NPF Avatars IV, Chapter VIII: At the Fountains of Madness

[Arhra]

Inbred's furious onslaught ended with him managing to grab a hold and hurl her into the air, breaking her contact with the ground. Skyshot seized the opportunity and cast a float spell upon her.

It could not overcome the Imposition of Law that the Caryatid's elemental power imposed, but it was far from useless. The Caryatid drifted downards slowly, leaving her vulnerable.

Summoning up some of the last of his mana, he took out his jar of dirt. "Hey, look here! I've got a jar of dirt! I've got a jar of dirt! And guess what's inside it!" Its uncertain what was going through the Caryatid's head at this moment. Possibly she thought he was the worst pirate she'd ever seen. Assuming, of course, that she thought he was a pirate for some reason.

Casting his earthquake spell, Skyshot hurled the jar. Still suspended in midair, the Caryatid could hardly dodge. She raised an arm to block it, the jar shattering on her arm. The earthquake spell rippled through her, fine cracks running through her stony facade. Green fire ran over her as she called up her power, stones pulling out of the ground and the ceiling.

As Skyshot charged towards where she would land, Steel also attacked, clubbing the Caryatid with his blunted blade. Mauve's redirected shot struck her full in the ribs, seeding instability throughout her damaged frame.

She contacted the ground again, a great flare of mana racing over her. The Seal was visible on her chest - a tracery of green light. Her vine hair writhed like a snake's nest, the veins of magic that threaded through her form were visible, engorged from the power that coursed through them. Whatever passed for her bones shone through her skin, lit with the overload of energy. The same power leaked out of the hair-thin cracks in her body. Jerkily rasing arms up into a summoning gesture, her gimlet eyes glared at them with the same relentless determination.

"Get back!" Arhra yelled, running into the fray, "She's going to -"

BOOM

* * *

In a place of darkness, lights blinked on, revealing a number of figures garbed in bulky, identical white robes. They sat at desks, slabs of marble, a seemingly anachronistic array of papers and holographic glyphs neatly arranged on top of them.

"We have lost contact with the Caryatid of Earth. We believe it has been destroyed."

One of the figures neatly signed a Declaration of Intent to Verbalise Profanities and immediately did so.

"Instability in the Temples has been rising." another said, "Is it possible this is just a communication breakdown? I suggest we commence feasibility studies at once."

The first speaker continued, "Also, the Portents Advisory Comitee has submitted their preliminary report. The Invisible Moon has been sighted by several reliable sources. Barrier monitoring displays a significant power spike in the last 24 hours, indicating possible penetration by the Chaos prime mover. They do not believe this is another false alarm. Further investigations are proceeding."

"Risk factor to universal integrity is above acceptable levels." The man at the largest and presumably most important desk said. "We will default to emergency protocols as defined in Sodality operating procedures. Dispatch a strike team immediately." The lights blinked out, leaving nothing but shadows.

* * *

Beyond a barrier that transcended time itself, the wind blew mournfully over the ancient landscape contained within. The eye draws inwards to its center, where a great pit descends to endless darkness. Things of twisted shape mill about its edges. A finger of rock stabs out into the abyss. At its end, alone, a single figure kneels, garbed in heavy cloak and palpable menace. One armoured arm emerges from the cloak, gauntleted hand grasping a metal staff of the same make as the armour and holding it vertical, butt resting on the ground. Even the Seal of Time had not been enough to stop them from coming here, to this place.

As they knelt there, contemplating the end, there was a stir of activity amongst the ragged masses gathered about the pit. They pushed one of their number forwards, to bring tidings. At the moment the Caryatid of Earth was destroyed, a portion of the barrier had flickered, originating from one of the five points that anchored it.

The creature edged warily outwards along the stone span to where the figure waited. Cautiously it spoke, "Great One, it appears the Seal of Earth has been destroyed... What should we do?"

The Herald of the End Times just laughed.

* * *

Arhra lay unmoving on the soft sand, the dissipating tendrils of her spell net partially wrapped about her, waving gently as they throbbed, slowly subsiding into nothingness. She'd hurled her spell-net just in time to contain the explosion.

After a dramatically appropriate period of lying like one dead, Arhra stirred, rising onto hands and knees. She took a moment to cough, hacking up what looked like gemstones. Looking at them critically, she put them in a pocket and then unsteadily stood up, running a hand through hair that had leaves in it.

"Sorry, my mind was elsewhere." Arhra paused for a moment. "Elemental backlash," she added by way of explaination for her appearance, plucking one of the leaves out of her hair and looking at it critically, "Should wear off in a few hours. Now, I suppose we should get out of here before the place -"

Something much like an alarm klaxon went off. You could almost heard suddenly dramatic music.

"Decides to explode on us." Arhra finished lamely, "Quick! Get everyone together and we'll go out through the emergency escape tunnel!" Getting blank looks at this, she sighed, "Of course there will be an emegency escape tunnel. It should be on the opposite side of the room to the way we came in." Surprisingly enough, she was right - a long, spiralling tunnel leading back up to the surface was located there.

OOC: I believe this is the end of my current titling trend. I just felt this one was good enough to try and maintain it through to the end of the Earth Temple. For ease of timing, I'm assuming Flare's last post happened just after the Caryatid was destroyed.

[Bailey]

Mauve's electricity restored Syttulg's power. Too much power. If something wasn't done with it, it could damage the batteries.

The combination of power boost and the massive amount of earth energy in the area from the Caryatid's destruction enabled Syttulg to remove the last of the toxins from his system, and also served to change him further. His torso bulged out oddly, carrying his head forwards and flattening it across itself while his arms stayed aproximately where they were, and an opening appeared where his head had been before it moved, widening into a platform like area. His legs became bulkier, and the blades on his arms twisted to become more like claws. He rose to his feet and strode over to the mage, kneeling down and angling his arm so it could be used as a ramp.

"Need a lift?"

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

"Oh dont anybody try and save ME!", came a voice from amongst the sand and dust cloud that yet another explosion had errr blown up. "I only had a BOULDER about to crush me!"

Nobody had noticed how he had survived being squished, and nobody ever did ask him how he had done it. This deleted scene can be found on the NPF Special Edition DVD boxset, as well as an extended version of Hawk and Steels mad dash through the sands which included yet more swearing and even some ultra cool slow-mo time travel performed by Steel himself!

An alternate version of the boulder squishing event can also be found.

Hawk stopped a moment and looked over at the remains of the Caryatid. "Wow, what a hardcase!"

...

A tumbleweed rolled past across the indoor desert of the chamber at this remark.

"Anyway can I now please get some healing over here, before we get to the imminent prequesite running scene?! I'm exhausted!

[mauve]

Mauve got up from where Flare had knocked her over.

"Well, that was exciting." she said, brushing sand and caryatid dust off her skirt. She looked over at the Newb, who had for some reason turned into a humanoid moving platform. Behind them, something was yelling for help.

"Hold on," Mauve said, looking over her shoulder. "Looks like we've angered the bird." Mauve stood up straight and the SPCA themesong started playing in the background, coming out of nowhere in particular.

"Check it out, I'm healing an endangered species," she said. "I'm expecting a medal or something from PETA."

The mage pointed a hand at the Hawk of Battle and cast a healing spell.

"Grab the near-dead folks, Syttulg," Mauve called over her shoulder. "I didn't do much during this fight, so I've got enough MP left to heal folks while we're running for our collective lives."

[Tarrin]

The last of the torn and chared flesh that was Tarrens chest finnished knitting together thanks to Mauves regen spell, standing up Tarrin looked around at the team and also at the encroching destruction.
"Well our job here is done....Rite?" Tarrin scanned the group for Arhra to find what the next course of action was going to be.

[POS Industries]

"Oh yeah? Who has fury now, you little lima bean looking... Hm?"

Rei, who had gone back to sitting cross-legged on the floor of the chamber after throwing Skyshot, safely encapsulated within her electromagnetic shield bubble, looked up from her game of "Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga" to see that the Caryatid had been successfully done away with.

"Oh good," she stated cheerily as the forcefield around her deactivated, "We win! Now, let's see.... save point... save point.... ah, there we go!"

[Flarecobra]

"OWWW..." I said, shaking my head. "Man...wish I didn't forget that when I'm in this form, that it's max MP and magic power that goes up...not the amount..." I said as my head was pounding. "Anyone got some elixors?"

[Steel Shadow]

Steel leant heavily on his staff, contemplating. There were alarms. The temple was going to colapse. Of course it was. That was how things were done. He'd get going as soon as he had his breath back. No flying though, he had no power left. Then the world turned orange. And hot. Uncomfortably so.

"Akk!!! Get it off!" Steel tugged at the still smouldering fabric of his mostly decimated cape. It came lose and hung still in the dead air. Half of it was gone, turned to ash. He frowned. Then sighed.

"I really, really hate this place." He muttered, clasping it back around his neck. "So it's good thing it's gunna explode, right?" He retied his bandana back on his forhead and hobbled over to the exit, using his staff as a cane. Plain flashed through his left arm.

"Oh yeah, forgot. Hey, can any healers fix my arm? A certain bird who shall remain nameles cut it up pretty bad." He called as he began to hurry through the tunnel, holding his wound steady.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

"Thank you Muave, much appreciated", Hawk said as the healing spell did its thing, his various bruises and afflictions finally leaving him in a matter of moments.

"Now, TO THE EXIT my friends, post-haste!"

Hawk flapped his wings and got himself airborne at long last. God it felt good to be flying again!

"Oh yeah, forgot. Hey, can any healers fix my arm? A certain bird who shall remain nameles cut it up pretty bad."

"Ah, yeah, I do apologise for that Steel. Mind control's a bitch!"

And with that, Hawk sped of in a blur of brown feathers as he procceeded to make good his escape from the temple.

[Arhra]

Arhra wished she had some sort of timer to see how long they had, but alas, no countdown magically appeared. Whipping her beaten body into action, she went to find Hydra.

"That was fast." Arhra commented on seeing the hydra-girl. She seemed to have mostly digested her enemy already. Hydra rose up, Arhra noting she was even taller, possibly as much as twice Arhra's (short) height. She had grown more heads - a total of nine and then those heads had snake hair, a writhing mass of them. Another set of arms seemed to have sprouted, brigning the total to six. "Well, good thing I don't think there's any of those hydra left," Arhra said, neglecting the fact there'd been several and she'd only actually seen one die. "Things could have gotten a bit absurd otherwise."

"I wouldn't mind eating some more." Hydra said wistfully, heads speaking at once giving her voice a choral tone. "That big hydra was scary" - it had almost eaten her after all - "but very tasty."

"No!" Arhra said forcefully, "We've got to get out of here. Besides, if you get any taller, you'll have trouble moving around indoors." Arhra patted her on the lower back, the shoulder being out of her reach. "Come on, we've spent far too much time talking and not nearly enough time panicking about explosions!"

The escape wasn't anything particularly out of the ordinary - the NPFers doing their best approximation of a run after the beating they'd taken, charging through the escape tunnel, doors irising open ahead of them.

What was surprising was the lack of an explosion. After they'd gotten what they thought was a safe distance away, they were disspointed to find no fireworks whatsoever. Evidentally the Caryatid's death did not set off some manner of self destruct sequence for the entire Temple. This was highly irregular.

As Arhra puzzled this over, there seemed to be an awful lot of talk of taking some time off. Arhra knew she had to take charge. "You're a bunch of pansies!" she declared, "All 'Oh! I can't go on!', 'I almost died!', 'I'm don't have much blood left!' and 'Its suicidal to go on without resting.'! I'm telling you, I - urk -" Arhra fell over.

"...Let's find a good place to rest for a bit." Arhra after a long pause. "You all brought food, right? We might have to get creative otherwise." She sat up, looking at Hawk speculatively.

* * *

As the NPFers rested, a different shadowy meeting was going on. There were large figures clustered in the darkness, the only light illuminating a rough sketch of the NPFers up on the walls. A winged shadow shifted, closest to this drawing turned to address the others. "These are our mutual enemies." she purred.

"Plant-man make fruit bad." A hulking shape said sadly.

"Yes, yes." The first speaker said impatiently. She was beginning to wonder about recruiting him. At least he was speaking now. And he could actually speak, unlike the others. "We all have our reasons for wanting revenge on them." She glanced around where the two others sat, a weirdly shifting shape of stone and a coiled, many headed shadow. "We've all been wronged or assaulted by them. We just have to wait for the right moment and then we can strike. Vengeance will be ours!" With a vicious gesture, she slashed a claw across the drawing, raking Skyshot's face.

OOC: Well, its the exciting time of doing stuff - basically whatever you've done up to this point and anything in particular while you're resting. I've also decided to make the first reference to the League of Enemies, as I've decided to call them.