[center] [img]https://i.imgur.com/kNmO8zV.png[/img] [b][color=DarkOrange]wordcount:[/color][/b] 1,635 (+3) [b][color=DarkOrange]Amaterasu: level 8[/color][/b] EXP: [color=DarkOrange]///////////////[/color]////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (15/80) [b][color=DarkOrange]Location:[/color][/b] Dead Zone Hinterlands - Curien Mansion [/center] After the very satisfying experience of smashing the last few gnomes into porcelain powder, Amatarusu managed to pick up the scent and sound of Not Kim and Kit. Both their metallic clanking and oily smell (be it armor polish or grease) were pretty distinctive. She then led the way there, senses sharp for hostiles, but ultimately failed to pick up the ambush they all walked into before it sprung on them. The skull-like things didn’t seem too dangerous to her, at least not until they lit their fuses, and she got what their deal was. Fortunately, she actually had experience dealing with explosives, and so swiftly paused the world, intending to cut those same fuses to neutralize that threat. When she did, however, she got an early glance at the bat-like being who’d darted in out of nowhere. Suspended in the air, frozen in time, the bat-being was in the middle of dashing down from the ceiling. Not at them. But at the skulls. It was also wearing well kept clothes, which put it well above the ghoulish aesthetics of anything else in this place, implying it did not belong, and adding credence to the idea that he was indeed going for their foes and not them. As such, she gave it a chance to prove himself, and he very much delivered, grabbing and tossing the skull bombs into the pit with supreme speed that meant that she [i]had[/i] to pause time every few moments in order to keep track of him doing so. If only she had a celestial brush technique to slow down time. That would be ever so handy right now. As a result of having as much time as she wanted to process what was going on, the divine was likely far less in awe than the others were when he finished up his cleanup, though she was still very impressed. Sure, she could have dealt with that herself, but she wasn’t going to nay-say him doing her work for her. She’d sat down while he’d been darting, which was good, because she needed to be sitting down when the bevy of revelations came through, starting with the one where this was actually who they were looking for. Which was odd. He smelled like he looked, of bat (or close enough), and certainly did not seem like someone who’d fallen down some stairs either, which did leave the question of who the human smell she’d sniffed in the lobby had been. Probably either someone who was now dead or was already a part of this place. The whole falling down stairs didn’t leave an option for much in between in retrospect. At any rate, that was secondary to the whole string of revelations about the missing children, about which she had questions, but which naturally could not ask. Still, she got at least some of the picture, and it was not pretty, but things would only make sense once the missing sections were filled in. Still in the dark about the exact nature of the missing kid’s disappearance, the gang were promptly dumped right into the dark as the lights suddenly went out. Certainly more of a problem for the others than for her, but the fact that the swift and competent Heismay took this as a sign to run was not reassuring. Nor was Band following him. Nor was the appearance of a massive ghost and a glowing eyed plant thing that did not seem to like being looked at at all. Amatarasu was entirely confident she could take these things, but that wouldn’t really help, because the current threat to the humans (and maybe bat) was instead whatever they were about to run into. Thus she too turned, and burst into motion, claws slashing into the mansion’s floor as she took off at a full pelt through it, overtaking and pulling ahead of all but Heismay in the process. As she sprinted through the halls, pausing only to cleave through some more gnomes and fill in a bit of broken flooring with her brush, her paw pads were gradually joined by the sound of a [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGvZRNzagH0]piano playing[/url] that grew louder and louder till she burst into a room and the music suddenly stopped. The music’s source turned out to be a yellow ghost with a massively oversized cranium that gave her an offended look for her rude interruption. She ignored it, glancing around the room, mainly looking for an exit, and found it to be a two story library of some kind. Its two floors, the upper consisting of a balcony/walkway around an open space in the center. Both of these sported many bookshelves around their walls, while the lower was host to a roaring fireplace that was maybe the only light-source still on in the building and, naturally, a piano, which the ghost had been playing. Even more offended at being ignored, the ghost rose up from its seat and then with a sudden oversize and vindictive grin wafted its hands around like a conductor, causing the books on the shelves to leap into the air, swirling around before being hurled at the intruders by the [url=https://i.imgur.com/3NtqBJ3.jpeg]polterghist’s[/url] powers. Amatarasu gave her own offended bark as she leapt to the side of one tossed book, only for another to bonk into her. Or, rather, her godhood, which was a glowing barrier of protection that shifted from green to orange as it took one of the three blows it could absorb before she herself began to come under harm. A total waste, in her opinion, given the books were being hurled with force enough merely to hurt and bruise rather than actually cause lethal harm. Still, it was annoying, so she switched up her arsenal and lashed out with her devout beads towards the specter, the chain of golden teardrop shapes striking like a long reaching whip, lashing the specter that was very surprised that the holy weapon was able to harm it. It was not dissuaded however, and instead retreated up to the second story of the room, which would force her to platform up after it if she wanted to take it down. Not something they had time for Up there it reached into its reserves of more sinister tomes, emptying the spell-book section of the library and sending these towards her in en-mass, which was a lot more control that it had demonstrated with its spinning and tossing. Amaterasu snarled as these came towards her, but mostly ignored them save for scampering to and fro to avoid being struck,focusing mostly on scanning the room for a way to platform up to the second floor. She was surprised, then, when the first spell-book, instead of crashing into the floor, paused and hovered the air next to her, unfurling and releasing a grinning skull [url=https://i.imgur.com/zZyG7cX.gif]lundged out of it[/url] at her from within its pages. The spell dashed against her godhood, flicking it down to red. A moment later a far faster moving book unleashed a flurry of [url=https://i.imgur.com/pyfeqHR.gif]rusted weapons[/url] that slashed the final layer of her godhood away, leaving her exposed to harm. That was more than enough to get her to take the threats seriously, the goddess switching from trying to go after the poltergeist (even as he kept pelting her with books) and to focus on these independently operating magical books instead. She leapt over another skull blast, and landed on the piano, snapping its lid shut in the process and releasing a discordant mess of strings, before whipping her divine beads out with precision and lashing the offending tome once, and then incredibly swiftly bringing them around for another swing, the light, long reaching, fast swinging weapon perfectly striking the offending piece of literature from afar. That didn’t help with all the other ones however, and so even as the enemy was dashed into ash and its spirit dropped, Amatrasu came up with a faster method of dealing with things. She paused the world, and drew a circle, and then a single line through one point on the edge of said circle. Then she un-paused the world, and where she had drawn her shapes, a sphere of that same size, made of colorful patterned paper had appeared, one that had a fizzling fuse sticking out where she’d drawn the line. Because of how large she had drawn it, this cherry-bomb was also [url=https://i.imgur.com/qM971SO.png]larger than she was[/url]. Rather than wait for that fuse to time down, because the books might move away from her bomb, she then leapt for cover behind the piano and opened her scroll across the world again. This time, she drew a line from the fireplace to the base of the cherry-bomb’s fuse, which caused flames to leap from the flames burning within right to that spot, bypassing the timer and setting off her explosive straight away. The explosion created a horizontal circular shock-wave of smoke, and a fireworks display like explosion, a one with the kanji for "[url=https://i.imgur.com/OH5GGOI.png]brilliance[/url]" at its center, which scattered colorful confetti all around. This divine blast ripped through the hostile magic tomes, knocked many of the mundane books off the shelves, and broke the piano’s legs, causing its body to crash to the ground with a clang. Very smug about this little party trick, the goddess poked her head up over her barricade, and bore her fangs at the poltergeist in a mockery of the grin she had wiped off its face. This, naturally, enraged the specter, but having just lost all of its magical tomes, it was back to hurling mundane books, which the goddess decided both she and the others could just weather. Thus, as she exited stage right, the others would enter to find a dozen or so spirits of books laying around a scorched carpet, and around them a confetti covered wreck of a library. From above, a steady stream of hurled books then came flying, hurled by a very angry poltergeist that was willing to take its frustration out on anyone and anything that it saw now that the main target of its ire had fled.