Fool's Adventures: A Demon's Souls/Buffy the Vampire Slayer Quest

Looking at your captive you decide the insurance it provides is worth the loss of stealth. Grabbing it more tightly you walk down the alleyway you are in toward the backdoor of the Bronze. Examining the door quickly you raise a hand and release a tiny arrow to blast a smoking hole in the door lock. Pulling it open you drag your captive in with you. "...it's almost like blood." thud. "Next." Words in a deep and growling masculine voice overlay yours as you invoke the ritual.

"Ululate sub luce lunae.
Da mihi fortitudinem Mater Lunae.
Hanc igitur oblationem.
Benedicat mihi."

The Moon pulses, touching your Demon Soul like the mother you called it. The knife on your hip twists and you can feel a ripple in the magic around you as the ritual begins. The nearby humans are already turning toward you as they register your entrance. You ignore them as you throw your captive before you and pull the suddenly visible and glowing knife. You don't want to drop your seeming with this many enemies around.

Leaping atop your captive as it struggles to move, the knife plunges into its chest. Giving the blade a vicious twist the vampire dies with a muffled scream and moonlight fire burning out its sockets before it turns into dust. The inrush of power nearly topples you. As you listen to the humans scream all around you however, you sense the strong Soul nearby. At the back entrance behind you, you also feel Willow and two others. The steady Soul from before and a Soul that smells of books and knowledge and old magic. You must have been distracted by the conflicting energies in the air from the rituals and all of the Souls around you to not sense them.

Growling in the back of your throat like metal smashing metal you flee into the crowd which is increasingly filled with panicking humans who at turns flinch away from you or stumble into you. You can hear the roars of vampires in the crowd all around you and the voice from before roaring out in anger, "Find the intruder and bring them to me!"

This is bad… you think to yourself as you feel the strong Soul drop onto the walkway above you. You hear a voice urging people to get out and see the Willow girl guiding people outside beside an older scholarly man. A young boy, the steady Soul, is further in and directing people out.

You can also sense it more clearly now, there are seven vampires in this building. The stronger disturbance is on the stage and you see a giant of a male standing in a spotlight, dropping the corpse of a woman. There is one vampire near him.

And then there are two more coming right for you! They are both bulky males and quite a bit more powerful than your captive was. Knife in one hand you use your newly gained power and blast the left creature in the gut with the other, detonating a massive chunk of his torso and slamming him into the ground with a grunt. The other is still rushing for you and you have to backpedal rapidly, but gracefully, away from it.

You ignore the preaching of the big male vampire as the weaker disturbance, a blonde female, passes a brunette girl up to him. You are focused totally on the environment around you and your opponent. It comes rushing for you and you strike out with your knife, cutting it on the arm, causing it immense pain if the scream it gives and the sizzle is anything to go by.

In that brief pause you locate every threat around you. The female, Darla most likely, you can sense moving around toward the back and the strong Soul's companions. The big leader is on the stage laughing as he holds the brunette. The one you downed is trying to rise, and your opponent is recovering and preparing to charge. One is above you on the walkway fighting the strong Soul, the Warrior. The other two are spread out in the crowd.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaghhhh!" Thump. The upper vampire is thrown off the walkway and sprawls near the stage. Your opponent takes that moment to charge you. You react by ducking and blasting his leading leg out from under him. Unfortunately he has enough momentum to topple you by falling onto you. Your seeming holds, barely, reinforced by the strength you have gained.

"I'm coming Witchy Girl!" The girlish voice of the Warrior is urgent, though still light as you hear her run on the walkway. You hold off the vampire on top of you as it gets a grip around your knife hand and begins to slam it into the floor. Getting your other hand pointed at its arm you turn the limb into ash with two rapid Soul Arrows, stunning the vampire, and then with a heave of your legs flip it over and stab down with the knife.

The Warrior leaps down acrobatically from the walkway onto a nearby table, grabbing a long wooden stick as your opponent becomes dust and moonlight fire. "Oh. Nevermind then... watch out!" Already moving before she speaks, you dodge mostly out of the way as another vampire comes out of the shadows behind you, but it still slams you down, causing your grip to fail and the knife to go skittering into the darkness past the table.

"You!" You can see the leader male glaring at the Warrior from beneath the scar on his forehead which you carefully take note of as you try to keep your opponent's snapping mouth away from you. "Kinda busy right now Scarface!" The Warrior yells in response. The leader vampire growls, "Damnable women! Get them both!" The vampires nearby start to head towards you both, the walkway vampire trying and failing to rise.

You feel a tearing in your right arm as you struggle to flip over and shoot the thing on top of you. It appears to have bitten you and torn a chunk out of you as it repeatedly slams your head into the ground. "No munchies for you!" Rather suddenly the weight on top of you is removed with extreme violence as the Warrior girl grabs it by both feet and tosses it into a table which then collapses on top of it.

Rising quickly you end up facing her. She is blonde and rather comely among humans you'd think, body strong with sleek muscle, a silver cross glinting at her chest. "Oh god you're hurt!" She exclaims as concern flashes across her face at the bloody chunk missing from your shoulder.

Seeing the vampire she tossed into the table managing to rise and rushing up behind her you grab the girl lightning quick by her jacket and pull her out of the way. You blast the vampire in the head and reduce the creature to dust essentially instantly. A plan is forming in your head, to turn potential threats against each other.

"Pay attention!" You say conversationally to the girl as you let her go, channeling the commanding tone of the Queen. "Thanks Witchy Girl!" She blithely ignores you as she turns to face the large male on the stage. He tosses the screaming brunette to the side and leaps down with a thud. "I will enjoy ripping your soul from you!"

"Oh no not today Scarface!" The Warrior girl charges the leader. You let out another Soul Arrow, blasting the big guy in the leg, breaking his balance as she charges. With a yell of, "Thanks, I got this now!" the girl then goes into a cartwheel flip and a kick which sends the thing flying into the stage. Plan set into motion you turn to find the vampire you downed, and scan for your knife.

Striding over you dodge the clumsy grab of the creature and finish the job you started on its torso with another Soul Arrow. Turning into a puff of dust it is utterly removed from existence. You can't find your knife however, your magical senses somewhat muddled by the thinned crowd of Souls and magic in the air and the relatively low intensity of the spell on the knife.

"Get off her Jesse!" Looking around through the thinned crowd at that cry you see the boy who was guiding the people out standing over another vampire pinning that brunette, wielding a stake. "Ah! Xander buddy, glad you could make it!" The vampire Jesse, responds happily as your focus shifts away from them.

Ignoring their verbal byplay you recede into the shadows, drawing them around you with raw magic, expanding your seeming. Most of your power is currently focused on your injuries however, even though they do not exactly pain you. Scanning around for threats you spot Darla sneaking up on the Warrior's companions. "Xander" is currently struggling with Jesse as people run past them. The walkway vampire is inching for the door out the back along the floor.

And the Warrior is fighting the leader vampire. You watch them as you move toward the back door along the edges of the room. Her form is too spinny, you judge silently, comparing her to past Slayers of Demons you encountered. Powerful. But needs training.

However, the fight goes rather poorly for the leader vampire as you watch. The Warrior is on equal footing with him in strength if she has leverage and uses that to manhandle him whenever she gets the chance.

Carefully moving you aim to sneak up on the walkway vampire as it crawls along, watching as Darla leaps at the scholarly man and takes him to the ground. The Willow girl however is quite quick with her hands and tosses the contents of some bottle onto the creature. The reaction is rather violent as Darla's face smokes and sizzles while she lets out an unearthly scream.

She is fleeing almost immediately, and you note as she screams into the night that you can sense another strange Soul lingering out in the alley. It feels dark and hungry. Strange. A vampire's death scream briefly diverts your attention and you see Jesse turning into dust as "Xander" pants heavily against a pillar.

Coming up behind the walkway vampire, which appears to have broken legs, you stomp on its back. Turning its head you see its already white face pale further when it meets your gaze.

"Aw shit." You thrust your hand forward and obliterate its head with another Soul Arrow, dusting it neatly. Coming up to the Warrior's companions, whose attention was grabbed by the dying scream of the vampire you just killed Willow calls to you as you rush past, agitated. "What about Buffy and the big guy!?"

Hurrying past them, you glance back at a crash from that direction as you near the door. You see the big vampire turning to roar and flinch while blocking the light from one of those strange lights coming in through a broken window. You turn to look at Willow and say calmly, "She's got it handled."

Spinning, you rush out through the door, ignoring the cries to wait which are punctuated by another death scream and the disappearance of the strong disturbance. As you run past its hiding spot in the shade of the building near a stack of barrels you meet the eyes of the owner of the dark and hungry Soul.

He must be a darkly gorgeous man amongst humans, you think. Seeing deeper you can sense the taint of vampires around him. Is he one of them? You wonder to yourself as you run past and duck down into a side alley. There was a complete lack of hostility from him. You think to yourself as you duck down into a convenient sewer hole and pull the cover in after you.

Dropping to the ground you finally relax your grip on your magic and let the seeming drop. Keeping your mantle close you begin the long walk home, keeping a mystical eye on Darla and the Warrior as they move about above you in different directions. You do not see where they each end up going before you are out of range but you can tell the battle is completely over for this night.

Taking note of your body you determine that your right upper arm is essentially useless right now and your skull is likely fractured in two places, though your skin was tough enough not to break or tear. Your ribs are also damaged along with some of your internals.

It will take you most of this night and the coming day in order to recover from your injuries, though meditation will help with that. These vampires are quite strong creatures, more so than you, you would judge. If you had your revival ritual these injuries would not be an issue, but that is for the distant future.

Finally reaching home, you take up an uninjured looking seeming and enter, securing the gate and front door behind you. Traveling up to your work room you activate the sanctum wards and settle into the central circle. Sitting cross legged you look at the place where your knife used to sit.

Losing that is a minor issue, though it is not an actual threat to you since the enchantment will break before it can be used again. It was already beginning to fade when you lost it. Turning away from the empty shelf you consider your next move after you recover.

You could go out to seek more knowledge of your most prevalent enemies, the vampires, from the school. The Warrior and her companions were a threat, though your tactical deception in the Bronze likely has them warily friendly toward you so it will be easier to sneak in and less risky if you are caught. You might also be able to locate the source of that repelling magic you sensed in the school.

You could also go out and examine the Magic Box for any mystical or more mundane defenses, preparation for taking the most powerful items from the building. As you currently are you should be able to overpower anything you find there, but the multitude of unknown items could complicate matters.

Finally, you could go out and hunt down a Soul to test your theory for consuming the magic of this town. With your greater strength and thus sensitivity to the magic, flows and finer details of the ambient magic are being revealed to you. What you are sensing indicates to you that this experiment is becoming more important. You need more information about the ambient magic.


What do you do after you have recovered?

[] Go to the "school" and seek a repository of knowledge on vampires within its walls. The Warrior and her companions are now less of a threat after the events of The Harvest.
[] Go to the Magic Box and examine it for defenses as well as try to note any especially powerful items.
[] Go out and hunt a Soul once night falls and it is easier, to test your theories about consuming the magic which taints this entire town.

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Wasted! Wasted! Headshot! Execution! Brutality!

And that pretty much wraps up Episode 2, which ended up being a lot shorter than I expected. *shrug* Ah well it turned out pretty good in my opinion!

The final death toll is:

-Bouncer dude
-That girl who looked like Buffy Luke ate
-Thomas
-Vamp Attacker #1
-Vamp Attacker #2
-Stage Vamp
-Jesse
-Walkway vamp
-Luke

You guys did some damage working with Buffy. It happened to work out that you got 5 out of 8 vampires which appeared in this update, even though you are still noodly magic wise. Circumstances and luck yo. You did pay for it though with your injuries which would have laid out a normal human.

For those who wish to know the spell incantation is:

"Howl under moonlight.
Give me strength Mother Moon.
Accept this offering.
Bless me."

Next update will lead us into Episode 3 "Strange Magic Girl".

Oh! Also you guys got a new thing on your character sheet. Enjoy.