Hey people. Silverlocke 980 here. Time for the message boards:
Sabriel41- Glad that cleared it up for you. I completely agree with your comment on Xianghua's "Just kidding!" comment. Too many game developers think stuff like this is "cute"- I find it condescending and infuriating. They ruin games with shit like this (aims revolver at nearest copy of FFX-2). For instance, this (cocks hammer back) piece of trash has zero storyline (BOOM), relies too much on graphics (BOOM), and is basically too damn childish (BOOM). Whatever idiot at Square Enix (BOOM) developed this (BOOM) should be thrown in jail on stupidity grounds. (BOOM)
(Sound of empty bullet cases dropping to floor) I swear. Gamers are more mature than people think. Otherwise, this immature crap would never show it's face. This sort of thing really doesn't affect SC 2 very much, and sometimes I find stuff like that funny ( I find Voldo's battle tactics, particularly Mantis Crawl, hilarious), but really, folks. Do we *need* this stuff? (I'm talking to you, Square Enix!)
The Silver One is starting to rant. I'll be trying to find a soapbox to preach from if I don't watch it, so I'll skip ahead to....
"SHOWTIME!"
Chapter 8
Into the Lion's Den
Valencia, Spain. Noon.
Siegfried looked around. The town gave off the aura of being on the verge of becoming a city, of being at the critical stage of growth and development inbetween. It was a bustling place, buildings being raised, the roads being paved (twice already, as the party walked to Valencia, they'd passed workers trying to improve the cobbled-stone roads), and the town generally growing. He wondered what Ivy thought of it, this town where her quest had led her.
Siegfried looked at Ivy. She was taking in the view with her customary stoicism, but Siegfried thought he saw worry in her eyes. She stared at the town for a moment, steeling herself up, then walked forward without saying a word. Siegfried looked at Kilik and shrugged. Kilik nodded at him and then they set off after Ivy. As they walked into the town, Siegfried looked about.
The first thing one noticed about the town was the sheer number of buildings being raised. Pieces of lumber lay everywhere along the sides of the road, waiting to be added on by the carpenters as needed; the metallic sounds of hammers and saws competed with the human sounds of yells and grunts in the air, an orchestra of life that was oddly comforting in it's very humaneness. After the long days on the road, with only the occasional wagon or rider passing by, it was good to hear the sounds of life again.
It had been about two weeks after the Sea Edge had sunk to the bottom of Navare's harbor. After hitting land with their makeshift raft, the party had quietly left Navare before the authorities could respond to the incident. They had need of food and supplies, but they'd waited until nightfall to enter the town again and buy what they needed. The gold from Voldo's bounty was almost completely gone. They barely had enough for an inn in Valencia, if they had to stay the night. Looking around, Siegfried wondered what this town held for Ivy. Why was she here?
In a mansion on the outskirts of Valencia, a heart began to beat.
************************************************************************
The Mansion of the Lions, Valencia, Spain. Same time.
The mansion was set off to the side, by itself, as if in indication of the owner's paranoid personality. It was a place that seemed to want to keep to itself, that repelled visitors. An aura of ruin and decay lay upon it like the mantle of a ruined cloak. The ruling council of Valencia had twice tried to have it destroyed, but no one would come close enough to the mansion to demolish it. One of the carpenters they'd hired to destroy it had come back and said, " If you fear anything in this world, fear that house. Something is in it, my friends. And it does not want to be disturbed." The council had decided to leave the house alone after that attempt. It stood by itself, surrounded by a thick iron fence over seven foot tall. No houses surrounded it. No one would live anywhere within sight of the thing, so the city simply moved it's development plans elsewhere. The house had an aura of power about it, an aura of some greater, darker place in time, and it simply resisted efforts to change it. It sat, like the center of a malevolent hurricane, or maybe the pupil of a nightmarish eye. The land around it seemed dead, the grass yellow, the shrubs shriveled and dry.
The mansion itself was a uniform gray color, it's former white dulled with the passage of many years. It's blue roof had crumbled and cracked, and the entire right wing had collapsed, giving the house a slouched look. The windows were cracked, the glass broken and the wood frayed. Only the front door, with it's knocker of a fierce lion and a strange keyhole shaped like an anchor, looked in anything like normal condition. The golden lion's head on it seemed alive, it's topaz eyes glittering in the sunlight. No one had been inside the house for two decades; it looked as if it had been deserted for centuries.
Inside, where even spiders would not take up residence, a pulse beat.
************************************************************************
Main Road. Valencia, Spain. Same time.
Ivy stiffened up, stopping dead in the middle of traffic and almost making Siegfried run straight into her. She stopped like a rabbit caught in the eyes of a hawk, her nostrils flaring in and out as her breath quickened. Her eyes widened and her arms trembled. She was in the grip of something, something only she could see. Or maybe it wasn't a sight that stopped her, but a sound.
" Ivy? What is it?" Siegfried said, putting out his hand but stopping before he reached her. " What is it?"
" Don't you hear it?" Ivy said, turning to the south with eyes full of hope and fear. " It's calling me..."
Kilik listened for a moment, and said, " What? What is calling you?"
" Home..." Ivy set off for the south, not looking at where she was going, pushing people out of her way as she walked, heading towards something only she understood. Siegfried hurried after her, with Kilik right behind him.
" Home? What are you talking about? Ivy, snap out of it!" Siegfried yelled. He grabbed her shoulder and swung her around. When she was facing him, she grabbed his shoulders. Her fingers were clamped on him like a vise. He clamped his own as well, holding onto her delicate but strong shoulders.
" Listen to me, Siegfried. This is what I've been searching for. My real father. The truth of my existence..." She took a breath to steady herself. " It's calling me. It wants me to come home..."
Siegfried looked in her eyes, trying to hold her with his own. " Ivy, are you sure about this?"
She merely nodded, an act that required all her self-control. She heard it, a voice saying "This way, this way... home is here. Home, your father, truth... Here! Come unto me!" It was taking all she had to avoid simply running to it, running towards home.
She had no idea how close she was to getting them all killed.
Siegfried nodded towards Ivy. " All right then. Lead the way. I'm right behind you." He let go of her, and she turned back down the road. She walked off, trying to make her way through the crowds as fast as she could. Kilik and Siegfried followed as best they could, losing sight of her as the crowds thickened and finding her as it ebbed. Eventually they reached the southernmost parts of Valencia, where the normal buildings stopped and the land of the Mansion of the Lions began.
On a northern road, Raphael walked into Valencia.
************************************************************************
Mansion of the Lions, Valencia, Spain. Three minutes later.
Siegfried stood before the house's immense gate, staring up at it. He never thought he'd see a place that reminded him of Travens Castle, but this mansion did. The same aura of decay swirled about it, and although it wasn't quite as strong as the aura Thok'ti had produced, it still assaulted the senses. If this was Ivy's home, he hoped she decided to move. The damn place was foul, and that was all there was to it. Even Ivy's wide-eyed enthusiasm had dissipated as they approached the mansion, her quick steps becoming slower as the mansion got closer and closer. Now that they were at it, she had stopped outside it's ruined gate, staring up at it. To her, the entire mansion radiated not foulness but sadness, as of a great thing brought low. It had a fallen state, somehow, a sense of something that had gone too far into the dark to be redeemed.
Kilik, standing behind Siegfried and Ivy, perceived something different from either of them. He was a monk, trained with a monk's senses, and what he saw in the house scared him. It was foul, true, and it was sad. But something else was in the house. The house's aura simply overwhelmed most other emanations from it, but Kilik's discerning power sensed something unholy in the mansion. Something he had sensed before. He knew it, but it danced on the tip of his tongue, retreating every time he thought he had the answer. What was it?
As Kilik watched, Ivy drew a key from one of her packs. The key was shaped like an anchor, with a topaz in the top. She walked forward, holding the key in her right hand, stepping carefully over the ruined gate. She walked to the front door of this ruined place, and gazed sadly at the lion head knocker, a remembrance of better days gone past, when this might have been the house of a great and noble family.
She put the key in the keyhole. The anchor head sunk in all the way, until only the circular end protruded. She turned it. A lock was heard clicking somewhere in the house, then a whirring noise. A great noise, as of many gears shifting all at once, and then the door was opening. The topaz eyes of the lion glittered once more, then dulled as they swung inwards to gaze upon the inside of the house. Ivy stepped forward, all her fears and hopes magnified now, at this final moment...
Above her, hanging from the rafters of the ruined house, something with one great eye watched her.
************************************************************************
Somewhere in Southern Asia. Same time.
Seung Mina sat down on a stump and sighed. Damn. She'd missed him again, although this time not by more than a few days. A week, at most. She'd been hunting Yunsung for some time now, always entering a town after he'd just left... two days, five, and once he'd managed to best her by a full nine days. She knew that he had a headstart, but she hadn't believed he'd been able to do this. Yunsung was traveling very light and very fast. She was having trouble staying even with him, much less catching up. As she stopped to catch her breath, she reluctantly came to the conclusion that Yunsung was a lot tougher than she had supposed. She had always teased him (in her mind it was just some light-hearted fun; she never meant to hurt anyone) in the dojo; this was apparently his revenge.
Of course, he didn't have a huge Zanbatou to carry around all the time, either. Having a big, long weapon was good for a physically weaker fighter like her, but man, it got heavy when you carried it for a while. The Red Thunder was a family heirloom, her favorite weapon, one she'd played with since childhood. It's edge could never hurt a family member, and even at five years old the razor sharp blade was no more dangerous than a bird to her. She'd grown up with this weapon.
Then again, she'd also grown up with the other family heirlooms, and that hadn't stopped her from giving the White Storm to Yunsung, had it? Nooo, it most certainly had not. She hadn't known he'd run off with it, but she still felt responsible. That was the reason why she was after him, to get the White Storm back.
Or at least, part of the reason. The other part was that Yunsung was her friend. She thought. The truth was, she didn't know if anyone had ever reached into Yunsung's heart. He was so cold, so different from the others. She taunted, flirted, and teased the boys in the dojo for fun, but he was the only one who never reacted. He'd only reacted the first time, in the form of a blistering retort. She had been taunting the men in the dojo, just playing around, when she'd seen Yunsung and his partner sparring. She'd come by and teased Yunsung's partner ( a man whose name she couldn't remember; so many of the soldiers in the dojo were just alike, enough so that she couldn't keep track of their names), causing him to stare like a love-sick puppy at her. Yunsung, seeing that sparring was a lost cause at the moment, had leaned against the wall of the dojo, face unemotional, waiting for her to leave. She'd sauntered over to him, showing him a flash of her legs through her dress. He hadn't even blinked. He was new to the dojo at the time, and this was her first sight of him. His red hair, rare in this part of the world, had fascinated her. She thought he was cute, if a bit unemotional.
" Ah, the new guy. And what are you doing here all by yourself?" she'd said, seductively smiling at him.
" Waiting for you to grow up and act like a woman, not a whore," he'd said, dead serious. He'd thrown her so off balance she'd left the dojo, shaken. She had never been responded to like that before. Most men mooned over her, even far older men, and to be told she acted like a prostitute had unnerved her. Ever since then, she'd teased Yunsung, trying to make him react, trying to find out why he of all men didn't care for her. He intrigued her. She began watching his matches, watching him train, and she'd been amazed when he'd won the one award she'd never earned. The award had been given to Yunsung after he'd bested ten opponents all at once. Seung Mina had been knocked out after taking down seven of them, but Yunsung had bested them all. Face already starting to swell from the blows he'd taken, bleeding in several places, he'd nonetheless been able to stand and receive his award, then limp off the training ground for healing. He was incredible.
Seung Mina had found herself wanting him, wanting him far beyond any man she'd ever known. Her father would kill her; Yunsung was eighteen, too young for her. But he seemed so much older. In one of the few conversations they'd had, she'd been stunned to hear he was eighteen. She had thought he was a youthful looking twenty-five, or at least twenty-three. She'd never have guessed he was eighteen.
She'd actually given the White Storm to him to win him over; he was so distant all the time, she thought that a gift might make him come a little closer to her. But he'd just taken it and ran off with it. She wanted to know why.
Sighing, Seung Mina picked up her Zanbatou. She started walking on the dirt road again, towards the north where, unbeknownst to her, Yunsung was about to find a young girl named Talim, a samurai named Mitsurugi, and his purpose in life. Unaware of the winds of change blowing about her, she walked on.
- Next chapter: The town of Wind and the Fall of the House of Lions!
Sabriel41- Glad that cleared it up for you. I completely agree with your comment on Xianghua's "Just kidding!" comment. Too many game developers think stuff like this is "cute"- I find it condescending and infuriating. They ruin games with shit like this (aims revolver at nearest copy of FFX-2). For instance, this (cocks hammer back) piece of trash has zero storyline (BOOM), relies too much on graphics (BOOM), and is basically too damn childish (BOOM). Whatever idiot at Square Enix (BOOM) developed this (BOOM) should be thrown in jail on stupidity grounds. (BOOM)
(Sound of empty bullet cases dropping to floor) I swear. Gamers are more mature than people think. Otherwise, this immature crap would never show it's face. This sort of thing really doesn't affect SC 2 very much, and sometimes I find stuff like that funny ( I find Voldo's battle tactics, particularly Mantis Crawl, hilarious), but really, folks. Do we *need* this stuff? (I'm talking to you, Square Enix!)
The Silver One is starting to rant. I'll be trying to find a soapbox to preach from if I don't watch it, so I'll skip ahead to....
"SHOWTIME!"
Chapter 8
Into the Lion's Den
Valencia, Spain. Noon.
Siegfried looked around. The town gave off the aura of being on the verge of becoming a city, of being at the critical stage of growth and development inbetween. It was a bustling place, buildings being raised, the roads being paved (twice already, as the party walked to Valencia, they'd passed workers trying to improve the cobbled-stone roads), and the town generally growing. He wondered what Ivy thought of it, this town where her quest had led her.
Siegfried looked at Ivy. She was taking in the view with her customary stoicism, but Siegfried thought he saw worry in her eyes. She stared at the town for a moment, steeling herself up, then walked forward without saying a word. Siegfried looked at Kilik and shrugged. Kilik nodded at him and then they set off after Ivy. As they walked into the town, Siegfried looked about.
The first thing one noticed about the town was the sheer number of buildings being raised. Pieces of lumber lay everywhere along the sides of the road, waiting to be added on by the carpenters as needed; the metallic sounds of hammers and saws competed with the human sounds of yells and grunts in the air, an orchestra of life that was oddly comforting in it's very humaneness. After the long days on the road, with only the occasional wagon or rider passing by, it was good to hear the sounds of life again.
It had been about two weeks after the Sea Edge had sunk to the bottom of Navare's harbor. After hitting land with their makeshift raft, the party had quietly left Navare before the authorities could respond to the incident. They had need of food and supplies, but they'd waited until nightfall to enter the town again and buy what they needed. The gold from Voldo's bounty was almost completely gone. They barely had enough for an inn in Valencia, if they had to stay the night. Looking around, Siegfried wondered what this town held for Ivy. Why was she here?
In a mansion on the outskirts of Valencia, a heart began to beat.
************************************************************************
The Mansion of the Lions, Valencia, Spain. Same time.
The mansion was set off to the side, by itself, as if in indication of the owner's paranoid personality. It was a place that seemed to want to keep to itself, that repelled visitors. An aura of ruin and decay lay upon it like the mantle of a ruined cloak. The ruling council of Valencia had twice tried to have it destroyed, but no one would come close enough to the mansion to demolish it. One of the carpenters they'd hired to destroy it had come back and said, " If you fear anything in this world, fear that house. Something is in it, my friends. And it does not want to be disturbed." The council had decided to leave the house alone after that attempt. It stood by itself, surrounded by a thick iron fence over seven foot tall. No houses surrounded it. No one would live anywhere within sight of the thing, so the city simply moved it's development plans elsewhere. The house had an aura of power about it, an aura of some greater, darker place in time, and it simply resisted efforts to change it. It sat, like the center of a malevolent hurricane, or maybe the pupil of a nightmarish eye. The land around it seemed dead, the grass yellow, the shrubs shriveled and dry.
The mansion itself was a uniform gray color, it's former white dulled with the passage of many years. It's blue roof had crumbled and cracked, and the entire right wing had collapsed, giving the house a slouched look. The windows were cracked, the glass broken and the wood frayed. Only the front door, with it's knocker of a fierce lion and a strange keyhole shaped like an anchor, looked in anything like normal condition. The golden lion's head on it seemed alive, it's topaz eyes glittering in the sunlight. No one had been inside the house for two decades; it looked as if it had been deserted for centuries.
Inside, where even spiders would not take up residence, a pulse beat.
************************************************************************
Main Road. Valencia, Spain. Same time.
Ivy stiffened up, stopping dead in the middle of traffic and almost making Siegfried run straight into her. She stopped like a rabbit caught in the eyes of a hawk, her nostrils flaring in and out as her breath quickened. Her eyes widened and her arms trembled. She was in the grip of something, something only she could see. Or maybe it wasn't a sight that stopped her, but a sound.
" Ivy? What is it?" Siegfried said, putting out his hand but stopping before he reached her. " What is it?"
" Don't you hear it?" Ivy said, turning to the south with eyes full of hope and fear. " It's calling me..."
Kilik listened for a moment, and said, " What? What is calling you?"
" Home..." Ivy set off for the south, not looking at where she was going, pushing people out of her way as she walked, heading towards something only she understood. Siegfried hurried after her, with Kilik right behind him.
" Home? What are you talking about? Ivy, snap out of it!" Siegfried yelled. He grabbed her shoulder and swung her around. When she was facing him, she grabbed his shoulders. Her fingers were clamped on him like a vise. He clamped his own as well, holding onto her delicate but strong shoulders.
" Listen to me, Siegfried. This is what I've been searching for. My real father. The truth of my existence..." She took a breath to steady herself. " It's calling me. It wants me to come home..."
Siegfried looked in her eyes, trying to hold her with his own. " Ivy, are you sure about this?"
She merely nodded, an act that required all her self-control. She heard it, a voice saying "This way, this way... home is here. Home, your father, truth... Here! Come unto me!" It was taking all she had to avoid simply running to it, running towards home.
She had no idea how close she was to getting them all killed.
Siegfried nodded towards Ivy. " All right then. Lead the way. I'm right behind you." He let go of her, and she turned back down the road. She walked off, trying to make her way through the crowds as fast as she could. Kilik and Siegfried followed as best they could, losing sight of her as the crowds thickened and finding her as it ebbed. Eventually they reached the southernmost parts of Valencia, where the normal buildings stopped and the land of the Mansion of the Lions began.
On a northern road, Raphael walked into Valencia.
************************************************************************
Mansion of the Lions, Valencia, Spain. Three minutes later.
Siegfried stood before the house's immense gate, staring up at it. He never thought he'd see a place that reminded him of Travens Castle, but this mansion did. The same aura of decay swirled about it, and although it wasn't quite as strong as the aura Thok'ti had produced, it still assaulted the senses. If this was Ivy's home, he hoped she decided to move. The damn place was foul, and that was all there was to it. Even Ivy's wide-eyed enthusiasm had dissipated as they approached the mansion, her quick steps becoming slower as the mansion got closer and closer. Now that they were at it, she had stopped outside it's ruined gate, staring up at it. To her, the entire mansion radiated not foulness but sadness, as of a great thing brought low. It had a fallen state, somehow, a sense of something that had gone too far into the dark to be redeemed.
Kilik, standing behind Siegfried and Ivy, perceived something different from either of them. He was a monk, trained with a monk's senses, and what he saw in the house scared him. It was foul, true, and it was sad. But something else was in the house. The house's aura simply overwhelmed most other emanations from it, but Kilik's discerning power sensed something unholy in the mansion. Something he had sensed before. He knew it, but it danced on the tip of his tongue, retreating every time he thought he had the answer. What was it?
As Kilik watched, Ivy drew a key from one of her packs. The key was shaped like an anchor, with a topaz in the top. She walked forward, holding the key in her right hand, stepping carefully over the ruined gate. She walked to the front door of this ruined place, and gazed sadly at the lion head knocker, a remembrance of better days gone past, when this might have been the house of a great and noble family.
She put the key in the keyhole. The anchor head sunk in all the way, until only the circular end protruded. She turned it. A lock was heard clicking somewhere in the house, then a whirring noise. A great noise, as of many gears shifting all at once, and then the door was opening. The topaz eyes of the lion glittered once more, then dulled as they swung inwards to gaze upon the inside of the house. Ivy stepped forward, all her fears and hopes magnified now, at this final moment...
Above her, hanging from the rafters of the ruined house, something with one great eye watched her.
************************************************************************
Somewhere in Southern Asia. Same time.
Seung Mina sat down on a stump and sighed. Damn. She'd missed him again, although this time not by more than a few days. A week, at most. She'd been hunting Yunsung for some time now, always entering a town after he'd just left... two days, five, and once he'd managed to best her by a full nine days. She knew that he had a headstart, but she hadn't believed he'd been able to do this. Yunsung was traveling very light and very fast. She was having trouble staying even with him, much less catching up. As she stopped to catch her breath, she reluctantly came to the conclusion that Yunsung was a lot tougher than she had supposed. She had always teased him (in her mind it was just some light-hearted fun; she never meant to hurt anyone) in the dojo; this was apparently his revenge.
Of course, he didn't have a huge Zanbatou to carry around all the time, either. Having a big, long weapon was good for a physically weaker fighter like her, but man, it got heavy when you carried it for a while. The Red Thunder was a family heirloom, her favorite weapon, one she'd played with since childhood. It's edge could never hurt a family member, and even at five years old the razor sharp blade was no more dangerous than a bird to her. She'd grown up with this weapon.
Then again, she'd also grown up with the other family heirlooms, and that hadn't stopped her from giving the White Storm to Yunsung, had it? Nooo, it most certainly had not. She hadn't known he'd run off with it, but she still felt responsible. That was the reason why she was after him, to get the White Storm back.
Or at least, part of the reason. The other part was that Yunsung was her friend. She thought. The truth was, she didn't know if anyone had ever reached into Yunsung's heart. He was so cold, so different from the others. She taunted, flirted, and teased the boys in the dojo for fun, but he was the only one who never reacted. He'd only reacted the first time, in the form of a blistering retort. She had been taunting the men in the dojo, just playing around, when she'd seen Yunsung and his partner sparring. She'd come by and teased Yunsung's partner ( a man whose name she couldn't remember; so many of the soldiers in the dojo were just alike, enough so that she couldn't keep track of their names), causing him to stare like a love-sick puppy at her. Yunsung, seeing that sparring was a lost cause at the moment, had leaned against the wall of the dojo, face unemotional, waiting for her to leave. She'd sauntered over to him, showing him a flash of her legs through her dress. He hadn't even blinked. He was new to the dojo at the time, and this was her first sight of him. His red hair, rare in this part of the world, had fascinated her. She thought he was cute, if a bit unemotional.
" Ah, the new guy. And what are you doing here all by yourself?" she'd said, seductively smiling at him.
" Waiting for you to grow up and act like a woman, not a whore," he'd said, dead serious. He'd thrown her so off balance she'd left the dojo, shaken. She had never been responded to like that before. Most men mooned over her, even far older men, and to be told she acted like a prostitute had unnerved her. Ever since then, she'd teased Yunsung, trying to make him react, trying to find out why he of all men didn't care for her. He intrigued her. She began watching his matches, watching him train, and she'd been amazed when he'd won the one award she'd never earned. The award had been given to Yunsung after he'd bested ten opponents all at once. Seung Mina had been knocked out after taking down seven of them, but Yunsung had bested them all. Face already starting to swell from the blows he'd taken, bleeding in several places, he'd nonetheless been able to stand and receive his award, then limp off the training ground for healing. He was incredible.
Seung Mina had found herself wanting him, wanting him far beyond any man she'd ever known. Her father would kill her; Yunsung was eighteen, too young for her. But he seemed so much older. In one of the few conversations they'd had, she'd been stunned to hear he was eighteen. She had thought he was a youthful looking twenty-five, or at least twenty-three. She'd never have guessed he was eighteen.
She'd actually given the White Storm to him to win him over; he was so distant all the time, she thought that a gift might make him come a little closer to her. But he'd just taken it and ran off with it. She wanted to know why.
Sighing, Seung Mina picked up her Zanbatou. She started walking on the dirt road again, towards the north where, unbeknownst to her, Yunsung was about to find a young girl named Talim, a samurai named Mitsurugi, and his purpose in life. Unaware of the winds of change blowing about her, she walked on.
- Next chapter: The town of Wind and the Fall of the House of Lions!
