#drowning

(5:21:40 PM) ventricularPipefitter: [ >Ross: Return to the present. Two hours of calmly hyperventilating, hurried research, swearing, and kicking the alchemiter, have led to this. ]
(5:21:51 PM) ventricularPipefitter: [ Billy The Bell Diver's atmospheric diving suit, The Goggles Do Everything, and a wallet full of portable healing. ]
(5:21:51 PM) ventricularPipefitter: [ You know where Echo is: over five hundred meters beneath the surface of her Land's oceans, drowning. Time to rescue her. ]
(5:28:32 PM) serpentLinguist: [ >Echo: Drown. Your swimming put you perilously close to a sudden pressure change pocket you were unaware of, and when you swam up, you swam into it. Your computer broke at the same time as your ribs collapsed, and you quickly lost the ability to pull water through your gills. ]
(5:30:59 PM) ventricularPipefitter: [ >Ross: No time to waste. He suits up, pressurizes the device to one atmosphere, and clicks his pocketwatch open. With the spinning of hands and the turning of gears, he is underwater. It is black, and cold. ]
(5:35:42 PM) serpentLinguist: [It's dark enough that the only direction seems to be marked by a faint, bluish glow in one general direction. Or is it? The daylight faded fast as Echo fell unconscious, and now there seems to be nothing lighting the way, safe for... there, in the distance, a dozen little flashes. Tiny fish blink to one another in the distance, forming a breadcrumb trail for
(5:36:01 PM) serpentLinguist: him to follow. It winds about, oddly meandering in the deep water.]
(5:37:41 PM) ventricularPipefitter: [ It's as good a hint as any. Ross activates the powerful lanterns and motors of his suit, propelling himself towards the light, and shining some of his own that way, hand outstretched. ]
(5:41:36 PM) serpentLinguist: [The trail doubles back, spirals, and curves erratically though the dark, still waters. Here or there, an occasional suited corpse floats just out of reach - a silent reminder to follow the path of the little blinking fish .]
(5:42:43 PM) serpentLinguist: [They get to be more plentiful as he goes along, leading towards a glowing cloud in the distance.]
(5:43:26 PM) ventricularPipefitter: [>Ross: Shut off your lights. Trust the fish: he can't see them so well with it lit. ]
(5:55:25 PM) ventricularPipefitter: (( brb. ))
(6:04:04 PM) ventricularPipefitter: [ Of The Essence ]
(6:04:04 PM) ventricularPipefitter: [ The wrinkle of spacetime local to Ross Eberhardt speeds up, sliding him towards the glowing cloud that surrounds -- that MUST surround -- Echo. ]
(6:09:46 PM) serpentLinguist: [ She's sinking. Slowly, slowly sinking. Her eyes are shut and she isn't moving as she drifts slowly in what must be a downwards The fish spiral around her loosely enough that he can't reach her. She's almost close enough to touch, but not quite. The bottom of the spiral is where the cloud of little fish are blinking and glowing, clinging to the bottom of an
(6:10:05 PM) serpentLinguist: irregularly-curved surface, like an invisible wall.]
(6:17:20 PM) ventricularPipefitter: [ There's...something there. Hn. Fuck. Ross smooths Time back out, and propels himself as close as he can. He retrieves a length of pipe--long, bronze, hooked at the end--from his specibus, and reaches out for her. ]
(6:19:34 PM) serpentLinguist: [The pipe crushes a little bit as it goes through the invisible barrier. The fish flash and blink in unison.]
(6:37:30 PM) ventricularPipefitter: [ Right then. That's bad. Don't reach in. Don't pull her out in a hurry. Rapid changes in pressure, Ross knows from diving with Echo, are a *bitch* How can he -possibly- get her out? And fast enough that he can -do- something about it. ]
(6:39:59 PM) ventricularPipefitter: [ But, maybe, if he can speed this process up -- Ross drifts lower, for the bottom of the pressure pocket, where the suspiciously helpful little fish glow. If he can just reach up from under, and -- ]
(6:39:59 PM) ventricularPipefitter: [ >Ross: Nudge Echo to the bottom of the pocket ]
(6:40:14 PM) serpentLinguist: [ She's still sinking. Slowly. One of the little fishes swims up from underneath and gets halfway to her before it's crushed by the pressure in the bubble. It, too, slowly floats down on the dense water. A few moments later, another does. A look underneath the main body of fish would show dozens of dead fish floating downwards.]
(7:14:51 PM) ventricularPipefitter: [Ross has [All The Time In The Medium]. Echo doesn't. She's drowning *now*, dying by inches as her brain's deprived of oxygen, the same fate inexhorably mirroring itself on her dreaming self on Prospit. Echo's been sinking through a deadly high-pressure pocket for easily 40 minutes. ]
(7:15:03 PM) ventricularPipefitter: [Suffocation's a slow way to go, for the golden children. How much longer does she have? Not much.]
(7:15:12 PM) ventricularPipefitter: [But her Dreamself has more Time than she does. And one life is better than none.]
(7:15:23 PM) ventricularPipefitter: [Ross activates [Of The Essence again], this time centering the wrinkle of fast time on Echo. It won't run down the clock on her Dreamself, however. That buys them *both* a little longer.]
(7:15:37 PM) ventricularPipefitter: [He watches her sink, and waits. Time is the harshest master, and Patience is her lesson. ]
(7:18:15 PM) serpentLinguist: [Time speeds up. She drifts down more quickly, reaching the bottom of the pressure bubble in a couple minutes.]
(7:23:49 PM) ventricularPipefitter: [ >Ross: Ascend.]
(7:23:49 PM) ventricularPipefitter: [ Also, Significant One-Word Commands aside, how's her condition? ]
(9:04:49 PM) serpentLinguist: [ DEAD. As of 14 minutes and 37 seconds ago. ]