05-29-2017, 01:04 PM
The royal guard could only do their best to hold off the additional enemies as their commander went head-to-head with the fusion of Zedd and Desman. The enthroned machine was gradually taking more and more damage, and with every injury, the fervor of Zeddman seemed to grow.
Dante stole a glance at the battle of the titans as he noticed his own adversary seeming to hesitate, wince. They were all feeling the hurt. But he wouldn’t let the royal guard break off to stop Zeddman. “Hey, hey, hey,” he growled with a grin at his lips. “Don’t look at him. You’re my opponent.”
Still. It was taking too long.
Zeddman knew that, too, and the knowledge boiled up within him as frustration. He was landing hits, but despite the damage the commander just seemed to go on and on. How long would it take to land a killing blow? Just what would it take to murder him?
It was Morene who answered that question. All Zeddman heard was “Move!”
He was lucky that he’d done so. Something large and silver flew overhead – one of the two cyber-guards, travelling faster than it had any right to. One of Morene’s gauntleted arms had the cybermen held by the armpit, the other of her hands was attached to a zipline whose destination was the throne. It wasn’t graceful. It wasn’t ceremonious. But they nonetheless each took a moment to gape as Morene flung the cyber-guard into its commander, crashing through its shield and damaging them both in the process.
Zeddman took the cue. He stormed forward, into the gap created by the cyber-guard, and thrust his left fist up into the ribcage of the commander. As he pulled it away, the Dragon Dagger was revealed; coated in oil and wreathed with sparks that must have hurt, even for a fused warrior. But again he thrust the dagger into the weak spot, pushing it deeper until half of his forearm was buried in the commander’s chest, and the shrill screams of the three cybermen threatened to burst all their eardrums.
“Die,” spat the conjoined warrior.
His right hand swung – connected with the cyber-commander’s metal neck. It jerked, holding – then the sword came back again for a second hit. This one freed the commander’s head from its stationary prison.
It sailed through the air before coming to Jak’s feet. The eco warrior, smile stained black, regarded the head for a moment before bringing one heavy boot down.
He hadn’t counted on the explosion that would follow.
The death of the cyber-commander had triggered the entire warehouse to start falling apart. Clearly a last-ditch effort to stop the invaders. As it came down around them, the ragtag bunch made their exit. Bruised, exhausted, but alive. What they exited to, however, could not be called normality.
The effects of Nebula Space had been felt even inside the factory, but now that they were out in the open, it became clear that they were in one of the Omniverse’s more unnatural spaces. The world had seemed askew before because they weren’t on flat ground. The factory had been built inside a plane that mirrored the inside of a sphere, purple and miasmic, covered in black dots. There was no ‘sky’; the ground extended out in every direction before curving back around to form a ceiling, from which extended – paradoxically, towards them – a small black tower, almost like an obelisk.
It screamed at them. Its voice was like a child’s gurgle; somehow reminiscent of the shrill mechanistic tones of the cybermen, but amplified a hundredfold and then run through water. “You’ll never shut down this factory!”
That was when they noticed the black spots began to move. Darkspawn. Perhaps hundreds, from across the sphere, converging on their location.
And just as they thought things couldn’t get any worse, the world began to quake. Dark power spilled out of the ground as something giant … rather, somethings, began to emerge from the sides of the sphere closest to the obelisk.
Tentacles. Each one spanning over half the distance between the party and the obelisk, each as thick as the large warehouse had been. They rose up out of the ground as though they had been waiting, dormant, for someone to threaten the dark world. At their nexus was a tiny, bulbous head, barely visible from their distance, but attached nonetheless to each of the eight limbs that stemmed from the obelisk. While the host ‘body’ seemed to be an organic thing, the colossal limbs were monstrosities of wire and metal, no doubt culled from the junkyards of the lowest tiers, held together by veins of sticky dark power. The Empire’s fingers-in-ears approach to the worst parts of the city were no doubt in part responsible for how big this thing had been allowed to become.
The tentacles, slow and deliberate like the movements of mountains, raised up and writhed at the centre of the sphere, waiting for them to get close enough to attack. Meanwhile, the black dots began to close in on their position from every viewable angle. They were cornered, and they would have to go the long way around to reach their destination. It wasn’t going to be easy.
Dante stole a glance at the battle of the titans as he noticed his own adversary seeming to hesitate, wince. They were all feeling the hurt. But he wouldn’t let the royal guard break off to stop Zeddman. “Hey, hey, hey,” he growled with a grin at his lips. “Don’t look at him. You’re my opponent.”
Still. It was taking too long.
Zeddman knew that, too, and the knowledge boiled up within him as frustration. He was landing hits, but despite the damage the commander just seemed to go on and on. How long would it take to land a killing blow? Just what would it take to murder him?
It was Morene who answered that question. All Zeddman heard was “Move!”
He was lucky that he’d done so. Something large and silver flew overhead – one of the two cyber-guards, travelling faster than it had any right to. One of Morene’s gauntleted arms had the cybermen held by the armpit, the other of her hands was attached to a zipline whose destination was the throne. It wasn’t graceful. It wasn’t ceremonious. But they nonetheless each took a moment to gape as Morene flung the cyber-guard into its commander, crashing through its shield and damaging them both in the process.
Zeddman took the cue. He stormed forward, into the gap created by the cyber-guard, and thrust his left fist up into the ribcage of the commander. As he pulled it away, the Dragon Dagger was revealed; coated in oil and wreathed with sparks that must have hurt, even for a fused warrior. But again he thrust the dagger into the weak spot, pushing it deeper until half of his forearm was buried in the commander’s chest, and the shrill screams of the three cybermen threatened to burst all their eardrums.
“Die,” spat the conjoined warrior.
His right hand swung – connected with the cyber-commander’s metal neck. It jerked, holding – then the sword came back again for a second hit. This one freed the commander’s head from its stationary prison.
It sailed through the air before coming to Jak’s feet. The eco warrior, smile stained black, regarded the head for a moment before bringing one heavy boot down.
He hadn’t counted on the explosion that would follow.
Quote:Desman takes 3 damage.
Jak takes 2 damage.
Zedd takes 1 damage.
Morene takes 1 damage.
Dante takes 1 damage.
The death of the cyber-commander had triggered the entire warehouse to start falling apart. Clearly a last-ditch effort to stop the invaders. As it came down around them, the ragtag bunch made their exit. Bruised, exhausted, but alive. What they exited to, however, could not be called normality.
The effects of Nebula Space had been felt even inside the factory, but now that they were out in the open, it became clear that they were in one of the Omniverse’s more unnatural spaces. The world had seemed askew before because they weren’t on flat ground. The factory had been built inside a plane that mirrored the inside of a sphere, purple and miasmic, covered in black dots. There was no ‘sky’; the ground extended out in every direction before curving back around to form a ceiling, from which extended – paradoxically, towards them – a small black tower, almost like an obelisk.
It screamed at them. Its voice was like a child’s gurgle; somehow reminiscent of the shrill mechanistic tones of the cybermen, but amplified a hundredfold and then run through water. “You’ll never shut down this factory!”
That was when they noticed the black spots began to move. Darkspawn. Perhaps hundreds, from across the sphere, converging on their location.
And just as they thought things couldn’t get any worse, the world began to quake. Dark power spilled out of the ground as something giant … rather, somethings, began to emerge from the sides of the sphere closest to the obelisk.
Tentacles. Each one spanning over half the distance between the party and the obelisk, each as thick as the large warehouse had been. They rose up out of the ground as though they had been waiting, dormant, for someone to threaten the dark world. At their nexus was a tiny, bulbous head, barely visible from their distance, but attached nonetheless to each of the eight limbs that stemmed from the obelisk. While the host ‘body’ seemed to be an organic thing, the colossal limbs were monstrosities of wire and metal, no doubt culled from the junkyards of the lowest tiers, held together by veins of sticky dark power. The Empire’s fingers-in-ears approach to the worst parts of the city were no doubt in part responsible for how big this thing had been allowed to become.
The tentacles, slow and deliberate like the movements of mountains, raised up and writhed at the centre of the sphere, waiting for them to get close enough to attack. Meanwhile, the black dots began to close in on their position from every viewable angle. They were cornered, and they would have to go the long way around to reach their destination. It wasn’t going to be easy.
Quote:You have 8 days and two posts each, neither of which may be longer than 1000 words to play this event. Your first post should entail getting past the darkling waves to the tentacles. Your second should entail getting past the tentacles to the head of the creature, which I have conveniently named Junktopus. You don’t have to strictly adhere to this guideline, do whatever seems like good writing, but you may not reach the head without my say-so.
These tentacles are massive, like skyscrapers, but extremely slow and cumbersome. You’ll be able to jump on top of them and climb on them, but they won’t stay still while you do so. They can twist, writhe and turn, and they’re not exactly easy to stand on since they’re made of wires. They’re also filled with hazards in the way of the dark power, which snakes through the tentacles in an uneven fashion and will seriously hurt you if you touch it due to the sheer amount and concentration of dark energy.
The head looks like this. It’s not Ultros, it just has his stupid ugly face.
Good luck and don’t die!