5561/WANTED: Wormfeast (2)

WANTED: Wormfeast (2)
Date of Scene:	10 November 2017
Location:	Lumiere
Synopsis:	The monstrous Wormfeast returns for a final showdown.
Cast of Characters:	974, Staren, Count Kord, 513, Priscilla, Tomoe

---

Carna (974) has posed:
    Visions of the past, or of another reality, or of one among many layers of reality, have been experienced by those exploring the Chopping Grounds. And it seems that, despite Staren and Tomoe being separated from the group during a fall into an abyss below, they have been reunited, as has Count Kord with Priscilla and Finna, despite them all journeying to their current destination without any awareness of each other. A large red gate of some form of crimson stone has appeared nearby, its skeletal design all too familiar for those who have been coming and going from Lumiere for nearly two years. Though the fact that it is HERE instead of at Lumiere's entrance, and further its shift in coloration, is one more element of surprise to add to the collective visions of reality resolving into the present, wherein all the explorers are together again.

    To add to the personal experiences each underwent, the visions of horror and the glimpse of three masked figures below on the part of Kord, the connection to some sort of 'Lumiere System' on Staren's part, and the becoming of a vessel for Light to flow through for Tomoe, and the moonlight-dappled temple city and its mysterious no-presence girl who has been leading them on a chase only to arrive at an answer that contains more questions for Priscilla and Finna, there is yet one more surprise in store.

    They have discovered the entrance to the Mausoleum for this locale, the lair of the second Marble Guardian of Lostrata: The Anti-Lantern weapon set in place to keep the most numerous among the thinking Dead from trying to fix this broken reincarnation device called Lumiere.

    Well... Perhaps 'one more' surprise isn't quite accurate.

    Amidst the sounds of many inhuman bodies squirming and writhing together, the surge of a mass of Unlit woven together grows in volume, until a gigantic head, covered almost completely in fanged worms, erupt from the gaping hole that has cored through the center of this once-holy ground, and down into the depths where there target lies. It looks a bit different, and its scale and power are very much changed from the initial encounter with this monstrosity, but those parasitic worms are still the same.

    Wormfeast. The monster that has been preying upon the weakest and most peaceful among the Lanterns in Tacet Sanctos, the single 'safe' community that exists in Barrowville, created by the Elites' own hands. Now it stands before them once again, blocking their path to an even greater obstacle.

    Staren fires his beam cannons, searing worms and sending pieces of corpses tumbling down from the wound, the bodies that have been woven together to create this... Abomination evident.

    Kord unleashes a shockwave of darkness and wind... And much like when he tried to attack the engineers rising from below, only to send two allies tumbling down into the dark, there is more poewr than was intended.

    But now, as he has grown closer to the whispering force called the Darkness since even just earlier, he alone can see what was invisible before.

    A gigantic icy fist of purest dark that accompnies his attack, and strikes Wormfeast in the face with power beyond Kord himself. The Darkness has been promising power to those who will listen to it, power that they can use for whatever they choose as long as they agree to use it, since Lumiere first unified. Now the evidence of this manifests for the first time.

    The titan reels from the blast, and from the blow that accompanies it, sending the giant head whipping to the side, flinging worms and body parts everywhere. Its slithering cry of surprise and rage, not even a voice, just the sound of many inhuman bodies moving together, like a huge ball of snakes, is the only reply it can offer. It has only just made its appearance, and already it suffers from a fierce attack. It was not expecting such well-prepared prey, clearly.

Staren has posed:
    It bleeds, metaphorically speaking. They can damage it, so they can kill it.

    There's a phrase Staren once read which comes to mind at times like this:

        'If you were standing in the path of the beam, you would obviously die pretty quickly. You wouldn't really die of anything, in the traditional sense. You would just stop being biology and start being physics.' --Randall Monroe, What If #141: Sunbeam

    This is what Staren tries to do to his foes. Knowledge and technological development allows those with no innate strength to manipulate ever-greater forces. Ever greater amounts of energy. When the demons and monsters came for Earth, men and women in armor hundreds of times tougher than steel, with guns that could blow through a tank in one shot, were there to fight them. And so it continues now on RIFTS Earth: Even the squishiest of mortals can don technology that lets them fight on par with monsters.

    Every good mathematician and engineer knows that you can solve a complex problem by reducing it to simpler problems you already know how to solve.

    So when Staren sees a monster problem, he pours absurd amounts of energy into it until it stops being a monster problem and starts being a physics problem.

    Physics problems are easy.

    To that end, Staren produces a rocket launcher from his magic bag and starts flying around the monster at a distance. Mini-missiles launch towards the wormbeast, exploding on contact into bursts of intense heat that aim to tear the bonds holding molecules apart and strip electrons from nuclei.

    Substitution is another good problem-solving technique. In this case, he's attempting to substitute large chunks of ash for large chunks of monster flesh.

    Ash is pretty easy to handle.

Count Kord has posed:
    Kord hesitates when he witnesses the bizarre slam of foreign power... power he does not, himself, control. Yveltal was always careful to shape him to be able to conquer problems with abilities he could gauge himself, so the Darkness briefly startles him, visibly so. It stuns the mass of worms that pretends to be a single mass, and... he grins, because it was a satisfying effect. He leaps up into the air, taking flight so that he is an even harder target to strike. He flits over the cavernous pit in the world, and flits up with great agility and speed to hover at a fixed point above the horrific creature.

    Then he lifts his hand, and air begins to howl around him. He quickly pivots in the air, and ejects a mass of cutting wind down into the middle of the swarm's mass. His attack is aimed to stoke the heat of Staren's attack, blowing away ash and turning it into a conflagaration that easily rivals the dead fires that can be found near this area of Lumiere. The howling is so much louder because of all the wind blasting down into the hole the Wormfeast crawled out of! Dust blasts in all directions, and cinders fly as he works in tandem to do what his patron god really loves.

    Destroy.

    "HAHAHAHA THIS WILL BE CATHARTIC!!" he bellows over his own cacophonous wind blast.

Finna (513) has posed:
Finna once again has the urge to cover her nose at the horrible thing that crawls forth from the hole that gave her the heebie jeebies earlier. The little fox whines protestingly at yet another horror from the black lagoon showing its face.

    ... No. a LOT of faces. She antsily paws around while her mind buzzes into high gear hunting for ideas on how to deal with a TITAN OF FUSED BODIES... while her allies all decide that they need to use some horrifying ranged weapons that prevent her getting close and ripping the thing apart.

    Not that she wants to get covered in that YUCK.

    The fox backflips and shapeshifts smoothly back into human form, clutching her Moonsilver bow confidently and nocking an arrow pulled seemingly from the ether!

    "Boys and their toys!" She snorts at Staren's mecha... breaks into a sidelong dash circling the giant hole... and unleashes a single, far less-impressive arrow towards the Titan's head. She doubts it really has anything like 'vitals', but 'go for the head' is usually a sound strategy when fighting ANYTHING. ... Usually.

    The arrow might well be a distraction though-- or... wait?

    Anyone who's participating in this fight might have to blink a few times because there are now seven Finnas firing her bow from all around the hole at the creature and dashing in sync.

Priscilla has posed:
    Priscilla, for her part in being dumped here alongside everyone else, after their variety of brief and trippy forays into/through some kind of dimensional prism surrounding this plaza, has more than her fair share of questions. What the hell Kord keeps seeing. Where Staren and Tomoe had gone. Why the latter is glowing, and what the former is talking about. Who the nobody-girl is and what she wanted. How to get to the moon. If anyone has any insights on all the papers she'd appropriated, or the gate.

    As things often are with Lumiere, however, the matters have to wait for the more pressing problem of immediate survival. "For a single moment's rest . . ." the crossbreed hisses, at the sight of the new arrival. "There is much we need yet to discuss. None of thee art allowed to becometh so injured thou art unable to answer questions" she then says, backing off from the central hole in the plaza as people start laying into it from afar. Thankfully, this time she is actually prepared to do so alongside them.

    When Priscilla gains a decent enough amount of distance, she spins gracefully on her heel and unhooks the previously invisible (or immaterial? it's never clear) greatbow from her back, slamming the organic obsidian spike into the cracked tiles and curling her fingers about the woven metallic strands of the bowstring. Rather than drawing or firing anything just yet, however, the molten orange gem set into the cross flares up with an uncannily familiar screeching, firing what looks almost like a faint and hazy, near-invisible 'laser' into the mass of worms, and 'painting' it as if for bombardment. Aside from probably being agonizingly painful for Wormfeast, the angry sights of the Obsidian Greatbow do indeed create an obvious, blazing beacon in the shape of a fiery, slitted eye, anchored in the air adjacent to its flesh. Aiming anywhere near it both vastly improves targeting, and effectively doubles offensive power through arbitrary and arcane means.

Tomoe has posed:
Tomoe was still in a bit of shock that she could use her wings here, given the issues with light. Yet there were other things she might think about, she'd become a vessel for something here, which would bear looking into. However for now the joy of catching up with the rest of the party was lost, she was dumped with the rest. She still glowed too, which is something that has got some people's asking what's going on.

There's no time for answers as Tomoe sees they are not alone.

"He's got some good ones."

Her wings flare out, which should be news to anyone here given she's been unable to use them without help from say Finna for as long as she's been here and Tomoe's already taking to the skies.

"It just never ends does it?!"

She makes a bit of a face about Wormfeast and with Finna's comment over the radio? Well she's right it's bad but not as bad as what they were dealing with before. She will rise sup a bit, start chanting and letting her light rays fly, more or less magical lasers on her part. She's also very glad the likes of Kord and Priscilla is here as well, or this could be an even worse situation without two heavy hitters like them to bolster the party. As for Wormfeast it's going to have a very bad day if Tomoe has anything to say about it.

Carna (974) has posed:
    Particle beams and rockets slam into Wormfeast, spraying so much decaying and reanimated bio-matter like a slurry. With flames added to the mix, and Kord enhancing them with a combination of his own slicing wind blades and the backing of the Darkness that sends claws of shadow spiralling down into the central mass to tunnel and scrape to the core, heat spreads down the monstrous head in rivers of fire that turn long white and purple invertebrates into gray ash and cinders.

    As Finna fires her arrow (or arrows?) into Wormfeast, sinking them into a creautre she will probably not wish to retrieve them after use, its clenched fleshless jaws, gumless, exposed teeth like tombstones upon a pair of hills, one upside-down and above the other, opens. The maw of the thing disgorges a wave of black ooze, the liquefied remains of the Dead it has consumed, as well as some not yet fully digested. Shambling bodies, whether Lantern and controlled by the worms that squirm through their flesh, or Unlit and simply seeking out prey, stagger their way towards the attackers, adding another element of threat to deal with beyond just attacking the boss.

    As well, melee-focused fighters have something to keep their allies safe from. From the size of Wormfeast, it's unlikely there's any shortage of these zombie-things to send at them. As Tomoe flies in the darkness, she herself producing her own light source (though whether it is a light that would 'count' outside of Lumiere is another question), she unleashes her magic lasers on the enemy. The rays are limned in a red radiance, a sort of 'coating' of another power. Sharper eyes might determine that glow is actually rings of glyphs and symbols incredibly compacted, overlapping each other until they become a solid band of red. Where the beams strike, flesh melts and what is wrong is set to right. Bodies fall from Wormfeast as though rejected, or as though rejecting that which consumed them.

    Priscilla paints a symbol of harm upon Wormfeast, causing its constant stream of black ooze and aggressive dead things to cease as its mouth is devoted once more to clenching shut as the rest of it issues forth a cry that is completely independent of what the mouth itself is doing. Just the angry and pained hissing of all its myriad smaller mouths.

    Several of the worm serpents launch themselves from the main body, and go seeking new hosts to infest. That appears to include Priscilla. Each of these worms is lengthy, and thick as a grown man's torso. In huge numbers, even she might be overwhelmed, or forced to abandon her current tactic.

    But then something white and very fast lashes out from behind her. Its exact nature is unknown. Its exact movements unseen. But in that flicker of an instant, the parasites coming for the cross-breed are rent into bleeding segments, writhing on the ground.

    And if Priscilla chances a look behind, there is nothing there.

    Someone here, however, sees as he gives himself over to this new power and uses it wantonly.

Carna (974) has posed:
Sub-Terra Luna Ruins (Darkness) - <Lumiere>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Prison homes plated in black steel are intermixed with the ruins of once-great buildings. Hallowed ground turned to a den of death and suffering, caked in corruption, run through from ceiling to the floor as though a great knife had pierced the world. To add to this seeming, there is even a constant flow of blood from above, dripping down into the depths. Red and thick, for hungering things below.

    A great seething mass of worms rises from the wound, red energies flowing through it like veins. Unseen eyes watch from the walls -- presences that whisper and advise, as they push things in favor of those who obey. The world bends to their will.

    And the shadows bleed together until they run in waterfalls of pitch, a roar that blocks out all else beyond the words of the whisperers, and the voices in one's own head.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contents
Count Kord <Crown Of Black Flames>
Priscilla <A Decapitated Figure With A Scythe Stands Behind Her>
Static Signals <Radio Messages Are Inaudible>
Wormfeast <A Test Of Your New Strength. Tear It Asunder.>
Wounds <Stop The Bleeding. They Can Smell It.>

Count Kord has posed:
    Kord's eyes flick around as he takes in the strange sights. The crown briefly distracts him -- it isn't the crown he wants, and so he ignores it as an illusion, a lie meant to control him. He eagerly uses the dark power that is given to him, because if this strange force wants to help him destroy, then by all means, he'll give it a course to hit his enemies with.

    His wings spread wide and, for a moment, his eyes glow behind his mask. The red in those wings and his tail becomes deeper, like clouds illuminated by bloody fires. The black seems to blur, taking on an appearance like crawling black lightning. He howls with the effort, accumulating a magical power of wind throughout his body, and then he releases a massive, cleaving beam of wind that doesn't just make a howling noise as it blows through the tunnel like a tornado, it glows like a beam of pure energy... because it is. White and red light pulses from the force of Dark and Wind magic pushed toward the weak point that Priscilla marked on his prey.

    It's really, really loud.

    He utterly ignores the, uh, interlopers that approach them. He can mop up later. Right now, he is cackling and enjoying a nice big fight, with no complications to distract him.

Finna (513) has posed:
EWWWWWWW EVEN MORE! Seeing how this thing falls apart fills Finna with another wave of revulsion and nausea. Even her Lunar composure cannot stomach this level of gross.

    Nevertheless... as gross as the things are, Finna's not too dissuaded from the role that she's taken up.

    The foxgirl's forced to pause only for a bit as she spots the unfamiliar magical displays being put forth here. Not that she's an expert in Tomoe's arsenal, but something curious going on here has her furrowing her brow a bit!

    "That's what we need! More of that!" She confidently declares... and vaults forwards.

    Because those undead are only a threat to her if they can MOVE QUICKLY enough. Up she goes, using Unlit 'noggins for stepping stones and kicking them down into the ground as she goes, keeping up the barrage of arrows!

    The Illusionary Finnas dive into the masses meanwhile, all seeking to distract and draw away the hordes. Perhaps get them slamming into each other.

Tomoe has posed:
Magic, tech and things somewhere in the middle assail Wormfeast, but is it enough? Tomoe quickly clues in she should be dealing with any adds as she might put it. She also does not presume the light will work on any other world but this one. She might try to experiment later but that's for another time she's got to worry about. She sees the nature of her spell has changed, that get her attention the red? She's not sure what's going on there and won't have time to realize those are actually runes. Rather than the small light rays she's getting super powered red laser of some sort.

She's going to have to train and pay attention o just what's happened to her and she's going to keep up with it, with Moon Cutter in Hand from her inventory now.

She'll take a moment before she'll try to attack with magic again as she'll try to get up close to run some interference. Before she'll try to chant again it does take her some time between spells after all.

"Lets keep it up!"

Priscilla has posed:
    Spewing out legions of the restless dead seems to be a not-uncommon tactic here. Why wouldn't it be? They're a resource easily tapped second only to breathable air, and do an admirable job of slowing down progress and complicating just about any proposition. Furthermore, they are the exact opposite of anything Priscilla's gargantuan dragonslayer greatbow, as opposed to Finna's swifter implement, is specialized for.

    She holds her ground for several moments, looking back and forth across the awakening, sludge-covered horde, fingers hovering at where a quiver should be and looking for a good opportunity to line several of them up, but sees none forthcoming. Wormfeast seems to like her especially little, and disgorges some of the foul and loathsome things that make up its body at her, instantly triggering her disgust reflex. She'd found the same things in the charnel-packed houses on the way here, so-

    That thought interrupted, even Priscilla has to look around in bewilderment when the slithering abominations fall to pieces of their own accord. Though vastly more specialized in /being/ invisible rather than spotting it, the former on its own means that she is used to these situations being the opposite way around, and is visibly offput by being surprised like this herself for once. At least it appears to be . . . beneficial? Benign, at least?

    "I beg thine pardon?" she says to Kord, more out of habit and in clear vexation than anything else, beseechingly looking around herself for several seconds, before giving up on finding the source, with the Unlit making steady progress. She instead takes just long enough to finally draw one of those utterly tremendous, comically impossible arrows that should never fly anywhere, draw the bow with a whispering, shuddering creak, and then launch the titanic spear straight at her previously placed mark, easily having enough inertia to splatter through a mob or two that unfortunately gets in the way at the last second.

    She has a bit of a plan for where it buries itself, but after that, she herself disappears in much the same way her 'friend' did, and absconds from the area, relocating to another shooting point. It's not so much trained sniper's discipline so much as it is naturally engrained behaviour for her, and a cheap and easy way to leave any of the horde advancing on her suddenly without a target, until she makes her next, obvious move.

Staren has posed:
    Hmm. It's not down yet. At least Staren is flying and can avoid the shambling zombies that way. How long before it produces some kind of flying undead or worms though? Staren decides it's time to turn things up another notch. Flying at a distance, he swaps the rocket launcher for an energy rifle of some sort, apparently made of one single part. He sets the RAISER rifle to full power, and moderate penetration -- enough to get through a few bodies, he hopes. And then he lands, just long enough to aim and fire a projectile of gleaming light at the base of the neck, before taking to the air again. Photons in an exotic, matter-like state, the outer layer dissolves away on impact, burning a passage around the projectile... and then suddenly the core imparts all its energy at once, energy equivalent to a half-ton of TNT being dumped into the surrounding matter as the exotic photons return to light.

Carna (974) has posed:
    As Kord pours his massive attack directly into the weak point created by Priscilla, the effect is devastating about a third of its head is simply sliced clean off. Maybe more. A cavernous skull that must have belonged to a giant of some description before it was repurposed as a breeding ground for THESE things, has now been slashed open to an extreme degree. What would be a fatal blow to most beings, leaving exposed their now heavily damaged brains. Instead, what is exposed is a squirming ball of worms, many of them now bisected due to being in the path of the attack.

    Teetering and wobbling around, weight no longer easily distributed, the contents of its skull slipping and pouring out into the hole in the ground, and back down below (where they'll have to go soon enough. Ugh), Wormfeast seems to be on the ropes already. Is this the power the Darkness can offer? The power to slay even things like this in short order? The answer to that question will have to go on hold. As Finna pours more arrows into the behemoth, streams of silvery smoke starting to come out of the holes they sank into, something seems to be building and shifting below the creature's semblance of a neck. Its jaw cranks open again, and many more bodies are vomitted forth, some larger than the previous wave, their forms heavy with worms to the point where they are almost more parasite than flesh.

    It's a fine thing to evade slow enemies. But as their numbers continue to increase, the chances of even a slow enemy getting in a lucky hit is going to go up. And one can only dodge for as long as there is room to evade. Further attempts to walk on the heads of the Unlit causes their parasitic cargo to snap and hiss and bite at nimble feet, making even that strategy hazardous. If not for its bestial nature, Wormfeast could almost be seen as intelligent. But that's not possible, right? A cunning predator, surely, but all those minds together do not form a super intelligence.

    Probably.

    Tomoe pauses to prepare for her next spell attack, and more worms stretch up from the slashed mass, launching themselves towards her. Of course, with her wings, she can probably evade easily... But flexible attackers that can whip themselves about provide more of a threat than just a single small arrow, particularly with the degree of mass they possess. Best not to get hit.

    Priscilla's attack blasts through the weak point she created, coring out the remainder of Wormfeast's skull, and leaving only its lower jaw and throat. More bodies tumble below in the spray, some of them no doubt meant to be issued forth as reinforcements for the existing and still-swelling horde of the undead. A gurgling, choking noise now comes from the pit of a throat, black ooze bubbling up from somewhere below.

Carna (974) has posed:
    Staren's attack pulverizes the base of the neck, thinner than the head it supported until recently, sending that remaining bottom third sloughing off like melted cheese (made of worms) and now even its bottom jaw is gone. They have beheaded this beast thrice over. Surely, that is enough!

    Connection Established: Analysis indicates a greater physiological structure below was supporting the head. Conclusion: There is much more of the enemy to defeat. Recommended Tactic: Tempospatial claudication linking Point 9Y176 - Blood Forge to Point 8885Z - Mausoleum Entrance. Confirm Link: Accept or Reject?

    Again with the data stream in Staren's mind. Not a voice, exactly, but mathematical formula and reality code that translate themselves automatically for him. Machinespeak of some kind for a World Device.

    And even as this message is silently imparted to him, it seems Wormfeast is gathering itself, amassing for a Phase Two as the 'shoulders' seem to be heaving and growing in breadth as more of itself rises from below.

Staren has posed:
    Staren fires a couple more beam cannon shots at what's left of the head as he considers the offer. Linking here to... the blood forge? What would that do? He's got a couple ideas, but he can't really be sure.

    Well, last time the mysterious system made the right call, bringing him here. If it wanted him dead it could have done so easily. [Accept], he thinks.

Priscilla has posed:
    Worms are not typically known for being incredibly sturdy, but still, Priscilla is surprised at the ease with which Kord blows away most of its entire head. Fascinated by the repulsive sight of the long hollowed out skull beneath the writhing mass, she suddenly gains quite a solid understanding of why the colony had pressed itself into the misshapen human visage it has chosen, but the Count wins out in terms of what she wins up staring at more than the other.

    "I hope then, Count Kord, that this means thou were not completely duped by those whispering voices of thine. Is this the power thou hast grasped for?" she asks. It seems as they near this last guardian, many promises and elusive, trailing threads have started to come to a head at once. Speaking of heads, however, her previous shot appears to have blown most of the remainder away, and thus she has to shift her angle. A few moments ago, she'd have cautiously written it as a victory until the Dead Lights didn't come, but now that she's had a glimpse of the skull beneath, she presumes the presence of an entire skeleton below.

    While they have the reprieve, Priscilla makes a quick job of tidying up the horde a little, moving where the lurching bodies are thinnest and easiest to maneuver around without bumping into them and foiling her invisibility, and scything down swaths of vulnerable or out of place parisitized Unlit here and there, opportunistically trimming their numbers to open up pockets of free space, and reduce the density of the horde. Then, she makes for the nearest building that is just high enough to look down the hole, and plants her bow again, drawing a second arrow. She waits on firing it off until she gets a good look, though. The things are pretty massive, and she prefers to travel light, so she only carries three at a time.

Finna (513) has posed:
This is starting to get tricky! As the supply of Unlit thickens to a tidal wave of them Finna's confident gait gets jittery. More and more swipes and bites are aimed at her before she can even turn around. Eventually a creature gets a CHOMP on her ankle and she goes yelping down into the mass with a *THUNKWHUMP!*

    The Unlit get a good ten seconds to claw and strike and pound and bite, and through it all Finna's shrieking and growling with growing viciousness!

    Down and out? Nope. hardly.

    Screeching out a shrill warcry, she makes her move...

    Blinding silvery light spears through the gaps between rotting limbs, and with a surge of Essence a plethora of the horde is forced back in every direction. The flash of STEEL shines an UPWARD LUNGE from an impossible position - Finna's wielding wielding a huge metal construct of crescent shape, sharp enough to slice and dice on one side - and with numerous holes for finger grips and other things.

    And right now Finna's wielding the thing with - rather than skill - just sheer intuition of 'apply strength and bladed edge to thing you want to chop'! ... And, amazingly enough, using her feet. Yes. Somehow, she's gripping the weapon with her FEET instead of hands for that rise.

    A few Unlit are bisected cleanly through and go flying as she flips around in the air and shifts the weapon into a proper hand grip.

    "Back where you came from, zombie-breath!!" For once, the insult is PRETTY LITERAL.

    And that's when she begins to spin the thing above her head so quickly it whistles and shrieks gratingly at the ears! And then.. she seemingly releases it?!

    The weapon goes flying from her hands from the spin-force, but a silvery glowing thread of Essence seems to connect it to her fingertips. Now she swings it overhead on a cord of Essence-silk - the same she uses to retract her knives!

    Zombie Mower Manuever is born.

Count Kord has posed:
    Kord can't hear Priscilla, for some reason. He just wildly, madly glows and wings up higher above the teetering mass of maggots. He accumulates more magical energy, puffing and panting from the exertion, feeling his own head ring with the headache of all the ambient, maddening noise around him. But then, abruptly, something stabs through the sound in his head, and he hesitates. A voice holding much more power over him, as it has guided him since his youth, speaks up. It hammers down the fuzz and the temptation, and reminds him:

    They offer you power. You ARE power. You are Destruction's Brood. Do not be deceived.

    And his mania abruptly calms to a dull roar, yet he picks up his assault right where it left off. This time, though, he frowns behind his mask, leering past the noise and the enhancement the dark brings. He speaks a few words, muffled by what he's doing, as he knows whatever being responsible for this noise will hear it. Then he flings yet more wind down into the Wormfeast, another swirling blast of air. In his world, this would be incredibly effective against bugs, so he's only using the wind blasts out of habit.

Tomoe has posed:
Kord opens up and just goes for the thing's weak point that Priscilla has made this is good it buys her more time to act and to try to not think about this horror. this time though Tomoe is making ready for another spell as the last one she let off, did some serious effects. Better than she could have done with a blade, though she'd not want to admit that openly. She's got her pride in being a swordsman.

She;'s able to move a bit and is keeping air borne, but they come for her.

Worms throwing themselves throwing at her and she's forced, to go on the evasive. She does find her opening finally and the chant starts up again. The runes come as she readies the light spell again trying to push it a bit harder this time as she does her best to aim it for the centre of mass of the Wormfeast.

"TAKE THIS!"

She does see the changes in her power? What is happening to her? At this point she's going to have to look into what's happened to her. She's also left open while casting...

Carna (974) has posed:
    No matter what these strange otherworldly forces may be that are giving them visions and messages and power-ups, they seem to be unified in purpose right now, each wishing to secure the demise of this particular monster. So as howling black winds accompany Kord's attacks, icy fists of shadow made flesh pummeling his foes and sending enormous force to each attack to sever and shred while drowning out the rest of the world; and as some unseen spectre lashes out to keep Priscilla safe, enabling her to use her ranged attacks without having to be concerned about being overrun and when she switches to melee nothing approaches her back that does not fall to the ground in pieces; and as Tomoe's spells tell Wormfeast 'no, this is not correct. Your forms should be divided apart. I will make it so.' and then she MAKES IT SO; and as Staren receives an analysis by what might by Lumiere itself trying to guide his hand towards understanding and error correction, even if that means redefining reality to fit its desired narrative (and perhaps his); and as Finna's blade sing with the long-forgotten sound of winds upon the Moon's seas in a time and place where it was possessed of life and water, a quiet voice chanting the names of those bodies of water with every strike that cuts through the hungry dead, it truly may feel like, for the first time, they really are the Prophecied Ones.

    Those chosen by fate to save Lumiere.

    Almost, because Tomoe was not one of those who ventured inside the Painting to meet Unpainted Priscilla and be told of her destiny as foretold by Los. Though she has a prophecy to her name, she is not one of the Six. And two of those Six are missing. Kushiko and Enark are absent. And so, there is still that sense that something is missing. They are not yet complete. But even so, by their own efforts, they have come this far, caught the attention of this world's powers, and received their boon.

    Darkness, Moonlight, Law, Chaos. They are working together to make whatever vision of the future they desire a reality.

    The red gate that Staren and Tomoe arrived via and accompanied by opens as a sense of acknowledgement flows through the former. The heat level increases tremendously as a constant flood of flaming blood pours out, dousing the swelling mass of worms, and sending them to shrieking bouts of agony as they are melted under the deluge. A bubbling mound of flaming undead flesh, that flows all the way down. From Priscilla's perch, she can see the effects of this, as well as the wave of forms that continues to rise. Others, in flight, like Kord and Tomoe, may see it as well. A huge arm made of worms, emerges. Many of the worms hred under the blast of wind from Kord, though now unaugmented by any additional power beyond his own. The visions he is seeing fade and melt back into 'reality' (is there such a thing as a single reality? Is this even the 'real' reality he is more familiar with?), and there is sense of loss as the additional power drains out of him. His 'vessel' was expanded to contain more of the Darkness. With it momentarily slipping away, there is now an emptiness left behind.

    The whispers do not stop, but they are no longer offering power.

    ----

    Darkness - Count Kord:

    Do not push yourself too far, too soon. You must acclimate to your new power. You do not wish to break or be consumed like the others. You will have more fitting foes to test yourself against, very soon. But when you wish it, you will have this power again.

    ----

    Whether this is in response to something Kord said or did or not, it does not appear the Darkness is actually acknowledging his words with its own.

Carna (974) has posed:
    Tomoe's spell however, is, as desired, even stronger than before. Instead of cauing damage, as it seemed to before, the effect this time is very clear. Red symbols sprawl across the flaming, squirming limb that surges up towards her. The runes and glyphs encircle it, blaze across it, and then activate. Again, she sets to right what is wrong. Instead of damaging the construct, she separates it. The worms pour en masse from their desired form and into the flaming blood, as the corpses they had woven together with their own bodies slip free of them somehow, filtered out by the runes that bend and turn the parasites towards the flame.

    She has imposed Law upon these things, as well as the punishment for their attempt to violate it. Gradually, more and more, the monstrous giant melts and falls apart. Wind blasts tear into it, flaming blood melts it, zombies fall apart and release their Dead Lights to signifty their demise under the cutting blows of Priscilla and Finna, and rules are places that are inviolate and for which even the attempt results in execution, and at the end, there just isn't enough of it left to crawl all the way up anymore. It lacks cohesion, it crumbles and screams as the collective dies.

    Priscilla's vantage point allows her to see the huge column of Dead Lights that erupt from the hole as all its myriad parts dissolve in a shrieking, tortured heap, leaving behind a blackened cork screw of charred and fused flesh leading downwards like a ramp of charcoal into the lair of the next Marble Guardian. Seemingly by change, the vortexes of wind Kord has unleashed, the heat produced by the river of molten blood that has now ceased with the gate's closing under its own initiative, the zombies that kept being toppled below by Finna, and the arrow that Priscilla fired, and the moonsilver fired by Finna, becoming a sort of spindly handrail leading all the way down. Perhaps it is the element of Law that Tomoe employed to give it such order, such form, that it could be used as a passage below.

    Or maybe it was Fate.

    Unlike when the Executor was slain, there does not appear to be any treasure to gather. But they have each gained something greater than any salvaged weapon, even if they do not yet know the full extent of it... Nor whether it can be trusted.

            HUNT COMPLETED: WORMFEAST

Staren has posed:
    A river of molten blood was indeed one of the possibilities Staren expected. He watches with satisfaction, and tries to give the connection the sense that he'd like to see the manual, although perhaps it's gone too quickly.

    The wormfeat defeated, Staren lands by the hole to look at the staircase. "...So. It seems we've all been gifted some kind of helpful power here. What do you all think of this? Do you think it's truly on our side?"

Count Kord has posed:
    There's an emptiness, and Kord shivers like he has been left cold and lonely in the forests of his homeland again. He watches the final chaotic slurry of attacks as the Wormfeast is finally, perhaps ultimately, destroyed. It fills him with a sense of relief and a soft sigh puffs from his mouth. Then he flits over to an edge of the hole while words echo through his head, peddling a promise of combat, of foes to further test himself against. He frowns in continued suspicion, despite what he has been given... he isn't one to trust a being that takes back what it gives just as easily.

    Yveltal remains silent.

    "..."

    Kord just stares down into the hole in Lostrata, eyes fixated on the unknown bottom. The fear washes over him, acknowledged as a foreign feeling.

    "I need a break," he decides, and he sits on the edge of the hole and crosses his arms.

    "I think it wants us to do what it couldn't do on its own," he answers Staren.

Priscilla has posed:
    Priscilla watches for several, long, silent minutes from her chosen point, atop a high building. She watches as Wormfeast dissolves and dies its agonizing death, watches as the active participant of the environment closes up and goes dormant once more, she watches as the abnormal spiral staircase forms, and she contemplates that descent, and that lair beyond, for quite a while, before putting away her weapons.

    "It must, Sir Staren, else it wouldst hath passed up an uncountable myriad of opportunities to thwart us. Though Lumiere is now a killing field drenched in darkness and tragedy, it was, once, a mechanism with a purpose. Shouldst such a thing not wish its purpose restored?"

Finna (513) has posed:
Finna's not much for destiny - she was fated to die alone in a blizzard, being stalked by a Great Terror... but through raw determination to survive and outwit the beast her soul break through her destiny, and called Luna's blessing down from heaven. That hard-earned power now resonates with memories from another world, it would seem.

    She's briefly entranced by the song that her spinning blade-on-a-thread sings as it's swung and carves apart the restless dead, the blade wreathed in a penumbra of wispy blue-white-silvery energies and shadows of her own anima.

    The BOILING BLOOD DELUGE is the thing that breaks her out of that trance... mostly by triggering a reflex GTFOOD leap that sends her saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiling backwards an impossibly long distance - as if the air currents of this place couldn't bear to let go of her all too quickly.

    Yet back down she does fall, landing nimbly as a cat...

    And with a WHUNK-CHNG, the massive blade-on-a-string embeds one tip into the floor next to her, the silken thread falling slack to the ground similarly and pooling haphazardly every which way.

    She stands there grinning rather madly - to hide the fact that she has UTTERLY NO idea what is happening here today. Her tail's wagging up a storm though!

    "That's two down!"

Staren has posed:
    Staren shrugs to Priscilla. "Not all things with a purpose also have volition. But perhaps so."

Tomoe has posed:
The effect of Tomoe's spell is being made clear to her, she watches as it forces the thing apart where it hits it. Her allies and friends just rip into thing one way or another. Something does not feel right something feels like they is something missing here. There is much she does not know, and much she has to learn. The battle goes on things get even more strange but the gate opens and something else is coming through and it looks like her spell is working but it's clear now she sees the strange symbols to her. She also watches in no small bit of awe as the thing comes apart as to what it should have been before it became twisted.

She comes in for a landing just kinda of a moment to gaze on what happened.

"I think my magic's been effected too.. and your right that is two down."

"I think we did good..."

She relaxes a little bit here as she sees the fight is over for now but things are far yet from over, there are things left to do for this world and she'll keep going. As the idea she has been changed and is going to have to look into this.