Thread 22
>>160720 Thread 23
>>163582 Thread 24
>>165724 In which a righteous asskicking ensues.
Art by Rapestove. (He writes in /eientei/. Yell at him till he updates.)
The red-hot lava has ignited the floorboards, a hazy pall of white woodsmoke beginning to fill the huge interior of the Voile library. From the carpet of flames emerges Remilia, her clothing smoldering and her face smeared with soot. She glares at you, seeming to see you for the first time. Her eyes narrow and flare with hate as a feral snarl tears from her throat.
For once, she wastes no time on arrogant bravado or sneering insults.
There’s only the attack.
The vampire literally
blurs as she rushes you, the tip of her fiery spear laying open your flank, piercing your rocky hide effortlessly. You lunge forward, your jaws closing in on the bitch.
She
vanishes. “UP~!” Keine cries, and you look up in time to see Remilia re-appear above you. She vanishes just as Meiling’s limp body goes pinwheeling through the air where she was. You bellow terribly as her spear slashes your rear leg, the wound burning terribly. The vampire’s mocking laughter lingers in the air as she alights on a burning table a short distance away, ignoring her burning clothes.
“She’s too fast!” Keine cries.
Remilia blurs towards you, a hideous screech piercing the air as she arcs through the air, her blazing spear slashing down. It explodes in embers and sparks as it meets
Kusanagi in midair, your schoolteacher a mere blur of blue contrast against the smoke and flames rapidly engulfing the library. You use the time she’s bought you, reaching for your magic. Claws can’t form somatic components, but Dragons are naturals; magic burns in their blood. “
Punchet, you whisper in the dragon’s native limbs feeling light and springy as
Haste takes effect.
You hear a shout of alarm and espy Keine swinging fruitlessly at empty air just as Remilia blurs over your shoulder with incredible speed – just in time to meet your tail, already swinging through the air. The vampire is swatted like a fly, smashing into a towering bookcase hard enough to send it careening to the burning floor. Keine dashes airborne, keeping clear of the burning floor and sizzling lava. She hovers over the fallen bookcase,
Kusanagi over her head in a double-handed high guard.
The bookcase explodes in a cloud of shredded paper and wooden shrapnel Remilia blasts through, wreathed in scarlet energy.
Kusanagi deflects uselessly as the vampire hits Keine’s stomach with her shoulder, screeching hideously. You’re still processing the afterimages when you hear the hakutaku impact the ceiling.
You cast your last powerful spell, your ace-in-the-hole, the last syllable leaving your lips just as Remilia dives upon you. You’ve barely begun to move before a shockwave of ruby light sends you reeling, staggered.
The vampire is upon you instantly, winding up with her huge spear. She hurls her it into you, ruby light blossoming around the broad spearhead as it strikes.
The world vanishes in a brilliant scarlet explosion. Somewhere very distant you hear something big crashing to earth. Then somewhere very, very close you hear wicked laughter. You stagger upright just in time to see Remilia hurtling at you from above, her spear gripped in both hands. Her feet slam into your shoulders. Somewhere, Keine screams in fury and fear, but Remilia plunges her broad-tipped spear into the gap between your shoulder-blades without hesitation, aiming for your heart.
Tink! A simple, beautiful sound, tolling clear as a bell.
“... what the dev-” Remilia manages before Keine plants a single well-aimed ruby bolt square on her chin, flipping her off your back neatly. You heave your bulk into the air, the floor creaking precariously under your newly redoubled weight. Remilia has already regained her feet, and is staring at you incredulously.
“Gugnir has rent dragon-hide before!” Remilia snarls, confused.
You flex one gigantic forelimb, now made of solid, living iron. “Yeah,” you reply in your booming dragon-voice. “About that.”
The vampire smirks disdainfully, twisting at the hip as she swings her spear violently. Scarlet magic darts spray from the weapon with incredible speed, raking the length of your stony flank.
Or would have, if you had one.
You shriek with mocking laughter, the tiny, piercing voice of your new body – a fiendish fairy no larger then a bumblebee – adding a nice edge to the insult. You do a single loop in midair and zip away from Remilia on gossamer wings.
The vampire howls with rage and you sense another attack incoming. You barrel roll hard, corkscrewing through the air with agility few things can match – and the glowing, bat-shaped magical missiles behind you are no exception, detonating harmlessly in your wake. You hear Remilia charge after you, bellowing in rage, only to halt suddenly.
The Voile Library is burning in earnest now. Thick, arcid woodsmoke billows from a floor literally made of fire; every inch not covered by thousand-degree lava is burning instead. Towering bookshelves have become mighty pillars of fire, explosive flashes and pops coming from them as the powerful magic in the oldest tomes wards off the flames. Occasionally a weaker tome succumbs with powerful blasts, blowing clouds of flaming paper and debris into the air. The air itself burns with oppressive heat, enough that even your new fiend-form is having trouble. You shift into something more comfortable.
Through the smoke-haze comes a stalking silhouette, just visible by the light of her burning clothes and the angry fireglow of the floor.
“Kill me?” it asks, lunging forward one way, then darting back, leading with its nose, as if it could smell you. “
Kill me? You know how many have tried?” It raises the long, horrible shaft of its weapon, the bloody glow of
Gugnir’s battle aura revealing her face in slashing shadows and scarlet-stained skin.
“It always ends the same way,” says the Scarlet Devil, a confidence centuries old dripping from her voice. “The prey
runs.”
And the wizard
Shapechanged into a
Hasted magma drake made of iron
attacks. You hit Remilia like a crossbow quarrel, ripping at her with your claws as you blow by at high speed. A horrific, inhuman shriek of rage is lost in the cacophony of impressive detonations that do little more then churn the smoke. You take inspiration, shifting into a smoke drake, your charcoal scales vanishing into the haze.
“I CAN SMELL YOU!” Remilia shrieks as she hurls danmaku into the hellscape with mad abandon, pieces of flaming debris and magma spray flying through the air. “I CAN HEAR THE BEATING OF YOUR HIDEOUS HEART!”
You glide in silently, dragonic blindsense guiding you straight to your target. You don’t even hear her complaint over the deafening concussions of her counterattack. You don’t know if it’s beautiful, or if it has a meaningful name, but the danmaku she’s hurling at you is certainly loud; concussion waves battering you as you flee into the smoke. Sprays of magma and burning wood splinters and everything else pelt you, bouncing off your solid iron body harmlessly. Using your blindsense, you locate Remilia and barrel in once more, fangs out and claws ready.
She turns into a
bat. You miss as she twirls acrobatically in air, then puts on unnatural speed in her pursuit. Through the ever-thicker smoke and superheated air, under the smashed remnants of tables and under toppled heaps of burning bookcases you flee, Remilia’s bat-form hot on your tail. Finding a good position, you whirl and
Shapechange into a fiendish displacer beast pack lord an instant before lashing out at her with your tentacles. She weaves past them with disdainful skill and shifts almost too fast to see, a veritable cloud of red magical chains whipping through the air to engulf you. They whiff through empty air harmlessly, your
displacement effect saving you. As you bound away, Remilia’s hands slash out, demonic claws raking you, but they simply skip off your iron hide. A sound no human throat could make rends the air as you dive back into the smoke, Remilia shifting into a bat to continue pursuit.
You continue to weave and dodge through the flaming ruins and blinding smoke of the Voile Library, both of you shifting and counter-shifting, striking and retreating, a deadly game of literal shadow-boxing. Remilia’s lethal speed avails her nothing against your body of living iron. Her magic could bypass it easily – if only she could connect. But her raw power is terrifying; despite superheated air, choking smoke and red-hot lava, her assaults have scarcely slackened.
As Remilia’s latest round of danmaku shakes the library to its very foundations, you know you’ve only minutes before the Scarlet Devil tears the very Library down on your head. You
Shapechange into a pyroclastic dragon once more and issue challenge; belting out a savage roar.
Remilia materializes before you instantly. Her face splits into a ravenous grin, a screech of triumph ripping from her throat as she draws back one palm. Her eyes glow with utter madness, the bloodlust you whipped to a fever pitch with every swift sting and slippery evasion about to be consummated. She pours every ounce of her monstrous power into a blindingly bright nimbus of scarlet energy in her palm – and slams it into your chest with a final triumphant scream.
And
Spell Turning flings it right back into her face.
Remilia’s limp form is flung through the air like so much trash. She smashes into the floor, skidding face-first through 1,000 degree lava before coming to a halt.
“ROCK, PAPER,
MAGIC, MOTHERSUCKER!” you bellow with unholy glee before unleashing your breath weapon. Remilia is hammered to the floor, the blast of superheated ash and sound scouring her with lava and flaming shrapnel blown off the floor. You gallop forward,
Haste accelerating your massively heavy metal body to unnatural speed, the entire building quaking under your rapid footfalls.
Hasted speed kept you aloft as an iron drake, flying more like a crossbow quarrel then a bird, and it keeps pyroclastic dragons forty-ton bulk airborne as well. But you’re now made of solid iron, and you weight four
hundred tons.
Which suits you just fine. You haven’t had much luck with flight recently, but by god have you had practice at
falling. Just as Remilia drags herself upright you leap into the air with all your strength – and come crashing down upon the Scarlet Devil. The floor of the Voile Library finally gives way under the tremendous impact. Sternum-shaking
cracks! sound as the massive floor supports snap, the floor collapsing into a shallow crawlspace.
You lurch to your feet, then slam your mighty bulk down again, bellowing. The support pillars quaver and crack as you hammer Remilia into bedrock with
hasted speed. Lava begins flowing down into the shallow crater, streaked by gray where an iron lamp fixture or shelf-brace met its molten end, pooling around you as you continue to attack.
At last, you have become an iron dragon swimming in lava at
c, (where
c = the speed of carnage generation in a total vacuum of fucks given.) The gambits have been played the spells cast – all that remains now is killing.
The prey runs. Remilia’s words collide with the memory of the mind flayer, its thoughts flowing unprotected at the moment of realization.
prey runs You fling your iron bulk at Remilia, every inch, body and soul, rearing up and smashing down as fast as possible, claws smashing through the floor and sinking into bedrock for better purchase. You lose all sense of time as you attack, beating your rage against the bedrock to see which will break first.
A bolt of pain spears your back, but you continue on. Remilia is your target, and before all else, Remilia
dies. A fusillade of danmaku rains on you, one well-aimed ogive missile flinging your chin upwards. Wafting through the smoke, whisping through the flames, come ghosts.
Dozens upon dozens upon dozens of ghosts, their hands reaching towards you eagerly, their eyes dull and thoughtless. Behind them, more and more, an orderly advance. Remilia’s ghost legions, freshly reinforced and much more powerful, are flooding the room.
[ ] Stand your ground.
[ ] Finish Remilia.
[ ] Write-in?
