The "Best" RPG Ever-121

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Hey, so, my recent near-hiatus of around a month and half probably hasn't escaped your notice. I can assure you that it wasn't by choice. I've been plagued somewhat by writer's block, but it's more been an issue of me getting sick every time that I otherwise had time and would've had energy to write. I've still been slowly chipping away at things, there just isn't quite enough progress to publish a lot of it yet. It's unlikely at this point that I'll actually finish the rest of Halloween Cheer this year; maybe I'll just wait and publish the whole batch next October, but don't be too surprised if I decide to release more captions from that throughout the coming year instead. Anyway, hopefully you enjoy this, and hopefully more soon!

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As the party of five headed out to the west of town, they soon found what seemed to be a wall of dire wolves standing out in the distance. Coming closer, another few rows behind the first one were visible, the whole lot of them assembled in ranks like a besieging army. Finally, their approach was met by the wolves backing away from them to form a semicircular indentation around them. The monstrous animals were staring at them with aggressive looks, but were eerily quiet and calm otherwise.

"This is...m-more unsettling than such low-level opponents really sh-should be," Nora said, currently shifted to feline form for agility. Lupa, next to her, was holding a big battleaxe close while giving out a low, quiet growl.

"Welp. If we go any farther in they'll surround us," Aria said, leaning on her still-sheathed sword. She could sort of feel it pulsating in her hand, already ravenous for the animals' blood...but she restrained herself for just a little longer.

"We should probably be ready for that either way," the witch said. "Sooo...ranged assault on the count of three?"
"Sure!" Rose said.

"Ready," Nora nodded. "St-stick close, Lupa." The wolf-girl nodded, still growling.

Aria raised her weapon with the hilt in both hands, mentally preparing to unleash it.

Seeing that everyone was prepared, Mira counted, holding out her scythe blade-down and summoning a mid-sized pumpkin in front of her: "One, two, three!" She swatted the pumpkin like a golf ball, and it sailed through the air, landing in the middle of the ranks of wolves on the group's right and exploding on impact into a demonic conflagration. Nora drew out some electricity from a bracelet, arcing it through a bunch of the dire wolves on their left. Rose grew some thorned vines up around the monsters to their front, the beasts struggling as half of them were cut and crushed by the force. Aria unsheathed her weapon and formed its back half into a long chain in a single motion, throwing it into the vine-bound wolves and swinging the remaining front half of the blade back and forth through the survivors and dead alike.

All of the nearby wolves that physically could, immediately and in unison, howled. Some survivors of the attacks on the left and right rushed forward, as well as all of the ones too far away to have been hit by the first few attacks. As they came closer, Lupa threw her axe at the nearest group, sending them crashing back several yards and into all the wolves behind them, before taking out another one. Rose continued growing her vines into a mobile thicket, snagging, tripping and grabbing more of the wolves in front, Aria finishing them off with her blade-on-a-chain. Mira raised her scythe and cut through some of the wolves that started to come too close, drawing out her shadow-tentacles to swat away or grab and throw several more of them; Lupa similarly went to work hacking away at the ones that came close on her side. Nora focused electricity and fire on the beasts trying to come around behind them to finish the circle.

It seemed the entire army of wolves which had assembled was rushing in toward them now. While she continued the melee work, the witch chanted another spell, and when she was done a wave of demonic fire spread out in front of her, giving them some breathing room on her side. Then she formed and tossed more exploding pumpkins to clear out all the beasts that were getting too close for comfort, being careful not to send anything too close to the part or in the direction of Rose's thorny plants. Nora picked up the non-demonic fire resulting from the heat of the explosion nearest herself, pulling it close to take down the wolves coming at her, then pushing it back out to burn the monsters farther off.

"Heheheh..HAAHAHAHA!!" Aria reformed her sword to its original appearance and started dashing in circles around the party, chopping and slashing through all of the wolves that came close; Lupa followed a short way behind to catch anything the shifter's reckless momentum missed. Mira switched to making some magic circles to throw ice up over the two of them and into the distance to keep the numbers of the more distant wolves down, Nora went back to using lightning, and Rose kept growing her thicket into a distant circle around the group's position that slowed down and wounded the beasts as they came.

The onslaught continued for a minute or two more, until a howl from somewhere in the back of all of the wolves seemed to cause them to suddenly stop and step back. It sounded..odd, not like any normal dire wolf's, and kind of strained. "Hey, ge'back here!" Aria swiped her sword a couple of times, taking a couple of steps to pursue the wolves backing away. The witch quickly moved behind her and placed a hand on her shoulder.
"Easy. Something weird's going on."
"I know, I know," the shifter said, sounding impatient and frustrated all the same. "It's okay—sword's fed enough to stay in control..."

"New alpha," Lupa said, pointing with her weapon as the source of the strange howl stepped up into view, some of the wolves in the back parting to make way for it.

It looked to be...a person. More specifically, it was dark-furred Canis man looking extremely disheveled, wearing badly-damaged armor, with some obvious cut and burn scars on his body and face. His expression was...wrong: Wild, furiously angry, and exhausted all at once. And his eyes especially...Mira knew what she was seeing after a second, and quickly looked away from them.

"Hey, that's—Donovan! Right?" Aria said, somehow recognizing him from the sketch they'd seen on the quest board the day before. He was growling hoarsely and incoherently, still slowly walking toward them—approaching Rose's thicket barrier.

"He's crazy from chaotic magic. Like Kayriel and—"
"So put him to sleep then!"

"Right, right..."

While Mira chanted, he came to the plants, grabbed some of them in his bare hands (despite all the thorns) and tore them aside, continuing to walk. There was something..barely visible, resembling the wrongly-shifting colors of the magic that Jacob had lifted from the people with a similar affliction before, swirling around him. She tried throwing her curse at him as soon as it was ready, but he lifted his hand and seemed to wave it away before it could take effect. It wasn't just his arm moving; some of that magic moved along with him, and in addition to seeing it, she could sort of feel it pulsating as it swept her curse aside.

"Uh—shoot. Think we're gonna have to knock him out the normal way. Try not to kill!" While she said this, Donovan's growling grew louder, turning into something halfway between an animal sound of rage and an extremely pained yell.

"GrrraaAAaAAAHHHH..!" Rose brought some of her vines toward him to try and restrain him, but they withered suddenly when getting close—and contacting the aura of chaotic magic. Nora similarly made an attempt to stun him with some electricity, which bent around that aura despite her best efforts. Aria was busy struggling to make her weapon take on a more blunt form, so Lupa stepped forward, brandishing her axe somewhat uncertainly.

From halfway into the pained yell onward, Donovan's body swiftly twisted into a different shape: Growing three times as tall, covering itself in rough, sharp-looking fur, and finally erupting two extra limbs on each side, between the legs and arms. All eight of his limbs ended in the same kind of bladed claws by the time it was through. His face elongated into a muzzle, the mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth, and the eyes sort of breaking apart until they'd become four short, wide multicolor-glowing eyes in a row along each side.

"Are you sure we shouldn't kill him now?" Aria said as his monstrous new form started toward them, using its limbs like a spider's legs, and howled.

"Just keep the wolves off us!" Mira said, stepping forward and splitting her scythe into its dual-wielded form. When Donovan raised his legs to strike, she parried them with the blades and some of her shadow-tentacles, giving the shifter a moment to move aside and start slashing through his attendant wolves as they charged in toward the group once again.

Nora tried to arc some fire and lightning at him, which again bounced around his body. "I c-can't control anything t-too close to it!"

"Throw a rock and let go!" the witch advised.

"Uh, my plants don't like it either!" the dragon-girl reported.

"Then deal with the wolves!" Mira repeated to her. "Lupa, help me out here!"

"Yes!"

The wolf-girl, at least, knew what to do. She came at him with her axes turned backwards, aiming to hit him on the head. When he blocked with an extra limb, she turned the other axe forward and cut into it, making a surprisingly shallow gash for her level of strength. Nora compacted some dirt into a solid mass and threw it at his head, landing a square hit just behind it—so that worked, at least. Eventually Mira managed to toss one of her half-scythes up, grab it by the blade with a shadow-tentacle, and then slam its hilt down square into the top of his head, some of the weapon's inherent demonic magic singing the fur. He didn't slow down a bit from either blow to the head, this time just his head closing around half of his eyes and shaking it off before continuing to try to bite her.

"Okay, knocking you out isn't looking like a great plan..." From continued close contact, Mira had the sense that the sickening magic strengthening, transforming, and possibly controlling him was something tangible and near—like she could almost feel it directly. Perhaps he was using it in a way close enough to normal magic for her to sense it in an almost-similar way. So maybe it would be easier than the slippery, faint version of this chaotic magic she'd been trying to practice with before...

"Idea! Rose, Lupa—try to keep him busy. Knock him over or back if you can, bare-handed if you've gotta. I need to concentrate."

"Uh, okay.."
"Strength contest!" Lupa said excitedly, waving the dragon-girl over.

"R-right!"

Rose waited for one of his limbs to stab out toward her, then moved aside and grabbed it in an arm. She let him do it a second time while that one struggled to get out of her grip, then started trying to tumble him over onto his side or back by leveraging both of them. Lupa ran over to whack him upward with the back of her axe on the side the dragon-girl was trying to lift up, and between the two of them, they succeeded in making his side hit the ground with a hard slam. Rose kicked his muzzle repeatedly while Lupa pounced to knock him the rest of the way onto his back, kneeling on top of him and catching the limbs that came close to her in her hands, harshly twisting each one before shoving it away again.

Lupa...right. Her magic was supposed to work like a funnel to draw that choatic junk in and burn it up as fuel for her own powers. With luck, Mira might not even need to expel all of that concentrated magic in him herself. She just needed to form a channel and get it going in the right direction. She continued chanting, directing her magic to pierce into his prone body, yanking pieces of the foreign magic out while trying to be careful not to grab whatever was left of his own natural, non-chaotic energy. Every piece she managed to catch, she pushed at Lupa. Eventually there were several string-like strands of sickening, pulsating color connecting Donovan's big, monstrous body to Lupa's, and (while she didn't seem to consciously direct it) the wolf-girl naturally sipohened the magic out of him. He soon started to struggle a little bit less, and then his huge, monstrous form began to shrink, the extra limbs shortening and his fur thinning away.

Mira worked to maintain and continue making more of the channels out of him, but it seemed to be working quite well already. The surviving wolves were no longer in his control, fleeing now from everyone else's decidedly superiour firepower. Aria sheathed her weapon; Rose stepped back and turned away, her expression looking slightly sick. After a bit longer, Donovan was back to the relatively human form of a Canis, and slumped over unconscious. Lupa hopped up off of him, looking around.

"Wolves all gone. Victory!" She flexed her arms.

"Ugh..you feel okay, Lupa?" Mira asked. Besides doing the magic itself being somewhat tiring, something about...handling that...for so long, even indirectly, had her feeling slightly sick to her stomach too.

"Yes! This one feels extra great! Too bad all the prey's gone!"

"That's..good. Ugh, okay." The witch stepped a little closer to the unconscious Canis. "Not sure we got all of it, so you get to sleep a little longer." A quick incantation cursed him to sleep until she said the key word—the same curse she'd tried before, but successful this time.

"I'm glad that worked, but uh, it was like..super gross," Rose remarked. "I hope we don't have to do something like that again."
"I dunno, going by the evidence, I'd say that's part one of three," Aria said. "At best. Maybe two of four, come to think of it?"
"You and I both need to get practicing to be ready for the next one, then," Mira said to the elf.
She nodded, "Mmh. S-sorry I couldn't um, help m-more."

"No problem. But you should prolly check him for injuries, in case any of what we did to the..spider-wolf form carried over." Nora nodded, kneeling in front of him and getting to work.

"He s-seems...exhausted, but relatively okay. A f-few scrapes and burns, to b-be sure...but nothing l-life threatening." His recent transformation had destroyed what was left of his clothes, so Nora produced a blanket out of her inventory and draped it over him once she was through with her checkup.
"Hey Lupa—since you're feeling so great, maybe you can carry him?" the witch suggested, gesturing at Donovan.

"Okay~!" the wolf-girl cheerfully hefted him up across her shoulders, not the least bit bothered by his state of dress. After briefly surveying the area once more, Mira started leading the group back to town.

Something like this didn't just happen out of nowhere, right? It reeked of some kind of villainous scheme, maybe by someone they hadn't met yet...or perhaps even by someone they had. But the majority of people with obvious power around here were either fellow players, or else at least well-known and well-trusted allies, like the Captain. Except...

That strange, multicolor look of chaotic magic was like some horrifying anti-rainbow. They had met one person, and very recently at that, who made Mira think of rainbows. That Reiaza girl's hair...but then, that was just a color association, and a weak one at that. Chaotic magic was, visually speaking, not really anything like Reiaza's hair, it was just sort of a weak half-conceptual link between the two. That, and Belwin had made it sound like she was pretty powerful, enough to take down witches and warlocks at least. However...unless the Troupe of Strangers had a reputation of showing up around the same time as a bunch of monsters, there was no real link to be concerned about.

Maybe she'd just keep an eye on that magician girl anyway...