Blood Boulder Keep, In and around the Yellowhaze capital

[Pheonix-IV]

The alien mind washed over them like a tsunami, crushing all sense of humanity from anyone with even the tinest shred of telepathic ability. Hundreds of men simply collapsed as the Lurker mind, disconnected from the psychic control matrix, promptly went insane. For a tiny moment it seemed as if there was a human voice crying out amidst the chaotic beastial eminations of the creature, but it was crushed and buried beneath instincts honed by thousands of years of careful evolution and manipulation by an intellegence far greater than any mere human, an intellegence which had shaped and moulded this creature into the perfect epitome of killing machines.

Within seconds the Lurker was beneath the ground, shearing through solid rock and sand as if it was no more than air, moments later ten foot spikes exploded from the ground, punching straight through stone, metal and flesh with equal ease. In minutes, hundreds were dead and dying as the Lurker, driven insane by the lack of control and now totally subsumed by the beast within, unleashed it's unique kind of hell upon the courtyard and every living thing within it.
The stones ran red with rivers that came up to mens ankles, more than one wounded or unconscious soldier simply drowned in the blood of his comrades.

Kalvan felt himself falling, falling downwards into darkness, a darkness so alien that the last vestages of his conscious mind failed to even register surprise when the darkness turned to face him, to reach up and embrace him within itself, cradling and protecting his poor, vulnerable mind from the psychic backlash of a wild Zerg.

Outside Kalvan's mind, the world turned black and white. Colour leached out of everything as time stopped dead, freezing the instant. Blood sent flying by an impact with a spike became a dull gray liquid paused in the air, bodies and limbs, contorted into various grotesque poses, simply stopped moving.
Those who had Chronomancy were unaffected by the Pause, and those who were experienced in it widened their eyes in shock as their disbelieving minds took in exactly what had happened. Somone had Paused the entire keep, no, everything in sight was monotone and motionless, somone had pulled off a Complete Pause, an absolute stopping of time itself.
It was immediately apparant to everyone who had done this, even somone with no magical skill at all would have been able to feel the waves of sheer power eminating from Kalvan, but the power carried with it a powerful taint, a taint far too familiar to those who had worked the arts of summoning before. Kalvan himself was rendered in pure shadows, no single source of light seemed to touch him, yet details were easy to see. His body stood with the right arm outflung, yet in an oddly lax position, as if he were unconscious and something else was holding him up. The Todash Darkness was pouring from his very skin in waves that were visible to the naked eye, waves that rapidly covered everything to the horizon in layers of shadow.

Kalvan's palm rotated slowly until it was facing flat towards the ground, with careful, confident motions his hand moved in a circle, palm still facing the ground. As he did so, the stones of the courtyard turned to midnight black sand, covered in spotted pinpricks of diamond light. Wisps began to swirl across the top of the sand in a clockwise pattern, following the motions of Kalvans hand. Slowly he increased in speed, the rotations becoming faster and faster, and below in the courtyard the sand which had replaced the stone swirled in sympathy, spinning faster and faster. Soon it was whipping around so fast that the grains merged together and seemed to form a single solid black surface, and then Kalvan balled his hand into a fist and punched towards the ground.
Instantly, black sand poured from every crack and hole in his armour. The sand was so fine that most of it didn't even settle upon the ground, rising on the dead air into a cloud that blurred and hid the outlines of the Magi Knight. Softer than the finest powder, the sand flowed forth in a perpetual torrent, and only one being there, the great Magus Dolomirr, recognised what it meant, and his eyes were filled with horrer as realisation dawned.
Suddenly, the sand in the courtyard simply fell downwards, as if a great hole had been excavated beneath it, in moments the Lurker, curiously unaffected by the Pause, was revealed to the open air. It thrashed around on the surface as the sands rose once more, this time carrying the creature with them, but to no avail. Finally, the courtyard settled and the Lurker was trapped upon the surface, for the sand had turned harder than the toughest diamond, and claws that could shear through alloy steel easier than a knife through water could not even dent or mar whatever it was the sand had become.

With a sound that can only be described as "Whoomp" colour and motion returned to the world, and with a sound unnerringly like somone knocking over a pyramid of cans, Kalvan collapsed to the stone, his body as ridged as a board. To the casual observer, it seemed as if nothing had changed, but within minutes the soldiers in the courtyard had turned upon the Lurker and began pushing it back, even as it gave up on it's futile attempt to burrow and began lashing out with claws and teeth.
Nobody seemed to notice that the ground from here to the horizon had turned into black sand, sand that refused to budge even a single grain. And only one person noticed the finer dust that Kalvan lay in, the black dusting standing out in stark contrast to his armour. Miles away, Dolomirr's hands began to shake as the magical eye focused in closer and closer upon the unconscious Kalvan and the strange that covered him.
Impossible!



Nobody, not even Dolomirr, noticed that Mwaw had vanished during the Pause and was now back, sitting quietly on Kalvan's shoulder once more...

[Zomby]

Time magic was tricky business and was difficult for magi and non-magi alike to deal with. One moment a situation seems one way and the very next it can be the exact opposite. With time magic, one finds himself having to rely heavily on his instincts and this is exactly what Kai Allard Liao does.

One moment, Dahlians are being torn piecemeal by the thorn-like appendages of the shapeshifter’s form, the very next moment it’s the teeth and claws of the beast that are lashing out at Dahlian and desert knight alike. Before even realizing what has happened or paying any heed to the magi-knight who has collapsed after performing such a great feat, Kai moves his hands to near the left side of his belt and then lashes them out over his head. Following the motion of his hands, Edward of Lud is lifted from the cobblestone of the blood-filled road and arcs through the sky and tears his way through one of the sandstone buildings just a block away from the gate.

Kai instantly sets off after his telekinetic projectile, pushing his way through the broken ranks of the desert knights. The gate can hold long enough without him, after all Merrick and the warriors of the Mohaine can do without him for a little while, no?

After a moment or two of sprinting, Kai comes to the shattered building and the beast that thrashes in the wreckage. If it wasn’t clear before, it is now. Edward of Lud has lost all control. The shapeshifter lashes out the thorn-like appendages at everything and anything and it constantly gnashes its teeth at nothing in particular. He has lost his mind to the assumed and feral shape.

Kai extends an arm with his palm open at a ninety degree angle, as if trying to tell someone to stop. Slowly, Kai feels as his own mind wraps around that of the large beast who’s feet clink on the cobblestone of the streets of the Keep. As the telepath’s mind probes that of the shapeshifter, a single word continuously beats in the head of Kai over and over like some sort of savage drum. “KILL. KILL. KILL,” it says but the voice in his head never waxes, never wanes, never grows in ferocity or timidity, but stays consistent in all manners. If the telepath was able to pay any attention to anything but the matter at hand he would realize that he had broken out in a cold sweat and that his skin across his entire body had tightened. Somehow, this voice chilled him more then any he had ever heard before and he had felt the minds of psychotic void magic, crazed weedeaters, and sociopath hermits. But even those had some complexity, some real, if irrational, thought. But this beast had none, only the desire to kill and not just kill a specific thing, but all things. From whatever forsaken world this creature had come from, Kai could only imagine the bane it was to all those who inhabited it.

As the telepath’s mind wrapped itself around that of the terrible beast, it slowly filled every valley and crevice of the beasts mind and as it did so the single thought crescendoed to a terrible volume in which Kai’s own thoughts were entirely drowned out. Slowly and steadily, the telepath approached the beast. As he grew close, a set of claws lashed out and tore through the simple shirt of Kai and instantly drew blood which doused the rest of the white clothing with the red of his own blood. Several times more the claws lashed out, each time opening new wounds to soak the white cloth. But as the creature lashed forward for another attack, Kai grabbed it by its sheltered head and yanked himself forward, planting the extended hand directly on the forehead of the beast. A second voice grew inside the head of the telepath, quiet at first but growing in strength, which screamed nothing more then “CHANGE. CHANGE. CHANG.” Every muscle in the telepath was brought to life and threatened to tear right through his skin as every part of his body attempted to make his own voice overpower that of the creature’s instinct.

And, eventually, it did. As a pool of blood formed around the sandaled feet of the telepath, the violent nature in the beast seemed to quiet and slowly the thorn-like appendages and the blood covered claws receded. The thick carapace of the creature became pink skin, the inhuman head became that of the Luddite, and the stooping posture of the beast straightened into that of a human. In a matter of minutes, the killing machine had been transformed back into the ever-joking Edward of Lud.

With the transformation complete, Kai lowered his arm from the forehead of the shapeshifter and closed his eyes. Seconds later he collapsed on his left knee in the blood puddled in the cracks of the cobblestone street and he muttered only two words before collapsing on his side, “Help me.”

[Idyllwyld]

Leather and buckled boots clacked once, twice, three times back haphazardly as Merrick stumbled away, holding out his arms outwards as if he were a drunk struggling to attain balance. His head lolled around in his jacket's collar from one side to the other, a loose wheel on a ship three sheets to the wind. The entire body of the anti-mage jerked upwards in a brief hiccup, only to then lurch forward. The once wild flaps of his sleeves were now lifelessly draped over his hands, and they swayed as he leaned and stumbled some more this way and that.

He blinked slowly, eyes bloodshot and dry. Clicking his parched tongue, that dried up piece of jerky, against the Sahara that was the top of his mouth, he uttered the only word appropriate for the occasion that was the Aftermath. "Whoa."

Reeling his upper torso back, he gazed around at the battlefield, of which he was still in the midst of. The chaos of the Lurker and...whatever just happened, was still heavy on anyone magically inclined. It felt as if one had just woken up in a sea of gelatin and inhaled half of the Olympic-sized pool, through the nostrils--and the pool had been thoroughly chlorinated. To someone as sensitive to magic as Merrick, the effect was only...acidic. Time magic is a tricky and lethal thing, what with the constant fear of feedback from the spell's natural instability. But what Kalvan had just performed was a feat on an unimaginable scale and with unimaginable power...

The mad-mage staggered off to the left, eyes still glazed to the world. The only problem was that world was somewhat blurry, triple-embossed, double-imagined, and somehow degaussed. It was as if an editor had gone screen FX crazy, plastering layer after layer of saturation tweaks, XTC filters, contrast reversals, sepia inlays, and the rest of the gamut. We won't even go into what everything smelled like, however there was a hint of rosemary in there.

The battle was still raging on as far as he could tell, which wasn't truly much. At least a dozen armed men still surrounded him, and while it appeared through his intoxicated eyes that they were waltzing to a polka towards him in truth they still aimed to kill. A part of Merrick's mind still registered this fact--the mind-numbing effects of such a great Pause could not shatter what sanity did not exist, magical residue on his mind aside. It was just hard to catch up.

A possible option was to catch one of the hanging lines off that incoming ship, the one slowly surging through the area. Its black sails were flat in the sands' doldrums, but that did nothing to hinder its steady progress. It looked relatively empty, except for one occupant hanging off the mast, but nevertheless seaworthy enough. The ship itself must've been lost, considering this was a desert and all, what with the complete lack of large bodies of water. The only odd thing about such a sight, aside from the presence of a naval vessel here at all, was the crackling noise...

Merrick tilted his head to the other side, eyebrows still crossed, perhaps even overlapping at this point, in confusion. His gaze fell downwards again, intending to look stupidly at his feet, but they were caught by the rational explanation for the sailing pirate ship. A flood of white crabs tumbled below the vessel's keel, sliding it forward like ball bearings--albeit ones that, once passed, rapidly clicked and crawled back to the front again. The anti-mage nodded in understanding, now perfectly clear on the matter. He waved at the ship's lone driver, presumably its captain (he was wearing a hat after all), who gestured back with a low sweep of his hand.

However, pondering the possibilities of whether or not the potency of enough time magic perhaps had the capability to juxtapose two universes onto one similar enough location or whether he was still just seeing things because his head remained a flurry of funny buggers amounted to time he did not have, as the edge of a sword or surface of a fist waits for no man. The coated mage stared in quiet serenity as one of those fists hurtled in slow motion towards him, jutting through the psychedelic purple mists that weren't there. The hand grew in disproportionate size as it neared, zooming in with the literal sense of the word, growing larger as it did closer. The body attached to the hand however shrunk, rapidly curling into a speck with only a squiggling trail twisting off an arm that inflated into the humongous knuckle-bearing train en route to Merrick's face.

"Heh," the anti-mage chuckled once, "Heh, heh....heh...eh..eeeh...hhh..."

Stars exploded before his eyes, flaring bright then dying into quadruple-pointed specks. The was the sensation of a great layer of dust falling off his shoulders, a second--third--fourth--fifth skin jolting upwards and then downwards to the floor. He felt clean, weightless, twirling in mid-air, pausing only to notice that it was his body, not dust, on the floor. After deliberating for a moment, he swooped down to join it.

Merrick laughed as he was then tickled with mittens. Large pads groped and brushed along his arms and legs, rustling his jacket and disturbing the slumbering vipers of his sleeves. They thrummed and cackled at the motions. He was sitting in a cloud, a big swarthy puff of cotton sticking to his body as he flailed and thrashed. The wild gestures tugged at the white stringy edges. They curled tighter, and this time with a force that they only presently displayed slung him upright, nearly to standing, only his feet didn't touch the ground.

"Oh...hellllloue," his tongue lolled to the people now next to him. Decent chaps, helping him up, letting him fly because his toes abhorred the ground, he thought. Their hands gripped his shoulders to keep him from soaring away like a balloon caught in a hurricane. Merrick chortled, he would have draped his arms around their shoulders in fellowship had they not pinned them to his sides. Someone else, someone big, stood behind him. That man was doing the arm draping for him, how convenient. Big sausage arms coiled around his neck and waist, keeping the anti-mage steady.

Another two men were stepping forward, clutching axes in their hands. The axes were smiling like gothic cathedrals, with their myriads of little bat wings and beaks at every corner. One huge tower could fly away and caw through hundreds of tiny, leaking jaws. The men were not gothic, but marched with determined precision. Steadily drummed music assailed Merrick's ears, hearkening the images of flowing black capes, bowled helmets, and a procession of treaded artillery. A word wanted to bounce off the anti-mage's tongue, something about roses? No, some other flower, a rather pretty one, but probably not what this empire was intending when they were so named....

A little ball of light with butterfly wings zipped out from the ear of the axeman on the left. It flickered between the two executioners, flying into one ear and visible through the whites of their eyes and then right out the other. It trailed a line of sparkling pixie dust over all their heads, and had Merrick's neck not been so constrained he would have looked up with an open mouth to let what Ed would've joked as "pixie shit" land daintily on his tongue.

The shiny glowy thingy finished its circle only to then bob before Asgard's eyes. A squealing noise kept coming from it, only to pause, then resume again, then pause, and then again. Gosh, it was annoying. Where was the swatter?

"Hey listen!" it shrilled.

Merrick took a deep breath to blow the pest away. One of the arms shoved its way against his face, cutting off the air intake. He grunted, but the incessant, unheeded, and useless advice the globe was trying to give had to be stopped. He tried shaking his head free, managing to expose at least his nose. He inhaled through the nostrils, deeply, more, he needed more. It would take one hell of a gust to blow away an entity of pure energy. He kept inhaling, filling the vacuum in his lungs (had he been breathing? It was debatable). Air particles swelled in size as they were propelled into his nostrils, becoming large enough to see with the naked eye. He was inhaling a flood of little bouncing balls all made up of even smaller bouncing balls which were made of even smaller bouncing balls and there were little bugs and insects and blades of grass--was that one purple?--and clods of dirt and swarming bacteria the size of a grapefruit......

Something wafting in tingled his nose hairs. Something familiar. Something thick, and heavy, an aroma as solid leaking gasoline mixed with electricity. It completely overshadowed the last of the rosemary.

"Hey listen!"

The men holding him were awash in the stink; either they were in dire need of a shower, or they were wearing far too much cologne to hide that very fact. They reeked of the stench, that alluring, intoxicating odor, that unmistakable, dreadful and at the same time exhilarating scent. How, Merrick wondered. These men were ordinary, they wielded no magic for this express purpose! They were immune to his counter-immunities! And yet, their very sweat now glistened with a faint aura--very faint, just a hint, and yet the fallout was clearly there. These ignorant, blind-deaf-noseless fools couldn't possibly detect what remnants had been left on them, or even on the very area itself, from the monumental effort undertaken by the chronomancer earlier. So much magic didn't just disappear, it irradiated a space, as noxious and blighting as any hydrogen bomb. And Merrick the Mad was the exploding Geiger Counter.

Four of the specially trained martial soldiers the anti-mage had been fighting against were holding him tight, grinning with grisly delight as their comrades approached to finish their foe once and for all, all for the glory of the Dahlian League. How sickly sweet, like the most hilarious and imaginative screenplay written by masters of comedy Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft, when Merrick, their helpless quarry, grabbed back.

[Pheonix-IV]

Nothing.

No, that was the wrong word. There was something, something so dark, so empty, that it was almost nothing, almost not there. Almost, but not quite.
Kalvan looked up and stared into the face of Death, and Death stared back. The hollow, monotone syllables clanging into position like the sound of funeral bells, each word slamming closed with the finality of crypt doors.
NOT YOU. YET.

And just like that, the world greeted Kalvan with open arms, his mind catapulting back into consciousness in a sudden neural explosion.
Kalvan stared upwards at the sky, oblivious to the world around him, he stared at the clouds of fine black dust, so fine as to be more like coloured air to the senses, and his mind desperately groped in the far corners of his memory for an explanation.

Perhaps he imagined it. Perhaps his feverish attempts to explain the inexplicable caused him to unconsciously fabricate a reason. Perhaps it was all an illusion caused by such a near Death experience.
Perhaps the words had not been spoken, perhaps he had not seen what had said them, and perhaps he had not understood exactly what it meant.

But then again, perhaps not.

We've invested too much time in you, human. You'll not be dying on us so easily.
We have plans for you...

[Idyllwyld]

The sobering effect of, well, sobering up was so refreshing, akin to that of taking one's head out of a vat of acid.

"Thank you, pixilated fairy!" Merrick screamed, one of his hands wrapped around one of his would-be killers, who was also screaming. The anti-mage's hand's clenched shut, and suddenly a very wet and sticky feeling spewed forth from between his fingers.

The other men immediately released him and darted away, grouping together just out of arms' reach. Merrick only grinned back, teeth literally beaming over them like a spotlight. His arm whipped back with the same limp and sinister crack of a wet towel, and the headless corpse clattered to the ground.

"Re-member when you ran away and I got on my knees and begged you not to leave me because I'd go berserk??" he sung, stepping forward slowly. "Wellll... You left me anyhow and then the days got worse and worse and now you see I've gone completely out of my mind... And..."

The Dahlians, to their credit, paid no heed to the lunatic and took their own bold step forward (of course only after a quick glance to their fellows). The ones with the axes held them at the ready, wickedly forged blades still thirsty for blood, anyone's blood.

It'd be best to oblige them. The axes, that is.

"They're coming to take me away, ha-haaa!!," Merrick shrieked," They're coming to take me away, ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-haaa!! To the funny farm. Where life is bea-u-tif-ful all the time and I'll-be-happy-to-see-those-nice-young-men-in-their-clean-white-coats-and they're coming to take me away, ha-haaa!!!!!"

The men-at-arms bellowed and charged, axes high and whistling through the air. Their eyes were white with rage and battlelust, ivory white just like gleaming bone. Bea-u-tif-ful.

"You thought it was a joke and so you laughed, you laughed when I had said that loosing you would make me flip my lid... RIGHT???" the madman barked. The energy still lingering in the air coalesced at his shoulder-blades, curling, unfurling, meeting 'n greeting 'n annihilating, stirring into the nightmare creamery and exploding backwards in narrow and sharp streams of purple-black-green jettisoning rays. The extra surge of electricity crackled around his creaking teeth, and Merrick shot forth as if out of a virtual rail gun.

Ba-dump ba-dump ba-dump ba-dump ba-daa!

Flying forward and riding air, literally tripping the light fantastic, laughing all the way. Heehee! But those guards, aye, tip off yer' hat and shed a tear for Ireland for them (or in other words, piss your pants), for 'mercy, they kept true to their charge, ramming headlong into the ramjet screaming forward hoping to ram them.

"I know you laughed, I heard you laugh, you-laughed-you-laughed-and-laughed-and-then you left, but now you know I'm utterly mad... RIGHT!!!"

The Dahlians shouldn't have held their axes so high.

Merrick the Mad's arms reached forth, and as the two fronts collided t'were his arms that broke the distance first, ripping into that security bubble and tearing it to shreds, grabbing onto their necks and faces, still riding the rockets until he was pressed right up into their faces. Two-handed axes were far too long. The anti-mage kicked forward, feet still in mid-air, latching the edge of his boots into one executioner's belt and using it as a foothold. Merrick climbed up the man, a self-styled Tartaros, Tower of Nightmare, and slapped the axes' two cheeks with both of his open palms.

"Well you just wait," Merrick cooed, and the axe between his hands would've appeared to glow, if you had the Eyes. These men, so carefully chosen for their complete and total lack of anything magical, did not. "They'll find you yet and when they do they'll put you in the A-S-P-C-A, you mangy mutt!!! And..."

One of the other axmen twisted around, hands gripping his ax at the lower end for maximum swing. Its glint caught Merrick's eye, and he spun away, letting himself fall to the ground. The other ax sliced through the air, striking just a hair of a fraction too late and unable to stop along its course. It struck the pole-axe formerly within Merrick's hands, and charged as it was, did what the anti-mage would've done had he remained there (albeit at the cost of his own head).

Ba-dump ba-dump ba-dump ba-dump ba-BOOOM!

"They're coming to take me away, ha-haaa," Merrick chirped, pulling himself to his feet. "They're coming to take me away, ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-haaa."

He swiveled about on his ankle to inspect the roaring battle around him, in and around the Keep's walls. He whistled lowly.

"To the happy home. With trees and flowers and chirping birds and basket weavers who sit and smile and twiddle their thumbs and toes and they're coming to take me away, ha-haaa!!!"