Dream: My New Method for Curing Infections
Saturday, February 25th:
Tiny cabins and brightly-painted houses crowded close, barely leaving room for a sidewalk between them. They looked cake-like, all doors and shutters and corbels, nothing undecorated. Alyssa and I turned between a pair of houses and walked into the second-story porch of the turquoise cabin to meet Sharon. I think we changed the bed sheets on the dining room table before we left.
Zookeepers and forestry types hawked their shows in the exhibition hall while the visitors milled and competed for seats. Many of them were showing off tiny animals. A pack of penguins raced around the perimeter of the room, cutting corners beneath the rolling lunch tables. Some of the spectators sniffled after they passed. A pair of young penguins, barely three inches tall, had been trampled to death by their larger brethren as they all pressed around the tight corner.
Alyssa and I returned to the cabin by ourselves and hung out for a while, then returned to the exhibition hall. Before we left, we changed the sheet on the table again.
The hall had just recovered from the penguin tragedy when something went wrong with the microbial zoo. An inside-out geode sprang from a display table and rolled around the room, its stubby orange crystals nearly metallic under the fluorescent lights. The crowd stumbled to avoid the six-inch ball of anger, but it leapt onto someone's chest and disappeared. mr_thrym knelt beside the unconscious victim, glancing up as I came to help.
"Charisma damage," he said. Now it would slowly kill its host as it floated through the bloodstream.
We tossed water on the victim, expelling the geode. It jumped for another target, but the scared crowd melted back out of harm's way. The orange oddity rolled through the room and out the double doors, where it subdued a passing woman. I ran out and mr_thrym followed.
She was attractive and looked surprisingly peaceful. We debated why the Charisma damage wasn't more painful for her.
"She could be a nymph," mr_thrym said. (They're so charismatic, it's possible they wouldn't be noticeably hurt by one attack, especially if it was a low roll.) That seemed unlikelyI mean, she was pretty, but not blinded by desire prettybut then, I didn't have a better explanation. I think she opened her eyes and smiled quietly.
We could force it out, but it might just attack her with its ability-damaging touch again and go back inside. [Like being grappled by a kraken, I thought. It crushes you every round, but if you escape and don't get far enough away, it just slaps you the next round, grabbing and crushing you, so you take twice as much damage.] We'd have to get rid of it right away.
"Gordon!" I shouted, "Bring that shotgun over here."
Down the hall, beltramgregor looked up from the sagging corpse of a Covenant elite, reloaded his weapon, and jogged past a purplish Covenant crate to join us. I produced a shotgun from somewhere and explained the situation. We crouched as low as possible by her side so we'd be able to blast it off without hurting her... probably. We nodded to mr_thrym, he rocked back a five-gallon pail of water, then swung it forwards.
Tiny cabins and brightly-painted houses crowded close, barely leaving room for a sidewalk between them. They looked cake-like, all doors and shutters and corbels, nothing undecorated. Alyssa and I turned between a pair of houses and walked into the second-story porch of the turquoise cabin to meet Sharon. I think we changed the bed sheets on the dining room table before we left.
Zookeepers and forestry types hawked their shows in the exhibition hall while the visitors milled and competed for seats. Many of them were showing off tiny animals. A pack of penguins raced around the perimeter of the room, cutting corners beneath the rolling lunch tables. Some of the spectators sniffled after they passed. A pair of young penguins, barely three inches tall, had been trampled to death by their larger brethren as they all pressed around the tight corner.
Alyssa and I returned to the cabin by ourselves and hung out for a while, then returned to the exhibition hall. Before we left, we changed the sheet on the table again.
The hall had just recovered from the penguin tragedy when something went wrong with the microbial zoo. An inside-out geode sprang from a display table and rolled around the room, its stubby orange crystals nearly metallic under the fluorescent lights. The crowd stumbled to avoid the six-inch ball of anger, but it leapt onto someone's chest and disappeared. mr_thrym knelt beside the unconscious victim, glancing up as I came to help.
"Charisma damage," he said. Now it would slowly kill its host as it floated through the bloodstream.
We tossed water on the victim, expelling the geode. It jumped for another target, but the scared crowd melted back out of harm's way. The orange oddity rolled through the room and out the double doors, where it subdued a passing woman. I ran out and mr_thrym followed.
She was attractive and looked surprisingly peaceful. We debated why the Charisma damage wasn't more painful for her.
"She could be a nymph," mr_thrym said. (They're so charismatic, it's possible they wouldn't be noticeably hurt by one attack, especially if it was a low roll.) That seemed unlikelyI mean, she was pretty, but not blinded by desire prettybut then, I didn't have a better explanation. I think she opened her eyes and smiled quietly.
We could force it out, but it might just attack her with its ability-damaging touch again and go back inside. [Like being grappled by a kraken, I thought. It crushes you every round, but if you escape and don't get far enough away, it just slaps you the next round, grabbing and crushing you, so you take twice as much damage.] We'd have to get rid of it right away.
"Gordon!" I shouted, "Bring that shotgun over here."
Down the hall, beltramgregor looked up from the sagging corpse of a Covenant elite, reloaded his weapon, and jogged past a purplish Covenant crate to join us. I produced a shotgun from somewhere and explained the situation. We crouched as low as possible by her side so we'd be able to blast it off without hurting her... probably. We nodded to mr_thrym, he rocked back a five-gallon pail of water, then swung it forwards.