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Posted: Fri Aug 02, 2013 11:48 am
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About half the time, Haunted House patrol was uneventful. The House itself shifted and changed, though there were a few routes that remained reasonably constant; part of the job was noting and reporting the changes each time. Jordan had noticed that it seemed more likely that he would encounter something or someone if he went into the House expecting to encounter something, which inclined him to suspect that the House could sense that expectation and alter its passageways and spaces to give him a path that would cross that of some other wanderer.
Today he'd gone in hoping irritably that he wouldn't meet anything. The House had provided him with a dead-end where there should have been a door only a few minutes into his route, and from there it had been nothing but collapsed hallways, rooms with single doors, mazes with no exit, and one door had opened onto a chasm that dropped steeply away into a fog-filled void. He'd spent more time backtracking than making progress.
The door he found next opened onto a room he'd seen only a few times. It seemed appropriate that this paradox room should show up on this trip, considering how labyrinthine and difficult the House seemed determined to make itself today. "Not again," he groaned, irritated.
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Posted: Fri Aug 02, 2013 11:54 am
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Posted: Fri Aug 02, 2013 2:56 pm
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"Hello?" Jordan called cautiously. The voice was distorted, the acoustics in this place weird and unhelpful, but it sounded like someone he knew. Another Hunter?
He made his way carefully into the room. Before he started down the staircase that descended from the platform on which he stood, he glanced back, and found that the door through which he had entered was sliding serenely along the wall, off the edge of the platform and out of reach. "Figures," he muttered, and watched it slip into a corner and vanish completely. I guess we're going through here the hard way.
You weren't thinking it would be easy, Ferros commented, a statement rather than a question.
The staircase turned a corner and changed orientation simultaneously; stepping around the edge swapped the local direction of gravity, and Jordan squinted as a short wave of dizziness passed over him. He looked around the room for the person he'd heard, then remembered to look down and up as well, since two axes of search weren't sufficient in this place.
He spared a moment to feel grateful that he'd long since gotten used to how incredibly ******** weird life could be when you were dealing with other worlds. If he'd stepped into this room early on in his career as a Hunter, it would have given him a headache, at least.
"In a relative sense," he called in reply to the other voice. It sounded like it was closer now, and definitely familiar. "I'm the right way up from my point of view."
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Posted: Fri Aug 02, 2013 7:35 pm
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Posted: Sun Aug 04, 2013 4:24 am
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Motion caught Jordan's attention, and he winced with sympathetic nausea as he spotted a figure in midair that seemed to be trying to fall. Gravity jerked the figure mercilessly in one direction and then another as the room's paradoxical orientations fought to claim it. Jumping off anything in this room seemed to be a bad idea. Could the conflicting forces actually tear a body apart? Jordan didn't want to find out, either personally or through observation.
He stayed where he was until the figure slammed into a flight of steps, bouncing limply in a way that made his bones ache, and then fell with an awful thump onto the path not far away. It went still, and he got a good look at it for the first time.
The zombie who he'd fought, exchanged insults with, hurt. A brief, vivid flash of memory in which he saw her grabbing Ferros, pain crossing her face as her flesh and bone made contact with the weapon. The ring on his finger lit up as Ferros stirred hungrily.
They hesitated then, and Ferros remained a ring as a sheaf of other memories unfolded in their shared recollection, memories in which she'd been a living human, not precisely in his employment but within his sphere of influence, in which she'd proved her worth and, to a degree, her trustworthiness. His other had trusted very few people, but he had considered Samantha reliable. Ferros, likewise, had respected her and not been concerned that she would turn on them. The memories weren't real, but the lives they remembered were no less vivid for all that, and they found themselves reluctant to consider her an immediate threat.
Jordan didn't move to help Sammy up, but neither did he summon Ferros. "Are you all right?" he asked, cautious and alert. If she didn't remember that other world, or if she didn't consider the memories worth negotiating a truce, approaching her would be nothing short of reckless.
He would give her the option, however temporary it might wind up being. Whether she chose to accept that offer would be her decision.
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Posted: Sun Aug 04, 2013 5:37 am
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Posted: Sun Aug 04, 2013 5:48 am
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Posted: Sun Aug 04, 2013 5:54 am
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Posted: Sun Aug 04, 2013 6:02 am
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Posted: Sun Aug 04, 2013 6:06 am
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Posted: Sun Aug 04, 2013 6:34 am
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Posted: Sun Aug 04, 2013 6:39 am
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Posted: Sun Aug 04, 2013 6:56 am
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