ic Codus Immortus: Icy Juice

[Exaccus]

"Welcome back amongst the living Morgan, we're 10,000 years hence we last met." Dreadnought spoke smoothly, more so than he usually did, he wondered if some of ember's...embers were reacting to the presence of his apostle in that ancient time but it was something to ponder later.

 

"Im afraid to say your sleep was disturbed by these two and your body moved far from its resting place." he said gesturing to Sin and the duke "Naturally i came to find you as fast as i could.once my friends here, Voin and Comrade Frost awoke me from my sleep." gesturing to his accomplices each in turn.

 

"these two i do not know personally, one by his surname, Sin and the other by his title, duke." gesturing again to the two opposite him. "They have been performing a study on you whilst you slept of sorts, a manner we intend to  resolve now....and please call me Joseph."

[Supercape]

GM

 

"Ten thousand winters! Ten thousand summers! Are the skies still the same?" gasped Morgen, for even her fiesty heart was aghast. "Perhaps I have slept too long. 'Tis good I awoke. What wonders await!" she said, almost greedy to see how the world had changed. 

 

"What study?" she asked of Sin and the Duke, not quite familiar with the word or the concept behind it. 

 

"Oh its fascinating! And my dear, may I say you are even more beautiful in the flesh! Like a candle!" clapped the Duke, delighted. "We were trying to deduce the nature of your coccoon. You see, we determined that..."

 

"You talk to much, my friend" interjected Dr. Sin, cold and firm. Even the Duke, normally so verbose, shut up. 

 

Dr Sin turned to Voin and Frost. "Well then...ask your questions...."

[Avenger Assembled]

When none of his compatriots spoke, Comrade Frost took this opportunity to consider the situation carefully. After all, he had plenty of experience with this sort of thing. Language. Hm. It was not uncommon for the truly ancient to be above mortal language through means magical or telepathic; such things were common enough albeit still beyond Dimitri personally. "My lady," he said suddenly, "I am Dimitri, this is Klara, and this is Joseph. These men seek to drain you of your long life like mosquitoes draining the blood of a cow - and they have means to do it." As he spoke, the temperature in their space dropped again. "What would you have us do in your name?" 

[Supercape]

GM

 

"Joseph, I know" replied Morgen, her burnt eye socket studying Comrade Frost carefully. No eye was within it, just scar tissue, but it still seemed to be looking straight at him. Through him, maybe. "He saved my tribe from ice countless seasons ago"

 

"I don't know you or Klara, but if the Giant...Joseph...be your friend, then you aren't an enemy of mine" she added, inviting said Giant...said Joseph to vouch. 

 

"As for these men, they best speak for themselves. Is it true?" she said, angrily, at the Duke and Dr Sin.

 

"Why it is a fasci---" started the Duke, looking sheepish and compensating by his usual bluster and vagueness. 

 

"Silence! I will not tell you again" snapped Dr. Sin, before turning on the charm to Morgen. 

 

"Your cocoon, lady. Your cocoon. Not your blood" he said, almost relishing the word blood. "It preserved you from the years. We harmed you not at all. We wished to understand your coccoon, and...yes...wished to harness it. If you let us, you can share in our wisdom, and use it for yourself!"

 

He turned back to Frost with crafty eyes. 

 

"The lady is not immortal, you see. Merely able to harness the ice and fire of aeons past to go into a suspended animation. Murk may argue that suspended animation is immortality, but once free, she most assuredly is not!"

 

He offered Morgen his hand. 

 

"And yet, lady, with what we have learned, immortality can be yours!" he said, offering his grand prize with triumphant eyes. 

[Tiffany Korta]

 

 

Zhenshchina-voin

"The choice is, of course, yours, but I must make you aware that you could choose a poison chalice. This man has done terrible things in the name of power and profit."

 

Klara was well aware that herself and Dimitri hands weren't exactly clean but what they'd done was to protect their homes from aggressors, mostly during wartime.

 

 

"If you truly desire to live forever I know a place where they can gift you such a thing without any cost to you or others."

 

She desperately wanted to ask her to take her wife with her, but that was a conversation for another time.

[Exaccus]

 "haha, yeah, without you and ember though i doubt i could've done it." he laughed, unphased by the air of tension developing around him "you and your people survived on your own merits even facing that thing whatever it was, that i could send it back to its hole and then some to lighten the load was my pleasure."

 

"You are being awfully rude to our host Doctor." he pointed out casually "Most unbecoming of a gentleman." he huffed indignently as a bit of his british stiff upper lip begining to show.

 

"what say you and I go have a little chat sir, remove yourself from this most unpleasent conversation, im sure i have tales that would be most intresting to ya hearing. whilst our acquaintances here discuss with my old friend" he offered "I have fought the statue of lord nelson himself given life by a sorcerer in the late victorian age!"

[Avenger Assembled]

Technically the choice now was in the lady's hands - but Frost was pretty sure he was going to have to start freezing people soon whatever happened. Still, a little diplomacy never hurt anyone. "You will like this new world. Children live where once they died, and there is food for every mouth. Come away from these thieves, and see what men have made together." Most of what he was saying about the present was a lie, but there was more truth to it than in his youth. 

[Supercape]

GM

 

"Good golly! I wouldn't miss this for the world!" refused the Duke, not keen in the slightest in being dragged away by Dreadnought. Dr. Sin did not shut him up this time, either. 

 

Morgen considered the words carefully. "Death, it seems to me, is as natural as the turn of seasons. But in my age the seasons did seem to turn to quickly, and many lives were too short by even our measure" she explained, mulling over the barrage of new concepts, offers, and seductions. 

 

"Why then, if you have immortality to offer, do you not share it with all?" she asked the company (but especially Voin, who appeared to dangle it). "Is it cruelty? is it vanity? Or do you take from some to feed others?" she asked, suspicious now. 

 

"We do it to survive" answered Dr. Sin, quick and insistent. "The most primal and natural emotion we have" he added. "Is this wrong?"

 

"No, it is not. But it may be destructive all the same" answered back Morgen, not one to be intimidated. 

 

She turned to Comrade Frost. "The world may well be better than it was. I would hope so, given the time it has had. But...you have the stain of something on your very flesh. The stain of death, of the lands beyond, even if you are alive!" she declared. Comrade Frost could feel that scarred enucleated eye socket examining him. She had some kind of eldritch sight (as Dreadnought well knew; she had torn her own eyeball out and fed the flesh to eldritch flames to gain it), that was clear. 

 

"I trust you not!"

[Tiffany Korta]

 

Zhenshchina-voin

Klara frowned a little, she'd wished that they'd be more time before speaking of such heavy matters. It seemed sometimes that all immortals had was the time to talk about such things.

 

"If it was possible I wish that all could enjoy immortality, I have a personal stake in such things. But alas the world is not yet ready for such things, there is too much in the world that needs to be put right. I assure you that the world is much better than it was, but there is still more to be done before it is ready."

 

This might be it and she was prepared for when the two acted, they wouldn't let this debate go on for much longer.

 

"Immortality is a precious gift and it should not be decided based on greed or power, which alas is how these two wish to do such things."

[Exaccus]

Dreadnought remained mostly quiet as events unfolded around him untill the whole affair and debate began to kick off around him.

 

Something about frost having been to bad places and stuff he didnt really understand but morgens displeasure was obvious so he felt the need to speak up.

 

"You were there, were you not, when I and ember spoke..do you remember what he said? "I do not require sacrifice but sacrifice is required." I imagine frost was in a similar situation to you and your tribe but in lieu of a giant or the spirit of his tribes fire something darker appeared to offer salvation, something that not only demanded sacrifice but reveled in it, he suffered to spare other people in times of darkness, much as you sacrificed your eye and i...i burned to the bone as i battled that demon."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Good," said Frost frankly. "I am a monster, woman. By my hands I have killed a great many, and traveled to worlds beyond this one and killed a great many there - and once I slew Famine itself, in vengeance for the suffering of my people." He was silent for a moment, considering his words carefully. "Enemies came to my land. I was taken, tortured, and my heart torn out while yet I lived. In those moments Death found me, and offered me revenge on all her enemies if I would take her hand. And so I did, and so I had, and here I am." He spread his hands like a maestro on the stage, but his voice did not match his words. "You should not trust me." He did not, from his tone, believe that anyone should. "Let me offer myself for trial by combat, in the style of the ancient gods." As he spoke, he began pulling his gloves off his hands, the room distinctly dropping in temperature as he did so. "If we are against you, then let us fall." 

[Supercape]

GM

 

"Men! Trial by combat! Ha!" spat. "What way is that to live? Deciding on the merits of one road or another by violence? No! I shall not. If fight I need to, I will. And I have. But I will not decide on my course of action thusly!" she said, proud and defiant. 

 

"And yet..you seem to be in my way...."

 

She reached into her embryonic sac of ember and concentrated. 

 

"Why! What have we here!" muttered the Duke, peering over Doctor Sin's shoulder. 

 

Morgen pulled from the ember a sword made of the same strange stuff; orange, semi-transculecent. It did not look particularly sharp, but it looked sharp enough. 

 

"Born from millenia in my slumber. Born from my passion, from fire and ice. In case any fool would wake me with ignoble intent. Not again will I be powerless in the face of forces from sky or earth" she said, defiantly. "Why do you think I tore out my eye, Joseph?" she said. 

 

To him, her words were kind and strong. To the others, suspicion. She pointed her sword at each of them. 

 

"This man if vile ice challenges me, and to any other man I would refuse. But I remember the bitter sting of ice. And sometimes violence is necessary, as Joseph and I have learned. And so, let us fight, you and I. This time, I burn with something mighty. This time, I will not be helpless before the cold!" she said, proud and defiant. 

 

She brandished her sword. 

 

"What is it to be, then, Ice man? What do we fight for? What do we fight with? With sword and shield, or with bare hands?"

 

She was still buck-naked, bar the remnants of ember gel on her body, and seemed not to mind one bit. Whilst brimming with life and vitality, her body was neither ugly to behold, nor one which would be plastered onto magazines. It was the body of an every-woman, and thus she was comfortable with. She came, after all, from a different time. 

 

"Oh! A duel! This I must see! Perhaps the Garden Lawn?" suggested the Duke. "Sir, I have a magnificent Russian Sabre from the Cossacks, a fine antique and very servicible, if you would care to use it?" offered the Duke to Comrade Frost, quite taken with the sheer drama of the play. 

 

Even Dr. Sin stayed quiet, caught up with the unfurling act. 

Edited August 17, 2018 by Supercape

[Avenger Assembled]

"With blade, then - and I pledge no tricks." This was not entirely how Frost had hoped the conversation would go but this was not the first time he had found himself in a duel to the pain with someone he had come to rescue. On the plus side, he hadn't promised tricks from the others. Well if she does destroy my flesh, Klara does know the trick of reviving me - unless I stay here until the Netherlands has a week of uninterrupted temperatures higher than 37 degrees. Which if the scientists were right was only  a few decades away, but that was neither here nor there. "I will take your kind gift, sir, with certain blessings of my own." Once sabre was in hand and they were outside, he reached into his greatcoat pockets and withdrew what looked for all the world like an animal bladder - which he rubbed up and down the blade, producing a visible rippling effect up and down the steel. "Is mech-samosek, the self-swinging sword of bogatyr legend." This was not actually the weapon that that hero carried, but the enchanted wolf's bladder would make it so for a little while. 

[Exaccus]

Joseph didn't like this one bit but he bit his tongue and opted to respect Frost and Morgen's decisions at least for now, and opted instead to quietly wait and watch what the rest of the audience might be up too, opportunities like this were dearly bought and easily missed, watching and preparing was the best use of his limitless time and endless energy right now

 

"I'd rather this not happen." he admitted openly to Morgen and frost both "but I'd be a hypocrite to interfere." he added "Mind that said, if i fear you come close to killing one another i will intervene there is no need for things to get too out of hand." he reasoned with his rumbling voice "there are few enough heroes as it is without us tearing one another apart."

 

"Fight until one can carry on no more or admits defeat but not a second longer or a blow more." he resolved "or face me if your thirst for battle is yet unquenched."

[Tiffany Korta]

 

Zhenshchina-voin

Whilst she'd had some problems with Dimitri in the past, and to be fair vice versa, Klara had never been tempted to actually fight her former teammate. But she guesses that even though she was younger when she entered the world she had a view that wasn't quite as black and white as the world this woman had lived in. She leaned in a whispered into Comrades Frost's ear.

 

"You know you don't have to do this, you're allowed to nominate a champion to fight on your behalf. And I've always been a better fighter than you." she was matter of fact rather than boastful "And Doctor Zui needs someone who can deal with such a devious mind."

[Avenger Assembled]

"I am supremely confident that right will prevail," commented Comrade Frost. "You are fine champion, Warrior Woman. But I need you elsewhere," he commented, glancing from Klara to Dr. Sin and the Duke, then back again. There were no rules in trial by combat about other combats breaking out at the same time, after all. "I have been torn apart before, my dear Dreadnought." He plunged the tip of his sword into the ground, faced Morgen, and said, "Not even death itself could stop me! I am Frost, now and forever. If my blood will convince you then let it be spilled," he said to Morgen. "But be warned. It might not please you!" 

[Supercape]

GM

 

The Duke appeared to be the only one excited at the spectacle. Dr Sin had a look of snide curiosity. Morgen had a look of pure determination. If nothing else, this was a woman who had burnt out her own eye. This was not a woman who was short on determination. She was will. 

 

The gardens of the Duke were splendid, as one might predict. Antiquated, perhaps. Even a little overgrown in areas. Trees with overhanging brances overhead, statues with a vaguely erotic form. Fragrant flowers were everywhere, as was their scent. 

 

Morgen had no cleaned, but she had at least put on some non-descript clothes. She was still barefoot and bare limbed. She gripped the sword she had given birth to her in her coccoon. Frost, astute to such matters, could tell she was not a fencer. She was a hunter, strong limbed, brutal, determined. She had experience, of a sort, in the adrenaline rush of fighting, but not training. 

 

"Any last words?" she demaned of Comrade Frost. 

 

"Oh! Does this break any laws? I am innocent of any law breaking you see? So...ahem...I totally dissaprove of this action, but lamentably am powerless to stop it!" he said clearly, with a little cheeky glint in his eye. 

 

"You worry to much about the Law. It is not for such as you an I" answered Doctor Sin. 

 

"Damn the laws! Do what is right!" proclaimed Morgen, still waiting on Frost to reply to her request for last words. 

[Avenger Assembled]

Frost advanced on Morgen, quickly, and caught her sword in his left hand! He squeezed and ice rimed the blade, sliding up and down the shaft until it pushed against the woman's hand. He could feel the magical weapon freezing solid in his grasp, but even as he tightened his fingers he knew it would not be enough. He squeezed hard, his own flesh hardening as he met the woman's eyes, his own glowing a brilliant red as the icy cold of death itself erupted from his hand. He answered her demand by declaiming "Thus!" at the top of his non-existent lungs.

[Supercape]

GM

 

The Ember Sword was stronger than steel, forged from the Icy Juice of her coccoon. Birthed in eldritch and divine energy. But still...Frosts cold grip made it cold beyond coldness, and it started to splinter. 

 

Morgen's scarred eye seemed to look at him and she gave a grimace showing off her poor dental hygeine (well, it was a time well before toothpaste...)

 

"Swift like the sharpest ice" she commented. "And you kill like the harshest winter" she speculated. "But I burn with the fire of Gods. No fire or ice will ever touch me again. This I have learned, and so will you..."

 

She pulled the sword out of his grip, leaving behind splinters and shards of the ember. 

 

"I would not kill. But I will show you that my will is stronger, and no man nor woman will command me" she swore, before bringing the sword round like an axe. It was not exactly a skilled movement, but her strength, ferocity and brutal determination were effective, and the blade tore into comrade Frost. 

 

Aside from the furious strength of the blow, the Ember seemed to try and  take something from him. Something inside. Maybe his soul, or life force, or essence. Call it what you will, it was precious, and Frost felt it being torn away....

[Exaccus]

It was tough to watch two friends fighting but fortunately for joe he'd mostly focused his attention on sin.

 

To joe he looked like any other old man, wisend and frail but the man projected an aura of malice and aggression like a cobra...it was a strange staredown that was to be certain but the moment he felt the archvillains attention slip in the blink of his eyes he took full advantage.

 

Exploding forth with speed his hulking frame belied.

 

It all came down to a fraction of a second, sin was a masterful combatant and tactician much like foresight the man moved with a calculated grace of rote turned instinct, a man of skill and precision backed with brutal cunning and a deep love and knowledge of violence.

 

It was for naught though for whilst sin had fought some of the greatest combatants of his age, not least of which were the ravens they all ultimately fought like human beings who on some level thought and feared and calculated.

 

Dreadnought did none of those things, he feared no injury, cared nothing for where his hands found purchase and overextended without forth and caught sin in his arms, holding him firmly in simple full nelson.

 

"Huff....you're one willy old geezer sin ill give you that but i gotcha now." 

[Supercape]

GM

 

Dr sin seemed rather surprised that Dreadnought got the better of him. He did not struggle once in his grip though. 

 

"Ah! You are faster than you look, fool! I will remember that!" he said, cunning and cruel. "You have me of course. I can no more break free of your grasp than I can break a mountain..." he commented quite calmly. He looked straight in the eye of Dreadnought with the most cunning and cruel of smiles. 

 

"You are quite the fool!" he laughed straight in Dreadnought's face. "Your brawn is no match for me!"

 

"I suddently remembered! My Hyena is on fire! Please excuse me!" proclaimed the Duke, who turned heel and, with surprsing agility, scuttled off, vaulting over a statue of Napolean quite gracefully. 

Edited August 31, 2018 by Supercape

[Avenger Assembled]

"Oh yes," Frost agreed, his voice on fire with pain as he felt his energy draining away into that blade. "I have seen battlefields like none you have seen, old woman! With the dead stacked up so high by _my hand_ to blot out the ground beneath my feet!" He stepped back, drew back his sword, and made a sudden eye contact with her - so she'd seen where the blade _would_ have gone, had he been aiming for her face, or her heart. "But no longer. I am breaker of blades!" And with that he struck out at the sword she carried, hacking away a piece of its orangeish framework. 

[Supercape]

GM

 

The splinters of ice and ember blossomed once again. 

 

Morgen actually raised her eyes. "No! It cannot be! This blade is forged from matter immaterial! From the Gods of the sky! From the Beating of my heart! It cannot be broken..."

 

And yet, for a moment, it seemed it might. But, crumbling as it did, it held true. 

 

"Yes! I admire your strength, Frost man! But my strength is greater!"

 

And then, with a full blown, fury driven thrust, she brought the blade straight into the centre of Frost....

[Avenger Assembled]

Dimitri dropped to one knee, pierced through the heart - being pierced through the heart could certainly hurt him, despite its absence, and he could feel the magic in the woman's blade burning its way through his connection to Nifelheim, the connection that sustained his life. Oh he would recover from it, as he always did, but who knew how long it would take? 

"...is it?" His eyes turned to where Dreadnought had Dr. Sin in his grasp and Klara was in hot pursuit of the slippery Duke. "You see, my lady?" he said with a smile. "It is just as I told you. Wickedness is defeated and righteousness has prevailed. Now if you will kindly remove your blade from my torso, we can begin the task of introducing you to this brand-new world of yours...?" 

[Tiffany Korta]

 

Zhenshchina-voin

As irritating as he could be Klara really wanted to make sure that Dimitri was going to be okay in this fight, plus she couldn't help feeling that he had something up his sleeves. Hopefully, Doctor Zui was in hand so she focused on the very irritating Duke.

 

With no time and patience to play nice with the irritating Duke, she flew towards him barreling into his back sending him tumbling to the ground. Standing over him she glowered down at him.

 

"I suggest you stay down or I may have to get unladylike!"