Rushu42

Aln nodded. "Very well. I'm no Archivist, but I'm familiar enough with the required Intent. Have you ever used a coppermind? The process is fairly intuitive, but it's useful to know-" she cut off at the sight of the figure approaching. He was carrying a plate of cookies. Calm down, Aln, she reminded herself. This isn't the other timeline. Sometimes cookies are just cookies. Before she could address him, another figure limped towards them, looking like some sort of travelling musician. She eyed the barkeep as the Epic turned down his offer of a game. Had she been sending people over here? A public bar had been a mistake. "I'm afraid you'd find me a dull gambler," she said, trying not to betray the tension that she felt. Were people normally this friendly? She'd never been one to go to bars, really, and after everything that had happened over the past few days, she couldn't help but see ulterior motives in every stranger. Aln stood abruptly and called to the proprietor. "Excuse me, how much to rent a double room for the night?" @mathiau @EmulatonStromenkiin @Kvothe the Bloodless @Zinc Counselor @Arlin

Aln glanced over at Folorian to see his response. She was inclined to believe in the Epic's honesty, herself - after all, sending a spy seemed an unnecessarily convoluted way to apprehend them, especially since the DA had demonstrated no qualms about direct assaults - but she didn't want to take that risk for both of them. @mathiau

"How can you sense this?" she asked, her eyes fixed on the wireframe. "Some form of Forgery savantism, or a corrupted Nahel bond? Or... ah, are you one of Calamity's Invested? Epic powers are often harder to predict with standard models of Investiture, which could account for a heightened awareness of SoulForged dissonance..." She trailed off as her fingers flicked to her pocket for a notebook. "Sorry, what was your question again?" @mathiau

Aln gratefully accepted the bowl of stew and sighed as the warmth of the room washed over her. It was busier than she'd expected, and among the tangled threads of conversation filling her vision it took her a moment to realize that the man in the corner was waiting for her. So much for a chance to rest, she thought, and walked over to sit at his table. That, however, drove any thought of sleep from her mind. She leaned forward. "What sort of strange things?" @mathiau

Aln stepped under the boardinghouse's awning and knocked on the door. They'd been caught by the rain as they'd walked over, so her clothes were now torn, covered with rock dust, stained with eldritch ooze - and soaking wet. She probably looked like she'd just climbed out of a cement mixer. Ah well, she thought. It's the Alleyverse. They've seen worse. @ZincAboutIt @mathiau @EmulatonStromenkiin

"Well, as much as I do love a mystery, your friendship is more important to me. I'm not going to jeopardize that by prying." The sentiment caught her by surprise, even as she said it. Odd, that she suddenly couldn't imagine her life without him around. "Anyway," she continued hastily, before he could read anything in her expression, "let's get going. We need to start making a plan. Every answer that I got in that hospital just seems to have opened up more questions."

"That's great!" she exclaimed. "What-" then she stopped herself at the look on his face. Lightweaver oaths were different than the other orders, she remembered. Whatever Truth he'd spoken was likely to be traumatic. He'd tell her when he was ready. "You're right," she said instead. "The Guild obviously isn't an option; what about that boardinghouse? I think it's not too far from here. We can compare what we've learned and regroup." @EmulatonStromenkiin

Aln pulled her hands down her face, doing her best to calm herself. "Maybe you could coin the saying yourself; you're close enough to a sage." She took a moment to glance at Folorian. He didn't seem injured, thankfully. There weren't many things that could hurt a Radiant, but she would hazard that those shadow monsters fell in that category. And her healing was probably blocked by that accursed bane; even now, his words were flickering dangerously close to invisibility. "Oh yes, Pel's alright, I think." In confirmation, Pel drifted up from her pocket and hung in the air. "It didn't seem to be directly striking at his Cognitive Essence, just disrupting his connection to the Physical realm. If those things had been using anti-investiture I doubt we'd have escaped there alive." "Aln," said the spren, "you may wish to ask Folorian about his soulcasting. I noticed a disturbance in the Cognitive Realm as he did it, like he was swearing an oath." Aln cocked her head and looked at the other scholar. "Pel just said something about swearing an oath - do you know what he's talking about?"

Aln pushed her way through the last of the rubble, Folorian beside her, and stumbled out into the street. The others who had been trapped in the lobby surged out behind her, but she ignored them and took off running again. While she hoped that the shadow creatures that had pursued her would stay focused on the hospital, she didn't dare count on it. Eventually, after a blur of unfamiliar turnings taken at random, she stopped, her lungs burning without stormlight to keep her going. As she leaned against a nearby wall, fighting to catch her breath, the full absurdity of the situation suddenly hit her. In a rush of pent-up stress and fear, Aln started laughing wildly. "I'm sorry," she said between gasps, "I'm sorry, it's really not funny. It's just - how was that for our first stealth mission?" @mathiau

I'll put one more post in the Hospital thread, I think, and then if you want you can transition us to the Boardinghouse in your response!

It's hard to have a slow burn story in an RP this action packed, but we can do our best . We should probably chat in our PM about how exactly we'd want it to go. Also, someone wants to talk to our characters in the Boardinghouse Thread. I was hoping to have at least a bit of a conversation between them before jumping into that, but I don't want to keep the person waiting too long. Do we want to write a conversation on the way to the Boardinghouse? I was waiting to see if you wanted to respond to my last post in the Hospital thread, but I can just move ahead to the Alleycity thread if you like.

Alright, I can mention it! I hope I didn't confuse the RP too much by mixing up events myself, whoops. As for the second point, I really have no idea how to write romance, honestly, but sure! I'm willing to explore that dynamic if you forgive my ineptitude. Aln would be slow to enter a relationship, I think, but it's a direction that could totally make sense for the characters if we want to. (Also, iirc Ene shipped them from like their first scene together, so there's that)

The Boarding House sounds good, especially if @EmulatonStromenkiin wanted to join up with our investigation. We could go to the tailor from there? It could be nice to do some more conversational RP before jumping back into action, though, like testing the bane or talking about the oath. I think Aln was a little distracted at the moment, so I hadn't written her as noticing the oath; just the soulcasting. I could have Pel have noticed, though, if you want him to bring it up.

Sounds good. I just wrote a post to hopefully get Aln and Folorian out of the hospital, so we can wrap that up. @mathiau what do you want to have them do during the timeskip?

Aln fell with the sand - feeling, for a brief, surreal moment, like she was in some giant hourglass. Then she landed with the painful crack of broken bones. She healed instantly from the Stormlight, of course, but it still hurt. As she scrabbled to her feet, she felt a strange rush of exultation. Folorian had done it! She knew how long he'd been struggling with Soulcasting. No, insisted a part of her mind. You've only known him for a few months. A wave of disorientation hit her again, but she gritted her teeth. Focus. She could focus. Where were they? She looked around. The hallway they had landed in wasn't far from the lobby; she remembered that from the hospital floor plans. So she took off running in that direction, calling only "This way," to Folorian between breaths. The sight of the room brought her up short. The entrance was blocked by piles of rubble, like part of the ceiling had caved in, and throngs of people were gathering, their worried speech twisting above their heads in slanting typography. Several people were clutching at injuries, apparently wounded in the explosion. She nearly pushed past - she was in a hurry, after all, and the hospital should have their own healers on staff. But she hesitated, the words of a recent oath still echoing in her mind, and channeled the last of her worryingly diminished store of stormlight towards their healing. She ducked off before they had time to say anything in thanks, and elbowed her way through the crowd. For once, at least, she was glad of her unusually short stature. She stopped before the exterior wall of the hospital and summoned Pel as a blade (ignoring the startled reactions of those around her). She couldn't just cut out a doorway in the wall and push it through; the weight of the brick wall would still be far too heavy for her to move, especially with the thin cuts of a Shardblade. But small pieces she could do. She jammed Pel through the wall and began slicing a grid of evenly sized small sections, which she then hammered through with the lengthened handle of the sword. Even with a supernaturally powerful tool, the work was slow, and she prayed that the shadow monsters would be sufficiently slowed to allow them time to leave.

"Crem. I thought maybe with the oath-" she cut off, eyes suddenly wide, as they dashed around a corner. A second shadow monster loomed in the hallway, this one tall and angular, with dozens of fingers like knives. In one hand - storms, it had too many hands - it held an unconscious young woman in a hospital gown. She skidded to a halt and looked desperately behind her at the relentlessly approaching mass of tentacles. They were pinned. Screams danced faintly at the edges of her vision, the tiny black letters cutting through the air. Her mind darted back to those stacks of files. How many had been currently admitted patients? Had the DA decided to purge the hospital? But there was little time for thought. Her eyes drifted down to the unconscious patient, and before she could reconsider Pel was forming in her hands as a metal quarterstaff. Her clumsy swing shouldn't have connected, but the monster made no move to dodge. Instead, when Pel struck the shadow, he seemed to corrode, bits of the silvery metal flaking off into the air. Pel? she sent in a panic. "I am - I am alright. I don't believe that I was injured, simply... interrupted." Now that's something to look into... later. Although it hadn't seemed to hurt the creature at all, it nevertheless managed to successfully draw its attention. Tilting its head like a curious child, the creature dropped the patient and reached out a hand towards Aln. She stumbled backwards. "Folorian, I think you're going to need to try!"

Ooh, exciting! The in-character guild isn't really in a position to be joined at the minute, unfortunately, but you can retcon it to say that your character joined before it was raided, if you want. @Harbinger

Aln dashed down the hallway after Folorian, Stormlight surging through her veins. An oozing tentacle touched her ankle and she kicked out in blind panic. She nearly overbalanced, but by some miracle the monster missed its chance to entangle her further, and she kept running. She spared a glance behind her. Storms, it was bigger than she'd thought - but at least it didn't seem very fast. It was almost certainly a Hemalurgic construct, given who they were dealing with, which meant that theoretically removing the spikes could disable it - but of course, the DA had probably jammed like 50 into the thing to safeguard against such a move. Better to assume that destroying it wasn't an option, then. What about containment? Even if it was specifically targeting her and Folorian, as she suspected, she could hardly in good conscience leave an eldritch ooze roaming a hospital. A plan began to pull itself together in her mind. Aln caught Folorian by his arm to gain his attention. "Folorian", she gasped out, Light leaking from her lips. "How much material can you soulcast at once?"

If we do end up doing a DA Cold War and there's a spot open in the department heads, I have an idea for an OP character I wanted to try (only for the purposes of interacting with this, not for messing with regularly balanced characters). I don't really know how the DA organization works, though, so if you don't want me jumping in with a department head without already having joined the guild, that's cool too. The idea is basically a Fortune abuser who's managed to get enough luck through a combination of different magic systems + chromium compounding that reality just kind of warps itself around her subconsciously wherever she goes, granting her pretty much whatever she wants. What she failed to consider before doing this, however, was that that would get incredibly boring. So after a few centuries she started actively going out of her way to cause problems for herself, only to become increasingly frustrated when they resolve themselves. She'd be joining in the Cold War primarily in the hopes of finally getting something to do. Has a character like this already been made? And would there be an open spot in any sort of DA conflict? I know we're still dealing with the current Era before moving on to deciding the next plot, but I wanted to ask.

Aln looked towards the spren catching the end of his words, then swiveled to scan the wall. There was nothing there... or at least, nothing she could directly see. Something flickered in the corner of her eye, niggling at her subconscious. Pel? "Kerr's right. I can sense its Cognitive Presence; it's very strong. It seems to be projecting a field of anti-awareness, perhaps even editing the - wait. It's leaving." Invisible to Aln's eyes, the slug had turned and begun wiggling up the wall and into an air conditioning vent. Aln took a few nervous steps backward. "Folorian, I think we should get-" The second half of her sentence was cut off by a splintering of the ceiling panels above, and suddenly dark tendrils began to drip from the ceiling, congealing into a mass of writhing shadows and flashing teeth. "-going," she finished, eyes wide, as the thing, whatever it was, began reaching its amorphous arms towards the pair.

"Go ahead," said Aln. "But yes, more than just the earthquakes, though I suspect they're a part of it. There are other agents in this hospital, looking for the same things that we are. I encountered someone in the records room who was searching for exactly the same symptoms that we are, but she left before I could determine her sympathies. Something's bothering me about the pattern of memory recovery, too, though I can't quite put my finger on it... Did you discover anything from the patient end of things?"

Ooh, expanding the magic system like this would be really cool. I wonder if we could establish some sort of meta-investiture powers - as in, powers based solely off of the detection/manipulation of other forms of investiture. Kind of like A-Bronze or Aluminum already impact things, but expanded, perhaps?

The man in the suit sprinted off towards the exit, but Aln barely noticed him go. She held the papers clutched to her chest, mind whirring rapidly. They were almost certainly dealing with some kind of large-scale Forgery; that much had been corroborated by the symptoms expressed in the files. But setting a side the theoretical implications of such an action being possible for a moment, there was clearly something strange going on with the pattern of people regaining their memories. Perhaps it was simply an ordinary manifestation of a SoulForgery slipping; after all, there was hardly prior research on the topic of Forging entire cities. What really puzzled her were the other people that she'd encountered in the records room. Laurelai, at least, had clearly been looking for the same information that Aln had - but she'd fled without pushing the issue. What was she motivated by, then? And who had she been signaling? A tremor ran through the building again, reminding her suddenly of where she was. Well, she'd gotten what she came for... mostly. She shoved the files into a pocket in her coat and strode down the hallway, heading towards the main exit. She hadn't gone far before she rounded a corner and nearly ran straight into Folorian. "Folorian!" she said. "There you are - I think we need to get out of here. Something very strange is happening in this hospital." @mathiau

Are the shadowy creatures seeking out anyone with "wrong" memories? In that case, should I write some showing up to track Aln down? She recovered her memories fairly early on. @Fatebreaker @anyone else who knows

Aln slowly sunk down until she was sitting on the floor, her back against a filing cabinet, paperwork in her arms. The third page of the file had finally included notes on the memories the woman had experienced, and they corroborated her own. Her eyes caught on a phrase, apparently a direct quote from the patient. "They took what was mine. Harmony, they stole it from me. I remember... pain wrapped in sweet lies. A gift that was not a gift." A shiver of cold ran through her. She knew of the DA's hemalurgic experiments - or, at least, part of her did. It was still hard to feel as if those memories had truly happened to her. It felt like a story, or a dream, that person she could have been. A first-hand account, even such a fragmented one, was a sobering reminder of what she was investigating. It was was so easy to get caught up in the questions, in the puzzle of it all, and forget the all-too-present danger. She wouldn't make that mistake again. Not like last time. Last time...? A memory thrust itself into her mind, as if it had been waiting for the chance. Flashes of imagery: wings of fire emblazoned on a stormy sky; monsters streaming from cracks in the world; a looming figure, a cracked grin, millions of angular legs, a roar drawn like a scribble in the air; echoes of a pain that had never occurred. She closed her eyes. The worst part, though, had been afterwards. Sitting in her library, gazing across the broken city, and knowing that their protectors, their saviors, were no less malicious, no less dangerous, no less unpredictable than the monsters that had been destroyed. Knowing that her life, and the lives of everyone in the city, rested in the blood-stained hands of unstable gods. Aln looked down and found that her hands were shaking where they clutched the file. Wait, no; that wasn't right. The room was shaking, like a giant had decided to use the hospital as a snowglobe. She started and jumped to her feet as papers began to fall from the shelves. The man in the suit was already at the door, holding it open, looking back at her. Had he said something? He was gesturing urgently to her, but she hesitated, then turned back to the shelf, scanning for the other file that Laurelai had shelved. There. She yanked it into her arms, grabbing a few others for good measure, and finally turned to leave. Only to see the filing cabinet behind her begin to fall. She inhaled Stormlight in a desperate burst of panicked adrenaline, throwing herself instinctively to the ground. Her mind tumbled ahead of her, scrabbling for a solution, and suddenly her hands were thrust out in front of her, and Pel was materializing between them, a long, unadorned pole of silvery metal. The filing cabinet buckled as it met the Shard...stick, but it gave her the time she needed to roll out of harm's way and dash for the door. Pel puffed away as she ran, and she saw the crash of the cabinet out of the corner of her eye. "What the storms is going on?" she gasped at the man. "We're not on a fault line - I don't think the Alleyverse even has tectonic plates - is something happening to the hospital?" @MacThorstenson @mathiau