RE: The Gradual Massacre (GBS2G4) [Round 5: GrandCon]
07-04-2013, 02:21 AM
“Well, I haven’t quite hammered out the details yet – “
LeMarche was interrupted by a cavalcade of groans that filled the café.
“But,” he continued, glaring meaningfully at the moaners, “I have an idea. We need to kill all of Ouroborous, and the only way we’ll be able to do that is through some sort of magic genocide spell thing. The Map of Rome is like some sort of powerful magical artifact, so I figure we can use it to bullshit our way into making that thing I said.”
“‘Powerful magical artifact,’” Algernon repeated, holding the Map of Rome like a regular old map instead of a powerful magical artifact. His expression was that of a man trying desperately not to lose all reason but quickly realizing that reality itself didn’t have it in the first place. It was the expression of an extremely sober man.
Holly, the only resident magic expert (or close enough), snatched the Map away. “Holy shit,” she said, and Algernon sobered up even more. “Holy shit.”
“I assume that means it really does have as much power as advertised,” the Countess said, who had also been rather skeptical. Algernon suddenly found himself in the strange position of empathizing with the Countess, at least concerning magic bullshit. He decided that he needed a drink.
“You don’t even know how much power is in this,” Holly said. As Algernon started to down the first bottle, Holly tapped on the paper gingerly. “But…I don’t even know how to use it…”
LeMarche only shrugged when Holly glanced at him. “I didn’t really think about what it did. But there must be something you can do, right?”
“Look,” the elf said, looming over the author, “I only deal with pathomancy. Y’know, feelings. There’s no way I can translate a Map of Rome into an emotion. I can’t use this.”
“What if you translated it into ‘magical?’” said the one dressed as a photographer, leaning her chair on two legs.
Holly gave her a disgusted look. “’Magical’ isn’t an emotion.”
“Well, sometimes I feel magical.”
“How about ‘powerful?’” someone else suggested.
“That’s not an emotion either just because I described it as ‘powerful’ and ‘magical’ doesn’t mean they are emotions.”
“Well, you can feel powerful, can’t you?”
Holly banged her head against a table.
“Okay, okay, how about this,” said Toni the Creature Design Consultant. “The immense magical power had been stored in the Map of Rome at some point in the past because a map is the perfect object for magical energy to be unable to do anything. It’s basically a battery that can’t fit anywhere. To use it, we need to somehow transfer the energy into an object that can actually direct the magic or use the magic or whatever. If we want a genocide spell specifically, it’ll have to be an object associated with death.”
LeMarche reached into Algernon’s backpack, startling the still-drinking man, and pulled out the arm of Imaginary Death. “So like this. But we still don’t know how to transfer the energy into it.”
“Well, we could probably release the energy if we destroyed the – “
The Map of Rome suddenly suffered from spontaneous anger-related combustion. Holly felt a lot better.
The crowd in the café backed away from the charring map as a strong wind started to pick up, a staple sign of great power being released. There was a sudden pulse that pushed anybody too close to the Map away, which made Algernon spill some of his wine. As a bright light started to fill the café, Toni yelled, “Do you know how to channel it?” before she fell to the floor and was pushed to a corner.
Of course she did, didn’t she? That was Magic 101. You didn’t just go straight to learning pathomancy, you had to get all the basics down. Yeah, maybe she hadn’t gone over the basics in a really long time, a really, really long time, but it was like math, right? Just because you decided to specialize in calculus didn’t mean you forgot all about addition, right? And math was kind of like magic.
Holly dearly hoped this was the case.
She steadied herself, planted both feet on the floor, and took a deep breath. Concentrated. Raised her hands to gather the strands of magic that coiled and writhed in the air and then…drew it in.
No wonder, she thought, that this had all been stored in an inert artifact. All this power couldn’t be contained in one person, and it likely would cause no amount of trouble in just any ol’ object. It was still coming. It could tear her apart from the inside. It felt like it was starting to already.
As she grit her teeth, as she was brought to her knees, as she sweated out the pain, Holly screamed out, “Where’s the arm,” and LeMarche pushed a table off of him and held it up.
Holly lowered an arm, two fingers pointing directly at her target. Instantly, a bright stream of power shot out and into the skeletal arm, which grew so hot that LeMarche yelped and dropped it, or rather, let go of it as the arm apparently decided not to drop at all. The constant stream of power seemed unending as Holly struggled to keep the line going, keep herself together, keep the power under her control.
And then it was done.
With the power contained, the café seemed blindingly dark. Holly dropped onto her hands as everybody slowly got up, muttering and coughing. Algernon stayed down, now absolutely covered in spilt wine and rather unhappy about it. The Countess righted herself and scuttled over to the sizzling arm of Death.
The arm now had a Presence that it hadn’t held before, an ominous power that seemed to spark as she reached for it. “Careful,” Holly warned as she finally sat up. “Don’t touch the hand.”
The Countess obeyed, picking up the arm by the humerus with two, slender fingers. “And how do we use this…?”
“Just give it here,” Holly said, now on her feet again and trying not to sway. “I’m the only magic user here anyways. I’ll take care of it.” After a moment of contemplation, the Countess handed the arm over.
“Hold up, are you planning on going out alone? You don’t really look too good,” Jessica said, walking up to Holly but making sure she was out of reach of the arm. Holly only glanced towards Algernon, who had stopped fussing over his stained clothes and went back to finishing off the wine with gusto, and then turned towards the door. Nobody stopped her.
You really want to be a big damn hero? Don’t be deluded. You just want attention. You just want to prove him wrong. There’s nothing noble about that.
Holly tightened her grip on the thrumming arm.
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With all that had happened in the past few minutes, the Countess was now plenty certain that the pathetic-looking author really did have some semblance of control, or at the very least, some juicy knowledge that she could use to her advantage. And now that they were all in a state of downtime, it seemed the perfect opportunity to confront him.
LeMarche, on his part, was not entirely happy with the Countess approaching him. Of course, he did know what she wanted, at least in general. And that was part of the problem. So when the amalgam clacked her way over, he pretended to be busy writing. Which he knew wouldn’t stop her at all. And it didn’t.
The Countess leered at him, but at least tried to be friendly about it. “Now what are you doing here, then?”
“Figured I’d get a jumpstart toward writing a happy ending or something,” LeMarche mumbled. Maybe he shouldn’t have made the Countess quite so sharp.
“I see,” said the Countess, trailing a finger on the table that LeMarche was sitting at. It carved a little spiral into the wood. “I assume that means you have an idea about how to kill the Controller?”
LeMarche made a vague sound of non-commitance.
“If you haven’t…I suggest you think of something fast, hm?”
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When Holly swung the hand at Ouroborous, it passed through, leaving corpses in its wake. But Death didn’t stop at what it touched. It sought out the parents. The children. The parents of parents and the children of children, up until it found nothing more in the family line.
All Ouroborites were related in some way, although sometimes the line abruptly cut off due to a little bit of cannibalism. But still, just one swing of Death’s arm made large cuts into the Ouroborous population. Bodies were dropping everywhere. Ouroborous had been so untouchable before, and now she could bring down an entire cloud, and then some. It was…
…well, she didn’t know.
Death coursed from one Ouroborite to another, passing through effortlessly. More bodies dropped at her feet. At this point, it was only a matter of waiting until Death found every last little bug.
Holly hated waiting. It often meant she couldn’t distract herself from…herself. God, when did she become so awful? Or at least awful at pretending she wasn’t awful?
Ouroborous, for their part, had absolutely no idea what was happening, nor did they care. Sometimes they even descended upon the recently fallen to feed. But although eating had been a viable solution in previous times, it was no match against the hand of Death.
None of them ran from Death. None of them hid. It wasn’t that they were brave. It wasn’t that they were too stupid. They were simply arational. Death had no meaning beyond, perhaps, being a source of food.
And so, the entire species of Ouroborous went extinct.
LeMarche was interrupted by a cavalcade of groans that filled the café.
“But,” he continued, glaring meaningfully at the moaners, “I have an idea. We need to kill all of Ouroborous, and the only way we’ll be able to do that is through some sort of magic genocide spell thing. The Map of Rome is like some sort of powerful magical artifact, so I figure we can use it to bullshit our way into making that thing I said.”
“‘Powerful magical artifact,’” Algernon repeated, holding the Map of Rome like a regular old map instead of a powerful magical artifact. His expression was that of a man trying desperately not to lose all reason but quickly realizing that reality itself didn’t have it in the first place. It was the expression of an extremely sober man.
Holly, the only resident magic expert (or close enough), snatched the Map away. “Holy shit,” she said, and Algernon sobered up even more. “Holy shit.”
“I assume that means it really does have as much power as advertised,” the Countess said, who had also been rather skeptical. Algernon suddenly found himself in the strange position of empathizing with the Countess, at least concerning magic bullshit. He decided that he needed a drink.
“You don’t even know how much power is in this,” Holly said. As Algernon started to down the first bottle, Holly tapped on the paper gingerly. “But…I don’t even know how to use it…”
LeMarche only shrugged when Holly glanced at him. “I didn’t really think about what it did. But there must be something you can do, right?”
“Look,” the elf said, looming over the author, “I only deal with pathomancy. Y’know, feelings. There’s no way I can translate a Map of Rome into an emotion. I can’t use this.”
“What if you translated it into ‘magical?’” said the one dressed as a photographer, leaning her chair on two legs.
Holly gave her a disgusted look. “’Magical’ isn’t an emotion.”
“Well, sometimes I feel magical.”
“How about ‘powerful?’” someone else suggested.
“That’s not an emotion either just because I described it as ‘powerful’ and ‘magical’ doesn’t mean they are emotions.”
“Well, you can feel powerful, can’t you?”
Holly banged her head against a table.
“Okay, okay, how about this,” said Toni the Creature Design Consultant. “The immense magical power had been stored in the Map of Rome at some point in the past because a map is the perfect object for magical energy to be unable to do anything. It’s basically a battery that can’t fit anywhere. To use it, we need to somehow transfer the energy into an object that can actually direct the magic or use the magic or whatever. If we want a genocide spell specifically, it’ll have to be an object associated with death.”
LeMarche reached into Algernon’s backpack, startling the still-drinking man, and pulled out the arm of Imaginary Death. “So like this. But we still don’t know how to transfer the energy into it.”
“Well, we could probably release the energy if we destroyed the – “
The Map of Rome suddenly suffered from spontaneous anger-related combustion. Holly felt a lot better.
The crowd in the café backed away from the charring map as a strong wind started to pick up, a staple sign of great power being released. There was a sudden pulse that pushed anybody too close to the Map away, which made Algernon spill some of his wine. As a bright light started to fill the café, Toni yelled, “Do you know how to channel it?” before she fell to the floor and was pushed to a corner.
Of course she did, didn’t she? That was Magic 101. You didn’t just go straight to learning pathomancy, you had to get all the basics down. Yeah, maybe she hadn’t gone over the basics in a really long time, a really, really long time, but it was like math, right? Just because you decided to specialize in calculus didn’t mean you forgot all about addition, right? And math was kind of like magic.
Holly dearly hoped this was the case.
She steadied herself, planted both feet on the floor, and took a deep breath. Concentrated. Raised her hands to gather the strands of magic that coiled and writhed in the air and then…drew it in.
No wonder, she thought, that this had all been stored in an inert artifact. All this power couldn’t be contained in one person, and it likely would cause no amount of trouble in just any ol’ object. It was still coming. It could tear her apart from the inside. It felt like it was starting to already.
As she grit her teeth, as she was brought to her knees, as she sweated out the pain, Holly screamed out, “Where’s the arm,” and LeMarche pushed a table off of him and held it up.
Holly lowered an arm, two fingers pointing directly at her target. Instantly, a bright stream of power shot out and into the skeletal arm, which grew so hot that LeMarche yelped and dropped it, or rather, let go of it as the arm apparently decided not to drop at all. The constant stream of power seemed unending as Holly struggled to keep the line going, keep herself together, keep the power under her control.
And then it was done.
With the power contained, the café seemed blindingly dark. Holly dropped onto her hands as everybody slowly got up, muttering and coughing. Algernon stayed down, now absolutely covered in spilt wine and rather unhappy about it. The Countess righted herself and scuttled over to the sizzling arm of Death.
The arm now had a Presence that it hadn’t held before, an ominous power that seemed to spark as she reached for it. “Careful,” Holly warned as she finally sat up. “Don’t touch the hand.”
The Countess obeyed, picking up the arm by the humerus with two, slender fingers. “And how do we use this…?”
“Just give it here,” Holly said, now on her feet again and trying not to sway. “I’m the only magic user here anyways. I’ll take care of it.” After a moment of contemplation, the Countess handed the arm over.
“Hold up, are you planning on going out alone? You don’t really look too good,” Jessica said, walking up to Holly but making sure she was out of reach of the arm. Holly only glanced towards Algernon, who had stopped fussing over his stained clothes and went back to finishing off the wine with gusto, and then turned towards the door. Nobody stopped her.
You really want to be a big damn hero? Don’t be deluded. You just want attention. You just want to prove him wrong. There’s nothing noble about that.
Holly tightened her grip on the thrumming arm.
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With all that had happened in the past few minutes, the Countess was now plenty certain that the pathetic-looking author really did have some semblance of control, or at the very least, some juicy knowledge that she could use to her advantage. And now that they were all in a state of downtime, it seemed the perfect opportunity to confront him.
LeMarche, on his part, was not entirely happy with the Countess approaching him. Of course, he did know what she wanted, at least in general. And that was part of the problem. So when the amalgam clacked her way over, he pretended to be busy writing. Which he knew wouldn’t stop her at all. And it didn’t.
The Countess leered at him, but at least tried to be friendly about it. “Now what are you doing here, then?”
“Figured I’d get a jumpstart toward writing a happy ending or something,” LeMarche mumbled. Maybe he shouldn’t have made the Countess quite so sharp.
“I see,” said the Countess, trailing a finger on the table that LeMarche was sitting at. It carved a little spiral into the wood. “I assume that means you have an idea about how to kill the Controller?”
LeMarche made a vague sound of non-commitance.
“If you haven’t…I suggest you think of something fast, hm?”
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When Holly swung the hand at Ouroborous, it passed through, leaving corpses in its wake. But Death didn’t stop at what it touched. It sought out the parents. The children. The parents of parents and the children of children, up until it found nothing more in the family line.
All Ouroborites were related in some way, although sometimes the line abruptly cut off due to a little bit of cannibalism. But still, just one swing of Death’s arm made large cuts into the Ouroborous population. Bodies were dropping everywhere. Ouroborous had been so untouchable before, and now she could bring down an entire cloud, and then some. It was…
…well, she didn’t know.
Death coursed from one Ouroborite to another, passing through effortlessly. More bodies dropped at her feet. At this point, it was only a matter of waiting until Death found every last little bug.
Holly hated waiting. It often meant she couldn’t distract herself from…herself. God, when did she become so awful? Or at least awful at pretending she wasn’t awful?
Ouroborous, for their part, had absolutely no idea what was happening, nor did they care. Sometimes they even descended upon the recently fallen to feed. But although eating had been a viable solution in previous times, it was no match against the hand of Death.
None of them ran from Death. None of them hid. It wasn’t that they were brave. It wasn’t that they were too stupid. They were simply arational. Death had no meaning beyond, perhaps, being a source of food.
And so, the entire species of Ouroborous went extinct.