Vigil

[Morty]

[Catgirl Abode]

Hiep's own surprise over Blanche's change of direction is replaced by amusement over Anika's warning. She tips her hat in a joke salute.

"I'll do my best not to be seduced. But now I'm really curious about her."

[Morty]

[Matters of Espionage]

"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?

Calm Reed frowns as well. Now that she thinks about it, she's not sure how to go about her idea.

"That... might be complicated, yes. I could start by talking to her. I know how to get people to divulge information without them noticing my purpose. I became practiced in it in Creation." She closes her eyes. "Or one of us could go to the source, that is either Magtok or Reinholdt. I have never met either of them and maybe getting their measure would make it easier. We can always split up and pursue different angles."

[Keeper]

The Widening Gyre

Jace goes off towards the anchor itself. He's going to see if he can use his magic to break apart some of the smaller pieces of the anchor like the struts that the zombies appeared out of. Especially if there are any lightning-orbs that contained the zombies still active. By now the general Vigil personnel might be responding to help with basic zombie threats but Jace still should try to see if he can dislodge this massive thing a little. Luckily he can use that shatter spell plenty of times.

[Earl of Purple]

The Widening Gyre

The spider witch blinks a little in surprise at the sudden arrival of a bear, which then waves at him. Fine, sure, can't get distracted right now. Still gotta deal with the anchor and the chains.

He leans back and looks up at the chain and the portal it's coming from; is it getting closer? That's not good. He can't really deal with the chain as effectively as this unicorn can, or the bear for that matter, so he'll step back a little before bending over. His shadow distorts slightly, the spider casting it moving around to proffer its spinnerets to the warlock. He'll start pulling a long rope of grey shadow-silk from his shadow, which weaves itself into a net on a long line, and starts swinging it around. When he's got enough momentum, he'll let it loose so it flies up and hopefully gums more of the chain up.

[Rebonack]

[The Widening Gyre]

Our heroes get to work.

Anika begins shaking the chain to make it much harder for those rude snakes climbing down it to do their climbing. The chain is REALLY BIG but also Anika is REALLY STRONG so this works quite a bit better than it would if, say, Jace were doing the same thing. With the chain wobbling around the lightning serpents are really only able to cling in place and hope for the best.

The sorcerer, meanwhile, hurls a net skyward! Now the chains have a big gummy spider web stuck to them, too. This proves to be a barrier that the lightning serpents are having a great deal of trouble passing over. They begin blasting at it with bolts of lightning, but we'll see how effective that is at burning away webs. Until the web is cleared they can't progress any further even if they weren't getting jostled around by Anika.

Then?

Jace blasts another one of those lightning orbs at the base of the anchor.

The sky is split by the sound of a trumpet, loud as a thunderclap, as a volley of lightning bolts come hurtling down from above! They strike nearby, disgorging a mob of more metal skeletons and a trio of vaguely humanoid figures made completely out of steel snakes slithering all over each other. Thankfully more adventurers and defenders are showing up by now and the new menaces are quickly assailed with a volley of various weapons fire.

[Shadowcaller]

[The Widening Gyre]

Hmph, this didn't have quite the effect the Anika had imagined but it did make sure those mean sneks stayed put. Then lighting. Just like when the dragon came around!

Or so she heard. Since Anika had been asleep the entire time.

Well, it wasn't quite fighting a dragon but at least snake-people was kind of new.
So she's going to run over there and maul them. Like, really hard.

[Keeper]

The Widening Gyre

Now that Jace knows to expect zombies he’s able to react a little faster. As the zombies appear he points his horn straight at them and sends a massive gout of fire right at the whole group.
Fwoosh!

[Earl of Purple]

Widening Gyre

The webs are made primarily of ectoplasm and shadow-stuff, so whilst they don't exactly burn they are weakened by sustained exposure to light. In the meanwhile, as more zombies appear, the warlock yelps and falls back into his shadow, the immense spider then appearing to jump further away before landing and spitting the man out again. He shudders; that's never a pleasant trip. He's going to take a moment to regain his bearings.

He's potentially a bit vulnerable, if any of the zombies can get close.

[Rebonack]

[The Widening Gyre]

Jace casts Burning Hands Hooves Horn!

The flames wash over the mob of zombies, torching several of them and leaving the rest badly scorched. Thankfully for Spiders, Man Jace is the most distracting thing at the moment and the zombies decide to focus their effort on him. The remaining bruiser skeletons go rushing toward the unicorn to slap the heck out of him while the ranged skeletons begin hurling what amount to caltrops at him. Neither of these things is enjoyable.

Anika decides to beat up the snakes!

Which, good on her!

The bear begins clawing the heck out of the snake-mass! The snake-mass doesn't like this and tries to bite her whole bunch! Their bites drain away breath (which Anika needs!) and replace it with lightning (which Anika definitely doesn't need!) which makes the bites quite dangerous! The second snake-mass is currently approaching Anika with intent to cause her even more harm, its arms made of snakes slithering together to form one really BIG snake made out of snakes!

These things sure are mean snakes, aren't they?

[Shadowcaller]

[The Widening Gyre]

Anika doesn't want to brag (okay, she does) but she was something of a snek herself, or could at least turn into one. So she's all too aware of what crazy things venom could do. Her darn niece had nearly knocked her out with a dose of it.
However, those teeth do have to go through her fur first which bristles up and hardens. Becoming as hard as iron.

Then Anika let's out a terrifying roar which carries a supernatural effect that might cause those sneks near her to flee, shrink back or at least think twice before putting her fangs in a bear even as she's slashing them up with her claws.

[Keeper]

The Widening Gyre

Zebes decide that he should PROBABLY do something now. Having to actually do things: terrible.
Zebes hops into the air and poofs into a large dragonite! Said dragonite immediately flaps into the bruiser zombie's way and begins attempting to clobber them with his big ol' dragony mitts and tail, wings flapping to keep him a few inches off the ground.

Meanwhile Jace, in his natural habitat of standing behind someone bigger and with more hit points, waves his horn and conjures several little bursts of tiny magical missiles that begin homing in on the ranged zombies to return fire at them.
He misses being able to shoot his gun at things. It was much less efficient but it had style.

[Magtok]

[Matters of Espionage]

Calm Reed frowns as well. Now that she thinks about it, she's not sure how to go about her idea.

"That... might be complicated, yes. I could start by talking to her. I know how to get people to divulge information without them noticing my purpose. I became practiced in it in Creation." She closes her eyes. "Or one of us could go to the source, that is either Magtok or Reinholdt. I have never met either of them and maybe getting their measure would make it easier. We can always split up and pursue different angles."

"Hmm. The cat and the robot man have been around the Nexus for a while; they'll probably be suspicious if a stranger starts asking them about Blanche out of the blue, especially if they figure out that stranger is from Vigil. And I don't really have any training at all in that stuff, so-" The zombie frowns. There has to be something she can do, right? What kind of hero just dumps their theory on someone else's plate and makes them do all the important investigative work? Maybe it's not too late to raid Blanche's room or steal all of her mail after all.

"If you think you can outsmart them, I'd say go for it, but I think I might be better off just pretending I accidentally lost my sword, and I'm looking in all the places Anika might be, just in case she found it first," Jen answers, looking to her sword and making a mental note to hide it somewhere before she starts pretending to look for it. It would be awfully embarrassing if her ridiculous excuse for ransacking a catgirl's dorm is sitting right in its scabbard, failing to hold up to even two seconds of scrutiny.

[Morty]

[Matters of Espionage]

"You have a point. Everything I have heard about Magtok suggests a degree of cunning. Whereas I am rusty when it comes to deception. I am accustomed to people deferring to me." Calm Reed has to admit her plan was quite vague. "Your cover story sounds plausible enough as well."

[Earl of Purple]

Widening Gyre

The spider-witch gestures to the attackers and his shadow's abdomen heaves, before a mass of shadowy spiderlings break off from the main shadow and stream across the ground towards the lightning-zombies. They're sticking mostly to shadowy areas, and have no physical existence- until they reach the zombies. Then, they'll coalesce in the lightning-blaster's own shadow before pooling around its feet and opening a small portal into the spider's own shadow-realm and moving to the next. In the shadow-realm, the lightning-zombies will quickly find any attempts at making light severely hampered, whilst it is exceedingly dark and they are at the bottom of the local food chain... If they have souls. If they don't have souls, they'll be treated as obstacles rather than food, which might not be better.

[Rebonack]

[The Widening Gyre]

Anika counters the sneak-bite attack by being UN-BEAR-ABLY LOUD! The effect is kinda weird. Some of the snakes are terrified. Other snakes are not. The end result is that this monster made out of a whole bunch of snakes scatters in a way that really isn't at all helpful in its goal of biting bears. It also makes it really easy for her to maul the heck out of it! This leaves one of the snake composites defeated and the other momentarily distracted by loud sounds.

Zebes, meanwhile, begins clobbering skeletons! They've already been burned pretty badly by Jace and a dragonite will be able to whomp through several of them pretty quickly. Even a glancing blow seems to be enough. Jace's magic missiles seem to have similar effect, battering the ranged skeletons and leaving those that aren't destroyed momentarily staggered. It'll take a bit of followup to finish them off for good but our heroes are definitely making progress!

Then the remaining lightning skeletons get BANISHED TO THE SHADOW REALM! That definitely makes them someone else's problem for sure. They do have souls, they're tormented spirits as it happens. Which means they're going to have a pretty bad time.

The anchor still remains, though two of its spars have been destroyed along with the lightning eggs that seem to lock them in place.

[Magtok]

[Matters of Espionage]

"You have a point. Everything I have heard about Magtok suggests a degree of cunning. Whereas I am rusty when it comes to deception. I am accustomed to people deferring to me." Calm Reed has to admit her plan was quite vague. "Your cover story sounds plausible enough as well."

"I know close to nothing about Reinholdt, but if he's been around this long, he's probably pretty good at sniffing out trouble too. If we even pick out the right one, I mean. There's a girl Reinholdt in MERC and a HALO one and then a third that hangs out in bars a lot," Jen adds, wondering if questioning Reina would work. She's technically not a Reinholdt, right? So that means she might not be as loyal to the others, and could have important secrets to sell to Calm Reed!

[Morty]

[Matters of Espionage]

"Then while you carry out your plan in Blanche's quarters, I can try looking into this Reinholdt," Calm Reed decides. "Maybe I can find a way to get information about Blanche without tipping my hand."

[Keeper]

The Widening Gyre

With the zombies taken care of, Jace and Zebes are going to move on to trying to damage the spars! Between the shattering spells and the dragon punches they should be able to do some damage. If they can't they'll go for the last zombie egg.

[Shadowcaller]

The Widening Gyre

Anika is going to take a big bear-bite out of those sneks and attempt to tear out a whole chunk of them and then spit them out.
Then she's going to attempt to run straight into whatever that remains the creature, using her own head as a battering ram, and continue right into one of the anchors if she can reach them.
This is unlikely to go well.

[Earl of Purple]

The Widening Gyre

The tormented souls will soon be devoured and then repurposed into more shadow-spiders, which is doubtless an improvement. The bones may be deposited somewhere dark nearby, where natural shadow-portals can open without getting noticed.

The spider-witch soon has the remaining spiderlings- the ones not banished by exposure to too much light, anyway- returning to his shadow as he works on another piece of magic. He's going to try dealing with the spars, but his magic's not really ideal at affecting physical objects. Souls and shadows, those it can deal with. Physical matter... less effective. He'll conjure a length of silk again, swinging it round like a bolas and flinging it at the spar, where it dissolves into toxic acid. It's more effective at flesh than metal, but should still have some effect.

[Magtok]

[Matters of Espionage]

"Then while you carry out your plan in Blanche's quarters, I can try looking into this Reinholdt," Calm Reed decides. "Maybe I can find a way to get information about Blanche without tipping my hand."

"Sure, but if you can't, don't mention me. If I were them and I was up to something, I'd report a weird conversation with an Exalt to my team as soon as the encounter was over, so everyone knows to keep an eye out for trouble," Jen stresses, glancing once more at her sword as she tries to figure out how she's going to hide this thing and pretend to be a completely clueless idiot who thinks rummaging around other people's rooms is okay. I guess she could try to do her best Anika impression, but...no, no, bad idea. Blanche is attracted to those personalities. It might be the smart and tactically advantageous move, but eww, no thanks, Laz has no desire to play seductress on this mission. She already has a girlfriend, a girlfriend who isn't a talking cat.

[Morty]

[Matters of Espionage]

Calm Reed nods.

"Of course. If I cannot avoid revealing something, I will pretend I am acting alone."

[Rebonack]

[The Widening Gyre]

Well Anika definitely beared that last snake monster to bits. Just chomping the heck out of it and then ramming it into one of the spars as the REST of our heroes focus their full attention on them. All three of the remaining lightning eggs burst in a shower of metal and a crackle of lightning as a groan ripples through the whole structure overhead.

Then, with a deafening shriek of straining metal, the chain snaps free and goes shooting back into the sky! With the connection broken the portal is no longer creeping steadily closer to the island and when the chain slaps against the edge of the portal the whole thing seems to come unwound. It disperses, the sky gradually lightening and the thunder fading.

There's still a big chunk of metal sticking out of the ground, though.

Huh.

Wonder what that was all about?

At the very least it means Jace probably isn't going to need to run through one of those assessment fights to show how good he is at dealing with potentially apocalyptic threats.

[Keeper]

The Widening Gyre

Well. That was definitely foreboding. Zebes pops back into his more portable form and lands back on Jace’s neck as he trots back to Anika.
”So that doesn’t happen too often does it?” he asks her.

[Shadowcaller]

The Widening Gyre

Anika isn't sure if she did manage to ram her head into the thing or not but it sure feels like she did at least.

As Jace walks up to her, the bear walks right next to him and puts her arm over his neck in what seems to be a friendly manner. Then it speaks or at least tries to as it only comes out as a series of growls which not even someone able to speak with animals will understand.

[Earl of Purple]

The Widening Gyre

The spider-warlock sighs, and as the others get about clearing up he'll head over to the remaining chunk of metal, running fingers over it as he tries to figure out its dimensional resonances. He's not quite touching it; instead he's trailing an ectoplasmic silk line from his hand to the metal, vibrations from the metal trying to determine the location and metaphysical nature of its home realm.

He's not actually going to interrupt Jace and Anika, but he does keep throwing worried glances in their direction- more focused on Jace than Anika, as it happens. Jace will feel as though he's being watched, by something old, predatory, and yet nervous.

[Keeper]

The Widening Gyre

Jace is bear-side-hugged. This doesn't seem to bother him much.
I'm telepathic. Are you stuck in that shape or did you forget? Jace can theoretically communicate with animals but it's not something he's had to use yet and isn't aware he can do it.

The feeling on the back of his neck makes him look around and notices the human fellow stealing glances at him.
Do you know that guy? He's staring.

[Shadowcaller]

The Widening Gyre

There's no reply from the bear but she does suddenly, and abruptly, stop. Then a jade colored puff of smoke later she's in her humanoid form once more.
She tilts her head and then gestures aggressively at the warlock. "Hey, stop staring, dude! Have you never seen a unicorn before? Lay it off." She shouts at the man.

[Rebonack]

[The Closed Gyre]

Spiders, man, uses some spiders magic and discovers that this metal is made of iron, carbon, and souls. It was forged in a realm of absolute, neverending tempest and is not a nice place.

But apparently a place that decided to visit VIGIL.

Fun!

[Magtok]

[Matters of Espionage]

Calm Reed nods.

"Of course. If I cannot avoid revealing something, I will pretend I am acting alone."

Saint Lazarus nods. "Good luck," is all she's willing to say before heading on out to begin her reconnaissance operation. Those weird talking cats won't know what hit them!