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Bloody Revelations	Bluehaven has not exactly fared well after the final, crushing assault levied upon it by the western navy of the Realm, to say little of being trapped between ships of the Black Fleet and even stranger ships of Claslat.     The maze of intentional wreckage of centuries old ships that had once surrounded it as an impenetrable barrier is now just wreckage of the normal sort, blasted and burnt, scattered and crushed, half simply ship-themed flotsam on the water, leaving the other half piled up on ancient coral beds only barely useful as stationary bergs to sail around, or stand on top of to scout the area. The incredibly complex lattice of a shipwork city inside of it is barely any better off, largely broken into floating chunks, like city block-sized rafts, from the passage of jade-plated triremes and Autocthonian artifact hulls. Even now, the stagnant, sargasso choked sea is still stained with deep colours of red, as a lack of any breeze or ocean current to wash it out of the weeds and algae has turned the rivers of blood into a permanent fixture. Corpses have all been thrown to the sharks by now, which have since moved on, leaving the place a burnt, arrow-riddled, bloodstained ghost town with very much the feeling of being haunted. Most of it has been severely corroded by acid, large portions sunk to the depths, where the tallest masts and towers still poke out from the water, due to the sheer mountain of debris below.     Dukantha never did show back up, though it's quite probable he's found his way back to the seas somewhere else. The Lintha here were butchered nearly to the last. A few ships escaped in the mayhem, and many more were out to sea when the siege began, but the last, great home of the Lintha has completely fallen. Captured ships that belonged to them for years, and which weren't broken in the fighting, are being pulled back out. Ships of the triple fleet that were sunk in the battle are being salvaged by teams of aquatic Dragon Blooded and Skullstone's sophisticated undead. There's been a long tally of bodies, and extensive registrars being taken of the massive hoards of wealth being pulled out of the Lintha's treasure hold for a couple of weeks now. A landing fleet has combed over the strange island of sickly blue grasses, white sands, and strange trees, but found nothing of real note, save a cave some surviving Lintha inner cloister priests were hiding out in, and designated the area a corrupted Water Demesne, to be purified and acquired by the Realm.
Bloody Revelations	All the participating Elites have since been offered an exorbitant commission for their efforts and given a medal of exceptional service in name of the Scarlet Empress (in absentium) that qualifies them as more or less equal to foreign legion officers, and are thus qualified to be here as long as they please. They have free roam of the area, though it might not do to stay a whole lot later, since the sun is shortly about to start setting, and there's no mistaking the signs of this place slowly becoming a mid-sized shadowland for the scale of death that'd occurred here. Not really a relevant one, in the middle of nowhere ocean, though. The ancient tomb beneath the water is concerning, but so far no ghosts have risen from it.     There are other Elites, who are now unfortunately very late to the party. Set sail in no doubt one of Wandering Dog's apparently many boats, they've been directed to come here to negotiate with the Lintha over the coming war on Skullstone. They've been told, more or less, that the Lintha will show up either way once they smell blood in the water, whether anyone talks to them or not, that they'll definitely turn down any facsimile of equal cooperation, and that the ideal outcome is the Lintha haggling over rights to Luthe and showing up late and opportunistically as usual, but just on the 'right' side instead of a side all their own, earlier and more confidently.     Tipping off an entire society of vicious pirates as to a terrible war on their #1 enemy upcoming that they can profit off of sounded like a solid idea at the time maybe, but it looks less and less likely to happen as floating wreckage bumps up against the hull of the chosen vessel, the skies become faded, steel grey, and the green mats of algae are soaked with red. They might just have to piece together what the hell happened instead.
Staren	Getting away from that crazy underwater tomb-city was a relief, and Staren hopes he never has to go back there except once to help people escape it.     Sailing on a boat doesn't feel much better, though -- he's far away from the warpgate, his ship can't reach here because (he can only assume, since he can't see Creation from space) the Wyld and possibly Heaven are in the way. So his mind is full of visions of something happening to the ship and getting freaking stranded.     The Lintha sounded pretty unlikely to be reasonable people. So Staren's not sure if it's better or worse when, as they approach Lintha territory, the change in the sky, the sea, and the essence (his armor has sensors now, and of course he recognizes underworld essence by feel now anyway) make it pretty clear they're entering a shadowland.     "Geeze. Did something kill them all?"
Wandering Dog	Wandering Dog doesn't technically own any ships himself, but he knows enough people and is owed enough favors that he can get access to one easily, allowing him and his allies to travel here. He's been up on deck the whole trip, drinking booze he bought in the Multiverse and offering a cup to anyone who wants one. This is probably going to be a difficult negotiation, and he likes to do his negotiations with a kick, because he's a crazy old man. Though, the situation they come across isn't one for negotiations. Blood-soaked algae, floating wreckage, and a lack of clear Lintha paints an easy picture, as Wandering Dog makes a request for the ship to keep getting closer, try and find the closest thing to life around here. Though if one of the more tactician types wants to overrule that, the martial artist is willing to hear them out. SPeaking of tactician types, Wandering Dog would approach the rest of his team on the deck, if they're available. "Looks like someone or something beat us here. What's the plan? If there's any survivors, we might still be able to negotiate, possibly with better odds of success, but I think we should also figure out what happened and if it's a threat to us." A pause, as Wandering Dog strokes his beard. "I'll let one of you brainiacs take the lead on figuring it out. If we have survivors, witnesses, or perpetrators, I'll try doing the talking."
All-Seeing Eye	When one puts his labor into something, it is important that one is not divorced from the benefit. Months ago, All-Seeing Eye stood outside the gates of the underworld Lookshy, ready to destroy it. An Abyssal had stopped him, and although it ate away at him to leave such an insult to the memory of the original, Eye listened to what that Abyssal had to say. He told him that the palatability of his solution depended on how much black he was willing to have on his hat. That, he could make a hasty attack on Lookshy's ghost to satisfy his need to punish now, or he could more meaningfully strike at Revelations in the long term.      He had been sceptical, to say the least. But Eye isn't stupid. In that moment, he knew that even he couldn't fend off the defenses Revelations had mustered. Faced with certain defeat and an unpalatable victory, he chose the latter.      Oh, how wrong he'd been. The Exalt makes no effort to hide himself, bedecked in the accolade bestowed him by the Realm forces. He isn't here to contribute labor, but to enjoy the benefits thereof. Even though nightfall approaches, the Exalt opts to remain longer. He celebrates, standing upon the railing of an empty Lintha vessel, with his erhu out.      He plays a merry tune which those approaching might be able to hear over the gentle rush of surf, the slapping of waves against empty hulls, and the occasional cry of gulls.
Finna	Finna is now working openly, favoring hanging around with the Clastlat bunch and All-Seeing Eye, but staying far away from the Skullstone ships. They get a wide, wide berth.     But what, exactly, is she doing? Why, salvaging. Diving into the sea. In her alter-ego guise of the archer Laughing Gale, she would've certainly accepted the offered medal - what the Dragon-Blooded don't know is all to her benefit! - but she's doing her absolute utmost to not let anyone who doesn't already know her witness shapeshifting.     Everything's done behind wreckage, beneath the waves, and so on.     For the moment, she's taken the form of a dolphin and is rummaging around in the underwaters, not really caring about the tingling of dark and cold Essence running down her back.     A few hungry ghosts, pfteh. She can deal with that.     Rummaging through the wreckage for TREASURE and anything that might win her some more approval and bragging rights is well worth the risks. Especially if she finds anything shiny or neat enough to keep for herself!     Like a Moonsilver Knife. That would be awesome.
Azure Armature	While there are more mundane (specifically, less Extremely Anime/Hyper Weeb) members of Team Vermilion, and Wandering Dog is manning the helm (or magically controlling the boats with his will as an extension of his mind, but nobody buys Sail charms, that's fake as hell), Azure Armature had joined the party to fill the roll of 'edgy anime who sat at the tip of the prow of the ship, cross legged, managing screens full of runes and letting her scarf billow gently in the air. As they start finding the blood, the bodies, and the wrecks, Armature rises, moving with 'natural' weeb balance, feet firmly planted on swaying wood, before alighting on the deck. "Their force-diminishment, if not entirely crippling, will mean either their appetites will be whet for mayhem, or their constitutions weak and spineless, broken and scattered. Either way: unuseful." Behind her, her strange mathmagic displays wink out at the tip of the prow. Armature tugs up her scarf to cover her mouth, and leans over the side to see what strikes the boat. "Prepare for boarders anyway."
Staren	Staren nods at Armature's evaluation of the situation. "Indeed. As for figuring out what happened... shouldn't we be able to just ASK a ghost? Where's a necromancer when you need one?"     ...     "...Is that... music?"
Empty Tidings	Empty Tidings has been lingering. The accolades and awards are welcome -- there was a bit of an emotional display upon accepting them; she cried, even! -- but the job wasn't quite finished. She has since been providing expert advice on the loot dragged up from the Lintha's holds (and subtly encouraging the belief that she's some kind of lost egg)... after, of course, she had it scouted for herself before the Realm even got there. A few trifles may have gone missing, and some of the lower holds might have been strangely sparse in loot, but nobody would know or care. Anything missing probably wasn't important if it could be easily smuggled out, anyway. And then there were her quiet night-time forays into Bluehaven itself... well, let's just say there used to be more Lintha here even after the defense was shattered and leave it at that. At the moment, she's sitting on a crate on the deck of the abandoned vessel All-Seeing Eye is performing on. She's dressed in blues and greens, with red lacquered needles pinning her long hair up, and seems to be quietly enjoying the celebratory tunes. Let the Realm handle whatever comes; they've done their part already.
Starbound Flotilla	Pavo's up in the crow's nest. Moonfin's helping with rigging. Seft's been busy navigating. Albert's been patroling for stowaways and such. Biteblade's fishing. And George, of course, contributes by drinking. "'Kill them all'? Pavo, are you seeing what he sees?" "Oh yes, it's looking pretty dark out there. Can't you see it?" "Conflicted. Well, it's to be expected, a little, but still, I am detecting..." "*Sniff sniff*... Yeah yeah. Wasss big fight here, looksss like." "Hhhhhhuh. Well. Looks like this got interesting. They're moving faster then." "It's not 'interesting'. It's /risky/ for what we want." "Oh yes. What's the plan then?" "The hoverbikes await our efforts, well equipped with amphibious engines." "Gotta run in! Figure out who'sss there!" "And probably get 'em out. I mean, Shadowlands are good for us, right?" "For our benefactor. Not as good as the Linthans." "Relieved. Well, at least we won't have to negotiate with them..."     The six move from their positions. As Albert passes by Azure, he informs her: "Call us if boarding becomes an emergency. We're scouting ahead." They head to where they've parked a rack of six fancy hoverbikes, and launch from the side of the ship, spreading out into formation and surging over the water, leaving a thin, swirling white wake behind them. They're not remotely subtle, but then again, how subtle can one be on water?     They're intending to make landing at the harbor shortly, pressed against the body of their color-coded hoverbikes. Moonfin, the fishman, is in elaborate full-body durasteel armor that looks like a powered cross between a diving suit and a samurai's armor, glowing cyan at the faceplate. Biteblade, the humanoid plant, is in durasteel plating with elaborately carved wood and bone ornaments over glowing powered components that glow an intense green. Pavo the bird-girl wears a divine-aesthetic set of mesoamerican-style armor, with yellow runes and inscriptions lighting up on stylishly gleaming golden armor and robes. Albert the monkey-man is wearing what looks like lab technician gear with extensive sets of tools and chemical protection, which integrates thin, resilient plates of durasteel, and lines of bright white. George (just plain human) wears a futuristic combat EVA hardsuit that glows a gentle red at the flat faceplate. Seft, the robotic Flotilla member, is wearing full-on medieval knight armor with a soft energized blue glow below the plates on her body, and especially around the eyes. "If these aren't more Abyssal friends of our benefactor, is there a reason to leave them alive? Really?" "I leave such discussion to those more invested in survival as an ethical fixture. I would rather we not fight, but that is simply the default wise Hylotl posture on the topic." "We're here to get a better position in the war on Skullstone. Giving them more territory is a loss. Failing to take a proven, working strike position against them even more. If Lintha is lost, we've got a reason to take it ourselves."
Bloody Revelations	The Starbound Flotilla finds quite a sight as they enter. Diving teams of well-equipped commandos with various water-breathing artifacts and watery Animas are hauling up both treasure and valuable wreckage. More mundane teams under the supervision of sorcerers are carving up the floating corpses of massive demons, killed by mass weapons fire for the most part, but many with huge chunks of missing flesh owed to bites, or burnt away via some anathemic magic. Teams of common labourers and Skullstone's 'advanced' zombies (they barely even smell) carry huge boxes of salvage, loot, and supplies back and forth over temporary walkways joining together the former chunks of Bluehaven, piling them up for quartermasters to look over as captains argue and haggle over divisions of spoils and credit in conference rooms aboard their ships.     Compared to the task force that had razed Bluehaven to the ground, the teams here are tiny, lightly armed, and have few vessels to their name, though there are still enough Dragon Blooded, enough ballistae and cannons, and enough soldiers, as to be unlikely for a cautious group to want to pick a head-on fight with, especially if they don't want to tip their hand.     There are no boarders on Wandering Dog's way in. Not even the wind stirs, never mind a living Lintha soul. If there are any here, they're well in hiding. What's even more eerie is the lack of a single spiritual presence, even the least elemental, asides the vaguely rotting, hydrochloric aura coming from the tiny spit of land out here in the middle of nowhere. Finding ghosts might take until nightfall, or diving to the bottom of a spooky, undersea crypt.     Finna has been having a good time with her own diving. The Lintha don't only keep stacks of coin and talents of jade, and thankfully not too much in the way of fine art and ledgers that have been thoroughly ruined now, but plenty of valuable artifacts and imports, ranging from exotic red jade firearms to fine magical compasses to exorbitantly costly alchemical and medical kits and tinctures; basically anything they could easily liquidate on a black market, most likely full of Dynasts. A not-insignificant portion of it, in fact, is stolen from Dynastic families, and there is an extra ten to twenty percent posted by various houses for recovering things that belong to them. Given that Dynasts can and frequently do live for centuries, the age of the stolen goods is hardly an impediment to jealously wanting it back. Moonsilver and Orichalcum are far rarer than jade here, but they exist, in tiny quantities, including the odd daiklave or piece of magitech.     Empty Tidings has managed to find a few Lintha survivors in the night, when the regulars least want to come out for fear of hungry ghosts. None of them have attempted to sail out into open waters; she has caught every last one of them trying to make it to the island. The Realm especially wants nothing to do with the cave after they'd launched a strike team to raid the insides and kill the cult of Dukantha members within it, but they'd then sealed it off under claims of Yozi taint, and the officers involved have been glad not to go back in since.
Finna	Finna is a greedy, treasure-hunting fox when all is said and done. From one corner of the ruins to another, she's in and out and swimming at great speed, having stripped off nearly all her clothing when she takes human form (with gills) to reduce drag. She's swimming here and there, and only when she has to actually YANK some nifty artifact swag from a corpse does she bother to say a few prayers wishing them a swift reincarnation and better life.     But she's still gonna yank daiklaves, gauntlets, tiaras, knives, whatever, and stuff it in sacks, and stick the sacks into Elsewhere. As much as she can carry.     Turns out that's only about two small sacks.     Which means when she next emerges, it's near one of the Claslat ships. A few rope-secured waterlogged sacks are tied to her in something that's KIND of like a harness, and she begins an EPIC feat of climbing up the ship's side using her bare hands.     SOMEHOW. Like some sort of human gecko. But each foot she advances is a grunt, and a groan, of epic strain. It would look like she's trying to carry at least two or three times her own body weight and the effort is a hell of a strain that just shouldn't even be REMOTELY possible for a girl of her physique.     And yet still, somehow, she manages to haul herself all the way up onto the deck and just FLOP, nearly naked and face down, and letthe sacks CLUNK-CLATTER-THUNK to the deck around her.     Just panting for breath.
Graceful Hands	"Dressed in the in the Realms finery and playing music in the aftermath of a shipwreck? How very self-indulgent. If I didnt know better, Id say you were a character from a play or opera. An epic, maybe? You might even give the You-Know-Whats competition for being ever so dramatic." A voice came from above All Seeing Eye as a woman clad in purple came down from nowhere at all, landing with no effort (and no sound) in the slightest. Her matching purple eyes regarded him with curiosity as she spun about to face him, leaning against a railing on the opposite side, her arms folded. "Though you did make a good showing of yourself during that naval encounter, and obviously, youre the stranger around these parts. Compared to everyone else here, you might as well be in the same organizational filing as the rest of the outsiders." The woman who made Dukantha disappear gave a sort of half hearted shrug before turning her gaze out towards the rest of sea, frowning. "You could just give me a huge break and give me the short and sweet summary of what you intend to do here instead of being cagey like what seems to be every other significant figure in the gods-damned history of Creation, if only for my personal curiosity. One or two sentences please, I have a nagging feeling that any extended manifestos and explanations thereof are going to be interrupted by...something."
All-Seeing Eye	Eye smiles down at Tidings. "While I have you here, darling," says the Exalt over the sound of his own music, "What do you suppose we should do about the Shadowland issue?" He inclines his head towards the rest of Bluehaven proper, and the steadily descending sun. The sheer amount of death will make it a likely spot for a shadowland. "We can't have the reality deviant making allies of their ghosts, and you /know/ she'll try. Is there a way to destroy them permanently?" He pauses thoughtfully. "Oooor... return their souls to the designated reincarnation apparatus?~"      Staren does hear music--until Eye's enhanced senses pick up disturbances in the surf, and unfamiliar voices being carried on the wind. Well, perhaps not unfamiliar, but certainly unexpected. "Hold that thought, dearest." The fiddle folds in on itself, mechanical seams appearing where there were none. It slides into a compartment in his wrist. Close as she is to him, Tidings can hear the sophisticated motors in his eyes whirring as he zooms in on the source of the sounds.      "Ha! Sails on the horizon. How interesting!" Eye reaches up behind his braided hair and removes the decorative red ribbon, waving it back and forth to signal to the approaching ships. In and of itself, it's a relatively inocuous gesture of welcome. Reading between the lines, as one must often do with Eye, it's 'I see you fuckers and I wish a bitch would.'      Eye seems to acknowledge Grace's presence without much alarm. Though her descent is soundless, his vision fills in the gap. His ultra-peripheral vision. "I'm not so much a stranger as you might think, dear! In fact, you might say I'm your predecessor. The flawless template from which modern Exalts deviate, hm?" He giggles.      "I intend to destroy the Lintha utterly, in Creation and its anomalous 'Underworld,' to deprive the reality deviant Bloody Revelations of potential allies. Then, I intend to learn her next move, defang it, destroy her, and then every other threat to Creation in order of threat from highest to lowest."
Wandering Dog	"Well, they might have one or two good men. Worth taking those who're willing to fight, I'd think, even if we're not going to get a big ally at this rate." Wandering Dog replies, but otherwise seems to agree with Azure Armature, as he pulls up to find somewhere to pull up. If he can, he'll move to take 'land', trying to move further and find trace of the cause, who the source of all of this is. He doesn't go diving right in just yet, mostly because as much as he loves a good fight, it'd be kind of dumb to pick one here where there's nothing to gain. And that's what he radios the Flotilla. <"If we can take this place easily, we should, but if whoever took this place out is still here and still has numbers, we shouldn't go picking a fight. While we could definitely take them, it'd be a mini-war, and we don't want to exert that much energy on something as gross as this, yeah?"> At one point, Wandering Dog grabs a small telescope and takes a look, spotting All-Seeing Eye. "Oh, great. The arrogant guy's here. All-Seeing Eye or whatever his name is. Who you think he's with for all of this?" When All-Seeing Eye waves at them though, Wandering Dog sighs and shrugs. "Looks like we're being greeted. He should be a good source of information." The martial artist will make sure that he gets a chance to talk to him...after he's talked to his allies quietly, first.
Staren	And suddenly, there's people. All-Seeing Eye, the Sidereal, and... is that Finna? Staren decides that she's probably the friendliest, and flies over to the ship she's dumping swag on. "Hey. What happened here, Finna?"
Empty Tidings	The night holds terrors, but they aren't all ghostly. She makes a note to check the cave herself more thoroughly later after one night's work. Maybe there's something for someone like her in there after all. Now, though, she's asked a very important question. She starts, "Well..." Tidings holds that thought. She looks out over the water, where Eye is waving. She doesn't bother to stand, or wave, or anything of the sort. Instead, she leans to the side and slides another crate around closer to her, with the lid partly pried off already. It's full of liquor. Well... it used to be full. Now the bottles are more empty than filled. "I suppose it was a matter of time before someone else came looking. After all the trouble we went to to find the place, too." Grace descends. Tidings spares her a glance, and then turns her attention back to the sea, listening without actually interjecting. Briefly, anyway. Very briefly. "Do you hide in the rigging waiting for passer-bys to drop down behind in order to act more mysterious? It seems a strange habit to have, especially if you're accusing /him/ of dramatics." Tidings pulls an unopened bottle of something expensive, strong, and stolen (by the Lintha; /she/ looted it. Very different) and extends it towards Grace. "Join us, then? While you're here. The celebrations will last as long as the hold-outs do."
Finna	Finna, who is facedown on the deck, hears Staren's approach. Her waterlogged fox ears *TWITCH* at that and rotate. With a grunt-grouch and HEAVE she sits up, facing him, not at all shy despite wearing so little.     "Oh, you decided to show up here! Where've you been when there was awful people to teach a lesson to and great loot to be swiped?" Her tone's only slightly teasy-sarcastic.     "See these fleets? Everyone here decided that Creation could use a lot less Lintha in it, and what a damned MESS this place is now. I bet only a hundred survived one way or the other..."
Staren	Staren doesn't seem to care what Finna's wearing. People have bodies, so what? They're machines made of meat. All that... stuff people make a fuss about doesn't matter unless he's in the bedroom with someone he likes.     Staren frowns slightly and looks away at the 'where were you' comment. Then he looks back at her. "Working for the greater good, as cliche as that sounds." So much for this part of the plan. Damn. But then he smiles. "...But so were you. People are going to be better off without the Lintha. Good job. But what are you going to do about the Shadowland that's forming?" He gestures vaguely in the direction of the new shadowland's center.
Graceful Hands	"Reality Deviant? Gods, I know certain...things that may argue that the use of essence itself is enough to quality for a term like that. I mean, you do you, I guess. Though I'm pretty sure the Lintha aren't particularly good for anything besides being a rapacious group of Yozi worshipping pirates that don't really have Creation's best interests at heart." Another shrug was given from the Sidereal, before she heard the words of a very certain Infernal. Groaning and rolling her eyes, she walked towards her and her crate of ill-gotten booze. "No, I don't. That'd be the same as if I asked you if you pass your idle time by stealing candy from children. Oh, *wait*..." she stated as her gaze went to the proffered bottle. "In light of that, if it's all the same to you, I'll serve myself." She reached into the crate and pulled herself a bottle of something choice, but at least gave the one in Tidings' hand a brief clink with her own. "Cheers, anyway." The top was opened with a brief flick of a thumb and a not insignificant amount was gone in a few seconds. It seemed Lintha channeling Yozi power was not the only thing that Grace could make disappear.
Azure Armature	From on shore, All-Seeing Eye signals to the approaching boat. A waving of a red scarf. A declaration. From upon the boat, Armature snorts quietly, tapping a few details onto her holographic display on her forearm, and then dismissing the floating screens with a quick shake-off of her right hand. No boarders seem to come. She was so sure. "Perhaps. I suggest dropping anchor, and we'll make land. That way, returning your ship will not be an issue." "Probably." Armature cannot fly, but she can hop back to the mast, and with a crouching leap, tumble onto the beach-head in a frontal roll, a stone's throw from the other group. "I suppose you all did this? Laid waste to the pirates?" Armature's tiny smirk hides behind her scarf's ruffled cloth. "That's good. Pirates are scum. But I have a question!" "Threats, top to bottom. That's a big mission. From the absent rulers to to the present princes in argent?"
Finna	"What am /I/ going to do?" Finna finishes catchign her breath and stands up, while feigning dusting herself off... and then, right the heck out of nowhere, HIGH-SPEED SHAKES LIKE AN ANIMAL, sending water spraying everywhere, and proceeds to then wring out her hair with both hands.     "Not a darned thing I -can- do, unfortunately. Shadowlands are countered by having a lot of life flooding in around them. This is the middle of the sea. But! Since it's the middle of the ocean, it's not a big deal. As long as ships know to stay away, this is not our problem. Maybe in a few centuries!"
Wandering Dog	"Good point. Dropping anchor!" As Azure Armature suggests it, Wandering Dog drops anchor a bit of a ways out, close enough that the group can approach, but not enough that they won't be able to leave with it. The Water Caste himself leaps off the side of the ship, landing on top of the water in a crouch as there's a brief flare of essence, before walking across it to reach the others. He still has his bottle of booze in hand, as he approaches the other group, but where the others focus on other people, Wandering Dog moves to talk to Empty Tidings. He recognizes her - the two were trapped in Lumiere together, something he won't forget, and he thinks pretty decently of everyone else trapped there, especially someone who is a fellow local of Creation. "Ah, this is your handiwork. Should have expected you to be the one pulping the Lintha, eh? Did the little bastards scream for mercy?" Wandering Dog was never a fan of them, despite what his mission today was, so the fact they're gone doesn't actually really displease him, so much as make things difficult. "Having a party on their wreckage is a little interesting. I'm always willing to crash a party, and I brought my own booze, too. Earth-brand. Pretty good." Wandering Dog takes a sip from his bottle. "So, what happened out here? I doubt the few of you could have handled this alone, with how big it is. You brought outsiders, yeah?"
Staren	Staren reflexively flinches when Finna shakes dry, but all it does is get some seawater on his suit. "I see. What about your friends?" Staren briefly glances meaningfully in the direction of the music. "Are any of them going to do anything, or is this just gonna be... an ocean shadowland?"     A few centuries. If Bloody Revelations wins before then, it won't really matter. But he's not sure they can't find a use for an ocean shadowland, anyway...
Finna	Finna blinks a few times and shrugs. Then grins mischeviously at him. "So what if it's an ocean Shadowland? There's Shadowlands everywhere. Big ones, small ones... making more isn't something to be proud of, but it's not like horrible terrible things can just pour out of here and cover the ocean. And it's only a real problem if you sail in during night and end up in the Underworld's oceans. They're no place for us."
Staren	Staren nods. "I see." It sounds like the shadowland will be easy pickings, if there's any use to be had from it.     Then he moves on to smalltalk. "So, out of curiousity, what shapes do you think are the best for swimming, and the most fun? I once met someone who spoke quite highly of aquatic forms and offered to let me try one, but they disappeared before I got around to taking them up on their offer. But who knows, maybe there will be another time."     Small talk between shapeshifters is weird.
Empty Tidings	"Of course I don't," Empty Tidings tells Grace, looking mildly offended. "I have self-motivated vigilantes for that." "Cheers~" *clink* Tidings mimics Grace's motions but not her thirst. She's been some degree of intoxicated basically since Dukantha got sent away and she got a chance to find where they were hiding the good stuff. "I'll try not to take mortal offense, being that suspicion is part of your job. I'm in too good a mood for that, anyway. The Lintha," she says, enunciating precisely and brandishing the bottle, "nearly dead to the last. Ahhh, what a wonderful time to be alive...!" Wandering Dog walks over. Tidings looks up from her box-seat and smiles warmly. "If it isn't the most renowned two-legged canine in all the lands! Pull up a barrel. Enjoy the evening. Your pleasant buzz, courtesy of the dead, dead Lintha." Her smile widens, and she wets her lips with another swig from the bottle shamelessly. Usually, she'd at least be pretending at manners, but they're on a pirate ship, so she can act a pirate. "Ah ah ah," she waggles a finger, "not so fast." She points at the Dog. "Questions for questions, mmmm? Why would you come all this way yourselves? We at least had a proper ship and a proper captain. /Im/proper captain if I have my way," she mumbles, lifting the bottle again. Conversationally, she says, "Some screamed. Some begged. Their leaders died confused, except the highest among them. She had the temerity to die /smug/, the salt-encrusted whore." Tidings spares a wave past All-Seeing Eye at the scarfed Azure Armature, but isn't yet to the point of just yelling at her.
Finna	"Dolphin, without a doubt, is the best for swimming!" Finna answers quickly and proudly. "They can't dive very deep, but they're the lords of the surface. Leaping and flipping and diving back in again. You can hear your way around for huge distances--" Probably describing natural sonar there! "--none of their senses are BAD, and if you're hungry you can just snatch up a fish. Not much tries to prey on dolphins either. Only the really big beasts might tussle with you, and you can hear them coming from a LONG way away."
All-Seeing Eye	There is a melodious laugh, in response to Tidings' criticism of Grace's flair for the dramatic. "Come now, dearest Tidings! It was a wonderful entrance."      On the topic of certain things and their distaste for the use of Essence, Eye simply shrugs his shoulders. He pockets the red ribbon once the others approach. "Perhaps you do," admits the Exalt. "I would... disagree with them, of course, ha!" He smiles brightly at her, wrinkling his nose. "I really doubt /those/ 'things' have Creation's best interests at heart, either. In fact, I'd argue the only difference between them and the Lintha is that the Lintha are more honest about it!" Eye tsk-tsks, shaking his head as if it were just /such/ a disappointment. ".../were/ more honest about it." He chuckles.      "So many of them think that mortals should be under the yoke of someone else--or worse, trapped in a hell of eternal stasis, lauded as 'eternal life.' It's tragic that such... closed-minded attitudes prevail."      Armature's question is answered with delighted vim. "Oh, /absolutely/ darling!" He takes a long, deep breath of the sea air. "I feel... clean," he says, making a point of looking at Tidings. "Don't you, dearest?" Her second question is answered no less enthusiastically. "Again, absolutely! Autochthonia's method of rule is a much kinder, more efficient way. Until the mortals here control their own well-being, their own destinies, until they can sleep at night without..." he scoffs. "The noise of eight hundred and seventy two backroom schemes colliding over their heads and waking them up... well, I just won't rest!"      "Oh, no," proudly says Eye to Dog. "This was an inside job!" He smiles and tilts his head like he's in a photo shoot, then continues. Inside job in that it was all actors locally sourced from Creation, that is. But if his half-truth allows doubt to spread, and the legend of Revelations' opposition to grow, all the better.      "What I want to know," says Eye, kind of... obliterating Tidings' subtle approach, "Is whether Revelations sent you. It's been some time since I've seen a few of your party. If I didn't know any better, I'd guess you were helping her?" He places a finger upon his lower lip inquisitively. "I hope that's not the case," he pouts. "I'd be rather... disappointed."
Staren	"Huh." Staren rubs the chin of his helmet. "Maybe someday I'll get to try being a dolphin, although I don't think I'd wanna do the long term 'let's see how long I can survive on fish' thing. Not my style."     Staren turns to look over the railing. "So now you and your friends are digging up all the pirate treasure, huh? Err, not digging..." he waves a hand dismissively. "You know what I mean."     He stares out over the sea for a moment.     "...So. Did you just come here to fight the Lintha, or are you also supporting the masters of the Skullstone Archipelago?"
Wandering Dog	A warm greeting, that's always great. As Tidings invites, Wandering Dog moves to indeed grab a barrel with one free hand and make himself a seat, taking another swig of drink. "Adventure, of course. Why else?" The martial artist laughs a little, looking out at the sea. "And where's a better place to get some adventure than out here in the deep unknown, where the Lintha are rumored to be? Take some like-minded associates, borrow a ship, get drunk, probably almost get boarded, beat up pirates. Fun for the whole family. Guess we were too late to the party, though." A bunch of half-trues and bullshitting helps make it seem like you're not lying, easier to express it on your face. Wandering Dog looks like a man who is the most confident of himself, someone who has swagger in everything he says and does. All-Seeing Eye gets a brief stare as he comes out and says it. The fact that it's an inside job gets a slightly confused nod, though the part about Revelations gets another swig of boosze and a laugh. "What makes you think that?" Hopefully that simple response isn't too suspicious, and hopefully someone better at lying (Dog prefers rousing speeches and half-truths instead of outright lying) can shake him off.
Starbound Flotilla	The Flotilla's landing is fairly organized, and wary, but it soon becomes much more clear that this isn't going to turn to violence very effectively. Seft seems relieved, but the others seem tense. Angry, cheated, and generally upset that this entire opportunity was taken right out from under their feet; even the easygoing George has pulled back his helmet to make room for one of those gross cigarettes he smokes that smells like a hospital. They filter around and mingle with the general conversations, aside from those taking place still well aboard the ship. "Smug is the only truly noble way to die. Hatred for societies is something you should reserve for those worthy of respect. It is far more sensible and far less tasteless to hold them in contempt instead." "We came here the same reason you did. Victory in conflict." "Winning isss only reassson to be around thisss world! Total messs of a place otherwissse. Detailsss not mattering, far asss Floran thinksss." "Figure you're here for about the same, huh? And going with Revelations' methods too, it looks like, so we could ask you just about the same thing. What, you get a good taste for genocide at Lookshy? Having a lot of fun with this now?" "Aghast. Pavo! No, they have to have been here just to... I know the Lintha weren't very good people. The way this world reacts to mass death isn't a moral judgment."     Seft seems the one most eager to calm the mood, but the rest exude an aura of sodium that is overwhelming. They're used to being the ones who jump ahead of the line with spectacularly organized violence, and getting beaten to that particular punch seems to have hit them. George is the only one keeping some silence, though, seemingly focused on looking around the area they've collected at landing.
Finna	"Erf, Skullstone. Who cares about those freaks? They're here on friendly terms, or so they say. Cooperation for the sake of the West. ... Don't believe it. Not even a little. The dead are ALWAYS up to something."     She is biased, of course. Heavily biased. "I happened to be in the right place at the right time. An-Teng had a few bones to clobber these pirates about." That's... not how the phrase goes, but Finna just shrugs.     "Did you notice who's here? It's some forces from An-Teng, the Dynasts of the Scarlet Empire, the Autochthonians, and Skullstone." Groups that normally wouldn't be able to collaborate so easily...
Staren	Staren turns back to Finna. "Skullstone got the /Dynasts/ working for them? Huh, I didn't expect that. What's An-Teng?"
Graceful Hands	The irony of All Seeing Eye's statement hit Grace harder than any other blow she had sustained in her long career, and the only thing he received in reply for the time being was more *glug* noises as the significant missing part of the bottle turned into the majority of it. "Let's be straight for a moment. You'd take offense if there was something with you involved and you *were* above suspicion." she said towards Tidings. "And I'm only here because I was considered an 'idle hand' by someone I owed a favor to, and now unfortunately, now everything is *my* problem. Have you any idea how much of a pain it is when something's considered your problem when it really isn't? And yes, I know you're going to say 'Why care?' but SOME of us aren't concerned with burning the house down." And then more people come. Some outsiders, some not. Which means more people and more things became Her Problem. Glug, glug, glug.
Finna	"A bit city-nation down in the Southwest. Supposed to be aligned with the Dynasts, but I can tell they're just paying lip service in the streets." Finna shrugs again, seemingly not too worried about An-Teng's deals. "The Realm likes to have fingers in everyone's pies, you know." ... that's ALSO probably not quite the right phrase...
Staren	Ah. Local politics. Probably not important. "Well... even if it removed a threat to Skullstone, the end of the Lintha's a good thing. Just, uh..." Man, what can Staren even say? "So what are you planning to do next? Not anything else helping Skullstone, right?"
All-Seeing Eye	"Oh," begins Eye, smiling like an old friend bringing back an inside joke. He playfully nudges Dog on the shoulder. "I have my reasons! You know... you're getting on in years," he says, shifting the focus of the conversation from why he thinks that to motivations Dog might have for working with her. "You're spry for your age! Don't get me wrong." He gives a sharp, humorous exhale. "But it is a concern for you, isn't it? That... mm, one day, you'll be... 'less than.'" The Alchemical places his hand 'consolingly' upon Dog's shoulder, and even shakes his head 'sadly.'      That hand, and the sadness, are gone in an instant. "Time marches on! Buuuut... If someone could promise you a world where you couldn't age, would you take it, I wonder?" He gives an exaggerated frown, shrugging his shoulders. "HM! Who can say? It would certainly allow you to have more of that adventure you're so fond of, if such a person existed. Why, if you played a part in the creation of such a world, well, that might even be an adventure in itself!" He pauses, in the most thinking-emoji way possible. He's established a reason that Dog might want to help Revelations, and then attempted to cast suspicion on him. The whole time, he's watching Dog's face for microexpressions, listening to his vitals for spikes in heartbeat.      Then... like he's just discovered something unsightly beneath a log...      "Hello... /Pavo./ I must admit, Revelations' methods are most efficient. The problem is with her aim. What did Lookshy provide, hm? Trade, culture, stability. This place will only be morned by slave drivers and murderers. You're many things, Captain, but you're not one of those."
Finna	"The sad thing is, this isn't even the Creation I'm from. I'm not sure if doing a great thing here counts!" Finna growls a bit at admitting this to Staren. "But I've learned something VERY useful for when I return home." ... useful, that is, if she wants to get involved in the West....     So maybe not that useful at all.     Thinking about this, she clutches at her heavy, metal-filled, clink-clunking sacks a bit more tightly. LOOT.     "Next? What are YOU going to do next? Some business brought you here, and you knew where to go!"
Empty Tidings	"I'd take it as a compliment, actually, or a warning that I should probably leave at the earliest possible convenience. You'd only put me above suspicion if you'd decided what to do with me." The Definitely A Dragon-Blooded Honest squints at her bottle. "No, I do understand that. You're making quite a few assumptions, you know. That's dangerous. Or so I'm told." Tidings beams up at Eye. "As a whistle," she agrees. "And it's about time, too." She holds her quickly-emptying bottle in both hands, between her fingertips. "Why else?" she echoes back at Wandering Dog, laughing a little. "Certainly not at the behest of some third party," she suggests. "Such as..." Tidings trails off, letting Eye basically dash her subtlety and subterfuge to the ground. She sighs quietly. "I would like to believe that you came here out of some heroic notion of defeating a scourge of the West with only your own two fists and a merry band of misfits. Unfortunately, we both know you're smarter than that." She looks off the side of the ship. It's only crowded because of the sheer power represented here as everyone gets on the deck; more are meant to be on it, but clearly are not. "You would be rescuing maidens from island strongholds and tearing through the masts of ghost-ships, were that the case. But since you weren't with us when we did those very things..." The Flotilla comes up. It's a good thing they weren't on a freshwater sea, because everything in it would be dead. Tidings looks at them from her seat, frowning slightly. The expression deepens, and she rises from the crate, swaying gently when she's risen to her full, not terribly impressive height. "They deserved hatred. They deserved everything we did to them -- everything /I/ did to them." She brandishes the bottle like a sword, holding it by the side in her right hand. "If I could have made it last longer, you would have arrived to see them still suffering!" "This..." Tidings sweeps her left hand towards the ruined floating city, the sea running red. "...this is a mercy. It's too good for that filth. The world is better off without the Lintha in it." Tidings somehow gives the impression that maybe this was a little personal.
Staren	"Of course it counts. These Lintha will never hurt anyone ever again." Staren points out.     "Next? Next, we're taking down Skullstone. Was hoping to manipulate the Lintha into attacking it and make two birds kill eachother without even needing a stone, but." He shrugs.     The opposition killed the Lintha, and it was a heroic thing that needed to be done. It just ALSO threw a wrench into their plan. Staren knows how that is, since Bloody Revelations likes to distract heroes with heroic things that need to be done and which ALSO further her secret plans.     He wonders how much Finna was told by whoever brought her here. But asking questions might make her ask them questions in turn...
Azure Armature	Handling things in a clear, direct manner. Going through problems, when they refused to be gone around. That was always the plan. That was always the strategy that moved things down the pitch. "Please - Gathering intelligence. Amassing resources. Let us dispatch with the pleasantries, as is your true way, and we can be firm with our words." "You were doing the same here. The most tangible resource is a lack of problems. It means you aren't doing something important. But you've set up here nicely." Armature gestures down the shattered, splinter littered sea. "I'd have pointed them at an enemy, and let them expend themselves for some profit beyond salvage." Squaring her shoulders and crossing her arms, the scarfed operative adjusts her tactical harness with a thumb. "But this is fine too."
Graceful Hands	Somewhere inbetween huge swigs of booze, Tidings was able to make out "Somehow, you aren't the biggest threat to ending the world as we know it at this moment, so I'm not going to do really much of anything to you," even spoken quietly enough that only she would hear it. Speaking-While-Mouth-Is-Full-Kata? Those crafty Sidereals think of everything!
Finna	Finna begins digging through her sacks, but at the mention of 'taking down Skullstone' she freezes for a few seconds. "We.... we who?" Finna is now digging through the sack, acting only half-interested, but periodically glancing over at Staren. A little weirded out, maybe.     She pulls out a dazzling chalice of gleaming Orichalcum and stuffs it back inside just as fast. A ring that's clearly of black-as-pitch Soulsteel. A glittering Moonsilver Tiara is rubbed fondly and carefully put back in. Red Jade Gauntlets are hoisted, weighed, frowned at, and stuffed back inside...     It seems she's been working diligently to snag anything and EVERYTHING made of the magical materials, even stuff she cannot possibly know how to use. This stuff is priceless.     "And why? ... First Luthe and now Skullstone and the Lintha? what places /aren't/ going to get smashed and pillaged by the time you're done...?"
Staren	Staren eyes the loot, but he's not gonna try to steal it. He wonders if there might be any left by the time the others leave...     He's... a bit confused, honesrly, by Finna's concern. "Why? It's... it's Skullstone. It's run by a deathlord who works the living as fanatical slaves to serve the dead, and there are too few ghosts around for everyone to be getting their fair turn. Isn't it a GOOD thing to take it down? Or is there something I'm missing?"
All-Seeing Eye	Tidings brings up a very good point. "Precisely, Tidings, dearest. You know, for someone with three centuries of storied heroic deeds... he really is rather late to the party today, isn't he?" He gives one single cluck of amusement. "Tragique."      "Moreover," says Eye, adding onto Tidings' hateful tirade, with one index finger pointed upwards, "A message had to be sent. To their ancestors, and to their gods. You of all people should understand the need to... correct certain deific mistreatments, hm?"      Azure Armature's response seems to take the wind out of his sails. He enjoys being a dramatic blowhard. She doesn't. "Fine, fine," he says. "But who is that enemy? Skullstone? Darling, they're a poison, yes, but a slow poison. Its... leadership understands that one doesn't 'grab' power, one 'accumulates' it. Is that dangerous to Creation in the long term? Yes! Of course. But if you're looking for allies of convenience, they are /much/ more predictable than these... dissidents ever were."
Finna	Finna stands up - with a foot now holding down the mouth of each waterlogged sack. She twitches a finger at Staren, ears going almost flat now. "There's a LOT of things you're missing, young man. Chief among them common sense." Her voice turns a little shrill and teeth visibly clench. "You don't just BLURT these things for all the world to hear! There could be spies about." Her hissy-screechy turns even more shrill as she cants her head. "Skullstone's navy is RIGHT OVER THERE."
Starbound Flotilla	"/Eye./" Pavo says, sneering a bit down her own beak. "What Lookshy provided was a place where what needed doing could get done. Not my fault they chose to doom themselves with a theocraticially-founded mess hamstringing their military. I don't mourn this place or any other one, I just mourn opportunities." She's clearly as pleasant as ever. Her posture is firm, like the woman is less looming and more leaning, invading as much space as she can invade as if she might greedily grab it all and put it in a bag and run away with it.     "You're here to fix up deification issues, huh? Let me know when you go after the deified ones, not the deifiers, then for once I might agree with ya." She narrows her eyes and then... Sort of reels it back a bit. Like she's already a bit worn out of her own sourness, showing its inner lack of substance.
Staren	Staren blinks. "They already know. Why did you think they had you kill the Lintha /now/? Out of the goodness of their hearts?"     Their cold, cold undead hearts.
Finna	Finna stares at Staren for a few moments... then snaps her jaw shut and stares blankly off into space, pondering. "Wait. waitwaitwait. You're saying Skullstone helped us take out the Lintha so the Lintha wouldn't help -your gang- wipe them out?"
Wandering Dog	All-Seeing Eye and Empty Tidings are too smart. They can see through Wandering Dog, and frankly, he doesn't like it. But, to continue waxing lies would just be cowardice. He's right. He knows he's right. His path is just and true, and he's not afraid of it. So as the two probe him, he speaks up. "I only walk the path I do because of shared enemies. You think I want to live forever as a ghost? The dead are supposed to be reincarnating, not walking the world. I lived a world where they walked. I was /raised/ in Skullstone. I know what it's like. I know that the Silver Prince lies. He's the one man I want dead more than any other." Wandering Dog doesn't raise his voice, which is good, because it'd suck if Skullstone's navy was to hear them. "Once that's done, I'll walk the road as I always do. See that as you will plan to leave soon anyways, once the rest of my group's done here." At the least, according to his heartbeat, Wandering Dog hasn't lied. He believes what he's saying absolutely.
Azure Armature	Azure Armature, aka 'Blue', was not an extremely forthright sort of person, but it was cutscenes like this that got her emoting going. Normally she ate a flavorless paste and brooded in the dark, because being in the dark raised your camo index, and you needed to wait for the Tsuchinoko to spawn. "I was thinking the Guild, actually. We both fought the Mask of Winters - denying someone like the argent a seabed of corpses seems productive whether or not I'd like him removed." "But removing a piece from the board is removing a piece from the board."
Starbound Flotilla	"You speak with the tone of someone who was wronged by the powerful." Moonfin says, in his /punchably/ smug tone to Tidings. "And that whatever the Lintha did to deserve so much hatred gave them power over you in some way. Always remember that hatred is the willingness to grant the people who hurt you strength over your soul. Contempt is all that is deserved by the lesser, who could never hold such a grasp. Always remember to resolve your own mutual exclusivities."     He says this in a wise, sagely, knowing tone, but there's a very solid chance that it's all pretentious, stupid bullshit. Or, at the very least, there sure isn't /inherent/ wisdom, only incidental. He seems to mostly be finding what few moments he can to feel less sour about losing his chance to show off his negotiation.
Staren	Staren blinks as Finna finally gets to at least the same chapter he's on. He nods. "So they didn't tell you."     "The smartest deathlords have learned how to manipulate heroes, I guess. We're just caught up in a war between two of them, trying to make sure some good stuff happens... And they knew we'd do it, /because/ they'd give us the chance to help people. You killed the Lintha. We'll free Skullstone from undead opression and kill a deathlord. The world's better off... and our patron's down a rival."     Staren gestures vaguely at Finna. "And if YOU win..." he frowns and pauses a moment. "Okay, I'm honestly losing track of the finer details of the deathlords' plans. If you win, Skullstone keeps standing and is a thorn in our patron's side until we try again. And we /will/ try again, because there's no way she's giving up until she's dead. Skullstone will fall, sooner or later. It's not like anyone involved has to worry about old age." Staren looks out over the water again.
Finna	Finna glares sourly at Staren. As if he should've told her this A WEEK OR TWO AGO or something. Never mind how they're not even in frequent contact. And then... THEN her eyes widen with pure frightened realization. "Terrorshit. So Skullstone wanted the Lintha gone in advance, someone you're withwants Skullstone gone and would've used the Lintha to help with it... and KNEW where the Lintha were..." That's not an easy thing to figure out. It's really not. But if it involves the Underworld...     Finna shudders. "We shouldn't stay here. It's not safe."
Staren	Staren blinks. "What, because it's a Shadowland? We're both working for deathlords. It's /very/ safe." Staren rubs his chin. "Actually, I guess that means our patrons are gonna be fighting over who the Lintha ghosts end up serving as ghost armies, huh? Or do Lintha not leave ghosts for some reason? Were there any... necromancers with your team? Maybe..."     Staren looks for the sun to gauge local time. How long until night.     "Maybe we should go." Staren looks back towards the boat, now anchored. "But I'm not hearing any calls to leave, so do you know something everybody else doesn't...?"
All-Seeing Eye	"I see," says Eye to Wandering Dog. And he actually sounds pretty satisfied with that answer. "Well, in that case... I don't suppose I could ask you to hold off on..." The next part is muttered so that only Dog can hear it. "Killing him, until he helps us kill Revelations? His timetable is significantly... longer than hers is." He then leans back like he'd shared something perfectly inconsequential.      Eye chuckles at the notion of the Lintha serving the argent. "You don't have to worry about that," he says. And that's all he says.      Eye hears Moonfin's grating 'advice,' but says nothing to contradict him. Instead, he turns to Tidings. "Earlier, I asked you about ways to permanently destroy these 'ghosts.' To... take the pieces off the playing board, as it were." He looks over his shoulder at Armature and smiles. "You were saying?" he asks Tidings.
Finna	"I'm not scared of Lintha ghosts! I'm scared of the fact that too many people knew something was going to be up RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW." Finna exclaims soundly, folding her arms under her chest.
Staren	"...Good point. I'm pretty sure I'm too valuable a pawn to sacrifice," Staren suddenly looks worried like someone who just heard NUCLEAR LAUNCH DETECTED, " but I'm not 100% sure and that still leaves the Bodhisattva. You have another way out, or...?" He just starts flying back towards the boat, anyway. Maybe Finna follows, maybe she escapes another way.
Empty Tidings	Tidings gives no indication she heard Grace, but it's quite likely she did. Instead of a pithy remark, she... takes a step towards Moonfin. The astounding smugness makes her want to lash out. Her self-control is at a -- well, not an all-time low, but certainly a fairly recent one. "They --!" She starts, tone obviously heated...! The bottle she's holding explodes. She crushes it in her bare hand and the remaining contents burst all over the deck. She jumps a little with a start, and then clenches her teeth and drops heavily back down to her prior seat atop a box against the mast. She grinds the heel of her (other) hand into her brow, head lowered, exhaling through her teeth. "They're dead," she says, voice low. "Most. Not all. I'll correct that myself if I must. They took my family; they don't deserve theirs." Deep breath. Tidings lifts her head, smiling tiredly at Eye. "There are ways. I'm sure I can provide one that's more convenient than personally dismembering their corpus, but while her lackeys are still here..." She shrugs a shoulder, shaking her glass-and-alcohol-soaked hand. There's no blood. "You don't need to worry."
Azure Armature	There's some trading of words that perhaps this place isn't secure. In the etherspaces, there is some trading of words between two conspirators of a private game. Armature's stance shifts forward, her arms slacking as she drops her stand-offish pose and rotates her arms into a big shrug. "It's a mystery." Her hands drop idle. "It's unlikely the argent will come here. Revelations might, but she's most likely more martially powerful than the argent - fighting her without a prepared area would be unwise. But this is very complex." Very complex, very dangerous, and Blue Very Much has a magic dimension teleportation ability to bail with herself. Or herself and Albert.
Staren	Staren suddenly stops in midair and points at his helmet. "I'm being told it's safe. Either stick close to me or get out of here fast!" He suggests to Finna.
Finna	"Who's telling you that?!" With Staren coming back and proclaiming it so swiftly, but having not realized what else is going on, Finna's not so sure to trust whoever's telling him anything.
Staren	"My 'patron'! You-know-who!" Staren's not sure shouting Deathlord names is a good idea.     He taps his chin. "Actually, she said 'stay there', so I figure either she's about to take control of this area or she /is/ gonna try to kill me. Actually, those two aren't mutually exclusive..."
Finna	Finna just JAWDROPS at Staren as he goes on rambling like this. "You're taking THOSE possibilities awfully calmly... it's that psycho from the radio, isn't it? The bloody witch."
Staren	Staren tilts his head to the side. "That's one possible description." he speaks matter-of-factly and calmly, no longer shouting.
All-Seeing Eye	"Fortunately, any area with me in it is a 'prepared area.' If she comes here, she dies. No more distractions, no more busy work."
Finna	"She's playing you like a harp. Like a country girl who just walked into a dark alley." ... WHOAH, that second allegory is going into bad places. "And you know it, and she knows it, which makes it all the nastier." Finna all but hisses.     "There's nothing more dangerous than people knowingly using each other. You never know when she'll stab you in the back. I hope you're being PERFECTLY careful." Finna's glowering and flattened ears at least tell the fellow shapeshifter one thing.     As wacky, sporadic, opinionated, and whimsical as this girl might be, she might actually care what happens to him.
Staren	"Same to you. Beware the Bodhisattva." Staren replies. It's not that he's ignoring her, but the many issues of working with Bloody Revelations is something he's already thought about.
Finna	"The who?" Finna can only just keep glaring, as if irritated that Staren's saying stuff she knows nothing about.
Bloody Revelations	Staren looks to the time. As he glances away, he sees the very end of sunset, with the muted orange glow of the ending day bleaching from the leaden grey sky.     Just as the sun slips beyond the horizon, its last dying rays gleaming all the brighter for it until they too fade into nothing, the dark of night, on the open ocean under the stars, is suddenly plunged into a deep, cold, black that is entirely unnatural. The snuffing of the light is abrupt as a candle, the twinkling constellations above contracting to tiny, dim white points, like the pupils of so many terrified animals. The breeze is all the more pointed for the fact that Bluehaven had never once felt one, as a slithering current of ice cold air crawls across exposed flesh like the dead fingers of a lover. The constant, ambient smell of salt and blood here intensifies, but it isn't due to the waters and the recent death that surrounds them. They're being redoubled by the same scents from somewhere else.     The carpet of thick, bile green sargasso atop the water, near to the shores of the tiny white and blue island, suddenly turns black and crumbles away, clearing a circle of pitch dark water that rapidly expands in every direction, stopping only out at a quarter mile. Every candle, light, and lamp used by the salvage crews is sucked inwards and extinguished simultaneously, while the dark red blood tinting the cleared waters suddenly erupts into flame instead, burning as a crimson oil slick that casts its ominous light across every reflective surface around.     From that radius, merged with another ocean completely, darker and calmer than even this spot could ever be, still as glass, the very center swells and breaks with the emergence of a tremendous hand that is recognizable to all present, for different reasons. A translucent tentacle as thick around as a tree, filled with writhing shadow, lined with pulsing flagella refracting strobes of unreal colour, and terminating in an uncanny humanoid hand, reaches high, upturns its palm, and unfolds its fingers like the blooming of a flower. Standing atop it like a statue atop a plinth, hand on hip, is exactly the person nobody here wanted to talk about. Her eyes glow in the dark. Death Essence smoulders off of her in such concentration that it becomes visible as ghostly smoke. Its chilling grip is less intense than the palpable anger that boils from her instead.     "I don't believe you."     She is easily a bowshot away, but her voice carries across the obsidian-still waters as if she were within arm's reach.     "So angry for missing a little lie by omission that you fell for a colossally stupid one. I can't believe it. He must be laughing like he never has before. Laughing at how easy you are. Laughing at me. Do you think you're winning because of this? You have the gall to do something so ill-conceived and celebrate about it? Are you having fun? Are you enjoying yourselves, feeling like I don't know, and you won't pay for it? Do you feel accomplished like this? Claiming you didn't need me, only to hide under someone else's skirts as their useful idiots? 'Take that!', right? 'We sure got one over on her!' is it? 'With the Silver Prince on our side, she doesn't stand a chance!' isn't that how it goes?"
Bloody Revelations	Several here have heard her raise her voice to an unrestrained fury before, swiftly followed by acts of rashly considered violence. The absence of it here is somehow worse. It is so dangerously neutral that it is like listening to the heat death of the universe, so charged with potential that it feels like awaiting a Big Bang.     "Look what you fools have done. Hand in hand with the Realm, giving them everything they could need for later. Drinking a mile away from the shores of that thing, their Sister. Not even ghosts will come back here. This, Bluehaven, Lintha Ng Oroo, Skalleng, the Family, all of it, do you know what happens to ghosts when everything that gave them meaning in life disappears? Are you so ignorant? Are you so determined to spite me because you couldn't handle reality? Are you so blind?"     A trickle of blood runs from under her dark bangs. Her caste mark is bleeding. Not just bleeding. Burning. A glow like red hot coals defines the inverse solar mark on her brow. Abyssal caste marks aren't supposed to do that. They suck in light. Something cracks in her voice. In her expression. It's like the finest fracture in a pane of glass that has just exceeded its pressure tolerance, deafeningly loud for its subtlety.     "Hey. Do you want to see something interesting?"
Staren	And then everything goes to hell. Or rather, to the underworld.     Staren was wondering how Revelations could reach them, but now it's obvious -- she's active in the underworld, and could just send minions to wait for the shadowland to cross over. When he sees the tentacle, he tries to hug Finna close with one arm, protectively. Not that he can actually STOP this minion... Oh, and Bloody Revelations herself came, too!     He hisses to Finna, 'The Bodhisattva Anointed in Dark Waters. The deathlord in control of Skullstone Archipelago!'     Oh boy, what a mess... 'Do you have another way out now that we're stuck in the Underworld?'
Starbound Flotilla	"..." Moonfin regards the outburst critically. He's the kind of guy who smugly says some inflamatory shit online and then criticizes you for being upset about the inflamatory shit. But Tidings controls it well enough that he can't find much to criticize, so he settles into looking kind of passively, not happily smug and crossing his arms at them.     Pavo remains sort of backgrounded, for now, with Eye swapping to his other business. She stays firmly there while Revelations emerges. The Flotilla -- even Seft, conflicted though she may be -- assemble into formation easily and quickly. No weapons drawn, but the Miniboss Arrangement is that perfect mix between a natural state one can relax in, and a state ready for combat. It's between the harbor's various occupants and Bloody Revelations, but distinctly not meant to guard /against/ her. Their arms are crossed. George is easygoing and expecting about it. Albert feels less cheated. Moonfin seems smug. Pavo looks like a friend just arrived. Biteblade seems curious, hopeful even. And Seft, despite Revelations, has the grim look of determination.     And after taking their positions, all take a listen to Revelations. It's not in /any/ of their habits to socially dogpile, so they don't have more to add to what Revelations says next besides their own interest.
Finna	Oh shiiiiiiiiiiiiit!     Finna is quick to duck down the moment horrible deathly essence tickles down her spine. HOW she is able to somehow get down on all fours like an animal despite being clearly human is anyone's guess, but she's unwilling to do more than PEEK over the railing of the ship as BLOODY REVELATIONS appears with the freakish possible entrance.     "Badbadbadbad... sunset. We should GO... carefully. If she does anything. I can get us out of here."     Almost as an afterthought, she reaches into the sack and grabs a few goodies. "If she's going to freak out, move when she freaks out in a DIFFERENT direction. ... Or if you need to dodge. NO big motions unless she's distracted."
Wandering Dog	"I've made my choices. I can't just walk back on them, now can I?" Wandering Dog replies to All-Seeing Eye, finishing off his bottle, right as the sun sets. Wandering Dog was already about to move to get back on the water and walk back to the ship, but as this happens, he freezes up, tense. As the waters shift over to the Underworld, and as the horrible tentacle mass rises from the water, unnaturally colored. The woman standing in the middle of the hand is easily recognizable, and Wandering Dog doesn't want to piss her off. He actually pays attention to her words and her attitude, trying to see if she's also mad at the group for being at this 'party' or not, but he personally doubts it. Instead, Wandering Dog turns to All-Seeing Eye. "I wouldn't do anything stupid if I was you. You really think you can take her right here, right now?" Wandering Dog doesn't seem to think Eye's odds are good. If the water doesn't seem like it'll suck them in or suddenly have tentacles reach through, Wandering Dog will move to start walking across it, to try returning to his ship. If there's any signs at all of threats coming from the water, though, he'll stay with the others until they're done. Listening and watching for ripples and strange creatures and lights, mainly.
Staren	Finna looks like a scared animal. Staren is... a little nervous, but not /nearly/ as much as one usually would be when someone like this shows up.     It's different when the deathlord is an ally. Staren gives her a disappointed 'you still don't get it' look. "If you have a way to leave, you should do so." He speaks in a tone of concern for her. Not for himself.     He'd rather not see Finna end up in this fight, if there's going to be a fight.
All-Seeing Eye	All-Seeing Eye doesn't entertain Revelations' monologue. That is not what he was built to do. There is only so far that his facade of affability goes, and this woman is one who has stretched it to its absolute limit. Moments ago, he made an ultimatum. If she shows up, she dies. No more distractions, no more busy work. PROTOSYNTHETIC AMMUNITION REPLICATOR ONLINE INTEGRATED ARTIFACT TRANSMOGRIFIER ONLINE ESSENCE PULSE CANNONS ONLINE AIM CALIBRATING SENSORS ONLINE DEDICATED HARMONIC TARGETING SYSTEM ONLINE          Lethal Force Authorized. Waste not, want not, Champion!      Crossbow bolts fly from Eye's outstretched arms. They do not fly through the air, they fly towards Revelations as if possessed of their own will. They do not stop their pursuit unless struck from the air. And even if they find their mark, they continue, supernaturally flying through the air like a swarm of metal hornets.      Blasts from his Essence cannons join the mix, his eyes expressionless Soulsteel nodules, his soft features illuminated both by the flaming oilslick around them and the flashes of his cannons. These bolts of lighting behave in much the same way, forming a cloud of angrily swarming projectiles seemingly possessed of their own wills.      Eye's whips snarl and lash out at whatever isn't bolted down. They throw extinquished lanterns, forgotten plates, cargo barrels, loose planks, rusty metal shingles. They throw shards of glass. They throw any discarded weapons not yet scavenged by the salvage teams. They throw nails, ripped up from rotten planks. All of these things bounce off of the hulls of ships, angle off of long-disused masts, tear through tattered sails, all to fly towards Revelations in this furious assault.      He even ejects his god damned hoverbike and throws that, skipping it across the surface of the water even as it unfolds to serve him. And after that, he cracks all /seven/ of his whips at once, the weapons extruding from his wrists, his ankles, even his hair, glimmering in the dark, is snapped in a silent, furious challenge. He throws the Boots of Perfected Speed, held aloft in a band of materialized lighning, each one in the opposite direction. The Fiddle of the Populat, thrown to bounce off of the underside of a crow's nest. All-Seeing Eye does not want to see something interesting.      All-Seeing Eye is fucking pissed.
Graceful Hands	With half the bottle gone now, Grace had taken a look around, grumbling a bit at the fact that the world had nicely turned itself into everyone's favorite place: The Underworld. Well, ghosts' favorite place anyway. She leaned over the railing, taking the entire sight in and took another swig, sighing. "Dealing with these types of people, honestly. What were all of you thinking? Except, maybe *you*." A finger was jabbed at Tidings. "At least you didn't go bugger the Prince or something. Or wait. Did you? Uuuugh." Still though, in spite of all the drinking and casualness, there was a frown on the woman's face. Honestly, she had just been around on observation duty and continue to observe she would, even if 'observation' had been keeping an ear out while enjoying a bottle of something good. If they had wanted someone who was into this whole 'Social Stealth' thing they should've sent the bloody Green Lady. Still, no essence was spent on her part, no katas being practiced or much of anything, really. This wasn't the time, nor the place, and as much as Grace figured, everyone here could get themselves out of trouble pretty well, as long as they didn't try anything heroic. ...and as if on command, All Seeing Eye decides to go do exactly that. Grace sighed as a crossbow bolt went whizzing by her face on its way towards the Abyssal in all her glory. Apart from the dynasts about, there didn't seem to be anyone who'd get caught in the collateral damage...so for now, all she did was rub her temples, take the final slug of liquor out of the bottle, and dropped it overboard.
Empty Tidings	'Are you so determined to spite me --' "Yes," Tidings says suddenly. She lifts her head, looking towards the dark sky, and then turns to face the burning seas and the figure atop them. "Yes, I am. Do you know why the Lintha are dead? Do you know why Bluehaven is a charnel house? Do you know why this bruise on the surface of the world is even here for you to do any of this with?" "Spite." She drags herself to her feet again. She's steady, this time. She blinks, once, twice, rolling her jaw and then spitting a mouthful of something that looks like water over the side, right past Grace's face, probably on purpose. She doesn't smell anything weird, because pure alcohol doesn't actually have a scent. Her eyes clear immediately. "Go ahead and laugh about how it's 'just as you planned,' or we're 'playing into his hand.' Do you think you're the only one who benefits from this?" She spreads her arms wide, motioning at the wide sea full of carnage and fire. "Do you think this was all done out of some /heroic impulse/?" Empty Tidings takes a step towards Bloody Revelations, despite the distance. The Flotilla forms up, and Wandering Dog gets up and warns Eye. Tidings looks at the Flotilla critically, sizing them up and noting their readiness, and then turns to face the elder Terrestrial instead. "Wandering Dog. I respect you and the legend you have built for yourself. You are a hero that anyone could admire -- that everyone /should/ admire. Benevolent. Loyal. Brave. Righteous." She smiles. "You are everything I ever wanted to be when I was a child, hungry to see the world and save it from itself. Creation would be darker and colder without people like you." She lays a hand against her chest and bows her head. "Please. Don't sully all of that because of whatever she's promised you. It isn't worth it." Empty Tidings takes a deep breath. She lifts her head, and her smile is gone. "I don't want to hurt you. But if you get in my way, I will do everything in my power to ensure no one ever so much as breathes your name ever again." All-Seeing Eye goes from zero to a hundred pretty much instantly. Tidings... doesn't charge across the sea to meet Revelations. Instead, she slides across the deck, keeping herself between the gathered Flotilla's members, the clearly hostile Terrestrial, and Eye. She mimics the casual stance of the Miniboss Arrangement all on her lonesome. A little bit of George's expectant attitude. A little bit of Seft's determination. A hint of Pavo's frustrating smugness. She isn't attacking them -- but she's not letting them stop Eye without a grotesque amount of violence, either.
Azure Armature	Well. This was unexpected. Armature reacts with the expected, almost animated shock. She tenses, when the border changes - becasue for a second, she could be wrong. Doubt had entered her mind, not because of All-Seeing Eye's confidence, but because the scenario she had presented - the Silver Prince never showing up, because he couldn't expose himself - had one small problem. The Silver Prince COULD theoretically kill or repel their small band. They had no armies, no secret weapon, and no trick prepared. Unlike the researcher they had killed, the Silver Prince was at least somewhat martial. And he could show up right now. When it's Bloody Revelations that shows up, there's a moment of relief. The others start moving to leave. Acceptable. All-Seeing Eye Does Not Want To See Somehting Interesting. Less acceptable. With a sigh, as ASE tosses the entire kitchen sink at Revy, Armature starts backstepping towards Dog. "You must have a leaping technique. Just jump it. And haul the anchor. I'll catch up. Go." With that 'suggestordered', Armature traces a cylinder of light around her forearm and hand with a twist of her wrist and splayed fingers leaving imprints in the air. "You're not going to ruin anything but a proud place's budget." She mutters, holding her light outlined "arm cannon" frame engaged. "You've proven your point, Eye. And taken your revenge, Tidings. Do we really have to do this?"
Wandering Dog	As Empty Tidings appeals to Wandering Dog's heroism, he thinks. She's right that he's all of that. But that actually emboldens him. He's righteous, she says. And that's what this crusade is. Righteous. "I've waited almost three centuries to end his life. I'm getting far too old. I'm not going to pass up the chance to end him, to free the islands, to avenge all of those ruined by him. How many people like me died simply for existing there? She gives me the ability to strike, and I'm gonna take it. I'm going to be the hero everyone knows me to be." As Azure Armature makes her recommendation, Wandering Dog thumbs up. He addresses Tidings one last time. "I think you're alright yourself. But next time we meet on these waters, it's probably not going to be friendly. And I'll show you exactly how I gained my fame." Taking a running start, Wandering Dog moves away from the direction of Eye, facing the waters where his boat is, and channeling essence through his legs into a martial arts technique. Making a massive jump, the Exalted moves to just clear the distance over towards the ship and land aboard it, hauling anchor. It's time to go.
Bloody Revelations	"No, I don't think you understand." says Bloody Revelations, actually *to* Empty Tidings, acknowledging her presence as much as someone else might wish she would not. "I have some patience for idiots who ruin things exactly according to plan. People who blunder in and ruin everything in a way that benefits me are a different matter. You are playing into his hands, and that's why I won't accept it. You can play into mine or you can play not at all" The direct challenge somehow doesn't bring her to a smug cackle. Flat, seething, controlled-only-because-it-isn't fury drips raw from every word. This is something, for once, Bloody Revelations Does Not Like. Something Did Not Go Her Way. She wanted something, and Someone Said No.     She doesn't flex a muscle when All-Seeing Eye leaps to the attack. It is perhaps laudable that he'd spring to action rather than trade words, against someone who rarely ever appears directly, and never tells anyone any more than what they need to know to do what she wants them to. The problem is that she is standing atop an outstretched palm of the Hekantokhire apparently known to some as: Nilih ~ Sovereign Instinct.     The tremendous barrage of attacks is no doubt enough to knock her right off that perch, but it isn't a static one Dozens more tendrils and hands erupt from the water, coruscating with nauseating pulses of fractal light and colour in their frenzied writhing. They twist and thrash with spectacular speed, snatching crossbow bolts and shrapnel, slapping improvised weapons aside, gripping hold of his hoverbike and hurling it back. Where they can't, they spread their hands to catch the fire dead on, ghostly flesh becoming perforated with bolts, scorched with Essence blasts, lacerated by lightning and steel. The Hekatonkhire is unhesitating and unerring in protecting its mistress from everything All-Seeing Eye can throw at her, even at the cost of harming itself. Bloody Revelations still refuses to indulge his hatred by moving, only stoking those flames by letting the ghost-behemoth reach out to smash him from the ship itself, a dozen translucent hands working in concert to crush the life out of him, pound him into the rigging, or snatch and throw him through several masts, at whichever becomes the most convenient earliest. Even as he eludes as many as he can, the others flicker with maddening light and spit lancing beams of crisscrossing incandescence at him, not quite Essence, yet perfectly capable of chopping steel into fine cubes.     The monster will fight him for her. Looking down on him, she turns up her chin instead. Contempt. Just as Moonfin had said.
Bloody Revelations	The moment her foes are driven to a suitable distance, all of a sudden, the Death Essence that already floods into the burgeoning shadowland like crashing waves of ice water abruptly doubles in intensity. Triples. It heightens tenfold. The eerie blood-fires lighting the sea spread outwards, consuming more and more of the sargasso, and setting flame to the hulks of Bluehaven's wreckage. The sound of shouting, tolling alarm bells, and the hissing of flares can be heard from behind the assembly, but it sounds ever so distant --too far to matter. Too little too late. It's not coming from the ghost behemoth holding her up, but Bloody Revelations herself, blazing off of her skin like a bonfire of Essence that isn't an Anima. All-Seeing Eye and Finna especially had felt the height of her power once before. This is an order of magnitude greater --a level that should take an Exalted hundreds of years to achieve, not less than one. It's not possible.     Bloody Revelation turns towards the demon island. "That thing right there is Lintha Ng Oroo. The favourite child of the coward Kimbery. The Behemoth that the Lintha call sister. Their most valued and treasured kin. The living Manse around which they revived their race. That cave is their way to speak to their Yozi mother, and a portal to Malfeas. That portal is the womb from which their great, corrupted champion emerged, and gave them their entire world. That thing is what the Silver Prince wants. Dukantha, and his grief and hate and his bond to his Sister, is what he wants. He knew I would be coming. I'll give him that. You can all have a good laugh at my expense. Congratulations. I came here and got nothing. My plans are ruined."     Her hand falls to the sword at her hip. It does that, on occasion, resting on the odd scabbard with the unnerving runes in times of stress and anger. It's like a tic. A reassurance. She's never used the damn thing. She's a Necromancer. Everything she's ever done is dark magic of tremendous scale, consorting with the dead and commanding Hekatonkhire. It's not exactly uncommon for Sorcerers, or even Exalted diplomats, to carry around daiklaves.     Except she does draw it. The rasp of steel is quietly audible for a mile. Steel. Not soulsteel. A weapon of plain and unassuming dimensions, a little long and thick at the cross-section for a single-edged, nearly straight sword, but the weapon of a mortal, not an Exalted. When it clears the scabbard, she flicks it downwards and to her side at the five o'clock position, extending it where it should glint in the fire --but it doesn't. There is no sword. That isn't to say there is an absence like a sword, or the black of Oblivion itself in the shape of a sword. There is no hole in reality or a splinter of the Void. The sword is not. There is merely the suggestion of a sword, present as the dim recognition of one --the barest shadow of something that almost doesn't exist, but does. Whatever it is, wherever she got it, it isn't an artifact weapon. There are no hearthstones or magical materials involved.
Bloody Revelations	She brings the weapon to her wrist, and with the graceful swish of a violinist finishing their piece, slashes it down to the artery. Red blood spews forth from the wound spraying against the base of the sword that is not. The wound flows shut on its own, but leaves a frightening amount of blood drizzling from all of Bloody Revelations' fingers and into the water. Where it drips down the suggestion of a blade however, it can only collect along the infinitesimal precipice of an edge that is barely there, gathering as a thick bead that runs all the way down to its tip. It paints a long, lurid red stripe as it goes, clean and sharp, bright scarlet against the night sea. The flat of the blade is dyed the black of ink just after, given substance and definition by dangerous quantities of bleeding, until it is a jet black length of steel with a vivid, scarlet hamon.     In the same second, Bloody Revelations Spilled from the Nightmare brings the blade smoothly to her front, lowering the point until it is perfectly level with the 'ground', taking a stance that is wholly unfamiliar even to the group's incredibly experienced martial artist, yet obviously a real stance all the same. The Death Essence roiling around her is drawn inward, imploding onto her and compressing to a single point.                 First Stance             Understanding of the Void:     "There is no escape from the all-consuming mouth of Oblivion."     Bloody Revelations twists the edge and slices upwards through the air, flicking the blade through a motion past her shoulders in the blink of an eye. The local fabric of the Loom quakes to such an extent that Graceful Hands will be warned of panicking pattern spiders just an instant before it happens.     The island, and a half-mile of the ocean in all directions, disappears.     For a frozen instant, a million tons of sand, rock, water, sargasso, and demon flesh, evaporate into a spray of fine black particles, rent down to their motonic components so quickly that the least gods are dead before they can separate their sovereign matter according to the proper laws of Creation's physics. The split second next, it's all just gone, and a tremendous, ear-shattering THOOM follows its disappearance as the air collapses in on the massive vacuum. Water implodes into the gap and then explodes upwards and outwards along the arc of the stroke, tracing the sword's path in imitation that ejects it a mile into the sky. The shockwave that necessarily comes after causes even the artifact ships of Claslat to rock and sway, to say nothing of the wooden vessels that crash and capsize all around them. The loot holds still within the blast zone are blown to pieces by the sheer force of it, scattering gold and jade to the currents. The crypt, as ancient and worrying as it had been, is pulverized in an instant.     To Graceful Hands' keen eye, several tiny stars in the sky have just winked out, their threads of destiny severed completely. Empty Tidings feels the Yozi taint wink out like a light. Finna and Wandering Dog feels the Dragon Lines split apart and die in an instant, killing the area's Water aspect on the spot. Azure Armature and All-Seeing Eye are subjected to the mathematical backlash of their visual Charms not agreeing with what had just been seen.
Bloody Revelations	When the backblast is done crashing against her perch, violently blowing back her hair and clothes while she stares unblinking into the howling wind until it settles, Bloody Revelations turns to look back over her shoulder, swishing the blade back up to her shoulder, and kisses it as a priest would a rosary.     "That is what he can have. That is all I'll allow him to have. That idiot who knows nothing about me. He and his fools who think they can even hope to fight an enemy about which they haven't the tiniest sliver of fact to go on. You can still be useful to me. You can live and go back to him -back to your respective masters- and tell them -show them- what you've seen now. Even those degenerate scum of the Realm can flee back to their Houses and warn them. The more the better, because I'm tired of not being taken seriously."     Maddeningly, she doesn't let that stand challenge. Someone excessively brave, driven, clever, or simply spiteful, could use that time to say something inspiringly defiant and Join Battle, and she might even kill them, but the Abyssal is just Done. Nothing to say. Nothing to laugh about. Nothing to feel triumphant about. If anyone had thought they'd known what a fit of temper looked like from her before, they were wrong; this is it. She storms off in the same way she had come, not willing to be second guessed; not willing to let someone Say No a second time.
All-Seeing Eye	The hoverbike is hurled back at him. Even when he nimbly bends backwards to narrowly avoid being struck by the thrown vehicle, he is still shooting, his arms bending at theoretically possible angles to find firing solutions. This becomes a non-issue when he is simply picked up.      He fights back. Of course he does. The hekantokhire's grip includes not just him, but his whips. All seven of them send thousands of volts of electricity into the monster's grip. He is pounded into the rigging, crushed. The voltage increases, and he is released. Midair. Thrown. Thrown through masts, his artificial skeleton making dense metallic thuds as it splinters through them. He skids across the deck of a ship, crashes through the guardrail, and flies through the rotten planks of a derelict's hull. Closer to Revelations, his hoverbike teeters on the edge of the ship the others are gathered upon, before gravity pulls it into those dark waters.      In the darkness of the ship he's been hurled into, Eye bleeds. He bleeds into the cold waters. Revelations explains the extent to which others have foiled her plans. Beneath the smotheringly placid surface of the water, so far away from her, his ears still ringing from the monster's assault, he doesn't hear it. But the drawing of the weapon--he hears that. That she would think him so easily defeated is an insult. Rage begins to well up inside him. Until he remembers what Moonfin said. Contempt. Not rage.      A whip pierces the surface of the water, snares around the railing of a nearby ship, just before the island disappears, pulling Eye up and aboveboard. His visual Charms scream at him for the impossibility of the backlash having been seen. He casually strolls right back to the spot where he began his fight. He casually inserts his fingers into his eye sockets and pulls the both of them out, severing them from their bundles of artificial optic nerves with a shower of sparks. He drops both onto the ground and crushes them beneath his heel as the boat rocks back and forth.      He shows such contempt for her that he deprives himself of his very namesake, his greatest advantage.      "You have to be lucky many times. I only have to be lucky once." He chuckles. "Ta, darling."
Azure Armature	There's a lot that transpires. For a moment, her Awareness subroutines all behold something terrifying. Then, the data of it. Armature's awareness becomes black. Emptiness. Nothingness. Then her eyes reboot. Normalcy, or something approaching it, reigns as physics goes 'wait, I can exist again? I'm allowed? o-okay, if you're sure!' Watching it all - even having seen it, there's a coldness in her chest. A tightness. And her right glove, ringed in hardlight rigging, clenching into a tight fist, slowly straining. That sort of power... "Hnnnngn. Luck has nothing to do with it any more." With a muted blue flash of math, Armature disappears in a bwip-pop, and does not reappear on Wandering Dog's boat.
Graceful Hands	A second bottle had been opened, but it had been dropped, with all of the liquor inside still completely intact. Grace blinked for a moment, rubbing her eyes with her sleeve, looking up towards the sky, then back at where the demon island was. "...huh." A few seconds later, the Sidereal looked towards her open hand that had been clutching her libation of choice, and it slowly turned into a fist. The mounds of paperwork and reports she had to fill were, for once, the farthest thing from Grace's mind as she looked towards the place where the island itself had been. "Was that...?" Memories washed over her, and she folded her arms as she just continued to look very thoughtful from her now very wrecked and unstable husk of a boat. For now, she tapped her chin, seemingly for once, lost in thought without a word to say.
Starbound Flotilla	The Flotilla ready for a protracted battle that is not to come. They know better than to mess with the opening shot, drawing their weapons and moving to a far more defensive stance. And they take their stances right at the border of where she drives them back, around the ships.     Moonfin is the only one among the Flotilla who recognizes a fraction of the meaning of drawing that plain 'sword'. Not out of historical insight, but cultural. He screams out to his allies, "HOLD ON!!" Before the tremendous impact -- or rather the effects of a lacking. Holding tight to the decks, the Flotilla stick the landing of making it through the backblast. It takes a few seconds after the blast clears for them to be back on their feet. "Huuuhhhhrrrrnnnh... God, I felt that in my knees." "Floran... Wantsss to learn to ssstab like that." "Terrified. Are you /still/ sure we should be working for her?" "I'm sure I wouldn't wanna work for anyone else." "A weapon you never have to fire is only as valuable as the crater its test left." "I don't favor this result, but our hands are clean of it, diplomatically." "Bitter. The last thing we're going to have coming out of this is clean hands."     They click something at their wrists, each almost simultaneously, summoning up their amphibious hoverbikes again, which were rocked and blasted away. They head out to mount them, and to surge back towards their vessel. The only one speaking is the one giving orders. "Go to extraction. I think it's time we start an operations protocol that fits our benefactor."
Finna	Finna is not here anymore. Neither is the sack.     Somehow, throughout all of that cacaphonous chaos, she appears to have vanished in the moments between thoughts. One moment she's there, and the next, not a hint.     Freaking Changing Moons!
Staren	Staren watches for Revel's response to Eye, and in case Finna tries to attack. Bloody Revelations lectures, her minion blocks the attacks. And then...     And then she dumps some fascinating exposition about the Lintha. That island over there is a giant demon and a connection to Malfeas? It... would be a great revelation, surely, if he were better-informed about Creation and the Lintha.     And then she...     And then she disintigrates an island with a gesture.     The sapient part of his brain registers that there's going to be danger when that vaccuum is filled, and gets the lizard part of his brain to grab onto the ship's railing and cling as it's shaken about.     When the craft settles, he looks around for Finna, and...     She's gone. With the loot.     Good fox.     Staren flies back to Dog's ship. He needs a moment to process all this.