Re: The Grand Battle II! [Round 6:Doomish Temple!]
11-17-2010, 04:40 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.
As the smoke and debris from Konka Rar's spell began to clear, a figure gradually became visible. Clara hadn't moved from where she'd been standing when the spell went off, although her arms were now folded across her chest. As the dust finished settling and things became even clearer, her face came into view: its lips were pursed and its eyes hooded; the eyes, in fact, were no longer the star-filled black discs they had appeared to be before the attack, having changed into one normal-if-purple-tinted eye and one that glowed with the same light as Konka's cybernetic ocular implant. Her whole face, in fact, had a much more skull-like cast than it usually did, which strongly accentuated the expression of irritated disdain she was wearing.
None of this was so strange, however, as the fact that she wasn't actually standing on anything: her feet hadn't moved since the spell was cast, but the floor had. The nun appeared to be hovering above a small crater that had formed; cracks ran from it up the nearby walls and a few feet into the corridor topped with the eye, and judging from the shrapnel that had pelted Maxwell and Konka Rar, it was very real. Clara just didn't seemed bothered about trivitalities like gravity. She began walking forward towards the lich, who found he was held fast in place. Despite the lack of ground, her footfalls echoed in the silence following the blast; they didn't sound in time with her feet's motion, but the sound was there.
"You know, it's always disappointing when someone has to go and ruin everyone else's nice time. But hey, I'm not gonna let this get me down; we can have a different sort of fun now, you and I. You're one of Cultivator's, right? Yeah, I remember you. Congratulations about Eximo, by the way, but I guess you don't know about that yet."
"Anyway, you wanted an explanation. Well, I'm the Organizer!" The way the capital O clanged left no doubt in the frozen conquerer's mind what the title meant. "You couldn't have known that when you attacked, of course, but regardless, trying to blow someone up is always rude; besides, knowing you, you'd have attacked even if you did know. Konka Rar, great lich, ruler of men and so forth. So stuck up! I know you've had a grudge against us since you got scooped up. Er, the real you, I mean. I can understand that, I suppose. What I can't understand is the thought (and don't tell me you haven't had it!) that you're anywhere near ready to take anyone on. Even nearly the weakest of us after having been crippled and at his most vulnerable, destroyed two of his best fighters." The nun, who was by this point standing mere inches in front of Konka Rar, chuckled. "Mages, huh? Little local reality control and suddenly they're ready to call themselves Vecna the Lich God, Lord of Secrets and such. You just don't understand."
Gestalt and Vyrm'n had caught up in time to see most of the monologue; Maxwell had retreated into the entrance of one of the corridors and was watching around a corner. Clara tapped the lich contemplatively on the chest. "I wonder if this is against the rules, but... You're a duplicate, shouldn't even be here. That can't count, and Observer's not in much of a position to make a fuss about interference. Yeah, this'll be fine." She pushed him to the opposite side of the main room, then moved back ext to the crater. With a click of her fingers, she released her undead opponent from his paralysis, as well as sending faintly-purple translucent barriers up in all eight corridors. "I'm sure you still think you can win this, so I'll humor you. I won't even use mind control, body control, teleportation, or even meddling with your past. Plus, you can have the first shot! Just you and me, no interference. Time to prove yourself, King Konka Rar."
The lich gripped his staff tightly, watching Clara simply stand opposite him with her arms folded. She was right, in a way; even with the knowledge of who he was facing, the idea that this would end in any way other than his victory simply didn't occur to him. However, overconfident he might have been, but foolhardy he wasn't; he'd been given an advantage in being allowed to move first, and he intended to take full advantage of it. He ran a number of lightning-fast calculations and predictions, his eye and various other cybernetic enhancements gathering as much data as they could. Eventually, shortly after Clara had begun making faces in apparent boredom, he was ready to cast his first spell.
"Arcane Disjunction!"
Konka Rar swung his staff towards the placid nun, its eye sockets glowing with silver light; as it reached the farthest part of the swing, the ram's skill sent a glowing missile barreling towards Clara, the shapeless bolt of glowing energy pulsing and crackling as it hurtled through the air. Clara seemed to be doing nothing in the way of response until the spell had nearly collided with her; then, her hand moved with speed that was impossible to follow. When it stopped, she had the sizzling light wrapped around her fingers and a vague smile hovering on her lips. "Nice try."
There was little else in the way of reaction from her; she began weaving the spell around the fingers of both hands, looking like a very sparkly version of cat's cradle, but otherwise simply stood there. The undead mage's mechanical eye narrowed, and he began preparing another spell; this time, with a cry of "Fangs of Cocytus!", he loosed a barrage of meter-long icicles. Clara flung her hands wide, the threads of magic still wrapped around her fingers expanding for form a wide net in front of her; the icicles collided with it, becoming entangled in the other spell and stopping short of their target. After a handful of them had been caught, the possessed woman freed her left hand from the net and flicked her right arm; both spells collapsed and writhed, reforming into a sort of silver whip studded with razor-sharp chunks of ice.
With inhuman dexterity and speed, she sent the whip screaming through the air, shattering those missiles that were still heading towards her. Most exploded when struck, sending frozen shards back towards the lich and the walls. His enhanced reflexes served him well, and Konka Rar was able to raise a shield before he was perforated, but he was becoming increasingly frustrated, especially when he heard a curt "Strike two." from the other side of the room.
Reasoning that his adversary had been easily able to turn missile spells against him, he decided it was time to try something that directly influenced the environment. Ordinarily, doing something like this in a combat situation would be dangerous, but Clara seemed to have no real interest in retaliating yet; he began chanting, digital mind feeding the calculations and specifications to the arcane one. This wasn't a rote spell like the others had been, some tried-and-tested formula with predictable results and only one real application; this was real sorcery, treating magic more like shapable clay than an often-reproduced mold. A network of red-orange lines wove themselves across the room, accompanied by a deep, mineral rumbling. Clara raised an eyebrow with interest, whip held idly by her side.
There was no loudly-announced and dramatic name, just a few more indecipherable syllables muttered. With no more warning than that, the stone began rippling, then sending out tendrils of rock. They swatted at the nun, who dodged nimbly and sent her weapon snapping towards the offending rock. It easily severed them, but for every one she cleaved off, two more sprouted. In addition, the walls began lancing at her with spikes formed of the same bedrock; they threatened to impale her if she ever stopped moving, forcing her to tumble and run up walls to avoid being skewered. It might have been humorous in another situation to watch the aged woman cavorting like a ninja, but Konka Rar was all business; as Clara was forced to concentrate on simply not being hit, he was preparing another devastating spell.
Several streaks of dark energy lanced across the floor towards the nun; despite her back being turned at the time, she sighed and snapped her fingers.
"I think this has been quite enough."
Konka Rar found himself unable to move once again. Then, as Clara turned towards him, he realized that wasn't quite right. He could still move, but with extreme slowness; the cavern around him was still attempting to attack too, but at a speed that suggested simply waiting for stalactites to grow into her might be more successful, and the black glow of the lich's most recent spell continued oozing much like molasses across the floor. He was forced to watch as she began moving towards him, whip carving a path through spikes and tendrils of stone and figure leaving afterimages in the air. "Do you understand yet?"
With another elegant flick of her wrist, Clara sent the whip careening towards the slowed wizard. By pure force of habit, he tried to force himself to block it, but could do nothing but watch as his body refused to obey and the whip slammed into him. His staff splintered, and as the ice raked across his torso, several ribs went with it. As she continued to move towards him, she sent the lash across him several more times, sundering one of his legs, yanking off his robotic arm, and eventually cracking his skull and cybernetic eye. She tossed the scourge aside as she drew level with him and reached out.
Her fingers wrapped around his neck, and he could feel his vertebrae grinding with the force of the grip. He was lifted off the ground and forced to look down at Clara's impassive face. There was no malice in her voice as she spoke. "This vessel could hold only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of what I am. You were given every advantage in the world. Nothing you could ever do or be will be any more significant to me than an ant to an entire galaxy. Nothing could even be that significant to any of us, even worthless, weak pretenders like the Director. Everything you could ever hope to accomplish is nothing. You are nothing. But worse, you're nothing that thinks itself grand and powerful. You're a child brandishing his slingshot against a thunderstorm."
Her face briefly lit up as something seemed to occur to her. "It's too bad you'll never meet Soft. She'd have a field day with you."
And with that, her interest in the lich seemed to wane completely. She tossed him aside like a doll, and he sailed slowly through the air. As she walked back towards the other side of the room, time seemed to catch up with itself; the dark spell collided harmlessly with a wall, Konka Rar collided rather less harmlessly with a stone column formed by his own magic, and most of the remaining tendrils and spikes that filled the room shattered into rock splinters. The barriers she'd raised faded at her will, and Clara beckoned to Gestalt and Vyrm'n, leading them into the tunnel two doors to the right of the one marked with the eye.
"While I have a nice conversation with your much politer friends, I'd advise you watch out; there's some people who aren't pleased with how you've treated their home."
As the nun and her companions disappeared into the passage she'd chosen, several hulking shapes rose from the floor of the main room. Vyrm'n shuddered at the enmity she could feel emanating from every molecule of the temple.
As the smoke and debris from Konka Rar's spell began to clear, a figure gradually became visible. Clara hadn't moved from where she'd been standing when the spell went off, although her arms were now folded across her chest. As the dust finished settling and things became even clearer, her face came into view: its lips were pursed and its eyes hooded; the eyes, in fact, were no longer the star-filled black discs they had appeared to be before the attack, having changed into one normal-if-purple-tinted eye and one that glowed with the same light as Konka's cybernetic ocular implant. Her whole face, in fact, had a much more skull-like cast than it usually did, which strongly accentuated the expression of irritated disdain she was wearing.
None of this was so strange, however, as the fact that she wasn't actually standing on anything: her feet hadn't moved since the spell was cast, but the floor had. The nun appeared to be hovering above a small crater that had formed; cracks ran from it up the nearby walls and a few feet into the corridor topped with the eye, and judging from the shrapnel that had pelted Maxwell and Konka Rar, it was very real. Clara just didn't seemed bothered about trivitalities like gravity. She began walking forward towards the lich, who found he was held fast in place. Despite the lack of ground, her footfalls echoed in the silence following the blast; they didn't sound in time with her feet's motion, but the sound was there.
"You know, it's always disappointing when someone has to go and ruin everyone else's nice time. But hey, I'm not gonna let this get me down; we can have a different sort of fun now, you and I. You're one of Cultivator's, right? Yeah, I remember you. Congratulations about Eximo, by the way, but I guess you don't know about that yet."
"Anyway, you wanted an explanation. Well, I'm the Organizer!" The way the capital O clanged left no doubt in the frozen conquerer's mind what the title meant. "You couldn't have known that when you attacked, of course, but regardless, trying to blow someone up is always rude; besides, knowing you, you'd have attacked even if you did know. Konka Rar, great lich, ruler of men and so forth. So stuck up! I know you've had a grudge against us since you got scooped up. Er, the real you, I mean. I can understand that, I suppose. What I can't understand is the thought (and don't tell me you haven't had it!) that you're anywhere near ready to take anyone on. Even nearly the weakest of us after having been crippled and at his most vulnerable, destroyed two of his best fighters." The nun, who was by this point standing mere inches in front of Konka Rar, chuckled. "Mages, huh? Little local reality control and suddenly they're ready to call themselves Vecna the Lich God, Lord of Secrets and such. You just don't understand."
Gestalt and Vyrm'n had caught up in time to see most of the monologue; Maxwell had retreated into the entrance of one of the corridors and was watching around a corner. Clara tapped the lich contemplatively on the chest. "I wonder if this is against the rules, but... You're a duplicate, shouldn't even be here. That can't count, and Observer's not in much of a position to make a fuss about interference. Yeah, this'll be fine." She pushed him to the opposite side of the main room, then moved back ext to the crater. With a click of her fingers, she released her undead opponent from his paralysis, as well as sending faintly-purple translucent barriers up in all eight corridors. "I'm sure you still think you can win this, so I'll humor you. I won't even use mind control, body control, teleportation, or even meddling with your past. Plus, you can have the first shot! Just you and me, no interference. Time to prove yourself, King Konka Rar."
The lich gripped his staff tightly, watching Clara simply stand opposite him with her arms folded. She was right, in a way; even with the knowledge of who he was facing, the idea that this would end in any way other than his victory simply didn't occur to him. However, overconfident he might have been, but foolhardy he wasn't; he'd been given an advantage in being allowed to move first, and he intended to take full advantage of it. He ran a number of lightning-fast calculations and predictions, his eye and various other cybernetic enhancements gathering as much data as they could. Eventually, shortly after Clara had begun making faces in apparent boredom, he was ready to cast his first spell.
"Arcane Disjunction!"
Konka Rar swung his staff towards the placid nun, its eye sockets glowing with silver light; as it reached the farthest part of the swing, the ram's skill sent a glowing missile barreling towards Clara, the shapeless bolt of glowing energy pulsing and crackling as it hurtled through the air. Clara seemed to be doing nothing in the way of response until the spell had nearly collided with her; then, her hand moved with speed that was impossible to follow. When it stopped, she had the sizzling light wrapped around her fingers and a vague smile hovering on her lips. "Nice try."
There was little else in the way of reaction from her; she began weaving the spell around the fingers of both hands, looking like a very sparkly version of cat's cradle, but otherwise simply stood there. The undead mage's mechanical eye narrowed, and he began preparing another spell; this time, with a cry of "Fangs of Cocytus!", he loosed a barrage of meter-long icicles. Clara flung her hands wide, the threads of magic still wrapped around her fingers expanding for form a wide net in front of her; the icicles collided with it, becoming entangled in the other spell and stopping short of their target. After a handful of them had been caught, the possessed woman freed her left hand from the net and flicked her right arm; both spells collapsed and writhed, reforming into a sort of silver whip studded with razor-sharp chunks of ice.
With inhuman dexterity and speed, she sent the whip screaming through the air, shattering those missiles that were still heading towards her. Most exploded when struck, sending frozen shards back towards the lich and the walls. His enhanced reflexes served him well, and Konka Rar was able to raise a shield before he was perforated, but he was becoming increasingly frustrated, especially when he heard a curt "Strike two." from the other side of the room.
Reasoning that his adversary had been easily able to turn missile spells against him, he decided it was time to try something that directly influenced the environment. Ordinarily, doing something like this in a combat situation would be dangerous, but Clara seemed to have no real interest in retaliating yet; he began chanting, digital mind feeding the calculations and specifications to the arcane one. This wasn't a rote spell like the others had been, some tried-and-tested formula with predictable results and only one real application; this was real sorcery, treating magic more like shapable clay than an often-reproduced mold. A network of red-orange lines wove themselves across the room, accompanied by a deep, mineral rumbling. Clara raised an eyebrow with interest, whip held idly by her side.
There was no loudly-announced and dramatic name, just a few more indecipherable syllables muttered. With no more warning than that, the stone began rippling, then sending out tendrils of rock. They swatted at the nun, who dodged nimbly and sent her weapon snapping towards the offending rock. It easily severed them, but for every one she cleaved off, two more sprouted. In addition, the walls began lancing at her with spikes formed of the same bedrock; they threatened to impale her if she ever stopped moving, forcing her to tumble and run up walls to avoid being skewered. It might have been humorous in another situation to watch the aged woman cavorting like a ninja, but Konka Rar was all business; as Clara was forced to concentrate on simply not being hit, he was preparing another devastating spell.
Several streaks of dark energy lanced across the floor towards the nun; despite her back being turned at the time, she sighed and snapped her fingers.
"I think this has been quite enough."
Konka Rar found himself unable to move once again. Then, as Clara turned towards him, he realized that wasn't quite right. He could still move, but with extreme slowness; the cavern around him was still attempting to attack too, but at a speed that suggested simply waiting for stalactites to grow into her might be more successful, and the black glow of the lich's most recent spell continued oozing much like molasses across the floor. He was forced to watch as she began moving towards him, whip carving a path through spikes and tendrils of stone and figure leaving afterimages in the air. "Do you understand yet?"
With another elegant flick of her wrist, Clara sent the whip careening towards the slowed wizard. By pure force of habit, he tried to force himself to block it, but could do nothing but watch as his body refused to obey and the whip slammed into him. His staff splintered, and as the ice raked across his torso, several ribs went with it. As she continued to move towards him, she sent the lash across him several more times, sundering one of his legs, yanking off his robotic arm, and eventually cracking his skull and cybernetic eye. She tossed the scourge aside as she drew level with him and reached out.
Her fingers wrapped around his neck, and he could feel his vertebrae grinding with the force of the grip. He was lifted off the ground and forced to look down at Clara's impassive face. There was no malice in her voice as she spoke. "This vessel could hold only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of what I am. You were given every advantage in the world. Nothing you could ever do or be will be any more significant to me than an ant to an entire galaxy. Nothing could even be that significant to any of us, even worthless, weak pretenders like the Director. Everything you could ever hope to accomplish is nothing. You are nothing. But worse, you're nothing that thinks itself grand and powerful. You're a child brandishing his slingshot against a thunderstorm."
Her face briefly lit up as something seemed to occur to her. "It's too bad you'll never meet Soft. She'd have a field day with you."
And with that, her interest in the lich seemed to wane completely. She tossed him aside like a doll, and he sailed slowly through the air. As she walked back towards the other side of the room, time seemed to catch up with itself; the dark spell collided harmlessly with a wall, Konka Rar collided rather less harmlessly with a stone column formed by his own magic, and most of the remaining tendrils and spikes that filled the room shattered into rock splinters. The barriers she'd raised faded at her will, and Clara beckoned to Gestalt and Vyrm'n, leading them into the tunnel two doors to the right of the one marked with the eye.
"While I have a nice conversation with your much politer friends, I'd advise you watch out; there's some people who aren't pleased with how you've treated their home."
As the nun and her companions disappeared into the passage she'd chosen, several hulking shapes rose from the floor of the main room. Vyrm'n shuddered at the enmity she could feel emanating from every molecule of the temple.