[Reverie - Mod-Thread] Trial of the Fallen Shroud

[Gloomcrest]

91st of Ash, 4622

Taking a moment to readjust his position after firing a small barrage of condensed Volley at the twin sisters, the difference in skill would be very much apparent as Cordelia’s tendrils of frigid water lash out, mimicking her outburst of frustration at those around. Not having the reflexes to assist in helping Vinsue out of a troubling situation, the amber-eyed thief could only look in horror as the thrashing appendage of water coils itself around Vinsue’s body, lifting her with relative ease before throwing her to a nearby bookshelf with excessive amounts of force to cripple the artificer gnome to limit the amount of non-disabled people from fighting.

Even if Jared could react in time, the distance his umbralplasm would need to extend itself to lessen the blow would be too much for the veteran Nightfallen magus in his current position. Still, the fear of possibly losing someone wanes as Andre channels his ether into his surrounding to conjure a pile of sand to soften the impact & in return, lessen the strain on Vinsue’s body.

As the Risen sister yells out once more, sending out lashes of water at her twin, Jared could only skirt the edges of the battlefield as his body felt like stone which needed time to recover. His citrine gaze, watching for any opportunity to land a hindering status effect with his mastery over the shadowy fluids he calls his own.

With waves of gelid spears flying across the battlefield, the intensity of the volley weakened with Hugo’s effects to make the battle manageable for those not as experienced compared to those with military or more of a struggling style of life.

Nevertheless, the amber-eyed thief had enough time to attempt to strike one of the sisters, but as he was about to Devise to create additional Compasses to fend off his enemies. Dahlia's lunge at his frame quickly throughs the thief off-guard as the world around him starts to fall apart, muddling his sense of reality as his vision briefly fades before his sight gazes upon a giant black & white checkerboard with towering pieces that Jared is familiar with.

Quickly his eyes adjusted to his new surroundings, noting that there were multiple pieces, mixtures of black & white, with some parts looking the same and abundant while others being in pairs or singles. Still, his thought was interrupted by the looming shadow that shifted above him. Turning his head upwards, a brief gasp slips out of the Alistian scoundrel's scarred lips as Dahlia's form was that of a colossus who laughs maniacally as she reaches out with her gigantic hands, picking one of the chess pieces before lifting it and attempting to stamp Jared's bug size form under the weight of the pawn.

With very little time to even stabilize himself, the amber-eyed thief used his uneven footwork to lead a roll into the side to avoid being squashed like a bug under Dahlia's shoe. The constant string of cackling does disturb Jared but he needs to go finish the fight as soon as he can so that he can assist the remaining group with their own conflict with Cordelia's betrayal but eliminating Dahlia first & surviving takes precedent.

[Mimi Pidders]

No sooner had Jared dodged the chess piece when it seemed to melt into the ground. The ground, in turn went from marbled stone to soft, and spongy, covered in vibrant moss, or as vibrant as anything could be when everything was in black and white. As Jared looked, more and more of the chess pieces dissolved, disincorporating as though they had never been there to begin with, because they hadn't. It had been set up for her amusement, and when it didn't immediately serve its purpose, she tired of it and broke it, as she had with so many things before.

In Dahlia's new world, there was no sky, just a flat grey horizon, and the image of the giant Dahlia was gone as if she'd never been there to start with. What had been human-sized game pieces were now the stalks of large plants, some opening to bloom and showing dahlias, some still closed and budding. The Dahlia forest smelled faintly of the flowers themselves, and of perfume, but was otherwise rather featureless. No breeze rustled the leaves of the plants that loomed overhead, no birds or mice or insects called. It was a seemingly natural scene frozen in a tableau.

Far in the distance, the sound of a woman laughing. It reverberated through the paths between the giant blooming flowers, peal after peal of laughter, growing to a crescendo of frenzied shrieking. Then, a deep breath, as though she were steadying herself. Perhaps she was.

"You'll die here," Dahlia said. Her voice seemed to come from every direction, echoing in Jared's eardrums and vibrating in his bones. It was her normal tone but also deep and reverberating, like the knell of a cathedral bell. "You're in my world, and I control every aspect of it. You will never find me. I will tire of toying with you, and I will squash you like a bug."

As if to emphasize this last point, a posh women's shoe, the sort that the Entente had been favoring in recent seasons, descended from the sky and crushed the flower right next to Jared, snapping it in two. Despite being a flower, it bled a thick, sticky substance. Saplike, as though it were a tree.

"If you surrender, I'll make it quick for you, at least."

[Gloomcrest]

91st of Ash, 4622

Feeling the way of motion sickness rush over his senses, it took a moment for the amber-eyed thief to check his surroundings, quickly make notes how the large black & white chessboard merely melts away with each individual piece fading into the abyss. What Jared thought was the extent of Dahlia’s reality was merely child’s play and the fact that she was delighted in torturing the Alistian petty thief was sickening to the stomach.

If Jared wanted to survive, then he would need to come up with anything that would work in this strange plane of existence as the world he once knew is changes like an artist switching to a new canvas and in this case, the world was merely gray with a simple horizon that stretches endlessly and the once large imposing figure vanishing like the morning fog giving way to encroaching daylight banishing the wispy clouds with each passing second.

The echoes of her sinister laugh that concocted a symphony of laughter strikes a cord of fear in the thief’s heart as this was possible the first & last time that his life was brushing close and with each sweeping motion, the nauseating feeling of reaching to death’s door looms closer. Yet those negative thoughts were dispelled by the lingering, deep breaths. The mere breathing alone was enough to tell that Jared was alone in his struggles to survive but when times became tough, his experience as a gutter rat would tell him to struggle no matter the cost.

Despite Dahlia making her threats quite clear that she could kill him in the most gruesome way possible just like how he could have simply been crushed by the heel of her glamorous shoe with the figment of the flower bleeding a thick, sticky sap-like substance. Jared was willing to defy the odds despite how low the chances of him living were; After all, there were people fighting outside of this crazy realm and he needed to get back to them.

“Fuck off, I would rather fucking die trying than give up to a lunatic like yourself; Arrogant piece of shit you are!”

With his sentence said and done, the lingering fear still remains but what grows from within was defiance; Could it be his mark reacting to being held prisoner or against his will remains undetermined but this swell of mixed emotions was enough to get the thief’s blood running as adrenaline courses through his veins.
The thief begins to steady himself before attempting to dart off in one direction, not knowing how far Dahlia’s control over this realm is despite the taunts of not being able to find her in whatever form she took; Jared knew that it was false, no matter how good you are at hiding yourself, there will always be a trace, a method to find someone despite the efforts of trying to mask their presence.

“Come on Jared! Think! Where can she hide, there must be a method to this fucking creepy ass world but you need to find it!”


The Alistian vagabond screams to himself internally as darts in random directions, quickly changing on the dime in his attempts to confuse & dodge potentially lethal strikes against his body as he was trying to make up a plan on the spot to deal with this madness, knowing fully well that his health & mental conditions will be pushed beyond its limits.

Should the thief use Nightfall despite suffering greatly from his level of Mageblight or try to use innate skills that he has build-up to this point trying to find Dahlia’s source? Tether? Catalyst? That holds this realm together and possibly wounding her in the process, one thing is for certain. Only one of them is going to come out of here alive & Jared is determined to live as he manipulates some umbralplasm that he stored in the shadow of his cloak and readying to let out a stream of Lance out when another foot or limb strikes out from the sky or ground.

[Mimi Pidders]

The forest was silent except for Dahlia's sourceless laughter, which echoed and reverberated and looped. When one peal stopped, another started, overlapping and looping around on itself in an endless, distracting cacophony. It didn't seem to react to anything Jared did, or if it did, there did not seem to be an obvious cue. It was louder, sometimes, or there was more laughter, but it did not seem to correlated to what direction he moved in.

The next attack was more disconcerting than the ones that had preceded it: the ground under Jared's feet disappeared and suddenly, he was falling into a sinkhole that was the same flat grey color and texture as what passed for a sky in Dahlia's dread realm. There was nothing to hold on to because there was a sudden absence, and the void tried to suck Jared under with the pressure of a vacuum trying to equalize its pressure. The flowers in the area turned toward him and drooped in a mocking bow as the sounds of Dahlia's laughter increased ringing out all around him. The faint smell of the flowers, of her perfume, was once again present.

"Ready to die, little worm? Your blood will fertilize the flowers in my mind palace. I'll make it quick if you promise not to struggle."

Jared needs to make a choice:
1) Fight back and try to stay in the Dahlia forest
2) Allow himself to be sucked into the vortex, and find out what awaits him elsewhere in the realm

[Gloomcrest]

91st of Ash, 4622

As the greyplane forest looms over in its wake of silence, Jared’s opponent's laughter pierces the veil that further echoes, altering its properties for a moment before being sent back in a loop. Seeing that nothing but trees & flowers watching his every move was deeply unsettling for the amber-eyed thief for all of the logic that he would usually apply in material plane may or may not apply.

“This is fucken bullshit… How the fuck am I suppose to find someone that can bend reality itself…”

The mere thought that was soon cut short as his preemptive set up with his umbralplasm flickers for a moment before the sudden plunge of falling due the surrounding ground that his feet stand upon gives way for some odd reason but it is possible to the innate magic of manifesting this so call ‘mind palace’; A word that was familiar to him as it was mentioned a couple of times from one of his allies: Salen.

Despite the immense danger that was present at large & being easily flustered; the Alistian scoundrel had a thought that could potentially work but it would be hard to pull off. If she was a practitioner of the Raw Magic just like himself; then there must be a limit that Dahlia could sustain before her grip upon her reality would weaken and a possible chance to severely injure Dahlia in her weakened state. A pretty extreme thought but extreme environmental pressures will often foster adaptability & in a thief’s line of work, being able to change plans just like a surging tide was very much important even though Jared hated to go off script.

“Not yet, I don’t plan on dying anytime soon!”

The sensation of the void was very much apparent with the surrounding air being pulled into the abyss and while Jared could not use Shepard due to his Mutation restrictions; the citrine-eyed thief had to think outside of the box. Taking a quick second to look for some sort of anchor to latch upon, the first thing that came to mind was trying to attach his umbralplasm to something steady such as a tree but extending his reach out would put some strain on his soul.

So what Jared thought was to essentially fling himself up in the air, in a direction that he could at least control from his own willpower. Knowing fully well that the potential backlash would cause pain, it was a choice that the amber-eyed thief was willing to make. Manipulating the Umbralplasm so that it straps a harness around his waist, the amber-eyed thief would fire out a single Lance with a weighted ball up in an angled direction to launch him mid-air.

The sudden increase of weight flying across would cause Jared to grunt loudly as his body was forcibly being dragged against his will and the potential landing would cause significant bruising upon landing but at the very least the damage would be kept to manageable level since the Nightfallen magus has experienced with aerial recovery due to using The Thieves’ Highway (What most people call the rooftops) often and slipping on such angles would require a dangerous.

Nonetheless, the thief was determined to stay inside of this strange forest & struggle to the bitter end; not wanting to give his opponent an easy victory.

[Mimi Pidders]

The air offered less resistance than it did in reality. or maybe the grey featureless horizon was just closer than it had appeared, but in either case, Jared soared into what passed for a sky in Dahlia's domain. As he soared over the treeline -- or the treeline of the flower-sized trees -- the ones in bloom pivoted as he passed, the disc of each flower homing in on him. The laughter was still present, but it was muffled, as though being higher in the air meant he were further away from the source. Which, in turn, pointed to there being a source. While on the ground, it had seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, high in the air it was clear that it wasn't coming from "up," at least. It wasn't everything, but it was something.

For a moment, all was calm, like the world was holding its breath.

Then that breath released, and Dahlia was speaking again: "You want to behave like an insect? Then allow me to swat you like one."

True to her word, a large, broad wicker object came sailing through the air toward Jared: a fly swatter, but one scaled up to be 5 times his size on each part of the rectangle. There was no avoiding this hit as there had been with the last two. His choices instead were to either allow himself to be struck or to try and counter the blow in some fashion, or perhaps to shield himself.

There was still no sign of the mage herself. She was seemingly omnipresent, but where her corporeal form was and how it could be hurt remained elusive. Jared was going to have to do more than merely parry her blows and wait it out if he wanted to win this battle.

[Gloomcrest]

91st of Ash, 4622

While the air offered less resistance than the thief did expected, his gaze takes a moment to adjust itself as the gray, featureless horizon looms closers as if the thief was approaching a ceiling of sorts but reality would soon return to his senses as the blooms would follow every inch of his movement, the laughter still present but somehow distant.

The quick realization that the potential source for where Dahlia might be was somewhere close to the ground he almost fell into but nonetheless, the sudden conjuration of a fly swatter which was five times larger in terms of his size was vastly approaching his form. With his resources limited as there was no way for the thief to change directions in a moment's notice while up in the air, the thief opted to take the strike by the massive weapon but at least reduce the amount of damage that his body was going to sustain.

Quickly pulling his cloak upwards toward the fly swatter, Jared would pull the umbralplasm and focus it into his cloak, using Stratum as a shield as best he could. The impact of getting hit by such a massive item while in the air would immediately shoot the thief down at high velocities towards the ground.

Letting out a loud grunt as the impact runs through his body, the Alistian scoundrel pulls his cloak as best he could, facing to the ground before suddenly a large sickening crack echoes as Jared would screaming loudly as the impact on his body to the ground; The thief couldn’t assess how much damage his body sustained only that extreme amounts of pain running through his arms & legs was forcing the thief to manipulate some of his umbralplasm into a thick block which he would stifle his screaming by biting into it.

The possibility of his bones being fractured & even broken was quite high as being struck down from such a high would be much to bear no matter how refined one’s body is or resistant to being taking blows. Picking himself up, still screaming into his umbralplasm block, the amber-eyed thief would blurry look around, noting the flowers & trees still laughing at his pathetic display.

Feeling in his gut that possibly all the plant-life present was an extension of Dahlia’s realm, the thief started to conjure more umbralplasm, quickly pulling the edge of his cloak up in a sideward motion as uses Shadowrend to create multiple scythes of whirling blades that would start to slice some of the flowers and scratching some of the trees which continues to fly out into the distance until he could no longer see it before beginning to hobbling, his speed reduced by a significant margin.

His pain was very much real but the reality around him was not & his gut felt sickened by the thought of dying in this strange world would result in him dying permanently. Strong-willed despite being in high amounts of pain, Jared needed to live for he had some many questions that needed to be answered and if it meant pushing beyond his normal capacity, he would do.

[Mimi Pidders]

Success

The cacophony of maddening, looping laughter halts, some discordant echoes continuing and then falling silent when nothing replaces them. The moment that Jared conjures the umbralplasm and begins cutting the tree-sized flowers with his shadow scythes the world feels still, like it's holding its breath. The liquid that came out of the dahlias when the giant shoe stomped on one by accident and the flyswatter crushed a few errant stalks always looked too thick to be water, but in the desaturated internal world of Dahlia's mind palace where everything but the thief is either black or white, it had seemed to be sap. Had Jared been foolhardy enough to sniff or taste it, he would known it to be blood.

There was no mistaking that fact now: some color floods back into the world as Dahlia's blood gushes forth from her namesake's severed stalks.

This is followed almost immediately by a scream. The ground beneath Jared's feet actually quakes as the scream starts in low, guttural bellow before crescendoing into and then beyond Dahlia's customary vocal range. Were there any glass or crystal objects around, they would surely shatter.

"First blood," comes her voice from the stalks that Jared cut, "Is not as important as last blood."

The cut flowers still do their best to face Jared, the face of each flower turning toward him like he's the sun. Then the petals explode outward, flying at him with the velocity of the arrows they have transformed into. They seem to have retained the ability the flowers had to seek Jared, and with his injury, he's not that mobile. He once again has a choice to make: will he try and redirect them, take the hit, or disrupt them somehow? Could there be some way to destroy them?

[Gloomcrest]

91st of Ash, 4622

The laughter of madness struck a cord of fear in the thief’s eyes as the dissonance of cackling plunged into a void of silence for just a moment. His keen eye to noticing details still has much to improve in his short life but at the very least the thief was able to tell that when his sickles of umbralplasm started to slash through some of the towering pillars of Dahlias, whos petals ranges from varying shades of greys & blacks. The oozing, semi-gelatinous sap had a familiar scent that Jared was all too familiar with.

His experience as a professional cook (mostly spent practicing at home) allowed his nose to pick up some sort of metallic note, something akin to being bloody which immediately felt overwhelming for the thief in question but had to steer his resolve as if he were to lose his focus & hard-work in numbing the pain he just sustain just moments ago. The shock that would run through his system would be much to bear.

Biting tightly onto his Umbralplasm block, the thief could imagine his lips bleeding by the grip strength his mouth was putting onto his makeshift gag to suppress his cries of anguish. Jared was by no means a fighter and being put into a life & death situation has made more apparent that he needed some form of combat tutoring if the Alistian thief manages to live.

Nevertheless, the thief’s inquisitive nature about how the plant-life around him was some for of extension of Dahlia form whether by body and/or soul proved to be correct and so the next thing that Jared had to figure out was how he could do as much damage as possible, his umbralplasm scythes did put some strain on his body as he was already entering into this combat with a disadvantage but with some renewed vigor, the thief had something to work; even if it only temporary.

While the scoundrel couldn’t speak, the echoes of drawing first blood & that whoever drawed the last drop of blood would be victorious and the thief’s hard-working nature against his own personal insecurities will be put to the test as the thief hobbles along the greyplane.

Concentrating on stabilizing his standing albeit weakened state by conjuring some umbralplasm through the use of Devise & shaping it with his mastery over Compass to trickle down onto his back, arms & legs to form a makeshift brace to help stabilize the injuries sustained while at the same at a moments notice that the Nightfallen Magus could at least hardened the Umbralplasm through the command of Stratum though the amount of protection provided would be limited due to the nature of the temporary braces spreading rather thin against his body.

“Come on Jared, use that grit of yours and push forward!”

The thief couldn’t help scream in his mind as the pain flares & burns through his bones, muscles & nerves. The thief couldn’t remember when he last experience this kind of pain in recent days but the sensation immediately brought his memories to the time he was initiated into Nightfall while being beaten down, a brief thought that causes the thief to freeze as his amber-eyed gaze looks out into the distance where the cut stalks of flowers turn to face at Jared’s direction.

Just as his eyes blinked, the surrounding blackened suddenly burst into the air, briefly fluttering into the air before drifting towards Jared. Each thin petal, coiling onto itself before forming into a thin-needle that quickly transmutes itself into arrows, knowing fully well that his reaction speed & movement capabilities has been restricted due to the heavy injuries he had sustained.

Despite the distance closing towards his body, the slight change in the arrow’s trajectory wasn’t noticed by the thief as there was too much going on for the thief to process in a mere moment. The best that the thief could do at the moment was try to fend off the attacks by lessening the blow though at the cost of sustaining additional damage.

Quickly using Devise & Compass, the citrine-eyed rogue would spread his Umbralplasm wide up in the air before solidifying the blackened cloak with Stratum, following the thief like an umbrella as it mimics the properties of a wooden shield to absorb some of the arrows before trying to hobble closer to additional plant-life.

As the thief throws out a barrage of Lances out towards some of the larger towering floral in an attempts to pierce it & cause additional bleeding wounds before firing some congealed umbralplasm through the use of Volley on some of the bleeding sap, thinking that the plants could be some sort of artery or vein which his umbralplasm could invade and wreak havoc through this was a theory that the thief was taking a gambit with.

At the Jared’s wispy Lances & Volleys flies out of his hands, a few arrows would pierce through his defenses, as petal-like arrows passes through his hands, thighs & arms cause the thief to scream louder into his umbralplasm gag before falling onto the ground, writhing in agony as his Stratum managed to at least absorbed some of the petal-like needles.

Feeling his vision start to fade for just a moment, the thief could tell that the pain surging through his body was calling his mind to shut off to preserve his sanity but still determined to live.

A couple of thoughts bubbled forward as his attempts to distract himself was evident:

Would he be capable of fighting alongside Hugo, Salen, Vinsue and the remaining members to fend off Cordelia?
If he does manage to live, would he simply be bleeding out until he last drawn his breath?
Was he truly giving everything to live? But most importantly…
Was Jared willing to give up despite not finding his purpose in this world he called home?
The answer to that was simple as day & night: A simple No & if he must suffer more to reach the end then so be it.

The thief begins to crawl on the ground, slowly bleeding out from his puncture wounds that smear the grey floor with his blood.

His muscles aching as his endurance was not made to last but by sheer effort alone is what drives the thief’s forward… The Alistian thief finally had a purpose to leave his home, a mere fledgling that left the nest to soar into the big world of the unknown, and still had more to do; figuring his purpose in the world & where to go and if it meant that he had to lose a limb, he would die trying to escape death’s grasp.

Concentrating on the Umbralplasm Brace that was keeping his body stable, the plasm reacts to his desires to live, stretching itself thinner around the pierced wounds which spreads itself over before apply heavy pressure to stanch the bleeding, inflicting more pain that Jared could bear as he had stop, clawing on the ground and digging his gloved hands into his palms to inflict another source of pain to assist in damping out the pain.

[Mimi Pidders]

As Dahlia's flower petal arrows pierced Jared, they transformed once again, the pointed head growing a mouth and then burrowing under his skin. Dahlia was merely a Remnant mage, and this was a mere illusion -- but with a Master Remnomancer, in their own mind palace, what her mind could conjure came true. The laughter returned as the saw-toothed worms wriggled under Jared's skin.

"You'll be food for the flowers soon enou--" Her gloating turned to an aggrieved scream as the thief cut another flower tree and another burst of red erupted forth. "ENOUGH," her voice rang out.

The forest was gone with the same jarring suddenness that it sprouted. The featureless plane of black and white squares with a grey sky was back, but there were no game pieces, and no flowers, and certainly no giant Dahlia in the sky. As Jared watches, the world seems to shrink. The endless planes of the horizon become bound into a single plane of ten squares by ten squares. Instead of walls at the ends of the chamber, there's more of the fuzzy, featureless grey that defined the sky. If he listens carefully, he can hear labored breaths, the sounds of someone weary in pain, the twin of his own.

"If I wait, you'll bleed out. I will win," came Dahlia's voice, but it lacked her characteristic confidence.

This could be Jared's chance to create an opportunity for himself. He could try to convince Dahlia that they don't need to fight, or try to trick her into revealing her position, or to goad or enrage her into doing something foolhardy.

What Jared attempts to do will be governed by how likely Dahlia herself is going to want to take that action, and his Charisma skills. Hope you've been doing more than cooking and stealing!