Power wouldn't help here. He wasn't too sure about how he would deal with it but everything seems to have an opposite force.
"There's another seal under the stage, and this one here." He takes a step back to think about the situation, "If we can get the two of them together it might very well be enough; I don't know what reaction would happen though but it would be devastating to it."
He started looking for a way below the stage before stopping, "Below the stage. Cheshire, did what you find below the stage look like this thing here?"
The Captain boots her way to the understage area in less the subtle fashion. Thankfully whatever odd effect was with the trapdoor didn't seem to extend to kicking your own entrance, and the floor could be seen a few feet down.
The audience were staring at this unusual display, and murmuring louder.
Cheshire was able to heal a little.
Kavax walked up to the seal and considered it. It wasn't very clear, but he had a hunch that he was well acquainted with the destruction of sealing magics (probably from the inside). Perhaps he could manage to remember something useful.
Feeling a *little* better, Cheshire weaves his way in cat form back through the crowd just in time to hear Carlos.
"I wasn't foolish enough to stick around and look closely at it," he grumbles. "I saw a seal with some thing that seemed dangerous and got out of there."
If they were going to get them to touch, they were going to have to move them. Seeing as she had one uncovered, Charly decides to try prying it loose. The plate didn't look that big. How heavy could it be? While she may throw lightning around like Thor, she lacked his giant-borne strength. She struggles to lift the plate until she feels something reach out and grab her arm.
Carlos considered how best to get the seal's energy to be turned on the other. On one hand they could tunnel it down to the other but that seemed risky, who knew how the magic would react.
"Charly, just please don't use any magic just yet until we figure out what this thing is."
"I wasn't planning on it," Charly grunts as she strains against the weight of the steel sheet, which has yet to budge. Her face is flushed with the effort. If things were even a little less dire, then this would probably be rather funny.
Kavax examines the seal, judging how to dismantle it. It is a massive ring almost 9 feet across and buried in the thick but now charred wood of the stage, sandwiched between layers of wood. But the addition of the metal must required additional support from below. The other half of the seal is probably also buried somewhere below.
Carlos considered the problem. The main issue was that it wasn't clear just how deep the second part was. Drilling down to it with magic would take some effort, and time, depending on what you needed to bore through.
Charly attempted to grab and move the ring. It was theoretically possible. But very, very heavy. As she touched the ring something grabbed her arm arounds the wrist - a tendril made of lightning lashing out as the symbols glowed once more.
"That'd be new..." Captain commented as she observed the under stage area for a few minutes as she allowed her phone to analyse data beyond what she could see.
"It'd take some force, but destroying the stage around the threat's seal or destroying the supports down here seems the most efficient method of bringing them together -- though how the threat will react and other consequences may alter its practicality..." Captain looked through the data for a moment as she looked for the best structural weak points.
There were several additional pillars of wood in the area, with various bits of machinery and rigging hanging from them. The main hiccup with simply blowing them apart is that the concrete floor does not have any obvious signs of the seal.
Charly tries to step back, but she finds her wrist is rather caught. Worse she can feel the pull into the seal. Panic rises only to get washed away in a maelstrom of fury. She has had enough. Something inside of her changes and where before she would have struggled, she finds new strength. She sets her feet and begins to flex her arm pulling the tendril tighter and tighter until it rips apart under the strain.
Free, but not nearly satisfied, Charly looks up at the swirling clouds overhead where her previous blast had left a massive hole. Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled and crackled as she listens to Captain Rose give her report. Concrete? The seal was under concrete? Wasn't there something about concrete and welding that her grandfather had told her? Yeah, never weld on concrete, but why? She remembers the question and her surprise at the answer. Superheating concrete could cause it to explode from the steam trapped within it.
She smiles as a new plan begins to form. Sure, it was a lot like the old one, but sometimes your problems really are all nails.
"Everybody clear out from the stage. I'm about to use some magic to do some mad science," she calls out, too giddy to even care what Captain Rose would think about this. Once everyone's clear, the show starts with the tempo of the rolling thunder and crackling lightning increasing above. Charly's attention is focused up above, which is why she doesn't notice the tendrils snaking around her ankles until they pull tight and start dragging her in.
"Would you stop using your magic!" Cheshire snaps at Charly. "In case you haven't noticed it's mostly powering our opposition.
"I was aiming for the concrete over the other seal," Charly growls, "So either shut up or figure out how to expose the other seal!"
With no sign of the lower part of the seal, Captain looked for a route further down from under the stage, rather not risking going above it with whatever was going on above her head. She watched the data being collected as she dismissed what briefly felt like a very satisfying solution of just destroying the more vulnerable parts of the stage until they smashed together passed.
"Hey, would it hurt you to bother asking before trying some of these things? I mean, I'm probably a better choice either for lifting that thing or simply pulverizing it, if that's what we need to do."
He eyed the seal. It would probably be a lot easier to deal with it if they got rid of the wood.
"Speaking of which, and based on the lightning stuff, is the 'just torch the place' option on the table? It'd be easier to deal with this seal here if it weren't embedded in the wood anymore."
He did, however, take his own advice and wait to see if anyone wanted to point out problems with this plan.
Lightning crackled through the magic circle, each previous glowing sigil flickering a bright white light as it passed around the enchanted steel. As the final sigil burns white the circle pulses with power once...and Charly vanishes.
In the lower area, Captain Rose sees Charly pop back into reality in the exact middle of where the circle sits.
From below the concrete, Charly hears something faint. It seems to be a scream of 'Freeeeeeee!'
The whole situation was overwhelming, in his mind it was like they were trying to play whack-a-mole, except the mole was this incessant spirit full of tricks.
"Torching the place could work but who knows how it will react to the flames. Besides if it comes back to strength during the blaze we won't be able to even know, and that worries me." He gives a grin but appreciated the question, "Truthfully your ideas are as good as mine right now." He hated to admit it but it was true, they needed another lead.
However he happy to see that they started having more of a unified front... Until Charly vanished again "This can't be good." He sighed and started thinking before starying down towards the lower level, Maybe there was something down there. Captain Rose must have found something or else she would have been back up by now.
Charly blinks as she's teleported into another prison. Anger boils over and lightning crackles as she imbues her blade with a little more power. A small part of ehr worries at how angry she's gotten but it's drowned out by the much larger part of her that wants to kill this monster. After all, wasn't that part of the job description that came with the domain of thunder?
She starts to march towards the way down, Her eyes blazing with blue-white fire.
As Charly reaches the edge of the barrier she hits an invisible wall. The situation became...clearer. Still, the creature here had been exerting a lot of control over the theatre...
Charly stumbles back a few steps, one hand rubbing her stinging nose. For a moment she wanted to just lash out until she was either free or tired. The crackling around her lessens as she calms down, even her fury ebbs away as she considers the situation. She's trapped, true, but so was the thing, and she had a feeling that it wasn't very creative.
She sits on the floor and closes her eyes, looking for the strands she needed. Perhaps this time she'd find them more easily.
"Right. I'll try brute force first."
Planting his feet somewhere that looked reinforced or otherwise stable, Kavax slammed his claws into the wood to grip the metal of the seal, and then heaved at it with unholy strength.
Carlos comes downstairs only to see Charly inside the circle and Captain Rose doing her usual approach.
"What did I just...?" He moves toward the circle, and sticks a hand out before getting a feeling that he should pull back. "So one problem solved I suppose."
He felt the air for aything. A trace that would lead him where they needed to go.
Seeing Charly using some more magic he shakes his head but decides its better to let her act than break her concentration halfway.
It would not be a simple process to take full control of the theatre. One of the requirements seemed to be death. But Charly was able to tap into the miasma that flowed invisibly through the old building. She didn't know everything that was happening inside - but she would know anything within the walls that she wanted to.
Charly was covered in a rain of dust as Kavax heaved impressively, and began to haul the heavy iron from the wood, cuasing the stage to snap and crackled like dry kindling. Which, under the years of varnish, it was.
Carlos was reasonably sure that the creature was somewhere in the sublevel below the basement, where its physical form had apparently been held.
Charly sat unmoving as she concentrated. Perhaps she couldn't bend reality to her will like she had thought, and she wasn't about to try Odin's method of gaining power. Instead she decides that she'd be better off finding the last victim.
"Downstairs... It just keeps going lower and lower." He waits for the others before moving out, he wasn't a fool to go alone.
Charly is able to locate the rest of the team, herself, a creature on the floor below them and another person deeper in the same level that she was currently on. There is also a presence in the stairwell that feels distinctly non-human and a group of Fey in the attic.
Kavax hefrted the seal he had ripped out of the wood, and eyed the hole down to the lower floor.
"So we just need to bring this one to the other one, right? Hey! Anybody down there who can't get to a safe spot? I'm going to jump down there with this and I don't want to crush anyone."
Charly finds that she can't get out the way. It is a circle, but the middle is still quite full of the stage. It would be...messy to drop it down.
Pulled out by Kavax's warning, Charly finds that she's in a pickle.
"I can't get out of the way, but if you can hold off..."
Charly focuses on the center filled with wood and a grin spreads over her face. Maybe she could do something about hat.
"Everyone clear the center of the seal. It's about to get toasty," she warns everybody, then gets ready to call down thunder.
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"Charly is trapped down here! Kavax!" Suddenly he hears Charly talk again about using magic. "Dios mios" His hand grips a small fetish in his pocket for luck, he barely knew the young woman but ever since she got here he thought it was a giant maelstrom of insanity. Agent of chaos? Or just an unlucky soul filled with entropy?
He moves back out of the way and gets ready to charge back in and try to dispel the barrier should her plan fail. She wouldn't be able to move away from anything collapsing.
There was a snap if lightning as Charly blew the middle section out of the metal ring. Charred wood rained around the theatre.
The spectral audience 'oooo'd' at the sight.
The threat of being squashed no longer an issue, she calls up out of the hole.
"Hey! There's someone under the stage here, something below me and something in the stairwell. There's also fey in the attic, but they should be okay."
And I hope I didn't just fry them...
The information relayed, she looks at the circle of the seal above her and decides that exposing the other half was more important than trying to see if she could affect things where she is.
She walks over to the edge of the area she is bound to and starts to zap the other side with enough voltage to turn the concrete red-hot and cause the water trapped in it to expand into steam and fracture it.
Kavax flinched back as Charly blasted the wood out of the seal he was holding. At least she had warned him this time. It was also fortunate that his scales were plenty tough enough that a rain of wood shrapnel wasn't going to hurt him any.
It was still rather alarming, and Kavax spent a few moments blinking after-images out of his vision and dusting himself off.
Kavax held onto the giant circle, although it was starting to become a struggle. It seemed to be somehow attracted to the rest of it.
As Charly continued to pour power into the concrete she was trying to explode, it occurs to her that there would be nowhere to go when it started to detonate.
"Kavax are you okay?!" He wasn't sure what to make of his sudden change of manner toward the monstrosity, but he was still a reliable friend despite it all.
He moved toward the dragon man and with a little sprinkle of magic, and a wedge of a quickly emptied shotgun he buttressed himself up against the harbinger of... whatever it was.
Charly is able to slowly crack the concrete over the second ring, although it will clearly be something of a process. There is also a worrying amount below it, suggesting it might take more time to get down to the third.
Calros helps Kavax with the ring. Between the two they can keep it from flying down.
"Hey Carlos? How many of these rings are there," she asks, a note of trepidation in her voice.
Carlos gasps for a bit before the shotgun clacks to the ground and it seems Kavax has the ring. Shaking his head he yells down, "I don't have a good answer for you chava. If you give me a moment I might be able to consider what spell could work and work backward but it is a long shot."
There are several numbers that have mystic properties. Given the arrangement, it likely wasn't 21. 3 would be the most likely, if Carlos had to guess.
Kavax gritted his teeth as he shifted his grip on the seal.
"Yeah, I'm alright. I think I'm going to go down there while I still have the endurance to do it in a controlled fashion, though."
Gripping the seal ring in one clawed hand, Kavax leapt into the hole. He dug his foot talons and other hand into one of the concrete pillars, and climbed down it into the lower level.