[Round 2] Between a Rock and a Hard Place - Wisp Quill vs Shadow Samus vs erinys

Spring Tournament 2009, Round Two - Between a Rock and a Hard Place [Wisp Quill vs Shadow Samus vs erinys]

As the battle progresses, just remember that each fight will go on for about 25-30 posts, the character that you chose last round must be used again, and that Councilors characters (for example, in this thread, Derrick) will act as a referee for this thread and maintain balance. Try to keep posts at around 500 words max, and avoid controlling your opponent's character. With all that said, have at it and have fun!

BiC:

Deep beneath the earth where the sane dare not tread, underneath a mile of earth that is where lay the golden goblet in a small dank room lit by a few torches that never seemed to run dry. To reach this sacred chamber one must first go through the temple before it, and endless myriad of corridors and stairs that seem to stretch for miles in every direction like an untamed spider's web.

Within the sandy is where the labyrinth, though tricky all on it's own, really showed it's true colour. Traps of all kind littered the endless hallways, from spikes flying out of holes in the walls, or parts of the floor where stepping on it causes it to collapse into an endless void. Here in this great catacomb of dangers and trials beyond any imagination was where Derrick has chosen.

Walking slowly past sculptures and carvings derrick barely noticed them, his eye's fixated on the area right before him. For some reason beyond his own reasoning he was chosen to be a referee of a great tournament. Unlike the others chosen however he decided to throw away the idea of a regular battle, for his battle he chose a true challenge.

The Perfect assassin already informed each of the three individuals parking in person of the task. Take the goblet from the heart of the labyrinth and take it to the surface without dying. To each he granted a simple map that ignored all but the largest passageways, a compass, and showed them to their particular entrance. The three would being from their stated starting points at the crack of noon, no sooner nor later. They would be pitted against the maze, the traps, each other, and even Derrick himself.

What Derrick did not tell them however was that he had an advanced map in a hand held device, as well as implanting tracking bugs in each of their compasses so he would always know their location. Derrick looked at his watch...11:56. Taking a hand gun in one hand, and his map in the other, derrick waited perfectly still for the carnage to begin.


oOc: Think Indian Jones, basically get the goblet and try to escape while fighting people. Feel free to add Derrick in any posts if you wish and have fun.

Amberstone looked at the two items she had been given, mostly looking at the piece of paper. It can’t be this simple…and why would I need these things? I’m not human. She growled slightly as she stepped towards the entrance, and away from the two items. The compass was previously hung around her neck like a collar, but she had taken it off. What would I want with that thing, anyway, a ‘goblet’? Eh, I‘ll just go in without worrying.

Looking up at the spikes above, she sighed and glanced back at the compass and map again. Hm…I would probably get lost, and that--’compass’ may help… Fine… The cub strode back over to the items, and picked up the compass by its string, before passing it to her left paw and slipped it back onto her neck.

In the hall in front of her, the gargoyle saw some statues against either wall, which looked mostly orange, due to the torches. The ground had turned slightly gray from dust and dirt, and ‘splashed’ up as Amberstone began to walk into the hallway. Don’t know why that man picked this place, but I don’t want anything to do with that goblet. I have no use for it. Why do I feel as if this place is going to attack me…? She shook that thought away, but she crawled underneath and avoided the human part of the statues. A loud slam caused her to turn around and see that the cave that she traveled down had disappeared past a fallen wall.

“Great. Trapped… guess the only was is forwards now.” Her scales glinted in the torch light, sending random dots of light scattering all around her. After turning down the left path after coming to a fork, she heard a small click as she stepped onto a tiled area. “Hm- ?!” An arrow became imbedded into the wall on her left, right in front of her nose. Taking her paw off of the tile, she noticed that it had a carving of an eye in it. Then she noticed that some of other tiles had eyes carved into them, but some where starting to fade.

“So, if I step on an eye, one of those will come out… of one of those holes…Ok.” The Vassyr shattered her scales, and focused on them to rotate around her, as she stepped into the arrow hallway. After making it to the center, and watching her footing, she found out that none of the tiles had any hint of a carving on them.

Growling, the cub continued onwards without any trouble, until a faint click entered her ears. “Oh no…” Hearing her scales getting hit as she bolted down the rest of the way, Amberstone nearly slammed into the tunnel wall outside of the arrow hallway. Looking back, as she made her scales float back into her wings, she saw the left wall was full of arrows. She also noticed that some of her scales had been punctured, but she knew they would grow back. Parts of her wings now had what seemed to be tears in them, but none of her silver blood came out from the wounds.

Atropos had just finished brushing off the last of the gray dust from her clothing as the helicopter landed. After she got out of the helicopter, it lifted back up and began to fly away. The people managing the tournament had warned her that if another helicopter met a disastrous fate after dropping her off, as the last one had, she would be stranded here and they wouldn't bother picking her up again. Reluctantly, she let the flying machine get away without harm, simply watching it as it disappeared over the horizon. She wanted to make sure she got back to the city after all this was done, it was as much a home to her as she'd ever had.

She had already passed the first round of the tournament, and the second was about to begin. What had become of her previous opponent she wasn't sure. For all she knew, her last attack might have killed him. Either way, apparently the tournament judges had proclaimed her the winner. Without letting her aggress the opponent any further, they picked her up in a helicopter and sent her on her way to the next location. That was easy enough, Atropos thought to herself as the helicopter flew her out of the abandoned city. The next round should be even more fun.

Looking around, Atropos assessed her current situation. The referee of this round of the tournament had already visited her while on her flight (how he got on and off the helicopter without it landing Atropos wasn't sure) and told her what her task was. Supposedly there was a goblet deep inside an underground labyrinth underneath an ancient temple in the middle of a vast desert, and she was supposed to retrieve the goblet before the other two participants did. Atropos figured that the best way to get the object before anyone else was to kill everyone else. In front of her stood a very large building, built from sandy colored bricks. Being the only building she could see, surrounded by otherwise featureless sand in every direction, Atropos determined that this was the temple. The helicopter had conveniently placed her right in front of a large open door.

Atropos looked at her map, and then at her compass, both given to her by the referee. The map was a complex drawing of passageways and tunnels, with a simple X marking the treasure and an arrow marking the entrance. The compass Atropos wasn't sure how to read. The little red arrow always pointed in the same direction, no matter how Atropos held the device, quite unlike a clock, which she did know how to read. It was currently pointing towards the entrance of the temple, so that must be where she was supposed to go. She glanced at the watch on her exposed left arm. Her sleeve had been torn up in the previous fight, so she had simply removed the tangled remains, leaving her arm bare. With the sleeve on her right arm, she rubbed off a layer of dried blood (her own, dark indigo blood) from the face of the watch, so she could see the hands. It was noon.

Following the compass's red arrow, Atropos walked into the dark chamber beyond the open door, entering the temple.

Small water droplets echoed throughout the mouth of the cave, making the almost pitch black rock walls seem denser and more threatening than they already were. Ahiga peered at his watch, seeing that it was twelve on the dot. The map and compass given to him earlier were in a small pack on his back, tucked safely between his wings.

"So, just go through, find a goblet, and get out with my skin, huh? I think I can do that." The sound of his voice resonated off the stones, making a distant whimper throughout the entrance. Ahiga walked into the small opening of the mouth, hearing something come falling down almost instantly. He turned, jumping out of the way as tons of rocks flooded the entrance, still coming down above him.

The Dark Angel turned again and began to run down the tunnel, using his hearing and breathing to keep from running into the crumbling structure around him. As the last rock trickled from above him, Ahiga sighed, taking out a compass and a small flashlight he'd brought for these kinds of situations. "So... I'm West right now... and the goblet is in the center of the Labyrinth... This should be easy."

The young man took the map from his pack, looking at the cave he was in. It showed the main way, a large cavern linking to a couple of slightly smaller paths, each snaking before disappearing from the paper. He began to jog through the cavern, his footsteps echoing back off the hollow walls. One step after another, Ahiga made his way to the other side, turning to face where he'd come from. Small arrows and snakes filled the stone and floor, said snakes slowly slithering towards him.

Just as Atropos crossed the threshold into the temple, a loud sound came from the area behind her and something cut off the sunlight that had previously been filling the room. Atropos would have turned around to see what exactly had happened, but she was too busy concentrating on her compass. With the natural lighting gone, she was relying on the light emanating from various torches and lanterns set throughout the vestibule to see the small guiding arrow.

As she walked in the direction of that little red arrow, not looking up to see where exactly she was going, Atropos smacked right into a brick wall. Surprised by the sudden collision she toppled over backwards, landing on her back. Getting up off the ground and crossing her legs in a seated position, she looked around. Behind her, a door (or rather a solid flat wall) had closed over the entryway. Torches hung from wrought iron sconces along the cold stone walls, and lanterns stood on various waist high pillars set throughout the room. All save one of the torches and lanterns were lit, despite the fact that no one had apparently been in the temple in ages, casting a flickering orange glare over the entire room.

A thick layer of sand and dust (but mostly sand) covered much of the marble tiled floor. It gathered up at the walls and pillars, and thinned out as it got further away from the entrance. The ceiling was lined in cobwebs, which grew thickest in the dark corners of the room. The wall in front of Atropos had a single torch hanging from it, the only one in the room which wasn't already lit aflame. The wall had two openings in it, one to either side of the torch. Atropos looked back at her compass, and then at her map, hoping either one would tell her which passageway to take. Neither one enlightened her any further, and she got up from the ground disappointedly.

"Heads to the left, tails to the right," Atropos said, flipping the compass into the air. It landed face down on the sandy floor. "Hmm...was that the heads side or the tails side?" Atropos wondered, realizing she hadn't decided that critical fact beforehand. Shrugging to herself, she grabbed the unlit torch off the wall and went to light it with one of the lit torches. However, as she pulled the torch from the sconce, an arrow flew out of the wall and struck her in the side. She let out a short yelp and dropped the torch.

"Oww...man, that hurts!" she said through a tightly clenched jaw. Taking a deep breath, she quickly pulled out the arrow and tossed it aside. "I do so hope it wasn't poisoned..." she said before bending over to recover her torch. She walked up to one of the burning torches on the wall, and held her cold torch up to it. It quickly took to flame, and taking one last look at the discarded arrow, Atropos headed down the passageway on the left. Only once she was well out of the vestibule did she remember that had she left her compass on the floor.

She stopped and looked back down the passage, thinking. "Oh well, it wasn't really that useful after all," Atropos finally decided, continuing without it.

One of the small torches on the wall caught his attention, the flickering flames licking at the moist rock and moss surrounding it. Ahiga grabbed it and tossed the wood into the thick of the hissing serpents, kicking and strangling the ones that managed to catch a hold of his pants legs.

"These things are more of a disturbance than I'd thought..." The angel spread his wings as far as the cavern would allow, giving a quick and weak down stroke to send the small creatures flying away from their target.

Refolding his wings, Ahiga turned and grabbed the torch, shaking off a small snake that had managed to snag a hold of his wrist. He felt along the smooth walls for a moment, finding a small hole. The youth slowly pushed the torch into the hole, a group of boulders falling free from their ancient grips, a shadow traversing across the new hole.

"Who's there? Show yourself!" Ahiga peeked through the old cobwebs that covered the opening, watching a rat disappear through a crack in the otherwise untouched stone. He sighed, letting his heart calm for a moment. "There's nobody but your opponents in this place, and they're more than likely clear on the other side of the labyrinth..."

Taking a breath, Ahiga stepped through the rest of the ancient webs and peered around, almost forgetting he didn't have a torch. A small light caught his blood red eyes, its color a bit different than the other torches he'd seen. He began slowly towards the mysterious light, picking up speed with each foot passed.

Atropos Belladonna moved deeper into the dark passageway, the flames from her torch lighting the way. The flickering orange light didn't provide much visibility, revealing only the cold stone walls to either side of her, and leaving the area in front of and behind her shrouded in darkness. The deeper into the labyrinth she went the colder it got, and soon she was shivering and wishing her sweatshirt had both its sleeves still. Thinking about it, she decided that she could remedy that problem. She stood still and held out her bare arm. Black liquid began to ooze out of her exposed skin, and soon a thick and flexible layer of black matter was covering her arm. Satisfied with the results, she continued forward.

As Atropos was walking deeper into the passage, one of the floor tiles she stepped on depressed into the ground, and she stopped moving to investigate. The tile had sunk a good three inches into the floor, and as it did, a deep grinding noise resounded throughout the shadowed hallway. Suddenly the whole room began to shake and shudder, and the bricks beneath her feet completely gave way. As the floor fell apart, Atropos was dropped down into utter darkness.

Atropos shrieked as she fell, but her cry was cut short with a grunt as she hit the ground, landing in a relatively soft pile of sand. Bricks from the floor above began to land on the ground around her and she formed a quick psychokinetic shield above her to keep the heavy stone blocks from landing on top of her. One brick landed solidly on top of the invisible bubble of force and bounced off with a thud, tumbling away into darkness. Atropos got up from the ground and tried to brush off as much of the sand as possible from her clothing. Realizing she was in complete darkness and couldn't see a thing, she frantically looked around for her missing torch. Somehow it must have gone out, perhaps stifled when it landed in the sand.

Atropos put out the palm of her hand and, using psychokinesis as a sort of extension of her hands, began to feel the ground for her missing torch. As she was doing so she noticed something odd, something different, something moving. What is that... she wondered, keeping silent to avoid attracting its attention. Curious, she ran her telekinetic hand over it again, this time with slightly more pressure. As she did, the silence of the room was suddenly interrupted with a loud hissing sound, and the object she was feeling with her mind quickly darted away out of her reach.

"Oh, it's just a snake," Atropos said to no one in particular. Quickly forgetting about the serpent, she started feeling around with her mind again. "I didn't know I could do this...I wonder..." Interested about the extent of this ability, she sent out a weak wave of telekinesis in every direction around her. The only thing she was able to glean from that was the fact that there were walls surrounding her, and they were somewhat close. She started to send out more waves of varying pressure and intensity, and was soon she knew approximately how far away the walls and ceiling were, where the door was located, where the snake had run off too, and where the various stone blocks and her dead torch had landed.

As she was scanning the room, she felt something move quickly past the open door. Retrieving her unlit torch with a flick of her fingers and gripping it like a club, she moved towards the door to discover what had moved. It's about time I had someone to kill...

The small light seemed to move as much as he did, and it annoyed him greatly. The Dark Angel sighed in frustration, focusing on the glowing orb just feet ahead of him. Something falling caught his attention, and skidding to a stop just outside what looked like another wall, Ahiga peered in, snapping his fingers to light a small torch on the stone face.

Nothing caught his immediate attention in the dead end room, so the boy stole the torch from its resting place and began once more towards the light. He kept his wings stretched to feel around the large hallway, something clicking along the wall as a feather skimmed the surface. Something locked into place behind him, and turning slowly, Ahiga's eyes widened to a wall with hundreds of spikes protruding from it. He took a step back, and the wall began careening toward him, taking out any and every stone jutting from the otherwise smooth surface. Folding his wings against his body, the Dark Angel threw himself at the light, dodging and jumping over pieces of crumbling rock and debris.

One more step led to Ahiga falling face first on a huge rock slide, slick from water erosion over the centuries. With nothing to hold on to, he slid easily down the face, landing in a pool of stagnant liquid. A small current carried the Angel along for a bit, dumping him onto a shore of miniature stalagmites. Standing and plucking some of the fragile limestone from his clothing, Ahiga kicked a mound of dirt, coughing as the dust flew from its resting position. To his amazement, the small light was hovering in front of him, its purple glow soothing. "So... small path I didn't see on the map? Found."