Dark Cloud — Roleplayer Guild


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King of Nothing

Location: Home of Tears
Jesse’s @Zoey Boey, Artorias’ @Dark Cloud, Rubick’s @Scarifar
Word Count: 5220 (+6)

Rubick wondered where the team was going to go now. Nadia was right about one thing: the Seekers here were always getting separated in one way or the other, and it seemed this event was going to be no exception. When Nadia made the decision to go to King’s Station, he took a moment to think, then decided to chase after her. Wherever the undead cat lady went, trouble followed suit, at least according to the tales he heard from the others. It was just the kind of excitement Rubick was looking for. “Wait for meee~!” Rubick said to Nadia in a singsong tone, chasing after her. “I’m not missing the action this time!” If she heard him over the rain, though, she did not respond.

Less said the better, and in the rather imposing knights case he simply followed after Rubick "...I shall join thee." rumbling under his breath he left the table and lumbered after the strange fellow, not seeing any reason to linger for his mind and nerves gnawing at him in such a cramped place (for him) as the Terminal Cafe.

Jesse was feeling pretty good after the Seekers defeated their first Consul. While she took a bit of time to be by herself, she went to reunite with them a little while later. On her way back she saw Rubick heading away.

 “You goin’ somewhere?” She asked.

Artorias bristled, caught off guard by the stranger calling after the Magus , nearly cracking his knuckles as he gripped the handle of his sword tightly only to ease slightly upon realizing this newcomer was no threat to him. "I know not…But if you arte an ally of the Magus…Follow us." with that the knight picked up the pace from his lumbering gait, surprisingly fast in his armor he easily caught up with the others.

“Uhh…” Jesse glanced between Rubick and Artorias. “Sure thing…your knightship.” She said. She just assumed this was a new ally of theirs or something. The lack of cohesion wasn’t great but they were a ragtag group of randoms from every possible universe, so it was probably going to be like this until they returned to some kind of Head Quarters.

After a thankfully briefer ride than the train they had taken to arrive at the Under, Rubick continued to follow Nadia. So far, most of the trip was rather uneventful, apart from the room full of crabs. Rubick thought the magical-looking crab was interesting, so he used Telekinesis to pick it up and launch it towards him, then blasted it with a Fade Bolt. When they finally came across the puzzle area, Rubick looked around the area with Nadia, trying to help find the solution to get past the gate blocking their path.

For a few minutes now the feral had been messing around with the strange mechanism all on her lonesome, and though she found no solutions she did find herself fascinated -not to mention a little creeped out- by a certain quirk this place possessed. Just when things seemed right on the cusp of opening up, she'd hit another dead end, this one all the more frustrating since she didn't understand it. As she stood in front of the fast-flowing canal, thinking with her arms crossed, the hat-wearing crustacean that had been residing stolidly by the smaller barred gate since her arrival suddenly rose into the air.

"What's going on!?" An unfamiliar, young-sounding voice cried out, making Nadia jump. Was that the crab talking? She turned as it flew past her and spotted Rubick, widening her eyes. "Release me this instant! Ouch!" The Magikrab flailed as Rubick nailed it with a spell, triggering a fight. Not only that, but the bolt immediately arced through the air and bounced between a handful of other crabs to aggro them as well. With a grunt of pain, the Magikrab reached out its pincer. "As custodian of the Stagmer-line," it announced, "I cannot let this stand!" It hawked up a pellet of astral matter and spat it right at Rubick, doing barely any damage.

In a matter of seconds things had gone from calm to chaos. Something the Magikrab blurted out concerned Nadia in particular, though. "H-hey, what're you doing?" she asked Rubick, jogging over. "Let the little guy go, he seems important!" If this crab had something to do with the train station, they couldn't just kill him, especially since he seemed to be a sentient being! With a hop she snatched him from Rubick’s line of fire. "Sorry, li'l bud! Here, hope this still works…" Thinking quickly, she manifested a Friend Heart and gave it to Magikrab, resetting him. She put him down, then turned toward a pair of mudcrabs, approaching the Seekers with clacking claws. Right now, these other crustaceans were a bigger problem. 

Jesse arrived on the next paper sailboat. Stepping off, she looked around at the station, and noticed a bunch of clicking crabs heading towards Nadia and Rubick. “What, a bunch of crabs?” She asked, producing the Service Weapon. 

"I guess so!" Nadia chirped, an amused glance thrown at Rubick. These clawful critters didn't look like too much of a challenge, but that hulking Rock Lobster might be another story. Making sure the Magikrab was tucked safely under one arm, she drew a box cutter. "Figured we'd save some for ya. Didn't wanna be shellfish!" 

Rubick was disappointed to not be able to obtain the Magikrab’s Spirit, but the Friend Heart was of more interest to him now. He barely recalled something of the sort happening to him, and he thought he had seen at least one of the others doing it as well. It was a curious ability that apparently anyone could do, which made Rubick wonder if he could do it too. That train of thought would have to be delayed, though, as the crabs would come upon them. “Whoops! Apologies, friends!” Rubick said to them, training his staff on the incoming enemies. “That crab was just too tempting of a target to pass up.” 

Though uniform in theme, these crustaceans were wildly different in terms of abilities. As Nadia quickly found when she flipped one of the four with a kick and then stabbed it with her boxcutter blade, the mudcrabs had almost nothing going for them. Conversely, the two Kinglers could spray jets of water and barrages of bubbles, both of which hurt more than they had any right to. Still, they could be handled; as Nadia suspected, the Rock Lobster was the real problem. With a huge amount of health that slowly regenerated, its stony carapace shrugged off punishment. When it used its big claw as a shield against Nadia's swing, her blade shattered, its fragments lacerating her skin. "Meowch!" She disengaged with a backward hop and hurried to fit a new blade from her case into the hilt.

Rubick used his Power Steal on a Kingler to obtain its ability to fire water, then turned his attention to the mudcrabs close to him. One of them walked up to him and tried to slam its claw down onto Rubick, but he disappeared in a flash of white webs. He then reappeared on top of the crab. “Over here!/ Rubick taunted the other crab, who proceeded to swing its claw towards Rubick. He then leaped off the one he was atop, and the crab struck its ally, knocking it over. This in turn caused the crabs to begin infighting, smashing and pinching each other with their claws. Rubick found it amusing for a few seconds, then decided to wrap it up with a Fade Bolt that struck both of them and a blast of water from his staff, finally ending them.

A flash of a blade glinted from the corner of the room as Artorias joined the fight breathing raggedly he took a stance with one hand upon the ground and the other holding his mighty blade resting upon his shoulders "...RAAAAH" like a wild animal the knight barely restrained his bloodthirsty cry as he sprang forth, he was fast and brutal. He was going to rip them apart, cut them apart, kill them all. He spun, cut and flipped backwards as a gout of water nearly blasted the knight from a Kingler only for the crab to be cut to pieces by the wild knight. He was much faster than he appeared, and stronger than he looked for his strikes were enough to kill the weaker crustaceans with barely a swing of his weapon. His berserk onslaught affronted Nadia, and she hung back to give him plenty of space.

Artorias seethed and gritted his teeth as a hard and propelling force glanced his shoulders, the other Kingler moving to hit the knight on his blind side. Pain quickly became fuel for the knight's rage, Artorias' seething quickly became a snarl as he regained his footing merely stumbling backwards. He pivoted on his feet, lowered himself on his knees with a hand upon the grimey stone flooring growling low his mind was becoming lost to the maddening rage he could barely contain.

Another blast of water hit him yet it only proved to further enrage the knight, his knees springing him ahead like pistons. Finstertöter sank into the creature's body cracking its shell and making a sickening sound as flesh was rended. The only thing that stood against him now, was the mighty Rock Lobster.

It was busy though slowly snapping a claw where the feral had been standing making a shrill noise as it found nothing but air, from its side a terrible blow cracked the joint of its legs snapping it inwards "HRRRRRRRRAAAAH" Finstertöter cracked as it struck even the joints of the giant lobster though with enough force he hobbled the things back legs. Artorias felt his joints burn with pain, and he could only leap aside before the Rock Lobster whipped its giant claws around. He couldn't kill it with cuts or scratches, but he could break its shell with brute force.

The lobster moved towards him prepared to crush the knight with its claws, as if in challenge Artorias let loose a guttural cry leaping towards the great beast and slammed the pommel of his blade with all his strength and weight put into it with both his hands. He could feel his body ache in response to the mighty blow he struck yet he gritted his teeth once more, enduring the pain.
“Man.” Jesse said, watching, not even aiming her Service Weapon. “This guy’s intense. Where’d you find him, Rubick?” 

“In the Royal Waterways,” Rubick replied. “He was surrounded by these ratmen fellows, so I assisted him.”

The monster seemed like it might respond to blunt damage, so Jesse plucked a nearby hunk of stone from the Earth and flung it at the lobster’s back with a flick of her wrist to support the hyped up knight. Rubick took the opportunity to Power Steal her Launch ability, and his eyes widened as he learned quite a bit regarding the strange artifact the ability actually originated from, but he chose to keep that to himself.

With the rage of Artorias backing it, even an ordinary pommel slam dealt a hefty wallop of blunt force to the monster’s carapace, spreading cracks across its surface. What it lacked in scope, however, Jesse’s telekinetic rock smash made up for. The tremendous, shell-shattering impact added real fuel to the fire, and after all this punishment the lobster’s goose was just about cooked. After planting a foot on one of the mudcrabs to pin it to the floor and carving it in half with her boxcutter, Nadia turned to see the Rock Lobster on its last legs while Artorias just kept whaling on the thing. “Jeez, it’s just a big bug,” she muttered, shaking her head. What was this guy’s damage?

She set down her sword and the Magikrab to conjure an orb of churning Hydro between her palms. “Hey, Tincan!” the feral called out as she ran in, neither knowing the knight’s name nor intending to use it if she did. “You sword-a need to CHILL OUT!” She leaped into the air, the Purrge of Vengeance swelling to five feet in diameter, and slammed it down on the Rock Lobster in an explosion of elemental water. With the monster wounded and its defenses compromised, the Blockbuster move helped finish it off in one fell swoop, and the residual tide also washed Artorias back. What she didn’t realize, however, was that doing so would trigger the gleaming knight’s aggression again–this time, against her. Without a clue she landed and stood up straight, wiping the back of her hand across her forehead with a sigh.

Artorias' eyes were blinded by rage, and something else that wasn't just the eyes of a man with a troubled state of mind. He grunted getting washed back into the wall, the knight rose just as fast as he fell and leapt at the feral, roaring and fully intending to kill. Both his mentality and instincts were driving him into action against another aggressor. Taken completely by surprise, Nadia had only the time to face him with a horrified expression before he struck.

Artorias collided not with Nadia but with a wall of loosely connected floating debris held together with telekinetic force. Jesse had zipped fast as a blink between Nadia and the knight, reacting as fast as she could to the fact that he was still Gleaming and Nadia had just hit him. Arms outstretched, she met Artorias’s lunge with her Shield, a bead of sweat running down her forehead. She stared at Artorias from through her large, see-through, horizontal wall of a Shield. “Oh, that’s no good,” Rubick said as he casted Telekinesis onto Artorias and tsking as he lifted him into the air. “You’re supposed to be attacking the crabs, not us.” 

Artorias struggled against the telekinetic hold of Rubick's spell to no avail, the knight roared in frustration for that was all he could do. Rubick’s words were ignored by the knight, or if he had heard the Magus' words they fell on deaf ears.

With the berserker successfully suspended, Nadia let out a sigh of relief, her shoulders going slack. She’d thrown up her arms in an attempt to block, but even she couldn’t guess as to whether or not it would’ve been on time if Jesse hadn’t stepped in. “That’s for the save, rock star,” she said, clapping her hand on the other woman’s shoulder. Then she scaled her shield of stone debris like a climbing wall. Once she’d scurried atop it she set her sights on Artorias, wiggled her tails, and pounced. “High time we put this bad boy to bed,” she called, summoning a Friend Heart. “...Good Knight!” In his blind rage Artorias swung at her, cleaving through the air with his greatsword’s merciless edge, but Nadia separated at the midsection to let his blade. Her lower half flew down to kick him in the nards, dealing the burst of extra damage her upper half needed to ram the Friend Heart into his helmet. After only a split-second of terrific pain Artorias was back to normal, in more ways than one. The light of Galeem was gone from his eyes, and his rage subsided.

Nadia’s lower half landed beside him, and her top half plopped down on top of it. “There!” she breathed, her chest heaving. “Feelin’ any better, Sir Loin?” 

Groaning, he’d fallen to his knees, his body fully restored but his mind under pressure. It all came back to him, and instead of anger a heavy sadness weighed upon the knight like he never felt before.

Artorias stared at his gauntlets with outstretched hands shaking, his weapon clattering to the ground "No…No it makes naught a bit of sense-" he remembered suddenly the sharp pain, the snapping of sinew, a dark and terrible being deep in the bowels of the earth "By the grace of Gwyn…I can't have…No…" slowly he understood what came to pass, his failure and the choice he made when he could have saved himself.

The knight got up on his hands and knees, slowly picking himself up off the ground grasping his blade he regarded the two women with an expression of shame on his lips. "I-I know not what came over me…I was consumed by them, the darkness and had you not opened my eyes…I would have killed you, all of you. I would have become…" he would have become a monster in the body of a man, lost to his humanity or rather twisted by it yet he still felt it in him the darkness but it wasn't gnawing at him now.

Nadia crossed her arms, grinning. “Ehh, I dunno, I think I’d-a given ya a run for your money, tough guy.”

Artorias let his words trail and shook his head, shuddering at the thought of becoming a monster without purpose "I am Artorias, once a knight of Gwyn and a hero in the eyes of my people…I am ever in your debt." he hung his head, no doubt hiding the look of shame still on his face as a knight he had sullied his chivalry by raising his weapon against these people.

“No sweat, happens to everyone,” the cat burglar replied breezily. 

“Yeah, it’s fine, Artorias. There’s a lot of that going around.” Jesse said. “There will be lots of giant monsters to fight, I’m sure of it.”

Nadia crouched down by the Magikrab, her head rested in one hand with her elbow on her knee. “Sure weren’t expectin’ you to talk, li’l guy! If I didn’t have those bread things back at the cafe I mighta gone for some crab cakes, ya know! Why didn't cha say anythin’?”

The Magikrab shuddered. “Oh, please, don’t joke like that, miss. As for why I kept quiet…well, you didn’t ask.”

“Well, it would’ve been nice to know before I attempted to kill you. I probably would’ve considered not doing so,” Rubick said nonchalantly, shrugging. 

“...Huh. I guess so.” Wearing a wry expression, Nadia scratched her head.

Jesse still wasn’t entirely sure what happened, so she just moved on, glancing at Nadia. “Uh. So. You’re lookin’ for something? We’re lookin’ for something’? Giant hole in the ground over there?” She pointed at it. “Is it really bottomless, who knows?”

“Do you have something for us to do?” She asked, like he might have a quest or something. Shit, she didn’t know. 

Meanwhile the knight silently stewed, burdened by his guilty conscience with the recollection of memories that came back to him, a glowing flask appeared in his free hand that he drank. 

The pain of battle melted away as he downed the draught, tasting both pleasant and unpleasant to him. It had been a taste he hadn't become accustomed to now that he could remember the little things.

The flask disappeared as quick as it had appeared from Artorias' hands, the topic of delving deep into the darkness or a pit with no end brought his attention quickly as it had been his duty long ago to venture into such places to root out the evils within.

"There arte…a great darkness below…I can sense it, and yet tis a force that is unlike any I hath felt before." Escaping the Mouldwood Depths, he remembered feeling something like a force he was both familiar with and hated yet his mind was too fraught by the feral mindset he had been plagued by. 

"If it is to the depths thou shalt stride, my blade is at thy command as an Abysswalker it tis my duty to walk the darkness for the sake of the light." the weight of his burdens may still weigh upon him yet in this new place far from his homeland he may forge a new path to redeem himself, for if he truly were lost he would not have been given a chance to use his strength to uphold the light once more.

Nadia had not been expecting a soliloquy of medieval melancholy to cut into her response to Jesse. She raised an eyebrow at Artorias. “Uh, sure. Much appreciated. Why…do you talk like that?”

Rubick rolled his eyes, as if it were obvious, and then replied, “He’s a knight; they all talk like that.”

An inquisitive look at Jesse as if to say I’m not the crazy one here, right? reminded Nadia of her original statement, so the feral quickly got back on track. “Oh, uh, forget that. Check this out.”

Jesse shrugged and frowned, at her look, and then turned to follow where Nadia went.

She jogged over to the side of the rushing canal that lay in front of the massive barred door. “So, I’m tryin’ to see what’s in there, right? Well, I figured I’d try turnin’ this big waterwheel to see if that worked, but I’ve been havin’ trouble. Watch this.” She stepped onto the water, skating atop it with her Shipgirl power, and cruised down the channel toward the opening that led to the seemingly bottomless abyss. When she pulled a lever on the wall next to it, a gate opened in front of the channel, allowing the water to flow out and down a long aqueduct that extended out across the empty space. The flow came to a sudden stop at a raised basin a little ways out, and after stepping off the stream onto the basin rim, Nadia pulled another lever to release the water again. It flowed down another aqueduct to the left and filled in another basin, where it stopped again. Nadia followed the stream to the second basin, where she turned and called back. “So far, so good, right? But there’s no lever on this one! And there’s these chests under the water here, but I can’t reach them!” She indicated the hole in the mechanism where a lever ought to go, then the surface of the water beneath her. “And watch this!”

She jumped over the closed sluice gate and ran along the dry bottom of the aqueduct, going farther and farther into the darkness until she could no longer be seen. A moment later, her voice sounded out from behind everyone. “Up here!” When the others turned, they found her standing atop the channel protruding above the waterwheel. It was a spatial impossibility–there was no way she could have worked her all the way back around in the seconds after she vanished. “Surprise!” she laughed, jumped down onto the stubbornly-unmoving waterwheel and then onto the ground. As she did, the sluice mechanisms reset themselves, restricting the channel’s flow back to its extent at the start. “Threw me for a loop at first. If ya go far enough, ya just end up back here. That’s why I’m purr-etty sure we need to get the water all the way to open the door. In other words, we need to do a wheely good job.” She put her hands on her hips, smiling. “Whatcha think?

“Sounds like a real conundrum.” Jesse said, eyeing the big door in their way. Buuut Nadia seems like she’s having fun.

Rubick tilted his head as he examined the puzzle. His mind raced, trying to discern a solution. He quickly came up with a few, and he decided to go with the most obvious one first. “Nadia, was it? Have you considered trying to open the chests first before the water reaches them?” Rubick suggested. “If the water is preventing us from accessing them, then we should prevent that scenario from occurring, yes?”

The feral ruminated on that for a moment. Then her eyebrows shot up. “Oh! Good thinkin’, Rube! C’mon, let’s go give it a shot!” She led the way toward the room’s right-hand wall, where the canal poured out into the abyss-spanning aqueduct. Rather than pull the lever to let the water stream down the channel, she hopped down onto the other side of the sluice gate. With anyone who chose to follow her on her heels, she made her way forward, then hooked a left at the first basin, then continued on to the second. Sure enough, the chests were high and dry. The looter in her demanded that she pop them all open straightaway, but she managed to restrain her greed long enough to notice something important. “Uh, guys? I think there’s a second part…”

All three boxes sported crude writing carved into their plastic lids. The one on the left read ‘The lever is in this chest’. Meanwhile, the one in the middle read ‘the lever is not in chest one’. Finally, the one on the right read ‘the lever is not in this chest’. Furthermore, the Seekers could also find writing carved into the floor of the basin itself, which said ‘only one statement is true’. “Hmm…” Nadia scratched her head, deep in thought. “Is it the first one? If it’s tellin’ the truth, then the other two are lyin’…I think?” Her brows knit together. “But wait…if the third one’s lyin’, then the lever is actually in it. Ugh…”

Jesse didn’t say anything for a while, her finger on her chin. “M’kay, so…the lever can’t be the one on the left.” She said. “Because if it was in the one on the left, that would make its statement true, but that would mean it would have to make the other two statements false. Which doesn’t work, because the one on the right would be true. That’s two true statements, when there can only be one.” She explained. She began counting on her fingers, but what exactly she was counting was impossible to parse, even for herself. 

“So that’s out, right?” She asked rhetorically. Nadia just blinked at her a couple times. Waiting for more.

“So let’s say the lever was in the middle box. That would make itself true, and the left box false. But again the one on the right would also be true, which is two truths, which isn’t allowed. So it can’t be in the middle.”

“So that only leaves-” She pauses a moment, rethinking everything she just said. “Yeah. So it has to be in the right one. Because that makes itself false, the middle box true, and the left box false, which is only one truth.” Jesse said, pointing at all of them as she mentioned them. 

“Rubick, you’re a puzzle guy, right? Am I makin’ any sense here?” She asked. 

The logic sounded pretty good to Nadia. “Alright, let’s give it a shot.” She cracked her knuckles, then her neck to either side, loosened up her shoulders, and finally rotated the switch. Dutifully the chest popped open, its halves thrown wide like a roaring maw poised to devour the heroes whole. Yet instead of snapping shut again with bestial ferocity, or disgorging some unutterable horror, the chest hung open. Within lay a metal rod, tipped on one end by a ribbed, red, rubbery grip. Just what the doctor ordered. “We did it!” Nadia cheered, like she’d helped solve the riddle at all. She seized the lever, vaulted up to the side of the basin, and plugged it into the waiting port. It slid in smoothly and clicked, firmly locked in place. “Crate thinkin’, Jesse!” When she tugged it down, the second sluice gate descended into the aqueduct’s bed. The team need only pull the second lever, and the ensuing torrent would wash all the way through to the waterwheel.

Jesse pumped her fist, hissing out a short little ‘yes’. Then she thought to return Nadia’s wit with some of her own, since she was feeling so smart.  “Well, I’ve been known to think outside the box now and again.” She said, and her smile immediately turned into a little grimace instead.

Before going back to unleash the flow, however, Nadia couldn’t help but look back at the other two chests. Her eyes sparkled, and a virulent idea was coursing through her synaptic fibers, highly resistant to her better judgment. “Y’knoooow,” she began after a moment. “The clues only mentioned where the lever was. They didn’t mention anythin’ else that might be inside the other ones.” She wiggled her fingers cartoonishly, her tail twitching in anticipation. “Adventurers like us can’t leave any stone unturned, right…?”

“Could be anything. Could be gold, could be a grenade, could be a monster inside. Maybe the box is the monster.” Jesse said. “The only question worth asking is if it’s possible that any bad thing in those chests could be worse than living with not knowing what was inside for the rest of your life.” She said dryly.

Waiting in stoney silence the knight had sat leaning against a wall nearby, puzzles though not his specialty were not above his intelligence however the inner mechanical workings of the sluice gate did perplex his dated perceptions "Quite right, it verily could be a mimic what hides it form as a chest." Artorias chimed in.

Nadia groaned. “Aww, you can’t just say stuff like that to me! Now I gotta know, and if anythin’ bad happens, it’s all. Your. Fault,” she told Jesse with mock seriousness. “Here, I’ll do the honors so nobody gets hurt. Stand back.” With eager hands she rotated the switch on the second chest and popped it open.

Instantly a wall of air burst out from within, buffeting everyone. Two shapes exploded out of the chest and lofted into the air, their calls intermingling as they turned to glare down at the Seekers. One was a alien creature with glowing yellow eyes, floating arms, and what looked like flowing green robes. The other was a blue-and-white harpy, subtly feminine in shape, with colorful ribbons that streamed in the currents of air that flowed from its free-floating turbine speaker-wings. Worse still, the combined power of the pair’s blistering winds knocked the other chest down, inadvertently popping it open as well. From that container sprang two more monsters: a tall, red-furred wolf with shiny metal boxing gear, and a twin-tailed feline with a flat screen for a head. Flapwoods and Decibelle floated on one side of the four Seekers, while Southpaw and Cat-5 squared up on the other. With a chorus of frenzied cries that echoed through the illimitable darkness, two odd couples prepared for battle.

Rubick blinked. “Well, that was somewhat unexpected,” he said.

Nadia slowly turned to look at Jesse, her face deadpan. “I can’t believe you did this.”

“Why do you let me tag along?” Jesse asked, shaking her head.
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