Chapter Text
Everything seems to slow down, to the point you thought your Time Dilation had somehow activated by mistake. The look on Amvinn's face is more confused than anything, wondering what this thing sticking out of his chest is. Before anyone can move, he’s lifted off his feet and flung off the pyramid like a rag doll, disappearing past the edge the Prince of Life emerged from.
“Orrick!” Esspin screams, breaking the silence that had rushed over you all after Amvinn was impaled. The Prince lets out a menacing chuckle, standing tall on his four tendril-like constructs.
“You Bastaaaaard!” Sara erupts, summoning in hand her bladed fans as she leaps forth into Strife like a valkyrie on a whirlwind of sheer force.
She makes a slash at the Prince’s neck, but is slapped out of the air by one of his tendrils, slamming her back down the ground. Using the momentum of the throw, she breaks into a roll, flipping over herself and landing on her hands and knees. In an instant, she’s charging again, still half prone and pouncing forward like a jaguar. This time she barely leaves the ground before she’s swat away. And just like the previous attack, she’s up within a second and ready to throw herself at him again. She’s ferocious, but there’s no way she can take on a powerhouse like the Prince of Life.
Your first instinct is to move, to get out there and to help your friend before she gets herself killed, but you don’t. You can’t. Something in the core of your being is telling you to just sit still, sit still and pray you aren’t spotted because if you are, you’ll be dead before you can blink. A sinister chill passes over you, leaving your blood cold as ice, yet you feel like you’re drenched in sweat. The beating of your heart is a drum pounding in your ears and your stomach’s turned inside out, leaving you feeble, like you’d be sick at the drop of a hat. Oh god, oh fuck, oh god, oh fu-
“Boss!” Creed says, grabbing you by the shoulder and shaking you out of your freeze. “What’s the play here?”
“W-, I d-… we, ah…” You stumble over your thoughts, reeling in shock from the sight of someone impaled through the stomach being tossed off a fucking cliff. “W-w-we strife!” You finally declare.
“… You serious?” He asks, taken aback by the uncertain ineptitude of your decision.
“You heard the human.” Dallra affirms, with a rock already reeled back in her sling. She lets it fly, slamming directly against the Prince’s temple, grabbing his attention to your small trio. “You’ve got that weird looking cuebat, don’t you? Let’s see if you can use it.” The Prince sends a tendril hurtling towards you three, retaliating against Dallra’s attack. Creed sidesteps in front of you, bat wound back, and cracks the tendril with a thunderous parry, sending it flying away like a popfly.
“It’s just called a bat, and I can use it perfectly fine.” Creed sneers, grinding his palms against his grip on the sports-club. “Do we have an actual plan for this guy or were we planning on going into this blind?” Good question. You frantically survey your Strife Roster, trying to get a feel for your chances at winning this fight. Amvinn might’ve been a Seer, but he was one of your team’s main frontline fighters. With him gone and Mia still out of commission, you’re down a huge amount of muscle. Esspin looks spellbound, a lost expression plastering her face as she silently fires her rifle at the Prince, ripping the bolt back with each roar she invokes. Distraught, but still fighting, although she doesn’t appear close to flipping her top like back on the Forge, so there’s no counting on that to secure the win. Sara, on the other hand, is well off the deep end, going full Murder Mode, feverishly throwing herself at the Prince blade-first again and again. Unfortunately, despite her speed, the Prince seems more than able to keep her at bay with little effort, batting her away with those enormous tendrils as if she were a pesky insect. Frank is… well, you aren’t sure what Frank is, but you doubt he’s a fighter. Up until now, he’s hung towards the back at the stairs, huddled besides the consorts. With yourself, Dallra and Creed included, you have five total fighters. Two ranged, three melee. Against the Death Tank who was able to keep Mia at bay while she was still at her peak.
“We aren’t strong enough to overwhelm him.” You finally declare to the group.
“So we run?” Dallra asks, launching another shot from her sling.
“Better late than never.” Creed jeeringly adds.
“We retreat.” You clarify, hoping you sound like less of a punk. “The only problem-“
“The bulgemunch is mobile enough on those tentacles to keep up wherever we go.” Dallra finishes for you, ripping a handful of stone out of the wall with her robo-arm to load into her sling. “Watching him through my sight, he must’ve scaled twenty levels in a minute. He’ll be all over us if we ran, we wouldn’t stand a chance absconding all at once.”
“Then we’ll split up.” Creed suggests. “Scatter, make it hard for him to focus on all of us at once. After that, break off into pairs, funnel down through the connecting temples, lay low until he wanders off.” He continues, pointing out the various exits on the rampart to you both.
“Prick’s gonna go after one of us once we all go different ways, though.” You shake your head, becoming more and more nervous with the situation. “We can’t handle this guy as a group, one of us alone would get ripped to shreds.”
“So we don’t let him choose who he goes after.” Creed says, confident and emboldened by his budding plan. “One of us stays back, keeps his attention and buys some time while the rest puts some distance between them and here. Once everyone’s in the clear, patsy gives him the slip, and takes one of the narrower passages too small for those tails of his to fit down. Easy as pie.”
“Creed… that’s anything but easy.” You say, equipping Bane of All Mountains. “But that’s about the best gameplan we’ve got at the moment. Question is; who’s the best person to keep him busy, then?” They both look at you for the briefest of moments until it dawns on you. The person is you. “Fuck, really?”
“You do have those fancy time powers, right?” Dallra notes, giving you a nervous half smile. “They could probably keep him still for a little while. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
“Gaaaah, god dammit.” You mumble to yourself. “Fine, alright. Dallra, keep his attention on you with your slingshot. Creed, be her shield and keep the Prince’s tendrils at bay. I’ll let everyone in on the plan and… keep him busy, I guess.”
“Good luck, Boss.” Creed says, slapping you on the back.
“Gee, thanks.” You grumble before making a break down the stairs, tearing down the steps towards the others. Your sudden movement momentarily brings the Prince’s attention to you, until one of Dallra’s shots hits him square between the eyes, snatching his focus to her.
“Mr Jason!” Gretel cries, practically jumping into your arms after meeting you halfway down the stairs. “This guy is a jerk!”
“He’s a lot more than a jerk, sweetie.” You say, grabbing hold of your daughter to try and stop your hands from shaking. You reach the bottom of the stairs and are about to find your way over to Esspin when you’re pulled back by the nape of your shirt. Just as you register that you’ve been stopped, you’re nearly flattened by one of the Prince’s tendrils slamming into the ground directly in front of you. Jeez, this is no place for a kid-lizard.
“Hey.” Frank says, still gripping the back of your hood as the tendril slithers out of the trench it left in the ground. That purple chameleon consort is peeking out from behind his legs, staring up at you with those beady eyes. “Sara seems really mad. I’m new to this whole multiple friends thing, so do we do something about that?”
“Not at the moment, we don’t.” You answer, passing Gretel into his arms. “Listen, Frank? I need you to take Gretel here and…” You grab hold of the other kid-lizard behind Frank by his nape and place him on the Blood player's head like a coonskin hat. “Whatever this one’s name is, and get these two to safety. Can you handle that?”
“Sure can!” He exclaims before trotting off the way you came with the two consorts, not saying another word. Huh… guess he follows instructions well…
“Mr Jason, please stay safe!” Gretel shouts to you, perched on Frank’s shoulder while grabbing the hair on the side of his head for support. Aww. That’s almost sweet enough for you to forget that you’re about to 1v1 the Living Incarnation of Death before you.
“Where’s he off to?” Esspin calls over from the other side of the rampart. She divides her attention between you and the Prince, only ever taking her eye off him to look at you when loading her next shot into the chamber of her elephant-hunter, leaving her glancing back and forth.
“He’s getting the consorts out of here.” You holler over to her. “We’re retreating.” The Prince seems to have devoted one of his tendrils to specifically blocking Esspin’s gunfire, constantly readjusting the green tree trunk to catch the oncoming bullets. He’s brutal, but cognitive, not out of his mind like the Heir of Rage was. What did Mia say happened to this guy again? Something about a Heart player fucking with his empathy? So he’s just a sociopath, then. Not an insane berserker. Perhaps he can be talked down?
“No way in hell!” Sara shouts, wiping the blood off her lip. She’s looking rather battered since the last time you checked on her, barely able to stay upright on two feet as enormous welts and bruises have decorated her fair skin and a nasty looking scrape’s appeared along her left side, running from the bottom of her palm to the mid of her tricep. Just how many times has she thrown herself at this guy? “We end this fucker right here, right now!” You don’t get it, what’s got her so riled u-… shit, that’s right, Mia had mentioned it when telling you about the Prince, that he was the one to kill Greg. No wonder she’s off the deep end seeing him all of a sudden.
“There’s no way we can deal with this guy with who we have right now.” You try to reason with her. She snarls at you.
“We handled that Thief just fine! We can handle this chump!” Sara barks back, flicking the slack out of her fans.
“You know how that fight ended, Sara! We barely walked away from the Forge!” You remind her, causing her scowl to harden more than it already was. “Besides, this guy’s on a completely different level than Medeas!”
“So we just turn-tail and let this asshole go around killing whoever he wants?!” Although she has a point, it’s not like you can really do anything about this guy right now. The only one on your team who could’ve possibly gone head-to-head with the Prince was Mia, but with her strength still tapped, she’s all but useless in a Strife. With no one who could access the Prince’s emotional spectrum, pacifying his murder-boner is likely off the table as well.
“I don’t like it either, but- Shit, Look Out!“ Capitalizing on her preoccupation with your bickering, the Prince springs one of his tendrils stabbing at Sara’s midsection. You reach a hand out to her, activating Time Dilation on base instinct and tear your way towards your Sylph. With (17 sec. your time =1 sec. local time) you reach her in the split of a second. You raise your guard and activate a Full Time Stop on the striking tendril, freezing it in its localized chronology. With the amount of force behind the attack, it takes an exorbitant amount of energy to hold the green vector still. Not to mention you already exerted yourself moving in a Time Dilation as far as you did. Pulling a move like that always winded you before, but between that and keeping the Prince in place, you feel your body’s temporal energies bottom out, and as you blow past your natural limiters, your spell begins to power itself off your physical vitality. Agony finds life in your stomach, tearing your insides apart and blurring your vision at its edges. “Sara…” You gasp. “we need… to-“ She’s already launched forward for another attack, deaf to your appeals.
Flying forward along the frozen tendril, Sara drags the point of a collapsed fan against its length. As she approaches the Prince’s main body, she reels back for a slash with an open fan. However, before she can follow through, the Prince grabs hold of her wrist, stopping the attack dead in its tracks. With his free hand he grasps her by the throat and begins to strangle her.
“Very few can escape the Green Meters, muzhik.” A sickly smile cuts across the Prince’s face as he bodefully boasts, reeling a tendril over his shoulder to level before Sara, aimed for her eye. “And you are not one of-.” Jerking forwards, all the air seems to escape from the Prince, and his braggadocious prattling juts short
“You said that same thing to my friend.” Sara rasps through the Prince’s grip. “You can take those Green Meters and shove it!” Her free hands rips outward, evoking a torrent of red to rush after it. In her hand, a collapsed fan, daggered-point cloaked crimson.
The newly stabbed Prince flexes his grip on Sara, nearly crushing her throat before throwing her to the ground like a tantruming toddler. You only just manage to catch her before she can crash into the stone floor, though the force of her entire weight slamming into you nearly knocks you clean out.
“GraaaAA! Measly Insect!” The Prince roars, grasping the wound in his side, trying to stop the bleeding. Before he can continue his assault, Dallra lands another hit on him, striking the knuckle of the hand covering his wound. “Fuck! Troll bitch!” In retaliation, the Prince releases a barrage of whipping attacks at the Seer. Creed takes her vanguard, swinging his bat like a mad man to keep the Prince’s bombardment at bay. He cracks the tendrils away with ease, but he can only ward off an onslaught like that for so long. You make a mad dash to Esspin with the opening they bought you.
“first… greg…” Sara rasps through a broken windpipe. “now… amvinn… why… why couldn’t I…” Tears begin to well up in her eyes before she shuts them closed, slipping into an exhausted sleep. As soon as she’s out, the air becomes remarkably harder to breathe in. Shit. You really hope she doesn’t die.
“Ess!” You exclaim, practically falling into her when handing Sara off. “Get her and Mia out of here. Doesn’t matter where, just as long as it’s safe. Dallra will find you when everything settles.”
“What of you?” Esspin asks, accepting Sara from your grasp. You look back at the four tailed demon relentlessly setting upon your team like a feral dog, knowing very well that you’ll soon have to face him on your own.
“Well… someone’s gotta keep that guy’s attention while you all get away…” You laugh, trying to swallow your petrifying fear. Esspin frowns at you, a knowing look of worry across her face.
“Jason.” Mia says, stepping forward. “Y-you can’t.”
“Don’t sweat it, I’ll be fine.” You try to assure her. It doesn’t seem to work. “Now get going.” Esspin turns and heads into the nearest threshold, Sara in arm, but Mia dawdles a moment, staring you down as unspoken and disapproving words of protests cloud her thoughts, lacking the strength to say them aloud. Eventually, she turns and follows your collective troll friend, disappearing down the hallway after her.
With them gone, you turn your attention back to the Prince. He hasn’t let up on his assault against Dallra and Creed, and you doubt he will any time soon. You shake your fatigue off the best you can before getting a running start towards him. As soon as you’re in range, you whip Bane of All Mountains as hard as you can flying through the air towards him. It slams against the side of his temple, causing the tendrils he’s standing with to buckle slightly at the sudden offense. It appears your attack landed with the blunt top of your pickaxe, doing little other than bringing his attention to yourself and royally pissing him off. With an exacerbated curse beneath your breath, you swoop in below the Prince’s green stilts, catching Bane and preparing for his counter attack. Looking up, though, you see the Prince gripping his head in labored agony, eyes wired shut. Guess he was more stunned than you first through.
“Boss, are we good?” Creed yells down to you, waving his bat to get your attention.
“Yeah, get the hell outta here!” You yell back. Without hesitation, they retreat into the temple outlet behind them, and you’re left alone with a pissed off Prince of Life. You immediately regret every life choice leading up to this situation.
As the Prince shakes off his stupor, he’s infuriated to find his quarries have all vanished from his reach. Scouring the area from his vantage point on his tendrils, the psycho seems to grow even more feral when he can’t find anything.
“Down here, jackass!” You shout, slamming Bane’s pick into one of his stilts. With an angry grunt, he flicks you back with noticeable ease, shoving you ass-first into the stairs leading up behind you. Getting back to your feet, you hold your position, guard ready and prepared to meet his next attack. None comes, however. The Prince simply glares down at you a moment, before lowering himself to the ground with an unexpected elegance. He stands before you, silently watching. “…Uh…“
“You stay while others abscond.” He finally says, still holding onto the stab wound Sara gave him. “Why is that?”
“…” You’re speechless at how cordial he’s suddenly become.
“Well?” He asks, flicking and swishing his Green Meters impatiently, as if they were a collection of gargantuan cat tails.
“Sorry, I just-… are you not going to kill me?” You ask, keeping Bane at your front between you and him.
“Oh ho ho, how optimistic. Make no mistake, you are about to die.” He clarifies. “But you’ve piqued my curiosity with this… solo act. Did your compatriots abandon you? Or do you intend to nobly sacrifice yourself while they escape? Perhaps you’ve a death wish to your name? I always do get a kick when you people throw something new my way, even if it's your woefully incompetent corpses.” There isn’t the slightest spark of reasonable emotion on his face. Completely mute. Freaks you the fuck out.
“Second one, but without the sacrifice bit.” You tell him, cautious that he might break back into strife with his question answered. Yet he remains still. “… Name’s Jason.”
“I don’t remember asking.”
“R-right… how about your name, then?”
“None of your concern.”
“Jeez, you’re a real ray of sunshine.” You sarcastically jab, not thinking if it’d offend him or not. He doesn’t seem to care.
“Ha! How callow. How quaint!!” He says, an air of arrogance riding smugly on his voice. “Unfortunately, your sheeply opinions mean little to a lion, like myself.”
“Jesus, that Witch did a number on your head.” The Prince’s eye twitches ever so slightly at your comments.
“You know of me, then? I thought those peons of yours looked familiar.” He scoffs, glancing over your shoulder. “So persistent, so annoying. Like a brood of roaches.”
“I-I can fix this. Fix you.” His brow jumps in an unimpressed amusement, mockingly entertained by what you’re saying. “There are plenty of other Heart players who could undo what the Witch did. A-and I can help you find them!” You tell him, feeling a little wind in your sail from him actually talking with you. Maybe you can even move towards negotiation. “Y-you just gotta let me help you first.” His mouth contorts to a disgusting smile.
“And, praytell, why would I do that?” He asks in a chilled tone. The glow of his tendrils flair up, basking the area in an uncharacteristically ominous green light. He lets his head fall limp to the side as he looks at you, mimicking the facets of a discarded puppet.
“Ah come on man, you’re not giving me a lot to work with here.” You complain, holding an open hand out to him, desperately trying to force a negotiation with the Life player.
“I don’t need your help, you simpleton.” He finally tells you. “There’s only one thing I want now, and the only measure of value you have left to offer is your measly spark of life.”
“I-… I know it might seem hopeless, and that we don’t have any other choice but to kill each other, but please… please believe me when I tell you that there is another way.” You tell him, doing your best to lay the foundation for an alliance. He might be a bastard, but he’s a powerful bastard. If you could recruit him, make him a sort of guard dog for your team, getting around the arena would be a nonissue. No one in their right mind would get within a mile of you with him by your side. “You don’t have to be the last one standing, we can find a way to undoom ourselves.”
“Undooming? Feh. Paltry matters of survival no longer interest me. What I want is beyond you. It is… elegant, divine.” He explains. “My only goal now is to slaughter as many sheep as I can before the end. Only then will I be perfect. Only then will I be clean.” Well, there goes your plans of using this guy. Might as well get the show on the road.
“I see…” You mutter, fully grasping how fucked in the head this guy is. “I guess that’s the end of our conversation.”
“It seems so.” The Prince agrees.
“Before you kill me…” He tilts his chin to better show off his devilish smirk, clearly pleased that you’ve accepted the fate he has made for you. “Could I ask you one question?”
“Hm. I don’t see the harm in humoring a meal, so why no-“ You slam Bane of All Mountains into the Prince’s upper lip just below his nose, and make a break for it. “Gah!” The Prince exclaims with a hearty amount of blood pouring from his face.
“How’d that taste, shithead?!” You shout back at him, struggling to take in breath as you race up the stone steps, headed up for the temple you met Creed at while he’s staggered. If you can make it there before he catches up, you can use the explosive powder in those storage barrels to demolish this place along with your opponent, just like back at the Forge.
“Very few… can escape the Green Meters!” He yells, giving chase now fully recovered. You can feel those tendrils slamming against the stairs just as you step off them, getting closer to their target with each strike. “And you are not one of them!”
Reaching the top of the stairs, you dive into the temple, scraping against the stone ground as you roll. Behind you, the Prince’s Green Meters shred through the temple walls like paper, hurling huge chunks of rock throughout the room as the foundations are blown out. You crawl away prone, getting a safe distance out of his range before standing upright again.
“Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit!” You repeat your rattled mantra to yourself, frantically sprinting down the hallway. Unlike the other pyramids, this temple is laid out rather intuitively, so you won’t be able to lose him in here. Fortunately though, this place is a god damn powder keg, all you have to do is drop a match and the roof will come down on top of this prick.
“You are not one of them!” The Prince roars, chasing after you. His Green Meters trail behind him, too big to spread out in the narrow hallway.
“Yeah, keep talking…” You mutter to yourself, glancing back at the Prince while hidden behind the corner of an intersection, waiting for him to catch up. As he rounds the corner, you take a swing for his head. He ducks and places a fist firmly into your stomach, followed up by an uppercut to your chin.
“Facing your death head on, are you?” He crows. You stagger away from the brute, feeling dazed. Life players sure pack a mean punch. “Or are you simply out of places to run?”
“You see a wall to my back?” You try to say as confidently as possible, still reeling from those two simple hits. You readjust your footing, and regrip your pickaxe. “Come on!” With Bane in your hands, you raise your guard, ready for him.
The Prince’s tendrils fold over themselves, shifting directions to aim their spikes at you. The hallway is too narrow to swing in, so he’s adopted a jabbing technique, shooting his tendrils one after another at you like darting snakes. You dodge left and right, scraping yourself up as you slam into the stone walls of the corridor, too focused on avoiding his attacks to spare yourself the hurt.
You’re tattered and bloody before an opportunity shows itself. On a particularly close strike, you manage to activate a Full Time Stop on the tendril, anchoring it in place. The Prince launches another tendril forward as soon as he realizes he can’t retract the other. Managing to capitalize on your streak of good luck, you catch the second tendril in another Time Stop, disabling the use of his bottom two limbs. With half of his armaments frozen in time, the Prince finally seems to realize what you’re doing, holding his last two tendrils back, waiting for you to make your move before he pounces again. You lurch forward, faking a charge in an attempt to bait them out. They reflex at your bluff, but hold back still, trained on you in waiting anticipation.
Seeing that he’s biding his time until you make your move, you say ‘fuck it’ and rush the Prince. On cue, the two remaining Green Meters come barreling down the hallway at you. You roll left, taking cover beneath one of the frozen tendrils while the other two start to frantically flail. The enormous tree-trunk-like weapons smash about the place, turning the ceiling, walls and floor of the corridor into rubble as they try to crush you under their weight. You twist and duck and dodge out of the way of these beasts the best you can, but he’s doing major damage to the structural integrity of the temple. You can’t let him keep thrashing like this unless you want the entire pyramid to come crumbling down on top of you.
You leap out into the middle of the hallway, giving the Prince a clear target to aim for now. As expected, the tendrils start to fold over themselves, maneuvering their pike-like tips as they search for an angle to impale you upon. Prepared for this, you Dilate the time around you just as the tendrils spring forward. (5 sec. your time =1 sec. local time) is more than enough time to handle the Prince’s attacks. As the two tendrils thrust forward in slow-motion, you glide between them with ease, and they bury their prongs in the stone, allowing you to place Full Time Stops on the both of them without difficulty. With all his precious Green Meters stuck in time, you turn back to the Prince, finding him flustered with befuddled anger at how easily you bamboozled him.
Tightening your grip on Bane, you assure yourself that you’ve got the Prince on the ropes, and make a charge for your trapped opponent. He tries to pull back, but his frozen tails keep him stuck in place. As you rush the Prince, you spot a look of bolstered certainty in his eyes, as he seems to realize he’s backed into a corner and has no other choice but to resort to his fists. The moment of truth comes, you enter melee range with your opponent. The two of you face and the Prince reaches forward, aiming to get a grip on your throat, snatching much faster than you could’ve ever anticipated for. Even a fraction of a second slower and he would’ve had you, but be it skill or luck, you somehow manage to trap him in a Time Knot just in the nick of time, halting his claim on your gullet. Still in motion from charging, you spin to the left so as not to run directly into the Prince, tumbling past and eventually falling to the ground, the faintest bit dizzier from it.
“Oh fuck…” You mumble to yourself, staring in awe at the statued form of the Prince of Life, stunned you were able to best him in Strife. “Goh, Fuck!” You exclaim much louder, finally feeling the physical backlash of having so many Temporal Abilities active all at once. You feel ill from the exertion, and you doubt you can keep it all up for much longer. Thankfully, with the Prince himself in a Time Knot, you’re able to release all the Full Time Stops you placed on his Green Miles. As you do, they fall limply to the floor, rendered powerless without a user, and a wave of relief flows over you like you just set down something heavy. “A-… alright! Fucking aced it…!”
You stagger back to your feet, using what remains of the wall in the corridor for support, hobbling along into the nearest room. You’ve only bought yourself a few minutes with that Time Knot, so there’s no time to waste. You carefully turn a barrel full of explosive powder over onto its side and roll it out to the hallway, pushing it up against the Prince’s frozen form. You quickly return and roll three more out, positioning them all in a square formation around him. While you aren’t an expert on explosives, you’re fairly certain this amount of blackpowder should be strong enough to blow through the nearby walls, starting a chain reaction with the rest of the stockpiles in the temple. All you need now is a way to safely set it off…
Looking around the area, you spot a few sizable pieces of destroyed wall the Prince’s flailing created. You pick up two fist-sized rocks, striking them against one another, evoking a burst of sparks to jump from the rubble chunks. This’ll do just fine. Setting off an explosion this big is gonna be risky, but Sara was right about this guy after all. You can’t just let him go wondering about the Arena, free to kill whoever he comes across. Action has to be taken!
You break the top off of one of the barrels and raise the rocks to strike, only finding pause when you realize what you’re about to do. Christ, you really weren’t thinking on that one. Even with your time dilation, there’s no way you can escape an explosion from this close. You’ll have to make a fuse of some sort. Maybe you could fashion one from the sleeve of your god tiers? No, that won’t work. God tiers are flame retardant… for the most part. Damn magic pajamas! You frantically scour for something flammable in your inventory when it hits you. The liquid in those pots!
You return to the room you got the barrels from and check inside the pots. Its contents are thick and oil-like. You pour a small puddle of it onto the floor and strike your rocks above it. The sparks fall and the liquid catches fire. Perfect!
You stumble out of the room, awkwardly pulling the pot behind you while it drags on the ground, scuffing up the floor. Reaching the Prince, you tilt the oversized vase and begin pouring the liquid over one of the barrels, soaking it in the slick substance. Once it’s good and marinated you start pulling the pot away in a bear-hug, careful not to drop it as you lead a trail of oil down the hall, out towards the exit. You’re just about out of liquid once you reach the eastern entrance, abandoning the pot now confident you’re far enough from the blast radius to safely trigger the explosion. You ready your spark-rocks, just one strike and-
“Jason?” You hear from down the hall. Your blood runs cold. “Jason, where are you?” They call for you again. There’s no mistaking that fear-stricken voice.
“Mia?!” You shout back. You drop the spark-rocks and round the corner, grabbing onto the wall to avoid completely falling over. Standing there, awkwardly hugging her polearm in her arms with a brave, teary face, peaking around the Prince to see you is your friend Mia.
“A-are you alright?” She meekly asks, seeing the frantic expression on your face.
“Mia…” Your shoulders slump seeing her, stripping the wind from your sails. Why isn’t she with the others? What is she doing here? What the hell is she thinking?! “Wha-wha what are you…?”
“W-when you told us to leave without you, I-I-I got worried, a-and you were gone for so long, I-I thought you were in trouble.” Her grasp on her polearm starts to wobble. “I-I thought you needed help!” She exclaims, trying to re-grip her weapon.
“Oh jesus christ.” Mia being here has your mind racing a mile a minute. Why the hell would she come back? Even if you were in trouble, what could she do in the state she’s in? Can you still set off the barrel explosives with her here? It’ll only take maybe ten or so seconds for the flames to burn through the barrel once the oil leads them there. If you want to be out of the blast radius when this goes off, you’ll have to be down at least two levels beforehand. Can she run that fast? If she can’t, will you be able to carry her? Shit, no time to think, that Time Knot only has a minute left in it, minute-thirty tops. “Mia, follow me, we’ve gotta get out of here. Hurry!”
“O-okay.” She nods, cautiously stepping over the Prince’s tendrils to meet you. You’re already halfway to the exit when your met with the next problem in this never-ending nightmare funhouse. “Aaah!” Mia screeches at the top of her lungs, nearly giving you a heart attack. Your head snaps back around at the sound of her cry and you see one of the Green Meters has wrapped itself around her leg like a coiling snake. What?! The Prince is still in the middle of your snare, how the hell is he able to move?!
“Hold on, I’m coming!” You shout, vaulting past the frozen Prince to get to the trapped girl. Reaching her, you slam your pickaxe into the tendril that’s snaked itself around her, causing it to recoil off. The dreadful thing slithers upright, reeling back to pounce on the new entity in its proximity. You push Mia behind your guard, ready to deflect the attack. “Mia, go now! I’ll-“ You’re cut short as another of the Green Meters wraps around both Mia and yourself, constricting you as if you were trapped prey. “Shit! Hold onto me!”
You wrap your wingspan around Mia, clutching onto her while doing your best to shield her as the two of you are smashed through several of the temple walls, the tendril whipping you around like a petulant child swinging their toys. You feel something break around your left arm region. Hard to tell what, though.
“Gah-ha!” You cry out as you’re sent through another wall. With teeth grit tighter than a vice, you manage to pry your eyes open, getting a bearing on your surroundings as you wince through the pain. Through the ruin remains of the temple, you spot the Prince of Life standing in stasis, still trapped within your Time Knot. How the hell is this bastard still able to move? There’s no way a Life player should be able to circumvent a temporal snare. Unless… there’s no way. Are those damn Green Meters an extension of his life force?! That’s the only way they’d be able to act autonomously with the Prince still impeded. More importantly, it means these things can keep you trapped here until the Prince frees himself from your snare! Think! You gotta get out of here, fast!
Before you have a chance to think your way out of the tentacle trap you find yourself, the tendril loosens its grasp and lets you go on its own. You ponder what could’ve possibly caused your sudden emancipation when you realize that there isn’t solid ground beneath you. Ah, that would explain it. You’ve been smashed through the outer wall of the temple and flung off the side.
… Fuck.
“Ahhhh!” Mia screams as the two of you free fall down the side of the monolithic pyramid structure. You look upwards, which at the angle you’re falling at, is actually downwards, and see the stone of the pyramid quickly approaching. As dread runs rampant through your head, a single thought rises to the forefront of your mind, sending a chill through you; Mia can't Survive the Fall.
You look down at your friend in her fragile state, still held protectively in your arms, and time seems to roll back before your very eyes. Almost like a slideshow playing before you, you recall all that you’ve been through together. Your first day in Sburb, your last day as neighbors, standing up for her at school, trying to calm her down when her powers first manifested. You see it all, and when you look at her again, before you is that shy girl your dad wanted to introduce you to, poking out from behind her mother’s legs to mutter her hellos to you. In this moment, your body feels weightless and a single Instruction is left to echo in your head;
Save Her!
In this split second decision, you twist your hips, angling yourself to be beneath Mia and wince in cringing anticipation, readying yourself for the landing. The two of you smack against the side of the stone pyramids, the air in your lungs being catapulted out of your body on impact. Pain surges up and down your spine, and the spasming in your chest muscles makes it impossible to gasp for breath. It feels like you were just struck by a train. Needless to say, you were not ready.
You cling onto Mia tightly, doing your best to shield her from any damage as you continue to roll, slide, skid and skip off the unforgiving exterior of the pyramid. You keep your eyes slammed shut trying to endure the pain, but manage to get a peek every now and then of where you are on the enormous structure, and how much further you have to go until the bottom. From what you see, you’ve just broken through the cloud line and are on a crash course to the base of the structure. LOFAC is a lot more lush than you realized, with a small green forest ring surrounding the base of the super pyramids as well as a couple small towns out in the fields beyond them. Off in the distance, several other giant pyramid structures like the one you currently tumble upon decorate the landscape, which seem to be the primary architecture for LOFAC. This Land’s actually kind of a nice place. Shame you aren’t experiencing it from a more pedestrian point of view.
You slide off a sub-pyramid, dropping a long way before banking off the side of another rampart below and finally slamming against the ground of LOFAC at what you can only assume is terminal velocity. The full weight of Mia lands with you, or more accurately on you, emphasizing the degree of mutilation your internal organs have sustained, and you lay there basking in the agony. Not for nothing, but you think that went as well as it could’ve.
“Uhhhhhgh…” You raspily moan, trying to push the pain out of your mind. You were on the fence about it before, but after that little move the Prince pulled, this Strife is way worse than the one you had with Medeas. At least with her, you had the luxury of a head injury to numb the pain. And you didn’t even get to blow anything up this time! All in all, it feels like you were just put through a wood chipper, you can hardly breath and you aren’t 100% sure you won’t vomit up your insides the moment you stand up.
“Jason? Are you okay?” Mia asks, shifting to look at you, which sparks a whole new type of torment to flair up as she redistributes her weight on your chest.
“Gah- I… yeah, I’m fine Mia… I just need a minute…” You manage to assure her. “But please… get off of me.”
“Oh! Ah, sorry!” She quickly apologizes, doing her best to get up without hurting you.
“How about you, you alright?” You ask her, still laying flat on your back.
“A little scraped up, but I-I’m fine.” She says, rubbing her elbow. Good. Normally, Mia could brush off a fall like that with a shit eating grin on her face, but without her powers, you’re pretty sure that fall would’ve killed her. You’re barely hanging on by a thread yourself. Let’s hope that super healing kicks in soon. “You’re… o-oh god.” Her voice starts to tremble, like she’s seen something horrible.
“What, what is i-“ You follow her eyes to where she’s staring and discover a grizzly sight, realizing you’re a lot more fucked up than you first thought. Both your legs are a broken mess, being more likened to tattered accordion that’ve been twisted and stretched about than proper human limbs, and a sickeningly large gash in your lower stomach has opened up, permitting a segment of your innards to protrude out. “Oh… wow…”
“Jason!” Mia exclaims through a teary voice. Her eyes start to well up like floodgates, overwhelmed by the sight of what’s become of you.
“C-calm down.” You try to keep her under control. “We can’t panic. We need to keep level-heads about us.”
“Your legs!” She shouts, the water works finally breaking down her face.
“Mia, you gotta calm down.” You repeat a little firmer this time.
“I-I-I-I think that’s your intestine!” She says while frantically beginning to shake.
“I’ll be fine if I just-“ You try to sit up but a piercing pain erupts from your back. It dawns on you that your spine might be broken. “Oh god, okay I just need to sit still for a bit and I’ll be fine.” You lay back down and close your eyes, taking deep and labored breaths to try and calm your nerves. Panicking in a moment like this would just exacerbate things. What you need to do is stay calm and think things through. There’s a solution to this, you just have to find it. Unfortunately, the adrenaline that was coursing through your body begins to wear off around the same time Mia begins to hyperventilate, and you can’t quite focus on anything anymore, and you mind goes into a kind of static fugue. Okay, no, this is still fine, you still have the healing factor you exchanged for your immortality. Any minute now and you’ll be right as rain, any… any minute… what? What the hell?! Why aren’t you healing, you should be healing! You had healed at this point the last time you got badly banged up, so why not now?! Are your injuries too severe to heal? Boss Is there a limit on what can be healed?! Okay, okay, fuck, okay, think. There’s another way, there’s always another way. Hey, Boss. Think! There has to be something, right? Maybe Mia can find Esspin and Sara. Are you even listening? Yeah, Aspect of Hope and Title of Sylph? There has to be a powerful healing motif in that combination. O-or something that can ease up this fucking pain! You can’t even think straight! God damn it, Boss! This is getting old, for Christ’s sake! Here!
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What?… Creed? Yeah, who the hell else? W-where are you? I thought you left with Dallra. I-is she here too? What? Oh, right, that was- wait hold on, we’re getting off track. Look, I’m not actually with you right now, but we don't have much time, so don’t sweat the hows or whys. Huh? Then how the hell are you talking to me? I just told you not to sweat the-, okay whatever, it’s a Psychic Link, but we really- W-what? You can just do that? Like with anybody?. Forget about it, not the important part. Listen! I have a message for you; Check Your Ability Index. My ability index? Why?… Creed? Hello? Check your Ability Index? You guess you have no reason not to, you know, other than the fact that you’re dying and should probably value your last moments.
Screw it, you open up your Ability Index and scroll through the listings. Full Time Stop, Time Dilation, Time Knot, Checkpoint, Complete Close Off, Dilation Close Off, Time Restore, Damage Turn-Back, Dama- wait, Damage Turn-Back? When did… Oh shit! You’d forgotten, all the abilities you unlocked from the limit-breaker! This must be what Creed was referring to, but how did he know about your new abilities? Forget it, no time to think about that now. You manually select Damage Turn-Back in the ability index and a small Cog construct appears hovering in your hand. You aren’t really sure what you’re supposed to do with this. Normally, your future self would teach you how to properly use your powers, but you’re on your own with this one. You just sort of… reach out and grasp the construct and… turn it counter clockwise. That seems right, right?
Your intuition was correct! The further back you turn the cog, the less your injuries seem to sting. You aren’t complaining, on account of it saving your life, but this ability seems a little… unbalanced? You’ve never had something as powerful as this in your arsenal during your journey. Although, you are a god, after all. Technically speaking, at least. Between that and your limiters being removed, you guess it isn’t that unreasonable of a power to have. But if you have a skill as strong as this, you shudder to imagine the types of abilities some of the other Godtiers might be toting. Well, regardless of how useful this ability might be, you feel just about all your reserved power flow out of you, like you’ve sprung a leak in the metaphysical container that housed all your temporal energy.
“Ahhalright.” You sigh as you finish fixing yourself up the best you can. You aren’t completely healed, but at least you aren’t a mangled pile of pain anymore. You sit up just fine, you spine welded back together again, and try to ease a still hysteric Mia.
“Ja-*hic*-sooon!” She cries, throwing her hands around you, hugging you tightly. It’s a little rough on your remaining injuries, but it’s clear she needs to vent that trauma out.
“It’s alright, I’m alright.” You assure her, lightly patting her back in an awkward attempt to comfort the weeping girl. Sure, you’ve known Mia for most of your life, but you’re still not used to her hugging you so much. “It’s okay, I’m all patched up now. Now come on, we’ve gotta go find the others before-“ Your stop short, cut off by the sound of shattering stone erupting from above you. Timidly looking up, already knowing in your heart what you’ll see, a bolt of fear shoots through every inch of your being. Coming down on top of you like a galloping horse is the Prince of Life, growing a twisted smile upon seeing you.
“Very few can escape the Green Meters, Jason!” He howls, barreling down the side of the pyramid like a Pale Rider. “And you are not one of them!” Him actually saying your name kind of has you scared out of your fucking mind right now. It just lets you know that he’s coming for you, and you specifically.
“Mia, we have to run.” You tell her, not looking away from the Prince. “We have to run right now!” You nearly slip trying to get to your feet too fast, eventually getting upright and breaking out into a full sprint, running as fast as you can to the forest around the bottom of the pyramid, dragging Mia behind you by the hand. She’s eventually able to run ahead of you, your injuries slowing you down, but you can keep up well enough.
The two of you are deep into the woods when you’re brave enough to look back. You spot the Prince just as he reaches the edge of the forest, witnessing him begin to swing his tendrils like vast axes through the trees before him, completely divorcing them from their stumps and flinging them up into the air. He’s like a rampaging lumberjack, hacking at the bit just to get to you. What the hell did you do to deserve having to deal with a beast like him? At this point, you’d take the Heir of Rage over this guy!
“Jason!” Mia calls your attention to her. “Someone’s here! Out in the field!” She points forward to the forest’s end. It’s hard to make out, but there’s a shadowy form standing out in the open between the forest and the nearest village. You hope to god it’s Dallra, or Esspin, or Creed, fuck even Frank could help.
Finally reaching the end of the forest, you come upon the the mysterious figure, witnessing as the shadows around them take form into… yourself? How did… Holy Fucking Shit… It’s the Fucking Heir of Rage! Pacing around, shaking and twitching like a rabid fucking animal! He perks up, eyes trained directly on you, stopping you dead in your tracks in front of him.
“AHHHH!” You scream to the uncaring entropy of the universe in seething fury. You weren’t being fucking literal! Every god damn turn, this hell-hole has some new freshly baked shit to slam down on your plate with all the grace and disdain of a disgruntled spouse delivering divorce papers to their cheating man-whore of a husband! Every pseudos-silver lining just begging to be trudged down by the absolute middle finger to all things good and holy that is reality’s insatiable drive to murder a bunch of kids! Fuck!
“W-who is he?” Mia asks, looking back to you. Before you can answer, the Prince of Life finally catches up with you, slamming the trees at the forest’s edge down with his tendrils, crushing them to splinters.
“You aren’t one of them, Jason.” He hisses, slowly approaching behind you, seeing that you’ve cornered yourself. “You. Aren’t. One Of Them.”
“W-what do we do?” Mia asks, hectically glancing between the two juggernauts. This is too much. You can’t protect her from this…
“You’re leaving.” You order Mia, ignoring her question.
“What?” You grab her by the shoulders.
“Get the hell out of here, now!” You shout, visibly startling her. “Find somewhere safe to hide and wait for me there. Dallra will find you.”
“B-but, Ja-“
“Mia…! Go!” Her eyes dart around frantically, scanning your face for any break in demeanor. Her shocked look softens into a small and knowing frown. She doesn’t say anything, just nods before turning and running out into the field, diagonal to the fight. The Heir of Rage’s attention darts to her as she absconds and he crouches down like a pouncing jungle cat, ready to chase after her. “HEY!” You shout, slamming your pickaxe against the ground to focus him on yourself. “Your fight’s right here, asshole! So come on!” He snarls back in response, now completely focused on you. As you stare the Heir down, your own face being mimicked back at you, his stolen visage begins to contort, growing sallow and ghoulish, with flesh rotting before your eyes until he has the likeness of a long dead corpse. How pleasant.
You’re left alone again, simmering with an annoyed sense of déjà vu. Only difference is you’re completely out of energy, and there are two monsters for you to fight this time. You’d complain, but there’s really no point. You’re in the shit right now, all you can do is grit your teeth and brace yourself. You ready your pick and prepare for the worst, bouncing your attention between the two, unsure of which will strike first. It’s funny, you’d think your heart rate would be through the roof right now, but it’s not. You aren’t sure if that’s good or not. All you know is… this is probably gonna suck.
Jason, Stand Your Ground.