2020-08-08: Exhumation
- Log: Exhumation
- Cast: Neriah Parringer, Jacqueline Barber, Tipheria Aredor, Ethius Hesiod, Ashley Winchester, Seraph Boudicca, Ivan, Ida Everstead-Rey, Marivel Armitage, Talia, Venetia Vuong, Dean Stark
- Where: Arastell Catacombs
- Date: August 08, 2020
- Summary: Neriah attempts to raise an ancient ally to bolster her growing cult of Valmar.
<Pose Tracker> Neriah Parringer has posed.
Word had come down of activity around Arastell Catacombs. Someone was stirring there - months after a battle that had taken place before.
Those descending into the depths find no interference from the resident everdead lich. It has been fought enough that it can seemingly muster no more. The path to the inner sanctum, marked by the maps found within the catacombs and the journal entries recorded by its inhabitants, is unimpeded - a simple descent into the chamber with but one burial, marked on the map with a name.
> Sep. di C.
But the sanctum is not empty. There are two other people there.
"I'm sorry I've kept you waiting." The voice is a low, throaty murmur, as long and delicately manicured fingers trace down the edge of the sarcophagus. Neriah's outfit is in darker shades of burgundy and black today, save for the white ermine fur trim of her overrobe, draped over a daringly-cut dress. She bites down to one deep red lip before drawing her hand away. "The memories don't always come, but my predecessor remembers you, Heresiarch Caius. The last one bound by the Chains of Arius.
"But the time has come that I need you," she says as she turns from the sarcophagus with a click of high heels that echoes in the dim light. She lays her palm on one of two items set up across the sanctum. It's a waist-high podium with a large black glass globe centred upon it, inert.
The second object is beside the first. It's a table with a shape resting on it - the shape of an utterly motionless young woman with pallid skin, blue hair and a pair of antennae.
Neriah dips her lashes. "I hope you don't mind being a bluenette robot when you're corporeal again, Caius. But, hey, if Arius can stand being me, then you can stand being T-Blue Two."
The Impetus of Valmar draws a breath, then closes her eyes and bows her head over the dark crystal. Both hands curled over it with fingers like claws, she focuses. From within the sarcophagus, there's a faint sound - and through cracks in the stonework, a dull, blue-tinged light begins to pulse.
A spark of a matching light begins to well at the heart of the crystal - small, but ominously swelling.
DC: Ida Everstead-Rey switches forms to Martial Artist Ida!
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
Jacqueline had been doing quite a bit scouting out in the Arastell Catacombs. She's been searching for something - nothing specific, just looking for something that might give her an idea of what Neriah was after.
She had found something interesting, though... so when she hears word of activity about the catacombs, she has a good idea of where to go. After warning everyone she knows and giving them directions, should they need them, Jacqueline sets out to the catacombs...
...and arrives in time to witness Neriah in the middle of a ritual.
"Neriah... please, stop right there." Jacqueline requests, her tone serious. "I can't let you do this."
<Pose Tracker> Tipheria Aredor has posed.
Tipheria Aredor managed to lead an expedition down into Arastell before, and there she'd found a map to the depths of the catacombs, but they hadn't been in any condition to follow up on it at the time.
But on hearing about activity, it's not something she can put off any more.
It's a lot easier to actually get down than she expected. Tipheria expected to be fighting every step of the way, and she has her spear out before she enters the first staircase - but there's nothing. Not even a bat or a single troglodyte jumps out to bar her path.
She starts speeding up when she realizes resistance is low, rushing ahead recklessly and even hopping down two stairs at a time once or twice. Tipheria slams into the door to the sanctum shoulder-first, staggers through as it opens under her blow -
"Hey!"
Well, so much for surprise. Tipheria points her spear at Neriah despite the distance, walking in more slowly than she rampaged down the stairs. She starts to approach, keeping the point of the spear aimed right at Neriah's center of mass. "Step away from the..."
Tipheria doesn't know what half of that is. "Crystal. Step away from the crystal. And the body!"
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.
Ethius is among the Drifters who come to once more investigate when there's word of activity picking up around Arastell Catacombs - but there is a noted passiveness in which he goes about navigating the still-hazardous labyrinths and its ominous ghostly blue flames. In places where ancient and/or misplaced technology run rampant, he tends to go through them with a level of certainty that suggests a comfort with that particular brand of the unknowable.
The handful of times he's been present for an expedition within these halls, he has shown closer to the opposite. Whether it is because of his own hand helping lead Neriah to her path or some other means, well... now's not the time for those kinds of questions. He finds it suspicious that the icy lich isn't present to deter them from going too much deeper than they usually manage.
He files in not far behind from Jay - it is her who makes the call to tell her to stop, and not him, as he skulks around the outer perimeter of the gathering. His quarterstaff is drawn but currently held in one hand. He doesn't point a palm out, nor do his usual time-saving strategy of repeating the first two syllables of a spell he might cast. It is strangely, by comparison of previous conduct, meek.
But his presence here nonetheless indicates a baseline desire to defy, if none of the usual bravado.
<Pose Tracker> Ashley Winchester has posed.
Ashley Winchester, ARMS commando and DEFINITELY NOT A CLONE has found his way to the dark ritual, too... How could he not? He has a map! And he's actually been here before! Judging by the sack hanging from his shoulder, he either packed for a long trip, or he's bringing a whole bunch of explosives in the hopes of reducing the sepulchre at the heart of Arastell to rubble.
Unfortunately, it's not to be. Neriah... has already begun the ritual.
"I told you guys it was this way," Ashley whispers to his entourage, positioned as he is just out of sight and around a handy hallway wall. "Looks like we're a bit late, though. Dang...!"
What's he going to do with all these explosives now...!?
Well, he could just hurl them at the crystal and set them on fire, and then see what happens!?
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
Boudicca promised aid to Jacqueline, during one of those scouting missions, broken chains and ancient warnings. She may not know everything about Arastell, but - on pain of death...
Through the catacombs, and it is suspiciously quiet, when she comes to that place the lich ought to be. Boudicca needs little permission to be nervous, all told. This is more than enough to set her nerves to cascade potential, everything which might go wrong.
She finds herself stepping out behind Jacqueline, into that chamber. "Ah..." A moment's pause and a pale gaze, as she considers with dread the implication of corpus and crystal. "Cease," is her agreement with her friends, though it's a little muted.
Looking at Neriah, she just looks... sad.
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
Ivan was part of a previous expedition to the catacombs, and never did return to explore further... until now, thanks to Jacqueline's intel.
Ivan is, perhaps, the only one who arrives upon the ghoulish scene of a woman completing some dark ritual to transfer a spirit out of a sarcophagus into the living world and promptly turns red and begins stammering at her.
(The last time he encountered Neriah she propositioned him a little).
"S-so this is the kind of thing you do to change the world...!" When she invoked a Day of Darkness, he admittedly had kind of a feeling.
He casts a few quick, curious glances back and forth between Neriah and Jacqueline, knowing that they have a History of sorts.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
The vile presence emanating from the Arastell Catacombs has reached critical mass. ARMS has temporarily called Ida away from her own investigation, and summoned her to the barrow.
This is hardly the first time Ida's been here, but the Catacombs have a confusing layout even ignoring the eldritch magic. Ida's stomach started tying itself in knots about ten minutes back, and it's only gotten worse sense. "My mistake then," says, as she peers over Ashley's shoulder. Her gaze darts between Neriah, the niche, and the lifeless entity lying on the table. It looks like it could be a copy of Tio. In fact, it is a Tio, but not the Tio Ida knows.
"Steady," Ida says, to Ashley. "We just need to--"
And then Tipheria, who has never once known a chill in her entire life, charges forward. Ida stares a moment.
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
A skeletal hand slowly places itself on Ivan's shoulder and a gravelly voice whispers in a tone like spiders swaying in a dry wind. "Who dares to disturb my slumber...? Is it you...mortal? I seeeeeee into your soul. I k now what you did... I know what you diiiiid...!"
The camera pulls back revealing that it's just Marivel holding onto a skeleton hand she miust have picked up somewhere in the catacombs. Her other hand pulls around and sticks, on Ivan's sleeve, a sticker. It is sticker of heart carrying two knives. It has red words 'LET ME TAKE A STAB AT FRIENDSHIP' spinning around the heart and it's a very big sticker. The heart is smiling goofily.
"You saved friendship and I remember I didn't give you a sticker yet. So there you go. If you scratch it, it smells like strawberries."
She pats Ivan twice on the shoulder. "Hm? Are you okay? You look a little flushed."
MARIVEL ARMITAGE - has no idea Ivan is a former assassin. Also has no idea Neriah propositioned him.
She does walk around and add, "You really going to use that poor girl's body for 'Caius'?" She looks to Jay for a moment and adds, "Tell you what, you quit this and you can go home early today, have nice bubblebath. What do ya say?"
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Talia hadn't been into Arastell...
...but if Ivan and Jacqueline Barber are going down here, then that's enough for her.
Jay's bodyguard is just shortly after her. Her hand rests on the sword at her side; Mirage is sheathed but ready to be drawn. She comes a stop -- her eyes are on Tipheria, from behind -- and then she looks at the crystal, then the body. She speaks a little quietly, at first. "It's--it's her! I thought I recognized her...!"
She steps forward, angrily -- and puts herself in front of Jay. Bodyguards have to be bodyguards.
"Sister Domitia!"
<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.
"Step away from the relic," says VENETIA VUONG
What right does Venetia have to give such commands?
She has no right. In the cosmic consortium of Filgaia and perhaps the worlds beyond, there may be in the end no ultima thule, no source of Law or Order. In the end, there's no justice:
There's just... us.
Venetia is pointing her bronze rod at this woman, this Neriah. Her other hand holds a bronze tile -- a Crest Graph.
"You are going to put that on the ground and you are going to step AWAY from activating whatever wretched revenant you are doddering around with," Venetia states, "because SO HELP ME GUARDIANS, if you intend to stand there and rip bloody chunks out of this already SICKLY world, if you intend to displace thousands or rule some kind of kingdom of tyranny, if you intend to make yourself the Second Draft of Krosse, I will take you out."
She pauses and says towards Talia, "what"
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
Dean is here to support Boudicca and Ida. He explored the Arastell Catacombs not too long ago with Ida, Yulie and Cyre, and though only one of those people is present, it was definitely an eerie place with some bad mojo going on. He still lacks experience as a Seer, and while this doesn't seem to be a case of Malevolence, it's still some bad mojo all the same. Besides, people need help! He can't just refuse to go along.
That said, he hasn't met Neriah before, or if he has, he's forgotten about it by now. He's not really *quite* sure what's going on, but when he sees Neriah talking to... a crystal? a body? like she's going to... do *someting*...? He sinks into a wary stance, Twin Fenrir flashing into his hands. He'll let the others do the talking!
Mostly because, uh. The talking that *is* going on is not really helping his comprehension of the situation. Who's Sister Domitia??
<Pose Tracker> Neriah Parringer has posed.
The sound of a familiar voice interrupts Neriah's focus. Her long lashes lift as her eyes focus on a familiar face.
There's little affection in the look she gives Jay. "I thought you'd be cuddled up with Lunata," she says with a shallow arch of her eyebrows. Something in her tone is stinging, like nails digging into a sore spot.
When Ivan emerges, Neriah flashes a little smile his way. "It helps to have help when you're going up against an entrenched, corrupt system."
Tipheria she recognizes in only the vaguest way, and she cants her head to one side with a slow rush of breath. Sliding her hands from the crystal, she moves one to rest at her hip and circles to stand to one side of it. "If you insist, but if you think you're going to stop me, you're deluded. The Chains of Arius were never a just fate, and so long as the last links of them hold this place, justice hasn't been served. I broke them for me. It's time for me to bring their last prisoner back into the life he deserves. As for you...."
That's about when Talia comes in and recognizes her.
Neriah dips her lashes slightly before folding her hands and bowing her head. "Yea, see the light of Althena, child," she says.
With Venetia and Tipheria both advancing, Neriah flicks her hand out, a long forked polearm materializing in her grasp. "Please," she scoffs.
"I'm the one who'll rejuvenate this shithole of a planet."
She surges into motion with a blur, snapping her left hand up. Unholy power surges with a blue-black shimmer, a gut-churning sensation of something tangibly wrong tugging at the senses as a sphere of magic congeals around her. The eldritch globe undulates with interlocking geometric patterns that defy the senses, an escherian nightmare of constantly-shifting energies.
"And none of you will stop me," she assures as she snaps her fork out, swinging for Tipheria, then for Venetia. Both hands grip it as she swings before pivoting away and sweeps her left hand towards the others gathered.
The temperature in the already-chilly catacombs suddenly plunges with a surge of magic. Spines of ice erupt through the floor, punching through crumbling stonework in a spray of debris and dust. They rise into the thick of the group, seeking to impale and slash as many of them as Neriah can get.
Behind her, the orb continues to pulse - and so does the sepulchre. Whatever she's started, it's still going.
OBJECTIVE:
* Stop Neriah before she can complete the ritual and revive Caius.
GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Neriah Parringer with Eldritch Sphere! GS: Neriah Parringer takes a solid hit from Neriah Parringer's Eldritch Sphere for 0 hit points! GS: Shield and Surge! applied to Neriah Parringer! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Tipheria Aredor with Cabal of Shadow! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Venetia Vuong with Cabal of Shadow! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Crackling! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Ivan with Crackling! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Ethius Hesiod with Crackling! GS: Neriah Parringer has gained 1 Combo! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Dean Stark with Crackling! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Talia with Crackling! GS: Neriah Parringer has gained 1 Combo! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Marivel Armitage with Crackling! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Crackling! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Crackling! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Ashley Winchester with Crackling! GS: Neriah Parringer has completed her action. GS: Talia takes a glancing hit from Neriah Parringer's Crackling for 63 hit points! GS: Venetia Vuong guards a hit from Neriah Parringer's Cabal of Shadow for 70 hit points! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Marivel Armitage takes a solid hit from Neriah Parringer's Crackling for 126 hit points! ===== +stats: Neriah Parringer ================================================= ___________________________________| Form 1 |___________________________________ _ The Impetus of Valmar CP: 241 AP: 120 DP: 48 _ _ REF: 25 _ _ POW: 50 10 Agility _ _ VIT: 45 6 Brute _ _ SOR: 50 12 Combat _ _ ARM: 30 10 Wits _ _ TEC: 38 _ _ +++Personal Skills: Creative, Defensive Charge, Fiend, Force Guard, _ _ Onslaught, Sentinel, Sorcery, SOS Overdrive, Sound Mind, Tankbuster, and _ _ Tough. _ _ +++Force Actions: Boost, Extend, Full Clip, and Guard. _ _ +++Tools: Arched Boots (1 Agility Quicken, Fanfare), Excavator's Lens (2 _ _ Wits Enlighten), and Chameleon Cloak (1 Combat Cleanse). _ |' BA-BOOM! Db 0 SOR CRUS AREA 0 / 50 '| |' Cabal of Shadow Db 4 TEC AREA 0 / 0 '| |' Eldritch Sphere Db 0 SOR SHIE SURG REFI 0 / 20 '| |' Hellmouth Db 6 SOR RESE 30 / 0 '| |' Inhalation Db 0 SOR REST ABSO REFI 30 / 20 '| |' Masterstroke Db 6 TEC DISP 30 / 10 '| |' Negative Light Db 4 SOR DISE POIS 0 / 20 '| |' Shhh! Db 0 SOR MUTE INTE REFI 15 / 15 '| |' Utmost Impetus Db 0 SOR LOCK 30 / 25 '| |' Valmarlance Db 6 TEC RUSH 30 / 0 '| |' Zap All Db 4 SOR AREA 0 / 0 '| |' Crackling F 4 SOR RESE 0 / 0 '| |' Let Mui Take A Selfie F 0 TEC RESE 0 / 0 '| |' Avenging Ray Sig 8 SOR FOLL GATL DEST 0 / 0 '| |' Burnflame Sig 8 SOR AREA DEST 0 / 0 '| |' Dawn of Retribution Sig 9 SOR PIER GATL 100 / 70 '| |' Gaze Sig 0 SOR LINK RUIN EFFI 45 / 35 '| |' Hellbreath Sig 0 SOR CURS AREA 0 / 50 '|
GS: Tipheria Aredor takes a solid hit from Neriah Parringer's Cabal of Shadow for 113 hit points! GS: Ethius Hesiod takes a solid hit from Neriah Parringer's Crackling for 125 hit points! GS: Jacqueline Barber guards a hit from Neriah Parringer's Crackling for 71 hit points! GS: Ivan completely evades a hit from Neriah Parringer's Crackling! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Ashley Winchester takes a solid hit from Neriah Parringer's Crackling for 139 hit points! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a glancing hit from Neriah Parringer's Crackling for 67 hit points! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey's Force Evade activates! GS: Seraph Boudicca takes a solid hit from Neriah Parringer's Crackling for 139 hit points! GS: Dean Stark critically Guards a hit from Neriah Parringer's Crackling for 25 hit points! GS: Dean Stark's Force Guard activates!
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
Jacqueline feels a lot more comfortable with her friends around her. She doesn't know if she could stand up to Neriah alone... though she is a little taken aback when Talia addresses her as Sister Domitia.
"...Ah, Sister Domitia is just an identity she used to manipulate the Rolance branch of the Church of Althena from the inside... Her real name is Neriah Parringer." She corrects.
And that's when Neriah addresses her. The difference in her tone and the way she looks at her, compared to the usual... it's enough to cause Jacqueline to flinch back a step. She... doesn't know why Neriah's reacting this way, but she feels a little hurt.
"I-I'm sorry? I don't see what Lunata has to do with this..." Jacqueline replies, taken aback. But, she steps forward once more, then, shaking her head.
"...I'm sorry, Neriah, but Valmar's power... can it really bring anything other than destruction? We have to stop you." She says. With that, she gestures with her left hand, invoking one of her Crest Graphs.
"Ivan, Talia!" She calls out, and a sorcerous force spreads out from her position, settling over the both of them to enhance their strength.
GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Ivan with Mage Armory! GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Talia with Mage Armory! GS: Jacqueline Barber has gained 2 Combo! GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action. GS: Talia takes a solid hit from Jacqueline Barber's Mage Armory for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper! applied to Talia!
<Pose Tracker> Tipheria Aredor has posed.
Tipheria definitely has no chill. Chill is for patient people.
Tipheria has never actually seen Neriah before. But she gets the idea pretty quickly. Especially with all the other Drifters here, and the kind of energy she's using...
Okay. Tipheria is not very sensitive to that. Rather the opposite; she can't use any magic at all. But the sphere Neriah brings up requires no particular sensitivity to detect and no more to find uncomfortable. "Valmar?" she half-asks, half-states, as she looks at it. It makes Tipheria's skin rise up in boosebumps, and it's not because it's cold.
Or not entirely because it's cold, anyway. The ice is a bit of a problem with that. Tipheria whirls her spear, deflecting only a couple of the icicles; more strike around her, shattering and spraying her with ice or digging in and chilling her to the bone.
"G - " Tipheria shatters a chunk of ice with the butt of her spear. She eyes the sphere. Part of that looks familiar, though she can't place it... maybe she's mixing it up with other magic, it all sort of blends together to her, but some of it seems like it should be distinctive. Either way, she knows what to do with it.
"Hey, Ivan!" Ivan she recognizes; he's not the only one but he's one she's actually worked with before. "Back me up, won't you?" Tipheria raises her spear, pointing it at Neriah again, looking almost thoughtful. A tiny pinprick of light forms on the very tip, not magic but chi.
Tipheria lunges. That one spark of light leaves a trail in the air behind her as she thrusts, moving two steps almost so fast she blurs. She attempts to drive the spearpoint against - even through - the barrier, her fighting energy spraying sparks if it touches the strange bubble, the muscles in her arms tensing as she tries to grind it straight through.
GS: Tipheria Aredor has attacked Neriah Parringer with Goring Spike! GS: Tipheria Aredor has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.
With Ethius not being called out by name, it may be in that moment the strange Symbologist starts getting a bit more emboldened. He picks up the rate of his footsteps as Neriah addresses her two present aggressors. There is only a flinch when Neriah's left hand surges up to that fell power - as this is the direction he is moving about. One would be hard pressed to shrug it off - the displaced air and temperature both feel very wrong, and uncomfortable in a way the mind has problems parsing other than knowing it is 'no.' It is not a sense one acclimates to.
'And none of you will stop me,' Neriah's proclamation followed by the swing of the fork sees him breaking off into a run forwards.
The temperature drops to something that scientifically counts as freezing but is punctuated further by that wrong-ness. It is in this moment that the dramatic tension meets a moment of levity, in that where Ethius is running, it ices over. He did not prepare for that possibility, and it shows as he staggers, slips, fails to jab the tip of his staff to the ground for traction...
And proceeds to faceplant against the ground as he is showered in shattered stonework and jabbed at by icy spikes erupting everywhere. (Incidentally, faceplanting helped him avoid being impaled - but the fall exacts an equivalent exchange in terms of overall injury with an additional helping of indignity, so maybe this is a net loss.)
His momentum towards the objective is thusly ground to a halt, and his recovery stymied by some of the destruction collapsing on him. Some moments later, he faces up to reveal there's some blood underneath the bandanna, but it's not enough to stop him from willing to get back up - even as the tip of the quarterstaff slips against the ground and nearly sees him collapse again.
Talia calling out the name of one of Neriah's aliases is a stark reminder of something that eats at him. All his attempts to put a stop to the exploitation of Glenwood's politics - how his removal of the Cardinal ended up playing directly into her hands.
He's out of physical striking range, and the ground isn't playing nice with him (a new set of icy spikes that seem ready to catch him if he falls face flat once more dissuades him from rushing forward), he risks the spellcasting - fluttering his fingers to a set of familiar syllables as he tries to raise the ambient heat drastically around Neriah.
"Overheat." Sorcerous light effects, followed by the uncomfortable rising of heat around Neriah.
He says nothing to her, at present.
GS: Neriah Parringer critically Guards a hit from Tipheria Aredor's Goring Spike for 22 hit points! GS: Neriah Parringer's Force Guard activates! GS: Ethius Hesiod has attacked Neriah Parringer with Overheat! GS: Ethius Hesiod has gained 2 Combo! GS: Ethius Hesiod has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
'I'm the one who'll *rejuvenate* this shithole of a planet,' Neriah claims.
Dean furrows his eyebrows. "What exactly are you trying to do that'll make that happen?" he asks, right before unholy magic and spines of ice slash through the room. Dean, already on the defensive, crosses Twin Fenrir before himself, and the ice lances shatter themselves on his ARMs, sending little shards flying up to scratch him like a wildcat's claws. Still, while they draw blood, those wounds are far less severe than they could have been.
"Seriously, I don't get what you're talking about!" he adds as he sweeps his paired ARMs around in a counter-attack and fires off a couple of warning shots at Neriah that'll allow him to remain on the defensive. What corrupt system is she talking about? Jay's words at least bring a little more context--being areligious, though, Dean only has the vaguest grasp of the Althenan and Granasian religions, including who Valmar even is. There's no mistaking this feeling of wrongness, though...
GS: Ivan takes a solid hit from Jacqueline Barber's Mage Armory for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper! applied to Ivan! GS: Dean Stark has attacked Neriah Parringer with Dual Shooter! GS: Dean Stark has completed his action. GS: Neriah Parringer critically Guards a hit from Ethius Hesiod's Overheat for 19 hit points! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: CRITICAL! Neriah Parringer guards a hit from Dean Stark's Dual Shooter for 97 hit points! GS: Cover! applied to Dean Stark! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Talia, unfortunately, offers no explanation for who Sister Domitia is. Jay explains, though. She looks sideways at her, then nods. Neriah Parringer. There is a furious look on her face -- more when Neriah addresses the subject of Lunata. She looks at Jay, worried for a moment. Then her eyes are back on Neriah.
"You've played with a lot of lives, no? You've toyed with a lot of people--gotten a lot of good people killed, too!" Talia shouts. Even as a little voice in the back of her mind reminds her: she is no better. She has done terrible things, too. Her fingers curl around the hilt of her sword, then draws it from the scabbard. Black energy, tinged with red, crackles all about the blade.
"We are not going to let you do this!" she yells, as Jay's magical power surrounds her -- glows brilliantly -- and then Talia leaps. She just jumps a spike of ice, which clips into her armored boot and throws her off. Talia lands, and a magical circle explodes into existence around her.
Then, a jagged spike of ice forms, and explodes away from her like a rocket.
GS: Talia has attacked Neriah Parringer with Freeze Lancer! GS: Talia has completed her action. GS: Neriah Parringer critically Guards a hit from Talia's Freeze Lancer for 27 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
Talia confirms the sorrows in Boudicca's eyes. That woman who rendered aid against the Saint of Sinners, so long ago...
Both of them wore different names, back then.
Was one of them lying?
Surely it sounds as if it is true, the way Neriah's register changes, shifts in an instant from beatific to berating. "This is not the way!" She cries, in defiance of her assurance. Rejuvenating the planet... it cannot be a matter of unchaining old evils.
Certainly Boudicca is invested in the rejuvenation of Filgaia - but not like this.
The temperature drops out in just the same way anxiety drops the floor from her organs, and Boudicca springs back, but a spine of ice catches her on her landing. It is cold the way decisions are cold, the finality of purpose. It is unpleasant; she staggers.
This absolute cold...
Boudicca does not grasp her weapons in hand. Rather she lifts an empty palm, fingers together, and like flint and steel they slide over each other. Click. The spark which comes spirals out - to curl over Ida's own fists, the hearthfire of Moor Gault to ward away the chill.
"If you truly wish to help Filgaia, please - listen to us!" Boudicca says, in final hope.
GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Smoke Sigil! GS: Seraph Boudicca assumes the Stoic stance! GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ashley Winchester has posed.
You know what tactically hiding behind corners notably does not defend well against? That's right! Ice waves that like to erupt across flat surfaces, especially when someone is leaning against them!
"Ghh--" Ashley grunts as a thorny cluster of razor-sharp spikes abruptly bursts into full bloom right into the small of his back. He's sent sprawling out into the open, back already bloody where the ice shards have cut cleanly around his body armor. It takes scarcely more than a moment for him to scramble back to his feet, his weapon already moving to take aim at the incarnate Impetus filling the catacombs with her vile... vileness?
Beat.
W-why would she wear something like that!? Is it because she's evil? Do evil people wear such revealing clothes on the regular?! Ashley is admittedly Not Familiar Enough with Neriah as an individual to know her as anything more than a terrible person who turned a very nice robot girl into a horrifying flesh monster... And seems only moments away from perpetrating an even more heinous act.
Shoving an old lich man into a robo-girl... Is all kinds of wrong!
It must be prevented, regardless of how vile the energy radiating from her happens to be. He is, after all, a Valmar-hating Granasian! It's his duty to stand up in the face of such evil if he has the power to do so!
...Though admittedly he feels a little bit like a fish out of water here. Do all these people really know Neriah that well...? Was she something to them, once?
Ashley pushes those thoughts aside for now. He loads a canister into his ARM and fires. The munition bursts in mid-air, opening up into a frigid vapor cloud that rapidly undergoes an autoendothermic reaction. The already low temperatures plummet even further, but Ashley is counting on that. It means his freezing fog won't just disperse, instead forming a thick layer of irritating, stinging chemical residue. It might just inconvenience Neriah enough for the others to exploit...!
GS: Ashley Winchester has attacked Neriah Parringer with Canister - Freezing Fog! GS: Ashley Winchester has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ashley Winchester has completed his action. GS: Neriah Parringer critically Guards a hit from Ashley Winchester's Canister - Freezing Fog for 20 hit points! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.
"Prove," Venetia begins to say because she is being attacked and cannot finish talking trash!! The incoming fork is parried by her upraised bronze rod - there is a mighty TANG!!! of bronze on steel, which no doubt demonstrates part of why she uses such a big weighty eikon of her authority as a Crest Sorceress. However, Venetia reels nonetheless, nearly dropping the Graph in the process.
"Kkh!!"
As she reels, Venetia looks, for a moment, at the fallen and reliquary figure - is it a person or a statue? Is the distinction blurry? As she does this, the wise words of Jay Barber ring outwards, and Venetia bellows with fury, "You were DOING this across TWO WORLDS? You think we're your plaything to revive your miserable cult spirit??"
This may be factually inaccurate but Venetia is an angry lady! She raises her rod and the Graph, which twinkles with crystalline light... that begins to form a rather dark-brown and sulfruous cast, a hazy light that sinks down into the ground. The air smells of the earth in a good clean place after a gentle rain. Then that scent turns into something sharper... the scent of desert after a storm.
Venetia sweeps the rod upwards with a contemptuous flick. The ground itself ripples, that post-rain scent rising as a ripple comes - stone flashing to soil, LIQUID soil almost, in a rolling corkscrew of a sine wave that aims to capture Neriah and send her flying towards a cavern wall.
GS: Venetia Vuong has attacked Neriah Parringer with Mud Flower! GS: Venetia Vuong has gained 1 Combo! GS: Venetia Vuong has completed her action. GS: Neriah Parringer critically Guards a hit from Venetia Vuong's Mud Flower for 15 hit points! GS: Neriah Parringer's Force Guard activates!
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
Ivan is startled out of his flustered reverie by an interlude with Marivel, a skeleton hand, and a sticker, and ends up whirling on her with a knife in hand and then looking grouchy and embarrassed once he processes it all.
"I don't need a sticker, Marivel!"
But he doesn't actually remove it or destroy it in front of her because That Would Hurt Her Feelings and he is not a cruel monster anymore(?) So now he's just stuck with a sticker for the forseeable future. Thanks, Marivel!
He turns back to the matter at hand.
Jacqueline and Tipheria both call for his attention, with Jacqueline offering up a magical fortification, and Tipheria asking for his support in going on the offensive.
"I..." maybe he shouldn't be looking for reasons to justify this, but...
It helps to have help when you're going up against an entrenched, corrupt system.
"Undead help? What-- or who-- are you raising?" he asks. But alas, negotiations have already broken down, and Neriah begins to unleash her magic upon them. Ivan tenses as the temperature suddenly falls, and icy spikes begin to rip from the floor. Ivan feels a telltale shudder beneath him and bursts into motion, launching into a high flip that has him bending just outside the path of an encroaching blade. He uses the momentum of his landing to push into the air again, closing the distance across the room in a series of flips that culminates in a cartwheel kick aimed at Neriah.
"I hoped to have at least one more conversation about your goals before it came to this kind of thing!"
GS: Ivan has attacked Neriah Parringer with Circus Trick! GS: Ivan has completed his action. GS: Neriah Parringer guards a hit from Ivan's Circus Trick for 76 hit points! GS: Cripple! applied to Neriah Parringer! GS: Neriah Parringer's Force Guard activates! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a solid hit from Seraph Boudicca's Smoke Sigil for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper! applied to Ida Everstead-Rey!
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
"But you deserve a sticker, Ivan." Marivel tells him.
"There sure are a lot of people who want to save Filgaia by murdering a lot of people on it." Marivel says. A spear of ice punches clean through her gut.
Marivel looks down, sighs, and says with smoke dripping out of her mouth. "Do you even know what an ecosystem is? Or a biosphere? Guardians save us from cavemen."
"An asshole!" Marivel shouts. "She's reviving an asshole into a cute robot girl body! If you don't stop her, you're going to feel guilty every time you punch the cute robot girl! That's a fate worse than death...! Than...deeeaaaathh..!"
She POUFS into black smoke which twirls and twists around on itself before Marivel reforms her body in a flash of darkness, guillotine in her hand, taking the form of a scythe today.
"Do you know what soil is? How about how trees work? Did you know that Filgaia is not flat, actually, but is round? Do you even know what a planet is relative to say, a moon? How about gravity?"
She takes one step forward and swipes with Guillotine for Neriah's body, twisting her arm into a wide arc.
"Do you even know what Valmar is?" Marivel says. "Be honest."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida remembers that chill. "Look out!" she shouts, as Neriah sucks the warmth from the very air. Ida leaps backwards, her feet skidding as they touch down on newly-rimed ground. Spikes of ice erupt from the earth on either side of her; one of them clips her calf, drawing a long line of red along her skin. Neriah's words hit home, too, and Ida bares her teeth. "And therefore," she says, "you needn't justify anything, do you?" It's so cold. It's so very cold.
And then familiar warmth embraces her, coiling around her fists and forearms. "This world is corrupt," Ida says, as Guardian-fire flares around her. "Full of rotten little tyrants who insist everything would be so much better if only the rabble sat down and obeyed. How would you be any different?!" Perhaps it's the fact that Talia just pulled the drape off everything Neriah did on Lunar. Perhaps it's the fact that Ida has so little patience left after dealing with Timotheus' atrocities for weeks on end.
Whatever the reason, Ida leaps across the room, leading with a jump-kick to Neriah's midsection, and flowing into a rain of punches against her head and throat.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Neriah Parringer with Relentless Combination! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey assumes the Avenger stance! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Neriah Parringer takes a solid hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Relentless Combination for 111 hit points!
DC: Marivel Armitage switches forms to Crimson Noble Marivel!
GS: Marivel Armitage has attacked Neriah Parringer with Guillotine! GS: Marivel Armitage has completed her action. GS: Neriah Parringer guards a hit from Marivel Armitage's Guillotine for 79 hit points! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
<Pose Tracker> Neriah Parringer has posed.
"No, you wouldn't, would you," Neriah answers Jay shortly, a thundercloud of frustration crossing her expression. "I hope she's at least treating you right. As much as killing another of the Death Guardian's lackeys appeals to me, I don't like to go out of my way to do it."
When Tipheria moves in to strike at her, Neriah sweeps her own polearm forward. The two weapons cross with a clang, the priestess bracing herself with both sharp heels against the floor. She's quick to pivot away, whirling and letting her shield absorb most of the blast from Ethius. "I should've killed you a long time ago, you damn lump," she growls.
Ice comes hurtling her way as Talia throws herself into the fray. Snapping her hand out, Neriah pours power into her shield; the icicle slams into it, eldritch patterns straining to hold the spell at bay for a moment before it bursts into shards. Her tongue chases over her lips. "Death's coming to this world anyway," she assures the once and former assassin. "The Day of Darkness is coming. Count on it."
The distraction gives Dean the moment he needs. His shots punch through, slipping through gaps in Neriah's shield. One grazes her shoulder, and she gasps in surprise and pain, recoiling a step and bringing her hand up to touch the bloody cut left behind.
She turns red-violet eyes to him in a flat scowl. "...Let me ask you something, bud. You believe in Granas?"
Regrouping, the High Priestess extends her hand again and lets more energy flow into her defensive shield. Focus etches into her expression as Ashley and Venetia open up, one with freezing fog, one with liquid earth. The globular shield strains against the pair of attacks, the eldritch energies pulsating and churning with tenebrous light before flaring out in a shocking wave, repulsing them away and breaking them up.
Neriah's eyes turn to Venetia. "Cult spirit. Please. Valmar is as much a cult spirit as the vaunted Granas - and he's far more real than you could ever know."
Ivan swoops in, then, foot first. Neriah pivots to face him - but hurtling straight into her shield proves pretty effective. The young assassin strikes true, and Neriah skids back several feet under the impact, shielding herself with both her field and her arm. Her heels dig little ruts into the stones under the force of the blow. "Gh-- I'd invite you to tea, but I feel like that Lydia would object!" she snaps back.
When Marivel closes ranks, Neriah whips her polearm around to meet her. Guillotine and Valmarlance clash together, and she's pushed back further, her leg nearly giving out under the impact. "What do you think I know?" she asks a touch acidly. "Where do you think I've been? Why do you think I wanted access to Arius's library? Do you think you're the only one walking around Filgaia who understands what really happened during the Battle of Good and Evil?"
Pivoting, she jabs out with her lance, trying to strike it through Marivel and buy herself some space. But that's about when Ida jumps in and starts throwing punches. Neriah growls and pushes her hand out, letting her shield try to absorb the worst of it, but she's steadily being pushed backwards. Trying to break through the shield and actually make contact with flesh is like pushing through semi-liquid cement, but she seems to feel the impacts even through it, and she eventually sweeps her hand out. "You're annoying me!" she shouts as power gathers.
A blast of power surges from Neriah's palm, expanding into the shape of a demonic visage of black and blue shadow flame. One of the faces of Valmar - expanding out to try and blow Ida away with a blast of fire and darkness.
Drawing a breath, Neriah strides forward again, gathering more of that flame around her. It surges along her limbs and dances in her eyes, reinforcing her shield. "The question isn't how different I'd be. It's why you're so eager to defend a stagnant world," she states as her eyes burn with growing sparks of power. Her hand comes up, the sigil of Valmar glowing at her palm.
Bursting out from around her, lightning bolts suddenly pour in massive numbers. They screech out in all directions, lancing towards Ivan, towards Talia, towards Tipheria, towards Venetia and Jay. Another slices towards Dean, intent on blowing him off his feet.
She flicks her hand, then, letting the shadow flame pour forth. "That's why I need an agent of change," she says coolly as the darkness radiates out, beams of it strafing towards Ashley, Boudicca and Ethius. The blackness sears like a beam of heat - and where it strikes, it leaves behind a feeling of curdling, of sickness, of spiritual uncleanliness that gnaws at the soul itself.
GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Neriah Parringer with Utmost Impetus! GS: Neriah Parringer has gained 1 Combo! GS: Neriah Parringer takes a solid hit from Neriah Parringer's Utmost Impetus for 0 hit points! GS: Lock State! applied to Neriah Parringer! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Marivel Armitage with Valmarlance! GS: Neriah Parringer has gained 2 Combo! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Hellmouth! GS: Neriah Parringer has gained 2 Combo! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Ivan with Zap All! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Talia with Zap All! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Tipheria Aredor with Zap All! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Venetia Vuong with Zap All! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Zap All! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Dean Stark with Zap All! GS: Neriah Parringer has activated a Boss Action! GS: You have activated the Boss Action Extend! GS: Neriah Parringer spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Ashley Winchester with Negative Light! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Negative Light! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Ethius Hesiod with Negative Light! GS: Neriah Parringer has gained 1 Combo! GS: Neriah Parringer has completed her action. GS: Jacqueline Barber guards a hit from Neriah Parringer's Zap All for 69 hit points! GS: Talia takes a glancing hit from Neriah Parringer's Zap All for 67 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Marivel Armitage takes a solid hit from Neriah Parringer's Valmarlance for 240 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Marivel Armitage gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Tipheria Aredor critically Guards a hit from Neriah Parringer's Zap All for 26 hit points! GS: Ethius Hesiod completely evades a hit from Neriah Parringer's Negative Light! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Ashley Winchester completely evades a hit from Neriah Parringer's Negative Light! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ashley Winchester gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Dean Stark takes a glancing hit from Neriah Parringer's Zap All for 59 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Dean Stark gains 1 additional Combo! GS: CRITICAL! Ivan guards a hit from Neriah Parringer's Zap All for 106 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ivan gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey critically Guards a hit from Neriah Parringer's Hellmouth for 32 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ida Everstead-Rey gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Seraph Boudicca takes a glancing hit from Neriah Parringer's Negative Light for 65 hit points! GS: Disease and Poison! applied to Seraph Boudicca! GS: Venetia Vuong completely evades a hit from Neriah Parringer's Zap All! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Venetia Vuong gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Talia glances at Jay, a little worriedly. Does she realize? Talia recalls the time that they ran into Neriah. Should she tell her?
Maybe not here.
"I am not inclined to let a day of darkness come, no? It seems like a bad time for everyone involved!" Talia snaps. She starts to run forward; she joins her brother, moving in next to him, and then she ducks down. Talia skids on the floor, crouching, as the bolt of lightning shoots just over her head, arcs of it snaking out for her.
One leaves a burn on her shoulder, before she leaps from her skidding across the ground. She lands, directly in front of Neriah, and Mirage stabs out. She stabs rapidly, her blade a blur of motion and flashes of white light, as she channels a little ki into it. "Sword Rain Alpha!"
She cries the attack out, then adds: "Why? Why did you interfere with the church? What is all of this for?"
GS: Talia has attacked Neriah Parringer with Sword Rain Alpha! GS: Talia has gained 2 Combo! GS: Talia has completed her action. GS: Neriah Parringer guards a hit from Talia's Sword Rain Alpha for 62 hit points! GS: Break! applied to Neriah Parringer! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
Does Dean believe in Granas? "Nope," he tells Neriah simply. This doesn't explain anything, nor does anything else she says, but in fairness he figures she's probably working up to a point, and/or not really willing to say. Either way, he trusts his friends and his senses. This is not good stuff, therefore, he's going to help stop her. Besides: a Day of Darkness doesn't sound like a fun time for anyone.
Wind and lightning bolts shear outwards towards the group. Dean manages to jump out of the way of a direct hit, but the force of it still sends him tumbling off his feet and rolling partway across the room. He gets his feet underneath him and surges towards Neriah, the combat rods of his ARMs flashing in a blur of motion as he attempts to wham her good.
GS: Dean Stark has attacked Neriah Parringer with Violence Vice! GS: Dean Stark has completed his action. GS: Neriah Parringer takes a glancing hit from Dean Stark's Violence Vice for 38 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Neriah Parringer gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Break! applied to Neriah Parringer!
<Pose Tracker> Ashley Winchester has posed.
How do you dodge an attack that travels at the speed of anti-light? In Ashley Winchester's case, it's a matter of coincidence. By complete happenstance, his frozen fog is still lingering in the air when Neriah unleashes that baleful, dark spectrum. Lances of inverse-white scythe toward the musketeer... and then diffuse, scattering like their radiant counterpart into a barrage of bolts... all conveniently aimed in a direction other than 'where Ashley is currently standing.'
He looks as surprised as anyone else that he's not at all touched.
"I don't get it," he says, then. Ashley loads another canister into his rifle. "All this power, you really *could* change the world... But if Valmar isn't as bad as everyone says it is, then why not tell people? You might know what really happened between Granas and Valmar back in the old times, but if nobody knows... If all anybody knows of the future you promise is the darkness of the old legends... Then of course we'll fight! That stagnant world you want to overturn is where everything we love lives! How can we not fight to protect it!?"
He fires again. This time the canister explodes into a sticky deluge of foul-smelling goo... That rapidly oxidizes and catches fire on exposure to air. Napalm, in other words. It's a war crime! But also very useful when fighting horrifying devil-worshipping cultists!
GS: Ashley Winchester spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Ashley Winchester has attacked Neriah Parringer with Canister - Incendiary Round! GS: Ashley Winchester has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ashley Winchester has completed his action. GS: Neriah Parringer takes a solid hit from Ashley Winchester's Canister - Incendiary Round for 142 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Neriah Parringer gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Poison! applied to Neriah Parringer!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
"I know as much about your Valmar as your Granas," Boudicca grants, not for the first time recently. "So perhaps there is a thing here I do not know, this I admit. But I know these methods are ill-suited to the salvation of a world - and I know my friends know more of the world than I, and were you to listen to their protests you would hear as I hear that your actions are poorly-construed!"
That darkness promises no peace; Boudicca is fond of the shade, but not like this. She leaps away, but the darkness follows; and what is the speed of the absence of light? (Surely Marivel would know.) She grimaces as her greaves find ground again, a moment of unpleasantry written in the grasp of shadows inside that thing she calls her chest.
"Change..."
Boudicca straightens, takes a breath. The air flows out around her with it. "That change is written on every soul who has come to stop you now! Open your eyes and see!" A Seraphic glyph alights in pale green, and the breeze curls in crisp and refreshing Spring, to curl around Dean and Ida, Marivel and Jacqueline.
Impassioned, she implores: "We can save Filgaia without these fell necromancies, Neriah!"
GS: Seraph Boudicca has activated a Force Action!
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
She's reviving an asshole into a cute robot girl body! If you don't stop her, you're going to feel guilty every time you punch the cute robot girl!
"Thank you, that's a helpful summary!" Ivan calls back to Marivel, in all sincerity.
Meanwhile, Neriah responds to Ivan's wish to know more about her motives.
I'd invite you to tea, but I feel like that Lydia would object!
"I don't know, but it would be better to invite her too!" Ivan says.
At least they don't all seem to be here to kill one another, although it sounds like stopping this is something he'd better get behind. He doesn't even know if someone is already using that body she plans to fill!
Talia joins him, just in time for a rain of lightning to descend. Ivan does his best to brace and weather the bolts, gritting his teeth and shuddering as one rolls through him. He takes a few steadying breaths, trying to shake it off, as he checks on his sister.
"Are you all right, Talia...?"
Talia is, in either case, leaping back into the fray, so Ivan follows suit. As his sister unleashes a ki-enhanced sword attack, Ivan charges in from another angle, offering a similar assault, as he strikes his sword forward in one fierce stab, waves of ki rolling off the blade as it moves through the air.
"Super Sonic Thrust!"
GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Dean Stark with Fortifying Tailwind! GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Fortifying Tailwind! GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Fortifying Tailwind! GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Marivel Armitage with Fortifying Tailwind! GS: Seraph Boudicca has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Boudicca takes 24 damage from Poison! GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action. GS: Jacqueline Barber takes a solid hit from Seraph Boudicca's Fortifying Tailwind for 0 hit points! GS: Burst, Quick, and Shield! applied to Jacqueline Barber! GS: Ivan has attacked Neriah Parringer with Super Sonic Thrust! GS: Ivan has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ivan has completed his action. GS: Marivel Armitage takes a solid hit from Seraph Boudicca's Fortifying Tailwind for 0 hit points! GS: Burst, Quick, and Shield! applied to Marivel Armitage! GS: Neriah Parringer takes a solid hit from Ivan's Super Sonic Thrust for 95 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Neriah Parringer gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Riposte! applied to Ivan!
<Pose Tracker> Tipheria Aredor has posed.
Tipheria jams her spear against Neriah's own polearm for several seconds longer, spraying sparks from the glowing tip before the light begins to fade. She bounds backwards, jabbing the butt of her spear downward while in midair to kick herself up further and bounce about twenty feet away, glaring.
Tipheria comes off as an impulsive, hot-headed, not-that-bright warrior who does most of her decision making by emotion. A lot of that is true, but she's at least a little smarter than she looks. She listens.
"I knew about the Valmar cult," Tipheria says. "I don't support any religion, from this world or the other - " She means Lunar. " - but they sound worse than most, or at least hide it less. The Day of Darkness? Not interested."
Tipheria begins to whirl her spear. She actually catches one of the descending bolts on the tip just as she slams the point into the stone wall, grounding the bolt away from her. Her spear is all metal, and functions as a very good lightning rod, but even so it leaves her fingers tingling and her hair threatening to puff out and away from her head (more than it was already, anyway). She growls, as much to cover pain as anything else.
Adopting a different stance, Tipheria shifts her grip on her spear entirely. Instead of using it to thrust, she holds it like she's going to make sweeping cuts with the surprisingly long blade it has, pointing it to one side instead of straight at Neriah.
When she finally comes in, Tipheria does thrust - once - before she cuts, striking at Neriah from multiple angles quickly. She never quite returns to a pure guard position, preferring to stay on the move, almost dancing around her. "My name is Tipheria of the Aredor tribe. If you want to bring on the death of the worlds, you'll have to get through me first! Let the past stay dead!"
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a solid hit from Seraph Boudicca's Fortifying Tailwind for 0 hit points! GS: Burst, Quick, and Shield! applied to Ida Everstead-Rey! GS: Tipheria Aredor has attacked Neriah Parringer with Gathering Storm! GS: Tipheria Aredor has gained 1 Combo! GS: Tipheria Aredor assumes the Avenger stance! GS: Tipheria Aredor has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
Jacqueline meets Talia's glance. She...doesn't seem to get it, but before either of them can say anything, Neriah comments back. Her short response actually gets a frown out of Jacqueline.
"...Look, if you're upset with me, Neriah, that's fine. But leave Lunata out of this." Jacqueline replies, a little tense. "And yes, for your information, she is."
Neriah calls down a flurry of lightning bolts. Jacqueline raises her hands to defend herself. The barrier emitting from her gauntlets shimmers forth for protection, but the sheer power is still enough to force her to one knee.
"...Why do you want to bring about the Day of Darkness? Is that what you want, or is that what Valmar wants?" Jacqueline asks with some effort, shaking her head as she forces herself back to her feet. "What are you expecting to happen?"
She starts to move, then, and as she does she gestures with her right hand to invoke one of her Crest Graphs, sending a bolt of lightning crashing down from above toward Neriah.
She nods, then, as Boudicca speaks, and Jacqueline can feel Boudicca's power bouying her.
"She's right, Neriah. This... this isn't necessary. Filgaia can still be saved without resorting to these measures." She agrees.
GS: Jacqueline Barber spends 2 Combo on Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling! GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Neriah Parringer with Lightning Strike! GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Neriah Parringer guards a hit from Tipheria Aredor's Gathering Storm for 79 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Neriah Parringer gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Mighty! applied to Tipheria Aredor! GS: Neriah Parringer critically Guards a hit from Jacqueline Barber's Lightning Strike for 29 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
"The truth of the--" Marivel begins and then shakes her head. "That's precisely what I'm saying. You found a little bit of truth and you are trying to fundamentally change how the world functions based on that little sliver you have. Even what I know is not so complete that I would be so arrogant to think that I can save Filgaia on my own with little consideration for those that already live here--and to think of that as a good thing. This universe is vast, Neriah! You will learn that we are all naught but dust and that the thing that chose you is not much bigger besides! There are no quick fixes for Filgaia... All you are doing is breaking this world further! It will not end in a restored world!"
Valmarlance slams right through Marivel. She jolts back sharply. She slides backwards, leaving thick red gore along the lance. Gritting her teeth, she POUFS once more. Neriah is getting deadlier with every passing battle, it seems.
Transforming into a cloud of bats, Marivel does somethingg unorthordox and doesn't resume a humanoid form immediately again. Instead the creatures slam towards Neriah, intending to clamp down on Neriah in several locations with TINY BAT FANGS.
"You're welcome Ivan!" Marivel says in a cutesy bat voice.
That fortifying wind from Boudicca might also make those bats a bit harder to knock free than Neriah might like but Marivel is a bit busy to thank Boudicca directly.
She'll just have to continue loving her as much as she always had.
GS: Marivel Armitage has attacked Neriah Parringer with Life Drain! GS: Marivel Armitage has completed her action. GS: Neriah Parringer critically Guards a hit from Marivel Armitage's Life Drain for 36 hit points! GS: Neriah Parringer's Force Guard activates!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
The hellmouth opens, not quite two feet away. Ida feels its heat on her skin, and reacts instinctively--she whips both arms up, crossing them across her chest. Reddish-silver liquid erupts from beneath her sleeves, and then the horrific visage slams into her, dead-on. The fire detonates with a dull roar that echoes through the burial chamber, and for a moment, Ida is lost in the darkness.
Then momentum finishes carrying her away, her boot-heels skidding on the icy ground. Blue-and-gold exoskeleton encases both arms, blackened in places by that eldritch flame. The pair of disc-like shields attached to it have melted, visibly, from that infernal heat. Ida lets out a hissing breath, steadying herself. "'Know ye that this is the Last Judgment, when all will be weighed and found lacking, and all brought to ruin.'" Ida focuses on Neriah's face as she recites the words--Granasian scriptures. Her tone is that of someone who learned this doctrine as a child, and was haunted by it. "'The works of man will be brought low; the Darkness will set at naught all man's labors in preparation for its terrible rebirth.'"
"The slightest weakness--the slightest sin--nothing more than an open door with which to let the enemy in." Dean would surely remember something like this, when he saw Ida's memories in Castle Rabenstein. A glass of pure, clean water rendered filthy by a single drop of ink. "But that isn't how it works, is it?"
In an eyeblink, Ida whips Devil's Due from its holster and trains the ARM on Neriah's center of mass. The shield, she reminds herself--break through it, and this fight becomes less one-sided. Stepping between Neriah and Boudicca, Ida focuses on her weapon's chamber, feels her lifeforce flow down and into the bullet. The copper and lead become a conduit for something greater.
Ida pulls the trigger. A shard of half-coherent life energy flies towards Neriah, a sliver of Ida's lifeforce imbued into her weapon.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Neriah Parringer with Bright Bullet! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.
Understated as her inflection might be, Ethius' body language gives way to a drop of his shoulders and a drawn back hand when the gathering heat isn't just deflected - it's basically waved away like the temperature never even changed as Neriah shields away his spellcasting. Until now, he has only truly survived against her multiple expressions of wrath.
"..." He blinks once. He needs to approach, even as the very air feels like it rejects his presence. He seems rooted to the spot with only a marginally passable defensive stance as his staff is taken in both hands, quietly measuring the distance between himself and Neriah when the warped sorceries filling the air messes with his sense for it. The pointed interfaith dialogue sees no interjection on his part, finding he has to start moving in a roundabout way, weaving around other combatants in his attempt to get closer.
He stumbles back from the wake of the pulsating energies that flare out from the globular shield even as he's not directly in the path of its pulsing. Wherever the lance goes in Neriah's attempts to stab Marivel through, in terms of angle it's not that far from running Ethius through as he tries to pass behind - and he falls to a crouch from slipping on another rough patch of ice just to avoid the lick of flame and dark intended for another of Neriah's current annoyances.
Lightning bolts ring out and he stumbles to a low, crouched jog as Neriah questions why they are eager to defend a stagnant world - why she needs an agent of change. He gets an opening, a clearer shot closer to Neriah - but it seems almost like his positioning was anticipated. He has to overshoot to a toppled pillar for cover. Darkness warps and washes around it. He is not impacted by it, but observing the blackness visually as it passes is almost just as bad that he has to shut his eyes and only guess it fades from the change in temperature from 'wrong feeling of heat' back to 'wrong feeling of cold.' He exhales.
"It is through your machinations that you attempted to strangle away the future of the people of Glenwood." Comes Ethius' voice, which can be mistaken for disembodied because he's currently behind cover. Why he would state that reason in specific, among all of them... his eyes open again. He's actually not all that sure where Neriah is currently standing right now from where he is, but he has to make an educated guess.
He remembers what he was told by that hound whose relationship with time and space is fatal to understand, down in the depths of the castle in which Marivel dwells. The discussions that follow about truths across spans of time, incomplete pictures...
...as a man who suffers greatly from incomplete pictures and having an incredible urgency to find it and deal with the things that scream at him as being some vague part of this whole he needs an answer for.
"Whatever this 'agent of change' you have acquired..."
Ethius action rolls right the hell back out of cover, lunging as he lands in a crouched stance where he flexes the furthest reach he can muster between his own body and his weapon, trying to pointedly jab Neriah precisely around one of her wrists - or where he thinks she's standing and where her risk is because he has zero time to correct between emerging from cover and lunging - not even announcing the well-used technique in favor of finishing what he has to say.
"I will not allow you to do as you please."
GS: Neriah Parringer critically Guards a hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Bright Bullet for 28 hit points! GS: Neriah Parringer's Force Guard activates! GS: Ethius Hesiod spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Ethius Hesiod has attacked Neriah Parringer with Far Point! GS: Ethius Hesiod has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ethius Hesiod has completed his action. GS: Neriah Parringer critically Guards a hit from Ethius Hesiod's Far Point for 25 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.
"Is that so?" Venetia says about Valmar and Granas. She stares dead ahead from behind her lace mask as a feeling crawls up her spine. I'm dealing with, touching on something horrid here, Venetia thinks. This is a place that Armitage belongs, maybe, or these mysterious Seraphs. Not -
No, Venetia thinks. No: This is my world as much as theirs. Her jaw sets and she puts the Graph away in favor of something else.
"A day of darkness?"
Others gather sorcery as Venetia feels her anger rise and roil. "This is your peril? Do you wish to bathe all of Filgaia in darkness? I understand you speak in metaphor, in analogy. But do you know," and now she finds the Graph she wants: "I think you're going to have to update your analogy."
The lightning strikes, arcing from Venetia's rod to the Crest Graph and off against the ground, avoiding most of the parts of Venetia that are 'Venetia.' "There are lamps of which you do not suspect," Venetia states: "And eyes that have learned how to see. By the deeps of ancient seas, transform and flense! Emerge! FACETER--"
It is like a machine gun, but the bullets are made out of cats-eyes agate! Charming! Sparkling! *frangible* -- and aimed to walk over and if necessary AROUND Neriah.
GS: Venetia Vuong spends 2 Combo on Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling! GS: Venetia Vuong has attacked Neriah Parringer with Faceter! GS: Venetia Vuong has completed her action. GS: Neriah Parringer guards a hit from Venetia Vuong's Faceter for 69 hit points! GS: Neriah Parringer's Force Guard activates! GS: Dean Stark takes a solid hit from Seraph Boudicca's Fortifying Tailwind for 0 hit points! GS: Burst, Quick, and Shield! applied to Dean Stark!
<Pose Tracker> Neriah Parringer has posed.
Neriah clicks her teeth together as Talia advances in a blur of blades. The furious attack goes a long way towards softening up her defenses, blades punching through her shield in places and coming close enough to nick her. She hisses as she parries a few with the haft of her polearm. "Destiny!" she snaps. "Rolance was an experiment, and even if it fell apart, it gave me what I needed!"
Dean lunges in to capitalize, and this time Neriah wheels away with a short bound - but the strike of the rod clips her elbow, managing to get through a gap in her shield. She twirls, wincing, but comes back around with a hard swing of her pronged polearm. The head snakes out towards Talia, then Dean, as she tries to impale the pair of them on the pointed, trident-like barbs.
"Good," she answers Dean with a dip of lashes. "Don't start. Their church's entire job is to keep Filgaia stagnant and unthinking--"
She's cut off by Ivan darting in with a supersonic strike. His thrust punches through Neriah's defenses and slashes across her shoulder even as she leans back to try and avoid it. Blood drips down the edge of his weapon, and she growls in pain before withdrawing - just in time to see Ashley opening up on her with a napalm round. The flaming slop splatters across Neriah's shield and sticks to it. For a moment, the room is centred by a perfect sphere of fire, before it collapses inward.
And then blooms outward again. A wave of force surges around Neriah as she blasts the shield out from around her. Her robes are singed in places, and she's scowling deeply. "Life's just more fun this way," she bites sarcastically.
Tipheria strikes true and hard, but Neriah's moving a little more quickly now, and she whirls her lancer around to deflect some of the strokes. Others sneak through to tag her around the hips and shoulders, but she grins nevertheless. "Tipheria, huh! Well, Tipheria! What I'm talking about isn't death, it's change! It's an end to the cycle of stagnation!" Her eyes blaze with zeal as she whirls away, eyes tracking towards Jay. Lightning screams, and she sweeps her arm out with a billow of shadow flame, soaking up the worst of the blast. Sparks dance across her, and she flicks her hair back with a grimace before clicking her teeth together sharply. Then Ida opens up on her, and she snaps her hand once more to deflect that shot with another burst of eldritch flame. The bullet hits the floor at her feet and ricochets past her calf, and she lets out a soft puff of relief.
"Do you know what you're quoting, Ida?" Neriah asks, eyes fixed on the woman intently. "Do you know who edited that book?"
When Ethius moves, rolling in to strike at her so precisely, Neriah actually drops her hand from her glaive. Her right palm hits the point of his staff.
And the staff stops. It stops like it's hit a brick wall. And for a moment, the spiritually sensitive can feel some other energy there - a sudden, brief deepening of the horrible energies rolling off of Neriah. She skids backwards a few feet, but her expression doesn't change.
"Allow," she scoffs. "You have no choice, Ethius. I make the choices here."
Bats whirl around Neriah as Marivel makes her move. Neriah yelps with brief surprise before throwing her shield up again. Mari-bats thump against it, but what pushes Neriah out of position a few steps is sheer surprise. "Stay out of my hair, Marivel!" she yells. "Don't mom-sass me, either-"
Venetia opens up with her GEM GUN. Cat's eyes pepper Neriah, off-guard as she is thanks to Marivel's trying to ruin her hair. Peppered by jewels, Neriah flails and shrieks in surprise and pain before tumbling backwards and toppling unceremoniously over the motionless Tio unit lying on the nearby bier. She hits the ground on the other side of it. Only her legs can be seen, twitching in the air a couple of times.
The black crystal continues to pulse. The energy at its heart is still building.
With a huff, Neriah kips back to her feet. Her face is alight with a furious blush. She's out of words. What more can she say when Marivel and Venetia have made a fool out of her?
She answers nonverbally. The frustration in her expression gives way to a dark smile, her lashes veiling her eyes. Touching two fingers together, she flicks them upwards in a contemptuous gesture.
And with a roaring boom, a wave of sheer force bursts out from around her.
The force of the explosion is massive, tearing at the walls and floor of the inner sanctum and blowing away chunks of the ceiling. Crushing force pummels through, pounding at most of the room. Furious billows of fire and force explode outwards to try and consume most everyone - Ashley, Ivan, Ida, Jay, Tipheria and Boudicca.
For Ethius, Marivel and Venetia, what follows is more malicious. She brings a slender silver cigarette holder to her lips and takes a drag.
What she breathes out begins as smoke, but as it billows out from where she stands, the whisps expand into plumes, extending outwards like talons of greenish-yellow miasma. To inhale it is like inhaling gaseous evil - a deep, revolting sensation that burns like a poison.
GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Neriah Parringer with Inhalation! GS: Neriah Parringer heals Neriah Parringer! She gains 100 temporary hit points! GS: Restore! Cripple and Poison removed! GS: Neriah Parringer has activated a Boss Action! GS: You have activated the Boss Action Titan! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Talia with Masterstroke! GS: Neriah Parringer has gained 1 Combo! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Dean Stark with Valmarlance! GS: Neriah Parringer has gained 2 Combo! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Ashley Winchester with BA-BOOM!! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Ivan with BA-BOOM!! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with BA-BOOM!! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Jacqueline Barber with BA-BOOM!! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Tipheria Aredor with BA-BOOM!! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Seraph Boudicca with BA-BOOM!! GS: Neriah Parringer has gained 1 Combo! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Ethius Hesiod with Hellbreath! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Marivel Armitage with Hellbreath! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Venetia Vuong with Hellbreath! GS: Neriah Parringer has gained 1 Combo! GS: Break and Surge expired! GS: Neriah Parringer has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Jacqueline Barber critically Guards a hit from Neriah Parringer's BA-BOOM! for 72 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Tipheria Aredor takes a solid hit from Neriah Parringer's BA-BOOM! for 144 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Tipheria Aredor gains 1 additional Combo! GS: CRITICAL! Ethius Hesiod critically Guards a hit from Neriah Parringer's Hellbreath for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ethius Hesiod gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Talia takes a solid hit from Neriah Parringer's Masterstroke for 157 hit points! GS: Dispel! Hyper removed! GS: Ashley Winchester guards a hit from Neriah Parringer's BA-BOOM! for 108 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ashley Winchester gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Marivel Armitage takes a solid hit from Neriah Parringer's Hellbreath for 0 hit points! GS: Break, Cripple, Jam, Mute, Slow, and Weaken! applied to Marivel Armitage! GS: Venetia Vuong takes a glancing hit from Neriah Parringer's Hellbreath for 0 hit points! GS: Break, Cripple, Jam, Mute, Slow, and Weaken! applied to Venetia Vuong! GS: Seraph Boudicca takes a solid hit from Neriah Parringer's BA-BOOM! for 108 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Ida Everstead-Rey takes a glancing hit from Neriah Parringer's BA-BOOM! for 140 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ida Everstead-Rey gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
"I am fine! This person... she was in Rolance! She posed as a leader of the church--I worked with her, before I left Lubov!" Talia calls it to her brother, trying to keep it succint. It is a little hard in the moment.
Her crimson eyes look back at Neriah, as her blade catches the haft of the polearm in the sorceress's hands. It slides, grating against wood. Talia's eyes narrow in anger.
"Rolance... and all of Glenwood! The people there are not your playthings, no!?" She shouts it, face going red with anger. "And neither is Filgaia!"
She swings her weapon backward -- and then the head of Neriah's polearm slams into Talia's stomach, piercing in. She stumbles back, yanking back before it can run her through, but red blood wells up. It stains her shirt and spreads, as she hisses in pain.
Then, Talia looks at Ivan -- a brief nod, to say, 'I'm all right,' before she gets back to it -- and then she leaps up. Talia comes down, slashing her blade down with one hand.
"Tiger Rage!"
And then she launches an upward slash, trying to break through Neriah's defenses in but a moment.
GS: Talia has attacked Neriah Parringer with Tiger Rage! GS: Talia has gained 1 Combo! GS: Talia has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Neriah Parringer guards a hit from Talia's Tiger Rage for 75 hit points! GS: Slow! applied to Neriah Parringer! GS: Dean Stark critically Guards a hit from Neriah Parringer's Valmarlance for 32 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Dean Stark gains 1 additional Combo! GS: CRITICAL! Ivan takes a solid hit from Neriah Parringer's BA-BOOM! for 157 hit points! GS: Ivan enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
Dean frowns thoughtfully at Neriah's decrial of the Granas Church. "Cyre said the same thing," he observes, something that probably won't please anybody. He glances over at Ida when she talks about the slightest weakness and sin--and he *does* remember that memory of hers he saw, with the drop of ink in the glass of water. That's right, isn't she Granasian? At the very least, she sounded like she was when Cyre was trashing Granas right in front of her. Maybe Ida can explain all this to him later.
"I still don't get what you mean," he continues to Neriah, "but I *do* know the vibes I'm feeling, and they feel horrible. If the 'change' you're talking about means spreading this stuff around the world, then I think you better reconsider whether the change you want is actually any good for anyone!"
Almost the same instant that Boudicca sends whorls of pale green healing wind swirling up around him, Neriah comes in to try to skewer him on the end of her trident. Rude!! He manages to fend off the worst of the attack by using his crossed ARMs as a shield, but one of the jagged ends still sears a long bloody line along his arm, and the force of the attack forces him back. The healing wind staves off the worst of the bleeding, at least. Dean flashes Boudicca a grateful smile and thumb's-up before he focuses back in on the Child of Valmar. The rods of his ARMs light up with brilliant heat, and as he charges back in towards her to try to strike her anew, those superheated rods may leave some nasty burns behind.
GS: Dean Stark spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Dean Stark has attacked Neriah Parringer with Burning Magazine! GS: Dean Stark has gained 1 Combo! GS: Cover expired! GS: Dean Stark has completed his action. GS: Neriah Parringer critically Guards a hit from Dean Stark's Burning Magazine for 23 hit points! GS: Neriah Parringer's Force Guard activates!
<Pose Tracker> Tipheria Aredor has posed.
A cloud of bats swarms past Tipheria while she's in the middle of a spinning strike. It almost distracts her enough to lose her position as she flinches away from one of them and nearly collides with another. "Bats!" she yells, and thinks: why are these even HERE?
She may not realize that is Marivel at the moment.
"Break it, huh," Tipheria growls, not even realizing she's pitched her voice that way. "You're going to break it with *this*? I don't think so, or you're going to make it even worse. Take it from someone who knows - "
Tipheria is interrupted by a thunderous explosion that bursts about five feet from her. She is completely concealed by smoke, blown rock dust, debris, and flame - and when it clears, she is not there at all. Neriah may, in fact, think she is dead.
Until Tipheria - her outer layer of three charred and holed in places, a visible scorch mark on one of her antler-like horns, her face covered in grime and dust - drops from the ceiling she was clinging to, almost directly above Neriah's head.
It's not a far drop as these things go. If she was outside she would have thought fifty feet a small drop, but in here there's a ceiling in the way and she can't get up any higher. But it also means she can push off the ceiling like an upside-down jump, and that's exactly what she does. Energy forms on the tip of her spear as she rockets downward, trailing chi like a comet as she tries to literally slam into Neriah from above with all her weight, momentum, and strength.
Tipheria bounds off afterwards. She's leapt towards the crystal, and she makes a come-and-get-it gesture toward Neriah as she does.
GS: Tipheria Aredor spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Tipheria Aredor has attacked Neriah Parringer with Skyfall Dive ! GS: Tipheria Aredor has completed her action. GS: Neriah Parringer guards a hit from Tipheria Aredor's Skyfall Dive for 111 hit points! GS: Cripple! applied to Neriah Parringer! GS: Hyper! applied to Tipheria Aredor! GS: Neriah Parringer's Force Guard activates!
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
"...An experiment?" Jacqueline repeats, taken aback. She looks toward Talia as she explains her own past with her. She shakes her head in disbelief, looking back at Neriah. "...You're talking about people's lives, Neriah! If that's the way you treat people, you're no better than any of the organizations you're planning to depose. You can't make anything better by treating people like tools! Is that the conclusion you came to?"
And that's when a furious Neriah tries to blow them all up. Jacqueline can feel the power building. She conjures a pillar of earth just as the flame and force consumes the room.
...And when the smoke clears, Jacqueline is still standing, but not without effort. She's breathing heavily from the effort it took to defend against a spell of that magnitude, and a crater has been torn into the ground on either side from where the force was dispersed. The pillar she had conjured is nowhere to be seen - reduced to dust.
Her eyes track toward the gem, frowning as she sees the crystal pulse, the energy building. ...She has to try and do something about that. She reaches into her bags, drawing out a bottle. She hurls it at Neriah's feet, where it explodes in a plume of smoke. Smoke that drains one's strength and energy, potentially inducing drowsiness if too much is inhaled. She then starts carefully side-stepping toward the crystal, trying to get closer...
GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Neriah Parringer with Diminishing Draught! GS: Jacqueline Barber has gained 1 Combo! GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
"Rolance was..." Pearloats, Boudicca thinks. "... full of people who needed help. People who so often found themselves besieged by war instead... these people, you call experiments, Neriah?"
Disappointment is neighbour to sadness; it draws conclusions.
She gestures to Talia, with a gauntlet-clad hand. "They were all people, with hopes and dreams and fears. Do not dismiss them."
Death, the end to stagnation, and Boudicca might be an Oracle but she's no fortune-teller; she doesn't know the meaning of the arcana. She says they have no choice.
"There is always a choice," Boudicca replies, throat tightening in the saying.
And then there is fire. Again Boudicca tries to be somewhere else; a sheer explosion might be more relieving on a spiritual level than what the others have to deal with, but to a Wind Seraph, the fire-plumes are no less jarring. The silk trim of her armor is all lit up with embers when she straightens from the explosion, smoke wisping up from her.
"There is ALWAYS a choice," Boudicca repeats, louder and more insistent. Her greaves impact the ground as she takes a step forward, reaching out to -- "Marivel! The world exhales! Soothing Breeze!"
Another Seraphic glyph alights, and the breeze this time is warm like summer nights, long talks in the moonlight. It's a breeze which is perfect... for bats.
GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Marivel Armitage with Soothing Breeze! GS: Seraph Boudicca takes 25 damage from Poison! GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action. GS: Neriah Parringer guards a hit from Jacqueline Barber's Diminishing Draught for 91 hit points! GS: Weaken! applied to Neriah Parringer!
<Pose Tracker> Ashley Winchester has posed.
What kind of evil sorceress doesn't immediately catch fire and burn to cinders when hit by napalm? Ashley was told that the difference between good and evil sorceresses (i.e. proper sorceresses and witches) is that the latter are basically made entirely of tinder! That's why if you throw them in a lake, they float! That's why they weigh less than a duck!!
(Perhaps Ashley should rely less on ancient wisdom doled out by that helpful grandma who lives at the corner store and likes to buy fresh loaves of bread that Ashley sells to her at the day-old price.
A wave of raw power ripples out from the Impetus of Valmar. Ashley's expression turns from shock to panic in the split second it takes for the blastwave to crash into him. Flame and force hammer at his body and shake his bones, even as the ruins collapse on top of him in a pile of pulverized stone--
But...
Flame and force... Pyrotic power... Change... Change...!
It's something Ashley knows... all too well.
"Change..." A pulse of blood like fire races through his veins. Adrenaline surges through his brain. He staggers to his feet, bloody and beaten, but with a face fixed with fury and determination. "Change... huh? I don't know what you want, miss Valmar. It sounds like you're... angry. Real angry. I understand. I do. The world... is really unfair... And maybe it does need to change. I know... that not all darkness is evil."
"After all..."
Flame. Fire, hot like the surface of the sun, scalding away even ash from stone. Light, brilliant like the blazing glare that parches the land, shining so bright that it brooks no shadow in its wake...!
"I know... that not all light is good either!"
Where Ashley Winchester stood, there is now a pillar of flame. Flame that pushes back against the twining shadow. Flame that allows nothing to survive in its presence... Except for that figure that looms ominously within it.
A soldier encased in black armor.
A warrior with a visor as bright red as the setting sun.
A knight whose mere presence threatens to set the world ablaze...!
"Change for its own sake-- it isn't good either! That's just the same as setting the world on fire! I understand wanting the world to change, to stop being so awful sometimes!" Knight Blazer surges forth, charging with breakneck speed. A blade of bright blue flame manifests in one hand-- and swings. Where it passes, the air ripples, blazes, then explodes. He strikes again and again, harrowing relentlessly...! "But this... Nobody asked you to bring the 'salvation' you promise! The world needs to change! It does! But no one person should be able to decide how and when!"
DC: Ashley Winchester switches forms to Knight Blazer!
GS: Ashley Winchester has attacked Neriah Parringer with Fury Striker! GS: Ashley Winchester has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ashley Winchester assumes the Avenger stance! GS: Ashley Winchester has completed his action. GS: Neriah Parringer guards a hit from Ashley Winchester's Fury Striker for 88 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.
Editing the books of truth? Venetia draws back her rod as Faceter's charge ends, and she says to Neriah, "Whatever your grudge against Granas, leave the world itself out of - of - Damn you, woman!" Why? Because Neriah is subjecting Venetia to a peril that has brought low many a mining enterprise since the sun first rose: careless smoking in an excavation site.
Ha ha! We laugh so we don't cry. As the fume washes over Venetia she looks momentarily furious (so what else is new) before staggering, letting out a gurgling gasp, and staggering even as the world threatens to implode round them. She sinks to one knee, swaying; her vision swims, eyes lachrymose involuntarily.
This would be flattering, Venetia thinks as she looks at her Graph pouch for a moment, if I didn't think this might be blood.
Why is one of them glowing? Venetia thinks dizzily.
She pulls it out. Huh, Venetia thinks. Routine stuff. Just the stock cleaner. Well, she thinks as she slaps it against the cavern wall, I --
There is a soft and purifying hum.
Imagine a sphere intersecting where Venetia is leaning. In that space, there is a tension -- it does not quite dispel any of what is clinging to Venetia, but there is a feeling of a stout piece of iron striking metal, of mechanism, of peaceful waters flowing past strange and glorious crystals. Venetia immediately retches against the corner, but it's a *normal* sort of wretching.
It may be less pleasant for SOME people in the area.
GS: Venetia Vuong has attacked Neriah Parringer with Purify Ground! GS: Venetia Vuong has gained 1 Combo! GS: Venetia Vuong has completed her action. GS: Neriah Parringer takes a solid hit from Venetia Vuong's Purify Ground for 66 hit points! GS: Dispel! Lock State removed! GS: Mute! applied to Neriah Parringer!
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.
The impact between staff and hand is thunderous to hear to the ear.
It is hell to the one who is holding that staff, pain surging through Ethius' arms. His grip loosens from errant twitching as his nerves buckle. Physically, the staff should drop - but it lingers from that impact, improbably, for several seconds for the length in which Neriah makes it clear. He has no choice in that matter.
The staff drops to the ground in a clatter when Marivel's assault and bat-tery has to be addressed. Neriah's backwards movement over the Tio unit from being peppered by Cat's Eyes should give him that opening to move forward - to taht pulsating blackened crystal, or even to the inert Tio unit.
The strange Symbologist, defined by pragmatism and a lack of hesitation, seems unable to muster that gumption as his left hand pushes against the ground to keep him up. That opportunity is lost as soon as Neriah's back up, looking to that evil smile.
Explosions ring out. He's not directly caught in the blast, but the backwash hurls him onto his back. A serpentine smoke cloud lunges for him in its wake, its form barely visible from eyes disrupted from looking into the brightness of the explosion head on - but he recognizes it's a gas of some kind. Shutting his eyes, Ethius' brings his right hand firmly up against his face mask and holds his breath while his dropped staff noisily clatters on the distant side of the room. The billowing poison continues to circle around him, as if waiting for that opening to come in and envenom him. He doesn't give it that chance...
...but he also doesn't get back up.
It is a stark contrast to the Ethius that was observed standing tall against perhaps the single most feared combatant of the entire radical faction of the Veruni short of Volsung themselves. That was an Ethius who expertly visually disassembled Kartikeya's every movement, knew what to strike against, and seemed able to largely withstand even a direct shot from the highest-spec hard-light shotgun blasts Kartikeya had to offer. A man who, in a short conversation with others on a Dig, did not speak of him in the aftermath like he were an insatiable, unstoppable monster among the Veruni.
This does not look very much like that Ethius from the Cardon Forest. This is an Ethius whom appears overcome and cornered from every angle - it matters not that he has made several key correct calls for his continued right to have a pulse against someone like Neriah. It seems to lend significant credence to her declaration.
As if the ability to stop this weren't his choice, as she says - a picture of an uncharacteristic look of powerlessness that could bleed into vulnerability as he puts his everything into holding his breath from the ground in which he is currently positionally prone.
A place where he can't talk back, as the air fills with a dangerous, all-consuming blaze to further overwhelm the senses.
GS: Ethius Hesiod has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida's eyes narrow at Neriah's crack about the Church, but she doesn't dispute it. She meets the other woman's gaze, her whole face tight with determination. "Do tell," she says, as if Neriah had simply offered to share a bit of gossip.
Somewhere along the way, Ida lost her pure, unbending faith, and gained something so much greater.
As Neriah momentarily loses her footing, Ida takes stock of the crystal. She chambers another round, and wonders if simply shattering it would be worse than letting it be--
Neriah does not give her the chance. A wave of explosive, crushing force erupts from the sorceress, lifting Ida off the ground. The heiress goes flying a good twenty feet, the memory of the last time this happened flashing before her eyes. She feels her body tense in the split-seconds before impact. Hyadean flesh moves in to keep its human counterpart from being pulped.
Ida hits the wall with a sickening crack. Rubble sprays from the point of impact; the dislodged dust of ages pours forwards, a waterfall of chalky grey powder. For a few moments, Ida is completely lost in the mess.
"...heh..."
That's Ida's voice, but it's not a proper Ida-like laugh. Within the dust, a silhouette comes loose from the wall, drops onto the floor. "That how I did it. Keep them afraid of you, and of your monstrousness. Justify yourself with a greater cause, even if you contradict yourself."
Ida steps forwards. Crimson and quicksilver trickle from her lips, but that is nothing new. What is new is that the blue-and-gold exoskeleton now envelops her entire body, stretching from neck to toe. The armor is a riot of styles, perhaps subconsciously cobbled together from a half-dozen suits of Hyadean armor. Vein-like silvery tubules stand out against her neck. "You said you missed the old me, didn't you?" Ida says, stepping forwards. Light gleams on her gorget and breastplate. "I can see why. What you're doing--I would be a fool not to be afraid. But you, Neriah--"
"You don't frighten me anymore."
DC: Creative Free attacks can only have the flags Artillery, Bold, Cancel, Follow, Gatling, Heal, Inspire, Pierce, Prudent, Reload, Reserve, Rush, Strike, Break, Formation, Hyper, Infect, Interrupt, Quick, Shield, Slow, Weaken, Cover, Mighty, and Riposte.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Third Method - Shaping the Battle-Forged Shell ! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a solid hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Third Method - Shaping the Battle-Forged Shell for 0 hit points! GS: Shield! applied to Ida Everstead-Rey! GS: Cover! applied to Ida Everstead-Rey!
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
I am fine! This person... she was in Rolance! She posed as a leader of the church--I worked with her, before I left Lubov!
"I--I met her before, too! Under... ... other circumstances!"
There is a lot of talk about whether it is possible for Neriah to improve the world, or if she -- through lack of knowledge, or her chosen methods of darkness, necromancy, and manipulation -- could only make it worse. Ivan listens thoughtfully to this, but it feels strange for someone like him to weigh in on such matters. It's a bit of a wonder to him that Talia has developed a fluency in this -- in choosing things to stand up for, and lines to draw. He wonders if that's something that would come to him in time or if it's a difference in their natures.
Soon after, he clashes with Neriah -- gives an apologetic wince of a smile as he draws blood, but it's likely going to take far more than that before this is over.
That reality is underscored swiftly when he watches as Talia is stabbed by Neriah's polearm! Talia tries to give Ivan a look of reassurance, but he remains thoroughly un-reassured, watching after her with wide eyes.
"Talia!!" Fear and anger build up suddenly that wasn't there before in all this abstract talk of the fate of the world.
"This needs to stop now--" He begins to gather magic into his hands, but it's Neriah's explosion that strikes first, throwing him from his feet in a blaze of fire and fury and scattering his thoughts in searing heat.
He finds himself on the ground, head spinning, pain vibrating through him. He pushes up on an elbow and gathers a handful of crackling stars, sweeping them through the air toward Neriah, where they hang around her for a moment, sparkling, before they begin to detonate around her into another array of fiery bursts.
GS: Ivan spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Ivan has attacked Neriah Parringer with Stars of Fury! GS: Ivan has completed his action. GS: Neriah Parringer takes a solid hit from Ivan's Stars of Fury for 202 hit points! GS: Seraph Boudicca heals Marivel Armitage! She gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Restore! Break, Cripple, Jam, Mute, Slow, and Weaken removed!
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
Marivel says, "Someone's gotta mom-sass you!" in reort, and also in chorus as a horde of tiny adorable bats. "I'm happy enough to leave adults be, but when dealing with children and their tantrums, someone's gotta be parent with a nice thick ruler to slap their knuckles with!"
But Neriah has a secret hidden power...
The power... OF SECOND HAND SMOKE!
It engulfs the bats and they recoil back, poufing into small cloud poufs once more before reforming into Marivel, who is crouching and looking rather unwell.
"See, you should be eating a candy cigarette--not those things. They're bad for your health, you know... and pollute the environment with toxins!"
But luckily there is a WIND SERAPH nearby to help CLEAR THE AIR. Boudicca's breeze makes breathing easier for Marivel and she is able to stand up--a bit unsteadily at first. Wounds take SOME kind of effect on Marivel even if it isn't immediately clear. Reforming her body, the transformations, enduring those wounds--they take a toll.
"Boudicca." She smiles at her. "I owe you one, once more. Let's.... Look after this strange world togeth--" She coughs several time, spitting out some black smoke--smoke that is not her own but Neriah's.
She straightens up and looks towards Ashley--
--Her eyes widen. Then she blinks once. He seems...
RHe seems strangely calm.
"He's getting better at using that power..." Marivel murmurs. "But this is just the tipping point of what Knight Blazer can do."
She looks to Neriah, raising her hand forward--thick red lances burst out of Guillotine and slam for Neriah's body at several different locations.
"Power... Get a little power and you think the world is in your hands." She murmurs.
GS: Marivel Armitage has attacked Neriah Parringer with Bloody Mari! GS: Marivel Armitage has gained 1 Combo! GS: Marivel Armitage has completed her action. GS: Neriah Parringer guards a hit from Marivel Armitage's Bloody Mari for 88 hit points! GS: Neriah Parringer's Force Guard activates!
<Pose Tracker> Neriah Parringer has posed.
Talia's anger is palpable, and her strike is sure and true, slicing through to tear through a fold of Neriah's cloak. The dark-haired woman swats the blade away with the back of her right hand. Again that surge of energy can be felt, a brief flicker of power peaking as she taps into it. "Everyone" is someone's plaything!" she snarls. "Your actions affect people every day! And I, for one, am not going to put off my agenda because some people or kingdoms are inconvenienced by it!"
When Dean opens up on her, Neriah's forced to move again, darting to one side and then the other as he strikes out with those searing ARMs. One of them slips through her defenses, marking her forearm, and she winces before withdrawing, swatting out with that right hand - she lets her trident drop with a clatter, seemingly done with it for now. It sets her up perfectly for Tipheria's powerful diving attack. The antlered woman descends like a falling star, bodily smashing into the Impetus of Valmar. With a burst of breath, Neriah tumbles to the ground, the spear slashing across her collar and tearing through her overrobe to leave a bloody line behind.
She's rolling quickly to her feet, but it's amidst a cloud of smoke from the potion Jay throws at her feet. Coughing, she shields her face in her sleeve, scowling over it. "You can't make an omelette without breaking a few clergymen," she fires back grimly. "This is the path set out for me. I deal."
With Ethius out of her hair for now, Neriah gives Ida a look, one eyebrow rising a little. "I did miss the old you, honestly. The new one's far too up her own ass for my tastes. But I guess there's not much I can do about that, unless you want to take a second to question what you read...."
Ivan calls out. This needs to stop. Neriah turns to face him, a flicker of surprise in her face.
Stars explode around her as Ivan strikes true. Neriah doesn't have the second she'd need to mount a defense. Blazing fire washes over her, scorching across her body, and she covers herself up with her right arm, growling as her sleeve catches fire. Grinding her teeth with momentary frustration, she hunkers down, forced back away from the dark crystal and the motionless Tio unit she's lined up as a vessel for her Heresiarch ally.
She ends up on the edge of the space Venetia has purified. With a startled hiss, she jerks backwards, steam rising from her as if she were a vampire exposed to the light. It stops as soon as she's out of range - but the sphere denies Neriah what she really would like, which is the ability to stand close to the soulsphere. Irritation burns behind her eyes. "Pest...."
Ashley Winchester calls forth something that should not be called forth.
Neriah flicks her hair back, rising and squaring her shoulders as she fixes her attention on the emergent Knight Blazer. She can feel that presence, tangibly.
She doesn't flinch. "For its own sake? Not quite," she murmurs. "Call it... a personal urge."
That bright blue blade comes forth as Knight Blazer strikes. Again Neriah's defensive field flickers into existence. The clash of powers booms through the chamber with a tangible shockwave. Slashes punch through the eldritch field, drawing blood with a hiss as Neriah holds her ground, bringing forth more power to do so. "You tempt me," she murmurs. "But there are some things I'll have to show you another time."
Marivel's lances pound in seconds later, once more forcing Neriah to lean on her eldritch sphere for protection. Narrowing her eyes, she pours power into the shield to hold both she and Knight Blazer at bay.
"Listen," she utters. "The Day of Darkness is coming one way or the other. Either get on board with me and Caius here, or get run over." Stepping back, Neriah raises her right hand.
Shadow flame eddies around her, pooling at her feet and flowing outwards. It expands into the shapes of several additional Neriahs, each one composed of flickering black fire and holding a single-bladed spear. Rippling through the room like shadows, the phantom Neriahs lash out, jabbing spears of flame at those who've offended her. One for Marivel, for Boudicca, for Talia and Tipheria.
"I've already moved my agenda forward in ways you can't even fathom." She sweeps her hand out, and fire begins to pour from it, bursting forth in vast columns. The room is illuminated with furious heat as she pours out hellish power into the blast, immense pillars rising to ty and consume Venetia, Ethius, Ida, Jay, Dean and Ivan.
And then she turns her gaze on Ashley. The stare she fixes him with is more than a tangible thing. Behind it is
S O M E T H I N G
that looms around her, invisible, yet somehow tangible, paralytic in its enormity. It's as if, for just a moment, Knight Blazer has been noticed by a fragment of something that SHOULD NOT BE.
Neriah raises her right index finger.
The beam that races from it is deceptively thin and pale. It's a single, almost innocuous RAY.
If it hits something, it'll proceed to blow out the entire back half of the catacomb in an immense explosion that can be seen from miles away in Klein City.
GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Neriah Parringer with Eldritch Sphere! GS: Neriah Parringer takes a solid hit from Neriah Parringer's Eldritch Sphere for 0 hit points! GS: Shield and Surge! applied to Neriah Parringer! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Marivel Armitage with Cabal of Shadow! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Cabal of Shadow! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Talia with Cabal of Shadow! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Tipheria Aredor with Cabal of Shadow! GS: Neriah Parringer has gained 1 Combo! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Venetia Vuong with Burnflame! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Ethius Hesiod with Burnflame! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Burnflame! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Burnflame! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Dean Stark with Burnflame! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Ivan with Burnflame! GS: Neriah Parringer has gained 2 Combo! GS: Neriah Parringer spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Ashley Winchester with Gaze! GS: Neriah Parringer has launched an attack Link! GS: Neriah Parringer has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Full Clip! GS: Neriah Parringer spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Ashley Winchester with Avenging Ray! GS: Neriah Parringer has gained 1 Combo! GS: You have finished a Link/Follow chain. Remember to +round! GS: Neriah Parringer has completed her action. GS: Ashley Winchester takes a glancing hit from Neriah Parringer's Gaze for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ashley Winchester gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seraph Boudicca critically Guards a hit from Neriah Parringer's Cabal of Shadow for 22 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Boudicca gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Venetia Vuong guards a hit from Neriah Parringer's Burnflame for 127 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Venetia Vuong gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Venetia Vuong enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: CRITICAL! Ashley Winchester takes a solid hit from Neriah Parringer's Avenging Ray for 330 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ashley Winchester gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Ashley Winchester enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Ashley Winchester has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight! GS: Talia takes a glancing hit from Neriah Parringer's Cabal of Shadow for 54 hit points! GS: Talia enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Tipheria Aredor guards a hit from Neriah Parringer's Cabal of Shadow for 67 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Tipheria Aredor gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey guards a hit from Neriah Parringer's Burnflame for 120 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ida Everstead-Rey gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Ivan guards a hit from Neriah Parringer's Burnflame for 115 hit points! GS: Ivan enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Ethius Hesiod takes a glancing hit from Neriah Parringer's Burnflame for 100 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ethius Hesiod gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Ethius Hesiod enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Jacqueline Barber critically Guards a hit from Neriah Parringer's Burnflame for 39 hit points! GS: Jacqueline Barber enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: CRITICAL! Dean Stark takes a glancing hit from Neriah Parringer's Burnflame for 124 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Dean Stark gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Dean Stark enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Marivel Armitage guards a hit from Neriah Parringer's Cabal of Shadow for 74 hit points! GS: Marivel Armitage enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
"That is a justification done after the fact!" Talia snaps back at Neriah. "Because others do it, this justifies you doing it!?"
There is a quick glance at Boudicca. She feels her footsteps getting more sluggish; she lost some blood from that seeps into her shirt. She looks at her brother, letting out a ragged breath.
"I'm... fine," she lies. The blast of shadowy flame flies, and she manages to twist to the side, only grazed along that side. Talia lets out a shaking breath, then swings back her hand. Mirage swings, with her, and darkness swirls about it.
Then she throws the weapon. Mirage hurtles, shooting towards Neriah, and slams at her. Talia's body splits apart into so many strands of smoky shadowstuff -- and reforms, hand on the hilt of the blade, slashing at her. With her off-hand, she stabs a dagger at Neriah.
Then, a magic circle swirls up under her feet.It flashes a brilliant, bright blue -- and Talia slashes down with her dagger.
And a crystalline piece of ice forms, immense, over Neriah's head -- and drops down, shattering into so much glittering ice dust.
GS: Talia spends 4 Combo on Link and Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Talia enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Talia has attacked Neriah Parringer with Mirage Edge! GS: Talia has launched an attack Link! GS: Talia's stance ends. She enters the Avenger stance! GS: Talia has attacked Neriah Parringer with Blizzaga! GS: Neriah Parringer critically Guards a hit from Talia's Mirage Edge for 37 hit points! GS: Talia has completed her action. GS: Neriah Parringer guards a hit from Talia's Blizzaga for 121 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
Ida steps out, made new in Hyadean fashion; Knight Blazer takes to the field, shining in dire light. Ethius does not stand at all. All these things are concerning, to varying degrees of nuance. But then, she is the Seraph Boudicca; elementally, she is wind, and concerned.
But there is one key factor, which Marivel highlights, and Boudicca smiles as she looks to her. "Together," she assures her, sending over another little breeze to puff away that lingering smoke.
(She's still smoking, herself, those embers eating away at her silks. It's an expression of a deeper malaise: the sickness of Valmar sinking into those things she calls her lungs, her liver, her heart. It is also, literally, the result of being blown up. Sometimes it's not just a metaphor, even with Boudicca.)
While she doesn't elicit a verbal reply, that hardly means Boudicca doesn't impact Neriah; that much is evidenced in the way that phantom finds her with flaming spear. Boudicca hears the way Ida denies fear and declines to run; she locks her stance, shifting only to ensure the lance strikes the side of her armour instead of straight through the chest. With fell heat it sears at her steel, branding a gash in the plate; were she mortal the heat would surely cook her liver, and the rest of her besides, because plate armour does little to dissipate heat.
It's deeply uncomfortable. She endures.
"If we cannot fathom such a thing --" but Boudicca's attempt to get Neriah to disclose her SECRET EVIL PLANS is interrupted all a sudden by the sheer mounting dread of what looks over Knight Blazer, in that moment. "-- !!" That is the sound of noise strangled in the throat, halting to a gasp.
If this keeps going...
And there is something strange happening to Ida, Boudicca thinks, as she looks to Dean across the battlefield. "We must not tarry!" She calls to him, and trusts he will know why.
Boudicca, throughout this, has been supporting her allies; now she looks to Neriah, who has worn faces and who seems to believe so much in what she does. This time the glyph which lights up does not bring with it a kindly breeze - but a gale, whipping around her before it spirals out towards Neriah herself. "Your Day of Darkness cannot come to pass! We will not allow it!" A breath, a declaration: "I will not allow it!"
GS: Seraph Boudicca spends 2 Combo on Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling! GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Neriah Parringer with Howling Gale! GS: Seraph Boudicca takes 25 damage from Poison! GS: Disease and Poison expired! GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action. GS: Neriah Parringer takes a solid hit from Seraph Boudicca's Howling Gale for 151 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
Ivan's affinity for fire only goes so far -- while his own flames seem almost a part of him, the flames of others will burn him, and Neriah's column of fire is no exception. He finds himself in the midst of a rising inferno that cracks his skin and sears down into his lungs.
It's all he can do to roll free of the flame pillar, coughing and forcing his limbs to move so he can push back up to his feet. He searches the room for Talia again, as he rises unsteadily. She's still upright, still fighting, but he worries for her.
"Your other unfathomable advances will have to be enough," he says to Neriah.
He coughs again, and the smoke that escapes from his mouth is his own smoke this time. Fire flares from within him, rolling off his back and down his arms, before swirling toward Neriah in a great whirling plume.
GS: Ivan has attacked Neriah Parringer with Inferno Heart! GS: Ivan enters a Counter stance! GS: Hyper expired! GS: Ivan has completed his action. GS: Neriah Parringer guards a hit from Ivan's Inferno Heart for 119 hit points! GS: Neriah Parringer's Force Guard activates!
<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.
Venetia has no snap back in her purified stretch of ground. She grins at Neriah without joy but she is mostly trying to breathe. She coughs up something thick and wet with some blood in it, but only some. She pushes herself upright just in time to feel a horrible premonition of gathering magic -
She jitterbug steps back. The fire bursts but it does not burst ON her, merely before her; she staggers back, hissing at the pain, shuddering again. She feels the world reel.
Venetia speaks finally. It is quiet but perhaps the sanctified slice of ground she has claimed grants it strength. "I reject your claim to the darkness, churchwoman," she says, before rearing up fully upright again.
There is something there - but it is focused on whatever in the name of Dinoginos is going on with Winchester. He is probably about to die, Venetia thinks, gripping her rod tighter and staring dead ahead. Some might think: I will save him; Venetia Vuong does not quite think that way, instead she thinks: Then I will make it worthwhile:
"Erode; accrete; compress; transform; arise; erode - the mystery of deep time, the shape of the stage of Mind and Life." Wind picks up - Boudicca's spell, but Venetia focuses herself forwards. The ground around her starts to gently dimple upwards. "Be ground, O Unclean Thing, and dissipate your malice in the depths of the planet."
"Arise," Venetia states, and then comes that horrific Ray that devours sound itself, but Venetia *keeps talking*. The result as she pushes out the invocation into the shrieking distortion of sound itself:
Deepest Art: Olivine Wind!
Wind adds to wind. A gale becomes a storm. A cyclonic storm. A cyclonic storm into which a good three hundred kilograms of conjured coarse-grained olivine sand have been poured - sand gathered upwards now and accelerated with metal-destroying force! Will the blessing of that thing be protection enow?
GS: Venetia Vuong has activated a Force Action! GS: Venetia Vuong has activated a Force Action! GS: Venetia Vuong has attacked Neriah Parringer with Deepest Art: Olivine Wind! GS: Venetia Vuong has gained 2 Combo! GS: Break, Cripple, Jam, Mute, Slow, and Weaken expired! GS: Venetia Vuong has completed her action. GS: Neriah Parringer guards a hit from Venetia Vuong's Deepest Art: Olivine Wind for 101 hit points! GS: Hex and Jam! applied to Neriah Parringer! GS: Neriah Parringer's Force Guard activates!
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
"You-" Jacqueline starts, shaking her head in disgust. "You can't just... dismiss your actions with a glib comment and expect everything to be fine! Do you really think clergymen are the only people your actions affected? That your actions hurt!?"
She shakes her head again.
"You keep saying things like 'this is the path set out for me', but you don't have to follow it! You can stop at any time!" She says. "But the more people you hurt, the more you resign yourself to it... the harder it'll be to come back."
With a sweep of Neriah's hand, pillars of flame billow forth. Jacqueline casts out both hands this time, a barrier crackling to life around her even as the fire rises up to try and consume her. It takes a lot of energy to maintain a barrier under that kind of force.
Eventually, the fire subsides, and Jacqueline has to stabilise herself against the wall for a moment to remain standing.
"I'm not... going to surrender to you. But I don't plan to be run over, either. I'm sorry, but... it's like Boudicca says. I won't just stand by and let your Day of Darkness happen." She says, shaking her head.
Jacqueline reaches into her bags, her hand closing around a stone Medium. The first Medium she ever received - the medium of Grudiev. She whispers a silent plea for help, and the Guardian answers.
Briefly, a vision of the saurian Guardian appears behind her. It's like a great inhalation occurs, as dust and debris are drawn into the vents on Grudiev's back, which are then exhaled out in a crystalline gale, settling over and surrounding everyone protectively in hopes of warding them from Neriah's power. It might be too late for Ashley, but... maybe the others will be okay...
GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Venetia Vuong with Material - Earthen Embrace! GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Ivan with Material - Earthen Embrace! GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Material - Earthen Embrace! GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Talia with Material - Earthen Embrace! GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Marivel Armitage with Material - Earthen Embrace! GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Material - Earthen Embrace! GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Tipheria Aredor with Material - Earthen Embrace! GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Dean Stark with Material - Earthen Embrace! GS: Jacqueline Barber has gained 1 Combo! GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action. GS: Jacqueline Barber heals Talia! She gains 250 temporary hit points! GS: Shield! applied to Talia! GS: Jacqueline Barber heals Ivan! He gains 250 temporary hit points! GS: Shield! applied to Ivan! GS: Ivan enters CONDITION GREEN!! Ashley Winchester (Ashley) pages Neriah Parringer and Tragedienne: Hey Tragi could you set me to 1 hp? I consulted with Neri and she's cool with it
GS: Jacqueline Barber heals Ida Everstead-Rey! She gains 250 temporary hit points! GS: Shield! applied to Ida Everstead-Rey! GS: Jacqueline Barber heals Venetia Vuong! She gains 250 temporary hit points! GS: Shield! applied to Venetia Vuong!
<Pose Tracker> Tipheria Aredor has posed.
Tipheria continues to back away from Neriah, getting some distance - which may be bad for fighting her, given Tipheria doesn't really do much at range, but does bring her closer to the crystal.
"What the hell is that?" Tipheria has spotted Lord Blazer. It appears to be on her side, but - her grip tightens around her spear anyway, squeezing the metal there a little too hard. Something like that... it makes her skin crawl as much as Neriah does. But she can put it off until later. And Ida, too - that catches her eye, but she doesn't *feel* as wrong as Lord Blazer.
She pulls her eyes away from Blazer to look at Neriah again. "You remind me of someone from the stories of old history," she says, almost conversationally. "The thing about her: she's long long dead, and nobody remembers her as anything but a madwoman. If they remember her at all."
"So. Like I said. Let the past stay dead. If we're going to walk into the future, we don't need your gods or your Darkness as guides."
Tipheria brandishes her spear, sweeping the point upward and across. "AIR RIPPER!" she yells, sending a half-moon of energy toward Neriah - but as it turns out that's as much of a distraction as anything else.
Pivoting on her heel, Tipheria sweeps the blade of her spear in a two-handed strike toward the black crystal, attempting to interrupt it by the only way she knows how to deal with evil power: sheer force.
GS: Jacqueline Barber heals Tipheria Aredor! She gains 250 temporary hit points! GS: Shield! applied to Tipheria Aredor! GS: Tipheria Aredor has attacked Neriah Parringer with Air Ripper! GS: Tipheria Aredor has gained 1 Combo! GS: Mighty expired! GS: Tipheria Aredor has completed her action. GS: Neriah Parringer critically Guards a hit from Tipheria Aredor's Air Ripper for 25 hit points! GS: Neriah Parringer's Force Guard activates! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! ===== +attacks: Neriah Parringer Form 1: The Impetus of Valmar ================= _ Name/Flags (Combo) |___________________________| Tier/Stat/PL |_____| Min/Cst _ _ BA-BOOM! Db SOR 0 0 / 50 _ _ - Area and Crush _ _ Cabal of Shadow Db TEC 4 0 / 0 _ _ - Area _ _ Eldritch Sphere Db SOR 0 0 / 20 _ _ - Refined, Shield, and Surge _ _ Hellmouth Db SOR 6 30 / 0 _ _ - Reserve _ _ Inhalation Db SOR 0 30 / 20 _ _ - Absorb, Refined, and Restore _ _ Masterstroke Db TEC 6 30 / 10 _ _ - Dispel _ _ Negative Light Db SOR 4 0 / 20 _ _ - Disease and Poison (1) _ _ Shhh! Db SOR 0 15 / 15 _ _ - Interrupt (1), Mute, and Refined _ _ Utmost Impetus Db SOR 0 30 / 25 _ _ - Lock State _ _ Valmarlance Db TEC 6 30 / 0 _ _ - Rush _ _ Zap All Db SOR 4 0 / 0 _ _ - Area _ _ Crackling F SOR 4 0 / 0 _ _ - Reserve _ _ Let Mui Take A Selfie F TEC 0 0 / 0 _ _ - Reserve _ _ Avenging Ray Sig SOR 8 0 / 0 _ _ - Destroy, Follow, and Gatling (0-3) _ _ Burnflame Sig SOR 8 0 / 0 _ _ - Area and Destroy _ _ Dawn of Retribution Sig SOR 9 100 / 70 _ _ - Gatling (0-3) and Pierce _ _ Gaze Sig SOR 0 45 / 35 _ _ - Efficient, Link (1), and Ruin _ _ Hellbreath Sig SOR 0 0 / 50 _ _ - Area and Curse _ _ FP: 584/1650 +attack +15 / +guard/+evade +15 / +charge +20 / +accept +5 _
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
Marivel smiles back at Boudicca. Moments like this, she thinks.
She channels a black aura around her hand which rapidly intensifies around her fist.
The Day of Darkness is coming
"And if it does come," Marivel says. "Then know that a day of darkness... only lasts one day!" She adds this to Boudicca, allowing technicality to intermingle with the statement of hope.
The speaar of flame RIIIIPS into Marivel but at the last moment, a puff of that wind scurrying around Marivel dampens the blow, allowing Marivel to escape with some moderate burns rather than a skewering and an immolation.
"Everything dies. Even 'gods'. Even yours."
She swings that hand cracklingg with dark energy forward. "Tis the great equalizer. No matter how many shamans you slay, that truth will remain the same."
And with that an erupting burst of darkness is sent hurtling back towards Neriah! Darkness is equal opportunity, don't you know!
GS: Jacqueline Barber heals Marivel Armitage! She gains 250 temporary hit points! GS: Shield! applied to Marivel Armitage! GS: Marivel Armitage spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Marivel Armitage has attacked Neriah Parringer with Erg Phasor! GS: Marivel Armitage has gained 1 Combo! GS: Marivel Armitage has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Neriah Parringer critically Guards a hit from Marivel Armitage's Erg Phasor for 59 hit points! GS: Neriah Parringer's Force Guard activates! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
"Ida's great the way she is now! If you don't like that, that's your problem!" Dean protests hotly at Neriah, even as pillars of flame blaze towards him. Because of his jumping to Ida's defense, he's a little slow to jump out of the way of the pillars, which swallow him whole--though thankfully that jump still carries him out before he can be burnt to a crisp. An ironic way to go, that'd be.
Boudicca shouts to him. He nods back sharply. "Right!! Let's put a stop to this before it gets any worse!"
He focuses in on Neriah. He suspects she might have a sad story, given how what she said about Granas mirrors what Cyre said, and if she does he feels sorry for her, but that doesn't mean he can just let her hurt people in her misguided efforts to change what's bad about the world. It sounds like she's got several people here who know her far better than he does, and if she's not listening to *them*, she's sure not going to listen to *him*. Best to do what he can to keep her from doing something she might or might not regret later.
In a series of fluid motions, he opens fire on her with both guns, then twirls around to focus with one gun, then the other, then both again; then he dashes forward with her in a flash of light, striking her with both illuminated rods in a sheer, sharp movement; then he leaps back to his starting position and charges both guns, which fire a single resounding EXPLOSION that bursts on impact.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
As Dean lands from his attack, Jay summons up Grudiev and uses their earthen power to send crystals to soothe and protect several others, including him. As it knits his wounds, he gives her a wave of thanks.
GS: Jacqueline Barber heals Dean Stark! He gains 250 temporary hit points! GS: Shield! applied to Dean Stark! GS: Dean Stark spends 4 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling! GS: Dean Stark enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Dean Stark has attacked Neriah Parringer with Twin Fenrir - Laser Impact! GS: Dean Stark has gained 1 Combo! GS: Dean Stark has completed his action. GS: CRITICAL! Neriah Parringer critically Guards a hit from Dean Stark's Twin Fenrir - Laser Impact for 55 hit points! GS: Neriah Parringer's Force Guard activates!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
There's a little, reflexive tic in Ida's lips as Neriah tells her just what she feels about her. "I told you," she says, her voice edged with anger. "If you're sitting on some dread secret about the faith I've half-abandoned, then--" The words tumble out. Ida finally gives voice to what she's known in her heart for months--she is no longer a frightened child, cowering behind Granas' wings. She is breaking the chains of the dysfunctional, manichaean worldview that was instilled in her as a child. Shards of them remain embedded in her soul. She glances back at Dean, grateful.
Ida steps forwards, over the prone body of Ethius Hesiod--putting herself between him and the woman who very much wants to murder him in cold blood. Her heart hammers in her chest as unholy energy builds around Neriah once again. And not just around Neriah. There's a brilliant blaze in the corner of her eye, a form knitting itself together--
Neriah responds to Ashley's escalation with some escalation of her own. Ida's mouth falls open as I T begins to slip through the cracks of reality. The hellish flame that washes over her is almost the lesser concern. Ida raises her arms to shield herself, but she's been wrongfooted nevertheless. Her newly-grown exoskeleton starts to warp and melt from the immense heat. A scream of agony tears from her throat. Through the haze of heat and tears, she sees Ashley advance--
"ASHLEY!" Ida screams, her voice raw.
Quite suddenly, the phantom form of Grudiev's right leg manifests before her. Crystalline dust settles over her, soothing her wounds; she manages a nod of gratitude as the apparition dissipates. Now it's her turn. Ida clears leather, sucking in a deep breath as she draws her ARM. The two-layered aura around Ida's body grows visible, pulling outwards and ejecting a series of rotating glyphs that trace their way across the floor. They form a line between Ida and Neriah, linking the two.
"Tell your God I'm coming for him," Ida says. Her voice trembles, but her hand is as steady as can be.
Ida pulls the trigger. Dragonfire tears free from the barrel, roaring through the ambient corruption like a great, purging wave. It takes shape, growing feathered wings, talons, ember-like eyes--the image of Moor Gault bears down on Neriah, keening out an avian war-cry.
The resulting explosion is enough to illuminate every dank crevice in the chamber. But will it be enough?
Ashley Winchester (Ashley) pages Neriah Parringer and Tragedienne: oh right
GS: Jacqueline Barber heals Seraph Boudicca! She gains 250 temporary hit points! GS: Shield! applied to Seraph Boudicca! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Inhalation! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has launched an attack Link! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a solid hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Inhalation for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper! applied to Ida Everstead-Rey! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey spends 3 Combo on Poison and Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Neriah Parringer with Breath Of The Fire Dragon! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Neriah Parringer guards a hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Breath Of The Fire Dragon for 116 hit points! GS: Poison! applied to Neriah Parringer! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up!
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.
The Symbologist whose very presence is a strong cause for why Neriah is what she is continues to keep a low profile as he works his lungs to their limit. When he opens an eye half-way, he can't make out the awful smoke being there any more. This is not to say the air quality of this particular catacomb is anywhere near good - it barely can be considered breathable. There are coughs, as his lungs demand more air. More angry, fervent, resolved yells, somehow able to be perceived above the incredible pressure the numerous powers in play have.
Ida puts herself between Ethius and Neriah, and in the shade cast by Ida's presence before an unholy unlight, Ethius gets up... but he isn't standing straight up. Oxygen is proving difficult to take in. 'The Day of Darkness is coming one way or the other.' Over a thousand years ago, a thing happened he recognizes should not have... lingered. He doesn't know why it did, or why that the thousand-year-long lingering was such a worrisome thing at all. But it was - and the appearance of the exoskeleton around Ida seems a striking... consequence? Of it. OF them.
The World Eater, Mother. Something about this picture before him now has a worrisome similarity - was this matter as regards Valmar and Granas like that, too? The enigmatic vandal doesn't ask it aloud because he feels he cannot. Shadow flame comes to life to remind him he doesn't have time to stand around and contemplate. He's not the target of the Shadow Neriahs but he starts taking off in a brief jog anyway, away from Ida, in some direction. The part that's meant for him comes soon after, as the room illuminates with a heat that seems a reflection of what he just tried to her. He misses a column that explodes to his right. Way further ahead. His gaze pulls him in all directions except the most important one, in which he catches at the cusp of 'too late.'
One column of flame explodes right in front of him. He brings an arm over his face as the shadowy flame burns away his shirt's left sleeve and even most of the glove, revealing the intricate and large number of Symbological tattoos underneath. He just avoided throwing himself into a well-led fire column outright, but not unsinged.
More power. That thin RAY races a ways behind him towards something else unfathomable. Though words of courage are being spoken, resolves are being stated, and challenges are being thrown, there is an overwhelming slurry of concepts building at the edge of his psyche.
He doesn't stand there to cast a new spell.
He doesn't go to retrieve the dropped (and further blasted away) quarterstaff.
He takes off in a dead sprint.
The power of Valmar feels wrong and incomprehensible - and though he has been under Neriah's ire for some time, he is not acclimated towards its flavor and feeling. The promise of a fearful Day of Darkness spurs on these conflicts ever more, as he builds up speed.
The room pulses with world-destroying horrors of opposing natures, and yet, the man runs headlong towards Neriah's position from an angle unlikely to cause him too much friendly fire grief against him (no matter how much of it may be warranted for any number of Solar Storm collaterals). He doesn't stop to give thanks to Ida for the momentary cover, for there's an urgency that compels him.
An urgency that bears an uncanny likeness to back in that Haunted Manor, so long ago, where Neriah was nearly taken by some ghosts - in which he bodily hurled himself at her in a tackle to break her free. That maneuver was more unambiguously well-intended then - here, bereft of the surgical precision in which he plans and strikes, is something exactly of that character. Born of urgency, of a need to do something.
As if it weren't Valmar in specific he feared, but something... else, if he doesn't put what he has into it.
Even if it is just a mere bodily tackle.
Talia (Natalia) pages Ashley Winchester and Neriah Parringer: Looking into how to do it, sec
GS: Ethius Hesiod has activated a Force Action! GS: Ethius Hesiod has attacked Neriah Parringer with Tackle! GS: Ethius Hesiod has completed his action. GS: Neriah Parringer guards a hit from Ethius Hesiod's Tackle for 72 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Ashley Winchester has posed.
Perhaps Ashley has learned to better control the power of Knight Blazer. Perhaps there's yet hope for Filgaia to be spared from the shadowless conflagration.
But Lord Blazer is only but one of the myriad threats facing the world. That is, after all, one of the reasons the Blaze of Disaster was sealed away into the body of a young Musketeer from Meria-Boule. There is a tactical advantage to having one of the many walking apocalypses under (temporary) control.
lmar is one such apocalypse.
And for a terrifying instant, its gaze locks with the Blazer's. For a singular moment, the weight of a dark god presses down upon Ashley Winchester's awareness and threatens to crush it like a grape.
But before it does, there is a ray.
It connects.
With Knight Blazer's chest.
What follows is a sound like thunder, but greater. It's the sound that a single nuclear bomb makes when it obliterates a city. It's the noise of a screaming mass of humanity trampling itself to death to escape a monster. It's a wave of static that scourges all conscious thought as it passes over the brain.
A blastwave of pure force tears out the Blazer's back. Stone is turned to dust. The earth itself seems as though it might shake apart. The light is blinding as it bores a hole straight through the ruins. The mountainside groans and collapses back upon itself with a din that seems practically whisper-quiet in comparison to the catastrophic sound that came before.
And when the dust clears...
...There is no more Knight Blazer.
Where he had once stood, there is now only collapsed earth and ruin. A flood of shattered earth is all that's there where there used to be a man.
It seems he's done for. If he's even still alive after that impact, the crushing pressure of the broken world will kill him soon enough--
No.
No.
The stone glistens as if wet-- but it is not. It is glowing, boiling, bubbling like a kettle set too long on the flame. Magma trickles away in slim rivulets, then gushes out in great gouts. Shafts of vermilion light lance out from the failing stone as the air itself begins to glow with impossible radiation.
And from within the collapse, Neriah feels...
A hungry g a z e fix upon her soul.
Suddenly, landslide fails. The earth sledges away, parting like a sea of molten glass. Another beam sluices out from the calamity-- but where Neriah's was a thin, ominous ray, this one is...
Not.
It is a torrent. It is a flood. It is the prominence of a hateful god-sun whose highest and holiest desire is the utter consumption of all that is.
And at its source, standing there with breastplate shattered, a single glowing core throbbing like a beating star-heart...
Is the Knight Blazer.
He's still alive-- It is still alive--!
But...
Is it Ashley Winchester in that armor, or something else...?
GS: Ashley Winchester has activated a Force Action! GS: Ashley Winchester has activated a Force Action! GS: Ashley Winchester spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Ashley Winchester has attacked Neriah Parringer with Banisher! GS: Ashley Winchester has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ashley Winchester has completed his action. GS: Neriah Parringer takes a solid hit from Ashley Winchester's Banisher for 209 hit points! GS: Neriah Parringer enters Critical health and gains 25 FP!
<Pose Tracker> Neriah Parringer has posed.
A little part of Neriah's mind is reminding her of things she doesn't want to be reminded of. She's killing people she should like. Jay, a woman who saved her life, and whom she's repaid with nothing but pain and suffering since.
She sets her jaw and pushes the thought aside. A guilty conscience has only ever held her back.
What's holding her back even more is that Catria's jumping her with a knife. Neriah's eldritch sphere handles the initial jabs and slashes admirably, and she holds her hand out to soak up the thrusts. "What're you hoping to accomplish," she asks before glancing down. Then up.
The shard of ice slams down against her shield and shatters into dust - too many shards even for her spell to account for. As icy chunks slash across her, she growls in pain and recoils, her right arm once again coming up to protect her. Ice that comes into contact with her hand simply shatters. The rest is more fortunate, leaving her cut in a few places and forced to further withdraw.
The ice is swept up in the powerful gale Boudicca summons forth. The power of wind slams into Neriah even as she tries to recover from Talia's assault. She's hurled backwards and slammed into one of the empty burial niches, then staggers forward with a grimace, maintaining her footing only with effort.
Ivan breathes forth the intensity of his own flame, mingling with Boudicca's wind to whirl around Neriah in a hellstorm of her own. The edges of her robe singe and flicker as she hunkers down defensively, doing her best to weather the fusillade of attacks. It only worsens when Venetia lets the olivine wind blow, the force of sand and breeze slashing through to mark her and tear at skin and robes. "Granas's nut hairs, you're all such frigging heroes!" she spits contemptuously. "Jay, I tried it the nice way and all it got me was pain! I am not going back to being the helpless victim I used to be! If it's that or this, then I choose this path every time!"
Marivel fights darkness with darkness, obligating Neriah to pour more power into her defenses. Her eldritch sphere fluctuates madly as the erg phasor collides with it, the Impetus of Valmar straining to hold the blast off - effort made all the more challenging as Dean opens up on her with all the power he can muster. Bullets and explosions rip into her defensive shield, stripping part of it away. Sweating with effort, Neriah flicks her hand and pours more of that bloodcurdling dark power into it, fighting to keep all of this offense from just vapourizing her soft human flesh.
Ida fights god with god, the image of Moor Gault screaming forward to tear into Neriah's eldritch defenses. Flame washes across her as one of those talons slashes through her shoulder, forcing her back all the further.
As Knight Blazer comes melting its way out of the landslide created by her blast, Neriah just lets out a low hiss through her teeth. "You're not going to make it easy for me, are you," she grumbles.
The blast hits her with incredible force and wipes away what little remains of her eldritch sphere. This time it's the other wall of the chamber that collapses behind Neriah as she's consumed within the immense beam of consumptive power. For a moment, it seems as though the Impetus of Valmar has simply been wiped away.
Until the beam divides around a growing sphere of power.
Neriah has raised her shield again, her right hand held out, radiant with a negative light. She's burned and battered in places, breathing heavily, her eyes ablaze with anger. "Not... yet," she rasps. "Not yet."
And that's when Tipheria makes a move.
The crescent of energy is intercepted - but it's her next play that leaves Neriah widening her eyes in panic. "NO," she shouts, and raises her hand -
And then Ethius tackles her and knocks her to the ground before she can act.
Tipheria smashes through the black crystal with nothing to impede her progress. The orb shatters into fragments, and the light within it blooms outward - but it brings no harm to Tipheria. It whisps past her before dissipating, melting away without a trace. As it does, the light within the remaining sarcophagus flickers and fades.
The presence within is gone, just like that. There will be no return for Heresiarch Caius.
Rolling to her feet, Neriah whips her curls back, her face red with rage. "Motherfucker!" she yells at Ethius, her composure broken as she levels a right-handed backhand at him.
The backhand comes with the force of a speeding train - and the moment of contact brings with it a brief but profound SHOCK. There is something behind the blow.
She rounds on Tipheria and snaps that hand out, trying to grab ahold of one of the woman's antlers. If she can take ahold, she'll fling her across the room with a strength she shouldn't have, trying to smash her into a wall. "Knew I should've killed Ethius years ago," she mutters acidly. "And you--" She cuts off.
Then she raises her right hand, palm up.
"RIGHT," Neriah announces. "KILLING YOU ALL."
What she calls forth puts even the RAY to shame. Power mounts and mounts as Neriah calls her shadow flame up around her. The dark energy contorts and twists unnaturally until it shifts to form the shapes of leering faces and necks, hideously distended. The faces of Valmar loom around her in effigy.
Those five energetic faces hurtle upwards. They twist together above her head and form into a vast globe of black energy. It's tall enough that the ceiling of the catacomb begins to give way, crumbling in a rain of masonry and mortar. Chunks of rock are torn free as the globe of negative power pushes the entire catacomb aside before it.
Neriah brings her arm down - and with a sickening lurch, the entire ball of energy descends and drops down into the centre of the room.
--
KLEIN CENTRAL
MILES AWAY
Dishes rattle. Windows shake. The earth rolls - and heads turn with shock as a massive plume of smoke and fire erupts on the horizon from the hill of Arastell. The explosion is so massive that it's impossible to miss and impossible not to feel.
It's blown off the entire top of the mound.
GS: Neriah Parringer has become ENRAGED! GS: You have activated the Boss Action Enrage! You may attack players multiple times this round and have twice as many actions! After this round, you will be too exhausted to fight for one round, and your defenses will be reduced! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Ethius Hesiod with Delumper! GS: Neriah Parringer has gained 1 Combo! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Tipheria Aredor with Detipher! GS: Neriah Parringer has gained 1 Combo! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Neriah Parringer with OVER NINE THOUSAND! GS: Neriah Parringer takes a solid hit from Neriah Parringer's OVER NINE THOUSAND for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper! applied to Neriah Parringer! GS: Neriah Parringer has activated a Boss Action! GS: You have activated the Boss Action Extend! GS: Neriah Parringer has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Full Clip! GS: Neriah Parringer spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Ashley Winchester with Dawn of Retribution! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Ethius Hesiod with Dawn of Retribution! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Dawn of Retribution! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Dean Stark with Dawn of Retribution! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Marivel Armitage with Dawn of Retribution! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Tipheria Aredor with Dawn of Retribution! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Dawn of Retribution! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Venetia Vuong with Dawn of Retribution! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Ivan with Dawn of Retribution! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Dawn of Retribution! GS: Neriah Parringer has attacked Talia with Dawn of Retribution! GS: Neriah Parringer has gained 1 Combo! GS: Neriah Parringer takes 27 damage from Poison! GS: Enrage purges all positive status! GS: Your rage has died down! You can't act this round, and you've received the Shieldbreak and Entangle status effects! GS: Neriah Parringer has completed her action. GS: Pierce!! Neriah Parringer's attack breaks through 100 temporary hit points! 150 remain! GS: Talia takes a glancing hit from Neriah Parringer's Dawn of Retribution for 117 hit points! GS: Talia's Force Evade activates! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Talia enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Jacqueline Barber guards a hit from Neriah Parringer's Dawn of Retribution for 134 hit points! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Tipheria Aredor critically Guards a hit from Neriah Parringer's Detipher for 30 hit points! GS: Tipheria Aredor enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Ashley Winchester takes a glancing hit from Neriah Parringer's Dawn of Retribution for 121 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ashley Winchester gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Ashley Winchester has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight! GS: Pierce!! Neriah Parringer's attack breaks through 100 temporary hit points! 120 remain! GS: Tipheria Aredor takes a glancing hit from Neriah Parringer's Dawn of Retribution for 121 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Tipheria Aredor gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Ethius Hesiod takes a glancing hit from Neriah Parringer's Delumper for 76 hit points! GS: Ethius Hesiod enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Pierce!! Neriah Parringer's attack breaks through 47 temporary hit points! 203 remain! GS: Dean Stark critically Guards a hit from Neriah Parringer's Dawn of Retribution for 47 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Dean Stark gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Ethius Hesiod guards a hit from Neriah Parringer's Dawn of Retribution for 144 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ethius Hesiod gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Pierce!! Neriah Parringer's attack breaks through 47 temporary hit points! 203 remain! GS: Seraph Boudicca critically Guards a hit from Neriah Parringer's Dawn of Retribution for 47 hit points! GS: COUNTER! Ivan counterattacks Neriah Parringerwith Counter Attack! GS: Pierce!! Neriah Parringer's attack breaks through 100 temporary hit points! 150 remain! GS: CRITICAL! Ivan takes a solid hit from Neriah Parringer's Dawn of Retribution for 354 hit points! GS: Ivan has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight! GS: Neriah Parringer guards a hit from Ivan's Counter Attack for 123 hit points! GS: Neriah Parringer's Force Guard activates! GS: Pierce!! Neriah Parringer's attack breaks through 100 temporary hit points! 150 remain! GS: Venetia Vuong guards a hit from Neriah Parringer's Dawn of Retribution for 136 hit points! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Pierce!! Neriah Parringer's attack breaks through 100 temporary hit points! 150 remain! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey guards a hit from Neriah Parringer's Dawn of Retribution for 145 hit points! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Pierce!! Neriah Parringer's attack breaks through 100 temporary hit points! 150 remain! GS: Marivel Armitage takes a solid hit from Neriah Parringer's Dawn of Retribution for 231 hit points! GS: Marivel Armitage enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
"That's the life of a hero. They are naught more than martyrs that carry the weight of this world on their backs." Marivel swings her hand forward, pointing it at Neriah like a Phoenix Wright protagonist. "And so long as people like you...seek to revive old horrors and restart ancient wars and twist Filgaia for your own ends simply because you equate limitations with helplesslness and impotency... So long as threats to the world like you exist, the need for their blood will persist."
She sees Ashley fall and her eyes widen faintly. No, she thinks.
It's impossible. The Time of Promise hasn't happened yet. Marivel looks at her hands. She doesn't sense paradox. He's fine--
For now.
With a flash of light, Marivel interposes her body between Ashley and Neriah, spreading her hands wide.
"Perhaps we are both gamblers... but I will win. I won't allow this world to be decided by one who simply passes on the injustices they felt onto others.
She draws out her microphone and raises it up high.
"Miracle in a moment! I call upon thy power! Grant these warriors thy power! BOOSTER!"
And with that a surging crackling crimson energy infuses itself into Ethius, Jay, Venetia, and Boudicca which might just be her showing ethnic bias in favor of Seraphs here or perhaps ethnic bias in favor of... a friend.
But really aren't they all? Even if Venetia crushed her head with a giant rock?
GS: Marivel Armitage has activated a Force Action! GS: Marivel Armitage has attacked Venetia Vuong with Booster! GS: Marivel Armitage has attacked Ethius Hesiod with Booster! GS: Marivel Armitage has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Booster! GS: Marivel Armitage has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Booster! GS: Marivel Armitage has completed her action. GS: Jacqueline Barber takes a solid hit from Marivel Armitage's Booster for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper, Quick, and Shield! applied to Jacqueline Barber! GS: Seraph Boudicca takes a solid hit from Marivel Armitage's Booster for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper, Quick, and Shield! applied to Seraph Boudicca! GS: Venetia Vuong takes a solid hit from Marivel Armitage's Booster for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper, Quick, and Shield! applied to Venetia Vuong!
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
Jacqueline's crystalline dust settles around Ivan, bolstering his strength and helping to mend his burns. It barely registers. He remains singleminded, all his attention focused on pulling more and more fire from within himself, pouring it toward Neriah to end this fight while there's still time to tend to Talia's injuries.
The rest of the battle seems distant -- words, transformations, destruction, even the moment when they fulfill their objective of shattering the crystal and ending the ritual goes unnoticed in Ivan's drive to burn away the threat in front of him.
Neriah's summoning, too, simply feels irrelevant to his mind -- his eyes stay locked on her, not quite seeing, and he doesn't move from where he stands or make any movement toward self preservation.
As the globe smashes down, the explosion of dark energy slams into him, sending him flying into the far wall of the chamber with a crack, before dropping bonelessly to the ground.
Even though he shows no sign of stirring from where he fell, it still takes a while for the hungry flames to stop leaping from his body in search of their target.
GS: Ethius Hesiod takes a solid hit from Marivel Armitage's Booster for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper, Quick, and Shield! applied to Ethius Hesiod!
<Pose Tracker> Ashley Winchester has posed.
Perhaps he was already unconscious when the shockwave came. That would be nice to think, wouldn't it? It'd mean that he wouldn't have to suffer feeling his very being ripped apart for a second time.
A sphere of unholy power expands, consuming the room in its entirety. The sole saving grace of the ordeal is that Neriah was kind enough to blow the top off the ruin before she exploded it. Knight Blazer, as catastrophic as its power might be, might not have survived a SECOND cave-in.
...The wave passes. A second spark of serendipity: if there was any sign of awareness within the Blazer's armor, it is gone once Neriah's power ravages the world. It's all gone, in fact. Any sense of awareness, and the Blazer's armor both are obliterated entirely.
All that's left on the floor is... Ashley Winchester, still breathing, in the protective shadow of the best vampire in all of Filgaia.
Unconscious... But not dead.
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Crystalline dust and a soft, glowing energy swirls around Talia. It embues her. Talia looks sideways at Jay, watching for a moment, with concern on her face. "Jay..."
She can't dwell in that worry. She looks away from Jay and back to Neriah, her expression severe and her feet shaky. But, with Jay's spell supporting her, she doesn't fall over. She grimaces, as Neriah rejects Jay's entreaties.
She flicks both weapons to the side. Then, her fingers spin her dagger, and sheathe it at her side.
For a second, as Knight Blazer fires that beam, it seems they have won.
That thought is soon dispelled. A quintet of energy masks appear, and then Neriah swings down a single, massive explosion. It slams into the ground, shaking it violently, and Talia tries to dodge -- but it catches her, and hurls her. She slams into the ground, rolling a few times. "Gh--"
And then she sees her brother slam down into the ground. The fires on him flicker for much too long. Talia's eyes widen, sharply; her breath is caught, like she forgot it exists. Then, she screams: "IVAN!"
Her head snaps, turning to look at Neriah. She can't help him if she throws another attack like that. Talia runs, bolting across the ground. Take the enemy out, she thinks, and then get him out of here. Believe he is alive, because otherwise--
She stops that train of thought. Talia moves like lightning, as she leaps into Neriah's vicinity with one jump. With a second, she launches up. Mirage twists after her, in a circling spiral pattern, and then she ends with a powerful thrust, and an explosion of white light off her blade as she hits the apex of her jump.
"LIGHT SPEAR CANNON!"
GS: Talia has activated a Force Action! GS: Talia has activated a Force Action! GS: Talia has attacked Neriah Parringer with Light Spear Cannon! GS: Talia has completed her action. GS: Neriah Parringer takes a solid hit from Talia's Light Spear Cannon for 210 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
Neriah sets it straight. She's always going to choose this path. Every time. At this, Jacqueline's expression falls. She looks... sad.
"...I see." She replies quietly, arms falling to her side. This. It feels... more final, than she has before. Was it foolish, to hope that Neriah could come back from this, even after all that she's done...?
And that - give or take some time - is when it happens. Ethius tackles Neriah, and in that time Tipheria strikes, and the crystal shatters.
Neriah's response is immediate and severe. Power builds, and builds. It's sickening to feel. It takes some effort for Jacqueline to remain standing. She watches as five terrible faces form out of the energy, as they go screaming upward, forming a terrible globe, and as they descend.
Jacqueline holds her hands out, that barrier forming once more... but, the action feels futile. The sphere descends on them all.
When the smoke clears, there's a pile of debris where Jacqueline once stood. For a time, the pile is still... and then, Marivel speaks. Crackling, crimson energy begins to spill out from beneath the pile and then, slowly, it begins to stir. And then, with a cough, Jacqueline pulls herself up to her feet. She looks drained and exhausted... but, Marivel's words and support have helped pull her back to her feet.
She looks upon Neriah again, and for a moment she shuts her eyes. And then, wordlessly, Jacqueline lowers herself into an offensive stance. She begins gesturing with both hands, weaving together two spells at once.
It happens in an instant - suddenly, a ring of fire bursts into being around Neriah, dancing around her. The heat is overwhelming, though none of the fire touches her directly. And then comes water, crashing down around her in a great tide, looking to sweep up both her and the conjured flames in a calamity of heat, steam, and water.
GS: Jacqueline Barber spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Neriah Parringer with Spellweaver Stance! GS: Jacqueline Barber has launched an attack Link! GS: Jacqueline Barber's stance ends. She enters the Avenger stance! GS: Jacqueline Barber spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Neriah Parringer with Dualcast - Tidal Flame! GS: Jacqueline Barber has gained 1 Combo! GS: Burst expired! GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action. GS: Neriah Parringer guards a hit from Jacqueline Barber's Spellweaver Stance for 50 hit points! GS: Neriah Parringer takes a solid hit from Jacqueline Barber's Dualcast - Tidal Flame for 169 hit points! GS: Poison! applied to Neriah Parringer!
<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.
The strength of the Earth visits her. Not the one she calls on by habit, but Grudiev is a familiar and welcome presence in some ways to Venetia Vuong. Her spell expends itself; she wipes her forehead with a dirty sleeve. A moment later, the world ends.
It's hard to define it any different way. There is a scream, a curse, and that gives Venetia enough time to get out another Graph and invoke it. The ground before her, aided by Grudiev's blessing, rises upwards in a sudden agitated anticline of attempted intervention. A moment later there is a titanic light, a titanic darkness -
Do ears burst? Does flesh rupture? Does the spiritual essence of a seraph die? In the face of such violence, one might think that the god of Nisan had intervened, that nebulous and enigmatic conceptual entity the only thing that could allow anyone or anything present to survive. The burst is enormous.
Venetia is starting to get annoyed at the certainty that she has died.
But then she breathes in fresh air. Fresh from the surface. The air that is warmed beneath the sky. Her entire body hurts as her awareness rises into it; and worst of all, she thinks with panic, her mask is sliding loose. Work, arms, she thinks, panicking on some subtle level for a moment -- but they are merely sore, doubtless bruised to hell, perhaps fractured, but WHOLE - intact - still feeling.
There is crimson light. Venetia finds that she can stand.
And the first thing she says is:
"Hero...?"
Gray dust of ages rolls off of Venetia as she reaches behind herself to retie her mask. The strap to her Crest pouch has broken; her bronze rod is half-melted against the ruin of a wall. Her hair, in fact, is probably singed, though thankfully the scent of scorched hair is, like, completely gone in the vortex of this battlefield. She looks like a revenant. Maybe she is.
"Don't make me laugh," Venetia answers Neriah. "I am no hero. Every teacher I have had called me rude and demanding by the end of the term. My uncle would threaten to throw me to 47. And if Everstead's damn book had been plagaristic, I would have taken her to court for every Gella she and her family had. I would walk past them begging for scraps in the road and sleep soundly in my bed."
Venetia steps over the rubble of her conjured wall. "And yet," she says, finishing with the knot. "Even a person like me understands the limits of what can be endured. As a person, this cruelty is preposterous... but as a scholar, you have infuriated me."
"What secrets could this tomb have held? What little details could have been teased out with careful study? A way to make walls for cheap? A hidden power source? Super-refractors in the back closets? I suppose," Venetia says as she staggers forwards, "We aren't going to ever know, now, are we."
"Let these kind people... these heroes... speak to you for the crimes you have visited upon the living," Venetia says. "As a scholar, I will speak to you of what you have done to the dead."
That's when Venetia surges forwards. The goal is simple, brutal. The form is not clumsy but to Ida or other experts of the martial arts it is very basic, but maybe that is what is needed. A knee towards Neriah's stomach; jackrabbit punches up close, aiming at the upper body and the jaw. A swinging left cross; and then a grip to the shoulder and a hip-toss into the rubble.
And somehow, Venetia finds, despite the full body fatigue - that she can shout - "GOT ANY MORE TRICKS, LAH? I'LL --"
At this point she takes two giant steps back quickly, because she could feel the magic.
GS: Venetia Vuong has activated a Force Action! GS: Venetia Vuong has attacked Neriah Parringer with Void 41 Swing Dance! GS: Venetia Vuong has gained 1 Combo! GS: Venetia Vuong has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Neriah Parringer takes a solid hit from Venetia Vuong's Void 41 Swing Dance for 182 hit points! GS: Neriah Parringer has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
One thing's for sure: Neriah is really good at getting people to not feel sorry for her anymore. No matter how sad a past she may have, if she's serious about choosing to hurt people every time, then Dean can't abide by that. Whatever her deal is, he'll leave her to Jay.
Besides, there's kind of a massive black ball of crackling energy exploding in everyone's face and honestly it's a miracle Dean's eardrums don't burst and leave him permanently deaf. Maybe it's the power of Twin Fenrir, a pair of OOPArts if ever anyone has seen one, that protects him. Certainly there's no other explanation for how Dean manages to stagger back upright after that looking only a little singed and dazed in the wake of the explosion.
There are others who haven't been so lucky. Looking at Ivan and Ashley, his expression steels, and he digs his boots into the floor as he traces the air with the now-blazing ends of his lit-up combat rods.
"I know you probably have a reason you think is really good for doing all you're doing," he tells Neriah. "But if you're choosing to hurt people because you were hurt, then I have to stop you, whether you'll 'let' me or not." The flames burst outward to fill a constellational frame and form a burning bird--the image of Moor Gault. Dean aims at Neriah with both ARMs, and they blast a charge that hits the bird and carries it forward with a loud TSSEEEEERRRRR!! towards Neriah.
GS: Dean Stark has attacked Neriah Parringer with Firebird Soul! GS: Dean Stark has gained 1 Combo! GS: Dean Stark has completed his action. GS: Neriah Parringer takes a solid hit from Dean Stark's Firebird Soul for 168 hit points! GS: Neriah Parringer has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Tipheria Aredor has posed.
Tipheria Aredor feels something in her hands as she smashes through the crystal. It might just be the force of impact, but it might be something more, as the little wisps of energy dart past her. Or maybe the sudden surge from Jay, who she doesn't know but she's surely not going to complain about -
Oh. No. She is going to complain about it - Grudiev and Moor Gault both. "Meddling Guardians!" she yells, in mild frustration. Even that can't take away the surge of success from disrupting Neriah's plans, though. She's grinning, even through the bruises, the scorches. Take THAT, she thinks.
But, as always, there are consequences.
This time the consequence comes quick and angry, as Neriah grabs one of Tipheria's horns (science fact: they aren't antlers because she doesn't lose them yearly). Neriah is not the first person to try this trick. She is, surprisingly, not even the strongest person to try this trick; Berserk once picked her up by the horn.
But she is the person who surprised Tipheria the most when it happened. She tosses her head in a reflexive movement to try to dislodge the grip, but only manages to slide Neriah's hand an inch. A critical inch, though; she doesn't throw quite on target, and Tipheria manages to twist in midair, driving her spear into the floor. The point carves a long line into the stone, an inch-deep cut -
And then the tip breaks off with a metallic pinging sound.
It's not the first spear Tipheria has lost and it won't be the last, but losing her grip makes her roll the last few yards. That actually saves her; she lands behind a fallen stone, and thus has at least some cover from the blast. For a moment, anyway. The stone doesn't survive the entire explosion.
Tipheria rises up, looking even worse than before. She is so covered in soot, scorches and rock dust that she looks grey; the only points of colour on her are her extremely red hair, a few places where the yellow middle layer peek through rips in her green sleeveless tunic, and blood from her side, which is turning the rock dust into something like paste.
With a roar, she charges, stumbling at first until fury picks up her feet. She just saw a bunch of people fall, and that - and her sense of vengeance - give her one target: Neriah.
Tipheria comes in with a charging thrust - but she doesn't let it fall, as she tries to literally lift Neriah up in the air with it, stabbing repeatedly and increasing the angle of her thrusts, lifting her higher and higher, about five feet into the air. The spearpoint is missing so she's actually using the butt of her spear; it's got a rounded weight there, and makes an acceptable bludgeon.
And then she finishes it with a single overhand smash to knock her straight back down. "What will you do now? WHAT NOW? You've LOST! Go home and think about it - and take your Valmar with you!"
GS: Tipheria Aredor has activated a Force Action! GS: Tipheria Aredor spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Tipheria Aredor has attacked Neriah Parringer with Storm Break! GS: Tipheria Aredor has gained 1 Combo! GS: Tipheria Aredor's Avenger stance ends. GS: Tipheria Aredor has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Steam hisses off of Ida's exoskeleton. She sucks in a breath, plants her feet securely, and steadies herself. The others' relentless onslaught gives her this small luxury--but eventually, it abates. She turns towards Ashely's tomb of rubble, and takes a step towards it, preparing to dig him out.
-pulse-
The stone begins to glow, and then melts like ice. Ida backpedals, her mouth dropping open as Knight Blazer frees itself and strikes back. Ashley says nothing--no cry of defiance, no nothing. Ida's heart skips a beat.
The only consolation is that Neriah isn't in good shape, either. Ida turns to her, her lips twisted in something that isn't quite a grimace. The exoskeleton has crawled up her cheeks to encircle her mouth and eyes. "And who said," Ida says, "that it must be this or that? Helplessness, or an unending chain of violence? Granas or Valmar?" There's a tremor in her voice. She glances at Knight Blazer a moment before looking back at Neriah. "I survived that hell because of those who reached out to me, no matter how I hurt them--those who helped me see what bullshit it all was!"
And then, Ethius Hesiod does what Ida was quietly hoping he'd do, with an assist from Tipheria, who still knows no chill. The energy within the crystal does not obliterate them all. However, Neriah might just do what it didn't.
"BRACE!" Ida screams. She closes her eyes, sets her feet, and curls into as tight a shape as she can manage. Valmar's leering, enraged faces linger behind her eyelids.
Everything becomes light and pain. Distantly, Ida hears herself scream.
The light abates, and Ida dares open her eyes again. Every inch of her body feels like it was sanded raw and then dunked in salt water. She looks down, and sees blood flowing from cracks in her breastplate and gorget; the quicksilver weaves itself into stabilizing webs, but there is only so much the stem tissue can do. It takes her a moment to power through the agony and see what's happened to the others.
Ashley is himself again. Marivel is standing over him. Ivan is likewise down, and Ida reacts instinctively--by turning to her best friend. "BOUDICCA!" Ida shouts, gesturing at Ivan; she can't heal him, but someone has to. Nobody is going to die today.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
nobody is going to die today
Tears slick Ida's eyes. She blinks, and the right eye is green. Her lifeforce ignites around her hand, the fiery core of Fafnir's power engulfed by the golden-white of Ida's. It condenses into coruscating arcs, which cast eerie shadows across the room. Her injuries suddenly become completely irrelevant. As Talia leaps at Neriah, Ida charges, moving like a freight train across the ravaged catacomb. Chunks of stone in her way simply dissolve into powder the moment she strikes them.
A roar tears free of Ida's throat as she drives her blackened, armored fist at Neriah Parringer's jaw. The impact from the shockwave alone would be enough to shatter bone, and pulverize concrete. The punch itself could tear through part of a Gear.
Venetia's approach is simple, practical, sane. Ida's is none of the above.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has activated a Force Action! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Neriah Parringer with Unbroken Lotus Fist! GS: Burst, Cover, and Quick expired! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Neriah Parringer guards a hit from Tipheria Aredor's Storm Break for 109 hit points! GS: Neriah Parringer has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight! GS: Neriah Parringer guards a hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Unbroken Lotus Fist for 117 hit points! GS: Neriah Parringer has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.
When Ethius tackles into Neriah, he recoils like he just hit a brick wall, staggers in a circle, and catches himself before falling to a kneel. It is not good for one's well-being to bodily ram against a thing that is teeming with Valmar. Fragments of orb scatter around his feet, motes of light harmlessly dancing around him... and he sucks in a breath.
Neriah catches him unawares with a punctuated curse. He weaves back, holding up his left hand to sort of intercept as he steps back. The physical contact is, unto itself, grazing in comparison. Comparison, it should be emphasized - the grazing contact is still enough to throw his left hand up and come just shy of dislocating his shoulder. His balance is forfeit as he spins, facing his back and falling to a kneel from SHOCK. His mind is fog with unlight.
UNKNOWN TIME...
...BUT ALSO JUST NOW?
"Hesiod!!" The word was spit from another shorter than himself. The strike of their fist - covered in a cast...? An exoskeleton? Could have gone through his ribcage were there not open air behind him.
"Hesiod...?" Another gasped, and kept away. Purple, he remembered their colors but scarce else for another shadow loomed.
I tried it the nice way and all it got me was pain! ...He didn't say that. But it was... much like that, to someone else. The intensity of it.
Two figures. Taller. One - a mother? They likened themselves to a mother. He never thought her one. The shape was too vague, for he didn't look at them. "That's not," she was insistent, "you're..." The words blurred. "...there's no need... you're not that." Words that he knew were not easy for either of the two to say. They had no reason to be that... close.
I am not going back to being the helpless victim I used to be! He didn't say that. There was still a likeness to those words - it wasn't those, but it was said with the same anger. The same conviction.
A strange-figured fellow in colorful uniform clothing pleaded. He himself was walking away. He didn't look back. Looking away from something so many were excited for. Looking away from something everyone around him felt he was made for. He shut that door that day.
He insisted on his name. Defiantly. Everything, that name entailed, and where he was going with it...
If it's that or this, then I choose this path every time! He didn't say it like that...
But he knew that would have been his answer.
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.
THE PART WHERE DEADLY VALMAR SORCERY SNAPS ITS FINGERS AND TELLS ONE TO PAY ATTENTION TO THEIR IMMINENT DEMISE
A flash of crimson light from Marivel, her voice trailing, and Ethius looks up with an unfocused, bleary look in his eyes. Up towards the Faces of Valmar rising up to the sky. He blinks, shuts his eyes. Neriah's commentary earlier - how she knew she should've killed him years ago - probably rings true on a lot of peoples' lips. The man has, in-between the big plays such as foiling Mother's final gambit, largely been an inconvenience on average. Very little has ever restrained his behavior, even when it has done great harm to those around him. He helped ruin Ida's academic career in pursuit of something to do with the preserved Metal Demon blood. He jerked around the feelings of Lydia Seren and even manipulated control of her through OS. He has destroyed many priceless things, taken any number of lives, tried to electrocute Neriah herself when she was using her power to deal with a giant death butterfly, and otherwise made attempts to live alongside the people of Lunar and Spira difficult. All for what?
Ethius' only means of defense, he finds, is to just look forward and cover his right arm over his eyes to try and block away the look of it. He doesn't realize now that his survival is because of the machinations of others, doing their part to deflect or overcome the incredible blast of incalculable sorcerous power that could even shame the RAY - once again, a recipient of their kindness where some argue it simply isn't warranted. Concussive forces bring him to his knees. Soul-rending energy washes over him. A decent-sized chunk of rock batters his... right shoulder. Negative power overwhelms. He closes his eyes so he can try to block out that sensory overload, confident in where Neriah stands. Only his left arm responds to the gesticulation he does as he approaches, mouthing the syllables with composed accuracy as he twists those fingers in painful-looking configurations only possible with years of practice and training.
He persists because of some path he walks. Maybe it is a twisted, nonsensical, physically-impossible path to comprehend - but it is a path that exists, that he has chosen, and somewhere along the way this involves being a horrible inconvenience to the Eighth.
Sorcerous lights from his exposed tattoos give away the spellcast as he extends that hand towards her now, capping it off with the spell's name as he opens his eyes.
"Surge Bolt." A pulse of electrical power surges, attempting to punch straight past any defenses it can en route to shocking her. He keeps that gaze level, inscrutible - and once again fails to tell Neriah why he's willing to go through this even when she is magnitudes beyond his reach to deal with.
GS: Ethius Hesiod has activated a Force Action! GS: Ethius Hesiod has attacked Neriah Parringer with Surge Bolt! GS: Ethius Hesiod has completed his action. GS: Neriah Parringer takes a solid hit from Ethius Hesiod's Surge Bolt for 201 hit points! GS: Neriah Parringer has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
She calls them heroes, like it's an insult, but Boudicca is shielded from those harsh words (and more besides) by the sturdy might of Grudiev as Jacqueline invokes his power. "As you have shown!" She calls, to her, in gratitude for her education on these matters. "You are precisely correct, Jacqueline! We shall not yield!"
But is it insulting? Boudicca wonders. And then she wonders: What perspective would lead a woman to call it insulting?
And then there is no time to wonder anything because Tipheria - that woman who helped fight Seymour and tragically that is all Boudicca knows of her, except, it seems, how she will carve the knot in twain - strikes the dark orb and Ethius ensures Neriah cannot respond and LORD BLAZER in his armour does not fall and --
"You," Boudicca says, as annihilation presses down.
Her lips move. There's no more sound but the roaring of power.
Boudicca was standing when it came down. Boudicca isn't standing when it passes.
Boudicca isn't even there when it passes.
Wait - no - there's a ribbon, on the ground. And once those spirits of Valmar are done with their assault, a woman forms around them. Is that how she weaves the ribbons into her braids just so? That is surely cheating.
She still kind of lies there face-down on the ground for a moment though. There's only so much she can cheat in the face of that kind of power. Look, there: she turns her face and sees the sky.
Luckily, there's a crimson aura around her to join the efforts of transformative dust, and the helpful hand of Booster leads Boudicca to push herself standing. "'Warrior'... is it..."
Something bright, behind her eyes. "Ah..."
Forward, forward: she springs forth, tonfa in hand. Three quick strikes to drive Neriah upwards, and one way or the other Boudicca ascends; soon enough she crashes down, a blow from above.
What a story...
GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Neriah Parringer with Cerberus Strike! GS: Seraph Boudicca has launched an attack Link! GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Neriah Parringer with Soaring Blast! GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action. GS: Neriah Parringer takes a solid hit from Seraph Boudicca's Cerberus Strike for 184 hit points! GS: Disrupt! applied to Neriah Parringer! GS: Neriah Parringer has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight! GS: Neriah Parringer takes a solid hit from Seraph Boudicca's Soaring Blast for 84 hit points! GS: Slow! applied to Neriah Parringer! GS: Neriah Parringer has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Neriah Parringer has posed.
What's left behind following the blast is little more than a tattered crater. The entire tell has been blown out, and the catacombs have been reduced to a rubble-filled crater open to the sky. Dust plumes in the air, particles of rock raining down around Neriah like ashfall. Breathing heavily, she lets her hand fall. A few curls stray into her face.
You know what I really regret? she reflects, in the moment she gets. Killing Jay. I really liked Jay.
Then Marivel's voice crackles through the carnage. Neriah clutches her hand into a fist and hisses out a frustrated breath.
A second later, Talia lunges at her and unleashes the light of her wrath.
Winded from leveling basically the entire catacomb, Neriah can't muster the defense she needs. Talia's attack takes her full on and blows her off her feet. Light sears at her and draws blood, and she hurtles through the air. Only instinct gives her the cue to flip and land in an uneasy three-point stance, spitting out blood.
The landing is brief. Jay conjures fire and water, catching Neriah in a calamitous crossfire. The heat and pressure nearly crush her, driving her back to a knee and forcing her to conjure up what little of her shield she can manage to hold up.
Dean and Moor Gault deal with that neatly enough. The eldritch energies can't hold against the power of a Guardian, and Neriah's again driven back, defending herself with one arm and squeezing an eye closed. "Self-righteous," she starts to spit out, before being cut off by Tipheria rushing in and throwing her off her feet. She comes down quicker than expected and manages to not land square on a spear, rolling away sickeningly from the worst of the attack, but comes down bloodied and cut in more places than she'd like. Boudicca's blows only add to the pain, pummeling her enough in midair as to practically juggle her before she hits the ground again.
Ethius gets his final licks in. The blast he calls up throws Neriah back and drops her back to her knee, her defense of shielding herself with her arms no defense at all.
Venetia deals with things in an incredibly direct fashion. Neriah flicks her curls back and prepares a sassy retort.
She gets about as far as "ungh" when Venetia knees her in the gut, folding her up like a card table.
There's a dull thud as Venetia flings Neriah to the ground. The dark-haired woman rolls a couple of feet before pushing to her knees. Her hair hangs in her face, a mess. It's the most pitiful she's looked in a very long time.
It's Ida who comes in to finish the job. The punch she swings at Neriah should be enough to snap her jaw.
It hits Neriah's suddenly-raised right palm. And it
S T O P S
As Neriah rises to her feet, the sense of unsettling energy in what's left of the ruins only grows. The woman's right-hand fingers clench like claws around Ida's fist and hold it in place.
No... not like claws.
With a hideous warping of flesh, Neriah's right hand shifts. Human flesh gives way to about midway down her forearm, blending down to a viciously curved set of demonic claws. The skin is yellow-ochre and scaled like draconic armour, the claws a vicious cobalt blue.
Brushing her curls out of her eyes with her other hand, Neriah lifts her head to lock her gaze on Ida.
If Ida wondered what Knight Blazer saw before, it is her turn to see it. To see SOMETHING gazing THROUGH her consciousness and reading the lines of her soul with a monstrous hunger. Something primally PRESENT, a thing bearable only by its incompleteness.
Neriah, just for a moment, tightens the Claw of Valmar around Ida's fist. The tips of her talons press against metal. Her eyes bore into the naturalist's.
She releases her grip and lets her breath out in a weary rush. Yellowed flesh fades back into human pale as Neriah gathers what's left of her robes around her, almost pulling into herself - and as she does, her body melts into shadow, almost like inky water as it sinks to the ground, puddles and fades away.
Not dead. Not by far. This locus of Valmarian power has been, at least, eliminated, but....
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
They fight back against Neriah. Jacqueline watches with some surprise as Neriah's arm shifts into a claw - no, a Claw - to catch Ida's fist... and then, Neriah melts away. Retreating, presumably.
With Neriah gone, Jacqueline's adrenaline fades away, too, and she very nearly collapses. But, wordlessly, she picks herself up. She has no further words - instead, she just quietly sees to the wounded, looking to patch up anyone who needs it.
They might have stopped Neriah from acquiring a dangerous new ally, but... she still felt defeated. A part of her had hoped that Neriah could be pulled back, but this...
...This felt like a point of no return.
<Pose Tracker> Ethius Hesiod has posed.
In the aftermath of all of it, Ethius clutches his shoulder. He looks a lot more haggard than he is usually ever willing to let on, but sometimes there is a reminder that he is (almost by pure biological technicality) a human being, with all the aches, pains, and foibles that come with it. His footsteps are not very steady, but the way he speaks - that much of Regular Ethius Behavior(tm) survives as intact as it's going to.
"This location is structurally unsound." Ethius reminds. "We must leave." Stating a bit of the obvious, battered and bruised and expended as they are. Putting their expedition experiences together, they should all be able to come up with a way out if their way in proves too compromised to retrace.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida's forward motion grinds to a halt in a momentous clash. Two kinds of blood paint her bared teeth as she focuses everything she has on breaking that guard. More blood drips from her lips. She sees the claw, and knows what it is, but it doesn't matter--she can't let it matter. She can't waver. She can't allow herself to waver--
Neriah's eyes meet Ida's. In that moment, something that is not Neriah looks back. Primal fear races down Ida's spine like an electric arc, her expression changing to one of terror. Even then, she does not waver. The claw tightens. Neriah gives her a subtle hint that she could do far more.
And then she's gone.
Ida's strength leaves her in a great rush. She pitches forwards, barely managing to keep from smacking her head as she lands on the floor.