Forrals Fortress

[Silence Sei]

The creatures gently slept as the night sky loomed overhead. Even the orcs who stood watch at the guard towers would occasionally doze off and nod their heads down slowly in the quiet darkness. It was the perfect time for a silent strike.

The most advanced of airships carried the volunteers over the forest area of the three mile long aerial island. Any closer would get the pinnacle of flying technology shot down. The brave souls were given dossiers on the situation; they were to drop in and kill anything native to the fortress island.

The time to attack was nigh.

((Place for character intros. Erikar, Alyssa Snow, The Inventor, Warpath, and Philomel, make your opening posts, set the setting of the forest to your liking a bit, and after you all have made your posts, the assault shall begin! Good Luck Guys!))

[The Inventor]

Invetisto watched as the castle loomed closer and closer. The building was huge, 5 stories tall. The walls were probably two stories. Invetisto knew he had the disadvantage against these creatures. Most of them had wings and Invetisto had no long range weapon. As Invetisto tried to think of a way to kill these creatures, he was suddenly pushed out of the aircraft and started to fall into the forest below. The forest was made entirely out of pine trees that he knew would probably damage his clockwork mechanisms. As Invetisto fell through the trees and many limbs lodged themselves into the joints of his clockwork body.

As soon as the body hit the ground the body crunch and the head flew off. Out of the bottom of the head, Invetisto crawled out then brushed himself off. The millipede like creature looked at his clockwork body before he said, “Great, now I need to make another one.” This body had lasted Invetisto 10 years, a decent amount of time for the first creation. However, now it was nothing more than a pile of scrap. Luckily Invetisto had trained himself to use his hundred arms so he could attack and guard simultaneously. He wasn’t as good as he was in his armor, but he could at least hold his own. Besides, this gave him the advantage of surprise. Since he could easily sneak up on his enemies and kill them with a slight of the throat. Invetisto then just shook his head then headed for the wall. At least he could limb it without trouble, unlike if he was in his clockwork body.

[Philomel]

"Once more to war, my dear,
Once more to war,
Until we have peace, my dear,
It will be one more time - then more."

In her hand her white sword, that winter blade that reflected the cold chill that now resided in her soul, stood to attention. Ready to cleave any animal, beast or being, in twain, it was clean and pure but soon would not be. Once more it and the faun were on an airship, once more they were flying towards possible death. Once more they had been hired along with many other warriors of legend to stop a horror beyond imagining from intruding into the fragile peace of Althanas; a horror that threatened life as they knew it.

The zombie dragon had been somewhat petrifying. Yet after that Philomel had made the easy transisition from assassin-whore to Matriarch of her own society - still in an infantile stage, yet existant - complete with her own borrowed ship. The circumstances were somewhat fantastical in the fact her own mother had secretly become a pirate and thus given her a reason to become joint-Captain, and Matriarch. The circumstrances were also unexpected, in the view that now Philomel was part of some deep-seated organisation that spread over every ocean in the known world. Yet, the circumstances were, finally, somewhat beautiful. They had a sense of culmination to then, a tune of a coincidental melody that had somehow lead to the faun-whore gaining suddenly in power and magic all in one sweet flow.

Beside her Veridian, her beloved Earth-Spirit in the form of a fox, tensed, eager to have the battle begin already and kill everything in their path. Her eyes were focused ahead, straight to the front window of the airship, watching the floating island come into view and the trees of the forest get closer.

At least there will be plenty of earth, Philomel said to him mentally, blinking slowly.

The golden eyes glanced up at her, then turned back to the front window.

True. Though plenty of air too. His reply was harsh, brutal but to the point.

The faun-whore found herself smirking a little, Air is not the enemy here, love. Neither is water. We can work with them fine. It is fire that I would worry about.

Fire that burns.

Yes, the Matriarch of the Gilded Lily nodded, Exactly. Fire that burns.

Back over her shoulder she looked, eyeing up the others that had been hired to join them. She recognised the tall proud form of Erikar, one of the masters of the Crimson Hand, though he seemed to avoid her eyes as if to hide their connection. Personally, they had never spoken but they knew each other well. Similarly there was a girl with white-blonde hair whom matched the description to one that Leaf had battled, and drawn to. Philomel could not be certain if it was her, but later, perhaps, she would ask this strange girl with the boom-bangs also known as 'pistols' what her name was.

"Steady!"

The call came out, echoing over the ship interior. Two seconds of searching and a hand-grab later Philomel had a suitable rope in hand, one of the many connected to a weight that would help to lower them to the ground. Bracing herself, and tighting her hold on her blade with one hand and the rope with the other, she pushed the pressure into her hooves and prepared to jump out when the ship came over the forest canopy. There was a fair spot with massively leafy trees, perfect for making a soft landing. They also seemed tall enough to access the castle walls from there and attempt an assault.

Veridian took several paw-steps closer until he could hop onto the bottom of the rope, and onto the weight and sit there, preparing to make the fall also.

They made no eye contact or mental communcation, but they did not need to, as they were in synchronisation already. Fight together, remain together - they would not be separated ever again.

[Alyssa Snow]

Berevar. Colder than her birthplace of Alerar and even colder still than the frigid expanse of Slavar's barren trundra. Never before did the girl's lithe frame experience a chill so severe. Even encased in the thick furs of her fox skin coat, the windchill of the sailing airship and sub zero temperatures pierced through. As she shivered to the brink of near seizure, she watched warriors from all over the land prepare for the siege at hand. Each of their faces were seasoned, unique, and wore determination on their brow. Alyssa, on the other hand, wore doubt on her own.

A wave of turbulent wind washed over the exposed deck of their vessel like a tsunami. It caught in her hood, flipped it from her blonde locks, and forced her to a stagger. She did all she could to shield her eyes from the biting frost, and left little regard for the bite of winter on her nose, ears, and lips. As the airship eased out of the pocket like a knife through butter, the mage gunner noticed the clockwork man from earlier converse with the pilot. In a moment later, he dived off the deck below.

Concerned, she made way to the railing with a hustle and peered overboard. Into the cover of night, the clockwork soldier plummeted to what she could vaguely make out to be a castle wall. The distance of the drop alone sent a chill down her spine no cold could replicate.

"This is it?" she asked aloud to the figure beside her.

The constant roar of wind stole her words before reaching the intended audience. Then, she watched as the figure of a woman with legs of a goat jumped overboard with animal companion in tow. Alyssa watched the two descend below. The frog in her throat tightened at the notion she too would have to make this jump.

"This is our only window!" the pilot shouted, "Everyone... may the Thaynes be with you this night..."

She didn't care for his tone. It sounded like a death sentence. With a deep breath of the sharp arctic air, the mage gunner closed her eyes. She took a moment to remember Leona's words.

----

"A fortress? In the sky?" Alyssa asked mid bite of her morning omelette. Leona took a sip from her tiny cup of espresso, pinky out.

"Yes," the Leader of the Tarot replied. She placed her drink back upon its similarly small saucer and flipped another of her cards to the table.

"But why me?" Alyssa asked, this time muffled by the bits of egg and bacon crumbling from her lips. The girl swallowed and dabbed away the excess with her napkin. "Why not send Jensen? Ioder can fly, he's surely a better pick!"

No," her tone was flat, decisive, but still carried the warmth of a matriarchal figure. Leona flipped another card, the queen of pentacles. "It has to be you." She flipped another card, The Chariot in an upright position. "You are the only one with the determination, the will power to survive, and the assertion to command if necessary."

Alyssa raised a brow. "You're kidding, right? Are you sure you don't have Tobias and I confused?" She reached to take a sip of her freshly squeezed orange juice.

"Positive." Leona flipped another card, The Fool upright. "You have very little exposure to the world compared to the rest. Your innocence and clarity are a virtue. This experience is something you need."

The young blonde set down her glass half empty.

"Well, yeah, I guess, but these are strangers. I've never worked with them before, and you read the announcement. This won't be some simple hunting trip to thin the herd. I don't know what a cockatrice, a manticore, or sphyx are, but hundreds dead sounds bad. What if the others can't handle this? What if it's a death trap?"

"They can handle it," the woman across from her stated as very matter of fact. The next card turned face up, Death. Alyssa snapped her eyes onto it and fell silent.

"See?! That's a bad sign. I don't know a lot about your thing with these cards, but that," she placed her finger on death, "is pretty straight forward."

"Nothing is straight forward, Alyssa." Leona glanced up from her reading directly at her pessimistic colleague. As though offended, but without any indication of such on her face, the seer gathered all the exposed cards haphazardly into a pile. "You're going to go, you're going to live, and you're going to be that much the better when you return."

Just like a teen would in defiance of a mother, the gunner folded her arms and abruptly pushed herself into the backing of the booth. She pursed her lips and cocked her head - a child in her truest form.

"Listen, in the months you've known me, when have I been wrong?"

Alyssa's cold facade began to melt. She looked down, off in the distance.

"Exactly," Leona continued. "Now, before you go, there is one thing I want to show you."

The young mage gunner perked up at the promise of whatever this "something" may be. She always did enjoy a present.

"You learned a few new things since we last talked, correct?"

Alyssa nodded, curious to where Leona planned to go with this.

"Good. Finish your breakfast and meet me out back." Leona gathered up her mess of cards, the edge of Death still slightly exposed, and began putting them in proper order. The seer's face gave no hint as to what was to come.

-----

"Listen lass, you better go now!" the pilot shouted.

Alyssa opened her soft, aquamarine eyes, both renewed in spirit and determination. She looked below for an open area in the haze, spotted a perfect place with enough foliage to cover, and with another deep breath she launched herself off the deck. As the air below swallowed her, the deck hand that held her rope gave a petrified glance to the pilot. He returned the expression in kind.

[Hysteria]

Darkness is a curious thing. Often people had said to Talen that light and dark were opposites, while others said that darkness was the absence of light. These could not be further from the truth. Darkness was the default state for all things. It was more natural to be cloaked in darkness than swathed in light. When the latter appeared for the first time it washed away darkness, just as water washes away earth. Islands of darkness are called shadows, and to the simple minded in this area, shadows were as tangible as light. This is not true. Darkness is affected by light, just as the opposite of light can affect darkness.

This is where our little protagonist enters the scene. Talen looked the world like a normal child. His hair was short and unkempt, his cloths clean but well-worn. Perhaps, if you didn’t know better, you could attribute Talen’s dark cloths and blase attitude to an adolescent phase. To those that knew the boy, they recognised him as somewhat more complicated.

A decent question, and one that might be running through the mind of anyone watching our little hero, is why did he agree to enter this foolhardy adventure? Was it a vein attempt to catch up on the fact that he had missed out on fighting the plague dragon? Perhaps that was part of it; a general nudge from the back of the head that reminded him that he needed to be apart of the world he was living in, not just watch from afar. Perhaps though a better explanation was that he was driven to join. Talen was the youngest member of the Ixian Knights, but he was the founder of another group, the Red Six.

This group was somewhat more nefarious in their attentions, as indeed was Talen. Their mandate was broad and unapologetic in its desire for power and wealth. When the opportunity came to jump onto an airship, get thrown into an island full of potentially deadly creatures and win a lofty price; Talen was willing.

The cold air whipped around the boy as he sat on the top of the airship, causing his cloak and air to whip backwards behind him. Talen had forgone the journey within the ship for a more solitary journey and was surrounded by only the curve of the hull below him and the sky above. Just as the shadow was an island amid an ocean of light, so too was this island a haven against the developed world. Orcs seemed to be the most advanced creatures, with the rest still hopping around on all fours or flapping through the air.

The time came quickly, and Talen’s thoughts of the light and dark were shifted to the back of his mind. Members of the foolhardy expedition started to disembark from the ship towards and so too did Talen. He pushed himself to his feet, to two long strides and launches himself off the airship.

The air caused his cloak to trail behind him as he dropped past two petrified looking crew members. with the wind catching his cloak his two pistols were visible holstered at his hips and the dark metal of his gauntlets caught the light. Lets do this.

[Warpath]

The airship lurched again, shuddering. Flint opened his eyes and looked over those assembled, wondering if anyone else was keen to its struggle. The blonde looked dubious, for one, but Flint suspected that had more to do with the nature of what came next than any inkling of their precarious situation.

The air of Berevar had teeth: fangs of chill that could pierce to the bone. Berevar abhorred life. Its stark white vistas burned the eye by day, and its unholy cold permitted no movement by night. It drank stamina, and clawed away at heat wherever it could be squirreled away. To resist it only made it angry.

The airship's engines were resisting it now, and had been for some time. They brought mechanical heat and noise and movement to that desolate place, and Berevar saw and heard even if nobody else did. Flint heard the propellers stall and stutter - just for a fraction of a second here and there, but enough to be noted. He felt the deck rock beneath his heavy boots, and heard the wood complain. Berevar demanded stillness, and even the vaunted machines of Alerar would have to come to heel eventually.

Even this one.

People seemed to think Flint a Salvarman. Few realized that the place of his birth was far closer to Berevar than Knife's Edge - far, far closer. His blood ran thick, and in it the requisite will to defy the pitiless cold. To live in Berevar, one needed a furnace of rage at his core, ever-burning, because to rest is to die.

Flint's coat was heavy and long and fur-lined, but had no sleeves. His fingers were bare, and he flexed and tightened them into fists, anticipating the slaughter to come. He wore two layers of skintight cotton beneath the coat, and nothing more. His head was bare. He did not care if Berevar leeched his heat - he had enough to spare. He had enough hate to melt the entire continent.

Magic made this fortress fly: enchantment and artifice. Witch-work was like strings, tugging away at things from some unseen place to produce the illusion of miraculous animation. Flint relished the thought of cutting the fortress's strings. He longed to watch it tumble lifeless to the tundra below, a gift to Mother Berevar.

By now his companions had flung themselves out of the airship and into the forest waiting below. Flint did not watch them, did not examine them - they were immaterial. He took a single step, then a second, faster now to a third (his heart was thundering, louder than his boots pummeling the deck), now four, and the fifth just before he flung himself into the black breath of death himself.

It was a cold that could rob breath from the lungs, and cut the eye with its own tears. Flint roared against it and laughed before his boots hit the ground, and he was already running, caught up in his own momentum.

He charged between the trees toward the walls roaring: mad, bad, and dangerous to know.

[Erikar]

The Left Hand of the Order shivered, a futile attempt to fight the biting cold that permeated every aspect of this barren land. His green gaze followed the others as they departed the technological marvel one by one, most forgoing ropes in favor of their abilities. He noted only one face he recognized - Philomel, a member of the Order, although operating of her own accord - the rest were strangers to him.

He crossed his arms beneath his burgundy cloak, his face devoid of emotion. The shouts sounds of the crewmen sounded distant as he walked to the stern of the ship, the engines roaring beneath him. He had a deep respect for minds brilliant enough to fabricate such a complex piece of technomagic. A smile found its way onto his pale face as the heat from the flames rose and warmed his freezing limbs. The assassin lingered for a moment, still ignoring the desperate shouts of the crew.

"Ya' have ta' jump now! Yer' goin ta' miss the island, boy!"

Erikar finally turned to acknowledge the helmsman. He held out an open hand, waiting expectantly. A crewman, probably third mate, nodded and ran forward to hand him a thick rope. The Left Hand nodded back in silent thanks and walked to the port side, watching as the last man to jump finally hit the ground. He tied the rope to the baldric across his chest and pulled his bastard-sword from its sheath.

'Wouldn't want to lose that, would we?'

Erikar leaped off the edge, the wind cutting at his skin like daggers as he fell. He closed his eyes tightly, turning his hazardous tumble of a descent into a graceful dive, his blade held in a white-knuckled grip. The ground rose quickly to meet him, evergreens looming closer and closer. The assassin writhed in the air, positioning his boots toward the ground. He let his sword go, pushing it towards the ground to provide an anchor. The steel fell rapidly, aided by Erikar's abilities, and stuck deep in the cold, flying earth. The killer's descent found him under the blade, and he exerted his energy to push off the anchored sword. His haphazard fall turned to a leisurely descent between the boughs, and he seemed to almost step off the air and onto the ground when he released his manipulation.

The forest was quiet; no creatures seemed near. The emerald-eyed assassin walked to his blade, buried up to the hilt in the frozen dirt. He gripped the leather handle tightly, planting his feet as he pulled. The sword finally gave after a moment's struggle, and he wiped it clean on his cloak. Erikar placed the blade in it's rightful home on his back and pulled his burgundy hood back over his head, shrouding his youthful features. Scanning his surroundings once more, taking in the stinging cold air and crisp smell of pines, he humphed.

'Suppose I might as well follow that big macho bastard's trail..'

Erikar turned to follow in Flint's path, staying alert for anything that might pose a threat.

[Silence Sei]

The roar of Flint Slovik echoed throughout the trees. The warriors call was answered by dozens of similar calls; monsters that were now awake, angry to be stirred from their slumber, and hungry. The birds that managed to survive on the island decided it best to take their leave, and most of the creatures followed the initial sound that woke them up.

The orcs and goblins in the towers were also put on high alert. Without any sense of command to tell them where to aim, the creatures pointed their ranged weapons towards the air. With a grunt that sounded as though their throats were filled with phlegm, the humanoid beasts launched their arrows various ways into the air. It was not enough of a battalion to make a full wall of projectile death, but most certainly one or two arrows would fly towards a target. Six of them were aimed right at the falling forms of Talen Shadowalker and Alyssa Snow.

Within the forest, Philomel would find herself crossing paths with a manticore. The lion-bodied beast roared, its call more like that of a trumpet than anything else. Its scorpion tail whipped around as though it had a mind of its own. It raised its leathery dragon wings and shot five spines towards the faun. The spines themselves caused severe paralysis to the touch , with the intention of making the girl prone enough to completely devour with its three rows of shark like teeth.

The centipede fighting Invetisto was unlike any of the centipedes known to the world. It was roughly twenty feet long, with different kinds of arms that ranged from primate, to lion, to even actual bug legs. It salivated at the discovery of this new prey, green saliva oozed from its mouth and dripped to the ground, hissing and eating away at it. It tucked its head down and in a flash, disappeared. The astute eye could see the prints of the different legs left in the dirt as it circled around the inventor. It reappeared behind the machine man and opened its mouth to reveal dozens of rows of teeth. The foul stench of death reeked off this monster as it dived down towards the inventors head.

Flint and Erikar received the warmest greeting. Each of them was greeted by two griffins each. Each pair of bird lion’s circled overhead and screamed as they dived down at each of the warriors. They announced their presence with a caw as they flew down through the air and attempted to claw and peck at their prey with their talons and beaks. If they failed, they would take to the air once more and try again, surely the most difficult of the predators to defeat.

((Alright guys, opening is up and everyone survived! Yay! In this round of posting you may hurt the creatures but not kill them. This is not supposed to be an easy excursion. Because Talen and Alyssa were still in the air as they ended their intros, they merely have to dodge three arrows each aimed straight for them. Get creative with your writing here! HQs depend on it!))

[Philomel]

Indeed, the crown of the trees provided some form of support as they descended on wings of fortitude. The leaves slapped against their skin idly and the thin branches caught them in an unsteady net before cracking once, twice, thrice - then breaking. They were held there, faun and fox in the middle air for a moment, before snap, they tumbled from the sky. Perfect, the pause was enough to gain their footing and so they landed on two hooves and four paws. Bouncing off from the rope they let their connection to the airship go, and left the pilot to deal with it as he pleased.

Taking a moment to pause and catch her bearings, Philomel checked first to see if Veridian was still with her, then looked around them. Surrounding was trees, foliage heavy and dense. Unsurprisingly there were no man-made paths, just a track made by deer in the past few minutes. She took a moment to bend down and touch the ground lightly with the points of her five fingers of her left hand. Awareness left her, drifted into the earth. What she sensed through it was not much different from what they saw - trees every even space, every which way. She could not sense the castle walls, but by memory from seeing them from the height of the airship they were not far away. A trickle of a stream was forty metres away and some rabbit was chewing leaves near it. Philomel breathed in, and began to focus to sense if and where any beings of an intelligent kind might be - but not before something loud and rude burst in upon her awareness.

Loud, rude and certainly large. Within those fifty metres of her sensory range it smelt her, clear and strong, and with powerful muscles it bound straight towards her. Reeling back from it, Philomel let out a cry to Veridian, telling him that something was coming. What exactly, she could not be sure, but it was charging them at several metres per second.

Ferociously it crushed down the trees surrounding, and with a roar of vehemence jumped into plain view. Terrifying beyond any belief the manticore stood at eight feet to the shoulder, and its curled tail was at least twice that in total. As she tumbled and twisted, aiming to grab her beloved, the beast caught them in his line of sight. He reared up, right onto his hind legs, wide draconic wings flapping before his tail whipped back - then straight forth. Yet, the two had already begun to tune in their magic.

Five spines of spear-like length and sharpness detatched themselves and were sent shooting like javelins towards the pair. Micro seconds passed as they spun through the air, aiming straight for them. In her own mind she counted the moments, blessing herself for the ability to have seen this danger before the spines had detatched. As they flew down she breathed in, and the earth opened up beneath them. Like a wormhole to the next galaxy a portal opened, then closed over their heads and the spines harmlessly hit the ground, spearing only centipede.

In that same moment they appeared right behind the creature, behind its flank. Veridian leapt from her arms where he had been curled, and launched high to grab onto the manticore's thigh. Digging his claws in he managed to scamper up high as the beast stared in confusion to where his prey had disappeared to - then howled as the small Earth Spirit claimed the pain.

Her arms free now, Philomel drew her mythril sword, and swung it back to provide momentum before swiping at the same furred hind leg. Her aim was to cut it deep, and cause not only agony but obvious damge enough to cease its mighty speed. Veridian clambered up higher, aiming for the manticore's throat, keeping his claws in sharp to not be thrown off, whilst the faun-whore danced with all the speed she had and could muster to slice the leg once more.

[The Inventor]

Invetisto turned as he heard a screech of rage. What he found shocked and scared him, a centipede with legs of nearly every animal on the planet had just bit into the head of his useless clockwork body. It must have thought that the body was alive since it attacked the head first. Invetisto knew that the creature would be after him soon, and with the acid that seemed to come from its toothy mouth, he would have to say that it could kill him easily. So, Invetisto did the only logical thing he could. He bent down and ran like his ancestors, on all 1,000,000 limbs.

Invetisto ran through the thicket with agility and speed only a super segmented creature like millipedes could. However, the centipede was also a segmented creature and the minute it saw Invetisto scurry away, it gave chase. Invetisto stayed a step ahead of the centipede, but it would eventually come down to stamina. Whoever tired out first would lose the race. If Invetisto got tired, he would surely be the centipede's lunch. If the centipede tired first it would lose its lunch. It was a race of life or death. Who would win the predator or the prey?

Invetisto had no want to find out so he did the natural thing; he found the closest tree and started to climb it. The tree he chosen was a blue spruce. It had many indents in it that he could use as protection as he climbed the tree. Only problem was, this centipede had the limbs of nearly every animal type which meant it had the limbs of the monkey which made it easy to follow Invetisto up the tree. This didn't deter Invetisto; he could go higher than the centipede since he was a lighter creature. However, he knew he wouldn't be able to stay there forever. His plan was to get to the top of the tree and figure out a plan.

It didn't take long for Invetisto to hear the snap that indicated the centipede couldn't go higher. Invetisto looked down and saw the centipede stare at him with a hunger in its eyes. The teeth were bared as it hissed at him. The acid fell to the floor it tried to figure a way to kill and eat its prey. Invetisto watched as the centipede hopped from branch to branch as it tried to find a way to get to Invetisto.

Invetisto continued to watch as the creature continued to jump from limb to limb, finally he saw it. The acid didn’t hurt the tree. Why? Invetisto didn't know. However, if the bark protected the tree from the acid, who was to say that the bark couldn't protect him. With that in mind, Invetisto pulled out his tools and began to work on a way to use the bark as a protection. He honestly hoped it would work. An hour later and he had a plate armor that connected at his joints. Each segment over lapped him so that he wouldn't be noticed as he headed down the tree.

He made it right next to the animal before he decided to end the pitiful creature’s life. So with quick movement he swung at the creature with his knife aimed for the center torso where he thought the heart would be. Instead all he got was an acid burn and a melted dagger. Invetisto had hit the acid pouch and as such, it had lost its acidic saliva and had started to thrash as it tried to relieve its pain. It then looked at Invetisto who was on the branch with his top right hand in the top left as he tried to ease the burn. However, no matter what, he couldn't get it to stop hurting. It lunged at the millipede like sentient with new vigor. The teeth filled mouth made Invetisto gulped as he got on all 1,000,000 legs again and ran, he was slower than before as he rushed out of the tree and into the brush, a hurt and angry centipede on his tail.

[Hysteria]

Talen fell slowly.

Time ticked by and in the mind's eyes time stretched and compressed. Moments seemed seconds, seconds stretched to minutes and each one was more detailed than the one before. Talen watched the island grow larger and larger and the extent of their foolhardy quest emerged. The others had fallen first, and fallen quicker. Unlike them Talen was unbound by the natural laws that pulled them towards the island. He let himself fall. If this land was an island in the sea, and a shadow an island in light, then Talen was an island in reality.

The cold air whipped across his form, but Talen only felt them as dull strikes as he focused on the orcs below. His polarised goggles formed across his face and his mouth twisted into a smile fit for an insane thrill seeker. Perhaps that observation was not too far off. The orc's arrows sang through the air towards Talen and invited him to dance; and dance among their symphony he did. His form twisted and sliced through the air as he willed himself to pick up speed. His timing was erratic, as it was driven by the beating drum of arrows. Then the projectiles became nothing, flecks of dust around him as the air itself fought its decent. The youth's face was stretched back by air but his cold white teeth never stopped smiling.

The wall was upon him and nearly completely filled Talen's vision. He twisted again and brought his feet towards the ground. Everything in the youth's body groaned in protest as he kicked himself into reverse and rapidly decreased in speed. His boots landed on wood of the wall with a reverberating boom even with the decreased speed. His body lifted from the crouch position he had taken landing and the cloak fell around him like an insect folding in its wings. From the folds a metal hand, tipped with dark claws, poked out and rested in front of his stomach. Talen's smile had turned into a snarl as he gazed at the orcs that had fired the arrows at him.

”What do we have here...?” Talen whispered, his words just as cold as the chilling air around them.

[Warpath]

Flint's boots punished snow-dusted earth as he navigated between the trees. It was difficult to turn when he was like this and he knew it, so he chose the wider gaps between the narrow trunks to accommodate his temporary limitations. He wasn't worried about the arrows - let the arrows come. The air was like little needles inside his lungs, punishing him for breaths Berevar considered too greedy.

He had eyes for the wall only, and dreams of feeling it crumble before him. He ignored the first unnatural bird-cry - louder than it ought to be, sure, but the wall. He could not ignore the second, which was fiercer, nearer, and deeper.

His chin snapped up just in time. His vision was fully dominated by the beast: its wingspan promised gales with every mighty beat, and it seemed to him at first an eagle blown utterly out of proportion. The savagery in its overlarge and ever-furious eyes could only mean one thing.

"BATTLE!" Flint roared with all of his own savagery - not a call for it, but an exultation of triumph.

He threw himself into the griffin's outstretched talons. They closed around the vambrace on his left forearm, but the natural blades and hooks could neither rend his flesh nor snap his bones through the unyielding alien metal. In a snap instant, Flint knew this was no oversized eagle: its leonine hindquarters fell to bear. The brute was ready and lighter, though, so he pulled his own feet off the ground and shoved them in between the beast's body and back legs, preventing it from using the claws there against him.

They were now fully entangled, and slowly gliding back down toward the earth as they struggled.

Flint saw the second griffin at the peripheral of his vision and smiled fiercely up at the first. He pushed himself away as far as he could with both legs and trapped arm, and then he cocked his free arm and swung. Knuckles met beak with a boney crack and the griffin squeezed its eyes closed and released him - shoved him away in pain and disgust.

The first griffin flung itself back toward the tree tops with one tempestuous shove from both wings, which further forced Flint earthward back-first. He let out a sharp grunt as his ribs met the frosted ground, and he had little time to recover before the second griffin was atop him.

He curled his lower body upward and shoved one boot under the second griffin's beak - he didn't have enough room to kick it, but he could prevent it from leaning down to him to peck or bite. The griffin strained against his leg, beak opened wide in a silent roar, and then it reached up with both talons to wrap them around his leg. The brute had little interest in seeing his pants or calf torn to ribbons, so he bent his knee, and then shoved.

The griffin didn't go far, but there was enough space now between them that Flint could bring up another boot. When the beast darted back down to him, he kicked outward with both feet and nailed his foe in the noble chest. Now, the griffin had pectoral muscles like any other bird - huge, powerful, deep, and broad, ideal to power its wings. Flint's attack was brutal but not as deadly as he hoped. Still, the griffin rolled away from him with a cry, and he'd bought himself time.

He sprinted into a denser collection of trees, shouting curses and taunts at his foes as he went. The first griffin attempted to dive down on him from on high, but he whirled around in time to watch it abort, stymied by the thick bramble of pine branches forming a protective canopy. The second griffin took a lower and more extreme trajectory, but Flint was ready for it.

That griffin dived him, claws gleefully outstretched, its keen eyes locked on him. He dodged left at the last minute, but the griffin was more agile than it thought he gave it credit for - it compensated and made its dive more extreme still...and did not account for the tree that had been outside its field of view until now.

The griffin had an eagle's sharp, precise eyes, but a lion's reckless hunger. Its right wing clipped the tree despite the creature's panicked readjustment, and it spun and tumbled to the ground where it struck hard and rolled. Still, as it stumbled to its feet, Flint could see that it was largely unharmed. It was, however, dazed.

He charged it and flung himself through the air, landing heavily upon its back and hooking his armored forearm around its neck.

"I was wondering how I was going to get past that wall," he growled into the monster's feathers. "How good of you to provide the means."

[Alyssa Snow]

Razor sharp gales of wind lashed at Alyssa's skin. Her reddened cheeks and nose felt as though on fire. In complete free fall, the ground began its rapid approach. With an advanced rifle strapped to her back, it began to pull her onto her back. Roars of creatures waking sounded in cacophony with human shouts. Not even in the limited time jumping overboard, and the sleeping fortress already stirred. The girl's face soured.

"So much for being covert," she mumbled too soft to carry in the rushing wind.

Alyssa drew her two snub nose revolvers from their thigh holsters. A flick of the wrist was all it took to snap the cylinders open. Then, like bees fleeing the nest, the crystal ammunition flew from the chambers and another swarm hovered from her hip pouch. The crystals, eighteen in total, danced around her falling figure. Some pushed against her back and she righted. Others flattened against the soles of her snow boots and she slowed. The last of them tucked against her midsection and she stabilized. Now, her deadly descent became a controlled glide.

And not soon enough.

In the chaos brewing below, some manner of humanoids began to release volleys of arrows into the twilight sky. If it were not for the sheer whistle and hiss of one passing a hair's breadth from her ear, the gunner would not have been the wiser to the attacks. She narrowed her eyes in the firey chill, trying to make out the shapes slithering in the black sky.

"Oh shi--!"

Another arrow's head caught the light of the moon, and its path sailed true for her heart. Her torso twisted, aided by the manipulation of her crystals. She lifted he or leg, bent an arm, and threw her head back as the feather fletchings brushed against her clothes. The razor edge of the tip just grazed her chin, drawing a bead of red which quickly congealed and hardened in the cold.

The maneuver cost her control and her body started spinning out in the drag. Alyssa kept her calm, for oddly enough, this hadn't been her first experience. With delicate movements, and magical aide, she returned to a manageable fall. The tips of trees started to sprout around her, an early warning for land below. The trees, however, were false profits. Though they warned of land, they silently omitted warning of another arrow sailing throw the limbs. This one, unceremoniously slammed into the meat of her shoulder. So close to a perfect landing, Alyssa lost control at the last minute, but luckily crashed into a bank of soft powder.

The pregnant mound of snow did not stir for a brief moment. Finally, like something from the horror stories of babes, it birthed clawing, thrashing hands. then, a white crusted face emerged with gaping whaling breaths.

"Oh cold! Oh cold! Oh cold!" Alyssa hysterically chanted until she fully emerged. She stood, she shivered, she batted the powder from herself, then tightly gripped the seething pain on her arm. She pulled her arctic glove away to find it wet and matted red. She glossed over the wound, relieved to find it less serious than it felt. The gunner rolled her shoulder with a tear welling in her eye, yet her moment had not been hindered.

"And this is what I was trying to say Leona, bunch of strangers with no coordination," she muttered, returning to the mound of snow.

"They'll be fine Alyssa, this will be good for you," she sarcastically paraphrased as she shoveled to find her weapons. "Only you can do it, you'll be a leader." Her fingers grazed the familiar edge of her rifle. She pried it from the packed snow with a crunch and slung it over her shoulder carelessly.

"Ow! Fuck!" The weapon's sling slapped against her wound.

The hostile murmuring continued, incomprehensible to anyone desiring to overhear, until finally she produced both her pistols from the mound.

"When I get back to headquarters..." Alyssa threatened, her mind full of revenge and angst. She tended to her weapons with care, brushed off the dirt, shook off the powder, and blew out the chamber. Some inhumane screeching sounded in the distance while more projectiles crashed through the treetops harmlessly.

The frustration at this raid's beginning were clear on her messy features. The gunner snapped her arm to the snow and from it, the crystals shot out. Twelve snapped into their chambers and the spares buried themselves back into the snow occupying her pouches. She flicked her wrists and the chambers clicked into place.

She was ready to put holes into something, anything that moved at this point, friend or foe. She scanned he limited horizon of tree trunks, brush, and sparkling tundra to find the faint flicker of flame dance through. That was the way to revenge. Alyssa clenched her teeth, tended to stray strands of blonde, then broke into a steady jog. Out of the fridge and into the freezer, the young gunner prioritized stepping quietly over stepping brashly.

[Silence Sei]

The manticore species was not known for its stupidity.

The second the beast heard Philomel behind it, it’s scorpion like tail wrapped around her blade. Green blood oozed from the exoskeleton like cover of the appendageas it yanked the weapon out of the faun’s hand and onto the ground. The beast began to turn with a growl as though ready to claim the humanoid creature as it’s impromptu midnight snack.

Philomel would have met an untimely end if not for Veridian. Though the small fox had plenty of moxy to it, its attack fell short in part to the larger monster’s turn. Veridian instead found himself tangled up in the unkempt mane of the creature, its claws finding a new home in the manticore’s cheek. The creature howled and bellowed as it thrashed about, its large body now distracted by the small pest caught up in its hair. It spun and jumped as though it were trying to attack an inivisble force, and all three hundred plus pounds of the monster leapt and bounded straight towards Philomel’s form.

The centipede that stalked Invetisto followed like the clockwork machination slept with its daughter. The insect growled and hissed as it chase the strange humanoid down through the thick brush of the island. All the while, branches and thorns found themselves into the body of the beast. It ignored this pain but was steadily losing it’s pace in following the representative for The Trading Company. Eventually, the worm-like monster tired out, collapsed upon the ground in order to regain some of its lost energy.

The orcs that Talen spotted returned the same piercing lize gaze towards the shadow warrior. They gave no quarter as they quickly armed themselves once more and fired at the youth. This time, every single archer was focused on the young Shadowalker, dozens of arrows presenting a rain of sharp death towards the boy. A few of the arrows were ignited as they passed through some torches in the castle courtyard, others were dipped in barrels of poison before being launched towards their target. The orcs cheered as they began to ready for the next wave of bow related deaths…

While Flint Slovik managed to tame one of the griffins, the other that stalked him instead tried to go for an easier prey. Once it saw that two more of it’s breathren were circling overhead, its eyes looked towards their prey, the man known as Erikar. Under normal circumstances, the master of magnetisim would have been more than enough of a match for two of these bird-lion hybrids, but three of the creatures were more than enough to overwhelm him. The griffin on the ground pinned the boy to the ground and cawed to its kin, who quickly swooped down. The aerial creatures each grabbed one of the mans arms and took off with him into the night sky, presumably to drop him upon something sharp and reveal his soft inner shell…

Flint’s griffin had found itself in quite the odd position, forced to obey its makeshift rider as it took to the air. As Flint neared the twenty foot castle walls, the winged creature began to slow itself down. It’s eyes shifted downwards, towards the river of the castle, but Flint’s power encouraged the monster to go forward. As it flew, a large green tentacle shot up from the river and wrapped itself around the griffin. The bird struggled against the appendage, and gave one last caw before it exploded into a mist of blood from one slight squeeze from the tentacle. Flint was sent spiraling downwards towards the river, where two more tentacles rose up from the water to obtain its new prey. If Flint looked closely, he could see a whirlpool in the river with hundreds upon hundreds of teeth inside. A singular eye looked at the muscular ship captain from the rushing waters, its teeth chomping in anticipation as the heavyweight tumbled through the air.

It was ironic that one named Alyssa Snow wound up in this particular area of the island. The only one who arrived at the snow-capped covered region of Forrals fortress, this was in itself a giant trap. Upon Alyssa’s unexpected arrival, the temperature quickly began to drop by fifteen degrees every five seconds. Winds began to push so hard it was as though the tree branches in the area went out of their way to try and smack the girl around. The young lady would have roughly a minute to escape this area where no monster dared to tread, lest she found herself a Tarot Icicle.


((Erikar has been killed for not making the deadline. He’s worm food now! Lye, the second rep from The Crimson Hand may now enter the arena. Just a quick tl;dr update on your characters.

Philomel; the manticore is distracted thanks to Veridian, but it is still a 300 lb sack of heavy trying to hit you with its girth. You are swordless now but are allowed to make a death blow on the creature now.

Inventor; you have successfully outran the centipede. My advice would be to use your next post to have your character meet another. Safety in numbers and all that.

Erikar: You dead.

Warpath; Your taming of the griffin was temporarily successfully, now you have to contend with a Sauron-Kraken. Use your imagination to add more details to the beast if you wish. This is a creature that cannot be killed, but can be avoided or injured. Get smart with it, Slovik!

Hysteria: all eyes in the castle are on you now as you are the target of roughly 30 or so arrows flying through the air. About 10 of them are covered with poison that will (duh) poison you if they hit bare skin. Another 10 are on fire.

Alyssa: No monsters this round but you find yourself in an area that’s inhospitable by anything. Alyssa has about a minute to run or get super warm somehow before hypothermia starts to kick in.

The challenges are rising….))

[Alyssa Snow]

With each hurried step, the crystalline powder crunched beneath her boots. She ducked and weaved through frozen foliage, placid and still as stone. With each lungful of air, a white puff of breath escaped her lips like a small steam contraption chugging away in the night. As she ran, the relentless Berevar air stung at her cheeks and throat like swarms of angry bees. Still, through the pain, the girl focused on the flickering light in the distance. Whatever source it came from, she could only hope it to be warm an inviting. Yet in the back of her mind, she held on to the pessimistic realization that others, including friend or foe, may also be thinking the same as she.

"So cold," she chattered under her breath.

In fact, it felt as though it had gotten colder than when she was buried under the mound of powder. Was it the wind from her running? Wind chill, it hand to be wind chill.

Alyssa slowed her pace, bending slightly at the knees to rest her hands upon and catch her breath. Her chest heaved in and exhaled. She shivered again.

"What," she panted, "the hell?"

Somehow, the cold nipped at her exposed flesh even harsher. It seemed as though the air rushing over her lithe frame wasn't the culprit. Confused, and feeling the bite exponentially increase by the breath, she heard a crackle. This was no ordinary noise, but one she found hauntingly familiar. She held one of her pistols to her vision. It showed no signs of a misfire, but she was certain. That crackling was the same sound as her ice bolts forming after a pull of the trigger. Then, as she witnessed an eerie web of white descend the tree trunk next to her, she realized the gravity of her situation.

"Oh shit..."

Frost began to crawl down everything around her. The thinnest branches which lightly swayed in the breeze became rigid then snapped. Twigs and ice rained down from the canopy above. She had to move.

Alyssa kicked into a full sprint, desperately aiming for the flicker in the distance. Sharp shards of ice and brittle wood pelted against her head and poked bluing cheeks. Her legs ached in protest to the rapidly decreasing temperature. The chill burned and her fingers felt as though on fire.

Then, the wind came.

Like a gale of a tropical storm it washed over her from behind, nearly toppling her over. She staggered, and in the process of recovering, slammed her injured shoulder against frost sharpened bark of a tree. Alyssa spun, slipping an expletive from her once rosy lips, but caught footing and continued. Except now, the low hanging branches, too thick to succumb to the permafrost, whipped violently in the squall. One of which belted her square in the forehead, and forced her on her back.

Her ears, while they also felt ablaze, rang loudly from the blow. Her vision blurred not only from the trauma, but hypothermia as well. She writhed in the snow, which looked more like a seizure than anything. The lashing boughs above her looked like a sea of black and white warring against one another. Thankfully, much of the needle like twigs and ice had been blown away in the gale.

The young woman managed to gather her bearings, and pushed herself to a seated position. Her limbs screamed in agony, resisting her will upon them and desperately aching for warmth. She huddled for a moment, time preciously wasted, with her arms crossed over her chest.

"Come on..." she muttered through chattering teeth. "Keep going..."

She urged herself to look forward. The flicker of orange and red discernibly brighter through the combative branches.

"Almost... there."

Alyssa willed herself to stand and doubled forward in weakness. She caught herself with an extended hand and took two slow, sharp, and agonizing breaths.

"Okay."

At this point, the girl's thoughts danced between coherent and delusional, but one small urge bubbled to the surface.

Survive.

Her mind fell silent. Her expression flattened, and her shivering body stilled. Some primitive force possessed her with demon like aggression. Alyssa righted herself, aimed her guns at her feet, willed the chambers to spin to a particular round, and fired.

Earth crackled, shuddered, and split. From under the Alyssa's feet a column of ice and stone shot forth. Like a cannon, it pushed her body onward and into the maelstrom of wood, frost, and wind. Her eyes, lacking their usual glint of innocence, snapped to the light on the horizon. Heavy branches approached at lethal speeds to which she replied with raised arms. Arms, that when imbued with the raw element of wind itself, cleaved ice and wood alike as though effortless. The pain, the burning, the cold, all of it seemed lost in a trance as she hacked her way through the tree tops. With the wind at her back, paired with the earthen propulsion, she covered ground faster then ever before.

Until, gravity forced her descent. The dancing brightness filled the entirety of her blurred sight, obstructed only by the a faint lattice of black. These branches that barred her path shattered when her wind infused body crashed through them and skid into a wave of powder. Her body slid to a halt. Alyssa's vision faded to black.

Cheep! Cheep!

Thickly lashed eyelids cracked open to reveal the beautiful, shimmering aquamarine beneath. Like waking from a deep slumber, the mage gunner held a hand to a blinding luminescence in front of her.

Cheep Chippet! Cheep Chippet!

Her body ached, and the moan that escaped the girl's lips affirmed it. She managed to prop herself up against something firm, jagged, but warm. Alyssa blinked away the sting from her eyes and with it, her vision returned.

Chippet Chiree!

A little, blue, Northern Swallow cocked his adorable crested head at the girl. It ruffled its feathers, then hopped closer to the blaze emanating from a hollowed stump just a couple feet from them both. The swallow chirped again, eyeing the girl as though unsure what to expect, then puffed itself triple in size to help it keep warm.

"Hello," the gunner murmured, still feeling the swath of delusion swimming in her skull.

Like a drunkard waking up in a stranger's bed, she looked around in a grog. Behind her rest a cliff of stone just barely twice her height and rounded more like a mound. In the middle, she sat with her back against the stone and just a foot or two away, the lit fire keeping her and Mr. Blue from an icy demise.

"You cold too?" she asked, her mind more like a child than a trained Aleran soldier. She huddled closer to the fire and Mr. Blue did the same with soft warble. Her chest quaked. So, she wrapped her arms around her knees and tucked them close. Alyssa stared into the flickering flame as winds howled above the two, shooting blankets white over head but not on top of them.

Mr. Blue, seeing the girl posed no harm, scuttled over to her and nuzzled his feathery frame between her ankles. As Alyssa moved her attention from him to the cackling light, she couldn't help but focus on a dark object lodged deep in the blaze. An arrowhead, jagged, crudely crafted, and clearly of orcish design, stood testament to their salvation's creation. By some chance of fate or predestined path, the same arrows that initially landed her in this hell, also served to save her life.

Mr. Blue gave a chip of comfort. Alyssa let a weak smile cross her blued lips.

((TLDR, Alyssa barely made it to the edge of this so called trap on survival instinct alone. Some of her childhood training in as Alerar's secret weapon prototype also played a factor. Right now, her and Mr.Blue, a little arctic swallow, are huddling next to a fire caused by a rogue orc fire arrow. I tried to chalk up some destiny/fate lingo in there to play off the Leona/Tarot elements. You the boss tho! Let me know if I'm dead or not.))

[Lye]

"So, Erikar volunteered to go?" Lye asked Wolken in the confines of his chambers. In his hands, the leader of The Order of the Crimson Hands clutched a piece of parchment. Half of a red, wax seal hung from the bottom with the other half firmly seated on the back.

"Seems he was eager to make an example of his new position," Wolken added in his deep, raspy voice.

The pale skinned assassin set down the letter onto his desk. In the flicker of candlelight, the scrawling black ink across the top read, "Urgent Request for Aide". Lye put a gloved hand to his chin, letting only the whistle of the Scavian winds outside break the quiet.

"Sir, if I may," Lye's hulking adviser began. He waved Wolken to continue. "I do not believe Erikar is ready for such an undertaking on his own."

"Rather bold of you to say about your superior," Lye chided with a toothy grin. His adviser stood stoic in light of the intimidation, a quality the assassin chose him for. "What do you suggest?"

Wolken did not yield his response.,"You, sir."

The assassin scowled. At present, several other priorities took precedence over some trivial pest extermination. He rose to his feet for which the monolith of a colleague did not waver, and paced to the plain window at the back of the room. Wolken saw this as an opportunity to elaborate, lest he be subject to some horrible manner of torture or worse, death.

"Sir, you appointed the boy to your left hand and Max Dirks to your right. Though I don't question your decisions," there was a slight pause in his speech to hint toward otherwise, "We have not seen much results from either of them. Given the rank you've bestowed on them, the only one adequate to oversee their activity is you."

"I see your point," returned Lye's raspy baritone reply. He stared into the desolate expanse of white only marred by the occasional barrack building or storehouse. Even then, the porcelain powder consumed the rooftops and walls like an unstoppable plague.

Wolken dared to step further to his master's chambers to gloss over the dossier Lye had discarded. He glanced over the details, stopping on the key elements. People died, monsters in droves, a flying fortress, and a marvel of Aleran technology.

"So will you go?" Wolken asked in the silence.

"Yes." Lye turned around and found his colleague snooping through his papers. His verdant, serpentine glare narrowed and Wolken took several respective steps back. Again, he remained firm in the face of intimidation.

"Then how will you get there?" the adviser continued.

Lye raised a silvered brow. "What do you mean?"

"Last I recall, your alliance with the Alrerans went down with Tobias Stalt and the Axios. I hardly imagine they'd take kindly to you aboard their most advanced vessel." For Wolken's hulking frame and massive muscles, his sharp wit often came as a surprise. A quality Lye respected, but equally hated.

"I pray that you give me more credit than that," the assassin harshly remarked. Again, Wolken remained silent, but his flat expression didn't confirm either way his thoughts on the statement.

"How I get aboard that vessel and onto that island is not important," Lye explained with aggravation on tongue. "What you need to worry about is keeping these men in line during my leave. Should Dirks return to the Sanctum before my return, he is to assume command. Understood?"

Wolken nodded.

"I want you to bring me The Reclaimer from the vault. I will leave by daybreak." Wolken nodded again and took his leave. Lye directed his attention through frosted glass and out into the tundra. With so much weighing on his already tired shoulders, he questioned the merit of this venture.

"You had better show me you are deserving of your post, Erikar..."

-----

"Oh shi--!"

And those were Erikar's last words before whisked away into the twilight sky. A faint series of expletives marked the redhead's last words. Somewhere nearby, slinking in the shadows, Lichensith Ulroke pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration.

"Not even one hour..." he muttered to himself within a perfect camouflage of darkness. His mind raced with the prospect of collecting Erikar's remains to bring back. Corvanik had a respect for the boy Lye could not fathom. Surely the Ai'Brone would want to piece together the parts. The thought further irritated him. Lye prayed that the youth would deal with the beasts mid air and survive. He was a master of magnetism after all, and before he slipped into the night, the bastard sword shimmered from his back. Lye took a deep breath of the familiar arctic air.

I suppose if he does survive, we can meet up after all this carnage is said and done, Lye thought to himself. The prospect of bloodshed lightened his spirits just as a nostalgic roar sounded in the distance.

The assassin melted from the shadows like one would rise from the water. Speaking of water, the moat not too far off in the distance had come alive with, what was that, tentacles? The assassin quirked a brow and cracked smile. Things were about to get interesting.

His boots kicked him into action toward the commotion. Large, slimy appendages lashed out from the moat skyward. Lye traced them upward only to be forced to shield his eyes from the sudden downfall of warm rain. As he continued his pace, he glanced to the dark droplets on his gloved hand. He brought it curiously to his lips for a taste. Blood?

Then, in response to the curiosity, a snowfall of griffon feathers fluttered down around him. Another nostalgic war cry directed his attention to the source of conflict. And there, Flint Skovic did battle with the appendages responsible for his vaporized pet.

Lye skid to a stop, sensing the gravity of the situation. Flint was a brawler who preferred fists over blades, but even this would surely be a test of his might. A test that Lye sought to make easier, because that juggernaut of a man would be their best bet to plow through future obstacles. Lye needed him to survive.

"Skovic!" Lye shouted as he reached to The Reclaimer (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?27491) on his back and lurched it skyward toward the pirate lord. "Catch!" Surely the massive iron blade would prove more useful in the brute's hands than the assassin's.

Then, with arm still extended, another gargantuan tentacle broke wide and slammed into Lye's hardened chest. Much like a bolt fired from a crossbow, the assassin became a projectile. One that crashed into, cleaved, and felled a tree or two before coming rest against a third.

With silver hair draped over the rest of his dark attire, Lye let out a groan of pain. A cloud of snow and debris settled around him.

((TLDR: Lye joins the fray. He throws a massive iron greatsword at Flint to help deal with the Kraken. Then takes a tentacle to the gut. He's messed up, but in tact and very much still in this.))

[Philomel]

Its blood was green.

Green?

Yes, green.

Her sword was mercilessly thrown away to the side, way before Philomel's well aimed strike could even get to a point of cutting through the skin. As Veridian ferociously fought with the beast's mane, his claws and small body caught in the strands of yellow hair, she was stuck, unarmed, beneath its clutches. The tail swept over her, though she saw it quivering due to pain and thick drops of blood were falling like acid rain. They splattered the earthen ground, garishly bright upon the mud, splotches of uneven distribution and size.

From his vantage point on top of the creature Veridian could see the form of the faun-whore, pushed over onto her back and struggling for ground in the microseconds it took for the manticore to turn. He growled, slashed around where he was, desperately looking for the nap of the neck underneath all that matted fur so he could rip the Drys-damned thing's throat out.

Stay still, he mentally shrieked, his mouth full of fur, Stay ... STILL!

Meanwhile, Philomel beneath the monster had not a chance to grasp for another useful weapon. Her throwing daggers were no use at close range and her keris dagger was stuck behind her back. The front paws and the open jaws were lunging for her rapidly. No matter how much Veridian might struggle to find an artery to sever, the closest danger was the maw, sweeping down towards her in a mighty roar. There were not even the two seconds needed for another portal jump. All there was was a brief moment of reality as she tried to sit up and the large white teeth glistened in the light.

Reality of uncertainity, endlessness and possible death. Death at the canines of a beautous giant of a mammal. A red tongue lolled in the centre of the hungry animal, touching the lower teeth.

Teeth. Hooves. Rocking back only briefly onto her back Philomel used what speed and strength she could summon to then heave right up again in a sit up. Except - the timing was perfect. Her cloven hooves aimed an impact right at the lower jaw, shocking them enough for the rest of her body to sweep up in the movement and for her horns to then hit the upper jaw. Aiming, truth be told at the join between the nose and the upper lip - the philtrum - where bone could easily be broken and any animal would scream in pain.

If the hooves missed then the headbutt would still land, somewhere on the face. Just to make sure she used what precious energy she had to summon up enough magic to essentially insert an earthquake through her horns. Upon impact they would then have at least thirty kilojoules of energy ricocheying through its body, enough to bring down a drystone wall, let alone be shoved directly through bone and flesh.

[The Inventor]

Invetisto heard the thud as the centipede that chased him collapsed. However, it didn’t really matter to Invetisto; he was hurt, out of his mechanical body, and worst of all lost. He didn’t know which way the castle was from his position. So, it was with a sigh, Invetisto started to climb yet another tree, however, his movement was much slower as he had to be careful about his top right hand. Once he made it to the top he got a better look at his surroundings.

Off in the distance far north there was the castle. Between him and the castle was a clearing. Out of that clearing was a bunch of tentacles which meant it was probably a river. As he watched he noticed a griffin which was caught in the tentacles get crushed and turned into a rainstorm of blood. He then noticed a man had fallen off the griffin. Invetisto was sure that the man needed help so, with a nod to assure himself of his plans, he made his way down the tree and headed off to help the man with this tentacle monstrosity. He was sure he would make it there by the time the man hit the river… or the bank.

((Invetisto has decided to try to help Flint with his tentacle problem))

[Hysteria]

Talen's armoured hands flashed into his cloak and drew the twin pistols. The metal glinted in firelight as he brought together the weapons and with their touch their forms melded into that of the rifle. It was a necessary action, as although the youth's weapon was powerful it was limited to certain forms for certain actions. The more magic used for each shot, the more the rifle's bulk was needed.

Talen pressed the rifle butt against his shoulder and levelled the sights along the wall to the closest of the orcs. The rifle flashed as the shot was released, casting a white light across Talen's pale features. The shot cut through the air as it travelled, but it was not meant for damage. Along its trajectory it released periodic burst of energy that detected everything within a large radius and fed that back to Talen.

The moment the shot had left the rifle Talen was following it. He slammed his feet into the wood of the wall with a thunderous charge. The shot fed back the location of the arrows as they moved, and Talen responded dodging left and right as they whizzed pass. Talen was reliant on his speed to react to the moments notice he received for each arrow.

The closest orcs loomed large, Talen could almost taste them. The victory was for little as an orc ordered a halt on the arrows, then for them to be released at once. The detection of his Hide shot released its last of three bursts, and all Talen could feel was a wall of arrows approaching. The youth gritted his teeth and continued his charge. The arrows approached, and Talen disappeared.

Darkness streaked across the ground, covering the last few metres to the orcs. The shape reared into the air and Talen burst back into material form inches from the closest orc. Talen's armoured hand flashed, and green blood sprayed onto the wall. The orc fell to his knees as the three slashes to his neck drained his blood quickly. Talen's hand shot out and grabbed the orc's rough leather armour and threw him into the next orc.

Chaos was descending on the group Talen had reached. Some ran, others drew crude hand to hand weapons. Someone outside of their small five man group decided that the orcs were already lost. The air filled with sparking lights as arrows, some aflame and some not arched into the air and towards the boy like rain from a coming storm.

..and me without my umbrella... Thought Talen as a smile slid its way across his face.

Talen grabbed the now limp body of the orc he had killed and thrown and hoisted him up onto the youth's shoulder. Another orc charged forwards, somehow oblivious to the coming rain of death. Talen's turned and caught the hasty blow against his dead cargo. With a flash of his free hand, Talen stabbed the sharp finger tips of his gauntlet through the orc's helmet. The creature reared backwards and held his hands over his bleeding face. Talen grabbed his arm and spun around so his back was facing him as he pulled him over the youth’s other shoulder. The arrows rained down, and the struggling over over Talen was quickly still. The others in the ground fell to their own comrades, but Talen watched crouched under his umbrella.

[Warpath]

Flint's captive did not want to obey. It procrastinated even as he goaded it on with threats it could understand, taking the longest route to the wall it could manage. Even one brawny arm around its throat was not menacing enough to keep it from hesitating just before crossing the wall, but he could not know that it feared something more immediately than he. It was too late for both of them.

Flint let out an undignified grunt as his mount suddenly stopped and disappeared from beneath him, but his own momentum went unimpeded. He was launched over the griffin's head and sent tumbling heel over crown in midair, snatching at what he'd lost. His first thought was that the griffin had found some means of stopping itself very suddenly with the express purpose of bucking him off, but logic quickly refuted the possibility, and his eyes confirmed.

The beast was so cruelly and efficiently dismembered that Flint felt sorry for it, despite the fact that it had been intent on killing him moments before. Their brief struggle had seemed noble to him - honorable - but this? As the brute righted himself in the midst of his freefall - and put eyes on his new foe - he steeled himself. His mission was momentarily on hold. He had retribution to hand out, now.

The brute was no stranger to creatures like this. His greatest feat thus far, in his estimation, was slaying the leviathan that had hunted their ship when he escorted Luned Bleddyn in her hunt for the Wandering Isle. That monster, like this one, had sought to rend him limb from limb with powerful tentacles. That one, like this one, had made the mistake of thinking him a meal.

He was working out the particulars of getting himself past the teeth and into the belly still breathing when a tentacle darted from just outside his vision and caught him mid-fall. It wound around his middle tight and it was only getting tighter, but he was not as quick to crumble as the griffin had been. Still, he was not in an ideal place to deal pain so high above the monster proper: he pounded his fists against the tentacle, which quivered but did not release him.

And then he heard his name cutting through the wind. Somehow, as he was lashed about, Flint caught the briefest glimpse of an ebon-clad figure on the bank. Likewise, it was only the glimmer of motion that triggered his instincts and he lashed out, catching something in his right hand before he fully knew what it even was. He looked up, and saw that he was holding a massive, rust-encrusted sword, and the plan crystallized in his mind's eye.

He pulled the blade to him in both hands, closed his eyes, exhaled, and became very, very still.

And then the world spun around him, flashes of walls and snowflakes and trees and distant battles. He let it happen, and then there was an unspeakable rush of agony across his entire body. The air was knocked from his lungs and he convulsed involuntarily, the pain pushing all reason aside so that it took a long moment for Flint to make sense of it: he'd been plunged into the moat's icy embrace. He was freezing to death.

The water rushed around him, greedily struggling to extricate the sword from his grip, but he endured. Still, his tremors had betrayed his ruse to the creature, who now realized he was very much alive. He could not see its gaze from here, but he could feel it turning to him. He was out of time.

Now, everyone knows Flint Skovik as a criminal mastermind, a juggernaut, a brawler, but he had been another thing for far longer than any of those. For most of his life he had existed in one place to do one thing. He had trained from the moment his eyes opened before dawn until they fluttered closed in exhaustion long after the setting of the sun. He had fought until his body failed, day in and day out. Flint had been a gladiator...and he was damn good at it.

He didn't like weapons anymore. He used his hands now, just his hands, and thought himself nobler for it - kinder to the things he broke, the people. None of that mattered now. The sword in his hand? That felt right.

He knew exactly what he was doing.

In defiance of the whirlpool and the thing that held him still, he brought the blade to bear. He plunged it into the tentacle's flesh and he sawed. This weapon had the perfect teeth for it, a match made in Hell. The slimy appendage struggled in blind panic, longing to writhe and lash, but it couldn't. Its nerves were sliced...but not severed.

The creature wanted blood, so Flint supplied it in rivulets.

It oozed from the wound, and the whirlpool carried it, dispersed it in a blinding black flurry. The water darkened until it was as black as pitch and half as viscous. Flint emerged from those loathsome deeps gasping, dragging himself and The Reclaimer through the mud. He turned and lifted his heavy limbs in case his gambit had failed and for a moment despaired, as a forest of tentacles hoisted themselves from the river, flinging gallons of water in every direction.

But they lashed without intent or target. As he hoped, the river monster was blinded by its own blood. As he watched, it occurred to him that the creature was not of just one mind: the tentacles all had minds of their own, and now they were panicking. They weren't looking for him at all. They were searching themselves, folding over and over, seeking out open wounds. Without the eye to tell each individual if it was whole, they abandoned all shared goals and resorted to pursuits of pure self-interest.

Still, Flint hurried away from the water. Eventually they'd rally or the water would clear, and he needed to be well out of reach before then.

He shrugged his sodden, weighty coat off - it was now a source of hypothermia rather than a defense against it - and peeled his layers of shirts off too. He paused for a moment and steadied himself. To some it might have been called meditation, but Flint wasn't looking for calm or peace: he was summoning up all his anger and hate. It got his heart pounding like a steady, relentless drum, and it got his blood running hot. When he opened his eyes again, the steam rolled off of his naked back and shoulders in wisps.

Moments later, he drove the end of The Reclaimer into the snow, and crouched down beside a body resting against a tree. "Find your feet, Assassin," Flint said to Lye. "Your talents may prove useful."

[Silence Sei]

As Alyssa and her new friend huddled for heat, they would soon find themselves with a new elemental threw. A swirl of snowflakes began to circle around the two, and the fire was quickly put out as the maelstrom of white turned into a wintery tornado that sucked the two of them up. They would find themselves spiraling through the harsh winds, as well as trees and other things picked up by the natural disaster. When the winds began to die, Alyssa and her avian pal were sent flying into a horde goblins who made their way into the courtyard of the fortress. Normally, such a thing would not be a big deal, but these particular goblins wielded spears that were all points up.

Lye, Invetisto and Flint were holding their own against the tentacle beast that guarded the castle walls. However, the creature, slightly blinded and now injured, was furious that it was hurt so. It’s long appendages flailed about trying to keep track of its prey. It slammed through trees, the ground, and even busted down a piece of the castle walls that it was so keen on defending. These tentacles would stop at nothing to find its victims. A loud, gargled roar came from the water as the arms of the creature seemed to spin out of control.

Unfortunately for Talen, one of these tentacles happened to slam against the small body of the warrior. Talen was sent flying into a the same group of goblins that Alyssa was also heading towards. While the goblins themselves were not deadly, the youth was now heavily injured due to the massive appendage slamming into his lithe form.

Finally, the mantiocore countered Philomel’s blow by turning its mane at the last second, causing the girl to slam her hoof into the body of Veridian. The small fox yelped as Philomel’s blow tore the small familiar out of the tangled mess that was the monsters hair. The manticore roared, though the declaration was quickly cut short thanks to the faun whore’s ability to render his bones to dust. The creature fell to the ground, its form that of a rug more than that of the proud beast it once was. After a hard fought battle, Philomel had won.

However, the manticore’s tail still attempted one last thrust at the girl, and managed to smack her in the furred left leg. While the blow itself was mostly superficial, the half-girl would find herself falling ill thanks to the poison of the tail. She would have to finish this siege quickly lest she fall to the effects of the poison.


((Status update! Sorry for the late delay guys!

Alyssa got thrown into a possible spiky death thanks to a random tornado. Talen is heading towards the same group of goblins, but he is critically injured thanks to the Sauron-krakens blow.

Philomel won against the Manticore but has found herself poisoned by its tail. She has 5 posts to make it through before she falls. Also, her kick managed to render Veridian unconscious.

Flint, Lye, and Invetisto have to contend with a pissed off set of tentacles slamming all over the place in order to find them. Tentacles may be severed, but with great difficulty. My advice is to avoid them altogether.

You guys have survived the appetizers, its almost time for the main course!))

[Hysteria]

Talen had a good view of the fights going on. The wall was now a pincushion of arrows and a few dead orcs. The mass of tentacles rising up from the water near the wall was engaged in haphazard combat with a few of Talen's ignored comrades. Last, but not least, a horde of goblins was approaching with spears and shields held ready. The creatures carried cruel grins, ones that rivalled Talen's one moments ago. Their green skin, rough armour and crude weapons would have been reassuring if there hadn't been so many of them.

A few moments ago Talen had been crouched beneath the bodies of two orcs on the wall as arrows rained down. The next there was a crash of wood and stone, and Talen had received an ironic taste of his own medicine as a tentacle smashed through his orc shield and sent him flying away from the fortress. Even in the brief moments after he had taken flight he felt the crack of ribs and distinct sensation of fluid rushing into his chest. Talen was not a fan of pain, in fact he actively avoided it. For now though he would suffer this trial, and deal with the growing (larger) issue of the goblins before he too became a pincushion.

Talen jammed his rifle against his shoulder and tried to aim with one hand. The other was pressed firmly against his chest trying to brace his tender ribs. The moments were moving too quickly, Talen had to act without proper aim. His rifle muzzle flashed twice and two shots erupted from the barrel, though the air and into the goblins. A moment later the first exploded. The green skinned grinning ranks were filled with fire and screams. Goblins ripped outwards some whole and others in pieces. The second explosion was better aimed, ripping the goblins directly in front of Talen asunder. They broke and ran from the chaos as bits of their comrades rained around them.

“Guaaaaah!”

Talen hit the hot ground, still smouldering from his fiery serenade. The youth felt his whole body shift and his ribs crack again with the landing. Talen's face skidded on the hot ground, scraping and burning his skin. Talen wanted to stand, but all he could do was double over in pain as he barely managed to keep hold of his gun. His other hand gripped the front of his shirt underneath him as he felt his insides shift with every breath. The goblins were returning, he could hear their evil chattering and their weapons being taken up again. Talen twisted his head to look, but his blurred vision and coppery taste of blood in his mouth was all he could focus on.

“Gaaaaaaaah!”

Talen's voice raised to a high pitch scream as a the limp body of Alyssa landed on the youth. For a moment Talen thought he was going to pass out from the pain. He fought the darkness, and let his anger keep his eyes from closing. The same force of will conjured the dark tentacles from Talen's back. They slipped out from Alyssa and pushed her off onto the charred ground. Two tentacles pushed into the ground and lifted Talen back up to a standing position. Two more stretched and and slipped into holds of the discarded goblin shields. More than once an arm bereft of a body was pushed out in the process. Talen felt like a character from one of his comics as he stood with the help of his shadowy appendages. He'd have laughed, if not for the pain in his chest and the blood dripping from his mouth. He was not done yet, for him the battle was just starting. The youth's body started to respond to the injuries he had sustained.

“Rrraaaaaaaaahhhhh!” Talen's mouth roared out into the night air as his ribs cracked back into place and bone was knitted together. His healing prowess worked, rather painfully, to heal the more severe injuries. Ribs connected, internal bleeding stopped and drained, and Talen was mostly back to normal. The arm he had been cradling his chest with lifted up and wiped the blood from his mouth, though a streak of charred and scrapped skin on his face remained.

The two tentacles lifted up, now lined with the goblins' wooden shields. The other two stayed near the ground ready to lash anything the other two missed. Talen himself lifted him his rifle and pointed it to the closest group of goblins.

“I guess we've got some shooting to do.” said Talen, glancing over his shoulder, “You take the hundred to the left.”

Hyperbole aside, the two dozen goblins that surrounded the pair would not be easy to kill. Talen fired, the shot striking one of the little green creature's shields. It looked pleased with itself for a moment, that was until the shot exploded and engulfed it and three more in fire.

“Game on!” Shouted Talen as the goblins rushed forwards.

[Alyssa Snow]

Achoo!

Mr. Blue (https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5602/15834305775_9e9419ea87.jpg) fluttered in surprise between Alyssa's feet.

"Sorry little guy," she apologized as she ran her sleeve across her nose.

She glanced down to her new avian friend to see little black eyes cocked to the side and staring back. She let out a soft giggle and smiled. Warmth welled in her cheeks to which she raised a brow. For a moment, she slipped her glove from her hand and touched them to her face. Though brief, their time spent huddled together under the cliff side had worked life back into her. Alyssa's legs let out another warble, and she could feel the tickle of the bird's fluffy down on her ankles. The mage gunner leg go of her huddled clasp of her legs and tried to stretch out more comfortably.

Her body replied with a throbbing ache over every inch.

She winced, but overcame the pain with a controlled breath. Now with more room, Mr. Blue hopped about, twisting and turning to examine the creature he had never seen before. The little swallow showed no fear in her presence and lightly pecked her leggings in curiosity. Either Mr. Blue was the bravest little thing in this deadly wildlands or he was just that innocent and naive. Regardless, the gunner couldn't help but feel a great sense of comfort in his presence.

"Feeling better?" she asked knowing all well the bird wouldn't understand her.

"Cheep Cheep!" he replied immediately with a flutter and hop atop her knee.

Alyssa startled, only slightly. Maybe he did understand her? It wouldn't be the first strange thing that happened today. The gunner decided to slake her curiosity. She brought her gloveless hand nearby and extended just a single finger toward Mr. Blue. He watched with little twitches of movement.

"May I?" Alyssa asked politely. She found it silly to ask permission to a bird but with a high pitched chirp, he scuttled toward her finger and pushed his neck against it.

Maybe it was surprise, maybe it was the fire's lapping warmth, or maybe it was just happiness, but the blonde haired mage felt a kindling heat deep in her core that spread throughout her like flames on oil. The hairs on her body prickled and stood on end. Her scrapes and bruises stung and her heart fluttered. Regardless, the sensation felt... welcoming.

"Thank you."

Alyssa's new friend chirped, which she imagined meant something similar.

It seemed, however, that this place did not permit any form of joy. Like a beast that fed on the light and consumed all in its darkness, the wind drastically shifted. What was once a safe haven from frosty gales, now became a violent torrent of wind and ice. The warming flame was the first to succumb to the darkness.

"Mr. Blue!" The gunner shouted. Her friend's featherweight body skittered and tumbled in the gale. Wild warbles of distress and fear barely made it to her over the roar of rushing wind.

"No!"

Alyssa strained her muscles to act. They replied in waves of shooting pain, but the gunner dominated them with sheer will. She rose, she leaped, and she reached for the flapping mess of blue feathers. Then, much like her companion, she too lifted from the ground. Her fingers stretched and teeth clenched. The reflection of her friend fluttered in her eyes. So close. Just a little... bit...

"Gotcha!"

She snagged him by the tail and tugged. His shrill squawk was one of pain and one that Alyssa would be sure to apologize for later. Right now, she pulled him in to her bosom and balled her body around him. Meanwhile, the wintery gale swirled and gnashed around them.

"Hold on..." she muttered to the critter that quivered in her embrace.

Snow, ice, stones, and branches joined the fray. Spinning, twirling, punching, and beating, these inanimate attackers pummeled and pelted against her tightly curled body. She felt the warm jacket on her back lash open. A searing pain stretched from hip to shoulder and opened her fabric shell to the penetrating cold. Her teeth clenched and brow scrunched. She had to bare it.

Like a flail on a chain of wind, a chunk of snow broke wide and bludgeoned her against the shoulder. The shock of impact carried throughout Alyssa's body like ripple in a well. Mr. Blue fluttered in her hands, but she kept strong. The beatings continued, relentless, painful, and harsh. Her momentary warmth sapped from her once more. Still, her will overcame.

Until, that is, it stopped.

As sudden as it began, the maelstrom of wind broke. No more pain, no more roaring gales, and nothing keeping them aloft. Her stomach fell at the same moment gravity wrapped its menacing fingers around them. Gunner and swallow plummeted to the ground below. Weak, freezing, and exhausted, all the girl managed was a tightened grasp. This fortress, this island.... Leona was wrong.

She was going to die here, and this plummet was as good a way as any. Still, if she could at least save one life, that'd be enough for her.

"I'm sorry..." she muttered.

She didn't open her eyes to see the sea of raised goblin spears vastly approaching. She didn't notice the obsidian youth entering the courtyard in a spray of rubble and stone. Alyssa did not hear the crippling blasts produced by the boy's weapons or the screams shortly after.

But she sure as hell felt the impact of her bloodied back meeting the meaty cushion of his body.

A guttural "Umph!" escaped her again blued lips. Though much less worse than meeting stone, the pain radiated down to the roots of her teeth. Her shield of flesh and bone finally broke. Alyssa sprawled out and from her chest fluttered free a little blue swallow.

The next few moments passed in a fade of wavering consciousness. Something slithered under her, then turned to comforting but aggressive warmth. Alyssa took a painful breath. Foul scents of burning hair and flesh flooded her nostrils. Clatters of steel and primal grunts sounded. The gunner fought to come to.

“Rrraaaaaaaaahhhhh!”

Well, she was conscious now...

Like an animal stirring from a slumber, Alyssa thrashed and flailed on the charred stone courtyard. Senses registered, bodily damage relayed in aches, and the girl shot to her feet with pistols drawn and frantically snapped aim from target to ugly, green target.

“I guess we've got some shooting to do,” a strange boy remarked to her with a glance over his shoulder, “You take the hundred to the left.”

"What?!" was her confused reply. She looked to the left of them, and only twelve stood in aggressive stances with pointed sticks poised to attack.

She snapped both barrels toward the group, but they did not waver. Instead, a goblin or two smashed their shields against their chests and loosed a war cry. The tattered gunner looked to boy, then the carnage at her feet, and finally back to the enemy hostiles.

"Game on!" the boy shouted. His weapons roared damage into the ranks behind her which sent those in front into a frenzy.

"For the love of--!"

Alyssa pulled triggers in bursts, with her mind still trying to grasp on to the complete and utter insanity of the past half hour. Bolts of ice slammed into angry little creatures, spouting green vitae into the crisp, arctic air. Another raised his shield to predict the incoming round only to be flung into the sky with fellow goblins-in-arms. A pillar of stone stood defiant to their advance and responsible for their broken formation. As the gunner fired away, her spine tingled in sync with her artificially infused relic. Crystals continued to fling their magical payloads, and Alyssa equally managed to reload them with various elemental energies.

In the spirit of her new ally, it was on.

[Lye]

Have you ever heard a giant, mutated, angry moat-squid scream in pain? Of course, no one has. Well, at least not until today.

Lye groaned as he assessed the damage to his person. Though literally tough as iron nails, a stunt like that rocked him to the core. Fragments of tree, stone, and remnant clothing stuck to and out of various flesh wounds. Even though the cuts and scrapes were no more severe than being bucked from a sprinting horse, the bruises and fractures bore the real source of agony. Luckily, the assassin possessed the ability to mend and correct the fractures, and he did just that.

Think of small worms under the skin, then imagine them lighting on fire and being made of razors. Somewhere in that horrible sensation, one can find the same pain required to mend broken bone, cartilage, and marrow through will alone. It is not pleasant, nor is it easy.

However, this wasn't the first time for Lye Ulroke.

With no more than clenched teeth, a growing desire for revenge, and a gaze that would cut stone, he bore the brunt of it all. His four fractured ribs stitched together and pulled his chest out. His missing teeth regrew and leg bent in more than three places straightened. Fingers that looked like frayed rope popped back into place and formed a quaking fist.

All in the meantime, his verdant gaze watched a moat-squid scream and writhe from a little cut.

"Find your feet, Assassin," The Reclaimer embedded itself to the snow and a large, masculine hand extended toward him. "Your talents may prove useful."

"That they will, Skovik," the assassin rebuked in venomous tones.

He took the brute's hand in his own and was lifted as though made of linen. The juggernaut let his colleague's weight fall upon his own two feet. Bruises and cuts reaffirmed their locations all over Lye's tattered body. A surge of thick, viscous fluid bubbled from the back of his throat to which he spat against the porcelain powder. He drew an equally bloody arm across his lips only further smearing blood along his alabaster flesh. Much like warriors would do before a battle.

Lye looked to The Reclaimer, then back to a very steamed off (literally) Flint.

"You do well with a blade. Keep it. You'll be needing it for whatever's next."

Lye turned to the Kraken as it violently thrashed about. Tentacles reached for something, anything, to grab, crush, and throw. The surrounding damage was minimal in the tantrum, but the epicenter was chaos. Still, its flailing appendages posed the biggest risk between them and the fortress. With deadly creatures outside, and an even deadlier one still guarding the gate, a creeping suspicion nagged to ask:

"What do you think they've got in there, Sovik?" Lye gestured past the Kraken toward the massive walls. "Aside from a regiment of sorry ass orcs about to die?"

Lye continued his monologue without pause for his comrade.

"Treasure? Magic? The Mother Orc?"

He looked to the juggernaut as a fountain of snow, trees, ice, and debris erupted behind them from a Kraken-launched boulder.

"Let's find out, shall we?"

Lye broke into a mad sprint toward the fortress wall. His fleet steps carried with him a wake of loose powder. As he neared the towering stone walls, he wrapped his fingers around the blackened steel needles still strapped to his arms. His eyes locked to one of the many trunks of squid meat and he loosed a volley of needles into the air. Lye dug his heels into the soil and skid to a halt only a few yards away from the wall and what he could assume was just outside tentacle range.

"Understand my pain..." the killer muttered as his projectiles slammed into slimey flesh.

This only angered the beast.

The afflicted appendage, surely only irritated over injured, shot toward the assassin like the shaft of a spear. Lye clenched his fists and teeth alike. He braced for impact but as the tentacle was about to hit, it stopped only feet short and well within the range of taking the bait.

"Your turn..." Lye quipped.

Like mending his bones just seconds ago, the excruciating pain he loved to endure took seat in both his extended arms. The assassin's skin writhed like rotten flesh. Bones shattered and reformed. Marrow contracted and condensed. Then, like hidden blades, two ivory prongs ripped through the assassin's forearms. A light hazing of blood misted to white below, and a toothy grin spread from ear to ear.

The Kraken shared the killer's twisted masochism down to the very last detail and to a degree the beast would comprehend.

It did not share Lye's same enjoyment.

Like before, when the brute sawed down to the nerve, the beast flailed. This time, it responded in exponential aggression. It wrapped its gooey grasp around a chunk of stone two men tall and easily four wide. Then, began to heft it.

Meanwhile, Lye remained firm and waited events to pan out. Above him, goblins and orcs took aim with bows, crossbows, and the like. The sound of strings pulling taught added to the shriek from the monstrosity.

The Kraken launched its massive makeshift projectile.

The watchtower beasts let their flaming, pointed, poisoned payload fly.

The assassin... laughed?

Arrows pierced trough him and buried to ground, the shadow of rocky doom loomed overhead, goblins and orcs ducked for cover, and then land where he stood disappeared under rubble. Debris launched every which way. Watchtower fiends lost footing to quaking earth and topped over ledges to their deaths. Snow once fallen, took to the air en masse to fall yet again, and from the top of the new jagged monolith, shot a shadow of darkness.

Like a specter, Lye emerged from the stone no worse than he looked before it fell. His boots cleared the tip by a hair's breadth as the clock ticked to zero and Lye became one again with the physical plane. His weight fell onto the stone, and he caught his footing. Through strands of platinum hair, he looked back to the burly juggernaut.

"Come on, Skovic! The window is limited!" he shouted to his comrade. A bloodied smile headlined the assassin's smug arrogance.

Then, using the crudely forged bridge, Lye quickly huffed it up and over the castle walls. Given the current mood of their biggest baby, this bridge would not be up for long before stones blackened the sky once more.

[Philomel]

With herculean effort the earthquake shattered the jaw bone into dust. Like crumpled paper it caved in, cracking in lightening bolt-shaped fractures from the nose to the temporal bones, splintering the zygomatic into tiny carved pieces. Crashing in like this the spine itself bent back, endangered itself from snapping entirely in twain, and the brain was crushed beneath the masses of energy impounding on it.

With a groan like a bruised kraken, or a mighty bear injured in a rutt, the manticore let out its last breath and fell back and downwards, pulled both by the force of pure gravity and by his own dead weight. As the pressure soared through him a shockwave blasted out the back of his skull, and with it a soft russet form was sent flying backwards, thrown to the air. Veridian landed with a whumph on the bark of a tree, his body prone and still. As the manticore's corpse spread itself on its deathbed of green leaves and white daisies Philomel felt the mental connection she had with the Earth Spirit grow hazy for a moment - then still.

As her heart beat, pushed and strained blood around her shaken body, she aimed to stand. Prodding the empty wasteland of a mind on the other side of the cerebral divide, she pushed herself with both palms flat on the ground to stand. The primary resounding thought was get to him, and though her thoughts were loud enough for any telepath to hear just in this moment of time, she could not communicate with the fox. It was if he was sleeping - but then no sleep her beloved had ever been through had felt this deep and given this sense of utter loss.

However, when she stood, there was a splintering pain through her leg. It was if a gods-hand had come at that moment and immaterially pinched her, so that there was the agony but no direct tugging of skin. Placing her hand to the point of torment she seethed, and winced, letting her mind think for a moment as she tried to remember the moments leading up to Veridian being cast down, unconcious.

The manticore had lunged. Veridian had been in its mane, madly trying to find a point of the neck to bite. In the last moments of thinking she had had only one real choice to kill it and save herself, and that was to send the shattering headbutt through its skull. But in that moment, its claws had been flailing and its tail had whipped around, savagely trying to -

Jab her. On the leg. Hand on the thigh the faun-whore bent over, peering at the wound. There was a hole, clearly, where the end of the sting had pierced, and from that hole blood was oozing thickly. As a dizziness began to settle into her head Philomel blinked, clearing her eyesight and was not at all pleased to see the presence of green sap, like the bright brutal blood of the beast, caught in amongst her fur, skin and flesh. Apparently it had already got into her bloodstream, if this current sense of wooziness was anything to go by, and the fact it had come from a sting, similar to that of a scorpian, meant only one word, and that was poison.

Fuck, she found herself cursing, Fuck. Then I don't have much time.

Her eyes glanced over, first, to where Veridian had fallen finally, from hitting the tree bark to a pile of leaves. At least, in some way, he had comfort, but in her mind there was a long time to go before anything was "okay." Secondly, she looked over to where her sword had been cast, and she knew it was tall enough to be used as a temporary crutch. So long as she needed it. Lastly she looked at the stinger of the downed beast, of what it was used for and what poison lived within its pointed end, and she deliberated over the usefulness of such a device. With all three of these glances down and no obvious danger around as far as a simple check told, a plan of simple steps formed into her mind, simple steps of easy access and quick operation.

Firstly she limped over to the mythril sword. Leaning down over it with a wince and a curse of whispering faunish, she picked it up by the hilt and then leaned on the tip. For want of not breaking it entirely she only used it as a base, as a point of steadiness, as she walked along another side of the triangle over a leg, to where the Earth Spirit lay.

Sad eyes peered down at him, and she swallowed for a moment as the inevitable guilt settled in. Kneeling down gently, placing her sword by her side, she moved to lean over him, then turn his body around. Placing him gently in a more comfortable position other than that he fell in, a pose as if just resting, she tried to prod his mind with hers. It was a rudimentary form of telepathy, but between them, it was perfect. A non-existent hand formed in her mind and pressed against the blackness that was his existence. There was a flutter, a waver. Then, nothing. Stillness and emptiness.

Irritated, irated with herself, the Nightingale moved to sit beside him, forgetting the mind. She knew full well that only time or a bucket of water would wake him. For now, however, she had to stem the bleeding of her wound, and thus she set about concentrating on self.

Sucking in her breath she thrust the leg out before her, the injured one, still bleeding. Grasping the hilt of the Lover, her deep emerald keris dagger, from behind her waist, Philomel gritted her teeth, crushing the molars against each other, before slipping the very tip into the wound.

Excruiciating agony spasmed through her, and for a moment the blade had cause to slip. The headache at her temples pounded, panicking for a moment. Her heart raced, shrieking with fear, before she ground herself back to reality.

"Stop it, Philomel," she spat, "Stop it. Pain is real. Stop it."

Stop it.

The Lover flicked. What remained of the green toxin was caught up with it and was flicked to the side. Now free of any poison that was not already inside her, Philomel immediately took to flicking the trigger under the crossbar of the dagger. Like Hades rising from the Underworld flames shot up, swarming over the length of the plynt dagger, rising until they burned with a fierce passion. Gripping it hard, and gripping it proud, the faun-whore forced the flames down against the wound.

Smoke rose up as the fur caught fire for a moment, then singed themselves to sleep. Capable of minor burns the hot metal and the flames in synchronisation sealed the cut and dried the blood surrounding, at the same time as burning away any bad mites that would which to feast on her flesh. Flicking the switch once more, Philomel seethed with despair as the fire ended but the pain still remained, perhaps even worse. Throwing the not gently ashy dagger to the side she cupped her thigh for a moment, rocking back and forth as she fought the urge to burst out screaming.

In pain. Utter, fecking, pain. Cut and burns, and now, soon, poison. They had only been here a few minutes and already Veridian was downed, her poisonous fate was sealed, and her leg was damaged. With it, she could cope perhaps, but only if she fulled willed herself to, concetrated on all that was, and all that was going to be. In any case, she immediately wanted off.

Her eyes wondered to the sky, piercing the clouds. This was a floating island, and the only way off directly was the way they got on - via airship. Except, they were nowhere to be seen. The pilots had made the rules strict, and clear. "The only way off is if you down the thing." Down it? Land the island. Send it spinning to its end. "Your mission is to get to the fortress." Well obviously, if there was going to be anything worth protecting, it would be in there.

Her mind whirred, fast and furious. She wanted off, but to jump down would be suicide. The airships were in no easy access to attempt to hijack them right now, with any promises of bodily pleasure or otherwise. Options were, currently, that they could either remain here, hoping that no more danger would come, or they could continue on, try to complete the mission. As she considered, Philomel realised that was the most useful option. To finish it, meant to get home, to get back to ground, to end this. She was injured - yes, but that was no small order in the grand scheme of things. She could get through that, and besides, it was Veridian she was more worried about. For now she could carry him, and though her leg was wounded she could still leap, she reckoned, a good eight metres out of the usual ten in a single go. He was light, and she was fast. By her own wills they could gain to the wall, jump over it straight avoiding much of the archers, and land to go straight into the castle. That - that or they could ...

Grinning, she realised. There was a much, simpler easier way to gain access to that impenetrable fortress. With renewed hope the faun-whore shook her body to its hooves. Forgetting, for now, the pain that would soon become a dull ache, she leaned down and collected in turn both blades, and then the fox. Striding, lastly and carefully, over to the manticore's end she savagely tore of the very end of the singer, carefully wrapping it in one of the many fabrics adorning her belt, then tying it on. Posion now, or later, she knew the stuff would come in handy one day, especially if she showed it to her knowing brother.

With everything now in tow she started to walk - then quickly ran. Sprinting, at a slightly lessened but by no means slow, pace she headed straight to where she knew the wall was, by her inital scan of the place as she had fallen. With each touch of hoof on ground she gained a larger and larger knowledge of where things were occurring, and what panic was enshewing around her as she sent more and more awareness into each hoofstep. As she gained near to the walls her brows furrowed upon realising there was some distubance twenty metres or so to the east, coupled with a raucous sound. Both meant the possibility of other assailants and therefore, allies.

Twenty metres was possible. But in her state she should get closer. So she did. And the arrows started to hail, but she was already crouching, and sucking in her breath, the Earth Spirit clutched close to her chest. Whizz of arrows overhead. She just had to wait. One. An arrow buried itself in the grass, too close for comfort. She folded her arms and breast entirely over Veridian, protecting him from any harm. ... Two. Two. Two, that was it. More arrows, and one grazed her shoulder, sending a rivulet of fresh blood down there.

But she was already going. And zooming. And moving. In the same way she had moved to the back of the manticore.

Lovely, lovely, earth portal.

Three.

She appeared, as if by instant teleporation magic, right beside Flint Skovic and Lichensich Ulroke. The hilarity of the situation made her chuckle. How ironic. He was here. Of course he was here.

She threw her boss an uneasy, cheeky grin and moved the prone fox to one arm. Using the other to whisk out her white blade, the Nightingale faced the oncoming foe of the assassin and the large ... other man, ready to save their lives and get the first step to getting the hell out of here.

[The Inventor]

Invetisto made it to the moat side; he saw a giant squid-like creature with hundreds of tentacles. The creature was in a frenzy as its tentacles swung randomly and destroyed tons of trees. They moved a lot quicker than that centipede did. In fact Invetisto didn’t have time to even get any plan together before a tentacle struck him which sent him through hundreds of trees. This sent him so far that he flew off the side of the floating island.

When Invetisto landed, he cursed whichever god kept that sent that creature as he lost consciousness, the pain too much for his mind to bear.

Invetisto is down and out.

[Warpath]

It did not take long for the river beast to complete its self-search for open wounds, and fear turned to frenzy very shortly after that. Flint put his prayers on Lye and his repertoire - without saying as much, of course - and he was not disappointed. He had hefted the heavy, ancient sword at the assassin's word, and was doing what he could to ward off the nearest tentacles as the pair made their way toward the fortress wall.

When Ulroke began to rely on his witch-work, Flint let a little distance form between them. He had done so out of mistrust for any arcane art, and his caution proved prudent. By the end of it, the brute was certain he was watching the end of a legendary boogeyman. Death by squishing struck him as particularly ignominious, so Flint marked himself pleasantly surprised when Lye reappeared atop the tremendous rock, thoroughly three-dimensional.

"Come on, Skovik!" the assassin cried when he saw Flint's hesitation. "The window is limited!"

The half-naked warrior crossed the distance between himself and his ally quickly but cautiously, eyes locked almost exclusively on the tentacles lashing and swinging from every direction, pounding furiously into the snow, wrenching at trees and tugging at boulders. It was a fearsome obstacle course, but Flint was soon pounding up the side of Lye's makeshift ramp.

As he reached the apex he caught sight of another figure, and it was only her immediately striking appearance that stayed his instinct to attack. He eyed her as he dropped onto the wall, and nodded once. "Madam," he said in dry greeting, hefting the sword up onto his shoulder. The fact that she was hauling what appeared to be a dead fox did not visibly trouble him.

Any camaraderie they might have shared was limited, of course, as their new vantage point so close to the fortress proper made them noticeable, indeed. Flint did not have eyes for anything on the inside of the wall - not yet. Instead he swiftly and efficiently noted the positions of their enemies on the wall. If they dropped over to the other side now, they would be no safer from slings and arrows than they'd been without the fortress.

"Follow," he said.

Flint stepped around Philomel with gentlemanly deference - strange in contrast to his appearance - and then he began to jog. The first two steps were leisurely, he leaned forward into the third, and by the fifth something visibly changed. He sprinted across the top of the wall, a true juggernaut, and he roared another fierce challenge to the defenders now hurrying toward the watchtower at the junction where walls met.

The orcs inside the watchtower had some inkling of what they were dealing with. They upended a table, spilling half-eaten mutton and crude playing cards in every direction, and they worked together to prop the table up in the doorway as a barricade. They began to fire upon the thunderous madman from behind it, but their quarrels only sank skin-deep until he was bristling about the chest and shoulders with them.

The orcs abandoned their attempts to slow or redirect the charge and instead threw themselves headlong into an equally futile effort: they tried to brace the barricade. Flint lowered his head and threw himself forward at full momentum, and drove his shoulder into the upended table.

There were screams, cut off near-instantly, and then a handful of huge but broken green-skinned bodies went sailing through the doorway on the opposite side of the watchtower. Ultimately they tumbled right over the wall and out of sight, amidst the splinters and shards of their would-be shield. Flint stepped out after them with the sword rested on his shoulder again, pulling bolts out of his shoulders one by one.

The brute had secured a watchtower for the raiders, a tactically sound fortification behind enemy lines, and he was pleased.

[Silence Sei]

The group had roughly arrived in the same area, which put goblin and orc alike on high alert. Out of the main castle stormed dozens of growling and hissing humanoid creatures armed with all manner of polearm and blade alike. The scattered as about six each tried to take down a single target. The fallen foes that Talen and Alyssa managed to take out started to rise, a swirl of blues and greens surrounding the bodies as they moved towards their fallen weapons with the speed and urgency of a sloth with slug blood.

Necromancy was in play.

Philomel would probably have noticed the abilities of a magician in play if not for a wild tentacle slamming her into a piece of the wall that was left undestroyed. Blood flew out of the whore's mouth, but they could all see that the half goat was still alive, but severely weakened as the tentacle removed itself from smashing the girl.

Lye would have similar misfortune, as from the soft ground rose several dozen rotting, skeletal hands that grabbed the Order master by the ankles. As he looked down at the earth below, an arrow hit the assassin in the back. Luck shined well upon him, as the arrow itself was not coated with anything dangerous. Similar zombified hands started to grab at the warriors that remained on the solid earth as though they planned to take them under.

"Stay off the Ground!" a voice commanded to the warriors, though from where they did not know, "His creatures will bury you alive if you don't find higher ground!"

((Okay, so Phi has been smashed against a wall, but she is still in this. Lye took an unexpected arrow to the back, and has zombie hands holding his ankles, but is otherwise alright.

Everyone has about 3 goblins and 3 orcs each on them with various weaponry I will leave up to you guys. If you don't get off the courtyards ground, the zombie hands will grab at you guys and try to reverse bury you alive. Also all previous dead orcs and goblins are revived if their bodies were still able to be brought back zombified, and now we have to contend with zombies too! Yay!

Also, the castle door is open. Might be something worth investigating there if you can get through the goblin and orc warriors pouring out of it! Massive teamwork is key here!))

[Elthas_Belthasar]

(Be advised: Plenty of swearing and gore will be present in my posting.)

Elthas's trench coat swished about his ankles with the breeze.

He heard the call from the unknown voice, and it was Invetisto's personal invitation that lead him to the battlefield.

He was searching for Invetisto's fallen form because he would honour the old alliances always.

The search lead him to the fortress that was talked about in the invitation to him, and he immediately smelled something that was very troublesome. Blood and death. Elthas drew his delyn daggers, and rotated them instinctively his face a mask of concern. There are people fighting in there, and I have to make my way to them...I have to... He heard the Orc coming up behind him before the dumb brute even realized that Elthas knew. You ain't sneaking up on ME, asshole! Elthas reacted quite significantly faster than the Orc did. His eyes narrowed as he concentrated and felt the comforting dagger leave his hand. He tossed his dagger at the first of the Orcs landing true at the thing's neck. Green blood, mixed with black, swirled out from the injury and the Orc fell. But, Elthas knew that likely was not the end. He needed to find Invetisto's form and insure that his former leader did not get reanimated at the foul taint of Necromancy's power.

Elthas spotted Invetisto's form up ahead, and made his way towards the fallen friend. The ties of honour and loyalty were what bound the living to one another, and separated them from the beasts of the wild. Elthas made his way towards Invetisto, after taking his dagger out of the neck of the creature. "Many fall." Elthas knelt down to his friend. He knew Invetisto was likely dead, having met some terrible injury or another. "Why didn't you call for my aide sooner?" Elthas looked at Invetisto's tiny form, and passed a hand over the little fellow's face. He closed his former boss's eyes and whispered a silent prayer for him. The prayer was meant for all who would perish that day. Elthas was prepared to accept his OWN loss as well.

Elthas stood up, he noticed right away that Invetisto was missing his usually present mechanical suit.

"He would want that secured." Elthas said out loud. His eyes darted about as he looked for the various chunks and pieces of the clockwork armour. They were strewn all over the area and in horrible condition, likely beyond repair. Elthas took Invetisto's body, tiny as it was before he moved ahead and place it in one of his larger pouches. Boss would deserve a proper burial. Elthas stared at the fortress ahead. There were people fighting in there somewhere, but there was also plenty to do outside the fortress as well. Elthas adjusted his fancy fedora. He wore a nobleman's suit, it was a three piece suit cut in the standard Radasanth style. Elthas's boots dug in the mud for as he walked, but he walked quickly looking for goblins and orcs that were visible. Up ahead, he saw a secondary squad of the brutes making their way AROUND the back of the attack party.

That's where I will start. Elthas readied his mind for combat. He knew one thing clearly: This is going to be a Hell of a fucking party, that's for sure. Elthas thought to himself as he intercepted the sneaking party. His daggers were held in attack position and at the ready. Elthas would not care for style points for...HE WAS the fucking reinforcements.

[Philomel]

Her arms wrapped protectively around the limp body of her precious darling. Curling up into a foetal position, she moved the mythril blade, still in the hand, at such at angle that it would do no damage to her or Veridian. The flailing tentacle was a beast from another mythos, a stray word from another book, a random look from a complete stranger, that caught her body off guard, flailing madly. As she tried to save her soul and that of the fox she held, the kraken deemed it appropriate to sweep her up and smash her into the wall, though it caught a rather bemused goblin's head as it did.

Curled up as she was the energy went mostly up and down her spine. It jarred through her, sending her head whacking away and sideways, but for the most part there her horn protected her. Blood still spat from her mouth, yet she was intact with only a rib or two broken, something that could at least be solved later. As she opened her eyes again, freshly downed by the impact, she saw the oncoming storm of the new wave of enemies. As the voice overhead told her to stay off the ground she couldn't help but think, "Well bloody too late," before she saw the skeletal hands begin to form.

A quick check around and she saw a swarm of ugly brutes. Two large orcs, the size of small minotaurs, charged towards her, whilst ten other beings came closer. Various broke off and moved to direct attack Lye, who was somewhere in the near vacinty but far enough away not to be attacked by the same set. Philomel found her desires here clearly set: survive and protect Veridian to whatever extent, and then later was to get out of the place. As the tentacle flung itself away, its work done, she gagged on a mouthful of blood, but found will enough to drop her hand holding the sword, then drop the sword itself. It lay there, limply beside her, and pale ghostly hands scratched at it, yet the oncoming enemies were her biggest threat currently. The biggest and ugliest orcs who were armed with machetes ran with a lumpy vigour, and they were in the perfect place. She grabbed a throwing dagger, easily within reach, and launched it at the thickest part of the tentacle she could see. Though she was weak, the kraken arm was big, and the dagger met its mark with a beautiful thunk.

In annoyance more than pain, the massive thing began to recoil and flail like a snake, serving as a brief distraction and something for the bigger orcs to try to get past, or hack at, before they could get to her. Others, two smaller orcs and two nifty little goblins with wicked crossbows, crept past, niggling laughter on their lips. Struggling to her feet, Philomel once more took up her mythril blade, using it as a temporary crutch. She sucked in her breath and flailed with her sword, limpy and loosely. A bolt from a crossbow whizzed past her hip, grazing it and causing a wound that took three layers of skin, but it was nothing compared to the agony she still felt from the manticore stinger.

Lye was somewhere, there in the beyond, and by workings of elimination Philomel figured they would have more chance together. The other man, the tough-looking beastie, had since gone somewhere in order to save some damsel maybe, and it looked like her and the crazy assassin were here by themselves now. She gulped, flailed a little more, then took two paces of running before she jumped.

Her weak legs made it shody work, and imperfectly she landed on top of an orc. He crumpled beneath her, the faun grunted like she had just been given a good pleasure, and she smiled a little at Lichensith.

"You got a little arrow in your foot," she said, "And the hands ..."

She hopped off the dazed orc, twisting now to stand back to back with her boss. Veridian was still prone in one hand, the poison still worked through her system, but she was giving herself all her wiles to try to get out of here. Defiantly she tapped a hoof softly on the ground as now ten orcs and goblins came to face them (one downed by her landing on it, one downed from no other reason than confusion). As she tapped the ground the softness spasmed, then became as hard as bedrock, the zombies hands directly beneath the two of them suddenly cut off from their bodies and falling to pieces. Their previous lives were now squashed to nothingness, their nerves nothing but solid mass, but it would only last so long before more came.

The kraken tentacle still flailed somewhat, seeking eager revenge, but the larger orcs had dodged the worst. Philomel ducked behind an easy picking goblin who was fighting her from a crossbow bolt, letting him be impaled instead of her. Through her hoof, stuck to the now rocky ground, she did a quick assessment of their surroundings - of walls, buildings and a rat scrabbling in a drain.

She spoke again, this time suggesting with all her heart, "Uh lets go. There is a door with some stairs ten feet behind us ... ish."

[Hysteria]

One of Talen's black arms of N'Jal lifted into the air. The goblin's shields that it had wrapped its muscular girth through glistened in the night air with blood. The dark youth turned his attention to the entrance as huge crash cut through the cold air and it was cold. The ground underfoot had cooled quicker than Talen had expected, and the icy chill one again wrapped cold fingers around the youth's form. If not for the physical exertion of battle he very well might have already succumb.

The crash of the door signalled another level of difficulty. Even with the quick glance Talen saw the orcs and goblins rush forwards, as a strange glow filled the dead goblins around him and Alyssa. The goblins continued to be a thorn in his side.

“Fiddlesticks...” Talen flashed a smile as he brought one of the arms down on the closest goblin.

Blood and gore squished out of the already dead creature. It was too slow to do anything. Just a distraction... thought Talen. He turned back towards the gunner, a plan quickly forming in his mind.

“Princess, we need to get to the others or we'll be here for ever.” Said Talen, pausing to slam a shield cloaked tentacle into another two goblins, “I suggest we high-tail it now, grab on!”

Talen lunged towards Alyssa. He looked as if he was going to run through her, but at the last moment he leapt into the air. One of the lower two arms slipped around the gunner's waist and lifted her off the ground. Talen didn't fly too high, just enough to keep his dangling cargo safe. He did however fly fast. The two shield adorned tentacles lifted up for what would enviably come next.

Arrows... I swear to god I hate arrows.

They flicked through the air as soon as Talen and Alyssa left the ground. The youth pulled Alyssa close, trying his best to focus on the incoming arrows. He could not use the sensor this time, it was just up to his eyes and the shields to protect them. The tentacles flicked up, wrapping around each other like a snake around its eggs. The arrows came thick, slamming into the shields with a nearly constant thudding.

“Nearly there!” Yelled Talen to his cargo.

A sight caught Talen's eyes below, the ground rippled with the hands of the dead. The youth pointed his palm towards the ground and a white light erupted forth. The light bathed everything in an eerie white glow, but what’s more it forced the undead back. It would not hold them for long, but Elruiand's Light would allow his temporary companions to get to higher ground without the risk of those dead hands. Talen had fused the wand into his body and used only the tip extending from his palm to call upon the magic.

Talen couldn't do much else as the shield encrusted flight skidded across the ground and burst apart. Long dark arms smashed into orc and goblin alike even before Talen had pushed himself back to his feet. His eyes were wild as they scanned the area. The faun was near him, as was the assassin. The brute had gone somewhere, but Talen didn't know where.

“Fuck!” Talen's childish curses were thrown aside as he grabbed his left arm. Two arrows had managed to pierce the armour on his arms in close proximity to one another just below the shoulder. Dark blood soaked down the metal armour, but for now there was nothing the youth could do. There were far more pressing matters to attend to.

“... behind us.” finished the Faun.

Talen turned and made for the door, tapping Philomel on the back as he went in thanks. More than a simple thanks, Talen called two more arms of N'Jal into existence. They twisted out of the back of the faun and their dark flesh would answer her call for now, unless of course she decided to try and use them against Talen.

[Alyssa Snow]

Siphoning, storing, and discharging elemental energy from the surrounding environment may sound like a simple process. It is not. The dark elves of Alerar devoted their lives to this science for centuries making minute strides at the cost of many mistakes. Alyssa was one such mistake. She was their greatest mistake, and the curse they brought upon her life was to be their blessing. They built her for this. Though she did not know it, Alyssa was meant to be a weapon to destroy a nation. Some have even foretold her to be a weapon to destroy worlds. (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?27530-Future-Imperfect-(Closed))

"They just keep coming!" Alyssa shouted to her strange dark friend.

Energy from the air pulled to her gun, compressed, charged and fired a concussive blast which turned one little green face into an oozing green crater some several feet away. The implanted relic which gripped her spine and gifted her abilities felt as though it was tightening with each round fired.

"Hey," the gunner discharged another earth shattering round which bowled over a small advance of hostile cretins. "How the hell are we supposed to drop this place from the sky?!"

A twisted and crude excuse for a spear cut across her vision. When she pinpointed the origin with his clawed hand still extended, she returned the invitation by replacing his eyes with two prongs of projectile ice. It took the corpse a moment to realize it was dead before it staggered backwards and toppled like a plank to its back. Behind it, a large oaken door burst wide. A new horde gibbered their way out from the stone fortress and split every which way towards sounds of battle.

When she saw this, her exhausted, beating heart dropped and her lithe frame literally felt the weight of dire circumstances. It was too much. Alyssa buckled at the knees. Her screaming muscles had but up her strong facade for long enough. Deep, panting breath escaped her lungs to the cold Berevar air. It consumed the warmth from her lungs and turned it into icy fingers that felt as though wrapped around all her stinging extremities.

"I... can't..." She muttered thick with doubt and exhaustion. "Just a break..."

It would not come.

Even during her moment of weakness and despair, the creatures at her feet began to emanate an eerie glow. Monsters with fragments of skull missing, long since coagulated wounds, and severed appendages began to stir. The remnants of a goblin's skull, and just his skull, again opened its eyes and bared teeth at Alyssa from her feet.

"Why...?"

"Princess!" her stranger shouted, "we need to get to the others or we'll be here for ever."

She watched his frightening vestige bear down one of several dark tentacles. The meat beneath it went from life form to pudding. Her dark hero looked more of a monster than the those that threatened them.

"I suggest we high tail it now!" he shouted. "Grab on!"

"Grab on?" Nothing made sense to Alyssa anymore, especially not when he charged at her in full sprint. She watched him with the blank expression of a deer in front of a carriage. Until, at the moment they would certainly collide, the boy leapt vertically into the air. Alyssa had only a second of confusion before blood slathered tentacles writhed around her waist and tightened.

"Gross! No!" but her shouts did not matter when they lifted her into the air and just inches from an orc's lunging halberd. To her disbelief, they took to the night sky.

Alyssa shot a glance up to the youth. Without wings, he flew and his dark silhouette nearly lost itself among the twilight if not for the stars. Relentless cold washed over them as he cut through the air to destinations unknown. Then he rose more shadowy arms to absorb an arrow's tip into stolen shields.

The poor gunner's heart dropped a beat yet again. Arrows from every which direction danced their haphazard waltz into the air. Alyssa brought her guns to bare and with a searing pain up and down her back, she charged them with the element of wind. Projectiles that dare draw close were met with a loud blast of air which stopped them dead in their tracks to fall lifelessly below. One, two, three, her weary blue eyes darted to and fro. As soon as she could see them in the blacken sky, she brought a muzzle to meet it.

This was not enough, and an arrow's shaft buried itself in the meat of her side just between her hero's dark arms. Her teeth clenched, but a tired whimper still escaped.

"Nearly there!" he yelled above.

Alyssa focused on taking steady breaths against the frantic thoughts which spun in her head. She kept her arms steady, yet the front posts still shook in fatigue. She still managed to deflect an arrow or two before her dark knight secured their landing. A rough landing, of course. Together, they skid along stone and carnage alike. Somewhere in the madness, the arrow's shaft in her side snapped off without its tip - a parting gift for young Alyssa.

When they came to rest, Talen rose with little pause given. The gunner did not.

Her breaths were ragged, her body worn, her clothes tattered, and a steady stream of red oozed from her new wound to join the gouge on her back, the cuts from the forest, and an artistic myriad of scrapes. She managed to get to her hands and knees. Pain seemed to be the only sense working. As the others conversed and dark fingers crawled up from the shattered earth below, the blonde urged herself to stand. She willed herself against the odds, pushed the fatigue to the back of her screaming mind, and just. kept. breathing.

She looked to her dark protector just as he gifted another with his mysterious appendages and made for the door. She was a woman with the legs of a goat in similar condition as herself. The other, a tall, pale stranger with a face that stirred old memories from the depths.

"Hello, Alyssa," he said to her, "good to see you again."

In that moment, the world fell quiet.

[Warpath]

Flint watched helplessly from just outside the watch tower. Their mostly-aquatic foe's reach was greater than they had guessed, and Philomel had paid for it. If that weren't challenge enough, a new glut of magic was brought to bear, and for the first time the brute grew worried. Whoever had animated this fortress was powerful, and proved themselves far more powerful still by animating the dead with ease even as the fortress went on flying.

He would need allies, if only to divide the cursed wizard's attention long enough to safely separate scheming head from puny body.

He let his eyes wander over the dark silhouettes all along the upper portion of the wall, and caught sight of hope. There were other allies appearing now, darkling bodies that could fly, and Flint had to hope they'd buy him time to add his own contributions. A course set, the burgeoning pirate lord started out of the tower with a fierce growl and hurried along the top of the wall toward the back of the fortress.

The wall angled outward here, and as Flint ran he spared a glance to his left, where he saw the beast reaching out from the moat in greater detail, heaving its moist mass up and outward to better reach the escaping morsels on the other side of the walls. Its might was considerable, and the wall would be a frail and temporary obstacle for it. He redoubled his speed, and returned his gaze ahead, where he caught sight now of new foemen hurrying to intercept him.

They were orcs, bullying the few stray goblins they'd been able to pull together as cannon fodder. The six of them climbed the wall from the inside, goblins first, from two separate ladders. The first goblin's head just peeked over the ledge as Flint approached, and he raised one armored arm without stopping. His vambrace caught the goblin by the head and ripped him brutally from his ladder, flipping end over end back to the distant courtyard below with a broken neck.

The second goblin, farther along the wall, hopped between the crenelations just in time for Flint to collide with him with full momentum. The little green-skin took to the air, armor shattered, and he was dead and broken long before his body went skipping across the rocks some thirty or forty feet ahead, leaving streaks of black blood. Flint stopped now and extricated the ladder from its moorings on the wall, and with a grunt shoved it away. The remaining goblin toward the top of it let a high-pitched shriek and rode the long arc out into the open air as the ladder fell, but the orc below slid down the ladder's length to mitigate the fall.

Meanwhile, another orc heaved himself over the wall from the ladder Flint had passed, and the brute turned to face him. The ladder was still shifting and rocking within its moorings behind the olive-skinned hulk, so Flint guessed another foe was ascending and his time was already woefully limited.

So he raised the Reclaimer overhead in both hands, and threw it with all his strength. It was a heavy weapon, and the rhythmic whoosh it made as it spun through the air was alarming enough that the orc just stood and watched, disbelieving, until the last moment. The orc raised his arm in time to intercept the blade, but its cruel, toothed blade bit deep into his forearm. To his credit, the hulk only grunted, but Flint was already on him again.

The brute caught hold of the sword's hilt and yanked downward, sawing the bones of the orc's forearm. The soldier screamed, this time, and Flint shoved his shoulder into the armored torso of his enemy to create some distance between them. The orc stumbled back, and Flint shoved the Reclaimer's pommel into the orc's face, rewarding him with a spray of blood. Now it was time for a butcher's work, and Flint heavily hacked his hapless foe down to the ground with brutal, precise swings, each producing a copious arc of blood.

Now a second orc was mounting the wall, and this one cried out at the butchery of his companion, which alerted Flint to his presence. The pirate lord turned and swung horizontally in one graceful motion, and the orc only survived because he had his blade already drawn and ready - a wiser foe, choosing to draw his sword and climb the ladder slower but remain capable of self-defense.

The Reclaimer glided across the orc's scimitar, scraping off a wave of sparks. Flint did not hesitate, lashing out with his free hand to grab the orc by the top of his breastplate. The soldier hardly realized what was happening before Flint lifted the taller warrior off of the ladder entirely, swung him overhead, and then lumbered to the opposite side of the wall before throwing his captive over the edge screaming. Wise or no, Flint was still stronger.

He spared a glance over the edge of the wall and saw one last surviving orc struggling to right the fallen ladder, but the brute did not have time to wait. He continued his mad dash along the wall to where it joined another. There was no watchtower here. Instead, there was an upraised platform, and upon that platform was a tremendous ballista. This was an orc-made thing, built for beings of remarkable strength and a love of carnage. It suited Flint's needs perfectly.

He set Lye's greatsword aside and set to work loading the siege weapon, setting a comically oversized missile in the loader. It was wound by crank, but Flint bypassed the mechanism entirely: he grabbed hold of the drawing mechanism with both hands, braced his boots against the base of the ballista, and pulled. The wood and metal of the thing groaned in protest, and the drawstring was stretched to its limits, but ultimately the mechanism locked in place. Now Flint fetched a torch from its place on the wall, turned and lit a fuse that ran up to a place just behind the head of the missile. It caught.

Only now did the brute realize that the ballista did not have the range of motion he required. Of course it was set to fire beyond the moat, not into it.

He spared a glance into the courtyard, where his allies were struggling against the dead. A cursory look told him they were managing, but soon the river-monster would be upon them too, and even the power over flight offered by the small, shadowy one might not be enough to outrange the monster.

Flint took a few hard, steadying breaths, squatted down, and gripped the underside of the ballista with both hands. He pushed hard from his legs, keeping his spine straight, and he felt the thews of his back, neck, and shoulders tense and bulge. The ballista shifted, the fuse hissed ominously, and Flint felt the inside of his forearms stretch to their very limits. He was strong enough, certainly, but were his tendons? It came down to the finer, necessarily delicate fibers in his wrists - his grip was insufficient.

No.

Flint squeezed the ballista's platform in both hands and redoubled his efforts, roaring at the top of his considerable lungs. The cry stretched out and grew ragged as he surged upward, and his vambraces whined and clicked, and then emitted a shot of wafting steam not unlike that from a screaming tea pot. Veins stood out across his body, struggling in stark contrast against his skin, and the ballista tipped.

But just as the end of the missile was lowering to where it needed to be, Flint caught sight of that last orc finally mounting the wall. The soldier charged, hollering a challenge. Still an inch to go, just an inch down and...

Flint's voice dwarfed the orc's as he let go with one hand, reached up, and cranked the release mechanism. The orc leapt, just in time for the released missile to catch him in the chest and pierce him through the middle, even though his breast plate, and carry him gagging over the wall.

Flint dropped the ballista with a thunderous clash and clatter as the whole thing collapsed under its own weight. Through the dust and snow kicked up by the oversized crossbow's failure, Flint watched the missile glide down into the moat, slice beneath the darkened waves, and disappear just beside where he knew the monster's unblinking eye lay.

And then the river exploded.

[Lye]

The assassin's feet met the chilled stone of the inner courtyard and the mayhem contained within. No sooner had he landed, did the earth come alive with the hands of the damned. Before he could finesse his way from capture, their rotted, bony fingers wrapped around his ankles. Their grips clamped with ungodly force.

Lye reached for one of the blades at his back and instead found an orc had used the moment to plant an arrow into the meat of his shoulder blade. He arched in reeling response to the surprise, then turned a menacing snarl to the beast. The assassin extended his arm, opened his palm, and from its center shot an ivory needle of bone. The orc knocked an arrow, drew the string, and found himself with Lye's bone needle lodged from his stubby nose into the mushy depths of his skull. The beast staggered, then dropped.

The killer's snarl turned to a grin despite the new addition to his back and the increasing threat of the undead below. As calm as one would expect a man of his profession, he drew his cursed blades in a swift, fluid movement. Yet, before he could bring their edges to bare, the castle's main doors flung open and poured more of the green skinned bastards.

Lye cursed under his breath. Their roaring, gibbering threat was far greater than the undead that gnashed to pull him to the depths.

"Come on!" he challenged against their inaudible language.

Stationary, he had the disadvantage, but he more than compensated in speed and flexibility. The first to strike was a lance belonging to the larger of the two breeds. It sailed for the hearth, but a twist and bend of the back spared Lye from skewer. He wrapped his arm around the crudely fashioned weapon and pulled the orc to him. Still putting his weight into the blow, the orc easily staggered forward. His throat met Lye's daggers and a gurgling hiss parted him from the mortal realm.

Goblins, dumb as they were alone, often excelled in groups. Groups like the three that appeared from the fallen orc's shadow and flanked into a three pronged assault. Scimitar's raised with chipped edges came toward the immobile assassin.

He had to act quickly -- flawlessly.

The spear slipped from the orc's hands and spun wildly in the air. Using forearms and momentum alone, Lye maneauverd its tip into the ground at his back. Meanwhile, the crunch and crackle of broken bone filled the air. He bent at the knee and pushed the fresh corpse of his recent attacker against the two other orcs aiming to join. His arms positioned themselves to either side of his body with blades angled to catch hostile swords.

Steel clashed.

Lye met his blades with the two while the other buried his weapon in the spear's haft. The goblins muttered hostile gibberish then were silenced with a lovely tone of spilled blood. With his daggers locked against scimitar, Lye's forearms projected long prongs of bone into and through the chests of his attackers. Meanwhile, his verdant gaze locked on the goblin behind him. Beast's eyes sparkled with a hint of fear while face to upside down face with its contorted target.

"Hello," Lye taunted.

The critter glanced its impaled and dying friends. It roared what Lye assumed were goblin equivalents to obscenities and revenge.

He silenced those as well when the wisps of shadow danced off a possessed blade's tip. A tip that revealed itself from within the last goblin's toothy maw. The hilt of the shadow kissed plade protruded from the back of its skull. The threats diminished into bubbling attempts at breathing and all three slurped wetly to the ground.

The assassin would have relished the moment longer if it hadn't been for the remaining assembly of attackers vast approaching not to mention the tightening claws of the undead at his ankles. Lye brought his bladed appendages to his chest, ready to battle orc sword and crossbow alike. They roared, charged, and one became faun fodder.

Philomel, a well respected and openly "friendly" member of his own Crimson Hands let a near orgasmic groan slip her lips as the best under her hooves twitched his last movements in this world. In any other moment, Lye's stomach would flop and his face would turn to one of disgust. Certain memories of the faun harkened events he wished had never transpired. However, this time, he smiled somewhere between relief and admiration.

"Good timing," he jeered.

"You got a little arrow in your foot," she said.

He glanced down to see the crossbow orc had misfired a true shot, yet managed to place the bolt firmly into Lye's boot. Luckily, between the toes.

"Great..."

"And the hands ..." she continued.

In some manner of god given magic, the faun tapped a hoof to the writhing earth and flailing hands popped free like ice from a tray. The crushing weight on the assassin's ankles lifted and the clawing appendages finally came to rest.

"Hmf," he managed with raised brows. "Quite the helpful trick."

The faun continued with a mixed sense of urgency. "Uh lets go. There is a door with some stairs ten feet behind us ... ish."

Meanwhile, the new fleet of enemy reinforcements learned the sensation of being bowling pins as a mass of shadow and shields mashed its way through the ranks. From the groaning bodies, stood a boy. One the assassin recognized as Talen, one of the Ixian Knights. His lip involuntarily curled.

The boy righted, ran past Philomel with a dark gift upon her back and made for the tower Skovic had previously claimed. More interestingly, another stood from the carnage albeit slower. This person warranted a smile from the killer.

"Hello, Alyssa," he said to her, "good to see you again."

Her face twisted into the most beautiful shock and awe with the perfect amount of defeat and fatigue. If these were better circumstances...

His features firmed.

"Let's get to the tower," he commanded sternly.

Philomel made use of her new appendages to help her weakened hobble. Surprisingly, she managed the new gifts quite well. Alyssa, on the other hand gripped at the seeping wound on her side. She was not in a rush to get anywhere. The angry flock of beast at her back carried a much different urgency.

"Come on." Lye reached out and with arrow still lodged in his back, hefted her up and over his shoulder. She weakly screamed some expletives and landed a few soft pats on his spine, but he let them drown out to the approaching battle cries. With fleet steps, the killer hefted to girl to the open doors and strange allies coaxing them to hurry.

Lye broke through the archway and both Talen and Philomel tended the doors shut with dark arms.

"There's no barracade!" he heard one of them mention.

Like a sack of potatoes, he flung his whimpering cargo overhead and to her rump.

"Get upstairs to the brute," he commanded. Lye turned to the two at the doors. "You too. I'll bar the door."

They nodded, none of them offering concern, but Talen gave a wary glance as he went by.

The assassin faced the thick, oaken doors and took a breath. They were banded and riveted with iron and even held the hooks for a bar. In its absence, Lye doubted this place ever called for a lock-down like the one they needed today. Again, he took a deep breath.

Then, he cleaved his own bone protrusion from one his arms.

He roared loud as the Skavian Juggernaut above. Marrow and blood oozed from the stump as blunted his agony and took the severed prong from the ground. With it he barred the door. Its steel strength would surely hold the hoard. With a grunt and clenched teeth, the assassin walked to join his temporary allies.

[Silence Sei]

The adventurers had up until now done a superb jobs of evading and engaging in their enemies. However, after Flint’s little stunt, the Foretress had now decided to no longer play around with its pray.

The river rumbled, the waters shook, and from the depths rose the full body of the tentacle creature. As the eyes surfaced, the mouth just below it soon followed and released a massive roar that shook the very foundations of the castle. Bricks fell into the water, goblins and orcs alike were floored. The very breath of the creature reeked of death and stale fish, the force of the wind from the pinkish hued creature’s breath one of the stronghold’s walls down.

The tentacles converged in a center that resembled a twenty foot long starfish, the solitary, bloodied, and angered eye searched for the attacker that dared harm it so. When it could not locate Flint, it began to go on a rampage. The beast had two tentacles it was using as makeshift legs, while four more tentacles began slamming all around the courtyard, destroying towers, walls, and even the goblins and orcs that tried to calm it down with their shouting.

With one mighty strike against the main castle, the door area was destroyed, and revealed a single spiral staircase, though where it led remained a mystery. In this rampage, the beast managed to actually hit Flint and send his body flying like a small doll into the castle itself, slammed straight into the staircase itself. It was do or die time for our adventurers.

((Home stretch now guys. The Sauraken is up and freaking pissed. Whereas it would have not been able to reach the actual castle area if it remained in the water, it can and now will strike anything it sees moving thanks to Flint’s attack. It has inadvertently revealed a solitary staircase that leads to your end game. It’s probably a good idea to ignore the beastie and see what awaits you…))

[Elthas_Belthasar]

On the ground, Elthas had not yet caught up with the rest of the group. He spotted Talen, his companion from the group known as Red Six and nodded in his general direction. Elthas had always been the speedy type, and he needed to get to where he needed to go. The horrible monster, straight out from one of the elder's stories...would be dealt with later. It emanated a mysterious power that was somehow familiar to Elthas. It was all due to his limited interactions with the sea-faring race known as Corallians. He somehow wished his friend, Sorish, was present for the ordeal to aide them. The beast's rampage caused debris of stone and mortar to come crashing every which way. Fleet footed as he was, Elthas concentrated on evading the large chunks of matter that came his way. He had not yet been noticed by the creature's attack. However, Elthas did notice something quite interesting indeed.

As his eyes narrowed he moved across the courtyard of the fortress.

He probably didn't have much of a place working with anybody EXCEPT for Talen.

He didn't recognize anybody else in the group.

As Elthas moved, he held his fedora in place so that it wouldn't fall off his head.

He moved at impressive land speeds, and kept his singularity forward. There were survivors here and there, and they needed assistance right away. However, THAT could also wait. Elthas was probably the first in the group to spot the entrace to the stairwell. In his single mindedness, Elthas looked up towards Talen's general position. "Talen, gather the remaining Champions and make a break for it!" Elthas yelled. The sound of towers and structures being broken with sheer force of will was hard on Elthas. He could hear each breaking of stone as it happened, and his head was already hurting. However, it wasn't enough to stop what he needed to do. His eyes had spotted the necromantic energies that swirled through the air and tainted it. He'd seen it far too often in his life. However, Elthas was no wizard. He'd long ago discarded the arcane arts in favour of a much more physical approach to combat. An Orc attempted to block Elthas's fast sprint towards the spiraling staircase. Elthas cut the Orc with tremendous skill, he was already in one of his trained combat stances. As he cut the Orc's neck and severed it, he saw black ichor. He knew where ever the necromancer was, they would likely reanimate the fallen.

"Gotta stop this from going on..." Elthas said out loud. He knew that SOMEONE in the champion's party had likely gathered the attention of the beast that was now attacking them. Elthas ran forward, ducked and rolled underneath an Orc's powerful mace attack and hauled ass towards the stairs that was revealed. He hoped to The Thayne that Talen had heard his plea. If Talen had, Elthas knew that they could rally at the base of where ever the stairs lead to. Keeping his fancy fedora intact, Elthas started to run up the stairs, he didn't stop for anything. Only stopping the beast and the source of the beast mattered...he soon found...

[Hysteria]

The door was hastily bared, but Talen didn't hold hope that they would be safe behind it. The youth's guns remained cold, though he could have added additional support to the door in his own peculiar way if he had wished. Instead a roar shook Talen's teeth right to the gums. The door area exploded in wood and stone, and Talen's own tentacles wrapped around him amid their larger cousins onslaught.

Seconds felt like hours, and a slightly crooked hand lifted out from the rubble. The searching fingers turned back down and leveraged the body attached to it up. Talen's face was smeared with blood that continued to leaked out of his nose. His hair was messy, covered in dirt and flecks of stone like the days of old when the boy spent his nights huddled in rubbish to keep warm.

“Uuugh”

Talen pulled himself further from the rubble and with the help of the one remaining black tentacle protruding from his back he made it to his feet. His body had faired worse than his face. As well as the wound to his arm from the arrows, a large piece of wood had pierced his side. Talen tried to ignore the wound, instead turning his eyes to the large sea creature that had destroyed the wall.

“Mum-” Talen's words were cut off by another's.

“...make a break for it!”

“Waaa?” Talen broke off his question as Elthas refused to stop. He didn't know where the man had come from, or what odd twist of fate made him appear just now, but it didn't matter.

No other choice I guess...

Talen grabbed the wood sticking out of his side and grit his teeth. The sound of wood being torn from flesh was a sickly squelch. The pain was out of this world, and Talen only managed to stand a second after removing the wood before falling to his knees. A moment was all it took and Talen stood back up. His face was still bloody, but the bleeding was gone. The wounds in his side and arm were the same and between bloodied cloths only pale and unbroken flesh.

“You heard our classy order giver!” Shouted Talen, “Everyman for himself!”

Talen's body disappeared the moments his words ended. The youth travelled outside the material realm and reappeared at the top of the revealed staircase.

[Lye]

The barred door did not hold. In fact, the entire tower did not hold.

Like some child's building block architecture, the kraken bowled his over brick and mortar as if it were leaves. Being at the bottom, Lye did not have much time to evade the crushing tons of rock that rained from above. Like fists of a god, they slammed into him. First, the shoulder, then head, neck, brow... He fell to his knees and clenched his teeth.

Not like this.

A sheet of wall slammed into his back, his arms barlely held the weight with a creak. The assassin tried to focus, he tried to stretch his grip to his shadowy domain. He reached for salvation from yet another stony demise. Another sheet of rubble slammed into the chunk atop his back. Herculean bones moaned under the strain, then buckled.

His body sprawled out, pinned. The weight now bore down on his ribs, skull, pelvis, and appendages. As more added to the pile, the exponential pressure translated to exponential pain. It piled higher and higher and higher until...

And the darkness embraced him.

He was not prepared. There were no options. Everything went dark.

The last stone of rubble skipped to a halt atop the stone grave.

((Lye is buried under the rubble. He is not down and out and will return in the next post when angry squid moves his rampage elsewhere.))

[Alyssa Snow]

She was hefted like some sack of flour and, she tried to pound her fist on his back in protest. Were it not for the searing pain reminding her of her physical condition, she would have continued to struggle. Every step he made forward put pressure on her gut and subsequently let the arrowhead inside her continue its internal havoc.

Being thrown onto stairs wasn't much of a reprieve and the young girl let out a shout. Orders barked over goblin squelches and orcish roars. Somewhere in the distance, a beast bellowed a battle cry that sounded human, but was far too ferocious to be. It was almost too much for the girl, this place.

Almost.

Alyssa forced herself to her feet with hand clasped over her seeping wound. She offered Lye a venomous glance as she wiped the blood from her lips.

"When this is over, I'm coming for you," she spat.

He did not reply, and she did not give him the pleasure. The blonde hurried up the steps to the second story just in time to catch a glimpse of a man heft a massive ballista toward the courtyard and fired it. Is he the brute Lye mentioned?! She could only remain slack jawed for a moment before the earth shook. More bestial screams deafened the air and forced her to cover her ears. To her shock, the kraken emerged from the mote and walked - more like decimated everything in its path.

This also meant their makeshift fortress. Not a single rest could be given here.

The ground under her feet shuddered and gave way. A tentacle crossed from wall to wall and completely removed the stairs she had just used. Her body once again plummeted. Quick reactions and sheer force of will gifted her the ability to draw her pistol and take aim to the little bit of wall which still stood. She willed another earthen round to spin the chamber and let the hammer fall.

In the mess, her magic connected and a pillar of stone shut out at her. Like the punch of a mighty giant, it smashed into her and shot her back into the courtyard.

Not a moment too soon, as the tower buckled like a fallen tree and consumed the interior she narrowly escaped from. Much like her flight with Mr. Blue, Alyssa tucked into herself and when she hit the corpse ridden courtyard, she tumbled like a bloody rag doll. Discarded weapons and rubble made sure to leave their mark as he skid to a halt.

Finally, the Fortress took its toll. Her arms fell against the cold stone and legs relaxed. Her will was not enough to move her this time. She only laid with eyes turned skyward. Its dark navy and star ridden magesty seemed so peaceful to the red, green, black, and whatever other colors of blood stained the pure white and grey about them.

She took a breath, and smiled.

Her agony and screaming pain subsided. The roar of combat quieted. And as the edges of black encroached her vision, she saw a little blue bird streak through the sky.

She saved at least one person...

Cheep Chippet!

Then, she took her much needed rest and closed her eyes. Her head rolled to the side.

((Unconscious, but her body is right near that stairwell. Feel free to make the save if you like. Otherwise, Ioder is up!))

[Warpath]

Victory was, as always, sweet...and woefully temporary.

Flint emerged from the cloud of disturbed dust and snow, set one boot triumphantly upon a crenellation, and leaned forward to watch his adversary's many limbs fall limp. His smug grin, thankfully concealed behind his beard, soon faded. The darkened water wasn't even settled before the monster heaved itself up out of its watery nest instead, very much alive, hundreds of gallons pouring off of its slimy, lissome form as it raised itself into the frigid night air upon a pair of steady tentacles.

Flint growled and watched as the thing began to rampage like a child denied a toy, flinging the brute's allies and enemies in every conceivable direction as it went. He had not saved the day. The situation had simply progressed from bad to worse.

"Enough of this," he muttered to himself, crossing the platform on the wall. He bent down to snatch up Lye's greatsword and once again rested it over his shoulder, already plotting out his next mad attempt on the river monster's life. He'd drop on it from above, he decided, and plunge the blade deep into its unblinking eye. If that did not kill it, the attempt would at least blind it, and then maybe, just maybe, its rampage could be put to some good use. With luck it might tear down the entire fortress for him.

Flint hopped up onto the edge of the wall, took the Reclaimer in both hands, and watched. The moment was soon approaching, victory so close he could taste it...

And then he happened to glance to one side, just in time to watch a tentacle lash in the air. It bent one way, then thrashed the other, squirmed, and then twisted, and he realized all too late what was coming.

The tentacle sent him into the air with bone-crushing violence, utterly shattering the stone he had been standing upon. The beast had not seen him, but in retrospect it was a wonder the abomination hadn't struck him down sooner: it was savaging everything in every conceivable direction, living or otherwise.

His vision blurred and darkened around the edges even as he tumbled through the chill Berevaran sky. He was aware of his bodily collision into something hard but ultimately yielding, aware of himself sliding to a stop, aware of the supposedly implacable stones crumbling all around him amidst dust and vaporized mortar. But he felt nothing, not yet.

The pain caught up with its cause moments later, when the ringing in Flint's ears faded and he gradually became cognizant of the shouts and screams and repeated and thunderous crack of tons of devastated stone. Breathing was agony, moving a dream. Despair crowded out everything else, sapping his will to live as surely as the glacial wind. There was only the tiniest spark to be found, an ember of hate and rage, rapidly dimming.

Flint gingerly pushed aside the ashes of his psyche, shielded that little spark from the pain and the misery of defeat. He nurtured it with outrage, fed it with the lightest breath of odium and injured pride, and the ember caught. It flared, following a carefully laid trail of fuel made up of all the things he'd lose if he gave up and died now, until his entire body burned with it.

He seethed.

Cracked bones knitted, and torn muscle fused, and Flint rolled slow and anguished onto his side. He spat red into the snow and wheezed, and blinked blood out of his eyes. The beast would find him soon, he knew, and he had to move. He shrugged off panic and analyzed his situation, determined the arc of his fall, and figured his likely position. He saw the staircase.

"Here!" he cried out, and coughed. "Here, you dogs! We have a wizard to kill."

Flint caught sight of the small, pretty blonde he'd noticed briefly before. He thought her dead at first, but the barest flutter of life was in her, and he bent down and pulled her up over his shoulder. She was not far from the Reclaimer, standing at an angle in the snow, so he took that up too. It hurt to stand but he did it, and when he walked it was with a limp, but he carried what could have been the only other living thing left in that godforsaken courtyard out of it using Lye's wicked sword as a makeshift cane.

And then, steadying a weapon in one hand and a broken girl with the other, he descended the staircase into the unknown.

[Silence Sei]

The angry tentacle beast’s rampage went on for several minutes, orcs and goblin blood alike quickly staining the dusty ground of the castle’s courtyard. As the beast went to find its rival, it stepped on the pile of rubble Lye happened to be buried under. All thirty tons of the creature crushed everything beneath its large ‘leg’ including Lichensith Ulroke himself.

Amongst the escapers, the beast managed to grab one last victim before they could all get away. Philomel had a tentacle wrapped around her lither form, and was quickly digested into the massive maw of the strange monstrosity. Both herself, Verdian and Lichensith would be able to be revived later, when the chaos died, but for now, hope was lost for those three souls.

As Flint, Talen, Alyssa and Elthas got to the top of the staircase, what they found was an abominable horror.

A giant beating heart seemed to support the top of the castle with its massive girth. The heart was roughly twenty feet winde and at least twenty feet long. Veins and ventracles snuck from the large organ down into the staircase which led the warriors here. Forrals Fortress was –alive-.

In the middle of the heart was half a man, his lower extremities fused into the red blood pumping body part itself. He mouthed the words ‘kill me’, but no words seemed to leave his form. His eyes seemed to be sewn shut by some wretched creator. Every so often when the man opened his mouth, a pool of blood would spill out, only for him to beg for the sweet release of death yet again.

Talen started to take a step towards the creature before the man’s hand came up. Despite being seemingly blind, he knew exactly where the warriors were. He mouthed a single silent word to them.

Traps.

((Phi did not meet the time limit so she is out, Lye is also dead. No harm came to the rest this post, as they all made their way up the staircase. Now you see the true form of Forrals fortress. This monstrosity wants to die, but traps litter floor and wall alike. In this round, you guys try to come up with the best traps you can think of not for your characters, but for your allies. The most creative trap takes out a member of the competition, and makes said competition lose that shot to get their PG a HQ!))

[Elthas_Belthasar]

(Edits to my post ammended as per request.)

Elthas's eyes saw it first.

THE WHOLE THING IS FUCKING ALIVE! Once in his early youth, he recalled the elders of his town teaching him about clockwork beasts. A part of him regretted that he walked away from that life, but the more logical side was also thankful that he HAD paid some attention. The whole fortress ITSELF was the enemy. Elthas came to the realization quickly, and he guessed the necromantic energies were liking originating from that beating heart. As disgusting as it was, Elthas was an Elf. ALL forms of the arcane arts fascinated him deep down, and a certain part of Elthas wanted to COMMAND that power. He was almost certain that Talen would agree. Though Elthas was a good man at heart, he was also a tainted man and had a growing disconnect between light and darkness. Elthas's eyes searched the environs for anything that could be a massive control device. The heart was obvious, but the word TRAP resonated in the air. Someone had BUILT the fucking creature. Elthas was determined to find an exploit and take command of the resources that the clockwork fortress would provide. He would let the others make idiotic mistakes. He was trained at wilderness survival and could see SOME of the traps that lurked about. Those could be disarmed later by someone more skilled than he. He was CERTAIN there were more cleverly hidden traps, but that wasn't the concern.

Elthas didn't know who Warpath was, he was dangerous, but he wouldn't warn Warpath.

Warpath could fend for himself and Elthas knew it too.

There was a woman in the troop that he hadn't seen earlier, but she would suffice. The woman spoke, she also seemed to have a quick head on her shoulder. Elthas listened to her plan for a few moments BEFORE rushing off to face his destiny. She had ONE shot of her weapon.

In a quick full moment, Elthas's sharp mind assessed the situation at hand. There was a fellow who was willingly or NOT controlling the device. They needed a replacement for that. Elthas turned his attention to Talen. "I have business proposition for you all. Consider this." Elthas said. "This fortress represents vast resources that Heroes like ourselves can likely exploit. There are traps here that must be disarmed to fully use the fortress to it's capacity." Elthas had a VERY serious expression and he looked MOSTLY at Talen, but addressed them all. Even the false prophet in the chamber ahead. "I'll need you guys providing cover fire. I think I can make this whole thing work in our favor if you guys give me just a few moments of time." Elthas said. He explained to the Heroes where many of the basic traps were. "I can't see where the advanced traps are that's up to you guys." Elthas continued and then looked at Alyssa, Talen and Warpath. "If you guys can JUST buy me some time I think I can salvage control and take care of the damned thing outside."

"I agree with your plan." He told the woman. "I just need a couple of moments to enact what I am about to do."

***

Regardless of what any of them would say Elthas nodded towards Talen one last time. "Talen. I will meet up with you later. Hold things down until I am back. And I'll provide you the cover you need to get your shot." In the few moments that Elthas saw the way that the prophet was attached to the heart, he decided that it was somehow HIS key to controlling the whole fucking thing. Then, Elthas took off. He ran at FULL speed, fifty miles per hour land speed and had a singular objective in his mind. The heart. And the mad prophet who controlled it. Kill you, I think not. Elthas considered the woman's idea and knew it was likely their only shot if he failed. He was likely going to attempt something that would be an early death sentence. He used his advanced senses to spot the minor traps in his way. Elthas ran and carefully zigged and zagged avoiding the traps that he COULD avoid with his current skill. The cover fire would come from all of the champions present. With a little luck and proper cover fire, he would make it to the prophet and the heart. Once Elthas made it to the prophet he did the first step of the plan. "Your services are no longer required." He skillfully unsheathed BOTH of his masterwork daggers, and proceeded to sever the hands off the prophet, and kick him away from the heart. "I am claiming the fortress as part of The Trading Company." He'd manage to run past the minor traps and by luck get to his destination.

As he approached the blind prophet, Elthas readied his weapons.

He lashed out quickly and forcibly detached the hands from the man's wrist, and he knew the prophet would not put up much of a fight.

"There will be no death for you." He turned towards Alyssa. "NOW!" He yelled. And then he would sacrifice himself, potentially, to attempt to gain control of the fortress for The Trading Company. That moment would define the champion he would become. He jumped TOWARDS the beating heart, was absorbed by it. JUST as Alyssa fired her weapon...Elthas knew he had precious seconds to figure the whole damned thing out.

[Alyssa Snow]

"I see you've learned to channel a new element," Lenona remarked as she sat atop an oaken barrel. Alyssa just barely crossed the exit of the Ace Up The Sleeve Inn and entered the back field of the joint. The clairvoyant acknowledged her even before she was in view. Alyssa still struggled to adjust to her mentor's unique abilities.

"Yes..?" the gunner hesitantly replied. She stepped into the large span of packed earth with a fire pit in the middle. Here, the Inn liked to host banquets, outdoor festivals, and occasionally weddings. In the spring and summer seasons, the open plains at its back were a myriad of color. Wild flowers of every genus spanned endlessly and only halted by the faint silhouette of the Tennaiglini Mountain Range. This day, perfect sky and mid afternoon sun light set the sea of flora ablaze with vibrancy.

"Beautiful day," Leona remarked.

"I live here thanks to you and the Hierarchy. Every day is like this for me." Alyssa stated plainly as she hefted her stolen, Aleran mage weapon over her shoulder. Her back remained to the fields. Leona looked directly at her, and the soft smile faded to a serious glare.

"Never forget the beauty of little things, Alyssa. Any day could be your last." The seer's tone seemed more threatening than advisory, and she held a concerned furrow in her brow. Alyssa flashed a similar expression of worry with a touch of confusion.

"What do you mean? Have you seen something?" the innocent teen asked. Leona rubbed at the bridge of her nose as though frustrated or tired. Alyssa never could really tell with her.

"It's not important." The teen opened her mouth to speak but was shushed with an extended index finger of her mentor. "Just listen to what I say. Your trip to this fortress is going to be perilous. You will not get out unscathed."

"Will I die?"

"I wish that question was less common..." Leona muttered to herself before returning to an audible tone, "That is up to you, really."

"Okay... Didn't you say you wanted to show me something or was this it?" Alyssa motioned to her mentor and the surrounding fauna.

"Only part of it," Leona slid from her barrel and stepped into the dirt courtyard. She walked to the fire pit and took a seat. Her hand gestured for Alyssa to join her. With a pause in her step, the gunner joined the seer.

"That thing on your back..." Leona trailed with a pointed finger. Alyssa hefted and glanced toward it.

"What about?"

"Can you use it?"

"No, not really. The crystals are too big and I can't seem to get them to hold a charge... It's almost like --"

"Would you like to?"

Alyssa's words stuck in her throat and left her in silence. She only offered a scrunched brow.

"What do you mean? You know how it works?" the girl asked.

"No, but you do. At least, the future you does. I've seen you use it," Leona stated.

Alyssa hefted the rifle off her shoulder and held it in both her hands. She reminisced on the trips she's brought it with her but found it more of a burden than an asset.

"I've used the monocular on it... but that's it..." she admitted with a touch of defeat.

"I've seen you fire it," Leona stated. Alyssa looked up in shock.

"Fired it? What does it do?! Is it like the pistols?" Honestly, Alyssa had no idea. In the Aleran Labs, they had only just finished developing the prototype when Alyssa escaped with it. They had never trained her on it nor did she know it could be fired. She had only assumed so because of the crystals she found in its magazine.

"One step at a time," Leona smiled. That pleasant expression did not come often from her. "Let's see if I can help the other you show this you what it does."

***********************

Cheep Chippet!

"Mr. Blue?"

The faint swallow's song echoed down the hall and groggily forced open her cerulean eyes. The pounding echoes of footsteps soon washed away its sweet song and each step shook her further awake.

Literally.

Once again, the mage gunner came to find herself atop someone else's shoulders. This time, the man who held her was double in size, but as he moved, the clank of metal on stone sounded. She noticed he too was injured but even though he struggled to walk, he took the time to scoop her out of danger's way. A hero in the truest sense.

The girl's groan elicited his attention.

"You awake?" he asked in a low bellowing tone.

Alyssa nodded softly, disregarding the fire that seemed to burn everywhere and the pounding in her skull. It took a moment of silence before she realized he couldn't see her nod from his back. She rubbed at her scrapped and bloodied face to dispel enough of the agony for a reply.

"Yeah," came her weak, hoarse response.

"Can you walk?"

"I think so."

"Good."

The beast of a man took pause on the steps and braced himself on the grungy railing. A boom from behind them echoed down the stairwell and knocked idle bits of stone from the ceiling above. Alyssa felt a moment of panic before realizing the bits of dust and rock was the worst of the damage this time. Her juggernaut of a companion knelt with faint signs of struggle and eased her onto her own legs. The ache and trauma caught up as she nearly failed to support her own weight. Alyssa buckled and caught the railing just in time.

"One step at a time," another voice chimed. This one sounded familiar, the voice of her dark hero from yet another near death experience. Alyssa winced, nodded, and forced herself upright with heavy breaths.

"I-I got it," she reassured.

"We can't pause for too long. I have a feeling we're about to get to the good part," Talen added. The young mage found the boy's speech odd in light of the situation, but she too felt whatever it was he did. Something large, something dark, and yet something in... pain? Though that same emotion emanated from the remaining four, this faint existence beating in the distance felt far greater than them combined.

Alyssa wanted to speak, but cracked ribs shot stabbing pain prior to each attempt. She only nodded and shooed the others with a wave of her hand. It meant, "Go on, I'll be right behind you."

Some shared concerned expressions while others continued with little regard. She took the pause from their view as a moment to silently, just... cry.

The pain she felt everywhere was maddening. Standing alone took maximum effort. The worst of which continued to radiate from her side where a deep hole still wept a river of red. She focused on breathing and with each inhale, she bared the brunt of broken bone rubbing against its other half. She just wanted to throw up. No task she had ever faced since escaping Alerar had shook her so aggressively.

Another tremor rumbled and more motes of dust leapt from the ceiling above. The sound of footsteps began to fade and she knew she needed to continue. This final stretch would either be salvation or damnation.

She used her dirty, bloody, and charred sleeve to clean her eyes. While it took away the moisture, it smeared the rest of the filth encrusted on her young, supple skin. Then, with clenched teeth, she gripped one hand on the crude stone railing and the other over the aggravated arrowhead buried deep in the flesh. Each step was a journey in its own. As she followed the group, she took note there were far less than before. Where was that pale skinned bastard? What about the goat lady?

She swallowed a lump of fear, dread, and sorrow.

The deeper they ventured, the heavier the air became. It smelled of must, mold, and... was that wet copper? Her head pounded trying to pin that familiar scent. Oddly, the pounding wasn't just inside her mind, but also a faint undulating rhythm in the stairwell that matched the pace. Weight pressed on her heart in fear it may be another unsurpassable obstacle, yet that uneasy feeling of sorrow and pain from earlier grew the further they ventured. Then, walls began to move. Not like the chips tumbling from the ceiling, but more like worms and webs. Effects of blood loss? The young blonde eyed it and tried to figure out the resemblance. To her, they looked like vines that squirmed in rhythm to the constant drum that filled the air. Like veins...

"Holy f--"

And there it was, the culmination of the journey, a massive beating heart with arteries and veins twisted into some manner of grotesque spiderweb. What she thought to be vines and roots were in fact beating blood vessels, some of which occasionally ruptured and spurted crimson below. Each time a rumble shuddered its way down from the kraken above, another cluster pinched off and spit blood into the shallow pool of the final room. The smell, the sound, and the sight of it all stirred her stomach. Worst of all, a half of man jutted from the beating organ like a tormented tumor. When it moved its lips, blood came out instead of words, but the words were clear enough to see.

"Kill. Me."

This poor soul's pain, agony, and sorrow were palpable upon the dank, humid air. Alyssa clutched her rail tight. Though she did not know why, but she felt paralyzed to continue. Then, he mouthed another word with trails of vitae from his eyes instead of tears.

"Traps..."

The girl mouthed it as she read. Fortunately for her, she didn't vomit crimson molasses like he did. She let her eyes fall on the pool at the edge of their feet. There was no telling what hid under its coagulated mess. If hands jutted from the ground above, anything could emerge from that. With heavy breaths, Alyssa winced at the weight which dug into her shoulder this entire journey - her rifle.

"This has to be the end," she muttered for the others to hear. "Hey shadow pants..." She referred to Talen. "You still have those guns?"

The boy acknowledged her, but she only gathered it as a yes. Alyssa slunk down onto one of the steps and braced her back against the wall. She winced at the pressure the seated position put on the unwelcome inclusion inside her. Still, she managed to sling the dirty, yet amazingly resilient rifle from her back. With some play, she wriggled the magazine free to check its precious cargo. Inside, one large crystal softly pulsated a bluish white light.

Leona's gift.

Alyssa only managed one and quite by accident than anything. Still, Leona assured her it was all she needed. She assured the gunner that the day would come when Alyssa could harness the weapon's true power, but not that day. Just one was enough.

She looked to Talen. Then, to Flint. Finally, to the new stranger with twin daggers elegantly gripped in hand.

"I'm not going anywhere," she commented in response to her physical state. The words even came in sharp, but heavy breaths.

"I have one shot." She inserted the magazine into the rifle with a click, a wince, and a yelp.

"I say you and I take aim. This guy with the rusty saw and this other guy with the knives clear out some of those large veins..." She pointed to the undulating trunks of meat which writhed with every heartbeat. They ran from the pool of blood below to the bleeding ceiling above. Three or four of them were in just the proper syncronage to pulse in and out of a clear path of sight to the man-tumor. Should the others be able to cleave them free, she could take the shot. However, that meant braving whatever lurked in the murky depths of stale life essence.

"The second I have a shot, I'll take it. If anything, that has to be the end of all this. If we don't finish this soon, it's over. You all know that." She took a breath and gulped down the sticky metallic flavor welling in her throat.

"From what I've been told, this should be able to punch a fist sized hole through the whole thing, but I can't risk those trunks pushing it off path. What do you say?"

She wished for compliance, because in all honesty, that was all she could offer them aside from trap fodder. Given the amount of her own blood that had seeped out from the earlier arrow, one pull of the trigger would be her last. She would have been content dying up there with the others, but by some hand of fate, she survived to be here, now, in this very moment. It had to mean something,because... Leona was never wrong...

Her faintly glimmering eyes begged for it to be over. A final command from an unlikely leader.

[Warpath]

...boom...

...doom...

Every time the abomination contracted, it did so in thunderous slow motion. Flint could feel its beat in his legs, through the solid stone of the floor. He could feel it in the walls around him, vibrating the air between. It rattled the deepest, sturdiest depths of that place, sending thin sheets of dislodged pebbles and dust drifting everywhere.

And that wasn't all it rained down on them. The abomination sweated blood, and every contraction sent that blood into the air in a fine, thin crimson mist that coated everything. Alyssa's hair was tinged scarlet with it, and Flint's skin was taking on an increasingly rusty hue. He could taste it in the back of his throat, feel it gradually weighing him down. Every passing second worsened the sensation, like just being in its presence was corrupting him from the inside.

He sneered and spat. "Wizards," he said, dripping disdain from his tongue as only someone with a Salvic accent can.

...boom...

...doom...

There were other survivors, but Flint wasn't paying attention to them, not yet. His eyes roamed over the gory cavern as his allies processed the same sights he was processing, leaning heavily upon the Reclaimer. Now, away from the immediacy of violent death, something nagged at him, a realization he picked at like a scab from a wound he couldn't remember getting in the first place.

...boom...

...doom...

The elf's sudden departure startled him, and as Flint watched him dodge and dance over a variety of traps, he felt his own comparatively insignificant heart sinking in his chest. A bear trap snapped closed, its teeth finding no purchase in meat or bone. A dart trap released its payload, each poisoned projectile launched in clever and deceptive staccato - three times Flint thought it empty when it wasn't, but the elf wouldn't be tricked that easily. A stone platform gave way under his foot, but he danced away from the released debris with expert ease.

And each time, Flint saw a better way to kill, even with the same traps in a different configuration. Between the lighting and the shape of the place, it would have been possible - easy even - to kill any and every intruder, to make escape impossible.

...boom...

"He did not say 'traps,'" Flint muttered, eyes widening as the elf disappeared into the grotesque conjuration.

...doom...

It came together in a mental cascade, too late. The orcs outside hadn't been positioned optimally for defense of the fortress. There had been no hot oil, no shattered glass on the high surfaces, no vanguard in the courtyard. In fact, they'd been perfectly trained and positioned to force any invaders through the courtyard as quickly as possible. And the moat monster...Flint had had his share of rampages, he knew what it was to be lost to rage and fury, and he knew all too well the bounds of the creature's considerable strength. It could have killed them all. It should have killed them all, simply by toppling the walls onto them, burying them in every stone and stomping until they were just red mush beneath. But it hadn't done that. In fact, it had uncovered the stairwell they'd just used, forced them down into it. It had only grown desperate when they'd turned to fight instead of hurried on to escape it...

The stairwell. The stairwell, which had collapsed behind them...trapping them.

"Not 'traps,'" Flint said again, the cold realization sending cold prickles up his spine. "Trap. Singular. This is the trap."

...boom...

The blonde raised her gun, braced the butt against her shoulder, and widened her stance. She had one tear-smudged eye closed, the other clear and focused. Flint lashed out, grabbed the rifle, and pulled just as she squeezed the trigger. The rifle leapt to life with an eerie, otherworldly sound, and Flint was distantly aware of some great blue-white lance of something leaving it at incredible velocity. When he tried to track the projectile, though, he saw only that his interference had been successful.

...doom...

"What the hell are you doing?!" the blonde shrieked at him. "I had one shot! One!"

"The man did not say 'traps,'" Flint insisted by way of explanation.

"What the hell are you talking about. Look at all the traps!"

"Those are not traps. Those are tests. This entire fortress has been a test. This is the trap. This chamber. We are in the trap."

"What are you...why? Why would anyone..."

Flint pointed at where the wretched creature was attached to the heart. "Did that look like a pilot to you? He was a host to a parasite, and his body was failing. The orcs, the monster in the moat, the staircase, the traps...all to test our strength, our stamina, our resolve, all to funnel us here. The way the elf disappeared into it! We are deceived. This was what we were expected to do. We are its new hosts. This is the trap."

"No," Alyssa said, shaking her head with a fresh welling of tears at the corners of her eyes. "I'm not dying down here. You're wrong. He can get control of it."

"Perhaps," Flint said, bending down beside the Reclaimer. "Perhaps that is what the wretch connected to it said, once."

...boom...

"What are you doing?"

The brute held up his right hand, and hesitated. He was too battered to start running, and the walls here were too thick, too sturdy anyway. He couldn't shatter them, and if he was right, to charge the heart was exactly what it wanted. He couldn't cut it, what would be the point? It was tremendous, and its veins were everywhere. He only had one weapon left.

"I am going to poison it," Flint said through clenched teeth.

And then he reached out and grinded his palm down along the serrated length of the Reclaimer, pushing deep. He growled as the sword's teeth ravaged the meat of his hand, but the muscle underneath was like steel, and he had to push harder. Blood gushed, and ran down the wicked blade in rivulets. His mouth was a grim line, his eyes hard.

...doom...

He held out his savaged hand, now trembling, and blinked the tears from his eyes. He couldn't see any sign of it, but he knew it was there: swaysong. It was the magical substance that had so transformed him over the last year or more, had helped him forge himself into the juggernaut he was now. But it had tried to kill him, first. It was a parasite, like the heart, tempting him with power, but acceptance of its offer doomed the host. If not for the vambraces Flint wore to process the stuff out of his blood, he would have died moments after he first drank the stuff down.

He surged to his feet with an agonized grimace and limped across the stones...toward where Alyssa's gun had discharged. Now she saw, partially concealed in the shadows, a vein running along the wall as thick as Flint's arm fully flexed. Her bullet had pierced it exactly as she'd said: a fist-sized hole, now furiously gushing dark, dark blood. Flint held up his own bloodied hand, hesitated for a moment, and then plunged his arm into the vein.

Boom...

...doom...

Something tugged at his arm, dragging it deeper into the colossal vein. And then it pulled, insistently, and then it yanked. Flint growled and steadied himself on the wall with his free hand, but he felt the bones and tendons in his shoulder stretching. He did not, however, attempt to retrieve his limb. He could feel it sucking the blood out of him forcefully, eagerly, drawing him into it itself.

Boom...

Doom...

Flint smiled hardly, and squeezed a fresh gush of blood from his palm. He imagined it traveling through the veins of the thing, spreading, undetectable amidst its own vast quantity of vitae. He imagined the swaysong waking to a new host, spreading, replicating, invading the particles of the thing.

Boom...doom...

Strengthening it, transforming it, teaching it a thousand better ways.

Boom...doom...

Changing it, just as it had changed him. Warping it from a colossal abomination into a demigod. Flint's arm trembled as it struggled to rip the limb free of him with the sheer force of its blood pressure. It felt the swaysong in itself now, felt the changes in every fiber of its being. It was powerful before, but now...now...

Boomdoom.

Now it realized something was wrong. The earth-rumbling heartbeat was coming faster now, ever faster, so fast that rocks began to dislodge from the ceiling and the floor trembled. The unsprung traps began to activate randomly, snapping and clicking and clanking ineffectually.

Boomdoom...boomdoom...

"You must find us a way out!" Flint roared.

He collapsed against the wall as the vein gave him one powerful yank, and he felt his arm threatening to leave its socket in his shoulder. He began to fight its pull, but now he wasn't sure if he was strong enough to pull away. They were both empowered now, and the heart had started out as so much more.

Boomdoom...boomdoom...boomDOOM...

Flint cried out as the vein split in an explosion of blood, and he fell backward to the ground, soaked in it. He clenched his battered arm to his side and hissed. The stuff stung his eyes, and he could feel its weight in his beard.

Boomdoomboomdoomboomdoom

Swaysong transforms those that consume it, but it does so in no specific order. The heart was learning that now. It had learned to pump blood more efficiently, to carry more precious nutrients at once, to produce amino acids it could not produce itself...but the linings of its veins hadn't become more elastic to compensate. Its blood pressure was literally rupturing its own veins. It was beating too hard, too fast for its girth, producing more blood that it didn't have the facilities to move anymore, not fast enough...it was a biological runaway train. Cancerous tumors formed on its extremities as a last-ditch effort to shunt all the extra blood somewhere, and veins bit into the stone, crushing it, grinding it into so many billions of pebbles. It was tearing the chamber, and itself, asunder.

Flint rolled onto his back with a wheeze and smiled, and his teeth were stained red.

[Hysteria]

Talen was fine. His body was dirty, his cloths carried some blood, but all in all he was unharmed. It would be a lie to say that it was without effort. Talen had trained for months learning how to control his energy for more than just physical attacks. He had refined his control, focused and fused it into his body. The result was significant, he was extremely hard to kill. Unlike his fellows lying crushed at the bottom of the stairs, Talen would not be stopped by death's grip.

All this work, all the training seemed in this instance to be for naught. The final goal of this disgusting fortress, the literal heart of the matter, was before them. Unlike his companions he held no pity for the man upon the heart. His interest, as Elthas had guess, was just that, interest. Given the circumstances, given what they were there to do, he cared not.

It was as the elf threw himself into the heart that Talen lifted his rifle to play his part. Before they could act, even as the princess fired to finish the thing, Flint sought otherwise. The juggernaut did something Talen had not expected. He stopped the shot and stole Talen's goal from him.


* * * *

“Ok... so seriously you want to take over this fortress thing?” Remedy tapped her fingernail against the glass as the pair sat under an umbrella near the docks in Scara Brae. The air was sweet, carrying the smells of the cargo as well as a hint of sea air. Talen had just told the red head of his plan.

“You? Mister nothing for no one? Why in Yedda's blue sky would you want something like that?” Remedy lent back and barely contained her laughter.

“Just...” Talen paused. His eyes turned to the ground as he wrestled with the question. He could lie; he was good at lying. “I want to own something... to make something with other people.”

Remedy's smile slid off her face. She realised Talen was actually telling the truth for once. While she didn't always see eye to eye with Talen, she was one of the few people that could empathise with him.

“Well then my pale friend, you should get it!”


* * * *

“Aaarrrh!”

The air was filled with copper taste of blood. Flecks filled the air like some nightmarish snow. Talen's pale face was flecked with the crimson liquid as his face twisted in anger. Talen's pale blue eyes normally carried a hint of youth in them. Now, staring at the fallen juggernaut they were cold with rage. Since the start of the fight Talen had held back. He held back when he agreed to travel by airship. He held back when he stayed with the group at the wall. Now it looked like he was going to be outdone right at the end because of it.

“STUPID MORTALS!” Talen's shouted into the room as stone crumbled around him. He didn't care. He didn't care one bit. “I didn't need you! I didn't need ANY of you!”

Talen's breathing was fast. His face, normally youthful and smiling, was instead plastered with a snarl. His body responded on its own as his desire to kill pulsated through him.

“You FUCKFACE!” Talen dropped his rifle and lifted his hands towards Flint.

Dark veins stretched (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYqJKQY8IQU) across Talen's skin. Spreading darkness they swiftly painted his ivory flesh obsidian. The youth's limbs stretched and lengthened as his cloths tore under rapidly expanding muscles. Hair replaced clothes, coating his shoulders and head with their midnight locks. Talen's face stretched forwards. His boyish featured hardened, his jaw cracked and grew longer.

The room would not last much longer. A huge crack came from above and a slab of stone ceiling slammed into the ground near Talen. The youth's now wolven face turned upwards as another came free. Talen bent his long black legs and burst into the air, catching the between the black steel claws adorning his arms he twisted and threw the stone towards the prostate juggernaut.

Talen landed on all fours next to his gun. His next action was set, he wanted to kill everything in the room. His long clawed hands wrapped around the length of his rifled and lifted it up. It looked like a toy weapon in the creature’s hand. Talen lifted it up and started shaking as one finger held down the trigger. Canisters fill with poison rained out of the rifle and bounced across the ground.

“You want poison?!” Talen roared the words as the gas sprayed out in every direction.

Humanity was lost. Talen was expending tremendous amounts of energy creating the toxic gas. The room filled quickly, poison and blood everywhere, filling every breath. The convulsing figure atop the heart was contending with two toxins now. The cancerous gift from the juggernaut and the liquefying gas stolen from a Freebird. The creature would have cried out, but blood was its only voice. Instead the torrent sprayed forth in a silent scream.

Talen turned away. He didn't care if he had killed the juggernaut or not. The gas would do its work soon. A cheep caught his attention though, and Talen's monstrous features turned towards Alyssa. She was alive, but barely. The blue swallow that had accompanied the blonde on her adventure was trying its best to nudge her awake. It flew towards Talen, cheeping with frantic calls for help. Talen held out a hand and the bird landed. If it was exposed to more of toxic gas it would not last much longer.

Talen closed his hand and with a satisfying crunch the bird was silent. The creature turned back to the heart to watch the final moments and ensure an end. Absently it tossed the small mattered ball of blue to the ground.

[Silence Sei]

The body attempted to groan as Elthas severed its arms, struggle against the man as he fused himself into its large organ. It coughed with dozens of pools of blood as the poisons began to fill the room, the crimson liquids creeping closer to the warriors. The body collapsed and fell to the ground almost as though it had been pushed out, the full form of a naked, average sized human quickly became lifeless in the dangerous room.

Then Talen crunched the bird.

As soon as the shadow warrior performed this seemingly small task, the quakes became more furious. Several stones seemed to converge completely upon the boy and crushed him under all the weight. The roof was almost completely caved in my this point, and with the staircase also destroyed, it seemed our heroes had no hope of survival.

A long tentacle slipped in through the roof and grabbed Alyssa, much to Flint’s protest, and lifted her away, though something seemed rather strange. Rather than the forceful nature the odd kraken exhibited earlier, it seemed careful not to hurt the girl, gently dragging her away from the rest. Another tentacle came and grabbed Flint, wrapped a little more firmly around the man who struggled against his former foe.

“Don’t fight it,” the ‘heart’ seemed to talk as half of Elthas’ body began to push through the hole where the former master fell out, “I can’t explain it, but I can control him now….I can control the entire island, what’s left of it. It’s like this thing is immune to poisons…it put on a show to try and appease you. It’s odd now, it’s almost as though it feels…happy.”

As Flint was carried away, Elthas left him with two warnings, “The island is coming down. I’m trying to move it into the ocean, but the landing will be a bit rough. Beware Forral, this is just the beginning.”

The last statement seemed to become a voice that was not Elthas’ own, instead it was deep and almost demon-possessed. The kraken lifted Flint out of the castle as Elthas smiled to his temporary ally.

The strange monster that now seemed to be friendly looked at Flint with its bloodsoaked eye, and the warrior could tell that the beast thought about popping the juggernaut right there. Instead, it ‘turned’ and began to walk back to the edge of the island. When it arrived at the edge of the island, Flint and Alyssa could see the once flying fortress careening towards the ground at incredible seas. Elthaas had kept his word, and all the eye could see was the azure blue of the sea.

Airships overhead held allies who would try to help in any way they could, and even the ocean seemed to hoist a singular ship that the landmass seemed to be going nowhere near…

((Congratulations! Hysteria is dead and Flint and Alyssa have survived the trials of Forrals Fortress. Elthas Warp and Alyssa are all allowed a conclusion post, and Hyst can even have a death post. The significance of this round of posting is that now, those who were waiting in the reserves can get a post in stating how they rescued/healed their allies. Naturally, we need Alyssa and Flint to post before we can do that, but this is Ioder, Fox, and Irate’s times to shine! Way to go people!))

[Alyssa Snow]

"Mr. Blue! NO!"

Alyssa's cries bore with them the depth of her deep rooted affections toward the animal. Even as the walls crumbled, poison filled her lungs, and swathes of blood sprayed like hoses without one to hold them, Alyssa scrambled to the discarded lump of feathers. Her blood loss, the unyielding pain, and burning fire in her poisoned lungs pushed to the back. She was as good as dead, that much was true, but her body continued to move against the odds. Her slender fingers scooped the avian corpse from the growing puddle of congealed vitae. Dark blood matted the once vibrant blue feathers. Only a small tuft of disconfigured blue remained unscathed in her hands. Those hopeful beady eyes, his little beak, his sweet song in the misery of the island. Gone.

A blue fire, hot as the deepest infernos of hell burned in her tear moistened eyes. She directed this seething hatred, this pain, toward her dark hero turned black abomination.

"How dare you..." she growled.

Talen gave her lifeless eyes, devoid of sympathy and filled with something more... primal. He was no better than that pale skinned assassin or the dozens of beasts slain above. He was a monster.

As the poisons crept through her veins, clawed at her heart, and gnashed at her liver, she remained unflinching in her gaze. Stone dislodged from above, their tomb began to close. She bared her fang of fury at this final threat as he raised one of many dark appendages to smite her. The edges of her fading vision crept inward, torches extinguished, black consumed all, but even in her few remaining breaths, she burned his silhouette into her mind.

Then a crash. Then, another.

Her eyes no longer served her failing form, but the rogue fragments of stone and motes of blood pelted against her skin from Talen's direction. His smite of fury did not follow, and the room was that much more silent. Defeated, worn, poisoned, and dying, Alyssa wrapped her grip tight around her feathered companions remains. Her body collapsed against the stairwell and tumbled only to be stopped by a familiar trunk of an arm protruding from stone. And there, as the walls caved in, she lie beside the fallen brute, Flint Skovic. With tattered feathers clutched to her chest, Alyssa took a few more shallow breaths.

It was finally over.

Except, that it would not end like this...

On the precipice of the veil, another crash sounded. The gunner's body lifted, everything limp as cloth save for her firm clutches. Pressure increased around her stomach. The arrow head which would have surely dealt her pain did not. Though its path of carnage continued, Alyssa could no longer feel it. She did feel momentum, she barely heard the clatter and rush of collapsing stone grow more faint, and she felt the familiar bitter bite of Berevar on her marred skin. Was she dead? Was she passing on?

She heard voices. Faint voices.

Were they friends? Were they angels?

They sounded happy, relieved.

The blonde had lost all sense of touch, and a cold numb washed over her. The muffled tones around her turned to silence. Her body failed. Yet, in the few seconds before she set foot into the veil, Alyssa let a weak smile cross bloodied lips. Her arms locked over her chest, and in her hands she clutched the one thing that had saved her numerous times, a true hero.

Upon the airship, surrounded by those which worked fervidly, Alyssa stepped into the veil.

Cheep Chippet!

((Alright! Made it! Survivors and those upon the ship, feel free to bunny whatever you want out of Alyssa. She's unconscious/dead/coma at the moment but I figure there will be some revivals aboard the ship. Huzzah!))

[Elthas_Belthasar]

(Yo Calvin this is my conclusion post feel free to bunny Elthas as you see fit after this point. Good luck to EVERYBODY)

In a singular moment, Elthas learned a lot about the fortress what it was and where it came from, what was it's entire PURPOSE.

Elthas was in a daze and was having a hard time focusing on things as he fused with the huge organ. That was it, it just need an ample sacrifice to gain proper control...it was like a child... The fortress ITSELF was not evil. It was used to evil ends though and Elthas wanted control of it. He was probably the only one thinking along those lines. Once he regained his clarity he looked at the surviving champions and then realized what he needed to do. "You guys go. I am going to figure this thing out and how to properly control it. Talen, I will send you my research later." There was a path of escape, but that was NOT Elthas's concern. He knew he'd been called for a higher purpose. Elthas walked over towards the blind prophet that was controlling the fortress previously. Elthas knelt down towards him. "Your actions have cost us severely. But you have one shot out of this mess." Elthas said. "Teach me how to properly control this thing and you may yet live." In the moment since he'd been sucked into the heart, Elthas had learned a great deal about the fortress. But that was NOT enough. He wanted to be certain he could command it with true skill and at any point he wanted to. He had a serious expression on his face.

"You can't control it's power..." The prophet began saying.

"Yeah I've heard that shit before." Elthas said angrily. He kept his eyes on the prophet as the memories of the fortress swelled in his mind. Teaching him things, showing him secrets but it was NOT enough. The singular moment had awakened a desire for power sleeping within Elthas. "You were doing fine with a minimum understanding of the process. I figured it out in just a few brief moments. So yeah the damned thing CAN be controlled I just need to know how." The prophet was hesitating and that was pissing Elthas off. He was a man of efficiency and keeping a cool head. The Elf adjusted his fedora through it all, he'd manage to keep that one on. "I'm willing to make sacrifices so that everybody we lost as a result of this debacle can be properly put to rest. I am honouring the old alliances." Elthas said to the prophet. "So one more time, shithead, what is the proper control mechanism?"

"I..." The prophet began. "I cannot tell you. I want you to kill me."

Elthas stood up from his knelt down position and looked at the prophet. "So that's it you've given up before the battle has begun?" Elthas hated those who were useless and this "prophet" was completely useless to his cause. Then the voice in his revealed another part of the puzzle. I require a sacrifice to sustain full power. The heart said in his head. Elthas nodded and understood what the heart meant. "No death for you blind one." Elthas suddenly grabbed the prophet's collar and pulled him up. "Like it or not you still have a use and a PURPOSE to fulfill." In the back of his mind, Elthas was already controlling the fortress, but he wanted to have COMPLETE control, which is something that the blind one was denying him. And he WOULD have it. "You will be held accountable to everybody who has died today Champion or not." Elthas said calmly. Then he shifted his body weight and did the unthinkable. He THREW the prophet into the heart so the heart could consume him.

"NO!" The blind prophet yelled as he was thrown forcibly. "NOT THIS!"

"Too late." Elthas said in response. He knew the others got away safely, the heart granted him that peace of knowledge. Then he looked up as the prophet was FULLY consumed by the heart in a final moment of a lot of screaming and blood. Elthas then walked back towards his position in front of the heart. Sat down, and began to commune with the heart in deep meditation as he began to uncover it's secrets. He would ensure that the remaining Champions would have adequate time to get off the island. Elthas held one more key to his puzzle. The body of his friend, Invetisto, had also come in contact with the heart. His friend had begun to stir in his packs, but Elthas was not entirely concerned about that. He was just completely focused on hearing the whispers that ELTHAS'S fortress, NOT Forral's fortress began to cascade into his mind. Elthas smiled. He knew he had out classed a very serious enemy that day...

[Ioder]

This was never so posed to happen. Leona said you would be okay. Ioder panicked as he finally made it to the scene. Carnage and catastrophe as far as the eye could see. The air ships had arrived with Ioder leading the armada. Like a holy beacon of light his aura permeated the sky ushering in the retrieval crew. Ioder with soared around the airships gracefully leading them to the survivors.

“C’mon men!” He cried as before dipping downward and diving into the fray. He had spotted the kraken lifting Alyssa and Flint up removing them from danger. The airships overhead all started their operation with great haste. There was much to clean up and many to find. The angel plummeted quickly, descending with great speed aimed for the enormous tentacle hoisting Alyssa.


-------------------

“Just make sure to bring her home.” Leona said as she leaned against the wall of her sleeping quarters. She was next to an open wind overlooking the great red forest. A cool breeze flowed in and lifted her bangs as it chilled her to the bone. “Whatever you do make sure she is alive.”

Hovering just on the other side of the wall Leona stood; Ioder crossed his arms as he received his orders. He ever since he heard of this event he had been placed second for the task. An insult really but Ioder understood Leona’s methods and that Alyssa was the one she choose. “It shall be done.” He said just before his powerful wings pushed his up into the air. He was not one to disobey direct orders or let a comrade die on the battlefield.


---------------------

“Rrrrraaaaa” Ioder cried as his glowing aura enveloped his entire self and he shot at the kraken like a shooting star. He had no real plan but he just needed to retrieve Alyssa regardless the cost. The tactical moved like an injured snake twisting itself around but being ever so careful not to harm the girl. Ioder noted it was strange almost as if it was trying to protect her, but whatever the case Ioder was to take her home.

He maintained his trajectory and planted his dimascus blade deep into the tenticle around Alyssa. Ioder carefully examined Alyssa’s face seeing if she was alive or dead but with no avail. The tentacle flailed, shaking Ioder off of it and simultaneously releasing Alyssa sending her flying into the air. Quickly he recovered himself before noticing the other Tarot agent plummeting downward. Ioder then tucked his wings, nose diving to catch her. Her fall was quick but Ioder quicker as he caught her buy the ankle only just feet from the ground.

“Don’t worry I have you.” The angel said trying to reach Alyssa. He pulled her up and began carrying her princess style to the closest airship. Ioder wile in flight took this chance to examining her more carefully being relieved to notice that she was still alive but on the brink of death. This was his fault; if only he had come instead of her, she would be okay. Ioder placed the palm of his hand on her heart and it began to glow bright with the power of the sun. He was doing what he could to stop her death even if only long enough to seek true help. The shallow cuts and scrapes covering her body began to heel and she started to breath at a more stable tempo.

The situation was beginning to look better for the Tarot agent as Ioder arrived at the airship delivering Alyssa to the medics. There still was much clean up to be done but for now Alyssa was safe and on the way to a recovery.

[Hysteria]

Darkness slipped up through the rubble like sand through the hourglass. It was an inevitable climb, lifting from the rubble like a bad omen. Shadows, unburdened by simple frailties such as physical form reached the top of the fortress and started a coalescence. Two dimensions became three, and form came from darkness. It was still the spectre of rage, of anger and failure. Talen stood upon the stone top of the fortress like a gargoyle upon a church. The long slender claws opened and closed, wolfen eyes blinked. Talen was alive.

The last ace in his hands, the one that sat a the back of his mind since the beginning had finally been played at the end. There was regret in the creature, regret at sticking to the line and following the pack. It never ended well when Talen played by the rules. But a failure often came with a silver lining.

The fortress was moving, driven by Elthas's will. The conciliation price was the new owner of the fortress. Although Talen wondered idly if the elf would be able to take a normal form again, the fact was that it was won. If The Trading Company did indeed now own this monstrosity of a fortress then there was indeed money to be made.

For now Talen would stay with the fortress and see what happened. The airship will take the weak away... The acidic thought twisted through Talen's mind. He had missed his prize, but for now he would not inflict any more pain.

[Warpath]

Flint fought down the compulsion to cough up his lungs. He had been hacking and spitting for some time now, the darkling one's gift to him and the gun-toting blonde. He stared defiantly into the single tremendous eye of his foe-turned-savior, which in turn stared back at him, and a mutual feeling was shared between them. Neither of them could do what they wanted to.

Flint could only vaguely remember when the first tentacle writhed its way into the poison-choked chamber. He had tried, feebly, to fight it off, but it had taken the girl without trouble. By the time the second limb had come for him, most of the fight was out of him until he had fresh air in his lungs, and even then he had been in no condition to struggle properly.

Now free from danger, the brute processed all he'd learned, and found it in him to relax...at least a little. He'd been right about the chamber and the abomination, but wrong about the elf. Somehow, he'd wrested some semblance of control over that place from inside the heart, and now Flint could see the blue horizon rushing up to meet them. Sunrise couldn't be far off.

The tentacle lifted him high, and Flint raised his eyes to see a small fleet of struggling airships hanging above. Lines were lowered, and one eager figure darted out from one of the airships to retrieve the blonde. Those that waited for Flint's return would not meet him halfway.

He reached out with his free hand and took hold of the thick chain dangling from the airship far above. The line had bars and footholds welded into the links of the chain, and even in his battered state the brute found it easy to grab hold. The high winds buffeted him, but his grip was sure.

The abomination hesitated before releasing him - either struggling against the urge to take advantage of this one last chance to crush him, or to be sure he wasn't going to fall again - and then the tentacle slowly fell away. As it unwrapped from around him, it revealed that he still held the Reclaimer in his free hand. He could have begun sawing away at the monster any time.

The chain began to steadily ascend, drawing Flint up with it. After a long time he could hear the crank working even over the ship's engines, and after a few moments more he could discern pale faces peering down at him. The chain slowed, then stopped. The crank was moored to a protrusion above a bay door on the underside of the ship, and Flint stepped gingerly off the chain and into the warm confines of the airship's hold.

The door was closed behind him, and he held himself up straight with a grimace. Weakness was not his to show, not here, not even now.

A thin but formidable woman stepped up to him, her features framed by the high fur collar of her coat, and she nodded her greetings brusquely. "Shall I order us down to the Salty Whore?" Roxanna said in Salvic.

Flint shook his head. "Keep after the fortress, Captain Baranski and his crew will keep for awhile yet. I need to see the fortress go down. When we dock I need your contacts. Find me the assassin called Lye first. It should not be difficult. Use our Armada channels."

He held the Reclaimer up in demonstration. "I have something that belongs to him."

"Lye first," Roxanna said with a nod. "Who next?"

"There is a wizard whose head needs separating from his shoulders," Flint said. "Find me Forral."

[Fox Owen Xavier]

Watching the ending of the battle from arriving airship, Fox had a mixture of interest and disgust. For someone to fuse a living creature with all that power and into non-living material was incredible especially to someone who was knowledgeable in the arcane arts. But at the same time, it was such an abomination against nature.

“Sigh… I guess it’s for the best that the ‘thing’ is dead. I would have loved to study the magical properties but it’s too dangerous and… Well, no use thinking about what is already done. I can’t easily change the past and from what I heard, it’s generally not worthwhile even if I had access to that realm of forbidden magic,” Fox spoke to himself as he waited with the rest of the medical team.

The kitsune was about to head down another down another random trail of thought when an annoying bright light begin rapidly approaching the ship. In the center, Fox could see a figure with wings carrying what seemed to be a dead body. Grabbing a few potions and herbs, the ‘medic’ rushed over to the deck where the shiny person had just landed. The herbalist could see the winged man trying to apply healing but even from the distance, Fox could see that the healing was far too inadequate.

“Step aside please,” sighed Fox as he inspected the body to see if it could even be saved. Even with the healing, the body was a sorry sight and the insides were probably worst off, based on the poisons his sensitive nose was busy deciphering. There was even an arrow wound to make his job harder. The oddest thing about the ‘corpse’ was that it seemed to have a ‘death grip’ on a crushed blue creature.

“Well, looks like you are going to spend the next few days hanging on death’s cliff if you have the will to survive. Or else you are going to waste all my hard efforts if your will lacking and you slip,” thought Fox as he carefully choose some herbs to counteract the poison and mixed them with a healing potion. “Damn, why is it so much harder to keep people alive than kill them… Not sure why I bother spending all this time and effort learning to keep people alive when it’s easier and pays just as well to kill…”

Finally, despite all his muttering and dark thoughts, the kitsune finished the mixture and slowly begin feeding to the limp body. For the arrow injury, the healer didn’t want to risk the body losing any more blood so he decided to leave the arrow head inside and just close the wound. If the woman really wanted it out and risk leaving a bigger scar, she could go find a doctor, magician, or even himself when her life wasn’t hanging on a thread.

“Well… That’s the best I can do for her. Living or dying is up to her strength,” stated Fox to the concerned angel. If the man was her boyfriend, partner, friendly stranger who saw a person in need, the kitsune didn’t know and did not care. For the herbalist, all that he was interested in was testing his skills and also the shiny magical crystal he had quietly pocketed in the mess for later inspection.

[Silence Sei]

The island crashed far enough away from Berevar that the waves caused by the crash only made soem slightly bigger waves upon the continent. The land mass, rather than sinking, amazingly floated upon the water like a large buoy. The castle was claimed by Elthaas and his ilk, the home to The Trading Company should they decide to take it. Here, they had reign over the creatures, and were surrounded on all sides by water; a fortress that was easy to defend and hard to attack. A truly marvelous gift from the one known as Forral.

((Thread is officially closed. I will try to have someone judge this by January so we can ring in the new year with 2 new HQs! Congratulations everyone!))

[Ranger]

Forrals Fortress (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?28247-Forrals-Fortress); I started this, and was asked by Sei to finish it. This judgment may come off as a bit harsh, potentially critical. I’m here to determine by your writing which Power Group you represent is rewarded a Head Quarters though. I will offer critique, but for the most part will point out flaws so you know what I saw that was out of place.

The Inventor
Plot (10/30)
Your opening post left much to be desired, as I wasn’t sure what exactly was going on for the thread, what the setting was, who your character was, or how you were involved. Opening posts are hard for everyone, and sometimes it’s best to let another person start a thread and build off of what they create afterwards so that your involvement has a place to exist comfortably.
Character (12/30)
A worm in an automaton… I love it. The idea is great. Make sure you build on it, really develop the character and add in more information for the reader about what he is and why he does what he does. I think, as far as the unique characters I’ve seen on the site, I really think this one is great. With practice and more experience in the base elements of writing you could go really far with this guy.

Your action with the centipede was very believable, showed a little more of the character, and yet part of it was odd. The part that threw me off was why you put on the bark for armor, snuck down the tree, and instead of continuing to sneak away you stabbed the thing.
Prose (15/30)
There were times when I thought something you said was a bit off, tense agreements here and there. Your writing is clear enough, but could use some polish as to the style. Remember that when you are writing numbers are always spelled not typed i.e. ten instead of 10.
Wildcard (4/10)
You fought valiantly and did well in a very large thread. Keep up the work and dedication to your writing and I look forward to more from you in the future.


Philomel
Plot (19/30)
You have an obvious way with words, but the writing is heavy and slow to read. At times I had to backtrack or come to a crawl in order to keep up. The pacing was the hardest part of reading your narrative.
Character (17/30)
I like the idea of the character, and how her connection to nature is a big part of the narrative. It’s interesting and as a reader I was happy to be able to really absorb who the character was and what they were about.
Your description of the fighting is not your strongest suit. It doesn’t flow very well, but it is clear. I would suggest taking the time to read up on other’s battles to get a better feel for how to write a battle, figure out what makes the writing good, and then incorporate it into your writing. You have a strong voice and strength with writing, try to not lose that with your action.
Prose (18/30)
Parallelism in your writing is good, but repetition of the exact same thing detracts from the narrative more. In your first post, for example, you used “Once” to open 3 sentences in a row, then used “the circumstances” in three back-to-back sentences in the next paragraph.
As noted in the plot, your writing makes things a little unclear, and it falls on your sentence structure mostly.
Your second post opened with a lot of pronouns, but without the proper noun (I assumed you were referring to yourself and your familiar) it was just a lot of ‘them’ and ‘their’. Used ‘loud’ and ‘rude’ twice to describe the same thing.
Wildcard (2/10)
DQ’ed


Alyssa Snow
Plot (21/30)
The pace was smooth with a very easy to read narrative, and very good advanced writing techniques that made the setting more in-depth than almost anyone else. I would have liked if the past jump wasn’t so much of the opening, as it did take away from what was going on in the present. And further on in the story your pacing slowed here and there, as if just a little off enough that it became muddled a bit.
Character (20/30)
The dialogue to offer backstory, depth to the reason you were there, and really the entire thread was exactly what was needed. The entire conversation was well done. I like the juxtaposition between your narrative and the character, it actually gives plenty of information for the reader to work with.
Prose (25/30)
Your style is simplistic in nature, but smooth and entirely too good in its eloquence. My only note so far is that you re-use a verb twice the same way in sentences that are back to back.

Clarity of one of the sentences made me re-read it a couple times, the fourth one in post 13. Not sure what ‘it’ was referring to. Missed capitalizing a sentence. A couple present tense slip ups in the writing.
Wildcard (7/10)


Hysteria
Plot (19/30)
Your opening post was rather… odd at first. It was like reading something more aligned with a philosophical debate about light and darkness, and right off the bat it hurt the pacing of the narrative. And the rest of your narrative at times had awkward pacing that was jolting from a reader standpoint.
Character (20/30)
Your character, the way you narrated our portion of the story, left much to be desired. I would have liked to know about Talen through your actions and dialogue. If you have quirks or other personality things that would make Talen a dynamic character you should incorporate that into the writing, round him out.
Prose (18/30)
Missing words in your narrative made me have to re-read the passage to find what was missing. As well as misspelled words, ‘vein’ instead of ‘vain’, ‘apart’ instead of ‘a part’
The use of ‘you’, second person, in the thread was awkward.
Using ‘whipping’ and ‘whip’ in the same sentence, ‘journey’ twice in the next. Try and use synonyms so that you don’t re-use the same word too often.

Second post, last sentence, what you wrote was rather unclear and hard to follow.
Wildcard (7/10)


Warpath
Plot (22/30)
The opening description, with the way you created the setting of Berevar, was brilliant and very enjoyable to read. Your pacing for the fight with the griffin was awkward to a degree, and I would have liked more description about the creature itself.

The pacing of post to post was good for the most part but off at other times, sometimes very long, sometimes to the point, but each time it was just a little different. Try and keep the consistency throughout.
Character (20/30)
You built quite a character though the narrative, but the last sentence of the first post really just crushed it for me. It was like this great guy with such an interesting, unexplored past that was just teasing the reader to learn more suddenly found modern American speech. As if you went from really creating a vision to saying “he’s a badass guys”.

Your actions with your opponent, taking it as an unwilling mount, was pretty interesting.
Prose (21/30)
Your writing style is fantastic to read, and really paints a strong picture for the reader, the personification of the land and how it felt, how it reacted, was great. However, as your first post continued it became heavy, try to use that technique and ability you have without losing the brevity and clarity.
Present tense being added into past tense writing
Wildcard (7/10)


Erikar
Plot (17/30)
What was missing of the plot was not setting – you did that well – and the pacing was done well enough too; you simply did not have enough about why you were part of the thread. What group are you part of that has sent you to the island and why? The Order is all I know of, but not what they are or why you’re part of it.
Character (15/30)
I look forward to seeing the development of the character, how he works and thinks. I really would like to know more about him, get inside his head. Remember that your reader isn’t going to necessarily know each thread you’ve done in the past, as well as read your profile, so it’s pivotal to include enough for the reader to see a well-developed, dynamic, round character instead of a flat and static one.
Prose (16/30)
Mistakes with wording, it seemed that you typed something originally and then decided to change what you wanted to say… but forgot to remove the first word you used.
Wildcard (2/10)
Your magnetism allowed you to be safe from the fall, I assume, but was lost on how it kept you from dying as well as how you used it that way.
DQ’ed.


Lye
Plot (20/30)
The opening post, aside from dialogue comment I made below, was very good. You gave a reason for what you are doing in the thread, a little bit of information about the clan and how Erikar was part of it. It was very well done.
Pacing of each post suffered a little.
Character (23/30)
Strong dialogue, with descriptors to add to the characters made the narrative of your first post very easy to read and very good.
Prose (22/30)
The narrative was well written and clear, but part of the 24th post was awkwardly worded with a lot of ‘you’ in it.
Wildcard (7/10)


Elthas_Belthasar
Plot (18/30)
Writing dialogue in the middle of a paragraph slows the pace, but the pace was also awkward in the very beginning of your intro. Also, try not to write too many short, single sentence paragraphs back to back.
Character (17/30)
More about who Elthas is, what he is about and rounding out the character would be great. I get a little bit of personality out of the inner dialogue, but describing it through the narrative would be much better.
Prose (20/30)
You could use synonyms for your name in place of starting each sentence with Elthas. Your writing has improved a lot since last I read something of yours, and it is clear and easy to read, but you still write something in all caps sometimes that could be underlined or italicized. Just a couple little mistakes such as missing commas, and a bit of sentence structure, apostrophes after a word that ends in an ‘s’ doesn’t need another – Elthas’ instead of Elthas’s.
Wildcard (7/10)


Ioder Didn’t judge your work because it was only one thread, going to give you a little reward just because. Scored you like a 50.
Fox Owen Xavier Same as Ioder.

Score::
The Inventor: 41
Philomel: 56
Alyssa Snow: 73
Hysteria: 64
Warpath: 70
Erikar: 50
Lye: 72
Elthas: 62

Name: (Post Count): Rewards:: I know that this was a ‘battle’ technically, but I am treating it as a quest for experience and gold; also, I have included post counts and will leave the discretion of who gets the ultimate reward to Sei. I would say based on post count and quality of posts alone it would be Alyssa. But congrats to everyone.
The Inventor: (4): 265 exp and 35 gold
Philomel: (5): 525 exp and 60 gold
Alyssa Snow: (8): 935 exp and 120 gold
Hysteria: (8): 1480 exp and 105 gold
Warpath: (8): 1345 exp and 115 gold
Erikar: (1): 80 exp and 10 gold
Lye: (4): 655 exp and 60 gold
Elthas: (4): 475 exp and 55 gold
Ioder: (1): 85 exp and 10 gold
Fox Owen: (1): 80 exp and 10 gold

[Lye]

EXP & GP Added!

Congrats on your HQ's!