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Groaning, growling, with aurelian energy sparking upon my brow, I wrench aside a twisted and smoking bulkhead. The metal squeals, folding beneath my irresistible grip, and I lever myself free of my transport’s shattered hull.
The crash was… an experience. The moment of impact, the sudden implosion of the cabin, the shattering ripple of kinetic chaos which hurled my unbreakable body against the wall, the floor, the ceiling without rhyme or reason as our stricken vessel bounced and rolled, slid and shuddered to a stop upon the frozen arctic ground, carving a miles-long trench in the ice – all novel experiences: well worthy of note, but not something I would like to do again.
However, there have been other positive developments in the process: My astral senses are beginning to re-awaken.
I had not even noticed, had not made the connection between the insistent pangs of instinct I have been experiencing and my bygone ability to sense the feelings, the very lives of lesser creatures – that is, until the moment that the mammal Hannigan’s body shattered against the crumbling bulkhead of his own tumbling spacecraft, the moment I tasted the sudden absence of his feeble life-force as it winked out of existence.
This heralds the return of a dimension of experience that has been sorely lacking. Comparatively, my long-delayed recovery from my gut-wound, blackened flesh finally flaking away to reveal scales of unblemished gold, is but a minor triumph.
All told, as I stalk away from the crumpled and burning frame of the boxy grey orbital craft, the icy firmament giving forth a dry and clammy crunch with every step I take, I am in an excellent mood. The air tastes crisp, the chill: bracing. A frozen, desolate world stretches out before me: plains of endless ice, lit in shades of twilight reflected from the gas giant which dominates the sky. My golden body gleams, the reflected glory of the gloaming staining my scintillating hide in shades of twinkling crimson. On the horizon, there is a mountain range, and twisted formations of ice lie closer to hand – but for the most part, all I see is rolling vistas of barren, wintery desert.
That is not, however, all I sense.
I raise my head, standing tall atop a frozen dune and narrowing my crimson eyes as I zero in on an anomaly. It is distant – hidden somewhere within the seemingly uninhabited rise and fall of the tundra – but something odd, something I have never, ever experienced before is pulling at my inchoate astral perceptions. It feels like a life-sign, a group of them even, but it tastes… wrong; There is no vibrancy to it – no complexity. It is too far away for me to say more with my powers at their current ebb: on a less barren world, I would not have detected it at all. The feeling is strange enough however that, in the here and now, it bears investigation.
Over the following hours, as I travel across the cryonic face of this savage little world at a loping jog, occasionally leaping over great, steaming chasms in the ground, the sensation I pursue grows stronger. It is a lush feeling, a dense outpouring of vitality: There is something very nearly arboreal about it. But again, there is that wrongness, that flatness, something almost suggestive of pantomime.
I feel as though I am being mocked; I do not understand, and that alone is enough to require swift and decisive action.
I crest a rise in the ice, stand atop a rocky, frozen hill – and I look down upon what many creatures would assuredly call paradise.
The crash was… an experience. The moment of impact, the sudden implosion of the cabin, the shattering ripple of kinetic chaos which hurled my unbreakable body against the wall, the floor, the ceiling without rhyme or reason as our stricken vessel bounced and rolled, slid and shuddered to a stop upon the frozen arctic ground, carving a miles-long trench in the ice – all novel experiences: well worthy of note, but not something I would like to do again.
However, there have been other positive developments in the process: My astral senses are beginning to re-awaken.
I had not even noticed, had not made the connection between the insistent pangs of instinct I have been experiencing and my bygone ability to sense the feelings, the very lives of lesser creatures – that is, until the moment that the mammal Hannigan’s body shattered against the crumbling bulkhead of his own tumbling spacecraft, the moment I tasted the sudden absence of his feeble life-force as it winked out of existence.
This heralds the return of a dimension of experience that has been sorely lacking. Comparatively, my long-delayed recovery from my gut-wound, blackened flesh finally flaking away to reveal scales of unblemished gold, is but a minor triumph.
All told, as I stalk away from the crumpled and burning frame of the boxy grey orbital craft, the icy firmament giving forth a dry and clammy crunch with every step I take, I am in an excellent mood. The air tastes crisp, the chill: bracing. A frozen, desolate world stretches out before me: plains of endless ice, lit in shades of twilight reflected from the gas giant which dominates the sky. My golden body gleams, the reflected glory of the gloaming staining my scintillating hide in shades of twinkling crimson. On the horizon, there is a mountain range, and twisted formations of ice lie closer to hand – but for the most part, all I see is rolling vistas of barren, wintery desert.
That is not, however, all I sense.
I raise my head, standing tall atop a frozen dune and narrowing my crimson eyes as I zero in on an anomaly. It is distant – hidden somewhere within the seemingly uninhabited rise and fall of the tundra – but something odd, something I have never, ever experienced before is pulling at my inchoate astral perceptions. It feels like a life-sign, a group of them even, but it tastes… wrong; There is no vibrancy to it – no complexity. It is too far away for me to say more with my powers at their current ebb: on a less barren world, I would not have detected it at all. The feeling is strange enough however that, in the here and now, it bears investigation.
Over the following hours, as I travel across the cryonic face of this savage little world at a loping jog, occasionally leaping over great, steaming chasms in the ground, the sensation I pursue grows stronger. It is a lush feeling, a dense outpouring of vitality: There is something very nearly arboreal about it. But again, there is that wrongness, that flatness, something almost suggestive of pantomime.
I feel as though I am being mocked; I do not understand, and that alone is enough to require swift and decisive action.
I crest a rise in the ice, stand atop a rocky, frozen hill – and I look down upon what many creatures would assuredly call paradise.
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