Vigil

[Rebonack]

[The Widening Gyre]

With at least one person gazing anxiously into the sky the growing sense of pressure finally breaks. What follows isn't a sudden downpour or a bolt of lightning.

No, it's a object.

At first it appears as nothing more than a glint of metal slowly descending. And from its seemingly lazry approach and widening shadow it becomes horrifyingly clear just how immense the object is.

Like an anchor or harpoon of impossible size, it lances down from the sky and transfixes the flying island, barbs extending explosively from the spike's flanks to lock it in place. Earth is hurled and the island shakes violently.

For a few seconds the chain remains slack, but then a clanking of metal against metal from amidst the churning storm is heard as the chain is pulled taut.

High above the surface of the chain seems to begin to crawl as things begin slithering down its length.

[Shadowcaller]

A Horse of Course

"Really? Weird." Anika scratches her head. "I mean, most people are determined in a way. Just about different things. My cousin probably put so much effort into being lazy that she probably count as determined about doing nothing all day."

She looks up as that strange wind comes in.

"Huh, looks like it might start raining."

She looks down at the two.

"But if you don't want to go inside we could hurry over to the library before the storm hits. Last time we had one we got attacked by a dragon so you might want to be indoors."

[Keeper]

A Horse of Course

Jace and Zebes glance at the tavern.
"Well, it's not that we don't want to see it but...might not be the best look if one of the Commanders meets us while we smell like ale."
It just wouldn't be a good look, so see Wenomir and Cessie with the suggestion they might have been drinking.
"I'm uh, not quite as afraid of dragons, but I get the prospective problem. Lead on."

[Shadowcaller]

A Horse of Course

"Oh, but this was a big one." Anika holds out her hands wide for emphasis. "Like, as large as that house." She gestures towards one of the cabins as she starts leading them away from the tavern. "She broke every window in the entire base by just breathing, it was crazy." The two might note that the windows around the base appears to be brand new.

Though Anika just seems to find the idea of the massive property destruction exciting judging by not only her tone but the expressive body language that she employs.
"So I bet the commanders would be pissed if that happen again." Anika looks up at the clouds again. "But you two have a lot of dragon fighting experience then? I wasn't even here for the storm dragon but I did fight an undead dragon once. Plus some kinda-dragons." But not the kind Wenomir had a relationship with apparently.

[Earl of Purple]

The Widening Gyre

As the portal opens and the thing begins to fall, the middle-aged warlock drops his things- the coffee spilling as the mug cracks against the path, whilst the book stops a short distance from the ground and starts hovering- to throw his arms up. Spectral webs form to try and stop the plummeting anchor, invisible threads crisscrossing the sky and occasionally glinting as it catches the light, but he's misjudged the size of it and the webbing isn't strong enough. The anchor still falls, but hopefully most of it is now covered with sticky ectoplasmic threads that will hamper any attacker's efforts at navigating their way down.

For now, though, he's quite tired; that took a lot out of him for no appreciable gain. He slumps and starts to cough before reaching into his robes and pulling out a menthol drop, which is unwrapped and put in his mouth.

[Keeper]

A Horse, of Course

"Yes, we do. I have quite a lot of experience slaying demons and liches and whatnot. Not too many dragons, though." That's a bit of a sore spot, actually. Their friend did murder a dragon once. Very messy incident.
"Well there was that one time you fought a thunderbird and actually died." snickers Zebes.
"I was only medically dead for five seconds! Anyway, would you like us to take a look? There uh, appears to be something dropping."
CLANK!
Yeah that doesn't seem like a normal weather pattern.

[Shadowcaller]

A Horse, of Course

"Thunderbird? Maybe that was a thunderdragon then." She had heard bronze dragons were associated to lighting but this one was apparently black and purple so it had to be something else.

Then the two draws her attention to... a chain? A rope? Whatever it was it appeared like it was coming from the sky itself. Weird.

"Eh, do you want to? I probably should have a look myself but I don't have any unicorn magic." Whatever that was. But as Jace offered she assumed he had some idea of what he was doing.

[Rebonack]

[The Widening Gyre]

Calling what just happened a CLANK! would be a pretty serious understatement.

The whole island shakes with the force of the impact, potentially enough to throw someone off their feet! Of course, Jace has four feet so he's a bit more stable than your average humanoid is. But what about Anika? Will she be thrown to her big purple butt by the force of the anchor striking true? That's definitely some sort of portal up there but it sure doesn't look like one of those DEMON portals.

No...

It might remind Anika a bit more of the portals that she saw when she and Laz were retrieving that... whatever it was. Glowy magical orb? From the tower. Those portals still looked different, though. One was a bloody thing shot through with darkness and flame. The other was like a sucking, fetid wound in reality the color of pure poison.

But this one?

It's like the eye of a storm, flashes of metal whirling through it and lightning crackling.

Maybe this one will be full of shaman zombies?

Regardless! From the base of the anchor five metal struts lance out, smashing into the ground nearby as an equal number of... platforms? Maybe? Begin growing. The surface isn't smooth, but rather looks more like metallic scales, wind rustling across them and lighting dancing from their surface. Above each platform a delicate latticework of metal wires forms to encase orbs of living electricity that look suspiciously like eggs.

There's definitely SOMETHING going on here.

One of those somethings is that CLANK!ing sound growing louder as the portal high above begins to creep steadily closer-
-or maybe the island is being pulled closer to the portal like a speared fish being drawn in.

[Keeper]

A Horse, of Course/Widening Gyre

"Um. Maybe? There's a million dragons." Some are shiny, some are not, some shout like thunder and some bake cookies.
"Well I'm not going to stand around after all of that."

Jace runs off toward the anchor at a steady pace but not rushing; he doesn't want to lose Anika.
Well that latticework IS looking pretty delicate. Might as well start with that. Jace waves a horn, and a reverberating pulse bursts on the nearest structure, one which usually causes objects nearby to simply shatter.
It is the oldest spell effect Jace knows how to do. It's useful when he wants it to happen.

[Shadowcaller]

[The Widening Gyre]

Anika had been one way too many boats and zeppelins to fall on her (not big!) butt. Though it certainly gave her a shock.

What the in Elune's great tits was going on?!

Jace was absolutely right, it was time to do something about this.
"Gonna head right to it!" Anika calls out before she in a emerald puff of green smoke will turn into a huge falcon that flies right towards that big dark cloud. Right where the source of that chain might just be.

[Earl of Purple]

The Widening Gyre

The warlock, after trying to catch his breath, scoops the book back up and walks towards the anchor. Tucking the book under his arm, he reaches into his robes and pulls out a length of silk rope that coils around his arm on its own. He'll arrive at the anchor after Jace and Anika, apparently unarmed but Jace might be able to sense the spider watching from his shadow, a vaguely threatening presence.

[Rebonack]

[The Widening Gyre]

There's definitely something going on here, something much more than just vaguely threatening. Definitely not something good!

When Jace blows up one of the pylons things start to happen in earnest.

The metal shatters and the orb of living lightning within begins wavering and jiggling and gyrating until quite abruptly it bursts in a shockwave of rushing wind that has a tendency to knock the breath right out of one's lungs.

Then a salvo of lightning strikes blast into the earth from the portal above, leaving crackling forms standing patches of glassed earth.

Now, Jace and Anika have probably seen lots of zombies over their lives. Gooey zombies for sure. Fire zombies. Those gross bloody tentacle zombies. But what stands before them now is a mob of lightning zombies.

Imagine, if you will, a skeleton made of iron. An iron skeleton surrounded by insubstantial 'flesh' of crackling lightning and rushing wind. They definitely have that shriveled, zombie-like look to them. Six of the things. Three remain near the anchor, raising their hands above their heads as balls of wild, crackling power begins to collect above them. The other three take off in a sprint toward our heroes to-

Try to slap them?

Turns out getting slapped by them carries the force of a thundercap and isn't something that you want to experience.

[Arkhosia]

► SHOW SPOILER

[Catgirl Abode]

Anika looks to Blanche and then to Hiep as an idea starts forming in her head. "The cellone!" The druid exclaims as she let's go of her girlfriend to start reaching into her pocket.

She looks back to the catgirl. "As in you, uh, don't need to shoot Ilpholin since all we need to use the magic of the cellone."
Reaching into her pockets the druid fishes out her VIGIL communicator. Anika didn't use these much but the last time Blanche saw it, which must have been months ago, it looked like any other communicator.
But now she must have given one of a model the catgirl has never seen before.

Gone is all the sleekness and comfort leaving only what's essentially a brick that was still small enough to easily fit in a pocket. If anything, this model seemed smaller than the standard one.
And it also looks like it could survive direct contact with a nuclear explosion.

She hands this tiny cinder block to Hiep. "All you need to do is uh..." Anika glances at her girlfriend again. "-think you can show her how to use it? To shout at Ilpholin I mean."

[Catgirl Abode]

Blanche blinks as Anika gets very excited all of a sudden, then stares even more when she sees what Anika's communicator looks like. Had she broken another one while she wasn't around? Terrifying. "Oh. Yeah, I think that works. It's probably safe for you to talk to her through that actually. Hell, we can all talk to her at once even." She shrugs, then looks at Anika after a second. "You do have her number, right?"

Assuming so, Blanche has no problem pointing out how to select Ilpholin's number and put the phone on speaker if needed.

[Shadowcaller]

[Catgirl Abode]

"Yep, it should even be in there somewhere." She gestures at the communicator. "Probably at that little green picture." She gestures at the 'call' icon and smiles, this was going so well!

Then they just had to make the call to Ilpholin, and that would work out too... right?

[The Widening Gyre]

Anika briefly catches a glimpse of Jace blowing up the thingy as she's flying up towards the cloud.
Awesome!
She didn't know unicorns could do that!

She doesn't notice the zombies though. Her focus was on the source for the quake. Unless the cloud was already gone of course?

[Rebonack]

[The Widening Gyre]

Anika, meanwhile, decides that it is a good time to BIRD UP!

She begins flying up toward the portal. Higher and higher and higher and... wow it is a LONG ways up there.

Has Anika ever tried flying up to a cloud before? They look at big and poofy and pretty close but when you try flying to one it becomes increasingly clear that they are VERY huge and VERY far away. In the course of the flight Anika will get the impressing that the portal has gotten a LITTLE closer but she'll probably be more distracted by the LIGHTNING SNAKES slithering down the chain from on high! They've been gummed up by those webs the warlock weaved but they're still winding their way around the links toward the island.

They're ugly things with disturbingly human faces. Just stretched out and snake-y looking. Their iron scales seem to be simply suspended in a body of lightning and wind, more like spirits than physical creatures. Also one of them tries striking at Anika.

Specifically, it LIGHTNING STRIKES at Anika! She had better make some evasive maneuvers if she doesn't want to get zapped.

[Shadowcaller]

[The Widening Gyre]

Sneks?!
They shouldn't be in the sky!

Unless they were those feathered sneks her sister used, those were allowed.
So she had to check their feather lic-

ZAAAAP

Turns out you didn't have to make evasive maneuvers if you just got hit. Luckily, Anika's pretty tough even as a bird.
Didn't stop the feeling of hurting all over or falling though, since that's exactly what she started to do and she had to struggle to get those wings going again.

But the next time those serpents would zap her she would be ready and not be focusing on anything else. Expect perhaps that she should make some kind of thunderbird joke to Jace once this was over with.

[Morty]

[Catgirl Abode]

Hiep waits for Ilpholin to pick up. Anika and Blanche know her, so she'll follow their lead. That said, her right foot taps impatiently. She's never been good at waiting.

[Magtok]

[Matters of Espionage]

"Straightforward but risky," Calm Reed assesses. "Blanche is cautious and neither of us are inconspicuous. We could be spotted by someone or leave traces." She breathes out. "I do not know if this is more or less complicated than I am used to. It is a monk's duty to gather information, but here few see me as a monk..." After this digression, she ventures: "We could carry out an investigation outside this place. If we cannot safely look into Blanche, we could intercept anything coming and going between her and her fathers. If there is indeed anything."

"Hm. How would we do do that?" Saint Lazarus asks plainly, frowning at the ceiling. If Blanche's room can't be raided without drawing suspicion, wouldn't following her around and keeping an eye out for any cats or cyborgs in the vicinity be even harder, and also a full-time job? Or is Calm Reed just talking about going through Blanche's mail and screening it for anything that says MagCorp or Reinholdt on it?

[Keeper]

[The Widening Gyre]

Luckily all these zombies are at least the same kind of zombie so Jace doesn't have to worry about some being immune to different elements.
While they're still at a distance charging at him, Jace launches five tiny sparks of flame into the air. Zebes leaps up, knocking them towards the zombies whereupon they EXPLODE into a BALL of FIRE! Like some sort of FIREBALL!

[Earl of Purple]

The Widening Gyre

The spider-witch doesn't have magic quite as explosive or impressive as Jace does, so he can't throw fireballs at them. He has to get close for his current preparations to work. So he eyes up the three at the base working their malevolent design, as the spider that is his shadow hunkers down and prepares to spring. Once he's gauged the distance, he falls backwards and disappears on reaching the ground, sinking into his own shadow- which remains with nothing to cast it.

The spider then jumps, no longer anchored by a slow two-legged human and seems to sail across the floor until it stops nearby, having 'landed' despite to all appearances it never left the ground. The warlock re-emerges, pushed out of the shadow headfirst and covered in cobwebs that soon dissipate on exposure to reality. As soon as he can, he throws out the arm with the silk rope wrapped around it, the rope stretching out and a web of shadows emerging from the end. He's aiming for the closest skeleton whilst it's still distracted, aiming to entangle it with the web and then pull it off balance to hopefully disrupt whatever the trio are up to.

[Rebonack]

[The Widening Gyre]

Anika has one advantage over the snakes right now, which would probably like to zap her again. She's falling and they're slithering and one of those things is much faster than the other. Thus, she is quite quickly out of zapping range but also the ground and those three skeletons conjuring the big lightning ball are both getting closer really quickly.

Jace and Zebes, meanwhile, lob a fireball! It turns out that, in spite of looking really intimidating, these lighting zombies aren't nearly as durable as one might expect. The blast from the fireball peels away their ethereal flesh in places and knocks a few of their metal bones loose. One loses a leg, leaving it to crawl closer. The second gets both its arms blown off. The third just loses a couple ribs. Still going strong, the second lightning skeleton leaps at Jace and attempts to HEADBUTT him! The third skeleton is looking to slap a horse. Taking evasive maneuvers might be wise!

The spider-witch hurls a web! The insulating material travels straight through the skeleton's lightning flesh and glomps onto the metal bones below, disrupting the cohesion of the monster's body. When he yanks the rip-cage gets pulled free and the skeleton just sort of gutters out. With one of the trio destroyed their group attack gutters and the remaining two skeletons begin tosses little jagged shards of iron crackling with static at the offending witch.

[Shadowcaller]

[The Widening Gyre]

You'd think the undead would be more preoccupied with what's on the ground than what's in the air.
But hey, if they want to get involved Anika is going to give them some ass.

Bear ass specifically.

Since she's going to turn into a bear and land on them.

[Reinholdt]

[Catgirl Abode]

Rinnng...
Rinnng...

A click later and the sound of a sultry, breathless nymph emanates from the speaker to everyone in the room. "Hey baby. I've been waiting for your call~" Soft moans of someone feminine and grunts of exertion from another person with a deeper voice provides a backdrop to the call. They're clearly trying to be quiet, but also not trying very hard. "But I'm a little tied up right now. Well they are." Giggles escape from the background. "So leave a message at the tone."

"Ahhhn~"

The phone goes into that gentle, hushed scratching noise of a machine recording whatever message they want to leave for Ilpholin.

[Shadowcaller]

[Catgirl Abode]

"Hi Ilpholin! So I meet this gal-" Anika starts before she's interrupted by the moan.

Which is when she realizes what this was. "Oh! That's me!" Both Hiep and Blanche would be familiar with Anika's moans. "So that's what she was doing with that device."

Then they also get to hear Anika giggle before the beep.

"We should call again, just to be sure." She concludes.

[Keeper]

The Widening Gyre

Naturally as a magical sorcerer horse Jace is more than capable of taking on a few zombies running at him. I mean, you'd think. Part of being a magical god-horse though is that Jastes really did spend a lot of his own essence to make sure Jace was a proper receptacle for his mantle with a proper unicorn mind-soul.

And this is the first time something with deadly intent has actually gotten within reach of him. So instead of sending out ten magic missiles of force or shooting a bunch of flames, Jace-
poofs into mist as the zombie's fist connects with his body, appearing about four feet away and facing away from the zombie.

Which immediately will get a pair of hooves right in its chest which will likely hurt far, far more than any physical blow Jace has ever swung before. As it turns out, horses have a lot of muscle in their legs and hindquarters and can kick much harder than skinny thirty-year-old humans.

[Morty]

[Catgirl Abode]

Hiep's eyebrows arch up and her eyes open wide. She did not see this coming. Predictably enough, this adds a new layer to the situation for her. Where a moment ago she was only concerned with finding information, now this Ilpholin sounds like a person she would very much like to meet.

"I don't know how those things work but I guess she's not picking up. What's our plan B?"

[Earl of Purple]

The Widening Gyre

The spider-witch yelps as iron is thrown at him, swinging the rope around to try and block some. It works, but a shard still manages to get past and hits hit thigh. In panic, and also pain, he opens his mouth unnaturally wide and a cone of spiders made of shadows and ectoplasm erupt out of his mouth, mostly to distract his attackers than actually harm them,

[Arkhosia]

[Catgirl Abode]

Blanche lets out a long-suffering sigh and buries her face in a hand, which does a nice job of concealing how red it's gotten. "Fine. I guess we're going over there then. Give me a minute to change."

[Rebonack]

[The Widening Gyre]

Okay.

So.

The spider warlock just vomited a bunch of spiders all over the two skeletons that were channeling that ball of lighting. They thrash about, tangled in ethereal webs and unable to throw more spiky balls at the guy.

And then a bear lands on them.

They do not survive a bear falling on them.

There are now no more channeling skeletons.

Jace, meanwhile, uses MISTY STEP followed up with HORSE KICK!

It turns out these skeletons are relatively fragile, all things considered, so their whole top of the skeleton Jace just kicked gets friggin' obliterated. The metal bones are hurled so hard that they blow apart the OTHER skeleton that was still staggering around. At this point the anchor is skeleton free, though those rude snakes are still gradually slithering downward. It'll be some time before they're a direct threat to anyone who isn't flying up to them.

[Shadowcaller]

[Catgirl Abode]

Anika's eyes widens in surprise as Blanche relents. "...alright, sure."
She couldn't help but to wonder if the catgirl was going to gear up into her full battle gear or take a more diplomatic approach.
An idea which briefly causes her to imagine Blanche in that one red dress before thinking better of it. Ilpholin had just done something very bad after all. She couldn't let herself be distracted by stupid sexy fantasies of Blanche and her.

She turns to Hiep. "Guess that's it. Keep in mind though, Ilpholin just murdered a bunch of demon-people." (demon + people= pemons? Nah) "So don't go all horny on her, okay? Since it's really easy to do unless she's killing you."

[The Widening Gyre]

Ow! Her butt!
Next time she'll land on her belly instead.

Anika looks around and finds a... human dude?
She waves her paw at him.
Hi human dude!

But she couldn't get distracted by human dudes now. Turning her head to look up, she might just be able to spot those lighting sneks still coming down the chain. Well, now she had a new idea of how to deal with them.

She'll get up on her hind legs, put her claws on the chain and give it a real good bear-shake. Considering the sheer size of the links it might take a bit but once she got a momentum going it would probably be pretty unpleasant for whatever was coming down it.