Mountain, meet Endbringer

[sturdycoldsteel]

The Fate who calls herself Mountain tried to convince some of her neighbors to allow the occasional mountain in their lands, for stability purposes.

"I meant no insult!" Dodge ball of lava. "I don't intend to interfere, you said no!" Dodge house-sized spear of ice. "I'm leaving peacefully, okay, so stop tearing up the tile!"

"You'll respawn at home. No permanent damage. You interrupted an important meeting, you need to learn a lesson about territory, mountain bitch." Dodge- no, fail to dodge a thrown tree, and then another ice ball. The next sphere of magma is what destroyed that form.




She wakes up, stripped of all her tools and enchantments and even clothes, and groans in pain.

Comments

[peterxy]

There aren't really any people who wouldn't like to be evacuated. As for why they're talking to her, well, just one of those things, isn't it, weird otherworldy culture, who knows.

The beast suddenly zaps farther inland and north, not paying much mind to being stealthy for now, and is soon out of view again. The water doesn't seem to have noticed its master has left, though.

[sturdycoldsteel]

There's really not much else she can do. Alternate between evacuating people and hitting the monster, then reverse or limit some of its damage to the island after five minutes of, not rest, but somewhat lower activity.

[peterxy]

The monster dodges most hits and tanks the rest, and it's really resistant. While it does, it cuts off as many evacuation efforts as it can.

...at one point it climbs to the top of one of the Fate's plateaus.

[sturdycoldsteel]

When it's halfway up, she grows a flash-fast spar of stone around all its limbs except the tail. And then starts emptying the top of that particular plateau, because it's going to get free.

[peterxy]

It's barely even slowed down by the stone, quickly smashing its freedom in a few seconds, and reaches the top before she has completely emptied it.

[sturdycoldsteel]

She punches it in the face with a diamond spike. This predictably does little to save the rest of the people there.

[peterxy]

Predictably! And predictably does little to hurt the thing, too, though it does lose balance and fall. It uses its tail to crush as many people as possible before it does, though, because there's no such thing as a gracious loss.

[sturdycoldsteel]

And Mountain is just about tapped out now. She flies somewhere (relatively) safe, one of the locations she'd been evacuating to with all the red tents, and pretty much collapses, still in her armor.

[peterxy]

The beast is anything but.

It continues wreaking havoc and causing mayhem and other such expressions, going a long way north.

[sturdycoldsteel]

When she wakes up, perhaps two hours later, she can't detect it. She finds someone not busy being badly injured or helping people who are, makes a stone caricature of the monster and points it in various directions. Where did it go?

[peterxy]

The person shrugs, says something in the second foreign language the first guy used, and points to a certain direction.

[sturdycoldsteel]

She nods and flies that way, fixing a few roads that have visible amounts of stuck traffic but otherwise saving her strength. She follows the path of destruction until she finds the monster or the path ends, meaning it was killed or gave up.

[peterxy]

She definitely does find the monster-

as it heads back the way she's coming. Through the rain-caused darkness she can see quite a lot of destruction there as well, and the creature doesn't stop to greet her. It stops for a second to topple a building, and she'll be able to notice it's visibly injured, but that doesn't seem to be affecting it in the slightest.

[sturdycoldsteel]

She untopples the building. Then starts trying to slow it down again. She's visibly slower and less powerful than when she fought it before, but she's still damn well going to try. Who's doing the most damage to it, so she can prioritize protecting them?

[peterxy]

There are apparently a handful of people who seem to be capable of dishing out the hurt: one human male in a green bodysuit with metal armor who's throwing lances made of energy at it, one in a blue-and-white bodysuit who can shoot lasers with various effects, and one female who can seriously pack a punch. The one in the bodysuit teleports himself and the other two whenever the monster gets too far out of range, and they don't seem to be needing much protecting.

[sturdycoldsteel]

She should go back to trying to hold it still long enough for the three big hitters to get a blow in, then.

She can't do much more big, expensive manipulation like strengthening the island's rock underlayers or making plateaus to evacuate to, but growing hills around the monster's legs is nowhere near the same scale.

[peterxy]

She can do that! And it will trip if she times that well, with quite a lot of momentum behind it. The big hitters don't even stop to thank her and just continue, well, hitting!

[sturdycoldsteel]

An excellent division of labor.

She's not afraid of getting smashed, whatever sent her here instead of to her own temple besides. But seriously, what the hell is that thing? If this was her home the entire continent would have crumbled into the abyss by now.

She keeps doing her best to immobilize it, getting angrier and angrier at the pointlessness of its rampage by the minute.

[peterxy]

Lots of people agree! There are more people arriving and hitting as well, some using strange contraptions and bombs and other such things. The creature runs south again, and this time the human with the green suit teleports her with the other two since she was so useful at stopping it.

And there's... someone there? Hard to make out from a distance, but they look... taller than a regular human, if still shorter than the beast. And the silhouette doesn't look... quite... human...

[sturdycoldsteel]

She really wishes she still had all her enchantments active. Burning Blade especially. But one makes do with what one has.

Is that person one of the fair folk? It looks a bit like an Ignivore, what with all the fire. Eh, no time to think about it. Monster's head, meet that diamond spike again. But it manages to grab and crush and throw her after that blow. Ow.

[peterxy]

The water's too restless, and tidal waves have become more frequent - too frequent. The human in the green suit and armor has stopped using the lances made of energy and is throwing huge balls of light that do shallower but wider damage, burning the creature's skin. Others with a variety of powers continue pummeling and burning and sitting in a cacophony of light and sound as they are teleported or move closer and join the fray, but there are less people than when the fight started. And none of them dealing nearly as much damage as the three.

One tidal wave hits the building the fiery stranger was on, and they disappear for a moment before emerging again and charging for the monster.

[sturdycoldsteel]

That is not an Ignivore. It still has a defined form, as opposed to being a shapeless being of all-consuming blue fire. At any rate she stops trying to fight the monster directly. She'd just get in the way, at this point.

But this... Giant not-tile... Is more and more damaged by the minute. The monster is shaking it to pieces. Well, she knows stones. Earthquakes, go away you are not welcome here.

[peterxy]

There's only so much she can do, here, since the earthquakes aren't really due to seismic activity, it's just too much water being moved.

The human with the lasers and the human that throws giant balls of light stop doing that when the... other thing... starts hitting the monsters. Okay, now there are two monsters and nicknames may start becoming necessary.

The big one throws the little one away, though, and the two humans start shooting it again. Oop, new tidal wave!

[sturdycoldsteel]

She's not really aware of anything but the slowly, slowly failing structure of this place's ground. She pours everything she can manage into keeping it stable, barely noticing that she's making a miniature mountain in the process, with ridges radiating off for miles in all directions. She can't afford to try to keep what's left of this city in one piece if she wants to try and save the rest of the island.

[peterxy]

The fight nonetheless continues to happen, though its details don't affect the sea at all. Apparently the bigger monster can multitask pretty well.