The "Best" RPG Ever-16

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---

On the way down the long, dark corridor, Mika paused and looked around as if she'd lost something.

"What's wrong?" asked Nora.

"Oh, I was just wondering where our fluffy wolf friend went."

"I gave him the day off," said Zack.

"When did this happen?"

"He said he was hungry," said Katherine, "and we offered to buy him a steak or something and he acted insulted. So Zack said he could go hunt for food today, as long as he came back without it by tomorrow morning."

"I was very specific about that," added Zack, "I don't want to wake up tomorrow morning to the smell of a dead deer or something."

The hall finally opened up to a large theater, ruined in the same manner as the castle's antechamber, with an elevated stage up front. Standing in front of the curtains, there was...something.

Zack and Katherine entered at the same time, and both paused, half-jumping back.

"What?" said the cat-girl "That's--"

"me?" said Zack, stealing her line.

"No, it's..." The psion near-automatically took a peek at the knight's sensory input, and trailed off. They were each seeing it as themselves: "Zack" was in a wedding gown and very uncharacteristically giggling; "Katherine" was in some rags, knelt over and crying.

"Eeyaah!" Before she could say anything else, the others came in, and Nora stumbled backwards onto her butt on seeing it, while Mika just looked confused.

"What do you see?" said Katherine.
"G-giant s-s-spider," said the weaver, terrified.

"Some kind of..angel thing?"

The cat-girl crossed her arms and glared. "What is this, a boggart?"

"Well, it's not attacking us or anything," said Mika, holding out a hand to help the elf up. Zack growled, a low, deep animalistic rumbling.

"Then we probably shouldn't..Zack?" said Katherine. He raised his sword and started to charge forward at it. "Hey, wait, it's not--!"

---

Before Lynn's eyes, a vertical rip in space over the ash pile suddenly became quite visible. "Look out!" she said, at the same time as someone with a very large sword jumped through, landing with a deep chop through the air, and at the same time as Rayna said "Yipe!" and instinctively hopped aside.

The person—a white-haired woman, apparently human, taller than both of them—stood back up and looked between them with a bright-bordering-on-disturbing grin. Rayna turned fully around to face her, uneasily holding one of her fans.

There was a second or two of awkward silence. "Um...hello?" said the illusionist.

The stranger's grin widened a bit more, beyond what seemed like it should have been possible, as she readied her weapon, moving it as easily as if it was a knife, and then she said "Blooood," the act of which opened her mouth to show a row of absurdly long, sharp teeth.

The fox-girl's eyes visibly widened at this, and she gave a small sidelong glance of are you seeing this? to the archer.

She charged forward and slashed straight through Rayna—well, through an illusion, the real one ducking aside with an "Aah!" as soon as the woman had begun to move. She turned her run around, not missing a beat, and started running toward Lynn.

The archer drew and threw an arrow at her as a distraction, which she deflected—not that Lynn noticed as she had already about-faced and started running away. "Why are you attacking us?!" she yelled, partially in an effort to figure out how much distance there was, whether or not the stranger was closing.

"Mister sword is starving!" said the stranger, who was in fact very close, just before making another wild downward swing and forcing Lynn to quickly roll aside. She sprang back up, prepared to take a hit for the loss of time, but saw the swordwoman running in the opposite direction, toward another illusory Rayna. "You have so much blood, I just need a little bit!"

The real fox-girl appeared next to Lynn and gave a small finger-to-lips 'shh' expression while the woman sliced straight through the illusion and another one appeared a bit farther ahead of her.

The illusion said, "How much is a 'little bit'?"

She stopped in front of the illusion, holding the blade one-handed so she could gesticulate. "Okay, so I lied, I need like a lot of blood, like maybe a severed arm's worth or oh! brains are full of the stuff, right?" She turned around and started running at the real people again, and they scattered.

"Sorry, we kind of need that to live!" The archer half-looked over her shoulder to see that she was indeed the current target, and then just kept running forward, pushing herself as hard as she could. Maybe Rayna would think of something--

SLAM

Lynn was blind-sided by something very large, flat, and bumpy smashing against her right side with a cracking sound the human body shouldn't make, and went flying into the air, hitting the ground a couple of yards away, rolling to a crouched stop. She tried to get back up but barely managed to turn her head upward between gasping from air after the sprint. The thing that had hit her was a very long, thick, rough wooden club, which was in the hand of a gigantic, fat, miscolored muscular thing.

The stranger caught up with where she had just been (in front of the brute), it swung its club down at her and she met it with her sword. "Heey! That's such a lame weapon. Bruises don't bleed right at all!" After ducking aside, she stabbed it in the the leg, and it staggered backwards a couple of steps.

"Hey, are you okay?" Lynn turned to her right, where the fox-girl was.

"Hh...I uh," she tried to get up and her entire right side protested. "OW I don't think so."

Rayna turned toward the stranger with an angry look, but paused on noticing the brute actually responsible for the injury. "Is..is that an ogre?"
"Yeah, probably."

The swordswoman, meanwhile, was busy killing it. It was strong and durable, and had a big club, but she was apparently a match for it in strength and far faster, anticipating its movements long before they made any impact. Whenever her sword cut or stabbed through its flesh, it came back out with an unnatural flow of blood swirling into it in defiance of gravity or really any comprehensible physics at all. The sword wasn't stained at all by the blood, it seemed to just disappear on touching the blade. She was also laughing like a maniac.

"That's uh..we should probably get out of here."
"I agree but I think my broken rib would rather stay here." Lynn tried to stand up again, more carefully. "Nngh..ow, ow...aah!" Most of the way up, she twisted wrong and lost her balance, but Rayna caught her and helped her the rest of the way. "Look, if she's still berserk and blood-crazy after killing that thing and remembers we exist you're gonna have to make a break for it."

"Don't worry, we're invisible right now."
"I'm pretty sure that doesn't matter."

"Well, I'm not just gonna leave you to die."

"Better me than both of us."

"Whatever, just go for now."

"I was hoping you wouldn't say that." Lynn allowed herself to be led on a slow turn-around, and then start moving away from the noise of the fight.

---

The knight's blade went straight through the image of himself in a wedding dress, and it disappeared. He turned around, ready to block an attack, but heard its voice (which sounded like his) again, coming from the other side of the room. Giggling.
"It's true, it's true. I'm gonna marry a prince and live happily ever after!"

"Shut UP!"

"What? I-it's not what?" said Nora.

"It's not physically there. If he used his senses for half a second he would—hey!" Katherine jumped out of the way of Zack's lunging stab. "I know you don't like me but—HEY!" The second shout (in response to a follow-up chop, which she barely managed to duck under) was accompanied with a psionic shout in his mind, and the knight staggered backwards a couple of steps, eyes closed. When he opened them again he shook his head slightly and blinked at the cat-girl a couple of times. "What?"

"Stop attacking me!"

"I wasn't—oh. Oh." He sheathed his sword and put a hand on his forehead for a few seconds, and had a look of concern when it was removed. "I'm so sorry..a-are you okay?"
"I'm fine, you broadcast your moves like a mile off anyway."

He looked around a bit. "Where did the—it go?"
"No telling, it disappeared when you slashed at it."
"I thought it was—"
"Where I was, yeah. Whatever we're dealing with is using some kind of mental illusion or something, which is especially concerning since my powers should block that sort of thing for me and didn't."

"So wait, how are you so sure it wasn't there?" said Mika.

"I couldn't smell it. There wasn't any scent at all coming from where it looked like it was, and considering Zack is part wolf that should have been even more obvious to him."

"Look, I'm really sorry, okay? I didn't mean to—"

"Then just listen when someone's tryin' to tell you something next time. Sheesh."

"...Hmm." Nora had walked over next to the stage, with her eyes closed.

"What is it?" said the witch, coming closer.
"The unnatural..whatever it is..probably what we're dealing with. It was on the stage at some point very recently." She opened her eyes, looking slightly frustrated. "I'd know whether it was there when we entered if I'd been paying attention earlier, it's just—I've always been r-really afraid of spiders, it caught me off guard."

"Well, can you see where it went from there? Like, a stronger signal coming from some particular direction?"
"Uh..." Nora closed her eyes, turned her head around a bit, sniffed the air. "It's..the trail's a little stronger that way," she said, pointing toward a partially-blocked passage deeper into the castle.
"Then I guess we'll have to go that way," said Zack. "We still don't know enough about whatever this is to report about yet."

---

The blood feeling, the feeling she got whenever the blade made contact with her gigantic opponent and found more delicious hot red fluid to drink, was exhilirating beyond description. It was more than an emotional shift; she felt stronger and more capable somehow, and the world seemed to slow down around her, making the big oaf's clumsy moves even easier to dodge and counter than ever before.

Her sense of blood seemed stronger than ever, too, she could feel the two small ones leaving and tell just how much more this big one would take before it died and how long its blood would stay fresh after that. And while she thought fleetingly of not killing it, letting it heal and regain its blood to be drunk another day, there was a kind of irresistible momentum that kept her striking at it. Like a bunch of sharks, the blade had started a feeding frenzy and wouldn't—couldn't stop until it was all gone. So when the thing dropped its club and fell to its knees, dizzy from sheer blood loss, she couldn't help but stab it straight in the heart (she hadn't known where its heart was before, but it was clearly the biggest chunk of blood available), ending its life at once and feeding the blade another torrent of its blood in the process.

When it seemed empty, fully drained, she pulled the sword back. It was..satiated. Its hunger was unending, its need unlimited, but it felt considerably dulled by the recent feast. It could eat another bite, but it didn't so badly want to at the moment. So without really thinking about it—or knowing that she could beforehand—she had the sword sheathe itself. It seemed to simply grow a big black sheath around its blade at a whim.

So sheathed, the sword's hunger seemed much farther away. It was obvious its appetite had mostly taken over her thoughts since drawing it, and now the cloud was lifted. She shook her head to clear it, her hair waving around a bit, and let go of the hilt, as it seemed much heavier all of a sudden. The weapon seemingly disappeared then, but of course it was still there, she could reach out and take it at any time. She then realized she was panting fairly heavily, and took a few seconds to regain her breath before turning around. Nobody there.

That's weird, she thought, as the pair of women she'd met at first were definitely there a second ago, and not moving anywhere near fast enough to be out of sight in this terrain. Oh, right, they'd been invisible or whatever before.

"Hey!" she shouted, waving in the general direction she thought they were. "Uhm, I've stopped being crazy now! Sorry about uh.."

"Coming at us with a sword?" said a voice rather close to her right ear.
"Yeah, that," she said, turning toward the sound of her voice, and grinning and putting a hand behind her head awkwardly. It was the fox-girl. And then her reflexes caught up to the fact that a person had unexpectedly appeared that close and she stumbled backwards. "Aah!" Not feeling especially balanced at the moment, she tumbled over onto her back and flailed for a second or two before sitting up.

"How did you—?"
"It's just a projeciton, I'm not actually here."
"Oh, well that makes sense...I guess? I didn't really mean to threaten you two earlier, that was mostly the sword talking."
"Uh-huh, and where's your murderously insane sword now?"
"Um..I'm not sure how to describe it other than 'sheathed' and 'away'. The main point is I'm not going to chase you around with it anytime soon."

"And why should I believe you about that?"
"Well..I'm not doing it right now am I? I mean, I don't think the state of mind I was just in is capable of holding a conversation this long without at least trying to hit someone with the sword."

"Hmm..what do you think?" said the real Rayna, who had carefully turned Lynn around to see the conversation.

"Sounds truthful to me, but you're the charisma expert. Anyway, did you notice how clumsy she is now? The sword probably buffs her stats or something."

"Well, who are you anyway?"
"Me? Um, well, my name is ah.." She paused a moment, beginning to actually process for the first time that she was, in fact, completely female. "..Aria?" After a second of thought she nodded. "Yes, pretty sure, Aria."
"Well, I'm Rayna. You weren't sure before?" said the fox-girl, one of her ears sideways.
"Well," said Aria, standing up, "drawing that big sword from the stone messed with my head a bit. I'm having some trouble remembering what I was doing before that."

"Well, do you know where you drew the sword from? You jumped out of some kind of rip in space over..that way," said Rayna's illusion, pointing vaguely toward the summoning circle site.

"Uh.."

"It wouldn't happen to be a blank white room asking you to pick a class, would it?" said Lynn, ignoring Rayna's shusing.

"Err..y-yes? How did you know that?" said Aria, looking in the direction of the latest voice despite not seeing anyone there.

"Ray, I th—"

"Raynaaaa."

The archer glared at her companion, both now visible. "Rayna, I think we have another player here."

"Oh, so you're, uh, you're from Earth too?" said Aria.
"Yep," said Rayna, "originally at least. We both looked really different before coming here, though. Like, really different."
The tall woman cocked her head sideways slightly. "Different enough to have been boys before?"
"Yes, about that different," said Lynn. "You too?"
"Yep!"
The archer looked at the illusionist for a second or two, and then both nodded. "Then I guess you can join our party if you want. You're the first other player we've run into since starting the game together."

"Cool!"

"Just promise you won't attack us again," said Rayna, glaring.
"Well, yeah, I mean that'd be stupid. Unless there's some kind of exploit where everyone gains a bunch of money from it or something.."
The archer said, "Not that we know of—"
"—and you're not allowed to test it on either of us," added the fox-girl.

"Fair enough," said Aria, shrugging.

She walked up a bit closer to them. "So uh, you know where a town is around here?"
"Yeah, but it's gonna be slow going getting there. That ogre broke my entire right side," said Lynn.

"Which is mostly your fault," added Rayna, "so I'd appreciate it if you help out here."
"No problem," said Aria with another grin, and took Lynn's shoulder from her. "Unfh." She grunted from the effort of helping Lynn move.

"Hey, what gives? You were carrying that huge sword around before!" Rayna 'looked' at her to get her stats. "Actually...all of your stats look..well, below average at best."
"Stat buffs," said Lynn again. "You lose them when you're not in berserk mode, right?"
"A-apparently," said Aria. "I'll still help out, though! But how do you look at someone else's stats?"

"Illusionist thing. Not sure I can teach you..."
"Well, I'm willing to try and learn anyway!"

"Later."