TonyC: email session archiving

2005-08-01T22:22:58Z

email session archiving

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With a last, desperate burst of energy, Monkey throws himself across the
threshold of the corridor. Behind him, the corridor collapses with a crash
and shoots out a cloud of dust. Coughing, he climbs to his feet. As the
dust clears, He sees that he's in a tall shaft; above he can see the gleam
of starlight. It's about twenty feet in diameter, circular, and the walls
are made of closely laid stone. On the walls of the shaft are handholds,
still sharp as if they were new-cut.

In the center of the shaft, a cage hangs from a chain that vanishes into
the darkness above. By the starlight, he thinks he can see crossbeams
about halfway up the shaft that hold the chain. The cage is tall and
narrow, and he recalls seeing such cages used to hold prisoners in some
towns he's passed through. It hangs about fifty feet off the ground.
Someone is in it: their cloaked form is slumped on the floor of the cage,
and a pale hand dangles and gleams in the starlight, still as a lily on a
grave.

Monkey puts his hands on his waist as he looks up. The situation
seems clear to him. There's only one way left. Up. So up shall he
go. Even had there been a way back, he would not even consider it.

The shaft is not too wide and the cage is not that far up. Thus
Monkey, disdaining mundane climbing as too slow, kicks off a nearby
handhold to the opposite side and once there, bounces back to
another side, gaining altitude in every hop. In that way, it does
not take long before he grabs the bar of the cage.

As the cage sways back and forth from the momentum, Monkey pulls
himself up a bit. Chin level with the cage's floor, he says,
"Ahoy there, mate. Monkey's the name. What's yours and whatcha
doing up here?" in his native Seatongue. He waits for an answer,
fully expecting one real soon. After all, is this not the West?
Likely the occupant knows the Tongue of The West. If he lives,
perhaps Monkey can get some explanation on what exactly is
supposed to be here. And if the prisoner's dead, well, is this
not a shadowland? Surely his ghost still haunts the cage, trapped
until the end of days. Either way, he'll get his answers, no?

Now that he's up close, Monkey can see that the prisoner is covered in a
blue cloak, and that the bars of the cage are of soulsteel. They feel icky
under his hands, but, well, it's not much worse than barnacles and
seaweed, right? (Now that he thinks about it, Monkey's never been
keelhauled. Maybe he should try that sometime.) The prisoner stirs at
Monkey's voice. Or maybe it's the way the cage is swinging.

She says, "Monkey. Where have you been?"

The voice is familiar -- it's almost Monkey's own. The prisoner looks up
and pulls back the hood of her cloak. Monkey looks into his own face.

"Oh," he says, "it's you."

"Of course it's me!" Still Moon says. "Who else would you find in this
place?"

"Well--" begins Monkey, but Still Moon rudely interrupts. Now that her
head is uncovered, Monkey can see her, and in rather better detail than
he's yet been able to. She looks like his twin, if he had one and she were
a she. On her forehead she wears a circlet of orichalcum, with an empty
socket in the center of her brow, over where Monkey's caste mark would be
if he were her, which he isn't. (Though Monkey wouldn't realize it, a
second observer, one skilled body language, would note that Monkey's cocky
self-confidence is replaced in Still Moon by a brazen assurance of
superiority.)

"Look at this cage," Still Moon says, "look at it! I stick my neck out for
you, and this is where I end up! Imprisoned by a jumped-up ghost with
delusions of grandeur and an army. You'd better come and get me, if you
know what's good for you..." There is a note of pleading in her voice at
this last.

Monkey says, "I can get you out of here in a jiffy," looking for the
latch.

She says, "Idiot! I'm not where you are! I'm back East. This was the only
way I could reach you. Wake up!"

She reaches through the bars of the cage and slaps him, faster than he can
blink. Startled, he loses his grasp on the bars and topples backward, his
usual Essence-fueled nimbleness suddenly gone, as if leaden chains
burdened his limbs.

"And take this," she shouts, throwing her crown down at him. "You'll need
it!"

Monkey watches the crown flash toward him and reaches out for it -- and
just as he braces for impact, there's a golden flash, like Kaizoku's anima
flaring in the night, and the shaft vanishes from sight. Monkey feels the
rough stone beneath his feet and looks around. He's on top of the wall,
bathed in light from strangely glowing sigils on the wall. He glances down
just in time to see them flare and burn out in a flash.

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