If you want to view paradise/Simply look around and view it
Once they had crossed however, they abruptly found the chamber on the other side brought into focus, as it had that brief instance when the toad had belched at them. It seemed in general outline to be a vaulted stone chamber, much like what one might expect underground. Except that the walls were overgrown with some sort of…overgrowth. It was moist, rank, and slimly, like a thick film of algae, only it presented in a variety of colors: dark greens, bright greens, purple, bright pink and red, brown.
It seemed to cover every static surface, including the floor. It yielded and squished as the party stepped cautiously into the chamber. It was somewhat slippery, though not so much so that a normal person could not walk on it with caution, and it felt to be perhaps a finger’s breadth or so deep. The film gave the impression of being alive, though it did not, thankfully, move, at least not as far as any of the group could tell.
In the center of the chamber, upon a knee-high rise that may have been a platform sat a nest, seemingly made of some sort of clear mucous or resin, resenbling a shallow glass bowl that had started to melt. Within sat a large collection of round, roughly spherical objects, mostly transparent and with a greenish tinge. Something was inside each of them, a vague translucent form that coalesced around a small black dot, whose exact location varied slightly form sphere to sphere. The objects looked disturbingly like eyes.
The ether-sensing rune that Praetorum had inscribed earlier told him that the barrier they had passed through was no fracture; however, once they were across it, he could perceive that the spheres themselves practically sizzled with ether, as if each one were its own tiny fracture. All but a few, that is. In one corner of the nest sat some objects that had taken on a dull grayish rather than green hue. The black dots in each of them had also settled towards the bottom.
The toad was there, and it hopped forward, making plopping sounds on the slime-coated floor as it did so, to interpose its awkward, bulbous form between the party and the nest.
”Do not harm my eggs,”
it said in a deep, phlegm-filled croak. The ocher colored eyes regarded them, moving separately as they did so. ”I am better prepared to defend them than before.”
Despite the obvious warning, the toad did not make any sort of aggressive or combative move. It regarded them in silence for a few trills. Then it spoke again.
”You are not with them? The ones that came earlier to harm my eggs? What are your intentions? Why have you come to my Imagining?”
It regarded them a little longer, seeming to focus on Cail for some reason. ”*How* have you come to my Imagining?”
it demanded, a somewhat livelier tone somehow creeping into the toad’s moist rumbling. ”The others found it once, but have seemed unable to since. I have seen them, wandering to and fro before the entrance, as if looking for something lost. But you found me readily, as they had the first time. How is it that you mortals do this?”
Next modpost, Tuesday, 24 August.
At that time, Basilisk will also be posting an update to this thread. For this reason, the deadline for your next post is a bit earlier (see below)
Deadline for your next round's posts is 2359 EST on 23 August. If you haven't posted by that time, I will consider you to have missed that round.