2021-07-03: The Hunted
- Log: The Hunted
- Cast: Elise Riesdale, Dispellado, Magilou, Venetia Vuong, Marivel Armitage, Seraph Yvain, Dean Stark, Seraph Lanval, Ida Everstead-Rey, Layna Manydays, Dash Caskett, Ines Colina, Seraph Harmaus, Hubert, Ruth Pauling
- Where: Celesti Wastelands
- Date: 7/3/2021
- Summary: Did Hubert mention he's only done this once before? It didn't go well.
<Pose Tracker> Elise Riesdale has posed.
====WHEN WE LAST LEFT OUR HEROES====
Hubert M. Burroughs, owner of Burroughs Mining Company has hired a group of fine Drifters to go invade the Derry Mines and take it back from some 'demons' who have taken over the place, who've even caused a mine collapse that killed many poor workers that hadn't been able to flee. You can definitely trust the timeline he presents. Just look at this handsome man: https://i.imgur.com/adBjJlv.jpg
Those who had questioned him found out he is a businessman typical of the nouveau rich of Guild Galad, having inherited his business from his father, who started it after demand for metal ore skyrocketed with the recent wars and expansions of cities in the Aquvy area. ( ) But with this increasing demand comes a need to meet it, on top of a mountain whose ores have depleted themselves, leading to tougher quotas.
Drifters accompanying Hubert and his two servants saw orange runoff coming from a side entrance, signs that the pumps the company was using to pipe out the water have failed. Once the Domain's boundaries were crossed, roses carpeted the lower parts of the mountain that were visible, the rest obscured by mist. As everyone moved further in, Hubert grew increasingly paranoid and angry, showing signs of the Malevolence that had taken hold in him at some point before.
An oddly nicely furnished elevator came to escort everyone all at that point, and the roses nearby it welcomed them in, hinting that Hubert had been there before with another set of guards, and that you are the 'New Guards'. Going up the elevator, people could see flashes of upper tunnels and new areas being co-opted and rebuildt into living quarters and settlements, with some additions making no sense relative to where the elevator supposedly was, like a stained glass window.
At the top is an open garden palace, sheltered from the elements by a dome of glass panels. There's fountains, birdsong, marble tiled floors, rows of rose bushes, flowers made of semi-precious stone, and in the back, the Rose Queen, sitting on her large golden throne.
<Pose Tracker> Elise Riesdale has posed.
=====RIGHT NOW====
Seraph. Oracle. Schturdark. Styx. Seer. Moor Gault. These words and what they relate to don't seem to draw emotion from the Rose Queen, but she takes them all in, eager to play the part of host.
She raises to her feet, smiling, her golden claws spread wide. "It is so good to be able to welcome you here! My grounds are still in the process of being built, but... do you not agree that this scarred mountain would be the perfect place, Ms. Manydays? A place of death, and ruin. A grave of those who died for one man's gain, a garden of joy and rememberance. A place where roses will bloom...." She drifts off, seeing Magilou's... unhappy expression. "It is for all who are unwelcome. Even witches. Especially, the evil ones, cast aside by their own stories." She gestures to Dash. "There is always a way, a place to be, a kingdom to shelter in."
'I hear that we've met before, or near enough.'
"....? Your face is new to me." Her red gaze centers on Yvain's face. "I... feel sad, looking at you. But a part of me feels happy, as well. Yvain..." She turns her head to look at Dean. "... So this... I see. They have attained their happily ever after, then." She closes her eyes. "I remember her song. The one she played for you. It is..."
"What the hell is this..." Hubert dabs at his neck, in the back of the group. "I get ferried up this mountain, to find some girl playing pretend?! Who are you, to think you can take my property away from me?!"
The show was nearly derailed, but Hubert has helpfully readjusted the trajectory.
Ida reveals her true identity. Elise glances on and smiles, settling back on her seat. "I did promise you an answer to your question, before. Have you figured it out? This is not the first time he has tried to enter. Not too long after he ordered his men to open fire on my subjects..." Her eyes widen, red lips split in a grim smile as she raises from her seat slightly. "He ran away. He abandoned his own guard. Some died, but they will live on within the garden. Others... they realized they had found paradise, and became my subjects. Some of them ran, and I let them. I know they'll come back eventually. Even being near my garden is enough for some to turn, but not everybody. Perhaps, one of you could tell me why? What makes a person a person, and another a hellion?"
Hubert seems stuck in one spot, one wide eye glaring daggers at Ida. ".... You.... I know that name. You came all the way here, just to mock me?! My family may not be as high as yours, but your day will come _soon enough_. The old must make way for a *new* generation of high society!" Spit flies from his lips as he screams at Ida. The two servants back away, slowly, as Hubert grits his teeth, taking cover behind Azoth, who seems friendly, and perhaps hardy.
"Look at him... he shudders. Just how long before he gives in, I wonder? He's fought back so hard against the forces that took root in him. The moment he smelled my roses was the moment he foresaw the coming of his rebirth. Do not worry, I welcome all here to join me. Him, and all of you. Be safe, as my subject. I only ask for you to bend your knee to me." She settles back into her throne. ".... But, I'm not really interested in all of you coming to join, just yet.
"Ah, but you cannot bear to be under the heel of someone else. I wonder, under that fine suit, if you're nothing more than a beast yourself?" Dark gold hair rises from behind her back. "The beast usually becomes a prince, but what becomes of princes who have yet to learn? They _become the beasts_. Hubert Mark Burroughs, _show me the true form of your soul_!!"
Hubert screams, and the glass from the ceiling shatters, falling down--
<Pose Tracker> Dispellado has posed.
I wonder, under that fine suit,
if you're nothing more than a beast yourself?
Hubert Mark Burroughs screams.
Glass from the ceiling shatters, falling down--
--and each shard suspends in a glittering field around the man as he falls to his knees, clutching his head.
It is the last one will see of this face of Hubert Burroughs, before a vortex of bruised blacks and violets blooms around him in a chaotic, concealing swirl, and all that glass is sucked in within an instant.
The howl of mining magnate becomes less a confused thing and more an angry one within that storm. The silhouette of his form almost seems to shrink for a moment -- and then bulges outward, gaining rapidly in mass and size as his voice becomes a great, booming thing.
And as the storm of Malevolence tapers, so too does the sound of Hubert's screaming voice.
What is left is something large. Something glorious. Something overwhelmingly, ostentatiously -gold-. If Hubert Burroughs were to be immortalized in an idealized statue, it might well be this: broad shouldered, immense, and composed entirely of gold in a sleek, rounded art deco styling, the thing that kneels there in Hubert's place looks like a statue brought to life. Everything in its proportions exaggerated, everything in its design beautiful. Gilded, armored plates shift around its dense form as its metal, mustachio'd mouth part to suck in a breath, chest expanding with a groan of metal; as he exhales, steam gushes thickly from his lips and from vents at his joints and between the seams of this new, golden form. At his elbows, grand, gilded mining drills spin with newfound life. It is all designed towards being awe-inspiring, too much so: even the shattered glass has been incorporated into its form, creating stained glass scenery at the Hellion's chest and along its arms and back portraying the many ever-so-benevolent and praiseworthy deeds of the Burroughs Mining Company, too sacrosanct in appearance to be real. It is all so much to prop up a grand image.
All save a pair of strange stag horns that seem to almost rip out from the top of his golden skull, their misshapen and gnarled ugliness utterly at odds with the theme of bold glories his new form so firmly pushes forward.
And with a metallic hiss, slowly the gilded baron rises onto his feet, his eyes opening to a glow of bright, aggrieved red as they turn their solid, baleful, grandiose glare -- first, upon Elise.
And then upon the others. His lips part. And steam gushes from them as he jabs a pointed finger at the would-be Rose Queen.
"ENOUGH."
The single word is booming enough to pain the ears and leave them ringing; his voice is immense and demanding and - perhaps most strangely - seems to reverberate as if it has its own echo, but nothing more than that single word is ever loosed, as if that is all he has the focus to manage, right now, in this state. The message perhaps is clear in how he points at Elise, even while staring at them.
Enough.
Enough games.
Enough delay.
Get rid of her.
By the look in those blazing red eyes - now beginning to leak a scarlet, viscous substance along once-pure gold - violence will happen, soon.
One way, or the other.
DC: Dispellado switches forms to Hubert - The Grand Facade!
<Pose Tracker> Elise Riesdale has posed.
The beast that lay underneath Hubert's form is dwarfs the woman in the golden throne.
She seems impressed. Joyful, even.
Red lips spread in a wide smile.
"If you threaten me, then, I'm afraid, I must take action." She stands to her full height of 5'6", making even her throne dwarf her. She gestures to the group.
"Seeing as your employer is threatening me and yourselves, and as I bear some... responsibility for these events, I shall take it upon myself to pay you for this... transgression. I assure you, my gold will be as real as any pittance he would have paid you. As well, I shall... aid, even."
Her gold-laced claws, looking like cracked alabaster embedded with gold, spread a hand out in offering.
"Kill this beast, and rid this land of his misery forever!"
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
... is she all right? Magilou glances to Dean, sidelong, without much bothering turn her head. She chuffs a breath from her lips, a rueful shade of reassuring smile playing over her lips.
It's a perfectly silent, 'don't worry about it'.
The merry dance of her lips stills, though, as Elise speaks on her gardens. Her smile now is pale and wan, as if she can barely keep up the patience to curve them. "Speak for yourself," she replies, too, too casual. "I make a welcome wherever I go!" Whether the places she goes to consent to welcoming Magilou is, frankly, not her concern, that's their problem.
Still, there's a quiet to her which was not before; she has not unfolded her arms, in front of her like a barricade. Her eyes fall on Hubert, and they narrow, a long blink of her eyes.
... yeah. She thought so.
Magilou looks to Elise, again, a small smirk playing at her lips as she lists the man's crimes. "How much you can bear," she answers her, and enigmatic as it is, she's not lying. She has just given Elise a perfectly workable definition of the distinction between man and Hellion.
A small jerk of her head, to Hubert, as he splutters to Ida. Elise's sweet offerings contrast so sharply with his fine, sculptured gold.
Magilou watches him change, and doesn't flinch. She doesn't even seem particularly sympathetic.
"He's hit his limit," she comments, finally.
And then she looks back, to Lanval.
"The bandaid's ripped off. You can take it from here, right, 'Oracle'?"
Her tone isn't precisely mocking, but neither does it have any shred of the seriousness of this situation. Magilou watches Elise stand up, and her hands unfold, one coming to rest on her hip as it cocks aside. "That's real sweet and all," she agrees, lightly, and for a moment perhaps it might even seem like she'd kneel.
"But," when her other hand lifts up, there's a shikigami floating there, beside it. "Don't you know what they say? Misery loves company!" A Seraphic glyph, red as flame lights around her, as she asks, chipper: "Ready to feel the burn? Fire Mine!"
And just like that, there's an orb of red flame in front of Elise, stopping her from venturing away from her throne towards the other Hellion.
GS: Magilou has attacked Elise Riesdale with Fire Mine! GS: Magilou has gained 2 Combo! GS: Magilou has completed her action. GS: Gamble: Moderate! Elise Riesdale guards a hit from Magilou's Fire Mine for 48 hit points! GS: Drowsy applied to Elise Riesdale! GS: Elise Riesdale activates Arcane Font!
<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.
Venetia Vuong has reached a level of rage that is, like the roiling pressurized stone heated to the point of liquification within Filgaia's magnetic core zones, *metastable*. She tilts her head back to look down her nose at the Rose Queen but she can hear what she is *saying*. She does not *care for it*, but after approximately six years of higher-level learning, Venetia can - RESENTFULLY - listen to things she DOESN'T WANT TO HEAR.
The Rose Queen is expressing her vision. There was an affray. People died. She brought them into this zone of malevolence and now they still exist in some form, not perhaps unlike that other zone of Malevolence. I wonder how much of this shit is out there, Venetia thinks, even as the queen keeps speaking. And then speaks about...
Hubert. Venetia's head turns slightly, to take him in as he is addressed. The aggression, Venetia thinks. This level of disdain. They have some kind of a connection. If she was furious enough to think this about a near-stranger, Venetia reasons, she wouldn't have built such a pretty posey garden downstairs.
Hubert. Something's happening. The storm rises; the glass breaks; the man rises, gold and gorgeous, a massive monolith. If he were an icon of worship, it would make sense; he could be a figure of the spirit of the age, or the hopes of it, Venetia thinks, even as she feels parts of her skin crawl backwards. But then he commands them -
- as does the queen -
Venetia pulls out her revolver from its holster. There's only one way to settle this.
BANG
The shot is up at the sky (slightly off set). In the brief cloud of shock and gun-smoke, Venetia speaks thus: "You're a pair of maniacs. If you were only going to hurt each other, I'd leave you to it. But do you know what, this mountain isn't your plaything, nor are those people, nor, for that matter, are the GGGGUUUAAAARRRRDDDS," this one drawn out towards the Queen, "because we're a bunch of PROFESSIONALS. Maybe your storybook lives don't have any room for people with skills, with abilities, with *talents* giving an honest day's work for an honest night's pay, but I suggest you take this opportunity to LEARN!"
The gun is twisted round and put back into the holster. Other hand, into the Crest pouch! Out comes a bronze Crest Graph.
"I assume you have a plan," Venetia asides to Ida, even as she raises the graph up with due reverence, the metal gleaming from its subtle inlays before a half-dozen clusters of agglomerated material streak outwards, rupturing from internal pressure into showers of jagged shards on their way towards the Queen.
GS: Venetia Vuong has attacked Elise Riesdale with GeodeSheller! GS: Venetia Vuong has gained 1 Combo! GS: Venetia Vuong has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
"Well to be honest, I don't have anything against hellions provided they can respect the autonomy of others and won't damage the land." Marivel says as she does. "Though I suppose the autonomy of people who had tried to kill you, well, in the laws of the wasteland self defense can take many forms."
It might be more dramatic if it wasn't coming out of the squeaky voice of a bat that flies in from the ceiling, transforming into her more elf-like form upon touching down upon the ground.
"The selfish man always finds a way to become a warning to others."
She considers for a moment and snaps her fingers, "Filgaia's truly in dire straits if it requires a kingdom of roses that feed off blood."
"Is this how you really think of yourself, Hugh? Or can a soul not find it in itself to lie when worn upon its sleeve? With lies so self evident blown into your hide, you might as well be telling the truth."
She looks towads Magilou.
"Oh heeeeeeeeeey Magilou," Marivel says in a tone that's similar to 'heeeeeey girlfriend'. "How fancy it is to see you here. Have you enjoyed your tour of this fine planet? Do the people here marvel at your magic and/or mystery? And how is Bienfu? It feels like it's been an age. It hasn't, has it? Did I oversleep again?"
She then shrugs both shoulders as she suddenly flings Guillotine towards Hubert's chest--the blade vanishing midflight only to reappear, striking at one of those glass depictions of his company's great works.
"Oh and Venetia's here. Venetia, I'm going to hug you once we're done here if this creature doesn't destroy my body so you best prepare yourself!"
GS: Marivel Armitage has attacked Hubert with Enhanced Aport Riposte! GS: Marivel Armitage has completed her action. GS: Hubert guards a hit from Marivel Armitage's Enhanced Aport Riposte for 84 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Yvain has posed.
"A happily ever after would suggest the story is over, Your Majesty. I insist it isn't."
Her song--the one played. What is it? Yvain doesn't know, though he responds boldly enough. And then, he listens to Elise explain about Ida... and about Hubert. She watches him as he answers, and takes a step towards Ida when Hubert rounds on her. "Careful," he warns, but then--
Then, the Rose Queen acts, and Yvain watches Hubert change. It does feel different, having done it once himself now, to watch a Hellion born. But he recognizes when a manipulation has occured, and he sees it in Elise, encouraging them now to kill him. He narrows his eyes. "..." Magilou asks if the Oracle can take it, and Yvain looks to Lanval. "We'll be counting on you," he says, and walks up after Magilou, moving to stand beside her. "...I have no interest in bowing down. You have more than some responsibility... And I'll make sure you own up to it."
Yvain extends a hand and Seraphic light bursts into being, a sudden surge of flame bursting from the ground hot enough to be magma at her feet, and exploding through the lovely ground and flowers alike.
"Magilou. ...Really, that joke is older than I am."
GS: Seraph Yvain has attacked Elise Riesdale with Eruption! GS: Seraph Yvain has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Yvain has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
While Magilou doesn't say anything outright to Dean's concern, she does give him a blase little smile. Dean's concern doesn't fade, but... well, it's true this isn't the best time for this. He nods once, meeting her eyes, and focuses back on what's in front of them.
The so-called Rose Queen looks at Dean and murmurs something about a happy ending, of someone who played a song. Dean doesn't know Amaranth well--or, really, at all--but he does remember the song she played on that flute, and of course Yvain regaining himself before he could've been lost forever is a happy ending, but Yvain has his own say on the matter. Dean scowls when Hubert continues to be a Hubert and show no remorse or sadness for the lives lost in this mine. When Hubert fully Hellions out, becoming a huge and ostentatious statue of gold... Dean would like to be surprised, but he really isn't. He knows from experience that Hellions aren't necessarily bad people, but they do experience a lot of emotional tumult, and Hubert wasn't really on an even keel up 'til now. However...
Dean nods firmly to Azoth behind him, as the servants sneak around to hide behind the robots. "Take care of them!" He looks over at Ida, Lanval, and Layna. "You guys take care of Hubert--I'll keep this Rose Queen lady off your backs!" Then he charges into battle against the strange Hellion, swinging his combat rods at her in an attempt to keep her back. They superheat for an instant, and if they strike, they'll leave some nasty burns.
"I don't care about his gold *or* yours! I came here to stop people from getting hurt! And that Hubert guy might be a scumbag, but we're not here to kill anybody!" he shouts at her. (Well, 'we' as in his fellow Seers and the Oracle of Water. Probably there are plenty of others in the group who would be happy to off him.) "So you need to stop, lady! You can't just transform people into Hellions because you feel like it!"
He'll leave the actual explanation of what Hellions are to someone else. Of course, depending on how things go, he might have to do that anyway, but *for now* he leaves explanations to someone else.
GS: Elise Riesdale takes a glancing hit from Seraph Yvain's Eruption for 73 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Elise Riesdale gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Poison applied to Elise Riesdale! GS: Elise Riesdale activates Evade bonus and Arcane Font! GS: Dean Stark spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Dean Stark has attacked Elise Riesdale with Burning Magazine! GS: Dean Stark has completed his action. GS: Elise Riesdale takes a solid hit from Venetia Vuong's GeodeSheller for 141 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Elise Riesdale gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Cripple applied to Elise Riesdale! GS: Charge!! You gain 40 FP! GS: Elise Riesdale activates Arcane Font!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
A transformation happens - and Lanval remains seated for it, both eyes open half-lidded as he watches the swelling flows of rage, conceit, and selfishness. The 'ENOUGH' flows around him, hair and beard swishing and swaying like a ripple of water that nonetheless refuses to allow the sound to travel too far against his own spiritual strength (and the benefit of a fresh Vessel besides).
A command is given by the newly transformed antler-adorning AU-clad Adonis, in which Lanval turns to the witch who addresses him.
Lanval gives a nod to Magilou. "Yep! We're up," he says while turning to Layna with a gentle smile. Even here, in this place of tension, the ambient cheer (and, uh, all the water) hasn't completely left him. Like Magilou, he retains that element of emotional distance between himself and Hubert - in his case, more that it is necessary as a baseline when you are the conduit between a Guardian's power and a Seer.
"Our Domain Master ish ashkin' fer ush ta help deal with a Hellion they jusht made," Lanval says to the gathered around the time he assumes sound is going to return to their ears as he rises. (It's an educated guess, mortal senses tend to be linear and touchy and he tries to keep that in mind.) "Ain't never heard of that before, but... if we're gonna shave 'em from themshelvesh... now'sh the time."
A newly transformed Hellion, and in the middle of a Domain at that, is going to ride that power high off the cliff and right into the face of the next - first, they need to hit those brakes by force and get that man's hearts and feelings to slow down.
He'll pipe in with his own thoughts and feelings once he feels they might have crested that point of Malevolence-fueled excitement where he might get some sense of self back - if it does. It's never a guarantee.
"Hey," Lanval makes an aside to Ines, "I know ya been through rough." He's seen the Beastwoman at some of her most emotionally vulnerable considering what happened to her family, and Saint Centour - and her vocation besides, as Fox Company itself tends to go on the rougher side of things with its work.
"Hubert ain't a great guy. That much, ain't no one gonna argue." Lanval parts one hand from the drinking gourd and holds it up towards Ines - not for her to take hold of, but as a conduit for a protective spell to give to her, a Seraphic Arte glyph underneath him.
Thoughts drift, for a moment. Hubert reminds him of someone - long, long ago. But that itme was a long, long time ago. He recenters his focus before it drifts too far into dangerous territory for an opening, looking to Ines once again as he completes the incantation and enriches her with the White aspects of Althenian Water. Soothing, reinvigorating...
"He'sh gonna need a lotta help." Beat. "But firsht, beatin' shome of that arrogance right outta him'll be a great firsht shtep."
GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked Ines Colina with Liquid Courage! GS: Seraph Lanval has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
"That's quite the ideal," says Ida, her voice soft and reflective. She glances at Yvain, then Hubert--and when she turns back to Elise, her lips tighten into a thin little line.
Hubert screams at her. Ida takes his abuse without flinching--rather than shrink away, she shakes her head, her expression twisting into something halfway between anger and pity. She can't quite muster up sympathy yet, much less empathy. "I came here because I felt, in my heart, that you had much to answer for. I was right."
Ida steps away from Hubert. She can sense the Malevolence boiling within him--it could spill over at any moment, engulfing him, changing him. Ida's mind flashes back to her own, agonizing transformation--how her body ripped itself apart, unraveling into shreds of flesh and shards of bone. The brief nothingness she felt before she wove herself anew.
And then it happens.
The shockwave of Malevolence blows Ida's hat off, and sends her the tail of her trenchcoat whipping back and forth behind her. Ida raises an arm to shield her brow, Hyadean tissue slicking out from her sleeves to form armored exoskeletal gauntlets. She doesn't look away. She cannot look away. The young magnate's transformation is glorious and terrible to behold, and all the emotion boiling from it is achingly familiar.
He's hit his limit, Magilou says, and Ida cannot think of a better way to describe what's happening.
Ida plants a foot on the floor, sucks in a deep breath, lets it out. Malevolence scratches against her brain, whispering that you're just like him, you have no right to pass judgment, you arrogant, idiot child.
So. Who's going to die today?
Ida looks between the Rose Queen and the transformed Hubert, each making their own demands. "No." It's a single word, spoken without rage, but it carries as thunder. "#-1 FUNCTION (ANSI) EXPECTS 2 ARGUMENTS BUT GOT 1 Ida says, to Elise. Not to murder them." She turns, gestures to the newly-born Hellion.
"Come," she says, to Hubert. "Show me your wounded, blackened heart, and I will take it--all of it." She glances back to Venetia, who asks as she has a plan. "Yes," she says. "But focus. Remember--inner conflict is how it gets you. Stay close to Dean, he'll keep you safe." In more ways than one. Ida trusts him with her life.
Ida surges forwards, her body flowing into a martial form as she engages the transformed magnate. She starts circling him, hands twisting through circular gestures, palms open. She starts to strike at him, testing his defenses--seeing what he can do.
"And cathartic," she adds, to Lanval, as she drives an open palm towards Hubert's stomach.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
"That's quite the ideal," says Ida, her voice soft and reflective. She glances at Yvain, then Hubert--and when she turns back to Elise, her lips tighten into a thin little line.
Hubert screams at her. Ida takes his abuse without flinching--rather than shrink away, she shakes her head, her expression twisting into something halfway between anger and pity. She can't quite muster up sympathy yet, much less empathy. "I came here because I felt, in my heart, that you had much to answer for. I was right."
Ida steps away from Hubert. She can sense the Malevolence boiling within him--it could spill over at any moment, engulfing him, changing him. Ida's mind flashes back to her own, agonizing transformation--how her body ripped itself apart, unraveling into shreds of flesh and shards of bone. The brief nothingness she felt before she wove herself anew.
And then it happens.
The shockwave of Malevolence blows Ida's hat off, and sends her the tail of her trenchcoat whipping back and forth behind her. Ida raises an arm to shield her brow, Hyadean tissue slicking out from her sleeves to form armored exoskeletal gauntlets. She doesn't look away. She cannot look away. The young magnate's transformation is glorious and terrible to behold, and all the emotion boiling from it is achingly familiar.
He's hit his limit, Magilou says, and Ida cannot think of a better way to describe what's happening.
Ida plants a foot on the floor, sucks in a deep breath, lets it out. Malevolence scratches against her brain, whispering that you're just like him, you have no right to pass judgment, you arrogant, idiot child.
So. Who's going to die today?
Ida looks between the Rose Queen and the transformed Hubert, each making their own demands. "No." It's a single word, spoken without rage, but it carries as thunder. "I swore to aid those who suffered as I once suffered, Ida says, to Elise. Not to murder them." She turns, gestures to the newly-born Hellion.
"Come," she says, to Hubert. "Show me your wounded, blackened heart, and I will take it--all of it." She glances back to Venetia, who asks as she has a plan. "Yes," she says. "But focus. Remember--inner conflict is how it gets you. Stay close to Dean, he'll keep you safe." In more ways than one. Ida trusts him with her life.
Ida surges forwards, her body flowing into a martial form as she engages the transformed magnate. She starts circling him, hands twisting through circular gestures, palms open. She starts to strike at him, testing his defenses--seeing what he can do.
"And cathartic," she adds, to Lanval, as she drives an open palm towards Hubert's stomach.
GS: Ines Colina accepts Seraph Lanval's Liquid Courage for 0 hit points! GS: Quick and Shield applied to Ines Colina! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Hubert with Water Dragon Form - Wave and Ripple Stance! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey assumes the Stoic stance! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Hubert guards a hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Water Dragon Form - Wave and Ripple Stance for 49 hit points! GS: Hubert activates Power Burst!
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.
"I'll admit, it's a pretty nice place. You're got yourself a fancy little set-up here." Layna admits with a shrug. "...It's just a shame that this whole thing stinks. Sorry, 'Your Highness', but setting yourself up as queen... just seems a little self-serving, aye? Makes me wonder what you're really after."
She shrugs, then, as she asks what makes a person a person and a Hellion a Hellion.
"Good question! Unfortunately, I'm not so good at the explaining part, aye? Basically, it all boils down to what's going on inside. So what's your story, Your Highness?" Layna asks. "'Course, Hellions are still people. ...I mean, I guess except for the ones that came from rocks and other stuff, but then again I haven't exactly sat down to have a chat with them, so..."
She shakes her head.
"...I'm digressing." She concludes.
Soon enough, though, things get worse as Hubert begins to turn with a scream. And then, he transforms as the Malevolence overtakes him. Layna grimaces, cursing under her breath. This situation is bad... but she has to admit, he does has a have a certain style she can't help but appreciate.
"...Damn it, I knew it was a bad idea to bring him here, but I didn't think he was this bad already." She says, shaking her head before glancing toward Lanval. "Guess we should've spritzed him before we got in here, huh...? Well, too late now. We're gonna have to do this the hard way."
And then, Hubert speaks one word. ENOUGH. It's loud enough to make Layna's ears ring. Her eyebrow twitches. She frowns, deeply, as Hubert points at Elise... and then as Elise gives an order in turn.
Layna raises a finger, looking very unamused.
"Okay, first of all? I am done taking orders today. I'm Captain Layna Manydays, dammit, and I take orders from no one! Secondly - I have been wanting to sock this guy in the teeth since I first saw him and I'm gonna do that, but not for you, and I'm not gonna kill him. We're putting him back, and then after him, you're next." With that said, Layna cracks her knuckles, nodding Dean's way. "On it, lad - you stay safe over there, aye? Just holler if you need us!"
And after that, she nods toward Lanval.
"Aye, this is a first, ain't it?" She grins, then, as he says they'll have to beat some of the arrogance out of Hubert. "See? This is why we get along so great, lad, you really know how to speak my language!"
With that Layna charges Hubert down, her right hand glowing red. She thrusts it toward his chest... but it isn't a strike aimed for the body. It's aimed for something else, something immaterial - to steal away some of his power and add it to her own.
GS: Layna Manydays has attacked Hubert with Plunder Power! GS: Layna Manydays has gained 1 Combo! GS: Layna Manydays has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Dash Caskett has posed.
So it looks like one Hellion ones to attack the other. Or perhaps own them? Its difficult to discern. The point is the woman on the throne is crazy. While some party members split off to help Hubert, the target, others will need to distract the Rose Queen. "I can offer up some support fire!" A pause as the Bega Buster is primed for firing. "I don't much liek the idea of playign the part of a guard! As much as that might amuse you, there are others who would have better things to do!"
A gesture ot the strange plants that occupy the place. "Why can't you just grow guards? You got plenty of power over plantlife it looks like! Why do you want people?"
The boy takes aim. "You know what? Doesn't matter. I'm not the best at convincing people of what to, or not to do. But at least I can give some incentive to stop!"
A trio of superheated plasma bolts are sent flying forward, in lieu of more words!
"A look to those who remain nearby. "So, plan of action? Just keep shooting? Or is there a specific thing we need to do? You know, like a ritual, or a spell or something?"
GS: Dash Caskett has attacked Elise Riesdale with Buster Salvo! GS: Dash Caskett has gained 1 Combo! GS: Dash Caskett has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Ines Colina has posed.
The screaming causes Ines to rapidly to Hubert, only to back away in horror as the transformation begins. She's never seen a human become a Hellion before, and it's enough to strike terror into an unprepared heart.
Especially when you've seen the results of that before, albeit from a different source.
The towering gold statue is not as terrifying as all that, but angear and fear well up inside, and her eyes shoot to the Rose Queen, full of hate. "You're a real piece of work," She growls, but right now she's in closer proximity to Hubert- and Venetia seems to say a lot of what she needs to say. They're both callous, selfish monsters, but..
"That'd just be bad for my reputation," Ines responds to Elise, "backstabbing an employer who only mostly deserves it." But she's still squaring off against Hubert. She looks to Ida. "Clue me in, does this work like with him?" She jerks a thumb to Yvain. "Weaken and then Lanval does... whatever?" She's guessing that's what Ida will want to do- even if Ines is not sure she agrees. Despite what she said, maybe this is a chance to kill off a robber baron- until Lanval steps in. He's seen what happened, and she gives a grim nod. "...Right. Beat the arrogance out of him. I can do that."
She needed a reminder. She hated most of her hometown, too. But no one deserves what happened to St Centour.
"Alright, big guy! Time for a lesson in metallurgy! You want something that'll take a beating, sometimes cheaper is better." She throws her fist out to the side. "Hand of metal, smash! Iron Haymaker!" Her right hand becomes encased in- or maybe is- metal, and she hurls an aggressive haymaker straight for Hubert's midsection. "Take it from a blacksmith's daughter, gold's real soft."
GS: Ines Colina has attacked Hubert with Iron Haymaker! GS: Ines Colina has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ines Colina has completed her action. GS: Hubert guards a hit from Layna Manydays's Plunder Power for 0 hit points! GS: Weaken applied to Hubert! GS: Mighty applied to Layna Manydays! GS: Hubert activates Power Burst! GS: Hubert guards a hit from Ines Colina's Iron Haymaker for 44 hit points! GS: Shield applied to Ines Colina! GS: Hubert activates Power Burst! GS: Elise Riesdale takes a solid hit from Dean Stark's Burning Magazine for 134 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Elise Riesdale gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Poison applied to Elise Riesdale! GS: Elise Riesdale takes a glancing hit from Dash Caskett's Buster Salvo for 59 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Elise Riesdale gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
Glass rains down in a glittering array, sparkling in the light.
It's beautiful in its own right -- deadly, but beautiful.
The same could be said of the force that takes him. The truth is a deadly thing, after all. All sharp edges, sparkling with its brilliance. He can feel its pressure even at this distance (he is in a Domain, after all) and it does not relent, especially not now.
This is the truth.
This is that man's true form.
"Magnificent," remarks Harmaus, yellow eyes widened as he watches as Hubert changes. His pulse -- or rather the imitation thereof -- quickens. Before, he hadn't been able to see this part.
Not since he had received his revelation. Even within the Baskar Village, he had been unable to bear witness to such glory.
"Ah, this is what it becomes," the Seraph rumbles, to the rear of those standing against the corrupt mine-owner and would-be queen alike. He remains seated on the tiled path leading up towards the throne from the elevator, simply watching attentively from the back.
"It wonders me what others become? But not enough, yet."
The power in this place is not able to simply transform everyone who has stepped into it. And though a part of him thrills at at the idea of it...
He is not willing to give into it and become what he ought to be. Not just yet. More understanding is needed.
<Pose Tracker> Hubert has posed.
He points. He waits. He experts.
Reared back, shoulders squared, Hubert's resplendent form is presented like someone so used to getting what they want that it should simply be matter of course. The authoritative splendor behind his new, Hellionized form just serves to underscore this fact, making what was once the (slightly more) quiet part loud of his bearing.
Exuding a power and authority that is much, much too loud to be real or true.
Some peel off to attack the Rose Queen. That they offer rationale besides Hubert's compensation does not seem to register to the Hellion, who only nods in a way that suggests this is simply the only appropriate response.
Some, however, do not, and it is towards them that the magnificent magnate's attention turns. That bright scarlet has oozed halfway down high, golden cheekbones (or whatever counts for them on such a sculpted face as this); a split strand of the strange substance has begun to puddle at his exaggeratedly handlebar mustache, and it begins to gather at one sharpened tip when his head cocks to the right, to stare at those who linger with a look of what must be purest bewilderment.
"GO," is intoned, another simple phrase, as if perhaps they just did not understand him. But they stay. And more than that... he can sense that hostile intent.
And for however difficult it is for him to speak right now, he can understand others.
Especially when they abruptly appear bursting forth from the form of a simple bat out of nowhere. That makes the grand sight of Hubert the golden idol take a single step back in surprise. He's a new Hellion. People don't just transform into sassy bats and elves where he comes from.
But there is still one salient point he focuses on here:
They defy him.
That gold mustache would bristle, if it could.
"... HOW DARE..."
It's the last, booming thought that Hubert manages before Marivel, Ines and Ida are upon him. Guillotine's blade is met by the sharp pivot of that golden idol's armored form as he snaps a forearm up to intercept it. Blade screams across the stained glass plating its way along that limb, shattering colorful shards and ruining a segment of toiling miners from the tableau. Ida and Ines will find their blows ringing strangely harmonious sounds off that gold armor; gold is soft, but whatever this is seems built to weather abuse; Ines' haymaker dents in that armored midsection, only to find it snapping back into place. And Ida's blows stagger him with each metallic ring... but those defenses hold strong, for the moment. Impervious, imperious.
But both of them might also note a certain lack of substance beneath the surface. The way the metal rings when they strike it.
Like the interior is hollow.
And it is as Ines and Ida begin to strike at him, that he rears back, one massive, sculpted hand curling finger-by-finger towards a fist.
And he _swings_.
Hubert is not a fighter. And Hellionization does not impart technique or style or understanding of how combat works. His attack is simple, and obvious. A straight punch hurled like a bludgeon.
But what it brings with it is power. Tremendous, overwhelming power.
He rears back. He swings. And there is the sound of a piston hammering into place as he looks to ram that limb into and through Ida, Ines, and -past- them -- straight towards Marivel. Steam gushes from him as if jetting him forward; the pure, towering force behind that blow is enough to send violent winds gushing outward around him that will blow aside anyone caught in their path, even if the punch itself cannot land its mark. Debris EXPLODES violently all around him as his flying assault sends him, ultimately, -slamming- into the ground from sheer momentum, with such force that it craters beneath him.
And it is there that Layna Manydays finds her mark, even as something glowing and radiant blossoms from his fist planted into the earth. The pirate's glowing hand touches his chest. She takes his strength. Infuses it in hers.
But it doesn't feel natural. It doesn't feel real. Somehow artificial and empty... like...
"YOU. HAVE RUINED. EVERYTHING!"
And with that bellowing boom, golden energy from Hubert's planted fist SHUNTS into the ground. Gilded veins blossom out all around him, bursting with molten gold that spirals in a forceful wave out towards Layna, towards Lanval...
... and towards Elise.
And if any of that liquefied, glowing golden substance collides with them, it will sink its avaricious heat down into the very soul of them.
Tainting them with golden, feverish, toxin that will burn all the way down to the core.
GS: Hubert has attacked Marivel Armitage with Gilded Fist! GS: Hubert has gained 1 Combo! GS: Hubert has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Gilded Fist! GS: Hubert has gained 1 Combo! GS: Hubert has attacked Ines Colina with Gilded Fist! GS: Hubert has gained 1 Combo! GS: Hubert spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Hubert has attacked Seraph Lanval with Midas Touch! GS: Hubert spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Hubert has attacked Layna Manydays with Midas Touch! GS: Hubert has completed their action. GS: Hubert spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Hubert has attacked Elise Riesdale with Midas Touch! GS: Elise Riesdale takes a glancing hit from Hubert's Midas Touch for 60 hit points! GS: Disease and Poison applied to Elise Riesdale! GS: Elise Riesdale activates Evade bonus! GS: Hubert has completed their action. GS: Layna Manydays takes a glancing hit from Hubert's Midas Touch for 58 hit points! GS: Disease and Poison applied to Layna Manydays! GS: Layna Manydays activates Evade bonus! GS: Seraph Lanval takes a solid hit from Hubert's Midas Touch for 111 hit points! GS: Disease and Poison applied to Seraph Lanval! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a glancing hit from Hubert's Gilded Fist for 75 hit points! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey activates Power Burst! GS: Marivel Armitage guards a hit from Hubert's Gilded Fist for 97 hit points! GS: Marivel Armitage activates Guard bonus! GS: Ines Colina guards a hit from Hubert's Gilded Fist for 97 hit points! GS: Ines Colina activates Guard bonus!
<Pose Tracker> Elise Riesdale has posed.
'How much you can bear.'
Iridescent shielding flares as Magilou's fire orb shoots towards the Rose Queen, a matrix of hexagons breaking down some of the blast as it passes through as Elise shifts to the left. It stops Elise from venturing forward, giving the others time to react. "My offer shall stand regardless, witch. But prick me, and I will prick you back!" A ruby dagger is flung with one hand, straight towards Magilou.
Venetia's treatment is not as gentle. The Stygian Sorceresswill find Elise *shifting* towards her, as if the queen's sudden rage was not enough to warrant a simple, slow glide, all the better for Venetia's shards to embed themselves into Elise's skin. Red pupils zero in on Venetia, with those claws come bearing down towards her throat, seeking a different sort of crimson from under that half veil. ".... Do you think I do not cry!? No one _cared_ about them. They gave every bit of their sweat to this mountain, and for _what_? So some bastard could step over their bodies!"
Do the roses need that blood? Would it take Elise's, instead? Whatever spills on the pristine tiled ground is wasted, the roses acting as neutral observers in this passion play. A spell of prismatic white goes out, cast towards Ida, from Elise's staff. "Tear him down."
Yvain's flame forces Elise to stop her attack on Venetia, that shielding coming up again as she flinches and draws backwards. "... So be it. If I must bare your blades!"
Dean's rods and earnest words drive her back a step further, as does Dash's attack. "... Gh... I admit, some of this *is* a pleasant surprise... My mistake was thinking you'd be like his former guards... Perhaps, the hearts of Drifters aren't as black as I was expecting, be it reputation, calling, or pride."
She hesitates, and raises a hand. "But all your pure hearts offer nothing to the dead. You're here to change this man, and not kill him? Let him get away, so he can do this again and again? He will _never learn_!"
The fact that she shouts this, as Hubert screams that she(?) has ruined everything, offers some meaning on its own.
Suddenly, fanciful huntsmen, dressed in colorful capes made of paper and smoke, curl around in the air, attacking Yvain, Dash, and Dean.
"And if no jaws will tear into this transformed stag...." A prismatic beam, in the shape of a plus or cross, fires from the air over Elise, straight at Hubert. "..... I will do it myself!"
GS: Elise Riesdale spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Magilou with Schneewittchen! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Venetia Vuong with Streublumen! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Seraph Yvain with Die zwolf Jager! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Dash Caskett with Die zwolf Jager! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Dean Stark with Die zwolf Jager! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Hubert with Lilienkreuz! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Vergoldete Lilie! GS: Elise Riesdale has gained 1 Combo! GS: Elise Riesdale takes 22 damage from Poison! GS: Elise Riesdale has completed her action. GS: Venetia Vuong critically guards Elise Riesdale's Streublumen for 23 hit points! GS: ROU|LET|TE: Low! Seraph Yvain takes a glancing hit from Elise Riesdale's Die zwolf Jager for 30 hit points! GS: Seraph Yvain activates Arcane Font! GS: Hubert guards a hit from Elise Riesdale's Lilienkreuz for 84 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Magilou takes a solid hit from Elise Riesdale's Schneewittchen for 214 hit points! GS: Mute and Poison applied to Magilou! GS: ROU|LET|TE: Catastrophic! Dash Caskett fully evades Elise Riesdale's Die zwolf Jager for 0 hit points! GS: Dash Caskett activates Evade bonus!
<Pose Tracker> Elise Riesdale has posed.
Elise Riesdale magilou = but I already had drowsy elsewhere SO
GS: ROU|LET|TE: Severe! Dean Stark critically guards Elise Riesdale's Die zwolf Jager for 39 hit points! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey accepts Elise Riesdale's Vergoldete Lilie for 0 hit points! GS: Pray grants a random effect! Hyper and Lock State applied to Ida Everstead-Rey!
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
Dean smiles Layna's way, both as she gives Elise the Malevolence 101 and as she acknowledge that she'll handle things on their end, and gives her a thumbs-up. "Will do!" To Venetia, hearing her conversation with Ida, he gives a firm nod. "Leave it to me!" he promises, as much a response to Ida as it is a reassurance to Venetia. Lanval's meanwhile already focused on Hubert, and that's both fine and great. Dean focuses on Elise and those fighting her alongside him.
"Just keep shooting for now!" Dean tells Dash. "We've got to soften 'em up first before we can purify them!" 'Weaken and then Lanval does whatever,' in other words--Ines has the right of it. Of course, the Hellions also have to *want* to be purified, but that's a step for later, and right now Dean isn't thinking of it. He's not really the planning sort, and when he *does* make plans, those plans are literally 'bust in on a monowheel and shoot everything in sight.'
Meanwhile, Hubert over there is screaming REAL LOUD about how they've ruined everything, but Dean doesn't feel all that sorry for him and doesn't have a lot of attention to spare for him besides.
"There're all kinds of Drifters," Dean agrees, "just like there's all kinds of Hellions. I don't agree with the kind of justice you're trying to get, but you *are* trying to get justice for those poor people who died here, aren't you? You're definitely a better person than he is. But that still doesn't mean you can do whatever you want! It doesn't make it okay for you to *kill* whoever you want!"
He braces himself against the huntsman-shaped projectiles, rods crossed in front of himself; the impact forces his heels back an inch, but he himself doesn't give, and the attack breaks around him. Dean sweeps his paired weapons to either side of himself and surges forward again. The brief superheating has cooled as quickly as it came on, but this time he whallops her with more insistent blows, aimed for Elise's more vulnerable sides.
"And if you're right, and he *does* go right back to being a creep after we purify him..." he shouts, right before swinging Twin Fenrir in for a decisive *crack*, "we'll take responsibility and deal with it then!"
After all, this isn't the first murderer Dean would let go free. He knows what'll happen if they don't mend their ways.
GS: Dean Stark has attacked Elise Riesdale with Assault Battery! GS: Dean Stark has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
"I'm told I bleed," Magilou responds, mildly, as she turns away from the dagger. It impacts her arm, instead of her centre, quite solidly, quite deep. She was told correctly, red as roses underneath her separated sleeves. This isn't the first time she's dealt with plant-based poisons, of late. Her eyes blink, slowly; there is a little slump to her stance. "Ah," she breathes, smiling. "I must decline." A sweet dream in a world which isn't so... what a nightmare.
She puts her energy into the new arrivals, instead. "Guara Bobelo is the best town I've been in for the last hundred years," Magilou smiles, to Marivel, a shade wan. "The people here are quite impressed by my magics, and Bienfu is right here. You'll forgive him if he doesn't care to come out right now. The air is about to get rather heated." Is... is that dig at Yvain?! Magilou, you use fire magic too!
Speaking of: "Of course!" Magilou says, with painted cheer, to Yvain. "Who do you think first spread it around!?" Is... is Magilou THAT OLD? Really, on a related note, is she that happy? She didn't look happy, a few moments prior. Her newfound zest doesn't seem, on the surface, to be fake, but...
Well, Yvain's known her long enough to see her get people through a few illusions over the centuries.
Of course, there are always those people who don't survive their eyes and hearts lying to them. Hubert isn't angry at her, evidenced by that nod; regardless he is quite angry at SOME of them, and Magilou kind of goes quiet every time his voice battles out to boom across the battlefield, in much the same way one doesn't try to talk over a cannon. Has she given the hard job to the Oracles and Seers and associated friends? ... maybe not.
"No, listen to her," she finally replies, to Dash, a little less cheerful. "It seems her motivation was truly to spread her happiness. She hasn't shattered her pretty lie to reveal the mess we're in, after all. Ah, but au contraire," Magilou lifts a finger, wagging it as she shifts her attention to Dean. "She demonstrably can transform people into Hellions on her very whim. Of course, she has a particular contrivance arranged to allow such a thing. One wonders how much experience she had with granting heart's desires before she broke her back." She's... explaining how it could happen, and one might wonder just why she'd go to the trouble, the sort of person she is. Maybe it has to do with the cat she still doesn't seem to be acknowledging.
Magilou sighs, a hand to her chest, as the moments pass. "But then, you meant she shouldn't, didn't you?" Eyes closing for a brief moment, smile fading for a brief moment, Magilou looks to Elise again. Their hearts aren't black, she says. He'll never learn, she says. "Malevolence is no secret to your contemporaries," she says, and though her soft voice can be heard, it is an intimacy to Elise alone (though, she cannot quite know Venetia's newness to the horror proves her point). There's a particular way she phrases the statement which -- again -- is a naked truth, approached laterally. "You're awfully, terribly seen. You surely knew that these brave-and-or-foolish individuals would come to you and say they could not stand your crimes. In the words of my esteemed colleague," oh no Venetia get out while you still can, "you're a pair of maniacs, to their eyes."
For some reason, Magilou doesn't include herself in that category of brave and possibly foolish heroes. Perhaps it's that same emotional distance Lanval's picked up on. It is strange, in fact, that for all Hubert's outpouring of pain, for all the lilt of the garden, Magilou doesn't seem too swayed by their Malevolence.
Magilou streetches out, hands coming up over her head, back in front of her. "Personally," she supposes, as Elise assaults Hubert, without bothering to lift a finger, "I just don't like your methods. And something, something, some jerk who still owes me money over that bet," she waves a hand, vaguely, towards Yvain. Don't think Magilou didn't hear that bit about the Rose Queen's involvement with his drake tenure! It's Yvain to whom she accuses: "Don't think I'll forgive your crimes just because you got a spiritache that one time!"
Magilou is so cruel...
Without missing a beat, she turns, now, with another wave of her hand to Elise. Somehow, she can't quite muster her usual energetic tone, but she still manages to chirp: "Look! A shooting star!" And lo, with the wave of her wrist, does a small meteor of ice come hurtling down on Elise's position, in stark contrast to the fire she threw at her before.
GS: Magilou has attacked Elise Riesdale with Spirit Drop! GS: Magilou has gained 2 Combo! GS: Magilou takes 26 damage from Poison! GS: Magilou has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
The ground shakes underneath Hubert's fist, and Lanval makes an exaggerated cringing face as he teeters on one foot and gets splashed in a great big ol' wave of molten gold, seemingly sinking into the surf of excess and luxury... but his soul is not so weak to be burned down to nothing, although now the likenesses are inescapable.
LUNAR - IN THE YEAR OF THE GODDESS 3791
An old man in his last years wept aloud before a statue of a sentry with a bucket in one hand and a rapier in another. The bucket's water was sarcosanct - no drop of water left it from when it was first filled, nor did anything ever violate its surface. The home of a venerated spirit.
"I beg of you," the infirm man pleads, "even for all the clean water we use, that you give us... I can never ask for a greater miracle than what I do now."
Seraph Lanval, from within this Vessel, watched. Two Normin bore witness... sort of. One of them, a Wind Normin (say hello to Exhast! Also goodbye, this is a flashback!). They lie exhausted and asleep over yonder, and did not bear much of anything. The other, an Earth Normin (this one's Temhip), frowned deeply and crossed his arms as he shot a glare up to the Vessel.
"Only my good-for-nothing son is left to inherit this family brewery," equal parts resentment and sorrow, "and the Goddess has seen to it that he would live a long, fruitful life... that he would throw away."
There was nothing Seraph Lanval could say to him, for the old man could not hear him. There was nothing Seraph Lanval could reach out to, for the old man could not feel him. The old man only had the piety to know of his name, to have worshipped him for decades like the rest.
In this moment of weakness, it felt like there was nothing to show for it - the old man, in his desperation, threw any number of valuables he had on him before the statue. Do something, anything. You must, Holy Servant to Goddess Althena Herself, O Mirthful Wellspring!
"You heard the mortal!" Temhip, rare among his own kind, had a willingness to raise his voice to who was ostensibly his master. "D'ya think it'll be okay if Ryland takes hold of the place?" He looks downcast. "Ohhhh... I was only getting over not being able to taste that glorious nectar of Rylia..."
"He be blessed with a long life, indeed," Lanval responds, working up a smile. "'Tis certain he will grow into it. Mayhap then, we speak of what doth come as the glorious nectar of the Sheller Brewery!"
"Ehhhn. Maybe." Temhip's enthusiasm at the prospect is but temporary.
FILGAIA - IN THE NOW, WELL OVER TWO AND A HALF CENTURIES LATER
Lanval is currently coated in molten gold that radiates and burns as Malevolent purple as any other gaudy, empty, hollow decoration, eyes blinking a few times for momentary levity in what is a physically and spiritually horrifying sight. Sanctified rainwaters, somehow spontaneously forming inside a mine, gently brush at and wash at the vile gilding that wars against the very strength of his soul (and is putting up a good fight, for its saturation).
As Hubert has started talking - tersely - Lanval gets up and walks at a measured, if unsteady pace. He takes hold of the memory, the likeness - for it has relevance here, even from a place and time far removed from the current.
"Hey," says the currently gold-coated Water Seraph, dripping malevolent molten gold off of himself, stumbling along up towards the giant, stiff, hollow gilded mining soon-to-be-former-magnate, "thish mine... it'sh everything ta you, ain't it? I mean... everything. Yer life." Others' lives, from the sound of it, but he's deep in the throes of his selfishness, so he has to frame it around him to start. "Do ya have nothin' elshe?"
Lanval blinks a few times as he keeps hold of one arm around the top of the drinking gourd, allowing - carefully - the molten gold to drip and drop around him without any getting in there.
When he feels he has an opening, he flicks it up to splash at the large, garish, stag-scalped big-headed man of bad business practices, hearing the Rose Queen's pleas and reasoning behind him about what kind of man he is.
He has his own conclusions on what's going on.
GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked Hubert with Soak Your Head! GS: Seraph Lanval has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Lanval takes 18 damage from Poison! GS: Seraph Lanval has completed his action. GS: Elise Riesdale guards a hit from Dean Stark's Assault Battery for 85 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Elise Riesdale gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Elise Riesdale activates Guard bonus! GS: CRITICAL! Gamble: High! Elise Riesdale takes a glancing hit from Magilou's Spirit Drop for 141 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Elise Riesdale gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Elise Riesdale activates Arcane Font!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida's hands strike metal, and metal gives. There's a sound not unlike someone kicking a length of air duct--metallic, but betraying a hollowness inside. The Seer's eyes narrow in focus. Of course, she thinks. Her ultimate form--the one she'd worn for the final confrontation with her dearest friends--was similar, in many ways, to the one Hubert wears now. The grandiose metallic shell, the emptiness within, the raw power of steam and machinery... the only thing missing is the constant shifting and violent self-injury, but Hubert doesn't seem the type for that.
"Hopefully," Ida says, to Ines, raising her hands and stepping back. "If his mind is still there, he has to be willing." Right now it's difficult to tell. He's not a feral beast, but it's like everything he is has been flattened out. Her gaze darts to Hubert's fist, and she sets her heels, body tensed like a coiled spring. She watches the man wind up, hops to the side with a smooth, practiced motion--
Hubert's fist missed Ida by a good foot or so, but the steam-powered shockwave catches her off-guard. The raw POWER behind that strike slams into her chest, shoves her backwards with enough force to drive the breath from her lungs. Ida sucks in air, and staggers a few steps before she can raise her guard and recover. Elise's sphere floats serenely across the battlefield and bursts between her shoulders, filling the air with the delicate scent of rose water. Energy surges through her, mingling with her Breath--were Ida's senses not so finely-tuned, she would miss the Malevolence in the otherwise-pleasant infusion. She breathes out, and plumes of red-violet vapor flow from her lips.
"Is this the first time you've felt that?" Ida says, glancing over her shoulder as Elise rails on about Hubert's crimes. "That need to see justice done? Oh, I remember. I remember." Of course, Hubert is still there, and is no less accusatory. "Oh, I dare," Ida whispers. She sets her feet. She takes one breath, two breaths, three. On each breath in, she focuses on what she sees around her--the roses, the ruined stained glass, the ornate flooring. She clenches her fists, holds them at her sides.
Ida inhales again, and this time, she does not stop. It isn't air she's breathing in--it's the Malevolence flowing off of Hubert's form. She's willingly taking it into her body, siphoning it away and sealing it within herself.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Hubert with Sin-Eater's Suspiration! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 2 Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
Marivel Armitage says, "Oh gosh." as Hubert insists that they 'GO', eyes wide. Sure, she is grateful for the chance to finally break A stained glass...ceiling? But she isn't expecting any sort of level of power from a newbie hellion.
"Like capitalism," Marivel says. "He endures despite our best efforts!"
Capitalism isn't happy to just endure though, it retaliates with the power of the great and powerful fist of a job creator. Marivel visibly caves in upon the impact and goes flying, splattering against the ground in a thick spray of blood (she must have recently drank) and black mist.
"He recovered quickly." Marivel mutters.
From this horrifying position splattered on the floor, she looks towards Magilou. "Well... The best in a hundred years."
She sits up. The body doesn't quite look right but she still stands, lobsided. Like physically. One of her legs is twisted in the wrong direction. "For Guara Bobelo then."
She doesn't want any part of this spirit lurking inside her so she doesn't go for a bite or anything like that. She's genuinely worried she might chip a tooth besides. Or a truth. Nevertheless, she darts in, swinging rapidly, all for the same precise point on Hubert's body to try and tear apart some of that armoring. She twists her left foot back into place with a sickening sounding CRUNCH.
GS: Marivel Armitage has attacked Hubert with Bloody Mari! GS: Marivel Armitage has gained 1 Combo! GS: Marivel Armitage has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.
"Why are you hugging me? There's a pair of Hellions in the throes of," Venetia says, before being briefly overwashed by the sound of spells and fire alike. "--beat the purple sludge off of them, unless there's something better to do! They've killed people, Armitage, and this mine's not dug out yet."
Ida answers her, with a certain lesser force than her address to the Hellions. (Smells like ritual to Venetia. She can ask later. Or not.) Venetia scoffs, briefly, but her eyes turn then towards Dean.
But only for a moment. Because -- the Hellion is coming towards her. There is not enough time to grip her gun or the rod of a sorceress. So it is with the Crest Graph alone in her hands that Venetia raises her arms up into a cross-block, the impact driving her back in a skittering stagger nearly three yards as she stares ahead, eyes glittering with a crust of fury atop the volcanism of fear.
"I'm sorry, then, is that your birth name?" Venetia asks the Hellion. "'No one'? Because you seem rather present to -" Thank Dinoginos, Venetia thinks as the weight and force shifts off of her.
During this momentary lull, Venetia contemplates what Ida has said. Inner conflict is how it gets you. Her eyes narrow for a moment. Dean is the expert. How can I keep my mind pure? I can't clear it right now, she thinks. - ah, she realizes. Sucking in a deep breath through her teeth and resisting the momentary pang of anxiety at the sight of the deep gash on Magilou's arm.
"D'you think sucking down a bucket of forbidden energy's going to do you any good, Prissy?" Venetia says, shifting the feces-discourse *up a notch*. "The only reason the both of you aren't going to get twenty years in a mushroom patch is that *I don't think this is illegal yet*! You're thirty years too early to overcome my skills-- Take this!"
Dean's advice is to whale on them? Fair enough. Venetia's swapped out a Crest Graph for another, though it would take close examiniation to realize this. "Behold! This is why you've already lost! Get flensed - for every thorn in a rose, there's ten thousand razors in a stone! BURST AND FLY!" The Crest Graph gleams. Oh no, she did the incantation!
There is a pulsation of violet before her hand. "FACETER!"
A veritable *firehose* of semi-precious quartz compounds, which are indeed coming closer to broken glass with somewhat less fragility due to stout interatomic bonds, flies towards the Queen of the Roses.
GS: Venetia Vuong spends 1 Combo on Gatling, loading 1 into Gatling! GS: Venetia Vuong has attacked Elise Riesdale with Faceter! GS: Venetia Vuong has completed her action. GS: Elise Riesdale takes a solid hit from Venetia Vuong's Faceter for 125 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Elise Riesdale gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Elise Riesdale activates Arcane Font!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Yvain has posed.
"You must," Yvain answers the Rose Queen as she speaks of what she must bear. He has though seen Magilou go through many illusions. It's been quite a long time. But Dean has Dash's question handled for the moment--a 'pleasant surprise', though...
"Your surprise gives nothing to the dead, either. This talk of elaborate vengeance--it is a hollow theatre, a show put on for your benefit. His crimes will be answered, I assure you. But not this way. To transform him into a thing and endanger your already-dying world..."
"..It cannot be allowed."
Yvain sweeps through, moving about the battlefield quickly.
"Hmmm, funny, I hear words but they don't actually mean anything," Yvain offers Magilou at the talk of the bet, as he suddenly moves, whirling out of the way of most of an attack of the spectral huntsman. Paper and smoke curls in the air, and Yvain leaps like a dancing flame far away, hefting the rifle in his grip. He doesn't use it yet, though. Instead, he waves his hand and White magic billows forth, a red light sparkling down on Magilou's shoulders and suffusing her with protective power.
"But I'll level with you," he says. "I understand the urge to vengeance against the corrupt--I could even applaud it, if you went about it differently. But vengeance never satisfies like you hope it would. You must beware that the enemy you strike down does not fall and hit those you care for in the falling."
"...The course of justice is never as smooth as you would hope."
GS: Seraph Yvain has attacked Magilou with Ardor! GS: Seraph Yvain has gained 3 Combo! GS: Seraph Yvain has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.
Layna and the others defy Hubert, and he does not take it well. A grin spreads across her face.
"You're not used to anyone telling you 'no', are you? You gonna throw a tantrum now?" Layna taunts, and then shrugs. "You don't get what you want, so now everyone else is responsible."
But he's fighting back, so now it's time to move. Layna drains some of his power, and she notices something... odd.
"...Well now. This empty strength of yours... I dunno if I even want it, but I guess I'll take it." Layna comments. Hubert punches the ground and a wave of molten gold spirals forth. Layna moves to leap out of the way, but some of them still splashes onto her. She winces as the toxic avarice sinks in - even just the slightest amount is enough to burn.
"Your greed... it's even worse than mine. I'm almost impressed." Layna says with a grin through clenched teeth. It tries to burn into her soul but she keeps it at bay for the time being. She's had enough experience carrying her own greed - she'll handle his for now.
"You're not used to fighting, huh? I can see it in the way you move. You've got power in spades, but you're all bluster - no talent. Well, that's good enough for some, I guess - let's see what it does for you, aye!?" She weaves to the side and mutters an incantation as she moves, fists at the ready as she lunges in before unleashing a swift right hook, once again aiming for the body. The danger doesn't come in the fist itself, however, but the wind scything off of it like a pirate's cutlass, threatening to slice right into his golden plating.
She listens as Lanval speaks, displaying insight into Hubert's character. She'll let him handle that side of this - she's never been the most introspective sort.
GS: Layna Manydays has attacked Hubert with Cutlass Gale! GS: Layna Manydays has gained 2 Combo! GS: Layna Manydays takes 19 damage from Poison! GS: Layna Manydays has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ines Colina has posed.
Even as Ines connects, none of that feels right, the dent popping back, the hollow ring. Of course Hellions don't fol
<Pose Tracker> Ines Colina has posed.
Even as Ines connects, none of that feels right, the dent popping back, the hollow ring. Of course Hellions don't follow the rules, that's how these things work. But again, she doesn't have that experience. And then Hubert rears back and she brings her arms up to guard-
And the hammer of a piston behind the first sends her sliding back, her arms rattling pain running through up top her shoulders. She's lucky something didn't dislocate with that much force.
They've ruined everything, huh? "Buddy, you're the one who turned into a statue," she says, with a bravado she maybe can't back up. "Pretty sure you can't throw your money around when your friends are trying to melt you down and sell you." And enough Guild Galad nobles might be able to hire enough firepower to do that. At a huge cost in human lives.
She is momentarily distracted vby Marivel going 'splat'. And then standing up again with a leg, badly off. "Hey, hold-" And then there's a CRUNCH as she closes and it's unpleasant. What the hell.
Ida gives her the skinny, and Ines nods. "...Gotta want it, huh." She stares up at the man of gold. "I don't like our chances, then," she whispers. Hubert seemed like the guy who might revel in having physical power to match his financial power. Layna tears into him, and Ines barks out a harsh laugh.
"Earth crack and crumble! Tectonic Breaker!" She slams her fist into the ground, and the earth rebels under the illusionary tiles of the garden, the earth splitting a quaking in a path under Hubert's golden feet. She has to keep it controlled, but things are stable enough here not to cause a quake. Her eyes cast to Lanval. "Can he even hear you, Lanval?" She asks, though Hubert can see enough to hurt. But he muses that he has nothing else. "...A lot of folk have got less that that, and they don't pull stuff like this." Ines is not a wellspring of sympathy.
GS: Ines Colina has attacked Hubert with Tectonic Breaker! GS: Ines Colina has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ines Colina has completed her action. GS: Seraph Yvain heals Magilou! She gains 100 temporary hit points! GS: Hubert takes a solid hit from Seraph Lanval's Soak Your Head for 108 hit points! GS: Mute and Poison applied to Hubert! GS: CRITICAL! Hubert guards a hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Sin-Eater's Suspiration for 0 hit points! GS: Weaken applied to Hubert! GS: Hubert guards a hit from Marivel Armitage's Bloody Mari for 108 hit points! GS: Hubert enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Hubert takes a solid hit from Layna Manydays's Cutlass Gale for 134 hit points! GS: Hubert guards a hit from Ines Colina's Tectonic Breaker for 72 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Dash Caskett has posed.
Shots ring true, pressing a temporary advantage. "Drifters? With black hearts? Nah lady, I just like to dig. It also just so happens Im equipped with one heck of an armory on me. Aaaand every once in a while some friends need some help, so here I am!" He says with a single arm shrug.
"Purification, right!" Dash replies to Dean. "So just gotta wail on her a bit, prune the leaves in a way. I get it!" Someone at ARMS once told him about this. He's fairly certain it was Ida, at some point. Speaking of, looks like shes got a lot of fighting going on with the other fella.
At least the two are fighting each other. Not that it would be enough of a distraction, as the Rose Queen has plenty of time to dole out weaponized retorts in the form of floaing huntsmen! They dive fast, straight for the party! The one that comes for Dash closes the distance quickly! Dash slams his feet on the ground, and the sound of revving wheels suddenly shoots him backwards, the Jet Skates screaming as they grind against the floor. When enough distance is gained, A quick hi-jump and front flip evades wha tcould have been a davastating blow. "Yikes!"
"I don't think the process can happen to me," he comments to Magilou, "But that doesn't mean I am gonna let her affect everyone else here." He also could be super wrong-- mostly because he gets images of what happened to Tio in his mind. Some magicks can bridge that gap between organic beings and the mechanical.
"Wish I brought the big guns, but I only brought the Drill," he says, commenting on his secondary choice of ARM. "But that is okay!" Let me try a higher setting, see if it doesn't do any good."
The Buster is aimed again, this time a bright magenta light clowing in the barrel. The shots fire this time are slower, but are much larger and brighter. The physics that hold the energy in place has gorged on high amounts of solar energy. They say the sun is good for them, but in this concnetrated mass? Not likely.
GS: Dash Caskett spends 2 Combo on Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling! GS: Dash Caskett has attacked Elise Riesdale with Heavy Buster! GS: Dash Caskett has gained 1 Combo! GS: Dash Caskett has completed his action. GS: Elise Riesdale critically guards Dash Caskett's Heavy Buster for 32 hit points! GS: Elise Riesdale activates Guard bonus!
<Pose Tracker> Hubert has posed.
Steam spills, shimmering with gold dust that reflects strange violets in the light as the armored form that was once Hubert rises to his feet.
It's an unsteady motion, and unnatural somehow, as if the Hellion were readjusting his movements on a delay. Bright red trails have become little, thick rivers down his cheeks, the strange substance dropping to the floor beneath him with little, hissing splatters as it eats and erodes at the ground and debris.
"MY FAMILY. MY LEGACY," hisses the Hellion, staring upward towards an uncertain destination.
Despite the bellowing, authoritative sound of the man's voice, though...
"MY MINE."
... there is something to it that rings distinctly desperate.
"I CANNOT LOSE IT--"
The words are cut off by the screech of prismatic light scorching across gold. Elise's cross scars its way from chest to head along the statuesque magnate's form, making booming words strangle out into an equally booming sound of surprise. It's a little shout that seems to warble as that energy rails across the head of the Hellion; it distorts like feedback, becoming briefly higher-pitched and panicked before that grandiose volume reasserts itself. Hubert staggers backward, gripping at his smoking face with a hiss as the light fades. There is an ugly wound across his chest, and what looks like an opening.
Within that opening? It looks empty. Save for the faintest, briefest glimmers of movement. Like something was scuttling around within.
"WHY. WHY?!"
Through the cracks of those fingers, a bright red gaze glares at Elise.
Before he can make good on his rage (?) however, the others are soon upon him. Marivel, broken and misshapen by his blows though she is, still manages more precision and grace and intent behind her blows than any of Hubert's wild swings ever could: he bats at her to no avail as she strikes at those same spots, golden armor tearing from his torso in puffs of gold-dust laden steam that quickly turns sickly and violet the further it dissipates from his gloriously gilded form. She strikes, and strikes, and strikes -- and begins to see an empty opening.
She can catch a glimpse of something within that immediately retreats from the sight of her in the seconds before Hubert recoils away in a stumbling motion.
That retreat, though, doesn't seem to be a preamble to a counter; for a moment, that bold, aggressive figure Hubert strikes is marred by the fact that he is stumbling -away- from her as if fleeing, a shrieked little, "NO!" losing some of that characteristic boom as his free hand waves. Lanval's waters cut off Hubert's retreat, hammering him across the head and chest in a way that further opens the wounds created by Marivel and Elise. It offsets his footing into a stagger.
A stagger that is completely compromised as the ground quakes VIOLENTLY beneath him, completely shattering his defenses as earth provides wind the perfect opportunity to strike:
Off Layna's blade, a sheering edge slices forward, across and -through- gold plating, up through his chest, digging a deep furrow --
--straight through that shining, scarlet-smeared face.
The sound of metal couples with a shrill shriek as Hubert's once so graceful form tumbles backwards and collapses onto his knees. Bowed forward, his head and chest hidden, he takes deep, seething breathes, even as something tugs at him.
Steam gushes with every breath. And that vapor draws into Ida with every one of hers. Letting her feel his desperation. His greed.
How deeply, truly afraid he feels.
"I WILL NOT RUN I WILL NOT RUN I WILL NOT--"
Gold dust coils around him, gathering rapidly, distorting and coagulating into sickly, bloated shapes that feed into the hidden, splintered openings of his bent over form.
...thish mine... it'sh everything ta you, ain't it? I mean... everything. Yer life.
And then it pauses.
He looks up, slowly.
"I... CANnot)]"
... and his booming voice trembles and dissipates as his head turns upward...
"... run."
And reveals the truth.
The statue is hollow. It is a shell, like a turtle's protective barrier from the outside world.
And within?
At the sundered head of that statue is a thin, tiny, shriveled, goblin-like creature, like a Gob's weak, sickly-looking (mustachio'd, of course) lesser cousin, literally hanging limply by the stag horns stuck through that far more glorious head it resides within as if eternally stuck within the grandiosity of it.
Within the gaping wounds of the armored shells chest, little, Malevolent spirits toil away, working the various gears and parts of the automaton for the true Hellion that resides within.
<Pose Tracker> Hubert has posed.
The true Hellion, doing nothing.
Hubert - the REAL Hubert - blinks slit eyes. He feels the open air buffet his slimy skin.
"oh no"
And he instantly reacts by squirming in his stuck spot as if trying to flee.
"oh no!!"
His Malevolent servants react instantly in kind. They turn and toil and -work- so -hard- for him, so terribly -hard- to make that great gold automaton rise up with a gush of steam and -swing- one hand up.
And it shines, beautifully, in a way so obviously at odds with the true ugliness within.
Within a second, that hand flashes in blinding splendor, the golden heat that radiates from it lancing out to sweep its debilitating light through Ida, Ines and Marivel and infuse them with the true, crippling weakness behind its deceitful glories. Its a blinding flash --
--and one that serves to mask the way that great golden statue SURGES into the air, rears back with a glowing fist --
"please! this is all i have! and she took it from me!! she's ruined me! she's -- she's -- disgraced and humiliated me--!!"
And that meek, shrieking voice is lost of all booming luster as Hubert's armored form comes -crashing down-, -slamming- a fist into the earth beneath him...
... sending great, artfully decorated and extremely sharply-pointed pillars of pure gold RIPPING past the distance between himself and Elise, tearing towards Layna and Lanval as they explode through the ground to consume all three of them in that glorious, desperate excess.
"it's my future, and my -- my--"
Reputation, he means to say, but for some reason, the shriveled Hellion cannot force himself to say the word.
As if the very idea was laughable.
DC: Hubert switches forms to Hubert - The Shrieking Heart!
GS: Hubert has attacked Hubert with Desperate Coil! GS: Hubert has gained 1 Combo! GS: Hubert accepts Hubert's Desperate Coil for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper applied to Hubert! GS: Mighty applied to Hubert! GS: Hubert has activated a Force Action! GS: Hubert spends 5 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Hubert has attacked Elise Riesdale with Aurum Vincit Omnia! GS: Hubert has attacked Seraph Lanval with Aurum Vincit Omnia! GS: Hubert has attacked Layna Manydays with Aurum Vincit Omnia! GS: Hubert has gained 1 Combo! GS: Hubert spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Hubert has attacked Marivel Armitage with Hand of Splendors! GS: Hubert has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Hand of Splendors! GS: Hubert has attacked Ines Colina with Hand of Splendors! GS: Hubert has gained 1 Combo! GS: Hubert takes 22 damage from Poison! GS: Hubert has completed their action. GS: Ida Everstead-Rey guards a hit from Hubert's Hand of Splendors for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ida Everstead-Rey gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: Break, Cripple, Jam, Mute, Poison, Slow, and Weaken applied to Ida Everstead-Rey! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey activates Guard bonus and Power Burst! GS: CRITICAL! Layna Manydays takes a glancing hit from Hubert's Aurum Vincit Omnia for 122 hit points! GS: Poison applied to Layna Manydays! GS: Layna Manydays activates Evade bonus! GS: Seraph Lanval has activated a Force Action! GS: CRITICAL! Seraph Lanval fully evades Hubert's Aurum Vincit Omnia for 0 hit points! GS: Seraph Lanval activates Evade bonus! GS: CRITICAL! Elise Riesdale critically guards Hubert's Aurum Vincit Omnia for 52 hit points! GS: Elise Riesdale activates Guard bonus! GS: Ines Colina takes a solid hit from Hubert's Hand of Splendors for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ines Colina gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: Break, Cripple, Jam, Mute, Poison, Slow, and Weaken applied to Ines Colina! GS: Marivel Armitage takes a solid hit from Hubert's Hand of Splendors for 0 hit points! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: Break, Cripple, Jam, Mute, Poison, Slow, and Weaken applied to Marivel Armitage!
<Pose Tracker> Elise Riesdale has posed.
"You wish to purify me?" Elise throws a shield up against Dean's more persistant blows, each hit knocking against the hard stone of Elise's surface. "This *is* me purified!" But Dean has another attack: his earnestness. "...!" Something flashes in those red eyes, something sad. She turns her head away, as if she can't bear to look at Dean, her own rod manifesting in a blink of light, to try to knock him away. "You are a young protagonist that has strayed far, far outside your fairy tale. What influence could you think you could have, in another person's story?"
Elise attempts to shift to the side of the oddly personal Magilou, displacing herself backwards with each uncomfortable observation Magilou makes. "Malevolence... I see, so that is what the Lady Layna meant. You speak as if I could control it like I control the perfume of a flower, but--" She phases backwards again. "It simply is. To command it is to strip it of its nature." She grits her teeth. "It is... unfortunate, that you disregard it as inconsequential. Perhaps it is not the best shield..." She seems to have noticed how Ida smells it so openly, letting it fill her as she fights Hubert.
Which gives Magilou the most perfect opening to start with that line. A shooting star of ice cuts through her shield, shattering it in advance of Venetia's quartz shards, pelting crystal against stone. ".... gh! Why... do you think I am here without a knight in sight?" This, to Yvain, as he tries to help Magilou. "The world outside may die, but here, the world shall always be in bloom!"
The saplings of roses creep up with urgent speed from the cracks in the tilework, buds forming and bursting into a sleepy perfume around Magilou, Venetia, and Yvain as they try to wrap around them with a thorny, but fragile embrace.
The growing stops the moment Dash's laser shoots her side, causing Elise to drop her hand. Focusing her sights on Dash, she raises her scepter and unleashes one bullet of ether, each bullet bouncing and ricochetting against invisible obstacles in seven random directions before slamming straight at Dash. "I don't know what makes you and the other one so unique, but I have bullets of my own!"
Gold flakes of a rotten degree of karat still stick to Elise's feet from where her own resistence is no match, from Hubert's earlier attack. She looks gleefully on the transformed form before her. "... You cannot impress them, so you throw themselves on their mercy. This.... this is _amazing_." She begins to laugh, glimmering tears freely running down her cheeks. "I see now... killing him would completely ruin this! Yes! The perfect revenge!"
She flings her hands out wide, the smell of rosewater settling on those who were affected with the reserves she has left. "Shackle his shattered self back in those frail bonds!"
GS: Elise Riesdale enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Dean Stark with Spindelriss! GS: Elise Riesdale has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Extend! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Magilou with Dornroschen! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Venetia Vuong with Dornroschen! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Seraph Yvain with Dornroschen! GS: Elise Riesdale has gained 1 Combo! GS: Elise Riesdale spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Dash Caskett with Freischutz! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Lied vom Abendrot! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Ines Colina with Lied vom Abendrot! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Marivel Armitage with Lied vom Abendrot! GS: Elise Riesdale has gained 1 Combo! GS: Elise Riesdale takes 27 damage from Poison! GS: Cripple, Disease, and Drowsy expired! GS: Elise Riesdale has completed her action. GS: Magilou guards a hit from Elise Riesdale's Dornroschen for 72 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Magilou gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Drowsy applied to Magilou! GS: Magilou activates Arcane Font! GS: Seraph Yvain takes a solid hit from Elise Riesdale's Dornroschen for 119 hit points! GS: Drowsy applied to Seraph Yvain! GS: Seraph Yvain activates Arcane Font! GS: Elise Riesdale heals Ida Everstead-Rey! She gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Restore! Break, Cripple, Jam, Mute, and Poison removed! GS: Elise Riesdale heals Ines Colina! She gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Restore! Break, Cripple, Jam, Mute, and Poison removed! GS: Venetia Vuong takes a glancing hit from Elise Riesdale's Dornroschen for 55 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Venetia Vuong gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Drowsy applied to Venetia Vuong! GS: Venetia Vuong activates Sufferer! GS: CRITICAL! Dash Caskett takes a solid hit from Elise Riesdale's Freischutz for 180 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Dash Caskett gains 1 additional Combo! GS: CRITICAL! Elise Riesdale heals Marivel Armitage! She gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Marivel Armitage gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Restore! Break, Cripple, Jam, and Weaken removed! GS: Marivel Armitage activates Evade bonus! GS: Marivel Armitage enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Dean Stark takes a solid hit from Elise Riesdale's Spindelriss for 139 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Dean Stark gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
Layna's talk of her greed, over there, does nothing to convince Magilou that she isn't THE PIRATE GIRL OF HER DREAMS. Ida: battling for justice through her own dark history. Dean: a fountain of optimism who won't stand for injustice. Marivel: Marivel. And yet, throughout all of their glorious establishing shots, Layna is the one who isn't shy to say, yeah, she wants all that cash money.
What an icon.
Sadly, Magilou can't subscribe to her newsletter. Perhaps it's because she's occupied with Elise, sidling along there. "No," she supposes, lightly. "It takes more than that to control it... deliberately. But when something is in every man's heart..." She lets the line settle into nothingness, a strange shade wistful.
Her attention goes to Yvain, instead. "Your ears evidently never turned back!" She issues, to him, and as his Seraphic magic builds up, she -- just like that -- grabs the dagger in her arm, and yoinks it out. As if she knew Yvain was leading to a healing spell, and it was coming straight for her.
It isn't a comfortable gesture, pulling a sharp thing out of oneself. The grimace of momentary pain on her face may well not even be matched entirely to the pain which surfaces in her eyes, in that brief, brief moment. Perhaps Magilou, a pasty academic, has never had to do such gruelling physical things.
In any case the warmth of flame knits the wound, and no more blood stains her sleeves. Magilou breathes out, in an entirely understated sigh. She doesn't thank him as much as grasp her arm to see its repair for herself. That's okay. She hardly needs to.
That ability to move more freely is something she takes immediately, a long, broad shikigami curling around herself as roses try to grow around her. Her little spirit is a lattice, and shortly it expands, in a wide spin which looses the thorns away. It doesn't stop her from smelling the perfume, of course. That invitation to sleep...
Magilou shakes her head, smiling.
There's something secret to her smile, too, as she thinks on Yvain railing against vengeance. That's right, she thinks; in this world we made for you, vengeance isn't the motivator it used to be. Ah! Time does not wait.
The world has an awful lot of new advancements, though, doesn't it. "Is that so?" Magilou asks, mirth glittering in her eyes, after Dash tells her he's unaffected. "Perhaps you were born under a lucky star..."
Magilou, of course, doesn't know how tricky the whole 'being born' thing is to Dash, even if Elise called him and Azoth out as being different. Different can mean an awful lot of things. She's from Lunar! 'Robot' isn't her first thought.
"You do have a terribly clever gun," she remarks, to Dash, because Magilou Doesn't Know About Busters. "And it seems you've been given perfect leave to use it." She gestures, vaguely, to Dean, in reference to his advice on how to soften Hellions up.
Magilou, neatly sidestepping Hubert's pillars of gold as they tear towards Elise, is RIGHT NEXT TO VENETIA HOW DID THAT HAPPEN. She says: "That's quite an interesting invocation! Do you belong to a school, or are you an independent talent?" This is exactly the space where Magilou really SHOULD show off the extent of her own sorcerous might, which makes it all the more notable when she rocks back, on her heels.
"... ah, right now, I'll just show you this." Her Hidden Artes are less strenuous on her magical connection; Magilou would hate to admit, out loud, that Elise's poison through her veins has wearied her to the point her spells are harder. A few carefree steps closer to Elise, and she invites the illusionist: "... look what I found!"
'What she's found' is her shikigami, elongating and sweeping under her, before Magilou pulls it all up like a rug from under her feet. Why she's tripping Elise up when she's helping the people fighting Hubert is a mystery unto Magilou.
"It's not that I'm against your revenge," she says, without too much gusto to the words. "Revenge is a fine dish, well served. But having wrapped yourself in all these lies... you don't understand much yourself, do you?" Magilou sighs, slumping a little. "... oh, well."
GS: Magilou has attacked Elise Riesdale with Hellrise! GS: Magilou has gained 1 Combo! GS: Magilou takes 24 damage from Poison! GS: Magilou has completed her action. GS: Gamble: Moderate! Elise Riesdale takes a solid hit from Magilou's Hellrise for 152 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Elise Riesdale gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Elise Riesdale activates Arcane Font! GS: Magilou drains Elise Riesdale! Magilou gains 76 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.
They tear at Hubert, and he's forced back. Layna can't help but grin at the blow she struck, the steam that gushes out. Hubert panics... and then, the head splits open - no, not his, a statue's. And inside, there he is. A wide grin crosses Layna's face.
"Oh. Oh, by the Goddess, this is too good. Look at you, 'Boss'! So that's the real you, aye?" Layna says with a guffaw. "Of course! Of course it is!"
Hubert crashes an armored fist into the ground, and sharp, golden pillars come rushing at her. One of them catches Layna in the side, splattering red on the ground behind her. She stumbles, but it does nothing to dull that grin on her face.
"Me, me, me... Is that all you have to say? Nothing about the guards she killed?" Layna asks. "It's all about you, aye? Well, let me ask you something, Hu - how many people have you ruined? How many have you disgraced and humiliated? How many futures have you stolen? You can't tell me you got this far on your own blood, sweat, and tears, aye? It doesn't work like that."
She recites an incantation and the wind begins to howl, the sky darkening. A storm begins to build around Hubert - a biting, cutting tornado that threatens to keep him solidly in place as Layna rears back.
"I'm gonna smash open that gilded shell of yours and tear you right back into reality. And if you're worth a damn as a human being, maybe you'll be able to haul yourself up onto your own two feet after we're through!" Layna shouts. And then she charges, her right fist hauled back and a wild, malicious look in her eyes. What happens next is perhaps elegant in its simplicity - she unleashes a single, powerful punch aimed at Hubert's armor, with enough force to disperse the very winds she had stirred up and clear the sky of clouds, should any be visible.
GS: Layna Manydays spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Healthy! For entering Condition Green, Layna Manydays receives 50 temporary hit points. GS: Layna Manydays enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Layna Manydays has attacked Hubert with Winds of Fortune! GS: Layna Manydays has gained 1 Combo! GS: Layna Manydays has launched an attack Link! GS: Layna Manydays spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Layna Manydays has attacked Hubert with Stormbreaker! GS: Layna Manydays has gained 1 Combo! GS: Layna Manydays takes 26 damage from Poison! GS: Disease expired! GS: Layna Manydays has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
LUNAR - IN THE YEAR OF THE GODDESS 3801
A young elf, heavy-set with reddish hair, looks impatient as he sits at a table with a handful of enterprising merchant types. One of them is a Hellion - a goblin. They are too weak in strength for their Malevolence to thicken the air, thanks to the tireless work of the one who resides within the statue.
The one who resides within this statue, now overlooking said heavy-set elf who seems just... done. Apathetic, bored. Like he cares little about what's going on other than what he's about to get.
"You would sell for this much, yes?" One of these merchant types comes off as more than a touch slimy, and he's not the Hellion. That should say plenty. "Well! You ask... quite a lot," he lies through his teeth.
"This land was my father's," the elf says, "he's gone. Said I was good for nothing," the elf throws his hands up, "means nothing to me."
The Hellion goblin looks over to the statue, and Lanval looks back.
By the statue, back turned, Temhip spits on the ground. A little seedling sprouts where it lands, between the cracks of poorly-maintained floorboard.
"Just pay me the gemstones already," the elf says.
"Oh, you have to sign the deed, that's," to the non-Hellion merchant's credit, this much is honest. He's doing that much by the book, making sure everything is written correctly even if he could exploit more. This makes him no less slimy. "Your name is there. You... you can write your name, right?"
"Ryland Sheller," the elf murmurs. Few on Lunar get to have second names - and already, he is throwing away his family's land just then and there.
Seraph Lanval, Lord of the Land of what will no longer be the Sheller Brewery, can do naught but watch as mortals do what they're going to.
FILGAIA - RIGHT NOW, 503 POST COLLAPSE
Lanval sees the goblin within. (He is also still dripping with molten gold, but, details.) The tiny voice, the feelings of inadequacy and weakness within the shattered head. When the pilot of the hollow golden statue makes its grandiose gestures to once again slam the ground and summon forth sharply-dressed sharp golden spikes, Lanval just balances on the tip of it by his toe, unmoved and not at all imbalanced.
Like a stereotypical martial arts master, opulence impotent under his big toe.
Enough to have Lanval stand at equal height, face-to-face with the creature that Hubert's twisted soul reflects.
"Ain't wrong ta have a goal," Lanval says, a little laugh at Layna's forward nature. She's perfectly honest with herself and what she wants in life - she's a worthy Seer of Water no matter what people may view as moral failings in other ways.
He leans closer from that pillar, dangling improbably against balance as he tries to lean close to the goblin and/or its armored head, as if looking in there with opening eyes.
"Shometimesh... life movesh on from that." Lanval looks down to the illusion-painted Domain, remembering how the place looked on the way in even with the flowers. "Now, I know a farm way, way, way better 'n a mine... but it shoundsh like ya barely had a mine goin'." He remembers hearing the Rose Queen's complaints about what he did. "Took every shortcut ya did, becaushe ya felt ya had to."
Lanval shakes his head once. "Did ya really want it? Were ya told you had ta have it? ...What'd ya give up in purshuit of it? Yourshelf. Washn't jusht an everything. Shayin' that... shame ash shayin'... nothin'. Ya gave up shomethin'."
He parts a hand away from the drinking gourd, pointing out with a finger and balancing as such he is now leaning backwards and looking at him, upside-down.
"Shomethin' ya wanted more than the mine, washn't it? C'mon." Lanval has a gentle laugh... and then his eyes open all the way to that shining aquamarine, with a warm smile. The deeds of Hubert are indefensible.
Oracles and Seers, though... they're here for that heart of Hubert. The deeds are to be sorted out by others.
"Come down from there! 'Tis less lonely towards the bottom. Ha ha ha!" Wreathed in the aura of mirth and water in all its forms great and not, Lanval leans out with that upside-down pointing hand and gives...
A gentle shove.
GS: Seraph Lanval has activated a Force Action! GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked Hubert with Shove! GS: Seraph Lanval takes 23 damage from Poison! GS: Seraph Lanval has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Ines Colina has posed.
That's it. That's what's really there. Ines can't help but laugh, a cold harsh bark. "This is what you're really like, huh? Behind the money, you're a sniveling little slime so scared of everything, Scared of losing your property. Your status." Ines' words turn to an angry, hateful snarl as she speaks. Even as he doesnb't say it, even Ines can see where he's going.
The flash comes, and Ines is unprepared to stop it with how angry she is. She drops to her knees, as her whole body feels weak and heavy, pain seeping into her bones, malevolence all over her. She felt this with Death's Door, now she feels it here. Weakness. Weakness in her bones. Her soul. Of course she's weak. She couldn't stop anything. Change anything. Save anyone. Like she's not going to save this guy. That's for other people. She's just going to beat him to a bloody pulp and hope there's enough left. If she can.
And then the rosewater washes over her, and washes the weakness away with a selfish joy, and anger flows through her again. "I didn't ask for your help, you self deluded bitch!" There is so much venom and hatred and anger in Ines now. "Once we're done with this goddamn moron, I'm going to burn your garden and salt the earth! I'll tear your damn flowers out to their roots, and make sure they never grow again!" Something has snapped.
"And you, sniveling about your reputation!" She catches the word unsaid. "You've never had to back it up in your entire coddled life! And you know what a reputation you can't back up is worth? Nothing!" She growls, that hate directed at herslf. "Trust me, I fucking know." She holders her fist in front of her face. She doesn't need the chant now. Spikes of metal form on her knuckles and burst forward, generating a giant thrusting blade. She points it at the gremlin that is Hubert. "I'm going to tear you out of that golden shell. Then maybe your stupid rich kid ass can learn what Filgaia is REALLY like, without all your Granas damned protections."
And then she charges, to drive her into his twisted little stomach. She doesn't give a damn whether he lives or dies at this point.
GS: Ines Colina has activated a Force Action! GS: Ines Colina spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Ines Colina has attacked Hubert with Hullbreaker Knuckle! GS: Ines Colina has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
Magilou pedants at him, and Dean huffs an exasperated sigh as he rolls his eyes. "Just because she technically *can* doesn't mean she *should*!" he clarifies. "Lots of people can do lots of things they shouldn't do!" Surely Magilou has plenty of experience with *that*.
It is funny to think that Dean might be an expert at anything, but he *does* have his strengths and has them in spades. He doesn't notice Venetia observing him, but she might observe in him plenty of focus--a singleminded, pure-hearted determination to do what he believes is right. It remains unwavering even after acknowledging that the Rose Queen isn't a bad person, that her goals have merit.
He nods firmly in agreement when Yvain speaks, expressing a similar sentiment with far more eloquence and experience behind it. Dash's takeaway makes him brighten. "Right, exactly! So let's keep it up!"
He engages Elise, not just in battle but conversation. "Why do you think you're purified now? Is it because you've got powers you had before? That's not purification! That's giving in to the Malevolence inside you!" He pauses when he sees that flash of sadness in her red eyes, and eases off on the attack when she turns her head away. This gives Elise ample opportunity to absolutely *clobber* him with that rod, which strikes his solar plexus and sends him reeling back several steps. He might well stop back-to-back with a certain someone. Even so, as he clutches his gut, he lifts his head with one eye shut.
"...You know, I've been a Drifter for four years now. I've seen a lot of horrible things, and fought to stop a lot of horrible people. There's a lot of things I don't understand, sure, and it's true I can be dense. But that doesn't mean I think I'm living some kind of fairy tale. You're not living a fairy tale either, no matter how many illusions you try to wrap yourself in. That's just you, trying to run away from your pain." He nods over to Magilou, who knows a thing or two about living in an illusion--not that he knows that--and then over his shoulder at Ida, his fellow Seer of Moor Gault. He looks back at Elise. "We *all* have influence on each other, because we're all living on this world together! We're all connected! What kind of influence could I have? Plenty, if you'd just open your heart!"
Rather than charging in again, Dean traces a cross in midair with Twin Fenrir. Those lines burn off invisible fuel, hovering in midair. Dean lifts one of his guns, which charges with white energy; when he fires, it impacts with the burning lines and *blazes* into the full form of a firebird. The momentum of his blast shoots it forward, and it cries piercingly as it flies towards Elise, burning Malevolence in its wake.
Dean doesn't think he'll be able to purify Elise right this instant. But she needs to *want* to be purified before that can happen. If she can feel it for herself... if he can understand her pain and sadness better... then maybe, one day, he'll be able to reach out to her and bring her back out of this illusion she's woven for herself.
GS: Dean Stark has attacked Elise Riesdale with Firebird Soul! GS: Dean Stark has gained 1 Combo! GS: Dean Stark has completed his action. GS: Hubert takes a solid hit from Layna Manydays's Winds of Fortune for 186 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Hubert gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Hubert activates Arcane Font! GS: Hubert enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Hubert takes a solid hit from Layna Manydays's Stormbreaker for 203 hit points! GS: Hubert takes a solid hit from Seraph Lanval's Shove for 155 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
Marivel hesitates. Despite her attitude, taking out somone who is begging for their life--their future--despite everything she says and however she behaves, she isn't a true stone cold killer by nature, just a monster. It doesn't help that the crippling weakness is hitting her. It actually prevents her from evading Elise's 'support'--Marivel isn't inclined to take Elise's assistance even as she provides it--but she receives it all the same. She recovers, some, as she struggles back up to her feet.
And she looks to Elise.
"Why are you crying?" Marivel asks of her. "What lies within that you hide?"
She looks to Lanval. "Is this enough?"
She then turns to look back to Hubert. He speaks of reputation and Marivel exhales out a soft sigh.
"Hubert," Marivel says. "You do not need to be a brave man to have a good reputation, you do not need to be a wealthy one. It is never too late to obtain a better reputation."
She gestures forward with a hand and says, "Make peace with your enemies, not war. There is enough war in this world, enough death. Gold makes an ill armor. It is soft and crumbles easy."
"If you can open your heart to others," Marivel continues with unerring confidence, despite her wounds. "Then you will have wealth that cannot be taken from you. Even should they leave, your memories will enrich you forevermore."
GS: Hubert takes a solid hit from Ines Colina's Hullbreaker Knuckle for 264 hit points! GS: Marivel Armitage takes 23 damage from Poison! GS: Marivel Armitage has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Elise Riesdale guards a hit from Dean Stark's Firebird Soul for 136 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Elise Riesdale gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.
Venetia can glimpse the golden coating around the crude shell within out of the corner of her eye, but she can spare no more thought than that from her main focus. The consequences are dire. Magilou is charging in heedlessly.
The world outside may die, but here--
-- Venetia's train of thought sails off the rails and into the time stream when Magilou swerves back and ends up next to her. (Venetia has moved like ten feet since the battle began. This is the way of the sorceress.) To Magilou, Venetia says, "Oh, yes, actually -- ancient mysteries from a whole hundred years ago down in the bad parts of Guild Galad. I doubt you've heard of it, you seem Lunarian. Lunarish?"
Off she goes.
Venetia's gaze turns forwards again.
"Then," she says to the Rose Queen, "You've given up, then? You'll have your garden, even as Filgaia perishes? Floating, I imagine, in the void, if the planet itself should be rent asunder by gravitation or some other mishap?"
"Maybe it will come to that," Venetia says to her as her hand rests on her Crest Graph pouch. "Perhaps. But I'm not ready to write this world off. It's littered with wonders... and there is more yet, beneath. Treasures beyond measure. So!"
"Let's see how well your roses fare against the deepest arts," Venetia concludes. The Crest Graph she brings out is a little different: for one thing, it seems to have an actual jewel in it, a shallow-cut inlay of some kind of green quartz, forming a tree-like shape. For another, it looks really new.
(Did she ever test this one out?) (No.)
For a heartbeat, the Crest Graph is invoked and it seems like nothing at all happens. Another heartbeat and it's like something is flowing outwards. Following one of the grand fractal shapes that underlie reality itself: that branch-and-fork design, following ancient laws. You see it in seashells, in trees seeking nourishment, in forking lightning. And in...
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! The imaginary, half-percieved shape of potentia comes into reality, like bursting cannons, tracking round and turfing up beautiful tiles and rosebushes on its way towards the Queen herself!
GS: Venetia Vuong has attacked Elise Riesdale with Deepest Art: Hypothetical Root! GS: Venetia Vuong has gained 1 Combo! GS: Venetia Vuong has completed her action. GS: ROU|LET|TE: Ruinous! Elise Riesdale takes a solid hit from Venetia Vuong's Deepest Art: Hypothetical Root for 223 hit points! GS: Entangle applied to Elise Riesdale! GS: Elise Riesdale activates Arcane Font! GS: Elise Riesdale enters CONDITION GREEN!! Ethius Hesiod (Ethius) pages Hubert and Elise Riesdale: just so you're not taken unawares - Ruth is going to show up to take Elise to safety in the revelation that she's working for her.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
- -1 ARGUMENT OUT OF RANGEa wasn't sure what she was expecting to find inside the gleaming golden statue, but surprise widens her eyes nevertheless. The sight of Hubert--the real Hubert--dangling there would be comical, if it weren't quietly heartbreaking. "You're not even doing your own dirty work," she says; she steps back, sweeping her hands through a circle as the Hellion flails and shrieks.
But those spirits are perfectly capable of retaliating. Ida raises an arm, the exoskeleton fanning out into a discus-like shield, but it's no use. As soon as that baleful ray touches her, a sense of helplessness--weakness--races up her limb, shoots through every nerve in her body. Ida sags, crossing her arms across her chest and gasping for breath. She's felt that helpless before. But it's like when she reached out and tried to show Dean just how it felt to feel nothing, and the memory comes back, as raw and bloody as it was, like she's experiencing it again, and oh God she's going to have a--
"Dean!" Ida looks back, over her shoulder, meets his gaze. She takes note of the color of his hair, his eyes, the shape of his ARMs. She feels the tile floor beneath her feet. It helps ground her.
'The world outside may die, but here, the world shall always be in bloom!'
Something flashes before Ida's eyes, called to the surface by the sensation of helplessness. Filgaia, a cold, lifeless shell. Lunar, cracked open like an egg and spilling something shapeless and wrong into the void. Not even selfish joy can kill the cold shudder that runs through Ida's body. She smells rosewater again, and glares over her shoulder at Elise. "You should listen to Dean," Ida says, her voice perched on a razor's edge between calm and anger. "I did. He helped save my life."
She turns back to Hubert--the real Hubert--and meets his gaze. Her voice softens, and that empathy she had so much trouble mustering comes flowing out. "You remind me of someone," Ida whispers. "Someone who lived long ago, and far away. He put innocents to the torch because he thought them traitors, and was locked in a tower, alone--stripped of his name, his title, his lands." She takes a step towards him, gestures up through the broken skylight at the sky above. If the Old Moon is out, she points right at it. "He lost everything that mattered to him, but he remembered the woman who put him there. He grew obsessed with her, tried to aid in her erasure from history." She breathes out. Malevolence flows from her mouth in sickly violet plumes, yet there's no sign that it's sinking in. She's taken it into her body, deliberately, but it's finding no purchase. It should be corrupting her. Why isn't it?
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida wasn't sure what she was expecting to find inside the gleaming golden statue, but surprise widens her eyes nevertheless. The sight of Hubert--the real Hubert--dangling there would be comical, if it weren't quietly heartbreaking. "You're not even doing your own dirty work," she says; she steps back, sweeping her hands through a circle as the Hellion flails and shrieks.
But those spirits are perfectly capable of retaliating. Ida raises an arm, the exoskeleton fanning out into a discus-like shield, but it's no use. As soon as that baleful ray touches her, a sense of helplessness--weakness--races up her limb, shoots through every nerve in her body. Ida sags, crossing her arms across her chest and gasping for breath. She's felt that helpless before. But it's like when she reached out and tried to show Dean just how it felt to feel nothing, and the memory comes back, as raw and bloody as it was, like she's experiencing it again, and oh God she's going to have a--
"Dean!" Ida looks back, over her shoulder, meets his gaze. She takes note of the color of his hair, his eyes, the shape of his ARMs. She feels the tile floor beneath her feet. It helps ground her.
'The world outside may die, but here, the world shall always be in bloom!'
Something flashes before Ida's eyes, called to the surface by the sensation of helplessness. Filgaia, a cold, lifeless shell. Lunar, cracked open like an egg and spilling something shapeless and wrong into the void. Not even selfish joy can kill the cold shudder that runs through Ida's body. She smells rosewater again, and glares over her shoulder at Elise. "You should listen to Dean," Ida says, her voice perched on a razor's edge between calm and anger. "I did. He helped save my life."
She turns back to Hubert--the real Hubert--and meets his gaze. Her voice softens, and that empathy she had so much trouble mustering comes flowing out. "You remind me of someone," Ida whispers. "Someone who lived long ago, and far away. He put innocents to the torch because he thought them traitors, and was locked in a tower, alone--stripped of his name, his title, his lands." She takes a step towards him, gestures up through the broken skylight at the sky above. If the Old Moon is out, she points right at it. "He lost everything that mattered to him, but he remembered the woman who put him there. He grew obsessed with her, tried to aid in her erasure from history." She breathes out. Malevolence flows from her mouth in sickly violet plumes, yet there's no sign that it's sinking in. She's taken it into her body, deliberately, but it's finding no purchase. It should be corrupting her. Why isn't it?
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
"I came into that tower a desperate woman--desperate to grow stronger, to understand the power that had taken me. That man--that Nameless Lord--didn't even care who I was, only that I wasn't her, his nemesis. I wanted to unravel the mysteries he held in that place, because I was so, so sick of not knowing... so sick of people dying because of my ignorance. And yet, when I finally confronted him, he was... like you. So small, so desperate, so very scared. He didn't even know his own name, and that burning obsession was the one thing keeping him alive. I wanted to hurt him, not because he hurt me, but because I wanted to feel powerful. I wanted to make someone else feel scared for once. And that feeling never went away--"
Ines surges forwards. Ida trails off, her teeth shutting with an audible 'clack' as the enormous woman makes her feelings known with her fist. Ida doesn't blame her. But...
"People died because of you," Ida says. "You grew rich off their suffering, their deaths, their sacrifice. You can either run from that, or you can look it in the eye and accept it." Ida clenches her right fist. Fire ignites around her knuckles, trailing a heat-haze that burns away the ambient Malevolence. Tendrils of pure white smoke rise up from armored fingers. "Hubert Mark Burroughs," Ida says. Breath flows from her lips, enveloping her. Her aura ignites, a brilliant, pure golden-white around the core of Moor Gault's flame. "Look at yourself. Let go."
Ida's body flows effortlessly through the strike. She rushes forwards, letting her legs provide initial momentum. Pure white lotus flowers blossom in her footprints, breaking apart into scattered petals of Breath. Her torso pulls back, her arm tightens. The world seems to hold its breath.
Ida's fist surges forwards. The shockwave hits first, but it's quickly blown apart by a surging, billowing torrent of purest flame--the very same flame that helped purify Yvain. The flame that sustains the world.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Hubert with Unbroken Lotus Fist! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Hubert takes a solid hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Unbroken Lotus Fist for 174 hit points! GS: Hubert has Fallen! They are no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Yvain has posed.
"That's true!" Yvain counters Magilou, and doesn't even blink as she pulls out a dagger in preparation for his healing. Not even a bat of an eye.
"This world of yours is an illusion! It does not live!"
Yvain feels the coming of the saplings almost before they arrive, but not in time to get out of the way; the roses and thorns gather around him and punch through his thick clothes before he burns them off with an aura of fire when they stop growing.
The invitation to sleep is nice, but, "I slept long enough. I'm staying awake, now."
"That is a fascinating weapon," Yvain says to Dash as he uses it, agreeing with Magilou here. "Pruning... That's a way to look at it. But you say you're immune to Hellionization?"
He does not ask Dean questions for the moment, instead smiling as he speaks of illusions and pain, of influence and working together. Yes. "...Well said."
Then he charges up power for another Arte, breathing in. "But if you will allow yourself to be trapped in your own illusions in this way... Then I'll have to show you how much they cage you."
A red glyph bursts into being on the ground, pillars of flame rising from four points to create a pyramidal cage within. From the center a great conflagration bursts upward, igniting the entire space within, searing and seething with power.
As his Arte works, he watches Marivel, hearing her reach out towards the man on the other side of the battlefield. He considers this wealth.
...He considers the story Ida mentions, and he wonders, for a moment. Could it be?
His flames burn brightly regardless, only burning out after long moments of casting.
GS: Seraph Yvain has activated a Force Action! GS: Seraph Yvain spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Seraph Yvain has attacked Elise Riesdale with Infernal Prison! GS: Seraph Yvain has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Yvain has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
Malevolence simply is, says Elise, the queen of roses. From his vantage point to the back, the cat-shaped Seraph's tail twitches once, twice.
But there is no controlling the truth, is there. It simply is.
"Much truth from mouth of one close, closer yet," Harmaus murmurs.
He's already learning many new things today. From the things that Elise proclaims--
To the true form of Hubert, his shell shattered.
It's shame he had only focused on purification, long ago. He could have learned so much if he had but watched. Even in recent years, Hellions as aware and fresh as these two are far rarer to come by...
Contrasted with the more bestial creatures that roam the lands of Lunar.
And they almost never happen in Filgaia, a land without truth until very, very recently.
The others shout their arguments against the Hellions, but they're things that the Seraph has heard argued many, many times.
No. There is no arguing with the truth.
GS: Elise Riesdale guards a hit from Seraph Yvain's Infernal Prison for 135 hit points! GS: Disease applied to Elise Riesdale! GS: Elise Riesdale activates Arcane Font! GS: Elise Riesdale has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Dash Caskett has posed.
Despite being much more powerful, they have only marginally more effectiveness. This Hellionization effect has some mutations that let the affected target fight far above what the original perso nwas capable of. "Well, that was... unexpected."
Naturally, not seeming to be one to take that on the chin, the Rose Queen returns fire. The erratic nature of the chromatic orb shot his way makes it a difficult projectile to dodge, and strikes him square in the chest. Dash gets slammed against the wall enough to shake the ground, and caves his chestpiece inward. What probably would have puncture chests and broken ribs yields very little reaction from Dash though, outside of an exasperated "Augh!" on initial impact.
But the extensivve visible damage is undeniable, regardless of how much the boy seems to shrug it off. Wafts of smoke and dissipating ether peel away from the cratered armor, as Dash rights himself. "Heh! ...Suppose so," Dash replies to Magilou with. "I think so? Its complicated," Dash replies to Yvain. A small arm-pump and smile is given toward them as well when it comes to his cool weaponry. If he could give a thumbs-up he would, but those are currently somewhere inside his arms.
Mental note to Roll: add some kind of device that can do a thumbs-up if his hands are missing.
Well, since buster fire isn't working, he does have a giant mechanical instrument that can probably work as a weed-eater if used right Of course 'using it right' is subjective here, usually just pointing it at something and revving the internals works. But no, Dean is here, so he has to get fancy.
The Jet Skates kick up dust and debris again as Dash moves to pick up speed. The buster is aimed forward, with the modules within tuned to fire a spray of extremely bright and searing plasma fire-- less powerful than the shots before, but painful, and distracting. As the shots fly, and enough speed built, Dash kickflips high into the air, and the Drill Arm screams to life, fast enough to whip a tornado up around the drill bit. Now he's thinking with power tools.
GS: Dash Caskett spends 2 Combo on Poison and Link! GS: Dash Caskett has attacked Elise Riesdale with Radiant Rain! GS: Dash Caskett has gained 1 Combo! GS: Dash Caskett has launched an attack Link! GS: Elise Riesdale critically guards Dash Caskett's Radiant Rain for 14 hit points! GS: Elise Riesdale has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight! GS: Dash Caskett has attacked Elise Riesdale with Full Burst Drill! GS: Dash Caskett has gained 1 Combo! GS: Dash Caskett has completed his action. GS: Elise Riesdale takes a solid hit from Dash Caskett's Full Burst Drill for 141 hit points! GS: Elise Riesdale has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Hubert has posed.
The workers of the statue toil without cease. They pull at levers. They infuse joints and pipes with golden, malevolent steam. They direct the motions of their superior's merciless monolith, even as some pour so much of themselves into it that they wither away into nothing but more Malevolence for the machine. It's fine.
After all, they can always get more to toil.
But dangling within the sundered temple of his idol, Hubert remains, stuck and helpless. Eyes nervously fidget towards Elise, sharp teeth worrying at his lip and long, spindly fingers toying with his mustache in a cocktail of nervous twitches as he spies her, still there. Laughing. Laughing at him. They're all laughing at him, aren't they? Elise. Layna. Ines--
"h-how dare you," that tiny, shrill voice hisses out. Angry, and afraid, Hubert looks like he is warring with the overwhelming impulse to run again; the very armor that is meant to protect him tremors in his terror and feelings of impotence.
But he stands his ground, as Malevolence swells all around him.
"i will not run away again -- i'll -- i'll tear down this entire mountain if i have to!! it is not yours to have!!"
It should be a furious bellow; and yet all the Hellion can manage is a squeak. What is more threatening, however, is the Malevolence that begins to surge around him and his golden monolith. Steeping more and more within the malignant energies that have turned his heart, something more sorcerous begins to swirl around him, crackling with a golden light that rapidly starts to bruise into more foul, sickly yellow hues.
The pressure around that armor begins to grow, and grow, and grow. Workers within the armor are sucked up into the mounting maelstrom. It begins to turn towards a tempest of ill lights--
And then he notices something from the corner of one bulbous eye. The shattered form of the statue turns, Layna's way. The Hellion's eyes widen. That foul fury begins to direct itself towards her --
--just a second too late.
Whatever might have been, ends with a roaring, winding stream of putrid gold light that sears -just- past Layna's head to CARVE through the illusive grounds of the estate surrounding them. The explosion that ripples outward from the impact point is enough to catch at clothes and hair with wild winds, but ultimately harmless -- especially compared to the winds that -Layna- conjures forth.
Hubert and his grand idol are caught, no matter how hard they struggle. Shards of stained glass rip from the golden behemoth's body, creating a twister of dazzlingly sharp, glinting glass. He tries his best to rear back, to try to either defend himself or counter Layna.
But --
WHAAAOOMMMMMM
--there is simply no chance.
One, single blow. It's more than enough. Enough to blow wind and glass away from its impact point, to part clouds...
And to launch Hubert and his idealized exoskeleton straight off the ground and up into the air, where the sharp, furious point of Ines Colina drives itself very literally home with a sharp, wet, -SHUNK-.
It's viscous, the bright red fluids that flow down Ines' thrust blade. The same kind of substance rolling down the statue's baleful eyes. Hubert makes a strangled sound as his spindly little claws grasp at his wounded belly, a gurgled "p-please" escaping his lips before gravity reasserts and he falls, thick, gooey globs of scarlet splattering in his wake.
And there, he hits ground with a tremendous, shuddering CRASH.
<Pose Tracker> Hubert has posed.
In the aftermath, Hubert is left with nothing more than words.
But words have power all their own.
The armor is curled up, scrabbling at the ground, desperate to try to get up. But it's useless. As useless as the goblin-like Hubert's own attempts to free himself from his hanging perch, yanking at those horns as if he might be able to drag himself from the wounded opening if he tried long enough.
But it is as he is yanking, that he notices a shadow looming over him. He looks up. He sees the form of Lanval - perhaps not terrifying for most - and yet all Hubert can summon is a simple, meek,
"eep"
past scarlet-stained lips.
Hubert goes still, then, only inertia keeping him swinging, as if he were attempting to play dead as Lanval assaults him with those questions. Those damning questions. Wide eyes shutter in a slow blink. Reflexively, Hubert tries to flinch away.
Shomethin' ya wanted more than the mine, washn't it? C'mon.
"..."
It's not terror of Lanval that seizes Hubert up, however.
It's the terror of possibility.
"i can't-- there's nothing left for me to--"
A hand presses down. And for all the struggling Hubert has done...
All it really takes is one
gentle
shove
to free Hubert from his self-made trap.
"aah--!"
As if there had been nothing seizing those stag's horns at all, with Lanval's shove, Hubert is pushed out of the armor that had been his protection and his prison all in one. He bounces off the edge of that gutted shell and rolls towards the ground, coming to a stop, face-down, in the ruined flooring that surrounds them. Weak little legs can barely move as if they've never been used before, but still they scrabble across the earth as he drags himself forward, confused and panicked. He tries to return to his armor -- to the mistaken and deceptive safety it provides...
... only to still at the sound of Marivel's words, long claws mere centimeters from grasping their gilded cage once more.
Gold makes an ill armor, she insists. And in the middle of those words, on the back of Lanval's own, and Ines and Layna's condemnations, Hubert hesitates, long fingers trembling. Apprehensive. Cautious. Afraid.
He doesn't know what might happen, if he has to look inside himself. If he has to open up.
"what if everyone sees..."
His words trail as he looks at that crackling flame in Ida Everstead-Rey's grasp. He would normally balk at the words from someone of her House being offered to him. He scarcely even understands much of it, really, as she talks of a man that has come and gone from the world -- truly, long before Hubert's own time on it.
But something about it hits too close to home.
Look at yourself.
If you can open your heart to others, then you will have wealth that cannot be taken from you.
'Tis less lonely towards the bottom.
He feels so tired. So weak. His eyes shut as he feels that soothing flame wash over him as every part of him feels gradually lighter, as if some weight he never knew was there was being burned away.
"... oh. I remember. I gave up..."
The words trail, lost in the flame. And when that heat ebbs away...
... there lies Hubert M. Burroughs, his clothes in tatters, his mustache a mess, his top hat lost to the tragic toils of transformation, and perhaps bleeding a -little- bit from a gut wound and various, many others...
But breathing. Unconscious, but alive.
Free of Malevolence, even if not from his sins.
<Pose Tracker> Elise Riesdale has posed.
The Rose Queen's joy is plenty enough for Magilou to press in towards her, and unveil her next present: her shikigami, which manages to slip Elise off her feet. .... Which manifests as Elise's form blinking once momentairely, and in the next instance, her pushing upwards to her feet using her scepter. Her teleportation in itself is an illusion, blinking out that moment from one step to the next in lieu of manifesting actual effort. Yet another lie, for Magilou.
What sadness does she hide? Red eyes gaze at Marivel's own shade of red. "Crying?" She touches her cheeks, seeming the gleam of gold streaked tears, and laughs. "This is joy, and sadness, all in one. Can you not see it?" She gestures to Dean. "Surely, that is what Malevolence is, as well. It is the whetstone that sharpens the soul, its own kind of purification."
With a wave of her hand, Elise's scepter levitates and blinks from existence. "... The world died long ago," she says to Venetia. "It simply took me years to realize it, enmeshed in the dying warmth of its corpse until it smothered out all hope. The world may still be a living thing for many of you, but for me... there is only one place. One of my own creation, where those who have been rejected may live as their truest selves. To those who come here, I open my heart."
The concept of a dying world is hard to see past metaphors and allusions, but the phoenix in Dean's attack puts that fire in his heart into the real world, knocking Elise backwards. A blink, and she is rising up, using her roses as supports, but the precious fruits of Venetia's research cut them to bits, leaving Elise halfway collapsed to the floor, her dark gold hair draped on the floor like that of a sagging porcelain doll.
As she rises, she sees the tail of a strange cat, of Harmaus. A cat. Curious, did her illusions cast this, or--
'You should listen to Dean.'
Elise raises her head just enough to level her gaze on Ida, and she smiles, slightly.
She shakes her head. "No. My dream... it cannot be realized by a weaker individual. I must be a thorny thicket to protect my subjects, a scepter to rule out chaos, and a knife, to cut those that threaten them. Those are the roles of a Rose Queen."
She persists to the last, and Yvain's flames, the flames from the seraph she tried to 'save' but relented.
By the time Dash comes blazing in with fire, speed, and his drill, Elise has already begin to fall, the last vestiges of her strength knocked clean away by Dash's attack as she gazes up towards the sky, blowing in through that broken glass.
She is exposed, definitely.
Ah... but what a terrible time to send her knight away....
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
"'Tis up to them," Lanval responds to Marivel while he's still making a mockery of leverage and physics in general, but all Seraphim do. Everyone comes at Hubert's hubris from various angles, and he trusts all of them no matter how callous or otherwise - so many hands trying to reach a heart should come from as many directions as possible. One of them may be accepted.
But it is up to them. As Dean and Ida channel Moor Gault through Seraph Boudicca to reach out to the others, so he does he provide Schturdark's power into Layna. Even Ines' words, harsh as they are, are doubtless laden with difficult truth of something Hubert needs to accept if he's to ever escape this mire of misery he has become stuck in.
The events pass as they do, and a wounded Hubert returns to his physical humanity as Lanval looks upon with a smile. (Then the gold pillar he's standing on melts in the purifying flame and water alike, its conjurer of origin no longer in the throes of Malevolence, and he falls down to the ground with a comical 'pfeh' exhalation.)
He's all right, but...
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Suddenly... the emotional fabric of the air changes. Sorrow. Guilt. Shame. Regret. Despair. They are not from the tears of the Rose Queen, pushed to the brink.
To some, this emotional thumbprint within the Malevolence is telling - a great shadow descends from on high through shattering stained glass, shaking the ground as they land in a crouch by the ailing would-be monarch's side (to their left).
They land in what little shade is afforded to these illusory environs, cultivated to be bright, colorful, and inviting to the weary. They scarce appear to be a part of this, for their visage by shadowy outline is - to put it simply - monstrous. Four horns, pointed behind them. A single, demonic-looking wing to their right. A tail extraordinarily long and restless in its movement. A body frame large and muscular, suited for a hulking, quadrupedal beast clutching a warped-looking polearm of some kind.
They are not a quadruped. Whether they are a beast is a subject of debate.
They rise fully upright and step out to the light - the glint of the beads of a Gransian rosary wrapped around their exposed right forearm, flesh like weathered gray stone compared to the flawless white marble around them. Clad most distinctively in a raincloud-gray overcoat that remains too large for them despite their frame, they stand abut a whole head taller than the Rose Queen, churning their own Malevolence into the Domain.
This Hellion - a gargoyle - has a name, for the appearance is familiar: Ruth Pauling. a.k.a. Death's Door, one of the greatest sharpshooters of Filgaia's modern military history. Veteran of the Celesti Civil War, one of the greatest warriors of the ill-fated Aquvy Union. Her deeds from that era are, let's say, worth way more than twenty years in the mushroom patches.
She turns with a bowed head to the Rose Queen, mossy green hair draped over her face with eyes closed, stone gray face gentle with a smile. "You're hurt. You're frustrated," softly spoken with a gentleness and character absolutely unlike the (horror-)storied Ruth Pauling of the 480s, flexing out her single overly large demonic wing as if in an intimidating gesture...
Before curling it inward, slackening it and gesturing the Rose Queen to shelter within her. Something like a hug, if she so accepts. A serpentine tongue flicks out between her lips.
"You're angry. You're disappointed." This head rises, eyes opening gradually to reveal that glowing, Malevolent purple. Her left hand hefts up that over-large polearm - no, her rifle, warped by Malevolence - as a lengthy stone gray tail terminating in a barbed hollow heart wraps around the shaft to be the second 'hand,' leaving her right arm free to support the Domain Master. A place for her tears to fall.
"You shared your beautiful dream with them, and this is how they regard it..." The gaze hardens, as raindrops start to fall - Malevolence-laced ones. They seem to stain the ground they touch, turning spotless marble into bleaker, earthen colors of rough, unpaved texture.
Ruth knows many of the gathered here already. The aggression that boils within her discordant heart is held taut, ready to explode out at a moment's notice were it not for her sense of self - such as it is - wresting it close.
"Guild Galad's taken all that's left," Malevolence leaks through her breath, her fanged teeth more visible as her voice wavers in tension as she repeats that sore spot with no easy solutions, "all but the dreams of those who desire better." She looks to the Rose Queen once more, that worrisome Hellion emotional flip-flop in play as she seamlessly transitions to a soft, (big) sisterly smile. Warm. Kind. Holding their sadness and despair close.
Like a gallant knight from heroic stories, albeit one wreathed in a demonic visage. "Who deserved better... than to have it be taken."
Before she about-faces to the rest.
"I CAN'T LET THEM BE SSSSSTOLEN ANEW!" Then harsh, mouth opening wide in a monstrous sneer with a serpentine hiss like she would strike, the altered Gae Buidhe/Dearg DC4 pointed their way, and that rain's starting to /flood/. A warning sign, to try and get them to back off after everyone's been worn down by the Hellion crossfire.
The only bigger surprise is that she hasn't started shooting... but that just might be the last hand she has on the leash of her feelings, seeing who's there - people who she (previously?) came to some sort of understanding with.
It may be best not to instigate a new challenge, but that may not even be Ruth's aim - the rain produces a thick, obscuring miasma-mist that's giving both the Rose Queen and herself the ability to retreat somewhere else within this Domain.
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.
There is a flood of water accompanying the purifying flames as Layna draws upon Lanval's - and Schturdark's by extension - powers of purification to cleanse Hubert of his Malevolence. And it succeeds, and the man falls. Battered and wounded, but just a man once more. Layna exhales, and shakes her head.
"Alright, now for-" She cuts herself off with a loud curse as the air shifts in a way she recognizes - heralding the arrival of another powerful Hellion. And a familiar one, at that.
"...Ah, hell, Ruth is here too!?" Layna says, retreating back. She moves to cover Hubert. After how hard they fought to not kill him, she's certainly not going to let Ruth have the satisfaction of doing it. ...But she isn't here for him. Ruth makes her intentions clear - to protect the Rose Queen from those who would harm her dream. The flood she conjures is enough to push her back and with another curse under her breath, Layna looks back to the open elevator.
"...Alright, makin' the call - I'm sounding the retreat! We don't have enough to deal with her, too." Layna says, moving to grab one of Hubert's limbs and lift him(albeit a bit roughly). "Someone come help me with this guy! I'm not leaving him for them."
It sounds like a mercy... until one considers that she's probably going to try and wring every last gella out of him that she can.
<Pose Tracker> Ines Colina has posed.
There's something satisfying about the piercing strike, the malevolent blood seeping down her magicked blade, before it disappears. But it looks like he survives it, as others-
Others show kindness that she doesn't have to spare.
And then the flame consumes. Ines isn't sure what to expect when it happens. This is purification, huh?
... oh. I remember. I gave up...
Ines glances down at the form of Hubert on the floor. Lucky to have the right acquaintances. She turns toward the Rose Queen, but that fight seems handled as well. Good. Someone's got to destroy this entire garden. It'll be slow, but with-
And then Death's Door open appears. Ines growls. "You again!?" She stands up, still ready to fight despite the damage she's taken fighting Hubert. There are cooler heads, though. Cooler, pirateyheads. Layna sounds the treat as she grabs their employer, but Ines doesn't move to retreat. Instead she takes a few more steps forward, positioning herself between those who decide to retreat and the Hellions, staring at Ruth until the Miasma makes it impossible to see. Sure, they're running, but who knows what else might be up their sleeve. She readies a spell to harden her skin incase an attack comes.
No matter what, Ines Colina is last on the elevator.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
Hubert falls. A low hiss emits from the feline Seraph's throat as Lanval approaches the remnants as it struggles to rise. He's risen to his feet, perhaps seeming for the moment as if he were about to charge forth and prevent this defilement--
But perhaps Harmaus, for all his ambitions, sees the writing on the wall: too many are arrayed here.
Hubert is purified. There is nothing he can do about that. But then even Elise falls.
A halo has begun to glow around the Seraph. One is an insult. Two is a disgrace. And then even this Domain will be destroyed...!
He cannot permit it. He glances for a moment between them all standing before him. Those he knows not at all.
Those he has fought against.
And one particular singular figure who he has met before, a long long time ago.
Who had remarked on such things.
"No. I will not allows it--"
But the emotions of this space undergo a particular twist. Grief. Guilt. Despair. It's a flavor he has not long sensed, particularly from...
From one like that. He has not met Ruth before.
For an instant, it might seem as if Harmaus were about to leap into the void, to follow deeper into the Domain as the miasma roils up. But the body knows what the mind does not. Try he might, but he might as well have attempted to run into a wall. His corpus recoils, however determined he might be. However he struggles against his own nature.
Again he hisses, and as they approach the elevator, maybe they'll see him for a moment's worth of time--
And then he vanishes, mere motes of light amidst the howl of Malevolence. He, too, has been forced to flee from this Domain.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0KfieEkIJo
'what if everyone sees...'
The words echo in Ida's ears as the flame does its work, hot and bright, but as comforting as the cool, pure water Layna brings to bear. Ida straightens up; some of the weight is off her shoulders, but she knows what's coming next, and it's always intense. Memories flash through her mind's eye, and they're achingly familiar. Hubert's trajectory through life was different from her own, but Guild Galad's high society scarred him all the same. Her jaw trembles. Tears well in the corners of her eyes--once again, she finds herself wanting to tear down the whole, wretched system and burn it to ash.
It won't be that simple. It never is. But the work must be done, and it starts with acts like these.
"I accept these memories, and bear their weight," Ida whispers, repeating what she said to Asura so long ago. "I accept these memories without shame, without anger, without judgment."
She looks down at the prone, tattered figure on the ground before her. "The dead cannot repent," Ida whispers. She kneels, uncorks a Spiran Potion, pours it onto the wound in Herbert's stomach. "Live."
She glances over her shoulder just in time to see the Rose Queen fall. An eerie silence hangs in the air, like the calm in the eye of a hurricane. Someone else is coming, someone familiar...
"Ruth," Ida breathes, her eyes wide as saucers. She turns to face the two Hellions, putting herself between them and Herbert. Things click into place. "This--this is her, isn't it?" That dream she'd mentioned--that person who would bring peace to all of Zoara. Her heart aches. When Ruth screams, it feels like a lash across her back. She remembers nights spent by a campfire with Jack and Rosaline--moments of comfort shared between monsters. No matter what else happened, they at least had each other.
Beyond that, though, they had people who cared about them, who wanted to see them safe and well and whole. Ida sets her jaw, and stares Death's Door in the face. "I'm glad you have someone," she whispers. "But murder won't fix this world, and neither will her illusions." She turns, kneels, and takes Herbert's arm, draping it across her shoulders. With her fellow Seer beside her, Ida makes for the elevator, quickly but carefully.
As for Ruth, well... sometimes, there are no easy answers.
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
Trap, trap, trap. Magilou said as much. It's more than she says, now, as the Rose Queen affects her teleportation trick. Some things which inform a person aren't written on them so plainly.
No -- all the sign of that displeasure is kept in that unimpressed expression, a pale shade of emotion, less than, lacking.
"Crafty," she says, and the word is lofty, at least.
It's a fey expression which takes her, as Elise speaks on the purity of her corruption. "An interesting conclusion," she smiles, with that selfsame distance. "Your methodology is quite sound." There is a 'but', to that sentence. She does not speak it. It hangs, ineffable, over her.
Surely 'interesting' in this case must mean 'wrong'. What joy is there to Malevolence?
What joy is there to Magilou?
Certainly she smiles, as Elise speaks on her weakness. A terrible, wretched smile, all carved into her face like a rose-bled dagger, lidded eyes looking down a nose. She laughs. It is violence done to the hollow of her chest. "Heh... heheheh!"
Magilou looks down at her, as she sprawls on the earth. She looks down on her, and tells her, without mercy or even any personal cruelty: "Seems your strings are cut." As if she were a puppet in some puppet play the world had put on, about its very dying heart.
... more than anything, it's a reflection from a mirror angled just, just so.
Her eyes narrow, in this moment. Her lips tense. It coincides entirely with the change in the air. This change, bringing with it... "Oh," Magilou says, with rising tone, a hand lifting beside her mouth.
Elise said she stood here without her knight, and now, Ruth arrives.
How nice, she thinks. She has a friend.
The rain brings with it mist, and Magilou shifts her weight to her opposite leg. Her voice is still level, still quite calm, as she says: "... a word of caution."
Magilou sighs, looking aside, as the Malevolent rain falls.
"A dream, disturbed, may soon become a nightmare."
She spares a glance to Yvain and Lanval, in the leaving, just to be sure; if she has to, she'll tap either one on the shoulder to remind them to leave. (Just those two? Magilou pretends she didn't hear that last one.) She's aware, at arm's length, how unpleasant it is to exist here right now. She ambles back into the elevator; she leans against the wall. ... strangely, she's not terribly chatty once they get out.
It's just too bad.
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
It's easy, Marivel thinks, how quickly you grow from loathing a human to having sympathy for them. You're pathetic. What would father say? What would mother say? what would Vasil say? Your people? How long does the kindness of words reach a man, how long until their old vices return again and again and again--
But Marivel exhales out her breath slowly. If she could just turn off who she was, become that true monster, she surely would have done it by now. In the end, she too wears armor. More sturdy than gold, perhaps, but it's hardly fast steel.
But she'll get there, she thinks. She only needs it for one hard day. One hard job.
She glances after the Rose Queen. Elise. Joy and sadness.
"I see it too well," She says softly.
She twists her head back into proper arrangement.
And she crouches to feel Hubert's throat. Feeling for a pulse.
She works to tend to the wounds. Quietly, without words.