4468/tFSoK-The Lion's Pride-2

tFSoK-The Lion's Pride-2
Date of Scene:	26 August 2016
Location:	Great Painting of Ariamis <PoA>
Synopsis:	Sinh the slumbering dragon is engaged and slain. Ornstein is pleased.
Cast of Characters:	Priscilla, 253, Reiji Arisu, Lezard Valeth, 911, 974, Staren, 1014

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Priscilla has posed:
    Hopefully, so many people should think, today will mark the last occasion that there is any need to go crawling through the bottomless cracks of Lordran's far-flung corners and meet the universally awful things seemingly oozing through every single one of them; at least for a long time.

    In keeping with the last visit, this place is a change from the usual, in that the way down is merely a couple of straight miles of horrible footing, blind drops, pitch blackness, natural toxic buildup, and geography designed by Satan, rather than all of that plus a weighty encyclopedia of exposition for why it is populated by teeming hordes of things hellbent on killing everyone. It's a straightforward, and plainly obvious kind of challenge, that can be circumvented every time by faithful planning.

    Especially faithful planning has gone into this one in particular. The last time, a group had run afoul of the area's only 'native' inhabitants; the Imperfect, wallowing in the flesh-melting fumes pooling at the deepest pits of this labyrinthine cavern complex. From its corpse, Lezard had intended to synthesize another one of his fantastically morbid Lordran cure-alls, and so whatever he has cooked up is primarily what the group has to rely on when they find themselves once again on the 'bottom floor'.

    That, and one native who had insisted upon coming along, as promised. Even more than anyone else, Ornstein stands out like a shiny, gold-plated nail against the variegated maze of stalactites and stalagmites, fusing together as if the floor and ceiling were made of melting, chalky green wax. The luridly coloured fumes boiling from suspicious fluids pooling widely along the cavern floor, matching the faint bio luminescence of moss and fungi growing from the solid rock, are just as intense as before, but thankfully, nothing is moving in them.

    Lastly, just as before, the caverns are filled with the same backdrop of distant, but incessantly howling wind, blowing at a dull roar in what sounds like generic ambiance until it changes pitch, back and forth, like the breathing of a great beast that only finishes inhaling every half hour. By now, however, everyone knows that's exactly what it is, and with nothing else to worry about, presuming protection from the air itself growing acidic the closer they follow it, it is a trivial affair to follow and close in on.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    The unfortunate by-product of Psyber's unique physiology is that whatever cure-all does get cooked up doesn't work that well or that long for him. It's an unpleasant reality of how his body works that his solution to noxious and awful poison is to 'suck it up and tough it out' or 'take intravenous heals from someone like Kyra or Haruno', with no other really standard medical alternative.

    Still. He is here. And he has his big sword across his back from the Heaven's Armory. He also has a paper bag with him. This time it contains a pair of bacon-double-cheeseburgers. One of them is held out to his side in the hopes of enticing the wayward spirit out of his sword. The other is unwrapped and eaten as he walked, though he can't savor it much over the fume and taste of aerosol poison.

    "Bleh. This place is awful. Let's get this done and get out of here."

Reiji Arisu has posed:
Fortunately, Reiji is completely human! That means that Lezard's amazing, definitely not snake-oil, kind of skeevy but totally effective cure-all actually does its job! Indeed, the terrible, corruptive nature of the toxin in these depths seems to have lost much of its efficacy-- but that doesn't mean that Reiji's not being careful in his own way.

He still has that gas mask on. And he's festooned himself with a few of Shinra's wards against poison, disease and corruption.

Can't be too careful, down here.

"Agreed," Reiji answers Psyber. His eyes flicker over towards the golden lancer. Ornstein's presence is reassuring for a number of reasons. "Let's get this taken care of and leave before the poison goes permanent."

Lezard Valeth has posed:
Lezard, to his credit, is a /legit/ alchemist, thank you very much. He doesn't deal in snake oil and he takes pride in his work. Much like he takes pride in basically everything else about himself, but that's beside the point.

From the corpse of the Imperfect, he distilled a set of vials of rancid-looking fluid. "It's not pleasant." Lezard says as he passes them out to whoever cares. "But drinking it should provide some measure of palliation against this vexing poisonous demesne." To prove that it's not poison, he uncorks one and drinks it down quickly, making a face. "I would recommend just drinking it all at once quickly. Much like many unpleasant things." He pulls a flask from his belt and takes a long drink of that as well, before putting it back. "Ugh. As skilled as I am, there are some things that are not easily resolved." He says. "The taste of medicines is one of those things." Also to his credit, the distillation /is/ legit as well, he's not trying a complicated attempt to get people to poison themselves. Most of the people here do that to themselves /without/ his prompting.

He nods to Psyber as he states his piece. "I concur. We should have done with this wretched place as soon as possible. Even the Abyss is preferable." He gestures. "I can only imagine that the great noise of breath is our quarry. Come, let us close in."

Elizabeth Bathory (911) has posed:
    The depths of Lordran. Come see the sights! Be eaten by great people! Explore beautiful Satan-Designed areas! If they sould postcards, NOBODY WOULD EVER COME HERE.

    This is why you can blame LEZARD VALETH for bringing a short European-ish girl with curly horns and skirts. And a rather large, draconic tail?

    She has complained, loudly, the entire way down this satanic sinkhole of suckitude. "This place is worse than a convention! Nearly as dank, unwashed, poisonous, and clawing at my personage as one of those foul events! Uuuurgh, or /concert pits/. This is not suitable to remain within! This is for the help to clean out, and the fans to mill about in! And us, without any adoring public to walk on above this... awful malaise and funk..."

    She looks at the bottom of her shoe, disgusted. "Let us be done with whatever mission Master wished to subject me to in this..."

    She looks around, and blecks audibly. "Surely he could not have /wanted/ to dirty me without purpose! Didn't you???!"

    She clings to Lezard for a few moments posessively. She sounds absolutely insane.

Carna (974) has posed:
    The robed Blue Scholar, Enark, trudges along with the others, down paths he has walked before. Though dark, confusing, and tiring, they are not what he would call 'familiar'. He takes special care to protect a refrigerated carrying case he obtained, which secures the bottles inside against breaking or sloshing too much if the container were to be dropped. He has spent his time since the previous trip examining a mix of flesh bits, gross mushrooms, and poison vapors, experimenting with them, and trying to find a mix of mundane and magical counter-toxins via his Murmurs of Poison Sea that will protect himself and others.

    His work may see some synergy with the works of others like Lezard, since they're elixirs meant to be adaptive to both the subject and the poisons they encounter, but if the necromancer's is superior then his work probably won't see much use. He does pipe up with, "Err, I also... Have... Some defensive elixirs." He adds on somewhat lamely as he procedes along with the others, "I worked rather hard on them."

    He lacks the laboratories that Lezard Valeth possesses, as well as having less experience with the Multiverse in general, but he also has access to a library that contains the sum total of all human knowledge, so there's that. It should at least be functional, chemically, and when taken together with magic...

    At the complaints of others, he remarks, "That said, this place isn't SO bad. I mean, I have seen worse." He is trying to keep up a cheerful face as he opens the container and pulls out a bottle of something so vividly bright blue that it looks like someone made a soft drink out of neon light. "Some electric lights, some decorations... Maybe a path down the middle and some railings on either side. Maybe extract all the poison. Yes, this place could be quite homely, in a subterranean cavern sort of way."

    The sound of breathing reaches his ears and his smile dims quite a bit as he uncorks his bottle drinks from it, before restoppering it and putting it back. "If, ah, anyone else wants some, I have plenty. Chilled and refreshing. I added strawberry flavoring to help it go down better."

Staren has posed:
    Here we are again, in the toxic mist filled with dangerous monsters to hunt a dragon.

    Staren kind of wishes he could get his mecha down here, but he can't. So it's the same setup as last time -- he rides his golem out to and partway down the cave, then heads the rest of the way on-foot in his armor.

    He looks at the medicine warily, then opens his visor long enough to drink it. Lezard has professional courtesy too, it seems. They're allies today.

    What the heck is up with that dragon-girl?

    Since he already took Lezard's medicine, he puts any dose offered him of Enark's medicine into his bag for now. "Don't know if they'll interact, but I'll keep it for if I need it later." He smiles. "Strawberry is a good choice." But he gives Enark a weird look. "You'd want to /live/ here? Ah, right, given where you live now... Look, I'm sure there are better places, although a man with enough magic can live anywhere he wants, I'm sure..."

Heaven's Armory (1014) has posed:
    Ari appears when bidden, with the promise of food. Her culinary experiences continue, as the slight, half-armored girl quietly explodes into being near Psyber's side, takes the wrapped burger, and watches her wielder for a moment to see how one is supposed to eat these things.
    Nom.
    The poison is something her true body is largely immune to, but her false, human body is likely not. This will cause problems if she sticks around long, but it may not come to that. She won't, herself, seek out a cure from Lezard. To be fair, she's similarly apathetic toward Enark's offering, which may give the (incorrect) impression that she's entirely without need.
    She makes a face. The smell of the place, at least, is interfering with her enjoyment of the complex set of flavors to be interpreted within this latest food offering.

Lezard Valeth has posed:
Lezard glances over at Enark, and arches an eyebrow at his own remarks. "Hmm... You seem to have access to some powerful knowledge that I do not. Perhaps we can work out a trade in a better time."

At that, Elizabeth appears, and he blinks at her. "Calm yourself, Elizabeth. We will lay the beast to rest. Your presence here is quite necessary for our success, I assure you. Perhaps once the unsavory creature has been removed, we can have it settled with more... palatable environs."

Priscilla has posed:
    "Such is the onus placed upon a slayer of monsters." Ornstein has to say for himself, continuing the cultural tradition of 'never showing your face ever for any reason'. "To turn back, simply because one finds their prey's lair unpleasant, is a laughable disgrace, and yet all the same, braving them will not convince further marks to rest where they are easier to reach." It might suddenly occur to someone that he would have had to take his helmet off, or open it up at least, to make use of what Lezard and Enark have to offer. They may also vaguely remember that he used /both/, but be damned if they will ever be able to recall exactly when, where or how. The lore deepens.

    It doesn't take a genius though, or four rounds of setup, to get where everyone is going. The area, ancient as it is, is too 'new' to have had layers of ages old calamities pile on top of each other. There are no foes to fight, curses to battle, traps to evade, or varieties of deleterious conceptual adversity. Even were ten feet of gold and plume not leading them around, it wouldn't take people very long to navigate to the source of the cave soundtrack; a space where a vast expanse of limestone wall suddenly contracts down into tunnel that looks like it was forcibly bored through the rock, rather than naturally worn down by water.

    The passage is certainly filled with it, at the annoying level that reaches just over the tops of anything but tall boots, but the walls are uneven, roughly streaked, and maintain a level course rather than going down any gradient.

    It also looks like it was originally much longer, when it terminates into a truly cavernous chamber that shares much the same aesthetic. Despite being made of the same chalky limestone and slate, its natural formations are few and bitterly worn, clustered around distant stone walls that look pockmarked and almost moth-eaten. Long, anemic waterfalls plunge from some interminable height up above, where small holes have breached a distant water table, contributing their echoes and watery mist to the already grey and confusing sprawl.

    Despite hunting a dragon, and narrowing it down to a single cave, it is absurdly easy to miss. A beast the size of a sauropod dinosaur, though nothing special by local standards, should normally be the obvious focal point the instant one enters, but Ornstein has to point it out by hand; so completely does its shape seem to blend in with the decrepit scenery.

Priscilla has posed:
    The thing is sprawled out so irregularly that it looks as if it fell over, rather than fell asleep, and uncountable years of remaining like that had caused lime deposits to slowly fuse the gaps between the stone and its skin; not that there appears to be any difference. The whole dragon resembles the flaking, ashen white bark of a piece of firewood on its last legs, as if its flesh is slowly turning to crumbling salt, and barely concealing the contours of its twisted, misshapen bones. It appears bleached, craggy, emaciated, and even the film of its wings looks like petrified parchment.

    Despite looking like it'll shatter like glass if hit with a hammer, sharp eyes can spot rivulets of fluid steadily leaking from its closed mouth and eyes, resembling the side effects of catastrophic internal bleeding, save for being disgustingly lurid green in colouration. The liquid runs in fine little rivers across the floor, from which the fumes seem to issue like drying gasoline. It seems like that smog must have been responisble for expanding the cavern to its current size too.

    Considering the quantity of the toxin present, and mentally multiplying it by thousands of years, it's clear that it has exuded more poisonous goo than its considerable mass could have ever contained at once. The only logical conclusion is that the poison has been steadily multiplying in keeping with the dragon's pace of purging it, or else corrupting and sloughing off with the flesh it regenerates. Aside from putting Nito at the height of his power in some serious perspective, it indicates this to be the kind of regenerative slumber that never, ever ends.

    So Ornstein gets on point before anyone can have second thoughts. The golden knight flourishes his cross-spear, crouches down low, then vaults thirty meters straight up into the air, vanishing into the dark ceiling of the cavern briefly, before plunging down on the dragon's back like a fairly literal thunderbolt. The super-massive ranseur plunges straight through the creature's spine, and should very clearly have skewered the heart and lungs with its shape. Divine lightning crackles and arcs through the aerial spray of jade green blood spewed from the wound.

    Though the dragon looks like it should shatter from a good whack with a hammer, ramming a giant spear through its chest cavity wakes it up, rather than putting it into a more permanent slumber. Deep, dark pits in its face flick open shark-like eyes, and then the stone fastening it to the floor cracks and blows away as it rears upon its hind legs like an infuriated wildcat, spewing out a torrent of archetypical flames from its thrashing maw, which terminate at an unimpressive distance, and instead become billowing clouds of extremely dangerous-looking mist. Ornstein clears the area.

Lezard Valeth has posed:
Progress is swift now that they have a way to avoid having their innards not liquified by the local hazards, far more dangerous than most of the creatures that have settled in here. Adaptation only goes so far, and Lezard's observations seem to bear that out. He doesn't respond to Ornstein's observations even if he does agree with them. He seems more interested in considering how the hell he drank that potion with his helmet on. Despite that, for all of his genius, the solution does not seem to be apparent. He leaves that mystery for another time, instead focusing on their goal.

The progress through the area finally terminates in the presence of the dragon itself. "Well then. I suppose that explains much... One wonders the kind of horrific corrosive that could infest this being that could have forged such effects?" He asks, adjusting his glasses. "It is no surprise this place is nigh-deserted, this is no place for the living... And not even the Undead."

Still, Ornstein opens this shindig up with the classic maneuver, and Lezard grimaces, not surprised that it takes more than that to take down the beast. He might have wished otherwise, but such is life. With a surge of Dark, the Manus Catalyst manifests in his hand, and he looks to the others. "Spread out! Force it to split its focus... And don't breathe the fog, there is no doubt that even our precautions are likely insufficient for such a direct exposure."

After stating the obvious for the team of practiced murder hobos and professional murder hobos, Lezard levels the Catalyst once he judges himself a good distance. Lightning didn't seem to be that effective, so... "DARK SAVIOR!" He calls out, summoning up a mass of shadowy, Abyssal-infused blades to rain down upon the dragon.

Reiji Arisu has posed:
    Reiji gives Enark a long look. After a moment, the exorcist sort of... shrugs. "Well, it can't hurt, can it?" And Ornstein quaffed both elixers anyway, so clearly whatever they're after is bad enough that he'll need to worry. Who ever heard of an overdose? Not Reiji Arisu! "Give me a dose," he said, offering a hand, "It might help me forget what Lezard's brew tasted like."

Except strawberry-flavored medicine is still medicine.

Does Reiji regret this decision?

PROBABLY YES. His throat sort of feels like it's on fire, and his stomach feels like it's trying to crawl out through his nostrils, but at least his blood isn't on fire. Plus he'll be at like, 180 morale for the fight scene. That's all that really matters.

FOUR ROUNDS OF SETUP LATER.

    Reiji's gait is noticably a bit more sluggish than normal as they make their way toward the rotting, toxic heart of this miserable place. Never again will he drink TWO antitoxins in one trip. It's like his brain is pounding from the inside. Or maybe that's his cerebral fluid congealing into a billion millipedes.

Or maybe, just maybe, his senses are picking up something... foul.

    There. That corpselike THING embedded in stone. Its body seems emaciated; the beast seems barely half-alive, as if the very essence of its being had become trapped in mid-rot. What could have done something like this to one of the great, immortal dragons?

Was it really Nito's doing? "Is THIS His plague?" Reiji wonders aloud. He knew the legends of the world's creation; Lezard certainly did, too. "How did this creature survive for so long?"

    They don't have much time to dwell on it, which is honestly all on Ornstein. Gone is the customary pre-combat philosophical belly-aching, the golden knight needs action NOW. Reiji grunts under his breath as the Dragonslayer makes good on his sobriquet. "Right. Better to get this done now."

    Reiji jukes to one side. Unfortunately the TERRIBLE ANTITOXIN COCKTAIL does not seem to be agreeing well with him. He misses a step, ending up barely catching the edge of Sinh's terrible toxic plume. The talismans pinned to his body blaze furiously at the poisonous touch before vanishing in puffs of sickly green smoke. "Damnit," Reiji growls. "Going to need... A second."

    But at least he can still fire. HOLLYWOOD and GOLD find their way into his hands. Gunpowder fills the air with its own acrid, sulfurous scent as the exorcist opens fire, blasting away at the dragon's calcified, withered wings with blessed lead and sacred buckshot!

Staren has posed:
    Is that... is that really the dragon? It looks so sick and weak. Then again, what else would a creature of conceptual pestilence look like? Ornstein leaping into the air purges any lingering doubts -- Staren readies his laser rifle and, (not wanting to mess up Ornstein's attack) tries to fire a burst at the dragon's head after Ornstein lands. Although, all that hissing about and spewing of mist may make such an attack more difficult than Staren was anticipating seconds ago...

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Psyber is mostly quiet for the trip, conserving his energy and not saying much as they march towards the dragon. This is both to keep his breathing regular and his regeneration at a net positive and to just keep from having to say much. He seems, however, tired again and generally worn out to be here.

    "What a decrepit looking beast," Psyber remarks in regards to the sleeping dragon of poison and disease. The half-angel says, "Ari, finish the burger. We oughta get to work. And I don't want your manifested form getting sick," He says with a bit of concern to his voice. Once Ornstein charges in, the half-angel lets out a sigh. He regrets it because it just means more poison goes into his lungs.

    "What a hassle." He draws the massive sword off his back and dashes in. There's almost no hesitation to his movements, "It's more diseased and sick than it is a living creature any more. We'd be doing it, and the world, a justice by purifying its vitriolic existence."

    He aims a descending strike with that huge blade right for the neckline. It probably won't work, but he's aiming for an outright decapitation.

Heaven's Armory (1014) has posed:
    Even under these health code violations, Ari's not a slow eater, but she's still looking a little worse for being here by the time she's finished off the burger and tossed the wrapper. The wrapper combusts on leaving her hands, thus preserving her no-littering policy, as none will notice another fine layer of ash in any place connected to Lordran.
    And now, to work. There had to be a good, pressing reason to be down in this toxic hell pit, after all. "A useless and wasteful cycle of half-death, spreading the same. Let us bring it to a close." The false body disappears in a brief, oddly quiet implosion. The sword is drawn, and swung. To the thought of purification, Ari transmits a wordless feeling of approval.

Elizabeth Bathory (911) has posed:
    Tromping through muck and ick only grows worse over the TIME KOMPRESSION of their arrival, and Elizabeth is just... She can't even. She just can't. Four Rounds of incessant nattering and complaining are summed up here:

    "Ugh! Even the smell is awful!"
    "Wow, your helmet is so shiny. Reminds me of..."
    "I should get some pictures, this place would be good album art!"
    "Are we /there/ yet?"
    "I'm going to have to burn these shoes, and probably the rest of this outfit, and myself for good measure, when we get back!"

    It is only the reassurances that they'll go someplace fancy after and probably get doted on by Lezard that keep her mostly in line, though honestly the idea they're going to kill some scummy lame dragon with this HUNKY knight in armor is pretty keen. Maybe she could get some Alone-stien time with tall shiny and slay-ey, and she'd sign any /part/ of him, rowr. OF COURSE, her love is merely a passing fancy next to her great and enduring love... OF HERSELF!

    As they approach the dragon that dies little by little before them, she flicks her wrist, a two-pronged jagged spear materializing in her hand. It has no name, unlike SOME servants and their overwrought armaments, HARRUMPH. "So, we just..."

    Ornstein, and Psyber, both seem to have the same idea, which is 'dive right in, Dragoon Style', so Elizabeth hangs back, her tail swishing as she uses her free claw-finger to tap her chin lightly. "It doesn't look very strong at all. I'll let the boys handle it... While I compose!"

    Jamming her spear in the ground, microphone-end up (that is, the butt of it), she uses both hands' thumb and index finger to box the vista of two muscly knights stabbing the shit out of a dragon. "Mmmm, how about... 'If you can't live without me, why aren't you dead yet?' ... Mmmm, yeah, that sounds great."

Carna (974) has posed:
    "Oh, yes, certainly! Certainly!" Enark remarks enthusiastically in response to Lezard. "I encourage learning and education! Just, ah, there's things in the library that might need to be... Removed to make it safer to conduct research. But if we can manage that, then you can study all you like! Have you considered membership in the Blue Scholars?"

    Staren's acceptance of a dose of the potion, even if it may not be as awesome as Lezard's contribution earns further smiles from Enark as he dishes it out, and again to Reiji. "Yes, well, it may not be my first choice, but it is better than some. You are correct in that. Don't worry, Sir Reiji, I made the elixir adaptive. It should work with Lord Lezard's mixture without interference. Probably. I mean, I did not know what he came up with in advance, so I could not really test it, but I'll just... Stop... Talking."

    Enark tilts his head a bit to squint at the dragon tail Elizabeth seems to possess. Is she aware that they're here to kill a dragon? Maybe she's not related to them. Maybe it's just cosmetic. Ari's declining the offer is taken in stride. Perhaps she is immune or something. Psyber may also have declined, but maybe he took something already.

    After navigating to the proper location, and sighting the beast, with the aid of Ornstein, Enark makes sure to stay back and away from it. He has no regeneration, no special resilience outside of being Dead, and even then it's more like a spirit than a corpse. The concept of his own existence is tied to his mind as much as his make-up, and he has not divorced himself of things like 'pain' and 'injury' that were such strong deterrents in life. Despite his elixir, as everyone else prepares for battle, Enark fights a crawling, itching feeling in his throat. He tries not to let the irritation make him do what he feels he's about to do. He doesn't even need to breathe. He can hold out! He can--

    "*HACKCOUGHCOUGHCOUGH*" he lets out loudly while trying to muffle it behind one hand. He wipes the accumulated poison off on his robe before realizing what he just did and looking around. Thankfully, Lezard has just cast a spell of his own, sending huge blades at Sinh, and Psyber has attempted to decapitate the diseased dragon with... Ari? So thankfully, Enark is not responsible for giving away their presence.

    He spares any further words, and instead causes waters of the River Styx to manifest around his hands as he attempts to send water dragons out to flow around his allies, mending their wounds continuously, whether caused by injury or poison. It's essentially a regeneration effect, though there is a time limit and some may have less need of it than others. Enark will be focusing on support this time, not wasting his energy on offensive spells in the first round of combat.

Priscilla has posed:
    It looks like the Dragonslayer will have to wrestle his spear back in a minute, because it seems to have been the wise move to launch off to the other end of the cavern, casually shattering a couple of stalactite tips he clips on the way down, due to being so large and made of so much metal. The dragon remains in those throes of thrashing anger for quite a while longer, smashing through quite a great deal more ages old stone formations than the knight had, by flexing its wings.

    The stomping, screaming, wingbeating and fire breathing all look like pretty stereotypical fantasy dragon chest beating, until it reaches a certain point where it seems to have gone on for too long to be just raging and showboating. The dragon doesn't know like it looks what it's doing, laying about aimlessly in pain and confusion like . . . well, like the kind of feverish delirium a critically ill patient exhibits when woken up in a hospital bed.

    The impression is reinforced when the pseudo-psychic presence comes out in full force, causing people's minds to thrum as if they were resonating components in a speaker system, catching otherwise inaudible soundwaves and playing them very loudly. Continuing the analogy, what comes from the dragon, or Sinh, as Ornstein had named it, feels like little more than static and agonizing bass drone, communicating nothing clearly, and sounding more like something broken and out of tune, than impressing any kind of clear sensation.

    Still, a dozen Dark blades sleet down between its shoulders, bursting into black conflagrations on its back that take away chunks of 'flesh' that crumble like used charcoal. Slugs and buckshot go ripping neatly through its brittle and crumpled wingspan, peppering the water with as much shrapnel from the wounds as from the bullets themselves. Ari's impressive length it swung straight for the underside of its jaw, given one unimpeded straight shot, and cleaves straight through what feels as if it should be a petrified windpipe, before slamming against that notoriously immutable bone, gushing a waterfall of green paint down her wielder. Pieces of its 'face', more like the eroded fossil of some horrific, prehistoric fish, explode into gouts of venting steam and gravel from invisible laser blasts . . .

    It's a hell of a lot more fragile than the other two, but it seems to be a little sick and confused about what 'dying' means. Despite its throat having been clearly cut through, Sinh manages to let loose an unnervingly cavern-shaking roar anyways, causing the shallow water to vibrate like the surface of a subwoofer. It smashes back down on all fours, adopting a more stable posture, and then inhales (???) the inhospitable air, only to spew it back out as a torrent of flames that burn a copper-antimony green, which it sweeps from left to right across its territory as a classic flamethrower.

    An unintentionally beneficial side effect of its infection, seems to be that the fire is more dangerous as it peters out. The length of the flamethrower is effectively tripled once the hideous smog extending from it is taken into account, and it may be deadlier than the fire anyways. It's harder to avoid, and lingers for much longer. Without protection, a few seconds of exposure is enough to make it take firm root in the flesh, where it will sit and multiply, and then a few seconds more is all that is needed to kill a human; a few minutes for a powerful superhuman. /With/ the custom anti-toxins Lezard and Enark have crafted up . . . it's more of a question.

    Oh, and there's also the matter that Reiji, Psyber and Ari (the last in particular) quickly find that its skin is covered completely in a thick layer of some kind of acidic mucous. The kind that makes rust monsters feel a little jealous of.

Staren has posed:
    Staren sighs as he sees Enark is having trouble with the poison. Unfortunately, they're fighting a dragon right now, so hopefully Enark's own protections will keep him safe until after.

    When the aimless breath weapon attacks and thrashing continue, Staren wonders what's up. "This doesn't seem...? Something's up. Could this dragon be a decoy?" Still, he holds out his arms and fires a half-dozen HEAT micromissiles to rain down on any parts of Sinh's body that aren't currently engaged in melee with someone. Ought to hedge his bets, even if it /does/ seem too easy. "Ugh, where is that coming from?!" He looks around for the source of the psychic sound, staying back and manifesting his wings to fly over the smog for a moment. He's not worried about poison, of course, but there's the possibility that that stuff is acid and will dissolve his suit.

    That would be bad. Very bad.

    Staren looks around, expecting some sort of psychic dragon-behind-the-dragon to be clinging to the cavern ceiling or something...

Heaven's Armory (1014) has posed:
    There are some matters in which a blade of Heaven's Armory will act with or without any overt direction, for or against. Chief among these is immediate survival. Given the way it was bleeding(?) a river of poison, it stood to reason that the dragon's insides might be especially dangerous, as guts go. This proves true as Ari feels the mucous cover her (which would be more disgusting to an entity whose purpose didn't necessitate being covered in other people's blood), and her reaction is nearly as reflexive as pulling one's hand out of a fire, if basically the opposite of that.
    Conceptual rather than literal truths are what are necessary for magic like the Armory's to function. As soon as she is dislodged, the acidic covering no longer 'belongs' to Sinh, so far as Ari is concerned, but to her. Without the strengthening from this point, she'd have rather less hope of attempting to burn off anything that comes out of a fire-breathing dragon. As is, this is still potentially dangerous to both herself and her wielder.
    If it works, however, she'll have converted that acid into less harmful detritus and light, and more useful heat and motion, with a quick pulse of feeling to Psyber that he should ideally pick a direction in which to use that motion.

Carna (974) has posed:
    As people attack, and the dragon thrashes in pain and confusion and rage, and a mental pressure bears down upon Enark, the Blue Scholar feels... Bad. Despite the claims of this being a mercy killing, he is suddenly realizing that maybe they should have come here intending to cure this creature instead of eliminate it. "Ah, err." Enark gets out with his hands clapped to his ears. Then he yells to the others, "Perhaps we should stop attacking it and see if there is a way to... To heal it? To communicate with it? To extract the poison maybe?"

    He should have thought of this sooner. As a scholar, he should have been thinking beyond the story he was given, that they were all given, of it being dangerous. He shoud have thought about examining and fixing this patient. But he got so swept up in the crusade to kill a dragon, like something out of a fairy tale, that he forgot his scientific curiosity, and abandoned critical thought. What a fool he was! Just like when he made those Monstrous Invader Murdering Incognito Constructs! He was just so enthusiastic about what he was making, the boundaries he was pushing, that he forgot everything else.

    And now he watches Sinh suffering and he feels like the worst person in the Multiverse.

    Then flames come billowing forth, toxic and lingering, and Enark scrambles out of the way. The dragon is dying, falling apart. It's probably for the best that it be put out of its misery. That is the only way he can justify it now. Not 'the safety of others', but putting this sad thing to rest. And even then, he wishes he had thought to suggest a different solution.

    "But honestly, if there is some way to mend it, and render it safe without killing it, we might be able to do this without further violence...!" he tries one more time even as he gestures and actively works a reanimated spell that someone cast before in ancient times and has been reused and reused in 'zombie' form ever since. Then he mutters things like words through a filter of a corpse's final breath and sends directed, active healing waters to those exposed to the toxins. Ari may have it under control, or not. But she and Psyber are not the only ones in danger.

Lezard Valeth has posed:
Lezard does the sensible thing and tries to engage from maximum range while people not blessed with ranged weapons have to deal with the horrifyingly potent toxins the draogn spews everywhere. Despite this, the thick, toxic fog hangs in the air, drifting in highly /inconvenient/ ways and forcing him to scurry about, interrupting his DPS chain. "Damn dragons!" Lezard grunts. "Elizabeth, can't you put this accursed creature out of our misery?" A subtle difference in motive, that, which likely feeds into his response to Enark. "Steel yourself, scholar. The only salvation for this creature is death." He hurls himself back even as his limestone stalagmite barrier sizzles and dissolves under the deadly fog, and he casts his cloak away next, the treated cloth dissolving as well. "Mayhaps coming here in flesh was not the best plan..." Lezard murmurs... And then the dragon howls it incoherent rage.

The delerious scream causes him to clamp down his hands over his ears, grimacing in pain. "Thrice-damned creature... Enough of this!" He flees across the battlefield and plants his feet, hoping to gain enough time to gather his power to him. The flows of energy begin surging about him, a magical circle forming beneath his feet as he prepares a powerful magic. "Do try to keep the beast pointed away, will you?"

Elizabeth Bathory (911) has posed:
    Elizabeth Bathory spent her time being a dumbass instead of actually doing her job, mostly because she was checking out the others that had come Dragonslaying with her, and not doing anything. She even started composing a dumb song instead of fighting! But...

    The Dragon makes her move. With a short hop, Elizabeth steps onto the top of her spear's mic-stand, and then leaps skyward, getting air to narrowly avoid the breath... But the toxic smog that billows out after, backwashes, and fills the air makes her choke and cough in sheer disgust. It gets all over her and occludes her in the air before, with a shriek that comes with a concussive burst, she blows the mist around her away with a blast of her powerful voice.

    Two draconic wings of her own spread from her back, keeping her aloft as she hears Lezard's call for her to ACTUALLY do something. That face did need a good pounding... "Right away! How's about my top ten hit, 'A Voice You'll Die For'?!" She announces, drawing in a large amount of air - which is dangerous in and of itself, but 'dragon' breath requires some serious lungspace to reproduce. Then, holding a single note, she starts... Singing?

    It's an awful cone of devastation, a sonic blast and a concussive tornado from her mouth aimed to simply buffet the dragon's neck and face away from Lezard and The Squishies and flinch the beast.

    Also everyone is probably deaf now if the accoustics in the cave are as shit as everything else in this world. Whoops!

Reiji Arisu has posed:
    The last time Reiji fought against one of Lordran's legendary dragons, it nearly cost him his life-- and the lives of all the people in this world. Kalameet was an apocalypse of a dragon: nn ambulatory armageddon, equipped with the ability to twist the very fundamental forces of reality to its whims.

This creature, this poor diminished beast, is a pale shadow of the Calamity Wyrm.

    Sinh the Sickly's voice resonated like static across the surface of his brain. Reiji's lips draw into a tight grimace. Compared to Kalameet, this was nothing but nails on a chalkboard. A nuisance. Nowhere was the crushing sense of despair, the terrible, soul-smothering PRESSURE.

But there was still flame. And still so much poison.

    Reiji winces. Even with the cocktail of antitoxins burning through his veins, every single one of his instincts is telling him that getting caught up in that cone of venomous flame would probably kill him. If it didn't, he'd be laid up recovering from the poison for weeks. He goes to dodge, but the sluggishness still drags at his limbs. He feels it start, and so he tucks into a roll, preferring to douse himself in poison water than let himself get caught up in that terrible breath.

The antitoxins are protecting him from that much, at least.

    Reiji's lungs convulse as he rises, choking on the lingering vapors. Fortunately, a HEALING DRAGON appears in time to soothe some of his aches. "This creature has suffered for long enough," he says over his shoulder at the scholar. "Look at him. How long has he been down here, choking on his own breath? No. This needs to end now," Reiji coughs, fishing around in his one of his pockets for... something. "For his sake, as well as our own."

    By the third pouch, he finds what he's looking for. A single, hand-loaded round. One with a distinctly... crystalline slug. Reiji draws back his handgun's slide and slips the bullet into the chamber. "I have no idea what this thing will do to it, but..."

Reiji aims, levelling his gun for the point at which the dragon's neck joined with its chest, just where he might imagine its lungs would be. He pulls the trigger, firing a single seed of purest crystal.

One of Seath's crystals, to be exact.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    The viscous green substance that runs down from the dragon onto Psyber and burns like acid. He's less concerned with his own well being and more for Ari's as he shouts, "Ari!" When the mucous covers the blade, realizing it could erode her and do serious damage. He immediately hops back and away from the dragon, disregarding the fact that his own flesh is taking some serious damage and it's eating through portions of his clothing in other places.

    Luckily, a moment later, Ari is turning it all intoo heat and motion. Psyber is quick to react, using the excess energy to rocket himself forward and back towards the dragon. Like a true man with a sword, Psyber generally only sees a single solution to this problem. When all you have is a sword, every problem is a dragon, so to speak.

    He stabs the sword into the ground, converting the momentul upwards and towards the heavy slash he made in the dragon's neck. Pulling the sword out of the ground as he goes, he tries to circle up and around to go for another executioner's strike in the same spot as before. He's hoping he can use Ari, plus his own strength, to simply wear down the neck bone.

Priscilla has posed:
    Staren finds out that it is indeed, acid. Everything is acid. Rather, the poison is so poisonous that it is effectively acid in of itself, ruining metals and ceramics just as ordinary toxins will ravage the squishy bits of living cells. Coupled with the fact that it keeps ticking even without direct exposure, doesn't that make it sort of like radiation in the end?

    It definitely means that flying isn't safe, because Sinh doesn't seem particularly beholden to concepts of tidal volume, and keeps spewing fire for several times longer than really seems normal or fair for a dragon boss, washing the torrent of combusting chemical horror back and forth across the cavern, and then rearing back once more to get it into the air again as well, unfortunately just as Elizabeth takes a jump as well. There's no need to particularly describe any aim, because there's no particularly safe place away from it; only the less dangerous spaces where the smoke is thinnest and the flames are furthest away, which anyone in their right mind should be aiming to stay in.

    Fortunately, it has to stop at some point, and that point is at where a counter 'breath' weapon strikes it square in its half-blind face. The danger zone twists sharply with its neck, as its head crashes through a thick grove of hanging limestone columns and its horns briefly tangle in the remainder, either jarring it to a halt, or simply causing it to stop because it temporarily can't fire on anyone. While its neck is twisted away at that vulnerable angle, a score of missiles rake along its side, punching smoking craters out of its ossified flesh, and filling the shallow water with thick clouds of emerald goo.

    Reiji also gets one good, square shot in on its neckline. The bullet itself does laughably little, the little squirt of emulsified blood almost comical in its understatement. It isn't until the cursed crystal begins appearing on the surface of its skin, like iridescent frost on the surface of a pond, that he can imagine the horrific fractals it must be doing inside, and explaining the apparent paralysis of its left shoulder, leg and lower neck.

    That good luck doesn't last long enough for Psyber to capitalize on it in addition though. As stated, he got one, unimpeded shot. Ari's quick thinking saves both him and herself from the messy fate of every sword-wielding scrub's first shot at the boss (and his sword), but the dragon wrenching its mess of twisted skull horns free has the greatsword colliding with its eye ridge instead, rupturing the beady, half-blind, shark-like organ even more grotesquely than the rest, in exchange for leaving him in the way when it whips its head back around, and attempts to bite him in half, simultaneous with the motions of its gargantuan wings lifting it from the ground in one thundering pummel of air, despite being riddled with holes.

    Sinh sluices infected blood like a wicker basket on his way up, but impossibly, it achieves flight regardless, gaining /considerable/ height in just a few moments, even with the length of spear sticking through its spine and chest. It manages a surprisingly bold, diving turn as well, converting the boiling hell-haze bubbling from its !lungs (clearly ruined as they would be) into a stream of explosive fireballs instead, nominally just regular fireballs until they achieve the exploding part, and then become gas mortars the kinds of which world militaries preemptively ban. It sweeps by those in the air especially, attempting to clip them with thrashes of its massive tail and claws, if not just crush them with its body mass, aiming the barrage mostly for the ground, where even clear misses leave a minefield of further hazards.

Staren has posed:
    "Ah, shit! It's eating my armor!" Staren transmits. He probably has it coated in nanites to detect surface damage or something, yeah, let's go with that.

    Okay, that's it, time to END this dragon... but some of his allies are close to it, preventing him from using the big booms.

    Sinh has his own big booms, though -- Staren's forcefield appears and then is blasted apart by a succession of explosions, Staren's armor is cracked and blasted and he can't maintain flight with so much turbulence, crashing to the ground.

    Okay. If he can avoid taking any more serious damage, he probably has... minutes? To find a solution before the acid eats his suit. So, that's better than nothing, right? He'll need to come up with a plan fast, though...

    And step one of the plan is END THE DRAGON. The missile racks pop up on Staren's smoking, sizzling suit of armor, and Staren hits him with everything he has out -- a burst from the laser sniper rifle, the beam cannons on his arm, and finally, a half-dozen missiles that superheat the air around Sinh into a great big fireball! He's... he's not immune to fire, right? Right?!

Psyber (253) has posed:
    "Well. I guess that's one eye Priscilla can't shove in a vacant eyesocket," Psyber muses as he causes the ye to explode and rupture from the impact of his sword, "Better hope she didn't lose the other one and need a replacement. We're running out of dragons to kill."

    Hijinks and japers aside, that whipping head hits him nastily, sending him rolling along the ground with a good chunk missing from his side. Thanks to Enark's regenerative and restorative waters flowing around, bolstering his own natural regeneration, Psyber is back up on his feet a few moments later and gripping the blade.

    "Ari, let's finish this with one blow. Convert all the poison in the air that you can into energy. I've got an idea."

    Psyber's Limit Break accrual is tied to incoming damage, as all good Tanks tend to have assigned. So, if Ari is actually able to convert that much poison into energy, Psyber will raise the sword over his head and try to send a massive beam of energy streaking towards the dragon to try to finish it off.

    He's not sure he and Ari are actually completely capable of doing so, yet, though.

Reiji Arisu has posed:
    Seath's crystal is approximately as terrifying as Reiji assumed it had to be. He had precious few of those bullets, but the damage that each one could do was... Impressive, to say the least. Catastrophic at the worst. While as single one is not nearly enough to take down creature of this size, the fact that it has apparently induced draconic paralysis says enough for their efficacy.

That alone might be why Reiji manages to avoid vanishing in a puff of corrupted flame and acidic smoke. That, and... Something... strange.

    An odd sequence of events starts going off deep within the exorcist's veins. Some kinetic equilibrium has been reached between one antitoxin and the other, and just the right concentration of each is now present for a new reaction to begin. Reiji feels energy surge through his nerves, filling every inch of his body with pure, alchemical POWER.

The world... Seems to slow down.

He watches, blinking slowly as fireballs sail through the air in slow motion.

His head cranes as missiles streak up to meet them, leaving contrails of smoke twisting in their wake.

This is... Interesting.

... He can dwell on it later.

    Reiji leaps straight into the air, vanishing in a blurr of speed and motion. He kicks off the nose of one of Staren's missiles, then another, the exorcist using each one as a stepping stone to deftly weave through Sinh's toxic fireballs. His hand falls to a black, raggedly-wrapped grip at his side. Without sound, without pomp or flash, an invisible, intangible blade emerges from its sheath. Reiji leaps, lunging forward ahead of another missile-- focuses, and swings.

He kicks off a stalactite, the brittle, calcified column shattering into chalkdust as he comes back around for another slash. Reiji rebounds from another missile, sweeping up once more with the invisible, intangible death-blade.

Twice more. Thrice more. Four. Five.

Eight slashes, before Reiji makes landfall and slides the spirit-blade back into its sheath.

Man, mad science can sure get pretty crazy.

Carna (974) has posed:
    It becomes increasingly difficult to fulfill his role as healer as Enark has to dodge not only lingering flames and clouds of poison smoke that is equivalent to acid mist, but also to just kind of try not to get in anyone else's way, to not get caught in an ycross fire, and to keep his focus as he is thrown into a terrifying battle when the only fight he has ever been in in his entire life (and death) was with that imperfect salamander thing they met when they came here before. That, and this, are the total of his combat experience.

    He is scared out of his wits and this is overriding his compassion for the thing as it tries to kill him and his allies. He may not be happy about helping it get killed, but he certainly sees the practicality of not stopping now. That's just... No longer an option. He isn't even sure if it's POSSIBLE to run with all this toxic dragon-scented FeBreeze floating around. And the fire. He isn't much for fire. It has its place, don't get him wrong, but that place is 'not all over him'.

    Thus, the task of keeping up with everyone's individual struggles and providing spot-healing whenever required is complicated by his efforts as a squishy healer mage to not become a new layer of murky sludge on the ground.

    It's harder than it looks. And it looks like he's just barely managing to hike up his robes as he runs from place to place and stay out of all the bad, while chanting and then pausing long enough to renew regenerative spells and direct new healing. It's up to the others to actually finish the thing.

    All he can do is this.

Heaven's Armory (1014) has posed:
    Ari is uncharacteristically slow to respond to this request. The way in which she communicates while in this form shares a similarity with Lordran dragons in that it isn't properly words, yet can still be interpreted as such. It's a much more pleasant and directed bit of psychic-sending, in any case. This is immediately relevant in that Psyber will get a message-sentiment echoing back to words he's heard before, the feeling coming through as clearly as did the false-girl's speech.
    It's not certain how well she can work with the poison in the air, but she is entirely willing to try. She can only draw on what is in close proximity to her, but pulling more air /in/ is something she can manage simply by burning it, in a manipulation of air pressure like that which feeds a firestorm. The mist is much too like ash for her liking, lacking the energy of life, but stubborn enough in refusing to die that there must be something with which to work.
    The air burns, the poison mist is pulled, and all of it converts into incadescent energy that runs the length of Ari's blade, up until the moment that Psyber releases it forward.

Lezard Valeth has posed:
"Well done, Elizabeth, that will do wonderfully." Lezard congratulates his Servant, smiling as the energy lights his face with an ominous glare from below. The horrifying poison mist is diverted, then consumed by the combination assault of Psyber and his heavenly arm, giving him just the opening he needs, while Enark's constant healing helps keep him intact through the horrfying effects of even casual contact with such a diseased creature... Though his gaze turns to Reiji for a moment, squinting at the use of a familiar-looking crystal in such a manner. He'll have to keep note of that...

But in the meantime, he has gathered enough power. With a surge of overwhelming force, the Catalyst is thrust forward, flaring with a brilliant flash of light.

             Accursed and reviled, scion of immortality denied,            

A terrifying chill wind gathers around Lezard, the beacon of Power that the Catalyst has become beginning to form shining sorcerous plinths of bright blue....

Spew forth thine hubris and call forth the stasis that had ever escaped you!

With a sudden explosive blast, a laser shears straight across the battlefiels, trailing across the ground as it sweeps up through the hampered Sinh. Everyhwere it touches, a familiar-looking effect spreads...

                        BREATH OF THE WHITE DRAGON!                        

As he cries out the name of the sorcery, there is an eruption across the touched areas, the spreading whiteness surging in a wave of engulfing crystal in a torrential draconic howl.

Elizabeth Bathory (911) has posed:
    There is a moment where someone with much, much more self-reflection would see this dragon, filled with bile and disease wrapped in a dying shell, but still filled with life and power, and think about this in relation to themselves.

    Did Elizabeth do these things? No. Elizabeth fell out of the air, her wings heavy with ick, coughing and spluttering and having acid away at her form. Thankfully, she's made out of magic. Lezard's magic! And, though she's draining him powerfully now, Lezard is also engaging in impressive spellwork.

    Without her spear - left in The Danger Zone - and having used a Phantasm-level attack, Elizabeth Bathory simply disappeared into the haze, further hidden by the acrid bursts of the 'fireballs' from Sinh's 'lungs'.

    She /probably/ didn't eat that to the face. Probably.

    BUT SHE BOUGHT HER MASTER TIME TO CAST SWEET not-that-good MAGIC SPELLS, that's something!!!

Priscilla has posed:
    Somewhere, far away and sunnier, Priscilla sneezes. This is a Lordran version of the Japanese thing where you sneeze when someone is talking about you; where instead you sneeze when someone is saying really rude and hurtful things that are also about you.

    Here, which is much less sunny and pleasant, owing to the reek of rot, heavy metals, compound toxins, blood, acidic fumes, and the comparatively pleasant stenches of gunpowder and ozone, Sinh breathes its last.

    The cavern has filled almost to saturation with the poisons it has been slowly exuding for the last few millennia, foggy enough to be difficult to see anywhere but very high up in the air, and well within the danger zone of wearing out the mundane and magical protection people have gathered against it, and mostly managed on life support by Enark's constant, frantic regeneration magic, like the most unlucky solo raid healer currently imaginable. The water running green and the walls sizzling as if soaked in boiling oil marks a good point for everyone to cut loose, as they do now.

    Theatrically, it would make the most sense to open with the shrieking barrage of laser, particle beam, and plasma missile fire that certainly ignites large portions of the less dense curtains of poison, and clears quite a considerable volume of it in the blast wave, but even before Staren's ammunition hits home, Reiji is already lancing free of the danger zone, eight, near-simultaneous slashes appearing as if by magic, laced across Sinh's chest, shoulders, flank, spine and neck, erupting into almost timed gushes of blood that are consumed in the maelstrom of sci-fi firepower.

    The dragon is physically hurled through the air, smashing through ranks of worn stalactites, and then suddenly thrown to the ground, like a doll by the hand of an angry god-child, as the spear shoved through its chest acts as a pithily appropriate lightning rod to the coruscating bolt of divine energies that shoot down through it, only visible as by Ornstein's hand once the dragon crashes into the fog-clear zone left by the missiles, and the knight can be seen dismounting from its back with the oversized polearm bloodily in hand.

    There might still be some fight left in it, despite increasingly becoming closer and closer to its visual analogue of charred, white wooden coals; used up, crumbling apart, smouldering and eaten away from within. It would also be irrelevant, as an arch-sorcery in emulation of a dragon far more powerful than Sinh rakes across the lesser dragon's further lessened form. The beam itself is minimally damaging, carving only a shallow line across its side, but the glassy soul-crystal that explodes from its trail is no less dangerous than the solid stuff Reiji had used; trading permanence for its massive area of damage. The stuff shatters as the stroke of Ari's gathered light passes through it, so much of its body breaking like glass only adding to the damage of the pseudo-conceptually powered beam cleaving through its wounded neck.

    It's overkill in the nick of time. There is little need to confirm a kill that large, as the essence of the First (Second?) Flame claims most of its physical form in that familiar mirage that conceals dissolving flesh and soul. This is good, because there's little chance as well. Even though Sinh is dead, the poison doesn't magically disappear as well. That cavern will be untouchable for at least a full day. The loot comes later. Ornstein urges everyone out, for the time being. If the pro says the job is over, it probably is.

Staren has posed:
    They hit it with everything they have in that moment.

    Staren watches his HUD carefully, the literal cooldowns on his energy weapons listed alongside the projected time to failure of his armor's environmental seals IF he takes no more hits.

    But it's dead.

    This is it, the big dramatic moment at the end of the battle. Someone should say something clever, dramatic, and inspiring.

    "Welp, time to go!" Staren manifests his wings and flies back the way they came, in a hurry to get away from the acid so he can use water from his matter manipulator to try and shower the acid off of his armor before it's too late.