Scene Listing

||

Scene Schedule

||

Scene Schedule RSS

Owner	Pose
Marigold	Base of Mount Eburacum, in the Western Isles      The Mine of Death.      As if sensing the atrocity here, the grass grows only in patches. Mount Eburacum's tawny crags tower above- a single pinnacle, isolated from and spiking far above the western range. The ground is just as tan, baked hard by the harsh north sun.      The labor camp that Echidna and her advisor Elffin had spoken of is here, nestled in among the foothills as a disfiguring blemish. Tunnels are driven into the mountainside like dark warrens, unfit for humans; rough ore is carried down in baskets by haggard teams, smelters within the camp put out columns of black smoke, and occasionally a caravan (staffed by far-better-fed Etrurian men) leaves the camp to ferry ingots along a southbound dirt road.      You arrive in the evening, as the setting sun casts a long eastward shadow and backlights the mountain in red. The labor camp's surroundings are scraped barren on purpose to make a shooting gallery out of escapees. Geese, the rough naval axeman with Echidna's crew, takes Roy's army on a winding scrabble behind crags and boulders, an eastern approach that stays out of the watchtowers' view. It's hard on the horses, but with cajoling, Marcus and Sue manage.      "They took my mates here last year," Geese murmurs while climbing hands-and-knees over a sharp-edged scree. "I worked this path out, but... it would've been suicide back then." "I'm sorry," Roy says, between pants of effort, trying to keep up. "Do you think we can...?" "No chance. Most people in there don't make it three months." "Oh." Roy swallows, more shaken than Geese is.      Eventually you come up behind a thirty-foot-wide craggy eruption of tan rock, and past that it's just three hundred feet of smooth dirt wasteland leading up to the camp's sharpened-tree-trunk walls, so Echidna leans back against the stone and beckons 'wait'. "No sense in giving them daylight to see us by," she says, chancing a little peek around the crag at the camp (fortunately, the watchtowers don't see her back). "Get comfortable."      But she doesn't get comfortable, and neither do her men. If you've got sharp ears, every now and then, the wind can carry the sound of wailing from the mines. It sounds like ghosts.      Elffin sits down and plays a little elevating tune on his harp. Geese is haunted by the obvious, scowling at the dirt. Echidna keeps her expression neutral, but there's a venom in how she sharpens her axe. Lucius murmurs a little prayer, and then seems to spend the rest of the time in meditation. Lugh hugs Lucius for comfort, and Chad tries to seem like he isn't doing the same.
Marigold	If you're (carefully!) peeking glances, you can start to piece together the camp's structure. It's built like a square frontier fort, with fifteen-foot-high stockade walls of sharpened tree trunks and open watchtowers at the corners. The western edge opens up towards the mountain and the mines, where chain gangs of pickaxe-carrying prisoners are led along by armed guards. The southern edge is the gate for caravans, prisoners in and metal out. The field to the north is where prisoners leave- freshly broken earth suggests a mass grave where Eburacum spits out the people it chewed up.      Staff housing is in a series of thatch-roofed stone houses outside the walls- after all, most of the defenses point inwards- to the east, facing you. And prisoners are put up in long row houses within the walls. It's hard to make out details from this distance, but the guards look fairly numerous and well-armed with swords and spears.      "It's shift work. People in there even at night. No chance of catching the guards all asleep," Echidna says ruefully. She nods to a pile of surplus axes and spears her gang has put together next to her: "Arm the prisoners. Kill whatever guards you can catch in bed. And get me Bishop Oro's head. All alright?"      The sun's fully down now, and the stars are starting to twinkle overhead. Lucius is just starting to conjure a little light in his palm for the army when he startles. "Oh, I'm sorry. Echidna, did you say 'Bishop' Oro?" "The camp overseer. What about him?" "... It's nothing, I suppose." "If you're chickening out--" "I am not."      https://youtu.be/7XgmQzkCCpo
Odette Raskins	Climbing around treacherous terrain might not be Odette's specialty, but it is something she's mostly capable of doing without getting too frazzled over it. Her trusty medical bag gets in the way at first, but following Geese's path instead of having to forge one of her own eases that burden somewhat. Before long, she's even hanging back (trying) to help those on horses urge their mounts along with gentle nudges and straying dangerous closely to kicking range. "That long ago? But if most people can't get past three...." Roy's not the only one shaken by hearing that, and the EMT bites back a quiet whimper as the possibility of rescuing actually nobody comes to mind. still, if nobody else is backing out... The self-imposed pressure to keep going along with everyone keeps Odette from saying anything about that. She's certainly not able to get comfortable as Echidna suggests, either, as she does some last minute checks of all her gear. Even though she did it before, it doesn't hurt to refresh her memory on where everything is. Watching Echidna sharpening that axe, weirdly enough, does actually give the EMT a moment's peace, and seeing Lucius meditating reminds her to join him in doing a few exercises of her own to try and steady her mind for what's likely to come. Lugh and Chad get lighter nudges from the side like she's trying to reassure them, too, although how effective that may be remains to be seen when she's... Actually, the exercise calms her down a fair bit instead of not at all. Odette almost seems calm by the time Echidna starts pointing out the guard rotation, already checking her bag for various things she could inject into the guards if she can just get the jump on any of the sleeping ones. "If we can get to the ones in bed first... I-I've got drugs for handling them, so I'll focus on that before the... Um. The brawl." Odette pulls out a few pre-filled syringes already before getting more doses loaded into several others. "A-and then after that starts up, the... Someone'll need to get the wounded prisoners out of the way. Or..." She sucks in air through her teeth anxiously, glancing at the surplus weapons. "... Back on their feet, right? Is there anyone else we should be keeping an eye out for from your crew?"
Flamel Parsons	Carefully peeking glances is about a tenth of a spy's craft. Most of it is reading certain newspapers, but that one won't do much here. No, he's primarily scouting with some binoculars and a savvy sense of espionage to plot a route through, at least, the aboveground visible sections, as well as scan the general clairvoyant impression of the space. "Night is a good approach! Sleepier enemies are a whole lot less alert. Let's make sure we catch a nap ourselves!"     He looks at Odette, nodding a couple times. "A little poison goes a long way! But, hmmm, how's your stealth skills? I can head in ahead of you and try to get any chemical neutralization done. Or, I could astrally project into your motor centers and pilot your body the way that various letter agencies use innocent proxy humans to commit illicit acts, so that you wouldn't have to worry about stealth!" Don't do that.     "Either way, I'm in your corner to make that happen. We'll need space to help these people get out, and I'll need a chance to gather intel up close if we're going to make sure everyone's out of here and this mine's closed up for good... or at least until some labor regulation can be established." He rolls over a bit, un-peeking and putting his binoculars away. "For now, I'm napping until work time..."     He really CAN just decide to nap and then nap, lightly, and wake up refreshed. This is the power of a man who is every type of socially normative. Once the sun is dipping, he'll be heading into camp to do spy shit, cut a path ahead, and stealthily gather intel about the quickest way to get the enslaved workers out and close this place. And, importantly, find a good spot to take action violently when the Lycian League's forces make their concentrated offensive!
Angela	''I worked this path out, but... it would've been suicide back then.'' Shajo in particular knows well the vibe of knowing your 'mates' are dead just by timelines even if you can't really know for sure. It's just a familiar vibe for the City even if it's been a little less the vibe for him personally since he's gotten to know the Dame Commander and the other Elites. He feels an upswelling of sympathy for the dread pirate Geese. "They'll pay for what they've done." He says as readily as one might talk about hte weather. ''No snese in giving them daylight to see us by,'' "Mm. Indeed." Shajo automatically agrees. Nonon tosses Shajo over the edge up top and pulls herself up after him. "Heh, if you insist!" She says and immediately DOES get comfortable by ying flat on the rock and closing her eyes. Shajo leaves her be for the moment to scootch on over to Geese. "...You ever play card games?" Shajo asks. "What's your favorite?" He keeps that awful SMILE Ego Gear close at hand but his intent is pretty clearly trying to give Geese something else to think about. "I've never been good at the gambling, Nonon always wants to take the whole pot no matter who wins and few people feel like saying no to that." ''No catching the guards all asleep'' "Even with shifts, nobody likes fighting at 3 am." Shajo admits.
Khosa	This whole situation is depressingly, infuriatingly familiar to Khosa. Khosa was never a mine-slave. At first she was too young to be useful for that, and later, too valuable; her skills were quite literally irreplacable. By the standards of 'how slaves were treated', she got off very well. But she was a slave, and Tyr used to run on the output of its iron mines. (It still does, but now they're free, which makes a difference; it's one of the major reasons she fights for Tyr now.) She's seen places like this before. She's *been* places like this before. Khosa thought she could keep her feelings about it locked up until after; that she could help Echidna and *then* unburden herself. She cannot. Khosa has been quietly seething the whole time they were waiting. Not at anyone here; really, she's trying not to blow up at the slightest issue. But her whole body is tense, and unfortunately for her, she *does* have sharp ears. Every time she hears something blown on the wind, she flinches, and then growls, and isn't even aware she's doing either. She barely needs to scout. It's *so* similar to the old iron mine, though the jagged rock wall topped with obsidian shards has been replaced with logs, and the roofs are thatch and not thin hide stretched over the gap (all you need in a place where it barely has weather beyond 'sunny' and 'night'). Khosa peeks over several times, though, getting a feel for what's where in there. "Fine," Khosa says, at Echidna's plan. It suits her. She is both large and strong, and simply gathers a bundle of weapons under one arm - it takes a bit of adjustment but it's more because of bulk than weight. She takes a bit of time about it to give the sky a bit more time to darken, though she's used to the desert, where it becomes dark quite quickly once the sun is down. Other people may ask for clarification, or continue to work on the plan. Khosa does not. She simply takes off at a jog. She's quiet (at first) and knows to keep out of the light, something helped by the fact that she can see just fine in the dark. Her plan is to get up to the darkest part of the wall and literally jump it. She can see in the dark, with thermal highlights so if there are guards using darkness as their only cover, she can avoid them; they need to hide behind something to actually be obscured to her. (Or be 'behind' a torch or other hot object from her point of view, since that spoils her infravision, though standing next to a torch lets her use regular vision.) As she jogs she focuses on her legs. It's not a visible shapechange, this time, except for perhaps a bit of sculpting in the shape of the muscle, but her gait becomes springy, bouncier, moving her about a step and a half's worth for every 'step' she takes. She's aiming for one of the darker areas behind the walls; a dead-end 'alley' between barracks where there are no exits of any sort, so no need to light as well as the places where someone could presumably escape through. She's quiet enough, but she's not really a thief and she is pretty sure she's going to draw attention if things go bad. But, if that means everyone *else* can slip in, that's fine by her. And if it means she gets to kill some of them because they're trying to kill her, well. That's even better.
Petra Soroka	"Like, I'm just saying. There's no way Cecilia *didn't* know about the "Mines of Death". Right? Like, this isn't a new thing. It's sort of a whole, fucking, set up encampment. I have no idea how anyone would, like, miss the super-slavery happening in their backyard."     "Like-- they got your friends a year ago? People don't make it three months? So, like, conservatively..." While clambering around-- oh, she's got some sturdy leather gloves to protect her hands from the sharp rocks! That's cute-- Petra keeps the mood up by doing math. She doesn't need to count on her fingers (she doesn't!!!) but it emphasizes her point, poking at them whenever both hands are unoccupied with rock. "I mean, they go through four people per year, *times* the number of people they have working in there. Which has got to be, like, hundreds?"     "A thousand people getting mulched every year by the *one* mine seems like it'd be hard to miss. I don't know. You guys don't have radios, or whatever. But that's still a *lot* of people." That's right! Cheerful talk to keep the mood up!     This is, apparently, how Petra decides to'get comfortable', in the haunting shadow of the mine. Babbling would, theoretically, help with taking people's minds off of the sounds and threat of the mine camp, but Petra continues to choose the absolute worst topics imaginable, while also settling down on the ground conspicuously near Lucius. She pulls a handful of assorted guns out of her compact mirror, checking them against the pile of weaponry to mentally associate them as having the same purpose, and then cracks open the tab on an energy drink and nervously sips it between sentences.     "What kind of fucked up shit do you have to do to get these guys killed in *three months*, anyways? That's *so* short. People on *death row* back on Earth don't die that quick; I did a little project about it in high school. I mean, probably, overwork and not getting fed enough, but how long does that take to actually *kill* someone? Well, three months, I guess. Fucked up."     Petra is not a charge-preempting scouter or planner at all, so she really doesn't have much to do besides get 'comfortable'. The questions she has for Echidna are only dubiously tactical, and moreso philosophical.     "Is that guy--" Bishop Oro, "-- the 'leader' of it all? Or just someone you hate specifically? If we're planning on beheading the camp... I mean, do we not expect them to just pop someone in his place and keep going exactly the same? Especially if we leave most of the guards alive by just rescuing people. Are we trying to make sure this place is empty and never gets used again, or just saving your guy?"
Trudy Grimm	Grimnir isn't here today. As an avowed noncombatant, there's no reason for him to be part of the raid, any more than Guinevere or Merlinus or (unfortunately) Hector. The lady he often accompanies, however, is quite present.     "What a wretched place," the green-eyed witch mutters thoughtfully, taking in the awful conditions within the camp. The disparity between the haggard workers and fat caravaneers does not go unnoticed. She skims across the facility and its pall of choking smelter smoke with only that look on her face-- it disappears when she sees... Well. Something. Whatever it is isn't immediately obvious to those who lack her particular sensitivities.     Instead of speak up or call out, Trudy reaches a hand out and beckons towards no one in particular, "Come, come. Yes, I can see and hear you quite clearly. You poor things, look at you." Slowly, she circles an empty patch of parched earth, "They just threw you in the dirt, mm~..."     'Bishop' Oro comes up and she pauses, glancing towards Lucius and Echidna, then back at the empty space before her, "Oh dear. A man of the cloth should definitely know better than this. You poor things. Consigned to where your cries go unheard." Her hand strokes the spine of the Grimoire where it dangles, then collects the tome. The buckle unfastens and the book unfurls through seemingly blank pages until the sickly green glow of Eiwaz, the Rune of Death, illuminates the parchment, "How about I make this right for you~?" > "Even with shifts, nobody likes fighting at 3 AM."     The witch's lips part in a sharp-toothed smile, the light of Eiwaz dancing sinister across the contours of her face, "Oh, there are ways to make night fighting far, far worse than just being tired~..." Supporting the Grimoire with one hand, she gestures with her other, "Go on. Your revenge awaits. Trust me, my unfortunate friends. Your voices will be heard."     The curse manifests most visibly as a thin, green vapor seeping up out of the ground. Faintly luminescent, dancing in eddies around the feet of the living and seemingly harmless to those who still breathe on its own.
Alucard	The more he has learned about this place, the more Alucard has had a knot of discomforting rage simmering in his belly. This kind of thing, treating humans like chattel, is what most of 'his' people want. He has heard Carmilla espouse using humans as labor and literal cattle more than once. It was only the guest right (and the fact that it would have enraged his father) that saved her from his blade. Mostly the guest right, though. That's serious business. As they advance, the dhampir's boots are silent on the stone, his left hand clutching the hilt of his sword as they advance. He says nothing, merely listens to the words Echidna and the others with true stake in this operation have to say. As they arrive at the waiting spot, he looks across the companions gathered here. He steps towards Lucius, pulling his sheathed weapon from his belt. "I am going to ... use an alternate method to get in." He hands the precious weapon to the priest. For it's seemingly almost excessive length, it is incredibly light, and tingles with magic. "If you will mind this for me for a while, I would appreciate it, Father," he asks in a roundabout way. Of course, if Lucius says no, he just literally leans it up against the rock face. His sword handled, he turns away, taking a few steps as his entire body shimmers. He somehow seems to shrink and elongate at the same time, his body reconfiguring into a massive white wolf. The only thing that has not changed are his eyes. Without another sound, he begins loping towards the camp in a wide arc, doing his best not to give away the location of everyone else who hasn't left yet. Wolves are solitary, right? They might not immediately shoot at him. Maybe.
Desire Stars	Get comfortable.     Ace can affect it convincingly; Neon cannot. I have no idea how anyone would, like, miss the super-slavery happening in their backyard.      Ace gives Petra a flat look, but says nothing.     "When we transform," says a leaned-against-the-crag, arms-crossed Ace to Neon (and to Michinaga), "It's fairly obvious. Let's do it now, while there's still some daylight and some distance between us and those houses outside the walls."     "Right..."                                  DESIRE DRIVER!                                                                  DESIRE DRIVER!                                                                   Set! MAGNUM                                                                      Set! BEAT!                                         "Henshin!"     "Henshin."     Two transformation belts, two transformations--no theatric showmanship from Ace or cat pantomimes from Neon. Ace, as Kamen Rider Geats, is clad in the white Magnum armor, its breastplate sporting a motif across the neckline that's halfway between the chambers of a revolver and the distinctive tear shapes of magatama prayer beads. The bracers sport articulated laser cannons, while his right hand holds the armor's distinctive form weapon, the Magnum Shooter; a heavy handcannon with a mounted scope.      Neon, as Kamen Rider Na-Go, is clad in the electric pink-blue Beat armor, with subwoofers set into the breastplate and pauldrons. She holds the Beat Axe anxiously in both hands, a flying-V guitar with a sharpened edge and a neck to accomodate a hand-and-a-half grip.     Much like Geese, Na-Go's attention is focused primarily on the dirt, more out of anxious anticipation than particular enmity. Her hands, partially occluded by the sleeves of her DGP windbreaker, fidget nervously.     Geats, meanwhile, seems 'comfortable,' if alert. Behind his fox-themed helmet, the usual smirk of his is gone, replaced with a thoughtful frown. He's one of the ones making occasional glances. Arm the prisoners. Kill whatever guards you can catch in bed. And get me Bishop Oro's head. All alright?     Behind her own cat-themed helmet, Na-Go turns pale as a sheet. She doesn't speak up, but her mind races as her vision picks up from the dirt. *I don't want to kill anyone... even the people that run a place as awful as this. Should I really be so ready to? Hasn't there been enough of that here already?* Her gaze is on the mass graves.     Na-Go's grasp on the Beat Buckle tightens. Someone'll need to get the wounded prisoners out of the way.     "I will," says Neon, too quickly.      Na-Go and Geats both take what weapons they can carry.      "...if you can take care of the watchtowers, then I'll get the prisoners up and running, Mr. Ace."      "Sure, but we'll have to be quick. Looks like Khosa's already on the move."      Geats pulls on the Magnum Shooter's stock, extending it into a RIFLE.      Na-Go hurries over to the houses, with Geats not far behind her. Both Riders make acrobatic ascents up the structures--Geats with a nimble moonsault, Na-Go with a crisp jump, wallstick, jump, both a little ways back from Khosa. Na-Go aims to vault the palisade wall land inside the camp, whereas Geats intends to make a perch of the wall and line up a shot on the watchtowers.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine's calmed a little since the battle at Tynan, but she's no happier for it. Her anger seems fit to boil over at the least provocation. On the way up the mountain, treading up too much dust or kicking a rock is enough to earn anyone a glare from the huntress. She doesn't scold anyone for being unstealthy, but she seems like she wants to.     Her mood only sours with the mining camp in sight. Waiting for nightfall has her on edge, though she recognizes the good sense of doing so. Once the sun is fully set, she slinks out from behind the crags and toward the stone guard-houses. She can keep a good pace even while stepping quietly, and although there's no real cover she also doesn't need a light source to navigate the area. Shying away from the torchlight of the watchtowers, she catches sight of Khosa with her armful of spears approaching the fort itself - and smiles, perhaps a little too eager to carry out the other half of the plan.     There are few ways to describe killing a sleeping person that would make it seem a noble act. Frankly, Madeleine doesn't care. She passes from bed to bed like the angel of death, knife clutched in both hands.
Odette Raskins	"But, hmmm, how's your stealth skills?" Odette doesn't answer Flamel right away because just his question takes a bit of the wind out of her sails. "R-right... The patrols'll probably catch me before I get close enough. And..." She peeks out at the guards and the slaves, then grimaces. "I might be able to pull off looking like one of the captives, but then I wouldn't have my..." She raises her duffel bag briefly, then passes Flamel some of those sedative-filled syringes. "I-it couldn't hurt to have more people with these, at least. The more we got, the fewer people that /need/ to die." "Or, I could astrally project into your motor centers and pilot your body the way that various letter agencies use innocent proxy humans to commit illicit acts, so that you wouldn't have to worry about stealth!" And then with great trembling, Odette slides several feet away from Flamel in a single large step. She'll follow him closely at go time, at least, primarily sticking to his path and clutching her bag tightly to her chest to keep its contents from jangling around. She'll take any safe-looking (but not necessarily safe-actual) opportunities she can to jab napping guards with sedatives bordering on medical malpractice, too, in the hopes of keeping at least some of them zonked out enough that they might not get their throats slit in the next few hours.
Lilian Rook	'No sense in giving them daylight to see us by. Get comfortable.'     So far, the concept of 'slavery' has been something immeasurably distant from Lilian's subjectively perceived life, for reasons worse than they should be. Despite her passive participation in the social class of the Phantom Circle, which could be easily argued benefits from it, and also her proximity to Petra, complex thought about the subject have never particularly occupied her.     Obviously slavery is bad and evil. Obviously people who buy and sell and work slaves are bad and evil. They're practically a cartoonishly valid target. Lilian understands that much from public concensus, and has had little reason to form a contradicting opinion. Not only has she never been to a public school, but she happens to be dramatically less Online than most of her Elite peers too. Liberating slaves from a mine by defeating the evil overseer is so classic she'd expect it from a trashy YA novel.     So it bothers her that Echidna bothers her. That those words give her pause, and that pause creates frustration, and that frustration creates confusion, only drives Lilian further up the wall. All of a sudden, she has nothing solid to say, no bearings on how to override her judgement, and it shows in the way she hesitates at the edge of the rise without taking a step backward to talk, simply raising her voice instead to say, "You're joking. You're the suicidally brave one, aren't you? Daylight would be less hopeless than the way you were defending that little hamlet square. You actually expect us to sit around listening to this for hours?"     Long seconds pass. Lilian's teeth grind together, she swallows her breath, then recovers it. Her jaw works in silence, and then her throat produces sound. "What if someone else dies while we sit here waiting?"
Lilian Rook	. . .     'Oh, I'm sorry. Echidna, did you say 'Bishop' Oro?'     "I'm sorry, Lucius." Lilian says, without elaborating, seated with her sword wound under arm and leg to be cradled at an angle against her body. She is the picture perfect opposite of Rutger's wary symbiotic hostility towards the blade. "I suppose you don't need my pity. It sounds as if you've seen this sort of thing happen before."     She should probably be limbering up. Practising forms. Steeling her mind for the battle ahead. No one has actually ever seen Lilian do that. All she does is let her thoughts wander, and come back to reality by touching her scar.     "I'd prefer to eliminate as much of the garrison as possible before arming the prisoners. They'll be desperate and furious, and thus likely to get killed. Even if they're sure to win en masse, there's no point in freeing them if half of them die against drilled and disciplined troops." Lilian says, adding vaguely to the ongoing discourse. It's a high assumption of the garrison, but one that may be justifiably wary. "They outnumber us by quite a bit, but their morale will be necessarily poor. No one is particularly eager to die for the overlord enslaving their countrymen; they just want to be on his good side."     'They'll pay for what they've done.'     "They won't. Not really." Lilian sighs. "They'll just be dead."     'Like, I'm just saying. There's no way Cecilia *didn't* know about the "Mines of Death". Right?'     Lilian responds more out of tension and reflexive, defensive hostility, more than good sense, but the words "We've already heard plenty about how no one in Etruria knows what anyone else in Etruria is doing. The right hand is so ignorant of the left that it's hardly beyond belief." aren't necessarily unrealistic. "A thousand isn't much to a nation. You've seen them gathering them out in the sticks. They're not being exported from cities with high walls."     'What kind of fucked up shit do you have to do to get these guys killed in *three months*, anyways?'     "Build the shafts quickly. Don't waste time on properly inspecting and supporting them with qualified architects. Drill no safety protocols or evacuation procedures. Build no infrastructure for egress or emergency excavation. Mines are dangerous places; I guarantee you that more have been killed by collapses, toxicity, gases, and random accidents." says Lilian.     "Not to mention how easily an illness would spread in these squalid quarters. Medicine and salt are certainly going to the frontline, not disposable labourers. How easily do you think so much as a splinter wound from a pick shaft could get infected here?"
Lilian Rook	. . . . . .     Lilian moves on without taking a share of weapons. She doesn't want to be responsible for what happens after distributing them. She can barely handle being responsible for the street folk joining the Association. The matter of stealth is trivial for her; even without the obvious, she's had enough training to drive the fundamentals and then some pounded into her bones, as 'field work' can often call for.     She skips from cover to cover at an unhurried pace, under veil of darkness, only stopping to allow guards past once or twice, hunkering down under her cloak. When she makes it into the camp, Lilian veers off to the 'staff housing' to the east, and slips from door to door, passing no windows and no torches.     The walls are stone and won't burn; and she doesn't intend to anyways. The men asleep are deplorable at best, but she doesn't have it in her to slit their throats like Madeline. Instead, she relies on some of the runic alchemical work of her 'old life', inscribing the correct transmutations before doors and windows to entrench them in enough earth to be inescapable from the inside; not without hours of digging.     Not only does she intend to prevent reinforcement, but after this is over, Lilian wants them to be rounded up and . . . what? Prosecuted? More than likely, they'll be enslaved themselves in all but name; or perhaps simply executed by furious Elites. It's something she has to think about later.
Petra Soroka	"We've already heard plenty about how no one in Etruria knows what anyone else in Etruria is doing. The right hand is so ignorant of the left that it's hardly beyond belief."     Petra opens her mouth to keep arguing that surely the *general of Etruria* knows where the country's weapons are coming from, and the function running behind her eyes to judge whether that argument is actually worth having is practically visible in the way she hangs there for a few seconds. Eventually she blinks and closes her mouth, coming to the conclusion that it's better to just believe Lilian unquestioningly.     "Yeah, that's true. Basically everyone in this world is like, totally good and super cool, or mega evil and thirty seconds away from betraying and murdering everyone around them anyways. These guys just suck." "Not to mention how easily an illness would spread in these squalid quarters."     "Ohhh... yeah, like in every big war before World War 1...." This is, apparently, Petra's way of conceptualizing the lethality of infectious diseases in pre-modern densely-packed conditions. "It seems kind of short-sighted to let all the tunnels collapse on people? I mean, that's where the ore is; that's the whole point of digging."     Petra takes a last sip of her energy drink and crumples up the can in one hand, looking briefly proud of herself for the feat. "Well, slavery's kind of short-sighted too, I guess. But still, dying in a cave-in sounds like the absolute worst way to die. I read stories all the time about people who get stuck in crevices they can't get out of, or go into caves that flood behind them so they run around to find an air pocket but can't hold their breath long enough to get anywhere else so they just slowly suffocate while standing up, or just get lost or have the path back blocked off by rocks, or poisonous air, yeah. I forgot that happens in mines."     Petra, for her part, is primarily focused on getting weapons to the slaves, for the exact opposite reasons of Lilian. Surely, once they have the tools to fight for their own destiny, the 'important' ones will survive, and the ones that don't were probably unavoidable losses anyways. Between being able to carry a full rack of axes and swords with tendrils of morphmetal-- the least stealthy thing imaginable, but she doesn't move in until the choice to be quiet is already gone-- and the extra pistols and revolvers she has to hand out, any cluster of functional hands and bodies becomes fairly considerably armed.
Marigold	Of all the people who might go to bat for Etruria's plausible deniability, it's the refined young man Elffin who speaks up, between little ditties on his harp. "It's possible Cecilia knows about Etruria's misdeeds," he says to Petra, to a wince from Roy. "It's more possible than you think that she doesn't. If those 'pirate' ships are attacking outbound vessels-" "How come you're defending them like this? You're-" "Geese, stow it. Elffin, doesn't matter whether they know or not." "... Of course." "Mmh."      Echidna elaborates a little while she silently eyes Khosa, sympathetically acknowledging the tension in her jaw: "We're knocking down the whole place tonight. Oro dies because he's in charge. And they won't rebuild it because we're killing his boss next." "Lord Arcard? You're hoping we can march on the Western Isles' capital?" "I'm not hearing better ideas." ". . ."      For Odette: "But yeah. Keep an eye out for our friend Larum. Short-" whatever that means by Echidna's standards- "with orange hair, pretty face, can't miss her."      Marcus eyes Trudy while she talks to 'no-one'. He'd been the one to stand up for dark magic's dignity before, but now there's a reluctance on his face: "They've been buried with too little dignity already, Trudy. Let those bones lie." Of course, he can't know she's working with perhaps-more-palatable ghosts today.      Echidna smiles with silent warm approval at Nonon, just as Geese is pulling a pack of ragged cards out of his jacket pocket. "Sure. Ever play Old Maw? I'll deal. You're trying to put together tricks to reach twenty-six..." He shuffles, deals, and definitely cheats a little. "Hah. Echidna does the same thing. We gotta make 'em play each other."      "What if someone else dies while we sit here waiting?"      Echidna, reclining with arms crossed and eyes shut, opens one just to look at Lilian. The good humor drains from her; not angry, but reminded of something she was trying to forget. "Then they can argue with the people who'd have died if the guards saw us coming. Don't tell me you've never made calls like this. Aren't you the experienced one?"      - - - -
Marigold	Lucius accepts Alucard's sword with the dignity of a religious artifact. For all he knows, it might be one. A big white wolf is grounds for staring, and Etrurian guards in a watchtower point at Alucard and wave their buddies over, but don't raise an alarm- turning into an animal isn't a known factor here. He both gets to be a distraction and totally unhindered in positioning.      Khosa takes off. Echidna startles, but smiles, and then picks herself up to her feet. "Well. I guess we're on the clock. Shanna-- Roy startles up too, half-gasping after Khosa, but regains his bearings. "Shanna, keep an eye out for reinforcements. Rutger, Fir, you'll be the first ones in. Marcus..." "Hah. Alright."      The guards on the towers are generally lax. They're armored in Etrurian white-and-green, just hardy enough to make a slave revolt with pickaxes hesitate, and their longbows aren't in hand. Little lanterns illuminate their surroundings, but not well enough. The ones who loiter near the gates, or who harass and clap irons on the laborers in their long hovels, aren't much different save trading the bows for shortspears and blades.      The guards sleep in the barracks outside the log stockade wall; after the new shift has cleared out and the old shift is snoring, it's not hard to slip under the notice of the watchtowers, squeak in through a maybe-creaky door, and start slitting throats or injecting sedatives. Madeleine and Odette make messy-and-tidy work respectively of a dozen, before Odette jolts a sleeping guard into making a noise before the drugs take hold, which wakes another up enough to scream just as Maddie descends on him.      Then it's an ugly close-quarters melee. Groggy men scramble for their shortswords, individually subpar but in a dense crush of two dozen in tight spaces. The uproar is quick to spread to the other guard-houses; one or two peek outside, the others scrambling for weapons and armor. The guard-houses that Lilian seals off soon produce the sound of fruitless pounding, fists on stone. Archers in the watchtowers draw and try to hit Maddie or Odette leaving, but they're right in Geats' crosshairs.      And down in the dirt roads of the camp's interior, Trudy's green mist swirls and coalesces into indistinct figures. The ghosts of dead prisoners begin to materialize in a slow trickle, unarmed but for deep and justified hatred. They're hers to command as she likes, but on their way in to the prisoner housing, Na-Go, Petra, and Khosa can already see a green-foggy specter forcing a terrified guard to the ground and wringing his neck.      The prisoner housing is split up as five long buildings, meant to house maybe a hundred and fifty people, and actually housing triple that. It shouldn't surprise anyone that they're dark, squalid, obscenely cramped, and full of people conditioned to immediately recoil and close ranks whenever strangers (like, say, a giant psychic, a weird blonde girl, and an armored hero) show up at the door. People rise from where they were sleeping on the floor; beds are reserved for the dying.      "Who are you?" "New prisoners- no, look, armor..." "You're not Etrurian?" "Listen- there's fighting!" "Oh, my god..." "Did Echidna send you?!"
Marigold	If that were all, it'd be easy mop-up. But eventually the uproar gets loud enough to reach the mountain; guards abandon their chain-gangs to emerge from the tunnels, and a tall middle-aged man in beautiful vestments emerges from his personal house. Roy's army splits before reaching him, trying to pincer the guards in the camp from the north and south gates, and leaving Echidna to deal with who must be Bishop Oro- but it isn't only Echidna who has a bone to pick with the spellbook-toting man. Lucius stares daggers through him, too, angry in a way he's rarely been.      "Well. The Hero of the Western Isles and her little crew." "That's right." Even with his little fiefdom now actively crumbling around him, he manages a grandiose arms-wide gesture. "Escalated to defying God's will, have we?" "You aren't very funny. Lay down your tome, please." "And who's that? Saint Elimine herself, here to scold me?" "Ghh. You're--"      Echidna naturally takes the split-second his eyes are off her to hurl a hatchet at his head. He narrowly dodges, then with a gesture and a bookmarking finger, paints everyone in a wide arc ahead of him with light magic: 'spikes' of glowing light materialize around everyone nearby in turn, then converge to impale. Echidna hits the dirt with a sizzling mark across her breastplate; Lucius moves a little too slow, taking a shard right to the chest and doubling over in pain.
Khosa	Khosa was trying to ignore Petra. "Shut the fuck up," is all she growled, as she went to go. Khosa's strategy, once she's inside, is very simple: she opens at least one of the slave barracks by literally punching through the door. It takes her three punches to clear an average-to-low quality, but locked, door, basically entirely out of the frame. She could probably have done it in two if she'd exerted herself a little more, but then she would've sprayed splinters like a shotgun inside on the last blow, and she didn't want to hurt anyone inside. "Everybody out out out!" Khosa doesn't take charge so much as simply keep things moving so she can repeat the process. "Yeah, we're here to rescue you. We've got weapons. I just dropped a pile of spears and axes outside." Khosa eyes, trying to figure out how many of them can walk under their own power and how many might need to be carried: "You'll have to help the others, I don't have enough hands to carry everyone. Your only goal is to get out; grab a weapon but only use it if you gotta. There's others with us there, including Echidna, so if they're fighting guards, they're on your side and they'll help you." Giving herself something concrete to do calms Khosa down, at least a little bit. "C'mon, I'll cover you," she says, as she pops back outside - Guards are coming out of the tunnels. They've noticed all of them - which means they've noticed her. Good. Scooping two axes out of the pile she dropped that she keeps, Khosa strides out of the prisoner housing. She has one of the axes cocked over each shoulder. They are not throwing axes. "HEY YOU FUCKERS," Khosa bellows at her top volume. She rises up, slamming her axe-holding fists together hard enough that there's a shockwave, though not a significant one - it doesn't do more than ruffle her hair and people further away won't even get that. But it, too, is *loud*. "You want a piece? Come on, you pieces of shit! I'll kill every one of you who dares stop them! You lay one more finger on them and I'm going to FEED IT TO YOU!" Khosa is beyond mere growling anger, now; lashing out in a way she generally tries not to. It means she's trying to draw all eyes to her, so that the others have freer rein of the place, but she's not really thinking that clearly; she just wants to kill someone over this. The first guard she sees come out of the mines, Khosa flings one axe at hard enough to pick them up off their feet and throw *them* backwards several feet after impact. She's only got one weapon after that but it doesn't really matter to her; she's as dangerous (probably more dangerous) bare-handed than trying to use the axes in melee, and the other axe has someone else's name on it. "Over here, you builders of filth! You - " For some reason, a term she's heard just lately pops into her head. " - Peckerwoods! C'mon! Are you enough of a man to take on one person? Come try your luck!" Khosa grins, feral, showing teeth in what is about a half step from a snarl. "Even all of you together!" The second axe, which she'd held back, goes whistling in a spinning line, like a buzzsaw, at Bishop Oro, an instant too late - Echidna and Lucius already dropped, whether on purpose or from injury. Khosa is *strong* - what she lacks in axe-wielding finesse (she's no axe specialist) she makes up for in sheer arm power, and she can throw it across the entire camp with force to spare. "Look, I'm not even armed!" she taunts, spreading her arms wide. Well, NOW she's not, anyway.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Butchering a dozen men in the black of night is ugly business, but Madeleine's used to doing more for worse reasons. She snarls when the guard beneath her blade wakes a moment too soon, and grabs Drogrung from her back while keeping the knife in her off hand. The huntress (the assassin?) has much better night vision than the guards and uses their relative blindness against them, sweeping her spear in a wide, clumsy arc simply to keep some distance while she sheathes her knife. Then, both hands firmly on her weapon's haft, she hops back and nearly bumps into Odette.     "Try to keep up, and watch my back," Madeleine growls, impaling one guard and using his body's weight to shove another off-balance. Once she's handled the guards remaining in that house she switches places with the medic to hold the doorway against intrusion. She's plenty able to hold the choke point with her weapon's superior reach, and she lunges at guards rushing by to give them second thoughts about turning their backs to her. Madeleine fights dangerously, sallying out of the doorway for brief intervals before returning to Odette's side. Her wounds have a habit of disappearing before the medic can really do much about them, but enough of the larger cuts stick around that Odette's aid is begrudgingly accepted.
Trudy Grimm	"Leaving restless dead to be restless is an unkindness," Trudy's tone is bright but comes off as just a little scolding, "All I do is allow them to reclaim part of what was stolen from them." Canting her head, she glances sidelong towards the elderly knight, "Grimnir and I will give them a proper final rites when we are done here. Please count on me."     The rune of Eiwaz above her grimoire pulses ominously, casting that sickly green light like a candleflame.     A ghost, in the process of materializing, pulls a guard to the ground. With both shockingly corporeal hands, the faceless spirit grasps a stone, hauls it overhead, then brings it down over and over.     Another guard trips, falling face-first to the ground. When he looks back to see what caught his foot he finds a bony hand and forearm growing out of the ground like some vile sapling. Earth moves aside as the skeletal remains unearth themselves, green light burning in empty sockets.     The faint green mist swirls, periodically rising and giving form to furious spirits of the wronged and abused who turn on their abusers with great violence; for harm delivered against them and those they cared for.     It is only when the camp has fully degenerated into chaos of guards and ghosts, skeletons and screams, that Trudy finally leaves her cover and enters the place herself. The Grimoire floats above her right hand, the rune of Death pulsing ominously like a beating heart. Her left hand folds up behind her back.     Blades of light appear around her -- Trudy stops -- In an instant and a flash of light, the blades collide with the flat black blade of a greatsword emerging from the witch's shadow. Those that had made it past the blade paint the parched earth behind her with crimson. From her shadow, an armored gauntlet reaches, grips the ground with steel fingers, and hauls forth. The Black Knight climbs free of the void, rising to his towering height, faint glimmers of green burning behind the slit visor of his helmet.     "Ahaha, would you be the Bishop I heard so much about?" Trudy's tone is mocking, even as she fusses over the wounds she'd taken, all without lowering the tome in her hand, "Do you see what is happening?"     The Black Knight takes the opportunity to gesture in the witch's stead, sweeping his free hand across the camp roiling with angry spirits and restless dead, the sounds of combat pierced with the screams of pain and terror.     "A man of the Cloth should know better than this. If only you were a better person, a wretched creature like me would have no such allies, you know?" She works a finger through a hole in her sleeve with a little frown. Without turning her head from it, her eyes shift to the great warrior in front of her, "You know what to do. Go on, then."     The Black Knight does not hesitate. He only leans forward, placing all of his weight on his leading left leg. Coiled like a spring, that leg straightens-- the other hurling forward to add its momentum-- launching the colossal Knight forward in a parabolic arc straight for the cave entrance. With both hands, he brings his greatsword down on Bishop Oro in a blow that shudders the stonework of the mine opening.     The blade scrapes where it lands, dragged back as the Black Knight recoils and rises to his full height while tactically placing himself between the mad Bishop and the more wounded Lucius. The greatsword sweeps up to rest across his shoulders, his left hand reaching forward with palm upward. He says nothing, but when he curls those steel-clad fingers towards himself, the meaning is unmistakable.
Angela	''They'll just be dead.'' "Eventually." Shajo says. "Sure we can take ''some'' time with it." Shajo does have thoughts about slavery though, of course, The City will just call it paying off debts usually rather than by its true name. But 'Mines of Death' are known to happen, particularly in District J. Shajo remembers when they barely avoided getting sent to one when Nonon got caught cheating at roulette by growling so hard at the roulette ball it'd bounce onto the right square. ''Man,'' He thinks. ''It's not just a good idea to live at Apple Tree Island when all is said and done, we probably aren't gonna be welcome anywhere in the City.'' ''Hah. Echdna does the same thing.'' "Teach me, I'm a quick learner when it comes to cards." Shajo glances to Echidna for a moment and then adds, "Good idea, but let's make sure we've got some distance..." ''Don't tell me you've never made calls like this.'' Shajo bites at his lip but doesn't comment. He's the Captain of Disciplinary--until the multiverse, that was the bulk of his job. Nonon jumps immediately to her feet when Echidna gives the call. "Eh? EH?? Khosa just went off? DAAAMN that's hot!" She punches her gauntlet into her fist and then jogs in after, though naturally due to lying down she's likely taking up the rear. Shajo gives a halfsrug to Geese and makes his way after Nonon. "Hey...you okay?" Shajjo asks of Lucius. "Don't think I've ever seen you--" He spots the Bishop but Nonon rushes ahead, swinging back with her golden gauntlet to try and punch the upper half of the bishop's body. "Whoever hits him the least has to tell the next campfire tale!" Nonon shouts, getting speared in her left leg and arm but largely just pushing through it. Shajo has to leap away at the last second, getting cut off from Nonon's aggressive charge.
Alucard	Alucard as a wolf, cannot open doors. What he can do is skulk. And lurk. And wait. Golden eyes shine in the darkness as he circles around, slipping into the camp proper as the violence begins. He slips through the shadows, hunting men like they were beasts. A twinge of shame tries to take root in his heart before he reminds himself that these ones are holding slaves. These ones were treating other humans like animals. They had the choice not to. They could stand up and say no, we won't do this anymore. A small voice in the back of his mind, an echo of one who is gone. 'I was right, my son. Look at them. See how they treat each other?' A growl rumbles deep in Alucard's chest, and his eyes seem to glow in the moonlight as he launches himself at a group of soldiers jogging by. The first one is the most fortunate, as his right leg below the knee is torn free by snapping jaws. As he begins to die screaming, the wolf rounds on the others, blood coating his jaws. With another terrible growl, he throws himself at the rest, braving their shortswords that cannot kill him, engaging in the brutality of nature. All the while his father laughs in his head.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel is quick and clean in his work. This is a spy, but not the kind who pays janitors 500 dollars to let him in to poison someone's shoes. He's a *proper* spy. A spy with effort, a spy with skill, and a spy with a dozen little tricky devices and techniques to help Odette Rasksins work easily, as well as being able to find a good hiding space to lay in wait, invisibly, until it's time to strike. He doesn't even resent Odette's mistrust!     He recognizes that people know the name. And he's happy to shout: "Flamel Parsons! Agent of a rebellious yet heroic local name! Get out as quick as you can! We're covering you!" He's so friendly. So positive. "Echidna's getting this solved! Odette, get the dying out of here *quick* though." On the way out, he makes sure to skim some of their tremendous reserves of overwhelming despair and misery. They sure do absolutely have enough.     Uh oh. Oh shit. They're schisming over there. When he hears conflict between Lucius and that mysterious figure... He rushes. Even invisibly, though, he can be targeted by *god*, which is why a mysterious, unoccupied space that suddenly has spikes converging on it is revealed to be Flamel. "Argh! What--?! Why is Saint Elimine's magic helping *this?!* This is brutal ultra-violent slavery! There isn't a divine force that approves of this!!" He stumbles, trying to shake off the magic and reinforce his movements telekinetically. "Even during the scouring, that wasn't her! What *is* this?!"     No waiting. Only beams. Blast him! Blast him, and the rest of that tunnel, with a firehose of the dying and depressed prisoner sentiment, that misery and despair, specifically. No invisibility or flanking or anything like that, if this guy's following the teachings of that guiding light of kindness then he's gotta have some empathy in there. It should blast the hefty, draining, drag-down feeling of hopelessness into the skull, while it slams the body with a sharper, bruising, battering impact.
Odette Raskins	"What if someone else dies while we sit here waiting?" "... dying in a cave-in ... stuck in crevices ... caves that flood Those two things, more than anything else, keeps Odette from even thinking about taking a nap more than once during the wait. That one time is enough to get her to start imagining all sorts of tragic scenarios of finding a corpse just too late to recover with the mind intact, a body disappearing just out of reach in some cave-in, a pocket of explosive air detonating just before... All that could happen if she takes a nap. It could even be happening while she's awake, but she's definitely not going to be getting any shut-eye during the wait. It really, REALLY helps that she's able to meditate with Lucius until then. Echidna describes Larum to Odette, and she nods slowly while committing what she can to memory. "Orange, pretty, short. Uh. Like..." She can't ask how short because Petra's right there. She'll just have to settle for looking for somebody that's shorter than Echidna, but that... No. She'll just have to remember those details if she actually sees anyone like that. In the camp, Odette's feeling pretty in the zone for a good while. Flamel's leading her the right way in, she's got dosages ready, she's finding the right veins to jab the guards, and a little bit of online research even means she's able to do it without waking anyone! With any luck, some of these guards might even survive enough to see some kind of that 'proper legal justice' she used to believe in and can only assume Lilian might believe in as well. Everything's coming up Odette, but that comes crashing down quickly once she encounters that one guard that just HAS to be a light sleeper. "Wh... Nononono, stay asleep. I'm... Uh... S-S-Santa!" The EMT in dark blue with a white duffel bag blurts out the first thing that comes to mind in a hasty panic as more of those guards start to wake and gather, and then she just starts yelping and screaming as she scrambles to not get her head caved in. Slipping under the first two groggy swings, she barrels through and lands on top of the next guard with her duffel bag and a stolen chestplate slapped together like a makeshift battering ram. Just in time, too, as she sees Madeleine wielding Drogrung and scurries over to join the huntress, trembling with her bag and chestplate in hand. "Oh heck oh heck.. R-right!" She takes a deep breath to try and steady herself, then screams when MAdeleine promptly impales a guard and starts using him as a weapon. She's more than happy to switch places with Madeleine once it looks like the way out is clear, and she steps out for all of one second before a volley of arrows whizzes right past her head. A few of them even graze her sides and one punches straight into her foot, drawing a painful shriek from the medic before she falls right back inside where Madeleine's waiting for her. "Th-they're after me, too! The... Archers, outside! And... Light magic?!" She warns Madeleine while scrambling to get the right gauzes and medications out, then dives when she sees those light spikes converging right where she was standing less than a second ago. She doesn't have enough time to think about that too, hard, though, with her immediate concern being treatment of herself, then Madeleine, then anyone else she can reach.
Desire Stars	From his perch, Geats is still bordering on a statue. The dim lantern light of the guards in the watchtowers illuminates their figures and their tired, almost bored faces. *That's always how it is, in places like this. Isn't it?* Arbiters of abuse--or even its passive beneficiaries--finding banality in its everyday execution, isn't a new idea to him. But, try as he might to put on a disaffected facade... *It's hard to see it and not be overwhelmed with contempt.*      One hand braced under the rifle's barrel, Geat's elbow holds a bundle of weapons firm over his knee, keeping them from tumbling down the wall. He hears the disturbance before he sees the signs of its spread--that muffled shout from the barracks draws his helmet whipping towards it. The red lenses of his helmet fix on the brewing melee for only a moment in the darkness. They find the archers reaching for bows and drawing strings taut a moment later.                               MAGNUM TACTICAL SHOOT                                    A red lance pierces the darkness, spearing through the watchtowers. For a split second, a line is drawn from the far tower to Geats' perch, before the heat violently cooks over into two explosions.      Scooping the weapons up into an underarm carry, Geats compresses the Magnum Shooter back to its handgun configuration and breaks into a sprint, his armored boots finding footholds well along the pointed palisades. The handcannon's blasting report sounds through the chaos of the starlit riot, suppressing fire headed for the guards manning the front entrance as Roy's army moves to pincer them in, forcing them to either engage or surrender.      Na-Go, meanwhile, hastily offers her own handful of weapons, having reached the prisoner housing with Petra and Khosa. "Yes, Echidna sent us, but we don't have time to talk! Here! Take them and hurry!"      The moment the last is gone, she reverses her grip on the Beat Axe, wielding it like a guitar instead of a melee weapon. Above the din of a prison break there rises an inspiring, anthemic melody, amplified by the subwoofers on her armor. Visible ledger lines sport the notes to a melody as Na-Go plays it, winding outwards from her armor to wrap around the prisoners, Khosa and Petra. The courageous anthem fills tired and alert bodies alike with newfound strength and clarity of aim--which they'll need very shortly against the guards rushing in from chain-gang duty. At the sight of them, Na-Go spins the turntable on the Beat Buckle at her waist, then quickly shreds a solo on the Beat Axe--                                     ROCK ICE!                                          In defense of the workers, her two-handed swings with the weapon are made wreathed in a cloak of freezing cold, which coalesces with violent rapidity into snap-frozen bursts of jagged ice.      Both Riders, in their positions, are within range of Oro's spell. Geats makes to avoid it by purposeful free-fall, sliding down the palisade wall. His wrist-mounted cannons fire behind and above him to add extra thrust; the sparks which fly from his armor give proof to his incomplete escape.      Na-Go's, too, is made at cost; her impressive vertical still seeing her clipped at the legs to the tune of another eruption of ablative sparks.
Odette Raskins	Properly wrapping anything up is out the window at the moment, and Odette and Madeleine will just have to settle with the former slapping bandages over their respective wounds haphazardly until she gets a chance to do anything without getting shot at or stabbed. It'll stop the bleeding and soothe the pain, at least, coupled with some strong painkillers to feel like there's less damage than is actually there. After the first few back and forths of Madeleine slipping out and then back in, though, Odette spots a potential hotbed of people to treat over by where Khosa left that pile of weapons, along with Echidna and Lucius struck with their own light magic-based injuries. "I-I'm gonna make a break for it... Th-those guys with the arrows might start aiming for me, so that'll be your chance!" Once she's able to get herself psyched up enough to actually leave the relative safety of the door, Odette whips her stolen chestplate at one of the archers like a misshapen frisbee before rushing at an off-angle towards Lucius and Echidna. More healers means faster work getting the slaves fixed up, and there's sure to be reinforcements to help them that way, but she'll have to draw the archers' attention away from anyone that can actually take them out first!
Petra Soroka	"Lord Arcard? You're hoping we can march on the Western Isles' capital?" "I'm not hearing better ideas."     "Okay." That does answer Petra's questions! As long as she's pointed in the correct direction, she'll just do whatever's asked of her and presumably the people smarter than her will have a grasp on what to do next, and so will Echidna. As she nods in placidly uncomplicated agreement, one thought does bubble to the surface of her mind, stressfully political.     ... Does this count as declaring war on Etruria? Is that what they're doing, after this? Marching a foreign army into the capital to kill its leader does seem a little itty bit politically charged, Petra reasons. Surely the actual nobles in the army have thought about what they'll be doing next, about that. The discussion's been had about joining forces with Echidna to free the slaves, but this seems like quite a lot of anti-governmental violence for a sidequest diversion. Roy's probably thought about... or, maybe Hector has... well, at least, Lilian was right about whoever's doing this being not worth keeping alive.     Once at the longhouses, Petra can't helpmaking an undignified and unintentionally insulting gagging sound at the smell of sweat, infection, and filth. She presses the sleeve of her jacket up to her mouth, delicately tip-toeing around bodies on the ground to get to a central enough position to announce her presence to the house she personally invited herself into, slightly muffled.     "Hey, you guys, we're tearing this place down and killing the guys in charge; happy birthday. I've got weapons to help if you're able to fight, and if you're not but want to anyways, then I've got some other weapons that're easier to use. But your main goal's to not die."     She generally phases out of attention at the babbling crowd, letting them chatter indistinctly and push around her while dazedly staring at a gaunt prisoner struggling to get out of a soiled mattress whose frame has writing-like scratches on it, too faint and far for Petra to read but enthralling nonetheless. After a few seconds of this, the name 'Echidna' catches her attention among the sussurus, and she snaps her head over to the direction it came from.     "Oh! So she's like, *famous* famous, with you guys. We're here with her, to-- to be more muscle and guns for this kind of shit. So count on us. It's over."     She slips over through the crush of bodies to help the person she'd been staring at up with a hand, then flicks open her compound mirror with one hand and pulls out another six-pack of energy drinks. "And I've got drinks, if you're in real bad shape. These have a-- chemical, so you'll feel better for a bit, and then you'll definitely throw up in thirty minutes because of how hungry you are, but by then you'll be outside." Sharing a source of glucose is an attempt to demonstrate tribal altruism!
Petra Soroka	Lingering inside for longer than she needs to, in order to give helping hands for evacuations and-- frankly, being too hesitant and germ-averse to just push her way through the crowd back to the entrance-- means that Petra avoids Oro's opening speech and attack by sheer happenstance. Once she's out (and takes a coughing full inhalation that she'd been avoiding the entire time in the barracks), she notices Lucius down first and traces the attack from him up to Bishop Oro, narrowing her eyes with her transteam gun gripped in hand. Rather than immediately taking a shot at him, though, she first pulls out Twopence, armored for thematic coherence, and straps a bomb to his underside.     "Okay, guys! Follow the little floating rat knight!" After a beat, Petra hastily amends, "Well, not too close, though! Really really not too close!"     With his sturdy, custom-ordered set of armor, Twopence floats over to the closest inwardsly-fortified wall of the camp, dropping off his explosive payload to blow a hole through. There's not much else to go hide behind, with how peeled-bare the surrounding landscape is, but it's probably better than being trapped inside the fence with Oro casting spells like that.
Lilian Rook	'Don't tell me you've never made calls like this. Aren't you the experienced one?'     "No. I haven't." Lilian says, nearly defensively, but slightly too vehement to effectively rebuke. "Not like this. I don't get asked to do these sorts of . . . covert operations, full of ordinary people." Her fingers curl around the crossguard of Night Mist and squeeze it like someone's hand. "I arrive, I act, people are saved. If I have to choose, then it regards the immediate situation. Something you decide in split seconds, not over hours." She looks at Echidna. "We've barely met. What sort of 'experience' do you expect I have? I'm a knight, not a guerilla."     . . . . . .     The sounds of pounding and screaming from inside sealed bunkhouses linger with Lilian unnecessarily. Suddenly, she can't get Petra's unwelcome rambling about the miserable deaths experienced by cavers out of her head. She knows that won't happen, and she knows that they don't know, but . . .     Lilian passes by a ghost strangling a man to death, and tries to pretend she didn't notice and didn't think about it. She fails.     What was the point again? Tactically, certainly, she's helped, but then what? Lie about them? They'll make noise if they think it gets them rescue; and that's assuming the ghosts can't get in already. Lilian frantically searches the corners of her mind for any utility to imprisoning the reinforcements at all, rather than letting them put a few spears in the allies she cares less about, then break ranks and run.     She struggles to feel any particular rage towards them right now, helpless as they are. The desperate thought that they have perhaps an hour to repent and pray makes her guts feel like they're full of ice water.     . . . . . . . . .     Lilian isn't at the slave barracks as they're cracked open. As picture perfect as it would be for the dark knight to swoop in and broodingly rescue them, she can't imagine coping with those scared and filthy faces right now. She throws herself into repeated skirmishes with the night watch, taking the freshest troops herself in hand to hand combat, where she continues rapidly gaining experience in authentic sword-on-spear life and death struggle. Partway through caving in a man's helmet with the edge of Night Mist's guard, after hacking the ninth spear in half, she reflects on Rutger's fixation on the quality of a sword, very briefly.     Her vision is one of her more augmented senses. The guards who've spent their time navigatin by torchlight are easy to attack and will find it hard to fire back. Their watchfulness and quality are well below the Bernish regular par, and so Lilian makes short work through their line under cover of night. Those that run, she ignores. Those that draw sidearms or attempt to attack from her blind spots are savagely injured and tossed aside. Her cloak and armour blend perfectly into the night, and she hardly expends herself defending against arrows at her incoming speed.
Lilian Rook	'Escalated to defying God's will, have we?'     "Since the day I was born. Do you think I'm about to stop for a pissant like you?"     Her entry is nearly a non-sequitur, but Lilian breaks onto the scene at just the right time to experience a spark of resentment finally catch on kindling when Oro snaps back at Lucius. "Keep her name out of your mouth." Lilian says. "Before her Sainthood, she was still nothing like you; and she'd be shamed for not yet being like him."     She isn't so unwise to keep verbally swinging in the middle of Oro's attack. It takes her a split second to take in the constellation of spikes all around her, and one more to dread that particular configuration. For all the years she'd spent-- still spends, pretending to be a 'spatial teleportation expert', she can't actually teleport out of a fully enclosing saturation spell like that. Where one would expect her to disappear(?), she takes a fraction of a breath, lunges towards one side of the light-daggers, and tumbles out the other side with sparks flying from her sword and glowing scrapes on her vambraces and her sides.     Rising from a rolling recovery similar to having ploughed through a window, Lilian draws glyphs from mid-air as she runs, and fires back at Oro as she runs. Her left hand maintains a conjoining of magical circles small enough to take with her, and bombards Oro with an onslaught of 'temporal element' beams; individually weak, and flying wide at first, but curving in on him from all sides along perfectly arched vectors. The last of them arc around Nonon as she reaches close combat-- and just as she passes between the Bishop and Lilian, she disappears while he can't see her, and falls on him from behind, driving him into the others.
Marigold	Marcus looks at Trudy skeptically for a moment, then shakes his head and sighs as he pushes his old bones up to his feet. "Well, I'm not going to tell you to put them back in the ground now," he grouses good-naturedly. "Just... ah, never mind." Lumbering off to battle from behind the boulder, he near-immediately has to catch a spray of stray light-spikes on his shield, grunting and hunkering down.      Nonon and the Black Knight rush in against Oro, and can close the distance as long as they're willing to eat enough sizzling light spikes in the process. For such a crushably unarmored target, he's alarmingly unconcerned, and it becomes clear why- with Lilian's rear attack driving him forward and preventing escape, they slam him back against the camp's sharpened-log outer walls, battered and cut. Flamel drenches him in misery a second later, impact seen in the creases of his face and slump of his shoulders. But before they can follow up, he coughs out a rattled laugh and raises his offhand staff to blink away.      Lucius, rising shakily to his feet while leaning against Shajo, fires a beam of scorching light magic at Oro just a second too late. By the deep charcoal scorch it leaves on the wall, that was definitely aimed to kill. "Thank you, Shajo. I'll be fine," he murmurs while covering his bleeding wound. "But that man..."      "Why is Saint Elimine's magic helping *this?!*"      "A man of the Cloth should know better than this."      "Before her Sainthood, she was still nothing like you..."      Oro reappears on a smelter's rooftop inside the camp, arms spread wide in an arrogant gesture. His white-and-blue vestments are still red-soaked, but he's mended most of his wounds in just that moment of absence. He looks down smugly over the wall at the party:      "Hmm? Doesn't the Saint tell you the world is God's message?" He makes a sweeping gesture at the camp down below, undead-wracked and in total havoc. "What are we to make of a world where tyrants grow fat and humble farmers are tortured? Surely, God's message is that might makes right!"      "Philosophy for a broody child. Not a bishop," Lucius says through a pained grimace.      "Hmhm. And which of us has the higher station?"      Oro has the presence of mind to focus his next scorching light-beam against one of the exterior guardhouses Lilian geomantically sealed off, blasting through its wall and letting the angry soldiers inside spill out to clash with the people who were just fighting him, jabbing speartips fueled by the frustration of having been caged and the naivete of not having witnessed how it's been going. Rutger and Fir mantle up onto nearby rooftops after him, and he's smart enough not to let them catch him, exerting most of his reserves to repeatedly blink away onto another rooftop whenever they zip too close.      Down below him, his camp is completely falling apart, not that he seems to care in the least about his own men.
Marigold	It takes the prisoners somewhere under five seconds to collectively decide to trust Petra, Odette, Na-Go, and Khosa completely. Dirty-faced haggard mistrust shifts to awe and then to rabid hope in a rapidly exothermic reaction. "Oh, thank god..." "I told you she'd come for us!!" "Well, I'll be..." "We're leaving! Oh, god, we're leaving!" A good three-quarters of them flood out after Odette and Twopence and escape through its gap in the northern wall, with a smaller number staying behind to inquisitively take Petra's energy drinks and arm themselves; the latter number includes a remarkably hale middle-aged man who takes up an axe and falls in time with Na-Go's boosting music.      Except for the recent emergence of a barrack's worth of freed fresh troops by the front gate, the desperately trying-to-regroup soldiers are pressed back towards the mines. Madeleine has ruthlessly thinned their numbers too much to hold a large area; Alucard in wolf form finds them nicely chewable once he can get in past their massed spears, and Na-Go finds them just as freezable; they can struggle against Trudy's vengeful dead one-on-one, but numbers and the sheer terror of seeing the dead rise makes them steadily collapse. The armed prisoners and the arrival of the bulk of Roy's army- Roy himself included, doing his very best not to be a burden during the fighting in the streets, and Echidna rallying former prisoners around herself- is the death knell for them holding ground in the camp.      The Etrurian soldiers' retreat back towards the mines isn't without incident. The mines' dark narrow mountainside tunnels are a dead end, or close to it, and there's still chained work-gangs of prisoners inside. Several dozen soldiers are still standing, and the first one to put a dagger to a chained worker's neck sparks a trend of holding a whole workgroup at spearpoint just inside the mines' mouth, which slows the offensive push to a breathless stalemate.      "Please," says a bloodied and bedraggled Roy, pushing his way forward through the ranks to the stalemate's no-man's-land. "Stop this! Lay down your weapons, and we'll..." "We'll what? We can't promise them their lives. They know that," Echidna calls out from just behind him. Roy flinches, and Echidna doesn't like saying it any more than he likes hearing it.      The reason her face is twisted like that is obvious to anyone near the mines with a good eye. There's a short orange-haired woman in the workgroup being held hostage. Her locked gaze with Echidna communicates something desperate. Unless you intervene, they're going to try something, and it might be something stupid.
Aidan Proudpick	Something stupid has arrived. The mines. It is a perfect setting for Aidan. He's lived down here. He was working down here since he was twelve. And these mines are nearly the same. A lot of people just think of mines are procedurally generated series of tunnels in various branching directions, possibly with bandits, spiders, bears, or shrimp people in them. But mines need fresh air. Most mines have a carefully planned out air circulation system. They have air shafts, air circulation systems. On the side of the mine, Aidan hammers the metal guard off one of the air shifts with his shield. Clinging to the rock with his thighs, he sucks in a deep breath before sticking his face into the air shaft. Hurricane force winds suddenly fill the mines from the air shaft, swirling white winds suddenly filling the mines from the back and blowing everything forward in a dusty thunderous gale.
Alucard	Alucard has many things going for him in this situation. As a wolf, he is fast and agile. His jaws, covered in the blood of wicked men, can crush bone and tear flesh. He himself is very hard to hurt. This means it's very easy for him to get to the spear lines and wind his way through to get behind them. Spearheads part his fur, but they don't get much further, piercing his skin takes more effort than they have time for. After he crosses the lines, his form blurs, and he walks as a man once more. He lunges into the back of the spear line, throwing fists and elbows. He spins, drifing a particularly brutal elbow in between a man's shoulders as he reaches out one hand. Across the battlefield, the sheathed blade kept by Lucius quivers and then rockets out of the scabbard. It races across the battlefield, a silver streak glinting in the moonlight, tagging spearmen, and other guards of the mine as it sails through the air only to clap into the half-vampire's gloved hand. The glow of his eyes is almost feral as he sets about the grim work of cutting through men like they were so much grass. Impossibly graceful, inhumanly methodical. In this moment, his enemies will know that he is not human.
Flamel Parsons	"Are you schisming!?" Flamel shouts at the roof, gesticulating wildly and telekinetically throwing a rock disrespectfully. "Are you *schisming* in the middle of my regime change?! Stop!! Stop schisming in my regime change!! *Don't do that!!*" This... must be uniquely offensive, in some way, to an agent of international espionage. "Especially with this psychohazardous worldview! I swear, I'm going to get in there and -- Woah!!" A spear crosses the space his head used to be.     Hand-to-hand time. Hand to GIANT hand. When he strikes back, it's with a palm-shot that's more than likely to launch someone bodily at a wall, because of the translucent giant hand! With a quick maneuver, he takes a combat stance that's somehow the perfect midpoint between kung-fu master and tv psychic, two fingers on his temple and one palm held firmly in an offensive position.     His hand-to-hand ability is... not skilled, but incredibly effective regardless, because of the telekinesis involved, so he takes mostly bruises and deals unbelievably heavy bodily impacts. And each time he strikes at one of the incoming, offending spearmen, he yanks chunks out of their minds, old memories related to Bern, or mercenary work, or Etruria, or even just what it's like to live in this world. He speaks, as he gathers: "You *can't* make that call! Saint Elimine didn't teach anything close to that, even I know! Because she didn't *live* it! She believed something even harsher and she grew away from that, you're wrong! And your schism is *awful!!*"     If he can get through enough, he'll whirl back around on Oro. His internal mindscape is working hard to build a cultural map of what it's like to exist as an Etrurian in this Bernish war, and overall throughout life. That map, hopefully, should let Flamel rush him astrally in a sudden burst, with the intent to get in there and directly, *violently* attack the confidence and sentiment that form the foundation of Oro's faith. He doesn't need to mess with his will to fight, or his faculties. A man whose actions are rooted in faith, or even justified by them, needs confidence!     Though, he might need some help striking at those doubts, if he can make them... Here's hoping some hero-shouting out here goes well.
Odette Raskins	"Surely, God's message is that might makes right!" "Philosophy for a broody child. Not a bishop," "Th... That's a terrible message. E-even kids know that kind of thinking is messed up!" Odette yells over towards Oro after taking a bit of time to gather her courage enough to even do that from so far away, partially from having it built up by all those prisoners actually looking at her with.. Hope?  Like she's some kind of hero, surely, even though it's largely Petra, Na-Go, and Khosa doing the heavy lifting there. Still, an ego boost is an ego boost. "D-don't shove each other now! Just make sure to... Uh. To get somewhere safe, and I'll fix you right up later!" She urges them on, shoving some gauze into the hands of the last prisoner to leave before realizing some of them are still lingering. Instead of trying to shoo them away, she slides her medical HUD back on, switching gears to check on their injuries and give them quick applications of medicated gauze and the like to help them keep fighting/acting as ablative bodies against the Etrurian soldiers. Once the prisoners and Roy's army merge, meanwhile, Odette can turn her attention towards others in more dire need of medical treatment. Roy's bloodied state has her hurrying over to check on his injuries and bandaging up the worst of them, possibly even stuffing gauze into the particularly nasty ones just to help stem the bleeding.   "We'll what? We can't promise them their lives. They know that," "B.. Being prisoners is at least better than dying, isn't it? Or.." Like Roy, Odette also doesn't seem too happy about the truth she's laying out for them. "I... I can still treat them, too, if they just surrender." She mumbles, like she's uncertain if she wants either of them to hear her before she spots a certain orange-haired woman. Didn't Echidna mention someone like that earlier? With the hostage-takers already precariously positioned, she knows there's little time let to save her. In a half-panic, Odette lets out the most confusing attempt at a battle-cry that sounds like she's half-screaming in terror while running at the soldiers, only stopping if it even looks like they're turning around to face her. And then she whips a bunch of empty glass bottles at them. She just needs to be distracting enough to get their attention off the hostage, but beyond that? Odette hasn't really planned things out that far.
Angela	''Thank you, Shajo. I'll be fine. But that man...'' "Is a right bastard, I'm sure." Shajo says. "Don't worry, I get it. Folks in big shot positions are the most prone to corruption. Guess it's the same for churches. We'll get 'em, but don't lose your head. You'd say th' same t'me if it was some asshole designed to get me a-burnin'. Here..." He pulls out a gun and shoots Lucius in the gut!! Oh wait it's healing bullets. Don't worry everybody, it's healing bullets. Shajo is attempting to look after Lucius's wounds by treating them with some weird healing ampules that are fired out from a pistol for some reason and is slightly glowing green too. Glowing green is the color of healing. "It takes a second, but it works fast." Meanwhile, Nonon, bleeding and charred from numerous wounds she willingly took in order to get close to Oro finds that he teleported away. "WHAT, he's a teleporter too??" Shajo grimaces himself now, "Ugh. That means that he could just bounce and escape the beating he's asking for...." Shajo says. "Any ideas, Lucius? You got the same sort of mystical whatsit, right?" Nonon, being an idiot, is not going to stop EChidna and that orange haired lady from doing something stupid but she might join in with doing something stupid once she realizes something stupid is happening. Instead right now she says, "Aggh I get it!! I've got it! We just gotta kill him in one hit!" She reaches for a mining cart, hefts it up, spins around in a circle before flinging it up in the air and punching it with Gold Rush so that it rockets forward towards Oro. "I'll show you a REAL GOLD RUSH!" Nonon yells.
Trudy Grimm	The Black Knight glowers at Oro until he disappears. Immediately, the great warrior whirls in place to the bishop's new position atop the smelter, stepping to keep himself positioned defensively before Lucius in the same motion. The holes in his armor from the light shards are still there, bloodless reminders of his state of unlife. His head jerks to one side with a loud pop-snap, only then does he bring his sword down from his shoulder and hold it at the ready.     Trudy hums where she stands some distance from the readied warrior, tapping her chin with her free hand. The Rune of Death glimmers above her grimoire, casting its sickly light on the woodwork and soil around her. Ghosts rise from the mist to seek their tormentors and killers, dragging animate bone with them where they're able. Even when the guard tower is ripped open, she does not move. The guardsmen are instead beset upon by those same animated dead, each one just as guilty as those who were already outside; just as guilty as those in the mines.     "Mmm... 'Might makes right', is it..?"     The witch extends her free hand, manifesting Mannaz the Rune of Man above her palm in a warm orange glow-- like an inviting campfire, or the soothing glimmer of a candleflame.     "I suppose we'll have to see if your conviction remains true when you are no longer the 'mighty' one."     Gebo and Dagaz are gripped in fingers curled like claws and jammed into Eiwaz, blazing away in brilliant colors as they are consumed as if by flame. In the same instant, a circle of runes springs out around Oro's feet. It hurts, and it pursues him. The first real sign of what it's doing is in the smeltery roof itself; the wood dries, cracks, and rots away until it can no longer support his weight. It acts more slowly on the living; and can be outrun.     But it only affects Oro. Any others who pass through the runic circle are unaffected.     Trudy's eyes glimmer in the light cast by burning the rune of Man over the flame of Death.     Aidan shouts out to 'hang on to something'. Trudy is focused, but also mercifully far from the mine entrance. The Black Knight drives his blade into the ground as an anchor and hangs on to it, using his other arm to keep Lucius from getting swept away in the sudden blast of wind.
Khosa	Khosa, now having worked herself up into a murdering fury over the slave-keepers, is doing the best she can to turn the retreat to the mines into a rout. If they come at her, she strikes back, no longer restraining her enhanced strength; blows are crushing, hard enough to launch back meters. If they don't, she barrels at them, with much the same result. Khosa almost certainly is struck doing this, but she barely seems to notice it. Her injuries patch over as she regenerates, often covered with scales or carapace to form a patchwork armoured covering - not that dealing injury is easy to begin with, as even her skin is as tough as sturdy plate mail. At one point she picks up a chunk of rock as big as she is, entirely a boulder, and throws it, viciously, at the biggest group of soldiers within reach - specifically, at one moving to engage Roy's incoming army, who might go after the fleeing prisoners. And the whole time she's yelling, too - trying to draw attention to herself, because as tough as she is, she can take it. By the time they're actually entering the mines she's calmed down. A little. Or, more accurate, she's still just as mad but she has reasserted at least a modicum of self-control, though her breathing is ragged. Khosa has to trust other people have Oro handled because she's focusing on this. At the stalemate at the entryway, her eyes narrow. "Of course they took hostages," she half-says, half-growls. Her teeth grind hard enough she can hear them, which means she stops a moment later before she cracks one - Khosa *hates* regrowing teeth. They can't promise their lives, Echidna says, and Khosa entirely agrees with it. But that doesn't mean they're helpless either. But she can't *tell* Echidna and Roy what she's going to do because the soldiers might be able to hear it; she gives Echidna a very slight nod instead. Khosa prefers working with psychometabolism. But she's not helpless with telepathy either. She reaches out, making psychic contact with the spear-wielders - it's not something they would notice at first unless they too are psychic, more of a mental tap than anything else. Until she *acts*. The hostage-takers are suddenly overcome with a flood of sensory input - all kinds. Their vision is filled with strange shapes and colours and lights overriding their normal vision, their ears hear a wild babbling roar of pure noise. Phantom smells and even tastes, none identifiable, fill their noses and tongues and the unpleasant back-of-the-throat place where you can *taste* strong smells, and their body feels like it's being poked, prodded, burned, frozen - touch run wild. The closest description is like a five-sense flashbang, a completely chaotic and incomprehensible sensory discharge that makes it impossible for them to know what's going on around them. If all goes right, they can't even tell what their spears are pointed at, or even if they're still holding them. And when the wind picks up, going from a gust to a gale to a hurricane, Khosa rushes. She is strong enough to push against the wind, but just to be sure her feet and lower legs shift, becoming great clawed reptilian things that dig into the ground - even into stone, enough to anchor herself with every step. She practically throws herself at the hostages, diving in front of them - even on top of them, she's trying to cover them with her body. The hostage-takers are (hopefully) too dazzled between her own attempts and Odette and Aidan's wind and everything else to tell what's going on for a moment, and Khosa has been trained - drilled extensively, for years - to get herself hurt instead of other people.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine slinks up the path from the guard-houses into the fort, in pursuit of the newly-freed guards - and stops short, in the sight of the hostages and their captors. There, she falters. This... isn't something she's had to deal with before. She's never been in the position of caring for something more vulnerable than herself that was under immediate, violent threat. Sure, there are endangered cryptid populations she's had to protect, sometimes with force, but rare is the moment where loggers will literally hold Bigfoot at gunpoint and make demands. She recalls an old mantra from the Excrucian War, a favorite of her kind that was oft deployed in word and in deed against the Nobilis:     "You have many things that you love. Remember, when it comes time to face us, that they are not immortal."     Here, in the face of such a threat, Madeleine falters. She lowers her spear. Despite the wash of blood down her front, it's the social discomfort that makes her stomach turn. Once or twice she'd wondered if she'd have what it took to defy the odds, to make that heroic stand her old nemeses were so often capable of. Now she knows. "Okay," she says. "Let's hear their demands."
Lilian Rook	'Hmm? Doesn't the Saint tell you the world is God's message?'     Lilian blinks at about the same time. She appears directly in front of Lucius, shielding him and the medical aid she'd called for by physical proximity.     §For all the good that'll do, if he can summon those from every angle. I can fully defend the two of us once or twice at a stretch, but I can't have him repeating that attack while the others struggle to take him down.§     §I had no idea that this sort of thing fell under the purview of light magic. I suppose I shouldn't continue to believe that they'll struggle to catch up with me in terms of military strategy.§     'Surely, God's message is that might makes right!'     §His wounds have already healed too. I really do hate regenerators. It wouldn't be a problem if he were a monster I could just cut the head off of, seeing as he has to cast the spells himself.§     'Hmhm. And which of us has the higher station?'     §Do I go for his staff? It's difficult to tell how much use it can endure rather than gauging how much magic he has left.§     Oro firing his next beam fills Lilian with a moment of relief that it isn't the worst attack for her to defend against, and that it's aimed somewhere that isn't Lucius; then a moment of disgust at knowing that undoing her work may just result in more dead slaves, and that it feels like a winning trade for the safety of the man behind her.     "If God wants you to learn that lesson then it won't be a moment before you die. For such a popular belief, people turn non-believer quickly."     Lilian won't move from Lucius while he's healing, and if Oro is evading both Rutger and Fir, he'll certainly react to being shot at. When she assembles her second magical circle, she aims it at him only briefly, then turns it towards its intended purpose only after appropriately closing her eyes, and letting 'God' take the wheel.     Which is a way to interpret her firing on 'blind instinct' at the rooftop she precognitively senses as most likely for him to teleport to nexy, carving out his potential footing at the moment he teleports. She has no idea if he can teleport while falling, but if it's Rutger and Fir, a moment of confusion should be enough.
Petra Soroka	"Oh, thank god..." "I told you she'd come for us!!" "Well, I'll be..." "We're leaving! Oh, god, we're leaving!"     Petra basks in the disgusting, diseased awe of the slaves, dutifully pulling weapons off of a makeshift rack made of Silver to hand to them. As they gasp and exclaim their relief at bring freed, only at most months before their average life expectancy ends, piling past her to rush out the gap she blew in the walls to a life-changing reversal of fortune that they'll never forget-- Petra pauses for a moment, to perform the same ritual she's done many times in this world already.     Eyes closed, measured breaths. She lets the energy of the atmosphere soak through her skin, tone-setting and arc-forming, suffusing her present mindset with the smeared-indistinct babbling and cheers of the people around her. Like a physical envelope, she rolls the sensation up and tucks it away, packaging the feeling of altruistic satisfaction for an ideologically pure and brave action up and storing it for later.     If Petra selects this item from her inventory at an appropriate time, she can mimic repeating that sensation of feeling good for doing good! This may encourage her to perform more morally-acceptable actions! "Surely, God's message is that might makes right!"     "Ugh-- this guy *sucks*!" Petra hisses, passing by Lilian and Lucius on her way to press the new outpouring of soldiers back before shouting up at Oro. "Fucking die about it then, idiot! If that's true, then Lilian's basically the hand of God here!"     And Petra, her most pious adherent. Her form of worship mostly involves shouting annoying insults at people while doing the work that Lilian isn't, as effectively as she can, and as diligently and mindfully as she's capable of mustering, to be a second location that Lilian can rely on being handled. The choice between objectives doesn't need to be made-- the prosthetic girl can stand in her place to devote herself to fending off the new influx of soldiers, and forcing them away from the slaves to the mines. "Stop this! Lay down your weapons, and we'll..."     Petra sucks in her breath, exhausted by the push up the hill to the mouth of the cave. Her morphmetal spear dissolves, nonthreateningly, to take the edge off of the hostage crisis, flowing down her elbow and past her ribs, hands held up. "Hey, hey, there's no winning for you here. There's no good option, but we can figure out the best one. If you-- if you kill those hostages, you just die right after, you know that, right? So let's take a moment... stand and talk for a second and...."     The slithering morphmetal wraps around Petra's hip and flips her transteam gun up into her upraised hand, slingshotting itself into the bottle slotted into its barrel right after. The impact slams her gun hand up and she swings it down in the same motion as leaping forwards, throwing herself into the waterfall of black-glittering mist that pours out when she squeezes the trigger.     "--Vaporize!"     Sting Silver's armor snaps onto her mid-tackle, giving her the strength and weight to fully body-slam the person holding the orange-haired woman that looked at Echidna and tear him away.
Desire Stars	And which of us has the higher station?     "The tyrant's grown so lazy that he doesn't know what goes on outside his own tower," The fox-themed Rider inclines his head towards the arned miners accompanying Na-Go, Petra, Odette and Khosa. "Just like the old days," muses Geats.     He tosses the bundle of weapons held under his free arm, straight into the sky. Before gravity can pull them too far apart from one another, He lifts them higher with a standing front kick. As they tumble uncertainly and threaten to halt their upwards momentum, Geats leaps a vertical that clears the roofs of the camp's interior with ease. His free hand spins the Desire Driver--                                   REVOLVE ON!                                       And sends him into a midair cartwheel, switching up his armor as he turns so that the Magnum buckle powers his legs rather than his upper body. Compact, articulated cannons mounted on his now-white-and-red greaves telescope outwards just as the thrown weapons begin to dip.     He seems to have the same general idea as Lilian--just without any precognition.     The extra momentum provided by their blasting proves just enough to power a trio of midair roundhouses, each one sending a spread of spare weapons hurtling through the air. Some head straight for the rooftop Oro is on, anticipating that he'll blink away. The others cover a wide spread of other rooftops, save for a few--limiting the safe spots for the bishop to stand and providing Lilian, Rutger and Fir with a telegraphed path to those safe spots.     Geats covers the few not supplied by the flying weapons with feathered triggerpulls of the Magnum Shooter, providing a tad more coverage before his boots hit the ground.     Na-Go feels the pit of her stomach drop when the guards begin to take hostages. She makes the mistake of locking eyes with one of those hostages, and feels her blood turn to ice as a gasp catches in her throat.     Overwhelming vertigo loosens her grip on the Beat Axe and makes her aware of the work her knees are doing to keep her standing. The dull roar of a camp undersiege fades into the background.     The well-trodden dirt beneath her feels harder, like cement. The darkness of night seems familiar, the stench of lethal exertion as acrid as motor oil on a warehouse floor. If you ever want to see your daughter again...     Khosa makes the decision for her--and she silently begs her body for help. *Please, just... get me there! Just move!*     "PLEASE!" her cry out loud jolts her back into the moment and she charges in on Khosa's heels. The V of the Beat Axe is used to trap a guard's wrist, a twist of her hands wrenching the weapon away as she prays she didn't waste too much time getting into the mine. Her knee desperately crashes into a ribcage as the opposite leg hooks behind the guards for a hip toss.
Marigold	"Thank you, Shajo. And Dame Commander," Lucius breathes with some effort. "You're right. I-- nn!" He isn't braced at all for the healing bullet, but breathes a little easier, straightens up, and re-finds his bookmark in his light magic tome. "Ahh. Better. If you can break his staff- it's only ordinary wood- or if you can get it for me, but I don't know if that's possible..."      When Alucard summons the sword, Lucius murmurs a little prayer after it, as if he were blessing a carrier pigeon on its journey.      Rutger and Fir play it patiently. The invisibly-quick dashes they use for combat aren't so good for longer distances, but the need to stay at minimum thirty feet away from them in a camp that's maybe a hundred feet to a side starts badly taxing Oro's staff. The wood sizzles a little by the tenth blink, and Trudy metaphorically lighting a fire under him- "Ach, damn you!" doubles the rate he needs to stay ahead, with Geats' flung weapons doubling it again.      Between blinks and healing himself after being struck with a kicked spare axe, he finds a spare second to rain plummeting light-daggers onto the undead and prisoners below with a spell, thinning Trudy's minions and creating wounded to tax the healers, but his focus can't be on it.      "Haah- my allies act in accordance with God's will. What hope do you have if you do not? Or are you the strong devouring the weak, after all?"      He's doing so well, though, right up until Lilian robs him of his footing just as the staff is creakingly overtaxed, and then Nonon slams him with a minecart at car crash velocities. Rutger has to pivot in their midair dash to avoid the cart and a last spray of light-daggers too, but they still manage to near about bisect him at the waist before he can hit the ground.      And he does hit the ground, with an ugly noise, in a mostly-deserted part of the camp. Oro grunts, pulls himself up to crawling, and tries to reach for his staff on the cobbles while the blood flows freely from him. Who knows how long the range on that teleport is? If he can just touch it...      "Hnnn. Well, done. But--"      Flamel then fits about five gallons' worth of suffering into a one-gallon brain. It's easy to gush philosophy-of-violence when you aren't the one with your house burned down or lost loved ones. Injecting stolen perspective from the buffeted soldiers makes Oro's eyes go wide and his voice hitch in his throat. His hand hesitates over the staff, for just a second. "Khh! A vision...?"
Marigold	For a minute, Na-Go and Madeleine can see it. There's an impossibly deep ache, a bitter fear, haunting the eyes of the worker-hostages in the mouth of the cave. 'We were so close', they seem to say. 'It's cruel beyond words, to die within sight of Hell's exit.'      Echidna sees it too. Her axe creaks with the clenching of her hands, and her teeth audibly grind. Agony and no good way through. She nods to Khosa- it makes sense, now, how she'd made that choice to delay so 'easily'.      Maddie asks for their demands; the panicked-and-barely-recomposed soldiers haven't thought that far. Some look to each other; some just shout. "A ship back to the mainland!" "Leave us alone!" "A, a pardon, for..." "Call off your dog!!" (Do they mean Alucard?)      While Aidan's topple-everything-in-the-mines strategy bruises and throws around a fair few workers too, they'll forgive him. Far away, Lucius clutches onto the Black Knight, spellbook pages fluttering. "Ah-!!"      More importantly, while half the remaining soldiers are blown down, about half find something to seize onto- a prisoner, each other, the wall, a chain- to keep from being bowled over. Just a second latr, Khosa's mental flashbang makes the soldiers scream and flail, completely untrained to resist anyhting of the sort.      And in the sudden havoc, a half-dozen glittering blades find a half-dozen dirtied bodies: lungs, guts, hearts, necks. Screaming. Red pools. Petra tackles the closest guard away from that orange-haired girl, and she bravely picks up a fallen shortsword to help fend off the others; Khosa lunges to stop a half-dozen others with her own body; and Na-Go and Alucard scythe through the fray to quell the remaining Etrurian resistance along with Echidna snap-throwing axes through as many guards as she can nail, but that won't put blood back in the hostage-workers who've crumpled to the ground.      Their chain-fellows already crouch down tear strips off their meager dirty clothes to press and bind wounds, clearly trained by each other, but that won't be enough by itself either. The orange-haired woman joins, and Echidna sprints over with a speed she doesn't even use in battle.      "Echidna!!" "Larum! Are you-?!" "Don't mind me, help! Oh, god..." "The healer-- you! Odette! Anyone! Alright, I've got my tourniquet, take this vulnerary and give it to the worst one, ahhh..." "There. Echidna, who are these people? Do you trust them?"
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine startles as the fight resumes in an instant. Her reflexes are good, however; she pivots from nearly dropping her spear to running a guard through with her teeth gritted in little more than a second. It's still long enough for some of the hostages to die. She watches them fall, fighting distractedly as innocent blood mixes with guilty on the tunnel floor.     "There. Echidna, who are these people? Do you trust them?"     Madeleine pauses, briefly. Her own hesitation moments before - the lives lost by her failure to intervene - looms large in her mind. "Maybe you shouldn't," is all she can manage before the fray pulls her away from the reunited pair. Frustration gives way to the adrenaline of battle, and the huntress is back to her bloody work. There is little room for showy maneuvers in even the shallow ends of the mine, but her superior vision in the dark and her skill with simple, brutal, effective killing serves her well.
Aidan Proudpick	Aidan starts scrambling down from his perch, back hunching and unhunching as he scurries down the mine from the top, hanging his head over the top of the mine. Frozen. So much blood. Are the hostages crumpled. Did he do the right thing. What was the right thing? Dark crimson slides further down the mine as Aidan freezes with paralysis. Did he do the most heroic thing. Will people judge him, weigh him on that unseen scale of heroics for what he just did. He drops down next to Madeleine, looking at her, remembering the men she so easily slaughtered at the town, and him so easily watching. And then the lives he just now had to so quickly gamble with. Does he really have the mind to weigh lives? Ru Li said he would never. An ice cold pick shoots through his brain. Lilian probably could have saved them all. Echidna shouts for a healer and Aidan snaps back into wakefulness. He rushes in, "I'll take the straight forward ones, Odette!" This, this he can do. He staggerruns in, opening up his bag, pulling supplies out, passing out bandages and pressing down. A gut wound, that's sepsis, right? And the lung, god, that person is going to strangle. Aidan presses a hand down tight on an arm. "Come on. Come on, you are almost free. You can make it. We aren't going to let them win."
Trudy Grimm	The moment Aidan's hurricane dies down to a degree that won't push him over, the Black Knight rises to his feet and wrenches his sword free. Hot on the heels of Echidna and the others, he strides directly into the mine. The ceiling is too low to carry his sword on his shoulder like usual; which is... Well. It means the towering Knight is dragging his blade behind and to one side, scraping metal against stone alongside the clatter of his armor with every step. Even before he is in sight, anyone and everyone will know he's there-- how big he is-- and what he's wielding.     Those soldiers who drop their weapons are the ones who get off most easily, slammed by the flat of the blade. Bruising a broken rib or two. They'll be fine. Those who don't; those who fight him; they get a good hit or two in. One even crushes in the side of his ribcage with a sledgehammer, caving in the armor in a way that would kill a man if he weren't already dead. The hammerhead gets stuck in amidst mangled metal plates. The Knight snaps the handle off one-handed, whirls it around, and introduces its wielder to the sharp end. A lot of 'Fight the Knight' interactions go similarly. He's gradually looking worse and worse as he's graciously permitting bold soldiers the first hit before savagely counterattacking his way through the mine.     At least he's pretty much ignoring the workers, even those who've taken up arms to defend themselves.     Outside, Trudy twists to use her back as a shield for her Grimoire from the latest wave of light-daggers. Her fingers, curled like hooks, clutch around the rune of Mannaz and continue pressing it into Eiwaz as one would hold a fruit into a juicer, the rune of Death casting off sparks as it slowly consumes its warm orange counterpart. She keeps it up long after Rutger cleaves the bishop's legs from his torso, striding towards where he's fallen.     The shadow cast by the staff darkens. The artifact promptly falls into its own shadow, as if falling off a shelf. It pops up out of Trudy's shadow mid-stride. She relents on making her runes kiss only to catch the artifact in her free hand.     "I certainly hope the Lady of the Void is feeling merciful today," Trudy comments, glowering down at Oro with that faint green glow in her eyes, "Because you are most certainly not going to see beyond the doors of the Allfather's shining hall."     She crouches down, resting the staff across her legs and keeping a hand on it; just out of his reach, "What would you like on your epitaph? I can at least do you that courtesy, even though you never extended the same to your charges."
Angela	''If you can break his staff-'' "Got it! Nonon!" "YEAH! Time to deprive a man of access to his rod!" Nonon shouts, fist pumping happily when she sees her minecart strke true and-- "Oh uh! Sorry Rutger! Don't worry uh, if you get hit by a minecart we'll heal you too! Theoreitcally, you know, if it happens in the future!" She intends to, 100 percent, rush over ot the staff and say, "Sorry!" and aims to just kick it towards Lucius. "What's yours is ours now! GA HA HA! Now Lucius is getting TWO staffs to play with GA HA HA!" "Stop chatting he might still have a trick up his sleeve...!" Shajo shouts but Nonon's GA HA HAing readily drowns him out.
Khosa	Khosa can do a lot of things, but she cannot cover literally everybody in the mines at once, even if she wants to. A half-dozen slaves - prisoners - die, and she doesn't let that slow her down. Keep moving. Keep covering - She ends up half-in front of, half-overtop of some of the prisoners, using her currently powerfully clawed feet to kick away any soldiers who decide they want to go in for a try anyway. Echidna gets an axe through one of them, and Khosa rises up afterwards; she's got a spear stuck in her shoulder, where it has broken off a few inches behind the head. She simply ignores it, and after a few moments it is pushed out by regrowing flesh and skin. Other injuries are doing the same thing, slower or faster depending; she's bloodstained but even when it's her blood they don't all correspond to wounds she still has. Khosa pulls one of the uninjured up to their feet, gives them a thump on the back, and says, "Go! Find the others!" They'll know where people are likely to be in here far better than Khosa will - because although Khosa has been to mines before she's never been to *this* one and has no idea of its twists and turns, where's been tunneled out and where's dangerous to go. "You should trust us, but I understand if you don't. I know a bit of first aid," Khosa says, her voice tight with her attempted control. "But I'm better off helping move people. I'll find anyone who's still in there and bring 'em back." By following the one she helped up, if necessary. "Gimme a couple of those potions, those vulneraries!" And if she runs across any guards, well. That's their problem. But her primary objective is to find, and help, the prisoners. You can't ever save everyone, Khosa knows. Losing only a handful in an attempt like *this* is nothing less than incredible. But you should damn well save as many as you can.
Alucard	Alucard is, possibly horrifyingly, good at killing. He flits through the guards of this awful place like a snake, the shining of his silver sword flashing in the light of the moon as blood runs in rivulets at his feet. "There are no innocents! Not anymore! Any one of them could have stood up and said: No, we won't behave like animals anymore!" His father's voice rings in his head, unbidden, as he goes about his terrible work, witnessing the atrocities that humans have perpetuated against one another. His fury rises, boiling over. Was his father right? Are humans just beasts who will treat anyone weaker or different than them with cruelty? They're not all like that. Certainly not. Enough of them, though... His sword swings in a glittering arc, the dark blood spraying from the blade like garnets in the moonlight as his attention swivels towards the Bishop. Towards Oro. He didn't get the chance to do what needed to be done to the last wicked clergy who crossed his path. The dhampir melds into the darkness, a living shadow, and flickers across the killing fields, his keen senses tracing the Bishop. Smelling his blood. He flickers out of the shadow of the Black Knight, his golden eyes gleaming, glowing red in the dark. Long knives designed for throwing bloom in his free hand, and he throws them at the Bishop. One for each of his wrists to pin into the ground, and one for each -eye-. "If you wish to be a monster," the dhampir hisses. "We will slay you like one. If your god tries to interfere, I will kill Him as well."
Petra Soroka	With this many Elites against a cornered and pathetic force of soldiers, it's over in an instant. A morphmetal tendril whips backwards and recoils into Petra's armor, scattered droplets lifting off the ground in unison. With a flash, Sting Silver vanishes, leaving Petra standing in the cave scraped-up but ultimately fine.     She sighs and drops her chin to her chest, reaching out to flatten her palm against a plane of morphmetal that'd typically reflexively appear to give her access to a reflective surface, only to find that she just moments ago stored it all away. Grumbling to herself, she fumbles around for her compact mirror and flips it open, greeted by her purple-haired double within. A hand to the mirror withdraws a reflection of a medical kit, and then Petra plops down crosslegged besides a wounded hostage, diligently pulling on nitrile gloves from the kit. "There. Echidna, who are these people? Do you trust them?"     "I'm fucking tired. I'm burnt all out of caring for the day," Petra mumbles to herself while still wrapping gauze around someone's bicep. Louder, to Larum, she says, "I guess so, yeah. In practical terms. Overall, we-- oh, we're offworlders, by the way-- are super beneficial to all the war stuff, because Lilian's here, and she's amazing enough to turn around a war on her own."     "Even though we have idiots too," Petra points over at Aidan, who's currently doing the exact same thing she is, with her bottle of disinfectant in her hand. "We're pretty much trustworthy. I mean, what're we going to do? Put you in the Mines of Superdeath?" "Maybe you shouldn't,"     Petra groans and rolls her eyes so dramatically that her entire head tilts with it. "The problem with having such a *rich* cast of characters is that half of them are randomly pussies or dumbasses at any random time. We're fine. We managed. We did a good thing today. Don't start sulking now."     Petra redirects her conversation to Larum while intently focused on lining up stitching, dabbing away with a clean cotton ball swabbed in antiseptic. "Anyways, Larum? Larum. We-- Roy's army, and also us specifically-- are helping Echidna. I think our next plan is to storm the capital, or whatever. What's your deal?"
Flamel Parsons	Flamel manages to get it in there. He manages to flood the brain with his payload, sneaking in with Etrurian intel and blasting with the intense cruelty. "*This* is *real!*" He emphasizes. "This is what 'might makes right' is causing! This is what your schism is about! There's a *lot* of who you are that knows it's wrong *somewhere* and that's because this isn't a theology debate, it's human lives and human misery and it cannot possibly be why Saint Elimine fought in the scouring or developed the way she did after!"     While he's in there, Flamel's pushing hard, trying to rip into him with the worker misery, old visions of Elimine defending the world in the Scouring that he picked up from the sword, all *kinds* of     Then focus breaks. A shock of immense negative psychic energy blasts out from the hostage situation. Dozens of people, dozens of dying people, dozens of guards. "GHHHH!" It shocks him, rattles him, and he can't keep it from flowing back to the man himself, Oro. Barely keeping hold of his attempt to psychically push back on Oro, he shouts, "And who's the strong and the weak there?! How many of those killers are going to die now?! How many of those slaves are going to use strength you've never seen just to try to save their friends?! Where does your philosophy *work*, besides a battlefield and Zephiel's brain?!"     It's possible that Flamel's gotten a little too invested. But, god or Elimine willing, if he can get this guy to back down, he can get a lot of these soldiers dealt with before more death happens.
Odette Raskins	Against all odds, Odette doesn't have to worry about the consequences of her actions for long once so many more mental and physical diversions come flying past her from far more qualified Elites on the field. That's not necessarily a relief, though, as she's also treated to the sight of so many blades drawing the blood of so many more, both of the Etrurian soldiers and the workers that were being held hostage. The only small relief comes from the fact that some of those chained workers seem to know a thing or two about stemming the bleeding. "K... Keep that pressure on! I-I'll be over in a second!" Odette calls out as she hurries right past Echidna and Larum with a quick nod after being called for help. Breathe. Feel the flow from the nose and mouth to the lungs, then to the rest of the body. To the feet that need to take her to those that need saving, and to the hands that'll make sure all that blood gets back where it needs to be. The mental exercise doesn't take longer than four or five seconds, but it's enough to keep her centered as she steadies the medical HUD over her eye to make sure she doesn't misread someone's vitals with the worst possible timing. "... That one first. Don't move anyone around too much!" Odette practically orders the former hostages as she starts going around with her single-minded focus on triage, stuffing and sealing wounds quickly with assorted amounts of both dry and medicated gauze. Aidan's and Petra's aid there gets an appreciative nod from her as well, and leaving the more straightforward treatment to them means she can focus more on treating those with more messed up injuries: Splinting particularly nasty breaks with discarded weapons, trying to save limbs with quick bandaging jobs, and replacing blood with little adhesive packs not unlike those she had taped to Lucius so long ago. Even with her focus on triage, however, it's impossible to ignore that continuing bloodshed just a few yards over. The best she can hope for is that those that die over there... Wait. There's still time, isn't there? "I-if anyone's dead... Don't let them get too mangled! They can.. We might still be able to save them later!" She saw how angry Khosa got before, and there might be hope for those dead slaves yet. Odette just has to hope they're not too far gone already by the time she gets to any of them who knows how much later.
Desire Stars	Oro is nearly solved--one more person tasked to him won't secure any more of a victory. What else is there? Things by the mines seem to have calmed down. But the bishop managed to open up a sealed barracks before being stunned like that. Those soldiers will be here any minute.     Geats makes a backwards moonsault, landing on the haft of a spear his kick had lodged into the masonry of a building on the camp's interior. The flexible haft acts as a springboard for a second leap, which catapults him over the battlefield as he presses into a twirling pirouette. His leg strikes out at the apex of the leap, a cyclone of roundhouses strafing the oncoming fresh soldiers from on high with blasts from the cannons mounted on his legs.     Landing in the middle of the soldiers, the sturdy frame of the Magnum Shooter twirls around his trigger finger, knocking aside the blades of axes, catching spears with the space between the scope and the barrel, turning both into his advantage before sideswords can be readied. His head whips around spear jabs, his palm turns aside axes by the cheek as he angles sideward like a fighter many years his senior.     Geats fights and retreats in like measure, taking advantage of the soldiers' frustration and eagerness to corrall them into the rough approximation of a straight line, whittling them down patiently until he sees his opportunity.     His thumb spins the cylinder of the Magnum Buckle slotted into the belt at his waist, then pulls the trigger.     A two-dimensional cross-section of a revolver's cylinder appears before him, one 'chamber' red to the black of its five empty counterparts. Geats makes a standing roundhouse that sets the cylinder spinning, funneling his momentum into a jumping back kick aimed right at the red cylinder. A split-second crackle of red lightning dances across his body, before he's 'shot' out of the cylinder, his form a white-hot silhouette that plows through the remaining soldiers.                                  MAGNUM VICTORY                                     He lands at the end of their unwitting column in a crouch, surveying as a delayed explosion barrels through their ranks.     Na-Go's knees give out the moment the adrenaline stops holding her up. From there, it's the Beat Axe which holds up her upper body, sharp points of its V dug into the floor of the mine as she grips it with both hands and her knees hit the dirt. The lenses of her cat-themed helmet would drill deeper into the mine, if they could--anything to keep from looking at the slain hostages or the survivors who will live without them. There. Echidna, who are these people? Do you trust them?     "I'm sorry," she says, soft and plaintive and quite evidently tearful even with the helmet concealing her face. "I'm sorry." Repeating it doesn't make her feel any more like she deserves any absolution. We managed. We did a good thing today. Don't start sulking now.     A shuddering inhale-exhale and a sniffle. "Okay. You're right, Petra. Larum--we're here to free you," she manages, forcing herself back to her feet by leaning on the Beat Axe--but not looking Larum's way even so. "We... have a-- a healer, with us. And weapons, for you. I'm so sorry we couldn't save everyone." Another breath to steady herself, and she manages to stand without the weapon.     "But I... I don't want to give up on the rest of you. Those of you who can fight... please, let my music wash your aches and fears away."
Lilian Rook	'Thank you, Shajo. And Dame Commander'     "It was my fault for doing something pointless." Lilian says, grimly. Illuminated only by the light of her magic circle, the harsh glow and deep shadows exaggerate her strained expression. "You don't have to thank me for taking responsibility for slipping up." Her breath crackles softly on the edge of the array, already flickering where the cold mist melts away on its overtaxed heat. She dismisses it with a careful wrenching apart of its constituent axes. "I'll have to ask you more in-depth about the Church's magic. And . . ."     'Haah- my allies act in accordance with God's will. What hope do you have if you do not? Or are you the strong devouring the weak, after all?'     The wave of light-daggers over the prisoners makes Lilian flinch. Her voice only hisses through her teeth. In an instant, she understands perfectly that there is no way she spares more than a handful of people at most, and her own limitations should she advance just close enough to choose. A last great heave of magical effort slams the remainder of her salvageable circles back into something workable, drawn on space in the residual trails of before, and more of her magic than she can afford to waste is spent slashing through the downward curtain of fire; a brute collision of magic with magic split into a dozen lagging beams, on blind hope that she hits more than a few and saves someone living.     "--I shouldn't have -- ignored, how Rutger is -- about swords." Lilian gasps. "Tell me -- about staves -- later."     'Hnnn. Well, done. But--'     "Sorry." Lilian says the word to Lucius, and is gone.     Metal boots trod the collapsed ground beside Oro, with an eerie lack of ambient clatter. Lilian kicks the staff from his reaching hand before he can recover, aiming it over to Shojo. Where the armour should rattle, it ticks softly instead. "To your credit, you were actually fairly strong."     Then Lilian's boot descends on Oro's hand. Likely breaking fingers. However she feels about killing the man herself, it doesn't extend to the short work the Sacaeans will make of him. "But your allies aren't here. And I suppose God wasn't ever to be found in this place at all."
Marigold	The staff is put just beyond Oro's reach, and his hands ball up. He stifles a noise of pain from Alucard's knives, then tries to muster up his remaining energy for the impressive feat of healing his own body without a staff. It's agonizingly slow, taking a long moment just to start fixing his eyes and push the knives out and just as long to start re-setting his fingers after Lilian stomps, but astonishingly it works.      If he had another minute uninterrupted, he could be a threat again. Luckily, surrounded like this, there's no way he gets it.      "Haah... the world... is a battlefield, you stupid boy. Elimine never changed. She lied. Taught you all kindness, so you'd--" His face twists with Flamel's renewed injection of forced empathy, and an awful noise rises in his throat, before he spits at Trudy:      "Ghah! Go on, then. Put it on my 'epitaph' that you proved me right. You... don't..." His teeth grit against the strain of the psychic assault, but he holds onto hate like only a truly wretched person can. "Have any refutation, but the sword!"      Rutger, returning from where they landed, puts a thumb on their blade's guard. Lucius catches up from behind just in time to stay them. "Rutger, Alucard, please stay yourselves." "Mm?"      "Bishop Oro. Is there anything I could--" "Shut up, you bloodsoaked hypocrite. Damn you and damn your mercy. Kill me." "Oh."      There's a fluttering of pages. The resulting down-angled beam of light from Lucius's hand reduces Oro to charcoal, then dust, then soot, in the span of two heartbeats. His shadow remains burnt into the ground when it fades. Deep breath. "Then may God correct your heart in your next life."      Effortfully, he re-composes himself into a very tired smile. "... Now. Trudy. May I have that staff? I understand there are those who need my help."
Marigold	The mine's mouth is tears of joy and tears of grief, blood of the oppressor and blood of the oppressed. But the balance is towards joy. The living cry over the dying feeling guilty relief that they are alive to mourn at all. Echidna uses her hair-wrap as a tourniquet under Odette's instruction, and Roy hastily pours expensive medicine on dirty wounds alongside Aidan and Petra. Clarine shows up as backup healer first, on horseback, and Lucius warps over after his errand too.      It remains to be seen how many of the wounded they can save. More than enough to make today heroic. Maybe not enough to make it not a little bitter.      When there's enough healers present that there's no more call for unskilled labor, and when the fighting in the depths of the mines has died down, Echidna and Larum slump against each other sitting by the cave's wall in tangible relief, with Roy crouching near them in a wordless, absorbed melancholy.      "So what happened to Geese? Elffin?" "They're fine. Worried to death about you." "Oh, thank goodness... but you shouldn't have come for me!!" "You told them you knew I would." "Because you're a blockhead sometimes!" "Says Larum." "Haha... yeah... says Larum."      Larum gets a little pouty at the insistences on mistrust. "Well, Echidna trusts you, so I do too. Obviously." Arms cross; then she winces from a mine-earned sprain. "Me and Echidna go back years. I met her around when Elffin did! You could say I'm the soul of the rebellion. The beating heart. The-" "She's our spy." "Hey! And the capital? You're gonna attack Jutes? I know you can do anything, but be careful!"      "I missed you too," Echidna says solemnly, putting her arm around her. "Hey... I didn't say..." "Yeah you did." "Ahh... sorry. I was just so scared." They relax for a while, then, and listen to Na-Go's music.      Down in the streets of the camp, Fir is hugging someone tearfully- a big lug in torn prisoner clothes who looks absolutely nothing like her. Someone might overhear: "Oh, dad... I'm so sorry." "Come on. What do you have to apologize to your father for?" "The people who were keeping you locked up, I fought--" "Shhh." "And I didn't even know--" "Fir. I'm sorry I wasn't there for you when you got here. You must've been so lost..." "Aaaahhh..."
Alucard	Alucard, with everyone else there, looms over the downed bishop. He bares his fangs as the man has the audacity to heal himself. His eyes burn in the night, and sorcerous power rises. The dhampir extends his hand, and fire spirals up in his palm, blindingly bright in the night. "You had the choice. You have these powers with which you could have helped people. You chose to hurt them for your own profit instead." He makes ready to loose a terrible gout of sorcerous fire when Lucius asks him to stay his hand. The part of him that is an inhuman monster wants to hiss at the cleric and vent his fury on the dispicable human on the ground. Instead, he draws a shuddering breath, and the fire winks out. With a thought, the scabbard that Lucius had been minding flies free. Alucard releases his blade, and the two meet in midair before replacing themselves in his belt. He looks at the others gathered, then to the bishop as Lucius incinerates him with holy light. He looks at Lucius, his expression conflicted and horrified. "I ...Forgive me." His body shimmers with magic as he changes his shape. Where there was a man is now a bat with a body the size of a medium dog and a wingspan like a condor. With a mighty flap, Alucard ascends, and with another burst of magic, he rockets off, becoming a shadow across the moon and then nothing at all.
Trudy Grimm	> "Ghah! Go on, then. Put it on my 'epitaph' that you proved me right. You... don't... Have any refutation, but the sword!"     "I suppose not," Trudy hums thoughtfully, rising back to her feet, "'Might makes right' is the way where I am from, too. There's one crucial difference between us, though..." Her eyes close, her lips spreading into a wide, warm, sharp-toothed smile.     "I don't think I'm mightier than the Gods, nor would I presume to speak for them."     Lucius ends Bishop Odo's waning existence. An act of mercy she inwardly admits she would not have granted him. Let him bleed out in agony. Let him feel his soul dragged into the clutches of the Lady. As his body burns away, her smile fades. When Lucius asks for the staff, she hands it to him without hesitation, then steps past him towards the mine.     With things wrapping up, the Black Knight has-- effectively ground to a halt. He stands at his full height in one of the tunnel crossroads sections, his greatsword jammed into the stone by his feet. How he remains upright is something of a mystery, given the a wful condition of his body and armor. He can still move; frequently turning his head slightly towards surrendered soldiers, or that way as relief runs by to tend to the wounded, his fingers shifting restlessly on his sword's pommel.     But hey, at least he seems to have had his fill of violence for now.