[Nexus] Random Places and Plots 8: Adventures! Thrills! Groceries!

[Recaiden]

[House of Petals]

Riki takes a few hits from seedbullets, and then a vinespear catches her leg, and she crashes into the floor of the hall amidst a scattering of blood drops. Even now her shape is changing, taking on a metallic mechanical aspect, but it's slow, shakier than her instant transformations of a few posts ago.

[Beans]

[House of Petals]
Kusu advances on her, raising her hand to form a huge ball of roiling royal fire, about to visit, if not death, at least serious hurt on her foe.

There is a small, slick sound and suddenly she stops, hand still at its apex, the fireball raging in place.

I've chosen my queen, and she's not you.

[Chaotic Bob]

She suspects. She isn't quite certain why she suspects, and doesn't have anything concrete, but she definitely thinks something's amiss. Magtok's going to have to be cautious about this, investigate both the targeted goddess and his intended revivification subject carefully. Let's head upstairs and see what we're dealing with in terms of building layout and such, first and foremost, before deciding on any sort of attack plan for this little act of extracurricular research.

[Lanvus - The Blue City]

Upstairs he goes!
Mind getting too close to the elementals everywhere, roughly ten feet around each of them is a bad kind of cold.

Anyway, upstairs!

Passing up the steps and through the open doorway at the end leads Magtok too...a significantly more "normal" location.
The place has a general feel similar to that of a lawyer's office.

Stifling. Sparsely decorated. And lined with books on every single wall.

The room is fairly large, perhaps equivalent to a small gymnasium, which is more than enough wall-space for hundreds of books.
Small cabinets are sprinkled about the floor space. Most of these are empty, but a few have unlabeled books on them.

The wall shelves are very clearly labeled with the typical A-Z standard, going by subject as opposed to names or authors however.

In the center of the room is a large desk, almost circular in shape with a small slice cut out on one end. This cut leads to a spinning chair, evidently used for the purpose of accessing all directions of the table at any given moment.

Lastly, there is what could have been a pleasant sun dome in the ceiling, if the outside wasn't a howling sand-gale instead of normal weather.

Only entrance or exit is the one Magtok just walked through.

****

"Phrygius. Vanatext. Girard."
Feiadyne stands before the three pillars, scowling for approximately two seconds before the one to her right alights with a dull gray fire. Then the left, and the middle remains darkened.

"Milady."
A polite, cultured man's voice from the right.

The sound of wind and shattering glass from the one on the left, along with a woman's shouts, answered by a group's muted responses.
A crisp, echoing voice emits from the pillar over the other sounds.
"Apologies, Lady of the Peak, there are distractions."

Silent for a moment, Feia glares at the more passive pillar.
"Phrygius, status on Vanatext."
"Last noted engaging the Speaker fifteen minutes prior."
"Sever the primary connection. We have seven minutes!"
"We're trying!"

"Continue as you were."
"My lady."
The left stone dims.

"Girard."
"On standby."
"There has been an unexpected acceleration in the scheduling of primary events."
"What do you require of me?"
"Begin the eclipse. Afterwards, report back to the desert. I smell a distortion that may require your intervention.
I am otherwise disposed and trust your ability."
"...it will be so. I will begin the unsealing immediately."
"Signal as completed, then attend to the tertiary matter. Direct contact only in the event the Deviant reveals herself again. That is all."
"Your will be done."

The right-most pillar darkens and the witch turns away.

This should set the board moving correctly, for the last time.
Two failures. Critical mistakes that have been noted, learned from, and incorporated.


Feia smiles, a happy, normal smile.

Many people are going to die soon.

[Recaiden]

[House of Petals]

The invisiwoozle assumes that means the correct thing, but Riki, stabbed and shot as she is, is not sure who Seiner is talking to.

Right now, it doesn't matter to her. So long as it's distracting Kusu the way it is. She stops trying to take on the perfect shape for the fight and returns to the familiar human shape the fangires know.

[Beans]

[House of Petals]
Kusu shifts; Riki will see her girlfriend in Fangire form behind the Queen, tentacles stuck into her back and arms, burning with her own royal fire.

The Crocus Fangire twists around to backhand Seiner across the floor, but she is in pretty terrible shape herself by now, starting to get weak-jointed and fatigued.

[Lord Magtok]

[Lanvus - The Blue City]

Upstairs he goes!
Mind getting too close to the elementals everywhere, roughly ten feet around each of them is a bad kind of cold.

Anyway, upstairs!

Passing up the steps and through the open doorway at the end leads Magtok too...a significantly more "normal" location.
The place has a general feel similar to that of a lawyer's office.

Stifling. Sparsely decorated. And lined with books on every single wall.

The room is fairly large, perhaps equivalent to a small gymnasium, which is more than enough wall-space for hundreds of books.
Small cabinets are sprinkled about the floor space. Most of these are empty, but a few have unlabeled books on them.

The wall shelves are very clearly labeled with the typical A-Z standard, going by subject as opposed to names or authors however.

In the center of the room is a large desk, almost circular in shape with a small slice cut out on one end. This cut leads to a spinning chair, evidently used for the purpose of accessing all directions of the table at any given moment.

Lastly, there is what could have been a pleasant sun dome in the ceiling, if the outside wasn't a howling sand-gale instead of normal weather.

Only entrance or exit is the one Magtok just walked through.

"Let's see...gods, deities, pantheons, norse, Freyja, true-speech. Go-, Dei-, Pan-, Nor-, Frey-, Tru-. Maybe a glance through the holy section, too."

Magtok attempts to pull out a whole bunch of books, keeping his range terribly broad as to avoid eliciting any extra suspicion from Feia if he should happen to accidentally throw in a book about Libitina, Libentina or Lubentina while he's at it. He can just skim through the relevant chapters, download as much as he can into his brain, and Ctrl+F his way to what he's looking for. Maybe do some actual reading while he's at it, too!

[Recaiden]

[House of Petals]

Oh. She means you, Riki. The vampire runs across the hall towards Kusu to help Seiner. Well, she would do that if it weren't for the stab wounds and seed-bullets; it's more of a slow limp until she's close enough to do something desperate.

Meanwhile, an invisiwoozle is in well enough shape to leap over and try to tackle the crocus.

[Beans]

[House of Petals]
Seiner is helped up, and in better shape than Riki, actually. She hugs her gently, a bit shaky still.
Want me to take care of her for you?

Tackled! Kusu falls over heavily, having trouble getting up.

[Recaiden]

[House of Petals]

Riki hugs her back tightly, even if it hurts her own arm. "No. I let her go before and that caused all this to happen. I have to finish it." She releases her King and turns towards Kusu, claws sliding out.

Meanwhile, the invisible one is attempting to hold the crocus fangire down.

[Chaotic Bob]

"Let's see...gods, deities, pantheons, norse, Freyja, true-speech. Go-, Dei-, Pan-, Nor-, Frey-, Tru-. Maybe a glance through the holy section, too."

Magtok attempts to pull out a whole bunch of books, keeping his range terribly broad as to avoid eliciting any extra suspicion from Feia if he should happen to accidentally throw in a book about Libitina, Libentina or Lubentina while he's at it. He can just skim through the relevant chapters, download as much as he can into his brain, and Ctrl+F his way to what he's looking for. Maybe do some actual reading while he's at it, too!

[Lanvus - The Blue City]

Some might call it cheating, that you can literally just thumb through a book and casually absorb all the information into your mind.
Others would call it simply convenient.

All but that first subject-choice are rolled into a subject area rather neatly labelled "Div", presumably for Divine or similar.
There's a rather disturbing amount of general material on the idea of godliness (one of the biggest sections in the room, for whatever reason), and numerous texts on theoretical absences or overloads of such capacity or beings. Purposes behind "Sparks" and "Dominions", their acquisitions, losses, capabilities.

An additional series of books is arranged at the end of the section, rather sparsely labeled with nothing more than "#1", "#2", and onwards. These appear to be hand-written, rather than through any particular printing method.
Each appears to contain field notes, detailing observations on numerous religious institutions and their followers. Although each book seems to have a different author, judging by variant handwritings, they all follow rather identical formats. A rough listing and brief description of various gods and belief codes (pantheons and a little more, perhaps), before leading into other sections going into further depth. The gods themselves, common mythologies on them, typical worship formats, followers, expectations.

Each is essentially a general guidebook of specific religious groups.

While none of the pantheons are clearly labeled, gods and religions are, so it wouldn't be terribly difficult for Magtok to cherry pick the ones he wanted after a little perusal. The scope of these are rather...vast.

***

"Binding, divinity."

Feia stands before another pillar, one towards the middle of the room.
This one reacts differently from the other three, primarily in that it does not burst into oddly-colored flames.

A haphazard portion of the runes it seems to be siphoning down from the ceiling begin to drift away from the crystal structure, drifting into a rough orbit around the witch's head.

They keep to the orbit only brief, as her eyes quickly scan over the symbols passing across her face, before they drift back towards the pillar and are replaced by others.

Feia's method of research is slower than Magtok's, but it has other perks.

[Lord Magtok]

Lanvus - The Blue City

Libitina, Venus, Freyja, Loki, Odin. Magtok focuses exclusively on those five names and their myths, ignoring Thor completely, as he's of the opinion that ol' Hammer Bro's been the subject of popular media and whatnot long enough that his behavior and modus operandi should be fairly obvious. Libitina's ties to Venus make investigating the latter self-explanatory, and while he's pretty sure he knows more than enough about Loki, it couldn't hurt to be just a little bit more prepared for that drag queen of a trickster goddess.

Libitina, obviously, gets more attention than anything else, her part of the book examined in its entirety, with Freyja as a close second, as Maggy looks for clues as to her personality and behavior in combat. The cyborg shakes his head, wondering why he was so worried about Feia freaking out about him researching Libby. Did he really think this was going to be difficult, looking up stuff about her? It's not like it's any less vital to the mission that Feia's only pretending to help him with.

[Chaotic Bob]

[Lanvus - The Blue City]
(definitely posted here, what happened to it?)

Pretending to help with?
Perhaps.
Hard to argue with relative, if brief, free-reign of one of her personal libraries however. Fairly definitive "help" there.


(Naturally, basic information can be found elsewhere, so we'll focus on important details here)

Freyja is, of course, a goddess of rather high standing amongst her peers.
By many, the highest.
She is an emotional deity, related in part to her attachment to Love, and is often in the form of tears in regards to her husband. Frequently disguised, she is prone to wandering beyond her hall. She has no fear of battle, frequently riding within it, and claiming the souls of many who die.

Evidently no afraid to go to rather severe measures to get what she wants, she has great power and willingly threatens its use to persuade others.
The book doesn't detail much about how she fights, although there is citations of elemental forces and manipulations of violent beasts.


On Libitina, information is more scarce. Hers does not appear to have been as open a worship, merely a pointed existence. She was their, everyone accepted that, and homage was paid to her in death.

What few did outright worshiped her seemed to be fringe groups, at best, grim and dismal cults focusing on the hereafter and its meanings. Opinions varied between groups, with little clues given from their goddess directly to them.

[Beans]

[House of Petals]

Riki hugs her back tightly, even if it hurts her own arm. "No. I let her go before and that caused all this to happen. I have to finish it." She releases her King and turns towards Kusu, claws sliding out.

Meanwhile, the invisible one is attempting to hold the crocus fangire down.

Seiner walks with her. I won't let you finish it alone, both as King and as your girlfriend. She nuzzles her lover's cheek softly with her... jellyfish bell.

Kusu struggles weakly, but she's not getting up any time soon.

[Recaiden]

[House of Petals]

Jellyfish bell nuzzle! How adorable of them.
"Do what you need then."

Meanwhile, a match is struck and set to see if Kusus's ridiculous plant costume will burn. That's probably bad of the invisible one.

[Beans]

[House of Petals]
It gets hard to tell where clothes end and body begins; it doesn't burn all that well, and she doesn't seem happy about it.
Seeing as she tries to strike out at it and all.

[Recaiden]

She strikes an invisiwoozle, who tumbles away.
Riki sighs. "She's never going to learn. Especially not now." The vampire kneels down and tries to stab Kusu in the torso at the presumed location of some vital organs. Hard to tell with transformations and plants.

[Beans]

[House of Petals]
She writhes in anger more than pain as Seiner stabs in her tentacles as well. The Queen starts to crack, too enraged and incoherent even to scream as royal flame dribbles out her cracks and holes.

[Recaiden]

There'll be plenty of pain for her to feel soon. Riki pulls back her claws and stabs at her again, and again, and many more times after that for good measure.

[Beans]

[House of Petals]
She shatters before much longer, her flame coalescing through and atop her shards into a mauve ball.

Exhausted, Seiner holds Riki softly. "So... what do we do with it?"

[Recaiden]

"What is it? There was something like this from the old Rook, too." Riki lets her claws slide back and puts an arm around her King.

[Devixer]

[Small Town, Big House]
She blinks, looking over at her fiancee.
"Um... do we? I'm actually not sure..."

((I'm sorry for taking so freaking long to post for this.))

"I'd like to stay the night, if that's okay," Hildur says. Johannes stays quiet for now, letting the two of them decide.

[Beans]

[Small Town, Big House]
Thryza nods. Sounds fine to me! I don't mind spending some time here, it's a nice town...
---

[House of Petals]
Seiner picks up the orb, warm and light, helping Riki back to the throne with her. She sits down heavily, wincing at the unpadded stone seat as she pulls her girlfriend close and just pants for now.
This is for the Queen... but, um, pretty sure that you can't actually absorb it, being non-Fangire and all, so, um...

[Recaiden]

[House of Petals]

Riki wraps her arms around Seiner, rocking back and forth softly. "I could be, couldn't I?"

Meanwhile, an invisiwoozle goes to make sure that Bishop and Circe are okay.

[Devixer]

Small Town, Big House

"Alright, I suppose you two can stay in the guest room," Johannes says.

"Thank you, father." Hildur smiles and stands up.

[Beans]

[House of Petals]
Seiner blinks. I... hon, if you really want to, I think we can do that...

Circe has been helping Bishop, who is exhausted but okay.
---
[Small Town, Big House]
Thryza smiles, arm around her girlfriend. Thank you!

[Devixer]

Small Town, Big House

Johannes just nods. He has a lot to process right now.

Hildur tries to lead Thyrza upstairs and into a small bedroom. The room itself is a little spartan, but the furnishings are all good quality. There's a single twin-sized bed, which may be disappointing.

[Beans]

Small Town, Big House

Johannes just nods. He has a lot to process right now.

Hildur tries to lead Thyrza upstairs and into a small bedroom. The room itself is a little spartan, but the furnishings are all good quality. There's a single twin-sized bed, which may be disappointing.

Thryza giggles as she sees the bed, stretching. Looks like we'll have to get cozied up close tonight, as if that's ever been a problem.
She leans over to kiss Hildur's cheek, smiling gently.

[Devixer]

Small Town, Big House

"Yep, looks like it," Hildur says, trying to pull Thyrza close to her and give her a soft kiss.

[Recaiden]

[House of Petals]

Riki nods. "It's not like I wouldn't be me. I've never been that attached to being what I am. And if it helps me be with you..."

[Beans]

Small Town, Big House

"Yep, looks like it," Hildur says, trying to pull Thyrza close to her and give her a soft kiss.

Thryza snuggles close, kissing back gently. Good thing we're veterans at that, mm?
---

[House of Petals]

Riki nods. "It's not like I wouldn't be me. I've never been that attached to being what I am. And if it helps me be with you..."

Seiner hugs her; Bishop is helped over and takes the ball of Queen-fire.
It can be done, but for now everyone needs rest. Becoming a Fangire won't be all that easy, or painless, even with two members of Checkmate Four powering the metamorphosis.