Chronicles of The Omniverse Archived Westeria City: Government Center

as written by Ronin

Were there civilians milling directly behind Pariah when the guardians opened fire, they would not have fired. Weapons volleyed or no, the guardians and the oracle stood awestruck as the Pariah moved beyond speed - his form literally dissipating in front of them, followed shortly by a sharp clack of disorienting thunder. They braced, the burst of energy rippling against the oracle's frontal wards, the soldiers tensing, holding, waiting... Then, death.

The oracle heard it before he even knew what it was. The crunch of protosteel, the squelshing pulp of rupturing organs, the hopeless death-cries of men he knew, men he loved. He turned just in time to see the comrade on his right begin to fall, the tip of a black blade piked through his chestplate. The oracle blinked. He pictured the face of the man beneath that visor - a man with two ex-wives and a grown daughter he'd tried desperately to reconcile with - a man the oracle had failed.

Next came pain. As he turned to face the Pariah, he found himself looking into a horrifying pillar of demonic energy. With his defenses lowered, the battering ram of foul magic collided into the him, meeting no resistance other than his physical armor. With his wards already situated at his back, however, he didn't go flying into the next wall, but was rather crushed between the two barriers like a squashed bug. The Pariah would be hardly a foot away, channeling the foul energy that pushed the oracle deeper into his own psionic shields. Armaplas groaned and cracked, his bones screamed. The sound traveled up his spine to his mouth and he yelped like a whipped dog, tears brimming in eyes that had lost their glow. For a moment, the Pariah would get what he wanted. The man - more a boy than a man - despaired. He looked at the bodies strewn across the floor, the splotches of blood pooling out of the corpses of his friends, the scrambling chaos of a parliament that would shortly die as soon as this monster was finished with him. Yes. He had failed.

---

Rubano shook his head. "Do not talk like that, Alison. You are going to live." He looked up towards the exits. With Max's second exit in addition to the first, the room was quickly clearing. "Stay with me minister. We will be alright."

The chairman hefted the girl, carrying her swiftly over rubble and corpses. He moved to the back of the quickly dissipating crowd, turning as two sickly shinks followed by an enormous slamming sound, watching as the oracle - their best line of defense - was pinned between two walls of arcane energy. The chairman held his breath.

"We will be ... alright ..."

---

The remaining soldiers were at the front, middle and rear of the crowd, directing them, helping the wounded, organizing the evacuation as best they could. They would not waste a second of time afforded to them by the distraction, directing instead towards the front of the GC, rather than the bunkers beneath. With an assassin that could move as fast as sound and blast through concrete like paper, there was no point in trying to barricade themselves. They needed to get to the TAF relief forces as soon as possible.
 
as written by Tiko

Evacuation efforts were already well underway before the Parliament members reached the grounds, and about half a dozen portals had already been erected to relocate government officials to secure bunkers located at various locations beyond the city. The ground floor personnel were already being ushered through while the area was held secure by what few TAF forces they had remaining on the grounds until reinforcements arrived.

It wouldn't be long now though, and the front gates to the large property were being opened to permit the arriving vehicles entrance as soldiers spilled out of the trucks.

It was perhaps a breath of hope for those who had fled the massacre within the Parliament Chambers to see the TAF forces mobilizing to secure the grounds for evacuation, while more organized to move on the building that yet contained Pariah.

Many members of Parliament remained within the building yet, but those who had been at the forefront of the escape began to spill out to join the ground floor personnel at the portals. Kynala among them.
 
as written by Lobos

Savoring the moment, if only for the moment, Pariah cut loose his sadism, sending a sudden burst of power into the hammering bolt to drive the point home. Pausing as he quested with supernatural senses, he realized that his time was up. Blades withdrew with sucking draws, two corpses hitting the floor in his wake as he turned, launching through the doors he'd entered. There he paused a second, reaching out with lifesense to detect the forces that would be arrayed against him without the building.

Many.

Swords slammed into sheathes under either shoulder, freedom of movement more desired at the moment as he surged forward down the hall ahead, easily clearing the gap he had made on his ingress into the building, his form stretching, then blurring, and then thunder roared as he cracked through sound once again.

A shoulder drove forward as his final pace propelled him into the wall at a steep angle, the down thrust bursting the floor from beneath him as he multiplied his velocity yet faster, driving into a long leap that sent him into the air before the building, debris spiralling in his wake as he came into view of the people outside, his figure like a soaring dark angel of death climbing the sky like an omen.

In the moment the shock he anticipated would buy him, Pariah twisted like a knife, manifesting his power in solid form and bounding from it like a hyper-velocity cannon, cutting an arrow's path to slam his boots and bulk on the leader of the fleeing mortals, a woman a woman who's dress made her flight all but indicative of the methods she'd used to be the first one from the building. To slam down, hard, and then immediately rebound with a thunderous bounce that would send him hurtling over the barricading troops like a living missile, the wake of his passage lending a final sonic boom that continued as he fled the scene with supersonic, preternatural swiftness.
 
as written by Script

As she emerged out into the street, Kynala breathed a sigh of relief. She could see the portals across the parking lot, and immediately ran for them, heedless of the attempts of the soldiers to organise their movements.

Then the wall of the building exploded behind them. She turned with an expression of fear to look up at the black figure in the sky, silhouetted against the sunlight.

An instant later, her scream barely escaped her lips before it was cut short as pariah slammed down on her, instantly shattering bone and crushing her down into the concrete with a spray of purple gore.

Her death was near instant.
 
as written by Ronin

Without strength and without any means to recover his hope, the oracle was powerless against the Pariah's final blow. He died alone and in tears.

Outside, the relief forces had already been briefed as to what kind of enemy they were up against. Guardians and oracles stood at-ready, ushering the fleeing politicians into the portals. The sound of shattering marble caught their attention, every soldier looking up as the Pariah exploded out of the building. Three oracles stepped forward, armor glowing, preparing to intercept the assassin ... still they were too slow. His armored boots slammed into Kynala, crushing the life out of her in an instant and rebounding in the next.

As the impact of the murderer's last attack dissipated into the air, the oracles stood fast. They didn't even bother to turn around, huddled together, power emanating off of them. Soldiers would hold the politicians back, giving the spellcasters space.

The guardians seemed to know what they were doing. One of them looked after the fleeing Pariah through the amplified sight on his visor. "Four hundred meters." He called out. "Eight hundred."

Energy cackled off their armor.

"Fifteen hundred. Two thousand."

They shone like stars now - anyone looking directly at them would be blinded.

"Line of sight lost."

They cast, the energy strobing off of them in a brilliant flash. Each of them rose slowly from their hunch, slightly out of breath. They did not falter, but quickly prepared the energy stores in their Witcher Suits, ready to put the necessary energy into maintaining the spell.

Wherever the Pariah was, if he had not teleported or gone through some portal into another dimension, would suddenly feel a great power fall over him. Orbs of light sparked into existence all around him, converging, linking, binding. Chains like lightning wrapped around his body, ropes made of cackling, psychic energy that would try to debilitate the fleeing assassin and violently shock him into submission. If successful, he would fall out of the sky like a felled bird, or simply slump to the ground, motionless, wracked with pain.
 
as written by Lobos

The moment his feet touched, the Pariah moved. Ludicrously fast, a race through the streets barely perceptible, the roar of continuous thunder shaking the air in his wake and leaving a string of blasted out windows behind. When the lightshow began, he scarcely sneered, utilizing the technique he had back within the government center.

Ceasing to exist within the trap, and instead a hundred paces forward. His departure from the city would be-

Ardent energy slammed into him from behind, lashing against his armor, attempting to bind him, to constrict him. The pain that it intended fell on a corpse's senses, an irritant and nothing more. His commands to his body remained intact, the fell magics that animated him superceding mere physical limitations.

Yet the constraint was tiresome. Hissing with irritation, Pariah's energies leaked from him, targeting and infesting the trapping bindings with eldritch, foul power, a poisonous corruption that he hoped would pass to the one or ones who sent it.

Meanwhile, he tested the bindings, using inhuman will and astonishing power to thrust one leg forward, and if successful, follow it with the other. And then again, and again.
 
as written by Ronin

The oracles tensed, muscles flexing as their spell made contact. Their psychic force sparked against the Pariah's foul aura and surged across his armor like a writhing spiderweb. They felt the enormous strength of the Pariah's will and counter-magics, an unbearable weight on the minds of the mortal oracles.

"Counter spell," one of them hissed.

"I feel it," another nodded, his face calm and unwrinkled. "Access auxiliary power now."

In unison, the arcane trio tapped into the Witcher Skin's vast stores of energy, amplifying their psychic potential far beyond the scope of human prowess. Light radiated off of them in waves of gold, wind ripping at the cloaks covering their backs.

With the mage-psykers' energy boosted, the three renewed their assault on the Pariah from afar with exponentially greater vigor, attempting to beat back the corpse's counter-strike and re-energize their binding spell.

"Shock has no affect," one of them shook her head. "Switch to heat."

The cackling ropes of energy that bound the Pariah would suddenly beat blood red. Unbearable heat emanated off of them now, beginning at 100 degrees Celsius.

Miles away, the lead oracle nodded. "Anchor him."

The magic surrounding the Pariah took on a slightly blue tinge, mingling with the red on the border. This spell would attempt to prevent the Pariah from teleporting away or accessing extra dimensional rifts, and would also attempt to capture him inside a vacuum-sealed arcane casing.

The oracles paused, the leader inhaling through his nostrils and exhaling through his mouth. "Now." His eyes flew open. They blazed in gold. "Burn."

The heat felling the Pariah spiked, jumping to 200 degrees, 300 degrees ... peaking at 500 degrees Celsius. The heat would attempt seep through his armor, melt the corpse's decayed flesh to his armor, perhaps debilitate him with agony, if he was capable of feeling anything like pain. It radiated to every side of the arcane dome the oracles had cast around the Pariah, the energy from the miniaturized furnace being absorbed into shield, a cyclical-recharge of sorts.

Back in the city, the oracles were not leaving the capture of the Pariah entirely to their magics. "Captain. He's at 243.936." One of the commed. "We are holding."

"Copy, Aras," a young voice shot through the static-sodden comms, "I'm moving my ship into firing range now."

In the distance, a Trireme rose into the clouds.

With the initial spell cast, the remaining politicians and civilians would be swiftly ushered into the portals.
 
as written by Lobos

Irritation blackened, becoming a tangible issuance of cold wrath that bled like a nearly visible, toxic stain in the air. Hindrances were to be overcome, obstacles shattered to the wayside.

"Persistent mortals..." The bindings strengthened, the Pariah's corruptive energies now lesser to the reinforcements. Communion with the master, a moment of skewed time as auras intermingled. A request made, pondered...

And approved.

"Leniency expired, mortals. You should have run." Power burgeoning, nay, erupting like a newly ruptured font, casting through the bindings a spire of churning daemonic energies, a writhing pillar of grainy, grey flames shot through with flickers of a darkness deeper than night, as Pariah's signature spiked drastically, from merely tracked to that of a virtual star of a reading. Before, this had been a mere act of terror, a glimpse of the sword. Now the sword was unveiled. As the bindings became as fire, the lethal entity adopted the flame as his own, his own corruption blossoming by a factor a hundredfold. Daemonfyre licked the street around him, asphalt boiling and running as tar ignited, stones hissed and began to glow. The buildings to either side blackened, paint curling away from the umbral inferno that raged as the unchained powers of the creature in their midst sought to break the chains as though they attempted to hold a beast far, far greater than what they had snared.

Lambent light spilled from the gaps within the Pariah's armor, wytchfire and daemonfyre etching around the silhouetted figure as he halted, and then turned. Casting the weight of his regard behind him, a piercing sensation of eyes by shrouded, empty sockets.

"Run, though it matters not.
Scream, though the sound will die before it leaves you.
Flinch, though the blow fell long before.
Die, as you passed the gates long ago."

Thrusting forward a clawed hand, the energies around Pariah rippled, cracked, howling like a legion of demon souls as his fingers flexed outwards, splaying. The force that rushed forth at the gesture was not merely terrible, it was monstrous. The wave threw cars along its path like toys cast aside by an errant child, it shredded the streets and facades with the contempt of nature for all things built by man's hands. Bursting back the way he had come, it took the form of the many heads of a serpent, the leading strikes of a hydra, hundreds of fanged heads churning as though in a god-brewed storm, the same hue as the power that poured from Pariah as an overflowing fountain. Raging forward, ignoring such trivial physical limitations as speed, flashing back the way he'd come as though it was a bullet, a torrent of destruction that focused along its path.

A bolt to not merely end the conjoined oracles, who's life forces flashed like bonfires within the life-sense of the Pariah, but a strike to burn their tortured echoes into the ground they stood on, into the air they placed themselves within. When it arrived, focused into a single yawning maw to slam upon them, it was not merely destructive, it was focused devastation incarnate, with energy aplenty to etch the burnt souls of their passing as permanent shadows where they placed their boots.
 
as written by Ronin

The oracles gasped, the spell-flow suddenly cut clean from their psychic ties. In a horrifying display of power, the Pariah had somehow reversed the binding spell and claimed the magic as his own. Heat became hellfire, and a ruthless corpse-assassin became a pagan god. They felt his energy spike miles away - would have felt it on the other side of the world. This was not some rampaging superhuman throwing a temper tantrum ... this was destruction incarnate, death and chaos given shape and form.

Still they held. Three mortals, side by side, tapped into the innermost reserves of their suits, into the deepest sanctums of their very souls. In the scant milliseconds before the Pariah's magic was upon them, they pulled their most powerful trump card - the Svalinn. Opening their collective consciousness to one another, the oracles melded their spirits into an ocean of psychic power and fused their energies with hundreds of other oracles, mages, psychics and plain iron-willed humans - a host of beings, men and women with minds as sharp and strong as tempered steel, working as one in the defense of their world. Their might shone bright and true, the oracles made living conduits of Terra's strength. Against the merciless blood-chant of the Pariah's rampage, they lifted a quiet, solemn creed.

By mortal men are battles fought...

The bolt shattered against them, fell energies seething against a shield of blinding gold. As the hydra-beast lunged, their power flared. The fanged jaws of the abomination snapped against a dome of radiant light.

With mortal blood is freedom bought...

They cast, channeling their power into the open mouth of the monster, pouring their will into his very throat, casting away the writhing horror like a bad dream. It evaporated in a cloud of smoke and shadow.

On Terra's mantle they are seated...

Their power was upon the incoming Pariah. Hundreds of minds descended on his consciousness in a concentrated homing wave, a titanic psychic boot that would attempt to crush the monster into the street and bury him into the asphalt. A strength that rivaled gods was upon him - the strength of men.

Honored... hallowed... undefeated.

'NOW!' Aras' psychic voice roared straight into the comms of the overhead Trireme. The ship hovered just above the cloudline, waiting, priming. Should the Pariah be incapacitated, even for a second, they would seize the chance. "Open fire!" the captain yelled, gauss cannons thundering along the ship's hull. A burst of supercharged megaslugs streaked downwards towards the monster. If they made contact, the bolts would likely eviscerate him, shredding armor, flesh, bone, annihilating everything physical about him. Every shot funneled into the crater was like a thunderbolt, sending small tremors into the earth. The vacant streets was pulverized, the half-melted buildings wavered on weakened supports.

When the shaking died and the smoke cleared, the oracles were on their knees, gasping. The Svalinn lent whoever called upon it enormous power ... but only for a while. They'd put everything they had into that last strike. They prayed it had been enough.
 
as written by Lobos

Suspicion twisted into fury as the tables turned yet again, some hidden resource employed as he relinquished the bindings on his own power. There wasn't time evade as the hammer blow, the thunder on his head and shoulders driving him downwards, legs bent, yet knees held above the earth through retaliated force of strength that betrayed the Pariah's inhuman nature, much less the power of his backing master. As the Svalinn struck, however, they had made a fatal flaw.

Pariah's mind was not there, as the presence violated the confines of a consciousness. But it was not the servant's mind touched.

Twas the Master's.

A buckshot fusillade of memories for an unprepared psyche passed to the collective, millennium's worth of alien thoughts and actions so twisted and macabre, so sinister and simply wrong, that the strength of man's mind was never intended to weather, to be subjected to. If consciously reached for to grip and focus on, it would rend eternal madness in and of itself. Yet the speed of thought reigned, and this took merely fractions of an instant in time, and then the malevolence of the presence the Svalinn touched brought its attention upon it.

So.... The telepathic voice nearly purred, its deep, grim tone holding malign amusement. Unwise.

The entity was vast, even the size of the collective would know fear, scarcely as though they were a single man against a beast that was as an ocean, a black presence that obscured hope and light as its shadow stretched across the empty plains of the subconsciousness. There was no warning as Krycis stabbed a lance of feedback into the collective gestalt mind in the form of undiluted infernal energy, daemonic power that could twist the soul and rend the body. A fragment cast-off of Krycis own consciousness pervaded the retalialtion, carrying with it the stuff of night terrors, horror and despair made manifest with the visage of the beast of the deep caverns, the dark godling whose game they even now danced to.

The Pariah did not waste the intervention, slipping round his form the frame of a dimension door to send him elsewhere within the depths below the streets of the city, deftly slipping the rain of thunder that pounded the crater he had occupied into fine powder, shattering the street around him to skyborne rubble that rained up to hundreds of feet away. Extricated, to serve the dread lord yet again.

Krycis' play was severed as the collective split asunder, yet the die had been cast. How many connected to the Svalinn had merely burst as his overflowing energies had poured back through the connection, spilling their vitals and blood to paint whatever had lain around them? How many now gibbered and lashed out, or hid and screamed as their minds lay flayed open by his touch? Whom might have slipped into slumbers, protective barriers to nearly broken minds, comas from which rise was dubious at best?

And who might now be wakening to a new master, twisted and perverted into tools by the contact with an entity bordering on fell divinity?
 
written by Rōnin and Tiko

The psionic force of the Svalinn, for a moment, held against Krycis' rend - a single star flickering against a void of empty black. The mortal minds of Terra dared to stand against the most unbearable of evils, their wills bracing against horrors they couldn't even comprehend.

Then, like a snuffed candle, it faded.

Hundreds of souls began to snap out of the Svalinn in mind-wrenching agony, Krycis' influence creeping over their consciousnesses in a sickly cancer. And yet... there was hope. A flicker in the dark as the candle of mortal will sought to respark once more. Take strength, all is not lost.

The voice came unbidden through the corrupting influence of Krycis' mind, touching upon the hearts of all within the Svalinn. It carried with it a resolve that held the strength of the heavens, and yet had been seeded and nurtured within the coils of mortality. With it came memories, knowledge, and hope, gifted upon those who sought to stand in the wake of a seemingly indomitable force of destruction.

Bits and fragments found their way into individuals, the truth behind the anomalies, and the war that had raged in the heavens. The truth of Krycis. Snippets of knowledge to the existence of god-slaying weapons, of the Sangraal, and of the Khamdaalak. More yet flashed through the minds of those who hadn't yet been lost to Krycis, metaphorical swords and shields that had been seeded across time by those who would see mortals stand strong even against the gods themselves.

And then it was gone, swallowed up by Krycis' influence and lost to the darkness and cancer that had overtaken the collective as it broke apart.

And as the darkness swallowed the minds of the Svalinn, the oracles at the government center, like every other soul linked to the defeated psionic entity, fought for their sanity. The girl had taken her helmet off and was vomiting quietly into the floor on her hands and knees. Aras was on his back, eyes clenched shut, attempting to calm his fluttering heart with slow, easy breaths. He did not think about it. Could not think about it ... and yet, couldn't help but think about it. The darkness clawed at his ears, breathing their rancid whispers into his heart, planting the seeds of fears he could hardly understand.

Buttheshadowsswallowyourwifeinthevoidandshecriesyo urname

No. Shut it out.

Yourunbornchildeatsitswayoutofherwombandfeastsonhe rheart

OUT.

Aras' eyes flew open in rage, purging Krycis from his being in a single push, surfacing the ocean of insanity with a ragged gasp. Words and thoughts drifted before him - the names of weapons - ancient words of power and might. These he clung to like drifting rafts, anchoring himself in the small bits of truth and hope that had somehow permeate Krycis' shadow.

He sat up in a numb trance, like a man waking up from a deep sleep. He looked to his left. Komika was lying on the ground in a pool of her own vomit, breathing quiet and slow. He reached out and softly brushed his mind against hers. It was like laying his hand over a wounded dog. With a breath of relief, he found his comrade herself ... beaten and unconscious, but herself.

"Walk always in the light ... walk always in the ways of the Wick ..." A voice trembled to Aras' right.

He turned towards the sound. Daven, the third oracle, lay curled in a ball on his side. He rocked back and forth, warbling old Lumaran prayers of protection. White knuckles gripped his gauss pistol, held under his chin.

Aras swallowed. "Daven. Daven, look at me."

The oracle's eyes glazed into oblivion. "Fear not the darkness, fear not the Wyrm. Stand true in the Wick and the shadow will not avail you..."

Aras tried to etch closer, his muscles spasming in pain. "Daven. Daven Neltos. Look at me, goddammit..."

"And you shall know peace, the peace of the Wick, the peace of order and light and love..."

"Daven! Look at me! Put that fucking gun down this instant! That's an order!" He writhed forward on his back, arm outstretched and flailing for his comrade's hand.

"And the Wyrm will fester in the void." Daven's mouth twitched. "The Wyrm will fester in the void. Fester in the void. Fester in the void. In the void. In the void. The void. Void. Void. Void." He chanted the word in a colorless monotone, a skipping record.

Aras' hand grazed Daven's wrist and he fired.

Blood flecked against Aras' face and he screamed. He rolled over on his side, teeth clenched in his mouths and tears brimming at the corner of his eyes. He would have wept were he not so angry. More then the damage to the city, more then a politician crushed before his eyes, more then the raw, abominable power of a god brushing against his mind, Aras was most shaken, most infuriated by the sight of a boy he had known, loved and trained take his own life, his mind broken in the throes of Krycis' ruthless will. Worse still was the likely probability that Daven was just one of the many. How many other Svalinn contributors had just perished? The psionic hub was intended to be their greatest weapon, the embodiment of human will and purpose ... and this monster had just brushed aside with hardly a second glance.

Yes, Aras was sane. But his friends were dead. His mission was failed. His people's mightiest power was broken. He closed his eyes and surrendered to a dreamless sleep.

Around him, the city burned.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top