RE: Grand Battle (S?) (Round 1: Matmor Atoll)
06-18-2013, 02:18 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-18-2013, 06:15 AM by Brom.)
The morning his destiny was destroyed began, as all mornings did, with the Ritual. His life was spent in Ritual, of course, nothing but ritual and intense preparation for his future role, but the first Ritual was the most important, and always to be done in solitude.
The Three-fringed Destined Shell Rider brushed away the gentle strands of waving anemone that still clung to him, stretching out the cricks and pops of last evening's training. He rose, paused for a moment to admire the intricate stitchwork of fluorescent seaweed spidering its way up his slender frame, and with a stately beat of his tail floated into the Armor Ceremony Room.
The Three-fringed Destined Shell Rider's armor waited for him, still sitting seerlike in its cage. Its hollowed eyelets gazed sternly out at its future owner. The sizable fringe of glowing seaweed at its back and the cruel curve of its helm gave it the appearance of some glistering, majestic seabird. In its lap was the bident that was his right, and the woven harness that was his destiny.
What a figure he would cut atop the Prophesied Eighth Shellbeast! What speed and power would they bring to bear with the rising of the Eighth Palatine City!
It was his place at its forefront. He would stand atop his proud Shellbeast there in the shadow of his great statue and there on the liminal plane between the ones above and the ones below he would keep the balance. He would protect his people as their eighth Shell Rider, heir to the proudest, most revered, most important Anthic Matmor tradition.
His fringe bristled just picturing it.
But you are not the Eighth Shell Rider yet, Three-fringed Destined Shell Rider. Very, very soon, but not yet. There are rites to be observed. The Ritual.
With steady hands he tugged the Visualization Root from the cracks in the Ceremony Room's walls and crushed it between his fingertips. The claret stream of juice flowed out and laced itself through the water. He inhaled deeply, and felt its tingling heat course into him. His conscience rose from him, yes, it rose out of the lowest keep in the atoll and up, past the spires of his home up into the Sharp Void and up and further, and up. And into the Egg, where his Shellbeast slept. It would be his everything. As soon as the palace breached the horizon they would push it into the ocean, and there he would be to Imprint with it and from that moment on they would never leave one another's side. His greatest weapon; his closest friend; the creature he had spent his entire life preparing to meet.
And then the Chest-Scarred Redfin Veteran burst into his chambers and disrupted his meditation and told him that something terrible had happened.
The second landing was the very first moment Volter St. Kepral could take any solace in since he arrived at this feculent pile of bone. For a moment his fulminating brain rattled into the serene blankness of martial practice. It was textbook. Lock windfoils, one-two-three, fire off stabilizer left, right, center, one-two, brace, one, slide to a halt. The trajectory was all off, of course, the graceful curve he had mastered turned to a terrifyingly new hop, but it was something. Now. Where was he?
He was standing, it seemed, in the exposed guts of the ruin, far below the spear he leapt from. He was on a shallow arch of some kind of patchwork crystal. The roof of a cathedral of some sort. Further off and down in the water there were more of them, these bottleglass basilicas, tethered to swooping arches of coral. A temple district, thought Volter. Like the ones at home.
You must not think of that word, Volter. Until you can see it again you must think only of escape. You must focus.
And what was there to focus on? The bubbling cluster of domes below him were seemingly out of reach, unless he cared to shatter the glass he stood upon and drop into the city below. Down there were more of those bizarre aberrations from the deep, waiting for him. At least up on the surface, they were focused almost entirely on the hulking brute with the greatclub.
And that crystalline... thing that had attacked him. Well, no. That he had attacked.
All she did was stand there and... ring at him. She hadn't seemed hostile. She'd seemed... curious. Interested.
But he wasn't to think of it that way. They were all here to kill one another, weren't they? He grimaced. Hopefully, the monsters would take care of the big one for him.
The howl that sounded from below goaded a squawk from his throat as well. His reverie and misdoubt were firmly exorcised.
That tears it, he thought, powering up his Seven-Leagues. We're not going down there. We might as well go up.
Perhaps he could square off with that strange blue thing that had so frightened him. His bolts had knocked it away easily enough, and he reckoned his halberd could do significant damage. It had looked so frail.
But she did nothing, Volter. She was right behind you. She could have ended you in an instant. But she didn't, did she?
No. It was not Volter's to decide what that meant, what she was, or what to do about it. He had his orders, ghoulish as they were. Orders were just about the only thing left to him he could understand.
That and the fiercely free joy of the Leap.
He snapped into the air again, and thrilled as it billowed into his rolling lungs.
He had attracted the attention of three tentacular flyers with his takeoff. They corrected course, voiding streams of pressurized water to pursue him as he flew back toward the spear.
Volter's glutinous lips pulled into a smile. Perhaps he would not fight the blue creature quite yet.
You wish to soar neck-and-neck with a Gandeerish Stormtrooper, then, you atrocious New World? Fine. I'll show you what we're capable of.
A mile below Volter's skybound chase, the great Shellbeast that had been meant for a decade to bear the Three-fringed Destined Shell Rider on its back sat in the shards of its pale afterbirth. It purred gently and nudged the sleeping form of the artificial corpse-man it had Imprinted on, its new, best, and closest friend, and waited patiently for Tom Jones to wake up and be its new Master.
The Three-fringed Destined Shell Rider brushed away the gentle strands of waving anemone that still clung to him, stretching out the cricks and pops of last evening's training. He rose, paused for a moment to admire the intricate stitchwork of fluorescent seaweed spidering its way up his slender frame, and with a stately beat of his tail floated into the Armor Ceremony Room.
The Three-fringed Destined Shell Rider's armor waited for him, still sitting seerlike in its cage. Its hollowed eyelets gazed sternly out at its future owner. The sizable fringe of glowing seaweed at its back and the cruel curve of its helm gave it the appearance of some glistering, majestic seabird. In its lap was the bident that was his right, and the woven harness that was his destiny.
What a figure he would cut atop the Prophesied Eighth Shellbeast! What speed and power would they bring to bear with the rising of the Eighth Palatine City!
It was his place at its forefront. He would stand atop his proud Shellbeast there in the shadow of his great statue and there on the liminal plane between the ones above and the ones below he would keep the balance. He would protect his people as their eighth Shell Rider, heir to the proudest, most revered, most important Anthic Matmor tradition.
His fringe bristled just picturing it.
But you are not the Eighth Shell Rider yet, Three-fringed Destined Shell Rider. Very, very soon, but not yet. There are rites to be observed. The Ritual.
With steady hands he tugged the Visualization Root from the cracks in the Ceremony Room's walls and crushed it between his fingertips. The claret stream of juice flowed out and laced itself through the water. He inhaled deeply, and felt its tingling heat course into him. His conscience rose from him, yes, it rose out of the lowest keep in the atoll and up, past the spires of his home up into the Sharp Void and up and further, and up. And into the Egg, where his Shellbeast slept. It would be his everything. As soon as the palace breached the horizon they would push it into the ocean, and there he would be to Imprint with it and from that moment on they would never leave one another's side. His greatest weapon; his closest friend; the creature he had spent his entire life preparing to meet.
And then the Chest-Scarred Redfin Veteran burst into his chambers and disrupted his meditation and told him that something terrible had happened.
The second landing was the very first moment Volter St. Kepral could take any solace in since he arrived at this feculent pile of bone. For a moment his fulminating brain rattled into the serene blankness of martial practice. It was textbook. Lock windfoils, one-two-three, fire off stabilizer left, right, center, one-two, brace, one, slide to a halt. The trajectory was all off, of course, the graceful curve he had mastered turned to a terrifyingly new hop, but it was something. Now. Where was he?
He was standing, it seemed, in the exposed guts of the ruin, far below the spear he leapt from. He was on a shallow arch of some kind of patchwork crystal. The roof of a cathedral of some sort. Further off and down in the water there were more of them, these bottleglass basilicas, tethered to swooping arches of coral. A temple district, thought Volter. Like the ones at home.
You must not think of that word, Volter. Until you can see it again you must think only of escape. You must focus.
And what was there to focus on? The bubbling cluster of domes below him were seemingly out of reach, unless he cared to shatter the glass he stood upon and drop into the city below. Down there were more of those bizarre aberrations from the deep, waiting for him. At least up on the surface, they were focused almost entirely on the hulking brute with the greatclub.
And that crystalline... thing that had attacked him. Well, no. That he had attacked.
All she did was stand there and... ring at him. She hadn't seemed hostile. She'd seemed... curious. Interested.
But he wasn't to think of it that way. They were all here to kill one another, weren't they? He grimaced. Hopefully, the monsters would take care of the big one for him.
The howl that sounded from below goaded a squawk from his throat as well. His reverie and misdoubt were firmly exorcised.
That tears it, he thought, powering up his Seven-Leagues. We're not going down there. We might as well go up.
Perhaps he could square off with that strange blue thing that had so frightened him. His bolts had knocked it away easily enough, and he reckoned his halberd could do significant damage. It had looked so frail.
But she did nothing, Volter. She was right behind you. She could have ended you in an instant. But she didn't, did she?
No. It was not Volter's to decide what that meant, what she was, or what to do about it. He had his orders, ghoulish as they were. Orders were just about the only thing left to him he could understand.
That and the fiercely free joy of the Leap.
He snapped into the air again, and thrilled as it billowed into his rolling lungs.
He had attracted the attention of three tentacular flyers with his takeoff. They corrected course, voiding streams of pressurized water to pursue him as he flew back toward the spear.
Volter's glutinous lips pulled into a smile. Perhaps he would not fight the blue creature quite yet.
You wish to soar neck-and-neck with a Gandeerish Stormtrooper, then, you atrocious New World? Fine. I'll show you what we're capable of.
A mile below Volter's skybound chase, the great Shellbeast that had been meant for a decade to bear the Three-fringed Destined Shell Rider on its back sat in the shards of its pale afterbirth. It purred gently and nudged the sleeping form of the artificial corpse-man it had Imprinted on, its new, best, and closest friend, and waited patiently for Tom Jones to wake up and be its new Master.
let's post righteously & having good times /// check out The Book of the Courtier /// ensure proper vegetable consumption /// also check out The Blade and the Cycle /// post it up!!