Session 66 - The Last Wind

Previously, Across The Horizon...
The Edge of the World holds a great many secrets, though our brave adventurers are intent on finding them all through careful scientific analysis (for three of them) and incredible feats of athleticism (one of them). The fifth is dealing with headaches.
To gain access to the deeper regions of the Edge of the World, our adventurers first had to solve a puzzle of unknown origin and purpose in a room that had crumbled into rubble, taking an orb that created a bubble of time from Twelve-dedicated pedestal to Twelve-dedicated puzzle.
Once the puzzle was solved, stairs dropped down to allow them access to the deeper tunnels, though only inside the safety of the bubble of the orb could they travel.
We join our brave adventurers as they continue their journey...
**
The passageway splits, one path going left, one path going right.
Azdar Chid and Aurin make no move to pick the direction.
It would seem that everyone defaults to the captain, whether or not he is currently wearing the hat (he is never wearing the hat).
The hatless captain pauses briefly, making sure that everyone is caught up, and then points down the left passage with his crossbow.
"Is that a 'go that way' point or a 'beware, something needs shooting' point?" Yves asks, but he's already heading thataway with his new best friend, Time Orb.
"It's too quiet to shoot anything without seeing it first. Wait until you see the whites of its eyes, or something." Linnet does her third quick headcount in the past five minutes - no change - and follows warily.
"The second one's more emphatic. And involves shooting.", Bast quietly mutters a couple of steps behind Time Orb and its new best friend Yves.
"Well, maybe you wanted it zotted or singed instead of shot," Yves says reasonably. "We should probably work out a standard set of gestures and, I don't know, distribute pamphlets to the crew for study, or something."
"Ship dictionary motion noted and will be accorded further study upon return to the actual ship."
Isa brings up the rear, pivoting from time to time to check for pursuit, just in case there is a second Time Orb they are not aware of.
The passageway curves around into a large room, one marked with four huge load-bearing columns spread evenly through the room, ceiling far above, with faded colorful designs along the walls, ones that potentially once told a story, but now have only the barest hint of what once had been.
Orrey pauses at the entrance, whistling under his breath as he starts sketching the approach.
(Linnet, too, is immediately distracted by the designs.)
Orrey is still sketching when the light changes, an aura of crimson flashing through the room for an instant.
"Oh, hey," says Yves, "anyone else notice that?" He holds up Friend Orb, in case that helps with seeing things that already happened.
"-oh what now." Bast slides right on through weary and lands in incensed, ready to shoot anything that shows itself.
Isa frowns. "That's an ominous aura."
"ERROR / CORRUPTION / CORE LOCKDOWN / CORE LOCKDOWN / CORE LOCKDOWN"
"It talks!" exclaims Yves in delight.
"Anyone see where that's coming from?"
"Everywhere?" Isa says.
Bars of lightning shoot up from the floor to ceiling, barring the way the party came, and the way they would leave, ninety feet away on the far end of the room.
That is enough to snap Linnet's head away from the puzzle. "But - it's ancient - and there's been nobody here for - ah, dust devils."
Isa says "Shit," and swings her spear around into a ready position.
A segment of the floor spirals open, dislodging rocks and stretching clumps of grass and mud apart.
"This is nicely smooth automation," Yves says, even as he pops his orb buddy into his satchel to leave hands free for slightly less friendly work.
The thing that rises up is by no means human, though it is humanoid. Its body is created from what looks like a chipped orange ceramic, faded blue and purple lines tracing its abdomen. Its joints are metal sinew, its 'head' a stone crown tipped with gold, its left arm a curved metal shield with one emerald slotted into the center, an emerald that is now glowing. Its right arm is an equally blunt but far more offensive long rod, as long as Isa and her extended spear are tall.
The crown shifts and takes in the room.
INITIATE INTRUDER REMOVAL
"I think that means us," Isa says redundantly.
She follows up with a curt "Get to cover!" as she runs up the line of explorers. Somewhere mid-Linnet, she lets her body drop down on the lead step, loading forward momentum in her legs, and springs up, high between the columns on her way to the distant ceiling.
The construct -- Faust clicks in Bast's mind, this thing is a Faust -- takes one lumbering step forward, and that massive stone rod thunders down at the moogle.
Bast's moment of hesitation between two equidistant columns costs him dearly; the rod, moving unexpectedly fast, smashes him down to the floor with enough force that he slides several feet on his back.
"Dammit, Captain, stop charging into danger, that's what underlings are for!" Linnet throws a powdered-sugar-scented snowball at his head and frantically dodges behind a column.
"If you'd be interested in talking this out, we're ready to listen," Yves says helpfully--it's a little easier to be helpful when one hasn't been personally attacked quite yet--but all the same, flicks out a complicated (and yet oddly squishy) sort of gesture toward the construct; the magic oozes its way toward the king of pain rapidly, while Yves slips behind a pillar.
Bast hisses at the construct, still on his back, and holds up his somewhat unresponsive right arm with his left as he aims and lands a shot squarely on the green emerald of the construct's shield.
The emerald on the shield flashes between red, then green, then blue, with all three colors mixed in with its original emerald.
Isa descends like a comet, spear-first and bow-wave streaming. The impact is nearly deafening in an enclosed space, and some of the cracks in the ceramic cowling have become outright chasms.
"Isa, if you bring down the ceiling on us while we're several floors underground, we are going to have a problem!"
Faust staggers back, ceramic shrapnel spraying across the battlefield. The emerald glows again, and those same colors swirl around the rod, and then the rod barrels around in a wide arc at Isa.
From within the cracked cowl, two other small devices crawl out, each the size of a backpack, each with a blinking red light on the top. They scatter through the room, one approaching Bast, one approaching Yves, though they do not appear to be moving aggressively.
Isa meets the rod with a grunt, planting her off-hand on it like a pommel horse and vaulting over the swing.
"Well, if you won't wear the hat, let me at least give you a little help." Linnet throws a frisbee-like blast of light at Bast, which explodes over his head in a very small shower of glitter, and underhand-tosses a snowball at Faust with her other hand. The non-dominant throw doesn't make much of an impact.
"Go to sleep, go to sleep, have a chat with Diabolos about the values of compromise and not just repeatedly trying to murder everyone," Yves sing-songs under his breath, back pressed to a pillar, as he does his best to remind an ancient being of a relatively recent bargain. And keep an eye on the new little devices. At the same time, ideally? Well, there's always an ideal to strive for, now, isn't there. "You and your little friends too..."
Bast flashes Linnet a wide-eyed stare as he finishes scraping himself off the floor, but his attention is promptly taken up by avoiding the skittering machine trying to make his acquaintance.
Faust... slumps, a bit.
Bast - from behind a column this time - takes aim at the crawler following him and pins it to the floor with a carefully aimed bolt. He spots the other one gaining on Yves across the room and sends another bolt its way - less precise, but still enough to send shards flying.
There is a flash of light around Bast, and then Bast is not there anymore.
What is there is... a toad, with a pom-pom.
A very Confused Toad with a pom-pom.
PARAMETERS EXCEEDED
INITIATE GORDIAS PROTOCOL Bast takes a tentative hop and bounces headfirst off the pillar he was hiding behind.
Whereas Faust rose from the ground, the new arrival to the battlefield descends from the ceiling, clad in the same carapace material as Faust. The Oppressor, though, has three sets of rotors keeping it in the air, and multiple cannons extending from all sides, cannons that herald its coming with a barrage at all intruders on the battlefield.
"Friendship offer stands," Yves calls to the Oppressor, just in case that does any good. (He does not expect it to do any good.)
"Yves, I appreciate that it worked with Diabolos, but Diabolos is a special case," Linnet calls out.
Isa is driven back by the fusillade, arms crossed before her. She looks up at the Oppressor, and her eyes narrow. "Fuck this."
Isa leaps up into the air, hanging suspended above the the battlefield, her foes made minuscule by perspective. Her eyes close as she brings her spear around in front of her, held in both hands, point-up.
She whispers to the flat of the blade, a secret name. Silver light flares, radiating out from the spear as a beacon above.
The spear drifts out from her hands, kept aloft by its own power. It splits, refracted out in triplicate on either side. Seven spears. Seven blades. Seven points, turning down towards her enemies.
As one, they strike, a rain of steel across all foes.
As the afterimages of the silver strikes fade, Isa herself, spear in hand, comes crashing down through the air, piercing through the Oppressor on her way groundward.
As Faust's exterior shifts to shrapnel, ice forms along its stone rod, and Isa is the only one within range.
Isa turns her armored side to face the rod, reinforced joints locking into place as a solid bulwark against the strike.
Bastoad pauses, then tries to bite the column he just bounced off.
"...must...not...get distracted by adorable captain..." It seems Linnet is, in fact, distracted by the adorable captain, but she manages to blow a puff of warm cinnamon at everyone and heal them up at least a little.
Yves slides down the column he's hiding behind a little, trying to track everything going on during this fight. He was mostly keeping up, and then Isa got... very exciting. Well. When in doubt, hurt the things trying to hurt one's friends, right? He snaps a sparkling clear nothingness at Faust.
The Oppressor's cannons all zero in on the White Mage on the battlefield, and then Linnet finds herself the center of attention.
Linnet squeaks and somehow manages to scramble out of the way in a fashion she claims later was completely an intentional tuck-and-roll, not a trip-over-her-own-feet.
The pillar is insufficiently tasty to hold Bastoad's attention. Seeing Faust doing a creditable impression of one in the middle of the room, he hops over to investigate, jumps up onto an immobile foot, and aims a severely disgruntled bite at the ankle joint.
Isa turns to look at Bast with an expression of amused exasperation. Without looking at Faust, she spins her spear into a reverse grip and thrusts backwards, the point shattering the last bits of ceramic resistance to strike some vital node. Wisps of green energy flow back into her along the shaft, and then she pulls it free to turn her attention towards the Oppressor.
INITIATE DETONATION "Oh shit."
The Oppressor suddenly starts blinking, a red that is getting brighter and faster, brighter and faster, brighter and faster...
"Bast, get the hell out of there! I don't want to freeze you too!" Linnet closes her eyes, breathes very rapidly for a minute, then screams and punches downward, smacking her open palm on the floor. A lethal-size icicle drops from the roof and crashes onto the Oppressor's oppression direction unit.
Bastoad croaks in Linnet's general direction and tries to hide in what's left of Faust.
The Oppressor sprays wildly throughout the battlefield again, shells pinging off of columns and people alike.
Linnet's ankle bracelets flash as a shell zips entirely too close to her feet, but manages to just miss.
Isa throws her gauntlet in front of her, Bast's clever flanges extending to shield her from the incoming flak.
Yves yelps as a shell cuts through his arm, and his excellent adventuring coat. "That's not the right place for damage to add to the aesthetic!" he shouts at the Oppressor, and snaps an enormous handful of crackling electricity right back at it.
It's quite a lot of electricity, actually. Something like a traveling thunderclap that connects directly with the blinking, and creates an enormous teeth-rattling sound of NAW, SON to that whole incipient explosion. ...though the number of pieces of the Construct Formerly Known As Oppressor flying through the air immediately afterward do probably count as an explosion themselves. Technically speaking.
ELIMINATION HALTED
"...thanks, I think? Everyone okay? Bast? Are you back to moogle form?" Linnet raises her voice a bit. "Orrey? I think it's stopped trying to kill us. In this specific bit, anyway."
Yves clears his throat a bit awkwardly. "Sorry about the... uh... debris."
Isa shrugs. "Less than there would have been otherwise. Good shot."
Though the shrapnel explosion has stopped, everyone's clothes and hair are still blowing in the wind.
Bast looks up from where he's sitting in the remains of Faust. "Looks like perfectly fine debris to me. None of it's ours." He gets up slowly, still favoring his right side where he took the first hit of the fight, and bends down to scoop up a former foot and whip it at the nearest set of lasers blocking the exit.
The wind dies.
And then the wind... dances between them.
As it once did.
Sweeping up pebbles and scraps of ceramic shell, the wind darts and dashes, swirls and swoops, following recognizable patterns and forming familiar shapes in the air between them.
The wind moves like Linnet once did.
The breath Bast takes to calm down cuts off mid-exhalation. His eyes dart around the room.
Yves looks at Linnet, then back at the moving wind.
Isa's eyes narrow, uncertain of how to interpret this omen.
Linnet still has one hand flat on the floor and the other on her knee. Her braid pools on the ground, completely still. If it weren't for the slight rise and fall of her shoulders, you wouldn't know she was even breathing.
The wind dances around her, ruffling Bast's coat, rearranging Yves's hair, flipping Isa's braid to her other shoulder.
Everything on Linnet remains still.
"...Great Crystal, why?" Linnet whispers, her eyes beginning to shimmer.
The wind slows, its playfulness settling down. It circles Linnet, close enough to knock pebbles into her, but no matter what it does, nothing on her moves. Her hair remains perfectly stationary.
Isa frowns, at this. "Now, that's just cruel," she says to no one in particular.
It sweeps around one last time... and then the wind is gone, leaving Linnet behind, now more than ever.
She's happiest when surrounded by friends and busiest when keeping them shielded and healed and cheered up and well fed. For now, though, Linnet closes her eyes and allows herself to feel completely, devastatingly alone.
End session.