"That's rather impressive then, because as far as I am aware I don't exactly have much magic in me... If I leave now and go help them out will you still be here when I come back"
"I am always here." she nods to him. "And you have quite a lot of magic in your blood, actually."
Pierce looks surprised at that. "Really? But I can only use one step magic" He says making a small circle of lite with his finger, from which tiny fireworks spew out.
Hecate darted around and forward, keeping well away from the beetle by Bear. There was no need to get closer to it than necessary, after all, and she aimed carefully before firing off a single bullet. Scath was... looking quite surrounded there. Either he was going to be just fine at handling it by himself, or he was actually in trouble... and if it was the latter, she was going to have some stern words for him about running ahead and getting surrounded.
for
"Mmmhmm. You have a very similar signature to those who visited a few weeks ago. It is strange how many visitors I have been having." she says looking towards the door, which slides open to allow Pierce passage.
Purple maggot becomes a streak of goop as a result of Hecate's effective muzzle velocity. A very long streak.
The desecated corspe, still wrapped in Scath's claws, lashes out once more, and this time finds prize, removing a clump of fur, and leaving a nasty welt.
As if that weren't enough, a maw lunges out of the corpse's chest cavity, and latches on to Scath, ripping a chunk out of him and sending pure pain rippling though his body. Unfortunately, the dulling of the venom where it bit does absolutely nothing for the rest of the pain as Scath's body resists the creature's venom. It has thre pairs of mandibles and a wide open mouth, long, jagged spikes all along its sides, that seem barely able to move. Each mandible has tiny hooked fangs with blue liquid dripping out.
And still the swarms of maggots clamber over Scath and the corpse, and everything around them. They roil and dig into Scath's body, trying to find their way into the open wounds.
Back to Roy and Fao!
Scath roars a battlecry of pain and outrage!
Either heal me or harm undead!
Bear charges the green bug, making an attempt to land a wicked bite while it's attention is focused on the cat.
Bite
Fire
Bleed (if they take it)
Bite has grab
Roy moves six squares in while casting Shield on himself.
Roy casts his triangular shield, and begins to march forward, as Faobhar rushes forth and with a single snap of his mighty flaming maw, destroys another of the maggots.
When Scath roars, he simultaneously feels a pulse of healing energy, and watches as the creature's body gets torn asunder; it doesn't seem to react, even though the effect definitely works.
Almost as she's doing that, several of the maggots lash out against Scath, snapping and gnashing, but only one makes it through his fur and hide. Once more, it doesn't hurt at all, but he can still feel that there is something obviously missing.
Hecate stepped out five feet, then started firing, fully intending to take down as many of the bugs as she could, as fast as she could. Unfortunately, the gun rose a little too high on her second shot, and she was unable to hit anything with it.
for
Hecate fires a pair of shots, one splatters the centipede most likely to cause Scath problems, and the other goes wide, as she fails to train her weapon back downwards enough as she targets the one a little closer.
Scath's claws rend and tear, and drag together as they rip what's left of the corpses to pieces, as he rends what's left of the body with his massive maw. He now has two rather large pairs of humanoid jerky for his efforts... and lots of bone.
A huge, two-headed worm-like creature is all that is left of the husk. It is larger than Scath, and each head is on opposite ends of the creature. Each one takes turns hissing as they exhale. Bluish goop burbles from their three-mandibled hundreds-of-teeth mouths.
They both lash out at Scath simultaneously, even as the swarm continues to roll over him.
The carnivorous maggots continue to swarm over Scath's body, ripping and tearing at his already-open wounds. One of the two heads lash out at Scath, and latches on, the chill and pain from the previous bite not particularly present... but he can also tell why; the numbing agent is spreading through his body this time.
The other head lashes out as well, but it's off balance from the previous attack, and Scath isn't having any of it.
Roy is up!
Edit:
Bear munch tackles the yellow one as Roy moves in to the space down and right of Hecate and tries to blow dart the red one.
Roy blow dart
fire forged steel Dart
Bear to hit
Bite
fire
bleed
grapple
Need fire or something, deal with maggots! Big fire! Too many smash! Need healing! If no can do, let know, will fall back!
The tiny-tufted dart flies through the air and wedges itself into the body of the creature, which flops its body halfway over, and it seems significantly worse for wear.
The flop is something bear hadn't accounted for when he lunged forward with a mighty nomph... and he catches nothing but air.
The maggots continue to attempt to assault Scath... and like Bear, he isn't quite prepared for one of them to suddenly flop over towards him. It breaches his guard, but it wasn't a particularly vulnerable spot after all... even still, it removes another chunk. Which promptly gets refilled, Scath's wounds mending.
Back to Scath and Hecate!
See if two-legs have fire...
Scath lets out a roar and lights into the two-headed thing, ripping at living flesh now, his stance finally of use...
Pierce nods and then excuses himself as he sprints to find his companions. As he skids to a stop his guns fire off in a burst of steel and gunpowder
As the shots sink into their targets Pierce quips heard you fellas could use a little help"
Hecate kept firing as she closed in, fully intending to take out every enemy she could with a barrage of shots aimed at the still-living beetles. "You know, cat, this would be a lot easier if you just let me kill things." she said bluntly as she reloaded her gun.
for
for
Stupid two-legs, left them plenty to kill... greedy...
.
Pat. Pat-Pat. Rat-tat-tat.
In a blur of motion, and incredible sound, (with a bit of biting and tearing on Scath's part), all of those creatures large enough to be dealt with by mundane implements are dealt with... but still the swarm bites and rends and claws.
Whiiiirrrr. Each individual com device chirps. "Scath say make big fire, kill all tiny. No can kill tiny with claw or tooth. Also, left plenty kill."
Meanwhile, Skyscale remains at the entrance clawing into the wall, and bellowing something about magic rocks that Pierce can only somewhat make out, having missed most of his spiel so far.
Scath holds onto the bit of worm he just bit into, and then bolts back to the entrance, where the dragon is, leaving the maggot swarm to fend for itself in finding food. Sitting down near the dragon, he drops the worm bit where the dragon can see it, and begins to lick his wounds, spitting out poison as he gets some out of each.
What is scale hide bellowing about? Tell him breath on maggots if they come out. Tell other two-legs lead maggots to scale hide if can't kill them. Tell scale hide worm was living in dead thing that wore scale skin.
Hope relays the message to the various communication devices, "If can't kill maggots, lead to big scaly. Tell big scaly kill. Also, what he talk about?"
Scath grumbles, and makes a mental note to listen more closely to the two-leg and the dragon. Languages weren't hard, if you paid attention...
Bear starts to move back towards the dragon, hoping the things will follow him. He leads enough so they don't catch up, but not so much that they give up.
Roy moves out of the way and checks any nearby barrels for something flammable.
Hecate raised her gun, pointing it away from things, and frowned as she looked around. Her bullets would do nothing to a swarm like that, especially because she had no scattershots, much less REAL modern firepower.
Bear leads the maggots away and towards Sky, as Roy scrambles up a wall to not distract them.
Bear makes a cuff sounds and indicates for Hecate to get out of the way or help lead them away so they don't attack her inseam of follow him.
"I have a few grenades, let's try a light incindary to start"
he says moving closer to the swarm and throwing the weapon
Scath digs his heels in... and pads his way out of the hallway, leaving the two-legs to their own devices, as Hope explains to them what's going on.
Roy moves over to some barrels and looks inside... it's a lot of metal of various types, styles, and shapes. There are a few metal canisters with a bronze-colored glowing liquid inside. It doesn't seem exceptionally sturdy on its own.
Seeing little in the obvious vein of helpful things, and being warned by Bear and Hecate that the swarm is coming, he slips away from it.
Bear and Hecate move steadily away from the creeping swarm, as Pierce throws in an incendiary. It seems fairly effective, the licking flames dispersing over a considerable portion... but there are literally thousands of maggots in the swarm, and their tiny bodies, packed tightly together, help to safeguard many of them.
Unfortunately, the speed and hustle of his allies are questionable, leaving Bear to grin and bear it to keep Roy safe. His hide is mostly able to turn away the creatures for now, and he hardly notices them.
Scath bats the dragon on the tail as hard as he can, but without claws, to get it's attention. Then the cat opens it's mouth and hisses at the approaching swarm. He keeps his mouth open, and moves his head from side to side, as if he were breathing on the approaching maggots. When he runs out of breath, he looks at the dragon significantly, and then moves back out of the way again, leaving room for the two-legs.
Skyscale looks to Scath... and then to the room... then back to the Scath...
He takes a deep breath and then exhales, the cone of lightning arcing amongst everything in the room, causing metal objects to bounce and clatter noisily.
He seems surprised by the effect he has, he dances around for a moment and begins clawing at the air once more.
Hecate winced a bit as the lightning came out - she was staying pretty far away from that, though, and in general leaving this little detail up to them.
Scath moves over to where the dragon is and bats at the air where he's miming about an invisible wall.
Something stop dragon from enter? Or me miss something?
He watches as you bat a paw through it, and presses his paw -firmly- against that same point, and stumbles backwards, whining and grumbling.
Hope peeks out of his saddlebags, as Scath asks his question. There's a dull humming noise... and then a moment later. "See magic. Need spend time learn about."
"Well that's not a good sign" Pierce runs over to where the dragon is and tries to see if he could leave and if he could see through it if he was on the other side. "Maybe an anti-life shell? No he could still see through that... I think"
Faobear takes more damage from the evil little critters, and can feel portions of his body go numb... like when he sleeps the wrong way, and all of his weight is on one paw. Except it doesn't go away.
After a bit of finesse, Scath works out how to tell the dragon exactly when to breathe... mainly by repeating precisely what he had done early. The dragon does as he's told by the fuzz-fungus infected no-scale. With several crackles and pops, the maggots explode blacken and crisp in Skyscale's arc of lightning.
"Is... wall. Yes. Magic wall. Like Roy Shield or Faith Shield or... other shield. But no can tell what else. Not affect any us... but affect Sky Scaled. So... magic against lizard?" she suggests after having taken the time to analyze the magic.
Bear leads the monstrous worms over, growling as they bite at his haunches.
When they are finally dealt with, he goes back to Roy and flops down onto the floor as he does often, this time with good reason.
"Aw. There's my big brave guy. I'm sorry, Bear. Thank ya for keeping us safe."
He hugs Bear and casts a spell or two until he's feeling better from the actual bites, at least.
With his treatable wounds dealt with, Roy pulls his funny tool and a brown glass bottle out, popping the top with a tool he flips out of the wooden stick. He holds the bottle up to Bear's muzzle and let's him take a swig before downing a bit of it himself, saving most for Bear.
Off to the side, Hecate was frowning slightly. Weapons that weren't very smart were... trouble. Useful this time, but they'd probably be safer if they looked for other options in the future, rather than continuing to make use of Skyscale.
Now that things were clear, though, Hecate turned to the rest of the chamber and started examining it. She hadn't really been able to pay much attention to the makeup of the room while she'd been busy helping eliminate the bugs, but now...
As Hecate (And Pierce once he's doing the same) moves through the room, the various pieces become more obviously parts to a greater whole. The latticework is clearly like the railing she'd seen before. The tiny beetles (which Scath had more experience with), lay destroyed on the floor, or rather, fallen into disrepair; malice didn't seem to have a hand in their destruction. The walls and floor are covered in cobwebs, dust, and the maggot's filth... along with more than a bit of blood.
The majority of the metals are of a rare material that Hecate doesn't recognize, but Pierce does. The metal glows a soft-bronze color, and seems to be used for most of the room. Even without the torches, it's clear the room would never move much beyond dim light, just for the mechanical components.
Perhaps not so strangely, the metal's use in the mechanical structure makes sense, despite its powerful properties when it comes to destroying magic; the material can be polarized, easily, to either accept positive or negative charge... or reject such. Weapons and armor made of this material function similarly to frost and fire-forged equipment. When used in electrical systems, there is a near-zero-loss in energy output... unless the metal or system is misconfigured, of course.
Once melted, the metal loses nearly all of its magical properties.
***
In the barrels that Roy had been going through, there are plenty of spare parts, and a few canisters of a liquid form of the metal, made clear through the crystalline sides of the vials. It glows dully. Likewise, are several pieces within the barrel that could likely be used to craft a new beetle, or repair several of the old ones.
One entire barrel is dedicated to a mystery liquid, that smells acrid, like battery acid, which Scath will recognize as the cleaning solution from following the beetles before.
It might also be possible to weaponize more of the materials with a little bit of work...
Scath sniffs the broken beetles, and bats at one experimentally.
Can fix beetle golem?