"--but--"
Before he had a chance to say more the world was ripping around him. Talas groaned as his intestines did terrible things inside him. The other place disappeared and he was back in the clearing, vertigo and nausea swinging at him like the fists of a Sczarni enforcer. Between that and the weariness from the the wolf-capturing expedition Talas half-felt like passing out.
Instead he bent over, his blade's tip digging into the earth as an impromptu cane to hold him up. The world spun and he heaved up a little water onto the scorched soil and the runic circle, coughing.
Focus, focus, there was--- oh gods he was still right next to the hell lizard thing. Talas wiped spit from his lips and tried weakly to straighten up.
"-huuhn-- THEDRA!"
"City-- man said-- open gate for-- ten seconds-- everyone needs to get-- circle--" he shouted, his words broken by gagging coughing. His free hand flailed indicatively at the circle he was standing on, and Talas staggered back instinctively from the lizard.
Witchlight flickered and grew within the henge as Talas appeared, shouting, underfoot of the ruinous lizard. Kenna held her aim and fired again.
The lizard lunged, focusing completely on the short, hairy prey behind the tree, ignoring the fact that it was bloodied and nearly dead. It had gone quiet, too beaten to even breathe right anymore, but it could not ignore it's purpose.
It's white thorn-like teeth that grew unnaturally from a beak-like mouth grew and writhed like the legs of some kind of centipede.
Your sin is lust.
You know in the depths of your soul, in the moments between being bitten and dying for the second time today, that the creature was hunting you for your transgressions against morality.
You have been judged and found wanton. Your corruption is an incubation chamber for the parasites that the creature delivered to you. The infection of your body now mirrors the infection of your soul.
You are unclean. Your death this time is not noble and no god will show you visions and give you another lease on life.
You are damned.
The savage bite crunched in, bending and tearing Dolgrin's armor. Some of the lizard's thorn-teeth detached, trailing black worm-things that tore free from the sores covering the lizard's mouth and shrieked as they burrowed into dwarven flesh. Dolgren was able to watch in horror as the things wriggled up inside him moments before he passed out.
Black smoke rose from the festering, burrowed wounds left behind by the worms. The lizard breathed in the smoke like a drug. It shuddered in pleasure and let out a quiet, staccato honk as the white thorns all over it's body twitched and grew, the ones on it's back and shoulders extending into articulated mandibles. More white thorns punched through it's skin growing along it's mouth and face and chest. Ichor and blood burst forth like a boil lanced from the inside.
Kestrel found herself showered in gore as she began to turn to respond to the reappearance of Talas, but with the disgusting scene happening right in front of her all she could do was stare and retch.
Eythil smiled at the other man said something as he dispatched another Orcish skirmisher. He didn't know exactly what Garridan had said, but he assumed it had been about killing them. But rather than rush out to face other Orcs, he kicked the dead Shaman Orc over, then bent down to retrieve the amulet he wore, recalling that the other one from earlier had given some sort of protective enhancement.
Teral's eyes widened as he continued his ritual, his expression divided between concentration and disgust at the sight of the beast's transformation. He shifted his mace to point at Talas below, hoping to give the unlucky man the edge he'd need to survive the next few seconds. The little hedgehog in his pouch continued its eerie chuckling noises, the sound reverberating oddly through the battlefield as the companions fell under its fate-altering effects one by one. His eyes shifted back and forth, looking for a way off the platform, but his focus remained on the ritual, flipping the coin over and through his fingers.
Thedra had been just about to respond to Talas when Dolgren was savaged by the lizard. "Hells, not again!" she cursed. "[bigger]Everyone to Talas, now!" she shouted, "Spectrum, do something! I don't care about your stupid spellblight! Figure it out!"
Spectrum glared, his face twisted in frustration. His eyes flicked about the battlefield, and he ran to the sigil, dodging the thrashing tail. Then he waved his hand in the direction of the unconscious dwarf and pulled.
Spectrum cast Telekinetic Maneuvor.
The elf's eyes began to bleed, but a telekinetic grip grabbed Dolgren and hauled him across the ground.
Dolgrin left a shallow trench in the ash as he was dragged roughly toward the sigil and out of range of the threatening lizard's jaws.
Thedra bolted too, also trying to dodge the creature's tail, yanking a potion free of one of her many pouches and unstoppering it with her teeth as she moved.
She poured the potion all over Dolgren's wound and rubbed it in.
Hearing Thedra's command, Ylmen veered about flew above the runic circle. After a final glance around at the state of things, he tucked his wings and fell into a sharp vertical dive, slowing rapidly just before landing despite his still folded wings. Once on the ground, he squatted into a low crouch, ready for whatever might happen next.
Eythil glanced back at the now ruined tree fort as he heard more shouting. What he saw gave him momentary pause. The hulking Lizard was now covered in twitching thorn-like appendages. He didn't know what was happening but he knew he had to help stop the Lizard.
Ignoring the other Orcish skirmishers, he turn and hurried back toward the inner area.
Garridan's attention is brought back to the strange occurrences near the giant lizard. He hears Talas yelling and immediately rushes back towards his companion as quickly as his hastened feet will carry him!
Talas straightened up from puking and looked around frantically-- first for Garridan, his friend, the only person he really knew out of this disparate bunch. He saw Garridan racing in towards him and nodded in relief.
Able to speak more clearly now, he yelled:
"FIVE SECONDS TO GET ON THE CIRCLE AND OUT OF HERE! OR BE STUCK HERE AN HOUR!"
Dolgren the dwarf looked in bad shape-- Talas took a short step closer to him and hauled the dwarf more fully onto the runes.
He looked up and saw Teral still on the platform. In Elven, he shouted, "TAKE A FEW STEPS BACK AND RUN AND JUMP FAR AS YOU CAN, FRIEND!"
Dolgrin lazily awoke, watching Thedra and Talas hanging over him as their forms faded in and out. He heard the fire, the roaring, the screaming... it all sounded distant to him
"Can you stand?" Talas shouts down at Dolgrin. "On the circle, friend dwarf!"
Suddenly the sounds of snarling wolves and orc battle cries sounded from outside the ring of fire.
The badly wounded dire wolf chained to the tree howled and continued to chew it's rope. It was nearly free.
The giant lizard was swaying, nearly dead. It focused on Dolgren with unnatural intensity and looked like it was about to move in for the kill.
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The lizard collapsed mid-lunge, it's lifeless head crashing right into Dolgren.
It's skin tore and released horrid, noxious fumes from the sores all over it's body. The strange parasites infesting it burst forth and burrowed downward into the earth leaving smoking holes in their wake and cracking the dirt to parched lifelessness. They had transformed much of the lizards body into something otherworldly. The gas and smoke and ichor washed outward scorching the ground and leaving a hellish miasma hanging in the air. The trees nearby hardened and died. The ring of fire darkened to a bloody color and terrible multi-eyed things peered though the fire at the recruits.
As the foul creature topples to the ground, Ariela races to the circle, vaulting over anything in her way.
Well, crap.
Teral might not have been fully apprised of the situation, but he knew an escape route when he saw it. He backed up several steps, then ran forward and leapt from the platform with all the might he could muster.
His foot caught on a broken board as he jumped, and for a moment it seemed he might fall far short of Talas and the circle, but in an amazing stroke of luck, a freak wind caused by all the fire and chaos suddenly stormed up and threw him another crucial ten feet.
That same wind, though, tumbled him further than he could correct for, and the ground raced up to meet him.
Eythil was the last to make it. He threw himself into the runic circle as the strange runes that ebbed and flickered with magic that was straining to take hold finally flared into strength.
The world lurched and they all felt like they were being stretched between tow impossibly distant places.
...or was it three.
They could faintly hear Spectrum yell out a garbled warning, but it was too late.
With a flash and a hiss they were all gone. In their place was left behind a patch of well-manicured cobblestone.
Dolgrin just stayed on the ground, not giving a heck about anything anymore. In a delirious swirling of thoughts, the dwarf said "beam me... up, Scottie."
Addryn's hands flew over his glassteel slate, working the calculations and trying to compensate for the interplanar flux. Why the city had ever decided to use an ExoPrime with suck unpredictable synchronicity, he would never know. It should have
The Watch squad assigned to him were tense, ready in case anything decided to hitch a ride in with their Recruits.
Addryn's eyes practically bugged out of their skull. "What th- NonoNO! DAMMIT!"
The portal ring flashed. The well-manicured cobblestones were gone. In their place was a patch of cracked obsidian with a pair of jutting stone blades jutting upward like claws. A patch of lingering smoke dissipated into the air making the Watch turn away and gag at the smell of brimstone.
Addryn's mind raced. He looked over his slate and back to hellish circle that had just been his portal site.
"What happened? Where'd they go?" one of the Watch asked.
Whoever Scottie was, he didn't beam them up, so much as down.
Way down.
They all lay on the ash-covered forest ground staring up into the sky.
There was no sky.
The twin red suns of the strange forest was gone. Instead there was an infinite spiral of chaos and evil.
It was like being at the bottom of a funnel staring up into layer after layer of horrific, crumbling wasteland. Each ring was a little wider than the one below it. Freezing water poured off the edges of frozen rings down onto the layers below. In other places it was lava. In others it was blood. The higher layers were brighter, lit with flames and the cherry glow of heated metal. Patches of savage ground floated, some chained to the ring-layers, others drifting free in the empty funnel-chasm above them all.
They could see cities. Massive structures and statues giving homage to hideous monsters and demons. Battlefields full of inhuman armies clashing.
As the layers descended toward the pain-wracked Recruits they became darker and darker. In some layers there were glowing energies that swirled outward. Greens. Purples. Sickly yellows. Down here though, it was only dark. They were in the middle of a small ring of awful light cast downward from the hellscapes above. Past their ring of dimness was yawning black.
They were on an island. Outside the circle of bare earth they lay on was cracked obsidian. It looked like the ground had quaked, leaving some patched of ground higher than others, and leaving sharp bladed ridges wherever the cracks had run.
Strange, jagged formations jutted from the ground like they were in the middle of a small forest of grasping claws.
Just past the small claw forest they could faintly see the reflection of fiercely running water. It howled and moaned. Tortured faces pressed against the underside for moments before being swallowed back down by the churning river. Broken structures flowed past them in the water. Rubble. Shattered timbers. Parts of destroyed buildings. The skull of a massive monster. Half of a demonic beast. A decaying overturned ship. Corpses.
The recruits slowly regained their bearings and got to their unsteady knees, ears ringing and lungs heaving.
You feel like a bowstring that was stretched to far and broken, sending the string flying in a direction it was never intended to go.
Then landing in a fire.
A sense of overwhelming hostility and dread permeates the very air here. This place hates you..
You can feel it digging into your soul and drawing and sifting through all your transgressions, peeling you back like an onion to find and count your sins.
Dolgrin groaned before very slowly sitting up. His arms and legs felt shattered by the travel as if he had spent a century on the rack.
Talas retches a second time. Planar teleportation is clearly not his thing. At least he already got rid of his food previously...?
"Wh-where..." he tries to look around through his watering eyes. "Nhuhh..."
He clutches at his belly, struggling to remain upright. "Maybe... shoulda stayed... in the burning forest..."
Dropping to her knees, Ariela regurgitates what feels like the contents of her last weeks worth of meals, he body wracked by dry heaves when she has nothing left. Feebly wiping her mouth and looking up, her mind is utterly overwhelmed by not only the bizarreness, but the omnipresent overwhelming evil that permeates the very air.
"Can't...think."
.
Spectrum looked green and near to collapse, but he stoically fought his way to his feet slowly and looked around. "...this is... very bad."
Thedra stayed on one knee huffing and rubbing her head. "Where are we?"
Eythil didn't understand what was happening as his body was pulled and stretched in seemingly all directions before snapping back together.
His legs gave out underneath him and he coughed violently while his body shook involuntarily. Blood ran freely from his nose and began to form a small pool under where he lay, but he was in no real shape to do anything about it. After 20 seconds or so he groaned and stood up, pinching the bridge of his nose to stem the bleeding. He still shook occasionally and looked unsteady. He looked around at the strange landscape, his eyes suddenly narrowed and he spit out a glob of blood on the ground as if in defiance.
Otherwise he seemed like he was unaffected by the plane.
Adrian's eyes went wide as he finished his calculations. He grabbed a chunk of cracked obsidian from the circle and took off running. "Let's go, move!"
He started sprinting through the crowd followed by his team of Watch guards. "Coming through!" he bellowed, weaving through startled people.
Yanking his keystone from his belt he pressed two gem-buttons button and started talking into it as quickly as he could.
"This is Addryn! I need teleportation clearance on doorstreet right now, and I need a breach team to meet me at the Razor Gate! I have two Operatives and a group of recruits lost in a planar shunt! I need priority control at the Pit Door."
"Granted. Go." the voice came through the Keystone like it was speaking between his ears.
"You catch all that?" he called over his shoulder to his team.
"Yeah! We'll catch up!" the sergeant said.
Without another word Addryn vanished.
Vance was curled in a ball dry heaving and holding his skull. Kestrel lay staring straight up into the terrible rings above her.
"What is happening?"
You can feel something moving inside you, wriggling strangely in your chest.
"I GOT SOMETHIN IN MY CHEST!" Dolgrin bellowed in fear
Eythil looked over at Dolgrin. The Dwarf was clearly frightened by something.
Quit wailing. Eythil thought.
He then hurried over and grabbed Dolgrin by his scale mail before slamming his hand over the Dwarfs mouth.
Dolgrin grabs Eythil's hand and holds it to his chest where the wiggly thing is, hoping that he'll figure it out.
Eythil could definitely feel something worm-like moving in the dwarf's chest and stomach, writhing just beneath the skin.
- Rounds
- Minutes
Garridan's head swam as his body is twisted and churned, only to be suddenly displaced hard onto a terrible wasteland. Immediately he exploded with vomit shooting into the air and on his clothes. He rolled onto his knees and continued to become violently ill, only catching a brief glimpse of their surroundings as the sickness rocks his body.
During the near minute of sickness he felt something attacking his mind and soul; it was as if the chaos of this place loathed his very existence. He gripped his head and struggled against the pain, but he eventually looked up and gasped at what he saw. "By the gods, where are we? And how do we get out of here?"
Suddenly Dolgrin shouted about something inside of his chest and Garridan turned to stare at the dwarf while one of the other saw to him. He glanced to Talas with a very concerned look.
Unlike the other portal sites on Door Street which all sat vertically, The Pit was just a recessed circle that sank about two feet into the ground. It was surrounded by braided iron bands as thick as a man's arm and covered with rusty thorns that looked a lot like they were covered in crusted blood. The Pit was sealed by a heavy iron plate, locked with massive thorned chains, three enormous locks and a brightly glowing rune in the center of the metal plate.
The thorny ring around the recessed circle gave the entire thing the impression of a leech-like maw. The high pitched squeal of straining metal whined in the air punctuated by the occasional boom of impact that shook the cover plate and rattled the chains.
Next to the Pit was an articulated crane of Dwarven make, twice the height of a man with a two ton counterweight. It was anchored securely into the ground and folded up tight, it's hand controls bound by yet another lock and chain.
Addryn appeared right in front of two intimidating looking Jurors who were standing guard over The Pit. They weren't surprised. Teleportation was one of the many things Jurors could sense, or even prevent if they felt like it. They knew he was coming and had allowed it. They were the locks on the doors of Door Street.
Addryn tapped the insignia on his chest. "Priority authorization, Blue Tower, Addryn, zero-six."
"Open it."
Spectrum knelt next to Dolgrin and put his hand on the dwarf's chest.
"...When you were bitten... did the larvae crawl into you?" he asked trying to think through the spellblight and the painful swirling emotions clawing through his mind.
"Teh hell if I know@! There's a thing in my chest! Get it out!"
Finally forcing herself to stand when her body is once again under her own control, Ariela makes her way over to her friend trying to think of how to help as Spectrum questions him.
Teral practically falls over as the transition completes, most of his being in absolute rebellion. He manages (barely) to look around, through bleary eyes.
"Son of a- again?!"