02-18-2017, 10:54 PM
The first task Carmelita assigned to herself was to eliminate magical items from the equation. The disguise bracelets would only be a problem if the bandits got away, and the gate and emergency signal were too heavy to deal with to start with, so Carmelita’s real aim was to eliminate the trove of material down in the workshop and in the armoury. The greatest challenge would be removing the lionesses.
She sat in her hidey hole and thought about how she could solve the problem. Fighting them was out of the question. The beasts were large, much larger than she liked the look of, and it would be impossible to do it without breaking her cover. Sabotage would be her usual recourse, but there was a slight problem in that she had no idea how to sabotage magic. In fact, most of her ideas were scuppered by ‘it’s magic’.
After two hours of drawing up and scrapping ideas, she sat back on her bedroll and stared at the ceiling. Not for the first time, she wished that she were back in time. Sly’s smile drifted across the inside of her eyelids and she wiped a tear from her face, but now she also thought of the others she’d left behind. The Guru, the small purple koala, would have had the answers to her questions, the mystic aborigine murmuring in his soft voice. Murray, big pink juggernaut that the hippo was, could probably have disabled them by hand. Bentley…
She sat up, a brainwave striking her. The turtle was a great inventor and analyst, but one of the most interesting things she found about his plans was how often they approached a problem from outside the box. So, if she couldn’t work out how to take them from the magical side, she’d have to approach them like Bentley would.
How to deal with magical lionesses if you can’t deal with the magical bit? You deal with the lionesses.
Carmelita sent a request to Chip, and quickly received a confused reply with a suitable diagram. She set to work, focusing her omnilium and designing the perfect tool for the job.
---
It was late the next night that she crept down into Four-Eyes workshop. The sound of machinery had gone quiet, and as she entered she noticed the centaur fast asleep in one corner of the room. The lionesses lay on guard by the opal dust, as they had when she scouted out the room a few days ago.
Carmelita dropped her cloak, deployed her secret weapon, and the lionesses perked their heads up.
The three metal lionesses were made primarily of bronze, with movement powered by steam and controlled with magic. That magic had effectively made them act like the real things, and Four-Eyes had apparently done away with any instinctual need to eat, drink or sleep to replace it with loyalty to him. The one thing he hadn’t removed, likely because it never crossed his mind, was the instinctual need for a mate.
There, not five feet in front of them, was a metallic looking lion. Sure, he looked like he had been through the wars, and his proportions were all wrong… but this was the only lion they had ever seen. Coupled with the scent of oil and steam wafting from suspicious patches of its mane and the lionesses went into a lust-fueled frenzy of activity.
Seeing the three lionesses throw themselves at her costume, Carmelita charged up the stairs. Four-Eyes had yet to wake when she left, and judging by the sudden cries of confusion she could hear along with the sound of chains breaking, he hadn’t spotted her leaving.
She activated her cloak as she ran, carefully holding a spritzer of scented oil out to one side and leaving a trail behind her. The lionesses were catching up fast, but she had nearly reached her destination.
Carmelita burst into the main cavern, invisible and with her footsteps drowned out by the intense noise of the lionesses pounding along behind her. She finished the last of the liquid in the spray bottle as she reached the armoury, tossing it into a hole between the slate roof and the stones, before circling back towards the entrance.
The bandits present, who’d heard the heavy clanking of the running constructs, were running about in a panic, some of them tearing open the armoury to grab weapons and armour. Into the room pounded the lionesses, chains flying from their necks like scarves, their glowing blue eyes searching intently for their potential partner. Screaming in shock, one of the bandits was run over, the sickening crack of bone easily audible even through the heavy thuds of their feet, and that was all it took for one of the bandits to finally charge them.
The lionesses reacted viciously, tearing into their attacker, and the situation only escalated from there. As Carmelita left the chaos behind her, the sound of a warhammer caving in one of lionesses’ shells was swiftly followed by the sound of flesh ripping and tearing and a cry being cut off.
About halfway back to the workshop, the vixen ducked into a groove in the wall as Four-Eyes made his way through the tunnels, slowed immensely by the low ceiling. Once he was past, Carmelita raced down the stairs again.
At the bottom, she divested herself of the costume and threw it into the furnace smiling immensely as the stuffy garment finished its productive life. Next up, the magic equipment on the back wall.
Unable to destroy the armour or weapons for fear of the vandalism being spotted, Carmelita did the next best thing: she fastened them to the racks. Grabbing the supplies she needed from the stack of materials nearby, she set about tying the weapons and armour to the racks she placed them on with steel wire, weaving it in great and hideous knots to make sure that serious effort was going to be needed to remove them.
Ideally that would be that, but Carmelita had one more task before the night was finished. Returning to the main cavern, she found a large number of angry bandits, all of them yelling at Four-Eyes who seemed quite angry himself. The words were indistinguishable, but it appeared that the centaur blamed the bandits for the loss of his lionesses, whilst the bandits blamed him for the loss of three companions and the crippling of three more. One of them made a move to strike the centaur, and Four-Eyes swept the woman’s legs out from under her and pressed a hoof warningly on her throat.
The commotion, while plentiful, had gathered too many people for Carmelita to safely attempt anything out in the open or up on the wall, but the armoury had been half ransacked for weapons and in the chaos it was the work of a moment for her to slip inside and tug a a halberd that had caught around the leg of the shelves. With a cavalcade of glass and metal, the potions and gadgets that had been stored there gave up the ghost, and Carmelita darted out just before Scar finally arrived to silence the argument and begin directing the clean-up.
She daren’t stay for their conversation, for risk of being bumped into, but she hoped that any speculation on their part was towards an unexpected quirk of the constructs or the bandits known infidelity with rules.
Still, the force multipliers had been dealt with. The next thing Carmelita was going to need was a distraction of a different sort...
She sat in her hidey hole and thought about how she could solve the problem. Fighting them was out of the question. The beasts were large, much larger than she liked the look of, and it would be impossible to do it without breaking her cover. Sabotage would be her usual recourse, but there was a slight problem in that she had no idea how to sabotage magic. In fact, most of her ideas were scuppered by ‘it’s magic’.
After two hours of drawing up and scrapping ideas, she sat back on her bedroll and stared at the ceiling. Not for the first time, she wished that she were back in time. Sly’s smile drifted across the inside of her eyelids and she wiped a tear from her face, but now she also thought of the others she’d left behind. The Guru, the small purple koala, would have had the answers to her questions, the mystic aborigine murmuring in his soft voice. Murray, big pink juggernaut that the hippo was, could probably have disabled them by hand. Bentley…
She sat up, a brainwave striking her. The turtle was a great inventor and analyst, but one of the most interesting things she found about his plans was how often they approached a problem from outside the box. So, if she couldn’t work out how to take them from the magical side, she’d have to approach them like Bentley would.
How to deal with magical lionesses if you can’t deal with the magical bit? You deal with the lionesses.
Carmelita sent a request to Chip, and quickly received a confused reply with a suitable diagram. She set to work, focusing her omnilium and designing the perfect tool for the job.
---
It was late the next night that she crept down into Four-Eyes workshop. The sound of machinery had gone quiet, and as she entered she noticed the centaur fast asleep in one corner of the room. The lionesses lay on guard by the opal dust, as they had when she scouted out the room a few days ago.
Carmelita dropped her cloak, deployed her secret weapon, and the lionesses perked their heads up.
The three metal lionesses were made primarily of bronze, with movement powered by steam and controlled with magic. That magic had effectively made them act like the real things, and Four-Eyes had apparently done away with any instinctual need to eat, drink or sleep to replace it with loyalty to him. The one thing he hadn’t removed, likely because it never crossed his mind, was the instinctual need for a mate.
There, not five feet in front of them, was a metallic looking lion. Sure, he looked like he had been through the wars, and his proportions were all wrong… but this was the only lion they had ever seen. Coupled with the scent of oil and steam wafting from suspicious patches of its mane and the lionesses went into a lust-fueled frenzy of activity.
Seeing the three lionesses throw themselves at her costume, Carmelita charged up the stairs. Four-Eyes had yet to wake when she left, and judging by the sudden cries of confusion she could hear along with the sound of chains breaking, he hadn’t spotted her leaving.
She activated her cloak as she ran, carefully holding a spritzer of scented oil out to one side and leaving a trail behind her. The lionesses were catching up fast, but she had nearly reached her destination.
Carmelita burst into the main cavern, invisible and with her footsteps drowned out by the intense noise of the lionesses pounding along behind her. She finished the last of the liquid in the spray bottle as she reached the armoury, tossing it into a hole between the slate roof and the stones, before circling back towards the entrance.
The bandits present, who’d heard the heavy clanking of the running constructs, were running about in a panic, some of them tearing open the armoury to grab weapons and armour. Into the room pounded the lionesses, chains flying from their necks like scarves, their glowing blue eyes searching intently for their potential partner. Screaming in shock, one of the bandits was run over, the sickening crack of bone easily audible even through the heavy thuds of their feet, and that was all it took for one of the bandits to finally charge them.
The lionesses reacted viciously, tearing into their attacker, and the situation only escalated from there. As Carmelita left the chaos behind her, the sound of a warhammer caving in one of lionesses’ shells was swiftly followed by the sound of flesh ripping and tearing and a cry being cut off.
About halfway back to the workshop, the vixen ducked into a groove in the wall as Four-Eyes made his way through the tunnels, slowed immensely by the low ceiling. Once he was past, Carmelita raced down the stairs again.
At the bottom, she divested herself of the costume and threw it into the furnace smiling immensely as the stuffy garment finished its productive life. Next up, the magic equipment on the back wall.
Unable to destroy the armour or weapons for fear of the vandalism being spotted, Carmelita did the next best thing: she fastened them to the racks. Grabbing the supplies she needed from the stack of materials nearby, she set about tying the weapons and armour to the racks she placed them on with steel wire, weaving it in great and hideous knots to make sure that serious effort was going to be needed to remove them.
Ideally that would be that, but Carmelita had one more task before the night was finished. Returning to the main cavern, she found a large number of angry bandits, all of them yelling at Four-Eyes who seemed quite angry himself. The words were indistinguishable, but it appeared that the centaur blamed the bandits for the loss of his lionesses, whilst the bandits blamed him for the loss of three companions and the crippling of three more. One of them made a move to strike the centaur, and Four-Eyes swept the woman’s legs out from under her and pressed a hoof warningly on her throat.
The commotion, while plentiful, had gathered too many people for Carmelita to safely attempt anything out in the open or up on the wall, but the armoury had been half ransacked for weapons and in the chaos it was the work of a moment for her to slip inside and tug a a halberd that had caught around the leg of the shelves. With a cavalcade of glass and metal, the potions and gadgets that had been stored there gave up the ghost, and Carmelita darted out just before Scar finally arrived to silence the argument and begin directing the clean-up.
She daren’t stay for their conversation, for risk of being bumped into, but she hoped that any speculation on their part was towards an unexpected quirk of the constructs or the bandits known infidelity with rules.
Still, the force multipliers had been dealt with. The next thing Carmelita was going to need was a distraction of a different sort...