Kieran

  “[áine], I think we’re prepared to accept your terms,” was the response that finally moved things along.

  [áine] looked excited as she squirmed in her chair, trying to either sit up straight or kneel on the cushion - Kieran couldn’t tell which was her goal, and she ended up with one leg under her while the other dangled off the seat. She leaned forward with a big, creepy grin.

  “Perfect! We can settle on the terms of the [Contract] whenever you’re ready. We can even do it now, if you’d like, and you all can be on your merry way to go save your [Human World] city, or whatever it is you want to do. However, I do have a proposition for you.”

  “Damn, look at Caoimhe over there, getting propositioned by an NPC,” Evan teased.

  “You were the one acting like you wanted to lick her feet earlier, Fiona.” Jazz said.

  “I did not say that.”

  “I believe your exact words were “I would die for this crazy lady?””

  “If you can tell me where I mentioned feet in there, I will pay you a hundred bucks.” Evan said.

  “Has Fiona ever mentioned liking feet?” Firo asked, putting on an oddly innocent voice.

  Ash snorted. “Oh, he has. Plenty of times. So many times.”

  “Bro.” Evan said, but it sounded like he was starting to laugh.

  “What?” Ash shot back, “The number of times I’ve heard you ask for women bosses to step on you while you’re tanking is incredibly high.”

  “Oh, you know - he has done that, hasn’t he?” Firo said.

  “And yet, he didn’t say it once during the fights with Scathach.” Nyx said.

  “Well, yeah, I thought you kinda called dibs on her, Nyx. The whole “god damn, she sounds hot” was before I could say anything.” Evan laughed.

  “I didn- Oh, wait, no, I totally did,” Nyx laughed. “To be fair, I stand by it.”

  “And there you have it folks.”

  “Can you guys focus, please?” Kieran asked as he hit the next response, asking what [áine] was referring to.

  “Well, I was preparing to fight you all when the [Dagda] told me he would be sending envoys. While I don’t really feel the need to test you like that any more, I am itching to dust off some of my skills.” She flashed a predatory smile as she continued, “Would you be interested in a fight, anyway? I can promise you some rewards should you win.”

  “Oh. Hell. Yes.” Jazz said. “I know we can’t do it tonight, but c’mon, you guys, we gotta do it.”

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  “Is there really any reason not to?” Evan asked. “I mean, it’s just free stuff if we win, right?”

  “Rewards?” was an available dialogue option for Kieran, so rather than respond to Evan, he clicked to ask the question.

  “Yes, rewards. From my personal armory.” [áine] said lightly, although the predatory look never left her face. “I will warn you though, given that you’ve impressed me so far, I don’t plan on taking it easy on you like originally planned.” She rolled a shoulder as if stretching out preemptively and added, “It’s been a while since I was really able to stretch my wings, and you’ve convinced me you might be able to handle it.”

  “So like…are we just about to die?” Firo asked. “We barely put a scratch on Scathach, and there’s no way that áine is weaker than she is, right?”

  “True, but Scathach and the Dagda both warned us about her using tricks and nature magic to get in our heads, right? Maybe this will be another fight where it’s not about getting her HP to zero so much as overcoming her magic?” Marissa offered, thinking back to her conversation with Scathach.

  “There was a mention of “mental magic”, too,” Nyx added. “But we really don’t know what that will entail.”

  “Putting aside her creepy smile, I don’t think that us losing here would be that much of a detriment. Given we’re the ones accepting a friendly challenge?” Ash said.

  “I’m inclined to agree,” Kieran said, “I think at worst this might be a one-off fight. We’ve already “passed” her “trial”, so this is just a bonus.” He made air quotes twice, despite no one being able to see them.

  “You think we only get one shot at this fight?” Jazz sighed, sounding entirely disappointed.

  “I could see it being the case, given the set up here.” Firo said. “If we’re accepting an extra hard challenge for special gear, then it seems logical that we wouldn’t get to just fight her until we win.”

  “Rather than only one try, I think it’s more likely that we could give up and progress without winning it, or something like that,” Evie said. “Or there’s a cut-off point in the fight where we need to pass it to continue, then it’s a matter of how far we can go on that run.”

  “Those make sense too.” Kieran said. “The second option could be very interesting. There’s a bottom line we need to hit to progress, but if we pass it without clearing we just get normal gear?”

  “That’d be interesting, though I think I would prefer the first option. Let us try until we either win or give up!” Marissa said.

  “Same.” Nyx agreed. “If it’s too hard and we need to admit defeat, that’s one thing. I’m not sure I like the idea of losing to a gotcha mechanic the first time we make it really far and being super punished for it.”

  “Well, it is a bonus fight.” Firo shrugged.

  “Still. I don’t like it.” Nyx repeated.

  “Well, I don’t have any other informational options now.” Kieran said, still staring at the same two options he had for the last minute or two. “I either accept or decline the fight.”

  “Accept.” The response was unanimous, instant, and came through in a chorus. Kieran laughed.

  “Alright then.” He said, and clicked on “We’ll take the challenge. And we won’t lose.”

  [áine’s] eyes suddenly glowed with anticipation. “Truly?” She sat up in the chair, using her legs to swing herself upright in a single graceful motion. “Oh, what a day! I haven’t gotten to fight in ages!” She clapped her hands once in excitement and used her wings as leverage to hover up onto her feet. She started floating off, away from where the group had their meeting.

  “Should we follow her?”

  As if in response to Jazz’s question, [áine] turned around and beckoned the party after her. “Come on, keep up. We can’t fight in the gardens here or the gardeners will get mad at me. We’ll go to the courtyard outside.”

  [áine] simply continued down the path after that, while Kieran and the rest of the party hurried after her. [áine] even took a few shortcuts, flying over the hedges of a few quick turns, leaving the party scrambling to keep up and not lose her trail.

  “You think she’s leading us back to the courtyard we landed in?” Firo asked.

  “Logically, I would guess no because that place seemed just as well manicured as this garden, didn’t it?” Ash said.

  “She’s also not leading us back the way we came.” Marissa said. “We’re headed for the opposite door of the one we came in through.”

  “So we are.” Firo said, as the group finally broke free of the hedge maze and got their bearings.

  “Come on, come on.” [áine] said impatiently, and flitted off toward the door, moving quicker now that there were no hedges to impede the party.

  The group streamed down the path leading to a door that looked very similar to the one they had entered through, where [áine] led them into a matching white room. The shape seemed as though it mirrored the room on the other side, but this one was missing the haphazard set up of chairs. It was simply empty.

  [áine] floated easily through the room and waved the other doors open to lead the group into a hallway. It wasn’t a long trip - just a few turns through some medium length hallways - before [áine] excitedly burst out into a new room through a pair of gorgeously carved wooden double doors.

  The room beyond was unmistakable; it was large and open, with grass and scattered trees littered throughout. It looked like a picturesque little meadow, just surrounded by walls instead of trees. There was no roof, allowing the trees to grow freely under what was a beautiful open sky.

  Kieran let his camera linger on the image. It was nighttime in the [Other World], and the starry night sky was awe inspiring. The sky box looked like an image of the cosmos taken where there was no light to get in the way. Stars shone all across the sky, and deep swirling colors mixed as if on canvas. It was nearly mesmerizing.

  “Holy crap.” Marissa said.

  “The sky?”

  “Yeah. I’ve seen some pretty sky boxes in my time, but damn.” Marissa answered.

  “They can get away with a lot when it doesn’t have to feel realistic, I guess.” Evie murmured.

  “”I guess so, because that definitely does not feel real.” Nyx said.

  “No kidding.” Kieran agreed.

  “So, we can fight in here! There should be plenty of space, and this section of the castle walls are exterior ones. We won’t damage them by accident, unlike inside.” [áine] said brightly. She sounded incredibly excited. “Oh! And don’t worry about damaging the plants or anything, either. The ones out here are magical - they’ll be fine.”

  As if to prove her point, [áine] raised a hand toward one of the nearby trees. A ball of fire appeared in front of her palm. It appeared to be about the size of a basketball, but quickly condensed into a much smaller sphere.

  There was a moment of silence when the ball stopped getting smaller before a beam of fire rocketed from the sphere. The beam was condensed, red hot, and looked more like heated liquid metal than it did a blast of actual flame.

  The beam scorched the left side of the tree, and with a flick of [áine’s] wrist, the beam shot two feet to the right, searing straight through the thick trunk, as though it were a hot blade through butter.

  The tree cracked and splintered, shooting off little embers for a moment, preparing to fall. Before it actually moved, the fire and embers licking at the tree simply vanished, and the tree went still. The three inch gap left by the beam seemed to fill with magic of some kind, and then the tree was just there, untouched. There was no indication at all that anything had happened to it.

  “See? So give it your all! You can’t actually destroy anything here.” [áine] declared proudly.

  “Bro. Why doesn’t Vine get a spell like that?” Firo asked. “All the fire spells in the Nature magic tree look wimpy as hell compared to that fire death beam.”

  “So, uh. Fiona? Aleister? Think you can eat one of those?” Evie asked, holding back nervous laughter.

  Jazz just let out a noncommittal “Uh…” while Evan laughed. Kieran thought it sounded nervous at first, but had to reconsider when Evan said, “You bet your ass I’m gonna try,” with all of his normal bravado.

  “I don’t know what kind of preparations you need to make, and I want this to be a good fight,” [áine] said, hovering in place, “so just let me know when you’re ready to get started. I’m happy to wait if it gives you time to prepare.”

  Kieran glanced at the clock and said, “We’re basically at the end of the night. What’s the plan?”

  Suddenly, the food crafting table appeared in front of Aleister. “Well. We can do our crafting and stuff here, so that’s easy enough.”

  “Do we want to just throw ourselves at her once and see what happens?” Evan asked. “I know we said we’re not sure how the fight functions as far as repeatability, but I think we should be safe to throw hands once before we break for the night.”

  “There’s no prep circle for us to walk into, so I imagine we need to talk to her to start the fight, right?” Marissa said, “I’m willing to bet that if we’ll really only get one shot at this, the game will warn us.”

  “True. Making the fight an outright pass/fail would be one thing, but not warning us first would be a real dick move on the devs’ part.” Evie said.

  “Then let’s get prepped and see what happens.” Evan said, pulling out the smith’s table.

  It didn’t take long for everyone to be set up for the fight again. With confirmation from the group, Marissa stepped up to [áine] and interacted with her.

  “No warnings. I can just hit whether we’re ready or not.”

  “Go?”

  “Go.”

  Twitch during the week and see how things go, in addition to the writing sprints. Feel free to stop by if you're free!