Cadet Rhysi Location: D1 Action: celebrating her birthday then running off to The Science
As the Calamitous Hollow thrashed and fought, more and more scales fell, the creature's reducing size turning them and more vulnerable to their collective's attacks. Having found and sequestered an ideal one at large size, she began collecting a whole armful of smaller ones, still singing the one line to herself as she went.
And then they won, and in an ideal fashion, they won while containing a living test subject and potential battery for Velencya. Watching it crash down with her armful of scales, Rhysi gave into the sudden, willful and wasteful impulse and ran back up to the earth knight.
Heaving her armful of scales up into the air as a not-very-gentle sort of confetti, Rhysi shouted with cheerful finality, "And many moooore!"
The holographic recording screen of her comtech flickered to rejoin her, startling the cadet into remembering what she was supposed to be doing.
"Ah!"
And then she was dashing toward the creature's head, ready to try, once again, to scan it. Maybe even take some preliminary samples.
It seemed that what they had done was cause the snake to recoil back from them, to shrink, and to become trapped in the same thing they were also now trapped in. Promethei saw the small red lights at a distance, and presumed that maybe there was some way to get them out. He also saw a scroll at his feet and idly picked it up, tucking it away.
He'd concern himself with that later. For now, there was the dark clouds surrounding Earth.
There had to be a way to free them. He refused to believe that Earth was gone after all the efforts they put in, and he also refused to believe that they were ******** stuck here because he was ******** fix it himself even if he had to somehow punch his way out of the cage-
They would deal with the fact that the Hollow was not actually dead later.
His attention shifted from the red lights in the distance to Nectaris as he saw her pitch her case to Cryolite. He had stuck with them. He had stuck with them throughout. There was no way that hadn't been noticed, and at this point it might've been safer for him to jump ship.
But would he?
When Nectaris looked to him, Promethei nodded shallowly and turned his attention to Cryolite. If Cryolite looked at Promethei, his expression was severe. The answer was in front of him.
Promethei could back him up. Had backed him up. He already helped record things Cryolite had said to give him something to reference and he'd be willing to do more of that if he wished.
Things are always shifting in the Cosmos. Try to hang on.
Abzu saw that what Almadel had given him--and a few others, he could figure, by the glows in the distance--was glowing. He trusted Almadel, as odd as it might've seen to trust a fast-dealing charming merchant. Whatever had been dropped into his bag had some utility here, up ahead.
He just had to believe that the utility it held would bring them back from the brink.
Ibirapitá tilted his head, letting the petals of his hair fall to the side as he murmured, "There does seem to be something to what you have on your wrist." He would not mind being stuck here. There was nothing left for him to live for at this point. There was a part of him though that did not want to doom everyone else.
If he could doom only himself, that would be acceptable. This was not, quite.
"Almadel gave it to me," Abzu shifted back on his knees. "Trust him-," his voice cut off as the dust in front of him shifted. It was hard to miss that dust turning back into a person, and Abzu couldn't hold back the sound of a choked sob as he quickly gathered Pendour up to embrace them again.
Pendour had found him. Was it the stone that Almadel gave him? "I got you," murmured Abzu, rubbing her back in an attempt to offer comfort without jostling her. "You're here." Where they were supposed to be.
Ibirapitá remained standing at a small distance.
... If only gaining his people back would have been so easy.
Maybe. She was fairly confident they were! Viatrix knew that she and her fellow Mauvians and their tech savvy Earth assistants had done everything they could to make that shield the best thing they could. She knew that it hit back at the Calamitous Hollow, even if they couldn't see anything from Earth.
"We got this!" announced Viatrix to everyone near her, swirling around with a compass in her hands and slightly elongated claws. "And if we don't, I'll go kick its a**!"
"Right? You ready, Encke? We got everyone's back!"
The sheer amount of dark electricity that had funneled toward him left him out of breath.
The sheer press of power was overwhelming. It was overwhelming in a way that was both familiar and not. He had felt darkness like that before, the creatures that wanted nothing but the worst for everything that breathed. Experiencing that malice in itself was not new. Experiencing what resulted from that malice was also not new, necessarily.
Encke pressed a hand to his chest with a gasp.
They had won, it seemed. To a degree. That creature, shrinking back to fit in its trap, was not dead by any permanent means. All they had done was trap it again. This would happen again, perhaps. Perhaps far beyond their lifetimes.
Encke looked down to what was still sparking with electricity that threatened to zoom up the wire. Was it still needed? There was still electricity in the air. There was still the Herald, staring at them all and waiting for them all to die.
A creature that ancient had the time.
Encke bent down to observe what had pulled electricity away from so many. His gaze shifted to the Velencians. Perhaps he should murmur a you're welcome to those that may have seen him as an enemy due to his protection of Caedus. Perhaps he would leave it be. A true hero didn't expect thank you.
A trope from movies, no doubt, but there was truth to it.
There was something to that feeling, though, that had him feeling stronger in his gut. Encke had done that. The power of Encke's Comet had done that. Was he a true hero, a true leader, a true model (and not just in the ways that had him in photoshoots for somehow still extant magazines)? Encke didn't know that. He couldn't know that. What he did know is that he felt something resonant as he observed the black electricity and waited for it to be entirely absorbed.
"Yeah, ready," murmured Encke. "Just give me a moment."
His gaze flicked up toward Viatrix. "You don't usually swear, by the way."
Viatrix giggled. "Look, if it's trying to eat Earth I think it deserves all the curses." She bounced on the toes of her sneakers. "Now we probably need to find all those glowy things that aren't you. C'mon!"
Encke let out another shaky breath, reaching for an odd piece of armour that fell from the sky as well as the item that had absorbed so much.
"Right."
Amasxs
Basiluzzo
Seiana_ZI
Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Seiana_ZI
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Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2025 12:31 pm
Cadet Lysvi Action: Surprised, but also very wiped out Location B9
After the way they were reaching out, hoping sincerely that the lightning would continue to leave them alone, they were surprised to find that it was shrinking back. And not only was it shrinking back, so was the snake that they were fighting itself, staring at them with malice.
It was malice they understood, even if they did not necessarily understand the way a snake's face naturally twisted. Lysvi could tell. Lysvi could tell it hated them, and perhaps wanted to see them die, too.
They needed to figure out how to leave. Maybe those people with gems were the key?
As Lysvi scanned the field, they could see that some people were coming back. Out of curiosity, they lifted their scanner, wondering what they could tell out of the environment now that it seemed the scanner might have been working.
At least, to a degree.
They tried to offer a smile to Neryn. "We won?"
Perhaps. The snake wasn't dead.
There might have been a lot ahead for both Earth and Velencya.
Something felt familiar about what they saw in front of them, but perhaps that was obvious why as they observed closer. Their son had said that many of those knights in the same calling had very similar coloration, very similar styles, very similar symbols. It made sense, if in theory that they were all united in one past life.
A past life that Eridu was uncertain they had. The first time they had visited their Wonder, they didn't feel the same kind of memories that Abzu said they experienced. Eridu also hadn't seen some ghostly ancestor that had a stick up its a** in the way it sounded like Pendour dealt with. It was something else.
Perhaps they knew?
Eridu was never the type to announce themself. Always moving in the background had become their speciality, in its own way. Instead of saying anything, they slipped closer, observing the small grouping of people that looked like them from a distance.
... Hm. Perhaps those were others that called to Cybele.
And perhaps the one with wings was Cybele.
Amasisx
Danube
staripopx
Cybele
Strickenizedx
Celadon
OP-Yunax
Hierapolis, Steins
a-disgruntlexd-dragon
Siegfried
Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2025 1:03 pm
Super Hybris location: ??? actions: coming apart, coming together
Cracked apart in the searing ice cold heat, the extremes of pain sharply broke through to the extremes of existence. Everything and nothing all at once. For someone who had always preferred to ground himself in the physical, the sudden loss of body should have been worse than any possible hell that waited him. But instead, the remaining conscious of Hybris of Reflection, of the soft and idle Malory Medraut, beheld a Dark Star, haloed in crystal and robed in violet streaks of energy and the pure white light of...
"Are you what comes next?" Hybris asked it, a voice without a throat, his eyeless gaze compelled and enticed to behold its vast and broken magnitude. He wished he could sink into its cracks, longed for those purple veins of lightning to strike into him, coursing through him to replace a heart and veins now long lost. He ached to press ghostly tooth and tongue against its light until he was crushed and burned into a furtherance of nothing, a forever of its everything. He wanted to consume any small piece of it and be used up in return.
To look away was to tear himself even further apart, and so he watched for the eternity it deserved; right until he felt, bit by bit and cell by cell, a remaking begin to take place.
"Will I see you again?"
xthe space cauldron
lizbot
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Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2025 1:11 pm
Squire Celadon of Cybele Location: E5 Action: Sticking with Cybele and co, following the call HP: 55/125
She felt utterly beaten. All of her energy, all of her will, evaporated with the creature's immense shape. She watched it shrink, flail, and finally, become entrapped in its new prison. Panting as she watched it, she felt no real sense of accomplishment. How long would that last?
And they were still stuck. Cybele had fallen off the creature, and everyone across the battlefield looked every bit as exhausted as she felt. Nothing was ushering them back to Earth. If it still existed.
Celadon wanted to sit down, give up, stare at the sky for a while. She gazed dully into some of the rifts as they slowly dissolved. But, something urged her to move. Like she had somewhere to go.
"I guess these things want us to keep moving," she said as she shook her wrist. The bracelet jingled softly. It almost suggested a way onward, and she supposed she had to follow it.
Niter kept Mangus close while he watched the Calamitous Hollow shrink and drop. Finally their little prison sprang to life and seemingly contained it. Niter breathed a sigh.
But he would be remiss if he didn't acknowledge the new Ascended Senshi in their midst. Nothing mattered more in that moment. So off he went, drifting between parties, drifting around the Queen, in order to look upon their newest shattered friend.
He didn't recall meeting her before, but Niter didn't try to expand his circle of contacts, either.
"Hi," he greeted her (Chrysocolla). "You were so cool up there."
Telesto was already ready for the next blow to come, the next strike to land. That was the nature of battle, to always be ready for it to continue and never stop. That was what always made it feel so jarring when it was over, when the proverbial last step wasn't there and their foot just fell downward. It was over. They had won.
Was this what winning looked like?
Their eyes scanned across the field, taking in the situation. Wounded senshi and knights, from all creeds. The creature itself, shrunken and ethereal. All of them, seemingly trapped.
The initial idea that killing the Calamitous Hollow would free them quickly faded, as Telesto reached out to the energy of the creature and felt the initial tingle of electricity. This was not energy they could draw on, which meant this wasn't a creature they could kill. Binding it here was the option... Did that mean they were sacrifices for this purpose? All of these people here? That seemed too much.
Composing themselves, they made their way back to the others of the Court, collecting some of the smaller scales and a large scale along the way; perhaps they would be of use for something one day, to help bring some comfort in this odd feeling life.
With the others, Telesto's eyes fall over Laon, a frown forming on their face. They listened and watched as the others reported over them, giving a small nod before looking to Remarque.
"Laon seems wounded but their eyes match many of the others here, they may be caught in something beyond. Hybris has been lost though, a bolt of black lightning struck them and removed them from this field. I have not seen signs of them yet," Telesto offers.
"I know this is not the best time, but we need to focus on getting out of here. There are the scales of the creature, do we think with enough work we could turn them to mirrors to escape through?" They asked to all of the gathered, looking for any semblance of an answer.
They had done it. The spikes were doing their job.
Helio was exhausted. He sucked in air as his mind and body worked to come together and calm the adrenaline that continued to rush through his veins. It would take some time before he didn’t feel on edge. For now, that energy was spent looking around for his comrades.
Fafnir was still standing. But it was Albite and Faustite that Helio frantically looked around for. He had noted the assistance Fafnir had needed to give their fiery leader, but the boy seemed relatively ok. Still, Helio’s heart had gone to his throat when he saw Faustite stumble. He hated watching Albite throw himself at the wretched creature now pinned down by the spikes.
The corrupt hadn’t really even noticed his feet moving or the dull thunk of wood on stone as he rushed himself over to the two boys. He practically wrenched hold of Albite’s wrist and pulled the other with him to Faustite’s side, golden eyes only waivering from the General King to make sure Albite was following. Of course he was though. The husband would want ot check on his beloved after all.
Even if, Albite bulked, Helio didn’t stop and only let go of the other’s wrist when he marched his a** up to that dark-haired half-youma, took the boys face in his hands and kissed him. Kissed him with everything he had. Every emotion of fear, want, desperation, and love was all mixed into that singular kiss. “I am so sorry.” The words were soft and hissed against the boys lips.
He only pulled away to turn. tugging Albite closer and give as desperate of a kiss to Albite. By this point, tears were wetting his face for the sheet amount of emotions that rushed through him.
“Thank Gods you’re both alright.” He breathed out finally.
The pure amount of people who had succumbed to the battle was daunting and imagination was a cruel mistress with how easily she played out a scenario of watching either or both of his boys dissappear or lie there motionless.
His brother, also.
A snap of the head and Helio looked for the blue-decked frame of his brother and sighed in audible relief of finding the other corrupt Eternal safe and sound.
“Are you good?” He did a quick cursary glance of his older brother looking for any major injuries.
All the while Helio could feel himself finally calming down despite the knowledge that they were, truly, stuck with the beast. His body sagged as the andrenaline began to wear off and exhaustion really began to sink into his bones and his head pounded for his prolonged connection with their ‘friend’.
lizbot
Hestia
strickenized
Faustite + Niter
Seiana_ZI
Borax + Fulgurite
Amor Remanet
Ilmari
Kolina
Helio + Magnus
a-disgruntled-dragon
Litharge + Haymitch + Mizuki
amasis
Tincanolite
Shiningamisgirl
Albite + Cryolite
meighei
Tama
whimsical blue
Fafnir
Daekie
Pax
Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2025 1:54 pm
Eternal Sailor Alastor Location: C8 Action: Waking up; chatting with Sessrumnir and Lucien
‘Valhalla? Oh, good. That’ll make it easier to find you.’
The trail of red seemed to go on forever, and though he could see a light in the distance, it never felt like he was getting any closer. The Dark Star had an awful pull, and thoughts of failure and doubt and misery trailed him almost faster than he could move.
But Alastor had spent a thousand years dodging such thoughts already. He kept moving forward.
For the time he’d spent here, he memorized what he could, and compartmentalized the emotions and thoughts that weren’t going to help get him out of here.
Later, he could worry about the pure power radiating from the Dark Star, or the endless waves of hopelessness, or the sensation of failure and loss and despair nipping at his heels.
For now, he was putting all his efforts into getting back.
At some point, his vision started to fade. When he looked behind him, he couldn’t see the Dark Star. When he looked ahead of him, he couldn’t see the red glow. He felt like he was moving, still, traveling along a current. He felt like he was being carried down a river, slowly at first and then with such ferocity that he thought it might drown him.
The sensation of bobbing underwater was not unknown to him, but he had very specifically avoided dark rivers so that he didn’t have to deal with this. He’d been half-drowned, or worse, too many times before.
He couldn’t breathe. There was a brief second of panic when there was no air to fill his lungs, and then–
Alastor sat upright with a great gasp of air, and so much force it was like he hadn’t been unconscious at all. He was keenly aware of a sudden onslaught of pain, but when he looked to assess the damage, he couldn’t see any of it.
“Sessrumnir,” he said. Michael was close to him, he could feel him. He’d know that energy signature anywhere. And Lucien, those were easy.
He could feel them but he couldn’t see them.
Sessrumnir’s necklace was more tumultuous than usual, flashing brighter and more unsteadily. Alastor looked calm but he was still sorting through his emotions. His brows furrowed and he put his hand on the ground, winced when he accidentally pushed a shard deeper into his palm. He hadn’t even known it was there.
Deep breaths. He was calming himself down quickly. His eyes still hadn’t changed and his brows were furrowed as if in deep thought.
He wanted to ask if they were okay, if the boys were okay. He just trusted that Sessrumnir would have told him if that weren’t the case, or if they had any other problems on their hands.
He took one more deep breath and seemed to calm a bit more. He didn’t try to rub his eyes or try to get up, even if instinct demanded it. Instead, sitting as still as possible, he calmly requested, “Can you show me what you see? My vision’s not so clear right now. Little light headed, too, but I feel fine. I could go another round.”
Corrupt Super Sailor Pax of Reverberation Location: In A4 Action: Sitting down Almadel's Pin 0/1 (+10DMG), Almadel's Bracelet 1/1, Almadel's Berry 1/1 (+15HP) That was it. They just didn't have the energy or the desire to be upright anymore. Nope. Too much going on, too much to think about, even more stimuli than before despite the fact magic wasn't being thrown around anymore; Pax sat down heavily and picked at the edges of their sash, letting their eyes unfocus until their eyesight blurred. ----- Half-Youma General Larimar Location: In G10 Action: Gathering scales Almadel's Pin 0/1 (+10DMG), Almadel's Bracelet 1/1, Almadel's Berry 1/1 (+15HP) If everyone else was picking up battle trophies, so was ze. ******** this. ******** all of this. Whatever was going on with those gems was none of zyr business, and if people were going to form an orderly queue on the way out of this hellhole, great, thanks, ze'd start paying attention to that when it happened. ----- Super DSS Róka of the Undertow Location: In G6 Action: Gathering scales, then Grieve-yeet Grieve was offered a beautiful array of obscenities from long-dead languages from her errant projectile -- they'd been in the middle of gathering scales, thanks for nothing, though they'd managed to fit a large one and three of the smaller ones into their subspace before she'd grabbed them.
Róka almost arrested their momentum before they hit the Hollow. Almost. It still godsdamn hurt; there was a faint film of water over the ends of their extremities, and water and electricity had never played nice.
They landed wobbling and shook themself out like a dog, fingers numb, legs half numb, hairtie broken and all that hair spilling loose down to almost their ankles. ----- Ascended General Chrysocolla of Moods Location: D12 Action: Holding the gemstone aloft Almadel's Pin 1/1 (+10DMG), Almadel's Bracelet 1/1, Almadel's Berry 0/1 (+15HP), Dusky Red Gemstone 1/1
"Thank you," she said to Niter with a muted gratefulness, and then just... slumped on him, fatigued, barely keeping herself upright. Being remade hadn't been painless, and the lightning she'd suffered would've killed her if she hadn't had Metallia; for a moment her eyes were glassy and purple, cosmos painted across them, and then she twitched a little and clutched the red gemstone in her hand, pulling it from subspace. She stepped back from him just far enough to raise her hand and squint at the crystal, watching it flash in those rhythmic pulses, like the heartbeat she didn't quite have as of a minute ago.
She was where she needed to be. She could feel that fundamentally, unshakably. She didn't need to worry just yet.
The storm was still crashing down around them. Lightning struck, inches from Kerberos, but it felt both close and distant. He knew Ida and Illyria were close. Lyndin was still going, still standing, and for the first time, Kerberos got to witness the power of that sword of his—and it was impressive.
A thousand years of experience would do that, Kerberos supposed.
Their numbers were reduced. The lightning had taken a few—and Kerberos hoped in his heart that they were not lost for good. That perhaps, by some miracle, by the strange magic of this place, they could return.
But at least the Calamitous Hollow was trapped, once more. Whatever they had done, whatever they had managed, they had sealed it away, and hopefully for good this time. They just had to pray that it had been in time, that the defenses they had all put so much of their hearts into had held.
He looked around, hoping for any kind of sign one way or another—searching for the soft greens of Earth Knights, the pastels of the Moon’s brand new host—
Oh, he realized, suddenly and in a sort of distant way. The prison was closing in.
It had been many, many years since Kerberos had been carried out of a tiny closet in Negaspace, shattered down to his core by being locked away. Most of the time, these days, he didn’t even think about it. The nightmares about it had lessened, with time.
But having the walls literally closing in all over again made him freeze up.
It wasn’t quite so dark, here. Lightning flashes still cut through. And in the back of his mind, he knew he wasn’t alone. But he might as well have been. The dark of that tiny little closet closed back in around him, and it didn’t matter, that it was ten years on and he wasn’t a Corrupt anymore and the woman who had put him there was, hopefully, dead somewhere in the Rift because no one had heard from her in years—
But this time, there was a light. A lot of lights.
A dozen red glows in the fog, and the soft pull of Almadel’s bracelet.
And purple flowers, traced on familiar skin.
Kerberos reached for Ida, taking her hand in both of his, glad for the sudden, very physical reminder that he wasn’t where he’d feared.
“Ida,” he said, softly, like her name might push back against the dark, “I think those stones might be pointing our way out.”
"I think we won?" offered Nembus, slowly, as she looked around. Did they actually win? Were they still alive? Certainly they were, it felt like it, but they were trapped and there was also clouds above that hinted that there may have been some damage to Earth.
Elliott chuckled, glancing down at his nails as they lengthed and retracted under his command. He felt He could do more with these. It was too bad that he couldn't do to anything with them to the now just the electrical monster. "Nembus, do you doubt Mauvian engineering?"
"Well, no-"
"We got this, Nembus." Nembus blinked. Did Elliott just wink?
As exhausted as he was, as much as the fact that they were not immediately whisked away home weighed on Basiluzzo's mind, there was also relief that he could rest for a moment. There was curiosity about the rubble around them, and he couldn't resist rummaging through some of it. He even came away with a tattered paper trapped under some of the rocks, but wasn't able to inspect it quite yet. Not when Encke gasped like that, immediately drawing Basiluzzo's attention.
He turned, just in time to see Viatrix swirl around, just in time to see the change in how Encke held and carried himself. "Vi!" he exclaimed, the paper getting tucked away for now. "You look amazing!" His father would–
Where was Stromboli, anyway? Basiluzzo looked this way and that, trying to find his father, relieved when he spotted him a small distance away. He even looked better than Basiluzzo himself felt, which was another relief. Basiluzzo's mother would kill him if anything happened to his father while she wasn't able to be there.
Throwing caution temporarily to the wind, he called, "dad!" across the field, waving to him. He didn't care, at that moment, who knew that Basiluzzo and Stromboli were related. It'd be fine. Besides, anyone who looked at them would be able to see that Basiluzzo was carved out of Stromboli's left buttcheek.
Speaking of family, though, Basiluzzo turned his attention to looking for his cousin as well. He knew she was there. Somewhere–
He could not say, one way or another, if the abyss properly stared back. Could a being so ancient and eldritch even begin to turn an eye to him? Could it, in its unfathomable nothingness, even begin to care about a single ant that lingered in its event horizon?
Perhaps it did not matter.
He did not wish to stay. He had much to do on Earth—at the very least, he had a wedding to plan to a woman that he had not realized he cared for deeply until this very moment. It had been a convenience, but it seemed as if it was…something more, now.
And in the distance, there was a light.
More than one, even—lanterns in the fog, and Diaboleite focused on them. Let them pull him.
It was not easy. It hurt, slowly coming back to himself, and as he came together, he realized that everything was still dark. Still blurry. To anyone looking, Diaboleite’s eyes were still far away—still marked by stars.
“Aoede?” He called for her, first, and then— “Benitoite? Stichtite? Mara?”
It was going to be very troublesome, he thought, if this was permanent.
