On the corner shining bright.
Heh Heh.
Sincere apologies for the long silence dear readers, but you must understand with my previous business partners now taking a pro-longed leave of absence, probably even permanent looking at this. My access to The Path has been entirely cut off and as a result my means of transportation along with it, so it was back to the good ol' fashioned way of travelling around the world, which is not an easy feat I must say, not with all the limitations imposed around the world due to a certain plague that has been roaming around, the good ol' Doctor doesn't make it easy on anyone, does it?
But never fear, for I am a crafty creature, I knew of ways to get from one country to another without raising any detection long before my rebirth, good to know that those means of transportation were left uncompromised.
That's right folks, I was on a road trip! Where you may ask? Why, the land of freedom of course! The U.S. of A! Smuggling myself across the border wasn't easy I'll tell you what, but you're not interested in the 'how' you're more interested in the 'why'. Well you see, part of Malik's final favour for me, before we took off to Martha's house, was that he would use the Proxy Web and it's pertaining connections to find an address of a very old game piece, it would have been impossible for me to track it down on my own, even with all the various details that the person in question sprawled all over their blog. And I can practically hear it echoing in the back of your head "Who!? Who, Kelevra, who!?" Heh Heh.
Well my dear reader, the subject of my visit resided in Maine, said subject was regarded as a leader of the runners at some point, a 2nd generation "Sage", a "doctor of the mind" and so many other titles, all falling under the not-so-simple username of Hakurei Ryuu, or as she was more commonly known by the people closest to her, Valerie. What can be said about Valerie? A true believer that one, always trying to encourage people to do better, to keep fighting and trying her best to give direction to those who were lost. Of course, typical human behaviour dictated that all of these attempts at guidance were not heeded by the person that was providing them to begin with, especially when shit would REALLY hit the fan. Still she was special, not just for her helpful nature but for the unique gifts that she seemed to possess, which was some kind of ability to mask her presence from our Tall Friend, not only that but to also see... "beyond" what the regular eye perceives and to access seemingly "different planes of existence" (Best way I can describe it). She was not necessarily unique with her gifts, AmalgamationSage was practically fluent in the type of stuff that Valerie was seemingly just dabbling in.
However, despite her nature of always holding onto hope, her story ended much like everyone else's did in this game, to this day Valerie is missing in action, realistically speaking, most likely dead. So why was I looking for her? Well, I wasn't. I was looking for something else and in order to find it, I needed to know her parent's home address.
You see, a certain nuisance was plaguing the Runners at this point in time, his fashion sense tended to gravitate towards the colour Red a lot. Heh, calm down Starman (If you're reading this that is), I am not trying to bring back Redlight, or Redlight 2, or make a third one, nothing like that, that game piece as far as I'm aware is dead and has been dead thanks to you, party pooper. However it was the first one's death that drew my fascination, to keep a long story short for those of you unaware (The views on my posts keep coming from somewhere, not to mention the occasional new follower appearing here and there), Redlight used to be the big bad Proxy who was gunning for one of the key members of the Runner community, Robert Sagel a man responsible for giving so many hope and then swiftly crushing it. Redlight had the ability to body hop from person to person, ensuring that nothing could really end him for sure, how he was able to do that is unknown, bottom line is he could do it. Eventually Red got tired of serving and decided to strike out on his own, but before he could do that Robert seemingly managed to kill him with a bit of the Bleeding Tree, a piece of which he managed to get after he got directions from Zero. Now of course, things are never that easy and Redlight wasn't actually dead, but he was seemingly infected with that piece of the Tree, an infection that body hopping could not cure, regardless of what body he hopped into it would carry over the infection, causing the host to slowly grow out various branches out of their body and slowly turn them into what appeared to be a tree. Desperate due to him running out of hosts, Redlight turned his attention to Valerie "The Mind Healer" in hopes that she could cure him of this illness. Suffice to say, he was wrong, as the result of Valerie's "Healing Touch" resulted in only accelerating his infection further, causing him to bolt out of her house in pain, only to end up turning into a tree in the front lawn of Valerie's house. Now he wasn't dead, he was seemingly fast enough to hop to another host, but regardless of his best efforts, it wasn't long until his ultimate demise.
By now you're probably piecing it together, I went to take a look at that tree, or rather where it once was, since the tree that was left behind was cut down by Valerie's friend Michelle and when I say cut down, I mean entirely removed. If you'll read the post, you'll understand why she did that, suffice to say the tree was exuding too much of bad voodoo and it had to go, Michelle spent the entire night removing it, every swing of the axe resulted as a blood splatter on her, all coming from the tree that was once Redlight. You'd think one would take more precautions when dealing with a tree that was born as a result of some kind of eldritch infection, but not to worry, Michelle was convinced that it was not "the same stuff", until she was proven wrong and she indeed got the same type of infection that Redlight had. It doesn't matter, unlike Valerie, Michelle was confirmed to be dead, oh the twists and turns that took place in her story, truly a worthy read.
So if the tree was cut down, why was I now standing in this neighbourhood, in the middle of the night? While I would have liked for the tree to still be there, or even just a stump, it wasn't necessary for what I came over there for. Speaking of the neighbourhood it was really quiet and empty, I mean yeah, kind of obvious, middle of the night, right? Except that as soon as arrived there, I began to feel this lingering heaviness in the air, like some invisible force was slightly trying to push me towards the ground, a feeling very similar to that of when you enter The Path. As I approached the house to which the address belonged, I began to hear this droning noise coming from nowhere and everywhere at the same time, it was distant, hard to make out, but endless. However, what immediately caught my attention was how the house looked, considering for how long Valerie has been missing (Since 2012) and how many crumbs of information she had left behind to tracking her address (Like her place of employment, a crumb she eventually regretted divulging), I figured I would be facing an abandoned, dilapidated building. But no, it looked in good enough condition, like a regular house would, I had no idea if anybody was living in it and I was not intent on finding out, I was here for something more important than tracking down a "Sage".
Finding the exact spot where the tree was easy, all I had to do was follow the lingering stench of burnt, rotten flesh that I began to notice the closer I got to the house's front yard, true enough the horrid stench led me to a spot in the ground, a dead spot. From a distance you would easily miss it due to it being covered by the grass, but once you get up close you will immediately notice the dead spot in the ground with bits and pieces of grass trying to grow in the dead spot, but utterly failing, it's as if Earth itself is trying to mend a wound within it. What struck me as weird is that the owners of this house, whoever they are, didn't even bother to fix this very apparent dead spot in their otherwise, clean kept yard. I mean, the vile stench alone that was coming from that spot and the distant droning noise that never disappeared, made no sense, until I remembered what Valerie specified in her blog, regular people couldn't see the Redlight Tree. Why was it that I was able to sense all of those things, after all, I never practised any of the "talents" that Valerie, or Sage were naturally gifted at, then it clicked, I really need to figure out a way to thank Morningstar for what his gas did to me, but more on that at some point later.
I asked my darling to peel back my human hosts vision and allow me to look at things through our true eyes, giving her the control of our host, she proceeded to close the hosts left eye and I was instantly enveloped in my own darkness, that was all to familiar to me. But I could see a flash of light just about ripple through the darkness, so I peered towards it, only to find the fabric of bandages blocking my way, so I ripped through them and slithered out to look around, but before I could even begin to gaze at where the source of the light was coming from, a massive flash of light erupted right next to me, lighting up the neighbourhood around me, right at the dead spot in the ground. The blinding, burning sensation was enough to knock my darling, who was currently in control of our host, down on the ground. Despite that she remained still, meaning that we weren't done here, so I proceeded to look around, extending out of our hosts right eye hole, it's weird to look at things from this... "Perspective", all the everyday things that you see: houses, roads, trees, the ground and etc. None of it is there, you are surrounded by this dark void, usually. Not this time though, not here, like I said, there was a flash of light that outright burnt me when witnessing it, so I waited, to see if it would happen again and indeed it did, however this time when it appeared, I could witness what exactly happened without any pain, because we were further away from the dead spot that the light was hitting.
Yes "hitting" as in coming down from up above and smashing into the dead spot in the ground, strongly resembling lightning. There were many thing off about this "lightning", for one it obviously didn't operate like the lightning you witness in your everyday life, when it hit the spot where the ground was, it didn't create any kind of damage, didn't burn anything and there was no sound of impact, or anything for that matter, it just came down from somewhere upwards, smashed into the area where the dead spot was, lighting up everything splitting up the darkness to a point where I could see the entire neighbourhood and then dissipating, rinse and repeat, non-stop. Second, while the seeming impact of said "lightning" didn't create any noise, it did reveal a noise and a stench, yes reveal, much like when it splits the darkness as a result of the flash, with that splitting it not only reveals the surroundings, but it also reveals this droning, constant, inhumane noise along with that awful stench that I honestly couldn't describe, even if I tried to, before all of it dissipating along with the flash of light. It's as if in those moments I could hear and smell something from a far distant beyond, that was outright inaccessible to me (Yet). The third thing about this "lightning" was that when I looked at the spot where it hit, after the flash of light dissipated, I could catch a glimpse of what looked like white, lit up roots growing deep into the dark void, before they dissipated along with the light. Looking up at where the "lightning" was coming from, though it was hard to make out at first due to the sheer distance, I was able to notice similar looking roots light up and dissipated right as the "lightning" came down on the dead spot.
I had an idea of what this meant, but I had to make sure, so I instructed my darling to pick up our host and stick our hand stump right under the "lightning" the results were instantaneously painful, as the lightning hit out stump, I instantly saw it go up in white flame, quickly enveloping our hosts arm, the pain was so indescribably tremendous that it forced me back in control of the human host, however when I opened my human hosts left eye, there was no fire, furthermore there was no pain, no trace of burning of any kind, the only thing that was weird was the fact that my darling had morphed around our stump and was bubbling up in that spot, presumably trying to heal it, however when I asked her to retract back a bit and show me the stump, it was absolutely fine, like nothing had ever happened to it. My darling does not try to fix up something in this body if it isn't damaged, that fire caused her to think that there was something damaged to such a point that she yanked me back in control of the human host, so she could deal with the damage. That gave me all the confirmation I needed to begin moving to my next stop.
Except, there was more.
Once I gathered my thoughts together at what just happened, I got up and was ready to leave, except when I turned around, there he was, right in the middle of the street, taller than I've ever seen him, towering over all the houses that were lined up in the neighbourhood, the moonlight obscuring his pale head. While the moonlight was blinding when looking directly upwards, I could tell that there were many tendrils pulsating out of him, because I could see their shadows crossing over me. And yet, despite his featureless head I could feel it, how he was looking down on me, like a fly that squashed into his windscreen, but a fly who's remains were refusing to get washed off. I wanted to lunge at him so much in this moment, the urge to prove him that I was no mere fly was... almost irresistible. But I had to play it smart, no way was I throwing away my progress for a cheap thrill, not this time, so as I stood still and stared directly at it, behind me was a manhole, so I had asked my darling to extend out of my foot and try to pry it open, to divert the Tall Fuck's attention I did the only thing that came naturally and wouldn't wake anyone up in the neighbourhood, I flipped it off with a massive smile on my face. He didn't react, however his tendrils were getting closer with every passing second, a little too close for comfort if I do say so myself, but as it was about to wrap them around me, I heard the manhole move just a bit which was enough for me, I instantly bolted in the manhole's direction away from our Tall Friend, as I did a sudden continuous ultrasound erupted through my ears, which blocked out most of the noise except for the violent sound of the tendrils instantly snapping towards me through the air. As I ran, I had my darling form a sharp edged spike around my foot and when I reached the manhole, I stomped as hard as I could on the opening Fortissimo created, causing the manhole lid to flip off entirely. I didn't even hesitate to look back, immediately jumping in and darting off through the sewers.
In retrospect I realize that it probably could have easily followed me anyway, but at the time my brain was thinking something among the lines of: "Oh, he's huge, bet he can't fit down here." Whether that was the actual reason that my getaway worked (Highly doubt it), doesn't really matter, I got away and now I'm planning on laying low for a bit, at least until I figure out a way to get to my next point of destination.
See you next time, my dear readers.
