1
1
here is a list of my servant sheets(new and improved format for my servant sheets)
Come explore the White Library, and reach the bottom of this Abyss
Fate / White Memoria
1!
Full steam ahead, let’s go!!
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Magus Profile!
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Relationship Index!
Day 1 - The City III
Dolores was hurt. That fact could not be argued. She was wounded, low on time, and had no idea what she was really dealing with. Sure, she could guess at how the homunculi functioned and their basic functions, but it would be simplicity itself to create multiple variants. Even ones designed with illusion and stealth magic in mind.
“We need to escape. Reaching our comrades is the main objective.”
She hated indecisiveness.
But she also hated leaving a task unfinished.
It galled the young lady to leave who knows how many killing machines walking about freely, but the fact of the matter was that the department came first. If it was really under attack like the Summoning Department, she had to be there to meet with her fellow shamans to defend it.
Not because she feared they couldn’t handle themselves, but because Caster’s lack of an appearance at the Summoning Department meant she was most likely focusing her attention on the shamans.
Did she know who Dolores was?
The youth couldn’t imagine how. Despite being a noteworthy practitioner within her department, Shamans weren’t well regarded outside their own, close knit circles, so you would have to be actively searching for information within a very specific and hard to find group. On top of which, she was a relatively minor noble who was outshone in importance by both her fellow students and her Master.
Caster was a servant. She could have admittedly plucked the information from someone who knew Dolores. But the timetable didn’t add up. Not many knew it was her who found the servants under the Tower of London and those that did wouldn’t have been truly vulnerable.
So, either one of the Masters recognized her, which was unlikely for outsiders.
Or they’d been told by someone on the inside.
A traitor was always possible, but who and where?
Amongst the enforcers, there were those who knew she had been captured coming from the tunnels. From the Vice Director’s cabinet, those she gave testimony to about the servants and masters. And as unlikely as it was, there were also certain shaman families who didn’t get along with hers.
Safe to say, there were a lot of possible culprits if she were to cast the net widely and she didn’t have the time for puzzles.
“Let’s go.”
‘Kitten?’
“We are heading to the department. We have to find Bran, Marcus, and the others.” She had to touch base with them, maybe see about finding Master Harfang too. He was bound to be either at the Clock Tower, helping contain the damage from Berserker’s fight with Barthomelloi, or back at their department.
He just had to vanish now of all times.
“I’m gonna have words with him after this.” She swore.
Suibhne was hesitant, that much was clear over their bond, and the spirit’s primary focus was on her wound. Which, admittedly, had begun to throb in a steady, pulsing rhythm. At the very least, the bleeding had stopped, but she knew that there would be ugly yellow and purple bruises up and down her side for weeks going forward. There was also the simple fact she lacked any real medical supplies or the time to find them.
Gritting her teeth, she sent reassurance across to her partner, silently asking Suibhne to trust her and follow her lead. A little bit of shame and acceptance, along with a good dose of worry, was her equally silent response.
Later on, Dolores knew she would have to explore their suddenly much stronger, clearer connection. At the moment she accepted it as a consequence of the combat and took comfort in the fact her spirit would trust her judgement. If nothing else, the sheer weight of the mystery Suibhne’s body carried reminded her of her youth.
“We’ll move quickly. And discretely. If the bounded field was this rushed, we can probably find a flaw or exit that wasn’t planned for. That’ll give us a way out that isn’t observed.”
It wasn’t an awful plan. In fact, it could be considered almost textbook perfect for her current situation. And that was the issue with it as the Magus saw her situation.
‘If I came up with a textbook solution, someone has a textbook counter.’
Suibhne leapt up onto the sill of a nearby building, bounding from floor to floor with exceptional ease, and even began padding along the roof - so as to be able to watch over the whole of the area - and continued to feed her the occasional update.
Hesitating for a moment, she decided to commit fully to her escape and closed her eyes.
Feeling a little blood drying on her skin, she pushed the itch out of her mind.
Feeling her ribs ache with every breath, she pushed the bruising out of her mind.
Feeling her stomach twist a little at the disgusting sight she’d been witness to, she pushed the horror of the trapped civilians out of her mind.
Retching, coughing, spitting, she produced several wriggling homunculi is her own. The tiny flying insects her mother’s gift let her bring into being. Empowering them with an ember of prana, she slipped them through the stealth spell. Normally, this would have been impossible, would have shattered the very spell she was working with, but she was a Shaman. And the cait sidhe was a manifestation brought about by Dolores’s own will and soul. They were one. So, in turn, their magic was one too.
Letting the insects drift out of their cover, she pushed them against the edge of the bounded field, making sure to avoid any concentrations of power, and lightly pushed her little minions against the spell keeping this area isolated.
Distressingly, this fed her a bit of information in turn.
For one, this was only one bounded field of many, perhaps as many as a dozen, scattered across London. That there were at least forty or fifty homunculi in each one, of which a couple were particularly strong, and that each field worked as a… processing center, slowly converting more humans into the seeds needed to create further homunculi. It was a factory that lured in, trapped, and converted humans, Magi, and Enforcers into more weapons.
Dolores swallowed, ignoring the sheer horror of this creation, and focused on doing what she had to.
“I found it. A crack in the spell.”
Moving as quickly as she could, and slowly calling her tiny swarm back inside the spell, and going very, very still when a pack of homunculi rushed by and covered the area, the Magus did what she could.
However, identifying a vulnerability in a bounded field was only one part of escaping from it.
What she was going to have to do was break it, shattering the field utterly, and removing its effects in total. That meant the civilians would react to what was going on around them… everything that is. And the Enforcers would also be able to very easily identify what was going. Assuming they weren’t all dead or weren’t already busy with other, similar such horrors.
‘Suibhne, can you hear me?’
Her mental words connected, if a little faintly, with the spirit. Still on top of a building, the ancient being was clearly agitated, unhappy about not being able to physically be there with her mistress.
But just as indecisiveness could be fatal, so too could impulsiveness invite disaster. Suibhne waited, hair bristling on end, as a particularly tall and thin creature walked around the area. It had a long, slimy tongue, easily four or five feet in length, that waved about the air. Small feelers seemed to waft in the air, trying to detect the Magus currently hiding from them. However, just as before, the detection was indecisive. Something that clearly frustrated the homunculi as they shuffled about, desperately questing for the intruder that had slain one of their number and was managing to hide from them.
Dolores was more than happy to let them take their time. Standing there, trying not to breathe too deeply, as the drying blood on her skin itched. It was still a break… after a fashion.
Eventually, the horde did leave, ambling off to other places.
What was probably just a few minutes had felt like hours and, once again, the Magus cursed her lack of physicality. Youth aside, she was simply small. And after the day she’d had she was exhausted and sore and her legs were cramping from standing. The temptation to whine and complain was a difficult one to reject, but thankfully Suibhne came to see her, twisting between her legs, and soothed the slight thorn of panic pushing into her.
Moving towards the weak point, the young Magus worked quickly, crudely scratching a magic circle with the small trickle of blood still leaking out of her wound, and empowered it.
Abandoning subtlety, and offering a prayer for the souls of those she would be damning to awareness of the living Hell around them, she pumped her magic into the spell, directed the bolt of raw, focused piercing at the imperfection in the bounded field, and started running as screams rang out behind her.
Her feet hit the ground and Dolores was gasping, all subtlety abandoned, as she and her partner started moving.
Pushing ahead, she didn’t look back, Suibhne was more than fast enough to dash ahead and keep an eye out for attackers, but that didn’t make things totally easy. Her short stride took a lot of work to eat up the distance in front of her and her reserves of energy was starting to flag. Tapping once more into her magical reserves, she empowered her body with reinforcement and exploded forward.
As unskilled at it as she was, even just a mild boost for a Magus put one such as her well and truly into the realm of the super human.
Oddly enough, there was no pursuit, no misshapen monsters chasing after her, no horrific baying as unholy abominations bent on ripping her limb from limb. Turning back to finally see what she had left behind, the young woman felt her eyes widen in realization.
The reason there was no pursuit was because, when the bounded field went down, the humans started fighting back. Even now flames were spreading, climbing hire and hire as the city block that had been trapped burned. When the wind turned her way, it carried the screams of the dying to her. In the distance, an explosion rang out, bits of debris rocketing up into the sky.
“By the Great Spirit….” Obviously, she had expected some kind of disaster. Normal civilians just weren’t prepared to face the horrors of ill wrought magecraft. “What’s done is done.” Dolores didn’t look away, no matter how much she wanted to screw her eyes shut. “I have to reach the department. It’s the only way to prevent my home suffering this fate.”
Turning aside from the assured slaughter going on behind her, she focused on the journey ahead. Her choice was made, after all, and angsting over it pointlessly would simply shame the deaths of the mortals behind her.
She still felt her eyes grow wet.
“Kitten, are you ok?”
Suibhne brushed against Dolores’s leg, looking up at the girl she was bound to.
“Yeah.” Forcing her voice to be firm, she refused to doubt her choice. “I’m just feeling guilty. But that won’t bring anyone back to life and there others still at risk. Not to mention all the other bounded fields around the city.” Dolores shook her head. “This is insignificant. What matters the most is minimizing losses.” Grunting, she placed her hand on her wound again. “I’m not happy about abandoning so many people.”
There was nothing left to say.
There was nothing else that could be said.
A choice was made and Dolores would live with it.
‘The next time I see Penny, I think I’m gonna hug her and cry.’
Rushing off into the city once more, she kept making progress towards her goal. Right now, there were people counting on her. And that meant she had people to save.
Maybe not everyone… but those that she could.
Choice Time
2
Have a bad feeling that we might bump into some unpleasantries, but would rather not attract attention by going directly through the front doors, hmm.
Last edited by SleepMode; March 14th, 2021 at 03:22 PM.
The Act of dozing off in the afternoon is a luxury indeed.
Coffee would be nice, though.
[Collection of my Servant Sheets]
Now Revamped!
Exactly my thoughts. 2Originally Posted by SleepMode
here is a list of my servant sheets(new and improved format for my servant sheets)
Come explore the White Library, and reach the bottom of this Abyss
Fate / White Memoria
Seconding this, same sentiments here
Quest of Fate
Apocrypha Universe Fate Quest Project
---
Beast's Lair Discord Server For Fate Quests
Hermes Servant Collection Master Post
Makes sense. 2!
Magus Profile!
Inventory
Relationship Index!
Day 1 - Invasion I
Dolores was… deeply confused.
Having identified what the bounded fields felt like from the inside and having experienced a taste of what the group’s mana “tasted” like, she didn’t even need Suibhne’s enhanced senses to detect the sheer number of traps covering the city.
Most were very well hidden, crafted in such a way that they followed the natural contours of the mundane buildings and streets and city blocks, with only a few deforming to block off vital arteries in the city. What had her so confused, however, was the sheer scale of the traps. Dozens were scattered across London, with tens of thousands of likely victims. Combined with the unnatural, sudden storm raging in the area it was clear that the mundane world was going to have a very, very negative reaction to this.
“Magecraft itself is at risk of discovery. Who… who would be willing to risk this much?”
Fat droplets of rain slowly began to fall from swollen, angry clouds. Slashes of lightning lit the city. Suibhne herself dropped to press up against Dolores, pushing a thread of worry to her mistress’s mind.
“It’s ok.” Running her fingers through the wild cat’s fur, she took a moment to duck into a convenience story with its door blown out. “I’m not even really hurting anymore.”
Snagging a few snacks, she downed an energy drink, grimacing at the taste, and swallowed a handful of pills. Mostly over the counter mild pain medications that wouldn’t have a negative interaction. Just enough to take the edge off of her labored breathing and throbbing, itching injury. The rest were a pair of caffeine pills though.
Exhaustion could be killer so, even if she would pay for this with a crash later, she’d grit her teeth and push on now.
“I was under the impression Magi scorned mundane solutions.” Her spirit chortled, having found a few pieces of cold fried fish to chow down on. Dolores simply shrugged.
“And they’re all dead now.” The cait sidhe radiated silent approval and Dolores rounded up a bit more in the way of supplies. A hammer, an immediately cheap flashlight, a bag of batteries, plenty of bottles of water, and the pills were all stuffed into a plastic bag. Then, deciding to be safe, she triple bagged her supplies and added some snacks.
It was at this moment that she realized why she was feeling so strange.
“Suibhne, can you smell anyone? Any humans other than me at all?”
Taking a moment, the spirit slowly nodded.
“There are humans, but only a few. And they’re scattered in the residential areas.”
“But….” Dolores swallowed, hoping her suspicions were wrong.
“But there are far too few.”
Closing her eyes, the Magus realized exactly what was going on.
“This is a ritual. A massive, city wide ritual of human sacrifice. There’s maybe seven million people in this city. That’s a lot of mana. And whoever set those bounded fields up are probably going to be sacrificing all that power to summon something, because any spell or curse of destruction with that much power might wipe out the whole hemisphere. Something I doubt the Mage's Association would permit.” Wracking her mind, the spell caster tried to come up with a possible explanation. In the end she gave up, any ritual of this scale simply beyond her ability to comprehend. “We need to move.”
The front entrance, however, was a no go.
It was the first place an enemy would try to invade from.
She’d seen Caster’s minions attacking the Summoning Department, they were heavy with mystery but wholly simplistic. Brutes with almost no cunning or thought behind their actions. If they were to accomplish anything against a large number of Shamans, they’d have to come at them with a greater number in an open battlefield.
Going through the tunnels was just asking to be walled in underground.
Or worse, forced through one of the Librarian’s Doorways.
Dolores shuddered.
That would be bad for everyone.
“We’ll take a short detour and enter through one of the secondary passages.” She resolved.
There was no way she would lose time now. She needed to regroup with her classmates and reinforce the line of defense before Caster herself showed up. So far the servant of spells had been content to stay away, but there was most likely a reason for it.
And she now knew that a ritual was being conducted.
Sacrificing humans inside bounded fields. Thousands, maybe millions of souls being converted into mana. To begin with, the sacrifice of humans on such a large scale was forbidden because of how attention grabbing it was. Putting one of the biggest cities in the world through a rapture scenario would be nothing short of a disaster.
But that point was moot.
If whatever this ritual summoned was going to destroy the city, then people far more powerful than her would intervene. They would step in, beat back this horror, and fix everything. Even if the cost was truly, staggeringly immense.
Right now her goal was to reach the other Shamans and see what she could do to help them.
So, not bothering with an umbrella, though she did pull on a yellow rain slicker she found in the back of the store, she gathered up her supplies, stepped out into the now roaring rainstorm, and empowered herself.
The heady thrum of Reinforcement pulsed inside of her body, beating in time to her heart. Suibhne growled and shook herself, claws and fur growing longer. Sharing a final moment, the duo launched themselves forward in a series of large, bounding lopes. Due to the superhuman strength granted by this particular spell, normal running was out of the question. Instead, she would essentially push off against the ground and propel her body forward in a low hop. In that way, each step could cover three or four meters and she could manage five or six such steps in a second.
Thankfully, Reinforcement also kept the rain droplets from doing more than feeling like a thousand tiny needles hitting her exposed skin.
An odd advantage of having no one about meant that she made great time. Bermondsey wasn’t always the most hopping of areas, but there was more than enough foot traffic to cover the Shamans and a well known population of eccentrics to help there too. It still took her nearly half an hour to cross the city, dodging lighting strikes, bounded fields, the odd homunculus, and mundanes, all the while.
But now that she stood outside of Macadder’s Finest Figgy Puddings, the main entrance to the Department for Shamans that didn’t enjoy walking through their literal front gate, she relaxed.
Wards thrummed and clicked into place, welcoming her inside the warm, dimly lit shop, a group of regular customers, mundanes aware of or associated with the Departement greeting her as she did so, and the purveyor of the restaurant, one Angus Macadder, lifted a pint of stout in greeting.
“Hello Little Ducky! What’s going on out there?”
Tall, with a fierce head of bright red hair, mutton chops, a tattoo on his neck from when he was in the service, and the strangest mix of accents she’d ever heard, the portly middle aged man waved her on over while the group of thirty odd people excitedly called out to her.
“Might be the end of the world, Angus. What’s going on in the department?”
That got a snort of laughter.
“Definitely the good Lord coming back. Some kind of baby fire demon down in the basement. It ran back into the side gate for you lot when I gave it a taste of buckshot, but, well, that just scared it off. Also….” He pulled the ruined remains of a double barreled shotgun out from under his countertop. “It ruined me Da’s piece.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Once this is all sorted out, assuming we make it through this, I’ll have the Department fix it up.”
That was, of course, the least of their worries.
That Burning Child was back.
The spirit who hunted her down in the tunnels, monstrously powerful for something so recently summoned. She hadn’t been able to get a good look at it last time, and Suibhne had been nearly banished by Caster, but she knew that much. Back then, had she been found, she would have most certainly perished.
Now? Now it was a different story.
She had Suibhne by her side. She was armed and had access to her magecraft. And she even had a small swarm to scout for her, so that thing would not get the drop on her again. Only it was probably even stronger now than it was before. The ritual going on was collecting an absurd amount of mana and the Burning Child would be that much stronger for it, assuming that it was connected to the ritual at all. ‘I don’t think my luck is good enough for them not to be connected.’
“Well, you’ll be off to deal with it?”
Smiling, the Magus picked up her bound spirit.
“Suibhne and I need to deal with it. It’s our duty, after all.”
Eyes turning a bit sad, Macadder gave her a nod.
“How about a snack before you go? I have a bit of shepherd's pie and cream for the kitten, if that’s alright?”
“I could still go for a bite.” The entire room turned to look at Suibhne, who began to purr. “That fish earlier wasn’t nearly enough.”
“Well I’ll be.”
“A talking cat.”
“This really is the end of the world.”
All of the group began agreeing, rapidly concurring on a single point.
“Dolores, Little Ducky.” Macadder gave her a heavy look. “You are most definitely an odd duckling. Because this lovely lady has to be the most normal partner we’ve ever seen.”
“What’s the world coming to?”
“A shaman that doesn’t have a giant glowing wheel with flaming, winged eyes?”
“Something actually practical and reasonable that doesn’t want to devour the world?”
“At least it’s not another, what did they call it, an outsider?”
“Yeah. Little Ducky really is a bit too practical. Do you think they’ll tease her for not having the ghost of her mother or a giant magic bird as a pet?”
Dolores tried not to wince. Keeping human spirits as familiars for a shaman was just… a big no-no.
“Well if they do, we can just keep her around more. Cute thing is just the right age for my grandson!”
And that was her cue to leave.
“Killer spirit. Basement. Now.” She deadpanned. Totally not blushing.
“Snack first, kitten. Or should I say… Little Ducky.” The sheer wall of smug radiating off of Suibhne was terrifying. Dolores felt her blush spreading as she felt the spirit reach out to her siblings and share the memories of the old timers and her nickname.
What passed was an actually relaxing break. Handing over her bag of supplies, Dolores enjoyed a pint of dark, heavy ale with an actually very tasty dish of shepherd’s pie. Suibhine herself luxuriated in the attention of the crowd, eagerly discussing events that had occurred over the previous centuries and millennia, even getting into a bitter dispute with one man about exactly how much of a “jumped up, sheep shagging, cunt” Ragnar Lothbrok was.
Mostly, she deigned to permit the crowd to cover her in scratches, rubs, and pets in exchange for her own pint of ale, saucer of cream, and a freshly cooked slice of salmon.
Idly, and for no particular reason, the Magus wondered if cait sidhe could get fat.
Ultimately, the time came, and having had more food and a breather Dolores definitely felt better prepared. Macadder, however, gestured for her to follow him.
“A wee little gift for you, since you’re about to get into trouble.”
Strolling into a back room, he started fooling around with a lock on a trunk before he started pulling something very big and very long out.
“Oh.” The Magus’s eyes went wide.
In his hands was a full claymore. A giant bloody sword that was at least six feet tall. And it radiated Mystery.
“It’s my family sword. Figured if you wanted to take that… thing on in combat, it might help a bit.”
Taking a sip of her beer, she thought about how to respond.
Choice Time!
1
1. Time for more flexing
Quest of Fate
Apocrypha Universe Fate Quest Project
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Hermes Servant Collection Master Post
1. BUSTER DOLORES ! SHE NEEDS TO LEARN TO ENJOY THE TASTE OF BLOOD ! THE BABY IS ONLY THE FIRST OF MANY TO FALL !
1
here is a list of my servant sheets(new and improved format for my servant sheets)
Come explore the White Library, and reach the bottom of this Abyss
Fate / White Memoria
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!
1.
1
The Act of dozing off in the afternoon is a luxury indeed.
Coffee would be nice, though.
[Collection of my Servant Sheets]
Now Revamped!
Magus Profile!
Inventory
Relationship Index!
Day 1 - Invasion II
“Thank you.” Closing her eyes, she gave a jerky nod of the head. “I’ll do my best!”
Ruffling her hair, the old man gave the rather young looking girl a sad smile.
“I’d say that children your age should be off playing with dolls, not fighting demons. But I think we both know enough about Magi to guess that this is just a foreshock. After you head down, I’ll lock the gate behind you and you just give it the old shave and a haircut and I’ll let you back in.”
Dolores felt a childish whine bubble from her chest.
How was she supposed to lug around that giant sword?!
Well, she knew how. But still! She was a Lady, not some barbarian princess out of a novel. If her classmates saw her swinging this… this… buster sword, there would be no end to their teasing! So, hefting the claymore in both hands, she swallowed and called to Suibhne to get ready. After all, once they started this fight it was likely going to get very nasty, very quickly and they would only have one good shot at finishing this fight.
At least without it blowing up in their faces.
“Aww, isn’t she just the cutest!”
Stepping outside, she blinked owlishly when an old camera snapped her picture.
The ancient polaroid spat out a perfect shot of the green haired girl standing there, massive sword in hand, and without the ability to even so much as pretend she wasn’t carrying a great hunk of metal around.
Wise Up!
“Shall we be off to slay the Questing Beast, Ser Morello?” Suibhne, the little traitorous furball, couldn’t resist the chance to tease her either.
Maybe she should spare herself the embarrassment and allow the city to be overrun with magical zombies after all?
Oh who was she kidding.
There was no way she’d ever let a task go unfinished.
So it was with great embarrassment and many promises of revenge that the diminutive shaman climbed down the staircase leading to the depths of the store’s basement. A narrow hallway of stone going downwards as darkness seemed to surround her from all sides, its walls were warm and homey, with many framed photographs lining the walls. In ways, it was like a story, telling of the passing of a great many year and even the passage of entire epochs of time.
Her walk was slow, but sure and the Magus took care to neither cut herself nor scrape the blade along the walls. And it was a sad sigh that Macadder unlocked his cellar door, stepping aside and letting the Magus fruitlessly search the dark room. Unlit, rather suddenly, the flickering light of flame illuminated the space and cast the room in tones of yellow and orange.
Unlike the store, the basement was made of slate grey stone.
Unmarked aside from the circle which the shamans of the department had left carved at its center. She knew that it worked like a dream catcher, a trap meant to isolate and prevent harmful spirits from entering the department.
Well, unless a shaman wanted them to get in.
The moment the child-like spirit of flames attempted to cross the boundary into their department, it was sent here and trapped by the array.
'It' s as we feared. The spirit is stronger.’
Before, the Child had been little more than a wisp of smoke and ash, powered by a heart of beating flame as it sought to rekindle itself with the lifeforce of others. Now? Now its flames burnt hot, their light more than enough to illuminate the room.
Across from the entrance, behind the trapped spirit, Dolores could see the side passage to the department.
A heavy set of carved wooden doors.
Of course, they just happened to be locked because of their little interloper. The symbols on the wood glowing ominously as it powered the array that kept the spirit from moving. Opening it would be impossible unless Dolores undid the trap and allowed the Burning Child to escape.
How… unfortunate.
Either way she’d be freeing Caster’s minion.
‘Then it is fortuitous that we decided to destroy it.’ Suibhne slunk by her side, eyes glinting dangerously as the cait sidhe observed their prey.
Before, they’d been separated.
Unable to fight together.
This time Dolores wouldn’t be fighting as a magus. But as a shaman. The enemy before her demanded nothing but her best. And as the Lady Morello, she wouldn’t be satisfied by nothing short of complete annihilation.
‘Holding a grudge, kitten?’
‘Would you think less of me if I said yes?’
‘On the contrary. I’d say it was time to stop the monologuing and start the killing.’
Dolores let out a sigh. She had a point.
Stepping into the room. Dolores felt the wards recognize her, the familiar mana resonating with her own as it washed over her body like lukewarm water. Red eyes settling on the trapped spirit.
She gave the word, and the door behind her closed.
Kneeling down, she slowed her breath, giving a prayer to God and thanking Him for shielding and protecting her on her journey. Controlling the weight in her lungs, feeling the slight burn as she held her exhale, the Magus continued to pray. She asked Him for strength in the coming battle and for His hand to guide hers and to bless this sword to smite His foes. Pouring a good half of her remaining power into the prayer and the sword, she tied the warmth and the light and shadow and the coolness and the purity of the moment to the weapon.
This was a Minor Banishment spell inspired by the Church’s exorcist techniques. A pale imitation, flattery in its most sincere form.
Rebuke (Genuflection)
Wise Up!
It was no sacrament, of course, but as she slowly and carefully enunciated a Hail Mary in ecclesiastical latin, the action itself calmed her. Her body still hurt, was still sore, and kneeling like this was causing parts of her body to catch. So, knowing the action would not dull the blade, she stuck the tip of the claymore into the ground so that it stood like a cross.
And she stretched.
Touching her toes, stretching her arms, even doing a few vertical and horizontal splits. She really tried to get the soreness in her calves and ribs to at least fade into a dull background ache, all the while she ignored the twitching, muttering, sometimes snarling monster that was whispering the most foul obscenities imaginable at her.
Suibhne had simply relieved herself on the thing’s leg and padded back over to stretch out and roll over like all cats do.
Standing up, Dolores drew the sword from the stone floor, raised it into a guard position, and thanked her lucky stars she’d had a noble’s education… and cursed herself for not training her reinforcement more. Pointing the tip straight at the chest of her enemy, she made sure to let her circuits settle into a pleased, steady thrum, and swore to herself she’d train for physical combat more after this.
‘Ready, Suibhne?’
Rolling her shoulders, unsheathing her claws, giving a loud yowl the cait sidhe let her own inherent mystery saturate the room and their bond.
“Ready kitten!”
The gate to the department flickered as the trap was released.
And the spirit of roaring flames was released.
Snarling, it immediately unleashed a blast of flames straight at her. It’s jaw unhinged and the jet of unholy flame sought her very soul to burn. Dodging to the left, Suibhne darted to the right and forward, claws lashing out at the child’s ankles. This in turn drew the monster’s attention and it kicked at her, the sidhe only just managing to dodge out of the way.
Dolores took the opening and, pushing off the ground, leapt straight at the monster’s chest, intent on driving her blade into its chest as quickly as possible.
A spirit’s weak point was the core.
And for a humanoid spirit, the core was always in the chest.
Leaping back, it unleashed another blast of fire and the Magus drove the sword down, slashing through the flames, and lunged forward again.
Unfortunately, her over eagerness was her weakness and the creature, black shards of fleshing popping and crackling, launched its finger bones at the shaman. Grunting, she felt the shards of charred demon flesh slam into her chest and one in particular ended up burying itself in the meat of her stomach. Crying out, she brought her swarm around and sent everything she had down at the monster.
Even as the homunculi attacked the monster’s eyes, burrowing into the nearly molten flesh and immolating themselves, the Magus withdrew, wounded, and lashed out with a second spell.
Consuming a portion of her remaining power, she struck out at the monster and blasted it with a minor banishment. Just enough to keep it off balance for Suibhne to dart in and rake her claws across the demon child’s stomach. Unfortunately, in an utter rage, the monster clawed at her and scratched a trio of deep, burning furrows across the spirit’s back.
Feeling the pain through their bond, the Magus cried out for the first time, snarling and roaring as she charged with the blade.
Stabbing and slashing, she desperately assaulted the chittering, snarling monster as it leapt and bounced around the room, moving like a chimp as it swung its arms and snarled and roared. Firing off another finger’s worth of bones, Dolores tried to dodge but was clipped in the arm this time, her dress’s sleeve being shredded and two more bones burrowing deep into her arm.
Struggling to raise her arms, she tapped into the magic of the trap itself, pulling on the Department’s spells to empower herself.
Steadying her limbs, she ignored the spreading burning sensation inside of her body and rushed back into battle. Until Suibhne was safely away, she wouldn’t let this freak even think of touching her again!
Boxing the monster in with her slashes, she drove it to a corner and rained blows on the monster until, finally, she managed to land a single good blow on its arm, severing the limb and drawing another unearthly, unnatural scream. Unleashing a blast of force, the monster knocked her back and slammed Dolores into the wall.
Breath knocked out of her chest, it was all Dolores could do to roll away as the burning spirit pounced after her.
Slipping underneath, yet being forced to leave her sword behind.
Instead, her fingertip glew with the light of green mana, steadily forming spheres flying forward and striking true. The small barrage of gandr peppering the back of the spirit as it writhed against the wall. Flesh peeling back as faux blood poured out of the wounds.
Not enough for a kill.
They couldn’t pierce deep enough to hit the core.
In that moment, both sides pulled apart. The monster’s arm had disintegrated into nothing, ash and flames dispersing into nothing but glimmers in the air. So too was the thing’s flames dimming. Its eyes were nothing but hollow sockets, a molten fluid leaking from where her swarm had burrowed deep, deep into the monster’s skull and too were its entrails half hanging out. Rotten flesh was seared black and seemed to flake away in the open air as the demonic undead seemed exhausted and confused, clearly unsure of what to do.
Not that Dolores herself was feeling great.
Her arm and stomach were both bleeding, her dress was ruined, again, and her top had been torn open. Not that there was exactly much to show off, the extra bit of humiliation was unappreciated as tired and battered as she was. More distressingly was Suibhne’s state. Gritting her teeth, she pushed the last of her power into her spirit, snuffing out the curse that had been warring with the sidhe’s body and resuscitated her.
“Kitten.” There were still a few lines of burned fur down the sidhe’s side. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
A stiff smile was the Magus’s only response, desperate to keep the curses slowly worming their way through her body in check.
Her mana was spent... used up to buy time for her to act.
Reacing for her pocket, Dolores pulled out a handful of small jewels. The crystrals she'd pocketed back when she first saw Berserker a day ago. She'd rather have avoided using them. But when she decided to face this foe, she knew she'd need them.
'Now then... what do I do?'
Choice Time!
Status Update!
Last edited by Wyvern; March 28th, 2021 at 06:27 PM.
Quick
Buster only destroys the physical body of the demon, Mystery-seeped Sword or no. While Arts feels like blowing through a chunk of our assets much too early.
Last edited by SleepMode; March 28th, 2021 at 10:46 PM.
The Act of dozing off in the afternoon is a luxury indeed.
Coffee would be nice, though.
[Collection of my Servant Sheets]
Now Revamped!
Hmmm... I'm going to break the Buster meme and pick Arts.
Breaks my heart to cease with the Buster memes but Quick is what I’m going with as it seems to be the halfway point between the two others
Quest of Fate
Apocrypha Universe Fate Quest Project
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Hermes Servant Collection Master Post
*patpat Hermes*
Mm...
I'll say Quick?
It leaves some resources for use later, and while a Water Elemental would be her strongest option, she can't take another hit so it'd make sense for her to decide on something fast and decisive if she's planning to need to do more after this.
Buster
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