[SE] Maze Runners

Michael

OUT OF DARKNESS INTO THE LIGHT
IF YOU WANT ME GONE

Michael.

You were supposed to leave after hearing all of that chaotic shit from Maea.

Not STAY.

Not actually want to do something about it.

But, she'd said - and he believed her because she'd never steered him wrong so far - there was no where safer from that purple hell than in places where people gravitated. Alone, he didn't stand a chance. Not anymore. The world was different now, too different for him to adapt to on his own. Gone, it seemed, were the days where this vagabond traveled alone. Too dangerous now, too, to trek into the unknown to retrieve all of his caches.

PISSED OFF was an understatement, and he wouldn't pace the day away in The Last Whisper. He wanted to do something about it, wanted to stab one of those voids shits in the eye or SOMETHING.

Anything.

And so here he was now within King's End's maze. He'd seen a small, purple creature - spider-like - skitter its way in through some tangled brush and he'd entered the maze perhaps too hastily. Backpack there across his shoulders, a handful of cloth strips, all colored red. He tied them onto branches and leaves before every turn or every choice of direction to ensure he'd find his way out again.

"The hell are you…?" A low mutter as he paused to tie another piece of cloth onto a branch. Taking a right that led down a long, long stretch of maze. A shadowed tunnel of hedges and roses.

If only Michael knew how portions of its walls shifted and changed at random, maybe he would have saved the cloth and never entered in the first place.

YOU PULL THE TRIGGER YOURSELF

"Boreal!" Tal hollered, scowling as he stomped through the maze, glaring daggers at the roses that bloomed in profusion along the walls of the tall hedges and swept the living labyrinth in a rainbow of glorious Flowerbirth color. "Boreal! C'mere, girl!"

Somewhere in the maze a pale dragon, muscular and blunt-muzzled and standing almost hip-high to the courier was nosing along the manicured lawn, intently ignoring her human as she ambled along. She was following a scent trail, though she paused occasionally to take absent swipes at the blooming roses with her jaws. The roses were always just a little too fast for her, however, pulling back out of range before she could get her teeth into them.

The man who was several twists of the maze behind her was slender but hardened, with lean muscles beneath his brown skin and messy tousle of black hair. His hands were calloused and small scars nicked at his hands and bared forearms from hard work and trouble survived. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of snow Goggles that seemed rather out of place in the cloudy spring weather of King's End. He wore a dapper armored vest over a simply grey shirt and brown leather trousers and he wasn't bothering with marking his way through the maze. He knew it was pointless but since his companion had decided to take a detour into the hedges it meant he was, too.

"You're not gettin' dinner if y'don't come right now!" he threatened as another shrubbery shifted behind him. He was summarily ignored by the distant dragon, but as he turned right into a turn of the maze ahead of him he stopped abruptly just before he ran into someone else coming from the other direction.

"... Uh. Shit. Who th'fuck are you?" he asked, eying the newcomer warily and remembering the last time he'd run into someone in this particular magic maze.

Michael

OUT OF DARKNESS INTO THE LIGHT
IF YOU WANT ME GONE

The sound of brushes shifting behind him, and Michael twisted slightly. Looked over his shoulder and stared as though in disbelief:

The maze had changed. Where once there had been a Y that split into two directions, now there was a wall. He turned around and moved toward the wall, his neurotic mind instantly blaming someone else for this trickery. And yet, there was no one else here with him, as far as he knew.

It was just him, the maze, and whatever THING he had followed in here.

Shit.

Okay, so he could just crawl through, right? They were just roses. If ever there was a time that Michael was exposing his lack of knowledge in places where people tread more often than not, this was it. He liked the shadows, the darkness. Spaces where it was just him and no one else, always avoided populations greater than 4 or more.

As he reached for the roses, they tangled more thickly, grew denser, made it impossible to see through let alone tear his way through.

"Great.." a low mumble as he turned away from the wall and started to walk toward wherever the hell he was going now. Anxiety a prickly sensation across his skin now that he knew marking his path was useless.

An abrupt pause when he heard a voice nearby. Coming toward him, something about not getting dinner. In here, sounds reverberated strangely, bounced in ways that reminded the Nomad of life in a cave system. At least here he could see the sky, but it was almost worse.

He rounded a corner at the same time as someone else, and he grunted. Moved back, more like a startled stumble away from the stranger. Had about the same reaction, too, sharp words snapped from between bared teeth.

"Who in the god damn fuck are you?!"

The want to shove the other out of his space barely reigned in. Michael old enough and seasoned enough to learn more about who he was facing before he exploded.

He breathed deep, noted the caution in which the man was eyeing him. Couldn't blame him at all, decided he quite liked him if first impressions were anything to go by. Finally, someone who seemed to have some common sense.

"Might help you in the future to watch where you're going so you don't give someone a heart attack." A grumbled comment. Cranky because he knew he was partially at fault, too.

YOU PULL THE TRIGGER YOURSELF

The old guy wasn't familiar to Tal, but that was hardly unexpected. The salty expletives that echoed the courier's own were a little more surprising, but that only made Tal's scowl deepen and cross his arms defensively as he glared at the strange man. Definitely on the scruffy side (not that the Messenger had any room to judge there) and another asshole who had a couple inches on him, but he didn't look overly dangerous and there weren't any big, obvious weapons dangling from his belt, at least.

Which probably meant he was an Abandoned or Attuned. Maybe with a big, toothy shift.

"Yeah? Not really my problem if y'have a weak heart," Tal grumbled right back, matching snark with snark as his own heartrate started to slow down again from the initial surprise. "Prob'ly shouldn't be in th'Gambit if you're that jumpy, anyways. There's all sorts o'weird shit in here." His nose wrinkled in resignation as he huffed and glanced to the side, glowering at a rose that bloomed bright red and utterly innocent beneath his bad temper. "Don't s'pose you've seen a white-ish dragon back that way?" he asked, jerking his chin behind the stranger and the direction he'd come from.

Michael

OUT OF DARKNESS INTO THE LIGHT
IF YOU WANT ME GONE

Oh, look: A younger version of himself but with a lot less profanity.

Great.

There were any number of reactions he could have flung at the guy, any number of snaps and snarls and insults, but at the end of the day where was that gonna get him? No telling who this man was or what he was capable of, Michael opted to let the snark linger there in the air. Easier ignored than reacted to when ego had left a long ass time ago.

Oh, but THEN

But T H E N

He wants help with something: Find a dragon. As if the vagabond didn’t have enough problems, now you wanna add a DRAGON?

“Uhm… no.” Stated very plainly. Incredulously, almost with a question.

More snark was nearly released, there on the tip of his tongue, when a rose branch shifted strangely along the corner of an eye. The shadow not quite right, not moving with any breeze but on its own. He jerked back from the bush and stared, intently searching. Seeing nothing but the darkness of crowded thorns and rose stems that created a chaotic network of darkness and light.

“You saw that, right?” Still staring at the bush. Not looking at the other man or thinking about why there would be a DRAGON in the maze.

YOU PULL THE TRIGGER YOURSELF

Oh, the bristling that would have had any self-respecting porcupine turning green with envy if Tal had known Michael's thoughts! Luckily for everyone involved he couldn't, and the other man's simple - if weirdly uncertain? - answer was enough for the courier to give a jerky nod. His scowl deepened and he filled his lungs to call for his mischievous companion again--

But instead of going on his merry way to his next heart attack, the stranger spoke up and Tal exhaled sharply, dark brows beetling together in annoyance. "Saw what?" he asked crossly, following the other man's stare to... a rose branch? In a whole ass maze full of rose hedges? Oooookay...

"S'a nice flower," he assured the old weirdo, starting to edge past him. "But, uh. Maybe don't try t'pick it." That was practically being neighborly, giving out free advice like that. Basically he'd done his good deed for the day and he felt no shame at all in leaving the other man to fend for himself.

Well. Almost no shame. Not enough to do more than make him pause at least, weighing whether or not the geezer would survive on his own if Tal abandoned him for an ungrateful dragon...

But in the end his companion won out over a stranger. Tal bobbed an awkward nod to him and gave a half-hearted wave as he forged deeper into the maze, where he'd eventually find Boreal napping in a patch of sunshine amidst a scatter of rose petals.

~Fin~