The others had gone on ahead now, leaving Rossweine and Signar alone in the hallway, striding at a more leisurely pace. There was no particular reason to dwell on what words to use, and the Prince had no vested interest in keeping Signar from his breakfast either.
"Do you intend to continue your work as a smith? If so, I will arrange access to a forge for you."
That was all, really. Just confirmation, before any further investment was made.
Regardless of how much guidance could be conferred from some no-name that a bunch of psychopaths worshipped, human decision-making oft shat all over the oracles of the divine, and in deciding to fight rather than run, the remaining mask-wearers sealed their fate. A spear, after all, was never a weapon capable of truly puncturing through any substantial body, especially not a human one. With a final harumph, Atzi jammed her corpse-shield’s chest into the charging point, catching the spearpoint between the ribs. The woman dropped the corpse a moment later, and the deadweight rendered that weapon pointless.
Which meant, then, that it was a hunting knife versus an arrow-studded club.
The difference in range settled it in an instant. They had neither the speed nor the skill to close the distance before the blunt face of Atzi’s club shattered the fragile, delicate bones of their wrist in one swing, then ripped up the muscles and sinew of their right left on the backswing. They collapsed in conscious agony, flailing in the snow as adrenaline failed to silence the cries of their broken body. And all before the spear-wielder could wrest their weapon free.
Atzi was upon him in an instant, one hand wrapped around his neck as she bent him backwards over the corpse of his accomplice. She ripped the mask off his face with the other and then clenched it into a fist. A clear threat of violence, followed by a verbal roar.
“Where's Maira? Answer me!"
If there was no answer immediately, she’ll break his teeth, three at a time until his face swelled up twice its current size. After all, Atzi wasn’t a murderer. Except for the one she had used as a shield, every other mask-wearer was still alive. Alive, so she’d have plenty to ask questions to.
The Restrain didn’t last even two seconds, huh? And where was KoT and Gale? Dead already?
Klava had caught a glimpse of them before, in between her trading blows with the rodent, but if Sofron could so freely turn his attention onto her now, that meant she couldn’t count on them for the time being. Also meant, though, that she couldn’t put her focus onto him too. With his shotgun primed and a machine gun waiting in the wings, heading down a corridor with no cover was a fool’s errand. And there was that poison in her veins, seeping deeper and deeper, crawling into her nerves, causing her muscles to stall by just that amount.
The decision came immediately.
Twisting her hips, Klava slammed her foot against the wall and propelled herself off to the side, the shotgun spread of the SPAS-12 grazing, but not pulverizing, her. The rodent was still there, crouched down, and in that second, the Maiden’s spell was made manifest, a silver sheen coating her body before she struck the ground once more…and then shot forwards! In an instant, she was upon the rodent, and in the next, it became a real fight, one that featured a blade against two wooden sticks.
And in a position so close that they were practically hugging?
A blade would always have space to cut, but a stick would not always have space to strike, and any attempt to grasp Klava in that moment would be confounded by the shimmer of magic that coated her entirety.
It was like that burning hallway again, choking and tearing up. But this time, she had another opponent waiting and no time to waste on a surrender.
Klava would kill that rodent. Twice, if she had to.
I’ve done it before and I’m still, in some ways, doing it now.
Either it never pops up in the IC before the RP dies, or people’s predilections for internal monologue ruin the surprise before it’s ICly revealed. It’s a great thing to play with either way though, as the backstory is otherwise a fairly pointless thing to have in a CS, perhaps only useful for ensuring that people read your five pages of lore and setting.
And in the once-in-a-blue-moon scenario where you get a character interaction focused RP that is active and long running, the secret backstories really get to play out in fun ways.
So if you think about it, you honestly have nothing to lose as a GM if you just cut the Backstory portion out of your CS templates completely and then tell the players to toss only the spicy history deets at you.
So when you say there’s a lot of Dragons, you mean that they’re generally a pretty populous monster race in this world? How well do the countries handle draconic threats then? Would one dragon be enough to fuck up cities? Or are they relatively common threats, with effective plans in place to manage and handle them?
With this being a DND-based thing, does that mean we have a host of interplanar and interdimensional gibbly goobers too? Or is it DND but without the much zanier elements of the game? Thinking stuff like Gith or Mindflayers or those funny little clock dudes.
With all fortune, the Baker boy would have caught that. Maybe he should have made his preferences clearer during the first dinner. Maybe they were all too busy eating to have heard back then. Maybe he would write it down.
Maybe he’d just stop bothering with corrections, if it fundamentally remained the same.
Such were small worries though, compared to the trial up ahead. The first day of training was inbound, and so too would the first day of his assignment. Observation of improvement for Kai and Nathaniel. Appeasement for the Light-Blessed. And for the others? Well, he’ll still have to cut perfect enough of a figure that when he stopped showing up, they’d assume it was out of overcompetence, rather than out of slothfulness. So he nodded his greetings towards those who came after him, and he watched Julian chase after Kai, Dot shadowing them. Took another few moments to revise, to feel the meager heat seep into his bones, and let out a breath.
“Signar,” Rossweine spoke, “Walk with me.”
And with that, the captain made for the mess hall at a leisurely pace. This early in the morning, the only lineup would be that of Squad 13 and perhaps a few other early birds, after all. It was only to be expected, considering the crop that the House had harvested.
A monstrosity composed of thousands upon thousands of individual parts, possessed, perhaps, with extraordinary senses that allowed it to detected his location even when cloaked. Well, slugs didn't necessarily have eyes, after all, so that worked out, in the worst way possible. Xuan-Yu's face twisted into an almost-exaggerated frown. This was perhaps the worst sort of opponent for both himself and Dulac. Which meant...
"We're going down, kiddo."
...mucking and sleuthing about was pointless.
As tentacles shot out towards them, Deathstalker emerged from the ether, crimson augments pulsating with consolidated power, and unleashed an axe-kick that smashed straight through the dilapidated flooring of the hallway. The mission objective, after all, was on the lower levels of the building, which meant that the first floor was 100% not anything worth investigating!
Klava absorbed the thrown chair on her bent arm, tumbling backwards to disperse the force as the wooden chair flung itself overhead. In the distance she could hear Gale and KoT at it as well, grand magics flaring up. She would have to join them soon. Unlike last time, after all, they weren’t fighting in a corridor, and didn’t have convenient tear gas dispensers to flung around. Which meant, of course, that a rodent with twinned tonfas was going to be a hell of a pain in the ass to deal with.
Gritting her teeth, Klava backed up against the onslaught of bludgeoning strikes, using her own wakizashi minimally as she duck and wove. For all the ‘supposed’ disadvantages that split-Instruments held, they were undoubtedly more useful in an actual conflict. An advantage then, would have to be found elsewhere. At the back wall, her snowball gleamed still, rolling gently away from the collapsed table. Just one second. That’s all she’ll need.
The chair.
Klava swung Moya-no-Yume, two-handed, against the offending tonfa, forcing it aside with hopes of disrupting the rodent’s stance for just a moment. An opportunity for bigger moves. In the next, she hopped over the chair that had been thrown at her, and, with her foot, kicked it back up at the woman. A visual distraction to buy a single second. Whether or not it would land, it mattered not, for at that point, the Maiden turned and ran. A feint, to encourage straightforward pursuit. And, body turned, body blocking the gleaming light of her Instrument as it drew in mana and converted it into melody, Klava cast her spell.
A frosty sheen coalesced behind both Espers, before the snowball shot out a beam of arctic cold, crossing the length of the room instantly to strike the rodent from behind.
Estylwen,
ReusableSword,
Irradiant,
FernStone,
Foster,
Xaltwind,
Th3King0fChaos,
Creative Chaos,
Guardian Angel Haruki,
Urizen
