2017-05-13: Fertile Soil

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==============================<* Ruins of Lahan *>===============================

Lahan was once a medium-sized village of 50 or so residents. Now, however, it is a ruin, with buildings smashed and their remnants scattered and scorched. Large gouges have been torn out of the grounds, and chunks of metal lie in the small creaters dotting the landscape. To the trained eye, it is clear that the village was decimated by a battle between Gears, and a few dozen marked graves nearby indicate that someone, at least, survived it. But whoever they were, they are long gone.

A short distance from Lahan, atop a jagged cliff separated from the village by a rope bridge (currently dangling broken), a small home sits. According to signage at the base of the cliff, this is where the town doctor can be found. So that is helpful.

BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPrm1nrkZ3k
<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

Lahan. Once, it was a peaceful place. A simple place. A village largely neglected by the world. A verdant landscape dotted with quaint little stone-wrought homes. A close-knit community. A simple, country doctor.

Now all that's left is a scar on the earth.

For as ill-explained and mysterious as the Lahan Incident was, there was one thing that everyone could be certain of: there was no recovering from it. The jagged, burnt gashes furrowed into the ground, the crumbling ruins of homes where people once celebrated and argued... the series of marked graves dotting the landscape, hastily made and forgotten, all attest to this simple, crushing fact.

Visiting Lahan is like visiting a calamity, frozen in amber.

It is a scar that is not just physical; anyone could feel the weight of despair that wreathed this place, if they dared to try to sneak in; ever since its destruction, the forgotten village has been patrolled by guards from Adlehyde and Aveh alike, guarded for the safety of others too curious for their own good. It all paints a bleak picture that sinks down to the bone... and that fact could not be any truer than it is today.

It started simple. Rumors about guards not reporting in, or disappearing when it was time to change shifts. Hardly noticeable to any who really cared, Lahan had become something of a deadzone of activity practically overnight. People disappearing. Animals acting aggressive. All hallmarks easily overlooked in a land as troubled as Ignas, in a location as dangerous as Lahan -- but one that spoke of eerie similarities to what had been happening in Port Timney. Something, perhaps, worth bearing investigation.

Lahan has been a blasted land for some time now. But today? It takes this idea to wholly different levels. One simply needs to enter the space surrounding the ruinous village to feel it: even to those spiritually tone deaf, something about this place simply feels -off-. Wrong.

It's that icy feeling in your gut. The way your hairs stand on the back of your neck. The cold sweat against your palms. The way your throat dries like the desert. Something in Lahan is angrily hammering on the "flight" half of those basic, fight or flight instincts, speaking something intrinsic and instinctual to the most primal parts of the brain:

Run. Flee.

And know every ounce of pathetic and impotent rage that spawns from that act.

For those who can see, it's clear the second they step within its ichorous field. The second they feel that weighty, sickening presence. See the black and violet motes of anti-light rising from the ground like the opposite of fireflies, in stark, defiant and angry contrast to the clear sky and bright sun above. The perceptible wrongness of this place that sinks into the senses and tries to twist the soul with its simple, contagious presence.

Malevolence

It grows thicker the deeper into Lahan one gets, and it is easy to see why everything has gone so quiet -- the bloodied bodies of guards at Adlehyde's military checkpoint, armor cleaved asunder. And yet everything is quiet. Disturbingly so. Like standing within the eye of a hurricane. There is nothing in the ruins. Nothing.

Nothing, save for what can be found at the very ground zero of the incident that ripped Lahan to shreds: a sword. Nothing but a sword, the air and land of Lahan otherwise seemingly empty. A sword, with a black blade and glowing, violet edges, buried into the dirt. Nothing but a sword.

Except for how very, very wrong it feels.

<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.

Of course Malevolence would flow to a place like Lahan, Talise realizes. It's a place of recent death and devastation, and though her adventures here have been mostly limited to reading and exploring around the edges, she's seen enough to know she didn't /want/ to come here.

The equation has changed. Rumours spread. And her world may be responsible for this plague of evil emotion.

She's beginning to learn how to see it, though it's still not quite clear. To her it's just a faint purple tinge, a haziness that seems to colour everything as she ventures into the thick of the Lahan Ruins, Rastaban held in a defensive posture and her eyes constantly scanning the wreckage, alert for anything that might jump out at her or the group she's travelling with. But the danger isn't from malevolent beasts here.

It's the way her soul seems to want to seep out through her toes and seep into the earth, crying with absolute despair all the while. It's a primal feeling, a deep, animal flight instinct that she has to actively fight against. The hairs stand up on the back of her neck. Run. Flee. Slightly pale, she glances to the side, at the companion with her.

"Ida... this is wrong," she murmurs, her voice low and pinched. "Really wrong."

It takes some doing to get to Ground Zero of it all; there's debris in the way, the same debris which makes life difficult for dungeon-diggers the world over. For Talise, it's not as big an obstacle because she has her gauntlets. Ogre's power flows through her as she manhandles a huge chunk of rubble to the side, then huffs, picking up her sword again.

But it's not her sword she sees first. It's the one wedged into the turf.

The woman's mouth opens half an inch, then closes. The violet aura glowing along the edges of the weapon sends a shudder through her as she swallows hard, forcing down the urge to wretch.

"This isn's right," she whispers, though she's not sure why. Yet at the same time she's /absolutely/ sure why.

With a snap of her head to one side, then the other, she gives the surrounding area one last look over, as if expecting some other, horrifying shoe to drop. "We need to be careful," she whispers to Ida.

<Pose Tracker> Sorey has posed.

While Sorey had not yet had a chance to plumb the Otherworldly Hollow's depths and discover the horrors within, he had gotten quite a bit of information regarding something going on up in the ruined town of Lahan. The possibility that the area was teaming with malevolence was something that he wasn't going to ignore... and having another place that might be spawning Hellions was not acceptable.

And thus Sorey had set out for the destroyed town with his group. It had taken several days to make the trip, and he had not been happy to leave the work of purifying the area around Timney given all of the trouble... but better to cut this off at the pass rather than risk another attack on someplace more populated, like Adelhyde City.

But Sorey stops as they approach the city, his hand tightening on the hilt of his sword as he looks at the ruins. "They were right - it's thick here. This much malevolence is... not something I would have expected to see a few months ago," the Shepherd comments, his voice sounding tight and controlled.

He was used to the feeling of malevolence, and this wasn't the worst that he'd felt. But it was bad. Really bad. He looks to his companions and nods, indicating they should carry on into the heart of the ruined city.

As they approach the center, Sorey pauses as he sees that single sword protruding from the ground. He holds up one hand, his lacquered wooden blade sliding from its sheath as he stares at the glowing black blade. "I don't think this is the source, but the malevolence has taken root with that sword - I'm not sure if this is something that came to rest here, or if its helped to create the problem, but..."

They have to try and purify it. "Rose, Alisha, Edna, Mikleo. Get ready. I'm going to start purifying the area. I expect whatever that thing is will react once I get started."

And with that, Sorey reverses his grip on his sword and raises it into the air. It bursts into flame, a clean white and blue that casts no heat, and indeed feels... reassuring in a way. "Lahan, in the name of the Shepherd, I will now begin purifying you!"

And he slams his blade into the ground, the flame traveling down the blade and into the tainted earth. And in an expanding circle around Sorey, the horrible miasma begins to clear...

talise

<Pose Tracker> Alisha Diphda has posed.

As Alisha told Rose: she hasn't been to Lahan before.

She only knows a little about Lahan. She knows someone destroyed it, but she doesn't understand who or what. The princess has never seen a Gear. She still barely knows what one is. She does, however, know war. Hyland and Rolance have fought since when she was little, and burnt villages and scarred battlefields -- even if the nature of those fires and scars are different -- are no stranger to her.

The way everything feels wrong here, too, is no stranger to her. But, it is a newer sort of familiarity, and she cannot see the way that purple and angry yellow combine together to make Lahan feel otherworldly. She has to keep walking, jaw set, and her green eyes set forward. "This is... this is so much," she says, as she stops, to look at the sword. Her eyes drift towards it; she feels herself tense, more, and she nods.

It is hard to be ready for something that she can't see.

"I am with you, Sorey," the princess says. She glances to the side, where she thinks that Edna is. Edna is actually on her other side. Then, she looks to Rose. She nods her head. "Stay alert. This could get--"

She pauses, as she hears a voice. "...Talise?" she asks. "Then--several of us have heard. That may be for the best..."

<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.

Ethius, professional loiterer and suspiciously well-spoken vagrant, is one of the number whom dare set foot again in Lahan against all the primal warnings of the human mind. His stride is slow, but unwavering. Is he... comfortable, being in places like this? What lies behind those unspeaking eyes of his?

Standing upon a small hill for a vantage point, one hand goes over his face as he tries to survey deeper into the discolored mists that bounce around in his peripheral vision... and slowly, surely, recolor all he sees.

He pauses. Even someone like him has limits. He is a human being. Gripping onto the quarterstaff for balance, he stands without further approach for a time, surveying most the rest that move further in. The sound of his breath is muffled by the bandanna around his face.

Where he stands, he has an excellent vantage point of what Sorey's doing, as the Shepherd declares the intent to purify. He may be little better than a witness, hardly more than a bit part... but this remains his one window to understanding the nature of the haze of hatred and negative emotion that now cover this land.

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

Ida has not been to Lahan. She has never seen the aftermath of war, except in pictures, and in ancient ruins. She's grown up at a remove from it--armed conflict is a matter of economics, of units sold, of innovation. This is different.

She steps out from Talise as the last piece of rubble is moved aside. She stands at the edge of what used to be a town square, taking in a sight that would be soul-wrenching even without the taint that clings to it. She hasn't said a word since she, Talise, and Sephilia arrived. To her companions, she's the very picture of stoicism, but she wants to cry, to scream, to beg forgiveness from the dead even if she was never actually personally involved. Consciously, she knows the malevolence is to blame, but it knows the right angle to attack.

Ida stares at the sword for a moment, so still and silent she might as well be a statue. She swallows. "It's unfortunate," she says, in what is the understatement of the month. "And it seems someone's decided to add their own litter. How disgraceful." Talise has seen Ida retreat behind the public face before, but now it's essentially a shield.

Sorey is here. Ida looks at the Shepherd and his companions, watching them closely. "Granas," she whispers, signing herself. "Guard us in the face of this great evil."

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Edna has posed.

Edna did make the effort of exploring that Otherworldly Hollow, and with the information she got, she relayed it all to Sorey, in a very much Edna-like manner. But the Shepherd was informed well enough of what was within. Which is exactly why the Earth Seraph did not go to making much further efforts. Firmly dwelling inside the young man, she has not used her feet for days. Her voice echoed out to relay thoughts to him when needed, but otherwise? She was MIA. Do not speak to Edna, she will rock lance you in the butt if you think to try.

...But this? This right here, when they finally arrrive at the ruins of Lahan? She can't keep lazing inside Sorey for this, and she kmows it.

There's a pulse of golden light, and then a form fades into existence next to Alisha and Sorey. "This is just about as bad as the hollow." She murmurs quietly, icy blue eyes narrowing at the sheer repulsive feeling of Malevolence teeming through the area. She opens up her umbrella and sets it onto a shoulder, hands gripping the end tightly.

"This is horrid. Sorey, Alisha. Get to it." She speaks firmly, not wanting to bathe in this impurity for as long as she doesn't need to be.

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

Half a kilometer out from his destination, Noah Hawthorne is forced to ground-tie his horse. The massive destrier, trained for mounted combat, big enough that it fears little on the blasted surface of Filgaia -- with hooves the size of dinner plates shod in knife-edged shoes -- balks, eyes wide enough to show the whites all around the liquid brown, and refuses to take another step in that direction.

He leaves the paint behind, thumbing free the catch that keeps his ARMs in either holster low at his hips, though he's halfway across the remaining distance when he begins to wonder if that isn't a bad idea: the sensations emanating from Lahan are a shot of raw electricity over edgy nerves, exactly the kind of jumpy mood that gets the wrong people shot in a crisis. Unusual for him, too; he's lost count of the number of eerie places he's been and terrible things he's seen, but this gets under his skin in a whole new way, only familiar to him because of his recent delve into the Hollows. It had made him nauseous then, and it makes him nauseous now.

He's trailing the party clipping along at the heels of the Shepherd; no one in Timney this week could have failed to notice the frenetic activity around the lecture at the Inn, and his curiosity is the stuff of legends. Halfway to the place where the infection begins he starts to perspire. It ought to be humid on hot skin in weather like this. It's not. It's chilly, clammy. Sick. He can't see the full extent of the nastiness there, but there are faint distortions in the visible world.

Broad shoulders set in a tense, stubbornly squared line, and he lengthens his pace to catch up.

<Pose Tracker> Rosaline Calice has posed.

"I see it," Rosaline says, her voice trembling, as she approaches the ruined village. "The Malevolence, I mean. I can... I can see it."

She looks at Gwen, her mouth half-hanging open. "It's just like you said." Then, to Xantia: "Let's be careful. It's going to try to mess with our heads, but it's not us, okay? It's not us."

She came to the village with Xantia and Gwen, the former presumably hitching a ride on the Super Courier's cart while Rosaline is riding on her own, nameless black horse. She got off as they approached the village, since sadly, her companion would likely be a liability here.

Her plan was to join up with Talise and Ida once they arrived. The reunion occurs but silently. Everyone here is keenly feeling the wrongness permeating the place. But here's Sorey already, working his magic. Whatever he's doing might not be within her precise spiritual wheelhouse, but it's worked so far and he's seemed like a good person. She'll support him.

She clutches her crucifix, breathlessly muttering prayers.

<Pose Tracker> Rose has posed.

MUCH EARLIER

"Missy, the Shepherd's looking for you," Eguille says, as he peeks into one of the Sparrowfeathers' caravans looking for Rose, catching her in the process of sharpening a dozen sets of knives.

"Oh? What does Sorey want?" she asks.

"Something about travel. To Lahan? You should go. For apologies."

"Apologies? I've already forgiven him!"

"That's not what I -"

"It's YOU I'm angry at, Eguille! You knew I'd freak out!"

"I don't think that's the real issue here -"

"WELL /I/ DO!" Rose grumps, before shaking her head and smiling chipperly. "But! Fine, fine, you handle these, or ask Rosh to, I'll be right along. Is my new belt ready, by the way?"

"No. You'll have to use pockets. Like everyone else."

"Dangit."

NOW

Rose was alongside Sorey, Alisha and the Shepherd's ghostly entourage, acting like nothing happened at all. She seemed a bit more calm than before, so Sorey might find solace in the fact that if nothing else, the Event has gotten her to stop looking around nervously like she's always being watched. Or maybe she's just doing her best to ignore the fact there are Seraphim with him.

She has no utility belt. Still hasn't replaced it.

Lahan is spooky for sure. Rose hadn't explored it, only traveled somewhat close to it. The horses' reactions when going near had always kept the Sparrowfeathers from going through as a shortcut, and now she understands why.

"Geez, um... Sorey, I don't know what Malevolence FEELS like, but this place is giving me bad vibes. Like, really bad vibes. We shouldn't be here bad. Are you sure this is a good idea?"

Oh, who is she kidding, Sorey is already doing his thing. Her eyes switch from him to the blade planted in the ground, even as others eye it. She wanders closer to touch it, especially in defiance of Sorey's warning. "What, this? Come on, it's just a sword. You said Malevolence comes from people. Can't we just pick this up and move it somewhere else?"

> ACT: Attempt to pick up sword.

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.

Ragnell is, technically speaking, not part of Sorey's group. She hasn't made a pact with Sorey, hasn't become a Sub-Lord under Lailah, is not even on the most stellar of terms with most of the group--but, in her view, Malevolence is everyone's problem, the Shepherd's most of all. Besides, as a Seraph, it's not really something she can ignore, quite literally.

The cherry on top is that she's just naturally curious.

So, some distance away from Sorey and his companions, but within sight (for both groups, for whomever cares to pay attention to her), Ragnell travels to Lahan. The Malevolence is thick here, and when she steps into its domain, it hits her like a punch to the gut: run, run, /run/. Ragnell grits her teeth, presses a hand to a hat already burned away. Then she keeps going.

Nobody tells *her* to run. Not even a dead town infested with Malevolence.

It's easy to see when Sorey gets started: he stabs the ground, and the purifying blue flames begin to burn away. Ragnell stays tense, glancing around at the area while also keeping him in view. She anticipates that something will happen. Something always does, doesn't it? She recognizes some of the people who've shown up here as well: Ida, Ethius, Talise, and so on. It's a regular party in here. One side of her mouth quirks up in mirthless humor; then she backs up some away from the core of the group and waits.

She won't have to wait long, all considered, given that Rose's first action is to attempt to pull the black blade out of the ground.

<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.

Jacqueline had been meaning to come here with her wagon, in order to properly bring supplies. But as she drew closer to Lahan, her horse became...uneasy, and hesitant...as if feeling the danger within - the same thing many others had likely experienced.

There was nothing for it, then. She would have to proceed on foot. But... as she went further in, she felt it. An oppressive atmosphere all around her. The innermost parts of her mind screamed at her to turn and flee but...

She couldn't.

She knew there were people here who might need her help.

Jacqueline reaches into her bags and pulls out a potion, downing the lot. It's enough to ward off the physical effects, though the mental ones still linger...and almost seem to intensify in response.

She shuts her eyes and shakes her head, as if to drive this thought away.

"This is...more horrible than the last time I came here..." She says, finally approaching the group that seems to be building up.

It was...a rather obvious statement, but right now she just needed to speak to take her mind off the thoughts that had begun plaguing her.

<Pose Tracker> Sephilia Lampbright has posed.

Sephilia has tagged along with Talise and Ida on this journey. Almost certainly not over any objections--the girl's got better at sneaking since the first time she met her friends, and it's only now that she comes out of hiding. She can see the Malevolence, she can feel its wrongness...

"Um...maybe I shouldn't have come after all," she says from behind her friends. "But something tells me that sword is Bad News, with capital letters..." The girl is nervous, but she has Chauncey with her, and she's not looking like she's about to cry, or flee...yet, at least.

<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.


The Vile Fiends didn't have to hear the rumors to be drawn here. They knew. The depths of Baticul Grotto showed them quite vividly there was something to be found here - in that pit full of spiritual and physical decay. A mass grave of people and animals from this region.

Unlike the Shepherd's party, maybe they couldn't do anything about that, but that didn't mean they felt like they could leave it alone.

The trek took a few days, to come close to that scar in the earth. He couldn't see the malevolence- but he sure could feel it.

"Hiro- why did we have to come here? It was bad enough last time." The small whimper had him slowly draw a flying pink dragonet onto his shoulder. "Hey- we came out of that okay Ruby." Mostly okay, "Just stay close to me." He remembers how she reacted to the swell of malevolence in the grotto. This was going to be tough for her.

It was tough enough for him and his sensitivity was still relatively low- even so it felt like his thoughts and stomach were swimming, making him diaphoretic and a little pale. Every so often he stepped wrong, had to regain his balance. He stole a glance towards Lucia, wondering how tough it must be for her, bearing all of that malevolence through no fault of her own.

"Lucia - how are you doing? How does this place feel like to you?"

Around the cliffside, there's several voices which are indistinct to him, including the pronouncement of purification. "Sounds like there's someone here... Jean, Lemina! I'm going on ahead to check it out." He calls back towards the others. Instead of creeping up though, he walks forward a little unsteadily- like he's about to walk into the open.

Which would put him right smack dab where the Shepherd is conducting his purification ritual.

Unless someone stops him of course.


<Pose Tracker> Lucia has posed.

To be in Lucia's presence is a fairly underwhelming experience for those who cannot sense Malevolence, but for those who can, well--

--it's fair to say that it was good preparation for this place.

And that is, perhaps, what makes it especially unsettling to see her now; normally a mobile nexus of dark essence, here she seems almost unremarkable, in the sense that there's so much background noise that she fits right in. In a disturbing way it is an opportunity for those who have witnessed her in the past, to experience her exactly as she is; a tall woman, in strange clothing, with a stranger expression.

Her eyes are alight with some sort of terrible intensity, her lips set in a line filled with enough stone for a statue. Ten statues. She is electrified and blank at the same time, a soulless juxtaposition.

(Those who know her better would instead recognize a particular kind of impotent distress that she is unable to clearly express. Misery rolls off her in waves nearly the equal of all the horror here, even without supernatural flavoring.)

When Hiro looks at her, she looks back, and he finds that she's come straight along with him. They're walking side-by-side, straight towards the Shepherd and his allies, and, not incidentally, the weapon through which much horror flows.

"We must retrieve the sword," she demands of her companion with the sort of abrupt urgency that is her hallmark, and, blue hair and red robes flowing, makes for it at exactly the same synchronistic moment as Rose.

<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.

Xantia has been in Lahan before. Post-destruction only, as far as she can remember, anyway. It didn't feel that great to be there then. The ghosts of the past felt almost tangible, even to someone as low on the spiritual sensitivity scale as she is. Thankfully, she met up with others and didn't have to deal with it alone, which made things a lot easier.

Today, things are different. She came here with others to begin with, for one thing. For another, she isn't here for personal reasons, but far more pressing matters. Rosaline has been her source of information regarding the crisis of Malevolence plaguing the area, for the most part, with Gwen being a second source this time around. Although she did her share of crazed animal suppression in the area, most of the greater picture eluded her until her Ethos friend and the 'Letter Lady' brought her up to speed. And so she came here, to investigate a place that evidence had pointed towards.

Well, maybe not investigate so much. You don't bring Xantia to investigate things. You bring her when it's highly likely that things will need punching. But even she understands that this is serious.

It may be difficult to tell, given that she arrives her usual cheerful self, wearing a smile and waving at people she recognizes, following Rosaline along to Talise's group. At least she raises the optimism quota quite a bit.

Her eyes linger on Sorey for a moment, seeing as he's about to do That Thing He Does. She's only distracted from this when Sephilia speaks up, chiming in, "I have no idea why so many people are here, but that's good, don't you think? If there's a lot of us, we're sure to be able to handle whatever's going on!"

<Pose Tracker> Maya Schrodinger has posed.

The Scion of Schrodinger has a very different relationship to the twisted force of darkness that hangs over Lahan like a foul and tangible shadow than, say, the Shepherd would. For one, she has no divine light with which to cleanse or even combat it: the weapons she wields are ill-suited to such a task and the magic she knows is brash and rudimentary, even if it is terrifyingly destructive. To destroy is very different than to purify, after all. Consider further that the fel powers of Malevolence constantly jam and interfere with her abilities, so dependent upon the force of will that they are, and Maya is a very poor choice indeed for an ally in standing firm against such an arcane threat.

So why is it that she's here, then?

A terrifying feeling, a pull, a need. Something hard to define, a tightness in the chest that led her to this point. Is it out of some poorly-planned desire to do good? Did she simply follow whatever makeshift train trailed in the Shepherd's wake on his journey here? Drawn to the presence of her friends, dare we call them that, in Hiro and Lemina?

That's something Maya should consider answering as she feels her vision throb and blur as she stares at a black-bladed sword jammed into the dirt in the centre of a town she has no business being in, standing atop the shattered shell of a ruined house. Something feels very wrong, and the veteran gunslinger looks like she ought to be in bed sleeping off her ills, not trapsing around the wilderness chasing glory.

<Pose Tracker> Virginia Maxwell has posed.

In the midst of what was once proudly called Lahan floats ...

A shimmering violet butterfly.

It floats, aloft on a bed of gentle breezes free of worries, seemingly unfettered by the thick, cloying sense of Malevolence that grips the air. And where one follows its trail, it heads towards some of the highest portions of Lahan, a nigh-broken tower that was once used as a weathervane along with a water storage, to one side of the blast zone, in the opposite direction from where the sword choked with Malevolence lies.

The butterfly cascades along, and lands at the gloved fingertips of a woman seated at the tallest portion of town, upon the weathervane.

A woman who's been missing from Adlehyde since a few days ago, abruptly. A woman with long white hair, tied into a side-braid with a black ribbon worn as a headband. A woman in a long, extravagant dress of opulent make, with an umbral brown and dark cream colouration. A familiar young woman, gazing down upon you with shimmering eyes filled with a child-like innocence... a child-like innocence, filled with cruelty. The eyes who gazed forth to seek the world out there, spread aloft on white wings higher than anyone ever could...

The eyes that flew too close to the sun, too quickly. Undeniably, it is Virginia Maxwell, despite her colours.

She lets go, and the landscape immediately distorts -- a sickly feeling rather distinctly identifiable as Malevolence overwhelms the area. The floor rapidly shifts from charred grassland to checkered marble, black and white. Spiral rose towers streak haphazardly into the skies, boldly defying legible and plausible geometry. Parapets and ramparts burst inbetween them, caked in frosted icing and stacked with fluffy red velvet layers and topped with giant strawberries, evoking the image of a child's dreamlike castle. Intricate coils of delicate filigrees lace the tower she sits on, which hangs with strange decorations -- stars, flowers, a crescent moon, like a child's mobile.

Around her dreamlike tower, the ground rapidly distorts, limbs bursting out of the ground and heads cracking as vile creatures rise to adopt a form suited for her:

Toys.

Twisted hussars with tall helmets wielding bayonet rifles, a giant teddy bear with a warped eye and an awful claw, a rocking horse whose eyes are stained with bloodstained tears. They surround her, and she giggles brightly as she spreads her arms and lets the butterfly fly into the distance.

These are undoubtedly Hellions, minor ones, but Hellions nonetheless.

"Maaaaaaaa~yaaaaaaa~! Hiiiiii~roooooo! Jeeeeeean! Lemmmmyyyyy! Heeeeey!"

She calls out ringingly, her voice free of worry and chipperly so, waving both her arms. Yet, there's a foreign quality to the timbre of her throat. Something that so subtly warps her voice and makes it unpleasant to hear.

"Ahhh, I didn't know you all'd come all the way out here...

I know it was somewhat sudden, but I'm okay now."

There's a ringing and amorous giggle as she breathily gasps, and spreads her arms once more and twirls around in a whirl of skirts.

"Isn't it all beautiful?

I've finally found the courage to look, Maya.

This is what I found, deep within my heart.

I don't have to be a burden to you anymore."

Her eyes shimmer, positively laced with the darkness of Malevolence as she cups her hands to her cheeks.

"I don't have to be afraid anymore......"

Morgan Newkirk has arrived.

DC: Virginia Maxwell switches forms to Dark Dreamer Virginia!
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

"I knew it was bad, but this is just..." The courier, Gwen Whitlock, is there, having arrived with Xantia and Rosaline. She regards the landscape of Lahan with a grim frown, having already taken off her glove and rolled up her sleeve to allow the Mockingbird ESR to stand ready. "If I knew what was gonna happen here the last time I delivered a package here, maybe I woulda' stayed a bit longer." Her eyelids weigh heavy over blue-grey eyes. Though, maybe...

No. It was better that she didn't know, right? If she knew, it would have weighed even heavier on her heart. Ignorance is bliss, right? A silver lining.

She looks to Rosaline. "So you can see it now too? I mean, I'm kinda glad I ain't alone, but at the same time, this has got to make things harder on ya." As they join Ida and Talise's group, Gwen looks over everyone. "Ah, there's Sorey and the gang down there!" Her face lights up, silently pumping a fist in the air.

Then she sees Rose, going towards the sword. "H-hey! Miss!" If Rose doesn't hesitate, Gwen breaks into a small jog, though the courier's isn't certain she'd be able to intervene with Rose before she can reach the sword. "Let's not go touchin' things!"

The ground shifts beneath her boots as she runs, causing the courier to stop. ".... What..." Gwen tilts her gaze upwards towards the source of the voice. "... G-ginny?" Her body sags as she stands still. "Ginny, why are you...?"

<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.

The strange white-haired man with the half-hidden face lowers his hand away from said face as the landscape unnaturally shifts. Changes. They don't coalesce clearly into the patterns the more spiritually attuned would see, but the sensations. The vague shapes...

His head moves rapidly to size up all that are here, as though attempting to cling to some tether of familiarity that he could confirm persisting between then, and now.

"This is Lahan." The words come out evenly, in that measured tone as always. It's unnatural - it should be tinged with fear, yelling with denial, if he's capable of seeing even a fraction of what some of the others around him are. He knows nothing about the strange spinning girl ahead of them, or the names that are being called out. His stake - curiosity - does not tether him as deeply.

"This is a place of tragedy." His hand goes back to his face, a developing Resonance finding itself at a stalemate with whatever mental fortitude has allowed him to journey as deep as he has. He has been to this fallen village twice. He... knows how it should appear. Whatever is happening...

"What is she doing?" He asks of no one. He's not expecting to be heard. He probably didn't even mean to ask it out loud.

<Pose Tracker> Lemina Ausa has posed.

Lemina, unfortunately, has been mostly busy wth some of her own explorations; it's best if the Vile Fiends aren't together one hundred percent of the time, given the constant pursuit, and all... ... buuuut they're still a team, and ultimately, Lemina likes spending time with her friends!

Even scary time. Like now! Lemina, as an experienced mage, is among the more sensitive of her party -- and even with her experience, she feels a little unnerved -- maybe even sick. She looks to Lucia frequently, hoping that the other woman knows better what to do or how to approach this. ... each time she looks, she spots that distress and begins to shift uncomfortably.

Things only get worse when she's actually addressed. The call of that familiar voice makes her turn her head /straight/ up toward it, ignoring even the sword that Lucia says they need to get. Her hand moves down toward the gear she wears at her side.

Her hand quivers. Bow, or staff? Bow, or...

Her fingers wrap around her staff, and she takes a firm step toward Virginia. "No..." she says, quietly at first. "No!" she insists, with a little more force. There's no snide comments about Virginia and hair bleach, no comments about what she /should/ be afraid of -- just the same monosyllabic rejection.

<Pose Tracker> Jean has posed.

It's not strange to Jean, to see death.

She hasn't shared why with her friends, but seeing these ruins, the marked graves, they all signify things familiar to her. The awful feeling in the air is something as well. Whatever it is, whatever it has been...

It speaks the same language as what she knows. Pure destruction. Raw devastation.

But it's more like what she saw in the Grotto, too. Jean, too, feels ice in her gut, though she walks as if nothing has happened. She looks around carefully, not ignoring the hair standing up on the back of her neck but not letting herself be slowed by it, either. But she doesn't only see and feel something tickling at her fear centers. No, there's...

There's that /feeling/, that presence. Is it Malevolence? That's not something Jean knows muh about, but she forces herself to breathe in what feels like horrid air, looks over her companions and what they're approaching, hands down at her sides.

She could be a perfectly ordinary dancer otherwise, looking carefully, because who wouldn't look carefully? Maybe in better circumstances she'd be offering the party a joke or two. But these are not better cirumstances.

By instinct though, her steps are silent, even given her jewelry.

And she sees ahead--

"Hiro!" Bounding from the back of the group, Jean /did/ hear the pronouncement, and she rushes upward to grip Hiro's arm and Ruby's mouth, pulling both back bodily. "Shh!" She hisses. "That's the Shepherd!" She'll let go only once both are quiet, at which point she'll lan around them to have a look.

Murmuring, "Sorry about tha--"

Lucia is just walking along. Jean's shoulders drop. "Why didn't I see that coming...?"

"Come on."

Jean's sensed it, the Malevolence. But she hasn't said a word about it to Lucia.

But right now isn't a matter of the journey. It isn't a matter of old difficulties. It's about the butterfly skirting at her vision as she starts to move out after Lucia, as she stteps out to see a familiar young woman with such innocence. A tower, a castle, a...

Jean's eyes widen. "Virginia!?" This finally gets shock out of her, before the voices start--well, the voice. Her own name is called among them. But that weird quality to her voice registers, unsettles.

"What did they do to you...?" She stares, and shakes her head. "Hiro, we have to help her. We can't leave her like this! Everyone--"

She stops and looks to Lemina, looks to Lucia again.

<Pose Tracker> Morgan Newkirk has posed.


"Wrong doesn't even begin to cover what this mess is," Morgan had tagged along with others. Partly out of curiosity. Party out of worry. Party because Noah owed him money. Or he owed Noah money. They were kind of vague on that one. Regardless the fox came along, and now? Now he almost wishes that he hadn't.

The power, the twisted mockery of what reality had become sickens him. Slowing his steps for just a moment as he rests the raise to see the brutal remains of the town. His long legs stretch to quicken his pace soon after as he moves into the ruins after the others. He wanted to see what this Shepard could do. Espicially after the talk he had the other night.

Still though this wrongness seeps into the bones. Twists up the mind. His ears are flat back. His tail tense as he stalks the streets. Like Noah he keeps one hand close to his weapons.

The other hand is a weapon, made obvious as the ARM begins to glow with briliant lines of electric blue energy as he flexes the fingers on his gauntlet.

There is about to be a workout he gets the feeling.

And then as the ceremony starts...

"Aw Ginny, just what did ya go and do ta yerself." A beatpause as he angles a glance at Noah. "...and just what did you get me into again?"

Look. He's got to blame someone at least.


<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

Guard us in the face of this great evil.

"This evil is yours."

The voice comes suddenly. Booming but muffled into an indistinctly metallic din that makes it difficult to discern the identity of, yet ringing out with the crystal clarity of someone with resounding and single-minded purpose. Some gathered would know that voice for its unknowableness as soon as it speaks. Many more still, not in the slightest. But it comes. And it comes not from above--

-- but from ahead.

A figure. In white, heavy armor. There where once was empty space, standing arms crossed at the fringes of that impact crater. Their face is covered by a horned, faceless helm, and yet the weight of their stare is practically palpable even in the midst of this choking miasma of Malevolence. And as they appear, Sorey's sword drives into the earth. The purifying flames billow outwards. The Malevolence starts to recede, and yet that knight looks wholly unconcerned as they stand beyond the sword. Rose begins to reach...

"You seek salvation from on high. You will not find it. Your weakness of will merely grants strength to your own failings."

Lucia begins to reach alongside Rose.

"Your failings merely grant strength to your own evils."

Fingers stretch. They touch upon a blackness darker than pitch, colder than the depths of Arctica.

"You who have brought the seed of Calamity here -- know its burden."

And as the Flames of Purification reach out -- as the would-be Lord of Calamity touches that blade...

... something reacts.

Malevolence billows outward, intensifying -- as if growing stronger within Lucia's presence the very second she touches that blade until it LASHES out, crashing against those blue flames like a violent tide. Foul energy lashes like a whip around the sword, catching Rose and Lucia within its fervor -- within the blossoming birth of deeply-rooted fear that grips this place. The violet around that blade pulses visibly, like the beat of the heart... and every pulse just plunges Malevolence deep into the earth with an invigorated passion spurned by -- Sorey's flames? Lucia's touch? It's hard to say. But what is clear is...

"Know your sins. Do not look away from them."

... -something- reacts. And reaches out, with a voice more in feeling, in dreadful, fearful -feeling- than words.

<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.
((((pulse)))

                                                                                                I am cowardice...

((((pulse)))

                                                                Lost souls, trapped by fears unconfronted...

((((pulse)))

                                A rusted blade...

((((PULSE)))

The Malevolence condenses. All of it, like a hurricane, palpable enough to be felt like violent winds billowing outward in blood-curdling wails of pain and fear and helplessness and FURY, funneling down like a vortex towards that sword. The dead of this place, the souls that man forgot, are given flesh in the form of impurity, all of them bound down into a massive, skeletal hand that wraps its creaking digits of black, withered bone around a sword forged from those trapped souls. Large and skeletal and pervading an intense sense of wrongness, a Hellion wrought entirely of Malevolence and damned souls emerges from the earth, its empty eyesockets blazing as violet as the horns that bedeck its skeletal head. It emerges, trembling with terror, Malevolence flowing like exposed blood along its skeletal body and armor that looks forged from the scrap of destroyed Gears, two swords clenched taut in its grasp: one, a rusted and chipped katana, the other a sleak blade that would look more at home in the grasping glove of a Gebler soldier.

And through its head pierces that black sword with its violet edges, still pulsing its wrongness... bleeding interminably and -violently- into the surrounding landscape in a way that will doubtlessly start to spread past Lahan if it isn't curtailed. Soon.

Have you the strength to free me...?

And through it all, the white knight watches, impassive and inscrutable, arms crossed as they stare down from on high as if nothing in this world could reach them. As if they were nothing but an arbiter of a trial -- untouchable, and unknowable.

---

O B J E C T I V E

Brave it Out

Defeat the Sword Dancer in 8 Turns!

B O N U S   O B J E C T I V E

Defile the Trial

Engage K.K. and do 30% Damage to Their Health!


DC: K.K. switches forms to The Wandering Geohound!
<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.

Talise never thought she'd be this relieved to see Sorey. As the Shepherd sets to work and she's called out to, she nods towards Alisha tensely, shifting and lowering her sword for a moment, entertaining a private spark of relief that the one here is the princess and not someone else. "Yeah... yeah, we heard. We need to stick close... we're all in grave danger. I can feel it."

For just a moment, she takes a hand off her sword, moving it to Ida's shoulder and giving the woman a reassuring squeeze. She smiles at her, wanly, wishing she felt it. Then Rosaline draws near, and Talise welcomes her with a nod.

"Stick close," she advises.

Her eyes grow wide as Rose begins to do something incredibly stupid -

- and then Virginia Maxwell of all people, someone Talise barely knows but at least recognizes as decent people, makes her presence known and changes /everything./

Spiral towers tear out of the earth and twisted Hellions emerge into being; Talise is seeing them with increasing clarity now. "Althena's light," Talise hisses, eyes tightening at the outer corners as drops back and plants a heel, swinging Rastaban into a ready stance. "I don't remember her being a psycho. Maybe strange, but--"

Something clicks in her mind; she gasps, her eyes sparking with a sudden, horrifying realization. (Is this--)

She has no time to react anymore. The earth tears open. Malevolence coalesces. A vast foeman hurtles from the earth, skeletal and imposing. And yet it's not the first thing Talise saw. Her eyes snap past the Sword Dancer, towards the faceless figure in armoured white.

Her teeth click together. "Damn it, I'm not going to play games with you," she growls, then looks back over her shoulder towards Ida and Sephilia. "Stay back and take care of that big one," she urges in a hiss. "I'm going to end this once and for all."

Talise doesn't wait around for a reply. She sprints towards KK, accelerating, then kicking off with a short leap, brandishing her sword in both hands and sweeping it out to her right. As she covers the distance, she raises her voice and shouts. "I'm not waiting around for salvation from somewhere else, K.K.! /I'm doing it!/"

Hurtling in, she raises her voice. "RUOOOOOOOOOAH!!" she roars as she wheels her arms back and lifts Rastaban, lunging at the White Knight her(him?)self. The gleaming blade sings as she unloads with a heavy stroke, aiming to slam the blade and her body weight into the Knight and hopefully end this before it even begins.


GS: Talise Gianfair has attacked K.K. with Ten Thousand Relentless Streams!
GS: Talise Gianfair has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Sorey has posed.

Well, there wasn't a reaction quite yet, so Sorey is glad that things are going well so fa-

"ROSE!" he shouts, staring in disbelief. "Don't touch that, it's not what it appears to be-"

And from the sword... evil. A considerable amount of it. Sorey hasn't felt anything like this in quite a long time. It is certainly something dark and evil - a creature of darkness and death that is certainly beyond anything that Sorey has faced before. But he can tell that much of the malevolence is focused on this thing.

"Malevolence may be created by people, but it can seep into the land itself," Sorey comments to Rose as he pulls his sword from he ground. The expanding purified area stops for the moment, but he can feel the waves of malevolence flowing off of this thing. It certainly isn't going to be easy... and then there was that other figure.

"Alisha, Edna, are you with me? We're going to need to try and keep that thing from hurting Rose or anyone else if possible." He sees the white knight, but... as much as he might like to take a swing at K.K., dealing with the source of the malevolence here is the most important thing. "And once we take it down, that should hopefully solve the malevolence problem in this area."

There was just too much going on right now, and the amount of malevolence is overwhelming his senses to a certain degree. Sorey isn't able to take note of what happened to that strange girl, or even that Lucia and the others were there.

Instead he levels his flaming sword, and shouts at the Sword Dancer. "I'm not sure what dark power has bound you here, but as the Shepherd, I will do what I must to set you and this land free of malevolence!"

And with that, Sorey braces himself, lowers his head, and charges towards the massive skeletal construct. Part of him knows there are others behind him... but even if he was alone, he'd have to fight this monster. He leaps into the air, bringing his flaming sword around in a wide arc towards the Sword Dancer's torso in a whirling motion. "STRIKING FANG!"

As he leaps away, he aims to drop down near to Rose. And he looks at her with a smile. "Sorry, this was a... bit more than I had been expecting to find out here."

GS: Sorey has attacked Sword Dancer with Striking Fang!
GS: Sorey has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Rosaline Calice has posed.

Rosaline can't help but have a tiny smile when Xantia manages to be optimistic even when the very air surrounding them feels hostile to their presence. But then, maybe she hasn't noticed.

"I'll be okay," she tells Gwen, "This isn't my first time, after all." There's something resembling steel in her voice, albeit still a rather shaky kind.

She sees a butterfly pass. Here? How? But wait--

The ground shifts. Twisted, dreamlike imagery superimposes itself over reality, though not in a way that completely resolves to Rosaline's spiritually-inclined but untrained eyes. In a way, that only makes it worse.

"Virginia?!" There is anguish in Rosaline's voice, even though she has only met the young woman once. She didn't... She didn't seem /all there/, to be perfectly honest, but she still seemed like someone whose heart was in the right place. "What in the world could have HAPPENED to her?"

But she's got no time to ponder that as a wave of unberable feeling washes over her, and a new threat makes itself known. And off in the distance... The white knight she was told about.

People closer to Ginny make their way to her tea party. Talise and friends keep their eyes on the prize, which by all appearances is the source of all this. "Everyone, please be careful!" She says, drawing her ARMs and aiming them in the Sword Dancer's general direction.

"Who are you to say this about salvation from on high?" she calls back, in a way that would be defiant if it wasn't barely above her normal speaking level (and she speaks very quietly).

And then Talise Leeroys right into the Knight. Oh no. Oh no!

GS: Rosaline Calice has attacked Sword Dancer with Esdras and Judith!
GS: Rosaline Calice has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Rose has posed.

If only Gwen hadn't stopped, the courier might have been able to catch Rose's arm or block her access to the blade. If she could have seen the warping changes brought about by Virginia's arrival, she might have paused. If she had but recognized Lucia it might have made her pause... or go faster, it's a coinflip's chance of either. Not even the appearance of the White Knight halts her.

But you had better believe that once this is over she'll be remembering his words and appearance very vividly. Right now she's a bit distracted by... well. What happens.

Lucia's touch, or Sorey's flames, who knows, causes the area to be engulfed in Malevolence. Rose is at the center of it, caught in the blast of darkness. She's far too shaken by this to realize Lucia might have triggered it, especially as she gets blasted by the emergence of the Hellion, landing by Sorey and Alisha without an ounce of catching herself.

She feels the cowardice within the blade. The fears, the rust, the regret, the sorrow, the anger, it's a rush of emotions that aren't her own. Rose clutches her chest, she screams, and she has no idea what's taking over her. There aren't HER memories. These aren't HER feelings. But what they spur inside is all hers.

You're afraid if this is all true you can't carry on Brad's dream anymore. That you can't make the world a better place if it's out of your control like this. "SHUT UP!"

What's a pair of knives in a world of supernatural evil? "/SHUT UP/!"

Further away, watching, Dezel -feels- that. It's awful. But it stops, as quickly as it started, as from under his hat and hair the Seraph sees his Vessel do what she does best.

Rose rises to her feet, still clutching her stomach with one arm, as the other pulls a knife out of its sheath. Especially as Sorey gets closer to her. She doesn't want to seem weak in front of him. Why is that? She's not sure. "Sorey, princess, I'm... I'm fine. Really, it's fine." A look ahead, at the best now standing before them, massive, covered in armor made from scraps-- invisible. Terrifyingly invisible. She can almost make out the skeletal shape, but that makes it even scarier.

Nope, she is NOT FINE after all. Not fine at all.

The Seraphim present, at least, will finally get a good look at Rose's Resonance. It's unusually high, and her fighting spirit in the face of that Malevolence was exceptional. That wave could've probably immediatly turned someone lesser, but she's standing back on her feet!

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Edna has posed.

Edna facepalms.

"Leave it to the scaredy cat to mess things up." She mutters just as soon as the malevolence begins to grow in reaction to... something. Was it the Lord of Calamity? Or was it Rose? Maybe it was simply waiting for the right moment? She couldn't be sure. But what she did know was that this whole thing had gotten a whole lot worse. The Earth Seraph calmly lifts her umbrella and closes it up. This isn't the time to be shielding herself from the day's rays. No, she was one hundred percept sure that it was going to be time to fight soon.

Blue eyes stare upward as the malevolence swirls upward into a storm of impurity, condensing and taking form. That of... a skeleton. A rather large and imposing one. A Sword Dancer. ...She's heard tell of these fiends in her time. But this just may be the first time that she's had to face one.

Edna sighs, tapping the toe of her foot to the ground and quietly limbering up. "Should have known traveling with the Shepherd would lead to things like this." Despite saying that, there's a smirk on her face. Sorey, you owe me a crablette when this is over." Yes, she's charging him for her help. Wonderful girl, ain't she?

She gets serious immediately after that and eyes the idly figure in white armor at the back, then the Sword Dancer. ".... ....." Logically, the threat in front of them should be dealt with first. Leave the staring fool at the back for later. That decided, she lifts a leg....

And then stomps the ground.

Several earth spikes burst upwards under the skeletal fiend, aiming to trip it up as well as test its footing. All the while, she gives Rose a look. "..... ....." That girl... actually has really high Resonance?

No way. She's so scared of 'ghosts'. That's ridiculous. Really?

She was going to have to have a nice talk with Sorey after this was over. Beyond the crablette. And if they live. That too.

GS: Seraph Edna has attacked Sword Dancer with Earth Spear!
GS: Seraph Edna has completed her action.
GS: K.K. guards a hit from Talise Gianfair's Ten Thousand Relentless Streams for 52 hit points!
GS: Disrupt! Statuses applied to K.K.!
GS: Sword Dancer critically Guards a hit from Rosaline Calice's Esdras and Judith for 17 hit points!
GS: Sword Dancer guards a hit from Seraph Edna's Earth Spear for 72 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Alisha Diphda has posed.

"Rose!" Alisha cries out. "Don't! That--"

Her cry is cut short as Lucia appears. Clad in her red robes, striding so tall, and with that terrifyingly calm look on her face, Alisha freezes up. "The... the Lord of Calamity," she gasps, softly. "Then--then this must be her--"

But then she catches a glimpse of the first Hellion that she can find here. The steel of a hussar's helm, shining too brightly -- and she turns to stare at it. It shifts, then, into a more mundane form -- and she blinks her eyes, like they may have played a trick on her, until she hears Virginia's voice.

She turns to look at her and stares. "She... she became a--" She turns, to look back at Lucia. Her expression screws up, changing from confusion to something approaching anger in the blink of an eye. Before the accusation can be made, though, a voice cuts through all of that.

"This evil is yours."

The princess turns, sharply, to look at the white knight and hear their words. And then, there is a terrible pulse from within the blade. She sees and feels it, as the Hellion forms: a Sword Dancer, made of bones, broken village, and the remains of war. Her green eyes widen even more sharply, pupils nearly pinpricks. "Rose!" she cries out, and she rushes to close the difference. She looks at her, then nods. "Sorey! I am with you!"

She doesn't, yet, see where Talise went.

She looks, instead, towards the Sword Dancer. As Sorey rushes in to engage, she nods -- teeth gritted together -- and shoots towards its side. The princess throws a mailed foot out, turning on it, and then her blade swings in a sharp, whirling arc into that mass of armor, before she dances back -- and one of Edna's earth spikes shoots up.

"Well-aimed, Lady Edna!"

GS: Alisha Diphda has attacked Sword Dancer with Rending Strike!
GS: Alisha Diphda has completed her action.
GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Sorey's Striking Fang for 124 hit points!
GS: Sword Dancer guards a hit from Alisha Diphda's Rending Strike for 72 hit points!
DC: Sword Dancer switches forms to The First Dance - Cowardice!
<Pose Tracker> Sephilia Lampbright has posed.

Sephilia stares at the candy castle..."I know that girl, I think," she mutters--but there's other things going on soon after. Like Talise charging at the figure--

"Is that...him? Oh no!" But, Talise has trusted Sephy with being her backup, with keeping the big Sword Dancer thing busy, and Sephy is going to do her job because that is what grown ups do. And Sephilia isn't a kid! So, out comes Chauncey into battle configuration, and Sephilia points at the Sword Dancer. "Chauncey!" she cries. "Let's get this guy! Chauncey Chop!" The doll lumbers forward and strikes, no fear evident in his button eyes.

GS: Sephilia Lampbright has attacked Sword Dancer with Chauncey Smash!!
GS: Sephilia Lampbright has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

People start moving towards the blade. Someone else appears, a figure that Ida does not recognize. She does not see the Malevolent hordes that accompany Virginia's arrival, but they only amplify the feeling that's already here. Ida's mouth opens, but nothing comes out--her expression wavers, terror creeping through the cracks. Someone speaks.

Ida's eyes dart to the figure in white, and stay there. Her hands stop halfway to the ARMs at her sides, beneath her coat; there is a dread, unspeakable gravity here, something that reaches into Ida's chest and seizes her heart between icy fingers. Talise told her about the Trial Knight, and the torments they inflicted upon others. Now, she is experiencing them firsthand.

Ida's jaw works. She's trying to form words in response to this accusation--a rebuttal, a denial, something. Her voice doesn't want to work. She stares as S O M E T H I N G takes shape before her. Her eyes don't want to focus on it. Looking at it hurts. She wants to scream, but she can't make a sound.

Talise charges. Ida's gaze snaps into focus again, and she feels the familiar sensation of wood and metal in her hands. Father made these guns for her. Mother taught her how to use them to purge evil. And yet, what is her intent here? Ida has gone from 'paralyzed with terror' to 'completely unmoored'.

"Back, devil!" Ida roars, her head snapping up to stare at that blank, featureless helmet. "Wretched, wicked creature! You have no right to judge! I'll send you screaming back to Valmar!" She's raised her voice in the presence of her companions, but not like this. Her gaze is angry, steely. She's visibly trembling. Sweat beads on her brow.

To K.K., this may be familiar. Turn terror into righteous anger, and fight it.

"BEGONE!" Ida draws and fires--not at K.K., but at the thing they just conjured. Brass hits the ground at her feet. Others lunge into the fray a moment later. Ida's already calculating how to shoot around them.

GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Sword Dancer with Revolver Shot!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

/I'm going to start purifying the area. I expect whatever that thing is will react once I get started./

Noah's close enough to the epicenter of everything by then to overhear that, words that instantly justify the time and discomfort involved in tracking the Shepherd's party. It was, very obviously, the right choice.

And then the world transitions away from sanity and rationality, sense and logic. The ground beneath his feet loses texture, rolling out in long slicks of harlequin black and white. Towers lance the vault of the sky, encrusted not with the lichens of passing time but /confectionary sugar/. Ominous shapes burst from the ground in a seething ring at the tower's base, their outlines more artificial than organic for the fleet few moments that this phantasm is visible to his astonished eyes.

To most other people, the time as come to reassess. Most would change their minds thus: /it was, very obviously, the wrong choice./

Not Noah. A bizarre world seems to insist on itself for the span of no more than two rapid heartbeats before melting back into shapes and configurations he recognizes, and in spite of the repellant effect of the grounds, what he feels, more than anything, is exhilaration because it's /something new./ Something he's never, ever seen before.

"Ho-ly--" The last word is drowned out by the eerily hollow voice of -- a child? Young woman. Seated atop a weathervane. Noah doesn't turn his head to look at Morgan when the fox-man arrives, but he answers him: "Blaming this on me is not even a believable lie, Newk--"

Things go from bad to worse swiftly. Noah's jaw goes lax as the world erupts in viciously twisting winds of what must be Malevolence, buffeting whatever part of him it is that didn't know it existed until a week ago, suddenly super-saturated. The hours he spent in the Hollows being accosted by creatures manipulated by it, soaked in water tainted by it; the sudden transfiguration of the landscape -- against which his psyche managed to reassert normalcy, fighting the horror of it in spite of a disposition that yearns to witness the unexplored. Now this. And this, whatever this is, defeats that resistance entirely. He's thrown off of his feet by the maelstrom, hitting the ground backward, hands splayed to keep him from being pushed around any more than he already was. The winds contract to a single dense point of a focus...

And something massive begins to take form, coalescing into a monstrosity of bone and wreckage. Fel substance oozes across its exposed architecture. A blade in each hand, one in its head that--

He drives himself backward using his heels, drawing one of the ARMs in his holster, to fire a single shot at the skeleton.../thing/. No fancy tricks, no use of the cylinders mounted to the top, just a test to find out whether or not he's even able to /touch/ it with weapons like his.

<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.

She'd only heard stories about what happened at Lahan -- fourth-hand at best. It was said that in one night, the entire village was wiped off the face of the world. For various reasons -- it was out of her way, it wasn't any of her concern, tales like that tended to grow in the telling, and so on -- Josephine Lovelace had never bothered to see for herself. Villages died -- it's a fact of Filgaia. Sometimes suddenly, sometimes not. The point was, life continued somewhere, somehow --

--but the landscape ahead of her is still not even remotely what she would have guessed a dead village could look like. Even with her experience. "Damn," she remarks to no one at all, still far from the outskirts of the once-bustling town when she pauses on the remains of the trail leading in. Even here, the scars reach.

Get in, get out. That's the plan -- just to take a look at things and then make up her mind later. At the end of the day, the only reason she's sticking her fingers into this at all is simple wild curiosity.

And maybe in this case, it's better not to be the cat.

Josie squints, then shades her eyes. "...Looks like we're not the only ones here," she comments, to the bird on her shoulder.

...That light?

What...

is

that

Shielding herself with her arms as the wave of Malevolence floods outwards through the remains of Lahan, Josie staggers backwards. It's wrong, it's wrong, it's wrong, it's wrong it's wrong

I don't want...

With effort, Josie rights herself, feeling for a moment as if she's just dragged herself up from the depths of a lake. Shaking her head, as if she could cast loose the trailing ends of the sensation away in that manner, she reaches up to the bird cringing on her shoulder. "Penelope, get out of here," she murmurs, before pulling the pigeon from her perch and gently tossing her into the sky. The bird, with little choice, takes flight.

"This is foolish," Josie comments, to herself as she draws the rifle from its holster on her back. "Still, I guess a fool'll be a fool, huh?" She can't back down now.

She runs, plunging into the depths of the sensation of corruption, readying her rifle as she goes.

She doesn't think, as she arrives in the center of the town, sighting a truly monstrous creature seemingly crafted from wreckage, bone. Gawain dances upwards, leveling at the thing's head. She opens fire.

GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Sephilia Lampbright's Chauncey Smash! for 32 hit points!
GS: Josephine Lovelace has attacked Sword Dancer with Gawain XR57 Mod!
GS: Josephine Lovelace has completed her action.
GS: Sword Dancer critically Guards a hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Revolver Shot for 17 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.

They say ignorance is bliss. Xantia is the living embodiment of the phrase, while ironically not agreeing with it. She /wants/ to know more, she just... doesn't know much. She also can't see much of what starts to happen down there, when it does. She doesn't know Virginia, either, so it takes Rosaline's alarm before she actually starts to get alarmed. "Hey... what's going on?"

Finally, she does manages to perceive something. That knight. Saying some complicated things that she also fails to really understand. It's not until the waves of Malevolence start to pour out that the feeling of wrongness becomes so strong that even she starts to sense it. And... hear it? She looks around, confused, at a voice out of nowhere. The apparent source begins to take form... and it's a form that she cannot grasp. But she can clearly see the armor and weapons, at least. It's obvious enough to tell that there's a threat there.

People start to attack it, which clinches it. She can see well enough where people are attacking, she just has to hit the same place. Simple enough. Xantia slams a fist into her palm. It speaks of strength? Well, she has that, in spades.

If it represents cowardice, then Xantia will be courage. Or stupidity, whichever. She just rushes directly for the Sword Dancer's hazy form, jumps up, and punches it... somewhere. She can't see where she's punching. She can't see what she's punching. But she's punching it. No reason to be hesitant, it's just an invisible monster. Nothing to worry about.

GS: Xantia has attacked Sword Dancer with Attacking The Darkness!
GS: Xantia has completed her action.
GS: Sword Dancer critically Guards a hit from Josephine Lovelace's Gawain XR57 Mod for 18 hit points!
GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Xantia's Attacking The Darkness for 97 hit points!
DG: You don't have a party leader right now! Start a party yourself with +party/create, or go make a friend with +party/join.
GS: Noah Hawthorne has attacked Sword Dancer with Pot Shot!
GS: Noah Hawthorne has completed his action.
GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Noah Hawthorne's Pot Shot for 104 hit points!
DC: The provided attack type is not valid. [Technical]
<Pose Tracker> Morgan Newkirk has posed.


Right. So many things happening at once. "Yeah but it makes me feel better, Hawthorne." The fox shoots back as he pulls the pistol from his holster. There is a half-second thought on that before he just slams it back home. "...think I'm gonna need something bigger for this bastard..." He mutters to himself as he raises his gauntlet.

Blue-white energy erupts from the back of his wrist and flows down the silvery metal. It fades a second later but in its wake it has left a gift. Along the back of the wrist and across his arm now sits a gleaming single barreled weapon. As if a part of a rifle simply attached itself to his forearm.

He plants his feet, takes aim and a single round rings out. Aiming to put it into the hollow of the skeleton's eye socket.

...it just makes him feel better.

"Damn thing is just like what we saw at the bottom of the Hollow! Just...less mouthy!" He calls back as he starts to move towards cover. Apparently he's expecting the damn thing to get uppity after getting shot so many times.

He notes others going after the silent watcher but that isn't quite his concern at the moment. His concern is the massive elemental evil creature that just ripped itself out of the ground and is learning at them.

GS: Morgan Newkirk has attacked Sword Dancer with Ace High!
GS: Morgan Newkirk has completed its action.
GS: Sword Dancer guards a hit from Morgan Newkirk's Ace High for 53 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

It all comes crashing down within moments. Within moments, the Sword Dancer begins to move, its every step a wailing groan of protest that just DEMANDS people flee and feel DISGUST for it, blades lifting and at the ready. Within moments, people respond to the call, flinging themselves at the Dancer to try to eliminate the threat at the source.

Within moments, Sorey charges for the massive construct, his flaming swords meeting the twin blades of the Dancer with a clash of metal and spark of fire and flame. The creature groans, pulsing with malevolent life that seeps down into the ground. And then it -springs- just as Sorey smiles, just as Sorey offers his assurances, to bring -both- its blades down within a furiously fast cleaving motion almost too fast for the eyes to see, looking to tear through both Sorey and Rose alike within its maddening fear.

Within moments, bullets ring out from afar. From Rosaline, her firepower drowns itself on the Dancer's back, clipping over and over again against wrecked armor and deep black bone in a way that makes it lurch forward, pause... and then -pivot- on its heel, lashing out with a large wave of black bleakness to slam into the poor nun, suffused with fearful, otherworldly frenzy. It is afraid. Everything is so cold. Just hide. Hide away. Let someone else deal with it. Go. Go. GO--

BANG

The sound of Morgan's shot rings out as the bullet lodges into the skeletal Hellion's hollow eye. Its head snaps backwards. Its entire body pauses, just long enough for Ida and Noah to get off their shots, tearing chunks of armor off the beast... before the violet morass within its hollow socket swirls. Churns. Thick as molasses... until Morgan's round is literally spit out of its eye. Until it begins to dance with movements both graceful and panicked, blades swirling in motions that stretch far further than should be possible, aiming to sweep Noah, Ida and Morgan up within a flurry of terror-wreathed strokes of those blades.

Within moments, Josephine's shot rings out, hitting the creature's head; it responds instantly as its skull cracks and violet fire writhes from the wound like rot-infested maggots, sweeping one arm out with a pathetic shriek that rings into the night as another wave of blackness swirls forth to catch her within its horror. And more still press their advantage those distance strikes provide -- Xantia attacks with thunderous force at the thing she struggles to see, and for her reward, hears the crack of bone as she hits its spinal column... as its Malevolence seeks down into her clenched fist like a sickened, desperate caress seconds before those blades plunge down with every intention of stabbing her through the chest.

Within moments, earth erupts all around the Dancer seconds before it can skewer Xantia any further, speaking through armor and skeletal mass and malevolence and setting it just off-balance enough for Sephilia's trusted Chauncy to smash into the back of the beast just as Alisha stabs it from the front. It wails and roars and cries -- it cries, a terrible, blood-chilling sound, as its rampage intensifies, blades whirling like a dervish around it to catch anything and anyone in its path. It would almost be beautifully elegant, if it weren't so soaked in a primal terror that it is feeding off of just as much as that terror feeds off it. Beautiful. Horrifying. All within mere moments.

<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

... And within those moments, one amongst them charges down a very different path, massive blade lifted, SWUNG--

"Your blade is too weak to reach me."

CLANG

It happens within an instant; Talise's weapon carves down, only to meet a bright flash of light and the curved ends of two twin swords, diverting its path until it cleaves a shallow cut across the pristine white of the Trial Knight's armor, straining to go further but unable.

Stopped by two twin blades, curved with blue blades, looking of notably ancient, Lunarian make. Strikingly so.

"You wish to try your will against mine, bard." Those blades groan with angry defiance.

"It shall be done."

Those blades -SNAP- open to knock Talise aside seconds before the Dancer lashes out, SLAMMING blades into the earth. With a roar, the ground splits beneath Talise in gouts of weakening, malevolent flame suffused with the terrified souls of the dead, just as K.K. -thrusts- upward with their blades...

... and disappears, just as a radiant, golden dragon of light snakes through the air to consume Talise in defiant protest of the malevolence that seeks to consume from below.

"You shall be tested!"

It's like a flurry, how the knight moves. One blade thrown out, soaring through the air, it moves almost with a will of its own, seeking to pierce through Josephine, Edna, Morgan and Noah at lightning speeds. To puncture through one before screaming to the next, all as the Knight moves with preternatural speed for one who ought be bogged down by that armor. They lunge RIGHT into the fray, right amongst Sorey, Rose, and the rest...

... and they attack, without mercy, or relent. Blade stabbed backwards, for Alisha, only to be -torn- free in the next moment to cleave into Xantia in an upwards motion predicting its inevitable, plunging fall for Sorey... all before K.K. leaps, blade held high, their second sweeping right back into their grasp...

... as they descend with resolute certainty towards Ida.

"I have every right to sit in judgment of one who cannot see their own true self. You, who would cast your very identity to the flame--"

And -stab-.

"--you shall be tried!"

GS: K.K. has attacked Sorey with Swallow Dance!
GS: K.K. has attacked Seraph Edna with Serpent Snare!
GS: K.K. has attacked Alisha Diphda with Swallow Dance!
GS: K.K. has attacked Xantia with Swallow Dance!
GS: K.K. has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Swallow Dance!
GS: K.K. has attacked Josephine Lovelace with Serpent Snare!
GS: K.K. has attacked Rosaline Calice with Serpent Snare!
GS: K.K. enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: K.K. has attacked Morgan Newkirk with Serpent Snare!
GS: K.K. has attacked Noah Hawthorne with Serpent Snare!
GS: K.K. has attacked Talise Gianfair with Dragon Ascendant!
GS: CRITICAL! Talise Gianfair guards a hit from K.K.'s Dragon Ascendant for 115 hit points!
GS: Sword Dancer enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Sword Dancer with Malevolent Coil!
GS: Sorey critically Guards a hit from K.K.'s Swallow Dance for 20 hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Malevolent Coil for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper! Statuses applied to Sword Dancer!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Sword Dancer with Malevolent Coil!
GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Malevolent Coil for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper! Statuses applied to Sword Dancer!
GS: Alisha Diphda guards a hit from K.K.'s Swallow Dance for 74 hit points!
GS: Seraph Edna critically Guards a hit from K.K.'s Serpent Snare for 14 hit points!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Talise Gianfair with Devil's Maw!
GS: Sword Dancer enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Sorey with Nightmare Instant!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Seraph Edna with Nightmare Instant!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Alisha Diphda with Nightmare Instant!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Rosaline Calice with Demon Fang!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Josephine Lovelace with Demon Fang!
GS: Sword Dancer enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Morgan Newkirk with Void Storm!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Void Storm!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Sephilia Lampbright with Void Storm!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Rose with Void Storm!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Xantia with Nightmare Instant!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Noah Hawthorne with Nightmare Instant!
GS: Sword Dancer has completed its action.
GS: You do not have any attacks from that person in queue.
GS: Talise Gianfair takes a glancing hit from Sword Dancer's Devil's Maw for 26 hit points!
GS: Disease and Weaken! Statuses applied to Talise Gianfair!
GS: Josephine Lovelace takes a glancing hit from K.K.'s Serpent Snare for 35 hit points!
DC: MISS! Ida Everstead-Rey completely evades Swallow Dance from K.K.!
GS: Noah Hawthorne takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Nightmare Instant for 150 hit points!
GS: Josephine Lovelace takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Demon Fang for 90 hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! Alisha Diphda guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Nightmare Instant for 155 hit points!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a glancing hit from Sword Dancer's Void Storm for 48 hit points!
GS: Rose guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Void Storm for 58 hit points!
GS: Sorey takes a glancing hit from Sword Dancer's Nightmare Instant for 69 hit points!
GS: Seraph Edna guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Nightmare Instant for 90 hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! Sephilia Lampbright critically Guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Void Storm for 40 hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! Noah Hawthorne guards a hit from K.K.'s Serpent Snare for 74 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Sword Dancer has posed.

Rounds: 1/8

DC: MISS! Rosaline Calice completely evades Demon Fang from Sword Dancer!
GS: Morgan Newkirk guards a hit from K.K.'s Serpent Snare for 39 hit points!
GS: Morgan Newkirk guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Void Storm for 63 hit points!
GS: Rosaline Calice takes a solid hit from K.K.'s Serpent Snare for 72 hit points!
GS: Xantia takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Nightmare Instant for 145 hit points!
GS: Xantia critically Guards a hit from K.K.'s Swallow Dance for 19 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.

In most situations, Talise has to remind herself what not to do. Not to let her anger and her impulse rule her decisions. To remember to keep her perspective.

With the burden of Malevolence filtering through her mind like a miasma, she can't do it. Her emotions are left frayed and her mind can't quite put the pieces together in a logical, well-reasoned order. All she can think of is that K.K. is behind this, and killing them will end it.

Even if she has to throw herself away to do it, she decides.

There's a brutal clash of metal as Rastaban meets the cross of those two ancient swords. Clenching her teeth, Talise bunches her shoulders and attempts to push through the bladelock. "This is what you wanted, wasn't it?" she growls. "Then I'm here--"

Before she can get the rest of the sentence out, KK knocks her back - and calls up a magic dragon. With a sudden intake of breath, the tall woman lunges backwards, away from the vanishing K.K., wheeling and shielding herself in a vain attempt to try and guard against the blazing magic. It roars across her like a wave, tearing at her coat and searing skin, hurling her backwards violently. Hitting the ground and rolling, she gasps in pain, forcing herself to her knees and coming up again - just in time to see K.K. darting around and attacking /everyone./

"Bastard," she growls as she springs to her feet again. An immense surge of guilt roils in the back of her throat. She's going to get them all killed, because she let her anger rule her. Again. She's already failed her test of /herself./

Curling around her sword, her hands tighten. Tears begin to bead in her eyes.

And then she clenches her teeth and shakes herself visibly, breathing in hard.

(Lady Chloe wouldn't run away,) she thinks as she begins to move, not having to think about it. All she knows is that she's made a mistake and she's going to have to make it right.

Malevolence roils around her. She doesn't slow down as she sprints towards K.K. The Knight's coming at Ida. Lunging again, the half-Beastwoman brings her sword out to her side.

"Fuck that," she snarls before raising her voice to a shout. "You want someone to test?! I'll take your damn test! /Come on!/" She winds up and-

"TIDAL BLOW!!"

She swings and attempts to deliver a massive horizontal blow, aimed to plow into K.K. and force the Knight back. Then--

"TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW TIDAL BLOW"

She keeps doing it. Keeps doing it in the hopes of knocking K.K. backwards every time she swings. In the hopes of eventually TIDAL BLOWing the Knight clean away from her friends. In the hopes that the Knight will leave everyone else alone.

GS: Talise Gianfair has attacked K.K. with Tidal Blow!
GS: Talise Gianfair has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Sorey has posed.

Sorey senses something coming towards him, as K.K. unleashes a blazing flash of light towards him. But the Shepherd spins around, bringing his own blade into the path of the sword. The Shepherd deflects the blade away in an expert manner, not allowing it to make contact - he looks at K.K. for a moment, and narrows his eyes. "I don't think you have the right to judge anyone! People are free to live their lives as they desire, and you-"

There is a whistling roar as the Sword Dancer brings its blade around, and Sorey leaps out of the way. That's still close enough to allow the massive blade to clip him, and he spins backwards, nursing his side for the moment. "Damn," he grunts, and then looks to the side. "I didn't want to have to do this so soon, but... Luzrov Rulay!"

Mikleo nods once from where he was holding back, looking for a place where he could apply his own magic to the battle. And the Seraph disappears into a bolt of light, racing across the room and slamming into Sorey, surrounding him in an almost glowing vestment of white and gold. He reaches out, taking hold of the bow that Mikleo had bonded to as his sacred instrument, and pulls back the string. "Alisha! Rose! Edna! Focus on that white knight - we'll deal with the malevolence monster once we're able to deal with that thing!"

Given what the others had said, he suspected that the White Knight was behind this entire affair, or at least was influencing it. He trusts his friends to cover his flanks, and keep that monster occupied for the time being. But as the glowing blue string of the bow flares, a large arrow of blue energy manifests across the length of the Shepherd's weapon. He aims it at K.K., and shouts, "SAINT'S ARROW!"

An expanding ring of blue light erupts around Sorey as the arrow flies, darting straight towards the White Knight, and aiming to transfix him in the air.

DC: Sorey switches forms to Armatus Luzrov Rulay!
GS: Sorey has attacked K.K. with Saint's Arrow!
GS: Sorey has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Kent Hauch has posed.

A gust of sudden wind adjusts the smoke, dust, and foul miasma hanging in the air, revealing a man who was not clearly visible before.

He knows the layout of Lahan ruins fairly well, having picked them over a few times. Likewise, he is coming to know the feel of Malevolence, and out of sheer cussedness, refuses to let it cause him to bow or shake.

Kent Hauch, leader of the Black Ties, is sitting with his back to half of a chimney, a bottle of clear alcohol with the label scraped off in his hand and Red River sitting to his left. He's watching this fight, a glowering gaze from shadowed eyes tracing K.K.'s movements as he confronts the assembled Drifters, occasionally lifting the bottle to his lips.

It's an odd juxtaposition. Kent Hauch is not a mysterious man. His motives seem clear. But as he sits there in his ash grey coat with the charred sleeves, grotesque burn scars covering his hands, wiping a sheen of sweat from his bald head, it looks like he is the one judging the mysterious knight. Like he's looking for something in the power struggle.

<Pose Tracker> Alisha Diphda has posed.

Alisha hears the clang of sword-upon-sword -- and then she turns. She recognizes K.K. only briefly. They were the knight who appeared at Port Timney -- and vanished again. And then, the white-clad knight is ripping their way across the battlefield. The blade comes stabbing for the princess's back -- and she only /just/ moves out of the way, to instead have it score along her arm and draw blood.

And the scream of the Sword Dancer rattles her bones. She swings her up her spear -- and the sweep of its sword slams /through/ her guard. The princess is thrown backward, slamming into the earth, and lands in a three-point stance. She lets out a shaky breath.

She glances to Sorey -- still unable to see Seraphim, still unable to see his Armatized form -- and then she nods, as she sees the arrow of blue light pulled back. "I... I understand!" she calls out. "We must stand firm against this! Goddess Althena, hear our plea! Calm Litany!"

She holds her spear up. White light whips around her, infuses into her, and then bursts out in a shockwave. It rolls through Rose and Edna, too. That leaves a faint outline around Edna. Her eyes set on K.K.

"This--this is not something you have to do!" she cries. "Please! There is no reason to do any of this...!"

GS: Alisha Diphda has attacked Alisha Diphda with Calm Litany!
GS: Alisha Diphda has attacked Seraph Edna with Calm Litany!
GS: Alisha Diphda has attacked Rose with Calm Litany!
GS: Alisha Diphda has completed her action.
GS: Alisha Diphda heals Alisha Diphda! She gains 100 temporary hit points!
GS: Alisha Diphda heals Rose! She gains 100 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Rosaline Calice has posed.

Rosaline looks at Ida with quiet admiration as she shouts her defiance in the name of Granas. Sure, it's probably a mechanism to hide her own fear, but she still wishes she could manage it.

Her bullets find their mark, for once. Unfortunately, their only contribution seems to be directing the monstrosity's attention towards her.

Alien feeling assail her, doubly potent in how they mingle with ones she needs no supernatural help harboring. She needs to run, get out of here, SAVE HERSELF.

She doesn't need to be asked twice.

In a desperate, full-body motion, the nun is out of the Sword Dancer's way. A pause to catch her breath, however, is all it takes for her to take the full brunt of the Trial Knight's rampage, skillful blades slicing through her habit, drawing blood.

She falls to the ground. As she pulls herself up, a choice presents itself to her, raw and primal.

Fight or flight?

Fight or flight?

Fight or flight?

Rosaline's friends may need a healer right now, but a healer does not fight, nor does she flee. Crest sorceries and the light of Granas are too complex for the woman who rises to bother with right now.

"YOU DON'T BELONG IN THIS WORLD!" she roars as she leaps right back towards the Sword Dancer, gripping metal and bone with all of her bestial might completely heedless of her own safety. She pulls and tears away at anything she can, apparently intent on dismantling the abomination piece by piece... unless it, inevitably, shakes her off.

She is way too laser-focused to notice Kent Hauch's presence right now, which, wo-wee, is probably for the best.

DC: Rosaline Calice switches forms to The Wrath!
GS: Rosaline Calice has attacked Sword Dancer with Now You've Done It!
GS: Rosaline Calice has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Rose has posed.

It's pure luck that sees Rose not be in the path of the Trial Knight's blade as it dances in a mad flurry, going from one Drifter to the next with impunity. Luck, even, that sees her notice the Sword Dancer just in time as it swings its own blades too. It's not luck, though, that lets her read its movements, the being humanoid enough she can make out its style in part, and predict the blade's direction. And it's not luck that sees her pull her second knife out and halt the massive sword with the both of her large daggers, struggling to remain standing as her knees bend and her lower body almost gives in to the Hellion's strength.

The pain in her arms signals her withdrawal, a leap upward and over the swinging blade to avoid being cut into pieces. To land onto the Sword Dancer's massive armored arm, dash up its shoulder and swing atop them.

"Are you nuts?! You can't take this thing on yourself!" she argues with Sorey, not actually knowing if that's true or not. "I'm not letting you play hero on your own!"

A movement from the Sword Dancer makes her reconsider-- she loses balance, almost hurled off the massive Hellion, and it only takes her a second of staring at it to realize maybe this is a Shepherd problem after all. MAYBE she would rather deal with the knight in white armor, who is almost assuredly some kind of human being, than the giant skeletal ghost wearing giant robot scraps as armor. Some life choices just kind of make themselves, you know?

"Damnit, Sorey, don't do anything stupid while we take care of this!"

Rose turns her attention to K.K., whose appearance she makes sure to burn into her memory. She feels uneasy, wobbly, like her feet can't keep her up, especially after that close encounter with Malevolence and then the Hellion's sword. Still, she has to pull her weight! Alisha rallies them, and that's the boost in confidence she needed.

"I don't care who you are, mister knight, but I don't think anyone who's in league with these kinds of monsters should talk about judgment! GLIMMER DRAGON!"

Twin swipes from afar, before Rose can even reach K.K., send shockwaves of yellow energy towards the knight's head and neck. Precise slices, carried by the wind itself. They probably won't penetrate the knight's armor, but a blow to the head is usually pretty disorienting either way!

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

More details start to seep into Ida's consciousness, even as she tries to keep them at arm's-length. The Malevolence is so thick that it's difficult to differentiate between her own, internal emotions and the seething, roiling mass of torment outside. The Dancer is an especially hideous spectacle; it's like something jabbed into the part of Ida's brain responsible for feeling disgust. It rushes at her.

Ida steps back, her boots churning up earth that used to be beneath someone's house. The rusty blade whistles towards her neck, and she meets it with the gleaming steel of her gunsmoke revolver. The weapon glances off the barrel, but the hideous, unspeakable force behind it remains. The blade cuts into Ida's shoulder--blood sprays from the wound, splattering the ground. Another scar will join the collection there.

Ida reels back. Her focus wavers precariously before snapping back into place in a wash of adrenaline. She's already moving before she consciously realizes K.K. is there, or what she said. She twists to the side, and that ancient blade comes down from above--there's the soft snkt of something cutting, something that's not flesh. A button goes flying off into the dirt. Ida is unharmed, but only just barely.

Talise charges. Poor Talise, who would shoulder this burden for her even though she deserves everything K.K. has to give her, and more, even though--

"NO!" Ida roars, suddenly terrified and enraged and disgusted all at once. Completely forgetting about the Sword Dancer, she rushes the knight, raises the revolver, and fires--

Nothing comes out. Dud primer, she realizes, as a fresh spike of terror shreds her focus. Ida twists the revolver in her grip, turning what could've been a point-blank shot into a pistol-whip, right for the side of her helmet. "I denied nothing!" Her knee drives upwards, into K.K.'s gut, hopefully. "I just left you my card!" she cries, her voice sounding a little unhinged--which is way more unhinged than anyone here has heard her, ever.

GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked K.K. with Unladylike Roughhousing!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Rosaline Calice's Now You've Done It for 80 hit points!
GS: Rose has attacked K.K. with Glimmer Dragon!
GS: Rose has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.

It's fast. Faster than she would have assumed, with a size like that. But perhaps, her mind runs, in that fleeing second after her bullet cracks home, as that great negative arc slices through the air, as she even then realizes that she won't have time to duck out of the way and grinds her heels into the dirt and grits her teeth, perhaps without any flesh at all--

It's cold. Like ice, plunging deep into her bones. Josie hisses a breath out through her teeth and staggers back a step, her left hand leaving the rifle to curl against her stomach. In her chest, her heart feels as if it lurches all of a sudden, pounding an unnatural rhythm against her ribs. Run. Just, run. The message is loud and clear, and carried to every branch of her body. Get out of here. Get away. Is this really worth dying for? This? For the sake of curiosity? /This/?

/What are you doing/, girl? it echoes, taking the form of an old familiar voice.

She takes another step back, breathing hard, gaze briefly glassy as she stares up at the creature. Her gaze hardens. "...Because I damn well feel like it," she breathes, finally righting herself. Her left hand lifts to rest on her firearm again. Only here does she look away from the monstrosity, casting a glance aside, up, in search of a better position. It's enough to see that woman -- Talise -- and that figure clad in armor -- and there, the blade flung out into the air, seeking a target.

Targets.

Josie springs backwards. The blade was faster, by a hair. It clips her forearm, tearing through the sleeve of her jacket and leaving a quick-blooming smear of red in its wake. One eye squeezes half-way closed in a wince. The muzzle of her rifle dances back up into the air quickly; Josie doesn't so much take the time to aim as look towards the armored figure, squeezing off a shot to ricochet through the air towards it.

Shoot first, ask questions later.

"--Who the hell are you!?"

She'll remember, in a moment, the figure Rosaline mentioned just days ago. But it will still take a moment. This place is making it hard to think; even her wits seem sluggish.

<Pose Tracker> Morgan Newkirk has posed.


"Well we got its attention! NOW WHAT?!" Morgan shouts seconds before the power of hate crashes down on him. The Dancer throws him back and off his feet to send him crashing among the ruins. Dust and sawdust explode up from where he falls as his head snaps back against the broken timbers. He sees stars for a second there and it nearly costs him his life.

Swords. Swords from nowhere.

He sees the flashing blades crossing impossibly though space as he pushes himself away from the wall. The blades flash, blood sprays as the weapon slices into his arm. Thankfully it didn't hit much vital thanks to the fact that he had that split-second to parry with his ARM. Silver ARM meets unnatural blades in sparks as the Drifter rolls away from the strike.

"Talise! What have I told you about inviting strange fellers to a party!" He shouts as he raises his weapon this time towards the White Knight. Again blue light as the weapon attached to it shifts again. The barrel shorter, the bore wider. He levels it at the Knight, timing his rounds to slip though those few moments where the shots are clear.

As he fires the Gauntlet glows, Dead Man's Hand he calls it.

What can I say. Sometimes the humor is dark.

The shield that grows around him with every shot fired is a brilliant blue. The recoil of the weapon enhancing the Gauntlet's already impressive defensive powers.

...and then Ida goes a little bit crazy.

"Friend," This shouted towards KK. "I think you just upset her! Gotta give ya points fer that. Hadn't seen it before!"


GS: Josephine Lovelace has attacked K.K. with Have a Blast!
GS: Josephine Lovelace has completed her action.
GS: Morgan Newkirk has attacked K.K. with Cover Gauntlet!
GS: Morgan Newkirk has completed its action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Edna has posed.

"Oh."

Is all that Edna says once that Sword Dancer stumbles just long enough for the others to strike at it. It responds with a whirling storm of slashes too fast for her to just leap away from. So she does what she does best. Plant herself like a tree and defend. Quickly, she opens up her umbrella and then infuses it with earth magic, hardening it to extreme levels. Just in time for those blades to come crashing right into the surface. The force of the strikes makes her skid back little by little, but that's apparently not all she has to contend with.

Edna senses something amiss soon after and looks off to find a... oh crap, that other one is attacking them now. Great. Greaaaat. "Tch!" She's only got one umbrella. So she improvises, taking one arm away from her umbrella and thrusting it to the ground. She clenches her hand into a fist, and then raises it, beckoning a wall of earth to rise up before her. There's an impact against it right after, and that wall shatters, stone debris striking her in the process. It's nothing to be terribly concerned about though. Not in the grand scheme of things. "This just got a whole lot worse." She mumbles calmly, despite the high tensions running about.

Mikleo's voice reaches her, and she sees Alisha take a big hit in the same moment. Focus on the white knight, huh? "Fine. Just try not to get Sorey murdered. That'd be bad for the rest of us, Meebo." After that, the Earth Seraph leaps away and soars through the sky briefly, descent bringing her closer to the general vicinity of the white knight. Landing upon the ground, she skids to a stop, and immediately turns her attention to Alisha. "Don't reckless, princess. Dying's not as fun as it sounds."

With that said, she turns her attention to K.K. and frowns a bit. "And you." She points her umbrella to the ground, then raises it, causing several earth spikes to burst upwards and float into the air. "I'm not going to ask you a bunch of questions. You're going to attack us? I'll make you regret it." She points her umbrella towards K.K. then and commands thosse floating spikes to race through the air, twisting and weaving, converging upon the white knight all at once.

GS: Alisha Diphda heals Seraph Edna! She gains 100 temporary hit points!
GS: Seraph Edna has attacked K.K. with Rock Lance!
GS: Seraph Edna has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Sephilia Lampbright has posed.

Sephy is overwhelmed. She's never seen anything like THIS before! And yet there's no chance to back away now. Battered and buffeted by the Sword Dancer's strike, nevertheless Sephilia and Chauncey stand ready to face the terror before them.

"Chauncey, just KEEP SMASHING!" she cries. The chaos surrounding them, the Malevolence, everything, there's no time to worry about it--just smashing the bad guys is what Sephy knows how to do in a situation like this, and it's what she's going to do.

Chauncey, a little bit of his stuffing showing from various cuts and tears, obeys his mistress, and keeps up the smashing.

GS: Sephilia Lampbright has attacked Sword Dancer with Chauncey Smash!!
GS: Sephilia Lampbright has completed her action.
GS: Morgan Newkirk has canceled their attack on K.K..
GS: Morgan Newkirk has attacked K.K. with Blazer Gauntlet!
GS: Morgan Newkirk has completed its action.
GS: CRITICAL! Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Sephilia Lampbright's Chauncey Smash! for 50 hit points!
GS: K.K. guards a hit from Talise Gianfair's Tidal Blow for 68 hit points!
GS: K.K. critically Guards a hit from Sorey's Saint's Arrow for 28 hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! K.K. guards a hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Unladylike Roughhousing for 87 hit points!
GS: K.K. critically Guards a hit from Rose's Glimmer Dragon for 14 hit points!
GS: K.K. guards a hit from Josephine Lovelace's Have a Blast for 80 hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! K.K. guards a hit from Morgan Newkirk's Blazer Gauntlet for 82 hit points!
GS: Morgan Newkirk takes Cover! It gains 50 temporary hit points!
GS: K.K. guards a hit from Seraph Edna's Rock Lance for 75 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.

Xantia can feel an impact. She can hear the result. That's good, she hit something! She wonders what she hit.

As she lands from her leaping into the fray, she turns towards that which she punched... and can see it clearly now. Directly in front of her, a massive skeletal creature is beneath the armor and swords. She blinks, seeming unsure of herself for a moment. She may appear intimidated. But she's actually wondering if punching things hard enough makes them become visible. That's good knowledge to file away for later.

A giant skeleton, that's new, certainly. But Xantia doesn't parse this as anything to fear any more than she does any opponent. As previously established, ignorance is bliss. She literally doesn't know any better. Fighting's always felt natural to her, and monsters take many different forms. This one's just a little bigger, that's all. That's no reason to treat this any different than any other fight. She's already established that she can punch it; if she can punch it, she can beat it. Simple logic. Why would she be worried?

This changes when the hand she used to throw the punch suddenly feels very uncomfortable. The cause isn't clear to her, and is enough of a distraction to make her look away from the danger right in front of her.

That costs her. She moves, but too slowly. One of those massive swords finds its mark - thankfully not straight through the chest, but striking the shoulder is quite enough to cause a pained scream. She moves quickly after that, jumping backwards, away from the creature, clutching her left shoulder.

What just happened? So much pain. So much blood. This is bad, right? It must be. She can't tell how bad, due to not remembering ever getting hurt quite that badly before. Either way, she isn't eager to immediately attack again.

K.K. gives her little choice. When the armored figure comes at her, weapons drawn, she reacts in a reflex, shielding herself with her good arm... and, miraculously, deflecting the blade coming for her with her bracer. Inwardly, she panics a moment - not for the danger she's in, but for fear that might have damaged it further. It doesn't look damaged, though. Perhaps that was a way it was meant to be used, all along.

Xantia's mind goes blank. Jokes regarding how much different that is from usual aside, one thing has become perfectly clear to her: she has to fight. No matter what, she can't stop fighting.

The wound should have slowed her down. Instead, she seems to be even faster than before. Using every bit of speed she can muster, she charges for the Shadow Dancer, and leaps once again, this time with a leg extended, aimed for the center of its torso. Using bones for a springboard, she immediately launches back into the air on impact, sending herself straight into the direction of the Trial Knight. Just before swinging a fist at him, she only has one thing to say, which encompasses all her feelings in this moment nicely.

"Go away!!"

GS: Xantia has attacked K.K. with Transilient Assault!
GS: Xantia has attacked Sword Dancer with Transilient Assault!
GS: Xantia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

Violence unfolds in all of its terrible spectacle, and as ever things seem to simultaneously happen in an instant, but at a glacial pace. Time stretches like taffy and Noah has the opportunity to see almost everything -- terrible things, but things he can't tear his eyes away from. Everywhere that those present manage to land blows sufficient to crack the bony exterior, deep indigo ichor bleeds out of its core, only intensifying the deep-seated urge to turn tail and run. It's an impulse he grits his teeth against, for one reason and one reason only: if this thing gets loose, it's going to carry that spectral disease with it. Noah has a vested interest in the ongoing existence of Filgaia -- he lives on it, after all -- and more than that, /he has had enough of bearcats and krakens to last him the rest of his life./ The memory of the tentacle monster deep in the belly of the Hollows, lashing out at him with the enraged bearcat glued to one end of a tentacle, is enough to keep him anchored here.

Even when things begin to go very, very wrong for him.

He thinks he's out of range of the skeletal Hellion, and he is /wrong/. He'll never, in hindsight -- if he lives that long -- be able to say just how it managed to reach him with those weapons it's holding. It does, and his world becomes a blur of singing metal in the air around him. He rolls to the side, finally gains his feet, but he's being pressed too hard to draw his second ARM and that misstep costs him. He brings the one firearm up to block and it transforms in the blink of an eye, barrels shifting, grip straightening, cylinders repositioned, a wicked blade spitting outward: from a howdah-like contraption to a short sword in less than a heartbeat. The first strike he can block, but not the second. What slashes he can block and dodge are fewer in number than those that land, biting into him fast enough that it takes his breath away. There isn't even enough time for him to answer Morgan's quip with one of his own -- a sure sign that he's in /serious/ trouble.

His reprieve only comes as Xantia lands her blow on the thing's spine and it turns its attention, and its weapons, toward /her/. He reels backward and away, left hand reaching for the other ivory grip of his still-holstered ARM to draw it, his hold slicked by the thin rivulets of red spooling down his arm from a gash below the shoulder. And while he's doing this, arming himself...

He takes another wound from a /different/ blade that broadsides him without the benefit of a guiding hand. The sound he makes braids together surprise and pain, and that's when all semblance of his usual demeanor evaporates. It's a thing Morgan's seen before: the rangy, easy-going, wry relic hunter hardens somehow, eyes like anvils. It's easy to overlook his stature most of the time. Less so when he's like this -- whatever 'this' is.

The ARM that was a blade transitions again, both raised as firearms to take a bead on the owner of that last, bladed insult. Something complicated happens with the cylinders arrayed across the top of both, a mechanism shifting. Noxious yellow-green substances coat the rounds in the chambers just before he pulls the triggers.

GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Xantia's Transilient Assault for 94 hit points!
GS: Noah Hawthorne has attacked K.K. with No Ticket!
GS: Noah Hawthorne has completed his action.
GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Noah Hawthorne's No Ticket for 73 hit points!
GS: Weaken! Statuses applied to K.K.!
GS: K.K. has completed its action.
<Pose Tracker> Myyah Hawwa has posed.

MEANWHILE, IN BLEDAVIK:

"ECS is reading high and steady. Spikes on every pass."

"Go back around and lower. I want to map the increase rate."

The operation room falls briefly silent as a light goes on above the security door. A moment later, the door opens and Lieutenant Commander Myyah Hawwa steps inside. She is a familiar face and would not cause alarm even if she hadn't been vetted by security outside, but noise is noise. She gives the room an apologetic smile as the locks cycle behind her.

"Sorry. The commander is still in a meeting with the regional LT," she says. "Central wants a mitigation plan submitted tonight."

"We're on a drone feed. We just pulled back the ground teams and sent a scramble request to the hangar."

Myyah is answered by the man who is standing and holding a mug of coffee instead of sitting at a terminal near a mug of coffee, which is the most reliable way to judge the person in charge of a round-the-clock surveillance team. He has sandy brown-blonde hair combed neatly to the side and is pale enough to suffer from a permanent five-o'clock shadow.

"Benzoma, right?" says Myyah. She joins him at the imaginary command dais where he stands in the center of the room. They both look at the main screen. "We're not launching any Gears today. LT has judged Lahan an acceptable write-off at this point."

"They might change their minds after this," says Benzoma, gesturing at the video feed. "There's apparition classes for this sort of thing, right? What does this rank at?"

Myyah hugs her tablet computer to her chest. The light of the screen catches in her eyes. She is very nearly unblinking.

"Significant," she murmurs.

Benzoma snorts into his coffee. A moment later, after he swallows: "Pretty fucking significant."

<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

As the focus of the battlefield shifts towards the White Knight on their blitzing attack, the Sword Dancer continues to move. Malevolence bleeds off of it as it stomps forward with eerie slowness that contrasts so sharply with the swiftness of its blades, that ill impurity leeching into the ground, spreading further and further with every step -- with every hideous pulse that ripples off the Hellion.

It may very well spread past the entirety of Lahan, if it is allowed to go too far. But for now, perhaps it is wiser to worry about one's safety.

Because the Dancer is moving, even as Chauncey assaults, large fists -smashing- into it bodily with enough force to send it lurching backwards from wherever it might have planned to traverse. The Dancer turns that baleful stare not on the doll -- but upon its owner. Cold violet gleams within the black of the Sword Dancer's sockets, soulless and yet somehow agonized, as its blades come down -- the rusted edge carving sweeping to carve through Chauncey. The other, the one that looks so vaguely reminiscent of a Gebler sword, literally -extends- itself like sharp-edged putty...

... all with every intent to come crashing down on poor Sephilia.

It is a rampage that will not stop with her. Those blades swing in sharp, elegant motions that are far faster than they have any right to be from something that moves so slow, cleaving towards Morgan, Xantia and Josephine in a flurried blitz of motion, malevolent winds generated in their wake cutting just as sharply -- and leaving just as cold a touch. They come for Edna, sharp and screaming, even as it -sweeps- its skeletal arms upwards, a tremendous wave of bleak blackness jutting upwards from the earth beneath Talise and Sorey to consume them even as they gear themselves to engage the night. Those blades come -down- moments later... and the ground beneath Noah cracks, groans, and then whimpers with misery, as bloated violet-black miasma seeps like corrupt pus from the scar of the earth, to seep down into his very soul.

It's an unmitigated frenzy that is only stopped when Rosaline and Xantia attack -- the latter CRACKS into the Dancer to springboard off of it, sending it off balance, while the former -tears- into it with a fearsome frenzy. Armor is shorn off in chunks, the pieces of woven Gear scrap crackling and turning into motes of darkness as soon as they leave the Dancer's body. Its bony jaw unhinges...

... and the agonized wail from it speaks of nothing but soul-sinking impotence.

It is then the Gebler sword disappears. Then that it grabs onto the sword literally -impaled- through its head. It pulls it free, that blade blade with its glowing edges, and every inch that drags out of it makes the air grow thicker with fear and anger. The blade is freed. The Sword Dancer says nothing.

It just seeks to impale Rosaline straight through the gut with a blade of literally no substance, its ethereal edge not plunging into her flesh, but that feral soul, to touch upon it with the sorrowful truth that her rage would seek to overwhelm:

you are running away

And it continues to move past as if not even cognizant of anything around it. Rusted, chipped katana is gripped. And as Rose lunges for K.K., the Dancer brings that blade up... and almost weakly jabs it -down- for her back, full of pathetic frailty and a helpless groan.

<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

You want someone to test?! I'll take your damn test!

"You already have."

Talise Gianfair lunges for the Trial Knight, and the white-clad figure stands their ground. TIDAL BLOW!! cries the Beastwoman, and that first horizontal blow is met with a parrying clash. Another. Another. Another. -Another-. Over and over, pushed to a defensive, K.K. wards those blows, so many cast aside but so many others piercing through their defenses, chipping armor, rending and bending it unpleasantly with each one. Every blow, a calm step backwards, even as that baleful gaze focuses dead on Talise.

"And now you will bear the consequences of your choice. Show. Me. MORE."

The last blow cleaves into the Trial Knight's chest, digging a deep furrow into the armor that still doesn't quite manage to reach flesh -- or whatever else -- might be beneath. They hear Rose's shout, and looks to knock Talise aside in time to literally -cleave- through those gusts of winds and yellow energy until most of it dissipates, the rest crashing largely harmlessly against that armor. "Willfully blind," the White Knight says in lone response to Rose, almost an accusation if it weren't so directly dispassionate. "Too afraid to see. You cannot reach me. I will show you."

Ida roars, and with a sudden fervor -penetrates- K.K.'s defenses to lodge that knee into the knight's gut. There is the horrible sound of bending metal as it pushes up against the Knight's midsection. It lurches forward...

... and places little more than the very tip of their blade against Ida's chest.

"You cast your name to the pyre, Ida Everstead-Rey."

That tip glows. Sings a hauntingly beautiful song into the air.

"Your family's name. Your family's craft. How to find them. What they are. Those who craft arms of fire for profit. You left yourself upon the altar."

And from that blade blossoms an ephemeral sphere of light, spinning its sorrowful song to eclipse Ida within its disorienting depths.

"And so I shall take it from you."

Before the Knight can plunge Ida any further, though -- spikes soar through the air, twisting towards the Knight to impale at them. Those curved shortswords, familiar, perhaps, in a vague way in design if not in look, cleave through the air within an eyeblink. Several of those rock lances shatter, the rest pummeling and exploding against K.K.'s armor, sending them reeling backwards -- and thanks to Talise's earlier actions, well out of way of being able to reciprocate in kind to Edna's onslaught. She's not going to ask a bunch of questions. She'll just make K.K. regret it.

Despite the lack of a face to see it, there seems to be nothing but approval from the Trial Knight at this declaration.

But from this distance, the others are free to assault K.K. at a range. Those ARM shots pummel the Knight, the corrosion of Noah's shots sinking through armor and into whatever lies beneath to eat at their strength. They lash out at the others, guarding against the onslaught of slugs with forearms and palms that manage to -swipe- at bullets in midair, catching them even as they bury into gauntlet-clad palms painfully. Still, they do not abate. Who the hell are you?! asks Josephine.

"I am that which all must account for."

They turn, to engage...

... just in time for Xantia to bowl into them, fist-first. GO AWAY! That fist meets helmet with a terrible crash of metal-on-flesh, denting armor inward in a way that makes half of K.K.'s face seem to crunch inwards... just as its blade swings up with a soft singing sound to engulf Xantia within that soft globe of burning light, just as they had done to Ida.

"-Make me-."

Truly, an elegant reprisal.

In theory, though, all this should leave them open for Sorey. In theory, the Armatus should do its work, to burn away the corruption as only the Shepherd can. The arrow is aimed, loosed -- and blue light CRIES out...

--just in time to meet the edge of a blade that seems almost practiced to anticipate the very act.

The edge of K.K.'s sword meets the blue light, cleaving it in twain in a bright flash of power that blinds for a brief moment. What remains burns at armor, singes it, but cannot transfix -- cannot hold K.K. in place. The Knight stands, unbowed.

"... You are no Shepherd, boy."

And then they move. Blinding, like a lightning bolt. Scarlet light trailing behind their blades, they -stab- towards Talise from one direction and then towards Sorey, before rounding back for another. And another. And -another-. An overwhelming deluge of assaults, each one binding both of them into that ethereal, scarlet thread of it is allowed until they are -both- held aloft... at which point? That red light will simply -explode- in a painful burst of power.

"This is exactly what I must do," K.K. finally intones to Alisha, as more and more a simple fact might be becoming clear: whatever this Knight is -- they do not seem to be exuding -any- Malevolence to speak of.

"And if you are too weak to stop me, it is exactly what I WILL do. Come, failed princess. Come, all of you. Into the pyre."

GS: K.K. has activated a Force Action!
GS: K.K. has attacked K.K. with Coil!
GS: CRITICAL! K.K. takes a solid hit from K.K.'s Coil for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper and Shield! Statuses applied to K.K.!
GS: K.K. has attacked Talise Gianfair with Scarlet Skein!
GS: K.K. has attacked Sorey with Scarlet Skein!
GS: K.K. enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: K.K. has attacked Xantia with Banishing Sorrow!
GS: K.K. has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Banishing Sorrow!
GS: K.K. has completed its action.
GS: Sword Dancer has activated a Force Action!
GS: Sword Dancer has activated a Force Action!
GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Xantia's Transilient Assault for 113 hit points!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Sephilia Lampbright with Nightmare Instant!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Seraph Edna with Nightmare Instant!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Talise Gianfair with Demon Roar!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Sorey with Demon Roar!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Rose with Rusted Blade!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Morgan Newkirk with Void Storm!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Josephine Lovelace with Void Storm!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Xantia with Void Storm!
GS: Sword Dancer enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Noah Hawthorne with Devil's Maw!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Rosaline Calice with Cowardice!
GS: Sword Dancer has completed its action.
GS: CRITICAL! Talise Gianfair critically Guards a hit from K.K.'s Scarlet Skein for 52 hit points!
GS: K.K. drains Talise Gianfair! K.K. gains 52 temporary hit points!
GS: Talise Gianfair takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Demon Roar for 120 hit points!
GS: Sephilia Lampbright guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Nightmare Instant for 92 hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! Sorey critically Guards a hit from K.K.'s Scarlet Skein for 50 hit points!
GS: K.K. drains Sorey! K.K. gains 76 temporary hit points!
GS: Sorey critically Guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Demon Roar for 21 hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! Ida Everstead-Rey takes a glancing hit from K.K.'s Banishing Sorrow for 84 hit points!
GS: Poison and Disease! Statuses applied to Ida Everstead-Rey!
GS: Josephine Lovelace has activated a Force Action!
GS: Josephine Lovelace takes a glancing hit from Sword Dancer's Void Storm for 61 hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! Xantia takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Void Storm for 153 hit points!
GS: Xantia guards a hit from K.K.'s Banishing Sorrow for 62 hit points!
GS: Poison and Disease! Statuses applied to Xantia!
GS: Rose takes a glancing hit from Sword Dancer's Rusted Blade for 137 hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! Rosaline Calice guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Cowardice for 256 hit points!
GS: Noah Hawthorne guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Devil's Maw for 39 hit points!
GS: Disease and Weaken! Statuses applied to Noah Hawthorne!
GS: Seraph Edna takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Nightmare Instant for 145 hit points!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Alisha Diphda with Nightmare Instant!
GS: Alisha Diphda guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Nightmare Instant for 87 hit points!
GS: Morgan Newkirk takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Void Storm for 107 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Sword Dancer has posed.

Round: 2/8

<Pose Tracker> Sorey has posed.

Sorey smiles at Rose's insistence that he can't fight on his own. "Yeah, but I'm not fighting it by myself - I've got all of you here to help me out!" he shouts, even as the Sword Dancer explodes into a flurry of movement. Mikleo appears in the air behind Sorey for a moment, and grins. "I'm not gonna let him overdo it. Don't worry Edna."

Really, you shouldn't worry. Mikleo is currently doing enough worrying for the both of you!

The thing was certainly moving with an incredible amount of speed, but as it whirls towards the Shepherd with a roar, Sorey raises his bow. A flash of light appears in front of him, and a barrier of energy deflects the worst of the dark energy from the Hellionish creature.

A moment later the barrage of light comes roaring in, and Sorey spins his bow and sends them flying to the side, scattered into a number of different directions thanks to his parry. He glances over at the others - no one seems to be seriously hurt, so the best thing they can do is keep pushing at their enemies.

"Alisha, I'm going to try and knock that armored guy out of here - keep up the support!" Part of Sorey wishes they could see the flow of malevolence that was racing through the area... but he also wishes they could see as it was being pushed back by the bravery of those who were fighting against the darkness.

The Shepherd lands on the ground, already pulling an arrow into existence along the line of his bow. And then Sorey raises it, aiming the weapon at K.K... and unleashes a shot. The arrow splits in two... and into two more, and two more from there, doubling several times as it arcs upwards into the air before raining down towards K.K. like an unending barrage of blue-white meteors, each one exploding into a flash of water as it slams into the white knight or the ground around him.

GS: Sorey has attacked K.K. with Blue Flurry!
GS: Sorey has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.

"Damn it," Talise shouts as Morgan speaks up, "it's a demon from Lunar!!" She's not even sure K.K. is a man - in fact she's started to assume the reverse.

A few of Talise's slashes score hits, but she's brushed aside soon enough, letting out a snarl and pivoting to bring herself back around. She can hear K.K. threatening Ida - threatening all of them.

The Knight moves before she can get another swing in. Bracing herself, she attempts to sweep past the incoming thrust; she's a step too slow, and the sword rips through her defenses and shreds a long rip in her seafarer's coat. A spray of red splatters across the ground behind her - but the sound of the explosion drowns out any outcry she makes. Then she's lost within a massive tidal wave of black energy; it seems to completely swallow her in a wave of absolute doubt and physical anguish.

Darkness passes... eventually. The tall woman hits the ground awkwardly, her shoulder slamming into marble tile painfully.

For a few seconds she struggles to get up. Much of her coat has been burned off, exposing a deep, bloody cut in her side and a series of burns up her arm. Blood drips down her bicep and into her gauntlet. More drips from a corner of her mouth. She hurts, everywhere.

"Don't you... sass at me, you damn monster," she hisses through her teeth. She plants her sword against the ground as she finally makes it to her feet, weaving unsteadily for a moment.

Behind her eyes, frustration burns. She wants to lash out and destroy something.

She doesn't. Instead she breathes. Lets it out in a slow stream.

(Do not let your anger rule you.)

"You have no reason to take anything out on these people," she says as she begins to move forward again, voice throaty with pain, but steady enough. "You're a stranger here just like I am. Leave them be and deal with me."

Power flows through her gauntlets. Shoulders bunching, she runs back into the fray. Rastaban's blade glitters as the Beastwoman swings out -

It's a feint. She whips the sword back, pivots - attempts to smash into K.K. with her shoulder, then come back around to swing at the Knight with one more two-handed stroke, aiming to simply rip the blade horizontally through him. It's another blow like the many she threw at him before - but more smooth this time.

GS: Talise Gianfair has attacked K.K. with Tidal Blow!
GS: Talise Gianfair has been weakened by Disease! They take 0 hit points of damage, and burn off their temporary hit points!
GS: Talise Gianfair has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Rose has posed.

Pyre this, pyre that. Why is this White Knight speaking of a pyre too? Is it the same pyre that Vin seemed to worship, or another one? Something to puzzle out later, when a giant Hellion isn't trying to put a sword directly through her back. Asking Vin would be the way to go.

The agility of both opponents is staggering, too. It doesn't make going after either one a breeze, much less trying to keep onto the knight's trail. That armor's thick and heavy to boot, with almost no joints to abuse. One couldn't blame K.K. for the decision to clad himself (themselves?) from head to toe in protection, but it's making Rose's job a lot harder here. Something to consider and plan for later.

The Sword Dancer's blade crashes down, piercing the ground rather than Rose's back. It cuts a nasty line through her jacket and tunic, even, it draws some blood, but lucky here it caught her side, not her spine. If that had been her spine it wouldn't be good news.

She throws herself forward after the White Knight, rumbling confusion and some anger aboutt he accusation of being blade. How can the knight even know that? And what will he try showing her? No, she's had enough today. She doesn't want more eye-opening traumatic experiences. Not today, anyway! "You won't show me anything! I've had just about enough of this Malevolence nonsense for the day!" She bounces quickly, you really have to give her that. She's still hurting, but focused on the fight like this, she can ignore it.

K.K. focuses on Sorey and Rose sees to try to use that opening. She dashes forward, jumps up, twirls her knives into a reverse grip. "Rising Phoenix!" Flames erupt around her feet and her knives and she suddenly screeches downward into a dropkick, passing amidst the myriad attacks trying to pin the knight down too-- or hopefully, the myriad attacks currently distracting them. If she can't nail the kick, that's what she has knives for, twirling and spinning into a fiery flurry. Maybe she can't pierce the armor with daggers, but flames should fare better in making K.K. uncomfortable.

GS: Rose has attacked K.K. with Rising Phoenix!
GS: Rose has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Alisha Diphda has posed.

The one time Alisha met Rosaline, it was in the midst of the battle for Port Timney. She saw her as a kindly nun; a woman who supported her, even during the worst of the fighting. To see her like this...

She gasps, sharply. "Please! Be careful, you could--you could succumb to it too!"

Edna, however, has wise words. Alisha turns to look back at K.K. She nods her head. "Y-Yes," she says. "I understand, Edna. We must... we must persevere against this knight!"

That is easier said than done. Alisha can feel the taint of the Sword Dancer's Malevolence spreading with each step. She can feel it seep in -- the bone-chilling, cloying, sickly sweet feeling that fills her with such terror. She only barely repulses that feeling. She stumbles, but she sees the blade coming down at Rose -- sees the darkness that threatens to swallow her friends.

And K.K. stands through all of it, clad in their white armor, and standing against it. Alisha's eyes widen at those words -- and then she shakes her head. "Then--then if you insist upon this course of action, I will have to stop you! I don't know who you are or what you intend... but I will not falter against you!"

She rushes in. Rose goes left -- and Alisha goes right. She leaps into the air, this time, and spins her spear overhead. She comes crashing down, and extends the spear, stabbing hard for the armored knight's side.

"Skewering Spear!"

GS: Alisha Diphda has attacked K.K. with Skewering Spear!
GS: Alisha Diphda has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Sephilia Lampbright has posed.

Somehow, Chauncey's plush arms, raised to ward against the Sword Dancer's terrifyingly focused attention, succeed at deflecting the lethal force of the blow somewhat...but only somewhat.

Bleeding, knocked back, Sephilia is terrified by the piercing gaze, but she's aware of more than just her immediate surroundings--as is necessary in a battle situation.

So she's aware of what's happening to Talise, facing off still with K.K., and taking a worse beating than Sephy herself has faced! Chauncey, knocked to his plushy knees from the force of the Sword Dancer's blow, staggers back upright, and back a bit.

"Talise, hang in there!" Sephilia cries, and feels an energy buzzing through her--and out to help her beleaguered friend. Then, having sent out her encouragement, Sephilia returns her attention to the monster that she is facing--awareness of the battlefield is good, but not to the point of distraction--and issues an order to Chauncey. "Let's try the Swift Fox Clothesline, Chauncey!" she cries. Lurching forward, building up speed as he goes, the doll rushes forward, one arm extended to clash yet again with the Sword Dancer.

GS: Sephilia Lampbright used Mystic on Talise Gianfair! 100 Temporary HP gained! All statuses cleared!
GS: Sephilia Lampbright has activated a Force Action!
GS: Sephilia Lampbright has attacked Sword Dancer with Swift Fox Clothesline!!
GS: Sephilia Lampbright has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Edna has posed.

"Tch. Guess it was too much to hope that creating distance would keep the other away." Edna says, riiiiight as that big ol angry Sword Dancer comes right for them. She's not going to worry about Sorey. Not with Meebo there with him. If they're going to attack the white knight, then she'll cover his and the others' backs by keeping that damned skeletal horror busy. Which means actually having to *run*. My god. Exertion. What a novel concept.

Edna moves through the area quickly, weaving this way and that, jumping over any sweeping slashes and ducking under any higher ones. But that is one strike she can't avoid, which comes from the side. Her umbrella is deployed and enchanted just in time to take the impact.

The force of the blow sends Edna sailing through the air, before she hits the ground and rolls. She's not out though. Rising back up to her feet with a dull glare, she speaks. "I changed my mind. I want ten crablettes when this is over." She decides that, saying it very pointedly despite how out of place it might be at the moment. Then, she points her umbrella towards the Sword Dance, closing it up as a magic circle forms beneath her feet. It's violet, glowing harshly for a few moments. Then, the Earth Seraph raises her weapon high and calls out.

"Air Pressure."

Immediately, the ground beneath the terrible creature grows crushingly heavy as two rings of gravity form. One on the ground, and one in the air, they pulse with earth energy, making it that much harder to move. If just for a few moments.

GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Sephilia Lampbright's Swift Fox Clothesline! for 87 hit points!
GS: Cripple! Statuses applied to Sword Dancer!
GS: Seraph Edna has attacked Sword Dancer with Air Pressure!
GS: Seraph Edna has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Seraph Edna's Air Pressure for 164 hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! K.K. takes a solid hit from Sorey's Blue Flurry for 218 hit points!
GS: K.K. enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Talise Gianfair's Tidal Blow for 112 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Kent Hauch has posed.

Kent frowns, lifting the bottle to his lips. He sees that the white knight pushes. That's all it seems to be doing, pushing on people, aggravating their emotions. It's the sort of thing a gang leader knows how to do, but to different targets, to different ends. When Kent Hauch pushes on the Black Ties, he's galvanizing them into acting like his own right arm. K.K. is pushing them into himself, goading them to fight him harder.

Irritating. It makes it hard to figure out what the bastard wants.

The Sword Dancer's wail erupts outward, vibrating the glass of his bottle painfully against his teeth before shattering it in his hand, splashing him with molotov. Kent growls, spitting out the neck of the bottle and looking at his already-bandaged left hand, brushing at it. None of the glass managed to penetrate the scarred, toughened skin. The fire had taken away some of the sensation and certainly made his hands harder to look at, but he was a little bit stronger somehow. Reforged.

He thumbs at the blood running down his cheek where a shard winged him, glowering at the giant Hellion. His brow knits. It seems like a hallucination, but he swears even he, a base and unspiritual creature, he can see the suggestion of something in the armor. Fargo Foobach described to him what it felt to look at something wrong. He shows his teeth - learning something every day lately.

GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Rose's Rising Phoenix for 138 hit points!
GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Alisha Diphda's Skewering Spear for 124 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

K.K.'s blade rests against Ida's stomach. The two of them just kind of hang there, and it would take just the slightest little push to send that blade into the young woman's gut. That's not what the Trial Knight does--what she does is possibly worse. Ida's world dissolves into a coruscating display of light and color. Sorrow so keen that it might as well be a stab wound drives into her. It feels like her flesh is on fire. She bites her lip to keep from screaming for her mother.

Rose and Edna's intervention keeps things from getting any more hellish than they already are. Feeling the blade withdraw, Ida plants a hand against K.K.'s armored chest, and shoves, tumbling across the dirt. She heard everything the Trial Knight told her, and it hurts. "You will not," Ida says, but inwardly, I wish someone would. The back of her jacket is smoldering, the heat creeping up her back--Ida throws it off, lets it flutter into the dirt. Her hand moves for the gun in the back holster, and Riesenlied's face swims in her vision. Ida's hand jerks away as if burned.

"BE JUDGED," she cries, but her voice doesn't have that roaring steel in it. She goes for the other revolver--not Devil's Due, the gun her mother used--and empties all six chambers at K.K. in quick succession. It takes effort to keep from trembling. Mother, Father, Edward, Sylvie. This monster /knows/. "I won't let you touch them!"

GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked K.K. with Fan the Hammer!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes 9 damage from Poison!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Morgan Newkirk has posed.


"And we are fighting demons from the moon now. Ain't that just the best news I've heard all day." Morgan calls as he slams a port on the side of his ARMs barrel. Spent brass ejects to arch though the cursed air but vanish in motes of energy before they can fall to the ground.

"I thought we were fighting the manifestation of hate and rage here!" Now he's just ranting at no one in perticular really as he raises his gun again. Just to see the blades and dark formless anger rip though the turf and debris towards him. Most people would leap out of the way but the Fox? The Fox just laughs and charges the storm. Blood sings in his ears. Eyes wide, lips pulled back in a wide grin just on the raw edge of manic he leaps towards the blades.

Bursting out the other side as his shield shatters around him blood now flows freely from several slices on his arms and chest. It was the quickest way though the mess and the shortest amount of time in it.

It makes a kind of crazy sense.

He shakes himself as he stands again and droplets of crimson stain the corrupt ground. The sandy fur of his tail and ears is starting to stain red but he didn't get his name for nothin and the Laughing Fox just keeps that wild grin fixed on his face.

He raises his gauntlet as the power of his ARM spins up in the form of...a little ball of light?

Well thats new.

It doesn't stay there though.

"Hawtthorne! Heads up! Help incoming!" He calls as the blue-white orb streaks across the battlefield towards the other Drifter. Hovering round him as it drains the corruption from the air and Noah himself.

GS: Morgan Newkirk has attacked Noah Hawthorne with Cover Gauntlet!
GS: Morgan Newkirk has completed its action.
GS: Noah Hawthorne takes a solid hit from Morgan Newkirk's Cover Gauntlet for 0 hit points!
GS: Shield! Statuses applied to Noah Hawthorne!
GS: Restore! Morgan Newkirk clears debuffs from Noah Hawthorne!
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.

"Fengalon's teeth." Those dark eyes of Josie's widen, even as she remembers what Rosaline had said in passing. 'A demon', Talise shouts. That armored knight doesn't so much as falter as she and others attempt to fill it with lead. Her gaze dips, just a second, following those slugs as they clatter to the earth. Josie takes a breath, quickly followed by another. 'All must account for?' Her gaze hardens. "...Like hell you /are/."

All of them. Into the pyre.

Josie's mind snaps back to that fire in the depths of the Hollow. Watching things burn. Watching Lily...

"Oh, no we're not! You're not taking anything--"

And there's still, Josephine realizes, as she just slightly turns her head to catch the glint of sickly-light-on-metal, that skeletal monstrosity to contend with. How can something that seems to move so slowly accelerate in a matter of an instant? She only has seconds.

This time -- against this thing -- it's enough. Close enough, at least. Drawing upon the core of her being, she leaps, back bent, as the blade comes in at an uncanny angle for her, tucking her rifle close against her body as she arcs towards the sky. It's not enough to spare her body completely -- the length of the sword she faces catches the side of her extended left leg, leaving a long blood streak -- but she otherwise tumbles unscathed, rolling onto her back as she returns to the earth.

Twisting herself, Josie pulls herself upright onto her feet, finding herself at that moment practically beneath the monstrosity.

This is at once likely both a very good and a very bad place to be. Bad, for obvious reasons. Good, because...

She, briefly, can claim one of the creature's very legs as a source of cover. She can feel, for a moment, the pulsation of magical effect around her -- thankfully confined to the skeletal creature -- which might only help her in her next gambit. Squinting her left eye shut, Josie steadies the firearm with her right as she aims for the bottom of the monster's skeletal jaw. Her finger eases over the trigger, and she fires.

GS: Josephine Lovelace has attacked Sword Dancer with Silver Lining!
GS: Josephine Lovelace has completed her action.
GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Josephine Lovelace's Silver Lining for 88 hit points!
GS: Josephine Lovelace takes Cover! She gains 50 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

In the same way that Noah's characteristic sly looks have been shed in favor of something less pliable, there isn't any expression of satisfaction to see the way some of his rounds punch holes in the armor of whoever, and whatever, owns the sword that drew his blood: only flat-faced determination, the muscle that straps his jaw tight, teeth gritted. Countless wounds bid for his attention, points of stinging heat where nerves have been slit, the ends sparking with impulses, but his focus is wholly on the way the armored figure /slaps/ his rounds out of the air, swatting them away as though they were bees, piercing gauntlets in places and being ricocheted off on useless vectors in others.

/What the hell is in there?/

Not far from him battlefield ivory continues to lay waste to whatever comes within reach -- and a few things that don't. Case in point: those swords, one freshly unsheathed from the Hellion's skull and skeined with indigo webs of pure fear, plunge down into the ground, sinking deeply, effortlessly into the blasted earth. The spectral blade pulses dark energy into it, opening a seam of emptiness that races for Noah's feet. His backpedaling doesn't put him out of range: his boot connects with a remnant of Lahan's devastation and the stumble slows him enough that the welter of filth bubbling up out of the ground surges across his boots, viscous and determined to run his courage to the /ground/.

His stumble turns into a topple, hazel eyes wide, suddenly distant. His back connects with the rucked earth, and though he keeps hold of his ARMs -- with a /death grip/, as though they were his only tether to sanity -- he is momentarily lost in a waking nightmare. The steady-beating engine of his heart lurches into a strained, frantic rhythm, adrenaline poured into his bloodstream to circle his veins like lit naphtha, crawling across his skin in waves of hot and cold. It is /bottomless terror/, a dose of it so intense that all he can do for those next few moments is fight all-consuming panic -- fear with no object. It scatters his thoughts to the wind like scraps of lit paper, drains the strength from his limbs to leave him weak.

...until Morgan Newkirk intervenes. He gives Noah a-- a-- /what the hell is that thing?/

All that matters is that it rips him out of insensate panic and restores his senses to him. For the second time he rolls away from something, hardly unscathed but still breathing. Hard, granted: breathing hard. He has enough of his wits back to send Morgan a half-assed salute somewhat diminished in effect by the weapon in his hand, then rounds on the skeleton, that same ARM levelled for another shot, this one aimed at the bony fingers clutching that malign sword.

GS: Noah Hawthorne has attacked Sword Dancer with X Marks The Spot!
GS: Noah Hawthorne has completed his action.
GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Noah Hawthorne's X Marks The Spot for 133 hit points!
GS: Sword Dancer enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Myyah Hawwa has posed.

One of the console operators turns to look over her shoulder. "Sir, another spike. Should I send the drone around lower again?"

"Sure, more data for the data fiends."

"You should take the drone back up before someone notices it," says Myyah. Benzoma glances sidelong at her. She looks back, and gives another little apology smile as she explains:

"We're almost certain there's Kislevi informers among the drifters. Besides, you're not getting anything other than Ether concentration without a specialist on site."

The operator looks between the two, but settles on Benzoma for the final say. Benzoma gestures in assent. "Do it."

"Could you zoom before you go up?" says Myyah. She steps forward. "Section D5 right now. The armored figure."

"Someone you know?" says Benzoma.

"Person of interest," says Myyah. "The commander wants some visuals for the briefing with Central."

The room remains in silence as the camera zooms and focuses on the increasingly desperate exchange of weapons and magic. The shot lingers. Myyah's attention lingers with it.

No.

"That's great," she says to the operator. "Thanks."

The camera pulls out as the drone gains altitude. Myyah turns away to return to Benzoma's side, favoring him with a direct look while she's facing him.

"I'll read your report later," she says. Her voice is not quiet; there are no secrets in a room this size with a team working this closely. "But what's your personal opinion?"

Benzoma grimaces, sucking in air noisily between her bared teeth. He exhales, shoulders slumping. "I don't know. Knight guy is a flavor of hedge mage. Could have symbols under the armor. Maybe that Kislevi prototype throws off some kind of Ether radiation. We should warm up the cruiser and glass the Cain-forsaken place."

"Ooo," says Myyah, feigning offense with a furrow of her brow. She turns to watch the screen again. "Taking the Emperor's name in vain. That's five demerits."

"Ha ha. Emperor preserve me and my delicate soul as I watch a giant skeleton murder a bunch of genetically-deficient teenagers."

Myyah's expression softens, though there remains a hint of humor in her smile. "Don't be so hard on them. They're holding their ground."

The two watch the melee for a silent moment. People are savaged and receive succor. They rage and find relief. A lady almost gets stabbed.

"What do you care?" says Benzoma.

Myyah taps her fingernail on the edge of her tablet. Tk. Tk. Tk.

"It's my job to find potential," she says.

<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.

Punching K.K. produces a sound as satisfying as striking the bone on the Shadow Dancer does. Xantia is given no reprieve to appreciate this, however. She was capable of escaping K.K.'s blade, but she was not expecting a sphere of light to emerge from it. There's little she can do to defend against it.

To make everything several times worse, the Shadow Dancer takes the opportunity to swing its sword her way right at the same time. If she was conscious of what exactly happened just now, she might have thanked her lucky stars that being obscured within the orb made her a harder target, enough so to be struck with the flat of a blade instead of being cleaved right through.

Then again, it doesn't feel particularly lucky. That strike was forceful enough to knock her not just at the ground, but /into/ it, the red-haired girl creating a trench by means of her body burrowing through it, until finally coming to a stop. For a time, she just lies there, completely still, appearing to have been knocked out. She probably should have been. But she's still conscious, and painfully aware of the bad state she's in.

Is she... going to die? A question she's never asked herself before. Despite the dangerous situations she keeps getting herself involved in, it just didn't seem like it would ever come up, at least, not anytime soon.

Upon considering this possibility, renewed strength flows through her body. All pain is abruptly gone. Her eyes fly open, and she rises, slowly.

She's not okay, she dimly realizes. She's just somehow managing to force herself past the pain, past the injuries. She isn't sure how. She doesn't notice her body's faint glow. She only sees the Trial Knight, dead ahead.

Despite everything, Xantia still manages to move with the same speed as before. She goes straight for K.K., the incoming punch probably predictable. Which is why she doesn't strike from the front. At the last possible moment, she dashes around, and attacks from the flank. More tactical than typical, for her.

She even manages to speak after doing so, the labored way of doing so betraying the fact that she isn't doing half as well as she made it appear. Weak, yet insistent. Her words are unchanged, save for a small addition.

"Go... away. ....please."

GS: Xantia used Mystic on Xantia! 0 Temporary HP gained! All statuses cleared!
GS: Xantia has activated a Force Action!
GS: Xantia has attacked K.K. with Focus Punch!
GS: Xantia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Rosaline Calice has posed.

Rosaline rips and tears with reckless abandon, lost in the throes of her rage. Alisha's words don't seem to reach her, not immediately at least. But the apparition, of course, fights back. It has something special for her, worse than sharp steel: a harsh, unbearable truth.

The ethereal blade plunges deep into her, drawing no blood but still sending the woman convulsing, stumbling away from the Sword Dancer, until she crumples to the ground, a pale, sickly-looking woman in a torn habit.

She hasn't felt the worst yet, however. The worst is what comes next: The horrifying moment of crystal clarity that comes over her, not dissipating her rage but making her consciously aware of it for what might be the first time.

"What am I... doing?" she asks herself, sounding punch-drunk as she looks at her hands. Her gloves were torn as she drew her claws, again. No matter how much she tries to bury it, the truth is undeniable.

"I'm a monster."

But before she can go down further down that train of thought, Alisha's words from earlier echo in her mind. 'You could succumb to it too!'

Even more importantly than what she was just doing, the nun remember /where she is/. This further piece of clarity isn't wanted, but it's helpful. She can't lose herself here. What she has isn't bravery and she know that, but she can do something with it.

Her torn-gloved hands reach for her trusty Esdras and Judith. She loads a new pair of clips into them. "I am Rosaline Calice, Etone-in-training," she says, "and I'm your WORST NIGHTMARE!"

And off she goes, screaming like a banshe as she leaps right back at the Sword Dancer, getting right up in its face and emptying every bullet she has into its cursed bones.

GS: Rosaline Calice has attacked Sword Dancer with One Woman Apocalypse!
GS: Rosaline Calice has completed her action.
GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Fan the Hammer for 106 hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! K.K. takes a solid hit from Xantia's Focus Punch for 203 hit points!
GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Rosaline Calice's One Woman Apocalypse for 156 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

Its wail grows.

Ever more intense.

Ever more fearful.

The rot creeps further, following the Sword Dancer's advance, its pitch black blade pulsing noxiously with every foot of ground the Malevolence spreads its festering presence to. Like weeds dragging across the earth and choking out everything else with the misfortune of being there.

Not that it is allowed to do so unabated. And nor does it allow anyone save those fortunate enough to be dragged out of its rampage by their efforts to keep K.K. at bay from its wrath. Sephilia and her doll go on the offensive, Chauncey rushing forward to SLAM into the Sword Dancer with enough of an impact to blow away chunks of scrap armor and send it reeling backwards, pinning it in place -- preventing it from reaching those too far away. Yet, as it goes, the Dancer lets out a strange chortle -- the type of nervous laughter that one gets when on the verge of a breakdown, when all senses start to simply black out in panic. It hangs light and terrible in the air... and that pitch sword shoves into the earth.

Through veins of spreading Malevolence, its blade travels, one with the weeds until it RUPTURES from the ground beneath Sephilia like an overgrown root, looking to STAB her through -- not physically, but spiritually. Right into her heart. To fill her mind with a simple terror. The things we cower from.

Like the thought of her parents, so far away, alone and possibly in distress, like those damningly prophetic words of Agatha foretold.

The upswell of Malevolence from the earth makes the scarred land beneath Morgan and Ida split in turn, as one fuels panic and rage into an assault against the knight and the other seeks to help a comrade. Malevolence spits free from the wounds beneath them, to douse them in corrupt and fetid flame.

And still it struggles against the doll, its rusted katana swinging feebly through the air. The ground beneath it grows so heavy, gravitic forces exerting crushing pressure; the sound of armor crunching inward is all too audible as armor plates crush into black bones, splintering them, making it wail...

... just as that rusted katana swings so simply and weakly, so pathetically, aimed for Edna in a way that would make any scoff at the chipped, dull-edged sight. One would wish.

Josephine looks for cover behind the monstrous Hellion itself -- a wise move, but one that comes with its own costs. The shot rings out, the bullet cracking into the Dancer's jaw in a way that makes it -explode-, partially unhinged and hanging open... and it's within barely a fraction of a second that it responds, literally stabbing -through- itself to reach Josephine behind it, to skewer it upon the tip of its rusty blade.

The katana and the black blade swing in tandem now, the former ripped free from the Hellion's own body and exerting tremendous, blackened force through the air that bursts towards the earth in contrails of black flame -- projectiles that roar to life to collide with Noah, just as he makes his assault. Rounds from Noah's gun shoot through those fingers; the skeletal creature roars despite its ruined jaw as its fingers loose and that blade falls, hitting ground with a tremulous shockwave of Malevolence. Souls, made palpable through impurity, cry out, twist and writhe before they are sucked back into the Sword Dancer as it reaches desperately for that blade to rip it free once more...

... leaving it in the perfect position to be blown apart by the sudden and violent incursion of Rosaline. It rips the blade free just in time to send a strong black gout of flame her way just before she levels shot after shot into its midsection, blowing apart bones and ribs and spine in a way that should send it toppling...

... if it wasn't clear that those burning tethers of pulsing, veining Malevolence running through it is keeping the abomination in tact. Damaged, but not destroyed.

<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

For as hard as they fight, for as hard as they hit, there's one distinct impression of the Knight above all others -- the impression of someone deliberately holding back.

"You are wrong, Talise Gianfair."

Those words come coldly and yet with absolute decisiveness the moment the Beastwoman attacks, in perfect tandem with the efforts of the Shepherd. The Knight does not move -- indeed, they seem to keep themselves -entirely open- to the attacks as if welcoming them.

"They are ALL involved. Every one. And if you feel so strongly, then show me you have the strength to MAKE ME do what you want. Or I will drag ALL OF THEM into this, and you will be too weak to stop me."

Talise crashes into the Trial Knight, and that blow RIPS through them horizontally with one smooth, swift motion. It tears into armor, leaving a deep gauge there -- and unsettles them, just enough for the Armatized Shepherd to capitalize on. Those arrows rain down, and with each explosion of water, the Knight is forced back, and back, and back, further and further from the Dancer, until the very last -launches- them off their feet, sending them spiraling through the air to land in a three-point stance dozens of feet further back.

Rose sees her opening, and she capitalizes on it without relent. Ida joins the fray, shouting in panicked defiance. The Knight's gaze turns towards them just as they gets into their defenses. They say nothing -- there is no time. And yet body language can say so many things.

Like the way the Knight deliberately leans into those flames as Rose drops down on them with a CLASH of heel upon metal. The way it turns towards Ida's bullets, each one ricocheting or lodging painfully in armor, knocking their helmeted head backwards. Steel scorches, melts, as the burning blades heat up that armor to uncomfortable degrees and send K.K. careening towards the ground with the deafening sound of a crash.

"... You have not the strength to judge me."

Those words come, damningly simple and yet full of nothing less than absolute certainty, as K.K. rises once more. Armor damaged, but looking so very unbending as the greatest of oak trees. Its voice, its gaze, focuses entirely on Ida in those scant moments.

"Know that fact as certainty when you are too weak to stop me from tearing your life down around you. Know that you had not the strength to defy it. Know that it was your fault."

And as they stand, Alisha falls, perfectly timed to capitalize on that moment of weakness. The spear stabs -hard- into the Knight's side, fracturing armor into so many splintering shards. Not quite deep enough to see what lies beneath, but more than enough to unsettle the Knight still recovering--

--just in time for Xantia to lodge her polite request from K.K.'s flank.

Weak, but insistent, the blow is anything but. Fueled by her momentum, it CRUNCHES into armor making steel fold inward like tissue paper, sending them careening until the Knight hits the side of a ruined building with a hideous crack. Rubble falls down all around them, burying them. Silence reigns.

"... What is a Shepherd?"

The question comes with crystal clarity as that rubble EXPLODES away in an expulsion of magical power the Knight had not seen fit to show until that exact moment. The ruins of Lahan's homes go flying as the Trial Knight rises from the depths of it all, helmet cracked across the left side...

... a glimpse of a cold, golden eye visible. An eye that stares up, for the briefest moments, with the full weight of its judgment. Up, for the briefest moments, towards Kent so far beyond.

"Is it a fool boy, playing pretend at adventure and heroism?"

Blades snap out to either side of K.K.. They step forward, once.

"Is it to purge the Lord of Calamity, and to reap one's rewards in legend and song?"

Blades clench. Tight.

"Know your burden, boy."

And in a flash, K.K. is gone. In an instant, they are simply -moving- faster than the human eye...

... towards Alisha.

"And know yours, failed princess."

One slash. Two. Three. Four. Five. All of them coming from different angles, over and over, to skewer and cut and -bind- Alisha in glowing red thread, over and over again, to suspend her high into the air...

... so that the White Knight may stab into her midsection in an explosion of crimson so bright it might look like plasmic blood, crackling through the air and engulfing both of them.

And when it is all over?

The Trial Knight is gone.

... leaving only in their place a strange, prismatic orb amongst the rubble, hauntingly beautiful and shifting in strange pulses through every color of the spectrum.

"For you are all far too weak to stop anything as you are."

B O N U S   O B J E C T I V E

Complete!!
GS: K.K. has activated a Force Action!
GS: K.K. has activated a Force Action!
GS: K.K. enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: K.K. has attacked Alisha Diphda with Scarlet Skein!
GS: Sword Dancer has activated a Force Action!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Josephine Lovelace with Nightmare Instant!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Devil's Maw!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Sephilia Lampbright with Cowardice!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Noah Hawthorne with Demon Roar!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Morgan Newkirk with Devil's Maw!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Rosaline Calice with Demon Fang!
GS: Sword Dancer has completed its action.
<Pose Tracker> Sword Dancer has posed.

Round: 3/8

GS: Sephilia Lampbright takes a glancing hit from Sword Dancer's Cowardice for 257 hit points!
GS: Josephine Lovelace takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Nightmare Instant for 146 hit points!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Sword Dancer with Nightmare Instant!
GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Nightmare Instant for 155 hit points!
GS: Sword Dancer has completed its action.
GS: Morgan Newkirk takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Devil's Maw for 63 hit points!
GS: Disease and Weaken! Statuses applied to Morgan Newkirk!
GS: Noah Hawthorne guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Demon Roar for 77 hit points!
GS: Rosaline Calice takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Demon Fang for 88 hit points!
DC: MISS! Ida Everstead-Rey completely evades Devil's Maw from Sword Dancer!
<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.

She can hear Sephilia calling out for her.

Behind Talise's eyes, resolve begins to surge through the pall of Malevolence-fuelled self-doubt and self-loathing that has settled over her heart. The girl believes in her. She has to make that belief mean something.

She makes it count. Her blade bites into cold white steel, and Sorey follows up on it. Panting heavily, the swordswoman pivots away, eyes hard as she watches K.K. She's more steady now.

The knight gets up again. Talise's jaw clenches. "Then I'll find the strength," she bites out, heartbeat quickening as she forces herself to focus through the pain. Sephilia is counting on her. Ida is. Alisha is. She can't fail. "You chose me. If a trial is what you want, then I'm going to be the one who wins it - and I won't let you hurt my friends, /or/ this world!"

And then K.K. is gone, leaving only an orb behind - and a bleeding princess. Talise's shoulders remain tightly bunched.

Her eyes are cold, and hard.

Behind her, the Hellion rampages, black blade and curved swinging in bloody tandem, crying souls seeking the lives of people she cares about. Sephilia. The Bladesinger whirls, clutching both hands around the haft of Rastaban and squaring her jaw.

"/Hold on, Sephy,/" she calls, her voice rough in her throat as she turns -

She doubles over as she runs and grabs ahold of the fallen orb. It's quickly shuttled into her inventory for now.

Then she's going at a full-sprint. Her eyes lock on Sephilia for a moment. The monstrous Hellion is savaging the girl, and while Sephilia's tough, she's human, too. Bloody, gauntleted fingers clutch her weapon all the more tightly as she lets the power of the Ogre pour from her gloves.

"Althena," she whispers. "Give me your strength. Please... if you're listening." (if you're the just goddess i've always known you are. if you're what lucia says you are.)

Talise leaps, a leap powered by the magical strength her gloves impart upon her. She boosts herself high above the battlefield. Dramatically, she hefts Rastaban back at the peak of her jump - and then gravity takes her, and she's descending towards the Sword Dancer like a comet from the goddess.

"DON'T /TOUCH HEEEEER!!/" Talise roars as she swings with all her magically-enhanced might - attempting to drive her blade through K.K.'s monstrous servitor in one devastating stroke.

GS: Talise Gianfair has attacked Sword Dancer with Savior's Storm!
GS: Talise Gianfair has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Sorey has posed.

Sorey might not be able to say what the end goal of any Shepherd would be, but as the white knight asks him that question, he doesn't hesitate in his answer. "My purpose as the Shepherd is to bring Seraphim and people together, and allow them to work to create a more harmonious world!" And he has grown stronger - his travels with his friends, his struggles with malevolence and the Hellions, all of that has helped him to become a better person.

"And people can grow stronger on their own, without you testing them! Believing that you have to force people to suffer to become stronger is just a conceit that rejects the bonds that exist between everyone!"

Sorey leaps forward, aiming to deliver another blow to K.K... but the white knight disappears in a flash, leaving behind only that orb in his wake. Sorey considers picking it up... but there's too much of a chance that it could be a trap of some sort. He doesn't want to risk it just yet, especially with the huge skeletal creature still rampaging about the center of the ruined down with its huge swords.

He has to hope Alisha will be okay, but they need to try and put that thing down if possible. "Mikleo, let's hit it with a spell!"

"Right!" the Seraph replies, appearing behind Sorey for a moment as the two of them concentrate. A circle of light appears beneath the Armatized Shepherd, followed by three larger circles appearing in the air above him. "Roaring vortex - unleash your power and smite our foes!" the two intone in unison. TRINITY ARROW!"

And three massive blades of water erupt from the hovering circles, all of them lancing forward to slam into the Sword Dancer.

GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Talise Gianfair's Savior's Storm for 159 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Sephilia Lampbright has posed.

Sephilia isn't sure what instinct or cue urges her to move, but move she does--and even then, it's just barely enough to prevent her from getting killed outright as the Malevolent energy rips through her, causing her to gasp, every muscle stiffening as she arcs her back in pure pain. A gasp, almost like a whimper, emerges from her mouth.

Chauncey stills in his movement, standing idly as his mistress writhes in the backpack carrying her.

"Dad..." gasps Sephilia, wrenching a shuddering breath. "Mom..."

For a moment, it seems like the girl is paralyzed with terror and regret. Tears stream from her eyes, squeezed shut.

"I'm sorry I can't be with you right now. I'm sorry I can't take the short way home."

Her eyes open, and through her tears, Sephy grabs the edge of the pack, hauling herself back to where she can see the fight, still going on. "I'm needed more here," she says, as if to give herself courage. "I'm needed here now...I can't give up. CHAUNCEY!"

Tears staining her cheeks like battle-paint, the girl points once more at the Sword Dancer. "We're not done yet! Let's hang in there, and give this thing just a little more!" A reserve of energy wells from within Sephilia, and the pain seems to lessen a little bit. "FOXINGTON POUND!!"

GS: Sephilia Lampbright used Mystic on Sephilia Lampbright! 100 Temporary HP gained! All statuses cleared!
GS: Sephilia Lampbright has activated a Force Action!
<Pose Tracker> Rose has posed.

Everything the White Knight says is significant. He talks of judging, of pyres, of flames, of strength and weakness. Of failure and success. He isn't acting like someone out to KILL people, he's... testing them? Shaping them? Maybe that's a ruse, just an impression it wants to give. Maybe Rose isn't reading into the knight's actions from the correct angle, or she's reading too much into it.

There's too much going on to press the right questions. Too many people for the knight to answer and taunt. This'll require private investigation to get to the bottom of, and that might rely a bit too much on the knight being willing to talk at all. Most likely it'll have to be at knife point.

Worries for another day.

"Alisha!" Oh that looks... that looks bad.

At least for now, K.K.'s withdrawn, leaving the party both to ponder his words, and deal with the Hellion that's been left behind. The massive, skeletal, ghostly, scary, terrifying Hellion. Rose takes a deep breath. This isn't like the Hollow. This isn't a mass of bones without a body trying to eat you. This is something humanoid.

Even if she can't see it clearly, she can take a very good guess about where to hit it. Or at least where to try hitting it.

OR, get this, she could NOT confront the horrible turboghost of Lahan and dive to Alisha to help her.

"Here, hang on!"

Rose produces, from her pockets, a healing potion. It isn't anything fancy or powerful but you'd be happier with it than not most of the time.

GS: Sephilia Lampbright has attacked Sword Dancer with Foxington Pound!
GS: Sephilia Lampbright has completed her action.
GS: Rose has attacked Alisha Diphda with Merchant's Wares!
GS: Rose has completed her action.
GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Sephilia Lampbright's Foxington Pound for 86 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

For as long as the armored figure refrains from assaulting Noah, Noah is willing to focus on the being spewing Malevolence out of every crack and pore. His shot connects, the tainted blade falls, but any satisfaction he might have felt wanes with the shockwave of fel energy that results from its impact with the ground, the swiftness with which the Hellion retrieves it, and the barrage of blackened projectiles that suddenly materialize. They paint dark ink-strokes on the air as they close in on him--

And the tiny mote of brilliance locked into his orbit by Morgan Newkirk intercepts the vast majority of them, a shooting star of protection. It cannot possibly get them all -- some of them land, and if he wasn't in rough shape before (he was) then he certainly is now. His clothes are sticky with blood and the sweat of induced fear, creating darkened wedges down the front of his chest and the middle of his b ack. His body aches in dozens of places.

He spares the unique cylinder on one of his ARMs only a moment's glance, though: the others, too, are bleeding, suffering in the miasma that bleeds liberally out of their opponent and the very ground they're standing on. With two choices -- tending to his own wounds, or helping to put an end to this, if they can, if such a thing /can/ be ended -- he doesn't hesitate to make his choice.

Imperceptible movements on the grips of the ARMs spin the metallic vials arrayed over each. He gathers what strength blood loss has left him with and pelts forward, vaulting up with ARMs upraised. He pivots the grips in either hand, barrels facing down, and they blur as they transform, wicked points angled downward, looking to lodge deep in blasted bone...and if they land that strike, to shift again, and fire deep into fouled marrow.

GS: Noah Hawthorne has attacked Sword Dancer with Fortune and Glory!
GS: Noah Hawthorne has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Rosaline Calice has posed.

Rosaline charges right through the flames, if that gets her closer to her target. She grits her teeth through the pain, more concerned about the habit she's wearing-- Luckily, Etonewear is made stupidly resilient, for obvious reasons.

She hits her mark to great effect, but she can't stay here. The red-hot rage that's been animating her is wearing off, like a lucid nightmare ending all too slowly. She runs away from the skeletal creature, holstering her now-useless ARM and...

Takes a few pained, deep breaths. She's back. She's herself again. She's not hurting /anyone/ again. What just happened to her... is something she'll have to think about later.

She takes stock of the situation as best as she can, through a cloudy, exhausted mind. There Sorey is, possibly their greatest beacon of hope. She clutches her cross in one hand, gathering power in the other, and projects it towards the Shepherd. She trusts him to make good use of it.

GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Noah Hawthorne's Fortune and Glory for 156 hit points!
DC: Rosaline Calice switches forms to The Timid Nun!
GS: Rosaline Calice has attacked Sorey with Holy Kindness!
GS: Rosaline Calice has completed her action.
GS: Rosaline Calice heals Sorey! He gains 100 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.

Xantia remains frozen in position after forcibly launching K.K. away from her. She listens to the knight's parting words, witnesses their parting actions, then watches them actually part. She's not quite sure why, but you can rest assured that once she regains her usual mental faculties, she will assume that it's because she asked nicely. A little politeness goes a long way: a good lesson to learn, even if it's probably not the correct one to learn from these particular events.

But the threat is not yet over. The skeletal creature is still wreaking havoc. Xantia takes a deep breath. Can she still do this? No, it's not a question of can or can't. She has to.

Once again, she moves, at a speed her wounded body shouldn't be capable of. Her glowing aura still present, but more faint now. Not even a hint of subtlety this time. There's no time. She just has to punch it, as hard as she can.

And so she does. As soon as she comes within range, that soft glow surrounding her body all flows to her right hand. It shines brightly, if briefly, for only as long as it takes her fist to fly forward, and strike the Shadow Dancer with all the force she can muster, causing a literal explosion of force.

Xantia staggers, afterwards. But even the stagger is with purpose. It's to make her way over to Rosaline's side. Despite her rapidly waning strength, she smiles at the Etone-in-training. Has she noticed the state her friend was in? Whether she has or not, she proceeds with purpose, not stopping until she reaches her destination... to lay a hand on Rosaline's shoulder. The glow from her hand fades, and a soothing sensation briefly flows through Rosaline's body. The way Xantia speaks isn't any different from the usual. Except for the lack of volume.

"Hey, Rosa... are you going to be okay? I hope so, because if not... who's going to make sure I'm okay...?"

With that, her body finally decides it's had all it can take, and she unceremoniously collapses.

GS: Xantia has attacked Sword Dancer with Exploding Fist!
GS: Xantia has completed her action.
GS: Xantia used Mystic on Rosaline Calice! 100 Temporary HP gained! All statuses cleared!
GS: Xantia has activated a Force Action!
<Pose Tracker> Morgan Newkirk has posed.


Morgan doesn't have much time to be smug. He wasn't actually sure if that was going to work. He had tried similar abilities on himself before and it worked. He just wasn't sure if it would work for someone else. It could have blown up Noah. Or blown up an area around Noah. Or just fizzled out. It was a risk though that Morgan was willing to take.

Mostly because it wouldn't hurt him.

What does hurt him though is the ground bursting like an open wound under his feet. Dark corruption leaks from the torn earth and twines around limbs. He can feel the fear, the hate. It crawls into his skull. Tearing into his mind as it sends him back to places he would rather not imagine. Old hurts and fears bubble up. Shouts of days long past mingle with the haze of the current battle as he staggers.

Though the twisting black he raises his arm though as he clenches his hand into a fist.

"Disengage..." His voice a low growl, the accent lacking from those two words. "...safeties."

The silver skin of the gauntlet fades into a darker color and looses it metalic luster as those lines of power etched in it grow in brightness and power. Light swirls out in a shield that slams into the corruption around him and shoves it back. It recedes and collects around the gauntlet to reveal a new weapon.

Twin six-barreled miniguns attached to the gauntlet. "Target locked."

The ensuing fire sounds like a buzzsaw as both miniguns open up, brass raining down around the Drifter's feet. The weapon moves from target to target with distrubing accuracy, aiming for joints. Where that energy joins to each other. Joins to the bones. Intending to blow it entirely apart.

There may be missiles too.

But there is a lot of bullets.

<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.

A yell catches Josie's attention. "Rosa--" Being where she is also means that Josephine gets an almost close-up look at Rosaline -- she'd been a little too preoccupied perhaps (understatement) to call out to the nun before -- as she hauls off and unloads onto the monster looming above. "--Shit!" Josie shouts as she ducks, falling back further behind the Sword Dancer proper after she takes her shot.

Bone fragments fall in a shower. Josie doesn't have the chance to appreciate the damage she just inflicted upon the thing.

She's aware of, briefly, a streak of dull red-orange. She's aware of slamming into the ground, her rifle flying from her grasp.

Slowly, amidst the haze of pain, she lifts her head from the ground, staring at the length of rusted metal that goes clean through the unholy creature looming above her. The same length of metal that's sunk into her abdomen, nearly nailing her to the earth. "Well that's... not too good... huh," she utters, woozily, letting her head sink back against the ground. Even the air looks... strange... right now.

Convulsing as it wrenches the blade, Josephine rolls onto her side, pressing her left hand against the wound. Damn, damn. She shouldn't bleed out right away, but even she can't deny this is bad. Everything's spinning, and she's not quite sure...

She turns her head, catching an explosion, somewhere towards the other end of the impromptu battlefield. And she hears...

They're all too weak to stop anything?

A gloved hand plants onto the ground, empowered sheerly by burning spite. "Damn you..." the archaeologist hisses, levering herself up with her left arm, her right still pressed against her stomach. "Damn you, damn you... how dare you..." She grits her teeth, finally managing to get up in a sort of seated position.

But what /can/ she do right now? Dark eyes turn towards the melee still unfolding, and she's dimly aware of an absence, of sorts.

She's got a few tricks left. "...Guess I /do/ owe you for this," she mutters, before her fingers weave in the gestures of the art, drawing upon one of the inscriptions written on her back. Her target's chosen purely at random, a little gift before Josie goes crawling for her gun.

Just a little boost, an upwelling of strength and battle-born resolve, appearing in a flare around Ida.

GS: Josephine Lovelace has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Strengthen!
GS: Josephine Lovelace has completed her action.
GS: Morgan Newkirk used Mystic on Morgan Newkirk! 0 Temporary HP gained! All statuses cleared!
GS: Morgan Newkirk has activated a Force Action!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a solid hit from Josephine Lovelace's Strengthen for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper! Statuses applied to Ida Everstead-Rey!
GS: Sorey has attacked Sword Dancer with Trinity Arrow!
GS: Sorey has completed his action.
GS: Morgan Newkirk has attacked Sword Dancer with Blazer Gauntlet!
GS: Morgan Newkirk has completed its action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Edna has posed.

Edna stands back and watches all of this transpire. The struggle against the mysterious white knight, the clash with the dreadful sword dancer. Gusts of wind, sparks, and power flare all about, tousling her hair, scarring the ground, charging the air itself. And she stands calm and still, icy blue eyes peering between both battlegrounds. She watches and waits. Watches as the white knight takes their leave. And then, all that' left is... The Sword Dancer.

Her target is set.

Body now brimming with golden energy, Edna locks her sight on the terrible creature, and she raises a foot. Then, her boot is stomped into the ground hard. She presses into it too, and that causes a massive pillar of stone to burst up from under the Sword Dancer, encasing it in rock briefly. "This thing's an eyesore." Edna mutters, then she swings her umbrella outwards. "It's time to get rid of it." As she says so, an orb of gold and black energy forms on the very tip, growing larger and larger, then... She points it forward.

The gravity sphere contracts into a super small state, and is fired forward. It pierces through the air at blinding speed, striking the stone pillar. What follows next is an explosion of stone and gravity as that tiny orb of energy explodes, blossoming outward in a pulsing sphere of an absence of light, cratering the ground in the process.

GS: Seraph Edna has attacked Sword Dancer with Terra Mine!
GS: Seraph Edna has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Alisha Diphda guards a hit from K.K.'s Scarlet Skein for 322 hit points!
GS: K.K. drains Alisha Diphda! K.K. gains 200 temporary hit points!
GS: Alisha Diphda has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!
GS: Rose heals Alisha Diphda! She gains 100 temporary hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Xantia's Exploding Fist for 203 hit points!
GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Sorey's Trinity Arrow for 167 hit points!
GS: Sword Dancer enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Morgan Newkirk's Blazer Gauntlet for 116 hit points!
GS: Morgan Newkirk takes Cover! It gains 50 temporary hit points!
GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Seraph Edna's Terra Mine for 166 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

Ida is running on adrenaline, and she can feel the wave starting to ebb. The presence of the Sword Dancer feels like an open wound on her soul, now, constantly dripping the crushing, piteous self-loathing she's felt at her lowest points. Her family would want her to stop it. Her god would want her to stop it. Ida just wants to run. She wastes several seconds trying to judge whether or not she can reload without being ventilated by either of the two monstrosities on the field, but a sickening surge from the ground below alerts her to imminent danger.

Ida twists on a heel, spraying dirt out behind her, and all but leaps into a tuck-and-roll. Distant pain shoots through her injured shoulder as she kneels behind a chunk of rubble. Coils of black energy lance up from the ground she stood on mere seconds ago. If she'd been a second slower, they would've gone right through her. She was extremely lucky, and knows it. Then--

"ALISHA!" Ida screams, but it's already too late. Sephy whimpers, somewhere.

You're running away.

Know that fact as certainty when you are too weak to stop me from tearing your life down around you. Know that you had not the strength to defy it. Know that it was your fault.

K.K. vanishes in a spray of Alisha's blood. Ida's lips twist in a rictus. She remembers turning her gella pouch away from the clerk, and showing Alisha her family's--

her family's

Ida screams. It's not a scream of pain or rage so much as at least a decade's worth of negative emotion, bottled and aged like wine. Josephine's spell finds its mark a moment later, amplifying all of it and closing the loop. Devil's Due is in Ida's hand before she knows it. She feels the exact burn marks it left on her hand that one time, and does not care.

When faced with devils like these,

our last recourse is to employ a devil's arms.

Devil's Due roars a moment later. A single golden tongue of flame roars from the weapon's barrel, tinged with all the sickly hues of Demon-smoke. More smoke spews out of the ejection port, but the entirety of the shell has been consumed, and launched right at the Sword Dancer. Glistening energies the color of mercury form faint rings around the Sword Dancer, like a bull's-eye--and it's in the center. More energies paint a mandala in the defiled ground under Ida's feet, hissing as Malevolence touches them.

GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Sword Dancer with Dragon's Breath!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has been weakened by Disease! They take 0 hit points of damage, and burn off their temporary hit points!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes 6 damage from Poison!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Dragon's Breath for 160 hit points!
GS: Poison and Break! Statuses applied to Sword Dancer!
<Pose Tracker> Alisha Diphda has posed.

Alisha feels her spear bite into K.K. It almost surprises her, when she manages to strike into that white armor. She is more surprised, eyes widened, when K.K. is slammed away from her, by Xantia's impact. She sucks in a gasp, head turning. But she looks at Sorey, when he is addressed. So she isn't looking at K.K., at first, and that is a terrible mistake.

'And know yours, failed princess.'

She looks back in time to see the swords fly towards her. They slash together as one, and red thread gets wrapped around her. Her spear drops; the red and gold ribbon clatters to the ground as she gets held high into the air. She starts to shout.

She screams, instead, as there is a terrible ripping -- and a flash of horrifying red light. She crumples to the ground around the orb, slamming into the earth without ceremony. Red splashes down, staining the golden emblem of Hyland, and she crumples down into a heap. Her hand slides over her midsection, and she sits hunched over, even when Rose runs up.

"R-Rose," she croaks out. She takes the healing potion in her hand. She pops the cork out with her thumb and lifts it, taking a sip of the potion -- then gulps the entire thing down. She sways -- and she looks like she might stand up, at first. Her eyes meet Rose's.

There is a little less light in them. Their color is a duller green than usual. She lets her hand off her midsection... and the front and side of her tunic is a bright, wet red. A trickle of it runs down from her mouth. "Thank you. I--I will be fine. Just..."

She sputters -- and something rattles in her throat, before she crumples against Rose. "...so please, don't worry. You can--you can leave me here for a moment."

<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

Even with K.K. gone, there is still one very real, very pertinent threat yet lingering; the Sword Dancer and its Malevolence, still spreading at a steady but palpable rate, still carrying with it its crazed terror. There are no more words necessary, and no words offered -- just raw feeling, the feeling of furious helplessness that just grows and grows like a tremulous storm constantly threatening the verge of tipping over.

But it is not untended to. Not for long. Sephilia and Talise attack in concert, the beastwoman's blade carving through ribcages and slicing them clean until it carves through the Sword Dancer's shoulder. Chauncey barrels into it with that titanic force, sending it lurching, BENDING backwards, the blow cracking bones at ugly angles before it -snaps- back into place and -swings- its blades down in simultaneous vertical and horizontal slashes for both Talise and Chauncey -- their efforts, thankfully, distracting it from Sephilia.

The swords lift again, intent on plunging into the pair without mercy... just as Noah lands on the Hellion's back. The bladed points of his unusual ARMs puncture into armor and blighted skeleton, and that firepower is blasted into its core, each one creating a hideous pulse of Malevolence as more and more of the pure swirling energy replaces bone. And just as with Josephine before, it reverse the grip on its blade and -stabs- through itself, sighing in relief at the pain as it looks to impale Noah straight through with the fatigued tip of that trembling katana.

It yanks. Once. Twice. Struggling to unsheathe the rusted edge from its body. So busy is it in this struggle, that it can't even see Xantia coming for it--

--not until it's too late. Not until that fist impacts the Sword Dancer right in the face with a deafening explosion of kinetic force billowing outward, sending it stumbling backwards with heavy, thudding steps.

When she lands, when she struggles away, Xantia's damage is done -- a good third of the Hellion's head has blown away, revealing a sweltering mass of pulsing Malevolence beneath...

... hints of terrified faces trapped within faintly visible with each little ebb of the violet ooze.

By the time Morgan has locked on to the Dancer, though, it has freed that blade. It looks to him as it hears the whirr of motion, gaze blank, unfeeling, yet horrified. It turns towards him as those bullets fly. And it starts walking. Staggering with each round of artillery, shuddering with each kinetic impact that shatters bone and rips through Malevolence.

It.

Still.

Walks.

Walks so slowly and yet so inevitable as it is torn apart, as missiles explode and rip into it, as it advances upon Morgan...

... to quietly, soundlessly, slip the tip of its black blade into his rib cage. Anticlimactically.

To fill his heart with a coward's cry.

Blades fling out a moment later. A shockwave rips furiously in spits of black energy to consume Rosa, before funneling into a practical bullet of bleak blackness aimed for Josephine so far away. It flails in an almost comically impotent manner, if not for the sheer agony it wreaks... and then that massive stone pillar catches under it, covers it, consumes it...

... just in time for gravity to churn everything around it into heavy, painful paste.

Rock churns. Bone powders. The Sword Dancer whimpers, a hellacious call into the sky that no one can answer, no one can alleviate. And when it lands, it lands on its face, its ruined face, body bent at irregular angles...

... that slowly start to twist back into place as it rises. As it stalks forward. Its blades fly out for Edna, seeking to sweep her up and cast her aside angrily in its flurry. It advances further, and further...

... and it is a shadow looming over Rose as she seeks to help Alisha, mere seconds before that black blade plunges down to introduce Rose's soul to the inescapable dread within.

It' a contact that can last only briefly at best, before smoke and one massive shell explodes across the side of the Sword Dancer courtesy of the Devil's Due. It churns through Gear-scrap armoring, it rips through the bulk of the Dancer's left arm until all that is left is a hand and that Malevolent mass. Silver hisses and consumes in its quicksilver energy as the creature wails and lashes out, its lightning-fast katana looking to carve straight through Ida without relent, blade extending just to greet her with that rusted edge...

... just in time for that spell of water encircles it. Carves through it. Rends it. The purifying magic of the Shepherd douses and weakens the beast, dissipating the very heart of Malevolence that empowers it. Bones grow brittle and the thrum of violet energy through it seems to dim as it -pushes- through the blades of water, attempting to feebly reach out and pierce through Sorey's chest. Weak. Feeble.

But overflowing with agony.

So very close now...

GS: Sword Dancer has activated a Force Action!
GS: Sword Dancer has activated a Force Action!
GS: Sword Dancer enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Sword Dancer with Nightmare Instant!
GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Nightmare Instant for 134 hit points!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Sword Dancer with Malevolent Coil!
GS: CRITICAL! Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Malevolent Coil for 0 hit points!
GS: Hyper! Statuses applied to Sword Dancer!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Nightmare Instant!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Noah Hawthorne with Nightmare Instant!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Sephilia Lampbright with Nightmare Instant!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Talise Gianfair with Nightmare Instant!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Seraph Edna with Nightmare Instant!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Josephine Lovelace with Demon Fang!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Rosaline Calice with Demon Roar!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Morgan Newkirk with Cowardice!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Rose with Cowardice!
GS: Sword Dancer has completed its action.
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Sorey with Rusted Blade!
GS: Sorey takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Rusted Blade for 268 hit points!
GS: Talise Gianfair takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Nightmare Instant for 142 hit points!
DC: MISS! Sephilia Lampbright completely evades Nightmare Instant from Sword Dancer!
GS: Rose guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Cowardice for 243 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Sword Dancer has posed.

Round: 4/8

GS: CRITICAL! Morgan Newkirk takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Cowardice for 222 hit points!
GS: Rosaline Calice critically Guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Demon Roar for 26 hit points!
GS: Noah Hawthorne takes a glancing hit from Sword Dancer's Nightmare Instant for 75 hit points!
GS: Josephine Lovelace takes a glancing hit from Sword Dancer's Demon Fang for 46 hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! Seraph Edna takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Nightmare Instant for 252 hit points!
GS: CRITICAL! Ida Everstead-Rey takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Nightmare Instant for 259 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Sorey has posed.

"Alisha!" Sorey's shout is angry, and upset at the same time. He doesn't want to see his friends hurt, even with everything that has happened. But they also chose to fight him. ...and yet... are Alisha and Rose really able to fight as well as they could, without even being able to see everything?

He... it was something for later. Rose was working to help Alisha, but at the same time that monster was still rampaging. Sorey turns, and is suddenly smashed by the huge beast, the blow sending him stumbling backwards from the incredible blow. He staggers, gagging at the pain for a few seconds...

"No, I'm not going to let you do this any longer!"

Sorey pulls back on his bow, numerous shimmering blue patterns of energy appearing around the arrow - looking almost like he was charging up some strange energy cannon. The Shepherd levels his weapon, and incants:

"My bow is the touch of the heavens! Let the vortex swallow you - and be purified!"

The arrow set into his bow flares to brilliant incandescence, and Sorey unleashes the strongest technique of this Armatus.

"AQUA LIMIT!"

The eruption of light from Sorey's bow roars outwards, aiming to pierce the Sword Dancer with arrows of light over and over again - an barrage of water and light to purify away the creature's darkness.

And then Sorey pulls on the center of the bow, pulling out a large blade of shimmering blue water - and dives at the skeletal monster, driving the power of purification throw Mikleo's Armatus and right into the undead construct's head!

GS: Sorey has attacked Sword Dancer with Aqua Limit!
GS: Sorey has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Kent Hauch has posed.

Kent Hauch is no longer on the roof.

He knows the paths of ruined Lahan. He wouldn't know what to do with the city were it still standing, but he was always more at home in destroyed places.

The golden eye hangs in front of his vision, an afterimage as though he'd been staring into the sun. He glares into that point, hands stuffed in his pockets. Red River feels comfortably hot on his back.

He scowls in defiance. Yeah, judge me, you bastard. Try to push me all you want. Whatever you're planning, it means nothing to me.

Everything can burn, Knight. Everything that's not mine can burn. "Cross me again," he growls. His hate attracts motes of the purple hellstuff suffusing Lahan. It rises from his steps and swirls in his wake.

<Pose Tracker> Rose has posed.

Hey Alisha's fine!

... ALISHA IS NOT FINE, ABORT, ABORT!

Rose catches the falling princess and sets her down, but there's no time to check on her condition. The Hellion creeps up behind her, lifting a blade that hungers for merchant blood. You'd think after all the blood it's tasted so far it would be more than sated, but no.

Rose turns around, bringing the knives up to block the blade. It... almost works. She couldn't dodge, after all. Alisha was right there on the ground. If the Sword Dancer's blade misses her it's going straight through the princess instead.

Rose is not as strong as a giant Gear-covered Hellion, she finds out. Still, the act of trying to block the blade changes its course ever slightly enough that it doesn't run her through, so much as open her sides. It might scar, but she's not dead, and now she's very, very agitated.

Sorey fires a blinding blast straight for the Hellion. Rose's knives come alive with wind magic, which she does not exactly control, it's more a reflex, and with blinding speed she launches herself, screaming, for the Sword Dancer. Is it anger, or fear? It's both, really. She does NOT want to approach that thing but-- Alisha's down, Sorey is probably counting on her. And a dead Hellion can't threaten anyone anymore, same as anyone else.

"HAVEN'T YOU DONE ENOUGH HARM?! GO BACK SIX FEET UNDER YOU STUPID... GHOST... THING!" Not the best insult ever, but it's backed a surge of, well, stabs. And slashes. Countless blows aimed for the cracks and notches in the Hellion's armor from prior strikes, aimed for where the joints SHOULD be, aimed for where its neck probably is. If a problem persists after you take a knife to it, you didn't try stabbing enough.

GS: Rose has activated a Force Action!
<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.

It's still alive. Well. For whatever factor of 'alive' applies to such a monstrous creature. Talise lays into it but it continues to swing; the violent sweep of grim blades dances out, and Talise mvoes to parry the blow away, but all she can do is transform what must have been a certain killing blow - Rastaban's blade clashes with the black blade and sweeps it to the side, but the vertical slash cuts into her, raking along her face and shoulder, across the outside of her chest. The wound isn't deep enough to kill, only to leave a bloody cut along her cheek, and deeper across her collarbone and side. With a choked sound in the back of her throat, she wheels backwards, dripping blood from two serious wounds now; the wound cut into her opposite side isn't bleeding as much anymore, blood clotting and slowing, but it's still seeping in an ugly way, sapping the life out of her drop by drop.

Shadow infringes on the edges of Talise's vision. She can hear a voice crying out behind her.

Princess Alisha. Someone Talise has her frustrations with, but a friend nevertheless. Struck down.

Just as Sephilia could be struck down, and Ida could be struck down, and Morgan could be struck down.

(You are too weak, says the White Knight. Too weak to save them.)

Still hanging back to recover, the ailing woman touches her sword's point to the turf. Maybe she is too weak to save them. Maybe she can never be as strong as she wishes she could be.

Rippling out of her heart, a wave of pure, blazing resolve washes over her. It surges against the blanket of Malevolence she has been tightly bound within. The folds of darkness begin to unravel.

"I can't let anyone else die," she rasps, her bloodied fingers sliding along Rastaban's haft. "Lady Chloe wouldn't...

A thought scorches itself into her consciousness. (I can never be the Dragonmaster. I can never be the Shepherd. I can never be a Princess, or a Seraph.)

(But I can protect this world.)

(I /will/.)

Sorey makes his move, in a thunderous spray of purifying light and water. Talise follows him in. Gripping Rastaban tightly, the bloodied, wounded woman steps in. Her movements flow more from the soul than from the mind. She sweeps her blade out, aiming to swat aside the katana, then flick away the black blade - and then on the backswing, she draws upon the power of her gauntlets one more time.

Stoically, she delivers a single, massive blow, like the tide crashing in as she attempts to sever the Sword Dancer's spinal column just below the ruined ribcage.

GS: Rose has activated a Force Action!
GS: Rose has attacked Sword Dancer with Thousand Swords!
GS: Rose has completed her action.
GS: Talise Gianfair has activated a Force Action!
GS: You have activated the Force Action Full Clip!
GS: Talise Gianfair has attacked Sword Dancer with Tidal Blow!
GS: Talise Gianfair has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Edna has posed.

"Alisha... tsk-!" Not again! Why in the world is she always getting hurt the most? Like some manner of curse. But there's no time to focus on her. Rose has it handled. Hopefully. But even so, that moment of taking her attention off of the Sword Dancer proves to be a very similar mistake as the one Alisha just made moments earlier.

She looks back just in time to find a blade swinging through the air for her. There's no time.

There's no time.

There's no time.

There's no time.

Impact.

Edna goes flying. Flying right through the air like a bullet. The only reason she wasn't cleaved in half is because she infused herself with earth magic right before impact! And even as she sails away, the Earth Seraph defiantly casts another spell in mid-flight. An arm thrusts out, manipulating the earth and causing several stone spires to blast upwards and pierce that shambling terror haphazardly.

And then she goes crashing right through the wall of a distant building like a rock thrown through a window. Rubble crumbles down atop her and all is silent in her direction afterward.

GS: Seraph Edna has attacked Sword Dancer with Rock Lance!
GS: Seraph Edna has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

It's not enough. All the might of her ARM, synchronized with all of her focused intent, and it's not enough. The thing's still alive. It rushes at Ida through the flames, and her eyes widen in surprise and terror--she swings Devil's Due to block, but the thing's just too fast. She manages a half-step back before the blade comes down like a guillotine. Blood traces an arc through the air, and splatters on the ground.

Ida has not quite been cut open. The monster's sword opened a wound from shoulder to collarbone, missing crucial arteries by inches. Ida's shirt is now mostly red. Her lips peel back from her teeth as pain threatens to overwhelm her again--she wobbles, sways, takes a step back--but she doesn't fall. Sorey tells the Hellion that he's going to purify it. Rose tells it to go back to where bones belong. Talise invokes her legendary hero. Ida's message for it is more blunt, and less hopeful, because her higher brain functions are a knotted, writhing mass of negative emotion, neatly reflecting the Malevolence outside.

Has it gotten into her heart...?

"Tell Valmar," Ida says, her voice barely a croak, "to prepare room in hell for K.K."

Ida chambers a second round, and fires. The bullet leaves a trail of burning, mercury-colored smoke as it flies, somehow causing turbulence and wind without actually altering its velocity.

GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Sword Dancer with Devil's Draw!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes 8 damage from Poison!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Sephilia Lampbright has posed.

Somehow, Sephy manages to evade the blow meant for her. Somehow, she's still in the fight. Chauncey, stuffing now openly visible through his numerous tears and cuts, still has enough of a form to be able to maintain his giant size. Sephy sees Alisha fall, knows that the rest of those assembled here today to battle this...thing...this avatar of Malevolence, are holding on by a thread.

It's a sewing pun.

She knows that she herself is lucky to still be up and fighting. And worse, the terror inflicted by the terrible blow still suffuses her heart, fought back only by the sheer strength of the girl's resolve.

Still, the resolve is there, and so is the enemy. "POUND IT, CHAUNCEY!" she yells, voice hoarse. "POUND IT TILL IT STOPS MOVING!"

Chauncey pounds.

GS: Sephilia Lampbright has attacked Sword Dancer with Foxington Pound!
GS: Sephilia Lampbright has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Alisha Diphda has posed.

Alisha doesn't protest, when Rose lets her down. She can, dimly, make out Sorey attacking. She hears Rose more than see her; she realizes the merchant is screaming as she attacks. Something about that makes her blood run cold. She blinks her eyes a few times, trying to sit up -- and fails, slumping back down. She breathes hard, but those breaths are shallow.

She is aware, dimly, of the people crying out her name or title. Her eyes lose focus, but she tries to keep breathing. She can't even see the Sword Dancer.

She can feel the wind of one of its blades passing -- and then she sees a blur, as Edna is pitched across the battlefield. Her spell flies, but so does the Seraph. The cloud of dust, when she hits, reflects in Alisha's dull eyes.

"E-Edna..."

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

The rumbling grind of exotic metal piercing bone finally reaches deep down into Noah's core and strikes a small spark of cathartic satisfaction. Held aloft by both, buried to the hilt in the thing's back, the ARMs convert at his behest to discharge rounds into the churning black and violent heart of it. That transition looses them from their buried state and should have allowed him to drop free, save for the pyrrhic willingness of the Hellion to skewer itself to punish him. He hears another crunch, sees a sudden intensification of stomach-turning unlight, and realizes only at the last moment what's happening -- too late to evade being run through. He feels the tip of the blade pierce through his torso below the ribs and emerge from his back, a shocking moment of painless pressure that quickly explodes into tendrils of invisible heat, backdrafts from the wound that scourge his nerves. He exerts pressure on the skeleton's back to push himself away, expecting the blade to be drawn free, and chokes back a tight sound when he finds that the blade is /stuck/, and himself pinned to the Hellion as though it were some sort of terrifying lepidopterist, and he the world's least likely butterfly. Blood drools back along the margin of blade between himself and the sword dancer, comingled with pitch and indigo. Every time it moves, every time it tries to tug the blade out of them both, it sends fresh lancets of agony into him, until he's dizzy with it, and black spots begin to tamper with his vision.

It's when it rounds on Morgan that it finally, /finally/ retrieves its weapon, and Noah simply falls, hitting the ground for the third time. This time he isn't so quick to stand. Laying on the corrupted earth and bleeding is a blessed reprieve after what came before it.

Head swimming, he decides that, yes, the time has finally come to tend to himself, and trust that the others can keep it busy long enough that he can keep himself from bleeding out. Cylinders on the ARMs shuffle. One becomes a blade. White liquid funnels along microchannels in it, funneled to the edge, and the cut he makes on the top of one thigh is small but sufficient: potent alchemy rockets through his system like cleansing fire.

GS: Noah Hawthorne has attacked Noah Hawthorne with But Not Today!
GS: Noah Hawthorne has completed his action.
GS: Lock and State! Statuses applied to Noah Hawthorne!
GS: Noah Hawthorne heals Noah Hawthorne! He gains 100 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Rosaline Calice has posed.

Rosaline breathes out as she finishes channeling her power into Sorey. She then sees Xantia staggering over to her, in very poor shape. "I-I'm going to be okay, Xantia," she says, "and so will you." She's doing her best to be reassuring, even if she doesn't look much better herself. The difference there is, the brunt of her wounds are spiritual rather than physical.

But Xantia touches her shoulder and... channels healing power into it? The nun's eyes widen. This girl isn't running out of surprises, is she? Then sees Josephine, who calls out her name-- Well, half of it. Rosaline is in a much better state than she was a moment ago, even as her skin remains pale and her every white hair stands on end.

"Josephine!" she calls back, reflexively extending a clawed hand as her friend is drawn right back into the battle.

Alisha-- whose name Rosaline still doesn't actually know --is down. Everyone else is badly hurt but still standing. Every second counts but everyone is pushing themselves as far as they can go. They can still do this.

She clutches her cross. She brought a special Crest Graph with her, one she's not very familiar with, but thought might help. She can't cleanse Malevolence, not the way Sorey does, but...

"O, praised be thy name..."

She presses both of her hands together, closing her eyes as she recites her prayer.

"May your wrath descend to free these poor souls..."

Blinding light dances from her clutched fingers, hot enough to make sweat bead on her forehead. Rosaline seems to be in pain, but holds on.

"And deliver us from evil! HEAVEN'S SMITE!"

The nun raises her hand, her habit blowing in miraculous wind. A giant column of light pierces through the miasma from up above, and towards the skeletal Hellion.

But before she can see the results, the Etone-in-Training collapses, past spent.

GS: Rosaline Calice has attacked Sword Dancer with Goddess Beam!
GS: Rosaline Calice has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.

There's still that sensation of something inpalatable grating its way into her brain at a steady pace. It's building up, it's getting worse, like those moments just before a storm finally breaks, wind and rain pelting the land. Josephine grimaces, and for more reason than the hole in her gut.

And that wound's still bleeding, she notes, glancing down at the red staining her right glove as she hauls herself across what was once some well-traveled road in the town. Every movement is slow, and every movement just jars the injury anyway. "Not how I wanted this to go," Josie mutters, her left hand finally falling on her briefly-lost firearm. Her hand slips away from her stomach where she half-sits, half-sprawls in the dirt and she reaches for her bag.

She's aware of, vaguely at least, the full fury some of the other people here are unleashing upon it as she reloads the firearm. When she does look up, it's in time to see a familiar-seeming red-headed girl -- some name with an X, a still on-the-ball part of her mind provides -- lay waste to a good section of the monster's head. "...Damn," she murmurs, appreciably.

That might have well been an artillery impact. That, and the one after that, and the next. And it's still walking.

"I'm hanging in there!" she calls back to Rosaline. It's technically true. "Might need some help, though!" Says the woman with a bleeding abdominal injury.

But she can really worry about that later. "Alright, let's go..." Josie lifts the modified Gawain rifle, once more taking careful aim. That hole in its head. The one pulsing with an absolutely unnatural aura. It's a literal long shot at this distance, but she thinks it's still just within range. At the pace it's moving, she even has a window.

It just won't stay open. She raises her voice, putting all the force into the shout she can. "Let's give it all we've got!" And Josie pulls the trigger.

It's not even in response to her attack, this time. It seemed to her almost as if the thing's going wild, hitting everything and anything it can reach. She dives, throwing herself forward and flattening herself as well as she can against the ground. It was a good try, just not good enough. A concentrated bullet of compressed darkness slams into her lower legs with bone-chilling force. For a moment, even that glancing hit's enough to leave the archaeologist stunned, before she plants both hands -- this itself earning a hiss of pain -- flat onto the ground and digs in, pushing herself up.

GS: Josephine Lovelace has attacked Sword Dancer with Kick the Bucket!
GS: Josephine Lovelace has completed her action.
Elhaym van Houten has arrived.
<Pose Tracker> Morgan Newkirk has posed.


A sane man would run.

A sane man would dodge.

A sane man would fly in the face of his possible death at the hands of an eldritch horror.

Apparently Morgan Newkirk doesn't subscribe to that specific brand of sanity. That brand of sanity doesn't bring you the championship title in Kislev. He keeps firing, watching the monster as it marches forwards. He keeps firing even as it rears back the newly reclaimed blade. He keeps firing as it slips that blade all so slowly into his ribcage.

Its then that the bullets trickle to a stop. The artillery ceases its roar. The beastman crumples to one knee as the blade is withdrawn. His eyes are wide. His breathing is ragged. Fear fills his heart. His limbs feel like led.

He should flee. He should hide. The horror of this creature is too much. Its too powerful. The concentrated darkness of the death of an entire town...

Flight!

FLEE!

...but there is another way.

The opposing instinct. Flight or...

Fight.

The only real way to stop being afraid is to kill your fear after all.

The fox spins as the creature passes. His unclad hand reaching out to catch a bit of bone to jerk him back to his feet. The gauntlet glows one last time and he throws everything thats left in him into the next few seconds. The Gauntlet glows as a trio of short, stubby launchers appear on the top of it. Shields spinning up around it as he slams the barrels into the side of the entity that filled his heart with fear.

"You need to get put out of my misery." He snarls without even a slight hesitation as he triggers all three missiles into its side at point blank range. The energy of the missile laugh reforming those shields of light that swirl around him.

Which is good, because the backblast is going to be a bitch.


GS: Morgan Newkirk has attacked Sword Dancer with Aces and Eights!
GS: Morgan Newkirk has completed its action.
GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Sorey's Aqua Limit for 207 hit points!
GS: Disease! Statuses applied to Sword Dancer!
GS: CRITICAL! Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Rose's Thousand Swords for 162 hit points!
GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Talise Gianfair's Tidal Blow for 142 hit points!
GS: Sword Dancer has Fallen! It is no longer able to fight!
GS: CRITICAL! Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Seraph Edna's Rock Lance for 225 hit points!
GS: Sword Dancer has Fallen! It is no longer able to fight!
GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Devil's Draw for 161 hit points!
GS: Sword Dancer has Fallen! It is no longer able to fight!
GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Sephilia Lampbright's Foxington Pound for 103 hit points!
GS: Sword Dancer has Fallen! It is no longer able to fight!
GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Rosaline Calice's Goddess Beam for 162 hit points!
GS: Sword Dancer has Fallen! It is no longer able to fight!
GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Josephine Lovelace's Kick the Bucket for 112 hit points!
GS: Sword Dancer has Fallen! It is no longer able to fight!
GS: CRITICAL! Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Morgan Newkirk's Aces and Eights for 248 hit points!
GS: Morgan Newkirk drains Sword Dancer! Morgan Newkirk gains 200 temporary hit points!
GS: Sword Dancer has Fallen! It is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

The Sword Dancer still stands. But it is weakened from the onslaught, and its already sloth-like gait is reduced to a pace that would make molasses envious. Its head turns, black bones creaking as it stares out toward the flying Edna, perhaps deciding to fixate on her...

... only to get a shard of stone lodged right into the only eye socket it has that still even exists.

Several more spires pierce and impale through bone, and the rocketing impact of exploding earth against it which, combined with Morgan's missiles EXPLODING against its skeletal hide and Gear-torn armor with rippling heat and force in monumental shockwaves unsettles its footing perfectly. It stumbles, for a split second -- and it gives the others the opening they need to capitalize on.

Truly, a good parting shot.

Chauncey lunges, and Chauncey -pounces-. Watch Chauncey pound! The doll's mighty fists break bones and send the Sword Dancer toppling backwards, an act sealed by the explosive shot of Ida's smokey round from her unusual ARM, the turbulent bullet shattering its sternum upon impact and sending the Hellion towards the ground with a deafening crash. Malevolence pulses. It groans, its spiritual voice sounding like many people wailing out of sync, out of key. It scrapes the ground, trying to claw its way up...

... just for Josephine's bullet to blow through the other end of its skull the exact moment it stands. Black bone flies like shrapnel through the air as half of its skull just explodes back, leaving it with half an eyesocket remaining and a gibbering mass of Malevolence like exposed brain, swirling and churning within its depths as it heaves a world-weary sigh into the spiritual sky. Its gaze turns. Its black blade points towards Rosaline. As if to single her out. Like recognizing like.

And for its trouble, it receives a column of holy light piercing straight through its chest, burning away with holy power that makes the undead spirits composing it SCREAM in RELIEF as its ribcage blows apart and all that remains is a beating mass of corruption. Like a heart. A thriving, blackened heart. It turns. It starts to move. The malevolence starts to spread anew. Spread further. It will not be deterred.

It stares down the bow of Sorey's Armatus without flinching, without even seeming to recognize it. It tries to lash out, to hold that black blade high --

--and Rose cleaves through the Hellion's armor, cutting through limbs, joints already damaged, stabbing into the spinal column that is its neck, sending it staggering, lurching. Its right leg snaps off. Malevolence tries to thread a new one. It reaches, feebly...

... and as that column of water bursts forth, both its blades are knocked aside by Talise... and the Sword Dancer is cleaved straight in two from the brutal blow of her blade, malevolence PULSING outward in crazed, terrified defiance as the assassin and the bard keep it locked down just long enough--

--for that shimmering water to crash through it like a deluge.

The column of empowered, mystical fluid engulfs, drowns, erodes. And the Sword Dancer is barely visible... sighing in open relief as the Malevolence is slowly burned away, as soul after soul after soul is released one after the other from its depths. Relief. Relief.

Freedom.

And when it is all over, there is nothing...

... nothing but that black blade, hovering in the air, violet edges pulsing with its sickening life. It hangs there, palpable...

... and with a seething crackle, disappears, leaving nothing but the lingering Malevolence suffusing the earth -- and that orb nestled nearby the fallen Alisha.

The Malevolence in Lahan yet lingers, needing to be purified... but the unholy mass of it seems to have weakened considerably, and more importantly, the spread has halted...

... even for however many questions still remain unanswered.

Even despite that threat that yet lingers.

O B J E C T I V E

Complete!!
<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.

The Sword Dancer drowns in the pure light of the Shepherd's power, riven in twain by the blade of Rastaban. As the light passes, dimming, Talise comes into view again. The crackling sword disintegrates before her; fading sparks of Malevolence drift past her face, but she doesn't break her pose, standing with her feet set and Rastaban held out to her side in both hands. Violet light streams from the blade, eddying and vanishing. The woman's face is utterly stoic, eyes closed even as blood drips down her cheek, chin, neck and sides, soaking into the ruins of her heavy coat and undertunic. The mailshirt she wore beneath the tunic is badly riven and rented, but probably the only thing that kept her alive.

"None of us are as weak as you think, K.K.," she murmurs.

Then she lets her breath out in a long, heavy rush and slouches forward like a wilting flower. Digging Rastaban's point into the turf, she keeps a hand on the hilt to support her, coming down to her knees and breathing heavily. Sweat drips down her face; so do a few drops of blood, forming small pools on the ground below her. The restraint seems to flood out of her now that the adrenaline rush is gone; she lets it be shown how badly hurt she is now that the lives of her friends don't depend on her showing a brave, unflinching face.

<Pose Tracker> Myyah Hawwa has posed.

"Looks like things are folding," says Benzoma. "That was brutal."

He pounds the last of his coffee, lets out a terrible and raspy exhalation, and then sets the cup on the top of a console nearby. The operator there hesitates, looks up, and decides work is more important.

"You should leave the ground teams pulled back and wait for an all-clear tomorrow morning," says Myyah. By now, she is looking down into her tablet.

Benzoma turns his eye upon her. Myyah does not immediately notice, but eventually she looks back to him when the silence stretches too long.

"Typically I run these orders up the ladder and wait for the good word to descend from on high," says Benzoma.

Myyah gives him another apologetic smile. Benzoma is a student of patterns and knows by now that this means she is about to reveal that she was holding another choice card. In this case, she shows him the face of her tablet for a moment, where he sees an open messenger client but not much text.

"Sorry," she says. "Commander just got out of the LT meeting."

"Ahhhhhhgghhhhhh." Benzoma closes his eyes and brings his hands up to rub his entire face. Eventually, only slightly muffled: "Okay. Sniper teams and capture teams are standing down. All these Lambs are walking. We're... what are we doing?"

Myyah doesn't answer. She crosses Benzoma to walk to the other side of the room, plucking his cup from the top of the console as she passes. At the far end of the room, she stops in front of a table where she sets down her tablet and takes up a thermal carafe. Benzoma watches her with increasing bleariness. When Myyah returns to him with a new serving of coffee, he mutely receives it as she presses the cup into his hands.

"You've been on this surveillance for thirty-six hours with four hours of sleep," she says. "Your team only did slightly better. You're standing down and getting some rest, and then your relief team is going to put together dossiers and collate data for your report tomorrow, which you will write after you speak to your superior so that he can congratulate you. Our field team will prepare the Lambs to act in our interests because of the work you did here today."

"Okay," he says.

Myyah smiles warmly. Her gaze pointedly moves toward the security door and then back to him. "I already arranged for everything. Get some sleep, sergeant."

"I'm going to enter all this overtime pay by hand just for the pleasure," says Benzoma. He slouches toward the door, where the locks begin to cycle. One of the operators stands, tidying up his station in anticipation of following Benzoma out.

Myyah turns to the other operator, who remains at her console

"Oh, it's alright ma'am," says the operator. "I can stay on until the next shift is here."

"I can watch the consoles for a few minutes," says Myyah. "I'm rated for it."

"It's really no problem," says the operator.

"You're tired," says Myyah. "You can trust me."

The operator hesitates. She furrows her brow in confusion, opens her mouth as if to speak, but abruptly resolves whatever internal dilemma she had and pushes her chair back from the console. "You're right," she says. "Thank you, ma'am."

"I'm here to help," says Myyah.

The last operator leaves. The door shuts and leaves Myyah alone with the sound of the locks cycling. Myyah walks back over to the table to pick up her tablet. As she walks back to the center of the room, she reaches into her satchel to retrieve a pair of sterile earbuds in a plastic bag. She breaks them out, seats them in her ears, and then spends a few moments browsing for a song on her tablet while everything syncs.

Myyah looks up at the screen. As the music fills the silence, her expression grows serene. She watches a skeleton die, a shepherd shepherd, and drifters drift away. The ritual of purifying the immediate Malevolence passes under her watchful gaze without comment or reaction. She observes alone.

Goddamn Lunarians don't know how to stay put, she thinks.

<Pose Tracker> Sephilia Lampbright has posed.

Sephilia climbs down from Chauncey, wincing at both her own injuries and the damage to Chauncey himself. "Don't worry, buddy," she says, hugging him. "I'll patch you up soon as I can." The doll shrinks, leaving Sephy holding onto him. Carefully, she deposits him in her satchel, then all but runs over to Talise.

"We did it!" she cries, hugging the tall beastwoman - but carefully, all to aware of the injuries both of them have sustained. "We know now that we CAN do something to them!"

She then turns to Ida, and wordlessly hugs the other woman as well.

"I just hope that those others are okay," Sephilia adds. "That girl, I think I recognized her."

<Pose Tracker> Sorey has posed.

Sorey lands on his feet, his body flashing for a moment as Mikleo disengages their Armatus. Dropping to one knee, the Shepherd looks over at Rose for a moment, trying to make sure that Alisha is... alive. For the moment. Damn, as much as he wants to rush over towards the princess, there is something he needs to do.

"Mikleo, Edna, I'm going to need your help for this," the Shepherd states quietly. He pulls out his sword, flame running up the blade for a moment as he holds the weapon above his head. The lacquered blade shimmers for a moment, and then Sorey brings it down into the ground with a single loud shout.

Mikleo reaches over to set one hand on top of Sorey's own, fingers wrapped around the hilt in a near death grip. He looks over and waits for Edna to join him, because with this much malevolence they could user her power to assist them.

As soon as they are all together, Sorey concentrates... and unleashes the flame of purification into the tainted earth.

It looks like an expanding ring of blue fire to those with the spiritual senses to see it, washing out in all directions. It burns away the malevolence in the land, washing over those who have been struck by the dark power of K.K. and his construct. It burns the lingering taint without leaving a mark on living flesh, leaving behind a ringing, quiet silence in its wake.

Lahan is no longer a ghost wracked down of horror and terror. Instead a more peaceful, languid silence settles over the ruins - the souls no longer thrashing as they are tormented by the malevolent power that had been drowning it.

And Sorey feels it all. People shouting, running. The terror and pain, knowing that everything was crumbling around them. The resentment, that they are dying and don't understand why. The hate for those who would do this to them. He drinks it in, because malevolence cannot be purified without understanding it, and you can only understand emotion by feeling it yourself.

The Shepherd pushes himself to his feet, slowly. He staggers after a moment, Mikleo grabbing onto his shoulder and keeping him steady. "...Rose..." he manages after a moment, staggering in her direction. "...how is... Alisha...?"

<Pose Tracker> Rose has posed.

It's odd, Rose would comment if someone asked, to stab something you can't quite see. You feel it, it's all there, but it's also not. Either way, the end result is that after sufficient stabbing, as well as countless blasts, attacks and beams(!) from other gathered Drifters, Rose sees the armor of the Hellion collapse, its swords drop, and its pressure vanish. Something she could feel, faintly, isn't there anymore.

That's honestly good enough for her.

Rose rushes back to Alisha's side, knives already sheathed, and she starts pulling out of her pockets rolls of bandages, a very tiny handful of healing berries, some knock-off of gels they make on Filgaia, another potion, and some candy that supposedly heals you. If nothing else restoratives on Filgaia are quite diverse!

But they're not a replacement for proper care. Rose is also bleeding now, thanks to that sword, but opts to help treat Alisha first. Even as Sorey arrives her attention doesn't waver off the princess. "Try not to move. We'll stop the bleeding, then we'll move you, alright?" She turns to the others gathered about. "I HAVE BANDAGES AND SOME HEALY STUFF, GATHER UP!" And THEN to Sorey, finally. "Bad, he sure didn't miss her. But if we get to it fast enough she'll be fine. Hey, help me out Sorey, lift her side so we can see the wound. Oh and hold her shirt up."

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Edna has posed.

After all is said and done...

...That pile of rubble withing that destroyed building shifts. And then a hand digs up through the clutter. And then the arm follows. Then the rest of Edna as the rubble is cleared away by merely moving her body. Once she's clear of it, one can see that she's seen much, MUCH better days... even so, work isn't done, is it? Eyes narrowed, Edna slowly walks her way back out of the destroyed building, weaving healing magic on herself as she goes. "...Make that ten crablettes and a plate of mabo curry." She mutters as she comes back over to Sorey and company. .... Ah, Purification. Right. She sighs and walks up to the Shepherd's other side, placing her hand over his and Mikleo's, contributing her own power to the ritual.

Once she's done her part... Edna just slumps down to the ground, then lays out onto her back flat. "Enough. I've had enough." She murmurs dully to no one in particular, just laying there, dead tired. No more Sword Dancers. No more mysterious white knights. Just... rest.

And crablettes.

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

Ida sags to her knees as the thing finally, finally gives up--it's like something else was animating her, and that something finally gave out as the Sword Dancer did. Devil's Due dangles limply from her fingers, probably still in her grip from synchronization alone. She closes her eyes and tries to breathe. Everything hurts. She's reasonably sure she's bleeding, bad, and--

Sephy hugs her, and Ida goes a little rigid, as if shocked. Slowly, she relaxes, and pats Sephy's shoulder.

"You did well," Ida says. There's a strange look in her eyes, not quite distant, but not quite all there, either. She rises with some difficulty, and starts hobbling across the broken ground to Rose. Her shirt is soaked with her own blood. Her holster assembly dangles from a single strap, thanks to the Dancer cutting the other when it damn near cut her neck open.

She presents herself to Rose for triage, without comment.

<Pose Tracker> Alisha Diphda has posed.

Alisha watches the flame of purification roll outward, washing over everything. She blinks a couple of times -- and she realizes that she can see it. She isn't used to that. Part of her thinks that it might be a fever dream.

She looks up, when Rose comes rushing back. She smiles, tired and exhausted -- and halfway to delirious from the blood loss. "You... everyone, they are okay? It sounds like we got the Hellion. That... nnh, that may be a good idea. That..."

She rolls onto her side, when Rose talks. She feels a little weak -- but she looks at the place where Edna impacted. She can't see any sign that the Seraph got out. She groans, softly, and then she leans backward.

Right against Rose, because the idea of sitting up without support sounds terrible right now. When she does, though, she spots something. She blinks, looking in the direction of a certain blonde-haired young woman laying flat on the ground.

"Rose," she says, her voice exhausted. "We should make sure that girl gets out of here. Where did she come from?"

She tries to point at Edna. It doesn't work out so well.

<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.

Talise lifts her head as Sephilia comes running towards her. She smiles wearily. Somehow, the sight of the younger girl beaming and rushing in for her hug makes it all worthwhile.

"Hey," she laughs thinly, arms loosely curving around Sephilia, though she winces as the contact puts pressure on a couple places that are uncomfortable to press. "Hey... you alright?" With some effort, she comes to her feet, releasing the hug and moving a gloved hand to rest on Sephilia's shoulder. Her smile is exhausted, but broad. "You did good."

Ida's shock leaves the tall Beastwoman frowning. Reaching out, she gives the woman's shoulder a touch, giving her a look. Hang in there, the look says without words.

Then she looks over, towards the rest of the Drifters gathered here. She hears Rose calling out but doesn't go over just yet, just watching the woman tend to Alisha, pursing her lips. Finally she lifts her hand, waving over to Sorey.

"Hey Shep," she calls to him. "'s Alisha alright?"

Only then does she begin slouching over for treatment, smiling as Alisha begins to stir. "Hey, take it easy," she calls.

<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.

Josephine manages to haul herself upright, even if it means she's assumed the more or less sprawled stance from before. One eye still on the Sword Dance, she reaches -- fingers scrabbling in the dirt briefly -- for her once-again lost rifle. Her hand closes around it and she reels it in.

As well as she can, the downed archaeologist straightens where she's sitting. Bringing up the rifle again, she seems inclined to take another shot.

A torrent of water. A flash of light.

And then, blessedly, the sensation of relief. The grinding pressure against her psyche -- her soul -- eases almost entirely, and with that, Josie exhales heavily, lowering her firearm.

"Over, huh...?" She smiles, lopsidedly, the expression colored only by a wince. Inching over a few inches, she lets herself slump against a small pile of rubble. "Guess I'll owe a few prayers, or something. Damn..." She presses her hand against her abdomen and closes her eyes.

No one will blame her if she just stays put for the moment.

<Pose Tracker> Morgan Newkirk has posed.


The /thing/ that was created by all the death, hoplessness, fear and rage of the townsfolk fades away. A victim of magic, stubbornness and high explosive. Morgan breathes a long sigh. The bundled fist is released. The the obvious white knuckles of his unclad hand slowly return to their normal color. HIs heart still roars in his ears, hammers in his chest. The targets are gone though. The unfocused anger that remains in him whirls around as if seeking a target. He finds none though as the odd gauntlet of his releases its held power.

The shield dissipates.

His various wounds still hurt though as he looks around at the shell-shocked survivors of an encounter with the dark side of the psyche. He can still feel where that blade slid into his chest even though the wound isn't visible to the naked eye.

It'll be some time before he forgets it though.

"Hawthorne," He calls out. His voice is rough, the lazy drawl wiped away to something sharper, harder edged as he reaches into a pouch at his waist to toss a few healing potions towards the other man.

"Good to see my little buddy there didn't blow you up." A tried grin before he lets his eyes sweep towards the rest of them. They stood against the creature here, proved it can be defeated. It will leave its mark on the though.

A battle always does.

Its towards Rose and Ida that he moves though, drips of blood following in his wake. "Here, I can help with that. Got some healing bits and bobs stored away." He says as he finds a nice place to sit. A sol is set withing arms reach of Josephine with a smirk before he lets his head lean back.

"Hellfire," He finally says to no one in perticular. "....I need a drink."

<Pose Tracker> Sorey has posed.

Sorey hears Rose stating that they need to help Rose, and get her patched up. Well, he can... do that. Right? He waves to Talise (and man, he looks wrung out from that tired little wave). The Shepherd turns and starts walking over towards the pair, and he makes a good three or four steps. But he doesn't sit down as much as measure out his length on the ground close by to where Alisha is laying with a bit of a Shephardy thump.

It takes Sorey a second to pull himself back into a seated position, and he reaches over to... not roll up Alisha's shirt.

Because he looks over at Mikleo, who nods and leans down, putting his hands on top of Sorey's as they start channeling some healing magic into Alisha to help stabilize her. Which is a thing, because it's clear that Sorey's hands are glowing and he's starting to mend the wound. "This should be enough to make it so we can carry you back to an inn, Alisha," Sorey states, although he sounds... haunted. Tired. Not to mention he's doing something kind of impossible as far as most Lunarians are concerned, given that he uses offensive magic. "I'm sorry I can't do too much more right now..."

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Edna has posed.

"...."

Edna sits up.

She stares over at Alisha. he heard something weird.

But she is way too damn tired to confirm it right now, so she just flops right back down. She'll worry about it later. Yes, later.

That little girl laying on the ground soon turns into a golden mote of light that flutters over to Sorey and vanishes within him, marking Edna's depature.

Whoops.

<Pose Tracker> Rose has posed.

"Thank you, mister!" Rose says to Morgan, not knowing his name, but acknowledging he's offering to help. More hands on deck is always good when dispensing first aid. Especially when some of those hands can glow. What the hell, Sorey, have you been keeping healing powers from her this entire time?!

"Whooooa, cool. I didn't know being the Shepherd lets you heal people, Sorey! That's so handy! If this wasn't an emergency we could set up a little booth and charge people by the wound!" ... well, you know, you live with the choices you make. Poor Sorey.

"There's no one there, princess. Rest up, I think you're head's still wobbly from the blows. Alright, who's next?"

Seeing Ida again was nice, but under these circumstances not so much. She still gets a big hi and hello the moment Rose can spare some attention. There's a non-zero chance at some point Rose will pass out from ignoring her own stab wounds, but hey.