poll_the_stars | You know honestly I can't say I expected this

Inavet hisses a creative curseword, and slams the door shut, and reaches for her magic. The door to the building she's hiding in becomes to all appearances an ordinary wall. It'll take her pursuers time to find it - none of their arcanists are any good at crystal craft, from what she can tell. It won't buy her enough time, but it'll buy her some, and every second counts.

She starts trying to patch herself up while she looks for an escape route they're not covering. Blood craft's not her best, but she's gotten a lot of practice at it, lately. Enough to stop herself from bleeding out from the wound in her side (because of course it's deep) and keep herself from collapsing from exhaustion. Too slow - one of these days it'll kill her.

But not yet, she thinks, as she spots a window to an alley. Out go her magic senses - no one's alive and breathing in that alley but a cat rummaging through the garbage.

She dumps an illusion over the alley, to appear exactly as it was before she entered it. She can't get the cat right in a rush, but she doesn't need this to hold out for very long. Just long enough to get away. Song disguises the sound of the window opening and her scrambling out of it. She's conscientious enough to close it behind her. Easier than another illusion. Maybe they won't notice the blood.

Which way? Mm. One that way, two to her left, three are - oh look they found the door, she needs to hurry. She takes a right, and runs.

And comes face to face with - a snake? With a mirror for a head? What, how in the -

It's very fast. She was not expecting it. She didn't even sense it, like it appeared from nowhere, she raises her knife but she's not fast enough -

And then there is darkness.

Darkness and pain.

She'd scream, but the air's sucked out of her lungs in a whoosh. She snaps her mouth shut and flails, lashing out with something, anything - but she feels nothing around her. Nothing at all. Not even air. It's like a pressure, on all of her, but instead of pressing in it's pulling out -

Is this how she's going to die? Some Ministry snake monster thing?

Not. Likely.

She isn't the best at blood craft, but she knows enough to keep herself alive. She knows enough to snap her eyes shut and cover her nose and mouth and push magic at herself so her body doesn't shut down. It's hard - there's so much to monitor, she has no air... But she can keep herself alive. If she doesn't move and she focuses near entirely on self preservation. For - for a little while, anyway. Not forever.

Time crunch, then. Well. She was always good at those.

Her lesser crafts won't do her any good here. No way to make sound with song, no air to ignite in fire with heat, no time for aura anything, nothing to move and change with breath. Forget stone and metal, even when she's not in a crisis she's awful with both, not to mention there's nothing around for either.

But she is good at crystal, and crystal deals in light.

If she's not the brightest fucking beacon the world has ever seen, it won't be for lack of trying.

Maybe someone will find her. Or maybe she'll blind the bastards who put her here. Either way, it won't hurt to try.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

warpfairy

The not-elf smiles back. And would Inavet like to hold her own spoon now?

From:

poll_the_stars

She would! Thank you helpful smart vacuum savior person.

She's still very shakey and has to pause to rest occasionally, but she's still visibly improving at what is probably an unprecedented rate.

From:

warpfairy

The not-elf sits back and watches her.

Inavet is on a floor, in a strange metal-plastic compartment surrounded by hard vacuum but filled with air, decorated with some objects of obscure purposes and also a chair in front of a window-thing that shows faint stars.

From:

poll_the_stars

Well that's terrifying. One hole in the wall and it's back to the vacuum. But she's in a place that's filled with air, so it's not completely awful. She's still not dead.

Eventually she is out of food. That's okay.

She stretches a little, experimentally, and then she carefully, carefully stands. Again: a little wobbly. But surprisingly stable for someone who was recently suffering multiple stab wounds followed by hard vacuum. She doesn't fall, and she doesn't look like she needs assistance.

She offers the empty food receptacle to the not-elf, and inclines her head in a 'thank you' manner. Because it's obvious they don't share a language.

From:

warpfairy

The not-elf takes the receptacle, carries it off to a little kitchenette very efficiently crammed full of arcane objects, puts it in an arcane object which makes soft noises, and then emerges into the main area again. She goes to the chair and starts poking the console in front of the chair. The air speaks, in the first language the not-elf tried; the not-elf replies to it as though she's have a conversation with it.

From:

poll_the_stars

That's... interesting.

She tilts her head, and she listens with song. She won't catch the meanings, but she'll catch the words. They'll stick.

(It's a trick she used for eavesdropping on government officials, but it can be repurposed.)

"Will it help you at all if I speak outloud?" she wonders. "Pinpoint my language?"

From:

warpfairy

The not-elf looks at her, but doesn't, obviously, understand.

However, after another couple of minutes, she picks up a small plastic rectangle with a window of light on one side and offers it to Inavet. She has another one; the screens show the same thing, but the not-elf says a phrase and the initial image disappears and is replaced. They have similarities (blue square, blue circle) and so do the phrases. When a few of them have gone by she gestures at Inavet and the rectangle with the blue square on it.

From:

poll_the_stars

... Okay, that's probably a 'talk to the strange thing that acts like a slab of quartz but very obviously isn't.' Got it.

"I don't actually know what type of phrase you need," she says. "I can start naming nouns, or - actually say words."

From:

warpfairy

That is clearly too long a phrase to mean "blue square"; the not-elf corrects the rectangle's misconception and then points at the blue square and traces its shape with her finger.

From:

poll_the_stars

Ooooh. Okay. She understands now.

"Blue square," she says, instead.

From:

warpfairy

The rectangle moves on to other areas of language. It double-checks itself, making sure it has isolated "blue", and "square" (it talks to her through the speakers in the air).

The not elf, satisfied that Inavet knows what she's doing, goes back and sits in her chair.

From:

poll_the_stars

Inavet sort of wishes the whatever-is-speaking would say the words out loud in the language she needs to learn, but she can work with this. She dutifully says words.

From:

warpfairy

The rectangle learns her language with apparently perfect memory and a very good grasp of extrapolation. It is slightly limited in its ability to learn non-concrete-nouns, of course, but it tries.

When it depicts people some of them don't have points on their ears at all. (And some of them have very peculiar foreheads.)

From:

poll_the_stars

When she first encounters one of these she slooowly tilts her head and looks at it in confusion.

"People," she tells it, and then she goes to the not-elf and points a questioning finger at the things with peculiar foreheads. Question face!

From:

warpfairy

The not-elf looks at what she's pointing at, then - picks up her own rectangle, pokes at it, and produces an extremely realistic image of what looks like a child version of this very not-elf, with a round-eared woman who looks just like her apart from that and the eyebrows, and a slightly but not much elfier man who, in context, is probably the not-elf's father.

Apparently there are not only several kinds of people, but they can breed.

From:

poll_the_stars

That's. Definitely a thing. Okay, she can roll with it.

She taps her ear (pointed differently), then points at herself, and says the word for her species. Might as well be tidy.

From:

warpfairy

The not-elf briefly borrows the rectangle, repeats that word, and taps it and then gives it back.

From:

poll_the_stars

Works for her.

She goes back to saying words. Exciting stuff.

From:

warpfairy

Very exciting.

Not-elf gets some food for herself, too.

The device eventually manages to get across that it wants to learn to talk about people being able to talk without making sound.

From:

poll_the_stars

Slightly confused peering.

"... Telepathy?"

From:

warpfairy

When she has told it this word, the air speaks to the not-elf, who then speaks back, and then the air says awkwardly in Inavet's language:

"If the person puts hand on face then telepathy. Yes or no?"

From:

poll_the_stars

Well, she asked permission first, and it's likely to help with language learning. If she hadn't of asked and saved her life, the answer would be no, but in this case...

"Yes," she says.

From:

warpfairy

The air translates this for the not-elf, who smiles and gets out of her chair and goes over to Inavet and offers her hand in the general direction of Inavet's face.

From:

poll_the_stars

Nod, nod. Though she will let the not-elf initiate the touching, she doesn't actually know how this works.

From:

warpfairy

Touch.

This should be faster, but I didn't want to do it without asking, at least not while things were calm and I thought I could get the computer translation software to learn how to ask you.