Against the Prince of Chaos
25st of July 2006 A.D.
They were further along than we thought were your first, oddly calm thoughts as the naggingly familiar monster began to swarm across the floor towards your party.
Explains why the Reds were stalling.Wish I'd remembered to bring some cold iron. "Wall the door, Lydia" you bark as you aboutface, letting your father past you at notWolverine as you settle into a stabler stance, the bruising of your shoulder all but forgotten. "Then you and Dad join me if you can." Your full regard settles like a weight on the approaching enemy, mental defenses shedding its aura like water. Your voice is at a normal volume, almost conversational, but somehow you feel everyone in the building can hear your next words as, for a moment the green of your anima spills backward into your eyes.
"You should not have left your prison, Old One."
You lose 2 Willpower and 2 Essence -> Now at 4/12 Essence and 5/9 Willpower
"I can't... I can't make walls, just a wave!" Lydia shouts, her voice distant over the all-consuming sound of the water bearing harder. faster on the tile floor. One shot than another sound, the first sparking off silver knuckles, the second passing through her hoodie only to strike something considerably more solid underneath, a parting gift from her father maybe.
As the light fades leaving you at once transformed and more yourself than you have ever been it also turns you. Like a compass needle seeking north you had turned to face the thing.
A hundred eyes, facets of a greater presence open wider in the flash of verdant light, a hundred misshapen mouths slash open to spew out a wave of noxious blue grey substance, mist or liquid, or something in between you could not say, but it saps the will and draws the soul into slumber from which none shall ever wake.
You take 1 Temporary Willpower Damage -> now at 4/9 Temp Willpower
Slashing high and stabbing low, you weave though the glistening tentacles with uncanny grace and ever growing insight. True not every blow finds its mark, but the stroke that does not land opens the way for three more that do. For the first time since Arcrtis Tor you encounter something able to parry your flames without being consumed and you are shocked, or at least the 'you' that is Molly Carpenter is shocked, an older deeper knowing nods with grim resolve as you mark well the chthonian armor, where it is and where it its
not.
The thing bleeds, not red blood but gouts of silver that fly into the air and then curl upon themselves as though disdaining the touch of mundane gravity.
At your back you can hear dad's voice call out a prayer of battle, clear and unyielding:
Saint Michael,
defend us in battle
that we might not perish
at the dreadful judgment
Then the sound of strife close up again, of rage and pain and disbelief, through eyes of spirit you can see a swarm of black tears in the world like knives fly from the 'doctor' all aimed at Lydia only fade like smoke before a high breeze. The two guards had fallen already, one slumped against a wall trailing blood upon it, the other clutching a wound in his leg, but the sorcerer has the worst of it. As he steps forth so sure of his power that he does not even run Lydia kicks him in the chest so hard she shatters his rib-cage like an overripe fruit, his broken body falling among the rubble.
"It breathes hunger, it breathes
want!" you call back at them, not even questioning how the thing is able to breathe abstract concepts. Of course a rashka can do that.
You take your own advice and fling yourself backwards supported on the threads of purest will, turning heels over head to avoid the mist until....
There. You feel the ceiling under your feet and you lunge at the thing in a flurry of flaming blows, carving through flesh and armor alike, Essence and Name.
The creature, the rashka folds back on itself, unconstrained by the dimensions of the world it had briefly impinged upon and then it is gone... leaving you floating in mid air in some kind of techno-sorcerous torture chamber for the elderly with five unconscious guards... and one very dead sorcerer in pieces.
"I... I thought he would be as tough as the other ones." Lydia sounds upset, but far from devastated. You can relate, but what are you going to do with this mess
Lydia is at 0/5 Essence
The silvery stuff of improbable possibility still floats around the room like those videos from the International Space Station with water in zero G and the more you look at them the more ideas you have.
You gain 2 Essence -> Now at 6/12 Essence
What do you do?
[] Get the victims out of here ASAP
[] Dad and Lydia can deal with the rest of the cultists, you can unhook these people from the apparatus
[] Write in
OOC: Well that poor Rashka did not get to show off all his uncanny powers, but yes among other things he had armor that could soak Agg (though only the armor could do that) and a breath weapon that you can dodge, but not parry that did temp willpower damage not as emotion altering UMI, but as shaping that literally wore away the soul like water on stone. 
