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

You straighten in your seat and rise. Your minion looks over and finishes her counting as you do. You look at her impassively and she answers the unspoken question readily.

"Seven hundred and thirty four dollars and twenty one cents. A reasonable amount, my Lady."

You nod and pull on your seeming as she stores the money. She watches with interest, tilting her head as you change very quickly. Dress flowing around your ankles like usual, you gesture to her to follow, which she obeys. You lead her out of the sanctum and, reaching up to the door frame, lock the sanctum wards. You turn to her.

"You will guard the lair tonight. Do not attempt to enter the sanctum." You say. She nods. You glide down the staircase, book and scroll at your hip as you leave through the front door. Sealing the gate behind you with the chains, you head to the sewer tunnel, cloaked in concealing shadows.

With the sun down you are even more wary of vampires in the under-roads. It is good that the shadows you are using dampen the scent you might leave. You move quickly through the town, the chittering of rats accompanying you again, but louder than before.

Tonight you will deal with the witches you sensed. You have already denied them of a place for easily acquiring magic items, which reduces what they could actually do to you, so they will have greater difficulty getting more threatening. Thus bound, you will now approach and undo what they have done so they cannot draw power from it or otherwise use it against you.

Then you will kill them.

As you run in the tunnels, you also sense a shifting mass of vampire scents. Their taint is all over the tunnels, creeping closer to your home, but not intelligently or seemingly by design. There are new scents you haven't smelled before. Along with the flowery scent of Darla and Angel's own scent.

Perhaps they are moving in force now? You wonder to yourself. After further thought you cannot discard it. However, you are not certain it is actually a case of active direction on their parts towards a singular objective. The scents are spread out and tainted with blood smell. Probably a mass of hunting then. You will have to be watchful for a resurgence in their numbers.

You do not sense the twin disturbances moving through the night's magic. You likely will later, but right now Darla and her compatriot are not moving. You avoid the densest portions of vampire scent, slightly delaying your path to the witches, but preventing you from encountering any of the blood suckers. The rat chitters accompany you as you pass near the Bronze and Angel's resting place.

You can sense that his lair is empty as the Bronze thumps away with raucous music into the night. As you expected, he must be hunting his own prey. You quickly leave this behind as you head toward the neighborhood of the witches.

A few minutes later you reach it. Finding a surface entrance you stealthily climb to it and peer out. You sense nothing and no one near you. The night is quiet as you emerge. You stand fully and set off through the alleys, flowing through them like oil. A handful of minutes later, you are hidden in another alley, convenient how many of those there are, watching the home of the witches.

Stretching out your senses towards it, you sense no wards or other boundary traps, as you had not before. What you do sense is a cloud of active magic towards the top of the home. Looking closer you see that the older Soul is within the cloud and the younger, and much weaker, one is in another room entirely.

You flutter silently around the gate, inset with a fearsome gargoyle face, and move up to the front door. Moving around the building you peer into the rooms on the lower floors. None of the witches are on the lower floor. Returning to the glass front door, you very carefully force the handle open.

The door pops inwards with a small crunch. You slip in around it and look around at an interestingly furnished home. Given that the old witch is preoccupied you will deal with the young one first. Perhaps she is in a younger body as well. You carefully glide up the stairs on soundless feet.

There you find an upper floor with a hall and several rooms coming off of it. Very carefully dropping your seeming, you head for the younger witch. You find her, behind a closed door. Placing a finger near the door handle, you use an extremely weak Soul Arrow to melt through the latch.

Pushing the door in, you find an older woman sleeping, bearing a young Soul. How odd. It would appear that the older witch switched bodies, likely with a descendant. You can see the corsucating tendrils of magical force, like a briarpatch, keeping the Souls out of their proper bodies.

Hmmmmm… I cannot undo this without being near the Soul of the original caster. This is unexpected, and not satisfactory. You can't get a proper "grip" on it and eating the Soul in front of you directly would be an unpleasant experience. Walking up to the sleeping woman, you slam one of your many hands down on her mouth. She wakes nearly instantly and her shriek is silenced by your hand.

You stare down at her impassively as she struggles. Lifting her up with the hand on her face, you secure her with two more hands, leaving the fourth free to cast. Reversing out of the room you carry the feebly struggling woman back towards the stairs. You quietly walk up them and to the door to an attic space.

The woman has gone completely still in likely atavistic terror as you raise your upper left hand to the attic door. Zhew! Boom! A large chunk of the door disintegrates around the door handle and you hear a shriek of surprised terror. You enter, turn, and see the young girl, "Amy", with the old Soul from before.

"No, no, no! Whatever sent you won't take me! Not now!" She raises her hand and you see an invisible grasper of force racing for your throat. You casually bat it aside with an exertion of your own Soul and a cloud of Fog light. You begin to feel like your skin is on fire, but before she can complete the likely immolation spell, you cast a Soul Arrow into her gut.

It stuns "Amy", knocking her up and over the cauldron she had bubbling away in the center of the room. She slams into the wall and collapses. You stride over, ignoring the struggles the one you are holding is making, and slam the witch you are carrying to the floor as Fog spreads throughout the room. Maintaining your gag, you reach over to the younger body. Placing your hand on her head, you drag her over.

With the touch, you get the proper grip on her Soul and you tear at all the spells connected to her Soul. They rip away, chunks of Soul coming along, with another shriek from "Amy" as she returns to consciousness. The spells dissolve under your power and the Souls swap back to their proper bodies. Before you can react however, a massive fist of force slams into your head, flipping you over and skidding across the floor. It actually nearly broke your neck, not that that would kill you.

"Aaagghhh… begone demon! Begone! By the dark place--!" Zhew! This is annoying, you think as you rise like a marionette and permanently shut up the older Soul, returned to her own body. The younger witch is looking at you in absolutely mortal terror. As you move towards her she throws up her hands and screams. A wall of force blocks your progress momentarily. Only momentarily, however.

With a wave of a hand you send a maximum power Soul Arrow into the wall, and it shatters like glass. At the same moment you burst through the fragments and, grasping the girl's head with both upper hands you pull. Her Soul bursts out of her in a nimbus of Fog as a fully formed spectre. Her body simultaneously falls over backwards, no longer supported.

You push power into the Fog around you, briefly isolating this space from the Hellmouth, enough to eat safely. Mouth ratcheting open, you consume the Soul in its entirety. Power flows through you, and you are at least somewhat, satisfied. It is… unfortunate about the older one, you muse as you relax and draw the Fog back in.

You quickly scan the room, noting the effigy dolls on hooks, the cauldron and the books. All of it is of no use to you, until you turn and see a trunk from which emanates a life and magic. Moving over quickly, you pop the lid and find a scared stiff but still living cat and a book. Reaching in you snatch up the book.

You rush down the stairs after that, pulling on a seeming and shooting out of the door as a deep shadow low to the ground and nearly invisible. You descend quickly into the sewer. You hear sirens blaring in the distance as you move into the deeper darkness of the tunnels. The scents of the vampires are mostly unchanged. You start planning what you might do when you return home.

When you get near the Bronze, however, you sense a enormous tearing sensation in the energies of the Hellmouth. Turning towards the center of the city you can feel a massive weight settle in the deeper parts of these tunnels. All around you the rats begin to chitter and writhe in agitation.

You hear deep and grinding phlegmy laughter resonate through the tunnels.

And then all is silent. Even the rats.

You stare into the darkness. Your Soul expands as you quest out with your senses. You smell the vampires and the rats near you, and nothing else. You hear nothing out of the ordinary. But your magic senses are incredibly disturbed. There is a thing in the deeper sewers and catacombs. You can feel it in the air like a stone on your shoulders.

Growling quietly, you recede into the darkness and make all speed toward your home. The time passes quickly as you move. At one point you briefly sense Darla and her strong companion moving. They seemed to be heading away from the Bronze and possibly toward the school. The speed at which they moved seemed to indicate agitation.

You do not sense Angel's Soul, though this is not particularly surprising considering he is mostly human seeming to you at a distance. You run, the strength you recently gained from the witch pushing you to inhuman speed. Soon you arrive near your lair.

Looking at it through magic at a distance, you sense nothing amiss. You can see your minion's Soul moving around slowly. Reaching the way back up, you emerge into the alleyway and head for your gate. Going through it you see your minion, who was apparently working in the yard with a broom, sweeping something into a hole. She is already looking at you.

She nods her head deeply, giving a proper, "My Lady."

You walk up to her and look into the hole. It is filled to the brim with rat corpses, ranging from large to tiny. All contorted in seemingly mortal agony. You look at your minion.

"Tell me." You say quietly. She nods again and begins to speak, while looking at the corpses.

"I was watching the house when these things boiled up from the master toilet upstairs, hollerin' and squeaking, before up and dying." She glances at you and then looks at your feet, before speaking again. "We have a problem, my Lady."

You nod and respond. "Indeed. A thing has come. An invader." You look down at the rats again. "Burn them to ash." You say. "As you will!" The woman responds perkily. While she heads back inside to gather the items needed to obey, you look outward, testing the walls of the property in your mind. You need to ward them, and the rest of the house, because whatever that thing is, it is incredibly powerful.

You head inside to the sanctum to deposit the witches' book near the ex Inferna. Your minion is busily moving things around in the kitchen. You head back down to the front room and consider what you have to do next.

You will be warding your home no matter what. Whatever this is, is too powerful to leave your lair undefended. The question then is what comes after it. You could get a message to Angel and Giles, alerting them to this and using two threats to deal with a third. You could go hunting yourself in the tunnels to attempt to figure out what is happening. You could also wait through the night and use your magic to find what limited information you can.

Looking back at your minion as she busies herself with your orders. She is mortal… you think to yourself. She will require sustenance soon… perhaps I can use that… You consider it. You could send her out in the morning to supply herself and look for information according to the town. Other strange events like what she found at home. Or you could have her simply go out and come back as quickly as possible. You don't trust her to run messages yet. You could also go with her to aid in whatever she is doing and potentially gather more information yourself.


What do you do? One of these.

[] Send a message to Giles and Angel after warding your home against the invader.
[] Go into the sewers and find out what you can of the invader.
[] Wait through the night, using your magic to find what information you can.


What does Annie and/or you do in the morning? And one of these.

[] Send her alone to gather supplies and what information the town knows.
[] Send her alone to gather supplies and return quickly.
[] Both of you will go out to gather supplies and what information the town knows.
[] Both of you will go out to gather supplies and then return quickly.

By line as usual.

---

Heheheheheheheheheh. And today we learn that getting into a magic duel with the Idol is really rather daft, and that four arms are particularly useful for carrying unwilling people.

This is also the end of Episode 3 "Strange Magic Girl"!

Death Toll is:

-Dirty Vampire
-Dirty's victim
-Stoner Girl Vampire
-Stoner Girl Vampire's Boytoy
-Amy Madison
-Catherine Madison


Next is Episode 4 "The Rats, The Rats!"

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