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

[video; addressed to Nuala but on the Hellsing lock]

[captaincocksure]

[He just holds up his CiD, panning the camera, long enough to give a clear idea of what's happening, and then he shouts above the din:]

Your Highness.

I assume orders are to get in there and start turning these things back.

[It's not really a question, just him confirming before he starts punching things.]

[23rd]

Even in the chaos erupting all over the city, the sudden presence of enormous robots is difficult to miss.

Especially to people who already know what they are.

Unfortunately, most of Baedal's xenian citizens don't -- and a lot of them die before they figure out how quickly they need to run. The Sentinels are shooting to kill, not capture, and they're targeting everyone nonhuman as if they were mutants.

X was already out on the beat, but she stopped dead and clapped her hands over her ears when the Candlelighter's spell shatters, the cracking and separate tearing amplified with her superhuman hearing. The first Sentinel she sees is a good distance away, but it's so tall it's clearly visible from where she's standing. She doesn't hesitate before hauling ass in that direction, barely slowed down by the various aggressive creatures in between her and it -- she plows right through them, leaving a trail of eviscerated monsters in her wake.

She sends one public message over the Network:

SENTINELS IN LUDMEAD

She has no time for any other warning as she's immediately slammed into by some kind of mutant dragon thing that doesn't die even when she stabs it in the brain. She's tangled up in that for a good three minutes, unable to get to the robot people are now fleeing from.

[payglorytoashes]

The analysis of magical barrier is engrossing, to the point where Rodolphus does not take much notice of the sky — his narrow focus on the world and lack of awareness in regard to his surroundings (or lack of constant vigilance, as some people might put it) has always been a problem for him. The magic is not what he's accustomed to, either. That's what makes him so deeply concentrated.

At the first crack, however, he has just enough time to jerk back. He's not even fast enough to warn whatever Hellsing employees have stuck with him before the boundaries shatter. Though he's not as tied to it as some of the Candlelighters, something that probably saves him, he actually blacks out for a second, though he catches himself before he falls over. As secretly proud as he is of the effort, it is immediately negated by a roughly four-foot tall frog creature landing on him. This appears to have been by accident instead of design, though there are more coming behind the initial scout. It and the others are armed, but seem confused and disoriented for the moment.

NOW WITH FIRST PARAGRAPH I'M THE BEST RPER

[molotovmartinis]

In three thousand or so years of fucking with humans, Balthazar knows from experience that people who have never before encountered anything the slightest bit supernatural, and even some who have, often start experiencing a sort of animal-like existentialism. They are reduced to clutching their faces and whimpering, why is this happening to me? What's going on?

Since his rebirth in fire, Balthazar hasn't wondered that. He knew. He was allowed to see the inner workings of the universe, and became one of the terrible cogs in it. He was a thing that happened to other people. There were most definitely many higher powers, and no one could claim to understand God, but he knew. He understood. He was the magician's assistant who disappeared or drowned or had knives thrown at them but was in on the secret.

Not for the first time since arriving in Baedal but now in a most unpleasant way, he's forced to confront the fact he no longer knows or understands anything. It's possible he can see more than your average Baedal citizen, but seeing no longer brings any answers. Why is the sky glowing and whirling? Why is it ripping open and allowing creatures from other places — some more dark than he's ever seen, and he has seen darkness — and giving him a blinding headache? At first he hides. He has been a general in Hell's army but he has never been a soldier. That wasn't the fucking point of him.

And then he can feel them, the seplavites. They are calling out in their mindless way, confused at their arrival, sniffing around for a leader the same way he sniffed around too his first day here. They know he's here, but in his absence, they just do what they do, which is hunt.

He could get out there and command them. It's his birthright. They must do as he says. That's their birthright. He could save people, or command them to attack either of the two House Ecumenal churches, just because.

After a long hesitation, he begins walking toward Mafaton, a mere shadow to anyone unable to see past his illusions: scentless, soundless, barely there at all. The seplavites join him in trickles, unable to resist his presence. And they can't hide themselves at all, curiously well-behaved despite being slavering, brainless corpses.

[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.

lyla & steph

[satrinah]

For the most part, Lyla's actions here in the chaos have been defensive. She will rescue anyone obviously in trouble and in her way, but her job has been to keep one person safe, and she's taken it pretty seriously. (It helps that in all this mess she hasn't used in a while; that certainly does do something for one's mental clarity, even if her resulting irritability is being taken out on the monsters.)

It's the huge, hulking, mutated cannibals (from one of those apocalypse worlds, not that Lyla knows that yet) that catch her eye in Canker Wedge, though. They have surrounded a small wooden house towards the outskirts of the canton and are banging on the doors while its inhabitants scream and try to beat them off with household weapons like kitchen knives or frying pans.

Lyla hesitates, and then starts marching toward the house.

[abruptplummeting]

Of all the places to encounter something like this, it had to be Badside. No, really. Could this have been any more cliche? However, sarcastically analyzing the situation is far far from Bucky's mind. Before getting deployed to Germany, heck up until he knew what HYDRA was, he'd flip his wig over something like this. Combating humans were one thing, but monsters? This was a whole other ballgame. And then again, even HYDRA didn't hit this level of crazy.

Right now? Bucky's positioned himself on top of a beat-up old apartment building. He's close to the edge, and part of him is wondering if it's gonna give way any minute. He's taking his chances though.

Steady hands, steady breathing. He peers through the scope of his rifle, fixing his cross-hairs on this loon. He's not shooting yet, just keeping the creature in his sights as it shambles through the dank nighttime streets of Badside. He needs to get a good shot, 'cuz he's got a feeling this thing ain't gonna go down easy.

Here goes.

BANG!

The shot echoes throughout the streets and there's pained roar, but it doesn't go down. A shot to the head and it doesn't go down. So now, this... whatever it is has spun around and is staring right at him.

Slow exhale. Then, to himself, "Why do I got a feeling that this ain't gonna end well?"

[closed narrative]

[cerebral]

The sky is falling

Writers in the Romantic era used to speak about the breathtaking splendour of nature, its innate beauty and terror—

the sky is falling

—they called it the sublime. It's something that Charles Xavier has only a moment to reflect upon as he looks up and thinks how small everything is in the scheme of things—

the sky is falling is falling

—how small he is, how small this canton is, how small this city, how small how small—

is falling is falling the sky is

—and he hears a shout and turns, eyes full of sorrow, because he can already feel what’s coming for them, coming for him, and he has to go while all around him hundreds, thousands, millions of minds scream out

the sky is falling the sky is falling the sky is falling

- - -

They try to tear at his mind with teeth that don't exist in the sense that they're not really teeth but there is sharp pain that isn't pain because it's not attached to his body.

They take the forms of things more terrible than humanity could ever dream of, these things that come from the darkness between stars, and twist and become something worse. They are coming for him and he feels his mind burning like it never has before. Although he's not only holding them off and it’s not for survival alone —other citizens who can access the astral plane are present and they are doing the same as he is. Quite apart from the city, they fight an invisible battle that few will see. Some succumb to the vicious attacks to their psyche and, somewhere else, their bodies become cold and lifeless.

Abstractly, he remembers Remy once said something about the attraction of certain creatures to the brightness of minds like his. But if they are the juiciest morsels, they are also the first line of defense.

What will stop them once they’re gone?

And so he battles on trying not to let the people he might never see again, the things he might never do or accomplish, distract him from his task. And in his weariest moments he thinks about nothing but them.

- - -

Later, when the fighting is done but he is too exhausted to try and pull himself back into his body, he drifts. That's when he senses it again —the unceasing, mindless hunger that he encountered when he first explored the fog.

Seeing it is worse. It’s nothing. An absence in existence, something that the human mind isn't meant to comprehend. It fills him with as much dread now as it did then, and even though he's far away, he feels a need to flee further, even though he knows there is no further.

So he does the next best thing and reaches out to the minds around him, as if they were guiding lights pointing the way home. But they're not; they're humans and xenians alike and he can feel them. Their pain and distress, their cries for help, their screaming need to survive.

Many of them fade out completely. Others simply stop.

He keeps going.