Void Rift (rp) - Intermission

Abigail seems to get quite far into the boss fight, before the slow bleed of her health finally leads to her defeat close to beating it. Abigail takes a long, deep breath and exhale; her face seeming calm as her hair ignites out of rage.


Praecantatia tries to hurry up the process a little, finishing the body and quickly moving on to the tail. The golems seem to notice Praecantatia's increased pace, trying to speed up their deliveries too.


Abigail and Stephanie press up against the palace wall; myself appearing next to the pair as a literal shadow on the wall.

"I guess this is the part where we wait..." Stephanie whispers.

 

I keep quiet, though I turn Evion away from her.


Praecantatia winds up getting slapped by a wing and a golem carrying an armor piece gets kicked before Xlentia suddenly gasps.
She still isn’t conscious, but she’s now breathing again.


“My job is to get you inside, and I’m gonna go have a lava bath once you do. I did not sign up to have some tyrant take me for a walk.” Doir grumbles, curling up on a nearby pedestal.

 

Abigail keeps trying, and seems to incrementally get worse over time somehow before giving up, turning off the console and turning the TV back on; hair extinguishing as she sits back in her sofa, frustrated.


Praecantatia doesn't appear to be hurt much by the blow, taking little more than a punch as she's knocked back a little - though keeps her footing. The golem Xlentia kicks seems to get mostly destroyed, signalling to the other golems. One other golem leaves it's group, scooping up the broken remains as the broken robot drags itself back to the portal.


"Where do we go once we're inside?" I ask, sliding up the wall to try and get on Doir's level.

 

Evion worms out of my grasp and scampers over to Katie.
“I guess he still thinks it’s too warm.” I shrug.
Evion looks at her somewhat endearingly - his two long fangs betray the rest of the look.


Xlentia’s breathing seems restricted by the platform, and her occasional muscle spasm becomes somewhat more frequent as Praecantatia gets kneecapped by Xlentia’s now armored tail.


“Remember how I said I was gonna go take a lava bath? That’s not just because you’re intolerable. I hear you’re a good swordsman, so there’s two things you get to do to me before I go for a swim. One, shave part of my fur. There’s a map of the palace poked into my skin by a needle. Two, skin off that part of the map. Three, if you kill me accidentally in the process your location gets given out, so let me lava bath myself a fair ways away.”

 

Katie takes a deep inhale, before blowing out an icy breeze over Evion. A bit of snow forms on Abigail's sofa, though it melts quickly.


Praecantatia gets knocked off balance. However, instead of falling, she instead sort of floats in zero gravity before she heals her kneecaps and gets back onto her feet. With her body and tail armoured, Praecantatia gently lowers the platform. The platform sinks into the ground, before Praecantatia begins to work on the wings.


I partially emerge from the wall, a cut throat razor appearing in my hand.

"The usual, then?" I say jokingly. Neither Artemis or Stephanie seem to be very amused, however.

 

Evion shivers, before shaking himself like a wet dog and walking up to Katie and starting to sniff her.


Xlentia lets out a low groan, though she doesn’t move aside from breathing. Her spasms seem to have also stopped.


“Dude, you’re such a piece of shit, you can’t even get a rodent to tolerate you.” Doir grumbles. “Can’t believe the gods bother working with you...”

 

Katie shifts over a little, nervous. Abigail glances over, keeping an eye on the pair.


Praecantatia keeps fusing the armour onto Xlentia until it finally comes to her head, carefully adding a large helmet with the biggest mage crystal embedded in the top. Once the armour is complete, Praecantatia draws a few runes which fly toward the armour and make it glow. The first rune seems to fuse the armour with Xlentia's form, making it like a second layer of scales; the armour no longer stiff to her body. The second seems to make the runes embedded in the armour glow lightly, before fading again. The third and final activates the mage crystals, blocking out psychic interference, while allowing Xlentia to securely use her own psychic powers without putting herself at risk.

Praecantatia turns off her generator, the psychic lockout field shrinking into it as she picks it up and dismisses her golems; heading back toward the rift.


"We only need you for a patch of skin right? There won't be any evidence left behind if I eat the rest of your corpse." I say threateningly, gripping the razor.

 

Evion freezes up once Katie moves, before slowly starting to take another step towards her and watching her reaction intently.


Xlentia seems to be beginning to stir.

"You'll have to calm her wrath yourself." Emerald says as Praecantatia enters the library. "I can keep her from rolling on the shadow kingdom, but this isn't an affair she's willing to let me handle. Do try to be careful with her head, though, last I checked her skull was barely holding itself together."


"Glad to know that behind your fancy blade you're as dull as a spoon." Noir snickers. "What part of no killing people because it'd give away your dumb ass did you not understand?"

 

Katie shifts back to the end of the sofa, nervous.


"The armour should be durable enough to prevent it from breaking and allow it to heal," Praecantatia says, watching her golems head through the rift, "The only drawback is that physical suppression is now almost entirely impossible."


"What part of 'skillful assassination' do you not understand?" I ask, "Killing people leaves corpses. Corpses are evidence. A silent assassination with no corpse left behind leaves no evidence."

"Other than a missing person." Artemis adds.

"By the time that becomes an issue, we'll be far gone." I respond.

 

Evion stops, before slowly slinking back to me.


Emerald blinks.
"Say that last part again?"


"Skill? Oh please, I'm a loud squeaker so don't make me laugh." Doir scoffs. "If you know so much about how this place works, then why the hell didn't you just walk in earlier?"

 

Katie calms down, the ice that was forming under her quickly melting.


"The only drawback of the armour is that physical suppression is now almost entirely impossible," Praecantatia repeats, "Attempting to say, slap her to her senses wouldn't work. The armour is designed to protect from mental and physical harm, so she'd be completely protected from that."


Stephanie casts a silencing spell on Doir, both suppressing his use of magic, and his ability to make noise.

"If you think it's necessary, we can keep him in an incapacitated - but not dead - state so we don't draw attention. We can wake him once we're safe." Stephanie says.

"It appears outright murder is a bad thing here, so we should try to leave unconscious bodies; not corpses. They likely get reborn like Atavul, so their corpse would just get transported to his rebirthing area." Artemis says, though keeping her death guardian form.

"Considering we found this guy on the streets, we should just shave him and keep him incapacitated then." I say.

 

Evion pauses again, stepping closer one more step to shove his face into the wet floor.


Emerald sighs.
“You realize that now I can’t stop her from throwing her hissy fit on Earth, right?”


Doir sticks his tongue out at you before bolting up onto Artemis’ shoulder.

The magma tide has risen to the point where there’s barely a path into the main entry that isn’t just lava.

 

Katie seems unnerved, though tries to distract herself with what's on television.


"Of course. Which is why there's a failsafe. As the one who enchanted the armour, I can easily disable some of it's protective aspects should I need to. My magic will still work on her too, so I can suppress her that way," Praecantatia explains, "Only I can disable it though, so there's no risk of one of the hive master's minions undermining our efforts."


Artemis quickly grabs Doir by the neck as a snap-reaction, and Doir begins to notice the dull drain a lot more now he's closer to Artemis. Artemis drops Doir onto the ground, staring him down.

 

Evion eventually tires of the water and comes back to me to sit on my lap.


“Do not abuse that failsafe.” Emerald says, serious.


Doir treats it as a staring contest, simply meeting Artemis’ gaze with their small beady eyes.

 

Katie relaxes, watching the TV. It appears to be a show about people exploring a haunted house to find ghosts, but by the looks of things, it's just a bunch of humans pretending to be scared of creaky wooden floors as they throw chairs at each other offscreen. Abigail occasionally laughs at the over the top reactions.


"It's designed as a last resort, should Xlentia go for a 'hissy fit' on Earth as you say." Praecantatia says.


Doir begins to feel a deep fear as he stares into Artemis' eyes, as if staring into the hollow eyes of a skull. The longer he looks, the weaker he feels.

 

“Hey, thanks again for everything. When the rest of your group comes here, give them these.” I say, summoning two boxes, one wrapped with green paper and the other in purple. “I should get going, though. Aj probably didn’t like the ‘gift’ I got him.”


“Don’t bash her skull in. Expect her to try and make a break for it in about seven minutes.”


He keeps staring at Artemis anyways, though he is on a downward slope to the magma.

 

"What did you get him?" Abigail asks, amused.


"I'll wait here, then." Praecantatia says, glancing about the library.


After about another minute, Doir starts to feel his grip of consciousness slip, Artemis' gaze scarily draining.

 

“I got him a talking ferret that’s an absolute jackass.”


Seven minutes later, Xlentia drags herself near the library.
“Emerald, what the null did they do to me?!”
“I got here literally days ago, just come in and ask Praecantatia.”
“I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU TO HANDLE TRAITORS FOR ME!” She roars.
“She’s not-“
Xlentia’s claw takes a swipe into the library doorway, flinging the doors wide open before Xlentia pokes her head in with a furious look.
“SHE HAS FIVE SECONDS TO BACK OFF BEFORE I ERASE HER, REALITY BE DAMNED.” She snarls.
“Xlentia, stop.”
“THOSE DOGS HAD THEIR CHANCE. TO NULL WITH THE THOUGHT I’D GIVE THEM ANOTHER.”
“You haven’t even seen her yet.”
Xlentia hesitates, though still seems utterly furious.


Doir keeps staring, seeming intent on doing so with every fiber of his being.

 

Abigail laughs.

"That's amazing. I don't think he'll keep it alive for very long though." Abigail says.


Praecantatia appears to vanish completely, one of her robotic golems appearing in her place. It chimes a little, lights blinking on it's face before it slowly walks toward the library entrance.


Doir ends up passing out, half of his life essence drained.

"Idiotic creature." Artemis says, before changing her focus to pressing against the wall.

 

“Oh, it’s from Atavul’s domain. Endlessly reincarnating.” I laugh.


Xlentia glares at the golem, looking directly at it.
“You said she was here. Not her spy things.” Xlentia growls.
“You wouldn’t listen either way.”
“OF COURSE NOT, I’M SICK OF BEING THEIR PLAYTHING!” She roars.


Doir’s body winds up rolling into the lava.
Before he was skinned.
You’re now out a map.