Minds Inflamed - Nin vs. Lucid

[Anomaly]

"Ion output at 100% and holding!"

"Enemies on the ground keep coming, increase magical shields to compensate for low level fire!"

"Airborne enemies inbound, increasing Ion field discharge field to maximum! We're losing air-space superiority!"

"Orders from the top, ignore the ants stings, swat the flies before they can infest us with maggots."

"Roger, commencing energy blanket discharge!"

The Dragons Skull gate, curling horned nerve center of the Floating Fortress' navigational and defense systems. Also the main gate of the fortress itself. If this gateway falls, there is no point of protecting any others. The massive maw of the beast who's name is long forgotten remains tightly closed against the would be invaders. Though thick bolts of crimson energy scythe through the thickly swarming monstrosities, some have already alighted on the rocky 'shore' of the island beyond the fortress walls.

Instantly, soldiers from the realms of Life and Death surged from their respective sectors to meet the enemy, adding the chaos of the chimera horde and the horror of the undead armies to the already terrible scene of demonic blood shed. Despite all this it was ease itself to see that unless serious action was taken, it would only be a matter of time before the invading forces pry open the Dragons Gate and enter the fortress at the border of Life and Death, giving them a straight shot to the Keep itself that looms far to the north.

Masters scramble from computer bank to computer bank, strengthening a power matrix here, augmenting a magical shield their, diverting magical and scientific energy through an endless corridor of systems far more complex than any normal person would be capable of dealing with. Each staff member specialized in making their own console sing and dance. This is not the first attack they've had to deal with, but this one certainly seems to be putting them to the test. Watching them scramble to and fro, one can't help but sense a certain amount of anxiety in the air. They have had orders not to move the fortress...phasing out of this dimension would only leave them open to further attack. Do or die, this was where they made their stand.

Suddenly the sense of hopelessness fades. The staff members again move about their tasks calmly...still moving swiftly and with purpose, still shouting commands and figures to one another, but now they move like a well oiled machine. This is all thanks, in no small part, to the man that stands at the helm of the Dragons Gate. The Pillar of Mind manipulates them each, strengthens them, and sends them dancing like pawns on a chess board. Lucid's powers reach out to the chimeran and undead horde, and what was a mindless brutal mob of beasts suddenly take on a chilling tactical order. The demon horde is not pushed back, but is held, sharply away from the Dragon Gate as the Gate defenses are brought online. Smoke curls out of the gates nostrils as a pulse of light and flame roars from between the clenched teeth. Balls of non-elemental flame whizz over the Masters forces and land in the demonic ranks where it burns and hisses, swallowing all that nears it.

For now, the gate is safe. Lucid smiles to himself...this is child's play for him. Yet even as this thought crosses his mind, he is made aware of a blind spot in his psychic field. Though he cannot directly sense a mind, the very absence of brain-wave activity sets off alarms. Even where the undead stand, who most of which lack brains altogether, brain waves can still travel. No...here is an anomaly that needs his attention. Bringing the visual screens into focus, he guides the controls mentally to zero in on the point of distortion.

There stands Nin, outside the gate and amidst the horde of this Brotherhood of Doom. There he stands and appears to gaze back across the channel of the visual screen into Lucid's soul. The demon within the Pillar of Mind stirs as Lucid readies all the Gates defenses. Amid the shouts of war, a great battle of the minds is about to take place.

[Nin`]

Out Of Character:

Here I’ll be “setting the scene” – so to speak, since it is my hope that this will be an epic battle. So I’ve decided to expand, from Nin’s point of view, upon Anomalies introductory post above while introducing my own. My goal (apart from winning of course ^^;) is to just put on a good (and interesting) show for people.

For clarity of mind: thoughts are italicised, whereas sub-vocalised thoughts are italicised with quotation marks.

---

***

Nin stood silently in anticipation, his patience waning beneath the blackened sun as he awaited the order to move. Arms crossed and with a black cloak swirling fiercely about him, Nin, poised in sinister meditation, observed the entire planet from within the psychic eye of his mind.

He quietly watched as events had unfolded…

Dawn had broke clear over the horizon of the world, bathing the perennial plains, the vast forests and the soaring red mountains in a bloody hue. Flesh-plants waved delicate fronds in the first glowing rays of the sun; screw-grass writhed as it sank its roots deeper into the hard earth. Strangle-vines tightened their grip on the ruins of an abandoned outpost, rendering steel and plastic down to their constituent parts ready for absorption. On the horizon the upright cones of spore chimneys, towering over distant cities, sputtered smoke into the sky, readying the clouds that would bring the afternoons fertilizing rain.

As far as the eye could see the sky was bare, yet a sinister heaviness, veiled and unseen, continued to linger high in the air. The rising sun was hazy, yet behind it, creeping slowly up from the horizon, there was a growing body of darkness: as of a great storm moving out from all directions. It looked as if the twilight, under an endless procession of trees, was flowing downwards from the mountains as the vast blackness reached out to veil the sky; blotting out the sun into little more then a silhouetted black orb.

The Masters floating fortress hung in the aerial midst’s of an untainted firmament, like a angelic sanctuary and cocoon of dreaming will, as the amassed armies of darkness closed in ever more, and to lay siege of what was soon to become the Masters tomb.

His senses were quickly diverted, bringing Nin’s mind back to the presence of the dusty hill as he detected a shift in the Dark Christ’s semblance. He nodded to them.

An irrepressible grin forged its way across his face, hungrily, as Nin, along with his brothers, was teleported directly into the heart of battle.

***

Strident and clear, the booming wail of a war horn sounded their arrival.

The sky was now utterly dark, the stillness of the heavy air foreboding a violent storm with a procession of clouds. Suddenly, in the skies surrounding the Masters fortress, a blinding flash seared the gathering clouds. Branched lightning smote down, lashing against the fortresses eastward tower defences as, for a staring moment, the watchers amidst its walls saw all the space between them and the sky alit with a white light. There, as the light faded into fierce swirls of black and contorted shapes, twisting and flaring in almost every direction like a rampant fire, Nin, embraced in a cloak of shadows, stood within the sky in effortless levitation.

His eyes flared menacingly, casting his sights down toward the raging struggle below. Brazen trumpets sounded. The hordes of the Brotherhood surged forward, some against tower walls, others towards the causeway and the ramp that led up to the Dragon gates. There the hugest Demons were mustered, together with the thundering gait of scores and legions of wild Orcs. A storm of arrows and energy blasts met them together with a hail of boulders alit in flame. The hordes of the Brotherhood wavered, broke and fled back; and then charged again, broke and charged again; and each time, like the incoming sea, they halted at a higher point. Again trumpets rang, and a legion of roaring Orcs rushed forth in tactical formation. Many held up great shields above them providing protection for others by forming a metallic canopy of singular armament, while in their midst they bore a titanic steel ram - swinging on mighty chains and imbued with the psychic force and strength of the armies stronger minded horrors. They gained the gate.

The mighty battering ram, swung by thousands of mesomorphic limbs, smote the Draconic gate, penetrating its supernatural defences with rending boom. Again and again the great ram swung and crashed, while the Masters continued to hail down fire after fire of bitter defiance.

The fortress was under heavy siege; Nin could tell that its defences were already suffering the malaise of the innumerable strain of the black horde, despite possessing the psionic faculty of being able to hear the Masters within as he honed his senses - their voices filling his mind:

"Ion output at 100% and holding!"

"Enemies on the ground keep coming, increase magical shields to compensate for low level fire!"

"Airborne enemies inbound, increasing Ion field discharge field to maximum! We're losing air-space superiority!"

"Orders from the top, ignore the ants stings, swat the flies before they can infest us with maggots."

"Roger, commencing energy blanket discharge!"


‘ Pitiful…’, he thought to himself. But then something changed. Another mind more advanced then the remnant psyches surrounding it had sharply entered into the fray. It brought on a strong sense of tactical order amongst the disarrayed minds of the Masters. There was an evident improvement in the Draconic gates defences.

This one was interesting…

Nin’s blood began to rush, surging like liquid fire coursing through his veins as he peered deeper into the mental field surrounding this aberration.

The Pillar of Mind!

Perhaps he would have a challenge this day after all…

Raising his right hand to the tip of his scalp, Nin slowly pulled down an ornate death mask – flawless in specular reflection - over his face; shaped with a nightmarish countenance. Then, reaching behind to the back of his head, he pulled up the cowl of his moiling black cloak, concealing the remaining areas of his cranium.

Continuing to peer into the mental field of the Pillar himself, Nin slowly descended unto the extending bridge below, where scurrying monstrosities rushed to and fro the Draconic gate: the very nerve centre to the fortress itself.

Then, almost without warning his mind rippled with electrochemical activity, like capillary waves along the interface between two fluids, as a secondary presence formed within the recesses of Nin’s mind.

‘Hmm… what’s got you all fired up, eh?’ A robust voice vibrantly sprung to life in subitaneous thought, sub-vocalised and confined entirely within Nin’s skull. He knew it well. Ignoring the question put to him, he sub-vocalised a laconic response.

‘Stay quiet.’

The ripples of mental activity, as gentle as a passing breeze, swiftly withdrew back into the quantum neural depths.

Reaching the stone bridge, his cloak wavering amidst the air between the boarders of life and death, Nin stood directly before the great fortress. The structure loomed up from the horizon like a stoned creature of obscene beauty. Great ring walls of stone, like towering cliffs, stood out from the keep like a mountainside, from which it ran - in complete circular design - and then returned again. The Dragons gate lay directly ahead.

The skull gate roared, as if with fury, as great streams of molten fire were expelled from its huge gaping jaws, engulfing the attackers in a torrid of writhing flames.

Hordes of Orcs fled in dismay, a great many burning and cast a light as they scattered in multiple directions. Out of the disarray, Nin swiftly grabbed a fleeing Orc commander, his hand gripping tightly around the grotesque creatures neck as he held it up from the ground.

“Sir, Nin…!” The creature yelped in discomfort, clutching at the warriors arm in hope of release.

“Why does the Dragons gate still stand commander? You were ordered to bring it down were you not?”

The Orc gasped for breath as it attempted speech, it’s vile voice rasping in the process.

“Aye, indeed sir, but… its power seems to have… somehow intensified… We could not overcome it.”

Staring up at the gate once more, studying both it structural and energy lay out, Nin knew of what the Orc spoke. Lucid…

“Why, if it was not for...”

He instantly cut of the Orc.

“Their victory against you needs no explanation…” He paused, releasing his grip; the Orc fell to the stone floor with a clash, slowly scampering away as it picked itself up, breathing freely once more with a momentary sigh of relief.

“… But your defeat allows none,” Nin closed.

Without a second thought the Orc was instantly flayed alive; it’s body writhing uncontrollably in violent discord.

Facing the fortress in full view, focusing his mind, Nin sternly arose to challenge her defences. His mind washed over the ion fields, the magical barriers, the technomechanics and the gates structural integrity, but without possessing an acute knowledge of the gate itself breaching it would toll both time and effort – two things he could ill afford this day. Suddenly, like the dark gathering of clouds about him, a scheme hatched in his mind.

He rapidly increased his neuronic activity, allowing him to take advantage of the brains quantum nature. Then, coupling his mind to a coherent quantum system, Nin began to continuously pump his brain into cycles of quantum coherence and collapse. During each episode of coherence his brain entered and re-entered a state of superposition with infinite counterparts of itself across parallel universes, where his mind attempted neural coupling between parallel states. His thoughts suddenly became plural, as if behind every thought he detected the faint choral echo of others that perfectly shadowed it. The act itself always forced the brain to collapse down to one macroscopic state, but the collapse was not instantaneous. There were series of vast moments when coupled brain coherence bled back into his own mind, putting him into a weak superposition with his own parallel-world counterparts - each in a different point of relative time. Impressions and information gathered and solidified, like the phantoms that take shape after hours of sensory deprivation, as a long white corridor stretched out to infinity within him. Then suddenly, like a torrent of rolling waves rushing out from the breach of a dam, a barrage of selective neural data swept across the dimensional barriers of space-time, flooding directly into his mind. His neurons began to stabilise once more, decelerating back into their natural speed, as the quantum link broke away from the endless white corridor of parallel future states.

Concealed from all but himself, his lips forged a reptilian grin. By sharing the task between infinite counterparts of his mind, spread across parallel universes and varied future states, Nin was quickly able to obtain the knowledge he sought.

Extending his right arm, palm arched vertically, Nin exerted his own mental efforts toward the gate. Blackness surfaced within the irises of his eyes, and it seemed that in a moment of silence the world had stood still. Almost hauntingly, the silence was luminously foreshadowed by an aggregation of psychic energies, as space-time rippled in distortion - guided by a power and mind of malice. The mighty skull of the Draconic gate began to tremble, as if almost with fear. A sonorous rent, like the cracking of bones, smashed through the fortress, as thunder running in the clouds, with the squeal of metal being torn aside - rupturing apart as the gates magical barriers waxed and waned. Horizontally stretching his fingertips, his eyes widening in the process, Nin intensified his assault. Slowly, severing the mighty gate piece by piece, the skull was rancorously torn from its architectural majesty.

The fortress hung amid dark skies in an effusion of rubble, like a lithic beast abruptly decapitated, with lapidary prowess.

Then, as if stricken by some blasting spell the gate was ripped asunder: there was a flash of searing lightning, and its great jaws trembled in riven fragments to the ground.

The way was open; the gate was breached.

He quickly withdrew the armies of the Brotherhood; psychokinetically manipulating each of the synaptic creatures accordingly, as the causeway leading up to the now hollowed entrance became clear with the parting black tide of his troops. He would face this foe alone.

Staring into the seeming void of the cleft, mindful eyes - followed by a bleak and sinisterly whisper - pierced through the darkness and unto the Pillar himself.

‘…I see you…’

[Lucid]

((OOC: Edited for the sake of the story flow..))

Lucid in control text is green.
Lucid's thoughts text are in green italics.
Kraai in control text is red.
Kraai's thoughts text are in red italics.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

"Ah, what a nostalgic feeling..." Kraai mused as he watched the battle taking place on the visual screen which Lucid used to observe the battle and moniter his army, sending out his army of mindflayers and other creatures to take on the opposing forces. Despite the circumstances, Lucid looked and felt extremely calm. One would almost think that he was a bit too relaxed for a battle to be raging outside, but it was this feeling that gave order to the chaos inside the control room. Everything seemed to be going much smoother now, but Lucid could tell that something wasn't right. He could sense there was a powerful presence approaching, but he couldn't read its mind or locate it.

"That's strange..." Lucid said out loud to Kraai as he scanned the area looking for the source of the disturbance he had felt. With some effort he was finally able to locate it, but if he was surprised, he didn't show it. Standing just outside the gate with an army of orcs, all determined to force their way through, was a member of The Brotherhood of Doom.

"Hmm? Is that him? How did he get here so quickly?" Kraai asked, but Lucid ignored him, narrowing his eyes as he looked upon the image of the intruder.

"Don't worry, My Lord. I won't allow him to pass..." Lucid said under his breath as he prepared to give the staff new orders. Unable to see into his mind, but anticipating the intruder's ambitions, Lucid quickly diverted his attention to the gate's defenses, and not a moment too soon.

"So forceful, isn't he?" Kraai observed as the intruder focused on destroying the gate piece by piece, but Lucid said nothing in response, concentrating only on protecting the gate. It was only a matter of time, however, before the gate was torn apart, but Lucid was not deterred by it. Of course, if one saw the destruction as a simple process, then he would be sadly mistaken.

As soon as the intruder was alone, he stared at Lucid through the void left by the destruction. ‘…I see you…’ a whisper taunted, but Kraai merely sighed. If the intruder intended on getting some sort of fearful or frantic response from this pathetic attempt at a challenge, then he was sorely mistaken. Kraai knew well of went on inside of Lucid's mind and there weren't many things that moved him so.

"Only because I allowed you to..." Lucid replied stoically to the intruder, exiting through the portal as the mouth of the Dragonic Gate suddenly reformed around him. "By merging my mind with the gate, I was able to distort your readings and input my own information, allowing you to see what you wanted to see." Lucid came to a stop before the gate as the mouth closed, his bangles giving a small jingling sound as he rested his hand on the side of the giant dragon skull. He closed his eyes, as if in contemplation, then re-opened them seconds later, now looking upon the intruder with crimson eyes.

"How foolish to think that you could breach the gate so easily..." Kraai smirked. "You're a thousand years too young to even try and accomplish such a task."

[Nin`]

Out of Character: Again, thoughts are italicised, whereas sub-vocalised thoughts are italicised with quotation marks.

---

Caught in the continuing reflection of his mask, Lucid stood distantly ahead of him.

He approached the entranceway with strident gait, his cloak swaying vacillatingly around him like an erratic black flame, as the fortress continued to loom overhead with riven statuesque.

As Nin drew nearer, the flash and flicker of his eyes shimmered lustily against the backdrop of a forlorn empyrean.

His mind was still in the process of decelerating after accessing its neural quantum state. The subjective effect was normal consciousness, but at an accelerated rate. It was as if his brain had been supercharged, able to process thoughts at a rate of twenty times faster then any normal mind. He could watch an apple fall from a tree and compose an assiduous disembowelling before it had reached the ground. Or watch the depressor and elevator muscle flex and twist in a hummingbird’s wing.

Lucids words coursed fluidly into his auditory cortex, intermittently, syllable by syllable at a time. He knew everything Lucid was saying, even before his brain could processes the frequency vibrations. It was something else he had learned while his mind was in superposition with its various parallel future states, when acquiring the knowledge he needed of the Draconic gates internal structure.

Then suddenly, without warning, his advance came to a swift halt as a squad of Master troops appeared from all sides around him, quickly encircling Nin with a thicket of spears all pointed towards him; and some had bows in hand, with arrows already fitted to the string, while others bore rifles of some arcane design.

This was unexpected. But Nin knew well that not all things could be so foreseen.

Nin quickly noted that those holding firearms were not soldiers, but technicians. By withdrawing his legions he had obviously given them all some sort of valiant encouragement. One strode forward toward him, a tall man of the castle guard from what Nin could judge, glancing at his armoury and uniform. He advanced until the point of his spear was within a foot of Nin’s breast. But Nin did not stir; momentarily, with an evanescent flicker of his eyes, Nin glanced back toward Lucid, yet the pillar just stood there before the open entrance of the gate, almost as if he were in a state of reverie, and completely unaware of his surroundings.

'Poor boy,' thought Nin to himself as the Pillars words continued to filter throughout his auditory senses. He steadily turned his attention back to the guard in front of him, his mind continuing to decelerate with the world still moving slowly around him. He could quite easily have forced his neural deceleration and restored his mind back to its natural processing speed instantly, but he didn’t want to risk overheating his glial cells or suffer any brief information loss. Better to let it restore itself naturally, he thought.

“Who are you, beast! What business have you in these lands!” Yelled the guard, viewing himself in the reflection of the stranger’s contorted shaped mask.

Nin remained silent, maintaining his composure as he viewed the guard with little more then a stoic gaze. The guard was quickly infuriated by his unmoved mien and apparent show of audacity.

“Beast! We are willing to die for our homeland!!” The guard lunged his spear toward Nin’s breast. But Nin continued to remain still, even as the spear hit - yet its edge failed to pierce any part of him. The guard’s eyes went wide with shock, before his countenance sharply contorted with ashen horror. Reaching out his right arm, Nin pulled the guard in closer to him; gouts of blood splashed against the ground below, while the remaining Masters each backed away like a flock of fearful birds.

“Willing to die for your homeland are you…?" Muttered Nin, almost teasingly.

"That’s very fitting, because I’m wiling to kill for it.” His words echoed malignly through the small band of Masters. The guard’s spear had struck his torso cleanly, but, unknowingly to him, Nin was adept in violently twisting space-time around him, over certain areas of his body. The weapons reality had been bent around itself, to such a degree, that it was propelled in the opposite direction, now impaling the guard on his own spear.

As revelation struck them, the remaining Masters each turned to flee, but to their despair they were unable to move… their minds had been petrified with fear; Nin had locked each of their amygdalae into a state of perpetual dread.

'These minds should do nicely,' he thought to himself satisfingly.

Then, from out the swirling blackness of his cloak, a mass of twisting black shapes, like great arched vines of shadow, loomed up all around him; like a slithering, restless dance of ink like arms on many scales, mimicking the way an octopus moved through the water. Almost no remaining light was visible beyond the absolute shifting black of the tentacles, accept for a flickering mauve light within them.

Clouds of smaller black shapes attended each major assemblage, and as the assemblages neared each other they threw out extensions between themselves, like umbilical cords of flowing darkness. Waves of energy pulsed between the main bodies, as the tentacles rapidly fissioned and merged with one another. The purple lightning continuing to flicker between the inky shapes with intensity, occasionally forming a geometric shell around Nin before collapsing back into something which appeared much more random. Despite the certain feeling that they were going to die, the Masters found the approach disturbingly hypnotic, like watching a finely orchestrated group of dancers, each locked in sinuous lithe. But it was also sickening: simply looking at these black and ink-like tentacles inspired a hollow feeling of dreadful nausea, for they were apprehending something that had clearly never been shaped by human intelligence; and in their minds the Masters knew that they had terribly underestimated their enemy. Veins of shadow crept closer and closer, malignly, oozing tightly around their prey.

Limned in violent arcs and sprays of lightning – quivering sheets and dancing baubles of contained plasma energy – the arcs of shadow probed inwards, obscenely and hungrily. The pointed ends of the forming arms suddenly bifurcated – rushing at the guards with unrelenting haste. They grew via oozing waves of pulsating darkness along the lengths behind them, the shadows swelling or contracting before locking into their fatal positions. Bifurcating and re-bifurcating they now formed a many fingered black hand, poised before each of the Master’s faces, ready to be plunged into eyes, mouths, noses, ears, even through skin and bone.

The Masters were forcefully held up in mid air like an array of puppets as the shadowy arms taut their quarry, gripping their faces in a show off pitched horror and tonal discord - like fingernails scratching sharply against a blackboard. The bifurcated hands delved deeper and deeper into the guard’s heads ravishing every orifice they could find, drilling through bone and muscle, until they had reached the cerebral cortexes. The arms were interrogating them, retrieving neural structures and synaptic transmissions, deep from within their encephalons.

The shadowy arms, like wild gluttonous monsters, sapped the Masters of everything they knew, including the Draconic gate and its defensive systems; drinking and stripping them of their very identities in the process, before feeding them directly into Nin’s mind. After their skulls had been emptied, and completely hollowed, the lifeless band of Masters were discarded like rag dolls as the arms of shadow hurled them outward in multiple directions, before quickly regressing back to the depths of Nin’s cloak.

Now that he had secured the data on the gate the information could be used and passed on to other, and various parallel states of himself - throughout the endless multiverse; and thus continuing the cycle.

He smirked, directing his attentions back toward Lucid, just as his mind restored itself back into its natural acceleration rate. Subjective reality normalized once more; his surroundings flowing in steady synchronisation with his conscious perception of them.

"How foolish to think that you could breach the gate so easily..." Came the Pillar of Minds voice, almost convincingly from what Nin could detect in his tone.

'Is this fool deliberately trying to play mind games with me?' he questioned to himself, eyeing Lucid, when suddenly his thoughts were interrupted with the presence of another: 'I do wish you would refrain from that Nin, or at least give fair warning before hand. Accelerating your mind like that is horribly erratic'.

'Thought I told you to be silent… besides it was necessary,' replied Nin, his tone cold and betraying no emotion.

The presence took a moment to respond, as it sometimes did. 'Yes I see, you made quite a mess… so this is the Pillar of Mind?' It questioned, turning its attentions towards Lucid.

'Tell me Chronos, what do you make of him…' asked Nin.

Chronos almost chuckled to itself in response. 'You call me by name, and ask of my opinion, all in the same sentence? My, my; and what’s got into you pray tell… don’t you already know?'

'I know only the basics of him. I could infiltrate his mind, but it would mean lowering my defences. So tell me what you see, use the warp if you have too.' Nin could feel Chronos’ thought processes churning somewhere behind his own. The experience was a bit like possessing a subconscious mind actually being able to communicate with you.

'Hmm,' murmured Chronos, 'it would appear that he is, what you would call, a duel soul being. He seems to posses both the soul of a demon and a human; acquired rather then inherited I think. Kraai is the demons name, quite a unpleasant little creature.' Chronos continued to delve deeper. 'Now lets see, Lucid… it seems he tried distorting your mind, which in turn appears to have distorted his own, allowing him too see what he wants to see…'

'I thought as much,' responded Nin, relatively unsurprised considering the power of his death mask. 'But lets be sure…'

He looked down to the rubble beneath him, picking up a shattered piece of debris in the process with a slight of his mind, before grasping it in his right hand. He analysed it for a long moment, allowing the structural information to wash over his tactile senses, passing through into the depths of his mind. Satisfied, Nin crushed the rock with near-effortless ease, allowing it to crumble back down to the ground below. That was all the evidence he needed.

Nin mused silently to himself over the pillars prosaical words, before addressing him directly. “Your tawdry arrogance dissimulates your fears well… or perhaps it ignorance...” An echo of dark laughter followed in his words like a myriad of sweeping shadows, as if a thousand other voices had surrounded him from some bleak and unknown place.

“You’re a surrealistic mind I can see, but it will not aid you against me…” The wind suddenly died, and all the air stood still as if quenched of hope.

His voice crackled with a faint laughter.

“Your illusions and ignis fatuus won’t work on me, boy.” His laughter grew, sinisterly.

“Anything which you attempt to mentally project, affecting my mind, is directly reflected back unto your own. A weakling like you cannot distort any part of my mind from me, nor can you control it.”

Extending his mind once more, Nin psychokinetically raised up the aggregated mass of rubble around him.

“Unfortunately for you, your illusions have just become your own,” the aggregation fell back to the ground with a thunderous crash, as he released the wreckage from his psychic grip.

“I’m afraid your gate is still very much in ruin. In attempting to distort my mind you’ve only succeeded in distorting your own,” he up looked toward the sky, watching the ongoing battle raging high above them with minor interest.

“Perhaps this is ample explanation for you regarding my mask… perhaps not. Given how easily fooled your rabble is, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to learn that you still don’t understand. Think, however you might try,” he mocked, turning back to Lucid with a scorn.

[Lucid]

"Tch...so that's how it is, hm?" Kraai said as he looked back at the gate.

"What is it Kraai?" Lucid asked.

"His mask seems to protect him from mental manipulations..." Kraai replied. "..and reflects it back upon the original caster...other magic spells as well, I imagine..." This new revelation didn't really surprise Kraai much. He had almost expected it, especially since Lucid wasn't able read the man's mind earlier, but it probably wouldn't have mattered much to him anyway. Still, it was best to keep Lucid from taking control at the moment since his mind was already warped enough as it was. It was a very bothersome turn of events, regardless.

With his mind still merged with the gate he was able to reform it, but he still had to protect it from anyone else who might try to attack it.

Kraai stood across from the intruder, silently observing him for a moment when two flying creatures crashed to the ground nearby. A mighty gryphon with her wings held out in a threatening manner was locked in a fierce battle with a demon she had pulled from the sky. Talons and claws slashed at each other as the two fought, their cries of pain piercing the air already filled with the sounds of shouts, explosions and the clanging of weapons.

"Too noisy!" Kraai suddenly growled, setting the demon ablaze with a hateful glare. The gryphon, sensing his anger, quickly backed away from the burning demon and gave a small apologetic bow before flying back to her post. Kraai didn't seem satisfied until the demon had burned down to mere ashes, and only then did he turn his attention back to the man before him.

"How bothersome," Kraai muttered in annoyance. "There's too many distractions here for a proper battle. Allow me to set up a barrier..." he said, but didn't wait for an answer before using the gate's power to form a large magical barrier which surrounded them and the gate. Once the barrier had been completely erected, the two found themselves in a strange and empty landscape that seemed to stretch on forever.

"Don't worry, this isn't a trick." Kraai began to explain. "This barrier will merely protect us, as well as the gate, from any outside harm or interference." He pointed to the shadowy image of the gate in the far distance. "The area within this barrier is also much larger than it seems...in case you need some room to run," he taunted. "Oh, but one thing...only when there is a victor, will this barrier be negated, so I imagine we'll be seeing alot of each other for now, so..."

As Kraai turned away from the man, the blackness inside the barrier suddenly changed to a snowy scene of a forest clearing. All around, great trees stood, their branches heavy with snow, their skeletal forms reaching towards the white sky as if trying to find the sun. A lone weeping willow bent over a frozen pond, her bare boughs blowing in the gentle, but cool breeze as snow continued to fall from the bleak white sky, covering the ground and trees with new layers of snow.

It could be said that this was a peaceful scene of perfect silence, but this was not entirely true. If one listened, then they could hear it...the sound of trees as they creaked under the strain of heavy snow, the sound of the breeze as it blew through the branches, the sound of water as it flowed below the thick layer of ice, and the sound of snow crunching beneath one's feet.

"Let's play a game..." Kraai suddenly said, breaking the silence as he turned back to face his opponent. "...but first I would like to know the name of the one who hides behind a mask. Why is this I wonder?" Kraai smiled devilishly. "Are you afraid?"

[Nin`]

"How bothersome," he seemed to mutter out in annoyance.

"There's too many distractions here for a proper battle. Allow me to set up a barrier..."

Keeping his sights continuously engrossed on the human-demon hybrid, Nin glowered with little more then disdain. His eyes glinting with a wild and manic look to them.

As warped as Lucid’s mind had become, he was still able to reform the gate to some extent. Re-establishing her defences to some former degree of stature.

Then, suddenly, something began to change.

He sensed a shift in the fabric of space-time surrounding them both. It felt almost like an energy discharge, to small and minute to perceive directly, but it was there. Something had been manipulated, twisted into some sort of other reality, but he couldn’t see it. He could only sense the meagre distortion echoing all around him, almost as if it were tying to target him.

'What's this…? What “barrier” was he speaking about?' Nin questioned; remembering the pillars words which he had earlier disregarded as more fantasy.

'He’s drawing what energy remains of the gate, manipulating the surrounding area with some sort of illusionary environment. Because of your psychokinetic defences you don’t see it, and it can’t affect your mind. But you can still sense its quantum effects'. Chronos explained, adopting an expression of seriousness. Nin felt the sudden urge to draw his blade and rent the pillar of minds little fantasy apart.

'No… not yet,' reasoned Chronos. 'Play along with his games Nin, let him think he is in control, just for the moment. Then destroy him, but not before we have some fun with him first,' he concluded; his tone sadistic.

Nin’s lips betrayed the hint of a small smile.

"...but first I would like to know the name of the one who hides behind a mask. Why is this I wonder?" Kraai asked smilingly, filling Nin with a loathsome resentment and disregard.

"Are you afraid?"

Nin met Kraai's gaze; his crimson irises flaring with wroth in a pool of black sclera.

"Fool! Do you think the fear you feel is mine?" Countered Nin, lowering his psychic defences, challengingly, to the required limits; allowing his opponents barrier to take effect of only his most basic sensory perceptions.

In a fleeting instant he found himself immersed in what seemed to be a vast forest clearing, immersed in snowfall, stretching out for what seemed an eternity in all directions.

"More illusions of yours?" He questioned to Lucid rhetorically, laughing lightly to himself as if he were humouring a small child.

"As for who I might be - Pillar of Mind - you may simply call me Nin."

He readjusted his stance, standing sternly and with readiness. "Your gate was never what I was after. That was just a means, and quite an enjoyable one, of reaching you, and an act of which I now pass on to others like me, even as I speak. No, I’ve been ordered to destroy you personally – and shall take great delight in doing so." He paused, examining his surroundings for a brief moment.

"But very well, oh “Pillar of Mind”, we’ll play it your way… for now." With haste, Nin threw back his cloak.

"However, once I am done with your antics don’t think for a second that I won’t rip your little fairy tail asunder!"

In a single, silent motion, he slid Ka'tallasith free from its black sheath. The blade shone like a sudden flame as he swept it out.

"Now… lets us dispense with theses preliminaries and move on to the main event!"

[Lucid]

((OOC: Not the best, but I haven't had a very good...year...yeah...))


"Hmph! You obviously don't know the meaning of fear..." Kraai said, looking up towards the sky at the falling snow as it swirled down around them. He seemed uninterested in the rest of what Nin had to say, but finally turned back towards him when he seemed to be taking some action.

"That's quite an impressive little toy you've got there," Kraai said as he watched Nin unsheath his sword. "Compensating for something, or do you perhaps expect some horsemen to come charging through here for you to cut down? Ah...but I digress. You sound as though you're in a hurry to die, so I won't keep you waiting. But just so you know, this isn't just a fairy tale..." Kraai grinned as he corrected Nin.

"This is my world..." Lucid continued, although he appeared to look beyond Nin as he spoke. He had already focused on lowering the temperature even further inside the barrier, but something else was changing as well.

Much like red paint on a white stage backdrop, blood began to run down the white sky, giving the scene a sinister look. The trees also darkened and changed, bending and twisting until they became disfigured, their branches moving strangely as if they were in pain. The bark on the trees then began to shift and open, revealing eyeballs which seemed to watch him.

"Don't think I don't know what you're planning..." he said, suddenly giving a deranged laugh. "I won't let you pull me down!" He held his arm out towards Nin and razor sharp shards of ice shot up from he ground beneath his feet. Lucid then threw his arm out and a dozen more large shards of ice materalizedin the air by him and were sent flying through the air towards Nin's torso.

"Yes, let's see his sword in action." Kraai whispered.

[Nin`]

A feral smile crossed the dark warriors face, his eyes narrowing, as he swung Ka’tallasith before him in an idle, fierce gesture; almost beckoning the Pillar’s assault hither.

Scores of serrated spikes, like great icy incisors, shrieked aloud with a howling crescendo cutting swiftly through the open air, and towards him like a wailing blizzard.

Nin’s gaze held steady and clear, and for a moment he stood in complete observation, his views reflecting flawlessly in the speculum of his masked face - save for his eyes, which only seemed to absorb everything beyond them.

Then, in a rising thermal agitation, Nin’s eyes suddenly ignited into a luminous vibrato, and the world began to slow; the flow of space-time distorted all around him, degenerating into a torpid remiss, as he willed his mind into a transitory state of accelerated consciousness.

Caught in the permutation of time, the expance of ice loomed over Nin with predatory advance, like huge flying daggers caught in slow motion.

He smiled to himself reassuringly as Ka'tallasith, gripped firmly in hand, shon out from his right side like an ardent flame, hungry for battle. Without hesitation, Nin launched himself into the air, somersaulting, just before the first shards reached him.

He moved with an unnatural velocity, avoiding the first two ice shards with astonishing ease whilst swinging his blade impetuously around him and into a synchronised wave of gyratory slashes.

Lunging and twisting in midair, Nin aligned and realigned his offensive, counterattacking time after time with inhuman speed. To an average mind observing him he would have seemed only like an array of caliginousness blurs between movements - followed abruptly by a rending discharge of concentrated ice.

Again and again, with devastating effect, Ka'tallasith struck relentlessly with unequalled careen - meeting each target with shattering boom while veering swiftly apace throughout every dimension with obscure motion. The blade itself was very strange, not appearing at all completely natural, as it seemed to defy the very laws of physics – almost as if it were not of this universe.

In what would have seemed like an instant in real time, Nin descended between the plethora’s of shattered ice, medially in midair, before touching down only seconds after his feet had left he ground. His eyes slowly faded, reverting back to their normal colour, the momentary lapse of accelerated consciousness fading quickly, once again restoring the flow of space-time around him; the ice shards swiftly followed - smashing loudly to the ground around him.

Then, in a flash of instance and as if from nowhere, an ice shard, much smaller, silently shot out of the changing environment. Without a second thought, Nin threw his blade into the air, extending his right arm and stretching out his palm towards it.

The icy spike struck his hand perfectly; piercing it all the way through with dagger-like laceration while he revealed his left hand from the darkness of his cloak, clad in what appeared to be a fierce metallic claw, before clasping Ka'tallasith at its hilt. His movements were sinuously swift, as if they had already been predetermined and orchestrated with wondrous intent.

But Nin’s demeanour betrayed nothing.

“Childs play,” he uttered with avowal.

“I hope for your sake that you can do better then that…” he directed to Kraai, “because if this is all you’ve got you’d better start running,” Nin vaunted, his tone confident and disdainful.

He took a moment to take in his new surroundings, observing them with a tactical curiosity: the skies were sanguine, stained and running with blood as if a thousand heads had been smashed against it. The air grew colder and denser with what would have perhaps been a deathly chill to most mortal men. And the trees, abstractly, continued to wizen, disfiguring in a way that might have been the gloom of death itself. But what had caught his interests for a moment longer were the eyes that bulged out from their bark. All around him they seemed to stare with something monstrous in their gaze, an innate affinity to which he could deeply relate. Honing his mind, he consciously tuned the psycho-electronic frequencies of his visual cortex in with the trees eyes own visionary senses almost instantly granting him the vision of a multitude of eyes throughout various positions. He watched Lucid, silently anew, with a gathering scorn.

"You obviously don't know the meaning of fear..." Kraai had earlier retorted - his words playing through Nin’s mind.

Looking back down to his bloody impaled hand, Nin conceded his point with the slightest of nods. The vertical spike shimmering, like a rapier that had only just drawn blood.

"I wouldn’t know the meaning of fear, no – at least not anymore…" he looked up staring back to Kraai. "I tore out my amygdale a long time ago, eradicating such primitive and innate traits entirely from my genetic being, before regenerating and evolving them anew to my design..." He voice rang with a dark tone.

Quietly, Nin ignited his psychokinetic abilities, manipulating the surroundings to his will. The incision to his hand flowed red in a surge of effluence, but not a drop had spilt unto the pristine white of diamond-like ice shards beneath him. Instead, the gouts of blood coursed up his palm, skyward, to the tips of his fingers, ebbing away from the ground and up into the above.

"… At first it removed the idea of pain from me, and I thought I felt no pain at all," Nin continued, "but then I came to realize that I just didn’t care about it." He mused to himself, watching his blood rise up above him, as he clenched his hand into a fist, shat