Fantasy RPG Forum - Standing Trials

Attunement told Vuda that Carlos, the Defier was to be the next one he'd have to deal with. He saw that Tirta was ripping the blood from a dying horse; using the liquid element to wreak her vengeance upon Remna. His smile broadened with a genuinely heartfelt wish of luck. Fury had a strange capacity to be both soothed and inflamed by the grunts and gasps of a battle where his partner was slowly gaining the upper hand.

Tirta had a definite edge by being bound to him through the ring. Remna had no way of knowing it, but with the ring's power being based upon Empathic empowerment, it granted a natural buffer, which was further reduced by the pairing of minds it was attempting to dominate. The weave of Tirta's mind was confusing to the Empath, as the paths it sought to twine were inconsistently patterned by the ring's link with Vuda's mind. This was compounded further by the fact that Empathy was one of the domains Vuda had blockaded with his Nemesis shielding.

Really, the only true danger to Tirta was the degree of rage that may have taken root in her heart. Vuda was well aware that the ship captain had the capacity to turn vicious against those that wronged her. It was her own overstepping against a trio of would-be rapists that had made her vulnerable to his manipulations. It had been a simple matter to exploit her overstepped condition a season or two ago and trick her into putting on the ring.

He'd told her she'd been abandoned by her element, in its shock over her violence. He had then told her that the ring would reconnect her with it. In truth, he'd used his Abrogation to sheathe her from her element, so the lie would convince her. Nonetheless, she HAD overstepped, she HAD fallen into a killing rage against her attackers, not that he blamed her. They deserved no better. But she'd better try to hold back this time. Even HE was a bit intimidated by the way the horse's corpse was turned nearly inside-out by the force of Tirta's demand for water to wield.

But he had more immediate concerns. As his attuned vision perceived Carlos' focus of ether control on the ground, he set his own control on replicating the surface of the same spread of soil, hardening it against the Defier's manipulation. Both men stood grimly still, eyes locked upon each other, bodies trembling with the mental effort of trying to overpower the hold the other had upon the ground.

Vuda's well still had Anita's ether twisted off against her ability to shift into any form. But he could see that she was finally thinking beyond that limitation. She snarled suddenly in anger, a gibbering giggle of manic anticipation as she simply drew blade and rose to her feet to charge him. The timing was perfect. Vuda connected anew to the well, retasking it to maintain his replicative hold on the earth at Carlos' feet.

As Anita began to close the distance, the blade gleaming in her hand, he tore open the plane of the forest near her, in a rupture portal connecting a spot that was quickly becoming his favorite. Naturally, she was not going to enter it willingly, but the level of pull he empowered it with, and the nudge of sovereign he slapped her with sent her tumbling into it, screams of realization quickly echoing into grim croaks and gurgles of horror and death.

The previous Saun, the traditional Underground Race had been turned into a death race by the invasion of the Shadow beasts that had beset the world at the behest of Lisirra, Syroa and Aelig. Attempts by a small group of Black guard had resulted in a massive explosion when they sought to light an inhibiting fire, but had inadvertently ignited several barrels of Alchemical fuel. Vuda had long had a portal instinctively attuned to his lab, where the fuel had been stored.

In the resulting wreckage, the very spot where his portal exited now had a thick metal beam running through it. Anita was now the latest to discover how it feels to reform after a rupture blink to find her body form with a tubular portion of her chest fused with this same iron beam. It was not quite the same as being stabbed. Since the flesh actually formed in the same spot, there was no actual piercing or penetration. The metal was simply sharing the same reality with a few of her ribs and vital organs.

The actual pain came from her own body weight causing a large portion of her chest to tear away from the fused flesh to sag below the metal, while a large portion above was squished against it. Vuda did not feel any vindictive need to peer through the portal to see the horror on Anita's face as she slowly died. He'd seen it often enough before on other faces. His focus was more on the horror of her fate being displayed upon the face of Carols, who was in position to see it quite easily.

His face paled noticeably, even in the darkness, and he relinquished his hold on the ground. Having seen that Divinya had had the wisdom to flee at Vuda's initial arrival, he decided she'd had the right idea. Vuda let them go, now turning his attention to the battle apparently still going on between Tirta and Remna. He stalked menacingly to where the contest had been going on, intenting to make his own contribution to his minion's efforts to hasten Remna's end.

Ether was already responding to his call when he stopped short, finding nothing but a massive pool of blood, streaking back to a somewhat deflated-looking equine corpse. He focused briefly on the ring, which would betray Tirta's location. There was a brief flash of concern that he'd overstepped himself, despite his use of one of his wells, since he only felt the ring's connection to a spot right at his feet, where the blood was pooling in a shallow bowl of earth.

He reached down in a shocked, autonomous fashion and dredged up the ring, where Tirta's body should be. He stared in confusion. Where was she? How could she have taken the thing off? It could not have happened unless he'd willed it, and he was certain that no such thought had entered his mind. The only other way would have been for her to cut off the finger upon which it had rested...

Sudden shock assailed him, along with a strange sensation he'd not felt for a long time...regret. Had she done it? had she given into such heinous rage that the element had back-lashed on her to the point of 'Consumption'? Had her whole body been engulfed and become solvent with the element she'd offended? He cast his attuned vision all around, seeing only the retreating image of Carlos. He swallowed hard, finding an obstructing knot in his throat.

When he caught up with the Don and his underlings, he had fully intended to switch her ring with the one that only imposed communication. Tirta had actually served him well, and with no overbearing level of sniveling over her station. He had come to appreciate her more than he'd realized. He felt a distracting tightness in his chest and shook his head to dispel this odd sense of loss. He actually found tears starting to form in his eyes.

But rage soon re-purposed those tears. The Don! The Rioters! The Mages! Why couldn't they have kept their peace and their place? Then he'd have had no reason to send Tirta into the fray. His face felt hot, and his cheeks began to ache with the intensity of his scowl. His breath came in ragged growls, his fists forming quivering claws. Tirta had been a tremendous asset, and he'd now been robbed of the opportunity to show his appreciation for the level of cooperation she'd shown, for one having been tricked into collaboration. He was a man that rewarded loyalty, but he'd failed her.

He now felt into his other ring for a connection to the ring held by the Don's stooge. Tirta was gone and he would make them pay. ALL of them...

Vuda did not wait to see if Tirta or Remna returned. He felt a call of danger, through the second ring, from the thug accompanying the Don. By the time he was able to direct his concentration into accessing the communication function of that ring, all he got back was a dying sense of '...ambush...'

He considered returning through his current portal for only a moment, as it would save him some ether expenditure. The Panel array back in the tower was what was powering the portal through which he'd come to Tirta's location. To return, and reuse it to connect to the spot where the Don's stooge had apparently just died, would save him ether a second time.

But angry impatience got the better of him. He dismissed the old portal, not considering that it may have lit the area enough to be noticed, and prepared to open one to the location where he suspected he would find the Don himself. Anyone else he found there was sure to be an enemy. And if they had managed to kill off the crime boss' escort, they must be formidable themselves.

He'd already tasked one of his wells to "tie off" the enemy Becomer's ether. A second had been used to maintain the flipped field to stymie the earth mage's aggression. But his snuffing of the fire with hardened air had been his own effort. And both the portal to his death trap impaling site, as well as the nudge of sovereign, to shove the charging Becomer through it, had been his own effort.

He was aware that he was starting to reach a point where he'd best slow down the use of his own ether usage. But he could not afford to simply charge through to what was sure to be a hostile situation. He still had several wells, and the two he'd already used were not fully spent yet by any means.

He took a moment now to task two more wells for defensive purposes. The first bolstered a replicative layering of his skin to turn it into virtual armor; the second being tasked to create a hardened air bubble around himself. This done, he decided to task one last well to generate the portal to the Don.

The air split into a widening rift, with a fiery roar. The mage stepped through to find several people facing him. The fire from what appeared to be a broken oil lamp made it difficult to discern the presence of any beside the seven standing and the several scattered upon the ground, apparently dead.

Two appeared to be avriel, though one of these two had an oddly asymmetrical, single-wing look to him. The bow in his hand did not make this appearance any more appealing to the Chief Adviser. But he expected his skin and armor to be able to handle that detail. The other seemed more in tune for a close-up sword fight, though he was surprised to see this more feral approach embodied by a female.

But he gave her no more than a scowl as he took in the Don, his necromancer minion, Divinya, and one other human male with the look of a caster about him. This was primarily due to the lack of any weapons in his hands. It now became clear that the other two standing figures were necromantic thralls. Vuda assumed them to belong to Divinya, though it did not really matter, as Necromancy was one of his Nemesis domains.

It presented a ripe opportunity for him. As a Nemesis domain, it only took half the ether effort to place a "Strangle" barrier around Divinya. If the thralls had been hers and not Neronin's, they would have either immediately collapsed into mere corpses, or if well-powered, suddenly been cut off from the source of their control. This latter was what Vuda was hoping for, as they would simply attack the nearest living body, serving his agenda in the process.

It took only a moment for him to realize that neither result occurred. By this, he realized the unarmed human male must be in control of the thralls and tagged him a necromancer. That simplified things greatly for him. He needed only to impose a preemptive field against necromancy and he would nullify both foes. Of course, by this time, chaos was already breaking loose. But he counted on his replicated body and hardened air armor to protect him until he could lay down the field.

It was more the matter that he could begin to feel the twinges of overstepping. Because he had to consider the possible need to make a quick escape, he kept the portal open; not considering that other wandering members of this fiasco might stumble through to get caught up in what was sure to be the last confrontation...