Writing Challenge #2!

[Brian]

The previous challenge isn't necessarily closed, but it's time for a new one.  This time around:

Focusing on description, write a scene of a character encountering an environment that is alien to them.

[Anastasia]

Took a crack at this. The idea was to describe an earth-like world from the view of an inhuman creature. An alien, if you will. You didn't say it needed to be a place alien to humans, after all. While this is no doubt intentional, I'll run with it anyway. In any event I'm not happy with how this turned out. It's supposed to be Dungeons and Dragons devil reflecting on his first view of a Prime Material world. He is a part of a vanguard that will take and conquer this world. This is culled from the D&D game I'm running right now, since I couldn't resist doing this and doing some DM focus work at the same time.

As I mentioned I don't like how it came out. It's not quite the challenge, as it focuses more on the reactions to things than actual description. I'm also not entirely fond of how Shaddon's voice came out, but them's tharr is the breaks when you make up a character on the spot to write for 3 paragraphs.

---

The sky was blue.

Shaddon frowned. Every briefing had drilled this fact into him with the flawless precision that Abigor's service was known for. He had not doubted the truth of it, of course. He had prepared himself with the iron will that had seen his ascent to dogai status. Yet all the preparation paled in the staring, smiling face of this simple fact! Rage seeped into his smooth, uncalloused hands, making them clench close. He would not allow himself the weakness of closing his eyes, no. Such an act would be worthy of a lemure, not his elite cast. No. All the more reason to focus and begin his tasks.

Instead Shaddon turned his gaze ahead, taking in the sights before him. Great empty expanses of nothing but too-bright green rising from the ground. Grass, as the locals reckoned it. Miserable stuff, soft, weak and little more than glorified padding for the ground. Nothing worthy that has been nurtured in fiendblood and venom, nothing that would slice a mortal's foot atwain with a single step into it. Looking ahead, he could see this worthless ground stretched to the horizon of the disgusting sky. Plain-land, though nothing like planes to a proper reckoning. No wonder mortals were so weak. This land coddles them, indulges weakness where iron discipline should be...ugh. Even the scent of this place was wrong, almost enough to turn the dogai's stomach.

Enough of this. This too was known, as was the failings of the mortals of this world. Creatures outside of the one true way, little more than soft barbarians, a fact given to him as well. This land is not worthy for Duke Abigor to claim. Stepping ahead, Shaddon took the first step in a journey to change that. Enough bloodshed and even the sky would dim red and the grass would grow crimson. Of that he was sure, for it was the only right way.

[Jason_Miao]

Rectangles burst forth from the ground.

Well, not actively.  But the grey rectangles towered above a blackened ground in ways that could not have been caused by natural means.  The geometric was so strange that it induced pain to observe.  Luckily, my sonic mining kit allowed me to topple the eye-sores.  They were close enough together that graveling the base of one would often cause several others to fall over as well.  Merely pointing the kit and triggering the sonic reaction graveled the base of one quite nicely, and while the result was not beauty, it was far less irritating to observe.

After a period, airborne creatures began to assist us.  They used chemical-induced mining rather than sonic, but those graveled large areas very effectively.  The result toppled the grey rectangles and sprayed the solid black surface all about, but the globe around my gas filtration unit was undamaged, so I had little to fear from the corrosive gasses that surrounded me.

By attracting attention, it appeared that my task to find intelligent life had succeeded.  We'd thought that this might be the case, when we'd determined that the patterned energetic waves had meaning, and this was possibly so.  We'd studied their signals to determine their meeting protocols.  Now, that we had met, I adopted my sonic mining kit to reproduce the encoded sonic patterns, to show them that I, too, am a sentient being like them.

"FOOLISH EARTHLINGS!  YOUR PUNY WEAPONS ARE NO MATCH FOR OUR SUPERIOR TECHNOLOGY!"

I admit to some nervousness.  When extending the tendril of friendship, there is always the risk of being ignored.

[Kaldrak]

Hrm...well. As Brian has been urging me to actually post my work this seems like a decent place to begin. The setting is for an original story idea of mine and the character has grown up in Silicon Valley, surrounded by cities and civilization, ergo a forest is quite alien to her.

---

It began as all dreams must begin. Anna took that first step down the forest path without any real idea where she was or how she had gotten there. And wasn't that always the case? When you dreamed, you are never aware of how they start, not the ones you remember anyway, just that some ways into them you suddenly become aware, like when leaving a dark tunnel in your car and being momentarily blinded by the sunlight. The world fades into view slowly around you and you gradually begin to see again. This was like that, somehow.

She looked up, squinting at the rays of sunlight shining through a canopy of shimmering green leaves. The light cast dappled shadows on the earthy rich floor of a forest unlike any she had ever seen before. It was this, more than anything else that told her she must be dreaming. Everything was so big for one thing, trees stretching up into the sky so tall she was unable to see the tops and wider around then the circumference of her room at home. They were...ancient, was the only word that occurred to her, but where on Earth did they allow trees to grow to this size and not cut them down? Strange birds cried in the distance and animals, small or large, chirped and grunted at one another in the deep dark of the woods around her. Anna inhaled deeply, smelling a rich, loamy smell that reminded her of the fresh scent of a spring rain, how everything was somehow cleaner afterwards.

She took a step down the path, lost in the fragrance of the forest. Unseen animals rustled in the underbrush as she walked, her mind drawn forward, ever forward. Something was waiting for her. Something ahead. The wonder of the forest was enthralling, compelling. It was at once otherworldly and familiar, a silent scream from her past.

Something...forgotten.
Something fey.

Her skin prickled and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. Watchers.  She thought. She was being observed quietly, patiently. Watchers in the green.

The trail meandered on its merry way, winding to and fro through the thicker underbrush on either side and with many a scraggly branch reaching across the path as if to bar her way forward. The trees now tangled together to form an almost impenetrable canopy overhead, blocking out most of the light.

It was a surprise when she stumbled upon the clearing. The sudden light hurt her eyes, but her gaze was drawn immediately to the sword standing upright in the center surrounded by fragrant grass.  It was coated in dirt and rust with virulent green vines twined about the pommel, seeming to hold it in place. There was some kind of lettering on the blade, but she couldn't quite make it out.

Anna knelt, brushing dirt off the inscription, wanting to know, to understand what she was seeing.
"A...tropos??"

Her voice echoed into the silence and she flinched. It was then that she realized just how quiet it was. How still. A whisper. A subconscious thought. A voice that was no voice. An echo of memory, fear and pain, triumph...and despair.
It spoke.

"This once was green."

A bone-chilling howl filled the air, answered again and again on all sides of the clearing. Anna could hear crashing and snarling, the enraged growling of savage beasts tearing through the undergrowth, closing in on her from all sides. Instinctively, her hand closed on the pommel of the sword.

She woke up.

[Brian]

Okay, I'm sorry -- I've really dropped the ball on this one.  I kept holding off on commenting while planning my own, and ... yeah.

My bad.

Excellent work, guys.

Dunefar: Yours looks pretty solid, very workable.

Miao: Yours was a bit harder to puzzle out, but pretty clever.

Kaldrak: That was really interesting, and somehow unexpected -- I liked it!

I'm afraid I don't have much criticism to offer.  But very nice; let's try and get things back on track.  I'll have another challenge posted within the next few days, and try not to drop the ball like I did this time.  It'll be an old classic, though. ;)