Aetuornos Beta 2-5

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2-5: Violet Confrontation

Thora found herself awkwardly standing near the monk while the catgirl went to gather and organize the spoils, and the necromancer was still collecting souls. "So, uh..."
"Yes? Speak your mind," she ordered.
"On the topic of our quest. You didn't see a purple light in the sky on your way here, didya?"

"No."
"Nor a girl flying around with, like, purple flames around her."
"Correct."
"Iiin that case...um.."

"I suspect a patrol pattern would be wisest," Noire said, rescuing her. "We should trek back in the direction of Greenleaf, and keep our eyes peeled toward the sky, not neglecting the south particularly. Another party, consisting of a summoner and a warrior, are in that direction, and they—like us—have a flare readied should they spot our quarry."
"Very well," the monk said, deferring to the rouge's suggestion. Well, it wasn't like there was anything left to kill behind her, after all.

"All done~!" Fiori sang cheerfully, bouncing back toward the group. By now, Noire had the loot neatly split into four nice, equal piles, and after looking to each of the others in turn to give them an opportunity to voice any complaints, she scooped up her own pile. The others did likewise, Zef last and with something of a resigned shrug.

"Since you excel at dodging and striking back, I think you might be best guarding our rear," Noire suggested. "Thora can take point, and put us squishier classes in the middle where we're safest."
"A sound plan," Zef agreed, nodding, and—the other two not objecting—they were off.

A bit of silent walking later, the catgirl said, "Monk seemed like a pretty hard sell to me: A fighter with no weapons or armor, a mage with a super limited spell set, and a healer with only single-target, touch-range healing. But I suppose, in the right hands, it's greater than the sum of its parts."
"Each flaw is made up for," Zef stated. "I am agile enough to avoid attack, and have greater than realistic capabilities in unarmed fighting for this body's build. In addition, Luminiere's light blades provide greater range and a cutting force. And a monk's method of healing is more potent for the same price than others' would be."
"Huh. The way you spoke before, I thought you hadn't put too much thought into the specifics of your class beyond simplicity of management," Noire said.

"Any great warrior must also be at least a passable strategist," she stated.

"It's like it was min-maxed for you," Fiori said. "Be ready for nerfs later, once people start complaining! Heheh." This earned her a somewhat confused look.

"Actually...based on some of the interviews, I don't think nerfing is necessarily in the playbook for the devs," Noire said. "They pretty much said they want every class to be 'overpowered', in different ways. You're supposed to feel like an awesome hero, after all. And it probably feels much worse being suddenly weaker when what feels like your actual body and powers are changing, so it's more about identifying exploits and developing counters for them for both monsters and certain other player classes. Well—really, the ridiculous variety of options almost guarantees that counters already exist in the latter, but they might add more of them."

"Hey!" Fiori pointed. "Is that the flare?"
Noire looked. "...That it is. Let's go!" she waved, and Thora ran as quickly as she could, the others behind her. Despite being the tallest of the four, her pace was only difficult for Fiori to match. When the demon-girl started to audibly pant, Thora took a moment to turn around, sweep her into her arms, and keep running, trying to ignore the small necromancer's almost flirtatious giggling in response.

The four of them crested a hill and caught sight of a girl riding on a giant scythe as though it was a witch's broom, hovering far off the ground. She seemed to be human, with black hair and bright red eyes; she wore a ludicrously skimpy outfit in black and purple that covered more of her arms and legs than it did her torso, complete with a bright purple scarf that seemed to float impossibly around her in midair; and both her body and the scythe she sat upon were wreathed in bright purple flame that danced around in circles. Below her were six black-feathered birds of prey each about the size of a person, all wreathed in the same flame, swarming around Jack, Ronin, and another man who looked like someone maybe two-thirds of the way into a werebear transformation.

The flying girl turned toward the newcomers, seeming to notice them instantly. "My my, I'm super popular all of a sudden," she called, her voice a fairly high soprano. She lifted a hand and a bright purple orb rose from her palm, growing to nearly the size of her head in a second or two. "'Fraid I'll have to disappoint you ladies, though."

With a very casual-seeming flick of the wrist, she sent the orb rocketing toward them. "Move!" Zef helpfully advised, leaping far away to the right. Noire ran left, and Thora threw Fiori forward before diving ingraciously in that direction herself. When the orb connected with the ground, it became a large explosion which Thora was just narrowly out of range of.

"WAAAAAAH!" Fiori spread her wings to glide instinctively, but still screamed in fear the entire way forward/down until she landed in an awkward forward tumble. This put her close enough for one of the birds to notice her and dive down talons-first. She saw this when she sat up, and managed to summon her scythe in time to block them, making the bird glance off the blade before arcing back up into the sky.

The bear-man roared as another of the birds came down at him, let it rake its talon across his shoulder so he could grab its leg with the opposite hand and slam it into the ground. Jack swung his axe wildly around above him to deter the beasts from diving; Ronin was busy casting a spell.

Once certain she was clear of the explosion, Noire turned and tossed a dagger up at the girl in the sky, aiming for her center. "Wwhoops!" She waved a hand forward and some of the fire around her gathered around the weapon, slowing it to a halt a couple of feet in front of her and making it spin slowly in the air. "Y'know kit-kat, you shouldn't throw things you're not okay with losing," she said, flicking her hand back and sending the flame-covered dagger off behind her—on the opposite side of the swarm of giant birds.

By now, Thora was finally back to her feet and hurrying toward the necromancer; Zef was already halfway down the hill, and took a flying leap, kicking and forming a crescent blade which buried itself in the side of one of the birds. She kicked off that one, flipping around in midair to land on top of another, forming light blades around each of her hands. She stabbed one of these down into its back to anchor herself and used the other to slash into its right wing repeatedly. The one that had just been tossed onto the ground stood up and screeched, hopping closer and pecking at its most recent assailant, who dodged only by backing away.

Ronin finally finished his spell, and a glimmer of light appeared just in front of him, forming into a gleaming white humanoid body with glowing yellow eyes, floating an inch or two off of the ground. "Ooh, lookit tha~at," the flying girl commented, clasping her hands together like she was happy to see this. The—probably—light elemental soared upward, striking swiftly at the bird with clawed hands.

Roth floated up into the sky while Thora and Fiori approached the three men, throwing some of the necromancer's own flame at the nearest couple of birds. The berserker got out her club and batted away one that was diving at Jack from his blind spot, sending it in an uncontrolled arc that ended with it tumbling along the ground. "Yo, thanks!" he said, swiping at another of them.

The bear-man's opponent gave up its assault and took off back into the sky. Zef's mark was whirling, twisting upside-down and sideways, and when she found her grip becoming too loose to maintain she dismissed the light-blades and hopped off, diving toward the group and landing next to Jack. "Who is most injured?"

"Druid bro," Jack said.

"I'll manage," the werebear (apparently a druid) said, making an upward pushing motion with his forepaws that caused some green light to twist upward around his body like rapidly-growing vines, which seemed to cause him to start regenerating his several cuts. The monk nodded, moving to the axe wielder and placing her hand on his shoulder, mending his wounds.

Noire stayed near the top of the hill, watching all of this and trying to think of something useful for her to do. As much as she hated to agree with the enemy, throwing her only remaining weapon really didn't seem like the best idea. She couldn't jump quite as well as the monk, nor would it help her much to be in the air; her dagger (if not thrown) had too little reach to counter those things' talons and beaks.

Three of the birds ganged up on the light elemental and tore it apart, but no sooner did it fade away than Ronin made another one and sent it back up into the air, panting from his efforts. The other three kept the clustered group of melee fighters busy, swarming down at them but frequently fluttering away just out of reach. The purple-flame aura around the beasts didn't seem to burn anyone particularly, but Noire had the distinct impression that at least one of those birds should've died or at least been permanently grounded by now from its injuries, and yet not one of them had. This was no simple, one-off passive buff the strange girl in the sky was using, and judging by the way she floated around in the air looking down at the scene...

She was controlling them. And she was probably healing them, too, or at least buffing them with high defense and some regeneration so good they might as well be getting constantly healed. And, while she was clearly quite powerful, she was a mage, after all, and possibly very squishy up close..but how could anyone hit her when she was so high up?

Noire got out the signal flares she'd bought, just four of them. They were magic-based, so they made a lot of light but no real explosion, per se. But did they make noise? Her catlike ears hadn't heard anything from the one Ronin's party threw, but they'd been quite far off. It was time to gamble and test, she decided. She'd already observed that the girl flying around on the giant scythe was going in a predictable pattern, so the rogue aimed carefully at where she was going to be in just a couple of seconds—and let loose a signal flare. Of course, their opponent saw this coming, and waved her hand to effortlessly make some of her purple fire form a shield just in front of her. The flare hit the shield, producing a bright flash and—yes!—a loud popping, crackling sound. Just what was needed.

The catgirl sprinted the rest of the way down the hill to the group, getting between the berserker and monk. She gasped some air in, and let it out in a quick, quiet: "Thora, throw Zef up at her!" It was loud enough for the two of them to hear, but soft enough that it couldn't be heard over the flare's noise above them. The two of them looked at Noire (who was now panting heavily to catch her breath) and then at each other, Zef nodding and Thora shrugging her own agreement to at least try this mad plan.

The flock of birds were still swarming around them throughout this, but their attack seemed less coordinated and careful, allowing Jack and the druid to force two of them to the ground, and giving Fiori a chance to swipe back at one that missed her and have one of Roth's fireballs actually connect. By the time the flare's light faded, Thora had the monk picked up in her arms (her weapon put away for the moment). She readied and then threw with all her might, sending Zef flying up into the air, past the birds, and just high enough to catch the scythe's handle in her right hand.

"Oh?" The weapon titled from the monk's weight as she swung up and forward, aiming to punch the girl in the face with a light-blade. But the girl simply floated up from her seat and back away from the scythe, maintaining her "floating in midair" status without the help of the flying weapon, and Zef was forced to take another full rotation around the handle in order to go up in the air and fall back onto the scythe, sticking the landing with both of her feet planted across it.

"My, you aren't afraid of heights at all, are ya?" the girl said, forming a pair of short swords out of purple light in her hands.
"I can fly," Zef replied bluntly, lifting a leg to roundhouse-kick toward her. She was just barely in range of the leg's light-blade but floated backwards just in time to dodge, coming back in to let loose with a series of slashes at the monk—who dodged all of them neatly.
"Are you sure you're not confusing yourself with your little winged friend down there?" she said.

While Noire's gambit didn't really succeed in stopping their opponent to any degree, Zef did manage to continue to distract her from controlling the birds. Thus, the six of them still on the ground made headway: Thora pounding a bird that Jack had grounded repeatedly with her spiked club until it stopped moving, the fire around it dying out, and Ronin's summoned elemental grabbing another bird in a bear hug and pulling it down to (somewhat appropriately) the druid, who tore into it with his claws while the elemental still had it restrained. The rogue herself was even able to duck in and stab or slash a downed avian here and there. Fiori raised her scythe like a staff and consumed one of her hedgehog-wolf-thing souls to send a fully tangible ghost of one rolling into another bird which had landed to peck at Jack, cutting deep gashes through it before dissipating into a white mist. Soon the number of monsters alive had whittled down to just three.

After observing her opponent's habits for just a few strikes, the monk made a pair of light-blades from her hands and successfully caught the purple blades against them, kicking forward at her stomach with a third blade. She released the swords and floated back just out of reach, once again just in time. "Quite some technique for a newbie~," she complimented in a teasing voice, forming a bow and arrow out of the purple light and firing a volley of three in rapid succession.

"My experience far outranks yours, if that is your best," Zef replied, swiftly rotating her torso to let the first two pass her and knocking the third away with her bare hand.

"HeeE~heheh," the girl cackled, in a distinctly witch-like manner, while she shot more arrows out. "You must be kidding. I'm letting you stand on my real weapon!"

Another bird went down, succumbing to necromantic flame. A second, the druid caught by the leg and laid out for Jack to chop into the few more times that its remaining health required to kill. The final bird circled too far above them to easily reach, successfully avoiding Roth's flame.

"Why toy with us, then?" the monk said. "Is it not your goal to slay us?"
"Is it?" She released the bow, and it disappeared. "Ooh no," she said, shaking her head as she raised both her hands up in front of her, "I've just been looking for something aaa~all day, and I think I've just now found it! LOOK OUT BELOOOW!" she called, more than loud enough for those who were below to hear. Slamming both of her hands down had the effect of throwing the scythe—and Zef on it—downward, spinning rapidly and seeming to pick up more and more purple flame as it went. The group below scattered as best they could, and after initially hugging the spinning weapon, the monk managed to peel herself off enough to leap away before it landed, generating a big explosion of purple flame as its blade buried into the earth.

About half of them didn't clear the explosion, but not one of them was injured by it. As they learned this, they all turned back toward where the scythe had landed just in time to see the remaining bird grabbing Ronin's shoulders in its talons and taking off into the air. "Ow—hey!" He struggled to get free, but lacked the strength to do so. The scythe picked itself up and spun around like a fan blade just beneath him, forming a column of purple flame which actually was dangerously hot, preventing anyone from getting too close. "Let go of you me, you stupid bird! Gaah!" Not having many other options, the summoner tried to punch at the monster's underside from below without much success.

"What th—this is a kidnapping?!" Noire said, coming as close as she dared to the column of fire.

"Distractions, kit-kat. Turnabout is fair play~." The flames completely obscured Ronin for a moment, and then they disappeared right along with the scythe, bird, and player.

"What the heck is this noise!?" Jack lifted his axe and threw it up at the floating girl (who was far too high in the air for it to reach). "Give my si—I mean, our mage back!"

"Oh, very well. I'm feeling generous," she said, lifting a hand in front of her and seeming to cause some purple fire to "un-burn" a sheet of scroll paper into existence, whereupon it fluttered down toward the heroes. "Do ooone simple task for me, and I'll release your friend to you. See, there's this sorcerer who's totes my rival and stuff, so I just want you to steal one teensy artifact from the top of his tower. This map will take you right to it, and—I know how you adventuring types are—you're free to take whatever else you want on your way up. Toodaloo~." She gave a faux-dainty wave, and then the flames around her gathered in to obscure her before she too vanished, flames and all.

Jack caught the paper, glaring at it. "Auugh, this scenario is dumb. Ronin's gonna hate me for this," he said.
"You've got that upside down," Noire pointed out.
"Oh, whatever, here," he shoved it at her to go retrieve his weapon, and she took a closer look for herself.

The druid reverted from werebear to human form—or, more accurately, elf form. He was around Thora's height, with light green eyes and dark green hair, and deeply tanned skin. His outfit was a leather jerkin and pants, with a coat that seemed to be made of a bear's skin—fur and all—right down to a hood made of its head in a manner which appeared to have his head seemingly in its mouth. This part of his outfit actually seemed to be the fur of his werebear form, and once he had changed back he lowered that hood to reveal his long, pointed ears. "Well, even with as poorly as it ended, I'm glad you four showed up. You must be the other party Ronin mentioned?"
"That's us!" Fiori chirped pleasantly, coming over to offer him a hand to shake. "I'm Fiori, that's Thora and Noire, and the monk is Zef!"
"Well met," he said, shaking her hand. "I am Grigori, a druid."

"Nice to meet you~. I'm a necromancer, so I'm gonna go collect giant bird souls now, 'kay?"
"Um...sssuuure." She bounced over to one of their bodies to get to work.

"What was that chick, anyway?" Jack said. "Max-level player, this soon?"

"I..don't think so," Thora said. "Remember that blacksmith? I think some of the staff are maybe playing major antagonists or plot NPC's or something..."

"By the way she improvised, I would assume a hired actress," Grigori suggested. "Or else a very serious roleplayer. You seem to have a knack for dramatic dialogue yourself, miss..Zef, was it?"

"Hmnh." The monk was still busy glaring at where the column of fire had been just before spiriting Ronin away, her arms crossed. "Banter is often useless, but an opponent eager to engage in it is usually easy to goad into letting slip important information. For instance: She was looking for Ronin," she said, gesturing forward. "Or someone who was, in some important way, like him."

"She certainly seemed excited when he summoned that light elemental," Noire commented.

"Aww, my soulventory's full already," Fiori whined, mostly to herself. "After those first few fights, it went all the way up to five. But, I guess one-two-two is good...?" she trailed off, and then: "Hey, Noire!"

"Hmn?" The catgirl turned to find her waving.
"There's daggers here, and a note!" she pointed off to where the valley sloped back upward, a short ways down from where the purple-flames girl had tossed her weapon.

The rogue put the map away for a moment, hurrying over. The 'note' in question was a piece of torn-off parchment that said "Replacements for Kit-Kat" with an arrow pointing down to the daggers. Below that, in smaller font, it said "Finders keepers!"

The daggers themselves were the same size in a fairly similar style, with purple gems set into the hilts. On top of the blade of one was a small ring with another such gem set into it. Noire knelt down, picking them up. "Hey, can you check for enchantments?" she said, standing and turning to the necromancer.

"Sure! Lemme see~." She held out her hands, and stared intently at the weapons and accompanying ring.

"Ooh, neato. The ring's 'bound' to the knives. If you wear it, you can make them teleport back into your hands as long as they're not too far off," she said, offering them back to the rogue. "No curses, either."

"Well, that's good to hear. These are...markedly superior to my original set as well," she said, comparing them to the one she still had. "I suppose it was some sleight of hand: She appeared to throw that one away, but that was actually these...?"

"I suppose she wanted to 'reward' you for your strategem," Grigori said.
"Mm-hm. Ordinarily, I would argue against claiming such a generous gift for myself alone offhand, but I am less than half as useful to the party when down one dagger," The rogue said, putting on the ring and mentally setting the new knives as her equipped weapon. "And I do not think any of you can make as effective use of these as I. As consolation, I will take none of the spoils from these avian beasts, if that is acceptable?" As she spoke, she tested the enchantment, tossing one of the daggers out at the hill and willing it to return. It was swallowed in a brief puff of purple flame from where it had landed, and reappeared in her hand through a similar effect.

"..Yeah, sure, whatever," Jack said. "Let's just get on with it." Everyone else had more neutral responses, except that Zef came closer.

"Noire. If you are not using your previous weapon...may I take it?"

"Uh...sure, I guess? You're very much not a weapon-wielding class, though." She held it carefully by the blade, offering the monk the hilt, and she took it, seeming to take a moment to test its weight in her hand
"Correct. That is precisely why I should have one," she said, putting the dagger away.

"Aahh, I getcha."

Everyone more or less distributed the work of collecting the loot from the birds, and then Jack came over to the rogue as she pulled the map back out. "So, what's it say anyway?"

"Well...there's no way that tower she spoke of exists. Look." As the others came closer to view the map over her shoulder, she pointed. "There's Greenleaf, the forest..Zef's monastery, a shrine off to the east of the town. And right here," (she pressed her finger on a spot marked with an X that said "Mondelain's Tower") "is where the tower should be. But by my reckoning, we—Thora, Fiori, and I—would've been within a couple of dozen yards of it on our way southward, and surely ought to have seen it. It should not require a very high spot-check roll to notice a tower."

"Well, maybe it's invisible unless you know where it is, or somethin'," Jack said. "Come on, we gotta do what she wants to get Ronin back, right?"

"I...suppose we ought at least to try," the rogue agreed, rolling the map up. "I can serve as our navigator; my sense of direction is impeccable."

With their larger group, Jack took the front alongside Thora, and the druid kept with Zef toward the back. A short ways along, the bull-horned man said, "Huh."
"What?" Thora asked, looking over.
"I thought—well, look. Ronin's actually my, uh, sister in real life. Our pod things're like, right next to each other? I'm just surprised she hasn't already logged out and started poking me or something. Getting this game was my idea, she's not games and stuff at all, but...well, she was having fun for a while."

"Hey, maybe she still is having fun," the tall demon-girl suggested.

"Pssh, playing 'damsel in distress'? Not a chance."
"That isn't necessarily what is happening," Zef said from the back row.

Fiori moved over next to the catgirl. "Heeey um..."

"Yes?"
"Can Iiii, lookit the map for a sec?"
"Certainly," she said, getting the scroll out and hand it over. The instant her fingers touched the paper, the necromancer nodded as though she had just confirmed something she'd strongly suspected.
"Hey, um, so like...we should stop for a sec."
Everyone did so, turning to look as she unrolled the map and looked at it more carefully, turning it over onto its apparently blank back side. Jack said, "Why?"

"'Cause like...this is enchanted? Aand, she didn't say 'follow this map's directions to get to the tower'. She said literally, 'this map will take you right to the tower'. Right? And like, how else can something literally take you to a place, besides being the way you get there?"

"So..what?" Thora said, "There's an invisible spell on the back?"

"Yep! Well—not invisible to me," Fiori said, "aannd, not exactly a spell? It's more just an..invocation phrase, to activate the enchantment."
"Well, say it, then," Jack said.

"'Kay. Uhhm, make some space please," she said, waving vaguely in front of herself, and the group moved away from that spot to give her room. Then she intoned: "'Mondelain's a stuffy, old, uncool jerkface'."

The map seemed to burn with some of the flying girl's characteristic purple flame, though this neither produced heat nor burned up the paper. It then shot forward from the map into the space in front of her, forming the rim of a tall oval within which a portal appeared, the front of a tall, white tower with two big wooden doors clearly visible on the other side. "There we go~!" Fiori said happily, and then pointed at it. "Everybody else in first; it's gonna close when the map itself goes through."

Everyone began filing through, except for Thora, who stopped next to the necromancer. "In case something jumps us at the last second," she said in response to a questioning look.
"Good idea! Hey, can you carry me through, maybe?"
"Um...sure," she nodded, faintly blushing at the happy, cute face Fiori made back up at her. "Heh, uhh..maybe this time I won't drop you. Sorry."
"Oh, that was actually kinda fun," she said. "It's scary in the moment, but since I know now I can't get hurt, it's kinda like a roller coaster!"

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Something that the amazing webcomic Darths & Droids taught me is that you can tell a two-layered story where all of the high-flying action and deadly conflicts only happen on the "inner" layer, to characters who everyone in the "outer" layer already know to be completely fictional, yet still maintain a sense of tension and intrigue on that "inner" layer of story. I would say that's more or less what I'm going for with the eventual "ingame" plot of Aetuornos. Of course, there also needs to be at least something going on in the real world as well, and I'm certainly aiming for that too, with the twist that this game's real world is still a fantasy world to us.