Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

18th of February 2007 A.D.

Seeing yourself flash across space in an instant, sword arching down to meet the canister is briefly disorientating, though nowhere near as bad as when the metal explodes into a cloud of grey-green murk, spilling out in five corners, a twisted parody of a wizard's pentagram, alive with malice and dreams of madness. In Sidney or in Chicago, in Paris or in Boston it would have spread slowly, needing to devour talents but in this place filled with the husks of broken dreams it metastasizes in a moment, reaching down towards the wizards who had cheated the Labyrinth its due... until it reaches precisely twelve feet from the break point. There it is constrained in blazing white, magnesium fire and behind that a shell of screaming winds. Not for nothing is the Merlin still counted the Council's premier ward-maker. What would have taken most wizards hours and even the most skilled minutes he had done in the span of your battle, letting neither foe's fury nor angel's coming distract him. He'd probably intended the binding for the Hollow Man, but now it serves to curtail a weapon of his devising.

"Fiddling while Rome burns..." A cold hacking laugh carries far more than it should as eyes under the tattered hood seem to burn into your skull, looking right at you. "That did not happen you know, Nero has more wisdom in his milk teeth than the whole wretched Council has in its skulls. Behold the age is passing, behold exiled princes returns out of the foam of ages broken and all you know to do is cling to the old. That if thine fate!"

What he had been attempting you are not sure... but it's probably not what he got. One of the bodies crumples inward in sharp planes as though he had been secretly crafted of origami, though origami doesn't scream.

Iteration Destroyed -> Three of Six Remaining

Harry manages to buffet one of the remaining three like a misshapen crow caught in a storm, though he can't manage the perfect catch and and burn from before. Instead his grandfather manages to catch the body in a narrow beam sonic attack that you only catch the edge of, not that you want to hear any more. Alas the thing seems more shaken than hurt.

You'd be making quips about evil doing itself worst injury if you had the breath to spare. Hate so black and deep it swallows up fates is exhausting, maybe all hate is and you are only now just noticing.

"Your magic is a lie, you Laws are delusion and each of you a slave in a design not of your own choosing. Open your eyes and See the Truth!"

Black lines crawl between the avatars of the Hollow Man, trying to pool what mastery of magic he still has into one final gambit, one that you guess the contents of even the moment his eyes fall on Harry, mind magic.

Iteration Three now at 6/10

You see the precise moment when Harry's mental defenses waver, his expression going slack, eyes too-wide... then figure at the center of the web of three explodes all over Sophia, not into blood and gore as you'd expect, but swirling dust as every single atom heavier than carbon is forced out of it in elemental form leaving behind slop in the rough shape of a man which promptly splashes down onto the stone floor and runs through the gutters.

"Showing off again McCoy?" The Merlin sounds about as strained as you are feeling, but you could swear there's an edge of humor in his voice.

Iteration Destroyed -> Two of Six Remaining

"No one soul-gaze the damn thing, it wants you to," the other elder wizard said.

"I want you to see the truth, to know where man stands in relation to the shape of the world!"

"Do you just talk in fortune-cookies, or should I be expecting my horoscope read soon too?" Harry snarls and you do not have the heart to tell him astrology can work.

"Kill! Consume! Sunder!" Lydia does not so much speak the words as emanate them, the specters of long fallen Wan Kuei take it as a blessing to indulge their ancient hungers.

So they do, edged in borrowed silver, demons who were once men, once damned, then lost again.

Iteration Destroyed -> One of Six Remaining

Now again the Hollow Seer is alone and wounded, surrounded by foes.

"Keeper of the Thousandth and First Hell, I am not thine enemy," he speaks and you know the words are for you alone. "Step aside and I will tell give you word of where the others lie... the others like you."

What do you do?

[] Ask one last Crown Question... then kill him
-[] Write in

[] Keep him talking, the Merlin can contain the fungus you're sure
-[] Write in

[] Kill him now

[] Write in

OOC: Sorry about the wait, I had to figure out what Dark Arcanoi a pose of specters would use in a fight and how that would work out against his defenses, as it turns out the answers are 'Maleficence' and 'not well'.