Plotting [Mod]

[Holly Mason]

Holly had been finding herself coming to the mines a lot lately.  It was the only place that had strong shadows that weren't *too* strong even if she hated to admit that there was such thing as too strong for her.  After fighting that strong shadow on the full moon she found herself with even more questions about this place, but there was one that stuck in her head.  Just how were these creatures connected to humans?  Apparently some shadows were literally doppelgangers to a particular human, some were actually intelligent, but most were just mindless.  She was sure of this now; there was absolutely no way to spin their behavior into something intelligent.  But if some shadows looked human, even looked like a specific human and could pass as humans what exactly did it mean?  It definitely meant that they had some kind of understanding of human nature, but how?  She never felt any shadows when she was walking about town, or at least she was pretty sure she didn't.  As far as she could tell they couldn't even go into the city.  Was it from mingling with the humans in what now is the outer circle?  Did they come from off the island?  How exactly would they go about creating an exact duplicate of someone?  Could they change their forms in such an extreme way?

Holly doubted it was all just a coincidence, and in her mind the forms the shadows took was another hint.  They were all based on some kind of human concept.  Their nature was definitely tied in some way to humanity's, she just wasn't sure how.  She didn't expect to find the answers here, but checking things out never hurt right?

[Erithania]

Beware the desu!

White Phantom

Skills
Mahamaon
Sukukaja

Null: Light
Weakness: Darkness

Black Phantom

Skills
Mamudoon
Tarukaja

Null: Darkness
Weakness: Light

[Holly Mason]

Her thoughts were interrupted by another ambush, not that anyone could actually call it that.  An ambush would require her to be surprised.  She wasted no time in increasing her own strength with Tarukaja and rushing right into them again.  It worked last time, so why not this time?  This time, the shadows didn't attack, instead they were engulfed by two lights, one orange one green.  Humph, it was going to be harder to get these ones to attack each other.  She opted to just fire off her own attack spell, hitting the white phantom with a blast of wind.  It hurt it, but it didn't seem to do anything in particular.

The black phantom increased their attack power again.  This could get very dangerous very quickly, she had to finish them quickly.  It's too bad that wasn't really an option for her when she was alone.  The white phantom just made this wall of paper surround her.  It looked like an area attack, so it was unlikely she would be able to trap them in their own attacks.  Damn, this might leave her in rough shape again.  Holly tried to dive out of the circle, and thus away from the shadows, but she was caught in the tail end of it.  It hurt, but it was on par with what she expected her and was nowhere near as bad as that samurai's attack.  It would take a little while, but she could do this.

She fired off a second blast of wind at the white one, and once again, the black one increased their attack power and the white one fired off another difficult to dodge light spell.  She had never quite seen targeting ability like this, was it a characteristic of the spell?  Regardless, she needed to finish off the white one now.  She wasn't sure how much more of this she could take now that the other one was going to start attacking too.  Fortunately, one more attack was enough to finish off the white one.  Holly braced herself for the black one's attack.

The area was covered with another magic circle and was engulfed in a black fog.  It was the exact opposite of the white one then.  She could probably handle it, but her heal wouldn't be enough to outdo that kind of damage and she wasn't quite sure if she could do enough damage to it before it finished her off.  It was time to get creative again.

Her wind spell had some amount of push back, but not enough to lift large objects like shadows.  Perhaps stronger versions wold be able to, but that didn't exactly help her now.  There was no point in wondering when her persona would get more attack power, she needed to focus on the current battle.  There wasn't much she could blow at it like there was at the executive building.  At most she could blow a little dirt in its face, but she imagined that would do little more than irritate it.  The support beam right above the shadow did look a little unsteady though.  It might make future explorations more difficult, but getting out of here alive was more important.  Rather than attack the shadow directly, she had Anaisa Pye destroy the support beam, collapsing part of the mine onto the shadow.  She made sure to get a little distance before firing it off and didn't stop running after she did in order to avoid the collapse herself.  There was a loud rumble and then a thump as the tunnel collapsed behind her.  She healed herself and waited awhile to see if any further attacks would be coming.

None did.

[ChromaticTruthsayer]

Success!

You defeated the enemy!
You also found: nothing at all

[Holly Mason]

Once it was clear the danger was gone, Holly sighed and pulled out her notes.  She was probably not going to be able to use this path for a little while at least.  She was pretty interested in seeing if the shadows would repair the tunnel though, or would at least try to dig through the collapsed part creating a less stable tunnel.  She'd give it a look in a couple of weeks.  For now, it was probably best to get out of here.  It's not like she'd actually be able to finish exploring this path in its current state.