[IC] Dark god Darko welcomes challangers

[Starfall]

Did Satori care about her bodily fluids?

Not really.

The Princess of Darkness wasn’t particularly fond of losing anything that belonged to her without some kind of reprisal; be it a pair of eyes, a layer of skin, or blood. But she was a creature of greed and vice. When push came to shove she didn’t need her bodily fluids beyond familiarity. Not that she would be losing much of it this time around. The Pater’s tail wound around her throat only to be sliced into a fine bloody mist over the course of several seconds and when the thread had passed Satori sported a ring of raw red flesh around her throat. The Primeval’s hopes that somehow blood pressure would succeed where earth shattering blows, hypersonic exchanges, and ancient magic had failed were soundly dashed…

At the end of the day Satori’s biology wasn’t so flimsy, obviously, or she would have ceased functioning when her eyes popped inside of her head. The same thing went for the Pater.

One problem had been solved and a handful others opened up. Timing however wasn’t an issue with Satori whose ability to perceive at high speeds from multiple angles made it nigh impossible to catch her off guard while her versatile power set made dominate spacing. The last daughter was well and truly playing a game of chess, taking her time to move accordingly and sadistically removing options from the other side of the board, and so far the Pater had done nothing but shake the proverbial cup and hope the dice came up Yahtzee. By attacking from multiple angles at once he was one step closer to figuring out her game but just acknowledging that there was a board with pieces on it was not enough. After all, at least you could get lucky with dice...

A tongue came for her thigh and a claw reached for her calf. To that Satori answered not with retreat but with the small set of secondary wings at the base of her spine, currently at rest with their length stretched along the back of her thighs. They hadn’t done a whole lot throughout this brief but intense exchange. They had no skeletal fingers to grab with or leathery membrane to defend with. They were in fact made up of a single solid shadow each with the shape of a wedge and that was that. But that was fine because they were largely reactionary, as their positioning might have implied, and always ready to defend her lower body.

Both wings whirled around her hips and extended into a set of barbed spears. The right one would strike the Pater’s tongue from the side, easily diverting its course, and close to the tip so as to avoid sudden dodges. It would be nailed to the ground likely through the offending wing. The clawed hand at her calf wasn’t as much of a threat given that it only sought to grab but the reaction was both simultaneous and ergonomic. The second spear would drive through the Pater’s wrist and nail his entire arm to the floor. Though there was more weight to these shadows than the fine blades her upper wings had become it was safe to assume that contact without defense would result in penetration.

Meanwhile Satori’s upper wings, finished with their assault, turned inwards. Two more simultaneous stabs with her upper wings, still sharp as the night itself and impossibly multi-edged, thrust their primary fingers towards the Pater’s gleaming black eyes. The distance was negligible and with the beats locked against her hammer escape was improbable. If contact was made those fingers would curl themselves inside of the Pater’s eye-sockets, digging into his skull before solidifying in proper, while its ancillary fingers shoved themselves rudely into the Pater’s mouth and did the same with his jaw.

Was all of this necessary? Not in the least, because the fight was already over.

Somehow someway Magna Pater’s slime covered skin had been enough to stop Satori’s backswing. When a similar such swing had already blown its arm clean off the beast had allowed the blow to land on his shoulder and apparently the goo was enough to absorb the kinetic force therein. What it had neglected to do anything about was the thrumming storm of electricity that surrounded the Verdissian Warhammer. Unless there was a supernatural element keeping the Pater’s mucus in place then the slime that coated its entire body was already in the process of both melting and igniting from the sustained thunderstorm. An act that also served to break apart those molecular bonds that gave the slime the structural integrity it needed to stave off blows.

So the Father of Vampires had elder magic in his snot that only activated itself for threats more dire than bone shattering boulders and violent explosions? It didn’t matter, not really, because the storm had finally arrived.

The Verdissian’s had been mentioned more than once but who were they? Far away from Guild Space the Verdissian Empire was an aggressive war machine that relentlessly expanded their borders. Part of their success came from the fact that the Verdissian people were actually made up of three to six (depending on one’s view of taxonomy) distinct species that had diverged from the Verdissian evolutionary line. The chaotic clash of cultures that resulted was part of what kept Verdissian culture from descending into the state of complacency that had doomed so many species for them. But like any sentient species they had myths and legends, one of which Satori had met…

Koen Blackspeed who had sacrificed his throne for freedom. And depending on what police report you read Satori had either mugged, seduced, or fooled the wayward prince into bequeathing her with his greatest weapon; the holy Solar Hammers. In reality it was more like they had become friends and she had taken advantage of his kindness. He also hadn’t given her the hammers themselves, despite the fact that she carried a Warhammer, so much as a fraction of their essence. The enigma known as Quaking Fire, so hot that it could defy the universe itself, a purging flame from which they were no escape. The world turned white and with it the first tongues of Quaking Fire emerged, shattering the structure of conventional space and then slipping through the cracks, only to emerge at random all throughout the Plague Forest in hot bursts that evaporated everything they touched. Meanwhile the Pater’s dark taint was set to be purged from this plane, the elder mucus swept away and venomous blood cleaned out as fires ruthlessly emerged inside of the Primeval’s body where they had no business being, why even the Pater’s eternally reincarnating soul was in danger before the holy artifact.

Along the way, pointlessly so, Satori’s ancillary wings had anchored themselves to the ground after their attacks and now jerked her around. This in turn restarted the sweeping motion of her strike, aiding the Verdissian Warhammer in passing through the Pater’s neck while its head was held in place for a handy decapitation.

The game was over, had been over for some time, and the players were all out of quarters. All that was left was to mash the start button until the timer finally hit zero.

[Doc Doctor]

@Starfall

The back swing hadn't been absorbed by the mucous, it hadn't even had the chance to begin. Her first swing was what had stuck after the monster's arm was blown off. But what really mattered was how the Magna Pater handled Satori's shadow defences. It wouldn't have stuck out its tongue unless it had grabbed her first, and its reaction speed was on par with Satori's. A negligible distance? That was what the monster had had to begin with, and it could handle sudden close range sneak attacks just as well as Satori.

It would unleash a low frequency sonar blast to disrupt Satori's ability to detect it at close range, the noise both cloaking the horror in sound static and disrupting the air pressure in its vicinity so that she couldn't feel the air shifting around it accurately. At the same time it would change the direction of its grasping arm as the spike shot for it in a way similar to how Satori had altered the swing of her hammer, to grab the ankle. She might have had another way if sensing it, and so it was not taking any chances. The monster would then aim to jerk her leg out from under her to its right to force her into dramatically missing its head by changing her entire bodily orientation, wrenching her to her back and making it difficult for her to keep a grip upon the hammer without having to readjust.

What's more, even if the hammer could break the slime's molecular bonds, it could just generate even more slime beneath that to keep the hammer firmly stuck. The slime acted also like an insulator, preventing the elder horror from getting shocked.

She'd be pulled to the ground, the Magna Pater lurching in with a chuckle that sounded as if it had come from a hyena with a mouth full of grave dirt. Anchored to the ground by shadows? The beast would upturn the ground too in the process. She'd wind up lying in front of it, and it would would be close enough so that even if the woman could see the soggy muzzle pressing into her belly, there would be little she could do to keep the tongue from piercing deep and entering her aortic artery. She could theoretically go crazy with the shadow spikes, but with the monster able to manipulate her body so easily with its wild might, she'd feel like less a tiger with its tail grabbed than a garden snake being used as a nun-chuck.

Meanwhile, the tail wasn't done yet. She had only severed what had been in reach, about four feet of it. After having been sliced away, the remainder would rear back out of reach and dip down, slime oozing over the stump to stop the bleeding by the time the Magna Pater had jerked Satori.

The monster had not yet revealed its ultimate weapon, which only its tail could call forth. As soon as the time was right...

[Starfall]

@Doc Doctor

Some people just never learned.

Of course it was perfectly understandable that the Magna Pater would do everything that it possibly could to avoid dying but at some point the struggle ceased being sporting and started being pathetic. Somehow the Pater had managed to slip a scream in-between its attempt to stab her thigh and grab at her calf, which had themselves been staggered to happen one after another, in a desperate attempt to stop what was already well in motion. And yet…

Nothing, absolutely nothing.

It was irritating to hear but Satori’s ability to sense the Pater extended to all four of her remaining senses and was supplemented by her mind’s eye which in itself peered through the shadows under her control. The grasp fell around her ankle and was immediately driven into the ground to a symphony of shattering bones and cracking earth. Simultaneously, for all of Satori’s actions had been done within less than second of one another, the beast would be blinded for the second time before her primary wings hooked into its skull and its jaw, leaving its mouth hanging wide open. And since the Pater had drawn his tongue back? Her final wing shot up and through the bottom of its jaw, hammering through the tip and nailing it roof of his mouth.

Rinse, wash, repeat.

Quaking Fire came spilling out, shattering time and space with its emergence, even the though mucus was somehow thick enough to survive temperatures upwards of ten octillion exceeding absolute heat did more than just burn. The magical fire was everywhere in an instant, the area around the Pater and Satori and even inside of the monster, it was only her will as the wielder drawing on those reigns that kept her from burning herself to a crisp and even the Verdissian miracle was defiant. One vaporized father later and Satori stood amidst a field of glass, the horrifying sound of a forest sized hole in the atmosphere surrounding her, and of course overhead the Pater’s head on a pair of spikes.

Then with a flex of her scapular muscles she tore that in two.

[Doc Doctor]

@Starfall

The Magna Pater always emitted sonar, constantly. Fluctuating the frequency and strength of the noise came naturally to it. As for Satori's "mind's eye", it wouldn't work on the creature. She couldn't smell, hear, taste, or see it. Feel? Yes, but only the pain of it digging into her gut and shivving the largest artery in her body. If she got lucky and the shadow spikes made a bid for the beast's head as it penetrated her, something would become quite apparent. With its head pinning her, it was free to use its right arm, which would preemptively seek to convince her that having it suck her dry was the least of her worries. It would have left some nice gouges on her ankle when it left, but they were nothing compared to the finale.

It was not a nice monster, or a politically correct one. It ate babies, tortured victims for months, and...
Was just then attempting to jam its entire claw, up to the firearm, into Satori's loins. She could try and stop it from sucking her blood... But then she'd lack the immediate resources needed to keep it from yanking her entire digestive system out through her baby hatch.

And the hammer? The monster would deploy its ultimate weapon to deal with that. As the slime and flesh of its body began to sizzle and melt before the immense heat, the tail would flick out to give Satori's grip on the hammer a wet slap, sticking there. She wouldn't let go, so how did it plan to...

*Sccchhhwuck.*

A sickening slurp of skin and muscle disconnecting from bone and tendon. The tail would tear away from Satori's hands with such obscene impetus that its friction with the air would leave a haze of smoke behind, and an echo like that of a gunshot. The meat of Satori's mitts would have been sloughed away, pulled along with the tail like meat off a tender chicken leg. It was a band-aid rip taken up to the most obscenely lethal degree possible. Forget a whip. The Magna Pater could peel her like an orange.

If the hammer's power was connected to Satori, this could very well break the link. Just to be sure though, the tail would then blur out to slap a grip on the hammer's shaft and plow it out from the woman's grasp. If still the heat came though, then the elder horror's pulsing frame would begin to dissolve beneath the heat. Fireproof? This shit wasn't fire. It was pure destruction, and not all the mucous in the world could save it from that. It would devote what few seconds it had left to making Satori's day as nasty as possible.

[Starfall]

@Doc Doctor

Of course a creature as creature as simple as the Magna Pater would not be intelligent enough to understand how the Mind of Satori's Eye worked but that didn’t stop it from working. Her supernatural sixth sense went beyond the conventional five, which isn't to say that any save for sight had been dulled by his actions, but he quite simply lacked the tools required to deny her vision. Not that he should feel ashamed about that, most of her opponents did, that's how the Princess of Darkness played the game after all. She denied tricks and traps whether they were literal or metaphorical, stripping monsters like the Primeval bare until they were left with nothing but wit and skill, and most were found wanting.

And so Satori saw his every action with perfect clarity and reacted accordingly, alternating between defense and offense with six autonomous limbs and one holy artifact she used to torture him.

Ineffectual as it was the Pater’s sonic shriek seemed more like a cry of terror to Satori. He attempted to bring his right arm up but it had been pierced at the wrist, the bones thoroughly shattered by the barbed head of her wing, the most he could manage would be tearing the entire hand off with one final burst of strength. Then he went so far as to thrust his stump, two stumps actually, at her abdomen and her forearm respectively. Each thump smeared his acidic blood across her clothing with a sizzle and a hiss, wearing away at her gear, but it wasn't enough. How could this be; well Satori was wearing a hunter’s coat, thick boots, and a set of clawed gauntlets. As foreign as it might have seemed these articles of clothing had actually been selected for defensive reasons as much as cosmetic ones. Sure they weren’t heavily enchanted toys from beyond the stars but they came in handy when things got down and dirty by keeping her safe from incidental damage when all other options were spent, not that they were. Merely flinging acid would do very little to a uniform that had survived literally everything else Satori had put it through.

And even if he succeeded, did he really think blood was an effective weapon against a vampire? Did he think she intended to commit suicide when she promised to drink his blood?

And that is how the Pater’s life would end. Blind and screaming while struggling for a victory that would not come; his head pierced on three different spikes while a blunt warhammer carved through his neck. The Father of Vampires who had denied evolution for thousands of years flailing hopelessly against the charming face of the latest model. It didn’t matter how many times he rewound time or rewrote his actions, how many scenarios he played out, he was quite simply outmatched. Fate had become a tunnel for him and Quaking Fire was the train at the very end of it, roaring down the tracks and hungry to consume his soul, and all he could do was struggle.

At least for a time.

But when it was over Satori was all that would be left, standing in a field of glass with her trophy hanging overhead.

[Doc Doctor]

@Starfall

Satori's sixth sense and the Magna Pater's immunity to supernatural detection would be at a stalemate. Apparently both were absolute in their power. Were Satori blind, she'd not be able to see the monster gutting her like a pig (not through her belly, sadly) and wielding her like a ventriloquist dummy until it was too late, and her attempt to stab it in the head would be met not with a dodge, but its tongue hissing into her body at high speed to penetrate her vitals (going around the monster's arm inside of her). Perhaps she thought that it would just hold still, or that her shadows were faster than its tongue?

As for Satori's gauntlets and how she thought the monster's attack worked... Not even close. Perhaps she was only fervently wishing that it worked that way. Its blood had been stopped by the mucous oozing over the stump. But it wasn't that its blood was acidic. It hadn't even hit her with the stump. It was that the incredible acceleration of its tail combined with its most adhesive slime could strip the meat off of Satori's bones by dragging across skin at first contact, then exposed muscle as the tail traveled further and exposed more of its surface area.

The fact that Satori was wearing gauntlets would just make things worse. Either she was forced to let go of the hammer and be ragdolled through the air, or the very gloves would be ripped off taking her fingers along for the ride.

Of course, that was only if Satori's sixth sense could overpower the Magna Pater's immunity. If not, then the monster's mucous would finally release the hammer and in an instant it would be incinerated. Perhaps there was but one way to determine the stronger power...

http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/Coin/

Lord Darko coin flipping to decide their fate!
@Thantos

[Starfall]

With that Satori was gone.

A moment she appeared within the dark confines of the Shin-Ra APC, steam wafting from her body and her once dashing outfit marred by burns and tears. Crusty black goop clung to her face where she had been splattered with gore. The Verdissian Warhammer was pleasantly quiet at her side but the distant rumble of thunder could be heard echoing from within. Without so much as a word she shoved her way past Gever and rifled through the mini-fridge, grabbing a classy wine bottle filled to the brim with dark red fluid, then drained it down her throat. It was sticky and warm despite the freezing temperature and it took a full minute for her to lap it up, the blood burned pleasantly through her system but would provide her with the material she needed to heal.

In time.

“It’s done; he won’t be coming, ever. Even if the beast survived I doubt he’ll want to tussle with Shin-Ra again. You deal with the next one; I’m going to take a nap.” Satori said with a grunt before sliding onto the bend and rolling onto her side, wings closing in around her upper body to provide some measure of defense against the dim military lights, and in her slumber would dream of the Time Warp.

[Drifting Pollen]

Surely it had been long enough, now?

With a quiet ticking, Eleanor realigned her optical wires, reconnecting her eyes and restoring her vision. She was pleased to note that it was once again showing her what was directly before her, just as it was supposed to.

From her high vantage point, she took a few moments to gaze down at the smouldering forest below, taking stock of the situation. It seemed that Satori had gone and dealt with the slimy beast, although Eubeal seemed to have vanished somewhere in the process. Had he been eaten? The thought produced a slight sigh. It'd be hard to take down a god if their party could be thinned so by a mere monster. She should have stepped in herself, or just killed it earlier when she was still close by, but it was too late now. She couldn't easily travel that far back in time, not in a situation like this.

Still, it wasn't a total loss! She'd gotten some useful information from the spiders. It could prove helpful if she ever ran into such a creature again- although she'd need to be careful to keep the data out of Sebastian's hands. She didn't even want to think about what he could build from such a vile blueprint.

Not lingering on such unsavory thoughts, Eleanor turned her attention to the APC, that was gradually growing more distant. She hadn't felt the dark god's influence for the last couple of minutes, and was wondering if he had fled, afraid of the powerful warriors coming for his life. Perhaps. But nevertheless, it had been an enjoyable ride so far, and she may as well stay on a little longer.

Flipping herself around again, Eleanor fell downwards at a shallow angle, rocketing towards the APC like a human meteor. As she approached, she gradually decelerated, until at last she alighted upon it once again, stretching her arms as she did.

"Well, that's the diversions out of the way... How long until we find something that can actually challenge us?"