@Jakers @Asuras
The water was rising.
The ground was darkening.
The black void that Madelon had almost fallen into was not the only one of its kind. More and more unsightly splotches emerged, until soon, Yohan’s stick was useless. It was like the splattering of ink, each splotch slowly expanding, dying the white ground black. The stick was abandoned, and from that point on, the duo could only proceed to swim.
Gravity was against them now. Carelessness, no, even a moment of weakness would cause them to sink into the abyss, unable to escape.
All around, buildings were shredded, pillars of gravity now massive as they turned those stone monuments into rubble. The blue sky was practically gray now, rocks falling upwards into foreign nothingness. But, despite all that destruction, there was a singular boon.
Ahead of them was the obselisk, the singular structure that remained untouched by the madness around them. The obstacles were removed, and now, the way was clear. It would be a long swim, and the clothing that they wore now dragged down their already exhausted limbs.
But perhaps they could still reach there. Perhaps they could still reach that anchor and find some answers.
Did they have the will to advance?
Or the desperation to descend?
@Zombehs @Click This @Psyker Landshark
As she screamed for help, as she ignored the lances of pain that pierced into her, Heidemarie felt a shift. The rocks that pinned her down, that entombed her and taunted her with a peephole of the blue sky, was slowly being lifted up.
There was a glimmer of hope.
Hope that lasted until she realized what exactly had happened.
That anti-gravity pillar that disintegrated stone had grown, now large enough, massive enough, to encapsulate the entire area around the building. One by one, the rubble lifted, and, with that, Heidemarie also felt a sudden shift as her own body rose, falling upwards. Underwater and on the side, the same effect pulled Caelan and Xi Feng as well, all of them suddenly in free fall, their ascent stopped only by the rubble that floated upwards at a slower rate.
The three could now see each other, drenched, bloodied, broken.
And, in the distance, they could see a fourth individual.
@Random @gamer5 @Bob Cut @Jageroux
It was Ann who spotted it first, blue eyes catching something strange in the sky. A blackbird? No, it was moving too erratically for it to be anything akin to flight. It rose as it fell into the pillars, before falling as it launched itself out of them. Ascent, descent, ascent, descent. Zig-zagging erratically, that dark figure continued its unorthodox path through the sky, its fearlessness at the face of such heights serving to almost be a mockery of what those below were subjected to.
A fearlessness that inspired fear.
The waterbound group continued on, no longer wading. They were still in the lead. They were just a minute or two away now. Ann’s gas tank served as a floatation device of sorts, allowing her to take the lead as others followed suit. The blackbird was approaching the obelisk, but why? Because they were? Because there was something else there? Or bec-
Just twenty meters before reaching the obelisk, the four swimmers suddenly fell. The water below them disappeared, and they crashed onto white stone. Another abnormality. In a twenty meter radius around the obelisk, water was blocked by an invisible barrier, creating what was now a three foot tall circular curtain around them. Almost as if there was some sort of display case around the gargantuan obelisk.
Onyx marvelled for a moment, the horologist impressed at the sheer scale of what stood before him, until a heavy droplet splattered onto his cheek.
A silver drop.
From the skies, the blackbird plummeted, slamming fifteen meters away from them. Two cracks simultaneously sounded, the heavy crack of stone and the much more brittle crackle of bones. Dust temporarily shrouded that individual, before it swept out its cloak, dispersing the cloud.
One hand dripped with silver blood.
Its legs, disjointed and twisted as they were from the impact, sustained its weight.
Golden eyes and ink-black hair framed a porcelain face, a sculpted, expressionless beauty.
And, in one smooth motion, it whipped out the Contender.
Ann could react. Onyx could react. Alina could react.
But Marionette could not.
A single shot was all it took to change the ‘display case’ to an ‘arena’.