2363/He Who Waits Within the Crushing Dark

He Who Waits Within the Crushing Dark
Date of Scene:	01 June 2015
Location:	Great Painting of Ariamis <PoA>
Synopsis:	Venturing into the very heart of the Abyss, those daring enough to try come face to face with the nature of the Dark, and what it means to be Man.
Cast of Characters:	Tomoe, Priscilla, 168, 183, 253, 395, 560, Ayako Hasekawa, Lezard Valeth, Reiji Arisu, 707

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Priscilla has posed:
    Everyone is summoned in almost utter blackness. The feeling is like the panic of waking up, opening one's eyes and seeing no difference from when they were closed; sharp and sudden as the unconscious transition from wakefulness to a phantom existence seemingly fails to reach fruition. The atmosphere is familiar to some, yet subtly different. The air remains silent, scentless, still and fails to blow in one's face no matter how fast they should try to move, perhaps not existing at all. The sensation of overwhelming scale bears down from every angle, as if some colossal thing were looming overhead, drowning everything beneath it in its impenetrable shadow. The feeling of being watched is more intense than before, to the point that it feels as if a great host of indescribable somethings waits just beyond the failing limits of human sight. The sense of hostility however, is curiously restrained. They are not merely tolerated, but welcomed; beckoned into the yawning darkness all around them.

    Of course, there is an /almost/ qualifying it. As a change from before, everyone's feet rest on solid ground; what feels like coarse, ice cold granite, but what looks like gleaming bone in the faint light cast by what Priscilla and Oscar can produce. There is the sense of something with substance lingering here. Definition somewhere in the blackness, implied by the fact that the ground seems to angle downwards. Curiously, neither of them are wearing their pendants. Priscilla offers little in the way of explanation.

    "This is the chasm of the Abyss. The deep crevice of the world that no longer exists, from which all Dark sprang forth. I knoweth not what role the Kings didst play, but in their absence the Abyss is . . . expectant of us. Once past its boundary, it desires something more than simply to snuff us out."

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Big risk, big reward. Psyber doesn't want to play around today, doesn't want to cut corners, and doesn't want to hamstring himself. As much as the spirit form offers a fallback, the spirit form also has a weaker constitution than himself. And Psyber needs to be as absolutely on-point as he can be. And thus... despite all better judgement, Psyber is here in person.

    He's dressed in his usual work outfit of long coat, pants and shirt. He's got a few swords across his back in varying forms, as well as a couple guns too. He sighs a bit and puffs on a cigarette while he looks to Priscilla, "This is going to be a rough one, huh?"

Reiji Arisu has posed:
    If there is anything Reiji knows, it's that exposing the spirit to the raw stuff of oblivion is a bad idea. He arrives not as a glowing soul, but as a being of flesh and blood, his corpus shielding his essence from the oppressive, overwhelming darkness that chokes this place. It's the kind of dark that awakens the animal-fear. The sort of dark hounds at mankind's heels- one that exists in the primal memory as why they must always seek greater sources of light.

It stings to look too deeply, and so Reiji focuses on the few shapes that exist in the void.

    "You don't say," he grunts to Psyber, before turning his attention to Oscar and Priscilla. "Have you two been beyond? What do we need to expect?"

Ayako Hasekawa has posed:
    Ayako is summoned as a Black Phantom, as usual. Floating in midair, sitting on her broomstick, dressed a witch, with an inky black aura that, compared to her surroundings, seems a bit gray. Her amber eyes blink for a moment as she glances around. It's... so dark.

    And then she shudders violently, almost falling off of her broomstick. This feeling of darkness. Of it watching. Of it trying to pull her in. Somethi-no. Ayako takes a few deep breaths and slowly calms down. "Ungh. What a yucky feeling." She sticks out her tongue distastefully. "But I'm okay." A soft smile crosses her face.

    Ayako cheerfully greets everyone in the group and quickly casts Water Bubble on everyone! A bubble of water surrounds each person for a moment and then vanishes. A useless barrier, but one still needed for her other ones! Best to be safe and ready! After all, it's Lordran. The rare moments are when something is not trying to kill you!

Amalthea (395) has posed:
    Just a small light in the darkness. A faint glimmer standing out amidst the purest, deepest, black of the Abyss, Amalthea arrives via the entry from New Londo. With but one blade to her name, the holy and divine slaying sword, Faith, she arrives, taking her place by Psyber without a sound, despite the super heavy plates of gleaming silvery armor adorning almost every part of her body.
    There's a wound there, not a physical one but a wound nonetheless, and though it has had time to heal, the ancient unicorn knight has still remained mostly sequestered in a reticent silence within the depths of her manse until just recently, making the trudge out into Lordran herself rather than simply resorting to the safer and more expedient means of being summoned as her normally so grossly incandescent golden self.
    "Knowing this place, rough is probably understatement." Murmured as she checks the straps of her shield and unslings her lance, Wishblade, into hand.

Lezard Valeth has posed:
Lezard Valeth, much like Psyber, has arrived in person. His own reasons are unstated. His dark clothing seems to almost blend into the Abyss around him, his cloak snapping in the lack of breeze. Perhaps something else moves it.

While others seem to be unsettled by the Abyss, Lezard stares into it, fascinated. Energy practically crackles from his hands as he steeps in the endless Darkness present, as if he was instinctively brushing against something but not quite able to grasp it. "I am prepared to assist." Lezard says, simply, his voice tinged with anticipa...

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
Much like Psyber and Reiji, Xiaomu is here in her corporeal form as well, and has added the carry-pack she sometimes totes around to her usual qipao and vest. Fortunately, the low light doesn't really offer too much clarity as to whether her hair is still altered from her run-in with a Fayt chaos surge; she can't afford to be vain about her hair when she's needed in the field.

"So, we're about to head into a preternatural chasm full of primordial darkness ..." She carefully leans over to take a look past the ledge.

"So it wants to do what instead of just killing us? And more to the point, why do *we* need to go in *there*?" the sage fox asks rather pointedly. "To go digging for the primordial light that lies beyond and beneath the primordial darkness, or something like that?"

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe is now once more back into tbe breach and she's feeling odd she's feeling shaken by other events and her confidence that is normally there. She's still here and she seems ready as she cam be of trouble. She follows after Priscilla now keeping silent she's clearly very much on edge but how much is from what she's experiancing now or what is eating at her?

Nathan Hall (168) has posed:
    Nathan is familiar with this void. This is, of course, by no means anything that makes the void less disturbing by nature, nor any less overwhelmingly unsettling. His emergence as a White Phantom comes with him as laden as he usually is with adventuring gear, anti-Abyss pendant especially, and his arms are crossed in a self-comforting gesture. There's also an odd bandage wrapped around his forehead. He tilts his head at Priscilla in a way that seems curious, almost confused, but his expression remains utterly unchanged. There's a baffled sort of noise.

    "We have no means, really, no real means of understanding what it wants with us until it tries." He says, looking to the space beyond their sight. "Tell us what you know of the situation already. Let us move on as soon as we can." He's going to try to get the group pushing further into the darkness, sticking close to Psyber, and a bit towards Amalthea. "I expect it to be rough, yes. Hopefully, we'll all be pleasantly surprised." There's a quick nod to the water-spirit too. "Thank you, Ayako." Lezard is given space, for various reasons. Xiaomu is given a dry explanation: "The ancestor of mankind exists in this place. We require his or her soul to complete the spiritual mechanism that will be used to save Lordran."

Emiya Shirou (560) has posed:
    "I get the feeling we picked the toughest path." States Shirou at the edge of the chasm. He's already armed himself and is decked out in some light armor of Union make. fanciful futuristic materials. White and red's the color scheme, oddly enough. He's taken by surprise when Ayako starts her buff-spree but after a few moments, remembers what it's from.

    "thankfully we've got a great group here."

Reiji Arisu has posed:
"If there's anything I learned from living with Xiaomu," Reiji says to Shirou. He pulls Gold from its holder with his free hand, snapping a fresh cartridge into its handle. "It's that the hardest routes are always the most rewarding when you beat them. We'll be fine, just stay sharp."

Psyber (253) has posed:
    At the comment about the hard route, Psyber shrugs his shoulders a bit, "This is the hard route, but it's the one that most defies the system. Gives the most agency. It's the objectively best option," Psyber firmly states as he takes a revolver out of his jacket and slides shots into the cylinder. Gimmering silver bullets being slid in one by one.

Amalthea (395) has posed:
    Nathan's presence is something... Amalthea must tolerate. But the unicorn makes no show of even trying to fake her feelings in the least. The librarian's lingering presence close by is met with silence, a slow turn of the head as the mechanical mythic's lone eye focuses raptly upon Nathan.
    It is no glare, but something far worse. A silent, almost placid, stare of that endlessly deep blue gaze, like a frigid pool standing out vividly in the eternal black of the Abyss; a pool utterly lacking of reflection, that stares through the youth in an almost entirely- a look akin to a wild animal staring down a human for the very first time, before she turns away. A low rumbled whicker and shoulders hunch, shifting not to turn her back outright to him, he is still her general and duty must be performed to that point. But beyond that, her very body language conveys an obvious, silent, apathetic and immortal sense of mild antipathy for the follies of man.

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
Gradually, bit by bit, a noticeable frown entrenches itself on Xiaomu's face, and she takes a moment to double-check her weapons as Nathan explains the situation more clearly ... and then Reiji plays the cheap-shot hole card: a game metaphor.

"Just remember, Reiji, those super-nightmare difficulties are for the super-elite gamers who choose to take on the extra challenge, and they typically come with a true final boss that makes the NORMAL final boss look like a mook by comparison," she points out. "I don't remember hearing that this particular leg of the quest was something any of us had a choice about ... and I don't know about you, but *I* haven't seen any 1-Ups floating around for the taking."

She finishes verifying that Silver and Platinum have full magazines plus a chambered round each, takes a moment to check Suiren's blade before re-sheathing it, seating it firmly in the staff which acts as the ice-elemental blade's scabbard, and does one more count of the grenades she's carrying, making extra-sure that the pins are all secure and won't come loose before she deliberately pulls them loose. "Well, we're not getting any closer to the final battle just standing here, and I don't think the pause menu has a 'return to level select' option, so if we're doing this, let's do it."

Ayako Hasekawa has posed:
    Ayako bows her head cheerfully towards Nathan when she's thanked. Her amber eyes take another slow look around... and she shudders again. Lightly this time. Her hands reach up and take off her witch hat. She flips it upside-down and rummages around inside it for a moment.

    In a moment, she takes out the Dragon Bone Charm pendant that Inga made for her a while back. Hey, if it can help resist corruption from The Filth, it might help against this horrible presence. She quickly slips it around her neck and pops her witch hat back on her head.

    Just in case, she slips her legs around the broomstick to sit on it in the classic witch riding on broomstick pose. Best to be ready to move!

    "But... but... the Extra route is supposed to lead to the Best Ending! So we got to go for it!"

Priscilla has posed:
    "I cannot imagine any of this being easy." Priscilla says to Psyber, visibly worried that so many people have forsaken the protection of removing themselves with phantom form, though her mood improves slightly at Ayako's usual, bubbly presence in the face of all of this. Oscar responds to Reiji. "Not much further than this. After we reached something like a floor, with no real knowledge of what could be lurking it, we decided to stop for the time being. I haven't the slightest clue of what to expect. I doubt anyone has ever been this far, save perhaps the Abysswalker himself, and if he left any records, they were well before my time." Priscilla speaks to Xiaomu as she begins walking, starting the group forward. "The precise opposite. We requireth the soul that is all of the antithesis of light. A void of infinite Humanity, which feeds upon and is fed upon by Flame in turn."

    The impression of the landscape being twisted bone is not helped by what sprawls out in front of the party, meter by meter as it passes through the little bubble of illumination that surrounds them. Logic says that it must just be unusually coloured stone, but the contours of the terrain are strangely unnerving. Great curving plateaus loom out of nowhere before ending abruptly over staggering falls. Blunt clusters of fused rocks erupt from the walls and floor at frequent intervals, making for the best way to descend the omnipresent dangerously steep drops. Long, segmented columns bridge the infinite darkness like gargantuan, organic spines grown from the earth. What could be considered stalagmites fail to stand straight upward, tilting jarringly at strange angles like badly windblown trees. The ground goes up and down seemingly at random, looping around pits, crossing chasms of nothing, ascending on makeshift stairs, not much of it makes sense, but progress is unmistakably downward; the path slowly funneling inward on a spiral into the center of some great depression.

    It isn't long before the party begins to see something else. Were they exploring a darkened forest or nighttime ruins, they could be dismissed as a trick of light or vision, but against a backdrop of utter nothingness, they stand out with alarming clarity. They are recognizable as eyes only to the human brain due to the precise distance they stand apart from each other and above the ground, moving in fixed pairs, but possess no definition other than being points of jarring white. As they draw closer, an outline surrounding them becomes distinguishable by the presence of a flickering grey haze behind it, rising like columns of monochrome fire off of the shadow at their center. There is the concrete impression of a human head and shoulders, sharply and clearly defined, but everything below it becomes an incomprehensible blur, causing the things to drift across the terrain without real movement. For those who have seen it, they resemble the physical manifestation of Humanity that can be found within Lordran's borders, but grown to the full size of a person, some even larger, and possessed of additional resolution.

    Though at first they seem to only wander at random, it becomes obvious that they are congregating around the Elites who walk alongside them, gathering into a teeming crowd of expressionless gazes, until there must be hundreds of the things pressed around from every direction. They make no noise, and yet project an incredibly strange feeling. A sense of what can only be described as deep, overpowering nostalgia, tinted with the undertones of longing. They break only as the party steps through a very obvious gateway of sorts, made of bizarrely bent columns that fuse together at the middle, behind which there is nothing but an endless expanse of flat, level ground, strewn with random patterns of small stones.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    As they walk, Psyber carefully looks around and then nods to Priscilla, "I will do whatever it takes to ensure this is successful and we are able to salvage your world into functionality," He notes seriously, pausing a moment later to ask her honestly, "Are you okay? I haven't taken the time I probably should to gauge your emotional health throughout this. Tell me if something's troubling you, I'd hate to contribute to any ill distress on your part."

    As they walk through the area and the eyes begin to follow them, Psyber reaches up and seems to pause for a moment, trying to decide which sword will be best for this particular mission. He seems to settle on a longsword kept in a battered hilt. He grips the handle and then draws it in a careful motion, revealing Sovereign, a sword from Elliana's world.

    "Time to test if this just works on Shajem and Amethyne, or any given Divinity. No time like the present." He murmurs as he twirls the blade in his hand as they arrive at the new area.

Reiji Arisu has posed:
    "I'm pretty sure that the position of Nightmare Mode Boss is taken by the Calamity Dragon we have to deal with when we're out of here," Reiji replies with a sardonic chuckle. "But the point is made. We'll proceed with caution. This place feels about as safe as a live grenade." He nods to Ayako, then, "Right. There's no backing down now. Just need to keep moving forward."

    He pauses as Priscilla and Oscar begin leading the group forward again. Onward it is. Reiji follows, his mobile arsenal swaying at his side with every other step. "A floor. This place has a bottom? It seems... Unthinkable."

But sure enough, the darkness begins gaining definition. Skeletal rock formations, jagged teeth of stone and ashen earth. And then... Something else entirely.

    Ghosts... Spirits? No. Something else. Shadows. No, not even that. The creatures that follow them through the ruins are impossible for Reiji to categorize- something that is hard not to find disturbing. It's... As if someone had taken a human and used his body to punch out a hole in the world. And these things are that hole.

    Odd feelings bubble up in the exorcist's heart. What /is/ that? What is it about this darkness that is so familiar? He goes quiet as he moves along, forcing the thoughts to the back of his mind.

Fortunately, they don't linger for too long.

    They come into a new place. Reiji shakes the lingering nostalgic notions from his brain, and replaces them with a keen, sharpened awareness. His main hand moves towards the array of hilts and handles jutting from his arsenal. It goes utterly still as he takes another step forward. Psyber gets a nod, "Let's hope it does. I don't have much that's specifically anti... Whatever this stuff is. What I've got on me now will have to do."

Ayako Hasekawa has posed:
    Ayako floats around on her broomstick, and floating pale blue flames wink into sight around the group to try to give some extra light. Once in a while she gives someone a ride on her broomstick when things get a little too steep.

    She stares at the full size Humanities and then blinks her amber eyes slowly. Eerie! Ayako tries not to stay too too close to them. Sometimes floating upwards to avoid them.

    Ayako curiously floats over to Priscilla when Psyber asks if she's okay. She doesn't want to echo the question to be annoying, but is still curious as to the answer. She does smile cheerfully and comfortingly towards Priscilla as well.

Nathan Hall (168) has posed:
    Nathan has an odd reaction to Amalthea. He notices the antipathy, in a way, and gives it its due attention, but seems neither to shy away from it nor to throw himself at it in a self-punishing way. He just seems to sort of accept it and work with it. His descent is unsteady, slow, gradual, careful to keep one hand on the clusters of rock that make for hand and footholds. "I am hopeful that this civil invitation does not mean an intent to wage any kind of battle at all. It is possible that the Ancestor may have a trade or agreement."

    "The nature of humanity is not necessarily violence, you know, not necessarily war. Violence is simply a means to an end. Just a means to an end for its greater nature. Maybe the pinnacle of humanity has a different sort of challenge to present to us, a different sort of nature to express." He rambles, a bit, as he stares at the Humanity around him. "Humanity can be a lot of things. It can be curiosity, and ambition, and vendettas, and arbitrary altruism. All sorts of things, really. Let's see how the Ancestor of Humanity will represent it today."

    The nostalgia is hitting Nathan hard, he understands the feeling very well. He's quashed it down deep, but that sort of longing for something entirely abstract, maybe something entirely impossible, is understood deeply. He shuffles through the gateway without much more to day, and steps out into the flat expanse, finding whatever seems to be the rough 'center', or at least where one might be expected to stand when having an audience of sorts. Is this where the 'invitation' feeling was pulling? If so, he'll stand respectfully, arms crossed now behind his back, standing attentively. Otherwise, the plan ought to be to move on.

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe is just on edge now after what's happened. She now keeps quite she does mill over the words that Priscilla ahs had and she looks to Xiaomu for a moment before she moves onwards some more. The strange place here puts her into an uneasy mood as she presses onwards. She does star to wonder if there's something wrong for Priscillia but her friend has been often hard to read at timws. Ot it could be Tomoe just bad at such things.

She then move to fall in with Nathan to cover him as she's seemed to become his body guard of her own accord when he's in situations like this. She's after all totally disposable and she knows it.

Lezard Valeth has posed:
...pation.

Nathan is avoiding Lezard, but that doesn't keep him from watching the Holistic Librarian intently. Something about him seems to have gained a moment of interest from the Necromancer of Midgard. However, he has nothing to say, turning away to continue his trek. The twisted expanses are rough and potentially deadly, full of lethal falls and twisting, confusing passages. But travel they do nonetheless. The innumerable manifestations of that elusive Humanity that appear draw his gaze, his hand twitching as this example of a new, fascinating phenomenon presents itself. It is little wonder why a man such as Lezard is eternally interested in the nature of Lordran. The basic functions of the world seem intent to continue to further everything he wishes to achieve.

As tempted as he is to harvest the innumerable spirits clustering around them, he stays his hand. they are not here for these spirits, but for something... Infinitely more. Infinitely... Darker. If these spirits remind Lezard of an earlier time, a time before his soul was stained black and damned by his own hands and his obsession, he does not show it. Perhaps this is one who is well and truly condemned.

They leave the spirits behind as they pass through what passes for a gateway. What is this place? Is this the darkest area of the Abyss? The Necromancer breathes faster, adrenaline racing through his veins as he withdraws his ruby-tipped sceptre.

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
For all her mostly good-natured snark, Xiaomu is semi-noticeably on edge as the group ventures into the Abyss. Priscilla's additional information makes even better sense of why the group is delving into this abyss than Nathan's earlier explanation, though, so she's not going to argue any further ...

Still, Reiji in particular would be able to pick out that she's staying extra-alert, as if she expects something from beyond the darkness between stars to leap out and start trying to devour souls. She's also as prepared as she CAN be to prevent at least the latter part from happening ... and if she can interrupt the initial leaping out to start with, all the better.

Amalthea (395) has posed:
    It is perhaps best that Nathan not throw himself against the armored wall that Amalthea presents. The ancient knight trudges on. The nature of humanity is not violence and war, no.
    It is sheer foolishness.
    But she keeps her thoughts to herself, nursing them as one would a bitter glass of buttermilk, sour and curdled.
    Thus, she traverses the Abyss, the slender glimmer of seashell light glinting off her horn, flickering as breezily as a butterfly in a gale as she trudges on in silence, heavy armor not even making a sound. The ethereal, unreal darkness is not lost on her, a primal sense of animal disquiet adding a halting gait to her steps every now and then, but she does not let herself falter frim simple quailing fear as it slowly mounts. A sensation that worsens as the many eyes of the darkness0 the humaniform shapes of sheer black lingering amid the group. It takes a considerably force of willpower to simply keep putting one boot in front of the other, hands clenching on her lance. It is now she gives voice to a different, more wild thought, put to words.
    "I mislike this place. So very much."

Emiya Shirou (560) has posed:
    Emiya Shirou's decided to stick close to Ayako. Why? Who really knows, but that's what he's doing. The young man's keeping his guard up the whole way through, and that means making some rather freaked-out faces at the strange spirits roaming around. "Hopefully they're friendly. What are they...? Can they speak?"

    If he only knew what they really were. That would be fairly crazy...

    "Stick close if anything happens. Where'll we be without your helpful spells?"

Ayako Hasekawa has posed:
    Ayako smiles softly at Shirou when he sticks close to her. Sometimes she lets him ride her broomstick when the terrain gets a bit too strange. Best not to repeat that... rocket sword incident again! "Hmm... they can't seem to speak... they're still eerie..."

    She then nods her head once and smiles at Shirou. "Un! I will!" A soft giggle follows, "Oh, I'm sure you would manage somehow! But I'll still do what I can."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Mizuki has been here, though she has been silent (and invisible) enough to evade anyone's detection until now. The only thing that may give her away is a small warp of light -- a glint of steel and color that appears as if out of nowhere at the same time as Psyber's blade twirls in his hands.

    She is not here as a person today, but as the cog of a machine presently cutting its presence out of nothingness. There is no need for her words, then; only her action. And action she will give, as it is required of her.

Priscilla has posed:
m

    Priscilla does her best to smile back at Ayako, put a little at ease by the presence of multiple people focusing on her mental wellbeing rather than the headlong trudge into the depths of extradimensional quasi-nega-hell. "There art more than enough things worth worrying over, but none of thee art one of them. Asides, I hath cometh thusfar without disaster. With the end so clearly in sight, it wouldst be difficult to lose faith now of all times." She casts a dubious glimpse to Sovereign. "I am not certain divinity hath any place here. We face the first mortal man. The essence of what it is to be human, rather than a god." She speaks offhandedly to Reiji. "If the Fire is finite, so too must be the Dark." It is Oscar who responds to Emiya, in a tone that suggests he is reciting something. "A fleeting will given to the Dark. It feels envy, or perhaps love, and despite the inevitability of tragedy, sees no other alternative."

    Wherever he might have heard that, it is fitting foreshadowing. The nonexistent air of the Abyss stirs with the approach of something from the dark, whirling past as if driven out of the way by something of great speed and size. The feeling of uncountable eyes on the back of one's neck is drowned out with the overwhelming presence of a single stare of fathomless intensity, raking every inch of the body. The ground rumbles under the tempo of heavy footfalls, rattling the loose stones against the barren floor. Slowly, something emerges from the edge of the light, resolving into a definite shape. It is hideous.

    To say that the thing before them is the true form of humanity is to say that humanity has no form at all. It is twisted, chaotic and utterly senseless, without an iota of rhyme or reason to its visage. Towering over everyone present with the size of a true monster, it retains only a passingly humanoid shape, stood upon twisted double jointed feet and walking with the support of its left arm, so utterly, disporportionately massive that it uses it as a third leg. It's skin is a kind of onyx verging on violet, under which is visible what would be a wasted and skeletal frame were it not for the fact that the skeleton bears only passing resemblence to a hominid, twisting and fusing together in strange, alien ways until it looks carved rather than grown. The lower half of its face is a lipless snarl of massive grey fangs; the top half is missing entirely, terminating into the towering mass of bone that has exploded from its head, neck and shoulders and swept up behind it in a pair of half rings like an unwholesome halo ringed with human teeth and the baleful glow of unblinking red eyes studded randomly into its mass. The only sign of its intelligence is the fact that its scrawnier arm clutches some form of staff, made of bizarrely warped, blackened wood and crystal, tapping against the ground like a walking stick.

Priscilla has posed:
    Nothing but a seething rumble escapes from its open mouth, but its 'voice' is practically screamed into the mind. A delusional rhapsody spoken with the psychotic passion of someone moved to insanity by their fervor, echoing over and over again with the simultaneously melancholy, furious, reverent and terrifying tones of trascendent yearning. It equates to a sense of endless, fathomless desire; the absolute certainty of being a fundamentally incomplete being, and the white hot purpose of taking and becoming everything it can as its answer. It is an overpowering impression that the creature is desperately searching for something. It seems even so far removed from Lordran, the fifth Lord has not escaped the fate of tragedy that has befallen all the others. It is irrevocably insane.

    Experiencing the creature's core essence snaps things into chilling perspective. The sudden understanding is clear as day: the Abyss did not spring into existence as a natural and fundamental opposite to the First Flame. The Abyss /is/ the first man. It is a part of him that has multiplied without ceasing for countless centuries, devouring the world of light in its mad quest for whatever it is it seeks. The Abyss /is/ Humanity, condensed into a choking, suffocating miasma. The true nature of mankind, divorced from all higher thoughts, functions and callings, is to Want. The Abyss desires everything. Welcomes everything. Consumes everything.

    The philosophy has to be examined later, because the first thing the creature does is to charge headlong into the group with a thunderous roar and smash Priscilla with a blindingly fast backhand strike that sends her crashing into the gate.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    The light is a thing of order, structure, absolution. It carves fact into the fabric of reality, makes clear the confusion of the Earth that it might be categorized, contained. Yet where there is too much light, the denizens of that realm become machines, incapable of things like faith, uncertainty, and imagination.

    The darkness, on the other hand, is a thing of disorder, chaos, and oddity. It cannot be rationalized. Like water or a gaseous compound, it will never maintain a coherent shape, nor one that can placed into any sort of usable metric. In it, everything is invisible. 'Imagination' within a place of pitch loses itself to insanity, and there can be no real or concrete images on which to base one's dreams. The denizens of such a realm can be no more than animals, shambling about, forever lost.

    Both extremes are deplorable to Mizuki. And so, this face of 'humanity' is a misnomer to her -- rather than that, it is only a 'human'. It is the raw body of instinct and impulse which ruins the delicate, beautiful flower of the soul. Never has she been so glad that she turned away from Kaathe's path as she is in this moment, nor so eager to test her blade. Only seconds before the pygmy launches itself toward their number does she finally become fully visible.

    Her countenance is a cool, silent expression of murder; it is the paradoxical, animal hatred that she feels toward the very idea that the human could ever fall so far.

    And she will not tolerate it. Even less will she tolerate it laying its filthy, grotesque paws upon her friend. In a moment, she vanishes again. In another, she reappears at its side. If she is allowed to do so, she sinks her sword deeply, so deep that only its pommel is left visible, and twists it in place before vanishing again, and reappearing several steps away. Rather than resummoning her sword, she now holds her gun in her left hand, and her shield in her right.

    Her face is statuesque and still. She takes a deep breath from her vigil before pointing the revolver at her quarry and pulling the trigger thrice. She lowers her arm shortly after, waiting.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Psyber nods at Priscilla's statement and slowly sheaths his sword as he does so. He scowls a bit and says, "If you're sure. But you can tell me if something bothers you, Pris. I really don't want to be making your life worse inadvertantly," Psyber worries about that a lot these days. Particularly after how much worse he made Nathan. Because of that, he gives Priscilla a serious look as if trying to figure out whether he's the problem in this case or not.

    A different weapon is taken out. This time, it's Erinyes, the warhammer from Annu. He rests the weapon up and across his shoulders, staring forward into the darkness as the form of Manus begins to take shape. The hand that grips the haft tightens around it and he adjusts his footing, scowling into the darkness and trying to make sense of what he's seeing. He looks to Reiji, "Time to wo-"

    He's cut off before he can say much more as the beast charges in and towards Priscilla, crashing into her and sending her flying. Psyber gets a shocked look, hop-dashing backwards and skidding his feet across the ground underneath him as he slams the hammer down and digs it in for traction, tearing up the ground, "You shouldn't have hit her," Psyber says seriously, staring at the creature, "We could have been reasonable, but..."

    And then Psyber sprints forward, moving fluidly and with a silent rage. The hammer swings in an underhand uppercut, the massive weight of the weapon being swung like it was a feather by the colossal strength of the angel as he tries to catch the underside of the monster with a massive strike.

    "You just shouldn't have hit her."

Ayako Hasekawa has posed:
    Ayako smiles gently at Priscilla when she reassures her that she's fine mentally. "Un. I'm glad." Her head inclines to the side gently as she listens. "The essence of what it is to be human, huh...?" She thinks that over for a while.

    Whatever she was thinking about is interrupted by the feeling of being watched. Not to mention the presence of something very big and very fast. Amber eyes stare at the... thing that emerges before the group. "What is-" And she is interrupted again by the rumble. She winces and clutches her witch hat down onto her head. "Ggghh! This feeling. I know this feeling! It's-"

    And then Ayako is interrupted again by the creature charging at the group suddenly! "Priscilla!" A ball of purple water is swiftly thrown in the Crossbreed's direction. "Healing Water!" Her amber eyes dart around quickly, trying to regain a sense of what is going on in the battlefield.

Reiji Arisu has posed:
That... Is not human.

    Dozens of hungry, red eyes seem to penetrate the Exorcist's mind and body like his flesh were mere tissue paper. The /thing/ that emerges from the yawning mouth of the void is as incomprehensible as it is monstrous. The First Man is a tremendous presence- a starved, consumptive entity. Reiji can feel its truth keenly. It tugs at his core, drawing his awareness away with a dark undercurrent of unfathomable, endless Want.

    This... Is humanity? Is it this that underlies the whole human race?

    No. No, mankind is greater than this. It is capable of so much more than this. This creature may have once been representative of man, but madness has stripped all but base desire.

It is Id given the form and power of a god.

    Like a pendulum, Reiji's spirit swings back into balance- but not quick enough to keep Priscilla from being waylayed by the monstrous First Man. "Xiaomu," Reiji growls, his ready hand trembling uncontrollably-- until he snaps it about the hilt of one of his many weapons, "Let's go to work."

One moment, Reiji is standing in place.

    In the next, he has advanced into the progenitor's guard, rolling beneath its great arm before coming to a stop at an angle from its back leg. "Karin," he whispers.

His sword does not.

    Flame erupts in a tremendous gout, casting defiant plumes of fire into the endless, ravenous abyss. The crimson katana is swung in wide, cleaving arcs at the tendon of the monster's legs. Reiji seems to be trying to hamstring the beast...

And maybe, to draw its attention with the flame it so desires to possess?

Nathan Hall (168) has posed:
    Nathan remains in his stock-still attentive position as Priscilla goes flying past him. His appearance is utterly stoic and emotionless, despite the incredible surge of sudden fear he begins to understand the nature of. The human's warped and horrifically twisted form evokes a powerful sensation of nausea, disgust, and abject, gut-wrenching fear. It is also clearly quite powerful, a thing of such magnitude that it could kill Nathan in a single solid strike. Regardless, Nathan's appearance remains unphased, and his expresison remains flat.

    "I see." He says, simply. In a way, he can see a great deal of the Ancestor in himself, as all at once he begins understanding the pure nature of their obsession. However, he does his absolute damndest not to turn this into a personal issue for him. This is business. This is simply what needs doing. He adjusts his glasses, and in spite of every ounce of oppressive darkness, his glasses shine with a brilliant glare. He uses his [SCAN] ability to immediately attempt to identify this being's weaknesses on physical and metaphysical levels... Specifically, he thinks, he'll try to understand its relationship with fire, something he's experimented with before and built up some initial understanding of.

Emiya Shirou (560) has posed:
    Bad enough that all of them are rummaging through the Abyss. The warped sensory input, bizarre physics, and oppressive all-encompassing Dark are enough to even unsettle the normally unyielding Shirou. It might be a good thing because he's entirely on edge just in time.

    He finds himself staring briefly at the humanoid, towering monstrosity... and then HURLING himself away from it with a single leap. He goes skidding across the 'ground,' Kanshou and Bakuya raised and at the ready. "Already...?! This is what we're here for?!"

    His twin swords stand against monsters, but this thing is another category entirely in its own way. A terrifying abomination that he cannot accept, if he knew its true nature...

    "HUUAH!" He ends up hurling BOTH through the darkness at the creature and quickly projecting another copy. In the end he repeats this several times then hops to Ayako's side again, weapons up defensively...

Lezard Valeth has posed:
The sheer presence that strikes Lezard sends him almost stumbling in the face of this... being. The fact that it is twisted and insane doesn't matter to the Necromancer, as he looks upon, perhaps, the closest thing to a God he will ever acknowledge. This is Humanity ade manifest. The desire to take, to consume, to /want/.

And Lezard throws his head back in the aftermath of the first, brutal assault, and laughs, reveling in the crackling, consuming presence that is the First Human. Power begins to gather around him, coalescing as he summons up his own power.

This is not the time to play nice. He makes an educated guess on what he will need to use here, and the form of the magical frame around him changes. "LIGHTNING BOLT!" He calls out. the non-air splitting as he unleashes a cascade of crackling electricity through the air towards the massive beast.

Amalthea (395) has posed:
    Ever forward the unicorn trudges, loppy ears pricked and listening to the pervasive ever present and deathly silence of the darkness. It is when that Thing appears that she halts, lone eye focusing on the true form and meaning of the Humanity of Lordran. How it Is. How it Wants. How this very core and soul of the Abyss itself consumes everything in an ever growing spread.
    Darkly fitting.
    But that is Humanity of this world. It is not the humanity that Amalthea knows and accepts, it is not the humanity that she knows- for all her recent bitterness- is capable of kindness, altruism; the humanity that is more... Human.
    All this and more she realizes in less than the span of a breath, and that's really all the time she has when the beast that is Manus bull rushes everyone and strikes Priscilla aside.
    In an instant, honed wild instinct gives way to honed veteran reflexes and Amalthea jinks aside. Her armor is heavy. To roll would take too much time to rise again.
    This is why a sudden explosive burst sounds off, the rocket knight's jump pack erupting with with an explosive surge of momentum that jinks her aside, landing perfectly on her feet with little time needed to re-balance as she brings her lance to bear.
    "Man is many things. But this is not one I will accept." Hissed to herself.
    As Psyber's righteous fury sets him into motion, Amalthea's pious dedication to duty spurs her. Shield is raised and with a much less than gentle yank she pulls Nathan and simply THROWS him behind her as she positions herself to stand as a defensive wall. An immoveable aegis in front of Priscilla and Ayako tending to her. Wishblade is poised at the ready, and with a twirl she reverses her grip upon the legendary silver lance of Laveil. Before HURLING it with all of her baleful, silent, simmering, fury.

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
There are some things that not only shouldn't exist, but have no place whatsoever in the rightful order of either the natural or the supernatural ... and this entity, Xiaomu is utterly certain of, counts as one of those. She's not even sure such a thing could embody *any* aspect of humanity, let alone be the proper manifestation of it.

And the fact that it swats Priscilla away like a dragon tail-swiping an unwary knight doesn't make it any more frightening to behold, mostly because this thing is already so damn scary to look at.

Xiaomu does her best to keep her wits about her, and as Reiji and the others join combat, the sage fox does so as well, dashing in behind Reiji, and as he breaks to one side, she bolts for the other with her staff clutched tightly in her left hand, her right arm raised, and a cry of "BYAKKOHOU!!" erupting from her lips ..

Accompanied by a similar eruption of pure white radiance, raw Light magic, aimed and released for the twin purposes of trying to blind the embodied Abyss and trying to dazzle its vision. Following that, Xiaomu pours on the speed, trying to get behind the monster and hamstring its OTHER leg, like Reiji was just going for on his side.

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe is more than a little bitscared at this point she just isn't sure what to make of this thing. She's looking in it's face if she can even call that a face. She keeps back and doesn't even want to think too hard about it. It comes at them and it's time to fight. Tomoe's going to charge right into the thick of thing. Tomoe is now rushing in to intercept it.

"GET THE HELL AWAY FROM THEM!"

Tomoe's acting more rashly than she does as she starts spamming her taunt abilities along with launching several light spells to get the darnt hing in her face. Dawn Breaker and the mourning wall is ready as she makes the plunge.

Priscilla has posed:
    It takes Priscilla far too long to pick herself up off the ground, rolling over in the layer of broken debris her body had made in its collision with the solid rock behind her. It is only when Ayako start healing her that she begins to move in earnest, taking in a deep, sharp breath and pushing herself upright, staggering on her feet, blood dripping from the long streaks of red shot through her hair. She wipes her eyes with the back of her sleeve to clear her vision, turning to regard the battle exploding into action with an exhausted stare, before making the effort to disappear, just as Mizuki does the opposite, first to strike Manus, Father of the Abyss.

    Orta-Aelinos plunges deep into his side, but the effort is like skewering a petrified tree, requiring all of her strength to drive the blade inward. He only just turns to face her as the revolver goes off, puncturing his hide in three separate places with little spurts of black. Just as he turns on the Author, Psyber blindsides him with a hammer that weighs more than he does, catching him straight in the chest with the telltale crack of bone and physically hurling his enormous bulk off of the ground, launched into the air where he is suspended for a moment by gravity. In the second it takes him to crash back down to the ground, six copies of kanshou and bakuya stab into him from alternating angles, and Amalthea's lance skewers him through the midsection, the gleaming silver sticking into the air as his prone form collides with the earth.

    He's barely begun to get up as Lezard's lightning blasts him dead on in the shoulder, arcing over the metallic weapons embedded in his body and burning off the ropey fur that clings to his arm. Karin bites severely into the back of his bony leg along with Xiaomu's opposite elemental sword into the other, knocking him back down, but a moment's contact is enough for the flames to gutter severely, the elemental energy being consumed just on touch. Nathan is immediately privy to this information as the SCAN reveals Manus to be supremely resilient to fire and most magic just by virtue of his very nature devouring it, being especially succeptible only to primal forces of creation and divinity. Oscar joins in with his trademarked suicidal bravery, leaping onto the downed creature and driving his sword between its fused ribs, using both hands on the pommel to push it as deep as it will go.

Priscilla has posed:
    At the slight gap in the offensive where every Elite is still winding up for their next attack, Manus abruptly switches from punching bag to a swirling vortex of chaotic, furious violence in the blink of an eye. His form is so dissassociated that the scramble of trashing limbs as he leaps back upright is nothing but a blurr, punctuated with a scathing, ear-busting roar as he grabs Oscar and physically hurls him away into the darkness along with his sword. Grabbing at himself, he smashes Shirou's replicas under the weight of his fingers, twisting and wrenching Mizuki's and Amalthea's weapons and vindictively casting them into the distance. He clearly either feels no pain, or is so out of his mind that he can't care about it.

    His return offensive is like a thundering, out of control train in the direction of everyone he can see, lashing out with a nauseating contortion of his swollen, elongated arm in Mizuki's direction to swat her like a fly, then sweeping around to smash Shirou with the opposite side, raising his titanic fist high up into the air and then bringing it down like an artillery shell on Reiji, and then again on his partner. His body shakes with fury as he wheels on Amalthea, swinging his oversized staff like an axe with the jagged crystal as the edge, and then using the backside like a hammer to try deck Psyber as hard as he had hit him. He launches himself into the air with a freakish degree of height, physically landing on Lezard and simply using both hands like an enraged ape to try and pulverize him against the ground. As Tomoe rushes in however, he spins around, looks straight down at her, and then snatches her with an extension of his arm like a striking snake. It becomes apparent at that point that the entire inside of his hand is studded with vicious, bony spikes, because he spends the next minute steadily crushing her like a car compactor, ignoring as many attacks as possibly as he focuses on crumpling her body like a soda can, smashing her against the ground a few times for good measure.

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
A roar like that can only really mean one thing, and Xiaomu yells, "SCATTER!" just before the counteroffensive begins - including a blow that smashes her flat to whatever passes for 'ground' here; she's not entirely sure she didn't just hear something break, and *is* entirely sure that it feels like something seriously did give way under that strike; she tries to pull herself further out of range, while simultaneously endeavoring to angle towards Reiji, and hoping that her partner is in better shape at the moment than she is.

But if she's hurt badly enough that close combat is no longer an option, she at least has other means of combat at her disposal. Still, Manus is so freaking huge that she doubts bullets are going to do much ...

There are a couple of hisses of pain giving away Xiaomu's position as she fishes in her vest for a grenade; a moment later, the pin has been pulled, the spoon released, and the grenade is arcing towards Manus's location - or as close to it as she can gauge by her hearing, which is not currently impaired.

The fireball which erupts when the grenade goes off is more literally 'fire' than you might expect, thanks to Shinra's munition mages enhancing the grenade with elemental force.

Ayako Hasekawa has posed:
    No cry of pain? No flinching even! Just movement from impacts... this... this thing just does not care! It just wishes to thrash and destroy right now! Ayako shakes her head quickly. This isn't the time to just stare!

    When Manus begins to move his misshapen arm, Ayako swiftly thrusts her palms outwards towards Mizuki! "Sea's Depth Barrier!" And a bubble of thick ocean water forms around Mizuki to help shield her from the sudden swat. Sea's Depth Barrier is a shield that slows down and cushions against attacks with thick, compressed sea water! In addition, it adds a certain weight to attacks that come out from the barrier!

    Ayako then blasts a jet of water from the brush of her broomstick. She flies off in pursuit of Mizuki and Amalthea's weapons that were thrown away! While Shirou can project more, those two will definitely need their weapons back!

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Speaking positively for a moment, Manus' movements are far too gradual and senseless for them to make full contact with Mizuki. More negatively, however, those same sweeping gestures are so wide, and so mad, that she cannot predict precisely where the hit will land. She halts time a moment to relocate, but the moment after she re-enters the more general flow of temporum, that bulbous flail of the abyss's arm strikes at her right side before it continues on in Shirou's direction. She has just enough time to block it with her shield, but the sheer force still manages to send her flying back where she collides with the 'floor' of the abyss.

    She somehow manages to land upright, but the fact remains that she has no weapon. Her revolver has been twisted into an inoperable shape and cast away, leaving her with nothing but the Moonlit Shield. But that will not deter her. She returns to the air seconds after her landing, throwing a line of three speeding fields in front of herself. After two, powerful flaps of her outstretched wings, she charges through each, her shield held in front of her. She attempts to charge the still-visible pommel of her sword to drive it even further inside of Manus. And if this maneuver is successful? Then the shield begins to glow a soft, ethereal, azure hue, sending a blast of raw magical energy into the dark one's side. This is meant not only to deal damage, but also to propel her away from him.

    Assuming she is allowed this distance, she rights herself in the air again with a surprisingly elegant, deliberate, half-circular twirl. She pours yet more of her power into the shield, generating no fewer than five crescents of light which approach Manus in a variety of patterns. Some zigzag at the cost of speed whilst others travel directly forward at the cost of maneuverability. All of them 'home in' on Mizuki's foe before she vanishes.

    This time she is beside Psyber when she comes back into being. With a flick of her wrist, she coats his body in a speeding field intended to both quicken his movements and increase the velocity of his strikes. Only when all of this is done would she finally remain still a moment. Her eyes squeeze tightly shut in pain -- the consequence of such overuse of her power.

    She can't remember the last time she used this much of her strength at once, or if she ever has. Something about seeing Priscilla hurt really bothered her, it seems.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    The relaxed pace at which Psyber normally fights is gone. People who are used to seeing him take a more pace or a more calm methodology might notice the change in posture and attitude. After the attack, Psyber simply watches him fly and lets the others go to town on him. He twirls the hammer and then slams it down to the ground, cratering it from the impact.

    For the moment, Manus is giving Psyber a form of Catharsis. A condensed avatar of the folly of man, the darkness and mistakes of humanity. Manus allows Psyber to externalize his self-loathing in a violent and productive way, and this is good for Psyber. This is also not great for Manus, because a focused Psyber is a very dangerous Psyber. And his red eyes glare at Manus in a hollow and distant way.

    "But you did hit her." Psyber says gravely, looking towards Manus as the creature, the man, the monster... recovers from the onslaught. Psyber takes a slow breath and watches it. He won't dodge the retaliation, because that is anathema to what he wants this fight to represent for himself. Not that he'll tell the others how he feels right now. So he simply makes no move to dodge and takes the hammer-swing of the staff dead on. It connects and slides him backwards.

    There's a cracking and crunching of bone and blood that follows in his trail, but Psyber keeps his grip on the hammer and drags it along with him, tearing a deep trench across the field as he uses the resistance to pull himself to a stop. With a wheezing moan, he pulls himself to his feet and picks up the hammer again.

    He dashes in again, slower this time, but more practiced. A marching jog as he asks hollowly, "We're trying to help. Trying to do what is right. Why would you hurt people trying to do the correct thing?" He asks in an empty, distant tone.

    As he draws in close, he plants a foot down hard and spins on it, pivoting the hammer around in a horizontal strike of immense force. As he recovers from the strike, he stares at whatever results from his attack, bringing the hammer to rest on the ground again.

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe has a terrible habit of rushing in and she's well she's going tio pay for it. She's now got the thing's attention. It doesn't take lone as she ends up attemping deflect the attack with her shield and it doesn't work. The mourning wall is knocked out of her hand and the horrible thing will catch her and crush her like she's in a trash compactor. She has time to let out a blood chilling scream and then there's silence.

YOU DIED

And all that remains is a burning red flame where there was Tomoe.

Lezard Valeth has posed:
Lezard might like what Manus represents, but it's less fun when Manus wants to smash him the everything. It leaps upon him and tries to smash him like some kind of massive, twisted great apr, and the Necromancer leaps aside, showing unexpected dexterity... but it's not enough to keep him safe. All it does is keep him from getting immediately pulverized, the Necromancer getting hurled across the floow in a tumbling, painful impact. He yells, wounds opening and red blood staining the ground as he staggers back to his feet.

Sending his own minions would be useless here. There is no way they can stand up to this kind of world-shaking force. Steadying himself, he focuses and channels additional magical power. Manus might be resistant to most of them, but he simply has to shape them the right way. "Mystic Cross!" He calls out, a wave of bright white sparkles washing out to strike out at Manus in an explosive wave of gleaming holy energy.

He always did love the irony implicit in the action.

Emiya Shirou (560) has posed:
    "Priscilla! Back off if you're too hurt!" The last thing SHirou needs is their native champion biting it. The thought of anyone dying in this crazy place fills his gut with a sour feeling best left undescribed.

    Really, he also doesn't have time to feel bad about things.

    Because here comes a huge club-smash! Or is it an arm? yes, it seems to be an arm...

    "You'd think something this huge would be slower!" All he can do is guard himself hastily. "RHO AIAS!" A purple-pinkish shield with three petals - hurriedly and crappily projected - catches the blow, having appeared from nowhere between it and Shirou... but the lengthy arm smashes through after a few moments of struggle and still sends him stumbling and tumbling and ragdolling across the rocky floor. WHAM WHAM THUNK!

    He ends up face-down with one arm bleeding fiercely, but still pushes up to his feet. Gasping for breath.

    But he's not done yet.

    "My body is made of swords!"

    raising his arm, Shirou brings his Magic Circuits to full bore. Power sizzles and rushes through them... and in mere moments a dozen swords of all shapes and sizes rain down upon Manus!

Reiji Arisu has posed:
    Karin's flames gutter and die. Reiji curses, sliding the sword back into its sheath before this... /thing/ can smother the core enchantment. That he instinctively leaps back to reassess his tactics is about the only thing that spares him from what happens next.

Manus goes mad. Madder. More mad than he was moments before.

    Primordial Man looses his fury. He becomes a cataclysm in of bone and sinew, blows raining down with deadly, instinctive precision. Reiji's distance from the creature means he /sees/ it wind up. It means the roar is a warning, and provides an opportunity for him to leap out of the way of the stone-shattering fist.

Others are not so lucky.

Tomoe's spirit body is broken outright. Psyber takes a heavy blow. Xiaomu...

Xiaomu.

    "Xiaomu!" Reiji roars. Whatever mental influence Manus was exerting over the exorcist's mind is shattered in an instant. He watches as his partner is floored by the creature's incredible strength... And as she gets back up to limp away. The terror fades- rage and the need for vengeance remains, honing his own mind to a deadly, razor's edge.

Primal forces. The elements alone will not suffice- not in this world. He needs something more... /fundamental./

He has such an option. Death rides upon his shoulder.

    Reiji fades back. He reaches back, seizing an ornate handle with his left hand. A breath. Darkness floods in, but he does not permit it further. Air. He needs air. His eyelids fall shut- but the darkness underneath them is somehow less oppressive than the oblivion that awaits him beyond. And so he keeps them closed.

A split second passes, then another. Then another. Reiji lets his awareness fade away. Only he and the beast and the blade exist in his personal world. For a miniature eternity, it is so- and then there is light.

Wind rushes past his ears. The explosion is nearer. He rushes to meet it. Scalding heat washes the darkness away, he opens his eyes. The beast is waiting.

    Darkdrift emerges from its sheath. It passes /through/ the sheath, lifting in an killing arc. Two hands grip its handle. Reiji emerges from the shadow of the fireball, the Sword of Death tracing a killing line into the hollow of the beast's chest. One more kick, Reiji's focus doubles, he tries to force the blade through.

This is Primordial Man.

Is he still mortal?

Does death still hold sway over him?

Time to find out.

Nathan Hall (168) has posed:
    Nathan is yanked behind Amalthea, and seems to accept it completely. Especially when she is between him and the massive staff. He's not sure what it does, but it looks like it's had an effect on his arm. Something good? Something bad? He's not sure, but it stabilized his form, or maybe he just kept his form stable in order to continue holding it. Hopefully Amalthea can halt it hard, because whatever it is, Nathan is going to strike at it. When it comes down towards Amalthea, he rushes in just behind her, trusting her to hold fast; assuming they can, he immediately pulls his hands together, crossing them in front of him.

    "Emerald Countermagic." He quietly whispers, firing off a multicolored bolt, intended to strike the staff and directly attack whatever magical enchantments it might carry that were either influencing his body or were worth holding back his mutation for. There's also a brief flash of blue light as SHIVAN, the bracer at his left hand, fires off; in very short order, plates of creator-divinity-aspected armor cover his body, formed out of pure ice. It doesn't look out of place around Lordran, with a practical, simplified shape, and an utterly flat, face-hiding faceplate under that hood. The Ancestor hasn't gotten to him yet, but he'd rather be ready just in case.

Amalthea (395) has posed:
    "Tch."
    Fucker didn't even wince from taking the Wishblade dead on. But even that does not budge the unicorn. Remaining right where she is, as a stalwart standing bastion before Nathan and Priscilla. Ayako will be saving her a trip later to retrieve her favorite lance, and for that she is infinitely grateful, but in the meantime, this does not leave the old knight wholly unarmed.
    With an almost joyous ring of steel singing against the lip of its scabbard she draws her blade. Faith, the Emperor Slaying Sword, is freed of its scabbard with a clarion and gentle sweet chime. Clasped with the same relaxed confidence of tenderly holding a lover's hand, the Kindness Rune etched upon the very soul of the blade, glimmering upon the blade as it senses presences its wielder holds dear to her heart.
    Taking a step forward, she seems ready to join the fight proper, but then grinds to a screeching halt as that lone eye focuses upon Psyber.
    And something within the half-man's demeanor, and the soul with which he pours into his every blow stays her blade.
    At least until The Primeval Man makes a target of her, rounding to lash out in his abyssal fury. Her reflexes are quick though, that shield is hoisted in an instant, but the impact is more than enough to resound with an immense and bell-like crash in the darkness, for all the weight of her armor and for all she sets her footing, the weight of that blow would shatter every bone in the body of a normal person, and the sheer viciousness of the impact nearly lifts the unicorn into the air. It earns a snarled cry of surprise and pain but the librarian of all people suddenly behind her means she cannot let herself be lifted. Boots skid as she grits teeth, only barely managing to absorb the blow with her body; and she pays for it. Shield and armor ringing, and deformed with immense dents, she recovers, though, with a gust of worryingly black steam. And then she lunges. A shrill, keening, howl of timeless woe lifted in the Abyss; with this old, grey, cry of ruin, Faith deals out merciless reprisal, every stroke and slash both wild and graceful- as though a beast were handed a blade and pointed in the direction of that which is most inimical to its way of life. That glinting rune shimmers on her blade, every blow swinging with all the literal force of a speeding car.

Priscilla has posed:
    The Father of the Abyss tosses Tomoe's broken digital corpse away like a distastefully smashed insect, stomping on its de-rezzing remains. Manus' conceptual opposition to fire comes into play as the Shinra issue elemental grenade detonates against his back, momentarily consuming him in a wave of roiling flame. The explosive knocks him forward, forcing him to clap his giant hand against the ground to stay upright, but the fire itself seems only to agitate him, causing him to wheel on its source where his primary arm shoots out to three times its previous length and lashes Xiaomu with the spikes covering its inside. He wheels to face Mizuki as she slams into his side, caving in some of his far-too-many ribs with that flash of raw magic. He raises his oversized limb in front of him to ward off the assault of flashing light from the shield's inner soul, shielding his face as the disks slash and blast into his flesh. Blood running down his fingers, he strikes out at Mizuki with the same alarming speed as before, catching her by the leg and hurling her back over his head in a dizzying, flail-like motion, releasing her on the downward swing to get her to impact the floor as if shot out of a cannon.

    He can't seem to make up his mind as to who to attack, taking attacks one after the other and retaliating against their originators in blind fury. He walks straight into the sleeting hail of replicated weapons, swords and spears plunging into his back and shoulders, riddling him with silver rain. His response is only to lunge for Shirou, slamming into him with one shoulder and transitioning into what can only be described as a curb stomp. He'd continue trying to grind Shirou into the unforgiving stone were it not for the holy magic blasting him away, sending him staggering back under the assault of holy light searing his twisted flesh, straight into the path of Erinyes, crunching into his torso like the report of a battleship cannon, sending him sprawling to the floor once more.

    When the emerald countermagic executes, it certainly lands alright, but meets with astonishingly negligible success. Either the magic inherent to that catalyst is leagues more powerful than Nathan's own, or it is some form of power that couldn't be called magic to begin with. Unfortunately, this prompts Manus to finally begin using it. He flips upwards off of his back and launches off the ground, landing directly in front of Lezard and clapping his hand to the ground, causing the ancient rocks to disintegrate under the roaring towers of pitch black flame that erupt from underneath it, spiralling away from him in a rushing storm of pure Dark made manifest, sucking the light away rather than casting any of its own. He jerks around in a half circle and levels the tip of the peculiar staff at Psyber, causing it to unleash an even greater torrent of darkness in a focused, pressurized vortex, shredding the ground like sand caught in a horizontal tornado.

    The continuous attack is interrupted partway through by Reiji exploding across Manus' chest. The ghostly blade of Darkdrift phases cleanly in and out of his torso, and an instant later, his flesh splits open into an eruption of blood and viscera, compounded by the existing blunt internal damage. He is practically bowled over by Amalthea, floored by the force of her sword as it flashes against his rock hard skin, spraying once-human ichor this way and that as it carves into him. She gets in multiple decisive blows before he jerkily reaches out and simply punches her head on with the extension of his arm, hitting straight and fast like a speeding semi. Having not forgotten Reiji, he turns his staff on him as he climbs to his feet, the head suddenly engulfed in a seething orb of blackness which rapidly discharges a withering hail of projectiles, falling upon him like a shower of minature comets, turning everything for fifty feet into a cratered hellscape.

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Hammer in the ground, braced for attack, Psyber takes the retaliation from Manus head on. The half-angel glares at him as the staff points and unleashes the vortex. He drops to a knee and grips the hammer, letting it drag him back across the ground with huge damage to himself. The hammer alone carves a path through the ground as Psyber is pressed back, but not as much as the spell itself shreds the ground and Psyber along with it.

    "I know how to... fix this. Fix the problem. It was simple. Occam's Razor," Psyber says in a hollow tone. He would fix Manus the same way he had tried to fix Nathan, but this time he would succeed. This time he didn't have the personal tie to Manus that would restrain him from doing what was necessary.

    What was necessary? An interesting thought that crosses his mind. How much had he made himself such a thing, but how much had Sburb reinforced that? It was hard to tell any more, but it was a facet of himself he had begun to embrace more and more. He dashes in again, but he leaves the hammer behind. If Erinyes was the weight of his sins, his next attack would be the culmination of his purpose.

    Struggling against his wounds, pressing through the pain that he has made no effort to avoid, Psyber comes in on Manus. Those watching closely would notice that first the tip of one of his fingers seems to flicker for a few moments. A shimmer of fire like a lighter that keeps trying to create a flame, but it gets blown out by the wind. In a few moments, the right hand erupts in white fire, and in seconds the left hand follows suit.

    The Hand of the Redeemer has been invoked. They are a beacon of hope, the belief that the darkness in someone can be removed if they are worthy. They draw corruption into themselves and wash away scars upon even the soul. But to what end would he invoke this? Manus was beyond such a thing. Or so one could think.

    See, when you treat those that need guidance, you learn certain principles. Some people need their darkness gently washed in light, cleaned and placed away, pushing them into redemption. Other times, though? Other times Psyber had learned that a cancer exists so deep in a being that there is only one fix.

    Psyber lunges in towards Manus with a look of fury and purpose, and he thrusts forward with both hands towards the 'torso' of the monster. He aims to push his flaming hands THROUGH Manus' outer shell and reach inside of him. Inside of his very concept and core of existence.

    See... you know how to fix a rotting wound? You excise it so completely that it's like nothing was ever there at all.

    Psyber grips around for purchase and, if he find it, he begins violently thrashing and pulling. His goal is simple: He is attempting to reach into Manus, grab the Dark Soul with the Hands of the Redeemer, and pull it out by whatever it takes. And, since this is not someone he cares about, he has no care if the concept is so deeply rooted that it turns Manus inside out.

Ayako Hasekawa has posed:
    Ayako propells herself with a jet of water from the brush of her broom and swiftly retrieves Amalthea's lance. She quickly u-turns flying upwards and around, carrying the lance and depositing it in front of Amalthea. "Got it back, Amalthea!" She smiles cheerfully at Amalthea as she jets on past, leaving a stream of water in her wake.

    She continues flying on and floats to a stop by Psyber. "Here you go, Psyber!" Ayako thrusts her palms outwards again, and another Sea's Depth Barrier forms about Psyber this time! Hopefully to help make his approach and attack that much easier and potent!

    But Ayako's timing is quite bad! She's there right in time for the horizontal vortex of darkness to fly forward at them both! She has no choice but to take shelter behind Psyber inside of the barrier she just formed! At least Psyber took said attack head on! If he didn't, she would have gone flying!

Reiji Arisu has posed:
It seems that even Primordial Man may one day die.

    Reiji completes his slash, landing clear on the other side of the simian monstrosity. He releases his breath, slinging Darkdrift's invisible edge out to one side...

Only for Manus to decide that he's had enough of that nonsense.

    A black star storm surges out of the Old One's cane-like staff. Reiji is reminded, briefly, of his recent bout with Fayt. But, unlike that fight, this one is far too lethal. There are dozens. His vision fills with black, painful spheres. The exorcist ducks underneath one, only to find that he needs to dodge a second. The third clips his shoulder, sending him off balance and straight into the fourth.

    Reiji is knocked clear of the remainder, rolling through the air. He bounces as he hits the ground, twisting, painfully, before somehow righting himself on one knee. Darkdrift's invisible blade and the heft of his mobile arsenal dig into the ground, slowing him to a stop.

Rib check. Two. Three. Fourth and fifth are broken on each side. Reiji rises, his breathing shallow. Moving too much now could pierce a lung.

But...

Risking personal injury for the sake of the world is part of his job.

    His hand tightens around the deathly blade. He lifts the arsenal to his mouth, seizing it in his teeth. Reiji takes in a slow, deep breath. Darkrdrift is held to one side, its blade angled just more than parallel to the ground. It's a classic, textbook Kendo stance.

If he cannot breathe, then he will finish this in one breath.

    There is a surge of movement. He has only a few seconds- they must count. Reiji rushes into Manus' blind spot as Psyber commences his attack. The exorcist does not strike the beast's torso- no, more wounds would not slow it further. He must do worse.

Whatever Psyber is doing, it's a gambit he needs to succeed.

And so, instead, Reiji attacks Manus' limbs. He rolls, he jumps, he seeks every opportunity to sever the beast's arms from his body.

    Bone lascerates flesh. He can feel his ribs scraping the hollow of his chest. So he releases his breath, little by little, with every leap and every strike. When it's spent, he draws in shorter, shallower ones, wheezing more with every strike.

Hopefully it distracts- or disables- the beast long enough for Psyber to do what must be done.

Emiya Shirou (560) has posed:
    With Manus bearing down upon him at such great speeds, Shirou acts entirely on reflex. DEFENSE TIME! With another desperate manuever he puts more power through his Circuits than he was ready for. They sizzle madly with his soul but despite being pushed so hard and fast, deliver.

    White plate armor of a filmy, translucent nature unfolds across his body at practically the last moment, right before he's crushed under a trampling mad creature!

    ... And it doesn't help terribly well. After a few blows it crumbles and fractures away, but by then...

    By then, the utterly manic Manus has moved on, leaving a bloodied, bruised, batteried Shirou behind. The magus barely rise again. This time he's got a hand across his chest. No doubt some ribs were broken. One leg limps...

    "How much can one monster take? I'm almost spent!"

    Seeing that Psyber's up to something however.. fills him with resolve.

    So long as he can do ANYTHING, he will do whatever he can.

    With his one still-good arm (bruised and battered, but not broken) he raises a hand again. Several copies of Ornstein's golden spear flicker-flash into existence high above Shirou and launch themselves.

    Straight for Manus' limbs.

    His goal? Pin those arms to the ground and maybe, just maybe, but time for the others to do something big!

Lezard Valeth has posed:
Lezard cast light into the Darkness, and the Darkness responds. The roaring blast of flame shears through Lezard's position, and a blazing shield manifests as the energies clash.

Manus wins. The darkness shatters through his defensive barrier, and Lezard's flesh erupts in blackfire, his body burning away in an eruption of all-consuming power.

In the aftermath of the blast, there is a faint, glittering formation, a faint spiritual outline that crackles and wavers. "I.... WILL NOT ACCEPT THIS!" He screams, forcing his spiritual form back into cohesion through pure force of will, an eruption of light and fury roaring up around him and extinguishing the remnants of the flame.

The shell is gone. All that remains between his spirit and the all-consuming hunger, the maw of annihilating Desire that is the Abyss is his own Will. A Will that defies the Gods themselves. A Will that would twist reality and demand it conform to his own desires.

Even with tiny sparks bleeding off of his spiritual form, he will not yield. The Power surges around him as he calls upon the Great Magic.

Far above, in the Darkness of the Abyss, gleaming feathers gather, streaming through the Void. "Thou must desire rest from thy empty existence..."

The feathers explode into lights, coalescing into halos of energy that pulse together, surging with brilliance. "Thou shalt HAVE IT!"

And then innumerable beams of blazing light shear downwards, a rain of blazing beams of holy energy showering downwards in an explosive cascade upon Manus. He pours all of his power into the spell, forcing it through until the ruby, like so many other times, shatters, the sceptre and focus for his power spent.

"CELESTIAL STAR!"

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    When Manus shoots Mizuki toward the ground, she no longer has enough energy left to stop time entirely. So after several broken, fairly hurried attempts to do so, she settles on a slowdown -- a momentary respite that gives her just enough time to again point her shield toward her target. In this case, however, that target is the ground. When the frigid motion ends, she collides with the floor of the Abyss again, this time much more violently. The metal portions of her bulwark begin emit sparks as the author's entire body is 'popped' back into the air. This time, she isn't able to catch herself in any way so dignified as before. She falls flat on her back, eyelids locked shut in agony.

    Many more blows are exchanged before she finally shambles to her feet. This time, she does not move -- rather, a spherical, growing area around her begins to take on a strange appearance. Portions of the area are glossed over by some odd bends of light similar to what one might see when the air has been tainted by gasoline, or intense heat. Only those within the bounds of this circle of influence would realize that its contents have been altered in appearance to resemble a sun-drenched garden; no doubt a stark refusal on her part to accept the darkness as it is.

    More than just jumbling aesthetics, it serves another, more practical purpose: it gives her the ability to directly manipulate reality within its bounds, to create physical objects out of nothing with her mind alone. In this case, these creations are... butterflies, hundreds of them. One hand clutches her head whilst the other opens its palm to release the swarm. As each one approaches Manus, they begin to transform en masse into a hail of daggers. After a single, full revolution, they launch themselves toward the dark one at speeds equivalent to that with which she was thrown before. They then go on to condense and explode as they sink into their flesh, continually dealing damage and, hopefully, keeping his attentions from the others in the area.

    Unfortunately, though, the maintenance of this thought field proves a bit much for Mizuki to bear. She slumps down to her knees as she continues to hold her hand aloft, leaving her completely vulnerable should she be attacked.

Amalthea (395) has posed:
    For all her righteous, indignant, stubborn refusal to let injury claim her, Amalthea's strength is a finite thing. And eventually her flurry begins to grow sluggish, like a storm beginning to fade and peter out the further it travels; after that initial monstrous blow, the unicorn cannot hold up her onslaught forever, and as she tires, so too do her reactions grow weary and sluggish.
    In that instant the blow comes for her, she thumbs the control on the inside of her shield, but it is a fraction too late, and instead of jump-jetting out of the path of danger, the blow is brutally, mercilessly, direct.
    With a crunch of steel worse than bones breaking she is launched backwards without a cry, toppling in a battered heap of dented metal and silver blood, body beginning to fail as she struggles to push herself back up. And simply falls.
    Motionless for a long moment, the world swims before her eyes, heart beating a mile a minute within her chest as systems reset and her body attempts to frantically repair what is tantamount to catastrophically, fatal damage.
    Thae lone blue eye watches, even as her ears ring from the blow, she can watch Psyber call forth his most sacred of skills. The hand which eases wounds deeper than anything even her tears could hope to heel. And the fuzzy thoughts swimming in her head instantly resolve to the clarity of a razor's edge as the hand of the redeemer is thrust upon Manus.
    No sooner than her lance is deposited in her hand, broken fingers curl around it in a vice grip. Hot blooded resolve flows, poured like a liquid fuel over the embers of Amalthea's endurance, she forces herself to rise in a jerky motion, refusing to stay down as she grits her teeth and thumbs her jetpack controls again.
    Spiralling upwards, she launches herself in a parabolic arc for Manus, bringing herself down spear point first, intent to skewer the beast and pin it down in place, in hopes of giving the primeval man nowhere to go for The Hand Of The Redeemer.

Nathan Hall (168) has posed:
    Nathan has little he can do; his support magics are a bit limited, and with an insane foe, there's not much negotiation that can be done. As such, all he can do right now is try to get out of the way. This involves backing off from Amalthea as she suddenly has a punch to deal with, and dodging away from the scattered shots aimed to Reiji primarily but spread around a great deal. With the sprays of Psyber-focused magical vortexes and bolts around him going off like mad, he's diving and dashing this way and that, but he's now gotten some bearing on the Ancestor's array of abilities.

    Amalthea needs some space, probably. For now, Nathan can do little in this overwhelming assault besides desperately try to keep out of the way and not die. Thank goodness for that armor, honestly. For now, he can't make much of a meaningful contribution here besides beginning to analyze his tactics. His massive leaps, the 'magical' strikes, he is running the tactical data through his mind repeatedly and heavily; he'll be trying to rattle off forewarnings for strikes and calling out moments of vulnerability shortly, to increase the efficiency of strikes and defenses.

Priscilla has posed:
     Even as wounded as he is, Manus fights like an out of control machine, paying no heed to pain or injury as the all-out barrage of Elite level attacks continues unabated, slamming into him from every angle, drowning him in the desperation and fury of the Union and Confederacy's finest. He charges straight through Mizuki's stom of butterfly daggers, stomping, striking, thrashing and crushing everything within reach even as his flesh blossoms into gouts of red, stumbling mid-strike as Darkdrift strokes across him again and again, taking pieces of his body along to the Other Side. Each traced copy of the Dragonslayer Spear skewers one of his limbs, adding another set of gleaming gold shafts to oppose the silver that still bristles from his form, crackling with arcs of divine lightning. He disappears completely in the luminous cataclysm of the Celestial Star, emerging smoking and bleeding from the crater like an enraged animal, renewing his feral, completely random assault on anyone and everyone within arm's reach, black flames exploding from every blow. Amalthea lands directly on top of him, driving her lance straight through his torso, and yet the stone it stabs into breaks before either he or it does. He reaches up towards his back, snatching Amalthea to crush her to death like he had Tomoe, only for Oscar to leap back out of the dark at the last moment, having picked himself up and sprinted back into the field of battle to employ his Gwyn-blessed sword to slice through the tendons of his wrist, rendering half of his fingers useless. As Manus wheels on Psyber, Priscilla makes her presence known by ripping the Lifehunt Scythe straight through his ribcage, causing blood and necrotized tissue to explode from every wound and orifice, each laceration momentarily dripping with swiftly evaporating dark fire. It is once Psyber leaps upon him and lays the Hands of the Redeemer upon him, that Manus reaches for his primordial magic.

    Even as Psyber's hands burn through Manus' ruined flesh, igniting a fiery clash of black and white flames that consumes his arms in a maelstrom of diametrically opposed, impossibly destructive energies, the Ancestor's staff blazes with a colossal, monochromatic conflagration. For a moment, nothing seems to happen, and then from everywhere at once, the Dark surges in. The Abyss responds to its host; its master; its originator; /its god/, by taking fatally corporeal form, crashing down like the encroaching wall of a tsunami. Lances of Dark erupt from the blackness all around, black flames racing across the floor as meteors of shadow hail from the sky, converging towards Manus, and by extension Psyber, as their ground zero. Nobody is safe. There is nowhere to go to avoid it. There is only a howling tempest of oblivion that seeks to fundamentally undo the very existence of those caught inside of it, eating away at their flesh and their souls, until it connects at the center and ignites into a cataclysmic explosion, rushing back the opposite way with physical force, driving a man-deep crater into the ground for as far as the light will show.

    At the end of it all, Pysber is left beside the prone, pitch dark silhouette of a human, black and featureless in its entirety, laid against the earth. Above it floats the strange, inverted counterpart of a Lordsoul. Where there should be the blazing heat of all life, there is a lukewarm, gentle breeze, deeply comforting to behold despite the writhing, living void at its center. Oscar staggers to his feet, armour rent and torn, tabard all but destroyed, blood oozing from between the plates, shield and sword discarded, and lays hands upon the Dark Soul, physically torn from its first and only owner. As Priscilla stirs in the middle of the slowly growing pool of red that stains her dress, she looks up to the sight of four, identical, humanoid shadows striding away from the figure on the ground in perfect symmetry, stopping to look back once at their soul with their white eyes, before marching off into the dark in utter silence.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    But first. First Mizuki will have her last words with this 'Manus'.

    The dream witch uses her resummoned blade as a crutch, clinging to it as she quite literally peels her phantom form from the ground. In time, when she has gathered her bearings more in earnest, she stumbles over to the inert body of the 'first man' and stares down at them. What begins as a tired gaze gradually turns into one of intense disdain -- a look of quiet disapproval, sure, but one that hints at a certain depth of hatred that can only be achieved by the most awful philosophical disparity. With a sort of renewed strength, she hefts her blade into the air and, after a moment's pause, stakes it into the heart of whatever she can discern as that shadowy form's chest.

    She clings tightly to the hilt of her blade, keeping her head inclined toward the motionless body, her own eyes sewn shut by exhaustion and an unwillingness to see the object of her aggression. Her breathing begins to quicken, then. She bites her lip before nearly inaudibly rasping:

    "I live for the day that your disgusting half of our balance is no longer necessary, worm. I will refuse to accept your existence until you are expunged from this reality and all others. Mark me, you dour phantom of our soon-to-be past, and regain your senses only so much as you must to fear your coming damnation. Then, and -only then-, will I be satisfied."

    With that, she draws her blade out of the being's might-have-been ribcage. Her hair whips about as though it were some sort of hateful shroud, or veil, before she goes to follow Priscilla.

    She has no idea where she is going, but she isn't going back home until she has voided herself of this inexplicable bloodlust.

Ayako Hasekawa has posed:
    Ayako can only watch as the attacks land one after the other as everyone tries to stop Manus. And then it happens. That staff blazes with energy and activity. And the Abyss suddenly surges around towards it's God!

    It only takes her a moment to figure out what's coming. The water spirit hops off of her broom and strikes downwards with the brush towards the ground. "Soul Boundary Water of Styx!" And a bubble of water surrounds Ayako as it tries to resist the terrible oblivion of Manus' one last attack. It's not enough! The bubble pops moments before the explosion and Ayako splashes apart into a puddle!

    Inside the crater, the water slowly gathers back together and Ayako's head emerges from it, forming from the water. "Ungh... that... ungh..." She slugs her way over to Priscilla slowly and starts to apply Healing Water to her quickly-even though she isn't fully formed quite yet.

Lezard Valeth has posed:
Lezard is powerful, but there is power and there is Power. He has not yet managed to grasp the quintessence that would allow him to surpass the bounds of his mortality, as much as he defies the limits of his nature.

Manus is one such being. Someone who has done so simply by existing, a terrifying being who yet resonates with him. He has little time to consider this, however, in the face of the cataclysmic wash of consuming Dark that he calls down.

He extends his hands, and focuses his Will.

His desire to live, against the desire of Manus to consume them all. It's so simple... And yet...

Barrier after barrier is erected instantly, Lezard summoning up waves of bone, crystalline barriers of magic, walls of light and repulsing wind. Each barrier shatters, slowing down the Darkness and partially dissipating it before it rends into his form, each one leaving him a little lesser, perhaps some part of him stripped away into the hungry Darkness.

It is a death by inches: He could not weather this barrage forever.

But he doesn't need to. Eventually, the overwhelming assault ends, Lezard's spirit being blasted back to the edge of the massive field, teetering on the brink as he steadies his diminished self... But he survived. The specrtral Necromancer steps forward, watching the black forms depart with a silent acceptance... And as Oscar claims his prize, Lezard looks upon the massive, ruined silhouette of Manus. "Lord of Darkness, fallen and accursed, your nature and power were self-evident. You truly were the progenitor of what it was to be... human."

He turns, then, looking to the massive, gnarled, clublike staff he carried. "It would be ill to allow such a symbol to remain fallen here in the Darkness. While you have fallen, another shall take up your symbol of office." He lays a hand upon the massive staff. "And the one who will do so, the one who will represent your hunger... Is I."

There is a wave of light as Lezard creates a teleportation circle, the massive staff glowing as he prepares to teleport it out of the Abyss. "Rest well, First of Humans, in the knowledge that this is not the end, but merely a new beginning."

Amalthea (395) has posed:
    With her lance embedded and her boots set, Amalthea refuses to budge, wrenching the shaft in her grasp in outright refusal to let go in her desperate last ditch effort to ensure Psyber his opening.
    As that merciless crushing hand bears down upon her she wonders to herself which will break first; her body or his soul.
    And the answer comes in the form of a noble knight of Astora, preventing a crushing defeat.
    As the Dark Soul is ripped from the body of Manus and the Abyss lashes out in one final reprisal, the unicorn is toppled from her perch. And when the storm of sheer raging blackness finally dies down, Amalthea is unmoving for a moment, staring at the 'sky'. Or is it the 'ground'? Only someone who is not her can tell that she's face down in the darkness, before pushing herself to sit up, looking to the first Man, the freed soul, and Priscilla.
    A slow breath hisses a long gout of that worryingly black steam again as she copes the only way she knows how.
    "The first Human was a dick... Fuck that guy..."

Psyber (253) has posed:
    Psyber is swallowed by the converging darkness that crashes in around him in a massive explosion. He should have expected such an outcome, but he felt it was worth it to probe the depths of an unknown power whose limits and extents were still just beyond his grasp. Some parts had worked, some parts hadn't, and in the end it had gotten a massive wave of black explosion dropped down onto him.

    Psyber groans and pulls himself to his feet, hands stained black and steaming as he looks down at the corrupted limbs. As always, the true extent of the Hands were just beyond his grasp, pardoning the cheesey puns. But this had been an interesting and slightly abstract attempt on his part. Even the failure was educational, though part of him wishes he had stuck with Mizuki's plan solely to save him the pain of having to purge the Abyss-taint from his limbs.

    "Nathan," Psyber says seriously and in a flat tone, still detached but also fringing into exhaustion and undertoned with extreme pain, "Please make a note in the plan that we have succeeded to date. We should move forward operations into the final leg as soon as possible. I do not wish for the Dark Soul to be free-floating for more than the absolute minimum of necessary time."

    He doesn't stop Lezard or even move to do that, "Carry the hunger well, Lezard. Do not be consumed by it, however."

    And then he starts limp-shuffling himself to try to find a way out.

Emiya Shirou (560) has posed:
    When the smoke clears and the Dark Soul has been claimed...

    Emiya Shirou rises slowly to his feet, in utter agony. The boy had no time to shield himself from the unleashing of pure Dark. Had he done so, would it have even meant anything? It's hard to say.

    He's been pierced through, torn up, and wrecked enough that he's bloody all over , neither arm wants to move and just standing takes a whole minute of gasping, groaning, and shuddering. It's a wonder he's still there at all!

    "That... had better have been... a success."

    Against the utter waves of Dark, Shirou's spirit was too bright to extinguish and consume. If there's one thing he has in spades it's stubborn determination, and he simply WILL NOT QUIT until this world's been set straight.

Nathan Hall (168) has posed:
    Nathan was only able to remain on his feet due to the Wolf Ring of Artorias; had it have been otherwise, he'd be bowled over by the events that happened. He lets his focus rest on the Elites here, and on the four shades that walk away. He lets them leave, undisturbed, without any measure of interference.

    There is a soft silent examination of Lezard. "Take care." He says, simply. That's all he seems to think about it. "Take the symbol with caution." The bad blood with the man is ignored, it seems, very strangely. And then there's Psyber. "Certainly, Psyber. We will prepare the mechanism, make arrangements to breach the Kiln, and prepare for the draconic threat. I will have our arrangements prepared shortly." And then the icy armor shatters off his body, falling off in chunks.

    He approaches Oscar with a firm sort of look. "You now hold all the pieces we need, and we have little time before the arrival of a threat of great concern. The loss of the source of the Abyss will be noted by certain outside observers. We need to work together immediately, once you have left this place."

Ayako Hasekawa has posed:
    Ayako slowly manages to reform. She still sluggishly walks around, tending to everyone's wounds with purple Healing Water. Especially those that are here in person! She does nonetheless heal those that are Phantoms as well. No sense them dying as well!

    Then, and only then does she start creating white Healing Water to start splashing on herself. Ayako sighs with relief once she starts working on her own wounds from that horrible attack. They might not show externally, but ouch! Even though she's here herself as a Phantom, she's definitely looking forward to resting in a nice body of water!