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finally done with this piece of s**t jfc
"Whatcha doin'?"
Jennalaia groaned and huddled over the new spell scroll that Stella had given her. Out of all the things she needed, one of them was not Vaerie bothering her. She was planning to head out to the Black Sovereign Domain today to pick up His Majesty, who'd snuck out again, and she wanted a new spell on her side.
And the one that Stella gave the mystic looked like a doozy. Summoning a comet out of a magic circle? How cool was that?
Vaerie tripped over one of Jenn's boots, reminding her of his existence. She groaned. "Nothing important, Vaevae. Why are you interested?"
"Well what you're doing looks interesting." Vaerie picked himself up. The blind cleric was annoying at best and completely insensitive at worst. He was a pain to be around and he was acting all high and mighty ever since he found out Jenn had started out late and was much less powerful than he was. Ever since, Jenn had been working towards getting stronger to dominate the insolent boy once again.
"Stella gave me a new spell, so I'm learning it," she snapped. The sorceress was already irritated at the fact that she had to pick up the boy king again. She didn't mind it at all, but she had already spent the day running all over Saint's Haven and wanted to rest at the guild hall for a bit.
"Oooh, is it a spell to magically pick out your best outfit of the day?" Vaerie asked. "Magically make your breasts bigger? Slim your figure down without dieting?"
"No, it's a spell to cure your insufferable personality," Jenn said sarcastically."
"Nah, I'm good. By the way, where are you?"
"I'm not the wall you're facing."
Vaerie whirled around. "I knew that. Uh... are you in front of me or to the side?"
Jenn silently shot a small spark at his backside. The cleric boy yelped in surprise. "That answer your question?" Jenn asked, grinning.
Vaerie turned around and scowled. "Well, it's hard to pinpoint you 'cuz your boobs are tiny! I can always tell where Kay and Kaae are because of their chests."
Jennalaia didn't even dignify that with an answer. Vaerie, being smart, used his magic to get a clearer picture of his surroundings and came up to Jenn's desk.
"So, really, what spell?"
"I summon a comet to rain death upon my enemies."
"Ha ha. Really, what's the spell?"
Jenn went over the chant and patterns in the scroll one more time. That would have to be good enough; it was almost sunset, and she didn't want King Cassius to be trapped in the Domain after dark, since it was going to take her a while to get up the mountain. She rolled up the spell and got up from her desk. Over her shoulder, she said, "Really. That's the spell. I summon a comet and rain death upon my enemies."
Vae gulped. Jenn smirked as she pulled on her boots and fetched her staff and orb. "What's the matter, Vaevae?"
Vaerie coughed. "Anyway, the reason I came in here in the first place: Kaydeen, Theophana and I are gonna do a midnight run of the Dryspring for fun. Problem is, we don't have a fourth member up for the night. Kay doesn't want to invite her blood sister because her blood sister is waaaay behind and has more than a few screws loose, Theophana's the only tinkerer willing to stay up that late and the other tinkerers are asleep, Kalynria and Arilette don't feel like showing, Zcaliber's obviously too low a level..."
Vaerie continued listing why all the different members of Valiance couldn't make it. Jenn started tuning him out, leaving her room and going to the pantry to pick up a few snacks. Vaerie followed her, continuing to list off reasons (Londonspi was stuck in Carderock due to the airship breaking down again, Aloiene hired by the Faire, Delsine going to a friend's house, Yukijii completely uninterested) why others wouldn't go with them.
"...and Kaydeen asked, so y'wanna come?"
"What?" Jenn said blankly.
"Midnight run of the Dryspring? I'm inviting you? The whole reason I walked into your room in the first place?" Vaerie said slowly, as if Jenn was stupid.
Jenn whacked him lightly with her staff and headed for the door. "Let me get this straight. You're inviting me on a dungeon run."
"Yup."
"Because you want to."
"Yup."
"Because I'm the last option."
"Yup."
"I'm not sure if I'm flattered or pissed off."
"Both?" Vaerie supplied. "Look, y'gonna come or not? We're in the area and we're both going back to Lotus Marsh the day after tomorrow, so we figured we'd do something fun. You need to head through the Dryspring anyway, right?"
Jenn winced. "...yes."
"Two birds with one stone!"
"I got the first bird, what's the second?"
Vaerie spread his arms. "You get to spend quality time with friends!"
"Piss off."
"Are you coming or not?"
"Fine! If it gets you off my back!" Jenn pushed the door open. "I have to go pick up the king from his latest adventure and deal with some other stuff. I'll meet you at the Lonely Forest Path at eleven. Okay?"
Vaerie gave her a thumbs-up. "It's a date!"
"Please never use that word again." Jenn left the guild hall and headed for the Black Mountain Path. She had a king to rescue, spitflower extract to collect, and a girl's dream to destroy.
~*~*~
Vaerie pumped his arm. Yes! Jennalaia had agreed! There was no way she'd survive on the Abyss plane. In the past, Jenn had refused Vae's help when injured. Now she'd have to and throw her pride under a rug. This was gonna be great.
That didn't mean everything he'd said was a lie. Kaydeen did want Jenn to come along, because Kay was pretty cool like that. Theo didn't care either way. Most of the tinkerers were asleep around midnight, though, that was true. But he hadn't even bothered asking some of the guild members. Londonspi was too low anyway, Zcaliber never really showed and nobody really knew him, Alliorah hadn't even chosen her path yet, so on.
Some of the stuff that he had said was a lie, though. Or omission of information, if you wanted to get technical. He said they were going into Dryspring, but what he hadn't said was they were going into Dryspring on the Abyss plane. That ensured that Jenn would be forced to rely on his healing magic instead of her stupid potions. Vaerie never could stomach that slop.
Vaerie turned and started strolling back to his room. Making his least favorite sorceress swallow her pride was gonna be great. Maybe he'd just decide not to help her until Kaydeen forced him-
Vaerie tripped over a table. Whoops. That's what he got for walking and thinking at the same time. He quickly got up and brushed himself off, and navigated the room.
He thought about that spell she said she was learning, but he brushed it off. There was no way a stupid sorceress would be able to summon a comet. Especially not a sorceress weaker than he was.
And especially not Jennalaia.
~*~*~
Jennalaia finished off the snipers with a few whacks of her staff. She had already been irritated because she wanted to take a nap, and now she had to get the boy king? She didn't mind, but he couldn't have decided to take on this adventure tomorrow? She had been looking forward to an evening of peace and quiet.
And then there was Vaerie. Something was off about him today, even more so than usual. He was being nice to her? That only ever happened if he was planning something. She would have loved to challenge him to a fight and put him in his place, but he was almost twice as powerful as she. Even with her new spell on her side, she didn't stand a chance. He could heal indefinitely, too. She had to get stronger than him in order to beat the s**t out of him like she did when they were kids.
Ugh! He hadn't even been decent when he learned she'd been arrested and that was why she took so long to head out! He'd laughed in her face! She poisoned the group of creatures in front of her, waited it out, and picked up the pocket change they had dropped. Maybe if she was smart, she could beat the stupid jerk of a priest. Somehow. Probably not.
After incinerating everything in the area, Jenn teleported a few times to the next main hub. Here lay the last line of defenses, a little gauntlet of sorts. It was an ugly place, and she could see dried blood splattered on the stone cliffs and the dirty ground of previous adventurers who'd come to try to take on the brethren who had a nasty habit of constantly summoning the burning demon known as Ignis. Jenn had lost count of the number of times she'd had to clean up the guards' mess and deal with Ignis in the process.
She heard sniffling, over in the corner. There was the king! Jenn quickened her pace, trying to get to the king cowering in the corner, but a horn sounding stopped her. She turned as the first gate opened and several armored poochums spilled out.
Jenn tightened her grip on her staff. This was going to be nice. Her staff glowed green as she spoke the enchantment for the poison spell, which sounded to the normal ear like "breathe deep!" and traced a small symbol in the air. Green poison sprayed over the poochums. She followed it up with a quick fire spell, and they all fell down dead.
Just in time too; the next gate had opened. Jenn cringed; spiders! Why did it always have to be bloody spiders? She ran forward anyway, tracing the circle needed for her favorite spell.
"Fireworks!" she yelled - at least that was how it sounded to the normal ear. Another sorceress would have heard a short but complex chant, summoning the burning rays. They exploded outward and converged on a single target: namely, the spiders. Most of the arachnids fell, but Jenn took care of the rest with a simple explosion.
The sorceress shuddered. She hated spiders.
The next wave was a pack of trolls; probably a family or two. Jenn didn't care. It wasn't in her job description to care about the workings of monster lives. Her job was to eradicate them and pick up the cash that remained.
Well, the cash part wasn't part of the job description. But Jenn needed money. She wasn't exactly rolling in cash; if she hadn't run into Theo and Vae that day in the Pass she'd be sleeping outside. Most of the money she made went into potions, clothing repair, traveling expenses, her portion of the guild hall rent, and to her biological family, who lived in Saint's Haven. She still hadn't met them, but the resourceful teen had managed to track them down through records in the library and left pouches of money on their doorstep every week.
Ugh. Jenn blasted the door in front of her. It shattered to pieces. Vaerie was never in the same situation because his mentor provided him with loads of cash previously. Vaerie didn't have a biological family to watch.
The last door creaked open. Jenn turned, expecting some more small fry. Instead, her stomach dropped.
A thumpy.
Jenn grimaced and the she realized this was the perfect opportunity to test her new spell. A thumpy had an outrageous amount of endurance; how would it hold up under a meteor?
She dashed forward, staff glowing, and muttered the fire chant, wearing it down just a tad with fire and ice. Then, she took her staff in both hands and raised it high, tracing the circle, visualizing everything...
To any other sorceress, it would sound like a long, complex string of chants. To anyone else, it sounded like Jennalaia yelled "Death rain down!" as a magic circle traced into existence above the thumpy. Seconds later, a giant comet dropped from the magic circle at mach 8 speed and crushed the thumpy. It exploded on the spot.
Jennalaia stared. That was one hell of a spell. To crush a thumpy in a second... that wasn't a magic spell to be taken lightly.
She grinned. What would Vaerie's face look like when he saw that? He probably wouldn't mess with her much anymore, given her temper. It was too much to hope that he'd be kind to her, but a touch of fear wouldn't hurt.
A whimper in the corner alerted Jenn to her current objective. She could worry about scaring the s**t out of Vaerie later. Right now, she had a king to fetch.
~*~*~
"So, you're all good with the plan?" Vaerie asked.
Kaydeen's blobby figure nodded. "It makes sense according to her personality too! She's way too prideful for help!"
Vaerie's plan was simple: leave Jennalaia to fend for herself while Kaydeen and himself took out the monsters. He didn't want to help her unless she begged for it. And since the sorceress would refuse to throw away her pride by asking a cleric to help, she would probably end up passing out and be humiliated by the fact that Vae had to save her. Perfect.
"Good, and remember - no helping her unless she sounds super desperate." Vaerie winked, though Kaydeen couldn't see it.
Kaydeen's blobby figure looked off somewhere else. "Hmmm... it's ten fifty. Shouldn't she be here by now?"
"She said she was going to take care of some stuff after picking up His Majesty from the Domain, I think."
"He ran off again? Gosh, that's such a bad habit!"
"You know what else is a bad habit? Talking about people when they aren't around," Jenn grumbled, appearing out of a magic circle.
Vaerie didn't flinch. "You know what else is a bad habit? Teleporting everywhere."
Jenn's blob shrugged. "I dunno about you, but I'd rather not walk after taking out Ignis for like the eighth time. He burned my leg." She pivoted her leg outward, revealing a long red burn on the inside of her leg. The edges of her leg armor were scorched as well.
Vaerie flicked a few sparks in her direction. They sank into her leg and began to slowly dissolve the burn.
Jenn blinked and moved her leg a little bit, watching as the burn was eaten away. "Huh. That's surprisingly kind of you."
"Of course you need to be in tip-top shape, silly," Kaydeen said as they started down the path. "We're going in on the Abyss plane!"
Vaerie flinched. She wasn't supposed to know that quite yet. But Kaydeen already had the Abyss crystals in hand, so there wasn't anything to worry about.
"Wait we're going in on the WHAT?" Jenn's protested as Kaydeen smashed the crystals on the ground. The path warped around them, twisted a bit and then returning to normal. It looked the same, but there was something far more sinister about it now.
"Oh, Vaerie didn't tell you?" Kaydeen said. "We decided to go on Abyss for a little challenge. Vaevae said he was gonna tell you!"
Jenn's voice dripped with venom. "No, he left that part out."
"Oops, I forgot," Vae hummed, readying his staff. "Here comes the first fight!"
The three were swarmed by the beasts of Marissa's Dryspring. Vaerie was optimistic as he fought that Jennalaia would definitely be overwhelmed by the sheer monstrous power of the creatures they were fighting. Kaydeen and himself were taking them out with ease, although some of his strikes were way off target when he put too much power into them.
But when he glanced over and focused for a few seconds, it seemed that Jenn was doing just fine. She was taking out monsters with deadly accuracy, with very few of her spells moving off-target. Those that were off-target appeared to be directed at Vaerie, anyway, so Vaerie suspected that they were not very off-target at all.
That sure was irritating. How was he supposed to humiliate her if she was doing well? He was just going to have to try harder.
As they all finished off the first wave of monsters, he turned in what he believed to be her general direction. "Hey, Jenn, why don't you scout ahead to see if there's a safer way?"
Jenn's blob twisted itself into a scowl. "You're stronger, why don't you? Besides, that's kind of redundant, don't you think? The whole point of a dungeon is to kill everything. Why bother scouting for a safer way?"
Vae colored. "Uh, right." He was so bent on humiliating Jennalaia that he was starting to forget the simplest principles of dungeons.
The trio continued to fight through the dungeon. Vae found himself having difficulty judging when to use magic to see and when to use it to shoot powerful beams. He could hear and sense Kay flipping through the air, delivering powerful kicks and the occasional magic spikes. He could feel the heat and chill and suction as Jennalaia fiercely burned, froze, voided, and blasted her opponents away. Vaerie shielded himself and cast healing magic that spread, inadvertently catching Jenn, which wasn't his intention. Nor did she seem to acknowledge that he was healing her.
Finally, they arrived at the area he was waiting for. Purposely, he stumbled. "Oww!"
Jenn stopped, and Kay knelt to hold up the cleric. "Pansy," the mystic muttered. "Kaydeen, you keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn't trip over his own two feet. I'll check on what's ahead."
Vaerie heard footsteps leading away, and he grinned. Now was the moment he'd been waiting for. A short moment later, he heard a faint scream of surprise as Jenn discovered the thumpy waiting there.
Kaydeen clicked her tongue. "I'm gonna go help her."
"Nah, I'm sure she can handle it," Vaerie said, standing up. He waited.
The cleric heard yells, loud thumps, crackling ice, small explosions, fire burning, and then finally he heard a faint voice yell something that sounded like "death rain down!"
For a split second after that all was still. Then a huge explosion shook the ground. Vaerie and Kaydeen lost their balance and fell. As soon as the earth stilled Vaerie got up, put as much magic as he could into his sight, and ran.
For a second he was actually kind of worried. Had his plan gotten out of hand? Had the surprise thumpy proven a bit too much for the sorceress? Not that he was complaining, but he'd rather leave the Dryspring without blood on his hands.
He was fully expecting to see a dead body and the thumpy still lumbering about.
Instead, Vaerie was faced with Jenn sitting on a giant rock that definitely wasn't ever in the Dryspring with dusty thumpy remains settling all around her. She was busy dusting herself off and hadn't even seen Vaerie approach. "Ugh, I'm going to be rinsing thumpy s**t off me for weeks," she muttered.
"...What." Vaerie's jaw hung open. How had lowly little Jennalaia murdered a thumpy in the Abyss? By herself?
Kaydeen had arrived on the scene. "Whoaaaa, Jenn! Did you kill the thumpy all by yourself?"
Jenn looked up and flashed a grin, sliding off the stone as it vanished. "Sure did! I used a new spell I got!"
"Cool! What's it do?"
Jenn looked at Vaerie and grinned slyly. "Oh, nothing much. I just summon a comet to rain death upon my enemies. Here, I'll do it again." She adjusted her handling on her staff and faced Vaerie.
"Aaaah, that's alright!" Vaerie choked out. "Let's uh... go."
It seemed Jenn had managed to escape from the fight unscathed, but Vaerie's cleric senses told him that wasn't quite true. He focused magic into sight and stared down Jennalaia. It seemed her armor was askew in several places, probably hiding some nasty wounds that were going to get infected with the thumpy dust if they weren't treated. He knew Jenn relied on potions, but potions only cured fatigue and numbed pain; they didn't heal physical wounds. He watched as she popped the cork off a red potion and chugged it, making a face.
"Blugh. This tastes horrible."
Vaerie pouted a bit. Stupid Jennalaia was so prideful she would probably hide her wounds until they were out of the Dryspring so she could stop by the clinic in Saint's Haven rather than ask Vaerie to heal her instead.
Stupid sorceresses.
 Jennalaia · Tue Oct 22, 2013 @ 04:28am · 0 Comments |
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