You hiss at him. You know, of course you know, and so does every dead thing in the entire catacombs! The revenant you were creeping past perks up as the echoes of the sound rings through the room, turning its dead, rheumy eyes up towards the ceiling, and it chatters.
Revenants aren't like normal zombies, who were taken by the fungus while their pan was still warm and their blood had yet to congeal. The mushrooms might still be trying to push and pull at their pumpbiscuit, make them seem alive, but revenants are dead, dead, long dead by the time the fungus came for them. They're just bone-puppets, their air-dried muscles powered by its flesh.
Normal zombies chirp and hiss and croon, whatever they think'll work to lure you in, and you don't mind those noises: like you told Mardie once, it's almost like having neighbours. But revenants have got no instincts left in their pan to make noise, 'cause they don't have pans. The only thing the fungus can make them do is click their jawbones together and clatter, and it's got to be the most annoying, fucking noise you've ever heard.
You want to bash in the stupid skull and make it stop, but that'd require losing your grip on your filtration mask, and besides, it'd just attract more over. Instead, you suck it up, your ears pinning back with agitation, and you grab the burial shroud you were examining and yank.
"Be careful -"
It catches on a bone spur, and the rip of fabric is loud enough to catch the revenant's attention. It turns towards you, the mycellium pulsing with each movement, and then it opens its seedblister and screams, loud enough that you can only just hear the wet pop of the mushrooms contracting around its voicebox below it all, and - goddamnit, now you're going to have to bail.
You abscond. At times like this, you're grateful that you've kept Castor leashed for so long: he doesn't need to physically grab you to anticipate your moves, and adjust your telekinesis to accommodate. You dart around the revenant, fling yourself against a wall and bounce, twisting your legs to land flat on the accompanying one.
The revenant swipes at you as you hurtle over its head, bone claws razor sharp from sweeps and sweeps of scraping at the water on the walls and rats and anything it senses moving, but it's too sharp to grab: it just slices straight through the thin fabric of your cape and skin as you hit the next wall, and then launch yourself at the pipe and scramble in.
Climbing up the pipe is easy-peasy, but between that and the flying skitterbeast act, you're winded by the time you get out of it. "It cut you," Castor says, peering at your back. "Let me see -"
You wrest back control of your psionics before he can start poking and prodding. "It's nothing, don't be such a lusus!" Castor would just worry, worry, worry, if you let him. You'd think he could still die, the way he goes on. "'sides, we gotta scamper if you wanna see why boo's yowling, right?"
The scream sounded like it was practically on top of you, but that's just the tunnels, always catching noises and carrying it like it's some sorta game. But your hive isn't that far from here: six floors up and four blocks over, and then you'll be at your little pipeline entrance.
no subject
You hiss at him. You know, of course you know, and so does every dead thing in the entire catacombs! The revenant you were creeping past perks up as the echoes of the sound rings through the room, turning its dead, rheumy eyes up towards the ceiling, and it chatters.
Revenants aren't like normal zombies, who were taken by the fungus while their pan was still warm and their blood had yet to congeal. The mushrooms might still be trying to push and pull at their pumpbiscuit, make them seem alive, but revenants are dead, dead, long dead by the time the fungus came for them. They're just bone-puppets, their air-dried muscles powered by its flesh.
Normal zombies chirp and hiss and croon, whatever they think'll work to lure you in, and you don't mind those noises: like you told Mardie once, it's almost like having neighbours. But revenants have got no instincts left in their pan to make noise, 'cause they don't have pans. The only thing the fungus can make them do is click their jawbones together and clatter, and it's got to be the most annoying, fucking noise you've ever heard.
You want to bash in the stupid skull and make it stop, but that'd require losing your grip on your filtration mask, and besides, it'd just attract more over. Instead, you suck it up, your ears pinning back with agitation, and you grab the burial shroud you were examining and yank.
"Be careful -"
It catches on a bone spur, and the rip of fabric is loud enough to catch the revenant's attention. It turns towards you, the mycellium pulsing with each movement, and then it opens its seedblister and screams, loud enough that you can only just hear the wet pop of the mushrooms contracting around its voicebox below it all, and - goddamnit, now you're going to have to bail.
You abscond. At times like this, you're grateful that you've kept Castor leashed for so long: he doesn't need to physically grab you to anticipate your moves, and adjust your telekinesis to accommodate. You dart around the revenant, fling yourself against a wall and bounce, twisting your legs to land flat on the accompanying one.
The revenant swipes at you as you hurtle over its head, bone claws razor sharp from sweeps and sweeps of scraping at the water on the walls and rats and anything it senses moving, but it's too sharp to grab: it just slices straight through the thin fabric of your cape and skin as you hit the next wall, and then launch yourself at the pipe and scramble in.
Climbing up the pipe is easy-peasy, but between that and the flying skitterbeast act, you're winded by the time you get out of it. "It cut you," Castor says, peering at your back. "Let me see -"
You wrest back control of your psionics before he can start poking and prodding. "It's nothing, don't be such a lusus!" Castor would just worry, worry, worry, if you let him. You'd think he could still die, the way he goes on. "'sides, we gotta scamper if you wanna see why boo's yowling, right?"
The scream sounded like it was practically on top of you, but that's just the tunnels, always catching noises and carrying it like it's some sorta game. But your hive isn't that far from here: six floors up and four blocks over, and then you'll be at your little pipeline entrance.
Hopefully he'll have stopped screaming by then.