The Eye, The Serpent, and The Pendulum [sw]

i used to dream in the dark of palisades park

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Not-Chryssa

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May 1

Eterna City, Sinnoh

Panromantic

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PERISH 111.1

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The Eye, The Serpent, and The Pendulum [sw]

POSTED ON May 1, 2021 17:53:07 GMT

shiv likes this

I. THE EYE

She fell, not into darkness, but into shades of gray.

She was a meteor shower, accelerated through gravity. Shards of pearly gypsum matched her momentum, hurtling downwards like a rain of stars. Frost formed on each one like bullets as they cut through the strange wind spiraling up from below.

It stank of rot. It sang of old beginnings.

Chryssa was alone. She’d jumped along with Jynx and Sableye, but they had vanished, and their powers with them. A simple Psychic would have slowed her fall to a leisurely float, a Poltergeist could have made for her a raft of ghost-white gems. Instead, she was at the mercy of gravity— and it drove her on like a thrill ride, mechanical and restless. Glistening columns of pure white rock passed by, the timbers of a petrified forest. She pierced them with her swarm of stones, drawn towards the yawning shadow of the pit.

Something moved. Something breathed. A crescent ring of shifting monochrome, flexing, fluttering. Chryssa realized they were Unown, flowing in militant lines like cells in their arteries. They swirled through circular highways, paving concentric rings of living numerals. What are they trying to tell me?

Her lips parted and dewy vapor billowed from her mouth, shaping words.

This is the needle which pricks the tongue,

This is the tongue which swallows stars,
This is the star which lights the wrong way,
This is the eye of the world.

01010100 01101000
01101001                         01110011
00100000             01101001             01110011
00100000         01110100 01101000         01100101
00100000         01100101     01111001         01100101
00100000         01101111 01100110         00100000
01110100         01101000         01100101
00100000                         01110111
01101111  01110010

0
1
1
0
1
1
0
0
01100100

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The Eye, The Serpent, and The Pendulum [sw]

POSTED ON May 2, 2021 1:52:46 GMT

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[attr="class","wildtemp"]

[attr="class","wildbgroc"]

[attr="class","wildtitle"]A WILD CUBCHOO APPEARED!

[attr="class","wildshiny"]

[attr="class","wildpkmnbox"]

[attr="class","wildpkmn"]

[attr="class","wildtab"]

[attr="class","wildtabox"] FEMALE	[attr="class","wildtabox2"] SNOW CLOAK
[attr="class","wildtabox"]ICY WIND	[attr="class","wildtabox2"]PLAY NICE
[attr="class","wildtabox"]FLAIL	[attr="class","wildtabox2"]POWDER SNOW
[attr="class","wildtabox"] ---	[attr="class","wildtabox2"] ---

[attr="class","wildtag"]chryssa glasgow

[attr="class","wildnote"] WHAT WILL YOU DO?

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Eterna City, Sinnoh

Panromantic

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PERISH 111.1

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The Eye, The Serpent, and The Pendulum [sw]

POSTED ON Jun 6, 2021 1:59:15 GMT

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II. THE SERPENT

The cave drank in sound, swallowing every breath, every blink. It starved for something Chryssa couldn’t quite describe-- perhaps it was light, or color, or the miracle of vision itself. Whatever it was, she felt it dulling around her, siphoned away with every foot she fell.

She was not alone down here-- gray statues, calcified with time, flashed past her from the passing veins of rock. She saw a Cubchoo, its body gray and dripping with threads of solid lime as if trying to escape the walls themselves. She fell past it, descending deeper.

They contracted, sloping narrower and narrower, until Chryssa realized she was falling not down a pit, but a pyramid.

Her body passed through a barrier, and she entered the nest.

THE SERPENT was a beast of angles and cruel geometry. Its body coiled like cardboard, ridged and broken at every joint. She could see it drowsing in the depths of its container, starving for something timeless, something outside human words. Something OTHER.

It lifted its gem-encrusted head, many-eyed and alien.

It opened its mouth, the predator of the pit, the heart of a trap built for an anomaly who only fed once a millennia. With her swarm of stones, the stench of sea and scars rising from its breaching tongue, Chryssa fell towards it.

She reached for her sword, but Muir wasn’t here. Her Pokemon had disappeared. Free-fall was no place for a cane, and no place for a blade.

So instead, she reached for a shield.

She caught herself on the serpent’s snout, fastening fingers in the hard edges of the leviathan's largest eye. It screamed soundlessly, vibrations rupturing arteries of stone. She pulled, tasting blood, freeing the faceted plate from tattered nerves. Trailing cords that smelled of salt and stone, she brought it up to block strike after strike of its barbed tongue, bending it like fork tines.

It writhed, its tight coils unfurling, its maw gaping listlessly. The yawning vacuum of its breath swelled again like a great sigh, buffeting her with age and cold. It seemed almost like a great tunnel, paving the way forward.

Something glinted in its depths. Something strange and achingly familiar, which called her towards a dream-- or perhaps away from a nightmare.

Chryssa did not hesitate. She stepped from the tooth-lined rim of its jaw, and fell towards the belly of the beast.

...

The concept of a ‘fabric of reality’ was in error, the mundane child of two-dimensional thinkers. Reality was a needle stitching the unfathomable, and Chryssa’s last step took her from its thread to its point.

PASSING CUBCHOO

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The Eye, The Serpent, and The Pendulum [sw]

POSTED ON Jun 6, 2021 4:19:20 GMT

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[attr="class","wildtemp"]

[attr="class","wildbgroc"]

[attr="class","wildtitle"]A WILD WEAVILE APPEARED!

[attr="class","wildshiny"]

[attr="class","wildpkmnbox"]

[attr="class","wildpkmn"]

[attr="class","wildtab"]

[attr="class","wildtabox"] FEMALE	[attr="class","wildtabox2"] PRESSURE
[attr="class","wildtabox"]ASSURANCE	[attr="class","wildtabox2"]HONE CLAWS
[attr="class","wildtabox"]SCREECH	[attr="class","wildtabox2"]SCRATCH
[attr="class","wildtabox"] ---	[attr="class","wildtabox2"] ---

[attr="class","wildtag"]chryssa glasgow

[attr="class","wildnote"] WHAT WILL YOU DO?

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murk

Not-Chryssa

She/Her

May 1

Eterna City, Sinnoh

Panromantic

radio host

agent

PERISH 111.1

safe. subliminal. sootopolis radio

266 height

as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport

awards

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The Eye, The Serpent, and The Pendulum [sw]

POSTED ON Aug 1, 2021 3:39:26 GMT

shiv and Zac Ramsay like this

III. THE PENDULUM

From the eye of the needle to its end, Chryssa faced an inevitable conclusion.

The serpentine wraith unwound as she passed through its belly, its broken angles rearranging in creaks of cardboard coils. It formed a straight passage, leading Chryssa onwards towards its heart.

The End carved through the darkness before her, unmistakable and vast.

Her forward progress slowed, and the anomaly moved through the air with weight and purpose. It was pronged, spade-shaped, the tongue of a bloodsucker. The world parted in its wake, breathed from fluttering lung-sacks on either side of the great equalizer.

What now?

In her hands, she clutched the gemstone eye. Her fingers tightened on its sharp edges. It had been her shield. Now, it would be her catalyst.

She held the Eye before her, and the vision changed.

Through the crystal Chryssa saw not the great scythe bisecting reality, but a simple pendulum. It swung on a hairline thread like a spider, its iris-shaped weight no larger than a silver dollar. It flickered faintly, dull as a dying star.

Still looking through the shield, Chryssa reached out.

She plucked the string.

A tone rang from the severed thread, a tone that resonated with finality-- and familiarity. I'm... in the cave, she realized as the clear note hummed from all around her like the strike of a tuning fork, reverberating off stone walls and columns. The vision began to unravel as the frayed end of the string waved in the frozen, salty air. Cold. Ice. I'm still in the pit. In the Contest.

The world rushed back as the pendulum hit the stone floor with a chime--and the trance broke. Her vision spun and Chryssa found herself on the ground, broken white pebbles digging like fingernails into her body. She gasped suddenly for breath and heard Oona respond with an exclamatory ululation. Body aching with cold and bruises, Chryssa groped blindly around herself and felt her hand settle on the familiar sheath of her Honedge.

She was back.

...And it was all a dream, Chryssa thought, propping herself up on Muir and levering herself slowly off the gypsum-covered ground. How... unsatisfying.

The ground around her was littered with fainted Pokemon. Chryssa picked her way through them, moving unsteadily on her feet. Weavile... and Hypno. Ah, of course. The pendulum she'd seen must have been Hypno's-- a distraction while its partner Weavile attacked her team. With their natural ghost and psychic-type resistances, Oona and Zuill must have broken out of the vision almost immediately-- only Chryssa had been trapped inside the nightmare at the end of the world.

As if performing last rites, she dropped a Pokeball on each as she limped past, refusing to look at them. She didn't want to admit what she'd experienced had been a fabrication by low-level Pokemon. It felt... wrong.

"That's it for the Contest, I suppose," Chryssa said, collecting the Weavile and Hypno. She ran a hand through grit-filled hair-- she couldn't even remember what she was supposed to be looking for. Her head was filled with eyes and coils and flickering forked tongues. No. It was just a dream...

She stopped. Zuill was holding something in both clawed hands, something clear and faceted-- something Chryssa remembered tearing from the serpent's immortal socket with only fingernails and desperation.

She drew in a breath. Involuntary. Incredulous.

"Is that..."

The Eye was clean, stripped of nerve and sinew. For all appearances, it was just another gemstone, a ruby gleaming faintly red in the half-light.

Chryssa's mouth curved in a crescent smile.

END THREAD.
CATCHING WEAVILE

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The Eye, The Serpent, and The Pendulum [sw]

POSTED ON Aug 1, 2021 20:54:21 GMT

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[attr="class","wildtemp"]

[attr="class","wildbgroc"]

[attr="class","wildtitle"]YOU CAUGHT THE WEAVILE!

[attr="class","wildshiny"]

[attr="class","wildpkmnbox"]

[attr="class","wildpkmn"]

[attr="class","wildtab"]

[attr="class","wildtabox"] FEMALE	[attr="class","wildtabox2"] PRESSURE
[attr="class","wildtabox"]ASSURANCE	[attr="class","wildtabox2"]HONE CLAWS
[attr="class","wildtabox"]SCREECH	[attr="class","wildtabox2"]SCRATCH
[attr="class","wildtabox"] ---	[attr="class","wildtabox2"] ---