Floating lives (Closed)

[Akion]

Alex looked at Shay and guessed that for him believing in magic was a massive step. He wondered what made it so hard to accept that he wasn't some kid who was lost but that he really was from another world.

Alex stood up for a moment and went to look at where the old man had been standing moments before. He didn't know why but he felt a tingle run down his spine. Crouching down he poked at the ground and at that moment he felt a drop of water hit the back of his head and then another, followed by a giant torrent of water pouring down from the sky. What was strange was that the water was pooling around their feet, it wasn't running off more so the clearing in which they sat was filling more and more so with the water.

Alex could barely see as the thick rain pounded away at them the water level now up to his chest, the floor beneath them steadily vanishing beneath him leaving him treading water. He looked for Shay but couldn't find him, in fact he couldn't even find the clearing any more, looking around he realised he was once more in that vast ocean.

Once more he felt the snare around his ankle though this time he was half expecting it, he didn't know what'd happen next or if he'd return home but he'd find himself in an all-togeather new world. For a moment he saw Shay swimming to the surface and quickly in an act of desperation he grabbed ahold of his wrist as best he could. He'd already dragged him into this ocean and he wasn't going to allow him to become lost on his own as he had been.

That was the last thing Alex remembered before waking up with the rain pummeling his face, Shay was laying near to him apparantly not yet conscious, the rain was pouring in from a hole above them, it seemed as if they'd landed inside an old house.

Pulling Shay away from the rain that poured down he pulled them into a rather large room which looked rather fancy, it had a large round white bed in it and many mirrors, along with strange things which were attached to the wall with string of some kind which looked like lamps. There was various other objects and things littering the room but Alex paid it little attention as he walked to the large window and looked outside, from it he could see a feild and beyond that he could see a mass of large and strange structures.

Walking back to where Shay was lying he looked at him, "Shay?" He asked as he shook him, "Shay are you ok?"

[Saloo]

Shay rested his head on his hands again, closing his eyes. He felt a drop of water his his face. Then, another and another. Shay opened his eyes just as he was hit with a torrent of water that seemed to come out of nowhere. He couldn't see anything and he heard the dull rush of water in his ears. He was so disoriented that he no longer knew which way was up. Everything was spinning.

The spinning stopped and Shay found himself deep underwater. He looked up and he could see light above him. He struggled, trying to reach that light as his lungs burned with the need to breathe again. He reached out and he felt something catch hold of his arm. He saw Alex there with him, pulling him down. He felt his mind fading into blackness and he fell into the depths.

Shay could hear the sound of water. It seemed distant, but it was there. He felt a dull pain in his leg, but it didn't seem to bad. It got worse as his mind started to come into focus.

"Shay?" He heard a voice say. He could feel someone shaking him. "Shay, are you okay?"

Shay groaned as his mind cleared. His leg burned, but not enough to tell him that he had ripped out his stitches. He sat up and his head spun, making him put a hand on his forehead.

"The hell happened...?" he muttered, still slightly dazed. He looked around the odd room. He had no clue where they were or how they had gotten there.

[Akion]

"Right after that old man disappeared it started to well... rain but then the clearing filled up like a basin, none of the water was draining away. It was as if the rain was only falling within the clearing. Any way we some how ended up in the ocean, at first I couldn't see you but then when I did I grabbed hold of you, I didn't know whether you'd end up in the same world as me or not other wise."

He looked at Shay wondering if he was taking this all in, there was an awful lot to understand and right now Alex didn't understand anything but that he'd ended up in that ocean again and that it would take him to new worlds, "I think you must of got caught up in the ocean with me, I'm not sure how but... well now we're in this strange place."

[Saloo]

"Wait, wait, wait... You're telling me we're in another world now?" asked Shay. "s**t... I just had to open my big mouth didn't I?" Shay laughed to himself. "Well, I guess we're in the same boat now kid," he finished, shakily forcing himself to stand.

"It's not going to do us any good to just sit around here." Shay managed to hobble over to the window. He looked out and took in their surroundings. The city they were in had obviously been abandoned long ago. Everything was overgrown and the buildings around them were crumbling away. He could see the field in the distance, but it was wild and uncultivated.

"Hmm... I'm going to guess that this isn't the world you're from kid, but it doesn't look like we ended up in the nicest of places either. He careful, especially since I'm not all the useful at the moment."

[Akion]

Alex nodded as he looked once more outside of the window, it was a bleak world out there from what he could tell, he wasn't sure if any one lived out there. Then somthing caught his eye, in the back garden was a glimpse of movement, he pointed at it. "Shay, down there, there's some thing down there" he said as he looked out the window he saw another movement at the other side of the garden, looking at both again he could vaugly make out the shapes of people in the massivly overgrown garden.

Then he saw her, the old woman walking up onto the stone paved path which ran down the garden, looking at her he noticed somthing he skin was grey and mottled, in fact it looked as if... large chunks of her flesh were missing. Alex felt his stomach churn, he could only see the side of her and upon looking again he noticed that she lacked any kind of jaw, that is untill she dragged herself around, he noticed that she had a limp as she did so and as she turned he realised it was because the bone was broken and sticking out of her leg. Along with this he saw her other wise missing jaw, hanging limp from the other side of her mouth, loosley attatched by a thin bit of flesh, her cold white eyes looked up at him blindly and then she made a low groan which sent a shiver down Alex's spine before he fully took in the sight before him.

Feeling himself wretch he made his way out of the room and back to the place where they'd landed and heaved up what little food he'd had in him before walking back in and sitting down on the bed pale. "What... what is she?" he asked in shock.

[Saloo]

Shay staggered away from the window. He had seen many rotten and decaying things is his life, but never before had he seen one up and walking around. He fell to the floor as his already shaky leg gave out. His hands shook slightly.

What kind of world have we fallen into... wondered Shay. He found himself praying to whatever gods may be out there that they wouldn't be stuck here for long. Then, he realized that it was pointless, seeing as there were no gods.

He could hear the sounds of Alex being sick in the next room. He couldn't blame him, but Shay was too shocked to even consider being sick. This... is going to be one hell of a bad day...

[Akion]

Alex's breathing slowed down slightly as he started to calm himself down, he wasn't sure what he'd just seen but it wasn't pretty and he didn't want to see it again, but he knew he'd seen a second figure in the tall grass and it was unlikely to be a nice open and accepting person who by coinsidence was ambling around in the back garden of an old and abandonded house with a walking corpse.

"There's at least two of them, and I have to guess more." Alex said tiredly, "I don't know if they can reach us up here but I'd have to guess that it's a possiblity, I doubt they are the friendly welcome wagon either, for one her jaw was bearly hanging on, I think that's because somthing took the other side of her face away." Alex said relaxing slightly trying to analyse the situation. "Then again I could be totally wrong and miss-judging them based on their looks and actions." He said with a grimace, "What do you think Shay?"

[Saloo]

"Ahh..." said Shay, his voice shaking slightly. "I'm going to have to agree with your guess... That falls into the 'monster' category and encounters from that area never end well..." Shay swallowed, doing his very best to steady himself.

Shay thought quickly, mentally going over their options. "We'll have to do one of two things. One, we stay, probably barricade the door, and we hope you can get us out of here before something... unpleasant finds us..." Shay paused.

"Or, we could go out there, deal with what we find and try to find a safer place. Neither of which is a smart plan in my opinion, but it doesn't look like we have a choice in the matter." Shay cursed under his breath. "Of all the times to be a ******** handicap..."

[Akion]

Alex nodded "I'll go and see what the situation is" he said walking out of the room to scout the floor on which they had landed.

Looking around he noticed the rain had stopped and once more the water had vanished as before, he thought about what the old man had said, maybe it was because of the rules or somthing, about how nothing should remain where it didn't come from.

Looking around he noticed they were on the second floor of what may of been a rather grand house at it's time, a pair of stairs headed up into what he could only reason was another floor for storage, seeing as how the stairs led to a hatch. looking around he found a stair case, well the remains of one; the stairs were all but unuable to ascent, decending may be a different case for a person with a handicap. The stairs were completly smashed, unless you were dextile enough you wouldn't be able to climb them and these corpes were barey holding themselfs togeather.

Looking around revealed no real means of survival, it was bare of food or anything such as that, nothing there would help them survive, he came back into the room. "Well I have good news and bad news, We're safe up here, there are no stairs up to this floor which they can get up, bad news is that getting down will be a problem. The only other option is sitting up here and surviving on what food you have with you, I doubt that'll last us long. What do you think?"

[Saloo]

Shay thought about it for a few moments, taking a mental inventory of what he had on him. "Let's see... I have enough food on me for about... three days with the both of us. If we go a little hungry, we could make that five," he said.

"The real problem is water. I wasn't expecting to be stranded in a place like this, so I have enough for... Maybe two or three days before we run out," he finished, seeming slightly depressed. That wasn't much to go on at all.

"As for the stairs, I could get down them if I really needed to. I'm not that injured." Shay had a sudden thought. They could stay in this house for a couple days and wait for his leg to get a bit better before venturing out into whatever was out there. The only problem with that would be that they would have less time to find water and food.

Shay sighed. "Damn... This is an annoying situation," he muttered.

[Akion]

Alex had grown bored after exploring the bed room in which Shay was now resting it. The room it'self had been interesting for a while, neither Alex nor Shay had managed to work out how to light the lamps in the room, they'd even followed the pieces of string to the wall and pushed the things poking out of them. Nothing had given them much luck and so with lack of much light and nothing to burn except for the bed sheets which looked as if they'd seen better days before the moths and so forth had found them a comfy nesting place.

Alex was now exploring the other rooms on this floor, one was covered in a smooth stone tiling which shone as the sun reflected off of it, it remined Alex of the stone used in the city; the smooth black pillars which lined the way into the city and many other things in the city were made from it. The room he was in seemed to be made for washing, it looked as if this black stone which lined it and from which the basin and seeming tub were made from was common in this world, he then wondered if the house it'self was made of it and the rooms just lined in some way to hide the fact.

Inside the other rooms he found them in a similar worn down state as the one they were resting in, though there was a bed made of wood in one of them. After a good long time Alex had managed to break off a good few chunks of the bed, he wasn't sure how he'd start a fire inside a house, he considered that it'd probably burn the entire thing down, well unless it was made of pure stone but he figured that the idea was nonsence.

Bringing the wood into the room he placed it down, "Well I have wood. Anything we can burn it in?"

[Saloo]

Shay raised an eyebrow slightly. "I really don't think that starting a fire is a good idea... We don't want to burn the place down."

Shay pulled his uninjured leg up to his chest and laid his arms on his knee as he leaned against the old bed in the room. "We don't really need a fire. If you want light, I can take care of that." Shay shoved his hand into one of his many pockets and pulled out a long, thin, silver rod.

With a sharp whack, he hit the rod on the hard floor. The rod vibrated, letting out a soft tune and it started to glow brightly like a flare. "I'm pretty sure this will give us all the light we need."

Shay put his hand on the floor next to the bed behind him. He felt something brush his hand. There was something under the bed. Looking, he saw an old book, a journal by the look of it. He picked it up and realized that, even though it was old, it hadn't been there all that long.

He loosened the small leather tie that kept it shut and opened it. It appeared to be full of notes on something. The words were cramped and hard to make out at times. He caught glimpses of something like a strange code on some of the pages. After examining one for a minute, he realized that it was a chemical formula. He read what he could make out on that page.

Contaminant in the water. (Possible cause of plant mutation.)

Overall population increase confirmed through census.
General migration toward populated areas likely. (Instinct?)
Some linger for long periods. (Look into that.)

Shay flipped to the last page to see if he could make anything out.

"Food supplies low." was writen at the bottom, followed by some numbers that looked like a date. "Return by" and then another date, some three days later. Seeing as the date system was different, he had no clue how old the little book was. It seemed like someone had at least stayed in this house for a while.

[Akion]

For a few moments Alex tried to guess the workings of the rod but he gave up. Shay seemed to have an array of strange things which had various uses, maybe one day he'd learn them all.

Alex looked over the book but he found he had one slight diss-advantage "Shay what does that book even say?" He asked, looking over the same pages as Shay and finding nothing on them but scribbles which meant nothing to him. Sure some of the things on the page were similar to ones he knew but also very distant from anything definitive. "I mean can you even read that?"

[Saloo]

Shay nodded. "A little. The handwriting isn't that great and most of it is in shorthand so I can't get much of a meaning out of it," he said, snapping the book shut. "From what I can tell someone is studying whatever those things out there are." Shay paused, thinking.

"I think they mean, or meant to come back here as some point. We may just get some help, but I wouldn't count on it. There's a date on it, but for all I know, it have been there forever. I can't really tell by the dust."

"Then again, from the shorthand, I don't think that whoever wrote this ever meant to have it read by anyone else. We could, for all I know, have a serious nut case on our hands."

[Aurkurai]

A shadow passed swiftly over the rooftops of the abandoned city. He avoided the more open spaces, preferring to avoid the unwanted attention of those on the streets below. The shadow, a young man, smiled to himself as he went. His bag of supplies was full so he would not need to worry about getting more for quite some time. The cities were always so closed, so suffocating.

Besides, now that he was back, he could get back to work again.

He stopped on a roof and looked down between the tall buildings. His deep green cloak fluttered over his shoulders and came to rest. The bag on one hip clinked softly as its contents knocked together. He brown hair fluttered in the soft breeze, occasionally blocking the watching green eyes. There was a garden below. It was overgrown and shabby, its formerly manicured beds barely noticeable.

He looked up suddenly, his movements were almost cat-like at times as he surveyed his surroundings. He heard a tap and a low tone echoed over the silent town. He could hear voices coming from...

He moved so that he could get a good look into a window without being seen. The voices were in the building that the man had chosen as his safe house here. He wondered who, or what, could be out here, away from the protection the cities brought. Looking into the window, he saw a man leaning against the old bed in the main room. He was holding something that was glowing brightly, like a flare. Another person was there too, a boy.

The man tilted his head curiously. Then, he saw the book. His eyes narrowed. They found his research notes. The man wasn't about to let his work get taken. He began to move, silently, over the rooftops once more. He reached the roof above the window and dropped down, landing gracefully on the window sill and looking at the intruders to his safe house with interest.