tushanshu_logs | EVENT | LANDFALL | KITHIKA

EVENT | LANDFALL | KITHIKA | DRAGON

Characters: ALL!
Date: February 12th - 28th
Location: Keeliai
Situation: The discovery of an artifact from the first war against Malicant reveals the land of Kithika within a dimension of the Death Plane... and just happens to be contained inside a bottle.
Warnings/Rating: Please indicate content warnings in subject headers as applicable.

OOC INFORMATION ♦ CITY OF KEELIAI ♦ INSIDE THE BOTTLE ♦ THE WORLD EATER
For nearly two days the brave quest takers have been sequestered at the sullied Temple and its grounds, the thick jungle and swamp preventing them from leaving. There are faint tremors that run through the ground and in the middle of the third night, the ground gives a great heave, jostling everyone from their rested states. In one of the Temple rooms, a sinkhole has appeared to reveal not spongy ground beneath, but a dark tunnel leading down into the earth. It doesn't take much to widen the entrance and follow the gentle downward slope that leads out to the north, and a walk of about two hours (which surely would feel like longer to those who don't enjoy being trapped in low, dank places) leads them under the swamp itself. By the time the tunnel slopes upward, the muddy ground has turned hard and packed with small chips of rock and sand; the terrain above is changing and as they emerge upward through a fissure in the ground...

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OOC NOTE: The Aftermath comment will be unfrozen and its direction posted on February 23rd, based on the outcome of the other threads.

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This time Xiang concentrated on the remnants of the pustules on his approach, keen eyes focusing on the creatures pulling themselves out of--

No, he realised as he drew nearer: they were not hatching from the goo, they were the goo. He put his ruff back in disgust. It had to be some sort of disease, but what sort could it possibly be?

He could feel the familiar pressure of the Divine Wind rising up in his chest now, and he let it build, sending a sharp vibration through his body as it grew. They were very nearly on top of the creatures before he roared: a deafening, tooth-jarring wave of sound, just short of painful to the riders behind him, which caused the creature directly in front of him to burst outright, and bowled over several of the others.

The third pass brought them back into range, and Amelia could see now what was happening with the remnants of the ruptured pustules. Creatures of black ooze rose up, horrendous and revolting. She aimed down her rifle at them, intent on picking them off when Temeraire began to vibrate.

"Teme- Lung Tien Xiang," she caught herself this time, "are you all ri-"

And then the dragon roared. A loud, powerful bellow which forced Amelia to flatten her ears against her skull. She would have wondered what good roaring at the monsters would do, had one of them not exploded from the force of the sound and several others knocked over.

Once her ears had stopped ringing enough for her tastes, she called out to Temeraire. "You might have mentioned that booming bellow of yours before!"

The rumbling of the dragon beneath him had been as much of an indication as Gene was going to get that something was about to happen, and there was a deafening roar that made the haft of his guan dao rattle in his hands and his head thrum with pain. At least its effects seemed to be directed at the squirming bile creatures rather than at the riders, for which Gene was grateful, especially when he saw one burst like an overripe melon. That caused him to revise his opinion of this unusual version of Temeraire several points upward. Whatever the hell that was, if the dragon could pull it off again a few more times, they might really have this thing in the bag.

"That was unexpected," he said when he could properly hear again, flexing his half-numbed fingers around his weapon as though to secure his grip on it.

Xiang angled himself sharply upward, pulling rapidly away from the remaining creatures and shaking his head from side to side in barely veiled disappointment. He came to a halt some fifty feet over the destroyed pustules, his wing-joints shifting smoothly into the complex motions that kept him hovering in midair, and considered.

It ought to have killed all of them, he thought irritably; instead only one of them had exploded, and the others were stumbling around, dazed but hardly dead. No doubt it was due to his reduced size, but that did not mean he had to be happy at this state of affairs, at all.

Gradually he became aware of voices calling out to him: the cat and the boy, again, complaining of the noise.

"I did not think it was important," he said offhandedly, still looking down at the creatures. "How many of them are there, do you suppose?"

"A warning would have been fair; you're quite loud and it's disorienting to a degree," Amelia chided, though her focus had shifted to the creatures below. They were grotesque, and having originated from the goo itself, were clearly not friendly. She took a shot at one of the reeling ones; it fell, a sizable hole punched through what could considered its head.

"Hard to tell their numbers. If they come from the pustules, then there is likely to be a great deal more than what we're seeing now." Worrisome, really. They weren't the only fighters, but the dragon was large. "Let's finish off this lot and find another spot to strike at, quickly."

All of the constant movement was dizzying, and Gene struggled to normalize his inner ear. It took a second, but he could look down at the creatures of pus from the dragon's back without his head reeling. He didn't have any projectile weapons to strike at them - not like this, anyway. Gene tightened his grip on the guan dao, looking down at his rings. He hadn't quite gotten the knack of using them without summoning the armor yet, and he wasn't too keen on trying that now, even if the idea of armor would be a welcome one.

"I agree. Better to destroy these ones before moving on."

The creatures were repulsive enough, on their own; as Xiang watched, Amelia put paid to another, and he growled in barely concealed disgust as it collapsed into its component parts.

"Now I will make another pass," he announced, trying to keep the patronizing edge from his voice. Napoleon would have known what he was trying to achieve, without even asking; evidently it was too much to ask of these untrained hangers-on. "Pray ready your ears, so you may strike once I have moved alongside them."

This time his descent was slower, a little more measured, to give his passengers time to move. Again the reassuring rumble, again the eye-watering wave of sound: then he flicked a wing up and rolled nearly vertical in the air, so the staggering remnants might be dispatched by polearm.

Before the dragon had fully turned for his next run, Amelia leveled her rifle and took aim, blasting off what seemed to be a limb from one of the remaining creatures. A second shot dispatched it, and Temeraire roared once more. The captain managed a third shot at close range, but instinctively snatched the harness before her as the dragon abruptly rolled to bring his passengers within close range.

Amelia herself was lacking any pole arms, and though the spectral rifle possessed a bayonet it wasn't long enough to quite reach the targets. She settled for adjusting herself to lie flat against Temeraire, one arm looped through the harness as she aimed once more. It was merely extra security; she did not wish to go falling off should the shredded harness fail.

Gene was really starting to get the hang of this. Granted, it was a bit like riding an avalanche - a patronizing avalanche - but it began to fall into a pattern he recognized. He'd ridden horses before, a little; this was similar, only much bigger and with wings.

His attack struck home when they swung close, slicing one of the remaining blobs to ribbons and wounding another before they began their ascent.

Maybe it was the fact that Temeraire had banked to bring them back around for another pass, and maybe it was the fact that the second attack had made the guan dao drag a little bit on the ascent, and maybe it was the fact that Gene hadn't been able to secure himself to the harness properly, but either way, the tortured bit of leather Gene had been using to stay on the dragon's back finally gave way. It snapped, and gravity took hold as Gene cried out and fell.

He had options. To use the rings, or not? For a moment, as he fell, Gene considered just hitting the ground at terminal velocity and keeping his secret intact. But no...no, he'd come too far to give up now. And death was something he'd prefer to avoid, despite being in its realm.

I really have to apologize to Tony when I get back, he thought with eerie calm as the wind whipped past him and in his eyes the dragon and his remaining rider briefly became the halves of a shattered Gulfstream falling from the sky. This isn't fun.

He closed his eyes, and was engulfed in a ball of blinding light.

Edited 2014-03-25 01:53 (UTC)

The armor materialized around him and he felt his power surge. He felt whole again, or near enough. This was his destiny, this was how he was supposed to be. He was still hurtling towards the ground, but that was now a challenge, not certain death. And he knew how to meet this challenge.

Hitting the ground in a handspring was doable if not easy, and he launched himself over the amassed blob creatures, guan dao in the other hand. The spectral weapon had increased in size to match this new form, big and ominous and armored in darkness itself. He came out of the handspring in a three-point position, the pole arm swung behind his body, ready to bring it forward in a deadly arc.

(Really, the key was to make it look like he'd intended to fall off. He was still an insecure teenager, after all.)

"Come on," the Mandarin said to the bile creatures, his voice disguised and deepened by the armor's modulator. "Come and get me."

They lunged, and so did he.

If nothing else, Xiang noticed the abrupt change in weight immediately, but it took him a split second longer to understand the reason for it, and by then it was too late to do anything.

He pivoted nonetheless, claws reaching out instinctively in a vain attempt to catch the plummeting figure, but he knew with the unerring instinct of any dragon that he would never reach the boy in time. He felt an unexpected pang of regret at that. It never did to lose a soldier, particularly one who had been entrusted to his care. It was irresponsible; more importantly, it was sloppy.

And then--he roared, once, in startled surprise, as blinding light covered the boy, and then was abruptly replaced by massive black armor--

He did not understand what was happening. How could he? But the person in the armor had to be the boy--how could it be anyone else?--and it handled itself with an air of confidence that suggested it had been unharmed by the fall.

Xiang risked one brief, baffled glance back at Amelia before lowering his head and hurriedly joining the fray.

She heard the cry and spun almost instinctively, making to grab Gene as she watched him plummet. Temeraire seemed to have the same idea, as the dragon himself spun and clawed for the boy. Gene's restraints had failed him, a fate which almost sickened her; she had lost Arrow in the same fashion.

The Captain opened her mouth to yell at Temeraire, to order him to dive after Gene, when the falling figure was engulfed in bright light. As it faded it revealed a black figure, larger than Gene. A split second later she realized it was a sort of armor, heavily stylized. The voice was not Gene's, it was far too deep, but surely it had to be the boy within the suit.

Amelia matched Temeraire's confusion with her own - if he had the ability to summon such a thing as to allow him flight, why had he even bothered tying himself precariously to a dragon's back? - then shook it off. She leveled her rifle once again, and blasted another creature to kingdom come.

Wearing the armor made Gene feel almost giddy with power; he'd held off on using it since arriving in Keeliai, watching the Starks to see if they had any idea who he might be. Well, the one he was most concerned about had seen enough anyway, so why keep it a secret now? He wasn't happy about having to reveal it to Temeraire and Amelia - that would raise more questions he wasn't keen on answering - so he'd try and avoid using the rings as best he could. He could open up darkforce portals to spirit these things away into the Not My Problem dimension, but that would not be subtle. So instead, he decided to get in there with his spectral weapon and tear through the creatures. One of them blew apart nearby, lanced by a bolt from Amelia's rifle. He waved once at her, up on dragonback, as acknowledgment of the skilled shot, and went back to attacking the creatures. There were fewer of them now, but they kept swarming all the same.

The armor looked to be of solid make, and sturdy, but some instinct told Xiang it might not hold up well under a direct blast from the Divine Wind. He would have to draw closer if he wished to do damage without indirectly harming the boy. It was an unfortunate development, and one that annoyed him, but even he could see there would be little point in complaining about it now.

"But he has no right," he said, sourly, as he folded his wings and dropped out of the sky, "to scold me for not warning him about the Divine Wind, when he has got an ability of his own."

Another strafing run, now, and as he neared the creatures he laid about himself with the spear in his claws, sending the surviving creatures scattering. It was an awkward business, but an easy glance of the battlefield told him he would be too easily surrounded if he landed.

Amelia nodded back at Gene as he waved, her own means of acknowledgement. The boy was clearly learned in some form of combat, and his capability while garbed in such a set of armor showed a familiarity with it. She would have to ask him about it later, and why he chose to keep this secret.

"No. No, it really isn't fair of him," she responded as Temeraire dove, a bit distractedly. After Gene's fall, she found herself somewhat more concerned with the state of her own harness. Unlike the boy, Amelia possessed no recourse in the event that her own ties failed her. She scored another hit as the strafing run began, careful to avoid Gene as he waded through the beasts.

There were fewer of the monsters now. "Once we've cleaned up this lot, we should move on to another collection. And think of ways to stop these things from emerging as we lance the boils."

Fair, unfair, Gene didn't really care. Beneath the helmet, he was grinning; nothing got his spirits up like a good fight, which was to say, a fight that he was winning. He struck out at some of the remaining creatures as Temeraire dove, knocking them flat and destroying one. The rush of wearing the armor, feeling the power again as he fought; this was the longest he'd gone without battle since he'd reclaimed his mother's ring, and it felt great.

There was another group of the beasts nearby. Gene vaulted past the remaining ones in his area to go get them (Temeraire and Amelia could deal with the ones that were left; he wanted a fresh batch).

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EVENT | LANDFALL | KITHIKA | DRAGON

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so late orz

SORRY FOR WAIT OTL

IT'S OKAY WE STILL LOVE YOU

BACKTHREAD THIS TIL THE END OF TIME Y/Y (also 1/2)

2/2

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