Post by Vangreth on Oct 12, 2020 16:00:49 GMT -6
Wandering the wilderness of Earth, most of the time, ended up in finding yet another strange side of the planet, it either came from its own people, ancient relics of the past, a display of alien ingenuity or reality flirting with the supernatural. It just seemed like Earth was the epicenter of all those things, converging into one planet filled to the brim with mysteries and wonders, waiting to be discovered by the numerous people exploring its landscapes. You never know what you might encounter, what things could be set in motion by a single being setting foot where nobody had for a while, and this excitement was forever present.
Of course, an alien exploring Earth due to boredom was not the greatest context, it wouldn’t make as much of a good story as an adventurer looking for trouble, or a fugitive on the run stumbling into something bigger than himself, but such was the reality for Vangreth, simple boredom after a long period of successive intense moment left the Muko-Jin with a sense of emptiness, like there was something missing in his daily life. The lack of stimulation, especially in the fighting departement, was itching him as days went with training, routine and the occasional person to meet. Not to say nothing interesting happened, but there were these strong sensations missing, maybe he had become hooked on such things.
As for general destination, the fortuneteller desert seemed like an interesting one if any. His interest was sparked when he thought back to the first time he had seen his monstrous self, he had been seeing it in reflection for a while, but had to track it down to a mirror in some sort of abandoned temple in the middle of said desert, which probably meant there would be more of those if someone was to dig in the right places, or look with the right eye… or maybe it would just provide some much needed occupation, since training the same way with gravity device on every now and then simply bored him at last, the device was made to be able to train in harsh conditions while doing any task after all, so there was no real reason to stack those things on top of each other.
While one might think going by foot would make it easier to find whilst looking for underground locations, Vangreth found that a bird’s eye view more often than not helped in seeing the ‘bigger picture’, which was vital when looking for those kinds of findings… Additionally, flying in his base form while his gravity device was pushing a hundred times on him did make for a decent enough exercise in itself!
Vangreth’s instinct did not miss the mark, and his aerial view allowed him to spot a general idea with strangely-formed sand hills, which would possibly be hiding some sort of underground building… perhaps there once were whole cities here? Or more likely, this desert had been used to build hideouts through the ages, and they ended up stacking the underground with it.
The alien landed at the roots of one of the hills, at random of course, as he had no idea where the actual entrance to the certainly abandoned space was, back when it was occupied. Fortunately, sand was pretty easy to dispatch, Vangreth just had to create strong gusts of wind by slapping away at the air in front of the hill to remove chunks of it really fast. Of course, this might have been creating sandstorms a few miles away, but anyone setting foot on the desert had to be prepared for such things, so he did not worry too much about it.
A few minutes of improved digging later, Vangreth had discovered what appeared to be a wall! Much more resistant to the alien’s way of uncovering things, it stood out after a few swoops, revealing this well-preserved structure that had been hiding in the sand for a length of time nobody could likely know. It did not take too long for Vangreth to carefully carve himself an entry point, as looking for the real thing would likely take hours and be pretty boring in itself, the alien made his way into his discovery, not really knowing what to expect from the descending staircases and mysterious rooms that haven’t been opened for likely hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
Since he could not exactly see in the dark, Vangreth’s aura would serve as the purple-ish source of light for this exploration, even if purple was not exactly the clearest color there was, he was familiar enough with it, and didn’t really want to go back to the nearest city to buy a flashlight and a handful of batteries with it.
The first few rooms tempered the alien’s expectation, as they were mostly empty, vaguely furnished by a few carved furnitures, some of which still had unidentified objects stocked there, waiting for their owner to pick them up once again… it was all a little sad to be honest.
But of course, this place had yet to reveal its more interesting aspects, those came in the form of a relatively well preserved book, uncanny, kind of like it was placed there weeks ago, contrasting with the withered state of everything else… enough so to pull Vangreth’s interests, who would pick it up and dust it off gently with the back of his hand before opening.
Then came the first real surprise. When the pages, at first blank, connected with Vangreth’s hands, letters began to form on them, in a language Vangreth could strangely read, although it was nothing he had seen before… not on Muko or Earth… but vaguely felt familiar to him… at first, he feared he had found yet another artifact of his terrifying species, and almost put the book down… before seeing an illustration form, that of a Shinjin, being worshipped by what appeared to be Earthlings.
From the looks of it, this was an ancient temple, built by a very early stage of Earthling society, back when a Shinjin spent some time there… he seemed benevolent, and there was mention of a ‘gift’ bestowed on certain of his loyal subjects… The book then records the apparition of said Shinjin, getting fewer and further between until he disappeared, leaving the temple to eventually be abandoned.
Vangreth gently closed the book, but when he did, the strange ‘light’ that had been writing visibly creating letters on the book escaped the pages and hovered in front of him for a few seconds, emitting a buzzing sound, similar to a few bees, before leaving towards a staircase not far from where they were… now that was instruction clear enough for Vangreth to understand, this thing was screaming ‘follow me’ all over!
The glow from the strange apparition made it quite easy to spot in the dark, but it went relatively fast, and Vangreth could not exactly fly at max speed in these kind of places, he would risk to destroy part of it, and in the worst scenario, have it collapsed on top of him. Not that he would be in real danger, but destroying this whole place felt very wrong to him.
If anything, this little chase down the bowels of this seemingly huge temple made Vangreth realize just how vast this thing went! He took many stairs up and down, corridors that seemed endless and even the rooms were larger than one would have expected from such a place! Everything looked carved into some sort of sandstone, but probably reinforced in some way to have passed the test of time for so long. Other than that, the alien probably missed so many details, the archeologists of the whole planet probably had trouble sleeping right now, not knowing why.
Eventually, the light slowed down, and even stopped, as they arrived in front of a massive door, made of metal, that contrasted with everything else so far… The light then visibly merged with the door, its glow creating strange runes of the door, which Vangreth quickly deduced were instructions to open it… the room in itself did not have much, there was a desk with a few old papers there, a workbench with no tools left and this door, not illuminated in blue, and a lock untouched by time, preventing anyone from opening it.
The first ‘clue’ came in the form of a simple riddle, ‘A situation with no answer requires a creative mind’, with emphasis on ‘creative’. Well, that kind of went without saying didn't it?
Vangreth decided to look into the papers on the desk, maybe there were some more clues there? Indeed, when he began to look into it, the papers were some kind of primitive blueprint, made in the same material as the book he previously took, which, when dusted, ended up being in a much better state than he would have believed! Instructions on how to make some sort of key, which he assumed was to open that lock, but the more he looked into the instructions… the more he felt cheated. While on the surface it looked simple enough, there were a few details that visibly made it impossible to create the key, not even getting to the part where the workbench had no tools… perhaps this riddle had already been solved, and the person who reached whatever was on the other side of the door made sure nobody could solve it still… but then, he was not the kind to quit without a little deeper look.
The alien spent hours trying to figure out the missing pieces, this thrilling challenge had his mind running, he wanted to solve this mystery! He tried carving keys from sandstone from the walls, woods from the desk, he even found some strange metal and tried with that… to no avail. There really were flaws in the creation process of the key, which made it impossible to carve without breaking!
Throwing his final metal attempt to the ground, the broken key resonated on impact and shattered, leaving a glowing dust and eventually nothing to the ground but a vague glow that faded away quickly…
The moment it clicked. The key was impossible to carve, it just had to BE. Like the metal, it was not meant to exist by itself, but rather… materialized as is.
Memories resurfaced in Vangreth’s mind… back on Muko, when he was still a child, the selection process had put him in the warrior caste for his physical sturdiness, but he had shown traces of magical potential, which could have made him into the ruler caste! A simple object like a key… if he knew the exact form it had to take… surely he could manage something like that right?!
The alien jumped from his position and to the desk, grabbing the instructions for the key, then rushed to the door, putting his right hand on the door, and with his left hand, he held the instructions, memorizing it with every detail.
‘’ On the right, I have material. On the left, I have a specific shape. Now, I only need…’’
The alien closed his eyes. A spark is what he needed, something to ignite his long forgotten magical potential, even some small it was, to allow him this one thing. He visualized the key in his mind, exactly as it was meant to be, and not how it was meant to be created. He quickly felt a strange sensation to his core, spreading through his body and into the tip of his fingers.
‘’ … a spark…’’
He opened his eyes and a spark of magic came from his fingertip, and out of thin air, appeared the key ! Well, it did not appear, he had created it. He firmly grabbed it, a wide smile on his face as the satisfaction of having discovered yet another thing about himself settled in.
He inserted the key into the lock, which fell heavily to the ground, and the door opened to reveal a room with what Vangreth could only describe as floating knowledge. Words in the air formed sentences and flew above these strange devices… and a ton of paper was stacked. It did not take long for Vangreth to understand what he had found, and quickly enough, he began to catch those ‘sentences’ with the paper there. The words reformed from the devices, but a print was made on the sheet he had caught it with… and it seemed to be more instruction, about this Shinjin, his ‘gift’ and the story of this ancient temple.
Well, at least now Vangreth had something to do for the next… whatever time it would take for him to make sense of all of this! He tried to catch every piece of information he could get and would take it back home, to maybe put it in a more comprehensible form, and study some of it… who knows, perhaps he’d learn some more interesting stuff from this place, after all, it had already thought him a little something to explore! WIth that new thrill, the alien left this place, which in itself took way too long because of his far he had travelled following this little light-thing, but Vangreth was way too excited about his findings to care at that point.
Of course, an alien exploring Earth due to boredom was not the greatest context, it wouldn’t make as much of a good story as an adventurer looking for trouble, or a fugitive on the run stumbling into something bigger than himself, but such was the reality for Vangreth, simple boredom after a long period of successive intense moment left the Muko-Jin with a sense of emptiness, like there was something missing in his daily life. The lack of stimulation, especially in the fighting departement, was itching him as days went with training, routine and the occasional person to meet. Not to say nothing interesting happened, but there were these strong sensations missing, maybe he had become hooked on such things.
As for general destination, the fortuneteller desert seemed like an interesting one if any. His interest was sparked when he thought back to the first time he had seen his monstrous self, he had been seeing it in reflection for a while, but had to track it down to a mirror in some sort of abandoned temple in the middle of said desert, which probably meant there would be more of those if someone was to dig in the right places, or look with the right eye… or maybe it would just provide some much needed occupation, since training the same way with gravity device on every now and then simply bored him at last, the device was made to be able to train in harsh conditions while doing any task after all, so there was no real reason to stack those things on top of each other.
While one might think going by foot would make it easier to find whilst looking for underground locations, Vangreth found that a bird’s eye view more often than not helped in seeing the ‘bigger picture’, which was vital when looking for those kinds of findings… Additionally, flying in his base form while his gravity device was pushing a hundred times on him did make for a decent enough exercise in itself!
Vangreth’s instinct did not miss the mark, and his aerial view allowed him to spot a general idea with strangely-formed sand hills, which would possibly be hiding some sort of underground building… perhaps there once were whole cities here? Or more likely, this desert had been used to build hideouts through the ages, and they ended up stacking the underground with it.
The alien landed at the roots of one of the hills, at random of course, as he had no idea where the actual entrance to the certainly abandoned space was, back when it was occupied. Fortunately, sand was pretty easy to dispatch, Vangreth just had to create strong gusts of wind by slapping away at the air in front of the hill to remove chunks of it really fast. Of course, this might have been creating sandstorms a few miles away, but anyone setting foot on the desert had to be prepared for such things, so he did not worry too much about it.
A few minutes of improved digging later, Vangreth had discovered what appeared to be a wall! Much more resistant to the alien’s way of uncovering things, it stood out after a few swoops, revealing this well-preserved structure that had been hiding in the sand for a length of time nobody could likely know. It did not take too long for Vangreth to carefully carve himself an entry point, as looking for the real thing would likely take hours and be pretty boring in itself, the alien made his way into his discovery, not really knowing what to expect from the descending staircases and mysterious rooms that haven’t been opened for likely hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
Since he could not exactly see in the dark, Vangreth’s aura would serve as the purple-ish source of light for this exploration, even if purple was not exactly the clearest color there was, he was familiar enough with it, and didn’t really want to go back to the nearest city to buy a flashlight and a handful of batteries with it.
The first few rooms tempered the alien’s expectation, as they were mostly empty, vaguely furnished by a few carved furnitures, some of which still had unidentified objects stocked there, waiting for their owner to pick them up once again… it was all a little sad to be honest.
But of course, this place had yet to reveal its more interesting aspects, those came in the form of a relatively well preserved book, uncanny, kind of like it was placed there weeks ago, contrasting with the withered state of everything else… enough so to pull Vangreth’s interests, who would pick it up and dust it off gently with the back of his hand before opening.
Then came the first real surprise. When the pages, at first blank, connected with Vangreth’s hands, letters began to form on them, in a language Vangreth could strangely read, although it was nothing he had seen before… not on Muko or Earth… but vaguely felt familiar to him… at first, he feared he had found yet another artifact of his terrifying species, and almost put the book down… before seeing an illustration form, that of a Shinjin, being worshipped by what appeared to be Earthlings.
From the looks of it, this was an ancient temple, built by a very early stage of Earthling society, back when a Shinjin spent some time there… he seemed benevolent, and there was mention of a ‘gift’ bestowed on certain of his loyal subjects… The book then records the apparition of said Shinjin, getting fewer and further between until he disappeared, leaving the temple to eventually be abandoned.
Vangreth gently closed the book, but when he did, the strange ‘light’ that had been writing visibly creating letters on the book escaped the pages and hovered in front of him for a few seconds, emitting a buzzing sound, similar to a few bees, before leaving towards a staircase not far from where they were… now that was instruction clear enough for Vangreth to understand, this thing was screaming ‘follow me’ all over!
The glow from the strange apparition made it quite easy to spot in the dark, but it went relatively fast, and Vangreth could not exactly fly at max speed in these kind of places, he would risk to destroy part of it, and in the worst scenario, have it collapsed on top of him. Not that he would be in real danger, but destroying this whole place felt very wrong to him.
If anything, this little chase down the bowels of this seemingly huge temple made Vangreth realize just how vast this thing went! He took many stairs up and down, corridors that seemed endless and even the rooms were larger than one would have expected from such a place! Everything looked carved into some sort of sandstone, but probably reinforced in some way to have passed the test of time for so long. Other than that, the alien probably missed so many details, the archeologists of the whole planet probably had trouble sleeping right now, not knowing why.
Eventually, the light slowed down, and even stopped, as they arrived in front of a massive door, made of metal, that contrasted with everything else so far… The light then visibly merged with the door, its glow creating strange runes of the door, which Vangreth quickly deduced were instructions to open it… the room in itself did not have much, there was a desk with a few old papers there, a workbench with no tools left and this door, not illuminated in blue, and a lock untouched by time, preventing anyone from opening it.
The first ‘clue’ came in the form of a simple riddle, ‘A situation with no answer requires a creative mind’, with emphasis on ‘creative’. Well, that kind of went without saying didn't it?
Vangreth decided to look into the papers on the desk, maybe there were some more clues there? Indeed, when he began to look into it, the papers were some kind of primitive blueprint, made in the same material as the book he previously took, which, when dusted, ended up being in a much better state than he would have believed! Instructions on how to make some sort of key, which he assumed was to open that lock, but the more he looked into the instructions… the more he felt cheated. While on the surface it looked simple enough, there were a few details that visibly made it impossible to create the key, not even getting to the part where the workbench had no tools… perhaps this riddle had already been solved, and the person who reached whatever was on the other side of the door made sure nobody could solve it still… but then, he was not the kind to quit without a little deeper look.
The alien spent hours trying to figure out the missing pieces, this thrilling challenge had his mind running, he wanted to solve this mystery! He tried carving keys from sandstone from the walls, woods from the desk, he even found some strange metal and tried with that… to no avail. There really were flaws in the creation process of the key, which made it impossible to carve without breaking!
Throwing his final metal attempt to the ground, the broken key resonated on impact and shattered, leaving a glowing dust and eventually nothing to the ground but a vague glow that faded away quickly…
The moment it clicked. The key was impossible to carve, it just had to BE. Like the metal, it was not meant to exist by itself, but rather… materialized as is.
Memories resurfaced in Vangreth’s mind… back on Muko, when he was still a child, the selection process had put him in the warrior caste for his physical sturdiness, but he had shown traces of magical potential, which could have made him into the ruler caste! A simple object like a key… if he knew the exact form it had to take… surely he could manage something like that right?!
The alien jumped from his position and to the desk, grabbing the instructions for the key, then rushed to the door, putting his right hand on the door, and with his left hand, he held the instructions, memorizing it with every detail.
‘’ On the right, I have material. On the left, I have a specific shape. Now, I only need…’’
The alien closed his eyes. A spark is what he needed, something to ignite his long forgotten magical potential, even some small it was, to allow him this one thing. He visualized the key in his mind, exactly as it was meant to be, and not how it was meant to be created. He quickly felt a strange sensation to his core, spreading through his body and into the tip of his fingers.
‘’ … a spark…’’
He opened his eyes and a spark of magic came from his fingertip, and out of thin air, appeared the key ! Well, it did not appear, he had created it. He firmly grabbed it, a wide smile on his face as the satisfaction of having discovered yet another thing about himself settled in.
He inserted the key into the lock, which fell heavily to the ground, and the door opened to reveal a room with what Vangreth could only describe as floating knowledge. Words in the air formed sentences and flew above these strange devices… and a ton of paper was stacked. It did not take long for Vangreth to understand what he had found, and quickly enough, he began to catch those ‘sentences’ with the paper there. The words reformed from the devices, but a print was made on the sheet he had caught it with… and it seemed to be more instruction, about this Shinjin, his ‘gift’ and the story of this ancient temple.
Well, at least now Vangreth had something to do for the next… whatever time it would take for him to make sense of all of this! He tried to catch every piece of information he could get and would take it back home, to maybe put it in a more comprehensible form, and study some of it… who knows, perhaps he’d learn some more interesting stuff from this place, after all, it had already thought him a little something to explore! WIth that new thrill, the alien left this place, which in itself took way too long because of his far he had travelled following this little light-thing, but Vangreth was way too excited about his findings to care at that point.
