Forums » Fantasy Roleplay » Bloodied Shards IC (CLOSED!)

On the top of a hill that overlooks the sea lived a woman. She lived in an abandoned lighthouse with a home attached to it. The sea was beautiful and sparkled. The view was the best around. She stayed up there alone. No one even dared to be near her. She was looked at as a monster by most towns due to her appearance. As for those who got to see her angry, they would fear for their lives and run away.

She was unsure how to feel about that but as time went on she accepted the fact that she would be hated for her appearance being too demonic. She brushed off the looks of disgust and the whispers she could hear every time she went out. She would smile kindly as if everything was alright.

One morning she had awoken from her bed to a message. After just watching what she could only describe as a hallucination, she picked up the disc and placed it on her shelf. "Another strange thing to come into my possession." She sighs and looks at herself in the mirror. Her horns and fangs were out. Her wings were hidden. She smiles. "I always did like a challenge, right? This alien creature wants something of mine? I find so many things around here that... well I dont even know where to begin to look." She skims the room and shrugs. "Something passed down huh? It couldnt be..." she placed a hand over her clavicle where a black gem resides attached to a silver chain. She undid the chain and held the gem up to the light. She snickers. "Well I'll be... sneaky indeed." She clasped in on her neck once more.

Shortly after she got dressed and was going to head to town when she paused and stared out into the open water. It was so peaceful as the wind blew her blonde hair off to the side. The sun was rising over the water and the warmth spread a smile across her face. Her green eyes shined like emeralds as she took in the view. She took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of the sea. She closed her eyes and felt at peace.

(Hope you guys like snarky ten year olds. )

Adriannu was fast asleep in the cave she called home when a bit of light disturbed her slumber. Instinctively she reacted by snatching the daggers under her pillow and exploding from her makeshift bed, ready to defend herself. However the child quickly realized that there was no threat and instead she was looking at something quite curious. In the middle of the cave was a slightly translucent humanoid shaped copper fox with seven tails and dressed in an ornate robe. While this fox was not very tall, they were still significantly taller than the child's roughly 134 cm.

Lowering her blade a bit, Adriannu started to listen to the fox's words which readily revealed themselves to be of ill news. Apparently her family heirloom was just one piece of what was once a vase that possessed truly incredible power, though this didn't really surprise her. After all, she had already been using the power of her shard for two years now and by its very nature of being a shard meant that it had to have once been a part of something. Now knowing this, it also didn't surprise her that someone was trying to collect all of these shards because of course someone would. Greed and power constantly dictated the behavior of others as she had seen plenty of times herself.

Now what did both surprise and leave her thoroughly unimpressed was what came next; the information about this enemy, why they couldn't stop her and why they thought that she could. They couldn't handle this threat that was of their own kind and expected her, a child to be able to handle this sorceress? Truly adults were utterly useless.

Next she was given some information about this enemy that was of some use, but what was said after that left her even more unimpressed. No, Adriannu was just as alone as this new foe without even the slightest person she could call upon for help. That included these other keepers of the shards as they were probably just as likely to try stealing her shard as this enemy. Probably try to justify it too by saying that she was "just" a kid and thus didn't need it. It wouldn't be the first time that someone tried using that justification to steal from her. The fox then followed up by saying that this sorceress wouldn't use the shard even as she gathered them for some reason, but actually refused to tell her said reason. This only helped to further strengthen her mantra of adults being useless.

After this he explained that he could offer little other aid which hardly surprised, but did mention that they had a reward should she manage to hold onto her shard. Yet further revelation of this reward merely caused her to facepalm. If there technology was so great, wouldn't it be smarter to give it to her now so she stood a better chance?! Also screw their gold, what did they expect her to be able to do with it? Kids like her don't have gold coins and so naturally trying to spend any would attract unwanted and likely dangerous attention. Looking longingly at her daggers, she wished that they could have just given her an excellent pair of properly fitted daggers instead of the gold. While these weren't bad, the hilts were a bit too big for her, meant for the hands of an adult, not those of a child.

It was here that she expected the message to finish, but instead the fox flickered before continuing on. Apparently he was aware of her experience with her shard and wanted to ensure that her resourcefulness didn't go to waste. This promptly made her wonder that if they had customized this message for her, why the heck had they left in the part about friends and family? They also should have known would would have been more useful to her then gold! Yet Adriannu didn't focus for long on her ire and instead grimly listened to the information she was being provided.

At the end of the long information dump she was given, the girl had a very deep frown on her face. She...didn't like this, didn't like it one bit. This Victi sounded like someone she didn't want to tangle with, not at all, but ultimately it didn't matter, not really. There was no way she was going to give up her precious family keepsake without a fight after all. It was all she had left to remember her parents by and she'd sooner die than give it up.

For now though, this gold needed to be buried for safekeeping until she figured out a decent way to spend it. At least the disc was small enough to be hidden easily. Heading to the cave mouth and looking at the sky, she'd estimate that it was an hour before sunrise. Best to quickly get to it then as it was in her best interest to finish the job before daybreak. Most of the people around here weren't Cathera and thus they didn't have night vision so naturally it would be advantageous to get safely buried under the cover of darkness.

Elsewhere in the solar system....

The magistrate paced the bridge of his ship, drawing nervous glances from the crew. A frustrated wizard who could also have you arrested for any reason was never a good thing to have around.

"You are absolutely certain we cannot simply evaporate her for violating the accords?" he asks sharply, snapping out the question for, as far as the crew was concerned, the millionth time that day.

"No, sir, we do not know her agenda. There are at least a dozen reasons she could be doing this which would be valid under the Pre-Mature Contact Laws," replies his lawer, a five-tailed red furred vixen with a hint of exhasperation in her voice.

"And you are just as certain that our.... communications are also not in violation of the accords?" he asks, also for the nth time that day.

"We are alerting specific individuals to a direct threat to them coming from hyper-planar civilization. We are, by that action, in fact attempting to uphold the accords," she answers with a thin sharp smile. Would he ever stop fretting over this?

"And we can do nothing more? No weapons? warding charms? Armour? Heroes always recieve mythological relics from on high, and that freak is nearly unstoppable without starship support!" he shouts, energy crackling along his tails.

The lawer flinches, and most of the crew are nearly hidden. She's a skilled counter-mage for a lawer, but the magistrate was also a genuine wizard, an Academy-trained mage! If he got truly angry.... She sighed, partly in annoyance, partly in relief that she hadn't been disintegrated yet, "You yourself told me that they needed to take advantage of her hubris and sadism. We can't give them more equipment for the same reason we can't just send a covert operations unit down to handle her! Look at the display! She's used nothing more dangerous than a kinetic blast against that one, and as far as she knows he's just a brigand to rob quickly, not her actual foe! She can't help herself but to draw out fights and banter when she feel like she can do so! If we'd sent a dozen Shades down after her, she would probably be chewing on their rations while sitting on their piled up corpses by now, but he can likely keep her from even getting serious for minutes! He may be able to escape if she gets bored! There's a 65% chance of it, even!"

The magistrate simply growls and resumes pacing...

Unless it's particularly exciting, like the thrill of a hunt or the joy of trolling random passers-by, Raven's not really the best at keeping her focus.

In minutes, she forgets why she went outside and starts wandering. Like most cats, she has a respectable-sized territory outside of the comfortable little cabin she calls her den. For a while she wanders her familiar game-trails under a good, familiar canopy, lost in thought. What good is a magic-thing from here going to do an alien? What kind of power did Lisa feel? Why did it scare her?

Should I be scared? Nah...

Everything's fine. Do your job and keep Liz from having a mental breakdown. Us two can solve our fox problem if we keep our heads on our shoulders. She pauses and chirps the cat's equivalent to a chuckle, thinking about how their supposed enemy might make that threat literal. The cat picks up her pace to an easy trot as she tries to picture the sorceress. She imagines the bipedal fox-with-too-many-tails part just fine; the magistrate did explain that she was of his kind.

The rest is left totally up to her imagination. Maybe the fox is on fire. Maybe she wears flamboyant silvery robes or sports a long grey beard becoming of a being well-versed in the arcane arts. The latter is unlikely if she's really a she, but the image inspires more laughter. The cat felt a little confused before, but now that she's alone with her thoughts, the situation has taken on a more amusing light, if only for a moment.

You have to remember she's a predator. She's the cat and you guys are mice. It's a slightly sobering thought. Just slightly. At least it's enough to chase the cat out of her own head and realize she's made a terrible mistake.

Wait.

Where am I?

The sun's not yet risen, but for her amber feline eyes, that isn't a problem. They flash silver in the dim light as she stops and frantically looks around. Then she laughs a sporadic, slightly nervous laugh when she realizes she'd manage to wander outside of her normal range into a very unfamiliar part of the forest.

Technically, she's not lost. Raven half turns to follow her own scent trail back toward the cabin; it's safer there and the chances of Lisa chewing her out when she gets back are growing by the second.

But this is a new place, and a little bit of exploring always does her some good. With a little snicker, she turns her tail toward the path home and scampers off into this unexplored- at least for her -section of wilderness.

No, Drake isn't paying attention to her impressive collection of tails. He snickers and spouts a quick "thank you" for both the compliment and the view before throwing a second punch, then a force unseen to him sweeps him off his feet and he falls hard on his back. "Oof!"

"Ow; pretty bold yourself." He tries to sit up on his elbows then launch himself to his feet.

Suddenly, there are three of her standing over him, walking around him in an ominous circle, one with her arms crossed, the second with her hands clasped behind her back, and the last with her hands on her hips, all smiling smugly as they look down at him with their creepily double-irised eyes.

The tentative approach Vee proceeded with left them tense, but the fascination of the discovery they had made was incredibly distracting to this. As they approached, the tension slowly wore, replaced by a stifled wild excitement they kept deep within for a moment.

As they passed a stone slab, tilted slightly the opposite direction thanks to the former overhanging stone dragging it down in it's own defeat, they turned their head left, then right.

It was the vae next to Vee's head that noticed it, and quickly flew down to investigate. Something about the clearing had left much of the nearby ground empty. The wood, leaves, and trees that fall to the bottom of the forest quite casually didn't descend here in the small circular clearing. Despite this, the area bore a clear resemblance to abandonment, no one had been here for probably as long as the Vynym had existed in these parts, possibly longer.

So the sole abandoned item on the ground was quite noticable, well not exactly sole item. A small circular disc, a pouch, and a piece of.....trash. The vae all react, the one near Vee's head flying down to investigate with the one formerly sat on their left shoulder buzzing to life to follow it down. The airborne pair make their way down to Vee again, and turning to expose their flowering backs, descend into their pods on Vee's chest.

Vee themselves simply stare down at the items, kneeling down next to them while the vae investigate. First it's the pouch, the pair both work the string loose and pull at either side to open it. One vae sticks its head down inside to see what might be contained inside. Hardened gold coins is what they find, but the sight of money hardly effects Vee. While the investigating vae reaches into the pouch to feel the coins, the other turns to the piece of trash nearby, a small thin shard with sharp edges. Regardless the vae decides to lift the object, pulling it up with a bit of effort on it's own part. The small creature giggles, and a smile comes to Vee's face as they come up with an idea.

The vae in the pouch pulls with both hands a single gold coin out of the pouch, holding it in the air triumphantly. "Ha Haaaa," the little thing shouts in victory. The other began swinging the shard around, playing with it as a makeshift weapon. The coin bearing vae jumped back and held out the gold coin as if to defend itself, the with a swing around its head, and a 360 degree turn, the other vae swings the shard hard and nails the coin directly.

Vee erupts in giggles as the poor thing stumbles backwards, the coin flying from their hands and the other vae stumbling into them from what turned out to be far more momentum than Vee had expected. Vae wings for each fumbling vae begin buzzing, and while the assailant manages to regain balance this way, the other begins turning, and falls directly onto the disc.

The vae quickly buzzes off the ground at the sight of a robed figure appearing on the disc, and the pair fall in line a few inches away to watch. Vee stares intently, their own vae wings still as the man speaks.

Oh no. Drake had been, for lack of a better phrase, on edge before. Now he feels not just a twinge of fear, but ice-cold terror seeping into his heart. Briefly panicked, his eyes flit from one form to the next, locking with each of their cold, unnaturally-colored eyes.

Illusions. This isn't real.

Knowing that's probably the case calms him a little bit, but the knowledge doesn't make the trick any less threatening. There's at least one pretty figure here who can still hurt him, and she can use this kind of trick to keep him from landing a single blow while she terrorizes him in whichever way she pleases. He remembers something the magistrate said about her and their race:

"She is one of my kind, and we are, fundamentally, hunters. Some even call us cruel, taken to slowly tormenting our prey..."

He takes an extreme measure to stop that from happening to him.

As the chimera stands, his form changes. Muscles ripple and grow. His spine twists to suit a quadruped stance. His clothes turn into fur and a long, stinging tail curls over a heavy-jawed lion's head adorned with a luxurious golden main. Drake roars and spins in a circle, swinging one large, razor-tipped paw in a wide arc. His thick, armored tail follows. He makes sure to aim for all three Victis at once, expecting one of them to be knocked down by his strike, if not his sudden growth in size and shape.

The transformation caught Victi off guard, she honestly hadn't expected magic that sophisticated here. A mass-variable polymorphism? She was impressed!

On the other hand, she knew that the swindlers running shell games must love this guy. It's not about tricking them into choosing the wrong cup, it's about palming the ball so all of them are wrong. The three electricity laced-illusions laughed as they shattered, releasing their payload through his body. In his previous form it might have been neutralizing, but for this new form? Well, it was actually better; he'd still be able to fight.

There's a glint of green and purple eyes a few meters in front of him, full of sly smugness, along with a slight Victi-shaped ripple in the air.... not where she actually is, obviously, three illusory copies and an invisibility wouldn't be complete without giving him the chance to prove how clever she was one more time. That one wasn't trapped, exactly, but it would accelerate him suddenly if he moved through it, so it might make him stumble. Maybe it wouldn't. The point was just to bait him toward her still-waiting Shriker.... She kinda hoped he'd figure it out, though.

That stings enough to stun the beast for a few seconds before he blinks away the pain and searches frantically for a prone Victi. None. Damn, of course!

He whips his large heard around, teeth bared in an ugly snarl. Not only has his shape changed, but much of his demeanor, too. His motions are erratic, panicked, less because the situation is frightening but more because that's what this form runs on. Fear. Fear and rage. Adrenaline pumps through his body and grants him strength, but costs him some of his common sense.

At least, it's looking that way.

He prowls in a circle, scanning the clearing for his enemy. There! A faint outline of her shape. A pair of green-violet eyes. Laughing eyes. Mocking him. He growls and stalks toward "her."

Then he stops.

Something isn't right.

He stops and stands still. Something isn't right, but this form can't quite figure out. However, that unsettling gut-feeling gives him some pause. He sits. Glaring at the possible trap in front of him, he turns to his enhanced senses. Smell, sound, and sight, tend to be better in this form, but smell sees the greatest improvement, so it's that he tries first. The chimera's nose twitches, trying to catch a whiff of the real Victi's scent. He's up again, prowling in another circle around the clearing, sniffing for the real her.

Raven strolls through the woods, often meandering towards random sounds, strange sights, funny smells. She stalks a few birds and rodents. Can't seem to catch anything though, which frustrates her.

Hey, is that a cave?

She catches a glimpse of the gaping maw of a cave and turns her head. Sure enough, that's a cave. Neat! Raven changes the direction of her languid walk to prowl toward the cave. She stops, unfortunately out in the open, when a little girl who looks half-cat suddenly appears in front of her, stepping out of the darkness and into the pale moonlight.

Strange.

Raven doesn't yelp, or speak, or move to run away or to greet her. She just stands very still and waits for the little cat girl to make another move. She might see the little creature standing yards away. Might not. Doesn't matter. Raven will risk following Adriannu regardless of what cover she has.

Really? He was just getting around to sniffing now? She was... perplexed by that. Well, either way, any kitsune worth their tails masked their scent while hunting or attempting to use illusory stealth. She hadn't put her scent on any of the illusions, though, that kind of chemical signature would require some very complex and specialized forms of summoning, or using a hallucination effect to trick the mind directly.... both things she couldn't do. Light and sound were just energy and could be released at the source, but smell is matter. Still energy, technically, but not in a practical sense.

The result was that her scent was.... around to a certain extent, where she had rolled under his feinted draw, for example, but she herself was nowhere to be found.

Using that residual scent on the ground. He confirms that no, the vision isn’t real, but her personal mask prevents him from pinning her actual location.

He also can’t see or hear her. Impressive, but also confusing and beyond frustrating. Infuriating would still be an understatement to this form. The chimera can’t help but hiss and spit with anger.

He steps on something in the grass and looks down. His sword. Resting his huge paw on it, he checks his immediate surroundings one more time, then the form kind of “deflates.” The lion’s mane recedes. He stands upright. The warm amber returns to his eyes, which flit around the clearing. He lowers his guard just enough to glance down and see where his sword handle lays. Then his eyes are up and his ears pricked as he slowly crouches to grab it. The apparent trap is still there, and his gaze can’t help but be drawn to that pair of disembodied double-irised eyes.

And as his mind clears a bit, he starts to laugh.

“Alright, hah! You got me.” Although it sound like he’s surrendering, his posture says everything but. He passes the sword to his right hand and glares at nothing, swaying a little from the stress of shapeshifting, yet otherwise looking ready to fight.

She moves into the place of the illusion before releasing both it and her stealth spells, making it look like she'd been there the whole time.

"Too bad you missed your opportunity," she says smugly, continuing to look at.... not him, but that one thing that had stayed the same during his transformation, "You know, maybe I won't kill you and take everything you own. I think that little shiny bit around your neck would be enough to get me to leave you alone, don't you?"

"Of course, they told you not to, didn't they?" she adds, a cruel smile taking to her thin black lips.