Left 4 Undead (for Adia and Caspar)

[westfallcorndog]

All at once Adia's phone receives a rather hefty, suspiciously well-spelled message from Harrowheart's number.

Adia:
I hope this message finds you in fine health and good spirits. This is Tamminy Photovolt, not Harrowheart; I am merely borrowing his messaging device. I would like to propose a research venture to you and to your companion, Caspar. Would you be interested in collecting samples of microorganisms with fluorescent proteins? My assumptions about your world's level of technology lead me to conclude that you understand their uses, but if not we can discuss. More to the point, I intend to visit a part of my homeworld historically called the Eastweald for samples of a rare ore which I will need for a future project. I know that there are/were native populations of both bacteria and fungi which produce fluorescent proteins in this area and suspected you may be interested. Expect the local climate to be temperate, late winter, elevation slightly above sea level with an ocean current which generally prevents snow. Field time is expected to be between five hours and one day. If you would like to attend, please dress and pack accordingly.
Yours,
Dr. Photovolt

A few seconds pass before another text follows.

And idk if Tams said this but bring Caspar to cause were killing zombies together its a guy thing. Meet at Naug's tower whenever your free.

And at the agreed-upon time it seems that quite a few people are milling about Naugus' tower. Harrowheart is sitting at one end of the U-shaped table in the yard, fully decked out in a deep blue suit of armor with bulky, spiked pauldrons and a red cape which collects on the ground near his feet. He's balancing the pommel of his runeblade in one open, floating palm and staring boredly into the distance while behind him Tamminy and Lawrence argue.

Tamminy is dressed for chilly weather and burdened by a backpack (made for a gnome's body, of course.) Lawrence doesn't seem to think this is enough and is insistent that she also take a single-barrel rifle designed for human arms. She can't seem to explain to him why this isn't going to work for her even as she demonstrates how poorly it fits her grip.

Comments

[westfallcorndog]

Harrowheart turns to Caspar and raises his lip just enough that it gets snagged on one of his fangs and makes him look less than noble. "What's the difference between the sun and the moon, Caspar? The sun makes its own light, and the moon makes its own light, too. A different light. Nobody ever went out at midnight and got a moon burn, did they?"

His furry ear twitches. Maybe they have, actually, if Elune was the one sending moonbeams down on them. But he's not going to tell Caspar that!

He returns his attention to the road and shakes his head (and his shoulder scientist) lightly. "Elune is a goddess. The Light is just... Magic. There's a difference."

[chiron_survivor]

"The moon doesn't make it's own light," Caspar shoots back immediately. "It reflects the sun's light. That's why you don't get a moon burn." There's a dumbass tacked on silently at the end there, although Adia picks up on it, glancing at Caspar and giving him a not-so-subtle shake of her head. The Cylon sighs and flicks off a piece of filth from his torn suit. "It felt nice, whatever it was."

"She didn't talk to me this time," Adia says softly, her eyes now on Harrowheart. "But maybe she doesn't have to, now that I'm more receptive to magic."

[westfallcorndog]

"Reflects the SUN?" Harrowheart fuckin' LAUGHS, one big, loud bark that he has to support with his hands on his stomach. He leans in with a smugly amused grin, toothy as can be, and mockingly asks, "How could the moon reflect the sun if the moon comes out at night and there ain't any sun at night?" Caspar, you fucking dingus, think this shit through!

Tamminy hears that and starts making a... Noise. A grumble-squeak of restrained fury, of infinite power and anger held prisoner within the tiniest body. "Harrowheart," she tries, desperate not to sound too bothered as she forces her words through her teeth, "Sweetie, do you remember when we talked about object permanence?" Harrowheart grunts in the affirmative, and Tamminy forces a laugh. "We'll talk about the sun when we get home."

He rumbles, willing to accept that the woman who makes solar-powered devices knows something about the sun that Caspar doesn't. Obviously she just doesn't want to embarrass the guy in public. Instead he swings his attention to Adia, curious, and says, "She didn't? So how can you be sure it was hers and not just the Light?"

[chiron_survivor]

"Oh my God," Caspar begins, because he knew that Harrowheart was stupid, but this is beyond the pale. "How can you not --"

Wait, what's that sound. Oh, it's Tamminy. He had kinda forgotten that she was there. The look he gives her is one part gratitude, two parts commiseration. Finally, someone who understands what it's like to be surrounded by idiots. "Good luck," he tells her, settling back into his more typical watchfulness. The last thing he needs right now is to be sucked into trying to explain how the sun and moon work to fur-for-brains over here.

Adia remains patiently silent through this latest round of banter. She's used to Harrowheart's lack of education in some subjects. Many subjects. When he addresses her directly about her powers, she shrugs and replies, "Because I used the moon rune. If it wasn't her power, then... well, it probably wouldn't have felt so familiar to me."

[westfallcorndog]

The moon rune... Harrowheart has to think on this a moment, but suddenly it occurs to him that he knows which rune she means. "The moon rune from the little skeletons! The tiny people from the well in the dream – I saw them in the Nexus after that, and they drew the same rune for me. It looked like the cross of the Light, but they told me it was for the moon. They drew Elune for me. Well, they tried to."

He gets to nodding as he stews on this. Adia must be on to something here. Elune gifted her the light, even if it was the Light. Is the Light one of Elune's powers, then? It's something he'll have to look into. Until then, they've got a pond to get to and some ore samples to take.

The trip to the water is brief, and in less than half an hour they've arrived. The manmade lake surrounds an abandoned city of hewn stone that might once have been white but now is blackened by ash of a devastating fire that burned out long ago. This place has been abandoned by the living for a long, long while... But there's no assurance that the dead have left. Harrowheart tests the safety of the murky waters by plunging his sword into the edge and is surprised to find how deep it is. The ground drops off almost immediately, and at a worgen's arm's length out it's already hip deep. His sword half disappears into the water, but rather than stirring up latent corpses his movements cause a bioluminescent display to bloom to life. It seems the bacteria in the pond don't appreciate being shaken!

He pads backwards and watches as the glow quickly subsides, then looks to Adia curiously. Is that normal? Is that what they came for? Water that glows, that's what Tamminy said earlier, right? He wants to watch her take a sample, if this is the stuff.

Tamminy, a few yards away, wastes no time sifting through the mud with a prospector's pan. She expects she'll find at least trace amounts of ore in this body of water, and when she thinks she does she plucks them out with a pair of tweezers and seals them safely in a stoppered glass vial. She'll have to run some tests when they get home, she explains, but she thinks she's found at least a little.

[chiron_survivor]

"Yes, the little skeletons," she replies, smiling fondly. Despite their morbid appearance, she found the messengers kind and helpful -- the only helpful beings in that entire Nightmare, aside from Elune herself. "The moon rune is a symbol in the language of Great Ones... they're not gods, though, they're... something else."

It makes her wonder, too, how Elune heard her pleas when she was praying to Artemis. Does the rune give her access to some generic moon goddess helpline? "You'll have to show me their drawings sometime, I have one of theirs, too."

Adia is used to walking long distances without complaint, but it's a relief when the lake comes into view. This is what she came for -- not zombies, and especially not tense religious discussions. The bioluminescent sparkle that Harrowheart ignites with his sword is magnificent, and she watches it with an awed expression until it dissipates into blackness. "That's caused by a microorganism," she tells the curious death knight, reassuring him that it is completely normal. Maybe the only normal thing about this entire trip.

Retrieving what looks like a tackle box from her messenger bag, she carefully sets up by the lake's edge, collecting samples of water in specially marked vials. There is a detailed process to detecting and cataloguing the bioluminescence, but that can wait until she's back at the lab. She's always asking herself questions about what she'll find. Is this bioluminescence caused by Noctiluca scintillans, or is there another creature responsible? And what led to this particular bloom?

Caspar stands a pace or two behind her, keeping a watchful eye on the burned out town. Part of him is also curious about the bioluminescence, as well as whatever Tamminy's doing, but Adia's safety is a priority. He does offer her a hand when asked, but he never completely relaxes. "Who used to live there? Humans?"

[westfallcorndog]

Harrowheart crouches near Adia and watches her work. What she's doing seems... Very mundane. So why is it interesting to him? Is it just because Adia is doing it, or is it because of the mystery behind it all?

Because Harrowheart is (not yet literally) snout deep in microorganisms with Adia, Tamminy decides to answer Caspar's question. Her hands are busy putting samples into containers and finding new room for them in her backpack, but her mind is clear and undistracted.

"Humans, yes," she says, nodding while she works. "That was a place called Stratholme, the largest city in the Eastweald and a hub for trade between the humans and the high elves in the north. The humans who lived there burned it down during the Third War as they fled – or failed to flee. You see, a plague came through the city. The Plague of Undeath. The Scourge – the mindless undead led by Arthas, the prince of this kingdom – plagued the people's grain. Some–"

Harrowheart's deep voice interrupts, "Arthas didn't plague Stratholme." He watches the two over his shoulder, one ear pointing towards them and the other swiveled to Adia. "Arthas was human then. He was a paladin. A Light-caster. The Scourge and the Cult of the Damned – their human necromancers, they plagued the grain. Arthas and the first paladin, Uther the Lightbringer, came to cleanse the city."

Tamminy's mouth opens slightly as she remembers the true story. "Oh... Oh, dear, you're right. It's one of the most important moments in human history. How could I forget?..."

Harrowheart returns to watching Adia's work as he continues the story. "Uther wanted to cure the people of their sickness using the Light. Arthas thought they were too far gone. He took his soldiers into the city and had them kill everyone they met. The undead and the living. He thought that if he destroyed the city he could stop the spread of the plague."

A rumble builds in his throat, a sound full of memories. "Not very many people made it out of Stratholme, and after that day Arthas was changed. I figure that's the day he started to become the Lich King. The King of the Scourge. Of undead like we saw earlier, and of death knights like me."

Tamminy pulls an uncomfortable face. Despite – or perhaps because of? – Harrowheart's nostalgic tone, the story discomforts her. "Well," she says, forcing a small laugh, "I've got my samples. Adia? Are you almost ready to get back to the Nexus?..."

[chiron_survivor]

Catching Harrowheart's interest out of the corner of her eyes, she wishes (not for the first time) that she had a powerful microscope with her, something that would let her show her friend exactly what she's looking for. "When I get these back to my lab," she explains to him, as she bottles up another sample, "I'm going to look at them with a special camera. And then I'll extract the chemical that made the water light up. I can use it for other experiments."

She falls silent again during Harrowheart's little history lesson. It's tragic and disappointing, as most stories of war are. What interests her the most is the role Arthas played in his own people's destruction. Is that how a presumably good person turns evil, with a decision that forever shifts their worldview? Or did this prince already have a darkness within him, one that shaped his path long before he killed his own people...?

Caspar's response is far less nuanced. "Kill 'em all and let the gods sort them out." He snorts. "Typical."

"I'm ready," Adia replies, putting away her samples and standing up in a quick efficiency. In other circumstances, she would have wanted to linger in this strange world a little while longer, but after being chased by zombies, she is eager to return to the Nexus.

[westfallcorndog]

Caspar snorts, and Harrowheart does too. That is typical, isn't it? At the very least he isn't offended by Caspar's blunt assessment, so there's that.

Harrow rises from his crouch and steps away from the party with an arm raised. His clawed hand grasps the air and begins to conjure magic, bolts of shadow like lightning that rush to his palm from the ground. The darkness intensifies until his hand is engulfed in it, and that's when he grasps the air and pulls downward. A kind of gateway, some sort of tear in reality into a world of darkness comes open as he pulls the shadows toward the ground. Out of it rolls a languid smoke, foggy and dark, and with it the rank odor of death and decay. There are sounds in that other, distant place. Sounds like gurgling stomachs, sounds like screaming, sounds like metal scraping stone.

Harrowheart takes Caspar by the hand and nods at Adia to encourage him to do the same. Tamminy takes the hint and grabs hold of Adia, and tightly. She's not going to be left behind in this place. But Light, why does that terrible minion have to take her by the shoulder? She hates this, she hates this, she hates everything about this!

When everyone is closely linked Harrowheart steps forward, but rather than walking directly into that other place he steps in sideways, slipping directly into the seam between the Plaguelands and that darker world.

Just a single step forward and the party is in the Nexus – at Naugus' tower, in fact. Time must have passed differently while they were gone, as the Nexus is darkened by night now. Lawrence is sitting in a chair nearby dead asleep under a heavy load of blankets. Tamminy smiles to see him, but she doesn't have it in her to wake him up.

"So," Harrowheart says as he looks between his friends. "Everyone came home in one piece. I'd call the mission a success. Adia, when you take pictures of your little pond creatures, I want to see them."

Tamminy whispers, "Thanks for coming, you two. It was good to have company. Especially yours, Adia. You..." She smiles slightly, though the tilt of her eyebrows betrays her embarrassment. "You were a big help."

[chiron_survivor]

Caspar looks about as thrilled as Tamminy -- bad enough that he has to hold Harrowheart's big, furry hand, but those sounds coming from the portal turn his stomach and make him regret the small meal he had earlier. Between the unexplainable magic and the smell of decay, his senses are thoroughly offended.

The middle link of the living chain bookended by the undead, Adia gives both Tamminy and Caspar a comforting hand squeeze. When they return to the Nexus, she lets out a soft sigh of relief. She catches sight of Lawrence, who must have fallen asleep waiting for them, and smiles as well. There's a good man there, or at least a man who cares about his secret(?) girlfriend very much.

She gives Harrowheart a warm, but tired smile. "Sure. I'll see you again soon." Hopefully with enough time for her to decide if she wants to lecture him about his minion or not. She loves him dearly, but she has to say something... later, though. She's far too drained to deal with it now.

When Tamminy whispers to her, she leans down enough so that she can give the smaller woman a hug -- if she wants one. "I'm glad I was there for you." She means it, too. How much worse would have it have been for her friend to be all alone?

Caspar watches over the two women with a thoughtful expression on his face, before looking over at Harrowheart. "I hope you're not expecting a hug, too," he says dryly. "You're lucky this suit is beyond saving, otherwise I'd send you a bill for the dry cleaning." And yet, somehow he doesn't sound all that annoyed. Not that he'd ever admit it, but part of him enjoyed the rush of splattering zombies and saving his girl.

He turns to leave, and Adia clears her throat. That's when he remembers the rifle slung over his shoulder. "Oh... here." He holds it out to the death knight, somewhat sheepishly. So much for a smooth exit.

[westfallcorndog]

Tamminy takes that hug gladly, and when they separate the smile on her face and warmth in her cheeks are impossible to miss. Adia, you're a good friend.

Harrowheart rumbles a laugh at Caspar's bullshit friendly banter. "Send me all the bills you want, Caspar, they ain't getting paid by a dead dog with no gold."

He takes up the shotgun that Adia hands him and looks it over before nodding at her. He wouldn't have minded if Caspar kept it, but he has the feeling Lawrence is going to want it for himself.