A steady stream of obscenity seemed to have replaced any conscious thought. Ilya shook is head quickly, trying to clear his mind of the distracting level of adrenaline and fear.
He focused now on his belt, drawing out a small black clay pot, the size of his fist. It was a low-powered bomb with the most diminutive blast radius he could concoct. He hoped; they didn’t exactly have a particularly good success rate. With his left hand he drew out a piece of flint, holding it between his middle and pointer fingers. He flicked his metallic thumb across it, shooting sparks towards the oiled wick of the bomb, desperately trying to ignite it.
Palios Stood up- scratch that attempted to stand up, he was soon learning just how difficult it was to get your feet under you when you’re practically blind. As thankful as he was for that Quivering, substandard, second-rate jungle okotan- okay, wait, maybe he wasn’t as thankful for the okotan’s bottle of blinding mist as he first thought. But hey, if anything was to be drawn from this horrible sequence of poor decisions, he had at least gotten a hit on Makuta.
Focus
Focus, he needed to get out of here- er, the mist that is, however if there was a way to leave the building he would very much like that.
Get out of the mist!
Yes, yes, the mist; that ever present issue he was currently experiencing, oh how he had begun to despise this mist in the past minute- why was the floor getting so hot?
STAND UP!
Yes, standing up should take priority, how else would one exit this cloud if we do not move? Plaios stabbed his short sword into the ground and used the new leverage to finally get his feet under him. At last, progress has been made! Palios followed up this ingenuous course of action by doing something just as brilliant. The aforementioned brilliant action was of course Retrieving his sword and simply walking forward, and he wouldn’t stop walking until he bumped into something, something that might indicate to him that he had left the mist.
After a couple tries the wick spits out sparks in every direction, burning slowly to its fated destination. The hammer was still spinning wildly on the tip of its handle in front of the party, and Makuta was fumbling about with the front door.
The sensation of air clearing from around his face told him that he had in fact cleared the mist, but his vision didn’t seem to improve. Only a pinhole of light was showing through an otherwise impenetrable void.
However, his strategy to walk forward until he collided with something was an excellent one, until he hit something low to the ground which decidedly tripped him.
Jaawu had an excellent view of Palios struggling to stand, then walking directly into him and beginning to fall on him. It wasn’t really clear what he was doing - outside of falling on you, that is.
Finally finding the handle, Makuta tensed for a moment and forced his eyes to slightly clear with a simple application of his mask power. Opening it just enough to see outside, his emotionless eye glared at Chesie.
Startled by the door’s sudden movement, Cheshie immediately straitened up, her idle handing snapping to her side, and her hand firmly gripping the length of her javelin. “Cheshie,” She replied resolutely, before adding a more tentative “sir.” at the end.
Katau, after seeing his attack was for the most part ineffective, stopped trying to heat the floor. Instead, he looked around the room and saw that Makuta was standing by the door. This time, Katau tried to surprise Makuta by diving for his legs.
Makuta looked to the side. There was some awful scraping and clattering going on which didn’t seem to be directly connected to him since he was standing by the door.
“There is a test occurring.” He said, stepping away from the door and pausing to stretch his neck. “We will see how quickly you can catch up. Those inside are your allies, and I…”
He threw the door open with a tilt of his head, and Cheshie felt a sudden motion which tossed her half the length of the room. “I expect you to improvise.” His eyes clouded over again, and he began stalking towards the assembled party, menacingly.
Makuta was a ways off, but as Katau approached he was barely quick enough to avoid getting clotheslined by a flying Cheshie. Now the mask maker was returning to the group; did he still wish to continue his dive?
Ilya panicked, his eyes flicking over the tightly packed group of people by the door. He saw the unintended adverse affects of his first bomb - he didn’t want to do something worse to these others.
The wick of the bomb grew disturbingly short. Ilya rotated to the left, in front of the forge, trying to find a window in which he could throw the bomb without hitting any of the others Okotans in the blast. If no such window could be found, he would be forced to either take the shot, or discard the projectile.
There appeared to be an open window directly behind him. Large enough to admit any of the people in the room, although too far away to toss the bomb in time. Dear, that fuse looked awfully short-
There was a blinding flash of light directly in front of Ilya, and a sharp, searing line of pain across his palm. The bomb had exploded, but…
Makuta’s hammer hit the ground. Across the room, the Mask Maker had his hand extended, his left hand gripping his right forearm, his mask glowing violently. The bomb had numerous cracks across its surface spilling out white light around them, frozen in midair mid-explosion.
A glance at Makuta would immediately reveal he was still blind, his eyes hazed over with that foul mist dumped on him from before.
Cheshie rubbed the back of her head as she tried to gather her thoughts which were running wild around her mind. Makuta was…fighting other okotans? And, was that a bomb exploding? He said something about a test…
Cheshie forced herself off the ground, with the butt of her javelin, she franticly glanced around the room, watching sight of Katau. “What’s going on here?” She called out to the okotan.
Someone deciding to fall on him was the exact motivation he needed to get up and do… something. Jaawu caught the fellow adventurer and righted them on their feet. “Alright there? Good thing I was here, these walls don’t look too nice to hit your head on.”
He looked in the direction of Makuta, who seemed to be at the door with someone running at him. “I think I’ll be off. Punch Makuta, or something like that.”
With that, he started running towards Makuta with the internet to ram into him, hopefully doing something. However, he halted this endeavor when he saw someone seeming to be doing the same thing. This gave him quite the idea. He would let the other do what he would and then use Makuta’s moment of weakness to get a few good blows in. It was better than just sitting, at least. So, he went to put his plan into action.
Fight. Makuta. Ok, I can do that. I can do this. Cheshie thought dumbfounded for a moment before giving Katau a brief nod. Then she ran at Makuta, shield first.
At last, he was free from the dreaded cloud, maybe now his vision would finally start to clear. As an added bonus, he had survived being inside the cloud with makuta. Things were going exceptionally well so far, hold on, was he still alive? In stories, he heard as a child, people who were dying would usually describe their experience as going towards a light and the only thing he could see currently was a light.
“KARZ, I’M DEAD! I’M DEAD!” or at least that’s what he would’ve said if he wasn’t so rudely interrupted by the sensation of falling. Normally "going towards the light” was followed by the feeling of ascension, but i don’t know if you know this, but falling is quite the reverse of that. If he was dead, he was fairly certain now that he was going someplace other than towards the light,
Then something caught him and soon enough his feet were under him once again, wait did they just talk? Okay, maybe he exaggerated just a tad too much. Clearly he was still under the effects of the mist and while he wasn’t dead at the moment the longer the mist clouded his vision the more chances he would have to be murderd by a clearly insane mask maker. “Where’s Makuta!” Palios shouted, obviously this was quite the poor decision in hindsight as it could pose the possibility that Makuta would be able to locate one of his targets.
Makuta waited until there were enough footsteps coming towards him, and with satisfaction closed his eyes.
The searing bomb flew from Ilya’s grip, rocketing across the room towards Makuta. Once it was close enough that it might hit one of the people charging him - he really couldn’t see to know for certain - it finished its detonation, spitting shrapnel around the room and into anyone close enough.
Makuta’s hammer turned on the ground and began sliding towards the Mask maker, gaining acceleration. If the explosion didn’t clear the lane, perhaps this would.
Cheshie snapped her attention toward the now whining bomb, turning her shield in an attempt to block the oncoming shrapnel, leaving her front and back exposed.
Henan’s neck joints creaked as he gazed at the massive statues adorning the entrance to the forge. Amazing craftsmanship. Henan thought to himself. Probably took a year to make .As he began to climb the enormous flight of stairs,He solemnly noted to ask about the techniques of the carving,and the type of stone used.As he neared the door,it seem to be sealed shut.He again looked at the carving,and then,trying not to break the craftsmanship,knocked on the door multiple times.
With a smile of satisfaction, Makuta felt the footsteps of Chesie turning about in place. His hand extended, his hammer flew across the floor, climbing into the air and-
-and the hammer’s handle stopped a few inches from his fingers, his face immediately falling into a disappointed scowl underneath his mask.
The hammer changed trajectory, flying back across the room in a sweeping curve aimed at Ilya, giving him a good amount of forewarning with an exaggerated turn and beginning to spin as it rounded the curve. The mask maker took the opportunity to go back to the door and open it barely enough to see outside.
“Name.” His eyes cleared momentarily to get a good look at whoever was on the steps.
Ilya flinched violently as the bomb detonated in his hand, pain arcing across his hand, wrist, and lower forearm. He barely felt the pain, instead seeming, like the bomb, to freeze. For a moment, all he could do was stare at the blinding white, the tiny shards of black clay shrapnel suspended like so many little comets, trailing white tails of fire. His eyes widened, the pure euphoria of fascination fading and twisting into something else … something else …
Shock.
Pure and utter and entirely removed from anything happening now.
Years, Ilya had spent both studying and experimenting with the bombs. While his skill was limited, his knowledge was extensive, and he knew - he knew - the comparatively colossal amount of energy such devices generated immediately after generation. For the Makuta to control it…
His eyes flicked up at the hammer, and he took an uncertain step back … then turned and sprinted further into the room, trying to get behind and around the forge. Yeah, run, coward. Like the Makuta will actually harm you. And yet something else told him that the Makuta wouldn’t hesitate.
He only had one brewed potion left, and frankly, he had no clue what it did. Nor did he have any clay jars baked for him to concoct new ones. He did have components, however, and as he passed behind the forge, he cast his eyes about for any kind of jar or container small enough for a bomb or potion or something.
Having stopped his mad slide toward the door, Katau noticed that yet another newcomer had arrived. He turned toward the others and said,
“Let’s try to surround him or something.” Katau started walking uncertainly towards Makuta, sword raised.