Bergamot Gristleborg
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Muddy Girl
Mythstar
Posts: 403
Trainer Class: 
Player Name: Chryssa Glasgow
OOC Username: M00K
Arena Points: 37
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Post by Bergamot Gristleborg on Mar 21, 2023 17:33:18 GMT 9
Bergamot Gristleborg may have been an immortal (and fictional) video game villain, but Chryssa Glasgow had her fair history with death.
She was, some would say, obsessed.
Infatuated with. Terrified of. Engaged to, one way or another, by the threads of fate or will of God or simply overactive imagination. In-game, she would stand and laugh before she sacrificed herself for another. Out of game, she would shield herself with hundreds, backstab those closest to her, and do anything it took to avoid that dark hand of eternity.
She was well aware eternity was not an ending. It was a cycle: neverending, ongoing, death and life and death again. Some took solace in that fact. Chryssa took only offense.
"I am here," she announced, the tap, tap of her stiletto heels echoing in the hall of deep vermilion. "To claim a lost soul!"
The Swimmer's eyes glittered like polished stones as the grayness of Seta approached, bleeding color from the world. "...That random Sneasel!" she announced, as if delivering a particularly apt punch line. "It's hip. It's dope. And if you won't give it to me, I'll steal it from your halls. You'll rue the day you crossed Bergamot Gristleborg! Nothing will stop me. Not time, not fear, not death!"
Her breath rattled in her throat for a moment. Somehow, she suddenly found it hard to breathe. To speak. Her hands shook. One strayed to her side, as if to grip the hilt of a sword, and came away empty.
Eyes glued to Seta, wavering on the line between hilarious and heretical, she mouthed again, Give it to me.
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C0D13
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Bug Maniac
Administrator
Posts: 2,101
Trainer Class: 
Player Name: C0D13
OOC Username: Ladybug
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Post by C0D13 on Apr 7, 2023 1:29:29 GMT 9
Seta does not acknowledge Morgana's appearance. Nor do they respond to the teen's use of fresh slang. There merely wait until she is done.
A soul has been selected, a pact has been forged, and it is clear what must happen next.
The hallway fills with monochrome as Seta passes Morgana, her form fading to limpid grays as if a storm cloud has just smothered her personal limelight. "A soul cannot be claimed, stolen, or given," Seta says, "It can only be won." Seta leads Morgana far down the hallway, headed for one of the innumerable doors. They walk for an unknowable amount of time before the gold-faced figure stops.
They lead you to a low portal leading into blackness. There is no frame, for that would imply a door. Instead, you feel the strong sense of the single step forward taking you across a vast distance.
You pass through the darkness. It's as brief as blinking, and you find yourself in a new world.
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Bergamot Gristleborg
•
Muddy Girl
Mythstar
Posts: 403
Trainer Class:
Player Name: Chryssa Glasgow
OOC Username: M00K
Arena Points: 37
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Post by Bergamot Gristleborg on May 25, 2023 16:52:37 GMT 9
"Tomato, tomato," said Bergamot Gristleborg in response to Seta's answer, pronouncing both words the same way. "I'm great at winning." She had never done it before, but she was highly confident she would be a magnanimous, humble, and generous winner if it ever occurred.
Bergamot Gristleborg knew well that life could not be given.
It could only be taken. And Morgana would be the one to take it back.
As she stepped through the gate, her surroundings transformed. It was a novel sensation, like a band of pressure passing over her body. The dim nothingness of The Everworld was replaced by hot, dry air and bright sunlight. The clamor of people packed shoulder-to-shoulder in the crowded market swamped her senses as merchants called out enticingly, trying to draw customers to their stalls. And above it all, the mouthwatering tang of spice.
Morgana coughed. Her eyes watered.
What is this? What does this have to do with death, or Pokemon?
She looked down at her hands, trying to pull up her User Interface to check if she'd received a Quest Prompt. A directive. Something to instruct her of a way to make sense out of all the smells and sounds and shifty eyes in the bazaar, and lead her towards what was (honestly) a random Sneasel.
< COMPLETE THE TRIAL. >
That was all.
"Useless Hydance!" Bergamot tried to say, but her voice was drowned out by a barking street salesman. "Fine! I'll show you when I win!" Again, her voice was drowned out by the overwhelming thump and sizzle of meat hitting a smoking-hot grill, releasing a burst of steam, smoke, and spice that left the villainess coughing again. She stumbled back, rubbing her eyes.
Never in her life had she experienced anything so chaotic. Multitextured, multilayered, and worst of all, operating completely independently from Morgana herself. Trying to make a stir in all this noise would be like a flea dancing on a dog's back.
Here, she was nothing. Here, she had no control. No spotlight. No one to annoy or play with. Just her alone with a rich slice of humanity, and a reminder of how very, very small she was.
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Bergamot Gristleborg
•
Muddy Girl
Mythstar
Posts: 403
Trainer Class:
Player Name: Chryssa Glasgow
OOC Username: M00K
Arena Points: 37
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Post by Bergamot Gristleborg on Jun 13, 2023 11:47:29 GMT 9
"I can't believe I'm doing this for a random Sneasel," Bergamot said loudly, slamming her empty glass down on the counter. "...Another mango lassi, please."
The NPC behind the stall nodded sagely, filling the glass back to the brim with frothy, pale orange liquid. Bergamot snatched it and drank it up, trying to let it sit in her mouth to cool down the burning. It helped, but the burning, itching feeling came back a few moments later, as if her body had absorbed the memory and continued to re-play it on a loop. "My ears are popping!" she announced, as if this was a great triumph for her instead of an immense overreaction to a mild spice mix.
Chryssa was a sheltered white girl who subsided on tasteless health foods and whatever other bland dishes her father's cooking staff decided to make for her. She had no experience with spicy foods. The strongest she'd ever experienced in her life was black pepper, and even that sometimes made her cough.
She enjoyed this new pain. It made her feel real.
"Tell me if you see it walk by in the background or something," she told the NPC, voice raspy. "Do I have to pay for this, by the way? I don't have any money." What would happen if she dined and dashed? Would spicy guards pursue her through the crowded marketplace like an Indiana Jones chase scene? That sounded exciting.
The NPC nodded, still not speaking, and extended his hand. "Whoops," said Morgana, pushing off her barstool and getting ready to dash away, but then something strange happened.
Near her ear, he grasped something. Something invisible. Something that took shape before her eyes like a shimmer, a heat wave, a thread of spun light. As it flowed away from her head, Bergamot smelled it distinctly. It was so at odds with the rest of the scents in the bazaar that it caught her off guard. My shampoo?
It filled her nostrils, the stench of chemicals and flowers, of steam and wet hair. It drove back the spice that still burned at the back of her throat as it flowed away from her mind and into the NPC's hand, coiling there like a snake.
Then the stallkeeper closed his hand and it was gone. He inclined his head, clearly thanking her for her business, and went back to grilling his meats.
Morgana stood, stunned, eyes narrowing as she processed what had just happen. What was that?
She knew what it was. It was a clue.
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Bergamot Gristleborg
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Muddy Girl
Mythstar
Posts: 403
Trainer Class:
Player Name: Chryssa Glasgow
OOC Username: M00K
Arena Points: 37
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Post by Bergamot Gristleborg on Jun 27, 2023 9:08:54 GMT 9
...A clue to what?
A clue to the rules of this game.
There was no money, but certain things were real here. Scent. Taste. Have I lost my memory? No, she still remembered how her shampoo smelled, so it wasn't like she was losing anything. More like making a copy, or sharing something she had. Like giving someone a recipe.
But that fact alone wouldn't help her find the so-called "random sneasel" in the busy marketplace. Scent was just a metaphor for experience - the thousand different smells mingling in the air was as overwhelming to the untrained nose as a crowd of people when you were looking for someone.
If Morgana had been the Sneasel's original owner, perhaps she could have found it by scent. Closed her eyes, filtered out the unknown, and just focused in on what was familiar. As a random trial-taker, however, Bergamot was at a disadvantage. She had no idea how Sneasel smelled. She had no bond or connection with it to follow.
...Fine. We'll do things the hard way. She would just have to stumble upon it.
So she did.
How did you find a needle in a haystack? If you didn't have a magnet, if you didn't have a trick up your sleeve, you sat down and looked for it, straw by straw, stick by stick.
Perhaps Seta had been counting on Morgana getting bored. But this was hardly boring. She ate foods she'd never heard of, but tasted too real to be anything but. Some developer had lovingly rendered these foods and spices, longing to share something the rest of the world had never known. Bergamot drank it in. She flounced from stall to stall, searching for Sneasel, leaving traces of herself behind in lieu of payment.
Sterile hospital rooms. Fresh bedsheets. Snow. Steel polish. Sparkling water. Taxidermy animals. Old books. New books.
She didn't have much to give. Less than the average person, that was for sure. But the vendors accepted her offerings gratefully despite their mundane nature, and Morgana began to wonder whether there was more going on. She had planned to make her way from one end of the market to the other, but it seemed to be expanding. There was always one more stall. There was always a little bit more to the crowded street. Where did it end?
Did it end with Sneasel?
Or did it end with her?
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Bergamot Gristleborg
•
Muddy Girl
Mythstar
Posts: 403
Trainer Class:
Player Name: Chryssa Glasgow
OOC Username: M00K
Arena Points: 37
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Post by Bergamot Gristleborg on Jun 27, 2023 10:03:36 GMT 9
"Ohohoho. Very clever."
She sat down to wait.
...is what she would have said, but even at the end of the shopping street, things were busy. People pushed past her in an endless sea, faceless. They called out, advertising their wares, searching for their friends and family. Hundreds of voices lost in a tide of noise. Now that she wasn't moving with them, she was jostled back and forth like a pizza dough in the hands of a pizza chef (simile wip). There was no not-moving in this place any more than you could create silence just by not-talking.
But she'd laid the trail of bread crumbs. She'd made that connection she lacked when she'd started this trial. Something different. Something new. Something that might not help lead her to Sneasel, but might lead Sneasel to her. She just had to endure.
But she didn't endure quietly.
"Ugh! Don't touch me!"
"This is growing tedious."
"How dare you step on my foot? I'll have you know I'm the queen of stepping- ow!"
<Sneeeeasel!>
"Don't patronize me, I'll-- a-ha!" Bergamot pointed at the Sneasel that had appeared around knee-level. "One of these things is not like the others! Got you!" She grabbed it like a stuffed mascot animal, swinging it high above her head and above the bustling crowd. Sneasel yelled and flailed its limbs in surprise. "What, you want to stay in this meat market?! Don't be absurd, you'll just end up in a kebab or something." She didn't think that was a stereotype.
Holding the rat weasel over her head, Bergamot quested out with one hand, reaching for the spiderwebby connection she'd woven between each of the shopkeepers. A paper trail of scent-receipts leading her back to where she started. "We're leaving," she enunciated clearly, feeling her way along the invisible wire.
Sneasel stopped struggling. This was just the way things were. Sometimes you got thrown into a pit, sometimes you landed in a meat market, sometimes people dragged you around without asking you what you wanted and they were still right. It wasn't always bad to have other people make decisions for you. Not everyone was in control of their own destiny, but that didn't mean it would be a bad one. It just meant having trust.
Back where she started, Bergamot held up the resigned Sneasel in both hands like a newborn lion cub being shown to the citizens of the kingdom, as if she could tell Seta was watching on the other side of the interrogation-room glass. "Ta-daa! I came, I saw, I conquered! Who said I couldn't win at soul-claiming?"
<Sneeeeeaaaaa...>
"And lucky you, you win too. Because you get to come with me! Bergamot. Riddle."
<....sel.>
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C0D13
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Bug Maniac
Administrator
Posts: 2,101
Trainer Class:
Player Name: C0D13
OOC Username: Ladybug
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Post by C0D13 on Jun 27, 2023 10:28:40 GMT 9
The stalls, the sizzling meat, the trail of smells, and the Sneasel clutched in Morgana's hands are all washed with grey, signaling the end of the Trial. The color expands, swallowing the rest of the bazaar.
"You have won the lost spirit," says Seta simply from somewhere nearby. "A victory of mind and soul." The scene around you slows, and the hiss and call of the market fade to a background buzz like slowed down tv static.
"You have passed the Trial of Spice."
The gray pushes close, engulfing you and your saved soul, and then a flash of vermillion as you find yourself back in the hall you started in. Back at the crossroads.
Red gates fill the sky, and Seta is nowhere to be found, though his words echo in your mind long after you leave the halls.
"Nothing leaves the Everworld unchanged."
Sneasel has been added to Bergamot Gristleborg's box.
Sneasel has learned Odor Sleuth! |
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