[TWFNE] Week 248: Day of Hope

[MoonlitRain014]

After making sure Aeria was supporting herself, Diamantus approached the wizened, shriveled creature carefully. It appeared to make no move and no deadly wave of magic erupted from it, so she gave it an experimental prod with her pistol. It grunted and shuffled away from the prod, so she did it again. Slowly she shuffled the creature out of the way and gestured towards the device. There was no use in speaking as the room seemed to have been trapped in silence.

Aeria limped over towards the device, conscious of the starry darkness that was creeping in. She carefully inspected it, poking at it with her halberd. Nothing seemed to happen so she reached out to touch it, running hands over its mechanisms and looking intently at it.

She shuffled around, letting out the occasional soft groan as she shifted her weight and tried to discern how the device worked, what might be causing the creeping starry darkness and how they could get out of this place alive. Aeria urgently gestured to her compatriots. The more help she had on this one, the better.

 

[Mystydjinn]

In light of the creeping darkness and sound becoming more memory than scientific phenomenon; Aelflead's mind, needing no further incentive to work quickly, started spinning.

Time Time Time Time Time Time Time

No-. Don't panic, what do you know?

Time. Stop? Stopped? Creepy walking dead things. Designed machine. Crystal is humming. Starry black shit. Starry black shit... Changes things? Pipes?

Glowing stars -no- crystals. Old magic principles, precursors to catalysts. Inky black star shit. Star shit in creepy dead things? Magic powered dead things?

Necromancy? Preservation?

Outside the confines of her mind, Aelflead had turned to stone. Since she was standing on the right of the room's centerpiece -the crystal- , the darkness that was steadily creeping into the room was directly in her line of vision and the entirety of her immediate focus.

Her hands had stopped moving across the surface of the crystal's encasement, having instead turned towards involuntarily becoming the brightest thing in the room rather than tactically useful. As the red headed woman's mind churned so did the flames on her hands grow intense. Their light and heat mirroring the winding thoughts within the woman's mind while her physical form made evident no more than a frozen woman.

Inky star shit is magic? No. Not magic, feedback. Bad formulas make black shit, black shit floods the place instead of intended product-what is intended product? What was intended product? Necromancy. Preservation substance. Room floodings are intentional, not feedback, just black shit.

..."Fuck, we turned a time capsule on."

 

[MoonlitRain014]

Diamantus wandered around the room's edges, at least as far as she could go before the darkness blotted out the room. The strange aural dynamics of the place had her glancing backwards at the starry stuff that was creeping across the room. She also kept an eye on the mouldering zombie. He seemed to be standing there, blank and inactive, so she moved her attention to everything else. Raising her voice, she quipped. "Good thing we've got a buncha brainpower stuck in here because this stuff that's invading the room's not stopping, so you need to put your heads together and quick!"

Aeria had been glancing at the various mechanisms that were part of the device. She prodded at it with probing fingers, seeking to find something that might disrupt the mechanism or perhaps deactivate it. She pondered aloud as she did so. "If we can't find a logical way to disable it, we might have to just jam it. I don't know that we want to see the full process that the machine was designed for in action. If this...this...whatever that creature is meant that we've set off some kind of....temporal device, it might be wise to stop it before it finishes and we find ourselves Vis knows where!"

Going back to inspecting the machine, she shot another glance at Cassius, as though encouraging him to come forward and inspect things.

 

[Redfin]

The device in the center of the room was large, stretching from the floor to the ceiling. It had no up or down. Rather, it had a core, the giant crystal. Surrounding that were bronze brackets and support holding it in place. Sprouting from that were thick pipes, similar to those that transferred water, only they moved something else. The pipes traveled down through the floor twisting and winding through the rest of the temple.

[608]

Spoiler: 1 Round Remaining

SimmeringTemple7.png

• Redfin
• Jul 2, 2019

 

[Mystydjinn]

"We're not going to wind up anywhere," Aelflead said with the panicked kind of certainty that a only a woman who's seen how she's going to die can carry, "We're gonna wind up just like-" Aelflead started to point at the shambling priest in the room but took another glance at the approach of the starry black approaching them instead.

It had already eaten away most of the ceiling besides the pipes leading out of the room. The walls on either side had mostly disappeared as well.

Then she turned back towards the crystal in the center of the room and the archaic symbols that she should have known, but could now only barely read, and frustration drove,"Nuwretu Vis! Toldoi flwaih uoaeouop reiap," from her lips with a hiss.

"Run to the door unless you've got explosives then!" The archaeologist's apprentice bellowed, taking a step back from the machine to center herself, before taking a deep breath. Aeria's haphazard solution was more or less right. They didn't have time for her to sit and remember years of study again, nor for Aeria to learn it in a day, nor for either of their guesses to pull something meaningful out of a thorough analysis of the building's construction.

Jamming it explicitly might make the problem worse if the crystal was a catalyst for the machine like she'd guessed; no, she would have to separate the power source from it's machine altogether.

For a moment, a wave of energy rushed through the room, converged on Aelflead, and then found itself bound up in the woman's arm.

Visdmanit! I am snorting (sniffing) library after this.

 

[MoonlitRain014]

Without any questioning, Aeria turned and began trying to limp/drag herself out of the room, struggling with her damaged body. Diamantus rushed up behind her and put a powerful arm around her. In an easy motion, the muscled velen heaved the slight spurii off of the ground and carried her bodily towards the door.

The spurii shouted at Aelflead, "I don't know if you should've done that! What....if...."

As the energy built, she lapsed into silence while Diamantus leaped forward as the energy began to grow around the warrior woman in the center of the room. Whatever was about to happen, it wasn't something that they'd be likely to survive if they didn't escape rapidly.

 

[Mystydjinn]

Not moments after, the light that had been emanating from Aelflead's burning fingers had spread to her hand and then entirely covered her arm. Velden didn't need depth charges, neither do you.

Now, warm enough to cause the air around her to ripple wildly and with a sliver doubt in her solution, Aelflead's open palm shot forward and struck the middle most point of the crystal's cage with an excess of panicked force.

As the heel of the woman's palm made contact with the crystal's cage, a dull and angry thud roared back in reply and echoed into the darkness beyond. In turn, the flames exploding from the archeologist's arm flashed green and black as they plumed around the woman's form and across the machine's surface with her strike.

Spoiler: Gamble

Audax Laxovis proc (Hence the palpable pulse of energy)
Corpore Daemonium (For plot reasons, flair, and the +10m range buff)
Gangway (Because the crystal has got to go)
Aelflead is palm striking the inky black shit out of the casing for the crystal, or what she's assuming is the power source for the temple. She's borrowing a page from her mentor who used a similar technique (minus the hellfire of course) to shatter blockades or sealed up doorways to ruins when Aelflead was younger.

Her goal in this case, is to break the cage free from the supports holding it in place in the machine and send it, and the crystal inside, flying across the room where they can't feed power into the machine anymore and hopefully stop the encroachment of this rotten magic formaldehyde. She's freaking out a bit so she doesn't have a back up plan.

 

[Redfin]

The noise of the impact dissipated into the void as metal groaned and twisted. The crystal tore free of the encasing, tumbling and twirling through the air. Energy burst out from the open end of the pipes ripping them apart. A shockwave burst from the crystal, absorbed into the nothingness. It washed over everything within the temple. The ragged robed man reached out as his body collapsed into dust.

For the adventurers, though, a scene was pushed into their minds. Was it a memory? A recording? Or something else?

"Will this work, my princess?" The speaker was wearing the same robes as the man that had been standing within the room. They were new, full of color and ornate designs. The man was also a normal laicar, old but still full of vigor.

He was standing in the same room as the crystal, only it was still in the process of being installed. Workers hurried to attach pipes to the walls and set up the encasing. They were hammering in plating to the open windows, slowly blocking out the light.

Overseeing things was a woman with shimmering dark hair reaching to her ankles. She was dressed in fine clothes suitable for long traveling days. Her sharp eyes remained on the crystal. "I know this will work. I've done all the research and calculations. Believe in me."

The high priest walked over to the one remaining window not blocked. He looked out at the view of a grand city. "Should we be doing this? It is surely against the will of the vis."

"If their will is for us to die, then I reject it. The cataclysm is coming soon, and I plan to protect our empire."

"Will this one keystone be enough?"

The princess smirked, though it was more of a reaction rather than an emotion. Her eyes remained stoic. "It won't be, but that's not something you need to worry about. Everything is already being installed. I'm going to check the other sites out as soon as this keystone is installed."

"And how long will we be gone?"

"I think five years should be fine. That way, we can avoid any potential aftereffects as well. We must hurry. The cataclysm is coming. And time waits for no empire." The princess walked up to the keystone. It was almost ready.

The scene faded, returning the temple to its shambled state. The crystal was lying on the ground, no long attached to the machine. The spread of the starry void had stopped. The entire structure began to shake. Patches of stone and brick disappeared, sucked back into the void. But that left building weak, and it began to crumble.

[1064]

 

[MoonlitRain014]

Diamantus screamed one simple word into the teeth of the collapsing temple's rending destruction: RUN! The muscled velen pushed herself even harder and hoped that her companions would be able to make it out. Her main concern was to save herself and Aeria, the others would (sadly) have to fend for themselves.

The entire edifice seemed to be unraveling but there was no time for any thought about the deeper implications of what was going on. Right now, there was just a headlong pelt for the doors that would get them out of the place that might still be their tomb.

All around them gigantic chunks of masonry fell along with pieces of metal and other assorted objects as the little party tried frantically to escape from the destruction of this ancient edifice.

 

[Aelflead Kirastes]

A good lot of things were set to flying through Aelflead's mind at the same time that she was set flying back onto her seat and melted stone for the second time that day.

Immediate elation that she wasn't in fact going to die, mild frustration that she'd fallen on her ass again, a smidge of panic because of how close she was to the starry darkness when she fell, a powerful urge to leave her lunch on the tile because she was covered in the high priest's remains, three sharp pains at the top of her head; but most powerful was the supreme sense of pride, joy, nostalgia, and smugness that had come from her rushed translation being right.

"Mwunghruwbua tyheua bleiabr..!" She half murmured under her breath and a wide toothy grin stretched across her face as she rose to her feet again.

Now, her hands still dancing with flames, Aelflead did not skip; afforded herself a "reasonable" bounce in her step as she moved to pick up the crystal. Humming, despite the rapidly crumbling structure around her.

No rumbling could ruin her mood. And as she found herself rushing towards the entrance, her bottom lip had been captured under her teeth, and her song had continued in it's hum.

 

[MoonlitRain014]

Bursting like a charging bull through the door, Diamantus looked like a wild force of nature. Her powerful thighs bunched, her thick calves flexed and her muscled arms carried Aeria easily, like a cradled child. There was no thought on her mind but to escape. Her eyebrows drew together as, just for a moment, a vague snatch of song reached her ears. Shaking her head, dismissing the thought, she put her head down and pumped as they made their way back through the chambers they'd entered.

Her goal was looming in sight and Aeria had glanced up as well, in spite of all of the pain of her aching and damaged body. Her face briefly opened into a smile before closing down again. The whole tower was crumbling around them and there was still a little distance left to go. The velen carrying her took a deep breath and redoubled her efforts. Time was getting short.

 

[Aelflead Kirastes]

From behind them, came the last three members of their company. Aelflead for her part, was still giddy from her desperation inspired gamble turning fruit. And though her smile had significantly dimmed in strength, she continued to hum while she carried the massive caged crystal on her shoulder and ran for the exit.

The stark contrast between her and the grimness implied by the situation was powerful though. This bunker, as the last shared vision had revealed the structure to be, was renovated to serve as a preservation chamber against the Cataclysm. An event that lived up to it's name, changing the face of the planet irrevocably along with many of it's inhabitants. The decayed creatures that had spilled out of the structure, the unholy monster named Chesmalt that had guarded its doors, had all once been people. A people faithfully obeying a leader who's desperate bid at saving them wound up the weapon that would do them in.

The destruction of the temple meant the deaths of the people in their entirety. No longer just their memory, long forgotten by time anyway, but a destruction of any chance that may have existed to save them. A blatant display of their failure, eradicating whatever potential might have been left. The temple turned bunker's collapsing roar, a sad ode to the folly of trying to deny fate.

Thoughts like these sat in the back of Aelflead's mind, beginning to bubble to the surface as she and the others caught up to Diamantus and Aeria, and ultimately prompting her to drop the crystal to the grass by her feet as she passed over the temple threshold.

Her humming had stopped and the giddiness from her desperation had been replaced with a dreadful sense of kinship to the hapless victims of Araevis' cruelty and the indifference of the supposed Vis.

Resisting the urge to slide to the ground, a half groan half growl passed through the suddenly solemn woman's lips:
"Trwtyhio* Vis."

Then she turned to watch the temple crumble.

Spoiler: Translation

Fuck the vis.

 

[Redfin]

The heroes escaped the temple as the stones cracked and walls crumbled. The crash never came. Everything was swallowed up by a starry abyss. For such chaos and destruction, there was no noise. The shambling horrors vanished, mid-step. Even the dust disappeared, leaving no trace of the grand structure behind. The oozing black stars rushed back into one point. Swirling and writhing, the abyss made one last gasp before it vanished.

But the small town of Kervidum was still in ruins. The entire center had been crushed by the appearance of the temple. Ruins and wreckages remained. More ghastly were the body that had been within the initial expansion area. They were nothing but red smears along the ground.

Falba looked on in disbelief. The enlil priest was looking ragged. His robes were covered in dirt. So was his blue-green feathers. Their natural shininess was covered up in a thick layer of dust. He stumbled forwards.

"Everyone, stay back. Continue tending to the wounded," he ordered the healthy and capable.

He cautiously moved towards the group. At least two of them were still standing. "You, you did it? You did it!" His sharp eyes looked around, but there was nothing left of the temple. Even the thick, oppressive atmosphere had vanished. The air felt cool.

Falba looked to the adventurers. "Can you move? Do you need help getting back to the camp?"

[1296]

 

[Aelflead Kirastes]

Aelflead said nothing for a moment, merely shaking her head and then bending down to retrieve her somewhat hollow prize.

"Cap'n claws back there won't admit it, but she's gonna die of blood loss in ten minutes on her own. The lancer's on her last legs too, but the rest of us are fine. Help them." She said, jabbing her free hand's thumb backward over her shoulder and then began walking away, headed towards the infirmary, rubbing her forehead.

"Drate huwio trweuop wai ffrwa flwaih, haisgra wur..." She mumbled to herself while as she left.

Don't die while I was gone, dumb ass.

 

[MoonlitRain014]

Diamantus shook her head as Falba tried to dispatch assistants to take Aeria from her. "I carry her to where she's gotta go and that's that. Anyone tries to get in my way, I'm moving 'em. Now tell me where I put her!"

The heavyset velen was directed towards a tent where the wounded of Kervidum were being treated. The spurii looked up blearily at Diamantus and mumbled as best as she could. "Th-thanks Dia. I..ooh...I don't feel so good but y-you got me...out."

For a moment, there was a strange strangled noise coming from the velen and her voice was husky when she spoke. "It's nothing, kiddo. You helped me outta scrapes, I was just returnin' the favour. We're even now."

A bed was indicated and gently, carefully Diamantus set Aeria down and placed her halberd beside her. "You rest now and I'll come find ya later."

After ensuring that her friend was settled, the blue and green scaled velen moved her heavy bulk out of the tent. She found Aelflead and faced her squarely. "What you did in there saved all our asses, Aelflead Kirastes. Any time I can help ya with anythin' you let me know, got it?"

 

[Redfin]

Falba gulped and cleared the way to the makeshift medical tent. It was full of the wounded and weary. They were mostly civilians. "Make some room," he ordered. "Please. The adventurers have saved the day, but they require healing, now. Anyone that can be spared, get them over to help. Bring food, water." He pointed to the healers and priests.

The temple was gone, along with that, the terror. Falba found it tough to feel happy, however, since he could fully see the destruction. The town would have a long road to recover, if it ever did. He turned to the few adventurers that could still stand and communicate clearly.

"Thank you, all of you," he motioned to the ones that were resting, "for all that you've done. I am fearful to think what would have happened if the temple was not banished to whence it came." The enlil shook his head, ruffling his feathers. "Let me know if there is anything else you need. And of course you will be paid with whatever we can muster. I'm just thankful you stopped it when you did."

[1482]

 

[MoonlitRain014]

Aeria looked up as the healers attended her. Since they'd fled the temple and she'd been carried by Diamantus, she had started to regain a measure of strength. Her voice, at least, was strong enough to carry over the din. "Your payment, while appreciated, is the last reason for us to have done what we did. There was something wrong and evil there, something that had to be stopped."

From where she stood at Aeria's side, Diamantus added her own two aurits. "The kid's got it right. Sure the pay's nice but it ain't why we did this. Least it ain't why I did it. Stuff like what was in there doesn't belong on Araevis. You ever need help again, Falba, you just let us know."