[quote=@drewccapp][color=pink]"So, I have three days to [i]live[/i]! I wonder what I can do with that kind of freedom? Well, there are a lot of ways to live. Just as many as there are to die. I wonder, how do you want to live? How do you want to die?"[/color] She then shifted her tone from playful to serious. [color=pink]"I can tell you have a great amount of love for your people. After all, what kind of person is willing to commit social suicide for their peers? We live in a stable time. Who wants to hear a message of doom? Would you listen to your own message in the way you've delivered it today?"[/color][/quote]

Ruskali peered at her mask from under bushy eyebrows. "To live..." he murmured, "...to die. There is no such thing, or there won't be, soon. You should know, Ze. You protect yourself from them, but the Horrors and the Nox are not the ones that need worry you. It is Amalgam. It is the Ravel. No one will hear it, no one will believe. All life as we know it is about to end, but only after your light goes out. So you must listen, and speak."

He lashed out and grabbed Listener's shoulders in a vicelike grip. "It's true, they're complacent! They won't hear the death knoll, but they will hear you! The Ravel draw the swarm, the swarm devours and then becomes one in Amalgam. Warn them, warn them!"

His skin began to rapidly lose color, turning papery thin while a roiling swelling darkness swirled in his veins. Ruskali was wasting away before her, as if his very life were being sucked from his body. "Secure the Light!" he choked while his gray-fogged eyes sank into skull-like sockets, and a group of passersby shrieked and backed away.

Inside Ruskali's widening mouth was the writhing, oily black sinew of a Nox.

[quote=@Plank Sinatra][color=6ecff6]"So...not to freak anyone out, but there's an evil death cloud just rolling up,"[/color] Iris reported brightly over comms. [color=6ecff6]"Just cruising in like it owns the place. I know in all the stories bad things always happen when someone goes to check the evil vortex out up close, but does anyone have [i]juuust[/i] enough curiosity to talk me into flying closer and seeing what's up with it?"[/color][/quote]

On the rooftop below, the hooded figure left the barrel to burn and swept away through a rooftop door, which squealed and clacked tightly shut.

The undulating dark cloud-- like shifting starlings --was still miles away on the horizon.

[color=B6C6AB]"'Evil death cloud' sounds like a plague of locusts,"[/color] Fluke jabbed conversationally while he spun the drone around and around Rose's head to see her new Nox-scarf from all angles. [color=B6C6AB]"I vote you fly straight into it. If you're not devoured like a chicken leg in a pool of piranhas, then I guess the rest of us'll be alright. But if we don't hear back from you in an hour we'll be in the fallout bunker. Oh hey, Cedar's got a gun pointed dead-on at Rose's face!"[/color]

[quote=@Grey Omen]He aimed Steel Rose's gun slightly off, just in case a direct hit would hurt her somehow. Then a colder part of his mind took over, steadying his hand and moving slightly to line it up directly. [color=BurlyWood][i]'Better safe than sorry,'[/i][/color] something in him whispered. [color=BurlyWood][i]'Safety as in guarantee Nox removal, that is, not her safety specifically.'[/i][/color] He made a silent prayer that a direct hit would only burn the Nox away without harming Rose, then pulled the trigger. ([@LuckyBlackCat])[/quote]

[h2][i]ka-BOOM![/i][/h2]
[i]SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE[/i]

The impact was like a heavy mallet; it struck Rose in the face of her mask and threw her sprawling backward to the ground while the narrow alley brightened with searing, blinding white light. She could suddenly breathe again, because the Nox had dissipated into a poof of harmless black smoke.

Its death-scream echoed down the alley and rang in their ears before it was gone.

The armadillo, undisturbed thanks to Cedar and Rose, continued digging in the dirt, uncovering more and more of a dead human arm that was still connected to a body, somewhere beneath the packed ground.

Fluke's drone whirred helpfully overhead.