Someone is crying. No. More than one someone. Someones. Hiccoughing sobs that shake the whole body. Voices. Mens voices. I don’t recognise them.
Worship Points received: 2
Termination process aborted.
Hidden Power unlocked!
Sacrifice
There are those who willingly give their life to save the life of another. You understand what drives them to make that bargain, as you, too, were willing to trade your life to save that of someone else. You have the Power: Sacrifice. You may take life in order to give life.
“Papa, you're hurt!”
I know DeeDee's voice, even thick with tears. The voice that answers her sounds different. Heavy, a little slurred. I fight through clammy grey mental fog and into darkness studded with lanternlight. The rain has eased into a steady grizzle, and the howling winds have blown themselves out into weary gusts chivvying the last of the storm clouds overhead.
Ganzor the shepherd kneels in front of me, a mud-caked DeeDee enveloped in his arms. His face is so battered and his clothes so torn and stained that I know him only from his boots. Someone has bound cloth around him in places, rusty red leaking through the rough bandaging. The lantern is at his side, casting its yellow glow in a small pool about us.
There are strangers with him, standing back a little. Beyond the lantern's light, their faces are shadowed. Their clothing is a similar style to his, including the battered and stained appearance. One man is holding a… giant fork? A wooden pole with great metal prongs at one end, shaped like the horns of a cartoon bull. The other has a long and heavy blade on a shorter stick. Both items look more agricultural than military.
Did they just fight off the men in dark armour? With farming tools? If I had the Worship Points, I’d give every one of them a Blessing. As it is, I spend one of my two in an attempt to split a single Bless between all four. I presume it works. My Points drop to one.
[MINOR ROCK NUMEN LEVEL 3
POWERS
Inconsequential Miracle (WP 1)
Minor Miracle (WP 2)
Bless (Max WP L)
Sacrifice (*)
WORSHIPPERS: 3
WORSHIP POINTS: 1
INFLUENCES
Life
DOMAINS
None]
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
The farmers seem to stand a little straighter, their tools-turned-weapons no longer drooping so much in their hands. They glance at each other, one of them cautiously flexing his arm to test its range of movement. DeeDee is less tentative. She leans precariously over, out of the circle of her father's arms, and presses a smacking kiss to my surface.
You have been offered Tribute! Do you accept Y/N
As I accept, the two armed farmers each rest a hand on me, and I end up three Worship Points richer. I wonder about Namuna, DeeDee's mother. Is she okay? Maybe I can tell. I concentrate on her, and on Bless, and feel Points whisked away. Surely that means she's alive? Voice, can I Bless someone who is dead?
I do not know.
Well, that was useless then. What good are you anyway? What good am I? What's the point? How many Points did I just spend anyway?
WORSHIP POINTS: 1
Fuck! All the Points I just gained, gone again. This sucks. This is… Aagh! I hate this! I hate this to the bottom of the infinite fathoms of the fiery pits of hell!
Memories rise, of amdram Shakespearian improv. Outrageous Seventeenth-century-esque insult rap battles. Life. Home. A desire to be back there so strong that it hurts. The pain shoots through me and emerges as it once did on that distant stage.
I hate this gleeking, gob-slobbering, motley-minded, flap-dragonish System and its pedestrian trickle-brained whey-faced gudgeon of an Induction Guidance Foot-Licker! I hate this whole toad-spotted maggot-pie bollocks! A pox upon your fat-kidneyed floating beslubbering text boxes! Why in Beelzebub’s beetle-buggered boil-brained baggage am I a ruddy ragwater rock? May the spirit of the Bard rise up and eloquently eviscerate you in verse until your unchin-snotted soul shrivels into… into… into rat pate!
Power gained
Hidden power unlocked
Vituperation
Anyone can be insulting. You take invective to an entirely new level. Your words are capable of causing quantifiable harm.
*You do not currently have access to any means of verbal communication, and are therefore unable to use this Power in most situations.*
You…
Domain granted.
[MINOR ROCK NUMEN LEVEL 3
POWERS
Inconsequential Miracle (WP 1)
Minor Miracle (WP 2)
Bless (Max WP L)
Curse (Max WP L) 0x00A00005 ERROR: VERBAL COMMUNICATION REQUIRED
Sacrifice (*)
Vituperation (*) 0x00A00006 ERROR: VERBAL COMMUNICATION NORMALLY REQUIRED
You little…
WORSHIPPERS: 3
WORSHIP POINTS: 1
INFLUENCES
Life
Invective
DOMAINS
Invective 0x00A00005 ERROR: VERBAL COMMUNICATION REQUIRED. DOMAIN SUSPENDED]
Fuck.
Anger releases me as quickly as it seized me, leaving me drained. Drained and alone, the shepherds and young Dee gone to wherever it is they live. To find Namuna alive and well, maybe.
I'm finding it increasingly difficult to treat this as just a dream. My memories of who and what I was seem hard to access. Maybe that's why the last recollection hit me so fiercely, because it had needed a hard tug to pull it out?
More likely my brain is treating it as if I really am dead and my life gone. It's the second stage of grief. Anger. Which means bargaining should be next to come chugging along on the emotional baggage-train. I'm pretty sure my professor spent half the lecture explaining that the stages don't necessarily follow a specific order. I'm also pretty sure there were a series of lectures on the thirty mental defense mechanisms, and I wish I was still comfortably swimming in Denial.
In the mean time, I have a bunch of stuff I can't use. Voice, what are the available options to gain verbal communication?
Voice?
Wait. Vituperation. Capable of causing quantifiable harm. Verbal communication normally required. Normally. Did I…
Did I just kill the Voice?
…
Crap.