Titanic Terrors

     Arrival at the so called 'front lines' is a chaotic affair. The insect monsters of the fourland dukedom have all seemed to go wild with the presence of the ants in the area, and the non-insect monsters are being equally attacked and preyed upon, creating unforseen dangers to travel that normally wouldn't be there. While the worst of the chaos is being suppressed by protective forces from the various cities and adventurers from nearby Eas, travel has grown more dangerous in the southwestern part of the dukedom.

     The combined force has managed to create a small base relatively nearby the pit where the ants have been coming and going from, and luckily there haven't been many signs of the absolutely gigantic Hive Princess since the first encounter with her a couple weeks back. Still, the dog and horse-sized ants coming and going from the pit aren't exactly something to sneeze at either, though they seem to be more doing their own thing rather than actively attacking the nearby cities.

     The earthquakes have begun to occur almost consistently every few hours now, and while they've managed to have some minor victories over smaller gatherings of ants attempting to harvest the forest, larger groups have still managed to gradually eat away at it and other natural resources.

     Which is why they put out a call for help for adventurer aid. Before things go too much further. And with each fight, the ants seem to be being more agitated by the presence of those defenders.

Schneider has joined in the quest to squash bugs. He is particularly qualified, he feels, but the fact is, he's qualified to fight anything flammable. If it were a giant asbestos monster, they should get someone else, but if it can be burned, Schneder is your one-stop solution. He's certainly a one-option solution. He shows up in response to the call to adventurers to aid, because Scale is about more than setting the Tower on fire. There are lands across Yamato that have not yet been burned to the ground. Luckily, Schneider is here to fix things.

Some people adventure for the loot. Some for the chance to see new sights. Some for the XP.

Chikako adventures for the chance to smash monsters.

(Smashing people tends to be frowned on, for some reason. She isn't quite sure why.)

"So," the Oni-girl says, giving her iron-clad club a twirl. "I hear there's bugs to squish, yeah?" She's only just arrived, having missed the backstory. So it's time to poke people until she gets some exposition.

A cart rolls forward and stops right next to Schneider. A small dwarf, one with whom Scnheider has adventured with before and who Schneider is actively teaching some moves, slowly climbs out of the cart. He waves goodbye to Uta, who is going to visit Wake while DosBox goes to squash some bugs. DosBox does NOT know where he is in the slightest, but there was an Adventure request, and Schneider was there, so DosBox figured he'd go, as he is THE SUPER SUPPORT as one person said once.

He waves goodbye to Uta as she rides off, and the Rock Gnome waddles up to Schneider with a cheery disposition, "Hi hi! Are ya ready to squish some bugs?" DosBox has literally no idea what he is getting into, but he's sure he can help.

Prophylaxis has kind of sort of appointed himself Chief Bugslapper of the Scale Emblem Alliance, owing to the fact that he has had a frankly uncomfortable number of encounters with threats of the insectoid and arachnoid variety of late. Setsuna is, of course, designated Bugspeaker.

...Because he can actually speak to them.

...Oracle is really cool.

"Looks like the infestation's worse than expected," Prophylaxis mutters as he overlooks the carnage unleashed by the giant ant hordes. "Should have known. Where there's one ant, there's going to be more ants. I wonder where they came from...? Can't be local, if they're messing up the ecosystem this bad..."

Or... are they!? Maybe Wake left some honey out on the counter at Eas or something.

She hasn't really done the whole job thing in quite a while. Getting back in the saddle means sucking it up and going though. Which is why Hisame's making a showing. Replete with fresh dangerous vials of something vile and her trusty tanking scythe. Everyone should have one of those. Hooked over one shoulder, arm draped over it, she steps up with the rest of the group and leans from one side, to the other getting a feel for the mess. "Maybe I didn't bring enough poison after all." She tilts her head to the other side, "Wouldn't be the first time I've had to improvise on the spot though."

With a stretch of her arms, she twists and flips the scythe so it's in hand properly. "Good to go whenever."

     There is bad news for Schneider. A lot of the ants spotted in the area are red ants, which means they're fire elemental! Probably. Honestly it's hard to know, the giant ants are weird. They literally have wizard ants among their lineup after all. And fire elemental monsters just mean you have to use MORE FIRE anyway. Just gotta outfire the fire.

     "Aye, there are." Responds one of the guard members that had volunteered for Ant Duty to help protect their lands. "Real big ones. I heard there's one the size of a mansion." The guard says, grimacing. Luckily not many had actually encountered the Titan Princess, or there likely would have been casualties so far.

     The guards pause, turning towards Dosbox as he rolls up on a cart. Which just casually rides off after dropping off the Gnome. "... Well. That was strange. But still, you're an adventurer, so your presence is very welcome." The guard says with a dip of their head. ... He is an adventurer right? A few of the guards seem to be glancing at the small gnome with a mix of curiosity and confusion. Why are adventurers so wierdly extreme in their body sizes sometimes?

     Wake /definitely/ left some honey out on the counter at Eas, which is why the ants are infesting this land and not at all because the desert is frankly awful and the ants wanted somewhere cooler to exist. Definitely. Yep. The guard comments, "We've not seen the giant ants here before, we've only heard of sightings of ants /this/ big in the area of Westlande. Maybe they hitched a ride on a boat or something? Or had an underground hive here before and just now ended up breaking the surface? I don't know, to be honest."

     Trusty tanking scythes are probably good for ants, honestly. Hooking around their heads and getting at those spindly small parts. "...I don't think anyone has enough poison for THIS to be honest, probably would need something that spreads better. Like fire. Lots of fire. Or maybe some sort of gas? Either way wouldn't be great for our forest..." Not that the ants were much better.

     'Good to go whenever' was... almost as if on cue. Some ants started to crawl over the edge of that giant chasm, coming out a few hundred yards from them. There were about 5 groups of ants, each one comprised of a bunch of smaller, vicious looking red ants surrounding larger black ants that each were carrying large stalagmites or stones strapped to their backs and held in their massive mandibles.

     "...That doesn't look quite the same as normal, they've just been coming in groups of black and red ants before, what are those giant ones doing?" The guard comments as the groups of ants start to split up. "Either way... let's keep them contained! Charge!" The guards call as they start to run towards the nearest group of ants, several of them holding heavy hammers or maces, and support groups firing blunted arrows at the massive ants.

Schneider eyes Dosbox, but nods in greeting. "I dunno about squashing," he says, "but there might be some incineration going on." He smirks with amusement and will consider Proph's words. "This is a game, yes? Does there need to be a reason? Someone just did Bugs=Bugs+ten thousand or whatever." Schneider knows nothing about computers.

Schneider's first impression with Fire is if it's not working, you're just not using enough. That's how the duty to that one place worked. At the sight of groups of black and red ants approaching, he will take a wide stance and shout out, "Seek and destroy, oh spirit of the sinful inferno! Blood fire! Death into the Void! Impellittari's Fire Ball!" It's a pretty basic fireball, but with Schneider's legendarily intense fire magic behind it, making for an earth-shattering KABOOM.

What wonderful timing! The adventurers are here, and so are the bugs to be squished!

Chikako grins, and then throws her head back and starts to laugh, a loud, hearty guffaw. She reaches one hand up, a quick swipe removing the horned headband from her forehead as her girlish human figure swells into hard-muscled, crimson-skinned immensity, the headband replaced by genuine Oni horns.

Her transformation complete, freed of her human burden, Chikako Douji rushes towards the mob of ants, twirling the now-much-more-reasonably-sized club over her head before smashing it down upon chitinous bodies.

Time to play the game!

Dosbox watches Schneider throw a massive fireball and whistles with amazement. Then he looks around at all the BIG SHOTS who came to play, and he feels a little intimidated. He has to do something. He as to prove that he is WORTH SOMETHING. He needs to bring his A GAME!

He begins to levitate off the ground a couple of inches as his eyes begin to glow a brilliant pure yellow. Arcs of lightining begin to form between his fingertips as he raises his hands, and in a copyright-breaching display of raw, titanic power, DosBox calls out in a deep, baritone voice,

"UNLIMITED POWER!!!!"

The tines of shocking energy arc out to any ants who happen to be unfortunate enough to come in contact with the display of pure arcane might.

Hisame tilts her head, considering the situation at hand. She spins the scythe in a flourish, pointing it at the ants, particularly aiming for a cluster of them like a good tank. "Burst!" is her callout, well that and some slightly unsettling laughter as the ground wells up, then... pops. And a cloud of corrosive spores swirl and spread amongst the ants. She'd totally do a taunting dance too, but she's pretty sure it won't matter really.

Westelande. Prophylaxis knows all about the ants in Westelande. Or rather, more than most. He was allowed into their hive before, after all. All part of an attempt to figure out more about monster behavior-- and whether there was any possibility of negotiation. But he was summarily kicked out shortly thereafter and heard nothing of them since.

Maybe he should have been keeping better tabs on their activities. The doctor frowns at the guard's assertion. "An underground hive...? It's possible. But if they came from Westelande, they're certainly a long way from home. Maybe someone helped to transport them here...?" And if someone did, Prophylaxis has a halfway decent idea of who.

But that matters little now. There's ants to deal with. The others' magic has already stirred up the atmosphere, so it takes Prophylaxis little mana to lift his staff and conjure down bolts of lightning of his own. They rain down on several of the larger ants, cooking them from the inside out. The air fills with the scent of faintly burnt licorice. The doctor, though, seems to still be distracted. He's still thinking about ant origins, it seems.

     Ah yes. Fire. Heat. The thing they'd come to escape. The ants actually give an angered sounding screech as the fireball comes flying in towards them and strike them, leaving several of the ants on the ground, their bodies steaming from the thorough cooking they just received. Schneider's attacks are effective it seems! Just gotta do enough fire to successfully burn them down, really!

     Chikako, meanwhile, turns into a similarly giant person, becoming an oni and charging in to bring her giant club down on the chitinous red soldier ants. Crash! Ants are smashed to the ground, starting to turn into pixels as they're brutally crushed by the massive club.

     Dosbox, meanwhile, unleashes a copywrite-breaking display of raw titanic power in the form of a massive arc of shocking energy that bursts through a group of the soldier ants, finishing one group of the soldier ants entirely, and damaging one of the others as the ants continue their movement forward both towards the adventurers, and to their other objectives.

     Meanwhile, Hisame causes the ground itself to well forth, causing an explosion of spores and corrosive energy to explode through a group of the ants, causing significant damage to the massive builder ants, one of which even drops its boulder, and with its dying breath, the builder ant drives the stalagmite in its mandibles into the ground, breaking into pixels shortly afterwards. Crack.

     Prophylaxis stirs up the magic in the air to bring forth a second bolt of lightning into the ground, and the larger ants follow similar suit to their sister who was destroyed, driving their stalagmites into the ground in their dying breath. Crack. Crack. Rumble.

     The edge of the pit suddenly collapses in towards where the two stalagmites were stabbed into the ground, the supporting ground under that fort rather suddenly becoming much less stable, though for now the fort and its people, supplies, and wounded are still safe.

     Meanwhile, the soldier ants have positioned themselves around the party, each one lifting up and aiming their abdomen forward underneath them. And unleashing a spray of hot acidic fluid towards the party. After a few moments, the party would realize that in that spray were also thousands of eggs which were immediately beginning to hatch into fire ants, swarming and attacking them!

Schneider's Armored Saint spell was not the right choice for defending against an acid spray. The eggs just make it worse, but Schneider's got a solution for that. It's More Fire. Schneider's solution is always More Fire. It eventually works. "Brain, Brain dead," he chants. "Obey your blood oath, come forth from the land of Avalon. Fire of Gehenna, become a fiery blast and burn everything around us!" Dramatic pause. "EXODUS!" An inferno more intense than the previous fireball erupts at more of the soldiers. More fire seems to be working so far!"

Dosbox notices the soldier ants as they ready themselves to attack. In response, he summons the very earth itself to act as his guardian. With a flick of his wrist and a bellowing, "LEROOOOOY!!! STONESKIN!!!!!!" He surrounds himself with Earth and hardens as tough as granite just in time.
DosBos DEFINITELY notices as the acid splashes at his defenses, and layer after layer of rock sizzles away. Still, his prayers are answered as his second flesh holds.

DosBox definitely did NOT notice the eggs that were spat out with the acid: at least not until they began hatching and gnawing on what remained of his barrier... Yet, the wall held, even as the tiny ants whittled away at it with their chompie-chomps. DosBox found himself hesitating for a split second as he looked at his seasoned comrades... What is he to do in this situation...?

DosBox shakes his head to bring himself back to his senses. When the party is in trouble, a Super Support does what he's supposed to do... Support!

He gives his very best shot at throwing a Frost Shock: he pulls his hands back behind him and shouts, "ANDTHENICASTFROST SHOOOOOOOOOCK!!!!" He throws his hands forward, launching an arctic blast of power. Unfortunately, these ants are no slouches. The one he aimed for has jukes for days, and the bolt of cold sails just past it, into the distance.

Hisame isn't quite fast enough in getting the repelling shield up in time for that acid after the ground collapsed beneath her. She's rusty, it's fine. It burns, but hey that's what a tank is for. Less happy are the creepy crawling biting ants though. She swats at herself a few times. Then just mutters and sucks it up. There's other ways to handle the issue. Like cussing and slapping at particularly painful bites.

She spins the blade around, aiming for the Soldier ants, lashing the scythe out in an overhead swing to try and spear and yank one closer, off balance. Or you know, dead. Dead would be kind of useful too. She's not talking too much though as she's too busy muttering about the biting and how she's going to have to fix it with a potion later. Hurt or not, she's trying to take point! Or a point at least.

"Mmm, we're taking them out, but that thing those builders are doing..." Prophylaxis frowns. They're not just dying. They're spending their last moments setting /something/ up. It's unfortunate that they find out so quickly exactly what that something is. The ground falls away, undermining the foundations of the fortress. The doctor hisses a curse and leaps out of the crumbling terrain, only to find himself staring down multiple soldier ants. Blocking theit acid spray with a suit of icy armor was a fantastic idea, but...

He was not ready for the eggs.

"Tch-- times like this I'm glad we've got system protection," the doctor spits as he (briefly) catches fire to burn away the biting swarm of tiny ants. His skin is pock-marked with flashing red pixels, each one covering what would be a blindingly painful insect bite-- if he wasn't being insulated from pain.

"We need to do something about those builders. If they keep that up, there won't be a fortress to defend," despite his warning, the doctor is feeling vengeful. He flicks a nearby stone into the air and then slams into it with his staff. It rockets forward, begins glowing like it had been filled with magma, and then erupts in a catastrophic explosion of flame and razor-sharp shrapnel, pulverizing several of the soldiers. "Keep them off of me. I'll try to do something to shore up the foundations."

"Frost shock?" Chikako Douji asks, as she smashes her way past the soldier ants and into the mob of builders. The Oni shakes her head, dismissing the notion. "I have a MUCH better spell."

She grins wider, still laughing, as she crashes into the larger black ants. She smashes one with her club... and another with a swipe of her bare hand, balled up to smash through its exoskeleton.

"I cast FIST."

     More fire is launched at the soldier ants, and more ants are now sizzling and on fire from the oncoming Exodus, the ants giving more of those angry screeches as they are engulfed by the fire. Several of them starting to charge towards Schneider as they are burned, only to fall down mid-charge. And those smaller fire ants are all but burnt away by the heat of the spell. Which was lucky for those who had been struck by the acid and ant combo.

     LEEEROOOOY, STOOOOONESKIIIIIIN! is called out over the battlefield, and several of the guards reflexively back away from Dosbox as he yells that out, moving instead towards the ants trying to get around them to try to keep them away. Meanwhile, an arctic blast is unleashed towards the soldier ants, and some of the heavily burnt ones are quickly frozen and then shatter as the bolt flies past them!

     A scythe cuts towards the soldier ants from the scythe-wielding Hisame, even as she cusses and swats at nastier bites from the lingering fire ants. The scythe catches onto one of the soldier ants' carapace, yanking it closer to her, the force of the downward stab piercing through a weak spot as it hisses and screeches, struggling and snapping at the air, acid sprayed out wildly as it tries to attack Hisame in its final moments, before exploding into the red pixels that signify the death of a monster.

     Meanwhile, Prophylaxis examines the situation and assesses it rather efficiently, and slaps a stone into the air and at several of the ants, striking one on the side and punching a hole into its carapace. The stone inside the ant then begins to glow... and the stone -- and ant it was inside of -- explode violently, injuring several of the other soldier ants around it.

     This makes way for Chikako Douji to leap in, club and fist being used to bash into weakened builder ant carapace. The club breaks through the chitinous exoskeleton with ease, which makes a nice hole for her fist to sink deep into the softer, more squishy unarmored parts of the ant that were infact just red glowing holes since this is a PG game. Either way, the ant ends up torn in half before exploding into red pixels which float into the sky!

     Meanwhile, the other builder ants move forward into place, stabbing their stalagmites into the ground alongside the fortress, the area that's beginning to fall threatening to take the adventurers and other ants along with it if they're not fast enough with getting out of the way! In addition, as the ground gives way, the front half of the fort begins to go with it, walls crumbling and falling into the pit below, along with several of the guards that hadn't been fast enough to evacuate.

     The soldier ants, meanwhile, go for a more direct assault! The remaining few charging those remaining adventurers with a simple intent: To catch them in their massive mandibles, lift them into the air, and rapidly crush them, shaking their heads to maximize damage from the jagged spikes inside of their mandibles in an almost eerie unison.

Schneider is pretty sturdy in a stand-up fight. Unlike many wizards, he is a hybrid caster. As a Rune Knight, he has both offense and defense in equal measures, though he doesn't always come across that way. But his armor of fire is enough to hold the soldier ants at bay, and he chuckles menacingly as he casts, "Spirits of sorcery, fangs of vengance, pinions of sinew and steely resolve. Once bitten! Great White!" Fangs of flame come from above and behind the bugs, biting into them, purifying them of any impurities. Like HP in this case.

Dosbox is slowly being devoured by the little guys still attached to himself. His attempts to cast an Aero spell are interrupted with a declaration of pain as an ant bites into his ankle. He looks over to the wall, and looks to the remaining ants, which are on their last legs... Like... The last... 4 of them? DosBox decides he just needs to finish things off.

With a crackle of eldrich energy, the remaining baby ants still chewing on DosBox begin to sizzle away into black smoke. His eyes, once glowing yellow, now take on an ultraviolet glow as black fire covered mystic orbs appear in his hands.

Raising his hands above him, he begins to summon forth all the darkness and hatred residing in his soul... and there is a lot of it...

"I pray to the darkness, merge your strength and mine, and deliver doom equally to the fools that stand in our way! Dragon... uh NIGHTMARE SPHERE!"

A massive ball of pure darkness descends upon the remaining ants...

Hisame tears the scythe free and holds it above her head. All while spinning out of the way of that last spray of acid. It might look like she's not taking things seriously (And to a degree, she's not.) but she did actually get out of the way this time. Catching the majority of the acid against her armor.
% r This time she does do a little taunting dance, laughing the whole time. Then without any preamble or warning, she double grips the scythe's handle and spins in a wide arc, gripped near the end of the handle. With the blade whistling, if she snags a hit, she'll jerk the blade up, then rip it away by the handle on the side of the polea arm. Ripping it down and away to disembowel.

Hit or not though? She bounces back and adjusts her grip, lapsing from goofy and laughing harbinger of DoTs and resumes her usual tanking seriousness. Trying to keep the attention on herself? Kind of? It's a game. Don't worry so much about it.

"You guys doing okay back there?" Turning her head back, just in case.

Chikako would laugh at the efforts of the soldier ants to hinder her from smashing them and their bretheren.

Oh, wait. She /is/ laughing. Clearly having quite the wonderful time of it. Quite clearly thrilled, in fact.

"Bwahahaha! Take that, you! And you!"

Chikako Douji is an expert at casting FIST today, it would seem. "What are they up to, anyway? Is it Shenanigans time yet?"

The walls come tumbling down, and the ants show no sign of letting up. Prophylaxis clicks his teeth as his head snaps towards the crumbling fortress. "No more time. I've got to take care of this. Schneider, you handle things out here." What's he going to do? The fort is crumbling and there's more ants on the way. Here's one now! It snaps its steely jaws around the doctor and--

Grinds not against flesh, but against a nigh-impenetrable wall of crystalline flame. With a grunt, the doctor forces himself out of his shield bubble, leaving the ant to struggle with its jaws half-shut around the unyielding globe. He rushes across the chaos of the battlefield, towards the crumbling citadel, with...

A song on his lips...?

"hYAmmrA ttu yAyE!" Prophylaxis chants, his voice resonating with something fundamental about the World. "hYAmmrA ttu rwLYE!" He skids to a stop, slamming his staff into the ground near the ants' collapsed chasm. "xE rre qejyu yAzAt ouwua naflansee!"

Something... changes. The land-- the earth itself-- begins to thrum. It's not an earthquake, it's something deeper. Soil begins to duplicate, stone begins to proliferate.

"hYAmmrA ttu lEnca!"

The chasms begin to grow shallower. Carefully dug tunnels close up. Cracks knit themselves back together.

"hYAmmrA ttu mamLYE!"

Tree roots, bidden by a different sort of magic, spread through the fresh earth, forming thick mats underneath the fortress walls.

"zz tAn, hErOnUtE daf ayulsa...!"

The magic fades, but the result is still the same: the land is squeezed denser, as the cracks are again filled in and reinforced.

"sAlLYA woth daf gral quals targue balduo..."

                                "Naave, jAztLYE!"                                

And all throughout, the land continues to thrum, to sing in harmony with the doctor. Rebuilding itself. Filling in what had been destroyed...!

     Jaws of fire burst from the ground, consuming several ants in their fierce bite and purifying them of their... surprising lack of any darkness or corruption, actually. They're just ants. and they're just angry, really. None of them are even glitching like tends to happen in big events or fights like this. They're just a weirdly intelligent swarm of ants.
     Which are being, after being purified, consumed in a sphere of darkness that tears and rips up the remaining soldier ants, leaving them collapsed on the ground, twitching, dead, and then exploding into little more than pixels. Now there were only a single builder ant left on the battlefield, as the edges of that pit continue to crumble, that remaining builder ant desperately trying to get into position before it's targeted. It falls a bit short, jamming in its stalagmite where it's attacked at!

     Maniacal laughter rings out as Hisame slices into the builder ant, cutting deep into its carapice and then ripping it down and to the side to cause high damage and leave it 'bleeding' and struggling to move as Hisame gets clear of the builder ant and checks on her allies! Meanwhile, Chikako Douji comes in to finish the job, her fist jammed into the weak spot created by Hisame, and then its 'guts' torn out, a core of some sort that is crushed in Chikako Douji's hands, followed by the final ant from this wave of attacks breaking into pixels that float off into the air.

     Crack. Crack. From that stalagmite stabbed into the ground, cracks are beginning to spread in the area, spreading past the adventurer's feet and running far. From the areas of the cracking, the remains of the fortress are sure to fall. It is, indeed, shenanigans time, it seems.

     As a song rises over the calming battlefield, cracks begin to slow. The land, the earth itself begins to thrum. Earth begins to spread. The cracks begin to close... and... Prophylaxis can feel something likely terrifying as he works to fill up the chasm: There's just too much for him to make a huge dent in at the moment, it's almost all he can do to keep the area from collapsing with his powers, the tunnels underneath were widely spread, and the ants... probably had been working on this for weeks. Maybe even months, waiting patiently as war raged on the surface. His magic did one thing notable though, as the land worked to fill in; loose dirt, rather than rocks, fell down into the chasm, and created what was, more or less, a ramp. And peering over the edge of the chasm?

     In the utter darkness, there was, oddly enough, torch light.

     The front of what looked like a grand castle. Eerily quiet, without a sign of ants anywhere in the depths below.

Even resonance with the Earth Song has its limits. Or rather, the doctor's stamina does. When his magic is spent for the day, he's left gasping for breath at the edge of the chasm that stretches far, far into the earth. He wedges himself up to peer down into the depths, only to find--

"...How long were they /at/ this? They've... built an entire city down there...?" Or is it that they found a city and refurbished it...? No. If these are the same unusual ants as the ones in Westelande, forging a nation is... something of a unique obsession of theirs. But why here...?

...

...Is it just that it's less hot and awful in Fourlands, or something...?

"This is going to take," the Doctor decides with a mutter, "A lot more firepower."

Schneider has been instructed to handle things out here. But really, 'Handle' thinks only means one thing to him. "Deep Doomsday," he chants. "To the spirits of land and air, bound by the pact, fulfill your obligation now." A short pause, then a sharp command, "MEGADETH!" His previous fire spells have been mere boyish high spirits. -This- spells is one of the /serious business/ spells where stone cracks and goes melty in places and enemies burst into pixels quickly and messily. This cleans up the riff-raff and any ants that might have escaped or been overlooked. It also gives the area a nice finished look.

Dosbox looks at the spell being cast by Schneider, and his eyes go wide. The flame is perfectly reflected in those large, black orbs. His mouth opens agape ever so slowly as the Gnome mutters, in response to the Megadeath spell, "Wicked... Can you teach me that one, too...?"

     Megadeath makes the area look nice and clean! And devoid of all life! There goes the neighborhood! Also possibly the remains of the fort, depending on where he aimed it. But the fort was half-gone anyway. It's probably fine. Everyone was evacuated now anyway, right?

Schneider chuckles, says to Dosbox, "Sorry, can't teach that one. That's one of my /special/ spells. Most of my attacks are kind of special, so..." He shrugs. It's hard to explain, since he's -not- an FC, but he's an homage character, if one that most players don't know.

Dosbox nods with understanding. "Everyone has secrets that they don't want to share, things that they hold precious to themselves. Also...." DosBox grins stupidly, "Fire is cool."

With the last of the ants disintegrating under her fists, Chikako takes a moment to stretch out and relax a little, waiting for the next fight. Except... there isn't one, just yet. Instead, there is...

....a castle?

"... wait a sec..." She turns and looks to the others, then back to the castle.

"Welp. More to smash, I guess.... I think we're gonna need a bigger hammer."