Scene #7831: The Last Spark of Chaos

Owner	Pose
Priscilla	The first point anywhere within 'the Dreg Heap' --as is its only current going name, even if uttered by a slightly mad and possibly dead old lady-- for miles upon miles that has even resembled a safe spot is here, inside the hollow of an unimaginably vast tree, torn from the earth and toppled over sideways in some time immemorial, and snapped apart not far above the roots. The titanic snarl and trunk-hollow juts out from a 'cliff' that runs from one horizon to the other, over a drop measured in double digits of miles, where the ground behind is rendered only as a watery haze of ash and rock and inky blots. Somehow, within this ridiculous checkpoint, with no way back up to the hellhole on solid ground without the power of flight, there is a bonfire. Its placement is deeply unnatural, someone or something simply having heaped charred bones together around a coiled sword that sputters feebly with ephemeral embers and the soft tinkling of bells. There is absolutely no way that this is a location that was ever meant to be fire-linked, and certainly not a natural power spot, on top of having no Firekeeper. It is impossibly faint and feeble, but it works, if barely, radiating a miniscule aura of restful and healing warmth, as well as serving as a tiny hole punched through spacetime to anchor everything from teleportation to summoning. The splintered far end, out in the weak, dying sunlight, is host to a royal blue cloth tied raggedly around a protruding splinter, with unmistakable white soapstone text scrawled beside it: You won't die. It overlooks a freefall equivalent to two mountains stacked atop each other, and a pinpoint speck of pitch blackness that is probably some kind of cave or tunnel precisely beneath it. It is the second of these.
Starbound Flotilla	The Starbound Flotilla have gotten a personal teleporter set up here. Well, more like a hastily-assembled booth, a beacon, and just enough space transplanters to safely get someone to the nearest beacon out of here if they need it, calling it a proper teleporter almost sounds vulgar. It should let most anyone get here, so long as they're approved by the topside team Priscilla set up. Unlike the last time they made this jump, the Flotilla no longer have a cool convoy vehicle. This time, the best they've got together is a sort of cart that maneuvers Big-Dog style on mechanical legs. Albert and Pavo are hard at work on making sure the cart will survive a descent through retro-rocket rigging, and not caring much about if they have to abandon most of it after it does. George is drinking, smoking, and otherwise preparing emotionally. Moonfin has tea, for those who need it, because of course he does. Seft is sitting at the edge, over the drop, occasionally talking with Biteblade, who is busy rigging some tethers and winches for the descent. When it's time, and the rest are here, Seft simply leaps. No time to spend not diving into the rest of this, now that there's been a chance to rest!
Kukuru	After being stopped from being too hasty for perhaps the first/only time in her life, Kukuru's settled in to whip up some comfort food for the crew preparing to dive into the mystery pit. Her hair is still a bit of a mess from the opposition the group's run into thus far, but she's since changed into a a fresher set of clothes that doesn't look quite as burnt or shot up. It just smells like food. Last time, Kukuru had stated her plan on how to determine the validity of the scrawled text, but she conveniently brings it up in the middle of passing out sandwiches made of stuff that definitely isn't from around here. No, really. It might be a little dusty and squished, but the ingredients are actually from somewhere safe! Probably. "SO I'm thinking... Um. I can teleport back up here, right? So I can jump down first. And if it's safe to go down that, I can just..." She makes a blooping noise with her mouth, complete with light jazz-hands for some inexplicable reason. "And if it ends p sucking... Um. It might take me a little while longer to get back up, but you'll all still know. How's that sound?"
Hiromi	When Kukuru is grabbed by Priscilla, Hiromi decides to cooperate with 'not jumping down just yet,' though there's not much point in her resting, herself. Her reserves don't work the same way, as far as she's aware. At least, the same senses in the realm of 'being tired' don't touch her consciousness, making it a matter of distant memory and imperfect empathy. Having nothing to occupy her mind, even sleep, she spends part of it bothering the Flotilla to give her a taste of their trail and camping supplies, just to see what they're like. Without any convenient storage mechanisms, she hasn't brought any of her own to share, though she does help in the effort of 'making a camping ground' by clearing space, flattening stone, and spreading soft earth as appropriate. She can't turn ashes into black soil, but if it's just a matter of controlling the shape, softness, and fire hazards, she can do that easily, without apparent means. It's not even telekinetic. Things just move, as if commanded to do so. Likewise, Hiromi samples Kukuru's cooking, though her semi-mysterious comments on everything she tries hint at 'curiosity' being a far stronger motive than 'hunger,' and she's only a somewhat pickier eater than someone would expect of a canine. She does, contrary to the expression involving wolf-as-a-verb, take her time to taste things. "Is fine," she says to the mention of teleporting safely. "'Falling' won't break me. Might break other things." Possibly not fine, that, but she acts otherwise. As expected, she goes straight over the edge, mimicking the distance she expects an ordinary human would cover with a half-hearted leap. This is 'following a path.' She doesn't expect to actually need to break her fall. And if she did that where it wasn't necessary, it would involve breaking the place she fell to, which would probably cause trouble to anyone following afterward. Hopefully, then, it'll be clear during the drop that this isn't the 'barely survivable' sort of fall.
Staren	Staren paid a visit to the Concord's field base here; perhaps she helped set it up. Certainly, she was surprised to see the endless plain; she was expecting either a sudden termination or gradual fade into the Abyss, at the 'end of the world'. Not that there was... this kind of nothing. She's unsurprised at being told inertial trackers and non-euclidean mapping software won't help here. How can you map and track where you are, when you aren't anywhere? But today she arrives by the teleporter so helpfully placed by the Flotilla. Not bothering with going for a particular look, aside from wearing the 'battle labcoat' -- perhaps it makes her feel more confident -- she's got it closed and added a belt around the waist to holster her pistol at and sheathe a pair of small swords behind her back. Scans indicate her body is robotic in nature, just disguised. A pack of drones come after Staren, camera- and humanoid-type, the latter deploying supplies in case the teleporter breaks and then standing guard in case something attacks this 'safe area' while the elites are away. She looks at the fire, starts to wonder what it burns for fuel, and then pushes that thought away as the least of mysteries here and probably not actually applicable. Looking out over the Dreg Heap, she observes, "I would have thought the abyss would be at the bottom of this canyon... that it would swallow all that stuff up... I wonder if this means there's an actual bottom under all that, or... whether it's built up faster than the abyss can take it? Or maybe it doesn't work that way..." It would be nice to be on a mission where she doesn't have to worry about anyone reading her mind, except this place is also extremely existentially dangerous, leading Staren to take every preparation measure she can think of while trying not to get lost in being too worried and careful to do anything. The literal precipice puts a sort of literal and metaphorical point on that issue; Staren gathers up most of her camera drones into her bag to make sure they stay with her when she takes that plunge. But first, she takes stock of the party and listens to plans. Seeing the Flotilla preparing a pack mule construct, she says "Ooh, that's an excellent idea!" and helps set it up. If they'd like more, she'll have the lab's prototyper whip up a facsimile to similar specs; she has one assembled and loaded with extra supplies before it comes through the teleporter, just to be sure. Seft made the same assumption as Staren, but Kukuru makes an excellent point, making her question whether she has perhaps become too ready to accept surface-level appearances of this kind of challenge. Although she mutters, "I almost wouldn't be surprised if there's an illusion that makes it look to observers like everyone who jumps goes splat..." Thinking of that, she checks on a camera drone looking downward to see what happened to Seft.
Eryl Fairfax	Light is light. Warmth is warmth. Eryl can abide by any amount as long as it's not none. Such is why he is able to find gainful rest, even by such a pitiful bonfire. Whomever left it, likely the same person who is leaving these blue markers and these safe falls, has his gratitude. But eventually, the time comes to move on. "Don't overthink it," he calls to everyone as he gestures at the leap. The target pit is small, far. The kind of distance that makes one sweat, makes one try to come up with strategies to ensure the slightest deviation doesn't end with one dashing against the sides of the pit. "Just stand on the edge and tilt forward, like this." He demonstrates, standing with half his feet hanging off the edge and leans forward. Gravity does the rest, pulling him down to plummet perfectly into the pit below. Nothing but net.
Priscilla	For what should be considered a staggering change of pace, considering the last several times she has been seen in her 'native environment', Priscilla has been killing a little time by kneeling down and sharing tea with Moonfin. If she is attempting to relax, there'd be no way to tell without mind reading, given that she essentially never evinces stress externally, but in this barren hollow with nothing else to do, it's certainly more comfortable than standing around awkwardly while the Flotilla prepare the recall point and drop vehicle. "I believeth only Sir Fairfax is one amongst us without apparent means of immediate recall." She glances sideways at Staren. Teasip. "With his body intact. Advancing by thineself, if our destination is as dangerous as believed, wouldst likely giveth thee time to learn nothing of it, and still be dangerous to even thineself besides; Lady Kuran herself is exhausted of this for the time being, after all. If the many of us art able to establish a stable point of landing, then all the better. Shouldst our position be untenable, please see to extracting Sir Fairfax immediately." She looks over to the Flotilla teleporter specialist. "And if Lady Kukuru shouldst be indisposed, well . . ." Rather enigmatically, she says to Staren, "I am not so certain that the Abyss hath any relevance here. Anymore. Perhaps it no longer exists, as far as concerns the end of the world. That which we hath seen that was similar is . . . Perhaps more concerning, even." The camera drones confirm there is no illusion here. Despite everything being eighteen kinds of nonsense, it really is just a case of staring down from everest to the ocean floor, sans water. Hiromi makes the decision for everyone anyways. It takes forever to fall all that distance. Even with her weight, even if she streamlines herself aerodynamically, she might as well be parachuting. Ironically, this makes it significantly easier to land accurately; there's ample time to correct course. As the yawning blackness in the ash below grows steadily larger with proximity, it reveals itself to be quite large. Enough to sink a castle through. Which might have already happened. The transition from wan light to deep shadow is a sudden roar of stagnant air being forced to echo around a cavernous underground space. The landing is a hard crash into a heap of soft ash easy to embed oneself waist deep in, ringed in white soapstone runes that somehow take the bite out of the stop. The light from above is now a dim white disc; one could deceive themselves into thinking of it as the moon in a starless sky. With that much illumination, one can see the rubble of a tremendous work of architecture that was well-aged long before it ever sank down here, of humble granite stones that had been worn by rain and wind and green growth an eternity ago. The surroundings are dark and dank and somehow wet, rippled mud and gravel alternating with ankle to knee deep frigid water, and strewn all throughout it, a carpet of half-buried bones, peeking out from the ashen glop just enough to snag the unwary foot.
Priscilla	From amongst the rubble, the broken walls and arches, and the monolithic fragments of gnarled archtree, piled into the cavern as so much shattered and sunken debris, there is already motion. No time is given to explore. From the moment of entry, there is danger. An entire archway stirs in the dark. Dust and ash shakes loose as it changes shape. The slumbering creature detaches sluggishly and crashes to the ground on four legs. A monstrous hulk of sharp bony angles and leathery wings, clawed feet and twisted horns, approaching from the shadows. As it moves, it suddenly appears to 'light up from within', its dark grey shape gaining distinction like iron heated in the forge. Fiery red and orange flickers under its hide, illuminating stretched sinews and emaciated flesh, reminiscent perhaps of some titanic, semi-humanoid horned bat, save for both its arms being wings in of themselves, whilst already having a set of wings on its back. Another crash sounds from the opposite end of the cavern. Another forge-glow in the dark. A nearly identical creature approaches from the other side, pincering the group in the landing zone. The both of them open maws of twisted fangs and blistering furnace heat, and howl shrieking rage and fire and sulfurous fumes, flying spittle like molten lava. Thus begins their simultaneous, thunderous charge from both sides.
Starbound Flotilla	Seft's descent is slowed. She slows it further as she reaches the bottom, a halo of blue light surrounding her as she hits the ground. Immediately, she has a torch out in her off-hand, burning some exotic super-science material to illuminate farther than any pitch-torch would. It gives her a moment to see the massive creature's movements, if not its fundamental nature. Raising it, she readies herself. A massive axe. A tower shield across her arm, the hand kept clasped around the torch. She's taking her stance when she hears the noise behind. Eyes wide, she jolts and looks back. Seeing this threat is a pair, now, she stumbles slightly, eyes wide! "Warning. One behind us too!" Her stance gets low and strained, and she tunes her armor to ready it to endure unimaginable heat. Surely axes have an elemental affinity against fire, right? She holds still. Perfectly still. So still, in fact, that her feet appear to be totally motionless compared to the subtle motions of readying herself. Energy builds, and builds, and builds in those legs, until, finally, she jumps, leaping outrageously high with her mobility enhancements. She tries to slam her shield through the rush of fire, enduring the pain, and bounce off the head of one of the creatures (the nearest, or soonest to arrive in the charge) with a massive overhead flip strike, intent on plunging the powered axe into the skull and then landing outsidde the pincer.
Hiromi	As she falls, Hiromi first merely watches the path, gauging her path and distance. She spreads her limbs out, adjusts her angle, and shifts her arc, eventually aligning it with Eryl's perfect trajectory. From there, she narrows her profile, coming around to rest in an arms-crossed, legs straight, stabilized dive, just her hair whipping up behind her. It's relaxing, in a way, but also rather dull, if only for the length, and the lack of scenery. She can't make out many different smells from up here, either. Breathing becomes a lot more difficult in high wind, making it an actual effort to try. As the ground approaches, she abruptly shifts, again spreading her limbs out, reducing terminal (and, thus, actual) velocity as much as her body allows, flipping at the last moment to take the reduced impact onto slightly-bent legs. At no point did she trust the soapstone, but it and the ash do their work. "Soft!" Leaping out of the landing zone right away, she stays deep in the ash, just off the freezing muck, turning one way and the other, now looking for trails, sniffing scents of old things, but having no need to find danger, when it finds immediately comes to find her. Now, what to do? Fight, obviously, but how, and where? Immediate answer, without verbalization: Not-here. "Keep going." That's the not-word Hiromi delivers to the charging demons, at the moment when their speed is greatest, and their paths would take them crashing into each other. It's an insidious command, an excuse to keep doing what they're doing, but past the point they should have thought of stopping, even with the simplest of minds. She intends to simply not be there when it happens, and accomplishes that by running in the same manner as would one jump, one powerful footstep at a time carrying her far across, and outside their paths, before turning about, one foot to a piece of rubble, ready to spring back in.
Kukuru	Kukuru is more than happy to sate Hiromi's curiosity, although the most adventurous food (at least by human standards) just involves raw meat with the same seasonings she's used with everything else. It's still (probably) pretty tasty, if a bit messy even with most of the blood drained ahead of time. She also notes that the wet wipes shouldn't be eaten. Once it's time to descend, Kukuru only spends about three seconds aiming her presumed jump before slipping at the last moment and falling ass-first anyway. There's a strained screeching noise as she goes down, too, that lingers up until she realizes she's not falling quite as fast as she was expecting. She falls, she waits, and she doesn't bother to right herself in midair as the fall just keeps on going way longer than it should, and there's only a slight grunt of vague curiosity as Kukuru finally hits the ash and gets stuck in there for a bit. She's clearly not in a huge rush to pull herself out of there, but she does behave once once she gets to actually look at the strange cave surrounding her. She notices that things are a lot damper than it feels initially, and the bones strewn about have her squinting her eyes at darker corners as if suspecting something might jump out at any moments. "Careful, everyone. There's... Yep, there they are." She speaks up as the four-winged creatures greet the group with those terrible flames and giant bodies, already getting her own claws on to prepare for their oncoming rush. Seeing little room to dodge, she just charges right at them, then promptly gets smashed out of the way and set on fire. After thrashing around for a moment to put out the flames, Kukuru's healing finally gets her settled down enough that she finally gets her shit together and starts sprinting towards one of the creatures. She smashes her claws into the ground beneath her to fling herself towards it, aiming for one of legs to latch on and start swinging herself around it not unlike a circular saw trying to tear it up at the base.
Eryl Fairfax	The whipping winds become sour and dank as Eryl descends into the pit. Sinking waist-deep into the ash, he struggles to quickly extract himself to make the landing clear for whomever follows. Squinting his eyes against the dark, he lets out a whistle, allowing the shrill tone to bounce off the distant walls and come back, his implants using the basic sonar to image the area. And something responds. Something growls. And then another. "Two hostiles, scatter!" he barks, tracking the one ahead with his eyes and the one behind with his ears. As they approach, he drops, a horn scraping his back as he tucks in and rolls along the ashen ground, slipping under one of them and firing a barrage of bullets into their underside as they pass overhead.
Staren	People jump. Staren opts for closing her eyes and just tipping off the edge, although, when she doesn't soon feel some kind of landing as she has in the past in similar situations, she opens her eyes, and actually angles for where the others are aiming to land. She assumed it wouldn't matter but... better to be safe. Everything kind of happens at once. Staren starts to look around, notices she's waist-deep in ash and grunts in annoyance, and archdemons are attacking! She struggles to pull free of the ash, defenses going up as she parries the... wing-arms? that they're swinging and still takes some bleeding cuts across her shoulder and cheek for the trouble. For a split second, she's stunned by the realization that FOR ONCE IT'S A PHYSICAL ENEMY THAT WORKS ON. This isn't phasing moonlight bullshit! Buoyed by that thought and realizing she can use her arms, warped-in metal panels, and robotic strength to just shove herself right out of the ash, she considers her options. Energy attacks of questionable use against something that's on fire all the time. Melee doesn't actually hit hard, though... The vambraces begin reconfiguring as she lands. Drones stream out of her bag and spread around the room. Energy cannons pop out of her vambraces and fire, then fold away into some larger internal extradimensional space before another weapon unfolds into place. Lasers, particle beams, plasma projectiles, even gyrojet and anti-tank minimissile launchers show up. But only fired once or twice before the next is tried; Staren's testing vulnerabilities. For her part Staren tries to keep distance and make sure she's never between them, trying to keep distance and circle around if approached so as not to be pressed into a wall. When the vambraces have cycled through those weapons she pulls a double-barreled shotgun with magitech ornamentation and blue inset gems out of her bag and fires ice magic blasts, which is the obvious thing to try and so she does it last so as not to let herself get stuck on the idea of not trying anything else if it works! "What do they feed on?! Where did they come from? Have they been waiting here since this place began, or did they come later?" And she groans at a realization. "Are these... arch-demons??"
Priscilla	Seft crashes headlong into the furiously charging beast. Its jaws snap out to catch her, but cannot get around her shield before she tumbles loose and rams her axe into its head. The sound is like a pickaxe striking stone. The way it flinches is abnormal, the jerk of impact arrested all at once after a split second. A thick, runny, molten-hot goo, like the very dimmest, dark red state of molten iron, spills from the wound that should run straight to its brain. And it keeps charging. Eryl's action slide and Kukuru's leap slash take them in opposite directions. With that ungainly bat-like frame, the monsters' bodies are high up off the ground, and provide plenty of leeway to get beneath, leaving a small, if precariously moving, 'safe zone' between lanky legs, clawed forelimbs, and a short neck. Kukuru's grab and slash causes a leg to give out immediately, the monster stumbling just as it collides with its fellow, as Hiromi commanded, with nobody still between them. The row of shots Eryl puts into his punch deep holes straight down its body, spewing molten blood onto him for his efforts. Wherever the vital organs are, they're definitely in all the wrong places. The deluge of shots from Staren's drones in all directions is a mixed bag of mostly failures too. The monsters both are outrageously resilient to any kind of directed heat weapon, regardless of sci-fi principle, and partially resistant to explosives. The volume of fire, at least, registers as enough of a presence for them to retaliate immediately, distracting them from focusing on any particular party member all at once. An enormour flamethrower, able to cross the entire length of the cavern rather than disperse into the air, blows out of one pair of hellish jaws, raking through the cloud of drones and bathing Staren and Hiromi in writhing fire that seems to have a life of its own, curving and dripping and seeking them out. The other monster rears back onto its hind legs and lashes out with a flurry of claws and wingbeats, then exhales a horrid geyser of purple-tinted ashen fumes everywhere around it; the physical strikes are an immediate menace to Seft, whilst melting-hot acidic fumes are the most pressing danger to Eryl and Kukuru, even worse for how easily they're breathed in or absorbed through the skin. "And what, praytell, wouldst be an 'arch'demon?!" Priscilla calls out to Staren as she disappears in a whirl of painted snow from the charge, and then doesn't reappear. A few splashing footsteps are lost in the chaos, and a terrible raking wound spews vast quantities of sheeting 'blood' from the firebreather's back, despite being merely long and shallow. "Though, most certainly, they doth appeareth as demons, there shouldst be no possibility of such! Their progenitor --the only place from which they arose-- is long gone! The Flame of Chaos long extinguished! There hath been no new demons for nearly a decade! How couldst these be here?! We couldst be no further from Lordran, in place or in time!"
Kukuru	Although Kukuru's body is fairly resilient (mostly thanks to her healing abilities) in the face of that acidic hell being put out by the giant bat-like thing's body, that definitely doesn't make the fumes being put out any less unpleasant. She can already feel those fumes burning through her clothes and into her exposed face, never mind all of the stuff that's getting in just from breathing. This actually might call for a change in strategy. She adjusts her hold on the bat's leg, not so much to drop off it easily, but to give it a few parting slices as she drops off of the creature and backs off rapidly to at least attempt to mitigate the worst of its horrible fumes. "Tricky... Nn. Maybe... Um. Maybe... It's because their kinda hunched up? Like an arch." She suggests in response to Priscilla and Staren without an ounce of joking in her heart. "But if demons can't be here, then... Maybe they're just really creepy. Not everything that's angry and freaky is a demon, you know?" Kukuru rubs one of her horns absent-mindedly at that, then gets back to actually fighting. She's managed to come up with a strategy in the meantime, too, as she opens up a dark portal in front of her that sends her rather large distance into the air. She starts falling, then opens up another portal beneath herself, falling through those ominous purple clouds to build up speed until she's clenching her mouth shut to not whine at the almost sickening speed. Once she's had enough, she opens up another portal facing the acid-spewer, launching herself at it like a ballista with those claws poised to tear right into or through it with how quickly she's going. Whether she hits it or not, though, she winds up tumbling quite a distance away, as if unable to actually stop herself after the fact. Hopefully, her luck is good enough that she doesn't hurl herself into the waiting maw of something even worse.
Hiromi	Hiromi's launched herself off the rubble she'd landed against before the attack even comes her way. She goes straight through it, burning, on fire, not making enough contact with the water to make any meaningful difference in charge, cloth and hair and skin burning away. It looks terribly effective. It looks terrible, full stop, though it would be worse if she could be clearly seen through the flames. And yet, she doesn't stop moving. There's no 'moment where the fire clears' to discover what's become of her beneath it, only the fact that her shape and size are still the same, and her momentum unbroken, to determine that she remains alive and well, for certain, extremely generous interpretations of the latter word. She leaps, a comet trailing flames in place of vapor, and lands atop the closer demon on all fours. Not expecting anything like sensible organs for weak points, she instead goes for the joints, quickly shifting into a straddling leglock over one shoulder joint, plunging her claws deep in for leverage, cutting her way as necessary, to grasp and strain and push past the socket's tolerance.
Eryl Fairfax	This might have been a mistake. Eryl throws his arms up to protect his eyes from the burning hot blood that issues from the demon above, but it still eats through metal and flesh both, drawing a pained hiss as he rises back to his feet, backing up to keep both demons in sight. Listening to the exchanges between Priscilla and Staren, his brain and implants begin running in parallel. Implants analyse the two and tap into his knowledge of what demons of this world are. Born of the experiments at Izalith, an attempt at replicating the First Flame... what are these? Are they demons born of that time? A crude replication that occurred at some point in the intervening eras between then and now? His grey matter though is entirely focussed on the fight. He tears at his clothes, ripping off parts affected by acid and whips his cape through the air to clear the fumes. He's not going to find vitals easily like this. A testing approach is needed. Elbows are raised, and slugs fly from them, one targeting one demon each. They scatter at different parts of their flight, cutting through the two at different angles, different patterns, aiming to find something important to damage.
Staren	The drones position themselves spread out in many directions so as not to get caught in a single arc attack like this, but it sure can melt some of them! And also Staren. The fire washes over her, coat blackening, clothes smouldering, and flesh starting to warp-- a sort of light washes over her, and when the flame stops coming, she is much more obviously a robot, painted mainly metallic red; it's human-shaped, although features and physique are smoothed a bit, more reminiscent of a doll than a battle borg or mech. The legs and feet are shaped as if bulky boots are built-in, and the face has a sculpted but unmoving mouth and nose and large robotic eyes, the lenses somehow more evoking the appearance of headlights or safety reflectors than a camera. Some sort of armatures on the side of the head are evocative of twintails. She's still wearing the (now-scorched) coat and has an orange holo-scarf. She's... still on fire as she charges and jumpjet-leaps right up at its face, drawing one of her swords and trying to stab it right in the mouth that just breathed at her with lightweight metal limned in a cutting, high-frequency field, before flying back away and firing the ice-shotgun again to discourage the thing from following her. "The... they're... it's a pun, which feels very out of place here! They're shaped like arches!" Staren calls back to Priscilla, waving a flaming arm. It feels stupid to even point out out-loud, but... everyone sees it, right? Right?? "Why are they made like that??"
Starbound Flotilla	Seft actually has plenty of vulnerability to those horrible fumes! Thank god it doesn't brutalize her quite as hard as it could. She's blasted around by those slashing strikes, but with her shield up, she can endure the brutality, jarring her arm but leaving her only coughing up the ash and sparking at the joints. In between some of the strikes, she looks down to her blade. Blunted at some parts, as if she'd struck a slab of metal. Grunting static under her breath, she shoves herself back onto her feet. Eyes flick wildly in that visor. She glances up to where Priscilla has provoked that massive blast of blood. The physical may be less effective here. She tosses her torch aside, yanks a ripcord on her axe, and lights it up with a chaotic mess of elemental energy, primarily electric and cryogenic. The way these creatures are so associated with heat... they have to be either incredibly conductive (making cryogenic attacks ideal) or incredibly non-conductive (making electrical attacks ideal), and there's just no middle-ground. She has to get an edge to her attacks, or she's toast! Throat. She should go after something that looks essential to the pulmonary systems here, because the breath weapons are causing a lot of problems and there's no such thing as a claws organ.
Priscilla	The fire-breathing demon remains focused on Hiromi last, whilst she charges down the entire length of its hellish, living-flame breath. Planted into the mud and bones and braced to the rubble with the apparent effort of spewing so much fire that it feels 'heavy' to be hit with, it is in no position to do anything about her next attack. It's barely stopped spewing fire by the time she already has its forelimb, and has leapt right over its shoulder. A terrible screech rebounds viciously from the cavern ceiling as she snaps its mammoth arm entirely, halted by Staren pluging vibroblades through its open maw and piercing into its neck. Hiromi's vaulting grapple is able to completely tear its other forelimb from the ground, and flip it over, crashing to the ground, just in time for Kukuru to plunge out of the sky at sickening speeds and bury her claws up to the shoulders in its superheated viscera. Its shuddering spasms and randomly directed exhalations of sputtering fire tell her that she's struck something important. Wild beating pulses around her claws, Tearing around inside, especially with Hiromi's and Staren's help, is sufficient to finally cause the monster to collapse, fall silent, and quickly cool to a dull and cold coal-black. Blasting enormous amounts of coilgun-accelerated buckshot into the other demon is significantly more effective on Eryl's part, finding the full force of each shot going into slowing and stumbling the beat that is far too large to actually miss. It advances on him immediately, lunging outwards, almost belly sliding, to snatch him up in its claws, suddenly extending ten meters in the blink of an eye, before Seft's axe reaches it first. 'Cold' appears to have no real meaning; any amount of cold the axe can be is irrelevant to the fire within; winter air feeds a bonfire as well as in summer. However, electricity is a different sort of heat, and slags through its pre-damaged, rock hard hide right away. The applied current lodged in it causes the monster to stagger and spasm as it is electrocuted, opening it up to a score more shots from Eryl until he finds the strangely shifted heart somewhere near its gut and right spine. It collapses sideways, snapping and spewing superheated toxic fog, losing the fight against electrocution as its heartbeat fades. Its head abruptly snaps back, and then spins free of its body entirely, torn free with a sickening, twisting slicing motion from Priscilla, able to reach its exposed and paralyzed throat from the ground. That seems to have taken care of it. Priscilla reappears, even, sensing no more danger, globs of molten blood already hardened to cold black slag on her dress, lightly dusted in frost. "No, they art most definitely such creatures." Priscilla says in response. "'Demon' hath a far more specific connotation to these lands than most. Twisted misborn creatures animated by a warped and unnatural fire, unable to sustain itself and doomed to fade and be extinguished from the moment of its conception. There is hardly any possibility of mistaking a creature of Chaos upon first glance. I merely wonder from whence the fire within them comes."
Priscilla	The question is practically a dare. A gunshot signal to start. The two giant demons have barely cooled before the cavern explodes. Both coal-black corpses are burnt exactly like their colour's namesake, disintegrating into charred, crumbling gravel, as fire explodes from within them, ruptures their frail and emaciated forms, and gathers into a pulsing singularity between them. Fire writhes and crawls over itself in an unconvincing facsimile of a human-sized sun, throbbing with the loud rhythm of an irregular heartbeat. Ash and coal from the two corpses is dragged in, accreting into a disk, then a sphere, and then a much larger mass of stone and bone and organic firewood. It shifts over itself, snapping and cracking into new shapes and welding together at the seams. The inside liquefies into new blood, which begins pumping all over again, with twice the feral fury. Now there is one demon, half again as large as the others. Less emaciated and ragged, it appears powerfully muscular, and so blazing hot that the air around it shimmers like a forge, emitting groping tongues of flame from its skin and into its surroundings. It rears up into a two-legged posture, throwing out one hand, and conjuring a blazing scar of solid fire into it, somewhere between a twisted wand and a sharpened scimitar. Pointing it towards the group, the demon howls, and from out of the distant, pale disk of sky far above, a deluge of bright, burning fireballs, like flaming meteors, begins crashing down all around the cave, exploding dramatically and leaving boiling pools of magma where they strike.
Kukuru	Kukuru inhales anxiously as the adrenaline makes her keep digging those claws into the already dying creature's body, stabbing them in as deeply as she can for what might as well be until she realizes that it's finally out of commission. It takes a little while longer for her to finally yank her claws out and step away, although there's still a brief flicker of a crazed look in her eyes before she turns to Hiromi and Staren with her usual pleasant smile (coated in blood and burns, but still). "Good work, everyone! We can finally breathe a little, huh?" She giggles lightly, then raises an eyebrow at Priscilla's revelation. "Wait, so they are demons? But if they couldn't be from here, then... Oh. Maybe it's got something to do with that... Uh." She snaps her claws a few times, somehow managing to make convincing facsimile of a finger-snapping noise with metal. "How everything looked all crammed together before? Maybe there's some time stuff going on and it's all... Parts of demons from other places rather than a real new thing." She's grasping at straws, but she also sounds fairly confident about that guess. Before she can continue with that line of thought, however, everything explodes. The corpses merge into an even more menacing form, and its rain of fire has Kukuru scrambling to look for some way to not die of getting immolated. The only relief Kukuru finds is that the falling death doesn't manage to strike her head on, but even the subsequent explosions and splashing magma still leave terrible scorched marks all over her, some of it even making her claws unbearably hot to keep wearing. Biting through the pain, Kukuru inhales slowly before squatting in place, claws dug into the ground in front of her as if preparing to strike. "I've got an idea... Once I've got a hold of it, start hitting it really hard!" That's the entire plan. A strategist, Kukuru is not, but she's at least good at committing to an idea as someone acting like her own safety is not all that important. Rather than teleporting and falling to build up speed, she just flings herself forward with those claws for an initial boost of speed towards the two-legged flamebeast. She lands not too far away from it purposely to try and grab its attention with her mere presence, then opens up multiple black and purple portals around it in succession. "He-ey, you. Um... Sorry you had to face us." Kukuru doesn't sound all too apologetic as she flings herself into one portal, coming through the other and aiming a drive-by slash at its side before going through the next portal. She repeats this process about six times from multiple angles, trying to hold its attention before coming out the seventh time and finally trying to latch onto it, claws and legs wrapped around it to start dragging it down for her allies to finish the job.
Starbound Flotilla	Seft has a few seconds to focus on recovery. Getting nanowrap around her limbs. At first, she's just recovering "after" the battle. When things begin to move, to shift underfoot and then in the air around her, she wraps more urgently. She injects repair agents. She moves as fast as she can as the new creature forms, something more humanoid? Oh, that isn't promising at all, that's the scariest thing that a big monster can do. She has to dive, scramble, and roll to evade the descending threat. And she sure can't do it very well! Bombardment from above is something she's least suited to handling, and this is nothing if not a bombardment. By the time she gets ahold of the flow of incoming shots, she's already badly burned, chunks of armor fusing and sparking. She synths a long whine of pain. Thankfully, there's plans! She listens attentively to Kukuru... Oh no!! That's not much of a plan at all!! Not like Seft has anything better. "Exasperated. Okay!!" She calls out, assenting. Another yank of the cord between dodges, and a fresh burst of exclusively electricity now. She rushes for the tethers and equipment that the Flotilla is still lowering, grabbing a power cable and plugging it in directly. Capacitors on the surface of the axe begin to bulge and mechanically pump strangely. Lighting up her armor's rocket-assisted motion, she closes the distance as fast as she can and tries to find a spot on the grand demon's body that Kukuru isn't close to. There, she wants to slam the axe down and give the thing more amps than it could ever take, using massive amounts of electricity direct from the camp's generator, far above.
Eryl Fairfax	Eryl stands his ground, focussing both arms on the approaching demon. "C'mon, 47% of your volume remains, it's in there somewhe-" He is cut off by a grasping hand, his implants scrambling to calculate a safe falling position using the surrounding ash as he digs his knee against the demon's palm, preparing to fire an explosive shell and tank the damage. But it's unnecessary. Seft comes in with the lightning axe to stun it, their grip loosening enough that Eryl can get his arm free and resume his assault, finally finding the heart and ripping it open, and Priscilla taking its head to seal the deal. But that's never it in Lordran. The remains of the demons become smoke and ash that coalesce, combining into an orb that reforms. One lean, healthy, full demon instead of two flagging ones. Portals open, and destruction rains from the heavens. Eryl gets low and starts running around the edges of the pit, eyes open an analyzing the demon. As Kukuru dashes through portals to slash it in parting, he watches how that molten blood spills. From it's spilling, he can guess the creature's blood pressure and pulse. From there, he can calculate its volume and vein and artery distribution. And with that, he can make a guess at where the heart is. He's not gonna scatter shot this time. Once he has a reasonable guess, he fires a massive round from his knee at the area of it's body he estimates it is at. It impacts like a runaway train to crack the stony hide, and then explodes violently to carve it open.
Staren	> I merely wonder from whence the fire within them comes. "Do they occur naturally, or are they created by intelligent hands?" asks Staren, and the demon answers by reforming itself. As the 'sun' starts to accrue stuff around it, she starts firing ice blasts at it, not intent to wait for it to finish... whatever it's doing, but also not sure how to attack a sun. DESTRUCTION RAINS FROM THE HEAVENS! Staren tries to dodge. It's hard enough to dodge an attack that hits everywhere, but at one point she zigs when she should have zagged and takes a direct hit, a 'meteor' punching right through Armor of Ithan, burns through the back of her coat, and dents and warps the metal body underneath with a loud CLANG and the screech of deforming metal. Unlike a flesh-and-blood creature that might groan in pain, or be stunned, or be slow to get up after that, she just shoves herself to standing with her arms and gets right back to it, the old amber spherical forcefield coming up to take the effect of the remaining meteor explosions as she zips around on thrusters in her boots while her magitech is disrupted. The field shrinks and ablates bit by bit as it's caught in the edge of explosions. Eryl proposes a plan. Staren remembers seeing that cold didn't work well but electricity DID. Once the meteor storm has ended, Staren drops the forcefield and tosses the shotgun to the edge of the cave, and draws the second sword. She crosses her arms in front of her, and her hands and the coat's vambraces glow, crackling with energy. She stares at the fused demon for a tense second, and then... the moment someone else attacks, if they aren't already, she zips in, with thruster-augmented robot speed kicked into overdrive, trying to flank with Kukuru as she darts by to slash once (there's a sound like a thunderclap as the cutting field suddenly becomes lightning for an instant, discharging electricity into the beast before the blade even makes contact and, hopefully, cuts) and then spinning for a followup attack -- her instinct is to just stab (thunderous BOOM!) and keep going, trying to shove the whole blade and her hand in, but she refrains from this out of concern for getting melted, and jets away again once the second blade makes contact.
Hiromi	Hiromi only halts before going for the other limbs on seeing her opponent fall, and has no time to build up to a charge for the other before it goes down as well. With the flames on her body finally guttering out, what it's done to her, beneath, is revealed. Most of her clothing is distressingly non-magical and can't survive heavy, thorough, flamethrower and-slash-or napalm attacks. Worse, in this case, is how much of her skin, large swathes of it, likewise burned through. Exposed, damaged muscles knit themselves back together in real time, and skin slowly stretches to cover them, blood-red fading to pink, and joining her overall, tanned complexion as if in afterthought. The whole process can be sped along by Kukuru's healing abilities, but has a stubborn slowness to it, inherently, like overcoming inertia. It's still not as bad as that last time she was shot in the head. Priscilla has an explanation. Hiromi has about enough time, in this lull, to nod to her. "Fire. Motion. Change. Life. I understand." She does. The demons still being here is explained easily enough. Even dregs are enough to sustain one in hibernation. Life exists only so long as there's movement, and little needs burn, otherwise. The motion of one striking a web is enough to rouse a spider to life. So much fuel could have been added, if it had been they who lost, and were consumed. Hiromi tilts her head to consider Kukuru's theory. "Brought here. Fallen, maybe. Tumbling down." She, herself, is naturally the last sort of person who would be bothered by a big-clawed woman covered in blood. This time, when a new demon appears, and begins charging up a no-doubt devestating attack, Hiromi doesn't run straight through it to attack. She gets down in the freezing muck and digs, throwing up walls of solid earth, pulled up from beneath the ash. This doesn't protect her from being cooked, but it's enough not to take that head on, for the moment. "'Eryl Fairfax.' 'Grandmaster.' You are clever man, yes? Can you find this one's heart? For my claws." He'd found it once before. A difficult matter, without knowing where it is. This one looks healthier, less like it could fall apart from its own force. Just-born, in a way. Flexible. Fewer brittle points for her to take. That's why she has to wait, even while magma pours into her defensive closure, and she's forced to abandon it. There. Eryl fired. She doesn't have to ask him if that's where it's heart is -- either he found it, or he didn't. That impact is all the signal she needs. It's not Hiromi that launches, but the ground beneath her, yet nearly as hard. She rises on a tower of earth, leaning precariously, yet moving too quickly for gravity to yet take hold. It's by no means a smooth construction, this instant, spiring mountain, but what matters most is that it anchors her feet as she approaches. She's not mid-air, without purchase, when she reaches her target, but with feet firmly planted. She twists, motion timed to the point of contact. Hips move thighs, knees flex, toes and ankles turn with equal strain. Her core carries her through, one shoulder moving directly opposite the other, elbow unfolding as she extends, claws harmlessly bent above her presented palm, turning from down to up. Impossible precision purely the result of impossible control in the service of impossible strength. She doesn't strike to pierce the heart, but fully tear it from its body, along with all the fiery not-flesh around it.
Priscilla	"Bleeding, it is, that thou need?" Priscilla replies to Eryl, as dry as she can be under the circumstances of a hail of faux-meteorites on rapid approach. "Then thou shalt have it." A flash wall --more of an explosion-- of solid blue-white ice rises up beside Hiromi's, painterly frost instantly freezing the mud and water solid, hardening and deepening its heat absorption. Being invisible won't necessarily help her here, though the demon does seem to be directing the grand fireballs with some sense of purpose. The combined slashing efforts of Kukuru and Staren, flanking it from all directions between just the two of them, surround it in a chaotic fireworks show of sparking metal on metallic hide, spurting fire-bright molten blood, and crackling sprays of electrical discharge. It defends itself to an extent by hunkering behind its wings, and then attempting to ward them off with its arms. After a few more passes, it swings that giant flaming scar in space like a sword, sweeping it as a burning ribbon around itself, trying to catch the both of them, where the almost nuclear heat of the blade can put an end to their attacks. Seft has the opportunity to do the same thing, but harder. Unfortunately, even then, the demon is just much bigger, and has much more physical power, to fight being electrocuted. She's far too fast on that rocket boost for it to defend itself, and the axe blade slams home into its torso, but even shuddering and howling in pain and fury, Seft has mere seconds of causing as much damage as she can before a searing singularity of pyromantic energy appears before her eyes, and explodes indiscriminately, the demon immune to its own point blank collateral. It advances on her, towards Eryl, then staggers as an invisible scythe slams into the axe wound and tears through its middle, then catches its leg and pulls opposite, gradually biting deeper and deeper, turning its molten blood into coal and ash, as it fights against. Unwilling to give up, the demon opens its maw, and a blinding point of orange light sparks to life between its jaws, firing a screaming 'laser beam' of hyperaccelerated chaos-flame at him and Hiromi, scraping the ground and causing the mud, water, and ice, to explode, throwing up pyroclastic geysers of lava. Shedding so much blood though, Original Face is able to crunch its central point of circulation just in time, and the slug slips just under its stationary chin, slamming through its solar plexus, and causing it to stagger forward, stooping and clutching its profusely bleeding wound with its open hand, briefing puking up a wad of searing blood. Hiromi rockets towards it. The sword-flame swings at her-- and then halts with a spray of gore, caught on another well-timed scythe blade. Her blow strikes true over its clutching hand, pulps every bone and muscle instantaneously, and then blasts its viscera --like molten reactor lead and concrete and carbonized wood-- out from its back. The demon roars in hissing silence, collapsing to its knees. Its inner fires blaze impossibly bright, and as it falls foward, consume it utterly before it even hits the ground, leaving behind only anticlimactic quiet. All that is left of it is the hovering will-o-wisp ghostlight of its soul, though rather than being white and whispy, it is angry red and appears to boil as if liquid. One that flies to Priscilla, un-fading, partially burnt and certainly bloodsoaked, but in decent shape. Holding it in her hand, she tries crushing it in her palm, as is her usual method, and then flinches and gasps, shaking a reddened palm. She frowns and stares at it like a once-wronged and mistrustful cat, instead causing it to disappear 'somewhere' with a swipe of her fingers and a puff of glittering frost.
Priscilla	Dusting herself of ash, Priscilla lets it be said by someone else that all there is left to do is to explore the cavern. However, it doesn't take long to wander, any sort of light in hand, before she stops before a set of stone stairs, a crumbling arch, and a deep, squared pool, that is equal reason for Eryl or Staren to pause, despite the light of the outdoors, brighter and hotter, somewhat behind its opposite archway. Her stare slowly tracking around the ruin, glowing yellow-gold in the dark, Priscilla breathes out the words "Firelink Shrine." "How is this . . . Firelink Shrine is older than the City of the Gods. It is placed above the true nexus of the world. A direct route to the Kiln of the First Flame itself; the heart of all creation. How couldst this rubble be here? Even if all other lands outside of Lordran --even within Lordran-- might be piled high here by the edges of the world shrinking and rebounding around the First Flame, it is not possible that its very center couldst." At the other end of the pool, a scrap of royal blue cloth has been tied around a pillar, stirring sluggishly in a faint breeze that comes from behind. A white soapstone message says: Stand at the edge of the world, and hold up the mark of the Lords. You won't die.
Staren	Oh fudge heat sword THAT's going to slice her in two! "Kukuru!" Oh wait, Kukuru regenerates and Staren has extra lives 'just' up above. Still, she has to focus entirely on dodging for a bit, and gets more of her coat burnt away and armor scorched for her trouble Staren is VERY glad this body isn't left briefly defenseless after using that attack at full power, like the old version was... The others finish it before Staren can come up with more to do. She quirks an eyebrow at Priscilla failing to absorb the soul... and then double-takes. "Wait, you... is its soul... entirely incompatible with everything else here...?" She assumes that's NOT a normal trait of demons, or Priscilla wouldn't have attempted it. Once things have cooled down, Staren puts her coat and shotgun away in her bag, removing the belt and tying it around her metal body to sheathe the vibroblades in. She keeps the robot-look, her disguise is... very damaged. Priscilla raises the puzzle of things being here that can't. "Is it possible that Lordran... that this universe... has gone through multiple cycles? A world beginning, living, dying, and ending, and here lie their remains? Or perhaps there is not only no 'where' here, but no 'when', and a piece of a future Lordran has ended up here?" Eventually she notices a soapstone message, and goes to read it. "Who could POSSIBLY have written this note?!"
Hiromi	Hiromi's left with fresh wounds thanks, in large part, to her unwillingness to deviate from her course of attack. There's no allowance for it, to make that perfect strike. It's highly fortunate, then, that somehow even this strike, the laser-like beam of fire and heat, is something that washes over her and 'merely' burns her surface, only just now reaching the point that her regeneration slows. It's purely by visibly conscious effort that she finishes the process, restoring her flesh, hair included, like stretching out after a workout. She does that, too, while cracking her joints two at a time. Acknowledging his success in what she'd requested, Hiromi raises a hand to Eryl, claws now disappearing beneath renewed skin, but holds off on further words, in favor of following after Priscilla. She's the one Hiromi had come here to support, after all, even if they've had few words together, since. It's been a mysterious affair, this journey. Not the fighting. She understands that well enough. The ruins, the jumbling, the passage of time, the appearance of things where they shouldn't, perhaps couldn't be, these she understands less. Picking up souls like that is new to her, too. "Heart-within-heart, this?" But Priscilla whisks it away somewhere, and Hiromi leaves it at that. There's a blue cloth. As she'd done before, Hiromi goes to inspect it, though this time, she first leans forward, abruptly shifting into the four-legged form of the Archwolf, padding over to give it, the soapstone, and the surroundings a sniff, now with it easier to touch her nose to the ground.
Eryl Fairfax	Calculations correct, aim true, Eryl nods with slight satisfaction as Hiromi seizes the heart, laying the creature low. "Thank you for the help everyone," he says to Priscilla and Kukuru and everyone else who opened bloody wounds. In the dark and rot, it was hard to tell, but Priscilla's words make him nod in acknowledgement. "How it came to be here, I cannot say. The 'Big Crunch' I explained at the edge of this heap alleges that things would be drawn to things of greater gravity which would then draw towards each other until everything collapses into a single point. And even if think in terms of... 'conceptual gravity,' the force that places of influence exert on the world, Firelink Shrine would rate highly. My best guess is that here, at the end of the world, something trumps even it." Spotting the splash of blue again, Eryl examines the soapstone message and exhales a huge groan. "Of course. Of course." Producing a notebook and pen, he scribbles down a set of co-ordinates and hands it to someone who can fly. "In the dreg heap, you will find a mausoleum occupied by rusted knightly armor. One of them is holding a banner. Get it and bring it back here please."
Kukuru	Seft's exasperation is well-deserved, yet it doesn't seem to bother Kukuru in the slightest. It probably should, considering that the 'plan' means getting close and right where the demon can still easily swing its burning sword at Kukuru, and especially considering the fact that it manages to slash right into her just before it takes the last few attacks that bring it down. Despite being floored for several moments as her body closes itself back up, however, Kukuru still manages to laugh lightly by the time the demon is finally subdued with the combined efforts of her claws, Seft's axework, Eryl's knee-cannon, Staren's lightning, and Hiromi's pure strength. The horrible burning sensation from being so close to the demon and its prior component demons for so long, as well as that freshly healed slash across her gut, tempers her mirth considerably after the fact, though, and it doesn't take long before the healer shifts her focus towards actually healing to start trying to patch everyone up after the battle. "Good work, everyone! Um... Is that normal?" She asks Priscilla while watching her disappear that demon's essence somewhere else, tapping a claw on her chin briefly before slipping it off to hold her hand up towards Priscilla. She's looking specifically at her hand, as if expecting to get a chance to treat that palm while she's at it. Although the name Firelink Shrine goes right over Kukuru's head at first, the explanation and Priscilla's question about it being here has her pondering that again. "Well... Why not? Things already looked super weird when we were with the old lady, right? Maybe this place is like that, too." She guesses without elaborating further, likely hinting that she might not fully understand her own suggestion. Staren draws Kukuru's attention to the note, and she once again furrows her brow in that attempting-to-solve sort of way that hasn't really gotten her far just yet. "Oh. Maybe... We gotta go back up to where the world just looked all.. Chasm-y? But what's the mark?"
Priscilla	"No." Priscilla says to Kukuru, but then, after a moment, "Yes." to Hiromi. "But I am not so certain that it even is a soul as we knoweth one." she says absentmindedly to Staren. "It hath the sense of one, and yet also as if more than mere spirit were contained inside of it. Something similar to . . . potential? I hath not the words for it." Her lip twists in a little ghost of a frown at the following question. "I do not knoweth for certain. The Undead roam again, in these lands, long after the banishing of the Darksign. Anything couldst be possible. But I hath mine own . . ." "Ah, yes, well done as well. Certainly I hath not yet seen a demon reach such heights of power. It is likely fortunate that we were able to encounter it at its weakest point. Or perhaps it was unfortunate that it was so at all; by all rights, they couldst only hath dwindled to nothing ordinarily." She shakes her head a moment and a few questions later. "No, I believeth the old woman to have no special insight, but merely knowledge that is not available to us in . . . our time." She decides on those last words hesitantly, speaking them in the same way one swallows unpleasant medicine. Spotting Eryl's notebook, her tone switches to a more positive one. "Aha. Attentive as always, Sir Fairfax. No, perhaps thou hast outdone thineself on this occasion? But thou art correct on two counts. If we art to envision the First Flame in a literal sense, and the boundaries of the world as only that which the firelight is cast upon, the shadows crushing in as it dims and banished back against as it is rekindled, it shouldst not be possible for the fire-pit itself to ever be pushed to the edge of the light and shadow such as this." "I supposeth we shalt learn very soon."