Re: Intense Struggle! (Round 5 - Cervaled Fall)
06-24-2011, 10:22 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.
Things had been quiet for a short time following Clara's and Konka Rar's conversation; the former had succumbed to dark, quiet ruminations on the possibility of escape and the possibility of being stuck here indefinitely even if the other competitors all got themselves killed; the latter simply hadnothing much to say, having become accustomed to solitude and not being very susceptible to boredom anyway, given his lichdom. After a few moments, though, the nun perked up.
"He wouldn't have put me here if I couldn't get out, or something wouldn't come along. That defeats the whole purpose, doesn't it?"
Even without much that could reasonably be called facial expression, the lich did his level best to project an air of minor confusion. He snapped, more out of habit than annoyance, "What are you talking about?"
Clara blinked and shook her head quickly. "Oh, right, I'm sorry. I presume you were just put here for 'data collection' or something, but The Monitor's running this interdimensional battle thing, and–"
Konka Rar harrumphed and cut her off. "'The Monitor', you say? It seems like I learn about another one of these preposterous dimensional overlord types every day. I know what you're talking about; I was in one myself, with The Cultivator, but I haven't seen anything from her since I was abducted from that battle and put here. Trust me, your Monitor doesn't have any intention of helping you get out."
The old woman's heart sank slightly as she heard of the apparent proliferation of battles and thought of the countless good people who must have already lost their lives fighting in them, but she pressed on. "Nonono, you see, he put all of us from our battle into this prison with express instructions to escape. Apparently it's his prison, and while you're all here to collect data on, he wants us to break out."
She left out the bit about her cellmate and the rest of the prisoners that presumably filled this place being copies; it'd almost certainly be pretty disheartening, and frankly she preferred not to go down trains of thought that included "And if he can just copy anyone from anywhere, how do I know the real me isn't back in the convent? Who knows how many Clara Jungfraus are floating around the worlds?"
The not-currently-a-sorceror shifted on his seat, inscrutable bony face betraying nothing. The fact that his words came so slowly and deliberately would have been telling, had Clara any of the memories her various counterparts had of him, but as it was, he simply sounded musing. "Did it... occur to you that this may simply be a means of testing his security, rather than an actual desire to have mayhem and destruction spread through his prison?"
She shrugged. "Something like that did cross my mind, but it seems like he wouldn't pull us out of his own battle to do that. Besides, from the sounds of it you got put here in a different manner than I did."
Though she tried to sound sure, the lich's point had actually gotten to her a bit. What if he was right? If that was true, there wouldn't be any sort of loophole or exploitable weakness or convenient coincidence; she'd have to work tirelessly and surreptitiously for who-knew-how-long, without magic, to have any chance of getting out, and for what? To be shot as soon as she left the grounds? To be put back in some deeper cell and told to escape again? For that matter, what was the point even if it was still the same battle? Despite all her promises and aspirations and plans, you simply couldn't fight someone who could control reality around you.
Konka Rar himself, on the other hand, was becoming quite excited. He suspected the silly old nun was right, and that her presence would ultimately facilitate his own escape and subsequent campaign of revenge on all the foolish Grandmasters who has conspired against him. His mind was already racing, trying to recall what he knew about the prison and how he could best use it to his advantage, formulating plans and backup plans and considering how best to take advantage of the presence of his extremely-serendipitous cellmate.
The conversation petered out again as the two retreated into their own rather disparate thoughts. Things weren't quiet for long though; there was a sound like tearing metal and breaking glass, followed almost immediately by the door panel juddering upwards and disappearing. The imprisoned pair started and craned to see what had happened; Clara recognized the boisterous Aegis, but his waiflike companion and the unmoving man slung over his shoulder were a mystery to her.
The lich wasted no time in exiting the room, sweeping into the corridor with a breezy "This is a pleasant surprise."; had he still had facial muscles, he'd probably have been beaming irrepressibly, but as it was he merely stayed locked in the bony, grinning rictus his skull always displayed.
Before he could actually enter that corridor, however, the man over Aegis's shoulder growled out, "Aegis, find a way to close the door. We're not letting Konka Rar out."
The lich, undeterred, simply stepped outside and cocked his head at his paralyzed berator. "What? You just did."
Clara, who by this point had risen and was hovering nervously by the open door, raised her eyebrows. "They seem to know you, Rar. Could someone please explain?"
A somewhat muffled voice floated over Aegis's shoulder."There was another contestant in our battle, one of his undead creations. We helped him find his free will and independence, but Rar here was intent on keeping him a slave. Rar was also involved in several conflicts in our battle, including teaming up with a particularly destructive necromancer.”
"What in ten ages are you talking about?!" By this point, the lich's elation had given way to slight confusion, which had itself metamorphosed into extreme annoyance as these people seemed to be doing everything in their power to avoid making sense. He nearly lashed out, but was struck with a thought and lapsed into silence for a moment. He tapped his jawbone pensively; "This 'undead creation' wouldn't happen to be my vacuum cleaner, would it?"
By this point, Clara herself was becoming rather annoyingly-confused, and reasoned that the best way to sort things out was to, well, sort things out. "Excuse me. There seems to be a great deal of confusion here. Does anyone have a cohesive explanation for this? For starters, who are these two?"
Aegis chimed in helpfully and straightforwardly with "This guy's Aeon. I've known him for years. The girl is Amethyst, who's apparently another contestant in the battle Aeon was in."
The man introduced as Aeon spoke up as soon as Aegis left off. "I believe I've figured some of this out. This is the fifth round, which you should remember as Battleopolis." Clara, of course, did not remember any such thing or even have an idea of what the man could be going on about, but the girl Amethyst nodded; the two recently-freed magic-users put two and two together, but one wished the speaker had been more clear and the other cursed him for wasting time. "The reason we're alive–and Konka Rar is here–is we're like Alcarith and the others in that round, copies created specifically as additional quirks of the setting. If they move on to the next round, we'd probably die. However, we're all copies of the real people, and in the real Konka Rar's perspective, all he was was Eximo disappearing without any explanation. The Konka Rars we fought against were also copies. Eximo won the Grand Battle, by the way. We didn't manage to kill the Director."
As Aeon's monologue fell silent, the rest of the group took a few moments to digest what he had said. A collective "Oh," arose as people went about their various thoughts; after another brief pause, Konka Rar spoke up sniggeringly. "You two were killed by a vacuum cleaner?"
Aeon's response was a brusque Long story.", which was followed by a surprisingly-lighthearted "I've never been so confused in my life, hah," from Aegis. At this point amethyst, who had been essentially silent up to now, said "Mind explaining who the old woman is?"
Clara smiled in spite of the girl's sharpness. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Sister Clara Jungfrau, necropolitan. I have been in this battle with Aegis now for several rounds, and–"
Aeon cut her off by spitting "So she's a contestant."
Amethst responded with "She looks friendly enough, and might prove useful if we manage to destroy the mana dampening systems."
Aeon, apparently partially mollified, said "The lich isn't coming with us."
Clara thought this was rather unfair, and frankly a bit prejudiced. Would he be as adamant about her not joining them if she looked more corpsey? Was he going to trust her just because she "looked nice"? Konka Rar had been nothing but polite, if a bit short, during the time she'd spent with him. She maintained her smile and evenly said "I don't believe he will cause any harm and this point. This floor has mana dampening systems in place, rendering both of us more or less harmless. I don't suppose a vow from him to keep civilized will convince the two of you of that?"
Konka Rar was all for deception if it suited his purpose, but kowtowing to this self-righteous pair was too far. Besides, they didn't have any kind of way to force him to do anything or stay anywhere, judging from the destroyed terminal next to the open door. "I will make no such thing."
Despite his face being hidden by Aegis's broad shoulders, the assembled battlers could practically hear Aeon's eyes rolling. Amethyst, probably reaching the same conclusion Konka Rar had, said "Very well. Rar, lead the way. You are not to leave our sights for any reason."
The group moved along, heading steadily upwards with the lich in the lead. Things were largely silent save for the tapping of leather and bone on metal, and of course the omnipresent and ever-loudening sounds of combat and warnings from the Warden coming from above. Konka Rar alone, probably due to his style of spellcasting compared to the others', noticed when the mana dampening systems went down. His skeletal grin didn't shift as he began gathering energy, no matter how much he would have liked it to.
All he had to do now was lose this gang of dead weights and he'd be free to pursue Grandmastercide. Once he'd drawn a reasonable amount of mana to himself, he whirled around, waves of darkness gathering around his outstretched hand. Always the villain to the core, he cackled "Hah! You haven't noticed? The mana dampening system gave out just a minute ago!"
"He's right," said Amethyst, her eyes darting down to her armband. With a thought, she conjured a swarm of bladelike crystals that hovered around the necromantic aggressor. Aegis took her cue, his gauntlets forming a longsword which he pointed at the lich's lack of a throat. Clara, for her part, was rather taken aback, and felt foolish enough at her baseless defense of her erstwhile cellmate that she did little more than take a few steps back.
Konka Rar released the dark spell he had been casting, shattering half of Amethyst's crystals in the process, and began launching fireballs at those that were left; before he could remove them all, though, Aegis simply encased his head in a morphic gauntlet. Clearly outnumbered and -matched, the sorcerer raised his remaining arm in a gesture of surrender, and Aegis let him free.
It was around this point that the assembled escapees noticed that with the mana dampeners failing, they weren't the only ones breaking out of their cells anymore. The noise level rose as casters of all varieties noticed their powers returning and set about opening, avoiding, or simply destroying their cells. Figures had started entering the corridors, clamoring for freedom, when Aph appeared around a corner. The sight of the cackling pink figure, wreathed in electricity and fire and surmounted by writhing black tentacles, was enough to send many of them retreating back to their containment.
A bloodthirsty grin spread even farther across the nymph's face as she caught sight of the five battlers standing in the middle of the mostly-empty hall; an expression of concern formed on Clara's features, replaced quickly by shock and horror. Her voice shook a little as she exhaled, "Aph."; Aeon, still paralyzed and not in a position to see much, asked "Another contestant?"
"Yep," said Aegis. His gauntlets shifted back to longsword form, the length of which he promptly increased. "Big fight?"
Amethyst's eerily flat reply came as a simple "Big fight," combined with the summoning of another cluster of crystals, these aimed at the murderous nymph. She launched several staggered salvos of crystalline projectiles at Aph, who simply destroyed most of them as they approached with answering barrages of ice and finished off those she missed with a flick of her tentacles.
Aegis shrugged Aeon off, letting him fall clumsily to the floor, and turned to Clara. "You do healing stuff, right?" Without waiting for a response, he nudged Aeon's prone form towards her before launching himself down the corridor, yelling "Get the poison out of him!"
The nun knelt down by the paralyzed man and began muttering as she ran her fingertips along his major blood vessels. A faint green glow began spreading under his skin, but was rather hard to see against the harsh brightness flooding the prison from Aph's fire and lightning. The nymph herself was nearly shrieking with glee as she send waves of destructive magic at the others; Amethyst was doing all she could to contain the devastation, but even her precise control of magic was no match for the sheer power Aph had at her disposal by now. Crystalline walls and invisible points of mana nullification and repulsion were erected and destroyed in a continual back-and-forth, but the girl was being forced gradually backwards.
The pink figure was blindsighted by a bolt of blackness from the left, but her mana-absorption device diffused most of it. Amethyst spared the lich a quizzical glance, but couldn't devote much attention to him; it was pretty clear anyway that he'd reasoned a violent loose cannon like Aph was worth dealing with before petty treachery, so the girl concentrated on hemming the nymph in while Konka Rar diverted her focus. Missing one of his arms and most of his cybernetic augmentations left the ancient conqueror at a fraction of his ability and power, but he was more than capable of harrying her with a barrage of minor spells and hurled insults. Between Konka Rar's and Amethyst's twin assaults, Aph was spread too thin to effectively retaliate against either.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Aegis dove through the maelstrom of icy shards and shattered crystal, swinging his sword wide and aiming straight for Aph's neck. As though in slow motion, her head turned and she locked eyes with the flying swordsman; there was seemingly nothing she could do in time to save herself as the gleaming metal scythed through the air intent on decapitating her.
Until a black tentacle whipped out of nowhere, wrapping itself around the man's wrist and flinging him off course. Another slammed itself into his stomach; a third collided with his chin in a vicious uppercut. Thoroughly deflected and rather battered, Aegis found himself set upon by more tentacles before he even landed; he was flung forcefully away from the nymph, catapulted over the edge of the walkway.
Thinking quickly, he reverted his sword to gauntlets and grabbed at the passing ledge; it wasn't enough, though, as his momentum and metallic grip simply bent the floor under his fingers, eventually simply coming free from the rest of the floor. It wasn't until he'd descended another level that Aegis was able to stop his fall.
Above him, lich and magician were struggling to keep pace with the increasingly-brutal nymph. Neither side seemed to be giving an inch, each waiting for the other to leave an opening, but neither Konka Rar nor Amethyst was accustomed to tandem spellcasting so it seemed certain one or the other of them would be the first to blink. Clara was still fervently praying, and Aeon was regaining some sensation in his limbs, but the extrication process was difficult in the face of the Monitor's complex designer poison.
Aph cackled as it became more and more obvious that her adversaries were faring poorly against her. "What's the matter, little girl? Can't handle a little magic? Maybe I won't bother absorbing you after all, you're so useless!"; as a long icicle embedded itself in Konka Rar's ribcage, she sneered "And how about you, old man? Not so tough without your staff and all your silly trinkets, are you?"
Back on the floor, Aeon flexed his hands and growled up at the worried nun. "Do you have a weapon?" Clara's eyes darted involuntarily to her cane, which was lying by her knees, but she shakily said "I don't think you're completely well yet, and…"
Without speaking, Aeon shakily rose and snatched up the stick; with one fluid motion, he unsheathed the sword within and propelled himself down the corridor. Clara scrambled to her feet, worry increasing tenfold, and hurriedly began another prayer. As he waded into the cloud of spells, a faint golden aura began shimmering around his skin; if one looked close enough, they would see that it resembled an ephemeral suit of plate mail, but no-one present had attention to spare for details like that.
Things had been quiet for a short time following Clara's and Konka Rar's conversation; the former had succumbed to dark, quiet ruminations on the possibility of escape and the possibility of being stuck here indefinitely even if the other competitors all got themselves killed; the latter simply hadnothing much to say, having become accustomed to solitude and not being very susceptible to boredom anyway, given his lichdom. After a few moments, though, the nun perked up.
"He wouldn't have put me here if I couldn't get out, or something wouldn't come along. That defeats the whole purpose, doesn't it?"
Even without much that could reasonably be called facial expression, the lich did his level best to project an air of minor confusion. He snapped, more out of habit than annoyance, "What are you talking about?"
Clara blinked and shook her head quickly. "Oh, right, I'm sorry. I presume you were just put here for 'data collection' or something, but The Monitor's running this interdimensional battle thing, and–"
Konka Rar harrumphed and cut her off. "'The Monitor', you say? It seems like I learn about another one of these preposterous dimensional overlord types every day. I know what you're talking about; I was in one myself, with The Cultivator, but I haven't seen anything from her since I was abducted from that battle and put here. Trust me, your Monitor doesn't have any intention of helping you get out."
The old woman's heart sank slightly as she heard of the apparent proliferation of battles and thought of the countless good people who must have already lost their lives fighting in them, but she pressed on. "Nonono, you see, he put all of us from our battle into this prison with express instructions to escape. Apparently it's his prison, and while you're all here to collect data on, he wants us to break out."
She left out the bit about her cellmate and the rest of the prisoners that presumably filled this place being copies; it'd almost certainly be pretty disheartening, and frankly she preferred not to go down trains of thought that included "And if he can just copy anyone from anywhere, how do I know the real me isn't back in the convent? Who knows how many Clara Jungfraus are floating around the worlds?"
The not-currently-a-sorceror shifted on his seat, inscrutable bony face betraying nothing. The fact that his words came so slowly and deliberately would have been telling, had Clara any of the memories her various counterparts had of him, but as it was, he simply sounded musing. "Did it... occur to you that this may simply be a means of testing his security, rather than an actual desire to have mayhem and destruction spread through his prison?"
She shrugged. "Something like that did cross my mind, but it seems like he wouldn't pull us out of his own battle to do that. Besides, from the sounds of it you got put here in a different manner than I did."
Though she tried to sound sure, the lich's point had actually gotten to her a bit. What if he was right? If that was true, there wouldn't be any sort of loophole or exploitable weakness or convenient coincidence; she'd have to work tirelessly and surreptitiously for who-knew-how-long, without magic, to have any chance of getting out, and for what? To be shot as soon as she left the grounds? To be put back in some deeper cell and told to escape again? For that matter, what was the point even if it was still the same battle? Despite all her promises and aspirations and plans, you simply couldn't fight someone who could control reality around you.
Konka Rar himself, on the other hand, was becoming quite excited. He suspected the silly old nun was right, and that her presence would ultimately facilitate his own escape and subsequent campaign of revenge on all the foolish Grandmasters who has conspired against him. His mind was already racing, trying to recall what he knew about the prison and how he could best use it to his advantage, formulating plans and backup plans and considering how best to take advantage of the presence of his extremely-serendipitous cellmate.
The conversation petered out again as the two retreated into their own rather disparate thoughts. Things weren't quiet for long though; there was a sound like tearing metal and breaking glass, followed almost immediately by the door panel juddering upwards and disappearing. The imprisoned pair started and craned to see what had happened; Clara recognized the boisterous Aegis, but his waiflike companion and the unmoving man slung over his shoulder were a mystery to her.
The lich wasted no time in exiting the room, sweeping into the corridor with a breezy "This is a pleasant surprise."; had he still had facial muscles, he'd probably have been beaming irrepressibly, but as it was he merely stayed locked in the bony, grinning rictus his skull always displayed.
Before he could actually enter that corridor, however, the man over Aegis's shoulder growled out, "Aegis, find a way to close the door. We're not letting Konka Rar out."
The lich, undeterred, simply stepped outside and cocked his head at his paralyzed berator. "What? You just did."
Clara, who by this point had risen and was hovering nervously by the open door, raised her eyebrows. "They seem to know you, Rar. Could someone please explain?"
A somewhat muffled voice floated over Aegis's shoulder."There was another contestant in our battle, one of his undead creations. We helped him find his free will and independence, but Rar here was intent on keeping him a slave. Rar was also involved in several conflicts in our battle, including teaming up with a particularly destructive necromancer.”
"What in ten ages are you talking about?!" By this point, the lich's elation had given way to slight confusion, which had itself metamorphosed into extreme annoyance as these people seemed to be doing everything in their power to avoid making sense. He nearly lashed out, but was struck with a thought and lapsed into silence for a moment. He tapped his jawbone pensively; "This 'undead creation' wouldn't happen to be my vacuum cleaner, would it?"
By this point, Clara herself was becoming rather annoyingly-confused, and reasoned that the best way to sort things out was to, well, sort things out. "Excuse me. There seems to be a great deal of confusion here. Does anyone have a cohesive explanation for this? For starters, who are these two?"
Aegis chimed in helpfully and straightforwardly with "This guy's Aeon. I've known him for years. The girl is Amethyst, who's apparently another contestant in the battle Aeon was in."
The man introduced as Aeon spoke up as soon as Aegis left off. "I believe I've figured some of this out. This is the fifth round, which you should remember as Battleopolis." Clara, of course, did not remember any such thing or even have an idea of what the man could be going on about, but the girl Amethyst nodded; the two recently-freed magic-users put two and two together, but one wished the speaker had been more clear and the other cursed him for wasting time. "The reason we're alive–and Konka Rar is here–is we're like Alcarith and the others in that round, copies created specifically as additional quirks of the setting. If they move on to the next round, we'd probably die. However, we're all copies of the real people, and in the real Konka Rar's perspective, all he was was Eximo disappearing without any explanation. The Konka Rars we fought against were also copies. Eximo won the Grand Battle, by the way. We didn't manage to kill the Director."
As Aeon's monologue fell silent, the rest of the group took a few moments to digest what he had said. A collective "Oh," arose as people went about their various thoughts; after another brief pause, Konka Rar spoke up sniggeringly. "You two were killed by a vacuum cleaner?"
Aeon's response was a brusque Long story.", which was followed by a surprisingly-lighthearted "I've never been so confused in my life, hah," from Aegis. At this point amethyst, who had been essentially silent up to now, said "Mind explaining who the old woman is?"
Clara smiled in spite of the girl's sharpness. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Sister Clara Jungfrau, necropolitan. I have been in this battle with Aegis now for several rounds, and–"
Aeon cut her off by spitting "So she's a contestant."
Amethst responded with "She looks friendly enough, and might prove useful if we manage to destroy the mana dampening systems."
Aeon, apparently partially mollified, said "The lich isn't coming with us."
Clara thought this was rather unfair, and frankly a bit prejudiced. Would he be as adamant about her not joining them if she looked more corpsey? Was he going to trust her just because she "looked nice"? Konka Rar had been nothing but polite, if a bit short, during the time she'd spent with him. She maintained her smile and evenly said "I don't believe he will cause any harm and this point. This floor has mana dampening systems in place, rendering both of us more or less harmless. I don't suppose a vow from him to keep civilized will convince the two of you of that?"
Konka Rar was all for deception if it suited his purpose, but kowtowing to this self-righteous pair was too far. Besides, they didn't have any kind of way to force him to do anything or stay anywhere, judging from the destroyed terminal next to the open door. "I will make no such thing."
Despite his face being hidden by Aegis's broad shoulders, the assembled battlers could practically hear Aeon's eyes rolling. Amethyst, probably reaching the same conclusion Konka Rar had, said "Very well. Rar, lead the way. You are not to leave our sights for any reason."
The group moved along, heading steadily upwards with the lich in the lead. Things were largely silent save for the tapping of leather and bone on metal, and of course the omnipresent and ever-loudening sounds of combat and warnings from the Warden coming from above. Konka Rar alone, probably due to his style of spellcasting compared to the others', noticed when the mana dampening systems went down. His skeletal grin didn't shift as he began gathering energy, no matter how much he would have liked it to.
All he had to do now was lose this gang of dead weights and he'd be free to pursue Grandmastercide. Once he'd drawn a reasonable amount of mana to himself, he whirled around, waves of darkness gathering around his outstretched hand. Always the villain to the core, he cackled "Hah! You haven't noticed? The mana dampening system gave out just a minute ago!"
"He's right," said Amethyst, her eyes darting down to her armband. With a thought, she conjured a swarm of bladelike crystals that hovered around the necromantic aggressor. Aegis took her cue, his gauntlets forming a longsword which he pointed at the lich's lack of a throat. Clara, for her part, was rather taken aback, and felt foolish enough at her baseless defense of her erstwhile cellmate that she did little more than take a few steps back.
Konka Rar released the dark spell he had been casting, shattering half of Amethyst's crystals in the process, and began launching fireballs at those that were left; before he could remove them all, though, Aegis simply encased his head in a morphic gauntlet. Clearly outnumbered and -matched, the sorcerer raised his remaining arm in a gesture of surrender, and Aegis let him free.
It was around this point that the assembled escapees noticed that with the mana dampeners failing, they weren't the only ones breaking out of their cells anymore. The noise level rose as casters of all varieties noticed their powers returning and set about opening, avoiding, or simply destroying their cells. Figures had started entering the corridors, clamoring for freedom, when Aph appeared around a corner. The sight of the cackling pink figure, wreathed in electricity and fire and surmounted by writhing black tentacles, was enough to send many of them retreating back to their containment.
A bloodthirsty grin spread even farther across the nymph's face as she caught sight of the five battlers standing in the middle of the mostly-empty hall; an expression of concern formed on Clara's features, replaced quickly by shock and horror. Her voice shook a little as she exhaled, "Aph."; Aeon, still paralyzed and not in a position to see much, asked "Another contestant?"
"Yep," said Aegis. His gauntlets shifted back to longsword form, the length of which he promptly increased. "Big fight?"
Amethyst's eerily flat reply came as a simple "Big fight," combined with the summoning of another cluster of crystals, these aimed at the murderous nymph. She launched several staggered salvos of crystalline projectiles at Aph, who simply destroyed most of them as they approached with answering barrages of ice and finished off those she missed with a flick of her tentacles.
Aegis shrugged Aeon off, letting him fall clumsily to the floor, and turned to Clara. "You do healing stuff, right?" Without waiting for a response, he nudged Aeon's prone form towards her before launching himself down the corridor, yelling "Get the poison out of him!"
The nun knelt down by the paralyzed man and began muttering as she ran her fingertips along his major blood vessels. A faint green glow began spreading under his skin, but was rather hard to see against the harsh brightness flooding the prison from Aph's fire and lightning. The nymph herself was nearly shrieking with glee as she send waves of destructive magic at the others; Amethyst was doing all she could to contain the devastation, but even her precise control of magic was no match for the sheer power Aph had at her disposal by now. Crystalline walls and invisible points of mana nullification and repulsion were erected and destroyed in a continual back-and-forth, but the girl was being forced gradually backwards.
The pink figure was blindsighted by a bolt of blackness from the left, but her mana-absorption device diffused most of it. Amethyst spared the lich a quizzical glance, but couldn't devote much attention to him; it was pretty clear anyway that he'd reasoned a violent loose cannon like Aph was worth dealing with before petty treachery, so the girl concentrated on hemming the nymph in while Konka Rar diverted her focus. Missing one of his arms and most of his cybernetic augmentations left the ancient conqueror at a fraction of his ability and power, but he was more than capable of harrying her with a barrage of minor spells and hurled insults. Between Konka Rar's and Amethyst's twin assaults, Aph was spread too thin to effectively retaliate against either.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Aegis dove through the maelstrom of icy shards and shattered crystal, swinging his sword wide and aiming straight for Aph's neck. As though in slow motion, her head turned and she locked eyes with the flying swordsman; there was seemingly nothing she could do in time to save herself as the gleaming metal scythed through the air intent on decapitating her.
Until a black tentacle whipped out of nowhere, wrapping itself around the man's wrist and flinging him off course. Another slammed itself into his stomach; a third collided with his chin in a vicious uppercut. Thoroughly deflected and rather battered, Aegis found himself set upon by more tentacles before he even landed; he was flung forcefully away from the nymph, catapulted over the edge of the walkway.
Thinking quickly, he reverted his sword to gauntlets and grabbed at the passing ledge; it wasn't enough, though, as his momentum and metallic grip simply bent the floor under his fingers, eventually simply coming free from the rest of the floor. It wasn't until he'd descended another level that Aegis was able to stop his fall.
Above him, lich and magician were struggling to keep pace with the increasingly-brutal nymph. Neither side seemed to be giving an inch, each waiting for the other to leave an opening, but neither Konka Rar nor Amethyst was accustomed to tandem spellcasting so it seemed certain one or the other of them would be the first to blink. Clara was still fervently praying, and Aeon was regaining some sensation in his limbs, but the extrication process was difficult in the face of the Monitor's complex designer poison.
Aph cackled as it became more and more obvious that her adversaries were faring poorly against her. "What's the matter, little girl? Can't handle a little magic? Maybe I won't bother absorbing you after all, you're so useless!"; as a long icicle embedded itself in Konka Rar's ribcage, she sneered "And how about you, old man? Not so tough without your staff and all your silly trinkets, are you?"
Back on the floor, Aeon flexed his hands and growled up at the worried nun. "Do you have a weapon?" Clara's eyes darted involuntarily to her cane, which was lying by her knees, but she shakily said "I don't think you're completely well yet, and…"
Without speaking, Aeon shakily rose and snatched up the stick; with one fluid motion, he unsheathed the sword within and propelled himself down the corridor. Clara scrambled to her feet, worry increasing tenfold, and hurriedly began another prayer. As he waded into the cloud of spells, a faint golden aura began shimmering around his skin; if one looked close enough, they would see that it resembled an ephemeral suit of plate mail, but no-one present had attention to spare for details like that.