One Year Ago: Charlie Base and What They Found There [Kenshiko]
[QUOTE=Cleric of Hell’s Brigade;4834425]“A person, not a disposable resource. An ally, even possibly a friend. But I see you are determined. Very well, follow me.”
Willa and Damask lead Kenshiko outside and around the outside of the base until, after half an hour, they reach a car sized opening.
“Down this shaft.”[/QUOTE]
By the Colonel's lead, Kenshiko found the wind-blown path along the blasted, black rocks. The torrid sea carried such a chill that cut through the air like cruel blades. there they found the passage.
Whisps of vapor escaped with a low hiss between Kenshiko's teeth. She raised a hand, gilded with a crackling golden glow. By this illumination, as she passed through she saw steel support beams, like uneven surgical staples, bolting the cavern open.
As the winds rushed past through that rocky slit, its passing howl trickled through the dark hollows past the surface, it seemed as if a low wail called out from deep below.
Buried by the passing ages, the ghosts of Vermilion called their company below.
Kenshiko moved past the entrance and cast a long gaze over the mine shaft. Stretching her arm over the yawning chasm, there was a rush of air from below that wicked past her, blood-warm. The glow in her palm swelled to a globe, and tipping it over, she let descend.
Tracking its path as it fell, all too shortly the light faded the deeper it fell into that darkness The Sergeant peered over the edge and muttered silently to herself. It seemed the thing had no bottom.
Then in an instant, there was a flash, as of the light offered had been collected and returned several times over. Something deep within the Earth had responded.
Heedlessly, she leapt after it straight into the abyss, the impact of her landing buffered by a short kiai. When she looked over to where her energy orb illuminated, she found the crystal formations standing under the excavation drones as they whirled above in clinical examination. Prismatic geode formations stood, silent crystalline towers. Their flat edges collected the light cast from the light source of her own ki into broad rays, cast from one to the next as they spread. The deposit field that lay below the entirety of Charlie Base stood alit, and where the facets caught the light they stood a field of fiery tongues.
Sequestered in the darkness, the secret history of this place was soon to come to light.
She pressed forward, each step forward carried by a burning within her. Something was down here, and all she had to do was reach out and grasp it.
Disciples of the Dragon VII: The Legacy of Zxu'ro [Zaofan]
[QUOTE=Cleric of Hell’s Brigade;4834429]“I understand. Eventually you and the other chosen will meet the real me, and it is there you’ll truly take upon my legacy. Tell me, Zaofan, what of my techniques do you both know so far?”[/QUOTE]
Zxu'ro's words struck him with a weight he'd never felt before, and taken quite off-guard by the revelation he was not here, he found himself quite short of words for a moment.
More than the fire in the kitchen hearth and even the simple pleasures of flavour, he'd never quite found a sense of place in his travels.
Ryuu-Shingen's technique had piqued his curiosity, only for the bloodlust to destroy the entire Hokuto order; Toh Magoh's promises of strength had played him for a fool; and Eskrimato's faction of the Turtle School, well, by then the training was far too late. The damage had been done, and he didn't want a master so long in years to waste his time on an uncommited fool like him.
In the end, perhaps it had only been the kitchens where he belonged, and for years he'd wandered, but never stayed in one place too long. The world was a great, wide place, after all, and the heritage of the Earth had been his anchor. Rooted in its strength to endure a great tumultuous history, he'd clung to it in an effort to find his place.
Only after meeting Ochazuke and Sasheem did he finally have an inkling of what that might be, and with that all had befallen Master Balon, he swore, then, that he would do his best to ensure none of this would be forgotten. There was something in the knowledge they shared that went beyond a simple friendship or tutelage.
[I]Eventually you and the other chosen will meet the real me.[/I]
His heart shrank and he felt his insides hollow, as if the entire world fell out from beneath his feet and cast him adrift once more. Mara the Wolf, Tao'ro the Spider, the diaspora of the Bedlam clan, Cinder's fallen Phoenix ashes, and the tainted legacy of Leon's student, the World Champion. For all the ugliness that had befallen this world, he wanted to do right by them. The path they set out led to counsel with the Master.
All that struggle, secrecy, and lives lost, and he wasn't even really here.
[I]It is there you’ll truly take upon my legacy.[/I]
The whole time, was he only ever chasing an idea? Right now, he was having words with a phantom.
He'd crossed hands with a Saiyan Elite, stared a Time Elemental in its fateful vortex, fought within the factories of the First Race, and breached the veil to glance headlong into the Void...
But it was never enough. No matter what he did, he would never catch up while the entire universe left him behind.
"I don't know what good it will do," he said, eyebrows raised over heavy-lidded eyes, the facade of a thin smile stretched over his face, "But we've come this far...so you tell me."
Having reached into the gathered ki that made up the shape of this living memory, Zaofan sighed and entered a deep, crouching stance, gathering ki towards himself as the agility of the [B]Wolf[/B] and fortitude of the [B]Bear[/B] entered his frame. Kicking off into a series of rapidfire blows, there were hints there. The arcing shell of a [B]Turtle[/B] in the After-Image, traced upon the [B]Crane's[/B] evasive footwork, feeding into the coiling limbs and snapping claws of the [B]Dragon[/B].
A gout of the [B]Flame[/B] taught to him by Balon-sensei animated the next sequence, impossibly hot as it swept upward, but so controlled it caught neither leaf nor grass as he thinned and fanned it, caught spread wide by the [B]Spider's[/B] silk, invisible.
Closing out the blended kata sequence, Zaofan felt ill at the display. It was his; it was an unorthodox hodgepodge.
"...and my colleague over there," he pointed to Sasheem, "he's carrying on the legacy of the Snake."
One Year Ago: Charlie Base and What They Found There [Kenshiko]
[QUOTE=Cleric of Hell’s Brigade;4841791]The air is stale and warm, the low sound of the excavation drones the only sound behind Kenshiko’s own breathing. Amidst the rubble she sees what she saw on Willa’s monitors, and assuredly before her she sees the armory and the temple library.[/QUOTE]
The small globe of ki fed its light into the field of crystals. Its light refracted upon each great facet glittered, the darkness fell back to reveal the little machines and the small whine of their rotary jets flit in small echoes as they resumed their delicate work, unveiling a sight unseen for ages. From the fissure entrance, any traces of daylight above soon faded from view, but paradoxically the projected light of her ki shone all the brighter, carried from prism to prism. A crude road leading deeper into the pit.
Kenshiko pressed a button onto her comm, static sounding out a channel to Willa and Damask miles above. "Contact. Moving forward."
Raisng a hand alit with energy, the Tiger Master continued to forge ahead where these wild, icy protrusions erupted from the stony strata.
soon the forms refined shortly, soon replaced by surfaces, geometrically rounded and square-measured.
Here was the remainder of a civiliazation thrust far underground, and the crystals served as a strange system of beacons that reacted accordingly to a living presence. When Kenshiko raised her hand, the bejewelled veins ebroidered into the facet construction bathed the area in a geographic masonry.
"Looks like it's not just a crystal mine. Somebody else got to refining your treasury far before we got here."
What sort of civilization was this? It would be impossible to measure entirely from here, but there were faint hints on the rock surface, where mineral leached through the condensation into drips. It was soon that she noticed amid the ruins that although columns rose , they served to hold no roof; The deposits of eons smoothed over the damage, forcefully conjoining them to a ceiling of shifted earth.
To her sensibilities the stalactite drops above came blood-warm as they fell.
How do you destroy the soul of a people?
Every step closer to this answer was with great trepidation. The Red Raiders knew the answer to that far too well, but as Heir to one of the Five Schools, the sheer scope and length of this repeated cycle caused Kenshiko to seethe. When she approached what Willa had designated the armory and library, and near their shattered walls, the light carried through the mineral veins revealed something horrid.
There was some faded shape she could make out. Extraordinarily faint, like a trick of the light. Perhaps the illumination past the shadows itself eroded the shapes as much as the mineral issue dripping from the roof. Carved into the rock was a watery motif bearing acute stains of time.
[CENTER][img]https://i.imgur.com/w3b4Fuf.jpg?1[/img][/CENTER]
A threat from the heavens to the mundane world below, its arrival heralded upon a falling red star. A bringer of light composed in awe and terror in equal measure stood in opposition.
[CENTER][img]https://i.imgur.com/C1OBafL.jpg?2[/img][/CENTER]
[I]What does this mean?[/I]
"Area's clear," she called out. "I have visual on something you and the Major ought to come see."
One Year Ago: Charlie Base and What They Found There [Kenshiko]
[QUOTE=Cleric of Hell’s Brigade;4848382]About five minutes later, Willa and Damask stand beside her.
“What is it?”[/QUOTE]
"You tell me, Colonel."
There in the darkness, there were twelve pillars gathered in a semicircle before the remains of the armory. Upon closer inspection, the shape of broad helm and worn standards were found, smoothed under layers of trickled limestone collected over their frames across countless years.
"The reason you and Damask found each other was because this is where you discovered your roots," she said.
Their swords and featureless visages pointed down, their features smoothed from eons' erosion. At the head of them their leige lord raised his blade to Heaven in the darkness.
"Heh, maybe you were meant to slay dragons instead of raiding."