Sandstone turns toward Cypress. Rubble from the temple, dirt from the floor, flow toward her. She grows bulkier, as if to match Cypress. She lashes out with a fist the size of a tool chest, her arm stretching and flowing. The fist slams into Cypress like an earthquake.
"NO! Leave Medea alone Shadow man. Get OUT of TOM'S SWAMP!"
Tom's fist attempts to crush Oz.
Gracie
Eldritch
Medea
Oz
Cesarina
Tom Cypress
"Medea is protected by some sort of interference from the Nexus itself. We'll need to go lay hands on her." Eldritch announces to the team.
He turns and targets one of the Greek demons. “Let the Icewinds of Dale freeze!" An ice cold blizzard erupts from glowing blue runes surrounding his hands after he commands.
Grace frowns at Tom's outburst, wondering if perhaps he's been befuddled by Medea.
"Hang about, Cypress. Take a hard look. You're not in your swamp. This is Eldritch's Nexus."
She holds a defensive position, watching his response carefully.
The Fury's fire flames out as Eldritch's magical cold slams into it. It shatters hundreds of ice chunks that begin to melt away.
Medea smiles a dazzing smile, "Ohh, you want to lay your hands on me, Eldritch. I can certainly accommodate that, my hero."
She moves toward Max as if stepping through the air with a springy step, her hips swinging and arms outstretched alluringly toward Max.
Cypress's massive fists send Oz back a bit, but the nightmare-being manages to absorb most of the blow .
He ripostes by tearing at the space in front of him, bringing into the world the maddening glare of the void.
Eldritch struggles to withstand the allure and then finally succumbs.
Tom Cypress gazes upon the giant staring eye and is just as impressed with it as a stump would be.
[dice=Will]1d20+14
Eldritch struggles to withstand the allure and then finally succumbs.
Cesarina swaps targets, seeing that Gracie is trying to work things out with Cypress.
Cypress turns to Gracie. "What mean not my swamp, Armor Girl. Armor Girl not take swamp from Tom."
His massive foot stomps the ground, and shockwaves ripple outward as though the ground is water. The ground shatters, throwing rocks like shrapnel.
Eldritch turns his attention to Tom Cypress trying to put him down, so they can concentrate on Medea and finish this. They had given her too much time in here.
What would a swamp not want? Winter! “Let the Icewinds of Dale freeze” From white blue runes encircling his hands jets a blizzard toward Tom Cypress.
So much for trying to be nice. Somehow not expecting such force, Grace topples to the ground, banging her head hard enough to be dazed by the experience.
It's all she can do to pick herself back up, which she does.
Sandstone hits Cypress with another titanic blow, but the plant man takes it like a champ.
Medea turns on the distracted Eldritch. "Icewinds, puh-lease. Feel the Breath of Boreas." Biting winds blast blue from her hand, striking Max's defenses.
Eldritch throws his Shield of Seraphim between himself and the blizzard, which blows right passed him.
Cesarina is slammed hard, a piece of rubble striking her directly on the temple. She wavers, but barely manages to keep her feet. She glares at Cypress woozily, and begins attacking him again.
"Whatever hold Medea has on him is too strong! We need to bring him down!" she shouts to Gracie.
That said, she attempts to bind him with the Shackles of Light once more.
Cesarina's shackles of light surround the swamp thing, sinking into his woody flesh. The massive green man loses his balance and falls to the ground.
Oz's form falters under the force of Tom's strike, yet he stays on his feet. With the swamp man binded by Cesarina's shackling light, Oz takes this brief reprieve to mend the wounds of his allies.
Medea is currently flying, buoyed by uprising air. She holds a large tome called the Alternity Atlas, an ancient book that details the doors between worlds and the nature of several limbo realms, including the Nerian Nexus.
Tom Cypress is thoroughly bound by the holy light that Cesarina wields, with little hope of escaping in the immediate future.
The magical energies of the Nexus still swirl around Medea, clearly boosting her defenses.
With only Medea left in play, Eldritch attempts to disrupt her, instead of directly targeting her. "Be bound by the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak!" He commands red ribbons to snake out from his glowing rune encircled hands toward the Alternity Atlas and pull it towards him.
Gracie leaps into the air to knock the book out of Medea's hands with her sword.
Gracie points her sword at Medea, spinning the blade to generate an anti-magical cone at the whirlwinds buoying up the wicked sorceress.
Eldritch's crimson ribbons reach out and wrap around the book. Medea is a powerful sorceress, but not much for tug of war. The book flies out of her hands and into Eldritch's.
Grace whirls her sword at Medea, and the air around her stills as it no longer supports her. She lands heavily on the ground, not in a cool superhero landing, but awkwardly, her skirts swirling, legs splayed. Her face reddens in anger as she grits out, "For today, I have found what I need, but you will pay for this insult, Eldritch."
Then her form blurs and she moves with the speed of Hermes, she stands and vanishes in a step.
"Well. That worked faster than I expected." Eldritch concludes while examining the Atlas.
"Medea's a real coward when the chips are down. She wasn't going to stick around with her muscle taken down. Her ego especially wouldn't want the bruising of being beaten by Eldritch." says Sandstone, shrinking down to a more compact and human sized form. She sheds bits of the street from outside into the ground. Still, she eyes Tom Cypress warily. "And don't count the big guy out. Way he is straining against those bonds worries me."
She keeps a fist pulled back.
Cesarina is visibly straining.
"He shouldn't...be able to break free so long as I keep concentrating, but...it's taking all my power to keep him restrained."
Gracie knocks Cypress over the head with the hilt of Calesvol, hoping that she does the amount of damage needed to knock him out, no more or less.
Cypress continues to struggle against the bonds. Cesarina can feel the immense power straining against her control.
"Unsurprisingly, it's like hitting a tree. Eldritch, can you teleport him somewhere? To his actual swamp, preferably?"
Eldritch looks up from the Alternity Atlas at Gracie's question. He evidently forgot that there was a threat still as he focused on the magical tome. "Would you know where is his actual swamp?" He asks as he closes the Atlas and stows it magically up his sleeve.
No one knows how the strange plant zombie creature known as Tom Cypress came to be, but he is known to come from the South River Swamp. The South River is one of the two rivers that flows through Freedom City into Great Bay.
Thumbing through the Atlas, Max is able to find the correct dimensional nodes within the Nexus to take him to the swamp. Further study can bring him back to the Nexus a few moments later.
"Oh here it is!" Eldritch obviously finding something in the magical tome Alternity Atlas.
"OK. I can take us to his swamp and return us here. I'll take all of us, because it will take me a few seconds to return. Yes, I'm not terribly comfortable being alone with Mr. Cypress in his home."
"Ready?" Eldritch asks and readies to cast.
When everyone consents, including Sandstone, "By the craft of Anog the Keymaker, I open the doors to the Netherworld," to bring them to the South River Swamp.
"Wait! Maybe at least one of us should stay here? Medea's still here after all. Let me stay with the spear, that doesn't need to go wandering either. I won't go anywhere, just seems dangerous to leave all at once while this crisis is still happening."
Oz sheepishly looks back and forth between Eldritch and Gracie. A scratchy, static-y voice coughs "Good Knight, I will stay by your side"
Cesarina grits her teeth as the musclebound swamp monster continues straining at the limits of her abilities.
"Yes, very sensible, very gallant. Now can we please get a move on before he busts loose and makes the entire point moot?"
Eldritch scrunches his eyebrows and replies, "At the moment, Medea is not an issue without this Atlas that she came searching for. We'll return in less than a minute but need to be prepared for anything. Here we go. Please don't resist."
Eldritch and Cesarina step through a door back into reality, the earthy smell of South River Swamp wrapping around them. South River Swamp is a combination of forested swamp and floodplain forest, and this time of year most of it is covered in at least a foot of muddy floodwater. Moss covered trees block out most of the moonlight on this dark night, and mist clings to the trunks.
Cypress, still struggling, falls into the water, and Cesarina feels his struggles grow even stronger.
Eldritch looks around and feels the power of the swamp surging toward Tom Cypress. This might not have been the best idea. He thinks to himself.
"I'm going to repeat my incantation. I'll only target you this time, so your shackles should drop when we depart." He specifies to Cesarina, not wanting to time her dropping the shackles before they leave. Don't want to give Cypress an inch.
"Good bye, Tom. By the craft of Anog the Keymaker, I open the doors to the Nexus." Eldritch repeats his spell again using the Atlas as a compass to return to where they left... without Tom Cypress.