Post by Solomon Moon on Sept 3, 2019 15:13:34 GMT -5
The world peeled away from beneath him, a bandage torn sharply off of a gangrenous world, flinging him soaring like a ballistic missile into the wild blue yonder. At first it was as if a giant's palm were squashing his internal organs back against his spine, vision blurred as his eyes deformed slightly, blood roared in his head as blood vessels were compressed, his testicles shrank up into his guts. It was glorious. Sol could half imagine himself with a mach cone taking shape around the point of his outstretched right fist, stretched out ahead of him like a glowing white warhead. He seemed to vanish into the blue abyss overhead, wrapped in the only embrace he'd known in years, the embrace of high G forces. He returned to it like a lover.
Then the physical forces equalized, his various organ systems finally catching up to the acceleration of his skeleton, and he briefly seemed to hang motionless in the air, the illusion unbroken as long as he kept his eye on the sapphire celestial dome overhead, despite being in free-fall and pulling a measurable fraction of the speed of sound. Wind whipped at his fatigues, snapping the fabric like ship's sails, the breeze he'd felt on the ledge now amplified by the lack of friction of boots against earth. The whistling of the wind in his ears droned it's angelic chorus. His exposed flesh felt cool. He didn't want it to end, it was peaceful, more peaceful than anything he'd ever known. What it must have been like to be a bird, soaring like this.
A distant part of him, a part of him the maimed serpent had thought to have left on the ledge when the platform launched him, urged him that time was short, that inaction would mean death. It took an effort to hear that voice, to act. He tore at the white glove on his right hand with his teeth, pulling garment free between canines. The black impact ceramic, accented by red, dust treated composite scales, seeming to grow organically out of a skeleton of carbon fiber, glistened evilly in the morning sun. Holding out the hand, he flexed his awareness of the artificial limb, watching in mute fascination as the scales rose and fell like the hackles of some predatory beast, ripples flowing up his arm. He grunted, probing the absence between man and machine, until he felt something catch, and watched as a thin jet of white orange fire sprang from the palm. The attitude of his soaring form altered almost immediately in response to the sudden source of thrust, his center of mass seeming to swing around on the axis perpendicular to the jet rising from his palm. A sudden shot of vertigo pierced him like a cold pillar from groin to the base of his skull, as the entire would seemed to pivot on gimbals and re-position around him. The horizon lurched past on a drunken angle, almost too quickly to follow, and Sol felt sick, as the platform ledge, now so distant that he could barely make it out, crookedly crawled across the line of his sight.
"Fuuuu-" He moaned, as his stomach did barrel rolls inside his guts, and cut thrust long enough to reorient his hand and apply a braking burn to his maneuver. The horizon leveled out slightly, his orientation the nearly perfect reverse of what it had been, facing back towards the launch platform, feet down, approaching the rising earth at about a forty five degree angle.
"Here goes." He groaned, flexing the muscles in his leg in an attempt to force blood upwards into his trunk and maintain the intracranial pressure required to nourish his tortured brain.
Right arm held out as if to wave farewell to the launch platform in the far distance, he pushed his left hand palm down towards the earth, feet together as if preparing for a pindrop into a body of water. He was just beginning the downward arch of his trajectory. A scream, somewhere between exhilaration and reptile terror, surged up out of his chest on a wave of adrenaline and cortisol as the very real threat of death finally dawned upon his hindbrain. The scream rose out of him like a cloud of razor blades shredding his windpipe, what looked like tongues of blue fire flowing away in wisps of red smoke. Sol's aura flowed out from his lips, covering his entire body in an instant, like a match thrown into a pool of liquid fire dust.
From the ground he looked nothing short of a blazing astrolite breaching the planet's atmosphere and burning up on reentry, which wasn't far from the truth. A tail of coruscating aura poured out of him like the halo of a comet, like the drive cone of a heatseeking missile. The scream was audible for miles, high and powerful, and one hundred percent sincere.
Sol focused his awareness down on the extra sensory perception of his aura, like a part of his living body covering him and being drawn thin by velocity. The world seemed to resolve, to realize in a way that rendered all seen not through the lens of his aura a pale imitation. The shapes of the trees below seemed to grow so sharp that they hurt to look at, colors so deep and pure that it was suffocating, air whipping through his clothes like a cloud of razors tearing his consciousness to shreds, the faintest sounds of his heart, his breath, like earthquakes, the roaring of the wind like the deafening vibration of reality. It seemed he could feel every individual particle as it passed against or through him, his mind overwhelmed by the input, as he focused on those particles between his fingers and his boots.
Viewed from below it began as a blinding flash, as if some volatile material were achieving sudden fusion, originating from the red/blue shape arching through the heavens. Moments later came a thunderous crash that shook the trees until their branches dumped a shower of dry leaves and needles and seeds, as if trembling in fright from the sudden report. An inverted teardrop of living plasma as long as some of the trees were tall, took shape at the base of the soaring blur, dwarfing the screaming figure with it's brilliance and violence.
Sol's braking burn seemed to swallow the entire world beneath him, as he poured strength into sustaining the reaction that would cut enough of his momentum to make landing alive a possibility. A tree swung up to meet his drive cone and was shredded near instantly to it's component atoms. Another followed, and then another, as he carved a burning swath through the canopy as it rose up to meet him. Sol wasn't sure if the roar he could hear was the sound of shredding wood, of of his own terror.
The forest floor shook as he landed, sending birds rousting in the surrounding mile of trees screeching into the air in shock and confusion. The impact left behind a crater that was nearly twelve meters deep, and twice as many wide, the rim rising in a berm of smoldering earth that turned black at the edges.
Sol groaned, smoke rising from his shoulders, boots and waist as he laboriously hauled himself out his own personal ground zero, and tumbled down the sloping rim that ran around the crater, before crunching painfully against a the trunk of a tree that had been decapitated about twenty meters up in a smoking ruin.
The one eyed meteor coughed raggedly, mouth full of the flavor of dirt and burned sawdust. With a shaking hand he plucked the water bag out of his jacket pocket, and tried a sip, only to gag and have it pour out of his nose. He realized a moment later that it was because he'd started laughing.
Then the physical forces equalized, his various organ systems finally catching up to the acceleration of his skeleton, and he briefly seemed to hang motionless in the air, the illusion unbroken as long as he kept his eye on the sapphire celestial dome overhead, despite being in free-fall and pulling a measurable fraction of the speed of sound. Wind whipped at his fatigues, snapping the fabric like ship's sails, the breeze he'd felt on the ledge now amplified by the lack of friction of boots against earth. The whistling of the wind in his ears droned it's angelic chorus. His exposed flesh felt cool. He didn't want it to end, it was peaceful, more peaceful than anything he'd ever known. What it must have been like to be a bird, soaring like this.
A distant part of him, a part of him the maimed serpent had thought to have left on the ledge when the platform launched him, urged him that time was short, that inaction would mean death. It took an effort to hear that voice, to act. He tore at the white glove on his right hand with his teeth, pulling garment free between canines. The black impact ceramic, accented by red, dust treated composite scales, seeming to grow organically out of a skeleton of carbon fiber, glistened evilly in the morning sun. Holding out the hand, he flexed his awareness of the artificial limb, watching in mute fascination as the scales rose and fell like the hackles of some predatory beast, ripples flowing up his arm. He grunted, probing the absence between man and machine, until he felt something catch, and watched as a thin jet of white orange fire sprang from the palm. The attitude of his soaring form altered almost immediately in response to the sudden source of thrust, his center of mass seeming to swing around on the axis perpendicular to the jet rising from his palm. A sudden shot of vertigo pierced him like a cold pillar from groin to the base of his skull, as the entire would seemed to pivot on gimbals and re-position around him. The horizon lurched past on a drunken angle, almost too quickly to follow, and Sol felt sick, as the platform ledge, now so distant that he could barely make it out, crookedly crawled across the line of his sight.
"Fuuuu-" He moaned, as his stomach did barrel rolls inside his guts, and cut thrust long enough to reorient his hand and apply a braking burn to his maneuver. The horizon leveled out slightly, his orientation the nearly perfect reverse of what it had been, facing back towards the launch platform, feet down, approaching the rising earth at about a forty five degree angle.
"Here goes." He groaned, flexing the muscles in his leg in an attempt to force blood upwards into his trunk and maintain the intracranial pressure required to nourish his tortured brain.
Right arm held out as if to wave farewell to the launch platform in the far distance, he pushed his left hand palm down towards the earth, feet together as if preparing for a pindrop into a body of water. He was just beginning the downward arch of his trajectory. A scream, somewhere between exhilaration and reptile terror, surged up out of his chest on a wave of adrenaline and cortisol as the very real threat of death finally dawned upon his hindbrain. The scream rose out of him like a cloud of razor blades shredding his windpipe, what looked like tongues of blue fire flowing away in wisps of red smoke. Sol's aura flowed out from his lips, covering his entire body in an instant, like a match thrown into a pool of liquid fire dust.
From the ground he looked nothing short of a blazing astrolite breaching the planet's atmosphere and burning up on reentry, which wasn't far from the truth. A tail of coruscating aura poured out of him like the halo of a comet, like the drive cone of a heatseeking missile. The scream was audible for miles, high and powerful, and one hundred percent sincere.
Sol focused his awareness down on the extra sensory perception of his aura, like a part of his living body covering him and being drawn thin by velocity. The world seemed to resolve, to realize in a way that rendered all seen not through the lens of his aura a pale imitation. The shapes of the trees below seemed to grow so sharp that they hurt to look at, colors so deep and pure that it was suffocating, air whipping through his clothes like a cloud of razors tearing his consciousness to shreds, the faintest sounds of his heart, his breath, like earthquakes, the roaring of the wind like the deafening vibration of reality. It seemed he could feel every individual particle as it passed against or through him, his mind overwhelmed by the input, as he focused on those particles between his fingers and his boots.
Viewed from below it began as a blinding flash, as if some volatile material were achieving sudden fusion, originating from the red/blue shape arching through the heavens. Moments later came a thunderous crash that shook the trees until their branches dumped a shower of dry leaves and needles and seeds, as if trembling in fright from the sudden report. An inverted teardrop of living plasma as long as some of the trees were tall, took shape at the base of the soaring blur, dwarfing the screaming figure with it's brilliance and violence.
Sol's braking burn seemed to swallow the entire world beneath him, as he poured strength into sustaining the reaction that would cut enough of his momentum to make landing alive a possibility. A tree swung up to meet his drive cone and was shredded near instantly to it's component atoms. Another followed, and then another, as he carved a burning swath through the canopy as it rose up to meet him. Sol wasn't sure if the roar he could hear was the sound of shredding wood, of of his own terror.
The forest floor shook as he landed, sending birds rousting in the surrounding mile of trees screeching into the air in shock and confusion. The impact left behind a crater that was nearly twelve meters deep, and twice as many wide, the rim rising in a berm of smoldering earth that turned black at the edges.
Sol groaned, smoke rising from his shoulders, boots and waist as he laboriously hauled himself out his own personal ground zero, and tumbled down the sloping rim that ran around the crater, before crunching painfully against a the trunk of a tree that had been decapitated about twenty meters up in a smoking ruin.
The one eyed meteor coughed raggedly, mouth full of the flavor of dirt and burned sawdust. With a shaking hand he plucked the water bag out of his jacket pocket, and tried a sip, only to gag and have it pour out of his nose. He realized a moment later that it was because he'd started laughing.
