Into the depths?
@Click This@Crimson Paladin
“And what is a measure of innocence?” The illuminator questioned. “We do not determine that. Not you, nor I. Only that one who dwells in the remnants of the old world does, and she’s not here. She’s never here, unless one of her maids are...delightful bunch, they are.” The silver eyes of the god narrowed. “And were you not listening? That one doesn’t even know why she was looking for it in the first place.”
“...I...Novak...” Lazhira frowned, taking a breath before sighing. “I really don’t know much. I just know its a ‘seal’ to something, and if he gets his hands on it he’s going to use it.”
“Hmm...but that is a...interesting offer, though.” The woman said with a tilt of her head. “Do you want to help find it? And return it to me?”
“...I don’t think its a good idea if we do that.” Lazhira frowned.
“Silence, girl, you don’t even know what would happen if you did get it. If you agree...and keep an eye on that one from doing anything, I’ll agree to let her go...for now.”
@Crusader LordAs she would lay upon the table, she’d notice something a bit peculiar. A faint outline of what seemed to be a body engraved into the table. It was almost unnoticeable, but it was there, and it was...only vaguely human in shape. In fact if she had to guess the various parts in the outline looked somewhat similar to the ‘unique’ features in the statues she could see. The main room would prove quite...unenlightening. Smooth stone. Doors. The receptacles for the spheres seemed to all be impossibly smooth, but overall nothing out of the ordinary given the already extraordinary nature of this place.
And when she walked into the western room?
Nothing.
Thankfully, nothing immediately happened.
It seemed a short walk to the statue at the other end. The large glass cylinders pulsed with the same blue energy the stone slab in the back did, slowly going from the top of each object to the bottom, disappearing into some engraving lines on the floor. The statue here was the one with a rather unusually large torso with a hole in it.
Would she approach?
Leannah silently seemed to think to herself for a moment...before ultimately not approaching the statue proper yet. More so, she decided to thoroughly investigate the rest of the room as best she could, to see if she could dig up any details or hints or inscriptions or so forth. That and she was keeping a careful eye out for traps along the way. This all reminded her of the prison well enough to make her cautious, but more so the ‘something’ missing from the statue made her wonder about the outline again back on the operating table.
Had The Illuminator been cobbled together from stolen stuff, like some kind of Frankenstein’s monster? As in perhaps Delphiti, who she was more and more guessing wasn’t humanity’s friend as the theorizing continued, nabbed aspects or literal knowledge from things to ‘birth’ the god of knowledge?
Still...careful investigation was key right now.
There were no inscriptions. The room was surprisingly sterile, and it seemed the Illuminator wasn’t going to be giving information unless he wanted it to be given. Leannah would however, distinctly notice the outline of...things within the cylinders. She couldn’t tell what exactly they were, but she could at least tell they were roughly human in shape. It was easy to make a few guesses about what would happen at some point from some context clues from previous encounters with such similar looking objects.
She had managed to move a little ways into the room now, a little over halfway between the entrance and the large black rock now.
Well, it seemed that this place was outright based on the prison complex, and the odd tubes used to make their bodies and likely humanity a long long time ago. Still, cautiously she would approach the large black rock in the room to search and examine it. Whether or not that yielded results, she would then finally sum up the courage to finally approach the statue with a hole through its unusually large torso.
Examining the stone was well...it was similar to the stones seen back in the complex, though this one was pulsing with unfamiliar power. In fact, it seemed the power may have been originating from this stone slab before slowly spreading through the rest of the room. She couldn’t see anything written on it, though it was definitely giving off a strong magical feeling that even she, as mostly untrained as she was, could feel.
The statue proved a bit more telling. Aside from the crystal sphere floating silently within the hole in the statue's chest, another small curiosity could be seen. The head, legs, and feet all had small grooves around each appendage. The stone didn’t look very strong, either. Written on the statue's featureless visage was a simple sentence.
“Holding secret knowledge often attracts the envious and opportunistic.”
A rather cynical statement. What would Leannah do?
The orb was so easily in front of her, like a secret waiting to be grabbed. Then again it also rang the pop culture alarm bells in her head of Hollywood traps and ancient temples with tiny golden idols sitting on pedestals without any ‘obvious’ protections.
But that was the allure of the prison complex as well for some of those humans, wasn’t it? The secret knowledge of the gods, the temptation that had brought out the worst in the ‘heretics’ who stayed behind and tried to lock up a goddess. The same who had become those monstrosities like the one she killed. Those that didn’t reject staying there, even as the ‘Sage’ had led others away and the moon mourned...only to perhaps turn to hatred to those that lingered behind after sealing the way to the lab/prison complex, if the Illuminator’s own comments were of any sense or truth to the matter.
So what would she do with this statue? That seemed to answer itself as she noted the nature of it.
Grabbing the grooves around each appendage, Leannah channeled magic into her arms and such to augment her strength. She would try to
tear this statue limb from limb, just as whatever had been made there or left behind was being torn at by the gods themselves. A lab for fiddling with mortal life. The prison that was sealed by a goddess and knowledge-hungry son, the former whose love likely turned ill against that which she had made and ‘cared’ for.
Leannah would get to work, breaking and tearing the statue limb from limb...and immediately there was the sound of some large machinery grinding, the room rumbling as
something moved deep within...and then the cylinders which had obviously contained bodies within, suddenly sprang to live as the creatures within began thrashing, flailing, and breaking out of each of their tubes.
They seemed...similar to the experiments at the lab, but also different.
These weren’t the slow, cowering things that milled about the place. Some seemed to have macabre augments attached right to their arms and legs. A few were missing fleshy legs entirely, instead being replaced by macabre metal blades or other augments. Similar with their arms, and some seemed to have their spines entirely replaced with some metal or other implants. They all got to their feet near instantly, turning to Leannah.
She had a handful of moments to figure a course of action before she was overrun with at least ten of these things, and there were still some unopened pods.
Wait. Wait wait wait. This was all about The Illuminator himself, right? Delphiti had those mortals in the Lab, and there was an operating table in the main room that noted that
”Knowledge was birthed by The moon's demand, but it was knowledge stolen”. Had the complex been used to experiment on the created humans, trying to find a way to create a god from literal ‘knowledge stolen’ by toying with mortal lives?!
Hell of a theory, supporting her ‘Frankenstein's Monster’ suspicions here, but more pressingly so a ‘hell’ of a situation. Seems she’d triggered a trap without realizing ‘how’ in truth, but that was no matter! She’d stop trying to tear apart the statue the rest of the way at the moment, and face the monstrosities toyed with by a mad god! However, she did have a plan of sorts.
“Come on! Form an orderly line! I knew I’d be popular here, but not this popular!” the catgirl shouted and teased, hopping behind the statue as she tried to lure the monstrosities close enough.
Her idea was channeling magic to just her arms and legs now, as compared to when she was doing things back in the complex the first time, focusing on using her keen martial arts senses and enhanced strength in her limbs. The goal was to lure the things over to chop at her, albeit safely gauging their reaction times with her own safety in mind, and see if she could bait out attacks to get them to chop the statue for her!
Worst case scenario, or if things got too pressing, she’d back off from the statue and make a break for the more spacious parts of the room to kite the things around. Not that they were the slow shuffling sort of ‘zombies’, but...hell she has the reflexes, agility, and training for getting herself moving and dodging at least.
The creatures, with surprising swiftness would soon be upon the statue. One would make an aim to chop at Leannah with a blade from the front that had been stitched onto its arm...and it would soon be followed by a second, lunging at her from her left.
Definitely not dumb weaponized zombies, that was for sure! But all the same, her plan hadn’t changed. She placed herself near an unbroken arm of the statue as the one from the front tried to chop at her, before leaping to the side to dodge at the last second! Yet it didn’t stop there, and as another lunged at her from her left she dropped down below its lunging stab into a quick attempt at a leg sweep at this creature. Success or not in the latter, she’d do her best to speedily rotate away from the creature to place herself on its left side with the statue at her back.
Thankfully though, Leannah was definitely more agile than these things. The first creature whiffed the attack completely, the blade on its arm striking the soft stone of the statue and cutting clean through it, leaving a slightly jagged edge behind as the arm fell to the floor. The second’s lunge would sail over her head, and was soon knocked off its feet.
A third and fourth creature now were upon her, having made their way from the front of the room. The third had an entire arm missing, and had just a jagged blade shoved into its other, much like the others. It would make a rather clumsy strike downwards. The other new one, though, had its hands replaced by two axes, and a metal plate had been fused to its chest, with more metal plates on one of its legs. It would make a wide sweeping motion with one arm, while the other would follow up with another frenzied sweep with the other in the opposite direction.
The others weren’t far behind - she’d need to do something before she was overwhelmed.
To that end, the catgirl drew on the first idea that came to mind. Or rather, the first
memory that came to mind as she drew on her mind for a solution to the rapidly evolving situation.
‘Boom’
The other night, when she’d tried to first learn the Light spell, she’d done the process admittedly wrong. Or rather, wrong but not ‘that’ wrong. It was the instability of her blessing, that touch of the cute bird sun goddess she possessed that had been wrongfully taken to be given to her by whichever goddess it was that brought her and the others to this world. Lazhira had ultimately taught her the control and caution to be able to do it right, even though the catgirl herself possessed a more unique effect when using the spell, but that small explosion had been the result. Just one instance that
small had resulted in knocking them all down, and she’d bumped herself in the process with a mild scratch.
...But what if she did it
on purpose this time?
She knew how to control the Light spell, and had come to understand how it could go wild and out of control again in the process. If she did that right here, as the enemies closed in, she could maybe knock them all down with one bigger exploding fireball! Not that she’d get out of it unscathed, as scaling up this ‘feat’ would likely have more dire consequences than before since she’d still be within the blast radius. That was the real rub of it all, if she got knocked onto some sharp edge it’d mean more harm and no current knowledge of healing spells if she even got out of the situation in the aftermath.
Yet all the same, she had to try something big to handle the crowd, as even with her speed all it would take is being surrounded well enough in due time to take her down. Kiting the group was possible, but she’d apparently triggered too many to awaken all at once.
So this attempt at a crowd-control area-of-effect spell, to use MMO terminology for a moment, would have to do something!
Leannah would thus begin to channel her magic instead for a ‘Light’ spell once more, albeit with far more ‘juice’ and magical energies this time, allowing the group to close in but moving to avoid getting hit with a blow in the process. Though rather than do things the ‘correct’ way to cast the Light spell, she would do it like she’d first imagined at Lazhira’s House. Channel the magical energy like a river, let it flow into her hand, and also deeply channel the visage of a burning sun with all of its fire and plasma and extreme heat. Then as she knew it was going to go out of control, and only once the group got close enough she had to unleash her ‘attack’ or else be hit with an attack by the things, she would push to surge all of of her magical energy that she could brute-force into the reaction to make it that much more potent and volatile when detonating!!!
As she would finally trigger the attack, she would throw the attack at the group of creatures and then drop the rest of her body down toward the floor. This all whilst having send the potentially deadly exploding fireball to hit the intended group of targets correctly and painfully.
It was a simple plan in actuality. Use what she had done before as a mistake, except do it on purpose this time - in a far more powerful way. Leannah would collect the power in her hand. It happened fast, relatively speaking. The rest of the creatures had started to converge on her now, though they rightly seemed wary of the miniature sun in her hand...that was steadily growing. More and more as she would channel more energy into it. And the more she channeled, the more unstable it would become - eventually growing to the size of a beachball, angry red in color as streams of energy leaked from its sides.
And then with one swift movement, she’d toss it into the crowd and would duck.
A searing, blinding flash.
A shriek of the creatures as flames engulfed the room. Leannah could feel the heat on her skin, the light searing her eyes and painfully knocking her completely prone. No attempt to shield her eyes from the explosion would work as her skin was burned. It would take some long, painful seconds before her sight would return.
Her body hurt all over, the side exposed to the explosion painfully burned - but the experiments? Burned to cinders. Completely and utterly reduced to ashes, and the pods which had yet to open had seemingly melted themselves shut from the intense heat.
...the crystal that had been embedded in the statue also looked burned and melted in some areas, and the statue was thoroughly singed, but it seemed at least she was safe for now. She was nauseous, and her body still burned, but she was safe now.
The black stone behind her hummed ominously, a rattling and buzzing noise before the blue light coming from it would blink and fade. Seemed she had succeeded in also damaging whatever this mechanism was, too.
The catgirl winced in notable pain, to say the very least, as the cooler open air began to make contact with the burned skin now on the right side of her body. Her hair and ears had survived, which was something to be thankful for beyond the obvious thankfulness for not being dead she supposed, but that mostly because her right arm had taken the brunt. Even the right side of her face was burnt, and whilst she could move the pain was something fierce regardless. On the one lone bright side, the former scratch wound from the birds earlier has been, ah, definitely cauterized at this point...ouch.
“Damn...stupid...piece of-,” Leannah cursed under her breath semi-quietly, as she forced her body to sit back up and then to stand. Her vision was perfectly fine and intact still, however, which was also something to be thankful for...hell that peak body she had was good for something! Yet the stinging and stabbing pains were not so much fun, and even the light had been blinding. Like...like a small supernova had gone off before her eyes and smacked her! It was a hell of an attack, it seemed, and something to make note of for later...but whilst also toning down the output if possible.
She’d put seemingly enough juice, looking around, to make the attack blast the monstrosities and then some. It had also been far too much, even if the desperate move had preserved her life and chances of going on in the process. It seemed that spell was something to practice, then, very much so. That, Light, and her martial arts thus far. Still, the catgirl gritted her teeth as she dusted herself off and noted that her ‘inventory’ of items was still very much intact and ok. A blessing to be sure, but it wouldn’t have been so lucky had she not been only burned on the right side of her body with the stuff on her left hip shielded from the blast and burn.
Letting out a long sigh, and trying to not gag from the nausea, Leannah reached over to the statue to finish tearing the now-cooled-off singed stone apart to grab the orb and take it back to the main room. There was nothing else she wanted in this room, at least that was intact or salvageable, save dragging out the statue parts to set near the operating table in the main room. If anything else came out to play, though, she was going to cut the antics and shoot a magic flamethrower from her hand to melt the thing at this point.
Nobbu and the Fox
@VitaVitaAR@PKMNB0Y“Well, I had to try.” Enli responded with a soft smile. “One does not come across skilled people as you often...though it seems quite a number have traveled into the village since yesterday.” He looked over to the faded scrolls. “If you have a way to make books, or paper or something writable, then by all means. I would welcome having things written down for the people here to use. I’m sure I could come up with something to ensure that some took an interest, though it may take awhile...”
He would nod, frowning lightly as he would consider a few ideas already running through his mind.
“Otherwise...I thank you for your help already. You’ve already given this old man a bit of hope. If there’s nothing else, for now, I shall need to prepare for meeting with the Kyrnith tomorrow. I can’t imagine what I’ll even need to start discussing for now.”
Builder and a Traveler
@PaulHaynek
“...Well someone left in a hurry.” Mie said with a small frown as Nicholas walked in, just as Donovan left. “Ah? Another one...haaa, so many guests to entertain.” Mie sighed with a mildly impish smile. “Yes, yes, I’m Mie. And you are? A friend of Donovan’s here, I assume?” She would ask with a stretch. “Well, whatever. You’re welcome here for now, if you want.”
“Another human eh?” The dwarf said looking towards Nicholas. “Well, if its all the same to you Mie, I’m gonna take off this armor and get settled in if you’re gonna let me stay here.”
“Yes, yes, we can talk later. I am...increasingly curious about the happenings in the dwarven home and that bait you had.” She would say, waving the dwarf off before looking back to Nicholas. “Need something? I’m likely closing shop soon, its getting a bit late and the Oni would like to have their evening off, I’m sure.”
Send Feet Pics
@Cu Chulainn
A rock was easy to find.
It was easy enough to use to distract someone, too. For a normal person, they’d have expectedly turned towards the noise...but of course, this was not a normal person. No, it was a giant deer. A giant deer that could probably flatten Malphas with a breath of air from its lungs. Distracting with with a simple stone toss? That was likely pure folly.
But sometimes, the most effective methods were the ones most simple.
The rock sailed through the air, and clattered against a tree some distance away.
The deer turned its head towards it.
And then towards the place Malphas
had been. It would slowly, gracefully walk over to the tree he had been hiding behind. A few long seconds passed before its head jerked away, its gaze being called in some other direction.
And then as swift as the winds, it was gone. He was safe, but a choking air was left in the area, making it hard to breathe as he left. He had come mere seconds away from a second death...but perhaps he’d not pay that any mind, for now.
The way back to the temple was fairly easy, all things considered. Now that he had learned a bit of stealth and sneak, it wasn’t too hard to avoid the creatures of the forest as long as he kept his ears open and soon he was back at the concealed temple. The same hunter that had threatened him so casually last time would greet him again as he passed through the doorway.
“Back again? And why are you here? Or have you come to declare you failed?”
Danyel
datadogie
The Red Seelie
rush99999
Xiro Zean
Cu Chulainn
Alfhedil
Ojiro Mashirao
Gerlando
Izurich
