Incense

The "Best" RPG Ever-34

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We need that thing targeting me for now. Go around, try to flank it. Zack ran toward the giant bone-creature, shifting to Dark form on the way. The shield might not do much good against attacks from something that big, but having more ability to survive taking hits in general sounded like a great idea just now. Behind him, Mika got on her broom and flew up and back a bit while Katherine and and Nora split off, the catgirl heading left with a pumpkin bomb in tow while the elf went right with the wolf behind her.

The giant's steps shook the ground near it. Coming closer, Zack had to time short hops off the ground to its steps to keep his balance and momentum. Soon he was in range of it, and it bent over in a surprising burst of speed, sweeping a fist at him and forcing him to jump back out of its way. The breadth of its hand reached from the ground to above his head.

You gonna climb the colossus? Katherine's voice in his head.

There's not really any handholds.

Well I'll make you a foothold! With that, Mika's bomb came flying in from the left and becoming a blast of dark fire on the bone-thing's ankle, carving a big hole in the side of it. The rest of its leg above that collapsed down into the hole and it fell forward, kneeling on its other knee and roaring again for good measure.

Not having to jump with its footsteps gave the knight an opportunity to try and attack. He ran up and gave a sideways slash at the knee; the white fire from his sword carved a hole as deep as the sword's length. It pounded a fist down at him and he had to roll aside, only to be catapulted into the air by the force of the blow on the ground nearby. Its other hand came at him for a punch while he was still in the air, and there wasn't much he could do but raise his shield in that general direction. The impact made the entire thing brightly glow and sent him flying backwards a long way, skipping over the ground like a lake's surface twice before righting himself and plunging his sword into the ground to take most of the force of the landing, his body falling in a bit of a heap afterward. The shield had a visible network of glowing cracks sprawled out from its center, and flickered faintly, neither of which seemed like good signs.

Zack returned to his feet in time to see the giant beginning to do the same, the foot that had been exploded and collapsed a moment earlier now all but whole again. Before it could stand entirely, a streak of white flew at it from the right, the wolf carrying the fire-dagger in its mouth long enough to stick it in about halfway up the monster's left leg. Nora followed up, pulling the fire out into a fireball while the animal ran back the way it had come from, and the giant's momentum from trying to stand sent it backward instead of forward, shaking the ground once more as it landed lying on its back.

He stood up, drawing the sword from the ground in the same motion, and ran at it, jumping up onto a leg and running up an increasingly steep slope as the bone giant pushed itself up off the ground. He made it as far as the stomach before having to bury his sword in its body as a handhold to keep from falling off, and then swung back and forth in place with the giant's motion, desperately holding its hilt with both hands in an effort not to slip off.

Mika flew over to Katherine's position as soon as the first bomb went off, and dropped another one with her. She flew around behind the giant then, while it was busy trying to get up, and swooped down to retrieve the dagger and ferry it back to Nora. Her flight cartwheeled back to the giant as it stood vertical again, and seeing the knight's state there and a giant hand drawing back to swat him off she produced and threw a bomb in the same motion, landing another explosion squarely in the monster's wrist, before zooming over to him as he got his bearing and planted his feet. There was a lot of wind in her ears, so she used the psion's mental link to say Need a lift?

His head turned to see her floating just to the right and under him, and unsheathed his sword from the giant's torso with the aid of a small burst of white fire turning the bone holding it in place to dust. Thanks. He half-dove, half-fell toward the broom and had to let go of his sword to catch the front end of it with both hands, followed by a swift motion to catch its hilt in its mouth.

Mika hadn't expected Zack to be quite so heavy or land quite so roughly, and she had to pull back hard to keep the broom from flipping forward and dumping her upside-down. Another giant-fisted punch sailed through the air just where they'd been before that forced maneuver, a gust of wind from it blowing the broom back a bit farther and whipping their hair around. Where are we going? I dunno if I can carry you like this for long!

Up! To its shoulders! Nodding, she flew up, trying to keep the broom steady to decrease his chances of slipping off it.

Katherine let loose her new bomb, up toward the side of the giant's stomach, to take its attention off of the precariously flying pair. It turned its head in the general direction the attack had come from but didn't see her—she was behind it by now. For another distraction, Nora pulled the ground just under its left foot up as hard as she could, throwing it off-balance just enough that it had to hold out its arms to keep from tumbling over again.

Katherine watched the giant's hand reform, its stomach fill back in with more bones. Are we even hurting this thing? It keeps regenerating!

Well, it has to have a weak point somewhere! Finally in position, Zack dropped straight down onto the bone giant's shoulder, released the sword from his mouth and caught it in his hand, and made a hard swing at its neck. Nearly half of it came apart in the white fire, and he rushed forward, shoving at it with both hands and sending it toppling over like a tree.

Dagger in hand, Nora ran around to the giant's front with the wolf still behind her. She paused, looking up to see the head sink into the shoulder opposite the one the knight stood on and then a new head pushing its way up from the empty neck. Its right hand, unhindered by the loss of the head, came to swat him off of it, but he jumped down out of the way just before it could hit him and landed on Mika's broom below him again, no less roughly but at least straddling it with his legs instead of clinging for dear life with his hands. The artifact—that glowing thing in its chest—is the source of the undead, right? She thought to the rest of the party.

The psion reponded: Yeah, obviously. So what?

So what happens if you pull it out? She handed the dagger to the wolf, it darted forward and stuck it in the front of the bone-creature's ankle, and Nora tore another hole in it with a fireball, collapsing the foot and forcing the giant to focus on kneeling and not toppling entirely over again instead of on continuing to swat at the witch's broom like a gnat. Hopefully that would be enough.

Mika and Zack did the mental-communication equivalent of looking briefly at each other and wordlessly confirming that they had both formed the same plan at the same time (it would have been a bit hard to do it physically with him in front of her on the broom), and flew down to the point where the handle was stuck in its chest. The knight swung his sword four times, forming a small square of cuts around the handle, and then stabbed his blade just above those cuts to grab the artifact in both hands and pull. It came slightly loose, but its deep purple glow brightened suddenly, and Zack yelled in pain, forced to let go at a sensation not unlike molten lava pouring over his hands.

The witch frowned, turning the broom to one side, swinging her opposite arm over the knight, and giving pulling the thing out a try of her own. She wasn't as strong as him, of course, but that aura only felt like a faint warmth to her, and as it began to pull free she had the broom help her by flying away from the giant. Zack retrieved his weapon and sliced off more of the bone around it, helping her get the weapon out the rest of the way.

And it was a weapon—a long scythe with a large blade made seemingly out of a single piece of pitch-black metal, glowing brilliantly purple with whatever magic had been responsible for all of the undead. As soon as it was out of the giant, the monster began to fall apart, roaring futilely as it lost form and quickly collapsed into a tall hill made entirely of bones and rotting flesh.

Mika flew clear of the avalanche of bones before touching down, letting Zack step off before hopping off her broom herself, taking it in her left hand with the scythe still in her right. Its glow steadily faded as if it was being calmed by her grip on it until it seemed to be just a faint tinge to the light reflecting off of it.

Zack dropped his blade and doubled over, panting heavily from his recent efforts. The others walked up while Mika set the scythe up so it was still vertical but the ground was handling most of its weight.

"Well, that went surprisingly well," said Katherine. And to Nora: "I can't believe you came up with that before I did." The elf understood the compliment hiding in that complaint and blushed faintly in response before turning to Zack.

"A-are you hurt?"

"'M fine...sword hilt...tastes like garbage.." he said between huffs of air. The wolf barked in what sounded like agreement, walking over to him and rubbing its side against his leg (or at least, the armor on it) in a way that seemed intended to look accidental.

"What was that about not being able to carry him?" said the catgirl, smirking at Mika. "You carried me just fine. Are you calling Zack here fat?"

"No, it's—he's a little heavier, maybe. It's just 'cause muscle weighs more, and he's bigger than you and also there's the armor. It's probably mostly the armor, now that I think about it."

"A-are you okay with that?" asked the elf, pointing to the scythe. "It's as t-tall as I am."

"I know right?" She picked it up and gave a slow, experimental one-handed swing with it. "It's super light though, for some reason. Anyway it has kind of a strong dark aura to it, so I'm not sure it's even safe for anyone else to handle right now. It kinda burned Zack a minute ago."

The elf glared at Zack as he stood upright again. "You s-said you were fine!" On closer inspection, she could see some elemental imbalances that clearly read to her as several bruises from when he'd bounced off the ground, and small but very real burns on the palms of his hands.

"Well, I'm not hurting. It can wait."
She walked up to him, still frowning. "You're just d-deferring the pain, you'll st-start feeling it before we get to town. A-a-anyway, it's n-not healthy to just ignore your injuries, you c-could have a cracked rib or something!" Nora knelt partway down and started healing the worse-looking wounds while she scolded him, and he just sighed quietly and let her do it.

Katherine, meanwhile, walked over toward the pile of bones. With a small upward movement from her hand, the fire dagger unburied itself and floated up over the pile, and then with a flick of the wrist it flew back to her to be stowed away.

"How did you...know where that was?" said Mika, who'd followed her out of curiosity.
"Psionic tagging skill," she said with a grin. "I can mark a small number of things as 'mine', and then I always know where they are as long as they don't go too far off. Great anti-theft measure if we didn't already have inventories only we can get to."

"..You could also use that to track someone through town if you wanted," said the witch, headtilting slightly. She put away the scythe in her inventory on the way back to the others.

---

A human man with neon green hair was sitting behind the community center's front desk. Looking up from whatever he was working on as they came close, he said, "Hello..can I help you?"
"Yeah, we're trying to find some office space—maybe with some corkboard—to rent for a few hours or so today?" said Rayna. "Someone said you might have something like that here, or..maybe you know where we can find one if not?"

He scratched his head. "Yeah, we have some office space. It's not really for rent, you just sign for it and put down a deposit in case anything gets broken. There's a room open..uh.." He paused, tilting his head slightly, seeming to really look at the two girls for the first time. "Hm.."
"What?" said Lynn.

"It's just that you look a lot like some performers I remember coming to my town when I was younger. I came out this way a few years back, used to live inland, in northern Valitha. You...ever been that way?"
They looked at each other briefly and then back at him, and the foxgirl answered, "That's..probably. We've sorta been all over."
"You're the illusionist, and you're the archer, right?" he said, looking a little excited. "It was a great show! I'm surprised you decided to come out to the frontier though, when there's lots of money to be made in less monster-infested lands."

Rayna wasn't sure what to say. "Err.."

"We decided to put our talents to use out here, fighting monsters," her best friend cut in. "It's as good or better money, and we might save some lives this way."
"Oh, I see, I see," he nodded. "I was gonna ask you if you wanted this place for a venue sometime. Gods know folks around here could use a break. I've got some friends in the guard I think could convince the Captain to pay on behalf of the town, you know, less stress keeps the streets more peaceful and all?"

"We'll..think about it," said Rayna. "We've been focusing pretty hard on using our abilities to fight lately, so it might take a bit to get some kind of show together."

"I understand," he nodded, kneeling over and reaching for something inside the back of the counter. "Let me know if you decide to do it, I work here every other day. For now, I can get you settled with that office." He placed a book down with a pen stuck in the middle facing them. "2B is free right now, it's pretty big, has some corkboard you can hang up on the desk."

The man insisted on covering the deposit after that, apprently hoping to encourage them to really put on that show. After he showed them the office briefly and handed them the keys they started off to the tavern, where they'd agreed to regroup. "..This just gets weirder," said Rayna. "He remembers us? But we've never been there. We've only been on Earth, or—here."
"I think we have to think of this as a game to make sense of it," said Lynn, thinking. "We're supposed to be people in this world. Our bodies were changed to look like we're from here in every way. We have magic—you have a tail. So it seems like we also get backstories.."

The foxgirl's ears were folded nearly against her head. "How does that work, though? Really, how does it work? Are a bunch of people's memories and records being altered to look like we were here all along? Did we actually replace people who were already here, doing this? Are there time-travelling imposters pretending to be us?"

"I'm as worried as you are. Why does it match so exactly something I just made up when I was put on the spot?" said Lynn. "I—did I—is this my fault? Did what I made up start becoming true?"

"...If someone can mess with people's heads enough for them to remember us then they can give you that idea in the first place, though," said Rayna, making an effort to calm down. "So it's not necessarily your fault. Even if it is..it sounds strangely apropros, doesn't it? Performers..is the closest thing I can think of to what we really are..or were, in the other world. Educators, too, I'd hope, but.."

"Mostly entertainers, yeah," Lynn nodded. "I'm jealous of Aria if it is whatever we say to other people about our pasts that's true. She just claims to have amnesia and doesn't have to worry about anything."

"I wouldn't be jealous of that," said the foxgirl. "Amnesiac storylines always come with baggage you can't remember. How long do you think we have before a guy shows up in town looking for her and claims to be her estranged husband, or her brother's murderer, or..."

"Stop giving the universe ideas!" said Lynn. "Or—whoever, or whatever's doing this. From now on we insist that Aria was a wealthy businesswoman with no attachments whatsoever."

"What about a butler—"
"No. Attachments."

Rayna smirked, sighed, and then moved the conversation on. "...So what do you think, should we do it?"
"Hm?"
"Put on a show for the town, like lime hair said? Sounds like we can make some relatively safe money that way."

"If we don't get booed off the stage. I have no idea what our show's supposed to look like, or how we go about it.."
"We've had dreams exactly to that effect, though. Maybe if we think hard enough about it today we'll dream up a regular show tonight and not even have to come up with an original script."
"Entertainers never do the same show twice, though," said Lynn. "Not if they want to be any good. I was entirely an archer before and now I do magic stuff, and we're both about to learn a bunch of new skills no matter how this build planning session goes. We'll have to find a way to work that in somehow—and still not get anyone hurt."

"...You're already thinking about how to do it," said Rayna quietly, "like it's not even a question that we will sometime. I'll admit I am too. It's like we're not just being remembered as those performers we dreamed about being, we're actually drawn to be them."

Lynn stopped walking and shivered. "Errngh, stop it, you're freaking me out."

Rayna paused with her. "It'd be more disturbing if we didn't even notice it happening, or were too in denial to point it out. But it's not like it hurts or anything. We're still us, we just have a really strong roleplaying aid."

"I'm still...terrified, we're on our way to not being ourselves anymore," said Lynn. "It makes me not want to think about it, and like you said—that's even worse."

"It doesn't have to be what we're thinking about all the time, as long as it's still there. Hey.." She slid up next to her friend and wrapped her arms around her, rubbing Lynn's far shoulder a bit. "We'll get through this, alright? Together."

"Alright..alright, yeah." Lynn calmed and returned the hug gently. "Let's go, the others're probably waiting for us by now."

---

They didn't encounter any undead on the way back to town. No monsters were around either, possibly they caught a convenient vacuum created by the undead being gone and any monsters eager to take their place unaware they were gone. Whatever the case, they made it back to town easily, and were in the Captain's office by late afternoon. Mika produced the scythe they'd found and started to offer it to her, but the Captain gestured for her to keep holding it.

"I already know exactly what that is," she said. "It generates dark magic of its own, feeds it to its wielder. If the wielder isn't compatible with dark magic then it uses it to hurt them instead. It should be fine for you to keep it—in fact, it's much safer than trying to lock it up somewhere. You don't have to worry about maintaining it or anything, the materials it's made out of are extremely difficult to even scratch, much less break."
Mika headtilted. "..How do you know so much about this thing from just a glance?"

"I recognize it," she said. "I was there to see it made. How it got out where you found it is a mystery to me, though. The last time I saw it was far away from here."

"Um..w-was it, made for someone you knew?" said Nora.

She nodded. "It shouldn't surprise you by now, I used to know a warlock. It was his."

"Oh..so you think he'd be okay with me having it?" said the witch.

"I don't care what he would want," she snapped, showing a small twitch of anger. After a deep breath to calm herself she explained: "We killed him when we found out what kind of person he really was. He should have suffered more, if anything."

"...We?" said Zack after a second.

"I used to be in a party like yours. He killed some of us in that fight, and then the survivors went our separate ways." Her voice was completely dispassionate, with no trace of the sadness one might expect. "There was something we couldn't ever agree on."

"Can I ask what that was?" said Katherine.
The Captain shrugged. "Whether he had been that disgusting person we slew all along, and merely hiding his true nature until he thought he was powerful enough that it didn't matter, or whether gaining the powers of demons had corrupted his mind somehow. I believed he had been deceiving us from the start." She looked to the witch again. "If you ever met a member of my party who was on the other side of that argument, I would advise you to flee them as quickly as you can."

"Uh, g-got it," said Mika a little nervously.