Raineh Daze

Shadow Contract: A Demon-Slaying Action RP

Akira and Andrea

A girl...? Well, they were close to the entrance, that should make this an easy one to get out then. If it was a girl. There was, after all, a distinct lack of any nearby demon to have caused the bloodstain, or any remnants of a body here. It could just be that she was lucky and overlooked, or an errant contractor. Or maybe this was a disguise, by possession or consumption or... honestly, Akira didn't really want to think about the number of ways that somebody might be impersonated by a particularly smart demon.

She'd rather take the ones that were confident enough in their power that they didn't bother hiding. Even if they were right about that, it was less of a headache on her end, and it wasn't like the boss was generally that far away, so at least those cases were simple... well, unless something even more powerful showed up.

Then they might be screwed.

"Andrea here could show you to the barrier, then you could leave," she suggested. If they were a demon, then they'd be unable to leave. Hopefully, even if they were meatpuppeting a girl. If she could leave... well, the fact that it was Andrea doing the escorting ought to be a clue, right? That meant their team's strongest combat asset had been (temporarily) sent away on a routine job. It ought to get picked up on, if the demon tried anything after.

And if escape wasn't an option, then having Andrea in the firing line was better than anybody else.

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

Tyaethe

As the healer finished the bulk of their work, Tyaethe waved for them to carry on and... well, stood there. Fionn had called for her attention for some reason, but aside from not having a clue what relevance she was supposed to have, it seemed that had resolved before she could have contributed anyway. Besides, what relevant skill did she have? "I'm somewhat resistant to curses by dint of regenerating and having far too much mana" wasn't a transferable talent. The only other thing she could do would have just been to put the man out of his misery, and that didn't seem to be the goal anyway.

What should she do now? Nominally, she was guarding these prisoners, but that didn't really count as doing anything. They were too scared to run for the most part, and even if they did it would be pointless to chase them. There were going to be enough other knights spreading out to do that.

Search for some trace of their missing evil? It probably wasn't here. Now that the fighting was over, Cae Mayl felt... normal. There was the pall of death and black magic, but it hadn't been changed fundamentally, and would probably clean up entirely once the moon properly rose. If there was anything here, it had to be gone. Even if it was, what good would she be in finding it? "Hey, can you find something when you can barely see what's going on?" It would be the fort again.

Same for finding Haelstadt's head (and how had that happened? Odd), the scent of blood was too ubiquitous to point out one person's missing body part.

She'd just stand here and wait for the moon, then. There was nothing else for her to contribute.

The Lion's Banner: A Fire Emblem-Inspired Anime Fantasy RP

Gisela

"Oh, I couldn't stay in the cottage forever," Gisela answered, continuing to work on the rudimentary plan--absorbed enough that Krysia seemed perfectly happy to now set the offending circle on fire, holding the smouldering page without a care in the world, "If I saved long enough, I might be able to manage a few decades before needing to work for someone... but magic can get expensive."

Ritual ingredients, access to books (where they were even traded), supplies for enchanting... all of it added up. Plus the basic matter of sustenance and maintenance; focusing all your time on magical pursuits didn't really lead you to managing a secondary life as a farmer on the side. Certainly, magic could help, but was it really that interesting to research? Every time anything went wrong, that would still cost money anyway. Magic could draw the process out, but she'd need to eventually stop being a recluse.

"The rumours are definitely true. I've thought about how you could try to trap her when summoning, but I haven't thought of a working method yet."

Krysia let out a boisterous laugh, wiping her hands together now that the circle had burnt out. "If you live as long as I have, you have to develop some common sense about these things. There's only so many times even demons can make mistakes before there's consequences."

@Eisenhorn

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

Tyaethe

Picking her sword up, Tyaethe's form seemed to waver, the armour looking more and more like smoke by the second. "Here? We fought a bit, I asked them to surrender."

It was... true, but it couldn't exactly be called an informative statement. As soon as she was done making it, the cloud dissipated entirely, leaving the paladin stood there, looking off into the distance. Specifically, where the moon was rising, even if the treeline around them made it a little bit on the impossible to see side.

"It would be nice if the rest of them gave up, there's not really a point to this," the girl added, glancing down at her stomach briefly. No holes in her clothing? That was good, sometimes the trick to stop it getting damaged didn't work, "One curse monster isn't very dangerous."

The Lion's Banner: A Fire Emblem-Inspired Anime Fantasy RP

Gisela

... using her magic to deal with drunkenness or hangovers would be wasteful, but if someone were to ask, she wasn't going to say no. For one, Velvetica wasn't paying for her services on a case-by-case basis, so she was going to be available. Secondly, any excuse to cast some sort of spell was a good one in her mind. Maybe she could refine it some more? Selectively purging toxins wasn't the sort of thing she needed to do much, but it might make for an interesting challenge, if she could scale it up that might allow for a large-scale sobering spell to affect an entire group.

"I was thinking more of a small cottage..." the mage mumbled, eyes going to the demon for a minute, "Maybe quite a large one. With headroom. Oh, and I'd need somewhere to keep books."

"Permanent circles have their uses, if the mage casts the same spell often enough. They can use magically conductive materials to make it easier to cast, and get to it at a moment's notice. It's generally only useful when the effect is very draining, or the circle is very generic," the demon took over the explanation, Gisela having grabbed a spare sheet and apparently decided to start sketching out a floor plan, "A less proficient summoner might make one when they arrange something with a more powerful demon like myself. This one put something like that in her staff to cut down the time it needs.

"Which is why we're not leaving one around that would let every average mage accidentally summon Merophayal because they were frustrated." The hundi whimpered at that.

@Eisenhorn

Shadow Contract: A Demon-Slaying Action RP

Akira and Andrea

Walking through an abandoned shopping centre was a bizarre experience, although this wasn't the first time. Probably? Demons did like to go where people were plentiful, they might even have been called out to this place before, or something like it. At least a space normally meant to hold hundreds ought to give plenty of room for Andrea and the more combat-inclined members of their little group to fight... and afford Akira plenty of things to hide behind when they inevitably got anywhere near their target.

One day, she'd find a better thing to do during a fight than hope that she didn't get targeted instead.

She came to a stop at the blood, looking at it dispassionately. Maybe, once upon a time, she would have been bothered by it but... well, demons killed people. It was what they did, and part and parcel of the job was running into that. More important was trying to work out if this was likely to lead to their target.

"Probably some weaker demon? I don't think a Devil would drag the body off," she offered with a shrug. Someone else might volunteer to investigate the shop, but Akira didn't want to have Andrea go off to engage what was probably nothing more than some demonic hound again.

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

The double attack once more forced the hammer-wielding knight down, this time without the advantage of his hammer, both hands instead wrapped around the haft of the spear, barely holding it at bay. Something that seemed to give the merc some form of amusement from the throaty chuckle, eyes boring out of the helmet and towards Gerard.

"Looks like this northerner bailed you out. Kept you from joining the rest of the faceless, where you belong. Not with these," he spat, before descending into laughter once again and ceasing any resistance. Opting, perhaps, to give the opportunity to Steffen and die with spite.

@Conscripts@HereComesTheSnow

---

Tyaethe

"... Good," the paladin said, pausing to turn her gaze on the other Boars, "On your knees. Or I crush your head. Pick."

It was a statement without much inflection, but without the trickery on their side--and with the obviously diminishing numbers everywhere, their secret weapons keeling over even as their death throes threatened to take out anybody stupid enough to come near--it wasn't one that the rank and file seemed interested in testing. The majority followed the instruction.

The remainder ran. Tyaethe let them; what was the point?

Releasing her sword--as little as it probably did to slow the bleeding, it was better than nothing, and she could get it back in a minute--and looking around, she set off for the densest blob of Iron Roses. Somewhat awkwardly, given there was still the spear protruding through her torso, but nothing to seriously impede her progress. Not that the remainder of the fighting was much of an obstacle either, the lingering Boars not wanting to drag yet another problem into their existing fights.

All of which made it rather easy to actually get back to the healer that had come along with them. Well, easy when you could just avoid the combat and even the curse abominations were easy enough to track...

"Need someone healed. Quickly," she stated, adding "Not me."

The spear was just a nuisance.

Waiting for a nod, Tyaethe scooped the mage up and turned around. No point letting them follow, it would be best if she just ran through this mess herself. Then they could be done here, once everything was cleaned up...

Advent of the Dawn — A Mecha Musume/Tokusatsu-Inspired RP (Reboot)

Jennifer Whittemore

Watching for its response rather than continuing her aerial dance was a smart move, had she just blindly continued trying to avoid it... well, she would have been lasered for sure. Who knew how that would have turned out, beside painfully. But hovering, watching, gave her enough warning to note when it was actually taking aim for her and avoid the Warped's beam.

As well as when to take emergency correction to account for the impact from below sending its aim haywire. Punchy must have come through!

Which meant that it was her turn to attack again, hit this bit piece by piece while it was disoriented--no doubt, now, going to try and focus on the much more damaging threat from below, which would give Jennifer the opportunity to dive in. Not aiming fruitlessly, this time, she was going to try and pummel uh... well, it probably had a neck area, right? So just hit that again and again before she had to pull out before getting a faceful of vaporisation. Maybe that would drop it? If the impact from the rocket punch was enough. Or maybe they'd need another round.

Or something.

The Lion's Banner: A Fire Emblem-Inspired Anime Fantasy RP

Gisela

"Poison, hmm..." the mage climbed from her seat and shuffled over, placing one hand on his arm and starting to chant an invocation. The aura of chaotic magic around her stilled, replaced entirely with the rather unnerving feeling of constrained magic running through the Hundi and into him, a feeling like the smell of grass after the rain and a scent of the sound of thunder. Then she fell silent, the rush stopped, and the unearthly aura came back--slightly diminished, for now, but still there, licking away.

"That should remove any poisons," Gisela said, hand lowering, "Along with any intoxicants, medicines, other drugs, or similar."

It was rather like her to go for the maximal option of just removing everything vaguely poison-related from anywhere in the body rather than identifying and neutralising it, "If it still aches in a few days, I can heal any residual damage off. If it gets worse, come back and I can deal with curses."

Curses would be a bit trickier.

"Besides, you don't need this circle, you can draw a much more specific one whenever you need it," the demon added, having procured a match from somewhere and started playing with it. "I've watched you work before."

Gisela's ears drooped as she started explaining, "I was thinking of getting a house some day, inlaying this in the floor with quicksilver or similar so I didn't have to keep drawing new ones."

There was the sound of metal on flesh as Krysia's hand met her own face.

@Eisenhorn

The Lion's Banner: A Fire Emblem-Inspired Anime Fantasy RP

Gisela

"Magical healing? No, there should be no ache," the mage answered, ears twitching as she turned to look at Urden with a frown, "Sometimes, there might be phantom pains, but usually that comes with wounds that healed naturally first. Maybe if there was poison or some type of curse on it..."

The demon behind her had dragged over another sheet and roughly outlined the same circle, sans most of the detail. What was important was numerous sections outlined in red chalk. "These need to go, if you're going to make it a circle any halfway competent mage could power."

"But..." the hundi's eyes flicked back to the paper, despite Urden's presence, "Then the circle would need to be completed for every summon. That defeats the point of making one directed by the caster's intent."

Krysia groaned, straightening up, "Puppy... you're forgetting that most people don't know anything about demons. Or only know enough to select the worst examples. And in any scenario, they wouldn't know how to make a binding agreement safely.

"You, soldier," the red-skinned giant said, pointing at him, "Imagine a world where any mage could summon almost any demon, without knowing the first thing about controlling them."

@Eisenhorn