Oracle Quest
Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2020 7:04 am
You are currently training to be an Oracle. Soon to be suffused in your bones is a god - a creature of prophecy and nonequivalence. As an Oracle, you are expected to foretell future events slathered in obscurity. To spew cryptic prophecies and let them drop upon the land as acid rain. To follow the ebb and flow of lives that are not your own, and to be passed along by currents beyond your reach...
It's a shame that there's one tiny problem. You're a scam artist. To be perfectly honest, seeing it get this far is baffling. You won't deny that Oracles exist in this world! It's a respected profession with centuries of proof. The thing is, you're not one. You do cold reading. You pressure and manipulate your clients. In fact, you know better than anyone that reading people is an entirely different skillset from reading the future.
And now they're gonna put a fuckin' god in you. You're kind of freaking out. Do god bones hurt? Will you get divine carpal tunnel?
More than anything, you're scared. You're scared, and you can't tell anybody but yourself.
The ceremony, elder said, must be conducted in isolation. So they dragged you deep into the subterranean network, so many winding curling twisting tunnels that they didn't need to blindfold you - you already don't know the way. It's a test, elder says. When the god in the mountain is filtered into you, like straining sand through a sieve, you will know the way. He says this, but you don't know if you believe him.
The ceremony was simple. Elder had you lie down, and wait until his footsteps were no longer audible. Then you were to slice underneath your left eye with the ceremonial dagger. If the god was present, which they were, they would seep into your tear ducts and nest in your vision, from which it will eventually enter your bones You're scared. You're hungry. You're lost. But above all else, you're about to be an Oracle. The dagger enters your skin.
You are darkness, then shapeless, sudden inferno, explosive expansion, infiltration, entry of something salty, a shelter from the absolution of self. You are SEVERED MOUNTAIN HANDS. It's a shame there's one tiny problem. You know almost nothing. You are aware that you should know the land, the sea, the stars, the sky, and everything nested between the nooks and crannies of calcified time.
Here is everything you, SEVERED MOUNTAIN HANDS, know. You are capable of lowest-level probabilistic manipulation. You are fully aware of everything that happens in the space within two miles. You know everything your host body does. Especially how to lie.
Notably, you cannot see the future.
What will you, SEVERED MOUNTAIN HANDS, do?
It's a shame that there's one tiny problem. You're a scam artist. To be perfectly honest, seeing it get this far is baffling. You won't deny that Oracles exist in this world! It's a respected profession with centuries of proof. The thing is, you're not one. You do cold reading. You pressure and manipulate your clients. In fact, you know better than anyone that reading people is an entirely different skillset from reading the future.
And now they're gonna put a fuckin' god in you. You're kind of freaking out. Do god bones hurt? Will you get divine carpal tunnel?
More than anything, you're scared. You're scared, and you can't tell anybody but yourself.
---
The ceremony, elder said, must be conducted in isolation. So they dragged you deep into the subterranean network, so many winding curling twisting tunnels that they didn't need to blindfold you - you already don't know the way. It's a test, elder says. When the god in the mountain is filtered into you, like straining sand through a sieve, you will know the way. He says this, but you don't know if you believe him.
---
The ceremony was simple. Elder had you lie down, and wait until his footsteps were no longer audible. Then you were to slice underneath your left eye with the ceremonial dagger. If the god was present, which they were, they would seep into your tear ducts and nest in your vision, from which it will eventually enter your bones You're scared. You're hungry. You're lost. But above all else, you're about to be an Oracle. The dagger enters your skin.
--- YOU ARE NOW THE GOD "SEVERED MOUNTAIN HANDS" ---
You are darkness, then shapeless, sudden inferno, explosive expansion, infiltration, entry of something salty, a shelter from the absolution of self. You are SEVERED MOUNTAIN HANDS. It's a shame there's one tiny problem. You know almost nothing. You are aware that you should know the land, the sea, the stars, the sky, and everything nested between the nooks and crannies of calcified time.
Here is everything you, SEVERED MOUNTAIN HANDS, know. You are capable of lowest-level probabilistic manipulation. You are fully aware of everything that happens in the space within two miles. You know everything your host body does. Especially how to lie.
Notably, you cannot see the future.
What will you, SEVERED MOUNTAIN HANDS, do?