[center][h1][color=silver]Annabelle Irons[/color][/h1]

and

[img]https://i.imgur.com/eEH78vK.png[/img][/center]

[hr]

The Rose Knight continued their dance, and Soth willingly obliged her without a word. Silver chains from sliced up appendages, butchering lasers from the eyes that emerged, and the Greater Horror casually continued to exponentially ramp up the amount of offending tentacles and eyes that appeared to assault Amaryllis. Soon, some tentacles were appearing with spikes on them, some with toothy mouths on them, a few with hard scales covering them, and eyes began to fire even stronger beams that dug into the carved stone walls around them with a frightening ease. It seemed the Horror was adjusting his tactics on the fly, confronting Amaryllis with greater threats than he had before. Soth almost didn't seem to care about Annabelle in the background, save a few beams and tentacles flung against her to keep the Rose Knight on her toes here and there. 

Alicia, too, would find a few things occur. As the tentacles narrowed down her location, passing through illusions and brushing against her enhanced uniform, they would begin to focus their assault on her. Eyes would also begin to emerge to fire lasers at her, ones on part with the eyes firing at Amaryllis now. Whilst the Beacon girl's safety was in question even more now, there was another thing she had done that was much more prominent in importance. 

The Star Seraph's arrow-spears flew true, even as she seemingly tried what could be a risky gambit at stopping Soth's true incarnation. They bounced off of the ceiling, threading the incredibly thin gap between the top of the stone ceiling and Soth's abyssal portals, flying down towards the altar and the sheet-covered body on top of it. Scale-covered tentacles shot out from the back of the portals to protect the body itself, taking the brunt of the light arrows. These tentacles in a flash of light were burnt greatly, glowing embers and singed and roasted flesh visible on them in the aftermath. 

But the arrows aimed at the altar hit, straight and true. Like beams of light they cut through the altar like the claws of an angered beast, piercing even the center shaft of it and cutting into the floor below. The golden ornamentation, the lavish design, it was gouged out like a cancer...and the altar collapsed. 

Though the cultists who had been standing around it now lied on the ground dead, their lives absorbed to fuel the altar as the ritual neared completion, a guttural scream like a great beast rang through the stone of the crypt...and out into the graveyard from the crypt's entrance. Stone and gold and fragments began to crumble, collapsing swiftly to the floor and allowing the body that had been on top to fall with them...only to be caught in the embrace of emerging chains from underneath the altar. But whilst the body was safe, the magical energies emitting from the crypt began to waver, the stone walls giving a great shudder as something seemed to go off-kilter. 

[color=crimson][i]'Well well, i must congratulate you for your valiant efforts in destroying my altar. It seems i cannot remotely channel my essence and finish the ritual in the normal manner...so i am forced to use other means....

A direct exposure to the rest of my self shall suffice!'[/i][/color]

The stone walls of the crypt then began to shake and shudder again, but this time without a sudden stop. Cracks began to form along the stone walls and ceiling, at first thing and spider-web-like, but then becoming larger and more substantial. Glowing glyphs upon the walls began to shatter and fall, the lit braziers shaking and some falling. 

The stone ceiling began to crumble, some dirt and heavy stone falling around the magical girl in the crypt's depths, and the floor began to...rise. 

[center][h3][i]-Outside the Crypt-[/i][/h3][/center]

Those who were outside of the crypt would find a startling sight. The crypt, or at least the above-ground part, began to crumble and collapse. Dirt began to rise around their feet rapidly, as if something was moving upwards. And indeed...it was. 

As the ground under their shook and quaked like someone had dropped a bomb, the barrier shimmered into visibility as magic pushed back the dirt and the above-ground ruins of the crypt like they were mere ragdolls. Cracks appeared on the barrier itself, even, as  the ground seemed to rise up into the air, eventually shattering with a great thundering.

Now it was in the air, up in the air for all to see. A great stone platform, the ruins of an altar, Alicia and Amaryllis fighting the tentacles of part of a horror that had been incarnated, Summer and Annabelle where they stood or kneeled, and a white sheet covered body held up by dark chains. A great power seemed to be anchored to the now-aerial platform, the former floor of the crypt covered in a light purple glow with an incredibly sinister aura. 

Annabelle felt the words die in her throat as she watched the scene occur from her position, feeling the floor shudder and watching as the now-platform she and the few others were on floated up into the air a bit before stopping. However, she looked back to Summer quickly as she held up the body that had been on the altar in her chains. 

It was far easier to see what Annabelle looked like at this stage of the ritual. Her other arm was weak, tighter against the bone, the kind of weakened flesh and bone one might expect to see out of a concentration camp. Her legs were similar, but not so bad, and her torso was mostly fine as a look of mortal terror cane onto her face. 

[color=silver]"I can break the channel Soth's is going to use to try to get into the body. That way....he can't...enter it, but it's only going to be this weak for a few more minutes.

I can break that link, it will cancel the ritual. Soth's power still grounds this place, and the body, to this realm. B-But h-he's...ARGH!!!...he's going to try to directly take over the body...i can feel it.... 

I...I....I need magical energy, and a lot of it. Or...alternately....if you or someone can shift into the overcity, i can channel that power through my prosthetic arm to shift just the connection...then.....we will....cut the connection faster..."[/color] 

Annabelle's voice was weaker, as Summer would be able to easily tell. But her ideas was simple: disrupt the connection by trying to overcity shift it. Or just use magical energy to disrupt it if she had enough given to her due to her own stores running incredibly low by now. 

The void-touched girl felt the feeling in her legs and flesh begin to fade, even as the sharpness of her pain continued on and on and on...like the dull beat of a drum. Her mouth was getting dryer, and she could feel the vestiges of power and life she was holding onto being pulled at. She wasn't going to die in a second or something dumb like that. But if they didn't stop this then Soth was going to rampage in a mortal coil. A proper incarnation, even, which would be ultimately terrifying. 

Then it struck. A painful dig into her very soul, surprising her enough with the pain that Annabelle let out a blood-curdling shriek of agony that rung out into the graveyard as clear as crystal. 

[color=silver]"Please...please..."[/color] the girl said, almost sobbing and seeming to beg Summer with her eyes as she looked to her again. 

In the sky, in the swirling center of the storm right above where the crypt had been, the air and physical space itself began to [b][u]bend and twist[/u][/b] like a writhing worm. The storm continued on, but whatever was starting...well, they needed to stop this ritual and all of this before that occurred. That much everyone could perhaps tell, perhaps just by merely glimpsing it. 


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