Lords of Creation, The Second Age

[Philote]

[Midas]

"We are on our way there just now actually" Midas informs her. "After our rest tonight we should make it there early tomorrow. Now as for our deal, I'd like you to become a permanent member. You'll be allowed to venture out of the town as you'd like so long as there isn't an emergency but you'll have to keep close ties with the town."

(Midas still does not know she is an Aspect)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Murozond]

"Change is spreading quickly, Murozond is pleased. The ripples of your acts are spreading out far, even now many come to confront you."

"Would you like to use your second wish?" Murozond asks displaying an excited grin from the inside of his glass lamp.

[Tsubasa & Wen Tien]

"Keep close ties with the town, eh?" Jhella responds, with a look of concentrated thought. "So then, what would happen if the town were to say fail or be destroyed? Though I wouldn't be dumb enough to do that, breaking a contract like that is the dumbest way that anyone can think of since I'm sure that being a permanent member of the town entails making sure that it grows and becomes more of a part of history."

[Tsubasa & Wen Tien]

"I'm sure we all want the answer to that question," Gravas replies. "Why don't I try seeing what's nearby by blowing away some sand."

She raises one hand in front of her face and blows out, the set of actions causing a large gust of wind to blast forth from the direction of the sea, "Now let's see what we have here."

[Philote]

Midas' eyes narrow. "Yes, it would be unfortunate if something like that happened. If it did, all those who were part of the town would surely have to work to restore it to glory."

[Tsubasa & Wen Tien]

"Of course, that does make sense," Jhella replies. "Now, since it sounds like we'll be leaving on the morrow, I'll take some time to enjoy myself with the festivities if that is fine. Where should we meet up?"

[Philote]

Midas proceeds to show her the map he had shown to Watches not long before.

[Tsubasa & Wen Tien]

After looking at the map and asking a few questions for clarification on where to go and meet up, Jhella walks off whistling in the direction of the Religious District of Spectropolis for some fun.

[Philote]

"Don't be long, you're under contract now" Midas says.

Turning back to Watches. "Lets finish camp, I expect we will have much work tomorrow."

[Celadon's Penultimate]

The Rag Lady.

He couldn't explain why, but for some reason, something in that name...it sent shivers down Ariel's spine. It called forth images of dark places, devoid of the love of the Goddess, empty of laughter and love and life. Dark places, foul smelling, cold and cruel.

It mocked him, for certainly something there was a touch of irony to it. Though she seemed to be a thing herself ruined, it was truly she who ruined others. Not a simple vandal, but a herald of deep, unyielding desolation.

Ariel kept his eyes trained on the wretched thing before him, but without thinking, took a step backward. She had ruined lives before, and if he was wise, he would do well not to let her ruin him.

"You don't frighten me, wretch." the angel ignored the bitterness of that lie on his lips, "I and my comrades...we shall take you in. Do you hear me, monster? We shall take you in, and you will be held with us, until Uburra-Namall and her train return from the celebration. S-sisters? SISTERS!"

Some spark of confidence returned to the angel as he heard the winds stirring up outside. That airy bluster grew nearer, kicking up dust along the way and, before long, there stood alongside Ariel his sisters, blonde Sariel wielding a sword, brunette Muriel wielding a mace and redhead Cassiel wielding a club.

"Ariel, don't be rude." Sariel chided, feigning disappointment with a cocky smirk, "Aren't you going to introduce us to your...diminutive friend?"

GV: So, here, I had in mind that the angels would vastly underestimate your power, and you would unleash some terrible assault on them, which only Ariel would escape, while his sisters were terribly maimed or deformed or something. Not killed, though, I had something planned for them afterwards. And speaking of plans, what did YOU have in mind for my angels?

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

She's taken aback by the sudden company. Even the whispers falter for a moment. She swiveling what would be her head to the three other angels now in the room, thinking, considering. It's almost as though she were an actor, and her co star had suddenly gone off script and left her trailing along behind struggling to keep up. But then the moment passes, the whispers come back sharper than ever, and she re-grasps her composure.

"Yes Ariel, you wouldn't want to be rude, would you?" she says confidently.

Wulf:  Pretty much your plan, with the exception of who gets maimed and what happens to them afterwards.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

"I don't like it." Watches says, as the weird woman made her way back to the city. "If you made a wager like that, would you lose on purpose?"

[Celadon's Penultimate]

"Don't speak my name, filth!" Ariel hissed, his sword glinting a fierce light, "And you, sisters, encouraging her! Certainly you couldn't have mistaken this for a social call! The Rag Lady is hereby an enemy to the Pantheon of the Goddess and all her Angels! If you don't mind, Sariel and Cassiel can bind her. On the way back to the Throne, Muriel can take the lead and I can guard the flank."

Sariel's stature betrayed no change, but it took everything in her power to resist the smile creeping at the corners of her mouth; Ariel was so cute when he got all dramatic.

Still, he wasn't wrong, and so Sariel gestured to her comrades, "All right, then. You heard him, girls. Let's round up the Rag Hag, and be back up to Michael before he decides we've all been gone too long."

The two Muriel and Cassiel exchanged glances, shrugged in unison, and approached the Rag Lady. Their weapons drawn and at the ready, they moved slow and deliberate with menace.

GV:  I leave them in your capable hands.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

As the pair of them approach, the bundle of rags tilts it's head at Sariel before clapping her hands for attention. The whispering that had, until this point, filled the cavern was suddenly silenced. "Everyone, I'm sorry to spring this on you but there's been a change of plans." she says, before pointing directly at Sariel. "I want that one."

The cave was filled with sudden, furious activity, as the monster Itself descended from the ceiling at lightning speed upon Sariel, even as the green lights that dotted the walls moved as one, converging upon and surrounding the angel, to block all possible routs of escape. As they coiled in, tighter and tighter in formation, they seemed to have bodies that flickered in and out of existence it random kaleidoscopic patterns that hurt to look at.

As this happened the Rag Lady's cloak whipped up again like a pit of vipers, and a great and terrible pressure was directed at Muriel and Cassiel. To them, she had changed. Transformed into something unworldly, shifting between forms that were so ugly, so wrong, so against the aesthetic of their noble matriarch that even their divinely crafted minds must surely begin to fracture.

(Itself is going to use Quickness(3) to catch and throw itself onto of Sariel, while the Balasaurs use Are you really there?(3) to block her escape and keep anyone else from getting close. Meanwhile the Rag Lady is using the same combo she let loose on Ari, Fearful Aura(6) + Presence 4 to break their minds over her knee.)

[Celadon's Penultimate]

What fresh hell was this?

The angels Ariel, Muriel and Cassiel stumbled back across the gravelly cave floor, unsteady, aghast at the sight before them. A twisting, wretched, and vile aesthetic had now grasped their minds with force from which the three of them could not hope to escape.

Light and air, which had been their most potent weapons, were turning slowly, and then all at once, against them. The sweet forest air that wafted in from outside grew stale and sour, even pungent with the scent of rot and waste. The light all about them flickered with ghastly visions, of fear, of despair, of all the most profound misery.

They dropped their weapons and cradled their heads in their hands, doubled over, begging voicelessly for unexpected mercies. A writhing, wicked cold gripped them, hopeless, helpless, hapless in the utter depths to which they would fall.

And Sariel would fall with them. The crushing weight of dread that tugged on her comrades' hearts and minds like so much wicked, unyielding gravity, would drag her down as well. The tumultuous flood of hatred and putrid bile and relentless loathing, which choked their every attempt at mental escape, would drown her mind and soul as well. And worse, she would endure what her comrades endured--what her siblings endured--while knowing that they still had yet more to face.

This wretched thing--her mind knew the briefest clarity to hear thoughts naming the beast Itself--this wretched thing would clamber across them like little more than ruinous debris. It would scratch their perfect white vestments with the fiercest claws, bite their flawless skin with ravenous fangs. It would violate everything they stood for--rip away every capacity for passion, destroy every hint of creativity or inspiration, mar their beauty beyond hope of repair. And worst of all, it would pierce and tear asunder their ability ever to live or love again.

Sariel's fraying thoughts darted between helplessly watching her siblings and maintaining her own losing struggle with Itself, when another clear thought came to mind, at last. The kaleidoscopic lights were not just this wretched Rag Lady's assault, but a vile mockery of the Fair Goddess.

Itself was there to destroy them, and these lights? The beauty of dreams turned into blasphemous nightmare. They would be the Rag Lady's own mobile victory flag. The sudden clarity with which the revelation came--even yet as she pushed back with all her might to grapple Itself, and stave off the literal jaws of doom--was enough to make everything else absolutely clear. In just that instant, something new built inside of her. Aside from the fear, aside from the pain, aside from the utter certainty of death that seemed to loom over her more apparent than the cave walls or even Itself...there was laughter.

As she and Itself tossed and turned and rolled about against the cave walls, across the cave floor, Sariel's grip on Itself--and in truth, her grip on reality--seemed less and less like priority. She couldn't help but keep her attention firm, now, on the mocking dance of the lights. The beautiful, monstrous dance of the mocking lights. The Rag Lady thought she had won.

Yet, if the Rag Lady has turned the truth into a lie, turned dream into nightmare, turned shifting shadow into loving light, thought Sariel, her expression growing wild with what may have been some mix of fear, hope and twisted glee, then the answer to her defeat is so clear. So, so clear...just...embrace the darkness.

It rang soft but clear, persistent in its echo through the psychic air, when the other angels heard it.

Embrace the darkness...

The other angels turned from their own anguish for just that moment, sobered from their own torment for just that instant, just long enough to see a blood-marred blonde head thrown back in a rage of wild, ecstatic epiphany. The shouting, whispering, wondering thought she had broadcast from her subconscious was silent through the cave, but her deep, hearty laughter was no simple thought and no mere illusion. Her wings slumped, her eyes crossed and lost all coordination, and she slid slow back toward the ground. Her sword fallen from her hand as gently as if she'd fallen asleep with it, her knees began to buckle, and she gave in to the Rag Lady's hateful gravity.

If this monstress had turned all light and air into the enemy, then perhaps The Fair Goddess would be waiting to console her in the dark and the mist. And if they could only reach respite by falling...then she would be honored to fall first.

GV: So, you've snapped Sariel, and the others are fast fading. Please no killing, though, okay? Everybody here has to be alive when this encounter is over, and Ariel has to be hurt the least.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

The Balasaurs parted obediently as the Rag Lady stepped forth into the circle, closing around them again as she knelt down the level of the laughing angel. She reached out, absentmindedly sweeping the stray locks of blond hair behind Sariel's ear. She leaned forward ever so slowly, and whispered.

"How'd you like that round up, hag?"

There was a wet, meaty sound as she shoved her other hand into the angels chest, rooting around inside, searching, prodding, until finally The Rag Lady found what she was looking for. Deep withing the servitor was its essence, warm and beautiful. She could feel beauty in it, like silk and a warm breeze and the cool texture of a jewel and a million other things. A million other things that the Sariel just did not need anymore.

There was a surge of power, crackling bolts of creation jumping along the angels form, and everywhere they touched they turned beauty to horror. The skin became dried out, pale, and clung to the bone. The hair became white where it was not completely exorcised, leaving only a few pair wisps clinging to her mottled scalp. Eyes, so breathtaking you could wander lost forever in them, became white and scratched with hundreds of little imperfections. A perfect smile became jagged and black. All the while the Balasaurs flickered, flickered in just such a way that Muriel and Cassiel could see it all, in all of it's transfixing carnage.

And all at once the changes were gone, and Sariel knelt there just as beautiful as before. Better than before, for the woulds inflicted by her tussle with Itself had been fully restored and no jagged wound was there when the Rag Lady tore her hand from the angels stomach. For all the world she was the same beautiful creature she was before. Only then did the circle break, the lights of the Balasaurs dancing off and again lining the walls. All was quiet, save for the terrified gibbering sobs of Muriel and Cassiel, curled on the floor unable to move. The sight had just been a little to much for their poor pretty little minds.

The Rag Lady turned to the last creature in the room capable of coherent thought. "Ariel?" She said, sashaying over to him and kneeling down. She took his face in her hands, smearing his sisters blood all over his right cheek, and through the rags he could barely make out eyes. "Ari, this is very important." she said, very gently. "You need to tell someone about this. You need to go, just as you are, and warn everyone you can about what's happened. Everyone. Because I'm going to send out my Balasaur's and they're going to kill everyone they see. So you need to warn them. Tell them to run, Ari. And tell them what they're running from."

She takes her bloody hand and ruffles his hair with it. "Run."


(Create Mythos -2, Fearful Aure + presence again to drive two Angels mad and make one go running.)

[Celadon's Penultimate]

The angel's feet couldn't seem to carry him fast enough. Out, out, out from the horrid nightmare in the cave, he had no care for the rocks he would stumble over, no care for the dirt that would mar his garments as he fell over himself, no care for the branches of the trees and bushes that clawed his face as he emerged back into the forest.

Ariel looked to either side of him, his chest heaving, tears blurring his vision. The Fair Goddess and her subjects had to be alerted right away, but where first? He looked this way and that and realized, there was no way he could be fast enough to reach them all in time. Not in this condition. He would have to alert the other angels.

In the meantime, a message would be left among the mortals. Among the most valuable of the mortals' frivolous capacities had to be their tendency to rumor, so Ariel left them with a bit of truth they would be unable to resist: The Rag Lady draws near. Take heed and despair. He breathed life into those words, gave them legs, gave them wings, gave them gills, and all the swiftness of the winds. He divided it into three, and sent them about their way. However the Boquabians could be reached, Ariel's words would reach them.

That parting kindness having been done for Uburra-Namall's beloved mortals, the angel would be off. Harnessing winds to his aid as best he could, he would persist against the deepest fatigue of body and mind, persist against the dire memories as they tried to fight suppression, persist against the creeping fear that he might arrive too late.

He would even persist against the pain, as his right wing dislocated from strain about halfway up the mount. He had been wise to cleave close to the mountainside in just such an event, but nonetheless, his faltering wing him clambering across jagged, unyielding rocks, until he was at last in sight of the balcony. To his fortune, as soon as he had it in his sights, the watchers on the balcony had him in their sights.

They rushed down to his aid, begging to know what had happened to him and where were their comrades, but Ariel would not speak another word. Not until he could speak to Michael in person.

GV: The Breathless are your monsters, for now. Feel free to narrate them as you please. Just, again, please don't kill them off. Now, as a warning, I'm going to bring some folks in. Still, despite your first instinct, don't panic. I'm not gonna Deus-ex the whole deal and spoil all your fun. Promise.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

She watched the angel leave silently, and then everything is silent for a while. She strains her ears, trying to pick up some sound that wasn't the angels he'd abandoned to whatever dismal fate she had in store for them. Nothing. He was well and truly gone.

She breathed out, and her ridged form loosened. Then she sucked in air and whooped for joy, leaping into the air and laughing like a schoolgirl. "Yes! Hahaha, yesyesyesyesYESYES! We did it! Holy crap we actually pulled it off! AHHHHHHHHH!"

The Balasaurs began to flicker again, sharing in the excitement. She spun around, smiling at them under the hood. "You guys. You were amazing. Like, with the light show? That was killer! I didn't even know you could do that. And you!" she shriek, sliding up to itself and wrapping its head in a big bear hug. "Oh you were perfect. You were so perfect!" The creature made a sort of weird purring sound as she stood up. "I messed up. I almost ruled it. I didn't expect those other guys to show up, can you believe I improved that whole last bit? I was so nervous I though my heart was going to explode."

Any menace in her demeanor had completely drained away. Her voice, her bearing, the way she moved, it had all changed. It had all become so disarmingly childish, as though she had taken off a frightful mask after popping out of a bush and shouting "boo!"

She capped her hands. "Okay, enough celebration. Huddle up everybody, they're going to be here soon." Every horrible thing in the room converged on her, forming a little circle with her. Except for one. Sariel sat there, still on her knees, looking forward at nothing. She had not moved. The Rag Lady looked over at her, sighed, and shook her head. "Sari. Sariel?"

This seemed to reach her, and she glaceed over at the Rag Lady, who patted the spot beside her. "Huddle up, c'mon."

Sariel crawled forward in a confused daze, her face still blank, and joined the circle. The Rag Lady smiled, and clapped her hands together again. "Okay everybody, now if Ari fell for my little fib then he'll be out spreading my name. By the way, sorry to spring that on you guys but we weren't going by script at that point and I had to say something. Anybody actually feel like going out an killing everyone is a good idea?"

There was a scattered tittering murmur that filled the cave which she nodded at.

"Yeah, I thought not. To big, to overt. You lose all your mystique. Besides, just personally, I think it'd be fun to make Ari look like a crazy person."

There's another tittering murmur, but this one sounds more approving.

"Right. Now they're going to be closing the net and I know you guys aren't that fast. Not to mention that it's almost nighttime and you guys just can not hide at night. So what I think," and at this she pulled a big sheet of parchment from her and squiggled a rough drawing of Boquabia in Sariel's blood, "is that you guys all pile onto Itself, and he carries you from here," she puts her finger on a point on the map and drags it off the island, "out into the ocean. You hide out there for like a week, then you start coming out of it to haunt the forests like your namesake. Itself, after that you can head off wherever. Pick your own targets, you know what to do."

There's a snort and a general tittering murmur of acknowledgement.

"While you're doing that, me and Saari will get off this rock the same way we got here, through the crystal network left behind by Mik Hael. She seems out of it, so I'm going to show her the ropes before moving on to phase two in Aabastra. If we never see each other again, know that Its thank to you that such a great debut is possible. I love each and every one of you. Break."

With that, the green lights piled themselves onto Itself. It could carry them all easily, they didn't weigh a thing. "Everybody hold on thigh so you don't fall." The Rag Lady called as the black and green streak ran out of the cave and bonded, quick as lightning, toward the ocean. After watching them go she dragged Sariel to her feet and started leading he deeper into the cave. That is, until something caught her eye.

Stepping over Muriel, she picked it up and grinned a huge grin. "Sari, your brother forgot his sword." she called over to Sariel, who only looked over as The Rag Lady jumped her sister and came back to her. "Check this out, this going to be amazing. I just had the best idea."

Then she ran Sariel through.

The former angel let out a choking gulp as The Rag Lady ripped the sword from her stomach and whipped it at the ground,  throwing blood spatters all over the ground and onto the other two angels. She then ripped off her broken chest plate and through it on the ground along with the sword. Sariel went to collapse, but the Rag Lady was under her in an instant, putting her shoulder under Sariel' arm and hoisting her up. "Don't be a baby, you're not going to die from something like that." she said, releasing a bit of energy that closed the wound in her stomach. "C'mon, the crystal isn't that far."

The pair made there way deeper and deeper into the cave, disappearing from the room and, soon, from the island itself. Only the angels remained.

(Monster Maker, close the wound.)

[Celadon's Penultimate]

To Ariel's fortune, it would be a short wait before he would get the audience he sought with Michael. After all, Michael had been looking for him, in hopes of a status report on the panic that had emerged down among the mortals. Needless to say, though, developments among the mortals had taken a turn for the worst.

"You..." Michael found himself stunned by Ariel's frantic and terrified words, "You mean to tell me that you and your comrades were attacked by some hateful fiend and her monster underlings--the very fiend who now has laid a threat against the whole of Boquabia--and you left your comrades behind?"

Requiring the support of two comrades simply to stand, Ariel's tears were inconsolable, "I...I had to! She spared me, and if I hadn't left, she might have finished me off, as well! In so doing, who would have remained alive to warn you of the attack to come?"

Michael steeled himself against Ariel's tearful pleas, and let out an angry sigh, but only to keep back his own tears; he turned to call two strong, sturdy male angels, one with black hair and one with brown, "Raphael! Uriel!"

News of their fallen comrades would not be taken well. Still, the time was yet to come when they would be allowed a moment's rest to mourn and grieve. Now...now was the time to prepare. Ariel would be escorted into the Heart of the Plane of Love and Life, to recover from his trauma. Gabriel would sound his trump--a booming reverberation like the deepest heartbreak, and the most stirring outrage--across all the psychic space of Boquabia, that every angel and mortal might be set to high alarm. A special additional troop would be assembled--four to patrol each cardinal corner of the island, and twenty-four more to keep watch with Gabriel atop the mount.

And as they kept vigilant watch, searching about for this fugitive monstress...Michael, Uriel and Raphael would take to the skies, and be off to fetch the Pantheon from Spectropolis. For her slight against this peaceful land, the Rag Lady would pay.

GV: Things are about to get very fun.

[Philote]

"There is no profit in fretting at this moment" Midas replies.

"In any case, she is bound by contract now and not even I can break such a deal without forfeiting my life."

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

The sand blows up, scattering a bunch of grey figures to and fro as they cover themselves. They're thin, everywhere, like they've been stretched out unnaturally some coming up to at least eight feet. As the sandstorm fades down, they begin to open their eyes.

All of their eyes.

Spread along randomly about their bodies are eyeballs. Huge eyeballs, the size of melons in some places. They don't have mouths or noses, but each has ears. Large, fan like ears hanging from the point you would have to consider their head. As they spin around, they lift up their ears like antennae searching for sound. The Watchman looks on, expression even more unreadable than it always is, before the Reasonable clears his throat. They all spin around then, eye's all locking in place on the gods. Slowly, shaking in dear, they drop to the ground in supplication. The entity buzzes about them, swaying from side to side as though dizzy.

The Reasonable looks over the pathetic, groveling mass and says. "Yeah, this is about what I'd expect."