Re: The Vivacious Deadlock: S3G6: Round Three: The Sable Masque
04-28-2012, 06:14 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.
Cascala leaned against a wall, the flounces of her once-again redesigned garments making it rather difficult to do so comfortably. What the hell had happened to her? What had she been thinking? With her staff once again firmly in her hand and not a musical instrument at all, it was hard to remember anything about whatever "song" she'd spent so long gibbering about and serving. It was like...
Well, it was like trying to remember her mindset when she'd been a vampire. Or an evil, weather-controlling scientist. Things that had been so clear and obvious then were just muddled half-thoughts now, memories of memories of insanity. Why had she been so changed with each round? Hadn't a lifetime of mental training and iron-hard psychic fortitude prepared her to resist exactly that sort of mental dominance?
But then, maybe it wasn't mental dominance. Maybe it was just the setting inserting itself into the empty spots in her head. She was becoming a different person with each different place she went because she wasn't a person at all. Who was "Cascala"? Her entire life had been lived as a title. She wasn't a woman – strong, proud, or otherwise. She was just a human-shaped concept, a weapon cultivated by uncaring wizards to combat a threat that had existed before she had. She wasn't in the battle: she was the battle. What had the Spectator said to her? It felt so long ago now, though it couldn't have been. It felt as though she'd lived a dozen lives since those words, possibly because she had. And none of them had been hers.
She spared a desultory glance for the new finery she'd been bedecked in. It was of course lavish, an ocean of glittering and flowing cyans and ultramarines with cream and daisy accents. She was as heavy with jewelry as ever, and could even recognize many of her own pieces in among the throng of glittering baubles that seemed to have been brought into being with the express purpose of adorning her. The garments themselves were astonishingly light and smooth for their bulk; their cut and style reminded her vaguely of Ephiberean fashion. The entire ensemble was certainly much more overstated and large than any Bellizhi artisan would ever have crafted. Even her burns from the first confrontation with Ivan had been neatly bandaged in what felt like weightless moonsilk and covered in demurely long sleeves. She was wearing a mask, too, but naturally she couldn't see what it looked like.
It was all beautiful. Transcendentally so, even. She'd grown up royalty in the wealthiest nation in her world, and even she'd never worn such finery. For all that through her childhood – and even her adulthood – the only vice, the only bit of indivuduality she'd ever had had been her primping vanity, she hated it all. Every masterfully-invisible stitch, every decadent thread painstakingly assembled by a supernaturally-gifted artisan into textiles that should have been worth ten times their weight in magesteel... All of it quietly whispered to her that she was nothing more than a doll to be dressed and redressed and sent on fantastical adventures with no more say in the matter than a literal toy would have. There was no personality under the layers of shimmering blue that wrapped around her, and there was no expectation that there should be.
She slid down to the floor, skirts somehow gracefully bending and folding to avoid unsightly wrinkles during a battle to the death. Her chin hit her chest, and she struggled not to sniffle like a child. If only Gesperi could see her now. He'd always said flow was the wrong school for the prophecy when he thought she couldn't hear, and often when he knew she could. She'd bend and yield too easily, wouldn't she? And he'd been right. Minutes into each new place and she'd been replaced by a cackling madwoman or a grinning idiot. She thought back to her encounter in the alleys of Genre City, back to exsanguinating two men without a second thought. Where had that gone? Why had it been so easy for her to lose the one piece of identity she truly had? Why hadn't she killed Harmon the instant they ran into each other? Some nonsense of singing and sense of obligation to a world that was not hers, both borne of the plane itself.
Well, that was it. No more flow, no more fitting into the shape of the container she was poured into. She would be as hard as ice and as unforgiving as a storm. No more would she let the trivialities of each new place she was put seep into her and change her very being. Maybe she wasn't a real person, but she didn't have to be a golem either, and she damn sure wasn't going to let anyone or anyplace else put more words in her head. She was going to–
"My, my, what could a lovely lady such as yourself be doing all alone in a quiet little nook like this? And looking like someone just told you you were about to be graded zircon no less?"
An elegantly-manicured hand, glistening with jewelry and rimmed with sumptuous violet cuffs, materialized in front of her.
"This is a happy occasion, and it just doesn't do to be seen like this."
Cascala grabbed the hand and let herself be hoisted upwards. She came face to face with an eagle-masked man grinning beneath his beak.
"Come on, let me show you how to have a little fun at this kind of party. You wouldn't want to end up like the one-eyed old witch that got dragged out by the Moppets, would you?"
---
As Phere had been kicking and screaming her way through the halls of the Resplendent Palace and Cascala had been devolving into another existential crisis, three men had been sitting in a darkened back room around a faintly-glowing tabletop. There were several flashes of brighter light across the object of their attentions, and one of the men grunted in surprise.
"Surely they wouldn't be so blunt? There's not even a trace of aura-concealment."
One of the others shrugged. "They obviously wanted us to notice these ones. It's a cover for whoever they're actually sending in of course."
The first one cocked an eyebrow. "Yes, but they'd know we'd figure it out if they were that obvious about it. You don't think it's a double-bluff? Make us focus on finding the hidden ones so we miss what the obvious ones are doing? Nobody ports this crudely."
The third finally cut in. "It's not our job to decipher their plans, merely to react to what we find. By trying to overthink our observations, we allow them to influence us."
There was silence for a beat before he continued, somewhat less somberly. "Besides, it's probably just some half-trained Talent or an Unpolished peasant trying to crash the party for some liquor and entertainment. Look, one of them's already being shown the door, and all we've got in the Amethyst wing is rank-3 Moppets."
The other two hmmed in unison.
"I suppose you're right. I'll send a few Tireless Men in to keep an eye on them, but it's probably best not to overreact."
The third clapped him gently on the back. "Good man. You'll get the hang of this yet. Send out a dispatch and let the diviners know we're up to red, but don't worry too much."
The second nodded, still looking slightly nervous. "Besides, it's not like the Kings are defenseless without us."
A grim expression crossed the three faces simultaneously. They all knew that well enough.
Cascala leaned against a wall, the flounces of her once-again redesigned garments making it rather difficult to do so comfortably. What the hell had happened to her? What had she been thinking? With her staff once again firmly in her hand and not a musical instrument at all, it was hard to remember anything about whatever "song" she'd spent so long gibbering about and serving. It was like...
Well, it was like trying to remember her mindset when she'd been a vampire. Or an evil, weather-controlling scientist. Things that had been so clear and obvious then were just muddled half-thoughts now, memories of memories of insanity. Why had she been so changed with each round? Hadn't a lifetime of mental training and iron-hard psychic fortitude prepared her to resist exactly that sort of mental dominance?
But then, maybe it wasn't mental dominance. Maybe it was just the setting inserting itself into the empty spots in her head. She was becoming a different person with each different place she went because she wasn't a person at all. Who was "Cascala"? Her entire life had been lived as a title. She wasn't a woman – strong, proud, or otherwise. She was just a human-shaped concept, a weapon cultivated by uncaring wizards to combat a threat that had existed before she had. She wasn't in the battle: she was the battle. What had the Spectator said to her? It felt so long ago now, though it couldn't have been. It felt as though she'd lived a dozen lives since those words, possibly because she had. And none of them had been hers.
She spared a desultory glance for the new finery she'd been bedecked in. It was of course lavish, an ocean of glittering and flowing cyans and ultramarines with cream and daisy accents. She was as heavy with jewelry as ever, and could even recognize many of her own pieces in among the throng of glittering baubles that seemed to have been brought into being with the express purpose of adorning her. The garments themselves were astonishingly light and smooth for their bulk; their cut and style reminded her vaguely of Ephiberean fashion. The entire ensemble was certainly much more overstated and large than any Bellizhi artisan would ever have crafted. Even her burns from the first confrontation with Ivan had been neatly bandaged in what felt like weightless moonsilk and covered in demurely long sleeves. She was wearing a mask, too, but naturally she couldn't see what it looked like.
It was all beautiful. Transcendentally so, even. She'd grown up royalty in the wealthiest nation in her world, and even she'd never worn such finery. For all that through her childhood – and even her adulthood – the only vice, the only bit of indivuduality she'd ever had had been her primping vanity, she hated it all. Every masterfully-invisible stitch, every decadent thread painstakingly assembled by a supernaturally-gifted artisan into textiles that should have been worth ten times their weight in magesteel... All of it quietly whispered to her that she was nothing more than a doll to be dressed and redressed and sent on fantastical adventures with no more say in the matter than a literal toy would have. There was no personality under the layers of shimmering blue that wrapped around her, and there was no expectation that there should be.
She slid down to the floor, skirts somehow gracefully bending and folding to avoid unsightly wrinkles during a battle to the death. Her chin hit her chest, and she struggled not to sniffle like a child. If only Gesperi could see her now. He'd always said flow was the wrong school for the prophecy when he thought she couldn't hear, and often when he knew she could. She'd bend and yield too easily, wouldn't she? And he'd been right. Minutes into each new place and she'd been replaced by a cackling madwoman or a grinning idiot. She thought back to her encounter in the alleys of Genre City, back to exsanguinating two men without a second thought. Where had that gone? Why had it been so easy for her to lose the one piece of identity she truly had? Why hadn't she killed Harmon the instant they ran into each other? Some nonsense of singing and sense of obligation to a world that was not hers, both borne of the plane itself.
Well, that was it. No more flow, no more fitting into the shape of the container she was poured into. She would be as hard as ice and as unforgiving as a storm. No more would she let the trivialities of each new place she was put seep into her and change her very being. Maybe she wasn't a real person, but she didn't have to be a golem either, and she damn sure wasn't going to let anyone or anyplace else put more words in her head. She was going to–
"My, my, what could a lovely lady such as yourself be doing all alone in a quiet little nook like this? And looking like someone just told you you were about to be graded zircon no less?"
An elegantly-manicured hand, glistening with jewelry and rimmed with sumptuous violet cuffs, materialized in front of her.
"This is a happy occasion, and it just doesn't do to be seen like this."
Cascala grabbed the hand and let herself be hoisted upwards. She came face to face with an eagle-masked man grinning beneath his beak.
"Come on, let me show you how to have a little fun at this kind of party. You wouldn't want to end up like the one-eyed old witch that got dragged out by the Moppets, would you?"
---
As Phere had been kicking and screaming her way through the halls of the Resplendent Palace and Cascala had been devolving into another existential crisis, three men had been sitting in a darkened back room around a faintly-glowing tabletop. There were several flashes of brighter light across the object of their attentions, and one of the men grunted in surprise.
"Surely they wouldn't be so blunt? There's not even a trace of aura-concealment."
One of the others shrugged. "They obviously wanted us to notice these ones. It's a cover for whoever they're actually sending in of course."
The first one cocked an eyebrow. "Yes, but they'd know we'd figure it out if they were that obvious about it. You don't think it's a double-bluff? Make us focus on finding the hidden ones so we miss what the obvious ones are doing? Nobody ports this crudely."
The third finally cut in. "It's not our job to decipher their plans, merely to react to what we find. By trying to overthink our observations, we allow them to influence us."
There was silence for a beat before he continued, somewhat less somberly. "Besides, it's probably just some half-trained Talent or an Unpolished peasant trying to crash the party for some liquor and entertainment. Look, one of them's already being shown the door, and all we've got in the Amethyst wing is rank-3 Moppets."
The other two hmmed in unison.
"I suppose you're right. I'll send a few Tireless Men in to keep an eye on them, but it's probably best not to overreact."
The third clapped him gently on the back. "Good man. You'll get the hang of this yet. Send out a dispatch and let the diviners know we're up to red, but don't worry too much."
The second nodded, still looking slightly nervous. "Besides, it's not like the Kings are defenseless without us."
A grim expression crossed the three faces simultaneously. They all knew that well enough.