World Tree MUSH

    Even in the day the woods here have a foreboding aura about them. The shadows seem deeper and the sounds muffled as though a thick fog lay across the landscape. Those who enter say they have the ever-present feeling of being watched, that small things just on the edge of vision always scurry off when one attempts to look at them. Even the hiking trail that runs through the hills into the woodlands seems disused now.
    Alice Mirra gulps nervously, clearly wanting to be somewhere else. Being a mage was not really something she wanted for herself, but the strange geometries and rules of magic imposed themselves on willing an unwilling alike. She fidgets with a large hand compact, glancing at the mirror side as she does so.

Even Kira with her talent over the darkness was at her limits at how long she been able to keep the barrier up. She was no longer bound by physical limits but she still needed enough of her strength to carry out her duties as a member of the Order oF Trismegistus. She was no longer able to keep Scura at bay and given the corrupted doll every chance to stand down.

 As much as she hated to do so, if Benedicta and her friends couldn't deal with this she was ready to put her down. Even if the al-mir'aj woman would hate her for doing so.

She watched as the sigils she had down started to crack. There wouldn't be enough time to place down new ones and even those wouldn't last long at this point. No ordinary human would be able to withstand the corruption that filled the woods. Afraid of what would happen to Benedicta she had instructed her to keep some distance away for the time being. She didn't need two feral rabbits to deal with and protecting Alice was going to be hard enough as it is.

    Luke had seen his own fair share of forests, both day and night times, which usually they were filled with unusual creatures that might be a bit too eager for a fight, but even him was finding this particular wooded region more than a bit unnerving. He was flanked by one of his pokemon, a large orange, cream and black beast, with a glowing flame on its forehead, casting some extra light around both, and doing its best to keep an eye around its surroundings, indeed, something like this is just a bit out of their wheelhouse, mystical stuff, or spooky things. Still, he wanted to help Benedicta and the rest, so he was here, willing to do whatever he would!.

    Hiking is something that Cagliostro will complain about. Indeed, she does! "So much walking, my delicate constitution doesn't agree with this!" It's all a sham of course. Everyone here has likely see Cagliostro in peril and knows she's far from a normal little girl, physically. Perhaps she isn't built like a tank or anything like that, but neither is she frail and delicate. The whole situation has her interest, even if she pretends to be only passingly invested.

    "So uh. Spooky woods, huh."
    Mau is here.
    See, being an adventurer means an easy in for a lot of jobs and job opportunities.
    The catgirl is clad in her armored dress, swords sheathed at her side, and she rubs at the back of her neck.
    "So someone wanna run the plan by me again?" She asks. "Was there a plan at all? Did I just miss it? I swear I was paying attention." Nevertheless, she kind of slouches where she stands.
    For the record Mau has never seen Cags in peril.
    However she does not comment negatively.
    "What's with the mirror? This isn't really a great place to put on makeup, you know." She says to Alice, before looking to the barrier.
    "Ohhhh that's coming apart, isn't it."

    A piercing screech splits the air as the flapping of huge wings can be heard. A great shadowy owl comes swooping down at Mau, talons extended!
    As the bird of prey descends, the trees rustle loudly without wind and a chorus of insects begins, accompanied by the percussion of frogs. Countless eyes glare devilishly from the shadowy hiding places in the trees and underbrush.

"Scura or Benedicta's shadow was created from a mirror. If we can get her back into the mirror dimension along with Benedicta it may be possible to end this mess once for all. Alice here is the key to getting you inside the mirror dimension, so please do everything you can to keep her safe from the shadow beasts."

 Kira explains quickly before the animals decend upon them. She promptly uses lightning to try and fry the creatures attacking them. This was a bit of a double-edge situation for the mage. She could try and keep the beasts contained for the others but her own darkness could only hurt them so much.

    The flapping of wings makes Mau's ears twitch. The catgirl blinks. And then--
    Faster than thinking about it, she draws her sword.
    The divine blade forged by the gods practically sings as it cuts through the air and sweeps to hew clean through the attacking bird of prey in the same smooth and fluid motion.
    Out of sheer reflex, Mau draws her second blade, a shorter sword, worn by time but still kept sharp and neat by much care. This second sword is mainly for defense as she takes on a fighting stance.
    "Oh. Shadowy monsterbeasts. Neat. Right, protect mirror girl to get into mirror dimension, got it."

    The 'ornamental' snake that circles Cagliostro twirls out from around her, moving around like a Gradius Option or something to interecept any incoming. But it makes no move to attack, and instead Cagliostro huffs, "Yes, I suppose this is an escort mission, hmn?" Sounding annoyed as always... but not just sitting there.

    Protect Alice. She can help with that. Dropping down to one knee, she places a hand to the ground, causing thick slabs of rock to erupt upward to form natural barriers to protect everyone, but most especially Alice.

     Giant owl! that can't be a normal thing, not with that shadowy look! He should have got Dynamo out, he hopes he won't cause the forest to burn to the ground. "Agni!, get ready for a fight,we need to protect Alice!". The pokemon's first priority is keeping Luke safe, so its first action is to get near the boy and shove it towards their charge, heat blasting from its frame before it slams forepaws into the ground, a beam of yellow energy shooting from its body into the sky, forming a glowing sphere a couple feet in the air that bathes the area with sunlight, hopefully pushing back the shadows around them some or at least making it easier to see what might be surrounding them, even if there is nothing magical about the light.

    The shadowy great horned owl is sheared in two by Mau's blade. The lightning bolt thunders and is accompanied by another ear-splitting explosion as a tree is hit and the sap within is converted into steam.
    Alice hides behind the slabs of rock created by Cagliostro's magic, hoping that Luke's magical beasts can keep any flying things away from her.
    "So Benedicta's hiding behind others?" There's a derisive snort. "Yeah, sounds like my other half; holding back, letting others fight her battles." Three different shadowy humanoids with long rabbit ears and a horn jutting from the forehead step out from the darkest shade of the trees. "Guess I'll have to go find her myself~." The voice is uncanny, sounding like an aggressive Benedicta. There's a droning sound as countless shadow insects boil out of the underbrush to obscure the group's vision.

Benedicta can't take it anymore as she can hear her double snort, "You do realize you sound like Sybil when you do that right?" Her horn glows yellow in the darkness hopeing Alice is getting close to opening the portal. Her claws are unsheathed as she tries to magical conjure her double from her hiding spot. She should be able to interfere with Scura's summoning magic at least somewhat if she can pin her down. A yellow summoning circle begins to draw in her counterpart, hopefully she doesn't overwhelm herself by doing this.

>> GAME >> Benedicta Cornell spends an Edge for: Twin Soul- to draw myself out

    Owl's handled. Now there's more of a problem with all the creepy eyes everywhere.
    Mau purses her lips briefly.
    Before the swarm of insects buzzes out at the party.
    Mau takes to the fore of the group, twirling her longsword in her hand.
    "Nah you're gonna have to get through me to--" She starts to say before Benedicta arrives. "Nevermind, there she is." Mau kind of shrugs before her sword suddenly lights on fire. One mighty swing launches a whole lot of fire to try and fry- crisp the buggy problem.

    Luke's pokemon are not magical!, at least he doesn't think they are... In any case, Luke is standing besides Alice, reaching for his pokeball belt, trying to grab another of the pokemon to defend himself. Seeing the the owl being destroyed without any issue, the pokemon's attention focuses on the approaching swarm of bugs and Luke decides that there is no need to be careful. "Bewear, Heat wave!". 
    The bear makes sure both Alice and Luke are shielded behind a rock formation before he attacks, snarling loudly, body glowing brightly as heat builds up, before it seems to heat a critical point and bursts into a gust of super heated air around it, enough to charr the grass and certainly kill any approaching bugs in a large radius around it.

    Insects? Yuck! Cagliostro grimaces, and she's going to do her best to make sure the bugs don't touch anything important! Like her. Also these jokers she's hanging out with can get some of that protection as well. It's pretty simple though...

    She's still kneeling, so now that the earth barriers have done their part, she transmutes them. "This should do it..." A quick conversion from one element to another, and since it's opposing, the earth barriers almost explode!

    Into water. Thick, heavy fock that spreads over. Why fog? Well, ever see bugs swarm in soupy fog? High humidity makes this kind of flying difficult!

    Then again they might be magic cheating bugs, that would suck.

    The bugs are indeed magical cheating bugs! They're shadowy reflections of actual bugs, not physical ones. That said, they're flimsy things and cooked by the fire from Mau's sword and Luke's Bewear and smashed by actual real water from Cagliostro's transmutation of rocks to water. There's a moment where it's clear they're going to keep coming in spite of that, but then Benedicta 'summons' her shadow.
    The shadow emerges from the summoning circle, staring at Benedicta. "Isn't it easy to summon something that *wants* to find you?"

Benedicta leaps forward trying to pin her double down. She's pretty sure she's can overpower her at least she's never seen fight directly after all. She's certainly going to make sure that her double doesn't escape again. Now they just need to stall for time so that Alice can get the mirror dimension open. Hopefully the others can keep her safe.

 Kira's doing her best to keep the shadows distracted and off of Alice as well. She tries and draws many of the animals into herself to keep them off of the younger mage.

    And there goes Benedicta just lunging to tackle her twin. Well, Mau is going to keep an eye on that but mainly twirls her blazing sword in hand.
    "I'll hold off the bugs, someone else... Do... Uh. Something."
    The jackass catgirl flicks her sword blade and sends another plume of fire at the problematic insects to at least keep them off the group.

Luke's pokemon (Agni),is a fire type, that was tasked to stay near Alice and basically taking the duty to maul of flamethrower anything that wasn't Luke, Alice or one of the starting group, playing defense near the rocks that Cagliostro summoned earlier. The sunny day performed moments earlier still lingers, bathing the area with bright light, which... might be counter productive if the idea is eliminate shadows. Meanwhile Luke looks around and checks the pokeballs on his belt to figure if he should send someone else. Fire seems to work, but scared to start a forest fire at this rate. "Benedicta! what can I do?" he asks.

    "You'd think it would be easier, but really, the moment you WANT to find something, it's a pain to find, generally." Cagliostro sighs lightly, but then she's back to trying to make sure Alice is safe. Mau focusing on the insects allows the little alchemist to take a breather to try to come up with a better plan.

    What Cagliostro does takes little time to decide. The water pooled nearby is useful still... transmuting it AGAIN would be a horrible waste of energy, because water is fine. She tugs it backward, bender-style, and has it form a wide, loose ring around Alice, freezing it into a thin but very cold 'shield' for now. It isn't all that strong yet, but it'll give a precious few fractions of a second to react if someone attacks.

    The lingering shadows subside under the the fires and Sunny Day. The bugs don't even leave shells or dust as they evaporte, only letting through light that was obscured before. Alice angles herself to use the ice ring as a barrier while getting out a hand mirror in preparation.
    Scura ducks to one side, whirling around to leap onto Benedicta's back. "You might as well rip your own heart in two if you keep denying the truth! I'm sick of living in your shadow, seeing you let Sybill push you around. And when we're done here, I'm going to make sure she never hurts us again." There's other Scuras trying to emerge from the deep shadows, though they seem to be kept at bay by the bright light unleashed by Luke's pokemon.

"Look I don't like her either, but do you think you can just blindly rush and attack her? I could be doing something about her right now, if I didn't have to deal with you! She's had free reign to do what she wants!" Benedicta feels a bit weaker as she comes into direct contact with Scura. Her body tries to reabsorb the shadow into herself but it's not fully taking. It seems like Scura's trying to become the dominant personality. "I thought you didn't want to be part of me..."

 Kira watches as the two try to merge back together and then her attentions towards Luke, "Make sure she doesn't absorb Benedicta, we need to the two to be on even footing when they merge back together!" She's heistant to intervene directly not wanting Scura to be pulled into herself.

    With the bug problem handled, Mau gives her sword another lazy twirl before she looks back to Benedicta and Scura. And the battle between the two trying to absorb one another.
    "Huh. I guess we can't have that." The catgirl say as she moseys over in that direction.
    And uses the pommel of her sword to try and clobber Scura dizzy and get her off Benedicta, pretty heedless or clueless of absorption dangers.

    With the others being held back by the pokemon's light, Cagliostro takes a breather and now can see that Benedicta is struggling. Rather than trying to interfere directly - something her abilities are poorly-tuned to doing - she hesitates, considers, and then snaps fingers. Sending her flying snake to the side to monitor for any situational changes, she now focuses on Benedicta.

    No words are spoken, just a thrumming of power, then a surge as she tries to do basic reinforcement of Benedicta. It's mostly a general 'buff' for people, but when struggling with herself... perhaps it will be effective in a more meta sense?

    Luke knows about as much as Mau does about this!. The best he can consider, now that the darkness situation is over, is to help separate the two. The issue is, he has no clue how to do it, he has no real 'buff' or healing ability on his team, and Mau seems to at least have that handled, he woudl send Bewear but... is scared of how much damage something that can casually smash a three asunder by waving might do while trying to knock someone unconscious, or somehow making it worse.

    "Yes but then I realized: I'm you! You're me! I'm the abyss that looks in." There's a vicious back and forth between Scura and Benedicta. "You don't *do* enough with your gifts! Imagine the faces of all those bitches from high school when you waltz in looking ageless at your twenty year reunion." Wings form as Scura takes to the skies to avoid getting clobbered by Mau.
    Finally, Alice finishes weaving her spell and aims the mirror at Scura just as the shadow-half dives for Benedicta. There's a flash of light and for an interminable number of heartbeats, it's not clear who was taken by the spell: Benedicta or her shadow.

The answer is both of them seeing how they're reflections of each other. Of course inside the mirror dimension any illusions are disabled automatically. It's just Benedicta as a high school girl and Benedicta as al-miar'aj. The question was which one was which? At first the world seemed the same as the outside. Except for one major difference. Up was down, down was up and so on. Scura was weakened a great deal inside she had came from the mirror to begin with.

"Well, I haven't been able to use my full powers..." Both Benedictas spoke at the same time. "Are we truly one and the same?" There was a clear echo in here.

The shadows outside started to weaken now that their master was unable to command them directly. Kira stood away from the entrance of the mirror dimension not wanting to look into it directly. The sorceress continued to battle though. "I'll protect Alice out here, be careful if you do decide to step inside. You might see something you don't like about yourself."

    Cagliostro tenses... then relaxes, dropping her hands and taking on her more normal, casual, almost indifferent look. She tosses her hair with a smirk, then tsks softly. "Oh no, no thank you. I'm perfectly aware that I'm not a good person, I'd rather not have the reminder!" She says that so cheerfully, but... true to her statement, she isn't going to go into that mirror dimension.