and onto Inferno

[Nusse]

(This is a followup of a kind to Entering Penumbra)

Would you believe that my quest to get out of the freezing hell of Penumbra and into Inferno would take me the better of two months? Meeting Ergo was as pleasant as any visit I’ve ever had with a dentist, and the tasks he laid out for me in order to get access to Inferno seemed to be designed by someone who would probably be related to a certain Marquis de Sade. Nevertheless after killing an Ice Golem and getting some bits and pieces for a pair of boots, I was ready to enter what I thought to be bliss after my time in the icy realm of Penumbra. Incidentally this is also where the story starts, in case you were wondering.

“Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch.” The burning ground hurt my feet to the point where I was jumping from foot to foot. Inferno was quite warm compared to Penumbra, which was quite a blessing, that my boots actually melted wasn’t. I guess I should’ve learned the lesson from the glasses I got when entering Penumbra that I should have equipped the new boots I got before I entered the realm. The reason however was that my Bronto hide boots were so pleasantly warm in Penumbra that I didn’t feel like taking them off before I got to somewhere warmer. I did feel like taking them off at the moment though, but before I even tried to remove them they caught fire and melted within seconds. Hence I was trying to get into my new boots while jumping from foot to foot and not being so much in a conversational mood when lo and behold another person emerges from the portal. I wasn’t particularly pleased with seeing my old acquaintance Bernard “Slacky” Age, in fact I almost stopped jumping from foot to foot, figuring that compared to this, the pain of regeneration would be welcome. It has to be said though that I’ve always been the survivor type, and whenever I think thoughts like that my survival instincts go into an override and keeps me alive. I’ve cursed said instincts many times, especially when waking up with a nanomage female after a night out at the Rompa Bar. Anyways Slacky smiles as he sees me, anyone who’ve ever seen an Atrox smile would know where his nickname came from, and gives a huge wave. I get particularly annoyed upon seeing that Slacky is in fact equipped with the lava protection boots that I’m currently trying to get on. Slacky, who, as other Atrox, usually display the apprehension of a brick wall in summer, actually frightens me when he says “You better get the boots on, the ground here is hot”, followed once again by a wide smile.
“It is? I hadn’t bloody noticed.”
“Hmm, why am I wearing my boots then? I always prefer to go barefeet….” Whereas he proceeds to remove his shoes. I forget myself for a second and stop jumping, Slacky is standing not 10 feet from me wiggling his toes and smiling, at that point I reminded myself that if I ever suffered a permadeath I’ll hopefully get to some sort of Heaven where I can give this God person a good telling off. I further reminded myself that I should probably start being kind if I was going to be able to pursue that.

Some minutes later I’d equipped my lava boots and started to cast some healing nanos to remove the blisters on my feet. I was finally able to get a good look at my surroundings and found that someone might have turned the heat a tad too much towards blazing before they went to lunch. I toyed with the idea of having a door permanently open between Penumbra and Inferno would do the trick for both realms for about a nanosecond or so before Slacky once again caught my attention.
“Haven’t I seen you somewhere before? You’re name is Nisse or something?”, his expression was a study of how absolutely stupid even a thinking Atrox could look.
“I don’t think so,” I replied, “My name is Nusse, but the resemblance must be purely coincidental.”
“I’m quite sure Nisse was solitus just like you, but then again you all look alike to me.”
“Indeed?”
“Yeah, I don’t know how you’re ever able to differentiate between a male and female, I’m guessing it might be down to some tricks that I’ve not learned.”
“Like females having a couple of oranges under their shirt?”
“Ah, so that’s what those bulges are then? Fascinating. I’ve seen some that probably have apples rather than oranges as well…”
“Look, I’d rather not stand here telling you about the birds and the bees, you’ve got no need for that information – ever.”
“Birds and bees?”
“Forget it!”

I withdrew the map I’d stuffed in my backpack and looked at it for a few minutes. Slacky was still wearing a look of anticipation, so I tried looking at it some more. After roughly 30 minutes he still hadn’t moved nor changed his expression, I emitted a huge sigh and looked at him. “I’m heading up to this place called Sorrow – you can tag along if you must.”
“I’d like that very much, I sense that we’re going to be good pals.”
“Yeah right.”
“Sorry?” He looked a bit taken aback.
“I said, yeah, I think you’re right.”
“Ah.” He gave another huge smile and I rolled my eyes.

We followed the road up the mountain, dodging the creatures we saw around us, I didn’t know about Slacky, but I was not going to find out whether or not the creatures around here were friendly. From the lessons I’d learned in Penumbra you’d be better off with treating each and every single one of the creatures as hostile, at least rather than trying to pet them, or you’d soon find yourself without any arms, or legs for that matter. After a while we stood upon the highest point of the mountain and looked at the beautiful view of the land below us.
“So how do we get down from here?”, Slacky had a way with obvious questions, they always seemed to be wanting to emerge from his mouth, that and utter drivel of course.
“Actually this is were we jump off.”, I answered, for indeed my map did say to jump off here, and the one who’d made the map seemed to have made further explorations in the area so logically he or she must’ve survived.
“I’m not jumping off here, it can’t be healthy”, he shook his head in order to get the point across.
When it comes to equipping gear that Ergo gives me I might not be without faults, when it comes to finding ways to getting away from Slacky however, I’m proud to say that my brain thinks far quicker than I can comprehend. Less than a second after Slacky had said that he wasn’t going to jump off, I was feeling the wind in my hair, smiling and having a quite decent andrenaline rush. It felt like 15-20 seconds, but it was probably less than 5, before I landed several hundred feet down the mountainside. As I’d thought the landing didn’t make filling for pizza out of me, but left me completely unharmed. Less than a second later I was kicked in the side of the head due to Slacky making his landing. I’d rather be kicked by a mule any day, in fact several times a day, rather than being kicked by an Atrox doing 50 mph down a mountainside. To make a long story short, it hurt like heck and the son (or at least he claimed to be male) of a test-tube dislocated my jaw in the process. I saw a fair bit of stars and could even start to make out a few familiar constellations before my view cleared and I could fire off some healing nanos.
“I’m sorry about that, I’m not used to jumping off cliffs”, he said wearing a properly apologetic expression.
“Forget it.”, I said, “Anyone could’ve done that.”
“But still I’m sorry.”
“Forget it.” I hate repeating myself, but I knew that I wouldn’t have been sorry if I’d done the same thing to him, and if my plan of getting rid of him bore fruits, this would’ve been worth it.

We continued on until we reached Sorrow, a small but quite nice outpost in the western part of Inferno. After talking a bit with the leaders of the outpost we were given a pass to the garden where we were told we could have a bit of a rest before we continued our journey.
“Wow, this looks nice!”, Slacky was wide-eyed, which wasn’t quite as rare as you’d think, as he looked around the place.
“Yeah.”
“Hmm, where can I put down my bags and rest for a bit?”
“Anywhere. Just don’t enter that cave. It’s a holy place for our hosts, and they wouldn’t take kindly on anyone entering.”
“Oh, thanks for warning me, I was just about to have a look in there myself. There seems to be people in there though.”
“They are redeemed creatures in disguise, it would be hard for them to go about Rubi-Ka looking like they do – don’t you think?”
“Yeah, I see your point. I’ll just head over there and do a lie down then, do you want to continue our journey in a couple of hours?”
“Sure, I’ll join you over there – need a bit of rest myself.”

I waited until he was sleeping before I headed into the cave and got my body scanned. Then I traded a bottle of sugar free Rum with the Forrester for a pass to get back into the garden again at a later point. I went back to where Slacky was resting and relaxed a bit in the lush grass while waiting for him to wake up.
“Ah, that felt good. Now I need a quick snack, how about you, are you hungry?” Slacky stretched and I saw that the resemblance to a gorilla was more than just passing.
“Yeah I could do with a bit to eat.” I pretended to have just woken up myself; hopefully my stretching wasn’t quite as close a resemblance though.
“Let’s eat then.”
In my earlier journals I’ve covered the amount of food Slacky seems to be able to stuff his face with during a meal, his appetite hadn’t changed much from what I could see during the last two months. His table manners, or in this case grass manners, was so disgusting that I’d to look another way to keep the food I ate to stay in my stomach. After a good half-hour or so he was finally finished eating so we packed our bags and went out by a statue marked Yuttos.

The Yuttos are quite a funny bunch, and seems to be very trusting of their fellow man or creature. I’ve amused myself on numerous occasions by setting fire to their garbs and blaming lightning out of a clear sky. It’s virtually impossible for anyone with half a brain to actually not be able to talk themselves out of any accusation done by these creatures. You’ll have a hard time trying to find anyone that works harder to please you and never get grumpy. So it was one of these fellows that I enlisted for my devious plan, I withdrew my nanoenhanced camera from my bag and asked the Yutto to take a picture of me and Slacky. The Yutto agreed, as I’d predicted, without complaint so he followed us to a spot west of the Yuttos camp. I asked him to be ready to take the picture, and to take lots of pictures in a row once he got going.
“Let’s go over here, Slacky.”
“Ok. This is a splendid backdrop for a picture.”
“Yes, indeed it is.”
“So where do you want me?” he asked.
“Hmm, I want you to go over towards that little bridge you see over there. Once you’re there wave to the Yutto, I’ll be over here waving as well, and then we can move closer to each other once the Yutto has started taking the pictures.”
“Good idea, that way the pictures will work kind of like a moving picture when you look at them in sequence?” Suffice to say that I was very impressed with Slacky using such words in a sentence.
“Yep, Slacky, my friend. Just head over there, and I’ll be looking at a safe distance. Ehm, from a distance.”

It was another one for the albums, Slacky being eaten by the Lord of the Void while I was waving to the Yutto with the camera. It gave me such a feeling of bliss that I almost forgot to accidentally shove the Yutto into the lava stream before heading back to the garden. While talking to the Forrester earlier I’d heard some mentions of a place called Pandemonium, and I wanted to learn a bit more.

[Freuty]

Awww poor ol' slacky

/me waits anxiously for news on what happend to him

((Great story Nusse can't wait for Pandemonium explorations hehe))

[Cogs]

((Hehe, good reading, m8 ))

[trgeorge]

((The dark side of Nusse revealed. Damn funny tho))

[Jpegg]

it certainly is