[quote=@Cruallassar]"Um, not to rain on the party or anything, but if you are now free to leave...and do leave...then what's to stop us from resetting the whatever it was you said afterwards and leave ourselves? Seems like that's a win-win situation."[/quote]
[quote=@WiseDragonGirl]"I just thought I'd let you know before you begin spewing riddles and make us squirm and stuff."[/quote]
[quote=@Bright_Ops]"You can't leave... not really anyway. You don't have a body in the physical world of your own, so the only ways you can enter the real world is if someone created you a body out of dark, twisted magic or if you possess someone... which is why we're really here, isn't it?" Narrowing his gaze at their 'hostess', he felt more and more confident with his theory as he continued "It's why this world was designed to make us suffer... to try and break our wills to make it easier for you. But you couldn't just take anyone; A weak soul begets a weak body and a weak host wouldn't last long... but while you managed to clear away those with weaker souls, you're not confident that you would win in an outright battle with us, thus this 'game' of yours."[/quote]
The woman blinked several times rapidly, her smile twisting in bemusement as confusion blossomed across her face.

[b][color=coral]"...Are you little motes being serious? I am having genuine trouble telling otherwise..."[/color][/b]

[quote=@Doc Doctor]A flash, a splitting boom, tatters of Donny's coat spinning in the void. The entire time the group had believed Donny to be on their side, but the only side Donny had ever been on was his own. He was no longer under contract, and so just like that, there was one less party member and one more dangerous foe. He'd have fired across his belly and through the side of his overcoat, drawing his revolver from its leg holster while his flank was hidden to the others. Ariett had been the one Donny considered the most threatening, so he aimed to shoot her down first with a .454 to the heart.[/quote]
[b][color=coral]"How...very bold of you."[/color][/b] The woman practically purred as she straightened again, neatly folding her hands together - the claws extending from her fingers silently retracting. Her eyes narrowed ever-so-faintly as she gave Donny a lazy, contemptuous smile. [b][color=coral]"...and how very conceited. Hubris within hubris. Though the audacity does-"[/color][/b]

[quote=@Holmishire]As she forced herself limp, she surreptitiously armed the grenade, holding it by her belly, and drifting lazily back towards Leona and Donny. Once she drew close, she spin around to protect the others from the blast with her body, and release the grenade.[/quote]
[b][color=coral]"Oh my."[/color][/b] The woman said faintly, her voice slightly raised and distant. The maneuver had apparently caught her entirely off-guard. [b][color=coral]"That's troublesome-"[/color][/b]

Like most other incendiary grenades, the M-14 napalm grenade was not strictly intended as a lethal weapon, but rather to burn through fortifications or to destroy troublesome objects. Its effective range upon detonation was quite limited, though it was likely to be quite unpleasant to anything it made contact with. Like other incendiary grenades, it also possessed an exceedingly short fuse, and started to burn a mere second after Ariett released it - combusting with a blinding light, sending sparks and embers flying in every direction throughout the void as a second star was born in the darkness followed immediately thereafter by a billowing cloud of obscuring smoke, obstructing both the woman and Donny from view - as well as the sword that Fortune saw fit to throw, which plunged straight into the fog tip-first, and flying eerily straight. Straighter than it had any business being, considering the angle Fortune had hurled it at. If Donny did not move away from his position, the weapon would hurtle through the cloud of smoke and impale him right through the chest - though he would have faint warning of its approach, only in that he could have seen Fortune throw it before Ariett had released the grenade.

The haphazardly flying sparks and cinders erupting from within the cloud of smoke shot through every direction in the surrounding darkness - and directly below them, approximately three meters down, they hit something before snuffing out. The darkness below them shivered, and gave way.

The source of the audible humming was revealed. It was a machine - insomuch as such a curious assembly could have been called mechanical. Resembling a large stone cairn, with twelve layers of monolithic stones layered atop each other, separated by thin films of cerulean static energies and adorned with strings of carved bones and chunks of obsidian. A series of precision linework arranged in fractal geometric patterns covered the surface of each stone, and set into the face of the sixth from the bottom was a computer screen gilded in brass, with a pewter case seated within the monolith's body. A fine mechanical keyboard with extremely robust but ornate pewter keys with pearl-coated surfaces and emerald typeface extended from below it, along with a messy guts-worth of cables and wiring worming out to trace all around the cairn, secured by clasps of the strung bones and connecting to obtrusive pewter ports in the side of the other eleven monoliths. Twelve small levitating spheres not entirely dissimilar in appearance from the traffic sphere from earlier hung about the top of the cairn, with holes along each of their three axis. A glittering black fluid of sorts circulated in and out of each opening, passing between each sphere in turn as a coursing, levitating river that formed a wavering, triple-layered halo of starlight around the assembly.

[b][color=coral]"What a hassle."[/color][/b] The woman's voice was utterly flat, but Donny could see that her face had twisted into a vicious snarl. As the rapidly approaching cloud of smoke approached them - the incendiary grenade having been flung at some speed - she reached out with her right hand, grasping at the device inside.

She missed, but apparently managed to graze it. The grenade and the cloud of smoke surrounding it pinwheeled a ways above her head, leaving behind a trail of sparks. Though it began to ascend, the woman's gesture had apparently robbed it of most of its velocity, leaving it hanging in space, still burning viciously, rather than flying away into nothingness. The woman hissed angrily, waving her hand as though it had been caught in a mousetrap. A fair amount of smoke clung and wafted from it conspicuously, but it appeared unburnt.

"I'm not positive, but I'm pretty certain that's the Allineator." The pavise knight commented from between Fortune, Kael, and Andreas. "Given none of you are local, I probably have the best chance at deactivating it...and if you know anything about magic, I guess you'd be the next best thing to our technician..." He nodded at Kael. "What do you all say to us two going down and switching it off while the others go and distract Leona and that fucking Proxy?"