Fool's Adventures: A Demon's Souls/Buffy the Vampire Slayer Quest

The demon before you moves quite gracefully. He might well be able to kill you before you can kill him, if the power and age of his Soul and body is anything to go by. This is why you decide to go with him, to figure out more about how he fights and his potential ability to actually kill you from the safety of a working disguise.

Perhaps you might have chosen an option to be less cautious in the future that will never be, but the trail of corpses he created put paid to that line of demonic thought in your head. As you follow him the conversation between you continues, most of your focus on the surroundings.

"So, how soon is 'recent'?" Angel asks you.

"The Sun had gone to bed. No earlier." You respond and watch his expression tighten as he grunts in contained anger. You come out onto the more open main roads now, walking on the path laid beside them. Distantly you can hear the Bronze, and you think he can as well from how his posture changes slightly.

Glancing back at you, he asks another question. "Buffy already came up with a plan while you talked? Care to fill me in?"

You look at him, head tilted in feigned curiosity.

"I didn't know you were that closely bound, good sir?" You say, false curiosity strong on your tongue. The expression of the demon beside you flows from embarassed to slightly amused.

"We're… not." You can hear some regret in that statement as he says it. "But this is too big for me to sit on my ass and we are… acquainted." The conviction in those statements is ironclad.

You nod, and look as if you are considering something while he watches you.

"We'll be meeting at the Bronze tomorrow night to finalize the assault on the thing's lair." You say calmly. Angel's face brightens slightly in thanks.

You come upon one of the flat stony lots full of cars at this point, a "parking lot" according to your minion, by a disused warehouse. All that sits there right now is a singular car, with no top. You've seen a few like this before, though you're not sure of the exact purpose of them being built like that.

Walking toward it you see him pull out a set of keys, and opens a door for you. "Ladies as always." He says with a look you'd almost call sardonic, as you get in, being careful not to touch him. You settle into the car with extreme grace and examine the interior intently while you do. Four seats, and some form of apparatus in front of the seat to your left which looks sort of like a ship's wheel. There are also a few points of attachment near the seats.

Looking around some more you find a piece of material which you think is meant to secure you into the seat, which you find to be suitably comfortable, though the place to rest your true legs under the illusion is a bit small for your height. Fiddling with the belting device while he gets in you secure yourself and then relax into the seat. You watch him as he starts the vehicle, which roars with a rather more vigorous engine than you normally hear.

A moment later he turns and the conveyance start moving. While you pull out of the lot you watch him drive. It seems like a relatively simple process, though not of much use to you. When you get fully onto the road you accelerate rapidly, the mechanical heart of this beast rumbling throatily.

He glances at you where you lounge in the seat. "How close can you get us?" He asks, sounding somewhat confident. An extremely quick moment's thought on your part and then you answer.

"Less than three blocks." You say, drawing on another term you'd heard during the shopping trip with your minion Annie. You continue speaking. "I sensed the edges of it. But the beating heart eluded my gaze." You look at him as you finish.

His expression is thoughtful, as his hands tap slightly on the wheel. "Hmm… your gaze is quite powerful. Spotted anything interesting about the nasties this 'king' spits out?" He asks you cordially.

You wave a hand. "Some. Their essence is linked to the king and returns upon death. If you could entrap the flickers you could damage the source." You glance out into the night as it rushes past you, faster than you can run by a significant margin. Noting the direction you look ahead to a street and gesture at it while speaking. "Turn right up ahead."

You continue the description you were making. "The creatures all come from normal rats and I can sense them before they become visible."

He nods. "Useful." He says, before he goes silent. The ride through the night is, somewhat, comfortable though "comfort" is not really important to you beyond noting its existence. Occasionally you give him directions, rapidly closing with the location of the foothold. After about a sixth of an hour however, Angel glances at you again and speaks.

"You know something about this bothers me…" You turn your head and lean further against the door to look at him questioningly.

He takes your expression as a permission to continue. "Why are they not invading the surface, as B-movie as that sounds? They have the ability from what I fought."

"Does your gaze have anything to say about it?" He asks, seeming mildly frustrated with this particular conundrum.

Your inhuman mind quickly balances the scale and you decide to answer at least in part. "Only a little. I think they lose most of their power on the surface."

You watch him process that information in silence.

"Hmm…" His response is noncommittal, though you can tell he believes your explanation. A few minutes later you tell him to stop, and glancing quickly at you, he finds a spot and pulls the vehicle into it. You unhook yourself and get out before the demon can open your door for you, though you can tell he wanted to, after a fashion.

You look around, scanning above and below the ground. The underground looks quiet for the moment, though you can feel the living pulse of the foothold right now. You glance at Angel as he gets out.

"We'll need to find a path down." You say, and gesture for him to follow you. Leading the way into the darkness of the alleys, you watch and listen. There was a recent pack of vampires which passed through here you think, based on the recently laid scents, though they are gone by now.

"Aren't you worried about stepping in something, it's not exactly a… ladylike place down there." He asks you from behind and slightly to your right.

You don't glance back as you respond. "No, my magic suffices." Truthfully, your demonic nature renders you completely immune to the forces of plague, poison, and bleeding. You have nothing to worry about sewer contents, even if your magic did not clean you. Looking around, you spot a cover. "Here." Pulling it up and over you then drop down into the dark, pulling up a slight light with contained Soul magic in your right hand.

Angel drops in after you, looking around tensely. Before you continue however, you turn to him and ask him a question.

"Have you seen the watcher rats?"

He nods. "Once. Ugly little buggers. Why?"

You turn and start walking down the tunnel in the dim light of your magic.

"We're gonna find one and kill it, lure forces away from the altar. The source is close." You say calmly. You can almost feel the shrug come from Angel at those declarations. When you glance back quickly you can see him close to you, seemingly ready to pull you out of harm's way.

"When I douse the light, one is close." You say to him, looking over your shoulder. He nods back at you.

The two of you begin to prowl forward into the dark. Slowly you pad on nearly silent feet towards the source of the foothold you can sense. It is a mass of squeaking sound and the image of pulsing gossamer containing barely hidden flesh on your senses.

After a handful of minutes you sense a flicker on those senses. A watcher. You slow, coming alongside Angel. He tenses as you do, watching you and the surroundings carefully. A couple steps later and you slowly douse the light. Your eyes adjust nigh instantly and you expect Angel's do as well.

Sliding quietly you come around a bend in the tunnels and see the cloaked form of a watcher near the ceiling. Watching it closely you sneak closer when its little hood isn't pointed in your direction. Then in a extremely fast, but still human move, you catch it in both hands like a giant bug.

It immediately starts screaming shrilly. Then you gather Soul magic in your hands, causing a white glow to burn out from between your fingers as you raise them before your face as if in prayer. The creature's cries heighten almost impossibly in volume and pitch, causing Angel to start raising his hands towards his ears.

And then there is a vigorous, wet, pop.

The cry goes abruptly silent and the light between your hands winks out.

You hear Angel chuckle slightly. "That… was nasty." He says, seeming both by turns disgusted and amused. You give a noncommittal sound of agreement. Shaking your hands to get rid of the mostly invisible flakes of creature left you light a very small candle flame light and look at the man demon beside you.

"Think you can get me one of their weapons quickly?" He asks you, all business again.

You nod brightly. "Most certainly. Come." You gesture with the light carrying hand away from the bend in the tunnel where you can sense rat warriors forming. Leaning close to him in the darkness in the dark as you retreat away from the watcher's post you whisper to him.

"There is five approaching. Go for the one I shoot first." You say. You can see him staring at you in the dark, obviously slightly affected by your proximity.

"Gotcha." He says, readying himself for when the first warrior turns the bend.

You don't have to wait long as the first warrior barrels around the tunnel. Zhew! Right into a face full of Soul Arrow. You can hear its neck snap and its flesh sizzle under the blow as the other rats pile up toward you. You see Angel rush past you, obviously restricting himself to human speeds. You wonder briefly at how your appearance has deceived him, and how to improve it.

Then, you are focused on the spell slinging. While Angel smashes the first warrior with a foot, killing it and grabbing its spiked club weapon, you launch two more arrows past his left. The first knocks a rat warrior off its paws and the second blasts the weapon of another into its own skull with a thonk. At the spellwork the gaze of the two creatures you didn't hit locks onto you and they all shriek with such volume that if you were mortal you might be stunned.

"Git tha SHE-THING! For the Squeak-Lord!" It's not in English, the language you use to speak to the mortals and Angel, but you understand the demonic squealing anyway. It is a consequence of being a Fog Demon. Malevolence comes easily to you.

Zhew! Zhew! Zhew! Zhew! Zhew!

More arrows fly from your hands, as Angel swings a mighty blow with his commandeered weapon into the rat warrior who he intercepted while it charged at you, slamming its head up and flipping it onto its back with a meaty crack. With the space made by that he turns and smashes the head of the rat you stunned with its own weapon into the wall, pulping it with a crunchy splat.

"They don't seem to like you!" He yells as your arrows meanwhile slam into the downed rat and the rat who he knocked over who is now charging at him on four limbs. The downed rat dies instantly and the other rat is not far behind. Angel takes the chance to flip the spiked club around, pointing the spiky end at the last rat, and then blasts it with a flaming rat skeleton and a loud accompanying screee!

Said flaming rat skeleton flies true and burrows into the throat of the last rat and then explodes while you respond.

"I killed a lot of them."

Angel snorts in amusement at your response, staying at the ready as the corpses shrivel and the essences retreat to the Rat King in the distance through the mystical plane.

You look around, and see no others coming, yet. Closer inspection however shows you that there are a few in the distance, which go to approach before stopping and spreading out. You cock your head to the left in your usual tilt for when something occurs which is less suitable.

"Hmm? Problem?" Angel asks you while he limbers his shoulders and raises the rat warrior weapon. You hum in contemplation while conjuring a faint light again.

"There's several of them ahead of us, in the distance. But they are fortifying." You say calmly.

Angel grimaces. "Great." He says. Then he looks down at the corpses at his feet. "I have an idea, follow me." He says confidently. Hmm… a part of you muses while the rest of you considers how this fits into his fighting ability. You follow him after he picks up one corpse, with a grimace of distaste marring his features, moving deeper down the tunnels.

"I've noticed that they can only fire their weapons once, then there is a waiting period of about twenty seconds." Angel says back to you while he walks with your faint light illuminating the tunnel around him. You nod in acknowledgement, you have a sense of his idea with the corpse.

It takes about a minute before you whisper very quietly for Angel to stop. He locks back at you, nods, and then edges up to a corner, barely illuminated by your faint light. He looks around it carefully before retreating slightly. Then he raises his right hand, beginning a countdown. It hits zero and then he throws the corpse around the corner. The corpse is illuminated by a burning cloud of flaming rat skeletons.

You both leap around the corner as the projectiles fade and start shooting at the weapons in the hands of the rat warriors you can see in the faint light, hiding in the corners of a crossroads. Moving around Angel's right side with hands full of Soul Arrows you blast away with four of them in quick succession while he fires his own weapon before charging into the mass of rat warriors. That still leaves two rat warriors unmolested; for a total of seven, but your next round of arrows begins cutting down their numbers starting with those two, killing them instantly.

Angel crushes the head of another rat into the floor in the next instant and as the remaining four scramble forward from the corners of the crossroads they were hiding, shrieking for your heads, you continue firing. They all get blasted to all fours, but surprisingly continue surging forward. Swinging low Angel flips over the first rat as it prepares to leap onto him. You send another surge of arrows into the right hand rats.

With those two down it leaves the last one about to leap at you, which it actually manages to do before Angel uses it a bit like a ball and bounces it off a wall with a hit from the club he is using. He is breathing somewhat heavily as the battle ends, though you think that is a bit of an affectation.

"You alright?" He asks you, looking over as the light of your arrows is replaced with the held light you've been using previously. You nod. He sighs before looking down the tunnel at the crossroads before you.

"So, which way now?" He says quietly. You spend a moment to look around for his benefit, and the benefit of your deception before you pick the right hand tunnel. You lead the way in this tunnel, your light illuminating the walls and a little circle around you.

"How close are we?" He asks, calmly. You look back briefly and then return to looking down the tunnel before answering.

"Very. Not more than another few corners." You say, placing a little more energy into your tone than usual. Between one step and the next as you finish speaking, you feel another grouping of energies around you. Low to the ground is a flood of small lives, coming at you from both directions down the tunnel.

You look back and start running, throwing a glance back to him over your shoulder. "Its trying to trap us in a rat flood." You say, false urgency laced in your voice, though it is still mostly calm.

"Dammit." Angel curses as you both sprint down the tunnel. A moment later the flood of rats appears out of the distance. The instant they do you start firing to clear a path through them. Seeing your intent Angel does the same with his weapon, and comes up alongside you. You retreat a little so that you are following Angel.

Clearing out a little pocket of space with your spells, and the swings he takes with the spiky club, it takes you a few moments to fight your way through the mass. But then you come out the other side as the horde mills around and tries to change direction. Hmm…? It shouldn't be doing that, a part of you thinks. Then the rest of you realizes what is happening as rat warriors in large numbers begin to grow from the horde like hideous toadstools.

"Time to go." Angel says as he reaches for you. You deftly dodge his maneuver and run with him, both of your feet slapping the stone rather quickly for the humans you are imitating. The chittering horde behind you is so loud you expect that mortals could hear it above ground. You start firing behind yourself over and over and over, eliciting shrieks and growls and wet half-formed squeals from the mass behind you.

Angel shouts over to you then. "Keep shooting! I see a bit up ahead where we can fight them properly!"

Angel himself fires his commandeered weapon back wildly. You keep shooting, glancing back to occasionally correct your aim. In those glances you see a solid ten of the rat warriors forming as they run after you, clogging the tunnel with their furry bodies. It would appear that both hordes sent to entrap you have fused together, though luckily in their mad dash the rather unintelligent warriors don't seem to have realized that they can also shoot at you. Those who still have their weapons in their half formed paws at least.

Then you see something much worse coming up behind them. Two of them in fact.

"Angel?" You ask conversationally.

"Yes Latria!? Kinda busy!" He huffs as you see a wider than normal tunnel mouth up ahead which he seems to be aiming for.

"There's two rat giants behind us." You answer his question, with a tiny hint of genuine amusement coloring your voice.

"What…!?" He throws a look over his shoulder, and you see his relatively pale face pale further under his brownish-black hair.

"Craaaaap!" He shouts with vigorous intensity.

You both dive through the wider tunnel mouth into a larger square room, a grate on the far end dumping water into a large pit going down into nothing with several pillars holding up the roof. It reminds you of your own church from the Tower in a way. You follow Angel as he races around the corner of the entrance and then stops, turning to raise his weapon. Getting the shape of his idea you run around him and aim your own spells at the doorway.

The squeaking, roaring, horde of ratty flesh boils into the room then. As the rat warriors look around in vicious confusion you blast away with the most powerful Soul Arrows you can use while still wearing the seeming. Angel's own blasts from the rat warrior weapon join yours in cutting through the ranks.

Both of you start circling around, weaving between the pillars as the rats rush toward you. You've downed six of the warriors when the rat giants catch up and squish the remaining four into squealing paste beneath their massive bodies. As the giants pound toward you, the pair of you maneuver to face them in the center of the room.

Zhew! Zhew! Screee!

You fire into the eyes of the creatures, blinding them and enraging them as Angel's own blast knocks aside the head of the left one. The combination of your hit and his sends it careening through a pillar and the wall beyond, knocking dust from the ceiling as it collapses. Their roars shake the room and the remaining one is nearly on top of you when you look back at it directly.

"Latria!" Angel shouts at you as the rat giant bares down on you. You however, are entirely unconcerned. There's a momentary pause in the air as the creature leaps for you, its gigantic bulk leaving the ground and its back almost scraping the low ceiling as its distorted mouth hangs open. You take that tiny moment to blast a Soul Arrow down that throat. Out of the corner of your eye as you start rotating to your left around the creature, you see Angel running for you, weapon held low like a sword.

You brush along the side of the creature, Soul Arrows slamming into its side and legs. When it lands, its right front leg it crumples under the weights involved with a snap and the creature slips toward the pit. As the beast scrambles and squeals in agony you riddle it with your arrows. And then Angel is there yelling like an ancient warrior as he brings down his weapon on the creature's skull. Using your momentum you keep turning, hair fluttering around you as the ornaments within it clack energetically, and see the other giant coming to its feet and snorting like a bull as it turns.

You get its attention by frying the remains of its bulbous eyes with two more arrows. It roars in absolutely insane rage and as you feel the rat giant behind you die, you feel the Rat King roar in similar rage as well. The magic pulses and writhes like an insane man trying to smash his own head open.

Skipping left towards the pillars, hiding the tiny sound of your foot-falls beneath the roar, you wait. For just a moment as centuries of fighting experience judge the perfect time. The rat giant bulls forward, brushing against another pillar with the bulk of its shoulder and pulverizing it. Charging for where it last saw you.

Angel, having caught onto your plan, ducks out of the way of the creature, face tight and stressed. The moment comes and with a Zhew Zhew you cut the front legs of the creature out from under it. It tumbles forward when those injured feet land and shatter, grating cries shearing through the air. That graceless and fatty tumble takes it into a roll into the hole the grate is draining into, though it is too big to actually fall all the way in.

Just get stuck with little leverage. Angel and you exchange a glance over the heaving meat of the beast and then you both attack the head with your full fury. The thing quickly dies.

"Well. That was something." The ensouled demon before you says as his breath heaves with only partially feigned tiredness. You incline your head in agreement and then gesture for the both of you to leave, as the corpses rapidly cool and shrivel. You both hurry out of the room, with you hopping over the meat pile of the lesser warriors which got squished while Angel gingerly moves around it.

Then, you are moving quickly down the tunnel. Angel frequently looks back the way you came as you run. You preempt his question before it can emerge.

"None are close, but hurry." Your tone is woven with a false thread of urgency as your feet eat up the distance beneath the ground. The magic of the Rat King almost seems stunned to your senses, though this is more of a conventional stunning than the wounding you can cause by consuming the essence of the creatures.

After three more turns and at most two minutes you come to the altar. And it is atrocious in your senses. Completely crude and primitive and slapdash and a terrible expression of sorcery. The part of you that is built around sorcery is actually revolted by the thing in front of you.

It is a roughly triangular arrangement of large rat bones, at the apex of which is a mutated rat skull. Rising up out of the ground in front of it is a pile of detritus, rot and manifested gossamer threads and atop that pile sits a plate of strange yellowish stone. On that stone rests a slowly charring heart. Human if you're not mistaken, from the times you've ripped it out of dying Slayers of Demons. And around it all is a crude chicken scratch form of demonic script.

"Disgusting." You say vehemently. In the next moment you blast it into absolutely infinitesimal little pieces. Reaching with your mystical nature you pull on the thing like a rotten cobweb and shred it to fragments. There is a distinct pop and the foothold disperses.

"Huh. I was gonna offer to burn it, but that works. We still clear?" Angel says as he turns to you, away from the charred hole you've carved in the stone, his posture relaxing infinitesimally as the weight of the foothold fades.

You look around to verify, and then look at him.

"Yes, but we should retreat for now I think. The Rat King will not send pursuit to the surface, and I must," You make sure to emphasize that word, "prepare for the battle tomorrow. The forces arrayed against us here have pushed up my estimations of what we face, significantly."

Angel takes that statement for a moment, considering it for nearly thirty seconds. Then he nods. "I can understand that. Let me escort you to the surface?" His tone and voice becomes much more formal and old on that last question. A deep part of you notes the successful completion of this part of his deception with inhuman precision.

You incline your head and smile faintly.

"As you will Sir Angel. Lead on." You say with your faint smile in your tone. He brightens slightly and then turns to head into the dark.

The walk is silent between you. But companionable. You have certainly gotten a good measure of Angel's abilities. And the conclusion you have come to is that he is rather vulnerable to your manipulations, but as a counterbalance his strength is extreme for a vampire. He is at least as strong as Darla, you judge, and would make a similar disturbance in the energy of the Hellmouth if his Soul didn't contain it in some way.

His strength is under such vicious control, it reminds you of some of the Slayers of Demons you have fought before. Quite the threat, and fully capable of killing me. Especially with how he was holding back with the rat giants, if you're right he probably could have casually tossed one like a ball. You will have to kill him at some point in the future, he is far too powerful to leave alive if he discovers your nature or you regain your power.

And then the walk ends as you come to another cover. Before he can offer to open it for you, you rush up the ladder and climb out yourself. He follows you shortly after, and takes a unnecessary deep breath of the night air.

He looks at you, a smile peeking out of his expression. "I guess goodbye for now? I could give you a ride home?" He asks, sounding somewhat… mixed. Interestingly, you actually aren't entirely sure what he is feeling based on his voice and expression. You note it down for now.

Looking at him from across the alley, you gently shake your head. "No thank you, I need to head back on my own. Good hunting, Angel." You say with an extremely graceful nod, being careful to use his name with no attachments and meaningful emphasis.

"Good hunting, Latria. " He says, accepting your reasoning. You raise your hand in parting and drift away into the shadows. Once you are out of sight and have made a large distance between you, you drop the pretense of moving with human speed. Drawing the shadows around you, you sprint under the light of the waxing moon.

The trip back is long but very quiet. The homes around you are nearly entirely silent; so much so that as you pass their white and other brightly colored walls, you can hear the clicking of cooling machinery in them, the breaths of the inhabitants and the sound of crickets and other insects. The scents, at least for the first part are normal for this town, a mix of human and vampire and a dozen, dozen other scents of food and other stranger things.

Magic has its own scent of a kind. It's rather like blueberries, you think to yourself. A suitable scent for it. Turning away from that mostly inconsequential thought you dip deeper into the alleys of this area.

That is when you sense it. A change in the air, as the scents of that pack of vampires you sensed before appears again, much fresher. Along with the scent of rats. Mind churning as you slow in caution you approach the source of the scents, and then you start to hear the screee! of the rat warrior's weapons and the meaty thumps of fists hitting flesh along with the occasional vampiric roar.

Turning a few corners you find a side alley where yellowish bursts of light flicker out of it and seems to be the source of the battle. Sliding up to the corner you look, and see three vampires fighting off three of the rat warriors with the corpses of three other rats surrounding the combatants. This should not be happening. You think.

The rat warriors move sluggishly, and even more like dumb beasts, triggering their weapons almost at random. The blasts are weaker and the rats themselves also seem… smaller. The vampires are also new however, and very inexperienced at fighting beyond the innate instincts they seem to possess. They are covered in wounds, though to the walking demonically possessed corpses you think such things are generally minor.

As you watch one of the vampires gets ahold of one of the remaining rat warriors and breaks its neck with a pop-pop-crackle of shattering vertebrae. At this point you step out from around the corner, hands raised.

Zhew! Zhew! Zhew!

You dust the left and rightmost vampires with your opening shots and, intentionally, stun the furthest rat warrior. You have a use for one of those. This leaves you in a very brief standoff with the remaining two fighters. The vampire takes one look at you and pales, even further than its almost corpse-like skin already is.

Then the stalemate is broken and they both charge at you, forgetting the presence of the other. You shoot more Soul Arrows. Zhew! Zhew! Zhew!

Your first shot misses the vampire, your second shot blasts away the top of the rat warrior's head, and the third catches the novitiate vampire right in the mouth as he leaps for you. The alleyway falls to total silence after the vampire's death scream, except for the twitching and squeaking groans of the last remaining rat warrior.

Approaching it, spells readied, you give it an inhumanly powerful kick to the head. Said head bounces off of the ground and then you blast its hands. Then you pick up its now limp body. Your mind turns to the much more important fact that the Rat King is moving forces on the surface now. Seemingly in a panic, but this is not a good thing for you, especially if he starts pushing rat giants above ground.

You will have to weaken him in some way when you get home, or devise a method to do so. This is in large part why you are taking one of the warriors, alive. Keeping an eye on your demonic cargo you sprint home as quickly as you can while maintaining some form of concealment.

You arrive back in your neighborhood as the creature starts to stir. You pause for a moment, looking for a convenient hard surface. Taking a grip, you slam it onto the ground with a loud thunk. While not as strong as your fellow Fog Demons, generally speaking, you are strong enough and have enough leverage to send it into unconsciousness again.

Satisfied that the thing won't start to wriggle again, and that it is still alive, you carry it through your gate. Your minion is already opening the door when you come in. You toss the body to her after mounting the front steps regally, which she catches adroitly as you drop your seeming and return to your true form.

"My lady!" She says, bowing over her burden. "I see your trip was more successful than you hoped?"

You tilt your head right. "In a way. To the sanctum." You command her. She moves quickly to your will and you both head upstairs as the front door shuts behind you. Waving a hand you unlock the sanctum wards and she carries the insensate body into the room before stepping aside to let you enter freely.

You do and gesture for her to drop it near the central circle. A Paralysis Sigil springs up around it. I need a proper prison… a part of you thinks, as the rest of your strange mind turns and calculates what exact ritual you are going to enact here.

You could do the initial ritual you thought of, using the living rat warrior's captured essence to grab the essence of the thing through sympathy and then through sacrifice of the rat warrior disperse a portion of the invader's essence to the winds of the Hellmouth. To be destroyed utterly as the energy fades across near infinite dimensions. Unfortunately through this method, you lack a way to actually consume that energy, though it will cause some significant weakness.

You could also use it to forge a weapon of sorts, now that you actually have it before you, you can see patterns you did not note before. Glancing over you look at your binding incense censer. With that you could bind the essence of the creatures you kill tomorrow, weakening the invader even if you cannot consume them due to the requirements of deception. It would also serve as a powerful weapon if you released and harnessed those energies, in a pinch, and it would eventually lose this property because of the method you are using.

Your gaze passes to your minion, to which she perks up, and… you pause. You could, perhaps steal some of the Rat King's energy and possibly feed on it if you use your minion as another component in the ritual. You wouldn't sacrifice her, since that would defeat the purpose. Essentially, you would link her to the power of the Rat King through the rat warrior and the strangeness of the Hellmouth which loosens the rules, and use the construction you've made of her Soul to feed like you would on the Hellmouth. It could work, though even with your literal centuries of experience you are not certain on what would result on it, though you are tough enough and skilled enough to survive anything especially vigorous.

Choices, choices…

What do you do?

[] You use the rat warrior as a sacrificial focus to disperse some of the Rat King's energy into the mass of the Hellmouth, casting it across the dimensions.

[] You use the binding censer you got from the Magic Box to make a weapon against the Rat King, building up a charge as you kill them before releasing a massive burst of energy.

[] You use your minion Annie in an experimental ritual to potentially steal energy from the Rat King. You are not entirely certain what will happen.

---

Hi hi, yes, remember when I said I was two thirds done? Well apparently my muse lied to me, and this monster came out of it.

Since this is so late I'm going to push back the usual vote lock by four hours so people have time to vote. The lock will be at 10:00 pm UTC June 15th. Have fun!