5536/Exploration: Chopping Grounds (1)

Exploration: Chopping Grounds (1)
Date of Scene:	27 October 2017
Location:	Lumiere
Synopsis:	Priscilla and Finna have a super team-up of ultra friendship to investigate the underground horrors of Barrowville.
Cast of Characters:	974, 513, Priscilla

---

Carna (974) has posed:
    Once, when the Union was still a thing that existed, Elites from outside of Lumiere came upon a place called Escher after being warned it was not somewhere they wished to go by bandit Lanterns, one of whom tried to lock them on the other side of a fence with some sort of void-tendrilled Nothing Elemental that even the near-mindless Unlit fled from. As they came up the path towards Escher's base, they could see in the distance another tower without obvious path of approach, emerging up from some maze-like tangle of decaying structures.

    A red glow rose up from the spaces between them to light the tower's base, like magma cracks in volcanic stone, and the smell of death, rot, smoke, and burning meat, even carried to them on stagnant air, was the first real odor in Lumiere since their arrival, when all else has been dust and ash.

    The sound of screams had been distant, but had carried.

    The Pristine Plagueway, where Crow was first encountered, winds all the way around Barrowville, an elaborate highway of stone suspended in the air. Of all the places that the Pristine Plagueway can reach, they have seen scarcely any thus far. Only one of its destinations, the Gutter Disgorge, where they encountered the ambushing Hook Cloaks in the fetid sewers. Though the 'order halls' established by Lanterns quick to claim unused islands and fortresses attached to the Pristine Plagueway were seen from a distance, neither they, nor any other part of the Plagueway has seen extensive exploration.

    That it is where Crow was first met is what led Enark to seek the Shadow here. And that is how he discovered another way into the depths of Barrowville's sewers, and ever closer to the second Marble Guardian, who guards the very tower they saw so long ago, that will lead them up and OUT of this hellhole finally, to whatever lies above them. And thus, that is where they are gathered now. A smaller team, for infiltration and scouting. As they stand at the threshold of what sounds and smells like a combination of furnace and slaughter house, a blackened archway at the end of a road over bottomless mist and fog, the other side of which is a faint red glow and passage walls like charcoal, the activity level alone is enough to make this one of the liveliest places they've been in Lumiere so far, excepting that time last year when they experienced a recreation of the past.

    Enark is nervous, but determined to continue his search, no matter where it takes him, as long as it leads to his missing friend.

Finna (513) has posed:
Normally, the smell of roasting meat would have Finna's mouth watering. But this being Lumiere, she's not so sure she wants to see what's burning. Her sharp nose can already tell it's not the sort of things she normally sinks her teeth into. Well, there's also her ears...

    And the fact that the location is so gosh darned hot that her winter coat is FAR, far too much for the region! The trotting fox whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiines her protest with each and every step taken on the volcanic terrain,...

    "Why are we here again?!" She complains to the four winds... and engages in a fit of the same rapid-shaking that many furred creatures use to dry off. Except...

    Except instead of casting off any water, she instead showers anyone who's unfortunate to be standing too close with some dust and HER ENTIRE WINTER COAT. Yeah. All her fine, fuzzy white fur just EXPLODES in every direction... and like a snake shedding its skin, she is different underneath. Now instead of white as snow, she is a dirty, mottled greyish-black mixture.

Priscilla has posed:
    "A very good question." intones thin air. At this point, Priscilla isn't in the habit of wandering into new territory in Lumiere in a way anyone can plainly see. It's just asking to pull aggro from multiple mobs at once, or worse, run into an ambush. Her tone seems less of the cooperative sort, though. "If thou findeth the surroundings so disagreeable, thou art perfectly welcome to leave."

    Yeah. Still not on the best terms with Finna. Still, she somehow seems more chill without a whole bunch of subordinates to look after. Weird. Of course, there's the fact that Finna hadn't decided to follow them in disguise for hours, but maybe it also has to do with, well, the utterly massive amount of control she has over the situation without anyone extra watching. Perhaps.

    "However, at the very least, I am adamant that Sir Crow is owed this much, and that we shalt be ill disposed to continuing further without him. I am not entirely sure what it is that leads Sir Enark in this direction, but I shalt place mine faith in his scholarly expertise." The crossbreed, at least, is barely fazed by the reek of burning flesh and blood. Her senses had been traumatized into numbness by sights and sounds and smells of death so long ago that this new twist on Lumiere's macabre usual is more of a potentially useful hint than a reason to be scared.

    Invisible or not, she proceeds with caution. Narrow tunnels are bad places to be caught even if you are see-through, since it takes very little effort to cover the whole way forward. The only sense of hers that isn't assailed by the slaughterhouse atmosphere reaches out in search of 'living' souls.

Carna (974) has posed:
    Enark says, "While, admittedly, Crow is capable of rendering himself undetectable, the fact that my search of the Pristine Plagueway has been so completely fruitless, paired with discovering a place connected to those who attempted to abduct him once before have led me to at least consider the possibility that just as Carna was rebounded to Lumiere when a space-time alteration occurred, so too might have Crow experienced the same when summoned from within your Painting. That or he is still in there somewhere, but we have yet to discover sign of that. And failing new evidence appearing, the precedent set by Carna is what I am relying upon presently."

    He says all this while standing back and brushing dog hair from his robes, real or imaginary. He then turns back to the dark archway, unsure where Priscilla is presently in regard to the party formation, but just hoping he's not the one in the lead as he slips into the passage, presumably with fox in tow (or ahead, or alongside, or something).

    The sensing for living souls turns up quite a few pings. Both of the cobbled-together Lantern variety, and, oddly enough, about a half-dozen actual, living-person souls. Outsiders? They are all further within.

    The tunnel doesn't remain a tunnel for long, soon opening up above them, and putting them seemingly at the very bottom of a patchwork of dark-industrial structures, cables, crane arms, girders bridging the gaps, and so on extending upwards into darkness.

    The path is a crevice, sandwiched between those sorts of buildings, some with windows, others merely with arrow-slits for archers to shoot through, perhaps, or maybe just observation holes. Blind alleys and spaces small enough only for small children to fit through line their route on both sides, but as they work their way through this claustrophic path, tight enough to squeeze on either side of a full-sized Priscilla, it seems they have gone unnoticed for the time being. Even if the sounds and gradually intensifying brick-red light dappling on the the walls indicates they are coming closer and closer.

    At leat until some horrific mass of insect legs comes surging out of a trash-packed alley to the side, spearing towards them with serrated chitin, like some awful combination of praying mantis, spider, and cockroach, but all scaled up to about the size of a house. The main body and head remain unseen, but if it seizes or impales any of them, they will likely get a closer look at such than they wish to when pulled into the nearly inaccessibly tight space between two buildings, and mounds of refuse to be consumed.

Finna (513) has posed:
"Oooooooh. Do *I* gotta be the big girl?" Finna faintly snap-mocks back at Priscilla. The fox may just be fearless. At least, so long as Priscilla isn't DOING anything.

    Or perhaps Finna's confidence stems from something else. She doesn't seem terribly concerned about Priscilla's invisibility. The confidence might be disconcerting...

    Although it might simply be that Finna is more focused on the task at hand than she appears, because she bounds over to Enark with a happy yip... and when she lands... she's once again standing upright as a young woman dressed in somewhat skimpy hunting leathers, grinning like a lunatic...

    And, well, building up a heck of a sweat in this heat.

    "Gonna have to trust you with the weird sorcery stuff. Hope Crow can take care of himself 'til we find him!"

    Her chipper cheer isn't much impacted by the increasing heat or the cramped tunnel.. but when it opens she puts a hand to her forehead and gazes every which way!

    "..... Uhhhhh... oooh, don't like the looks of this! Way too many vantage points on us..." She's quiet otherwise while studying the place...

    Except for a YELP when the insectile THING comes whipping out of nowhere. She dives instantly in front of Enark and flicks a hand up---

    Five daggers go sailing for the thing's joints all in different angles, each dagger trailing a silvery thread!

Priscilla has posed:
    Priscilla only just barely follows all of that. That is to say, she gets it, but mostly only agrees with it out of lack of expertise to find anything faulty with the logic. "As good a guess as any, I supposeth. Let us hope it is the last we shalt be made to maketh."

    Trundling along through the dark and oppressively cramped alleys, Priscilla is pretty much forced to take on the stature of her 'mortal' guise, or else straight up be a blockade in the way of anything trying to attack. Though she'd be okay with soaking for Enark, it does defeat the purpose of taking point. Partway along that journey, she hesitates just a moment, to say: "There art others . . . alive, here. Not simply Lanterns, but /living/." That /severely/ bothers her, considering the closest to the living in this place are the few remaining Lit.

    The brief stop is fortunate timing, because it leaves her just short of the explosive surge of the urban ambush predator; no doubt one of those undead amalgams that adapts to Lumiere's nightmare environments to prey on the Dead Lights of wandering Lanterns. It's unfortunate that she can't even use her new weapon in the enclosed space, but she has other options. When the thing charges forward, with Finna no doubt being the obvious target, Priscilla dips forward and slides under its thorax, any leg clearance from the ground willing, flicks out her long, wickedly curved dagger, and jams it into the creature's underside, ripping through as much chitin as possible and injecting lethal Lifehunt charge into its blood.

Carna (974) has posed:
    The scything legs get stabbed in the joints by Finna's blades, twitching and thrashing as their serrated chitin draws sparks from the black steel and ash-covered stone of the cramped passage's walls and ground. They have surprising reach, and even after that initial evasion, if not for the knives keeping the squirming, giant-insect appendages from bending properly, they could have shot out and through someone vulnerable, like, say, Enark, who wasn't quite as agile as the others in dodging and nearly fell in his scramble to get away.

    Then Priscilla bravely reaches her arm into the dark hole lined with the discarded refuse of humans, from old cans and food wrappers dripping with rancid grease and spoiled food, used diapers and crumpled filthy newspapers, to the half-eaten remains of dead rats and small dogs, and who knows what other foulness. All so that she can reach into a pit of utter pitch from which the unholy combination of roach, spider, and mantis has produced this current, dark-brown, chitin'd horror legs, where the very maw it wishes to eat them with lies somewhere deeper within, unseen, and stab into what is hopefully its underbelly with a knife of her own, working the blade around to tear up as much as she can while afflicting it with her weapon's foul power.

    The horrific, high-pitched, nails-on-chalkboard screeching of the creature from its injury is bad enough, but the way it goes berserk, its legs thrashing despite the obstructions in its joints, damaging itself in the process as it carves gouges into stone and metal, has the potential to be far more painful to anyone still in striking range, before it gives a few last convulsive spasms and then withdraws its limbs half-way back into its den in its death reflex, at least leaving the path cleared to continue their journey.

    Ahead, it looks like this is not the last such side-passage or alley they should be considered with, but the slaying of this ambush predator at least, for now, seems to have left them without any injury. But this happened only a relatively short time after entering this area. If anyone has a clock to check, it's been about 15 minutes since they entered this passage. What else lies ahead of them? Enark is coughing and wheezing as he gets to his feet, shaken, but still prepared to move forward. His breathing has a whistling to it that wasn't there before his torso injury. He tries to steady himself, to suppress his fear responses, and remind himself he doesn't need air. Wordlessly, he proceeds ahead, though he takes the time to cast a water shield on both himself and Priscilla and Finna with some muttered magic words.

    Unless there is cause to stop or go back, the exploration proceeds, taking the trio past more alleys, some stuffed with garbage like before. As long as they keep their distance and move quietly they are not ambushed again by giant bugs. Though at one point they turn a corner and find themselves faced two paths. One of them is an alley with dolls and mannequins sitting, lying, hanging suspended, and otherwise populating it. For those still with eyes intact, glass eyes stare directly at them, unblinkingly, as though arranged knowing that someone would be coming through this way.

    The other path is a set of extremely steep stairs leading down to a wider cobbledstone road, which in turn slopes downwards to where that red light is even more intense, and the heat it signifies. Ther are a lot of ledges above this path, though. And it seems too much to hope for that there won't be ANY ambushers.

    So which way will they go? The tangle of artificial bodies can be pushed through easily enough, assuming they don't do anything weird, but at the end of the path is a dimly-red corner that may lead to their destination without the likelihood of attack from above. But who knows if these dolls will actually be so accomodating?

Carna (974) has posed:
    Enark looks both ways, nervously. And then makes a surprising suggestion. "Dolls were the symbol and servants of one of the current generation of Lords of Silence, Maretta of the Hollow Children. It might be a sign the passage is safe that so many are located here." He looks as far up as he can, seeing the tangle of wires and wooden bodies above. "On the other hand, this is the generation of Lords who abandoned their posts. The opposite might be the case. And even if protective, I can not say with certainty whether Maretta has any influence this far from her den."

Finna (513) has posed:
No more HORRIBLEBUG! The screeching makes Finna a bit uncomfortable - especially considering her sensitive ears - but she just flick-wrenches her hand backwards... and all the knives she tossed detach and sail back towards her on what are revealed to be threads of Essence silk. She closes her hands around them all at once in a way that weirds out onlookers - one might think she palmed them, but WHERE THE HELL DID THE KNIVES GO?!

    The watery shield is accepted with a sigh of thanks... but her sharp ears pick up the difference in Enark's breathing. The foxgal falls back to Enark's side again, clearly determined to guard the ONLY PERSON WHO KNOWS THIS CRAZY PLACE.

    It's a long and uneventful trek from there, which Finna is thankful for... but round one bend and...

    "OHNOWWHAT." Finna's never going to get used to this place. She gapes in full disbelief at finding dolls and stuff of all things in this place... but just rubs her forehead and presses onwards. A few times she returns a doll's stare though, weirded out by them.

    "Think it's unlikely! That any lord or lady would make a home here... only thing you can do is sweat sweat sweat!"

Priscilla has posed:
    Priscilla gets to add one more to the huge succession of life choices she regrets when she crams her dagger into that space. Despite her total and complete numbness to all sorts of death, horror, gore, and mutilation, filth of this variety fills her with an unspeakable kind of revulsion. Between the glittering city of the gods, and the cold and sterile painted world, her exposure to the tremendous amounts of waste humans generate has always been minimal, and intentionally distant.

    She will, in fact, /demand/ that Enark summon some water for her to drench her arm in, and then double clean her dagger, returning to visibility long enough to show both covered in bug blood. From then on, she starts chucking prism stones and the odd alluring skull (she has fewer of those) in front of really glaringly dangerous looking alleys and alcoves, though thankfully without response it seems.

    Dolls. She has a good relationship with dolls. She has a bad relationship with heights. Lordran things. Let's go with the dolls. "Regardless, even if the dolls art to be untoward, they art clearly present and manageable obstacles. I believeth the saying is 'the devil thou knowest'." For lack of any objection, she'll take down that path. If the cluster of mannequins is too oppressive to really move through them without bumping and shifting them, she won't even bother to turn invisible again.

Carna (974) has posed:
    Enark makes the time to divert some of Priscilla's water shield to her cleansing and that of her weapon before they are on their way again. She may still want to get some disinfectant or a bubble bath or something when she gets back, though.

    Priscilla seems to have decided for the group, so Enark shrugs at Finna and hurries along after her. But he doesn't hurry TOO fast. Working their way through the mass of dolls and mannequins, most of them simply plain frames, with no decoration beyond their basic, sculpted faces, no clothing, no wigs. Some don't even have eyes, though many do. And they don't always match colors.

    The feeling of being watched is definitely present, but what one makes of that sensation is up to the individual. Where one might find it creepy, another might find it comforting to know someone is looking out for them. It may take some ducking and jostling and pushing past limp bodies suspended on wires to make their way through, but except for Enark having an encounter with one of the dolls seemingly pinching its fingers shut around the hem of his robe (not intentionally, of course! ...Probably. No deliberate action was observed, at least. It could have been accident!) and some dangling fingers running through Priscilla's hair if she doesn't duck low enough, and an innocent-eyed, pouty-faced doll slumping forward right in front of Finna as she approaches, head turned to the side so that its crystal-blue eyes are looking up at her... Well, they escape this path completely without any harm whatsoever. That's nice for a change.

    At the far end of the alley, there is a shorter alley around the corner, ending at a ledge overlooking the place they have come here to explore.

    Giant iron wheels lined with spikes have bodies impaled upon them. The wheels turn by the efforts of hulking, gray-fleshed figures wearing blood-stained burlap sacks on their heads, pushing levers around and around, working chains, that draw the impaled figures across a sea of hot coals, one after the other. The sizzling of charred flesh is minimal, all moisture long since steamed out of them, leaving them pieces of charcoal.

    Huge pits have pulley systems drawing up large contains of molten blood, flaming and filled with the aspect of Despair, just like the Marble Guardian that produced it.

    Wagons filled with bodies, many of them still squirming, are rolled along placidly by more of the bag-headed men, down unknown paths, and occasionally to one of the many series of large furnaces embedded in the walls. Wooden tables are set up where still-thrashing Lanterns are brought forth, injected with some clear fluid from hideously large syringes that are simply jabbed in wherever it is convenient, and then the bag-men proceed to chop the Lanterns up, butchering them into parts, without said Lanterns 'dying' and dissolving into Dead Lights as they normally would when suffering such injuries. Hands and feet and other parts are shovelled off the tables into troughs of sorts, while others are placed into buckets and carried away.

    These and many other scenes of carnage and nightmare fuel are everywhere in the large open area before them. The walls and their dark-industrial design, stretching upwards for what must be a few miles at least, gleam from the painfully red glow shining from whatever blood-foundry lies below them. That crimson glow illuminates the silhouette of a vast tower high above, though only barely visible from down here.

    This is a very unpleasnt place indeed.

    New Area Discovered:

    CHOPPING GROUNDS

Priscilla has posed:
    Well. That . . .

    That's something. Alright.

    Priscilla is reminded, on a very distant level, of a certain other cult of man-eaters and man-butchers she had the misfortune of briefly encountering. That had been some psychotic degenerates in a dank basement. The scale on display here is /industrial/. Working in teams to chop and grill countless scores of woefully unfortunate Lanterns, with specialty built machinery and specialty concocted solutions, clearly designed and perfected a long time ago, being built on the back of the horrific Marble Guardian only recently slain. To what ends, Priscilla can only guess. It'd make sense that the city is filled with scavengers like this. The victims might even be its residents. The conclusions she hopes is inaccurate, is that the entire process might be to feed something other than just the usual monsters.

    There is an important question, though; one that she practically whispers in the flickering shadow of the fireglow, well far away enough not to be seen.

    "How long dost thou expecteth the remaining blood shalt last? Its source is slain." She /really/ hopes Crow isn't here.

Finna (513) has posed:
Finna's nostrils are the first victims of this heinous torture. She's been smelling wafts of it for quite some time, but as it gets stronger and stronger, and more and more sorts of smells mix into the mess... nausea and disgust mix with downright terror and horror... and the lithe young woman darts off to the side, doubles over...

    *BLEEEeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaarghhhhhhhh*

    Yeah. Thankfully her stomach was already mostly empty.

    She shivers right there and backs up, taking some cover and ducking down instead of exposing herself. In a few moments she's back in fox form, favoring her smaller, less visible form....

    "What... WHY....?!"

Carna (974) has posed:
    Enark is the most skittish of the group by far, and while there is bravery in him to even keep coming into such places of danger and horror after his brush with a second death, it would be reasonable to expect him to be just as appalled by all this as Finna. Instead he is... Frowning in thought. A hand goes to his brow, his body too cold and dead to be affected much by the heat, so the gesture being more as though to massage some thought into his brain than to wipe away sweat. "This seems... Familiar somehow. Terribly familiar, but I can not quite place where I have seen it before." He thumbs the tip of his hook nose a bit, as his hand comes back down and he peeks around the edge of one of the buildings they are sandwiched between in their vantage point.

    "I don't know. Perhaps that is its purpose. The Marble Guardians, as far as I have gathered, are Anti-Lantern weapons designed specifically to stop any Lanterns from proceeding in their path to the World of Ashes. Whether placed merely as obstacles, or as challenges to be overcome, I can not for a moment think that using the run-off of a slain Guardian like this was intended on the part of their designer. Clearly there was some connection to the God Forge, but... Maybe someone has somehow tapped into or diverted--" he is cut off in trying to come up with a satisfying explanation in regard to Finna's maybe rhetorical question as well as for his own mind, when he spots a small group of people in hoods and cloaks lined with hooks entering the area from one of the lower passages.

    His stomach, such as it is, drops at the sight. Those are the same ones who tried to abduct Crow before. If they're here... Does that mean?

    But as the Hookcloaks come, others come after them. A line of people, three or four in military fatigues of some kind, another some woman in a torn pink dress with shoulder looking bruised and dislocated, and the last a small child in a white gown, a truly enormous mass of hair hanging down around her head and running along the ground behind her. Its coloration is hard to say due to the degree of filth covering it, as well as her clothing, and her skin.

    Except for the child, all of these people being led on a chain connecting their collars and bindings to each other are living human beings, as far as Priscilla's soul sense can discern. If Finna's nose can detect their smell over all the conflicting odors and the scennt of her own recent sickness, then she gets the same impression. Where the senses of both may falter is with the child, who, though she pads along with the others, head down, face hidden behind her own hair, seems to not even be present despite being openly visible to the eye. She has no presence. It's like, despite looking right at her, she's not even there. They might as well be looking at a wall while searching for any human impression. Whatever she is, she's not alive, not Lit, not a Lantern, and definitely not Unlit.

    But they know someone else who can make themselves undetectable, don't they? She might be a clue.

    And she, along with the other victims, horror at what they are seeing, panic and revulsion, starting to overwhelm their clear fatigue from the injuries they have suffered at the hands of their captors as they are brought before one of the bag-men. The looming figure lurches away from where he is observing the pouring of molten blood into some sort of black-steel mold, and moves to meet up with the Hookcloak.

    It is quite likely they are witnessing the method (or one of them) by which these butchers obtain their meat.

Priscilla has posed:
    Priscilla's expression was already tense and pensive at the grotesque sights before her, but it falls even further when she feels those distinctly living, breathing souls, being marched into the fore, becoming a darkly glacial stare of hostility. There are only two conclusions here, both of which she airs out loud.

    "Either there art, somehow, still survivors of the world up above, or these ones art being transported from the outer Multiverse as meat for the flames." she says. The latter is what spurs her to action.

    The Obsidian Greatbow is finally draw from invisibility. Even diminished to meet Priscilla's mortal stature as it it, it can barely be planted and drawn in this space. Even so, she has an eye on the leader, and thus a shot. An iron lance is drawn from . . . well, apparently she had the quiver on her, and selectively invisible this whole time? Is that how all her weapon vanishing tricks work? Or is there a hammer space involved? Needless to say, it can't be one of many given these twists and turns, but she expects one to be enough. A mass of metal the weight of a man, sculpted into a thick, flanged spear goes on the obsidian-bone rest, the metallic string whispers faintly under the colossal draw, and Priscilla looses the dragonslayer great arrow at the leading Hookcloak . . . lined up exactly with the worker figure. With even the slightest degree of luck, it'd skewer them both and hurl them into the boiling vat.

Finna (513) has posed:
"No way anyone's alive from Lumiere's... living world! Probably... yeah. Disgusting assholes!" Finna would curse further, but there's just no time to express such disgust and rage.

    For now though... she just decides to vault down the ledge and slip into stealth of her own. Rather than being outright invisible, she combines hiding with a strange befuddling aura that simply causes her to be entirely overlooked and ignored.

    She's headed for the procession, though without knowing what's going on she hasn't commited to anything beyond scouting yet...

Carna (974) has posed:
    The arrow flies from Priscilla's boy, startling Enark as the giant-sized javelin launches forcefully, impaling the Hookcloak in the midst of its bartering, and the bag-man in front of him. They do both get hurtled back into the steaming, hissing, torrent of burning blood when they ram into the bloodsmithing set-up they have, scattering tools and crates and other miscellaneous objects everywhere in the fall. However, while the Hookcloak dies quickly, vanishing into a fog of Deadlights, and sending the remaining Hookcloaks scrambling to secure their merchandise, the bag-man stands up, his head and shoulders aflame and running with liquefied Despair, that burns away all hope, leaving the very idea of something better merely a reminder of how painfully hollow one has become. He grabs the huge arrow impaling his belly, the fifteen-foot tall butcher, working to tear the impaling shaft out of his torso despite the damage being caused, even up to the point of causing all of his putrid intestines to spill out of his torn-open belly to the ground as both he and others around him yell out in rage as they point in the direction the arrow came from.

    Massive long-hafted hammers, huge butcher knives and meat cleavers, and even a lengh of chain with anvils on both ends are wielded as weapons as the creautres of various, but uniformly large, and a combination of rotund and muscular, begin moving to assault the intruders. Those capable of attacking from afar begin to gather at the base of the ledge that the trio--or duo now, as Finna has slipped away--hurling basins of flaming blood up towards them even if some of it spills back down upon the butchers themselves, or try to strike out with their anvil-chains. The rest are heading up the path that they could have taken instead of the alley that they did, perhaps intending to try to circle around. But how any of them could possibly fit through that tight corridor full of dolls and mannequins is up to the imagination. Of note, not ALL the butchers and laborers have stopped what they are doing. While some have diverted from their tasks, many others continue about their business. Apparently being under attack by wandering murder-hobos isn't so unusual an event that they feel the need to rush off to battle.

    The Hookcloak survivors, however, seem determined not to lose their captives, and as Finna pursues the staggering, confused, exhausted, and wounded humans (plus weird kid) towards one of the numerous alleys that render this place simultaneously a deadly maze and hopelessly unsecure and unsecurable, she may manage to catch them unawards in tight confines. They certainly aren't expecting a fox with a Somebody Else's Problem field to chase them. And taking down the captors would mean freeing the captives.

    Enark has retreated from the ledge to go back to the doll-filled alleyway to see if there's any way to stall the enemy. He settles for putting a ward of protection over the other end of the passage, invoking Tharmas's name to make time twist and turn. Anyone who attempts to simply force their way through will, at least for a time, find themselves leaving the way they came as they are turned about without their realizing. It won't stop projectiles, but the ones with the projectiles are attacking from the base of the ledge, not trying to cram their bodies into an alleyway full of dolls.

    "Please tell me we have an escape route in mind," Enark pleads.

Finna (513) has posed:
Finna's hardly the most principled or heroic person in Creation... or Lumiere... but there is no way in hell she's going to just let a bunch of people be marched off presumably for heartless slaughter!

    Which is why she similarly has little mercy for the Hookcloak survivors. The moment she's behind them... Finna is once again in human form - although visible only for a moment...

    Her body blurs and ripples, hints of moonlight exuding forth from her skin and then... vwhoooooosh!

    Almost entirely silently, she blitzes forth starting from the rear of the chain gant, blurring in and out of sight for only brief split-seconds as she seeks to whip past the gang and deftly carve through every offending throat with poisoned knives. "Sloppy slavers deserve to get knocked down and out for good!"

    She ends the superspeed burst, still faintly glowing, at the head of the group... showing a smirk for the captives. "We're getting out of here."

    The weird kid with the extreme hair has her worried, but Finna's trying not to show it.

Priscilla has posed:
    Priscilla is somewhat impressed/dismayed the giant beast of grisly labour is still moving, but her intended objective is still accomplished. The handoff is called off, and the Hookcloaks are in disarray, running, hopefully, into the metaphorical (and perhaps literal) waiting jaws of the fox Exalted. Despite the power of her weapon, however, Priscilla is not nearly enough a trained archer to get into a standing shootout with this many enemies, and the greatbow is all power and no repetition, meant for bosses, not hordes. She puts it away, in that 'right on the d-pad' way.

    She still has to hold this pass until there are results with the prisoners. Were they merely Lanterns, their fate would be less important, but living souls and the strange non-presence raise serious questions. Without the luxury of dropping aggro, Priscilla actually steps out of and away from Enark's protective ward, putting him to her back, and withdrawing luminous Moonlight, and her wicked Dagger in either hand. "I had considered 'over their corpses'. A change of pace." she replies, with a hint of vicious frost in her voice.

    For the time needed, Priscilla walks into the fray. The blue sword lashes out and flaming pots and jangling chains, repelling the dark, supernatural power of the Marble Guardian's blood and slicing through iron with magical force, creating a narrow path in which Priscilla can turn her side and stand between flying anvils, axes, and burning blood splashes. When she has a spare moment in the barrage, Moonlight swirls with motes of shadowy light, and sings out in ringing chorus as she throws out a blade of arcane moonlight into the rear line, slashing and exploding whatever is unlucky enough to be in the way.

    Up close, she uses the long and short weapons in tandem, tracing dazzling lines of light through the air with her sword and clashing blades with the force of a 20 foot giant, and lashing out with lethal stabs of the soul-slaying dagger unseen. Part of its effectiveness is her form and her strength, but it's almost as if the twin blades move of their own volition, slowly turning into a revolving dance of endlessly chaining slashes that gradually speed up regardless of the damage she takes. A piece of shrapnel here. A graced blade there. Her dress is dotted with her own blood in several places, but it seems like the crossbreed has almost zoned out into an island of blue and silver murder, as if she's aiming to see how many bodies she can pile up.

Carna (974) has posed:
    The Hookcloaks are caught by surprise, and while some try to retaliate with hand-scythes and projecting the hooks on their cloaks out on cables to catch fox flesh, two wind up fleeing while the others die to Finna's blades. They dissolve into Dead Light mist in the process. The living prisoners are scared, exhausted, wounded, and confused. For all they know this is yet another person here to capture them. But the promise that they are to be rescued causes relief among most, suspicious but hopeful glances among the soldiers, and no particular reaction from the face-concealed-by-hair kid.

    The Exalt can then begin working on unbinding them. Hopefully she remembers the way back through the labyrinth of alleys, because trying to find a second exit out of here among all the many, many different paths or just running back the general way they went without a clear idea of their route, could lead to becoming lost, trapped, or running into something even worse.

    Maybe the nose knows.

    Priscilla makes her way back through the alleyway full of dolls and mannequins, but they seem oddly more of an obstacle on the way back than the way in, like they're trying to keep her from going through. The butchers and bag-men seem to be uncertain of where precisely Priscilla and Enark are until she finally steps out of the alley, searching and looking further down the street. Almost like they can't see the doll-filled passage.

    Enark has similar difficulty making it through, and has to cancel the Turn-About ward he placed to redirect hostile force through the application of time, one of only two Time spells he knows, once Priscilla makes it clear she's going out to fight, and then joins her, though he hangs out at the edge of the corridor, ready to cast healing spells and water shields on her.

    The guttural, near-bestial roar of rage when the half-dragon is eventually spotted is echoed by the hulking figures around the spotter, and they soon charge forth and into the deadly onslaught of melee and ranged attacks from blades and moonlight.

    While it is not finesse they use, their sturdy bodies, brute strength, and great size combine to make them damage sponges that keep taking hits and are slow to fall. However, fall they do, eventually, when enough of their bodies are damaged to cause their collapse and demise. Unlike the Hookcloaks, they do not break up into Dead Lights immediately. They are as slow to dissolve as they are to face a second death. Almost like the Stone Devils did not immediately dissolve, betraying that though they were Dead, they were not quite Lanterns.

    The soul-slaying weapon is the one that tends to fell them swiftly, while raw damage dealing means beating on them for an extended period of time, giving fifteen-foot masses of meat and muscle and leathered skin a chance to go up against the twenty-foot giant and possibly land blows by simply presenting a wall of cleavers and meathooks lashing out constantly from enemies that just allow themselves to take hits if it means a chance to kill their target.

    But in the battle of attrition, the difference made by both an essentially instantly-lethal dagger and the support magic being tossed onto Priscilla continuously to reduce or eliminate any injury, and to heal anything that gets through the shields means that she is soon surrounded by the pile of bodies she had hoped for, even if they are soon to disintegrate into motes of broken down spirit matter, leaving the street empty once more.

    Some other butchers seem to be lumbering their way in Priscilla's direction from the far end of the furnace area upon realizing their allies have fallen. One of them is leading on a chain something like a giant, razor-toothed mouth on the front of a mass of raw, bleeding skin in the shape of a centipede, but with human legs protruding from all over its body. Hopefully Finna will finish freeing the prisoners and bring them back to them before they have to face a second wave, with the addition of even worse opponents.

Priscilla has posed:
    Though Priscilla had waded into the fray driven as much by a seething desire to do harm to those things she had seen working the mills as anything else, and certainly had confidence in her ability to lay murderous waste to swathes of even tough opponents, she is ultimately glad for Enark's help. She is mighty, but she is not Undead, and so eventually exhaustion and pain from small injuries starts to stack up, so having him cover her where she can't be everywhere at once, and deal with the chip damage that gets through, is probably a near-deciding factor in finally cleaving through the mob.

    He has a limited supply of magic, though, and Priscilla has both limited energy, and a limited tolerance to stay here and draw the heat. This is her secondary style of fighting, and neither sustainable, nor terribly safe, and she has absolutely no desire to do the suicidal heroic Elite thing and throw herself on the slavering flesh monster. In fact, with the wheels shut down for the minute, no enemies in aggressing range, and having given Finna what she hopes is plenty of time even for the capricious and inconsistent Lunar, she Nopes the hell on out of there, flicking blood from her blades and practically shoveling Enark back into the alleyway.

    "Thou were very much correct in interpreting the dolls as harbingers of safety." she says, almost kind of surprised. Usually that's the thing someone says before the mannequins come alive and strangle someone from behind. Apparently her affinity for dolls paid off.

Finna (513) has posed:
"Tch.." Finna grouches out some displeasure at seeing the Hookcloaks dissolve into spirit motes. "That just means they'll be back... hoi there, name's Finna! And if you want to live... steel yourself as best you can and follow along! Whoever still has some decent strength left, don't leave behind those without or you're staying here with them."

    She belts this off quickly and sharply, dusting her hands off and and sprouting a heck of a playful smirk. She's gotta show some zest and guts to raise their spirits and give them hope after all!

    ANd just like that, she once again zips through the group as a blur... and the chains snap apart, cut cleanly in a few weak points of their welds by streaks of silvery light too fast to properly focus on.

    Now once again at the 'back' of the procession Fina announces, "Keep your eyes open and wits about you. No telling what's gatherin' out there!" It's.. noisy and smelly enough that she really doesn't WANT to know what's gathering out there!

    Thankfully, Finna does have a good way back. The nose does indeed know, and animals like foxes are excellent at, well, marking where they've been Even in human form, she can smell the way she came!

    Before she sets off though, she aims another Hard Look at the strangely super-long-haired girl. "... Can you SEE through that?"

    Apart from that one - hopefully uneventful question, she leads the group back through the labyrinth of alleys and passes and is quick to flick knives at anything threatening the return to Enark!

Carna (974) has posed:
    Enark is indeed running low on magical energies as he is forcibly guided back into the alleyway. There's no new magic to be had after magic itself was killed. All he can do is wait for Lumiere to reanimate the magic he is recycling within him, which means once he is out there is a time frame where he has no power except to make mimics, and that isn't going to be especially useful in this situation. He steps out of the shadows and says, "It was an educated guess, but if I had been wrong, we might have suffered a worse fate. Interpreting portents of the associations of mythical figures is not precisely my area of expertise."

    Though he had heard from those who explored the Arcade of skeletal remains found around a Shrine of Light in an area called 'The Arcade'... In the middle of a doll shop. Time passed enough for the Dead to decay into skeletons or for Living explorers to suffer the same fate, without being found by the monsters outside, under the watchful gaze of dolls. While he wasn't thinking of that at the time he made his guess, it fits.

    As Priscilla and Enark wait in the alley, Finna comes running up with the freed living souls, doing their best to keep up with each other and help any others that have trouble. The Lunar received no response from the non-presence figure, and she or he or it is also the slowest among them, but the one that moves with the most methodical, unceasing gait. Tireless. Once everyone is together again, they are free to head back down the labyrinth of passages towards the volcanic-rock-looking tunnel they entered through, and out onto the Pristine Plagueway. However, somewhere along the way, the moment no one is looking, the long-haired child seems to have left the group. Because they've vanished.

    Just like Crow did when they left the Painting in Lordran.

    A gruesome new location they've uncovered, with disturbing new elements to deal with -- including that of outsiders who have no place here being involved. But at least everyone except that mystery child made it back.