Walking. Just fucking walking. That was mostly what he did nowadays, and it could get pretty boring at times. Maybe boring was better though, because the interruptions always tended to be for the worse: someone insisting he was an evil robot or some kind of deathly danger right ahead. While moving slowly forwards with his head down and hands in his pockets was a pretty miserable prospect for the rest of his immortal life, he supposed at least it was a life.
He knew the coast intimately by now. Had explored it at night enough times to even know the local muggers and ne'er-do-wells that hung out under the pier. He gave them a friendly wave as he passed.
Eventually Adam ended up where he always did just before the sun would begin to turn the sky orange: before the water, chewing at his lip with his newly sharp teeth and looking out as if wanting to find something on the horizon.
Something quiet and pulsing seems to capture Adam’s attention. It’s quiet and thrumming, not unlike the sound of thousands of crickets at night, making for quite the symphony as the sounds filter over and over and over again. It becomes like white noise, until it doesn’t, until it stops.
The only thing that seems to be of note is a nonstop tugging sensation Adam will feel the second the sound stops, something that tells him to get into the water, just a little, to get closer. Don’t you want to step in Adam? There may be something waiting. Just a little bit closer. Closer…
Don’t you want to find out?
Usually, tugging and pulling sensations telling one to get in the water were a bad idea to indulge in, but with a quick sweep of the horizon Adam couldn't see any evil looking mermaids. He was unsure where this sudden desire had come from, but the noise he'd heard had been odd, and he had been wanting to test out if he could walk and survive underwater as an Ascended...the possibility of drowning being removed certainly made the sea more welcoming.
Screw it. He stepped towards the bubbling surf, leaving his boots behind at the edge of the water as he went into his knees and then looked around, trying to look for anything that could have been responsible for the sound.
Yes, Adam, that’s it.
There’s a sense of sharpened cold that hits the Ascended, a guideline of sorts. Because the second he begins to stray away from it the water grows warmer and warmer, almost uncomfortably so.
It’s like a game, the closer Adam gets to this feeling, the cooler he’ll feel. And yet the feeling still asks for him to come closer and closer, deeper and deeper into the water until he might be able to spot a stick of sorts jutting out from a broken crate in the sea.
Is this what you seek?
For someone who was not usually aware of temperature anymore, it was strange to suddenly notice the warmth of the water when he left a very specific trail. Resisting making some comment aloud about peeing in the ocean, Adam kept following the cold line, oddly drawn to it as if he hoped to find something at the end of it.
And he did, though it just looked like some old junk. Through the murky water (which he could feel heavy on his head, but which was surprisingly not all that scary to be underneath) he saw a crate, a stick.
Well, if nothing else, sticks were fun to hold during walks. Taking a couple of steps forwards, Adam placed his hands on the stick, one by the end and one in the middle, and lifted it up and out of the crate.
Almost, almost…
The second that Adam grabs onto the stick, the water goes back to normal, that feeling disappears. And all that’s left is for Adam is to figure out what exactly it does. As he lifts it out of the crate, he’ll soon see it’s a parasol – closed with a silver salt eaten clasp while the handle itself is made of a different sort of dark material, obsidian, perhaps?
Now, Adam. What does it do?
The stick came out of the crate easily and once it was out Adam could see that it was not in fact a stick, but a little umbrella (he had not been around enough polite company to be aware of the correct 'parasol' name). He turned it one way then the other in the water, looking at it's clasp and handle - maybe it would be worth something at the markets.
Figuring it probably wouldn't do much good to test it underwater, he first walked back up the shore until he broke the surface, standing with his ankles in the surf as he twirled the parasol around in his hands, then opened it and held it up experimentally in the air above his head.
To the surface it is, and the second that Adam gets out of the water with the moonlight and stars twinkling overhead, the bioluminescent algae in the waves that lap against his boots, it all seems so bright in comparison to the depths of the ocean he’d scrounged this parasol out of. Once it’s opened, however, the light vanishes. A blanket of black covers the Ascended and the surrounding area of an extent of five feet on either side, drowning out the light from the moon and stars and the algae at Adam’s feet.
(SO SORRY IT TOOK SO LONG)
Adam has received an Ascended tech!
Light Parasol | A parasol that when used by an Ascended and opened, extends light protection 5ft out from the edges of the parasol.
While the effect wasn't quite as obvious at night as it might have been any other time, Adam immediately laughed as he saw the parasol extend out it's darkness. Oh, he was going to use the hell out of this. No more sitting in the shadow of rocks and buildings for him, having to skulk around like some kind of creep.
Just to test it out, he waited til the sun came up, happily dancing and grinning when the parasol did indeed hide him away from the light. [say]"Hey, Voice-Goddess-Lady, if you gave me this, ta."[/say] He said out to the air before heading home, feeling for the first time like he'd actually won something since coming back to life.
[FIN]
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