Re: The Grand Battle II! [Round 6:Doomish Temple!]
07-27-2010, 01:37 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.
Clara glanced around the room she was in. It was tiny and carved roughly out of the living rock; approximately circular, it had eight passages leading off from it. There was no real reason to assume it was a central chamber or anything like that, but the old nun couldn't help but feel like the number of corridors was somehow significant, and that this room was if not central then at least important. A long life and longer death had taught her to trust her instincts, so she didn't waste any time trying to rationalize them away or pretend she hadn't had those thoughts.
The first to move was that black... thing... from earlier. Apparently it was more than just a streaky blob of darkness, if it had managed to make it this far, but it was still incredibly unsettling. She watched impassively as it slunk off down one of the corridors, squeezing through gaps and sliding under barriers that Clara herself would have no chance of passing. Seemed antisocial, that one. Between its apparent tendency to sequester itself off from the other contestants and Maxwell's obvious pacifism, she had to wonder what the other people from this game were like to have been beaten by them. For that matter, the most violence she'd seen was from the boxes; even then, it had mostly been implied rather than observed, and the little spirit just seemed so innocuous. Combined with Galus's obvious incompetence, the whole bunch was just incredibly different from the superpowered group that she'd been told to fight.
This whole train of thought rather forced Clara to deal with some things she'd been trying to put off and forget. This was not the Intense Thingamajig she had been forced into. The chipper but distracted voice that had announced their arrival into this doomish temple wasn't the Monitor she had become so accustomed to dreading. She thought the last thing she could remember was being transported out of that vile swamp, but if she concentrated, she could recall a desert and something about Aph and B. If she really strained there was something after that too, but it felt less like memory than like... Watching a movie, she supposed. She was aware of her own surroundings and situations, and at the same time aware of a completely different set of circumstances running concurrently. The bizarre part was that the movie was about her, and she was only vaguely aware of it. It was worrisome, and the entire shift from one battle to another was worrisome, and the sounds echoing out of the corridor the black creature had gone down were worrisome as well.
Clara shook her head and blinked a few times. She was a practical person, and even if she was worried or confused or in the middle of some sort of sick game with the uncanny hunch that she wasn't entirely who she thought she was, she wouldn't let herself get bogged down with unhelpful cogitation or crippling nervousness. There were tasks in front of her and people around her, and fretting would do nobody any good. Straightening up, she decided the first thing to do was get a better feel for the location. Picking a passage at random from the ones that thing hadn't gone down, she poked her head into one of the openings. She saw a dirt road stretching away, lined with houses and a forge and trees. The houses got denser as they got farther away from her, clearly a residential area of some old town. It was odd how few people were about given the midmorning sun and number of dwellings, and the ones that were in evidence wore odd, dark clothes and moved with purpose, ignoring any others they passed. It was a stone hallway that went for about fifteen feet before curving sharply to the right. There were markings on the walls, but it was difficult to make out what they were supposed to be from her current position. Clara blinked again and looked back at the others.
Maxwell was biting a thumbnail and gazing at the walls with the vacant stare of someone whose thoughts were worlds away from whatever planet the Observer has dropped them on this time. Konka Rar was muttering to himself and tapping the walls of the chamber with his skull-topped staff. Gestalt, if Clara remembered the bizarre spirit's name correctly, was as inscrutable as ever, sitting placidly with its broom balanced across its topmost box. It still surprised the woman that such a strange creature would have been chosen for a competition like this one; perhaps this grandmaster had more of a sense of humor than her own had had. The description of this new round certainly bore that theory out, but it was hard to ascribe a trait like humor to an entity that threw sapient beings into a bizarre imitation of gladiatorial combat for its own amusement. She briefly wondered if this one's reasoning or motivations had been different, but before that train of thought could get far, Maxwell made a vaguely interrogative noise and headed into a corridor.
Preferring his company to that of the sneering lich or the disconcerting spirit, Clara followed after him, taking the precaution of unsheathing her swordstick. The fencer's dreamlike expression had hardened, signalling a return to the relatively mundane reality the rest of the world occupied. "What's on your mind, dear?" "Just... Had a thought."
It was difficult for a human to resurface from the depths of catatonia, and schrotgolems don't have the psychological resilience that comes with an organic brain and a lifetime of experience with repression and willful ignorance. Still, the cognitive break had been exactly what Gestalt needed, and a newly-revitalized consciousness emerged from the cloudy depths of mindlessness. Deep parts of the golem's mind had been ticking away in the absence of conscious thought, and a series of goals and ideas and priorities had formed in the void that had previously been filled by Gestalt's animal instincts and reactionary cautiousness.
Samuel was dead. On reflection, it was probably much of the reason that the golem had snapped when it did; the sudden and violent termination of a link that had tenuously held on for as long as it had, coupled with the stress and newness of the entire situation, had doubtless been the final straw. Gestalt's people, if constructs like schrotgolems with no discernible collective identity were could be called people, were fragile at the best of times, and Gestalt was old. It was a wonder it had lasted as long as it had. Samuel was dead, but by the very nature of their link and his powers, some of his humanity and abilities had rubbed off on his partner and they were more powerfully manifested after the backlash from his suicide.
Samuel was dead. Rexxcer was dead too. He'd been a good man, a genius, a philanthropist. He'd been Gestalt's friend, insofar as it was capable. He was dead and it was the fault of the caprices of some ineffable being without the decency to do it with so much as an if-you-please. A world's greatest scientist dropped into a situation he had no hope of escaping purely for the amusement of one giggling god. It was unacceptable. A being whose millennia of existence had been solely to serve the greater good, snuffed out for chuckles. Good men and average men and weak men had all fallen at each other's hands, but the blood was all on the Observer's.
Survival was no longer the only concern. Survival was simply a means to an end. Gestalt's survival would bring about the end of the grandmaster's, and Gestalt's survival intended to bring Maxwell's and Vyrm'n's with it. These two new faces would come along too if the golem had any say; only one death was on the horizon.
This immediately proved difficult, as three of its companions had already disappeared; the only one left, the bony one with the metal enhancements, was paying no attention to Gestalt, preferring to do enigmatic things of his own. He positively reeked of sort of magic that had spawned the schrotgolem and so many others like it, as well as exuding an air of haughty confidence and effortless superiority. Both facts would doubtless prove invaluable to the golem, and it wasted no time in making its move.
you hate him
The lich had ignored the others from the moment the Observer had stopped talking: as soon as the typical paralysis from a new round had ended, Konka Rar's magical and technological sensors had gone wild. From what little data he could gather from where he was, there was some sort of artifact of immense power somewhere in this temple, and he intended to find it. He began assembling spells to aid his search, twisting syllables falling off his tongue as his staff doused for power sources.
His attention was fully occupied by his search; he had little doubt that the other competitors in this joke of a battle would completely fail to attack him. With his senses all tuned to the nuances of magical and electromagnetic emanations, he failed to notice all but the boxes slipping away. He'd expected it, but he didn't see it happen. He similarly didn't notice the burnt piece of wood hover across the room from the only being who hadn't left it; he did notice, however, when it started writing on the wall in front of him, charcoal letters forming across the pitted stone. The message was... confusing.
"Hate whom?", he snapped irritably, concentration lapsing and focus returning to the room.
the observer
the one who dragged you into this and bent you to his will
ostensibly the one who started your own battle as well
Konka Rar's cybernetic eye refocused, the closest he could do to scowling with annoyance. As irritating as the presumptuous thing's implied tone was, it was correct. The powerful sorcerer was nothing if not violently furious at the powers that had seen fit to toss him around like a puppet for their own amusement. He settled for crossing his arms and tapping the ground with the base of his staff. "What of it?"
i assure you that your animosity is mirrored by mine if not surpassed by it
i lack the tools to effectively take my revenge but possess a number of abilities that may aid others in doing so
others like yourself with access to magic i cannot grasp
A clacking grunt escaped from the lich's skull, presumably the necrotic equivalent of a snort. Allying himself with others had proven time and again to be leagues less efficient than simply using his own servants as he was accustomed to; more treacherous lieutenants and double-dealing agents and power-hungry apprentices than he cared to remember had taught him that lesson, and the inept cyborg he'd tried to use against Ekelhaft had hammered the point home. Doing so with as bizarre and apparently-worthless being as Gestalt certainly made no sense. He made as if to turn back to his divinations with a sardonic "You'll forgive he if I don't clap with glee at the prospect of allying myself with a shambling junkheap, thanks all the same."
The writing stick still floating by the wall and the stacks of boxes that formed Gestalt's main body didn't shift. The only thing that betrayed that the golem had anything to do with what happened next was a slight fluctuation in magical potential in the room, a tipoff the lich barely payed heed to and one that wouldn't have afforded him enough time to react if he had.
Konka Rar's wrists slammed against the wall he was next to, and his staff pinwheeled away, landing across the room and rolling into one of the passageways out. His laser cannon made a sad "vweeoop" noise as it disconnected itself from its power source, and his jaw was literally ripped from his face as though to silence him. The input from his mechanical eye flickered and distorted before shutting off entirely. A moment later it rebooted, displaying in glowing green text:
Conn7hhon: St0ble
P23er: 94%
Electrohdsbbinetism Vete7hk: Onliqqqqq
qqqq:Qqq qq
&displaytext: then perhaps we will see if tearing you apart limb from limb and detonating that lovely generator of yours will destroy you and if your death will bring about the end of the round and bring me closer to the observer
i dont want to end you and i am not even sure that i can but i am confident that you neither know how to damage me nor are in any position to do so
i did not want to go the violent route it is quite counter to my goals and indeed it is reminiscent of the tactics employed by our common enemy but
pride goeth before destruction
a haughty spirit before a fall
a less perceptive wizard than yourself taught me that
With no warning, the force that had bound Konka Rar's arms released; his weapon reconnected to its power, and his staff rolled back towards his feet. The charcoal slid along the wall again, elegant writing spelling out another placid message.
please
we cannot do this without each other and if we dont do it then who will
Clara glanced around the room she was in. It was tiny and carved roughly out of the living rock; approximately circular, it had eight passages leading off from it. There was no real reason to assume it was a central chamber or anything like that, but the old nun couldn't help but feel like the number of corridors was somehow significant, and that this room was if not central then at least important. A long life and longer death had taught her to trust her instincts, so she didn't waste any time trying to rationalize them away or pretend she hadn't had those thoughts.
The first to move was that black... thing... from earlier. Apparently it was more than just a streaky blob of darkness, if it had managed to make it this far, but it was still incredibly unsettling. She watched impassively as it slunk off down one of the corridors, squeezing through gaps and sliding under barriers that Clara herself would have no chance of passing. Seemed antisocial, that one. Between its apparent tendency to sequester itself off from the other contestants and Maxwell's obvious pacifism, she had to wonder what the other people from this game were like to have been beaten by them. For that matter, the most violence she'd seen was from the boxes; even then, it had mostly been implied rather than observed, and the little spirit just seemed so innocuous. Combined with Galus's obvious incompetence, the whole bunch was just incredibly different from the superpowered group that she'd been told to fight.
This whole train of thought rather forced Clara to deal with some things she'd been trying to put off and forget. This was not the Intense Thingamajig she had been forced into. The chipper but distracted voice that had announced their arrival into this doomish temple wasn't the Monitor she had become so accustomed to dreading. She thought the last thing she could remember was being transported out of that vile swamp, but if she concentrated, she could recall a desert and something about Aph and B. If she really strained there was something after that too, but it felt less like memory than like... Watching a movie, she supposed. She was aware of her own surroundings and situations, and at the same time aware of a completely different set of circumstances running concurrently. The bizarre part was that the movie was about her, and she was only vaguely aware of it. It was worrisome, and the entire shift from one battle to another was worrisome, and the sounds echoing out of the corridor the black creature had gone down were worrisome as well.
Clara shook her head and blinked a few times. She was a practical person, and even if she was worried or confused or in the middle of some sort of sick game with the uncanny hunch that she wasn't entirely who she thought she was, she wouldn't let herself get bogged down with unhelpful cogitation or crippling nervousness. There were tasks in front of her and people around her, and fretting would do nobody any good. Straightening up, she decided the first thing to do was get a better feel for the location. Picking a passage at random from the ones that thing hadn't gone down, she poked her head into one of the openings. She saw a dirt road stretching away, lined with houses and a forge and trees. The houses got denser as they got farther away from her, clearly a residential area of some old town. It was odd how few people were about given the midmorning sun and number of dwellings, and the ones that were in evidence wore odd, dark clothes and moved with purpose, ignoring any others they passed. It was a stone hallway that went for about fifteen feet before curving sharply to the right. There were markings on the walls, but it was difficult to make out what they were supposed to be from her current position. Clara blinked again and looked back at the others.
Maxwell was biting a thumbnail and gazing at the walls with the vacant stare of someone whose thoughts were worlds away from whatever planet the Observer has dropped them on this time. Konka Rar was muttering to himself and tapping the walls of the chamber with his skull-topped staff. Gestalt, if Clara remembered the bizarre spirit's name correctly, was as inscrutable as ever, sitting placidly with its broom balanced across its topmost box. It still surprised the woman that such a strange creature would have been chosen for a competition like this one; perhaps this grandmaster had more of a sense of humor than her own had had. The description of this new round certainly bore that theory out, but it was hard to ascribe a trait like humor to an entity that threw sapient beings into a bizarre imitation of gladiatorial combat for its own amusement. She briefly wondered if this one's reasoning or motivations had been different, but before that train of thought could get far, Maxwell made a vaguely interrogative noise and headed into a corridor.
Preferring his company to that of the sneering lich or the disconcerting spirit, Clara followed after him, taking the precaution of unsheathing her swordstick. The fencer's dreamlike expression had hardened, signalling a return to the relatively mundane reality the rest of the world occupied. "What's on your mind, dear?" "Just... Had a thought."
It was difficult for a human to resurface from the depths of catatonia, and schrotgolems don't have the psychological resilience that comes with an organic brain and a lifetime of experience with repression and willful ignorance. Still, the cognitive break had been exactly what Gestalt needed, and a newly-revitalized consciousness emerged from the cloudy depths of mindlessness. Deep parts of the golem's mind had been ticking away in the absence of conscious thought, and a series of goals and ideas and priorities had formed in the void that had previously been filled by Gestalt's animal instincts and reactionary cautiousness.
Samuel was dead. On reflection, it was probably much of the reason that the golem had snapped when it did; the sudden and violent termination of a link that had tenuously held on for as long as it had, coupled with the stress and newness of the entire situation, had doubtless been the final straw. Gestalt's people, if constructs like schrotgolems with no discernible collective identity were could be called people, were fragile at the best of times, and Gestalt was old. It was a wonder it had lasted as long as it had. Samuel was dead, but by the very nature of their link and his powers, some of his humanity and abilities had rubbed off on his partner and they were more powerfully manifested after the backlash from his suicide.
Samuel was dead. Rexxcer was dead too. He'd been a good man, a genius, a philanthropist. He'd been Gestalt's friend, insofar as it was capable. He was dead and it was the fault of the caprices of some ineffable being without the decency to do it with so much as an if-you-please. A world's greatest scientist dropped into a situation he had no hope of escaping purely for the amusement of one giggling god. It was unacceptable. A being whose millennia of existence had been solely to serve the greater good, snuffed out for chuckles. Good men and average men and weak men had all fallen at each other's hands, but the blood was all on the Observer's.
Survival was no longer the only concern. Survival was simply a means to an end. Gestalt's survival would bring about the end of the grandmaster's, and Gestalt's survival intended to bring Maxwell's and Vyrm'n's with it. These two new faces would come along too if the golem had any say; only one death was on the horizon.
This immediately proved difficult, as three of its companions had already disappeared; the only one left, the bony one with the metal enhancements, was paying no attention to Gestalt, preferring to do enigmatic things of his own. He positively reeked of sort of magic that had spawned the schrotgolem and so many others like it, as well as exuding an air of haughty confidence and effortless superiority. Both facts would doubtless prove invaluable to the golem, and it wasted no time in making its move.
you hate him
The lich had ignored the others from the moment the Observer had stopped talking: as soon as the typical paralysis from a new round had ended, Konka Rar's magical and technological sensors had gone wild. From what little data he could gather from where he was, there was some sort of artifact of immense power somewhere in this temple, and he intended to find it. He began assembling spells to aid his search, twisting syllables falling off his tongue as his staff doused for power sources.
His attention was fully occupied by his search; he had little doubt that the other competitors in this joke of a battle would completely fail to attack him. With his senses all tuned to the nuances of magical and electromagnetic emanations, he failed to notice all but the boxes slipping away. He'd expected it, but he didn't see it happen. He similarly didn't notice the burnt piece of wood hover across the room from the only being who hadn't left it; he did notice, however, when it started writing on the wall in front of him, charcoal letters forming across the pitted stone. The message was... confusing.
"Hate whom?", he snapped irritably, concentration lapsing and focus returning to the room.
the observer
the one who dragged you into this and bent you to his will
ostensibly the one who started your own battle as well
Konka Rar's cybernetic eye refocused, the closest he could do to scowling with annoyance. As irritating as the presumptuous thing's implied tone was, it was correct. The powerful sorcerer was nothing if not violently furious at the powers that had seen fit to toss him around like a puppet for their own amusement. He settled for crossing his arms and tapping the ground with the base of his staff. "What of it?"
i assure you that your animosity is mirrored by mine if not surpassed by it
i lack the tools to effectively take my revenge but possess a number of abilities that may aid others in doing so
others like yourself with access to magic i cannot grasp
A clacking grunt escaped from the lich's skull, presumably the necrotic equivalent of a snort. Allying himself with others had proven time and again to be leagues less efficient than simply using his own servants as he was accustomed to; more treacherous lieutenants and double-dealing agents and power-hungry apprentices than he cared to remember had taught him that lesson, and the inept cyborg he'd tried to use against Ekelhaft had hammered the point home. Doing so with as bizarre and apparently-worthless being as Gestalt certainly made no sense. He made as if to turn back to his divinations with a sardonic "You'll forgive he if I don't clap with glee at the prospect of allying myself with a shambling junkheap, thanks all the same."
The writing stick still floating by the wall and the stacks of boxes that formed Gestalt's main body didn't shift. The only thing that betrayed that the golem had anything to do with what happened next was a slight fluctuation in magical potential in the room, a tipoff the lich barely payed heed to and one that wouldn't have afforded him enough time to react if he had.
Konka Rar's wrists slammed against the wall he was next to, and his staff pinwheeled away, landing across the room and rolling into one of the passageways out. His laser cannon made a sad "vweeoop" noise as it disconnected itself from its power source, and his jaw was literally ripped from his face as though to silence him. The input from his mechanical eye flickered and distorted before shutting off entirely. A moment later it rebooted, displaying in glowing green text:
Conn7hhon: St0ble
P23er: 94%
Electrohdsbbinetism Vete7hk: Onliqqqqq
qqqq:Qqq qq
&displaytext: then perhaps we will see if tearing you apart limb from limb and detonating that lovely generator of yours will destroy you and if your death will bring about the end of the round and bring me closer to the observer
i dont want to end you and i am not even sure that i can but i am confident that you neither know how to damage me nor are in any position to do so
i did not want to go the violent route it is quite counter to my goals and indeed it is reminiscent of the tactics employed by our common enemy but
pride goeth before destruction
a haughty spirit before a fall
a less perceptive wizard than yourself taught me that
With no warning, the force that had bound Konka Rar's arms released; his weapon reconnected to its power, and his staff rolled back towards his feet. The charcoal slid along the wall again, elegant writing spelling out another placid message.
please
we cannot do this without each other and if we dont do it then who will