[GST] a light in dark places pt. 2

[Talon]

T A L O N

Talon engaged the monstrosity. The sound of a hundred mouths all shrieking, screaming, moaning, laughing, and even begging all rose in a cacophany of ungodly noise.

The caverns shook as the draegir battled a voidstone infused horror.

---

Aoren heard Hilana. He knew that the priority was not the abomination that was now locked in furious combat with the love of his life. Logically, he knew that Talon was not just strong enough, but was clever enough to overcome the challenges presented with fighting a creature that distorted the very fabric of reality around it.

All the same, he could not bring himself to move. It was not until Aurin barked his command that Aoren shook himself out of his stupor. The dragon nodded and joined the others, stepping up to the partial cave-in. With the weight of the oppressive voidstone lifted off of them, it was easier to stir his aether into motion. He cast his senses across Nyxus and looked through the shadows of the Warrens until his sight guided him to the group of the miners. They were in a makeshift shelter within a cave. They looked to be holding their own against some shinaegri. Fortunately these ones did not look to be voidrillium tainted. He blinked, returning his senses to the material world.

“Hilana, Athalia, have your lava bombs at the ready. There are shinaegri that the miners are fending off. Only a handful and not quite so tainted as what we just faced.” He gave a grim smirk. “Make a splash, cause a distraction. Then get to the miners and start rounding them up.”

He looked to Aurin.

“The miners have bunkered down in a cave. It will be immediately ahead and to the right. If you can, it looks like you've got a few tricks up your sleeve. Get to them. Start ushering them back toward the mine shaft.” He looked at Hikami and Yumiko.

“As for us? We will take out the shinaegri while Aurin, Hilana and Athalia get to the miners.” Aoren waited only a moment to make sure everyone understood their part. He then turned to the partial cave in and drew in a breath. The flow of the elements came easier to him now that Talon was drawing the focus of the voidstone cursed monstrosity. He reached deeper into the well of power within him, took hold of the rock and stone and began coercing it to crumble away into the rock around it. He enacted sculpting to reshape the stone to create a viable pathway, at least as viable as he could given the circumstances. As soon as the pathway was clear enough, he shouted.

“Go! Go!” Time was not their friend in this moment and it was better to act swiftly.

Off Topic

There are only about 8 shinaegri. There are 14 miners bunkered down with simple weapons (i.e. crossbow, mining tools, etc.) taking shelter. 10 souls lost.

[Hilana Chenzira]

"There are fourteen left. Ten have been lost of the original 24 that were reported missing," Hilana informed them as they started on the dirt. While Aurin warded, the two sisters got to work on moving it. There was little point in digging with hands, and even grabbing one of the abandoned shovels wasn't going to move things the way Elementalism could. The sisters worked from the top, as Aoren scouted through Nyxus. Hilana did not want to expend more aether than necessary to see where Aurin's wards were, so she made estimations based on the shape of the mining shafts around them, carving deliberately at the rock and earth and pushing it to the side. It was steady going, made much easier with less effects of the voidrillium; but the earlier fight had certainly taken its toll with the way they had had to handle themselves with the corruptive, corrosive dragonshard.

When he explained his plan, the sisters nodded, and Lia checked her pouch to see how many lava bombs she had remaining. "Understood," Hilana nodded and when she shared a glance with her sister, she started to produce more of the lodestones for the other Vastiana to fill once again. They could take no chances on what was inside this cavern joining together; they would need to be thoroughly damaged in order for the others to take them out. The magma would certainly make the required distraction, considering their weakness to fire. Athalia passed the filled lodestones back to her sister, and Hilana kept them in her hands. Worst case scenario, if need be, they could use the dawnfire that Talon had given them; but she preferred to keep that on hand in case of emergency to cover their tracks on the way back. There would be a whole parade of miners, some of which were bound to be injured, and that meant they had to cover them. Arcas would surely manage, but there were always contingencies.

"I'll see what triage can be done for those that need it when we get in there," she took a steadying breath, squaring her shoulders as the tunnel became opened, and with the shadows around and near, Hilana went through first. She pushed air ahead of her in order to make sure she did not run head-on into one of the gravebound horrors that might have been attracted to a new opening, and all that was going on in the other cavern. That was absolutely the last thing any of them needed, a sudden attack drawn from the changing stone on the other side of the cave-in. She spread her fingers, and let that same wind take the carefully-prepared lava bombs, guiding them overhead as sweat trickled through the dust on her forehead. When they were in position over the shinaegri, they were activated, spilling lava upon the creatures while she made her way towards the right to get at the miners.

Athalia had followed her sister, and her own lava bombs were soon joining the first wave from Hilana. Lodestone after lodestone released the blazing, boiling lava within, coating the creatures along their backs and sides. She did not linger by the doorway, following Hilana towards where the miners had been holed up, though she kept her attention on the undead beasts lest they decide to come forward. "Hello, my name is Hilana. We are here to help you get out of the mines," she spoke calmly in Common as she did a head count, twice, to make sure this was all fourteen. "I am a doctor. Who can walk, and who cannot? If you've large wounds, show me, please." She retrieved her medical kit from her bag. She could spread the potions and elixirs out. she knew she had enough of her Magma Bloom ones for everyone.

[Aurin]

Aoren's knack for the knowing trick must have outstripped his own, or else he just wasn't as confident pouring all of his awareness through rock and dirt when body horror was trying to skull fuck a god as an appetizer before devouring them and the miners stuck below like a treat in a dog's chew toy. But, all the same, it was good to know what was waiting for them. Aurin was, if nothing else, a man who liked to know things. Specifically, he liked to know things that other people didn't want him to know, but knowing things that increased his chances of survival were also clutch.

Good as his word, he wove his wards to support their tunnel; none of them were dwarves or moles or miners, so he figured cheating with magic was their best bet.

When the women began fire bombing the gross monsters, he made a mental note to tell Hilana that she was a lava bomb in the sack when it was slightly more appropriate. He often said things inappropriately, but there was a method to it, at least in his head.

But once they reached the miners, he considered the situation.

"Fuck that," he said. "Stabilize anyone bleeding out or something, but..."

He found a stable-seeming wall and leaned his hands against it. Arcas was good for a couple of things: cock-blocking the flesh demons; dampening the voidrillium effects. It was still more difficult than it ought to have been, but he could feel the slipstream here. He knew the slipstream near the Tranquil Gardens.

So, while the healers were healing and the tanks were tanking, the Railrunner concentrated entirely on coordinating their safe exit from these unholy premises. For all the power he had accrued, Aurin barely considered himself any sort of official magic-user. He had tricks. He had mastered these tricks, but only Traversion had come with an honest-to-gods instructor, and Valencia Grey knew her shit. As such, so did Aurin.

When he had all the threads crossed, connected, and woven to bridge here and there, he pulled them taught like a boy playing cat's cradle. The stone under his hands rippled as if made of water, turned to light, and then showed the cultivated greenery outside the emergency entrance to the hospital, as well as a few startled passers-by. The faint entropic pull of the voidrillium had made it difficult to connect, difficult to create, and difficult to maintain, but he was certain that the passage itself would be safe.

He stepped back and out of the way. The portal was large enough that the sisters could easily pass through with a patient betwixt them. Dragons and Avialae might have to duck their heads, but they could fit if they wanted to. He hoped they all knew when to fight and when to retreat, though, because he didn't intend to play hero.

"Well, don't just gape. Time to see the physicians, no?"

Aurin would do what he could to help the ambulatory through the portal. If necessary, he could vault the immobile through personally. It took some effort to maintain the portal, but he had long ago learned to multitask. He didn't know if their front line would fall back or win the day, but he could maintain this point of egress for quite a while as long as Arcas kept the voidrillium at bay.

[Hikami]

龍 In that brief respite from the voidrillium corruption, Hikami took in an account of his condition. The anchor seemed to be fine from what he could feel, but without being able to semble deeper he wouldn't know for sure. Regardless Yumeko took that moment to reassure her nephew, pulling something from her pocket. Placing it around his neck he caught sight of the bright blue color stone and realized what she had given him. "I figured it would come in handy for times when your recklessness would get the better of your judgment and rationality." she mused, her pact weapon firm in her free hand.

The Heart of J'mora shone brightly as he felt himself become invigorated by the aether of the grand Frostrylyth set within the amulet. "Thank you" he whispered, finding some new strength as he stood and readied himself for what lay beyond the rocks before them. Hearing Aoren's plan, he nodded, calling forth Aoi Ryu within his hand as he was ok with this part of the plan. He would make sure the other three could get to the miners safely and retreat just the same.

"Ready yourself, and remember not to let your emotions overtake you nephew." she reminded him, taking up a fighting stance as they had almost broken through the stone. When they did, and when Aoren gave the go, Hikami, and Yumeko to the flanks of Hilana, Althia, and Aurin slaughtering the Shinaegri that approached. He was careful in this confrontation, keeping his attacks measured and controlled, feeding from the Frostrylyth as they fought. Both warriors would kill three of the flesh demons a piece, leaving the rest for Aoren to deal with as they would protect the others as they dealt with the miners.

All the while Hikami couldn't help hear the slight giggle again. 龍

"Common Speech"
"Synskrit Speech"
"Self-Thoughts"

[Talon]

T A L O N

The miners stared at Hilana warily for a moment before shuffling forward. There were no panicked screams. There were no mad rushes of terrified civilians scrambling to get help. An older Moratallen stepped forward, hefting his pickaxe up over his shoulder. These were Kalzasern Warren laborers. They knew the risks. They were trained to prepare not for if a disaster happened, but when it happened.

“Litter team.” Four of the miners jumped up and rushed to the back of the cave. They each took up positions at the end of the litters and hoisted them up. Immediately the litter bearers brought the wounded over for Hilana to inspect. Two humans. One with deep lacerations on their torso with intestines hanging out. A moist cloth was covering the intestinal wounds to prevent them from further injury. As no doctor was present, none of the miners had attempted to place them back in the abdomen. The second human was trembling, their veins a deep charred blackened color. Evidence of voidrillium corruption. The human was clutching a small dawnstone dragonshard but the stone was cracked and seemed to just barely be holding the worst effects of the corruption at bay.

“Lithan, Errel, Aosuke.” Two humans and an Avialae stepped forward, each of them still carrying their mining gear. “Guard.”

The Moratallen looked at Hilana.

“There are no bodies.” There was no need to elaborate. Hilana could easily guess what happened to the miners who had been lost.

When Aurin made his proclamation, summoning his powers and ripping a hole between the Warrens and into the gardens of the hospital, the miners stared at him in shock. But the stupor lasted only a moment.

The Circle of Spells had long documented the challenges of teleportation across the Warrens. Even in the most ideal circumstances, it was a dangerous thing to attempt long-distance teleportation across even a single layer of the Warrens. To attempt to cross the boundaries of any layer or through a layer and to the surface was a feat that either required the absolute concentration of a master or the end-result would be a complete disaster. Given Aurin's training by the Railrunners, a coven of witches who devoted their entire lives to understanding the manipulation of portal magic, he was perhaps one of the few who could accomplish this feat mostly unscathed. Mostly. As soon as Aurin tore open the portal, crackling energy bit at the edges along with hints of an aethereal mist that any denizen of Kalzasi knew all too well.

The Dread Mists circled the edges of Aurin's portal.

-----

Aoren slashed into the shinaegri alongside Hikami and Yumeko. He wielded twin longswords, cutting the shambling horrors to ribbons with a precision well suited to a dragon that had been a warrior his entire long life. When the last of the shamblers had been cut down, Aoren came to a stop and looked around assessing the area. It was in that precise moment that the caverns shook and terrible roars echoed through the Buried Empire of the Deeps. Aoren looked back to where Talon fought against the horrifying creature, worry plain on his face.

Without even thinking he took a step back toward his partner. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that Aurin had ripped open a portal to the Tranquil Gardens hospital. He blinked, that was an incredibly impressive feat and it made him reevaluate the man in many ways. His eyes zeroed in on the presence of the mists that were swirling around the edges of the portal.

“Shit.” Rushing forward he came to stand immediately beside Aurin and clapped a hand on the man's shoulder. Tapping into his own rune of Traversion, Aoren began channeling his power in conjunction with the sly man's. He was nowhere near Aurin's skill or power as a teleporter but he could definitely lend his own power to the effort of keeping the portal open.

“Through the portal! Now!” Aoren looked to Hikami. “Watch our backs!”

[Hilana Chenzira]

She looked up at the Moratallen, and gave him a grave nod. "May Wraeden walk with them and bring them peace." He was not one of her Gods, but she knew that Kalzasi was quite polytheistic. The image that the ancient dragon god invoked would bring far more comfort than her own Gods. Such was the difference in cultures, but it was not on them to remark upon. She did offer a silent apology to the Founders for not invoking them here, but it was this was not the time to proselytize.

But her hands never stopped moving, even as Aurin seemed to have decided that it was go time. Each of the miners that were capable of taking them were offered her Magma Bloom potions for drinking while she looked them over for anything pressing. Aside from a general exhaustion, most of them looked capable of getting out of here - she was not about to use Semblance right now, not with what was going on. She did not need to drain and strain herself when she had working eyes and over a decade of training and practice when it came to triage and treatment. But those on the litters...

"Lia, would you help walk those that need it through the portal, please?" Hilana asked her sister. That would enable Aurin to hopefully focus on the portal and his wards and keeping things at bay so that they could get those out of here. That let her look over the ones on the litter, and she did not curse out loud, but she might have liked to. She carefully moved the moistened cloth before she used her aqualyth shard to sluice her hands. There was still an urgency to her movements, but this was not something that could be rushed and hope to save the miner's life. She used the shard to carefully clean the man's abdominal cavity, her lips pressed together as she focused on manipulating the water to draw the excess out and to the side, before she carefully cleaned the organs and tucked them back in. A clean cloth from her medical kit was soaked with water to cover the wound. That would need to do before a necromancer or kineticist could put him back together. The Vastiana would uncork one of her Jovmandr's Elixirs to trickle it down the man's throat and make sure he swallowed it. "Take him out, please," she told the litter bearers, turning her attention to the man with the cracked Dawnstone.

This one was a problem. She wasn't sure of how to use the Dawnfire within the lodestone in a way that would not harm the man, and asking Aoren was asking for trouble right now. With the red dragon assisting Aurin in keeping the portal steady and the mists at bay, Hilana uncapped the second Jovmandr's elixir for him, and then one of her aether-replenishing star thistle draughts. "There are bound to be healers, or negators, that can work on this with you. But this will help you hold on a bit longer. Breathe. You are stronger than it is." She squeezed his hand and nodded to the litter bearers. "Take him, please." Inasmuch as she wanted to go with the patients...

"That is all of them. Back to Talon?" Hilana was not about to leave him behind. If they could help...

[Aurin]

Aurin didn't consider himself a brave man. He wasn't even particularly self-aware, if only because he had knowingly set up blinders and walls, making a maze of himself to keep parts of himself contained and other parts safe. But if he wasn't brave, he knew how to handle himself, and he was confident in his abilities. If he played things up to the level of bravado, well, it was all part of being a confidence man.

One of the more recent things to best him had been what came to him now unexpected and unwelcome: the Dread Mists. They had nearly killed him once, and some wounds never quite healed. This one was not physical, but that didn't make it any the less painful or embarrassing.

He panicked, shoved an injured miner out of the way so he could be the first through his portal, shoulders hitched, cringing his way through. The fox-faced man looked like a beast of prey, a coward, a kicked, broken thing.

The crumpled posture of his flight caused him to trip over an uneven flagstone in the courtyard before the Tranquil Gardens. He would be embarrassed later; in his terror, he couldn't even flee properly. But if he had lost a little time to the trauma response, he became acutely aware again right away.

Stone beneath his hands and knees. Sunlight on his back. Medics rushing to his aid, he waved them past toward the portal he had fortunately been able to keep open despite it all.

"Warrens!" he managed to gasp. They were better than he was, rushing to help expedite the process from this side, undaunted by the hungry, chaotic flicker of the mists attempting to subvert or consume his portal spell. Then he slapped himself in the face a few times, cursing at himself.

By the time he had steeled himself enough to stand and turn and face his fear, the whites of his eyes quite prominent, jaw twitching at violently gritting teeth, he went back to help, though not quite so near to his portal as the others. The miners were quite efficient with their litters, and he shoved a medic away from the voidrillium-corrupted man and toward the one with his guts spilled out. Aurin could help with the former, but not the latter.

"I got this. Go."

Conveniently, that meant Aurin could pull the man's arm around his shoulders to help support his weight and not get any closer to even that hint of the aetherial mists. He slipped the illumite brooch from his chest and upon the man. If a bit of the dragonshard could hold against the corruption, then the one powering the runeforged artefact Torin had crafted specifically to offer him protection and power during the Eclipse ought to do him one better, at least until the healers could do whatever it is they would do to reverse the voidrillium's effects or, at least, halt them permanently.

"I've got you," he told the man, trying on his bravado again. Let Aurin be scared shitless. He could pretend to be confident to ease this one's fear and existential dread. "C'mon."

With that, he would get the man inside and get him to the people who could truly help, and then, he supposed, he would go back and pull the portal closed, and take a bath to get the taint of the Dread Mists, real or imagined, off him. Or, perhaps, Talon would just turn it off. Aurin didn't even know what he was capable of anymore.

[Hikami]

龍 Everything was coming together for the most part. The miners' rescue was well underway and Hikami and his aunt were covering the flanks of the miners being escorted out of the tunnels as well. He was on guard as one could never really know what would happen in the Warrens. As he focused on keeping them safe, the voice from earlier came into his mind again.

"What makes you think you can protect these fools? You couldn't even protect the Ice spirit within you." it maniacally giggled, its eldritch tendrils slowly crawling their way into the iceborn's mind. He had to remember his training from his time with the monks of the Sky Temple. He had to shut it out less he jeopardized the mission going wrong. But was it right? He could save the spirit due to his recklessness.

He couldn't allow himself to be a hindrance to the rescue, he wouldn't be. The Opening of the portal to the Tranquil Gardens was a good sign, and would mean that they wouldn't have to bring the miners back up through the tunnels. "All you are good for is causing destruction, being a reckless force of nature. You'll never be more than a force of nature." it hissed violently in his ear, causing his anger to rise as he was getting fed up with the voice. It didn't dawn on him that the Dread Mist were in play and that they could be the cause of how vocal that eldritch voice was.

When Aoren called for him to watch their back, he nodded, twirling Aoi Ryu as he looked to his aunt. "Go and make sure everyone makes it back safe, I'll cover the rear from here." Yumeko looked concerned but there was an unspoken conversation happening between aunt and nephew and with a solemn nod she went to cover the miners as they were brought through the tunnel.

With a flourish of his halberd, he drew a line and silently vowed that none would break through. Even if he wasn't at full strength he would do his best to make sure they got out alive and safe. 龍

"Common Speech"
"Synskrit Speech"
"Self-Thoughts"

[Hekatos]

Review

All involved have earned 10 xp for use at their discretion, except Hikami, who is now retired.

Any injuries have healed by present day, physical and mental depletion. If Paragon wants to offer concrete remuneration, I will leave that up to him. This thread is how Aurin gets enough voidrillium for Imogen's ritual.