Into the Eye of the Dragon

Into the Eye of the Dragon

Postby Rattrap » Thu Sep 25, 2003 4:27 pm

Damien had seen the posters, had heard the town criers. The drow Audmathus -- the individual the man had been seeking for far too long -- was set up to die. To. Die. To think, that one of his reputation could simply be...'killed'. It was a blow to Damien's idea of the individual, but not so much not to know what he had to do.

Well, not so much what he had to do, but want he wanted. The drow would go free -- Damien wouldn't let some petty guards slay quite possibly the only worthy opponent to be found in Myrkentown. Sure, there are plenty of would-be opponents everywhere, especially around that Broken Dagger...everybody hiding or displaying blades, pretending they have mastery over some chump skill or another. But that's just what those people were; chumps.

But, Damien had to be honest with himself. This 'Audmathus' could very well be just a chump himself. It wouldn't take much to best the best of Myrkentown.

Everything was told to him by those posters. The place, the time. Only a minimum of scouting was needed before he figured it to be all too easy. And thus, he waited.

[line][/line]

So the time came, finally. The guards weren't hard to bypass; others had already beat him to the rooftops, which had caused the guards to sweep them clean. That wasn't too much to handle; all Damien did was wait until they were done before scaling straight up the face of the building, window ledge by window ledge.

On the top, there was one left over. The shadow demon stood, facing away from Damien, towards the obvious direction that much of the crowd were locked onto as well. Audmathus, being wheeled in to lose his head. And that captain be damned, he didn't make his speeches long enough.

It healed the drow's reputation a little when Damien spotted the mischief already beginning, and the shadow demon provided no attempt to stop the man's plan, having already leapt clear off the roof, probably to battle the drow. The guillotine blade was already dropping, the crossbow was already charged, and the rest was all reflexive luck.

...which proved perfectly on target, as the large, magically conjured shard of simple rock blasted and destroyed the entire guillotine stand with its sheer momentum.

Audmathus was freed, people were screaming, swords were being hurled, guards were in a flurry...the chaos had begun.

Damien rotated the crystal on the crossbow -- such a wonderful find, it was. Cost him half a fortune, but it was well worth it. The logistics were simple -- the crystal had four positions, powering different effects. Elemental in styles, ranging from fire to water to earth to lightning. Fire had to definitely be Damien's favorite -- the water and earth settings could shoot out anything from just a plain cold blast of water to a deadly shard of ice, whereas the earth setting did everything from dirt to obsidian. When he wanted results, sometimes chancing on dirt wasn't smart.

The setting went to fire, and the string was drawn back -- it charged the weapon more than anything else, intensifying and multiplying the power of the projectile. Embers began to form, swirling in formation, ahead of the weapon, joining together to form a central goblet of liquid fire, which upon completion launched at the drow and his newfound friends.

Damien didn't have time enough to figure out a new aim; the bolt slammed through his calf before he even noticed the shooter, and he fell backwards in surprise.

...back over the highest vertex of the roof, where he could lay momentarily without fear of extra bolts. Damien pinned his leg down with the other, and ripped the bolt the rest of the way through his calf, figuring the guiding 'wings' would hurt less than the spiked head of the bolt.

The wound bled profusely, but Damien paid no attention to it. He was surprised, a little, by how much the pain seemed distant to him. Almost happening to someone else...ignorable, for the time being. But the fact that his leg refused to support his weight was not.

So Damien crawled back over that vertex with the crossbow newly charged on the earth setting, and fired upon the crowd once more. To his fears' credit, a large mound of dirt rained onto the crowd, not even compact enough to serve as a decent bludgeon. The string was pulled back again, but nothing else would fly from the crossbow.

It was out of energy, already, it seemed. One could only assume such charged shots would drain it faster than the normal, lower powered ones, but Damien hadn't expected it to lose all its power that fast. Oh well. It was then he noticed the black webs eating away at his vision, and the pain became all the more distant.

It wasn't the first time Damien had experienced this, and something at the back of his mind cried out with sudden realization of what happened last time.

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Into the Eye of the Dragon Pt. 2

Postby Rattrap » Fri Sep 26, 2003 12:05 pm

Damien had encountered the dragon by the lake. It was quite large, although it didn't match the size of Big Red...but there it was, and Damien didn't know about Big Red then. He had his trusty ranseur, and he had the will for riches. So he stared the dragon down on that beach, overconfident of his abilities.

The dragon hadn't even blinked before the attack, giving him no warning. The tail, so large, so very pink, flew out and slammed against Damien's whole body. Instantly, he could feel his ribs give away and what could and probably were his organs bursting from the sheer force, as his torso was essentially obliterated.

Funny, he didn't remember that before. In fact, it was just to this point that Damien began to realize this was a memory, a dream. Yet he could do nothing to stop it, save for watch himself take that plunge into the water as he had, oh so long ago.

The water was frigid, but he had lost feeling quickly, and his vision had ebbed away with black cobwebs.

Here, everything seemed to stop. It was familiar, yet...still odd. He could feel there was another presence. Something in the dark nothingness that he apparently had become, something beckoning to him. There was no memory there. It was lost to him. But, suddenly, he was back in the water, swimming to the surface. There was still pain, but it seemed...distant, now. While his body didn't want to respond correctly, the will was there, and he trekked back out onto the beach to face the dragon once more.

"...Prove to me that letting you keep your life was not a mistake."



Damien woke up, eyes popping calmly open to take in the sunlight drifting through the leaves of the tree he was sleeping against. He shifted his leg, examining the wound the crossbolt had made. The evidence was still there, but it had healed amazingly quick.

Damien wondered about what the dragon had said...that pink dragon that the Twisted Trio had identified as Arkadielous, but Damien had doubts about that. He knew the legend like anyone else, but he had to doubt there was only one pink dragon in existance. Not only that, there were known to be those that could change color at will...in fact, Damien figured Arkadielous was probably one of those, most commonly spotted as pink.

But whatever the case was...Damien thought about the words spoken by that dragon, and eventually he came down to the possibility that perhaps he hadn't let him keep his life, after all.

But that didn't make any sense. Yet...neither did waking up twice from fatal instances. Stranger things had happened...right?

...regardless, it didn't change his course. There was a freed felon to find and battle, and Damien hoped the drow wouldn't stay in hiding after such a show.
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Damien's End

Postby Rattrap » Tue Aug 10, 2004 11:14 am

Damien and the dark man Jack met in the forest, purely by accident. The sun was high, giving little angle to the plentiful, but hardly concealing shadows that made up their environment. A perfectly nice day for a picnic, one could say. Or a hike. Many things; yet their meeting was considerably far from nice.

The moment Jack laid eyes on the ranseur-weilding other, the darkness inside was obvious. His stride stopped short, watching the man from behind black dead locks. Waiting.

Damien took a moment longer to notice the other, glancing absently at the dark man before continuing on. It was when, all of a sudden, Damien was filled with a strange urge to kill the dark man when he took the second look. His brow furrowed at mild confusion in the sudden emotion; it was strangely not his own, even if it was in his nature. But, it only lasted a moment before he gave way to it, readying his six-foot polearm.


"Well, chump, it looks like this is your unlucky day. I hope yer ready fer a fight, 'cause you're about to get one."

Jack didn't give a response other than removing his well-kept white linen shirt, draping it over a nearby branch. His dark oily skin gleamed dully in the indirect lighting. He already knew more about recent events in Damien's life than he himself did; but the details hardly mattered as the short man polevaulted at Jack.

Damien had always been a fighter, and a good one; he'd taken on bands of orcs, dragons, guardsfolk - and scarce a scar to tell of it. The ranseur had always been his faithful companion; now it was spearheading towards Jack with Damien's light weight behind it. What happened was what he least expected, by far.

Jack spun away, hand backhanding the ranseur's three spikes just to the side to plummet into the ground; before it could get that far, his other hand was latched and the weapon was used for leverage as the first spike pierced the ground; Jack's body curled upwards, driving one foot up at Damien, knocking him clear of his own weapon. The curl developed into a flip and the hand never let go of the weapon, wrenching it from the ground and spinning it around; the blunt end slammed into the short man only a moment's time airborn, launching him into a nearby tree. Jack dropped neatly to his feet; Damien dropped from his own vertical landing point on the side of the tree.
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Postby Rattrap » Wed Aug 11, 2004 12:18 pm

Damien's first reaction after the grimace was sheer and simple surprise; he'd fought with Pharris, with Audmathus. In a battle royale of sorts, even, everybody with a vendetta or goal, it seemed. But not Damien; he threw himself into that fight for the simple sake of fighting.

...and they were all amazingly fast. That's what had made it so entertaining. But this...this was rediculous. Two heartbeats had passed since he took to the air.

Jack spun the ranseur and tossed it aside, where it stuck into the ground as Dante would find it some days later. His gaze never left Damien, who picked himself back up and rubbed his jaw, where the initial blow had struck him.


"Well. I wasn't expecting it, I'll give you that."

Damien tore the crossbow from his belt and aimed at the dark man's chest, not bothering to give the magically enhanced crystal any time to charge. A firebolt was released without hesitation and Jack was hurling himself backwards to avoid it, curling out his back. Inertia protested, but Jack slipped under the bolt, almost falling onto his back if not for his quick stabilizing hand. No rest, though, as Damien was already upon him.

He had drawn his shortsword and swiped at the half-downed dark man, who kicked off from his awkward balance and pivoted almost entirely on the one balancing hand which was soon joined by the other, pushing away from the ground entirely; he'd have landed facing Damien if not for the fireball that struck him squarely in the gut before his toes reached the ground. The force suceeded in bringing him onto his back. A couple more heartbeats passed.


"...but now it's just time to die."

It was hard to tell what extent the fireball had hurt Jack; his skin was already virtually black and there wasn't time to really look. Damien was once again over Jack, but with a different result. The dark man's foot hooked Damien's and kicked it up. The short man rocked a bit, but would've been fine if not for the dark man's quick move into a crouch where his foot was grappled and then the stand which tore Damien into the air, upside down. Once standing, holding the other man upside down facing away, Jack wrapped his leg under Damien's arm across his neck and buckled, driving their combined weights into the shorter combatant's neck and spine. It was an interesting looking pile-driver, and several satisfying snaps gave proof to its effectiveness. A moment later, Damien's weapons hit the ground.

Jack untangled himself and stood over the other. Damien blinked a few times, finding it awfully hard to breathe. He was pretty sure he was dead or dying, as he couldn't move his limbs anymore.

Jack spoke calmly:
"Tell your master that Ye Xannon is coming."

A blade materialized in the dark man's hand, curiously enough. It almost looked to be made of light, except it shed none. It shimmered, as well, like looking at something in the distance on a hot day. Over all, it just didn't seem to actually be all there; certainly not dangerous looking, although if only because Jack was weilding it might say otherwise.

Suffice to say, it hurt a whole hell of a lot as the dark man drove it into Damien's chest, whose gaze burned too bright a white before oblivion and something darker took him.
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