Bob™ at 18:49, 17 March 2015

2015-03-17T18:49:31Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 18:49, 17 March 2015
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	"Emera calls me Sapphire."		"Emera calls me Sapphire."

	~~<br><br>~~		***

	Screaming Barracuda sprawled on her back and groaned. Everything was blurry, apart from the pain throbbing in her jaw. It wasn't the first time she'd been punched whilst playing. Probably not even the seventh. Numerous assailants floated around her swimming brain, shouting abuse and insulting her music. Wankers...		Screaming Barracuda sprawled on her back and groaned. Everything was blurry, apart from the pain throbbing in her jaw. It wasn't the first time she'd been punched whilst playing. Probably not even the seventh. Numerous assailants floated around her swimming brain, shouting abuse and insulting her music. Wankers...
	<br><br>		<br><br>

Bob™ at 18:45, 17 March 2015

2015-03-17T18:45:45Z

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Sandy at 01:48, 6 December 2014

2014-12-06T01:48:24Z

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Sandy at 01:42, 6 December 2014

2014-12-06T01:42:00Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 01:42, 6 December 2014
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	<font size="3">'''Sapphire'''</font>		<font size="3">'''Sapphire'''</font>
	<br><br>		<br><br>
			Screaming Barracuda sprawled on her back and groaned. Everything was blurry, apart from the pain throbbing in her jaw. It wasn't the first time she'd been punched whilst playing. Probably not even the seventh. Numerous assailants floated around her swimming brain, shouting abuse and insulting her music. Wankers...

			"Piss o-"

			The word died on her lips, as two cyan lights burned away the haze. A masked face hovered above her. Fingers grasped her throat -- squeezing, crushing, killing.

			She clawed at him with her left hand, grabbing and slapping at the smooth hardness of his mask, trying to gouge those cyan slits. But his face was impenetrable. Strong and invulnerable in the center of her darkening vision. Invincible.

			His face was. The rest of him wasn't.

			Screaming Barracuda's right hand did a little squeezing and crushing of its own. But not on his neck.

			The cultist's groan was higher than hers had been. His grip loosened. She struggled, twisting and slithering her body beneath his, until she could pull one leg free. The Piscarian rocker drove her boot heel into his chest.

			He floundered backwards. Barra's hand scrabbled on the floor till it found the neck of her guitar.

			The man howled, still falsetto, and lunged.

			Wailing Doom cracked him in the side of the head. And despite her detractors' comments to the contrary, her instrument really did hurt much more when applied externally.

			Screaming Barracuda kicked the crumpling weight aside, got up, and gawped at the two women who appeared at the end of the passage -- battling in the middle of a two-tone inferno.

			***

			Waves of fire crashed together. Blue and yellow met like rival oceans waging war. Long burning streams snaked from the beautiful apocalypse, slashing at both pyrokineticists' faces and outstretched arms. But other flames flashed across their flesh to intercept them. An incendiary aegis blocked each one, roaring defiance. Alexa Haelia's eyes glared from amidst her azure conflagration. Molten murder seethed in their fiery depths.

			Those blue things want to kill us! They're... Unicorn!

			"What?"

			Unicorn!

			Ali turned her head. And if they were crazy, so was she. Because a burning blue horn was pointing right at her chest. Her flames rushed around to intercept it. But fire or flesh, real or delusion, the unicorn smashed into her like a speeding truck. Ali flew across the corridor and thudded against the wall.

			"Ugh... Show off..."

			She lay on the floor, pain echoing through her bones. Alexa... Sapphire...

			That's a stupid name! It's a pun! We're not going to be beaten by someone whose name's a pun!

			...walked towards her. The woman's eyes glowered hotter and bluer than the serpentine tongues lapping around her body.

			"You were right," Sapphire said. "The unicorn worked... But there's something better."

			The animal rose up on its hind legs, goring the air with flaming hooves. Its body surged outward, expanded like an inflating balloon. Expanded and shifted -- twisting, changing. Masses of fire lashed out from its back and stretched into a pair of pteropine wings.

			A dragon! It's a dragon!

			"I know!"

			Ali braced one hand against the floor and raised the other. Yellow tongues flickered across her fingers, ready to flare and fly. But Alison Haelia felt like a woman standing on the roof of her house, about to try blowing back a hurricane.

			We'll handle this!

			"How?"

			We have an idea!

			"But..."

			We saw it in the song!

			"I don't... Hey!"

			Fire gushed from her fingertips. But not at Sapphire, or her grow-your-own dragon. It stopped in the air between them. Stopped and grew, spreading and shaping. Clay giving birth to a sculptor's dreams. The amorphous mass settled into a humanoid form, fashioning head and limbs. Flames softened into features.

			"That's... me?" Ali said.

			No. You don't have pointy ears...

			The dragon roared. Pyromancer Elyssa smirked, and tossed a fireball at its face.

			***

			"Again?" Screaming Barracuda said.

			She rolled over, got her hands under her, and pushed herself up -- lifting her bruised face from the floor. Which tosser had punched her this time? Whoever the bastard was, her ears were bloody ringing from the... the... punch.

			No, not a punch...

			The Piscarian sat back on her legs, trying to shake the cobwebs from her head. Wailing Doom lay beside her. She picked it up and hugged it to her chest. Fingers twanged across its strings.

			"So she shot him in the face!
			Just shot him in the fa-a-a-a-ace!
			Yeah, she shot him in the face!
			Oh, oh, oh, in the fa-a-a-a-ace!"

			The familiar lyrics and tune wrapped themselves around the universe and crammed it back into order. Barra stood up and stared at the aftermath of Armageddon. The remains of furniture and interior walls lay before her in a melted, mangled mess. Hot, dusty stench filled her nose.

			She'd been lucky. The room she'd dived into had been at the edge of the destruction, otherwise her publicist would already be busy setting up the Screaming Barracuda holographic post-death tour.

			"Ali..."

			Barra glanced at the door to the passage. But at this point entrances were fairly optional. She walked across the room instead, stepping over rubble and subdued patches of fire, and through the next, until she came to the smoking, blackened corridor.

			"Yeah..." a voice said. "That... That... worked..."

			"Ali? Is that you?"

			The musician stood above the supine woman, whose face and charred clothes were almost as dark as the walls.

			"Yeah..."

			Barra's eyes narrowed.

			"How do I know it's really you?" The Piscarian grasped her guitar by the neck and hefted it overhead like a battleaxe. "That other bint looked the bloody same!"

			"Short hair! Look!"

			"Yeah? Maybe it got burned off!"

			"Crethnerith."

			"Oh, screw you." Screaming Barracuda lowered her weapon.

			"Alexa?"

			Barra looked around, turned back to Ali, and grimaced.

			"Ali... She's... I'm sorry."

			The pyrokineticist said nothing for some moments. She clambered to her feet, wincing as she moved her limbs, and didn't meet Barra's gaze.

			"Let's get outside," Ali said at last. "Then I'll burn this place to the ground."

Durlin: Created page with "'''The Four Kasans'''

"Who's Erebus the Black?" Telemachus says.

"A dragon," you say.

"Huh?"

The faces around the..."

2014-12-05T21:27:29Z

Created page with "'''The Four Kasans''' "Who's Erebus the Black?" Telemachus says. "A dragon," you say. "Huh?" The faces around the..."

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LotS/The Story/Fade to Gold/The Four Kasans - Revision history

Bob™ at 18:49, 17 March 2015

Bob™ at 18:45, 17 March 2015

Sandy at 01:48, 6 December 2014

Sandy at 01:42, 6 December 2014

Durlin: Created page with "'''The Four Kasans''' "Who's Erebus the Black?" Telemachus says. "A dragon," you say. "Huh?" The faces around the..."

Durlin: Created page with "'''The Four Kasans'''

"Who's Erebus the Black?" Telemachus says.

"A dragon," you say.

"Huh?"

The faces around the..."