Virgin Victory teleport room Top of the Split mountain Outside the Convent of Our Lady of the Charred Visage Tostarena Town S.O.U. Building Seiran Clinic
”Goldlewis!” Midna cried out in alarm and horror, arm stretched out towards the agent as she raced towards him, shadow hand outstretched and grabbing onto his leg in an echo of how she had saved him from plummeting off of the bridge. Unlike the momentum of the blow that had sent him towards that pit, upon the frozen time her attempt to pull him away from danger had 0 impact, and before she could react to that failure it was too late.
The man turned to ash that slipped through her fingers, the princess giving a soft ”no..” as her outstretched hand dropped to the ground tandem with the man’s spirit hitting the floor.
She was stunned enough by her failure that the rest of the seekers got moving before she could, most notable among them a screaming with rage Geralt, who rained fire down on Nox, prompting Midna to flinch away despite the well aimed shots not having any risk of hitting her. Then, before she could try and strike him, Nox teleported past her to take Geralt on in close combat, which his new form did not seem suited for.
In that moment, she could have gone after the guardian, fought against or backed up anyone else, but Midna’s one visible eye was locked on Goldlewis’s killer, and it was that more than anything that sent her to back him Geralt, despite Sandalphon appearing to do the same. As it turned out, she closed in just after Sandalphon blinked away anyway, rendering her intervention rather timely.
Unfortunately she could not keep mer mouth shut, and so if her wolfo’s paws and claws pattering over the ground didn’t give her rear charge away to Nox, her cry of ”Die you monster!” certainly did.
She rammed her lance forwards, only for the masked man’s gaze to snap to meet her own, and his shield to jolt perfectly in position to catch her weapon. Knowing what that would cause, she punched her lance from below with a secondary arm to knock it off course, missing both man and shield as a result.
Her wolfos, however, did not have the brains to put two and two together, and promptly pounced, striking Nox with its claws and aiming to do the same with its jaws, only to get taped by the bottom rim of shield on the head, freezing both steed and rider in time in the midst of a too late ”N-” from the princess.
Then, with a clinical flick of his wrist, Nox sliced a blade of energy straight through the beast’s skull.
Ironically the shield itself was the only reason Midna did not receive the same fate, as the wolfos having slipped under its guard left Midna right in front of it. Thus, the time it took for him to move it aside in order to target her, two things hit him.
The first was a fireball courtesy of Geralt, because it wasn’t like Nox’s original target had gone anywhere. The second was a pounce from Midna’s Beast Legion, the vague blur having been hard to pick up on in the midst of all of the pyrotechnics going on on the battlefield. Both knocked Nox off balance enough for his time stop of Midna to time out.
”-O!” Midna finished her interrupted command, only for it to be immediately followed by a confused ”what?” as she fell to the ground amongst the ashes of her Wolfos.
She blinked once and then scrambled backwards, dropping her lance to six limb scuttle clear of Nox’s attempt to finish the job despite the distractions with another energy slash that scored a deep groove in the floor right between her legs.
The Beast Legion darted in to claw at Nox while he was off guard, giving Minda enough time to summon her Flygon, and then use its bulk to ward her as she pulled herself first into a crouch, and then pushed herself back to her feet.
”Cover whoever he goes for. Don’t touch the shield, don’t up like the other thi-” Minda choked on unwanted sorrow, and then fought off the sense loss she did not want to feel, but not to adjust her the way she referred to her fallen wolfos to ”-like them”
The former wolfos nodded just a fraction and with a flap of its wings took to the skies, leaving her on her own again.
But not really.
With Minda on one side of Nox, the Beast Legion on the opposite side, and Geralt having a clear firing line between them with Flygon moving to defensively circle overhead, ready to swoop or rain dragon breath to assist, really it was Nox who was on his own.
They just had to play this smart, Midna thought to herself, yet that little boost of hope was smothered as, in her peripheral vision she caught the sight of Roxas’s ash joining that had already spilled on the floor. His fate basked in the light of what had to be a final smash from Sandalph, only for it to be blocked out as beads of tears formed at the edges of her eyes.
Hanging in the air above the village, Rayne just took a little moment to close her eyes, relax, and experience the sky for all its serene glory. To breathe the untainted surface air, feel the breeze wisp through her hair, feel the touch of the sun on her skin. Then the moment ended as her mind reminded her as to why she was here, and she opened her eyes again to keep them peeled for danger.
First thing’s first, she figured out where the Raven Heralds had run off in the direction of, which revealed no sign of them, mostly because of any kind of road they might have used to travel. Well, other than the hole in the wall they had punched in-order to break into the town.
Indeed there wasn’t much indication of anything else around, other than the picturesque landscape which Rayne was very much enjoying. She’d once signed up to fight a war to protect nature after all (even if she hadn’t ended up fighting it) and it was heartening to see it doing so well in this world. Out here on the frontier anyway. She had to wonder how built up things were, however far back along the dirt road the heart of Riltaea was situated.
“Guess they could be hiding in the woods” she mused, but they’d likely run into the other heroes of the town if they tried to come back that way, which while concerning in its own way, meant that they’d have advanced warning of some kind.
Either way, having got a lay of the land, and made sure that there wasn’t another attack streaming over the plains towards them, she felt confident that she could go back down a bit. Focus more on the village, see what they were up to and if she could help out somehow. Mushroom farming and magical firepower might not be the most applicable skills to a rebuilding effort, but she could probably do something.
Or, well, help bury corpses. Both the Heralds and the Heroes had doubtless left a lot of those strewn around.
Central hub: Smash City Alcamoth Accessible locations: Peach’s castle Limsa Lominscuttle Town Lumbridge Twilight Town Kosm’s Beach
”COWARD! GET BACK HERE SO I CAN STOMP YOU” Bowser roared after the absconded F, but it was no use, he wasn’t coming back.
Jr more quietly agreed with his father’s sentiment ”I know this makes it easier for us, but it feels bad to let him get away with this” while Kamek pondered ”It’s strange, he was quite formidable when I tried to take him on. With his ability to reverse time I find it odd he would not even try”
He then had a thought, and proceeded to retrieve and flick through Robin Goodfellow’s tome to see if it had any information on why he might have done so. Unfortunately, unlike the previous owner of the book, F’s entry was rather short.
Robin Goodfellow A trickster straight out of a comedy play, Robin Goodfellow may have once been good-natured. However, when he discovered the play from which he was created, the nature of his existence broke his spirit and turned him cruel and bitter towards humanity.
The incarnation of theatrics, mankind's dedication to the art of theatre and storytelling has birthed Robin Goodfellow. Unlike other Archangels, his manifested form has a singular defined origin - the play Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare.
As an Egregore summoned by the Stagmer-line, Robin is a composite being created by the accumulated thoughts, dreams, and desires of humanity, for good or evil. His random magic tricks allow him to help or hinder as he pleases, but once self-aware his chief pastime became trapping sufferers in dreams, the greatest deception of all, to which he ascribed a noble, even vicarious purpose
F One of the twenty-six members of Moebius who operate throughout the World of Light as its Consuls. His true identity is unknown. Being utterly above consequence, he is a malevolent manipulator who delights in the suffering of others, if for no other reason than assuaging his own boredom
”Hmmf, so they can keep secrets even from you. Let us hope you are more useful when we get to dealing with the Guardian then, hmmm” Kamek said to the book, before snapping it shut.
Out of all of the troop, Rika was the only one unconcerned with the runaway Consul, as she was instead distracted by shiny things, namely the pile of items that had once constituted Omari’s inventory, commenting ”wow, look at all these knives he had on him” about its contents.
- Shiny Knife: A shiny new knife. You can see your reflection in the blade.
- Foe Facts! Journal: Omori uses this to record any enemies he's faced so far.
- Tulip Hairstick: Plain, simple, and bulbous. Increases health a decent amount.
- Machete and Pistol: Two piratical weapons bound together. The machete is short and broad, deal unremarkable slash damage while the pistol is a flintlock, with short range, high recoil, and deceptively big damage. However, the pistol is empty and does not accept ammunition. The only way to load it is by landing two subsequent hits with the machete. They share durability and upgrades.
- Dance Instructions: While it looks like a classic treasure map at first glance, this scraw of yellowed paper is actually a step-by-step process by which one might, in theory, ‘do the monkey’.
- Cockatiel Bobblehead: A cute locker ornament owned by a young sailor who wanted a parrot of his own. The merry jig it dances once slapped can bring a smile to even the most world-weary face.
- Endless Summer Life Preserver: (x2) Bearing the name of some long-gone craft, this buoyant inner tube can keep one afloat even on a stormy sea.
- Revolver: A renowned gunblade. What it lacks in power, it more than makes up for with its reliability. Despite its name, it cannot be used as an actual gun, meaning it does not fire projectiles, and can therefore only be used in melee combat. Triggering a round in the gun chamber sends a shock wave through the blade, increasing its damage potential, but the timing required is hard to learn, which is why it takes years to master wielding a gunblade.
- Serrated Knife: A large dagger most infamously wielded by General RAAM of the Locust Horde. Although it is a knife in the hands of RAAM, by human standards, it is a short sword.
- Boltok Pistol: The standard-issue sidearm of the Locust. a high-caliber, double-action revolver with a 6-round capacity, a side swing chamber, and an enclosed hammer. It is heavy, slow to fire, but does unequivocally more damage per shot and has exceptional stopping power.
- Boxing Glove: A gun that shoots a limited-range boxing glove with a chance to stun. Each time it kills an enemy, it gains a star up to 3 stars. When at 3 stars, it can be charged to consume the stars and fire a high-damage super punch.
The ship girl had crouched down to look at all these, and while at it promptly flicked the little Cockatiel Bobblehead, who’s dance she found very amusing. Indeed despite how inappropriate it was to have it be dancing over a child’s grave, it was simply too merry a jig, resulting in a slight bit of mood raising all round.
Enough for the others to approach and inspect the items at least. Or rather at Kamek’s insistence, move them, so he could sweep the ash into a pile and then have some Toadies build a small cairn over it, along with one for all the other fallen Seekers (and Undyne). A bit of respect that made deciding what to do with the spirits and items feel a little less like grave robbing.
In the end, Jr ended up finding himself slipping the tulip hairpin sideways into his topknot, before fusing both Undyne and Omari into his right arm in a bout of sentimentality. Both had deserved better. Nocturne might have also deserved better, but having never actually met her, there was little sentimentality to be found, and she was promptly crushed into an item.
Notable spirits consumed: Undyne and Omori (Right arm) The scales on Junior's right arm turn a bit more blue, but then the colors on his arm got more muted overall. It has some light piece of metal armor strapped around the forearm and bicep, as well as a light gauntlet and shoulder plate. The minor personality changes cancel each other out. These spirits confer the Strengths Lance Aptitude (which includes both wielding and throwing proficiencies) and Emotions, which affect his stats a little based on his emotions: angry (+attack/-defense), happy (+speed/-accuracy), sad (+defense/-speed). These spirits also confer the Weaknesses Worse Depth Perception and Spider/Drowning Phobia
New item obtained: Volt Gun A rather heavy pistol that can essentially fire electric bolts. Their damage is okay, but they can build up stagger quickly and even apply paralysis, as well as trigger electric elemental reactions. While this gun can't run out of power its fire rate is very slow, one shot every five seconds, and the bolts' travel time means they can be dodged
The results of the fusion were nothing flashy, though they did result in jr turning down a replacement mount upon having a rather adverse response to a proposed spider steed, and a slight red glow when he got annoyed at his new irrational fear of the multi legged creepy crawlies.
The volt gun was promptly stashed, along with everything else that wasn’t claimed, and with that they were ready to move on and face the final boss of the area. Well. Almost ready
Kamek level up:
Beast inside (Tigren Sourceress + Devan Shell): augment’s Kamek’s devil form, granting it the claws, fangs and agility of a Dire Panther, allowing for melee attacks as well as a pounce attack mid ranged, which lands the user behind their foe, facing their back and in a defensive posture.
Rika Level up:
Denting Blows(Vi): If Rika can land a series of 3 punches (vault breakers included) on a target within 4 seconds of each other, the third blow will be empowered. This third blow deals extra damage equivalent to 15% of the enemies max hp (though there is a hard cap of 3 punches worth of extra damage, and armor/defense still reduces the damage), as well as increasing her attack speed by 60% and reducing enemy armor by 20% (both for 4 seconds). The effects do not stack, but can have their durations refreshed, and the third blow procs her Hexed-teched weakness, disabling the fist that deals the third blow for 2 seconds.
Jr level up:
Monster metal (Vespikan Ferromancer/Undyne): via a combination of the Ferromancer and Undyne’s magic, Jr can now produce magic infused iron, as long as it comes in the form of spikes and spears. As well as giving it the ability to better harm foes with physical resistance (such as ghosts), it also lets the summoned objects still be manipulated even once they are no longer in contact with his body. They can either float close to Jr to be later launched at targets, or can have their trajectory altered once while in flight, letting the shots re-adjust if they miss, rain down from above when shot over a target, spike up after being launched under, or even orbit around the foe inorder to shoot them in the back.
They also had to open up the seal, a task easily done, though the result certainly was dramatic, followed by a dark and daunting traversal through a gloomily lit corridor, which had Bowser agreeing with Nadia that ”Yeah, definitely building some good tension here”
The area’s bosses chamber was certainly getting a good rating, as the payoff of the heavily chained Hollow Knight and its dramatic escape from its bindings right when they appeared was a nice capping off for the presentation, at least in Bowser’s books.
”Now this is more like it, none of that sad sack of a beach baloney. Let’s rumble big guy” Bowser said, smacking a fist into a palm as he prepared to go toe to toe with the towering foe, each punch reducing that height difference as he enlarged himself as much as he could.
”Less commentary, more taking it down” Kamek insisted, before belated adding ”If you please sire” only for the Hollow Knight to seized the initiative and lunge across half the arena while thrusting its blade towards the king.
The king had barely a moment to bring his guard up, the blade ramming clean into and out the other side of his forearm, but stopping before it reached his chest. In response to this blow there came twin cries of ‘Papa!’ from both Rika and Jr who had been flanking their father, and who both now came to his defense, starting with Jr unleashing a barrage of spears he’d prepped and had floating with him, the blades thunking into the knight even as the prince himself raised his staff to heal his father.
Rika meanwhile went in, fists at the ready, slamming into the knight’s chest with a vaultbreaker to drive it back, and forcing it to extract its blade from her father, before driving her other fist into one of its legs upon landing and then, when the first gauntlet came back online landing a third strike for good measure. That third strike was accompanied by a flash of light and a crack as jagged glowing orange lines formed on the hollow knight’s armor, briefly weakening its defense.
She went in for a fourth punch, only for the knight to have gotten wise to this gnat smacking it, preemptively blocking this next predictable strike with its nail, and then retaliating with a massive slash that sent Rika tumbling back.
A freshly healed Bowser was right there to take over however, declaring ”Now you’re gonna pay” as he full charged the knight on all fours, goreing it with his tusks and launching him up into the air, putting him in prime position to be blasted by Kamek, who, alongside 4 clones, all shot the predictably arcing knight with a Volt Gun each, overcoming its shoddy fire rate with volume of fire.
Briefly staggered by a combination of the bolts and a bad landing, the hollow knight was then assailed by all three of the Troop’s royals at once. Both Rika and Jr (in the form of Undyne) stabbed their spears into it from either side, skewering it, before Bowser came in last to deliver a healthy punch that messily ripped the Hollow Knight off of the impalement and slammed it back into a wall.
Infection dripped from the wounded knight’s guts as it pushed itself away from the wall, but rather than weakening it, all the damage they had done seemed instead to have empowered the Hollow Knight, for while it had moved slowly in between actions before, now it seemed more alert. Or perhaps, more easily compelled to move.
It also pulled out a few new tricks while it was at it.
First it teleported into the air before slamming right back down to the ground with meteoric force, causing columns of infected fire to burst up from the ground around the impact site, blasting the Troop back and away. Then it opened its cloak, revealing its infection dripping wounds in full, out of which globs of infection lept in a barrage of blight, furthur scattering the troop who did not want to get in contact with that one bit.
”I don’t understand, if this is the source of the infection why is only using the infection now that we’ve caused it to leak out” Kamek asked no one particular, and then, remembering he had a source of answers that he had intended to use anyway before them getting targeted first rather distracted him, put the lighting gun away and asked his book.
The Hollow Knight A fully-grown vessel created and trained for the purpose of sealing the Infection and saving the underground kingdom. To harbor such a virulent plague and keep it sealed within, absolute emptiness was required, but in the course of its upbringing the vessel's purity became tainted by its bond with its creator. When the time came for the vessel to fulfill its destiny, it failed to contain the Infection completely, ensuring that one day the plague would rise again
No trace of the original vessel remains except a powerful urge to kill the infection, even within itself. Its nail is ancient, but every bit as deadly as the day it was forged. Deep within lurks a virulent hatred of all living things, but no matter how deep the vessel's nail sinks, it will never reach the source
”Oh… oh dear” Kamek muttered, before calling out a warning ”The Knight is just another level of the seal! A living prison! If we kill it, the real source of the infection may well get out” before remembering what they’d been told they needed.
”Ah. That is why we need the dream catcher? To… enter its dreams? Akin to what Robin did to us? Is that where the infection is? In its… mind? Its soul?” He wondered out loud, as the Troop grouped up defensively around him, opening the way for someone else to take over. ”I dearly wish we’d had a better explanation” the mage complained as he put away the book, and instead brought out the staff they had retrieved from the prison, holding it aloft.
Nothing happened
”So what do we do? Weaken it? Will that make it work?” jr asked, having turned off the Undyne recording so he could heal them all.
”Something like that?” Kamek replied with uncertainty, before deciding the best they could do was ”Put it down, but not out!”
Central hub: Smash City Alcamoth Accessible locations: Peach’s castle Limsa Lominscuttle Town Lumbridge Twilight Town Kosm’s Beach
Being faced with the prospect of having to put down their former allies got four different reactions from the troop, but they could be roughly split into two groups. On the one hand Bowser and his son were filled with a mix of sorrow and anger, neither of them were able to express correctly, feelings specifically caused by the sight of the thing that had been Omori.
”You… YOU! Bowser stuttered with impotent rage at F, filled with anger both at the Consul and at himself for having failed yet another child, while his son only managed a quiet ”No…” of disbelief at the death of his sort of maybe rival.
On the other hand, a freshly eneivilied Kamek’s opinion on the matter was that ”They are dead, we need to put them down for good before they do the same to us” a point that was handily punctuated when the thing that had been Undyne screamed a mutilated rendition of her battlecry at the top of her lungs as she began unleashing a scatter shot rain of spears at them. Rather than hurling them however, they ripped free from glowing regenerating pustules growing on her stomach and back, leaving each and every one tipped with the orange-yellow glow of infection.
”Put them down where?” Rika, who had been barely impacted by this at all emotionally asked, as she casually started stepping around or hopping over the spears that she was slowing as they got close to her
”Kill them all Rika!” Kamek clarified as he floated back and away from the front lines and started casting spells from a safe distance.
”Ohhhhh” the ship girl replied before declaring she was ”on it!” and leaping forwards through the spar shower, before counter charging the thing that had once been Omori.
The thing with the body of a child came at her with a combat knife in one hand, and a serrated knife in the other, and with the way the infection had affected it, they seemed to be fused with it’s flesh, such that it would never hold anything but the blades again. Still, despite these changes and the double infection, it had started out as just a child’s body, while Rika was a weapon of war augmented with over half a dozen additional spirits.
As a result they didn’t really clash, and instead Rika simply slammed into the little guy with a gauntlet fist, launching it up into the air, only to grab it out of it with her other hand and slamming it back into the ground.
”Careful of the infection Rika!” Kamek called out in warning, but the ship girl was already taking steps. Specifically, she leapt back, opened her palm which contained her grizco blaster, and promptly started hammering the infected child with burning goop as it started to rise, igniting it. She was going to start skewering it with her spear, when a crackle of electricity came from her side, keying her into an incoming shot from the thing that had been Nocturn.
A pinky tap of her feather fall sent her flying up into the air, narrowly avoiding the stunning shot thanks to her shot speed slowing aura. While floating up there, slowly descending towards the infected now grouped together beneath her, she had a clever idea. As such, a moment later both infected were smashed to the ground as Rika, in the form of The Beast, crashed down on top of them.
She couldn’t get infected if her body wasn’t the one on the line.
As Rika tied up the two humans, the entire rest of the Troop was busy trying to contend with the undying Undyne, despite the ship girl having once fought her living form to a standstill on her own. The magical monster’s form seemed to have been massively empowered by the duel infection, both in terms of durability and firepower.
Atop his gryphon steed, Jr was the first main target for that firepower, probably because he’d had the same idea as Rika, and was presently wearing Undyne’s face (or rather helmet) which seemed to tick whatever was left of her mind off to no end.
Despite wearing said face, he wasn’t actually able to fight back in the same way, and so there was no trading of spear volleys, as instead the prince’s own splashed up from the ground below his target. This had worked for a bit, but only till the thing that had been Undyne stopped standing there shooting and instead started trying to take them on in melee. The prince could have used his mount to stay out of the way of this, but instead he was using it to skirmish, raising his spear above his head to buff his melee strikes, before using his steed’s agility to dart in and strike his foe before she could strike him.
Unfortunately, while this might have been a great boon against a living foe, his strikes did not cause any flinching from pain, and so each blow given was traded for another in turn. At least when it wasn’t too busy wailing on Bowser that was. Lacking any real fitness, the thing used its spear more as a bludgeon than any kind of thrusting weapon, and yet its infection-fueled strength meant the king was still in danger.
Already his forearms were covered in bruises and cracked scales from guarding against the spear turned blunt instrument, and that was from only blocking a few blows. Returning the favor didn’t seem to have much effect either, for even when the king got the chance to rev up and deliver a kinetic strike module empowered punch when it was distracted by Jr, the blow was softened greatly by her mushy constituency and, worse, the damage it did do was bursting a pustule, which caused a shotgun blast of magical spear heads to shoot back at him.
”Gah” the king roared in alarm as he just barely managed to turn away and have the spears hit his side rather than his face. Unfortunately that left him off guard for when the thing that had been Undyne to whirl and drive a kick into him, its unnatural strength sending him sprawling onto his back.
”Papa!” Jr cried out in alarm, swooping forwards and sliced his spear across Undyne's back, but to no avail as it continued to advance on Bowser as he tried to haul himself off of his back and onto his feet. Sensing that the thing would not be dissuaded by just a strike, Jr gripped his spear in both of his hands, and drove it down in an overhead stab that drove deep into the thing’s back.
It didn’t flinch from the blow, but as it tired to take another step, it found itself slowed as jr used Unyne’s muscles to hold fast to the spear, and his gryphon steed’s claws to hold fast to the cave floor, scratching grooves in it. The strength of Jr’s mimicry of the living Undyne wasn’t enough to match that of the unliving one, but it was enough that it wasn't going to get to where it had kicked Bowser too before he got up.
So instead it turned on the person slowing it down.
Without a care in the world to the damage it did, the thing that had been Undyne twisted around on the spear embedded into it and drove its own forwards, skewering the feathered beast breath Jr before he could think to simply let go of the spear. He did so a moment later with or without his consent as the armored form of Undyne he was clad in was dropped unceremoniously to the ground, and though he did land on his feet, the half squat he was in as a result of his legs previously having been on either side of a giant cat bird wasn’t exactly a good one for fighting.
Nor was his lack of weapon, which was currently still sticking out of the thing that had been Undyne. Said weapon did however make a good point for Bowser to grab, now protecting his son in turn as he held the monster back long enough for him to recover and form a new spear with which to fight.
Actively pinned between the two armored warriors, the thing that had been Undyne should have been at a disadvantage, but with the way her wounds caused explosions of infection tipped spearheads to fly out, she really wasn't, the thing paying king and prince back for every punch and stab.
With the two male royals attempting to take the thing that had been Undyne down, and Rika neatly handling two others with her massive armored centipede form, the question could be asked, what was Kamek up to?
The answer could be found in a massive glowing orb of power reaching all the way up the tunnel’s ceiling, one held above a grounded Kamek and 4 doppelgangers who had all been charging it. The magikoopa artillery strike was something Kamek had come up with quite some time ago, but there had never really been enemies slow and stupid enough to safely charge it, yet also dangerous enough to warrant it.
The infected Undyne 100% fit those bills however, and so once it was finally ready, the mage called out ”Out of the way, your spiky mageties!” before he and his minions hurled the orb at the thing that had been Undyne. Prince and King threw themselves to the floor as the massive orb of energy raced forwards, slammed into their foe, and then just kept going, smashing into the cavern wall with an almighty explosion, sending rocks and dust tumbling everywhere.
”Did, did you get it?” Jr asked as he and his father picked themselves off of the floor, the prince mentally clicking a switch and pausing the song playing in his cassette player that had turned him into Undyne. His intention had been to begin healing, but a scream from within the crater in the wall Kamek’s attack had slammed into ended that notion: the wave of sound pushed the dust cloud away, revealing the thing that had been Undyne once more.
Alive, for a certain sense of the word anyway.
It was almost entirely unidentifiable as something that had once Been Undyne. Its legs a ruin it dragged itself forwards with its arms, while its body was held together by thorned roots, and its mouth hung far too wide open, exposing far too many teeth. The broken mermaid seemed at least like it might have difficulty attacking in this state, until it screamed again, this time causing a wave of spears to fly forth along with the blast of sound.
”Me and my big mouth” Jr complained as he ducked under a spear and then made an iron shield to block a few more. The infected spears stabbed into it, and began to immediately begin eating away at the metal, forcing him to drop it before any of it could seep between his scales.
”Buuuuurn it!” came a deeper, more gravely shout from Kamek, who had transformed into his new devil form after using up all his Mana in that one singular magical attack that hadn’t finished the job. Now he spat fireballs from his maw instead, flying on leathery wings and blasting the thing that had been Undyne. Jr joined in, seeing the logic of this even if it was Kamek’s only way of attacking at the moment, breathing in and hucking his own napalm fireball at the incoming thing.
Both were entirely outdone by Bowser in this department however, who unleashed a torrent of flames. Together, the trio ignited the roots that seemed to be holding the thing that had been Undyne together, further destabilize it, and causing infection to spill from its guts, both in liquid form and in the form of lightseeds that splatted to the ground and then came at them on their own.
Fireballs launched by jr and Kamek blasted into these one by one, incinerating them before they could reach Bowser, and yet even with both physical sources of infection purged, the thing that had been Undyne came on still. Chest cavity split open and emptied, voice dead in the process, all it could do was open its jaw wide, wider and wider, and attempt to sink its misaligned teeth into the King.
Bowser for his part stood his ground, breathed deep, and then unleashed a megafireball. The slow moving orb engulfed the thing which mindlessly shambled straight into, smothering it in heat and flame that burned and burned. It collapsed to the floor before it could reach the other side, arms ruined, her melted form burned away beneath the heat of the flame, evaporating and, at last, turning to dust.
The trio of koopas was left panting from exertion, while also being gripped with a tinge of sorrow at having had to put down the guard captain of the home of tears, who most certainly had done nothing to deserve this fate. There was a moment of thought about possible last words to put her to rest when a body that had once belonged to a small child splatted into the wall next to where the thing that had been Undye had been slammed by Kamek’s spell.
As with the thing that had been Undyne however, the collision with this wall failed to put down the thing that had been Omori. Unlike the former guard captain however, there was no obscuring cloud of dust to hide this fact, and so a moment later Rika, in the form of the Beast, rammed head and horns first into the infected child, once again splattering him against the wall. Despite what should have been a crushing blow, thing that had been Omori endured this seemingly lethal blow. It did not, however, endure the several follow ups as Rika used her head to mountain smashed it into paste, and then, finally, ash.
The Beast raised its perpetually grinning head up, a head smeared in blood, guts,ash, and infection and looked at the horrified faces of Bowser and Jr, before it vanished. The remains of Omari dropped to the ground several meters from where Rika now stood, the ship girl dusting off her gauntlets after having rather casually dealt with two of the seeker’s former members, who then proceed to ask her shocked relatives ”What?” with genuine confusion as to why they were looking at her like that.
Before they could respond however, the devilish looking Kamek reminded them that ”The one responsible is right there” causing the rest of the troop to turn and face the cause of this nightmare that the mage was pointing at: F
“Aventon huh?” Rayne repeated. It was certainly a name, as was Riltaea, the name of the nation it was part of. But, naturally, lacking context, that was about all it was, names.
Well actually if she thought about it a bit, the fact that they were on a frontier was actually useful context. They were probably far from anywhere else, specifically due to said nation presumably pushing into some kind of wilds or foreign territory. That had all sorts of implications probably, but the main one was that the ruins they had found, and specifically those of the church, were not ones that belonged to the ancestors of the people they had helped protect.
Which was probably bad news when it came to getting information about the goddess who had brought them here.
As she thought about this, the quest to investigate the monsters out in the wilds rapidly gained more volunteers, and also shifted from a killing them plan to a pacifying/taming them plan which Rayne was going to be less useful for. There was also talk of some of them staying guard in-case the Raven Heralds came back, which was a team currently pretty understaffed
“I could stick around and keep watch as well. Be your eyes in the sky, kind of thing” she volunteered in the end, before saying “if you need help out there, maybe shoot something up through the trees… or just fly up and shout. I’ll-” she checked her cards and found armageddon sitting in her hand still “-make a really loud explosion if we need help” before clarifying that she’d do that “In the air, not in the town”
That was how she found herself floating above it all, keeping watch in the now nice and clear rather than choked with rain or smoke skies, which was far more pleasant than they’d been since she’d gotten here. She could still do with a change of clothes after being out in all that last night, that was for sure.
The clearness of the skies gave her another thought, and that was that, well, there was nothing stopping her from going up now. Not dreadful weather or plumes of choking smoke, not urgency to save people, and certainly not the guaranteed death that her own sky would have brung. It called to her, that endless blue, and so almost without thinking, she began to rise, higher and higher, above it all, causing this alien world, familiar, strange, and nostalgic all in one, to come into view, as first the tree line, and then the horizon line, fled away from her ascending from.
Just above a plaza of dark stone, a young croaker child found himself floating. He was, he was quite sure, dead. For one, there was the whole floating thing. For the other, he still had his gills, and should presently be suffocating in the air he had never entered before his untimely demise.
He was not alone in this place, and in coming to this realization. Even as he came to his senses other people were being deposited around him by the same unseen hands that had brought him here. Ahead of them all was a path, stretched out the front of the plaza, leading over a bridge crossing a dark moat/river that surrounded the large island. Around the moat were fields and forests of faded yet still beautiful and serene flowers and trees of a myriad of kinds, within which other spirits, other souls, seemed to frolic or laze contently. . The bridge did not lead there however, but instead to another island surrounded by its own moat, this one containing a manor of black polished marble, one as equally beautiful and as it was intimidating to even consider approaching. Yet where else was there to go? Certainly not into the water; as the tadpole watched, an avian beastkin attempted to fly over it, only to seem to be repulsed by some unseen barrier and to tumble to the ground. They rose, unharmed, but as their futile attempts to even walk into the river proved, there was no way forwards that way.
So, after making some conversation, and shouting at the spirits across the river who simply pointed them across the bridge, they took the only path available. They crossed the bridge and entered the manor.
Within was a maze of rooms, far more than it seemed it could hold on the outside, which linked to each other nonsensically. There were exits, ones leading out onto more bridges, but these were shrouded in mists, and no one who ever crossed one ever came back. Still, time, impatience and some unknown pull to a specific bridge caused the group to dwindle, till only the tadpole was left, wandering the halls, pressing deeper and deeper till, at last, at the heart of the great house, he finally found him. Sat upon a simple stool before an easel holding an impossibly detailed painting of the realm, pallet in one hand, paintbrush in another with which he was adding yet more detail, was Death himself.
Then the cry of a babe shattered the memory, and the true state of the land of death came into view. Gone where the souls living afterlives in eternal peace. Gone were the forests, fields and gardens of plants reborn after death replaced by a blackened ruin of scorched craters, more desolate even than the outer regions once were, while the labyrinthian home which once stood was gone in its entirety.
In its place was nothing. Just a hole, blasted down into the veil between realms, which a goblin in a pointed hat had just recently climbed out of with a babe carried at her breast.
“Shh shh shh little one, it’s alright” the Mother said, caressing the beastkin infant’s down feathered scalp till it was soothed and calmed. Then she pressed a finger lightly to its forehead and caused the source of the memory to reappear.
The tadpole-like mortal hovered before her, or rather, a representation of it did, for its soul was the same as that of the child. To it she asked, “and what happened then?
“I told him I hadn’t had time for much when I was alive. That maybe I could have another go at it instead of staying wherever this was,” the child told the goddess, “he told me that it was a rare thing to be gifted, but that that was a fair reason, and then just like that, I was someone else.”
The tadpole faded, and was replaced with a dwarven warrior. “It was a good life. Long life. Till the beasts came and I fell in battle. That time, no one took me anywhere. Well, the beasts tried, but El’zadir and me kin dealt with them. After that, me and everyone else, we just sort of, floated about. Not that that’s unusual apparently, a lot of the other dead did that for a bit and then ended up being born again, having never heard of the place I’d been to. Bit of a long wait this time, seeing as so many died during the attacks. So I thought I’d go try and find this place myself again.”
“And found this”
“Sure did. Then I got caught and turned into one of those for a bit,” the dwarf said, as he pointed out into the plain of death at a mist of spectral warriors riding out towards them from the edge of a kingdom that had been built on the ruins of the land of the dead, “got killed again in some war, got out of there, and then came to find you.”
It had been something of a roundabout method, The Mother knew. He’d come to Tricity, having heard the goddess favored it. Then conspired with the ghosts hanging out there to get him reborn specifically into the body of a spiritual family. They had then brought their newborn to the soul speaker as per family tradition, and via that the dwarf had managed to get out a call about the existence of and fate of the land of the dead.
And thus (after she had borrowed the dwarf’s next life to act as her guide) they were now here, at the border of a kingdom of the fay that had begun squatting upon the ruins of the lands of the dead, and they did not seem exactly peaceful. Watchtowers dotted the land with balefire burning atop them forming great eyes that had set their gaze upon her, marking out her location.
Towards it rode a unit of wraiths, cold spectral figures formed of souls bound in glamor, sat upon the backs of similarly undead steeds. The diminutive master of these, fluttering above them and directing them with a handful of spectral chains bound to their necks, was one of the new fairy creatures, wearing a spectral cloak over form fitting leather armor.
“Well well well, what have we here? A lost little goblin? Best you run along home now, lest you end up joining the Witchfeighd’s legions of the damned!” The fay declared as she fluttered above, her wraith-knights forming a threatening circle around the goblin, rather preventing her from running.
Not that the goddess was at all inclined to do so.
“Witchfeighd hmmm? I happen to be something of a witch myself,” the Mother replied, tipping her hat in greeting and entirely unperturbed by the strange copper, gold, and black lances being pointed at her, “more of one than this Witchfeighd, if this is her idea of hospitality. Assuming you are acting under her orders I mean.” She raised a questioning eyebrow at the little fairy and asked, “are you?”
“I am a wand in her arsenal, and her magic flows in my veins,” the fairy replied proudly, though she was in part boasting to cover how unnerved she was by how unconcerned this goblin witch, who had a baby sashed to her chest no less, was about being surrounded.
“That a yes? Good, then you shall take me right to her. I have traveled far to meet the new lord of this land. Or should I be going over there somewhere?” She asked, waving a hand casually towards a differently themed set of fortifications, ones watched over by bounded astral beings, that sat on the opposite side of the massive hole she had just exited from the realm this fay hailed from.
“Them? Hecate rules this land, not those interlopers! We’ll be tossing them out soon enough, her malevolence will see to it sure as death,” the fairy insisted, sneering over at the foe who was camped out on the opposite edge of the great hole into this realm, only to be quite surprised to find the goblin witch sat side saddle on the back of one of her wraith knights.
“Excellent, then let us waste no more time, yes? We don’t want to keep her waiting after all,” the witch stated, and at that point she’d already won.
The confused but smart-enough-to-know-not-to-pick-fights-with-people-exuding-so-much-casual-confidence fay promptly transported her guest as requested. As they did, the guised goddess got a further picture of the nature of the fairies of this realm, who seemed to be between campaigning seasons and preparing for the next. They were preparing such things that would have made mortal armies quail in their boots. Great wells of magical power were being filled from what little remained of the realm of death, its very essence being squeezed from the soil into great cauldrons. Undead legions were being formed, lost souls snatched away from the masses of dead created by the outer beast invasion, bound in spectral facsimile of their former selves, or even their own bones. Blood was drained from captured beasts, inner and outer, and used to prepare profane potions or paint the five pointed stars that seemed to be the basis for much of their equivalent of runework.
Most of their living space seemed to consist of barrows made up of the byproducts of their draining death from the land, transforming the dark substance into a pearly white stone and soil. Their queen lived in the grandest of these mounds, one decorated with great pillars of white stone that curved in like ribs, and at their center held the greatest of the balefire beacons. It's great burning eye stared down at them as they approached.
It wasn’t the only eye upon them, for those of many of fay around had been drawn to the strange goblin riding brazenly towards their lady’s parlor, and the rest caught on when she slipped off and casually strolled inside.
The insides contained the classic witch’s hut essentials, but scaled up to the quantity and quality befitting a witch queen. Racks of strange and rare ingredients lined shelf after shelf (both wooden and those that in an actual barrow would have held the dead), from eyes of newt, snakes oils and bones galore, along with numerous trinkets and artifacts stolen from all across the realms. Nets full of exotic herbs hung from the ceiling, drying in the heat produced by a great balefire burning beneath an even greater cauldron filled with outer beast bile, blood, and even viler fluids, along with a host of ingredients off of the shelves.
The Witchfeighd Hecate herself, rendered wretched and hideous by her deeds most foul, was perched upon the shoulder of a beautiful elf clothed in rags and chains who she was forcing to stir the vial bru with a ladle that contained more power than some fairies had in their whole bodies.
“Ah, I see our uninvited guest has been delivered straight to my doorstep in one piece,” Hecate observed as she ceased her slave’s stirring, before she insisted “this had better be worth my time,” as a clear threat to the fairy who had brought The Mother to her, causing her to back away half a step in fear even as she swore it would be so.
“Greetings, witch Hecate.” The Mother greeted the fairy in lieu of being greeted herself, stepping forwards and tipping her hat to the other witch in such a way that it obscured the fairy that had brought her here, a subtle manner of insisting that she was very much worth the time, and she herself would prove it.
“That’s Witchfeighd to you, stranger, whoever and whatever you think you are, stumbling into my realm like this, thinking you can command my minions to do as you please.” The witch replied with unmasked hostility, for, to a fay like her, there were only kneeling peons and enemies to be crushed, and the simple matter of her guest’s attitude was swinging her rapidly into the latter camp already.
“They call me Rose back in Tricity, and I’m just a simple mother, come to learn the fate of the land of the dead, and see the ascension of its new liege.” The Mother replied with words that were all technically true, seemingly now buttering Hecate up a bit, which the fay found just a touch suspicious.
Still, she was not one to turn down an opportunity to gloat.
“Well you have come at an auspicious time then, Rose of Tricity, for within the hour, my latest brew shall be complete, and when it is, the very earth of this realm shall swallow up my foes, and bury them in a shallow grave,” she declared, earning a cheer from the observing masses.
“Witch Rose, if you’d kindly,” The Mother replied politely, before saying that, “and I must say, you have quite the fascinating demesne,” using the term to refer to a witch’s combination of laboratory and living space, functionally a far more dignified and generalist name for a witch’s hut, “so many fascinating odds and ends you have here, though none less than that,” she said, pointing to a humble paintbrush sitting upon a shelf just behind the Witchfeighd, gathering dust.
This strange selection of interest prompted whispers of speculation among the many fay who had gathered around the outskirts of the large room, peering down from the shelves where they sat amongst the ingredients. One in particular caused one of the goblin goddess’ pointed ears to twitch, a whisper of, “wasn’t that the only thing we found here?” confirming The Mother’s suspicions about the artifact’s quiet power.
“And why is that, Rose?” The Witchfeighd asked with disrespect before asking accusingly “have you come to steal it?”
“Not at all, I’ll gladly barter you for it.” The Mother replied, before offering, “I have many pieces of fine runework from my home city that might interest you. All made with wondrous r’kava to boot.” As she pulled out a knife with the runes of pain painted on its blade, another with a scroll tied around its length that described an intricate transformation into a monstrous beast, and a third that simply had the rune for sharp on it.
“Bah, paltry offerings, you insult me with such base magics,” the Witchfeighd replied, rejecting her outright, “I wouldn't trade a thimble of glamor for the things made by dirt dwellers.”
“Then how about this?” The Mother asked instead, before reaching for a locket around her neck, opening it, and revealing the shrunken heart of Egrioth, one of two greater outer beasts, still beating, its power bound by innumerable runes. In response, all breaths went still for a moment, as its bounded power hurt the eyes of those who looked upon it.
Lesser fay flinched away, but the Witchfeighd’s own stayed locked on it for that moment, before flicking to the paintbrush and back again. She chose, as The Mother had expected, greed. What she had not expected was quite how deep that greed ran, as the fairy flicked out both hands and tried to claim both the heart and the brush, whose value she had clearly underestimated.
The air rippled as a deadly curse ripped forwards, only to crash into the witch’s hat, runes on its rim flaring to life as she used it not to protect her divine form, but instead the babe she carried against her bosoms.
“One of my grandsons got me that as a gift, you know,” she complained, as the hat disintegrated, magic spent protecting her from a single strike. Then she was forced to leap to the side, one hand steadying and protecting the infant in her care as she avoided another deadly curse. When she landed, she thrust a hand over her back and into a satchel she was wearing, out of which she pulled a second hat, informing the fairies with the air of a teacher that, “a proper witch always has a spare,” before popping it upon her head.
“Seize her, bring me that heart! Whoever does so becomes my apprentice!” The Witchfeighd barked at the spectating fay, prompting many to rise up into the air, drawing weapons and wands galore. This did not include the fairy who had brought The Mother here, whose eyes the goddess met and then to whom she gave a quick nod of approval before making all the rest regret rising against her.
Spells and sorcery flew, bolts of death, screaming skulls, balefire, and spectral scythes all raining down on the goddess, who stepped and leapt to avoid them and keep them from harming a feather on her ward’s head. As she moved, and countless shelves and nicknacks around her were destroyed, she retaliated using the heart, forming needle thin lances of pain that lashed out and skewered fairy after fairy, sending them tumbling from the air in bouts of unspeakable pain.
Other more martial ones darted in when the spellcasters failed, sickles and swords at the ready, but the goddess drew the mortal made knife marked with runes of pain, which extended a sword length aura of suffering from its material form. Wielding it, she caught and paired their miniature weapons with the metal blade, before slicing them with the aura of pain, forcing them back or down.
“Idiots! Fools! Are none of you worthy?!” The Witchfeighd castigated from atop her elven slave, even as she began to weave a wide reaching curse that would lay waste to both her foe and any fay who happened to be trying to take her down at that moment.
The Mother promptly tossed the scroll wrapped knife at the elf of all people, skewering her in the chest. Yet instead of killing her the blade pumped power into her, draining wells of r’kava and using it to twist her as the scroll described, transforming her in an instant into a creature like a howler monkey wrapped in chitin armor. In the process of transforming she shattered her chains and threw the Witchfeighd from her shoulder, and the first thing she did with this new freedom was to scream at her captor and tormentor with a voice that could shatter eardrums, or in the Witchfeighd’s case, make concentrating on casting mighty difficult.
Having distracted the Witchfeighd, the goddess continued to fight, happily taking hits to her own body while doing everything she could to prevent even a scratch from landing on the crying infant. The next to try were a squad of wraiths sent in by the fay, spectral forms of undead immune to the pain she had been inflicting on her living foes.
Given that the the souls within were living half lives of suffering due to being bound in these forms however, she had little issue with drawing the blade marked simply as sharp and cleaving into the wraiths with it, the concept of sharpness it was imbued with cutting them far more than the the metal that would have gone right through them otherwise. The undead shattered, freeing the souls from their prisons, all of whom called their thanks and cheered on the goddess as she used the space she had cleaved to unleash another barrage of pain inducing-needles upon the remaining aggressive fay.
She turned then as a new scream came, the elf slave turned monkey knight crying out as the Witchfeighd managed to finish a spell that left her slave a withered aged husk on the brink of death. Sparing her victim not a second glance, the Witchfeighd turned to meet the Mother’s eyes.
The two witches faced each other down, surrounded by the groaning forms of all the rest of the combatants, and watched only by those too cowardly or too wise to not get involved.
The crying infant rather ruined the dramatic atmosphere however, and the Mother was given only a moment to try and soothe it before balefire flames ripped forth from the hands of the Witchfeighd, threatening to wash over everything, minion and goddess alike.
In response she tossed her hat, the second rune-engraved head garment scything through the green flames, devouring the spell and then vaporizing like its predecessor had. In that moment however, the Witchfeighd had time to leap for the paintbrush all this had started over, which she proceeded to toss into her cauldron, causing it to explode with power, much to her cackling delight.
“Realm of death, rise up and claim these wretched lives in the name of the Witchfeighd!” She commanded, prompting the paintbrush to rise up out of the cauldron, and then for power to spear down from it into the earth. This prompted the inert soil of the realm of death to come to life, taking the form of endless grasping hands which grabbed hold of every being but the Witchfeighd, before attempting to drag them back down into it.
“Cease this!” The Mother commanded at the same time as she launched a titanic spike of pain towards the Witchfeighd, but the fay was no lesser minion, and though she suffered there was no breaking the spell that was sure to slay all in her demesne.
Again the Mother speared her foe, but she was holding back, unwilling to inflict deadly pain upon her foe despite the way the hands were close to breaking past her swatting hand to reach the baby. She frowned, began to try to step forwards, only for her eyes widened for just a moment before her form was replaced by that of a woman as old looking as the Witchfeighd, yet also one who had aged far more gracefully.
“Enough of this, if you won’t do it I will!” The Breaker declared, as she flicked a finger across her brow, causing a third and final hat appeared upon her head, this one not mortal made, but undeniably divine in nature. The Witchfeighd’s own eyes widened for just a moment as the Breaker shattered all the Mother’s pretense of being mortal, and then closed forever when in an instant the goddess had crossed the room, wrapped her hand around the tiny fairy, and crushed the life from her, ending her life to save all the ones she was about to claim with her foul sorcery.
The Breaker’s lips were covered with an ever so slight smile as Asheel took her first (natural) mortal life, only for a moment of confusion to cross her face before the Maiden appeared with one of horror on her own.
“She has no soul!?!?!?!?!?!” The youngest of them cried out in horror, as the magic came apart in her hand, and revealed this inexplicable exception to the law she had written in the Khodex.
“No no no. I can fix this. I just need to… I just… I can… I…” she tried and tried, but it was no use. The Witchfeighd was no more, and there was nothing left of her to bring back, at least nothing that would matter. She could build a perfect replica, this she knew, simply by looking back at what once was, but it would not be the same. Her cycle was broken, and there was no way of continuing what had already ended.
And so the Maiden, shocked, gave way for the Mother, who shed tears even for a monster like the Witchfeighd, who gave way for the Breaker, who opened her hand and let the magic both the others had been trying to hold onto, that had once made up the Witchfeighd’s body, drift away.
“The Witchfeighd is dead!” A fay cried out in panic upon seeing this, before above them there roared a mighty explosion as the great baelfire eye of their dead leader fell apart without her, letting the whole realm know of her death and that all her foul workings had been undone.
Her slayer cared not for their plight, instead bending down and pulling the blade she’d thrown at the now mutated withered elf out of their chest, causing the transformation to reverse, and the aging curse having already been undone by the Witchfeighd ‘s death. It was only when a second shout came that, “the armies of Eirgwyn are on the match! They’re coming! We’re doomed!” that she paid attention to the fairies again.
“I’ll lead us to victory!” “No I!” “No I!” called out several fairies who were recovering from the pain the Mother had caused and near-death their former leader had inflicted, all shakingly drawing weapons with clear indication on how they were going to resolve the question of succession.
“None of you will,” the Breaker broke in to say, before pointing at the one who had first met and then brought the Mother here, “she was the only one wise enough to not try and fight a goddess, so she will lead you,” before imbuing her chosen champion with the magic of the old Witchfeighd, and crowning her with a tiny witch’s hat.
“Meanwhile I suppose I will prevent the Mother from shedding any more tears, and make sure no one else dies today, not before we correct this mistake, and you are all granted souls by the Maiden,” the Breaker said as she unstrapped the babe she’d been saddled with, instructing her champion to protect it. Then, grasping the paintbrush all this had been about, she strode back out of the barrow.
As she emerged, she pressed two fingers to her lips, and whistled, causing a mono-wheeled motorcycle with bladed wheels to burst out of a poor snouter’s field, punch into the veil, leap through the hole into the land of death, and to then land perfectly before her, ready to be mounted. The Breaker did so, and then rode her machine forwards at lightning speed, scything across the land of the dead, and dragging the paintbrush across the borders of the fairy nations found within.
Where she brushed it, rivers like the one from the tadpole’s memory of the old land of the dead formed, ones which no mortal being, living or dead, could cross, caring not for how the fay who’s armies she was locking into their kingdoms tried to stop her and, in an instant, halting the advance of Eirgwyn’s armies, and forcing an armistice upon the war for the land of the dead.
Then Asheel, not Maiden, not Mother, not Breaker, Asheel, the Wheel, the Cycle incarnate, rose up above the hole in the land of the dead, and in three and one voices spoke thusly:
“Hear me, o tiny sparks of life who war for this realm: you have been made wrong. As the Maiden decreed, all things that live are to have souls, such that they will live on after death, and be reborn as new lives, to live out new experiences in a cycle that will continue till the end of time. Yet you and you alone will not, for you have no souls and so your death is the final end. This crime against the Khodex we will set right! Yet time it will take. So cease your wars, lay down your arms, put aside your grievances till the day that I grant you what you have always been owed, lest you face the wrath of a goddess who now holds the realm of death in her clutches!”
As the final words boomed, the wheel spun around the handle of Death’s paintbrush, and the fallen god’s realm was granted a new mistress. Bombed out craters were swept away, and in their place was laid a foundation of endless pristine white triangular paving stones, a fresh canvas upon which she would paint her own image of this realm in time.
For now, however, the wheel descended, and then three in one became one of three again, the Breaker riding back to the kingdom of the Witchfeighd. The new Witchfeighd. Whatever she was named before (a suitable name for a follower, no doubt) was swiftly forgotten. Now she was the Witchfeighd, and her name was Morghein.
It was not the new Witchfeighd the fay were hailing upon the Breaker’s return, however, but instead her patron, chanting, “hail her malevolence, hail her magnificence, hail the matriarch of souls!”
“Matriarch, hmmm? I can work with that,” she said to herself, before commanding the fay to clear away and to leave her in peace as she took over Hecate’s barrow, and making it her own demesne, within which she began concocting a brew to grant the fay the souls she had promised them.
After she returned the baby to its parents, that was.
Start: 28 mp 1 mp boosted by wheels to make the Super Cycle able to be summoned to Asheel’s side whenever she desires 1 mp boosted by witchcraft to make the new Witchfeighd, Morghein, a hero, mainly by boosting her magic levels up massively using the corpse of the old one. 1 mp boosted by witchcraft to make a holy site and home in the land of the dead, named simply Asheel’s Demesne, within which all manner of potion ingredients from across the realms are readily available. End: 25
The Mother, guided by a one of the few souls to have been taken to the land of the dead and then allowed to reincarnate, travels to that realm, and finds it a desolate wasteland with a massive hole punched from it into the veil in the center.
She meets the Witchfeighd Hecate, attempts to barter for a paintbrush which the former lord of the realm had designed it with, only to end up fighting her, and for the Breaker to take over and kill her. Permanently. This causes her to discover fairies have no souls, which she is not pleased about, so she first puts a stop to the war for the land of the dead via river styx like borders, and then demands they all stop fighting everywhere till she can make them new souls.
She promptly takes over the Witchfeighd’s demesne (which is a fancy name for her witch’s hut) and prepares to brew up a way to give fairies souls, but not before returning the baby she had borrowed to guide her to the land of the dead.
She also crowns a replacement Witchfeighd, Morghein, functionally making the Witchfeighd’s kingdom her vassal in the process due to her patronage of their new leader. The Breaker gets a new name for this act of conquest, the Matriark.
Rayne awoke stiff, having fallen asleep in her armor with her hat tipped over her eyes. In her defense she had had a very, very, very long day, and unfortunately it had not been some kind of dream. The morning sun shining in through the windows of the hunters lodge alone would have made that clear.
She was tempted to just lower the brim of her hat to block it, but Sanae‘s words prompted the witch knight to pick herself up to face the day.
“I’m up now” she said as she rose into the air, before doing some shoulder stretches and high knees to limber up a bit. Only after that did she join the conversation, sighing that “of course this place also has monsters” in response to the information that there were such things on the prowl, before easily agreeing that “yeah, I’ll help” with regards to dealing with that situation, the thought of saying no not even crossing her mind.
What she did have a little thought about, however, was to actually ask a question that had been lost in all the ‘excitement’ of the previous day, which was “what is this place called anyway? This village, the region it's in, things like that” directing said question specifically at the hunters who they were offering to help with dealing with the local monster problem.
Central hub: Smash City Alcamoth Accessible locations: Peach’s castle Limsa Lominscuttle Town Lumbridge Twilight Town Kosm’s Beach
”I mean we’ll walk, obviously” was Bowser’s obvious answer to the question of how they were going to get down the chasm, causing Jr to groan loudly and to then turn and ask ””Kamek, make me one of those ridable dragons or something, I don’t wanna walk all day again!”
”I suppose” Kamek agreed with a sight, before beginning to conjure, before reeling what that sounded like and clarifying ”that I can make you a steed I mean. I do not suppose that we can walk down there, as the lift is out, remember?”
”Ohhh. By chasm I thought she meant just the way down to the hole” Bowser replied ”but I mean, can’t we just jump down it again? Land on those flowers”
”I’m not sure if that is wise, we got lucky last time that no one hit the sides of the chasm” Kamek replied as he finished conjuring a king gryphon for the young prince, who excitedly hopped on its back, before taking off, doing a loop de loop and then landing back on the ground again.
”Couldn’t we all just, well, use that to get down?” Rika asked
”No it's mine, and you can’t have it!” Jr disagreed with a mix of brattyness and cheer, before remembering something and saying ”Oh but here, you can have this” before tossing Rika the tape for the Beast.
”The ‘Undyne’ tape fixed itself over night somehow, so I’ve got that now” he explained, before briefly switching to the fishy knight, which made for quite the majestic image atop the king gryphon’s back, before turning it off again. ”Cool huh?”
”Oh? Thanks” Rika replied, catching it, before clarifying ”But I didn’t mean I’d take your bird thing. I can just float down using that floaty rock I have after all”
”Also I can make more. Some more anyway” Kamek clarified ”Not enough for everyone, but if needs must we can just ferry people down a few at a time”
”Sounds like a plan!” Bowser decided, getting up off his butt and declaring ”Alright troop, let’s move out!”
Move out they did, or rather down, following the mining trails and avoiding any kind of trouble this time, till they arrived at the place where the crane had once stood. Reduced to splinters, it would not, as Kamek said, provide a way down. This had not, apparently, stopped the miners however, as while they approached, a figure was seen emerging from the chasm.
She was a blocky figure, in a way very reminiscent of a certain Steve, wearing equally blocky metal armor over a Yellow sweater that looked like it would be quite cozy where it is not at the moment very wet. When flagged down, she introduced herself as Makena and returned to the edge of the pit to explain how she had just gotten out, and in doing so why she was drenched.
Pouring endlessly out of a recently dug nook in the chasm wall was a 1 meter wide cubic waterfall that rolled down and down and down into the dark. She had, apparently, swum all the way up it, and claimed it to be a much superior alternative to her competition’s method. Said method was on the other side of the chasm, and seemed to consist of a single rope that, again, went down and down and down forever into the dark.
Makena espoused the creator said rope to be a fool, specifically for the sin of digging straight down, which was not a debate the troop and any reference for. Bowser promptly asked how in the world else you would dig down, prompting Makena to disavow him. Shortly after, she took her leave, leaving the seekers with a choice of 3 ways down. Leap of faith, vertical swimming, or massive amounts of abseiling.
Well, those or their own power, which 3 out of 4 of them took. After providing a steed or two if they were desired, Kamek simply began drifting down the hole atop his broomstick, while Rika activated her feather fall rune and began to float slowly after while Jr, well, Jr proceeded to divebomb his gryphon mount straight down into the dark while whooping with glee.
That left Bowser with the options of rope or water, and given that the rope was not going to be able to hold him, he opted for water. He could breathe it after all. Unfortunately the big lug forgot he couldn’t swim anymore.
The Koopa king promptly sank like a stone, endangering anyone who’d gone before him with his much too swift pace. Still, while fast for anyone sane, it wasn’t so fast he was gonna go splat, particularly when he added his super bell into the mix, and started to control his descent by scratching his cat claws against the wall. Now descending at a sane speed, he continued on down and down and down till at last he and the rest of the Troop arrived at the bottom and discovered something terrible: someone had cut down all the flowers!
There were also two holes dug into the once fertile ground. Into one the waterfall fell, and for some reason it did not overflow out of it and flood the cave. The second one had the rope descending into it, and from it the sound of metal striking stone could be heard. Suspecting a culprit of the flower devastation, the Troop looked down this hole, and found a rather short individual wearing silvery armor digging a hole straight down into the ground.
He was promptly shouted at, but insisted that the flowers had been like that when he got here. When asked why he was digging down there for, he informed them he was digging something called a ‘hellevator’ and to leave him to it.
So they did.
”Well, if it wasn’t him, I think we all know who did this, though I wonder if this means our survival was an accident, or if we’re scaring him now? Either way, he should be” Kamek declared, having already relayed the lack of a soft landing awaiting them.
At least there wasn’t also a pack of monsters awaiting them either, and so the troop happily set up shop and waited for the rest of the team to join them back down in the depths.
The light at the end of the tunnel. After a much longer crawl Amelia finally saw it. On her hands and knees she squeezed through the rooted tunnel until she finally managed to squeeze herself through some part-hidden, part-forgotten, part-uncared for hole that she guessed was made by a badger or some other burrowing creature.
She emerged into a small crevasse that hosted the abandoned den, as well as a dozen or so meters of poorly vegetated dirt stick between two cliff faces on either side, and, strangely, at each end, some kind of wall. The furthest of these walls did seem to have some kind of gate, but it was closed, trapping her in here.
“Why did you lead me into… this place?” Amelia asked out loud, seemingly to nobody. As right now only she could see her Godmother. The fairy only gave an undignified ‘hmpf’. She wouldn’t be much help right now, Amelia realized. So she started looking up the cliffsides. Maybe she could crawl up them?
As she was contemplating this strange set up someone had clearly made for a purpose, what the walls were meant to keep in stirred as a trio of hulking bull sized shapes stirred in the shadows of the cliff face where they had been avoiding the beating heat of the tropical midday sun.
One had a round body sporting 10 legs, all from different animals, out of the top of which a formless black neck ending in featureless head hosting only a triple segmented mouth. The next was a big cat with three quadruple eyed raven’s heads and a dozen bladed tendrils instead of a tail. The last was a green shelled beetle with clawed reptilian limbs and shredded eagle wings that flicked out from under their thorax protection when it stretched after rising.
The mix and match creatures were horrible, but they did share one thing in common, and that was a faintly glowing rune on their foreheads, one of a ring with a smaller ring with a dot in the center at its base, that looked a bit like a simplified depiction of Galbar’s waterways, and rings of other much more jagged runes surrounding their necks.
Having unfurled themselves, the outer beasts, for surely that must be what they were, began to stalk towards her with hunger in their eyes and saliva on their jaws.
Amelia froze where she stood. The three monsters started to stalk - each in their unique way - towards the mortal. “Amelia, my little bulb.” The Godmother said, veiling her worry. “You should move.” Amelia didn’t move. “Dear?” Her Godmother asked again. “Move.” Amelia did not move. “Move you foolish child!” The Godmother rammed Amelia, just in time as the cat-like beast lunged for her.
The elf - knocked out of whatever paralysing fear held her - fell to the ground. On her forearms she crawled away. “Roll left!” Her Godmother yelled. She did. Three bladed tails stabbed the ground where she was a moment ago. Above her was now a massive mass of black. An unnatural amount of legs moved around her. A clawed, lizard-like arm grasped at her. She crawled away, through the leg of a cow and a tall bird. Grasping claws grabbed her and lifted her for a second, before sending her to the wall.
Amelia fell badly on her left shoulder. The pang of pain felt familiar. For a second she was in that forest again. With the spindly legged beast that killed her parents. The memory and the pain conjured tears.
“Kill it!” Her Godmother yelled. “Kill them!”
She couldn’t. Killing was wrong. It was one of the worst things one could do. A shadow moved over her. She tried to roll away but two strong, cat-like legs pinned her down by the shoulders. It snarled at her with its three eyes. It’s tails moving over from above to go in for the kill.
“Please, oh Allianthé please don’t let me-” She stopped. The desperate prayer was too familiar. Last she said it, her entire family died. This couldn’t be what she had to do.
The beast drew blood as it slashed her arm. Amelia screamed out in pain. That was enough. The cat growled at her. She punched it hard. Pain jolted through her right hand as her skin split. The beast recoiled but quickly turned back, ready to bite her to death. It wasn’t fast enough.
Amelia had already finished waving her wand. The piece of yew, so unimaginatively crafted, was covered with iridescent veins. “Kill.” She whispered at the cat-beast, which stopped moving for a moment. Then it turned around. The two other beasts were behind it, ready to kill their prey if the cat-beast wouldn’t. Not that they would be given much of a chance. It lunged at the many-legged beast. It was a devastating ambush as it started tearing and cutting away.
It gave a shrieking scream that sounded far too close to a mortal’s cry for comfort as it tried to scramble back, but the cat-like beast just kept slashing and clawing, hacking at limbs. It fully served at least two before the now less multi legged thing fought back, arcing its neck down and biting into one of its attacker’s three heads, cruising it in a single bite. It was only one, however, and so the battle continued, blood spilling everywhere.
Unfortunately, the command to kill was very different to one like, say, protect me, and so the beetle creature was free to, once it was over its confusion, turn its attention back to Amelia instead. As it stalked closer however, there came a shout from one of the walls of “Would you things keep it down” as the white furry face of an opossum topped with a black pointy hat popped over the top.
Said shout was followed by one of “By the Wheel!”when the figure noticed Amelia, followed by a shout of “Over here, quickly!” directed specifically at her he vanished as quickly as he appeared, after which the gate in the wall started to swing open.
Once the gate was open enough to squeeze his goblin sized body though the fullbood opossum-kin slipped through the gap, pausing only to grab and pull his wide brimmed pointy hat from where it had gotten stuck, before hurting forwards. The rest of his garb was similarly witchy, a black coat/robe of some sort, one that sported many pockets. Out of one of these he pulled a small wooden slab on which a number of runes softly glowed, ones that matched the ones on the beast’s neck. He hurried forwards, and once close enough pressed a finger to one of these.
In response, some of the runes on the beetle monster glowed bright, causing it to hiss and stumble in its chase, tumbling to the ground where it began writhing in pain. He hurried past her and it, and pointed the slab at the pair who were rearing each other apart, causing them, too, to collapse in pain as well.
“Oh dear oh dear oh dear, what have you done to each other?” he asked the heavily damaged pair, clearly upset by their injuries, before turning on Amelia and demanding to know “You! Who are you? How did you get in here? Didn’t you see the warning signs?” before gesturing up at the tops of the cliff face where a number of signposts who’s text could not be seen due to it pointing outwards, before pointing at the pair of wounded beasts and demanding to know “and what did you do to them?”
“I-I…” Amelia stood frozen on the ground. All color drained from her face as the carnage finally stopped. Had she ordered one of these things to fight? To kill!? The realization set in. Did she carry responsibility? “I didn’t know…I never saw- In the Veil, I never saw the signs.” She muttered as she tried to take a step back from the halted fighting. “It’s not my fault.” She kept muttering as she took another step back. “I just- I just made it think something.” She made it think that it should kill the other beast. Oh goddess, she had glamoured it into killing.
Then her eyes turned towards the angry opossum-beastman. She could stay frozen and helpless or she could stop being a victim of outer beasts and circumstances. Slowly, with shaky and uncertain hands she raised her ‘wand’ at the opossum man. “I-I’m very sorry for what happened. I really am but… but I’m not going to die myself over this. My life will not end here.” She spoke of death and life with the finality unmistakingly from Arbor. Where it was known as a fact that death was unavoidable end.
“Wow wow wow there missy, there’s no need for that. No one is going to die themselves or anyone else over this, long as you don’t do… whatever you can do with that stick” the pintsized possum-man replied, pointing the rune inscribed controller back at her in a somewhat unconvincing attempt at thereating her back with it “So put it down, and let’s go talk this through over a little something to eat? I have some dried wheel fruit and jerky somewhere in my office for when I get snacky. We could work out a deal, keep this between us, not escalate this to the authorities, that kind of thing? If you really can do magic with just that twig, well now, that would be something else, and I would oh so love to learn all about it”
Amelia lowered her wand as a small smile crept over her lips. “I really am sorry.” She said, sounding a lot more apologetic and a lot less fearful for her life. A few moments later she was looking at the strange wheelfruit, finding no immediate or obvious way to start eating it. The jerky she didn’t touch.
“Sir.” Amelia said as she fidgeted with the wheelfruit. “Where am I actually?”
“Wheels turn. You really aren't from around here are you? How far much of the world did you skip over to have never-” he shook his head, pausing his query and instead answered the unspoken question first as they stepped through the gate, holding up his own little wheelfruit and saying “like this” before squeezing the center between two fingers, causing the disk shaped fruit to spit along the center. Then he simply lifted the top of the hard fruit off, exposing a half circle of dried fruit flesh.
He then put a finger on this flesh and gave it a spin, causing the edible part of the fruit to rotate around the core of the plant. “Nibble your way round the outside as many turns as you like, and then simply pop the other half on like so” he said as he demonstrated, neatly re-packaging his snack before her eyes.
As he had been giving this demonstration, they’ed headed along a little rising road, past a few building side on the other side of the wall, leaving the gate in the hands of a goblin fellow who was mostly just waiting for a box with a strange bug in it to reel the gate back shut. Once they reached the top of the crevasse, little research post and penned beasts behind them, signs warning of them on their right, they could look forwards and see where they were.
To the west, off in the distance, was the unmistakable signifier of the direction of her home, the great tree towering above all. Home itself however was not visible, for the walls of the edge of the crater that was the land of origin blocked that view. Slicing through those walls to the north was a great river, one greater than all others except its equally vast twin on the other side of the world.
That gave her something of an indicator as to where she was, but as to what this place was called, and what gave it its name, well, that sat on the banks of the river. Houses and buildings by the score straddled both sides, and an island in the center, while a great bridge crossed it and linked all three semi separate settlements together.
Hence the name
“Welcome, my dear, to Tricity!” the possum exclaimed, clearly quite proud of the place, despite the side of it they were on having seen better days. Reconstruction work to the half of the city devastated by the outer beast invasion was still ongoing. Part of this might be due to the rather large array of new buildings that had sprung up around what seemed to be a permanently raging stormcloud sat only a little bit to their east. Indeed, this little compounded was almost certainly part of whatever that new settlement within a settlement was.
A little hint as to what it was for came when the possum realized he’d failed to introduce himself, and proceed to tip his hat to her and do just that, saying “Oh, and I am witch Higglesworth, a pleasure to meet you”
The elven girl was wide-eyed staring out from the crater’s edge. Her mouth was agape. She had seen many things when she traveled with her parents but this, this was something else. A city that could rival Arbor. Perhaps do more than rival Arbor. If not for the twin great Trees, Arbor would most certainly be eclipsed. “It’s so big.” She said, “So mixed!” She added, while pointing at the myriad of species she saw working the fields and the water. “There’s so many beastmen here!” Her eyes darted over the great city. Parts of it were clearly older and perhaps grander, but she adored all sides.
“Oh, it’s very nice to meet you, Mr. Higglesworth.” She said then to the opposom-man beside her, while keeping the thought that ‘Witch’ was a very strange first name to herself. “I am Amelia from Arbor.” She quickly returned the greetings. After which she took a few more moments to marvel at the great split city before her. But her mind was already going to other thoughts. “Say… Mr. Higglesworth. Those outer beasts, how did you manage to control them? I mean I know you used runes. We got some in Arbor too but none of the rune mages there know how to use them to control outer beasts.”
“Ah well that-” the witch dithered for a moment on where to explain, before deciding “ah well, it's only fair if we are going to trade” and then launching into an explanation with the dictation of someone giving a lecture.
“So, for one, while they do look it, those are not quite outer beasts, even though they are derived from them. You see in the dark days when they first appeared, our fair city was assailed by a great horde of them. Yet by the power of gods, heroes and mortals, we endured, and were left afterwards with a rather large pile of rotting flesh. So we gathered it all up, and piled it all into a pool of R’kava, one that is now causing that mighty storm cloud over there” he explained, pointing over at it.
“This caused it to grow and grow, giving us a wonderfully large supply of the stuff, which is very handy for rune craft as it turns out. But it also turned it into something called, according to the old Octari, a spawning pool, which is a pool of R’kava that can change creatures into other ones, or even spit out whole new ones. Well, having fed the pool so many outer beasts, along with actual beasts and the dead, we ended up with, well, those” he turned away from the city to look down at the ‘not quite outer beasts’ who a small team of witches and soldiers where currently corralling/medication depending on their current state, before giving them a name.
“Chimeras, we call them, and though they do look like the outer beasts, or demons, there is one key internal difference: They have souls and not stolen ones either. Born as they are from a natural process of this world, they are part of the cycle of reincarnation, rather than strange soulless things that must have come from somewhere beyond it” he revealed, though not how he knew, before actually answering her question which was “well, how you control any beast really, a suitable combination of carrot and stick. These are somewhat early days however, hence the unfortunate incident when you arrived in their pen”
“The stick itself is a curse rune, one of pain, which came from a runestone that formed in the corpse of the greater outer beasts who attempted to assail the land of origin and was felled by the efforts of three gods, and then gifted to us by Asheel, forever may she turn, along with another from which we learned more of the basics” he concluded “all of which has caused quite the magical revolution around these parts. It almost makes up for the collapse of our tin mines.”
The elven girl hung on every word that Higglesworth spoke. It was a fascinating tale to hear. One of ingenuity but also necessity. With her mind she tried to remember the rune. Not that she wanted to hurt anyone with it, but to direct an absolute form of pain at something seemed very powerful. If she could bring some of that knowledge back to Arbor, Irrithae - when she returned - would be very proud of her! Even better, perhaps she could come to an accord to share some information back and forth. After all, Arbor had its own trump cards. As if to conform, she felt a mental nod of confidence coming from her hidden fairy godmother.
But then she was hit by a profound sense of sadness as she realized what the pool of R’kava was. A mass grave of both people and outer beast. “We - I mean Arbor - never really came to your aid, huh?” She said almost absent mindedly. Why did she feel a slight pang of guilt over that? What could they do? Killing was forbidden. It was a curse offered only to the Deathguard. Still, something should've been done.
“Mr. Higglesworth, does Tricity think that the outer beasts will be back? I mean like before, like a great invading wave?”
The man seemed a little confused by her first question, clearly having not expected such aid at all, before sighing sadly in response to her second and admitting that “Yes. Or something else, even worse. What has happened once will happen again, so turns the wheel after all”
“That said, we now know dangers lurk out there, and though this new age may be one of terrors, it also the age of magic” he said, seeming to be quoting someone as he did so “so next time, next time we will be prepared to stand against the darkness with all the myriad of powers our world has to offer. With magic and machinery, we will endure!”
“So says the soul speaker anyway” he added, confirming that the words were not his own, before adding his own perspective which was “as for me, while survival is nice and all, frankly I just find all the recent discoveries about the supernatural to be quite fascinating. Your own very much included”
“It is fascinating.” Amelia returned genuinely. “I’ve only learned a little bit myself. Most of what I could do was with Arcana and well, I’m warned that it’ll make me go bad.” Only now was that reality really sinking in. That some day she might become some horrific monster. A few others had made the same sacrifice as well. Her eyes turned towards the big pool of R’Kava. It looked ugly and it spawned monsters but back at home, the ever coruscating Wellspring did that as well. It just took a while. With that Amelia started to see some similarities between the two civilizations.
“You’ve been nice to me Mr. Higglesworth.” Amelia said as she turned back to her new oppossom friend. “And I know you like magic, so I’ll let you in on some more.” She pulled out her wand again. “There are creatures living in this world called ‘fairies’. They can do all sorts of cool things! Like lying away the darkness.” She slowed down a little again. “That’s also how I did what I did.” She said, her words laced with a deep sense of guilt. Not just for her oppossom friend. Clearly he was taking care of those creatures. She also felt sin towards the creatures. One died at her hand. “It’s called glamour, and you can learn it too!” Her excitement returned quickly though. “All you need to do is find a fairy and let them teach you how to make a wand! They’re tricky though. And-” She stopped, as if listening to words that the witch could hear. She nodded in understanding at nothing, nodded again, and then even said: “Okay.” Then she turned back to the opposom. “My godmother says she’s not the right fairy for you but I’m sure that you’ll find someone!”
“I also have a question for you, Mr. Higglesworth.” Her tone got a bit more serious now. As serious as the young elf could present her self at least. “But first I have to tell you a few things. I lost my parents not too long ago. But then someone took me in. Her name’s Irrithae. She’s Allianthé’s Prophetess. She’s away now on some important business deep below the earth but she’ll be back. And when she is, she’s probably going to rule Arbor. So if it was possible, I’d like to go speak to your ‘soul speaker’. Maybe we can agree that if Tricity ever faces the dangers from those big beasts, Arbor can come to help?”
“Well spin me round and call me a rolly polly, that’s a lot to take in” he admitted, “a new kind of magic, and people we’ve never heard of? I suppose not a lot of them must not have died yet. Lucky them”
“As for the soul speaker, well, he’s not exactly our leader. Maybe our spiritual leader? One of them anyway, and he does have quite the influential seat on the council, so if you want an audience with them, he’s not a bad way to get it” the witch told her, before thinking for a moment and then realizing “wait, hmmm, isn’t he visiting this side of the city today?” before tilting his hat a bit to block out the sun some more as he peered down at the city, before spotting a blue and orange banner fluttering above one of the buildings.
“Yes right there” he confirmed, pointing it out and calling the distance “just a shot trip by buggy”
He, naturally, offered to give her a ride there, and so, bouncing down a gravel road on the back of a bug powered go kart, began Amelia’s adventures in Tricity.
Amelia slips through from the veil into the Tricity and immediately finds herself in a weird place. A sort of crevice-pen holding three weird outer beast-like creatures. Who immediately start threatening her. She gets scared and uses her glamour magic combined with her arcane abilities to influence one of the monsters to kill the other. An opposom beastman looks into the pen to hear what’s happening and quickly rushes in. He uses a rune to regain control over the beasts and then demands to know what’s happening and how Amelia got into the pen.
After a short threat and clarification that things are not too bad, the two get out of the pen. Amelia tries to eat a wheel fruit (and fails) while the opposom man shows her all there is to Tricity. He also explains to her some of the history of Tricity, what the chimera are, what R’Kava is and how Tricity got so good with runes.
The elven girl listens attentively and contemplates Arbor’s roll in the outer beast crisis. She also recognizes that the opposom man (the Witch Higglesworth) likes magic. As a sign of friendship she explains the existence of glamour. Then she also proposes that she could talk with the soul speaker about having Arbor help Tricity in the future.
Virgin Victory teleport room Top of the Split mountain Outside the Convent of Our Lady of the Charred Visage Tostarena Town S.O.U. Building Seiran Clinic
Midna and her wolves slashed and clawed at the hand they had captive with vicious abandon, till they heard a crack in the very foundations of the bridge. It prompted Midna to command her beasts that it was ”Time to get away” as she herself moved to pull away from the chained hand, only for her wrist to be tugged and then held as the chain wrapped around their captor went taught.
She had all of a moment to give a little ”ah” of understanding of the double edged sword of her plan before it cut her, the titan putting all his force into wrenching free of the bindings, vaporizing the chain and the part of the bridge it was bound to in one titanic hail.
Disconnected from the chain, Midna’s Legion returned to its core as its mistress and fellow minion hurtled through the air towards the reactor wall. Midna reached out and grabbed said core as she flew, before opening a portal to the twilight realm that caught her minion and gave it a softer landing in the source of her sands. She could do little in the everpresent glow of mako to prevent herself from smashing into the far wall however, and so promptly did so. The air was knocked out of her lungs, and her back bruised to the nines, but at least she did not get crushed by the bridge segment as it smashed into the wall beside her.
Instead she just had to worry about both falling and the resulting hail of debris, but the latter turned out to be a solution to the former as she narrowly managed to catch a her sized chunk coming her way in her shadow hand, and then proceed to use it as a flotation device preventing her from plummeting down into the abyss below. She only got to cling to it for a few moments to catch her breath however, before she was forced to hurl herself off of it and to another bridge splinter to avoid being laser beamed. Then again to another. And another.
It was, then, something of a relief to end that song and dance by being sucked into their foe, at least after the futile screaming plunge into the vacuum had come to an end, and Sandalphon got an idea of where they were and what they could do.
”Alright” Minda replied, before pausing to block one of the purple lances with her shadow hand, and then continuing ”I’ve already ripped out one heart today, what’s one more?”
That was easier said than done however, especially because when she tried to open a portal to summon minion reinforcements, she couldn't find a link back to her own realm, just as she had failed to do so in the Astral Plane.
”Looks like you are replacing the other thing for now” she told the Legion core she was still holding in her hand, before re-linking her astral chain to it, and summoning the beast legion being beneath her. Mounting it as she so often did her wolfos.
She did this in near perfect sync with the core summoning its own reinforcements.
”Alright, let’s clear them out!” she declared upon taking in the masses, as she prepared to do what she did best: taking out the chaff.
Astride her beast legion she charged forwards, lance in hand, skewering one of the wireframes upon its tip, before pulling it closer with a yank and ripping its faceless head apart with two dragon claw swipes. It shattered into sprues, freeing her legion up to pounce on the next, knocking it down to give her a free stab right through the skull.
Those two loners were something of an exception to their duplicates’ fighting style however, as several more of the wireframes massed up and came at her as a gang, fists at the ready. So out came the shadow hand, and down went powerful ground pounds and slaps, sending wireframes flying or pulping them against the strange white ground.
Just as she had finished making wireframe pancakes, wires of purple circuitry forming on the ground below her, stretching out from the core, helpful reminded her of its existence. Not wanting to stand on whatever that was for any longer than needed, the princess spurred her astral beast to leap back, the legion doing so just in time to prevent them from being skewered by massive spikes spearing up from the ground.
”Awww, you want my attention?” she asked the core with faux sweetness as she turned on it, before raising up her shadow hand and starting to form a twilight volleybomb ”Then you’ve got it!”
She’d observed the squads of wireframes forming protective shield walls in front of it, but this held no concern for her as she let her volleybomb fly, spiking it down directly into them. The meters wide orb smoothly phased through shield, wireframe and then half way into the ground before detonating, scattering the defending wireframes and exposing the core.
She slashed a wide angle energy blast towards it using her lance, and then pivoted to charge another group of wireframes, crashing right into the center of them before winding a dark energy field and having her beast legion leap between their stunned forms, executing them en-mass with precision throat bites.
With her keeping the enemy minion population culled nice and low, she hoped others who where better at taking down singular foes would be able to focus 100% on heart ripping duty.
Izurich
Drifting Pollen
Rezod92
Lexisheeps
xxjessicaxx
Timemaster
Eviledd1984
pkken
VitaVitaAR
