Roughdragon1

Endless Quest - A Fantasy Dungeon RP

Sylvia was right behind the ogre, and she now realized how small she was compared to the muscle-ridden, berserker of a rat.

If that thing grabs me it’ll… she didn’t want to finish the thought. She saw how savage the normal Skaven were, from the Dwarf corpses on the ground. She didn’t want to imagine what the infinitely more barbaric ogre would do to a fragile human such as her.

She shook such thoughts from her head.

If I do this correctly, I won’t have to worry about such things.

She quickly scanned the ogre’s back, noting the several bumps that represented its spinal cord. If her knowledge was correct, the higher up the injury to the spine, the deadlier it was. She weighed her options. He couldn’t simply slash at the spine with her dagger; the bone was too thick, especially for a beast of this size. The blade would simply fail to cut into the bone. She had to jam her dagger deep into its spine, to sever the nerves within and paralyze it.

She took a deep breath. Such a simple thing as stabbing a lumbering, quarter-wit rat in the back was a difficult thing to, especially since the ogre was thrashing around due to Marianne’s insects and other such distractions. If she missed, which meant missing the spine and striking flesh, it would instantly alert the ogre and spell agonizing death for her. She knew she couldn’t dodge as fast or fight as well as the others: Her skill lay in her ability to conceal herself and strike when it was the most essential, to put all of her energy and calculation into a single, critical hit.

She raised her dagger, aimed for the gap between two vertebrae, and brought it down into the ogre’s back with all of her might, praying that her shot was true.

Endless Quest - A Fantasy Dungeon RP

Edited again

Endless Quest - A Fantasy Dungeon RP

Boom, edited.

Endless Quest - A Fantasy Dungeon RP

@Roughdragon1
Isn't the shaman riding on top of the ogre?

@Hammerman

Crap, you're right. I'll edit it.

Endless Quest - A Fantasy Dungeon RP

“Gah!” Sylvia felt the rusty blades hit her in the gut, knocking her out of her transparency spell, but luckily the chainmail prevented the blades from going through. Still, it felt like being punched, hard. The rat was distracted, thinking it had cut her. She took the opportunity of its distraction to jam her dagger into its neck, and twisted it, ending the rat’s life. It fell to the ground, twitching.

She raised her shirt to get a look at the chainmail, which was nicked in two areas. Another hit like that, and the links would break. She looked over to her left, where Grendrick was tearing into an ogre’s legs, flesh and blood flying in all directions. Alongside it was some kind of spellcaster, a shaman. Marianne was already distracting it with her insects, so Sylvia activated her near-invisibility again, and began to sneak over to where the ogre was.

She kept to the edges of the fight, trying her best to avoid the stray rats which were still retreating. The ogre was massive, much larger than anything she had ever seen, a brute consisting of pure muscle and raw strength. With Grendrick going berserk on its legs, Sylvia tried to look for an opening, a weakness within its bulk.

Everything humanoid must share similar biology. If I could disable it with a well-aimed incision...

She was a good distance away from the rat ogre, far enough to avoid its blows or Grendrick's wild fury. She would have one chance to make this work; her compromised chainmail wouldn't protect her from another sword blow, much less a smack from an ogre.

Sylvia had her target: A series of slight bulges that ran up the ogre's back up to its head. The spine. If she could jab it with her dagger, it would most likely stop it in its tracks, if not cripple it indefinitely. Still, the target was narrow and a miss would only give the beast a flesh wound, and most likely give her several broken bones.

She raised her dagger; For the first time in a long while, she saw that her hand was shaking. Even if she could paralyze the ogre, they still had the shaman to deal with.

We'll deal with him later. That bloody ogre is the most immediate threat.

Sylvia took a deep breath, and ran towards the ogre, her dagger prepared to find its mark.

Endless Quest - A Fantasy Dungeon RP

Sylvia assessed the situation.

The Skaven swarmed the group, rushing past Grendrick and into the rest of them. For some reason, those dwarves were shooting at him with their crossbows. Idiots.

That orc was demolishing the Skaven that it could catch with his axe, blood and parts flying all around.

The Skaven were rushing towards the back, trying to escape the massacre. Marianne was swarming the rat-men with her insects, distracting and stinging them. Faria was dispatching Skaven to her right with her bow and arrow.

Given the current chaos, it was the perfect situation for someone like Sylvia. She recited an incantation which made her nearly translucent, allowing her to blend in with the nearby environment. She stalked forwards into the fray of the panicked Skaven, and as one of them raised their weapon to attack her, she quickly thrust her dagger through its hairy throat and twisted, killing the rat with relative ease.

Another one came from her left, rusty sword raised over its head. She yanked her dagger out, and sliced the rat’s sword arm, through its shoulder. The Skaven’s arm fell limp to its side, and Sylvia followed up by jabbing her dagger through its eye and kicking it to the ground, dead.

Thankfully, the Skaven were sloppy fighters, who didn’t care about technique nor finesse. Really, they seemed to utilize pure savagery, making them predictable.

She noticed another one sneaking up behind Nove, who was distracted by the Skaven in front of him. She ran forwards and grabbed the thing by its scruff, dragging it back. The Skaven wrenched out of her grip, turning to face her. It had two nasty-looking knives in its hands, both rusted and dripping with Dwarven blood.

Sylvia and the Skaven circled around, waiting for the other to make a move. These sorts of situations were dangerous, especially for her. Her chainmail wouldn’t protect much if she was stabbed, a drawback of the armor’s design. The Skaven licked its black lips, snarling. Rows of rotten teeth showed through its snout. Evidently, this one was more of a fighter than the others.

Endless Quest - A Fantasy Dungeon RP

Sylvia looked around, taking in the Dwarven architecture. She had read about Dwarven ingenuity, the words feeding into her imagination, but nothing compared to the real thing. She looked at the rat-men, who were attacking the fortified Dwarves.

Soon, they’ll crumble. She slipped out her knife, being careful not to accidentally cut herself, as the many scars on her arm showed. Even though hiding a knife in one’s sleeve was the preferred method of concealment among many assassins, but it was often painful.

If they took the rat-men by surprise, confused them, and rushed them while they were off guard, they would be easy targets, like jumping salmon during mating season.

“I could sneak around, take out a few of them in the back,” she said.

It was a simple thing, killing these creatures. A stab to the throat, a jab through the heart, the snipping of certain joints and ligaments in order to cripple and disable.
Sylvia had studied a bit of basic magic, enough to mask her footsteps or blend in with her environment, an invaluable skill for someone like her, especially with her extremely light armor.

She had that feeling again, a tingling within her core. Bloodlust, that’s what it was. A keen thirst for violence and death. Whatever they decided to do, she just hoped she could slit some throats.

“So, what are we doing, then? Better decide quickly, I doubt the rat-men are so patient.” Sylvia began to scan for weaknesses within the Skaven formation, trying to find the best route through or around them.

Endless Quest - A Fantasy Dungeon RP

Well, time to grab my things, then.

Sylvia walked down the streets, watching the dirty roads around her. The slum-like area of the city wasn’t nearly as bad as Karadun, but it did bring back some troubling memories. On her left, in an alley, she witnessed three thugs harassing a poor-looking woman, pushing her to the ground, kicking her. Any other person would jump in and try to intervene, but Sylvia knew better. Even if she stopped the three thugs, whoever sent them would simply send another few thugs to find the woman again tomorrow. She would be simply delaying the inevitable. And so, even as the woman’s gaze locked with Sylvia’s, she turned her head away and kept walking, ignoring the sickening beating.

She headed up to the inn she was staying in: An old, decaying, run-down excuse of a building she swore doubled as a public latrine. Bricks were out of place, planks were rotting, and every now and then a shambling drunk exited out of the rusting doorway.

Still, she couldn’t complain: It was better than what she had back home. She walked her way up the creaking steps, and found her way to the door to her room. She stepped inside, locking the door behind her.

A neatish pile of clothes sat on her dusty bed, and were what she planned to wear to the rifts. She quickly undressed, slipping on some clothes that wouldn’t get in the way of a fight (God, she hated dresses).

She didn’t forget to wear the chainmail vest underneath her clothes, which pinched and pulled, but she would happily deal with that rather than a fatal gash. She slipped her knife up her sleeve, checked her things, and headed out.

She stood in front of the infinity gates, away from the bug lady and the orc. Out of habit, she took her knife and began to meticulously sharpen it on a nearby rock, fine tuning the sharper-than-razor-sharp edge. It was a habit she’d gained over the years; You could never predict when a fight would break out.

Endless Quest - A Fantasy Dungeon RP

Sylvia saw the scene unfold in front of her -- the man crashing through the wall while wrestling some beast, talking to the beast, and then… petting the beast?

Must be one rowdy pet.

At that moment she had drawn her dagger so quickly she accidentally cut her palm, a trickle of blood from her stinging scratch streaming down the blade. She hid it back up her sleeve, feeling the cold metal return to its place.

She stood back away from everyone as they began to talk to the man, who happened to be a diamond-rank guild member.

Strange… a man of such experience was going to help us? This place certainly values its newcomers.

She remembered her time at Karadun; Assassins were highly sought after by both clients and counter-assassins alike. There was no academy of assassins people attended: People either died, or survived.

It made her relax a bit more. The good news was that at least these people weren’t trying to get them killed. The bad news was that the things they were going to kill were certainly more resilient than humans.

She looked back around the place to get a sense of what everyone was doing. The first thing she noticed, strangely, was a hooded and robed girl who also stood at the perimeter of the group. She noted her temperament; her movements, no matter how slight they were, could reveal much about her personality.

A slight darting of the eyes, as if analyzing potential targets and escape routes, her hands kept out of plain sight, as if she were readying a weapon for a potential attack. Her utterly calm demeanor.

Ah, a fellow assassin. While Sylvia specialized in staying out of plain sight and striking when most vulnerable, this woman seemed to be the more… combative type.

Good, I won’t have to be the only one sneaking behind the enemy.

Endless Quest - A Fantasy Dungeon RP

Sylvia looked around the table at all the different adventurers, not all of them human. It was a strange thing, really. She’d never seen beings like these before; they were things she would have thought she’d find in some fairy-tale book. For example: the walking, talking wolf. After spending a few days in this seemingly magical place where many strange beings wandered and socialized, she came to find out that the wolf-man was a Lycanthrope, which is exactly that -- a wolf-man. He’d said that since he was the most experienced, he would be the one to lead the party, which she had no objections over.

A sight that made her raise an eyebrow in suspicion was the boy who had immediately pledged his sword to everybody. The prospect of pledging one’s undoubting loyalty to someone was unsettling to Sylvia. She had learned firsthand what that sort of thing could lead to.

Sylvia saw a girl who seemed to be covered in bugs, which disgusted her, to say the least.

Bloody hell, that can’t be comfortable.

Just thinking about the hundreds of insects crawling around on her skin made her tremble.

An orc sat at the table, a looming mass of muscle and sinew. She knew about the orcs about as much as she did lycans, and as far as she knew, they were born for and excelled in frontline combat.

All in all, Sylvia felt… out of place in this hall of warriors and adventurers. They all seemed to be so prepared, so equipped for the job, while she sat there in peasant clothing. To be fair, she did hurry over right after a contract, and therefore didn’t have time to change outfits.

Still, it doesn’t change the fact that I am out of place.

She looked at the form in front of her. Luckily, she’d taught herself to read during her childhood, it was a necessary skill to learn for her profession; her employers constantly tried to scam her out of deals using written contracts.

She read the form carefully, trying to discern some kind of hidden trap or double meaning of the words and phrases, but found nothing dangerous. Satisfied, she signed it with sloppy handwriting.

As for the name, she couldn’t care less, and wrote what immediately came to her mind as she thought about herself and her experiences: Cannon Fodder. She knew it wouldn’t come to pass, these adventurers needed something to encourage them, not bring them down.

She took some cheese and popped it into her mouth. At least the food was good.