Remove ads

Mare Internum: An Exalted Quest

Reader mode
Remove ads
For A Better World 42
  • Threadmarks
    • Broken25 said:
    [X] Wait for the enemy, then I'll attack to disrupt them as much as possible with your support.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    "Wait for the enemy, then I'll attack to disrupt them as much as possible with your support."

    COLTER: "That's for the best, I think. We're too exposed to fall back or charge. Hopefully reinforcements will arrive before the charge, we're only forty here."

    Colter motions for you to join him in peering over the lip of the trench. The dry grey earth reinforced with stakes gives way to a haze of smoke. Your throat tightens as you sniff the air.

    COLTER: "We won't even know when-"

    AWARENESS: EXCEPTIONAL
    6 4
    CHECK PASSED

    Among the dry rustle of burning brush you hear a sharper snap and a hiss of air.

    Your body moves of its own accord. The arrow that would have fatally struck Colter just under the rim of his helmet is instead held in your hand, snapped in two from the force with which you plucked it from the air.

    Colter staggers back in surprise, but to his credit he reacts quickly.

    COLTER: "To arms! Shields up, they attack from the smoke!"

    You hear more snaps of releasing bows further into the smoke. You hear impacts of metal and flesh, cries of pain.

    Without further contemplation you climb over the edge of the trench. An angry flurry of clicks greets you, like an agitated nest of insects.

    CRAFT: Single wood self bows. None of the plangency of horn or compound sealant.

    AWARENESS: Seventeen releases, thirty to fifty paces distant in a half-ring in front of you.

    WAR: They meant to draw you out. They are here for you, after all.

    You feel Essence flooding into your eyes, lengthening the time between moments. Seventeen arrows are in the air. You hear the smoke-filled air hiss on their barbed arrowheads and ruffle their mottled grey fletching.

    The smoke curls ahead of you. The arrows descend... slowly.

    [ ] Draw your sword and cut them down.
    [ ] Dodge them.
    [ ] Ignore them and charge. They can't hurt you.
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • For A Better World 43
  • Threadmarks
    • JustGazzer said:
    [X] Draw your sword and cut them down.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Some have likened the art of swordsmanship to calligraphy. This is clearly nonsense, because your writing medium is not trying to kill you. However, there is some truth to it; a sword is a delicate implement to be swung in moderation, each stroke must be made with precision and care, yet decisiveness. To swing too hard at the wrong surface will damage your blade. To alter the angle of your swing mid-cut will damage your blade. To block a forceful attack rather than deflecting will damage your blade. A damaged blade loses its cutting edge, and a sword without a cutting edge is as useless as a blunt spear or a weightless club.

    Swordsmanship itself is a specialized combat skill with narrow functions, useful primarily against lightly armored opponents at short range. The Opening Gate style in particular hyper-focuses on the ideal conditions of a duel against a single, similarly equipped opponent. Worse, with your injury you are forced to use your sabre one-handed in your non-dominant hand.

    An arrow in flight can be arrested with a sword in three ways. The arrowhead can be struck directly to deflect its course, she shaft can be cut near the head to optimally terminate its flight, or the shaft can be pushed aside with the flat of the blade to divert it from its target. All are difficult and prone to failure. An arrowhead struck directly can shatter into equally dangerous shrapnel, a miscalculation in the cut can lead to the halves of the arrow continuing on their path with undiminished momentum, and deflection requires great precision to avoid simply moving the target of the arrow to another part of your body.

    All this you consider as the arrows slowly descend. You draw your sword.

    HAWK SWORD: Have at you!

    ATHLETICS: VERY DIFFICULT
    5 3
    CHECK FAILED

    Your movement is pure reaction, cutting, shattering and deflecting each of the seventeen arrows within the space of a breath in a shower of sparks, raindrops and splinters.

    As you step forward, however, your right leg falters. You glance down to see a barbed arrow produding from the back of your calf. You cut it in half too far up the shaft to stop its momentum, and it continued on its path with barely diminished force to pierce your unarmored shin directly between your tibia and fibula.

    SAGACITY: Luckily it has also missed your major tibial arteries. The blood loss is not immediately dangerous.

    You take another step, using a flicker of Essence to compensate for the loss of muscular function. One last arrow hisses from the darkness. You swat it aside without effort.

    AWARENESS: How can they see you?

    The smoke ahead grows dark, like clouds drawing in before the breaking of a thunderstorm. You see flashes of color within, a whirl of crimson embers. They move in time with an unseen breath.

    You feel the movement of the air against your skin before you see any distortion in the smoke that indicates an attack is coming. A lash of metal hisses out of the darkness to strike in a surge of violent motion.

    The hawk sword intercepts it, once, twice, three times. First meridian reversal, second return, sixth reversal. You didn't even need to think about it.

    It's an edged weapon, heavy, short, more an axeblade than a sword, attached to a long, flexible chain. It retracts into the darkness with a hiss.

    "I know you are there."

    The smoke draws back, revealing your hunter.

    The man before you is plainly dead. Mummified, dessicated flesh clings to his once-broad frame, blackened with the smoke that surrounds him. Deep cuts criss-cross his flesh, bare aside from a cuirass and faulds. The chain-weapon is looped around his withered hands. His ruined eye sockets burn like candlelights, glaring at you with unrestrained malice.

    INTEGRITY: Oh good, he's already dead.

    WAR: He's still trying to kill us.

    INTEGRITY: But we won't feel so bad about killing him, because it already happened.

    Wait, we feel bad about killing people?

    INTEGRITY: You feel lots of things you don't notice.

    Thoughts for later.

    [ ] You're on fire.
    [ ] Who are you?
    [ ] Have we met?
    [ ] What's it like being dead?
    [ ] Are you sad?
    [ ] Are you sad about being dead, specifically?
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • "We feel lots of things you don't notice" is one of those statements that's totally innocuous and also so heavy that having it dropped on you stops you in your tracks.
     
    For A Better World 44
  • Threadmarks
    • glyph said:
    [X] Are you sad about being dead, specifically?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    "Are you sad about being dead, specifically?"

    THE HUNTER: "No."

    The response is immediate. Wisps of black smoke exhale with the rasping word.

    THE HUNTER: "I have found my purpose. Soon you will see. Your corpse will be first among us."

    "No thanks, I'm using it."

    He exhales a cloud of smoke and fades back into the darkness. Then, the Raigi charge.

    Reacting instantly, you sidestep two arrows, duck a third, deflect a throwing hatchet. Your first attacker leaps from the smoke, a woman, taller than you. Everything about her, from her cloth blindfold and leathers to her skin and long braided hair, is the ash-grey that permeates everything on the island, a far cry from the brightly dyed cavalry you fought on the beach. She swings a hooked shortspear towards you.

    You stare at the characters engraved on the grey haft of the weapon, just above where her hand grips it. They are unfamiliar to you. Are they a weaponsmith's signature? A prayer? An invocation?

    Do they say "Stay safe?" Do they say "Come home to me?"

    You kill her. Her blood is also grey.

    Three more follow, also blindfolded. The one with the axe and shield tries to occupy you from the front while his compatriots go for your comparatively undefended right side. You distract the first man with a debilitating strike to the arm while you vault back and break the second's leg with a push kick and behead him as he falls. You leap to stab the third attacker through her collarbone and into her heart, while simultaneously kicking out to slice the throat of the first man with the arrowhead that still protudes from the back of your right calf.

    You duck behind a tree to avoid another volley of arrows. In the distance, through the smoke, you can hear more fighting. It seems they are attacking the trenches enough to keep the legion occupied. How many attackers have they committed to this assault?

    There are too many unknowns about this battle to be sure of what you should do, but you do know that the enemy are targeting you specifically. With this in mind, how should you proceed?

    [ ] Charge to eliminate the archers before they coordinate a defense.
    [ ] Pursue the Hunter, he's the main threat here, the legion can deal with the rest.
    [ ] Make yourself a rallying point and a target by drawing attention to yourself.
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • For A Better World 45
  • Threadmarks
    • TenMoreMiles said:
    [x ] Charge to eliminate the archers before they coordinate a defense.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    You bound further into the smoke at a sprint, away from the defensive line. Aggressively eliminiating the archers now will ensure the best odds for the survival of the legion defenders.

    These Raigi are odd; their eyes are blindfolded and they have some strange power that allows them to sense your location through the smoke. Your own eyes, sharp as they are, cannot pierce the smoke veil, but your other senses can compensate.

    Another clatter of arrow releases signals an incoming volley. You duck and roll to avoid most of them and split the final shaft as you rise with an ascending cut. The pattern of releases inform you that they have shifted their formation to adjust to your movement.

    Three more Raigi emerge from the darkness, armed with hooked spears and oval wooden shields. The first one attempts a stab as you approach at speed, but it goes wide as you duck to the side. Before he can adjust his shield, you sever his leg above the knee and split the spearhead of the second as he lunges to support. He tries to bull you over with his shield, but you evade and crush his skill with a pommel strike as he passes. The third raises his weapon and backs off carefully. You kill the first as he lies prone with a stab to the back of his neck. He would have bled out in less than half an hour anyway.

    The third charges, having found his resolve. He must already know it is hopeless, but he throws his life away anyway.

    The archers are close. You reach the first by the time the last spearman's body hits the ground. She has already nocked another arrow in the heartbeats since the last volley. Your opening strike splits the bowshaft as you enter range. The sharp cracking sound that follows is both split wood and broken bone; the released tension of the limb shatters her wrist. With a grimace of pain, she draws a dagger with her other hand and lunges at you.

    They are all so determined. A distant, analytical part of your mind tells you their forces should have broken by now.

    There are sixteen other archers. Only three of them manage to loose another shot before being eliminated, and none of them hit. Something akin to satisfaction warms you.

    You look down on the last archer, grey blood streaming from his mouth. His wounds are fatal. He looks so young.

    On an unknown impulse, you reach down and pull back his blindfold.

    Grey eyes look back at you, fearful, clouded with tears. In his face, you see other children. You feel nothing.

    You see a city of amber spires, streets wet with gore. Screams echo in the night. The city's defenders are dead. You know you should stop.

    You see endless fields, rotting in the sun where there is nobody left to bring the harvest, mute witness to the death of generations.

    You see flames consuming a family home, reflected in the eyes of a dying girl. Your hands hold the torch and the knife. You feel nothing.

    You see a boy, fantastic eyes filled with horror, looking down on you from a distant mountain as he forsees the life you have already lived.

    The future.

    Blood falls, drop by drop, into an endless sea. You feel nothing.

    The archer is already dead, dull eyes staring at you in cold accusation. You fall to your knees and retch, though nothing comes up. You drop your sword, grasp at your throat.

    You feel nothing. You feel nothing. You feel nothing.

    THE HUNTER: "I know that look."

    You struggle to breathe. Smoke and shadow press down upon you, but you cannot determine the hunter's location.

    THE HUNTER: "You are remembering, aren't you?"

    You give no answer. You couldn't even if you wanted to.

    THE HUNTER: "It erodes your self. It weakens your resolve. Your mind tells you this is not how you are meant to be. To you, the slaughter is weakness. But what if it could be strength?"

    The corpse-man steps from the darkness, glowing with sullen embers.

    THE HUNTER: "You could give yourself over to it. Set it to purpose. No more guilt. No more shame. It is a prize beyond anything we have ever been given. It is more than we deserve, but our lord offers it. You would be first among us."

    He reaches down towards you, a blackened claw of dessicated flesh and bone, curling with smoke.

    [ ] Take his hand.
    [ ] Push it away.
    [ ] Consider his offer.
    [ ] Ask a question.
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • Reader mode
    You must login or register to reply here.
    Remove ads
    Back
    Top