the sky is falling.

[baedalites]

Who: Everyone.
What: Part two begins.
When: Evening, a few hours before the end of the 24-hour siege period.
Notes: Feel free to thread in comments here or make your own posts! NPC your own monsters, team up in locations anywhere you like, and feel free to plot things at the plotting post, which has the relevant details. Remember that this is city-wide, so you are free to do what you like with locations.

Just after dark, the air of Baedal seems to change. While it was tense before, with the stand-off in Mafaton, a new kind of electrical energy begins to spread through the city, leaking from the sky itself. The horizon is clear tonight, even starry where the city lights don't obscure the view, but soon enough it begins to blur with color, and at an alarmingly rapid pace. Bright streaks of pink and green begin to spiral across the sky, in an approximation of the auroras, though it is much nearer and brighter than any common demonstration of an aurora should be. The geomagnetic storm swirls and dances, initially beautiful, but its intensity is ominous.

It's also growing. Most geomagnetic storms stay to one corner, but this spreads across the entire sky, green-purple-pink-red illuminated and inching further into the dark, leaving the city of Baedal tinted with a dim, eerie glow. This continues for about a half an hour, until that tension reaches its breaking point.

The magical boundaries holding Mafaton crack and then completely shatter. It is audible, and the backlash sends flying many of the Candlelighters trying frantically to preserve the borders of their siege. A few of them are killed by the backlash of their spell's combustion, but more are simply shaken; having one's magic work so thoroughly broken is not a pleasant experience. The sound covers another tearing, this time a metaphysical one that rips the heavens open in places the common eye can't see. Those whose vision allows them to observe different layers of reality will notice, but others will only see the incoming flood of creatures from other universes.

One siege has ended, but another has just begun, and this time, it's not just Mafaton at risk.

Comments

[studious_snake]

Jay had been in his apartment when things took a turn for the more chaotic, lounging around in partial snake form, his lower half a tail and his upper half almost entirely snake-like itself, but with a human head and arms so he could hear anything that came up on his CiD and type in messages. When Jay heard the noises, he shifted his upper body to human and looked out the window and, seeing a giant skeletal dragon thing flying around in the sky and giant monsters in the street, decided to head back into his apartment, away from the window, and check his CiD. Unfortunately, the dragon had seen him at the window and dove toward it. At first, Jay didn't even register the dragon, only the flying glass, and he screamed, his upper body instinctively covering itself with scales which helped to protect him from more severe cuts than the scrapes he received and his hands covering his eyes.

Then he looked up and saw the dragon.

"Oh, shit."

Turning, he slithered back into his apartment, clutching his CiD in his hand as he raced through the rooms. He knew that he was going away from the door, but he'd have had to go closer to the dragon to get out and he didn't want to do that. Besides, there was a window in his room, and he was only on the second floor, so he figured he could jump out and be fine. Of course, he'd never jumped from that nigh before, but it seemed like it should be low enough that it should be fine.

However, when he reached his room and threw open the window, he hesitated a moment, staring down. It looked awfully high when he was actually considering jumping...

However, he quickly made up his mind when he heard a loud crash of a dragon racing down the hall, its wings smashing against everything as it went, and, closing his eyes, jumped out the window. Then he hit the ground. It was jarring and uncomfortable, but he was fine, so he darted out of the alley he'd landed in and slithered down the street rapidly, trying to find somewhere that might be safe, CiD still clutched in his hand. He knew it might be a bad idea to go out like this, but it was too late to go back now and get pants, and at least covered in scales it would be less likely for anyone to recognize him.

Jay was starting to feel like he was doing fairly well when a large, apparent zombie composed of multiple corpses sewn together stepped out in front of him. Jay recoiled and hissed, letting his fangs drop into place despite knowing that he wasn't about to sink his fangs into that thing.

[23rd]

It's been a long time since Laura's been able to let go like this. The last few years, she's had to worry about annoying concerns like is this person dying the only way to solve this problem -- generally the answer is no, necessitating another course of action -- but there's no questioning it now. These things are dangerous and vicious and aiming to kill, and nobody has time to subdue.

It means that she's a lot faster.

She just slaughters everything in her way, aiming for spines and heads -- it's a good rule of thumb that most things die permanently when you behead them -- and nothing slows her down, not being bitten or clawed or stabbed. There's a hole in her abdomen the size of a golf ball, but it isn't stopping her from dropping from above and landing on the shoulders of this ragged zombie thing. Her claws sink deep into its brain first, but it's still moving even after that, not that she's too surprised. The abdead ones are the worst, because often they don't die even if you pull off the head, but she's making good headway.

Her claws are capable of cutting through steel; they go through dead flesh like paper. She detaches one of its arms and sends it flying out into the street, where it lands still twitching.

It's hard to say whether she thinks Jay is a civilian -- a giant snake looks an awful lot like some of the monsters coming in through reality's holes -- or if she's just targeting everything that looks aggressive.

[studious_snake]

Jay was relieved when he saw the girl tear into the monster with it's claws. He'd been pretty sure an undead thing like that wouldn't be stopped by a bit of venom, no matter how toxic, and Jay's bite was pretty much the entirety of his arsenal. However, a worried twinge on his mind reminded him that while he was clearly a living thing, he hadn't done anything to identify himself as definitely not being a monster himself yet. Fortunately, when shifting to escape he'd retained enough human characteristics to speak normally.

"Thanks!" he called, which thanking her should identify him as a civilian, and it was probably best to express gratitude when someone saved your life, anyway. However, he'd noticed the hole in her abdomen when she'd dropped down, and was concerned as well. "Are you sure you can keep going with that?" He nodded toward her abdomen. She seemed to be fine despite that, however. Still, he hoped his savior and hopefully protector wasn't about to drop dead.

[23rd]

When she's done ripping it into pieces -- if that doesn't kill it, it at least renders it effectively harmless unless anyone trips over it and lands in its mouth -- she's covered in some awful looking and smelling combination of mutant pus and congealed blood. It's gotten in her bloodstream, too, but her healing factor's already fighting that off. Whatever this is, it's no Legacy.

Well, he's lucid and he's not attacking. It's more likely he's a citizen than not, then, but Laura's social skills are pretty poor under the best of circumstances, so she ignores the question. "Are there more?"

[studious_snake]

When the woman doesn't answer, Jay assumes she's close enough to fine, and then he notices the wound closing. Well, that explains why she wasn't more concerned about it. As for her social graces, he wasn't really concerned about them. He wasn't the best socially himself, and his sister had never been any better than this woman was at social skills, either. At the moment, he cares more about survival than having all his questions answered. He glances around.

"I don't see any at the moment, but it's only a matter of time. There's this skeleton dragon thing crashing around in my apartment, which is right over--" Suddenly the window of a nearby apartment, one which happened to be Jay's, was smashed by said skeletal dragon, shards of glass flying everywhere. "--there."

[23rd]

Laura whips around at the sound of breaking glass, her feet spreading to balance her weight out more evenly as she assesses the situation. Skeleton anything is bad news; if they're lucky it can be killed by beheading, but that's no guarantee. Things reanimated that way have a tendency to be able to reassemble themselves.

Well, there's one way to find out.

She glances briefly at Jay. "Hide." Then she's taking off in the direction of his apartment, launching herself up the side of the building. She's completely fearless about drawing attention to herself -- as long as things are focused on her, they're not attacking other people, and she's much harder to kill than the average citizen. Bone isn't much harder to slice up than meat, really.

[studious_snake]

Hiding was something he could and would do very, very willingly. He knew he couldn't fight any of these things, after all, and he didn't want to die. He wasn't the noble hero die in battle type. If he'd legitimately thought he could add something he would if something happened to pose a danger to him as well, at least in his mind, but that was the extent of his heroism. Slithering away quickly, Jay shifted away the last of his human remnants to better streamline his body before beginning to cram himself behind a dumpster.

The smell was terrible and he nearly gagged, and he couldn't due to the strength of the smell catch the scent of anything beyond the garbage, but it was a tight place that these creatures would probably not expect to find a civilian crammed in the tiny space between the dumpster and the wall. In this form, he couldn't hear what was going on out there, but curiosity would lead him to poke his head out every so often before pulling it back in to remain out of sight.

[23rd]

The dragon lunges at her and nearly takes a chunk out of her torso, but she twists just enough for it to miss, its jaw snapping shut bare centimeters from her skin. Her arms wrap around its head as she clamps down on it and it screams -- how, exactly, she's not sure, since it has no vocal chords -- and flails, trying to shake her off. She's clawing at its spine, trying to sever it at the base, which becomes enormously difficult when it takes off flying. With her attached.

The two of them are grappling in the air, her trying to cut off its head while it writhes in the air, trying to throw her off its back. It can't bite her and its front claws can't reach her, but it twists itself upside down and swipes at her with its back legs just as her claws slice through the base of one of its wings. They plummet to the ground, crashing into a nearby window.

There's a split second of silence before the dragon comes flailing out again, screeching, and then Laura leaps out after it. Holding her severed arm.

Her scream isn't out of pain, but a fierce, feral anger -- and rather than dropping her arm, she uses it as a club. Her claws are still out, it's more or less the same as using a sword, and it gives her twice the range. Her claws slice through the thing's vertebrae as she spins, her foot slamming into the bottom of its jaw, her outstretched foot claw piercing the bone and embedding itself deeply into its "brain". The dragon convulses and lets out one long, hideous death rattle, then stops moving entirely.

She shoves the severed arm back in its socket and holds it there, waiting for the flesh to knit together. It'll be a few minutes at the most.

It also gives her a moment to catch her breath and restore some of the blood she's lost.

[studious_snake]

Jay watched the bloody fight in awe and horror, amazed by the ferocity of the skeleton creature and glad that he hadn't tried to face it himself, as he doubted he'd have survived such an attack, but also surprised by the ferocity of his savior, and her incredible ability to recover from things that would have probably killed him. Like the loss of an arm.

His stomach knotted up when he saw the blood drip to the ground, certain she was going to die, and he was going to be left relying on the skeletal dragon's inability to notice him for his survival, but she didn't. Not only didn't she die, she managed to destroy the dragon, then put herself back together.

In awe, he slithered out, shifting at that point so his upper half was somewhat human, though his lower half remained entirely serpentine.

"Those abilities must be amazingly useful! I'd likely have died if I'd tried to fight that thing. There's not much I can do against the undead."

[23rd]

Laura glances over at him supremely calmly in the face of the fact that one of her arms is severed and she's talking to a half-snake-man. Welcome to Baedal, shit's weird. "Remove the head." That's her best advice, yes. Beheading tends to kill everything. Tends to, because some of these damn things are doggedly persistent and keep reanimating. She's starting to learn when it's wise to go fetch a magic-user. "Can you use a sword?"

No, Laura, most people don't just happen to know how to use deadly weapons.

[studious_snake]

Looking at her severed arm was disturbing, but after what he'd seen with the healing hole before, he wasn't too worried about it since he was sure it would heal, especially since she seemed so calm about the whole situation.

"I'm not sure I can remove the head, and I know I can't use a sword."

The only way he knew how to fight was to strike and bite, like a snake. It was only by his serpentine instincts and venom that he could do anything against any opponent at all, since learning to fight had never been necessary in his life.