ChaoZ: A Royal pain in the elves.

The Minotaur swings his axe down at Rol. But Jex's light arrows hit and the impacts throw off its aim. The giant axe strikes the ground instead, causing the stones to shatter. The impact of the arrows daze the giant beast long enough for Rol to get right in front of the creature.

Az kicks the ghoul she was struggling with. Causing it to stumble back and giving her an opening. She exploits the opening by firing a lightning blast from her sword. Sending the ghoul flying.

Meanwhile Fluffy is still trying to get the ghoul off of its tail. The manticore whips its tail backwards and the ghoul with it. The ghoul's head is smacked against the wall, cracking the undead creatures skull.
Unfortunatly the now dead ghoul is still stuck on the Manticores tail. Fluffy sighs.


The fifth ghoul leaps at Rol from behind. But a small fireball from Ziome stops it in its track long enough for Az to run up to it and thrust her sword through the ghoul.

The ghoul Ziome had been sweeping away tries to retaliate when the witch her back is turned. She smacks it in the head with the hard end of her broom before it can do anything.


Meanwhile the elven boy attempts to take advantage of the distraction and tries to sneak past the Minotaur. Trying to escape through the door the giant creature smashed open earlier. Seemingly forgetting he's still tied up.

"Up we go."

The bounty hunter launches himself upwards with a pillar of shadows so he's roughly eye-to-eye with the minotaur, a handful of mini explosives in his left hand.

"Please work to some or any degree."

Rol chucked the explosives towards the minotaur's shoulder hole. Falling towards the, he created a ramp of shadows to slide down rather than a full impact faceplant.

The Minotaur attempts to lift his axe again as Rol flies by. But the giant weapon seems to be stuck in the floor. Allowing Rol to escape safely after dropping the explosives.
The blast that follows completely destroys the minotaurs shoulder. Its arm falls as it becomes detached from the rest of the creature.
The undead beast roars and stumbles backwards. He then attempts to grab Rol with his remaining hand.

Ziome hits the last ghoul several times with her Broom. Allowing Az to swoop in unnoticed and decapetating the ghoul from behind.
Fluffy's struggle with the dead ghoul on his tail continues.

Meanwhile the elven boy notices he is still tied up. He notices a sharp piece of debris and attempts to cut his rope with it.

The bounty hunter used his shadows to prevent the minotaur from fully grasping him (a thus subsequently crushing him) keeping the hand open with several pillars of shadows pushing at the fingers. 

"Oi. Jex, maim and murder and minotaur."

The ice arrows hit their target and the ice spreads avor the minotaurs body. The already cold temperature making the process faster. The Giant undead creature becomes stuck as its body freezes into place. The ice encases its hand allowing Rol to break free.

Meanwhile ZIome goes to help fluffy get rid of the dead ghoul on his tail.
The elf boy cuts his rope and tries to sprint out of there but slips on the ice and falls. When he looks up he sees standing over him with her sword pointed at him again. "And where did you think you were going?"

The ice crawls up the minotaurs face threatening to completely encase the undead giant. The minotaur roars again, shaking the room an shattering the Ice.
The creature grabs its  Giant axe and pulls it out of the ground. Intending to swing it around wildly.

"Uh. Scary maaaan."

Rol fell to the ground but quickly jumped to his feet.

"That's a really big axe." The bounty hunter sighed. He tried to use the gauntlet to shoot at the hand handling the axe.

Ziome struggles to pull the dead ghoul off Fluffy's tail.

The runes on the glove light up again and a ball of darkness shoots out. It explodes when it collides with the minotaurs wrist. The dark explosion that follows causes the Giant axe to fly towards Jex with the creatures severed hand still hanging on to the weapon.

The undead Minotaur roars. Without hands the creature only has one weapon left. He charges towards Rol with its one unbroken giant horn.

"Fight me bruh."

Rol made a bruce lee-esque come at me pose while gathering shadows to shoot as a large spike at the Minotaur.

Jex quickly jumped out of the way of the projectile and rolled off to the side. He wound up his staff like a rifle a shot a single light arrow towards the minotaur as it ran towards Rol.

The light arrow whizzed through the air and exploded on impact. Throwing the minotaurs balance off and making him trip. He falls head first into Rols shadow spike. The giant spike piercing the minotaurs skull through its eye. It's green glowing eyes faded and the giant creature collapsed.


"That takes care of that. Now as for the prisoner trying to escape.. How should we deal with him?"
Az said once the minotaur was down. Her blade still pointed at the elf kid.

"I was scared! what was I supposed to do?"


"What part of you being a prisoner do you not understand?"


"A lot of prisoners try to escape."


"And those that don't get away, like you little smartass, get punished. "

"You Bit- "


"I dare you to finish that word." She glares down at the elf.

He hesitates "I-I didn't.. wait.. did you hear that?"


"That tricks not gonna work. Now stand up, we need to tie you up agai-"

Suddenly a sound comes from beyond the door the minotaur previously smashed open. The sound becomes louder quickly. Its a bunch of roars and snarls and something closing in fast.
Glowing eyes appear in the distance, a lot of them.


"Shit. More ghouls."

It was indeed a horde of ghouls that was heading their way. Too many to count.

"Do we feed parts of him to the ghouls as punishment? Or is that too medieval? Wait, what time period are we in?"

Rol sighed, then eyed the oncoming horde. "Do we have a deus ex machina, or do we actually have to figure something out?" 

(Just for clarification Val is nothing like our world. Our time periods never existed in Val. It has its own time periods that have no similarity to ours. Val has technology far beyond ours but civilization is still behind. Just how much depends on what part of Val you're in. Medieval has no meaning in Val. I really can't explain this without writing a full post on it. You'll just have to wait till I finally release the Kirokraken History PDF. )



"Neither, I have a plan. I'll need some time to prepare though. Rol and Jex you two keep the horde from coming through that door at any means nescesarry. Ziome you help me set up this spell. Uh.. Manticore you keep an eye on the elf kid, make sure he doesn't try anything funny."

Ziome nods. "Yes mistress." She runs over to Az who is already drawing a magic circle in the air.
Fluffy tilts his head but then nods and walks over to the elf. Growling at him as he backs the boy into a corner. "Whoa, nice kitty stay staay st-" Fluffy snaps at him. "AAH! Please don't hurt me!"

(i know, but it's Rol.)

"Aight."

The bounty hunter shot Pew and Pew at the ghouls. Hopefully hindering them while he waited to Jex to do something more effective.

"Don't kill him Fluffy, not yet anyways."

Jex smirked and twirled his staff. Walking ahead of Rol as he pelted the ground with bullets, he started swinging his staff in front of them.

"Lucis Magica: Introitum Caelum."



Light magic twirled from the staff and formed between them and the ghouls. It shaped itself into an old fashioned gate, spikes at the top and all. It wasn't very strong as he had not been properly trained in utility magic but his job was to keep them at bay so this would suffice. He had also wanted to try using light magic to create objects but had never had the chance to use it until now. Normally the Gate would sear anything it touched but he had not mastered the spell yet.

Unfortunatly the ghouls were not evil, just hungry. Their decaying flesh was not affected. But the gate did stop them from coming through. Although it wasn't long before the undead creatures started climbing the gate.
The gate was too tall for them to climb over so they started shaking it. Screaming and pushing against the gate trying to get to their prey. The gate started to creak.
"That gate won't hold them long enough!"
Az shouts as she tries to finish the circle as fast as she can with Ziome's help.





(You couldn't know Val doesn't have the whole Evil is hurt by holy things. Sorry about that.
It would have worked on demons though. Not because they're evil but because they were born from darkness. (Which Rol's shadow powers prove isn't evil in itself.)

Ghouls aren't demons however. (Although in their original mythology they were but thats real life mythology.) In Val the Undead are creatures of Order. (Because death is the extreme form of order. If everything is dead there is no chaos. etc.)
Just for future reference:
Light= Angels, Darkness=Demons, Undead=Order, Dragons=Chaos.)

Rol formed multiple shadow tendrils, sending them through the gate to push the ghouls from the breaking through.

"This is an ineffective measure, but we're just stalling right?"

"It's like one of those games where you can just kill everything but the story line is wait and protect so you're like k."

Jex looked at Rol and nodded, urging him to keep it up. Jex looked at the Gate and saw it slowly bend from the weight of the ghouls.

"Sagitta Magica! Series Fulgaris!"

He would shoot the bolts of fire at the gate, shooting above and forcing them to rain upon the ghouls.


(OOC: Sorry Ken, didn't know. Will edit appropriately.)

(I said you couldn't have known. Because I didn't tell anyone. So my fault not yours. No need to apologize jex. You probably would have known if I had finished writing the val history pdf but yeah.. That thing is taking ages.)




"I said stop the horde. Killing them also counts as stopping them, just saying. as long as they don't get through before I'm finished."
The measure was indeed quite ineffective. There were so many ghouls that they just piled up against the gate and it started bending.
The fire took out the ghouls on top but there were too many of them.





(My original plan was just an all out battle but Rol's post made me think he thought they wouldn't be able to handle the horde. With the "do we have a Deus ex machina?" question. So.. yeah.
But really you guys are supposed to be pretty damn powerfull. You'd be able to handle a horde of ghouls. It's the next boss you should worry about, and the riddle because the last one didn't go so well.
On the other hand conserving stamina here for the rest of the dungeon isn't a bad idea. )

"But your spell is probably going to make all prior work moot, so why waste time eliminating them?"

the bounty hunter asked, decreasing the amount of pushing shadows and making a shadow copy of the gate.

"Because it might help keep them at bay?"
The shadow gate reinforced the gate. One of the ghouls got its head stuck between the bars. The other ghouls frantic pushing and pulling caused it's head to pop off its shoulders and roll against Jex's foot.
The ghouls on the bottom are trampled by the weight of the ones on top.

"Just a bit longer. We're almost done!"
There were three complicated magic circles positioned behind each other. Az and Ziome were putting the last symbols into the third one.
"If I were you guys I'd move out of the way."

Rol complied and moved out of the way with a quick salute.

As soon as Rol and Jex were out of the way Az put her hand in the center of the last circle. Ziome jumped back. The glowing, floating circles started rotating so that the symbols on them fit together. When they were perfectly aligned they started rotating the other way in sync.

Az closed her eyes and a bright flash followed. It was so bright that everyone in the room was blinded for a few seconds. When their vision returned the ice in the room had melted. The two gates and the ghouls that they were holding back had vanished.
Only a trail of smoke and ashes remained where they stood.

Ziome rushed over to Az and handed her a mana potion. Az stumbled before grabbing and drinking the potion. She was visibly exhausted but the potion would slowly return her stamina.
"Remind me not to use that again any time soon."
"Yes Mistress."


"Now that that's settled.. What are we gonna do with you?" Az turned to the elf boy. He had attempted to escape earlier. This would be a good time to address that issue.
He cowered in the corner with Fluffy still keeping his eyes on the elf.

Jex stepped over when Az instructed them to do so and allowed his Gate to fall upon her spell activating. He tried to close his eyes before the flash but was too late and staggered back from the impact of the light.


"Oh okay."


He mumbled. Blinking back his vision, he looked at where the ghouls were and started towards where they came from.


"I don't know what you want to do with the Elf Guy but those seemed like too many ghouls to be in one place for no reason."

"Alright, aside from Jex's valid point."

Rol turned to the elf boy. "It's time to interrogate the elf boy and then find out it's actually an elf girl in disguise, and then because Jex is a harem manga protagonist she'll fall for him and i'll laugh the entire time." The bounty hunter spewed the nonsense loudly.