05-18-2016, 10:35 PM
It had long been a firm belief, if not an absolutism, in Nealaphh's mind that godhood was not a measure of power, but of worship. Heroes and villains of incredible, earth-shaking power were scattered across the span of infinity like so many shells upon the distant shore. They came and went, taking their insufferable platitudes of friendship or nihilism with them, leaving no more of a mark upon their universe than the imprint of a cowrie in the sand, washed away in seconds by the ebbing tides of the temporal schism. No, it was not these individuals who were remembered. Frail, weak, disgusting specimens of countless species often found themselves at the pinnacle of some great artifice, the heads of their implacable disciples bowed in reverence. These living gods, they possessed no special abilities, no preternatural affinity for world-bending feats of destruction. They needed no such thing to garner the undying love of their chosen idol, and with this fervent host at their beck and call, such clods of flesh left an indelible legacy on the universe.
Woe betide those who would confront a combination of both the worshiped mortal and the bombastic paragon.
It was this train of thought that steamed across the God-Mind's psyche as it stopped to observe the draconic humanoids that had been so casually slain by its comrades. Though clad in very little, there was something consistent in their attire; a small amulet of polished glass, etched with the same insignia that had marked the point of no return on the path to the summit. Culture. Volvagia was no mere beast, despite how simple her mind might seem. She was a mother. A queen.
She was a goddess, and Nealaphh had thrown its loyal followers directly into her path.
Standing up from where it was crouching, Nealaphh called out to Okor through the communicator wired directly into its neural network. No response, not even from the artificial mind housed within the Plague Marine's armor. In keeping with the dawning comprehension, Nealaphh noted that the rumbles and quakes of battle had settled back into the normal, geological thrum of the mountain. There was only one conclusion; Volvagia had bested them. The shadow called out to Red Hood, Erik Vrell and Demetri who milled about nearby, planning their next movement.
We must go.
All three turned around in unison and stared at the Enigma with a hint of apprehension and confusion. Surely the implications must have already connected within their feeble heads, but predictably enough Red Hood spoke asked the obvious question anyway.
"Why?"
Nealaphh said nothing and swept past the now muttering Gorons, tracing the path they had so slowly been creeping along to get to this point. The mission was a scratch. The best they could hope for now was to save as many Gorons as possible before Volvagia either tired of its reverie or retreated. As painful as it was, Nealaphh conceded the prudence of responding to the vigilante.
Alpha has fallen. We need to protect the village.
"Will we even make it in time? It took us an hour to just get up the mountain!" Vrell said, spreading his arms wide. The foreman of the Goron technicians shot the psion a dirty look.
"Better to save some than none!" he growled, trundling around to follow the god-mind's footsteps. With nothing further to debate, Vrell and Hood fell in line, leaving only Demetri and his sentient body suit standing in the carrion-filled clearing.
"Creator...I'm not entirely sure participating in the defense is suited to our capabilities." IRIS chirped, a concerned tone. Demetri made a face that could best be described as frog-like before letting out a long winded sigh.
"Nealaphh came to rescue me from Nippur. The least we can do is check it out." the thief muttered, fingering the points of his spiked chains pensively. With that, the troupe was once again moving as a united pack, at an admittedly hurried shuffle.
The sky overhead seemed to cackle with sparking flame as Beta Squad reunited with Gamma. Their injuries were varied and grievous, to be sure. Harry Dresden hovered over Miranda's supine form as Connor and Colonel both sat on hunks of igneous slag, watching the comparatively unscathed subterfuge team approach. A flicker of jealously was perceptible in their collected consciousness, but more importantly, a sense of pride. If nothing else, at least one of the Squads had been successful.
Myriad corpses, too varied and mangled for words, littered the black battlefield. Some of the crumpled dragons still drew labored, ragged breaths, calling out for a mother who was too enraged to hear. Easily a thousand heaps of scaled carrion littered the landscape, their scales and half-lidded eyes glimmering like a sea of fireflies among the charred scree.
"We saw Volvagia, at least, I'm pretty goddamn sure it was Volvagia, fly down the mountain overhead. Didn't even glance at us. Alpha dead?" Connor asked. Normally Nealaphh would find the mercenary's particular bland of flippant dry humor to be bemusing, but the god-mind was far too rife with permutations and tactical estimations to appreciate the attempt at levity.
"Alpha dead." quipped Red Hood, responding on Nealaphh's behalf. The Enigma shot a thought over to Colonel.
You did not pursue?
"I did not wish to act without orders. On our own, engaging the primary target would have been suicidal, bordering pointless." the Navi fired back, a surprisingly sharp edge injected into his otherwise measured dialogue.
We're going after her.
"You're damn right we're going after her!" shouted one of the Gorons who had assisted in Gamma's defense. The rest of the Brothers murmured and nodded their prodigious craniums in agreement.
"What about...egh...Alpha?" Miranda grunted as Harry hauled her back onto her feet. Nealaphh paused and let this thought override its background tasks. Honestly, it hadn't even considered the need for a search and rescue attempt. Honestly, if, of all Primes, Okor had been killed, there was very little reason to suspect anyone else had.
They knew their mission might end in death. I won't abandon the Gorons in favor of potentially ridding a few Primes from minor inconvenience.
"Okay." Miranda said in a completely flat tone. It was rather hard to gauge just how the mysterious amputee felt from her tone and inflection alone, and Nealaphh did not have the brain power to spare to try and pry more directly into such a passing curiosity.
"Yeah, that's great, but we're all pretty spent here. I'm not really feeling dragon slaying right now." Harry said, folding the charred sleeves of his trench coat over one another.
Then do what you can to get the Gorons to safety. The priority has changed.
This was not entirely true. Nealaphh was still absolutely driven on the goal of ridding the Ashen Steppes of the Brood Mother once and for all, but appearance were critical at the moment. It could not afford to lose the Gorons as an ally, and abandoning them when it was clearly responsible for their impending slaughter would not go over well at all; not just for the Gorons, but the entire Omniverse. Being a savior was incredibly tedious.
We can't delay any longer. Make your choices.
A few minutes later, the total thirty Gorons and a handful of weary and, in some cases, nearly dying Primes began their descent from the summit. Without the need to stay on guard against the dragon swarms, their progress was swift, and the downhill hike allowed for easier travel. This especially suited the Gorons, who curled themselves into tight balls and subsequently started rolling right down the scorched side of the mountain like thundering boulders. Nealaphh could not fault them for feeling the need to get to the village, and if the god-mind had been in a slightly different circumstance, it make have adopted its avian form and joined their blitz.
Such bravado made no tactical sense at this point. They needed to operate as a group; it was the only way anything was going to be accomplished.
Some span of time later (Nealaphh wasn't in the mood to keep track), the combined forces of Beta and Gamma crested the final hill to be met only with a vista of flames. Volvagia made no attempts at subtlety as it looped and curled through the sky, woefully rending the Gorons' quaint mason-work huts to absolute ruin. Pain...no...absolute anguish radiated from the entire scene, wafting through the psychic medium and tickling the deeper, suppressed levels of Nealaphh's psyche. It was invigorating, intoxicating even, to pay witness to such destruction with wild abandon. It could feel the sorrow of Volvagia's bereft rage with every shattered wall, and it could feel the trembling, cathartic fear of the Gorons caught in the Arch Dragon's wake.
To say the village was in ruins was to implicate that there was any trace of it left at all. Between the naturally jagged stone of the Ashen Steppes and the pulverized piles of debris that had once been homes, farms, shops and more, it was impossible to distinguish what was artifice and what was natural. Gorons scattered like fat beetles among the ember soaked remnants of their domiciles, trying in futility to find some respite from the lashing flames of Volvagia's ire.
To be completely honest, the Enigma was more than slightly jealous of Volvagia. A strong part of the god-mind wished to join in the flagrant fracas, dancing amidst the tongues of flame and joining in the brazen percussion that so heralded a changing universe. Nealaphh was abruptly dragged from its enraptured awe as IRIS screeched a particularly emotive warning.
"DUCK YOU IDIOTS!"
Not a moment later, Volvagia screamed past overhead, and in the middle of its white-hot indignance, Nealaphh knew that they had been spotted. But there was something else that was primarily occupying the dragon's attention. Something that it both hated and feared. Even as Nealaphh made the deduction of what such a thing could be, Darunia rocketed forth from some heretofore unseen outcropping and collided with Volvagia in mid-air. The sheer bulk of his mineral mass, coupled with his gorilla-like build, saw the two veteran Primes tumble to the ground in a snarl of scale and shale. They landed among a plume of black soot, which exploded from the ground like its own living entity, coyly dancing around the ensuing showdown like a ghost, egging them on. Volvagia stood coiled, her mouth held agape as Darunia pounded his fists together with a thunderous bang. The Goron Chieftan launched himself like a bullet towards the Goddess of Drakes, but the clever predator caught him like a child's toy between her mighty mandibles and proceeded to fling Darunia off over the southern hillside.
Satisfied that the Chief had been dealt with for the moment, Volvagia's remaining eye slowly, deliberately rolled around to look upon the new Primes who dared to contend with her. Most of them smelled like the blood of her brood, not that Volvagia needed a reason to crush anything that dared challenge her.
Prepare yourselves.
Woe betide those who would confront a combination of both the worshiped mortal and the bombastic paragon.
It was this train of thought that steamed across the God-Mind's psyche as it stopped to observe the draconic humanoids that had been so casually slain by its comrades. Though clad in very little, there was something consistent in their attire; a small amulet of polished glass, etched with the same insignia that had marked the point of no return on the path to the summit. Culture. Volvagia was no mere beast, despite how simple her mind might seem. She was a mother. A queen.
She was a goddess, and Nealaphh had thrown its loyal followers directly into her path.
Standing up from where it was crouching, Nealaphh called out to Okor through the communicator wired directly into its neural network. No response, not even from the artificial mind housed within the Plague Marine's armor. In keeping with the dawning comprehension, Nealaphh noted that the rumbles and quakes of battle had settled back into the normal, geological thrum of the mountain. There was only one conclusion; Volvagia had bested them. The shadow called out to Red Hood, Erik Vrell and Demetri who milled about nearby, planning their next movement.
We must go.
All three turned around in unison and stared at the Enigma with a hint of apprehension and confusion. Surely the implications must have already connected within their feeble heads, but predictably enough Red Hood spoke asked the obvious question anyway.
"Why?"
Nealaphh said nothing and swept past the now muttering Gorons, tracing the path they had so slowly been creeping along to get to this point. The mission was a scratch. The best they could hope for now was to save as many Gorons as possible before Volvagia either tired of its reverie or retreated. As painful as it was, Nealaphh conceded the prudence of responding to the vigilante.
Alpha has fallen. We need to protect the village.
"Will we even make it in time? It took us an hour to just get up the mountain!" Vrell said, spreading his arms wide. The foreman of the Goron technicians shot the psion a dirty look.
"Better to save some than none!" he growled, trundling around to follow the god-mind's footsteps. With nothing further to debate, Vrell and Hood fell in line, leaving only Demetri and his sentient body suit standing in the carrion-filled clearing.
"Creator...I'm not entirely sure participating in the defense is suited to our capabilities." IRIS chirped, a concerned tone. Demetri made a face that could best be described as frog-like before letting out a long winded sigh.
"Nealaphh came to rescue me from Nippur. The least we can do is check it out." the thief muttered, fingering the points of his spiked chains pensively. With that, the troupe was once again moving as a united pack, at an admittedly hurried shuffle.
The sky overhead seemed to cackle with sparking flame as Beta Squad reunited with Gamma. Their injuries were varied and grievous, to be sure. Harry Dresden hovered over Miranda's supine form as Connor and Colonel both sat on hunks of igneous slag, watching the comparatively unscathed subterfuge team approach. A flicker of jealously was perceptible in their collected consciousness, but more importantly, a sense of pride. If nothing else, at least one of the Squads had been successful.
Myriad corpses, too varied and mangled for words, littered the black battlefield. Some of the crumpled dragons still drew labored, ragged breaths, calling out for a mother who was too enraged to hear. Easily a thousand heaps of scaled carrion littered the landscape, their scales and half-lidded eyes glimmering like a sea of fireflies among the charred scree.
"We saw Volvagia, at least, I'm pretty goddamn sure it was Volvagia, fly down the mountain overhead. Didn't even glance at us. Alpha dead?" Connor asked. Normally Nealaphh would find the mercenary's particular bland of flippant dry humor to be bemusing, but the god-mind was far too rife with permutations and tactical estimations to appreciate the attempt at levity.
"Alpha dead." quipped Red Hood, responding on Nealaphh's behalf. The Enigma shot a thought over to Colonel.
You did not pursue?
"I did not wish to act without orders. On our own, engaging the primary target would have been suicidal, bordering pointless." the Navi fired back, a surprisingly sharp edge injected into his otherwise measured dialogue.
We're going after her.
"You're damn right we're going after her!" shouted one of the Gorons who had assisted in Gamma's defense. The rest of the Brothers murmured and nodded their prodigious craniums in agreement.
"What about...egh...Alpha?" Miranda grunted as Harry hauled her back onto her feet. Nealaphh paused and let this thought override its background tasks. Honestly, it hadn't even considered the need for a search and rescue attempt. Honestly, if, of all Primes, Okor had been killed, there was very little reason to suspect anyone else had.
They knew their mission might end in death. I won't abandon the Gorons in favor of potentially ridding a few Primes from minor inconvenience.
"Okay." Miranda said in a completely flat tone. It was rather hard to gauge just how the mysterious amputee felt from her tone and inflection alone, and Nealaphh did not have the brain power to spare to try and pry more directly into such a passing curiosity.
"Yeah, that's great, but we're all pretty spent here. I'm not really feeling dragon slaying right now." Harry said, folding the charred sleeves of his trench coat over one another.
Then do what you can to get the Gorons to safety. The priority has changed.
This was not entirely true. Nealaphh was still absolutely driven on the goal of ridding the Ashen Steppes of the Brood Mother once and for all, but appearance were critical at the moment. It could not afford to lose the Gorons as an ally, and abandoning them when it was clearly responsible for their impending slaughter would not go over well at all; not just for the Gorons, but the entire Omniverse. Being a savior was incredibly tedious.
We can't delay any longer. Make your choices.
A few minutes later, the total thirty Gorons and a handful of weary and, in some cases, nearly dying Primes began their descent from the summit. Without the need to stay on guard against the dragon swarms, their progress was swift, and the downhill hike allowed for easier travel. This especially suited the Gorons, who curled themselves into tight balls and subsequently started rolling right down the scorched side of the mountain like thundering boulders. Nealaphh could not fault them for feeling the need to get to the village, and if the god-mind had been in a slightly different circumstance, it make have adopted its avian form and joined their blitz.
Such bravado made no tactical sense at this point. They needed to operate as a group; it was the only way anything was going to be accomplished.
Some span of time later (Nealaphh wasn't in the mood to keep track), the combined forces of Beta and Gamma crested the final hill to be met only with a vista of flames. Volvagia made no attempts at subtlety as it looped and curled through the sky, woefully rending the Gorons' quaint mason-work huts to absolute ruin. Pain...no...absolute anguish radiated from the entire scene, wafting through the psychic medium and tickling the deeper, suppressed levels of Nealaphh's psyche. It was invigorating, intoxicating even, to pay witness to such destruction with wild abandon. It could feel the sorrow of Volvagia's bereft rage with every shattered wall, and it could feel the trembling, cathartic fear of the Gorons caught in the Arch Dragon's wake.
To say the village was in ruins was to implicate that there was any trace of it left at all. Between the naturally jagged stone of the Ashen Steppes and the pulverized piles of debris that had once been homes, farms, shops and more, it was impossible to distinguish what was artifice and what was natural. Gorons scattered like fat beetles among the ember soaked remnants of their domiciles, trying in futility to find some respite from the lashing flames of Volvagia's ire.
To be completely honest, the Enigma was more than slightly jealous of Volvagia. A strong part of the god-mind wished to join in the flagrant fracas, dancing amidst the tongues of flame and joining in the brazen percussion that so heralded a changing universe. Nealaphh was abruptly dragged from its enraptured awe as IRIS screeched a particularly emotive warning.
"DUCK YOU IDIOTS!"
Not a moment later, Volvagia screamed past overhead, and in the middle of its white-hot indignance, Nealaphh knew that they had been spotted. But there was something else that was primarily occupying the dragon's attention. Something that it both hated and feared. Even as Nealaphh made the deduction of what such a thing could be, Darunia rocketed forth from some heretofore unseen outcropping and collided with Volvagia in mid-air. The sheer bulk of his mineral mass, coupled with his gorilla-like build, saw the two veteran Primes tumble to the ground in a snarl of scale and shale. They landed among a plume of black soot, which exploded from the ground like its own living entity, coyly dancing around the ensuing showdown like a ghost, egging them on. Volvagia stood coiled, her mouth held agape as Darunia pounded his fists together with a thunderous bang. The Goron Chieftan launched himself like a bullet towards the Goddess of Drakes, but the clever predator caught him like a child's toy between her mighty mandibles and proceeded to fling Darunia off over the southern hillside.
Satisfied that the Chief had been dealt with for the moment, Volvagia's remaining eye slowly, deliberately rolled around to look upon the new Primes who dared to contend with her. Most of them smelled like the blood of her brood, not that Volvagia needed a reason to crush anything that dared challenge her.
Prepare yourselves.
Quote:Number of Rounds: 3
Word Limit: 1,500
Random Events: Off
Existing Damage and SP use stay
Posting Order: Volvagia, followed by Post Calling in this thread. Once Called, a writer has 1 hour to post.
Time Limit: Three Days, starting from Volvagia's last post.
Current Damage:
Harry Dresden:
4/20
SP: 0
Miranda Frost:
10/20
SP: 0
Colonel:
6/20
SP: 0
Connor Hound:
5/20
SP: 1
Red Hood:
15/20
SP: 2
And, we dream of home I dream of life out of here Their dreams are small My dreams don't know fear I got my heart full of hope I will change everything No matter what I'm told How impossible it seems We did it before And we'll do it again We're indestructible Even when we're tired And we've been here before Just you and I
Don't try to rescue me I don't need to be rescued
Don't try to rescue me I don't need to be rescued