World Tree MUSH

    So it's been a week since the trip to Veldora Palace and hobnobbing with nobility. A week since the princess, Xala, said her mother would be holding some kind of dark ritual involving the fallen star that would have terrible repurcussions. And...
    The princess is nowhere to be seen at the meeting point.
    "I don't like this." Morrigan says, tapping her foot impatiently. She's armed to the teeth today, dressed in her studded leather armor, a short sword at her side and multiple daggers- more than she needs, strapped to various places as Mary Contrary lightly pats her on the shoulder.
    "Maybe she's just late?" The little shinki offers helpfully and Morrigan shakes her head while eyeing the side entrance to the castle.
    "You don't just 'be late' to a rebellion, Mary." She points out while waiting for the rest of her Ritual Stopping Team to arrive. She also called in for help from SHIELD on the matter, too.

    Dante's abandoned subtlety. No more barding, it's time to kick some ass and take names. So he's got his guns in hand and his sword on his back.

    "Me either. I really don't know if she's legit or not, feels too convenient to me." He says, impatiently reading a magazine. It's about M A N L Y stuff; Hot girls, guns, bikes, booze, that kinda thing. He reads it for the articles, h swears up and down. (Not that a little eye candy ain't bad.)

Neviah debated showing up. She's not particularly well equipped to handle anything that involves, y'know, action or warfighting. The events in a newly-forming world not too far adjacent to this one drove that home starkly. But one overriding concern weighed on her.

She didn't want to leave Morrigan to handle the danger alone.

"I hope she wasn't caught on the way here," the professor murmurs, folding her arms across her midsection and looking up to the sky. Her outfit's /not/ manly, save in the sense that it's her usual collection of professorial menswear from the late Victorian age; she does at least have her pistol hanging at her belt, figuring her rifle'd be too obvious.

    CLANK. CLANK. CLANK. CLANK.

    Hope this isn't going to be a stealth mission. Justina brought the heavy duty Doll frame. 7' tall, about 5' wide and built like a walking tank. The heavy mechanoid arrives after teleporting in a short distance away, trying to at least not trigger any magical wards or warning systems from the power of the teleport spell, if not the onboard magical batteries that power the frame. "We may have to break in... if her mother is as far gone as she suggested, perhaps the princess is being used in the ritual... as the sacrifice." suggests the scientist in her dour, logical way.

  Since SHIELD was called in, it's Agent Anneka Stojespal, quinjet pilot and very reluctant field agent, who answers the call. Today she doesn't appear to have Agent Coulson or any other support with her. It's just Anneka and the silent-running, talking-and-thinking quinjet.

  By the time she comes trudging up to the designated meeting area, it's clear she took to heart the description of mission parameters. Anneka's armed to the teeth and looking very unhappy about it -- she has a heavy-duty bulletproof vest, various ICER firearms strapped to her person packing sedative dendrotoxin 'night-night' rounds, and her customary bland expression of resignation.

  This woman probably needs a vacation.

  "Never a good sign when stood up by aristocracy." The agent's voice is the same customary raven's-croak. "Or anyone else." Her eye slides to Morrigan. "What's your read on the situation, Agent Parton? Special Agent Assistant Jolene?" It is entirely possible she will never let Morrigan live that down, not for the rest of Anneka's natural days.

  Yeah, she's grinning, but it fades quick. "Sorry. Have had business elsewhere. Very busy. May have to catch me up with finer details."

    Magilou has actually shown up as agreed upon, after her.. illustrious exit from the trip to the palace. Her outfit, unlike hopefully everyone else, is exactly the same as it was for that trip and as it has been for every part of this mission. Mostly because she's a homeless criminal drifter. Even that outfit is stolen.

    "Mm, are we just going to wait on her then, or do we do the rebellion by ourselves? I guess we should probably stop her from being sacrificed, if that's what we think is happening."

    This time, while Matsu Shuzenji's outfit is fancy, it is not the high-society clothing she wore last time. No, this is her formal robes as the Phoenix Maiden, as a priestess and healer. And she's come loaded for bear, with pre-made talismans, her signature kagura-suzu bell, and even a gohei, a stick with white strips of zig-zagging paper affixed to it. She is, for once, accompanied by no attendants.

    The tiny shrine maiden is ready to deal with whatever they might have to deal with in the process of stopping the ritual. "I will leave the brute force to all of you. But I'll do everything I can to disrupt the ritual itself. It isn't often that a battle falls within my specialties." There is a fire in those crimson eyes. "I'm not going to let some dark god get its hooks into this world. It goes against every principle I was raised under." And it could mean danger for Arashi-no-Moto, besides.

    "I'm pretty sure the princess was legit." Morrigan mutters to Dante as she fiddles with the convenient side door while people arrive. "God I hope that's not the case." Asided to Justina's thought about the princess being a potential sacrifice.
    "The situation is pretty bad, Agent Stojespal! We have a tier 5 Satanic Ritual on our hands and we don't know what it's going to call or do!" The Warlock replies to Anneka while Mary waves when called by her secret agent name.
    "I think... We're not going to wait on her." Morrigan decides in reply to Magilou, before looking to Matsu.
    "Yeah. ... Yeah, I don't think I can let that happen, either." Murmured as she tries the door again before scowling. Morrigan pulls out her Thieves Tools.
    It's a battered old credit card. Which she uses to brute force the lock with a POP.
    "... Well that was easier than expected." She says opening the way to darkness.
    There's no sign of people. No sign of guards. Just a room with a set of stairs leading downwards.
    And the sound of ominous chanting coming from those stairs.
    "Ah. Chanting. There's chanting. That can't be good."

    After Morrigan brute-forces the lock with an old plastic card, Justina steps forward. The frame manages to compress enough to fit in the doorway. "I'll take point. If they have guards in the chamber it would be better for me to take the first hits... This body can be repaired easier than an organic one." a glance to Matsu. "Even if we have a healer to hand."

    Justina's doll CLANK. CLANK. CLANKs down the stairs, definitely not the stealthy approach. As the doll moves its forearms transform in flashes of blue-white light into a pair of hexagonal pillars. Bludgeoning weapons.

    "I dunno, just felt a little convenient. I've had the thought in the back of my brain for the last week." Dante shrugs as he stuffs his magazine in a coat pocket. They decide to go in, Dante's okay with that.

"I wasn't aware there was tiers to this sorta thing, but yeah I'd say this is a Tier Five on the Spookerometer alright. Everything here's just been so damn weird." Dante is about to kick the door down when Morrigan manages to jimmy the lock open. He guesses there's something to be said about subtlety after all! At least this time they can bust some heads.

    He takes point, guns out, as he hears some ominous chanting in eldritch tongues. "Yeeeeeah, time to hurry this up a bit."

    Matsu eyes the credit card, eyes Morrigan, and then eyes the credit card again. "...that doesn't look like it started life as a lockpicking tool," she observes in a bland tone. But then she's heading down the stairs; and unlike usual for her, the tiny miko is staying near the front of the group. As they go, she's already taking out an ofuda. There is the question of what sort to prepare, though. Purifying would work against any evil corruption, but if there's no actual corruption going on, it won't do much. Warding against evil... well, at the very least, it will serve as a magical 'flashbang' for something like this, and might by her a couple seconds to assess the situation. It might even briefly disrupt the ritual. it's worth a try.

    She does side-glance at Justina, however. "I don't know how much healing I'll be able to do. I'll be prioritizing the ritual. Try not to get too injured," she adds, towards the rest of the group. It's about all Matsu has to offer, however, because that chanting is... worrying. Very worrying.

It brings Neviah an odd sense of comfort to see that Magilou is her usual Magi-self. At least this time she hasn't drenched them all yet.

Glancing at Morrigan, Neviah presses her lips together as she realizes that they will, in fact, have to do this sans princess. She sighs and pulls out her rifle case, extracting the old weapon and feeding a round into it. Handling the situatiuon with her pistol alone would've been ideal, but it seems like things are about to get bigger and more ominous.

The lock pops. Neviah falls in, slinking along behind Morrigan with her rifle in both hands. She's wrapped a length of ratty cloth around the weapon barrel. It's not a silencer - it's to keep any glint of light from dancing off of exposed metal.

Not that there's anyone to see it. The professor frowns, tilting her head and listening to the chanting as intently as she can from this distance. For several seconds, she's silent.

"They are trying to call something," she says after that beat. "Something unpleasa--"

She pauses as Justina and Dante go barreling in, blinking rapidly at their backs.

    "Oh, I don't know that I'd call myself a healer!" Magilou says, waving her hand around. "I'm more of a witch." She's aware Justina was referring to Matsu, she's just being a brat. As normal. She'll head down towards the chamber as well, however, happy to allow others to rush ahead in front of her.

    She's mostly just going to be hanging around for the moment, but she is actually an incredibly effective counter-caster. Hopefully she'll meander down that way in time to help out.

  The situation is pretty bad, Agent Stojespal! The agent in question arches her lone red brow, and her blue eye hoods in an expression of clear skepticism. We have a Tier Five Satanic Ritual on our hands and we don't know what it's going to call or do! This time Agent Stojespal huffs a sigh. "Start speaking a language I understand, Agent Parton."

  Half a glance is cast to the battered old credit card with which Morrigan pops the lock. "...That was maxed out, wasn't it?" As she delivers her droll commentary she moves to put away the pistol she had half-drawn. She'd been ready to shoot the lock, but fortunately, that isn't necessary. It would have involved too much noise. This works much better.

  Swapping the pistol out for what must be an ICER model, Anneka files after the rest, letting Justina take point. Another wise notion.

  She does make sure to fire off a comment to Matsu, though, because the others are already gone.

  Anneka mutely spreads her arms to Matsu in a see-what-I-have-to-put-up-with? gesture, staying back with the others. She edges closer to where Morrigan is. "Just so you know," she mutters to the Warlock, "absolutely I have no idea what we are dealing with, so I will follow your lead."

  Beat.

  "...what the hell is a Tier Five Satanic Ritual?"

    "Justina was talking about Matsu." Morrigan points out. "Not Magilou. Both are M names but different." The Warlock says to the pointy eared evil witch as Dante and Justina head right in. Morrigan is fine with this. Those two can handle themselves in a fight and easily pull weight for more than one person, each.
    It's as Morrigan slides her credit card back into her wallet that she shoots Matsu and Anneka a shit eating grin.
    "Totally maxed out, my credit score is a nightmare." But then she's much more serious. "A Tier Five is when--" When the party reaches the bottom of the stairs, Morrigan shuts clean up.
    The chamber under the castle is massive, dominated by a large machine glowing with eldritch green light.
    And strapped into it... Is the princess.
    "Ah." Morrigan says as the chanting reaches a crescendo, countless hooded figures fill the chamber, and at their head standing by the machine is a woman in her middle age, in ornate robes, wearing a golden circlet. That must be the queen.
    "Tonight! Tonight my followers, we will achieve the ultimate power! By sacrificing my unfaithful daughter and this world, our Master, Xel'Yaoth will devour this world and grow in strength!"
    Morrigan sputters. "X-Xel'Yaoth?"
    And the Queen seems to hear it as her green-glowing eyes lock on the party.
    "Interlopers. Ah yes, I knew my daughter wasn't to be trusted. But it is no matter. You will not stop--"
    Morrigan's hand SNAPS up index finger pointed like a gun.
    "Eldritch BLAST!" The Warlock declares.
    ...
    Nothing comes out of her hand.
    "... Eldritch *BLAST!*" She says shaking her hand at the queen.
    "... Guys this usually works."
    "No no no..." Queen Veldora says gently. "It's more like... ELDRITCH BLAST!" She declares, a ray of green energy lancing from her fingertips and slamming Morrigan in the chest, *launching* the Warlock a clean ten feet away from where she had been standing seconds before.

    "It's an understandable mistake to make." Dante asides to Neviah. It's time to shut the hell up, as thye reach the ritual.

    Dante winces as Morrigan gets hit with ELDRITCH BLAST! A lot of weird shit is going on, fancy etheral energies and cultists, an evil queen, a princess to be sacrificed...

    It's time to dance. "I'll hold her off!" Dante says, as he springs to action. "Just do the thing!" The thing, in this case, is really up to the viewer to decide what he means.

    Dante rushes Veldora, his pistols blazing away at the eldritch queen, demonic firepower matching up against the wrath of Elder Gods.

Neviah glances at Anneka with shoulders tensing beneath her overcoat. "I don't know about tiers," she admits, "but the power behind the fallen star here seems to be some manner of... preternatural entity." Her eyes dart briefly towards Morrigan, then back. "I felt it, briefly... it was... incomprehensible. But monstrous."

She remembers it entirely too clearly. How could she not? As horrifying as it was, she experienced something like it one other time - and managed to bulls-eye an enemy with sight beyond what her eyes could conceive. The realization leaves her to look down at her rifle.

It feels very empty right now.

Up the stairs they creep, Neviah bringing up the rear like the helpless lump she is. Ahead of them, an immense machine - and a princess strapped into it. The professor opens her mouth slightly and ducks into the shadows of the entryway, letting people dumber and beefier than her bear the worst of things. But her focus is on Morrigan.

Her fears are confirmed, and she presses her lips firmly together, on edge as she awaits what Morrigan does.

Something. And then, nothing. She blinks once - only to gasp as Morrigan is thrown across the room. "Morrigan!" she cries, breaking her cover without thought and holding out her hand.

Not a tactician in the best of times, Neviah scrambles out of cover without firing a shot and throws herself at where Morrigan landed. She reaches out, light shimmering from her fingers as she forces her weak healing magic to the task of throwing a Sanctuary field over herself and the warlock. It will take an act of will to strike she and Morrigan from behind it.

It does not occur to her that Valdora probably has more than enough will to brush the field aside. She just crouches over Morrigan, struggling to power the field as she looks over her shoulder towards the queen. "I knew it," she growls. "It was the same creature all along, wasn't it? Does your Xel'Yaoth simply discard its adherents like this?!"

Neviah is a low-level cleric with a very old pistol. She is the wrong person to be talking shit.

    Matsu merely replies to Anneka with an arched eyebrow; it's half a heartbeat later that she's dashing right off after them.

    She's a little out of breath by the time she reaches the bottom of the stairs, but what she sees there is enough to draw a quiet gasp regardless, and chill her blood in her veins. It's... it's way worse than she expected. She can feel it. Every fiber of her being is screaming that this is wrong. And more than that, the goddess inside her is railing against it.

    Then Morrigan fails to fling an Eldritch Blast - and the Queen responds in kind, with rather more success. Morrigan goes flying back, and instantly, the tiny healer is turning to run after her. "Morrigan-!" But... she stops. She remembers. That ritual... it poses a threat. A great one, not just to this world, but to nearby worlds. Potentially, to Arashi-no-Moto.

    Gritting her teeth, the Phoenix Maiden turns. She floods her warding talisman with Suzaku's fire, and then hurls it with all her might towards the princess in the machine. It shouldn't hurt her at all, but it won't make that machine, or the ritual, happy in the least.

    And then, perhaps in a show of insanity, she starts running towards the machine. "Someone, please, help me reach the princess!"

    CLANK. CLANK. CLANK.

    Justina steps out into the room and uncompresses to combat width. Morrigan tries to snipe the Queen and gets counter-sniped when her Patron totally doesn't have her back. The Princess is in trouble, there's a giant machine, and the Queen is firing bolts powerful enough to knock Morrigan for an entire orbit not just a loop.

    "Matsu, can you disrupt their magicks? If so I'll cover for you. We must either dirupt their enchantments, or destroy the machine. I fear the Princess' life is forfeit." Two heavy repeating crossbows unfold from the heavy shoulder mountings. She moves up, intending to start pounding on the machine directly with those giant Oni-maces, firing heavy steel-tipped bolts into the thing at the same time.

    Magilou will tilt her head back and forth as she looks at the chamber and the ritual that's going on. None of this seems very good to her, but what does she know?

Well, quite a lot, generally. But not that much specific to this. She's got enough sense to decide that the Queen is something she shouldn't necessarily go drawing the attention of. Morrigan clearly seems to have the 'getting the shit kicked out of her' handled.

    No, Magilou's eye has been drawn to the machine that is at the center of the ritual. Perhaps thankfully for everyone involved on every side, she does not try to cast Explosion in this underground chamber. Instead, she's going to go for a shorter spell, spikes of pure Ice rising from the ground and piercing into the machine. These even might serve as steps for Matsu to reach the princess, if she's extremely, extremely confident in her climbing and jumping abilities.

  By her own admission the Warlock's credit score is a nightmare. "Of course it is," Anneka claps back, with a grin of her own. "Maybe you would drive something better than that junker, I think."

  Oops it's serious time again. Like a switch flipping the agent cocks her ICER and thumbs off its safety, bracing both hands and slinking up against the nearest wall. She's not as bad a shot as one might imagine, but she's also not great, so she might as well present as small a target as possible.

  She looks up at the machine, the princess, and the whole hullabaloo.

  "Well, shit," she drawls.

  She eyes the hooded figures, keeping to the shadows as much as she can. It doesn't take much to pick out that woman of middling years as the bandleader of this little show. Oh, sacrificing things to some kind of unpronounceable monstrosity sounds bad.

  Somehow, the fact that Morrigan seems to know that name makes it ten times worse.

  Oh, they've been noticed. Awesome.

  Morrigan fails to cast Magic Missile. Anneka frowns, raises her ICER, and--

  There goes Morrigan across the room. Wasting no time, Anneka raises her pistol and fires two clean, measured shots right at the queen's centre of mass.

  Nnnnope we're not playing around today, Anneka is not receiving nearly enough hazard pay for Eldritch Monstrosities.

    Dante rushes the queen. And to top it all off, Anneka opens fire upon her as well. The woman holds up a single hand, a shimmering veil of green light enveloping her, bullets spanging off her magical shield as her attention shifts slowly toward the demon hunter and the quinjet pilot.
    "Ah, more insects." Queen Veldora muses as she intends to deal with the more immediate threat.
    "Look into my eyes, Son of Sparda." She whispers into Dante's mind.
    Before unleashing a psychic spike of surging pain, intending to cripple him with agony in that instant.
    For all the figures in robes chanting in the room, they don't actually do anything to stop Matsu as she rushes for the machine and the princess- but Magilou's ice spikes hail down, causing the robed figures to spread apart and clear a path as the evil witch and the doll start laying into the machine.
    "My life doesn't matter!" The princess says, "Find a way to stop this madness!" She says as Matsu's talisman slaps onto the machine by her, causing its bright, sickening green light to dim by a degree.
    Madness that only continues all around as Neviah practically baseball slides over to Morrigan's downed position, the Warlock's little shinki familiar frantically shaking her master, trying to wake her.
    "GUH!" Morrigan snaps awake, sitting up with a wince and clutching her scorched armor. "Oh that's unpleasant."
    On an arbitrary scale of 0 to 93, Morrigan is feeling about a 32 right now as she shifts onto her knees.
    She offers Neviah a pained look. ... And not from her injuries.
    "I didn't know." Is all she says as she staggers to her feet and draws her short sword.
    She proceeds to use the remainder of her strength to stab a hooded figure, in the back, to death, as hard as she can while remaining in range of the Sanctuary.
    It's one less ominous chanting voice in the room.

    Dante dips and dives as he throws down with the Queen Bitch of the Outer Cosmos here. "You better believe I ain't afraid to throw down with a lady!" He calls out, firing repeatedly while he engages with the corrupted queen. Of course, that psychic spike catches him when he's not aware, leaving Dante to shriek in pain as he drops to the ground, blood trickling from his eyes and mouth. It's not a pretty sight, as he tries to get his vision to stop blurring and his ears to quit ringing.

    He vomits blood, before he forces himself to get back up, stowing his guns in favor of his greatsword. With Rebellion in hand, Dante rushes the queen, jumping up and bringing the blade down upon her.

    Justina, for her part, Is using all the power her Doll frame can output, trying to smash the machine's casing in and cause some critical level of damage... she runs a scan on it, while continuing to whale away with those bludgeoning arms, trying to find a weakness.

    Those who can sense or see 'spirits' or 'souls' would start to 'see' Justina's ethereal form within the Doll's shape, seemingly pantomiming the same actions as she draws herself closer to the Doll to use its full sensor suite.

  The agent looks annoyed when her rounds ping off the barrier harmlessly. "Those are expensive, damn it." Grousing about incredibly dangerous situations is her way of surviving incredibly dangerous situations as a perfectly normal and mortal agent. "Insect? Hunh. Guess I'm moving up."

  What's she doing to Dante? Anneka sure doesn't know, and that's all the more reason to open fire on the woman again. This time she raises the pistol, bracing it with both hands and snapping off three quick, measured shots this time. No panic fire, this. Each shot is carefully measured, and once she fires the last, she squishes herself back against the wall for whatever good it might do.

  "Hey!" Anneka shouts, the better for Morrigan to hear her from wherever she landed. "You okay over there, Parton?"

  Oh. She's going to start stabbing folks.

  No time to be a little low-grade horrified by the prospect of killing every hooded loser in the room. She's got her hands full dealing with Queen Lost-Her-Way, here. So she braces herself, and she snaps off another shot or two while she does.

  And she snarls.

  "Go the &@$^ to sleep!"

Neviah is the last person in the world who should be fighting here. She crouches by Morrigan, holding her left hand up and focusing as best she can through the frustration and the worry, the anger and the gut fear. She glances down at Morrigan, teeth caught around her lower lip as she exhales through her nose.

"It's alright," she assures, her voice soft. "I'm here for you, alright?"

She's not sure how much comfort that is. Especially when Morrigan just shanks the hell out of a cultist. Neviah doesn't even blink. At this point she doesn't give one single hoot about the lives of these people.

In truth she's not even sure how much she cares about the /princess./ She cares mainly about Morrigan, who is rapidly assuming the position of one of her only friends, if not /the/ only friend. She's from the same branch, if nothing else - and now she's in the same boat as Neviah herself. Two forsaken women from a world lost to the Tree.

"I'm gonna try something," Neviah cautions, her voice a little shaky as she shifts her position. Keeping her left hand raised, she turns her body carefully until she can rest the barrel of her rifle in the crook of her left elbow, bracing as best she can in the awkward position. She's never tried to both fire her rifle and hold up the Sanctuary spell before - and certainly not in the heat of the moment. Hand shaking around the grip of the old rifle, the professor broadens her stance to stabilize herself, squinting down the rifle barrel at Queen Valdora.

"God of Abraham, if you were ever to revisit Your policy on magic, now would be the time," she whispers, before squeezing the trigger sharply. There's a loud CRACK of igniting gunpowder as Neviah fires a shot through her own sanctuary, aiming to put the bullet somewhere centre of mass on the mad queen.

Only then does she fire back a hot retort: "That was for /Morrigan,/ you... you /addlepated fussock!!/"

    Magilou will glance around at the cultists who are spreading apart and moving away from herself and the Doll. Not necessarily feeling like she has to stay on what she was doing, Magilou will smirk and say. "The power I showed in your court was but a taste of the true Magilou experience! A splash in the ocean, a drop in the bucket, a cube in the ice tray!"

    Those who were there the last time might get a shiver up their spine, but luckily she's not doing a 360 degree minor blast of water. Instead, a crushing wave blasts out in a single direction, in a line, meant to take down as many cultists at possible, moving at a pace and with a hardness that might be actually lethal if the cultists are weak enough.

    That probably still splashes some other people, though, with backwash and all.

    Matsu is no adventurer. Her physical training is spotty at best. It's less like watching a heroic, acrobatic advance, and a lot more like watching a short girl scrambling and scrabbling her way towards the machine. While she's making her madcap way through and around Magilou's spikes, however, she's already pulling out more talismans of warding. She can't afford much in the way of conversation; she's going to have to do a lot of chanting. But she does, very briefly, offer one clipped response to the princess. "That's the plan. You're just at the center of it."

    And then there is quiet murmuring. "O ebon turtle of earth and stone, o azure dragon of the stormy skies..."

    But while the Phoenix Maiden murmurs words that come to her almost without effort, another train of thought brushes through the back of her mind. 'Suzaku... I don't know if you can hear me. I don't know if you're even conscious. But your power is my power. You hate this as much as I do. You feel how wrong it is. Please, as much as you can...'

    At the completion of her chant, Matsu spins. Six talismans dart out around her, adhering to the floor in a perfect hexagon. Lines of blue and grey magic dance between them; something building, accelerating, until suddenly it is radiating - a radiant, flowing ward, billowing outward, pressing against the eldritch energies of the ritual. But then, a third color joins the blue and the gray.

    Rippling, radiant red.

    Suzaku's purifying flame begins to radiate outward from Matsu, flowing through the ward she's placed, lending a pure, sacred strength to the already powerful evil-repelling energies.

    Morrigan is still smoldering a little as she collapses back on her ass after shanking a man to death. She's not looking as hot as she could right now. And... She looks genuinely surprised by Neviah's outburst.
    Not the insult, but the fact that the Cambridge professor just decided to draw the ire of the queen for Morrigan's sake.
    "... A-ah don't, she'll kill you!" For the first time in a very long time, Morrigan sounds genuinely concerned that this is an actual possibility for someone.
    Especially as the queen's attention shifts.
    It costs her, as Dante's blade embeds in her shoulder, drawing a massive spray of blood from her as she crumples, dead.
    Before the queen on the floor vanishes, an illusion. The REAL queen re-appears... In Neviah Younger's face.
    "For Morrigan? You mean our great master's failed follower?"
    "No no no no no no no!"
    Morrigan's blade embeds in the queen's side and the queen ignores it as the queen holds up something in her hand.
    It is a pickled octopus tentacle.
    "Oh." Morrigan says sounding disappointed. "Oh shit."
    The queen drops the tentacle and vanishes.
    Neviah and Anneka by proxy are suddenly bathed in pitch blackness. And cold. So so so cold as the room is sundered and exposed to the cold blackness of the space between stars.
    Then the whispers start.
    And something slurps in the darkness. Something reaches out and touches the professor and the pilot. Something slithery, slippery, ad *wrong* as is touch burns cold from a sudden slick slide of acid dribbled on skin.
    Just as fast as it came it's gone as Morrigan counterspells the rift before it can devour the pair alive.
    But pulling on that power seems to drain Morrigan further as she collapses to her knees.
    The cultists do their best to flee- and multiple of their number are crushed under the force of the water Magilou smashes them with, while Matsu...
    Matsu pours herself into purifying and halting the ritual, causing the light of the machine to dim dramatically as the cultists feed more of their very life energy into it to try and compensate. But in a battle of myriad mook cultists against an immortal phoenix, Matsu quickly gains the upper hand as the Machine starts to sputter and spark from Justina just absolutely laying into it.

    As Dante seemingly kills the queen, Dante's about to shout in triumph before suddenly she reveals herself in front of Neviah. "Oh."

    He stares at Morrigan and the queen dips, leaving the heroes alone as they try to stop the ritual in a panic. "Fuuuuuuuuuuck." He rushes towards the machine, bringing his sword into it with an aggressive roar even despite the cold, despite the whispering in the back of his brain, despite all the feelings of failure. He won't stop at this rate, not when there's still a chance to act.

    Rebellion smashes and slashes all over the machine as Dante frantically tries to stop it from doing...stuff.

Neviah is really, /really/ hoping she manages to get lucky and kill the damned queen already.

Fortune is not about to give her a perfect roll of the dice.

At this point she's fairly sure Xel'Yaoth is no god of her world, but it matters far less than getting herself and Morrigan out of there alive. She can hear Morrigan crying out in alarm behind her - and then the queen /looks/ at her.

From very close. Neviah gasps and stumbles back a step, her gun clunking against her forearm and dropping free to the floor. Before she can so much as muster a response, the wide-eyed professor lets out a yelp as Morrigan strikes true.

With no effect. None at all.

The professor's face is pale as she fumbles at her waist for her pistol. "Don't call her that," she manages to protest tensely before the tentacle is dropped.

What waits for her is more than what Morrigan shared with her in the woods of Minnesota - more than the glimpse into a fragment of a star brought on by a brush of fingertips. This is prolonged - malicious. Lost in the dark, Neviah loses track of her spell, her sanctuary crumpling away as the writhing blasphemy swallows her. She can /feel/ things that aren't there and should not be.

She has never felt something so cold and wet that it wants to turn her skin to ash and winnow her soul out of her veins. She gasps but it's lost in her throat as little more than a thin, pained sound. Her strength fades into an acidic sear of pain that burns as much from the inside as out.

Knees buckling, the professor hits the ground on her side. Her rifle spills away from her, pistol long since forgotten. As much as Morrigan's driven the obscene rift away, it's done its job: Neviah can't so much as muster a thought to focus on a spell. Even the simple, no-god-needed cantrips at her disposal are beyond her. She merely struggles to lift her head, tears in her eyes and face pale as she claws forward to pull herself laboriously to her knees.

It takes her a second to figure out where the queen is. She moved. It hardly matters - Neviah can't do anything to her. She crawls forward anyway, breathing hoarsely and trying to fight through the debilitating pain and mind-numbing horror.

It is only when she gets close enough that she can muster just enough energy to strike.

"AAAAAAH," Neviah cries shapelessly as she throws herself at Queen Valdora's leg, limply trying to latch on to her and grip like a big useless dead weight.

"DAAAAAH," she manages again before attempting to bite the queen's leg. She has normal human teeth. This will not work.

    <Target Located. Highlighting on HUD.> flashes in Justina's vision. The Doll's head snaps toward a spot on the machine... and she moves over toward it.

    The half-elf scientist-mage begins chanting her own spell, laser focussed on the machine. Attempting to end this here and now. "Scattered Bones of the Divine Beast. Spire. Crimson Crystal. Steel Clockwork. Move and become the Wind. Stop and become as Stone. Striking Spears rend shields asunder." One of the sectioned mace arms reverts and the palm extends out. Only to find Dante managing to stab directly into the area she located. Instead she then turns on the remaining cultists. "CHAIN LIGHTNING!"

    A loud CRACK erupts as Justina slams a whole-ass lightning bolt into the cultists that haven't run away yet. The power jumping from cultist to cultist, but purposefully missing her allies. Her soul is fully combined with the Doll body. She is currently at her most powerful... and her most vulnerable.

    Magilou will turn her eye over to the Queen, who has vanished and reappeared. A plan springs to the witch's calculating and cold mind. It's a bad, bad plan.

    But especially with Neviah taking such a reckless action, Magilou feels obliged to try and draw the Queen's ire. She'll step forward, pointing at the Queen. "You! You're no true magic user at all. Pathetic, leeching magic from your betters, trying to pretend that just because some demon is favoring you, you've earned it. Watch a witch work worthy wonders!"

    She'll twirl her hands, and a set of three doves will fly out, and at the Queen's face. They'll transform into fireballs most of the way there, before they land.

  This is going very pear-shaped very fast. No sooner does she snap off three efficient shots than Anneka suddenly loses sight of the room. It isn't that she's removed from it, but things are suddenly so dark that one eye isn't quite enough to keep up. The woman squints, blinks rapidly; but nothing helps.

  After that comes the whispers. Disconcerting snippets of conversation; uneven pitches and intonations, half a hundred languages she can't understand. Anneka whirls one way, then the other, leading with her ICER pistol, but there's nothing to see or fire upon.

  ...was that a slurp?

  Whirling at the sensation of something horribly wrong brushes past an arm, Anneka makes a strangled sound of disgust. That she's wearing heavy clothing doesn't matter; it slides right past her skin as though she were wearing short sleeves. What is that?

  Then, the burning.

  At the first touch of what feels like acid, the pilot shrieks. It doesn't sound like there's a happy fun time going on in the sphere of horrible darkness. In fact it sounds very bad to go by the noises Anneka is making. Her voice has gone hoarse, but she's still shrieking.

  After a few seconds they might resolve themselves into words. Her accent twists them, but they're clear.

  "Fire -- fire! -- I am on fire--!"

  The words are not in English, though; they're in whatever language it is that she speaks natively. Sounds Slavic. It is very definitely not the language spoken in Sokovia, though.

  Apparently the sensation is very much like burning alive; a thing with which Anneka Stojespal is intimately acquainted.

  It's over fast. When it is, she's left curled in a ball on the ground, shivering and sweating as she hauls herself back to her feet.

  She picks up her pistol and fires at Queen Veldora again, but she's such a mess that there's no telling whether her shots actually land or not.

  "GO THE ^&*@ TO SLEEP!"

  Yeah Anneka is kind of pissed. Also really scared. Pretty fifty-fifty split, really.

    Matsu's ward is severely hampering the ritual. The deaths of so many other casters have pushed it closer still to failing. But it yet hangs on. It yet pushes towards completion. She can sense it slowly weaving together, bit by bit. The woman at the core of that ritual - the Queen herself - yet stands, yet supports it. And on top of that... her magic is horrid. Horrifying. Utterly wrong, to the point it offends Matsu's magical senses. She's running roughshod all over those gathered here to stop her. She's...

    Matsu catches heself thinking, 'She's hurting my friends.'

    Crimson eyes begin to glow.

    "...maybe I don't know the first thing about good rulers. I still can't say I've seen one. But I've seen plenty of bad ones in my time. I lost my parents to bad rulership. I know what it looks like when someone's awful, irredeemable." A spread of four ofuda is fanned out, released. They begin to float around Matsu, circling quickly. "And right now I see a madwoman looking to feed her daughter to a ritual that will feed her country to an unholy monstrosity. I don't even need to have a god in me to feel how wrong it is. But I do."

    Jangle. The kagura-suzu is in her hand. Slowly, the Phoenix Maiden begins to turn... to dance, in slow, ritual prayer.

    Jangle. "O azure dragon of the east, o white tiger of the west. Evil walks this land."

    Jangle. "O ebon tortoise of the north, corruption spreads without cease. The crimson bird of the south entreats you, lend your strength."

    Jangle. "Let the Four Guardians walk as one, to lock away that which threatens this land." Jangle. "Let Our wisdom pass judgment on wickedness, and Our might steal that by which it profits." Jangle. The six talismans around Matsu begin to whirl, faster and faster. Light begins to shine from the circle. Blue, white, gray, red.

    Matsu sweeps the kagura-suzu around in a circle, and brings it down to point straight at Queen Veldora. "Veldora, queen of this kingdom, by Our judgment We bury away that might by which you do evil, to bind as long as Our strength shall last!"

    The four talismans around Matsu suddenly radiate outwards, and then bend around to hurtle as one towards the Queen. They do not carry much force... but they immediately begin sinking into not her body, but her soul. A binding technique, a seal attempting to envelop her very magic itself, enmeshed with Matsu's life force and the magic of all four guardian beasts.

>> GAME >> Matsu Shuzenji commits an Edge for: Sealing Queen Veldora's magic away.

>> SUMMARY[Matsu Shuzenji] >> Healer is angry. :|

    A lot happens. And it happens so very fast.
    Dante goes ham on the machine, Rebellion massively adding to the damage already wrought by Justina's handiwork; Justina turning her attention to the cultists, frying them into submission with a sudden lancing blast of chain lightning, sending countless volts of deadly electricity into their bodies. Many keel over dead. The ones that do not start trying to crawl away, smoldering.
    Queen Veldora does in fact re-appear, looming over Neviah, Magilou's fireballs pelting into the magically supercharged queen and searing her clothes and flesh, as she tries to fend them off.
    "What would YOU know about magic, street entertainer?" She demands in a snarl. But then she shifts her attention to the woman gnawing on her ankle.
    "... You may think to yourself that you have quarrel with me..." She muses. "But what quarrel would an ant have with a boot?" She asks, raising her hand, casually aiming, her fingers crackling with that deadly necrotic energy, slowly brightening in her grasp as she intends to pop Neviah's skull like a grape when...
    "Eldritch blast!" she declares.
    ... And nothing happens.
    The Queen, confused at this, shakes her hand at Neviah's face.
    Still nothing happens.
    This is Matsu's doing, calling upon her prayers to seal the queen's power away from her.
    "Get away from her, you bitch'." Morrigan's voice calls out.
    It makes the queen look up.
    Right as the Warlock hauls off with everything she has and slugs the murderous royal right across the jaw. It staggers her, a look of shock crossing her expression as she clutches her face.. Right before an ICER round pelts the woman in the chest, dropping her like a sack of potatoes now that she does not have Xel'Yaoth's magic fuelling her.
    

The machine is destroyed. Dante gives Morrigan major props for the one-liner, and Anneka props for dropping the bitch in a single ICER shot. Not bad ofr a stun gun. Now they can put the queen on trial for being...well, evil.

    "Nice. We....we got her, right? We got the thing?" He says in a punchdrunk haze, staggering a little until he slumps to his knees. That psychic attack really did a number on him. He can smell smoke in his brain and his vision is starting to give Dante a preview to the veils beyond reality as we know it.

    And so Dante falls over. Thud.

    "I've forgotten more about magic then you've ever really known. Well, that's not true, I have a great memory." Magilou will say, pressing a finger to the side of her temple.

    She has managed to go through this fight not only without a scratch but also without anyone ever so much as attempting to scratch her, as she watches the Queen go down.

    The lifeblood won't even have stopped flowing, and the Queen might not even be completely unconcious, so the last words the Evil Queen might hear is the Evil 'Street Performer' Witch turning to Morrigan and asking.. "...So how much am I getting paid for helping you with this, anyways?"

Neviah doesn't /need/ thoughts to realize how utterly in over her head she is. She can't even get her ass up off the ground. Clinging to Queen Valdora's leg like an ankle-biter is taking everything she has and more. But what choice is there?

None. She /likes/ Morrigan, damn it all. So long as Neviah herself is going to die, she can at least try to keep Morrigan from the same fate.

She is not helping all that much. She can't even manage another shout so much a thin "gaaahhh" as she tries to take another bite at the queen's calf, but her energy's failing her rapidly. Within a few seconds she's slumping down Veldora's leg, clinging to her garments with one hand and looking up at her with teeth clenched forcelessly, her eyes wide and wild with a mix of desperation, pain, terror and dawning understanding. The crackle of energy ripples in her field of vision. It's all she can see, as if time has slowed down to give her just a moment with her thoughts.

    /If I had a god, I could have lived./
    /If I had power, I could have helped./
    /I guess the God of Abraham doesn't give two hoots about me after all./

Someone else does. A couple of someones. Neviah, bracing miserably for her own death, can only gawk as Veldora's spell just fizzles on her fingertips - and then /gasp/ as Morrigan stomps up and cold-cocks the depowered royal lady.

Neviah is still holding on to Veldora's garments, but her grip is torn free at the combo of punch and bullet throw the wicked monarch back. The wounded professor slumps against the floor, her shoulder bumping Morrigan's leg as she blinks slowly to try and recover her senses.

"...You... you didn't die," she manages, thinly.

    The sealing succeeds, and Matsu maintains her posture, kagura-suzu pointed at the Queen for several long seconds. But Morrigan finally brings around one hell of a punch, and then Anneka shoots her in the goshdarn chest, and down the woman goes.

    Almost immediately, Matsu slumps to one knee, panting heavily - and visibly sweating. She looks genuinely unwell, and that's not a look that's typical for the girl possessed by a being of healing and purity. She manages to push herself to her feet, but there's a little sway there. "Hey. All of you. I'm... I've bound her magic. Sealed it away. But the seal is bound with some of my lifeforce. Please... figure out what you're going to do with her, so I don't have to maintain this long."

    A pause, and then a glance around, as if confirming that no attendants are present to hear her speak.

    "...this feels fucking awful. If I didn't have Suzaku inside me, it would have killed me."

    Justina scans the room. <No further threats detected. Magic levels leveling off and beginning to decline.> The half-elf breathes a sigh of relief and starts to 'back away' from how close she is to the machine, her soul-light fading out and the robotic frame becoming just that once more. A puppet.

    Dante keels over, and the Doll moves to scoop him up, tossing him haphazardly over one of the now-folded crossbow mountings on the shoulder. She then moves over to Matsu, kneeling down and offering the other arm for the young priestess to sit in, like a litter. "Rest for now... you... uh..." that social awkwardness seeps back in, and the scientist just kind of mumbles out a 'well done' instead of the probably really corny and 'profound' thing she was going to say.

    Optics land on the downed Queen, then turn back to look up at the Princess. "Someone should probably cut her down if she still lives."

    "Yes, Dante. We did the thing."
    Setting her hands on her knees to catch her breath, Morrigan shakes her hand out after clocking the queen. Punching someone with a low STR stat is never fun.
    "No. I didn't." She says at first to Neviah. "But you almost did." She points out bitterly while catching her breath and getting her heart to stop hammering in her chest.
    "Someone un-strap the princess from that... wreck." She motions at the unconscious princess in the remnants of the machine before clutching her head with one hand, reaching down to help Neviah up with the other. It looks like Justina has Dante handled over there, and Anneka is in no condition to give anyone a ride home right now.
    "Oh. Right. That. I'll fix that for you, right now, Matsu." She says when the phoenix priestess explains the dilemma of sealing the queen's magic, Morrigan stands over the fallen queen, and points a hand down at the unconscious woman.
    "Looks like you're the one that failed, huh? I guess that means our boss won't mind if I do this-" She says.
    As several lances of eldritch green energy blasts from her fingers into the downed woman once- twice- three times- a fourth time.
    All that's left is a smoldering corpse when Morrigan is done.
    "... Okay everyone. I've had it with this country. I'll be waiting at the van."

    Well, that certainly is a solution. Matsu doesn't seem all that perturbed by it, either; the Phoenix Maiden has only a cold stare to give the corpse, then she's ambling off after Morrigan.

    The color is already returning to her cheeks by the time she's going back up the stairs.

Neviah closes her eyes and slumps against Morrigan's leg for a moment, taking as much of a breather as she can possibly manage.

The warlock, at least, is there to help her out. She manages to stand, with assistance, wobbly on her feet but managing to keep herself upright despite the feeling of overall weakness and exhaustion that's come over her. Pushing her hair back with both hands, she lets out a puff of breath.

She has no answer when Morrigan points out that she herself almost died. The professor just looks off to one side, biting her lower lip as her thoughts drift.

Morrigan isn't wrong.

    /Of course she's not./
    /What kind of useless lump am I, anyway?/
    /If only I had power, I could have done something./
    /Destroyed that queen and--/

Neviah's train of thought is derailed when Morrigan moves over to do just that. Brushing back a coil of hair, she steps to one side to look on, wincing as the second blast hits and looking away.

When she finally does look back, it's with another wince. She moves over to the smoldering corpse and looks down at her with an unreadable expression.

It gives way to a scowl as she drives her toe into the queen's corpse in a sharp kick.

Then several more ineffectual kicks. "I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you!!" she yells at the body irrationally, in the process of kicking it a few feet across the floor.

    Magilou's only comment will be a click of her tongue and a shake of her head. She's not really disapproving of killing the Queen, more just of wasting magical energy to do it when a knife would have done the trick just fine. She'll glance at Neviah, though, and snap her fingers. Magilou's not digging deeply, not post battle, so it won't be nearly as focused as her own best healing artes are, but a general wave of regeneration and energy will wash over Neviah, the magical equivilent of downing two aspirin and a five hour energy.

    Then, the drifter witch will head towards the van and out of this place.