Post by Dante on May 14, 2005 1:55:30 GMT -5
The dark knight was completely unprepared for this attack. He had always been best at single combat, and his fatal flaw had always been a tendency to underestimate his foes. He turned to flee, and was shocked when his legs were cut away from beneath him by the two swordsmen. He twisted around as he fell, and grabbed out at the grey swordsman, intending to choke him, and succeeded in grabbing the grey’s head in one of his huge hands. The dark knight began to squeeze.
“No!” cried the blue, and put his sword straight through the dark knight’s arm. The grey fell to the floor, clutching his face.
The dark knight looked almost pathetic now, lying on the floor with his legs cut and broken, missing a hand, the armour on his other arm cracked, his face filled with knives and bolts. Derik strode forward and swung his scimitar down onto the dark knight’s chest, and then again, and again, until the breastplate burst.
Inside the dark knight’s armour there was no soft flesh, or wraithlike spirit. It was simply a mass of swirling, brightly coloured chaos, dancing about and flowing around. Some of it began to spiral out of the dark knight’s chest, until Antenora put a stop to it by stabbing the Blade of Banning into the heart of the chaos.
The mass of chaos glowed bright white instantly, and then began to dissipate into the air, and the dark knight’s armour began to turn to dust with it.
“This should not have happened to me…” groaned the dark knight, before his entire body collapsed into dust on the floor, dead and defeated.
“Wow,” said PJ. “I defeated a virus.”
“Actually, we defeated a virus,” corrected Antenora.
“Master?” came a voice, and the group looked to the grey swordsman, who was covering his face with his hands. “I think he might have hurt my face. Would you look?”
The blue swordsman approached his friend, but Antenora, who was standing just next to the grey swordsman, looked first.
“Let me see if you’re alright,” she said, not having a clue who the swordsmen were. “Now, take off that mask and…”
Her voice trailed away as the grey swordsman removed his mask, revealing a face covered in cuts and scars and gashes, twisting it into something almost unbearably ugly. But it’s difficult to forget a friend’s face, and even though it had been savaged, the group recognised the face beneath the grey mask.
“Akbar?” asked Derik.
The blue swordsmen bent to look at his friend’s face, and judging there to be no new wound, replaced his mask. The blue swordsman sighed, and then turned to face the group.
“I suppose the game is up, then?” he said, with a touch of grim humour, before lifting his own mask for a second to reveal the similarly scarred and ruined face of Ennui.
---
The group of six sat around Snicket’s campfire again, later. Colin had toasted some more marshmallows whilst they’d been away, and the group tucked in hungrily. They’d talked for a while, filling each other in on their background – Derik, PJ and Char explained what they’d been doing, Antenora explained how she’d been captured, and Ennui and Akbar told the story of the attack which left them so disfigured.
“We’d secretly left 667 some time before the war, so that I could train Akbar in the ways of the Intellecteer,” explained Ennui. “And returned when we heard news of the war. But as we’ve explained, we were prevented from getting there in time.”
“I still remember it now,” Antenora said. “When the n00bs broke in, Dante sent me a PM saying that I should escape to the L.D.B. He told me he’d come and find me later, but then he never arrived.”
“Do you think he’s dead?” asked Char, almost hopefully.
“No,” Derik answered. “Nothing could kill Dante, he’s far too strong. I wonder what happened to him, though?”
“What truly happened at 667, anyway?” asked Akbar. “What happened that brought us all here?”
“I’ll explain,” Derik sighed. “Char said that all Intellecteers should be thrown out of 667. Dante decided to fight fire with fire, and led the Intellecteers into battle against Char’s Randoms.”
“It’s not that easy,” said Char. “Some people didn’t take sides – they didn’t want to fight. I only fought you because you fought me.”
“It’s funny,” said PJ. “Dante said almost the exact same thing to me, near the start of the war.”
“Anyway,” continued Derik, “the fighting grew far more fierce than it ever had before. It became a war across all the sections of 667. And that was when the n00bs arrived.”
“It’s a sight I’ll never forget,” Antenora shuddered. “All those n00bs, rushing towards the walls of the castle, with the spammer Les Paul at their head.”
“Les Paul was a registered member – he could walk straight in, whereas the gates of 667 repelled the unregistered n00bs,” explained Derik. “I watched him battle Tragedy, at the very top floor of 667. Tragedy relied too much on his Banning Wand. He tried to smite Les Paul down with it, but the Bannium chains just fell off him. Eventually, the Wand simply shattered, and Les Paul struck Tragedy down.”
“So that’s what all that cheering was about,” said PJ. “I remember a great roar going up from all the n00bs.”
“It was at the moment of Tragedy’s death that the gates of 667 broke open, letting in all the really cool member forces,” continued Derik. “667 was truly lost then. Dante told me that he was going to ring the evacuation bell, and that I should get out.”
“I heard the bell toll as I was in the heat of battle with the n00bs and renegade Randoms,” explained PJ. “It was complete chaos – some of the Randoms were on my side, some had joined the n00bs. I shot five n00bs straight through the heart with a single crossbow bolt, with such force that the bow was absorbed into my arm.”
He brandished his crossbow-arm as if it was a mark of honour rather than an inconvenient prosthetic.
“PJ, that’s not true,” replied Derik. “You shot five n00bs through the heart with a single bolt, but the force of the blow destroyed your hand. I used my remaining G-Mod abilities to restore your post count and fix that crossbow to your wrist.”
“It amounts to the same thing,” argued PJ, but Antenora coughed quietly at this moment, reminding them that they were explaining what had happened to 667 and not arguing again.
“So anyway,” said Derik, “Dante vanished to ring the bell, and I went off to get out. The only member I saw along the way was PJ, whose wounds I healed. The bell tolled at that moment, and we ran to escape the building. It was only when we reached the grounds around 667 that we turned back and looked what was happening to the building.”
“It was burning down,” said PJ. “Everything we loved, up in smoke. All the n00bs were still inside – they must have lost hundreds that day.”
“And we ran off, into the wastelands,” said Derik. “There were just the two of us – if any n00bs decided to come after us, we’d have been finished. But none ever came.”
“I saw them all pouring out, heading off in one direction,” Char said. “I had managed to hire a private link to get me out of there, but we waited around in case any of my friends escaped, too. None of them did. I never saw them again.”
“Does…” Ennui started, before hesitating. Whatever he wanted to say was clearly difficult for him. “Does anyone know if Amber is… still alive?”
“I’m sorry, Ennui,” said PJ. “I don’t have a clue. I think everyone who escaped just scattered off in different directions. The survivors could be anywhere, and we don’t even know who they are.”
The group fell silent, each mourning their own individual losses. Antenora looked thoughtful, though, as well as sad.
“I never saw the remains of 667,” she said. “But it’s occurred to me that if a Blade of Banning was left in the ruins of the L.D.B., mightn’t there be something useful in the ruins of 667?”
“That’s a good point,” Akbar said. “Me and Ennui didn’t think to look, when we arrived. We were too shocked.”
“Maybe some other survivors went back there, to look for people,” pointed out Char.
“So is that our next port of call, then?” asked Ennui. “667 Dark Avenue?”
“Alright then,” said Derik grimly. “But how are we to get there?”
“We could check my map!” said Char, brightly. “It has the entire Internet on it. We can plot the quickest route.”
To the astonishment of Derik and PJ, Char opened up a browser window in the air next to herself, and began to search through some files.
“Why didn’t you tell us that you had a map of the Internet?” exclaimed Derik.
“Because we haven’t needed it yet,” said Char. “Here it is…”
They all leaned in close to the browser window. A map was displayed, and Char zoomed in on a section of it. They could see the Generic Woods where they were, and to the west, the Web Archive. To their north were some of the great Internet cities, and to the south…
“There it is!” said Ennui. “Just to our south.”
“Hey, look at this,” exclaimed PJ. “Derik, we’ve practically double back on ourselves. We travelled east through the wastelands to reach that highway there, travelled north along it to the Web Archive, and then went east through the Generic Woods. If we go down to 667 then we’ll have gone in a perfect square.”
“Okay, so we know where we’re going,” said Derik. “But how are we getting there? Just walking?”
“Actually,” said Antenora, “I established a hyperlink to 667 near the entrance to the L.D.B. It’ll teleport us straight there.”
“Lead the way, then,” said Derik, slinging Colin over his shoulder and stamping out the campfire.
They walked up to the entrance to the L.D.B., and Antenora started examining the stonework on the left side of the gate.
“It should be one of the stones here,” she said, deep in thought. “Yes, here. Everyone touch this brick.”
Antenora, Derik, PJ, Char, Ennui, and Akbar leant forward and laid their hands on the stone. When nothing happened, Antenora suggested that they try the stone one place to the left, which they did. The group vanished in a flash of blue light, leaving the Generic Woods quiet and empty once more.
“No!” cried the blue, and put his sword straight through the dark knight’s arm. The grey fell to the floor, clutching his face.
The dark knight looked almost pathetic now, lying on the floor with his legs cut and broken, missing a hand, the armour on his other arm cracked, his face filled with knives and bolts. Derik strode forward and swung his scimitar down onto the dark knight’s chest, and then again, and again, until the breastplate burst.
Inside the dark knight’s armour there was no soft flesh, or wraithlike spirit. It was simply a mass of swirling, brightly coloured chaos, dancing about and flowing around. Some of it began to spiral out of the dark knight’s chest, until Antenora put a stop to it by stabbing the Blade of Banning into the heart of the chaos.
The mass of chaos glowed bright white instantly, and then began to dissipate into the air, and the dark knight’s armour began to turn to dust with it.
“This should not have happened to me…” groaned the dark knight, before his entire body collapsed into dust on the floor, dead and defeated.
“Wow,” said PJ. “I defeated a virus.”
“Actually, we defeated a virus,” corrected Antenora.
“Master?” came a voice, and the group looked to the grey swordsman, who was covering his face with his hands. “I think he might have hurt my face. Would you look?”
The blue swordsman approached his friend, but Antenora, who was standing just next to the grey swordsman, looked first.
“Let me see if you’re alright,” she said, not having a clue who the swordsmen were. “Now, take off that mask and…”
Her voice trailed away as the grey swordsman removed his mask, revealing a face covered in cuts and scars and gashes, twisting it into something almost unbearably ugly. But it’s difficult to forget a friend’s face, and even though it had been savaged, the group recognised the face beneath the grey mask.
“Akbar?” asked Derik.
The blue swordsmen bent to look at his friend’s face, and judging there to be no new wound, replaced his mask. The blue swordsman sighed, and then turned to face the group.
“I suppose the game is up, then?” he said, with a touch of grim humour, before lifting his own mask for a second to reveal the similarly scarred and ruined face of Ennui.
---
The group of six sat around Snicket’s campfire again, later. Colin had toasted some more marshmallows whilst they’d been away, and the group tucked in hungrily. They’d talked for a while, filling each other in on their background – Derik, PJ and Char explained what they’d been doing, Antenora explained how she’d been captured, and Ennui and Akbar told the story of the attack which left them so disfigured.
“We’d secretly left 667 some time before the war, so that I could train Akbar in the ways of the Intellecteer,” explained Ennui. “And returned when we heard news of the war. But as we’ve explained, we were prevented from getting there in time.”
“I still remember it now,” Antenora said. “When the n00bs broke in, Dante sent me a PM saying that I should escape to the L.D.B. He told me he’d come and find me later, but then he never arrived.”
“Do you think he’s dead?” asked Char, almost hopefully.
“No,” Derik answered. “Nothing could kill Dante, he’s far too strong. I wonder what happened to him, though?”
“What truly happened at 667, anyway?” asked Akbar. “What happened that brought us all here?”
“I’ll explain,” Derik sighed. “Char said that all Intellecteers should be thrown out of 667. Dante decided to fight fire with fire, and led the Intellecteers into battle against Char’s Randoms.”
“It’s not that easy,” said Char. “Some people didn’t take sides – they didn’t want to fight. I only fought you because you fought me.”
“It’s funny,” said PJ. “Dante said almost the exact same thing to me, near the start of the war.”
“Anyway,” continued Derik, “the fighting grew far more fierce than it ever had before. It became a war across all the sections of 667. And that was when the n00bs arrived.”
“It’s a sight I’ll never forget,” Antenora shuddered. “All those n00bs, rushing towards the walls of the castle, with the spammer Les Paul at their head.”
“Les Paul was a registered member – he could walk straight in, whereas the gates of 667 repelled the unregistered n00bs,” explained Derik. “I watched him battle Tragedy, at the very top floor of 667. Tragedy relied too much on his Banning Wand. He tried to smite Les Paul down with it, but the Bannium chains just fell off him. Eventually, the Wand simply shattered, and Les Paul struck Tragedy down.”
“So that’s what all that cheering was about,” said PJ. “I remember a great roar going up from all the n00bs.”
“It was at the moment of Tragedy’s death that the gates of 667 broke open, letting in all the really cool member forces,” continued Derik. “667 was truly lost then. Dante told me that he was going to ring the evacuation bell, and that I should get out.”
“I heard the bell toll as I was in the heat of battle with the n00bs and renegade Randoms,” explained PJ. “It was complete chaos – some of the Randoms were on my side, some had joined the n00bs. I shot five n00bs straight through the heart with a single crossbow bolt, with such force that the bow was absorbed into my arm.”
He brandished his crossbow-arm as if it was a mark of honour rather than an inconvenient prosthetic.
“PJ, that’s not true,” replied Derik. “You shot five n00bs through the heart with a single bolt, but the force of the blow destroyed your hand. I used my remaining G-Mod abilities to restore your post count and fix that crossbow to your wrist.”
“It amounts to the same thing,” argued PJ, but Antenora coughed quietly at this moment, reminding them that they were explaining what had happened to 667 and not arguing again.
“So anyway,” said Derik, “Dante vanished to ring the bell, and I went off to get out. The only member I saw along the way was PJ, whose wounds I healed. The bell tolled at that moment, and we ran to escape the building. It was only when we reached the grounds around 667 that we turned back and looked what was happening to the building.”
“It was burning down,” said PJ. “Everything we loved, up in smoke. All the n00bs were still inside – they must have lost hundreds that day.”
“And we ran off, into the wastelands,” said Derik. “There were just the two of us – if any n00bs decided to come after us, we’d have been finished. But none ever came.”
“I saw them all pouring out, heading off in one direction,” Char said. “I had managed to hire a private link to get me out of there, but we waited around in case any of my friends escaped, too. None of them did. I never saw them again.”
“Does…” Ennui started, before hesitating. Whatever he wanted to say was clearly difficult for him. “Does anyone know if Amber is… still alive?”
“I’m sorry, Ennui,” said PJ. “I don’t have a clue. I think everyone who escaped just scattered off in different directions. The survivors could be anywhere, and we don’t even know who they are.”
The group fell silent, each mourning their own individual losses. Antenora looked thoughtful, though, as well as sad.
“I never saw the remains of 667,” she said. “But it’s occurred to me that if a Blade of Banning was left in the ruins of the L.D.B., mightn’t there be something useful in the ruins of 667?”
“That’s a good point,” Akbar said. “Me and Ennui didn’t think to look, when we arrived. We were too shocked.”
“Maybe some other survivors went back there, to look for people,” pointed out Char.
“So is that our next port of call, then?” asked Ennui. “667 Dark Avenue?”
“Alright then,” said Derik grimly. “But how are we to get there?”
“We could check my map!” said Char, brightly. “It has the entire Internet on it. We can plot the quickest route.”
To the astonishment of Derik and PJ, Char opened up a browser window in the air next to herself, and began to search through some files.
“Why didn’t you tell us that you had a map of the Internet?” exclaimed Derik.
“Because we haven’t needed it yet,” said Char. “Here it is…”
They all leaned in close to the browser window. A map was displayed, and Char zoomed in on a section of it. They could see the Generic Woods where they were, and to the west, the Web Archive. To their north were some of the great Internet cities, and to the south…
“There it is!” said Ennui. “Just to our south.”
“Hey, look at this,” exclaimed PJ. “Derik, we’ve practically double back on ourselves. We travelled east through the wastelands to reach that highway there, travelled north along it to the Web Archive, and then went east through the Generic Woods. If we go down to 667 then we’ll have gone in a perfect square.”
“Okay, so we know where we’re going,” said Derik. “But how are we getting there? Just walking?”
“Actually,” said Antenora, “I established a hyperlink to 667 near the entrance to the L.D.B. It’ll teleport us straight there.”
“Lead the way, then,” said Derik, slinging Colin over his shoulder and stamping out the campfire.
They walked up to the entrance to the L.D.B., and Antenora started examining the stonework on the left side of the gate.
“It should be one of the stones here,” she said, deep in thought. “Yes, here. Everyone touch this brick.”
Antenora, Derik, PJ, Char, Ennui, and Akbar leant forward and laid their hands on the stone. When nothing happened, Antenora suggested that they try the stone one place to the left, which they did. The group vanished in a flash of blue light, leaving the Generic Woods quiet and empty once more.