Brendon was barely conscious as Furlok placed him down on the stone bed.
Everything burned, inside and out, and his will to even fight off his own death was weakening as well from the mental image of Valtina-the girl he'd been ready to ask to be moirales-attempting to kill him.
He didn't even know where he was, only that he was laying on stone. Furlok had taken him out of her Sketch modus when she found his quest bed, getting directions from some of the ghostly consorts on his land.
Now that he was on the bed that Jeff had confirmed would return him to full health when he died, she was actually getting a bit annoyed that he still wasn't dead. His powers had an internal life support system, not healing him so much as just keeping him alive despite the damage to his body.
The only thing Furlok could think to do was.. Finished the job. She drew her Brushware, slashing at his heart to push him passed the brink of death. His powers were still new to him, and couldn't keep going any longer without training. They shut down; and so did Brendon's entire body.
There was silence, no sounds other than the skittering of monsters across the fleshy ground as they approached Furlok and the quest bed.
There was a single, horrible moment where Furlok wondered if Jeff had been wrong, and she'd just killed her kismesis permanently. Thankfully Brendon ascended just ast the teal blood's eyes began to water.
She dried her eyes quickly, not wanting him to see her with anything approximating tears in her eyes when he came back down. Brendon's body was no longer damaged, completely healed. Then Furlok saw what Brendon was now wearing, and suddenly her eyes started watering for a completely different reason.
With no idea what was going on, Brendon wasn't sure why Furlok was doubled over laughing on the ground in front of him, until he looked down and saw his god tier outfit. The Prince class outfit had a cape with a hood, and a shirt with its aspect symbol on it.
By itself, that was fine. Less fine were the fingerless gloves that went up to his elbows, even less fine were the shorts that stopped just above his knees, baggy like a pair of what Brendon believed were called 'bloomers', leaving the majority of his legs on display.
And while again this could be tolerated-Brendon didn't see much wrong with his legs-the high heels were the deal breaker. High heels had been originally made for men, sure, but that time was long ago and Brendon didn't much care for the look.
The entire outfit was two shades of dark green, the symbol on his chest a jet black, semi spiked half skull; the Doom symbol. Brendon thought that the outfit would be so much better if the heels were replaced with boots, the shorts with almost anything.
No sooner had he thought this did the outfit shift to match what he was picturing, the heels vanishing into a pair of boots, the bloomers becoming a respectable pair of pants. Furlok seemed disappointed by this, her ruckus laughter dying down.
"No, change it back, I didn't get any pictures." Furlok demanded.
Brendon rolled his eyes, "Take a picture of this." he said, using his wallet modus to take the entire outfit off all at once, storing it in an inventory card.
He placed it and the Boxcar Buffer into an alchemizer, combining the two; boosting the stats of the outfit and giving it a more mafioso look like keeping the Doom aspect look. This done, he equipped the outfit, dubbed the Don of Doom's Royal Robes.
Furlok had indeed taken several pictures of Brendon's naked form while he'd been occupied with this, but Brendon suspected these were more for her own personal use.
"Alright, I'm changed, and not dead, what's happening and what now?" He asked.
"Valtina iced you," Furlok said, "I say our next course of action is returning the favor." Furlok said with a smirk. Whatever revenge they had planned was put on hold by the small army of monsters that Furlok's mad dash to Brendon's quest bed had drawn.
Brendon took out his shot gun and took aim, preparing to see what a god tier prince of doom could do. He fired into the hoard of monsters, his aspect increasing the power of the attack. A cluster of imps were all killed in a single shot, the ogre weakened nearly to the point of death already.
Prince is the Destroyer, Brendon recalled reading on Aspico's chat page, They destroy their aspect. Doom is the aspect of destruction, devastation, death, sacrifice, and rules.
'Prince of Doom,' Brendon thought as he switched to his axe, charging the monsters, 'Destroyer of destruction and breaker of rules.'
These monsters were certainly destructive, and it seemed that was the only justification his powers needed to wipe the them off the face of the planet. But even as he started to carve through the beasts savagely, he was already thinking of how else his powers could be used.
'Breaker of rules,' 'destroyer of sacrifice.'
Each of those spirits in the towns on LoFaM, all of them had sacrificed themselves, given their lives to fight the denizen, becoming the spirits that now populated the land.
Maybe.. Maybe there was something he could do about that…
"So you've just been adventuring across this place all this time?" Java asked.
She and Arvis had been exploring LoBaV. She'd tried to help him fight whenever monsters appeared to fight them, but she couldn't help but notice that even his imps were stronger than all the monsters on her own.
Every threat on Arrvis' land seemed stronger and more dangerous than anything Java had had to deal with. If she didn't have her new god tier flight and Breath powers, she was pretty sure she'd be useless.
Arvis on the other hand was hook-shotting around the place, cutting through monsters with his hook swords and barely breaking a sweat. And all without any powers no less. Java several times almost forgot what she was there to do, and whenever she did it, taking a little bit of Arvis' natural freedom and skill with each sudden breath, she felt guilty.
She wondered why she had to be the one who'd come into the game with the powers to steal the freedom from others; especially when she couldn't actually do anything with it afterwards.
She supposed in passing that she might be thinking of her powers in the wrong way, but she didn't have any time to think about it. She had to focus on the task a hand: weakening the enemy, and whether she liked it or not, Arvis was the enemy right now.
Arvis nodded,"Yeah, the place is pretty intense. Can't even go into the towns without the consorts chasing you out of the place." He explained.
Java wondered on this, "Are you sure?" She asked.
"What do you mean?" Arvis asked her.
"Well, on my land, the consorts weren't enemies or anything, they needed help from me. Maybe yours need help in some way to."
Arvis chuckled at this, "Only thing they need is a kick in the ass. They hate everything, me included." He paused, "Well, not hate so much. When I went in the first time, it seemed more like everyone was afraid of everyone else. They didn't trust each other, and they weren't willing to risk giving me a chance. Just don't know how to handle people I guess."
Java snorted, "Well then you're the perfect person to help them!"
"What do you mean?" Arvis asked, not sure what she meant.
"Before the game you were like, the life of the party. We were only, what, your third friend group? Of six? You could connections with people who no one else could, and I guess that makes sense since your a Blood player.
"I read Aspico's chart of the aspects, and the Blood aspect is supposed to have a lot to do with connecting to others. My land's challenge had a lot to do with flight and freedom, Breath player stuff.
"Your land is probably just waiting for you to put those people meeting skills to good use and get all the consorts to trust each other again. Maybe that's what'll let you deal with the Denizen, not sure, Lurabo wasn't exactly specific about what they were."
Java mentally kicked herself, trying to make herself stop talking. She was on an infiltration mission to drain Arvis of his power, not an inspiration mission to power him up. She couldn't help herself though, she didn't like being a spy, Rogue or not, she just wanted to help Arvis, not hurt him.
But… if she ended up ruining the session for everyone because she didn't have the nerve to do what needed to be done, it'd be worse than anything she was doing to Arvis right now. He'd forgive her when it was over, he had to, he would understand what she was doing.
She took a breath, taking in more of Arvis' freedom with her as she did, and kept going. Arvis didn't notice the faint blue mist leaving his body and going to Java, too deep in thought about what she had said to him.
It'd been so long in the game now that Arvis had completely forgotten all the stories he'd told her and the others about his 'friends', an army of friends that only existed in his mind so he could tell the few that actually existed he was more important than he actually was.
For a split second, he considered telling the truth about it. All the time he'd spent alone, and now the closeness with a girl as wonderful as Java, had him feeling that constantly avoiding other people like he'd been doing up to now wasn't the right way to go about his life. She was right, he was supposed to be the session's Blood player after all.
But, as the blue mists of his personal liberation left his body, whatever confidence he'd built up over the course of his journey left as well, leaving him too frightened of how she and the others would react to learning of his lies.
He shuddered, not knowing why. Java did, and she coughed, casting the blue smoke to the winds around them, losing it forever.
"Maybe.. I did know a lot of antisocial people before the game started," Arvis said, digging further into his former lies, "Weren't easy, but I got around it and got pretty good with them. But.. I'm not sure it'll work here."
"Why?" Java asked, though she was growing retroactively glad that he wasn't going to try entering the towns, not wanting him to get inside only to learn that she'd stolen all of his thunder.
"Because.. I.. don't think I could really get into the whole connecting and making new friends things right now," Arvis said, "I mean, I lost a *lot* of friends when this game started and the world ended, couldn't save any of them, and I'm pretty torn up about that."
"Oh, yeah that makes sense." Java said.
If she were thinking more deeply about it she'd have been able to notice how not torn up about it Arvis sounded, but she was more focused on her mission now, not wanting to let herself slow down and potentially give up on the mission too soon.
Patior was quite fond of the outfit he'd received through his ascension.
It was a fairly simple, robe like outfit with a hood, its color scheme a bluish green. Perhaps it was just the indigo blue wings that he'd grown during the ascension that he was fond of, and the power of flight that it brought.
Perhaps it was just the extra powers his mind had gotten.
As a god tier Mage of Mind, his focus and logical reasoning had been sharpened. At least, he told themself they had been to keep himself on track.
His Process ability made it so obvious that no matter if Valtina was seen in the act or not, Furlok would attack someone on his team out of revenge. He flew through the water raining down on him towards the gate to Valtina's land. It made the most sense to start there.
He took a position a ways away from the gate that Valtina had come through, taking aim with his sniper rifle.
If anyone else came through, it would only take him one shot to stop them. He was patient, and waited diligently. He didn't think much about anything during this time, worried he would begin thinking illogically and have second thoughts about what he was doing.
He needed to focus. He'd Already started to second guess his previous decisions leading up to this point, emotions starting to gum up the works of his logical decisions.
He refused to believe that he'd been wrong up to this point. He was the class of active knowledge gathering, and the aspect of mental power. He was capable of being wrong. Just as his willpower began to break though, he saw the flash form the gate as someone came through.
Sure enough, it was Furlok.
Patior fired immediately, the bullet sailing through the air. It was a combination of teal blooded troll's natural senses and her space player nature that allowed Furlok to turn around and raise her hand to catch the bullet. It was entirely Thief of Space powers that saved her life however.
The moment the bullet reached her skin, it stopped dead and fell straight down, all of its momentum and speed gone, robbed by Furlok.
Patior's eyes widen as he realized he'd been foolish to not factor in her having build up powers of her own. This was the most powerful successful use of her class and aspect powers that she'd been able to muster this far, and Furlok decided to use the increase in velocity she'd just gained.
She kicked off the ground, rocketing at exactly the same speed of the sniper bullet, appearing in front of Patior and slamming her fist into his jaw with just under it.
She held back only slightly, not wanting to actually kill him.
The sniper force punch sent Patior several feet back, unconscious. Furlok shook the heat off of her hand, then picked the indigo blood up from the ground and threw him into the nearest gate, returning him to his own land.
Brendon came over to her quickly, having discovered the god tier flight power. It made the travel much easier. "What was that?" Brendon asked."
"Don't worry about it," Furlok said, "We need to find your moirale and kill her. Then you two can have sloppy palerom makeouts or whatever it is that Moirales do." She said, Brendon rolling his eyes to hide his blushing.
He wanted to try talking to Valtina rather than just off her like Furlok was saying, but if they could find her quest bed, they would definitely have to kill her; for entirely wholesome reasons though.
