(Author's Note) Backing up a moment: Namely, Ulfgar is mine, although Blizzard et al owns the actual character class he belongs to. Duh me.
~~~
Continental drift is a phenomenon that takes years to occur, and even then occurs at such a slow rate as to be undetectable by the naked eye.
To have such a geological pattern keep pace with him was very disconcerting to Niklaus. It might not have been so bad had Sasha not been constantly trying to catch any glimpse of the behemoth's accouterments out of Niklaus' periphery. Her occasional giggles kept Niklaus in a maddening state of frustration.
"Aw, c'mon Nik," she was saying, having given him an abbreviated name, "he's hot, even you can't deny it."
"I can, quite easily, and I would appreciate it if you mind that huge axe he just happens to wield like a toy."
"I dunno, he seems kinda simple, he might think it's a toy."
Niklaus snorted. "I doubt that; he was more than capable with those knives; even my old throwing instructor would have trouble keeping up. Plus, I think his behaviors are really a sham."
"Uh-huh," Sasha said, unconvinced.
"He hit that homonculus by ricocheting knives off nearby rocks and then going through a skull that was about to fall down, and that was after I blocked the first pair he threw. That takes an incredible understanding of a lot of things to pull that off."
"Enough practice can make anyone a decent shot," Sasha countered, "I'm sure you weren't born with an instinctive understanding of swords."
"Yes, but throwing weapons are a different matter; they're much more difficult to master, especially in those conditions."
"Yeah, whatever," Sasha responded, clearly unconvinced.
Niklaus let the matter drop. The succubus could keep her opinion of the continent at their side; as long as she held an Aura at the ready, he would rest easier.
"Aww, would the strong sure Pawadin feew safer if lil' ol' me kept him safe?" Sasha mocked.
"And trees are just trees, right?"
Sasha straightened. In her own way. "I was right, wasn't I?"
Niklaus smiled slightly to himself and chanced a glance at his behemoth traveling companion.
The behemoth in question loped along at an easy pace; for Ulfgar, it was an easy pace, for Niklaus, it was somewhat exhausting keeping up and he was seriously considering asking Sasha to ignite an Aura to help him keep up.
However, Auras are meant to be shared, and if Ulfgar did not feel any benefit to his own mighty stamina (and only increasing the distance between himself and his companion) he might wonder why Niklaus was depriving him of an Aura if they were, in fact, allies.
After Niklaus had worked himself into a fine sweat, the giant finally glanced down at him. "Don't Paladin have an Aura that gives them stamina?"
Niklaus glanced up, finding himself in a quandary. "We do," he began cautiously.
"Honesty might work out best here," Sasha hissed.
"Somehow a possessed Paladin stirs far less than unswerving loyalty," Niklaus snapped back.
"Not that, jackass! Tell him you don't want to boost his own stamina and you still lag behind."
"Oh," Niklaus retorted shamefacedly, and then relayed that information to Ulfgar.
Ulfgar looked askance at him. "I'm sure Paladin can ignite an Aura and not have it bless everyone around them. It wouldn't make much sense if Paladin were busy blessing their enemies while they tried to kill them."
Niklaus was more than happy when Sasha ignited the right Aura and they were able to keep up with the Northman.
The companions travelled in relative silence (barring the occasional conversation between Niklaus and Sasha).
After several hours of journeying, they came upon the town which hosted the restaurant Ulfgar had boasted of. The events occuring between them and the town, however, forced them to pause.
Namely, they beheld a rather atrocious sight: the local militia were engaged in mortal combat against immortal foes. Undead soldiers bore down on the hapless defenders, triumphant through superior numbers and superior skills.
At the rear of the force stood some form of a zombie colonel. He bore a simple war hat and a riding crop that dripped with ichor (likely after using it on some demon that wasn't doing *something* right, Sasha observed).
The undead colonel was rasping orders, Niklaus couldn't really understand what it said. What he could tell was that the banner he bore was in fact representative of Mephisto, there were undead down there, and he was, in fact, still trained as a Paladin.
Do we have to do this again?
Yes, we don't know what purpose these demons serve, but we can assume it's for ill purposes.
Naw, really? Is this shiny-man reasoning, or--
"We should do something," Ulfgar rumbled quietly, almost too low for Niklaus to hear.
Niklaus and Sasha broke from their mental sparring match to notice the giant.
Ulfgar looked back at the warrior and gestured towards the troops. "That one at the head, he's talking about their risen lord, and how they must now answer the call of the 'maiden' or something and visit her blessing upon the worthless inhabitants of this hamlet. Possibly Andariel, the Maiden of Anguish."
Niklaus looked to his companion in awe. His companion glanced back. "What?" Ulfgar asked, "did you really think I was as big a fool as I let on?"
A smile played around Niklaus' lips. "I had hoped not," he grinned at his large friend.
With a smug look towards Sasha, Niklaus listened raptly as Ulfgar detailed a course of action. He would have liked to offer his own insight, but could not see any hole in the strategem.
If any strategy consisting of two people overthrowing a seige consisting of at least fifty undead soldiers on their own merits and dismissing any silly thoughts of tactical retreats, expectations of the local militia, or any real hope of success could be construed as without holes, it was indeed flawless.
The colonel in command of the siege would have been very interested to know how such a strategy would know any success, but as it was he was rather preoccupied by the battle before him. Although not necessary to their ultimate mission, it did give his troops some added bloodlust to fuel their Hate.
The colonel turned to consider other factors, specifically a man-sized battering ram that burst into his back without any courtesy or warning, sending him airborne.
While the colonel paused to consider his new status as a creature of inadvertent flight, he found a new concern to preoccupy himself with. Specifically, the arrival of another creature of the air that seemed determined to rendevous with him midair.
Perhaps creature wasn't quite the right word. However, it moved visibly, bore a large axe which should have been cumbersome (inexplicably, it wasn't) and roared ferally as it brought said axe around to negotiate on behalf of the village. The colonel might have considered the terms "seige engine," "small fortress," or even "impending geologic disaster in the form of a meteor that will extinguish all life on this world, starting with my dessicated carcass," but Ulfgar's axe met with the colonel before he could compile an adequate list of more accurate phrases.
The Northman removed his axe--still midair--and pirouetted with preternatural grace as the again-expired undead colonel landed on the ground. Ulfgar followed his foe to the ground, but since the colonel was dead (again) it could not move fast enough to get out of the way of the huge feet that sought solid ground once again.
Niklaus, however, had already raced ahead again, and Ulfgar lifted himself out of the dust cloud into the air once more to reach the Paladin so they could pursue the fight as a unit.
Merus the town guardsman was fighting for his life against a foe that really couldn't care for its own sake. The undead bore ruthlessly down on him, and he was hard pressed to maintain his own defense, much less mount any offense against his foe.
In times such as those, one is often forgiven by his peers for a moment of less-than-rational thought. Merus found himself in just such a moment, and realized that he was going to die. He would die either under the onslaught of this evil beast, or under another.
It was that moment that Merus forsook all defensive considerations and swung at the undead creature with all his might, hoping to at least save his comrades from one more evil being to fight.
His weapon arced beautifully, aiming directly for his foe's skull, a strike that would cleave the exposed bone beautifully.
Merus missed.
He looked down and saw the zombie had crouched under the blow and let him throw himself off balance in the desperate gambit. The undead readied its knife and lunged to strike at his exposed flank. Merus closed his eyes to the explosion of pain he knew was coming.
A gust of air blasted past him, and he still had not felt the deathblow.
Cautiously, he opened his eyes, and saw a pile of dust settling on the ground before him. He couldn't shake the inexplicable feeling that this was the foe that had so cunningly prepared his deathstroke.
Marus looked to his right, and saw a figure weilding a longsword decimating another zombie and moving quickly onto the next.
Niklaus tore through the ranks of undead as a scythe through grain. Silence flashed, keeping true to its namesake as cries of Hate died and twitching limbs stilled.
Niklaus was in perfect form, dispatching undead after undead, fully immersed in his element. He was a blur among his foes, and the undead soldiers that were so ruthless and efficient now had the tables turned on them.
Silence--and its weilder--blurred as they moved through the undead. Despite everything, Sasha was enjoying herself. Although definitely not combat-saavy, she felt that Niklaus was more than capable of keeping their communal hide alive.
Not that she would admit it while he was paying attention, of course.
However, while Niklaus had fallen into the easy rhythym of combat, ensconsed within Sasha's Aura of Concentration, Sasha was getting worked up, thrilled at the power she and the shiny-man wielded.
Before long, Sasha was rather excited by the whole experience, and the cool blues and greens of the Aura of Concentration began to flicker with the excited reds and oranges of the Aura of the Fanatic. Sasha's excitement grew, and her Aura pulsed with orange, tinged with blood reds.
Niklaus, helpless amidst Sasha's BloodLust, had no recourse but to swing at insane speeds, parrying and striking so fast that several zombies wondered how they found themselves with several limbs missing before a quick and ruthless decapitation.
One such zombie found itself laying between its own feet. After a moment's confusion, it realized that only its skull was between its feet. It then saw a booted--and, unfortunately living--foot sweep around and kick it directly into the head of another hapless foe.
Both skulls shattered on impact, creating a dust cloud that blocked view of the Paladin from the support troops.
Suddenly, the cloud parted as a form blurred into those exact same support troops. In a dizzying spin, and quite a bit of curving steel courtesy of a large axe, there were a plethora of loose limbs scattered upon the ground.
Ulfgar had caught up with Niklaus, and was exploiting the mass confusion created by the possessed Paladin in a whirling avalanche of destruction.
The imposing--and coincidentally, living--seige engine had literally burst onto the scene, and joined Niklaus causing despair, disorder, and chaos better than any minion of Hell.
It would have brought a tear to the undead colonel's eye, but after his hellish ressurection, he was bereft of any tear ducts.
Plus, Ulfgar had ended his life (again) rather pointedly, making it somewhat difficult to cry for anyone.
Niklaus, meanwhile, was helpless amidst Sasha's BloodLust. He could only swing faster, harder, buoyed by Sasha's Aura but it still wasn't enough.
Frantically, he hoisted up a zombie by its corroding armor and began swinging it around in one hand, using it as an impromptu club, Silence held in the other.
The zombie was less than thrilled at this turn of events, and flailed helplessly as it collided nonstop into comrade after comrade.
Ulfgar reared back, and began spinning in a curious display of balance, technique, and an inhuman resilience to getting dizzy. Niklaus stood confidently within the destructive radius of Ulfgar's motions, and struck out against the remaining zombies, helpless for Sasha's Bloodlust.
Sasha was euphoric; she shuddered at the pleasure of the kill, the thirst for decimating her former comrades allied with Niklaus' ease and grace with the sword. Each ring of Silence against unprotected dead flesh was a new wave of pleasure, and she revelled in it.
So much that she exploded in a flash of BloodLust, that lascivious thrill at the infliction of horrendous pain upon one's foes.
Raw energy nearly drowned Niklaus as he was caught in the blast mid-swing.
His foes were less lucky as the possessed Paladin decimated them so quickly even Ulgar was surprised.
The Paladin seemingly disappeared, only to reappear as flashes of destruction as another dozen undead warriors collapsed from sheer disintegration.
Ulfgar caught the occasional glimpse of the Fanatic Paladin, the occasional arc of his powerful sword, as Niklaus was carried helplessly along by his own raw power.
If Niklaus had been aware of Ulfgar's musings, he would very much have liked to argue over "his" raw power. However, he was rather preoccupied with surviving Sasha's Bloodlust. This was no normal BloodLust, however, this went far beyond anything Sasha had ever done.
Niklaus realized with a cold knot in his stomach that they had run out of zombies and Niklaus was not sure if Sasha in her state would discern between Hell's forces and Sanctuary's inhabitants.
Niklaus was therefore relieved when Sasha finally spent herself and Niklaus collapsed to his knees, gasping for air, Silence forgotten.
They sat there, dazed at the experience. Villagers peered out from the hasty walls that served to slow the hellish assault to gaze in wonder at the axe-toting warrior and the exhausted knight. For the longest time, neither said anything.
"Was it good for you too?" Sasha asked meekly.
~~~
Continental drift is a phenomenon that takes years to occur, and even then occurs at such a slow rate as to be undetectable by the naked eye.
To have such a geological pattern keep pace with him was very disconcerting to Niklaus. It might not have been so bad had Sasha not been constantly trying to catch any glimpse of the behemoth's accouterments out of Niklaus' periphery. Her occasional giggles kept Niklaus in a maddening state of frustration.
"Aw, c'mon Nik," she was saying, having given him an abbreviated name, "he's hot, even you can't deny it."
"I can, quite easily, and I would appreciate it if you mind that huge axe he just happens to wield like a toy."
"I dunno, he seems kinda simple, he might think it's a toy."
Niklaus snorted. "I doubt that; he was more than capable with those knives; even my old throwing instructor would have trouble keeping up. Plus, I think his behaviors are really a sham."
"Uh-huh," Sasha said, unconvinced.
"He hit that homonculus by ricocheting knives off nearby rocks and then going through a skull that was about to fall down, and that was after I blocked the first pair he threw. That takes an incredible understanding of a lot of things to pull that off."
"Enough practice can make anyone a decent shot," Sasha countered, "I'm sure you weren't born with an instinctive understanding of swords."
"Yes, but throwing weapons are a different matter; they're much more difficult to master, especially in those conditions."
"Yeah, whatever," Sasha responded, clearly unconvinced.
Niklaus let the matter drop. The succubus could keep her opinion of the continent at their side; as long as she held an Aura at the ready, he would rest easier.
"Aww, would the strong sure Pawadin feew safer if lil' ol' me kept him safe?" Sasha mocked.
"And trees are just trees, right?"
Sasha straightened. In her own way. "I was right, wasn't I?"
Niklaus smiled slightly to himself and chanced a glance at his behemoth traveling companion.
The behemoth in question loped along at an easy pace; for Ulfgar, it was an easy pace, for Niklaus, it was somewhat exhausting keeping up and he was seriously considering asking Sasha to ignite an Aura to help him keep up.
However, Auras are meant to be shared, and if Ulfgar did not feel any benefit to his own mighty stamina (and only increasing the distance between himself and his companion) he might wonder why Niklaus was depriving him of an Aura if they were, in fact, allies.
After Niklaus had worked himself into a fine sweat, the giant finally glanced down at him. "Don't Paladin have an Aura that gives them stamina?"
Niklaus glanced up, finding himself in a quandary. "We do," he began cautiously.
"Honesty might work out best here," Sasha hissed.
"Somehow a possessed Paladin stirs far less than unswerving loyalty," Niklaus snapped back.
"Not that, jackass! Tell him you don't want to boost his own stamina and you still lag behind."
"Oh," Niklaus retorted shamefacedly, and then relayed that information to Ulfgar.
Ulfgar looked askance at him. "I'm sure Paladin can ignite an Aura and not have it bless everyone around them. It wouldn't make much sense if Paladin were busy blessing their enemies while they tried to kill them."
Niklaus was more than happy when Sasha ignited the right Aura and they were able to keep up with the Northman.
The companions travelled in relative silence (barring the occasional conversation between Niklaus and Sasha).
After several hours of journeying, they came upon the town which hosted the restaurant Ulfgar had boasted of. The events occuring between them and the town, however, forced them to pause.
Namely, they beheld a rather atrocious sight: the local militia were engaged in mortal combat against immortal foes. Undead soldiers bore down on the hapless defenders, triumphant through superior numbers and superior skills.
At the rear of the force stood some form of a zombie colonel. He bore a simple war hat and a riding crop that dripped with ichor (likely after using it on some demon that wasn't doing *something* right, Sasha observed).
The undead colonel was rasping orders, Niklaus couldn't really understand what it said. What he could tell was that the banner he bore was in fact representative of Mephisto, there were undead down there, and he was, in fact, still trained as a Paladin.
Do we have to do this again?
Yes, we don't know what purpose these demons serve, but we can assume it's for ill purposes.
Naw, really? Is this shiny-man reasoning, or--
"We should do something," Ulfgar rumbled quietly, almost too low for Niklaus to hear.
Niklaus and Sasha broke from their mental sparring match to notice the giant.
Ulfgar looked back at the warrior and gestured towards the troops. "That one at the head, he's talking about their risen lord, and how they must now answer the call of the 'maiden' or something and visit her blessing upon the worthless inhabitants of this hamlet. Possibly Andariel, the Maiden of Anguish."
Niklaus looked to his companion in awe. His companion glanced back. "What?" Ulfgar asked, "did you really think I was as big a fool as I let on?"
A smile played around Niklaus' lips. "I had hoped not," he grinned at his large friend.
With a smug look towards Sasha, Niklaus listened raptly as Ulfgar detailed a course of action. He would have liked to offer his own insight, but could not see any hole in the strategem.
If any strategy consisting of two people overthrowing a seige consisting of at least fifty undead soldiers on their own merits and dismissing any silly thoughts of tactical retreats, expectations of the local militia, or any real hope of success could be construed as without holes, it was indeed flawless.
The colonel in command of the siege would have been very interested to know how such a strategy would know any success, but as it was he was rather preoccupied by the battle before him. Although not necessary to their ultimate mission, it did give his troops some added bloodlust to fuel their Hate.
The colonel turned to consider other factors, specifically a man-sized battering ram that burst into his back without any courtesy or warning, sending him airborne.
While the colonel paused to consider his new status as a creature of inadvertent flight, he found a new concern to preoccupy himself with. Specifically, the arrival of another creature of the air that seemed determined to rendevous with him midair.
Perhaps creature wasn't quite the right word. However, it moved visibly, bore a large axe which should have been cumbersome (inexplicably, it wasn't) and roared ferally as it brought said axe around to negotiate on behalf of the village. The colonel might have considered the terms "seige engine," "small fortress," or even "impending geologic disaster in the form of a meteor that will extinguish all life on this world, starting with my dessicated carcass," but Ulfgar's axe met with the colonel before he could compile an adequate list of more accurate phrases.
The Northman removed his axe--still midair--and pirouetted with preternatural grace as the again-expired undead colonel landed on the ground. Ulfgar followed his foe to the ground, but since the colonel was dead (again) it could not move fast enough to get out of the way of the huge feet that sought solid ground once again.
Niklaus, however, had already raced ahead again, and Ulfgar lifted himself out of the dust cloud into the air once more to reach the Paladin so they could pursue the fight as a unit.
Merus the town guardsman was fighting for his life against a foe that really couldn't care for its own sake. The undead bore ruthlessly down on him, and he was hard pressed to maintain his own defense, much less mount any offense against his foe.
In times such as those, one is often forgiven by his peers for a moment of less-than-rational thought. Merus found himself in just such a moment, and realized that he was going to die. He would die either under the onslaught of this evil beast, or under another.
It was that moment that Merus forsook all defensive considerations and swung at the undead creature with all his might, hoping to at least save his comrades from one more evil being to fight.
His weapon arced beautifully, aiming directly for his foe's skull, a strike that would cleave the exposed bone beautifully.
Merus missed.
He looked down and saw the zombie had crouched under the blow and let him throw himself off balance in the desperate gambit. The undead readied its knife and lunged to strike at his exposed flank. Merus closed his eyes to the explosion of pain he knew was coming.
A gust of air blasted past him, and he still had not felt the deathblow.
Cautiously, he opened his eyes, and saw a pile of dust settling on the ground before him. He couldn't shake the inexplicable feeling that this was the foe that had so cunningly prepared his deathstroke.
Marus looked to his right, and saw a figure weilding a longsword decimating another zombie and moving quickly onto the next.
Niklaus tore through the ranks of undead as a scythe through grain. Silence flashed, keeping true to its namesake as cries of Hate died and twitching limbs stilled.
Niklaus was in perfect form, dispatching undead after undead, fully immersed in his element. He was a blur among his foes, and the undead soldiers that were so ruthless and efficient now had the tables turned on them.
Silence--and its weilder--blurred as they moved through the undead. Despite everything, Sasha was enjoying herself. Although definitely not combat-saavy, she felt that Niklaus was more than capable of keeping their communal hide alive.
Not that she would admit it while he was paying attention, of course.
However, while Niklaus had fallen into the easy rhythym of combat, ensconsed within Sasha's Aura of Concentration, Sasha was getting worked up, thrilled at the power she and the shiny-man wielded.
Before long, Sasha was rather excited by the whole experience, and the cool blues and greens of the Aura of Concentration began to flicker with the excited reds and oranges of the Aura of the Fanatic. Sasha's excitement grew, and her Aura pulsed with orange, tinged with blood reds.
Niklaus, helpless amidst Sasha's BloodLust, had no recourse but to swing at insane speeds, parrying and striking so fast that several zombies wondered how they found themselves with several limbs missing before a quick and ruthless decapitation.
One such zombie found itself laying between its own feet. After a moment's confusion, it realized that only its skull was between its feet. It then saw a booted--and, unfortunately living--foot sweep around and kick it directly into the head of another hapless foe.
Both skulls shattered on impact, creating a dust cloud that blocked view of the Paladin from the support troops.
Suddenly, the cloud parted as a form blurred into those exact same support troops. In a dizzying spin, and quite a bit of curving steel courtesy of a large axe, there were a plethora of loose limbs scattered upon the ground.
Ulfgar had caught up with Niklaus, and was exploiting the mass confusion created by the possessed Paladin in a whirling avalanche of destruction.
The imposing--and coincidentally, living--seige engine had literally burst onto the scene, and joined Niklaus causing despair, disorder, and chaos better than any minion of Hell.
It would have brought a tear to the undead colonel's eye, but after his hellish ressurection, he was bereft of any tear ducts.
Plus, Ulfgar had ended his life (again) rather pointedly, making it somewhat difficult to cry for anyone.
Niklaus, meanwhile, was helpless amidst Sasha's BloodLust. He could only swing faster, harder, buoyed by Sasha's Aura but it still wasn't enough.
Frantically, he hoisted up a zombie by its corroding armor and began swinging it around in one hand, using it as an impromptu club, Silence held in the other.
The zombie was less than thrilled at this turn of events, and flailed helplessly as it collided nonstop into comrade after comrade.
Ulfgar reared back, and began spinning in a curious display of balance, technique, and an inhuman resilience to getting dizzy. Niklaus stood confidently within the destructive radius of Ulfgar's motions, and struck out against the remaining zombies, helpless for Sasha's Bloodlust.
Sasha was euphoric; she shuddered at the pleasure of the kill, the thirst for decimating her former comrades allied with Niklaus' ease and grace with the sword. Each ring of Silence against unprotected dead flesh was a new wave of pleasure, and she revelled in it.
So much that she exploded in a flash of BloodLust, that lascivious thrill at the infliction of horrendous pain upon one's foes.
Raw energy nearly drowned Niklaus as he was caught in the blast mid-swing.
His foes were less lucky as the possessed Paladin decimated them so quickly even Ulgar was surprised.
The Paladin seemingly disappeared, only to reappear as flashes of destruction as another dozen undead warriors collapsed from sheer disintegration.
Ulfgar caught the occasional glimpse of the Fanatic Paladin, the occasional arc of his powerful sword, as Niklaus was carried helplessly along by his own raw power.
If Niklaus had been aware of Ulfgar's musings, he would very much have liked to argue over "his" raw power. However, he was rather preoccupied with surviving Sasha's Bloodlust. This was no normal BloodLust, however, this went far beyond anything Sasha had ever done.
Niklaus realized with a cold knot in his stomach that they had run out of zombies and Niklaus was not sure if Sasha in her state would discern between Hell's forces and Sanctuary's inhabitants.
Niklaus was therefore relieved when Sasha finally spent herself and Niklaus collapsed to his knees, gasping for air, Silence forgotten.
They sat there, dazed at the experience. Villagers peered out from the hasty walls that served to slow the hellish assault to gaze in wonder at the axe-toting warrior and the exhausted knight. For the longest time, neither said anything.
"Was it good for you too?" Sasha asked meekly.