In a dolphin-infested village...Utilizing the dolphin's confusion,
Kevin launches a treacherous, underhanded sneak attack, rolling to his feet and striking swiftly.
[Kevin vs. Dolphin: 1+1 vs. 5+1-
1]
The dolphin, however, dodges with shocking adeptness, and in a single instant appears to make up its mind that yes, it would probably be in its best interest to savage Kevin terribly.
[Counterattack: Dolphin vs. Kevin: 3+1 vs. 2]
Launching toward him, the dolphin slams its hard, tough nose into Kevin's chest, sending him stumbling backwards, the wind knocked right out of him.
[Dolphin vs. Kevin: 4+1 vs. 5]
The distance Kevin gains on the furious aquatic mammal, though, allows him to get a good head start on running the hell away even while the dolphin leaps forward, which in retrospect may have been a smarter idea to do immediately. Stumbling forth, he starts to run away from the village. However, his first desperate stumble does not afford him much in the way of speed, and with some concern he notes that the dolphin appears to be gaining on him rapidly, now whipped into an appropriate rage to tear every bone out of his body in short order. After running down a street for a bit with no luck, he decides to half-run, half-roll into another space between buildings, which the dolphin is fortunately too fat to comfortably fit through.
Feeling like he's got a moment to catch his breath, Kevin rests his back against a nearby wall, only to be interrupted, as one might expect, by the dolphin from before leaping at him from above. It's actually a little late by Kevin's own reckoning.
[Dolphin vs. Kevin: 6+1 vs. 6]
And though he is bumped something fierce by the dolphin's descent, he is fortunate to say that it's not as bad as all that, as most of the dolphin's weight does go into the ground, which fazes it little, as it flops back up and balances on its tail. He'd almost forgotten the pleasures of being chased about by dolphins within an urban environment.
At a hole leading to freedom...Sigmund prepares to lift off, stepping atop his phylactery and lifting it up with his magical presence. Floating through the hole carefully, he takes a moment to look up. Quite a long way to go, it seems - difficult to tell with the darkness. He then looks down, and notes an even longer way to go. With trepidation he tries to make himself ascend.
[Magic roll: 1]
The darkness doesn't help, and neither does his rather unwieldy grip on the phylactery, and so he manages to misjudge the application of presence ever so slightly, and the phylactery tips one way precariously with him still on it.
[Agility roll: 6+1]
Sigmund makes a sudden yelp and moves his paws rapidly, causing the phylactery to tip further, combining it all with a furious reapplication of magic, a process which unfortunately furthers itself to the point where Sigmund is now running atop the phylactery constantly, afraid to stop for fear of plummeting an untold distance downward into what may be a very literal abyss.
In a spinning tunnel of misery...Morton takes a moment to come to a standstill in the spinning tunnel's reference frame, stabilizing himself with a multitude of projected arms. Within a minute or so he finds himself next to Wilma's door, which seems undisturbed by the spinning.
It does, however, appear to be greatly disturbed by the fact that good mage Wilma seems to be yelling and banging on something from the inside, which seems like it'd call for something approaching a quick response.
Above the ruins of the Black Tower of Eckledun...Not satisfied with his insufficient power,
Scott considers briefly where he might find some more. He considers one way, then the other, and pushes at the great bits of rubble and pulls, but nothing comes of it save a small display of twinkling lights around the rubble in question, which seem to mock him.
The shameful thing is, his contemplation of the task is of such intensity that he neglects to even get mad about the nearby area clearly mocking him for being unable to dig through several hundred tons of rubble in search for a buried mage.
In the control room of a giant void eel...Mark, having technically not failed yet at his goal in any capacity, at least as far as he can tell, sits down at the shadow fellow's chair and pulls some straps over himself, feeling much more secure already, even if he's not quite sure what the proper procedure is for using these - much like the controls, they do seem replete with whatsits and protrusions of an ominous nature. Assuming he's done a serviceable job with what he knows, though, he gets back to the controls, testing out some interesting-looking buttons, going for the first glowing one, which emits a powerful shriek that chills Mark to his very bones, and seems to shriek for as long as it keeps it pressed down. How strange.
Next he tries one of the more conspicuous levers, and finds himself slightly pulled upwards as a result. Wonderful!
Finally, he tries a green whatsit, twiddling it this way and that before finding the right way to do it - it clicks, and then Mark feels a sudden roar, and is forced down into the chair with extreme force, to the point where he starts to feel a bit faint. It doesn't last long, however, as soon the roar cuts out, and is instead replaced by a very powerful boom that sends Mark's new chair off the floor and flying upwards - he manages to avoid getting smashed into the ceiling by shrinking back and allowing the armrests to take most of the punishment, which admittedly ruins the chair's structural integrity a little.
Worse, though, Mark becomes aware of a gaping hole beneath him all of a sudden, through which the only thing he can see is blackness - around him the control room appears to have split into several fragments, which now seem to be slowly drifting apart, a black void visible through every widening crack, the individual pieces starting to rotate away from each other. The hallway that led him here, Mark notices, seems to be gone as well.
In fact, he can't really see much beyond this control room, least of all any trace of the void eel he was attempting to commandeer (though a brief red glint does indicate that the light is probably still out there somewhere), which leads him to believe that he may not be as good of a driver as he may have believed. And none of the buttons on the disintegrating control room look to be glowy anymore, which is even worse.