Re: The Vivacious Deadlock: S3G6: Signups End the 28th! RUN WHILE YOU STILL CAN
05-29-2011, 03:24 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by engineclock.
The eight contestants were suddenly and painfully aware that they were no longer anywhere near what they had previously been able to call home.
Each was seated stiffly in an oddly curved white chair that they did their best to convince themselves wasn’t moving slightly, paralyzed into identical positions of attentiveness. A few of those gathered tried to cry out in rage or fear, but their throats would not move except to draw breath. They were helpless to do anything but stare at the figure standing in the middle of the ring of chairs, smiling at them with a polite expression of mild fascination.
The Spectator was once again possessed of a massive pair of wings; they nestled on top of what could have been a brilliant red gown if it wasn’t expanding and contracting in a way that strongly suggested shallow breathing. Her hair was pinned somewhat erratically to the back of her head and in an attempt to be less distracting was only slightly occupied with tying itself in knots. She clapped her hands in delight, baring her teeth at the eight unfortunates before her.
“My doves of war,” she laughed, bowing so that her wings fanned out and fluttered inches from the pale floor, “Welcome to life.”
She swayed upright and gestured to the walls and ceiling of the room. The contestants, no matter how unwilling they might have been, had no choice but to look on helplessly and respond with varying levels of horror and discomfort as thousands of eyes stared back, blinking curiously. Occasionally one would flicker with an image of some alien perspective before clearing and returning to reflecting the faces below. Someone in the lineup swallowed noisily.
“My eyes have seen every fiber of the worlds you spawned from and countless more besides. I have called eight of you away, stolen you from the fates to which you would have been otherwise inevitably bound, to participate in something greater than each of you could hope to achieve individually. You will all become part of something that transcends even the beauty of your already fragile existences…You, my doves, will perform a sacrifice to the highest cause any of us could aspire to.” Her face, or what could be seen of it, took on an expression that was almost mournful. “Life… itself.”
She let her hand drop and the contestants’ heads snapped back to her in unison. Slowly she began to thread her way in between them, twisting to gaze into each of their faces through no readily apparent means. “I envy you, my sparrows. All of you. Does this surprise you?... It may. It could not be blamed, I suppose… There are so many things that even eyes cannot see...”
“Understand that I have no life like the kind that burns so brilliantly inside every one of you. My blood and my bones are only shadows on shadows; they are nothing compared to what even the weakest of you possesses. Not since I first came into being from the lifeless form of one much older and greater than I have I ever had to fear for my survival. I no longer know what it means fight for one’s life, to acknowledge that any moment one’s existence could be so cruelly torn away by another in a single, terrible instant… Such was the price I paid. I was given no choice. I envy you indeed, my doves.”
She reached the first contestant, a blonde, heavily armored man accompanied by an oversized sword. She collapsed onto his lap with some pretense of elegance, sweeping her wings backwards and hitting him squarely in the face. Ignorant or uncaring as to his look of stunned horror, she called out to the rest, “And so I have selected each of you from among the countless lives my eyes have observed in their quest to find the perfect sacrifices. There are no mistakes. You are all here to fulfill your purposes; you are here to do what I never could…”
She draped an arm around the man’s shoulders, pretending not to notice that her hair was busily tangling itself in his. “This champion here I do not expect any of you will recognize, though in his land his name is the seed of legends. Sir Cedric the valiant, the noble, the just, the bringer of vengeance to the wicked and those who would dare bring a sword down on the neck of a king… so might he have been more if I had not called for him. A god of war favors Cedric above all others, or so it’s said. Fire and steel. Watch this one, my doves.”
The Spectator twisted away from Cedric, drawing her wings back and leaving a spray of feathers behind her. She danced over to the chair next to him, occupied by a small cat-like being marked by odd splotches of color.
“This fragile beauty we will refer to for the sake of convenience as Merrifield, but what are names to us? Perhaps you won’t understand. Little Merrifield, so marvelously alive she can twist life itself with her biokinesis, and given proper circumstance, can even create it.” Her wings quivered and the Spectator sighed sadly. “Not a fighter, our pretty Merrifield, though she’s far from defenseless. I’ll leave it to you to discover what wonders she’ll work. But if this charmer cannot be called a warrior, neither can our next: the relentless Doctor Melissa Harmon.” She swept sideways, fanning a wing out over Merrifield as she passed and slowing to circle around a slender woman with an odd-looking machine held tightly in her lap.
“Were you aware of one another’s existences before I brought you here? Were you aware of mine? Doctor Harmon was, I expect, somewhat closer than most of you to discovering what lay beyond the boundaries of her own already infinite universe, and so to realizing such things… it could be said that she has already succeeded. There are stranger things then even I lying in wait for what our Doctor can do for them. I wouldn’t wait for such an occurrence to step lightly around her, though…”
The Spectator drifted past Harmon, smiling blankly, and moved on to a vaguely human-shaped shadowy figure with baleful red eyes. “If must we speak of strange things then I suppose our next guest must be mentioned. Such a little anomaly, this one. What can be said of something not truly alive, yet still blessed with the gift of death? Your trust in him goes on its own unsteady legs. I don’t think in this case that names have even their negligible weight, do they?...” Her head dipped towards the motionless Cog and her hair swirled downwards to hide her face; she said something the other contestants couldn’t quite hear and brushed past him abruptly without further comment.
An unremarkable young man sat patiently in the next chair, singular in that he alone was watching the approaching Grandmaster with an inquisitive expression. She bowed slightly in front of him, back arched and wings half extended, and grinned. “Ivan Norst, sparrows. Nothing so impressive to look at as some of you others, but what faith have we in only shapes?” She laughed. “Ivan the brilliant. No stranger to subtlety and force, no few things to hide. I’d caution you against deciding him worthless so early on. He might prove interesting, though I won’t ruin anything further for him or you.”
Digging into the next chair in the circle with a motley collection of claws was what could be described as a triple-headed hydra, bearing a variety of colors and gently twitching limbs. The Spectator circled it unhurriedly, briefly resting a hand on the darkest of its heads. It glared at her furiously from underneath her fingers.
“Most of you I imagine would shy away from the chance to merge your bodies with those of others, even for what good could be gained… likewise, so was this delicate wonder reluctant at first to undergo the process that formed them into the shape you see before you. But Nalzaki, for want of a better name, is all the better for it. These three heads all contain separate beings, though their body may not indicate as such. The fierce Razaran, the just Nalyg, the clever Kanpeki. Marvelous, don’t you think…?” The edges of her dress drew back in discomfort as she wound around them, trailing a finger down their central spine. “They’re something like a king in their world of origin. Naturally I couldn’t resist having them.”
She approached the next contestant more slowly, turning her head in a show of curiosity. The edges of her gown gathered around her and splintered into a host of needle-like legs that clicked on the floor quietly, rippling like a millipede’s.
“Neither could I deny calling away the fine creature you see before you, the Grand Magus Cascala bint Ondun al-Bellizhi. Her shivering empire told of the day we could meet, didn’t it?...” The Spectator leaned down and gently held Cascala’s face in her hands, lowering her voice to barely above a whisper. “Did they foresee this, my dove? Are you prepared as the others are not for what must be done? Do you know what I risk in your place, what your world asks of you for your sacrifice? You were made for me, little Magus. You are mine as none of these others could ever be…”
She broke off and swayed upwards, releasing Cascala and letting the woman fall back into her chair. Another laugh rattled somewhere in her throat. “But not of all you were so fortunate to be forewarned. This last of my eight for all her wisdom didn’t see me coming, though compared to all else this is a petty oversight, I think.”
She drifted behind the last chair, upon which a regal woman in an ornate gown was seated. Her expression was one of contempt and rage, and she managed to twitch a corner of her mouth downward in disgust as the Spectator’s dress slithered near her foot. “The grand Empress Phere, the far-seeing queen. Isn’t she beautiful, my sparrows, my starlings? Her eyes reach nearly as far as a single one of mine, a weaker one, though it’s more than enough to serve her purposes, such as they are. I can’t imagine you’ll be able to hide much from her. Why would you? Such stunning eyes. I’ve no little hopes for our bitter Empress, biased as that may be. So it goes.”
The winged Grandmaster turned her back on Phere as the legs of her gown began to swell in size, shuddering in a wave from front to back as they gained a metallic glare and formed a circle of glittering talons. “But of course I have the right to pick my favorites, my doves, my sacred sacrifices. I am the Spectator. Who is going to complain if my eyes prefer the path of one to another? I imagine you might if you are not one of the ones I take to. What else could be expected…?” The legs directly in front of her grew claws and snapped with a harsh clanking sound. “Even so, my doves. You and I are interwoven now as intimately as any beings can be; my shoulders are the ones to carry your fates, my hands are the ones guiding yours…”
She pointed upwards once more even as the countless eyes covering the ceiling and walls blinked simultaneously, reopening to reveal that each now reflected a miniscule part of a much larger scene. A city loomed dizzyingly above the ringed contestants, the image occasionally disrupted as an odd eye shivered and readjusted its view. The carpet of eyes was silent, but as a man was stabbed in the throat and bled to death just before a cluster of them in the lower-right corner it became apparent that the city they depicted was far from peaceful.
“Such a beautiful place…”
The eyes swiveled as one to pan upwards against the city skyline, revealing very few tall buildings other than the odd skyscraper or two. A dusky smog choked what could be seen of the air and sunk down to the streets, where it spread and obscured the doors and windows on the level of the unkempt pavement.
“But I’m afraid it’s somewhat past its time.”
The city blacked out and was replaced a second later by a disturbingly clear view of an ominous-looking book lying placidly on a featureless surface. A key-like symbol was visible on its cover, though it was partially obscured by the clearly lifeless hand sprawled across it. As the eight below watched, a somewhat more lively hand knocked the first away roughly, and was joined by a matching one as an unseen newcomer snatched the book out of view.
“The Tome you have just seen until very recently belonged to the leader of the Savvy, the most powerful coterie in a city already overrun by such coalitions and divided by constant infighting… tragically her life was cut short just now by some unknown assassin, in spite of her protestations. Her death will mean the total collapse of the already fragile coexistence of the numerous warring factions and perhaps even the destruction of the city itself. Such is life, my doves. I can place no blame on another destroyer and have no wish to do so. But this is not our concern, not at the moment, no. My starlings, my sparrows, your goal here is that Tome.
“Through its own mechanisms, the details of which are unnecessary to what you must accomplish, this strange and wondrous artifact has the ability to shift its surroundings to an entirely different method of vision, and thus, reality. The layers of perception it strips away to do so can affect everything from your bodies to your minds to the nature of your souls themselves…” The Spectator was laughing again, half with joy and half with excitement, her wings rolling in their sockets. “I have watched this city for so long, my doves. I will bring you to the critical moment of its crashing glory and you will all play a part in its slow and magnificent death. Oh, I envy you, sparrows, though I have said so much already…”
“You will find the Tome with the one who has so wrongfully taken it, and you will seize it for yourselves and silence them once more. The artifacts that give the Tome its power can be found scattered across the city with the lieutenants of the Savvy and the members of the now-seething others. All will be chaos, doves. The city is at war. It is perhaps worth mentioning that I will recall you only when one of you is dead by the hands of the other seven or the knives of the city itself. The one who holds the book at this time will earn a small favor from myself; the one who dies may find themselves in the same position.
“I wish you luck, my sacrifices. Die your beautiful deaths in my name and yours.”
There was the sound of wings beating, and the eight contestants were gone.
________________
“Very nice, if I may be allowed to comment.”
The Spectator collapsed on one of the now-vacant chairs, nestling in her own feathers. She grinned over at Crowe, who was rapidly appearing from what had previously been empty air. “You’d lie about your own name to humor me, I think. I thought it was a bit flashy, to be honest.”
Crowe smirked. “You, flashy? I shudder to think.”
“Oh shove off, why don’t you, it was just starting to get quiet in here.”
________________
The eight contestants were suddenly and painfully aware that they were no longer anywhere near what they had previously been able to call home.
Each was seated stiffly in an oddly curved white chair that they did their best to convince themselves wasn’t moving slightly, paralyzed into identical positions of attentiveness. A few of those gathered tried to cry out in rage or fear, but their throats would not move except to draw breath. They were helpless to do anything but stare at the figure standing in the middle of the ring of chairs, smiling at them with a polite expression of mild fascination.
The Spectator was once again possessed of a massive pair of wings; they nestled on top of what could have been a brilliant red gown if it wasn’t expanding and contracting in a way that strongly suggested shallow breathing. Her hair was pinned somewhat erratically to the back of her head and in an attempt to be less distracting was only slightly occupied with tying itself in knots. She clapped her hands in delight, baring her teeth at the eight unfortunates before her.
“My doves of war,” she laughed, bowing so that her wings fanned out and fluttered inches from the pale floor, “Welcome to life.”
She swayed upright and gestured to the walls and ceiling of the room. The contestants, no matter how unwilling they might have been, had no choice but to look on helplessly and respond with varying levels of horror and discomfort as thousands of eyes stared back, blinking curiously. Occasionally one would flicker with an image of some alien perspective before clearing and returning to reflecting the faces below. Someone in the lineup swallowed noisily.
“My eyes have seen every fiber of the worlds you spawned from and countless more besides. I have called eight of you away, stolen you from the fates to which you would have been otherwise inevitably bound, to participate in something greater than each of you could hope to achieve individually. You will all become part of something that transcends even the beauty of your already fragile existences…You, my doves, will perform a sacrifice to the highest cause any of us could aspire to.” Her face, or what could be seen of it, took on an expression that was almost mournful. “Life… itself.”
She let her hand drop and the contestants’ heads snapped back to her in unison. Slowly she began to thread her way in between them, twisting to gaze into each of their faces through no readily apparent means. “I envy you, my sparrows. All of you. Does this surprise you?... It may. It could not be blamed, I suppose… There are so many things that even eyes cannot see...”
“Understand that I have no life like the kind that burns so brilliantly inside every one of you. My blood and my bones are only shadows on shadows; they are nothing compared to what even the weakest of you possesses. Not since I first came into being from the lifeless form of one much older and greater than I have I ever had to fear for my survival. I no longer know what it means fight for one’s life, to acknowledge that any moment one’s existence could be so cruelly torn away by another in a single, terrible instant… Such was the price I paid. I was given no choice. I envy you indeed, my doves.”
She reached the first contestant, a blonde, heavily armored man accompanied by an oversized sword. She collapsed onto his lap with some pretense of elegance, sweeping her wings backwards and hitting him squarely in the face. Ignorant or uncaring as to his look of stunned horror, she called out to the rest, “And so I have selected each of you from among the countless lives my eyes have observed in their quest to find the perfect sacrifices. There are no mistakes. You are all here to fulfill your purposes; you are here to do what I never could…”
She draped an arm around the man’s shoulders, pretending not to notice that her hair was busily tangling itself in his. “This champion here I do not expect any of you will recognize, though in his land his name is the seed of legends. Sir Cedric the valiant, the noble, the just, the bringer of vengeance to the wicked and those who would dare bring a sword down on the neck of a king… so might he have been more if I had not called for him. A god of war favors Cedric above all others, or so it’s said. Fire and steel. Watch this one, my doves.”
The Spectator twisted away from Cedric, drawing her wings back and leaving a spray of feathers behind her. She danced over to the chair next to him, occupied by a small cat-like being marked by odd splotches of color.
“This fragile beauty we will refer to for the sake of convenience as Merrifield, but what are names to us? Perhaps you won’t understand. Little Merrifield, so marvelously alive she can twist life itself with her biokinesis, and given proper circumstance, can even create it.” Her wings quivered and the Spectator sighed sadly. “Not a fighter, our pretty Merrifield, though she’s far from defenseless. I’ll leave it to you to discover what wonders she’ll work. But if this charmer cannot be called a warrior, neither can our next: the relentless Doctor Melissa Harmon.” She swept sideways, fanning a wing out over Merrifield as she passed and slowing to circle around a slender woman with an odd-looking machine held tightly in her lap.
“Were you aware of one another’s existences before I brought you here? Were you aware of mine? Doctor Harmon was, I expect, somewhat closer than most of you to discovering what lay beyond the boundaries of her own already infinite universe, and so to realizing such things… it could be said that she has already succeeded. There are stranger things then even I lying in wait for what our Doctor can do for them. I wouldn’t wait for such an occurrence to step lightly around her, though…”
The Spectator drifted past Harmon, smiling blankly, and moved on to a vaguely human-shaped shadowy figure with baleful red eyes. “If must we speak of strange things then I suppose our next guest must be mentioned. Such a little anomaly, this one. What can be said of something not truly alive, yet still blessed with the gift of death? Your trust in him goes on its own unsteady legs. I don’t think in this case that names have even their negligible weight, do they?...” Her head dipped towards the motionless Cog and her hair swirled downwards to hide her face; she said something the other contestants couldn’t quite hear and brushed past him abruptly without further comment.
An unremarkable young man sat patiently in the next chair, singular in that he alone was watching the approaching Grandmaster with an inquisitive expression. She bowed slightly in front of him, back arched and wings half extended, and grinned. “Ivan Norst, sparrows. Nothing so impressive to look at as some of you others, but what faith have we in only shapes?” She laughed. “Ivan the brilliant. No stranger to subtlety and force, no few things to hide. I’d caution you against deciding him worthless so early on. He might prove interesting, though I won’t ruin anything further for him or you.”
Digging into the next chair in the circle with a motley collection of claws was what could be described as a triple-headed hydra, bearing a variety of colors and gently twitching limbs. The Spectator circled it unhurriedly, briefly resting a hand on the darkest of its heads. It glared at her furiously from underneath her fingers.
“Most of you I imagine would shy away from the chance to merge your bodies with those of others, even for what good could be gained… likewise, so was this delicate wonder reluctant at first to undergo the process that formed them into the shape you see before you. But Nalzaki, for want of a better name, is all the better for it. These three heads all contain separate beings, though their body may not indicate as such. The fierce Razaran, the just Nalyg, the clever Kanpeki. Marvelous, don’t you think…?” The edges of her dress drew back in discomfort as she wound around them, trailing a finger down their central spine. “They’re something like a king in their world of origin. Naturally I couldn’t resist having them.”
She approached the next contestant more slowly, turning her head in a show of curiosity. The edges of her gown gathered around her and splintered into a host of needle-like legs that clicked on the floor quietly, rippling like a millipede’s.
“Neither could I deny calling away the fine creature you see before you, the Grand Magus Cascala bint Ondun al-Bellizhi. Her shivering empire told of the day we could meet, didn’t it?...” The Spectator leaned down and gently held Cascala’s face in her hands, lowering her voice to barely above a whisper. “Did they foresee this, my dove? Are you prepared as the others are not for what must be done? Do you know what I risk in your place, what your world asks of you for your sacrifice? You were made for me, little Magus. You are mine as none of these others could ever be…”
She broke off and swayed upwards, releasing Cascala and letting the woman fall back into her chair. Another laugh rattled somewhere in her throat. “But not of all you were so fortunate to be forewarned. This last of my eight for all her wisdom didn’t see me coming, though compared to all else this is a petty oversight, I think.”
She drifted behind the last chair, upon which a regal woman in an ornate gown was seated. Her expression was one of contempt and rage, and she managed to twitch a corner of her mouth downward in disgust as the Spectator’s dress slithered near her foot. “The grand Empress Phere, the far-seeing queen. Isn’t she beautiful, my sparrows, my starlings? Her eyes reach nearly as far as a single one of mine, a weaker one, though it’s more than enough to serve her purposes, such as they are. I can’t imagine you’ll be able to hide much from her. Why would you? Such stunning eyes. I’ve no little hopes for our bitter Empress, biased as that may be. So it goes.”
The winged Grandmaster turned her back on Phere as the legs of her gown began to swell in size, shuddering in a wave from front to back as they gained a metallic glare and formed a circle of glittering talons. “But of course I have the right to pick my favorites, my doves, my sacred sacrifices. I am the Spectator. Who is going to complain if my eyes prefer the path of one to another? I imagine you might if you are not one of the ones I take to. What else could be expected…?” The legs directly in front of her grew claws and snapped with a harsh clanking sound. “Even so, my doves. You and I are interwoven now as intimately as any beings can be; my shoulders are the ones to carry your fates, my hands are the ones guiding yours…”
She pointed upwards once more even as the countless eyes covering the ceiling and walls blinked simultaneously, reopening to reveal that each now reflected a miniscule part of a much larger scene. A city loomed dizzyingly above the ringed contestants, the image occasionally disrupted as an odd eye shivered and readjusted its view. The carpet of eyes was silent, but as a man was stabbed in the throat and bled to death just before a cluster of them in the lower-right corner it became apparent that the city they depicted was far from peaceful.
“Such a beautiful place…”
The eyes swiveled as one to pan upwards against the city skyline, revealing very few tall buildings other than the odd skyscraper or two. A dusky smog choked what could be seen of the air and sunk down to the streets, where it spread and obscured the doors and windows on the level of the unkempt pavement.
“But I’m afraid it’s somewhat past its time.”
The city blacked out and was replaced a second later by a disturbingly clear view of an ominous-looking book lying placidly on a featureless surface. A key-like symbol was visible on its cover, though it was partially obscured by the clearly lifeless hand sprawled across it. As the eight below watched, a somewhat more lively hand knocked the first away roughly, and was joined by a matching one as an unseen newcomer snatched the book out of view.
“The Tome you have just seen until very recently belonged to the leader of the Savvy, the most powerful coterie in a city already overrun by such coalitions and divided by constant infighting… tragically her life was cut short just now by some unknown assassin, in spite of her protestations. Her death will mean the total collapse of the already fragile coexistence of the numerous warring factions and perhaps even the destruction of the city itself. Such is life, my doves. I can place no blame on another destroyer and have no wish to do so. But this is not our concern, not at the moment, no. My starlings, my sparrows, your goal here is that Tome.
“Through its own mechanisms, the details of which are unnecessary to what you must accomplish, this strange and wondrous artifact has the ability to shift its surroundings to an entirely different method of vision, and thus, reality. The layers of perception it strips away to do so can affect everything from your bodies to your minds to the nature of your souls themselves…” The Spectator was laughing again, half with joy and half with excitement, her wings rolling in their sockets. “I have watched this city for so long, my doves. I will bring you to the critical moment of its crashing glory and you will all play a part in its slow and magnificent death. Oh, I envy you, sparrows, though I have said so much already…”
“You will find the Tome with the one who has so wrongfully taken it, and you will seize it for yourselves and silence them once more. The artifacts that give the Tome its power can be found scattered across the city with the lieutenants of the Savvy and the members of the now-seething others. All will be chaos, doves. The city is at war. It is perhaps worth mentioning that I will recall you only when one of you is dead by the hands of the other seven or the knives of the city itself. The one who holds the book at this time will earn a small favor from myself; the one who dies may find themselves in the same position.
“I wish you luck, my sacrifices. Die your beautiful deaths in my name and yours.”
There was the sound of wings beating, and the eight contestants were gone.
________________
“Very nice, if I may be allowed to comment.”
The Spectator collapsed on one of the now-vacant chairs, nestling in her own feathers. She grinned over at Crowe, who was rapidly appearing from what had previously been empty air. “You’d lie about your own name to humor me, I think. I thought it was a bit flashy, to be honest.”
Crowe smirked. “You, flashy? I shudder to think.”
“Oh shove off, why don’t you, it was just starting to get quiet in here.”
________________