I will see you in Samura

[peace_keeper]

Who: 82 White Chain and the Outlands Cosmology Class
What: Field trip!
Where: Dead Kingdom of Samura, The Outlands.
When: Early February
Warning: I hope you got a signed consent form from your legal guardian.

After weeks of talking about the voices of gods and the void between worlds and the King's Road and other such esoteric topics, it would not be surprising for even a studious student to still not have a good grip on what The Outlands were. They were a big place, after all. Far larger than the Earth, and far stranger.

Eventually, you had to just go there.

White Chain had been reminding her class of the upcoming trip for the last week, but it might still be surprising to see a large stone archway set up in the front of the classroom. It was covered in carefully carved runes, and would not have looked out of place in a wizard's tower or a crumbling dungeon full of goblins and beholders. It definitely looked out of place in a classroom.

Once the class was gathered, White Chain addressed them all with her hands clasped behind her back. "Once active, this gateway will lead to the dead kingdom of Samura. Samura was once a land dedicated to peace. A land of philosophers and poets. Such things rarely last, but Samura's end was not what you might assume. No one conquered it. No, Samura fell because of wars in neighboring regions. Refugees, seeking peace, continually fled to Samura until eventually there was not enough food and shelter for anyone. The result: Famine, riots, and collapse. Now, only ruins and bones remain. It is a somber place. It is also safe, and so an ideal place to first experience the outlands."

Each student was offered an emergency kit that included a signal flare, should they get lost, a lightweight emergency blanket, and a water bottle. She touched a rune on the gateway and a portal of shimmering light swirled into being before turning clear, and suddenly instead of seeing the blackboard behind the gate, you could see a starlit desert. "Are there any questions before we go?"

The Ruins of Samura

The first thing anyone noticed on stepping into the Outlands was that Samura was COLD. Breath fogged the near freezing air. The second thing anyone noticed that this was like no place on Earth. A desert of vividly purple stand stretched out to the horizon. Strange, alien trees remained here and there, stunted, twisted, and dead from centuries of drought and famine. Above, a sky impossibly dense with starts of a thousand vibrant colors lit the land almost as bright as daylight. The portal stood in the middle of what must have once been a beautiful plaza lined by building that looked to be almost as much sculptures of art as they were homes and businesses. Now, most of them were falling apart or just rubble, but a few remained upright.

The main street led away from the plaza towards a large cliff which appeared to have a waterfall flowing down it and the shapes of more buildings along the top. On closer examination, however, it became obvious that the "waterfall" was actually a sandflow, and that it was flowing up the cliff face. Indeed, there appeared to be an entire river of shifting sand that wound through the ruins of canals that criss crossed the ruined town.

Here and there, one could find bones. Human bones. Nothing lived here. Not anymore.

"Be cautious with the ruins. Some of them are quite fragile, and could collapse. We leave in three hours time. I will set of a signal flare by the gateway half an hour before we leave, and will leave the gate open until all students are accounted for. If you get lost, set off your flare and I will come for you as fast as I can."

Comments

The Ruins

[yokeye]

[Toki was not in attendance for the weeks of history on gods and the void and the King's Road and whatever else may be relevant, nor was he actually taking the Outlands Cosmology class. But he's here for the field trip, of course. White Chain's explanation of Samura is tuned out immediately, in favor of looking at the gateway. Luckily, he also misses the 'are there questions?' because the portal opening is more interesting.

Stepping through the gate, he barely notices the cold because... Samura looks like his visions. Eveything's weird and bright and colorful. Oh shit. What if they make perfect sense after all; he just sees things happening in the Outlands? He can't take his eye off the multi-colored stars, but he hasn't stopped walking and he trips over something; the purple sand doesn't make a cloud of dust like it should. It's barely disturbed. He looks back to see what his foot caught on... and it's a skull. A decidedly human (or human-like) skull. He scrambles away from it as quickly as possibly, running into somebody and proceeding to cling to their arm.]

Let's explore together~!

[heromedal]

[ Honestly trading a human skull for Rex is basically an equivalent exchange in terms of spookiness. Thanks to their height difference the top of Toki's head came about up to Rex's shoulder, and that was with him slouching.

He spends a long moment staring down with his ominous eyes. He does nothing to shake Toki off except sigh in a 'really?' kind of way. At least his current music at least seems to vaguely fit the scenery. ]

Very well.

[yokeye]

[Toki immediately withdraws his arm as soon as he sees who he latched onto. This guy is ridiculously tall and honestly kind of creepy-looking. He's seen him around campus, Rex is hard to miss, but he's never spoken to him. The music is blaring from his earphones and it's some weird electronica that wouldn't be out of place as video game background music.]

Okay, then~!

[He laughs nervously, because Rex agreed and now he's kind of stuck wandering around with him for a while. Maybe he isn't as scary as first impressions indicate.]

Have you been to the Outlands before~!?

[heromedal]

[ It's the most common reaction to him- hanging around somewhere long enough for people to start 'see him around' is a new and unpleasant experience. He'd rather step in and vanish like he's used to. ]

I have not.

[ He turns his head away, looking across the environment slowly. He has seen many ruins though, some more lively than others and this one feels incredibly dead. It's an odd way to think of it, but it really does. Like all too many deaths happened at once and are slowly filtering away through a hole too small for them all to fit at once. ]

It's more peaceful than I thought.

[ Yes, this horrendously quiet aura of death is peaceful to Rex. He even takes a deep breath, like might do when walking out into the summer sun. ]

Rex.

[ That's his usual introduction, hands in pockets, no bow. ]

[hippocarnival]

Being an actual student of White Chain's history class this term, Yuya's been excited for this trip for weeks. For a place they hear so much about and his familiar comes from, Yuya feels he's way overdue to the chance to explore the place that sits alongside their world. It seems like any ordinary curiosity at first, to him.

Then they cross through the portal, and Yuya's left speechless. Odd-Eyes has to gently nudge Yuya to the side so he doesn't block the way as his whole attention is captured by the vibrancy of it. It's beautiful despite its sadness, but more than that...

He clutches the emergency kit closer, slowly venturing out. Once he shakes himself of his stupor, he's quick to join the other students looking around the ruins, kicking up sand and observing the reverse waterfall and running his hands over the trees.

It's an hour to the ens that he finds himself standing at the edge, looking into the distance well past Samura. He knows he's not supposed to go that far out of the area. He wants to.

[atomicultimatum]

Aside from Yuya, Jade’s probably the only other one here whose actually apart of the class. She’s stuck to the rest of the class up until everyone went farting off into who even knew where, and for a little while wanders herself. She’d found a couple bones she’d thought looked interesting but didn’t pick them up. Instead she just gathered up what sand she could and tried to bury, ah, cover them up. That’s what you do with dead things right?

The dragon that was sticking close to Yuya was new though. New to her anyway.

Not that she knew what a dragon was, really, so, “Hi Yuya. Whose your big...” Uh. Give her a second, “Lizard friend?”

[hippocarnival]

Yuya looks up, offering Jade a wave and a grin.

"Oh, this is Odd-Eyes. He's my familiar." Yuya pats his side, while Odd-Eyes comes down from sticking his head into a broken window.

[atomicultimatum]

"Woah." Curses that she can't smell for crap right now. At least not compared to how she usually could. At least she still has her ears.

"Nice to meet you Odd-Eyes!"

"That's so cool." She whispers.

Ruins

[gaiarage]

[Frankly, Naoki's surprised they let him anywhere near this class, let alone go on a field trip. He'd be lying if he said the urge to go back to the Outlands and stay there never crossed his mind. Not that it'll happen right now, not with all these students around, and with the professor keeping an eye on him. She must be pretty good at that, too, what with having so many.

Or maybe it's because Naoki wouldn't even consider running away to Samura. Whatever lesson White Chain is trying to impart by taking them all here, it's clearly not getting through, because most of what he feels looking over the colorful landscape is boredom. There's nothing here for them to do, just poke around crumbling buildings and morn people that have been dead for centuries. Not his idea of a good time.

Aside from some light exploring, Naoki spends most of their three hours sitting with his back to what he's pretty sure used to be the wall of a sculpture garden, hucking bones off of the cliff and watching them tumble down.]

This sucks.

[infestedcouncilpresident]

I think it's incredible! It's a whole new world! One so far from home I can't even imagine it!

[Kohaku kicked up some sand and peered down the cliff.]

Sucks it's such a dump, though.

[gaiarage]

[He nods in agreement and tosses a bleached rib over the edge, then offers him (him? he's pretty sure this is a boy) one from the pile next to him.]

They think we're too inexperienced to go anywhere interesting.

[infestedcouncilpresident]

[She nodded with agreement, but didn't take the bone. That used to belong to someone you know.]

I've been training for four years now. My powers actually do what I want them to now. I thought I'd actually get to do something with them, y'know?

[leekspins]

The dream of becoming an Outworld Explorer was a relatively new one for Orihime, so it wasn't quite as strong as her other desires to teach, to go to space, and to bake and sell cakes. This field trip would mark her first time setting foot in this strange and mysterious dimension.

When the day came, she wasn't sure if she should still go. The monster that attacked Peter was still out there, and it was bound to come after her brother. But at the end of the three hours, it would still be light outside, so being away for a little while wouldn't ruin the plans they made. So she went.

It took a few moments for the true cold of the place to work itself into her bones, and she found herself wishing she'd brought her coat after all. It was only for a few hours, though, and she didn't want to waste a single minute of it, so she didn't go back. Instead she hugged her arms tightly across her chest and set off, glad for the chance to do some exploring on her own time.

She kept her distance from the ruins where she could observe them without a pillar falling on her head. Too many accidents around campus grounds had encouraged her not to tempt fate! But she could look around the landscape itself, and she did, following the river of sand with a look of wonder on her face. When she saw that it flowed upward, she tilted her head back and let her jaw drop open.

"S...so cool...!"

She was shivering, but ignored her discomfort to go in for a closer look. She stooped to dip her fingers in the rivulets of finely grained sand, letting it sift over her hand. What was this for, she wondered? She gazed up at the multi-colored sky and tugged the collar of her shirt up to cover her mouth and nose. What a sad, pretty place...

[peace_keeper]

White Chain had brought a few extra jackets. She knew that Samura was a bit cold for humans these days, but also that humans tended to ignore warnings.

She made no attempt as stealth as she walked up behind Orihime, so it probably wasn't a surprise when she dropped an old leather jacket over her shoulders.

[leekspins]

Orihime rocked forward a fraction of an inch, surprised, but her fingers came up instinctively to seize hold of the coat and tug it more firmly around her slumped shoulders. She tipped her head back, blinking at White Chain, then she smiled.

"Thank you. That's really nice of you." And it would make her short stay infinitely better, too!

She shrugged her arms into the sleeves and zipped the jacket all the way up, keeping her hands inside of the coat cuffs. "Is the temperature always like this? Do the Outlands get exposed to the same sunlight that Earth does?"

[peace_keeper]

She nodded in response to the thanks.

"Samura has a day night cycle. Many places in the Outlands do. And many do not. My home has an artificial sun, which was broken many thousands of years ago. So it hangs in one place in the sky forever. It's always about 3:30 in the afternoon."

Ruins

[lastexit]

The cold wasn't the first thing Maya noticed in the ruins, the first thing was how off everything felt. There's a trace ambiance to the world, not musical but tonal. The traces of a living world, the traces of Earth. This place wasn't Earth, and it was very close to dead. So Maya felt disoriented and wrong for a few moments after the sound of the portal wasn't all she could hear.

That was a lot, but at least it was magic of an Angel. Which meant it was incredibly steadying and very nice to hear. Honestly that shift probably made the desert sound more disorienting. White Chain's magic was just so... easy, to hear.

Maya waited around the meeting point for a little longer than her classmates, just to steady her nerves. Before following the little noise she could from the sand-river, the magic innate to that made enough noise she could trace it. And at the waterfall sandrise(?) she stared for a moment before taking some pictures. And looking for something to toss in and see if it got carried up by the current.

[peace_keeper]

White Chain noticed her interest in the sandflow and played tourguide for the moment.

"Towards Samura's end, the rivers themselves started drying up. It was a gifted runesmith who figured out how to make a new kind of sand that flows like water. Barges used to ride these rivers of sand, shipping in supplies from distant lands to save the ailing kingdom."

She folded her arms and stared out into the horizon. "It was too late, and the secret of flowsand was lost as Samura fell into ruin. I will admit, I was sad to see it go, but there was nothing I could have done."

[lastexit]

"I can't imagine this place ever producing food, the atmosphere is... wrong." Maya studying the speed the sand is moving, debating if she can put her hand in there without rending flesh from bone.

Look, she needs her hands, they're very important.

"I wonder what this place sounded like, before it all faded away. If more of the magic sounded like this." The flowsand, sounded like water metal water if that makes sense. Probably not, but those were the sounds she could feel in her head as she got close. "Or if it was as chaotic as Earth sounds every day."

[peace_keeper]

"It's been a wasteland for seven hundred years. That puts a pall over a land. For the short time Samura flourished, it was quite a beautiful place, where a musician won far more fame than a warrior. For a time, it almost seemed like it could last."

White Chain shook her head ruefully. She may have slightly misunderstood what Maya meant by what Samura sounded like. "Sadly, violence is inescapable."

[hippocarnival]

Yuya's been much less hesitant on this trip, but his investigating does bring him back around to the opposite side of the sandy river. Odd-Eyes isn't far behind him, sniffing around at something.

Yuya offers Maya a smile. "This place is pretty amazing, right?"

[lastexit]

"We're standing on a graveyard of death and silence."

Maya Matlin, resident killjoy.

Respect for the Dead (The Ruins)

[thedevilwearsgucci]

After a few moments of the students investigating and the weft and weave of ambient sound veils the space around White Chain, there's a deliberate CRUNCH as one of the skulls littering the plaza nearby is crushed under a heeled shoe fashioned out of a large-caliber pistol.

White Chain probably already knew she was there. That wasn't the point, really.

"No matter where you go, you find parables like this." Cereza sighs. "Falls from grace, the tower crumbling, Icarus falling into the ocean... It gets a little monotonous after a while. They've really gone all out with this particular set piece, however, real bones and everything."

That's supposed to be a greeting. Sort of.

[peace_keeper]

"All humans and all their works are writ in sand, and will blow away to nothing eventually, making room for some new endeavor. Mortals are more of a process than a people. Ever creating that which they know will not last."

Her voice was icily polite, but impatient.

"Remind me why you decided to tag along? There are no night clubs or bars in Samura anymore."

[thedevilwearsgucci]

"Protection! These students are appetizing for a lot of reasons. Let's face it, both your friends and mine would LOVE to get their hands on a couple of them. Or claws. Or tentacles."

She makes a small hup noise and somehow swings UP a pole, and onto the larger-than-life stone horse statue attached to it.

"Think of it this way. We can cover each other's half of the spectrum."