Oneiroscope on 31/7/2005 at 07:40
{OOC: Here's a bit about the monastary. Maybe kinda pointless, but what the heck.}
A volley of firearrows crashed into the line of Fat Men who had been closing on the walls. The effect was catastophic. A huge fireball that drenched the nearby Guardians in burning acid. A full throated cheer went up on the wall, but did not last.
Another Hound had made it's presence known by gutting three archers in the space of as many heartbeats. Fenris, however, spitted the fiend with a growl of preternatural ferocity from his foam-flecked lips. The grimmest of the Minders, in a berserk northern rage, held the now visible monster aloft on the end of his blade. Then Fenris cast it down from the wall for the new ranks of Harden's Remade to feast their eyes upon. The Minder howled, a primordial sound that left a trail of his breath in the chill night air. Gooseflesh rose on the arms of the archers near him.
Dragons soared over the walls, a few brought down by well placed arrows. But many more deposited their unseen burdens safely. The Minders were reduced to little miore than Hound hunters. Only they could track the unseen brutes and match the mad killing frenzy of the creatures with skill and psionics.
Father Kinnis was the closest thing the monastary had to a commander at the moment. For this reason, the ancient priest was kept hidden from view and his orders were relayed by Hammer runners.
The Combat Bots had been moved to the underground, where their careening cannonballs could be most damaging and also serve to collapse the tunnels. All thought of escape was gone. Father Kinnis had filled those left behind with a kind of desperate ferocity. All knew they were doomed, but all wanted to take their toll on the enemy before such time came. They fought for every last moment of precious life, though those moments were filled by ghastly battle.
Gode dashed across the courtyard and intercepted an invisible Hound, homing in on its blood drenched thoughts then extinguishing them with a terrible slash from Oracle. Oracle had told many fortunes today. This would not be the last.
But already the Minders were weakening. The drugs the Hammers had used to suppress their powers had left them all feeling drained and dull. They "saw" the Hounds only because the monsters radiated such awful hate and malice that even in the aftermath of the drugs the Hounds shone like beacons.
This could not go on much longer. If we keep on this way, we will not last out the night, Gode thought.
Undu was like a wind of death within the courtyard. Gode saw within the black man a bottomless pit of rage and grief. The scimitar took the head of another Hound, but the mad exultant slash had left Undu far too open. It was only luck that the next Hound had been knocked aside by a rushing phalanx of pikemen rather than killing the Minder. Undu recovered from his overextension and destroyed the Hound as it lay prone. He looked up at Gode briefly, and in the flat expression he saw there Gode knew Undu sought death. That killing Thule had broken him.
Gode snarled, then chased down another Hound just as it dropped from the air.
Acorn on 11/8/2005 at 23:21
I went to the beach, looks like you did some good writing. :cool:
Oneiroscope on 12/8/2005 at 07:45
{OOC:Thanks! :D Hope you had fun at the beach!}
Acorn on 30/8/2005 at 07:39
Ok I WILL post tomorrow, I WILL!
Oneiroscope on 31/8/2005 at 00:10
:cheeky:
Been feeling kida the same way lately. Oh, and just so you know in case I don't get around to it, I am intending to cut the bit where O uses the souls as a weapon. Not that he wouldn't do that :ebil: , but I just don't really like the concept as written. Seems kind of... floppy. :erg:
Anyway, I'm looking forward to your post! :thumb:
PS: Where is littlek?? :confused: I figured she'd jump all over getting Fern and Nat back together.}
Acorn on 13/9/2005 at 18:39
{OOC: Back!! Lets move this on toward the end. :p Okayy, Garrett gets the shield!}
Garrett watched the battle and his "friends" in turns. He had never felt comfortable in groups, and now they just seemed to be slowing things down. They gasped and the thief turned back to see Keeper Orson rising as an undead, but not an ungainly zombie. His movements seemed unnaturally deliberate for a corpse. The Keeper was obviously being controled by someone or some thing.
At the sight of him, an unbidden memory clouded the thief's thoughts. This man's face as he battled bravely into a nest of spiders in attempt to save the coccooned thief from his fate as a dinner for the wretched beasts. Then, dragging Garrett away to secret him in a Keeper alclove while he recuperated. The small hidden vault in the side of a cliff near the tower. The thief remembered, and the note from Hardin made better sense now in context with all his subsequent experiences. It had been false, designed to cause the thief to assasinate his cohorts and further the plans of the Stone. He'd been used alright, but why did the Stone want the wizard Oneiros manifested here so desperately? Because control of him would put a powerful tool in the enemy's hands... Orson also had been deliberately targeted... as a minder of the mad wizard... Garrett whirled on the watching group and wrenched the Sun Shield from Oliver's unsuspecting grasp. The thief vaulted the log, one shadow detaching from the rest and flitting through the trees right up to the slowly pacing corpse at the wizards back.
"Oh, Oneiros." The newly made lich sang in a dry papery voice full of self-congradulation, "Its time for you to come to heel!" The wizard stiffened and shrieked in surprise, the whipping bolts of hellfire raging suddenly out of his control. Oneirous struck out blindly, fighting the liches control, hewing down several trees in his thrashings. Orson laughed coldly, the stone's laugh, and quelled the fires about the wizard. Then began to speak.
"Hey." the thief whispered and Orson turned to see him, eyebrows raised over empty eyes its evil smile dissapearing from its bloodless lips, "I forgot to thank you for what you did for me." Garrett added grimly and oriented the shield full upon the Keeper from a mere few feet away. "noooo!" its other worldly voice cried out. "So close, I was so clooose this time!" and in the blinding glare, it vaporized into ashes at Garrett's feet.
His mind still opened to the Minder's influence, Oneiros clawed at his helm and dropped to his knees howling in pain, the pure light just as much of an assault on his demonic nature as it was for the undead.
Acorn and her friends ran forward, Oliver liberating the shield from the thief somewhat shamefacedly. Frobert remained in shadow under the denser trees however, slipping deep into thought over the events he had just whitnessed.
With an otherworldly groan the armored wizard slowly righted himself. Black smoke was filtering out through the seams in his helmet, but Oneiros appeared to still be able to see. He rose and surveyed the battlefield. No corpse now moved within a mile, and the lich, Leaf, absent though there was a significant pile of dust mounded on the ground where the wreched abomination had stood. Oneiros turned again looking for Minder Orson but his body was as gone as the familiar presence from his mind. Which brought to mind the other, the unfamiliar presence that had used the Keeper as a springboard to slip through the wizard's defenses. The Wizard shuddered his armor shedding a few extra drops of his blood. He had challenged the void and its denizens for the power to become undefeatable, made horrible deals in the name of security. Now, these Keepers who had heretofore been his sanity would be the instruments of Oneirous' undoing. There were still the others yet living. A threat like no other... unless he could get to them first. The Wizard raised his gauntlet to the sky and a lightning bolt streaked down to strike at his feet. Grasping it, Oneirous tamed the wild power to his will and the crackling bolt changed form into the shape of a winged, something. Its head a jagged fork, hissing and spitting and lashing this way and that almost more like a tail. Its great wings, sheet light. Twitchy in their movements they jerked up and down even as the Wizard jumped astride his steed. The creature rose as it had struck, with blinding speed and a great boom. Oneirous was gone. He flew North, toward the monastery to deal with the rest of his unmindful wardens.
Oneiroscope on 14/9/2005 at 03:10
Excellent! :thumb: I'll try to think of something to write later.
Acorn on 14/9/2005 at 05:30
I added more to the last post
Oneiroscope on 25/9/2005 at 04:24
In mere moments, the wizard had ridden the lightning to the monastary. The gates were buckling inward against a concentrated assault of Guardians. Fat Men rained destruction down upon the panicked defenders on the walls and within the compound. Dragons soared through the air in a line from the monastary back to Harden's tower, bringing fresh Remade in a continuous wave. Hounds rampaged within the walls, surrounding the remaining Minders. Only two still stood, Oneiros saw. But who? It was irrelevant.
Oneiros neared the gate. He loosed the lightning from it's erstwhile form as a winged steed and allowed it to fall on the Guardians hacking at the ruined portal. It struck like the hammer of the Builder himself. The sodden ground around the gate was a knee deep foul and stinking mud born of rain, blood, and the awful ichor of the Fat Men. The awesome power of the bolt tranformed it into a lake of Death. The mud erupted into a collossal bloom of steam, melted armor, seared and sundered flesh, and charred earth.
Oneiros fell through the air, unsupported now by his lightning steed. He struck the earth near the center of the Remade army, making a new explosion of mud and bodies. For a moment, he was motionless in the crater. The Remade foolishly approached to investigate. A high, cold-hearted cackle skirled crazily from the demon helm, rising from the pit and sowing fear in hearts that had all but forgotten it.
----------------
"Friends, we'd best be off. Let us make for the Keep as wuickly as we are able." Oliver told the companions. "Perhaps the Stone has lost an army here, but I have no doubt it has more."
"He's right." Kestril said. "Let's waste no time. We must take the artifacts to the Keep and stop the Thing. I only pray we are not already too late."
Acorn's brow wrinkled. "Too late? If we stop it, how are we too late?"
"Milady, there are plans within plans. The greatest strategists, and our Foe is one if any ever were, wring victory from defeat."
Garrett grunted. "How can we know what that Thing has done while we've been delayed out here in the sticks? What it will do even if we succeed?"
Kestril looked south, to the Keep. "Often I wonder if anything has happened that the Skollus Stone did not plan eons before our birth."
"That is neither here nor there, good Keeper." Oliver stated. "First we must concern ourselves with what we know. THEN we will worry about what we do not."
The companions began to wearily move south. What awaited them in the village, in the Keep, in the dark, stalked their worried thoughts unnamed. Unseen. Unfelt. Unheard. Inescapable.
Acorn on 28/10/2005 at 05:03
Agh, I will think of something to add to the story tonight.
