Castlevania: Disharmony

Ricky took the lead...again. He approached the door of the rhythmic hammering waiting for everyone to round up before carefully and quietly going through the door spear in hand. He looked around the room and continued to go through being careful of traps and enemies.

Henric, not surprisingly, brings up the rear, idly checking his guns and reloading it if necessary.

The moment the three enter the doorway, they're hit with a blast of hot air and see where the hammering noise was coming from. The room is shaped like a long rectangle 100 meters long with the sides covered in large, roaring furnaces with red-hot pokers sticking out of them; and in the center of the room is a massive iron anvil, stretching straight down the hall. Along each side of the anvil are something close to fifty men, their skins blackened from burns and traced red with bloody flesh peaking through the cracked, burnt skin. They're blindfolded, naked, and with large manacles chaining them to the anvil. In their hands is a large oversized hammer, and they all raise and let fall the hammer simultaneously onto the anvil, hammering out piece after piece of armor that piles behind them. They don't stop, they don't whimper, they just keep on hammering; none notice the men enter the room.

At the end of the hall they can see a massive, armored figure, covered in blazingly red armor with their back to the doorway.

Alois purses his lips. My oh my! What a spectacle! It's a shame that these poor souls were being forced to do this. Oh well! Alois had seen worse. He had been though worse! No sympathy for the devil, as they say.

Turning towards Ricky, Alois smiles and points to the red knight ahead. Lifting his hand, he motions it towards the mans harpoon and blesses it with smite energy. He mouths the actions Ricky needed to do. Strings to a puppet.

"Throw it to coincide with the hammer Mr. Mochi."

Alois waits then, gun at the ready. He was ready to move onto the next room when the deed was done.

Ricky understood the mouthing of the words. He could tell what Alois wanted him to do, but he was getting a little bit tired of getting pushed around by someone he just met. Like a child being told what to do and when to do it. Ricky was no child and he was definitely no cannon fodder for this. But he listened to the holy man. He raised his harpoon and got his sights on the massive armor at the end. Yes, he timed the throw just right so that when it hit the poundings of the rhythmic hammers would drown out the noise of battle going to happen. Hopefully one finished as soon as it started hoping to hit the behemoth of armor and taking it out then and there.

Henric stares at the scene flatly. Unless Ricky had become an ogre recently (though that WOULD explain a few things), there's no way he's making that throw. So he decides to take matters into his own hands and fires a shot with his pistol through the thing's visor just as the hammer rings as to not waste the harpoon's blowing of their cover.

100 meters is a long distance for an accurate gunshot OR a harpoon. So it should come to no one's surprise that both miss. The harpoon ends up impaling one of the smiths 35 meters away but he keeps on hammering, seemingly ignoring the huge harpoon stuck through his body. The gunshot likewise veers off and none can see where it hits.

As far as the smiths go, they just keep on pounding, even the ones closest to the group. Nobody has taken notice of them.

Alois holds in a laugh as he just shakes his head at Ricky. Faith in thine own skill, he supposed. Maybe it was a faith misplace. Shaking his head, Alois simply raised his hand and motioned the others forward. Opting to actually lead the front this time, Alois raised his gun and took great pain in sticking to the walls and cutting the distance down between himself and the knight. Once the beast was in range, Alois took aim and fired a blessed bullet right into the things face. He was always cautious mind you of what lay ahead.

Following Alois's example, he takes a slightly different route with as much cover as he can, taking out his shotgun and, when at an appropriate angle, blasts out his knee. If it looks like he can't get close enough to use his shotgun without exposing himself to large amounts of personal risk, he gets as close as he can without forfeiting a line of cover before shooting at the visor area again.

Ricky grins. For once stabbing the wrong guy just seemed right. Following Alois with his new spear out and ready he would let the two of them take care of the hell knight with their guns. Only when it would seem that the hell knight was still standing would he attempt to throw his spear, this time at a much closer distance, into the hell knight. Going for the Olympic gold here.

There's only two routes: one side of the forge or the other. Reggie and Ricky go in one direction, Henrik in the other.

As soon as the two pass by a few of the men hammering the forge mindlessly, the men turn and swing their hammers. Henrik immediately slumps forward as a hammer hits him square in the back, knocking him down to his knees. He can feel his back twitching. The hit HURT, and may even have chipped a bone in his vertebrae. The only thing that saved him was the fact that he was even marginally a brute.

The other two pass by the first hammerer and he turns immediately, bringing his hammer down with a massive *CRUNCH* onto Alois's right shoulder- quite obviously breaking it. Alois immediately drops his weapon, unable to hold on to it.

Ricky quickly reacted with a spear to the first hammer's face with enough force behind it to hopefully disorient it enough to get back to the safety zone with Alois and his weapon in tow. Once back he tries to to see what he can do to save Henrick, deciding to shoot the hammer's next to him hopefully distracting them enough for him to get the hell out of dodge.

"Ow, hell!" He rolls over to fill that particular forger with buckshot as he summarily backpedals out of his reach.

Pain. Waves of pain. He considered himself a master of it. Pain. This pain was nothing compared to the fires of hell. This pain was nothing. Yet...pain was always something. This pain had sent him to his KNEES! Ego check. Reminder that even the infallible could be fallible.

He grabbed the gun with his other hand and quickly moved back into the safety zone. Backing away a bit more, Alois was quick to raise his hand and heal his shoulder. Broken? Yes. But it could be fixed...

Henrik spins with the blow, backpedals, and fires his shotgun. The buckshot blows out the hammerman's knees, crotch, and stomach. It falls over without even a grunt of pain (... Well, MAYBE an "I can take it!") but this backpedaling makes Henrik pass the next hammerman. It too turns from its forge to swing a hammer at Henrik, only barely missing Henrik's knee as it cracks the stone floor.

Ricky, in the meantime, stuns the hammerman with the blunt end of his spear, dragging Alois back as Alois gropes for his weapon. The two retreat beyond the danger zone, but the hammerman keeps coming. Ricky fires a shot at the new hammerman attacking Henrik, but it seems not to notice the bullet blowing bloody chunks out of its back.

As the hammers keep falling, Henrik is the first to notice something. With every simultaneous *clang* of the hammers, the flesh of the downed hammerman writhes and starts knitting back together. After two or three, it's beginning to stand again.

Meanwhile, the other hammerman that was stunned comes after Ricky and Alois, swinging his hammer in a wide circle that grazes Ricky's chest. Alois' concentration is broken, and he fails to even partly heal his wound, as he is still on the defensive.