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The Epic of Beginnings - Fragments of a weathered scroll

Narkissa Langdon

Considering the fact that she had previously seen other people disappear from this spot in a rippling flash, Narkissa wasn’t extremely surprised when, in the middle of chasing after Malphas, the entire environment around her completely changed, literally warping them away from the peculiar stone prison.

“Bloody hell. Come here, you,” she yelled back, in response to Malphas’ playful, but irritating behavior. Considering the situation, she was in little mood to play games. Even once the book was handed back to her, she looked a little cross as she tucked the book safely against her.

Her personal belongings reacquired, she finally took in the area around her. The area they were in was surrounded by beautiful wilderness; from the cliffs, to the trees and mountains, and then to the shining sea, the view projected a majestic image fit for a painting. The ocean and beach part was the most interesting to Narkissa; even if it had killed her in the past, she still felt irresistibly drawn to the water.

“That big guy? I lost track of him a long time ago. Sorry.” While she wanted to make a beeline for the beach as well, as her adrenaline died down from the escape and subsequent book chase, she felt dead tired. So, she also sat down.

Seeing the cat girl had made it was well, she waved her over and motioned for her to join them. “Watching the ocean,” she replied, humoring her question.

@Rune_Alchemist @Cu Chulainn @Crusader Lord

The Epic of Beginnings - Fragments of a weathered scroll

Narkissa Langdon

The fact that the wall had been partially destroyed mere moments from her scaling it really did help. While the stone colossus was preoccupied, she fully scaled the crumbled remains of the wall, before swinging over to the other side, quickly out of sight of any prying eyes from the giant.

What she didn’t expect as she began to climb down was that Malphas was still there, and he was pilfering her book.
“Hey! Where are you going with my stuff!?” Narkissa yelled from up top, annoyed at the little man’s audacity to just randomly pick up things that fell from the sky. Hurrying to scramble down from the wall, she yelled at him again before finally jumping from a safe height. Grabbing her fallen sword, she ran right after the erstwhile cult leader, before trying to snatch the book from his stealing hands.

“It would behoove you not to pick up every random thing that magically appears in front of you.”

@Rune_Alchemist @Cu Chulainn

The Epic of Beginnings - Fragments of a weathered scroll

Narkissa Langdon

Conveniently enough, Narkissa found a nice enough blade among the pile of weapons. Tossing her previous, hastily found weapon aside, she found a more suitably balanced sword. An axe truly was rather cumbersome for a person with a smaller body like her, and one that she was yet to become fully accustomed to, at that. At the very least, she’d seen enough movies and some research on how to use a sword, even if she’d never touched a weapon in her previous life.

One she was done picking over her choice of weapons, she peeked outside to see what the situation was like. What she saw was… Leannah charging the giant.

Hmm. Narkissa didn’t expect that.

It also meant that the giant had become distracted, though. With a suitable diversion, Narkissa finally dashed out, and made for the wall once more. She would attempt to scale it.

Before she did, however, she tossed her book –and her newly acquired sword—over the wall to free her hands. Hopefully either of them wouldn’t hit anything… or anybody important. She then began hastily climbing it. Just like Leannah! Except the stone she was climbing wasn’t trying to actively kill her. Yet.

@Rune_Alchemist @Cu Chulainn @Crusader Lord

The Epic of Beginnings - Fragments of a weathered scroll

Narkissa Langdon

As far as Narkissa was concerned, what she saw was impossible. Then again, the original appearance of the wall in front of them should have been impossible, so the sight of the strange man flying, if briefly, on ethereal wings was no less strange than any one of the things that she had seen or happened to her today. Then, in the blink of an eye, he was over the wall and gone. He had escaped.
That also meant that Narkissa was now alone. With the stone giant.

She had long lost track of her other brief allies, Leanna and Donovan, leaving her by her lonesome in the stone ruins. Thankfully, it seemed that the giant had been disoriented by Malphas’ escape and busied itself scanning the area. By the time that it glanced in her direction, she had long ducked into the safety of the building.

Perhaps she could attempt to scale the wall when the giant had its attention taken elsewhere. For now, she looked around the room; seeing another weapons pile, she was drawn towards it. An axe was rather less than ideal; to her, a sword felt more natural, and for one she searched, biding her time before she could attempt the wall herself.

@Rune_Alchemist

The Epic of Beginnings - Fragments of a weathered scroll

Narkissa Langdon

The appearance of the wall was an unexpected and utterly supernatural phenomenon that should have been exclusively in the realm of CGI, special effects, and movies, but there it suddenly was, blocking their surefire escape from the strange stone behemoth that was chasing them and intent on apparently murdering them in cold blood. Either way, she immediately skidded to a stop, in the few seconds she had to figure out what she was going to do.

Of course, that was when she witnessed the only fellow runner she had, that strange, androgynous man, scream out from her side. Something about flying. Whatever it was, he kept his momentum, and she witnessed him making a foolhardy beeline for the wall. And then… He jumped at it. It really was an unfathomably absurd moment, but she didn’t stop to witness the result of his leap of faith.

Narkissa decided to process the absurdity of the situation later, and focus on the important reality. The stone giant was still hot on their tails, with imminent death following.

Unlike Malphas, she decided to take the safe route. There was a building straight to her left that could easily buy her some time, and without further ceremony, she booked it with her flagging energy towards the structure, but not before taking a look back to see how Malphas had faired. Was his mangled body now dashed against the walls, or did he succeed, and there was no body for her to find? If the latter was true, she might have to try to make it over herself…

@Rune_Alchemist @Cu Chulainn

The Epic of Beginnings - Fragments of a weathered scroll

Narkissa Langdon

She was so close. The gate was in easy reach now, to the point that she could begin to make out the individual bricks on the flanking walls. What she hadn’t counted on, however, was that the stone monstrosity had some other ability other than wildly swinging its arms around and stomping its feet.

For somebody that used to be a well-respected professor, she let out a long string of colorful profanities as a strange ethereal projectile smashed itself into the gatehouse. It was a near miss, but the sheer force of the impact caused her to trip forward. Bringing her book in against her chest, while making sure to not impale herself on her weapon, she hit the ground with the side of her body with a painful groan.

Thankfully, she didn’t flail around on the ground and managed to transfer the momentum to a roll. The danger of the situation and the resulting burst of adrenaline got her off the ground right quick.

Wincing at the pain, she began to run again, taking a backwards glance at the stone giant. Unfortunately for her, while it seemed she could outrun the thing before it reached the gate, it seemed to be charging up for the seemingly magical attack. Making a split second decision, she cut away from the person nearest to her –which seemed to be Malphas—while heading towards the gate, both hoping it would miss or aim elsewhere, or she could reach the gate first.

@Crusader Lord @Guy0fV4lor @Rune_Alchemist @Cu Chulainn

The Epic of Beginnings - Fragments of a weathered scroll

Narkissa Langdon

Narkissa, despite the manner of her untimely death, was quite the pragmatist when it came to personal survival. From the moment she had left the ruins and Donovan had broken away on whatever misguided distraction attempt he was on, she had made a dead sprint for the gatehouse like structure in the distance, if only by virtue of it being in the opposite direction of the stone guardian at the time she had made her decision.

Thus, she was in the lead by quite a margin when the stone guardian’s attention turned away from Donovan, which she noticed when she briefly turned her head back in his direction. Seeing the stone monster start to catch up to them, she screamed backwards. “Run, you fools!”

Despite her words, she happened to disagree with Malphas’ internal sentiment. Being in the lead, she really couldn’t care less if the others got trampled behind her –it would be unfortunate, but she would live—as long as she could make it past the gatehouse. Although Narkissa couldn’t be sure, it seemed almost like a portal of some sort, and in the distance, she had noticed some others pass through as well, with a strange resulting visual effect.

Hedging her bets on this, she gathered her remaining strength and broke into (even more) of a dead sprint, book in hand. While the catgirl’s words sounded utterly useless to her, hearing Malphas call upon the goddess’s blessing behind her, she remembered the contents of said book. Immediately, she concentrated her attention on her lower body and legs, attempting to gather what otherworldly energy could be gathered. Magic speed spells or not, she made a bet to herself and straight-lined it to the gate.

@Crusader Lord @Guy0fV4lor @Rune_Alchemist @Cu Chulainn

The Epic of Beginnings - Fragments of a weathered scroll

Narkissa Langdon

“I was,” replied Narkissa, poking around at the weapon pile. Her reply came noncommittally; after all, this was the person that she had witnessed assaulting the man who she knew now was Donovan, and there was also the fact that he had only waited until now to introduce himself. Despite his apology, first impressions really were everything, and she internally looked at the androgynous man with a healthy dose of skepticism.

“I suppose so,” she continued, with a light wiggle of her book. Considering that it appeared that they had all just woken up, Narkissa found it an odd thing to point out, even if she was carrying a book. Looking through the weapon pile, she would have preferred a sword. Despite being a professor and archeologist of good reputation in her past life, she had also found some joy in the questionable hobby of historical reenactment—and had found some preference for swords in the course of that. Unfortunately, there weren’t any particularly suitable swords she found in the pile, and she was left with an old war axe. To her, it really wasn’t an ideal weapon, but it looked the sturdiest.

And it was good that she chose the sturdiest. Before she could respond to Malphas any further, trouble appeared outside, precluding anymore polite conversation or practice of magic.

Of all the things she had expected, a giant stone golem was not one of them. But considering what the goddess had said, it was likely that this was the guardian that she had spoke of.

She had words for Donovan on his mad rush, but it really did buy the rest of them some time. “Don’t need to say it,” she spoke back to Leannah, before immediately making good on her words. Narkissa had not expected to be given a new life, and she didn't intend to needlessly squander it. Dashing outside, she made it her priority to run in the direction opposite of where the golem was headed.

@Crusader Lord @Guy0fV4lor @Rune_Alchemist @Cu Chulainn

The Epic of Beginnings - Fragments of a weathered scroll

Narkissa Langdon

No matter what Narkissa would have tried, the nature of the situation and the fact that she had dodged the voices earlier meant that any manner of greeting after that would be some degree of awkward. Compounding the fact was that immediately after popping out, she was stunned by the ethereal workers that were building a makeshift staircase up towards her. If it weren’t for the strangely reassuring Scottish voice from the closest to her, she would have had even heavier doubts about the group.

“Scottish? Now that’s a sight for sore eyes,” she muttered, before returning a greeting in a standard British accent. “Narkissa. You’ll have to forgive my behavior… I just woke up to this, and I’m… still taking it all in. Speaking of which, what is that?” She pointed at the disappearing specters, and the now completed makeshift staircase.

Although she still remained suspicious of them, now that the stairs were completed, there was actually some room to maneuver. She stepped down towards the group, magic tome in hand—already she had learned quite a bit in the first few pages.

She still had many questions for the others –where did they come from and who they were, for example—but the strange cat-eared girl answered the first question straightforwardly without any prompting. “I see… and that fellow?” she thumbed with her free hand towards Malphas, the only person that had ignored her thus far.

Further questioning was stopped by Leannah’s exclamation. “Something dangerous? I don’t have a weapon…” Now that she was downstairs, it was clear that she was the only person that remained unarmed, despite the shoddy quality of the others’ armaments. Realizing this, she didn’t wait for a response and began to look around for the closest weapon—but at the same time, idly went through the motions for a spell, curious if she could do so.

@Crusader Lord @Guy0fV4lor @Rune_Alchemist @Cu Chulainn

The Epic of Beginnings - Fragments of a weathered scroll

Narkissa Langdon

@Cu Chulainn

For somebody who just had the experience of a lifetime, Narkissa definitely had an odd reaction to it. Throwing caution to the wind by archeological prospects in the books before her, she had a one-set mind to go through all the tomes in the decrepit bookshelf. She vaguely remembered that there was supposed to be some sort of danger in the vicinity, but with no way outside of the room, studying the books remained the best thing to do. Unfortunately for her, most of the books were so faded that it made them impossible to read with her naked eye. She was well aware of advanced archeological tools that could scan such pages and discern the faded ink to make pages legible –such technologies were used to scan ancient Roman scrolls in the past—but that was something she hardly had access to.

As book after book turned up blank or crumpled to pieces, she began to despair. But at last, she came across a book with legible letters; a strange book, in a language that she had never seen before, but somehow, she found herself intuitively able to make sense of it. Although it was in quite a bad state, she could still tell the title from spine, and an intriguing title it was. If this were in the past, she would have simply dismissed its title as a novelty book, but with recent events, there was a very real possibility that it could be useful.

So, she began to read. Using some broken furniture as a makeshift chair, she carefully cracked the tome open.

Every so oftern, she would stop and peek out from below, to see what the situation was. Narkissa wasn’t completely oblivious. She knew that she would have to deal with the people down below eventually. She had no idea who they were, or their intentions, so making contact was indeed risky. After all, having been in a pod in an isolated upper floor, there were no indicators for her to assume that there were people similar to herself.

Eventually, she was able to get a better sense of the people down below. Although they were clearly strangers to each other, it didn’t seem like they were the menace spoken of in these ruins, and it was clear they knew she was there, because they were now repairing the staircase to her level and making good on that progress.

She stuck out her head once again, this time less discretely. “Er, hi. Who are you people?”

@Crusader Lord @Guy0fV4lor @Rune_Alchemist @Cu Chulainn