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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ConnorSB" data-source="post: 1488773" data-attributes="member: 14273">Axon, who had thus far been silent, gasped when he saw the Conductor. It was not the ogre’s size- he had seen the great brutes before. It was viewing the thing’s mind that surprised him.In a place beyond the normal conscious mind, Axon stood waist deep in a shallow ocean. Looking down, he saw not the frail human body that wheezed and ached on the physical plane, but what he liked to call his paragon form, the shape of his mind made manifest as a psionic avatar. He was himself, but well muscled, handsome, with his brown hair cascading long and thick down to his waist, rather than being the few patches his mortal form held. And other things were different about him. In this place, this hyperconscious sea, he glowed with an inner light, orange as the dawn.Perhaps a dozen feet away stood the Conductor’s paragon, the phantasmal water swirling around its hips. The ogre’s mind manifested itself as a literally blank form- a naked, genderless humanoid of average height, weight, and build, without hair or eyes or any face at all, skin so white it was almost blinding to look at the paragon. Once Axon’s metaphysical eyes adjusted to the purity and intensity of the Conductor’s avatar, he could make out fine black runes crawling across the thing’s skin, little black lines that shook and wove about like caterpillars.The thing saluted him, an in an instant the waters had drained away, the avatar had disappeared, and Axon was back on the train, staring at an ogre.“Hey,” it said. “Anybody hit de button yet?” It reached a paw out and, smashing through the glass, slammed the button into the wall. Things groaned within the trains walls, and metal plates began sliding across the windows. Axon looked out the window, trying to get a glimpse of the fast-nearing bandits before the coverings slid all the way across. Then he noticed something.The plate wasn’t sliding anymore. The window was still exposed.“Uh, Conductor,” he cried. “I think we have a problem.” There was a cacophony of thunkings as the rest of the windows closed, and the car dimmed significantly. But light still poured in from the last, broken window. People looked about, but almost every eye settled on the uncovered portal.The keening wail of a velociraptor’s scream echoed through the ghostly silent Car Four. The glint of steel flashed across the panicked faces inside the car. The bandits were upon them.</blockquote>

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