The "Best" RPG Ever-95

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The two chickens were asleep in their boxes, and remained so while Katherine carefully lifted the lids and set them aside. "Honestly, I might just dread this part more than actually fighting a demon," Mira admitted, moving closer to the boxes. She sighed quietly, turning partway toward the shifter.
"Well, it's about the same as before: Pop their necks and drain out the blood."

"Got it," Aria nodded.

Even after the sword was out, she felt much more in control than last time—having quite recently fed it a good meal. Sticking the giant blade into the relatively small chickens seemed unwise, so she split it off into the two-swords form and held one blade above each of the fresh wounds, drawing the blood out through them.

I wonder if 'blood-bending' would ever be actually useful, Lynn thought toward everyone except the witch and shifter—to avoid distracting them. I mean, for anything other than this. Seems to me if you can pull it into the sword you should be able to swing it around too, right?

Worth keeping it in mind in case we discover a spell that explodes blood into fire or something, Rayna agreed.

While they prepared for the ritual, Rose was busy going around dropping handfuls of seeds into the ground. It would be far easier to grow these into any of a number of combat-useful forms than to try to mutate the surrounding grass into the right forms, so when they already knew where the battleground would be there was no good reason not to prepare.

After Mira's ritual was done, she took several steps back from the portal as it opened, panting heavily from the recent effort. Everyone else tensed up, trying to be ready for anything. After a moment, a giant, pitch-black tentacle burst out of the portal, swung back and forth until it seemed to latch onto the portal's edge. Five more such appendages burst from the portal next, each one grabbing another part of its edge, and then the hole in space seemed to be strained wider as the owner of the limbs shoved itself out through it. The demon in question seemed to be composed of at least twenty similarly gigantic tentacles, along with a central mass in the middle with a circular mouth containing long, sharp teeth all the way around the rim. The mouth opened, giving a shrill screaming noise, before it slammed its center down onto the ground, starting to move toward the nearest person—Aria, as she had taken a few steps forward once the thing appeared.

I guess it is about time we encountered something Lovecraftian, huh? Lynn thought, pulling her bow back and sending a burning arrow toward the thing's side—if it even had a front or back in the first place. Nora amplified the fire on the way there and it buried itself halfway up a tentacle, the flames searing across the limb as it landed. The thing screeched and whipped a couple of tentacles in Lynn's direction; she jumped back just out of range, finding their fully-extended length a bit of a surprise.

Don't get careless, Katherine replied.

By now Aria was close enough to slash into a couple of tentacles, drawing dark red, oozing blood out into her weapon and receiving a harsher retaliation than the archer had gotten. She ducked back, splitting her weapon into numerous knives chained together and wrapping each tentacle she could with the chains. The shifter wound up in a rough tug-of-war with the demon while some of its free tentacles tensed to thrash at her arms. Little help here?

Clera dove in from above, aiming a small fireball toward the thing's center. Immediately it drew most of its tentacles upward to meet the fire, blocking it. Its 'mouth' might be a weak point, she suggested, and if so, it knows it.

Rose finished raising a few of her pre-planted seeds, and now had a healthy collection of big, thorned vines to send at the thing, first grabbing the tentacles it had locked to Aria's weapon a bit farther up each limb to pull them away. The creature screamed as it let go of the metal chains, letting the shifter fall back and reform her weapon into a whole sword again. "Thanks!"

"Hnngh—yep!" The demon started grabbing and pulling at the vines with its free tentacles, forcing Rose to concentrate on regenerating them and holding them steady. Nora moved around to the side opposite the dragon-girl and began firing some lightning at the beast, trying without much success to hit its center.

You doing anything right now? Lynn asked toward the fox-girl while shooting a volley of rocky arrows at their opponent.

I've been casting every kind of illusion I've got since we started! I don't think it uses sight or sound, or scent...no idea how that thing 'senses'!

You can't 'read' that info? the psion asked, moving in closer and tossing a couple of her unenchanted knives the creature's way.

I'll give it a shot...

Zack moved carefully around their mark, keeping his shield ready to block any tentacles aimed at someone unprepared to dodge or take them. At this point he noticed Lupa had just been following him around and not doing much. "Hit it," he said, gesturing toward the demon with his sword. The wolf-girl nodded, and charged toward the creature with a greataxe raised, slamming it straight down through the upper third of a tentacle, nearly severing the limb. The demon shrieked, finally tearing itself loose of Rose's vines to aim every limb it had Lupa's way; she hopped back and forth away from them, switching to some smaller axes to throw at it as parting gifts. Each of these was blocked by a limb at the cost of some injury.

Small complication, Rayna reported. That's not one demon, it's two. They're—I'm not really sure how to describe it, but they're like inside of each other somehow? Be on the lookout for it to do something weird, anyway.

Its senses? Lynn asked.

Yeah, it feels vibrations in the air and ground or something...I don't think there's much I can do to fool it. Sorry.

Mira, having finally caught her breath and mounted her broom, took this opportunity to fire some ice shards straight down toward the thing's center. Each one was caught by a tentacle, and as Lupa got out of the thing's range more of them fired up toward her, forcing her to make a sharp incline to move out of reach. Not to be outdone, Aria made her own blade extra-long and had a go at chopping off a tentacle about halfway up, then began to reform it into the chained knives again to block the predictable assault this resulted in. This came not quite quickly enough, as some of the limbs whipped toward her near-instantly. Zack dove in the way of them, blocking two or three with his shield and another couple with his sword. The shifter backed off to one side, making her weapon into a harpoon instead in hopes of catching the thing's center with it.

Having repelled the strikes, the knight stepped slowly back, keeping his weapon and shield up and watching for another attack. The demon raised its tentacles up strangely, not away from him like it would if it was about to strike again, but instead pointed toward him. After a second an inky black mist spewed from where the tentacle's suckers should be toward Zack, and immediately concluding that it could not possibly be good to be hit by that, he dove away to one side, rolling roughly on the ground before standing up. His reaction wasn't quite quick enough to avoid all of it, some coating his armor and exposed fur. The former slid off and dissipated, while the latter seemed to soak inward while he was standing back up from the roll.

He shuddered. Zack? Katherine could feel something pulling at his mind, but didn't seem able to do anything about it. After a second, the knight fell forward again, landing on a knee and burying his blade into the ground, leaning on its hilt with both hands.

Thoughts flared up to the front of his mind, overwhelming him and making it impossible for the psion to reach him: I'm useless—I couldn't protect them—I can't keep anyone safe—it's my fault... While this kept him down, the demon raised its tentacles around him, clearly planning to grab him. Lupa jumped in front, giving an animal howl and brandishing her greataxe before bringing it down on the nearest limb, cutting its lower fourth or so off in the process.

Ink stuff is some kind of mind magic, the psion warned everyone else while still trying to push against its effect on Zack's mind. I can't shake it off of him!

Taking a look now, Rayna responded.

Clera sent a mid-size fireball toward Nora, which the elf amplified into a larger explosive while directing it toward the demon's exposed back; it pulled some tentacles away from Lupa to deal with this, while the wolf-girl continued to slash wildly at it. Mira rained down more icicles to draw a few more of the tentacles' attention, Rose pulled at still more with some fresh vines, and Lynn began a new barrage of enchanted arrows aimed at the thing's center. It still seemed intent on slowly moving toward the knight, at least until Aria jumped right in its face, directly between the demon and him, and threw a well-aimed harpoon straight down the middle, right into its mouth.

The scream from this was louder and shriller than any before, as the demon drew nearly every limb it had to try and pull the weapon back out—and pointed a few of the remainder toward the shifter. It's gonna shoot again, get back! Katherine advised. The harpoon was jerked out and firmly held by some tentacles against the shifter's efforts to retrieve it.

I'll be fine. Can't let go of this!

You'll be fine?! Did you see what it just— The protest was too late to achieve much, as Aria stood her ground amidst a spray of the demon's dark ink and let it soak into her while she yanked the weapon back, forming it back into a blade. The greater concentration had a more immediate and drastic pull on her mind, drawing up thoughts of failure, giving up, losing—fears of giving in to the sword-demon's bloodlust and finally going insane. But Aria didn't flinch, and took advantage of a resulting hesitation from the demon to reclaim her weapon, reform her sword and give a solid swing right through the nearest few tentacles.

"YOU THINK YOU CAN STOP ME WITH THAT?!" she yelled at the top of her lungs, stepping forward while the demon, making a noise reminiscent of a dog whining, crawled an inch or two backwards. "I WILL NEVER GIVE UP! AND TRYING TO MAKE ME GIVE UP—" The shifter raised her blade again. "JUST! MAKES! ME! ANGRY!" Each word was punctuated with another hard swing through the thing's tentacles and step forward, ever closer to its 'mouth'. Its effects fully rejected by her mind, the inky magic exploded out of Aria's body and dissipated into the air. The demon shrieked and rolled back away from her, which didn't do much good when her next move was to vault up into the air and land on a tentacle, jabbing her sword into it before splitting it in two, pulling one blade out from each side and cutting the lower half of the limb right off in the process.

The demon screamed again, launching itself into the air with its tentacles and landing between Aria and Zack—who the smaller wolf-girl was still standing in front of, her greataxe held before her protectively. Aria turned and growled. Katherine! Give this to Zack. The 'this' in question was the thoughts behind her recent yelling—a condensed knot of unstoppable willpower; a refusal to give up or lose which was stronger than words alone could convey.

I can't get through to him at all at this point!

Try it anyway. The psion acquiesced, opening a channel straight between the shifter and Zack and pouring the thoughts through as directly as she could manage. Somewhat to her surprise this worked, the black, inky magic steaming out of the knight's body while he slowly pushed himself back up to his feet and gave a low, angry growl. Lupa, noticing this, stepped back and to one side until she was next to him, giving a somewhat less deep but no less enraged growl. The demon skittered back slightly, apparently uncertain what to do when two of its intended prey failed to stay down.

"I am so tired of everything in this world screwing with my head!" Zack yelled, yanking his weapon out of the ground and giving it a small swing through the air to throw the dirt off. Holy magic blazed across the blade as he charged the demon, Lupa next to him, and both of them slashed through one limb after another until the demon was backed up into Aria's range again, and she gleefully joined in as well. It seemed the thing was able to grow new appendages as it lost old ones, since by the time it leapt away from them to a clear patch of land nearby it had probably lost most of those it began with, yet still seemed to have just as many as ever. It shrieked once more as everyone approached it, and then did something unexpected—pointing its tentacles inward, seemingly jamming several of them into its mouth and pulling outward. In a motion which was difficult to physically comprehend, the demon turned inside-out in an instant, most of its limbs disappearing while those remaining became a pair of legs, six arms ending in various attached blades, and a head with dark hair and bright, glowing golden eyes. The 'mouth' became a muscular chest with what looked like a tattoo of the other demon's mouth across it. It carried itself competently, eyeing the group surrounding it with the weapons attached to its arms raised in all available directions.

The other demon, Rayna reported while starting to set up some illusions—this one, after all, had eyes. Mira swooped down to throw more ice at it, which it dodged aside of or hit away with its weapons; it moved forward and swung at illusions of Zack and Lupa while they went to either side to attack it, but it also blocked their real weapons skillfully, dancing away from them before they could follow up. A bolt of lightning from Nora arced through the blades into its body, making the demon shudder for a second—long enough for Aria to slash at its chest. It backed up just far enough to receive a shallow cut straight down the chest which bled bright blue, feeding the shifter's blade and emboldening her to take another step forward. The demon's eyes flashed a blinding light which the illusionist wasn't prepared to block for her, briefly stunning the shifter and forcing Zack to move into position in front of her and block a pair of strikes with his shield.

Rose threw a thorned whip around one of the demon's arms, yanking it away to one side before Lupa tossed a couple more of her axes at its other side, one being deflected but the other burying itself deep into space between the base of two of its arms. Mira flew next to the demon, swinging her scythe to catch another of its blades and try to pull the whole thing off-balance with the momentum, but it slid its blade expertly along the weapon to disengage itself before it could be pulled, while using a different blade to cut the dragon-girl's whip off of itself.

Back up a second, Rayna advised, and everyone did—except Rose, who was already a fair distance away. The fox-girl gave it six illusory attackers all charging it at once, and it raised its blades to block them—giving Clera an opening to send a jet of fire straight down upon its head, amplified further by the weaver. Its hair and flesh burned, but didn't take nearly as much damage from the heat as might be expected, and it leapt toward her in a spin of weapons, flinging the axe off of itself and forcing her to make an awkward sideways maneuver to dodge. Mira swooped in behind the demon, sticking her scythe into the spinning blades. This time it didn't have enough control over its momentum or balance to do much, and tumbled onto the ground, rolling a short distance before stopping on its front. Nora shot lightning down at its back while Lupa and Aria both ran up, raising their weapons. The shifter chopped first, which the demon rolled away from, but the wolf-girl's swing came down right where it rolled to and her axe landed squarely in the chest.

It drew itself inward—legs and arms alike—like a dying spider, its eyes pulsing flashes of light like a strobe. These Rayna kept everyone from seeing, although it didn't matter much as the tattooed 'mouth' on the humanoid demon suddenly opened back up and its limbs were brutally torn off of its body and pulled into that mouth, the thing turning inside out again and erupting with three or four times the tentacles it had had before as the original demon reappeared. Everyone who'd been near the more humanoid demon backed up as the reformed limbs swung wildly around it.

"Those're its last arms!" Rayna said—aloud, for Rose's benefit. "Tear 'em off or get us to the center to finish it."

The dragon-girl nodded, raising the rest of her pre-planted vines to grab several of the demon's limbs. Aria split her blade into chained knives and threw the lot of them to stab and wrap around more of them, pulling in the opposite direction. The demon shrieked, pulling itself free of the knives and raising half of its free tentacles toward Rose, spending the rest of them blocking a barrage of arrows, axes and green icicles. Seeing what was coming, Zack jumped to cut off some of the poised limbs, Lupa moving alongside him to do the same, but they didn't quite get all of them. The black spray shot down at the vines gripping the demon's other limbs first, causing some of them to wither and break, but the tentacles continued spraying as they quickly turned forward, straight at Rose. The ink connected and sank into her skin and scales; her expression at first suggested she was trying to fight it, but her grip weakened enough for the tentacles still held in vines to slip free and raise themselves up toward her.

In the sky above the demon, Clera chanted a spell which wreathed her body completely in flame. It was harmless to her, due to the spell's design, but quite the opposite to anything else it touched. At this point the demon's tentacles were all busy elsewhere, leaving its mouth exposed from one particular direction above it, so she dove straight in that way, pulling out of the dive at the last second to fling the spell's fire off of herself and careening the rest of the way into the creature's center, straight inside of its presumed weak point. The demon screamed, the fire seeming to spread out from inside its mouth across all its tentacles as it collapsed, finally down for the count. Nora pulled the fire away from its center just as Aria came close and jammed her blade straight inside, dealing the finishing blow to the demon and starting to claim its remaining blood for her own demon.

Rose was on her knees by this point, covering her face in her hands and clearly sobbing. What do we do? Rose is still down! Katherine found her mind as impossible to reach as ever, but managed to pick up one concept through the usual haze—fake.

Mira swooped down next to Aria and quickly landed, putting her broom away. Its power did this to her, so it should be able to dispel it. She raised a hand, drawing out the demon's soul, as usual. It was two souls, really—as it had been two demons—a dark, ink-like soul mixed unevenly with a bright, golden-glowing one. With a further wave of her hand the witch absorbed both, and during the rush of power she walked quickly to where the dragon-girl was, chanting something briefly to pull from the newfound power entering her and dispel the effects of the ink. It seemed reluctant to leave, partially sticking to her body as it leaked out and upward, but after a moment it did dissipate; nonetheless Rose remained where she was, just as though it was still affecting her.

"Hey..." Mira knelt over, reaching a hand slowly to put it on her shoulder. The slightest touch of her finger was met with a violent shudder, and while she pulled her hand back Rose pulled her head out of her hands just enough to look at the witch for just a second with a pained expression. She gave a brief, whimpering, sniffling sound before suddenly standing up, spreading her wings wide, and taking off into the sky, flying upwards and to the east.

Mira stood up, getting out her broom again. I'm going after her.

You sure about that? Katherine asked. She's probably flying back to her forest because she wants to be alone.

I know. The witch mounted her broom. That's why I'm going after her. With that, she took off in the same direction Rose had.

Lupa watched them both leave before turning to face Zack with a wide-eyed, concerned expression. "Master okay?" she asked. "Did this one...fight good enough?"

"Yeah...you did really good," he said, then sniffed, becoming suddenly aware of some recent tears staining his own cheeks. "I'm...I'll be fine." Unsure how else to reassure her, he placed a hand on her head and ruffled her hair a bit. Lupa's expression brightened right away, her tail wagging a bit faster.

Dropping the hand back to his side, the knight looked in Aria's direction. "Hey..thanks." Not only had she jumped right between the demon and him when he was down, but it was somehow clear to him that the..thought or whatever it was that had snapped him out of it, while it had come through the psion, was originally hers.

"No problem!" Aria flashed a huge grin and gave him a thumbs-up with her free hand for good measure. "Let me know if you ever need some blind confidence again. Plenty more where that came from!"

As everyone else was headed inside by now, Zack gestured for Lupa to follow and then did the same. Katherine dropped behind the others until she was about next to him. You sure you're okay? That...ink stuff's effect seems pretty nasty.

I'll get over it, he said with a slight nod. What exactly did it do, anyway? Mostly he was concerned about any..."long-term" aftereffects like those from the Incubus.

I had a look at what Rayna saw of it. Unlike...that, it's not an all-at-once thing; more like a persistent enchantment that needs to be dispelled to go away—which it has, so you shouldn't have anything to worry about. I'm not sure if knocking you out would've helped, unless someone could dispel it before you woke up. As long as it's in you, it just grabs any thoughts in your head with negative emotions tied to them and shoves them to the front of your mind until you can't think about anything else. I guess the 'idea' is to stop its prey cold so it can just grab and eat it easy.

Zack gestured slightly toward Aria. So how did she...?

I'm not exactly sure. I mean—to me it just looks like she thought 'louder' than the thoughts the demon-ink could dredge up. Which sounds...stupid; thinking loud, strong thoughts shouldn't actively dispel magic, right?

Meanwhile, Clera landed next to the shifter, who—finished feeding the demo for now—was just sheathing her blade and putting it away. "Heyyy...what's up?" Aria said, picking up on her not-so-subtle expression of barely-contained rage.

"Why did you disregard the warning about that creature's attack immediately after it was issued?" she demanded.

"Well...I was pretty sure I knew what it was doing, and I knew that wasn't gonna work on me. Better to make it target me than take down a second person, right?"

"And you were absolutely certain that it wouldn't do the same to you?"
"Of course," Aria shrugged. "If I wasn't, it would have."
The winged girl stopped in place for a second, her face scrunching up as she attempted to both parse and comprehend that response.

You see? the psion said to Zack, both having watched the last of this exchange.