plot } the creatures descend.

[synergismus]

Who: Everyone!
What: Creatures descend!
Where: All across the city, although attacks will be most fervent at its heart.
When: Friday/Veerdi evening and into the week.
Notes: Slow and back-tagging is, as always, permitted. If you are confused, look at these two posts for more information.
Warnings: Violence, creepiness, swearing knowing these characters.

On Veerdi, the presence of the creatures reaches a fever pitch. Something has provoked them into launching an all-out assault, though it is one that begins slowly. The pipe-crawlers, generally harmless though they may be, are seen across homes in Baedal, sneaking up through the pipes and into bathtub drains or sinks. They come by the dozens, and their keening makes most homeowners nauseated--but it's their appearance that leads to a number of distressed Network calls.

This is just the distraction for the rest.

The call of the crawlers draws in the armored, sickly creatures with the tiny primates carried inside of it. They are inelegantly lumbering, but much faster than one might expect, and certainly hostile. They trudge across the city, barreling over anyone who gets in their path and leaving them half-crushed in the street. They're certainly unsettling in their obvious unhealthiness, and the disease-ridden animals they carry are downright vicious, especially once they escape (messily, bloodily) from their fleshy cage.

It's the birds that are the worst, though; the cleverest, and the cruelest.

These strange black birds are resistant to typical attacks and flying in large groups. They descend on pedestrians, picking at their eyes and faces, ready to rapidly tear flesh from bone until there's nothing left but skeletal remains. They fly out of range when they can, only to divebomb anyone who might think they've escaped.

Comments

[rhinemaid]

The attacks begin to reach crescendo when Ilde is downriver; she spends the majority of her time in the water right now and intends to spend a solid amount of it there in the future, and as such she's making a significant effort to make herself known to the Gross Tar and the other creatures of it. (Partly to dissuade them from any foolish attempts on the territory in it that she's already marking out, partly because this is almost like the community she once pointed out she didn't have - it's interesting, appealing. A part of her is wary of a feeling that might begin tying her to a place she can't afford to stay.)

She watches from where she's sitting on the bank, at first, but she won't avoid attracting notice forever, and she slides back into the river (her tail forms and she pushes herself deep underwater) before she can do too much tempting of fate, kukri knife clenched in one hand as she begins to swim north toward Raven's Gate. She has things there to protect, and she'll need to catch Sonja, maybe some of those she knows here.

Periodically, she surfaces to see what the situation is above the water- the primates that wander nearest to her vantage point soon regret it.

[manipulativni.livejournal.com]

Since hearing about the attacks, Katherine has been doing her best to hide away, although she could easily fight off her fair share of monsters. She's done it often enough before. But she's far more experienced with running, and she doesn't necessarily want to expose herself as a vampire to the city, at least not yet. And while she can play the part of a frightened teenage girl well enough...well, eventually, she needs to eat. And while she could easily make a meal of someone else who's staying at the inn, it's too risky to do so when there are so many people crowding the place, trying to avoid being attacked.

Which is why she's outside, finishing off a young man who was stupid enough to believe her sob story about needing shelter from the birds. She makes sure to leave the body a bit messy, tearing his clothes and smearing some leftover blood before leaving it in the street (there's one upside to these attacks, a dead body will be far less suspicious).

She happens to be by the river, and she hears Ilde before she sees her. Curiosity compels her to head in her direction, and once she spots her form, she stops and calls out.

"Hello? Who's down there?"

[rhinemaid]

The sensitivity that Ilde has to other beings of a supernatural origin is...well, frankly, most of the time it's essentially useless to her. The feeling doesn't mean anything yet; her instincts don't come with a manual, and much of what she learns about herself is trial and error. Some of it is instinctive enough that it's easy, and other things are less intuitive (or maybe more, depending on how you look at it) in ways that she finds frustratingly elusive.

...but it does serve well enough to let her know there is something there, someone there, and though she doesn't hear the call, her tail breaks the surface once before she twists in the other direction to come up and look for what she's registered near her. Her first thought is that it's a threat - under the circumstances, she can hardly be blamed - and the knife in her hand is held ready-

"Katherine," she says, a little blankly surprised for a moment.

(Isobel has never looked like this.)

[manipulativni.livejournal.com]

Katherine's eyes go a bit wide for a moment as she notices the form as something entirely foreign to her, unlike anything she's ever seen. She wonders for a moment if it's one of the creatures that's recently been set loose on the city, but then she notices the knife and wonders what else it could be.

And then it addresses her by name, and she recognizes the voice and the face, even if the features are quite clearly not human at the moment.

"Ilde," she replies, relaxing her stance (she hadn't quite been battle-ready, but some tension had built up in her body, preparing to move quicker than the blink of an eye if needed). "So this is what you usually look like."

[rhinemaid]

"Feet optional," she shrugs - when she has legs, there's a tattoo high around one thigh, but as a tail there's only an indistinct black stripe-like marking below her backside. So Katherine isn't human, she thinks; that doesn't tell her what she is, and having some mastery of tact she chooses not to ask. It isn't her business; Sonja doesn't advertise, either, and Ilde knows how to keep secrets. "Are you safe out here?"

[manipulativni.livejournal.com]

If Ilde's sense of smell is strong enough, she may be able to smell the blood on her breath, which would be at least a hint if not a dead giveaway. But with the attacks, there's plenty of injuries and possibly fatalities, so it may not mean as much as it typically would.

"As safe as I ever am," she replies, which, here, is a considerable amount safer than she is at home even when she's not trapped and starving in a tomb. "What about you?"

[ofminastirith.livejournal.com]

At some point, Boromir manages to make his way through streets of hurried, screaming city goers, fighting as he goes along. He is extremely lost (not that he has anywhere to really go, or anyone to miss him). And so he finds himself doing what he always does in this particular situation in the wilds of Middle Earth -finding a water source and following it.

He sees another stalker, but this time has the advantage of being behind it. He beheads it, before quickly turning the beast over and ramming his sword into its diseased appendages again and again.

Grim faced and with his fair share of scratches, he scans this area of the Gross Tar for familiar scenery.

[rhinemaid]

Perhaps if Boromir is observant, he'll realize that he's being studied back - big blue eyes, so dark they appear black at first glance, just barely above the water-line. Ilde isn't interested in getting caught in battles before she reaches Raven's Gate and her own territory, but it pays to know what's going on and this is not the first time that she's used an ability to move through the water for something like reconnaisance.

It's always an interesting experiment in stifling instinct; luring humans into the water is mischief more than anything else, most of the time, a gleeful pay attention to me! from the fey creatures that lurk there, but now's really not the time to start playing games with people who are heavily armed. Or anyone, for that matter, since she's got more important things on her own mind, like 'not dying'.

(The mind is a tool; Ilde's could really use a manual in a language she knows how to read. And a psychiatrist.)

If her eyes don't catch his attention, the death-shriek of the monkey whose neck she just snapped might do it.

[ofminastirith.livejournal.com]

There's someone in the water. The thought comes quickly to his mind, and he knows just as quickly that that person isn't drowning or in danger, and his instincts tell him that there isn't something quite clicking into place about it all.

He makes his way cautiously to the river's edge, not ready to fight but his sword isn't going away either.

"Who goes there?"

[rhinemaid]

While some impulses it's important to resist, others it is less so, and frankly she isn't that good at it in the first place - that's why she worries about the important ones, and tends to let everything else go. That's logical. It's sound thinking.

(She was terribly proud of herself for that one.)

So, peering up at him with a bloodied knife in hand, "Who wants to know?"

[ofminastirith.livejournal.com]

She is-

He's spent the past year in the company of Halfling, Dwarves, Elves and Maiar (although he doesn't know the last part, but Gandalf was old when his grandfather was young and so it wouldn't have surprised him). Before that he spent the better part of his life fighting the hordes of Mordor. And then he died. And he was brought here. Even today's events haven't felt that unusual in the grand scheme of his life.

Still, this is a different kind of -xenian? That's the word they use- than the ones that live in Middle Earth. And he is not easily surprised, so congratulations.

After a pause, he replies, "Boromir, son of Denethor."

[nojudge.livejournal.com]

At some point, because circumstances are what they are, a certain pirate has to make something of an unglamorous escape. Shot is in rare supply, he needs time to recharge his energy to use magic, and while fighting rollers and monkeys in close quarters is effective enough considering his skill with his blade, the godsdamned birds are another story.

So he takes a breath and dives into the river.

Between the current and his ability to hold his breath while swimming, he loses his feathered adversaries rather neatly. The downside to his cunning plan, however, is that the river isn't, shall we say, fucking around with said current - nor all the rocks in it - and Balthier realizes as he narrowly avoids slamming headfirst into something very solid, that he is now quite stuck, being hurdled effortlessly by the river.

Damnit.

This is going to give him such a headache, he can just tell.

[rhinemaid]

Wait, what was that-

Ilde has twisted around and is in pursuit out of sheer curiosity before she even realizes what (who) it is she's following, but she forces herself forward faster when she recognizes Balthier. (By his rings, as it happens.) The river is the source of her power and with her fey magic all instinct and still new to her this is the only place where she's willing to deliberately take a risk on using it. He's going to be dragged out of her reach soon, so she twists in the water and makes a demand of it - it's a strain to pull against the current when she's only half-aware of what it is she's really doing, but for just long enough the water acquiesces to her and Balthier is thrust back against it, toward her, and she catches a hold of the back of his shirt first.

She shoves her face in Balthier's long enough that if he has his eyes open at all, he'll see a very disapproving look, and then she gets a better grip on his shoulders and drives them toward the surface with her tail.

[nojudge.livejournal.com]

Oop-well. That's certainly unusual.

... The fact that he zipped by in the water and thought he saw a girl, not that he's being hauled bodily around. The latter bit happens rather often, much to his displeasure.

Anyway.

He coughs and gasps in air when they break the surface, and blinks rapidly - of course he had his eyes open, to further the cause of not dying, and the sudden change to air vs water is a bit uncomfortable. "Ilde," he says, sounding a bit to one side of uncomfortably breathless, "I thought I recognized those eyes."

[rhinemaid]

The disapproving look has not quite dissipated; here in her natural habitat, she's far more at home than Balthier, but upon the opportunity for closer examination, she's certainly already been in a fight or three. With the monkeys, from the looks of the scratches left behind, though she's still sporting the remnants of her gunshot wound from the fog. (Katherine could smell her blood from it, earlier.)

"You have to stop doing this," she tells him, not quite as deadpan as usual, "Sonja and I can't be everywhere."

She nudges him with her tail, illustratively. Feet are useless.

[nojudge.livejournal.com]

"But you're so good at it," he counters, finally beginning to catch his breath properly, and even throwing in a rakish look that's almost a smile, in his typical fashion. "It'd be unmannerly of me to not let you show off, wouldn't you say?"

Ah, yes. Tail. Balthier ends up placing one hand on her shoulder to steady himself in the water - the current isn't quite so vicious, up on the surface, but he hasn't got one of those useful things. It means he's looking closer at her, and not at her inhuman features. "Why don't you let me rest for a moment, and I can take care of those for you."

Her wounds, he means. Perhaps she recalls him remarking, on their journey, that despite his rather impressive injuries, he'd be fine once they were in an area they were sure they could use magic in.

[tothelastbreath]

At some point, she'll surface to find quite a situation above water. Mostly above water, anyway.

A bedraggled young man is clinging for all he's worth to a length of white... Rope? Hard to tell what it's made of, but it's attached to his right sleeve and wound tight around the trunk of a tree nearby. The severed head of an armadillo lies at the foot, very much dead in a spreading pool of blood, though the area is still overrun by the monkeys it was carrying. The rest of it is slumped on the river bank, close enough to imply it could've knocked Allen into the water, propelled onwards by the momentum of its final charge, even as it fell.

Allen has the rope wound around his hand (his only hand, at the moment) and is trying to reel himself in with rather limited success. The current's pull is simply too strong, and his waterlogged cowl isn't helping. A pair of monkeys decide he's not too off-shore to be spared and seize their chance to strike, leaping for his exposed face with claws and teeth bared. They're taken down just as quickly by a powerful swipe of his claws, but it was clearly a lucky strike. Buffeted as he is by the river, Allen's aim is unreliable at best. The creatures' chittering reaches a feverish pitch as they gather on the bank, getting ready to play follow the leader; and a beat of hesitation stills him, torn between making it to land and simply letting go. The latter is the wiser choice by far, but he did promise to help clear the area. And these things can't bother other people so long as they're set on attacking him. Priorities thusly sorted, he grits his teeth and, against all good and common sense, redoubles his efforts to haul himself ashore.

It doesn't look like he'll make it in time.

[rhinemaid]

The first thought that crosses Ilde's mind is that she is not a bloody life-guard. This doesn't actually stop her from making the decision to assist; she's really coming to loathe those little beasts, and she's not having them in her river. (It is, as far as she's presently concerned, her river - with all due respect to Maryis.) She thinks for a moment, then vanishes again with a small disturbance in the water unlikely to come to Allen's attention at first.

When she's under him, though, her arms wrapping around his thighs and her shoulder pressing behind him as the quick and powerful motion of her tail drives the two of them forward toward the shore...well, that's going to be a little harder to fail to notice.

[tothelastbreath]

It is, very; and Allen's acknowledgement of it is immediate, instinctive, and... Embarrassing. A choked sound of surprise bubbles out of him, right as his thighs tense up in a coiled manner that quite plainly says he means to kick her. Thankfully, his brain catches up a second later to point out how much progress he's making all of a sudden, not to mention how much easier it's getting to breathe.

Oh. In that case.

Other than a quick downward glance, which doesn't show him much beyond a whole lot of water, his only reaction is to relax slightly in acceptance.

[rhinemaid]

Ilde registers the aborted kick, and the flat of her blade presses against the side of his thigh in a very polite warning - that would have been unwise on his part, given where she is and how difficult she is to get at from that angle.

(She may be mad - she is mad - but she's terribly clever.)

When they get near enough to the bank, she gives him a hard shove forwards to get him clear of the river's current (which doesn't seem to give her much trouble, though of course it wouldn't). She lets go in the process, rolling backwards in the water as he's propelled forward to the shore, and she'll surface when he's clear, knife in hand and blue-black eyes gleaming the way the rest of her does when the light catches on her flesh like mother of pearl.

[tothelastbreath]

He would thank her if he had a moment to spare, but with the horde of monkeys already leaping at him, there's barely time to shove himself on his feet and react.

A quick snap of his mantle sends the first few flying back. They crash more than land, each with a bone-deep crunch that leaves them twitching in their final death throes, and with the rest conveniently gathered on the bank, the fight ends swiftly. An oval shield with a cross in its center burns to life amidst the monkeys, disintegrating those unfortunate enough to be in direct contact with it. Others in its immediate vicinity are bisected by perpendicular slashes (again, crosses), before it vanishes with a final flare that takes out most of the mob. Spooked, the survivors turn tail and flee ― only to meet their end at Allen's claws.

Then it's all over, so fast it could almost be brutal if not for the unhappy twist of Allen's mouth when he surveys the bodies. He appears to shake himself out of it soon enough, turning instead to scan the river for whoever helped him earlier―

(Oh, wow.)

Going by the way snowy eyebrows are shooting straight into sopping wet bangs, this is Allen's first good look at Ilde (or any of her kind, for that matter). Dimly, he recalls snatches of stories told by sailors in shady taverns, usually when he's busy emptying someone else's pockets over a game of cards. They were typically long and wild and convoluted and drunken and, well, glorified old wives' tales, mostly.

Inaccurate too, seeing as none of them ever mentioned mermaids were blue.

"Ah... Thank you for earlier, Miss," He manages to say after a heartbeat, then in a display of good manners, falls into a crouch by the water so they're more or less on eye level, looking positively chagrined. "Sorry I tried to kick you. You caught me by surprise."

[ironshodboots]

Nazca has more than enough reason to dislike ravens. Generally, she's the sort of woman who prefers to have other people handle this sort of problem for her, but she's caught out going from one place to another, and finds herself sticking to the river. It might not make her safer in fact, but it makes her feel safer.

When she sees Ilde, she comments wryly, "First eels, now this." She has a stiletto knife in hand.

[rhinemaid]

"Eels were worse," Ilde says, apparently seeing no problem with skipping the pleasantries - under the circumstances, or just in general. "Eels were in their territory."

The monkeys that risk the river, on the other hand, are in hers.

[ironshodboots]

"Well, the gods-forsaken birds are in the air." She shakes her head. "Are you doing well enough, then?"

[rhinemaid]

"Better now-" she rolls in the water, illustratively, to show Nazca where the wound she had from the gun's backfire on their little jaunt seawards is gone, thanks to Balthier's magic. She's been handling herself all right.