TEST DRIVE 005

[phantasmods]

Hello and welcome to the fifth test drive for Phantasmal Rift!

Test drive threads are assumed to be game canon for accepted characters unless otherwise noted, so don't feel like you'll have to introduce yourself a second time to everyone you meet! As an added bonus, participation in the test drive comes with the chance to earn up to two items of loot for your trouble! Characters who are accepted can earn one item for having a top level, and one for tagging out to someone else's top level! Your SWEET LOOT will be included with your acceptance notice.

Additionally, characters currently in game can earn themselves a piece of bonus loot for the dungeon by tagging people's top-levels on the test drive! Existing characters get their bonus loot along with the rest of their loot at the conclusion of the dungeon.

This time, the Test Drive takes place in Incendia - a less-ruined-than-expected city that has been abandoned for over a century, due to the magical effects of the Fissure (unstable reality region) that have made it impossible to live in. What effects are these, you ask?

Well...

BY DAY

By day, the city is lovely, if oddly empty. The sun shines down, and magical lights along the sidewalk - the equivalent of power lines - flow energy throughout the city. It's possible to think that the little sparks you sometimes see at the corner of your vision are related. After all, there's a great deal of magic in the air...

But in spite of this, the city lies abandoned, for no immediately apparent reason. You might have found yourself in a wide-open shipping yard, where large metal containers levitate about, moving without any help or oversight from human hands. Be careful; these containers changing positions make it easy to get lost for quite a long time, since few of them have much in the way of identifying traits over than color. Didn't you already pass that arrangement of two red ones on top of a blue one before...?

Or perhaps you're in the massive park in the center of town, with its blatantly magical fountain (a half-dome of water just hanging in the air) and the tents of an abandoned festival. Two stages and a long line of street food booths stand empty - surely no one will mind if you use them for something, right?

Or perhaps you're just suddenly on the streets, among stalled-out taxis and cars that go nowhere and lack the familiar smell of gasoline. There's apartments and shops all around, with little gardens spilling out over balconies... Maybe if you go knock on some doors, you'll find people.

Wherever it is you are, surely there's got to be someone around who can tell you what's going on, right...?

BY DUSK

As night falls, rather than dropping the way you might expect, the temperature begins to rise. And then the sparks in the edges of your vision are very much more than simply at the edges of your vision. They catch first on the plants, the papers stuck to the now-lit magical streetlights, the trash cans... And then, increasingly so, on the buildings proper, the shops, the skyscrapers, the cars in the street.

Within half an hour, an inferno is starting to build, and it's clear that there's not going to be anywhere above ground safe from it. But fortunately, there's safety beneath the level of the streets - if you can make your way fast enough to an underground station.

BY NIGHT

In the remains of these subway tunnels, lit mostly by the dim glow of magical energy lines, you're at least safe from the inferno above. Unlike the aboveground parts of the city, however, the tunnels are in an obvious state of disrepair, with broken concrete, rot, and mildew. The stations might have once been clean, but they quite transparently are not now, and the tunnels themselves are as bad or worse.

Thankfully, no trains run anymore, so you're not at risk of being run down on the broken tracks. There's also not any full-on collapses blocking the way, and the tunnels seem well-enough made that there's probably not risk of a cave-in.

Less pleasantly, you aren't the only thing taking shelter in the tunnels from the firestorm above. And the magic of that flame has touched the feral dogs that rove the tunnels, turning them into barking, howling creatures of as much flame as flesh themselves. And then there's the occasional patch of mold, mildew, and slime in the darkest parts of the tunnels, where even the magical circuits have gone out, that moves to douse any light that comes near it...

Comments

day

[founderinglight]

[Lily is probably not expecting the deep voice of an older man in response to her words, but it's what she gets.]

That would likely be because it's no afterlife at all. Water?

[In his hand, offered to her, is a still-sealed water bottle. It's pretty... blatantly been looted from the ice-filled barrel of them that he's leaning against, but the thought is there?]

[ax_iom]

[who the fuck are you

she just looks at him.]

If I'm not dead, then I still have work to do. I don't need it.

[founderinglight]

If you've work to do, then you'll do yourself no good wearing yourself out with dehydration before you get there.

[He is a logical, cultured stranger in a fancy black coat, black leather gloves, and a white teeshirt with "NOT ARDYN, WE'RE TWINS" on it in blue metallic dye.

And he's still holding out the water bottle.]

[ax_iom]

I don't need it. And I'm not stupid enough to take drinks from weird older men I've never met before.

[What the fuck is this guy wearing? She's keeping a wary distance from him.]

[founderinglight]

It's sealed.

[He might know a few people with a poison phobia, okay, he isn't totally naive.]

And unless you're something deceptively human looking that is not, in fact, human, you'll run into dehydration eventually.

[ax_iom]

Sealed doesn't mean much to me.

[listen, it's not a phobia if the world really does want you dead.]

I'm magic, so it's fine.

[Disclaimer: Her magic does not work that way. At all.]

[founderinglight]

That makes two of us, so you're not getting off the hook that easily, young lady.

[But he flips the water bottle in his hand before vanishing it in a scattering of crystalline lights. You can throw a water bottle at a mage but you can't make them drink.]

[ax_iom]

That was... magic...?

[She stares at him, her face made of shock and fear... until it's replaced by rage.

She lunges for him, her elegant dress fluttering behind her, as she lifts up that ridiculously heavy hammer like it's nothing and swings like she's intending to kill him.

Because she kind of is.]

[founderinglight]

Oh, not again -

[The way he dodges isn't entirely a simple side-step - Lily's hammer crashes through an afterimage of blue light rather than its intended target, who spins off to her left. For the moment being, at least, he's not drawn a weapon in response.]

[ax_iom]

[She growls, and... And loses sight of the world, for just one moment.

Here. The elder magi are here, too. The world wasn't enough? Now the afterlife, or whatever this was, had them, too? She couldn't even die right, and now the enemies who have caused everything are just here as casually as can be? He's standing there, smiling, like he has no part in the atrocities of the Elder Magi? Of the Hand? He just smiles so innocently as everything goes wrong?

Her mind goes red. Her anger burns. It burns, it burns, until she roars, a primal roar of fury like her anger trying to escape through her mouth, but it's not enough, it's never enough, the burning is spreading- Through her lungs, through her heart, through her whole body, her anger is burning everything--

From Izunia's point of view, Lily seems to simply erupt into flames, burning away that dress of hers, and the hammer. But it's not like it leaves her naked, but instead, the flames seem to turn black, and twist, coating her until her she's wearing a costume reminiscent of a barbarian- Furs, covering her chest and legs, but not much more. But off the back of her fur gloves, sharp, hooked claws form, jagged like the black flame they seem to be made out of, long and deadly.

Her anger has taken over, and been given form. She hits the ground where his afterimage was, and lunges after him, trailing embers as she speeds at him.]

[founderinglight]

Infernian's own horns, girl -

[Sorry, Lily, you're just going to be hitting more afterimage - this time as Izunia flings something past her shoulder that leaves behind a streak of blue light as he vanishes again. His voice comes from somewhere behind her - ]

I am not your enemy!

[ax_iom]

Shut up!

[Her voice is guttural, growling, as she spins and chases him, mindlessly, fueled entirely by rage.]

You are! You and the rest of your group! I'll take you all out!

[founderinglight]

[It'll be a rather long chase, then, a streak of blue darting ahead of Lily to pause on the top of a lamp post and call down - ]

Leviathan's gills, I'm not a part of any group, I don't even have enough retainers for a Glaive -

[Oops she's getting close now on to the next lamppost.]

[ax_iom]

Liar!

[She's chasing, as long as her rage can fuel her. And where he lands on each lamppost, she's just swiping with her claws, cutting clean through the metal and letting them fall to the ground... No going back, Izunia!]

whoops ok time to get back to these

[founderinglight]

[He's not the sort to look back anyway. Instead, he takes the time to make enough headway that he's got a clear enough view...

The goal of the ice that spreads across the ground isn't to hurt her. It's just to slow her down a bit, give him enough time to get a few words out - ]

Use your head, girl, if I was your enemy would I not have struck while you were casual and unsuspecting of me?!

[ax_iom]

I was suspicious of you from the start, idiot!

[Unfortunately, her fury burns like fire. Literally, in fact, as the ice melts right where her feet touch down, going up in a cloud of steam.]

[founderinglight]

And yet I still could very much have carved your heart out of your chest before -

[Ah, she's getting a bit close, time to warp a time or two.]

- you had the chance to defend! If I wished you dead, you would be dead!

[ax_iom]

Then try it! I win either way!

[She's shouting in her angry, not really... thinking about what she's saying... that's not alarming at all!]

[founderinglight]

... You're very stupid, aren't you.

[Yeah like Izunia isn't going to notice that, but...

Really, Lily, has he actually tried to attack you yet?]

[ax_iom]

And whose fault is that?!

[She screams, and seems to coil into a ball for a moment... Before she bursts forward, lunging like a feral beast aiming to take down its prey.]

[founderinglight]

I have no idea because I'm not from the same fucking universe as you!

[It's impressive that he manages to rattle all of that off before having to warp again - she's able to get pretty close before he warps off, vanishing somewhere into one of the taller trees around the border of the park. They're pretty close to getting out onto the streets proper, now.]

[ax_iom]

That doesn't mean anything!

[One member of the Hand was a thaumivore. All of the monsters- and familiars, they were too. Another universe doesn't matter.

But... The fire seems to be weakening, the further she runs. The claws don't seem to cut quite as cleanly. She's gasping for breath as she lunges again, but it's much slower than it was before.]

[founderinglight]

[It's more the slowness that he notices, rather than the dying down of the fire. There's another flash of a warp light through the trees.

If he can hold out until she exhausts herself, then either she'll have to start listening to sense or he can make an actual getaway. It worked with Noctis, didn't it?

Another flash. He doesn't seem to be leading her anywhere in particular save for along the edge of the park.]

[ax_iom]

[One epic chase later!

After a couple more minutes of the chase, she finally slows down, her feet dragging, and... just like before, fire covers her. But this time, rather than her earlier elegant balldress, this one is something frillier, more... well, magical girl-style. Dark gray and violets, and much simpler.

She finally stops, and falls to her knees.]

[founderinglight]

[It's only once the fire fades away that Izunia - breathing a bit hard himself - warps back. Rather than standing on the lamp this time, he sits, feet dangling in a way that's almost childish, given that he's (apparently) in his mid thirties and near six and a half feet.]

Are you willing to listen to sense, now?