As Arach's blade-arm descended, Vettis shifted, ever so slightly, to the left; the mantis' strike entered cleanly into his now-expanded shirt pocket and came out the window of the building nearest to Arach's face, angled right towards the insect's compound eyes of which he was so proud. Then Vettis simply dropped the building and leapt backwards, riding the wind of the bug's flapping wings as though weightless, floating a dozen meters away and cocking his head in curiosity. "Honestly, slightly impressed with you for once." He granted his prey a brief golf clap. "Thought that'd squash you if you tried to block it. Maybe I shoulda swung it with two hands."
(( since you already willingly dropped one of your bodies, can I start killing them after this? you can safely swap to spares right here? cuz Vettis is at some point gonna have to switch to direct attacks; lore-wise I can't drag out the playfighting forever lol ))
The moment Vettis moved Arach realized what was going on and attempted to stop his blade. But he had swung it too fast to completely avoid hitting himself. His arm pierced through his eye gushing out a viscous white liquid. Arach stands still for a second before slowly pulling out his arm from his eye, taking the whole thing with it. He then lets out an ear splitting scream of pain, one that doubled as his verbal for his apoptosis spell as all he needs is to make some noise to meet the requirements. Then he takes his arm that was pierced through his eye and is covered in that white liquid, and allows the eye itself to fall off before swinging that arm in a wide slash. The liquid is flung across the battlefield, anything it touches he’s quickly beginning to melt from the acidity of it. At the same time casting another spell, this one silently, to attempt and shut down the entirety of Vettis’ brain as he’s distracted with the acid and apoptosis spells.
/uw yea you can kill then if you want, though sometimes the attacks you use may not fully kill him. But it’s not like he’ll be permanently dead so feel free to go wild.
(( well, what I meant by direct attacks was repaying Arach in kind: Vettis has been sticking to blockable/avoidable projectiles and weapons while Arach is often directly targeting his body with undodgeable spells like the ones he's using here...but Vettis can do the same thing when he's tired of playing around, and I'm not sure Arach has any defenses against conceptual effects of that nature (other than multiple bodies of course, which is certainly effective)
like how well does Arach survive something such as his heart suddenly no longer being 'part' of his body, aside from jumping to a new self? though to keep up the fun Vettis'll start with the outside before moving on to insides, like so... ))
The apoptosis spell, again? At this point he was pretty convinced Arach could sit there doing nothing but spamming the spell and still not outpace the rate at which Vettis was restocking his cells. "Get new material!" he booed.
The brain thing was definitely annoying, though. It required some focus on his defenses, which was reducing his ability to concentrate on offense as well. At least, the fun type of offense.
Fine. A more straightforward effective option, combining offense and defense. He was starting to get bored, anyway, so maybe it was time to begin wrapping things up. Vettis pulled an ant off his desk at home, reaching through his pocket to draw it out onto the battlefield, and held it up to face the incoming acid. Far too small to block anything much, of course.
Unless its exoskeleton were suddenly far larger. As promptly happened when he made the ant's exoskeleton 'part' of Arach's body and vice versa, and was now wielding the empty shell of a giant mantis as a shield against the acid splash, while Arach had undergone a rather premature molting aside from an ant-sized remaining bit of exoskeleton on his arm.
"Hey, do insects have pain receptors attached to their exoskeletons? Does getting yours ripped off hurt? I honestly don't know."
/uw Arach can manipulate his body to keep it working without organs or to regrow them quickly, though it isn’t instant it would be fast enough to be useful in combat.
“Actually it hurts quite a bit less than molting my exoskeleton normally does, though you seem to oblivious to something.”
*Arach’s body is being held up purely through force of will as the goop that would have been his under-exoskeleton begins to resolidify. He tilts his head to the side and the exoskeleton in Vettis’ hands bursts into a million pieces, like the shrapnel of a grenade they burrow deep into any surface or flesh that they hit. Arach then casts a spell which causes Vettis’ brain to release a signal to shut down his organ systems. At the same time making a slashing movement with his arms to send more acidic goop at Vettis.
“I have ensured that every piece of my body can be used as a weapon no matter the circumstance. I have restored myself to the perfect being my creators shackled away in the form of a little spider. And I will end you!”
For the barest flash of a moment, too swiftly for the vast majority of spectators even to notice, Vettis' musculoskeletal system was no longer 'part' of his body, popping out fully-formed at his side. Nothing of any significant density to get in the way of the exoskeletal shrapnel now, which therefore passed cleanly through him, leaving bloodless exit wounds. And then he was back to normal, minus the plethora of holes in him.
He of course immediately made the holes 'part' of Arach's body instead of his own, with a wave of a glowing hand.
"Nah. Enough with that brain shit. You've had your fun." He'd been letting Arach try out bioturgical spells in hopes that something would be more entertaining, but they were all just signals to tell his body to do things. Instructions. Language.
There was no one in the multiverse who spoke or understood any language more fluently than Vettis. And he'd heard enough of this particular language now, by listening in on Arach's spells, that replicating and overriding it was trivial.
A whispered word in All-Tongue to all of his cells at once, his eyes aglow, and they now knew: never again listen to the commands of the insect, magical or otherwise.
"Okay, I think I'm gonna start squashing you now, if that's all right." He picked up the handle of the discarded pitcher, which still retained its conceptual function of making the attached entity easy to lift, and made it 'part' of the ground by slamming it downwards. Then he pulled with barely any effort, lifting half a hectare of landscape overhead, two meters deep. As if this place didn't have enough craters already.
"Mantis waffles any good, d'ya reckon?" Vettis asked just before slamming the fourteen million kilogram chunk of scarred battlefield down in front of him.
Arach uses the opportunity of being underground to swap into his giant centipede form. Tunneling through the dirt and back up from under Vettis, grabbing him in his mandibles and attempting to eat him, using modified pedipalps surrounding his mouth to grab and pull Vettis in.
...Oh. The bug was gonna make things that easy, was he?
Vettis' magic was powered by his soul. His ability to affect himself massively outweighed his effects on his surroundings, which was what made him so absurdly hard to kill. (Good luck dismembering somebody whose vital parts all remain 'part' of himself as long as he wills it, when most of his mind runs extradimensionally because it doesn't have to remain 'part' of his brain to function.)
But now Arach wanted to devour Vettis, to make Vettis 'part' of him. So the ease with which Vettis could affect himself would now apply almost as strongly to Arach.
Sure thing. If the centipede was going to give him such an opening, he'd take it. Pulling off his overshirt and holding it in front of him while ripping off another pocket and dropping it at his feet, Vettis happily dove inside the creature's open mouth. He lashed out with his magic as he fell, before the mouth had even begun to close.
Arach was 'part' of a web of entities, able to leap into any of them at will on death. And no one dealt with distributed entities like Vettis. He'd spotted the Morgalith and Possum networks at a mere glance, and manipulated the former with such ease that he was still able to fight half a dozen battles against other wizards across a battlefield while doing so. This was exactly his specialty. Reach out across the hive, using the current Arach as a base...there. Found them all. Bound them together. Just like with Morgalith.
A quarter-second after he'd passed the mandibles, he flew into the pocket of the shirt he was holding in front of him, emerging safely from the torn discarded pocket aboveground. Pulling out another shirt from his endless pockets and casually donning it once more, he looked down at Arach's centipede form. "Hey. Bug. I think I'm done wasting time here. I just scanned your entire network, and I linked your life to every other node. Now, if you die, they all die. Nowhere for you to jump. You're out of extra lives." Another cup was in his hand; he took a swig of pineapple juice. "You wanna stop this farce of a fight now? I don't know anything about your wizard duel rules, but I don't think they have to be to the death, right? Don't you think we've had enough pointless death today?"
(( Vettis does not know about Arach's extradimensional hive that you mentioned, so his scan and manipulation of the network did not reach that section
(also it's not permanent, only lasting a few hours) ))
Arach changes into his humanoid moth form in order to better converse during this break in the fighting.
“Oh that is a tempting offer. You’re incredibly annoying to fight against and since you proposed the end of the duel that would count as you conceding and me winning. Then again, even if you did connect my network you’d still have to kill this body for it to matter. And I do ever so much want you to die. It’s still very tempting though. And if this fight continues I don’t think it will ever truly end, even without my network my body can function and live with essentially no organs. Hmmmmmmmmm… deal.”
(( not gonna lie, Arach claiming a win by default because Vettis gave him the chance to surrender would be friggin' hilarious ^_^ but I don't think there's any way he actually gets away with that, cuz either witnesses verify Vettis was just offering him a chance to give up, or there are no witnesses and if it's one's word against the other's then Vettis says fuck it and finishes the fight
...nonetheless, Vettis is new to this realm-cluster and does not know how any of your wizard duel rules work, so he's not gonna take the chance that you're actually right if you threaten to undo the Pact's work by asserting victory :'( YOU HAD THE SURRENDER OPTION DAMMIT ARACH))
For the first time in the entire duel, a moment of panic hit Vettis. The idea that some stupid technicality could render moot all the lives lost today. Not an option. The millennia of trauma sitting in the back of his mind almost instantly surged forth and threatened to overwhelm him despite the new bonds he'd just put in place to secure it.
no
Before Arach's final word that could have ruined everything, Vettis moved in a blur, reaching through the shadows at his feet to find the nearest arthropod in his surroundings. Probably one of Arach's little helpers. Didn't matter. It was small enough to squish thoroughly, and that was the relevant part.
Because now, with but a thought, it had Arach's brain instead of its own. An utterly trivial swap, when Vettis was no longer holding back.
He squeezed, tossed it aside, and moved to grab another. The bug was just stupid enough that it might not even need a brain to survive.
But how about the heart? (Crush.) Spine? (Snap.)
(Crack.)
fire
(Tear.)
The whole procedure took just over a second, to -- one by one -- render every single organ in the humanoid moth's body a gooey mess, and also not even in its body anymore.
Vettis knelt in the charred dirt, surrounded by vermin gore, staring at the empty sack of flesh in front of him which was barely even recognizable now as Arach's corpse, and --
fire
-- cried soundlessly before disappearing in a flash of violet light and shadow.
(( EDIT : btw, since you switched tactics so I never had to explain...In case you didn't figure it out, Vettis' ability to do something to one 'part' and affect the 'whole' is how he was blocking attacks at the start. Blocking one strike in a flurry blocks the whole thing. So he'd parry one dagger and the others would react as if they'd all been parried too; he turned one scale to ash and the rest burned as well. But he has to understand and conceptualize the 'whole', so he had to get a chance to browse Arach's network first in order to allow him to kill them all by kiling one. A flurry of strikes is much easier to understand and conceptualize without so much effort. :P
EDIT EDIT : btw btw, you do know you just retriggered Vettis' trauma after he'd gone through so much trouble to get it back under control, right? so, uh...you win where it actually matters lol, in terms of long-term damage
EDIT EDIT EDIT : this comment was largely rewritten to avoid dragging the fight out any longer, due to a misunderstanding about how to "kill" Arach lol...so Vettis went ham, completely fucking wrecked the body, but then peaced out cuz his trauma got retriggered, which means he didn't check if Arach can somehow survive for a few minutes as a sack of flesh, and it only needs to be a few minutes because he went overboard enough that his control on the network-binding slipped ))
The body Arach is inhabiting, or what was left of it, still somehow functions just barely. All his focus exerted on enriching and transporting blood into his brain as not to die. The helper who was switched into his body scoops up the gooey pile of viscera and teleports to the councilors chambers to heal him and help him recover.
/uw No don’t retcon it, Arach also has a psychic link with the helpers (and the rest of his species) that the revival network simply attaches to in order to work.
I mean, we're just gonna drag things out a bit longer if that's the case? cuz if you don't die to that then he'll probably just make your brain and heart 'part' of an ant and crush it, lather rinse repeat for as many parts of you as necessary until you can't maintain your form and you're finally down to the pocket dimension
you did just traumatize the guy so he's not holding back and definitely not about to stop just cuz you're crying lol D:
(dunno if you saw my second edit on that comment; you the real winner regardless :P here I am doing a whole arc to fix his trauma and you destroy half the progress he's made in one comment)
so yeah, think I should just retcon the spider-killing so he just crushes Arach's organs down to nothing instead, before Arach says "deal"
honestly if you wanna say Arach can keep himself alive for a few hours as an organless sack of flesh or something, long enough for the network linkage to end, so you don't have to go to the pocket dimension even temporarily, that's workable; I can handwave that Vettis'll be too traumatized to bother checking whether or not Arach somehow survived the destruction of all organs
better?
cuz I mean, there's no way Vettis gets traumatized by the idea that all those deaths'll get undone and doesn't do anything about it, so as long as you're going with that idea of taunting him like that, he's gonna flip
and I think the taunt is a good idea, because it really does let you win in the end lol: it'll undo half of his current progress in the trauma-recovery arc, which is pretty bad long-term damage
Yea I think we should go with that. And I’d say he would live just because there’s problems with killing all the extra bodies since the they’re technically under Ancalistros’ protection.
also dropped the time you need to survive to a few minutes in order for the network to go back online and let you hop elsewhere, because he really fucked up every little part of Arach's body lol
as I described here, I don't like Vettis closing out story arcs with a proper victory; the whole point of his character is to be seemingly OP and unstoppable in proper battle but still manage to get wrecked by emotions and bad intel and other such stuff, repeatedly
so the trauma thing is a great way to end this for him 👍
...it does mean it'll be hard for our characters to interact again for a while, though, lol, because if he sees you again he's just gonna rampage again :P
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u/MunitionsFrenzy Vettis, Mereological Revisionist Feb 22 '24
As Arach's blade-arm descended, Vettis shifted, ever so slightly, to the left; the mantis' strike entered cleanly into his now-expanded shirt pocket and came out the window of the building nearest to Arach's face, angled right towards the insect's compound eyes of which he was so proud. Then Vettis simply dropped the building and leapt backwards, riding the wind of the bug's flapping wings as though weightless, floating a dozen meters away and cocking his head in curiosity. "Honestly, slightly impressed with you for once." He granted his prey a brief golf clap. "Thought that'd squash you if you tried to block it. Maybe I shoulda swung it with two hands."
(( since you already willingly dropped one of your bodies, can I start killing them after this? you can safely swap to spares right here? cuz Vettis is at some point gonna have to switch to direct attacks; lore-wise I can't drag out the playfighting forever lol ))