Saturday, January 3, 2015

Page 932

The six retreated to the air--Rayen’s group on a platform of ice, Octavia’s group on one of platinum, courtesy of the Lady Socorro.

Rather than pursue them, however, Sanko went after their support. A tidal wave of rock and dirt launched up and swallowed a building full of Rainlords some thirty meters away. One moment, the structure and all the people were there, and the next, there lay only flat land and a few sinking chunks of broken roof tiles.

There had hardly been time to react. More Rainlords were rushing up the hill to the Keep’s entrance, but if the six heads didn’t hold the Gargoyle back, then those new Rainlords were practically dead already.

Rayen went full tilt. Pan-rozum brought out the full strength of her alteration ability, transforming herself into a being of ultraviolet light. To the naked eye, her flesh was almost invisible, save only for the dimmest of purple outlines around her body, making her clothes appear to float in space. Zeff, however, could at least see the woman’s soul now--a kind of translucently blue whirlpool that completely filled the space where her body should have been.

And in a blink, she was gone, launching her assault at the speed of ultraviolet light. She carved a swath into the ground so fast that it left a second wave of exploding rock in her wake. She zigzagged faster than any human eye could follow, and then focused her efforts into a concentrated burst of nigh invisible light, creating a shock wave that left a massive crater behind and a fresh hole in the Keep’s front wall.

That seemed to grab Sanko’s attention.

The other five heads attacked as well--Octavia with another singularity that sucked up one of the Keep’s towers, Zeff with a pair of building-sized spears of ice dropped from the heavens, Socorro with a gigantic slab of platinum dropped above the Keep, Santos with a series of earth-shattering explosions, and Evangelina with a splash of fuming acid that melted half the Keep’s gate.

Parson Miles burst up above the castle and knocked Socorro’s slab away with an arching tornado. Lawrence and his men would not be far behind, Zeff knew.

But of course, they were not the real threat.

The sundered earth convulsed and bloated skyward, and from it, a gargantuan figure began to rise.

34 comments:

  1. that left a massive crater behind and fresh whole[hole] in the Keep’s front wall.

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  2. It sure ain't whole anymore, that's for sure

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  3. I wonder why Octavia isn't using her own ability to supplement the cane?

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  4. There hardly (had) been time to react.

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  5. How is Octavia able to use the sword's ability of singularities when it doesn't look like she's enjoying the fight. The sword isn't even bonded to her soul (at least I don't think). This sword seems fundamentally different from Lynn's glove. Lynn's glove practically makes her a pseudo-aberration.

    Also, I'd really love to know who's faster, Harper or Rayen? :)

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  6. perhaps being a servant makes abberation artifact interaction different?

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  7. Likely it varies from aberration to aberration and it was only Lynette's that requires enjoyment of battle.

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  8. Maybe the difference lies in both the nature of the artefact (swords are taken up and can be used without direct skin contact; gauntlets, not so much) and/or the nature abbreviation the bone came from. *shrugs*

    Hmmmm.. it might even matter if the bone came from their birth body, or not. Maybe. Would the duration of being host to whatever abbreviations are count when it comes to the ultimate properties of what weapons are made out of the physical remains when they come to hand?

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  9. At the beginning, the double dashes, are they intensional?

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  10. Between the difference in the type of item, and the difference in aberration (not abbreviation), I'm more inclined to believe it'd be the difference in aberration that's the reason. Based on Haqq's explanation, plus what we've seen with Lynn and the logic of the series overall, it'd be safe to say that ALL aberration items require some sort of bond. Perhaps, the bone sword does indeed require such a bond, but because it's such a powerful aberration's bones, it actually extends its..."aura" (shrugs) further than the sword itself. And Octavia, being a powerful servant with sufficient soul pressure (I think it was called that), is able to interact with it remotely. The cane, of course, mutes the bond so no one can sense the artifact til she unsheaths it. And though she doesn't look like she's having fun, we're not exactly in her mind right now to find out for sure. But that's all just hypothesizing.

    I believe it very much does matter which body an aberration dies in. Remember Geoffrey's grandfather coming to claim his body? Damian didn't want Geoffrey's original body, rather Samuel's, which Geoffrey stole. That has to be significant. However, I'm not sure if there's any trade-off in power in the item if the aberration died after recently body-swapping. Hell, I'm not even sure that's not an ability unique to Geoffrey alone since Desmond's explanation can go either way I think.

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  11. Possible. I dare say probable

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  12. Doubtful. Not with how Haqq explained it, and the dude researches these things. Still, he could be wrong...

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  13. Could be that the two abilities are just too incompatible. Or using one takes all her concentration and she can only alternate.

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  14. Might be a matter of taste, but in this sentence...
    "a shock wave that left a massive crater behind and [a] fresh hole in the Keep’s front wall."
    I think it'd sound better if you repeated the article.

    The more I think about this sentence, the stranger it sounds to me. I'm not sure how to describe this. You have your verb here, "leave sth. behind", but what you're doing is like "leave sth. behind and sth.". The rest of the sentence after "behind" sounds tacked on, like it doesn't belong to the rest.

    "a shock wave that left a massive crater behind and tore a hole in the Keep’s front wall.", maybe.

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  15. Yup. I'd intended for that "a" to be there. Fixed now, thank you.

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  16. in the Abilities page, you typo'd the close underline tag and now the whole rest of the page is underlined. Even the comments.

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  17. Seems the Four Empires don't have a monopoly on monsters. Harper is one of the Vanguard's 40 strongest, and Rayen is pretty much a straight upgrade of him.

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  18. Mr. Frost can Harper use pan-rozum, too? If he can... I wonder why he didn't use it, instead of using pan-forma.

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  19. ...Harper can and did use pan-rozum...

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  20. The Four "Empires"?

    Anyway, we knew from long ago that the Rainlords/Sandlords had legitimate monsters of their own. But the strongest monsters period seem to belong to the 3 major Factions. That doesn't mean that there aren't any unaligned monsters out there hiding (look at fucking Stasya), just that we don't know them.

    I'm itching to see if Frost will write Gargoyle vs. Octavia, Rayen, Darktide, and Seadevil. One of the "Top 8" vs. the 4 strongest Rainlords. God, that would be glorious...

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  21. Deliberate. Each emperor has an empire. Dozer and Morgunov are allied under the banner of Abolish, but are by no means one empire.

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  22. Ah I was wondering if that's not what you were going for. But why stop at four? You can make a case for dividing the Vanguard into 2 or even 3 sects

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  23. The Vanguard might split into two or more empires soon, but currently it's officially just Sermung's.

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  24. What he did used in his last battle was pan-forma, and he'd a hard time controlling it.

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  25. Pissed me off though...

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  26. Oh, you're right. Sorry my bad. It seems like I'd forgotten about this info.

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  27. By the way I'm just wondering why Zeff's can use it easily while Harper had a hard time using it?

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  28. [an] arching tornado

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  29. I think it is bonded with her cause she always has thar cane with her it didnt leave her hands a single time yet...

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  30. im actually curious what goes through the mind when in a pan-rozum state as light. going as fast as light would make you time-less. how would one perceive that. going that fast, you wouldnt even feel the passage of time. would it feel like teleportation? going from one place to another instantaneously but you simply havent perceived the last few seconds, or would the existence of a reaper inside your brain change everything. all i know is that its one of the coolest powers out there

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