engineers: (imagine how cheap plane tickets)
bixing the science king ([personal profile] engineers) wrote2023-02-07 06:53 am
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hardrocklife: (062)

[personal profile] hardrocklife 2023-03-04 02:54 am (UTC)(link)
It's... a personal quest of mine. I've traveled the world, seeking sorcerers, healers, scientists... Anyone who might lead me to the cure I seek.
hardrocklife: (029)

[personal profile] hardrocklife 2023-03-04 03:12 am (UTC)(link)
... I need a way to undo--

[oh hey you know what helps with explaining things? memshares! down into Memory Theatre they go. the cat just lands on top of lu bixing when they drop in here. hi.

a memory begins to play...]


MEMORY: STRONGER

No matter how hard you try, it's useless.

Every day, you train with the sword. Every night, you study the magic arts.

And yet, you're still so much weaker than the men you're supposed to be leading. You have no talent for magic. No strength or stamina to stand up against a seasoned warrior. For years, you've tried to get stronger, and failed. You slip up, get wounded, and start to fall behind. Why are you the leader, anyway? You only fail them, time and time again.

And not just them. The villagers who rely on you for protection. The children, waiting for you to return with food and supplies in hand. And most of all... that man. The great sage you've devoted your life to serving. You're failing him.

"I have to be stronger...! Stronger...!"

Today, like many other days, you sneak away to train in secret. It's futile, but you won't stop trying. You swing your sword again and again, using a tree for a target, adding to its hundreds of scars -- all of them pathetically shallow. Desperation growing, you swing and you swing until at last, you collapse. Your muscles ache. Your lungs burn. Is this all you're capable of?

... A familiar chime pulls you from your thoughts. The sound of his staff.

"Allow me to grant that wish."

You can barely stand, but you just manage to turn to see him. The great sage, clad in red, extending his staff towards you.

In that moment, it's as if everything around you is bathed in crimson. Dark tendrils extend from him to you, binding you in place as the magic fills your body. There's a horrible crawling feeling, a feeling of things shifting in unnatural ways underneath your skin, a feeling so strange and terrifying that you can only scream. Your skin hardens, uneven rock protrusions forming in various places. Your sense of feeling dulls, and all that's left is a lingering sense of wrongness... and the bitter taste of betrayal.


hardrocklife: (067)

[personal profile] hardrocklife 2023-03-04 01:46 pm (UTC)(link)
[Zelgadis had to turn away during the last moments of that memory. He's already seen it far too many times, in his nightmares.]

... He said that he simply gave me the strength that I desired. And I... believed him, for a while.

But... some time later, I did learn the real reason.

Rezo was born blind. He studied the healing arts in order to cure himself, and became a great sage. But even though he could cure the eyes of others, he could never heal his own. He grew desperate... turned to other methods.

I discovered he had been conducting chimera research in secret. He believed he could gain sight by fusing another creature to himself, or by creating a compatible body and transferring his soul into it. What happened to me was merely an experiment to that end.
hardrocklife: (071)

[personal profile] hardrocklife 2023-03-04 03:50 pm (UTC)(link)
[Zelgadis watches, speechless. There's a flicker of emotion in his eyes when he first sees that girl, and then again when the man bursts into the room and embraces the boy. There's a tension that lingers.

It takes a few moments for him to find any words.]


That girl... what was she?

[Because there was one word that immediately came to mind. She looked like a chimera.]
hardrocklife: (050)

[personal profile] hardrocklife 2023-03-04 04:14 pm (UTC)(link)
[There's a slow nod.]

Even in distant worlds... the same thing. I wish I were more surprised.

... Was there -- [His voice is quiet, and it falters for a moment.] is there a way to reverse it?
hardrocklife: (059)

[personal profile] hardrocklife 2023-03-04 04:37 pm (UTC)(link)
[...]

I remember something about a virus and a vaccine...

[And a chorus of desperate, pleading voices. The melting shadows. The syringe.]
hardrocklife: (093)

[personal profile] hardrocklife 2023-03-04 04:57 pm (UTC)(link)
[Zelgadis studies Lu Bixing as he speaks, the tension plain on his face. He swallows.]

But that... then there is a way, it just...

[He wants to rationalize it. He wants to make it work in theory. Because he needs it to work. Something has to work.]

-- What do you mean, an entire galaxy?
hardrocklife: (038)

[personal profile] hardrocklife 2023-03-05 11:53 pm (UTC)(link)
That's...

[It's an unfathomable number of people. Billions.

...]


That's it, then...? It's hopeless?
hardrocklife: (059)

[personal profile] hardrocklife 2023-03-06 12:30 am (UTC)(link)
It may be closer to science than magic, in some ways. Though executed with magic... the theory, the preparations, are scientific in nature.

[He stares into the darkness of the blank screen.]

... I've spoken to numerous chimera researchers on the subject. I remember one likened his craft to that of drinkmaking. Said that it's simple enough to combine ingredients, as he poured his juice into my ale... but to then remove the juice, and only the juice? It would simply be too difficult, to the point of calling it impossible. I'm sure it was the first nonalcoholic thing he'd had to drink all day... but I often remember that encounter.

[He ruined Zel's drink. And spilled juice on his clothes.]

I know well that any process to unmake a chimera would likely be a difficult one. That it could involve stripping this body down to its core components and remaking it. The pain and the risk... those are things I've prepared myself for a long time ago.