Meteion / The Meteia (
finalefantasy) wrote2023-03-16 11:14 pm
[a crossing of the ways]
[you're falling through a field of stars.
the blues, blacks and radioactive red-violets of the cosmos are so bright and real that you feel as though you could reach out and grasp them, and they would slide through your fingers like rich and textured silk. the stars themselves blaze rainbows at the edges of your vision, too strong to stare at directly -- but you can almost taste their wavelengths on your tongue, the sweet strange flavours of the universe. at the very edge of your hearing you can hear their distant song.
it's an onslaught of sensation, euphoric, ever-changing...but it doesn't last forever. all too soon, you land -- softly, softly, on your own two feet.]
((this will come off as a fairly dreamlike experience to characters who enter, if that will help mitigate any 'aaaah where am i' panic reactions! if you want to play with that though feel free, i'm not your boss. for other ffxiv characters, this is post-endwalker, though your character doesn't have to be from that timepoint and we can handwave weird time travel/magic shenanigans.))
the blues, blacks and radioactive red-violets of the cosmos are so bright and real that you feel as though you could reach out and grasp them, and they would slide through your fingers like rich and textured silk. the stars themselves blaze rainbows at the edges of your vision, too strong to stare at directly -- but you can almost taste their wavelengths on your tongue, the sweet strange flavours of the universe. at the very edge of your hearing you can hear their distant song.
it's an onslaught of sensation, euphoric, ever-changing...but it doesn't last forever. all too soon, you land -- softly, softly, on your own two feet.]
((this will come off as a fairly dreamlike experience to characters who enter, if that will help mitigate any 'aaaah where am i' panic reactions! if you want to play with that though feel free, i'm not your boss. for other ffxiv characters, this is post-endwalker, though your character doesn't have to be from that timepoint and we can handwave weird time travel/magic shenanigans.))

[telomania's terminus]
down here it's cool and still. you're standing in the midst of a vast plain covered with the bones of small birds, pale and fragile. you feel a little weightless--walking around won't crush them, though they will shift and turn, delicate ribs and wings and skulls providing little points of pressure underfoot. here and there amongst the bones lie gleams of buried colour and gold, though it's not really obvious what they are without unearthing them.
despite the contents of this place, it doesn't feel foreboding. it's just calm, and perhaps a little lonely.
and as far as other landmarks go...there's a single small shape in the distance that could be human. you could investigate further around here, or head towards it.
what do you do?]
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the shape turns out to be a shadow -- the pitch-black silhouette of a young woman, superimposed upon the landscape of bones. there's something a little alien about it: the suggestion of small wings fanning out from the sides of the head, curling softly in some unseen breeze; a long tail that stretches out behind her; the shapes of feet that curl out into claws instead of toes. she stands at rest, hands clasped in front of her, her head turning a little to mark him as he approaches.
a soft, almost mechanical echo of a voice sounds in his head. there is no hint that her unseen mouth has moved.]
Greetings.
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[this is somehow not the weirdest place he's been, but it's up there. raises a tentative hand in greeting and uses his mouth to make words like a pleb.]
Hi there. Would you mind telling me where we are?
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But eventually he stirs and stoops to dig through the bones for the color and gold. that's something out-of-place.]
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as he sings back to the stars, as he takes in their joy, he starts to catch the impression of a shadow in one of them, flickering within its core. it's very hard to get a bead on, though: when he actually focuses on that star directly, he can't see past its outer light.
the nearest patch of colour is a striated stone orb, large as his head and still perfectly formed. it begins to glow dully as it's exposed to the light of the stars. the red colour reflects oddly in the eyesockets of the small skulls around it.
the nearest patch of gold beneath the bones is indeed gold metal -- an ornately worked fragment the length of his arm, broken off of something much larger, perhaps an archway or alterpiece. there is something unpleasant about the way it shines, when it's more exposed, and the bones spread around it begin to tremble faintly.
does he touch either directly? or is he only clearing the bones away from them?]
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He picks up both items. Most of his arms go for the stone orb, picking that up to turn it around and admire it. Who doesn't like a big giant marble! But one of his hands will root out the metal too just for curiosity's sake.]
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the nearest patch of gold beneath the bones is indeed gold metal -- an ornately worked fragment longer than her arm, broken off of something much larger, perhaps an archway or altarpiece. there is something unpleasant about the way it shines, when it's more exposed, and the bones spread around it begin to tremble faintly.
is she just clearing bones from atop it? or is she handling the metal directly?]
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Re: [telomania's terminus]
But: Wheeling through the colours of the cosmos is at least normal to them, and, as such, they don't feel like there's nowhere to escape. Given what they see, they can't trust that the figure isn't some kind of agent of Fate, so they begin to investigate the current area instead]
Now what do we have around here, hm...
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second: there's a patch of gold and at least three patches of colour -- purple, red, blue -- in their immediate vicinity! any of them would require unearthing from the bones before they can tell more of what their nature.
the figure in the distance seems content to stay in place while they noodle around, so if it's an agent after them, it's relatively chill.
what most catches their interest first?]
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[i'm sorry it's been a long few days]
♥♥♥
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he keeps an eye on the figure, as well. is it moving at all? ]
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he himself has not been changed. he is himself.
the figure is still, a sort of landmark in the distance.]
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HELLO <3
steeling herself, talis steps forward--and pauses as she hears the crunch of bones underfoot. she glances down, brow furrowing, but... time to move on.
so she does. marching forward towards that lone figure.]
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the shape turns out to be a shadow -- the pitch-black silhouette of one of the Meteia, superimposed upon the landscape of bones. her small wings move softly in some unseen breeze. she stands at rest and neutral, hands clasped in front of her, her head turning a little to mark the approach.
Greetings, you who b̸r̴o̵u̶g̶h̸t̶ ̵e̸n̴d̶i̷n̵g̸s̶, and brought joy.
[the voice is soft and dispassionate, undercut with glitchy static. it's the one Talis heard giving a report across the vast stretch of the universe, and the one she heard in Ultima Thule.]
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[philia's precipice]
(if you had a shadow guiding you, then at this point it is gone.)
at the end of the path is an equally ethereal viewing platform, or lookout point. there's a couple of tidy benches beneath a single broad tree, and a telescope affixed to the lacy railings, but everything's made of those clustered golden firefly-lights, not quite real. the platform looks out over the reaches of space, rather than any terrestrial place, and the view is even more rich and rife and impossible here -- the vast colourful spatters of nebulae; planets large and small, beringed and twinned; attendant satellites; asteroid belts.
there's a young woman seated upon one of the benches -- blue-haired, blue-clad, wings where her ears should be, the only solid thing here apart from you. she doesn't notice you right off, seemingly lost in the view.]
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Hello there, Meteion.
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Oh...I had not thought to see you again, so soon.
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chirps very softly to announce himself, ahem. his gaze keeps flicking from the woman, presumably the one he was directed towards, and the view of spaaAAAAAAAAAAAACEEEeee]
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Hm?
[the woman looks behind her to mark him, wide-eyed, clearly not having expected anyone to come by]
Oh, ah…greetings, wanderer! Now how did you find your way here?
[she sounds very much like her sisters, but there is a lot more obvious emotion in her voice, surprise and nervous curiosity.]
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the tree, strange and etheareal as it is, is laden with golden ghostly fruit; if it's an imitation or a recollection, it's one of when the original was lush with summer bounty.]
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[elpis evoked]
you can tell that the surroundings here are absolutely bursting with complexity and life, a sharp contrast to the relatively sparse areas you've visited so far in Meteion's realm -- the smell of greenery assaults your nose, and the flash of wildlife fast and strange can be seen between the leaves. there are howls and growls and buzzes and birdsong on the wind, some distant, some close.
this area of your current island is covered with large, shallow pools, where small creatures that look like axolotls wallow lazily about. one is hovering a little ways over the surface of the pool itself, suspended somehow in the air without wings. it seems happy about it. there's also a blue crystalline device by you both that rotates gently in place; you know when looking at it that it can be used to teleport to the other islands.]
Meteion is standing next to you. there's an aching feeling in the atmosphere here: this is a paradise so beloved and so lost that it tangibly hurts to look upon, in the sweetest of ways.]
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That salamander is floating.
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It is am ambystoma--a creature of water, given some small ability to manipulate wind aether. A few of them were more adventurous than others, as you can see.
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