Knight Sylvestre
Location: the NeighborhoodAt first, the streets of the Neighborhood did not seem to Cyril like a maze. They were wide-open, the edges formed by unassuming homes, and while fences did span the spaces between the houses they looked neither impenetrable nor imposing. Keeping this in mind, he proceeded through the unfamiliar place at a steady clip, and his armor gave a burst of muted
clinks with each step. After a short time, he found himself synchronizing the clatter of his glaive's shaft against the ground, as he used it like a walking stick, with the noise of his armor. He kept aware of his surroundings, however, and did not allow the little game to distract him. In this borough, empty as it was enviable, anything could leap out at him from any direction. For this reason, he walked down the center of the lane, and in doing so avoided the strange metal carriages that dotted its rims with some frequency.
Cyril recognized the suburb as a labyrinth before long, though. A combination of darkness and lack of experience rendered every house close to identical in his eyes, and after a few minutes he could hardly tell one from another. Try as he might to keep abreast of his turns and the overall path he'd taken, the vanguard could not help but feel as though he was wandering in circles. The temptation to break into one of the homes took root within him, but he kept it at bay with the principle that no matter where the people were, stealing was stealing. Still, the look of the sky made him uneasy -as though the heavens would rip apart and send down a torrential flood any moment- and he wondered if the premise of the tournament meant everything inside this city was up for grabs.
A sudden light and noise pierced the night, and Cyril span in an instant to face it. About two horizontal streets away, a plume of flame rose above the horizon of fences, followed by a cloud of smoke. Aftershock pushed into and through him, not too strong but significant for its vicinity. In seconds Cyril's mind was alight with possibilities.
Magic. Dynamite. Demons. Fireworks. There were too many questions and not enough answers, but the vanguard couldn't very well ignore what was pretty much his first lead. Like it or not, his opponent was standing less than seven hundred feet away right now. The path to a better world began here.
Not wanting to lose the scent, is it were, the knight elected to take a direct route. After setting off at a brisk trot, he got within 10 feet of the nearest fence before throwing himself forward. His armor dutifully exuded its sheen, and the burst of momentum carried him straight through the wooden barricade in a shower of wood. Cyril skidded to his feet, unscathed, and gazed at the shattered planks with the baleful eyes of a tyrant. “This is a necessary sacrifice,” he told the boards, his voice a touch too low and sinister to be serious. In a matter of moments, the fence opposite suffered the same fate—an example for all fence-kind that this knight wasn't one to hesitate when it came to doing what needed to be done.
On the opposite side lay a pool surrounded by warm-colored stone pavement, but Cyril saved his focus. With ardent determination he plowed on, through one pair of houses' yards and then another, until he stood before the blackened crater where the explosion went off one minute ago. Smoke, embers, and a hole—there was nothing special. As he scanned the vicinity, however, he spotted something that didn't belong.
He approached it, glancing around as he did. The odd object lay in the exact middle of a cul-de-sac, though Cyril didn't know that name, and for the first time he felt penned-in.
Whoever set off that explosion, he reasoned,
must have encountered something, gotten mad, or otherwise provoked. I haven't seen any monsters, but nobody in their right mind would waste such a potentially powerful weapon. The hairs on the back of Cyril's neck rose, and he paused to look around again. “A trap,” he sighed, looking at the strange, cobbled-together contraption fifteen feet in front of him. It has to be. If there were monsters, the explosion would have drawn them for sure, but instead, all it drew was him.
A click from the thing reached his ears, and the primeval question assailed him: fight or flight? He chose the latter, and turned before executing a roll away from the object. The next second, the device burst, releasing a spray of gluey string in every direction. It splattered across the pavement and hardened in less than five seconds. Cyril got to his feet, but before he could even try to grasp his surroundings, they presented themselves to him. With a series of bangs, the doors of the four nearby houses flew open, and out marched a series of small, colorful golems. Though haphazard in their design, and seemingly crafted from household appliances, all moved with purposeful speed straight for the warrior in their midst. A grim smile came to the vanguard's face, and he clutched his weapon with both hands.
“Oho, what have we here? Another box of toys for me to throw open and play with?”
Cyril glanced up at a nearby streetlight. At the top, sitting on a makeshift chair, was a gangly figure in full-body, tight-fitting white armor. The stranger pushed a lever, and with a protesting groan the chair slid down the streetlight like someone descending a spiral staircase, and at he end the recliner spat out its occupant onto the earth. One of the constructs walked right by him, and with his free hand he gave it a pat on the head; with the other, he was tinkering with some unidentifiable trinket, his long, slender fingers constantly in motion.
The maker, mused Cyril, and the stranger tilted his head. “Ah, my mistake! What an interesting sight. Behold, ye knight of old! Thou hast trespassed into the territory of...heheh, well, me! Of course! Aren't my new inventions cool?” The constructs had coalesced into a mob, almost completely surrounding Cyril. He did not seem fazed. “Genius. Absolute genius! I could go on for hours Each one a unique specimen, carved from the finest appliances...oh, nevermind. You don't look the technical type. Hah!” The inventor looked down at the junk in his hand, now a sort of cube shape, and he worked at it with both hands. After a second he pulled something from his belt and inserted it into the device, then chuckled to himself. By now, his minions were dangerously close.
“Well, isn't this a super-cool scenario?” Hovering by the streetlight was that drone again. It projected the image of Oren Erumel, smiling as usual, and the young man declared, “Have fun, you two! And remember, winner get's a li'l something-something for his 'invent'-ory! Start!”
Immediately, Jokaero hurled his device at Cyril. The knight twisted his shoulders to place his shield in front, happy to bat the projectile away, but to his surprise the little machine hit his shield and projected little legs with which it latched on. It then began to emit a loud and annoying beep, but Cyril discovered that the irksome noise wasn't its only effect; the robots, numerous but plodding, abandoned their less-than-threatening walking speed to bolt straight at him.
In the murky, bewildering depths of the undulating, sea-locked dystopia, where noisome vapors wafted from the pale, flabby flesh and protuberant growths of hideous unnamables, the Cthulhean descendant bartered bitter words with the blood-soaked death seeker. Saria, knowing of twisted things from beyond the stars, equated her opponent to an emissary of the cosmos robbed of her enigma and set against her in a manner oddly mortal. When Rose dazed down the bridge of her nose at the intruder, she found only a flea, too inconsequential to even comprehend her worthlessness, but like all bothersome parasites she needed to be crushed sooner or later. Fitfully, as if waking from a dream, the phylacteries belonging to each despicable creature flared to life. “A beautiful face can hide so much darkness. Who can fathom the workings of a woman's mind? I dare not...my drone is still working its way into this place, but time and tide wait for no man. Ladies, I bid you both a good hunt. Begin whenever.” Then the voice and the artificial light from within the hearts vanished. In its place, there existed only the putrescence of the abyss's denizens, the vexing eccentricities of the deep refuge, the weight of the howling dark, and the inexorable call to arms.
Blackjack
Location: the Neighborhood'@DeadnautComing out into the cold, moist night air after a brief but furious few minutes of heart-pounding action felt like running face-first into a heavy slap. Behind Teller, the lights of Slow Dancers' dimmed before blinking out altogether, and a look backward would turn up only a dark, empty, and desolate storefront. In pursuit of his desire, the soldier had consigned one more ghost to this dead city—destined to fade away, but not to be forgotten. His phylactery, as though shrugging off the lackadaisical embrace of the bar prior to its destruction, gave a low tone followed by two beeps, each accompanied by a gentle beat of the heart itself.
Mip.
Mip.On its front, beneath the glassed-over compartment, two little lights blinked on one after another: one grass green, and the other cobalt blue. Then they blinked off, and Teller was left only with the silence. A couple seconds later, after the somber atmosphere had a chance to sink in, the quiet broke once again with the arrival of Oren's drone. In its arm it clutched an open box, and without putting up a display the machine pronounced, “Both of you were noble, in your own ways. A lot rested on each of your shoulders, and there could be no compromise. His dying words...to supplant your wish with his. An impossibility, yet you could always modify your wish. You need not take up his burden, merely his soul, but...would it not be poetic, to know that a noble spirit achieved his goal in the end?”
The box contained a technological mask, not too far removed in terms of advancement from Teller's own gear, though a little more colorful. The amaranth eye of the announcer's drone betrayed no recognition, but it said, “Ooh, something fun. You'd have to sacrifice the protection and other functions of your helmet to use it, but wouldn't it be worth it?” A moment passed, one that contained intense thinking, but whether due to lack of ability or lack of propriety, no pun came. “Well, so long. There's about an hour before the big storm hits. Your next foe's a long way off, so you'd be better off thinking about food and shelter. Adieu!” Without skipping a beat, the drone rose up and zipped away.
You got:50.
VisorYou can run, but you can't hideWhen worn, and after witnessing enough damage dealt in the course of a fight, can be activated by a button to makes every projectile from the user perfectly home in on a target for a short period
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