Re: The Wretched Rite - Round One - The Rose Ring
10-01-2011, 03:38 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.
Once upon a time there was a sweet innocent girl who wanted nothing more in the whole world than to share her stories with others. She found a nice little town full of colourful characters and she wrote them delightful tales which they all thoroughly enjoyed. They were all like 'man your stories are so great I wish we could have storytime all the time and not have to deal with reality at all', and since the girl was so good and kind she obliged them. All was good in the town and it could have and should have ended there, but unfortunately for everyone involved it did not.
One otherwise unremarkable day a group of nine intruding bastards wandered into the town seemingly intent upon ruining the happiness she had brought to the people of this peaceful city. She tried to be kind and include them in her stories, but they just made a mess of things, reducing her finely crafted plots to abject nonsense. Yet others would not be deterred, so determined they were to eradicate her stories that they forced the people of the town back to reality.
The people of the town were all 'hey narrator lady these guys are bothering us, is there anything you can do about it?' and the girl begrudgingly agreed to kill all of the intruders. As the intruders awoke from their sleep they felt something strange, a compulsion guiding them towards the library, and if they stopped and checked themselves somewhere on their body they would find a marking, a red circle with a rose inside.
--------
Slowly the town awoke from their confused sleep. If they had noticed the contestants amongst them, it might very well have caused something of a panic, or at the very least some difficult questions. However most of the population of the town were already panicking, whether it was over the fact that a large chunk of the town was rather unexpectedly on fire, or because of the dragon circling lazily in the skies overhead. The newcomers were by and large unnoticed.
One person who was unable to ignore them was Red, after waking from the longest and deepest sleep a girl should ever go through she found herself on the floor of her bedroom. A weirdo lavender lady and another lady dripping wet with long scraggly hair were in her bed, in the middle of doing something that she instinctively knew she shouldn't be exposed to at such a young age. Her awakening had not gone unnoticed, they had paused and were staring at her.
"Beat it kid." Adelaide snapped.
Red didn't need telling twice, without a word she fled down the stairs to the castle proper, she would do the sensible thing: find a grown up and tell them that there were strangers being inappropriate in her room.
---------
Vera quickly dismissed the crazy dream she had had as nothing more than a crazy dream. She knew she was blessed by fate, the very notion that she could be defeated was preposterous. The town was much busier than it had been. Here and there were people (she guessed they were people, they were the same approximate shape as people) rushing through the town which had previously seemed so empty. Though surprised, Vera was not particuarly interested. They weren't her fated enemies, they weren't her problem. She opted to ignore the strange creatures.
She felt some kind of pull, drawing her inexorably towards some unknown destination. Vera was quick to assume it was the hand of fate, guiding her to where she was supposed to be. So, she happily headed off in that direction, and she would have followed it all the way to the library had she not noticed the majestic beast flying high over the town.
For the first time since being snatched into this battle her attention was diverted from her potential fate. Dragons were an alien concept to a tsote, their literature being so focused around fate and the acceptance or denial thereof that most of their mythical creatures had some tie in to a person's fate. For example in tsote literature vampires drank the fates of their victims, and for this reason were a little more picky in who they attacked.
This... thing, Vera struggled for words to adequately describe the dragon, was something else entirely. To bring down a creature like this would be amazing. Her fate would always be waiting for her, but this might be the one opportunity she had to kill such a creature. She knew instantly that she had to take it. The dangers involved in fighting such a creature never even crossed her mind. Fate wouldn't let her lose, not while she still had her destiny to fulfil.
She drew her pistol, took careful aim and fired upon the creature. The dragon roared, spewing forth an angry plume of flame as it did so, and descended towards the arrogant tsote. Vera slid her gun back into its holster, unsheathed her razorwhip and grinned.
--------
Adelaide and Alice were forced to cut things short as they heard the sound of heavy footsteps echoing up the spiral staircase. There was an awkward moment, mainly on Alice's side, as they disengaged from one another. Alice scrambled around pulling her clothes back on, managing to make herself decent as a pair of royal guards stormed into the room, flanked by Red. The guards (a pair of anthropomorphic ravens) were dressed in polished plate armour and wielded a pair of halberds. They looked somewhat anachronistic standing next to a bulletin board full of crayon drawings.
"Explain yourselves." One guard demanded, swinging his halberd around in what was probably a threatening manner, he hadn't actually had to do this before, he wasn't sure what the correct procedure was. "Who are you and what are you doing in here?"
Adelaide peeled herself from the bed that was now soggy with grimy water and walked over to Alice. "We were jus' enjoying ourselves, not that it's any of yer goddamned business." She draped one arm over Alice's shoulder and continued: "S'not 'gainst the law las' time I checked." Grimy water dripped down Alice's back, pooling on the cold stone floor at her feet.
The more confident of the two guards strode towards the pair, his halberd raised threateningly. "Nobody likes a smart arse." He retorted. "Cooperate and we'll try and keep the number of 'unfortunate accidents' to a minimum." Adelaide rolled her eyes.
"Fuck you." Alice snapped, or at least started to. Suddenly the ground dropped out beneath her as she and Adelaide plunged into an expanse of murky water stretching out in all directions. She flailed around desperately trying to find which way was up, when Adelaide snatched her hand and pulled her to the surface.
Alice pulled herself out of the water, to find herself back in the streets climbing out of a puddle. In their absence things had become rather a lot more active. People were running around panicking, or those who were more level headed were forming a bucket chain from the river to put out the blazing inferno.
Alice looked down at her clothing, already ragged and stained now also soaking wet and clinging tightly to her skin. "Thanks for that." she muttered.
"Yea well, don' expect it agin." Adelaide responded. She and Alice both found themselves looking towards a nearby building, the library, as though some indefinable force was drawing them towards it.
"I fuckin' knew it." Alice spat. "It's fuckin' fate after all. It always is." She felt a little bit foolish believing that this whole thing was some crazy story and that she'd get to go home for kissing some brat of a princess. It was always fuckin' fate.
She turned to look at Adelaide, whose gaze remained affixed upon the library. It was a little bit awkward now, not that it hadn't been before. It wasn't that it hadn't been good, she just felt embarrassed, letting herself go, being as intimate as it was possible to be with a perfect stranger.
Alice started towards the library, figuring it was about time to give whatever agent of fate had brought her here a piece of her mind. She turned to Adelaide and asked "You coming?" Part of her hoped that the answer was no.
Once upon a time there was a sweet innocent girl who wanted nothing more in the whole world than to share her stories with others. She found a nice little town full of colourful characters and she wrote them delightful tales which they all thoroughly enjoyed. They were all like 'man your stories are so great I wish we could have storytime all the time and not have to deal with reality at all', and since the girl was so good and kind she obliged them. All was good in the town and it could have and should have ended there, but unfortunately for everyone involved it did not.
One otherwise unremarkable day a group of nine intruding bastards wandered into the town seemingly intent upon ruining the happiness she had brought to the people of this peaceful city. She tried to be kind and include them in her stories, but they just made a mess of things, reducing her finely crafted plots to abject nonsense. Yet others would not be deterred, so determined they were to eradicate her stories that they forced the people of the town back to reality.
The people of the town were all 'hey narrator lady these guys are bothering us, is there anything you can do about it?' and the girl begrudgingly agreed to kill all of the intruders. As the intruders awoke from their sleep they felt something strange, a compulsion guiding them towards the library, and if they stopped and checked themselves somewhere on their body they would find a marking, a red circle with a rose inside.
--------
Slowly the town awoke from their confused sleep. If they had noticed the contestants amongst them, it might very well have caused something of a panic, or at the very least some difficult questions. However most of the population of the town were already panicking, whether it was over the fact that a large chunk of the town was rather unexpectedly on fire, or because of the dragon circling lazily in the skies overhead. The newcomers were by and large unnoticed.
One person who was unable to ignore them was Red, after waking from the longest and deepest sleep a girl should ever go through she found herself on the floor of her bedroom. A weirdo lavender lady and another lady dripping wet with long scraggly hair were in her bed, in the middle of doing something that she instinctively knew she shouldn't be exposed to at such a young age. Her awakening had not gone unnoticed, they had paused and were staring at her.
"Beat it kid." Adelaide snapped.
Red didn't need telling twice, without a word she fled down the stairs to the castle proper, she would do the sensible thing: find a grown up and tell them that there were strangers being inappropriate in her room.
---------
Vera quickly dismissed the crazy dream she had had as nothing more than a crazy dream. She knew she was blessed by fate, the very notion that she could be defeated was preposterous. The town was much busier than it had been. Here and there were people (she guessed they were people, they were the same approximate shape as people) rushing through the town which had previously seemed so empty. Though surprised, Vera was not particuarly interested. They weren't her fated enemies, they weren't her problem. She opted to ignore the strange creatures.
She felt some kind of pull, drawing her inexorably towards some unknown destination. Vera was quick to assume it was the hand of fate, guiding her to where she was supposed to be. So, she happily headed off in that direction, and she would have followed it all the way to the library had she not noticed the majestic beast flying high over the town.
For the first time since being snatched into this battle her attention was diverted from her potential fate. Dragons were an alien concept to a tsote, their literature being so focused around fate and the acceptance or denial thereof that most of their mythical creatures had some tie in to a person's fate. For example in tsote literature vampires drank the fates of their victims, and for this reason were a little more picky in who they attacked.
This... thing, Vera struggled for words to adequately describe the dragon, was something else entirely. To bring down a creature like this would be amazing. Her fate would always be waiting for her, but this might be the one opportunity she had to kill such a creature. She knew instantly that she had to take it. The dangers involved in fighting such a creature never even crossed her mind. Fate wouldn't let her lose, not while she still had her destiny to fulfil.
She drew her pistol, took careful aim and fired upon the creature. The dragon roared, spewing forth an angry plume of flame as it did so, and descended towards the arrogant tsote. Vera slid her gun back into its holster, unsheathed her razorwhip and grinned.
--------
Adelaide and Alice were forced to cut things short as they heard the sound of heavy footsteps echoing up the spiral staircase. There was an awkward moment, mainly on Alice's side, as they disengaged from one another. Alice scrambled around pulling her clothes back on, managing to make herself decent as a pair of royal guards stormed into the room, flanked by Red. The guards (a pair of anthropomorphic ravens) were dressed in polished plate armour and wielded a pair of halberds. They looked somewhat anachronistic standing next to a bulletin board full of crayon drawings.
"Explain yourselves." One guard demanded, swinging his halberd around in what was probably a threatening manner, he hadn't actually had to do this before, he wasn't sure what the correct procedure was. "Who are you and what are you doing in here?"
Adelaide peeled herself from the bed that was now soggy with grimy water and walked over to Alice. "We were jus' enjoying ourselves, not that it's any of yer goddamned business." She draped one arm over Alice's shoulder and continued: "S'not 'gainst the law las' time I checked." Grimy water dripped down Alice's back, pooling on the cold stone floor at her feet.
The more confident of the two guards strode towards the pair, his halberd raised threateningly. "Nobody likes a smart arse." He retorted. "Cooperate and we'll try and keep the number of 'unfortunate accidents' to a minimum." Adelaide rolled her eyes.
"Fuck you." Alice snapped, or at least started to. Suddenly the ground dropped out beneath her as she and Adelaide plunged into an expanse of murky water stretching out in all directions. She flailed around desperately trying to find which way was up, when Adelaide snatched her hand and pulled her to the surface.
Alice pulled herself out of the water, to find herself back in the streets climbing out of a puddle. In their absence things had become rather a lot more active. People were running around panicking, or those who were more level headed were forming a bucket chain from the river to put out the blazing inferno.
Alice looked down at her clothing, already ragged and stained now also soaking wet and clinging tightly to her skin. "Thanks for that." she muttered.
"Yea well, don' expect it agin." Adelaide responded. She and Alice both found themselves looking towards a nearby building, the library, as though some indefinable force was drawing them towards it.
"I fuckin' knew it." Alice spat. "It's fuckin' fate after all. It always is." She felt a little bit foolish believing that this whole thing was some crazy story and that she'd get to go home for kissing some brat of a princess. It was always fuckin' fate.
She turned to look at Adelaide, whose gaze remained affixed upon the library. It was a little bit awkward now, not that it hadn't been before. It wasn't that it hadn't been good, she just felt embarrassed, letting herself go, being as intimate as it was possible to be with a perfect stranger.
Alice started towards the library, figuring it was about time to give whatever agent of fate had brought her here a piece of her mind. She turned to Adelaide and asked "You coming?" Part of her hoped that the answer was no.
Heaven Help Us | Make Room!!!! | I'm Not Okay (I Promise)
Hang 'Em High | The Only Hope For Me Is You | Zero Percent | Early Sunsets Over Monroeville | DESTROYA | Demolition Lovers | To The End
Surrender The Night | Disenchanted | The Ghost Of You | Party Poison | Vampires Will Never Hurt You | The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You
Hang 'Em High | The Only Hope For Me Is You | Zero Percent | Early Sunsets Over Monroeville | DESTROYA | Demolition Lovers | To The End
Surrender The Night | Disenchanted | The Ghost Of You | Party Poison | Vampires Will Never Hurt You | The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You