Kronshi
Estylwen
OwO
Sky Blue
Remram
Half Pint
hanzo
Marik
IzurichAaaand it's up. Sorry for the delay this time around. Still been pretty addled by life stuff.
Asuras Member
No spoken words, only napalm and guns
Status
Recent Statuses
4 yrs ago
Political opinions on a public forum? I just wanna rp for god's sake!
3
likes
Bio
Call me: Asuras
I like: Urban Fantasy, High Fantasy, Anime Aesthetics
I play: Anything. Mostly women.
I have a long history of GM'ing, perhaps even more than playing. I like art, and I commission a lot. D&D is my life right now.
Most Recent Posts
@ERode
Gerome smiled, crossed his arms at his back, and casually strolled about the safehouse, inspecting items and corners with fleeting interest as he spoke.
"I am well glad that happenstance brought me here. Forgive me if this knowledge comes off as unnerving, but I can certainly sense in you already that what I need is within you. A tool, right for this job. Tell me, have you ever used that against something of greater being than the Manifestations that typically crawl out of the Dark City hole? Something more than a demon?" Gerome's eyes cast down upon Amaya where she sat from across the room. A scrutiny and analysis had already seemed to have taken place, and his impression of her went deeper than physical appearances and recommendations. She might have been exactly on the money with her presumptions. Gerome continued his sauntering.
"I imagine not, all things considered. It is so rare that gods and angels show themselves in the other world. The Dark City has a habit of showing only its worst," he continued. Roland interjected.
"Most of us are pretty vile ourselves," he scoffed, "Guess the Dark City just gives tit for tat. I'm sure a saintly mage has seen the light here and there." Gerome's expression had become flat, listening to Roland, before he forced his lips back into a lifeless smile.
"You may be right. Perhaps we can see a new saint here tonight. Ma'am, what I request of you is simultaneously the greatest thing you may ever achieve, and yet outwardly a simple matter. You can sense the strangeness in the air tonight, yes? I know of something to come, and an opportunity that may never show again."
Gerome made his way to a more open space in the middle of the safehouse, and from inside his spotless coat pulled out a small vial filled with red. It was obvious enough that it was blood inside. With two fingers, Gerome pinched the glass and shattered it. A splash and then drips of blood hit the concrete floor with faint taps. The puddle bubbled and then from it rose a tall, thin line of red which suddenly split sideways, as if parting the air itself to reveal a secret tunnel beyond.
"Within you will find the Labyrinth, not merely the Dark City. A Dungeon, and one to a very particular place. Deeper still you will find your target. It will be impossible to miss or identify. Your reward-" Gerome pulled from his coat once again, revealing a black credit card, "-is more money than you've ever held at once, I surmise. All you need to do is fell this weakened being. Simple, yes?"
@OwO
"Anyways, it's good that you're here because-" the young woman blinked, stiffened, and turned to an expression of anger all within the span of a half-second. Even for the most half-baked of mages, something as simple as a tossed mundane object was rarely simple. No, they were mediums for explosions, disguised weapons, and sometimes far worse. The snake-eyed woman extended a hand to catch the tossed can and grasped it, deftly catching it before flexing her own powers. Immense strength spaghettified the can -a strength that the woman quickly realized was unnecessary. The contents of the Value Purple Soda exploded in her face with a pitiful fizz. No magic was unleashed. No delayed curse. She blinked, and frowned, and glared.
"What?! What's with you? Who tosses a can of soda?! At least throw a spell at me, like come on!" The woman wiped at her face and then flicked her hands with a grimace. Value Purple smelled like cough medicine, and she clearly didn't enjoy it. "Damnit, my face is gonna be sticky now. No damn water in the Dark City." Tossing the crushed can, she approached Macaron with a taught, driven step.
"We're even now, though yours was definitely more childish. Definitely. Like I was saying though, you got here at perfect timing. Shit's going down already, and two bodies is better than one. I know you can toss cans, but you also do know your way around magecraft, right? Please tell me you haven't just been shirking that side of your lineage too."
@Estylwen
A red flare bore from the enchanted shadow's shifting face, its directive changed now from the mindless predation of others to a true purpose. The crawling void suddenly lurched and rose up briefly before descending upon a shadow beside it. One was but an animal, and another was now a blessed soldier. The two tangled into a storm of darkness and wailing before an obvious victory emerged. Now 'other', the unaffected shadows sought new prey. A soldier stood against a storm of barbarism.
Cygni made a motion in silence, and washed over them a spellcraft that presumably hid them to some extent. It was difficult to discern yet what, if anything, could still sense them, but the feeling of wrongness that pervaded the domain had diminished slightly, indicating that a barrier had been erected in some capacity.
Reina's signal flare had yet to produce any additional aid, nor draw in more enemies. Normally there was a contingent of dark figures and gazing eyes about Yusei's domain, vigilant against the invasion of competing divinities and skulking thieves, but the region felt empty. Only the howling of malign winds kept the trio company. Cygni remained dour and focused, the bend of his vague emotions seeming as if a cold determination. Erina by contrast was a mixture of slight apprehension and a confidence that currently stood dominant. As they pressed on, Reina eventually caught a peculiar anomaly along the way.
It seemed not unlike a crack in the wall of a skyscraper, but was cut into the side of a piece of rubble on the side of the road they traveled. Between the crack, the distinct sights of a section of the Dark City could be seen, as though she were standing within one of its buildings and looking down at an empty street. Peculiar at first, it seemed more and more common as they continued. The slices of Dark City reality became more numerous, and larger. The other two had paused, seemingly noticing the phenomenon as well.
"It is as though the Labyrinth is breaking down," Cygni stated, observing a cut into the domain that hovered at face-height some feet away.
"I was right, this is not something achievable by another mage. Not one of our lifetimes," Erina said sharply. "This can only be the work of something on par with Yusei." She looked to Reina and then Cygni, a hint of worry in her eyes that reflected in the sensed emotions of Reina's spell.
@Remram
The team broke into a hurried reaction, shifting positions, readying weapons, and scanning surroundings. The smoke from the building continued to billow, and its outermost edges sifted around the squad's boots.
"I can make it out, just barely," Rafael said, his voice struggling to maintain cool. His rifle leveled up into the dust cloud, waiting for movement from that 'thing' which was 'merely present' and yet so deadly. "I would retreat to a higher position, but you guys may need my directions here," he continued. In one moment, Dirk was standing there readied, and another, he had vanished. The smoke already saturated the empty void he had left behind.
Bel's expression was a contorted one of anger, his finger itching to loose a volley onto anything that dared to twitch. "Is this just a matter of invisibility, or are we going to have to improvise our attacks here?" he asked. If it was merely invisible, the solution was easy. If not... heads had to be put together.
"I'm afraid the latter," Rafael droned. Emma had deftly pulled a knife into her left hand and set the dog carrier onto the ground with the other. After unzipping the top of the bag a white smoke, cold as ice, evaporated from within. Her 'dog', a pact-bound familiar, manifested within the Dark City as a shapeless fog -though one could often catch a glimpse of something predatory and animalistic lurking just behind the white veil. Incorporeal as it was, perhaps it was one of the better shots at harming the Manifestation they faced.
Mathias watched the confines of the cloud, waiting for that pattern of singularly "dust-ness" to shift, and found his moment: a fracture in the pattern, less than a movement of even a single particle. The concept came rushing for him once again and with it a sensation of jaws and claws within the formless stampede.
Rafael opened fire with a single shot, himself able to see just as well. With his prompt, Bel too ripped into the cloud with a hail of arcane bullets, but nothing yet seemed to connect.
@Kronshi
Despite the fully obscuring gas mask, Ozymandias could discern -perhaps through subtle body language, perhaps retroactively in the voice of hers that followed- that the woman smiled at his answer.
"I see. An astute assessment- hey, wait," she protested as she was grabbed, but did not tug back and instead kept pace beside Ozymandias. The building had indeed shifted, and the scenery outside no longer recognizable. Though it was indeed that same sort of street as any other in the Dark City, the buildings broken any sense that he was still near where he had entered from Realspace. A glint in the sky caught his eye -a shimmer of pure red, and for a moment the sensation that one or more people on the other side of it were looking back at him.
"I'm afraid that after being displaced, I've no idea where the original portal was either," the woman said then. She retracted her arm from his grip as she took a few more tentative steps on the street. "We could form a portal back to Realspace here, if we are not afraid of potentially stepping into someone's apartment." The woman paused, thinking, before turning to face him.
"Ah, I might as well make it plainly clear; from herein, we are accomplices in this matter. You are surely confused about a lot of this, but we'll save the heavier explanations for later. Right now, your observation is indeed correct. There will be a servant after us..." She paused again, "...after you. And much as I threatened you, I do need you alive now."
The woman continued across the street, seemingly aimless, but no less searching for an existing portal. Etiquette demanded that portals used to get in be the ones used to get out, lest wayward rifts form right in the faces of mundane mortals in Realspace by accident. Even moving ten feet in the Dark City could well place oneself somewhere miles away in Realspace by comparison. For the time being, the woman clearly considered it not quite emergency-enough to warrant such an escape hatch.
Little did either of the two mutual strangers know that they were heading straight for their very pursuer.
Gerome smiled, crossed his arms at his back, and casually strolled about the safehouse, inspecting items and corners with fleeting interest as he spoke.
"I am well glad that happenstance brought me here. Forgive me if this knowledge comes off as unnerving, but I can certainly sense in you already that what I need is within you. A tool, right for this job. Tell me, have you ever used that against something of greater being than the Manifestations that typically crawl out of the Dark City hole? Something more than a demon?" Gerome's eyes cast down upon Amaya where she sat from across the room. A scrutiny and analysis had already seemed to have taken place, and his impression of her went deeper than physical appearances and recommendations. She might have been exactly on the money with her presumptions. Gerome continued his sauntering.
"I imagine not, all things considered. It is so rare that gods and angels show themselves in the other world. The Dark City has a habit of showing only its worst," he continued. Roland interjected.
"Most of us are pretty vile ourselves," he scoffed, "Guess the Dark City just gives tit for tat. I'm sure a saintly mage has seen the light here and there." Gerome's expression had become flat, listening to Roland, before he forced his lips back into a lifeless smile.
"You may be right. Perhaps we can see a new saint here tonight. Ma'am, what I request of you is simultaneously the greatest thing you may ever achieve, and yet outwardly a simple matter. You can sense the strangeness in the air tonight, yes? I know of something to come, and an opportunity that may never show again."
Gerome made his way to a more open space in the middle of the safehouse, and from inside his spotless coat pulled out a small vial filled with red. It was obvious enough that it was blood inside. With two fingers, Gerome pinched the glass and shattered it. A splash and then drips of blood hit the concrete floor with faint taps. The puddle bubbled and then from it rose a tall, thin line of red which suddenly split sideways, as if parting the air itself to reveal a secret tunnel beyond.
"Within you will find the Labyrinth, not merely the Dark City. A Dungeon, and one to a very particular place. Deeper still you will find your target. It will be impossible to miss or identify. Your reward-" Gerome pulled from his coat once again, revealing a black credit card, "-is more money than you've ever held at once, I surmise. All you need to do is fell this weakened being. Simple, yes?"
@OwO
"Anyways, it's good that you're here because-" the young woman blinked, stiffened, and turned to an expression of anger all within the span of a half-second. Even for the most half-baked of mages, something as simple as a tossed mundane object was rarely simple. No, they were mediums for explosions, disguised weapons, and sometimes far worse. The snake-eyed woman extended a hand to catch the tossed can and grasped it, deftly catching it before flexing her own powers. Immense strength spaghettified the can -a strength that the woman quickly realized was unnecessary. The contents of the Value Purple Soda exploded in her face with a pitiful fizz. No magic was unleashed. No delayed curse. She blinked, and frowned, and glared.
"What?! What's with you? Who tosses a can of soda?! At least throw a spell at me, like come on!" The woman wiped at her face and then flicked her hands with a grimace. Value Purple smelled like cough medicine, and she clearly didn't enjoy it. "Damnit, my face is gonna be sticky now. No damn water in the Dark City." Tossing the crushed can, she approached Macaron with a taught, driven step.
"We're even now, though yours was definitely more childish. Definitely. Like I was saying though, you got here at perfect timing. Shit's going down already, and two bodies is better than one. I know you can toss cans, but you also do know your way around magecraft, right? Please tell me you haven't just been shirking that side of your lineage too."
@Estylwen
A red flare bore from the enchanted shadow's shifting face, its directive changed now from the mindless predation of others to a true purpose. The crawling void suddenly lurched and rose up briefly before descending upon a shadow beside it. One was but an animal, and another was now a blessed soldier. The two tangled into a storm of darkness and wailing before an obvious victory emerged. Now 'other', the unaffected shadows sought new prey. A soldier stood against a storm of barbarism.
Cygni made a motion in silence, and washed over them a spellcraft that presumably hid them to some extent. It was difficult to discern yet what, if anything, could still sense them, but the feeling of wrongness that pervaded the domain had diminished slightly, indicating that a barrier had been erected in some capacity.
Reina's signal flare had yet to produce any additional aid, nor draw in more enemies. Normally there was a contingent of dark figures and gazing eyes about Yusei's domain, vigilant against the invasion of competing divinities and skulking thieves, but the region felt empty. Only the howling of malign winds kept the trio company. Cygni remained dour and focused, the bend of his vague emotions seeming as if a cold determination. Erina by contrast was a mixture of slight apprehension and a confidence that currently stood dominant. As they pressed on, Reina eventually caught a peculiar anomaly along the way.
It seemed not unlike a crack in the wall of a skyscraper, but was cut into the side of a piece of rubble on the side of the road they traveled. Between the crack, the distinct sights of a section of the Dark City could be seen, as though she were standing within one of its buildings and looking down at an empty street. Peculiar at first, it seemed more and more common as they continued. The slices of Dark City reality became more numerous, and larger. The other two had paused, seemingly noticing the phenomenon as well.
"It is as though the Labyrinth is breaking down," Cygni stated, observing a cut into the domain that hovered at face-height some feet away.
"I was right, this is not something achievable by another mage. Not one of our lifetimes," Erina said sharply. "This can only be the work of something on par with Yusei." She looked to Reina and then Cygni, a hint of worry in her eyes that reflected in the sensed emotions of Reina's spell.
@Remram
The team broke into a hurried reaction, shifting positions, readying weapons, and scanning surroundings. The smoke from the building continued to billow, and its outermost edges sifted around the squad's boots.
"I can make it out, just barely," Rafael said, his voice struggling to maintain cool. His rifle leveled up into the dust cloud, waiting for movement from that 'thing' which was 'merely present' and yet so deadly. "I would retreat to a higher position, but you guys may need my directions here," he continued. In one moment, Dirk was standing there readied, and another, he had vanished. The smoke already saturated the empty void he had left behind.
Bel's expression was a contorted one of anger, his finger itching to loose a volley onto anything that dared to twitch. "Is this just a matter of invisibility, or are we going to have to improvise our attacks here?" he asked. If it was merely invisible, the solution was easy. If not... heads had to be put together.
"I'm afraid the latter," Rafael droned. Emma had deftly pulled a knife into her left hand and set the dog carrier onto the ground with the other. After unzipping the top of the bag a white smoke, cold as ice, evaporated from within. Her 'dog', a pact-bound familiar, manifested within the Dark City as a shapeless fog -though one could often catch a glimpse of something predatory and animalistic lurking just behind the white veil. Incorporeal as it was, perhaps it was one of the better shots at harming the Manifestation they faced.
Mathias watched the confines of the cloud, waiting for that pattern of singularly "dust-ness" to shift, and found his moment: a fracture in the pattern, less than a movement of even a single particle. The concept came rushing for him once again and with it a sensation of jaws and claws within the formless stampede.
Rafael opened fire with a single shot, himself able to see just as well. With his prompt, Bel too ripped into the cloud with a hail of arcane bullets, but nothing yet seemed to connect.
@Kronshi
Despite the fully obscuring gas mask, Ozymandias could discern -perhaps through subtle body language, perhaps retroactively in the voice of hers that followed- that the woman smiled at his answer.
"I see. An astute assessment- hey, wait," she protested as she was grabbed, but did not tug back and instead kept pace beside Ozymandias. The building had indeed shifted, and the scenery outside no longer recognizable. Though it was indeed that same sort of street as any other in the Dark City, the buildings broken any sense that he was still near where he had entered from Realspace. A glint in the sky caught his eye -a shimmer of pure red, and for a moment the sensation that one or more people on the other side of it were looking back at him.
"I'm afraid that after being displaced, I've no idea where the original portal was either," the woman said then. She retracted her arm from his grip as she took a few more tentative steps on the street. "We could form a portal back to Realspace here, if we are not afraid of potentially stepping into someone's apartment." The woman paused, thinking, before turning to face him.
"Ah, I might as well make it plainly clear; from herein, we are accomplices in this matter. You are surely confused about a lot of this, but we'll save the heavier explanations for later. Right now, your observation is indeed correct. There will be a servant after us..." She paused again, "...after you. And much as I threatened you, I do need you alive now."
The woman continued across the street, seemingly aimless, but no less searching for an existing portal. Etiquette demanded that portals used to get in be the ones used to get out, lest wayward rifts form right in the faces of mundane mortals in Realspace by accident. Even moving ten feet in the Dark City could well place oneself somewhere miles away in Realspace by comparison. For the time being, the woman clearly considered it not quite emergency-enough to warrant such an escape hatch.
Little did either of the two mutual strangers know that they were heading straight for their very pursuer.
IC coming soon (tm)
I'll have something soon. Been very busy and tired lately.
Just waiting on Kronshi now.
Look man I aint got every minor location memorized. Its magic or something.
Post is up. Sorry this one took longer. This week has been... crazy. ._.
@OwO
"Place can always be cleaned up," Hideji said, realizing a moment later the implication of his words. He said nothing of it and continued eating as Macaron read the letter. The safehouse neither exploded nor was slipped into a pocket dimension of horrors, and so his heartrate decreased by a marginal amount. There was always an elevated base-level around Macaron.
"Ah, same bitch as another before? Who were those two you promised to kill, what, two weeks ago? Ever follow up on them?" he casually spoke. The increased speed of her macaroni-eating told him all he needed to know -that Macaron was making neither a fake threat, nor only mildly annoyed by this nameless bitch, and content to saving the punishment for later.
"Whoever it is, you're on your own tonight. I've got somewhere to be in a few hours," Hideji said through a cheek-full of cheese and carbs.
With neither car nor mule, Macaron's navigation through the Bluegate City realspace was cursed to either half-day-long walks or public transportation. Her clipper card -a fray-edged laminated pass smudged with dirt- granted her reprieve from the relatively cheap cost of busses and trains, if only by a dollar or so each ride. Still, she could get away with not paying from time to time when hopping onto a bus and judging the vibes of the driver as 'apathetic' or 'tight-ass', or jumping over the turnstile at a station.
Falloway Street was several miles down one of the three major streets of Bluegate, tucked away into a triangle of mismanaged single-lane roads that surrounded a historic office space. Jebby Tim's was a convenience store that the public largely considered "less fancy than 210's and less ghetto than Markstop". A truly middling establishment, with an anthropomorphic elephant featured on the neon nameplate hovering over its doors.
Surely enough, an open rift was sitting plainly in the alleyway behind the Jebby Tim's, barely lit by a streetlamp on its last legs. Even so out in the open, such phenomenon were rarely ever witnessed by normal people. Even for independent mages, unbeholden to an unspoken rule of the Dark Sphere's collective Houses, it was in their best interest to keep the arcane out of public knowledge. Lingering rifts like these tended to come with a host of enchantments to redirect the attention of non-mages away. For mages, it required a keen eye.
Given how easy it was to identify, Macaron got the impression that whoever made this one didn't actually protect it from mortals, however. Laziness.
Once within, Macaron was spirited into the Dark City. A step brought her from dark alley onto a brightly-lit sidewalk. The nondescript reflection of Bluegate was as familiar to her as a mage as was the Realspace it cloned. The 'tags' mentioned in the letter offered Macaron little to go off of initially, but she quickly found her target.
A torso-sized rectangle of glowing blue was embedded into the corner of a nearby building across the street. It surrounded two runes -meaningless to Macaron- but evidently enough a 'tag' that made itself obvious. As proscribed by the letter, following it led her further from the rift and elsewhere in the Dark City. Each tag in succession was as visible as the last, pasted upon various structures like signposts, storefronts, and benches shaped vaguely like bus stops.
As Macaron crossed another street to the next tag, a sound caught her ear, faint as the beat of an owl's wings. Much like the bird, too, it came in swooping from above. Instinct guided her to dodge out of the way of something which threatened her back. Within a split second, something impacted the ground where one she stood. The street did not quite buckle as it split, large splinters snaked through the fake asphalt and converged into one point where a single woman's hand was embedded.
Green eyes peaked out from behind blonde hair and round spectacles, and a fanged smile peeled back. Werewolves normally sported much more obvious patterns of permanent modification, but the sharpness of her teeth seemed just as unnatural. The woman pulled her flattened hand from the hole made in the street, pulling up a puff of dust and gravel, before suddenly shifting her demeanor. She clapped her hands together and swayed playfully.
"Ah! Just kidding! You passed the test! I was just going to pounce you and make sure you listened before jumping at me, but I guess you're too fast, boo..."
@ERode
"I don't get followed," Roland said, then pausing. He took a drag, and with breath strained by the forced presence of burning smoke, he eked out words as smoke left behind them, "as far as I know." At her second and final question, he chuckled.
"You tell me, Miss Amaya. I'm not the particularly confrontational type." There was no knock, as such traditions were meaningless for safehouses, and the handle of the door turned. Swinging into the interior, the heavy fire door revealed perfectly within frame a well-dressed man whose tightly-tailored sleeves, waist, and leg revealed a lanky and tall physique. The white-haired man, with a faint smile, tapped his folded umbrella onto the concrete square just outside the door, shedding a splash of rainwater for someone else to slip on in the future. As he entered, he set aside the umbrella near the door and habitually fixed his outfit. His right hand, unlike the left, was shrouded by a black glove.
"Good evening, fellows," he said. His voice was sharp and clear, but carried within it a subtly threatening tone. Roland was still as ever. The man cast a glance his way before looking to Amaya. His eyes were platinum teetering upon gold, as piercing as the words he spoke. "I hope you are not too settled in, miss. I'm in need of some assistance. Your assistance."
His attire, and the lack of any symbology otherwise, exposed little of his potential identity save for the potential that he was, like Amaya, an independent mage. She certainly didn't recognize him either.
"My name is Gerome. I was recommended to you... by a certain Leonard Forrst. An urgent matter, and one that requires your... armory." The man moved closer towards the center of the room, but unlike Roland's aura of apathy in approaching others, this man's was one of certainty -of arrogance. He held no fear not because he was unafraid, but because he knew he didn't have to be.
"I hope that the direness of my request rouses your interest and assuages any reluctance. I assure you I come with no ill will."
@Estylwen
To those of the Dark Sphere, whose knowledge extended into the supernatural, the existence of deities was a given. These things which the mortal realm had come to imagine existed in part or in full within the Labyrinth, shaped by belief and superstition; but they were mere reflections to what lay beyond. A mage understood that a god represented in the magic of the Labyrinth was but a painting, and that the true being may very well live beyond what the arcane offered.
Even that host which had cemented magic law in aeons past was not a true 'god'. Not of Realspace. Not of everything.
Reina knelt within the chapel dedicated to something beyond the greatest in the Labyrinth -a thing which was master of Realspace as much as it was a governor of the Labyrinth. To many mages such a dedication felt strange, as the depth of their being and persisting was focused upon a triumph over the Labyrinth alone. Why care for elements which they never cared to see or realize? For others, perhaps, the Labyrinth was merely that stepping stone into something greater.
Cygni and Erina were dressed in decorated ensembles of cloth and jewelry -an attire that was wholly out of place in the modern world, but expected in a household such as the Asher's. Delves were ventures of thought and story, as much a metaphor as it was a physical experience. For many mages, presenting themselves in a highly tailored fashion only served to strengthen their presence and power within the Labyrinth. Cygni and Erina were two such characters.
Adopting a regale of blacks and reds, and with a crown of horns, Cygni took on the appearance of a devilish king, whilst Erina sported a starkly contrasting robe of white, whose feathered ends terminated into a black gradient -the faint, threatening approach of darkness upon a canvas of light.
After Reina, the two followed in suit. Reina stepped through a veil of black, and arrived on the other side surrounded by a maelstrom of red.
Unlike the Dark City, whose familiar but 'off' nature was like a dreamy recollection of Realspace, the Labyrinth was a place of true imagination warping around the skeleton of a city in memory. Immense spires with facsimiles of windows stretched into a twisting sky of shimmering clouds and lustrous rings. Yusei's domain was painted crimson and its streets misshapen by coagulated orbs. It was already an unnerving place, but upon entering this night Reina was battered by fell winds. Spectral lights darted through the air carried upon unseen gusts, and a malevolent, ominous feeling nestled into her stomach like a parasite. What had felt abnormal in Realspace became a tangible anxiety twisting within. Cygni and Erina stepped through the portal with looks on their faces that reflected much the same feelings.
Yusei's throne lay a mile beyond, shrouded by a circle of half-toppled skyscrapers. But their walk, as usual, would not be unbothered. This night, however, it would prove even moreso challenging.
Creeping shadows slunk from behind upturned fragments of pavement, their amorphous faces wailing with silence. One, then two... Five... Twelve... Twenty two. Activity here was immense, as if entities had been birthed suddenly in terrible numbers or called from far and wide -inconveniently- to their exact location.
Even for such small-fry as these, it was evident the Labyrinth was restless. Whatever rare chances of worse Manifestations there were felt increasingly more likely.
@Kronshi
The woman tightened her grip upon the 'gun' even stronger, and lifted it an inch if only to exaggerate its presence.
"Consider it a motivator," she said cooly. As her words suggested, she had no interest in stalling his progress. Either she had no intention of harming Ozymandias in reality and simply wished to press his determination in some cold logic, or perhaps the motivator was real and he was a dead man if he failed. The woman remained silent as he sunk deep into the newest round of lockpicking. This last attempt had to work.
As Ozymandias orchestrated his precautions, assessments, and executions the door proceeded as planned each step -a mirror of the previous attempt. It was only at the final lock that he would know if it wished to see him dead or victorious. Three left. Two left. One... There it was. One moment of swift arcane executions cursed at the persistence of this simple door, and with a split-second of heart-stopping anticipation...
There was a click. No, rather, more than a click, it was like a shudder. The door wheezed, its essence of 'door' escaping if only in spirit. Before Ozymandias was a simple door in appearance, but it no longer maintained the purpose of one. It was as if for a moment that the door seemed as though it could simply be walked through.
For a moment, it was though it could be seen through.
Beyond its plain off-white coloration was a figure, small in size, with something trailing after them. He imagined wires, or strings perhaps, like the truth of the figure revealing itself as being attached to an unseen whole beyond. A groan around him pulled back his trance-like vision. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, and the door itself recoiled and rebounded. All at once it was as though the structure of the building had split itself into quarters and then recollected each part. Something about the building felt as though it was no longer the same place.
Behind him, the woman in the raincoat and gasmask surveyed her surroundings, assessing the brief phenomenon. Her gun was gone, replaced by an empty palm. The building and room were still, but Ozymandias could still feel the sensation of something in the ground -not quite a quake. It was unclear if they were reverberations of the senses alone.
"What did you see?" the woman asked. Her head was directed away, towards the singular exit out onto the streets of the Dark City. The howling outside was gone, but left in its silence with Ozymandias a sensation that whatever was calling had found its prey then.
It felt as though it was coming for him.
@Remram
Bel snorted at Mathias' joke, his eyes and head on a swivel around the truck.
"Yea, I'd heard the two candidates up for election are real strange too. 'Moaning Shadow', part of the Upside-down Hallway party is my preferred candidate though," he said. Rafael had closed his eyes, face pensive, and exercised his scrying magic to answer Mathias. Projected senses probed at the immediate surroundings, and then at the whispers and auras of the Dark City. Rafael opened his eyes and turned to Mathias, his eyes turned towards the ground.
"I believe so, but you won't like the answer," Rafael said. Dirk, Emma, and Bel turned their attention towards Rafael and Mathias, but kept their positions in the circle. Rafael spared Mathias from prodding, and continued, "Signs point towards this being a more conceptual Manifestation."
"So the answer is..." Dirk began, chiming in.
"...Everywhere," Emma said.
"Or anywhere," Rafael added. A grimness took hold of their features. Simulated static in each of their ears preceded the sound on Nina's voice coming through via spellcraft.
"Is everyone intact over there? Good. We just picked up an even bigger spike on the meter. Whatever's the cause is picking up in magnitude. What's it looking like on your side?" she inquired.
"We should hurry this along," Dirk said exterior to the spell-radio conversation. The team brought their weapons closer to their chests. "Route seems clear, lets get back into-"
The sound of steel being raked by a heavy mass interrupted Dirk. He turned around to the truck only to find it shredded. Three massive gashes had shorn away huge chunks of the trailer, and undoubtedly damaged or outright destroyed several pieces of their sensor cargo. Nothing of the source could be seen, but that didn't stop Rafael. Boots slammed on the street as the sniper broke into a sprint straight for Mathias. Rafael dove, throwing his weight into the team leader to knock him down.
Something large and invisible battered through the air, narrowly missing the two of them, followed by an explosion of brick and stone as the building next to them was impacted. Smoke poured out onto the streets, temporarily shrouding them.
"Place can always be cleaned up," Hideji said, realizing a moment later the implication of his words. He said nothing of it and continued eating as Macaron read the letter. The safehouse neither exploded nor was slipped into a pocket dimension of horrors, and so his heartrate decreased by a marginal amount. There was always an elevated base-level around Macaron.
"Ah, same bitch as another before? Who were those two you promised to kill, what, two weeks ago? Ever follow up on them?" he casually spoke. The increased speed of her macaroni-eating told him all he needed to know -that Macaron was making neither a fake threat, nor only mildly annoyed by this nameless bitch, and content to saving the punishment for later.
"Whoever it is, you're on your own tonight. I've got somewhere to be in a few hours," Hideji said through a cheek-full of cheese and carbs.
*******************************
With neither car nor mule, Macaron's navigation through the Bluegate City realspace was cursed to either half-day-long walks or public transportation. Her clipper card -a fray-edged laminated pass smudged with dirt- granted her reprieve from the relatively cheap cost of busses and trains, if only by a dollar or so each ride. Still, she could get away with not paying from time to time when hopping onto a bus and judging the vibes of the driver as 'apathetic' or 'tight-ass', or jumping over the turnstile at a station.
Falloway Street was several miles down one of the three major streets of Bluegate, tucked away into a triangle of mismanaged single-lane roads that surrounded a historic office space. Jebby Tim's was a convenience store that the public largely considered "less fancy than 210's and less ghetto than Markstop". A truly middling establishment, with an anthropomorphic elephant featured on the neon nameplate hovering over its doors.
Surely enough, an open rift was sitting plainly in the alleyway behind the Jebby Tim's, barely lit by a streetlamp on its last legs. Even so out in the open, such phenomenon were rarely ever witnessed by normal people. Even for independent mages, unbeholden to an unspoken rule of the Dark Sphere's collective Houses, it was in their best interest to keep the arcane out of public knowledge. Lingering rifts like these tended to come with a host of enchantments to redirect the attention of non-mages away. For mages, it required a keen eye.
Given how easy it was to identify, Macaron got the impression that whoever made this one didn't actually protect it from mortals, however. Laziness.
Once within, Macaron was spirited into the Dark City. A step brought her from dark alley onto a brightly-lit sidewalk. The nondescript reflection of Bluegate was as familiar to her as a mage as was the Realspace it cloned. The 'tags' mentioned in the letter offered Macaron little to go off of initially, but she quickly found her target.
A torso-sized rectangle of glowing blue was embedded into the corner of a nearby building across the street. It surrounded two runes -meaningless to Macaron- but evidently enough a 'tag' that made itself obvious. As proscribed by the letter, following it led her further from the rift and elsewhere in the Dark City. Each tag in succession was as visible as the last, pasted upon various structures like signposts, storefronts, and benches shaped vaguely like bus stops.
As Macaron crossed another street to the next tag, a sound caught her ear, faint as the beat of an owl's wings. Much like the bird, too, it came in swooping from above. Instinct guided her to dodge out of the way of something which threatened her back. Within a split second, something impacted the ground where one she stood. The street did not quite buckle as it split, large splinters snaked through the fake asphalt and converged into one point where a single woman's hand was embedded.
Green eyes peaked out from behind blonde hair and round spectacles, and a fanged smile peeled back. Werewolves normally sported much more obvious patterns of permanent modification, but the sharpness of her teeth seemed just as unnatural. The woman pulled her flattened hand from the hole made in the street, pulling up a puff of dust and gravel, before suddenly shifting her demeanor. She clapped her hands together and swayed playfully.
"Ah! Just kidding! You passed the test! I was just going to pounce you and make sure you listened before jumping at me, but I guess you're too fast, boo..."
@ERode
"I don't get followed," Roland said, then pausing. He took a drag, and with breath strained by the forced presence of burning smoke, he eked out words as smoke left behind them, "as far as I know." At her second and final question, he chuckled.
"You tell me, Miss Amaya. I'm not the particularly confrontational type." There was no knock, as such traditions were meaningless for safehouses, and the handle of the door turned. Swinging into the interior, the heavy fire door revealed perfectly within frame a well-dressed man whose tightly-tailored sleeves, waist, and leg revealed a lanky and tall physique. The white-haired man, with a faint smile, tapped his folded umbrella onto the concrete square just outside the door, shedding a splash of rainwater for someone else to slip on in the future. As he entered, he set aside the umbrella near the door and habitually fixed his outfit. His right hand, unlike the left, was shrouded by a black glove.
"Good evening, fellows," he said. His voice was sharp and clear, but carried within it a subtly threatening tone. Roland was still as ever. The man cast a glance his way before looking to Amaya. His eyes were platinum teetering upon gold, as piercing as the words he spoke. "I hope you are not too settled in, miss. I'm in need of some assistance. Your assistance."
His attire, and the lack of any symbology otherwise, exposed little of his potential identity save for the potential that he was, like Amaya, an independent mage. She certainly didn't recognize him either.
"My name is Gerome. I was recommended to you... by a certain Leonard Forrst. An urgent matter, and one that requires your... armory." The man moved closer towards the center of the room, but unlike Roland's aura of apathy in approaching others, this man's was one of certainty -of arrogance. He held no fear not because he was unafraid, but because he knew he didn't have to be.
"I hope that the direness of my request rouses your interest and assuages any reluctance. I assure you I come with no ill will."
@Estylwen
To those of the Dark Sphere, whose knowledge extended into the supernatural, the existence of deities was a given. These things which the mortal realm had come to imagine existed in part or in full within the Labyrinth, shaped by belief and superstition; but they were mere reflections to what lay beyond. A mage understood that a god represented in the magic of the Labyrinth was but a painting, and that the true being may very well live beyond what the arcane offered.
Even that host which had cemented magic law in aeons past was not a true 'god'. Not of Realspace. Not of everything.
Reina knelt within the chapel dedicated to something beyond the greatest in the Labyrinth -a thing which was master of Realspace as much as it was a governor of the Labyrinth. To many mages such a dedication felt strange, as the depth of their being and persisting was focused upon a triumph over the Labyrinth alone. Why care for elements which they never cared to see or realize? For others, perhaps, the Labyrinth was merely that stepping stone into something greater.
Cygni and Erina were dressed in decorated ensembles of cloth and jewelry -an attire that was wholly out of place in the modern world, but expected in a household such as the Asher's. Delves were ventures of thought and story, as much a metaphor as it was a physical experience. For many mages, presenting themselves in a highly tailored fashion only served to strengthen their presence and power within the Labyrinth. Cygni and Erina were two such characters.
Adopting a regale of blacks and reds, and with a crown of horns, Cygni took on the appearance of a devilish king, whilst Erina sported a starkly contrasting robe of white, whose feathered ends terminated into a black gradient -the faint, threatening approach of darkness upon a canvas of light.
After Reina, the two followed in suit. Reina stepped through a veil of black, and arrived on the other side surrounded by a maelstrom of red.
Unlike the Dark City, whose familiar but 'off' nature was like a dreamy recollection of Realspace, the Labyrinth was a place of true imagination warping around the skeleton of a city in memory. Immense spires with facsimiles of windows stretched into a twisting sky of shimmering clouds and lustrous rings. Yusei's domain was painted crimson and its streets misshapen by coagulated orbs. It was already an unnerving place, but upon entering this night Reina was battered by fell winds. Spectral lights darted through the air carried upon unseen gusts, and a malevolent, ominous feeling nestled into her stomach like a parasite. What had felt abnormal in Realspace became a tangible anxiety twisting within. Cygni and Erina stepped through the portal with looks on their faces that reflected much the same feelings.
Yusei's throne lay a mile beyond, shrouded by a circle of half-toppled skyscrapers. But their walk, as usual, would not be unbothered. This night, however, it would prove even moreso challenging.
Creeping shadows slunk from behind upturned fragments of pavement, their amorphous faces wailing with silence. One, then two... Five... Twelve... Twenty two. Activity here was immense, as if entities had been birthed suddenly in terrible numbers or called from far and wide -inconveniently- to their exact location.
Even for such small-fry as these, it was evident the Labyrinth was restless. Whatever rare chances of worse Manifestations there were felt increasingly more likely.
@Kronshi
The woman tightened her grip upon the 'gun' even stronger, and lifted it an inch if only to exaggerate its presence.
"Consider it a motivator," she said cooly. As her words suggested, she had no interest in stalling his progress. Either she had no intention of harming Ozymandias in reality and simply wished to press his determination in some cold logic, or perhaps the motivator was real and he was a dead man if he failed. The woman remained silent as he sunk deep into the newest round of lockpicking. This last attempt had to work.
As Ozymandias orchestrated his precautions, assessments, and executions the door proceeded as planned each step -a mirror of the previous attempt. It was only at the final lock that he would know if it wished to see him dead or victorious. Three left. Two left. One... There it was. One moment of swift arcane executions cursed at the persistence of this simple door, and with a split-second of heart-stopping anticipation...
There was a click. No, rather, more than a click, it was like a shudder. The door wheezed, its essence of 'door' escaping if only in spirit. Before Ozymandias was a simple door in appearance, but it no longer maintained the purpose of one. It was as if for a moment that the door seemed as though it could simply be walked through.
For a moment, it was though it could be seen through.
Beyond its plain off-white coloration was a figure, small in size, with something trailing after them. He imagined wires, or strings perhaps, like the truth of the figure revealing itself as being attached to an unseen whole beyond. A groan around him pulled back his trance-like vision. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, and the door itself recoiled and rebounded. All at once it was as though the structure of the building had split itself into quarters and then recollected each part. Something about the building felt as though it was no longer the same place.
Behind him, the woman in the raincoat and gasmask surveyed her surroundings, assessing the brief phenomenon. Her gun was gone, replaced by an empty palm. The building and room were still, but Ozymandias could still feel the sensation of something in the ground -not quite a quake. It was unclear if they were reverberations of the senses alone.
"What did you see?" the woman asked. Her head was directed away, towards the singular exit out onto the streets of the Dark City. The howling outside was gone, but left in its silence with Ozymandias a sensation that whatever was calling had found its prey then.
It felt as though it was coming for him.
@Remram
Bel snorted at Mathias' joke, his eyes and head on a swivel around the truck.
"Yea, I'd heard the two candidates up for election are real strange too. 'Moaning Shadow', part of the Upside-down Hallway party is my preferred candidate though," he said. Rafael had closed his eyes, face pensive, and exercised his scrying magic to answer Mathias. Projected senses probed at the immediate surroundings, and then at the whispers and auras of the Dark City. Rafael opened his eyes and turned to Mathias, his eyes turned towards the ground.
"I believe so, but you won't like the answer," Rafael said. Dirk, Emma, and Bel turned their attention towards Rafael and Mathias, but kept their positions in the circle. Rafael spared Mathias from prodding, and continued, "Signs point towards this being a more conceptual Manifestation."
"So the answer is..." Dirk began, chiming in.
"...Everywhere," Emma said.
"Or anywhere," Rafael added. A grimness took hold of their features. Simulated static in each of their ears preceded the sound on Nina's voice coming through via spellcraft.
"Is everyone intact over there? Good. We just picked up an even bigger spike on the meter. Whatever's the cause is picking up in magnitude. What's it looking like on your side?" she inquired.
"We should hurry this along," Dirk said exterior to the spell-radio conversation. The team brought their weapons closer to their chests. "Route seems clear, lets get back into-"
The sound of steel being raked by a heavy mass interrupted Dirk. He turned around to the truck only to find it shredded. Three massive gashes had shorn away huge chunks of the trailer, and undoubtedly damaged or outright destroyed several pieces of their sensor cargo. Nothing of the source could be seen, but that didn't stop Rafael. Boots slammed on the street as the sniper broke into a sprint straight for Mathias. Rafael dove, throwing his weight into the team leader to knock him down.
Something large and invisible battered through the air, narrowly missing the two of them, followed by an explosion of brick and stone as the building next to them was impacted. Smoke poured out onto the streets, temporarily shrouding them.
Next IC will come tomorrow.
I'll get on a post soon. I recently got a cat so I'm a little busier than usual but should have next IC soon.
© 2007-2024