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Post by Dmitri Pendragon on Jan 30, 2019 9:52:29 GMT
((So perhaps the 1–3 times a week will be a little less frequent than that…but I'm here now! One assignment worth half the course done, two more (smaller weightings) to go!))
A storm gathered at the horizon of thought. Randor's sword quivered at the height of its arc, stopped. Randor turned to look. The sunlight on the blade suddenly died, swamped by clouds whispering danger.
A great storm. A greater foe.
Randor tightened his hands on the hilt of his sword and struck down at Marmak.
The dark stone swallowed the lich. In two of the newly formed pods, threads of yellow-stained blackness leaked through the smallest of holes. The creeping appendages slowly took shape—a hand, an arm, part of a shoulder.
Mere paces away, a lich pushed to its knees from the green puddle.
"Ooookay." Valene swished her lightsaber side to side and watched the earth first shred then shatter thirteen lich. More even odds, and not a finger lifted on her part.
She eyed the last two guarding the Imarien captives. Neither showed any interest in joining the fate of the other thirteen. It did frustrate her that they'd chosen to power themselves up and then ignore Ver. Who, after all, was clearly the more significant threat to their ongoing existence.
She scooted closer. "Don't mind me."
Both lich stiffened and turned to her, shapeless faces beneath a spiny crown.
Haar'chak. "I said don't. DON'T."
They charged her, spikes sprouting like vines from their arms, all their arms.
Valene screamed, whipped her lightsaber around her head and rushed to meet them. Battle fury stretched inside her, tautened to its breaking point. She leapt—feeling, failing, for the Force. Vines reached for her. She grabbed one, swung around it and dove for the ground—and rolled to her feet facing the lich.
Between them and the Imarien.
She flung a fist in the air—at them, at the black sun in the red sky, the listless eye of Azul the Baleful. "Ha! Take that, you mouthless slime!"
One of them split its head asunder, baring previously unformed fangs in a soundless roar.
Haar'chak.
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Post by Leilani Sunblade on Feb 5, 2019 3:01:42 GMT
((So perhaps the 1–3 times a week will be a little less frequent than that…but I'm here now! One assignment worth half the course done, two more (smaller weightings) to go!)) The dark stone swallowed the lich. In two of the newly formed pods, threads of yellow-stained blackness leaked through the smallest of holes. The creeping appendages slowly took shape—a hand, an arm, part of a shoulder. Mere paces away, a lich pushed to its knees from the green puddle.
"Ooookay." Valene swished her lightsaber side to side and watched the earth first shred then shatter thirteen lich. More even odds, and not a finger lifted on her part. She eyed the last two guarding the Imarien captives. Neither showed any interest in joining the fate of the other thirteen. It did frustrate her that they'd chosen to power themselves up and then ignore Ver. Who, after all, was clearly the more significant threat to their ongoing existence. She scooted closer. "Don't mind me." Both lich stiffened and turned to her, shapeless faces beneath a spiny crown. Haar'chak. "I said don't. DON'T." They charged her, spikes sprouting like vines from their arms, all their arms. Valene screamed, whipped her lightsaber around her head and rushed to meet them. Battle fury stretched inside her, tautened to its breaking point. She leapt—feeling, failing, for the Force. Vines reached for her. She grabbed one, swung around it and dove for the ground—and rolled to her feet facing the lich. Between them and the Imarien. She flung a fist in the air—at them, at the black sun in the red sky, the listless eye of Azul the Baleful. "Ha! Take that, you mouthless slime!" One of them split its head asunder, baring previously unformed fangs in a soundless roar. Haar' chak.((Whoop whoop! No worries on the delay; I'll probably be slow as well, now that I'm getting back to editing.)) ((Quick clarification on something in your post: is the lich that just regenerated from the green puddle also green?))
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Post by Dmitri Pendragon on Feb 6, 2019 4:18:24 GMT
((Yes, the lich from the puddle is green. I will name all changes of colour.))
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Post by Leilani Sunblade on Feb 26, 2019 23:58:58 GMT
((So perhaps the 1–3 times a week will be a little less frequent than that…but I'm here now! One assignment worth half the course done, two more (smaller weightings) to go!)
The dark stone swallowed the lich. In two of the newly formed pods, threads of yellow-stained blackness leaked through the smallest of holes. The creeping appendages slowly took shape—a hand, an arm, part of a shoulder. Mere paces away, a lich pushed to its knees from the green puddle.
"Ooookay." Valene swished her lightsaber side to side and watched the earth first shred then shatter thirteen lich. More even odds, and not a finger lifted on her part. She eyed the last two guarding the Imarien captives. Neither showed any interest in joining the fate of the other thirteen. It did frustrate her that they'd chosen to power themselves up and then ignore Ver. Who, after all, was clearly the more significant threat to their ongoing existence. She scooted closer. "Don't mind me." Both lich stiffened and turned to her, shapeless faces beneath a spiny crown. Haar'chak. "I said don't. DON'T." They charged her, spikes sprouting like vines from their arms, all their arms. Valene screamed, whipped her lightsaber around her head and rushed to meet them. Battle fury stretched inside her, tautened to its breaking point. She leapt—feeling, failing, for the Force. Vines reached for her. She grabbed one, swung around it and dove for the ground—and rolled to her feet facing the lich. Between them and the Imarien. She flung a fist in the air—at them, at the black sun in the red sky, the listless eye of Azul the Baleful. "Ha! Take that, you mouthless slime!" One of them split its head asunder, baring previously unformed fangs in a soundless roar. Haar' chak.((And I just basically disappeared for a month. Apologies. Editing happened. Spring break is next week, though, so that's good!))
They regenerated. Blast it. Blast it. Ver sucked in a breath, focusing. Deal with the closest threat first; that was the new green one. She knew how to deal with those. Catching up her stones from earlier took only a thought; she pulled them whirling towards, around, and through the rising lich. As soon as she was satisfied that it was down again, she let the stones drop.
Now for the other two yellow lich. Again, she pulled on the ground beneath, drawing it up. Faster. Stop them. She allowed herself to draw on a touch more of the Dark Force's power; to fall a little further into the eerie song. Shards of stone shot up around both of the lich, closing them in, then began to crush inward, the edges of each shard melding together as they touched.
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Post by Dmitri Pendragon on Mar 19, 2019 9:46:44 GMT
((Well, at least we have it going again, however slow it may appear to be. How's your spring break?  )) ((I just had a very strange experience…I was reading a page on Wookieepedia, I saw a picture captioned something like "A Human Force-sensitive attunes a Force crystal…" and I said to myself fully seriously, I wonder what sort of alien a Human is.))
Without taking her eyes off the lich, Valene tuned her consciousness to the bound Imarien behind her. In the brief glimpses she'd managed to steal they had looked intact, if restrained. If she had the Force she would have been able to feel whether they breathed. If she had the Force she might be able to keep them breathing longer. When the lich charged, she finally recognised that she could not, that there was no way in Chaos she could beat two lich without the Force. And also, far too late, that with Ver's enemies decimated and Valene protecting the Imarien that they no longer needed to close the Mouth. But there was no time to cry out, not a breath to spare to warn her fellow Lightsider of her own stifling inability. Tentacles sprouted at her and she took a tight defence, blade flashing blue through the familiar forms her Master had made her repeat day after day until the sweat poured out of her and her fingers blistered and cracked around the lightsaber. She officially added opponents whose elbows grew swords to her blacklist. Without the Force the forms were not enough. Lower-case F, no superiority. Tentacles took her legs, black against the black ground. When she hacked at them, they dragged her feet in different directions and she fell heavily, winding herself. Naturally the lightsaber went next. A hand as large as a blanket enveloped her, crushing her ribcage into her lungs. Valene calculated her entire list of options before she bit the membrane. It tasted exactly as she expected. The lich jerked in response. The motion sent a painful shudder deep into Valene's aching lungs. The goop on her teeth hardened, pushed her lips back and forced her jaw apart until the bones clicked at her ears. When the lich threw her into the Mouth, her first thought was of gratitude for not needing to experience a tentacle down her throat.
The green lich melted back into the bubbling puddle. Fingers sprouted from the goop and the entire morass began to squirm towards Ver like a boneless kandra. The Force vibrated around the stone tombs trapping the yellow lich. A note of fury entered the song of the Dark Force and built to a screaming crescendo. Almost in sync, the stone tombs blew apart, blasting broken shards in arcs of destruction. Yellow smoke rose from the wreckage and evaporated in Azul's glare. |
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Post by Leilani Sunblade on Mar 19, 2019 11:24:16 GMT
((Wait. Wait. What . . . storm you, Dmitri. Storm. You. That was not ok!))
((I will reply properly later. Right now I'm just mad.))
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Post by Dmitri Pendragon on Mar 20, 2019 5:17:00 GMT
((Hehe. Sorry. Feel free to take it as a motion-in-happening and immediate-problem-to-be-solved, not an inflexible completed action. But honestly I've been holding back Valene's impending defeat for several posts now.))
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Post by Leilani Sunblade on May 5, 2019 1:07:40 GMT
((Well, at least we have it going again, however slow it may appear to be. How's your spring break? )) ((I just had a very strange experience…I was reading a page on Wookieepedia, I saw a picture captioned something like "A Human Force-sensitive attunes a Force crystal…" and I said to myself fully seriously, I wonder what sort of alien a Human is.))
Without taking her eyes off the lich, Valene tuned her consciousness to the bound Imarien behind her. In the brief glimpses she'd managed to steal they had looked intact, if restrained. If she had the Force she would have been able to feel whether they breathed. If she had the Force she might be able to keep them breathing longer. When the lich charged, she finally recognised that she could not, that there was no way in Chaos she could beat two lich without the Force. And also, far too late, that with Ver's enemies decimated and Valene protecting the Imarien that they no longer needed to close the Mouth. But there was no time to cry out, not a breath to spare to warn her fellow Lightsider of her own stifling inability. Tentacles sprouted at her and she took a tight defence, blade flashing blue through the familiar forms her Master had made her repeat day after day until the sweat poured out of her and her fingers blistered and cracked around the lightsaber. She officially added opponents whose elbows grew swords to her blacklist. Without the Force the forms were not enough. Lower-case F, no superiority. Tentacles took her legs, black against the black ground. When she hacked at them, they dragged her feet in different directions and she fell heavily, winding herself. Naturally the lightsaber went next. A hand as large as a blanket enveloped her, crushing her ribcage into her lungs. Valene calculated her entire list of options before she bit the membrane. It tasted exactly as she expected. The lich jerked in response. The motion sent a painful shudder deep into Valene's aching lungs. The goop on her teeth hardened, pushed her lips back and forced her jaw apart until the bones clicked at her ears. When the lich threw her into the Mouth, her first thought was of gratitude for not needing to experience a tentacle down her throat.
The green lich melted back into the bubbling puddle. Fingers sprouted from the goop and the entire morass began to squirm towards Ver like a boneless kandra. The Force vibrated around the stone tombs trapping the yellow lich. A note of fury entered the song of the Dark Force and built to a screaming crescendo. Almost in sync, the stone tombs blew apart, blasting broken shards in arcs of destruction. Yellow smoke rose from the wreckage and evaporated in Azul's glare. ((All right. I'm done procrastinating and ready to accept that this post happened. Specifically, that the events therein happened. Because, yeah, I see how it was inevitable.)) ((Also, I just now caught what you did in the last bit of that post. Throwing in a bit of a Star Wars/Cosmere crossover, hmm?)) Ver had almost thought they'd be all right. She'd paused the lichs' attack on her and turned to see how Valene was doing -- Only to see the Imarien flung towards the Mouth by a lich mutated into mind-twisting horror. "No!" Ver dropped to the ground, planted her hands on the earth, and flooded power into the rock and dirt. Movemovemove, close it -- If she could block the hole -- If the ground would respond fast enough -- No. Valene dropped into the Mouth. A moment later, a moment too late, the ground responded, cracking around the edge of the Mouth and leaning inwards on both sides. Ver yanked back on her control of it. No, no, no, no . . . Valene was gone. Dead. Worse than dead. And it was Ver's fault. Again her incompetence cost the life of a friend and fellow warrior far more deserving, far more worthy than she. Again, someone fell because Ver hadn't paid close enough attention, because she wasn't fast enough, because she wasn't enough at all . . . The Force sang with fury. Ver dropped lower to avoid the shards as the tombs exploded and the lich emerged. They were back, and the ones by the pit weren't distracted by Valene any more, and now there was no one left between them and the prisoners. No one but Ver. I can't fail again. Ver recalled what she'd seen in the Mirror of Shades, felt the waiting power of the darkened Force at her fingertips. She glanced at the prisoners -- defenseless, doomed unless Ver did something remarkable. And herself -- she was doomed either way. If she could save someone, anyone . . . it would be worth it. And then she'd die here, on Mandalore, before Dae could ever learn what she'd done. I'll do what I have to do. And so, Ver reached deep, deep, deep into the waiting Force, deep into her feelings of guilt and shame and despair and anger and desperation. She gathered them up, claimed them. And then she answered the note of fury she'd sensed a moment ago with a scream of her own. And the earth shook. This time, though, it didn't stop. Cracks rushed out from Ver's position, opening between her and the lich and the Imarien and the Mouth, splitting the ground beneath the feet of the lich nearest to Ver. Molten rock bubbled up from the cracks, moving against its natural flow and far more swiftly than it should, and pooled around the lich. Then it flowed up their bodies, clinging, hardening on the outside but remaining cool within. Any lich that tried to open its body around the molten rock simply found the hole filled by hot, rapidly-hardened stone. |
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