Freyd

"Not happening!" Ironclad refusal took the form of tumbling turned demolition derby as Freyd changed tactics and replaced dodging around attacks into crazy through the cellar itself. Ear-splitting cries resonated throughout the confined space as the maws bound around his fist peeled back their seals, unleashing the power of oblivion. Dust and splinters sprayed like shrapnel all about the space as chaos and destruction reigned, obscuring everything. The floors above creaked ominously as support columns and beams we sundered and snapped like twigs, whole sections vanishing with the passage o

"Nope. Nope! NOPE!" Try has he might, there were far too many strands flying about to effectively inflict any kind of counterattack. Dodging like the ballbearing in a pinball machine, he instantly felt himself sympathizing with its plight. Both were battered and thrown about violently for the amusement of others, with the only apparent end being an inevitable swallow by the void at the end of their torture chamber. Freyd hadn't quite spotted that particular menace, yet, being too busy dancing around like a madman, trying to keep himself from being flayed alive. Every edge and line defin

And that's when the house bit him - or tried, rather. He'd barely stepped halfway down the stairs when the mortar lines between rubblestone blocks forming the basement suddenly shone red, making the entire space feel like the inside of a very hostile enemy submarine, or maybe a Resident Evil movie. Moving on instinct alone, Freyd tumbled forward just in time to avoid a tangle of razor-sharp red strands slicing at him from every direction. "Definitely Resident Evil," he cried out, vaguely remembering something about a red queen and lasers in corridors chopping protagonists into tiny bits

Allowing his lumberjack disguise to fade, Freyd didn't expect it to do him much good if his guess was correct. The centre of a broadly spun web that could override the rules of their digital reality? That was raid level shit, or, more precisely, the sort of nonsense you would typically only find in labyrinths. Approaching the main entrance seemed ridiculously stupid, and possibly suicidal. Freyd elected, instead, to wander around to the side of the structure, seeking another door, cellar, or unsecured window. Option number two seemed like today's winner. A pair of slanted shutters jut ou

The manor house itself was wreathed in filaments from top to bottom, serving as some sort of nexus or root for the splaying crimson strands splaying outward from it in every direction. They were densest near the building itself, producing a reddish halo that seemed to pulse from the structure in time with the motions of the wind. "Yeah," Freyd muttered, "that's not ominous in the slightest. Hey, Persi, how much you want to bet this is the Lord Magistrate's pad?" Slinking down from beneath his armor, his normally aloof shadow mongoose familiar was on edge, her blazing azure eyes narro

A dark mass loomed in the distance, nestled in a valley between two rising slopes of wavering crimson adorned with heavy lacings in white. Though it was tough to tell, so heavily was it encased by the gossamer strands, Freyd thought he saw a series of tower-like elements poking up to match the tallest of the surrounding trees. All of it looked as though it was swaddled beneath a sheer, fabric-blanket of gauze. Realization dawned, along with cursing for having taken him so long to connect the similar contexts. These strands weren't like vines at all. They were like webs, very similar to the

Following the road a while longer revealed more undulating terrain: a series of rolling hills all set aflame with the deepest burning colours of Autumn. "The floor sure likes its themes, doesn't it?" Soon, gossamer strands like translucent vines began to appear, draping from various branches and strung between trees as if connecting one to the other. Most were white or clear, but it didn't take long to start seeing the occasional tinge of pink, eventually verging into reds. It was like watching the fire in the forest canopy slowly bleeding or being drained into the strands and fila

If it were only that simple. Beneath the pallor of its thinly layered fur, Freyd could also see the prominent red veins streaking and pulsing beneath its near-translucent flesh. Cringing at the prospect that this entire wood might be infected by whatever befell the other mobs, it brought small comfort that the critter betrayed no outward sign of aggression. it simply looked at him, standing still and silent as if waiting for a pair of headlights to match its gaze. The thought was enough to make him snicker, and the snicker was enough to spook the deer. It darted away through the underbrus

Something tugged at the periphery of his awareness as he walked, the rustling of leaves in the breeze overhead suspiciously similar to the crackling of a campfire and coloured to match. A white form flitted between nearby boughs, like some sort of inverted shadow adapted to conceal itself amidst the mostly bleached bark of the densely packed forest. The leaves looked more like oak or maple, Freyd was never really good at recognizing anything but the latter, mostly because of his own childhood origins. A snap sent him instantly into a crouch, spinning to spot a source and ready to respond to

Clattering hooves against cobblestone suggested the presence of a road. Rushing as quickly as he dared, Freyd reached the weathered pathway, deeply rutted by age and heavy use. Whatever rider he'd heard was long gone, but could still be heard in the distance - eastward, judging by the station and passage of the sun. There was little option but to rely upon some conventions, even if they were somehow revealed to be different and distinct for this floor. At least it gave him a datum by which to set some bearings. "He's headed away from Glyndebourne," Freyd declared, starting to piece

Wandering aimlessly through the woods for a time, Freyd wasn't truly certain where he was going. He had no bearings, no map and no sense of the layout of this floor. Glyndebourne remained too dangerous to approach, for the time being. Ironically, he realized that he was acting as if this floor had tagged him with an orange mark, despite having turned his own green icon off in the debacle of the previous night. It felt very odd, yet strangely also not, and he had no idea what to make of the sensation. He might was well have been back in the Forest of Memories, once more haunted by shades s

Word came shortly thereafter, reporting more incidents in the outskirt of Glyndebourne. O&I were scouts and special agents. They were not an army or police force to be wielded as some blunt instrument against a vast and unknown threat. While Foyle, Sykes, Aus and others worked their leads remotely, he would do the same. The only remaining thread still loose and available to pull at was this 'Lord Magistrate' he'd kept hearing about. Shifting through shadow to shed the layers of ash and soot gathered over his own shell, Freyd hesitantly wondered whether the two creatures he'd just

"Ah! Please, no more! It's gone! I swear it!" Steadying his stance, Freyd paused, hesitating just enough for the floating murk of post-flame content to settle down and allow sight to resume its function. The mob had shifted once more and assumed the guise of a young female, stout and stocky in form with a buxom figure and dressed as one might expect a lady farmer to possess. "Who are you? What happened here?" She ignored his query, seemingly simultaneously desperate and elated, and moving to embrace him like a savior. But Freyd was too familiar with the deceitful ways of

Keeping up the pressure, his enemies hissed and shifted, attempting to alter their forms to something more suitable to their ever-changing circumstances and finding it impossible. Never the type to stand as the stalwart tank, Freyd had always preferred and agile and elusive combat style based on misdirection paired with powerful individual strikes. It seemed effective, as Samael's Pride opened its maw a second time and devoured most of the male's torso, sending it to whatever void or oblivion lay beyond its touch. "Inssssolence," hissed the female, very conveniently and foolishly conf

"Catch you if you... what the..." Looking up, Freyd watched as Morningstar extricated himself from an odd position and still managed to pull off an unorthodox attack. "Nice moves, but you're no damsel in distress. If you fall, the ground can catch your ass," he call upwards with a chuckle. The golem was finally starting to rouse itself, its attention focusing down upon the Whisper even as the fire behind its eyes began glowing ferociously. "Oh, no you don't." Speed was ever in their favour. Darting forward, Freyd leapt and spun, dodging as a giant metal gauntlet sought to sw

Uh.. friendly or not-friendly? While the debate debuted in Freyd's mind, the rest of him had already decided. Breaking cover, he rushed the nearest goopy mass and slammed the screeching keen of his fists into - no, through - its left shoulder, severing most of its recently grown arm in the process. 'I am really glad I can't taste anything you eat,' he thought, as Samael's Pride bit off a chunk. Cleaving off the first hit, Freyd followed through the rest of his kata, slamming the second mob hard enough to unbalance it. Both foes flailed wildly, recovering with speed, but not enough to

Two sinuous creatures emerged from the tree line, each looking like amoeba's with severe cases of gigantism: immense, blobby looking things of near-translucent flesh laden with layers of angrily irate red veins that pulsed with sickly power as their worm-like bodies slithered into the farmstead. Moments later, they rose, standing like a pair of cobras, even flaring their pulpy masses wide and each conjuring a pair of sinister eyes. Their bloated bodies would shift to take on more humanoid forms, though never quite anything aesthetically pleasing. Both just looked... wrong. "Someone fou

"This isn't a player-crafted item," he muttered to himself, though he'd argue it was for Persi's benefit if anyone every called him on it. "So how the hell did something like this get into a mob's mesh, unless..." A furrowed brow belied furtive analysis and consideration of unorthodox options. "Could these be the actual skins worn over, or even forming the actual meshes of mobs - the very lattices that made up their models and forms in this digital world?" His eyes widened at the consequences. "Did someone find a way to scourge the mesh off a mob?" Dark. Probably too dark. That l

Something in the ashes caught his attention as he raked through the debris, peeling away the uppermost layers of the piles which were now little more than crinkled sheets of carbon paper and crumbled to dust at the slightest touch. Beneath those, however, several inches down, some of the garments could more clearly be made out. Still burnt beyond any potential recovery, it was the bits of bizarre burgundy veins laced throughout their fabrics that caught his attention. Flame could not have caused this alone. Either the original tailor had woven the strands into fabric, or someone had subseq

It was one of the great ironies of Aincrad that death left behind no evidence, especially in the case of mobs, who would typically and eventually respawn. The occasional corpse left behind by quests for plot purposes were a jarring and inconsistent anomaly, which was what made him think to look for some. Finding such evidence would imply that he'd stumbled into a quest by accident, possibly triggered by simple proximity. Arrival in Glyndebourne might have been enough to set some off. Two hours later, finding nothing, that hypothesis was sufficiently thrashed to merit discarding, save for o

Rounding the bend in the loosely defined trail and clearing revealed a far more alarming scene than he'd anticipated. The smoke had been white, and the plume modest in size, suggesting a mere cooking fire. The truth was far more tragic. It was a cottage, set firmly in the past tense. Little remained of the structure, clearly ravaged by fire to the point of full engulfment and collapse. Little remained standing save the stone hearth and chimney at the far end and the scattered implements of a devastated farmstead strewn all about. The smoke he'd seen drifted up from the stone ruins, likel

The other points of interest that Foyle and his own encounters had extricated was the repeated mention of some hoity toity 'Lord Magistrate.' "Sounds like a total git." It might have been a bit soon, but the declaration fit his limited experiences to date. "Right. Might as well start there. If this person is in charge of the redcoats, then he's most likely to have some info, or at least be at the centre of whatever this cluster *cough* entails." Downing the last drop of drink and dismissing its vacated container to his inventory for future refills, Freyd quickly surveyed his sur

Warmth from his tea cup bumped against his upper lip. Something about that drifting, unbeckoned thought had placed him in a powerful if momentary daze. Blinking, then again, Freyd's gaze lowered to the lengthy shadow stretching out from his dusty, muck-covered boots. The grass and forest floor had been wet with dew and left a damp chill in the morning air. Footfalls had churned up the mucky surface during his backwoods trek. Glancing behind him, he found no steps left to follow. Good. At least that was still working. A startled chipmunk raced out from beneath some nearby brush, loo

Foyle was the first to scout the floor once the raid was completed and access permitted by the system, but nothing in his initial surveys yielded any clues. This entire floor seemed to be modeled on the early American colonial period, save without firearms. The redcoats responding to Sally's cry had carried swords, but no pistols or muskets. Redcoats... was this supposed to be some version of the revolutionary war? Was this just another 'red versus blue' playing out in period costume? Sipping at the simmering beverage as he searched, the Whisper once again found himself in his element

Heading back to Glyndebourne was too risky and unlikely to yield meaningful results. O&I would be crawling all over that place, squeezing through a sifter to glean anything that could be found. Whatever this was had clearly asserted itself over the locals in the floor's primary settlement. The only real leads obtained during their brief scuffle with Turncoat Sally and her scarlet ruffians centred around the unusual transfer of colour between their clothes. "Come to think if it," he whispered to himself, "each time it happened the effect seemed to become more lucid, potent, and dange