ic Tail of Gold (IC)

[angrydurf]

"Awww you think I'm pretty!"  Ouroboros teased sarcastically and shook his head at the carnage around them.  "Messy amatures."  he murmured under his breath and moved to follow Aquaria a shadowy nimbus enveloping him as he descended slowing and controlling his fall and letting him hover just over the ground when he reached the bottom.

 

Limned in the shadows he'd summoned Ouroboros frowned at the statues, "Time flows differently in many realms, but it is not so static nor deterministic as prophecy would have one believe."  the dhampir suggested with a frown, "Not good likenesses regardless."    He drifted toward the statues on guard and ready,  "Mind games or trap our only way is forward and continue to be warrey."

[Avenger Assembled]

Aquaria squatted beneath her statue and peered up at it with staring eyes. In a soft, rumbling song, she answered Salvo - "Vhoka is a false god - and all he shows are clever lies. Believe nothing you hear here." And with that, she hopped after Ouroboros and past the still, silent statues, disappearing into the darkness of the temple proper, the howling of a distant beast echoing against the tumbling rush of the great Niagara behind them. 

 

Inside, the group at first found themselves in what seemed to be a slaughterhouse - a great stone-hewn room marred by the freshly recent corpses of some half-a-dozen human beings, all of them in what appeared to be the arcane robes of cultists or mystics. There before them was a great stone maw set into the floor, fangs jagged and bloody, each one as big as a man and the mouth itself some fifty feet wide. Whatever lay down below inside that mouth, dark and indistinct, was something of vast, malignant power; like watching just the outline of a shark with nothing but a thin sheet of glass to protect yourself. 

[RocketLord]

Justice

 

"This is weird, right?" Robin asked Salvo, as the other two moved on, while she looked up at the statues. Don't trust anything, time moves weird, prophecy? Really? So the statues could be because of lots of things, right? Great.

 

Reaching the next chamber, she was happy that her armor included a helmet so the others couldn't see her grimace. Bodies everywhere, and they had died recently, and that big stone maw... had they smashed themselves against the stone teeth or what had happened here?

 

"I know I'm new in the whole magic game, but, is that some kind of sacrifice? Did they do this to themselves?" Full armor, still. She wanted to be ready for whatever was down in that hole.

[Avenger Assembled]

Salvo saw it simply enough. 

 

They were all filtering into the temple when suddenly she felt a crack in the middle of her spine and fell, helpless and paralyzed to the ground. From there, unable even to scream, she watched the horrific scene play out as Ouroboros and Sea Devil turned on Justice and cracked her open like a tin can to feast on the sweet juices within, then hurled her corpse into the open maw while chanting in eldritch tongues. Then Ouroboros took Sea Devil's trident and impaled her through the back while the latter bellowed "A SACRIFICE! A SACRIFICE FROM ALL OF US!" The blood called something from within the maw, something black and furred and writhing, that grabbed Salvo by the ankle and dragged her down to where teeth and claws awaited. 

 

"No," Aquaria was just telling Justice, "this definitely looks like they were eaten too." She bent down over the corpses, sniffing the air with her great nostrils, and said, "This...I smell the beast here, but...it is very strange. Those big sharp teeth from before, they did not do this...." Her eyes suddenly snapped open, bulging wide, and she dropped the fragment she was holding. "Look!" she demanded. "Come, and see!" 

 

 

[Zeitgeist Blue]

Salvo

 

Before Aquaria could reach the robe, a beam of unstable magic cut between Aquaria and the robe. Salvo's hands sizzled as she shut her weapon down. "Stop!" She stalked forward, the vision playing out in her mind. She glanced at the great stone maw, as if the temple's beast would appear between its jagged teeth any moment. "Careful, Sea Devil, all of you."

 

"I don't need to repeat it, but this place is cursed and so is anything within its walls." The light behind her visor darkened, emitting a low glare on her companions all. "And this temple is malicious and aware of our presence. It wants to inflict on us the same fate as the cultists. I saw it as a vision, except it was us as the actors instead of these idiots. Maybe all that was shown to me were lies but," She waved at the bodies and pieces of bodies littering the floor around them. "Look for yourself how these cultists fared. Ward yourselves against malignant control and influence."

 

Then she looked down at the torn robe, scanning it with her sensory suite. "This is not one of the cultist's dead here. Gaudier and more expensive, maybe it belonged to one of their superiors?" She looked up then, to the great maw and the sickening blackness within. "I think the answer is inside there. Something came from the maw and dragged the robe's owner into the depths of the temple. The cultists sacrificed them to Vhoka even as they killed each other. I saw this too."

[angrydurf]

Poking at the bodies Ouroboros looked but sharply as the lance of wild magic shot past.  "Sacrifice or sacrament the lines blur when one is dealing with devourer entities."  He replied to Justice as he noted the same as Aquaria, "They fell on one another, difficult to say if in ecstatic fervor or outside influence."  he confirmed and looked over the more decorative robe.  "I've not known an unstable cultist who did not prefer more ornate garb when rising through the ranks."  He agreed as well and continued examining the bodies.

 

Ouroboros stood a frown etched on his features.  "Regardless of the source of their cannibalistic urges, rite or possession when Vhoka was awakened," he noted and nudged the robe with one booted toe, "This one is not among the fallen, or at the least not it's body."  The dhampir looked to his companions with concern, "If this was all to awaken Vhoka it is not out side the realm of possibility they succeed at least in part and the devourer now rides the flesh of the former leader."

[Avenger Assembled]

A shadow seemed to part and Ouroboros saw his father emerge from the pit, looking somewhat bedraggled but just as he'd last seen him minus the tattered finery and the blood on his face and arms. "Help me, son!" The white hand extended in his direction. "It was this thing that took me away from you, fed my hunger!" His red eyes stared wide as Avenger declared, "It's not too late!" Behind his father, Ouroboros could see a trail of sizzling hot blood magic that trailed away to where the Deep One had just moved, deeper into the heart of the temple. 

 

- 

 

"I can hear them," said Aquaria, suddenly. "Lying whispers, everywhere. Do not be fooled!" she urged her friends, leaping not over the pit (for she knew better than to leap across an open maw for that way lay devouring) but along its side until she reached another door deeper into the temple. Loathe to leave the others behind, she turned to face them as she pointed with her trident. 

[RocketLord]

Justice

 

They ate each other? Oh come on. Robin frowned, taking some big steps around the massive mouth that even Froggy seemed like she didn't want to get too close to.

 

"Do all all big magic things turn out like this? Every thing you discover being more horrible than the last?" Her voice wasn't shaking. No, not at all. This wasn't freaking her out at all.

 

She reached for her belt, but removed her hand again. She was almost ready to escape back to Z-Space, but she couldn't really do that, could she? They had to press on and find this Vhoka. She moved closer to Ouroboros. He at least seemed to know what was happening here.

 

"How do we deal with the leader if Vhoka is possessing him? I'm pretty sure that just beating him up won't help, right?"

 

After an answer or not, she moved past Aquaria and deeper into the temple. She could at least try to block any hits coming their way, plus, she could see in the dark.

[angrydurf]

Ouroboros glared at the shadowy apparition eyes glinting with predatory light, "Careful now Vhoka, I'm liable to think this is personal you keep that up."  he growled.  His relationship with his father was, conflicted, to say the least at this point.  But if he knew one thing about Jack Faretti with certainty.  It was that Jack Faretti never pleaded to anyone for help.

 

He glanced to Justice ignoring the fals whispers and lies completely now.  "No, sometimes you meet a cute trickster god, but usually that's after the horribleness."  He stalked forward warily but resolute and nodded to Justice, "Well you can try a riddle contest but chances are he won't go for it."  the magus darkly joked with a vague smirk. 

 

"If Vhoka has taken a host or physical form he will take on some of hte weaknesses of that form."  he explained as he picked his way deeper into the temple following aquaria for now.  "Once weakened and restrained the possession or embodiment can be broken and the spell on earth he's powering can be broken."  when dealing with entities such as this there wasn't much beyond disrupting their plans to be done.  "Of course then we have to get out of his house and hopefully he's not too pissed about the whole banishment thing."  he nodded to the amulet that powered Justices suit, "It comes down to it that should do it, get Aquaria and Ni-Salvo out." he laughed under his breath, "I'm good at finding my way home."  he added with a wry grin showing a little more fang than he realized.  

[Zeitgeist Blue]

Aquaria's warning of lies in her mind, Salvo followed the others deeper into the temple, her sabatons stomping on the stone floor as if to scare away the visions.

 

"And sometimes you could find wonder without any form of horribleness," Salvo growls after Huang. "Yet I doubt primeval magic such as this one cares about any human-made concepts. They do as they do and it turns out horrible more often than not."

 

Salvo looks towards Aquaria, leading them deeper into the tunnel. "Sea Devil might have the specifics for your questions, Justice." She shakes her head. Her snort at the almost-use of her name comes out like a crackle of static. "I'll be glad to leave this place sooner rather than later. I don't know how you tolerate extra-dimensional travel so much. It's all some form of ugly evil and horibleness. Where is the dimension of eternal puppies and when is the next threat that will lead us there, Chosen of Heshem?"

Edited November 19, 2020 by Zeitgeist Blue

[Avenger Assembled]

Aquaria was expecting the lying song that came next but that made it no less unpleasant to hear. 

 

They followed the bloody trail through dark corridors lined with hideous statues of beings torn apart by a great clenching maw, until at last they came to a vast cavern where an obscene thing crouched atop a vast cyclopean throne, about it and echoing from the deep darkness the sounds and hooting of Deep Ones like a gigantic chorus, the thing itself the size of a small skyscraper when it stood, a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face is a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. As they entered it rose to its hind legs and gave a terrible bellow, raising a trident larger than a tractor-trailer over its head. 

 

"Dagon the king, in his raging," quoted Sea Devil as she unconsciously craned her neck to look upward, her tone like one confronted with abomination - albeit not quite the tone a Surfacer would have adopted here. "You will not fool us!" she bellowed at nothing in particular, raising her own trident high in mockery of the false song of her god before them. 

 

And then Justice was conscious of a dripping sound that wasn't coming from the rocks or the fish-frog god-thing - but of something just above her head... 

[Avenger Assembled]

The beast that leaped down, snapping its jaws at Justice's face, wasn't a werewolf anymore than Salvo, Justice, and Ouroboros were chimpanzees when removed from their costumes. It was somehow a pure, ultimate evolution of lycanthropy, its hands and feet ending in clawed digits, its fangs wicked sharp, magical, transformative energy curling around it like flame around a burning wooden icon. It was humanity reshaped by magical power into something pure, malevolent, and hungry for flesh. It bulked a good ten feet tall and its eyes gleamed with an unholy light that on closer inspection was in fact the gleam of undersea light off tiny ivory teeth around each socket. When it howled it gave a terrible howl, deep and loud, and its call was that of the primeval forest that had once been man's ultimate terror. 

 

Having no fear of mammals beyond those she encountered every damned day, Aquaria bellowed in return as she leaped for the beast, thrusting a trident that glowed with searing green energy - that the creature deflected with a swipe of one mighty paw! 

 

And then, with great affrontery given its savage nature and visibly bloody, dripping mouth, the creature growled and laughed all at once as it declared "Fools! Fools! Ultimate power is mine! Vhoka will feast on your lives and take them for his own!" 

 

"FALSE GOD!" Sea Devil bellowed, back on her feet and mad as Hell. "Your flesh is unworthy!" 

[Zeitgeist Blue]

Salvo

 

Salvo whipped towards the beast that had leaped among them. Her head strained upward at the mass of savage fur and muscle, bristling with violence in every movement. Savagery made flesh. It towered over them all as its god's avatar and its howl reverberated through Salvo's armor, plates and gears shaking with the primeval magic that poured from the beast beyond werewolves.

 

It was a predator made perfect and unholy.

 

Yet, Salvo-Bellios was not a woman but a weapon, fear excised as the weakness of mortals. Her machine-body powered up and the metallic roar crashed in defiance against the beast. The Sea Devil bellowed as she leapt, spear in hand, and the war cries echoed through the temple in tortured disharmony.

 

"Tear it out yourself, monster." Salvo slammed her arms together as Aquaria was pushed aside. Her voice boomed as fire grew within her, flowing through her armor's Soul into this dimension. "If you are strong enough." She felt it, the breaking point and she could no longer hold it within.

 

"Back, Sea Devil!"

 

A pillar of flame roared, unleased from her palms, and tore through the wet air towards the beast. The stone floor in its path was seared black with the intense heat. It was hellfire and it grew larger and more alive with afterimages of the damned. The fire crashed upon the beast like some hellish parody of storm waves.

Edited November 27, 2020 by Zeitgeist Blue

[Avenger Assembled]

Sea Devil heard the warning and leaped away, scuttling along the rocky ceiling of the makeshift cave that held them, avoiding the fiery blasts as they rocketed towards the beast. Alarmingly, the beast gave a low growl and suddenly inhaled the flames that surrounded it, not only seeming unhurt but actually growing noticeably, until it towered so high its head brushed the ceiling above. It roared as what were distinctly suckered limbs erupted from its torso like some unholy merger of wolf and octopus!

 

"FOOLISH MORTALS!" it bellowed as liquid flame rose high around its feet, casting a sickly reddish glow across the scene, which was now revealing itself to be a roughly-dug cave deep in the body of the stone beneath the temple. "THE MAW OF VHOKA CONSUMES! IT CANNOT BE CONSUMED! BEAST AND WHELP AND BROKEN THING AND FLESH THAT HIDES - ALL WILL BE DEVOURED!"

[angrydurf]

Ouroboros spun as the creature dropped from the ceiling to attack Justice the glint of his forcefield strengthening in the direction of the threat as he flew clear of the melee.  "I'm not a fan of kill it with fire in most case but I'll make an exce-"  He cut off his quip as the devourer absorbed the burst of hellfire and seemed all the mightier for it.  "Well that's an unexpected trick."  

 

"Lets try something a little different."  the hovering Dhampir suggested as he began his own dark incantation, "Izvikaiite mnogoto ramena na Kar'Kradas ot mestata mezhdu tyakh!"  The final syllable rolling off his tongue as his coat flung open and a multitude of shadowy grasping limbs emerged from it's dark folds streaming across the chamber to clutch and and restrain the rampaging devourer.  Each limb slapped away or failing to find purchase followed by more as the writhing army of phantom tendrils grappled the great beast.

[RocketLord]

Justice

 

"Ah! What the hell!?" The others took the whole ultimate apex predator werewolf thing way better than Justice as it struck at her. Her armor held, barely, but she was still up close, and everything was happening so fast all around her. Sea Devil, Ouroboros, even Salvo, they were used to this kind of thing. Robin was still new to the whole magic thing, still learning everything, but this thing? She crouched out of the way as Sea Devil struck and Salvo tried to burn the thing, but she shouldn't cower. She was here to help, she was here to fight, she... she knew what she had to do.

 

Throwing her right hand up, she placed her left on her belt and the amulet. "Power up! Activate H.E.R.O. mode!" She flicked the a switch on the Justice Driver with her left hand, then quickly swiped her right hand down over the amulet, causing it to start spinning. "HENSHIN!"

 

Quickly throwing her hands out to the side, Justice moved forward, a body sized rainbow portal appearing in front of her. She ran into it, but rather than disappearing, she passed straight through it, her silver armor replaced by red and gold, with pink powerlines running all over the armor. First time she was actually testing this armor in the field, but she needed the boost if she was going to keep up.

 

Justice jumped to the side, spun under the creature and jumped up with a powerful kick aimed at the center of its chest.

[Avenger Assembled]

Justice's powerful blows staggered the creature, flesh cracking like a statue's marble against each punch. "BREAK YOUR BONES AND EAT YOUR FLESH!" it howled again, in a voice like a typhoon as tentacles erupted again and again from its furry body. Without hesitation, Sea Devil sprang into action in support and leaped at the creature even as it whipped a fanged tentacle towards Salvo. With a warrior's bellow, she drove her trident into the opening cracked open by Justice - 

 

And then all of a sudden, Aquaria was standing there with her trident through a human being's heart. She croaked in surprise, eyes hidden by her armor, but there was no hiding the naked, dead man impaled simultaneously through heart and lungs, dead as a dolphin. Blood dripped down her trident, thick and hot and too-familiar a scent, as it stained her armored three-fingered hands. 

 

The scene around them changed again, warping into the rocky confines of a vast underground cavern as the illusion of Dagon triumphant faded. From the depths of the cave around them, invisible in the dark save for glowing red eyes for those to see, a voice whispered - 

 

YOU SEE. SO EASY TO GIVE IN TO YOUR HUNGERS. TO DESTROY. COME. EAT OF HIS FLESH AND TAKE HIS POWER. 

 

The very air rang of the unholy power of a false god uncaged, a deafening chorus that seemed to ring through Aquaria's soul. Aquaria staggered back, shaking the body off her prongs, and whirled on her allies, her posture one of desperate defiance. 

 

"No...no - I am not going back to prison!" 

[Zeitgeist Blue]

Salvo

 

The hulking hero stalks toward the Deep One, and as her sabatons tread forward, a deep and menacing noise rumbles from her armored bulk like some overworked engine. Salvo ignores the Sea Devil's desperate defiance, and she stops an arm's breath away. They are of a height, smooth and alien black armor against her blood-red techno-magical plates, and Sea Devil can see her faceplate reflected on Salvo's own visor.

 

Only when Salvo is close does one realize that she is laughing.

 

"Then count yourself lucky the U.S. justice system holds no jurisdiction in the realm of Vhoka's Temple, Sea Devil, and that you travel with those with enough sense not to take you in." Salvo looks behind her, to Justice and Ouroboros, as if waiting for her companions to speak otherwise. Salvo turns back to Aquaria.  "Given other circumstances and more legally-bound heroes, I would not want to guess the results of a stand-off. Speaking as a registered Freedom City meta-human and a member of the Freedom League Auxiliary of course."

 

Salvo would reach for Aquaria's trident to push it aside, then afterwards would stalk past the Sea Devil, towards the corpse to begin her scans. "Now let us find out if you should add manslaughter to your rep sheet, and us as accomplices, were we hypothetically back in Freedom. Perhaps we should listen and destroy the body to hide the evidence after all." Again the laugh like a low, grating engine.

 

The Sea Devil had repeatedly spoken of Vhoka's lies. Yet even guarded, the Deep One was shaken from the Deceiver's tricks. It knew a lot about them or perhaps this was merely unlucky happenstance. In the primeval temple, surrounded by darkness and the baleful eyes of creatures, Salvo knew where the odds lay.

Edited December 14, 2020 by Zeitgeist Blue

[Avenger Assembled]

The truth was that Aquaria knew what Surface Men looked like when they died but this was a truth she would never discuss among strangers. She felt cold terror seize her heart as she contemplated her fate at the hands of her erstwhile allies, until she seemed to feel a calming force sweep over her from the reassuring presence of Ouroboros. "I do not like prison," she muttered in a sound like a horde of bullfrogs chirping, "It was bad. I do not...I do not think I killed him." Did she feel any guilt in that cold heart? It was best not to think about such things, she knew from long experience. 

 

The dead body turned out to be a very real dead body, but one of a considerably older vintage than one freshly killed by a Deep One's trident - there was certainly much less blood than one would have expected. It looked perhaps as old as the bodies upstairs, greying beard the only thing it wore, and rather more battered than even their fight and a quick impalement would have allowed for. It bore a few tattoos, shaped like the arcane symbols on the discarded roles of the cultists upstairs/

 

Across the cavern, Ouroboros spotted something amid the shadowy gloom and spectral mouths across the room - a canine form sitting on a throne shaped like a great fanged maw, its clawed hands raised and waving in an arcane style. The form did not seem to realize it had been spotted - yet. 

[RocketLord]

Justice

 

Justice took a step back when the wolf disappeared and Sea Devil had suddenly skewered a man instead of a monster. He was... what? What was all this? She had felt her blows connecting with the monster, she had hit it again and again, she had felt it strike her, but now it was just gone, and it was some dead man and Sea Devil was panicking and...

 

Salvo to the rescue, calming things down. Robin moved closer, inspecting the body alongside Salvo, even if this suit didn't have nearly as many sensors as the old one. "This guy looks like he's been dead for a while. I think you're right, it doesn't seem like you killed him." She turned to Sea Devil, trying her best to get a reassuring tone and body language across. 

[angrydurf]

"That was too easy."  Ouroboros said even as the beast reverted to the form of a man impaled on the end of the deep ones trident.  "Beware the lies of would be gods Aquaria In-His-Mouth."  he warned as he caught the amphibian heroes gaze suppressing her flight or fight instincts with a swell of vampric mesmerism.  

 

As the others examined the body he turned his attention and potent mystic gifts to the room around him finally alighting upon the chanting figure.  All this deception and misdirection was not what Vhoka was known for, something wasn't adding up but every moment they tarried here more damage was done by the rite on earth running it's course.  

 

Staring directly at the being weaving the illusions Ouroboros shook his head, "Such deception does not suit you devourer."  he intoned and offered an explanation for his companions, "He hides and cowers behind illusion."  he revealed and raised a hand focusing his will against the god thing in it's own realm and pushed though it was not enough and the illusion held he knew it could not for long.  Redoubling his efforts he hissed, "Prepare I will reveal him."

[Zeitgeist Blue]

Salvo

 

"An actual kill would have given us all a headache. I wouldn't want to deal with Sea Devil's problem now in this place," Salvo replies to Justice, then looks up from the body at the darkness to watch the glowing red eyes all around them. Ouroboros directed their to a figure, canine in form, and Salvo stepped closer to the half-dhampir as he began to dispel the illusion.

 

Salvo waited patiently, watching Ouroboros. A few seconds passed but still nothing happened. Still, the body lying on the floor a few feet away. Still, the oppressive darkness pressing at them from all sides and the ringing silence of a vast, empty temple. The red eyes hiding in the shadows still watched them.

 

Salvo raised her hand and with an angry bang and flash of magic near Ouroboros' head, the scene broke. Energy lanced towards the canine form, searing it with the white hot being of Soulfire. The sudden barrage ended as abruptly as it began, and Salvo lowered her smoking hand to her side. She turned to Ouroboros.

 

"You were taking a while."

[Avenger Assembled]

With a deep bass bellow, Aquaria struck her trident against the ground - and a remarkable thing happened. They all felt it; a sudden, spectral investigation and the distinct sensation of something sticky and wet tugging at them, tugging at their magic, pulling at it like the tentacles of an octopus pulling a fish into its gullet. The effect was only momentary but it was certainly striking, especially as Aquaria bellowed again "No false gods! Only Dagon and Hydra! " The momentary magic faded, its effects having lasted only seconds at best - but the effect on their antagonist was striking. 

 

The illusions faded, revealing clearly for the first time the beast that sat across the room - what had once been a man, some nine feet tall now and canine, body transformed into a humanoid wolf that was somehow worse than any Hollywood production of a werewolf, as if bones and flesh had been reshaped by a crude predator's eye rather than a Hollywood artist's touch. The tentacles, coiled and black around its waist, didn't help matters any. With its disguises gone it rose to its clawed feet again and howled, just once, and roared "ALL FLESH WILL BE EATEN!" 

[RocketLord]

Justice

 

Salvo's patience ran out before Robin could attempt anything, and well... yeah, sometimes you just had to smash something when dealing with magic. She'd remember that.

 

It felt weird. She wasn't magic. Not like the rest here, but she still felt it, tugging on her armor, on the amulet, on her source of power... what would she even be without it, anyway? What could she do here if someting pulled it away? The thing was weird. It was uncanny, it simply looked wrong. 

 

It wasn't an illusion, right? It couldn't be an illusion too, right? 

 

She couldn't take the chance.

[Avenger Assembled]

Sea Devil stayed in the rear though all her instincts told her to scream and leap for its throat. She'd used a great and terrible spell to expose its secrets and there would be consequences. There always were with the false gods. 

 

Sure enough, there were indeed. Roaring in inarticulate rage at its exposure, the great beast reached up with its tentacles and tore at the rocky ceiling above them, striking at it with what at first looked like an effort to escape, then to procure missile weapons - until suddenly with a great roar, the rocks gave way with an unholy roar, sending huge boulders plunging down into the melee that surrounded it. The beast meant to bring the whole place down on their heads!