Terminal

The Final Hazard

Kael hastily examines the machine in front of him, looking for controls or other devices that might suggest a reset command.

@Cruallassar

Set into the face of the sixth stone slab from the bottom of the cairn was a computer screen gilded in brass, with a pewter case seated within the monolith's body. A fine mechanical keyboard with extremely robust but ornate pewter keys with pearl-coated surfaces and emerald typeface extended from below it. The computer's readout currently was not displaying anything helpful - nearly all of the text, if it could even be called that, was completely illegible, save for a single repeating line that reappeared at the bottom of the screen every few moments only to rapidly scroll upwards and vanish at the top.

>Current Allineation Target Lost.

As he moved he took one of the field triage kits from the backpack and hurled it at the pavise knight. It probably was one of the worst distractions he could come up with, but maybe it would help.

@WiseDragonGirl

Anybody and anything within twenty meters was essentially fucked.

@Doc Doctor

The field triage kit was sent flying as a shard of Donny slashed across its surface, sending it flying through the bleak emptiness. The knight raised their pavise, several metal-coated fragments smacking into it and losing most of their momentum, drifting eerily in place. After several moments he lowered the pavise, and without even looking at the surface - now covered in rapidly spreading metal, releasing a keening, screeching sound akin to metal being compacted and sheared - pressed some control on its inner surface, causing the clasps to release from his arms and send it drifting as well. He then set his sights to look for Andreas in order to determine if the doctor had survived Donny's final act of violence.

"Does it look like there is any method of escape here anymore?" He said again, though as before the comment did not seem directed at either Kael or Andreas. "It is hopeless."

TTL: The Final Hazard OOC

@Terminal
Might I inquire as to the fate of the crossbow bolt that was redirected back at the Pavise Knight?

@Cruallassar

Check the post.

The Final Hazard

He willed a slug to form very closely around the Pavise Knight...the same as the slug that they had had such a dangerous ride in, which had claimed the lives of three people.

@Cruallassar

The dark air wavered very briefly as something began to form - just for long enough to send the deflected bolt spiraling away into the void at great force - but then settled as whatever effect had been about to manifest faltered and vanished.

"Why are you even fighting back?" The pavise knight called out to the endless pitch void as he calmly and methodically reloaded his crossbow with another cylinder-tipped arrow, having fully set his left arm into the straps of his pavise. "This world is far too broken for anything worthwhile to be learned now, especially after killing your main source of information. You should just let them die. I do not promise their deaths will be painless - but they will be quick."

Kael seemed to be in control and Andy decided he would go over to him and see if he could help him with the device, but not before he knew what Donny's fate was.

@WiseDragonGirl

@Doc Doctor
In that single moment of eternity as the bolts materialized from thin air, Donny was very briefly entertained by a curious, foreign thought.

'You seem out of sorts. A little stuck, unsure and therefore unwilling to proceed. I can sympathize - but this world cannot get anymore broken.

I will ask you one question - what do you want? I am not talking to you, Donny-boy. I am talking to you.

Deliver an interesting answer and there may be a way out for you - although, naturally, your own situation is still yours to escape from. I refuse to clean up your mess.'

TTL: The Final Hazard OOC

@Terminal

I'm going to wait and see how you interpret the goings on before posting. Whatever you say happens, happens!

@Doc Doctor

The bolts were successfully moved, but it is not yet any of my business as to whether or not they make contact with Donny. That would seem to be an issue to be decided by you alone. Do let me know if any kind of contact with the business-ends of the bolts should occur though, and I will take it from there.

Roster updated.

The Final Hazard

With one final leap from a mount granted to him by the Goddesses themselves, Fortune De Vigny's final words as his divine lance made contact with daemonic flesh and both he and the foul creature itself were consumed by an explosion of pure, heavenly light were "FOR BRETONNIA!"

He would never be seen again.

@Bright_Ops

Neither would Leona.

Perhaps her form had simply not been as intimidating as it seemed. Perhaps whatever power it had afforded her had not yet been fully developed. Perhaps she had been specially vulnerable to whatever magic Fortune had sacrificed his life to employ.

Whatever the case had been however, naught remained once Fortune departed in his final blaze of glory - not so much as a scrap of golden hair from her hide.

Kael's next action would be to use his Ethereal Sight...it would work, because he willed it.

@Cruallassar

His first action to will the three bolts now surrounding Donny into place took but an instant, a simplicity too mundane to require more than an errant thought to arrange in this suggestion of a world. When he turned to his own ethereal sight however...

He saw nothing.

There was no magic, anywhere. Unlike before, it was not as if magic had once been but had died. Now it was simply that magic had never existed; as if what had been before had been a mere illusion. The only trace of it he could find was spilled like ink in water from his own eyes.

Of course, his sight did reveal something that had been hidden before - it did not seem magical, quite - as still could not even properly see it, per-se. Yet, Kael could somehow tell that now, there were connections of a kind, all surrounding the machine left in the darkness. Perhaps due to his willing his own sight to work, perhaps passively enhancing his own power without realization.

One of the conduits tied directly to the pavise knight, a winding, screw-like cord that twisted silently like a knife in the empty space. Its motion was excruciatingly slow - but certain, like the sun rising and setting.

The other conduit tied - somewhere else. It seemed to spiral inward, inside the machine itself, burrowing into the depths of the construct's own internal space without end until it reached - something, somewhere else. It was hard to discern more. Peering into that link was akin to feeling one had when standing upon the edge of a chasm.

"Shit." The pavise knight uttered from behind Kael. "Well, guess we have more time to reset the machine-"

Kael received no warning whatsoever. As he had been speaking, the pavise knight had slipped loose his crossbow, leveled it calmly to aim it at the small of the archer's back, and fired another one of the small, cylinder-tipped bolts at him mid-sentence without even breaking his tone or sentence.

-now." He said with a complete deadpan, the sound nearly obscured by the metallic twang of his weapon firing.

The Final Hazard

"Oh?" Andy said to Leona, silently hoping the others would hurry up with that device, "then why are you so worked up about it? You could have just laughed it off and call me adorably ignorant and keep your form." He gestured to whatever he had to call this new appearance of her. "You looked better just a moment ago, although I have to say you have beautiful eyes."

@WiseDragonGirl

@WiseDragonGirl
"The only place flattery and childishness will get you..." The woman purred as her form continued to bloat and contort, "...is the depths of my belly." though now its blossoming, roiling coils of flesh had begun to settle into a more definite form. The only feature that remained as it had been was her head, which retained its shape and features, though had now been enlarged several times. Her body was now hexapodal, with six appendages as thick around as tree-trunks sprouting from her long body, each ending in a claw-tipped feline paw. A long sinuous tail had begun to slither and extend from the small of her back, and two large struts of what looked like bone had begun to sprout from her back, just underneath her first set of shoulders. All across the twisted mass of flesh, a fine layer of golden fur began to grow in.

Therefore, the next task he wills to occur, is for the machine before him to reset.

@Cruallassar

@Cruallassar
The Allineator rejected him.

The only warning he had was a faint pulse of light from the cairn before it unleashed a shockwave that passed right through the pavise knight without effect, but upon striking Kael knocked him back and flipped him end-over-end in the vacuum.

"Woah! Come back! I didn't-" The Pavise Knight struggled with his words as he turned his outstretched arm to Kael as the shockwave passed through him. "Godsdamnit I have no idea what is going on anymore..." He grumbled as he began to drift through the darkness. "Are you alright kid? Hang on, I'll sort you out..."

TTL: The Final Hazard OOC

Oh...
Oh Terminal, you glorious hellspawn.

I am onto you.

@Cruallassar

About time. I've only been hinting at it for around nine pages now.

TTL: The Final Hazard OOC

@Terminal

Damn, you beat me to the post by just a few minutes.

Edit: May I edit my post due to the fact that it was written before I had a chance to read the GM post that ninja'ed me?

@Bright_Ops

Permission granted.

TTL: The Final Hazard OOC

Roster and lives have been updated.

The Final Hazard

"Leona," he called to her, continuing to drift around a bit, "you know I wasn't kidding about that voodoo-curse, right? I can see obvious signs it's already working, bad luck is surrounding you like a dark cloud. But, I can be coerced in sharing what I know about countering it over a cup of coffee. It would be a shame if pretty woman like you would die and you have no idea how much I long for a cup of coffee, I'm close to selling my soul for one decent cup."

@WiseDragonGirl

@WiseDragonGirl
What Andreas saw was nothing he would have cared to have coffee with.

The woman's mass was rapidly expanding in every direction, her flesh seething and roiling like a bubbling sea of bile. Her clothes were in the process of shredding themselves as her mass broke through their seams. Her features were still vaguely the same though, even as they became bloated and twisted, and Andreas could still detect the hint of a smile about the contorted ridge that must have been her lips as she fixed her bulging, malignant golden eyes on him.

"Little mote, The sound she uttered possibly came from her mouth, but sounded less like a human voice insomuch as a chance acoustic phenomenon created by the expansion and incidental sound of her bloating form as razor talons began to sprout from her extremities and what looked like golden fur began to grow across her collar. "I am far beyond whatever feeble cantrips your pissant tribesman could have concocted."

The moment he saw Fortune bring his sword up, Donny fired off a second shot to blast out the knight's elbow joint, effectively interrupting his attack.

@Doc Doctor

Before he came back into view, the group would have just barely enough time to react to a grenade being tossed right back at them, a dark blur hurtling through the midst of the smoke. No, not quite. The grenade was /arching/ out of the smoke, flying around in a wide circle towards the party's right. If they remained where they were, it seemed that the grenade would somehow pass around and behind them...

@Doc Doctor

@Doc Doctor
Which was when the frankly queer suggestions that were space and time acted up again. Possibly. It was incredibly hard to tell what was going on with all the smoke from the incendiary grenade blooming in the empty, featureless battlefield. What Donny felt and what he saw though were both mutually exclusive, as well as impossible.

The first thing being the long gash that had slid open across the left side of his clothes and through a good few centimeters of his abdomen, resulting in a small splatter of blood flying free through the darkness. It was not a bad wound, all things considered. Very precise and clean. He was unlikely to bleed out from it anytime soon - which was to say, in the next thirty minutes or so. What was bad was that it had come completely out of nowhere and had apparently been caused by nothing.

The second thing being Fortune's blade flying, pinwheeling end over end - probably from the knight's interrupted, botched throw of the weapon - through the space just behind the trajectory arc of the grenade Donny had thrown, where it made contact with and sliced cleanly through the razor wire Donny had secured to the projectile. Due to its thinness and coloration, it had been effectively invisible in the void to the other passengers. There was no way any kind of throw the knight had made should have even come close to the wire unless he had specifically known about it, and even then, Donny's shot to his elbow should have precluded that.

In a single, smooth motion he slid five of the strange metal-coating crossbow bolts from his belt and cast them toward Donny and his new friend in a blanket pattern while Kael was nice and obscured by the smoke, then looked down at the machine and willed himself there. From here, to in front of the device, to hell with transit time, this was the test of his theory on this space.

@Cruallassar

@Doc Doctor
Three of the blindly scattered crossbow bolts were dead misses, having been cast by hand through a large cloud of smoke in a void without gravity. By chance though, one was headed on a direct collision course with Donny's right leg - it was not coming straight at him, its head facing several degrees away from the actual heading of its trajectory, but there was no telling whether the cylindrical head needed to hit him directly or lightly graze him in order to go off.

Also by chance, one punched directly into the woman's expanding, fleshy form - and then sank in as the rising walls of flesh washed over and consumed it whole. There was a wet sort of popping noise from her, followed by a long hiss, as though somebody had left a kettle with water out on a stove, but her body continued to grow and her expression was unperturbed.

@Cruallassar
It worked.

The transistion through space and and time came with a number of other revelations. Perhaps manipulations of this sort had been possible even when the illusory world itself had still been whole - though surely more difficult, as the nuances of time, space, relativity, matter, and energy would have complicated the effect.

The revelation also struck him, out of the blue, that perhaps he could have saved Ariett if she were still merely bleeding out with his newfound power. If he could move from place to place at will, who was to say he could not mend her flesh and vigor with but a thought?

However, that possibility was no longer available. The first thing he saw upon looking at the computer screen mounted on the cairn's body was a rapidly rolling wall of text, not all of it in legible type, but two of the newest lines were written in perfectly coherent words and had been emphatically highlighted by whatever force governed the flow of information.

>Entity V [4165277] Ariett Deveca has died.
>Entity V [4165277] Ariett Deveca cause of death: Cerebral Hypoxia following excessive blood loss.
>Entity [Ghost with no home] penalized.

Another line of text appeared on the screen directly below that morbid announcement, shifting the remaining text upwards. Given the mass of incomprehensible text sliding across the screen, he otherwise might not have noticed it - if his name had not been listed in the same line.

>Entity Proxy [Iris] vitiating Entity VII [4167067] Kael Arvindr.

_{"You could have saved her, you worthless thief."}

"How did you do that?" The pavise knight said as he finally arrived by Kael's shoulder, drifting through the void hastily. The whole of his face remained obscured by the radiant, golden haze emanating from his eyes like a noxious gas. "Is that just a thing you can do? You should have just appeared behind that fucking Proxy Donovan and ended him on the spot! Uh." He paused as he reached out with a tentative hand for Kael's shoulder. "...Can you do that again? Maybe you should do that now..."