Winterhold College - An In-Coven-ient Truth
Ace - Level: 9 - Total EXP: 519/90Level 7 Heismay (58/70) Sectonia
Word Count: 1797 (+3 exp)
Tension in the Aurelian Nexus continued to skyrocket as the Cadet and Heismay scrambled to deal as much damage as they could to the crimson ritual candles before the abominable conglomerate of bodies they were fighting could finish whatever it was trying to do. Their adrenaline pumped as they worked to demolish one together, spurring them to hack at the dense waxen surface faster and faster until the candle finally crumbled, its unnatural flame snuffed out. As soon as the fire died, so too did the demonic symbol above it vanished. But if the Seekers had hoped that snuffing out one flame would compromise the whole ritual, they would be disappointed. The candles at the other four points of the pentagram burned bright, and as a third body stretched up from the Coven in mad adulation, they seemed to blaze brighter still.
The twisted voices of the conjoined tormented howled as one, unleashing Famine. Swarms of flies descended, quickly surrounding the Seekers to harry and blind them even as the remaining poison frogs continued their sticky assault. Growling, Heismay executed a flurry of attacks, but even his swift flashing blade could do little to meaningfully reduce the flies’ numbers. Instead he leaped into the air, beating his wings for even greater height and to buffet the flies back. Two frogs opened wide and shot their tongues at him, and only by wall-jumping off a sheer surface with Vauban’s Warframe agility did he manage to avoid their grasp. With a flip he soared through the chamber and landed on the opposite side of the Coven from Ace, next to another candle. Before he got started, though, he couldn't help but sneak a fearful glance at the Coven, anxious of what it might do next. The eugief couldn’t shake that sinking feeling that he was running out of time.
This type of fighting, while annoying to be sure, was normally not enough to wind the monster hunter - not even close. Yet as the seconds marched on and their progress remained slow, beads of sweat formed on his brow and rolled down. Battling a time limit, an unknown one at that, added a level of stress that was just compounded by the blob's unsettling chanting and casting.
Ace glanced towards the door on one side of the chamber. Realistically, nothing was stopping he and Heismay from simply abandoning the fight. It might hurt their pride a little, but they could retreat before the spell was finished casting, leaving whatever horrible results to an empty room.
...but the thought of leaving this thing to its own devices and one of the other Seekers later stumbling into something worse because of that did not sit right with him. It was bad luck, but like it or not it was their responsibility now. Shirking that responsibility would feel worse than any bruise to the ego.
It was almost like a wake up call, slipping through the wary haze that always distracted Ace in these magical situations. In the interest of putting a stop to this before it could potentially hurt anyone else wandering through the maze the brain fog briefly cleared and the hunter thought, what if they didn't have to destroy the candles and could just snuff the flames themselves?
Ace had already stopped trying to clear the flies away from him, and he weathered the light battering of a nearby frog as he took a moment to swap weapons again and load a new elemental ammo.
"Heismay--!" he started to call out, intending to let the eugief know his plan, when the room's doors opened suddenly to permit two new visitors, exactly what Ace had thought might happen.
From one monster to another, as Sectonia entered the new room and saw the hideous creature in front of her she understood the assignment right away.
”ANOTHER horrible monster? Is this place just some prison to be cleansed?” Sectonia said with righteous rage as she started to help clear the flies and frogs from the area with her area magic. A death pulse for any that got near her, and rays or rings of cleansing light hitting things from afar. Although without knowing what was going on, she’d be clearing out and dealing damage to everything without any focus.
“Finally, a stroke of luck!” Heismay crowed as the frogs and especially flies began to melt away.
More hands to help put a stop to the ritual was good, and Sectonia was an excellent hand for that indeed, but the indiscriminate spray of spells from the queen bee choked Ace's words in his throat and threw his aim off. The water shots he'd loaded into the bowgun were finite, and the first couple slammed uselessly into the ground of the magic circle.
"Sectonia!" the Cadet called after forcing out a breath.
"It's got kut-kurazy tough skin - we've been trying to put out those candles!"While he said that Ace had backed up, away from the center of the room to give himself some breathing space. What flies still survived Sectonia's wrath followed after him, but they were the least of his concern. He took another breath, steadier this time, pointing the barrel of the bowgun at the nearest candle to try dousing it with the water ammo again.
Pss. In one unceremonious instant the liquid shot doused the flame, leaving the candle with nothing but a thin wisp of smoke spiraling upward, the sigil above it vanished.
As Ace made his discovery, Heismay continued to hack away at another candle. Without as many pests around to distract and disrupt him he could fully focus on the task, but the eugief wasn’t exactly built for pure damage output. Thanks to all the chaos he hadn’t noticed his comrade’s stroke of genius, either. It would take him more time to demolish his target, maybe more time than he or the other Seekers had. As he slashed again and again at the dense, unyielding blood-red wax, he could only hope that whatever was coming would be weaker with these ritual elements destroyed.
Soon after Sectonia and Mokou arrived to help turn the tides of the frantic battle, the Coven gathered its strength for another spell. Three pairs of nubby arms waved wildly as three crazed voices howled unintelligible curses, declaring War. Twenty molten globules shot outward from their position and created foot-wide pools of lava where they splashed down, increasing the temperature of the Aurelian Nexus to a hellish degree in a matter of seconds. A fourth and final body arose from the Coven, and as it did it cast a flicker of flame toward the candle Ace snuffed out to relight it.
Heismay noticed an incoming projectile in time and managed to dodge, but to say he had a bad feeling about where this was going was an understatement. “Come on!” He growled as he assumed his Assassin form and plunged his curved greatsword into the candle, though even that did not quite destroy it. “Damn it!” He plied his strength against his weapon like a crowbar, hoping to split the candle in half.
Sectonia looked at the candles and the lava being summoned at this point and had an idea to deal with both. Waving her hands she summoned 5 ice antlers which were commanded to just freeze the candles, fire, and lava. She then moved to using Void Globules at the Coven in between summoning more Ice antlers and flying above the battlefield to not touch the lava itself until it was thoroughly frozen. Although thanks to having used a lot of her mana on Shadow Fred just earlier, she would need to ‘land’ to regain more thanks to one of her spirits.
The new position separated from the ritual circle was a better vantage point for the Cadet, from which he was able to evade the one blob of lava that got thrown his way. He crouched a few feet from where it landed noting that though it wasn't spreading none of the lava looked like it was fading or cooling. He also could see that the flame he'd doused had just been re-lit - but the fact that it had bothered to relight it in the first place meant that it actually did need these candles for whatever spell it was casting. Destroying them was taking way too long even if it would prevent them from being lit again, but with four candles left and four Seekers fighting, maybe...
Unsure of the antler's ability to handle the heat, Ace took aim again.
"Try and keep the fire out while we break them!" He shouted to the others. That way maybe it would buy them more time, or if all of the flames were put out at once it would ruin the magic. Whatever worked. He put out the same candle he was fighting over the Coven with, then shot at the one on the next point of the pentagram to douse that one too.
Although the antlers’ ice breath wasn’t cold enough to freeze the lava and could only reduce its temperature incrementally, their efforts turned out to be much more effective against the candle flames. Seconds after Ace re-extinguished the one relit by the Coven, the antlers put out two more candles, including the one Heismay had been trying to destroy. “...Oh.” After staring for a moment, he shifted from Assassin to Gunner and loaded a Poison Shot, taking aim at the last candle. The Cadet beat him to the punch, however, and spared him the need to spend more MP. “Well struck!” As he shifted back to normal, Heismay turned his eyes toward the Coven. Now that all five candles were either broken or snuffed out, what would happen next?
Even without the candles, though, the Coven’s four bodies began their final invocation: Death. As their berserk dance reached its zenith, and their babbling cries filled the room, the air pressure changed suddenly. In the empty space directly above the maniacal amalgamation, a dark blot welled up from nothing, sprouting features that shifted and slid around as it grew. Slitted eyes, gnarled horns, floppy limps and toothy maws formed and unformed until the
abomination took its final shape, a spherical demonic mass of grotesquely haphazard asymmetricality. When its eyes finally opened, lolling around in its sockets, they peered down at the Coven gibbering and flailing beneath it in a celebratory frenzy. Then the beast fell upon them, its mouths opening wide to devour the cancerous mass chunk after messy chunk. The Tormentor roared, the hideous sound loud enough to be deafening, and floated forward to attack.