Re: Intense Struggle! (Round 6 - Frozen Destinies)
12-11-2012, 05:52 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.
She finally awoke from her nightmare.
The first sounds she heard were the sounds of battle raging around her; the screams of the dying and of those whose bodies had simply been malformed by the haphazard reconstruction of the worlds. The first thing she saw was battle; mismatched monsters desperately fighting for survival. Within moments something had died, a man with patches of brass dotted across pale scaly skin, who had probably been human not so long ago. A splash of whatever passed for blood in these insane incompatible worlds landed not too far from her face and she felt the slightest tickle of a familiar emotion building in the back of her mind; desperately she pushed it down.
She’d dreamed that she was a nymph called Aph and of all the things that she had done; all of the people she had loved and lost and who she had killed, whether in anger or pain or just for the sheer pleasure she would take from it. She knew for a fact that if she so much as closed her eyes it would all rise up to meet her; the faces of the dead and the dying and of what she had done to them. But what was worse than the images of horror that she couldn’t seem to shake was the emotion that she had felt. She’d felt it all, the joy of love and the bitter sting of denial, the all consuming rage that had sublimated sense and of course the rapture of ending the life of another. At some level she knew that she hadn’t just dreamed of Aph, but that she had been her, that all that she had done, equally she had done. What perhaps scared her more than anything else was that she knew she still had the capacity to feel these emotions; emotions so strong that they would consume her whole and burn away the very essence of what she was, leaving her as she had been, a pathetic being acting only on the purest most primal of emotions, all but incapable of reason and thought.
The world into which she had awakened might have been described as hellish or horrifying by another, but to her it was a golden shining opportunity; a once in a lifetime chance to be her own person.
There was a familiar screech from somewhere behind her, followed by a cry of: “Stop this foolishness! Stand still you insignificant insects! Stand still and accept your inevitable doom!” The voice was unmistakably her own, or rather it was Aph’s, though such a distinction was meaningless to anyone who wasn’t her. At first she thought that she had somehow without noticing relapsed into emotion and become Aph once again, it was a full minute before she began to realise that her body was still under her control and that that outburst had never passed her lips.
Which, when she thought about it, was something that left her confused. If Aph was someone else, then she couldn’t be Aph, and while yes she’d just spent a good number of minutes assuring herself of that fact but if she really wasn’t Aph then who was she? A glance at her body confirmed that she was a nymph and an attempt to move her arms confirmed that she was tied in the way she remembered Aph being tied. She might have mused further on her identity but her train of thought was interrupted by the sudden appearance of an irate leprechaun crashing heavily to the ground just in front of her.
“Ugh.” Iota grumbled to himself. “I think the damned thing’s got buggered up.” While the battle still raged on behind them Iota spent a good minute fiddling with an intricate golden pistol, before casually tossing it aside. It was then that he noticed her, or rather that he noticed that she was awake and looking at him. “Well shit.” He scrabbled to his feet and then shouted to the others: “I think we got a problem; this one’s woken up!” She felt the heat as a fireball was thrown just over her prone body. It just missed Iota by a hair’s breadth and he seemed to forget about her lying there in front of him as without so much as flinching he charged back into the fray.
She just lay there; her hands and feet bound together with interdimensional twine. Of course she knew that this bondage was no impediment to her movement; she just didn’t want to move. She didn’t want to exist with the knowledge of the things she had done and maybe if she just lay here long enough that would be the case. But despair was just another emotion to drown in and lose herself once again. Momentarily she gathered up the effort to roll herself onto her other side where she saw the battle being waged against her former self.
The Non-Infringers themselves looked relatively unharmed though the same could not be said for the miscellaneous and mismatched buildings that had bordered this street. A couple, already weakened by the reconstruction of the worlds, had been reduced to rubble. Those that still stood were either ablaze or missing chunks of their structure and looking like they would not be standing much longer; as though a particularly stiff breeze might finish the job Aph had started. The Non-Infringers themselves looked more or less unharmed. Iota was up close, dancing around the nymph with his fists raised before him, just looking for an opportunity to punch her lights out. Crazyman Dragonarms was standing back, his misshapen arm raised threateningly, but only embers emerged from the vent on his palm. He looked exhausted, his hair slick with sweat. XMO was doing his best to try to stem the tide of destruction, but he was fighting a losing battle. As she watched he sucked up the flames from a burning building, but pieces shifted and moments later it was crumbling before him. PAX/Tom were huddled together; whatever they were doing she couldn’t tell from where she lay.
And of course there was Aph. She hovered there, her arms and legs still bound, her hair whipping up around her in the powerful winds of her own rage. Her eyes were filled with fury at the pathetic insects that would not die. But most noticeably about her there was a hole in her chest the size of a fist leaking peals of pale amethyst mana which Aph didn’t even seem to have noticed.
She, the she that is not Aph in this instance, immediately regretted turning to see the fight. She felt revulsion to her core as she looked at her former self, as if a thick black bile was filling the gut she didn’t have, and the fog of rage began to descend upon her. All of her self-hatred, all of the regret and the disgust she felt for her actions had found an outlet; someone else that could be blamed and could be punished. The part of her that wanted to stay in control, that just wanted to be her, was fading away, sublimated by her own hatred. She slowly rose from the floor as lightning began to course through her skin. Aph turned and stared bewilderedly at her double.
“What… are…?” Aph’s usual certainty had faded from her voice, but after a moment she found a more familiar emotion to deal with this development. “Imposter!” she yelled as she summoned up a blast of ice. Not-Aph lashed out with a bolt of lightning, shattering the blast in mid-air, but before she could retaliate Aph was gone. All that was left was amethyst smoke hanging in the air in roughly the same shape as the person it had just been.
“XMO!” The Paxes yelled in unison. Between them they were holding some enormous weapon that looked like it had been constructed of whatever junk they had been able to scavenge at a moment’s notice (which given the state of the worlds made for quite a diverse collection of parts). XMO had at that moment been attempting to use a pile of rubble to support a particularly unsteady looking building; he glanced towards the Toms and to where Aph had been moments before. “Blow her away, so she can’t congeal back together again.” XMO did just that.
The nymph who was decidedly Not-Aph did not react. She stared at the Non-Infringers in something approximating shock. On the one hand that part of her that she had hated was dead, but on the other she had been denied the opportunity to kill it herself. The lightning crackling through her body only got more intense at points sparking off and earthing itself in nearby buildings.
“Any chance of a second blast from that death cannon?” Crazyman Dragonarms yelled back to PAX/Tom.
“Unfortunately, no.” They replied. “It’ll probably need half an hour or so to recharge.”
“Ah well then.” Iota mused. “Round Two ah guess.” But before the words were even out of his mouth the second nymph had collapsed, just as suddenly as the first had been reduced to smoke. “Eh, nevermind.”
It was touch and go for a minute, but ultimately the absence of Aph had allowed her to regain enough of a hold on herself to push down the anger she’d felt at being unable to slay her personally. And with that fury gone her magic ebbed away once again, leaving her lying in an undignified heap.
“Nice work Non-Infringers.” XMO said, apparently satisfied that his impromptu restoration work was Good Enough to offset the damage their battle had caused. “But time is of the essence. We’ll need to hurry if we intend to arrive Just In The Nick Of Time. Iota we’re going to need you to lead the way, assuming that you haven’t exhausted your supernatural supplies of luck,”
“No worries there.” Iota replied with a grin.
“Dragonarms you get the girl,” XMO continued, “and PAX it would probably be a good idea to bring that Miniature Atomic Destablization Cannon with you, just in case.”
Crazyman grumbled to himself as he went to grab the other nymph, but stopped short when he realised she was still conscious. “Hold up, she’s still awake.”
“Give her a clout on the back of the head ought ta sort that out.” Iota suggested. XMO and the Paxes seemed pretty nonplussed.
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here.” She muttered, half to herself.
“Or what? You’ll smite me down for disrespecting you?” Crazyman replied half-sarcastically. She said nothing. It wasn’t a question that seemed worth the effort of replying to. “Who are you anyway?” Crazyman asked. He wasn’t really the type of person that anyone would call emotional or intuitive, but he knew that something had changed. There was something almost resembling sadness in her eyes.
“I dunno.” She replied indifferently. Crazyman glanced around to see that the others weren’t waiting for him and picked her up, far more gently than he would have done with Aph.
“I mean, what’s your name?” He asked.
“I don’t have one.” She said. She couldn’t bear going by the name of the thing she hated the most and picking a new name was impossible; everything in her life was tied back to Aph, anything she chose would remind her of her, would link her to her forever.
They walked for a second in silence before Crazyman made a suggestion. “What about Pink?” He asked. “Pink’s a nice name.”
“That’s a terrible name.” She replied.
Crazyman scowled for a second, it didn’t seem all that terrible a name from where he stood. “How about Cerise?” He tried again.
There was a pause that could potentially have been described as thoughtful.
"Okay." Cerise conceded.
She finally awoke from her nightmare.
The first sounds she heard were the sounds of battle raging around her; the screams of the dying and of those whose bodies had simply been malformed by the haphazard reconstruction of the worlds. The first thing she saw was battle; mismatched monsters desperately fighting for survival. Within moments something had died, a man with patches of brass dotted across pale scaly skin, who had probably been human not so long ago. A splash of whatever passed for blood in these insane incompatible worlds landed not too far from her face and she felt the slightest tickle of a familiar emotion building in the back of her mind; desperately she pushed it down.
She’d dreamed that she was a nymph called Aph and of all the things that she had done; all of the people she had loved and lost and who she had killed, whether in anger or pain or just for the sheer pleasure she would take from it. She knew for a fact that if she so much as closed her eyes it would all rise up to meet her; the faces of the dead and the dying and of what she had done to them. But what was worse than the images of horror that she couldn’t seem to shake was the emotion that she had felt. She’d felt it all, the joy of love and the bitter sting of denial, the all consuming rage that had sublimated sense and of course the rapture of ending the life of another. At some level she knew that she hadn’t just dreamed of Aph, but that she had been her, that all that she had done, equally she had done. What perhaps scared her more than anything else was that she knew she still had the capacity to feel these emotions; emotions so strong that they would consume her whole and burn away the very essence of what she was, leaving her as she had been, a pathetic being acting only on the purest most primal of emotions, all but incapable of reason and thought.
The world into which she had awakened might have been described as hellish or horrifying by another, but to her it was a golden shining opportunity; a once in a lifetime chance to be her own person.
There was a familiar screech from somewhere behind her, followed by a cry of: “Stop this foolishness! Stand still you insignificant insects! Stand still and accept your inevitable doom!” The voice was unmistakably her own, or rather it was Aph’s, though such a distinction was meaningless to anyone who wasn’t her. At first she thought that she had somehow without noticing relapsed into emotion and become Aph once again, it was a full minute before she began to realise that her body was still under her control and that that outburst had never passed her lips.
Which, when she thought about it, was something that left her confused. If Aph was someone else, then she couldn’t be Aph, and while yes she’d just spent a good number of minutes assuring herself of that fact but if she really wasn’t Aph then who was she? A glance at her body confirmed that she was a nymph and an attempt to move her arms confirmed that she was tied in the way she remembered Aph being tied. She might have mused further on her identity but her train of thought was interrupted by the sudden appearance of an irate leprechaun crashing heavily to the ground just in front of her.
“Ugh.” Iota grumbled to himself. “I think the damned thing’s got buggered up.” While the battle still raged on behind them Iota spent a good minute fiddling with an intricate golden pistol, before casually tossing it aside. It was then that he noticed her, or rather that he noticed that she was awake and looking at him. “Well shit.” He scrabbled to his feet and then shouted to the others: “I think we got a problem; this one’s woken up!” She felt the heat as a fireball was thrown just over her prone body. It just missed Iota by a hair’s breadth and he seemed to forget about her lying there in front of him as without so much as flinching he charged back into the fray.
She just lay there; her hands and feet bound together with interdimensional twine. Of course she knew that this bondage was no impediment to her movement; she just didn’t want to move. She didn’t want to exist with the knowledge of the things she had done and maybe if she just lay here long enough that would be the case. But despair was just another emotion to drown in and lose herself once again. Momentarily she gathered up the effort to roll herself onto her other side where she saw the battle being waged against her former self.
The Non-Infringers themselves looked relatively unharmed though the same could not be said for the miscellaneous and mismatched buildings that had bordered this street. A couple, already weakened by the reconstruction of the worlds, had been reduced to rubble. Those that still stood were either ablaze or missing chunks of their structure and looking like they would not be standing much longer; as though a particularly stiff breeze might finish the job Aph had started. The Non-Infringers themselves looked more or less unharmed. Iota was up close, dancing around the nymph with his fists raised before him, just looking for an opportunity to punch her lights out. Crazyman Dragonarms was standing back, his misshapen arm raised threateningly, but only embers emerged from the vent on his palm. He looked exhausted, his hair slick with sweat. XMO was doing his best to try to stem the tide of destruction, but he was fighting a losing battle. As she watched he sucked up the flames from a burning building, but pieces shifted and moments later it was crumbling before him. PAX/Tom were huddled together; whatever they were doing she couldn’t tell from where she lay.
And of course there was Aph. She hovered there, her arms and legs still bound, her hair whipping up around her in the powerful winds of her own rage. Her eyes were filled with fury at the pathetic insects that would not die. But most noticeably about her there was a hole in her chest the size of a fist leaking peals of pale amethyst mana which Aph didn’t even seem to have noticed.
She, the she that is not Aph in this instance, immediately regretted turning to see the fight. She felt revulsion to her core as she looked at her former self, as if a thick black bile was filling the gut she didn’t have, and the fog of rage began to descend upon her. All of her self-hatred, all of the regret and the disgust she felt for her actions had found an outlet; someone else that could be blamed and could be punished. The part of her that wanted to stay in control, that just wanted to be her, was fading away, sublimated by her own hatred. She slowly rose from the floor as lightning began to course through her skin. Aph turned and stared bewilderedly at her double.
“What… are…?” Aph’s usual certainty had faded from her voice, but after a moment she found a more familiar emotion to deal with this development. “Imposter!” she yelled as she summoned up a blast of ice. Not-Aph lashed out with a bolt of lightning, shattering the blast in mid-air, but before she could retaliate Aph was gone. All that was left was amethyst smoke hanging in the air in roughly the same shape as the person it had just been.
“XMO!” The Paxes yelled in unison. Between them they were holding some enormous weapon that looked like it had been constructed of whatever junk they had been able to scavenge at a moment’s notice (which given the state of the worlds made for quite a diverse collection of parts). XMO had at that moment been attempting to use a pile of rubble to support a particularly unsteady looking building; he glanced towards the Toms and to where Aph had been moments before. “Blow her away, so she can’t congeal back together again.” XMO did just that.
The nymph who was decidedly Not-Aph did not react. She stared at the Non-Infringers in something approximating shock. On the one hand that part of her that she had hated was dead, but on the other she had been denied the opportunity to kill it herself. The lightning crackling through her body only got more intense at points sparking off and earthing itself in nearby buildings.
“Any chance of a second blast from that death cannon?” Crazyman Dragonarms yelled back to PAX/Tom.
“Unfortunately, no.” They replied. “It’ll probably need half an hour or so to recharge.”
“Ah well then.” Iota mused. “Round Two ah guess.” But before the words were even out of his mouth the second nymph had collapsed, just as suddenly as the first had been reduced to smoke. “Eh, nevermind.”
It was touch and go for a minute, but ultimately the absence of Aph had allowed her to regain enough of a hold on herself to push down the anger she’d felt at being unable to slay her personally. And with that fury gone her magic ebbed away once again, leaving her lying in an undignified heap.
“Nice work Non-Infringers.” XMO said, apparently satisfied that his impromptu restoration work was Good Enough to offset the damage their battle had caused. “But time is of the essence. We’ll need to hurry if we intend to arrive Just In The Nick Of Time. Iota we’re going to need you to lead the way, assuming that you haven’t exhausted your supernatural supplies of luck,”
“No worries there.” Iota replied with a grin.
“Dragonarms you get the girl,” XMO continued, “and PAX it would probably be a good idea to bring that Miniature Atomic Destablization Cannon with you, just in case.”
Crazyman grumbled to himself as he went to grab the other nymph, but stopped short when he realised she was still conscious. “Hold up, she’s still awake.”
“Give her a clout on the back of the head ought ta sort that out.” Iota suggested. XMO and the Paxes seemed pretty nonplussed.
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here.” She muttered, half to herself.
“Or what? You’ll smite me down for disrespecting you?” Crazyman replied half-sarcastically. She said nothing. It wasn’t a question that seemed worth the effort of replying to. “Who are you anyway?” Crazyman asked. He wasn’t really the type of person that anyone would call emotional or intuitive, but he knew that something had changed. There was something almost resembling sadness in her eyes.
“I dunno.” She replied indifferently. Crazyman glanced around to see that the others weren’t waiting for him and picked her up, far more gently than he would have done with Aph.
“I mean, what’s your name?” He asked.
“I don’t have one.” She said. She couldn’t bear going by the name of the thing she hated the most and picking a new name was impossible; everything in her life was tied back to Aph, anything she chose would remind her of her, would link her to her forever.
They walked for a second in silence before Crazyman made a suggestion. “What about Pink?” He asked. “Pink’s a nice name.”
“That’s a terrible name.” She replied.
Crazyman scowled for a second, it didn’t seem all that terrible a name from where he stood. “How about Cerise?” He tried again.
There was a pause that could potentially have been described as thoughtful.
"Okay." Cerise conceded.
Heaven Help Us | Make Room!!!! | I'm Not Okay (I Promise)
Hang 'Em High | The Only Hope For Me Is You | Zero Percent | Early Sunsets Over Monroeville | DESTROYA | Demolition Lovers | To The End
Surrender The Night | Disenchanted | The Ghost Of You | Party Poison | Vampires Will Never Hurt You | The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You
Hang 'Em High | The Only Hope For Me Is You | Zero Percent | Early Sunsets Over Monroeville | DESTROYA | Demolition Lovers | To The End
Surrender The Night | Disenchanted | The Ghost Of You | Party Poison | Vampires Will Never Hurt You | The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You