Re: Epic Clash Round 4 - The Unholy Fortress
11-23-2010, 04:14 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Baphomet.
Glere watched as Spender disappeared. Asteira, too, was nowhere to be found. Thomas doubled over, retching, as something black and cold swirled out of his back. A sudden pulse of blackness burst from his body and dissipated into white mist. The remaining cultists recoiled, bearing faces of confusion. Thomas raised his head and met Glere's gaze, holding back four minds' emotions. He looked down at his hands and stood, exhaling slowly. Darkness enveloped them both.
A sharp sound rang out across seemingly infinite blackness. A spotlight faded into existence, illuminating The Overseer and Chronicler atop a pedestal. Bryce clapped again, and again, and again, slowly building his tempo to a crescendo. He grinned a white grin and the entire expanse was suddenly illuminated with bright daylight.
A man and a sentient cape stood atop glowing circles on a transparent floor. All around them, a diverse and seemingly infinite throng of beings erupted in a simultaneous cheer. Bryce spoke, and his voice was amplified and echoed across the entire gathered crowd.
"Dudes, babes, and whatever else the multiverse happened to cook up, the Epic Clash is on! I am, of course, your host, Bryce, and beside me is my co-host, Miles! From every universe, every world, anything and everything that ever existed, I asked you to bring me eight champions, and today we see the cream of the crop, the best of the best, our finalists, everyone give them a hand!"
The cheering crowd somehow threw themselves into an even more frenzied cheer, all manner of enthusiastic sounds from alien physiologies mingling with the clapping. Chants of "Glere" and "Thomas" were audible among them, though the two contestants remained still as statues in their glowing circles.
"I know those of you who've been watching from the start are itching to see more action, but for those of you just tuning in, let's give our would-be champions a little introduction, shall we?"
Glere suddenly staggered as whatever force was holding him stationary was released. Bryce gestured to him and the circle around him began to shimmer with blue and white light. "In the blue corner, we have Glere!" The crowd began to cheer and boo the fishbowlkin in equal parts, and Bryce continued when the sounds died down. "What is there to say about Glere? He's got a cape full of junk, he's got a fishbowl for a head, and he's CRAAAZY, folks! Glere, give us a few words!"
Glere stood straight and adjusted his cape. "Crazy, am I? Coming from you, that means something. As for my words, I choose 'tarpaulin' and 'fetishistic'." Upon uttering the last word, he deftly reached into his cape and flung a bowling ball directly at Bryce's head. The ball struck an invisible surface in front of Bryce and the crowd roared, mostly with laughter.
"Ha ha, I like that fighting spirit, Glere. Let's keep it coming for that final round!" The circle around Glere turned black and he faded from existence. Bryce then pointed to the remaining contestant. "In the green corner, ladies and gentlemen, Thomas Packston!"
The circle surrounding Thomas began to shimmer green and white and he quickly steadied himself. His eyes flashed red briefly before turning gray. Without waiting to be prompted, he began to shout. "These battles are terrible! You're taking real people, sentient beings, and treating them as your playthings! You're manipulating them and forcing them to kill one another! That's...that's just wrong!"
Bryce smirked widely and snapped his fingers as the crowd broke into cheers and boos all around them. Thomas froze once again, this time slowly tipping over to land on his outstretched arm, where he bounced as if made of plastic. "As I was saying, Thomas is here because he's got four minds, each of them with control over a different classical element! He's equal parts crafty and deadly, and I'll bet we're all anxious to see him put that to use!"
With that, Thomas's circle turned black as well, and the paralyzed man faded from view.
He arrived in a familiar black space, trapped inside a transparent bubble. Glere sat in a similar bubble a few meters away, and both drifted in the hazy space between waking and unconsciousness. They were dimly aware of several floating screens, each showing different angles of Bryce giving his speech, the shots of the crowd, various excerpts from previous battle rounds. After several minutes, Bryce and Miles popped into existence below the screens. Bryce's face sobered immediately and both contestants were snapped into awakening. The screens were currently fixated on some allegedly-musical entertainment that had taken the stage in the two hosts' absence, and Bryce uttered a disgusted "Ugh" before clicking them off.
"Now that we've got that out of the way, let's get down to business. Our penultimate round just became our final round, so I guess we're skipping the volcano lair of Dr. Malice. That's a shame, because the second-to-last round traditionally contains contestants from the other battles in some limited form. It would have been nice to give you a taste of what you'd be up against in the all-stars battle." He paused briefly in contemplation. "By the way, there's going to be an all-stars battle. Whichever of you wins will enter a second battle with the winners of the other seven battles from this season. So, you know, heads up." He smiled sinisterly before muttering "I'm not hosting that one." Thomas voiced some objection, but the bubble muted every sound he made.
Miles raised his eyebrow. "So, uh, we're just using the last round we had planned for... you know, before?"
"Come to think of it," Bryce began, ignoring Miles's query, "we'd better take the blueprints for the other contestants out of Dr. Malice's matter aggregator before something nasty happens." Looking up at the bubbles, he continued. "Last round tends to have something to do with the contestants' minds. I think it's to flesh out your character better to the audience, so they'll sympathize more with you in the all-star round. That said, I've found a little pocket universe that takes a twist on that concept."
"So, we ARE using the same one? Uh, because I...I've been meaning to tell you, something happened when we were out..." Miles interjected.
Bryce turned to face him for the first time since entering the black space. He remained silent.
Miles shrank a bit and continued. "The...uh, both the source universe and the copy both, uhm, well they went dark, right before we went to the...the thing, just now. I couldn't see what happened or who was doing it, but, uh..."
Bryce snapped aggressively and two more floating screens appeared. In both was an infinite white expanse. Tears in the fabric of reality itself swirled with non-color, the rips spelling out words in English, different phrases on each screen.
BRYCE PHOTEMA, OVERSEER, USURPER, PRETENDER
FIND YOURSELF YET, HUMAN?
Miles fidgeted as the silence became more oppressive. He looked back and forth between the rapidly-paling face of Bryce and the screens. When The Overseer finally spoke, it was in a small voice. "And you don't know who?"
"It was... I tried every different way to scan, but it was all just...
"Uh...
"Well, black. Could we make another copy?"
Bryce took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his hair. "No," he said finally, "We'd have to temporally-displace the copy, and considering the way the mindspace works here it wouldn't function the same. Whoever did this knew what they were doing."
"Then...what's our final round?"
Bryce smiled. "We improvise."
The makeup caked to the faces of the felbeasts crowded in the center of the big top did nothing to make them look more personable, much less clown-like. Once fiercely pursuing the interlopers into their circus of horror, they now huddled together in fear, multiple eyes darting back and forth, illuminated by the flickering orange glow of the inferno now consuming the west wall. One suddenly screeched out in terror, but by the time the others turned to see the cause of its alarm, the sound had already been replaced by a wet gurgle.
Breaking through the circle, a tall, gaunt, gray-skinned figure stood mid-swing. Protruding from his arm, a white blade of energy glowed, anguished faces shifting across its surface. The two halves of the felbeast that the blade had just severed hit the ground with a sickening slapping sound. His dark eyes narrowed at the crowd, their slightly-luminous pupils indicating a hidden malevolence not present on his stoic face. Before their eyes, a barely-visible wisp bearing their fallen comrade's countenance was sucked from the bisected corpse into the glowing chrome port over the figure's heart. The silvery cables that protruded from this port, circled the figure's torso, and entered his back at the spine flashed briefly.
By the time he was recognized as one of the three interlopers, all but one of the tentacled clowns was shredded to their component parts by various weaponry forged from other souls likewise stolen by the pale figure. The final creature was held aloft by his neck, ethereal cables wrapping around him from their source in the pale man's hand.
Very calmly, slowly, he spoke in a cadence resembling a choir chant. "Rejoice for your comrades, for they have died in the service of Teival."
The clown tugged helplessly at the cables binding him. Its tongue lolled as it cried out. "Oh god, you monster! You... You killed them all!"
Without pause, Teival continued. "In death, they serve a greater purpose. In death, their souls have found a savior. In death, they extend my life, and are thus granted eternal life through me."
"You're insane! NNGH!" The creature's tentacles wriggled uselessly as the cables binding it tightened around its thorax.
"If eternity is measured by the lives that count it out, I am eternal. All those that die for me are eternal too. You would have died eventually if I had not come along. The time between now and that certain end is inconsequential, and the time between now and when I will kill you is even less meaningful."
The felbeast merely began weeping as it realized the futility of its situation.
"Where is the ringmaster?" Teival asked, after a pause.
"Wh...what?"
With slow deliberation, Teival drove a glowing pin through one of the creature's eyes. It cried out in pain and began sobbing anew.
"Where is the ringmaster?" Teival repeated.
"H...hiding in the equipment shack."
Teival's face remained stoic and emotionless as he shredded the creature to ribbons.
Elsewhere in the circus, a darkened room was illuminated as a searing beam of heat sliced a door off its hinges. The creature that stepped through the door's remains was perfectly capable of operating the handle, but he'd been feeling increasingly bored, temperamental, and destructive as this round had progressed. Jet black from horned head to taloned toe, Keegan resembled and behaved like a child of approximately 10 years of age. He was as immature as the universe he had been destined to be the Ender of--or more accurately, would have been if he wasn't plucked from his world for this battle.
By the dim light of the nebula overhead and the smoldering remains of the door, Keegan peered into the room with his ember-like eyes. A central walkway passed between two rows of stages and enclosures, some of which had dark, rustling shapes inside. Keegan leapt up, floating about a foot over the ground, and summoned his skeletal horse below him. With a rhythmic clatter, the bony hooves trotted along the central lane. Keegan extended his hand, conjuring a glowing ball of light whose luminescence spread through the entire hall.
One of the creatures in an enclosure leapt up at the wall and shrieked horribly. Keegan's mouth opened in shock, an inner orange glow from deeper in his throat displaying two rows of needle-like teeth.
He quickly overcame his surprise, replacing it with laughter. In a voice that sounded like several children speaking in unison, he appraised the situation to his horse. "The sign said this was the freak show, but this looks just like a stupid monkey. The things that work here are freakier than this!" He tapped his chin with a clawed finger. "...But maybe that's why they think they're freaks."
The apelike creature continued to shriek, until a gesture from Keegan brought a series of orange sparks together into a single point in its cage, which suddenly burst with a sizable explosion. The creature's lower half was severed completely, and Keegan watched it struggle. He chuckled, then began to move on.
The next area simply held a single glassy globe, inside which was a red liquid that seemed to be animated of its own accord. Above it, a large mechanized tarantula was suspended by the ceiling, apparently inert. Pictures on the wall described the liquid as the pilot of the spider. Keegan paid these little mind and proceeded further.
The next enclosure caused Keegan to double-take. It contained a human, huddled against the back wall of the cage. His hair was messy and he wore a frightened expression and a pink t-shirt that said simply Unicorns are awesome. He flinched at Keegan's approach.
"Heh. Whatcha doing in here, man?"
The human sat up a bit, swallowed, and answered shakily. "Kidnapped. They...there was supposed to be this battle, but then the whole thing just kind of uh, broke, like, time, and um. What...what are you doing in here?" He narrowed his eyes, which were underlined by dark circles.
Keegan looked away further down the corridor. "Hey, kidnapped and stuck in a battle too. I guess right now I'm killin' stuff. There's two other guys, one of 'em says I'm supposed to keep my eye on the last one."
The human's eyes widened. "There's something else loose in here. I couldn't see it, but I could hear it moving around. Is that your uh..."
"Oh, cool. That's probably Surok, he's like this slimy tar thing. He's really gross," Keegan replied. He smiled and looked around for signs of the third contestant, swinging his feet excitedly at his horse's side.
"Cool. Uh, if you let me out, I could probably help you look..."
"Nope," Keegan replied with a grin. With a wave of his hand, he set the human on fire. He chuckled again as the human's screams echoed through the corridor. Keegan dismounted and moved on to the next exhibit, tracing his fingertip along the wall, leaving a burnt line in the wallpaper.
Before he reached the next stage, Keegan heard a loud crash over the shrieks. He turned just in time to see the mechanized spider wrench its remaining legs loose of the cables suspending it on the ceiling and drop to the ground with a heavy clank. It wobbled to its feet as if unsure how they were supposed to move, and then turned its red-tinted eyes to face Keegan. He saw, oozing from the various metal plates and gears driving the legs, black, slimy gunk.
"Shit," Keegan exclaimed. "Surok got the robot."
"InterloPlease state your nStep away from the treasLethal force is requiYou cannot escaschzzzzzzz-" blurted a garbled prerecorded message from the spider. Without further warning, it spat a blistering globule of molten metal at Keegan.
"OW! Owowowowowow," repeated the Ender as he leapt up and down, frantically brushing the rivulets off his body. During one such leap, the tarantula fired again, just barely missing him due to his spastic flailing. Orange sparks began to condense under the machine's body, and when they had charged into a single point of white hot energy, it exploded outward, flinging the spider through the far wall. Keegan leapt on his horse's back and darted out the door in pursuit.
There, silhouetted against the flames of the big top, stood Teival. "Hey, grey guy," Keegan called to him.
Striding forward, Teival appraised the situation calmly. "I see you're still tailing Surok. I'm almost surprised you've kept your attention on a single task this long."
A wave of fire washed over Surok's new metal carapace, but didn't do any noticeable damage. Keegan frowned. "God, you are so annoying."
Teival lashed a ghost-whip out, wrapping around one of the spider's legs. He pulled, but the other legs rooted themselves in the dirt and the whole beast only stumbled slightly. "Give me more respect, Keegan. Remember that it is only by my mercy that you are still alive."
Keegan leapt from his horse and smirked as he charged up another explosion beneath the legs of the still-bound spider. "Yeah, I've been thinking about that. You know how you say you're trying to escape this battle?"
Teival scowled. "This is fact, yes." Keegan's explosion went off, launching the machine into the air. Teival pulled on his whip, flipping it upside down.
"Well, you also say you are only doing this friendship thing with me because I don't have a soul to power your stupid implant thing." Keegan turned to face Teival, leaving the spider behind him.
Teival looked from Keegan to the spider. "Hold him," he said.
Keegan continued, paying the spider no mind as it clumsily flailed its legs in an attempt to right itself. "So I take it you found your ringmaster guy, and there's no way out of this round either? And you did your stupid preachy thing and killed him and took his soul? Well, next round, that's it. There's no more rounds after that."
Teival's stoic facade broke for a moment, his eyes narrowed in indignation. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that next round, your easiest way out is going to be through me. I'm saying maybe the only reason you haven't killed me yet is because you're not sure you can. I'm saying that you've been an uptight asshole ever since this battle started, and if we ever were friends, we won't be after this round. We can't. You're out of options." Keegan rotated his shoulders and took a step towards Teival. The spider rooted two of its legs in the ground and flipped itself back over.
Teival released the ghost-whip and planted his feet firmly in the dirt, facing the Ender. "I can still kill The Stranger," he said.
"You can't. You're not strong enough."
Teival sneered and his dark eyes narrowed further. He held his arms out, hands balled into fists, and two ghostly blades shot out from them. "I can still kill you."
Keegan's ember-like eyes flashed and he shook his head. He raised his hand towards Teival, and waves of heat began emanating from it. "Even with all your fancy weapons and fancier words, you're weak and stupid." The tall figure's once-emotionless visage erupted in an expression of pure hate.
The spider, now thoroughly disregarded, belted out another string of prerecorded messages in a deep booming voice and leapt at the pair. Both snarled and twisted, the brunt of their previously-bottled aggression erupting towards a new source.
The resultant explosion sent shockwaves across the circus. Then, all was black.
A single light source came into being, illuminating the hidden figure of The Stranger. Wrapped in several multicolored coats, several overlapping shirts of clashing design, two scarves, a big floppy hat, and green goggles, the strange figure was too encumbered to walk properly. If there was even a man in there, he was completely obscured. He waddled forward, his glove-wrapped hands making a cheering motion, accompanied by appropriate enthusiastic sounds, albeit muffled by his neckwear. "Woo, woo! Guys, that was great, just great. I'm gonna get accepted by those big shots in no time for this. I mean come on! Explosions! Alliances broken! Blood, murder, adult themes, ha ha! Awesome. Come on, we've got a final round to get to, and I'm sure you're all itching to get at each others' throats. Especially after that, I mean wow."
A bright light flashed in the darkness as Teival, Keegan, and The Stranger were transported to a new location. Seven figures materialized on a giant ball of writhing flesh floating in space, beams of light flashing out from cracks in the surface.
"Okay, so this is a-" The stranger began, before doing a double-take at the number of figures that just arrived.
"'Sup," said Bryce, smirkingly.
The Stranger looked over the four newcomers with alarm. "Overseer! And, The Chronicler, and uh..." he surveyed the frozen figures of Thomas and Glere, "guests! What's... what're...uh...to what do I owe the pleasure?"
Huge smirk still plastered annoyingly across his face, Bryce looked the landscape up and down. "Nice place you've got here. I'll take it."
The Stranger took a moment to respond. "You'll what?"
Miles looked back and forth between the two grandmasters. "Wait, uh, really?"
"What, you don't like it?" Bryce asked, addressing Miles. "See, he's got basically a ball of continuous nuclear reactions, like a mini-star, wrapped in a delicious candy shell of psychic pustule-laden eldritch monstrosity! It's really a pretty sweet location for a final round."
"It's..." The Stranger began, apparently not knowing where to begin, "Yeah, I mean there's more to it than that, but...it's..." He paused, apparently steeling himself. "It's mine, I set it up for The Exalted Exchange. You'll have to find someplace else."
"Excuse me a moment, folks, I gotta take care of something," quipped Bryce, taking a few steps towards The Stranger.
"You stay away from me!" The Stranger shrieked. Something bright flashed from his hand toward The Overseer, who continued walking unfazed and began to remove his sunglasses.
In an instant, both figures were encased in an orb of static. Miles flinched, and looked back at the four paralyzed contestants. He waved his hands and conjured up several screens, all of which only displayed more static. "Twice in one day, jammed," he muttered to himself. He waved the screens out of existence and walked closer to inspect the ball, but apparently decided better of it halfway and just stood and crossed his arms awkwardly. He walked back to the contestants and conjured more screens around Keegan and Teival. Across them flashed several lines of data.
Miles scanned the screens impassively and fidgeted. Nearly two minutes passed in the white noise and glow of the static orb before it finally blinked out of existence.
Bryce knelt on the ground, massaging his temple with one hand. In front of him was a crumpled pile of clothing. The former stood, and the latter slowly inflated and pushed itself up off the ground. Bryce cracked his neck. The Stranger stood, and Bryce nodded to him. The cloth man disappeared in a puff of smoke. "Guy put up a better fight than I expected," Bryce muttered, before continuing to address the gathered crowd. "Okay, we're sharing this one. Miles, do me a favor," he made a gesture encompassing the entirety of the twisted ground they stood on, "Copy all this mess, put it like two miles out that way."
"Can't you just-"
"Miles, I'm asking you to be proactive here. You're supposed to be my co-host, but I'm doing all the work. It's time I gave you some responsibility befitting your station."
Miles looked taken aback for a second, then nodded with a barely-suppressed smile. He waved his hand, and with a loud pop and a rumble, a point of light flashed in space above them. It quickly grew into a massive flaming orb, and writhing organic masses weaved themselves into a hollow sphere around it with a few empty spaces where the light still shone through.
"Here's how this is gonna work," Bryce began. "See all these pulsing greenish blisters all over the surface of this thing? Well, each of those is... it's like a seed. The whole mess is alive, and it can fish around in your brain. It pulls out random stuff from your memories: people who were important to you, things that hold some significance to why you are you..." He gestured to a gigantic blister in the distance, the size of a small house, "It can even recreate entire events and settings. It grows them in these pods, and moves them around, and makes them do things that it thinks will get a reaction out of you. To make matters worse, there's going to be another contestant on the thing with you, and all the things that haunt their minds will be running around with you, too. Now, this thing is very powerful. It can recreate some pretty amazing things, even intricate technology and magic, up to a certain point."
He gestured to the duplicate orb hanging ominously above them. "'But Overseer,' you must be saying, 'why are there two?' Well, it gets better. You're going to get paired off with a contestant from a different battle and split up onto the different psychic terror star monsters. After they've had a little while to stew in your mental bullshit, they're going to crash into each other." He paused and looked back and forth between them, "And honestly, that's when shit hits the fan, because these things look to be about a mile in diameter, and I'm not sure how well they're gonna stabilize from an impact of that magnitude."
Bryce held his hands out and looked the contestants over. "Now, as far as I'm concerned, these are still two separate battles, even though one of them is unofficial and unsanctioned. If anyone dies, the other person in their battle is going to leave the round, and the other pair is gonna stay until someone dies there, too. Any questions?"
He paused as if waiting for the paralyzed figures to speak up. "Of course not. Now, let's get this party started."
Glere and Thomas were encased in blue bubbles, and Teival and Keegan were encased in red bubbles. One blue and one red bubble shot off through space to the distant sphere, and the other two split up and shot across the surface of the original one.
Glere watched as Spender disappeared. Asteira, too, was nowhere to be found. Thomas doubled over, retching, as something black and cold swirled out of his back. A sudden pulse of blackness burst from his body and dissipated into white mist. The remaining cultists recoiled, bearing faces of confusion. Thomas raised his head and met Glere's gaze, holding back four minds' emotions. He looked down at his hands and stood, exhaling slowly. Darkness enveloped them both.
A sharp sound rang out across seemingly infinite blackness. A spotlight faded into existence, illuminating The Overseer and Chronicler atop a pedestal. Bryce clapped again, and again, and again, slowly building his tempo to a crescendo. He grinned a white grin and the entire expanse was suddenly illuminated with bright daylight.
A man and a sentient cape stood atop glowing circles on a transparent floor. All around them, a diverse and seemingly infinite throng of beings erupted in a simultaneous cheer. Bryce spoke, and his voice was amplified and echoed across the entire gathered crowd.
"Dudes, babes, and whatever else the multiverse happened to cook up, the Epic Clash is on! I am, of course, your host, Bryce, and beside me is my co-host, Miles! From every universe, every world, anything and everything that ever existed, I asked you to bring me eight champions, and today we see the cream of the crop, the best of the best, our finalists, everyone give them a hand!"
The cheering crowd somehow threw themselves into an even more frenzied cheer, all manner of enthusiastic sounds from alien physiologies mingling with the clapping. Chants of "Glere" and "Thomas" were audible among them, though the two contestants remained still as statues in their glowing circles.
"I know those of you who've been watching from the start are itching to see more action, but for those of you just tuning in, let's give our would-be champions a little introduction, shall we?"
Glere suddenly staggered as whatever force was holding him stationary was released. Bryce gestured to him and the circle around him began to shimmer with blue and white light. "In the blue corner, we have Glere!" The crowd began to cheer and boo the fishbowlkin in equal parts, and Bryce continued when the sounds died down. "What is there to say about Glere? He's got a cape full of junk, he's got a fishbowl for a head, and he's CRAAAZY, folks! Glere, give us a few words!"
Glere stood straight and adjusted his cape. "Crazy, am I? Coming from you, that means something. As for my words, I choose 'tarpaulin' and 'fetishistic'." Upon uttering the last word, he deftly reached into his cape and flung a bowling ball directly at Bryce's head. The ball struck an invisible surface in front of Bryce and the crowd roared, mostly with laughter.
"Ha ha, I like that fighting spirit, Glere. Let's keep it coming for that final round!" The circle around Glere turned black and he faded from existence. Bryce then pointed to the remaining contestant. "In the green corner, ladies and gentlemen, Thomas Packston!"
The circle surrounding Thomas began to shimmer green and white and he quickly steadied himself. His eyes flashed red briefly before turning gray. Without waiting to be prompted, he began to shout. "These battles are terrible! You're taking real people, sentient beings, and treating them as your playthings! You're manipulating them and forcing them to kill one another! That's...that's just wrong!"
Bryce smirked widely and snapped his fingers as the crowd broke into cheers and boos all around them. Thomas froze once again, this time slowly tipping over to land on his outstretched arm, where he bounced as if made of plastic. "As I was saying, Thomas is here because he's got four minds, each of them with control over a different classical element! He's equal parts crafty and deadly, and I'll bet we're all anxious to see him put that to use!"
With that, Thomas's circle turned black as well, and the paralyzed man faded from view.
He arrived in a familiar black space, trapped inside a transparent bubble. Glere sat in a similar bubble a few meters away, and both drifted in the hazy space between waking and unconsciousness. They were dimly aware of several floating screens, each showing different angles of Bryce giving his speech, the shots of the crowd, various excerpts from previous battle rounds. After several minutes, Bryce and Miles popped into existence below the screens. Bryce's face sobered immediately and both contestants were snapped into awakening. The screens were currently fixated on some allegedly-musical entertainment that had taken the stage in the two hosts' absence, and Bryce uttered a disgusted "Ugh" before clicking them off.
"Now that we've got that out of the way, let's get down to business. Our penultimate round just became our final round, so I guess we're skipping the volcano lair of Dr. Malice. That's a shame, because the second-to-last round traditionally contains contestants from the other battles in some limited form. It would have been nice to give you a taste of what you'd be up against in the all-stars battle." He paused briefly in contemplation. "By the way, there's going to be an all-stars battle. Whichever of you wins will enter a second battle with the winners of the other seven battles from this season. So, you know, heads up." He smiled sinisterly before muttering "I'm not hosting that one." Thomas voiced some objection, but the bubble muted every sound he made.
Miles raised his eyebrow. "So, uh, we're just using the last round we had planned for... you know, before?"
"Come to think of it," Bryce began, ignoring Miles's query, "we'd better take the blueprints for the other contestants out of Dr. Malice's matter aggregator before something nasty happens." Looking up at the bubbles, he continued. "Last round tends to have something to do with the contestants' minds. I think it's to flesh out your character better to the audience, so they'll sympathize more with you in the all-star round. That said, I've found a little pocket universe that takes a twist on that concept."
"So, we ARE using the same one? Uh, because I...I've been meaning to tell you, something happened when we were out..." Miles interjected.
Bryce turned to face him for the first time since entering the black space. He remained silent.
Miles shrank a bit and continued. "The...uh, both the source universe and the copy both, uhm, well they went dark, right before we went to the...the thing, just now. I couldn't see what happened or who was doing it, but, uh..."
Bryce snapped aggressively and two more floating screens appeared. In both was an infinite white expanse. Tears in the fabric of reality itself swirled with non-color, the rips spelling out words in English, different phrases on each screen.
BRYCE PHOTEMA, OVERSEER, USURPER, PRETENDER
FIND YOURSELF YET, HUMAN?
Miles fidgeted as the silence became more oppressive. He looked back and forth between the rapidly-paling face of Bryce and the screens. When The Overseer finally spoke, it was in a small voice. "And you don't know who?"
"It was... I tried every different way to scan, but it was all just...
"Uh...
"Well, black. Could we make another copy?"
Bryce took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his hair. "No," he said finally, "We'd have to temporally-displace the copy, and considering the way the mindspace works here it wouldn't function the same. Whoever did this knew what they were doing."
"Then...what's our final round?"
Bryce smiled. "We improvise."
The makeup caked to the faces of the felbeasts crowded in the center of the big top did nothing to make them look more personable, much less clown-like. Once fiercely pursuing the interlopers into their circus of horror, they now huddled together in fear, multiple eyes darting back and forth, illuminated by the flickering orange glow of the inferno now consuming the west wall. One suddenly screeched out in terror, but by the time the others turned to see the cause of its alarm, the sound had already been replaced by a wet gurgle.
Breaking through the circle, a tall, gaunt, gray-skinned figure stood mid-swing. Protruding from his arm, a white blade of energy glowed, anguished faces shifting across its surface. The two halves of the felbeast that the blade had just severed hit the ground with a sickening slapping sound. His dark eyes narrowed at the crowd, their slightly-luminous pupils indicating a hidden malevolence not present on his stoic face. Before their eyes, a barely-visible wisp bearing their fallen comrade's countenance was sucked from the bisected corpse into the glowing chrome port over the figure's heart. The silvery cables that protruded from this port, circled the figure's torso, and entered his back at the spine flashed briefly.
By the time he was recognized as one of the three interlopers, all but one of the tentacled clowns was shredded to their component parts by various weaponry forged from other souls likewise stolen by the pale figure. The final creature was held aloft by his neck, ethereal cables wrapping around him from their source in the pale man's hand.
Very calmly, slowly, he spoke in a cadence resembling a choir chant. "Rejoice for your comrades, for they have died in the service of Teival."
The clown tugged helplessly at the cables binding him. Its tongue lolled as it cried out. "Oh god, you monster! You... You killed them all!"
Without pause, Teival continued. "In death, they serve a greater purpose. In death, their souls have found a savior. In death, they extend my life, and are thus granted eternal life through me."
"You're insane! NNGH!" The creature's tentacles wriggled uselessly as the cables binding it tightened around its thorax.
"If eternity is measured by the lives that count it out, I am eternal. All those that die for me are eternal too. You would have died eventually if I had not come along. The time between now and that certain end is inconsequential, and the time between now and when I will kill you is even less meaningful."
The felbeast merely began weeping as it realized the futility of its situation.
"Where is the ringmaster?" Teival asked, after a pause.
"Wh...what?"
With slow deliberation, Teival drove a glowing pin through one of the creature's eyes. It cried out in pain and began sobbing anew.
"Where is the ringmaster?" Teival repeated.
"H...hiding in the equipment shack."
Teival's face remained stoic and emotionless as he shredded the creature to ribbons.
Elsewhere in the circus, a darkened room was illuminated as a searing beam of heat sliced a door off its hinges. The creature that stepped through the door's remains was perfectly capable of operating the handle, but he'd been feeling increasingly bored, temperamental, and destructive as this round had progressed. Jet black from horned head to taloned toe, Keegan resembled and behaved like a child of approximately 10 years of age. He was as immature as the universe he had been destined to be the Ender of--or more accurately, would have been if he wasn't plucked from his world for this battle.
By the dim light of the nebula overhead and the smoldering remains of the door, Keegan peered into the room with his ember-like eyes. A central walkway passed between two rows of stages and enclosures, some of which had dark, rustling shapes inside. Keegan leapt up, floating about a foot over the ground, and summoned his skeletal horse below him. With a rhythmic clatter, the bony hooves trotted along the central lane. Keegan extended his hand, conjuring a glowing ball of light whose luminescence spread through the entire hall.
One of the creatures in an enclosure leapt up at the wall and shrieked horribly. Keegan's mouth opened in shock, an inner orange glow from deeper in his throat displaying two rows of needle-like teeth.
He quickly overcame his surprise, replacing it with laughter. In a voice that sounded like several children speaking in unison, he appraised the situation to his horse. "The sign said this was the freak show, but this looks just like a stupid monkey. The things that work here are freakier than this!" He tapped his chin with a clawed finger. "...But maybe that's why they think they're freaks."
The apelike creature continued to shriek, until a gesture from Keegan brought a series of orange sparks together into a single point in its cage, which suddenly burst with a sizable explosion. The creature's lower half was severed completely, and Keegan watched it struggle. He chuckled, then began to move on.
The next area simply held a single glassy globe, inside which was a red liquid that seemed to be animated of its own accord. Above it, a large mechanized tarantula was suspended by the ceiling, apparently inert. Pictures on the wall described the liquid as the pilot of the spider. Keegan paid these little mind and proceeded further.
The next enclosure caused Keegan to double-take. It contained a human, huddled against the back wall of the cage. His hair was messy and he wore a frightened expression and a pink t-shirt that said simply Unicorns are awesome. He flinched at Keegan's approach.
"Heh. Whatcha doing in here, man?"
The human sat up a bit, swallowed, and answered shakily. "Kidnapped. They...there was supposed to be this battle, but then the whole thing just kind of uh, broke, like, time, and um. What...what are you doing in here?" He narrowed his eyes, which were underlined by dark circles.
Keegan looked away further down the corridor. "Hey, kidnapped and stuck in a battle too. I guess right now I'm killin' stuff. There's two other guys, one of 'em says I'm supposed to keep my eye on the last one."
The human's eyes widened. "There's something else loose in here. I couldn't see it, but I could hear it moving around. Is that your uh..."
"Oh, cool. That's probably Surok, he's like this slimy tar thing. He's really gross," Keegan replied. He smiled and looked around for signs of the third contestant, swinging his feet excitedly at his horse's side.
"Cool. Uh, if you let me out, I could probably help you look..."
"Nope," Keegan replied with a grin. With a wave of his hand, he set the human on fire. He chuckled again as the human's screams echoed through the corridor. Keegan dismounted and moved on to the next exhibit, tracing his fingertip along the wall, leaving a burnt line in the wallpaper.
Before he reached the next stage, Keegan heard a loud crash over the shrieks. He turned just in time to see the mechanized spider wrench its remaining legs loose of the cables suspending it on the ceiling and drop to the ground with a heavy clank. It wobbled to its feet as if unsure how they were supposed to move, and then turned its red-tinted eyes to face Keegan. He saw, oozing from the various metal plates and gears driving the legs, black, slimy gunk.
"Shit," Keegan exclaimed. "Surok got the robot."
"InterloPlease state your nStep away from the treasLethal force is requiYou cannot escaschzzzzzzz-" blurted a garbled prerecorded message from the spider. Without further warning, it spat a blistering globule of molten metal at Keegan.
"OW! Owowowowowow," repeated the Ender as he leapt up and down, frantically brushing the rivulets off his body. During one such leap, the tarantula fired again, just barely missing him due to his spastic flailing. Orange sparks began to condense under the machine's body, and when they had charged into a single point of white hot energy, it exploded outward, flinging the spider through the far wall. Keegan leapt on his horse's back and darted out the door in pursuit.
There, silhouetted against the flames of the big top, stood Teival. "Hey, grey guy," Keegan called to him.
Striding forward, Teival appraised the situation calmly. "I see you're still tailing Surok. I'm almost surprised you've kept your attention on a single task this long."
A wave of fire washed over Surok's new metal carapace, but didn't do any noticeable damage. Keegan frowned. "God, you are so annoying."
Teival lashed a ghost-whip out, wrapping around one of the spider's legs. He pulled, but the other legs rooted themselves in the dirt and the whole beast only stumbled slightly. "Give me more respect, Keegan. Remember that it is only by my mercy that you are still alive."
Keegan leapt from his horse and smirked as he charged up another explosion beneath the legs of the still-bound spider. "Yeah, I've been thinking about that. You know how you say you're trying to escape this battle?"
Teival scowled. "This is fact, yes." Keegan's explosion went off, launching the machine into the air. Teival pulled on his whip, flipping it upside down.
"Well, you also say you are only doing this friendship thing with me because I don't have a soul to power your stupid implant thing." Keegan turned to face Teival, leaving the spider behind him.
Teival looked from Keegan to the spider. "Hold him," he said.
Keegan continued, paying the spider no mind as it clumsily flailed its legs in an attempt to right itself. "So I take it you found your ringmaster guy, and there's no way out of this round either? And you did your stupid preachy thing and killed him and took his soul? Well, next round, that's it. There's no more rounds after that."
Teival's stoic facade broke for a moment, his eyes narrowed in indignation. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that next round, your easiest way out is going to be through me. I'm saying maybe the only reason you haven't killed me yet is because you're not sure you can. I'm saying that you've been an uptight asshole ever since this battle started, and if we ever were friends, we won't be after this round. We can't. You're out of options." Keegan rotated his shoulders and took a step towards Teival. The spider rooted two of its legs in the ground and flipped itself back over.
Teival released the ghost-whip and planted his feet firmly in the dirt, facing the Ender. "I can still kill The Stranger," he said.
"You can't. You're not strong enough."
Teival sneered and his dark eyes narrowed further. He held his arms out, hands balled into fists, and two ghostly blades shot out from them. "I can still kill you."
Keegan's ember-like eyes flashed and he shook his head. He raised his hand towards Teival, and waves of heat began emanating from it. "Even with all your fancy weapons and fancier words, you're weak and stupid." The tall figure's once-emotionless visage erupted in an expression of pure hate.
The spider, now thoroughly disregarded, belted out another string of prerecorded messages in a deep booming voice and leapt at the pair. Both snarled and twisted, the brunt of their previously-bottled aggression erupting towards a new source.
The resultant explosion sent shockwaves across the circus. Then, all was black.
A single light source came into being, illuminating the hidden figure of The Stranger. Wrapped in several multicolored coats, several overlapping shirts of clashing design, two scarves, a big floppy hat, and green goggles, the strange figure was too encumbered to walk properly. If there was even a man in there, he was completely obscured. He waddled forward, his glove-wrapped hands making a cheering motion, accompanied by appropriate enthusiastic sounds, albeit muffled by his neckwear. "Woo, woo! Guys, that was great, just great. I'm gonna get accepted by those big shots in no time for this. I mean come on! Explosions! Alliances broken! Blood, murder, adult themes, ha ha! Awesome. Come on, we've got a final round to get to, and I'm sure you're all itching to get at each others' throats. Especially after that, I mean wow."
A bright light flashed in the darkness as Teival, Keegan, and The Stranger were transported to a new location. Seven figures materialized on a giant ball of writhing flesh floating in space, beams of light flashing out from cracks in the surface.
"Okay, so this is a-" The stranger began, before doing a double-take at the number of figures that just arrived.
"'Sup," said Bryce, smirkingly.
The Stranger looked over the four newcomers with alarm. "Overseer! And, The Chronicler, and uh..." he surveyed the frozen figures of Thomas and Glere, "guests! What's... what're...uh...to what do I owe the pleasure?"
Huge smirk still plastered annoyingly across his face, Bryce looked the landscape up and down. "Nice place you've got here. I'll take it."
The Stranger took a moment to respond. "You'll what?"
Miles looked back and forth between the two grandmasters. "Wait, uh, really?"
"What, you don't like it?" Bryce asked, addressing Miles. "See, he's got basically a ball of continuous nuclear reactions, like a mini-star, wrapped in a delicious candy shell of psychic pustule-laden eldritch monstrosity! It's really a pretty sweet location for a final round."
"It's..." The Stranger began, apparently not knowing where to begin, "Yeah, I mean there's more to it than that, but...it's..." He paused, apparently steeling himself. "It's mine, I set it up for The Exalted Exchange. You'll have to find someplace else."
"Excuse me a moment, folks, I gotta take care of something," quipped Bryce, taking a few steps towards The Stranger.
"You stay away from me!" The Stranger shrieked. Something bright flashed from his hand toward The Overseer, who continued walking unfazed and began to remove his sunglasses.
In an instant, both figures were encased in an orb of static. Miles flinched, and looked back at the four paralyzed contestants. He waved his hands and conjured up several screens, all of which only displayed more static. "Twice in one day, jammed," he muttered to himself. He waved the screens out of existence and walked closer to inspect the ball, but apparently decided better of it halfway and just stood and crossed his arms awkwardly. He walked back to the contestants and conjured more screens around Keegan and Teival. Across them flashed several lines of data.
Spoiler
Spoiler
Miles scanned the screens impassively and fidgeted. Nearly two minutes passed in the white noise and glow of the static orb before it finally blinked out of existence.
Bryce knelt on the ground, massaging his temple with one hand. In front of him was a crumpled pile of clothing. The former stood, and the latter slowly inflated and pushed itself up off the ground. Bryce cracked his neck. The Stranger stood, and Bryce nodded to him. The cloth man disappeared in a puff of smoke. "Guy put up a better fight than I expected," Bryce muttered, before continuing to address the gathered crowd. "Okay, we're sharing this one. Miles, do me a favor," he made a gesture encompassing the entirety of the twisted ground they stood on, "Copy all this mess, put it like two miles out that way."
"Can't you just-"
"Miles, I'm asking you to be proactive here. You're supposed to be my co-host, but I'm doing all the work. It's time I gave you some responsibility befitting your station."
Miles looked taken aback for a second, then nodded with a barely-suppressed smile. He waved his hand, and with a loud pop and a rumble, a point of light flashed in space above them. It quickly grew into a massive flaming orb, and writhing organic masses weaved themselves into a hollow sphere around it with a few empty spaces where the light still shone through.
"Here's how this is gonna work," Bryce began. "See all these pulsing greenish blisters all over the surface of this thing? Well, each of those is... it's like a seed. The whole mess is alive, and it can fish around in your brain. It pulls out random stuff from your memories: people who were important to you, things that hold some significance to why you are you..." He gestured to a gigantic blister in the distance, the size of a small house, "It can even recreate entire events and settings. It grows them in these pods, and moves them around, and makes them do things that it thinks will get a reaction out of you. To make matters worse, there's going to be another contestant on the thing with you, and all the things that haunt their minds will be running around with you, too. Now, this thing is very powerful. It can recreate some pretty amazing things, even intricate technology and magic, up to a certain point."
He gestured to the duplicate orb hanging ominously above them. "'But Overseer,' you must be saying, 'why are there two?' Well, it gets better. You're going to get paired off with a contestant from a different battle and split up onto the different psychic terror star monsters. After they've had a little while to stew in your mental bullshit, they're going to crash into each other." He paused and looked back and forth between them, "And honestly, that's when shit hits the fan, because these things look to be about a mile in diameter, and I'm not sure how well they're gonna stabilize from an impact of that magnitude."
Bryce held his hands out and looked the contestants over. "Now, as far as I'm concerned, these are still two separate battles, even though one of them is unofficial and unsanctioned. If anyone dies, the other person in their battle is going to leave the round, and the other pair is gonna stay until someone dies there, too. Any questions?"
He paused as if waiting for the paralyzed figures to speak up. "Of course not. Now, let's get this party started."
Glere and Thomas were encased in blue bubbles, and Teival and Keegan were encased in red bubbles. One blue and one red bubble shot off through space to the distant sphere, and the other two split up and shot across the surface of the original one.
Spoiler