It is time for me to release a snap bit of fiction revolving around my game world of Detritus. I was going to release some of the material I am already working on for the game but thought I would use Rory’s Story Cubes app again to generate a bit of spontaneous fiction for the day. Keep my brain ticking over and all.
So here is the roll from the story cubes;
Cinder’s head throbbed. She felt the ground beneath her hands. The hard plates that were tiled in a nice ordered row. Fredrica, her human friend, had laughed when she saw them. “Coaster’s for a brand of beer they had tried at the bar” Fred had said “Tasted like ass mixed with jelly beans. Local’s didn’t like it. Think it went under after a week or so. Where did you get these? Maybe we can find some of the brews too.” Cinder raised her head from the Herndez Beerz Coaster tile. Fred had been here last night. She had given me something. A box wrapped with a bow made out of cassette tape whatever that meant. Said she had never seen it before, the present. She had hoped that it would fit the piece of the puzzle that was my background.
Cinder had cursed at her and hit her. She said things that she was not proud of saying. She was just trying to help Cinder but the Lost are broken somehow. None of them openly admit it but where it comes to their history they are. There is a big hole in their memory, especially the elders. The hole relates to where they came from. The world beyond their portal. Why they were forgotten. That is why they call themselves the Lost. They seem to believe that in their own reality they became Lost. In reality they don’t want to know as they see Detritus as their true home. Of course, other things from their reality show up every now and again and when they do many of them disappear. More of them reappear soon afterward but they are young ones that are taken in by the community.
When Fred had gone, Cinder remembered she was curious to what was in the present. The closed box could have been anything. It could have been anything from the human’s own world that came across after her. It could be some relic from the Erudite or even something from the cantankerous Jugo’s world. In all likelihood it would be nothing from the Lost’s own history. The items from their own reality almost never made it to Detritus which was as curious and confusing as it was rare. She slipped her childlike ceramic fingers under the cassette tape and attempted to rip it. It proved to be too tough for Cinder’s fingers and she watched the tip of one finger break off. She swore in pain and withdrew her arm. The full hand dropped to the floor and she stared at the ceiling as unconsciously a new hand was drawn from a collection of doll parts she had stored nearby. As the hand oriented itself and fixed in place of the spirit fingers that were shown Cinder continued to stare at the ceiling. As soon as the damage were repaired she unconsciously looked down again through a cracked porcelain doll’s visage.
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| Cinder, copywrited art concept for the game |
She turned to a cupboard in the shape of a phone box and drew out a tanning blade from it. Moving back to the present she quickly sliced the cassette tape until it fell away in ribboned shreds. Cinder placed the tanning blade down on the coasters and lifted the lid to the present. Her hollow porcelain eyes looked into the boxes darkest recesses.
What Cinder saw threw her painfully to the floor and knocked her out. But now as she was awakening she was beginning to put the myriad of images together quickly, although it was causing her pain to do so. Inside the box had been an obsidian cube with an open split in it. A split perfectly shaped for a Lost’s sized hand. Not a porcelain hand like that which her unconscious drew to her, but a soft subble hand that could feel every control inside the split. She saw her own hands paired so the backs pressed together and felt. Really felt! There would be buttons inside and they would control it. A ship! One that travelled through the night. A whole race together on one ship. The mood was great on board though. It was almost as this is the only way that it had been for a long time. Had their race been lost and forgotten on some journey? Was this the lock on her memory set free. As Cinder rose from the floor she stood carefully, looking at the box that still sat on the table in front of her.
The memories were still flooding her and though Cinder was scared that they would destroy her she would not stop them. She knew she could but she opened herself to the pain that seemed to be ripping at her spirit from the inside out. Her own vision faded from the box one more time as she saw a beautiful view. A planet, perfect distance from the sun the controls told her and she manoeuvred the controls to bring a landing.
Then views of a building city, a thriving place with sandstone towers and coloured streets. The Lost were producing at a wondrous rate and the whole of their society was buoyed by the quick transition. Looking over the city hung their old home, the ship slowly calculating the time to release something.
It must have been years to the next vision as the city had expanded as far as Cinder could see. She looked to the vessel that she had bought her people with her in and it seemed to crack open. Wide. In one instant the vessel grew brighter than the light of a thousand suns and all of the Lost in the vicinity fell to the ground, unconscious. Cinder’s eyes snapped open in her visions and she saw something in the room with her. It towered over her still form. She realised that she was bound to a cold table. Wrists, ankles, forehead and neck had something restraining her. The dark shape at the back of the room registered her awareness and moved to a bank of blinking machinery. It seemed to press buttons on the console with more than ten hands at once and thoughts came in to her head. Thoughts and questions that she fought not to answer. Fought with a strong will that had seen her entire race to a new world. But had it? Had she been given another mission all this time.
Questions struck her wave after wave as did machines strike her body. One cell at a time it tore back the flesh of Cinder and she could not scream. Her mouth had been stapled shut at the skeletal level and the pain as well as drug injections were designed to keep her aware of every peeling moment.
She could not remember these questions from her dreams. She knew that whatever was asking them were the true rulers of their world and it was they that had ordered her to ferry them to this new reality. it was them that now found the Lost simply be useless to them. There were only fifteen of the rulers left and they had now been bought to where they need. To prove that the reality they wanted existed they needed to do an experiment. Simultaneously the Lost would be dismembered to the last cells whilst being maintained with drugs. If they disappeared to this reality then the fifteen would know their plans were on track. They would follow and have servants that would know what they needed yet again.
Cinder’s body fell again to the floor of her home again. The second time in less than three hours. This time her spirit was catatonic. It needed to survive and as many of the spirits had done across this reality it did the only thing that it could.
Fredrica entered the next morning calling out coyly for Cinder. She saw her gift on the table opened and smiled, smiled until she heard the mewling cry. She walked around the corner of the table and saw amongst the clothing that Cinder had worn the day before two Lost babies, formed from the parts Fredrica had been scavenging for her friend for some time. Fredrica giggled at the babies and wondered why Cinder had left them on the floor…