The Crimson Carnival: Chapter IX, A Rose’s Thorns

  --- Gregory Fischer ---

  The Theater Rose opened with a stab of her blade, a swirl of crimson around the point, a piercing strike that he deflected off his metal hand before backhanding with a fist full of flame. One that was easily evaded when Maeve leaned back, in a spin that quickly turned into a kick that he leapt back with minimizing the damage even as the glass on the ground tore up the sole of his boots.

  Not letting this get him down he rushed forward once more, getting close enough that Maeve’s elongated blade -now looking more like a rapier than a dagger- wouldn’t be able to stab him. A quick opening strike to her chest forced the red eyed woman back but a quick swing of her blade once more a dagger did the same to him before he could follow up.

  His eyes narrowed as he puffed at his smoke and watched the crimson in the air re-coalesce into a rapier, a process that was far faster than their initial build up. (Alright, so she can change the blade length at will. Going to assume she can make it longer than that as well, meaning close or far I’ve got no range advantage.)

  As if to demonstrate this Maeve shot forward far faster than he could manage, her sword raised to run him through. Which is why she ended up rushing straight into the smoke screen he unleashed in a massive exhale, the smoke of his ‘special cigarette’ expanding at something resembling his normal speed with power.

  Just to check he tried twisting the smoke in a way that he normally would with a single victim stuck coughing in a cloud of his smoke, only to find his control over it quickly fading. (Damn it, I’m going to need another Chapter or whatever to pull this off aren’t I?)

  “Cur!” Maeve coughed, as she blindly swung her blade, the crimson of the blade clearly trying to sweep away the lingering smoke.

  Unfortunately for her, this particular spell was one that he’d long since trained to a point of enduring beyond anything short of B grade wind spell. Training that also allowed him to easily and silently circle around his opponent, both his vision and his lungs more than used to moving through the dense smoke of war that blinded Maeve.

  Not bothering with anything fancy, he quickly built up a surge of fire in his metal hand before unleashing the built up heat into the Theater Rose’s back. Generating a burst of flame and cinder just large enough to send her flying but not enough to stun her as she quickly reoriented herself mid-air to keep him in her line of sight.

  Whatsmore she didn’t even bother to land before once more launching herself at him in a surge of crimson rather than cinder, the speed of which left him unable to dodge. If not for a little book at least.

  More on reflex than anything else he willed himself to move while drawing on the magic of his Smoke, and like usual he moved reappearing to the side as Maeve crashed into the ground her rapier easily piercing the ground like it would his hide.

  The fluttering of pages in the air reminded him that just like before whatever he’d just done wasn’t part of his usual Smoke Dash, but rather the Book’s Swift Dodge. (Fuck it. Whatever works.)

  As Maeve ripped her blade free of the ground he used his Swift Dodge to quickly re-enter striking distance before his opponent could react, leaving her open as he delivered a Heat Fist to her face. Cinders trailing his fist as the metal began to glow with the Heat it was containing.

  With wide eyes Maeve bent backwards out of the way of his fist, before quickly flipping backwards in a single handed spring that he absolutely could not pull off. With this distance the Theater Rose swung this hand towards him, sending a crimson point hurling towards him.

  He willed himself to move in another dash to avoid the thorns, only to stutter in place as pages swirled around him and did little else. (What?)

  The thorns impacted his shoulder with enough force to make him stumble back in a spin as pages exploded out of his right shoulder.

  His hand shot towards the thorn impaling his shoulder ready to rip it out and cauterize the flesh only to find nothing there, his flesh unharmed even as his hand came back red. (What’s happening?)

  “A curious magic…” Maeve admitted, watching him with narrowed eyes as the blood on his hand turned into a crimson sheet of paper before falling to the ground.

  “Yeah, it is…” He agreed, his eyes drifting towards his Book as he remembered Briar explaining something about ‘The Library’s Protection’.

  Even if at the time (and now) he hadn’t quite been able to understand everything she’d explained about converting byproduct existential waste pages from experience along the splash tangents of Necro to maintain the structural integrity of one’s metaphysical projection upon the physical axes via a Madness anchor to lower font size and line spacing. (Whatever the fuck that means…)

  Still he was beginning to understand that that meant something along the lines of (a paper shield… I can work with this.) He grinned as he rolled his shoulder, and drew another cigarette.

  “Weren’t we in the middle of something?” He asked Maeve as he lit his smoke, aware that while they were fighting neither of them was really fighting to kill the other so much as to stop the other.

  “Yes. We were.” Maeve nodded, readying her own blade with a smirk. “And it seems like I don’t have to feel guilty for letting loose a bit.”

  (Ah, shit.)

  Once more The Theater Rose launched forth in a trail of crimson. Crimson that swirled with twice as much power as her previous strikes.

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  Instinctively he wanted to dodge, but after his last attempt failed he wasn’t quite willing to trust the Book’s magic. So instead he trusted his own steel, as he blocked Maeve’s blade with his arm deflecting the strike to the side even as he felt the lashing crimson cut into him before extracting more crimson pages.

  The Theater Rose’s blade shattered, returning to its original dagger length as she proceeded to lash out in a flurry of swipes that he blocked and deflected off of his metal arm, the smoke in his lungs empowering his body enough to endure the onslaught with ease.

  At least until he saw an opening and shoulder checked Meave, before wrapping his lightly glowing metal arm around her more fleshy one and grabbing her hand with the heated metal to force her to drop her blade.

  “You’re going to have to hurt me a lot worse than that to make me give up.” Maeve grinned with a maw full of fangs, before opening it wider than any human could manage and biting down into his neck.

  Crimson pages erupted from his neck, keeping him from feeling much of what he was pretty sure would for most be a fatal bite. But even then their grapple had gone from him holding her in place to her wrapping her legs around his back and digging her teeth in deeper. A sensation that he was feeling more and more of as crimson pages continued to spray out.

  Glass crunched under his foot.

  Thinking quickly, he grabbed onto Maeve’s legs, locking her place as he dropped onto his back, crushing her between his weight and the broken glass beneath them.

  A cry tore out of the Theater Rose as her own back was cut to pieces, forcing her to loosen her grip just enough that he instinctively dashed away in a swirl of paper that confused him just as much as it relieved him. (Why did it work this time and not before?)

  Shaking his head of thoughts that wouldn’t help him, he turned back to Maeve as she stood up and rolled her shoulders. Whatever she was clearly having a healing factor of some kind.

  “Your magic truly is curious… It protects you from physical damage and yet these pages still taste and function as if made of blood.” The red eyed woman observed, as she picked up a crimson page floating in the air before having it dissolve into a swirl of red around her hand.

  (Blood?) He frowned, his eyes drifting to where more crimson pages were slowly falling from him. (Does that mean I’m bleeding? Or maybe my shield is since I’m not feeling any blood loss?)

  Almost instinctively he opened the Book in his hand, (a book that I’m pretty sure that I left on those stairs before the fight began…)

  He briefly glanced at the stairs, before deciding the Book must’ve had a recall charm of some kind built into it. (Honestly, not its most impressive feature.)

  The eldritch script on the page creeped and crawled, sending a slight ache behind his eyes as he found himself quickly reading his ‘Current Story’ only to find a new line in the mix of it all entitled ‘Contained Pages’ with a number next to it that seemed to slowly be dropping. (I guess that’s my shield then.)

  “You know if I was any other monster in this accursed carnival, I wouldn’t hesitate to attack you right now.” Maeve warned him. “You really should not be reading your… grimoire? Outside of cover.”

  He couldn’t help but grimace at that as he turned back to his opponent after making such an amateur mistake. “Yeah, I kn-whoa…”

  Maeve’s eyes narrowed at him as his smoke fell out of his mouth. “What is it?”

  He swallowed the ache from reading the Book rapidly building up behind his eyes as he stared at The Theater Rose. Or rather at the Eldritch Script that danced through the air around her, whispering so many sweet secrets as they drifted about.

  (“Name: Maeve Roisin, Species: Human (Deviation), Genre: Fantasy, Classification: Scrapper/Blaster/Vampire, Derivative Addendum: None.”) He read from the words shifting through the air around The Theater Rose, unaware that his nose was beginning to bleed he continued to read. (“Resistant to Slash, Blunt, and Mind, Weak to Light and Fatally so to Spirit…”)

  Something grabbed onto him and he suddenly found himself dazedly flying before crashing into the ground, book pages cushioning his fall but doing absolutely nothing to stop the ache stabbing through his head.

  “Fuck… What… What just happened?” He grimaced, feeling something warm and damp on his face. Wiping at it he found his hand coming back covered in blood that did not turn into paper.

  “Have you come back to your senses?” Maeve asked him cautiously.

  “Y-yeah.” He nodded, wincing as the movement hurt his head. “What… what happened exactly?”

  “You became mesmerized by something. When you began to bleed without your magic I felt the honorable thing to do was to force you out of it. Physical disorientation and pain being the best methods in my experience.” Maeve explained, watching him carefully as she approached.

  “That… that makes sense.” He admitted as he forced himself to stand even as the world spun around him a bit. “I… I think I know what triggered it…” He glanced at the Book in his hands before letting it fall to the ground. “We… we can keep fighting…”

  “I don’t believe that is wise…” Maeve confessed, with a touch of concern.

  He pulled out a smoke to calm his shakes, before lighting it and consuming the cigarette in a single inhalation.

  (In with the good smoke…) He thought, holding the Smoke in his lungs as he felt the chems flooding his system, filling him with power as it brought him back to the minimum -both physically and mentally- to keep him in the fight, before exhaling the spent byproducts. (Out with the bad smoke…)

  He cracked his neck to either side, before nodding and reentering his fighting stance. “Alright, I’m good to go.”

  Before he could react Maeve reached out and shoved him back, and with far more effort than it should’ve taken him he stayed standing even as he was sent skidding back.

  “See?” He told the Theater Rose with a wry grin as he caught himself on a nearby support pillar before he could lose his balance. (Now I’m feeling the blood loss…)

  There was a faint creaking as he put his weight on the wooden pillar, before said pillar made a cracking sound.

  He blinked, looking to his side where the crack in the pillar was slowly growing as he backed away from it. “Uh, I think we should get off the stage…”

  The pillar snapped like a gunshot and he reflexively dashed away, stumbling as he reappeared on the ground with his feet skidding slightly on the broken glass.

  Maeve landed next to him with far more grace, before both of them turned and watched as the Theater Rose’s stage proceeded to collapse in front of them. The decrepitness of the rest of the theater having long since infected the breaking wood work.

  Beside him Maeve took in a deep breath before letting it out and slowly turning towards him. “Do you still want to fight?”

  He opened his mouth before a wave of sound and music rippled over them, the sky lighting up as if it were day.

  They both snapped their attention to the sky above where a pink beam of light was shooting into the air with an upbeat tune. One that just barely covered the sound of something cracking as smaller lights swirled around the pillar, rising towards the sky and slowly beating away at said something.

  At least until that something finally gave and the entire sky shattered in an explosion of colors, reminiscent of the fireworks that had kicked this nightmare of a night off.

  And as he watched this explosion of color and music he couldn’t help but admit that, “I’m not topping whatever the fuck that is…”

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  A/N: No choices this time, but an explanation. I’ve been rolling for other characters in the park that we could’ve companioned to see how they’re doing and… Well one of them Critted, hard thus causing the next event.