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Sruixan · 12-25-2009, 09:26 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Sruixan.

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**Schazer** · 12-25-2009, 09:32 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

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GBCE · 12-25-2009, 11:47 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by snoomanwaff.

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SleepingOrange · 12-25-2009, 10:29 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

There is nothing special about life, when you get down to it, and death is just the absence of that immaterial nothing. It's all the same, and all that separates the nonliving from life and death is molecular complexity.

Gestalt had always thought that. All that separates a squirrel from a pile of useful bones is a confusing flurry of chemical reactions that Gestalt had just never learned to control. What else could there be, anyway? I couldn't feel anything, so it couldn't be there. Not to mention, I...

And that was the thing. Who was this "I"? What was a Gestalt? Introspection had never been a strong suit of the schrotgolem's before, but... Everything was changing since the merge. Life WAS a thing, and the golem was seeing things quite differently through the lens of vitality. Humans, an erstwhile-inscrutable mass of things going at cross purposes were now sleek, elegant machines, and minds, once merely a collection of neural oddities, were now twitching, spinning, things. Things that could be bent and operated and broken like anything else.

This new partnership had brought forth... Understanding. Understanding in the form of a glowing pearl in the middle of swirling black mists of more and more mysteries, but the pearl was there, would eventually be within reach, and had provided elucidation just by its presence.

What Gestalt didn't realize was the longer it remained in intimate contact with Samuel's mind, the more of humanity and life were bleeding through; as the Karmist and the schrotgolem pursued their dark foe, riding the waves of each other's power, deep inside Gestalt pragmatism was turning into fear, a desire to end this game was turning to bloodlust, and an idle, ticking curiosity was turning into a burning need to know everything about the world.

And an already-conflicted feeling regarding Gestalt's quondam companion was becoming a confusing mix of emotions about the one being in this bizarre competition that the golem had really been able to relate to.

An eagle made of shards of stained glass, spotted with blood and suffused with a dark, reeking energy, soared above the Karmist, shrieking silently towards a sky that wasn't a sky, rocketing after a dark shape that wasn't of this world.

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**Schazer** · 12-26-2009, 09:08 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

Vyrm'n's trajectory as it crashed into Samuel was near-perfect, and would've been at a bone-crushingly high velocity if not for the execution of a 180-degree turn in order to pull it off. As it were, Samuel's bones were left unbroken as the Faceless seized the arm he had instinctively thrown in front of his face and dragged him through the painting/portal/window.

As the quayside accelerated towards Vyrm'n and the Karmist from below, to his unconscious surprise Samuel's focus was more fixated upon his entrapped arm. The Karmic energies, sensing the proximity of their target, felt like they were going to rend his arm to tattered shreds in an attempt to escape.

Not yet, Samuel thought to himself, teeth gritted in concentration.The golem is too much of an unkno- It took all of Samuel's willpower to halt Karma's inexorable current, and was quite a sterling effort that he managed to maintain such focus, even as Faceless and Karmist crashed onto a flat-topped roof.

Samuel managed to touch down with his feet and take a few staggering steps, reducing the crushing forces which would've manifest had he been stuck within the impact of Faceless and stone; his barely elegant stride was broken by his arm being pulled ahead by a far more massive and momentous Vyrm'n, making the Karmist fall flat on his face and leaving him scrabbling to pick himself up as the Faceless finally released him after dragging Samuel a good couple of metres.

Samuel floated back to a standing position with as much grace as he could muster, drifting to the far edge of the building from the swiftly pillarizing Faceless. The grit sprung off his now-scratched suit. It might've been his imagination, but Samuel fancied he saw the Faceless twitch a little as the dust responded to his will, the schrotgolem's power. He recalled the way Gestalt and Vyrm'n had fought in the Labyrinth Field, and shot the grains in the Faceless' direction.

Vyrm'n, in response, leapt clear of the dust well before it reached its side of the building, and terminated its upward leap by jackknifing towards Samuel. Acting more on survival instinct than common sense, the Karmist leapt backwards; risking his neck were it not for the forces of Gestalt keeping him suspended in the air. The Faceless had little appreciation of this defiance of physics, and swiftly changed trajectories again to ram into Samuel from below. Not as maneuverable without something to push off, the Karmist was bodily smacked by the shadow in its ascent.

Samuel tried to take a page from Vyrm'n's book, kill his flight and use gravity to his tactical advantage, but the Faceless swirled around his ankles before its elegant, black-comet shape seemed to liquify and fall to earth, dragging Samuel down in overbearing defiance of his concerted attempts to stay airborne.

The two crash-landed in an alley, though like the rest of this world it was devoid of the usual signs of habitation - there was no stinking dumpster for the pair to comically plummet into, no signs of moss or damp on the shady stones. The only sign of any mortal having trespassed here was the crater-like dent imprinted in the ground, from which Vyrm'n swiftly slithered to loom over Samuel's battered form. Shards of shattered flagstone rose and cocooned the Karmist in a swirl of sharp rocks. Vyrm'n shuffled back, giving it a wide berth, consciousness extending out to the rest of the painting, searching for the rest of Gestalt. To its alarm, the schrotgolem was all around, detritus peering down from roofs, perching at windows, and skipping up either end of the alley.

A piercing mental screech resonated across the region the schrotgolem inhabited. Both Karmist and Faceless looked upward, to the rapidly disintegrating form of the stained-glass eagle. The prismatic swarm came streaking down towards the Faceless and the rubble shield, several pieces shifting into formation to form the screaming head of a savage raptor that tore mercilessly into the shadow.

Vyrm'n made valiant and highly acrobatic efforts to avoid Gestalt's assault, but for every colour in the golem's rainbow arsenal the Faceless reluctantly seized and tucked away into the darkness (reluctantly, knowing each piece was a psychic link to this abomination), a pane of glass could be heard being torn from its stone frame and plummeting to the street below before its shards joined the fray.

Meanwhile, the Karmist tried to catch his breath, moving slowly while he checked for broken bones. Irritably parting the shield of rock to better watch the fight, Samuel wondered why his Karmic perception had failed him this time. The Faceless was no different, and his powers had not been diminished by his meld with Gestalt, so why had he been incapable of anticipating its attacks? Scrutinising the shadow (which contemptuously spat out a pall of pale pink dust as Samuel watched; the viciously eroded remnants of Gestalt's red glass shards), he realised something had changed in it, nothing morphological, but more a subtle shift in perception, which with Samuel's powers of detection gleaned so much more from.

All through this skirmish, for reasons Samuel could not fathom, Vyrm'n's intent was not to kill. Incapacitate, injure, perhaps, but not to strike the final blow. Samuel had his suspicions as to the origins of this, but in his present condition it would have to merely suffice as an interesting development, to be expanded on later.

SleepingOrange · 12-26-2009, 09:39 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

Even as the dark column shrunk gradually back from its battle with the glittering beast, the rest of Gestalt's "body" was inching towards the combat. Gone, or at least not in evidence, were yo-yos and laser pointers and dolls and gloves, replaced by wickedly sharp knives and hooked garden tools and ticking, sinister clockwork devices, all crawling with a dark, singular purpose towards the harried Faceless.

The golem wasn't even pretending to maintain the eagle-shape anymore. What were one moment wings the next became vicious claws raking across the inscrutable darkness that was Vyrm'n, then shifted to legs skittering across the wall to avoid the weakening retaliation from a flailing spectral pseudopod. The Faceless was so preoccupied merely holding its own and dodging the ever-multiplying shards of glass and flying cutlery that she didn't even notice the hated brick until it was digging into her, tearing away at the pseudo-matter of her body. The black surface quivered, backed into a wall and pummeled from every angle, weapons appearing from apparently-nowhere faster than she could destroy them.

Even as omnipresent as Gestalt's pieces were, more pressing and grating to Vyrm'n was the psychic assault it seemed to be launching, or perhaps couldn't help but spew in the general direction of its target. Fragments of thought and what might pass for emotion in a poor light battered the schizoid mind of the harried Faceless, threatening to drown out its own reasoning and eternal metacognition.

...AND IF I...BUT THE NATURE OF...WITH OUR...CAN'T BEAR TO...THREATENS...YOU CAN'T SIMPLY...

Dozens of voices, all of them Gestalt, many with the telltale sneer of Samuel behind them, a few appearing to be arguing with each other, screamed across Vyrm'n's mind, and impressions and thoughts and memories poured in and around, like the million disjointed songs she'd heard in the midst of the spore cloud. Central and loudest, though, was an insistent chorus, shrieked loudly and rhythmically.

WHY? HOW?

And underneath it all, noticeable because of how quiet and comparatively lucid it was, a ceaseless litany of:

Who am I? What is life, and how do I relate to it? Can anything truly die?

Just as she was beginning to gain some ground, Vyrm'n realized Gestalt's movements weren't the usual smooth, precise ones she expected from it. A knife shook jerkily though the air and embedded itself in a wall after an easy dodge; the brick so enthusiastically tearing at her was occasionally immobile or sluggish; the glass swarm changed gradually and indistinctly from form to increasingly-nebulous form.

Samuel, watching from his cocoon and listening through and to Gestalt's mind, pursed his lips slightly. This was not really according to plan, and perhaps more worryingly, the golem's already-unusual consciousness appeared to be warping and splintering. He'd been experimenting with gathering karmic energy from the deaths of things thanks to some perspective he'd gained from his new partner, but was beginning to reason that this line of inquiry might have to be curtailed momentarily to reassert some control over the situation.

Vyrm'n slid to the left a bit, then a bit more. Her attacker seemed not to notice, content to slash and bite and tear at the wall behind her. She carefully and slowly began to extricate herself from the maelstrom of debris when all of the thoughts assailing her mind and all of the emotions ripping at her consciousness coalesced into a single, pointed blast of fear and fury, wailing THE ONLY WAY TO UNDERSTAND IS IF THERE IS NOTHING TO UNDERSTAND.

**Schazer** · 12-26-2009, 10:51 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

Vyrm'n studied the increasingly erratic Gestalt warily, though its focus was still more on that brick. Having lost nearly a bucketfull of mass to it, Vyrm'n was most unwilling to have to evade that further. The stars twinkled as the black bulk trembled with pain. The Faceless was so close to retreating into the darkest recesses of its already darkest self, and letting that emptiness rush forward to spirit away these bringers of pain.

Samuel saw it, and involuntarily backed away as the now unaccosted Vyrm'n suddenly became that motiveless enemy of life, before she reasserted control, albeit with reluctance. Under different circumstances, Samuel would've goaded the Faceless for its cowardice. As it were, he sufficed with trying with limited success to shut out the increasingly persistent agonising of the schrotgolem.

Trying its hardest to maintain focus despite the sting of alien atomic song, Vyrm'n listened intently to Gestalt's dirge. Audibility was not the issue, as the song sprung out from all around the golem's considerable field of influence. Coherence was, and the strict policy of keeping its thoughts to itself during this fight only hampered Vyrm'n's attempts to piece meaning from the disconnected melee of ideas.

Gestalt. Vyrm'n answered the first question to the best of its ability; now to tackle the other two. The new voice served to interrupt Samuel and Gestalt's interior monologue, leaving Gestalt's arsenal suspended in mid-air or mid-strike or however they had been when Vyrm'n had charged into the maelstrom. Some blades and pointed tools spun slowly to orient themselves in the direction of the Faceless, though others ruined the effect by continuing to rotate indefinitely.

A moment of silence which approximated a nerve-steeling sigh from the Faceless, then it continued: Life... It's... complicated. To me, it was... a song richer and more complex than that of the lifeless. But once we are mired in it... we are life, Gestalt. It is infectious and corrosive and intoxicating. It is the stars that pierce the endless night.

I think, though the word is a concept of humans... Life is sacred, Gestalt. We cannot be of it and also have the right to rationalise it. Perhaps... to do so while it taints you yourself is impossible. Perhaps... there are some things best left untouched.

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GBCE · 12-31-2009, 03:15 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Opirian.

Galus wandered away from Maxwell, not paying much attention to much around him, not even the destruction caused by his fellow combatants. He found himself at the water wheel, the continuous loop of confusion if one tried to figure it out for to long. Opirian sat on the edge and stared outwards at the world, its mostly two-tone planes all but kept one from telling where surfaces started and ended, but that didn't matter in a place where even gravity was denied even a shred of logic. The constant creaking of the waterwheel was annoying but brought back memories, memories of space and of recklessness.

The 'night' was just like any other, of course there was no night in space just an endless field of stars speckling a black wasteland. Galus had been flying for quite a few hours now, his wing men chattering over the comm. systems trying to fill the silence of the vacuum. A streak of light, an explosion and one moment his whole world changed into one filled with a lust for revenge and hate, Krowe had arrived. Friend's ships had exploded, leaving Opirian alone with two to support him, but it wouldn't be enough.

Krowe's ship had dwarfed theirs but Galus kept fighting despite having no chance to win, so his friends could escape, he kept fighting not knowing the identity of this ruthless enemy. One foolish move, one accident was all it took Galus maneuvered too tight, slamming into one of his friends his ship sent spinning out of control straight into the behemoth that was Krowe's battleship. Galus couldn't think, he had just killed one of his friends, that's when it almost ended for good, mass drivers pierced the hull of his ship and his last friend, his friends exploding and his own becoming nothing more than a heap of scrap floating in space.

Galus snapped too with a start, he couldn't remember much else past that, either because he didn't know or didn't want to recall, fingering the trigger of the pistol in his holster he stared out at the faceless' fight once more.

Sruixan · 01-01-2010, 01:03 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Sruixan.

A little too engrossed in his own troubles, Maxwell didn't notice Galus slink off until it was too late to do anything about it. Admittedly, there was nothing that he wanted out of Galus any longer, but maybe a little company, a little comfort from the supposed safety in numbers, perhaps that would have been nice. Maxwell knew he could do without, of course, but there was a surprisingly chaotic carnage on the floor behind him that said he couldn't.

He'd never truely felt death before. It had been a new and unique experience, to feel his imminent demise, and one he hoped would stay as a one-off for quite some time. That wasn't possible, sadly, but, hey, one can try. Everybody tries to push things out of their mind, to hide some bothersome thought in the corner, or to sweep some soberingly painful realisation under the bed; it's a human thing to do. Maxwell just wasn't too certain how one would go about covering up an elephant, although with a big enough sheet of cloth, maybe several sown together, and some camouflage paint one could go a fair way, but a metaphorical elephant is a tad more awkward than that.

Still, there was one thing that was much easier to do. Making the decision to fight or flee. There were two objects in his possession that said he could fight, and two feet on his body that said he could flee...

Hesitating somewhat, he started to pick his way down the corridor, circumnavigating the brash puddles of blood, being even more careful about the perfectly littered shards that were strewn all over the place. In conjunction, little cogwheels clicked and turned, pulling something up from the depths of his mind...

About halfway down the corridor, an observer - maybe The Observer - would have seen Maxwell stop, swear quite heavily in three different languages, turn around and pick his way back down the passageway, mumbling incomprehensibly for a while and then switching to a wobbling whistle. Quite why was something he was going to keep for himself for a while.

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Not The Author · 01-01-2010, 08:32 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Not The Author.

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**Schazer** · 01-02-2010, 12:44 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

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Faceless and Karmist waited with bated breath for Gestalt's reaction. The golem had little discernbile thought while Vyrm'n had pleaded with it, beyond the perpeutal raging ideas which had gripped it in agonising existential crisis.

As the shadow's words sunk in, nothing happened for the (to them) considerable length of a Karmist's heartbeat, before coherence returned to Gestalt's thoughts with an impotent fury reminicent of Nu.
YOU STAND THERE BLEATING YOUR TIRED PLATITUDES LIKE SOME IGNORANT PAGAN CHANT TO DRIVE BACK THE UNKNOWN FEAR- Gestalt's physical assault accompanied the mental, knives, needles, crockery, and the fake-diamond dust of glass fragements chasing, albeit with some lack of co-ordination, the already-fleeing Vyrm'n -AND YOU HAVE THE MORONIC TEMERITY TO THINK I COULD FIND SOLACE IN IT SUCH AS YOU DOThe Faceless experienced further de ja vu as again, the hateful and hated brick gouged across the starscape, followed all-too-shortly by a platoon of shattered tiles under Samuel's command. Though it had taken as much mind-bending interpretation and parsing as it had to decode Gestalt's messages, the Karmist had managed to negotiate enough karma to mend the bones broken in his legs. He now stood, cocky grin replaced with a grim gash in his mouth from which only a cautious sneer dared to replace the gritted teeth of fierce concentration.

The assault from two consciousnesses was finally too much for Vyrm'n. The combined cacophony of a thousand wounds swallowing up the fresh pain-song; the Faceless grasped the last piece of the Labyrinth Field, its furious scream echoing down the connection with the energy to match even Gestalt's mad howls.

Do you really want to know what life is, Gestalt? This is what your existence means to the universe.

Samuel saw it coming, and had the sense to shove their combined consciousness well away from the black pillar, as Vyrm'n succumbed to the pain and let its sapience be replaced with the raging emptiness that was the true Faceless. He didn't experience it; the feeling of being dwarfed by a whole, uncaring universe was Gestalt's and Gestalt's alone to revel in. Still, the sensation was not entirely lost to the Karmist; who, through he and Gestalt's melded state of being, managed to watch what had stolen his Labyrinthine prize; albeit in a peripheral fashion. What he saw left the Karmist speechless, unable to formulate a sarcastic reply or acerbic quip to fake understanding and control over the situation.

The void faded, to be replaced by the shaken scrap of Vyrm'n, somehow less majestic in comparison to that other force cloaked by that inky exterior. All present noted that Gestalt as a being had survived being stared down by all of existence - whether it was awed or terrified or dismissive was hard to say; the only noticeable change in its demeanour was that it had halted for the time being.

Vyrm'n opened its mind again to the melded duo, something it had avoided doing during the fight to shield its stream of consciousness from the pervasive contact with Gestalt's. It didn't even bother to articulate into words; the message a simple one of argument-winning dismissal, along the lines of there you have it. Vyrm'n's mental voice was evidently meant to be contemptuous, but the Faceless was incapable of hiding its terrified exhaustion as it retreated to its own mind, spitting out the jagged brick which hit the alley floor with an unresponsive thud.

Trembling visibly, and no longer in the mood to fight, Vyrm'n took its leave, slithering drunkenly up to the alley entrance before leaping into the air and seeking out the portal that led back to Maxwell.

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Dragon Fogel · 01-12-2010, 04:11 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

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**btp** · 01-12-2010, 04:39 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by bobthepen.

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Sruixan · 01-12-2010, 12:51 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Sruixan.

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**btp** · 01-13-2010, 02:12 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by bobthepen.

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Vyrm'n circled around the shipyard turned battleground, listening carefully for Maxwell's song or for whatever obscure doorway would guide the Faceless to him. The search did not take long. Vyrm'n located the floating picture frame which had lead them to this harbor, and Maxwell was not far off. All the while, Vyrm'n never once allowed Samuel's song to escape its perception. The Karmist had fallen to his knees at his initial exposure to the void and even now sat dumbfounded, staring down at his hands. [background=#000050]It consumes everything. Even with indirect contact he was reduced to that pathetic mess. The song of the schrotgolem was faint but present. The collection of trinkets which had earlier housed Gestalt, however, sat lifeless on the cobblestone. Their weakened puppeteer had retreated elsewhere.

They'll recover. I will have Maxwell in my care by then. The Faceless headed for the open portal, leaving behind the broken pair.

YOU'RE NOT GOING YET.

Vyrm'n stopped abruptly. There had been a voice, a shout followed by silence. Were Vyrm'n human, it could have passed the interruption off as a trick of the mind, brought on by stress from the recent battle. Yet Vyrm'n did not have a human mind, and audible sensations were merely the fluctuations in the song of the matter surrounding it. That statement had not stemmed from the material realm.

GET BACK THERE.

The Faceless turned its attention back to the kneeling Karmist. This was obviously a mental attack of some kind. Vyrm'n focused again on Samuel, yet the black-suited man simply sat, slouched over, gazing upon his open palms. Almost instinctively Vyrm'n headed back towards the battleground, listening intently for the source of the voice.

CLOSER.

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**Schazer** · 01-19-2010, 01:25 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

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EDIT:

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Sruixan · 01-20-2010, 05:25 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Sruixan.

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This scene could do with a lovely little sunset, though Maxwell as he once more laid eyes upon the aftermath of his confrontation with Samuel. The resultant fractal of fractured glass and whatever motley miscellany of objects Gestalt had been hording took up a remarkably large patch of the gallery corridor, but then things had gotten quite violent, hadn't they?

Yes, a nice picturesque sunset, peeking in through broken windows, reflecting, refracting, twinkling light in that glass there - it could be quite beautiful, actually. Why would that be? Would it be art? It could well be the sort of thing one might exhibit on these walls and for once it might actually have a tangible point. After all, it would have a "deeper meaning" alright. It is certainly the sort of thing Xavier might spend hours slaving over, organising each petty fragment, trying fruitlessly to compose the perfect picture. But of course, it is much better spontaneous, although I suppose spontaneity has the fatal disadvantage of being potentially lethal...

Speaking... well, actually, thinking of lethality, it occured to Maxwell somewhat suddenly that the plan he had hatched and indeed intended to carry out had the slightest potential of causing his demise. Only the slightest, though. The tiniest, most negilible chance, so infinitesimally insignificant that it hardly deserved the time he was devoting to it. The least of his worries at that moment in time, the tiniest of trifles to deal with, the lowest of low priorities...

...and then he thought again, and concluded that he wasn't fooling anyone. He had to be honest with himself. He had yet to be entirely truthful with anyone so far, so it seemed reasonable to practise on himself and then work his way up, to bigger, possibly more painful fish. If he caught a bad, bad moment...

There was, a short distance down the corridor, a fairly ancient-looking door that, after being opened with the epitome of caution, revealed itself to be guarding a reasonably barren room. Once, perhaps, assuming that this stretch was an exhibition of some ramshackle description, it held pictures, or sculptures, of mind-boggling dimensions and intentions. Now its main feature was a window and its newest occupant, a man currently exploiting the first feature as a means of getting his bearings. The room's view was not overly awe-inspiring, which was odd considering the vast amount of stuff that warranted awe in this environ, but then, once more assuming that this room was part of the exhibition, it seemed reasonable to assume that the designer, intelligent or not, did not want to draw away from the room's contents; to keep the conciousness of the occupant firmly locked inside with whatever monstrosity insulted it, just for kicks.

Of course, this was mere supposition, done by Maxwell as he hung himself out of the window, clutching desperately on to his hat, in case gravity took a shining to it and decided to make it its plaything. With some considerable craning, the genius could see the window through which Galus had most likely fallen at his own request and could pinpoint the destination the pilot had been steering towards - the most remarkable watermill that appeared to flow, from what he suspected would be his point of view were he there, uphill. But to Maxwell the complex was perpendicular to the wall, and so no fundamental rules were being broken - the water quite happily flowed along the channel to its inevitable end as a waterfall. That waterfall was the defiant here, flatly refusing to be toyed with by gravity and plotting its own course. But were he to stand on the correct plane, Maxwell mused, the waterfall would no longer be so provocative and the water channel would take the spotlight. Perspective was the key here. Either you could take umbrage at the irrespectable behaviour displayed, or you could tilt your head slightly and proclaim there to be no problem at all - your pick.

The view was lovely, when viewed correctly, but it was not what Maxwell had sought solitidue to peruse. With a sobered sigh, he set himself to work.

**btp** · 01-21-2010, 07:11 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by bobthepen.

â€œWhere did you go? I can't go on without you. It's too much, too much.â€

The soft reverberations emanating from the Karmist's lips intrigued the Faceless. A few meters from the hovering Vyrm'n, Samuel's gaze was turned down, his brow slightly creased. His hands were quivering and eyes welling up. Vyrm'n lacked the capacity to appreciate subtleties in expression, but the song of the Karmist sung openly of one weak, distressed, and â€¦

PITIFUL.

Vyrm'n pitied Samuel. Despite all his arrogance and scheming, when exposed to the tiniest fragment of the terror which Vyrm'n housed in itself, he was reduced to this quivering mess. Even Cabaret had fared better against the void. The Magician had fought, clawed, and struggled to defeat the onslaught of the unleashed blackness; Samuel merely broke down.

WAKE HIM.

The voice interrupted the Faceless' thoughts once more. It shouted, loud and distinct, yet Vyrm'n could not pinpoint the origin, or the exact message. When it spoke, it commanded attention, yet when it ceased, it was if it never existed. That latter property disturbed Vyrm'n. The Faceless was and had always been bombarded by the cacophony of the universe. Every entity that existed left behind some trace melody. It was only a matter of sifting through the innumerable soundings and identifying the song of interest. Vyrm'n had honed that skill masterfully, to the point that, with focus, nothing was beyond its perception.

In the midst of Vyrm'n's ruminating, a dark tendril unconsciously extended from the Faceless' body, carefully reaching towards the whispering Karmist.

â€œNothing is beyond perception.â€ The Faceless had, at a few points, difficulty in locating individuals. Cabaret managed to hide amid the clamor of the amusement park, and the twisted, reality defying corridors of the present world had obfuscated the location of Maxwell. Vyrm'n paused. Maxwell. It had intended to search for Maxwell earlier. Why did it stop? True, the anomaly of the voice had captured the Faceless' concentration, but concern for Maxwell would have outweighed any curiosity, especially after so difficult a confrontation. Vyrm'n began listening for Maxwell once again, all the while, the black outstretched thread continued gradually reaching out to the Karmist.

Perspective is the key here.

The words shot out to Vyrm'n. Sheâ€¦It had heard them. The words were not merely interpreted from the song of the disturbed matter, vibrating in accordance with the sound produced. This was an actual sensation. In that instant Vyrm'n had sensed not only Maxwell's quiet uttering, but all the sounds surrounding him, the rasp of his breath, the beat of his heart, and the rush of water.

He's at the waterfall.

The revelation broke whatever hold had prevented Vyrm'n from leaving, and the Faceless streaked through the sky towards the open portal. The wayward tendril was jerked away from its target, passing a few centimeters from the Karmist's face as it flew by.

---
The glazed eyes of the Karmist turned upward towards the portal above. The heavy head flopped backwards as the wisp of wind from the fleeing thread brushed against parting lips.

â€œOh. There you are.â€

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**Schazer** · 01-23-2010, 01:20 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

The Faceless found the one window which was connected with the gallery hall. Halting for a moment in the now-deserted corridor, Vyrm'n listened this way and that, this time trying to recognise the waterfall instead of Maxwell. A circuitous path, less direct than Galus' but managing to obey the laws of non-4-dimensional space, presented itself. By exercising a little more concentration, a quicker, albeit more physics-warping, path sprung to Vyrm'n's mind. A headache, akin to trying to cross one's eyes for too long, swiftly discouraged Vyrm'n from this way of viewing the world. The shadow accelerated off again through the monochrome hallways, idly thinking that a near-absence of water was an interesting property for a world to have.

Vyrm'n knew full well that its musings on the Escherscape's distribution of water were a futile attempt at self-distraction - an oddly human concept, but the Faceless wasn't looking that far into it - yet. That black voice was none the Faceless had heard before, but it was not fear of the unknown that gave it it terrifying quality. No, the voice had invoked that sense of horrified fascination because it was the sound of that which should never have been given the ability to articulate.

It was pure malevolence; a resentful base hatred of everything and a desire to see it beaten, broken and scattered into nothing. It was the voice of the brick from the Labyrinth field, were it to exclaim its own thoughts as it carved Vyrm'n up.

It was the voice of a raging black sun.

-----

Earlier...

"We who serve are Master you Lutherion!"

The Sunset had arrived, after steady negotiation of the gravitationally schizoid terrain, and had been re-reading the note Vyrm'n had passed on when Dorukomets was suddenly thrown beside him from seemingly thin air. He rose from his kneeling position by Amethyst's carving and appraised the ghost knight. Though the arm fused with the Nightmare did not move from the Balancer's side, Dorukomets drew his sword at the whine. It audibility scrambled up the register, drowning out the sluggish slosh of water in the impossible fountain.

"Where who is are Master you Lutherion!"

"SILENCE." The violet pulse of the rifle illuminated the knight's face as it swung up to point at him. Dorukomets' expression fell from contorted confusion to outright fear at the sight of it, the ghost attempting to muffle the cries of the legion that fought their way from his mouth. The Sunset wasn't yet sure what to make of this development - it was probably a contestant, but then for Core's sake what was it doing here? The Balancer studied the note again, gun still trained on the interloper, carefully weighing the etymologies and sounds of the names. "DORUKOMETS." He ventured.

The knight glanced up, daring to open his mouth - "We yes? are How legion did and you serve-" before promptly shutting it as something in the Sunset's arm clicked ominously. A "yes" had definitely been in there. So why had this "Amethyst" put such an unassuming spirit at the top of her list of contestants?

"ANSWER MY QUESTIONS, DORUKOMETS, WITH A MINIMUM OF CHATTER AND I WILL NOT HARM YOU." The Sunset did not know why he felt a sense of time running out, but the persistent sensation was worming its way in, leaving the iron giant with no time for pleasantries.

Dorukomets did not respond. His eyes were flickering everywhere beneath his helm, like a thousand insistent souls demanded a different thing for the spirit to rest its attention on. The Balancer studied the mad ghost cautiously, noting how increasingly, his eyes were resting on something behind the byzantium behemoth. Leaving his gun trained on Dorukomets, he turned to look, his senses already informing him of what he dreaded most.

It wasn't the gears of this dimension that had started their unstoppable grind, but to a being like the Sunset the seismic signature of such a momentous movement was as clear as day. He could've spent most of his remaining time to latch onto the warping reality, but that intrinsic comprehension of the Balancer's internal clock told him that if somehow he bypassed the Observer's wards, he would only have time perhaps to relay what he knew to Amethyst. If he found her in time.

The Balancer could only stare out into what was emptiness on this plane, but on another housed what had been the Sunset's most promising ally in his most important battle of all. Behind him, the spirits of the Wightmaw Arm wailed through Dorukomets.

"MAAASTERRR LUUTHEEERIONN!"

The grinding ceased; though only the Sunset (and, perhaps, if she were paying attention, Vyrm'n) knew of it. Peppering the flagstones with machinegun fire, the Balancer vented his frustration. One round of ammo later, he felt perhaps a little more cool-headed, though in some ways the anger had been a pleasant substitute to the hopeless desolation engulfing the ancient being.

A wavering chuckle reached the Sunset, who swung to face Dorukomets. The ghost had a look of wide-eyed disbelief as he stared out into the now-nothing, but his mouth was twitching into a grin of jubliation.

"He's dead..."

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**btp** · 01-27-2010, 03:47 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by bobthepen.

The demons follow me. They taunt me in the darkness. The light protects me. The light banishes the demons. Who stole the light?

Defeated and abandoned, the body of Samuel Therion meandered through the deserted alleyways of the harbor. His movements were jagged, flimsy, and uncoordinated. The remnants of the power bestowed to him by Gestalt prevented his form from collapsing on the cobblestone pavement, but it, at times, held him aloft in such unnatural positions that the Karmist resembled a marionette more than a man. The arms, utterly limp, swayed in time with the lurching motions which guided the feet to the ground. At points, the semblance of walking was disregarded entirely. The scraping of leather on stone echoed through the corridors as the points of levitating wing-tipped shoes dragged along the rough floor. Every joint of the Karmist was loose, every muscle weary, unwilling to provide any substantial support to the languid frame. On occasion, the head, bent low towards the ground would flop to the side, revealing glossy, pale, unfocused eyes.

The scenery around the Karmist began to change as the body proceeded towards some unknown goal. The roofs of buildings connected into archways which merged into tunnels which straightened into corridors. After some time wandering, moving apparently in circles, the body of Samuel found itself once again amongst the twisted unnavigable hallways and staircases where the round had commenced. Yet the unconscious form of the Karmist found no difficulty in maneuvering amidst the mess of perceived gravity, if indeed it managed to perceive anything.

---
Deep within the body, through the glossy, unseeing eyes, past barrier after barrier of invisible protection, through impenetrable blackness wrapped in a shawl of fear and forgetfulness, lay Samuel's fragmented mind.

It's dark here. So dark. The demons live in the darkness. They beckon me to them, to listen to their tales. They torture me so. Their stories are awful, terrible, such cruelty, but no I will not listen, I cannot. It's too much, too much.

Samuel hid in the darkness of his mind. Left alone with only pieces of himself, the Karmist could not bear to allow his conscious mind to wander. He sat, repeating all that was safe for him to know, and blocking out all that caused him pain.

Where did you go? I can't go on without you. Who has stolen you from me? I need your light. I cannot see without it. The light holds the demons at bay. With it I can laugh at them. With it I can see the truth clearly. But now, all they do is torment me with their lies.

Earlier, Samuel had felt the presence of his light. He had tried to listen to it, but the message was brief and distant. "_el__s__i__" Not much had gotten though. At least, not enough for Samuel to make sense of it from within his self-made prison. So the Karmist's mind continued muttering to itself, waiting for the light it longed for to return.

-------------
"He's dead..."

Having spoken these words, the ghost knight's spectral hands reached out and grasped the metal behemoth. Dorukomet's iridescent eyes flared with intensity as the soft chuckle escalated into full cackling laughter.

"I did it! I've won! I've beat him! That idiotic necromaSTer thought he could control me! But I escaped him! I escaped that whole wretched game! HahahahaAH-AHHHHH"

The laughter broke instantly into a wretched scream. Dorukomet released The Sunset from his grasp, and jabbed his translucent hands deep inside his own ghastly head. The sound of thousands of spectral chains breaking at the news of their master's demise coupled with the deafening cacophony of a thousand voices all clamoring for control of their one spectral body gushed forth from the spirit, shaking the walls around it.

The Sunset had a simple solution to this unexpected auditory assault. Another hum was added to the roaring chorus for a few moments. Then, The Sunset fired the Nightmare.

**Schazer** · 01-28-2010, 09:47 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

While Samuel drifted into the Ouroborean world's most twisted hub, Vyrm'n zipped out of it at breakneck speeds round the corners as it reverted to its one-eyed view on gravity. Around it, the Faceless sensed the echoes of a world shifting. Concluding it could only be the other battle's round concluding, Vyrm'n figured the Sunset would be thoroughly infuriated by this. Still, if anyone, he seemed the type capable to tear a hole of escape through the cage. In a detached sort of way, it hoped the Balancer was succeeding.

Galus didn't bother to try afford himself a better view to ascertain why Karmist, Schrotgolem, and Faceless had ceased the fight, but did see Vyrm'n streak off a short while after, heading off presumably to find Maxwell. The Urisian moved away from that window, and then looked out another. This time, he got his shoulders through before kicking away with his feet; down now aligned with Galus' posture. Where he had been standing in a corridor, now he was clambering out of a window which fell into a deep, square pit. A transition as awkward as ever, but from this cliff he had been traversing earlier before encountering Maxwell, the marine was offered a decent view of some strange phenomena occuring between him and the fountain.

Perhaps some poor syntax in the laws of this plane, left unchecked by the Observer in the haste to mash his battle's dimension with the Director's, had manifested at this interface and left the proceedings at the fountain unobservable from the exterior. As the troublesome other dimension was spirited away, though, this glitch no longer occurred; and Galus could hear, quite easily, Dorukomet's screams over the fountain. Sight restored with the sound, the Urisian's body tensed in alertness as the Sunset's hulking, metal form appeared in the courtyard, along with an armoured, glowing spectre who was the source of the thoroughly audible wailing.

Orange eyes assessed the situation. First and foremost, Galus noted the Sunset's arm was lit in a blaze of energised violet; followed by a quick sweep to note there was no cover along the cliff, short of jumping down into a window. Taking a few cautious paces backwards, the marine's heel nudged against a windowsill - rather out of place embedded in a horizontal stone cliff, but Galus was not going to quibble as he jumped in.

He had been prepared for gravity to warp as he crossed the boundary, but a full 180 degrees? Galus took a sharp breath as the world spun upside down, and the window suddenly became a dizzying fall into endless sky. One look in there was enough for his brain to demand an immediate shift over to the corner, as far from that vertigo-inducing plummet as possible.

Now an impractical distance above him, a doorknob clicked. Debating how pointless it would be to draw his gun, before unholstering it anyway, Galus watched the liquid slurry flow of Vyrm'n enter the room. It was always hard to tell with the Faceless, but it didn't seem too surprised to see him. Actually, it may've known he was there, hence opening the door slowly to avoid a firefight. Galus wondered if Maxwell's ramblings were getting to him; was it worth spending so much time justifying the actions of such a violent creature?
Vyrm'n deliberated for a moment, before selecting a wall perpendicular to Galus' floor to rest on. The pair stood off for a few moments, Galus uncertain, Vyrm'n phlegmatic; until a crackling surge of energy made both stiffen, the Urisian turning to the cliff-window from which the sound had come, the Faceless seizing upon his distraction to lash out with a slender, black tendril.

Galus froze as he felt the link on his cheek. He knew what would happen next, and lowered his gun a little. The shadow revealed nothing until certain he would not retaliate, then the floodgates were opened. Firstly and succinctly the main query, forefront on the Faceless' mind, led the charge into Galus' mind. Maxwell.

"He's nearby."

The fountain what's going on- there was a certain inflection to the second question, Maxwell still persisting in the Faceless' thoughts even as it concentrated on the matter at hand. Luna had had a habit of doing that too.

"I doubt it. I couldn't see anything for a while, but... last I saw, there was only the Sunset and, well, something else."

The Faceless thought nothing audibly for a moment; its link even drifted away from the Urisian as it listened to the world. It reached out again after spotting Dorukomets, but Galus pre-emptively swatted it away with a gloved hand. Before the shadow could react, there was a snap of releasing buckles and Galus took one of his gloves off; proffering his exposed hand to Vyrm'n.

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Sruixan · 01-28-2010, 01:25 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Sruixan.

The work Maxwell had sought solitude to carry out was actually rather simple; at least, the actions were simple, but the possible reprecussions, scheduled to pop up somewhere further down the line by his own reckoning, were a little harder to bite, let alone swallow. It wasn't going to be a huge deal, and Maxwell was sure he was just hyping it up because of how it would, should, could affect him. And Vyrm'n. That was the tricky bit. But, well, one never knew, and certainly Maxwell never did.

See, the thought that he might have his pocketwatch on him hadn't occured to him before. In the previous round, he'd tried thinking about the time and had wished for its presence, but the myriad distractions were extra-ordinarily adept at keeping him from a particular memory, that he'd snuck a peek of it coming out of the library, that he'd put it back into his pocket after that. Curse the fallability of the human mind, its innocent way of holding up its hands and shrugging dejectedly when queried, then the next moment, absent-mindedness evaporated, producing the very thing you asked it for in the first place from right in front of your nose, taking the liberty of whacking it on the way up, just to rub it in. Literally.

Once again, depending on perspective, the pocketwatch was either nothing special, or curiously something. The intricate designs on the top were of Maxwell's own - the whole thing had been a comission that he'd gotten for his 18th birthday and he'd kept the bugger close ever since - and they did hint somewhat at the oddity of the interior. For a start, there were two clockfaces, one in each half, with the one in the lid keeping a drastically different time to the other. The second folly was the fact that each clock had two second hands, each preferring to plot its own orbit between the numbers, independent of the passage of time.

You couldn't see the third eccentricity, and Maxwell alone knew it was there. Well, he was relatively certain it was still there. It would no longer serve its original purpose, but it could be easily put to another curious and possibly immoral use...

With this certified, Maxwell took from another pocket his notebook, tore a page from it and wrote a couple of paragraphs, before rummaging through aforementioned pocket once more, retrieving some blu-tac and using it to stick the page to the front cover of the notebook. Simple.

Exiting the sideroom, it occured to Maxwell that the absence of noise was probably a sign that the conflict had ceased, which meant he'd somewhat lost the opportunity he had in mind. On the other hand, double doors don't usually start swinging all by themselves...

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Robust Laser · 01-30-2010, 04:17 AM

Originally posted on MSPA by cyber95.

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**btp** · 01-30-2010, 03:59 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by bobthepen.

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GBCE · 01-30-2010, 07:52 PM

Originally posted on MSPA by Opirian.

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