[h3][color=gold][center][img]https://i.imgur.com/VnvZYEe.png[/img]
[/center]
Ezekiel [@Helo]
Scratch / Val [@Apex Sunburn]
Callandra [@princess][hr]
[center][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_1Iw37Mx8o[/youtube][/center]

The beeping reaches its final breathless moment. One last pulse. One last blink. Then—

[i]White light. Heat. Sound like a god’s scream.[/i]

The bomb detonates. Not with fire, but with force. A wave of arcane energy explodes outward, tearing through the cargo hold like a tidal surge of lightning and sound.

Time fractures. Metal screams. Crates are hurled into the air like toys caught in a storm.

Ezekiel, you see it coming but move too slow. The blast hits you squarely, hurling you backwards through a wall of shattered barrels. Your body crashes against the cargo hold’s frame, the impact knocking the breath from your lungs and leaving you sprawled in a heap. But you’re alive, and you’re mostly intact. 

Val, you dive behind a stack of crates just in time to dull the worst of it, but you are not fully unscathed. The shockwave tears across your side. You feel something sharp cut into you, but thankfully it doesn’t feel too deep. You hit the ground hard, pain flaring as you clutch your ribs and try to breathe through the sting. 

Scratch, your instinct is to protect Vallena, no matter the cost. By the time you turn to act she dives to relative safety and here is no more time to react. But thankfully, you don’t have to.

Because Callandra does.

You feel her grab you just before the explosion hits. She throws herself over you, wrapping her body around yours in a single desperate motion.

Callandra, the blast strikes your back like nothing you’ve ever experienced before. It tears into you with unrelenting power. You feel bones crack. You feel something softer, more internal, give way. Your world turns white. You hit the ground like a ragdoll, and then there is nothing but ringing silence and the taste of blood.

Scratch, when the smoke clears, you are not untouched, but you are okay. Callandra, however, does not rise.

And around you, the chaos deepens.

The explosion has shattered more than wood and steel.

At the far end of the hold, the griffon’s cage is mangled, split wide open. You all hear it before you see it ...a shriek, wild and furious, echoing through the haze.

The griffon erupts from the wreckage, wings spread wide. It crashes into a stack of crates, sends barrels flying, talons slashing wildly at anything near. Its eyes are crazed. Its body is all muscle and panic and fury.

And behind it, another danger builds. The hull near the engineering deck is fractured. A jagged breach has formed near the sealed engineering room that houses the bound elemental itself. Sparks crackle from exposed conduit. The floor beneath you trembles.

You can feel it ...the elemental within is stirring. The wards are damaged. The bond is weakening.

Smoke swirls in thick columns now. Fires flicker in the debris. Somewhere behind it all, an alarm begins to wail.

The cargo hold has become a war zone.

And Callandra lies motionless in the rubble.

But that’s not all. You hear something else, something peculiar…

The sound of the very weave of space and time ripping open, and the smell of smoke and brimstone that follows. And in an instant, the silhouettes of 3 humanoid shapes appear in different corners of the room. The thick smoke in the air makes them difficult to make out, but you notice that they each are wearing some kind of red hood.  

What do you do?[/color][/h3]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/TYyagV4.jpeg[/img]