Virtual War Drome 3: Palace of the Gods

[agoraoptera]

The bone was spreading and-

-And all was suddenly fire and fury, pounding against Agora with an explosive madness, throwing him out of the depression.

Why is it, he thought wryly, that all my opponents seek to burn away my flesh as a starting move?

It was just as well. This way, without any flesh acting as an impediment, Agora would be able to move quicker. Even as the last traces of his prior foe's meat incinerated away- and Agora still did not know that man's name- he landed on his feet and gazed through the ashen smoke, searching for his foe.

There! That man, clad in a swirling black cloak, glaring at him with such great malevolence in his obsidian orbs. I almost feel honoured. His new opponent held no visible weapons, how then had he created such a great explosion? It was just as well that the flesh had taken the bulk of the kinetic damage, and that he was light enough to simply be thrown aside. The bone hadn't spread quite far enough that Agora would want to take the chance. So, were the explosions part of his innate powers? There would be no way to find out, but trial and error. On the other hand, he looked to simply be a man, and a man was susceptible to disease.

"Black-Soul," Agora called out, "What is your name?" I'm not going to make the same mistake as before. I prefer to know whose skin I wear.

[Sicon112]

The fire below him slowly burned out, the heat and light of the flames feeding him back some of the power he had expended, not that he needed it right now. Glancing around at the smoke before him, he scanned for the sight of a silhouette. "Don't tell me that thing was so fragile as to lose just like that..." As if some cosmic entity was responding to his words, the smoke parted before him, and through the split he stared at the skeletal being that faced him. He smirked. "I thought not."

"Black-Soul, what is your name?"

Oh? So the thing could talk, could it. "I don't particularly care what you call me. You could call me Sicon, but then, I would just as easily respond to the name 'Your Demise'." He grinned wickedly. Time for the real fun to begin. His legs bent beneath him, and with a flash of light at his feet, he bounded towards his target at an unnatural speed, propelling himself with a burst of energy below him. In another leap, he would close the distance between them and attack...

...but that leap never came. Uncounted times he had used this maneuver in combat. His body was so used to it he no longer even had to think consciously about it. And yet, this time, as his foot landed on the tarnished and soot-stained bone below him, his vision blurred, and a sudden weakness raced through his body. His leg, unable to hold his weight, collapsed under him as he fell to a knee, body racked by a coughing fit.

Gasping for breath, Sicon's eyes opened and as the bone came into focus below him, he saw it stained with blood. His eyes widening in sudden horrified realization, his mind shot inward, darting through the familiar composition of his body, now riddled with hostile, foreign contaminates. His nerves, he muscles, his organs, they were everywhere. A uncounted types of parasitic bacteria and viruses. How.... how did this happen without me noticing? Then he recalled it, the strangely off feel of the air around him, the ominous presence of the bone growths below him... "Heh.... careless." He gasped out, before coughing once more.

"Heh....Heh heh heh..." Ever so slowly and delicately, he began to chuckle, the sound coming out with a wheeze. Around his kneeling form, wisps of black began to collect. Curling around him and darting in and out of his skin, multiplying every instant. Destroy, destroy destroy DESTROY THE PARASITES! He could feel his power doing its work as the hostile organisms were obliterated, shattered apart by an overload of energy. "Ha ha ha ha! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!" Throwing back his head, Sicon laughed, filling the air with the sound of his glee. Slowly, purposefully, he braced his foot on the ground and stood. For a moment, he stared upward at the sky, silent and unmoving. Then, with the popping of bone, his head fell down, his black eyes staring straight at the skeleton from under his hood and the strands of white hair that fell into his face. He was smirking.

"Nice try."

With a loud crunch, the ground below his feet buckled and collapsed inward, bone dissolving below him in an instant as black tendrils darted up from the small indentation in the earth, swirling around him in a vortex of power, spinning around and around before vanishing into his arm. Then he struck.

He leaped forward, right arm outstretched, and landed in a crouch right at the place where the skeleton had been standing. Bolts of black lightning shot into the ground and, if the skeleton was still nearby, up the lower half of his body as well, and in the next instant, the whole area erupted in flames as everything the lightning had touched was detonated simultaneously.

[agoraoptera]

The man named Sicon leapt forward, ebony lightning crackling along his arm. Agora didn't wait to see the completion of his action, instead twisting away and leaping for all he was worth. If the first attack was anything to go by, this would be as-
The snap and crackle of a conflagration rushing forth, while not as surprising as the first attack, hurt and jerked in its resounding thunderclap. Due to the fact that there was no flesh covering his form, the explosion did not have quite the same impact on him as before, instead passing through him, flickering tongues of fire licking his bones.

Not too bad, he thought. As long as I can stay away from the centre of the blast, let the overpressure catch me and push me away, I ought to be fine. Sicon had shown that his attacks were primarily explosive, though the dead skeleton knew that it was highly likely that his foe had other tricks up his sleeve.

But how had he done it? How had he overcome the plagues? For a moment, it had seemed that his insides were being ripped apart, torn to so much slurry. Then he had done something, something that had seemingly restored him to full strength. If his plagues were useless, this foe would be immensely difficult to overcome. And what of the terror-field? For him to jump right at him, without any effect at all, this was a foe to be feared. At the very least, he had touched the bone..

Agora needed time to think. The man would, presumably, give chase and this place was immense. There had to be ways to defeat him. If there was no way at all, why then, he would have to make one.

[Sicon112]

Sicon reveled in the epicenter of his destruction. Fire flared all around him, and he could feel the immense pressure of the blast slamming into him as he pulled it inward, making it a part of him. Like a tornado of fire, the blast whirled inward and downward, surrounding him as it was absorbed back into his body so that he could make use of it once more. He knew his enemy had already been knocked back by the blast, and further allowing the wave to expand would deal no appreciable damage, only serve to carry more of his used power beyond his reach.

He uses his resiliency and lack of vitals to survive while his plague breaks his enemies down bit by bit. Tch. That's a pain, and not even very fun. As the tornado vanished around him with a final flash, he could already feel the hostile presence invading his body, and lashed out with his mind once more, ripping apart the invading infections before they could get a foothold. And when I got close... what was that? It was like something trying to rip into my skull... Whatever it was, his mental discipline had managed to deflect it, but only for the second or so he had been in contact. He didn't think he would be able to stay very close for very long. His eyebrow twitched as pain shot through his chest at his breath. The dizziness was fading as the sudden violent fever wore off, but the damage that some of the other infections had done was still there. He could heal from this, now that he had cured himself, but it would take time outside of the battle. Fine. No more playing.

As the skeleton turned to flee, the smoke cloud before Sicon bent outward around him, wisps of the thick black cloud trailing behind him as he emerged from the depths of his destruction, the tiny lightning bolts of his power flickering back and forth between them. Then, with an earth shaking crash, boulders, chunks of the ground catapulted high into the air by his second blast began to rain down around them. However, Sicon did not hesitate as he strode forward towards his target. "You won't be going anywhere except hell." His fingers snapped as lightning shot across the ground. "Let me give you a preview."

With a roar, a boulder that had landed right next to the skeletal figure detonated, the wave of fire timed with the intention of hurling the target into a second boulder ten feet away with enough force to easily shatter bone. Not good enough. His eyes narrowed and became blacker still, if that was possible, as he began to look into a world beyond sight. He hissed, his chest hurt too much yet to gasp, as he sighted what he was hoping not to see. What stood before him around the form of his target was not something that could be described to human minds. The closest word to convey the sight was death. However, even that does not convey the full meaning. The man before Sicon was like him in a way, an avatar of a concept. That death around him was the essence of the word, the idea, the concept of a slow, painful demise as your body was eaten away by uncounted millions of tiny creatures, to small for the eye to see. This was no longer a game to the other concept bearer. The man before him was far more advanced in his control of the concept that he carried, if he had ever been a man in the first place, however, his was merely a subset of the many types of death. Sicon carried a much more potent and wide concept. The question was, would that be enough to cover for his lack of ability? I'll make it work. The toe of his boot tapped the ground once more, and another hyper-concentrated explosion tore from the second rock, intended to hurl the target into yet another hard surface. If he couldn't burn him, then he would just systematically break him like an old toy.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

With each approaching footfall, another explosion tore the landscape apart further, each blast meant to send the target flying into rubble or another shockwave. It no longer mattered whether the target had avoided the first attack, as each new one homed in on his location, and with each new blast, the land was shattered into more rubble on which the skeleton could shatter, and more shockwaves darted through the air, slamming into each other and rebounding only to strike another wall of flame.

Pillars of fire rose ever higher around him as Sicon strode into the center of the destruction. Kicking aside a bit of charred bone into another blast, Sicon's eyes narrowed. Everywhere he goes, that bone follows. It comes from him then. I wonder what happens if I separate it from him? Once more, he grinned wickedly, then, with a roar of exertion, all the power he had just absorbed flashed out once more from his feet hurling everything in the area high into the air, as he allowed himself to fly upward along with the debris. Hurtling out of the flames at the summit of the blast he came, black cloak flaring around him as sunlight flashed across the shining metal of his Soulblade as he yanked it out of it's scabbard and scanned the area for his target, flying amidst the rubble.

(Hey, agora, you up for a duel across midair flying rocks?)

[agoraoptera]

This was getting tiresome, Agora decided. Explosions everywhere, making the ground erupt like a lanced boil, causing him to lose his balance more than once. And then the man had launched them both up into the air, throwing them both around like a ragdoll. The whimsical nature of the attack irritated him slightly.

Then all thoughts of irritation departed from his mind as Sicon came soaring out of the dust and debris with a huge blade that looked almost too black to be real. It would not do, it simply would not do if he wanted to engage in close combat. Using the flying rocks as stepping stones, he launched himself further upwards and away from his foe, simultaneously seeding the bone growths unintentionally.

As he did so, Agora tore off a rib and jabbed it into each rock. It hindered him not in the least for, even up here, with the bones spreading on the debris and the debris in the first place being already tainted with bone, he could still regrow what he needed. Looking about for a goal, trying to keep track of the chasing man, Agora caught sight of a door in the distance. This room, while large, was but one room in presumably a million. The size might work to his advantage, but eventually the lack of options meant that Agora could only run and running was yet a tiresome act. Mentally, at least. Boredom was not something he could overcome easily.

Behind him, Sicon came out of the dust clouds, grinning like Agora's own skull, macabre and maniacal, Soulblade lifted high.

[Sicon112]

There!

Above him, he saw the calcified growths covering various chunks of rubble, and his eyes darted along their path, which lead, just as he expected, straight to his target. Leaping from rock to rock, he dashed forward, stopping for a second to disintegrate and absorb a bone-covered bit of stone flying downward at his head, kicked out of place by the skeleton. His eyes blurred from stone to stone as pathways formed and collapsed impossibly fast before him. His Eye for Destruction showed him every trajectory, and in the eyes of his mind everything fell into line. Darting forward and upward, he rebounded across the calcified rubble already falling, disintegrating it as he kicked off.

Four to go. He landed on the side of one rock, then flipped away before the force of his momentum faded and he slipped off. Three. His left hand darted out and grabbed a protruding bone, swinging himself up and away towards his next step. Two! He hit feet first on the bottom of a slab of dirt that was not quite fully consumed yet. The force of his landing caused the platform to crack as it spun in midair, then he launched down and forward as it shattered behind him, aiming for a platform just below his enemy. However, right as he landed, the skeletal figure jumped once more, and the platform he was on snapped in half, one piece careening down to hit his landing place, knocking it out of alignment. Crap! Too far!

In a last-ditch attempt to reach his opponent, Sicon detonated the rock on which he stood, launching himself upward in a pillar of flames and smoke. The black cloud parted before him, and he came hurtling out, surrounded by a halo of flames, just as his opponent turned to face him. "Too slow!" Sicon was already aware that he could only afford moments this close to his fellow concept bearer, but that was a moot point anyway, for he wouldn't be able to reach the skeleton's current perch, even with his boost. However, his Soulblade could.

Metal covered in streaks of black lightning swung upward, slashing with a speed faster than the human eye could follow, cutting upwards through where the front of his opponent's ribcage was. Dodging the strike would be difficult, completely impossible unless the avatar of death could move at a level above that of a human, due to his opponent's current downward momentum, which would make him collide with the upward striking blade wielded by Sicon, who was also moving up, almost instantaneously. Blocking might have been a possibility, if it were a normal blade, but this blade was a construct of Sicon's soul. Attempting to stop it with physical force was useless. There was no "equal and opposite reaction" to be seen on this blade, as the force opposing its movement would merely be consumed.

However, a mere upward slash, even an unstoppable one, would deal very little damage to the skeleton, something Sicon already realized. That was why the tip, as it passed along its arc, left a thin black trail behind it. There was a momentary crackle, and the line expanded into a blinding light, meant to explode from within his opponent's pelvis, ribcage, and skull, destroying them completely and shattering his legs into thousands of tiny fragments.

Between the moment his enemy had realized he was flying out of the smoke towards him and the completion of this slash, less than a second had elapsed.

The blast sent Sicon flying downward at an increased velocity, which he only accelerated by crashing through some rubble and detonating it in his wake. As flaming debris rained down around him, he landed with supernatural lightness, due to siphoning off the force of his landing, in a crouch about fifty meters from the door, as anything that remained of his enemy was catapulted towards the wall near the archway.

[agoraoptera]

The explosions made for interesting fireworks, Agora had to admit as he observed the man prance around and cut at the rock where he had been maybe six or so seconds ago. A spectacular explosion, to be sure, very majestic. He turned away, wondering if the man would sense his departure or think that he had been destroyed. After all, he had..

Except that when Agora had thrown out so many of his ribs, at least one of them was blown far, far away from the fight by the force of the concussive explosions. The rib, charred as it was, was still a part of him and so when his skeleton had been obliterated, the rib- having landed oh so coincidentally by the still-spreading bone- became the focus of his reconstitution.

"An unnatural life," Agora shook his head, "But I'll take it." He turned to leave.

And then turned right back again when one enormous resounding explosion, far greater than any of the prior combustions. It was so strong that even the skeleton's magical eyes- for how else would he be able to see?- were blinded for a moment in the brilliance, despite his distance from the epicentre of the explosion. When his sight and hearing returned to him, Agora saw that the entire floor had been utterly obliterated. leaving an enormous crater, maybe two kilometres or more in radius where he had been. The door where Agora had been heading to, the wall, everything was gone. His foe, if he still somehow managed to survive, was probably somewhere at the bottom of the debris. Agora leaned over to see if he could ascertain how deep it was. But.. whatever illumination came from the roof above was lacking, at least whatever illumination that still existed. It was an inky black abyss.

What in the world had happened? Crouching there at the edge, looking for any possible causes, he realised that there was a strange pungent scent in the air. It was.. charred beef? More than that. It was some sort of combustible gas, Agora realised. Fuel or some such. Had that entire section of the floor beneath them have been filled with flammable gas? If so, then that would have explained the enormous eruption. Just as well he was on the other side of the room now. Funny how it all fell into place.

Agora opened the door directly opposite the first, over ten kilometres apart.

[Sicon112]

Sicon wasn't worried about the temperature of the fireball he had just been engulfed in. That didn't bother him in the least. He had created much worse. What was bothering him was the fact that he was currently on one knee, bracing himself on his Soulblade which he had stabbed into the ground to support himself, and coughing out blood. Whatever that first infection had done, it had damaged part of his lungs. The attack had hit at the same time as the secondary explosion, an he had been unable to entirely block the oncoming shockwave, which had sent him flying through the flames a significant distance. However, he had managed to get enough time to land properly between coughing fits.

Due to the short time of exposure during his most recent attack, Sicon had managed to purge the last round of infection from his system before it could do much damage, but the reminder of his earlier carelessness remained. It was a minute or so before he stood once again and then began to scan the area, sliding his sword back into its sheath. The skeleton's concept was no longer actively assaulting him. Dead, or out of range then. Was his opponent attempting to hide? From what Sicon had seen before this point, the avatar of death had no real attack power aside from his plagues, so that was likely, if he was still alive. Sicon searched more closely as he wandered through the rubble. Just as he was about to give up, his eyes crossed a tiny bit of power left behind in the wake of the skeleton, brought to Sicon's attention due to his innate concept detection. And once more, it's time to hunt. He won't escape twice.

Sicon strode over the edge of the crater, and found himself before a new doorway. He could see the traces of his opponent's concept clearly now. A short distance on the other side of the door and he would once more be within range. Narrowing his eyes and noting once more that it was inexplicably impossible to see the room on the other side before he entered, Sicon stepped through, already searching the area for his enemy.

[agoraoptera]

As soon as he stepped in, Agora began to feel strangely.. quiet. Empty, as it were. Then he realised what the sensation was; the souls that were a never-ending melodiously discordant scream were silent. For the first time since the start of his wretched existence, he could not hear anything.

No, it was not entirely silent. There was a strange humming coming from an odd contraption, all brass metal and vaguely spherical. From one end protruded a long conveyor belt on which lay an uncountable collection of glass jars of varying sizes, each shining ever so slightly. Abruptly, the humming grew slightly and the conveyor belt began to move. From the Machine came newly-manufactured jars, glowing with a painful brilliance unlike the pale light of the previous containers.

There was something strange about all this. Agora approached the first of the new jars, peering intently at it and he saw-

-Agora staring back out at him from within, a tormented expression. What was this? This was the old him, when he was still human. The first soul he had ever claimed, when he had separated mind and soul, leading to this unnatural existence. The second jar's occupant had a face twisted in an equally grotesque manner. His second victim. In fact, he realised as the conveyor belt kept moving and the Machine kept churning out jars, they were all the souls he had accumulated in his entire existence. The conveyor belt began to pick up speed and the humming became growling and suddenly screaming as tens of souls were churned out by the second, each one in absolute pain. Finally, the Machine abruptly stopped and the final jar emerged, within his final foe.

The Machine had taken all the souls he had contained, Agora realised belatedly, had automatically sought out souls and drew them into itself instantaneously within the boundaries of the room. But now the sweet shrieking of his victims filled the entire bone-laced room as they experienced a new torment, one of glassy confinement.

His thoughts cut away when he heard the harsh footfall of his manic opponent. Sicon.

[Sicon112]

The moment his feet made contact with the floor of the room, Sicon felt the tugging sensation clamp down on his mind. Parts of his body began to ache as something was yanked on. That was when the seal on his power began sending off warning signals on his mind. The hell?

The floor rocked like the deck of a ship in a typhoon as cracks spread across it like lightning through the clouds, immense clouds of transcendent black power pouring out, as Sicon let out a shout of surprise. A pillar of black energy formed around him, and torrents of black lightning darted here and there across the room as chunks of the roof crumbled beneath the world-shaking onslaught. Sicon's body lit up with pain, as though something was tearing it apart. Black shadows twisted and whirled behind him, first formless, but ever so slowly melding together into an almost recognizable shape. The seal is breaking! Gotta get out of here NOW!

Slamming his hands into the floor with enough force to shatter the stone and embed them in the previously smooth surface, Sicon lashed out with his power, amplified a thousandfold as his soul was partially separated from his mortal flesh. If he had been aiming it, he perhaps could have annihilated everything in the room in an instant, but if it came into contact with the machine, he would almost surely be consumed. He wasn't entirely sure what was causing the effect, as he had only caught a glimpse of the machine, but he could feel where his mind was being pulled to, and so he struck out and downwards, shattering the floor of the room, and plunging himself and his opponent into the darkness below.

Sicon didn't know what awaited him below, but with the imminent threat of being torn from his body, the only thing stabilizing his power, he didn't really feel like staying in the previous room either. Luckily, the moment he passed through where the floor was, the strange pull suddenly released him, and his out of control power once more fell into his grasp.

That was when he caught a glimpse of bone through the cloud of flying debris. No more screwing around. As if agreeing with him, he felt pain shoot through his lungs once more. Too much damage had been done to him in that first moment to not take this seriously any more. I'm finishing this, and I'm doing it NOW!

Debris everywhere exploded with a brilliant white light as the pitch black energy contained within the rubble that it had latched onto after escaping the machine's influence responded to the determination of its master. The chunk of floor that Sicon had embedded his fists into detonated a second later, freeing him and launching him towards where his opponent was, flying through a cloud of explosions with no apparent way to change direction. Drawing his sword mid-flight, Sicon slashed forward as the pitch black lightning flashing across his blade resolved into a tiny ball at the point. The moment the sword hit a target, that lightning would dart across the surface of the object in an instant, then detonate the entire thing from within. With no physical objects to push off of, and with the shockwaves from the detonations of a moment before taken into Sicon's calculations, dodging would be extraordinarily difficult.

(Summary: Dropped the entire floor out of the room, leaving the machine unharmed. I then proceeded to detonate all the chunks of falling floor as we fell towards the next room below, then fly at you with my sword. Your move.)

[Lordxana0]

Drome reset. Battle Canceled. Both characters live.