15[20:25] A new world is crawling from the ashes of the old; two thousand years of guilt and fear and the greatest lie ever told... 15[20:28] The thing that used to be Ragara Takoye luxuriates in his newfound corruptive power. Alongside the coral-like spines that burst bloodily from his newfound backbone and new-grown tail, dozens of tiny fissures vent hot green gas under pressure. It offers no shade against the awful green sun behind him. 15[20:30] Four Fangs and four more stand, stagger, or hover at Hell's precipice, before a gate they have decided they can't leave open, but facing an entity that will fight to keep them dead and burnt down here as the boundary shatters and ruin spills forth from west to east across Creation. [20:33] 14Piu: "Well, we've got the numbers. Sho, take the jar, stay back." [20:38] "But not, like, too far back. You'll get the hang of it." 15[20:43] Sadako tosses the jar back to Caxi, who leaves it on the cloud with Sho and bids it to hang back... but not too far. Daizo can feel his link to it is stretched to the limit, and he can feel the same again by Garnet, who stands beside him. Caxi points at Takoye, and her fingers grow long and sharp, anima melting on contact with air and leaving brackish, rusty water tripping from her 15[20:43] bark-colored claws. [20:47] 07Dryas affixes a mask to her face - the same grinning visage that she wore when the wedding reception at Brightwork went hot. [20:59] 10Daizo's got his warclub in a one-handed grip, the business end resting almost casually on his shoulder. His visor clicks into place, and instead of the usual clear crystal, a smoked crystal set of lenses drops over his eyes. Takoye's easier to look at, but still isn't exactly easy on the eyes. [21:20] 07Dryas nocks and draws. "The sun was spitting fire... the sky was blue as ice..." 15[21:27] The vents along Takoye's back begin to glow as a torrent of energy runs along his spine and comes out of his roaring reptilian maw, leaving the tunnel awash in poison fire... but our heroes stand steadfast, blocking, knocking, or dodging out of the way. Sadako alone is burned, and her mouth flies open in a wordless scream... but as the monster is spent, she grins with glowing green 15[21:27] teeth. [21:30] 10As soon as it becomes clear what Takoye intends, Daizo shifts his stance, channeling Essence through his weapon. Around him, the unearthly flame fizzles and dies, as if doused—or snuffed out. [21:32] 14Piu uses the Chain to disrupt some of the incoming, moves out of the way of the rest, then charges. [21:32] 07Dryas looses the arrow, splitting the firey beam neatly asunder before it disintegrates in the fires. [21:36] 14Piu's in under its guard in a flash, using its own knee as a launch point to jump up and spinning roundhouse kick it in the jaw, dropping under its arms before it can either guard with them or strike her. 15[21:41] Sadako runs past Piu, trailing green fire from the burning rifts in her ribcage. She gets right in the staggered monster's face and lets loose the Hell she swallowed up with a wordless, jaw-stretching scream. The green is tinged with ghostly white. Takoye burns. [21:43] 07Glad she's on our side. [21:43] 14!!! [21:44] 10Daizo: "Holy fuck—" [21:46] 07Dryas: "Do you think it will try to breathe fire like that again?!" [21:46] 6Man, she's great. Sadako follows up by lariating the hell out of the monster, but it's not quite staggered just yet! [21:47] 6Zhangyu follows up* 15[21:47] Sadako: "I hope so." [22:00] 10Sadako's display only distracts Daizo for e moment, although there are a hell of a lot of questions he'll want to ask later. He advances down the corridor, footsteps growing louder and louder, heavier and heavier. Takoye may turn fang and claw against him, but this mockery of a dragon will break— "HAAA!" 10He slams Takoye with enough force to knock him into the wall, and then Daizo's follow-up blow falls squarely on the [22:00] 10 lizard's back. "Pasiap take you—" 10The black basalt floor cracks, then splits, a sinkhole opening to draw Takoye in. 15[22:06] The monster is pulled into the rift Daizo opens in the tunnel, and the Dynast feels a bitter chill brush past him as Caxi glides forward, dripping claws at the ready, and plunges them directly into Takoye's still-exposed torso. There's a crack and a spray of mist as the great reptile seems to freeze from the inside out. He roars in pain, eyes clouding over... but Caxi screams in 15[22:06] frustration as she pulls out claws now caked with cold, coagulated green blood. Looks like she'd expected something more. [22:07] 10Daizo shudders—he's felt that freezing grasp before. [22:09] 07Dryas withdraws one of Hakkai's Rebuttals from its polished quiver. Her eyes flash with fury. "Kneel, beast! Surrender and be exorcised, or be utterly destroyed!" 15[22:15] The beast roars in anguish, seeming to struggle between a will to live and a will to kill. The thrashing throws more fissures in the stone. [22:18] 14Piu is going in for the kill, then skids to halt and turns: "Are you KIDDING me right now!!" [22:19] 10Daizo: "Ghosts are one thing, but you want me to pull a demon out of him?" [22:22] 6Zhangyu: "But can you?" [22:22] 10Daizo hunkers down and reaches a hand out towards the struggling Takoye. A flame ignites in his palm. "I can try!" [22:22] 14Piu, grumbling, stands back a bit. [22:27] 07Dryas steps forward, lowering her weapon for a moment: "You can do it!" [22:33] 10Daizo clears his mind—the battle, Takoye's roaring and shuddering as the demon inside struggles for control, the chill still emanating from Caxi's claws—it's all wiped away. He begins to recite the Demon-Expelling Mantra, written in the most primeval form of Old Realm, every syllable and tone precisely enunciated. The flame in his hand expands, swirls into a tendril, traces a sigil in the air. [22:34] 10But when his will touches the demon's, and he tries to lead the flame to it through Takoye's broken body… 15[22:37] Daizo can feel it wedged inside the idiot's soul like a spear embedded in solid stone. He strains and pulls, but while the spear bends it does not break or come free. He feels a tremendous sense of futile, hollowing despair as he makes contact and, ultimately, is forced to let go. [22:38] 14And when he does, Piu is already in position to turn The Chain into a linked set of knives around the demon's throat and twist. 15[22:39] The monster's head comes off clean. [22:39] 10The flame gutters, his tongue trips, and the sheer spiritual pressure pushes him away. But just out of spite, he's able to capture a bit of that flame again and lash Gervesin with it.  15[22:42] The headless corpse starts to rot immediately, falling to suppurating mush like the rations at the top of the pit before their very eyes. That twisted spear emerges haft-first from the remains, still embedded in the fissure, whose cracks are still expanding. A chunk of basalt from the upper tunnel lands between Dryas and Piu. [22:43] 14Piu: "Don't have to listen to Takoye talk anymore and hurt a big girl demon in the process? I'll take that." [22:43] "Still, we just lost our star witness in the case against Suris. Feels less and less like that's ever going to trial, though." [22:44] 07Dryas leaps backwards from the chunk of rock: "Yikes!" 07Does the spear show any further signs of movement? Did Sho perish? 15[22:45] Sho seems to be alive, clinging to the jar for dear life. His face is very red, but he doesn't look burned. [22:46] 14Someone should probably help him. Someone other than Caxi, or at least Caxi alone. 15[22:47] Sadako looks at Dryas. "Do you taste metal?" [22:47] 07Dryas looks this way and that. "We have to close it up! Either throw the spear back to Hell or chain it to something so it doesn't do that again." 07Dryas: "Do I taste what?" [22:47] 07Does she? 15[22:47] A little bit. It might be adrenaline. [22:49] 07Dryas: "I suppose? Does it help us close this gate?" 07She approaches the spear. If she is not an appropriate host, perhaps she can handle it long enough to cast it into Hell or bar the Gate with it. [22:49] 07Dryas: "We leave Gervesin behind, then? Or cast it into Hell, or bend it into a bar for the gate?" [22:50] 14Well, Piu at least will go over to check on Sho. Maybe Garnet too. She doesn't really have anything to add to the 'close the gateway to Hell' conversation. [22:51] 6Zhangyu will probably check on Sadako, I mean she gave better than she got but she still did... 15[22:52] Caxi: "Sealing this has to be the priority. Mash up the cracks, collapse the tunnel, flood it all... it doesn't matter how." [22:52] 14From down the way: "Agreeing with Caxi here!" 15[22:52] Garnet is looking at Sadako with what Daizo knows is an uncomfortable mixture of protective concern and visceral revulsion. [22:53] 07Dryas unloops a length of rope and forms a basic knot, which she slides over the spear - delicately. No interest in repeating what happened to Takoye. "Then let's do it! What was eating away at the gate, anyway? Sealing it up will be even harder hundreds of feet below the water, with naught but fish and coral to stop another one of these from crawling through." 15[22:56] Sho: "That was scary! Thanks, Lady Piu. I'm fine, I just—" He has to pause to throw up over the side of the cloud. [22:57] 10Daizo: "Doesn't it stand to reason? The light of hell itself must have been eating away at that seal." [22:57] 14Piu is very nimble and he isn't aiming at her, so that's fine. She examines the vomit for an inordinate amount of blood. 15[22:57] What would be an ordinate amount of blood? 15[22:57] It's not... *all* blood. [22:58] 10Shit. We need to get Sho topside before his liver comes falling out of his ass.  [22:58] 07Dryas: "What do we do to seal it more securely?" [22:58] 14Is there anything we can do here and now? [22:59] 14Evenly: "Sit down best you can and rest; we'll try to do something for the pain." 15[23:00] Caxi: "Draining the tunnel is the culprit. If we can block the cracks up with something watertight and then let the water back in... that should hold." 15[23:01] Sho lays down along the cloud at Piu's direction, on his side. "Aheh. Maybe I... should've listened to Master Takoye... but when would I get another chance to see something like this?" [23:01] 07Dryas: "Earth and stone, then! The Dragons will smother the fire in mud and water. Daizo!?" [23:03] 10Daizo: "Easy. This is already starting to crumble. I could practically stand here and have it fall in on us." [23:03] 14Piu, mainly, is thinking about how they should have just put the jar on the ground and told him to flat out run. But he's right: he got to see it. [23:04] 14Now they need to make sure he lives to tell about it. And not just for sentimentality: now HE'S the only witness. [23:07] 14Once he's comfortable, Piu will hop out with the jar, which she'll put down near Garnet, and approach Caxi. "How far away can you send that skiff? Can it fly Sho and I back to the encampment?" 15[23:08] Caxi: "Yeah, anywhere. You shouldn't do that, though." [23:09] "Sho has maybe an hour before the sickness given to him by that demon's power kills him, and he needs either a miracle to save him or, more pragmatically, the head of the legionnaires to hear his testimony against Suris before he passes." 15[23:09] "Even if he makes it, he's so shot through that everyone else he comes in contact with will get sick. Unless you have a lead box to keep him in." 15[23:09] Sho: "What is she saying? I can't hear her." [23:09] 14That's the point, Sho. "Then we'll set up a quarantine tent. The Blooded are immune, yes?" [23:10] "We need to present a fait accompli to the legionnaires. I don't want to have to fight the whole damn camp over honor." 15[23:11] Caxi: "You're the boss." [23:11] 14Piu rolls her eyes at that. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, babe." [23:12] 07Dryas looks down, contemptuously, at the spear. "What of this trash?" 15[23:12] Caxi: "That trash is a priceless relic, and if we bring it back with us we're going to regret it soon." [23:13] 07Dryas: "Then we destroy it? Or leave it to gather coral for ten thousand years?" 15[23:14] Caxi: "Leaving it here keeps him trapped the longest." 15[23:15] Caxi, to Daizo: "What are we doing with Sho?" [23:19] "Grieve longer, grieving lord. Tell the coral your troubles." 07Dryas releases the rope to let Gervesin moulder another ten thousand years, and starts walking up the hall. [23:20] 10Daizo's snapped out of his study of the tunnel walls. "Good question." Can you save him? 15[23:21] ...if I must. Must I? [23:23] 07Dryas: "Zhangyu, can you help bring down the walls?" [23:24] We need him alive to testify to what happened here. It might make things much simpler.  [23:24] Will it be as dramatic as what you did for Deled? 15[23:24] More. [23:25] 6Zhangyu: "Not as well as my cousin, but I can assist." [23:25] 07Dryas starts making her way to the vine she shot about Sadako's ankle, which is charred but still intact: "Suris. You really thought he was your ticket to the big time," 07she reflects ruefully, as she realizes what Suris really meant by that. [23:27] All right. So you take him on the cloud instead of Piu. I'll oversee sealing up the gate. 15[23:28] As you wish, my love. 15[23:28] Caxi turns on her heel. I'll take him to the surface. 15[23:28] "*I'll take him to the surface." [23:28] 14Piu blinks. "...All right." [23:28] 07Dryas: "Is there anything else I can do?" 15[23:28] Gently: "Come along, Papa." [23:30] 6Zhangyu follows whatever Daizo directs, or, more usually directs him not to do, thudding into walls at the perfect place, placing falling rocks, and just generally being unbelievably goddamn strong. [23:30] Thank you. And later—we need to talk. I want—I need to know about everything. To be ready. 15[23:31] The two of them drift up to the surface. Caxi says nothing more to anyone. [23:31] 10Right. That's a hell of a parting line to leave Caxi with. No pun intended. [23:33] 10Anyway, in a few minutes, he's marked chalk Xs and circles in several places. "Here, here, here, here, and… here." [23:34] "Once we start, we'll have ten minutes or so before everything falls in. These are natural fracture lines, they should cleave right off cleanly." [23:35] 07Dryas slings the Earned Nemesis across her back and gingerly takes one step, then another, up the leaves of the vine she shot earlier. Charred but no worse for wear, yet. One step after another finds the vine. Despite being no thicker than a child's wrist, it doesn't bend or even deform under her as she moves. She bends closer and closer to the floor as she moves, until she is running on all fours up the flowers and leaves of [23:35] the vine itself, and then climbing up it with a surprising grace. [23:35] "And we put the spear there—" 10he indicates an oval on the tunnel floor. "It'll be buried under a hundred tonze of stone." [23:37] "If Sho makes it, we'll come back and he'll show us how to flood the locks. If he doesn't, we'll figure it out." 15[23:38] Dryas can't quite keep pace with the cloud that doesn't need to navigate or find purchase. It's a couple of minutes later that she emerges on the surface, where it's now past dark. The sickly green light shimmers out of the rift. She can't see any stars in the cloudless sky. 15[23:38] It takes her another couple of minutes to find Sho, because he's hanging upside-down in midair, held aloft at the ankles like a pig being bled by a tendril of pure shadow. Seven more are lancing along his core meridian, burrowing into his body and letting black fluid drain from his body onto the black basalt below. [23:38] "OK. Let's do it." 10The sounds of fist and jade striking stone reverberate through the tunnel like being in the midst of a thunderstorm. [23:39] 07Dryas gasps in shock at the sight. She keeps well clear of the black droplets. 15[23:39] The tendrils all run back through the air to a feminine silhouette, an ink-stained blot on Dryas's vision, from which dozens of these tendrils writhe like living things. [23:39] 07What do the droplets smell like? 15[23:40] The black blood of the earth. [23:42] 07Dryas grimaces a bit as she circles around the scene. What a sight. Dryas was never tutored by maman, but this is not how maman did things, so far as she can recall. 15[23:44] More poison ebbs out of the helpless man's body. Some of the shadowy figure's pseudopods twitch like a cat's whiskers, and Dryas thinks she can just barely see the shape's head flatten out, like the shadow of a face in profile turning into the shadow of a face looking directly at her. 15[23:45] 「SHIN CAXI」 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK2fo4TxvUA - Do you pray each evening — out of horror, or of fear — to the savage god whose bloody hand commands you now to die alone? 15[23:45] Below, the earth trembles. 15[23:47] The rest of the expeditioners - Sadako with the jar - make their way first out of the tunnel and then, more slowly, up the vertical shaft as the green light blots out bit by bit with the gate's entryway's judicious collapse. [23:48] "Cousin, what have you done?!" 07Dryas whispers to herself as she - does she? makes eye contact. [23:48] 14Eventually someone's going to have the talk with Dryas about not sticking her finger into literally every pie presented. [23:49] 14Especially if you're going to be judgmental about all of them. [23:49] 07Dryas rejects the idea that there is something out there that isn't her business. [23:50] 14The trafficking and sale of thinking creatures better not be. 15[23:50] Sho falls to the ground in a heap. The tendrils retract into the silhouette, which peels apart from the center to reveal a pained and panting Caxi, lit blue by her chilly anima, throwing contrast on the black veins running from her collar, up her throat, to trace her face and eyes that meet her cousin's in the dark. 15[23:51] "The bare minimum." 15[23:51] The others begin to emerge from the pit. [23:51] 07Dryas takes a step forward, reaches out with her hand. "Are you alright?" 07she glances backwards, then to Caxi again. 15[23:52] Caxi: "He'll live. He needs fresh water and bedrest." [23:52] 07Dryas: "Are you alright?" 15[23:52] Caxi: "Fuck you." 15[23:53] "Grab him." [23:53] 07Dryas gets an arm underneath, to support him. 15[23:53] Caxi goes to join the others, leaving Dryas to load Sho onto the skiff, or wait for one of the boys to do it. 15[23:54] To Daizo and Piu: "He'll be fine. He's lost a lot of fluid." [23:54] 14Piu: "Hell yeah! Thanks Caxi." [23:55] 14Notably she asks no further questions, because she understands how this works. [23:55] 07She'll do it. [23:56] 14Bravely, bravely, bravely onward, to gossip-- [23:57] 10Daizo: "Good. We'll need him when it comes time to flood the tunnel. It's sealed up as tightly as if you'd mortared it, and Gervesin with it." 15[23:57] Caxi: "Good work." 15[23:57] "Good work, everyone." [23:58] 10Is Caxi gonna let him sweep her into a hug? 15[23:58] She will. [00:00] 07Dryas will accompany the skiff all the way back to base camp. 15[00:01] NEXT TIME: Let me explain,