Re: The Wretched Rite - Round Two - Inferno Alpha
02-20-2012, 11:09 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by MrGuy.
“A rather disdainful-looking mechanical man is slouched in a wicker chair, clutching a fistful of syringes and seriously considering stabbing himself through the central processing unit simply so someone else can take over the horrid monotony of his job. Then a flying mouse shows up—sorry, sorry, tell me if you’ve heard this one before.”
Poran slowly opened his eyes, and upon seeing the person who’d just delivered this little soliloquy—not only as large as everyone else in this strange little contest, he noted, but almost certainly even more so; coated in a shimmering silver skin, as if it were reflecting the light of Yamara, the third moon; and gently flexing his five-jointed index finger back and forth by his piercingly red eye, the sort of eye that tells you that your life and everything you’ve accomplished during it is nothing at all, and… hmm, I had best write this down before I forget it. Withdrawing the pen from his pouch, he began frantically writing down a description of the strange creature on a nearby stack of scrap, only for his path to suddenly be blocked by a very large syringe thrust into the paper.
“Sorry, mousey-boy, but there’ll be no writing. That might be a respite, and if you get to do nice things down here, we might as well put you up with the virtuous pagans! Though confidentially, most of them probably belong in the Seventh Circle, Sub-Section Three. You know pagans!” He paused for a moment, waiting for his joke to register; upon realizing it had fallen flat, the red glow of his eyes dulled slightly, and he closed them halfway. “Look, just sit still and let me stab you with one of these things, alright? Don’t worry; it’ll hurt me more than it hurts you. I tell you, this job is torture!”
Poran, at least, had enough context for this joke to laugh briefly before realizing that the man was searching through a very expansive portfolio of very large needles, which he had made it rather clear the Leskrin would be stabbed with in short order. A quick glance through a window of the little office they were in revealed quite a host of people with rotting or missing limbs, large boils, horrible scarring and rashes, the occasional open sore, and a multitude of swollen eyes and lips. I do wish I had noticed that earlier, he thought.
“Hmm… black plague, no, pretty sure rats can’t contact that. Leprosy? Well, as far as I know that’ll do, but I like to save that one for later… ooh! What’s this here?” He looked very closely at the label for a particular syringe; Poran took the opportunity to flit over to an air vent as quietly as he could, gently mumbling the words to an autobiographical ode he’d written so as to conjure up an image of himself. “Typhoid-like disease in mice, ah, that will be a great start!” In a flash, the robot whipped the syringe out, plunged it into the illusion, and began pumping out the contents. Within seconds, the pooling fluid on his desk made it clear that something was off, but by this point Poran was already off into the air vent.
He quickly realized that perhaps a better escape route was available, as the vents were—above all else—extremely hot. He managed to get about five meters across and two meters up (after a vertical junction) before his wings burst suddenly into flame, at which point he began frantically blowing on them in an attempt to extinguish them. This did little to help the situation, and in fact worsened it as he had a great deal of trouble continuing to maintain a proper trajectory. He managed to escape through another vent quickly enough that, after rolling around in the dirt, he was able to put out his wings before substantial damage could occur to them. Relieved, he flitted back into the air (if somewhat unsteadily), only to swoop down again to avoid a sword that promptly embedded itself in the wall behind him.
The creature who had swung it at him, and who almost immediately removed it from the wall and readied it for another slash, reminded Poran a bit of the syringe fellow. This one, however, was even larger, carried (in addition to the sword) a very large gun (which Poran did not recognize as such, due to his society not possessing them, but which he certainly recognized as a Very Dangerous Thing if only by instinct), sported a very large pair of horns, and stared him down with not two but six bright red eyes. Poran smiled uncomfortably at him, and at the five identical robots who soon joined him.
“I don’t suppose you gentlemen would be interested in a song?”
The answer was—rather predictably, Poran supposed—several more sword thrusts, one of which hacked off the tip of the Leskrin’s tail. Annoyed and terrified in equal parts, he quickly began playing his harp as quickly as he could, surrounding the area around him with various lights and patterns; the robots, confused at the sudden burst of visual input, were stalled long enough for him to dart off.
What he saw was, as one might expect, rather disgusting. Various piles of corpses were being methodically hacked to bits; if one had looked inside the robots’ programming, one would have seen an intricate partially-randomized subroutine determining the order of separation. As soon as the head was removed from the torso—consistently the final part—a new, identical copy of the body would slowly materialize that the process would begin a new. The result of this was that the floor was carpeted in flesh, blood and the occasional bone, and Poran—caught between finding the most poetic way to describe the carnage and simply preventing himself from fainting or vomiting at the sheer sight—nearly slammed into one of the tormenters before catching himself and swerving away.
At this point, the robots chasing him, while used to prey that was often more complacent, generally slower, and universally a larger target, decided that the best tool for this particular job was their sidearms, usually used to give a bit of variety to the torture so that it would stay fresh, exhausting and excruciating. They pulled them out and began to fire in the bard’s direction; his continued illusions allowed him to keep avoiding the shots, but he realized it wouldn’t be long before they either got lucky or he ran out of steam. Realizing this, he briefly considered escaping through the vents again, before the singed wings returned to his mind with a flash of pain as he made a particularly sharp turn.
I’m going to die if I keep this up, he thought to himself, and if, as surely as I will, I do die, I’d rather it at least be a quick event and spare my fellow combatants the pain, but then again that would be setting a terrible example for The Unborn and I do feel like I was no help in preventing the state it’s in at the moment—such a terrible thing, it truly must be avoided—but on the other hand, oh dear, what is there for me to do? I suppose I could attempt to shoot them, as large as they are, and briefly putting away his harp while shouting an ancient ballad at the top of his lungs, he fired several shots in the androids’ direction, only to see every one of them rebound harmlessly with a ping, at which point he promptly replaced his bow and went back to playing music. So that won’t work, his train of thought continued, and with that in mind I suppose I could simply sequester myself in some corner of those metal corridors and frantically compose poetry until I burn to ashes. If nothing else, that would be a spectacular death, and hopefully The Unborn would learn something from my dedication to the art, and oh dear I’m about to run into one of them again. With this, he swooped beneath a tormenter’s legs, and this is when something lucky (but also likely, given what he was doing) occurred:
The robots chasing him fired several more blasts from their shotguns, which tore into the otherwise-occupied tormenter; his circuitry sufficiently damaged, he quickly slammed to the ground.
At this, Poran suddenly smiled, for now he realized that he could survive, if lucky. Just like the ballad of Drefi, he thought to himself, the key to victory will be in using the enemy’s arms. After a few more moments of fleeing, he nodded, and then did a sudden U-turn, swooped downward beneath his pursuers, then swooped up above them, and then began swerving around in circles at every angle he could manage. Playing his harp as rapidly and energetically as possible, to further confuse them with image after image, he breathed a sigh of relief as they quickly began shooting and slashing in such a frantic and disorganized manner that they managed to make short work of each other. Eventually, only two of the robots chasing him remained, and both of them were in such sorry shape that he was quite confident they would not be much of a threat. Satisfied, he flitted to the ground, quickly scribbled out a rather clumsy sonnet praising himself, and squirmed into one of the fallen androids’ empty eye sockets for a rest.
“A rather disdainful-looking mechanical man is slouched in a wicker chair, clutching a fistful of syringes and seriously considering stabbing himself through the central processing unit simply so someone else can take over the horrid monotony of his job. Then a flying mouse shows up—sorry, sorry, tell me if you’ve heard this one before.”
Poran slowly opened his eyes, and upon seeing the person who’d just delivered this little soliloquy—not only as large as everyone else in this strange little contest, he noted, but almost certainly even more so; coated in a shimmering silver skin, as if it were reflecting the light of Yamara, the third moon; and gently flexing his five-jointed index finger back and forth by his piercingly red eye, the sort of eye that tells you that your life and everything you’ve accomplished during it is nothing at all, and… hmm, I had best write this down before I forget it. Withdrawing the pen from his pouch, he began frantically writing down a description of the strange creature on a nearby stack of scrap, only for his path to suddenly be blocked by a very large syringe thrust into the paper.
“Sorry, mousey-boy, but there’ll be no writing. That might be a respite, and if you get to do nice things down here, we might as well put you up with the virtuous pagans! Though confidentially, most of them probably belong in the Seventh Circle, Sub-Section Three. You know pagans!” He paused for a moment, waiting for his joke to register; upon realizing it had fallen flat, the red glow of his eyes dulled slightly, and he closed them halfway. “Look, just sit still and let me stab you with one of these things, alright? Don’t worry; it’ll hurt me more than it hurts you. I tell you, this job is torture!”
Poran, at least, had enough context for this joke to laugh briefly before realizing that the man was searching through a very expansive portfolio of very large needles, which he had made it rather clear the Leskrin would be stabbed with in short order. A quick glance through a window of the little office they were in revealed quite a host of people with rotting or missing limbs, large boils, horrible scarring and rashes, the occasional open sore, and a multitude of swollen eyes and lips. I do wish I had noticed that earlier, he thought.
“Hmm… black plague, no, pretty sure rats can’t contact that. Leprosy? Well, as far as I know that’ll do, but I like to save that one for later… ooh! What’s this here?” He looked very closely at the label for a particular syringe; Poran took the opportunity to flit over to an air vent as quietly as he could, gently mumbling the words to an autobiographical ode he’d written so as to conjure up an image of himself. “Typhoid-like disease in mice, ah, that will be a great start!” In a flash, the robot whipped the syringe out, plunged it into the illusion, and began pumping out the contents. Within seconds, the pooling fluid on his desk made it clear that something was off, but by this point Poran was already off into the air vent.
He quickly realized that perhaps a better escape route was available, as the vents were—above all else—extremely hot. He managed to get about five meters across and two meters up (after a vertical junction) before his wings burst suddenly into flame, at which point he began frantically blowing on them in an attempt to extinguish them. This did little to help the situation, and in fact worsened it as he had a great deal of trouble continuing to maintain a proper trajectory. He managed to escape through another vent quickly enough that, after rolling around in the dirt, he was able to put out his wings before substantial damage could occur to them. Relieved, he flitted back into the air (if somewhat unsteadily), only to swoop down again to avoid a sword that promptly embedded itself in the wall behind him.
The creature who had swung it at him, and who almost immediately removed it from the wall and readied it for another slash, reminded Poran a bit of the syringe fellow. This one, however, was even larger, carried (in addition to the sword) a very large gun (which Poran did not recognize as such, due to his society not possessing them, but which he certainly recognized as a Very Dangerous Thing if only by instinct), sported a very large pair of horns, and stared him down with not two but six bright red eyes. Poran smiled uncomfortably at him, and at the five identical robots who soon joined him.
“I don’t suppose you gentlemen would be interested in a song?”
The answer was—rather predictably, Poran supposed—several more sword thrusts, one of which hacked off the tip of the Leskrin’s tail. Annoyed and terrified in equal parts, he quickly began playing his harp as quickly as he could, surrounding the area around him with various lights and patterns; the robots, confused at the sudden burst of visual input, were stalled long enough for him to dart off.
What he saw was, as one might expect, rather disgusting. Various piles of corpses were being methodically hacked to bits; if one had looked inside the robots’ programming, one would have seen an intricate partially-randomized subroutine determining the order of separation. As soon as the head was removed from the torso—consistently the final part—a new, identical copy of the body would slowly materialize that the process would begin a new. The result of this was that the floor was carpeted in flesh, blood and the occasional bone, and Poran—caught between finding the most poetic way to describe the carnage and simply preventing himself from fainting or vomiting at the sheer sight—nearly slammed into one of the tormenters before catching himself and swerving away.
At this point, the robots chasing him, while used to prey that was often more complacent, generally slower, and universally a larger target, decided that the best tool for this particular job was their sidearms, usually used to give a bit of variety to the torture so that it would stay fresh, exhausting and excruciating. They pulled them out and began to fire in the bard’s direction; his continued illusions allowed him to keep avoiding the shots, but he realized it wouldn’t be long before they either got lucky or he ran out of steam. Realizing this, he briefly considered escaping through the vents again, before the singed wings returned to his mind with a flash of pain as he made a particularly sharp turn.
I’m going to die if I keep this up, he thought to himself, and if, as surely as I will, I do die, I’d rather it at least be a quick event and spare my fellow combatants the pain, but then again that would be setting a terrible example for The Unborn and I do feel like I was no help in preventing the state it’s in at the moment—such a terrible thing, it truly must be avoided—but on the other hand, oh dear, what is there for me to do? I suppose I could attempt to shoot them, as large as they are, and briefly putting away his harp while shouting an ancient ballad at the top of his lungs, he fired several shots in the androids’ direction, only to see every one of them rebound harmlessly with a ping, at which point he promptly replaced his bow and went back to playing music. So that won’t work, his train of thought continued, and with that in mind I suppose I could simply sequester myself in some corner of those metal corridors and frantically compose poetry until I burn to ashes. If nothing else, that would be a spectacular death, and hopefully The Unborn would learn something from my dedication to the art, and oh dear I’m about to run into one of them again. With this, he swooped beneath a tormenter’s legs, and this is when something lucky (but also likely, given what he was doing) occurred:
The robots chasing him fired several more blasts from their shotguns, which tore into the otherwise-occupied tormenter; his circuitry sufficiently damaged, he quickly slammed to the ground.
At this, Poran suddenly smiled, for now he realized that he could survive, if lucky. Just like the ballad of Drefi, he thought to himself, the key to victory will be in using the enemy’s arms. After a few more moments of fleeing, he nodded, and then did a sudden U-turn, swooped downward beneath his pursuers, then swooped up above them, and then began swerving around in circles at every angle he could manage. Playing his harp as rapidly and energetically as possible, to further confuse them with image after image, he breathed a sigh of relief as they quickly began shooting and slashing in such a frantic and disorganized manner that they managed to make short work of each other. Eventually, only two of the robots chasing him remained, and both of them were in such sorry shape that he was quite confident they would not be much of a threat. Satisfied, he flitted to the ground, quickly scribbled out a rather clumsy sonnet praising himself, and squirmed into one of the fallen androids’ empty eye sockets for a rest.