- Location
- some computer lab
[X] Aut Pax, Aut Bellum
Godcard
- Thread starter Birdsie
- Start date
- Original
[X] Divine Audience
Simping on Mommy Lotus! 😘
Simping on Mommy Lotus! 😘
- Location
- Ostren
[X] Aut Pax, Aut Bellum [12 Ambrosia]
When offered godlike power go all in
When offered godlike power go all in
Last edited:
- Location
- The UK
[X] Aut Pax, Aut Bellum [12 Ambrosia]
- Location
- 1
I'd ask why so many people were inclined for Aut Pax Aut Bellum, but since it's flatly a preference thing by this point there really isn't much to say. And to be fair, every option seems to have gambling baked in to some degree. Aut Pax is up front, Pyldret is 'can Zane figure out how to use literally any of his new powers', the Audience is 'can she teach enough stuff fast enough, and will she', Temporal is 'will things go wrong after less than a week in the rerun', and the option nobody is voting for is 'can we Somehow get strong enough not to die from Hell and more assassins after losing our Knight Arm'- All of these are things which are to some degree seriously in doubt which are needed for the battle to go well, though the way in which they're in doubt differs from 'literally random chance' to 'presumably random chance' to 'probably just unrevealed info unless birdsie is in the school of rolling to determine facts about the world which the players don't know as they come up' to 'are we impossibly skilled at life yes/no'.
OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
[X] Squire of Pyldret [12 Ambrosia]
Chapter 28 - A Squire's Choice
Birdsie
Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy
- Location
- Poland
A Squire's Choice
It could sometimes be difficult to understand oneself: in between the sempiternal fits of passion and unimaginative spiral bustle, a human being was an endless fractal of complexity, every person in a crowd their own, perfected snowflake. All of them aflutter in a white blizzard that had been ravaging their little planet for millennia.
A human mind alone was a deep pool of opaque waters indeed! And its moist reservoir ran far down, not only with rational thought, but with vibrant, spinning threads of unreasoning sorrow, unforeseeable excitement, and unpredictable bouts of vice and virtue, like a machine built with the explicit purpose of being as interesting as possible.
Most humans could be summarized as this:
A human being is a conflagration of events - more than a few that are stupid beyond mortal description, but more than a few that are also unspeakably beautiful, like time-locked crystal prisms of eye-watering radiance that only the participants would ever have the pleasure of fondly remembering.
At least, until the moment of final rest. There was always an ending.
It was sad that human life was so dreadfully short. If human beings lived for maybe thrice, maybe twice as much as they did, then maybe a couple of them would have developed sufficient wisdom over time to be worth actually fucking saving.
He paused, realizing that he was merely feeling the sting of shameful defeat. He needn't be so… bitter about what happened.
He breathed in and out, feeling the heat of medium-grade alcohol in his throat. A breath that'd probably be more apt for a hobo, than someone like him, not that he could tell anyhow. He'd lost his sense of taste a while ago.
He took another swig of his whiskey - he'd eliminated the unwanted middleman in the form of a rocks glass earlier that afternoon, and decided to drink from the bottle.
After it was all said and done, David Corrigan couldn't say - not when he actually thought about it, not when he was being honest with himself - that he'd enjoyed playing the game in any capacity. It was a disgusting mess of disgusting people using disgusting means to abuse each other and then shove a knob down the throat of whoever didn't appear to be looking at a given moment. There was no actual joy of any kind in the organized murders or the drug trade, the pomp and circumstance of underworld realpolitik and gangster posturing. It was the same kind of deep-stained subhuman ugliness each night, boring and samey.
At the end of the day, the fun parts of that dark function were those moments where his regrettable but necessary actions brought him ever closer to reaching his final objective of saving people and putting his skills to the test. He'd sacrificed much of himself in that pursuit - most notable was the seventeen years he'd sheared away as a sacrifice on the altar of blood; months of potential that he'd never experience or enjoy now. He'd sacrificed his left eye, a kidney, and his ability to enjoy any kind of food save for a narrow range of citrus flavors - he'd always loved oranges, it was the one item he wasn't ever willing to sacrifice to Mephistopheles; the last scrap of his humanity.
There were other things he'd sacrificed, some of them direct or indirect: the love of his life, his beloved children, his close relatives. All of them left on their own when they noticed who he became, and he let them go with little fuss. He knew what he was getting into, so there was no point to arguing or regretting.
Another notable sacrifice was the seven years of his life that he'd sacrificed during the last week, in a mad scramble to secure his rapidly failing and collapsing assets, only to end up in a kingdom of burnt-down ashes. And then, he'd lost the remnants of his organization's mainline fighters, and the others, seeing where the wind seemed to be blowing, decided to leave before it transformed into a full-on hurricane. He'd survived the fight with Marzanna almost by fluke, having somehow predicted the treacherous strike aimed at his own back in the last moment.
That, he recalled, was four hours ago. He hadn't bothered calling the police, telling anybody, or even cleaning up the body - it was still there, only a couple of footsteps away, the blood having long since dried into an oval smear that surrounded her skull and throat where his fist cracked her temple and his knife cut her neck.
He was a terrible wreck, as expected of someone who'd severed his own lifespan down into less than its former half. His once-lustrous hair was already starting to turn ashen-gray at the temples, with a few stand-out white hairs, and he was developing a severe widow's peak. His cheeks sagged with the weight of gravity, the crinkles around the edges of his eyes spreading out like pools of blood to consume his entire face in thin wrinkles. And his aging wasn't yet done - he could feel the tugging of destroyed telomeres pulling him to the other side as if whispering there wasn't that much more ahead of him. He'd be dead of natural causes within a few days or weeks.
Although the trio of his former employees led by Zane Li Black may have never expected the exact method of their victory, they'd indeed been the victors in the end. They had killed Mephistopheles, becoming the vaunted demon-slayers - not with a blade, but simply through ragged exhaustion.
All of those sacrifices to pursue the Holy Grail - the magnum opus.
He looked down at his Godcard. Its compatibility had dropped again, because he was failing to re-consolidate his assets, to rake in whatever opportunity he still could.
He pocketed the damned - literally - card and kept drinking.
There was no malt flavor on his tongue, no fine roast or smoky burn. After sacrificing his sense of taste, David had found that in retrospect, even water had a kind of taste. Now, he could no more tell apart water from root beer than a blind man could tell apart a few shades of green from each other.
It could still get him drunk. And with a single kidney remaining and a failing liver, it could do so exceptionally fast.
After emptying the bottle, he decided that it was time. He reached for a bottle of pills, swallowed a handful, and waited.
At one point, he leaned back in his chair, knees unflexing minimally, and let himself tip over, his wooden dining chair simply clattering against the floorboards. As the cushioned backrest hit the floor, the pounding vibration of the impact reverberated through his back, forcing him to utter, as much as moan out, a dumb grunt of pain.
He mumbled, as much as he hummed, the lyrics of a Robbie Williams song, all the while pondering when he'd feel the effect of the pills he took five minutes prior.
"Lots a' dif'r'nt horses. 'Cuz she ma'e o' candy…"
He yawned all of a sudden, and his tired mind seemed to rouse at the unexpected action. It was enough that he analyzed the state of his own body and realized how he was feeling. A terrible cold was making its way down to his wrists, like tendrils of promised death. A few more seconds - forty to sixty - and he'd fall asleep to never awaken.
And yet, before it could happen, there was a vibration in his pocket. His phone was ringing. He didn't bother picking up, simply letting himself doze off. The deathly cold had completely numbed his fingers down to their ends, in an indescribably painful yet also tinglingly pleasant way, as if he'd dipped his fingers into a mound of winter snow.
He chuckled.
And then stopped - annoyingly, his phone kept on vibrating.
A final measure of resolve and composure allowed him to yank out the small irritant and a trained motion of the thumb picked up the call.
He didn't care to maintain the strict decorum he usually applied in conversations with subordinates. He was going to be dead in moments. Maybe even before this conversation ended. He'd simply wanted to end himself on his own terms, instead of dying to the curse applied by a stupid bargain-store magic item.
"'Fuck's you want?" he slurred through his throat.
"Sir, there's a situation. The Mangler's attacking-"
All of a sudden, he roused, like an unconscious man who'd had a bucket of ice poured over him. David stood up, one hand and elbow fully pressed against the nearest table to keep himself stable. A sudden burst of dark annihilation coated his skin and seeped into his veins - he sacrificed, on a hunch, on an impulse, some of his particularly good memories of adolescence - and then felt a new power settle upon him; a supernatural ability to resist toxins and poisons of all kinds, hopefully powerful enough to at least prolong his miserable existence long enough to hear more of this.
It wasn't instant, but in seconds, the world cleared as the blurred daze of alcohol fell away, and he could feel the effects of the pills fade away in moments. It was like a shroud of steel being taken off his shoulders.
He breathed in and out, fast, as he stumbled across the apartment - over Marzanna's corpse - with grit teeth. He pressed the phone between shoulder and ear as he rummaged for his coat and mask. "Where? No, fucking nevermind - send me the address, and then tell someone nearby to call me."
---
"Hey... If you can hear me... Lotus Maiden..."
He'd never prayed before, not in this way. It was certainly a new and fascinating experience - he understood on a basic level that results might come of it, but he didn't understand how he understood that or what he was actually expected to do. He didn't even know what might happen.
"...Please, do something?"
He clenched his jaw and coughed out some blood in the middle of the air, feeling as weightlessness captured him, at the apex of his flight. His arms were mangled - ironically or maybe not - and his ribcage was a mosaic of white shards digging into his internal organs like particularly tenacious rose thorns making their way into human skin. All of it sank down all at once to the bottom of his pelvis as he flew head-down in the direction of the streets, the Mangler's steady footsteps underneath reverberating across the space between them like the quiet footsteps of a small but deadly titan.
And then, a sudden blaze of awareness - a covenant from beyond this world, as he felt the man in the garden smile at him.
"On the Maiden's behalf, I accept your prayer. Let indeed the Knight-Aspirant perish here," said the man with a voice of delight, rising, wings unfurling into brilliant constellations of rainbow stars, every scale a quasar of draconic passion over his back like a mantle of the cosmos, "and let the Squire of Pyldret rise from the ashes!"
As Zane's eyes opened, they weren't his usual deep blue, but rather, a starburst of every color in existence, like a prism releasing inner power into the world.
He oriented himself in the air to be head-up, feet-down, somehow - he didn't understand how he did it, but he did it - feeling that inner power burn in his heart like a crucible of volcanic heat, as endless and mighty as a dragon's bulwark. Its power seeped into his every muscle and filled out his fingers like a grail of might that was spilling out its contents into him. The power flowed into every thread and fiber of his being, suffusing his bones like struts of indestructible adamant around a shell of perforated gypsum. It was enough to stem the blood flow and let him control his fingers again, resummon his Knight Arm, and then land safely by flexing his knees.
He didn't even have that much time to properly react to the attack, as the Mangler struck. Another blow as powerful as before, but Zane evaded it perfectly, and then replied with a devastating punch to the side, making the wolf howl in surprise and hop back, curled in on where its underbelly was now leaking blood.
It looked down at its wound, and then at him, eyes like citrine floodlights, black irises dilating in response to a perceived threat.
"Didn't expect me to be so tenacious, huh? You son of a bitch?!" He seized the initiative and dashed forward, all notions of complex martial arts pushed aside - he kicked the tarmac underneath to launch himself like a bullet, and left behind two zones of spiderweb cracks in the concrete from which he blasted off.
Zane cocked his fist in a mid-flight punch, expecting to deliver a blow to the snout, but the creature growled at the last moment and shrank very suddenly to the size of a man-wolf, grabbing his arm and throwing him aside, before returning to its full wolf form.
"Awh, fuck, that's cheating," he spat out, having landed on his broken chest. The Mangler was upon him momentarily, but was then repelled as Zane fired several dense bursts of petals in its direction - it must have read the attacks, correctly, as dangerous, because it avoided them.
In the pushing heat of the fast-paced battle, he somehow realized that he wasn't thinking of the Mangler as a man, but a wild creature - it was an interesting way to think, given he'd seen surface-level evidence to the contrary.
It ran for him once more, and Zane met it with several blows, rapidly changing his approach from offense to defense when he realized that its peak attack speed was still a touch above his own in the end - it struck him with a powerful clawing blow, a motion that would've shredded lesser men into quarters, but he was fast to evade. He couldn't dodge its follow-up attack: a second blow from its other limb, with the flat of its paw: blunt and, under most circumstances, likely bone-shattering.
It resulted in Zane sliding down the street, using the soles of his shoes to bleed momentum against the asphalt. As he'd used his forearm to block that final blow, he noticed a thin sheet of tough rainbow scales sprouting from his skin in the place where the attack had landed, like minerals or rocks more than a proper lizard's scales.
The Mangler had ceased its onslaught, instead choosing to step back and observe him watchfully, sniffing the air. He turned to match its position relative to himself.
"Let's throw down, bastard. You were so eager a few moments ago," Zane said, continuing to pour out his thoughts into verbal form. "Where's the fucking zeal gone, bitch?"
Almost contrary to his actual expectations, it seized the apprentice-level bait and pounced for him, claws outstretched.
He dashed to the side in a desperate evasion, parried a follow-up extended swipe of its right claw, punched it once in the snout with a jab - powerfully enough to elicit a short whine - and then continued to fight against the beast in a contest of martial arts and sheer tenacious brutality, claws matched well against the gloves of briars. It was a fight of seizing and relenting initiative from moment to moment, with no decisive or withering blows landing on either of them; more akin to a constant dance between the ashes floating in the air, their motions creating shockwaves as loud as gunshots and deflecting one another's attempts to end the other.
After a moment of this constant back-and-forth, the part of Zane that constantly analyzed his opponents for possible openings noticed a golden opportunity that he'd somehow missed in the flow of combat. Namely, their fight had developed a steady rhythm - a dance, indeed.
One, two - one, two...
And then a shift.
One-two-three, one-two-three-four, one, two, THREE!
It was sudden and unimaginable, like an entire cruise liner launching from the ocean on an unexpected geyser of pressurized geothermal water. The Mangler practically stumbled over itself as Zane blocked its last blow and changed the pacing and vector of his strikes, landing several devastating blows on its left hind leg as a result.
The Mangler howled so loudly that even Zane ceased pursuit, cringing at the noise. It stepped back away from him like a mouse from a sudden fire, its injured limb slightly raised into the air. The Mangler stared at him almost uncomprehendingly, like a concerned priest at an assembly of devil worshippers.
"I'm not scared of you," he said, feeling the coppery tinge of blood making its way onto his tongue from his gums. "You should be scared of me."
Its look remained for a few seconds, before disappearing as its pupils grew to swallow its whole eyeballs as if to match his own prismatic light with peerless darkness. All of the Mangler's accumulated wounds healed so fast that he could even hear the flesh reknitting, blood solidifying into scabs with a disgustingly wet noise.
Oh shit.
The Mangler opened its maw, to reveal an abyss of utter pitch within. Around them, the light scattered into its open jaws, darkening the entire world. He could feel a portion of his newly gained power be sucked in like dirt into a vacuum.
"Over here!"
He looked across the street and saw, of all people, Mephistopheles, standing with hand outstretched. As Zane looked back at his opponent, he saw that strands of terrible darkness were reaching into their world, dissipating concrete underfoot like concentrated pools of entropy, and sucking in air and light to leave the world forever lessened.
---
As of right now, you have .7 Ambrosia.
A choice is to be made.
Although he's fought the Mangler rather impressively following his abrupt power-up sequence, it should be kept in mind that Zane is still grievously injured and that he is, in fact, running out of both stamina and whatever mojo is keeping his powers charged rather quickly, practically burning through all of his energy. It's very possible, and indeed somewhat likely, that he won't be able to keep himself working at such a furious pace for much longer.
[ ] Trust the Devil - In order for agreements of any kind to be made in the future, and for understanding to blossom in the moment, the past has to be put aside. Dash for Mephistopheles and take his hand, presuming he intends to teleport you out to safety.
[ ] Fight the Beast - The bastard's tried to kill you, and while he isn't the most pressing threat, whatever the Mangler is doing could prove to be utterly catastrophic. You were this close to killing it - stay here and try to slay the Mangler instead. You aren't running away from this.
Also, make a decision on one of the following Improvements to develop instantaneously:
[ ] Draconic Vigor II - A passive and permanent improvement to your body's capabilities, active even when not under duress or actively channeling any mana into your body. +++Physical Statistics, +Mental Statistics, +Spiritual Statistics.
[ ] Reinforcement II - An active technique, unlike the above - its benefits are slightly greater, but also incur a flat cost of energy per second to maintain. It can be the difference between life and death, whichever you choose.
[ ] Dragonscale - Although you've already subconsciously used this ability to protect yourself, this grants you far greater control, allowing you to sprout and retract a thin layer of protective scales from your body, granting the effective armor rating of a tank's glacis plating with further resistance at key points, as well as 20% magic resistance.
It could sometimes be difficult to understand oneself: in between the sempiternal fits of passion and unimaginative spiral bustle, a human being was an endless fractal of complexity, every person in a crowd their own, perfected snowflake. All of them aflutter in a white blizzard that had been ravaging their little planet for millennia.
A human mind alone was a deep pool of opaque waters indeed! And its moist reservoir ran far down, not only with rational thought, but with vibrant, spinning threads of unreasoning sorrow, unforeseeable excitement, and unpredictable bouts of vice and virtue, like a machine built with the explicit purpose of being as interesting as possible.
Most humans could be summarized as this:
A human being is a conflagration of events - more than a few that are stupid beyond mortal description, but more than a few that are also unspeakably beautiful, like time-locked crystal prisms of eye-watering radiance that only the participants would ever have the pleasure of fondly remembering.
At least, until the moment of final rest. There was always an ending.
It was sad that human life was so dreadfully short. If human beings lived for maybe thrice, maybe twice as much as they did, then maybe a couple of them would have developed sufficient wisdom over time to be worth actually fucking saving.
He paused, realizing that he was merely feeling the sting of shameful defeat. He needn't be so… bitter about what happened.
He breathed in and out, feeling the heat of medium-grade alcohol in his throat. A breath that'd probably be more apt for a hobo, than someone like him, not that he could tell anyhow. He'd lost his sense of taste a while ago.
He took another swig of his whiskey - he'd eliminated the unwanted middleman in the form of a rocks glass earlier that afternoon, and decided to drink from the bottle.
After it was all said and done, David Corrigan couldn't say - not when he actually thought about it, not when he was being honest with himself - that he'd enjoyed playing the game in any capacity. It was a disgusting mess of disgusting people using disgusting means to abuse each other and then shove a knob down the throat of whoever didn't appear to be looking at a given moment. There was no actual joy of any kind in the organized murders or the drug trade, the pomp and circumstance of underworld realpolitik and gangster posturing. It was the same kind of deep-stained subhuman ugliness each night, boring and samey.
At the end of the day, the fun parts of that dark function were those moments where his regrettable but necessary actions brought him ever closer to reaching his final objective of saving people and putting his skills to the test. He'd sacrificed much of himself in that pursuit - most notable was the seventeen years he'd sheared away as a sacrifice on the altar of blood; months of potential that he'd never experience or enjoy now. He'd sacrificed his left eye, a kidney, and his ability to enjoy any kind of food save for a narrow range of citrus flavors - he'd always loved oranges, it was the one item he wasn't ever willing to sacrifice to Mephistopheles; the last scrap of his humanity.
There were other things he'd sacrificed, some of them direct or indirect: the love of his life, his beloved children, his close relatives. All of them left on their own when they noticed who he became, and he let them go with little fuss. He knew what he was getting into, so there was no point to arguing or regretting.
Another notable sacrifice was the seven years of his life that he'd sacrificed during the last week, in a mad scramble to secure his rapidly failing and collapsing assets, only to end up in a kingdom of burnt-down ashes. And then, he'd lost the remnants of his organization's mainline fighters, and the others, seeing where the wind seemed to be blowing, decided to leave before it transformed into a full-on hurricane. He'd survived the fight with Marzanna almost by fluke, having somehow predicted the treacherous strike aimed at his own back in the last moment.
That, he recalled, was four hours ago. He hadn't bothered calling the police, telling anybody, or even cleaning up the body - it was still there, only a couple of footsteps away, the blood having long since dried into an oval smear that surrounded her skull and throat where his fist cracked her temple and his knife cut her neck.
He was a terrible wreck, as expected of someone who'd severed his own lifespan down into less than its former half. His once-lustrous hair was already starting to turn ashen-gray at the temples, with a few stand-out white hairs, and he was developing a severe widow's peak. His cheeks sagged with the weight of gravity, the crinkles around the edges of his eyes spreading out like pools of blood to consume his entire face in thin wrinkles. And his aging wasn't yet done - he could feel the tugging of destroyed telomeres pulling him to the other side as if whispering there wasn't that much more ahead of him. He'd be dead of natural causes within a few days or weeks.
Although the trio of his former employees led by Zane Li Black may have never expected the exact method of their victory, they'd indeed been the victors in the end. They had killed Mephistopheles, becoming the vaunted demon-slayers - not with a blade, but simply through ragged exhaustion.
All of those sacrifices to pursue the Holy Grail - the magnum opus.
He looked down at his Godcard. Its compatibility had dropped again, because he was failing to re-consolidate his assets, to rake in whatever opportunity he still could.
Mephistopheles, Devil [Spirits] of Trickery
Godcard, Series F400/K810
Contracts, Trickery, Bargains, Selfishness
High Compatibility [75%]
Power Level [4]
Dealmaker (lv5) - An ability to make powerful contracts of binding capacity. In order to apply, a contract must have its conditions agreed upon by both parties, with their full consent, and can include any stipulations or conditions desired [...]
Speak of The Devil (lv2) - And he shall appear. As soon as the name of Mephistopheles is spoken within the range of six miles, become aware of its speaker, their location, and the surrounding environment, gaining the ability to translocate [...]
A Desire For More (lv2) - A yearning for infinite power? All can be granted. A personal sacrifice of various possessions or abilities may offer various forms of [...]
He pocketed the damned - literally - card and kept drinking.
There was no malt flavor on his tongue, no fine roast or smoky burn. After sacrificing his sense of taste, David had found that in retrospect, even water had a kind of taste. Now, he could no more tell apart water from root beer than a blind man could tell apart a few shades of green from each other.
It could still get him drunk. And with a single kidney remaining and a failing liver, it could do so exceptionally fast.
After emptying the bottle, he decided that it was time. He reached for a bottle of pills, swallowed a handful, and waited.
At one point, he leaned back in his chair, knees unflexing minimally, and let himself tip over, his wooden dining chair simply clattering against the floorboards. As the cushioned backrest hit the floor, the pounding vibration of the impact reverberated through his back, forcing him to utter, as much as moan out, a dumb grunt of pain.
He mumbled, as much as he hummed, the lyrics of a Robbie Williams song, all the while pondering when he'd feel the effect of the pills he took five minutes prior.
"Lots a' dif'r'nt horses. 'Cuz she ma'e o' candy…"
He yawned all of a sudden, and his tired mind seemed to rouse at the unexpected action. It was enough that he analyzed the state of his own body and realized how he was feeling. A terrible cold was making its way down to his wrists, like tendrils of promised death. A few more seconds - forty to sixty - and he'd fall asleep to never awaken.
And yet, before it could happen, there was a vibration in his pocket. His phone was ringing. He didn't bother picking up, simply letting himself doze off. The deathly cold had completely numbed his fingers down to their ends, in an indescribably painful yet also tinglingly pleasant way, as if he'd dipped his fingers into a mound of winter snow.
He chuckled.
And then stopped - annoyingly, his phone kept on vibrating.
A final measure of resolve and composure allowed him to yank out the small irritant and a trained motion of the thumb picked up the call.
He didn't care to maintain the strict decorum he usually applied in conversations with subordinates. He was going to be dead in moments. Maybe even before this conversation ended. He'd simply wanted to end himself on his own terms, instead of dying to the curse applied by a stupid bargain-store magic item.
"'Fuck's you want?" he slurred through his throat.
"Sir, there's a situation. The Mangler's attacking-"
All of a sudden, he roused, like an unconscious man who'd had a bucket of ice poured over him. David stood up, one hand and elbow fully pressed against the nearest table to keep himself stable. A sudden burst of dark annihilation coated his skin and seeped into his veins - he sacrificed, on a hunch, on an impulse, some of his particularly good memories of adolescence - and then felt a new power settle upon him; a supernatural ability to resist toxins and poisons of all kinds, hopefully powerful enough to at least prolong his miserable existence long enough to hear more of this.
It wasn't instant, but in seconds, the world cleared as the blurred daze of alcohol fell away, and he could feel the effects of the pills fade away in moments. It was like a shroud of steel being taken off his shoulders.
He breathed in and out, fast, as he stumbled across the apartment - over Marzanna's corpse - with grit teeth. He pressed the phone between shoulder and ear as he rummaged for his coat and mask. "Where? No, fucking nevermind - send me the address, and then tell someone nearby to call me."
---
"Hey... If you can hear me... Lotus Maiden..."
He'd never prayed before, not in this way. It was certainly a new and fascinating experience - he understood on a basic level that results might come of it, but he didn't understand how he understood that or what he was actually expected to do. He didn't even know what might happen.
"...Please, do something?"
He clenched his jaw and coughed out some blood in the middle of the air, feeling as weightlessness captured him, at the apex of his flight. His arms were mangled - ironically or maybe not - and his ribcage was a mosaic of white shards digging into his internal organs like particularly tenacious rose thorns making their way into human skin. All of it sank down all at once to the bottom of his pelvis as he flew head-down in the direction of the streets, the Mangler's steady footsteps underneath reverberating across the space between them like the quiet footsteps of a small but deadly titan.
And then, a sudden blaze of awareness - a covenant from beyond this world, as he felt the man in the garden smile at him.
"On the Maiden's behalf, I accept your prayer. Let indeed the Knight-Aspirant perish here," said the man with a voice of delight, rising, wings unfurling into brilliant constellations of rainbow stars, every scale a quasar of draconic passion over his back like a mantle of the cosmos, "and let the Squire of Pyldret rise from the ashes!"
As Zane's eyes opened, they weren't his usual deep blue, but rather, a starburst of every color in existence, like a prism releasing inner power into the world.
He oriented himself in the air to be head-up, feet-down, somehow - he didn't understand how he did it, but he did it - feeling that inner power burn in his heart like a crucible of volcanic heat, as endless and mighty as a dragon's bulwark. Its power seeped into his every muscle and filled out his fingers like a grail of might that was spilling out its contents into him. The power flowed into every thread and fiber of his being, suffusing his bones like struts of indestructible adamant around a shell of perforated gypsum. It was enough to stem the blood flow and let him control his fingers again, resummon his Knight Arm, and then land safely by flexing his knees.
He didn't even have that much time to properly react to the attack, as the Mangler struck. Another blow as powerful as before, but Zane evaded it perfectly, and then replied with a devastating punch to the side, making the wolf howl in surprise and hop back, curled in on where its underbelly was now leaking blood.
It looked down at its wound, and then at him, eyes like citrine floodlights, black irises dilating in response to a perceived threat.
"Didn't expect me to be so tenacious, huh? You son of a bitch?!" He seized the initiative and dashed forward, all notions of complex martial arts pushed aside - he kicked the tarmac underneath to launch himself like a bullet, and left behind two zones of spiderweb cracks in the concrete from which he blasted off.
Zane cocked his fist in a mid-flight punch, expecting to deliver a blow to the snout, but the creature growled at the last moment and shrank very suddenly to the size of a man-wolf, grabbing his arm and throwing him aside, before returning to its full wolf form.
"Awh, fuck, that's cheating," he spat out, having landed on his broken chest. The Mangler was upon him momentarily, but was then repelled as Zane fired several dense bursts of petals in its direction - it must have read the attacks, correctly, as dangerous, because it avoided them.
In the pushing heat of the fast-paced battle, he somehow realized that he wasn't thinking of the Mangler as a man, but a wild creature - it was an interesting way to think, given he'd seen surface-level evidence to the contrary.
It ran for him once more, and Zane met it with several blows, rapidly changing his approach from offense to defense when he realized that its peak attack speed was still a touch above his own in the end - it struck him with a powerful clawing blow, a motion that would've shredded lesser men into quarters, but he was fast to evade. He couldn't dodge its follow-up attack: a second blow from its other limb, with the flat of its paw: blunt and, under most circumstances, likely bone-shattering.
It resulted in Zane sliding down the street, using the soles of his shoes to bleed momentum against the asphalt. As he'd used his forearm to block that final blow, he noticed a thin sheet of tough rainbow scales sprouting from his skin in the place where the attack had landed, like minerals or rocks more than a proper lizard's scales.
The Mangler had ceased its onslaught, instead choosing to step back and observe him watchfully, sniffing the air. He turned to match its position relative to himself.
"Let's throw down, bastard. You were so eager a few moments ago," Zane said, continuing to pour out his thoughts into verbal form. "Where's the fucking zeal gone, bitch?"
Almost contrary to his actual expectations, it seized the apprentice-level bait and pounced for him, claws outstretched.
He dashed to the side in a desperate evasion, parried a follow-up extended swipe of its right claw, punched it once in the snout with a jab - powerfully enough to elicit a short whine - and then continued to fight against the beast in a contest of martial arts and sheer tenacious brutality, claws matched well against the gloves of briars. It was a fight of seizing and relenting initiative from moment to moment, with no decisive or withering blows landing on either of them; more akin to a constant dance between the ashes floating in the air, their motions creating shockwaves as loud as gunshots and deflecting one another's attempts to end the other.
After a moment of this constant back-and-forth, the part of Zane that constantly analyzed his opponents for possible openings noticed a golden opportunity that he'd somehow missed in the flow of combat. Namely, their fight had developed a steady rhythm - a dance, indeed.
One, two - one, two...
And then a shift.
One-two-three, one-two-three-four, one, two, THREE!
It was sudden and unimaginable, like an entire cruise liner launching from the ocean on an unexpected geyser of pressurized geothermal water. The Mangler practically stumbled over itself as Zane blocked its last blow and changed the pacing and vector of his strikes, landing several devastating blows on its left hind leg as a result.
The Mangler howled so loudly that even Zane ceased pursuit, cringing at the noise. It stepped back away from him like a mouse from a sudden fire, its injured limb slightly raised into the air. The Mangler stared at him almost uncomprehendingly, like a concerned priest at an assembly of devil worshippers.
"I'm not scared of you," he said, feeling the coppery tinge of blood making its way onto his tongue from his gums. "You should be scared of me."
Its look remained for a few seconds, before disappearing as its pupils grew to swallow its whole eyeballs as if to match his own prismatic light with peerless darkness. All of the Mangler's accumulated wounds healed so fast that he could even hear the flesh reknitting, blood solidifying into scabs with a disgustingly wet noise.
Oh shit.
The Mangler opened its maw, to reveal an abyss of utter pitch within. Around them, the light scattered into its open jaws, darkening the entire world. He could feel a portion of his newly gained power be sucked in like dirt into a vacuum.
"Over here!"
He looked across the street and saw, of all people, Mephistopheles, standing with hand outstretched. As Zane looked back at his opponent, he saw that strands of terrible darkness were reaching into their world, dissipating concrete underfoot like concentrated pools of entropy, and sucking in air and light to leave the world forever lessened.
---
As of right now, you have .7 Ambrosia.
A choice is to be made.
Although he's fought the Mangler rather impressively following his abrupt power-up sequence, it should be kept in mind that Zane is still grievously injured and that he is, in fact, running out of both stamina and whatever mojo is keeping his powers charged rather quickly, practically burning through all of his energy. It's very possible, and indeed somewhat likely, that he won't be able to keep himself working at such a furious pace for much longer.
[ ] Trust the Devil - In order for agreements of any kind to be made in the future, and for understanding to blossom in the moment, the past has to be put aside. Dash for Mephistopheles and take his hand, presuming he intends to teleport you out to safety.
[ ] Fight the Beast - The bastard's tried to kill you, and while he isn't the most pressing threat, whatever the Mangler is doing could prove to be utterly catastrophic. You were this close to killing it - stay here and try to slay the Mangler instead. You aren't running away from this.
Also, make a decision on one of the following Improvements to develop instantaneously:
[ ] Draconic Vigor II - A passive and permanent improvement to your body's capabilities, active even when not under duress or actively channeling any mana into your body. +++Physical Statistics, +Mental Statistics, +Spiritual Statistics.
[ ] Reinforcement II - An active technique, unlike the above - its benefits are slightly greater, but also incur a flat cost of energy per second to maintain. It can be the difference between life and death, whichever you choose.
[ ] Dragonscale - Although you've already subconsciously used this ability to protect yourself, this grants you far greater control, allowing you to sprout and retract a thin layer of protective scales from your body, granting the effective armor rating of a tank's glacis plating with further resistance at key points, as well as 20% magic resistance.
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Gabbie
That One Writer
- Location
- Italy
- Pronouns
- They/Them
[X] Plan: Long-Run Safety
-[X] Trust the Devil
-[X] Draconic Vigor II
If Mephisto's here, that means he's willing to make amends. That, or eventually killing the Mangler could end up being the amends. Draconic Vigor will also (probably) heal our wounds and give us more stamina (+++PHYS) and give us more mana to work with in the future, as well as the ability to meditate better and grow our mana (+MEN, +SPI).
-[X] Trust the Devil
-[X] Draconic Vigor II
If Mephisto's here, that means he's willing to make amends. That, or eventually killing the Mangler could end up being the amends. Draconic Vigor will also (probably) heal our wounds and give us more stamina (+++PHYS) and give us more mana to work with in the future, as well as the ability to meditate better and grow our mana (+MEN, +SPI).
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- Location
- 1
I'm inclined for Dragonscale, largely because the Mangler is draining power and slightly because it's useful against possible Mephistopheles betrayal. That said, my vote for 'Trust the Devil' is Not because i trust Mephistopheles, but rather because "JUST RUN" is not an option.
[X] Trust the Devil
[X] Dragonscale
[X] Trust the Devil
[X] Dragonscale
- Location
- Poland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Plan: Long-Run Safety
Fuck it, I want to see more of this fucker.
Hopefully won't be a damning choice. Oh well, we have a galactic dragon going to us to save the world anyway.
Honestly, I was somewhat against that choice, but now I disagree- it just feels like a great safety net, in a way.
Fuck it, I want to see more of this fucker.
Hopefully won't be a damning choice. Oh well, we have a galactic dragon going to us to save the world anyway.
Honestly, I was somewhat against that choice, but now I disagree- it just feels like a great safety net, in a way.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Trust the Devil
[X] Dragonscale
[X] Dragonscale
Gabbie
That One Writer
- Location
- Italy
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Further argumentations for Draconic Vigor rather than Dragonscale
- Starting to specialize this early in a powerset we know absolutely nothing about spells disaster.
- Dragonscale will not give us an edge in the battle we are currently experiencing for two reasons: we are almost out of mana, and Dragonscale requires mana to be used.
- Teleporting away with Mephisto will obviously finish the fight for good, right? The Mangler has +++++Tracking, he WILL find us and the fight will resume, which is why we need something immediate that doesn't waste mana.
- Dragonscale is a limited skill-tree; Draconic Vigor makes us better at developing EVERY skill tree, so to speak.
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- Location
- 1
ah yes buying one level in a specific power at no cost to other powersets is specializing in the powerset it comes from.
...That is not listed in the ability. It's not even implied; the ability is to sprout and retract the scales, so if you don't retract them you aren't even using the ability, technically. If the scales are a Conjuration, then it would suggest they drain mana, but we haven't been told such either.
The Mangler may have +++++tracking, but he was only able to roughly figure out where Zane had gone (when Sheath was active) over short(few blocks, sub-city) range with an unbroken physical trail to follow. Teleportation- if that is indeed what Mephisto is planning for- breaks that trail and teleports us much further away from the Mangler. Furthermore, our Mana will regenerate over time, and also get the opportunity to learn basic control over our powers. Depending on the specifics of how things work, it may be possible for Zane to just fly off to another planet-assuming some combination of 'can tank a vacuum', 'can get a space suit', 'can carry a reasonably durable balloon into orbit', 'can elementally breath air', or a few other possibilities. The Mangler may have +whatever tracking, but there's 'find out where Zane is' and then there's 'Actually get there'; Even if the Mangler sees Zane is, say, orbiting the moon, he's going to need to precisely aim for where Zane is going to be after the amount of time delay from light distance plus travel time, which will just be impossible if Zane is also occasionally shifting his habitat orbit.
(And Zane would be able to use Sheath The Blade while orbiting in space, because it only seals Invocations, not Being Sorta Kinda A Dragon)
so... Draconic Vigor is a potential pick?
while fighting the Mangler?
Gabbie
That One Writer
- Location
- Italy
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Yes, it quite literally is. It is implied and it is not hard to deduce. At all.
Draconic Vigor is objectively superior and I have explained the reasons in enough detail that they should be obvious. But I will do so again, since they were so unclear the first time around.
- Dragonscale is hyperspecialization in defense - even if little.
- I'm thinking about very, very short-term, because that's what matters. Right now.
- You don't think about winning the war when you're being shot at and are about to die; you think about winning the fight you're in.
- As such, we have seen defense is not a problem.
- What is a problem? Attack; we need to SIGNIFICANTLY penetrate the Mangler's defense and regeneration both.
- So, the deduction is? We don't need the extra DEF Dragonscale will give us, as literally shown by the update. We can outmaneuver his attacks and we can already tank them when dodging is impossible, with little to no damage. ALL OF THIS, considering we are grievously injured.
- What do we need? Draconic Vigor II, which will give +PHYS (implied +ATK) and +SPI and +MEN (implied +Magic), which are domains that will make our current and future Mangler-defeating odds greater.
- Location
- 1
...yeah, Zane is spending power? That doesn't mean, however, that Dragonscale is a constant upkeep. Reinforcement could just as easily be what's being discussed. Dragonscale was used for one line, Reinforcement was used for the entire subsequent exchange.
If it was objectively superior, it would not be a choice.
...this line is almost paradoxical. Hyperspecialized... a little? But yes. Dragonscale is a purely defensive effect...
... so why aren't you advocating for Dragonscale, exactly? I am also thinking about the short term. Dragonscale isn't important for progression in any way I can see, so it is intrinsically short-term.
very true. Oh, are you about to talk about how to win the war-
...It wasn't a problem before the Mangler picked up his World-Eating Darkness form or whatever that is. the Darkness effect absorbed a part of Zanes newfound power- if he keeps fighting the Mangler in this form it's entirely possible the accumulated drain will bring him down.
there is no way Draconic Vigor is going to instantly grant us this capability. Also, attack is needed for 'kill the mangler', which is the war goal, not for 'don't die to the Mangler', which is the battle goal.
... You mean, aside from the power-drain which is my explicit reason for supporting Dragonscale?
+++Phys is not going to give us the attack boost to beat the Mangler on its own, and a solitary +Men/Spi is probably not going to be the tipping point in whether we can scale far enough. Even If it was, this is Long-term thinking; further, we have not been told we won't be able to pick others from this powerset at a later point. So.
