Unbending Space
13th of January 2007 A.D.
As you surge forward, it is not quite with the swiftness of lightning. Even a speeding bullet would outpace you. Yet, it is more than enough that you are within the swinging distance of your sword from the monstrosity in front of you before the fastest of your subordinates can as much as raise their weapons. The thing is definitely made of meat, minced meat covered in scales shells and fingernails growing at random from its oily pores, but as you try to cut it is as it the sword in your hand, the sword that had slain a once-god is a blunt metal club that you have to force in among clouds of putrid steam.
Lost 2 Essence -> Now at 7/15
"You are not welcome, you were not invited
blood bags," the words are everywhere, commonplace insult made dreadful curse, giving you just enough time to contemplate the horror of blood bursting into internal cavities, stomachs, eyes, lungs and cast it away with a flexing of will before you hear a familiar voice speaking an unfamiliar word behind you:
"Expello!"
Lost 1 Willpower -> Now at 6/9
Harry Loses 1 Willpower -> Now at 7/8
The world
untwists with a sharp crack, more felt than heard, the curse of blood made stillborn even as a spear of light flashes from Lydia's up-swept palm striking the thing right in the blazing red eye, though it does not seem overly troubled at being doomed to die.
Then the electro-lasers open up only a handful but going all out. There is no rattle of bullets being fired of course, just a line of continuous plasma connecting the barrel to target and the artificial thunder which it brings.
Too much, it is too much even for whatever this is.
Even in death the creature does not burn or detonate or suffer any other fate that might have been expected of organic matter exposed to flaming ruin, instead it peels back, layer upon layer like an ear of corn being shucked to reveal leathery cysts that burst into a weird collection of stuff: marbles scattering to and fro, dice and even a mid-sized stone. You see something flashing and think it's a knife, but as it falls among the pile of steaming meat that had once been a vampire and worse than a vampire you realize that it's a steel pen of all things
"Divine Majesty, is the target terminated?" Hand of Gently Falling Ash asks as he steps not in but back, allowing agents with still fully charged guns to take the lead, smart.
"Yeah, it's very gone, excellently done," you hesitate to call the creature dead as it would be hard to think of it as having been
alive. The only reason it was ever even animate was not playing by the rules of biology or chemistry, as demonstrated by how rapidly it it falling apart now that its tortured mind is no longer holding it together, now that it is of no further use to the Things Beyond.
"What do we have here?" Tiffany is the next to step into the room and look down at the bric-a-brac that had been inside the core of the vampire thing. "Harry you are the detective, any idea what that is?"
"Hard to stomach?" he tries for a quip, but his heart isn't in it. "Huh... does Rock look like...? I think that is a Pet Rock, look you can see the eyes and that's a Sheaffer pen, before your time, they used to make really good pens." He sounds a bit shaky, maybe using the talk of old pens to ground himself after the fight.
Maybe that's why Tiffany even brought it up, you think.
The once-demon in question picks up the pen, the thoughtful look in her eye giving lie to the notion. "That still does not answer what
all this is doing in the stomach of a vampire. I would not put it past the lunatics who made this crass failure in biology to have omitted giving it a gag reflex, but even if it fed by full body absorption it would have learned to separate its meals from their indigestible possessions after the first time. If it is clever enough to try to kill thematically it's clever enough not to swallow rocks."
"Does it matter?" Lydia asks hesitantly. "I mean it's dead now we can keep going." She motions to the passage beyond where the veiny back of the flesh-room had been.
"Maybe not, but a lot of power was invested in this particular vampire to make it an amplifier of sorts for an Outsider spirit," you answer, catching on to what Tiffany meant.
You could ask, if the answer is meaningful enough it might even give you another mote of essence over over what you spend... but if it is not it will cost you half as much as the fight did.
What do you do?
[] Ask how the odd collection got in the vampire
[] Do not ask, move on
[] Write in
OOC: And what is what an electro-laser on full-auto looks like, also a Starborn counter-spelling something Outsider related. Incidentally the shaping targeted everyone and would have started the process of drowsing targets in their own blood as it... migrated to places it should not be in the body. Lydia did not use the Agg version of Hunter's Bolt since she wanted to conserve essence, alas that meant the thing soaked the damage. 
