Kalleth

Closed

Ennui approved.

Revival of the Guild Contests is here!

Done! I went a few hundred words over, but I don't think the writing is overly fluffy and it's a complete story, so I don't mind.

RPGC #15: New Beginnings - Prompt and Entries

The Elder's Due (Wordcount: 1339)

“I hear you’ve been doing some jobs again,” he said casually, his voice crackling and soft as cigar smoke.

“Yeah, I figured I could use the cash what with times being what they are,” the reply came, practiced and even with just the right amount of plausibility.

“Your dad’s been looking for you. Said you were getting into the wrong sort of trouble kid.”

“Only one kind of trouble old man, and I ain’t in it.”

“That a fact?” The question went unanswered for a time, while cold spirits went down and the old ghosts came up.

“Kid, you’re in over your head.”

“Like hell I am.” A distant roar of thunder punctuated his retort. Rain pattered on the roof of the bar, and the sound of the door ringing behind them was as raucous a noise as the bar had seen all night. Thump of boots. A seat taken by a leather jacket. Murmured order, followed by brisk service.

“That fella’s got some height on you, I’d say you’re in over your head.”

“He’s not here for me.”

“How can you tell?” A long silence accompanied this question, of a different kind than the first. The rain fell harder, and flashes of lightning illuminated the face of a man betrayed.

“Because he’s here for you, old man.” The whiskey ran smooth, and the tempest outside masked the storm inside the bar. The kid got up to leave, and when he did he placed his due and then some on the counter. “Job’s done, I ‘spect that’ll be plenty to cover the damages. You never saw me.”

“They’ll come for you too someday.” That crackling voice couldn’t mask the panic well.

“Let them,” the kid said, voice dripping with arrogance. “I’ll always be ready.”

And then the kid walked out of the bar into the tempest. The storm he left in his wake made the wind and rain look like an old man spitting in his own face.

---

Alder sat on the porch of the small one-story house, pipe in hand, puffing away. It was only 5:10 AM and he couldn’t sleep. Sun was rising though, and as he felt its warmth the superficial chill on his skin lessened. Chill in his bones felt colder than ever, but that sort of thing couldn’t be helped. Not when you were lucky enough to wake up most mornings, to pull yourself out of bed, grimace at your ugly reflection in the mirror, and then go outside to think your thoughts.

Alder switched hands with his pipe, scratching his face idly as he looked out on the valley. His cavernous, line-strewn face, so riddled with wrinkles that his scars almost hid between the folds. Almost. Alder took a pull, and breathed out long and quiet. He’d not spoken a word in years, even as he kept right on with the thinking. It got hard sometimes, when Alder couldn’t hear himself think above the gunfire, the screams, the sounds of rending flesh and spurting blood and sizzling…

Pipe done and smoked, Alder got to his feet and went to work. His workshop lay just adjacent to his little house, the barn style doors opened just a crack, padlock strewn on the ground nearby.

Unsurprising, Alder often drank late into the evening and forgot to lock up. He went in without bothering to close the door, and started to set his work station in order. It didn’t take too long, since he was the only one out here, and there was only so much disorder a single man could cause. He was able to put everything back in its proper place in no time, and then he sighed. Living all by himself way out here was peaceful, but not very energetic. That was fine and good for an old man like Alder, and as he picked out a chunk of butternut he contemplated his own bemusement at that. That a man of his violent past should find this tranquility to suit him so well smacked of an ironic jab.

Alder didn’t ply his craft in the workshop. He hadn’t been apprenticed to a master carpenter as a boy, had never taken any formal classes in woodworking, hadn’t even ever really seen any fine wood pieces for the better part of his life. Alder’s hands worked the butternut, running with the grain of the wood running against the grain of Alder’s being. Or maybe not. It was true he hadn’t been at this so long, but his numerous pieces lining the workshop’s shelves attested to Alder’s persistence in this of all things. He examined them from his stool, remembering the experience of carving each one.

The first piece was more of an object lesson in how far Alder had come, than anything else. A sharp, crooked piece barely resembling the intended product, all the cuts were angry and angular, most against the grain and trying to rip through the wood into the soul of what he had wanted to make at that time.

Many gradually improving pieces later, came the first good piece. A fox, its form distinct, smooth, and competently formed. There were crooked lines one could spot, and imperfections too, but the theme of the piece came together in a unified concept. Alder wasn’t some sort of artistic expert, but he’d say that the sly fox of his was where his competency finally matched his vision. Many pieces came after the fox, each one more or less as he’d set out to create them.

Today Alder felt different. When he ran his hands over the butternut wood, all cleaned and ready to be shaped, the form came to him. Just like that. Alder bowed his head, and began to carve. He opened his eyes from time to time, to ascertain just where exactly a line should end, or to make certain he didn’t cut himself like a damn fool, but for the most part he bowed his head, breathed in and out, and carved. The sounds of the birds in the trees seeped in from outside, and soon enough even with Alder’s eyes closed, an almost divine light shone in and filled his vision with gold rather than darkness. He heard nothing but the songs, smelled nothing but wood sealant, felt nothing but the soft grain under the pads of his fingertips.

A crash from the back of Alder’s workshop rang out.

“Fuck,” A voice cursed quietly, coming from the same area as the sudden noise. Alder’s hand slipped, his focus broken. He opened his eyes and frowned. He’d cut himself by mistake. A few droplets of blood marred the otherwise beautiful figure that Alder’s own hands had carved. He got up abruptly, provoking more startled noises and sounds from the corner of his workshop. Alder went over to one of his worktables and got a rag to soak up the blood. He only lightly dabbed and otherwise let the fabric do its work. Relieved that no stain remained, Alder finally attended to his wound. There were bandages in the cabinet above him. He reached up and looked inside. To his dismay, the first-aid kit was missing. He realized he now probably knew where it resided, but as he turned to go and confront the intruder-

BANG!

The figure that Alder had carved fell to the workshop’s floor, landing on its side. Feet quickly thundered past it, jostling the butternut wood and causing it to roll into an expanding pool of blood. The liquid bled into the wood’s own reddish grain, irreparably staining the figure.

---

An old man, with a deeply lined face, and a worn expression. A masterpiece of wood carving, mysteriously found and exhibited in many famous art museums. The Elder’s Due, connoisseurs tentatively titled the piece, whose creator hadn’t provided any name for the figure. Conservators tried to remove the stains, but found that the blood ran too deep, and they decided to leave it as it was. Thousands upon thousands of visitors see The Elder’s Due every year.

Closed

Jordan Manilow

---

@Crusader Lord@Spriggs27

---

A cry for help. A desperate plea. An unfamiliar name being called for. His name. Jordan shook himself and drew up the iron in his bones. His mettle would not bend, nor break, when he was called to duty. He might be a failure, he might not be. He would never let it be said that he did not give it his all. He turned on his heels and took off at a sprint. The cloud followed obligingly, and Jordan cracked his knuckles as he ran. He felt strange again, his awareness of the bleachers heightening, and he retained a vague sense of the ground below them. He didn't let that distract him for the moment. Reaching the edge of the bleachers, he leapt up off the tallest point and reached the apex of his jump looking down below.

Darkness.

Jordan dove, rotating in the air to plant his feet towards the ground. He seemed to weigh more than normal, and as he landed with a deafening boom, Jordan arched backward and clenched his fists. He felt everything. Every rock, every plant, every metal. The awareness rocked his mind, a piercing pain blocking everything else out. He screamed silently, not hearing his own voice. He heard... grinding. A crumbling thunder that scraped and groaned and seemed impossibly large. Jordan surged forward, his body moving from instinct. His senses... Too much... He felt his grip lock, and he squeezed with all of his-

At the centre of the darkness, its source, Jordan held a young girl by the neck, choking her. She had tears in her eyes, and all Jordan saw was terror. He dropped her immediately, flinching back, staring at his hands. What the fuck is going on? I can't... No. Kano's wrong. It's- It's not her. It could never be her. But... What did I just-? The gym teacher turned to look at the rest of his students. They all looked at him, terrified. His responsibility. His duty. He'd failed them, hadn't he?

Darkness.

Jordan felt a terrible pain in his face. He blinked and saw grass under his face. He looked up, and saw the darkness user's walls, dividing two angry looking girls. He'd just leapt off the bleachers and landed face first on the ground. Perfect. Getting to his feet, the gym teacher stomped over to the bluish haired girl with the upstuck attitude. She'd covered herself in a sheet of ice devised from her sweat. Jordan would have been impressed on another occasion. Now though, he simply grabbed her arm with enough force to crack the ice shell, his own hands possessing all the strength and durability of granite. Gripping her by the arm, he towed her aside next to the bleachers, and locked her feet in place with rock. Wordless, he moved back toward the redhead who was too eager to mete out punishment. She was emitting measurable amounts of heat, which he shrugged off, even welcomed faintly, as it dried him off. He grabbed her by the wrist and tugged her to the other side of the bleachers, where he repeated his time out preparations, binding her feet to the ground as solidly as concrete.

"The rest of you, back to your dorms! Or your next class. I don't care! Just make yourselves scarce! The show's over!" His voice was harsher than he'd intended. He sounded like Kano. He pointed to the darkness user, as she turned to leave and called out, "Hey, stay here emo chick!" Jordan held his right hand in his left, clenching and unclenching, trying to control his breathing. He closed the distance between the two, and got down on one knee, looking up at her. He examined her neck, and then her face. He looked at her from head to toe, every bit the teenage girl that she so obviously was. Jordan recalled those walls of darkness she'd evidently created, softly moving waves of blackness, somewhere between a gas and a liquid, acting as barriers to separate her classmates, to keep them from hurting each other. Jordan met this young girl's gaze for all of about two and a half seconds, before he bowed down into his hands and started to sob.

It... just for a second...

It had felt good to choke the life from her with his own hands. He'd felt...

Powerful.

Explanation

The paragraph between both utterances of "Darkness" is a vision/hallucination.
In actual fact, Jordan leaps off the bleachers, falls on his face, and then ends the class and does the other stuff.

Closed

For some context.



Only without the high railing at the top, and imagining the bleachers themselves to be two or three times higher.

---

Just posted. Manilow's Gauntlet is coming to an abrupt end. Why, you ask?

Well for one, you kids suck at teamwork and shit. C'mon. I can only watch you squabble so long. And for two....

PLOT.

*Calls for Papa @Zelosse*

Closed

.....
Jesus Christ, that's a billion fucking updates....

I won't lie, I'm having a hell of a time keeping track of what I have to actually respond to anymore.

@Old Amsterdam

Nothing atm. The interactions have moved past Dia and Felix for the moment. Feel free to fill in their reactions to what's going on around them or make a new move.

Closed

@Spriggs27

It's actually about to kick off at the track and field, but yes, Jordan's otherwise occupied atm.

Closed

Jordan Manilow

---

@Spriggs27@Old Amsterdam@Zelosse@Sailorsadie@RoccanIronclad@Stern Algorithm

---

Jordan sat from his perch, ass buzzing faintly thanks to the pink-haired boy's efforts. He sincerely hoped the boy would give up, if only so that Jordan could stop feeling his hair stand on end, even more so than usual. He raised an eyebrow at the student down below who in a fit of striking observance, had the gall to label Jordan a hobo. Jordan chewed at his lip, considered, and then nodded at that. After all, she hadn't seen the Shed. None of them had, and hopefully never would. Jordan was fine with his students believing that age-old myth that the teachers lived at school, waking up at the precise time their classes began and going into sleep mode during the holidays. He held his tongue, wondering if any of the students would defend his honour. After all, he'd put down more two-bit tykes of her ilk in his day than he could count on both of his hands and feet, at least. All the same, he started devising comebacks almost by accident, all of them vastly inappropriate and vastly hilarious.

The temperature dropped markedly, and Jordan thought for just a second that the headmaster had come to spectate, before he noted the girl who looked slightly uncomfortable standing next to Felix as the probable source of the chill. That might also be his girlfriend, Jordan thought absently. He felt kind of bored at this point, waiting for more projectiles, or at least a ratcheting up of intensity from his pupils. This level of cold was as likely to affect him as was the static currently tingling against his butt.

Jordan's interest was piqued by the beginnings of a tremor, signalling an earth elementalist, before he saw the beginnings of infighting emerge. One girl started questioning Felix's girlfriend, while the fire user himself began attempting to counteract his girlfriend's powers, which clearly were not properly focused. The end result, while impressive individually, resulted in Manilow leaning back and enjoying the sunshine while a possible threat neutralized itself. These kids were eons away from true teamwork, truly fulfilled potential, and that was why Jordan's enjoyment of the weather could remain only as a façade. His expression was grim, though none of them would see it. They needed to work together, and prevail as a united force, if what was happening to Kano, maybe even to Jordan himself, if that progressed...

A crackling noise broke the silence of Jordan's thoughts and he rolled backward on instinct, coming up in a kneeled position on the bleachers themselves. The edge of which had now been covered over with ice, where he'd been sitting moments before. Perhaps a more talented ice user had decided to take action, or that girlfriend of Felix's had more control than he gave her credit for. Either way, Jordan stood up now and felt the tingling in his feet through his shoes, a faint vibration under which he could feel the current of electricity pulsing. Maybe he was writing his students off too quickly. After all, the current was just as strong here as it was on the bars near the pink-haired boy, and Jordan wagered the current retained its force along the whole of the bleachers. An impressive feat. Not sufficient to subdue their teacher, but notable nonetheless.

Jordan was making to peek over the edge, maybe toss a few taunts, and see to what end the drama below had progressed before he felt a shadow come over him. Looking up, he saw a cloud familiar, or elemental, filled to bursting with rain.

"Fuck." Jordan breathed.

He ran in the other direction, students forgotten as the cloud kept pace with him, the beginnings of rain crackling down on the bleachers. Not for the first or the last time, Jordan cursed water users with all of his worst obscenities. Jordan rapidly approached the end of the bleachers, running out of room and ideas. Desperate, in a way he hadn't expected his students to bring out in him, Jordan skidded to a stop at the bleachers' edge. The cloud came over him, and with it came the rain, a conductor which could increase the electric potential, lower his resistance to devastating or even lethal levels. Jordan's power came fitfully, and then in a flood, all of his will concentrated above him.

It wasn't enough.

Jordan felt his body grow slick with rain, felt the water weakening his resistance, flowing down in moments to meet the bleachers. Jordan waited for pain, burning, and very bad smells. A tiny shock jolted up his spine, before subsiding. The Gym Teacher blinked, and then realized he couldn't feel the electricity at this end of the bleachers. No vibrations. And then he felt ridiculous. Lucky, foolish, and a little bit embarrassed. Clearly his body was by no means the most direct path for the charge to take back to the ground. If Jordan had been facing a trained and competent lightning user, getting wet would have meant death, for even the most hardy of earth elementalists. However in his current untrained state, this student was unable to provide sufficient will to overcome the natural laws of his element. It had merely been an unpleasant coincidence, then, that Jordan had almost been overcome by children without any training using the barest measures of their strength, in disorganized concert, had it not?

Standing silent in the rain, Jordan Manilow shivered, his mind roiling at the implications.

Closed

Jordan Manilow

@Hammerman@Arya10108909@RoccanIronclad

---

The first attempt, a ball of wind, made Jordan laugh. The force itself was nothing to shake a stick at, but it was child's play for him to let his legs unfold and drop to the next bar down, allowing the compressed ball of air to pass harmlessly above him. The next attempt took him off-guard, when he felt the metal begin to buzz with electricity, but in a moment Jordan was back to his calm collected state. The boy down below using his powers was not particularly strong, and though Jordan felt the electricity running through him like last night's chili, he was very fortunate. As an Earth user, Jordan's resistance to electricity was much higher than normal, which made this enterprising student's tazer-like blasts feel like static from one of Catherine's fuzzy sweaters. Of course Jordan had to watch himself, because he knew more than well enough that there were a share of water users in his class...

The last attack, causing the metal to bend and warp underneath Jordan's fingers, he circumvented in an after-thought, launching himself up the last few rungs of the bleachers, breathing hard, until he could sit back on the edge, waving down at the class. Was this all this year's roster had to offer? Abysmal, the worst he'd seen so far... Of course, Jordan watched with keen interest all the students who weren't participating. He hoped some would add their efforts to their classmates. He wanted to be pushed to the limit by them, and in turn, cause them to extend themselves fully. That would be a fulfilling first class, in Manilow's eyes.

EDIT: Actually did the homework on electricity and grounding, and came up with a canon method of explaining Manny's reaction without changing its outcome. :)

Closed

*Jerks out of a drug-addled haze*

Yer good Sprigg.

*tumbles over into a heap, murmuring about convoluted means of creating comprehensive plot*

@Spriggs27