Duelling on the Edge
By KanaScott, Jul 13, 2005, 11:39:09 AM

Link: http://kanascott.deviantart.com/art/Duelling-on-the-Edge-20537002

"Well, my brother was on Blood 2, and he was in this certain level: edging along a ledge sticking out of the side of a skyscraper, and the first line happened, and I just said it, and he looked around at me and said "bloody hell...", and then my imagination ran away with me as I watched the rest of the level, and I had to write it down. It's only a very small chunk of the level, and I couldn't remember any more...
Only the last fight is really elaborated upon.
So here it is: small tribute to a rather old game which really does deserve its 18 rating (though I don't think my piece is 18-rated :D)
Blood 2 and all characters and creatures are © 1998 Monolith Productions Inc
Piece is © me (Apocalypsebunny)"

The dark figure silhouetted by the open doorway shuddered and fell under the hail of bullets that wracked its body. I lowered the assault rifle and directed my gaze into a shadowy corner to reassert my night-vision.
Stupid creature, I thought. Probably a Drudge. It had stepped out of the brightly-lit building into the near-blackness beyond, and been dazzled. Luckily, I had blended into this blackness, rendered invisible by its destroyed night-vision, which was handy, seeing as I'd been temporarily blinded by the yellow brightness spilling from the door. When the details in the shadows began to re-form, I resumed edging along the narrow ledge that prevented me from plummeting to the concrete floor hundreds of storeys below.
Suddenly my leather coat was illuminated along the arm by a bright green glow that cast the shadows into blackness again.
Otherworld, I thought, and half-turned on a foot and a half of concrete to see a portal retreating into darkness and a spiked creature pacing on the ledge above me on the adjacent building. I tried to still my breathing, tried to blend into the wall. The shikari could either be as dense as a sewer on a hot day or as sharp as my knife. A lot of the time, the sewer prevailed, but I didn’t want to be around on its good days.
Unfortunately, I was.
As the dying green light shone on my coat, its head snapped round with a savage growl, and it leapt towards me across the gaping void.
I swung the M16 up to meet it.
It convulsed in the rain of bullets and hit the ledge hard, limply staggering to its feet just to feel the impact of another salvo before falling into the night.
A shuddering sigh escaped my lips. It hadn’t touched me; I had been lucky. My coat bore more than a few puckered lines of stitching where a claw or spike of one of those creatures had slashed through, and my own body had many corresponding marks.
I swallowed to appease my dry throat and continued moving along the ledge. Reaching the corner, I flexed my calves and leapt over to the ledge on the adjacent building; the ledge several below the one that the Shikari had spawned on. Keeping one eye on the open door of the building some way to my left now where I had dispatched the drudge, I stalked off along the new ledge.
My vigilance proved to be a mistake, as a blue light shone some way in front of me from the top of a shortish building set between two taller buildings to my left, heralding the arrival of a Zealot. I froze, but it already knew I was there, and disappeared in a flash of blue, to reappear barely two metres behind me, swinging its sickle-ended staff at my back. I pivoted rapidly and backtracked along the precarious ledge, putting sustained M16 fire into the dark folds of its cloak. I could never tell if they were taking hits, these creatures. They just advanced and advanced and teleported if they thought things were getting boring.
Presumably they were; it disappeared again and my last few rounds zinged off the way I’d come. I half-turned again to put my back to the wall, and saw the blue flash as it appeared several metres to my right. More bullets, answered with a dark blue fireball, which I ducked. In my moment of inattention, it had flashed to nearer where I’d first seen it, floating in mid air over the void. I ran sideways along the ledge, keeping my rifle trained on it as it swooped and dived, trying to evade the bullets.
They say that the shortest distance between a point and a line is a right angle. They’re right. As soon as I was directly in front of it, it lunged towards me with blinding speed, and I dived to the left, rolling out of the way of the staff and pulling out my flare guns. Finishing on my feet, I turned rapidly and fired off four projectiles at the Zealot, which had stopped just short of the building wall.
All four met their mark, and I watched its death-throes with satisfaction. It arched back in agony in mid- air, blue light forming around it, and disappeared in a silent explosion of blue light, leaving nothing but a slightly scorched area on the wall. Holstering my flare guns, I pulled out the .50 BMG sniper and peered into the lens. I could see at least three green portals swirling in the distance through the maze of skyscrapers.
People would get hurt, people would die. It wasn’t going to be fun. But then, it never was. Not as Caleb, the undead leader of the Chosen, with the only thing to drive me my desire to rid the world of the Cabal. To do that, I would bring the world to the brink of destruction.