Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 2: Space - Abridged]
12-09-2012, 09:27 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Mirdini.
Nemaeus walked up the spiraling staircase, his sword's crackling breaking the silence between his footsteps. The tower was much larger than it had first seemed, giving him plenty of time to think. He still wasn’t sure what he expected to find, much less do once he finished climbing - there was no guarantee the drake would even get close enough for the sword to touch it. Even if it did, without the pelt’s protection Nemaeus would be hard-pressed to find an opening large enough to swing at it. One wrong step and he’d be ashes.
Well, beating the odds is what a hero’s supposed to do, isn’t it? I’ve just got to get in character.
He shook his head wryly. Despite his best efforts fate had seen fit to cast him in this role; all that was left was to play it out. At least he cut a dashing figure in his pinstripe suit, mythical sword in hand - a murderer seeking redemption at the peak of an ancient ruin. Details mattered. This was a story, after all.
Tria sat on the ground, watching Nemaeus walk away. She wanted to say something, thank him for the pelt, say anything. All she managed was to shrink further into the fur’s embrace, shivering as the dragon’s roars slowly faded from her immediate surroundings.
The wall the dragon’s fire had brushed earlier was slightly warm to the touch as Tria leaned against it. She wasn’t sure when she’d found the strength to stand, much less move in the direction Nemaeus had gone. He wasn’t lying about the protection the pelt afforded – she’d seen that much for herself. So why had he given it to her? Why had he left? And what was up with his eyes?
Just what is that guy’s deal?
Nemaeus reached the top of the spire, clambering across some particularly enterprising plants that had encroached upon the stairwell. He found himself in an overgrown tower garden, trees and ruins interspersed with avenues now covered in all manner of vines and vegetation. Thick gray blanketed the sky, the deep blue he’d started his ascent with now banished by billowing clouds. Nemaeus worked his way deeper into the garden, hardly noticing the sword’s crackling growing in intensity. The drake was missing, but among the ruined columns and towering oaks he could make out the sound of flowing water, pulling him ever onward.
The drake had no name, unlike many of its antecedents. This wasn’t particularly surprising - it had had no-one to give it one. The hero in this telling of the tale didn’t belong. He had skipped straight to the climax, and far too early at that; though that did not reduce the burning hatred the beast felt for him and his cursed sword. Each telling the dragon had lost, slain by the noble soul chosen by the sword. This drake was no different – doomed to fail and fall to its death as countless others had before it.
That was if this had been an orthodox telling of the tale. But this hero was foreign, and through his presence and failure to follow the narrative he had done the impossible.
He had given the drake a chance.
Tria deliberated as she stumbled forward, the clouded sky casting the ruins in a grim light. She was supposed to be in a fight to the death with these six other… people, yet so far just one out of the three she’d met had been obviously hostile. Nemaeus had helped her. If anything, he seemed about as confused about the whole thing as she was. She couldn’t rule out that that had been an act, but his words had felt genuine.
She’d been proven wrong time and again about the kindness of strangers, so what made this guy any different? Why did she think he was worth risking her life to follow?
I’ll figure that out when I catch up with him.
Was she really still naïve enough to believe someone would help her without an ulterior motive?
As she began to ascend inside the tower she’d glimpsed Nemaeus enter, she was surprised to realize that the answer was yes.
The source of the water was nearby, though curiously the vegetation seemed to be thinning out as Nemaeus drew closer and closer to what had to be the center of the rooftop garden. A large ring of fluted columns loomed out of the dim surroundings. Walking toward one of the wide gaps between them, Nemaeus found his gaze drawn upwards, discerning that they supported an overgrown roof far above. His eyes were still glued to the ceiling as he entered the massive gazebo, making the sudden splash his shoe made when he walked down into the lightly flooded floor of the structure all the more surprising. His eyes jerked down to stare at the source of the pool: an ancient fountain whose lowest tier had begun to crack, allowing a trickle of water to escape.
The drake wrapped around the fountain stared straight back.
It had felt him approach, the burning flames in the back of its throat swelling in anticipation, yet it made no move to ambush the hero. He might have been an interloper, an anomaly, but the drake was still bound – and a surprise attack at this juncture simply wasn’t how the story went. So it waited, contenting itself with thoughts of roasting flesh. His arrival was understated, as if he didn’t know that this was the place where he would encounter his nemesis, and that their final battle would ensue. The drake did not care. It stared at the hero, waiting for its cue.
Nemaeus slipped, almost falling face-first into the water at the sight of the drake. The thing was looking straight at him, but not moving from its perch. It was almost as if it was waiting for Nemaeus to do something.
Well if it wanted him to do something, he could oblige. Locking eyes with it, he threw all his charm at the drake, hoping against hope that it was less resilient than that fucking aardvark as he began talking.
“Alright big guy, just sit tight while I come on over. We’re going to have a nice talk, you and I.”
The drake slowly swayed in time with Nemaeus’ steps. Making his way through the pool of water and up the fountain without breaking eye contact took some effort, but Nemaeus eventually found himself face to face with the beast. It was still captivated.
“Okay now… stretch your neck out for me, nice and easy,” he muttered, slowly raising the sword in a two-handed grip. It was radiant with blue lightning, the crackling almost drowning out his words.
Nemaeus could hardly believe his luck when the drake complied, leaning forward to give Nemaeus a clean shot at beheading it. This was too easy.
He swung down the blade.
Blinding white light
deafening thunder
the jarring crack of the sword bouncing off, flying out of his grip
the drake’s tail whipping about, clipping him as it roared
flying through the air
landing as the roof collap-
Silence.
As she trudged up what felt like the fifty-thousandth stair that day, Tria wished she hadn’t spent half her time in this new universe clambering up and down fire escapes. At least these stairs were carved stone, as opposed to the torturously steep metal on Hoofstad.
The tower was wrapped in an eerie calm, save for the wind whistling through its narrow windows. She caught glimpses of the sky as she passed them – glimpses she’d soon start ignoring as the clouds refused to stop roiling ominously.
Some calm before the storm. Can’t the weather just make up its mi-.
Light streamed in through every window of the tower, followed by a thunderclap that nearly sent her flying. Several heartbeats passed without the stairs collapsing under her, spurring Tria to resume marching up. She’d nearly reached the roof, and whatever was going on up there certainly wasn’t peaceful.
Nemaeus opened his eyes, surprised to find that he hadn’t been reduced to charcoal yet. His back felt like a tenderized steak, but he was alive. Slowly pushing himself up against the column he’d landed on, his hand stopped as something cut into it. He looked down to find that piece of shit sword, stuck in the column about a foot from where his head had been resting. It didn’t seem very coincidental.
He cut it free using the Kyprian claw, cursing his decision to not just try to cut the drake’s head off with that instead. Sword in one hand, claw in the other he wondered why he’d let himself get caught up in the drama.
Hadn’t he come up here to get it all over with? Why was he acting as if he wanted to win this fight?
...
Was there even a fight left to lose?
He glanced back to where the fountain had stood. It was now buried under what had once been the gazebo’s roof, an avalanche in which his chances of survival would have been slim. Seemed the drake had saved him with that pat on the back. The beast itself hadn’t been so lucky, as various limbs sticking out from under the rubble attested.
Then they began to move.
The drake did not know what foul magic the man had used to immobilize it, just that it hated him all the more for it. What he had done had been unnatural, wrong, but fit well enough with the concept of the hero challenging it that it felt freed from its restraints. Flexing its wings, it prepared to take to the sky - finding moments later that they would not respond. It screamed, flames melting stone as it bucked against the rubble weighing it down.
As soon as it was free, he would pay.
Nemaeus found himself sprinting towards where he remembered the stairwell ending. Once the first jet of dragon breath had erupted from the rubble to ignite the nearby foliage, he’d found his instincts were rather opposed to the idea of being incinerated. Nothing like the peace he’d found in that second of free-fall awaited him in front of that drake, only searing pain.
So he vaulted waist-high roots, dodging from wall to column, all the while aware of the creeping fire behind him. The drake had managed to free itself; that much was obvious. He’d hoped the overgrown garden would keep it from taking off or chasing too effectively, but it wouldn't be doing much to shield him once reduced to a smoking crater.
If the stairs aren't in this direction...
No, that didn't bear thinking about.
She took the stairs three at a time now. Tria had heard the dragon roar, and mindlessly charging forward was the only way she could keep herself from sprinting back down the stairs instead. As much as she was terrified of – better not to think about it – if Nemaeus was up there with that dragon he needed the pelt much more than she did. Not getting it to him would be as good as killing him. The events in the pyramid had been awful enough; she wouldn’t allow herself to have Nemaeus’ death on her conscience as well. She skidded past yet another landing, barely noticing the vines that had started to appear as she flew up the stairs.
He could see the edge of the tower, the sky beyond still draped with churning clouds that refused to deliver on their promise of rain. The garden around Nemaeus was an inferno, flames brushing him as he ran past trees reduced to pillars of fire, the ground a mess of burning roots and vines.
He burst out of purgatory into the outer ring of the rooftop, leaning his head through the metal fence surrounding the tower’s edge to catch a few smoke-free breaths. A short wall and the biting wind out here were functioning as a temporary firebreak, though Nemaeus didn’t see that lasting long. As soon as the wind changed this refuge would be engulfed in flames, and he wasn’t keen to stick around for that. A few dozen feet away he could see the entrance to the stairwell, and after a final deep breath Nemaeus went for it.
At which point the drake come crashing out of the flames, knocking over part of the wall and landing right in front of Nemaeus. It looked crazed, almost rabid, and far beyond any sort of compulsion he could hope to lay on it. That trick wasn’t going to work twice. He noticed the sword in his hand was crackling with lightning once more, and considered just tossing the thing off the tower in the moments before his imminent incineration. The blade put on a good show, but for all that it had failed abysmally. The claw in his other hand felt comfortable, reliable.
Ironic. The Counsellor had whisked him from a death he desired, only to send him to one he wanted no part of. He looked up from his weapons to see the drake inhaling. All thoughts of escape fled as he froze. Whether in fear or acquiescence, the result would be just the same.
Back again. The city lights in the distance, a dark night sky hanging above. Hands rough from fashioning the noose, adjusting it one last time. The breeze gently shakes the curtains, his suit and pelt wrapped around him, a part of him. The coarse rope like a dull razor. One last breath. A light kick.
The drake began to exhale.
One second of freedom. Such a small thing, yet it feels like all the time in the world. No debts, no worries, no orders. Just him, his suit, his pelt, his life in freefall.
I’m sorry.
His head cracked against the cobblestone path, throwing Nemaeus out of his reverie. He could hear the dragon’s breath rushing past him, the air around him ablaze. He hadn’t thought he'd lose his sense of pain that quickly, but that was just as well. If he was that far gone it was far better than the alternative. Lying back, he waited for the end.
Death refused to claim him.
He opened his eyes, expecting the dragon’s maw, only to see the wolf’s jaw staring scornfully back at him.
Behind it the drake’s mouth yawned wide, flames temporarily extinguished. He moved on instinct, arm snapping to extend, sword piercing deep into the soft tissue within. Light. Noise.
The drake crashed to the side, scales still crackling with an unearthly blue energy. As his senses slowly returned, Nemaeus realized he was weighed down by more than just his pelt. He flipped the wolf’s jaw back to find Tria lying on top of him, hands locked in a death grip on the sides of the fur. She raised her eyes to his, quite obviously petrified and exhausted by what she’d just done.
Nemaeus quickly considered and discarded the idea of persuading her that she wasn’t scared or tired, that she could stand up and run down the stairs with him. Somehow she’d fought her way up here, and twisting that into something more immediately beneficial would be sickening. Instead he scooped her up as he stood, throwing the pelt around his shoulders and rushing between the gleaming black corpse and the conflagration it had started to reach the stairs.
They were about halfway down the tower before Tria spoke, her voice barely audible.
“You were right about that thing” she croaked, nodding at the pelt.
Then her eyes rolled back in her head and she fell into welcoming darkness.
Nemaeus walked up the spiraling staircase, his sword's crackling breaking the silence between his footsteps. The tower was much larger than it had first seemed, giving him plenty of time to think. He still wasn’t sure what he expected to find, much less do once he finished climbing - there was no guarantee the drake would even get close enough for the sword to touch it. Even if it did, without the pelt’s protection Nemaeus would be hard-pressed to find an opening large enough to swing at it. One wrong step and he’d be ashes.
Well, beating the odds is what a hero’s supposed to do, isn’t it? I’ve just got to get in character.
He shook his head wryly. Despite his best efforts fate had seen fit to cast him in this role; all that was left was to play it out. At least he cut a dashing figure in his pinstripe suit, mythical sword in hand - a murderer seeking redemption at the peak of an ancient ruin. Details mattered. This was a story, after all.
Tria sat on the ground, watching Nemaeus walk away. She wanted to say something, thank him for the pelt, say anything. All she managed was to shrink further into the fur’s embrace, shivering as the dragon’s roars slowly faded from her immediate surroundings.
The wall the dragon’s fire had brushed earlier was slightly warm to the touch as Tria leaned against it. She wasn’t sure when she’d found the strength to stand, much less move in the direction Nemaeus had gone. He wasn’t lying about the protection the pelt afforded – she’d seen that much for herself. So why had he given it to her? Why had he left? And what was up with his eyes?
Just what is that guy’s deal?
Nemaeus reached the top of the spire, clambering across some particularly enterprising plants that had encroached upon the stairwell. He found himself in an overgrown tower garden, trees and ruins interspersed with avenues now covered in all manner of vines and vegetation. Thick gray blanketed the sky, the deep blue he’d started his ascent with now banished by billowing clouds. Nemaeus worked his way deeper into the garden, hardly noticing the sword’s crackling growing in intensity. The drake was missing, but among the ruined columns and towering oaks he could make out the sound of flowing water, pulling him ever onward.
The drake had no name, unlike many of its antecedents. This wasn’t particularly surprising - it had had no-one to give it one. The hero in this telling of the tale didn’t belong. He had skipped straight to the climax, and far too early at that; though that did not reduce the burning hatred the beast felt for him and his cursed sword. Each telling the dragon had lost, slain by the noble soul chosen by the sword. This drake was no different – doomed to fail and fall to its death as countless others had before it.
That was if this had been an orthodox telling of the tale. But this hero was foreign, and through his presence and failure to follow the narrative he had done the impossible.
He had given the drake a chance.
Tria deliberated as she stumbled forward, the clouded sky casting the ruins in a grim light. She was supposed to be in a fight to the death with these six other… people, yet so far just one out of the three she’d met had been obviously hostile. Nemaeus had helped her. If anything, he seemed about as confused about the whole thing as she was. She couldn’t rule out that that had been an act, but his words had felt genuine.
She’d been proven wrong time and again about the kindness of strangers, so what made this guy any different? Why did she think he was worth risking her life to follow?
I’ll figure that out when I catch up with him.
Was she really still naïve enough to believe someone would help her without an ulterior motive?
As she began to ascend inside the tower she’d glimpsed Nemaeus enter, she was surprised to realize that the answer was yes.
The source of the water was nearby, though curiously the vegetation seemed to be thinning out as Nemaeus drew closer and closer to what had to be the center of the rooftop garden. A large ring of fluted columns loomed out of the dim surroundings. Walking toward one of the wide gaps between them, Nemaeus found his gaze drawn upwards, discerning that they supported an overgrown roof far above. His eyes were still glued to the ceiling as he entered the massive gazebo, making the sudden splash his shoe made when he walked down into the lightly flooded floor of the structure all the more surprising. His eyes jerked down to stare at the source of the pool: an ancient fountain whose lowest tier had begun to crack, allowing a trickle of water to escape.
The drake wrapped around the fountain stared straight back.
It had felt him approach, the burning flames in the back of its throat swelling in anticipation, yet it made no move to ambush the hero. He might have been an interloper, an anomaly, but the drake was still bound – and a surprise attack at this juncture simply wasn’t how the story went. So it waited, contenting itself with thoughts of roasting flesh. His arrival was understated, as if he didn’t know that this was the place where he would encounter his nemesis, and that their final battle would ensue. The drake did not care. It stared at the hero, waiting for its cue.
Nemaeus slipped, almost falling face-first into the water at the sight of the drake. The thing was looking straight at him, but not moving from its perch. It was almost as if it was waiting for Nemaeus to do something.
Well if it wanted him to do something, he could oblige. Locking eyes with it, he threw all his charm at the drake, hoping against hope that it was less resilient than that fucking aardvark as he began talking.
“Alright big guy, just sit tight while I come on over. We’re going to have a nice talk, you and I.”
The drake slowly swayed in time with Nemaeus’ steps. Making his way through the pool of water and up the fountain without breaking eye contact took some effort, but Nemaeus eventually found himself face to face with the beast. It was still captivated.
“Okay now… stretch your neck out for me, nice and easy,” he muttered, slowly raising the sword in a two-handed grip. It was radiant with blue lightning, the crackling almost drowning out his words.
Nemaeus could hardly believe his luck when the drake complied, leaning forward to give Nemaeus a clean shot at beheading it. This was too easy.
He swung down the blade.
Blinding white light
deafening thunder
the jarring crack of the sword bouncing off, flying out of his grip
the drake’s tail whipping about, clipping him as it roared
flying through the air
landing as the roof collap-
Silence.
As she trudged up what felt like the fifty-thousandth stair that day, Tria wished she hadn’t spent half her time in this new universe clambering up and down fire escapes. At least these stairs were carved stone, as opposed to the torturously steep metal on Hoofstad.
The tower was wrapped in an eerie calm, save for the wind whistling through its narrow windows. She caught glimpses of the sky as she passed them – glimpses she’d soon start ignoring as the clouds refused to stop roiling ominously.
Some calm before the storm. Can’t the weather just make up its mi-.
Light streamed in through every window of the tower, followed by a thunderclap that nearly sent her flying. Several heartbeats passed without the stairs collapsing under her, spurring Tria to resume marching up. She’d nearly reached the roof, and whatever was going on up there certainly wasn’t peaceful.
Nemaeus opened his eyes, surprised to find that he hadn’t been reduced to charcoal yet. His back felt like a tenderized steak, but he was alive. Slowly pushing himself up against the column he’d landed on, his hand stopped as something cut into it. He looked down to find that piece of shit sword, stuck in the column about a foot from where his head had been resting. It didn’t seem very coincidental.
He cut it free using the Kyprian claw, cursing his decision to not just try to cut the drake’s head off with that instead. Sword in one hand, claw in the other he wondered why he’d let himself get caught up in the drama.
Hadn’t he come up here to get it all over with? Why was he acting as if he wanted to win this fight?
...
Was there even a fight left to lose?
He glanced back to where the fountain had stood. It was now buried under what had once been the gazebo’s roof, an avalanche in which his chances of survival would have been slim. Seemed the drake had saved him with that pat on the back. The beast itself hadn’t been so lucky, as various limbs sticking out from under the rubble attested.
Then they began to move.
The drake did not know what foul magic the man had used to immobilize it, just that it hated him all the more for it. What he had done had been unnatural, wrong, but fit well enough with the concept of the hero challenging it that it felt freed from its restraints. Flexing its wings, it prepared to take to the sky - finding moments later that they would not respond. It screamed, flames melting stone as it bucked against the rubble weighing it down.
As soon as it was free, he would pay.
Nemaeus found himself sprinting towards where he remembered the stairwell ending. Once the first jet of dragon breath had erupted from the rubble to ignite the nearby foliage, he’d found his instincts were rather opposed to the idea of being incinerated. Nothing like the peace he’d found in that second of free-fall awaited him in front of that drake, only searing pain.
So he vaulted waist-high roots, dodging from wall to column, all the while aware of the creeping fire behind him. The drake had managed to free itself; that much was obvious. He’d hoped the overgrown garden would keep it from taking off or chasing too effectively, but it wouldn't be doing much to shield him once reduced to a smoking crater.
If the stairs aren't in this direction...
No, that didn't bear thinking about.
She took the stairs three at a time now. Tria had heard the dragon roar, and mindlessly charging forward was the only way she could keep herself from sprinting back down the stairs instead. As much as she was terrified of – better not to think about it – if Nemaeus was up there with that dragon he needed the pelt much more than she did. Not getting it to him would be as good as killing him. The events in the pyramid had been awful enough; she wouldn’t allow herself to have Nemaeus’ death on her conscience as well. She skidded past yet another landing, barely noticing the vines that had started to appear as she flew up the stairs.
He could see the edge of the tower, the sky beyond still draped with churning clouds that refused to deliver on their promise of rain. The garden around Nemaeus was an inferno, flames brushing him as he ran past trees reduced to pillars of fire, the ground a mess of burning roots and vines.
He burst out of purgatory into the outer ring of the rooftop, leaning his head through the metal fence surrounding the tower’s edge to catch a few smoke-free breaths. A short wall and the biting wind out here were functioning as a temporary firebreak, though Nemaeus didn’t see that lasting long. As soon as the wind changed this refuge would be engulfed in flames, and he wasn’t keen to stick around for that. A few dozen feet away he could see the entrance to the stairwell, and after a final deep breath Nemaeus went for it.
At which point the drake come crashing out of the flames, knocking over part of the wall and landing right in front of Nemaeus. It looked crazed, almost rabid, and far beyond any sort of compulsion he could hope to lay on it. That trick wasn’t going to work twice. He noticed the sword in his hand was crackling with lightning once more, and considered just tossing the thing off the tower in the moments before his imminent incineration. The blade put on a good show, but for all that it had failed abysmally. The claw in his other hand felt comfortable, reliable.
Ironic. The Counsellor had whisked him from a death he desired, only to send him to one he wanted no part of. He looked up from his weapons to see the drake inhaling. All thoughts of escape fled as he froze. Whether in fear or acquiescence, the result would be just the same.
Back again. The city lights in the distance, a dark night sky hanging above. Hands rough from fashioning the noose, adjusting it one last time. The breeze gently shakes the curtains, his suit and pelt wrapped around him, a part of him. The coarse rope like a dull razor. One last breath. A light kick.
The drake began to exhale.
One second of freedom. Such a small thing, yet it feels like all the time in the world. No debts, no worries, no orders. Just him, his suit, his pelt, his life in freefall.
I’m sorry.
His head cracked against the cobblestone path, throwing Nemaeus out of his reverie. He could hear the dragon’s breath rushing past him, the air around him ablaze. He hadn’t thought he'd lose his sense of pain that quickly, but that was just as well. If he was that far gone it was far better than the alternative. Lying back, he waited for the end.
Death refused to claim him.
He opened his eyes, expecting the dragon’s maw, only to see the wolf’s jaw staring scornfully back at him.
Behind it the drake’s mouth yawned wide, flames temporarily extinguished. He moved on instinct, arm snapping to extend, sword piercing deep into the soft tissue within. Light. Noise.
The drake crashed to the side, scales still crackling with an unearthly blue energy. As his senses slowly returned, Nemaeus realized he was weighed down by more than just his pelt. He flipped the wolf’s jaw back to find Tria lying on top of him, hands locked in a death grip on the sides of the fur. She raised her eyes to his, quite obviously petrified and exhausted by what she’d just done.
Nemaeus quickly considered and discarded the idea of persuading her that she wasn’t scared or tired, that she could stand up and run down the stairs with him. Somehow she’d fought her way up here, and twisting that into something more immediately beneficial would be sickening. Instead he scooped her up as he stood, throwing the pelt around his shoulders and rushing between the gleaming black corpse and the conflagration it had started to reach the stairs.
They were about halfway down the tower before Tria spoke, her voice barely audible.
“You were right about that thing” she croaked, nodding at the pelt.
Then her eyes rolled back in her head and she fell into welcoming darkness.