Re: Grand Battle S3G1! (Round Three: Caelo Ruinam)
05-16-2012, 10:17 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.
The hermit, as well as the rest of Alex's group, were still in the flying island shack when Dorukumets decided to show his stupid, musclebound face again. It was always something, wasn't it? She had long since given up being frustrated that things always worked out to be a three-on-three bout with these ridiculous idiots. It was probably fate, or something. She'd heard a lot about fate in the last week. Instead, she spent her frustration on more important things, like the fact that this time her three was herself, with very limited and unskilled magic; Tock, who wasn't good for much more than punching things really hard; and the new metal-clad daydreamer, who didn't seem to be carrying a bow and was hard to imagine being much good at throwing lightning or anything as spacey as he was. It was going to be another long grind of a battle that would take a huge chunk out of her etherdust supply as she gradually wore Dorukomets and his auto-counter down.
Fuck's sake, she had so much better shit to be doing.
No sense wasting time grumbling, though. She was a leader, and it was time to lead. "Tock," she barked, "get in front, soak up whatever those two throw at you. Tor, you and I need to focus on taking down the octopus first."
Tor blinked hard and tried to shake the lingering effects of the kalamritul out of his eyes and brain. Focus on the octopus. Right. He could probably keep focused on that, it wasn't too complicated. Octopus. Ock. Toe. Pussss.
"Right. Uh, right. Yeah, okay."
Alex grimaced. It was going to be a long fight.
"How?"
A really long fight.
Tykidu tittered. "Are you sure about this, Dorky? I don't think they're even ready for us!"
"Ja," offered Gimeri. "Maybe we should wait until they learn to fight again!"
Dorukomets laughed a hearty, offputting laugh. "Ordinarily SIR DORUKOMETS would never dream of combating such a weak group of stragglers, but this time he will make an exception!" He glared at Alex. "Too long has this little girl stood in the way of obtaining the gauntlet, and that ends now!"
Alex simply unshouldered her pack and tossed it to Tor while unsheathing her sword with the other hand. "Just find some firebat capsules or poison pouches or something, and use them when you're not keeping me supplied with etherdust." How long can it take them to gather things up from a hut that has, what, three rooms?
"Ah ha, so she does have some fight left in her after all! Well, companions, no need to hold back!"
With no more preamble than that, he lunged. With speed that seemed out of place even to those who had seen him fight before, Dorukomets whipped a spear off his back and leveled the point at Alex's throat even as he thundered across the floor towards her. With a speed that seemed like it should literally have been impossible, Tock interposed himself between them, deflecting the spear blow with his shoulder and taking only superficial damage to his brassy frame for the trouble.
The mechanical man ducked back out of the way as Dorukomets reeled, and Alex took the opening to mutter to herself a bit and swing her sword around; after a moment, a volley of sharp and jagged chunks of ice materialized behind the arc of her blade. They launched themselves towards the temporally-displaced knight's group, peppering them with freezing razors before weakly exploding into puffs of cold fire. Gimeri squealed unpleasantly and hurried to scribble some minor healing glyphs on Dorukomets's back; he was completely cured, but at least she and the bird weren't unharmed. Alex briefly wished she'd invested in some runespells at some point; she was just so mediocre with natural magic.
She didn't have much time to spend on that train of thought, though, since Tor had finally found something in the bag that seemed promisingly weaponizable even through the haze of pleasant befuddlement that was filling him top to bottom. He idly wondered why none of these bottles and bags and weird squirmy things weren't labeled – or frankly how so many of them fit in a little leather backpack – but set all that aside as he flung a sinister-looking vial of bubbling black sludge at... Who was it supposed– right, the octopus! At the octopus.
The glass shattered like sugar and the dark spirits inside burst out with a sound that was a cross between an explosion and a scream. They clawed and bit at Gimeri for several seconds as she flailed ineffectually at their incorporeal bodies, then fled and faded into nothingness, leaving her covered in lacerations and what looked like acid burns.
"Thees ees unbearable! Don't let zem hurt me, Sir Dokuromets!"
"I will aid you, fair Gimeri!"
The little bird-man did an awkward, fluttering dance, clicking his beak and squaking loudly, then pointed straight at Tor. Tock blurred into motion again, putting himself in the path of the spell everyone expected to materialize; when nothing seemed to happen, he relaaxed slightly, which sent Tykidu into gales of raucous chirp-laughter.
"Your golem could not outsmart the mighty entourage of SIR DORUKOMETS forever! Not after the last time we met, little girl."
As Dorukomets himself attacked again with an obnoxious cry of "DORUUUUUUU!" and was locked in a grapple with Tock, Alex's eyes were darting all around the little dock-room. What could he possibly be– and then she saw it. A ball of molten rock and metal wreathed with black-tinged flame was forming over Tor. Before she could speak, it began streaking towards him, too fast to dodge even if he had been aware of its presence.
---
Huebert, in spite of or because of TinTen's request that he not go far, had continued on his way since leaving the dock, pummeling monsters and occasionally vaporizing the ones that looked too big to punch effectively. His plasma cannister was just whirring down as it cooled from being fired when he heard the thundering boom that he had no way of knowing signalled the arrival of Alex and her crew; he considered going back to check it out, but was distracted by an approaching lizard beast. When several voices followed the crash, however, whatever had happened behind him became much more interesting than some easily-dispatched reptile; with an excited grin, he doubled back, thankful for the one voice that seemed to like DRAMATIC EXCLAMATIONS the most for making it easy to find the way.
Curiously, despite the fact that he'd definitively and lethally cleared the halls as he'd passed, there were more rats and lizards and so forth littering the gloomy darkness. He didn't give it much thought – who cared where vermin came from, right? – and just barelled past, intent on reaching whatever was causing such a ruckus. It wasn't hard; the monsters would growl or scream or bark or whatever they did and try to attack him, but as he moved past they'd inevitably just... let him go. None of them made an effort to pursue him, and that suited him just fine. He had bigger fish to fry. Or punch or laser.
By the time he reached the dock again, the arrogant monologue contest was over and fighting had begun in earnest. Two groups of three weird-looking beings were lined up and duking it out; Huebert arrived just in time to see the avian one launch some kind of firey attack on... Was that Tor?
Huebert's excitement quickly withered to anger and worry. Tor was an arrogant prick, and probably a racist judging by the way he'd always looked at Huebert and even his own troops, but he still didn't need to die. Especially not before they'd had a chance to explore this weird place and especially not before Scofflaw. Without stopping to think or draw a weapon, Huebert dashed into the room, fists swinging. His intervention couldn't have really made much of a difference regardless of how it played out, though, since it was about at that moment that the spell, now a spike of lethal heat and steel, slammed into Tor's back. The shocked alien's eyes widened and he screamed as he was immolated and impaled.
Of course, no-one could have seen what had actually happened without the aid of a high-speed camera with impressive zooming capabilities. Though he'd burned off his toxins as recently as his freefall from Caelo Ruinam, the intervening waiting on the shipshack and fight had been long enough to build a healthy supply back up. Or, rather, an unhealthy one. The intense heat from Gimeri's missile was enough to spontaneously ignite the unaware telpori-hal, sending his body crumbling into a biological ash slurry before the metal bolt could do it any real harm. He collapsed, the spell embedded in what could only be called his flesh by dint of its current shape, and disintegrated.
Huebert, who hadn't been exposed to Tor's species's more combustive quirks and didn't remember much of what the Fool had told them about him, only saw the captain killed and burnt.
"Dammit!"
His shout devolved from expletive to wordless howl of rage, and he charged into the fray, not bothering to wonder why the round hadn't ended yet. Despite Tykidu having been the one who'd actually killed Tor as far as Huebert was aware, Dorukomets was closer; he swung as hard as he could, muscles rivalling the monster's in size even if they were outmatched in quantity, confident that he could knock its smug, unarmored head in with one blow. What he hadn't expected was to be struck himself in the gut and tossed backwards, unable even to see what had hit him. As Huebert collided with the wall behind him, Dorukomets shoved Tock aside and turned to face him, laughing.
"Ha HA! So, another challenger seeks to tackle SIR DORUKOMETS, even as his moment of final victory approaches. At least this one looks like it can handle itself in combat. Perhaps it will not die quite so embarrassingly!"
Huebert spat on the ground, not even bothering to stand up. "Go fuck yourself, you caricature."
He drew out his carbine and sent a burst of laserfire straight at the showboating warrior. Gimeri screamed, Alex shouted at Tock to take advantage of the situation, and Tykidu was clearly panicking as his hero took a volley of weaponized light to the chest and arms. Nobody seemed to notice Tor calmly reform, still looking dazed, or pick up the pack by its now-scorched straps.
---
TinTen stood up. He had... Well, it was less of a plan than he'd like it to be. Hardly a plan at all, really. For all his research and divining, for all his time and effort... He was simply in a place and in a situation there wasn't much precedent for, no matter how far he stretched interpretations. On the one limb, he was pretty confident about how to find Scofflaw, and almost certainly overconfident about his own safety. On the other, there was no guarantee of how the encounter with his quarry would play out. If he considered one set of writ in a certain way, Scofflaw might even end up benefiting from it; another way saw them mutually stymied, and a third forecast both playing into the hands of a third party. Still, he had to try if there was any chance of finishing the bastard off, and there certainly was that much.
He sighed, and gathered up his book and pulled datapads from the clenching hands of some very passive-aggressive defeated skeletons. Without a backwards glance, he headed out the way he'd sent Huebert. With a truncated list of directions he intended to take gripped on one side and his weapon drawn on the other, he headed out through the labyrinthine dungeon ahead of him.
After several minutes of confident wandering, eyes fixed on a datapad and almost absentmindedly taking potshots at whatever assorted monsters accosted him, he came to yet another fork. Along one path, scorches on the wall and sections of stone that had been sublimated indicated Huebert had gone that way; along the other undisturbed corridor there wasn't much at all worth mentioning, save for the fact that it was the one TinTen wanted to go down.
"Hmph. Expected to meet Huebert before now," he muttered to a tentacular abomination as he blasted its myriad eyes out. "Reminded him to stay close."
He waffled for several seconds, debating going after Huebert or simply continuing along his way. Eventually, he came to the conclusion that Huebert was faster than he, so catching up would probably be futile, and would eat up a lot of time even if it wasn't. With an annoyed squelch, he slithered his way through the darkness.
Anyone with a map of Caelo Ruinam would have been able to see that his meanderings were an extemely redundant and nearly random spiderweb of twists and turns; despite being extremely inefficient, though, they were bringing him closer to a stairwell that would bring him out of the depths of the citadel's dungeons and straight into the hangar filled with Lady Midday's mechs, aircraft, and soldiers. By coincidence or by providence, he was approaching what could loosely be called his goal, despite doing so in the most dangerous and roundabout way possible.
---
Dorukomets fell, an expression of pained surprise plastered across his face; Huebert rose, a grimly retributive one on his. It was about this time that he realized that despite Tor's death, the round hadn't moved on, and about this time that Tor himself piped up cheerfully in spite of being dead and a battle raging around him.
"Hey, it's that guy!"
'That guy' looked over, eyebrows raised. "Wait, bu–"
His question was cut off as a ballistic octopus collided with him and knocked him back down, doing its level best to throttle him.
"How could you do that to him! He didn't even hurt you!"
It took all of Huebert's considerable strength and dexterity to wrangle the murderous cephalopod and cast her aside; as he did, he caught sight of Tock hammering Tykidu into the ground with his fists. Alex calmly strode over to the writhing Gimeri, slashing her several times until she was still. Her body was still floating, but she seemed to have been dealt a deathblow.
Huebert stood back up. Again. He massaged the suckermarks on his wrists and neck, and coughed out "What the hell is going on here?"
Tor looked at the bodies of his defeated foes. "They... That one's still breathing. Aren't you going to kill them?"
Alex took his resurrection in much greater stride than Huebert had, despite knowing him for less time, not even bothering to give the near-unrecognizable alien a second glance.
"No," she said, giving Dorukomets a kick in the side and grinning understatedly as he did his best not to groan or shift away from the blow. "They always do this when they're beaten, and I'm not about to go around stabbing a bunch of idiots who have surrendered."
That seemed just fine to Tor. Lots of things did. Alex turned to Huebert as the rest of her crew finally started filing out of their craft and had better have one heck of a reason it took them that long.
"Thanks, you really have no idea how much time you just saved us, and how important that is. What kind of weapon is that? I've never seen something that can dish out that much damage, or channel magic that effectively. Best manapistol I've ever seen could only get a burst out every seven seconds or so, and that got, what, ten in a shot?"
Huebert's brow furrowed.
"Wait, magic?"
The hermit, as well as the rest of Alex's group, were still in the flying island shack when Dorukumets decided to show his stupid, musclebound face again. It was always something, wasn't it? She had long since given up being frustrated that things always worked out to be a three-on-three bout with these ridiculous idiots. It was probably fate, or something. She'd heard a lot about fate in the last week. Instead, she spent her frustration on more important things, like the fact that this time her three was herself, with very limited and unskilled magic; Tock, who wasn't good for much more than punching things really hard; and the new metal-clad daydreamer, who didn't seem to be carrying a bow and was hard to imagine being much good at throwing lightning or anything as spacey as he was. It was going to be another long grind of a battle that would take a huge chunk out of her etherdust supply as she gradually wore Dorukomets and his auto-counter down.
Fuck's sake, she had so much better shit to be doing.
No sense wasting time grumbling, though. She was a leader, and it was time to lead. "Tock," she barked, "get in front, soak up whatever those two throw at you. Tor, you and I need to focus on taking down the octopus first."
Tor blinked hard and tried to shake the lingering effects of the kalamritul out of his eyes and brain. Focus on the octopus. Right. He could probably keep focused on that, it wasn't too complicated. Octopus. Ock. Toe. Pussss.
"Right. Uh, right. Yeah, okay."
Alex grimaced. It was going to be a long fight.
"How?"
A really long fight.
Tykidu tittered. "Are you sure about this, Dorky? I don't think they're even ready for us!"
"Ja," offered Gimeri. "Maybe we should wait until they learn to fight again!"
Dorukomets laughed a hearty, offputting laugh. "Ordinarily SIR DORUKOMETS would never dream of combating such a weak group of stragglers, but this time he will make an exception!" He glared at Alex. "Too long has this little girl stood in the way of obtaining the gauntlet, and that ends now!"
Alex simply unshouldered her pack and tossed it to Tor while unsheathing her sword with the other hand. "Just find some firebat capsules or poison pouches or something, and use them when you're not keeping me supplied with etherdust." How long can it take them to gather things up from a hut that has, what, three rooms?
"Ah ha, so she does have some fight left in her after all! Well, companions, no need to hold back!"
With no more preamble than that, he lunged. With speed that seemed out of place even to those who had seen him fight before, Dorukomets whipped a spear off his back and leveled the point at Alex's throat even as he thundered across the floor towards her. With a speed that seemed like it should literally have been impossible, Tock interposed himself between them, deflecting the spear blow with his shoulder and taking only superficial damage to his brassy frame for the trouble.
The mechanical man ducked back out of the way as Dorukomets reeled, and Alex took the opening to mutter to herself a bit and swing her sword around; after a moment, a volley of sharp and jagged chunks of ice materialized behind the arc of her blade. They launched themselves towards the temporally-displaced knight's group, peppering them with freezing razors before weakly exploding into puffs of cold fire. Gimeri squealed unpleasantly and hurried to scribble some minor healing glyphs on Dorukomets's back; he was completely cured, but at least she and the bird weren't unharmed. Alex briefly wished she'd invested in some runespells at some point; she was just so mediocre with natural magic.
She didn't have much time to spend on that train of thought, though, since Tor had finally found something in the bag that seemed promisingly weaponizable even through the haze of pleasant befuddlement that was filling him top to bottom. He idly wondered why none of these bottles and bags and weird squirmy things weren't labeled – or frankly how so many of them fit in a little leather backpack – but set all that aside as he flung a sinister-looking vial of bubbling black sludge at... Who was it supposed– right, the octopus! At the octopus.
The glass shattered like sugar and the dark spirits inside burst out with a sound that was a cross between an explosion and a scream. They clawed and bit at Gimeri for several seconds as she flailed ineffectually at their incorporeal bodies, then fled and faded into nothingness, leaving her covered in lacerations and what looked like acid burns.
"Thees ees unbearable! Don't let zem hurt me, Sir Dokuromets!"
"I will aid you, fair Gimeri!"
The little bird-man did an awkward, fluttering dance, clicking his beak and squaking loudly, then pointed straight at Tor. Tock blurred into motion again, putting himself in the path of the spell everyone expected to materialize; when nothing seemed to happen, he relaaxed slightly, which sent Tykidu into gales of raucous chirp-laughter.
"Your golem could not outsmart the mighty entourage of SIR DORUKOMETS forever! Not after the last time we met, little girl."
As Dorukomets himself attacked again with an obnoxious cry of "DORUUUUUUU!" and was locked in a grapple with Tock, Alex's eyes were darting all around the little dock-room. What could he possibly be– and then she saw it. A ball of molten rock and metal wreathed with black-tinged flame was forming over Tor. Before she could speak, it began streaking towards him, too fast to dodge even if he had been aware of its presence.
---
Huebert, in spite of or because of TinTen's request that he not go far, had continued on his way since leaving the dock, pummeling monsters and occasionally vaporizing the ones that looked too big to punch effectively. His plasma cannister was just whirring down as it cooled from being fired when he heard the thundering boom that he had no way of knowing signalled the arrival of Alex and her crew; he considered going back to check it out, but was distracted by an approaching lizard beast. When several voices followed the crash, however, whatever had happened behind him became much more interesting than some easily-dispatched reptile; with an excited grin, he doubled back, thankful for the one voice that seemed to like DRAMATIC EXCLAMATIONS the most for making it easy to find the way.
Curiously, despite the fact that he'd definitively and lethally cleared the halls as he'd passed, there were more rats and lizards and so forth littering the gloomy darkness. He didn't give it much thought – who cared where vermin came from, right? – and just barelled past, intent on reaching whatever was causing such a ruckus. It wasn't hard; the monsters would growl or scream or bark or whatever they did and try to attack him, but as he moved past they'd inevitably just... let him go. None of them made an effort to pursue him, and that suited him just fine. He had bigger fish to fry. Or punch or laser.
By the time he reached the dock again, the arrogant monologue contest was over and fighting had begun in earnest. Two groups of three weird-looking beings were lined up and duking it out; Huebert arrived just in time to see the avian one launch some kind of firey attack on... Was that Tor?
Huebert's excitement quickly withered to anger and worry. Tor was an arrogant prick, and probably a racist judging by the way he'd always looked at Huebert and even his own troops, but he still didn't need to die. Especially not before they'd had a chance to explore this weird place and especially not before Scofflaw. Without stopping to think or draw a weapon, Huebert dashed into the room, fists swinging. His intervention couldn't have really made much of a difference regardless of how it played out, though, since it was about at that moment that the spell, now a spike of lethal heat and steel, slammed into Tor's back. The shocked alien's eyes widened and he screamed as he was immolated and impaled.
Of course, no-one could have seen what had actually happened without the aid of a high-speed camera with impressive zooming capabilities. Though he'd burned off his toxins as recently as his freefall from Caelo Ruinam, the intervening waiting on the shipshack and fight had been long enough to build a healthy supply back up. Or, rather, an unhealthy one. The intense heat from Gimeri's missile was enough to spontaneously ignite the unaware telpori-hal, sending his body crumbling into a biological ash slurry before the metal bolt could do it any real harm. He collapsed, the spell embedded in what could only be called his flesh by dint of its current shape, and disintegrated.
Huebert, who hadn't been exposed to Tor's species's more combustive quirks and didn't remember much of what the Fool had told them about him, only saw the captain killed and burnt.
"Dammit!"
His shout devolved from expletive to wordless howl of rage, and he charged into the fray, not bothering to wonder why the round hadn't ended yet. Despite Tykidu having been the one who'd actually killed Tor as far as Huebert was aware, Dorukomets was closer; he swung as hard as he could, muscles rivalling the monster's in size even if they were outmatched in quantity, confident that he could knock its smug, unarmored head in with one blow. What he hadn't expected was to be struck himself in the gut and tossed backwards, unable even to see what had hit him. As Huebert collided with the wall behind him, Dorukomets shoved Tock aside and turned to face him, laughing.
"Ha HA! So, another challenger seeks to tackle SIR DORUKOMETS, even as his moment of final victory approaches. At least this one looks like it can handle itself in combat. Perhaps it will not die quite so embarrassingly!"
Huebert spat on the ground, not even bothering to stand up. "Go fuck yourself, you caricature."
He drew out his carbine and sent a burst of laserfire straight at the showboating warrior. Gimeri screamed, Alex shouted at Tock to take advantage of the situation, and Tykidu was clearly panicking as his hero took a volley of weaponized light to the chest and arms. Nobody seemed to notice Tor calmly reform, still looking dazed, or pick up the pack by its now-scorched straps.
---
TinTen stood up. He had... Well, it was less of a plan than he'd like it to be. Hardly a plan at all, really. For all his research and divining, for all his time and effort... He was simply in a place and in a situation there wasn't much precedent for, no matter how far he stretched interpretations. On the one limb, he was pretty confident about how to find Scofflaw, and almost certainly overconfident about his own safety. On the other, there was no guarantee of how the encounter with his quarry would play out. If he considered one set of writ in a certain way, Scofflaw might even end up benefiting from it; another way saw them mutually stymied, and a third forecast both playing into the hands of a third party. Still, he had to try if there was any chance of finishing the bastard off, and there certainly was that much.
He sighed, and gathered up his book and pulled datapads from the clenching hands of some very passive-aggressive defeated skeletons. Without a backwards glance, he headed out the way he'd sent Huebert. With a truncated list of directions he intended to take gripped on one side and his weapon drawn on the other, he headed out through the labyrinthine dungeon ahead of him.
After several minutes of confident wandering, eyes fixed on a datapad and almost absentmindedly taking potshots at whatever assorted monsters accosted him, he came to yet another fork. Along one path, scorches on the wall and sections of stone that had been sublimated indicated Huebert had gone that way; along the other undisturbed corridor there wasn't much at all worth mentioning, save for the fact that it was the one TinTen wanted to go down.
"Hmph. Expected to meet Huebert before now," he muttered to a tentacular abomination as he blasted its myriad eyes out. "Reminded him to stay close."
He waffled for several seconds, debating going after Huebert or simply continuing along his way. Eventually, he came to the conclusion that Huebert was faster than he, so catching up would probably be futile, and would eat up a lot of time even if it wasn't. With an annoyed squelch, he slithered his way through the darkness.
Anyone with a map of Caelo Ruinam would have been able to see that his meanderings were an extemely redundant and nearly random spiderweb of twists and turns; despite being extremely inefficient, though, they were bringing him closer to a stairwell that would bring him out of the depths of the citadel's dungeons and straight into the hangar filled with Lady Midday's mechs, aircraft, and soldiers. By coincidence or by providence, he was approaching what could loosely be called his goal, despite doing so in the most dangerous and roundabout way possible.
---
Dorukomets fell, an expression of pained surprise plastered across his face; Huebert rose, a grimly retributive one on his. It was about this time that he realized that despite Tor's death, the round hadn't moved on, and about this time that Tor himself piped up cheerfully in spite of being dead and a battle raging around him.
"Hey, it's that guy!"
'That guy' looked over, eyebrows raised. "Wait, bu–"
His question was cut off as a ballistic octopus collided with him and knocked him back down, doing its level best to throttle him.
"How could you do that to him! He didn't even hurt you!"
It took all of Huebert's considerable strength and dexterity to wrangle the murderous cephalopod and cast her aside; as he did, he caught sight of Tock hammering Tykidu into the ground with his fists. Alex calmly strode over to the writhing Gimeri, slashing her several times until she was still. Her body was still floating, but she seemed to have been dealt a deathblow.
Huebert stood back up. Again. He massaged the suckermarks on his wrists and neck, and coughed out "What the hell is going on here?"
Tor looked at the bodies of his defeated foes. "They... That one's still breathing. Aren't you going to kill them?"
Alex took his resurrection in much greater stride than Huebert had, despite knowing him for less time, not even bothering to give the near-unrecognizable alien a second glance.
"No," she said, giving Dorukomets a kick in the side and grinning understatedly as he did his best not to groan or shift away from the blow. "They always do this when they're beaten, and I'm not about to go around stabbing a bunch of idiots who have surrendered."
That seemed just fine to Tor. Lots of things did. Alex turned to Huebert as the rest of her crew finally started filing out of their craft and had better have one heck of a reason it took them that long.
"Thanks, you really have no idea how much time you just saved us, and how important that is. What kind of weapon is that? I've never seen something that can dish out that much damage, or channel magic that effectively. Best manapistol I've ever seen could only get a burst out every seven seconds or so, and that got, what, ten in a shot?"
Huebert's brow furrowed.
"Wait, magic?"