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Priscilla     It's been a long time since Elites have come to Lordran. At least in any way pertinent, outside of small, individual invitations. For most, it's simply the land that the First of the Concord hails from, almost completely mysterious, save for word spread from a handful of veterans of the old Union, the majority retired, the remainder having mostly limited parts of the picture. A place where the only currency of value is souls. Where anything can grow to become a monstrous foe. A place of civilizations built on their extinct predecessors, the curses of the past just below the surface. A country that is the home of the gods, and the crux of all creation.

    For now, though, searching for far-scattered remnants of knowledge of the very existence of one of those civilizations, removed entirely from all historical record, individual fragments known only to ancient places and their sparse or no remaining peoples, takes place almost outside of Lordran proper. High in the seemingly endless sea of mountains that surrounds the central continent of the world, isolating it from the many lands of men all around it. A journey that only the bravest and hardiest would dare make, given the way the peaks cluster together as claustrophobic as mountains can get, scarcely a valley or river between them to break up the hellish, frigid stones.

    This is a mountain known only two men alive. One of them, Priscilla would not say. The other is one of the Four Knights of Gwyn, named Dragonslayer Orstein, the captain of those ancient heroes of legend, seldom even glimpsed by humans. Why he would know this place is perhaps evident in its name. He refers to it only as Archdragon Peak. A place where no Warpgate had ever materialized. A brutal slog of hundreds of miles on foot, though even the much better advised mode of flight is unnecessarily difficult. Even in a cloudless, pale blue sky, seemingly pristine and calm as can be, jetstreams that begin far lower and far, far more fearsome than any Earth, make it a laborious and taxing effort to maintain even a jet plane, and threaten to stall out most aircraft for the way it fights their propulsion.

    As per its name, the destination sits at the very peak of a mountain. One high enough that it is a struggle to breathe; enough to be fatal from overexertion to regular people, like the tip of Everest. That this place is, from the very little the Knight says of it, is a place regarded as holy to warriors specifically, might say a lot about the calibre of the few who come here.

    Even its architecture feels like a far cry from both the lands of men and the land of the gods. It is something lost in time. An untouched Stonehenge of a place. The mountain's top is a wide, rough, and uneven plateau, where odd white shrubs and pale grasses cling to the rocks here and there, winding pathways worn between the crags and cliffs by nature. Everything from the natural roads to the broad vistas is home to rows upon fields of primitive cairns, commemorating some countless, ancient dead, as the ground far too hard to bury anyone

    At its far edge, a sort of monastery, perhaps. One of amber-coloured stone, rough hewn and brought up the mountain from someplace else, but worn mostly smooth by the winds of ages. It is far bigger than any monastery should be, even those built in some fertile valley rather than a mountaintop. Its walls are sheer and brutally angular, reaching ten stories high in places, at the very least. Its construction is highly irregular, built up like many different towers of varying heights fused together, crumbling away in some places, yet affixed with rough wooden scaffolds and braided rope bridges here and there, as if there were some impossibly slow construction still going on. Pennants and banners fly here and there, though they must be fixed at the bottom too, to remain attached, and all of their livery has bleached and faded away in the sun.
Priscilla     The sun. It is, up here, unnaturally bright. It's as if it had come halfway to the earth, bathing everything in a harsh white midday radiance. Even staring at a reflective surface is damaging to the eyes. The direct light somehow completely defeats the cold of a local Everest, purging any and all snow from its primeval stones, rendering the peak merely 'brisk'; the sole reprieve, next to the laborious effort of breathing and moving about.

    The dragonslayer himself is, of course, present. A man ten feet tall, who radiates a palpable aura of power bordering on menace, clad in gleaming --almost shimmering-- armour of gold, cut with elaborate and fierce facades, with long hanging waist plates, and a helmet shaped like a snarling lion with a red knightly plume. He carries a spear of similar golden design, with huge cross lugs far in excess of hunting any boar, and a spearhead that is much more like a lance, four feet long and flanged rather than flat, with a massive diamond point.

    It's a far cry from the spear that he leads to, embedded in the ground by its blunt end. Something made of robust and weather-worn bronze, with a head much more like a norse broad sword. A faded red scarf or wrapping has been tied around the short guard, flapping in the breeze. He runs his hand along it as he passes, leading you in taciturn silence up many crossing stairs, too steep to be meant for normal humans, though not quite steep enough for him. It leads to a flat, stone-tiled field before the monastery's gates. An ancient iron portcullis of sorts, larger than life as everything else here. One which must weigh thousands of tons-- far beyond what even a hundred men could lift with chains.

    It is not unguarded. The first, and no doubt most minor trial to entering, is a high rise bridge of stone which spans the entire stairway, and another over the plaza beyond, crossing horizontally, and of no use but to give someone up top a high vantage over the only paths. You do not see soldiers, monks, or warriors here. What you see is a score of beings cloaked in what resembles tattered norse cloaks and tunics, bleached and worn thin. Seven feet at their hunched posture. No doubt taller if they stood up straight, due to the long, prehensile necks that support their swaying heads, scaled dull emerald green for the fact that they are serpents shaped like men.

    Bright, sharp eyes, enormous fangs, powerful, clawed limbs. Two amongst them are large enough for someone to sit comfortably on each shoulder, no doubt the oldest of their number. Even from a distance, you can tell they are armed, albeit strangely, strapped with massive kukris and curved shotels of seemingly pitted damascus, the largest holding axes larger than a man in a single hand, with long, clattering chains attached to the hilt and wound about the other hand, like a Japanese kusarigama. There are a number of massive wooden shields with faded and scraped livery, scratched and pitted from many battles, and bandoliers that rattle under their mantles.

    Even the ragged door guards look like something best not trifled with. An experienced warrior would be able to glimpse the telltale signs of not only experience, but training, in them. The way their weapons are kept still rather than waved about. Their untwitching posture. Their roving fields of vision. Beastmen who have seen a hundredfold more combat than a knight.
Maksim Messerglas "Nothing like... a brisk... hike... up a mountain!"

Maksim huffs, and puffs, and puts one foot in front of the other, Light bless him in his persistence. He is no legendary warrior, no savior of worlds, no hero of times and places far and wide. Maksim is a nobleman, and a scholarly one at that; his physique is as good as it is because he gets so deep into his studies he forgets to eat, then sprints back and forth across university campuses in a panic about library hours and class accredation. The fact that he's made it this far is a minor miracle.

He puts one foot on a sun-baked stone, stretching his back and legs. "The mountain air... is brrrr-" *crack*; *quiet groan* "-r-racing! Eh? And the *view!*" He gestures off a cliff that, should he take a wrong step, he will skid down a scree-covered embankment, go over, and plummet off of to his certain death. "It's, erm... Extant!"

(Deep breaths, Maksim. You're in the company of the most high at a time like this. Act your station.)

He steps off the stone and keeps walking, raising a hand towards one of the, er, natives, calling, "Excuse me! Hello! To whom do we speak regarding passage through your fair lands?"

Maksim, being apparently unarmed and unarmored, probably should not be the one marching directly into the maw of the beastmen.
Starbound Flotilla     The STARBOUND FLOTILLA are here, in their standard Durasteel equipment! 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. Each has a heavy industrial-yellow two-pronged plasma-cutter-like tool strapped to their side, a Matter Manipulator.

    It would not be wise to visit via ship, simply because that's not the lay of the land or the way of this world. The Flotilla, instead, use a complex mixture of walking, ad-hoc bridge construction, and a small stable of a half-dozen Glitch horses to make it over. It takes almost half the damn day for them to carve a walkable path, dotted with unique mobility-enhancing technologies, from where they started to Archdragon Peak, and these bridges and tunnels are likely as anything to be gone in a year's time. But you know, leaving ruins behind is just what people do around here.

    The oxygen nanoskins keep flickering on and off. Eventually, George gets sick of it and has everyone take oxygen tanks and masks; he'll offer those to allied sorts who have joined the trek. Seft shields her eyes with one hand, displaying a squinting =_= on her eye-visor, before she heads towards the dragonslayer. She's leading the Flotilla today. Lordran is more familiar to her than to anyone else here -- though, to its credit, it's certainly a whole lot more brutal than any Glitch world might be.

    First thing's first. They're meant to follow the Dragonslayer -- but is this the battle that needs facing? Seft asks, "Questioning. Ornstein, what is Anor Londo's political relationship with these beastmen? Will we need to fight for your task?" She's as ready as ever for it, with a hand on the battle-axe hilt in her Matter Manipulator, perhaps only because of how constant the displays of weaponry are in the locals.
Zero Kiryu Zero Kiryu has seen the kind of bullshit that a housecat can evolve into in this world. He is /entirely/ unsurprised that another major figure of Lordran is a ten foot tall man with a spear that would be hilariously overwrought anywhere and everywhere else. As it is... he's not sure it's /boar/ the giant would hunt, but he's certain that boar exist which could give that spear a run for its money.

Of all the great troubles along the way, though, it is the sun that troubles him the mother. Midway through the journey he vanishes for an instant, before reappearing at Yuuki's side bearing two rather ornamental parasols. Ordinarily he would bring only the /one/, and share it. Today, he doesn't have a large enough parasol for that.

So two it is. The one that he bears depicts a vivid night sky, a little too imagined to be interpreted as realistic but pretty all the same.

For the most part he seems content to linger at Yuuki Kuran's shoulder-- that is, until...

His parasol snaps shut abruptly and sweeps down in front of Maksim as he attempts to advance forward. The motion isn't forceful, it's not going to bowl him or anyone else over. It has the quality of the arm at a parking garage descending.

The Director's bodyguard keeps his eyes on the beastman guards.

"Don't approach anything or anyone here like that. Not even a housecat." He warns.

Then the parasol is retracted, and put back up.
Yuuki Kuran "Why yes, Maester Messerglas, it is a wonderful time for a hike!" Kuran Yuuki agrees, completely casual in her dominance of 'cold' 'remote' 'mountain' terrains thanks to her aggressive normalcy. "May I call you Maksim? You may call me Yuuki, if you like! I believe this is the gathering place for our party -- and this must be the great Ornstein? We've never had the opportunity to meet!"

Yuuki is all smiles and two-hand shakes for the enormous giant of a man. He may have to lean down, but Yuuki is eager even on her tiptoes to show appreciation and warmth on the cold mountainside.

"Master Ornstein," Yuuki begins. "This doesn't have anything to do with those blue something-or-others, does it? I had almost forgotten, but I remember them causing Priscilla some distress. It's so good you're here, I'm sure there will be nothing that our combined forces cannot solve!"

Well, when you bring half the active roster of the Concord and sign up the entirety for a giant quest, you get people to show. Dim and hazy Union-era memories can stay buried.
Guzma Some might be expecting Guzma and the Trio to clown around up here. Spend the whole hike goofing around, get to the top, almost suffocate to death. While that was /possible/, Guzma predicted it from his goons, and googled stuff about mountain climbing and exertion, and made sure the trio internalized it.

The result is that they were very, very well-behaved, and also, halfway through, they didn't start complaining. It's not until they got to the very peak that the Trio all took a brief cross-legged sit near the steep steps, none of them wearing their bandanas over their face so that they can actually breathe, huffing and puffing. "My feet are killing meeeee!" The pink-haired girl says.

"Rapp, get up. We're here." Guzma bonks her lightly on the head, his muscles aching, his breathing controlled so that he doesn't literally suffocate as a 'basically a normie', giving her a hand to pull her up, as Tupp and Zipp follow after her.

"Yo, this is some kind of warrior temple, yeah? Did you train here ever?" Tupp asks Ornstein, rubbing a hand through his aqua-colored hair, as Zipp stands beside him. Rapp and Guzma grab pokeballs as they go up the very steep steps, towards the tilled fields and the monastery itself. Large beings guard it. Beastmen, of some sort. The spheres go flying, unleashing Pinsir, a giant gray bug with two pincers, and Zubat, literally your mother's blue bat.

Zubat flies around, calling out 'Beastmen' for Pinsir, who moves to play sumo and dance around them, trying to bait them into fighting if they're indeed going to fight, and ultimately, trying to grab weapons they strike with using its pincers and strength and toss them aside before going in for a counter-attack.
Tomoe It has been a very long time since Tomoe had been in Lordran. It felt like it was several lifetimes ago, she'd been back a few times since then but they were brief visits. So she returns once more curious to see how things fair and eager to take up this new quest. Thanks to how bright the sun was?

She had no issue being able to fly for a good deal of the way here, she'll touch down some distance away to approach the site on foot. She would catch up to the dragonslayer. She takes a moment to take in Ornstein, he towers over her which is not a common experience for Tomoe. She does seem bothered but it's clear it's not something she's used to.

"Sir Ornstein, I am Tomoe the Iron Lily. I have come here to cooperate with you on your quest."

She will take a look at beings ahead who live here, she wonders about them while she does not consider things to be hostile it's clear they are armed and know how to use their weapons.

s she takes in Maskim the Starbounders also drop-in, she bristles slightly for a moment. It's not unexpected they would be here after all.

"It was a good flight up, nice to be able to fly here for once."

She now looks to The Dragon Slayer.

"So what do we do from here?"

She isn't going to start a fight if it's not needed but she has no issue with finishing one should it break out.

She also looks to the Starbounders and simply says "Been a long time."
Captain Flint      It's been some time since Flint and his men have been to Lordran. Standing beside the seasoned pirate captain is John Silver, his quartermaster--sporting a wooden leg, a crutch, and a faint shadow of stubble. Quite different than his last appearance here some years ago. The sea, it seems, has begun to harden the former thief.

     Flint and Silver have, naturally, brought along a small contingent of the Walrus crew, as they usually do on missions like this. Standing at the base of the mountain, behind the two most senior crew members, there is an assortment of pirates, seemingly sourced from numerous nations among their world of origin, but all of them clearly as beaten by the elements as Flint and Silver, and all of them bearing the marks of a hard, toilsome way of living. They wear heavy furs to protect against the cold, and have come with boarding equipment repurposed for scaling a mountain.

     The ascent into the mountains is difficult, not the least for Silver, given his condition. But the promise of riches is stronger than the fear of hardship for these men of fortune. The ascent to the Peak itself proves excruciatingly so, and even claims the life of a Mr. Delmonte--but there are no complaints. Silver himself seems a man driven, determined to allow neither the Peak nor his leg humble him. Several times, the crude design of his prosthesis causes him to lose his balance.

     The men, and especially Flint, are there ready to save them. When they first met, Flint would sooner kill Silver than speak with him, for his attempt to rob the Walrus of its prize. But there is something different between these men, as the years have passed. Trust. Perhaps it even resembles friendship. With frost clinging to his trimmed goatee, his face red and stinging from bitter winds, Flint is the first to reach the peak. His hand is clasped firmly around the outstretched arm of John Silver, who is pushed from behind by two of the crew.

     When the last Walrus crew member reaches the summit, he falls to his knees, panting for breath. The heavy furs these men wear are all that keeps them from an icy demise, but even so, 18th century English science simply doesn't have many answers for this type of vicious cold, nor the dangers of this altitude. The crew is alive, but winded, and not evidently pleased.

     Silver takes his crutch back from a crew member, leaning upon one of the cairns for balance until he can nestle it under his arm once more. He, his captain, and the rest of the men make their approach to the Dragonslayer with hands shielding their eyes from the blinding albedo. They follow, too beaten by weather to bother having words with the silent figure. Flint gives an order, non-verbally. He stops in his tracks on the bridge, turning and motioning with his head, first to Silver and the crew, then to the hunched, ragged figures.

     The pirates take up positions where they're able to, creating cover with loose stones from the bridge if necessary. Guns, ranging from muskets and flintlocks to more modern counterparts, are drawn, and leveled, but not yet fired. Others may not wish to start a fight, but these men are ready to finish it. If the hunched, ragged creatures attack anyone on their ascent, they will do so in a crossfire set up by the pirates, who have lightly fortified themselves.
Arianrhod     The trek up the mountain to it's peak is a long one. Winding. Braving the climb, the heights, the slowly thinning air, would likely leave one's stamina rather lacking by the time they reached their destination. And this is no different for Arianrhod...'s horse.

    Indeed, having carried the armor-clad warrior up to the top of this mountain, the steed is looking a little worse for wear. Which is why, once they arrive in the presence of the apparent Dragonslayer, Arianrhod drops down from atop her mount. Patting the creature, she leaves it be to gather its strength once more, turning to move towards Ornstein.

    There are no words, simply a nod in greeting from the woman's full helmet.

    Leaving her mount behind, Arianrhod proceeds the rest of the way on foot, following the large group to those large stone bridges. Only once they come across the cloaked serpentmen does Arianrhod arm herself, reaching to her waist where a sheathed sword hangs. She draws it out, bringing it down to her side.

    Then, where others stop and wait, Arianrhod starts walking forward without hesitation. Saying nothing. But also not moving to make the first swing. She intends to test these beastmen. To see if they will allow her to pass. Or foolishly attempt to block her.
Raziel 'The mountain seemed to stretch forever into the sky, separating it from the lands of men simply by its sheer existence.  No doubt that my former 'benefactor' Kain would have enjoyed these sighs quite a bit.  To me, however, they served to remind me only of what I had lost.'

Raziel climbed with the others, assisted by claws that allowed him to grip onto the stone and his natural strength and agility helped him the rest of the way.  Another benefit to being undead is that he lacked the ability to breathe, so the air becoming thinner had no visible effect on him.  

Raziel did not hide what he was today, standing with his fellows as he was natural.  His undead body obvious for all to see, with clawed fingers and cloven feet.  His eyes blazing with energy, and his mouth covered by a standard.  

'Our 'guide' for this journey referred to this place as Archdragon peak.  An ominous name for sure.  However, there was a beauty to this place.  Life proved once more, that it could grow anywhere, showing just how tenacious it could be.  The grasses somehow narrowly clinging to this place, despite what would be a very hard place for things to breathe.'

Raziel's hand went up to his face to shield his eyes from the sun.  Though he showed no visible reaction to it as one might expect of a vampire, he still was not extremely fond of the bright light, especially as bright as this one was.  He focused his gaze back on the monastery itself.  

'These buildings were worn with age and wind that no doubt still blows viciously through these peaks.  The walls being nothing but sheer drops, and their angular design left much to speculation of their designer.  Perhaps these were different forts, but somehow pressed together?  Or perhaps there was construction started by different peoples?'

As they approached the 'guard' of this place, Raziel's eyes settled on those taking charge.

'These 'men' as some might call them were only men in name and stature only.  Even then, only just.  Serpents through and through, perhaps related to the name of this place in some way...perhaps servant of the creature that it was named for.  The dragonslayer did not show signs of aggression...at least yet.  With how dangerous people claimed this land was, it only served to remind me of Nosgoth's future.'

"Whom are these...people who guard this place?  Should we consider them allies, enemies, or neither?" he asks the dragon slayer, "My knowledge of your homeland is limited to 'everything is deadly', and to which we share a commonality."
Eryl Fairfax     Eryl is here.

    Why the Grandmaster of the Paladins is in company with such a large gathering of Concord members is a mystery. He's certainly not forthcoming about it. Ever is he at the front of the pack on the hike, displaying no signs of fatigue. His breaths are deep and steady, even as the oxygen thins. The only sign that he is affected by this environment at all is that he has swapped out his usual black leather shoes with equally black and leather boots with thick soles.

    Upon arriving at the peak and meeting Ornstein, he offers the Dragonslayer a deep bow. "Thank you for having us," he says finally, in a strong, steady voice. His eyes track to the bridge, and the robed snakemen guarding the doors at the far end. Everyone lingers. Everyone talks among themselves. But these young men cause a fuss, posturing-no, not even that. Sending their creatures to do the posturing for them.

    Eryl pinches his nose and sighs. And then he starts forward, putting his arms around Guzma and Rapp's waists, before hoisting them up to carry them on his shoulders. "Come along please," he says as he marches down the bridge.

    The most obvious threat is the swords these creatures carry. But those long necks, and those sharp teeth? Those are far more dangerous. The reach they must have... Eryl gazes at them the whole approach, calculating how far their necks can go, and stopping just beyond their reach.

    It is here that he deposits the Team Skull members, placing his hands on their heads, and pushing them into a bow to the creatures, which he also joins.

    "Our apologies for intrusion, and for the deep disrespect these two have shown," he says, projecting his voice so that not even the wind can snatch it. "We seek entry, and will observe all and any of your customs. Will you grant it to us?"
Guzma Guzma and Rapp are carried. Guzma squirms, Rapp panics, until she sees that Eryl's handsome and then stops. Pinsir and Zubat stop what they were about to do and just...follow along. Pinsir bows as well, while Zubat perches.

Guzma grunts at Eryl. "Hey! I don't bow to /anybody/!" While Rapp, the girl, just starts pleading. "I'm so sorry I'm so sorry please forgive us, we were so disrespectful, yo, just, just let us through, please!"
Maksim Messerglas Maksim is vaguely taken aback by the sheer amount of manpower called up on this expedition. Not merely a small bit envious, either. If he could get half of this for his own personal crusade, he could -- well, he could do a lot of things.

"You may," he tells Yuuki, smiling, red-cheeked with cold and exertion. "I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Yuuki." He bows, politely but a touch less than formally, given they've just established an informal relationship on the spot.

Which doesn't stop *her* bodyguard from cutting in shortly thereafter, either. "Ah? Really? I --" Others take a much more hostile approach to the guardians of this apparent monastery. The umbrella stops him in his tracks, though. "I see. Unfriendly country, then. I'll take that under advisement, thank you. Even a housecat...?" Maksim trails off in a slightly disturbed murmur. He falls back ever so slightly. Pirates and space adventurers and themed thugs take up the vanguard instead.
Mordred      One of the knights here is not like the other one. One of these knights is... Literally half the height of the dragonslayer. Despite the size difference, however, theknight clad in white and red is keeping pace with the veteran in this region, taking rapid steps and short hops to compensate for the difference in their gait. Indeed, it does seem like the shorter knight is deliberately focusing on keeping step with Ornstein.

    It also seems like the shorter knight is rather irritated about something. It might have to do with the fact that Mordred literally has to jump across gaps and climb up inclines that Ornstein just walks across. The low, frequent grumbling coming from inside that suit of white armor seems to confirm this each time Ornstein crosses a gap with ease.

     She doesn't even seem to notice that several others here are having just as much trouble. At least there's the beastmen standing before them, their allegiance and hostilities uncertain. Straightening up, Mordred lets out a brief grunt while standing on... Well, standby. It does appear that Eryl's got things under control with Guzma and Rapp while Yuuki and Zero addressing Maksim, leaving Mordred to play the silent bodyguard!

     ... Who might still be shorter than everyone else. And is definitely clenching her fists way too hard while watching those beastmen guards from behind her helmet.
Yuuki Kuran Yuuki beams. "Definitely a housecat! There was a terribly smug one a long time ago who was some powerful forest spirit. I think? It's all very hazy, but I'm pretty sure I can explain via Master Ornstein:"

Yuuki gesture towards the 10 foot tall enormous plate armored gigachad with arms like the trunks of young trees. "Most dangers here are both sized and scaled to him! Lordran is a land of incredible beauty, and also - incredible danger!"

"Mmmmmostly the incredible danger."
Zero Kiryu "The fabric of this place leans hostile. It isn't that any particular thing is likely to be a problem, but that you can't ascertain what will be a problem quickly enough if you get too close. Unless, I suppose, you are particularly fast. If that's the case, feel free to take risks." Zero explains to Maksim, simply. He returns to Yuuki's flank a moment later, adjusting his parasol as he goes.
Priscilla     The famed Dragonslayer obliges a handshake beforehand mostly out of courtesy for knowing Yuuki is Priscilla's second in command in another organization. One she is, more or less, Lord of, out in the Multiverse, which secures a significant amount of loyalty at home; a place that respects power and grit above all else. His acceptance of Eryl, however, seems somehow stranger by far.

    When Seft asks him a question though, his first words in the whole trek up the mountain resound inside, yet somehow still through, his complete mask, in a gravely sort of tenor. "Relationship?" he almost rhetorically ponders. "There could be nothing further. This is a place hidden from Anor Londo. A citadel that once stood as a bastion against the Dragons in ancient times, even if it is now a city. A place such as this could only exist far away in secrecy. Anything here, is best assumed to be an enemy. Even those who might bear no particular ill will are still disciples of the way of the dragons." He leaves off whatever that is, though it seems unlikely the beastmen are 'disciples' of anything. "It is natural that anything worth doing demands that you fight, in some form."

    It takes him but an instant to discern what Yuuki means by 'blue something-or-others.", responding with a slow shake of his head. "Their time is all but passed. Lady Ciaran would be the only one who knows." The seemingly innocent question about training here draws from him a sound that is almost indescribable, partly between a rough growl and a sorrowful sigh. His gauntleted fingers lift from the sword-spear on the way past. "No."

    "This was once my mentor's affair. The only time I had paid visit before was when he turned traitor to the gods, and the Knights of Gwyn. To kill him."

    "I found that did not have a prayer of defeating him at that time. I escaped with my life, and left my spear behind to mark the battle."

    The warnings from many are well-placed. Clearly those serpent men are intelligent enough, given their armament and those signs of skill, but it's a tossup whether they communicate in any verbal tongue, or whether it is their role simply to kill anyone who comes up here, whether it be to serve as a trial, insinct, or some ancient grudge; it is one they act on.

    The minute you cross the first step up the straight, you are assailed within instants. By surprising means. The creatures atop the bridges, for lacking any sort of bow and arow, rear back their heads, and 'strike' at thin air suitably like a snake attacking prey. Instead of biting however, a glow can be seen through the gaps in their scales where their throats temporarily swell, and they spit globs of churning fire, independent of any material to burn, on the group, showering them in volleys. The white hot flames, in fact, curve subtly to trace people once they start to dodge, suddenly making the curtain of fire much more threatening. The two largest serpents swing their chained axes over their heads like flails, then launch them towards you, smashing into the stone with tremendous, earth-cracking force, before reeling them back and sweeping them side to side as enormously heavy scythes. Some of the beastmen leap off their perches and rush down the stairs, leaned heavily forward and moving at great speed. Those with the heavy shields move in front, shielding the middle and rear ranks from projectiles, until they're close enough that the mob behind them can leap straight over them and bounce on the group, plunging with sharp points from above, and then having and slashing and spinning like dervishes with weapons in each hand, a whirling mass of blades, cloaks, and the sinous sweves and strikes of their heads as third, heavy weapons, biting with such force that they are able to lift and bodily hurl people, aimed at walls, rocks, or the mountain edge.
Raziel 'It would seem we had our answer almost immediately.  The serpents, upon seeing us approach too closely to their keep, raised the alarm.  A fire burned at us, coordinated movements, and dangerous weapons were readied and used in our direction.  It would seem that from this point forward, there would be nothing but danger and enemies.'

Fire flings at Raziel, forcing the ghoul to jump back to avoid the initial flames, but the subtle flame that traced after catches him across the left arm, causing him to recoil.  The scythes come in massive sweeps, forcing Raziel to jump up, aiming to grab the side of the nearest wall and look for a better vantage point.

However, the phalanx they used was of interest to Raziel.  Holding his claws out, he reached out with his telekinesis and attempts to RIP the shields away from those trying to protect the chargers.  Perhaps those with ranged attacks could better take care of their advancing foes before they became a larger threat.
Eryl Fairfax     The heads uncoil and lunge. Eryl pulls back on Rapp and Guzma's heads and elbow them to get them behind him. It's okay, he should be out of range. He pulls a fist back, ready to meet the strike... and then sees the glow building in the back of their throats.

    Of course. Stupid. Disciples of dragons. What are dragons most infamous for?

    The flames billow out and engulf Eryl, who raises his other arm to shield his face. But that cocked fist flies. It does not strike the snakeman however. Instead, he aims it right down it's mouth to clog the flames inside its gullet. The cloth of his sleeve and the false flesh over his arm gives way to reveal metal that endures the flames as Eryl grabs the creature from within and yanks back sharply.

    As it staggers forward, it's long neck exposed, his other arm shoots down as one leg shoots up, knee and elbow connecting with the beastman's throat in between. But he's not done yet. Grabbing its head, he shouts, "DUCK!" before putting all his strength into swinging their entire body around and hurling it into the crowd of dragon disciples.
Captain Flint      "OPEN FIRE!" Flint has to yell it, over the din of the battle. One of the fireballs strikes Silver's position, knocking him to the ground and setting his wooden leg ablaze. Flint looks over his shoulder to see his quartermaster beating the flames out with a rag.

     As planned, the pirates set up a crossfire, giving these denizens a proper Lordran hello. Those beastmen which intend to advance on the others with close-range weapons will find themselves battered by an array of musket balls, automatic fire, and even buckshot.

     More fireballs collide with their position, knocking the stones they'd set up aside and leaving them open. One of the men is struck in the head by one such stone, blood slowly pooling onto the bridge. The shields present a problem almost immediately, and it is for this reason that Flint draws his saber and advances on them, aiming to prevent them from shielding their fellows.

     Pistol in one hand and sword in the other, he fires rapidly into the engagement, attempting to force them to keep their guard up while Raziel attempts to yank their shields away. He's not just doing that, though--the captain is attempting to goad them into lifting their heads above their shields to strike him--at which point he'll attempt to strike through with his saber.
Arianrhod     Arianrhod does not stop her stride even as the creatures above begin to rain fire down upon her and the group. Flames begin to coat the ground around her, until one finally hits her dead on. The fire splashes across her ornate armor, blooming outwards as it meets the hardened resistance. The cloth parts of Arianrhod's armour is a little blackened, parts still sizzling from embers. But the warrior is unconcerned.

    As the beastmen charge forward in formation, Arianrhod lowers her own stance and runs to meet them. As she does so, her helmet turns upwards as some leap over their shield-bearing brethren, coming down towards her with the sharp point of its blade. Arianrhod swiftly brings her sword up to deflect the downward stab. But she doesn't stop to engage the leaper, leaving it behind her to others as she continues into that defensive formation.

    A defensive formation that doesn't appear to last too long as an invisible force launched by Raziel attempts to rip those shields away. Even if he's not entirely successful, Arianrhod takes advantage of the opening in the defense to plunge into with a battlecry, her sword whipping around to try and chop off arms and heads and just sow chaos into the formation.
Zero Kiryu Zero Kiryu... simply doesn't get out of the way. He takes a step and a half forward to put himself in the broad path of anything that happens to pass towards Yuuki, but otherwise simply allows himself to be diced apart by the axe-on-a-chain. He doesn't bother regenerating himself in a particularly obvious way, although what he does instead is probably sufficiently familiar in 'broad character' that the attackers won't have an especially difficult time figuring out that the threat isn't neutralized.

Unless they're too busy dealing with everything else going on, anyway.

From the pile of gore and even individual droplets that sprayed into the surroundings -- including on the axe that did the damage to begin with -- vines begin to sprout and grow. They spread across the environment in fast-forward, like some sort of nightmarishly ultra-aggressive kudzu. They're not /attacking/ despite their clear hostility, instead simply growing.

Growing, crossing bridges, winding themselves around and into the environment. More of it appears faster than it can be burned, even if it can be practically burned-- and by the time anyone thinks to do so, it is surely sufficiently underfoot that getting rid of it off-handedly simple ceases to be an option.
Guzma Rapp and Guzma push behind Eryl, Guzma still frustrated, Rapp glad to be out of there, yelling at the top of her lungs, "I DON'T THINK THEY'RE FRIENDLY!"

As Eryl gets hit by the flames, and they continue to come down. Guzma grabs another pokeball, as Rapp ducks behind him. You're not usually supposed to use more than one...but they have like a dozen guys, at minimum, right?

"Go, Heracross!"

Heracross comes out, causing Pinsir to immediately stand up and clatter angrily. The two only have a second to snap at each other before Guzma gives orders. "Take out the axemen!"

Heracross and Pinsir move to charge past the shields towards the axemen, each moving to use their strength (Heracross is Way Stronger, Pinsir is Way More Vicious) to tear into them, even as the axes slice into their armored chitin and cause them to squeal in pain and scatter back down the stairs. Pinsir tries to use its pincers to just plain disarm one, while Heracross...

Tries to throw an axeman off the mountain.

To make sure there's room /to/ charge through the axeman, the Trio's Pokemon come out, Zubat, Salandit, and Garbodor spraying toxic liquid at the shieldbearers to clear them out and open up. They get hit by fire in the process, which makes Garbodor smell /absolutely awful/. And it already smelled pretty awful!
Tomoe Tomoe makes note of the Dragon SLayer's word as he gives some additional information on the site before them. With the answers she gives? She knows how this is going to start. The Mourning Wall is readied and she draws her sword Dawn Breaker. With those two items in hand, she will cross the first step up and she will end up being assaulted by the Beastmen. They are also breathing fire on top of any other skills they have. Old habits start to come back to her as she parries a fireblast with her shield keeping herself from the worst of it.

"Here we go."

She will chant quickly sending bolts of light and lighting at the attacking Beastmen. Then as Raziel attempts to break the shield wall? Tomoe charge trying to crash into the hopefully now very distracted Beastmen and engage them. She calls out

"COME AND FACE ME!"

Even as she hacks slashes and puts her shield to use in close combat against the enemy.
Maksim Messerglas It turns out it's a really good idea Zero stopped Maksim from marching in and trying to parley: the only tongue the lizardmen speak is, apparently, /flame!/

(that's a joke. get it? flametongue? eh?)

Maksim, in keeping with his heroic demeanor, turns tail and runs like hell. He goes at a dead sprint across the flat space outside the gate, ducking his head and narrowly evading getting hacked in half, set on fire, or otherwise very quickly brought to an end. He takes an ignoble sort of dive behind a squat boulder adjacent to the path they took up, scrabbling in the rocky dirt to get behind it and out of the immediate area of sudden and extreme violence. His fingers flex, his hands move in quick motions, and a second later, he just vanishes altogether, letting a cloak of invisibility fold around him and take him wholly out of sight and, hopefully, out of mind.

A second after /that/, he repositions a second time, just in case anybody decides to just fling something sharp or burning at the space he just vacated. It wouldn't be the worst idea, after all.
Mordred      It appears thatMordred's going to get an outlet for her frustration sooner rather than later! Just as well, since she's already prepared to fight when the serpent men and beastmen begin bombarding the group with flames and approaching with their shields raised, respectively. Charging right into the fray, the Saber-class weaves through most of that rain of fire as her blade clashes against and deflects those oncoming blades, actually showing off her skill with the sword for once instead of just relying on pure brute force.

    That may have to do with how strong these things are to begin with. Each clash of her weapon against several of theirs leaves Mordred with more injuries she can dish out thanks to their formation, and the numerous cuts and gashes have her adjusting her strategy on the fly.

     "Tricky bastards, ain't ya...? Alright, let's see how much you like this!" Each time Mordred spots an opening, she thrusts her sword at whatever she can reach. Gaps in the shields, gaps in their swings, but simply stabbing with that sword isn't enough. Instead, the knight's blade crackles violently with red lightning as it starts to surge off the blade, arcing around wildly as she aims to disrupt their ranks with both steel and magic.
Yuuki Kuran "Ah, see, Maksim? The beautiful danger of Lordran!" Yuuki exclaims, turning to look at--

The blinking outlined lack of Maksim Messerglass highlit on the air.
Bink. Bink. Bink.

"Where did that man get off to?" Yuuki wonders, her face being spattered by a convenient cheek-and-nothing-else Shoujo Deuteragonist Pulp-spray as Zero gets obliterated over her shoulder. Wicking her thumb across her cheek and popping it into her mouth, she finally gives the beastman charging her down with a sword a lick of attention.

By his sword shattering across her neck in a spray of metallic shards. Yuuki sighs. "Have you seen Maksim? He's gotten off somewhere."

The beastman bellows, picks up Yuuki, and with a great heave, throws her off the mountain.

MEANWHILE,
Next to the boulder that Maksim had disappeared to before actually disappearing from sight, another Yuuki (this one has a scarf with a butterfly pattern on it!) peers around the lip of the rock. "Maksim? Are you here? Where *did* he go?"
Starbound Flotilla     The Flotilla surge into action.

"Star Three! Shield, sustain pressure twelve!"
"Determined. Their charge will be broken!"
"Star Two, sheaths off, close circuit at heading two!"
"Their flank shall be pierced before they become aware of it."
"Star Six! Star Five! Taking fire, cauterize at high pressure!"
"Aww, I /just/ made those grenades."
"Let's see these godless beasts smited down to ash!"
"Star Five! Move in and /feast/!"
"FLORAN! ISSS!! HERE!! FOR!! HUUUUUUUUUUUUNT!!!"

    George pulls back fast, rolling to put out the flames over his body. Ducking low to avoid being harvested by the scythe, he retrieves heavy grenades from his Matter Manipulator, and throws them up to Pavo as she leaps off overhead. She rushes through the flames and, despite being alight herself, boosts on holo-wings to a high glide and starts bombing the snakemen with frost elemental grenades!

"That ought to mess with the cold-blooded bastards!"
"You just let me handle the death-from-heaven side of things!"

    "FLORAN ISSS HUNGRYYYYY!" Biteblade calls out, leaping into the charge and sustaining all the barraging damage that comes down onto her armor. She doesn't mind it! Two heavy daggers come out and just start stabbing as fast as she can, and of course, she starts /biting/, trying to chomp through the incoming foes and get some good fresh meat in her to regenerate with. Finally, guilt-free cannibalism! They did it first, so it's OKAY for Biteblade to bite back and latch on when she's bitten!

    Seft and Moonfin suffer the incoming attacks from range with the trust that the others will handle most. Their specialty lies in the melee. Seft brings out her heavy tower shield and battle-axe, while Moonfin wields his katana expertly. They rush to take the shields head-on, to stop that momentum and to get at the vulnerable back-ranks as they try to refresh the skirmishers! "Focused. Be careful! This close to the edge, they'll try to throw us off! Make sure none of you risk it, they're trying to make gravity into a weapon to kill us!" She's jarred by a sudden bite herself, but digs her shield in and /refuses/ to be thrown, instead having a chunk of metal ripped out of her armor!

    Moonfin moves to blink-teleport through the phalanx's shields, to rip through the side of the back ranks and make sure they don't get a chance to sustain their leaping assault! "Fifth Sea Hylotl Style: Redirected Stream!"
Priscilla     Raziel plies his telekinesis at the serpents, and finds the true extent of their strength, when, rather than relinquishing their barricades, the serpents that are no doubt heavier than men continue moving *with* them. Attempts to rip them in his direction send beastmen hurtling in his direction up at the wall, slamming kukris in like climbing spikes and assailing him with vicious bites. Those that go up against obstacles mostly block them with their shields. Those that go off the edge are less lucky, forced to give up their shields by necessity, though one takes the plunge even with it.

    More strangely, those shield users hit by fire when they are unable to guard against it very slowly regenerate before your eyes, their bleeding stopping in a few second, and the wounds starting to knit back together, though a direct headshot with sufficient force kills them instantly. The keyword is 'sufficient', as their scales are hard as platemail, and their skulls are very thick, as are their spines, taking considerable force to decapitate, and considerable skill, as the canny foes weave and bend their necks out of blade arcs more often than not.

    Those without shields, for whatever reason, do not seem to be the same. One being thrown into the crowd causes two more to topple, and be momentarily vulnerable for more massed attacks. Charging into the ranks becomes a furious class of blows and a mosh pit of bodies. Surrounding, or shock trooping into their mass, is a bloody affair, as their omnidirectional attack patterns result in being shredded from every side, though they aren't quite as solid as the most heavily armoured attackers. Given that Heracross is a stag beetle, and yeeting is what they do, another is hurled from the mountainside, crashing and bouncing all the way down through the fog of low clouds.

    More Elites are able to back up the initial spearpoint charge, involving Mordred and Tomoe adding their heavy gear to the push, with her shield and Seft's covering them from counter-charge fire, when metallic vines and toxic ooze become such severe battlefield hazards that even the snakemen have a hard time maneuvering around them, relying on spitting fireballs, and in some cases, throwing knives from under their mantles with deadly accuracy, though some simply just get poisoned as a trade for attacking the Pokemon responsible. The heavy axe snakes are much tougher targets. Not only are they huge, but commensurately thrice as strong and tough, and engage in extended, pitched battle with heavy melee combatants, giving as good as they get, and presenting the serious danger of swallowing someone if they manage to bite down on head and shoulders, though the bug pokemon are too broad and spiny to do so.

    Ornstein spins his spear overhead hard enough to generate a powerful gust of air, lowering himself into a three point stance like a sprinter with the weapon extended to his side. In the blink of an eye, he suddenly closes the distance *up the entire staircase*. It seems like he jumped, but at such a perfectly calculated shallow angle that it looks like he veritably glides frictionlessly over the ground. The spear snaps out with a subtle 'boom', and not only catches one serpent man through the chest, but skewers another behind it, the former impacting the golden lugs with the audible snap of bone. Shifting his grip, the lance at the end crackles with brilliant gold lightning unlike any colour of electricity, causing the snakes to fry, and then explode into scorched chunks of meat.
Priscilla     In fact, Tomoe's lightning magic seems to be far more effective than light magic, albeit it isn't an instantly slaying bane. It's something the serpents seem to hate, and naturally recoil from, scorched and electrocuted easily, one even dropping dead from the known effect of current passing through the heart. Strangely, Morded's purely mana-based 'lightning' seems not to have the same effect, though is no less lethal than usual. The fire damage of George's grenades feels less effective than it should be. The biology here is . . . a little confusing. What relation serpents have to flame is yet to be truly determined. However, the explosive force scatters them just fine, tumbling down stairs and off of bridges, finally breaking the formation to the degree that the knights can gain breathing space, and Biteblade and Moonfin's deadly blades can finish the remainder, as well as join the battle with the heavy 'alpha' serpents and cut them down with aid of Flint's men.

    Maksim, by contrast, gets away scott free, by being a dirty coward. Yuuki, likewise yeeted from the mountain, essentially does so sort of similarly. In a way. They're clear of the pitched battle, though a single fireball naturally arcs out of the air and splashes against the boulder out of its innate seeking nature, turning the front-facing side molten and liquid.

    A short, bloody battle, stains the stairs red, and fills the air with whiffs of gore, charcoal, and ozone, before the breeze quickly carries it all away. It was a brief welcome. A deadly doormat to warn would-be warriors of what they're getting into. One that has killed more than enough, no doubt, due to the cairns outside. Anyone who could get inside alone would be . . .
Priscilla     Defeating the guard complement, of course, has no bearing on physically entering. The utterly gigantic portcullis remains sealed, with no gaps quite wide enough for a human's shoulders to squeeze through. Rather than chains, enormous mechanical levers are set into each side by the gate, strangely advanced for this place, despite their old bronze construction. Each length is sufficient for five men to push or pull abreast, though they are thick with dust.

    Exploration around the corner yields a much smaller door, looking into a nearly pitch black interior room of minor proportions, blocked with a grated door of seemingly pristine, if darkly finished, steel. It is obviously locked, by some means, and strangely, unnaturally robust, such that a block of plastique wouldn't suffice to blow through it. Inside is a circular stone dias, deeply engraved around its perimeter with roughly hewn runes.

    Scaling up the walls, or flying, meets one with blasts of jetstream winds with unnatural suddenness, seeming to suddenly begin perhaps fifty feet off the ground, with a sharply scaling viciousness that reaches full peak at seventy. Hurling a rope or hook to the top is impossible. Even firing an arrow would be dubious, unless at tremendous speed. A regular bullet would be blown away. At the tip top, as well, are far more numerous serpent men, patrolling regular routes around unnecessarily broad wall tops, primitively crenellated and armed with stone and pitch drops, indicating the wall is at least ten meters thick.

    Beyond it, you spot a hallway through the wall, a number of arches, and then a vast courtyard of sorts, though nothing grows in it. Its purpose is uncertain, for the fact that parts of it are 'missing'-- that is to say, the floor abruptly terminates in many places, leading to obscene, bottomless drops into a cloud-shrouded chasm of indeterminate, but surely massive depth, which must run through part of the mountain, invisible from the outside.

    The floor, therefore, could be described as a number of greatly oversized bridges and catwalks, and many many stairs, winding about in all directions like a hopelessly complicated painting, stitching in and out of tremendous towers rising from the chasm walls, creating a small castle even within the monastery's courtyard, with numerous gatehouses, overpasses, long bridges, and lookout towers, the way muddied and complicated by landslides of crumbled or sagging construction. Catwalks of ten foot thick sharpened logs, strung together with thick rope, are studded in the walls at various heights, reaching small outcroppings of architectural stone, further adding to the convolution of the yard.

    There appears to be no gates in or out, save the front one, making it uncertain how one would access the rest of the enormous building. The only things of note, are a seemingly completely unnecessary number of armed serpents --what looks like a hundred in number scattered all about the paths in 'checkpoints' of five to ten-- seemingly on watch, despite the lack of places to go, and at the end of a lengthy, ground floor walkway, a suitably gigantic bell, covered in both verdigris and rings of old runes, hung barely off the ground by a pale granite arch, overlooked by a broken half-bridge at the very highest level of the courtyard, which previously ran right over the walkway just before the bell, only accessible by running the whole gauntlet of stairs and bridges.
Maksim Messerglas Maksim, from his position of concealment, has ample opportunity to stop and study the battle and its combatants. The sheer variety of technique and equipment is actually a wonder to someone like him, who has studied the arts of battle primarily from an armchair while said arts were contained within an old, well-worn text. There was often wine involved. Too much of that tended to make him stand up, try to mimic the footwork, and promptly remind himself that he is not, in fact, some sort of warrior-prince. (And also drunk, at the time.)

Yuuki appears like a nicely-enscarfed ghost. Maksim jumps in surprise, which, fortunately, he's too invisible to let her see. He takes a second to compose himself, and then clears his throat politely, the sound coming from somewhere on her left. "I-" He spots the fireball. Everything freezes, letting him examine the glob of gently-arcing napalm in freeze-frame clarity for as long as he desires. His mind races, primarily in regards to getting to safety, but a nagging bit of duty and conscience jumps in and demands his attention instead.

When the world starts to move, so does he. Maksim appears as a hazy outline, the man suddenly snatching up a stone from the ground and, with surprising deftness, heaving it like a shot put into the precise arc of the fireball that, in his estimation, would have imperiled Yuuki in mere seconds. The fireball does indeed reduce a rock to a dribbly molten mess, but it's the one in mid-air, and it ends up catching his forearm with the spray of flecks of red-hot stone, eliciting an undignified yelp and a rapid swatting as his sleeve starts to smolder.

Maksim flickers back into plain visibility. "I'm right here," he says, somewhat lamely. "Your bodyguard, is he --"
Captain Flint      The engagement with the guards is over after a hail of bullets and a fearsome trading of blows. Flint's chest heaves with exertion, all the moreso for the thin mountain air. The sweat he'd worked up is quickly cooled on his brow. He wipes it off, dusting himself off. After a brief glance at his own person, and at Raziel's, he nods.

     Silver and the others congregate before the door. "Where is Mr. Black?"

     "Out like a lamp," Silver replies. "When the fighting started he caught a rock to the head."

     Flint nods. "Billy, Joji, get him inside and out of the way, then get back--handsomely. That was far from the only resistance we'll encounter here." The two pirates exchange a grim look, but ultimately comply with Flint's order, meeting back up with the party once they've seen to Black.

     They come to the door, and attempt unsuccessfully to knock it down with a makeshift battering ram. It splinters after the third swing. "Fuck the door," Flint snarls, as his men are about to attempt blowing it open. "Focus your efforts instead on the wall. If you cannot break through it with picks, abandon the endeavor and return to myself and Mr. Silver." The pirates procure the aforementioned picks, heaving into the wall around the grated door with all their strength.

     Silver and Flint, on the other hand, focus their attention on the bell, conversing briefly. "Musket!" calls Silver, who is promptly thrown the requested weapon, tossing his crutch to the side. He shoulders the weapon, takes aim, and attempts to ring the bell from afar.
Zero Kiryu I'm fine. Just sore. The voice of Zero Kiryu answers Maksim. It's coming from all around, which is to say from the giant mass of plants that he spread around when he bodily appeared to die.

At the top of the stairs, where the vines have reached, Zero's form knits itself back into existence from a mass of plant matter. He regards the portcullis and the levers distantly, apparently attempting to decide what he wants to do with them all.

His attention flicks towards Captain Flint's men, and then back to the door, and then again to the levers. The easy thing for /him/ to do would just be to lift the damn thing. He's pretty certain that he's strong enough. On the other hand...

Zero looks again, towards the levers. He rubs at the back of his head, "No matter what I do, I'm sure it'll do something lethal in response..."

So he defers to Flint's men, and to Raziel's imminent attempts.
Raziel Hanging from the wall, nobody can really get a look at Raziel except for the now flying lizard man, and of course, anyone deciding to look up.  So nobody's really aware that Raziel's eyes got more than a little wider when the Serpents proved to be stronger than expected, and that they would rather die than lose their shield.  

The bite lands, causing the Undead to wince.  It was painful, to be sure, but Raziel's advantage as a ghoul does make it harder to do enough physical pain for him to physically recoil.  His claws come down on the thing that bites him, aiming to claw at its eyes.  Trying to free his arm and get a better tactical situation.  

Then it comes to him.  Raziel lets go of the wall and with his telekinetics aims to drag the creature down with him.  This time, using the telekinetics as a boost, aiming to toss his foe down while using the same force to boost him upwards.  Moments later, his tattered wings are deployed to allow him safe passage to the ground.  

'The hall of the great place was no easy feat to get to.  Mechanical levers are used to open the gate, which is strange, given the general bronze appearance of the metal that is noted here.  Perhaps this is from a different time...or a different place.'

Raziel comes to the grated door.  Inside it is dark, but that was little concern to the ghost.  After a moment, he extends his arms out from himself and turns around.  It is something like turning a key, but instead of entering the door, he steps into the spirit world.  Now, instead of a physical being, his body is incorporeal.  

He takes a step and attempts to literally step through the gated door and enter the room itself.
Mordred      With the combined serpent and beast contingent removed, Mordred swings the blade to her side with a sharp snap to get the blood off like a cool guy, but it doesn't really come off at all. That's what she gets for using lightning on it, but aside from the smell?

    It probably looks cooler now. Speaking of smell, though, she wrinkles her nose beneath the helmet as she turns to look towards Guzma's... "Is that a garbage bag?" She asks incredulously, simply staring at him and the odd creature before shaking her head and strapping the sword to her back. Her armor's somewhat dinged up by that first encounter, but most of the damage is internal, anyway. Nothing some rest won't fix up later!

    For now, though, she still has her eyes on the prize... Whatever that prize is. "Ain't done yet... Take a look at this place." She whistles lightly as she ooks over the outside of the massive feat of architecture before them. "Heh. Might get ideas, the way they laid out all this." She comments to nobody in particular, somehow content to keep talking to... Somebody?

    "You getting up alright, boss?" Mordred doesn't actually look backwards to see if Yuuki's actually there, stepping sideways to let Flint and Raziel try their hands at the door. At some point, though, she's going to hit the door with her sword. It's probably not going to work, but she has to give it a shot.
Tomoe Tomoe is quick to learn that her lighting seems to be more effective on these serpents as she's locked in mele she gets the idea to start making use of her lighting magic and sword arts. Well for as long as the remains of the enemy are there. Once the last one has fallen for the moment. She presumes there might be more out there as she cleans off her blade before she moves on. She's wary at this point as they move on ahead. She recalls some of her past 'adventures' in this world. The dizzying array of complex and lethal traps is not lost on her at all.

"Watch for traps, they can get intense."

She gets the bright idea to try and fly up, but that has little luck even with her skills? She's soon forced back down to the ground. Her red wings vanish in a burst of light as she sets down.

"Well so much for that."

She will now have to think of another plan to get in she will take a moment to try and scope out and note what's above the 'Wind Wall' for lack of a better term.

With some idea of what might be up there she'll turn her attention to Captain Flint and his men's efforts trying to get in and then pauses. An idea forms in her mind but rapidly she realizes it's not the best thing to try now. She'll hang back and let Flint's Men and Raziel do their thing. She does however stand ready to try and help Flint's crew should they set off something.
Eryl Fairfax     Eryl produces a handkerchief, and takes the time to wipe the soot and various fluids off his fist. "Is anyone hurt?" he asks. One man was injured, but is being tended to. Hopefully, he makes it. Everyone else seems fine, thankfully.

    He turns his attention to the gates. To the temple beyond. He wanders over to the side door and examines it. Looking down at those massive gaps in the floor. He gathers up some of the pale grass and launches it into the air, watching them dance and scatter in the turbulent jetstreams above. Next, he fires some shots from his fingers past both doors, listening to how the sound of the bullet's impacts bounce and rebound throughout the parts of the temple he can't see.

    And finally, just to make sure he can get everything he can, he asks Ornstein. "What do you remember of this place the last time you were here?"

    Once he gets his answer, with all the information he's gathered, he takes a seat on the steps and gets to work.

    CALCULATING BUILDING INTERIOR

    His brain and his implants hum and sing in concert. Heuristics are employed to extrapolate the entire structure from limited information. Estimates as to population, the location of living quarters, of armoires and other locations of strategic import are placed and discarded based on logical building, tactics, and environmental necessity.

    Knowledge is power, and Eryl aims to be the most powerful here. But ultimately, having a map is secondary. His primary objective is to figure out where there may be a third access point. A place not immediately obvious, a place not well guarded.
Starbound Flotilla     The Flotilla spend their time recovering from the skirmish, quickly administering light medications through their armor to get as close to top form as they can before it's time for the next one. Alright, looks like Raziel's getting the front door, and then past that is a lot of long bridges, nightmareish encounters with patrolling assholes, catwalks, just the whole nine yards.

"Ready for a steep climb."
"I'm not liking these winds. We've got heaven itself thwarting us."
"Let's stick to grappling hooks. Here, everyone gather round, grab 'em if you want 'em."

    George pops down a crate and opens up the Flotilla's stockpile of grappling hooks, both for the Flotilla and for the rest of the group. This one's gonna be a climb; if they can't ascend with them, it's best to at least abort the falls using them! There's also a sustained effort from Flint's crew to break through one of the walls, and so the Flotilla join in. Mining is sort of a specialty of theirs, you know? Everyone besides George starts backing up the effort with their own mining lasers and laser-pickaxes.
Guzma As they get through, Guzma and the Trio return their pokemon to their balls, a bit cut up and injured but nothing big. Rapp thinks Eryl's the coolest, and moves over towards him as he takes a seat. As he starts calculating, she watches him with interest, trying to figure out what he's doing. When he seems to have possibly found something, she speaks to him. "Oh! What were you just doing? You seemed to need to rest, but you were so alert!"

Guzma, Tupp, and Zipp, meanwhile head over to the walls where they're using picks. Guzma sends back out the Pinsir, and tells it to start digging, which it obliges, trying to use its pincers to help pick at the walls. He then turns to Flint.

"So, you're used to just breaking through walls? Is that something pirates do often?"
Arianrhod     Arianrhod pulls her blade out of the head of a downed serpentman. She flicks the weapon to the side to shake off as much of the blood as she can before returning the weapon to its sheathe. The armored warrior is splattered with blood herself, though that'll be far more difficult to clean of and thus will have to wait for another time.

    Stepping through the mass of the fallen beastmen, Arianrhod comes to a step at the main entrance to the structure. Her helmet tilts upwards as she takes in the size of the portcullis defending it. She then looks to the side to see the smaller door that Raziel is trying to phase through. She wonders what might be hidden within that dark room. But clearly the wraith has its exploration in hand.

    Ariandrhod returns her attention to the portcullis. Through the criss-crossing pattern of its bars, she can see the hallway spreading out beyond. And at the end of that, a courtyard. Though for the moment its details elude her. A situation easily rectified though. Given that she can see past it, that allows her to-

    A swirling surge of power whips up around Arianrhod, causing her to fade away. A similar light show appears on the other side of the gate, Arianrhod reforming there. Glancing at the two large levers that likely control the raising of the gate, she doubts she can manipulate both on her own. Instead she looks back towards the others still outside and says, "Unless another can join me in here to assist with these levers, I will scout ahead for other means of entering." And assuming none choose to enter as she does, Arianrhod proceeds further through the hallway towards the courtyard. She doesn't intend to fight the patrolling serpentmen just yet, as that would be stupid without assistance. But she does keep a look out for anything to assist her allies with getting inside.
Captain Flint      "Often," explains Flint to Guzma, "When we hunt a prize, those who could be worth a ransom will hide, be it in the hold, the cabin, or wherever there is a wall between them and ourselves. The only difference is that in those cases, we use axes rather than picks."

     Flint scours the area, his eyes narrowing as he marks the spots where the beastmen patrol. He points towards one of the beastmen carrying pitch, and then looks back towards Guzma. "I do not allow my enemies a fight for which I myself do not dictate the terms. It would appear these snake-men feel similarly. In any case, that is why my men and I never leave our world without certain tools."
Yuuki Kuran It is now MORDRED who experiences YUUKI's missing object outline blinking before their very eyes!
Bink. Bink. Bink.

MEANWHILE, the first:
Yeeted!Yuuki, who has crossed her arms as she flies through the air down a seemingly bottomless mountain. It just goes on and on! Certainly there's the impression of a treeline far below, perhaps, if she squints, but...

With a puff of alpine mist and butterflies, Yuuki disappears without ever rustling the tops of the treeline mirage below her.

MEANWHILE, the second:
Scarf!Yuuki smiles as Maksim speaks to her, wreathed in flame and with a bloody cheek. "Ah! You have powers like Priscilla! Great, I won't have to worry about you. And Zero?"

His voice speaks from the vines. Yuuki smiles, a kind upurn towards her cheeks. "Zero is fine. Ah, I think I'm needed by the door!"

Scarf!Yuuki catches up with Guzma as excavation on the wall begins. "Do you think your pokemon could simply heave the portcullis? Or is it too large? Hmm... Maybe cutting the lower bars? No, we should respect the edifice!"

Yuuki peers around for ingress. "Let's go inside! The winch should be there."
Priscilla     Ornstein has no need of shaking blood from his spear. It evapourates into a dull red mist on its heat. Eryl asks him a question. He gravels back through his helmet "It has not changed much. Some decay. Some new walls. But this place will be the same for thousands of years. The worship of the Archdragon --to walk the path-- is to see the turning of the ages. Generations of serpents will be its attendants, seeing to those only of proven enlightenment, or at least suitable strength. Its adherents will wait within its walls for countless centuries, until they transcend, or fall from the path. It has no need of quarters, commons, feasting halls, or armouries. The mendicants suited to this place abandon those needs, or die in the attempt, cloistered in every corner, before monuments and idols of old."

    Scanning the building increasingly infers that it doesn't seem to have a lot of practical function. Eryl can see that it's very likely that little door heads into it properly, but it seems that this door is locked from the other side. He detects enormous hollows within, with huge, vaulted ceilings and soaring staircases that makes its ten storey height more like three, with an additional two sub-levels carved into the mountain, many hovering over that enormous chasm, and many more designed as spaces that surround some great centrepiece, with only some balconies and bridges crawling along its exterior, dangerously high up, and likely with similarly barred doors.

    It's incredibly difficult to detect life signs; the serpents have very minimal vitals, and other things besides might have none recognizable. It's more than likely that some supernatural method is needed to get inside. Perhaps like Raziel's and Arianrhods, as they phase through the gate without incident. A challenge that either finds no necessity to compensate, as magical types never come up here, or one where sufficiently powerful sorcery is deemed as worthy as a hardened body.

    Taking picks to the walls is more or less absurdity. The tools send jarring vibrations up to the elbows and shoulders, flaking away disheartening chips of stone, making it seem like it'll be an all day affair to widen a tunnel through the sheer thickness of it, and liable to draw attention to be attacked. The place has stood for an age, after all, but what looks like pale amber granite is incredibly dense and hard. It seems that in this land, one can find and quarry even stone that transcends earthly properties. When the Flotilla join in with their high powered Matter Manipulators on mining mode though, things immediately go more swiftly, and the superhuman strength of the chosen Pokemon heaves debris and cracks stone to make it easier to mine, making it more like a five minute affair to bore a cramped tunnel through. It might be slightly superfluous if a couple of really strong people can get through and heave the levers, but it'd still be a potentially useful protected tunnel and narrow choke point.

    However, after a minute, Flint skips a step. The musket ball strikes the bell. It doesn't even slightly shift from its position, and no clapper rings, but the impact resonates through its ancient metal, oddly growing in strength and volume over several seconds, until it becomes one, continuous, piercing toll, rising to the point of drowning out speech, before slowly fading away.
Priscilla     ---
    Deep shadow passes over the walls and into the courtyard. Or, it doesn't pass. It occludes the sun, growing and spreading exponentially. It dims the stones. Occludes the bell. Shrouds you in darkness.

     A tremendous crash hits the bell's pathway. The raking of stone over stone. The vibrations of tremendous weight coming to a scraping halt, felt all the way up in the jostling of the wooden walkways. An enormous winged beast; the first that fits the name of this secluded and brutal place. A towering monster on two legs and two wings, covered in hide lacking scales, instead the hard grey of striated stone, as if its skin itself were solid, organic rock. Three fingered claws the size of a human being extend from each wing joint. Its neck, back, and tail are covered in scores of interlocking plates of hardened armour, ending in sharp points over its sides, with its underside textured like a cliff wall.Massive, irregular spines run along its entire dorsal line, its back, strangely enough, host to tufts of white-ish fur, as if it'd started to come in and then abruptly stopped. Its head looks like a brutally carved draconic church facade; even its eyes are blank and grey. A wind mass of horns extends backwards and sideways like a mane, twisted and seemingly malformed, dozens in number.

    The monster crackles faintly as it moves, like the shifting of a glacier. It scrapes its gigantic clawed feet across the ground several times as if sharpening its talons, its tail swaying pendulously from side to side. Its mouth snaps open with alarming alacrity, exposing rows of teeth that glint like dull steel, and what looks like a second row of smaller teeth behind it, coming in like a shark's. The deafening sound that erupts from its vibrating throat is half bellowing roar and half piercing shriek, rebounding off the walls like an artillery explosion. Gradually sweeping its head and neck side to side, the ground vibrates and spews ancient dust from its surface where it faces, the direct line of its raw like being hit with carpentry hammers all over the body, just from the sound itself.

    It charges down the central pathway, moving at surprising speed for its size, tail straight and wings half-extended to balance its swaying head, neck, and torso, jaws snapping viciously.

                                 Ancient Wyvern                                
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Starbound Flotilla "Woah, woah! We got incoming!"
"Formation titan-wing-leviathan! Pressure, pressure!"
"Big, /big/ prey! Hasss sssonic ssscream, clamp down!"

    Power-armor helmets close to block the scream's impact. Seft charges in hard, tower-shield first, looking to stop the beast in its tracks. Biteblade moves with her, blades out. Two rocket-powered charges close first, and Seft manages to time the tower shield planting hard into the ground right as the impact occurs, making sure it's all braced while Biteblade moves to rip through its hide with a ruthless blender-like barrage of slashes over its body.

    The others rush quickly to try to get into their own attack positions. Seft raises her battle-axe and strikes with an overhead blow so intense that it's likely to crater the ground beneath them. "Determined. I won't let our First's ally's unfinished business be stopped by a lizard! /Let us through!/" She calls out in a sort of heroic self-psych-up.
Eryl Fairfax     Eryl exhales through his nose. That was a bust. This place is somewhere to go to hide away from the world until you transcend or die. Structures exist only to offer worship or hide from the weather. Either the occupants go beyond the need for food, or starve in the attempt. No supplies come in, and no one who comes here ever leaves. They only need one entrance.

    He looks to Rapp and offers a polite smile. "I have calculated the interior of this place. I was hoping to figure out the location of a concealed entrance, but no lu-that bell's ringing is unnatural." He looks to Flint, who bypassed the entire gauntlet beyond the gate and at the ringing bell.

    Just in time to see a dragon land. No, not a dragon. A wyvern,

    It screams, a terrible sonic assault that has him clamping his hands over his ears. But he presses on, running to the gate lever and throwing it, using his entire height and weight to move it and get the gate open. Fighting out here on the narrow bridge and path is a death sentence. Even if they must contend with these serpent men, they need more room to manoeuvrer.

    "Get inside!" he shouts as the gate opens, squeezing under the moment he gets a chance. Breaking into a sprint, he rushes the great beast and leaps at it, aiming to grapple onto its head and start punching it in the eyes.
Raziel The bell rings, and the resonating sound seems to shake through the entire place.  Raziel turns towards the source of the approaching beast, not having to phase through the mostly disassembled door.  He had barely had a chance to look at the object before this happened.  

'And there it stood, towering above its minions as a mountain does over its foothills. The roar is used to announce itself, as well as proclaim it's dominance was enough to hurt even the strongest foes.  Even as it's movements were like a glacier at first, I could tell for its size it was not to be trifled with.  If we made one mistake, then it would be our doom.'

Raziel's right-hand snaps back, as the claw covered in the sinister and baleful light, fades as a blade comes into hand.  The pale blue blade comes to life as Raziel moves to try and flank the larger creature.  Attacking it directly from the front was going to be exceptionally suicidal for someone like Raziel.

Instead, he moves to attack it's flank, the blade swiping out and dragging it along with the beast, attempting to try and get a strike at the tail of the beast.  If he could damage it, he assumed that the beast's balance would be put off.  
Mordred     "Oh! Shit, there you are. Alright, that's everyone important, then." After confirming Yuuki's location (with a new scarf she does't recall seeing, no less), Mordred's worries are set aside! It doesn't take long to get a quick headcount going, and once that's done...

    It's time for something else. "Damn. That's a big one." She lets out an excited laugh as the wyvern crasees down following the bell's oddly drawn out ring, resting the bloodied blade on her shoulder while letting the mana build up once more. As it charges towards the group bellowing its fearsome noise, the Saber's armor works against her as the shockwaves rattle around inside against those wounds from the last fight.

     "That's something, at least... But you can do better than that, can't you?!" Bellowing her own challenge to the beast, Mordred goes for the head on charge once again, that red lightning still lingering at her feet as she draws closer to the wyvern. Just before there's a head-on collision, though, Mordred finally releases that mana in a burst underneath her, leaping clear over the monster and aiming a landing on its back. Throughout that flip, Mordred's aiming to drag the silver blade through as much of its hide as she can, even using her armored boot to force the blade in and drag it through even faster!
Zero Kiryu Zero Kiryu is roundly trounced by the Wyvern on first contact. A snapping jaw closes around his body and releases a vaguely humanoid-shaped mass of meat that collapses to the ground and simply dissolves into the surrounding plant matter. It doesn't even lie there looking like a dead person the way his corpse did the last time around.

Fortunately, he spent all that time seeding himself.

From every direction the vines spring to life, underbrush transforming into a full-on jungle as trees grow in seconds and flowers bloom among them, vicious biting thorns lancing up out of them as swinging vines covered in them reach out to grasp and construct and lacerate. Simultaneously, clouds of power begin to pour off of the trees.

A cloud of soporific dust drifts through the air-- and it is avoidant of those assembled, for the most part. Zero isn't /exceptionally/ precise with his roaming cloud of toxins, but nobody should get more than a passing hiff of the stuff.
Guzma Guzma is able to get through the tunnels with the others, when an absolutely fucking massive armored dragon- no, wyvern- lands from the bell being rung, drops, and roars so powerfully that the three humans get knocked backwards, Pinsir blasted into the tunnel wall and taking grazing damage from both the shockwaves and primarily the wall itself.

Guzma, grimacing from the pain of falling, grabs Pinsir's Pokeball and returns it with a click. He then swaps for another one, shouting out.

"Vikavolt!"

A flying weird bug with long electrified tusks comes out, floating in the air. It begins to channel up electrical energy, especially when Guzma calls out.

"Use Thunderbolt!"

The bug finally lets loose the lightning, aiming directly for its head. It's attempting to lightly paralyze it, as well as knock off its aim so that the charge is rendered more ineffective than it otherwise would be.

The other guys, meanwhile...

Are hyping up Guzma. Yep! They are Not Contributing In This Fight at the moment. Rapp rushes to join them as Eryl calls out to her and charges, the girl moving to join her buddies and watch the group fight. She wants to contribute too, but...

Is a Zubat enough?
Arianrhod     Standing just beyond the large hallway, looking out at the courtyard and it's 'floor' of catwalks and bridges and drops leading somewhere deep, Arianrhod suspects it will take some time to navigate and deal with the serpentmen patrols.

    And then the bell across the way rings. And a large shadow falls over her. Arianrhod's helmet tilts up.

    Arianrhod takes a step back at the sight of the large, flying wyvern. As it makes its way down towards them, Arianrhod slowly draws her sword once more. Taking hold with both hands, she raises it towards the landing creature. She maintains her position though, waiting for the wyvern to make the first move.

    And it does so, unleashing an ear-piercing roar. Arianrhod struggles to stand her ground, instinctively taking another step back as the forceful sound washes over her. Once it has passed, Arianrhod stands tall once more and waits. Sure enough, the beast charges towards them. Arianrhod holds her position even as it closes in. Until finally she raises her sword to block as the wyvern's teeth-filled head swings her way. It's mass knocks into her, sending her skidding backwards across the hallway floor on her feet. But finally she stops, though only for a moment.

    Arianrhod quickly dashes forwards, leaping upwards and swinging her blade towards the wyvern's closest wing, attempting to cut through it in an attempt to deny it further flight.
Maksim Messerglas "Er... something like that," Maksim says. He jerks his head towards the vaguely ominous, definitely disembodied kudzu-voice when he hears it. "Ah! Well, please --" Maksim gestures in a polite 'don't let me keep you' kind of way. He holds it until Yuuki drifts over towards the excavation, then breathes out a quiet sigh and takes stock of his damaged apparel. It's not /too/ bad. Maybe he looks roguish with the little burns, instead of destitute. It's still smoldering, though. He pats his sleeve a few times, mildly miserable about how this whole adventure is going.

The world shakes. Maksim wobbles and falls unceremoniously on his butt. He's showered in bits of dust and debris, and holds fast to the ground as even the edge of the roar is enough to try to shove him further away. He stares at the colossal thing with open-mouthed shock, and it's only after the shouts of 'Get inside!' that he actually /moves/.

Maksim runs towards the hole that got dug. The thing was strong enough to withstand centuries of weather up here; it's strong enough to hold up from a little dragon attack. "Mister Zero, I certainly hope you are as 'fine' as you were a moment ago," he says to the exploding and expanding foliage. "If that thing can take to the air and we cannot --"

He reaches the passage. Maksim squeezes through, hugging a wall in the interior and peering out around the corner. He reaches into his coat and draws... well, a weapon, one that one of his men insisted he carry, even if he had nothing else. The archaic-looking pistol goes up, held in a two-handed grip, and Maksim lets the beast have it, with little care for where the shot goes but 'up.' It's a long time to reload one of these, but damn if he's going to go hide in a corner again. He'll do /something/!
Captain Flint      Billy Bones, a muscled pirate with straw-blonde hair and stubble, throws his pick aside. "We could hack at this until fucking Christmas and not get through," he calls to Flint.

     Flint turns around, nodding once. "Very well," he says, after the crack of Silver's musket. "Pack up and regroup. Guzma and the Flotilla can--"

     He knows what it is before he sees it. The vibrations can be none other than the beast for which this place was named. "Congratulations, Mr. Silver," says the captain, reloading his pistol. "The head lizard, as it were."

     The deafening roar knocks both Silver and Flint to the ground. Flint grabs his quartermaster by the collar, preventing him from rolling off of a steep cliff. The two get back to their feet quickly.

     The captain would have liked more time to prepare, but... Guzma has a seemingly wide array of creatures able to harass this dragon. His men, however, only have their brawn and their guns. "Form up on Guzma! Don't allow the beast to overtake his position!" The pirates grab their guns and take up defensive positions around Guzma, some kneeling so as not to block his line of sight. Flint, meanwhile, procures a rifle from one of his men, trading the handgun he'd been using.

     It's a 19th century model, a volcanic lever-action rifle more at home on the frontier of the old west than in the hands of a pirate. He shoulders it. As Guzma's Pokemon uses Thunderbolt, he formulates another tactic.

     "Next, go for the eyes," he says to the trainer, doing the same himself with the rifle. "OPEN FIRE!"

     A hail of bullets flies forth from the pirates, Flint's in particular aiming for the eyes.
Tomoe The work to get inside the building continues on for a moment, she watches the shot be taken the bell be hit. It doesn't move, it doesn't ring she has to stop for a moment. She watches as something happens it's a shadow passing over the walls and into the courtyard. It's not so much a shadow though it's some more, she doesn't need to know just what it other than something is coming and soon she sees what it is. It's a Wyvern of some sort and that is terrifyingly bad news.

but it's time to fight. Tomoe moves and rolls as fast as she can which manages to keep her from getting just enough out of the way of the attack.

She's back on her feet in second, Dawn Breaker in hand once more and she'll make a rush heading for the Wyvern striking for its neck and torso as she speeds in, hoping to get a hit in and will fly after it if necessary to make her attacks.
Zero Kiryu A twist of vine winds its way up the wall next to Maksim.

I no longer have a mortal body. If Yuuki isn't concerned, don't be concerned. Zero's voice emanates from the vine.
Yuuki Kuran text text text THE BACKSTORY THEATRE text text text

Crayon Yuuki hovers in the air next to HD Render Screenshot Manstein With Helmet But No Shirt.
'Yuuki, Archdragon peak is home to SCALY MONK VAMPIRES who worship STRENGTH and not needing to DO ANYTHING but contemplating BEING STRONG AND OLD.' HD Manstein kills effortlessly.
Crayon Yuuki's enormous eyes pop with stars. 'Wow! This history is rich! Does this have anything to do with Priscilla?'
HD Manstein's glistening pectorals bulge with power. 'I haven't said anything like that. Please pay attention.'
Crayon Yuuki vibrates on the daydream cloud violently. 'But Priscilla is fluffy and big, and these snakes are hard and small! It's totally different!' Steam billows from her ears which just got drawn this second.
HD Manstein's two-spears-per-fist what-are-you-gonna-do-about-it-shrug is cut off by the enormous snapping jaws of the Ancient Wyvern bursting through the pillow-soft realm of her intense useless-headed daydreaming, getting bunted by the nose and the action of the neck into a wall with a 'bwomph!', sliding down, and sitting dazedly in a pile of rubble.

"Oh. Well, that one's big and hard, but it's still nothing like her!"
Yuuki nobody else participated in your daydream except maybe Zero, who may be disappointed in you as a free action.

Because Dragon is large and hard, Yuuki decides to just kip up, close her hand into a fist, and punch the dragon in his STUPID face for being such a rude and unannounced guest into her dream realm. She, of course, waits until Flint's men have finished shooting and begun to reload - she understands the struggle of such time-based activities.
Zero Kiryu << Yuuki, >> Zero thinks at her, << your mindscape is going to stick like that if you're not careful. >>
Priscilla     The experience of fighting this creature, this wyvern, is a suitably strange one. Intelligent, fire-spitting warrior snakes had been a loose introduction to the fringe of dragon lore, but this encounter goes deeper. The wyvern charges on, heedless of attack or injury, its enormous weight and speed making it certain that none of the blows slow it down. It's *too* much weight.

    Biteblade and Seft strike it dead on, finding the jarring sensation that Flint's men had felt striking that stone with their picks earlier, cleaving narrow splits through its grey, craggy hide that ooze blood only after piercing four inches deep. It doesn't swerve to protect its head at all from Eryl, though striking it in the eyes feels like punching bowling balls, only having the slightest flex and immense hardness, though he certain it can at least feel pain from traumatizing its softest organs. It rears back its head to throw him up, and then snap him in its lethal jaws with one extension of its neck.

    Raziel carves up the tail on his pass, biting into the only slightly softer underside, hacking a quarter of the way through and spilling the blood that this strange creature thankfully bleeds. Its back turns out to be a blind spot, as Mordred can tell, the monster thrashing during its charge, side to side, to try and shake her off, menacing her with its many razor sharp spines, but suffering many bloody gashes and punctures from the Noble Phantasm sword cutting into it. Even when Zero's thorned metal vines cinch around it, there's a moment of resistance, before they begin sliding down its body, carving myriad shallow gashes in its armour to weaken it, before it breaks through. It's difficult to tell if the toxins have any effect just yet, with less than a minute passed, especially in a creature this size.

    The lightning attack from Guzma has a strange effect. Where the blast would cause a huge heat release from the resistance of hard carapace, it instead blows off chunks of plating like a small explosion, showering the ground with rocky rubble and exposing vulnerable exposed flesh. Arianrhod tears partially through the wing, but finds her momentum abruptly arrested before she goes all the way through, for resilience like carving steel sheeting, leaving a long gash that strangely doesn't bleed, before a single powerful beat throws her loose.

    Hails of shot rattle off its stoney face, difficult to aim at with its therapod gait, its head counterbalanced with its tail, but several shots strike it in the eyes where Eryl had already pummeled. They *crack* a little. Pit like spheres of limestone. The monster lets loose another shriek-roar, especially at Tomoe lashes out at its 'belly'. Finally, Yuuki's massive head blow smashes its angle to the side. Its charge doesn't halt, but drifts, so that its full side comes crashing through the array of elites, and its tail swipes out into her with enormous strength.

    After ploughing through the group, clawing several times for traction, a tremendous blast of air carries it into the skies with a single beat, far higher in one lurch than any bird or bat, needing to flutter several times to leave ground. Successive pounding strikes carry it higher, listing to one side where Arianrhod had cut up a wind, and dribbling fat globs of cold, dark blood onto the ground. At a suitable apes, its jagged maw opens up, and it vomits a crushing downpour of fire, broad and searing, swept side to side over the whole gathering, and then forward across a broad lane as it powers forward and strafes the area. The physical sensation is like being thrown under a waterfall, despite its lack of physical substance, and it leaves the ground burning away with a field of additional fire hazard despite the lack of anything to burn.
Priscilla     The Dragonslayer amongst the group whirls his spear in a tremendous arc, dispersing a wall of flame in all directions around him, creating a short-lived safe bubble. When the fire moves off from him, he so briefly barks back to Yuuki over the noise "A wyvern. One who tried, but failed to become a dragon. This one is older and larger than most." After that, he flexes his golden knees, and leaps off the ground with a tremendous crack of force, just barely reaching the tip of the high wall through the incredible wind resistance, slaughtering several serpent men to either side with swift sweeps of his reptile-killing lighting spear, and then leaping one more time to catch the wyvern as it passes over, triple back and forth cleaves blasting away carapace like Tomoe's lightning down its tail, before he lands again.

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Starbound Flotilla "Star Four! It's on wings!"
"Aye, I'll cast it out of heaven for sure! Moonie, on me!"
"Hah. Grant me passage to heaven, o goddess."
"Star Three, observatory!"
"Affirming. I won't let you get hurt!"

    Shield up. The Flotilla crowds around Seft, whose heavy shield unfolds multiple projectors and creates an ad-hoc energy-field of a roof to shield the group from the fire strafe! Unfortunately, heat bleeds through, and licking flames sear armor. Moonfin and Pavo link hands through the heat, and the samurai missionary gives the pirate god a firm nod. Her holo-wings spread wide and she blasts off as soon as it's no longer overhead, carrying Moonfin! Circling wide, she swoops low over the flying beast with her remaining flight energy...

    And then, with a huge flip, she /launches/ Moonfin down, and he blasts towards the beast katana-first! "Fourth Sea Hylotl Style: Tossed By Waves!" The katana surges with elemental electricity, a product of his observations here, and performing an ACCELERATED PLUNGING ATTACK!

    George is busy trying to put out the fire. It's not working very well; the Flotilla's just going to have to grin and bear it.
Mordred      Noticing the peculiar effect that Guzma's Pokemon have with their lightning-based attacks gives Mordred an idea! She hasn't quite put two and two together yet from her last attempt at using lightning on the serpent men of this region, but...

     Screw it. This'll do. She has to wait before putting her plan into action, though, as the wyvern's charge threatens to fling the knight off the beast's back and right into its charge. Her grip keeps her from taking a hard landing until just before it blasts itself into the air, giving the Saber a moment to gather herself as it swings back around to blast flames down upon the group.

    "An old failure is still a failure, but... Even a failure's got some tricks up its sleeve if its been alive this long." Chuckling briefly, Mordred hunkers down behind her sword as the wyvern makes it flaming pass across the group, the superheated metal burning her inside her own armor. She has to weather it, though, as she watches for her next opportunity to strike.

     She sees the exposed flesh in that cracked carapace. "If lightning worked on the outside, then how about... The inside?!" Leaping upwards at the dragon, Mordred opts for the tried and true method of stabbing it really hard! That red lightning crackles around her blade again, though, as it spreads from her blade around herself and (ideally) into the dragon itself!
Raziel Raziel can feel the blade tear through the softer parts of the wyvern.  This means that the scales on the bottom of it are the weakest.  Strange, you would think that the underside of a creature who flies and attacks ground targets would not have such an obvious point...especially one accessible to those it would fight.  

However, the answer becomes clear.  Those flames are /deadly/, as the burn without a source even after the dragon completes its strafe.  Thankfully, Raziel leaped into the safety that was the Dragonslayer's field in time, allowing him a chance to rethink his strategy, especially with the creature into the sky again.  

The lightning made sense now...however, it was a power that the Reaver had not at this time.  Nor did there seem to be any elemental fountains or forges he could borrow.  His eyes darting around until...

Quickly running, he did not have much time.  Aiming to grip onto the wall, as the Reaver changed into the element of air.  Making him slightly lighter, as he gets high enough and waits.  Once the Dragon strafes the area again, he leaps, his wings extended.  The lightness thanks to the air reaver gives him just enough of a boost, to land on the creature's back.

He doesn't linger, as the blade comes to life and he aims to try and strike down on the right-wing of the creature with all of the might he can muster, trying to crash the beast out of the sky.
Eryl Fairfax     "The eyes are like stone!" Eryl shouts down at everyone. "Every bit of it is going to be incredibly tough! We need-" He watches as Guzma's Pokemon blows open a section of scales to expose the soft flesh underneath. "Lightning! Even a failed dragon is vulnerable! Blow open its-"

    The wyvern whips its head up and launches him into the air. Sharp fangs and a messy end are all that await him. And he doesn't have a flight unit, or anything of the sort. But he does have shoes. At the apex of his ascent, he reaches down and slips off one of his boots. As he falls, and the dragon rears up to bit him, he throws it. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The act of tossing his shoe is just enough to move him so that instead of meeting the dragon's mouth, he starts sliding down its neck, his hand reaching out to grab a spine to stop.

    He hangs there as the wyvern takes flight and begins searing the ground with flames. "Oh no you don't," he hisses, as one of his armblades extends from his sleeve. It begins to hum, vibrating against the air at speeds until the blade begins to glow hot from friction. With a calculated leap, he moves towards the joint that connects one of its wings to the body, and drives the blade in a gap between its scales before bringing it around in an arc, aiming to partially or at least internally sever the limb.
Tomoe This Wyvern is no lightweight as it still a threat and up after the first exchange of attacks from all the gathered elites. Tomoe keeps moving she does not want to sit still after scoring a hit as she did on the thing's belly. She heard the roar in response to the injury she inflicted and it's clear it felt that one. The thing is charging at them all and it's going to hit hard. Tomoe starts moving, her wings flaring out. She isn't quite fast enough to escape the thing's wrath. She also gets caught on the edge of the burst of flame that Wyvern let lose upon the whole party.

She's burning she's still up it's hurting and she knows it won't stop till the Wyvern is downed, she will swap weapon switching from her sword and shield. To her Naginata wanting to get a good deal more reach for fighting something like this, now with Moon Cutter in hand, she will fly at the Wyvern. She flies up and then drops down at the back at the beat holding her Nagitna as she is intent to fly by the Wyvern several times going for attacks on the head now and if she can manage it going for the base of the skull with her weapon.
Captain Flint      The blast of air as the dragon takes off buffets Flint and his men, but they manage to hold their ground. There is a brief lull in the shooting as they steady themselves, all the same. Weapons are reloaded, leveled...

     But the wyvern interrupts their efforts. "Take cover!" Flint's shouted warning comes too late for two of his men, who are engulfed in flames and fall screaming to the ground. The captain and Silver dive out of the way, Silver's crutch swallowed up by the burning field left in the wake. "SANDBAGS!"

     "/What?!" Silver incredulously calls, as he salvages a heavy MG from the corpse of one of the incinerated pirate. "We can't fortify--"

     "Cut them open and douse those flames before we have no place to stand!"

     Under his orders, the pirates, each having come with a sandbag originally intended for fortifications, instead cut them open and begin spreading the sand out, attempting to bury the flames and starve them of oxygen.

     As this goes on, Flint braces himself, sprinting through the flames and shrugging off his furs as they catch fire. Waving them in the air, he makes a target of himself in order to distract it from his allies. Tossing the burning furs aside, he takes aim at the spots where Guzma's Pokemon stripped the beast of its thick plating, and fires as fast as the lever-action can manage, casings falling to the treacherous path below.
Zero Kiryu The strafing fire sets ablaze the many vines scattered about, scorching some and causing others to begin melting or catch alight. An instant later, Zero Kiryu re-materializes at Yuuki's side, using his Obligatory Hidden Fashionable Accessory to simple re-constitute himself within range of somebody he knows to be a firm Safe Zone. He himself looks a little burned around the edges, though it is in a way that doesn't really relate neatly to a man made of meat exactly.

Zero lingers for a moment and then-- he jumps.

<< The feeling from behind you is not hostile. >> Echoes in Ornstein's mind, very clearly in Zero's voice.

A vine hooks around Ornstein's shoulder, pulling Zero in. He doesn't remain for long-- he springs off of the man, not /fast/ exactly, but able to cross a lot of ground in a single bound. He probably doesn't have the accuracy to do it in one leap by himself, but using "hookshot" points to get closer and have steady aim gives him what he needs to get it done.

Another leap, and Zero hooks a vine to the Wyvern, swinging himself beneath and back around onto its back. He takes a step, lunges, and brings both fists down towards the back of its neck.

He doesn't stick around to see how well that worked. His form flickers, bringing him back to Yuuki's side. One hand rises as he begins to spread more vines into his vicinity, anticipating an imminent fall -- if not from his blow, then from the efforts of others -- and wishing to be ready with a fresh, unburned layer of vines if it should come to that.
Arianrhod     While Arianrhod is able to partway drive her sword into the wyvern's wing, she's halted before she inflict as much harm as she had hoped. It's wing then beats, throwing her downwards. Arianrhod quickly hits the ground hard on her back. A less sturdy structure likely would have broken under the force. But Arianrhod still takes it like the champ she is, quickly rising to her feet once more.

    Looking up into the sky, Arianrhod watches as the wyvern unleashes its fire breath on the others from its position in the air. She calmly slides her sword back into its sheathe and then takes in a deep breathe.

    Arianrhod lets out a loud whistle from within her helmet...

    ... The sound of rapidly closing steps begins to rise in volume, echoing from within the main hallway through the wall that they entered. Soon enough, Arianrhod's steed comes galloping through the hole that the others had dug and then down the hallway towards Arianrhod. Arianrhod starts running, then manages to pull herself up onto her mount as it gallops past. Taking the reigns, she starts riding after the wyvern as it strafes the area. As she does so, she reaches out to her side. A light grows out from her grip, forming into the long, ornate lance that is her signature weapon.

    As she brings her galloping horse up as close as she can to the flying lizard, Arianrhod stands up on saddle and then leaps off it and into the air. As she clears the same height as the strafing wyvern, she raises her lance into the air. A bolt of lightning strikes downward from above, hitting the weapon and charging it. Arianrhod spins her weapon around to point downwards as she reaches the arc of her leap and comes back down towards the wyvern.

    With a battle cry, Arianrhod tries to drip the tip of the powerful weapon between the wyvern's scales, following in Mordred's footsteps to deliver the gathered lightning charge into the creature directly.
Guzma The armor explodes from the interesting effect of the lightning, but the flames roll out. They explode, knocking Guzma and his trio off their feet, Guzma's jacket catching aflame, but - the sand comes down. On one hand, Guzma is no longer on fire. On the other, he's covered in sand.

On the third mutant hand, Guzma is pissed!

But luckily, they know how to make more weak spots. "Vikavolt, focus on the armor! Crack it open! ZAP CANNON!"
5rAiming directly at the armor, Vikavolt hums, and then channels as much lightning as it safely can into its pincers. At the last moment, it fires a colossal beam, and starts arcing it across the armor, hoping to expose as much as possible.

It also rakes across the eyes, trying to further put off their shot and make aiming impossible!
Maksim Messerglas "So noted," Maksim asides to the speaker-vine. "I will endeavor to render assistance while you are, er, disembodied."

Then the drag-- wyvern breathes fire on them, and that's basically the absolute worst.

Maksim scrambles away from the point near the wall as fire sweeps across. The wave of heat washes over his face, and he throws up his (slightly burned) sleeve to shield himself before he gets licked by tongues of flaming death. He falls back into some chamber adjacent to the street, back hitting the edge of a staircase, and then spins, takes one look, and immediately starts charging up it to the high ground. He doesn't want to be on the thoroughfare when it strafes it again. And...

Maksim gets to the edge of the roof, a plan forming. He draws a stylus from his coat pocket, taking a second (subjectively, two or three minutes) to examine the architecture and the wyvern's path through the sky. If he had to guess, it's going to make another pass after the first, using its aerial advantage as much as it can. And, if he also had to guess, it'll pass right by his current position, putting him dead in its sights in just a moment. He doesn't have long.

His glyphic handwriting is a bit sloppy this time, is what he's saying, here.

Maksim stabs his fingertip and sweeps warm blood over the shallow etchings in the corner of the second story of the building. Then, he bails, trying to get off the exposed walkway before it realizes what he's doing (hopefully it's not a sorcerer /and/ a fire-breathing monster, that'd just be unsporting) and eats him in retaliation. There is no visible change to show that he did much of anything at all, excepting a vague and momentary vertical heat shimmer crossing the space above the road it's ideally going to want to strafe.

It will discover, ideally at high velocity, that that heat shimmer is a ward meant to block it specifically -- and that the ward is as solid as the curiously unyielding stone this place is made of.
Yuuki Kuran Yuuki hauls off and strikes the ancient drake mid-charge, the blow cracking like a peal of thunder that turns aside stony flesh in a great crumple zone around her. It is a perfect motion, otherworldly grace, and extremely anime.

It is the part of the anime that goes 'veeeeeeeeeeeeeWER-BKOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM' and then a lot of gravel on concrete as the Ancient DRIFT tumbles down behind and around her, giving her the glorious moment of visible untouchability. The dragon charges. She strikes it. It loses, and blows past her spectacularly.

"I'm sorry, failed dragon, but I don't really have forever to play with you." She announces, smiling faintly - at Zero, for his humor, and Ornstein, for his company.

"Don't hold back - if we're stopped by things like this, we won't be any help at all, will we?" She calls to the gathered crowd of elites, waving both hands up at everyone supportively. She's cheerleading? How unsightly.

There's a weird brown streak that falls from the sky like a cannonball shot from space, crashing into the Ancient Drake's neck-base, essentially above the drake's shoulders, and that pressure explosion 'bweee-ronk' detonations ring again.

And for an instant - two Yuukis! One wields a long scythe, alighting on the ground and shimmering like a mirage. The other wears a scarf and pops up and down cheering on the Ancient Drake getting blasted.

One is *much* more Anime Cool than the other.
Priscilla     Having learned, with some bestial intelligence, that its foes are wielding its elemental bane, albeit in non-divine form, the wyvern finally turns to contort its body as much as possible away from Moonfin's meteoric dive, albeit it still shrieks as the electrified katana accelerated to high speeds splits cleanly down its flank, cutting into its leg and splitting its heavily thorn-damaged carapace. Morded taking advantage of its damaged exterior sinks her Noble Phantasm in deep, causing an eruption of charred blood and gore from the blast point, before the howling beast shakes her freen, and then turns to smash her, and Moonfin, out of the air, and down into the ground.

    Raziel rips into the right wing, opposite of Arianrhod's attack, rending a significant amount of its critical flight surface. It begins to fall, slowly but surely, gliding down on billowing wings like steel sheets, but not able to keep its height without constant pounding wingbeats. When Eryl carves straight down to the bone, and halfway splits that though, it can't use that wing strongly enough to even keep that up, and begins to fall. Intending to take them with it, it dives into a steep, high g-force corkscrew, looking to throw them loose, cut them with its spines, and hurl them either into the architecture or into the bottomless pits all around.

    Tomoe's barrage of strikes crisscross against its flanks in flight, but the naginata is much too light, and not possessed of quite the same sword arts, to do as much damage, and she lacks the leverage to make use of its full arcs while dedicating her movement to keeping pace with it in a dogfight. Rifle bullets largely spang off the monster's obscenely thick, stony hide as it moves so quickly and erratically while throwing its assailants off, but some find their mark, piercing deep into its exposed flesh. Zero's massive blow to the base of its neck tilts its angle to a dangerously sharp, steep dive, now little more than a controlled crash course.

    It angles its wings and crashes straight through Arianrhod, intercepting her before her strike can land home. It has the mass to crash through Maksim's ward, still, at that velocity, but the sky-splitting blast from the Vikavolt peels huge lines of armour away with the crawling electrical tendrils that splash over it, and the impact with the ward involves a colossal amount of force, crunching its forward half nastily, bleeding and pierced with bits of its carapace. Finally, the last strike from Yuuki sends it just about straight down, and the crash is a small earthquake unto itself, throwing up enormous clouds of fire-smothering sand and stone pieces.
Priscilla     Yet, it's still alive. If there's anything to be said about this monster, it's that it has a vital force far exceeding any living creature of the wyvern archetype, consistently surviving devastating injuries that should murder even the most overgrown and ferocious of scaly winged menaces. You can hear it scraping and stomping up on its feet again. Its tattered wings flare outward, dispersing the sand in a scraping, battering whirlwind.

    Giving off one, deafening, *furious* roar, a powerful, incendiary sound, like a crackling bonfire put through a wind tunnel, builds up in its throat, and it then spits five enormous fireballs with the character of shots from a cannon, streaking through the air and detonating into significant clouds of flame and superheated gas that mushroom upwards, turning the flying sand to sprays of molten glass that act like grenade fragments at an even further radius.

    Ornstein drops from the wall along the wave of fire and pressure, and drops onto the ancient wyvern's back like a thunderbolt, driving the spear all the way up to the lugs in its back, and then with a powerful, practiced twist and shunt, pushes it past even those through its opened wounds, releasing a thunderous crack of holy lightning. The monster staggers wildly, wobbling back and forth, drooling copious quantities of blood from its open mouth, gushing onto the stones.

                                 Ancient Wyvern                                
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Captain Flint      Flint is out of ammunition. He throws the rifle to the ground, where it clatters off to the side. All he has left is his sabre. That... and a few grenades. He reaches into his pocket and procures a flint to strike for the purpose of lighting the fuse, only to look up and see the fireballs being spat by the beast.

     Forget lighting it. "Again, Guzma!" he calls, wrapping the grenades in his longcoat as one clumped together cluster. As white-hot sand is glassed and thrown violently about him, he stands his ground, building up centrifugal momentum before hurling all four of them directly into the path of one of those fireballs. The heat ignites them from the moment they pass through. Though the fireballs are unhindered by his attack, that wasn't his intention.

     His intention was to have them explode right in front of its face, pelting it with molten fragments of modern ceramic.
Raziel Raziel hits the ground a few seconds right after the Wyvern.  He only turns when he hears the sound of the beast standing back up.  Apparently despite all of that damage, despite the fact it's lost the ability to fly...it still has fight in it yet.  However, this time he couldn't get far enough away, nor is the Dragonslayer in a position to cast another shield.

The Reaver reignites, the fire is breathed, and Raziel only has one way forward.  The wind Reaver raises up, as it attempts to use the elemental energy in his blade against the fire of the dragon.  The blade cutting through the flame as it soars at him.  

It looks like Raziel is but a boulder in a raging stream.  Heat washes over the area, but the Reaver cools it just enough to not light himself on fire.  Seconds seem to stretch forever as he just narrowly holds off the dragon's breath.  

He charges in right after, eyes narrowed as he leaps for the face of the dragon, aiming to thrust the blade in a quick series of strikes to try and find some purchase in the creature's eye.  
Starbound Flotilla "INCOMING!"
"Nnnh! I can do little with so many projectiles...!"
"Woah! Woah! Can't weave this one, it's everywhere!"
"Aaaaaargh! It's like being on fire a /second/ time!!"
"Burnsss! Floran burnsss!"
"*BZZZT* Pained. Hold on! Don't let it break this, we're almost through!"

    Seft and Moonfin are the party tanks. Sometimes Albert subs in, as he does now with a hefty riot shield. But the whole gang absolutely eats shit. George hides behind Moonfin, and Albert covers Pavo as best he can, while Seft tries her best to keep Biteblade safe. But Albert's armor is torn up and he's knocked on his ass. Moonfin can only mitigate so much damage, and takes a clean shot of molten nuclear glass straight through the chest. Seft is torn up, half her helmet sheared off and chunks of armor slagged or worse. Albert falls to his knees. Moonfin, too, falls to his knees.

    But this is where a Glitch is meant to shine. Here, a knight with blade and shield stands against a titanic dragon she's been sent by her patron to slay. And so deep in the racial memories of the Glitch, in the subroutines long disconnected by Hivemind termination, Seft draws resolve. She raises her battle-axe, overloading elemental psionics circuits to maximize its electrical energies. She charges shield-first, staggering as some of her armor falls away. "Heroic. HaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!" Her armor's remaining microthrusters sputter, then blast at full force as she tries to slam her axe-head deep into the body of the creature and force it off the path; while it staggers this much, she intends to knock it clean off the central path they're dueling on and down as great a distance as she can, and try to leave it skewered on whatever the nearest rock formation far below may be.

    If it was fair game for the serpent-men, it's fair game here.
Guzma The blast rends the armor. Guzma smirks, but then immediately is punished for smirking by the sand turned into molten glass, which slashes into him, pelting him with burning cuts as he screams. Tupp, Rapp, and Zipp duck out of the way, but Guzma is wounded, knocking him to the ground. He'll need that glass removed. Luckily none marred his face.

"VIKAVOLT! ONE MORE ZAP CANNON! AIM FOR THE HEAD!"

As Guzma shouts in fury and pain, the Vikavolt charges up...and fires another sky-splitting blast. It's not aimed for the eyes, just the face, so it's not going to be as effective against precision, but...

It's sure going to hurt.
Eryl Fairfax     The satisfying crunch of bone splitting reaches Eryl's ears as he stabs deep into the wyvern. It's not flying on that anymore. Between the internal severance and tattered wing membranes, it's landlocked. But it's still falling, and determined to fall as hard as possible. Eryl clings to the wing joint for dear life, his implants maintaining conscious awareness of the environment even as his brain becomes jumbled from the spinning.

    JUMP OFF STRAIGHT UP NOW

    He leaps, and lands safely on the carved stone ground, tucking and rolling to protect his head. Upon standing up, he sees the great creature, the ascended being, open its mouth and unleash explosive flames that render the very air hazardous. Molten sand alights against Eryl's face and hair, drawing pained hisses as he's forced to wrap his head in his cloak. A fireball lands close, exploding with enough force to knock him through a stone wall. Fortunately, there was no pit on the other side.

    Ornstein comes down and impacts hard on its back, unleashing divine lightning into the wyvern. It stands there, mouth agape as blood issues from within. Eryl rises from the rubble, and stands before it. "You came close. The closest of anyone I'm sure. I'm sorry that we are to cut it all short."

    He raises his leg and points his knee at the scaled beast's mouth. "Goodbye." His pant leg erupts as a projectile flies from his kneecap at incredible velocity, alighting the air in flame and sparks. It is aimed to crash into the back of the wyvern's mouth before detonating and taking the whole head with it.
Mordred      "Don't like that, do ya? Well, too bad, but you're not-" As mouthy as Mordred's getting, she doesn't qite get away with taunting the beast for long as it whirls about rather abruptly, shaking her off and slamming her right into the ground with a rather crunchy crash upon the stone below.

    "Still got some fight left, huh...? Gonna be a shame to kill it, but..." Jerking herself out of the cracked ground from the impact, Mordred winces while rotating her arm a few times. "It's either us or it. So... Bring it on!" She shouts towards the wyvern, challening it once more as it roars back at the group so intent on killing it.

     No chance of dodging this one. Mitigating the damage is the best Mordred can hope for, and her best chance of doing that is, much like her preferred strategy, charging right through its attacks. Dodging back and forth would only increase the odds of her getting caught in multiple detonations at once, and moving away would just mean being exposed to an explosion longer. Going through it, though...

     Going through it would be her best shot of minimizing damage /and/ looking cool. Burning another heap of mana, Mordred launches herself through the explosions, shouting furiously in return for both intimidation factor and because she is literally on fire at that moment. As she bursts out of the mushroom cloud, she disperses that armor, trading sustained sustained burns for more scattered shrapnel injuries.

     Of course, with Ornstein diving onto the wyvern's back, that leaves Mordred to aim for its front. Instead of trying to stab it in the chest or the face, though, she opts for its wings instead. "You're not getting away this time!" She uses Clarent more like an oversized butcher knife than a sword, hacking away wildly with one-handed swings while her other hand grasps and pulls, trying to outright tear those wings off with a bloodthirsty rage overcoming her.
Zero Kiryu One of the enormous fireballs and molten glass pours onto Zero Kiryu's position, and he just stands there. At-a-glance, he doesn't seem to have deployed any sort of extraordinary defense-- that is, without a closer look. Somebody who is paying very careful attention will notice that the vines extending out from the vampire's feet have buried themselves among the flow of blood pouring from the Wyvern.

He's using the Wyvern's own strength to simply stonewall its desperation attack.

"Ornstein." Zero asides to the giant of a warrior, as his vines rear up and collapse towards the Wyvern. He asks, "What exactly makes a Dragon a failure?"
Tomoe The Wyvern is not dead, Tomoe sees this. This is one hell of a Wyvern to be sure but it has to go and the fact it's still going is a respectable thing. Not that she thinks too much of is s the powerful being make ready for another attack and this time? She knows there is no dodging it. She will move to pop a number of her tanking abilities to endure it. Tomoe glows for a moment as she kneels taking the blast it's painful she's got blotches of angry red wireframes all over her body.

Tomoe pauses to pull some shards of glass out of her body with a sound of pain, it is done. As she finishes she behold Ornstein in all his flory as he messed up the dragon with a blast of holy lighting and some serious attacks of his own. This inspires Tomoe and she rallies, readying her spear once more she will make a go at the Wyvern once more and she will they to angle and get in under its head and drive her spear up through the underside of its jaw and drive Moon Cutter up trying to impale the thing from below.
Arianrhod     Arianrhod is struck by the wyvern mid-flight, her lance discharging harmlessly into the air. The armored warrior is dragged with the wyvern down to the ground as it crashes. She hits it hard, bouncing across the ground a few times before skidding to a stop.

    Arianrhod slowly rises to her feet once more, not actually looking all that worse off after being slammed into the ground for a second type. What the hell is her armor made of!? Arianrhod watches as the wyvern summons more of its flames, making no attempt to evade them as she stands her ground.

    The fireballs are unleashed. One explodes in Arianrhod's area, completely engulfing her in flame and superheated gas. The fires burn hot, raging bright. But soon, an even greater light flares to life within those flames. Arianrhod's lance sweeps through the flames in a flash, the wind from the blow pushing the flames aside to reveal the former knight standing there, engulfed in an aura of power and barely singed by that latest assault of fire.

    Quickly stepping towards the wyvern, Arianrhod leaps into the air once more. She doesn't bother with the lightning this time. Timing her attack with Eryl's, Arianrhod brings her lance point down on the wyvern's snout, attempting to pierce through both the top and bottom in order to pin it's mouth closed against the ground, forcing its head to absorb the full force of Eryl's exploding knee shot.
Maksim Messerglas Maksim lets out an undignified but extremely appropriate shout of triumph when he sees the wyvern hammer through his ward. He follows it almost immediately with one of alarm as the surface it was anchored to -- the corner of the building -- suffers the same fate. The stone is pulverized immediately, a fracture erupting through it from floor to ceiling, the pieces not immediately reduced to gravel instead merely buckling badly. Maksim's earlier scramble away from the walkway is well-timed, because it's starting to come down with him on top of it.

His blind run turns into a wild leap. He's pinwheeling his arms and legs as he rises and then falls, catching a likely petrified wooden beam from a higher walkway with his midsection. The wind gets knocked out of him, and he dangles perilously, scrabbling for a hold -- until he realizes he's only a few feet above the ground and lets go, dropping onto the sand with a second wheezing grunt. Well, it *looked* like sand: it's actually a sand-covered slab of stone, massive for no reason he can reckon in the immediate moment. Maksim sucks in a wheezing breath, dragging himself to his knees.

The wyvern draws in a similar, much more terrible breath. Maksim shunts his panic to a place he will access later, once he's got time to count his new grey hairs.

He scrawls in the dirt with his diamond-tipped stylus, still clutched in nearly bloodless fingers. The script for this is flowing, Arabic-adjacent, made with practiced motions and rapidity that comes from having used it on every shelf he has ever put a book on out of paranoid fear of an oil lamp tipping over. He rotates on the spot, getting it down at a speed he wasn't sure even he could manage. He's starting to come unravelled at the edges, he thinks. He needs a stiff drink. If this works. If he lives.

The hellish fireballs come down, erupting into waves and pillars of deadly heat that rises up to greet the wind-torn heavens. Maksim is practically underneath one, his position in the odd plaza isolated from any further danger -- or any kind of cover. The tide of liquid-like flame sweeps away his silhouette, roiling like a thunderhead and flowing into every crack and crevice, to burn whatever might be alive here to a state far from. The smoke and heat is so intense it makes trying to find a trace of him impossible for seconds and heartbeats that carry on with an implacable, unenviable thud-thud-thud.

It finally clears. The plaza is scorched clean of everything but stone and glass, the former so hot it glows like coals, the latter gleaming with the myriad reflected lights of the sun and the fire. The flash-vitrified sands leave gently curving waves of razor-edged, near-molten panes, shimmering with crystalline clarity. It would be beautiful, if it weren't several hundred degrees. Only stone and glass are left because only stone and glass *can* be left.

Except, there he is.

Maksim sits in the middle of the plaza, surrounded by gorgeous, flowing script inscribed in a perfect circle tight around where he kneels. Outside that circle, the world is an oven of superheated solids and the lung-scorching air that dares brush featherlight touches across the smoldering ruin. Inside the circle, it is as if the Armageddon-likened firestorm never happened, save for being blown clear of loose particulate and left perfectly clean. Maksim is utterly still, sweat pouring from his brow, clutching his right hand with his left, where a slender burn in the shape of the stylus he had been holding presently creases his skin. The stylus in question -- having had the tip just barely outside the perimeter of the ward when the fireball came down -- is a rapidly-cooling splatter of molten metal between two curving characters etched into the ground.
Yuuki Kuran It's very odd. Yuuki stands, despite the inherent danger of just hanging out cheering on people punching a (failed) dragon as they make their blows. Biff! Pow! Socko!

She seems utterly unflapped, serene in the face of the courtyard exploding in rubble. None of it really touches her, tumbling to either side of her as she stands resolute.

It's a certain thing, anyway. The results weren't expected: they were required. This was the absolute minimum showing of the power of friendship and loyalty.

The molten firebombs are reacted to in the same blithe standing acceptance of all other things. She turns, one striking atop Maksim's ward. "Maksim! There you are!" She calls.

The scarfed Yuuki jogs to the edge of the crater, extending a hand. "You had me worried! Excellent first showing. Did you make a magic rune? That fast?"

The ball that was clearly heading for her has a crescent moon carved out of it, splitting into two chunks as the Yuuki with a scythe lands on a pile of rubble, twirling her scythe once before fading into a mist mirage.

"Don't hesitate to ask for help, Maksim. We're a big team, you know?" Scarf Yuuki beams at Maester Messerglas.
Maksim Messerglas Maksim is not sure if Yuuki is real or not. He hesitantly starts to extend a hand, and then remembers that's the burned one and switches awkwardly to his left instead.

"Er... thank you. Yes. A ward. I know a little sorcery, and I ward my things against fire with some frequency, so the process was..." He trails off, watching Scythe Yuuki for a couple seconds in the distance.

"There are sometimes two of you," he half-asks, half-observes, as if mostly uncertain where to go with this.
Yuuki Kuran Yuuki is extra steady as she takes Maksim's hand, helping him over the gap with a light heave - even with her left! She was a prefect at a private boarding school - She's used to getting people out of craters.

Don't ask.

"Still, you're quite fast! That's really useful. Can you ward against other things as well?"

Yuuki blinks, her conversational questioning halted by Maksim's inquiries as to there being a second of her. Well, he observes. "Ah. Yes, sometimes." She returns observingly, patting him on the shoulder. "You did well, for someone used to something a bit less..."

Slow pan towards the crater being detonated with the drake inside it. A rivulet of drakeblood rolls down by her feet, and she squats down to wick at it with her finger and consider. "Hmm. Not actually a dragon?" is Yuuki's quiet observation.

She stands up. "Large... winged lizards?" She settles on.
Priscilla     The wyvern's terrifying blasts are its last hurrah. Captain Flint's grenades explode against it, showering its ruined and bloodied skin with high velocity fragments. Raziel's deadly thrust finds the damage dealt to its eyes before and blinds it completely, gushing blood from both sockets. Guzma's final zap cannon torches its head such that you can all see exposed skull, a sort of rough, dull gleaming grey rather than white bone. It's even further crippled when Mordred breaks its leg and wings down with repeated hacking blows, leaving it all but totally immobile. Both Arianrhod's and Tomoe's polearms skewer through its ruined maw from both ends, pinning it open so that Eryl's explosive railgun round hits straight in the back of its throat, drooling fire and gore in equal measure, exploding out the base of its skull at the back of its neck. Paralyzed, it lists dangerously to the side, and then Seft's tremendous electrified axe blow hacks deep into its very bones, finally decapitating it entirely, and sending it silently, solemnly, tubmling into the foggy abyss below, down and down and down until not even a crunch can be heard..

                                 Ancient Wyvern                                
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                                 ENEMY DEFEATED                                

    After a few moments of silence, where you are left with just the hissing of the few smouldering embers and the blobs of molten glass remaining, cooling in the brisk mountain air, there is one last sound, new to you here. It is quiet. Sedate. But it rings in your ears as if it were right beside you. The chiming of a bell; one small and narrow, making for a deep, shimmering, ethereal sound.

    Fog rises up around you, cutting off all sense of the world around you, and in the blink of an eye, it falls away again. Your surroundings have totally changed. All of you are arranged in formation, within the inner halls of the great, unspeakably ancient sanctum. The glare of the sun is less prevalent here, as is the chill outside, when you are surrounded by thick stone walls on all sides.

    The light is warm, halfway between amber and the colourless light of the sun. Mysteriously, it comes from masses of pure white candles, still burning, having partly dissolved into thick lakes of hard wax over brutalist stone tables and plinths, and in the corners and up and down stairs.

    The room you're in is the kind of square that indicates that it occupies a layer of one of the cuboid towers of harsh, spartan granite-superior. Its center, however, is a massive drop into a deep, dark abyss, a stone's throw across, with a single impossibly tall pillar arising from it. Atop the pillar is an exquisite, yet still somehow primitive-seeming, grey stone idol of an enormous nest of thorns, occupied by a draconic beast that arches its neck to look down upon all assembled, with huge, swept wings curved about it.

    It appears to have four legs, at least, from what little can be made out above the nest, and what would make up a large part of its body is rendered without any detail, obscured within the mass of thorns, but you catch a peek of broad, seemingly muscled shoulders, and a chest that converges to a forward jut somewhat like a breastplate of angular plate armour, engraved as if its surface were ribs. Its head is as powerful and heavyset as they come, more than any king carnivore of prehistoric past, and huge, comparatively elegant horns sweep back far from its head. Its back bristles with what could be spikes, or fine spines, or thorns, or something harder to depict.
Priscilla     Despite being so rough and simple, only showing the upper quarter of the object of worship, you feel an immense sense of presence about it. An aura of tangible power. No, an *actual* aura of power. A depiction even this partially complete still resonates with something. Some fundamental, timeless, primeval aspect of the weave of the world that makes it resonate with a formless kind of gravity and ageless menace.

    It's finally starting to become little wonder that there are those who'd come to this place as a form of worship. They are in fact, still here. Arrayed on strewn out fine carpets, like eastern prayer or meditation rugs, surrounded by iron bowls, plates, vases, and thuribles, are human forms cross legged and bowed over, hands in lap, with almost identical postures; no, human*oid*.

    To a one, they are emaciated figures with stone grey skin, so thin that the shape of their ribs is visible, their midsections so taut it'd be a wonder if they still contained any viscera, their limbs long and thin and oversized. Their fingers and toes are claws. Their nearly visible spines bristle with tiny spikes. Their necks are elongated and bowed. Their heads are extended with narrow snouts, small fangs, and gnarled horns from the backs of their skulls. Some possess the stubs of tails. Some even growths below the shoulder blades resembling the stumps of extra limbs. Some are more human, while others are much more misshapen, and significantly larger.

    Not one of them budges in the slightest. No matter what you do. On any kind of inspection, their skin is grey because they are literally petrified. Statues. No warmth. No heartbeat. Nothing. They've simply found an empty space, rolled out a rug, burnt their incense, used whatever the vessels were for, and seemingly meditated in the idol's presence until they turned to stone, somehow. The place still smells faintly of unidentifiable incense, but who is keeping the candles lit is a very good question.

    Only now does Ornstein answer Zero's question.

    A Dragon --a true Dragon-- is an entity to which the concept of failure does not apply." That word choice, rather than creature or beast, feels telling. "Immortal, inscrutable, some say 'complete' or 'transcendental'. Things that have never been 'tainted' by the possession of a soul. They do not belong in this world. Their descendents, degenerated through gaining the concept of 'life', exist in the current age. Their least cousins, drakes, and the occasional slumbering monsters of great malice and power. But the very first of them --the Archdragons-- cannot be quantified; not in any way except, perhaps, power incarnate."

    "Even in war, with the vast, divine armies of Gwyn, even with the traitor amongst their ranks who rendered them vulnerable, even wielding tools of war and holy miracles of dragon slaying, for even the rank and file amongst their number, three score of us were slain for every one of them. Those bloody days are long gone, but there are those who see the Dragon as a symbol of transcendence. An escape from the concepts of life and death, Fire and Dark. They seek to transform themselves."

    "They almost always fail. Drakes descend from the diluted blood of Dragons. Wyverns ascend from human forms who reach the limit of their apotheosis. There are likely more wyverns here. It would be best if we proceed within the walls."