The Cleft of Dimensions

Torval hugged himself as he wandered, lost, through the maze of the arena.

I shoudln't have let Dantain convince me to come here, he thought to himself. On hindsight, I shoudln't have let him convince me to remove my equipment, either. Oh well, at least this is the Player's Battle Arena. There aren't any monsters around here, so the only thing I have to be worried about is an attack by other players. But that won't happen as long as I don't bother anyone...

Torval stopped in front of yet another one of the infinite junctions in the maze. He was, admittedly, truly and hopelessly lost.
Suddenly, Torval sensed something. The air behind him shifted subtly as someone moved. Torval looked behind him, but there was no one there. He shuddered.

He was about to move forward when something nudged against his foot. Looking down, he saw an adorable pink kitten rubbing itself against his leg. It looked up at him and purred. Torval immediately recognised it as a pokemon from his Pokedex pages. It was a Skitty, a domestic feline pokemon.
Slightly soothed by the presence of such an adorable creature, Torval knelt on the ground and stroked the pokemon's head.

All of a sudden, the area was filled by a bloodthirsty scream. Torval turned towards the noise and saw, down one of the corridors, a young girl was charging towards him. Wielding a hunting rifle. Torval leapt to his feet. The girl started firing at him, but Torval was experienced in battles. He dodged the bullets, and ran forward to meet the girl. The girl reloaded her rifle and fired of a few rounds which hit Torval on his arm, exploding on impact. Torval grunted, but he was a powerful player, even without his equipment. He reached the girl and, barehanded, threw a powerful uppercut. The girl flew back a few yards and hit the ground, unmoving.

Torval clutched at his arm, gasping for breath. What had just happened? He had been attacked! Then it passed again. The feeling of someone moving behind him. He turned around, but again there was no one there except the Skitty, which hadn't moved.

Then he heard footsteps, approaching from ahead. Out of the mouth of the corridor, Dantain appeared, flanked by his pet harpy and Koa the Barbarian.

"Hello, Torval." Dantain stepped in front of him. "I see you were attacked. The arena can be a treacherous place."
Torval gritted his teeth. "Yeah, I can vouch that much for you."
"That's just as well, then." Daintain grinned. "Makes it easier for us to finish you off."
"Oh y- What?! What do you mean?"
"I see you get our friend Crossroads there." Dantain gestured towards the girl lying on the ground. "But it doesn't matter. She was still a weakling." Dantain drew his gun and pointed it at Torval. "It's over, Torval. We found out about your plot. This ends here!"
This is crazy, thought Torval. What is he talking about? Why is does he have Koa with him? What plot does he think I'm involved in?
But at that moment, Dantain was pointing a gun at Torval, and his fighter instincts kicked in. He lunged at Dantain, his fist raised to land a massive punch to his jaw.

But before Torval could attack, Koa dashed forward and tripped him over. In an instant, Koa was upon him, beating the life out of him. But Torval's strength was greater than Koa, and he threw Koa off and leapt to his feet, ready to battle. For a split second, Torval noticed that the Skitty had vanished. Koa drew his sword and lunged forward, ready to slash Torval, but Torval blocked the blade with his arms, yelling in pain. Then he punched out repeatedly at the barbarian with both hands, ending with an uppercut to his chin. Severely wounded, Koa fled into the maze.

Dantain applauded sarcastically at Torval. "Well done, Torval. Even without your weapons, you're still one heck of a fighter."
"What are you trying to do, Dantain?"
"I'm sorry Torval, but I can't give you the chance to escape. Harpy, kill Torval!"

With a terrifying screech, Dantain's harpy took to the air and swooped at Torval, beak and talons ready to do some severe damage. Dantain whipped out his gun and started firing at Torval.
Time slows.

Torval was locked in combat with the harpy, trying to land punches while at the same time fending of it's talons with his arms. He was forced to take the damage from Dantain's bullets while he focused on the harpy. Koa returned to the scene of the battle, berserker rage burning in his eyes. The girl with the rifle from earlier, Crossroads, got up, and was ready to charge into the fray. Then, out of the corner of his eye, Torval noticed something. The Skitty, which had vanished some time earlier, returned from the depths of the maze. There was something odd about the shadows on the wall behind the pokemon. When Torval peered closely at the darkness, he noticed a darker shadow, lurking in the darkness of the shadows.

The figure reached into its pocket and pulled out something glowing. It looked like a tiny fairy, curled up asleep. Oh no, thought Torval, its a cyber elf! If that thing wakes up...
The figure prodded the cyber elf with a finger. Sure enough, the cyber elf woke up... and began crying. A cold wind blew through the area. As the elf's cries increased in volume, the intensity of the wind grew. Soon enough, a harsh blizzard was storming around the area!

Crossroads, already weak from her fight with Torval, collapsed into the deepening snow. Dantain was frightened of by the sudden change in weather, and fled into the dungeon. The harpy fled after its master. That only left Koa the Barbarian and Torval standing. Koa lunged at Torval with his sword, but again, Torval blocked it with his hands and knocked Koa to the ground with a powerul hook. Koa landed in a deep snow mound and tried to get up, but the blizzard was just to much for him, and he collapsed.

Torval stood alone in the center of the blizzard, panting. He had somehow survived. Dantain was probably in the maze of the arena somewhere, but that didn't matter. Torval just wanted to get out from the maze himself.
Then he heard a sound. "Nyao, nyao..."

Torval turned. There was the Skitty, sitting calmly in the middle of the blizzard. Lurking in the shadows of a nearby wall was the dark figure from earlier. The figure reached behind its back and pulled out two sharp, thorned whips. The figure advanced towards Torval.
Oh no, thought Torval, everyone's trying to kill me today! I'm not going to take this sitting down!
Torval dashed forward, getting the first strike, and let loose a flurry of punches at the figure! Pow! Smack! All the punches connected soundly, but his opponent hardly appeared to be fazed! The figure leapt forward and landed a kick on Torval's chest. That really did HURT! Torval decided that he couldn't win this fight and attempted to flee. But as he was running, he became aware of a set of smaller footsteps chasing him. He risked looking back, just in time to see the Skitty leaping at him, baring its fangs.

The dark figure was sitting against the side of the wall, with the cyber elf resting on his palm. He hummed a soft lullaby as he stroked its hair and put it back to sleep. The blizzard slowly cleared up.
The Skitty returned to its master and sat at his feet. "Nyao, nyao."
The figure spoke. "Well done, my Skitty. Torval and his friends have finally been defeated."
"Nyao nyao?"
"Well, alright, perhaps it was a little unethical of me to incite his friends against him like that. But what other choice did I have? At least be grateful I didn't send YOU in to handle Torval alone."
"Nyao nyao..."
"Quite so." The figure got up, putting the cyber elf back into his pocket. "Anyway, we had better be leaving now. The Immortals will be showing up at any minute."

The figure closed its eyes and said "Exit!" At once, the figure and the Skity vanished.

*********************************************

Okay, back to reality! The above passage is based on a PvP (or Player versus Player) session that took place yesterday in one of my favourite video games, Cleft of Dimensions! Some readers might recognise a few other video game characters there, such as Skitty from pokemon and the cyber elf from the Megaman series. But that's not all; The dark figure with the cyber elf is actually a Moogle from the Final Fantasy Series. That's right, Cleft of Dimensions, a MUD game that takes its areas and characters from classic popular video games. MUD means Multi User Dimension by the way, and what this means is that your video game look something like this:

Unawesome? Not at all! In the same way that reading a story book is like watching a movie inside your mind, playing a game through words like that is like having the video game inside your imagination, where the graphics are better than in any high-definition console game.

This blog post as you see it is the dawn of a new idea of mine: Writing a short "cut-scene" at the beginning of each post. As I have mentioned before, I quite like writing, and this should provide sufficient practice for me. What this means is, you get to read overblown dramatic battle scenes such as the one above. Enjoy.


Brand new colorful edit! Ever wonder what it must have really looked like in the battle arena during the fight? Click here!