Experimentations (Honor, I)ragon)

[Halcyon Hero]

Metal hissed and sparks flew as at least a dozen different alloys mixed together, each pouring slowly into a communal basin from separate pipes. The sparks flashed various colors as the being overseeing the process muttered a handful of arcane words and made a sweeping gesture towards the molten substance, rainbow-colored magic seeping from the extremity to flow into the mixing metals. The mixture sat and bubbled for a moment as the magic spread through it, the black molten liquid often splashing up into the air in great waves and churning all together.

The lich cackled; he loved new experimentations. His skull spinning around freely, Zaknafein’s crimson orbs gazed over to inspect the second mixture. This one was a bright blue, and churned madly within a floating glass orb. Muttering a few more choice words, the lich sent another wave of magic flowing into the bluish liquid, causing it to expand within the glass orb and slosh about with a renewed fury. Pulse after pulse of magical energy bombarded the two mixtures, and occasionally the lich would turn on yet another experiment—this one a volume of purple gas contained within a magical barrier—and drop a spell over it, too.

Cackling again, the lich turned away from the volatile substances and strode down a narrow hallway. The way was lit by a yellow mage-light floating above the lich’s head, casting the stone walls and floor in an eerie glow. Turning into a book-filled room (only one of many), Zaknafein peered around, finally spotting a wide piece of blank paper stretched across a wall. Walking up to it, the lich snapped his fingers, and letters quickly faded into view upon the paper. Zak stood tapping a single bony digit against his equally bony chin, surveying the sprawling words calmly. But apparently, what he sought was not to be found, and the lich motioned at the paper, the black lines of letters and numbers scrolling to the side into nothingness and new formulas and notes appearing on the opposite side.

For a long while the lich stood and observed, periodically scrolling the data to the side and bringing up new information. Finally, he seemed satisfied (for the moment, at least), and waved the words away into nothingness. Again he immerged into the winding hallways of cold stone, taking twisted path after twisted path to emerge in a mostly empty chamber. A long spouting of arcane syllables, and the lich summoned before him a large circular window. For a time, he merely drifted around, the viewing portal wandering of its own accord. But eventually, he found the exact things to fulfill his curiosities. Within even acknowledging that they were there, or even turning to look at them, the lich spoke to two dark shadows waiting behind him.

“I need lab rats. Go and fetch these three.”

<====}=0 – 0={====>

The sword flashed up, severing the encroaching limb at the elbow and flinging the separated forearm twirling into the bright blue sky. Undaunted, the skeleton warrior let out a throaty growl and clawed out at the samurai with his other bony arm. Sliding his right foot across to the side, Koganei spun around, catching his opponent’s rear unguarded. Hand blazing with blue flame-like energy, the ronin slammed his palm into the off-guard skeleton’s spine, blasting through it and the ribs beyond the send bones spiraling throughout the air. One down. Many, many more to go.

Koganei grimaced as the tight ring of skeleton warriors tightened around him. Many wore steel armor, some pulsed with a magical light, and all were armed with heavy weapons. Drawing his second sword from its sheath, the wanderer took up a defensive stance. They came on in a rush. Koganei was a whirlwind of flashing steel and blazing blue energy. A ring of heavy swords rose above the man, their broad sides gleaming in the midday sunlight. Spreading his arms and twisting his torso, the ronin flooded his outer body and swords with energy, launching himself into a furious spinning as the blades descended. As one, they clanged off of the blue dome that now protected the whirling Koganei, sending the tall skeleton warriors off balance. Never one to miss an opportunity, the samurai kicked forward, his spinning blades cutting into his off-guard foes. The carnage continued for many minutes, the warrior fighting furiously against the horde. Soon, the blue-haired man found himself standing on a growing pile of bones, yet the number of his enemy never seemed to decrease.

Yelling, the samurai jabbed a katana into the ribcage of an approaching skeleton and ripped upwards, showing the area with bones. Spinning to cover his backside, the man jabbed out again. The blade easily slipped through a ribcage, yet this skeleton seemed to be a bit quicker than the ones before it. Bony fingers hastily closed around the blade, and the owner stepped back and twisted to the side. A shocked Koganei then found himself only with a single blade, his other rapidly drifting away in the crowd of skeletons. Angry and indignant, the ronin grasped his remaining weapon in both hand. The blade flashed, the glowing metal elongating and broadening to form a zanbattou. Grinning wickedly, the warrior hefted the heavy blade and brought it swinging back around in a wide circle. Everywhere the blade went, a path of utter destruction followed. The skeletons fell a dozen at a time to the massive blade, the massacre filling the area with a rain of bones.

Laughing, the confident warrior swung the blade straight up, holding it poised above his head and ready to smash down and reduce the skeleton before him to white flakes. And he would have, had his body not suddenly gone numb. A bit frightened, the man mentally ordered his arms to move. The zanbattou merely slipped from his unheeding fingers, falling to imbed itself in the bone-strewn ground. Koganei heard a raspy laugh behind him, yet he could not turn to view the owner no matter how hard he tried.

“Quickly, serpent, before the spell wears off.”

As if in answer to the command, a great maw, wide and black and devoid of any teeth save for four opposing fangs, rose up before the stunned samurai. The maw arced up over the man’s head, quickly swallowing his entire body and snapping shut.

<====}=0 – 0={====>

Wincing, the samurai grasped at his aching head and sat up into a cross-legged position. His pride wounded more than his body, the ronin looked around. The man found himself in a small circular chamber, empty save for a few scattered skulls and a single door.

“Nice,” Koganei muttered, reaching for his sword hilt. To his immense embarrassment and disbelief, it took the samurai several long moments to realize that he was grasping at empty air. The realization hit him like a blow to the gut, the warrior’s eyes going wide as his stared down at his empty sheath.

“Oh, dear god, no,” he gasped, spinning around on his knees in search of his blades. “Oh, just kill me now!” He was in trouble. He might as well commit seppuku and be done with it.

OoC: Go re-read Koganei, for he has been changed a bit.

[Silver]

OoC: God, does it suck to break a promise. Here's your post, punk.
BiC:

I lay on my back, my eyes half-closed against the pale shafts of moonlight, and let my mind simply wander through the night. No direct thoughts, no direct emotions, nothing but the peace of a night without fighting, without wounds or danger or helplessness or anything that had been burning my life since before I could remember. The smells and sights of the night were always so peaceful, such a stark contrast to the bawdy activity of the day. Summer was upon this place, this planet with a name I had never heard.

Just the cool breeze was enough to keep me awake, just the soft grass was enough to make me sleepy, and everything in between simply added to the distant feeling of lingering twilight. It hung over me like a dense fog or a soft blanket in the dead of winter. My lips stretched in a smile of contentment brought about by nothing short of peace, of longing for the continuation of just this one moment in time. A deep breath of the cool night air entered my lungs and awakened me once more. Renewed and reinvigorated energy passed through me for a moment, enough to let me sit up in the stubble of fresh grass.

When I did, I sensed an instant mood change for the entire night and for the area around me. The feeling of death—a feeling I had felt so many times, in so many places—closed upon me so quickly that it almost took my breath. The small amount of energy in me leapt, tearing the rest of me from the lackadaisical semi-slumber I had been enjoying, and I found myself awake and on guard and, in that fragile instant, entirely aware.

Scraaaape.

The metal of my sword ground against the iron of an axe and I found myself confronting what looked to be a skeleton. A feeling of closed-off anger punched into my awareness, marshaling the forces of my adrenaline into a tangible essence, and I pushed the creature away. It stumbled, its bony limbs unaccustomed to strain without the support of muscles and flesh, and crashed to the ground with a clatter. It was unsatisfying. I stared down at it, my stomach churning as I felt the fullness of my anger return.

A crunch penetrated the night air as my sword shattered the intruding limb of another skeletal soldier, breaking its arm off at the biceps, or where the biceps would have been on a living creature. My chin twitched up, my eyes scanned around me. A horde of the things had surrounded me, armed and armored as if they were taking on an army. An army of one, if I could be considered that much, would be crushed by a force such as this. That might have been what I was if I were different ... it might have been what I was before. I tightened my grip on my weapon and went to work.

Bones flew. Many describe wholesale slaughter as being glorious, as being heroic, or as being just a mass of motion and energy clashing together. That was not how it was at all. It was personal, it was in my face and in my body. Every movement they made, I was forced to counter. Every one of them I rendered immobile, another filled its place and forced me to compensate. I fought a battle so unwinnable that it could have been the premise for a story. In some ways, it was the subject for a story.

Minutes or hours might have passed as I cleaved through the ranks of impossible creatures. Gratuitous violence followed in my wake, but I was past caring. The anger that burned within me saw the white of a skull or a bone, produced the reasoning and the logic behind my actions, and shoved them away just as quickly. It made no difference at this stage.

Then it all stopped.

All of the sudden, I felt numb. My limbs ceased to move, the skeletons closing in on me, and I felt a slight pressure at the small of my back. The same feeling I received when someone was watching me, or when I felt that there was danger just beyond my sight—that was the pressure at my back. I felt my arm fall to my side, the sword tumbling from my fingers, and felt the pressure increase. After a moment, I heard a distant voice, hardly audible, and turned. The only way to describe what I saw would be to call it a lich. Tall, pale, almost a corpse itself, it looked almost like something from the artwork on dark, dismal cathedral walls. He looked like the patron saint of dead things and murderers. It might have been true.

And boy, did he look surprised. Darkness enveloped me directly after, and I found myself unable to move or think shortly after that.

[I)ragon11]

The form of an armored woman rose from the settling dust, and with her, an upsurge of undead skeletons. Her eyes scanned her surroundings quickly and narrowed. Her bike lay a few hundred feet behind her embedded in a cliff wall, a trail of dust and gouged earth led out from the wreck. The young woman had escaped with minimal surface damage.

A putrid breath seemed to hang in the air as all fell silent. Then, with a sudden rush of wind, sand, bone and plasma, the inevitable carnage began. Swords flailing wildly, the undead charged, only to be turned to mere dust and splinters by the plasmatic explosions. Dozens of ghoulish warriors fell before they had even lifted their weapon, but countless more pressed on.

It wasn’t long before Roery realized there was no hope to stand and fight. That only put her in a worse mood. She had been so miserable for so long now, that the unliving army of punching bags was almost a welcome sight. Being forced to flee was the last thing she wanted to do.

Just as the zombies pressed their way through her defensive barrage of plasma disks, Roery took to the skies, taking out a few unlucky assailants with the blast from her thrusters. From the air the situation looked even more hopeless. The sea of discolored marrow and rusted armor stretched unabated in all directions.

Turning in air—flying swords and spears clattering semi harmlessly off her armor—the girl took off in the direction of her crashed bike. Maybe if she could start it up without being dragged down by the unliving army, she could bulldoze her way through them and escape. Or if nothing else, she could climb the cliff wall and escape to the hilltops.

Her plasma disk launchers continued to lay siege to the undead as she rocketed her way through the air. As luck would have it, her thrusters weren’t able to carry her all the way to her destination. Aiming her guns forward and towards the ground, she began to gouge out a place to land in the midst of the swarming army.

She took a deep breath and landed hard, trying to avoid breathing in the soldiers turned to powder. The young woman grimaced at the thought and kicked forward, sprinting her way straight through bone and jagged blades.

The female soldier gasped as a rusted blade stabbed her side and another gouged her thigh badly. She furrowed her brow and made sure to overkill the two culprits by sending pointblank plasma disks into their ribcages. She leaped forward again, propelled partially by the massive explosions.

If not for the adrenaline rush, her focused mind, and her suit’s general ability to dull pain, her accumulated slashes and wounds might have done her in by now. She was over halfway there; giving up was not an option. All she needed was one more jump.

Then the worst thing possible happened. She could feel something in the air change, some greater danger. Her muscles tensioned, but it was already too late as her body immediately ceased to follow what her mind told it to do. Her eyes widened as every fiber of her being told her body to brace for impact, but instead fell limply to the ground from her full on sprint. The wind was instantly knocked out of her as she crumbled and rolled along the ground, crashing strait through skeletons that had ceased moving and merely stood in their place. The undead soldiers stepped back to form a circle around the woman as she finally came to a stop in an awkwardly heap on the ground.

She winced in pain, her breathing heavy as the pain from her many wounds started to sink in, and the rising sense of fear took hold. She strained her mind to move even a finger, but nothing worked. Even her eyes were locked, staring strait up into the blurry sky. She could only make out a dark, looming form before her. It steadily becoming larger as it came closer, obscuring her vision until all that she could see was darkness. Her panic escalated more, only to be subdued suddenly as her mind went dark as well.

[Halcyon Hero]

The door flew off its hinges, complete torn from the wall as the crushing blast of energy hit it. Bent nearly in two, the metal scrap bounced around the corridor beyond, coming to a rest against the far wall where the path split in two. His hands clenched in fists, Koganei stomped down the passage. His jaw was clenched tightly and his left eye was ticking rather persistently. He wanted out. He wanted out, and he wanted his swords. And to severely punish whomever was responsible for his current predicament. Coming to the split, the ronin peered down each poorly-lit passage.

The left curved around behind the blue-haired man, while the right curved in the opposite direction. Gashing his teeth, the man went right, his footsteps echoing throughout the empty stone corridor. The way continued for some time, ever curving to the left and sloping upwards. Finally, the samurai spotted a torch ahead, stuck into a wall and revealing another split. Irked at having to make another “this-way-or-that-way” decision, Koganei picked a path a random and hurried down it, anxious to be out of this place. Time and time again, the ronin encountered nothing but split paths, each serving only to increase his ire. The final straw came when he rounded a corner to find a small, circular chamber, the opposite wall riddled with at least half a dozen doorways.

Snarling an incoherent noise somewhat similar to a drowning tiger, the warrior unleashed a torrent of pounding energy waves, blasting through the room and the passages beyond until there was only a rough, rubble-filled tunnel. Koganei was rather surprised that the ceiling still held, though a part of him wished it hadn’t. Tired of merely walking—and of the ever-echoing footsteps—the blue-haired traveler launched forward, his booted feet a blur stepping in midair.

He continued to run for several minutes, randomly picking any direction that struck him when faced with a choice. Finally, the way before the speeding man opened up into a colossal room. His feet skidding across the floor as he braked, Koganei looked up in wonder. Large white blocks, about four feet by four feet by four feet, filled the air above the blue-haired swordsman, floating independently in a random formation all the way to the ceiling some ten stories up. Noticing a lack of any exits on his current level, Koganei shrugged and prepared for the ascent.

OoC: HH feels the need to remind that our characters aren't to run into each other for a while, having to explore on their own for a period.

[Silver]

Something thick and slippery coated my fingers and my hand ... my arm ... my shoulder. The entire left side of my body was numb by the time I awoke and opened my eyes. Darkness pushed against my eyes, and for a moment I wondered—oddly detached, for some reason—whether I had gone blind. The possibility left me feeling unfazed, which left me both confused and curious as the blackness around me became shadows and outlines. My hearing and sense of smell, the absence of which I felt surprised to not have noticed in the fist place, renewed themselves along with my eyesight. For a moment, I wondered why I smelled blood.

The heavy throb of pain coursed through my left side the moment I tried to move my arm, but I ignored it with an exceptional method of pain avoidance I had learned in my years as a bounty hunter, mercenary, and master swordsman. I screamed my goddamn head off. It felt like a wolf had eviscerated that side of my body, and I would know. The screaming gradually receded into a series of gasping, half-whimpering breaths and unashamed tears. Whoever the hell had done this to me was going to burn in a series of custom-made hells specifically meant for the torture only used car salesmen had ever imagined. The pain disappeared as soon as my breathing had become mostly calm, and I blinked the blurry tears from my eyes, which had already adjusted to the darkness.

It is impossible to put a pin on just how long I lay in the darkness. Running on just what I could assume at the time, I assumed it was a few minutes, but darkness and disorientation have the odd tendency of killing the perception of time. The fear of moving gradually faded once again, born in part from my natural curiosity, and I found myself trying to look down my body. The clothing I wore on my torso had disappeared, and I was coated from my shoulder to my fingertips in dried blood, as well as from my armpit to my waist. That was not what shocked me.

The clinical explanation for what my left side had become would be saying that I was suffering from nineteen open lacerations on my left arm, a puncture wound in my left shoulder, and three long lacerations down by left side. The instinctual explanation for what my left side had become would be saying that it was now a lump of drying, dirty, disgusting wounds that made that side of my body look like it had been part of a torture session. The tool that had done it was startlingly obvious. A red-stained katana was still jutting from my shoulder. Surprisingly, the screaming did not return, but was replaced instead by sharp breaths and a sudden desire to be anywhere else in the entire universe. I would take heaven, hell, purgatory, the otherworld, the Dome, a desert, an ocean, a nest of sharks. My basic survival instinct told me that even the nest of sharks would be safer than here for one reason, and one reason only: whatever had done this to me had left me alive. It had left me wherever I was. It knew how to find me again.

I stood with considerable difficulty. The difficulty arose from the katana. What I had not noticed at first glance was that it was imbedded almost halfway in my shoulder, which was pinned to a stone floor. Blade had been shoved through my shoulder and into that stone floor, and getting loose was both painful—hence, more screaming—and nigh impossible. I have a talent for doing things that are nigh-impossible, as I did when I finally worked the weapon out of my shoulder and tossed it onto the ground near me. I stood and swayed like a reed for a few moments before toppling forward against the door. It splintered, broke, and gave way beneath me, falling together with my body into a dirty corridor.

For an irrational second, I contemplated whether or not to just kill myself and have done. The sane parts of my mind pushed me back into a state of self-awareness long enough to set my hands on the katana and make my stumbling way into the dimly lit halls. Pain be damned.

[I)ragon11]

The blonde haired young woman awoke with a jerk. Painting slightly, she sat up and examined her surroundings.

“... Ugh, another cell.” She muttered to no one in particular as she rubbed at her eye with her palm. Noting she still had her armor on, she took a second to assess her condition. She was pleased to see that almost every wound that had pierced her flesh had healed by now, however her armor didn’t look that great, mainly because of the dirt and blood stains. She shrugged inwardly and told her armor to deactivate and activate again, which caused her bio mechanical suit to merely let off a soft glow that effectively repealed all the dirt from her armor.

Now that she was nice and shinny, the girl stood and moved over to the bars of her cell. Looking both ways before proceeding, she kicked the cell door into the opposite wall. The resounding clatter of metal striking stone filled the hallways.

Roery scratched her nose idly and waited for the guards to come hollering.

No one came. This made Roery frown slightly. She was a bit aggravated already, and now she didn’t even have anyone to beat her frustration into.

Other then her cell, the stone hallway was completely empty. The walls merely stretched on in either direction for a few hundred feet before stopping at a perpendicular hallway. The female clone sighed and rubbed her head. Who sends an army of skeletons to hunt down a single girl, only to let her roam free within the dungeon?

Sighing again, the armored girl jogged down the corridor to her left. She then took a right before coming to another fork, at which she took another left. A few turns latter and she came to a dead end. Pursing her lips in annoyance, she blonde turned and ran down another series of turns before hitting yet another dead end.

... It’s a maze... They captured me and stuck me in a maze... she quickly turned and sprinted down another sequence of turns. Upon reaching the next dead end, the ticked off girl fired off her thrusters and collided feet first with the wall, nearly busting it completely. Springing backwards, she snapped both guns into her hands and shoot off a few plasma disks. The stone wall crumbled and a light shown through the settling dust. Slightly less infuriated, the young woman dashed through the rubble into the next enclosure.

Arching an eyebrow, Roery strolled to where the floor ended. The plane room was about the size of a house, with a ten-foot wide hole stretching from wall to wall in the center that appeared to be bottomless. There was no light source to be seen, yet it remained a well lit room.

“Uh... huh...” finding nothing of interest at all, Roery hopped over the gap and jogged to the exit on the far wall. The same, dimly lit, dull, stone wall stretched on before her. After reaching the next dead end, her inkling that she wasn’t actually out of the maze yet was confirmed. This time she punched the wall until it gave away. And such was the fate of every dead she came across.