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Baneful rolled 1 6-sided dice:
2
Total: 2 (1-6)
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Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2012 8:08 pm
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Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2012 8:23 pm
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Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2012 8:32 pm
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Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2012 8:39 pm
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Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2012 8:49 pm
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Zar gave Nuru a look as if he'd mortally offended him, eyes narrowing to slits as he frowned. "Not working? Of course I'm working. I am always working. I simply rearranged my bustling schedule to accommodate some refuse sorting post-fright night and then this heretofore unscheduled fog intrusion made itself known to me. I simply rearranged my order of business - I am not off the clock."
He rearranged his tie in a sort of nervous tic, tailtip flicking like a feral cat, giving Nuru another sort of glazed and distant look, as if not really seeing him, the strange feeling of this place making the boil feel like he was far away, another stranger like the unmoving figures. He wished he could get nearer, he wished he could feel the old warmth and security, before the cold immovability of logic had slithered in and taken its place.
"It was perhaps not ideal in that illusion, it had a fairly unsatisfactory end. But when have the horsemen ever been truly correct about anything? They loathe the hunters, call them murderers and savages. And yet here I stand. They were going to liberate us regardless in due time."
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Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2012 10:21 pm
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"That is right," A sigh and a hiss, one that only Zar could hear, "You are working, you are always working, perfect, flawless. Noone understands how hard you work, not anyone else, not even him. You can't trust him, you can't trust anyone."
Was it just their imagination or was the fog growing thicker around them, blocking all else away?
- "You can't trust anyone," The voice echoed, reconfirmed, splitting into pure emotion, of greed and distrust. What did the others really know anyway?
Meanwhile for Nuru, all he could sense was something wrong. Zar was sick, there was something off with him. He needed help. He needed someone to be there for him -
- So why didn't they listen to what the barghest had to say??
"He doesn't trust you you know?" The voice echoed in Nuru's mind. "He doesn't trust you, one day he will betray you. You should ask him, you should test him..."
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Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2012 11:03 pm
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Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2012 11:19 pm
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The voice, saying exactly what he wanted to hear, was so readily internalised. He was working hard, always and without a single iota of appreciation from anyone. No one understood. Maybe at one time he felt like Nuru had - at the very least - come close to knowing him. But how could anyone truly understand perfection, absolute order and regimented control? The simple, logical answer was that they could not.
Nuru was messy. He was messy and chaotic right down to his core, the kind of dirt that would never come off.
There had been beauty there before he could see the cracks, but now he was imperfect, like all production rejects - fundamentally flawed.
And now he was asking about trust. Something he couldn't begin to fathom the way Zar did. There was absolute trust only in absolute fact.
He really couldn't afford to entertain these inefficient little fancies any longer.
Turning his most chilly and withering expression on the barghest boil, Zar curled his lip, exposing just a small fraction of razor sharp teeth. "So now you ask." Doubt, he was correct to doubt. He couldn't be trusted, he could never be trusted. Here was his chance to tell him that.
"If you must know." he drawled. "I'm afraid that I will more regrettably have to inform you to the negative. Your request for this "trust" is ill informed and henceforth denied in full. You are imperfect - flawed. A discontinued model. I must pursue loftier goals. You will only ever bring me down to your pitiful level and that is inefficiency I can ill afford."
"You do not comprehend me, my dear boil. You never have, and I realise now - you never shall."
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Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2012 1:17 pm
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What?... At first Zar's words seemed garbled... like incoherent nonsense. But the barghest played them over and over in his mind. They weren't nonsense, he slowly realized with sheer horror, no - they spelled it out for him in torturous ways only Zar could muster.
He didn't trust him. Not only did he not trust him; but he did not seem to like anything about him either. How could he?! After everything Nuru has done for him; he was the center of his world - no, universe. All he gave was his own trust, love, and affection. He would have given his life for you Zar, all of it. But this is the thanks he gets?! This is his reward for his unquestionable loyalty?! No Zar. No. It was not Nuru who was imperfect.
The hurt look on Nuru's face seemed frozen in time as a look of defeat slowly crept into his eyes... and then anger as his lips curled and finally he spoke, "Ahm not imperfec'," he snarled the words, "YOU are one who's imperfec'."
Imperfect with sickness... with whatever was wrong with him. With whatever was making him crumble to pieces. These facts, or at least Nuru's facts in the matter, were the excuses he mentally added for Zar in the end. Maybe it was selfish to think the only reason Zar would say such horrible things were because his brain was broken like the rest of him. Never because there was actually anything wrong with him... because there wasn't.
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Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2012 1:41 pm
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Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2012 2:01 pm
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Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2012 2:46 pm
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Being seized by Nuru made him laugh, a mirthless sound, rattled syllables dislodged by his surprise
The boil's hands, once welcomed as a loving caress now made his very skin crawl in repulsed waves, so very imperfect. Emotion was unflattering and so messy.
And then on the periphery of hearing someone was speaking, speaking to him.
Home
The snarled word was a command and a prediction, like the stern words of his father, impossible to disobey.
The world seemed to still in awe of the voice, not even a solitary whisper contesting its absolute command.
As if a bathplug somewhere had been pulled, the remaining colour swirled and leeched out of the world, out of Nuru, out of everything that he could see, and as it receded, the chill rose upwards, creeping and slithering through his veins like ice. It was almost a relief. Nuru receded and the pain of lingering love did too. Emotions were sloughed off like a discarded skin. He had a home. It had been waiting for him all along, calling to him, a place he had always sought. A place he belonged.
Reaching up with suddenly strong claws he pried the hands off himself. Reaching for words that would no longer come.
Don't be ridiculous, I know precisely who I am. he had been going to say
Except now he did not. He did not speak and he did not know.
Who he was had been was irrelevant, all that mattered was where he was going.
There had been something important, so important that now no longer mattered, everything was white, the boil before him became a mere shape - an obstacle in the way of home that simply had to be removed.
The fog rolled in, caressing his slender form, bleeding into him, no longer terrifying but reassuring.
In losing himself he had found perfection.
All that had been Zar was gone, muted to silence. The instinct to speak lingered, like a fading note on the air, but when he tried, all that came forth was a word that now defined everything that remained.
"Home"
HP:60
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Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2012 3:42 pm
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Baneful rolled 2 12-sided dice:
1, 7
Total: 8 (2-24)
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Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2012 3:57 pm
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Saliru rolled 2 8-sided dice:
7, 7
Total: 14 (2-16)
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Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2012 4:03 pm
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