2018-05-06: A Reckoning

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===============================<* Mount Zulan *>================================

The largest peak on the Meribus continent, Mount Zulan is estimated to be more than five thousand feet in height. None have ever reached the summit; the peak is populated by angry and predominantly carnivorous wildlife, and the approach is treacherous. Landslides and rockfalls are common, with little warning. Despite the dangers, the mountain still attracts the occasional adventurer, drawn by rumours of ancient ruins from the first days of the Goddess's reign, said to lie buried beneath the ice and snows.

BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yawlRq0VMss
DG: A party led by Ida Everstead-Rey is now entering Castle Rabenstein Sanctum.
DG: Party formation is now over. An Entry Challenge will now be drawn and displayed to the party.
========================<* Castle Rabenstein Sanctum *>=========================

DC: Hellion Horde switches forms to Doctor Habsburg!

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

ABOVE

The stairwell seems to descend forever, corkscrewing upon itself. It's not unlike the ones in the Nameless Tower--it feels like obsessive, circular thinking, a spiral of endless despair that cannot be broken. The only light inside comes from Rosaline's flames, which lend an eerie cast to everything. There has to be an end to them. Ida is down here. There has to be a way to get to her... right?

BELOW

Ida lies against a well-worn stone slab, restrained by heavy leather straps. Everything aches.
Well done. You're going to die here.
The thought lingers in Ida's mind like a splinter in an eye. She watches as her captor goes about his business, the pulsing of the Anomalous Orb on his person triggering sympathetic throbs just behind her eyes. It feels almost like a migraine developing. She's tried to free herself, repeatedly, but her limbs don't quite want to work right, and the dull burning sensation in the side of her neck speaks of poison. She's helpless. She went through all this, and she's still helpless to defend herself. Helpless to defend anyone. The Orb pulses again. Ida's vision swims; her father's voice comes back to her, stern and unforgiving.
I thought we taught you that hitting back is never acceptable, no matter how you feel. Do you have any idea how shameful it is to hear that you've done this?
Emotions boil up in Ida's heart, one after another. Shame, anger, frustration, disappointment, despair--it's as though the Orb is calling them to the surface, or perhaps the Malevolence within her is resonating with it. It's so thick with the stuff that it might as well be a solid knot of it. Does this Hellion even know what he holds in his hand?
"Let me go," Ida says. Her voice is raw, pained, desperate. Another wave washes off the Orb, and in her mind's eye, she sees Siegfried staring at her in long-dead lover's tomb, shock giving way to rage the likes of which she's never seen from him. "Get that thing--" What's wrong? Can't handle a little Malevolence? I thought you wanted this. "away from--"
Another pulse, another memory. Kalve's face, pale and bloodless, halfway between the thing she fought and the man she came to respect and care for. He sets her down on a chair in someone's empty house.
Survive, he told her.
Anger starts taking hold. This time, Ida lets it. Muscles cord and knot and tighten beneath the restraints holding her, as if her body were rebelling against the indignity--the hideous insult--of being trapped and contained and made helpless yet again.
"Or I'll--"
Ida's eyes gleam a sickly violet.
DC: You switch forms to Unchained Devil Ida!
DC: Ida Everstead-Rey switches forms to Unchained Devil Ida!
<Pose Tracker> Garrett Stampede has posed.


Downward the stairs go, and downward Garrett stalks. His pace quick and steady, sword resting against his shoulder, all seeming of not being a Hellion goes from his person. Ice frosts over his battered armor. Jagged spikes of it decorate his blade. Frost and snow seems to swirl in his wake as he stalks forwards, towards his goal.

...that Goal being finding Ida.

Then taking out his frustration on whoever took her from them. "I'm getting sick of these stairs." He growls. "How deep does this bloody thing go, back down to the bottom of the bloody cliff?"


<Pose Tracker> Doctor Habsburg has posed.
"I can save them... I will save them... no matter how many lives it will take until I can save lives!!" Such are the words of madness from a blood-drenched man - no, an ambulatory mosquito-leech Hellion - as he clutches that Anomalous Orb. It pulls and twists at those emotional strings... yanks them, like a whiplash in a direction they cannot define.
Neither are in control of these feelings, as Ida makes her demands to the gleam of those eyes of hers.
"Your compliance is necessary." The Hellion hisses an unnatural voice that struggles to figure out how exactly it leaves the kind of throat he has, their tone somehow straddling the concept of both a caretaker that seeks to soothe and the demented glee of a sadist. The waterfall of free-flowing blood continues to pour, filling the laboratory with that choking coppery scent. "You will give me all you have, so that others may live."
The restraints should be so tight as to have rendered her limbs numb, devoid of any fight, any ability to flex. The construction starts to shudder, the squeal of stressed restraints an almost rhythmic accompaniment to the ambient sloshing of open blood.
He whips his free hand out to pull down tighter on one such restraint to put an end to this... deviation.
"Relax." Says a Hellion drenched in blood and ichor, with a monstrous insect face not even its theoretical brood mother would love, as he casts a sinister shadow over his lone (...for the moment) captive, deep within the bowels of his laboratory of life and death.
...No, just death.
<Pose Tracker> Rosaline Calice has posed.

There is a deafening roar as the door explodes into burning splinters.

"--GONNA KILL YOU!!" Rosaline screams out in this bloody murder tone she ironically hasn't used much these days. She flies out like a bullet from the opening left, letting Mother's Mercy hang from a few errant Corpse Strings so as to free both of her claws. She raises them, the light of her own flames making them seem even more grotesquely oversized and lethal than they already are, and aims to plunge them both into the flesh(?) of the Hellion holding their friend captive.

Wouldn't cutting Ida's restrains be a good use of them? Maybe. But Rosaline has finally found her prey, and so her intent is laser-focused.

She did say she smelled blood, after all.

GS: Rosaline Calice has attacked Doctor Habsburg with From the Shadows!
GS: Rosaline Calice has completed her action.
GS: Doctor Habsburg guards a hit from Rosaline Calice's From the Shadows for 73 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
The thing that was once a man asks Ida to give of herself--asks her to sacrifice all that she has, and more, for the sake of some nebulous 'other'. He pulls on the strap around her wrist until she can feel the blood draining from her fingers, replaced with dull discomfort. Her bicep twists and pulses in a distinctly unnatural way--the muscle itself is growing. Just like it's growing all over Ida's body. It could be a reaction to the Orb, or to her predicament, or yet another of the bizarre vicissitudes some Hellions are prone to.
"I warned you," Ida whispers. It feels like she's staring up at a tidal wave, and the only hope of survival is to become one with it, to ride it, no matter how much destruction it leaves.
Isn't that always the case? Helplessness or destructive rage. Make your choice, idiot girl.
Ida's eyes gleam. The Malevolent sun in her heart pulses in time with the orb in the other Hellion's hand. The sound of stressed, cracking stone echoes through the room, and a moment later, the agonized howl of bending metal joins it. Reinforced leather strips snap, one after another, like package twine. No sooner has Rosaline torn the door down than she sees what just happened--Ida, lunging off a reinforced stone slab that is now nothing more than a pile of broken chunks, sundered metal, torn leather. Malevolence blazes off every inch of her; her eyes gleam, and the network of meridians is illuminated from within.
One hand grabs for Habsburg's throat. Even as Rosaline charges, Ida tries to take hold of the other Hellion with an iron grip, and then drive him into as many nearby bits of equipment as possible.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Doctor Habsburg with Devil Fist!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
GS: Doctor Habsburg takes a solid hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Devil Fist for 144 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Garrett Stampede has posed.


There is a chuckle from the shadows behind Rosa's dramatic entry. "...what she said."

Comes the drawl from the last knight of a dead land. He meanders out of the shadows on the heels of Rosa's explosion, a glance takes in the situation in one easy look. Deceptively slow as he lets his hand twitch on the hilt of his corrupted sword.

Ida is restrained. The corpses. The death. For a second he considers severing Ida's bonds.

But then she saves him the trouble and his grin turn vicious. Wolfish. A hunter that has scented his prey cornered before him.

"You know," Again that deceptively slow drawl. "Your house? Really PISSES ME OFF!"

With in a blinding flash the blade is off his shoulder, impacting against the stonework as a rush of two foot long jagged spires of ice erupt from the ground.

A backhand of the blade as he pulls it from the ground sends shards of deadly ice flying around the charging Rosa and the angry Ida and towards the target of his ire.

GS: Garrett Stampede has attacked Doctor Habsburg with Winter's Reaping!
GS: Garrett Stampede has completed his action.
GS: Doctor Habsburg guards a hit from Garrett Stampede's Winter's Reaping for 75 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Doctor Habsburg has posed.
They arrive. He seems too absorbed in his work to care overly much, in the heat of the moment.
Rosaline plunges her claws into soft, spongy, slimy flesh underneath the bloody rags. They are too soft and spongy to afford any meaningful resistance to being stabbed. What she will instead find is that the slimy Malevolent flesh knots the hell back up, a gross 'slurp' sound as even any bodily fluids that might escape from the fresh wounds... comes right back in.
Garrett's chunks of ice, similarly, embed themselves within. They twist about as the gross-as-hell flesh underneath re-knots, sucking back up the let-up blood, and lets the icicles fall upon the ground with little 'tink' noises.
"You both... will make most excellent subjects." The tone of his voice shifts rapidly, between surprise and offense and pain with opportunistic, hungry desperation. He needs them.
Ida hauls off and breaks free. So stunned, there is a great red hand to his light purple throat. He is weightless in her hand, in her churning cauldron of feelings and contradictions as though this were unwitting appeasement to some of her more deeper-set conflicts with helplessness and lacking the power to overcome one's situation.
He is hurled away so quickly that one can only know where he is by the shattering glass, the exploding electrical streams - seems some of the electrical globes from earlier found their way down here - and the splashes of once-stored blood samples exposed to open air and further contamination.
"Why do they resist?!" His voice echoes out as he rises from this ruined equipment, slurping noises all about as his body tries to knot this up. He hunches over, his back arching unnaturally like he might quite have a proper spine to dictate the direction of his back. "Why do they die?!"
The air grows thicker with blood, of Malevolent sorcery. A heavy, wet air bears down upon them. It's harder to breathe - and yet, a sense of something... accumulating, somehow.
GS: Doctor Habsburg has attacked Garrett Stampede with Ew This Is Gross!
GS: Doctor Habsburg has attacked Rosaline Calice with Ew This Is Gross!
GS: Doctor Habsburg has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Plague Vector!
GS: Doctor Habsburg has entered a Reflect stance!
GS: Doctor Habsburg has completed its action.
GS: Rosaline Calice takes a solid hit from Doctor Habsburg's Ew This Is Gross for 119 hit points!
DC: MISS! Ida Everstead-Rey completely evades Plague Vector from Doctor Habsburg!
GS: CRITICAL! Garrett Stampede guards a hit from Doctor Habsburg's Ew This Is Gross for 69 hit points!
GS: Cripple and Poison! Statuses applied to Garrett Stampede!
GS: Hyper! Statuses applied to Doctor Habsburg!
<Pose Tracker> Rosaline Calice has posed.

Rosaline's claws sink into her target, and yet the wounds she inflicts don't... stick. In her single-minded state, the solution seems obvious enough: more overwhelming force from the three of them combined. But the castle's owner has other ideas.

Heavy air slows down Rosaline's ardors, as it quite literally chokes her down, in both a physical and metaphysical sense. The latter is what clinches it, forcing her to stagger down, clutching at her throat, hissing and spitting.

She stumbled back on her feet, still seeing red but at least coherent again. I don't want to be a beast, she told Ida. She blinks until her vision is more coherent again. "We won't... We won't be caged for your SICK EXPERIMENTS!" she spits out.

As he lurches back up, Rosaline sees an opening. She performs a series of quiet incantations and arcane gestures, none of which are actually likely to mean anything, until from the palms of her hands burst forth a veritable barrage of fireballs, relentless and thick enough to build up heat in the entire room, not to mention melt down the vast majority of the equipment found in the general direction of the malleable man.

GS: Rosaline Calice has attacked Doctor Habsburg with Curtain of Flames!
GS: Rosaline Calice has completed her action.
GS: Doctor Habsburg guards a hit from Rosaline Calice's Curtain of Flames for 81 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Garrett Stampede has posed.


Choking. Painful. Ugly air. It gets into his lungs, draws the very life out of Garrett as he staggers a moment. As if the tries to recover from the mess he can feel the power of that mist, sapping his strength.

He catches himself as he staggers, his pale eyes burning with violet(and violent) energy as he takes a two handed grip on the sword of his.

"You've failed." He snarls, no remorse in his words. "Your experiments do nothing but kill people. Give it up, and return to whatever hell spawned you."

A simple gesture and the shards of ice suddenly leap from the ground. Each of them expand into forms of great frost-bound wolves that bound towards the good Doctor, resistant for the moment to Rosalines flames. Or at least unstopped by them as each of the four great beasts attempt to catch a limb in their teeth. To slow and harriey the horrible form of a once desperately good man.


GS: Garrett Stampede has attacked Doctor Habsburg with Wolves of World's End!
GS: Garrett Stampede takes 8 damage from Poison!
GS: Garrett Stampede has completed his action.
GS: Doctor Habsburg guards a hit from Garrett Stampede's Wolves of World's End for 70 hit points!
GS: Slow! Statuses applied to Doctor Habsburg!
GS: Cover! Statuses applied to Garrett Stampede!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
The sight of her tormentor flying into something fragile fills Ida's heart with a perverse sense of glee. She takes a step forwards, pivots on a heel, and drives her other foot into something else that looks especially breakable--an assembly of empty tanks hooked up to horrible needles. Metal twists. Glass shatters. Motes of Malevolence alight on something Ida is wearing around her waist for good luck, a chain made of strange, dark metal. She's twisted a link into a belt-clasp, but it doesn't look like that was its intended function.
Its intended function? Well, it used to be part of the chain Berserk used to swing his wrecking-ball around. Now it's a battle-trophy taken from a dead foe. Now it's brought to this place all the pain and torment inflicted by its original owner, and that pain and torment resonates with Ida's own.
Ida unbuckles the chain, tests its weight in her hands. Part of the buckle untwists, forming a hook. Ida lashes out with it, experimentally, and a table laden with glassware explodes into a cloud of shrapnel. It feels like she could just storm through this place, wrecking everything in sight, tearing this man's cruel work apart around him. She could do it.
But there's that hesitance that holds her back, that caution. Power is not enough. Violence is not enough. The Malevolence shifts within her, like a mass of red-hot metal taking shape under a smith's hammer.
Magic flows towards her, borne by the humidity in the air. Ida feels it, lets out her breath in sharp, barking laughter, even as the shadows around her congeal. She stalks forwards, sucks in another breath, laughs again. Her lungs start to burn, but her body is healing faster than the plague can do its bloody work. Ida coughs and spits blood and somehow it looks like the most confident thing in the world.
"PATHETIC!" Ida says. "Don't you know when to cut your losses, old man?" Ida whips the length of chain again, this time at the recovering Hellion. The hook lashes out, sharp enough to dig into flesh and sturdy enough to let her reel that flesh in.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Doctor Habsburg with Reel In!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
GS: Doctor Habsburg guards a hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Reel In for 75 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Doctor Habsburg has posed.
Destruction rains. Think about how difficult the trek up to this wretched castle was. Now, think about how intricate so many of the devices here are. The unique pieces, the advanced constructions. Somewhere within the mire of mixed feelings given power and form, the collateral of these explosive outbursts may be felt above and beyond the pains and stresses among these four right now.
Things that could be forever lost to Lunar, now, to wait how many untold decades or even centuries before another with the drive, creativity, and means to replicate these items comes forth.
There is an unearthly shriek as the vampiric mosquito-leech Hellion covers themselves while the nekomata's flame magic fills the air, smoldering from the residual heat as more things cook and explode all around. An arm rears back to strike at Rosaline, only to find himself being leapt upon and chewed by frost wolves. His stringy form finds itself pulled apart every which way.
"I will not give up! I cannot give up! I will... I can... save--" He is yanked free of the grasp of the wolves by a chain that once belonged to another, whose latent malice and mean-spiritedness lingers on with the memories and meanings associated to it by its wielder. The destruction continues to spread.
Electricity dances across the laboratory, flickering with loud, ear-piercing surges of noise. That might not be good? But it's not stopping them from beating up the owner of their collective ire, so maybe it's okay.
"I will not lose another...!" Feet find their balance. "What you are doing, you are preventing the gift of li--"
KRA-KOOM.
The floor explodes in one electrical burst. Underneath them all is a pulsing, swirling pulse of energy. Segments of the laboratory floor float as the only available footing.
"What are you doing?!" The monster's voice screams with indignant rage, and drowning sorrow as he is held close by the hook of a deceased brute. Clawed fingers - clawed in the sense of having little tiny teeth on them - try to dig into Ida's huge bicep. That may sting, a little. But then, the sense of something... leaving it. Any fluids that go through, they will be sucked dry - rapidly, if he cannot be shaken off.
"...To watch them bleed out..." As he says this, it seems reliving this thought, this feeling, is almost incantation enough itself as any bleeding on Garrett seems to accelerate. Aggravate, like any moisture on his body just wants to let itself out - black water magic. This man was a black mage of the element of water. A means of healing by sorcery... is not in his grasp.
"...The blood! The blood... I can save them with the blood... give me your blood...!" And put it where? That doesn't seem to matter. The other arm waves wildly, grabbing hold of what seems like a syringe that, in his panic, doesn't notice is already full of something else as he tries to jam it into Rosaline, just a short ways off. (That's still an impressive wingspan on his part, though.)
GS: Doctor Habsburg has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Leeching!
GS: Doctor Habsburg has attacked Garrett Stampede with Bleed Out!
GS: Doctor Habsburg has attacked Rosaline Calice with Bad Humour!
GS: Doctor Habsburg has completed its action.
GS: Please react targeting the attack number in +queue.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a glancing hit from Doctor Habsburg's Leeching for 28 hit points!
GS: Weaken! Statuses applied to Ida Everstead-Rey!
DC: MISS! Rosaline Calice completely evades Bad Humour from Doctor Habsburg!
GS: Garrett Stampede guards a hit from Doctor Habsburg's Bleed Out for 71 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
The floor tears itself apart. The castle itself seems to be reeling against the destruction wrought against it--or maybe the Domain is simply reacting to its master's emotional state. Whatever the cause, the three Furies and their foe now fight above what looks like a massive rent in the earth, pulsing with pure, mystical might. It feels like the heartbeat of a world. And yet, much like the rift they encountered on the way here, this feels... artificial. A channel or tributary of a much greater wellspring nearby.
Ida doesn't have the time or presence of mind to dwell on matters of geomancy. She jerks her arm away, but she's not quick enough. Horrible little teeth dig into her skin, rasping through her flesh, opening capillaries. Blood flows freely down her arm, mingling with chi leeched from her meridians. Ida allows herself to flinch, even as a feeling of momentary weariness overtakes her.
'I will not lose another...!'
That's what he was doing. The full force of it hits Ida in the gut while her guard is down. She can see the path, now--someone taught to heal, yet unable to save someone they cared about deeply. Someone made helpless, just like her.
"Old man," Ida whispers. Whatever fury was animating her seems to abate, but Garrett and Rosaline are finding out that Ida is more dangerous when her anger is channeled. "Do you have any idea how many people you've killed? Or does it not matter? Does it not matter, as long as you feel you can do something?" The sun in her chest burns brilliantly. A chunk of flooring floats past her, her discarded winter clothes piled atop it--her shadow slips out from behind her, expands to swallow them up, and snaps back into place. Ida reaches into nothingness and draws a heavy-barreled pistol. Her lip curls as she aims it at Habsburg, and pulls the trigger. A brilliant plume of Malevolence-laced dragonfire roars towards the enemy Hellion!
<Pose Tracker> Rosaline Calice has posed.

"YOU CAN'T SAVE ANYONE ANYMORE!" Rosaline roars, as Garrett's wolves grab onto the madman. "You've strayed way too far off your path, and we've come to make you pay the price!"

Rosaline is in absolutely no position to sermon anyone, she realizes. She's murderous monster, and very little separates him from the rest of them. But... no, even beyond all the pain and frustration it took for them to even get here, a tiny, indefatigable part of her somehow refuses to let her berate herself over this.

Even though she found a way to get herself lost in her own head at this of all times, life goes on, as expressed by the floor exploding beneath her. She finds a sizeable enough chunk of the floor to leap onto from her crumbling perch, then surveys the scene to make sure no one here has fallen into the abyss.

A syringe comes her way. A deep-seated fear of needles kicks in, and before the object can make it anywhere close to one of Rosaline's veins, the catwoman has leapt over backwards, letting herself freefall into the swirling mass of energy. She should probably learn to float sometime. She can probably do it. But until then...

She projects another series of Corpse Strings from her fingers, using them to latch on to another intact piece of floor. She reels herself back up and, with her free hand, raises Mother's Mercy, purple mist pouring from its every seam, then fires it and the foul magic within at the abomination.

GS: Rosaline Calice has attacked Doctor Habsburg with Malevolent Shells!
GS: Rosaline Calice has completed her action.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Doctor Habsburg with Desecration Flame!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Garrett Stampede has posed.


The wolves hold the leach and Garrett smirks in satisfaction. Then he's moving. Moving though the explosions, though the fire and the destruction that rains around him. The floor disappears and he leaps to a platform, landing in a crouch as he holds the blade out to the side.

He can feel the wounds he's suffered in the march here begin to reopen and flow faster and faster. Leaving a pool of corrupted and tainted blood where he stands.

He smiles though the pain of it. "What does it look like we're doing?" He snarls. "We're putting an end to this farce. This place is ours now. You're disgusting experiments end here and now. You've gone too far down this path. Can you even see what you've become?!"

And then he's moving again, flashing so fast from platform to platform that he is little more than a blur. The bastard sword in his hands scything though the air towards the things shoulder, intending to take the entire limb off.

GS: Garrett Stampede has attacked Doctor Habsburg with Ravager's Strike!
GS: Garrett Stampede takes 10 damage from Poison!
GS: Garrett Stampede has completed his action.
GS: Doctor Habsburg guards a hit from Rosaline Calice's Malevolent Shells for 41 hit points!
GS: Mighty! Statuses applied to Rosaline Calice!
GS: Doctor Habsburg critically Guards a hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Desecration Flame for 29 hit points!
GS: Doctor Habsburg takes a solid hit from Garrett Stampede's Ravager's Strike for 86 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Doctor Habsburg has posed.
He scarce has any idea what he's seeing when two of them draw exotic weapons upon him.
The Malevolent dragonfire liquefies purplish Hellion flesh in clouds of crimson and violet, wet vapors of dissonance and lifeblood grasping at one another and pulling itself back. The forearm shudders, as much fear as it is a bundle of nerves and muscle that doesn't seem to know what to do about itself as it continues to roast and smolder.
"It is all I can do! It is... it is the only way..." His contradictions. To kill, to harm, to do all sorts of painful and ghastly things as it regard's a body's blood, all in the name of using it to save - but all he seems to show for it is death, and also lots of blood.
"What do you know of a path? To have seen wounded that you had no power to save through Her blessings?!" He cries in defiance to the mysterious device that is pointed at him. Its ammunition sinks and washes around him, more and more flame trying to wash through, to purge him, to turn him into no more than forgotten dust of the world underneath - but wet, regenerating flesh bubbles and blisters to maintain form and coherence--
"Can you see what you're doi---" This ends in a pained shriek as a shoulder is lopped off clean. Blood. There is blood everywhere. Malevolent fibers on strings reach out to grasp it from the stump, as it dangles precariously above the void of the rift. Snorting noises follow, nasal and congested as though EVERYTHING were trying to hold itself in. Every breath, every drop of blood.
"You've... you've ruined everything... you're taking it away from me, you're-- you're... taking it away from everyone who will need my help..." Is he laughing? Is he crying? From the floating chunk of ground that remains balanced, he clutches the stump-plus-Malevolent-flesh-string-thing as the other wildly spins, fingers twitching with sorcerous purposes.
"I do not understand what went wrong! I give the sick the blood of the healthy AND THEY DIE," something churns the stomach. Something cramps the leg. Moisture in the air twists and contorts, but not just in the air itself - also within oneself.
The very water in one's body threatens to rebel, to throw one's own health into imbalance and chaos. "I need more... I need more... all the other ones before were wrong! They must have been sick... unhealthy... then I need yours... give it to me... give it to me...!"
He does not give much thought into the delivery mechanism as he stands at the precipice of falling into the rift - only the idea that the blood must be sacrificed to him, by any means necessary, as the water within one's own bodies threaten to rebel.
GS: Doctor Habsburg has activated a Force Action!
GS: Doctor Habsburg has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Dyscrasia!
GS: Doctor Habsburg has attacked Rosaline Calice with Dyscrasia!
GS: Doctor Habsburg has attacked Garrett Stampede with Dyscrasia!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a glancing hit from Doctor Habsburg's Dyscrasia for 110 hit points!
GS: ! Statuses applied to Ida Everstead-Rey!
GS: CRITICAL! Garrett Stampede guards a hit from Doctor Habsburg's Dyscrasia for 130 hit points!
GS: Cripple and Poison! Statuses applied to Garrett Stampede!
GS: Hyper! Statuses applied to Doctor Habsburg!
GS: Doctor Habsburg has completed its action.
GS: Rosaline Calice guards a hit from Doctor Habsburg's Dyscrasia for 126 hit points!
GS: ! Statuses applied to Rosaline Calice!
<Pose Tracker> Garrett Stampede has posed.


There is a moment of satisfaction as Garrett sees the strike hit home. He spins, sliding just a few bare inches across the platform. The room smells of the metalic tang of blood and science as he surveys the destruction.

"Anyone who needs your help? You've killed them all already you crazy bastard." He snarls as his blade flicks out again, the strike coming towards the leaches back, drawn at an angle from hip to shoulder. Brutal, smooth, a killing stroke to be sure.

...but did anyone suspect anything less of this group.

Then he can feel it though, his own blood rebelling against him. Boiling in his veins, he grits his teeth against the pain but it is overwhelming. Red clouds his vision as blood begins to leak from his ears, his eyes, great crimson tears falling down his face to stream towards the monster mage in front of him.

Now he screams, collapsing to one knee as it overcomes him for a moment, his hand spasming. Nearly loosing a grip on his weapon as he concentrates his will against falling prey to the leach.

"I will not become one more of your victims." He growls though clenched teeth, stained red with his own rebelling blood. "I have too much left to do."

GS: Garrett Stampede has attacked Doctor Habsburg with Arctica's Finest!
GS: Garrett Stampede takes 9 damage from Poison!
GS: Garrett Stampede has completed his action.
GS: Doctor Habsburg takes a solid hit from Garrett Stampede's Arctica's Finest for 165 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Rosaline Calice has posed.

Rosaline is asked what she knows of a path. Of having no power to save the wounded. The words prompt a joyless, manic smile. She doesn't answer with words, but with a loud, hollow laugh.

And then she shoots.

He sounds like he's crying, or maybe Rosaline is projecting. "You canNOT do anything to atone anymore! You can't!" She feels she's on the verge of a realization, something just on the tip of her tongue. But nothing comes, except the urge to scream incoherently.

And she does, though by no choice of her own, as her own blood comes bursting out of several key points of her body, prompting unimaginable pain, enough to send her spasming and curling up on the floor as blood pools around her body. She places a hand on her chest, with herculean effort, and stops the flow using willpower and no small amount of her own healing magic. As painful as it is, this one works, she thinks to herself dimly. And it is painful, roughly as much as it was when the blood came out.

"Stop. Just stop," she says, staggering back onto her feet, her kimono and fur matted with blood. Bloody tears are rolling down her face.

"You've done enough. You've done far too much. Now just shut up and REST--"

She bounds towards the man, her claw opened, purple mist and pink flame swirling around it in a localized storm of chaotic sorcery.

"--IN--"

And she plunges it straight towards the man's chest-- INTO his chest, if she has her way.

"--PEACE."

And as she does this, she grasps for his soul. Some people would reach for someone's heart. No, she wants to tear out his soul. Why? She isn't consciously sure just yet. Can she even do that? Only one way to find out.

GS: Rosaline Calice has attacked Doctor Habsburg with Gloves Off!
GS: Rosaline Calice has completed her action.
GS: Doctor Habsburg takes a solid hit from Rosaline Calice's Gloves Off for 227 hit points!
GS: Doctor Habsburg has Fallen! It is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Not that long ago, Lily Kiel employed some manner of horrific magic against Ida--something that made her blood denser and heavier in her veins. She finds herself flashing back to it, now, as Habsburg screams about his failings and unleashes his sorcerous might. Every inch of Ida's flesh feels like raw, desolate agony. Blotches of blue, black, and violet rise against her exposed skin. Blood streams from her eyes, her nostrils, her ears, the corners of her mouth. Even then, her body tries to draw what it's lost back into it, or failing that, to regenerate it completely. For a moment or two, Ida can do nothing but clutch her sides and shake in agony, biting her tongue to keep from screaming. The length of chain wraps tightly around her forearm. White-knuckled fingers keep an iron grip on Peacemaker.
Slowly, the pain becomes bearable. Ida coughs, forces herself upright, her vision swimming as she takes stock of the situation. Rosaline and Garrett fall on Habsburg, the former Etone screaming out something that under other circumstances could be a blessing. Ida circles around, leaping off the chunk of ground she's perched on. Malevolence flows down her arm, as if replacing the blood Habsburg took from her. The pistol's barrel starts to glow.
Ida finds her opening. She raises the gun, tracing a line from her heart to her weapon to her target. Part of her wishes she could reach him. Another part of her knows that he wouldn't listen to her even if she somehow could. She lets out a breath, pulls the trigger, and sends a second, tiny sun screaming towards the enemy Hellion.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Doctor Habsburg with Hell-Heart Furnace Shot!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
GS: Doctor Habsburg takes a solid hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Hell-Heart Furnace Shot for 184 hit points!
GS: Poison! Statuses applied to Doctor Habsburg!
GS: Doctor Habsburg has Fallen! It is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Doctor Habsburg has posed.
Garrett will not become one more victim of Doctor Gordon Habsburg today, in favor of achieving whatever there is left for him to do.
Arcitca's finest - arguably now, its only - draws his blade. The speed in which he accomplishes this is lost to the naked eye. Lost to any eye imaginable, though the ears will catch it. The unsheathing of steel, the squelch of a blade through flesh. So clean, there's not even a drop of blood on that sword. It goes through the vampiric insect-man so fast that not even a droplet could find the time to stain it a deeper crimson.
The Doctor falls to his knees. His floor-platform tilts back.
Rosaline bids that this man just go rest in peace, to assert there is nothing more he can do.
The platform rocks forward violently as she sticks her claw in there. The stare he gives is entirely vacant, a shrill hum as she digs in deep through. So deeply stained in blood and Malevolence they are, what she grabs a hold of is hard to define - maybe it falls upon belief to give form and definition to what she withdraws out of there. Something, enough that the Hellion loses something. In her paw, it is a swirling ball of Malevolence and blood that seems to want to mend itself, or just be a quasi-alive sticky wet thing. It may be more telling that the wound doesn't seem to knot itself up, as they stagger back. They slide out of her paw's stabbing grasp.
Ida finds her opening.
All that can be said, has been said. None of them, alone, have the power to rise above the swamp of conflicted emotions that now transform them all into monsters with very little restraint to keep them together. However Ida feels, her act is the summation of what they are doing - and a tiny sun shoots past where Rosaline stands with her prize(?).
The sun expands around the vampiric blood scholar, and a final shrill inhuman scream seems to fill the air as he tips off backwards, off his platform...
To fall unseen and unheard. He does not have the decency to burn into multiple small piles of ash like those bandits they ambushed as the catalyst for this entire miserable journey into Mt. Manfred.
The environs start to stabilize. The ground mends itself - or maybe the exposed space above the massive rift merely melts away? - with one final addition that bounces against the ground like it were a child's toy, teasing with the promise of shattering into glass and maybe a catastrophic explosion that could blanket a greater landmass than just Mt. Manfred in Malevolence.
Instead, the Anomalous Orb stops bouncing after the fourth rebound, and rolls teasingly across the ground to a stop between everyone's feet.
<Pose Tracker> Rosaline Calice has posed.

Rosaline stands back, only giving a glance to the swirling mass gripped between her claws. The vampire's body falls into the light. She maneuvers her tails so that she can remain upright while the floor mends itself.

She pants, staring off into space for a moment before she raises her claw again. Oh, right, a soul. Why did she pluck it out, anyway? Some form of sentimentality, she isn't sure. And now, what to do with it...

She looks around and finds some equipment that was miraculously spared their wrath. With her free hand, she grasps an empty jar attached to a strange device, unscrews it and places the mass of Malevolence within. She finds a lid and screws it on.

With this done, she leaves the jar on the table, so she won't forget it later. She'll find a use for it, she's sure. Maybe to prop up some books.

But until then, she returns her attention to the orb, and squints.

"What are we going to do with this thing...?"

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida watches Habsburg fall, and vanish. She stares over the edge for a long moment after, as if expecting to see something--anything--that would indicate this is a temporary victory. Instead, the floor starts to knit itself back together, leaving the three of them alone in the wrecked laboratory. Now that the adrenaline surge is washing out of her system, Ida's form seems to stabilize itself as well, shrinking back down to the normal proportions of her usual Hellionized state. She takes a moment to breathe, sizes her two colleagues up, and then:
"...I suppose this place is ours, now, isn't it?" Ida might be right. The horrible, oppressive resistance of the Domain has all but vanished. The top predator of the local ecosystem is no longer there.
Ida smiles. She holsters her gun--which, really, is tucking it into her own shadow--and reaches down, picking up the orb. It feels like it fits perfectly in the palm of her hand, and the pulsing keeps time with her heartbeat. "I'm sure I can think of a few ideas."
<Pose Tracker> Garrett Stampede has posed.


The sword in his hand is clean, not a drop having been drawn from the leech. A detached part of his mind notes that, notes how odd that a creature that desired so much blood had none of its own to give.

Did he try giving his own first?

Is that how this all started.

They might never know the truth.

As Garrett's body becomes his own again, his rebealous blood settles again to leave thick and sticky tracks against his armor and his face the man slowly pulls himself back to his feet. Its painful, every move seems to cause something to burn. He still drips his own life from several wounds as he looks around the place as it slowly kits itself back together.

"I think it is," The knight finally says again. Wryly. Amusedly. "It seems like we have a proper castle again. Or will once we get to repairing it. Its...not been itself for some time I think."

Then Rosa comments about their new prize. And Ida smiles.

Garrett just smiks slowly. "Something tells me," He drawls as he sheathes his sword again. "That this idea of yours is more than just a paperweight."