Unlike most other Paths, the Obrimos almost Awaken themselves as they start seeing the inconsistencies in their own logic, and are often mentally reaching out to try to find a new way of thinking and approach their problems.

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It didn’t seem to make sense. Randall had gone through box after box of items, following his brother’s track and trying to find where he had gone awry. Some of it made sense; it began with newspaper clippings, articles about strange coincidences that had had taken place around the city, picking out names and dates to compare against the others. There were mentions of strange animal noises being heard, flashing lights, and even a case of a supposed alligator sighting in a storm drain.

It went off, somehow, when his tracking became irregular; each book that Randall dug out had been more esoteric, the first beginning with simple stories about candles and prayer and the next moving into casting one’s self into darkness. Of course, Brian had been found spread out and bled to death in his apartment, his body positioned on a chalk circle in some sort of sacrament. The symbols in the chalk matched some that he had written in the notebooks, but they didn’t make sense. It was like nothing he had ever seen before…

[Private to Olympic: Stretch out the legs or whatever you would like to start with, as we’re picking up pretty close to where your RTJ left off. Please end the post with him looking into one of the notebooks.]

Randall stood up from his desk, and walked over to the window of his apartment.

What is it?  What am I missing?  He looked out at the streets below.  From his spot on the 15th floor, the people below weren't quite ants.  More like mice. Perspective.

He turned quickly, grabbing a jacket and an old, battered notebook.  I need to see it how He saw it.  Tucking the notebook under his arm, he left the apartment.  He headed to the stairs, looking up at the top landing.  There was nothing there.  Randall shrugged, and practically ran down to the bottom floor.

As he hurried through the lobby, he was momentarily halted by the voice of Claire, the front desk lady.  "You got an umbrella, Mr. Harmon?  Looks like rain."  Randall smiled at her, causing the middle aged divorcee to blush.   "It always looks like rain, Ms. Newman. I'll be fine."  He waved in a familiar way to her, and headed out to the street, flagging a taxi.

Thunder rumbled overhead.  It did look like rain.  He told the driver to take him to a storage facility across town.  As they drove, he opened the notebook. Maybe looking at this shit around all of Brian's stuff will help. He thought as he looked over the pages.

The notebook taken by Randall had been one of the last used by his brother, in what could only be called the apex of what he was involved in. They mostly spun a story about something stalking through the night, making several references to a being known as Yv and his bed of locusts as well as multiple references to something called the "Shadow Shaper."

Once the second half of the book was reached, the timbre changed from speaking of it's arrival to a catalog of activities it might engage in. It slowly devolved into pages covered with variations of Yv, written large and small at all angles and abstract drawings that looked like frantic scribbles; it was almost as if there was a point at which you could put your finger and declare that this is where things had gone wrong.

There was something that felt a little different about this one, though. It could have just been him grasping at threads, but when flipping through the pages, it seemed like the very texture of the pages themselves changed halfway through; the first half felt normal, but once the writing became erratic and spun into madness, the papers felt more frail and crisp. They looked just the same as the other ones, however, other than the change in writing

[Private to Olympic: Olympic can arrive at his location; paint the scene where he is getting his "perspective," and please end with the notebook still in his hand.]

The rest of the ride passed uneventfully with Randall utterly adsorbed in his brother's notebook.  Eventually, his reverie was broken by the driver's voice.

"Eh yo, we're here.  That'll be 19.98."

Randall handed him $25, and got out.  Before him rose a series of squat buildings, and a sign that said "U-Sto-It." How many times have I gone back and forth from here?  20, 30 times?  How have I not thought of this?  He hurried to his brother's... no, HIS locker, as more thunder rumbled overhead.

The garage style door opened with a series of squeaks and crashes, and he flicked the light on.  On one side, there were numerous boxes fill with the kind of junk a young adult accumulates.  Books, magazines, old video games, and various kitchen devices cost only 3 small payments of 19.25 if you call now.  Against the opposite wall was a small collection of furniture, and a moderately sized safe.

Randall went to work as the sky opened outside.  He rearranged the furniture into a small office in the center of the unit, with a camp chair, a few side tables, a coffee table, a rolling whiteboard, and bookshelf.  He filled every available flat space with books and loose pages pulled from the safe, taping some to the front of the white board.  Then he went through the boxes, finding one labeled "weird."  He pulled it open ad took out an old camera, a cast of a non-human skull, and a think leather bound book.

Bringing them over to his makeshift desk, he sat down in his camp chair. Ok, let's try to think like Brian.  Staring at the white board covered in pages, he pondered it, tapping his chin with the notebook he had brought.

Minutes grew to hours as Randall spread out everything he had on Brian, finding every dot in which he could draw a line. Just as it had the last few times he had stared at it, there was almost nothing that went directly from one point to another...anything that seemed to tie two events together made no sense once a third became involved. Either his brother had a hodge-podge approach to whatever dark ritual he had been approaching, or there was a part of it that couldn't be figured out through simple effects.

After spending almost the entire day looking between the pieces, he could feel the weariness begin to set in. It was only natural after spending a day trying to puzzle out the pieces. Randall sat back in his chair, rubbing his eyes until spots danced in the corner, the rest taking a blurred perspective as they adjusted.

Perspective.

As his eyes began to gain their focus back, they crossed over one of the pages he had taped against the whiteboard, a section of the notebook that his brother had been writing the phrase "HE HAS COME" over and over along both sides of the page and in varying sizes. However, when looked at with an unfocused gaze, the larger writing seemed to blend into a shape that vaguely looked like a different set of larger letters. Randall realized he had seen other pages that looked like this in the notebook he had brought. Had Brian been trying to hide a message?

[Private to Olympic: let me know if you need me to better describe how he's seeing that page, I can explain further. This next post is probably a good "getting lost into the mystery" one before we start tipping into Awakening...]

Randall stands again, looking at the board from 10 feet away.  It still isn't quite right.  He closed on the board again and began rearranging the papers over and over, backing up to look at the bigger picture in between each arrangement.  Left to right.  Top to bottom.  Diagonally.  Alphabetically by last letter on the page.

As he worked, hours passed.  The storm was in full swing now.  The rain came down in sheets, deafening against the tin roof of the storage unit.  The single halogen bulb overhead flickered with the thunder.  Randall barely noticed, in his frenzied state.

Dammit, what is wrong!? Why can't I see it? "WHY?"  The last word was shouted as he kicked over the white board, sending notebook pages flying into the air.  He fell to his knees as the cascaded down around him.

With the next rip of thunder, the garage lost power, plunging Randall into darkness. He could hear the silence usually taken up by the ambient hum of electronics, vacant as the pages flew through the air and landed on the floor. Rain hammered the roof like children with baseball bats, rattling against a wind that even he could feel inside the walls.

There was a distant humming as a generator kicked on, accompanied by a soft humming in the corner of the garage where an emergency light had been installed from what must have been a common occurrence. The room was bathed in an orange light that was only half as bright as the halogen above had been, and it seemed somehow directed towards the whiteboard that lay on it's back.

And in the pages, defined by the bolded lines of text that gave it shape...it was there. A symbol, something that was a word that he had never seen, but in the back of his head he knew what it was. Truth. It rang as a word without sound, a language that had no voice ringing in his ears as the outline became darker.

[Private to Olympic: Randall's awakening is being triggered by seeing a symbol in High Speech, revealing the Lie. The next part of this moves to the Aether, but not until he first falls asleep after seeing the symbol, as he must truly "awaken" to Awaken. You may move time forward either by minutes or hours, whichever works for you, but please end it with him falling asleep/losing consciousness/etc...]

Randall slowly stands, and rips a blank piece of paper out a book.  Pulling out a pen, he draws the shape in a shaky hand.  Truth.  He picked up a few notebooks in a daze, left the storage unit, closing and locking the door behind him.

Turning home, he started to walk the 4 miles to his apartment.  The rain didn't seem to bother him, as he relentlessly trudged by people huddling under umbrellas and ignoring taxis offering him a ride. Truth.

He finally reached his building.  Claire was gone by now.  Just as well, he didn't want to talk.  He went straight to his room, and collapsed on the bed.  He took the now waterlogged drawing out of his pocket, and placed it next to his clock. Truth. He feel asleep looking at it.

It was almost as if there were cotton in his ears as he walked, the world around him somehow seeming...frail, for lack of a better word. It was hard to not see similar shapes all around him as he walked; even the pattern of light that bounced off the wet streets was less than random, and the street signs formed together to make their own twisted symbol towards the sky. It continued all the way home, his wet shoes leaving a trail behind him all the way to his bed, the puddles on the floor taking shape in the wake of each step.

When his eyes finally closed, it was as if they instead opened fully, both of which he was aware of; sleep had overtaken Simon, but in his dream, he was more awake than he had ever been. Instead of laying on his bed and laying at a drawing, he was drifting in the air, weightless like a leaf twirling in a hidden breeze. Both the sky above and ground below boiled and pitched as if he were inside a cloud, watching a storm from the inside out, bursts of light and rumbles of thunder permeating the space around him.

It seemed there was something beyond the cloud, just out of the edge of his vision. A dark shape loomed in the distance, like an anchor to his swirling, and he slowly felt himself being pulled towards it...

[Private to Olympic: While Randall does seem to have some control over how he moves in the Aether, it doesn't seem to do him any good; he is still being pulled towards something looming in the cloud, something large and pillar-like.]

As frail and flimsy as the world had seemed on his walk home, to Randall this place seemed vibrant and alive.  God, it feels like I've been here before.  No, like I've been hear all along.  Is this what Brian found?  Is this Truth?

Randall leaned into the pull, like the time he had been skydiving with his college friends.  It seemed that had been a lifetime ago, but what he had learned came back to him as he narrowed himself towards the looming object, making himself as bullet shaped and aerodynamic as possible.

I'm ready.  I NEED to know.

As he was tossed through the air, Randall began to see other shapes in the air; a darkness that was just beyond the mist that looked like stone. Due to the erratic flight path, it was hard to say whether it was ground or a ceiling, either seeming just as likely as he was thrown through the air. It wasn't until after he crashed into it that he realized it was a wall, sliding down a steep incline for nearly a full minute before colliding into a a hard surface.

When he looked up again, it was there; the stone pillar that stood spiking from the earth like the crag of a meteor, it's top burning bright with a fire that he stood in the shadow of. The walls of it had appeared to be weathered, but as he approached, they were stricken with etchings. Words were drawn across them in languages he both recognized and didn't, as well as symbols that matched those he had seen in his brother's writing. As he approached, Randall's foot brushed a rough knife made out of blackened steel, the blade dull from being used to carve into the pillar. When he looked closer, there was one name that stood out to him, signed in an immediately recognizable script.

Brian

[Private to Olympic: This response should end once he has marked the wall, whether by blood or blade.]

Randall tentatively reached out to touch the name, as though touching it would cause it to disappear.  "Son of a bitch.  He was here."  He looked along the surface of the thing, now recognizing names written in countless handwritings and languages.  Had they all died like his brother?  Was this... Tower a lure to a similar end, or was it a stepping stone to...

Truth.  That word had led him here.  That word would lead him on.  He picked up the knife, and started to carve, remembering the nickname his brother had for him in high school.  Olympics.  Randall was the athlete, and Brian was the smart one.  Randall had called him Brain.  It was time to be both.

I, Randall "Olympic" Harmon, seek the Truth.

Even as he spoke, Randall could feel the energy begin to surge within him. It was as if each spoken syllable somehow lit a fire in the next, causing the last word to ring out with a force that had always been within him and waiting to speak. His voice seemed to reverberate even louder, pulsing with the light atop the tower, both growing with an intensity that washed over his senses.

The world went stark white, the looping echo of his own voice becoming thunderous until he could practically feel it. Randall let go of the knife as he finished carving, the blade seeming to take a direction that was more sideways than down as it drifted away from him, making long streaks in the air as it went. Both sound and light had become physical things, moving around him and pounding his body with each reverberation going deeper into his chest, seeming to reach his heart. Skin aflame, he felt the air rush along his face, hair and clothing beginning to whip around him...

...and in that moment he fell backward, landing in a puddle on the wet concrete. A train was rushing less than a foot from where he had been standing, it's loud clanging of pieces and parts almost overpowering the loud ringing of the railroad crossing that chimed in time with flashing red lights. He was in the middle of the street in a rural suburb, and at some point day had become night. His legs hurt as if he'd been walking for miles, although he could still see the Chicago skyline in the distance.

Only it wasn't the same. The row of lighted buildings seemed to be bursting with their own energy, lighted windows dancing with electricity and surging to currents that were invisible to the normal eye. Smokestacks spewed out millions of particles, each still carrying enough burn to create smoke. Even his breath seemed to have a pulse as it left his body, carrying with it a spark that he had never felt before...

[Private to Olympic: Welcome to the world of the Awakening. Give us one more post to end the thread; think of it like the end of the first episode of a television show. You can advance time from as short as a few seconds to a few days if you need, but don't feel the need to have to cover a lot. Just do what seems most fitting.]

He sat in the puddle for a minute catching his breath as the train passed.  A moment after it passed, he pulled himself forward, reaching out to the track.  A jolt of energy surged through his finger, and coalesced into a ball in his palm.  He tried to stand, but found his legs protesting.  He took the ball of energy, and grasped it, pushing the power into his legs.  The surge revived his muscles, burning away the pain and lactic acid.

He stood with ease and turned to walk home.  As he traveled, street lights flickered at his passing.  He moved distractedly, feeling as though he was a blind man seeing the world for the first time.  The shine of the house lights, the smell of the sewer grate, the taste of industry in the air, the sound of a car horn, the feeling of his shin impacting against something hard and plastic.


He looked at the car that had nearly run him down.  A man was inside, yelling.  What a funny thing.  This fool, threatening someone like him.  Could he not see the power that surged around him?  He touched the hood of the car, and pushed a jolt of energy into it.  The power surged through the vehicle.  He felt it overload, and the engine turned off.

The man seemed confused. He couldn't see the power, could he?  Randall... no... Olympic understood, and he smiled.  He had much to learn, but now, he had the capacity to process it.

I'll figure this out Brian.  I promise.