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Selena follows the group more slowly. Her fox squirms and whines in her arms, looking up at her in real distress. The little witch nods.
"Shh. I feel it too." she mutters back to the creature, then stops at the open inner gate to look toward the burned building in the center of the compound. She squints, uncertain that she's actually seeing what she thinks she's seeing.
"I'm seeing the outlines of another buldiing. Rasputin may be aware already of what we're doing." she warns over her shoulder to the others. Then she calls up to the tower.
"Quasit! Don't adjust the settings when a lightning bolt is about to be discharged. Have Findurel time it out and take your hands off the machine altogether a couple seconds beforehand each time!"
"Good job, keep it up!" Maka shouted from above.
Kalchine grits his teeth against the rising tension in the air, his ears standing up high and flicking quickly this way and that. His fur rises on edge, either making him look bigger and more intimidating or bigger and cuddlier.
It doesn't help matters any that this is just what it felt like so many times when the enemy was regrouping or massing for a charge back home. A tension filled time of relative peace that presaged extreme danger.
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Sakitu scampers along with the rest of the group as they disable the first tower and then the second. Shortly after the lightening from the second tower stops, she feels her skin tingle and the fur on her body starts to stand on end. She rubs her hand down her arms a couple times trying to make it stay flat but it won't.
Glancing at Kalchine, she sees that he's having the same problem.
"Annoying. Right?" she says as she steps up to him. She holds her arm out to show him how puffy it looks.
"It makes me feel funny."
She smoothly shifts from her vulpine form to her human form, all the fur melting away to reveal smooth, human skin. She shivers slightly.
"A little colder now, but at least I don't have that tingling feeling. You can change into a new form too, right?"
As the third tower settles into its new settings, the frequency and intensity of the lightning from all of the towers jumps upwards, though none more than the fourth. The electric sense of pressure in the air grows oppressive, like you're somehow about to be struck by lightning while on the floor of the ocean.
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"I think the bubble is about to pop." says Quasit as she surveys the scene. She grins at Findurel in a sort of mad way and waggles her eyebrows. The sense of a leap into the void was settling over her, even though she told herself she knew what to expect. There was freedom in jumping off a cliff.
She climbs down to the ground, motions that they're moving on, and leads the group back through the inner gate, then follows the outer fencing up to the final tower, still jogging -- not because time was an issue, but because she was excited.
And on reaching the final tower, before climbing up, she gives a final pep talk to her companions.
"OK, I'm not sure exactly what's going to happen when we turn off this last terminal, but I'm guessing the lightning will stop and whatever is in that pocket dimension is going to appear over there on top of that burned shrine."
"My guess is it'll be some sort of building, with Rasputin inside it. And my guess is that he's going to stay in there and wait for us, setting up traps and dispatching minions. I expect tricks and deceptions -- we aren't going to find any more Anastasias in there. But we're going to go in there, find him, and end this. As a group."
"And be ready for those vampire priests -- they'll be lurking and hiding, waiting to jump us in some dark room. And don't forget Headless -- he may teleport in at some inopportune moment too."
"All right? Are we set? Anyone need to prepare anything or clarify a plan?"
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"I think the bubble is about to pop." says Quasit as she surveys the scene. She grins at Findurel in a sort of mad way and waggles her eyebrows.
Fin grins back as Quasit disables the third tower. ”You go, girl…now for the last one, Q…”
"All right? Are we set? Anyone need to prepare anything or clarify a plan?"
He gives a sheepish shrug. ”This is new territory for me…not sure what to expect…think we’re gonna just have to wing it…not much time to plan before we have to flip the final switch, Q…”
When Quasit is ready, Fin will follow her up the ladder and assist her as needed…
"Something tells me that if we touched right now the spark would be like a lightning bolt," Kalchine answers Sakitu with a rueful grin, holding up his forearm to show all the hairs standing up with static electricity.
"I can change but only a limited number of times per day and into forms that will help us in combat," he says. [b]"I'm saving it for that instead of just making myself more comfortable.
As Quasit gave a quick briefing before disabling the last tower, Kalchine looked at the frost ape statue in his hand. This would be the time to return Chest Thumper to his normal form and drop all sorts of spells on him to increase his combat potential.
But it would also expose the frost ape to danger and he didn't want to do that unless it was absolutely necessary.
So, he gave the little statue a squeeze then tucked it away, nodding his readiness to Quasit.
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Selena looks around continually as the group makes its way to the last tower. She seems tense and impatient. When Quasit hesitates to discuss things with the group, her patience snaps.
”Maybe I didn’t make myself clear earlier, the more terminals you deactivate the more unstable the planar energies become. As you probably can feel in the air. You’re doing very rough approximations of the proper settings, and the currents will continue to drift the longer you hesitate. By all the gods, would you PLEASE get up there and turn off that last one before we blow a city sized hole in this planet?”
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Quasit closes her eyes and slowly counts to 10 as Selena yells at her. A city sized hole being blown in the planet was bad, but if her last conscious moment was seeing a certain witch being blasted apart...
"All right, all right, I'm going. I notice you aren't volunteering to actually twiddle the dials yourself." she grouses as she retreats up the ladder.
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In the instant that Quasit and Selena finish setting the last tower into the proper settings, a searingly-bright bolt of violet lightning leaps from all four towers to the air where the spire of the ruined temple once stood. As you recover your vision after the bright flash, the ruined temple burns... in reverse. Flames crawl up its walls, leaving restored wood behind them. Fallen stones lift up and slot into place. Shattered glass flies back into stained glass windows. In less than a minute, a pristine structure stands where once there had been a ruin.
"Oh wow! Did anyone else see that!?" Maka shouted down to the others.
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When the final terminal powers down, Quasit immediately looks around at the center of the compound, curious about how the cancelation of the planar shift would manifest itself, and still not entirely sure that there wasn't about to be a large hole blown in the planet. The final blasts of lightning and the bright flash does nothing to encourage her. Unconsciously, she steps next to Findurel and leans on his tall slim form, half-hiding.
Whatever she had expected, it wasn't what she saw. The spectacle of the seeming reversal of the destruction of the temple, like time running quickly backwards, was a bizarre and unsettling thing to watch. But then she nods slowly.
"Of course. To mask the fact that he was shifting the monastery to another plane, he needed to create the illusion that something had happened to it on this plane. Remember what Selena said about the terminals, how they existed on both planes at once? Something similar must have happened here -- the same building but not destroyed. And now that they're reintegrating, the primary unspilt form of the building must be reasserting itself... somehow."
As Findurel proceeds her down the ladder, she does a final 360 degree look around from the vantage point of the tower, looking for external threats.
Once satisfied that only the Russian countryside is out there, she quickly slides down the ladder, and silently motions for the group to begin heading for the entrance to the returned sanctuary.
Kalchine had been looking toward the woods when the lighting flashed and the thunder crashed. He looked up to the sky but was about to look back out to the border when a sensation he could not define made him turn.
He could only gape at the unnatural reversal of time and destruction as the temple seemingly rebuilt itself.
It was another reminder of just how powerful the magic they were facing was.
He fell in with the rest, depending on his military training to keep him spread out from them as his mind wrestled with the lunacy of challenging someone who could create such wonders and meddle with other dimensions with apparent ease.
You see nothing moving in the camp or the countryside... though as you look at the restored temple, it seems to have just a faint... unreality to it, the light on it seems too bright, the textures of the walls just off somehow. Those magically skilled among you can recognize that it's probably a bad idea to breach those walls, for the presence of Rasputin's sanctuary here has a certain... fragility. Though it might also prove impossible to breach them, depending on exact working of the magic. There are four large stained-glass windows along the sides of the building, however, in addition to the entrance.
You hear the deep toll of a bell from the temple's tower as you make your way around to the entrance. There is something wrong with the sound, seeming almost to be ringing forward and backward in time simultaneously.
When you get around to the door, you find a terrible sight--a dead soldier has been nailed to the door, his arms and legs forming an X shape.
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Quasit narrows her eyes and grimaces.
"Charming." she mutters grimly. She takes a few steps, considering the horrible spectacle.
"Might just be Rasputin's way of greeting us. But I doubt it. It might be booby-trapped."
She gestures Findurel over and murmurs so only he can hear.
"Fin... pretty sure it's dead, but Rasputin tends to employ undead minions. Put a couple arrows in it just to be sure. Make one of them a ghost arrow even. With your new holy bow, that oughta wake it up if it's more than it appears."
"And if it doesn't move, i'll go check it out for traps."
"A cheap trick," Kalchine comments as he sees the body mounted on the door. "Such attempts to shock and terrorize people with wanton brutality are common back home. The only correct response is to mourn for the one who has been used as nothing more than a tool and despise those that have used them as a tool."
He arranges himself in front of the door, where he can easily see it but out of the direct line of fire should something come blasting out.
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After seeing the crucified soldier on the door, Fin nods in agreement with Kal, but wonders if it this trick might be a trap or ambush. He looks to Quasit. ”I don’t like this at all, Q…gotta be a trap…and an eerie one at that…can’t be so easy as to simply walk up to the door and enter. Perhaps we should try to enter thru the stained glass windows?”
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Quasit goes back over to Findurel to talk to him.
”I guess you didn’t hear me. I want you to use your fancy new holy bow to sink a couple arrows into that body, including with a ghost salt arrow, before anyone approaches that thing. Rasputin likes using undead minions. If it doesn’t squawk I’ll go investigate it for booby traps.”
As Fin gets ready to fire, he notices that the corpse is staring right at him. No, wait... it's not the corpse, it's an identical-looking spirit rising out of the corpse!
As Fin meets the spirit's eyes, he feels a sense of vertigo. The world seems to blur around him... and suddenly he is the one nailed to the door, excruciating pain wracking his entire body.
Just as you notice a spirit rising from the corpse on the door, Fin suddenly collapses to the ground like a marionette whose strings were cut. A ghostly version of him appears overtop the corpse nailed to the door, screaming in silent agony as a spirit looking just like the corpse fully emerges and floats in front of the grisly scene.
Bulvi's eyes narrowed as he heard Fin scream, as he moved closer towards the undead figure he focused, his blade seemed to become almost as transparent as the figure as he raised the blade. "I think you are going to want to pay more attention to me!" He snarled in Russian... before his sword sailed harmlessly by the figures shoulder.
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Sakitu can barely look at the grotesque display on the door. What kind of evil creature does something like that. The poor soldier. Even while she's watching, a specter moves out of the body and closes the distance to them.
Sakitu stifles a scream when the faint form touches Fin and his body collapses. A moment later she sees Fin's image trapped on the door.
She can't hold back her scream.
"Fin! No!"
She raises her hands, palms out, towards the ghost and blasts it with tiny glowing missiles.
"Leave him alone!" Maka shouted before dashing across the battlefield in a burst of flames.
The trick is not so cheap now and Kalchine quietly curses himself for underestimating just how cruel and powerful Rasputin is. Such mistakes can cost a person both his life and those of the people around him.
He clicks his thoughts away from the horror of Fin's transformation and locks in on what needs to be done.
Marching toward the creature, he summons up all the heat he can muster from the area, coalescing it at his fist and extending it in a blade shaped plane of fire.
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Quasit had been looking all around, expecting threats from everywhere. Of course she was watching the macabre body nailed to the doors, but as Fin pulled out his bow and prepared to fire, she was watching him, getting ready to remind him again about using a ghost salt arrow.
And then suddenly Findurel's face contorts and he drops senseless at her feet, eyes still open and empty of life.
"FIN!" she shrieks in panic. And now everyone around her was yelling and running forward. She hadn't seen it--she didn't see what happened--was he dead?
She drops to her knees and begins to feel for a pulse on his wrist and neck, and slapping his face.
"Fin! Don't do this to me! Don't you dare die!"
Desperately she pounds on his chest with both fists at once, attempting to engender a heartbeat.
The spirit seems unimpressed by Bulvi's miss. It's harmed by Maka's flames and Sakitu's missiles, though the flames obviously don't harm it fully. In the midst of all this, however, you here the piercing sound of glass scraping on glass. The figures in four of the stained-glass windows peel out of their places and start charging towards you!
The floating spirit ignores Maka and Bulvi and darts towards Kalchine. It reaches out to touch him...
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Unknown to his friends, as they’re busy fighting for their lives, an anguished Fin makes it back to his body, his willpower just strong enough to rebound and breakthrough the foul magic…still stunned, he lays there reeling, breathing heavily, struggling to comprehend what the heck just happened to him…
Kalchine readies to strike the specter with his flaming blade but it is faster, its incorporeal hand contacting him.
The druid was only determined, not afraid, before, but as he abruptly finds that he is frozen in place, with no way to protect himself, he is terrified. He would cry out in fear, if even that activity wasn't robbed of him.
Fin's spirit vanishes from the door, and moments later his body starts to stir.
Bulvi did his best to keep pace with the spectre and force it to direct it's attention towards him as he sees Kalchine suddenly freeze.
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As soon as the magic missiles leave her hands, Sakitu races over to where Fin had collapsed. She skids to a stop on her knees. She flinches back in horror as a spectral form raises from his body. It floats for a second in the air above him then shoots across the snow covered ground towards Kalchine. Sakitu watches the wispy shape for only a moment before she turns back to Fin.
His body stirs! Her heart skips a beat and she nearly jumps on top of him in her eagerness to embrace him.
"Fin! Fin! Wake up."
The sounds of combat catch her attention and prompt her to look up. Strange glass creatures are lurching towards them. One has already closed on Quasit, or more likely, it was the other way around. Quasit most likely charged the unnatural construct. There's another glass creature lumbering towards Quasit.
On the other side of the building, two more of the creatures stagger across the field towards Kalchine and his ape. Those creatures probably won't be affected by any magic that touches on their mind. But they don't look like they can fly either. But they look huge. Too big to fall into one of her pits.
She thrusts a hand out towards the one closest to Kalchine. The air a couple paces away from the monster quickly crystalizes into a solid wall. She swipes her hand in a wide circle and the wall forms in a large circle surrounding the creature.
Fin stirs again and she turns her attention back to him.
"Fin. Get up. Please."
As the spirit moved away, Maka lashed out with a kick before again dashing after it in a fiery burst.
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Selena runs up next to Quasit and attempts to touch the glass creature.
"I'm not sure why I'm helping you when you insist on running off alone to face things well beyond your ability to fight. Maybe I just want to see what you come back as when I cast Reincarnate on your corpse." scolds the witch. "Maybe a hairy little dwarf. Or a wombat."
Quasit finds her attack glances off the surprisingly hard material of the glass creature. Bulvi hits the ghostly creature twice, drawing its ire.
Maka does some measure of damage to the spirit, as well.
The glass construct manages to resist Selena's spell. She does recognize that it's a glass golem, with the usual immunity to most magic, though cold effects do slow them.
The two constructs blocked by the wall of ice pound on it.
The construct Quasit attacked, which seems to be some sort of religious figure, swings a colorful depiction of a scroll in stained glass at her.
It manages to slash one of Quasit's arms. The surprisingly sharp-edged glass slices into her flesh, leaving a bleeding wound.
The spirit glares at Bulvi
Bulvi drops to the ground as his spirit appears on the door in place of Fin's.
"Leave my Bull alone!" Maka roared, fury igniting her flames into a brilliant blue blaze. Her internal buffer burned away as raw elemental power surged through her. She shot forward like a comet. There was no defense in her movement, only vengeance.
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When her spell fails to work, Selena frowns petulantly.
"Hmm. That should have worked." she grumbles. She throws a brief accusing glance at her fox, who whimpers defensively.
Selena takes a step to the side and her form swirls and vanishes in a puff of snowflakes, only to have her reappear behind the glass golem. Then, holding her staff before her in one hand, she conjures up a new spell against the creature with her other and delivers it with a word of arcane mystery.
Kalchine decides that the fiery blade projecting from his hand isn't going to cut it against this phantom creature, especially since it is joined by the strange glass creatures. One of them has already left Quasit with a wound that is bleeding dangerously.
So, he changes tactics, gathering up some of the life energy her normally uses to heal against this creature driven by unlife.