lostcarnival | ⇨ FAERIE TALES

Peridot has turned her attention back to the lake, watching the water spread and transform the floor with a look of awe. There's a delay before gets her wits back about her to answer Herbert's question.

"I don't particularly relish the idea of going underwater to fight a fae whose sphere of influence is drowning," she muses, twitching tail betraying her nerves. She doesn't exactly have any hot ideas for how to lure them out here, though...

Alphys scoots a little closer to the lake and raises her voice: "Uh, and as the intrepid adventurers uncovered her lair, the mysterious lady of the lake came to greet them!"

A strong current kicks up within the pond, water blasting out of the tunnel at a wildly accelerated rate. The force of it wears the stone away, widening the portal. A funnel of water shoots up from the pool's surface, like a geyser unleashing from the earth below.

The Lady of the Lake stands on the top of the water stream, as if it's something as solid as a pedestal to display herself on. She's just as naked as she was before.

"Oh," she says. "It's another pretty gem..."

He was planning on an elixir of some description, but Herbert guesses it's time, now. They have to face this bitch again. Immediately.

"Yes," he says, "she's here to see the other two. Have you lost them already? Or lost interest?"

Peridot could literally just strangle Alphys right about now, she's so furious. What the hell was she thinking, bringing the fae out like that before they'd even settled on an approach, or braced themselves for the encounter at all?!

She takes a step back when the Lady appears and addresses her, shaken by the sudden turn this has taken.

Edited 2018-05-26 03:59 (UTC)

It worked!... entirely too well. But Alphys' storytelling can affect this super-powered fae, and she's gonna keep going.

"But you've already got two perfectly good gems!" She says. "You really don't need anymore, right?"

"Alphys what are you doing!?" Peridot hisses at her in a barely hushed tone, lashing her tail angrily. Maybe she's being unduly harsh, but after what just happened she is pretty hesitant to see where this is going next.

"If!" says Herbert, his eyes stressfully wider, trying to continue and reinforce his improvised strategy in the face of Alphys. "She even still has them at all!"

"Oh, I'd never lose something so nice," she says, smiling slightly in a way that suggests she is humouring them for the entertainment of it. "We've only just begun to get to know each other."

The pillar of water lowers so that she's closer to their level, laying forward into her belly and kicking her legs.

"Did you want to come along? I can't see why else you'd be here."

"We're here to win them back from you," Peridot announces fiercely, forcing herself to take a step forward. She's bristling, gauntlet clad hand fidgeting restlessly.

Alphys shrinks back as the lady gets closer, but when she lays forward, she realizes something: Oh no, she's hot.

"U-uh- that's right! We're here to rescue our friends!"

...She doesn't actually know Jasper or Lapis but the power of friendship is always handy in these stories.

Edited 2018-05-26 22:37 (UTC)

Herbert slowly pulls out another corked flask and opens it, plucking one of his green glowing feathers to stir the mixture within.

"She's coming up behind you as we speak," he says, letting the feather dissolve, not looking up at the Lady, "following you here through the watery portal--you must not be completed your business with her. Perhaps you haaaave... less control than you think." He finally looks up as he tilts the flask back to take a drink from it and hands it sideways to Peridot.

As Herbert speaks, Malachite's gigantic head begins to emerge from the water. For a second she looks -- almost perplexed, struggling to remember how exactly she got here. But honestly? Right now Malachite is enough of a mess that she's not going to question it. She's out of the Lady of the Lake's drowning cavern, and she's going to make the most of it.

A horrid grin spreads across her snout, her lips peeling back four ways to show fangs. One giant hand follows her head and shoulders, slapping down wetly against the floor of the library to pull herself up.

Well, forget that, then. Whether or not Malachite is obeying her commands as stringently as she'd like, there's still plenty of time to learn! The Lady of the Lake watches the fusion with a look of amusements, pulling herself out of the way to allow her to surface.

"Oh, Malachite - I didn't know you were coming," she says. With that, she springs off of her water pedestal, and lands right on the fusion's back, lashing out with her seaweed hair and grabbing at Malachite's shoulders and neck.

"While you're here, could you crush these for me?"

That means you, guys.

"T-t-that's a fusion?" Alphys' jaw drops.

She hadn't known what to expect when she learned of gem fusing, only that it sounded much less horrific than her failed experiments (and maybe she could learn something from it to help them). But THIS... this makes her think of all the legends of monsters absorbing human SOULs and becoming terrible beasts with immense power. If Malachite is anywhere near the level of a monster with a human SOUL, they were in big trouble.

"W-what do we d-do now...?"

Ah. So THAT'S Malachite.

Peridot's eyes widen with alarm as the fusion emerges, craning her neck up to follow her face as it rises, and then she takes a few steps further back when it turns out that hey, this damn thing is so tall, just tilting her head back isn't going to cut it. Fear is sinking it's icy claws into her; the fusion is exactly as Amethyst described, and yet somehow worse than Peridot could have ever imagined, and for a moment? She nearly despairs, because she doesn't see how she can possibly complete her task.

Fear is only a placeholder for anger, though, and that takes back over quick enough when the fae hops up on Malachite's back. She hates seeing Lapis like this, crazed and reduced to inhabiting a fusion that she swore up and down that she never wanted to have anything to do with again. And Jasper... Much as she hates to admit it, Jasper doesn't deserve this either.

Herbert's elixir is, for the moment, forgotten. Peridot glances at Alphys, and then back up at Malachite. Her eyes narrow.

"Even though the fusion was massive, and the fae controlling her was a cruel and heartless," she starts to narrate, "the heroes had to fight. Especially the great and lovable and powerful Peridot, because she had a promise to uphold. And the earth itself heard that promise, and it gave her the power to fight harder than she ever had before... Because she wasn't going anywhere without her best friend!"

The moment before her speech ends, she takes on her dragon form, and-- wreathed in an aura of narrative-summoned Earth Spirit energy-- she launches herself right at Malachite's face.

TIME TO RUMBLE, EVERYBODY.

Malachite doesn't seem to be off put by being told by the Fae riding her to fight at all. There's a small part of her that might mostly be Lapis that doesn't want to hurt anyone, but there's also the larger part of her that wants revenge. On the Lady, for certain, but the outlet she chooses doesn't matter.

Her jaws open wide in four directions as Peridot launches herself towards her face. And once close enough, a second, just as awful set of pharyngeal jaws shoot out and grab Peridot once she's close enough to pull her fully into her awful mouth.

With the top set of hands, she raises up the water underneath herself. Herbert and Alphys will be greeted by water clones of themselves, armed with a sword and spear made of ice. Just to even the odds.

Edited (now with 100% more vore) 2018-05-27 03:05 (UTC)

Hidden among the shelves, cloaked in the stealth spell he picked up in Wismuth, Shima waits with Sans, watching the proceedings with some alarm as the plot accelerates unexpectedly. Shima had been hoping to let the others tussle with the fused gem a little longer before making his appearance, but with Peridot chomped and the added threat of the water clones, there's not going to be a better chance to show up before the others get completely pinned down.

They've got a plan though. He lowers his staff for Sans, indicating for him to hop on and hang on to the rings before he makes his approach, taking a running start, dropping his 'invisibility' only when he's within throwing distance from the disturbed pond.

"Jajaan~! Back-up's arrived! Take 'em out, Warden-san!"

He skids on his heel before spinning, using his staff to slingshot the miniaturized Sans directly at the fae hanging onto Malachite's back.

Edited 2018-05-27 03:24 (UTC)

Sans had narratively placed himself off to the side from the start, trying out the magic by suggesting to the story that he was 'so short that nobody would possibly notice him.' The Athenaeum took this in a pretty literal way, which is what has resulted in him hanging off of the end of some kid's staff like a doll.

He has a plan, though. He's not the most confident creative type, but he's recently found some inspiration - the kind that he can thank the Athenaeum for, in the first place.

"Though the skeleton's transformation took more than a second, he had found a way to upgrade his abilities with an old book of notes that his mentor had once wrote." He positions himself on the end of the staff, ready to go. "He catches the fae totally by surprise."

And... woosh.

It isn't just Sans that gets hurled at the Lady of the Lake. One minute it's a miniature skeleton, and the next, it's a full-sized skeleton werewolf, tearing right over Malachite's shoulder and ripping off the offending fae. The two of them barrel to the floor, with the Lady between Sans's jaws.

For Peridot's part of things, well... This didn't turn out to be anywhere near as cool of a move as she was hoping it would be. She'd been expecting to land on the fusion's face and do some damage to her numerous eyes with her nasty little goblin claws? She also DEFINITELY hadn't expected Malachite to have a second set of jaws hidden down her awful gullet, and they snag her right out of the air and trap her with embarrassing ease.

The dragon snarls and thrashes at first, spewing flame left and right and lashing out with her claws at any soft surface she can reach to try and force Malachite to let go of her.

"I don't know which of you is doing this but I SERIOUSLY HATE YOU RIGHT NOW," she snarls between blasts of fire.

Unfortunately down in Malachite's throat there's a lot of soft surface to reach; Malachite screams in two voices as Peridot scorches the inside of her throat, but the identical rectangular teeth of her pharyngeal jaws stay clamped down firmly on the dragon. Her crocodilian tail sweeps around at ground level as she turns in place, posing an immediate danger to the regular sized people around her.

"YOU..." she screeches, clawing at her neck. There's an obvious solution to this, but unfortunately for Peridot, Malachite is really bad at letting go.

Edited 2018-05-27 04:52 (UTC)

Shima has only just enough time to stop next to Herbert and gulp down some of the offered elixir--with a dubious look and a shrug--before they're hit with a wave of water from Malachite's thrashing tail, nearly flattened by the tail itself.

He stumbles back with a sputter and starts chanting, "--zohatta sohatta sowaka--Yamantaka-kun, you're up!"

Licks of black fire burst up around Shima, forming a giant djinn-like demon, with the head of a bull and three pairs of arms. It thumps its fists, a wild and pleased look in its eye at the fight being presented to it, tackling Malachite while she's still busy trying to keep that dragon-shaped Peridot down, looking to grapple her and keep her from any farther stomping.

Shima himself steps back a bit more, taking his chance to add some embellishment. "Phew... Lucky I've gotten good enough at this that I won't pass out from summoning him today! We'll have a smooth partnership yet!"

Edited 2018-05-27 08:19 (UTC)

True to Sans's story, the Lady of the Lake is caught totally off guard! When means she is taken down to the floor, just as intended. The two of them roll onto the stone floor together, right at the edge of the water.

Sans has his jaw around her, but his teeth don't manage to leave a mark. Instead, she grabs a hold of his skull and starts forcing his jaw open, her weed hair going for his eye socket and attempting to latch on. She doesn't know of this beast has anything in there, but she's going to find out.

Herbert is immediately incredibly cranky about this clone facing him because it's narratively forcing him to do the exact thing he was hoping to avoid. Shoving the stopper back into the bottle and setting it off to the side for anyone who ignored it like an idiot to potentially come back to, Herbert reaches into his bag and removes the hot oil sword that should absolutely not fit in there.

"Let's see how you do against your fatal weakness!" he announces, flaring out his wings. "The Oleum Blade!" Reira probably cheers over his radio. He'd feel like an idiot about it if he wasn't getting so into it. Like a stage sword fight, he slices towards his opponent's sword rather than his actual opponent--but in this case, he is actually trying for strategy, what with the rival sword being made of ice.

Overall, though, he has no actual clue what he's doing. Hopefully, in a story, this won't be too detrimental.

It's a little hard for Malachite to grapple with Yamantaka when she's trying to keep a dragon down, especially since it has a pair of hands it doesn't have to use just to stand.

But also, there's enough water that two hands larger than Malachite's own made of water join the fight to help her stay balanced and continue to grapple with the demon. It does not, however, stop Malachite's tail from thrashing around and creating large waves of water.

Herbert's water clone, on the other hand, has it's weapon and itself sliced in two from the Oleum Blade. It seems at least that strategy worked.

Unfortunately, just as the water clone starts to fall apart, it just splits into two, and both water-Herberts stab towards him.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject