Elegy

I'm hitting the road tomorrow to drive back to school. I should have internet in the evenings, and the trip will only take a couple of days, but my posting speed will be substantially reduced while I'm getting settled.

Seth stayed where he was, surveying the scene. Albert was bound to a stone slab, terrified but unharmed. A man in a strange green zombie mask, much like one of the first robots he'd battled, stood over him, a pistol in his hand and a ritual knife nearby. Having seen the effects of modern guns before, and fully aware of the fact that functional monster robots lurked behind him, the young mage knew that one misstep here would bring about his death and make it all for nothing. He would not allow that, not after everything he'd been put through. So he reached out with his clarity charm, linking his mind to that of the apparent leader who stood over Albert. "My name is Seth Syme," he began, his silent voice thunderous. "Today I have been pummeled, thrown, hacked up, blasted, burned, and buried alive. I am still standing; my enemies are not, nor will they ever again. I can promise you that, if you are still here in twenty seconds, will learn exactly what happened to your minions, as will everyone else in this room. I suggest you take my very generous offer and GET. OUT. NOW."

GM The man in the hockey mask scrambled to obey, partly afraid and partly fuming. So many legends existed about the Symes, and so few records. Some said that the whole family had vanished along with the house, that the Symes of today were the descendants of the wizard Seth and the mysterious young woman he'd died to protect. Apparently, they were wrong on both counts. And if Seth died, if they accomplished what had formerly been an excellent bonus, they would lose their chance to appease the Whisperer in Shadows. But the cultist was forced to skid to a halt and backpedal, reaching for his gun, as someone appeared in the doorway just in front of him. As the flash of orange subsided, there was no mistaking the man. Stripped to the waist, covered in half-tended bruises and cuts, covered in dirt, there was still no question that it was Seth Syme. His eyepatch had fallen to the side, revealing a hideously-scarred hole filled with autumn-colored light. Power glowed around his hands, and his face was full of cold fury. In an instant a dozen shotguns were pointed his way.

As the impact of the grave dirt grew muffled, Seth frantically went over his options. No ordinary man had the strength to open a locked steel coffin, and without room to gesture and work his magic Seth might as well be ordinary. But there was one thing left to him, one exceptional thing that did not require his magic to be magical: his shield bracelet. And if he could just force its energy in another direction... He reached out, feeling his way along the web of the arcane until he touched the intricate lattice of charms layered upon the device. It seemed a shame to interfere with something of such craft, but this was direst need. The young mage grabbed hold of that lattice and pulled. It was like grasping a flat sheet of latex in the center and pulling it up into a cone, turning a shield into a spike. The device grew deathly cold as its purpose was subverted, and Seth gritted his teeth as that cold wormed its way into his bones and left him shivering. For a moment nothing happened. Thump. Thump. Closer to buried. Closer to dead. And then, all at once, the steel of the coffin shattered, raining dirt and metal fragments down on its occupant. Wheezing, Seth fought his way up until he could sit, could gesture. And then he fixed the room beyond the exit sign in his mind and was gone in a flash of orange.

GM Albert whimpered as the ritual above him continued. Thick, cloying incense forced its way into his nostrils, and the flickering light of many torches let the blade hanging above him a sharp gleam. "Whisperer," the masked man cried, "we give to you the blood of twilight, the line of Syme! We return that which was stolen, hidden for centuries in prisons of flesh!" The insurance manager tried desperately to figure out what the maniac was talking about. Blood of twilight? Was it possible that the cultist didn't know that... "Um," Albert muttered, fidgeting nervously as much as his bindings would allow, "there's a... small problem." The masked man stared down at him, his eyes confused behind the leering visage of Frankenstein's monster. "See, uh," Albert continued, "I'm a Syme, sure, but not a descendant of Seth Syme. See, he uh... He didn't have any kids. So if you need the, uh, the blood of twilight from him, well, he's the only one who has it." The cultist stared at him, thunderstruck, the dropped the knife. Albert let out a decidedly unmanly scream as it hit the stone an inch from his face. "IDIOT!" The lead cultist shouted at the man by the monitor, shaking with rage. "'The bloodline will be stronger in a descendant', you said. But the man doesn't have any descendants!" The monitor-watcher quailed before the onslaught. "You were about to sacrifice him! He's lying, trying to buy time!" Striding over, the leader cuffed him in the side of the head, throwing him to the ground. "He's not lying. But perhaps you were, brother, when you claimed to have researched Syme genealogy! Go dig the mage out before this all comes to ruin!"

Seth only blearily saw the hallway he was dragged down; exhaustion and injury had worked a spell of their own, and his thoughts were hardly coherent. He did not resist as the skeletons dragged him across the muddied dirt of their exhibit. He did not react with horror when they shoved him roughly into a steel coffin so tight he had no room to move his arms, did not cry out when they shut the lid and left him in the dark. He groaned when the coffin hit the bottom of the grave, leaving a new and bloody bruise on the back of his head, but did not fight. His body screamed for him to sleep, to give in. But some little part of him, something distant and quiet, told him that he shouldn't, though he couldn't remember why. Everything inside was muddled, as if someone had wrapped his brain in gauze, and everything outside was darkness and pain. His eyelids fluttered; trying to keep them open was herculean, one of the hardest things he could remember having ever done. And why? If he slept, he would stop hurting. The little voice would go away. There would be numbness. Quiet. It was the drumming of dirt on the top of the coffin that brought him back to his senses. He had been dead the first time he'd been buried, but he had imagined the sound often in his nightmares. Thump. Thump. Dirt cascaded down at regular intervals, mimicking the heavy beating of his heart. Thump. Thump. His eyes widened as situational awareness returned. Thump. Thump. He couldn't move, couldn't gesture. The magic wouldn't come if he couldn't gesture. Thump. Thump. The coffin was sealed; already the air was getting thin. Thump. Thump. No way out. Back to the void.

GM Seth's power blew outward from him in a wave, knocking back everything in the room. It ripped metal bones from the skeletons, stripped bandages from the mummy, battered the demons almost out of their lava pools. Had he been able to muster such an attack again and again, the young mage might have cleared the room in moments, battering aside all of his opponents and striding through the final door with his head held high. But Seth had been in only three fights in his life, had his new abilities for less than a month, and was using a hastily invented spell. In short, it was a feat that, in his present condition, he could not possibly repeat. He sank to his knees, spent; he'd underestimated the cost to himself . Two skeletons that had been behind columns, escaping his magic, clattered forward to grab him by the arms, dragging him away down one of the side halls. Behind that final door, the man in the Frankenstein mask nodded. "Well done, brother. We will begin the ritual." Turning away, he approached the slab on which Albert lay, taking up a jagged dagger as he walked. "Whisperer in Shadows," he intoned, his voice deep and strong, "make us your instruments." "Let is be so," the other cultists thundered as one.

Striking again, Seth sent an invisible fist flying into the body of one of the demon-snakes, nearly shearing the creature in half, then dodged to the side as its counterpart fired at him again. He smelled singed hair; a little more to the right and he would've been roasted. But the reprieve was a very, very short one; he was suddenly surrounded by bones that kicked and scrabbled at him, skeletal fingers wrapping around his wrists and squeezing hard enough to leave deep purple bruises. With a shout he managed to heave them away, but he found himself entirely surrounded. The mummy was getting up, and the damaged demon wouldn't be out of the fight for long. Those monsters that had already attacked were fully prepared to do it again, and Seth knew he couldn't stand up to this sort of battery much longer. He ached and bled, every inch of him; never had he pushed himself, or his magic, so far. But the only solution was to push it further still. Once again he reached inside himself to weave a new spell, grasping for the forces of twilight, his metaphorical fingers stumbling over magic's loom as his enemies closed in...

GM The demon-snakes opened their jaws in a hideous roar, each sending a wave of fire at Seth, as the skeletons and mummy lumbered forward. The young mage twisted away from the flames, feeling the heat of their passage as they impacted the wall behind him, and wondered if Midnight Manse would soon burn down. But no fire leapt at his back; whatever the room had been built of, it wasn't particularly flammable. Raising his hands in an arcane gesture, Seth smashed a wave of force into the side of the mummy's head, knocking it into a column. But the forces arrayed against him remained overwhelming...

Seth hits, Mummy stunned and bruised. Skeletons advance. Demon 1 misses. Demon 2 misses. Seth hits, Demon 1 staggered and stunned. Two skeletons hit, one critical. Seth bruised. Demon 2 misses. Seth uses extra effort to power stunt from Magic: Area (Burst) Blast 10, Accurate 2, Precise. Seth exhausted. Demons are immobile and autofail their reflex saves. Two skeletons succeed. Four skeletons staggered and stunned. Mummy staggered and stunned. Demon 1 bruised, Demon 2 stunned and bruised. Seth submits to a deathtrap and gains a hero point for doing so. Seth uses extra effort to power stunt Strike 10 in place of Immunity 10 on his device, burning his hero point to keep from going unconscious. Seth uses Clarity Charm + intimidate against the Wickermen leader. He gets -2 for being in an inferior position, modifying his rolled 14 to a 12. The Wickermen leader gets an 11 on the opposed check, and is thus intimidated.

Waving his hands in front of him, Seth advanced through the cloud of plaster dust his attack had thrown up, coughing violently. The gritty stuff was getting in his lungs and eye despite his best efforts, and he was glad when he finally reached the hallway on the far side. Still, he wasn't sure how much more of this he could take. He wasn't going to give up, but his body just might give up on him. At least the overly-loud music had finally stopped. And, by his estimate of the building's size, he had to be very near the back. He could only hope that Albert was still there, and unharmed. Finally emerging from yet another darkened hallway, he looked around and felt his heart sink. The room was a hellscape, a sweltering cave with rough walls, stalagmites, and pools of "lava". There were three entrances to this one, and out of each of the others lumbered yet another monster. From the right came a mummy of ancient Egypt, arms outstretched and trailing stained bandages. From the left came half a dozen fleshless skeletons, clacking their jaws and flexing long fingers of bone. And out of the lava pools rose two strange creatures, serpents with horned heads and an infernal glow in their eyes. Fire, real fire, burned within their jaws. Yet behind them all, clear green against the red, was an exit sign. Seth smiled.

GM The masked cultists watched, thunderstruck, as Seth simply ripped down the ceiling, crushing the robots in an instant. "What does it take..." the man in the hockey mask breathed. Behind him, the man in the Frankenstein mask growled low in his throat. "Enough delaying tactics. Send everything we have left at him, brother. Everything." With a nod, the monitor-watcher reached over to pull several levers. By his command a cyber-ghoulish parade staggered down the various hallways leading to the final exhibit, which the young mage was fast approaching... At one time, there had been several entrances to Midnight Manse that linked up at the final exhibit, a way to create a different experience each time one went. But the damage to the place over thirty years of abandonment had been extensive; the exhibits for the rat-men, cannibals, ghosts, and nuclear mutants had been beyond salvaging when the Wickermen had moved in. But their techno-magic had made it easy to turn the rest of the rickety old machines, once supplemented by live performers, into a defense system that had already proven deadly against rival gangs... and a pair of now-missing patrolmen. Half of that system was now trashed. Would the remaining half be enough?

GM For all their inanimate furor, the bank furnishings never stood a chance against five heroes. Within a few minutes of their entry the Hannover Credit Union was full of shredded rugs, scattered papers, and metal shavings. The last of the civilians in the front room had been moved to safety, some teleported to the hospital and some helped just outside, where they were sitting on the sidewalk as cheerful paramedics checked them over. The bags of ATM cash, which had finished filling while the heroes fought, had tried to make a roll for it just as the police pulled up, but with the heroes standing near the mangled doors they hadn't made it far. Several patrolmen were watching them closely. Yet the memory of the grinding sound from inside the vault reminded the heroes that the crisis might not yet be over. Sure enough, the vault door hung loose on its hinges, mangled and barely shut. Behind it was a scene of carnage to rival that of the front room: overturned safety-deposit boxes littered the floor, their contents scattered around them, while a cloud of hundred dollar bills drifted aimlessly on the wind produced by the room's heavy cooling fans. Every single one of the several hundred boxes had been opened and ransacked... and in record time. In the center of the room, the one calm point amidst the chaos, sat a wheeled metal cart used for moving heavy things in and out of the vault. It'd been piled high, but not with bags of cash. It instead contained a huge mound of coins: pennies, quarters, gold and silver dollars. A few curiosities had been piled in as well: several old war medals, a silverware set, a copper picture frame, and other such things that must have come out of the safety deposit boxes. Of the bank employee who had been hit in the head by one of the boxes there was no sign. Yet peals of high-pitched, tittering laughter occasionally broke out from the corners of the room...

That sounds like a good suggestion, AA. I'll put up a post to move things along first thing tomorrow.

Thank you all. I really appreciate the advice, and will do my best to put it into practice.