Re: Intense Struggle! (Round 5 - Cervaled Fall)
07-25-2011, 04:00 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Aryogaton.
The first priority was to get back into the fight as soon as possible. With three-maybe-four allies and a powerful enemy within near-slashing distance, there was one conclusive place Aegis belonged, and he wasn’t there. He focused at the ceiling, attempting to judge where Aph and his allies were from the sound of shattering ice and struggle of various degrees of magic. It soon became clear that the noise of irrelevant fights breaking out from floors above and below drowned out any information Aegis could possibly glean from the upper floor, so he simply resorted to hammering the ceiling until something broke. However, directing a hammer several feet upwards with no room for a powerful swing was rather cumbersome, and his only accomplishment was to generate even more noise to add to the chaos.
Finding this useless, Aegis decided to try to climb back up. He placed a foot on the railing on his floor and extended his gauntlets upwards to the one above. With a heave, he jumped upwards and caught hold of the floor and began to lift himself back and into the fight. As soon as he managed come into view of what was happening, however, a crystalline body appeared over the edge, crashing into Aegis and sending him over the ledge yet again.
Aegis pushed aside the unidentified mess of crystals. It took only a moment to realize he was falling past the lowest floor. With the nearest ledge too far to reach, he extended a chain from his left gauntlet and flung the tool at an arbitrary wall, the hand at the end of the chain digging into the metal and providing an impromptu anchor point. Aegis swung away from the center of the shaft and slammed into the wall. He saw the crystalline being—which he now realized looked rather similar to Amethyst’s crystals—fall to and shatter on the bottom of the shaft a hundred feet below him.
Aegis let out a held breath and began climbing up the wall. Ensuring that no object will throw him back down again, he lifted himself to Sector S and examined the situation. The shards from Amethyst’s crystal body left his face a bloody mess, so Aegis tore off piece of cloth from the nearest resource and made a face mask with bits of silver.
Sector S, strangely, was saturated by all sorts of wild plant and fungal life. Aegis vaguely realized that, as the commotion from various floors seemed to be more and more violent as one travels down Cervaled Fall, this floor would contain the most dangerous contestants. This was confirmed when he was hit in the back from a force reminiscent of a train.
Aegis turned over and saw a figure standing over him with a large pincer in place of a hand, what looked like beetle horns in place of a head, and tens of thousands of insects and various tiny critters in place of skin. The beetle horns disappeared, and the figure began to speak.
“This floor is chaotic enough without people from the upper floors falling down here. One less contribution to this chaos for the better.”
Aegis lifted himself up with a swift motion and punched the insect man in the face, sending him sprawling backwards onto an overgrown mushroom cap. Reacting immediately, he hopped to the ceiling, crawled a short distance, and leaped onto Aegis, sprouting dragonfly wings in the process.
As the insect man grabbed at Aegis’ throat, he felt a minor electric shock. He grabbed at the insect man’s face and the conductive metal of his gauntlets absorbed the shock, amplifying it. The insect man flew up and threw Aegis down, landing him on an overgrown root.
“Just one question. You can fly. You can crawl on walls. Why don’t you leave this floor if you think it’s so terrible?”
“My name’s Cole Aran. I’m looking for a certain god named Balance.”
“Then why the hell are you attacking me?!”
If Cole was about to answer, Aegis would not have listened. He leaped up and formed a morning star, swinging it around and grazing Cole’s abdomen. Several more swings later, Aegis landed a direct hit. Aegis grinned and charged at the downed Cole, ready to score another, when he rammed into an invisible wall. He screamed and tried to break through, then tried to move around the wall, both to no avail, soon realizing that he was encased and trapped.
Indeed, what appeared as an old man dressed in dull grey was only twenty feet away, his arm pointing directly at Aegis.
“Jump out the top.” Cole whispered to Aegis as he charged at Balance.
Taking the hint, Aegis probed around the top of the invisible box, found the edge, and heaved himself out. Cole and Balance were already locked in combat. All things considered, though both of them attacked Aegis unprovoked, Cole was the one who actually tried to kill him. Aegis formed a broadsword and charged at Cole. Reacting quickly and taking advantage of a housefly’s instinctive reflexes, Cole jumped to the ceiling, allowing Aegis to swing at empty air. He sprouted wings and flew at Balance, who generated a barrier, only for Cole to fly around it. Cole landed a sharp jab at Balance’s back before narrowly dodging a blade swing from Aegis.
Balance was rather nonplussed by the scenario. Cole was targeting him, Aegis was targeting Cole, and he himself was to assist the one least favored by the odds, which, by all accounts, could only be Cole. A tactical retreat would not be possible either, as the fight between Cole and Aegis was unbalanced to begin with. Unable to attack or retreat, the embittered god wavered.
Meanwhile, Cole was continuously flying all around Balance, scoring slashes and stabs with pincers and stingers, all the while weaving into and out of Aegis’ reach just enough for him to make a significant, but ultimately irrelevant effect.
Eventually, the god fell, both figuratively and over the railing and down the central shaft of Cervaled Fall. Cole turned around and dodged yet another swing of the broadsword, then addressed Aegis.
“Stop.”
“It’s like trying to slice a fly in half with a sword. Stop flying!”
“That’s the point. In any case, I have other matters to attend to. Enjoy the plant life.”
As Cole disappeared upwards, Aegis cursed to himself and remembered the fight now two or three floors above. Seeing as attempts to climb up the railings have proved fruitless, Aegis simply ran down the walkway, looking for a more built-in way to get upwards. He soon realized that the floor was bustling with contestants, both fighting amongst each other and against large creatures of animalized plant matter. Deciding that he had already wasted enough time, Aegis simply plowed through, weaving past the Sector S contestants and slicing through a trunk of plant life when necessary. Upon arriving at the end of the floor, however, he found that the lift was entirely blocked by wild growth. Cursing yet again, he turned around and looked at tall, serene-if-he-cared view of all of Cervaled Fall. The roots and fungal growth on this floor was getting progressively worse and was spreading to the upper floors. Contestants of all forms were being thrown over the walkways and into the central shaft—the ones lucky enough to be capable of flight or preemptive magic reentered their respective fights, while the unlucky ones simply plummeted down. All the while, the Warden’s voice blared on the intercom, accomplishing nothing but further addition to the chaos.
I need to get out of here. Aegis turned to the blocked lift and began hacking away, drowning out the noise behind him as he focused on getting out. Within a few minutes, the growth was torn apart to enough extent for Aegis to enter the lift. He pressed an arbitrary button, the doors closed, and Aegis leaned back on the wall of the lift and let out a groan.
The first priority was to get back into the fight as soon as possible. With three-maybe-four allies and a powerful enemy within near-slashing distance, there was one conclusive place Aegis belonged, and he wasn’t there. He focused at the ceiling, attempting to judge where Aph and his allies were from the sound of shattering ice and struggle of various degrees of magic. It soon became clear that the noise of irrelevant fights breaking out from floors above and below drowned out any information Aegis could possibly glean from the upper floor, so he simply resorted to hammering the ceiling until something broke. However, directing a hammer several feet upwards with no room for a powerful swing was rather cumbersome, and his only accomplishment was to generate even more noise to add to the chaos.
Finding this useless, Aegis decided to try to climb back up. He placed a foot on the railing on his floor and extended his gauntlets upwards to the one above. With a heave, he jumped upwards and caught hold of the floor and began to lift himself back and into the fight. As soon as he managed come into view of what was happening, however, a crystalline body appeared over the edge, crashing into Aegis and sending him over the ledge yet again.
Aegis pushed aside the unidentified mess of crystals. It took only a moment to realize he was falling past the lowest floor. With the nearest ledge too far to reach, he extended a chain from his left gauntlet and flung the tool at an arbitrary wall, the hand at the end of the chain digging into the metal and providing an impromptu anchor point. Aegis swung away from the center of the shaft and slammed into the wall. He saw the crystalline being—which he now realized looked rather similar to Amethyst’s crystals—fall to and shatter on the bottom of the shaft a hundred feet below him.
Aegis let out a held breath and began climbing up the wall. Ensuring that no object will throw him back down again, he lifted himself to Sector S and examined the situation. The shards from Amethyst’s crystal body left his face a bloody mess, so Aegis tore off piece of cloth from the nearest resource and made a face mask with bits of silver.
Sector S, strangely, was saturated by all sorts of wild plant and fungal life. Aegis vaguely realized that, as the commotion from various floors seemed to be more and more violent as one travels down Cervaled Fall, this floor would contain the most dangerous contestants. This was confirmed when he was hit in the back from a force reminiscent of a train.
Aegis turned over and saw a figure standing over him with a large pincer in place of a hand, what looked like beetle horns in place of a head, and tens of thousands of insects and various tiny critters in place of skin. The beetle horns disappeared, and the figure began to speak.
“This floor is chaotic enough without people from the upper floors falling down here. One less contribution to this chaos for the better.”
Aegis lifted himself up with a swift motion and punched the insect man in the face, sending him sprawling backwards onto an overgrown mushroom cap. Reacting immediately, he hopped to the ceiling, crawled a short distance, and leaped onto Aegis, sprouting dragonfly wings in the process.
As the insect man grabbed at Aegis’ throat, he felt a minor electric shock. He grabbed at the insect man’s face and the conductive metal of his gauntlets absorbed the shock, amplifying it. The insect man flew up and threw Aegis down, landing him on an overgrown root.
“Just one question. You can fly. You can crawl on walls. Why don’t you leave this floor if you think it’s so terrible?”
“My name’s Cole Aran. I’m looking for a certain god named Balance.”
“Then why the hell are you attacking me?!”
If Cole was about to answer, Aegis would not have listened. He leaped up and formed a morning star, swinging it around and grazing Cole’s abdomen. Several more swings later, Aegis landed a direct hit. Aegis grinned and charged at the downed Cole, ready to score another, when he rammed into an invisible wall. He screamed and tried to break through, then tried to move around the wall, both to no avail, soon realizing that he was encased and trapped.
Indeed, what appeared as an old man dressed in dull grey was only twenty feet away, his arm pointing directly at Aegis.
“Jump out the top.” Cole whispered to Aegis as he charged at Balance.
Taking the hint, Aegis probed around the top of the invisible box, found the edge, and heaved himself out. Cole and Balance were already locked in combat. All things considered, though both of them attacked Aegis unprovoked, Cole was the one who actually tried to kill him. Aegis formed a broadsword and charged at Cole. Reacting quickly and taking advantage of a housefly’s instinctive reflexes, Cole jumped to the ceiling, allowing Aegis to swing at empty air. He sprouted wings and flew at Balance, who generated a barrier, only for Cole to fly around it. Cole landed a sharp jab at Balance’s back before narrowly dodging a blade swing from Aegis.
Balance was rather nonplussed by the scenario. Cole was targeting him, Aegis was targeting Cole, and he himself was to assist the one least favored by the odds, which, by all accounts, could only be Cole. A tactical retreat would not be possible either, as the fight between Cole and Aegis was unbalanced to begin with. Unable to attack or retreat, the embittered god wavered.
Meanwhile, Cole was continuously flying all around Balance, scoring slashes and stabs with pincers and stingers, all the while weaving into and out of Aegis’ reach just enough for him to make a significant, but ultimately irrelevant effect.
Eventually, the god fell, both figuratively and over the railing and down the central shaft of Cervaled Fall. Cole turned around and dodged yet another swing of the broadsword, then addressed Aegis.
“Stop.”
“It’s like trying to slice a fly in half with a sword. Stop flying!”
“That’s the point. In any case, I have other matters to attend to. Enjoy the plant life.”
As Cole disappeared upwards, Aegis cursed to himself and remembered the fight now two or three floors above. Seeing as attempts to climb up the railings have proved fruitless, Aegis simply ran down the walkway, looking for a more built-in way to get upwards. He soon realized that the floor was bustling with contestants, both fighting amongst each other and against large creatures of animalized plant matter. Deciding that he had already wasted enough time, Aegis simply plowed through, weaving past the Sector S contestants and slicing through a trunk of plant life when necessary. Upon arriving at the end of the floor, however, he found that the lift was entirely blocked by wild growth. Cursing yet again, he turned around and looked at tall, serene-if-he-cared view of all of Cervaled Fall. The roots and fungal growth on this floor was getting progressively worse and was spreading to the upper floors. Contestants of all forms were being thrown over the walkways and into the central shaft—the ones lucky enough to be capable of flight or preemptive magic reentered their respective fights, while the unlucky ones simply plummeted down. All the while, the Warden’s voice blared on the intercom, accomplishing nothing but further addition to the chaos.
I need to get out of here. Aegis turned to the blocked lift and began hacking away, drowning out the noise behind him as he focused on getting out. Within a few minutes, the growth was torn apart to enough extent for Aegis to enter the lift. He pressed an arbitrary button, the doors closed, and Aegis leaned back on the wall of the lift and let out a groan.