The assault had devolved into chaos. Whether it could be repaired, whether the group would push on, remained to be seen. Zhusha's attempt on Draconua, along with Reign's magic raised to defend against the hit; Madhukar's rebelling magic lashing through her; Wyvern tumbling, falling, landing to be absorbed by stone... (hopefully Sora moved swiftly enough to avoid the falling bird-dragon)--all happened in flashes and glimpses between driving curtains of snow, glimpses of the madness the group was dissolving into.
Perhaps worst of all was Esther's aid. The corrupted mutant had swept air pressure in to aid them: blocking out the snow, now, and abruptly cutting off the wind, with a bubble of high air pressure. The storm raged farther around them, blinding white, but here--in the group--all was abruptly still and quiet. Yet this magic pulsed with Chaos on its own, distracting, maddening. Only Sora was far enough away to avoid this taint. They had, however, bought them a few moments' time.
Regardless, the storm was intensifying outside: the white flakes swirled madly, and even Esther's barrier of high-pressure air seemed to swell and throb as if battered by the wind. It would not last long, this shield, and the group had a difficult decision to make. To linger here longer would be potentially dangerous, even deadly; they were still exposed, out in the cold, and though there was no sign of the worm now there was also no guarantee it would not return. The sky, such as it was, was darkening, the temperatures slowly dropping. It would be wise to move on, be that toward the mountains, or down into the tunnels, or back the way they'd come.
________________
Characters should choose which path to take, if any; remaining in place for much longer may prove dangerous. They may choose to roll, if they so wish, to take any desired action.
Those characters who remain within Esther's protective bubble for more than a moment or two will NOT take further Corruption points, (if they had already taken one from Draconua) but WILL feel the effects of chaos urging them toward chaotic behavior. Those who have not taken points this thread and are afflicted will take one Corruption Point and be considered Touched. All may choose to leave the protection of their Black Winds instead, and brave the fury of the storm.
The next GM post will occur on March 12th.
@Tahi-shei (Sora)
@Madhukar @Twisted @Marshmallow @Nemo @Reign @Pride (Nidhogg)
@Draconua @Zhusha @Esther
Tahi-shei's world was crashing down around him. Conflicting ideas ran through his mind -- Vargas's command to turn back if they were at risk contrasted with a grave warning. If you fail, this nest may be destroyed. Pride's vision and his flicker of anger pulsed through Tahi-shei while his anxiety and frustration echoed back. It was a two-way link, after all. Nobody was listening to him, not really -- No, Draconua isn't listening to me.
Do not fail.
Do not fail.
He realized with a dawning horror that he was not qualified to make this decision. Lives were in his hands now, as everything fell apart. They had lost Sora, Giggle, Carja's aunt -- he didn't have Draconua under control, Gembound were turning on each other, and his life was spiraling out of control. At least, for the moment, the storm had stopped -- but he could taste the chaos in the air, and he knew the price of it.
He acted first. Commands could come after. Thankfully, blessed spores hit the air -- hopefully they'd go high enough to hit Draconua, his true target. At least the storm was not to interfere with them. Maybe, just maybe, it would get her to calm the hell down long enough to listen to him.
"HEY!" he shouted, even though he didn't exactly have to yell at the moment. "If any one of you is able to contact Vargas from a distance, do it. DRACONUA! On the Master's authority, I am removing you from this mission. Go back. Now." Hopefully his magic would keep her from killing him. "STOP ATTACKING HER. You will only provoke her. Now! There is a decision to be made, and I am letting you make it."
He took a deep breath. "After we rescue anyone who can be rescued, we are either going to continue to the mountains or turn back. We will vote. If we fail here, the caves might be destroyed. All of us could die. Or, we could die on our way in, and the same thing would happen. One way or another, make your decisions now or forever hold your peace. We move shortly."
Tahi-shei was not a general who would walk unwilling men to their deaths. He did not want to. He was panicking, and scared. Giggle was gone, Pride was angry with him, James-- James had withdrawn. He felt the quiet. It was not so much the link breaking as it was James compartmentalizing and shutting Tahi-shei out for the moment. He felt nauseous, now -- feeling James's horror and disgust.
I'm sorry, he thought, on the verge of hysterical. Perhaps Vargas was right -- maybe all this emotion was a weakness, in the end.
@/draconua specifically, but
EVERYONE PAY HEED
Here—! Here, amid the pandemonium of bodies scrambling over one another, claws vying for purchase, she was most comfortable. Her festering hole beneath the Black Spire might be a place to rest, but bedlam was her home. Flames seethed over her body and left raw, shimmering-black flesh in its wake, hide's soot whisked away by the blustering winds.
Voices cried out around her; she lifted her head from the hole to bare her grinning teeth at the torbie's orders, then the overly-long bird that'd dove at her quarry—the bone-eater swirling by with hurled insults (slavering, sure, but stupid?) Nidhogg blundered in from the white, hissing and spitting something made indistinct by the blizzard. Golden spots had darted toward her feet.
The valkhound broke into a grin, jarred loose from her singularly-focused targeting of the Ordered beast, because
SHE WAS DRACONUA, THE SLEEPLESS CHAOS, AND THIS WAS HER DOMAIN. She reared up, maw opened to the sky so that they WOULD KNOW HER NAME—
Heady, corrupted (somehow, even musky) air filled her lungs when she made for another gout of flame, simultaneously crushing and so freeing. She stood in the eye of a hurricane, the walls still swirling around her and all the others. The storm remained as static in her maddened skull, bouncing around amid the rising and rising and rising chaotic energy in the atmosphere; it was just so close to being unbearable. Draconua felt wired to explode.
Tahi-shei's being conveniently so audible as Esther peeled back the wintry veil… ? Unfortunate. She tore for him, and stopped short with a spray of powdery-white-soaked-carmine—
(He called her name like it belonged in his mouth, simpering coward that he was—hiding in the middle of the group. Her head snapped toward him, and the entropic fire in her throat died. The oil weeping down her flanks caught instead, burning out in an inglorious blaze. "On the Master's authority," the deer cried, "I am removing you from this mission. Go back. Now.")
—and… a giggle started to bubble out her gullet. It was small enough, at first, a sound barely even discernible as her; especially to the poor Sika, blind as he was. Yet, even if Tahi-shei could not properly see her, her presence and closeness was sure to be felt: the stink of sweat mingled with burning hair; the oppressive cold-burn of a fire licking up her entire shoulder radiated; the fanning of her hot breath as she craned her neck to devolve into hysterical laughter.
Her entire body rocked with it, peals of cackling and crowing. Gobs of Oil-laden saliva dribbled from her jaw.
"You should've considered me provoked the moment you promised to just banish Order." A wheezing hiss punctuated that vile, venomous word, then another laugh—a laugh—a giggle—"I cannot find it in myself to be rattled by empty threats uttered from empty vessels." She couldn't have stopped laughing if she tried.
A question for the audience: "do you think so little of me? The one that CONSUMES AND DESTROYS IN HIS NAME?! THE ONE THAT FREED YOUR OWN FROM THAT FELL WORM?" It was rhetorical—she plowed on with a gnarled twist of her teeth; "this is not a glorious hunt to save your Caves! This is seeking SCRAPS like a ravenous PEASANT."
The laughter grew louder with her voice, booming cracks of thunder interspersed with a lethal promise: "SEEKING ANYTHING FOR PROOF THAT I SHOULD NOT CARRY OUT HIS CONTINGENCIES—AND I DO NOT MEAN OUR CREATOR."
She turned, then, back down to Tahi-shei, a full-on guffaw spitting directly onto the stag's face. Jagged, Oilstained teeth grinned Cheshire-wide—like a cat who's caught a grand prize: "I FOUND A SINGLE PIECE, JUST FOR YOU."
The worm, fleeing to nurse its festering wound.
Draconua rose back to her full height, sanguine face-plate eclipsing whatever light was cast from above; a horrendous halo for an unholy beast. Gone was the delighted grin, the mirthful overlay of her lyrics. "DO NOT TRY TO TELL ME WHEN I CANNOT CARRY OUT MY PURPOSE," she bellowed down to Tahi-shei, unheeding of whatever command he tried to instill; it was merely luck that his cordyceps had managed to wipe away any thought of destroying him then and there, "I TOLD YOU THE CONSEQUENCE OF MY EXISTENCE, BEFORE."
And here's the promise, spoken in a low, dark, menacing roar: "YOU WILL HAVE MY MERCY, MY OBEDIENCE, WHEN I AM DEAD AND GONE."
Lips peeled back, full maw exposed in a familiar sight, skull swinging down and tracking Tahi-shei, should he move back as she expected.
"On the Master's authority, I'll lay in wait for your inevitable failure, for your cowardice to see you in Order's embrace, and I will not be your savior."
Draconua's just going along with whatever happens, but not without a kickass monologue.
Esther's spell worked, and the air instantly changed as the storm and snow were forcefully pushed away in a halt. The cave was too large for Esther to do anything to the entirety of it, but that didn't stop the magic from removing the harsh winds from the area directly around the group, except for those stuck within the hole below. The storm wouldn't have reached down there anyway. The maned wolf breathed in the stale air around them, it bled with chaotic air that the corruption in them loved and desired. Esther tried to keep such things out of their head most of the time, but now, they would leave the others to do their thing while they did what they wanted themselves.
The deer that was directing all of them screeched with directions the maned wolf honestly didn't care much about. They had nothing to do with the others that attacked the sleepless chaos - Esther was not an idiot. They knew the power the large creature held, and they did not want to be taken down in a flash of... Whatever spells she constantly used to plow down her enemies. None of the gembound here would be strong enough to take her down alone, and from what they'd seen so far, none of them were even strong enough to take her down together. His Magic - His power - must be too strong for them to handle.
Another deer asked for someone to hold them up - Esther did not move to do that. Helping the ones lost would be a good idea, but Esther was not there to help them now. The group was wasting time in the snow - they could feel the winds beating the barrier they made. It would not hold for long. Soon the barrier would be eaten up by the snow and winds, and it looked like the winds were only getting stronger. It was going to hurt when it finally broke through with force. It would be better for all of them to leave the barrier of their own accord. Of course, no one did that yet - they were all sitting ducks within the wind.
Tahi-shei used some kind of magic to take hold of the sleepless chaos, and Esther was surprised to see her listen to him at all. She did not look, nor sound, happy about it. All teeth and goopy oil down her - arguably scary - mouth. She was right, though, when she said the deer was not a threat to her. Draconua could take each of them down one by one if she really wanted to - Esther kind of was curious to see what Vargas' reaction to that would be, but it would be bad now. This was important, and Esther kind of hoped the gembound here completed the mission. Before they realized, the familiar feeling of flame touched the gembound's fur - it would be tinged black, soon. Worse of all the fire wasn't even warm. It never was.
Their nostrils flared. Esther was done here - they ignored the fire to see if they could find their way back to the entrance. The moment they stepped outside the barrier, the fire would go out anyway.
Marshmallow was just being a Marshmallow as usual and stayed hanging onto Tahi. She zoned out for a minute or two there before realizing that Tahi was calling on them to vote. Uh... what was that? Marshmallow didn't actually know that word for some reason, it wasn't one of those words that she understood like... food. Was Tahi asking if they were hungry? Maybe 'vote' was a food! If so, then she definitely was! "Yes! Vote! Vote!"
[Marshmallow has no vote due to this]
Instead of driving his beak into whatever part of Draconua it might or might not have reached, Zhusha crashed ungracefully into an invisible wall much like a bird into a window. Dazed, he flapped his wings clumsily, rapidly losing height as he attempted to process what had just happened. ... magic? he wondered, struggling to regain altitude as the eldritch serpent below lunged at him and was repelled by the same shield.
The cheetah--ah, he was the one who had made the shield, Zhusha assumed. And he supposed it made sense, but... looking around, he doubted they could make much of an effective enemy to anything, let alone-- Mother? The word held little sentimental meaning for he who had made it this far without one, but he hadn't thought those were supposed to be evil.
In any case, it made little sense to forge onward with three of them missing and two uncontrollable chaos beasts who might turn on them any moment. Which idiot's idea was it to bring them along, anyway? he wondered resentfully. But--failure meant being destroyed? There had been far too little exposition on that particular possibility for his liking. "WHO'S DOING THE DESTROYING," he honked to Tahi-shei. "I'LL FIGHT THEM." It was not a boast, nor was it spoken with any hope of winning. The opposite, in fact--despairing, yet furious. If they were going to die--he hoped they wouldn't--he wanted to make whoever was responsible hurt for it. If he could even injure something capable of destroying the whole world...
Things were quieter, all of a sudden, and Zhusha realized that Draconua had stopped roaring. He'd blocked it all out. In hindsight, perhaps he shouldn't have yelled to the deer while the beast was also yelling--but the more time he spent with this ragtag group, the more he resented them all. Unorganized, hopeless, helpless, failures. What was the point in staying with them all? Nothing good had come out of it.
"GET RID OF IT," he spat, jerking his head toward Draconua. "NO-GOOD PIECE OF TRASH." He felt the urge to attack her again--whether that was his own anger or the chaos whispering in his ear would probably never be known--but valiantly restrained himself and whirled around instead, storming off into the storm.
Immediately, he was buffeted by the winds and forced to land, near-blinded by the snow. In hindsight—and he really wasn't liking how much he was having to use his hindsight—leaving the bubble had perhaps not been the best of ideas. But he hated everyone within that circle anyway, so he was stubbornly refusing to go back. Instead he made his way… well, he had no idea where, honestly, but he was hoping it was in the general direction of an exit.
Touched w/ 1 point of corruption from Black Winds
that wasn't supposed to be reassure; just a blank roll