Re: Inexorable Altercation [Round III - Vorlon Complex]
04-21-2011, 05:48 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.
The last five minutes had been even more confusing and harrowing than the rest of this whole thing had been. Competition. Fight. Whatever it was. It was horrible, and it just kept getting worse. Three men had been killed in, well it wasn't really cold blood as such but at worst it was lukewarm blood and it had happened right in front of her and mostly because of her, and then she'd been accosted by the only other sane person and he'd completely lost it, and then he made her follow and they got separated and there was killing everywhere, and... Light and explosions, the sensation of teleportation, threats from some kind of glowing demon thing...
And now she was in a dark, cold room. It was a nice respite from the frantic, heart-pounding action. Not because this whole thing was overwhelming, Anna was definitely too... Definitely... She sighed. This was all too much. There was no use pretending to be strong and confident or even capable anymore. She just wanted to go back home and pretend not to be aware of the villagers and other witches laughing behind her back. Even being a useless witch in some stupid mountain was better than being a useless witch about to be killed by a hundred different people.
She looked at her knife and her shoddy broom. She thought back to the handful of parlor tricks she was capable of. She considered her physical abilities and mental acuity. And then she thought about the other six contestants and their weapons and skills and strengths, plus that crazy demon guy and all the sailors and those weird explodey things. Why was she even here? It... It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair!
At this point, another woman might have taken her rage and fear and turned them into a weapon, stiffening her resolve and straightening her spine and mowing down those who dared to threaten her with all the determination available to someone who had finally been pushed too far. Or perhaps she would have broken down, the weight of the situation and the magnitude of her impotence crushing her completely and sending her into a spiral of self-destruction and emotional histrionics. A typical narrative would have her grow as a person, and reveal a lot about her through the window of her response to the situation.
Annaliese, however, was not either of those women. She was designed by nature and her life to be the sort of person who good-naturedly try to help people and do what she thinks is best as long as it didn't really inconvenience anyone. She didn't have the force of personality or the power of magic that it took to be a capable witch, and she didn't have the emotional range or self-worth it took to respond adequately to a situation like a Grand Battle. Where a normal person could be equated to a glass, Annaliese was more like a banana: the former, under repeated blows, would shatter dramatically, becoming broken but dangerous; the latter would eventually simply squash, not much good for anything. The witch had reached her squashing point.
She looked at her nearby surroundings, hoping there was somewhere she could sit or lie down until someone came to kill her. It was difficult to see very much or very far; there was no apparent light source in the room, so the only illumination came from the faint and sickly glow of runes on the recently-enchanted broom. Fortunately, there was a large chair or throne very nearby, apparently carved from the same stone that made up the floor and walls Annaliese could see. She moved slowly towards it as if in a dream, shuffling footsteps echoing dully in the otherwise-complete silence.
She reached the chair, dropping the broom to the ground and putting the knife back away. She moved as though to sit down, but noticed that there was something already in the chair; picking up the smallish object without really examining it, she sank onto the hard stone and laid whatever it was in her lap. Her eyes closed, and she exhaled. In the cool stillness and silence of the room, the sounds of slowly-shifting rock could almost be detected, but that was all. It was a place of utter peace, and a fitting tomb for one such as Annaliese.
Still, utter emotional defeat or not, she was still human. After a period of silent waiting, perhaps as short as ten minutes, perhaps as long as an hour or two, Annaliese's eyes opened again. Nothing had changed about the situation, but she did feel a little bit silly just sitting there, not to mention that she was getting rather bored. She blinked a few times and sighed quietly, then looked down at the object in her lap. It was made of metal and glass, but was surprisingly light; it was shaped rather like a crown in a lot of ways, and gave off an air of futuristic regality. She turned it over and over in her hands, and if she hadn't hailed from a place and time that hadn't even experienced a Renaissance-equivalent, might have recognized that the inside was lined with circuitry and electrodes. With nothing better to do, she placed it on her head on a whim.
As the crown settled into place, a brief flash of electricity sparked behind the glass. Annaliese twitched, he back arcing in surprise and a sensation that wasn't so much pain as brief, unbearable tingling; she tried to pull the device off, but it wouldn't budge.
A figure came into being a few feet from the trembling witch; she could see the apparition clearly despite the gloom, and was even more disquieted by its appearance. The word "person" might give some basic starting point, but the slick green carapace, too many limbs, and multifarious compound eyes ensured that the word's connotations of "human" were quite inapplicable. She was dressed in ornate clothing of primarily sky-blue colors; a crown, every way the duplicate of the one on Annaliese, was perched atop her head. She spoke, mandibles clicking softly.
"What's going on? I thought the whole planet was to be abandoned and sealed off?"
The last five minutes had been even more confusing and harrowing than the rest of this whole thing had been. Competition. Fight. Whatever it was. It was horrible, and it just kept getting worse. Three men had been killed in, well it wasn't really cold blood as such but at worst it was lukewarm blood and it had happened right in front of her and mostly because of her, and then she'd been accosted by the only other sane person and he'd completely lost it, and then he made her follow and they got separated and there was killing everywhere, and... Light and explosions, the sensation of teleportation, threats from some kind of glowing demon thing...
And now she was in a dark, cold room. It was a nice respite from the frantic, heart-pounding action. Not because this whole thing was overwhelming, Anna was definitely too... Definitely... She sighed. This was all too much. There was no use pretending to be strong and confident or even capable anymore. She just wanted to go back home and pretend not to be aware of the villagers and other witches laughing behind her back. Even being a useless witch in some stupid mountain was better than being a useless witch about to be killed by a hundred different people.
She looked at her knife and her shoddy broom. She thought back to the handful of parlor tricks she was capable of. She considered her physical abilities and mental acuity. And then she thought about the other six contestants and their weapons and skills and strengths, plus that crazy demon guy and all the sailors and those weird explodey things. Why was she even here? It... It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair!
At this point, another woman might have taken her rage and fear and turned them into a weapon, stiffening her resolve and straightening her spine and mowing down those who dared to threaten her with all the determination available to someone who had finally been pushed too far. Or perhaps she would have broken down, the weight of the situation and the magnitude of her impotence crushing her completely and sending her into a spiral of self-destruction and emotional histrionics. A typical narrative would have her grow as a person, and reveal a lot about her through the window of her response to the situation.
Annaliese, however, was not either of those women. She was designed by nature and her life to be the sort of person who good-naturedly try to help people and do what she thinks is best as long as it didn't really inconvenience anyone. She didn't have the force of personality or the power of magic that it took to be a capable witch, and she didn't have the emotional range or self-worth it took to respond adequately to a situation like a Grand Battle. Where a normal person could be equated to a glass, Annaliese was more like a banana: the former, under repeated blows, would shatter dramatically, becoming broken but dangerous; the latter would eventually simply squash, not much good for anything. The witch had reached her squashing point.
She looked at her nearby surroundings, hoping there was somewhere she could sit or lie down until someone came to kill her. It was difficult to see very much or very far; there was no apparent light source in the room, so the only illumination came from the faint and sickly glow of runes on the recently-enchanted broom. Fortunately, there was a large chair or throne very nearby, apparently carved from the same stone that made up the floor and walls Annaliese could see. She moved slowly towards it as if in a dream, shuffling footsteps echoing dully in the otherwise-complete silence.
She reached the chair, dropping the broom to the ground and putting the knife back away. She moved as though to sit down, but noticed that there was something already in the chair; picking up the smallish object without really examining it, she sank onto the hard stone and laid whatever it was in her lap. Her eyes closed, and she exhaled. In the cool stillness and silence of the room, the sounds of slowly-shifting rock could almost be detected, but that was all. It was a place of utter peace, and a fitting tomb for one such as Annaliese.
Still, utter emotional defeat or not, she was still human. After a period of silent waiting, perhaps as short as ten minutes, perhaps as long as an hour or two, Annaliese's eyes opened again. Nothing had changed about the situation, but she did feel a little bit silly just sitting there, not to mention that she was getting rather bored. She blinked a few times and sighed quietly, then looked down at the object in her lap. It was made of metal and glass, but was surprisingly light; it was shaped rather like a crown in a lot of ways, and gave off an air of futuristic regality. She turned it over and over in her hands, and if she hadn't hailed from a place and time that hadn't even experienced a Renaissance-equivalent, might have recognized that the inside was lined with circuitry and electrodes. With nothing better to do, she placed it on her head on a whim.
As the crown settled into place, a brief flash of electricity sparked behind the glass. Annaliese twitched, he back arcing in surprise and a sensation that wasn't so much pain as brief, unbearable tingling; she tried to pull the device off, but it wouldn't budge.
A figure came into being a few feet from the trembling witch; she could see the apparition clearly despite the gloom, and was even more disquieted by its appearance. The word "person" might give some basic starting point, but the slick green carapace, too many limbs, and multifarious compound eyes ensured that the word's connotations of "human" were quite inapplicable. She was dressed in ornate clothing of primarily sky-blue colors; a crown, every way the duplicate of the one on Annaliese, was perched atop her head. She spoke, mandibles clicking softly.
"What's going on? I thought the whole planet was to be abandoned and sealed off?"
![[Image: Vorlon.png]](https://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff258/CeramicOrange/Other%20Adventures/Vorlon.png)