aestrix | Tyranny, meet anarchy

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Tyranny, meet anarchy

The city of Eantasyl is fortunate in its placement, and is considered old for even an elven city. The streets are some kind of shimmery stone, the buildings neatly arranged and well maintained. It's pleasant, and generally considered a nice place for the rich to retire. There's a noticeable lack of greenery and foliage on the streets themselves - the place is kept very dense, and it's can be guessed that its citizens thought they had enough foliage already. It sits at the base of one of the very first world trees. One could be forgiven for missing the city for the tree - it's several thousand feet tall, and its branches bring shade to more than half of Eantasyl. They do not need gardens. They have enough to spare, up in the sky.

(The leaves are a pain to rake.)

Despite many of its flaws (and there are many) the Sunrise Empire isn't actually a horrible place to live. This place especially. Just steer clear of the government, keep your head down, don't join any rebellions, and don't break any laws, and you'll be fine. Probably. Unless there are dangerous criminals running around, causing trouble.

But that hardly ever happens. The Ministry has it all under control.

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"Cool. It's a bit awkward, but I ought to be able to find that kind of stuff with a little creativity."

Jinx snaps the last few parts into place, and picks up the vaguely-rifle-shaped device. Sparks crackle down her arms, earthing themselves into the machinery, and it hums to life.

"Incidentally, what's your name?"

"Kuvairian Ysentiril. Just Kuvair works, though. What exactly is down here that we're braving a fuckton of traps for?"

"So far as I can tell, this is where the local government keeps its super-secret prisoners. Which I'll bet you are mages that they slapped down for not liking their rules. Also, I have an Apokalypsi scanner. It isn't exactly hard for me to find the traps. Speaking of which..."

She pings the local area. Little scanner, gimme a trap map for the whole prison.

...

That's a lot of traps.

A hell of a lot of traps, actually.

Different kinds, too. Poison and cold and fire and various sharp objects and stinging insects and something that just drains all oxygen from the room and one that unleashes these horrible half bear half plant creatures with venomous teeth. The half bear half plant creatures do not, of course, need to breathe. Why would they do that.

This is a very very deadly room.

"Arcanists," corrects Kuvair, idly. "I'm - there are a few arcanists in here, but not nearly enough to fill a prison." Pause. "... Arcanists can sense other arcanists, by the way. There's five in here."

Do any of the traps appear to be hardened enough to withstand contained-antimatter blasting? 'Cause it's generally kind of hard for traps to kill you when they've been destroyed at the molecular level. ...then again, magic.

Nope! Some of them have some things surrounding them to redirect direct attack, equivalent to an upgraded version of the invisible walls from earlier, but those broke under direct fire, too.

Alright, then!

Jinx shoulders her rocket launcher and pulls out Pow-Pow. She flicks a switch, and an ominous hum steadily rises to a vicious sizzle, heat-haze rising from the triple barrels of the rabbit-eared minigun.

"Okay, Kuvair. There are a hell of a lot of traps out there. Fortunately, I brought the good toys, so none are going to stand up to direct attack. That said, there are a lot of them, and all of them are probably gonna go off at once. Your job is to keep the ones that last long enough to trigger from killing us. Got it?"

"Got it! Best if I have hold of you for that, so..." He puts a hand on her shoulder. "Ready."

Okay, here goes. Spin up the gun, bonk the activation button on the air-transmuter with a foot, push open the door with your left hand, kick out the air-transmuter, and open up with Pow-Pow, nastiest traps first.

They get blown up.

Darts hit Jinx and Kuvair half a second later, laced with poison. Stinging insects are released from their cubbies, and they fly towards the duo in a menacing manner. The floor writhes, reacting to the explosives to... Not do anything to Jinx or Kuvair, actually. It seems to be doing something to protect something underground, behind some kind of panels.

Kuvair grits his teeth, and gets to killing the poison.

How does the cloud of stinging insects react to being pumped full of plasmafire? Because there is more than enough plasmafire to go around. Jinx grits her teeth in a wild, vicious smile and drags her shots back and forth through the buzzing cloud of oncoming death, incidentally melting the wall behind them.

From how they melt and burn and buzz in an angry fashion before being turned to plasma goop, they do not react well! And neither does the wall. Or the bear-plant-beast thing behind it. Lots of things die.

... Something moves to shield the floor. It is shielded very thoroughly, though sustained fire could likely break it.

Kuvair is still killing the poison, prioritizing Jinx because she's the one killing things, but he grits out, "The prisoners are under the floor, 'far as I can tell."

Jinx nods tersely, but focusses on destroying traps for now. Number 1: don't die.

Good plan!

Traps die. A few of them get some hits in, but Kuvair is very good at his job. Healing occurs, and then...

Well, they now have a very melted, very destroyed room. With a mostly intact floor. There might be a trap or two left somewhere, but there is a very clear victor here.

Jinx produces her little scanner again.

Any lingering traps? Also, what happened to the floor?

There's a lightning trap over there lodged in a non-melted part of the ceiling that still works, and a spike trap over there that will attempt to skewer anyone that steps near it.

Kuvair finishes healing Jinx. He releases her shoulder.

"Pardon me, I need to fall over," he says. He does so. "Ow."

Jinx quickly fries the lightning trap, then bends over Kuvair, grabbing a few handy pieces of shrapnel along the way. When she brings her hand down, it has an injector in it - the same type as the stamina-booster currently active on Jinx herself, it sacrifices speed and strength for better endurance and a faster recovery rate. Hopefully it'll get Kuvair back on his feet.

"I'm okay," he assures. "Just focused on keeping you up so you could blow up everything. 'S smart resource planning. Means I'm kinda hurting now. I'll fix it, though."

"Yeah, I'd rather not you died."

Jinx waits, watching Kuvair with one eye and examining the excessively-tough flooring with the other. (The little scanner helps.)

"I'd rather I didn't die, too!"

The excessively tough flooring seems to have several layers to its excessive toughness! The protection's centered around what the scanner says to be... slots. In the ground. They are person sized. Sort of like someone's placed coffins underneath the floor, and then covered them in every protective magical and mundane force they could get their hands on, to keep them safe.

... This is not like an ordinary prison.

Jinx frowns. Weird.

Then she picks up the air-maker. Scanner confirms that all the poison is gone, and no more is going to be added anytime soon?

Yep! The poison makers were blown up along with everything else.

The place seems safe, except for the debris and the spike trap over there.

Eh, spike trap is pretty irrelevant, but she supposes she'd better not wander into it accidentally. There, have an extra plasma bolt.

Now, then. The floor here is kinda complicated, so 'turn it into air' is not going to work very well. Jinx just stands well back and starts to burn down to the coffin with Pow-Pow.

The floor won't know what hit it. Well. Okay, yes it will, what hit it is lots of fire and plasma from Pow-Pow.

Kuvair sits up. "Better-ish now, that poison hurts like a motherfucker."

He looks at the thing she's burning to. "That's one of the arcanists, I think. Must be a hell of a prison to even keep them there."

Jinx grins. "Fortunately, it looks like your government did not bet on me existing."

She checks her scanner absently. Any new surprises on the government-response-team front?

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