Redemption; Journey Through the Nine Circles (for ages 16+)

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Raphael
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Re: Redemption; Journey Through the Nine Circles (for ages 1

#706 Post by Raphael »

Talia didn't waste time with thank yous when Helen took control of the Tempest, she was focused solely on reaching Raphael now. Curling her wings around herself, she dropped down through the eye of the storm and spread her wings as soon as she was free from the vacuum of the swirling winds, nodding her head in response to Lily's question as she dive-bombed her way in Raphael's position <He was already losing his temper when he was arguing with Matashi, I fear that the samurai have pushed him past his level of control. I can feel his rage, but he's showing signs of fatigue, he's almost at his breaking point. I know you don't manipulate elements much, but I need you to give me and Raphael an isolated location however you can. force the samurai away from him, and I can take care of the rest!>

Tobias saw the modifications to the tempest and couldn't help but grin. "Impressive upgrades to the storm Helen, and a well performed death spike I might add, quite amusing in fact!"
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Re: Redemption; Journey Through the Nine Circles (for ages 1

#707 Post by Pyromancer »

Helen glanced over to Tobias as she slammed the bottom of the vortex down into the middle of a group of samurai. "Focus, Tobias! If you need a task, pull a Tepes on the ones remaining!" Having caught the group of samurai in the vortex, she lifted the end again and began waiting for another cluster to form.

* * *

Andrew quickly upped his energy channeling and leaped a good twenty feet straight horizontal to the other side of the clearing. He then spun on his father, his gray eyes flashing before he shot back towards the monster. He swung for the leg...

... only to be blocked as his opponent moved the stone blade even faster. Andrew used the block as a platform and pushed himself back to his previous position across the clearing. A two-handed swing of the Beast's weapon sent a wave of arcane energy edged with flame at his father, who responded by slamming his stone blade down in the middle of it. The wave split, and the remainder shot off behind the monster, leaving two swaths of cut down, burning trees.

"Very impressive son, but don't forget who taught you to do that." Andrew's eyes shot wide as his father's eyes turned a shade of gray to match his own, and quickly dashed off around the clearing. Attack was no longer an option. Now the challenge was to survive and, hopefully, find some sort of weakness in his father's defense.

((About bloody time my muse returned!))
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Re: Redemption; Journey Through the Nine Circles (for ages 1

#708 Post by foxlord »

Lily nodded, calling up all the elemental expertise she could, glancing at the ground before pulling up some earthen walls made of the weird, ashy black sand to separate Raphael from the angry samurai. <I'll give it all I can, but work fast! I don't know how long they'll last for!> she called to Talia, wanting to do what she could to keep the group together and alive.

Vickie meanwhile was dancing around the three remaining warriors, trying to keep her distance, holding her spear with one hand, trying to use the magic of her gloves to make it a manageable size for her new technique. She didn't have a shield though, so was relying on her footwork. Her arm still burned fiercely, blood seeping into her dress and fur, making any sort of movement painful and sticky... She couldn't think of how to remove them on her own, not wanting to risk magic, for fear of being surrounded if she didn't keep moving. She wasn't an elemental specialist, and her holy magic slowed them but she couldn't put forth the energy for a strong enough blast without standing still, which wasn't an option.

Matashi continued to pin the warriors down with earthen arms, moving closer to the vortex to allow Helen the opportunity to suck up all the ones in her path, grabbing the ones around it and holding them in place, using his trapped souls to attract those nearby and draw them near him. They'd be gone in no time now!
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Re: Redemption; Journey Through the Nine Circles (for ages 1

#709 Post by Raphael »

Tobias looked down and noticed Vickie was having trouble with some undying samurai of her own and folded his wings in. As he began to descend, he gave Helen a mock salute "I'll leave you to deal with the bothersome demon fowl then!" His body slowly adjusted its angle until he was falling head first, his bat wings folded in and acting as funnels to increase his speed. As he finally neared the ground, he opened his wings, slowed his descent, and landed in front of Vickie, aiming his clawed right hand at the trio of samurai "Focus on your wounds, love, I'll deal with these stragglers." With a twitch of his fingers, three death spikes shot out of the ground and impaled themselves on the samurai, piercing their rib cages and lifting them off of the scorched terrain. As he watched the samurai attempt to pull themselves off of the spikes, he clenched his fist tightly, and the three spikes erupted with thorns that burrowed deep into the flesh of the japanese warriors. Try as they might, the samurai were left dangling on the spikes.

Talia took the chance to fly into the isolated box and sealed it behind her, using her prowess to reinforce Lily's gift that kept the couple locked within. Hopefully Talia could break through to Raphael before he relearned how to transfer out of the makeshift prison <Just keep the samurai away from the box, I'll do what I can!> Raphael was stabbing and slashing wildly at the sand to try and cut an exit out and break free, completely oblivious to Talia. Until her scent filled the confined space, and he looked in her direction.

Talia stood stock still, watching the glowing green eyes staring at her like a predator about to attack its prey. If there was ever a time to try and bring Raphael back to his senses, it was now or never *Here goes nothing…* Focusing her mind on Raphael's she entered his thoughts, and was able to see what was happening inside of the assassin's mind.

The space was all black, save for a lone figure. Raphael, or at least, it looked like Raphael. It looked just like him, but he was larger, was lacking in the clothes department, his claws were out, and he seemed to be attacking wildly at dark silhouettes of anthropomorphic Foxes in business uniforms. They all were identical, and they all seemed to have a sadistic grin on their face. It was then Talia realized that Raphael was fighting what he believed to be Belial, or at least, his subconscious was, and every one struck down just added more to the hoard that was already large in number. Not too far from the battle, a cage was seemingly forced open, and another, more realistic, and properly clothed Raphael was hovering unconscious in the darkness that made up his mind. Talia flew around the battle to float near the unconscious assassin, grabbing his shoulders and lightly shaking him to try and rouse the unconscious body "Raph? Raphael, wake up!"

Raphael stirred slightly from Talia's attempts to wake him, but it was a wasted effort as his conscious, logical half was powerless while his feral half was running rampant, both in and out of his mind. Talia, not sure what to do right now, clung to Raphael as tightly as she could, and burying her face into his shoulder "Please…I know you can hear me…You have to let go of your anger…There are people who need you to help keep them safe…I need you to keep me safe…" Raphael's eyes began to twitch lightly, Talia's words barely getting through to him, but still reaching his sleeping conscious "You don't have to fight alone…I'm here, and I'm going to help keep you from ever losing control again…So please…Wake up…"

Raphael's eyes opened slowly, and he saw Talia's smiling face, chuckling weakly "You're very noisy…do you know that?" Talia tugged at Raphael's ear lightly, making him grunt "None of that…How do I get that beast under control again?"

Raphael, now conscious again, found himself on an invisible walkway, his consciousness forming his own means of treading the complexity of his mind "It won't stop fighting until it's killed its biggest threat…But right now, the only thing threatening his existence is me…But neither of us can function at our best without the other, so he has to be forced back into his cage until I can find the time to mend the damage Belial did to my mind…I need your help to calm him down…" "Well, that's why I'm here hon, Let's cage us an animal!"

Talia flew alongside Raphael, rushing for the center of the battlefield "Focus on clearing the illusions away from my feral half somehow. Fly into them, anything to disrupt the images!" Talia nodded and hurried ahead, flying in front of Raphael's larger, more bestial form, and breaking some of the illusions that were targeted by his claws. The feral beast spun to try and attack Talia, but his large claw was caught by Raphael's, stopping the other claw with his other hand when the beast tried to attack him with his free claw "That's enough! The demon is gone! All you are fighting are ghosts of our past, and the more you fight, the more they surround you! Keep fighting, and all you'll be doing is exactly what HE wanted us for in the first place. Is that what you want-to be that monster's killer?!"

The beast roared ferociously at Raphael, and Talia was about to approach when Raphael told her to stay back "Don't get in the way Talia, this is MY inner demon to deal with…And only I can communicate with this beast..." Raphael focused his attention back to the beast, staring it in the eye with a fire not many have seen, not even those he considered close enough in the group he was with now "I haven't forgotten what he did to us…How he split us into two, constantly fighting over control of the mind, for him to use you as he saw fit…And using my guilt to keep us tethered to the past…But if you keep fighting wildly, you're going to get both os us killed…And what will that accomplish?

"I formed that mental cage for a reason, to keep you from influencing my decisions until we were both one mind and soul again. Because without me, you would only think about kill or be killed. But without you, I can't fight at my strongest...The only reason I haven't expelled you is because we need each other. You need me to make the right decisions, and I need your strength to protect what's important to us…Something we couldn't protect in the past…"

The beast growled irritably, but released his grip on Raphael's hands. Raphael looked up at the large beast, and nudged toward the cage "Wait for me to mend the cage, I'll deal with this…" As the beast turned and started leaving the mass of Belial specters, Raphael turned his head to look at them surrounding him now. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes, trying to free his mind of the negative thoughts and emotions that these specters once brought "The ties that bind us are no more, demon…Leave this place and never return…" Five images of people Talia has never seen appeared, hovering behind Raphael. A Family of 3 Ocelot anthros, father, mother, and a very young son, who all seemed to have some resemblance to Raphael. Next to them was a dark haired human male on their left, and a beautiful female Lynx anthro to their right. "…Very soon…I will face you for the last time, to put an end to the torment you have caused us all…"

This was the first time Talia had ever seen this side of Raphael, and it honestly brought tears to her eyes, both spiritually, and physically. Raphael turned to face the five memories of his past, his eyes softening as he struggled to hold his gaze on them "…I couldn't protect you…I've accepted that…Please…help me see this through, so that I may avenge the people who I was forced to kill for his cause…" The memories nodded and engulfed the black void of his mind with light, actually making it seem like there was a white sky that faded to a black ground. With their deed of clearing his mind complete, the memories faded, and Raphael walked over to the cage, where the beast was standing outside of the entrance, waiting for him. Raphael glanced at Talia with a smile as he passed her, before ushering the beast into the cage, and slowly easing the door shut "Those demons can't do you any harm here, to fight them is to only exhaust yourself…I'll find a way to mend the damage that keeps us separate, then you'll be free from this cage, just try to be patient…" The door repaired itself and was securely locked now, leaving Raphael and Talia. Raphael looked at Talia and nodded "Time to go, we still have work to do…" "…Right…"

Now free from Raphael's mind scape, Talia helped keep Raphael from collapsing as he regained control of his body "…Sorry for making you worry Tal…Let's go help our friends…" Talia smiled and nodded "I like the sound of that."

The box of sand and ash exploded outward, Raphael firing at the sand with his hellfire torrent and turning the sand into molten glass before rushing forward and using his powers to yank the katana out of the samurai's had and decapitate them one by one before transferring to other samurai and tricking them into the same outcome. As the glass was slowly forming into molten globs, Talia was wrapping it around the decapitated samurai, looking up at Lily as she formed them in large sand balls "Lily! I need your strongest gust of wind, we need to cool these guys down so they can't move!" With no water to work with and cool the sand down, Talia was resorting to wrapping the samurais up in molten sand and forcing them together into a large glass ball. Raphael, meanwhile, was playing soccer and baseball with the decapitated heads, keeping them away while Talia and Lily focused on cooling down the molten sand "We need to get this taken care of so we can go find Andrew! That brainiac should have been back by now!"
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Re: Redemption; Journey Through the Nine Circles (for ages 1

#710 Post by Pyromancer »

Andrew was in trouble. He had been dodging his father’s attacks by the skin of his teeth, and now found himself pinned with two trees at his back and no way past his father that didn’t risk being cut in half. Watching his opponent grin and bring his sword about for a stabbing charge, Andrew felt his skin go slick with sweat. Is this it? Is this my death? He slammed his eyes shut, wishing to be safe…

… and an instant later he opened them on the other side of the clearing. Surprised, he turned to look back at his father, who was looking around in confusion. “What the- Where’d you go?” Andrew found his thoughts going at hyperspeed.

Surpriseconfusiontransferreddoesn’tknow(insert picture of wolves attacking a deer)harryhimwearhimdowncuthistendons-

Yes!

Andrew grinned for a moment before transferring right behind the monster and slashing into the back of its left knee. "Argh!" His father collapsed to one knee, then swung back to try and hit Andrew. Said Summoner transferred away again before delivering a slash to the ribs on the monster’s right. Another transfer and miss and his father’s Achilles tendon was severed. Again and again Andrew transferred around his father, slicing at vulnerable flesh while staying just out of his father’s field of vision.

Finally, Andrew stood on the far side of the clearing from his father, who was down on both knees and had somehow twisted himself around to face him. Andrew brought the Beast’s weapon around and began to charge-

Just as the most horrible, ear-piercing, disorientating noise filled the clearing. Andrew went to cover his ears by reflex but his world suddenly swam and he found himself on his knees, puking his metaphorical guts out. It took all he had to keep from falling over as his sense of balance virtually disappeared, and his vision quickly blurred from the sound waves passing through the fluid surrounding his eyes.

He struggled to bring his head up, but got it just in time to see the blurry form of his father climbing to his feet and a winged shape, almost like a crimson butterfly with an enlarged abdomen, land in a nearby tree and wrap four tentacles from its abdomen around the branches. As Andrew watched the red blotches on his father's form disappear, he knew this fight just got much, much worse.

* * *

Helen glanced out to the forest as a faint sound, almost like an amateur was playing a set of bagpipes horrifically wrong, reached her through the winds howling around her. Given how it was coming from the direction Andrew went flying, and how loud it must've been to reach her through said winds, she judged that it was time to finish things up.

Twisting her hand around to an upward-facing claw, she changed the tornado into a sphere and briefly increased the force of the winds going into it. The moment the last harpy in the immediate area was sucked in, she isolated the ball with a shell of vacuum before raising its temperature to the flashpoint of Hell's atmosphere. In an instant, the sphere and everything in it was reduced to a fine cloud of ash.

Not wasting a moment, Helen released her hold on the vacuum shell (causing it to vanish with a slight whump ) and went into a steep, headfirst dive. She flipped over right before hitting the ground, her foot leaving a six-inch-deep hole. At the moment of impact, a veritable forest of barbed stone spears erupted from the ground around her, catching the majority of the samurai and leaving them impaled and immobilized. Thankfully, she had taken the care to avoid harming her allies beyond minor scratches.
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Re: Redemption; Journey Through the Nine Circles (for ages 1

#711 Post by foxlord »

Vickie nodded to Tobias and gave him a thankful look, turning her healing powers on herself, starting to close the wound. She grit her fangs, having not had many opportunities to do this and was not as good at keeping the concentration needed, so the going was slow. The area felt numb, and as it stitched itself together under her paw, she could feel it moving, which made her nervous. She let out a cry as she put more energy into it, drawing some from her gauntlets to increase its potency. It was a very unsettling feeling, but also good in a way.

Lily waited with bated breath as Talia went to calm Raphael down, doing her best to keep the earthen walls up before Raph exploded out of the prison, her feeling the shock as the sand collapsed. She was afraid of what it would mean, before seeing he was alright, which was a relief, it had to be said! Nodding to Talia, she started to channel a wind-storm, which was the trickiest bit of magick she'd done yet, but she was able to call up a competent one to cool down the molten sand to make a decent glass prison, doing her best to keep focus as the wind whipped and struggled to go every which way, as wind was wont to do, but she kept focus, barely.

Matashi released his focus on the earthen arms, letting them crumble as their work finished, wrapping himself in a fine earthen barrier as he looked out towards the emptying battlefield. As Helen landed, she shot up a wall of spikes, his barrier deflecting them, barely. "Watch yourself young one! We are not foes here" he said in a scolding, paternal tone before drawing his blade and heading out into the field once more.
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Re: Redemption; Journey Through the Nine Circles (for ages 16+)

#712 Post by Raphael »

Raphael swatted a samurai's head witht he side of his heavenly blade, just as a spike came up and imputed it through the eye, keeping it in place. With only a few left that were still standing and pulling themselves together, this would be a cakewalk for some of the other fighters in their group "Talia, you stay here and cover cleanup. I'm taking Matashi and we're going to go help Andrew!" "You got it!"

Raphael appeared beside Matashi, gripping his shoulder "Wings out, brother. We need higher ground to find Andrew, and the skies are clear. I'll get us skyward, you keep us suspended in the air until we find him." With that, Raphael locked forearms with Matashi and transferred them both up to high in the sky, trusting Matashi to use his wings to keep them in the air "Tell me if you see him, I'll get us down there."

It didn't take them long to figure out where Andrew was, as a shrill cry echoed in the air, at a pitch that almost forced Raphael to loosen his grip as it scraped at his ears. Once the sound faded, he shook his head to try and rid the uneasiness of the sound from his body, before turning in the direction of the sound to find something flying in the distance "That's got to be him, hang on!"

Within seconds, Raphael and Matashi were suspended above Andrew and the strange creature. Raphael released his grip on Matashi's forearm and, while transferring for a more accurate position, landed beside andrew with his sword and demon gun drawn "What the [censored] is that thing?"

Talia, meanwhile, was using her earth control to wrap the remaining samurai's in sand, before scorching them with fire and using gusts of wind to cool the glass that resulted from her efforts "Alright everybody! Let's finish these suicide swordsmen off!"

Tobias was amused by Helen's spike attack, and took the extra spikes as projectiles, impaling one swordsman and pinning his regenerating body to a cliffside, before dismembering him and pinning his limbs not too far from his body "Stay there for a while, chap, we have to deal with your friends."
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