One trill she was standing in thick pools of chunky blood. In the next she standing outside the gates of Egilrun, blinking through the rays of the sudden sun. People piddled about their daily business in and out of the town. The ex-convict slowly sheathed her gladius, thankful the gate guards had grown so complacent they evidently failed to notice her alarming arrival. Her gaze drifted to her dark twin beside her. With a final parting smirk, the Diri of Destruction once more became her curious shadow. Max tilted her head but she didn't linger on the strangeness long. Slags Deep loomed despairingly ahead of her. It was to that terrible place she'd come to return.
Maxine steeled herself and made way for Egilrun's entrance. The sun was soft and warm upon her skin. The air was fresh and crisp with opportunity. If it wasn't for the thick spatter of blood that painted her clothes, face, and hair, she might've forgotten she'd just finished murdering a literal room's worth of mages. The citizens were as clueless as anywhere. It wasn't until she was in the forefront of anyone's view that people started to pay attention. Gasps and murmurs of concern echoed in her wake. The pair of guards eventually stiffened once she neared their post.
"Stay where you are," the one on the left shouted from just outside the gate. He held his spear a bit more firmly in his gloved hands. Max kept walking. He grew visibly unsettled by that.
"I command you! Stop!"
"Aye!" his companion shouted from the right side of the gate.
"He said halt!"
"We take orders from toy soldiers now?" an ominous, familiar voice hissed in Maxine's ear. She froze at the very sound of it, eyes widening slightly. The gatemen mistook her pause for obedience.
"Good," the first gate guard shouted.
"Now state your business. And...explain what in the damned Lords happened."
"I tripped," Max answered to the man's guffaw, mind still working to recover from the bodiless voice she'd heard.
"Tripped? Must've been quite the fall."
"Yep." She looked from either guard toward the gate.
"You guys gonna keep me from going to wash up or what?"
"State your business. Don't get dodgy with me, girl."
"The Warden of Slags Deep is expecting me."
The two gate guards exchanged glances. Neither of them spoke. Max shrugged and started forward again, only for the two to collapse in toward her entrance path. The ex-convict took a deep breath. She flexed her fingertips. Her dark expression moved from one guard to the other. That darkness expressed in the Seekers' chamber was not long off the horizon. By the look in their eyes, the guards could see it beginning to resurface.
"You could cut them down so easily," the Diri's voice lulled her toward violent temptation again.
"Who are they to stand in our way?" Maxine felt her right hand drooping toward her sword hilt. The spirit was right. She could do it. She could drop there where they stood. Right here. Right now. What was another two dropped bodies on an already stacked pile to-trial?
"Look," Max cut in, voice growing tense.
"You want to keep that rich asshole waiting? Be my guest. What are your names? When he sends someone down looking for me, I want to tell him exactly who held me the fuck up." The pair of guards looked to one another while she glared expectantly.
"Well? What's it gonna be?" Armor clinked as they stepped aside slowly and returned to their original places.
"Uh huh. I fuckin' thought so." Max passed through the gates, glancing suspiciously back at her own shadow briefly before continuing on toward the towering prison.
She was halfway to her destination when she heard the tell-tale sound of footsteps. They weren't just any foot steps. They clinked and clanged, heavy leathers and loose chains thumping with the movement of bodies. She rolled her eyes but she wasn't surprised. Her confident play was too easy. Once she left the guards had time to think. Thinking was a dangerous thing, and the more they thought, the more unsure they became. They surely ran off to find a superior if only to cover their ass. Now the cavalry was here.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
Now was not the time to be stopped. Not in the state she was in. As nonchalantly as possible, Maxine picked up her walking pace. She took unpredictable turns, changed direction, and even doubled back once or twice in an effort to throw any following soldiers off her trail. The perimeter was closing. She could feel and hear the inevitable meeting between herself and them. In an attempt to delay, she chanced a lesser crime. Her left, key imprinted hand shot out to grasp a door hand. After a quick turn it surprisingly opened for her and she made no pause slipping inside. She shut the door behind her and immediately began moving through the empty business.
The ex-convict avoided passing clear windows altogether in her navigation. It was a lost cause but she zipped through the building, shooting from one room to the next in search of an exit. Hope came when she found the back door. Just as she was reaching out to pop it open, a pair of boots just outside cast a shadow within. Quietly, she cursed, searching for a new avenue. She went back the way she came. Knuckles banged upon the front door. Another loss. Max ventured into one final door, only to find it to be a closet. She was cornered.
Shit, shit, shit!
Just then her shadow moved. Its darkness cast itself upon the back wall of the small room, absorbing briefly into it. A gentle cracking sound, and then a loud crash sounded as the wood splintered and split apart before her eyes. Max sent a boot through the compromised material, creating an exit for herself undarkened by soldiers. Her shadow reappeared behind her as she moved into the daylight. She had a new way out, but the sound did little to conceal her escape. Max didn't make it far down the street when she heard the running of armored military personnel hustling to her position.
"Elements," Maxine addressed the growing number of soldiers arriving from the adjacent street.
"Wish I could say it's ever a pleasure."
"Feelin' is mutual, murderer," a tall armored man atop a great brown horse thundered down to her. His hand rested on his sword.
"Missed your home, is that it?"
"Home? Nah. I made a new one. Right back in Scalvoris Town actually."
"Good. I was there at your little riot. Maybe this time I'll get to put the shackles on you, if not the sword."
"If you get the chance, see if you can't do it before I kill so many of your brothers."
"Seize her," he growled, gripping the reins of his horse.
"Bullshit!" Max laughed with brows raised.
"On what grounds?"
"You're covered from head-to-toe in blood. You, a known killer with a list of crimes long enough to write on a scroll. That's all the fucking grounds I need."
The soldiers began to encircle her with their weapons drawn. Her hand was on her own sword hilt. Her eyes shifted and so did her body, trying to account for which soldier was inching to make opportunity. All the while the commanding officer waited patiently with a tight jaw. This would end poorly. New blood would spatter over the dried splotches like a new layer of fresh paint. More dead Elements on her conscience. It wouldn't mattered. Just more numbers. She noticed one of the incoming soldiers, a young woman, sported a flame pin.
"Alright, alright," she rolled her eyes and presented her palms before her.
"Easy. Escort me to the prison yourself if you want."
"We're past that," the horsed Element grunted.
"You'll be detained until we have the explanation we're looking for. I'm sure once we get it we can return you to Slags Deep where you belong. Permanently."
"You tried that before," Max sneered.
"Didn't take."
"Surrender your weapons or your life."
"Now you're just being a dick."
"I won't ask again."
"Last chance," Max warned him, dipping her hand back to her gladius again. The small mass soldiers started to close in. She shook her head.
"Last chance for everyone to just walk away."
"Take her."
The Diri of Destruction rose from the guise of her shadow once more. A duplicate of Maxine, a dark doppelganger with crimson eyes, leaped from the ground to stand behind her. Its left shadowy arm shot through her back to mold with her true, corresponding arm. The same was done with its right. Then, like slipping into a costume, Shadow Max stepped forward to meld with the original's vessel. It all happened within the span of a trill. More concerning, it happened before the ex-convict could register it at all. All it took was a single moment for two to become one.
The soldiers rushed in and the concussive blast hit them with an absolutely stunning rate of speed and power. They were flung backward like dolls in the wake of the attack. Windows of nearby buildings blew out and the very earth itself seemed to offer a minor quake. As quick as the Diri joined her it separated, falling backward from her frame and melding back into her shadow upon the cobbles. Max stumbled, wavering for a moment in place. Around her laid the Elements who had surrounded her. Their bodies were still. So still. They were folded upon themselves, twisted and resting in odd, unnatural positions. Blood leaked from their orifices and stained their armor. Just beyond them their commanding officer was trapped beneath the still weight of his war horse. He gasped and sputtered, but by every sound of it, he wasn't long for this world even if he was freed of the organic trap. In an instant, the entire squadron of Elements was finished and dead at her feet. Citizens just stared. Then they ran. Quickly.
She bit her lip, head rapidly snapping as she looked around. She hadn't done this. She hadn't. It didn't matter. She was what they had seen. Slags Deep was the only thought on her mind now. Max knew she had to get there. Fast. She stepped over the ruptured Elements and made way for the structure not-so-far in the distance. Finger wrapped around her ankle. The ex-convict wavered and peered down, preparing to cave in the face of the idiot who touched her. Instead she found the Flame Element staring defiantly up at her. Trails of crimson dribbled from her mouth and down her neck. Max stood there a moment too long, watching her glare back, struggling. She was their lone survivor surrounded by her dead. She'd join the others soon.
"Fucking idiot," Maxine murmured down toward her. She wrenched her foot out of the woman's grasp. In the next instant she was crouching down beside her, dragging her out from beneath a fallen comrade.
"I told you to walk away. Do you listen? Of fucking course you don't." Max jerked her body up off the bloody cobbles and slung an arm across her shoulder. The soldier, either too hurt to fight her or too quietly grateful, didn't struggle from her aid. This was a bad idea. A stupid, stupid idea. Yet here she was: the Element Killer limping a wounded soldier off the killing field she'd created.
What a fucking sight this is.
Maxine dropped the Flame Element down against a building’s alleyway about a block away. She propped the woman up before lunging sidelong, catching a stranger by the shoulder before they could hustle from the scene. The ex-convict yanked them sternly toward her, eyes alight with intimidating command presence.
"You from here?"
"A-aye!" the middle-aged woman stuttered nervously.
"Good. Get a healer here now. Go!"
There was no further question or interjection. The scared citizen merely ran off to do her bidding, not daring to stray from the order. Max turned toward the injured Element at the sound of her stirring. The young woman peered at her with rapidly color-changing eyes.
"Who the hell are you?" she rasped out, and by the inflection of her tone, Max understood she didn't mean it literally. No doubt her commanding officer had briefed them on who they were dealing with. After all, he'd the pleasure of witnessing her arrest, trial, and transport to Slags Deep apparently. The Flame Element knew who she was and what she did. Both of them knew that identity wasn't consist with what she'd just done now.
"Me?" Max settled her expression into a cold one, holding her gaze.
"I'm the Bad Guy." Then, without further time to waste, she was gone. The odd little girl beneath Level Seven would have her in her audience that night.
Dialogue|Thoughts
You may help to design your Diri of Destruction and what powers it has. These can be self discovered in this thread and I will review it. If I think it needs toned down or adjusted, I will let you know. My door is always open to questions. Well done and have fun.
