Inside 60

[Rebonack]

[Midnight Park]

Another hit, another chunk of Ashna's awareness siphoned away. She may be starting to feel rather drowsy. The white mist seeps into Requiem, again mending some of her injuries. That's one of the problems with fighting undead (or unliving for that matter) that can drain people. Monsters that constantly heal themselves are really annoying.

The qilin gives another cry of pain as the flames wash over her again, reopening her previous burns and filling the air with the scent of roasted flesh. Much like the evil cleric, Requiem back-peddles to escape the oppressive heat that's causing blisters and deep burns to spread across her. It takes her a few moments to clear the pain from her mind, but once she does she sets her hooves and focuses again.

Why?

Because her dawn aura has returned to full strength again.

With a shout she launches another harmony bolt at Ashna. Getting nailed by it would be about as unpleasant as getting blasted by the thing the first time around.

[Recaiden]

[Midnight Park]

Requiem might notice the heat and scope of the flames increasing just as she does her awareness-draining thing.

Now, what's going on again? Ashna isn't quite sure. Oh, but things are burning. The wonderful smell catches her attention back to the real world, in time to dive and roll under that odd distortion in the sky. Awful not-quite-undead magic. She springs back up with another swing of the hammer at the monster.

[Rebonack]

[Midnight Park]

The fire burns hotter, licking at the surrounding trees, causing the wet, rotten deadfall on the forest floor to hiss and pop with vaporizing water and pitch.

There's a dull crack as Requiem gets smashed across the face again, sending her sprawling. Dazed and disoriented, she tries to rise, but find that her leg has gotten snagged in the twisting roots of the forest. She looks up at the evil cleric looming over her, a sad, resigned expression on her face. One of her eyes is swollen shut and several of her teeth are broken, blood running down her jaw.

Requiem closes her eyes and bows her head, body relaxing as she waits for the end.

"I'm sorry I couldn't help you..." the qilin whispers.

[Recaiden]

[Midnight Park]

"Whoever you're talking to, don't apologize. You didn't try to help."
The evil cleric lifts the hammer to finish off the pony, and hesitates. The monster is defeated. It won't come after her. She doesn't need to eat it; it probably isn't even edible! It called those shadows in. And supposedly its creator did something even the First couldn't do.
The flames collapse back to a small patch around Ashna's feet, merely warm.

"I'm sorry I was not there to save you, either time."
Reaches out to touch the shadeling, and attempts to conjure a band of cool, solid fire around her neck.
"Be healed."
And a physical-based, non-thaumaturgic healing effect should come over both of them.

"I realized the bird and I were in complete agreement about what to do here. That usually means I'm <censored> up whatever it is. So you get another chance, though I still can't just let you off. You can't just go around 'freeing' undead to join you."

[Deathkeeper]

Temple Street

Artorias is here, sitting down besides a bench and reading from a small paperback. He's dressed in a simple tan shirt, and the bare minimum of pockets. His unkempt hair is slightly more -kempt than usual, since he's become more of an official cleric and all. For now, that is the simple scene, just a calm young man and a book.
[Closed]

[Rebonack]

[Midnight Park]

Oh boy, healing! Requiem is healed and stuff! Rebo isn't sure if Asha's magic heals wisdom damage or not. Usually that stuff is far more stubborn. And for the record, magical healing would have worked on the shade-pone just fine. The unliving are healed by both positive and negative energy, weirdly enough.

The qilin seems pretty surprised that her head didn't just do a 'watermelon smashed by Gallagher' impression. She's not too keen on her new accessory, though. She has the uncanny feeling that it'll go off like a bomb collar if she does anything shifty.

"You're asking me not to free my friends who are still bound in the shackles of undeath," Requiem says in a quiet voice. "Do you know what it's like being a prisoner in your own body while someone else sifts through your memories to torment you? To have someone use you as a tool to kill your friends and enslave them, too? The vampire I was isn't even gone! We're the same person now. We're in harmony." She rises to her hooves, her expression defiant. "You're telling me that I can't save people who desperately need saving. I can't obey that command because I won't condemn others to slavery in undeath, not after I've experienced it myself."

She closes her eyes, expecting her own destruction to swiftly follow.

"My Mistress will know what you do to me. She can feel it when her little ponies die."

[Beans]

[Alley Fulla Trashcans]
There is a something laying on the ground in this alley fulla trashcans.

It looks like a hoomin, or at least a hoominoid, in a suit of combat armor on the sleek-and-sciencey side, complete with featureless helmet and product codes on the armor plates. Oddly, it has eight sleeves for the arms.
Thankfully, its occupant has eight arms for the sleeves.
Flopped on the ground, the thing moves just a little, breathing painfully.

[Recaiden]

[Midnight Park]

Better safe than accidentally killed pones.
The qilin is good with uncanny feelings; that's exactly what it would do.

The evil cleric, for her part, laughs.
"I have, actually. To have no control over your body, to struggle helplessly to stop what's been done by the thing that is you now. You're deluding yourself. You aren't saving them. You're just giving them a subtler form of slavery. What better way to gather servants than to twist their memories until they willingly bear the shackles, thinking themselves free?"

"I'm not going to kill you, Requim. If you destroy yourself rather than abide peacefully, that's no fault of mine."

[Ionbound]

Spoiler

Show

[Devil's Charm Hospital]

Down the corridor she can see a huge hulking creature wander out of one of the rooms, it could easily have been a patient or one of the personnel if not for the huge club it was carrying in it's hand. The next moment another smaller creature exits as well, dragging a chain after it.
The two haven't noticed her yet but they're bound too soon.

Clara immediately gets as quiet and stealthy as possible, shapeshifting into a female human, though not her original, form. She tunes in on the Kroot's thoughts, trying to get an idea of what they're there for while remaining out of sight.

[UncleWolf]

A Spooky House



The music fills the house; this is the kind of house that carries music well, especially a big, loud piano like this one. Nothing unusual happens, but if there's anyone else in the house they almost certainly know that she's here.

"If anyone is there, you may come out. I don't mean you any harm." The Angel says once her music is done. She stays seated and takes another look around, hoping that whatever is here will show its face now. She didn't relish the idea of roaming around an unknown building for too long.

[Lost_Deep]

A Spooky House

Nothing happens. Nothing. Either they're not going to respond to that, or they can't, or no one's there.

...but she'll likely get an odd feeling that someone else is here. And inexplicable feeling she isn't alone.

[Rebonack]

[Midnight Park]

Destroy yourself rather than abide peacefully... So she was right. The collar is some kind of geas, isn't it? Surely her Mistress would be able to break it. Breaking the unbreakable is her purpose and destiny.

"My memories haven't been tampered with," Requiem insists. "And I'm not enslaved to my Mistress. I'm loyal to her and what she stands for. She set me free from a tortured existence and I follow her out of gratitude. If you've been a vampire then you know what it's like. Anything is better than that. Death is preferable. But the monster that's pulling the strings of your body won't let you die."

The qilin snorts, her tail lashing behind her.

"Even if you're right... even if my Mistress is controlling me I really don't care. You haven't met her. You haven't seen her weeping over the bodies of her little ponies who have been killed by undead lords and zealots. We're her children. We're her little ponies. She loves us. She loves all of us. I was nothing but a tool to my old master. He didn't even notice when I was lost in the Gloom. My Mistress saved me and she loves me. She's my friend. And I really don't think she's subtle enough to make a big act of all of this, to be controlling us all and making us think it was our idea all along."

Why?

Because Sunder isn't a clever pony.

[Shadowcaller]

Temple Street

Artorias is here, sitting down besides a bench and reading from a small paperback. He's dressed in a simple tan shirt, and the bare minimum of pockets. His unkempt hair is slightly more -kempt than usual, since he's become more of an official cleric and all. For now, that is the simple scene, just a calm young man and a book.
[Closed]

Spoiler

Show

Clara immediately gets as quiet and stealthy as possible, shapeshifting into a female human, though not her original, form. She tunes in on the Kroot's thoughts, trying to get an idea of what they're there for while remaining out of sight.

Temple Street

And young man, a book and AWESOME you mean?

Libra appears, dressed in a rather slinky dress which seem rather unlike her. "Ta-DA! Look what I got!" She exclaims (loudly) and makes a twirl. "Isn't this the best clothes Arty? Everyone should wear dresses!" She looks up at him, as her eyes as been on her dress for this entire time. "Don't you have a dress Arty? It would look so cool."

Devil's charm's hospital

The two wander out of the room and Clara will be able to see that they are dragging a goblin after them at the end of the chain. The kroot points at the exit and the ogre starts walking towards it, being joined by three orcs who seem to now be standing guard at the door. The Kroot itself is then joined by another Kroot coming from inside the room and the two starts walking in Clara's direction.
She can sense that he's hungry and is disappointed by the lack of resistance it's facing. He won't even get to eat these prisoners as they're going to take them hostages, according to the plan. Now it's going to get more hostages before going back into the tunnels.

[Deathkeeper]

Temple Street

Arty looks up and smiles, closing his book.
"Hello, Libra. I've been meaning to thank you. Chadwick has been doing wonderfully since you helped his mind.
And no, I don't have a dress. Centaurs don't worry about clothes much, especially on things that go past the waist. I suppose you could cut out the back and it might fit over a build like ours? Either way, they're a feminine thing in most cultures, and I'm no mare. I can't even talk to one!" he says with a small laugh.

[Recaiden]

[Midnight Park]

"I'm sorry you feel that way."
The evil cleric detonates the flame collar. It should be quite lethal.

[Rebonack]

[Midnight Park]

Requiem's neck explodes, sending her head sailing through the air and bouncing off the trunk of a nearby tree. Her headless corpse topples over, twitching and thrashing spasmodically while gloom spurts from the stump. Much to her horror, laying there in the forest duff as she is, Requiem discovers that a shadeling can survive quite a bit longer with their head severed than a living person or a vampire can. She tries gasping for breath, but she doesn't have any lungs. She tries calling out for help, but she meets the same problem. She tries moving her legs, but she can't feel them, mostly because they're laying in a heap twenty feet away.

Tears mingled with liquid shadow runs down her face as she sits there helplessly, crying silently. Everything hurts. Everything hurts. She can't feel her body, but it feels like it's on fire.

How long can a shadeling survive as a severed head?

Well, that's an interesting question isn't it?

But it might be best if Ashna just puts the poor thing out of her misery.

[Recaiden]

[Midnight Park]

Ah, but if the shadeling dies, Sunder will know. We can't have that, can we?
Ashna walks over to the severed head, and attempts to lay hands upon it.
"Slow. Survive."
A human can survive beheading for a few moments, a shadeling apparently longer, and one enchanted to have its body process veeery slowly, maybe a very long time.
Attempts are made to pick up the shadeling head and head back through the woods. She knows someone who can hopefully keep it...unlive.

[Rebonack]

[Midnight Park]

Sunder would know. But she wouldn't necessarily be aware of which of her little ponies died or where they died. Requiem was hoping that knowledge would put enough fear into Ashna that she would leave her alone.

The qilin can hear the cleric approaching, her feet tramping on the ground. She still has a chance. One last trump card she can try. But after that... after that she's all out of options. When Ashna reaches for her, Requiem causes her head to melt into a pool of liquid gloom. The mass of devouring darkness springs at Ashna's hand like a coiled serpent, aiming to lash around the limb and begin greedily devouring her awareness. Healing damage really doesn't do her a whole lot of good right now, but her gloomy touch carries with it more than just wisdom draining this time around.

She's also trying to cause Ashna to sink into a deep, dreamless slumber.

If she can put Ashna to sleep, she should be able to ooze her way over to her body and...

Maybe make it liquify too?

And then put herself back together?

Requiem honestly has no idea whether or not that's how her gloom form ability works. But it's worth a shot...

[Recaiden]

[Midnight Park]

It works. The evil cleric was not expecting nearly that much activity from a severed head, and the darkness takes her by surprise and latches onto her arm.
Ashna stumbles, and quickly falls, drained.

She's never needed to be conscious to turn up the flames. She needs to be okay to keep them turned down. A veritable inferno springs up around the evil cleric, trees hissing, small leaves catching fire. Gloom-liquid maybe not in for the best time.

[Rebonack]

[Midnight Park]

And that's why gloom form tends to be a shadeling's trump card. People don't usually expect a solid thing to suddenly become very NOT solid. Unfortunately, the gloom form isn't without its drawbacks. One of those drawbacks? Because they're spread over a wider area attacks spread over a wider area hurt a LOT more.

With her presently tiny liquid gloom mass humming with stolen energy from Ashna Requiem makes a break for the edge of the inferno. The flames lick at her, causing her to hiss and boil as she scrambles through the blazing leaf-litter toward her headless body. By the time she clears the blaze much of her previously slick, oily mass has been reduced to clotted, clumped chunks of char coal that crumble away as she desperately pulls herself toward her prize. She hopes beyond hope that she'll actually be able to join her head back to her body, otherwise she'll probably still die anyway.

Smoke rises up through the canopy of Midnight Park.

It's only a matter of time before the blaze is noticed and something is done about it.

Handy to have custodians who can shepherd clouds around.

[Recaiden]

[Midnight Park]

Ashna lays there, in an enchanted sleep.
The flames roar and blast, sending waves and blasts of fire towards the fleeing liquid shadeling. It kind of likes Ashna. The least it can do is finish off this treacherous opponent.

[Rebonack]

[Midnight Park]

Nope.

Requiem can't take any more at this point. She's unceremoniously reduced to a heap of charred, clotted gloom. Her body continues to lay there on the ground, the torrent of liquid shadow spewing from her neck stump slowing to a mere trickle.

It'll be a few minutes yet before the first responders arrive to begin trying to douse the flames. The fire will likely have difficulty spreading far, given how damp and cold the lower stories of the forest are. Not exactly an ideal place for a forest fire.

Meanwhile!

Originally Nightlight was just coming to check on his friend. He's a little surprised when he notices her sand cart sitting alone and unattended, but this wouldn't be the first time that has happened. "Hey Req! You left your cart all alone again!" he calls out as he trots along, a box of candied daisies hanging in the air next to him suspended in his TK field.

Silence meets him.

"Req? Hey, what's up? You aren't chasing squirrel shadows around again, are you?" he yells off into the forest. With a frown, Nightlight trots over to the cart and his heart stops. Requiem's rake burned to cinders. Her sand garden ruined by hoof and foot prints. A spattering of gloomy blood. Nightlight drops his box and reaches out with his magic, illuminating the area around him.

There.

Hoofprints in the forest floor. Footprints, too. Req ran. The other thing chased her.

"No..."

Nightlight gallops off as fast as his hooves can take him. The smell of smoke grows ever stronger. And the smell of spilled blood. The infernal orange glow of flames flickers and dances between the trees, casting shadows long and hard. Then he sees it, his friend sprawled across the ground and a blazing pyre fire not too distant from her. He closes the gap in a hard gallop, stumbling once along the way as his hoof crunches into something brittle and dusty. "Requiem! Req! Are you okay?" the unicorn shadeling calls out as he slows to a canter, then to a trot. "...Req...?"

Her head is gone.

Nightlight moves in a daze, his mind unable to process what he's seeing. "Req...? Come on, Req, this isn't funny." He places a hoof on the body and begins to shake it. "Req? Requiem! Get up! Please... oh God... please don't be dead. No... no no nonono..." he sobs as he falls across his lost friend and gives a keening wail of despair and anguish.

[Darkcomet]

[Street Barge Stratus - Ballroom]

They cross the peach colored marblike floor - marble-alike, in cheap demihuman slang - without any opposition. The occupants of the chamber, perhaps thirty or so including the crewmen, appear unharmed albeit perturbed. Strange, brown bloated creatures dressed with fine crimson tunics huddle together in whale-like pods. They share no concept of personal space among their species, closeness is in their nature, whether it be to comfort one another or out've shared fear. The susurrus of their worried, bleating voices is insufferable when standing too close. The thestrals pass a few others - strange, calmly speaking tall folken with great dangling trunks, an enormous arachnid in a rather nice suit and tie, other oddities of the clashing noble culture.

The thestrals will begin to reveal themselves beside a stout mustachioed man in a suit afire with the brightest colors of Fall. His cap has the most shiny things upon it - and his very nearly human face puts forth some semblance of command. He has little in the way of a neck - a squat head and a too-broad mouth altogether give him away as some offshoot. Thus, he and the two men near him don't quite fall over each other with fear or surprise. Their bewilderment is clear, but it lasts only a short while. Vigilantes. Ah. "Gunfire below, ma'rm," Mustache huffs for the three of them, gathering himself. He folds his hands slowly behind is back, from which they'd lurched forward into a fighting stance when Tenebra and Nyx appeared. "I fear the worst. I've taken all possible measures to alert the police, but I cannot contact the bridge for a more formal alarm. The bells are still sounding, but who can say how long that will last, ma'rm. I've been preparing a few men to go down with me and find out the trouble."

The trouble, it would seem, is making no attempts to conceal itself. Not too far away from the thestrals now, the locked double-doors to below begin to click and clack. The handles flicker madly, as though willing to be shot loose. A pair of Autumn-dressed door guards take a few smart steps back.

It is what saves them a great deal of pain. In a shockwave of blue light, both doors are blown off their hinges, catapulted into the room. Guests are sent scrambling to avoid their path, all but for the tall folk, one of which is struck from his near suicidal state of calm by a flying length of gold and oak. Battered to the floor, but only injured, it would seem.

Through the door soars a collection of airborne blue globes. Several of them are small, dim, lacking light or life of their core-sphere. The core-sphere, a young Turrr named Qy, crackles with power and life, a glowing ball of lightning covered in runic designs. He is laced around his girth with protruding block constructs, the breadth of which denote his age, revealing him to the knowledgeable as barely a teenager. Qy shrieks with glee, his dull Ur spheres whirling around him in unison, ready to channel more of his explosive inner light. Most of the guests take the swiftest path away from him.

Turrr have no voice with which to speak the Common language. Thus, when Qy speaks, it is in the combined voices of his friends, a layered amalgamation that booms throughout the chamber, rolling slowly like the sound of thunder. "Everybody on the floooooOORRRR!" The last becomes a shriek, a command, sending lightning scything out through the Ur-sphere channels and blasting craters in the pillars set gapped around the room. "Tell me where the one called Jin is, and you will not be harmeeed. Ed. Urr." Qy whoops and stutters strangely.

Mustache, recovered again from yet another interesting entrance, hollers back, "Jin's long since gone home for the day, fiend! Leave this place at once!"

Qy turns his terrible attentions upon the Mustache and his current company, the thestrals among them.

"Lying will do you no good, Urr-cutal-nfam, hurk, no good at all," The enunciation of the last word bears terrible weight, as one of the Ur spheres alights, tossing a lightning bolt in the crewman's direction.

[Sky Barge Stratus - Roof Deck]

Jin scrabbles out from between the two of them, his wits long since scared off, unable to cope with what's happening. As Noelle begins to leave, he hurries over and squats to push as much of the lantern-goop back inside his charge as he can. With a quick, fearful glance at the shadowy equine still standing there. "What should I do?" He manages to ask.

Noelle evidently arrives just in time to see the scene in the ballroom!

"Well we can't have that." The Major, seeing that the potential to make this guy just stand down is long since gone given the lightning bolts flying around, raises her bolt pistol and fires into the...floating lightning ball thing with other weird things on and around him, the miniature rocket propelled bolt aimed straight for the core sphere.

She wouldn't have fancied her ability to negotiate with something that alien anyway.

She'll also be bolting for any cover that isn't people that she can find very quickly (for a human, anyway), if possible.

[ThirdEmperor]

[Park Park]

The usually tidy park has overspilled it's bounds, the tidy expanses of green and winding sidewalk trails vanishing under towering hedge-walls that sprouted up overnight. Vines and thorns weave together into impassable barriers, leaning crookedly together to form winding passageways, plastic gargoyles leering down from atop the walls. Pumpkins grin glowing smiles on the road up to the entrance. It's a hedge maze, as enjoyed by children and grudgingly endured by their chaperones everywhere.

Only, nobody's enjoying this one.

Somebody's gone and put up rolls and rolls of yellow caution tape around the whole place.


The walls are sprouting strange flowers, petals streaked with electric splashes of blue and purple. Smaller white flowers cling to the vines and glow faintly in the moonlight. The whole park has a sickly, cloying smell of perfume, and people say they've seen the walls shift and change. Some go so far as to suggest the plants tried to grab them. Yesterday, the local volunteer fire department had to go and rescue a toddler from the maze - and they needed to bring their axes to do it.


Could this festive Halloween celebration have turned into a haunted death trap?

Well, yeah. And nobody's surprised.

[Arkhosia]

[Italian Restaurant] (Well. I wouldn't say closed. More RP more better, right?)

"Well. This place seems . . . okay." Catherine says, peering at it. She wasn't suuuper excited for it, but who knows. Maybe the food is good? Or at least comes in healthy sized helpings. "After you." She says, holding the door open for Miria.

Iris leads the way into the averagely designed Generales Restaurant, which now has a name! The two are seiftly led by a waiter dressed in a black dress shirt and pants with a mullet to a table and given menus, then asks for drink orders.
A soda please
Miria requests politely.

[Lost_Deep]

Park Park

Bella, in her costume, walks up to the maze. Aww, this one is shut down? She wanted to try it.

Bella looks to be in middle school, a teenager who will someday be a beautiful woman. Her costume is Egyptian-themed, with the stereotypical make-up and hair dyed black. She's wearing a red dress, and a little hair ornament on the top of her head that looks like a throne.

Bella looks around for someone who looks like they know what's going on. Maybe this will open back up later, there's still time in October.

[Recaiden]

[Midnight Park]

Unless this is the sort of enchanted sleep that wears off immediately when the monster that placed the spell dies, the evil cleric won't be going anywhere yet. Just lying there, very obvious, not burning in the center of the flames.

Now, maybe the pony is too distraught to investigate the fire slowly spreading through the wet forest.

[Arkhosia]

[Alley Fulla Trashcans]
There is a something laying on the ground in this alley fulla trashcans.

It looks like a hoomin, or at least a hoominoid, in a suit of combat armor on the sleek-and-sciencey side, complete with featureless helmet and product codes on the armor plates. Oddly, it has eight sleeves for the arms.
Thankfully, its occupant has eight arms for the sleeves.
Flopped on the ground, the thing moves just a little, breathing painfully.

The hoomin may be surprised to spot a possibly utterly adorable spider approach her, as big as a dog, non threatening and absolutely adorable I think!
Then again, it may not be surprising and the lady might have crippling arachnophobia. I don't know!

[Rebonack]

[Midnight Park]

Nah, the sleep lasts until some of the wisdom damage is healed. Which... generally takes a day. Barring outside magical interference.

Before long pegasi begin showing up with clouds and begin dumping water on the flames. Given the magical nature of the fire, they probably won't have much luck putting the source out. Eventually one of them lands to see what's going on and finds Nightlight still sobbing over a headless corpse.

Well...

That's something to go fetch the Mistress over.

A few minutes later the massive, imperious looking pegasus lands, eying the flames for but a moment before moving to kneel down next to Nightlight. The sobbing unicorn looks at her with a blank expression before burying his face in her feathers. "She was my friend..." he chokes out, his voice hoarse from crying.

Sunder gently nuzzles at his ear. "She was a friend to us all, my little pony. Requiem won't be forgotten."

"She... she was so kind and friendly. Why would anyone want to hurt her?" Nightlight asks.

The nightmære shakes her head sadly. "I don't know, my little pony. But I intend to find out." She rises to her hooves, approaches the crackling flames, and then hauls back to punch them with one of her front hooves. There's a pretty good chance Sunder just knocked out the flames. That or straight up destroyed them. Her Talent is pretty scary.

[Recaiden]

[Midnight Park]

The source is indeed quite resistant to being put out, but the pegasi can easily keep the fire from spreading. And the cleric lies there, still asleep.

Sunder punches the flames, and they flicker out.

In a small settlement Outside, the magical flames that power the place vanish, and the town is quickly filled with darkness and confusion.
In the Hunting Grounds, a scientist falls over like a stalk of cut wheat.
In a frozen glade, the last source of heat that was holding off the unnatural ice goes out. Death takes the forest.
In a playground, a child falls from the monkey bars. His mother rushes over to find him without a scratch, but no longer breathing.
In a flying ship a world away, the lifting bars fail in a way that is supposed to be impossible, and the vessel begins to plummet.

And right here, Ashna quietly dies.