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Who: Faris & open
Status: Open
Where: The places where MANTA quests are happening!
What: Faris and you taking on MANTA board quests.
Warnings: None so far.

Model at your own risk

[Faris has a serious sense of deja vu about this one... ugh. The ones that go over multiple months are always the most bothersome, aren't they? He just hopes that this one doesn't involve some creepy guy trying to resurrect a wife and creating succubi instead.]

Ahoy there! Artist bloke! [Faris looks around, a hand on the hilt of his sword, but there's nothing jumping out as a threat. Just a lot of art supplies scattered about.] Can't tell if this is from a struggle or just the normal state of things 'round here.

[And just as he leans forward towards one of the paintings--SWOOSH. In he goes!]

Celestial Navigation

[Faris looks up at the darkening sky, watching the stars wink on to replace the sunset.]

'Tis a funny thing. I've seen the sky change before, but not like this. [He looks down at his parchment, where he's already recorded what he knows of the old sky from memory.] Ever do this before?

Begrudged

[Faris does not often answer the bounties on creatures, and in fact, he's coming to the conviction that he'd like to do something about the ones that are out to hunt down hides and shells solely for profit.

But some are justified. This sounds to be one of those... but as Faris watches the tonberry, he frowns.]

This beast is meant to be dangerous? It's moving like a snail--a snail filled with molasses.

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[ Sherlock has been investigating the missing people related to this artist, but so far he hasn't made any major progress beyond the artist being a definite suspect. He has an idea where the people might have disappeared even if he doesn't understand the magic behind it. However, where are the missing people now? How can he rescue them? (Is their anyone alive to rescue?)

Those are his thoughts when he returns to pour over the crime scene and hears someone in the home studio. ]

Wait!

[ He rushes into the studio in hopes of helping the painting's newest victim when he's pulled in as well. The world around him changes to something unreal. It's as if he's fallen into one of those wax museums, which is better than another world he's been pulled into before. Sherlock is simply glad that this place appears to lack giant swinging axes. He doesn't immediately see anyone else. ]

Hullo? Is anyone else here?

[Faris grabs his head, blinking hard at the sights around him. The place is so vibrant and so full of shapes and lines... it's too real to be real.

But he looks up sharply when he hears another human voice. Who is that? Faris doesn't recognize him, but he looks like a real man, not a painted one.]

I am. [Faris looks down at the brightly colored path and up to see just what kind of painting they're in. Looks like a pastoral scene. But he doesn't trust it.] You got yanked in too?

[ Ah, the man he saw get pulled in. Good, that makes things marginally easier. ]

Yes, I saw you get taken by the painting.

[ This pastoral scene is something he could find in a museum, and it's unnerving to see the golden blades of grass formed of thick paint strokes bend by an absent gentle wind. The air is still, but the grass is stuck in the illusion of motion. ]

All my investigations showed that the victims and paintings are linked, and this only proves it.

[ Sherlock looks behind him, but he doesn't see the artist's gallery. It's only more of this pastoral scene. Damn. Then how do they leave this place? ]

[Hmph. Faris doesn't think he approves of someone going in after him. Although it's better than someone picking the thing up and taking it off somewhere else or cutting it up; no telling what would happen then. Maybe he just doesn't like being called a victim of something, even if he technically is.]

You've managed to test your theory out on yourself. [Faris also looks over the man's shoulder. Looks like more hyperverdant nature, but just to test it out, he strides back in that direction.

The strides take him beyond the point where the boundary of the canvas was, he's certain, and he stops.]

Not a frame or a fray in sight... but if there's a way in there's a way out. Let's start by seeing if we can find someone else who got pulled in.

[[ ooc: Sorry for the delay. I went out of town and am still playing catch up. ]]

[ Similarly, Sherlock doesn't approve of himself being caught in the trap set out by the artist. (Or it seems fitting to call it a trap) Nothing to do for it now, however. ]

We should encounter someone. For all my search, I could not find evidence of violence in the gallery, so all the missing people should be in the paintings.

[ Unless being here for any length of time causes them to disappear further like a cube of sugar in coffee. Sherlock sets off in a direction that seems to lead to some kind of building. It's hard to tell at this painterly distance. ]

How familiar are you with magic?

[ooc: no worries!]

...That's true. [Now that he mentions it, Faris doesn't remember seeing any blood, or hell, anything even knocked about.] I'd have thought to see some paint tipped over at least if someone was trying to fight against getting dragged in. It must have surprised them just as much as it did us.

Magic's commonplace where I'm from. I can use it myself. [Albeit he can't just swap around what kind he uses by putting on a different set of clothes anymore.] What about yourself?

[ By violence, Sherlock mostly means blood or other bodily fluids. No smells to suggest someone buried in the walls or under the floor as a means to hide the bodies. Sherlock frowns as he catches himself assuming that the aim of the artist was to cause grave harm. He needs to keep an open mind, not guess. In a twisted moral sense, the artist could have meant well despite unwilling victims. He doesn't have the evidence to really say. ]

Magic is not at all common. It is reserved mostly for those doing tricks involving misdirection and slight of hand.

[ And cultist leaders trying to awaken Old Ones from the Abyss.... Sherlock still wars with what was real. Every answer points to damning implications and his own insanity. ]

Have you seen anything like this before?

[What? How do you have a world where magic isn't common? Faris is about to ask how they light fires, keep their water clean, deal with wounds--everything--but the next question reminds him that they have more pressing matters than interrogating each other on their worlds.]

I've seen illusions, false images laid over a castle to hide the way in and make it appear as something other than it was. [The image of a normal castle laid over a hideous construction made of bones and flesh, specifically... but also the invisible paths through the Interdimensional Rift, and the Siren's projection of Papa, not to mention some spells Faris had used himself.] There's ways to break such things... let's look for something that's out of place.

[He holds his hands out in front of them, turning them back and forth. They still look like real hands, not a painting.]

Things that look like they haven't been painted.

[ Sherlock looks at his own hands when the other man does. They are still flesh and bone, and to Sherlock's relief, they are not trembling. It helps that this world looks so different than that other world Sherlock had found himself trapped in at times. ]

Even if that isn't a way out of here, it could lead us to where some of the kidnapped are.

[ As they continue walking, that suggestion of a building in the distance starts to render into something better resembling a building made of paint strokes. ]

Considering we are now stuck in this together, I might has well introduce myself. I'm Sherlock Holmes.

Faris Scherwiz.

[It's not like Faris to be glad that he's in trouble together with someone he doesn't know well, but after the misadventure with Garuda last month, he finds it reassuring that he's not the only person in this mess. It'll be harder to die that way. And it'll be harder for Sherlock to die, too.

His adventures with Lenna, Bartz, and the Baldesions hadn't started with him knowing them at all, either.]

You say your folk don't use much magic. How about fighting? [Faris frowns at the building as it starts to come into focus. Rather, it comes into focus the way something an impressionist painting does, clear at a distance, abstract up close.] It's strange to me walking through a wilderness without monsters leaping out to attack.

I've my pistol with me, and I am a fair shot.

[ He also does a lot of property damage and tactical dodge rolls in a battle. Hopefully, his decline in health won't hamper him too much. As it is, Sherlock is more concerned with how this scenery will allow them to move should action be required. Would it be possible to reach that building in the distance before actually walking there because the world changed perspective? Could they run into something when trying to escape? What are the rules of this place? ]

Most people in my time and place do not have to worry about monsters jumping out from the wilderness. Man does enough of that their own, and those are who I deal with.

[ ... and a cult worshiping the coming of some eldritch being sleeping beneath the depths. However, that is not his usual adversary and a one time incident. He hopes. ]

Mankind's pretty creative about making trouble for itself, isn't it.

[Between the war fifty years ago that near wiped out the wind drakes and then the crystal machines that threatened the actual ability of life to live on the planet... even if the idea of a full-scale war now is pretty damn unlikely, there's plenty of other manmade mischief that gets almost as bad.

You know, like piracy.]

...what d'you think would happen if you fired off a shot into the sky right now?

Quite.

[ The actions of man are bad enough even without considering wars, but those innocent are still swept up into the evils all the same. To what end? ]

There is but one way to find out.

[ Sherlock aims upward and at an angle back the way they came to reduce any chance of the bullet injuring anyone as it fell from the sky. The shot goes off like normal. However, soon the suggestion of a bullet shot is "painted" in the air. There's no puncture in the canvas. The bullet trajectory has become part of the scenery.

He didn't expect that. ]

I wonder what became of the bullet...

[Faris has been here long enough to become familiar with handheld firearms, but he'd be lying if he said that being able to keep a tiny cannon on your belt didn't still impress him. He watches the bullet--hard though that is given its speed--but then it becomes easier. There's just a hint in the trail in the paintstrokes of the sky.]

I don't particularly like that. [...] If the bullet's become part of the painting, imagine what's going to happen to us if we spend too long a time figuring this out.

This does not bode well for the other people lost to this world.

[ If they come across people, they may not be a part of the painting originally. The matter then concerns how to reverse the process... or tell of their sad fates. Sherlock shakes his head. ]

We can move more quickly and still watch for traps.

[ He starts to move quicker towards the building in the distance. That's the main landmark they have in this scene. It's still the best hope to finding evidence someone besides them. (That doesn't solve how to leave the painting, however....) ]

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Model at your own risk

sorry for late/ty for patience! traveling slowness

No worries! Tag at your pace

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