Dark Jack

The Prophecy

Oh... I completely missed that post, actually. Sorry Merc; I'll have to rewrite that post with Ixion's movements taken into consideration when I have time.
Guh... finally had the time and energy to write a proper post, and I make a mistake like that. Damn.

The Prophecy

"No," Crone said sharply when Jillian made an attempt at answering Salas' question as to their location and the outcome of the Battle of Anaxim. Gerald himself had turned on the rock he was sitting on entirely, facing away from their campfire now so that he could more easily watch the unfolding events that appeared to now center around Crone. "If everyone important had been spared the embrace of death, not a soul in our fair forest would have passed on at the hands of the villainous intruders. Everyone is important, naught is expendable."
Somewhat taken aback by how fiercely this ancient and powerful woman defended a pointless and idealistic philosophy like that, even in this situation, Gerald's eyes narrowed as he struggled to understand the inner workings of this character. She had been rather distant with him when he had visited her in the forest and spoken about little else than his own abilities and how they could use them against the Swallower of Worlds; she had seemed so rational back then that the warlock had assumed she was like him, a person whose focus was always the end objective at any cost, but her words now suggested differently... Really, how could someone this old be so naive? But then, she had taken part in planning how to deal with Hazzergash and the Crusader's Guild, albeit briefly, as she left most of it up to the other guardians. She had known that many of her subjects would die, he was sure of it. Perhaps it was less about idealism and more about hope? To desire something even though one knows it is impossible to achieve? It was possible.
"And to declare the battle decidedly our loss would be to do our achievements injustice," the huddled figure continued, her way of speaking starting to slightly irk Gerald. "As you truthfully noted our enemy failed to obtain what he sought, and furthermore he lost all but a handful of the followers he brought to our forest alongside himself. I would label it a mutual defeat, if an evaluation had to be made in terms of victors and losers."

When the witch inquired about the crone's identity, however, all the old woman did was to shoot what seemed like a weary look at Renold, slowly nodding her head at him once before she lowered her gaze once more and seemed to lose interest in the situation and sort of just stared off into space.
"She calls herself Crone, and not even Anaxim itself knew her by any other name than that, little one," the green dragon began to explain, still lying down but with his head held high on his serpentine neck. "Of us the Guardians of Anaxim she is the oldest and most powerful, even though she is a little one like you, a human. She was our leader, and she wields all schools of magic, from the divine magic of Reina to the sinister witchcraft of black magic." The dragon chuckled to himself, looking at Jillian with eyes that gleamed with humor. "But she is a secretive sort, friend; I've known her for the better part of a millennium, and that's all I've really learned about her in that time. She's old, wise and powerful, even more so than myself."
"There exists no requirement for you to discern my nature more closely than that," Crone said, apparently deciding to rejoin the conversation once the subject of her identity was over with. Quickly muttering something under her breath she suddenly waved with both of her hands, flinging one in the direction of Gerald and letting the other sweep over Jillian's body from toe to top, white light shining from her palms as she did so that - much to Gerald's surprise - immediately banished all symptoms of magical exhaustion from their bodies, healing them both completely. All so nonchalantly and swiftly; the warlock could barely believe how powerful this woman was!
Having done that Crone looked at each of the three non-guardians - Jillian, Salas and Gerald - in turn before speaking again. "What bears greater relevance to all of us is your intentions, you who came from the outside to defend our home. What is your next objective?"

---

The woman watched the curious acrobatic endeavors of her second opponent with calm interest once she had removed herself from immediate danger - presuming that the Fixer did not teleport to her, of course, or aim another ranged attack at her from his perch - trying to estimate the abilities and manner in which this new adversary moved. Analyzing her enemies' skills and powers was almost a necessity for her to stand even the slightest chance against these two; with one being able to teleport effortlessly and attack from range and the other apparently being capable of quite remarkable feats of agility, guarding against the attacks of both could prove impossible.
She did gain one bit of valuable insight simply by observing the others during her moment's respite, though, which came from the way the second, unknown enemy stopped to presumably glare at the Fixer for a brief time after having evaded the deflected weapon. Though this character's face was hidden behind its strange mask its body language betrayed its momentary hostile preposition towards her primary target. It seemed that whatever alliance bound these two together was much looser than she had first assumed, if they could be pushed to the verge of turning against one another by such a small accident as what had occurred between them. At best this could mean that they were really not together at all but just both viewed her as an enemy for some reason, but at worst this was but another clever deception on the Fixer's part to make her lower her guard a little. Maybe they could be made to target each other instead of her? No, that would be unlikely, seeing as they had worked with the common purpose of defeating her thus far; it was more likely that they would fight each other after she had been killed only. At the very least this should mean that they were not accustomed to cooperating, which meant that it was less likely that they performed any coordinated maneuvers. It could still happen, and she needed to beware of such, but the chance of such a thing to result in an inevitable defeat for her was not as great as she had feared.

And indeed it seemed that just an instant later the two reached accordance with one another anew, for as the Fixer spoke menacingly to her in response to her question his staff-wielding comrade turned his fury away from his fellow mask-bearer and rushed at her, automatically taking the higher priority since a threat to her person was inevitably more urgent to pay attention to than the words of another. She tried to listen to the speaker as she prepared to deal with her attacker, but she could not let herself be distracted; she wanted to hear their evaluation of her situation. She needed the evaluation of someone else, as she was not allowed to make that estimation herself.
Those movements are not within human ability, she thought, admittedly surprised by the sheer acceleration demonstrated by this masked character, not to mention the inhuman speeds he achieved at the end of that acceleration. Even though she had only removed herself from her enemies by a couple of dozen feet this man ran towards her at speeds that could probably compete with that of a galloping horse, if not beat it altogether. And the way his staff moved as he swiftly approached her... she could tell just by looking at it that there was a strength behind it that was disproportional to the build of its wielder. He is not only agile and can somehow hide from my magical detection, but also possesses unnatural speed and strength? Were these properties obtained through the Grand Master as well?
There was not much that the woman could do against this man's fierce attack; he was moving too fast for her to be able to properly dodge a weapon with the kind of reach his staff had, and if she estimated the force behind its movements correctly it would easily be able to break her guard if she tried to block it with her sword. If she tried either of those things the best she could hope for was for her to be left open to a follow-up attack and probably finished quickly, although it seemed more likely that she would be fatally wounded by this attack alone. Ordinary fighting with her level of ability would not be enough to handle this attack...
Luckily she was not an ordinary fighter, and although the speed and strength of her opponent's attack was certainly impressive to say the least, its movements did telegraph how and where the blow would eventually land relatively clearly, allowing her to anticipate it. Raising her empty left hand as though to block the attack with the naked palm of her hand, she moved her thumb back up to the side of her index finger, as she had when first engaging the presumed Fixer... and rubbed against it, erasing energy-changed the sigil she had drawn there.

When her enemy's blow landed it was met not by soft flesh and fragile bones, but by a foot-wide circular magical barrier centered on the middle of her palm. Hard and rigid the colorless and translucent shield absorbed the impact of the strike, preventing it from reaching her in the first place, but then immediately shattered like glass and dissipated; she had only stored enough energy in the Protect-seal to take one blow of that caliber, so she had to make sure not to give this man the chance to get in a second. With any luck having a swing that powerful blocked completely would stagger the masked man briefly, although with his strength and speed chances were that he would recover quickly. She had to act even faster... only she realized too late that she would not be allowed to.
Only then did she realize that the pattern of the Fixer's speaking - pausing in mid-sentence for emphasis as he did - suggested that he was about done talking, and the threat in his voice would have reached her even if she had not listened to his words with half an ear, absorbing enough of the other's mutterings to understand his assessment of her circumstances. The Fixer had stressed that her circumstances were not desperate in his eyes, but the reasoning he presented this by was flawed, based on a different view on the situation in general and different principles from the ones she was taught to work by. He had said that her circumstances were not desperate, but he had also emphasized that he considered her defeat - her death, even - a certainty. If victory for her was extremely improbable to the point of impossibility, and defeat practically inevitable, those circumstances seemed within the parameters of how 'desperate circumstances' had been described to her. The Fixer had disapproved of her taking desperate measures into use, but his justification of this was faulty; his continued attempts to intimidate her had provided her with appraisal from another source than herself to justify taking those very same measures into use.
He did not give her a chance of doing so, however; the moment he had finished speaking she sensed the now-familiar burst of energy that marked a teleportation, and it only took some very basic tactical foresight and a quick redirection of her magical senses to confirm that this wily warrior was now behind her. She moved as quickly as she possibly could, her entire body moving in coordination as her left hand dropped away from her crumbling barrier and to her right hip, grasping for the hilt of her second sword there with its demon skull-guard grinning evilly as though in anticipation of finally being unleashed from its scabbard. Her right hand swung to the side, the blade of her runesword held upright in her hand to guard as large a portion of her wounded side against a possible horizontal swing, all while she turned her body to halfway face this new immediate threat against her and moved to what had previously been her left, hoping to evade a possible attack that was not a horizontal swing. Judging by the weapons she had seen the Fixer use thus far it seemed unlikely that he had anything suitable for thrusting, but a vertical or semi-vertical slash was still a possibility. And through it all she muttered arcane words under her breath, forming a verbal-only spell in the midst of combat.
Once again her runesword found the chain of the Fixer's weapon and interfered with its trajectory... but this time she could not fling it aside quickly enough. All catching the chain of the weapon served to do was to make the object at its end strike her chest instead of her throat; it was fortunate that the object attacking her now was not the bladed end of the weapon, or she would have died. As it was she probably broke several ribs, but hopefully she escaped lethal damage.

I need a direction, she thought, drawing her second sword with its bizarre twin blades wrapping around each other in an extremely tight spiral that gave them an integrity that was actually stronger than if they had been only one, without offering sacrificing any significant amount of cutting-capacity. Embedded into the two blades, distributed along the cores of each of them and placed so that the sword remained symmetrical, were a total of twenty-six little oval stones, black with a metallic gleam. The demon skulled sword was brandished in the direction of the staff-wielder, and while her left hand did this, her right hand flicked her wrist to send the chain caught on it and the weight at its end towards the ground and to the side. Words still formed on her lips, incredibly swift and barely audible; casting spells this quickly with only the verbal component was very dangerous, but the situation was desperate. Every direction is obstructed except... up.
She finished the spell while still encircling herself with her dual sweeping blades, and the magic responded to the instructions of her mind immediately. For an instant a faint white aura wrapped around her legs, then rushed downwards and converged below her feet... then a flash of light originated from there, and abruptly the woman was propelled skyward at blinding speeds. The next second she found herself in the air some thirty feet above her enemies' heads, her velocity having died as instantaneously as it had been gained and leaving her about to plummet back where she had come from, into the waiting hands of her opponents.
If she touched the ground again she was dead, at least while both of them were fighting at full capacity; if she hesitated for too long, even if she could stay in the air, the Fixer would teleport to her and kill her, presuming of course that her flinging the weighted end of his weapon away did indeed prevent him from throwing it towards her while staying on the ground. She had hit him with the light-beam earlier, as he had dodged it rather than teleport; his teleportation had limits. If she was quick enough, acted unpredictably enough, she could hit him before he could react. She had no time, she had to act instantly... They were directly below her; releasing the Lightning-seal on her runesword in their direction should hit them both. There was no way they could evade that.
She jerked her runesword downward, even as her two-bladed demon blade was raised high above her head, ready to slash. She began forming the syllables that would unleash a devastating bolt of lightning upon her target and his accomplice...

Pain. Hot, searing pain. Incomprehensible pain. Her chest and back felt heavy. Her entire lower body ceased responding to her will. A wicked metal spike protruded through the front of her coat, at the middle of her chest right beneath the collarbone; a metal spike that penetrated all the way through her torso, measuring a little more than thirty inches from its point along its curved-conical beak-like length to where it connected to its hilt, which was a three-foot long pole of steel.
She could not speak... her hands lost their grip on her swords. In a spray of blood her upper body jerked forward with the force of the weapon that had just punched through her. She did half a somersault on her way down, then hit the ground hard with her shoulders and head first, then falling onto her back, pressing the weapon even further into herself with her own weight.
"Fin'ly she drew it," a male voice called from a nearby rooftop as her vision faded, sounding amused and happy. Her swords clattered to the ground near her; her enemies would be very close. It did not matter. She was defenseless. Defeated. Dead. "Di'n't wanna hav'ta save 'er. Easier this way.
One down, eleven to go."

The Prophecy

Okay, presuming that Syn really did drop out (I thought you and he were still doing that humongous collaborate post of yours, yoshua? The reason I didn't try to engage your characters all this time was because you told me you were doing something with them, after all...) and Draven isn't going to need a number, I rolled the dice... and a really interesting selection came out. I will tell you as much as it was not a number that had not been picked; a character was successfully selected (had an unpicked number come up, no character would have been selected).
I wouldn't use random selection like this if any factors within the character's control could potentially influence the outcome, by the way; the fact alone that I left this decision entirely up to chance is because the occurrence I'm anticipating will happen in some IC days is a random one beyond the control of the characters. Of course, on the off chance that the character picked through the dice roll should somehow manage to make itself unqualified for the random event by the time it should occur, nothing will happen... I'm not going to force something to happen despite that it logically could not have just because a pair of dice told me it should. The dice just picked the character; the event is still all me.

The ex-sergeant went for Aemoten, yeah, sorry... as you might have been able to tell by the post itself it was rather forced, so I didn't put nearly as much effort into explaining things as I should have. And although I didn't post as Olan, I did include a passage on the events on the other side of the barracks, describing events there immediately after the descent from the roof and the actions of some other characters over there. I don't know how much more I should add as Olan... he would help Thaler down as agreed, but not immediately do much more than that; not with Thaler being as quiet as she is at the moment, at least.
And speaking of being quiet, are you all right, Nessa? You seem a bit... I don't know. My intuition just tells me that something's wrong.

By detrimental research I was mostly referring to targeted weapons research; I know that the fruits of numerous other branches of science could easy be and have been perverted to be used in harmful ways such as in weapons, and while this is unfortunate I still don't call that detrimental research because the original purpose of it was beneficial. Things that can't possibly be used for good, however - such as most instances of bio-weapon technology - but are clearly made for the sole purpose of war, those are the ones I call detrimental. Eh, and obviously research to find a way to use beneficial technology in a harmful way is also detrimental. The exact amount of resources that should be used for that kind of things is none, if you ask me.

The Prophecy

Okay... Jaelnec: 2, Morgan: 4, Jillian: 11 and Salas: 6. Still missing numbers from Aemoten, Thaler, I'on, Ixion, Draven and Etakar (I don't think it'll have any particular relevance to the RP if Zacharias' number comes up unless he becomes an active part of it again, but I've noted his 8 as well).

And I'm going to roll regular two six-sided dice since I don't own a twelve-sided one... that is why 1 is not an option (not because 1 is an automatic "no one got picked", which could be a completely credible option).

The Prophecy

Sorry about my recent ineptitude when it comes to keeping up with the RP, everyone... For some reason I've just been feeling inexplicably fatigued a lot these days and can only seem to barely find the energy to write a post every now and then. I will keep posting - first in the Jillian/Salas/Gerald-scene since that's the oldest one I need to get done, and then in the Ixion/Morgan-scene, since it seems like my input is needed again already, with Morgan being about to bash the agent's skull in and everything - but please be patient with me, at least for a little while. This funk of mine is sure to pass eventually, and I'll be more active again.

Hmm... since I'm writing an OOC-post anyways I might as well bring up another thing that I've been reminding myself that I needed to do for a while now, only to forget it over and over again. I would like for all of you to pick a number from two to twelve for your characters (that is, Shien will have to pick a number for Aemoten and Etakar individually). You can pick the same number for a character than has already been used for one, but honestly I think it'd be more interesting the more numbers are represented. I pick 2 for Jaelnec; Gerald and Olan don't need numbers.
Once I have numbers for all characters (that means yours too, yoshua and Syn) I'll roll a couple of dice and let fate run its course. I won't tell you which number comes up or what it means, but it will have significance for the RP later on.

The Prophecy

He dodged it? the woman wondered as she quietly muttered the arcane words that would re-seal the magic into her runesword, immediately ending the spell after barely letting it manifest rather than trying to follow her enemy's movements with it. No, the ray touched him for an instant, on the shoulder. He reacted extremely quickly to avoid being hit in the chest; the delay from extinguishing the blinding light to shooting out the beam was less than half a second. Just what one could expect from Grim. But why dodge? Had he teleported instead, with that timing, he could have escaped completely unscathed. Is his teleportation not as instantaneous as it appears? And why retreat behind cover? Surely he must have realized how exposed that attack left me; if he had appeared behind me just then he could have targeted my back. Of course if this is Grim, he would know that I anticipated that vulnerability and was prepared to counteract an exploitation of it...
Straightening back up, sword lowered by her side, the blue-clad ducal agent stared at the wooden containers the presumed Fixer had dived into cover behind. Though she did not actually have visual contact with her target hiding back there she had once more locked on to the signature of his magical energy, and could tell that he had not teleported away yet. What is he doing? A trap? I could easily attack him through those containers, and there is no way I would not know that he was there. Must be a trap. I won't fall for it. Wait.
There was noise above and behind her; not the loud noise of something hitting a wall, but a relatively muffled noise of something just shuffling against it. Climbing. She could hear approximately where it was coming from, but for some reason she could not sense the source of the sound even when she focused her magical senses on the location and scanned it thoroughly. It was probably the second character, she figured, trying to sneak up on her or at least descend onto the battlefield. Why could she not sense this person? She was the best at sensing magical energy among the twelve, a specialist magical tracker capable of identifying even scraps of residual energy left behind by the caster of a spell and sensing most necromancers, so who was this person whose soul was so thoroughly hidden that she could not detect its energy even when concentrating on it?

Her opponent stood, not only revealing himself to her eyes once more but also exposing himself completely. Once more this man's actions were perplexing to her; why would he do this when he could have teleported away from behind cover, which would have tricked anyone incapable of actually sensing the teleportation itself? Another piece of evidence that this man must truly be the Fixer, for why else would he do this but if he knew that she would sense him teleporting? This must be another trap; he wanted her to try to attack him and expose herself so that he could teleport close to her and deliver a strike from a vulnerable angle. Mercy? Threats? What point was there to try to confuse and distract her anymore at that point? She had already concluded that this was an ambush, and that this man was the Fixer, and though his words had done nothing but attempted to sow a mix of doubt and suspicion in her mind, his every action had proven his identity as her target.
Finishing his last word the servant of the Grand Master vanished in a burst of magical energy, and the woman immediately spun around herself, her sword raised and ready to parry and counterattack the instant she located her adversary, who she figured was certain to try to use his instant movement to attack her from an angle. She did not spot him, but only a heartbeat after the first teleportation she sensed the energy of another, this one directly above her. Raising her sword even higher to guard against an aerial assault, she was met by the sight of the man practically hanging in the air some ways above, and barely even had time to realize what was happening before it had already occurred.
Her guard was too high, the other's attack was too quick; she could not block or evade. All she could manage to do was to start moving away from the trajectory of the curious bladed weapon while simultaneously turning so that it would hit as little of her as possible and carry as little risk of killing or crippling her as possible. The result of her desperate maneuver was that rather than being immediately incapacitated, as the attack doubtlessly would have accomplished, the blade of his weapon only caught her by her right side, slicing just below her shoulder, across the side of her ribcage and some ways onto her right breast before she slammed the pummel of her sword into the chain connecting the weapon to its wielder, disrupting its movement and saving her from even deeper lacerations. Flinging the chain and weapon away from herself with a quick flick of her wrist the woman retreated backwards and away from her airborne enemy, first in a long backwards leap and then several quick running steps before she became motionless again.

She grit her teeth but kept her posture straight despite the pain, even as she felt blood soak her clothes on her right side, turning her blue garments red. She did not think that any muscles had been severed, though; it felt as though she could move normally, painful though it might be. Her ribcage had also prevented the blade from cutting too deeply; she suspected that several of her ribs had been notched, but her vital organs were intact. For the moment she would continue to function, and it was the purpose of a tool to continue functioning until it broke.
There would be reprimands for this wound, however... The master would be compassionate, as seemed to be his habit when she was injured, but some of the other nobles would be less merciful, as they always complained when she got a new scar, particularly one that extended onto her breast. They found the sight disturbing, and punished her in addition to demanding intercourse with her as they often did. She suspected that the master did not know that she was being made serve in this way, but his advisor and second-in-command knew and had confirmed to her that she was supposed to comply with requests for such and do whatever the nobles asked of her. She... did not like that. It was an irrational and emotional response that she could not logically justify, but though she ordinarily felt nothing, that in particular unsettled her. She would have to go to the Church of Reina and see how well they could heal the wound later; if the scar was not too visible, maybe she would not be punished as harshly.
That was for another time, though. Right now she was wounded and still engaged in a battle against an opponent capable of instantaneous movement and another that she could not sense. From this angle she actually saw this second character for the first time, although this did not reveal much to her, as the person's outfit completely concealed the person's body, leaving not even a single patch of skin visible to try to analyze its nature.
I need to be careful, she thought, raising her sword in a defensive stance once again, ignoring the searing agony in her right side. That attack just before was dangerous; had his second teleportation not revealed his location to me, I would definitely have been incapacitated or killed by that. Why does he stay at a distance, though? Grim always preferred melee combat, but this man has only attacked from range, despite that Grim would know that I have the advantage at medium-range.
"Would you say," she suddenly shouted, though without losing focus of what she was doing or dropping her guard, "that these are 'desperate circumstances' for me?"

The Prophecy

Ashgan, do you want to post next or should I?

And by the way, how is your post coming along, Merc?

The Prophecy

Crone... Gerald had only spent around a day or so in the Anaxim Forest before the Crusader's Guild invaded it, but during that time he had spent most of the previous evening and night with this woman, desperately spilling his own secrets to her while learning very little about her in return. In fact he had learned more about her from the other guardians then he had from herself, although even the information they had revealed ultimately seemed far from satisfying.
According to what he had been told the more permanent residents of the Anaxim Forest were referred to it as its 'guardians', and these guardians were arbitrarily ranked by the forest itself, being placed above or below others in authority and importance depending on their level of power. For most part this ranking was ultimately irrelevant, since the vast majority of the guardians were so equal in the extents of their strength and abilities that one could hardly be called superior to the other, even if Anaxim's advanced senses allowed it to differentiate on even the smallest scale. The exceptions to this broad equality among the guardians turned out to be the top three rankings, which were all greatly superior to their colleagues and even had large gaps in power between themselves. The third highest ranking guardian had been Alamon, the Gazzeral he and Jillian had briefly encountered earlier before he was lost to the battle; he had been an incredibly powerful water-elementalist, and on top of that he was also the second oldest resident in the forest, actually old enough to have experienced the war against the Gazzeral that preceded the foundation of Rodoria and southern Wegam Fermos. His death was a sore loss to the scholar in Gerald... all of that history and knowledge, just gone for no reason. How many civilized Gazzeral were even left? According to Alamon he had not met another like himself for centuries, at least. Then there was the second highest ranking guardian, Renold the Elder Green, with both physical and magical power that far exceeded that of the Gazzeral, even though Renold was younger than Alamon - considerably so, in fact. It seemed pretty natural that an elder dragon should hold a high position within any arbitrary hierarchy like this, probably even the highest, but the highest guardian was nothing like one would expect. The highest ranking guardian of the Anaxim Forest, whose sheer magical power was incomparable even to Renold's considerable might - the one who was also the single oldest resident of the forest, despite seeming to be, for all intents and purposes, fully human - was Crone.
Arcane arch mage, expert necromancer, monstrously powerful elementalist, potent summoner, High Priestess of Reina, and quite possibly the single most knowledgeable and dangerous witch in Rodoria, if not all of Reniam; this was who Crone was, a woman who had an impossibly wide capacity for magic that allowed her to use even schools thereof that should, logically, have been incompatible... Had she devoted herself to just one or two schools of magic, Gerald dared not even imagine the heights of mastery she could have achieved. No one knew how old she really was - though Alamon had mentioned that she had been in the forest for even longer than he had, and had been old even back then -, where she had come from, how she was able to ignore the established limitations of magical practice or, for that matter, why she was even still alive to begin with. She even refused to tell a single soul her real name, going solely by the title of Crone.

Even now just being in her presence was enough to send shivers down the necromancer's spine, because even if she hid most of her magical energy - if she had not, Gerald suspected that she might accidentally kill less powerful people just by being near them - his senses were sharp enough to at least get a glimpse of what she was trying to hide. This power... was not normal.
As it would happen Crone did not even acknowledge anyone else at the lake right away, but instead seemed to focus her attention solely on the man lying on the ground in front of her as her eyes - the right one seeming to shine the firelight significantly more than the left one, he suddenly noticed - roamed over his body, clearly suffering burn-injuries at the very least, all while quietly rubbing her bony hands together. A thin mist of smoke rose from both of them but quickly dispersed, most likely not actually coming from them but having incidentally been brought along from their initial location when they teleported here.
Such a flashy teleportation spell, grimly Gerald noted to himself, it's tasteless and wasteful. When I obtain the power and ability to do something like that, I'll definitely find a subtler way to do it. Faster, too, if at all possible.
"Reina, Lady of Mercy," Crone dryly squeaked, finally parting her hands hand holding them out towards Salas, "I beseech You to heal this man, that Your will may be done."
And just like that her hands began emanating a soft white radiance, bathing the wounded man in that rapidly mended his wounds wherever it touched, and as she waved her hands up and down his body, Salas went from incapacitated to uninjured in a matter of seconds. By the time the light stopped shining from Crone's hands, all but the man's clothes had been restored completely; not even a single cut or bruise was left on his form, and even the smoke had been purged from his lungs. Even his magical energy had been partially restored, and anything that was not outright detached from him had been regenerated, so while his tongue was still missing his scars had become significantly fainter; even the cavities in his teeth had been fixed, and irregularities in his vision had been corrected. This was the power of a High Priest of Reina, the most potent healers in Reniam; the power to restore anyone even from the brink of death.

"You should be fine now," Crone told her patient as she stood feebly, her huddled form hunching even when fully erect, making her seem even smaller than she really was. "This place is safe, and your wounds are no more. You are fortunate to have survived; none others shared that fate."
She looked up then, her gaze going directly to each of the three others present, calmly looking each of them in the eyes as if she already knew exactly where each of them were, without even needing to look. "At least, none others that remain in the forest."

The Prophecy

I am fine with whatever you prefer right now, actually. I was wondering whether to post for that scene today since Ashgan posted, but ultimately decided to wait since you had announced that you were writing a post for today. So if you want to post as Salas immediately that's still completely fine, and if you want me to post first and have Salas all healed up that's fine, too.

The Prophecy

Heh, my aching is usually about as accurate in its readings as any other weather forecast, so the advantages it gives is really neglectible. It turned out that my hands were a bit off on their forecast for today; it did get extremely dark and cloudy outside, but aside from that weather today has been as hot as the past couple of weeks. Consulting the internet told us that there were some pretty bad rainstorms and thunderstorms further south, but up here it just got a bit dark for a while. So convenient as it might be to some, it just doesn't seem reliable enough to me to be worth the disadvantages that comes with it.
I can move much better now that it's cleared up again, though, and the pain has lessened, so I'll at least deal with some OOC posting now. Today wasn't even that bad when I think about it; there have been times when I could barely think coherently from sheer agony and have been incapable of bending or stretching anything but the outermost joint of my fingers. Those are the really bad days... normally it's just a relatively dull constant aching that I've gotten pretty used to, yet am always aware of at the same time, and a decrease of dexterity... oh, and the fact that my knuckles crack every time I clench my fingers even some of the way, whether I mean to or not. Heh, new real-life acquaintances often seem deeply disturbed by that part. It's always interesting to see if they're the kind of people just shooting sidelong glances at you and shuddering each time you produce the sound, or if they're the kind to openly complain that it's disgusting. If not for the pain and impending disability of my hands, it might've been a fun toy to have.

Ah, there are a number of other alternatives, just none more widespread than the concept of the afterlife in the other Planes. The Catolohne worshippers of the Creator, for instance (since they completely discard the religious ideas that are prevalent in other countries), believe that just as all things came from the Creator, all things return to the to him when their time comes. Because of this the souls of Catolohne Creator-worshippers don't get afterlives like others, but have their souls fed to their Creator to be reentered into the circle of creation and destruction. People who sell their souls to the Grand Master of Evil usually don't get a traditional afterlife either, but get to live out the rest of eternity bound to the Grand Master's will by the power of their infernal contracts.
And yeah, there are far less angels in the Planes than there are demons, and far more dead spirits in the Upper Plane than in the Lower Plane. Some gods might try to convince a dead spirit to become an angel once in a while, though most won't, but they are infinitely more merciful in their recruitment of angels than the demons are to bolster their own ranks. Even Rilon will usually only try to persuade dead spirits to become his angels through temptation and trickery, which is still much better than the continuous hunting, torturing and killing of dead spirits that occurs in the Lower Plane until they surrender and become demons. In comparison, there has accumulated about twenty thousand angels since the creation of their kind, whereas there exist untold billions of demons. This is also why angels are generally stronger than lesser demons, since the power bestowed upon them is distributed to a much smaller number; the orlgarhi is the only known kind of lesser demon that is stronger than the average angel, whereas thalks are just comparable to them. There are naturally many types of both angels and demons that haven't been properly documented yet, but you get the idea; the average angel is far superior to the average demon.

I'm probably not even as ambitious as you in regard to my desire for longevity, Shien, and even more selfish; yeah, the prospect of ceasing to exist is a bit inconvenient to think about, but I'm pretty sure that not existing would not particularly bother me once I've gotten to that point, even if there is no alternative to not existing (if I die and it is at all possible, I'm definitely sticking around as a ghost), and it is annoying to think that no matter how much I accomplish during my life I will always want to do more and never complete it all, but that's not really why I want to live forever. It's not that I want to help people, to contribute, or for any kind of noble purpose like that; I simply like living. Every mundane, repetitive minute of it. I like eating, even if it's the same thing as I've eaten a thousand times before; I like watching good movies, and even half-assed ones if the mood strikes me, and even rewatching them after some time; I like to read books, write books, and reread books; I like to play games, and replay games. I like the warm sun and the cool breeze, the sight of flowers and the smell of rain. Heck, I even like just sitting around doing absolutely nothing besides delving into my own thoughts. It's not that I need to achieve as much as possible, I just want to be comfortable and stay comfortable. Being dead doesn't sound comfortable at all; I probably won't be able to do any of the things I like if I'm dead. So I don't want to die. I want to live.
The bit about the hindrance of scientific advancement is certainly one I agree with. And as if useful and downright beneficial technology getting unnecessarily delayed or discarded for reasons that I can only imagine must originate from some vague concept of ethics was not bad enough, other technologies are being withheld simply due to sheer greed (*cough*hydrogen fuel cells for vehicles*cough*). I honestly think that it's an even greater crime for humanity to halt scientific advancement in beneficial areas than to pour all their resources into ultimately detrimental ones.

Teleportation usually requires so much magical energy that it would outright kill an average human to attempt it, but this is only the case for average humans. Some humans have naturally stronger souls than others, and many other species are usually stronger than average humans, and this is not even taking into account the fact that mages naturally increase the power of their souls simply by doing their magic, meaning that even that average human could eventually come to possess the power to teleport in time (in other words, nearly every mage can potentially possess a superhuman soul). It would not be something that anyone had the power to do, and definitely not something to be done repeatedly or from anything but full capacity, but certainly not in a level that would be commonly regarded as impossible (Shien's estimates sound pretty probable in regards to the rarity of the ability). The greatest obstacle when it comes to teleportation, the substantial requirement of magical energy aside, is the sheer difficulty of doing it right; while many mages would theoretically be strong enough to teleport if they rested themselves completely beforehand, the skill to do so successfully is much rarer than the strength. It is something that can be learned, but which is so extremely difficult that it is indeed practically impossible to most mages, and thus the ability to teleport is the mark of an incredibly skilled mage more than it is of an extremely powerful one.
And as Shien surmised, Shadow Image is indeed an even rarer spell to master than the various different spells of teleportation because it is even more difficult, as you not only move yourself somewhere else, but actually exist in multiple locations at the same time.