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Evehime Gevurah     'Meteorological event' is a bit of a ridiculous claim, anything at all considered. If one weren't familiar at all with the premise of The Line, they could be forgiven for thinking that this is it: the gargantuan scar of seared black earth, burnt into ugly fulgurite and pressed into muddy diamond, that stretches from horizon to horizon from the tracking point to the landing point, painted across the landscape by the immensely high-speed fall of some massive celestial object at an implausibly shallow angle.

    The part that hadn't been underplayed are the claims of 'energy signatures'. Even if one were miles away from it, they can feel the tingling on their skin, like adrenaline and wet batteries, and see the unnatural sunset, gold and purple tinged with midday blue at its edges, at the opposite horizon. Any fragments left in its wake have already been scavenged to the last by the local denizens, indicated by the maze of tire tracks, thruster burns, and beastly footprints, scribbled crazily over the trench, and even those sites, often showing signs of struggle, still crackle with bits of endlessly circulating lightning, or are surrounded by bubbles of weightlessly floating dirt and stone.

    The trench terminates at the edge of a cliff, just short of tipping over and plunging into a sea-deep river that feeds into the Great Ocean. Almost teetering on the ledge is what can only be described as 'a piece of sky', blue and glassy and hazy and strange, pulled right off the ceiling of the atmosphere, and on top of it, a massive hunk of marble and gold architecture that looks like it was smashed off the corner of some unfathomably larger block. A densely woven maze of halls and pillars and arches and vaulted ceilings and stained glass that still feels like a scattered crumb fallen from the upper tiers of a cake.

    Getting inside isn't even a question; it is open on every side because every side was originally inside. Layers upon layers of gleaming, mirror-polished floors, glittering golden columns and white marble walls, abstract mosaics and murals and scatters of coloured light fragmented by dyed windows, are open in every single direction. Most of them, also, contain signs of fierce combat. So much that the imagination struggles to imagine the Line's daredevils swarming over it in such numbers this fast.
Kale Hearthward "What... even is that?"

Kale was going to find a convenient spot to perch and examine the object - but on seeing the swarming locals, he decides he can do his initial observation from the air just as easily.

The hawk evaluates his options, as he spends a few moments watching the thing - and those around it and inside it. It's... interesting, at least. He doesn't know if he has the words to describe it. And the rumors speak of divine treasures and lethal traps - and Kale could use a little bit of divine intervention right now. He's off of his rhythm, as Midway so gently reminded him last night, and he's been at a loss for how to get it back.

... But by the same token, being this much out of sorts, is he really fit for dealing with traps? And even before then, just getting through the first rooms looks like he'll be facing a fight against whatever scavenger group also happens to be using that entrance.

"... No," he tells himself. "Thinking like that - I'll be stuck where I am."

And with that thought, he picks whatever looks like the least-occupied entrance, drops onto it, and tries to burst through - using his jet boots and his agile reflexes in concert to try to just maneuver around whatever opposition he runs into!
Persephone Kore      "But it's pretty, isn't it? So pretty I almost can't remember to be afraid."

     Unlike the inhabitants of the Line, the Queen in Veils is slow and relaxed, its sedate gracefulness cancelling out any advantage of its long strides. Big girls always finish last, but isn't that really a virtue? Haha, I've never minded it, at least.

     Though faceless, the pearl-white plastic mecha perfectly mirrors Persephone's body language at 6:1 scale, making my feelings still just as easy to read as they always are! There's rueful contemplation as she passes the bodies and the sites of conflict; warm marveling awe whenever her gaze lingers on the horizon; a little hitch of tension when she realizes just how close it is to falling into the Great Ocean.

     (Her strongest emotion, of course, is that suffocating more-than-real warmth and love radiating off of me! But just assume that's always there, okay~? So I don't have to say it every time!)

     She does not enter immediately. Instead, the Queen in Veils raises its doll-jointed hand and lays it on the monolithic cake-crumb's side.

    You're a long way from home, aren't you? Out of place, all alone. No clues but yourself. But I can still read your story just fine, and that's what I'm interested in most of all!! So tell me: why are you the way that you are?
Cantio Cantio's looking somewhat dumbstruck at just what it is she's looking at. It's the sky, but it's solid, and she's looking inside of it, but it's on the outside. The only thing she can really make sense of are all the people swarming all over the thing that looks like it doesn't belong here at all, and even that's still a mass of people she's not particularly equipped to...

Also, she's not sure what she's supposed to do about this thing. "Maybe we can just... Go in? It really is pretty... Pretty." She suggests with a laugh for Persephone while approaching the fallen structure, not even bothering to adjust her path to account for those already getting in themselves.

Common sense would tell her to follow Kale's lead, to try and find a more roundabout path that won't potentially put  her on the shitlist of all the people here. Cantio's mind, however, tells her that she needs to go straight in. Phony would be disappointed in her if she didn't trust herself that she could pull this off, after all, and so she just takes the shortest path towards what she can only assume to be the middle!

Somewhere in the middle of that structure, anyway. That much, at least, is still mostly a guess since she still has no idea just how this actual thing is laid out. Cantio doesn't bring out her weapons just yet, at least, although she's already prepared to punch the shit out of anyone without a proper name that tries to stop her.
Hiromi     Hiromi is, at times, slow to act. A short period of deliberation, of deciding that yes, this is a strange enough thing to deserve her presence, and yes, she'll do so now, rather than later, precedes her arrival. It's once she does act that she does so at full force, or something great enough that meaningful comparison is impossible. She tears the ground beneath her with her steps, each one a flex and leap forward, trailing the trench's path from the outer side.

    The smell of tingling air. It's not a pleasant one, for her. The sky domains are different.

    It would, one would reasonably assume, be a poor idea to get in her way. There are ways something could redirect the unstoppable force of her motion, if one were so unwise, though likely still 'not for long.' She's uninterested in the scavengers, just now, but only in reaching the edges of this broken place and finding what else it smells like. As she'd said to Persephone, there is the question of whether it's alive, or only scattered bones.
Darren      An aging RV speeds down the Line. A radar dish swivels wildly atop it, the engine groaning--the driver, illuminated from the back by myriad computer screens, is flooring it. Solar panels bolted to the roof gleam brightly. He'd been tracking this object for a while now--Darren Spears, enlightened scientist. He'd even advised the Concord about it, although he never did figure out how to delete an image.

     The RV screeches to a halt well in advance of the precarious cliff. It needs to, because the brake pads are in dire need of replacement, and Darren's early brake still ends up placing the vehicle perilously close. He hurriedly opens the driver's side door, tries to get out before unbuckling the seatbelt, and nearly falls out in his excitement.

     "Exhibit A," he narrates into a phone that floats from the pocket of his gym shorts. It's orange, and the case looks like it's got eyes. "The sky might literally have fallen," he notes with wonder. "Or at least, something snatched a little piece of it, somehow. Note the difference in color between our 'flake' and the rest of the sky." The phone pans upwards, as Darren adjusts his blue hoodie, unzipping it and airing it out a little bit. He must have been chilly in the RV.

     "Exhibit B... our culprit, maybe?" The phone camera focuses on the architecture affixed to the hunk of atmosphere. "Looks like a piece of something much larger. Could be a hologram reality apparatus--need more data to be sure..." Darren lifts gently off the ground.

     "Good call, Cantio," he says. "Persephone's own findings to be added later," he adds to his recording, waving at Phony as the phone float-pans towards her.

     "Signs of combat inside structure. Hard for me to tell if it's recent or not, but... I doubt it. The extent of the damage almost makes me wonder if the fighting isn't what caused this."
Staren     The Star Hawk fits in a bit better with the locals, flying at supersonic speed to approach the impact site. The distant boom arrives before it, though, as Staren slows down for a landing, the fighter-jet-like mecha transforming into a 40-foot-tall humanoid in a blur of motion, and approaching the Queen in Veils as the only other entity of like size.

    Staren opens a video transmission. <"It's up to you, isn't it?"> As in, it's her decision; Staren's curiousity about the structure isn't so strong that she'd dismiss the idea out of hand, she's also curious to hear Phony's reasoning. <"The rest of us don't have the power to send it back... or a way to tell where to send it *to*."> None of us have the power to stop you if that's your decision, either.

    Staren glances at her sensors showing Kale and Cantio charging in. "Well, I guess I'll take a look." She briefly starts to form the sentence 'so let me know what you decide so we have time to get clear' and then remembers that Phony can just fling them out of the building no problem.

    When the cockpit opens, Staren has changed from her piloting suit back to her usual outfit, magic flight and defenses up, and floats down to the entrance Cantio went in, accompanied by a swarm of drones, looking to rendezvous with her. A party is better un-split!
Evehime Gevurah     Even the locals, few as still remain around the outer site, know better than to get in the way of anything that tears up ground like Hiromi, and also anything that deliberately moves slow in this madcap zone for insane people. Arriving from the air is pretty gauche, locally considered, but it's not as if that really matters here. Despite the signs of such recent, overwhelming activity, nobody seems keen to linger around the outside. There are small heaps of parked vehicles and tethered mounts that have been left aside for some indeterminate amount of time, but shockingly little sound of activity relative to the architecture's sheer size and density of places to be.

    It smells old. It feels old. Older than time, but cleaned and kept and lovingly, even worshipfully, maintained, for almost that long. The sense of vibration through its surprisingly thick and conductive floors tells Hiromi that there are a score of places where 'adventurers' might be exploring, but a hundred places where something is moving that isn't, and especially one, great, utterly inaudible sound, with texture of clapping bells and churning machinery and a great beating heart, still thumps away like a metronome somewhere deep at its center. She smells blood and ozone and carbon and incense, but strangely, little of it is new, that much mingled with motor oil and sweat and leather.

    The story is one even older than smells and sounds, but so much of it is just the same. A place where everything worked perfectly, forever. Was meant to work perfectly, forever. The endless movements and schedules of countless long-gone servants, more complex than orbits and gravity in their daily path. A place that used to hear gathered song and praises as often as idle chatter. And then it stopped being those things, bit by bit, day by day, as a grim silence crept closer and closer to it. That they were 'at the gates', that fewer and fewer voices answered back, fewer feet found these halls out of all the others, and all five stages of grief are seeped into the stones over such a short time, before impossible violence had shook it for seven days and seven nights, and it had gone all but silent. But that was easily a hundred years ago.

    Picking a 'least occupied' entrance is more or less a gamble past a very near point, as very few have anyone who have bothered to linger around them for long. As Kale charges in though, even though the outside air disappears, and he is surrounded by a dim, glittering kalaeidoscope of light and shadow and reflection, he actually feels the air beneath his wings pick up. It feels easier to fly. The atmosphere is lighter. And it feels like he's a million miles up, almost flirting with the limits of gravity, despite being so close to the ground.

    He blazes right past the remains of a crashed ship, buried in a slightly creepy glass mural, over a dismembered mecha, around and through a collapse from the floor above, between waterfalls streaming from white nowhere into overgrown green and sapphire gardens. Then he goes straight down a hall with a window to the outside (how?) on his left that is bigger than a skyscraper, and the hall just seems to go on forever and ever, and the sunlight is getting hotter and hotter, and the air is actually burning, and the light is bearing down on him, and the entrance is gone, and the exit is gone, and this is so definitely a trap, just without the swinging blades.
Evehime Gevurah     The sights inside aren't much different for Cantio or Staren, though they're more cluttered with signs of heavy ordnance and high-speed crashes, including the still-burning remains of several wipe-outs. As they advance, however, the damage becomes more severe the fewer signs of entry there are. Rather than ancient gilded coffers torn open and gardens plucked up and halls stripped of their ornaments by adventurers, things here appear to just be wholesale missing, like the metaphorical bolts were pried off and they were carried away.

    It isn't long before they stumble across a couple of Holy Combustion Knights, clad in the somewhat iconic megadiamond armour and hyperglass weapons, cut off at an intersection and covering the ostensible escape of a handful of terrified squires and scribes carrying out bags bursting with glitter and scrolls on exotic fuel-fed hovercycles.

    There are more than just a couple of knights, but the rest are dead. They'be beleagured on all sides by swarms of creatures that are like golden rings and white ribbons that slash with elegant dives, and winged orbs of glass and crystal and pulsing light that bombard them with unrecognizable 'magic circles' that explode into pillars of floor-and-ceiling-piercing light.
Kale Hearthward This is wonderful!

There's a crashed ship, and bits of mecha - all interesting sights, and the waterfalls flowing into colorful gardens and the impossible corridors and...

... and it's getting hot in here. And - there's no path forward. And no path backward.

<J-IC-Scene> Kale Hearthward says, "Wait - where's the exit -"
<J-IC-Scene> Hiromi says, "Its heart beats."
<J-IC-Scene> Hiromi says, "Maybe it consumes you."

The air burns. The light blazes.

Kale can handle a *bit* of it, more than most could. Enough to afford him a bit of time to think. The first thoughts are of things that would be nice to have here - ways to teleport out, or stop time to set other things up, or - some sort of magical sense to find weak points. All of that would be useful, but he doesn't have that, and dwelling too long on might-have-beens is unhelpful.

What does he have...?

After pausing for a moment, he reaches into his vest, and pulls out a ziplog bag stuffed full of pebbles. He grabs a few, and tosses them onto the floor - the pebbles expand into boulders of varying size.

He keeps scattering these as he starts moving again - they're better than breadcrumbs for marking where he's been, and if there's some sort of dimensional stuff going on here maybe having more things in the room will 'anchor' it a bit. Maybe. It's a reach, but he's going to take any reach that might work right now.

With his trail of 'breadcrumbs' ongoing, he starts searching, trying to see if either entrance or exit door might just be hidden somewhere in the corridor, racing against time with the heat and light bearing down on him...
Cantio "There's sure to be a lot to find." Cantio replies to Darren with a thumbs-up in passing. "I mean, something this big doesn't just go sideways or inside out every day. Whatever did this might still be here. Or whoever, if..." She trails off, already doing some mental math that's ultimately useless (and skipped after the first three seconds). She lets loose some of her own drones to float alongside Staren's, less for safety and more to task them with just recording the ambient noise as they progress through the structure.

The signs of battle become all too obvious with each mark on the walls, hole in the ground, and weirdly clean marks where things should be that are no longer there. "Anyone looting this place couldn't have gotten stuff out that fast. I don't think I've taken anything out of here yet, so chances are whoever moved this stuff either took it before crashing this place, or..."

The knights coming into view finishes that statement for her. Seeing a chance to show off her skills and win over some devoted followers, Cantio splits into multiple copies of herself to start joining the fight against the swarm of creatures, sending out various versions of herself clad in different outfits (yet all wielding the same type of modular laser sword) to starts hacking away and shooting at the creatures with sonic blasts that are both pleasant to listen to and terrible to feel.

"You may want to drop those if you want to get out of this alive. Be careful now!" She warns the knights with a '''playful''' wink that's just a bit too stiff to really work for her, and then she rushes into the swarm as well to grab one of the creatures by the ring. Seeing an opportunity to test something, she tries accelerating its time while pulling on it with both hands, mostly to see if they're the immortal/slow-aging sort of weird creature or just something that looks kind of weird but still susceptible to rapid aging.
Persephone Kore      "That sounds exactly like the kind of thing a hero would do, Cantio! So of course you should do it. The littlest champion," she says to Cantio with a little laugh. Does Phony or the Queen speak? It's Persephone's voice, but it doesn't sound muffled at all, and the Queen's body language shifts as if it were the one speaking: hand on face adoringly, head cocked to one side.

     Even as the Queen in Veils lays one hand on the structure meditatively, it turns to look back at Darren- of course I noticed your eyes on me!- and give him an amiable wave back.

     Then, the memories: Ah. You really are scattered bones, aren't you? ... What a sad story. I wish you could be lived in again, used again, loved again. But that's too much to ask for isn't it? The people here think you're more useful in pieces. And there really isn't a point in putting you back where you belong: there's no-one left to feel the belonging.

     "I'm not sending it back," she says to Staren, having reached her conclusion. "It was lonely and unloved for a long time before it fell. At least now we're keeping it company, right?" And of course you have the power to stop me!! It's called 'making a sad face'. Haha, but even apart from that, there's so many special people here. I believe in all of you that you could find a way!

     "Everyone else is coming in from the edges," she says to no-one in particular. "Has anyone tried from above? I'm not sure." She does exactly that: lifted gently by her telekinesis, the Queen in Veils floats up to the top of the shining marble-and-gold structures and walks along the upper reaches to approximately the center, searching for a way down and in from there. If she's right, it might just be a shortcut to the center- or if not, it's still likely to be less touched by new intruders.
Hiromi     'This is a place' is a statement with no value, as is 'this is a place of many things.' Its complexity and history nudges against the borders of Hiromi's consciousness as she considers. That sound, below. The beating of a heart. This place does yet live. Should it, then, be placed back where it came from? It could be. What did Hiromi do, the last time she found ancient wonders, things that could not be replicated by the greatest sages, but might still work their miracles, if left in their proper place?

    Ahh. Yes, that's right. That's what she did.

    Hiromi needs no entryway. She makes her own, burrowing into the walls to find their between-places, claws tearing her way to tunnels between floor and ceiling, wrenching wondrous glass and metal asunder. She ignores the pretty halls and gardens, aiming lower.

<J-IC-Scene> Hiromi says, "I choose... my own, slow path. Choose your own, or follow mine."

    It has to be slow. It's the hardest path that could be chosen, in one sense. Perhaps that means it will be the easiest, in another, for denying the design of defense.
Staren > Cantio: Anyone looting this place couldn't have gotten stuff out that fast.
    "'Fast' is kinda the whole deal of the people here..." Staren observes.

    As they come upon the knights she starts to hesitate. Weighing the rightness of helping pillage vs just leaving this place... Cantio makes that decision for her, and she starts to hold out a hand to summon a weapon into, and then freezes. <"I'm sorry. Phony, are these defenders people?"> I know it's wrong but there's no time and-- her mind fills with visions of hypothetical aftermath where she learns she murdered innocent people defending their home, again, again. 'I was helping Cantio' won't assuage her conscience.

> Phony: You could try asking them.
    "Hey! Hey!" Staren doesn't stand motionless, Cantio is putting herself in danger, and Staren puts into action her half-formed defense plan of deploying walls of stone between the defenders and herself and Cantio to see if they'll block the magic circles and let them focus on fighting a small number of them at a time; She fires the laser pistol at full power at any she can see taking aggressive action, and starts warping in heavier weaponry if that's not enough.

    But while doing all that, she shouts at the strange defender-creatures. "This is really important! If this is some kind of misunderstanding, I need you to tell me!" Oh, as if it makes it any better if it turns out they couldn't talk. They couldn't the other times, either... But I can't let Cantio get hurt, either... "I'm sure you hear this a lot from people shooting at you, but I'd rather talk than fight!"

    Wasn't there a plan to deal with this problem? The computer can't answer questions like that, though, I need to phrase it right... and she's kind of distracted fighting and reshaping the battlefield right now.
Darren      Having fallen in with Staren and Cantio, Darren immediately changes his posture when he sees constructs, presumably, in pursuit of the knights and their charges. Lowering, hands on his knees, as if to receive a snap.

     Stone. 19. Hike. No hut. No time. Roswell emerges in a flash of light. As Cantio attempts to test the longevity of the rings, and Staren's walls come up, the little alien warps the space of the intersection.

    In this space, 'fast' is now 'slow'--and vice versa. The fleeing squires and knights, evidently unable to outrun the defenders til now, stand to benefit from this the most. But someone else benefits:

     Another flash of light reveals Harry, the towering yeti. Now faster in this warped space, the fierce creature lifts two trunk-sized arms. A glimmering aurora bathes the knights and squires in protective light, able to blunt the force of attacks hurled their way.

Walk, don't run. You'll be faster.
Evehime Gevurah     Leaving his 'breadcrumb' boulders in the endless corridor, the trail goes on and on and on long enough to lose hope, but by flying at high speeds eventually Kale stumbles upon the very start of his trail again. This is demoralizing, but potentially life-savingly helpful; he knows now that he is not stuck in infinite space, but caught in an extremely large loop. The doors in and out are nowhere to be found. Just the gigantic window that are somehow always beside him wherever he goes. The heat doesn't have an upwards limit. The radiant light reflects from the pale stone, and that which it absorbs is immediately released in shimmering waves like an oven. Only hiding in the shadow of his own boulders is, at this point, enough to save him from burns increasingly penetrating deeper through his skin. Even then, the light reflected from the back wall alone, and the conductive heat from everything else, will roast him alive eventually.

    Out in the main thoroughfare hall, the scribes blow right past Staren and Cantio in a panic on their supersonic cycles, barely sparing them a glance, and pelting them with a few bits of glittery metal falling out of their bags purely by accident. The knights, however, struggling to even break through to make a fighting retreat, cry out in relief upon seeing them, and wave them on, redoubling their efforts to smash through the creeping encirclement to fall in with them.

    Unfortunately, the walls are not much of an impediment. The magical circles slide 'under' them in some way, simply choosing coordinates in space perhaps(?), where the white circle itself is merely a reflection of those invisible mechanics. The flying rings and robes are stymied by them only in as much as they can't fly over or around them, and if they orient all their rings along the same axis, they have an extremely thin profile to do that with. As strange as it looks, the white vestments that are strung between and trail from their many wheels are like being cut with a paper thin guillotine, flung with the tip speed of a cracking whip. It's only the megadiamond that keeps the knights from being dismembered in moments, and even then their armour and shields are gashed halfway to pieces. The vertical blasts of light, piercing floors and ceilings, come with a strange sort of distorted flywheel whine that rises and falls like a falsetto note.
Evehime Gevurah     Cantio gives the knights a wonkie. They look a little confused, but are back to defending themselves in a heartbeat, cutting down the flying creatures as fast as they can with blistering sweeps of hyperglass swords, reeling as sparks fly from their plating. Blood oozes from deep splits in places. "We will lay down our lives for the Empress if need be!" "We have no regrets; this is all for the sake of speed!" "But now we are the last to leave! I'm sure you'll be rewarded handsomely!"

    Having a lot of clones in play means dividing up the number of targets the swarm has to attack, which takes a lot of heat off of her and the knights. The swords are almost totally ineffective on the creatures of cloth, being too soft and flexible to effectively cut, however Staren's laser blasts ignite them in one or two shots (which is admittedly odd for a combat-grade laser). Cantio's sonic blasts, however, have a tremendous effect on the many-winged crystals, causing them to crack and shatter on impact, dying in tremendous explosions, and releasing horrible screams when wounded. Those that survive the initial injury go from sky blue to blood red, crackling with crimson electricity, their magical circles turning the same colour, and doubling in tracking speed, firing rapid triple pillars of energy instead of one at a time.

    The relief that the knights are praying for comes when the storm of lightning swift killers circling all around them suddenly slows to a crawl, which they stare around in amazement. The shielding light that envelops them is seemingly absorbed into those mega diamond plates, filling the gashes and cracks and restoring its lustre. "Relativity be praised!" is apparently their takeaway, no strangers to the effects of the Line's separate Gears. They salute Darren, and begin hacking their way out, moving cautiously through the wall of fluttering enemies and placing their strikes carefully into the metallic portions of their enemy. The odd ribbon that whips out for them is something they take on the chest and retaliate through, easily able to trade with these slower blows with their protective buff on.

    However oddly, Staren's attempt to communicate causes a brief pause in the barrage. The crystal orb creatures swivel in a way that seems 'towards' each other, their cores pulsing in irregular rhythm, making unintelligible sounds. Then they all enrage as a group, focusing relentlessly on Staren to blow her to pieces with strafing walls of piercing light.
Evehime Gevurah     The Queen in Veils landing atop the fragment of castle built on a piece of the sky finds its soft, plastic weight is amply supported by the floor beneath it, save where it crackles with the sound of falling gravel over the most damaged regions the furthest between any pillars, the bisected trunks of which she can see all around her, telling her that this was never a roof, and simply wiped clean by its fall. She could force her way in at any point, or take some spiral stairs here and there by dismissing the Queen in Veils, but her 'mecha' will fit through a wide open circle near-ish the center, but still a ways off from it, from which glittering whitewater pours from its edges into a foggy waterfall below, like a piece of a waterfall had been cut right out and never asked where the river above it went. The stairs, at least from the top, appear to lead to mostly untouched rooms below, but the waterfall leads to a surprisingly vast and green garden, with a sliver of a ringed shape visible.

    Hiromi Doing This Again and ploughing right through the stone and metal and in between places of floors and walls and ceiling makes necessarily slow and winding progress, not as much because of the sheer sturdiness of the structure (though that does factor in), but most significantly because of the immutable geometric logistics of not crossing any empty space and how that affects a route forward. However, she is mostly undisturbed, save where the odd noclip light pillar blasts through as an incidental act of the many battles outside, or where a shuddering explosion threatens to cave her in.

    Eventually, she reaches a threshold at which no walls go further, and the ceiling/floor only terminates at a wall of water. Behind it, she can smell wet greens, rich earth, fresh smoke, and hear the vibration of that rhythmic pulse, as well as hear soft ringing in the air along with it. There is also the scent of blood and a recent fire, and a human scent.
Darren That bought them some time. Staren's drawn their attention. So... "BULLET! 22! HUT, HUT, HIKE!"

     The yeti lumbers forwards, marching towards the red-tinted crystalline swarms with arms raised. Fists larger than a human head crash into them with brutish strength, the recoil from the blows sending ripples through white fur. When his fists are stopped by ornate floor or gleaming walls, the force is enough to shake the ground nearby.

Roswell disappears in the midst of this charge, returning to a blue-and-yellow ball in Darren's hand. He swaps it out for another, making a bullet pass into the nearest concentration of ring-constructs. Out comes Nessie, who wastes no time making an attack of her own.

     The blue horn on the plesiosaur's head glows. Light condenses at the tip, into a brightly shining orb. Rays split from this orb, sweeping in alternating directions, each one leaving scores in its wake as it passes.

     Darren, meanwhile, is assisting the yeti--his hand extended, he appears to be trying to fracture the enraged crystalline constructs. "Good hustle! Keep that momentum," he shouts for Cantio and Staren's benefit.
Cantio "Stop apologizing, stop doubting yourself, and stop doubting us." Cantio says curtly to Staren while they work their way through the swarm of creatures, taking note of how strangely the creatures are moving as well as the difference in speeds between the scribes and the knights. The clones notice the difference in reactions to their attacks as well, shifting more towards a blast-focused approach as they scatter their swords into bits to act like arrays of amplifiers for those sonic attacks that seemed to work surprisingly well. With Darren's speed-inversion working in their favor, they can even shift their efforts from trying to catch the things in the first place to actually aiming accurately so as to not catch each other or the knights in the crossfire.

"None of us knows for certain what the situation is here, but it's easy enough to guess who we might be able to work with at all over here." She continues while catching a ribbon across her arm and fighting through the pain to just grab it and pour more of that sound-based offensive magic into the thing up close. A trio of energy pillars comes flying her way, and Cantio brings out her sword to block it, both to see how well one of her high-tech swords can withstand it along with trying to determine if she'd be better off just avoiding them instead.

"If the guess is right, it's right. And if the guess is wrong? It's wrong. We can adjust. But trying to straddle the middle ground..." She trails off, gesturing at the enraged orb creatures while inhaling deeply. Once she's found her center (more or less), Cantio puts on a more chipper-sounding voice to try and rally those knights while charging back into the fray alongside Harry with her clones and the knights. It's just a bit too saccharine to be natural even for someone with her general color scheme, as though she's trying to invoke the tone of somebody younger-sounding and more heroic than she actually is.

"Don't overthink things! Let's just clear this place out and figure out the rest later!"
Kale Hearthward The good news: Kale has found out some more information. The bad news: the information is that this room is indeed an endless loop and, assuming that he didn't miss anything, means there truly isn't an exit here.

And, hunkering against the cool side of a boulder to get out of the heat (somewhat), he realizes he's out of time.

There is no time to bemoan choosing a tactic that didn't work out. There's no time for wondering if this is truly the end, wondering if he'd ever see his comrades and loved ones again - or, rather, there is time, if Kale wanted to do nothing else.

He pulls his left hand sword, releasing a pained breath into the hilt mid-draw - no time for fancy activation poses, not that there'd be anyone around to see them. Just enough breath to get the magic carried into the mechanisms, turning the turbine that makes the blade unfold and activate.

He affords himself a moment - only a solitary moment - to steel himself before he gets back up to his feet and runs, full out, for that window, swinging Periactus as he does so, the blade forming and spinning into a giant drill mid swing.

No time to bemoan or worry about his predicament, or second guess himself. Decision, action, decision, action, until he breathes his last.
Persephone Kore      There's something so lonely about it, isn't there? I read, once, that when whales die they fall and fall. And when they hit the bottom, things pick their bones for years. When one story ends another one starts, but the new story is so quiet, so melancholy.

     I'm not sure if I like it at all. But the quiet is nice.

     It is lonely up here, but Phony has my own thoughts and the narrative to keep her company. Did the waterfall-hole happen to lie where she'd look? Or in her fugue, was she drawn to the sound of rushing water?

     The Queen cranes its head forwards over the edge, looking down into the hole. After a moment's contemplation, it walks to the empty circle's center, striding across thin air with clacky footsteps as if something really were still there. At the exact center, it raises its hands and slowly descends towards the green below.

     When her mech lands, Phony takes a moment to assess her surroundings in more ways than one. I'm really far in, aren't I? So there shouldn't be too many people. Who *is* here? Is anyone still alive, from before it fell?

     Shutting her eyes and attuning herself to the hearts of those around her, Phony soaks in as much detail as she can from that 'sea of stars'. Who's nearby? What are the qualities of their hearts? Are there any truly standout presences she doesn't recognize as belonging to her allies?
Hiromi     Patiently working her way 'forward,' for various but significant meanings of the word, Hiromi arrives at 'a destination,' for a good enough meaning of the term.

    There's nowhere to go but in, but at least here she has the smell of earth. Better than sterile, carved stone, made smooth by unknown hands. Here, though this is part of the sky, it might yield to her, a creature of the earth. She carefully tears through the final layers of metal, and makes her way into a place of growing and burning things. There's a human, here, somewhere. She'll make her way in that direction, still moving like a huntress.
Staren     Staren has to focus more on dodging circles than she'd like. Although, at least she learns the defenders can't themselves move directly through them... She focuses on trying to box them in, rather than setting up some sort of maze where they'll only be encountered in small numbers -- it's good for THEM to be close to walls, but not for her and her allies because then they can't see the circles coming!

    Once she finishes speaking, they... appear to be talking amongst themselves? Did they *understand* her?? Hope that this will go well rises in her heart... until they all focus on her. The piercing light hits magic shielding, stopping it but ablating away at the same time, softly glowing 'cuts' soon all over the invisible armor all around her. (The long 'skirt' part of her coat is cut to ribbons, though.) She's caught off-guard by the initial barrage, but she WAS kind of prepared for this...

    Staren's body armor warps onto her: Bubble helmet, orange holo-scarf, sleeveless 'labcoat' cloth over white plating with concord-orange accents over black flexible material. This time, it's further enhanced -- glittering hyperglass nozzles mounted on a jetpack, on plates around the body, and on swiveling spurs that allow for fine control; megadiamond armor plates cover the easiest-to-strike/cover areas on top of the normal armor.

    With this, and Darren slowing things down, she's much better able to weave around and between the intersecting lines of fire, though bits of coat-tail get lopped off and the megadiamond plating accumulates cuts. She's upped her offensive game too, going from lasers to forearm-mounted energy cannons firing Darren-speed-enhanced miniature comets of firey plasma that splash/spread on impact to try and cover and possibly set on fire anything they come in contact with!

    She does feel briefly bad at Cantio's words, and nods, but there isn't time for her to dwell on such thoughts.

    Staren tries to corral the defenders enough with the walls to indirect-fire plasma missiles from shoulder racks and incinerate a group at once!
Evehime Gevurah     Corralled into half-functional killboxes, the enemies are starting to be beaten back as the knights stage their fighting retreat, using all of their temporary HP to the fullest. Darren's attack has two saving graces to it; the winged orbs are exactly as weak as they look to big, blunt, shattering impacts, and the beams that hit them may be harmlessly refracted, but then they end up splitting and spinning and slashing through hordes of surrounding ribbon monsters.

    The walls raised by Staren provide convenient material to launch, both with sonic blasts and the yeti's fists, pinning down the light, fluttering entities and cracking the translucent ones. Comets of plasma ignite and turn shoals of slashing cloth into bonfires, making strange wailing sounds as they fall charred and lifeless to the ground once the last of their white shroud is eaten up by fire.

    They scrape by in eliminating the last of the enemies just as the knights exit the trick room and before any of the entities can follow them. Stopping to catch their breath, the Holy Knights each offer a stamped 'medal of service to her Holiness' as is the prerogative of a questing knight, redeemable at one of the Speed Fortresses on the main Line for some future favour or another. They also warn that there is a terrible trap in the corridor ahead, and only the one to the right (from which they came) is now safe, as they've just eliminated its guardians. However, they also share that there are 'fearsome monsters' lingering around a 'holy garden', because 'a guardian even more terrible than they' has ejected them from the inner sanctum, and that no one has managed to penetrate it so far. They're hoping to get a full expedition organized once they return home, bearing treasures of 'secret knowledge' and 'celestial metals'.
Staren     Thankfully, when the monsters(?) run out of new tricks the tide of battle turns swiftly enough! Finally, the Concord partners get a little breathing room. Staren accepts the medal and offers a business card in turn. "If you would like Concord involvement in the mission, give us a call. We'll also let you know if we end up making it through the sanctum today so you can save yourselves a trip." There's an enchantment on the helmet that lets her speak as if it weren't there.

    She also decides to try pushing it a little: "I think, honorable knight, that saving your lives on a mission like this is worth a bit more than a favor, a bit of that 'secret knowledge' would do nicely. Though of course you must keep enough to show her Holiness the value of your expedition, I understand."

    Staren smiles what she hopes is charmingly.

    And also silently directs some of the drones to go scout the 'trapped' room and the 'untrapped' room, to add to her automap if nothing else.
Evehime Gevurah     Kale does something more than mildly suicidal. After this length of time, he is asking to be blasted by a giant laser in the face, behind little more than the shade of Periactus itself (mostly if he wants to keep his vision). The drill contacts the stained glass, and finds the hardness of diamond and the strength of steel, sliding and skittering while attempting to bite in and find a foothold. The force of his approach finally causes a crack, which the tip catches in, and after an unholy screeching racket and ample smoke and sparks of pure friction, he breaks his way through, and tumbles into somewhere soothingly cool and humid and wet, landing on soft, springy earth.

    It doesn't take long to figure out that the group has mainly converged into the same ring-shaped 'garden', because approaching from any direction eventually leads into it. The open space is tall enough to see into every vaulted and glittering balcony. Paint and murals at the tops of soaring pillars suggest the crumbled remains of an illustrated ceiling, but now water simply rushes from nowhere. The strip of green walks, rainbow mist, and crystal clear creeks, is broad and long enough for some small number of people to probably live in permanently. If one cares to examine, there are many signs that it was once badly damaged, and that 'nature' has simply overtaken it, new flowers and succulents colonizing old craters, grass sprouting from stone cracks, vines using old scars as climbing footholds. Blooming trees are everywhere, without particular organization to any of them, bearing unfamiliar, impossibly vivid fruits.

    If one can get high enough (or to a clear space and looks up), across the artificial valley, the deliberate construction rises floor to ceiling again in a cylindrical shape at its center hub, sealed by massive doors of gleaming gold that are covered in patterns of a radiating sun and a snowy mountain below.

    It's also littered with the signs of many recently failed attempts at invasion, everything from smoking, limbless mecha to crashed and twisted hovercycles to exploded jetpacks and skeletonized speed mutant mounts, though even that ugliness is almost lost in the lush greenery. The culprits patrol the area at random, easily glimpsed through the trees or at the creek that bisects the garden. Packs of weird, roving, armless white-cloaked and masked humanoids, giant floating golden faces, winged figures like living flames carrying swords of gold, and huge, faceless 'statues' of marble standing around in suspicious places. They're not instantly aggro'd just by entering, but they appear to be hostile and on patrol everywhere.
Darren      Smoke clears, and there's a moment to talk to the knights. Darren takes the opportunity. An image comes to his mind--a famous one, of a scholar in red stumbling through the firmament.

     "I do love secret knowledge," Darren notes with a smile, when Staren brings it up. Turning the medal around in his hand, he levitates it into his drawstring backpack.

<Tac-Concord> 4 Staren says, "Oh, uh, if either of you want access to the automap and shared target locations, I have glasses you can use."
<Tac-Concord> 4 Darren says, "Bet. Lemme get a pair."

     Slipping them on once offered, he's going to take the quickest route to the inner --if that means through the trapped room, then either Staren's drone will be his miner's canary, or he'll have to make some serious jukes to get through.
Evehime Gevurah     Hiromi can easily scent the places where invaders were recently killed, and weapons and magic were fired from either side, as well as the enemies themselves, if she cares to avoid them. The earth between her feet is soft and unworked, but relatively thin, just barely enough to allow the solid growth of tree roots downward. The smell of a human is a recent trail, appearing right in the middle, probably from above, and leading forward through the sanctum doors. Depending on whether she cares to follow it exactly, or forge her own way onward, she'll encounter different sights and problems along the way.

    Persephone can sense the psychic presences of all the enemies at once; they aren't even veiled to the degree that humans naturally are, without any unclarity or mixture of different thoughts. However, they have a strangely 'undeveloped' sense to them, as if they can only really process one thought or emotion or command at a time, and all of them are filled with an unpleasant, bitter, spiteful, burning vengeful hate for what feels like 'all intruders', but after she focuses for a little while, what seems to be 'all humans', or perhaps 'all mortals'? The biggest stand-out is, of course, from within the sanctum as Hiromi has found the directions, strangely 'muffled', perhaps by some old, half-working seal of the doors, but feeling grand and vast all the same, unmistakably in a state of deeply focused meditation and tranquil calm.
Evehime Gevurah     Darren going straight through the center encounters mainly only a very long, tall, and pretty hallway with a delicate and intricately painted glass floor. The drone entering first instantly drops like a thousand ton stone and shatters into a million pieces against the glass. All of those pieces crumple and flatten like a tin can under an industrial pneumatic press, until it is squashed into a nearly two-dimensional painting of a crashed drone.
Hiromi     Hiromi has spent this much time avoiding the place's defenses, and she continues in avoiding those places where the looters have already met their ends, and those that ended them. She's more interested in the one who made it through.

    So much so that, unless another path should be clearly stealthier in its approach, she carefully parallels that recent trail. She keeps the earth growing beneath her feet -- not the things in the earth, but the earth itself, subtly mounding where she walks. She might need a lot of it to suddenly move.
Kale Hearthward For a time, Kale does nothing but lay on his back, in the dirt, breathing heavily. Periactus, which has spun itself out and deactivated, lays next to him.

"... Alright. What have we learned today, Hearthward..." he says, to himself, staring upwards. "'Sometimes actually trying to brute force your way out of the trap is less painful than trying to think your way out of it'?"

"... That doesn't sound quite right..."

"... 'Sometimes you just get a bit burnt'? No..."

"... 'Sometimes there is no moral, now get back up and find the treasure'. That'll have to do."

He gets up. Periactus looks a bit beat up, he'll have to get a new one made later. The rest of him is a bit on the medium-rare side, but he'll just have to struggle through it.

<J-IC-Scene> Kale Hearthward says, "... I don't suppose anyone with healing happens to be nearby?"
<J-IC-Scene> Staren says, "Not enough for that, anyway. Medicine will make it hurt less and reduce the chance of infection, but I expect you don't want to stop and wait through a synthetic skin graft operation right now."

Damn. Well, fight through the pain, see a healer later.

He kicks off again, flying high enough to get the general layout. There's the likely destination (he hopes), the central area. Of course, it's guarded.

Kale steels himself again, and carefully starts moving - dashing from cover to cover, trying to rely on speed and mobility and timing to stay unseen - or, at least, uncaught for long enough to get clear.
Evehime Gevurah     Staren is informed, a little bit miffed by questioning a knight's honour, that how well she can trade a token of Holy Favour is very much up to her own proficiency. However, when Darren also pesters for secret knowledge, they confer amongst themselves and decide that there are three brave Elites and they have only two tokens to give, so it is ultimately only fair to present a third prize.

    Rummaging through what one could conceivably call an 'adventurer pack', they fork over a pair of scrolls, ostensibly looted from some ancient library of knowledge. However, even at a glance, anyone can tell that they don't fit together. One is like lustrous white silk wrapped around an egraved axel of embellished gold, sealed with a sort of golden bolt or stamp that only releases with a small amount of magic, and reveals essentially unreadable geometric script. The other is like a glass canister capped in pewter, the case itself etched with countless miniscule sigils that catch slivers of light. The scroll itself is deep golden-amber, inked in black and red, and is accessible by simply 'pulling superhumanly hard' on both caps, displaying an inside of an incredibly complicated character-based language with numerous illustrations that are hard to tell apart as either instructive diagrams or decorative mandalas. It seems very very odd that they'd be found together.
Cantio With the creatures eliminated, Cantio can catch her breath and even takes a moment to look over the shiny medal that she's gotten from the knights. She absorbs the information they share rather intently, too, especially that regarding the TERRIBLE GUARDIAN, the right side clearing, and the secret knowledge and celestial metals protected by it.

Mostly the knowledge and metals.

She offers the knights some business cards before they leave, both with her Concord-based contact information and more colorful ones with her home city's insignia to really hammer in the 'you just got saved by the Concord and also royalty' side of this whole thing. She doesn't keep them for long, however, and leaves the decision of what to grab to Darren and Staren when the third and fourth options are presented. She does, however, recommend snagging the glass and pewter canister while slipping on those mapping glasses for convenient intel gathering (and to see how weird things may or may not look with them on). "It's harder to read, but if we can translate it, we'll have a better shot at deciphering whatever it is."

When Cantio notices Darren heading for what might very well be the still trapped rooms, she doesn't stop him, but she does watch the drone going in first and winces when it becomes considerably less three dimensional. "Maybe... This way instead." She recommends while gesturing towards the right path with an anxious chuckle. It's clear Cantio's more interested in getting to that holy garden before anything else ends up going missing, but she is at least waiting for them to finish up here before heading down the rightmost path to regroup with the rest of the group in the ringed garden.
Darren      Darren stops in his tracks, holding out a hand for Nessie and Harry to do the same. "Hold up. You see that?"

    Harry grumbles with concern at the sight of the flattened drone. Darren removes Staren's shades, rapping a finger against his chin. "Heavy gravity..."

    "Oh, damn. Of course!"

    Nessie is called back. Out comes Saucer, the ladybug with the aircraft early-warning array for a thorax. The little ladybug is bathed in red energy, misty clouds gathering around him as he grows to an enormous size.

    Now a glowing-eyed UFO with a wide-cast tractor beam, Saucer angles backwards, bumping against the ceiling. The tractor beam is aimed towards the room ahead.

    Bombarded with the strange energies called forth by the UFO ladybug's will, the gravity in the room begins to lessen. Harry, under Darren's command, flings small hunks of hail into the room.

    When the hail can skirt the boundary and not be crushed alarmingly flat, then Darren makes his move, recalling the yeti and flying across the chamber as Saucer continues to counter its gravity--no sense chancing any pressure plates.
Persephone Kore      Hating humans like that... I thought this was a war between humans, but was this place really built by something else? Maybe it really was a piece of heaven.

     The Queen in Veils gives a distracted wave to the rest of the party as everyone else converges. The practicality of making it past the arrayed celestial defenders doesn't really cross her mind; her personal sense of danger is horribly atrophied, and I'll step in if you *really* need it, but I'm sure my friends are special enough to make it just fine!

     Persephone herself teleports out onto the Queen's outstretched palm to snag one of those impossibly vivid fruits- she chooses a red one, of course!- and then shimmers back into the cockpit to enjoy it, without her doll-mech breaking stride. Cheerfully, to Hiromi: "Think you can open those doors for us? I really want to see!"

     One gets the sense that she doesn't mean 'I want to see what's on the other side', as much as 'I want to see you do it'.

     I do also want to see *who's* on the other side, though! I have a little bit of a suspicion, but it's hard to tell with their mind so empty and relaxed.
Staren     Okay, they pushed it a little, and there's nothing to be lost by politeness, so after a quick look over the containers and sliding them into her messenger bag: "Thank you, kind knights." She starts to bow, and then awkwardly tries to switch it to a curtsey halfway. It's okay, as long as she maintains a poker face they'll assume it's just a gesture from another world! (she does not have a good poker face)

    By default, the glasses display a very faint overlay of projected 3D map of what's 'behind' walls, with more opaque colored indicators with ranges for locations of known hostiles, allies, and unknowns, which are noticeably faded/greyed with a 'time since last seen' indicator for those lost sight of. One button on the frame returns to this view, another turns it on/off, and another brings up the settings / general computer use menu, which projects buttons and the like for the user to 'touch'.

    Staren starts to turn away from Darren, but stops and looks when the drone goes offline, seeing it crash and crush. "Uhh..." She hesitates, but surely Darren won't be suicidal, right? So she follows Cantio. Besides, she can see Darren's location through the automap. She keeps a little picture-in-picture of what he's seeing in the corner of her vision to see how that shakes out.

THE GARDEN
    Staren takes a moment to look around and take it in, while drones fly up and out and explore -- whenever one gets attacked or shot down by guardians, the rest maintain slightly more distance from guardians until the aggro bubble is discerned (and marked on the automap with a warning.)

    After a moment, Staren takes some soil/grass and fruit/leaf samples to add to Concord R&D's collection should anyone care to look over them.
Evehime Gevurah     Persephone irresponsibly plucking fruit from a heavenly garden does not result in any kind of smiting. It's probably far too late for that anyways. It is impossibly sweet and rich to the tongue, with a flavour that can't seem to settle on just one note, as if her tongue isn't physically equipped to experience its full breadth. It's also saturated with enough water to live off without drinking, if one cared to.
    Staren's mapping of the rightmost corridor shows only a few straggling enemies wandering in from other routes, and seemingly no presence of terribly deadly traps.

    However, Darren counteracting 'instantly fatal gravity' with 'anti-gravity', in the most literal of terms, the straight hallway is actually, now, the easiest route. One that leads to the garden in line with an arrow straight cobbled path directly into the sanctum, with a bridge over the creek, all marginally overgrown but by far the clearest shot to the great golden doors set into the center at cardinal points.

    This is also where Hiromi is lead to. This would be unremarkable save that it implies the entrant just walked all this way in. The path is littered --heaped, even-- on both side with bodies and destruction, but beyond the first stretch, all of it is 'the enemy'. There are barely any signs of fighting to go with them, merely crushed and lifeless stone, torn white limbs, bent and broken metal, thrown to the wayside like trash.

    Their issue is that a mob of enemies has gathered at the very far end, quite a ways away, but still within sight if one squints against the light. It seems as if they're gathering to wait patiently outside the door, intent on ambushing someone the moment it opens, with some rudimentary form of tactical intelligence. With such a long and clear line of sight though, it isn't long before they notice, turn around to face that group, and attack.

    This is more of an issue than the corridor before, because most of the mob appears to be capable of sniping them like this without really caring about the great distance, and there really isn't any way to shelter from it without running into the forest and simply drawing aggro from more patrols. Laser beams from floating heads trace explosive walls where they scan back and forth. High-velocity globes of holy fire shriek in a constant stream from the bright swordsmen. Enormous spiral lances of solid energy are hurled by the giant statues. Even the humanoids throw wide their cloaks, the insides lined with glowing eyes, and barrage the group with a suppressing deluge of feather-shaped incendiary darts.
Cantio "This looks like it's been like this a for a while longer. Damaged, but... Left alone somehow?" Cantio comments as she notices the signs of nature around the garden, puzzling over all the signs of hoverbikes and other vehicles and machines clearly left by others trying to get in. Noticing the giant golden doors, she's about to go check that out right away, but stops upon noticing the packs of more human-ish body parts that don't quite look like they're fully one person each.

Also, the fact that they're shooting all sorts of lasers, lances, and balls at the group as though they had entered some kind of invisible timed battle arena. Yelping in surprise at first, Cantio scrambles around to get her footing back on track before executing a sick sideways flip through a whole stack of darts!

And then getting shot in the chest anyway by another barrage of burning holy stuff, but at least she looked cool for a few seconds. Cantio staggers back for a moment as she brings out her sword once more to use it as a shield, throwing some healing magic into her wounds and around the garden battlefield at her allies to give them a bit more of a boost going into this new fight.

"It looks like they might be most comfortable fighting at range, so... Let's get in there!" Cantio charges out of whatever little cover that sword qualifies as after announcing that 'strategy', evading more shots as best she can while weathering those she can't. The evasion gets easier as her sword splits apart with each shot it blocks, and she eventually hurls herself sideways as the sword is once again scattered into many component pieces that flit around like shitty plastic pellets sans gravity.

While the evasive maneuvers continue, those bits of Cantio's sword start blasting their own lasers at the aggroing creatures, not entirely to inflict terrible searing damage to them, but to try and pin them down so that the group can effectively get through their barrage and bust them up.
Kale Hearthward Kale ends up finding the Concord group and tagging along with them, largely whether they want him there or not. After the rough trip so far he really doesn't want to tackle any more of this place alone.

"Close range - got it," says Kale, when Cantio makes her analysis, and he kicks off with his jet boots again - skimming forward to close in and engage one, maneuvering around the incoming fire with a variety of flashy midair twists and turns and spins.

(It's good to have someone to show off to again.)
Staren     To Cantio: "After everything we've seen, I wouldn't be surprised if there's some temporal wackiness, too. Time might pass faster inside this place..."

    Upon sighting the group of enemies waiting, Staren reaches into her bag and pulls out an M72 rocket launcher, but while she prepares to deploy it, the fight starts! Fortunately, she's already got the high-mobility armor on and can take evasive action immediately! She fires the launcher as soon as she can point it where it'll at least hit *near* a grounded enemy and then drops the tube. Most of the attacks give her some opportunity to evade -- although she's soon rattled around by explosions and has got her share of scorch marks and burns in her magic field and her armor, the darts being a particular pain to dodge and make her try to sweep them out of the magic forcefield with her arms before they can make things around her dangerously hot!

    She follows Cantio's lead, trying to approach and just taking the occasional plasma potshot until she gets close, drawing a pair of vibro-swords and trying to flank and stab enemies faster than they can adjust their fire to track her!

    Sure hope they aren't actually super-good in melee too...
Darren Darren's flight to the garden is accompanied by his immense UFO friend and his plesiosaur friend. Upon seeing the mob gathered at the far end, Darren touches down at-speed, sneakers sending sprays of earth flying forward as he does.

     "STONE! 22! HUT HUT HUT..."

     The violent screen of projectiles is incoming. He hasn't called the snap yet. Play clock is ticking. "HIKE!"

     Saucer roars, lights on his massive carapace flashing. The large pokemon takes a nasty hit from the lasers, but manifests a wide, sturdy protective screen a split second before the globes of fire and incendiary darts strike him--and Darren.

     From behind this protective screen, Nessie throws her head back. A plaintive cry summons a thick, vision-obscuring mist, billowing to envelop the crowd at the far end of the garden. Darren recalls her, and takes off running, feet pounding the ground, arms pumping.

Gotta get better field position.

     As Saucer smolders in the background, nursing a smoking wound, the UFO begins mustering its strength for some sort of attack, blue lights glowing brighter and brighter. Darren, meanwhile, sends out Slabb, leaping into midair to hurl the pokeball across the stream.

     The heavy, stonehenge-looking creature leaps high into the air--higher than should be possible with its weight. His surface gleams as Darren lands. Slabb rockets himself towards the patch of mist, air friction evidently so great that a fiery corona forms in his flight. Darren watches, waits, for Staren's missile to impact. Once it does, Saucer's attack fires with a mental urging from Darren. Grass blades flatten, disturbed earth smooths out. Gravity is massively amplified, to both crush the defenders and ratched up the intensity of Slabb's Bullet Dash.

     A fiery explosion sends clods of earth and cobblestone flying as Slabb impacts the earth.
Persephone Kore      Phony makes soft noises of satisfaction audible even through the cockpit. "This can't be the Garden of Eden, can it? But even so, taking the fruit feels sort of... what's the term? 'Gender affirming'?"

     The Queen in Veils' white plastic is gouged and burned by heavenly lasers and spears, but since it's homogeneous and totally lacking in actual vital components, it simply keeps walking through the disfiguring onslaught at an unhurried pace. Its shadow provides a convenient chunk of moving cover for allies.

     Persephone's ego-regeneration steadily bends it back into its ideal shape, smoothing over gouges and erasing burn-marks like a photoshop blur tool. But it isn't quite fast enough to keep up with the accumulating damage.

     "Hey," she scolds the angels gently. "That really isn't cute, you know. If this place is already ruined, why are you doing this? Just for revenge against mankind? I don't like it at all. Please stop."

     Though there is no gesture or incantation to go with the psychic exertion, there's a tangible shift in the air as Persephone's heavy aura reorients against them, a magnetic tug on the skin. The language of hearts is gravity. Gravity can bring things together, but it can also deform: Jupiter's tidal forces slowly shred its moons apart.

     With her aura focused on resculpting their hearts- singleminded and crystal-clear though they might be- it becomes extremely difficult to want to hurt her and her friends, and extremely easy to simply give up and leave. Combined with the demoralizing impact of her friends attacking, it's liable to force a rout.
Hiromi     Once she's to to the stretch at which stealth will be practically impossible, Hiromi pauses and observes. One ear flicks in Persephone's direction, the only acknowledgment amidst focused attention. She gathers. Others strike first.

    It isn't Hiromi itself, though one could assume otherwise, that rushes toward the defending mob. It's an even greater wave of earth, unreasonably real, dense, dark and solid, than even what had been following Hiromi out. It's a landslide without a mountain, lifted into being by Hiromi's hands, engaged by her wordless command. It rises, in places, like a tumultuous tidal wave, bits of green carried here and there with it, crashing and rising again.

    It's quite easily attacked, scorched and scored and pierced, but there's hardly any point in doing so. Finding the wolf behind it is possible, but difficult, and stray fire isn't enough to slow her. It's mass set in motion, and an equal force could halt it, but flames and lasers aren't up to that task.

    It all comes crashing down hard when it hits Saucer's amplified gravity field. At that point, Hiromi's not far behind, leaping out and up to the joining line of the doors, her claws ready.
Evehime Gevurah     With the situation on the marble path turning into a stand-up gunfight normally only seen in worlds with primitive and poor-quality firearms, it quickly becomes apparent why every group that'd been able to penetrate this deep before had been wasted right away, especially with their proclivity to try and outspeed the problem on a straightaway. Given the lack of 'corpses' by the door, it does seem to imply that they heaped up by the path before this congregation gathered, which had then annihilated the adventurers, daredevils, and glory-seekers.

    Saucer's barrier covering the party is a vital initial reprieve, as the group being packed so close together on and near the path is a recipe for absolute disaster, probably annihilating anyone who isn't Persephone or Hiromi tough with overlapping blast templates and even dropping those two to orange health. Nessie's mist is an absolutely massive boon right after; the sheer volume of fire coming through the fog still makes for a real bullet hell level, but the distance still works against the enemy more than Darren's allies; they can't aim, and the Elites only have to aim 'along the path'.

    Saturation fire from Cantio's many laser swords, and the explosives from Staren, are well-suited to aiming 'roughly in the enemy's direction' and still inflicting damage. As Kale can easily see such brightly shining energy attacks coming in the mist, scattered heavily at random, and has the tactical map information to go off as well, he is first into the fray, followed by Hiromi and then Staren. The rolling earthen wall shields those low to the ground remarkably well for a short while, though the javelins appear to be able to pierce it with enormous kinetic force, albeit still utterly blind.

    The floating faces appear to have no melee attacking ability whatsoever, and can't fire at point blank without also incinerating themselves, though the armless humanoids at least attempt to jump back and keep spraying up close. The statues of course have big, telegraphed, crushingly powerful attacks with blunt strikes and conjured bladed weapons of ethereal light, and the flame-creatures have their swords, but it's still a good deal easier to deal with that then anything else. The gravity field also massively hampers their agility and ability to react, and the crash from Slab disrupts their lines, allowing Kale to fly right in and carve a breach into their ranks, perfect for Hiromi to scatter them like bowling pins with their enormous strength, and leaving things relatively safe for even Staren to get some hits in.

    The melee is short and chaotic, half-blind fire filling the mist, obscured shapes rushing around, attacks coming from blind spots on both sides, the cluster of enemies getting in each others' way. A great deal of damage is done in the surprise round. There's a period where the enemy starts to rally and close in, encircling dangerously, but it's too little too late; their numbers dwindled, 'morale' (in as far as they experience it) low, and having demonstrated enough intelligence to form a line like this in the first place, the remaining enemies recognize a losing battle through their haze of hatred, as Persephone strips all that alien rage away with the vastly greater weight of her heart. It looks rather strange to see such inhuman creatures do so, but soon enough, they begin scattering into the woods under cover of mist.

    That leaves the group with just the gigantic golden doors. Though they are, easily discovered, warded up and down against almost every conceivable magic, they are susceptible to 'unrealistically titanic amounts of force prying them open', which would normally be utterly unthinkable and a huge obstacle, except Hiromi is right there, and Persephone isn't all that far behind.
Hiromi     It's a rare shot that, fired blind, can find Hiromi, but by the same token, there's no way for her to anticipate and dodge an attack that even her opponent didn't realize would be aimed her way. Initially safe by having begun her assault from a point of ambush, things get much more dangerous when she leaps for the door, and abruptly realizes that there are, somehow, still too many too-dangerous defenders for her to take her time proving the limitlessness of her strength. The floating faces can strike her, if they don't mind hitting the mostly-impenetrable door, but she twists off and away to avoid them. The statues can't reach her with their speed, but the flame-creatures can. She lands atop the remains of her landslide, a chaotic mess of dark earth, roots, and torn greenery, reorienting with a delay of zero, and launches herself into those surviving numbers, instead.

    Tracking every movement in her vicinity like an impossibly frenetic dance, into which she slides her own steps, Hiromi is constant motion. Her sense of moving 'just enough' doesn't avoid those golden blades entirely, but lets them scrape against her, knocking pillars of earth up through her opponents from odd angles, and finally stealing one their blades for herself. She hurls it through the eyes revealed by an uncloaked figure, taking its blasts in the process, though her burned flesh falls off to reveal a still-healthy body beneath, with no mass lost. She grabs one of the floating faces, and throws it into the conjured weapon of a statue in the moment it forms.

    Everything is going quite well, by her standards, until a massive lance of light from just outside her awareness, and through the obscuring haze, finds her in the same moment she's sidestepping a statue's next downward swing and slamming another defender into the ground by her grip on its cloak. It hits her in her still-healing face, from the upper side, angled just below her temple.

    Hiromi's head explodes, her grey matter along with it, and the earth faintly ripples to softly accept her fallen form to rest, as she drops where she stood. So softly, she almost sinks, as if it were more mud than garden soil.

    It takes a full twelve seconds before she's back on her feet, shaking the dirt from her hair.
Hiromi     Once the fight is over, Hiromi clears away the earth still pushed up against the door. She could do that with her hands, but tapping her foot in an impatiently authoritative manner is faster at getting it to melt away to either side.

    She makes sure that it's strong enough to take the stance of her feet, beneath her, when she puts real effort into pushing those doors apart.
Staren     Staren's armor still ends up scorched all across the front, with some deeper burns on some of the plates; thankfully protective allies give her time to keep refreshing the magic field on her way to melee.

    Once there it's kind of a relief that Cantio's right and there is not some additional layer of bullshit in this strange place. Or at least not one in this fight. Her fighting style in melee is informal and brutal, using the cutting field that limns the blade to just try and make as big of a wound as possible, or to outright destroy as much structure as possible when fighting something that doesn't bleed, tearing the blades free as destructively as she can whenever she gets them into something. She really has no formal training in this.

    Has Persephone actually seen her mind do this before? As long as she doesn't run into a problem she can't solve like this, it becomes smaller and laser-focused, everything is tactical and objective information and processed as such. Enemy, obstacle, ally, dangerous area, incoming attack, opening to exploit.

    Moment-to-moment decisions are mostly reflex while she tries to stay where attacks aren't while launching her own. Sometimes, a brain trained by years of experience intuitively recognizes an opportunity for a more complex maneuver and builds sub-objectives forwards or backwards to the present, executing as soon as the chain is complete or a definitively 'forward' progress step can be made.

    Some foes are completely neutralized in melee and the statues are easy to dodge; the flame creatures and armless humanoids are the biggest problem here, and Staren can outmaneuver the latter and use her extra sword to block the former.

    There is a slight mental expansion when Hiromi 'dies'; there isn't enough room to fully process the emotion, just a dulled shock and then -- no brain, can't personally fix, no objective change, reconsider later, can't she regenerate or something? -- and she gets right back to it.

    When the enemies run away, Staren's mind is out of objectives and unfocuses with a brief moment of disorientation; she looks around, verifying less instinctively that the threat is gone before rushing over to Hiromi while sheathing her swords, thinking a brief Thanks to Persephone while considering how to solve this problem... until she notices Hiromi is regenerating. "Geeze. You scared us a bit there..."

    She's still a bit rattled from that as she turns to consider the door.
Darren      "Good hustle, good hustle!" There's no need to pursue the enemies into the treeline. Instead, Darren turns and extends his hand towards the gigantic UFO. It becomes apparent, after some midair wiggling, that Saucer is being telekinetically pet. Slabb, rising up from the earthen crater made by his impact, waddles over to get some short-distance pets, which Darren is more than happy to give.

     "Now," he says, taking a drink of water from a squeeze-bottle, as Saucer slowly floats over, "If this -is- part of a hologram reality generation system, I bet the most important controls'd be behind those doors." Certainly, they're the kind of doors you put in the way of things you don't want just anyone touching.

     Wiping his brow with a towel, he recalls Slabb and Saucer both, the latter shrinking down and changing back to his original form. Thumb and forefinger on his chin, Darren looks between Hiromi and Persephone. Roswell comes out, peeking over Darren's shoulder.

     "Nah," says Darren to the little alien. "I think they got it." Cupping his hands to call over, "Yo, Staren! Get that secret knowledge ready, blood. Might need it in the inner sanctum."

     In the meantime, Darren's phone pans across the battlefield. "Exhibit C. 'Holy garden' mentioned by Holy Combustion Knights. Note the remains of facility defense... regiment? Systems? Whatever they are, there's a certain intelligence that's hard to miss. For instance, the concentration here's due to an attempted ambush."

     He pauses, posing a question to Persephone over the tactical radio as a sudden curiosity overtakes him.

     "In terms of will, or heart... not quite like one of us, according to an expert on-site," he says, his mind pressing down on the volume switch to zoom in. "More like part of a human." There's a grateful smile sent Phony's way. "Probably whatever parts you'd need to effectively defend this place."
Cantio After an initially confusing volley form both sides, the creatures are beaten back and forced to flee! Cantio is looking a bit winded by the time the garden is clear of active threats, and she does freak out considerably when it looks like Hiromi's just flat out dead, but the Archwolf's return to the living....

Actually, Cantio still looks fairly freaked out about that. "How...? D-did you just...? Are you okay?!" Even without waiting for a response, she's already fussing over Hiromi, busting out the expensive healing magic to try and fix whatever lingering injuries there are in Hiromi's head that she's able to. "I-I mean, it's great that you didn't stay... Dead, but still!"

Cantio eventually stops freaking out, at least, and calms down enough to turn her attention back to the giant cylindrical structure with the golden doors. The wards keep her from trying to just shove her hand right through it at first, but her curiosity gets the better of her as she brings out a considerably more expendable clone to have them try and phase right through it first.

It's only after doing so that Cantio realizes that doing so won't really help everyone else get inside, so she joins in the efforts to pry it open despite not having quite that same level of overwhelming strength. A lot, sure, but not ludicrously so.

Darren mentions the secret knowledge, and that gets Cantio to perk up a bit. "Oh! Right. They knights we saved before mentioned that there was a terrible guardian that kicked them out, too, so there's probably going to be something even worse behind these doors."
Hiromi     After answering Kale, Hiromi spares another short, almost-silent laugh for Staren's concern. "Battles frighten, but skin grows thick, yes? Be sure, only, callouses still let you bend. Only as stiff as needed." That probably wasn't a pun.

    Cantio gets a monosyllabic grunt that she can unambiguously understand as an affirmative 'yes, I'm healthy,' with an undertone of acceptance for her fussing. She finds, further, that Hiromi is still covered in wounds, though they're all something in the general area of 'superficial.' Healing magic can take care of them, together with a nick to her ear that's odd to have been there anyway, if it just fully regenerated. Apart from that, her head's fully intact.
Kale Hearthward The tactical map is very useful. That it's all Concord tech and/or support, though - that's... something that sits in the back of Kale's mind. It feels kind of like cheating, somehow.

He wraps up his part of the battle just in time to turn and see Hiromi's head explode. That was... also worrying. For a lot of reasons.

"Really you just - walk it off. Getting killed like that," he observes as he lands nearby, after the initial shock and questions have passed.
Persephone Kore      Though she isn't facing that way, Phony is still aware of when Hiromi 'winks out' nearby. Her mech turns to look, conveying alarm despite its lack of features with a hand covering where its mouth would be. She seems able to accept Hiromi's 'waking up' a moment later with an unusual ease, though: "Don't embarrass her, okay, Cantio? And Kale. I'm sure she's perfectly fine!"

     The Queen in Veils barely recoils when struck, weathering explosions and lasers as if it were far heavier than plastic possibly could be. Unfortunately, it is still markedly softer than metal; even lacking any 'weak points', it can still be chiseled away into nothing with enough sustained firepower.

     Around the point that a sustained beam from one of the giant faces burns straight through its head to leave a crescent-shaped remnant, its patient goodwill evaporates into something distinctly irritated.

     "Hey, I told you to stop that." A barrage of feathers are knocked aside as if by a hurricane wind that touches nothing else.

     "I asked nicely and everything!" A lance strikes an invisible wall just two feet away from the Queen's plastic chest, and crumples on impact.

     "I really am losing my patience you know!!" Another face fires on her from the side. The laser bends around her mech as if warped by a horrifing gravity well.

     Its hands ball up in agitation. "I really don't want to play games with you. You don't get the point at all! Please, just-" It lunges to reach for one of the stone statues, nearly its own size. Plastic fingers close around a marble arm. There is only a slight shift in posture, and then a sound like thunder, and the trees all bend away from her in the pressure-wave.

     The Queen's arm is straight and its hand is empty. The statue is gone. A dissipating vapor cone and lightly glowing trail of ionized air shows where it went: thrown back out the hole in the ceiling and into the sky, liable to land somewhere in the Great Ocean hundreds of miles away.

     A soft, defeated sigh. "It would make things easier if you just stopped, okay?"

     When the celestial creatures break and run, she takes a moment to relax and let the mech's accumulated damage heal over. She could help with the door, but I'd rather see her do it! As long as that's not imposing, haha.
Evehime Gevurah     Opening the doors, as some might correctly intuit, is a feat worthy of Hiromi. Even though their size and material already suggests they must weigh an obscene amount, it is the sheer resistance that makes it a herculean effort of physical labour to push them inward. It doesn't seem as if they are designed to only open with a special code, but rather, they are meant only to be possible to open by power bordering on divine.

    Doing so, of course, leads only into a circular center; this is the only possibility bar (another) violation of space. Here, even those with dull and mortal senses can feel what Hiromi had felt: the throbbing of power in the air, vibration beating the dirt, the sound of clapping bells and turning gears and a beating heart inside their ears and their hearts and their heads. It isn't loud, but it isn't quiet either, unignorable, but easily accepted, without respect to distance.

    It takes no kind of extrasensory attunement to feel the energy that circulates throughout this entire chamber, endlessly flowing, bending, and orbiting back into itself, crashing and reemerging, without ever leaving. It passes through every cell, every atom of your bodies, stirring some deep and long-forgotten instinct, adjacent and yet indescribably separate from 'awe', which compels one to stand back and appreciate a master artist's hand in motion without interference.

    It comes from a sphere of solid sky at the very geometric center, the same as the giant piece outside, yet impossibly more vivid; sapphire blue for the most part, yet all the colours of sunset and night are reflected in its equator and penumbra, fading back to day at its ultimate edge. A mesh of golden gears, seemingly connected to nothing but each other, ticks and churns slowly within, each ratchet of the largest wheel causing another pulse of sparkling light to eject from it as if from the corona of a star, each smaller cog regulating the rate at which its myriad streams orbit its gravity well. There is an unshakable sense that even this, itself, is a set of meshing gears. Hard matter interlocking with liquid colour, liquid colour interlocking with ephemeral energy, ephemeral energy interlocking with something deep and primal and all around you.

    The walkway continues to the center of the room as a short bridge and a circle platform. Water cascades from white nothingness above, where there should be a stone ceiling, in a ring around the celestial machinery, and fills a bottomless, crystal clear pool below, perfectly reflecting the sky-colours and glimmering firefly streams above. The most valuable object of greatest interest is plain to see. The specific person that Hiromi and Persephone had been tracking is present almost incidentally. Almost.
Evehime Gevurah     A woman is seated in lotus position under a portion of the circular waterfall with her back facing the door, letting the water crash over her bare upper half, mostly obscured by voluminous black hair, wet enough to be plastered straight against her skin; a small heap of black and gold cloth is folded off to the side, out of the water, along with a handful of glittering trinkets and a pewter-capped glass scroll case.Getting a sense of perspective in the room immediately indicates that she could probably look Cantio or Staren in the eye even from her seated position. She is enormous even for her height, and even moreso, not in built up way, but with such sublimely optimized and balanced ratios of combat-ready mass that just looking at her makes the deep lizard brain react as if being stared down by a jaguar.

    Actually, everything about her reaches deep into an ancient part of the evolutionary psyche: the part that recognizes tribe, leader, strong, and desirable, that is always subconsciously absorbing everything from shape to posture to bearing to voice to micro-expressions in other humans, subdividing and classifying them as higher or lower authority, scary or harmless, ruthful or deceitful, tough or weak, threat or mate. That instinct is explosively awakened from its normal state of silent suggestion, ringing alarm bells in any basically humanoid mind: this is the greatest of all leaders, this is the strongest of all warriors, this is the most beautiful of either to ever exist; they know no deceit, they know no failure, they know no defeat; throw all that you have to the wind to follow them; submit and be saved and exalted; all else is secondary to joining their tribe.

    Visually, she is only familiar to Persephone, but her voice is at least recognizable to some. Without the narrow bottleneck of what sounds a radio can produce however, equalling --no, exceeding-- the beating of the divine engine in eminence and power, commanding every sound in the chamber to bend itself for the sake of absolute clarity. The voice of one who has never thought to lie. The voice of one who has never feared anything in a way you understand.

    "Kneel." The one word command isn't a suggestion, but an exercise of absolute regnal dominion. It takes a truly special power of will not to feel the overpowering urge to comply --and to feel fulfilled to do so. "The Celestial Engines aren't to be tampered with by the young, the primitive, or the half-formed. A piece of the Ten Heavenly Realms is not where you belong. Explain yourselves." There's a second of pause, and then she says, without either turning to look, or any kind of clarification, "I sense you there. What is the meaning of this?"
Darren      "Exhibit D--" But words don't do it justice, do they? Do they ever, when it comes to masterpieces? Darren falls silent, letting the phone capture, with its limited ability, the extent of the majestic, celestial machine before him. He follows the walkway, the phone panning downwards to catch the clear waters below.

     It becomes evident then, at the sight of the incredibly imposing figure meditating, that words not only wouldn't suit this sight, but would actively tarnish the contemplative silence implied by a space like this. An inner sanctum. Given command, Darren kneels.

     He then explains himself.

     "Half-formed. Why else would I be here, if not to be something other than? The search for truth--for enlightenment--is always going to be transgressive to somebody."
Kale Hearthward Yeah. This - has to be what they're looking for.

Well, what Kale's looking for - but at this point it's sort of like, 'a share' of whatever treasure is at the heart of all of this, instead of all of it. Hopefully a share, anyway. He'll worry about that later.

"... Ah..." Kale looks around - and gets his phone out to take a few quick pictures. This feels like something to be remembered.

And then Kale is commanded to kneel, by someone who his brain is telling him is the leader of his tribe. Of course he'd kneel. Why wouldn't he kneel? There's nothing strange about this situation.

She says they don't belong here. Of course! How is it that he didn't realize that before now. It makes perfect sense.

"I'm here looking for power," explains Kale. "I thought maybe there might be some in the center of this object."

"... That's about it?" He feels the need to explain further. "I've been getting my tailfeathers kicked over and over again for the last month and so I am starting to get increasingly desperate for some solution that'll give me some sort of edge before I develop an inferiority complex. So that's why I came in through here."

There. That should do it, as an explanation. Kale feels properly fulfilled.
Cantio "Emba..? Ah! Don't worry, I'm just... Er." Is there even a remote possibility Cantio's behavior could be called anything but embarassing and fussing? Probably not, and she sighs lightly in defeat before patting Hiromi's arm lightly. "Sorry about that. I just... I'm not used to seeing that sort of thing up close. Still, to be able to take that and keep going..."

Cantio shuts herself up with a quick smack to both sides of her face. Even she's got a limit when it comes to experimentation, and that apparently means not studying allies!

Once the doors open up, Cantio steps in and feels that pressure hitting her almost immediately when she sees that magnificent structure made of gears and wheels and such. As much as she'd like to spend the next hour or three studying the whole structure, however, there's work to be done in following that walkway to see just what else might be hiding in this structure along with whatever might qualify as the terrible guardian of this place.

She does, however, leave some clones behind to inspect the great geared structure for her.

Cantio sees a lone figure under the waterfall, and she's enthralled at first. She sees a powerful warrior, an ideal leader, someone to fear, someone to trust, someone to be cautious around, someone to hide from, absolute terror, respectful awe, indescribable horny. She's certainly felt all of those emotions at differing times, but never all at once like this, and the effect on her mind of all those things hitting her at once make it all too easy not to realize that a command was even issued until she realizes one of her hands is on the ground.

"... H-huh? Oh! I'm here to see what... What happened to bring this place down like this." Cantio replies, actually doing quite a good job of projecting her voice despite still resting with one knee on the ground. There's something telling her that this isn't the right position to be in, but it feels almost normal somehow. "And to see... Um. To see what sorts of technologies I can find here with my allies."
Hiromi     Hiromi opens the door, as a foregone conclusion, a mighty effort though it takes her. It even looks like an effort, slow and steady and grand. There's no sweat, no need to catch her breath, yet the impression remains. So many other things, she'd simply strike with her heel, and be done with them.

    They go inside, and a command is given.

    There's no sense of resistance, in Hiromi. There's no sense of anything at all, like a wave that didn't crash against a rocky shore because it never reached it at all. There's no purchase for the command to find, and nothing for it to grasp. There's not even a sense that Hiromi heard it for anything but a word. But, hear it, she did.

    "Come, make me, if you can. Try to force me. The order of things, you know it, yes? First, challenge. Second, victory. Last, domination." A word filled with meaning. "Your voice, I've heard it. Don't disappoint me, claiming without taking."

    Oh, but she was asked a question. Answering it as if it's not nearly as important or emotional as challenging this warrior of warriors to immediately shut up, put up, and see where that takes them, Hiromi says, "Taking by right of conquest." A different word, similar, and just as clearly understandable. Self-fulfilling authority. To deny it is to deny reality. If it were not permissible then it would not have happened. "Digging before-buried things, tearing out its heart, taking its power. 'Dismantling.'"

    As if only just noticing it, she looks up over the sphere of sky. "More living-beating than heard. Does this sky need its pieces? Or will it be devoured, more to take its place?"
Persephone Kore      Persephone does really, sincerely applaud when Hiromi pushes the doors open. Of course she does it with her doll-mech's hands, so it sounds a little bit strange, but it's impossible for anything she does to seem insincere. "Haha, you really are amazing! Thanks for showing us, Hiromi. I mean it."

     On entering, of course, she's near-immediately enthralled by that celestial orb. She extends her subtle psychic senses towards it, but asks it nothing. What answers could it give her that could be more fascinating than the thing itself? The Queen takes a step forward and instinctively raises a hand for it, though it's still so far away. She could stare at it for hours.

     So it's good that you're here, isn't it? To be even more fascinating than that.

     The command to 'kneel' washes over her and sinks in, a droplet of food coloring vanishing in the ocean. The Queen raises a hand to its cheek. "Ahaha, but you don't really mean that. Not to me. Wouldn't you be sad, if you really were that lonely?" Of course she perceives Evehime's mind-bending magnificence- actually, I love it a lot!! Maybe I'm a little jealous- but it peacefully sinks in and blends with Phony's overflowing self-love and towering ego. It's just really hard for me to think higher of you than I think of myself! Ahaha, but I'm trying, I promise.

     She shimmers out of its cockpit to sit in the mech's open palm, her legs crossed and dangling over the side. Her elbow rests on the Queen's curled finger, and her hand supports a charming smile.

     "I wanted to learn its story. Why it became this way, and whether it'd be doing a good deed to put it back where it belongs."

     That smile shifts to a slightly pouty frown in response to 'young or half-formed'. "That's the second time anyone's called me underdeveloped. I'm really starting to dislike it, you know."
Staren     Staren was vaguely expecting perhaps more enemies, and is caught off guard by... this. She tries to take in the details as best she can before she notices Evehime, and that lizardbrain sense of 'predator' which is, frankly, a bit worn out and exhausted from encounters with Lilian, is mercifully dulled by Persephone's aura. Although Staren moves closer to the Queen in Veils's foot.

    Kneel. Part of her resists, but it isn't enough... although once the feeling of fulfillment rushes through her, most of her brain agrees on: What the hell was that?! Before analysis and self-observation and seeking control spin off in different directions. Mental influence! Danger! Phony's here. I'm safe. But what if-- okay yeah, Phony's here. But what does this person want?

    Staren stands if there isn't remaining influence not to. "Curiousity. We wanted--" Oh, Kale had something specific in mind. "I wanted to see what was here. ...And maybe exploit it. Probably."
Evehime Gevurah     "Four low creatures. Two higher forms. I'm surprised." intones the figure under the falls. It could be described as a 'rumble' or 'boom' if only it weren't so satisfyingly melodic, with a tiny bit of verbal fry. "A weak soldier searching for strength. Certainly, power can be found here, but a mortal soul like that would pay a terrible price for wielding it; weigh carefully your ambition. To exploit the Celestial Engine . . . ? Well, no matter. This one holds up the sky in some far-flung Realm. It is likely that few to none still live there, if such a thing begs your care. Technologies, you will not find. Those are the purview of humanity. This belonged to one of the Angelic Races. The Word of the Holy Spirit is what governs physical law here, not wisdom or science."

    "To become fully formed, seeking the Truth is a necessary step. That one understands so much. Good. But this is a Malchut Truth; a foundation of all the conscious emotions and conscious intellects is necessary to even begin to comprehend it. You're getting ahead of yourself. No matter."

    The woman pushes herself up to her feet, turns and steps from out under the waterfall. The sense of meditative calm, filling the room, flows back into her and collapses into a point of focus with the density of a star. Luminous, near-cyan eyes, marked red at their corners and cheekbones, move to Persephone, and a half-smile twists her lips. "Take no offense, would-be Hesed. A warning is only a warning. But the creatures you've brought along in your wake are unready for this, if indeed even you are."

    She stoops for a moment to move that pewter-ended scroll canister off the pile of clothes, and then begin drying her hair with a black cloth, as if speaking casually to a lover. She doesn't spare a single glance for any kneeling figure. On the one hand, it's a little too obvious that she currently seems to barely consider their existence, but on the other hand, it also feels a lot less threatening like that. "What happened? Ah, its story. It is a long one, but also a simple one."

    "This debris is a fragment of one of the Ten Heavenly Realms, as I said. One of the many sites of the War of Eversion. A hundred and some years ago, the people I once knew fought here. I fought here. It is one of the five Realms in which I campaigned. The reason you see it here is simple; the damage was so severe that even now it slowly disintegrates under its fading power, and its edges crumble to earth. I hadn't thought of it for a long time, but . . . I shall keep my reasons to myself, but I felt the urge to return to one of these places. This one was about to fall into nothingness, so I caught and threw it where it seemed convenient. It holds many memories."
Evehime Gevurah     Hiromi, just like that time on the radio, suddenly stirs laughter in her. There is no sense of derision or arrogance in it; it is a spontaneous outburst of amused excitement, powerful enough to drown out thought-- to make a heart soar in elation and freeze in fear. "You want to be dominated? I can tell just from looking at you, she-wolf, you are far stronger than I assumed from just your voice. But isn't that the nature of wolves and humans? One that stretches back thousands of years. I see, I see! How amusing! In a moment, then!" Her grin is too fierce to be entirely sane. It feels better for most to be beneath it.

    "Dismantle it if you will, and have no care for someone's far-away sky. My people shattered thousands of these Engines across all Ten Realms, and picked their bones for the powers of the Creator. At first for mere wonders, and then for weapons of war. I would be a hypocrite to deny it. But that much power will destroy a lesser man, and slowly twist even a greater man bit by bit."

    She goes back to shaking her head at Persephone. "It makes no difference if you return it. The Creator abandoned it long ago. The Holy Spirit lost. Only its servants still care for it, and even then, only those of little spirit and great rage still bother to stalk its halls. You may even keep it, if you wish. That second to last of all wars is long gone, and the point of it all has gone since then as well. It is little more than a bittersweet trophy, of a time when humanity conquered every last one of the eight billion curses arrayed against it, and we lost our Reason."

    "Ah, but first, your servant has something of mine. They will return it."
Staren     Staren frowns a bit at being called low, but verbally contesting it is probably a bad idea. Still, her prediction of the 'usefulness' of this 'Celestial Engine' trends ever downward, then steps up a bit when Evehime says her people DID find wonders and weapons in it. Although the need to somehow circumvent memetic hazards is noted.

    Eight billion curses? Lost your reason? What happened?

> Ah, but first, your servant has something of mine. They will return it.
    If the command is there it's resented, but Staren agrees that hiding things here is a bad idea. Although... Does she mean BOTH scrolls? REALLY? Okay yeah bad idea. Staren pulls the two scroll cases from her bag and holds them out.

    The movement, and the break in Evehime's stream of exposition, gives her a chance to speak. "What eight billion curses? How did humanity lose its reason?"
Kale Hearthward ... Weak?

"I'm - not weak," Kale manages to say. "I'm not."

A large part of himself is pushing back - the part that's still viewing her as the tribal be-all end-all of authority. The other part, though... manages to push Kale to his feet.

Well, not quite to his feet. To the level that he's no longer kneeling - but not *quite* standing up straight. Not yet. Gradually.

"And I am *not* a low creature."

The part of himself that's pushing him onwards understands that the reason he's able to be speaking right now is because her full force isn't on him right now - but he's still standing up.

"I will carve up and remake this world with my own two hands, if I must," he says. "I will conquer and dismantle, as well, starting with this piece of fallen heaven if I must."

Of course there is none of Hiromi's force of meaning behind the words, nothing close, but Kale's trying. This is not a smart thing to do right now. He knows that. But if he didn't stand, however much the effort before and however much the cost after, he isn't sure he'd want to go on as he had been.

"So don't... call me low, or weak. Do that, at your own peril."
Staren     Staren looks over as Kale stands up and declares that he will remake this world with his own two hands. Gods, it was so tiring thinking I had to do that. Maybe he's different, though. Does he draw strength from this, or only desperation? Guess we'll see.
Darren      That he is appraised to be reaching farther than his grasp will allow doesn't seem to bother Darren. "Well, you gotta start somewhere," he says, still kneeling. "I'll put in the time. Guess I'll see you again when I got that foundation." Despite the imposing, dominating aura that Evehime projects, Darren speaks that with absolute certainty.

     He extends his hand and the phone flies towards it. Now in his palm, the screen is unlocked. In less than a minute he's in the deep, deep end of search results, trawling single-digit membership forums for even the slightest similarity to what she'd said. A 'Malchut Truth.'

     It's not that he's expecting to find some fully-written out screed on some ancient self-made website with auto-playing music. But this is the type of person that turns heads. It's taking an act of will not to stare, in point of fact--and the decision to avoid standing back up...

OH MY GOD BRUH YOU--

     Darren casts a hard glare Roswell's way, silently mouthing 'shut your damn mouth.'

     Darren's not necessarily expecting to find everything--but someone must've seen something, must've heard her speak at length. This isn't the kind of person you ignore, after all.
Cantio Angelic races and things that work by decree rather than by logic. That's definitely not what Cantio had in mind, and she looks somewhat disappointed by that revelation despite not vocalizing it right away. Still, for something to be called the Celestial Engine means it has to be something great, although that great price is likely something that might be too much to risk at the moment.

"Malchut? Is that a..." Cantio starts, then stops when she realizes the explanations aren't finished yet. The swallows nervously, trying to keep her expression neutral despite it being clear on her face that she might not quite be familiar with everything that the woman is throwing at the group.

Conscious emotions, conscious intellects? That's definitely not a thing she's looked into before, but it's something that she files away for eventual* future** research. The story is listened to, and those looks directed at Persephone are noted with confused curiosity, but it's the connection of this place to the unidentified woman that has Cantio speaking again.

"I didn't realize this place had a connection to you. In that case, would it be alright if I studied the gears and things outside?" Cantio asks, pausing briefly to signal to the other Cantios to stop checking said gears and cogs and things out from before just in case she's not given the go ahead to do so. Even though permission has been granted to dismantle the machines, she's still trying to be at least a little careful. "Dismantling it might.. Oh!"

Those knights and scribes from earlier were escaping with bits of something, weren't they? And they did mention a terrible guardian... "If it's not a problem, then I'd like to take some of this back with me. I know there's going to be more..." She refrains from actually saying 'lesser', and she's trying not to think it, but she's definitely thinking it. "... People from the local area and further out that'll be coming to try and do the same. I don't think they'll be able to understand iat as well as anyone here."

The woman's question to Hiromi, however, just has Cantio looking between them in wide-eyed surprise. Some (repressed) part of her mind is likely reasoning it away as a power dynamics thing, but another part of her mind overpowers that and gets her to just nod once, slowly and deliberately.

*later
**if she ever remembers after seeing all those gears and cogs earlier
Persephone Kore      "Humanity's reason," Phony says thoughtfully, idly tapping her fingers on her temple. "Conviction and will, right? Defying and sculpting the world. When you've broken every curse and beaten the world into exactly its perfect shape, that reason is lost, isn't it? Or it sleeps, until things decay again."

     A brief pause. She laughs. "Or something like that, probably. I know I'm not that clever."

     Persephone perks up eagerly when Hiromi and Evehime acknowledge each other, reading the tension in the air with pure almost-sparkly-eyed eagerness. "She's really amazing, Evehime! Maybe even more amazing than Miyamomo. But if it's true that other people might still live in the realm where that engine holds up the sky... you'll probably want to go somewhere else to fight. Just in case!"

     "... My servant? Oh, you mean-" She directs a warm smile towards Staren. Everything really will be okay! I promise. You're doing so, so well. And I'm proud of you for not feeling like Kale does, anymore. "Is that scroll yours? You don't seem like you keep a lot of possessions. What's so important about it?"

     She looks at Kale. Her eyebrows lift. She looks back at Evehime. "He's not with us actually," she informs her with a thoughtful expression.
Hiromi     "Don't you know? This truth. The strong challenge. The stronger takes victory. The strongest dominates. You're surprised I know truths, maybe? But I am Hiromi." It would be an avalanche of meaning, but that implies a period of time. All of it is condensed within the single name. The full meaning of 'Hiromi' is given when she speaks her name, integral to it her position at the apex.

    If there was only one difference between Hiromi and Evehime, though there is certainly more than one, it would be that Hiromi is a wolf. Her self-expression isn't made to be perfectly understandable to humanity, nor to the human-adjacent, nor to incidentally similar humanoids. Only a wolf could have that same intuitive understanding of the Archwolf at a glance, as a human must necessarily have of Evehime.

    And yet, even so, Hiromi's stance, her expression, her sound, her breath, the micromotions of her muscles, all gives a specific feeling, which needs only simple translation. She wants to fight. It's not unbridled. It's not rage, nor even anger, in the first place. It's controlled, just imperfectly, in the way that a smile reveals happiness, even when the rest of the body is still. For her, that's her entire body. It's a very specific kind of anticipatory joy.

    Battle-lust is a carnal desire.

    Her laughter is near-silent, though her body shakes, only the bells in her hair being quieter. "You think you're stronger! Yes, good. Good. You must believe this. Belief, too, is strength." The joy relaxes. Her thoughts are clear and sharp.

    "To follow this, this truth, is what is good." The statement's flow is less halting than her usual, as of having had occasion to express the same sentiment many times. "Rescue from foolish leaders. From needless pain. From destruction that shatters, not tempers."


THEN:

    Persephone said, "They can become like 'you are'. But you're 'the strongest', aren't you? And there can only be one person who's the strongest. What does that mean? Would you share, or would you fight about it? If you fought about it, what would you be if not 'Hiromi' anymore?"


NOW:

    "Or, don't you know? I am the Archwolf. I lead until another takes my Authority. To conquer what can be is 'good.' To control, to raise, to take into my pack. If you wish for me, all of me, you must take it, too. Do you see? The danger of foolishness. Of losing, but only to one who doesn't understand wisdom. If you have wisdom, you'll be my challenger. Submit to me, or make me submit. Know the weight of what I carry. If you lack wisdom, you'll be my mountain."

    Put simply, "I'm always seeking, higher mountains. To climb. To top. Some need long, but I am patient."
Darren      A little while longer, and he's got a lead. His brow furrows with that special, absorbed kind of interest which comes from pursuing a passion. Malchut... nothing. Try 'divine intellect. divine emotions.' Oh, damn. There's something. Malkuth? Shoot... I'mma be at this a while. Better hit up the library.

     After a moment of concentration evidently not focused on the phone, Darren, sporting a blush that isn't well hidden by his downturned head, speaks up. "...Ten illuminations--on the manifestations of the divine's infinite light within creation."

     "Yeah. I can do that."
Evehime Gevurah     Evehime's eyes slide right over to the offered scrolls. It's strange. They don't really seem to saccade. Moreover, she appears to have no intent of coming all the way over there and bending down just to take it from Staren. She hefts the scroll she already has --actually quite conveniently portable in her hands, briefly glances at the entry, and then throws it away with a flick of her wrist. The scroll disappears, visually disintegrating with a supersonic bang.

    A deafening buzzing sound runs together with a resounding crash from behind, sparks flying from the golden doors, and then a sharp, nearly wrist-breaking impact with the scroll in Staren's hand. In an instant, the original scroll ricochets right off the floor and right back into Evehime's open hand. The scroll Staren had held rips through the air straight into her other palm. All that rather than lean down. The gold and white scroll is left in her possession; Evehime appears to have no interest. "These aren't for your kind." she says, slotting them into the geometric-patterned black-gold sash around her waist.

    "The eight billion curses of which the penultimate is Time, last before only Death." she says, as if that were explanation enough. "You are right as usual, would-be Hesed. Reason is lost when reasons run dry. What is there left to drive a human being when every enemy is conquered, every curse defeated, every dream made manifest, every feat achieved, every idea perfected? When you reach the end of a book, you stop reading." There is a palpable sense of gravity listing back and forth as she considers answering the second question. "This once belonged to one of my comrades, and so it is left to me." Oddly, for once, she uses a word layered with many similar, overlapping, approximate meanings, not unlike Hiromi does far more often. "The [Tenfold Truths] are not to be given freely."

    "It begs permission." Evehime remarks neutrally on Cantio. "Very well then. Study for all the good it will do you. Secrets will reveal themselves if you have the wisdom. If not, you will only waste your time. The halls of all the Heavens were pillaged long ago. Half of them under my command. The scraps remaining are better suited to your kind." Darren's crackpot knowledge has three times as many keywords as he actually needs to instantly recognize this, along with previous words Evehime has used, along with their explanation, as some kind of fucked up convergent evolutionary form of the sefirot his phone is about to bombard him with, translating Multiversally to the ancient transliterated forms.

    And then her stare switches sharply on Kale. It isn't like being glared at. It's like the glowing red eye of a billion dollar killsat just swivelled and locked on to him from orbit. He can practically feel the laser dot on his forehead. The unvocalized premonition of unfathomable violence is so thick in the air that it is asphyxiating. Heart-stopping. In an instant, without any communication but miniscule cues of posture and tension, Kale is sure that Evehime is absolutely ready to kill him. She isn't even considering how. She isn't looking for an opening. Trying to assess him. She has just decided she will.

    "Did I give you permission to look at me?" are the dangerous words that bristle with spears around his skull. "Burnt half to death. Bloodied and exhausted. Cowed by your allies. That 'threat' is little more than a squeal of terror, directed at yourself." Persephone disavows Kale's alliance at about the worst time for him and the best time for everyone else. "Tell me truthfully, creature. Do you fear the Hesed? Do you fear the Wolf? If so, prostrate and beg forgiveness; you will never so much as touch me in your condition. No creature that would come to claim power from the Celestial Engines could hope to imperil the warrior who conquered this place herself. Kneel and I will spare your life."
Evehime Gevurah     Heaving a breath of annoyance at having wasted so many words, she leans down one more time to grab the small pile of clothes, and slip back on a gold-patterned sort of black half-shawl, fingerless black metal wrist gloves, and something vaguely approximating chest wrappings, even if only in appearance rather than function. Her gaze wanders curiously back to Darren when he starts mumbling. Speaking to him sounds begrudging, but honest. "Where did you hear of that?" Oh no. She's sort of interested. And hasn't ever heard of a smartphone.

    But lastly, and more largely, she is fixated on Hiromi. "Even stronger than the Master of the Nameless Style? Even if it's but your amateur estimation, that is interesting. Very, very interesting." She hasn't stopped focusing on the Archwolf, though. "I've heard much, and seen some, of the rot that infests this Multiverse. The invisible foe that diseases and preys upon mankind. The foe that extinguishes hearts, seeped into every crevice of their frail civilizations. For even a wolf to realize . . . Ahh, how pitiful." Unfortunately for everyone else, fully dressed, Evehime is now also bristling with the urge to fight. The unmistakable hot and irrational welling of blood from a true master, who has no greater desire left in life but to test that mastery to its absolute limit. "I am Evehime Gevurah, the Last Warrior. None have come after me, and none have equalled me. Name your time and your place, Wolf-Queen. Show me your strength and prove yourself an adequate foe."
Hiromi     "'Time and place,'" Hiromi says, and like a wave washing over her body, she appears to relax. She hasn't, actually, but only cloaked her readiness in the manner a hunter may. Still, it's an outward expression that carries that meaning of 'not this moment.' 'Maybe.' 'Unless something tasty-looking breaks into a run.' 'Probably can't help myself then, you know how it is.'

    "Your challenge, I've heard it. I'll make us a place. Or find one. Your terms, name them." Her eyes sparkle, though the rest of her face remains neutral. "Long ago, when I was smaller..." Trailing off into a memory she does not describe, she says, possibly as an answer to something, "'Questions.' 'Favors.' 'Messages.'" Then, even that sparkle returns to the unknowable, unblinking. "But you don't need these. You know the battle-joy. I know this, too."

    She appears content to leave it at that.
Darren      Of course. Darren's got her attention.

WELL? SHOOT YOUR SHOT BRO

     "...for the time being, knowledge is free, for those with the will to seek it." He tries to keep his voice even. Tries to keep his gaze down. "I got that will. So, like I said... the next time I see you, I'll know all ten."
Evehime Gevurah     Evehime seems mildly disinterested by Darren's first assertion, saying only "Not even knowledge is free. You will pay with something, whether that be blood or years or tears." However the second one seems to amuse her in some very distant way. Just the act of bringing good humour to her punches him in the gut with a light-hearted thrill of satsifaction and joy, somewhere deep in his social survival lobe. "You had best have plans to avoid seeing me for a long time then, if that is your goal. Perhaps become a blind sage?"

    Her answer to Hiromi, however, is exceedingly simple. "What terms need there be? We will fight until one of us yields. Combat is combat. Strength that holds up only within the bounds of rules is imperfect strength. Should I win, you will accept my authority for one hundred days and nights, as is the way of wolves, yes? Should I be surprised instead, you may ask for whatever boon is within my ability."