Xaltwind — Roleplayer Guild

[quote=@Xaltwind]
Kikka - Common Realm

--- Coliseum Interior; Obstacle Course Dimension ---

@Zeroth
]
And so, the proverbial whistle was bleeted, and the third and seemingly final trial began!

In an instant, Nephertys Setet could feel the sensation of dozens of bodies all around her suddenly get pressed up against and intruding upon her own personage. Arms, legs, torsos, backs, necks, feet, hands, fingers, all of them and everywhere, grabbing, touching, pushing, shoving, clawing, scraping, stomping. It was... Unpleasant, to say the least, but also unlike anyhting she'd ever experienced before. So many people, packed in such a tight space, all trying to escape at the same time without any order or discipline or guidance, a mad scramble where it was every man, woman and child for themselves. Everyone and anyone geting in each other's way, swears, curses, yelps of pain or indgination, it was a right mess.

Somehow, after a not insignificant amount of time, the throng of applicants had managed to shuffle and squeeze around enough for the young desert dweller to get to the edge of the trench, and with eager hands, she grabbed onto the side and edge of this very ball-free ball-pit and began to heave herself up. This initial part hadn't been particularly tiring or straining on her phyiscally, more so mentally. Never had been in such a crowded and chaotic place before, the girl took a moment to recollect and gather her composure. She also took in the sight of the various obstacles that lay ahead.

... And watched as some poor guy got hit in the side of the head by a flying magic missile just as he was getting ready to reach the first of the many road blocks, and subsequently get flung off like a ragdoll... Nephy gulped.

But there was no time to hesitate. She'd already forgotten if the Master of Ceremony had stated if there was a time-limit or not, but the quicker she got this done, the better. With that mindset flooding her (limited) mind, the dark skinned girl moved forward, on to the first hindrance.

She watched with a face that screamed Oh ye gods, do I really have to do this!? as she looked at the muddy ground that hada a bunch of strange, thorny metal cord stretched slightly above it. What kind  of madness was this!? There were no plants made of metal or with thorny barbs like this in the wild, was there? Watching as others knelt and began crawling, or slithering, underneath the menacing hurdle, Nephy eventually relented with a deep sigh and bent down as well. Getting onto all fours, like some beast or toddler, she tried to lower herself as much as she could.

Unfortunately, when you've got rather sizeable bazongas, trying to get flat on the ground isn't exactly easy. Furthemore, when you've got really long hair, that doesn't make things easier when there's sharp and pointy things above you. As she tried to move forward by dragging herself, she coudld feel her low twintails more than once get caught in the wire, and she had to pause to roll over on one side and try to wriggle herself free from the snag. This made her progress under the barbed wire very slowly and frustrating. She pouted quite fiercly while wriggling around down there. The ick factor was also a problem.

Hailing from a place that was very dry, things like mud wasn't exactly a commonplace natural obstacle. Sure, there was sand, but it was as mentioned, dry. If you got it on yourself, you could brush or sweep or shake it off. But this... This stuff was wet, brown, sticky and gooey. It clung to your body and clothes and had a slightly below room-temperature, making it a constant unpleasant reminder... Also, it got stuck in places that were really inconvenient, especially when you were wearing light clothes with a lot of openings...

"Gwaaahh... Finally...! This was most certainlky not splendid."

A mud-caked Nephy at last emerged from the wirey mud pit. Standing up, she looked down at her rather sorry state, frowning deeply and, futilly, tried to scrape and brush as much of the sticky and unpleasant mud off as she could. But as she stood there, a bolt of electric energy straked by her face, leaving an unpleasant smell of ozone behind, and the young wizardess was reminded that this wasn't exactly a safe place to stop and dust yourself off. Looking around in an almost frantic way, she spotted where the others were moving to and followed quickly. As she was used to excersising and moving about, this hand't been as hard on her as some others, but it had done a number on both her hair and her clothes, and she was more worn down from having had to repeatedly free her hair and clothes from the barbed wire than from the act of crawling.

Reaching the second obstacle, Nephy looked a bit confused. How were they supposed to get across if the bridge was elevated above their heads with no ramp? Then, she watched in stunned horror, as people tried to cross this mudpit not by walking on the thin railed bars, but by clinging underneath and swinging themselves back and forth, using their hands and arms.

"M-Madness...!" She stated, blinking a few times just to make sure this wasn't a mirage or something. It was not. Most unfortunately.

Stepping up, she tried to watch how the others did and handled themselves, before putting her own hands onto the bars. They were uncomfortable. And there were countless traces of muddy prints and wet dirt left all over them. But as she watched people do swinging motions with their whole bodies and moving like a pendulum, the Setet heiress couldn't help but feel like this might actually look to be... Well, fun! Though judging by the grunts, groans and words of outrage that kept spilling out of every other contestants mouth, along with the spine-chilling screams of those who slipped and fell down into the sloppy soup of sludge below, perhaps it wasn't so fun...

Regardless, she had to get past this too! So, with a heave and ho and a hefty swing, she started on her path! ... And immediately lost her grip, let out a girly 'Aiiiieeeeee!' and fell down into the mud below with a comedic 'splat'. Yup. She'd never done anything like this before, and having to be good at it, on the spot, without any prior practice or preparation, was obviously going to result in this outcome. Undeterred however, Nephy rose from the goopy gunk, like some kind of monster from an old movie, mud and gloop sliding off and trickling down her fetching form as she stood once more, looking up at the bars that mocked her from the heavens above.

"I will not be defeated." She swore, shaking her fist at the rails up above.

Exiting the pit and returning to the starting-point, because thankfully there was a sloped path for those who didn't manage to get across on their first go, Nephy returned to the start. She was drenched in even more muck now, but that didn't matter. With narrowed blue and golden eyes, she once again attempted the crossing. This time, she didn't fail to grab the first set of bars, at least. But... She also kinda just... Hung there... Dangling... She tried kicking her legs and shaking her lower body, but she couldn't seem to get the hang of how to swing her whole body... Or, so it was for a fair of time though... Eventually, thanks to watching those who passed her by, the young lady eventually picked up on how to do it herself.

Sadly, at this point, she'd been hanging there for a while, and keeping yourself suspended while trying to hold up your own body's entire weight did do a number on your arms. Nephertys could feel hers start to hurt and ache in protest. But despite the pain, desptie looking like a mud-monster, and despite being contineously off-balance in her swings due to her own proportions, she somehow managed to get past these hellish bars. Once she had crossed, the star mage had to sit down on the ground and panted furiously, brushing off more of the mud from her form.

But when a chunk of ice, the size of a pumpkin, landed next to her and sent icey shards flying all over the place (and herself), she reckoned it was time to get back up and keep moving!

The third obstacle was a wall. A wall with wonky, strange and unnatural indents or outcroppings. Apparently they were supposed to scale it. Nephy watched as other applicants scampered up and tried to conquer the vertical surface. Some succeeded. Some slipped and dangled precariously. Some fell and plummeted back down, or hit others below them and brought their rivals down along with them. No matter how you sliced it, this clearly didn't look safe at all.

"What sort of person could even come up with something like this...?" she asked, while looking at the bizarre surface before her.

Approaching cautiously, she reached a hand out and touched the wall, then one of the lower... Grabby-hold-y things.. Coarse. Hard. Uncomfortable. Yup, it all tracked. Rubbing her hands together and shaking off some of the clinging mu slop, she grabbed her first hold. Then placed a foot on one of the lower indents. With a hefty huff, she pushed herself up and grabbed the next hole. Initially, it seemed to be going alright, but as she got higher and the grabby things became more infrequent and more angled in unnatural and inconvenient ways, young Nephertys could feel her wrists, hands and fingers beging to hurt. The fact that her ample chest was also constatnly getting in her way and bumping into the outcroppings when she tried to go higher was also a concern, a concern that almost knocked herself off the wall several times.

At one point she slipped with one hand, banging her shoulder and arm into the hard, unforgiving object and nearly losing her entire footing. Only by some miraculous stroke of luck, did she manage to grapple onto a new fastening and keep herself from falling aaaaaall the way back down. This was not excersise Nephy was used to, and her limbs all yelled at her for making them do this. But the stubborn youth refused to yield or listen to the complaints of her frail physical form, and forged on, eventually flinging herself up onto the flat floor at the peak.

Lying on her side, breathing heavily, sweaty and with a slow-panning camera that went from her feet and worked its way up her body until it reached her face, with flushed cheeks and half closed eyes as she took quick, repeated breaths...

... Anyway...!

Once recovered, if only a little bit, the wizard got back up, looking around for where to go next. And there it was... Nephy's eyes went wide and her mouth slightly dropped as she saw the next obtsacle. A deep pit, filled with more mud - what was up with thist rial and mud?! Did the guy who designed this have some kind of weird, obsessive mud-fesish or something?! - with upright logs placed in it... And when she saw what the other applicants did, she could feel her stomach lurch.

"That's... That's crazy..."

While Neph was usually optimistic and undaunted by most things, this was... A bit out of her wheel-house. Never had she done anything like this, or even remotely similar to it before, in her entire life. People had to jump between this upright pillars, without falling down, in order to get to the other side. And given that many of those who crossed were liek Nephy - that is, covered in mud - plenty of footprints and mud-remnants were left on the surfaces of where you were supposed to land and leap from. She could feel her legs shake slightly. This wasn't... This didn't seem fair... Were Magic Knights really supposed to do this sort of thing? Was needing to jump between thin, vertical platforms a common thing in their line of work? The Setet-girl couldn't help but feel uncertain about that.

Her mother's words echoed in her head agian though. And she knew. She knew that no matter what, she had to do this. She had to succeed. Otherwise, what was the point of having gotten this far?

Steeling herself with a few slaps on her own cheeks, she moved ahead. And watched some poor unlucky sod get hit by a water sphere right in mid-air as he jumped between two pillars, promptly sending him to the bottom of the pit. Nephy gulped again, louder this time.

Reaching the edge, she looked out over and observed the log-filled pit of mud. She looked down, and instantly regretted doing so, having to back away from the edge for a moment. Shaking her head, Nephertys then re-approached, sucked in a deep breath of air, locked her eyes on the closest log, crouched aaaaaaaaaand.......!

JUMP!

It was a odd sensation, flinging yourself over an open pit, aiming to land in a specific place, having to judge distance and apply the right amount of force and angle and momentum, all by yourself, with no help from magic or spells... It felt so... Heavy, and clumbsy... Speaking of clumbsy...

"Gwuh-hooohk!!"

Nephy made the first jump... But just barely... Rather, she sort of hit the log itself with her lower body and legs, and her upper body flopped onto the actual 'landing zone'... It was incredibly unexpected, not to mention painful, but somehow she managed to scramble and clamper back up onto the pillar's top, keeping herself from fallling down. Her legs really hurt after that though, and she'd likely end up with bruises on her upper thighs from it. And this was just the first log, there was still a not-so-few more logs to go before she was across. Watching as spells flew past and whizzed by, watching other applicants jump and get safely past her, or fall to their fate, Nephertys spent a good while on that one pillar, taking deep breaths. Just breaths.

Eventually, she stood again. Repeated what she'd done for the first jump, and once more took the leap! The second time went better, but not by much. She still miscalculated the distance and landed with one her shins slamming into the top-edge-side of the pillar, which again, hurt quite a bit. This... This wasn't good. If she kept hurting herself like this, there was no way she'd make it across. But she had to. She just had to succeed. Preparing for the next bounce, she stood again...

... ANd then, a sudden gust of wind blew.

A really strong wind. Just as she jumped.

Was this it? Was she doomed to fall down? She wasn't sure she'd be able to keep going if she did. The fall was far, and her body already hurt. If she took more damage, would she even be able to go on...?

... But the wind, surely meant to blow contestants off the logs, did not seal her destiny this day. In fact, like a spring-loaded pinball-launcher, it propelled Nephy forward and upwards, in a soaring arc that you would never be able to achieve with a mere human's physical prowess. The wind carried her past the log she'd aimed for, and the next, and the next, and even the next! Until she finally came falling down, and landed on the one after that... Almost perfectly...

The desert girl looked back, blinking and with a face of stunned bewilderment. How... What... had somebody...? No, nobody else could use magic either, thanks to these bracelets, so... Huh? She saw a few of the people behind her, staring in shock or confusion as well. It seemed she wasn't the only one who was surprised. But, hey, on the bright side, there was only one jump left, and she managed this one just fine, as it didn't require as much mental math and precision!

"Th-That was scary... So scary..."

Nephy's heart was beating like a drum, her legs hurt, he breath was labored and she felt like her entire body was shaking from nerves, and perhaps a bit of adrenaline. Wanting to get as far away from this pit of doom as soon as possible, the star mage didn't stick atround to catch her breath or contemplate the evvents that had just benefitted her in a blatantly favorable way, and moved to the next station.

"Oh... How... Peculiar." Nephertys stopped in amazement.

Rotating, spinning machines... With colorful gloves on them... And a narrow path inbetween them. What were they supposed to d--

"Gwakkk! Aarghh! Narrh! Pfah!"

She watched as another girl tried to run between the constructs on the thin walkway, only to get pummeled repeatedly as one of the spinning gloves caught her, and sent her flying into the opposite row of rotating fists, which sent her careening back to the first lot, and so forth and so on. Ah, so that was it... They had to get past this rotato-fist without getting punched. How insidious. And barbaric. But at least this seemed more in line with a Magic Knight's work... Dodging enemy attacks and motions seemed far more in line with what she'd imagine them to deal with, as opposed to jumping over pits...

Reaching the machinery, muddy, aching, heart pounding, breathing heavily and feeling weariness setting in, Neph had no choice but to try and conquer this unrelenting obstacle as well. Readying herself, she tried to do a cool, protagist slow-mo moment, where she watched, figured out and perfectly meanuevered through the spinning boxing gloves in an awesome, matrix-like fluid movement without getting hit once and making it unscathed to the other side!

Obviously, that isn't how things went.

"Gah! Oof! Nahn! Pwuh! Ack! Sonova--! Bwof! Ow! Dangit--!" ... Precision, timing and coordination with anything except magic was not Nephertys forte. But somehow, despite being slugged, socked and slapped around like she was the world's biggest punching bag, the pretty dark skinned girl made it through. Exactly how she did it... Well, she can't really recall, one of those fist things hit her pretty hard in the head...

However, there it was. The final challenge.

"... I'm... I... So... Close..."

Her body was trembling. Every part of her hurt now. her face, her chest, her lungs, her arms, her back, her legs... Everything felt sore and battered, heavy and tired. She wanted to do nothing more than lay down and rest. But before she could do that, she had to get up this... This thing. a ramp, coated in oil, placed at the very end when everyone was hurt and exhausted... How evil... She watched as her exhausted, battered and bruised peers tried to run up the sloping ramp, only to slip, fall on their face or belly, and come sliding back down to the ground. Some weren't even trying, choosing instead to sit next to the ramp and try and recover... A smart move, if you didn't think you had it in you to make it up right when you arrived.

But Nephy wasn't smart. I eman, Nephy wasn't about to be stopped by this final hurdle!

She watched. Some tried to run straight. Some tried to zig-zag up. Some tried to jump or make tiny leaps. Some tried crawling. Some tried running like a pair, with one pushing a person infront of themselves up ahead, and the person infront trying to drag and pull the one behind along with them. But none of these plans seemed to work. They all ended in face-planting bellyflops and humiliating, slow-sliding back down.

However, it seemed someone had seen something. Nephertys noticed a girl wearing a light cape, who was taking said cape off, and began to tear it apart. Confused at this sight, the dsert dweller approached her. To savetime, the conversation went by as follows:

The cape-wearer was surprised to be talked to. Nephy inquried why she was ripping up her clothes. The cape wearer was rude and told the star mage to buzz off. The star mage asked if she was doing it in a fit of frustration. The cape-wearer indignantly stated that she wasn't angry and shoo'd Nephertys away.

But, the cape-wearing amge then tried to run up the ramp... And to the star amge's surprise, she was actually doing it. But ho-- Wait... Her feet and hands... They were wrapped in strips of cloth? But why...? Wouldn't they get soaked in the oil and become slippery too? Well, perhaps they'd remain frictional long enough for you to get up? How curious... That girl must've been quite clever! Perhaps even a genius!

... Thougn in all honesty, she'd seen a pair of other applicants do it before, and was now just mimicking them... But Nephy didn't know that.

Finding some left over scraps by the capeless cape-mage, young lady Setet picked them and replicated the idea, as best she could anyway. She then returned to infront of the ramp. Looking up the daunting run ahead of her, she once more took a deep, deep, deeeeeeep breath, then exhaled... Closed her eyes, cleared her mind, was reminded of her much her fudging legs hurt, and then... Took off!

Like a shibainu hopped up on sugar, the star mage charged forward in a frantic blind surge, yelling - very heroically - all the way as she raced forth, reaching and planting the first foot on the ramp, then the second, then sliding, both hands came down, the pulled, her feet pushed. It was an undignified, inelegant and unsightly scramble, voif o grace, poise or composure. And yet, this mad flailing of arms and legs, constant yelling and unbending determination to GODS-DAMNED-MAKE-IT-UP-THIS-FORSAKEN-ASS-RAMP managed to somehow, by some force of the universe, drive and allow the noblewoman from the golden-laiden desert, to claw and crawl her way up the slippery surface... Until she finally, finally, reached the top...!

"I-- Hwaaaah-- made it...!"

With a voice much deeper than her usual tone, and an elongated, hollow breath, Nephertys Setet climbed onto the flat surface of the platform... And then promptly collapsed where she was, falling into an unceremonious heap. her vision was blurry, her hearing was muffled, her breaths were ragged and hastened, her limbs pounded and hurt, her lungs were on fire, her mouth was dry and she felt as if she had the coldest of sweats. She trembled and quivered as all the adrenaline drained away and gave rise to the exhaustion and aftermath of excessive intense physical activity.

...

...

But...

".. I ... did it... Mother... I... did... it...."

Actions & Interactions:
- Nephy took on the obstacle course.
- Nepgy completed the obstacle course, albeit battered, bruised and completely exhausted, now unable to stand or even move.

Relevant People:
- Various unknown applicants.
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