ic [Gorgon] Unwelcome Guests [IC]

[Supercape]

Rene, mindful of hitting his comrade Nick Cimitierre, stayed back and once again launched another magical assault on the creature.

"Not enough of ze blue!" he said, assessing his take on the artistic merits of the scene.

The right mix of colours was clearly important.

In accordance with his irritation and his desire to remedy the drabness of the scene, a flash of blue-white lightning smoked into being from his side and lanced its way straight into the body of the beast...

[Ecalsneerg]

Equinox flinched and cartwheeled backwards through the air as the vicious ectoplasmic tentacle whirled around at her. Eyes screwed shut, she prepared for the worst... only to re-open her eyes to Dead Head lying crushed. "No..."

Eying the massive beast angrily, she lifted her wand and didn't even bother speaking. She just channelled forth her anger, frustration, her tiredness, even channelled the sheer exhaustion seeping into her bones from using so much magic in such a short space of time. The magic exploded forth with such a heat that even the air boiled and simmered around the blast of flame, which whirled and sparked and twisted in a manner which was nothing like normal heat.

The spiritual flame hit the giant mewling creation first, scourging the spells binding it into existence a little and leaving them worn and worried. Then the main body of fire struck and those weakened spells could do nothing to stop the main body of the creature turning to ash.

[trollthumper]

The Hecatonchire shrieked as its core bindings unwound. It began like a cry of pain before moving on into a more inhuman area, a loud, thin wail of utter desolation. The cry rose, again and again, as the bodies burned and the ectoplasmic half of the thing's mass unfurled into phantasmal fog. Soon, it tapered off into nothingness, and all that was left of the Hecatonchire was a smoldering mass that soon crumbled into ash.

"I never really thought I'd appreciate the scent of barbecued Grue," Nick said. "At least that damn thing's off the lawn."

The other Hecatonchire reared as its spectral companion was utterly demolished. It prepared to unleash another ectoplasmic barrage... but that left it wide open, as Kid Cthulhu unleashed another mental onslaught on the undead construct. Unnatural piping filled the air as the Hecatonchire recoiled and thrashed blindly, eventually settling on the grass in a staggered state.

[Dr Archeville]

Dead Head had leaped in front of the blast meant for Equinox, and suffered greatly for it, which perhaps partly spurred on her impressive incendiary workings. As the great beast burned, Phantom darted over to him and worked a quick healing spell on the revenant (well, more a repairing spell), which combined with his own unearthly regenerative abilities to make him good as 'new'.

"'ppreciate it, Phantom, but I think I'm about t'undo some'a what ya jes' did," he drawled as he saw the second giant Grue-Beast was still active. Remaining on the ground where he'd fallen, he stared hard at the conglomeration of Grue dead, saw how the bodies were held together, how the necrotic flesh was preserved... and pulled at those sorceries. As he did, his own body began to sympathetically unravel, skin putrefying and slackening off his face and limbs. "If one a y'all's got another big whammy t'throw at it... now'd be the time..."

[trollthumper]

Whatever putrescence Dead Head was working on himself, it was working ten times over on the Hecatonchire. Lesions and decay erupted across the stitched-together bodies of the dead Grue, and the ectoplasmic tendrils of the great beast began to twitch and wither. What had once been solid ectoplasm, coiled and tensed like steel cables, fell apart and rained down on the lawn of the Parkhurst like a sudden shower. It tried to move, tried to get away, but even that was turmoil.

"You've obviously seen better days," Nick said. The thing was weak enough that he could see through his corpus, to the thin strand that was keeping the whole construct knit together. "Here's a little something for the pain."

He lashed out with his claws, and the connection was cut. The bodies tumbled to the ground, and whatever preservative magics kept them together failed instantly, reducing them to ash. The spirits of the Grue were just as quick to dissolve, fading away into the twilight with more of a whimper than a scream.

"I knew there was a reason we didn't hold more of these conferences," Nick said. "The interruptions. So. Gorgon. Battle Brutes seems like a pretty good idea... but then again, you never know. It could have ways to assimilate them into its own defenses -- and of course, turning a force of stasis on a plane of destruction could lead to one of those great cosmic disturbances. Like if someone turned up the heat on Hel. What do you guys think?"

[Supercape]

"I knew there was a reason we didn't hold more of these conferences," Nick said. "The interruptions. So. Gorgon. Battle Brutes seems like a pretty good idea... but then again, you never know. It could have ways to assimilate them into its own defenses -- and of course, turning a force of stasis on a plane of destruction could lead to one of those great cosmic disturbances. Like if someone turned up the heat on Hel. What do you guys think?"

Rene put away his magic paintbrush with a little flurry that was a little too flash. But he had a twinkle in his eye and smile on his face.

"Interruptions have their good side..." he commented, surveying the destruction around them. "...I mean, look at this" he continued, surveying the marks of battle and scorched architecture courtesy of the mystic energies that had danced around the walls.

"It makes a magnificent picture!" he murmured, a grin on his face. He coughed slightly as he realised he was getting distracted.

"*Ahem* anyway, yes, to business! Summoning an army sounds good. But what army? We have no eyes, no ears, to see what will be effective. We need some guidance, even if it is from the tea leaves in a cup!"

[Dr Archeville]

"Well," Dead Head drawled, slowly standing, the backlashed rot on him having stopped and now slowly being reversed by his body's unnatural regenerative processes, "seein' these aliens got me thinkin' -- maybe we can call out t'other, non-pre-graverobbin' alien mystics? Them fellers up on the moon, the... Farsiders," he his right middle finger and thumb as the name came to him, butt he act of doing so caused the still-rotted tendons to snap and the fingers to dangle limply. He continued talking, unphazed, seemingly not even aware of the damage. "I cain't imagien folks livin' on the moon ain't got no mystics. Or the Star Knights, or, ah, them fellers what fight the Grue... Kkore... Moar... Lor!" He tried to snap the fingers on his right hand again, and, failing, noticed the damage, and popped the digits back into place, "ways I hear it, they got a whole federation, like on Space Trek; don't know if they got some 'Primary Mandate' that'd prevent 'em form interferin' with us, but it's worth a shot."

[Ecalsneerg]

Equinox, breathing hard, lowered herself back to the ground before her concentration gave out and her levitation spell shattered. She just wasn't used to throwing magical punches so hard, and knelt on the ground for a good minute, breating steadily and trying to will her legs to begin working again.

"I think Rene has a point," she gasped quietly. With a grunt and a supreme effort of will, she forced her aching body to stand up, and rolled her neck with an audible click. "Why don't we try divination? Although we can probably think of something more advanced than tea leaves."

[trollthumper]

"Divination's not always something you can trust," Nick said. "Remember all the stories about people who went to the Pythian Oracle and heard exactly the wrong thing. Well, from their perspective, at least." He stroked his chin. "Then again, I don't suppose it could hurt. I've got an idea..."

The workshop still looked like a hurricane had briefly set up shop, but there was enough that was salvageable for the experiment. Nick was sitting in a chair backed with iron and copper, both of which looked like more than base metals. The copper shined like it had served to conduct Zeus's lightning bolts, and the iron was dark and stygian, as if it had been taken from the base of the earth. From the back of the chair extended cables that had been woven from finer strands of the same material. Nick was wrapping one cable to his right wrist, and holding the other one out with his left hand.

"I've got a connection to the Moirae," he said. "It's mostly a postmortem-type thing -- I get an idea of why something happened, and what it all means. It's not the clearest of connections because, hey, they're the Moirae - they're unstuck in time. But odds are I could use that connection and glimpse the future, instead of the past. Thing is, I mostly verbalize it -- I know my art, but I'm not that good at producing it." He offered the cable to Rene. "So, Rene - how about I provide the story, and you provide the illustrations?"

[Supercape]

"So, Rene - how about I provide the story, and you provide the illustrations?"

With a smile, Rene whipped out his paintbrush that he had only just put away. It sprung into his hand with the same, if not more, theatrical flourish with which he had stowed it away.

"It will be mon pleasure, monsieur!" he answered. "Normally, I would paint ze illustrations on a suitably prepared canvas, but, alas, the only canvas I had here..."

He nodded towards the shredded, blackened, and still slightly smoking wreck in the corner of the room. Rene had chosen a bad place to store canvas in Parkhurst.

"...anyway. With ze aid of this enchanted paintbrush and ink, I will endevour to illustrate straight onto ze fabric of reality!" he said, with a twirl.

"Ready when you are!"

[trollthumper]

Nick gave Rene a nod of the head, then reached out for contact with the stygian depths. Yielding control to the strands of the past - the ones already woven and cut - was something he was familiar with; it had taken him a while to translate the terms of fate into English, even if it was broken and vague as all hell, but it was known territory.

Making contact with the threads of fate yet to be woven was like applying alligator clamps to his frontal lobe by comparison. His body convulsed in the chair as he began to yell at the top of his lungs. It took him a few seconds to realize that he was saying something. What it was, however, he couldn't tell. He'd heard Latin, Greek, even the occasional bit of Etruscan, some Enochian, Old Norse, and Aramaic. This sounded like nothing he'd ever heard. It sounded like the language used to shape the world.

Rene's hand raced across the air at lightning speed as the ideas surged into his head. Like the silhouettes on the side of an amphora, the images began to take hold in the air. First was the Gorgon, a steel-gray monstrosity that loomed against a sky dotted with pinhole stars. It looked down on the various practitioners with careful study and preparation. It moved closer, looking down on creation. Then, with no warning, it stopped like a bullet freezing in mid-air, and began to scream. Its mouth was open in silent agony, and clouds of silver streamed out at the corners, marring the sky. The Gorgon turned suddenly, faster than anything the size of a planet should, and ran, shrinking in the night sky as it vanished into the corners of the cosmos.

The image cut out as Nick came back to his sense. He was gasping for breath, and sweat ran from his brow. Despite the exhaustion, however, he was smiling. "Looks like... we're not screwed," he said. "Pretty good outcome, I'd say."