Alga ==> Talk: Old Man
Alga licked her lips hesitantly before finally beginning with a "...H-Hello...?"
The man didn't look up. The man hadn't seemed to hear. So Alga walked forward a little bit. She might have repeated herself but the man sighed and flicked the scroll to a pile. He didn't call another.
He spoke and his words were unintelligible. They sounded harsh and sour and sharp. Like buzzing flies screeching out of his throat. Alga hadn't even known that vocal chords could make some of those sounds.
He stood, looking more frustrated than before. The man was... bigger than he looked.
His face was weathered with time, yes, with wrinkles rippling his facial features. All the tentacles on his head had receded, leaving him completely bald, but his cyan beard was so long it reached halfway down his chest. And that was saying something, seeing as he was was least a head taller than Alga. If the robe that obscured his features was anything to go by, he was also a head broader than her too. Whether it was girth or strength though was hard to say from how his robe fell.
The man buzzed something through grit teeth. The world responded. The green pillar shone with light, consuming the features of the room for a brief moment.
And then she'd known what he'd said. The growls and buzzing before... made sense now.
"Why have you come?"
He looked to Alga impatiently.
"...I-I..."
Alga's throat caught and she felt the rise of panic in her chest. He was angry, very angry it sounded like. She'd interrupted him, she'd messed up and her throat wouldn't work-
Chest beginning to heave, the girl's hands squeezed tight around her gun in a trembling grip and she let out a croak. He was waiting and she needed to say something before it got worse, oh Squid-
"I...was-" Too quiet, way too quiet. "S-Sent... Um."
She was beginning to feel dizzy. Just a little. The pressure in her chest was tight and everything was beginning to narrow down.
He waited, unmoving. Unflinching. His gaze fixed on her.
"Sent," he repeated, growling in his buzzing tongue.
"U-Um..."
How did she explain this? How? He definitely wasn't your average squid, far beyond it, but how did she know he even knew what the Word was? Did she just...say it? If she tried explaining too much it would just make him more angry.
Alga licked her lips, stared at the man as she struggled to control her breathing. A moment of silence, she needed that.
"Th-The...Word...?"
Even as she said it, Alga's mind began to race for some explanation. How did you explain a being in a mirror was leading you everywhere...?
"The Word," he repeated in her own tongue. Then his buzzing and hissing indicated, "there are many Words. Of which Domain?"
"I..." The response threw her and she stared at the being with a confusion that momentarily overrode the need to panic she felt in her chest.
"I...d-don't know... They just...wanted...to talk? To someone..."
But the man knew what she meant. And while that in itself was a relief, it brought on somehow more confusion than before, because now she knew that there was more people than just her who could talk to them. And there were more of them.
"To whom?" the man growled, motioning to all the emptiness around him, "I am all that is left."
He turned away from her and back to his scrolls. As he did, the obsidian pillar jut out a barb that nearly skewered him. It stopped an inch away. He didn't even blink.
"Almost half a millennium has it been since this temple had a new Acolyte. I know not who you seek nor what you seek, but this is a place of knowledge. Perhaps you will find it."
The barb may not have fazed him, but for Alga who had already been coasting on adrenaline since the start of their conversation, it was more than enough to make her jump and force an embarrassing yip from her throat.
For a moment, she sat staring, absorbing his words. The diversion of his attention, even if he still spoke, came as a welcome relief, and Alga kept herself in silence to keep from drawing it once more.
This was a very weird situation. If she could just...see the Word, ask them what they needed, or even just make sure she was doing the right thing at the right time, it would have made things a lot easier.
Alga blinked. Then turned her head to glance at her backpack in the peripheral of her vision. She wondered...
After a moment of hesitation, she moved to sit down and set her gun off to the side before reaching over to pull her backback in front. Could the mirror possibly be...?
The mirror was there, as it always was. Polished stone with its reflective side.
She pulled it out, her digits gently caressing the grooves of the mirror as they shook with nervousness.
She looked within it with her lips pursed, squeezing the handle tight in an effort to calm the frayed nerves which made her hands tremble so violently.
"Are you there...?" Her voice was quiet, hardly a whisper, as though she were afraid the man in the distance would catch her.
"--noʎ op ʇɐɥʍ 'sǝ⅄" The Word began.
The old man jerked back, alarm in his eyes. He held out his arm as if grasping some unseen force. In an instant, the mirror was in his hand and gone from hers.
He growled, a trickle of panic or excitement leaking into his guttural tones.
"You brought a Word here!?" It was an accusation, shock, disgust, horror, giddiness and pleasure all at once.
A loud yelp left Alga's throat, her hand flinching back with the sudden loss of the mirror's handle, and she stared almost blankly as her mind connected the dots. It was gone. The Word had just...been snatched away.
Alga was on her feet and two steps forward before she knew she was even moving.
"W-Wait-- give them back-"
Her chest was cold and tight at the same time, far worse than whatever she had felt before. She could have sworn her hearts had stopped had she not heard them pounding frantically in her ears.
"What?" he accused. "I didn't... you don't even know what this isdo you?"
He motioned to the mirror.
"I can't take the Word from you," he growled. "It's inside you."
That. Didn't make much sense. But it did little to abate the sudden panic beating her over the head and she was left struggling to breathe as she tried to comfort herself with the fact.
She...didn't like this man.
"...I-" Alga felt the hoarseness in her voice more than she heard it. What did she say? She didn't know. She was having a hard time thinking as it was.
She wasn't certain how long she stood there, or how long she felt frozen staring from the man to the mirror and back again, but by the time she made a move, her limbs felt weighted, heavy. She sat down, though it was more of a crumple of limbs on themselves, and with nothing else to do she made the attempt to focus on her breathing.
It was...hard. The icy grip in her chest refused to leave, her lungs taut and frozen against her though she could feel the labored rising in her torso. Her gaze skirted from the man, first to the floor, then to the pillars and walls that sat a ways behind her.
She needed a distraction. She needed to think.
Alga found her head turning away. Where, it didn’t matter. Just not toward this… man. To the scrolls. To the active pillars. To the carving. To the ceiling.
… the ceiling? She had presumed there would be one; she could see it outside. Yet above her loomed an endless expanse of stars, familiar, yet different. There were more there, after all. Where the marble pillars stopped a hundred feet up, the four special pillars extended into the infinite sky, occasionally lighting it up with color, or shape.
The stars, she noticed, were shifting. Actively moving, no faster than clouds on a gentle breeze, but moving noticeably.
It was something, at least.
What to distract you next, Seer?
