Re: Intense Struggle Season 2! (Round 3: Castle Suterrea)
06-07-2011, 08:51 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by GreyGabe.
Marcus fired another round into the thing’s head, marveling at its durability. Finally though, the leonine creature stopped dragging itself towards him, and slumped to the ground in a foul-smelling heap. Marcus shook his head. He still wasn’t entirely sure why he had set off on his own, aside from the nagging feeling that there was something he needed to take care of.
Plus, he was somewhat irked at Karen. Like he had never been pushed out of the way of enemy fire before. Like he hadn’t worked with woman soldiers before. And sure, maybe he had let her linger a little, but when you live on a cramped ship with several other men (and to be fair, one woman, but Syl kept her comings and goings fairly private, and seldom deigned to converse with her fellow mercenaries) you could be expected to be a bit… but anyway that had not been what was going on! He was just dazed. From the fall. Yes. And anyway, he was old enough to be her father. Girl had her mind in the gutter. Shame, shame, shame on her.
Marcus suddenly snapped out of his reverie, finding he had been wandering down a long, dimly lit corridor. Better stop that, Marcus, he thought to himself, not a good habit to get in. Getting mired in your own head’ll get you killed. He stepped over a poorly hidden trip wire, past the much more cleverly hidden pressure plate, and found himself at another intersection. A corridor ran off to the side in two directions, and directly ahead were a pair of large, heavy wooden doors. Shrugging, Marcus gave the doors a shove. They didn’t budge. Hanging the Retribution over one shoulder, he drew back, took a deep breath, and slammed his shoulder into the door. It gave way with a dull cracking sound, the doors squeaking on their hinges.
The room he found himself in was rather large, and filled with an impressive number of dead people. It was fairly obvious that the room was a dining hall, and that there had been a rather expansive feast in progress when whatever happened, happened. From the fact that everyone was still seated, Marcus was guessing poison was somehow to blame. Whatever it was must have been rather sudden, or completely painless, judging from the fact that the desiccated corpses were still mostly seated. At one end of the room, a table sat up on a large dais, and behind it a large chair. The figure there looked somehow better preserved than the rest of the bodies, but not by much. It wore faded, threadbare silken clothes and perched upon its brow sat a dully gleaming golden crown, and on the table in front of it was a golden scepter, which looked to be set with sapphires. Marcus grinned. Souvenirs! As he was about to head that way, he heard the patter of footsteps behind him, accompanied by heavy breathing. Marcus darted to one side of the door, and listened as whatever it was grew closer. He jerked back as it dashed past him into the room, suddenly skidding to a halt. It, or rather, she uttered a high-pitched squeak and turned to run right back out when she saw Marcus standing next to the door. Lillian gasped and took a step back, looking like nothing so much as a hunted animal. Marcus held out his hands to show he wasn’t going to hurt her.
“It’s okay, kid. Just, just calm down. You’re okay now, I can help you.”
Lillian looked somewhat skeptical, but relaxed slightly.
Marcus took a few steps toward her. “What happened? You get attacked by one of the monsters in this place?”
<font color="#C68E17">Lillian shifted from foot to foot, occasionally glancing past Marcus into the hall behind him.
“…Kind of, yes…”
“What do you mean, kind of?”
“Well, I—“
She was cut off by a second set of footsteps, rapidly approaching.
Marcus turned, hand on the butt of one of his pistols.
“…Sarika?”
“Marcus? Is that you? And… Lillian? Are you two alright?”
“Yeah, we’re fine! What about you, you look like hell!”
“I’ll be fine, now that I’ve found you two…”
Sarika made her way closer, leaning on her staff for support.
Marcus moved forward to help her, but stopped when he felt a small hand grab onto his.
“No! That’s not the bird-lady! It’s not!”
Marcus glanced at Lillian, seeing the terror plainly in her eyes. Then he glanced back at Sarika just in time to see a flash of something cross her features. Something dark and cruel. But then her gentle, pained smile was back.
“I don’t know what she’s talking about! Maybe there are shapeshifters in this old castle? You know how they like to move into these old, empty buildings.”
Marcus firmly but gently pulled his hand out of Lillian’s, and patted her on the head (Lillian hated it when grownups did that).
He took another step towards Sarika.
“Sarika, have you seen Dekowin anywhere? I haven’t seen hide nor hair of her this entire round.”
Sarika shrugged and smiled sheepishly. “Can’t say I have, Marcus. Let’s look for her together.”
Marcus nodded as if in agreement, then drew his pistol and fired three rounds. Not-Sarika took one shot to the shoulder before sliding sideways. Suddenly, Sarika’s appearance was replaced with that of a pale, strange young woman, whose unsettling appearance was rendered somewhat amusing by Sarika’s headdress, which she quickly tossed aside along with the staff. Marcus wondered how she had managed to get a hold of those.
Perhaps the girl-thing noticed the object of his concern, because she grinned evilly. “You know, she screamed…” The girl thing examined her wound nonchalantly. “Before I killed her. She screamed and screamed. But nobody came to save her.” The thing stuck two fingers in the bullet hole, and extracted the bullet, flicking it to the floor.
Marcus yawned. “Uh-huh. Sure. I totally believe you. You heartless thing, you.”
“Don’t believe me?” The thing shrugged. “It matters not. You’ll soon be able to ask her yourself. I don’t appreciate it when mere mortals enter my chambers without leave. And I cannot abide a human who goes rifling through my things, who murders my poor servants in cold blood!”
Marcus stared blankly at her for a moment, before he figured out what she was talking about. “In cold blood!? You’re kidding me. They were going to eat me!”
“Well, yes. They do get rather hungry, you know.”
Marcus holstered his pistol and swung the Retribution around. “Fine. You want to fight? Let’s fight.”
She grinned, revealing a set of pointed teeth. “Good! Have at you!”
Marcus didn’t even have time to line up a shot before she was in front of him, slashing out with one hand. Even though her nails didn’t look very sharp, they left four straight furrows on the chest plate of his armor. Marcus swung out with a swift back-hand, but the thing had already backed out of range. And why, exactly, Marcus thought as he began to fire, do I keep running into things that can dodge bullets?
Marcus hoped that Lillian had taken cover somewhere safe, because he couldn’t risk taking the time to check. His shots kept missing, and the thing was darting in again and again, leaving little nicks and scratches all over his armor, but ignoring his exposed face and neck. It was toying with him!
He waited, and when it darted in again, he swung the Retribution down… only to have it unceremoniously torn from his grasp, the strap hanging loosely around his shoulder breaking free. The rifle was tossed aside, and the girl-thing slammed one hand against his chest, sending him flying backwards onto one of the tables. Ancient dishes and bits of corpses went flying. Marcus leapt to his feet, drawing one of his combat knives and brandishing it in front of him.
“My, my. A knife! Oh, truly I am stricken with terror!” She laughed, and walked forward. “I do wish I didn’t have to end this so soon… you have such interesting memories, memories of other worlds and battles waged in the black sea of stars…”
Marcus’s eyes widened.
“And such battles! Buildings, cities reduced to rubble! Millions killed in the blink of an eye, many more left to suffer… it is glorious. You remember, of course. You remember their faces, their grimaces of pain, the chorus of their screams!”
“It wasn’t like that!”
“Not to you, perhaps. But to me, it is like a feast! Perhaps I won’t kill you, not immediately. Perhaps I will keep you for a time, and sup on the echoes of death that hide, locked away in your mind.”
She was only a few paces away, now. Marcus moved towards her, pulling back the knife… and stopped. It was her.
The girl from the hospital. He remembered, of course… he could never escape it, no matter how much he wanted to. He had seen many horrors during the war, both before and since, but this one had been the worst. The rebels had taken over a hospital in the city of Nith, a prosperous colony that had done its best to stay out of the war. They had rigged the building with explosives, planning to use the civilians to stave off Armada aggression. It didn’t work. It might have, if not for the fact that an important rebel general wasn’t the one in charge of the operation. If the rebels hadn’t just destroyed an Imperial space station a few months prior, killing hundreds of thousands of Armada personnel and their families. If Nith had declared for the Empire rather than trying to stay out of things entirely. It might have worked, or maybe things would have ended up just the same. Long story short, the hospital and several city blocks around it blew, killing thousands and trapping hundreds more. The Armada troopers on the ground (the ones not killed in the blast, anyway) rushed in to provide relief, digging through the debris for survivors. It was… Marcus had not been prepared for it. There were too many trapped people and not enough marines to get to them all. Marcus had found the girl by chance, as much as anything. There was too much rubble, though. He could see her, he could almost reach her, but he couldn’t get her out. He yelled for her to hold on, but he could tell she was bleeding, that…
She died with Marcus and five other marines only a few feet away. They couldn’t dig fast enough, couldn’t get to her in time to stem the bleeding. Marcus sat by as they wheeled her remains away.
And now she stood before him, her face smeared with dirt and ash, her blonde hair matted with blood. The knife dropped from his limp fingers.</font>
Lillian watched, confused, from her place underneath one of the tables. She had been reluctant to squeeze between the skeletal remains, but the Spirit had urged her on. It seemed that the Not-Sarika had forgotten all about her. But why wasn’t Marcus killing it? Why was he just staring at it? Why wouldn’t he move?
Marcus fired another round into the thing’s head, marveling at its durability. Finally though, the leonine creature stopped dragging itself towards him, and slumped to the ground in a foul-smelling heap. Marcus shook his head. He still wasn’t entirely sure why he had set off on his own, aside from the nagging feeling that there was something he needed to take care of.
Plus, he was somewhat irked at Karen. Like he had never been pushed out of the way of enemy fire before. Like he hadn’t worked with woman soldiers before. And sure, maybe he had let her linger a little, but when you live on a cramped ship with several other men (and to be fair, one woman, but Syl kept her comings and goings fairly private, and seldom deigned to converse with her fellow mercenaries) you could be expected to be a bit… but anyway that had not been what was going on! He was just dazed. From the fall. Yes. And anyway, he was old enough to be her father. Girl had her mind in the gutter. Shame, shame, shame on her.
Marcus suddenly snapped out of his reverie, finding he had been wandering down a long, dimly lit corridor. Better stop that, Marcus, he thought to himself, not a good habit to get in. Getting mired in your own head’ll get you killed. He stepped over a poorly hidden trip wire, past the much more cleverly hidden pressure plate, and found himself at another intersection. A corridor ran off to the side in two directions, and directly ahead were a pair of large, heavy wooden doors. Shrugging, Marcus gave the doors a shove. They didn’t budge. Hanging the Retribution over one shoulder, he drew back, took a deep breath, and slammed his shoulder into the door. It gave way with a dull cracking sound, the doors squeaking on their hinges.
The room he found himself in was rather large, and filled with an impressive number of dead people. It was fairly obvious that the room was a dining hall, and that there had been a rather expansive feast in progress when whatever happened, happened. From the fact that everyone was still seated, Marcus was guessing poison was somehow to blame. Whatever it was must have been rather sudden, or completely painless, judging from the fact that the desiccated corpses were still mostly seated. At one end of the room, a table sat up on a large dais, and behind it a large chair. The figure there looked somehow better preserved than the rest of the bodies, but not by much. It wore faded, threadbare silken clothes and perched upon its brow sat a dully gleaming golden crown, and on the table in front of it was a golden scepter, which looked to be set with sapphires. Marcus grinned. Souvenirs! As he was about to head that way, he heard the patter of footsteps behind him, accompanied by heavy breathing. Marcus darted to one side of the door, and listened as whatever it was grew closer. He jerked back as it dashed past him into the room, suddenly skidding to a halt. It, or rather, she uttered a high-pitched squeak and turned to run right back out when she saw Marcus standing next to the door. Lillian gasped and took a step back, looking like nothing so much as a hunted animal. Marcus held out his hands to show he wasn’t going to hurt her.
“It’s okay, kid. Just, just calm down. You’re okay now, I can help you.”
Lillian looked somewhat skeptical, but relaxed slightly.
Marcus took a few steps toward her. “What happened? You get attacked by one of the monsters in this place?”
<font color="#C68E17">Lillian shifted from foot to foot, occasionally glancing past Marcus into the hall behind him.
“…Kind of, yes…”
“What do you mean, kind of?”
“Well, I—“
She was cut off by a second set of footsteps, rapidly approaching.
Marcus turned, hand on the butt of one of his pistols.
“…Sarika?”
“Marcus? Is that you? And… Lillian? Are you two alright?”
“Yeah, we’re fine! What about you, you look like hell!”
“I’ll be fine, now that I’ve found you two…”
Sarika made her way closer, leaning on her staff for support.
Marcus moved forward to help her, but stopped when he felt a small hand grab onto his.
“No! That’s not the bird-lady! It’s not!”
Marcus glanced at Lillian, seeing the terror plainly in her eyes. Then he glanced back at Sarika just in time to see a flash of something cross her features. Something dark and cruel. But then her gentle, pained smile was back.
“I don’t know what she’s talking about! Maybe there are shapeshifters in this old castle? You know how they like to move into these old, empty buildings.”
Marcus firmly but gently pulled his hand out of Lillian’s, and patted her on the head (Lillian hated it when grownups did that).
He took another step towards Sarika.
“Sarika, have you seen Dekowin anywhere? I haven’t seen hide nor hair of her this entire round.”
Sarika shrugged and smiled sheepishly. “Can’t say I have, Marcus. Let’s look for her together.”
Marcus nodded as if in agreement, then drew his pistol and fired three rounds. Not-Sarika took one shot to the shoulder before sliding sideways. Suddenly, Sarika’s appearance was replaced with that of a pale, strange young woman, whose unsettling appearance was rendered somewhat amusing by Sarika’s headdress, which she quickly tossed aside along with the staff. Marcus wondered how she had managed to get a hold of those.
Perhaps the girl-thing noticed the object of his concern, because she grinned evilly. “You know, she screamed…” The girl thing examined her wound nonchalantly. “Before I killed her. She screamed and screamed. But nobody came to save her.” The thing stuck two fingers in the bullet hole, and extracted the bullet, flicking it to the floor.
Marcus yawned. “Uh-huh. Sure. I totally believe you. You heartless thing, you.”
“Don’t believe me?” The thing shrugged. “It matters not. You’ll soon be able to ask her yourself. I don’t appreciate it when mere mortals enter my chambers without leave. And I cannot abide a human who goes rifling through my things, who murders my poor servants in cold blood!”
Marcus stared blankly at her for a moment, before he figured out what she was talking about. “In cold blood!? You’re kidding me. They were going to eat me!”
“Well, yes. They do get rather hungry, you know.”
Marcus holstered his pistol and swung the Retribution around. “Fine. You want to fight? Let’s fight.”
She grinned, revealing a set of pointed teeth. “Good! Have at you!”
Marcus didn’t even have time to line up a shot before she was in front of him, slashing out with one hand. Even though her nails didn’t look very sharp, they left four straight furrows on the chest plate of his armor. Marcus swung out with a swift back-hand, but the thing had already backed out of range. And why, exactly, Marcus thought as he began to fire, do I keep running into things that can dodge bullets?
Marcus hoped that Lillian had taken cover somewhere safe, because he couldn’t risk taking the time to check. His shots kept missing, and the thing was darting in again and again, leaving little nicks and scratches all over his armor, but ignoring his exposed face and neck. It was toying with him!
He waited, and when it darted in again, he swung the Retribution down… only to have it unceremoniously torn from his grasp, the strap hanging loosely around his shoulder breaking free. The rifle was tossed aside, and the girl-thing slammed one hand against his chest, sending him flying backwards onto one of the tables. Ancient dishes and bits of corpses went flying. Marcus leapt to his feet, drawing one of his combat knives and brandishing it in front of him.
“My, my. A knife! Oh, truly I am stricken with terror!” She laughed, and walked forward. “I do wish I didn’t have to end this so soon… you have such interesting memories, memories of other worlds and battles waged in the black sea of stars…”
Marcus’s eyes widened.
“And such battles! Buildings, cities reduced to rubble! Millions killed in the blink of an eye, many more left to suffer… it is glorious. You remember, of course. You remember their faces, their grimaces of pain, the chorus of their screams!”
“It wasn’t like that!”
“Not to you, perhaps. But to me, it is like a feast! Perhaps I won’t kill you, not immediately. Perhaps I will keep you for a time, and sup on the echoes of death that hide, locked away in your mind.”
She was only a few paces away, now. Marcus moved towards her, pulling back the knife… and stopped. It was her.
The girl from the hospital. He remembered, of course… he could never escape it, no matter how much he wanted to. He had seen many horrors during the war, both before and since, but this one had been the worst. The rebels had taken over a hospital in the city of Nith, a prosperous colony that had done its best to stay out of the war. They had rigged the building with explosives, planning to use the civilians to stave off Armada aggression. It didn’t work. It might have, if not for the fact that an important rebel general wasn’t the one in charge of the operation. If the rebels hadn’t just destroyed an Imperial space station a few months prior, killing hundreds of thousands of Armada personnel and their families. If Nith had declared for the Empire rather than trying to stay out of things entirely. It might have worked, or maybe things would have ended up just the same. Long story short, the hospital and several city blocks around it blew, killing thousands and trapping hundreds more. The Armada troopers on the ground (the ones not killed in the blast, anyway) rushed in to provide relief, digging through the debris for survivors. It was… Marcus had not been prepared for it. There were too many trapped people and not enough marines to get to them all. Marcus had found the girl by chance, as much as anything. There was too much rubble, though. He could see her, he could almost reach her, but he couldn’t get her out. He yelled for her to hold on, but he could tell she was bleeding, that…
She died with Marcus and five other marines only a few feet away. They couldn’t dig fast enough, couldn’t get to her in time to stem the bleeding. Marcus sat by as they wheeled her remains away.
And now she stood before him, her face smeared with dirt and ash, her blonde hair matted with blood. The knife dropped from his limp fingers.</font>
Lillian watched, confused, from her place underneath one of the tables. She had been reluctant to squeeze between the skeletal remains, but the Spirit had urged her on. It seemed that the Not-Sarika had forgotten all about her. But why wasn’t Marcus killing it? Why was he just staring at it? Why wouldn’t he move?