"Great...wish I knew if the rune was a boundary or an origin point, guess I'll find out."
Take my mace, tell the squire to stay here and watch things, then...proceed, down into the dark depths where the Agents of The Crown reside.
5c, 31, split COMP.
[COMP: 2/2] Spell
You conjure the image of a spike which slowly fades away.
[COMP: 1/1] Spell
You conjure the image of a boxy cage which slowly fades away.
You proceed past the barrier and immediately see a difference, from the inside the haze is almost impenetrable. After a few paces you notice that the shadows are stretching towards you, the shadowy corridor ahead appears to shift and twist. The lights in both the left and right forks have been dimmed by some outside interference; likely whatever lies beyond.
After a few more steps you feel the temperature drop sharply like falling from a tropical beach into the arctic ocean. Ahead the deep shadowed recesses seem to watch you with eternal malevolence.
[TRAN: 7] Resistance
They are everywhere, listening, watching. What do they want? Your soul? Your body? You begin to panic feeling the fear that primal man had of the dark, filled with predators and their deadly fangs and scything claws.
"Hey Soteriologist, can I turn this thing into a zombie?"
Waiting intensifies. While he's at it, James uses Memento Mori.
Invoke the legacy of the gods that man once was.
Cow the flames of genesis and align them to your will.
You need only a loop of wire and the right words.
And though I may speak them to you, my voice will never reach you.
MAXIMUM WAIT
Memento Mori highlights a wall, with the obvious implication that if you were to kool-aid-man your way through, you would likely meet some sort of grisly end. Likewise, the region around the giant murderlobster corpse is still red with certain death.
After a few minutes sitting, wondering how you will replace your feet and how you're meant to take out that field, you hear a loud crack from outside followed by clinking and jingling. The area in its direction pales, apparently whatever's making that ruckus isn't too bad for your health.
"This little shit..."
Crazy maneuvers time. Try to trap the dark tentacle thing under my frame and eject myself out as far out as possible. With any luck malfunctioning drive comes down while the thing is still trapped and I'm theoretically safely away.
[LTAR vs. SDEF: -1 vs 5] Attempting to trap it
[SDEF vs. LTAR: 1 vs 6] Trying to keep the LATRANS intact
You attempt to trap the monstrosity and fail abysmally, violent mechanical groans and a flood of new warning messages flood the cock pit as your foe's tentacles quickly tear apart your frame, your efforts earning only their grating laughter-like roar.
An explosion, a pneumatic hiss, and near instantly, impact, it feels like someone has just tried to jam your seat up your backside, which, to be fair, isn't too far from the truth. Those were the first set of the thrusters, the actual "eject" ones, they don't send you too far - they're more just there to get you out of the frame, and for the safety thrusters to make sure you're oriented the right way and not about to be launched into a building.
You know from experience that they are an utter bitch to install, all sorts of delicate sensors wired up with some outdated processors and linked to a frankly irresponsible amount of thrusters, which are seemingly 50% mechanical interlocks and safety measures by weight. Well, they were at least. Those pieces of black plastic and metal, scattering in your wake? Those are the interlocks, you won't be needing them. Now, it's just the thrusters remaining. Okay, there's also the chair, and you, the person strapped to it, but, that's more of an afterthought.
You remember to relax for this next bit, let yourself sink into the now, semi-inflated, and decidedly softer seat. It'd have felt a hell of a lot worse otherwise. You're practically much crushed against your seat as the "get the fuck out of dodge" thrusters fire off and eject, easily propelling you half a block away somewhere along that ordeal. What few thrusters remain will ensure a safe (but far from comfortable) landing. At the very last possible moment of course, the NEE wouldn't want their precious little pilots to get picked off in midair now would they?
This of course means that as you sail backwards, wondering what lunatic designed this system, you have quite a good view of the ensuing bloodbath. Lucky you.
So, the capacitor fires off back towards the ground near its previous position, its previous position that you have thankfully just evacuated. Seeing this, the tentacled abomination takes to the air once more. Fast enough to live. Not fast enough to save itself.
The capacitor hits the ground. It does not continue. It freezes, an instant after it touches the ground, before the impact had even really began, and rushes back upwards.
A snap, a sharp, loud, snap. As if the very tension in the air, had pulled
something, you're not sure what, to its breaking point.
The monstrosity's legs and parts of numerous tentacles fall off. A sanguine deluge, crackling with dying discharges of dark energy, gushes forth.
It was a perfect cut, a clean slice along a plane precisely perpendicular to direction of gravity, and perhaps, more concerningly, at around the rough height such that, were the LUPUS in range of it, it would have neatly bisected the cockpit and the pilot within.
A horrid, furious roar. The beast lashes out in every direction, as if assailed by an unseen foe, dark discharges flying off at random angles.
Snap.
Another "slice", this at exactly half the height off the ground as the previous one. Severed limbs, blasts of energy, flailing tentacles, all cut apart.
Snap.
It is perhaps thankful, that your comrades were a bit further back relative to where you fought; thankful, that the brighter ones had disengaged and ran. Because every soldier, every demon still in a wide radius has just been neatly bisected at just below chest height.
Bloody gurgles.
Snap.
Horrified screams.
Snap.
Cries for help.
Snap.
Snap.
Snap.
Snap.
Snap.
Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap.
Blood, flesh, and metal. Diced, scattered, and fallen.
Unrecognizable.
From what you can make out, most of the soldiers are fine. Physically, at least. They managed to retreat far enough to be out of range. Mentally, well, let's just say you don't envy their therapists. The fact that one or two of them got caught running, their severed top halves managing to sail just out of range into the embrace of bloodloss, shock, and merciful death, probably doesn't help much. You hear some screams, some sobs, most are quiet though, rushing back into cover as the LUPUS unloads into the disoriented abomination.
What the hell did it... do? That was fantastic but... what? 
MOAR SCIENCE!
Look around for a tiny, tiny shred of wax on the ground around me. If this spell does what I immediately assumed it does, and trades off effect for cost reduction, I might have summoned an TEENY TINY bit of wax, MAYBE shaped like a crayon
ALso:
"3d 72 -a"
MOAR CRAYONS!
Hmm, for more barrier testing, try and find a hollow scrap metal tube, or bit of discarded newspaper I can roll into a tube, and insert one end of said tube into the barrier. Do the runes appear on the inside of the tube? If not I may have a way to sneak in without tripping any arcane alarms (provided they ignore random garbage being inserted and removed over and over).
Regardless of if that works, look around for a light vehicle, something with an enclosed cabin/drivers seat/cockpit, preferably operational but not necessarily. I has a plan.
(I presume my earlier attempts to find a manhole nearby were for naught?)
[COMP: 8/6] CRAYONS!
You get a purplish-pink crayon. It isn't violently murdering you, abnormally heavy, abnormally light, giving you dominion over wax, or anything like that. It seems to be, for all intents and purposes, a perfectly mundane crayon. Which is to say that there is
obviously something very, very wrong with it, you just need to figure out
what.
You can't find any other wax here however, no matter how hard you look.
We forgot about that bit about manholes last turn, sorry about that. But no, you didn't even need to search for any, you know that all the maintenance areas, located within the ridges of the helix itself (which is to say within the literal floor) are accessed via maintenance access point. Access points that, thanks to this little war of yours, are no longer accessible and have been sealed off, which may or may not involve flooding them with cement or some other such substance.
The runes still appear on the inside although no alarms are going off or spiked tentacles appearing to do unspeakable things to you so... positive outcome? You turn around and are presented with dozens of options of cars parked carelessly where immortal magical jackasses can steal them.
Caladlebolg + '12 ixc'. Finish them off. Then continue following Beirus.
[UTAR vs. MDEF: 4 vs 1, 1, 1] Caladlebolg swings targeting the recovering masks, targets close enough to only need one roll
[COMP: 8/8] Spell
[UTAR vs. MDEF: 5 vs 9, 5 ] Spell attack on the ascending masks, targets close enough to only need one roll
You swing Caladlebolg a few times, corrosion spilling forth and overwhelming the still-regenerating malestroms, weathering their masks to naught. With the momentum of the last swing, spin upon your heel and unleash your necrotic barrage upon the two ascending masks. They all manage to avoid damage by locking their debris fields together and slowing them down to the point of forming a barrier, one which your inky black-green missiles rapidly rusts and ruins.
They're unharmed, but they'll need some time to regrow their debris fields. Seeing as the three blocking your path are just piles of rubble now, you gesture for O'Greenahan to disengage and let him rush past you, while you follow along, covering his back against the four remaining foes.
Stay out of the way of Hawk's attack. Keep shooting if I need to. Keep going.
[UTAR vs. SDEF: 4 vs 1] Opening fire on a mask
[SDEF vs. LTAR: 1 vs -1, 1, 1] Not being brutally murdered; nowhere to dodge
((Considering how badly they rolled, they might as well just commit seppuku, seriously, what the hell?))
The three maelstroms on your side rushes forth, storms of debris and shrapnel descending upon you. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Seems that, you're going to have to meet this head-on. Tendril-like protrusions erupt, the nearest one sweeping to take your head; you catch it with the side of your bound weapon, and time stops.
With each swing, each trigger pull, time stops. It's, slow, methodical, almost relaxing even. You fall into a certain rhythm, a cross step here to get into a better position, angle the rifle to redirect an attack there, a quick twirl to keep the shrapnel out of what little flesh remains, and another burst-fire to keep them on their (figurative) toes. Hard to tell how much subjective time passes, an hour? Maybe more? Doesn't feel that long, but combat hardly ever does.
In real time, the clash lasts only a few seconds. Your twirling, spinning rifle clashing over and over against their onslaught, punctuated with roaring discharges and quick steps that, again and again, barely escaping injury. A violent cacophony. You leap over sweeping tendrils, and deflect shrapnel with impossibly well-aimed shots, a dancing figure amidst a storm of death.
A gap. An opening. You slam your rifle against another incoming blade-like limb and dismiss it, resummoning it in your other hand, the barrel pressed against one of the masks, right against the rune. All four barrels empty at once, blowing it apart. Expertly guiding the recoil, you use it to slam the butt or your rifle backwards, parrying a blow aimed for your throat, combining the force of the incoming strike with a quick backstep to disengage now that the Ladlemonger has finished off his lot.
You both continue higher through the tower until you stop, remembering the elevators from the first building. The tower up here is scorched all around and you can see the faint flicker of electrical discharges hiding behind light globes and near the bare, exposed rebar.
Author
Topic: Perplexicon - Down the Foxhole - Raining Mecha (Read 177401 times)