strangetrip | Inn-world Combat: The Dread Reign

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Inn-world Combat: The Dread Reign

At the crest of the mountain, Coc'zac sat atop Nazu's head looking through a glass that Hotor held to his eye. Vokva sat beside them, little more than a pile of bones atop a pile of rocks, and Hafur paced behind them, holding the troops in check. They milled in the pre-dawn gloom, skeletons, wights, zombies, wraiths, and all manner of undead creatures. Periodically, Nazu swept the space behind them with their tail bowling over anyone who'd gotten too close.

The first pinpoint of light had Coc'zac's teeth chattering with excitement in his disembodied head. Today was the day he'd been planning for. Soon, soon the Inn and its occupants would be his. Nazu unleashed a heavy sigh tinged with poison and necrosis. Fortunately the troops were all dead already, and Coc'zac didn't have anything in the way of arms to hit them with.

It fell to Hafur to gesture the troops forward as punctuation to Coc'zac's 'rousing' speech, and together they crept through the portal, avoiding its fizzing and popping edges demarcated in what would be neon blue, if they could still see in color. They couldn't properly hear either, but they were aware of the noise and the danger it marked.

Once they were all through, the advance scouts, four bands of skeleton archers swept quietly as they could through the shadows to take up position around the main buildings, prepared to pick off anyone who exited--for example for a pre-sun jog. And once they'd settled into wary, silent waiting, occasionally interrupted by the pop of a joint or the clatter of toe bones on stone, the next wave rolled in finding shadows to hide in until the residents emerged with the wights taking point.The bone naga and three flameskulls slipped through the lobby doors and stealthed toward the offices, assuming to find the command center there.

It wasn't long before the invaders caught the notice of the residents, and then shouts began to echo through the grey light and journals filled with messages and reminders of siege plans. Several strongly worded messages urged the kids and those without weapons or fighting skills to head for the Temple where the Hallow spell would protect them from unholy undead things.

And so the battle for the Madonna Inn began...

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"A little smaller, brother!" Loki called back, throwing a couple more blurring spells on the new arrivals. No sense leaving them easy to target! But it was a good point; Surtur's crown plus the Eternal Flame would resurrect him for Ragnarok. If this thing had something similar, perhaps it had a similar resurrection planned? "Less decorative!"

He didn't stop moving or casting just because he was thinking, though. To give Stark time to get mobile (and incidentally keep Thor's component atoms together), Loki wrapped the skull in silence just as it started to chatter again. The silence would break one spell, but by then it would hopefully be too late to catch everyone on the ground anymore.

Conjured barriers? Portals popping in and out of existence like virtual particles? Yep. Hogwarts shit. Expelliarmus it up, comrades. The other two who had joined the fray were keeping the home front protected, and that was all Tony needed to know.

Following his fellow Avenger's ascent, Iron Man took off into the sky like a rocket. Each appendage was ablaze with his repulsors firing off, and he hugged them in close to sharpen the aerodynamics of his swift descent upon the airborne skull. He kept his vision locked on the thing, giving F.R.I.D.A.Y. just enough time to put a target on it. It liked missiles? Oh, it was going to get them.

"Thor, micro-missile chaser headed your way!" A slew of projectiles emerged from Iron Man's back, streaking brightly across the sky directly for their target following Thor's attack. He pulled an abrupt arc away from the inn to escape the blast radius, and the roar of missile-on-bone filled the air.

"Eye-holes over here, Skeletor! There's more where that came from, so open wide!"

At least the man in the technology was going away from Carlos. It meant he could unleash everything. The distractions provided were good - it meant that hopefully skull boy's attention was divided.

Most wizards had a school of magic they preferred - Carlos' was water magic based, with a touch of entropy, but for sheer outright damage in a fight? Nothing beat a blast of fire to the face - or in this case, up the nose-holes of the skull above him. The flying fighters were going to go for the larger distraction, but that was fine, it just gave him openings to try something else. There was a time and a place for a smart-ass comment, but without Harry or his other Warden friends there, he just had to wait for the right opening.

Clarice couldn't help the laugh at Thor's comments. It was so very much him, but her attention was on the magic user. Her mind began to work how to use what he was doing with her portals. She glanced at Thor and his hammer and a thought began to take shape.

"Hey, Carlos." She'd heard his name being used though they hadn't talked before. "If I create a portal opening in front of us, can you put a barrier up strong enough flying skull can't get through?"

If he could, she'd tell Thor to hit the son of a bitch right into it on one of his hammer swings.

Carlos swore to himself as his fireball went wide - damn, that thing was fast - but he took a quick swing of his staff as the skull came close. No more than a glancing blow, but he'd take it.

He glanced over at the woman - Clarice, he seemed to recall, though he didn't actually know her, before turning his attention back to the skull. "Impermeable barrier? Not exactly a specialty, but give me a moment to prepare it, and I can do it. Got an idea?" He tended to work with laws of thermodynamics - namely that the energy was absorbed by the barrier, and whatever was going through the barrier was slowed down. Extending it so that it effectively slowed it to a stop would be challenging - but he could do it.

"Yeah I'm thinking Thor smashes skull through a portal that I create and it bounces off your barrier back to Thor to smash, and skull ping pong begins." She shot him a quick smile. "Get ready."

Then she shifted her weight to open a portal by Thor again. It also helped in conversations because she could talk through it and didn't have to yell. "Hey, got an idea. Me and wizard boy will set up portals and a barrier. You think you can hit that thing through the portal and into the barrier? It should and I mean should, bounce back at you and you can hit it again. If it doesn't work I want a big ass wake with lots of alcohol for my funeral okay? And tie a cherry stem in my honor."

"Much smaller!" he shouts back to his brother.

Thor had only half-heard the conversation between Carlos and Claire. It was growing increasingly more difficult to hear everyhihng over the din of spells and missiles and the crack of lightning. Even as they talked, he had been unleashing his own flurry of blows against the undead beast -- some of which had missed their mark. The creature was fast, and instead of wearing him down, their assault seemed to have galvanized the creature, and it moved even faster than it had from start.

"I can do that," he says. "Not the cherry stem thing, though -- I'm still no good at it -- so if you want it, you will have to save dying for some other time."

He gives Clarice a smile, then launches himself skyward to continue his assault until he has the signal that Clarice is ready.

All he needed to do for now was keep the creature away from the others.

Edited 2018-08-29 01:25 (UTC)

For once, Loki didn't join the conversation. It wasn't that he didn't have anything to say, that hardly ever happened. It was more that his attention was entirely taken up with maintaining and casting more spells, defensive and otherwise, than he generally did. In most combats, he looked after himself and backstabbed at the edges of the fight. It had always worked well, before.

It wouldn't work here. There was no 'edge' to combat, and he was more likely to interfere than not if he tried his usual tactics.

Fortunately, a combination of illusions, deflections, and dispels (all more obvious with flashing green light than he really liked to be) served to keep a fair amount of the thing's rotting and burning attacks away from the ones who actually were fighting it. As a matter of efficiency, he'd mostly stopped including himself in his defenses: four were easier to track than five, and as the only one not overtly attacking, he didn't appear to be high-priority for the thing.

All of Tony's attention went to weaving through counter-strikes and carpet bombing (or trying to) the uppity chunk of calcium phosphate whenever he got the chance. Even so, he couldn't help but keep one eye on the ones on ground. Loki, duplicitous bugger that he was, was doing his damndest to make life easier for him and everyone else through whatever mystical tricks he had up his sleeve.

The other two--identified Clarice and Carlos (Alliteration! Nice) with some help from F.R.I.D.A.Y.S.'s internal database--were huddling up with Thor in some manner before the latter went skyward-bound once more. A wizard, a casual spacetime manipulator, and the God of Thunder. Now wasn't that a treat. Whatever they were up to, they seemed to have it on lock down. Part of him wanted in on the action, but most of him wanted to preserve his armor and his flesh and watch the show.

A sudden glancing blow from one of the missile strikes was a painful reminder to keep focused on doing just that. The nanoparticles that composed his suit were swift to repair the damage, preventing any from making it to his skin.

"Keep the flying suit well away from me when I do this," Carlos cried out suddenly in the middle of preparation. " I will not be responsible for anything that goes wrong with it." Ah the joys of magic up against technology - the more futuristic, the more likely Carlos was to fry it. He was no Dresden in terms of strength, but this was a bit of an unknown quantity, and as such his magic was a little less controlled than normal.

He gritted his teeth, set himself and then a green barrier appeared around, more solid than normal, distorting his features. "Whatever you are doing, do it now," he called out to Clarice.

While Carlos was preparing his barrier, Clarice had to center herself. She knew that this would take a lot out of her and the only time she'd made a large portal was after her head had been screwed with. Her feet spread apart and her hands separated.

The portal in front of her and Carlos grew large where it looked like they disappeared with the other portal directly in Thor's sight line and hopefully where the skull would fly so that Thor could hit it. At the very least the fire shots from the skull would pass through to hopefully bounce off the barrier.

"Hit that home run!"

"Got it!"

Thor launches himself towards the demilich, and it turns to face him, teeth chattering; it sends a spray of fire at Thor that singes his skin and hair, but Thor continues to barrel towards him and strikes him so hard with Stormbreaker that there's an audible crack.

It flies through the portal so quickly that when it bounces against Carlos' barrier, it snaps back towards him so fast that it almost strikes him. He manages to clip it with the edge of Stormbreaker, sending it towards the barrier slower than he did before, making it an easier target for any teammembers hoping to get a spell or a shot off on it before it strikes Carlos' barrier a second time.

Whether or not someone wanted to get a spell off proved to be immaterial, as Coc’zac took matters into his own nonexistent hands.

This was humiliating. It was unacceptable. With a scream of rage and a few syllables, after the big one’s hammer struck again to send him hurtling back at the tear in space, Coc’zac threw black beams of not light but only darkness at the wizard. Several, to make sure.

The beams would tear and blast his flesh, yes! And the life they consumed would restore the demilich. Why, it would be as if this humiliation had never occurred!

But they were proving to be difficult, and even after erasing the humiliation, Coc’zac was... uncertain. Perhaps it was time for a final statement and withdrawal? He spun up higher into the air, to ponder and also conduct more distances strikes.

The skull bouncing against the barrier was jarring - he felt it through ever fibre of his being. He wasn't sure how many more strikes he could take, but he could certainly take a couple more.

Carlos may be a good fighter, but part of the reason he'd survived so long was knowing when the attention was turning to you. Those black beams that followed the scream looked far more dangerous than the light ones earlier, and as much as the plan was working, he did not want to be caught in their path - nor did he want them to bounce off an impermeable barrier and hit someone else. He was shouting at Clarice to shut off the barrier, but in the mean time he had changed his barrier to normal to try and negate the effects of the beam around him and Clarice, while he made it mostly out of the way, not all the beams missed, two catching minor glancing blows, enough to make him scream out with pain.

It always took a lot out of Clarice to keep her portals going and she could feel it fading. At Carlos' shout, she let the portal close. "Sorry, guys that's as much as I can do." She raised her voice and hoped the others could hear her over the din of battle.

Clarice fell to her knees as she tried to catch her breath. Her head shot up when she heard Carlos yell in pain, but all she could do was watch helplessly. She tried to open another portal to help the others but all that happened were little crackles of light but no portal reappeared. "Well hell."

That was the last statement before a beam barely caught her on the shoulder as she ducked into a ball trying to become as small a target as she could.

The pinpointed target on his scanner's shot up into the sky, and Tony sensed its game immediately.

"Need help finding your spine, Skellington!?" Tony's voice projected through his face plate, turning on a dime to make a beeline straight for the thing.

Clarice and Carlos were getting hit hard, and he simply couldn't abide the nerve on the skull to simply turn tail after all that. The ping-pong tactic was the most fun Tony had spectating in a long time, especially with the sheer joy it brought his old teammate. Tony made a mental note to treat them all to a drink afterward, if they'd have it. Shawarma, even, if one of the cooks knew how to make it. Ah, nostalgia.

'Food later, explosives now.' Upon Iron Man's upper back re-emerged his micro-missiles. He waited until the moment he was within 50 meters--the closest he had gotten thus far--before unleashing a relentless barrage. His shoulder-mounted missile-launchers were quick to join the fun while he was closing in, lighting up the night sky.

The flying knight was too irritating! Coc'zac dodged most of the missiles themselves, though the damage from their explosions was not something he could dodge easily, and a few judicious teleports handled the larger things. It didn't seem fair, somehow, heavy armor and explosions!

Coc'zac the Conqueror would teach him about fair. By being as unfair as possible.

Rather than run away or fly away to gain distance for attacks, as he'd been doing, Coc'zac dove through a few portals of his own making, zig-zagging closer and closer, half-second by half-second, listening for the patterns of the knight's explosions. Once he was satisfied that he'd land either between or immediately before another strike (thus possibly inflicting the knight's own missiles upon him), he charged.

Physically.

He rarely attacked physically; he was just a skull, and he had Vokva and Hotor and even Nazu for sheer physical power. But in this case it seemed appropriate: Coc'zac head-butted the knight directly in the light on his chest, and in that same second released a few other spells he'd been stacking up.

A vicious lightning bolt - lightning wasn't his choice, but lightning and metal got along so very, very well - directly to that light, to carry across all the armor. And a blast of pure dark force to send the knight slamming away and to the ground.

Where heavy armor belonged. "Know your place, insect!" Coc'zac screamed, teeth beginning to chatter on more spells, then release them. More ways to press his new advantage.

Tony swore--F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s scanning feature could barely keep up with all the wormhole whack-a-mole going on. Through the smoke and flash bangs, Tony didn't see the skull coming right at him. It was a good thing, too, as that would have been the last thing he'd have seen.

The sudden impact to his chest wasn't enough to break the inertia of his flight. The sudden jolt of lightning and magical onslaught, however, were.

With each successive blow that hit his body like a wrecking ball, his armor should have been more than able to withstand it. The nanoparticles failed to respond accordingly to the damage feedback--leaving more than a few parts of Tony's body vulnerable. A blow to his arm, his ribs, and then to his head and everything went black before the pain or confusion could process. Iron Man was a meteorite falling to earth.

The wretched thing had too much magic, and mitigation wasn't mitigating as much as Loki actually wanted it to. Much earlier in the battle, he'd dropped his own defenses in favor of strengthening the others', and now with the thing throwing out fire and dark energy seemingly at random, he stopped paying attention to anything else.

He didn't learn that was a mistake until Iron Man hit him with all the force of... he didn't even have time to work out how much force it was before he was smashed into the ground by a metaphorical ton of metal and they both went bouncing and ragdolling across the desert floor, tangled together at high speed.

Loki felt more than heard the cracks - his ribs definitely, skull possibly. Hips? Back? There was too much generalized pain to be sure of any one thing. Somewhere along the way, something had sliced open his scalp in at least one place, blood kept trying to get in his eyes.

It was too much pain to comprehend or deal with. So he didn't. Oddly, this meant that he was able to think and process quickly, undistracted; the pain was there, but it was wallpaper in a room or water to a fish, and that let something else occur to the god of mischief. If it was this for him, how bad was it for the mortal in the armor doing all of this damage?

Worse, much worse.

Loki didn't let himself think about it, there wasn't time. Instead he managed to wipe the curtain of blood away from his eyes, then press his now-bloody hand to Stark's faceplate. Just do something! Thor had said, waving the cut on his arm. Loki just did something: he shoved every bit of magical energy he had left (and why not, whatever converted life the blood on his hand could offer; blood magic, why not?) at Stark, willing nothing more than get up from this.

The shoved hand-to-faceplate and bright flash of green separated them, but Stark's limpness caught Loki's arm on the way, adding a new dimension of pain to the ocean: dislocated shoulder. Once separated, Loki's lighter weight brought him to a stop fairly quickly, but between injuries and having just spent more energy than he had, he was limp and unconscious when he did.

"Fuck." Carlos was already in agony, but on seeing the fire and dark energy coming round about him and Clarice, he hauled himself up, though he couldn't help but cry out again as he put weight on an injured leg, and headed over, trying to pull Clarice out of the way.

What was left of his barrier flickered and failed, and he was caught by some of the fire, flattening him to the ground and knocking him unconscious.

Thor should have done this from the get-go. It might have ended things immediately. But turning it on wasn't as simple as flipping a lightswitch. Maybe his father had no problems tapping into the Odinforce without difficulty, but Thor could count the number of times he actively utilized the power on one hand.

The first time on Sakaar, when the Hulk was thrashing him.
On Asgard, during the final battle against Hela and her undead army.
On the Statesman against Thanos and his children, where he was somehow able to figure out how to consciously stop it.
On Earth, when he fought against Thanos and his army right before the snap.

And then, now.

The only common thread between each of those moments was that he had been protecting something, even if what he wanted to protect was himself.

Sparks of lightning arc across his fingers with an audible electrical sizzle. He looks over at Loki and Tony's limp and prone forms, and then sets eyes on the third. He didn't even know the man, and yet he still fought alongside them, setting up barriers that protected them and aided them in the battle.

And when he looks at the three of them, the the sizzling in his fingers shoot up his arms; it draws itself across the entirety of his body in a nearly an instant, his mismatched eyes lighting up with electric white-blue light.

"Clarice," he somehow manages, a half-second before lightning races across Stormbreaker. "I need a portal as far as you can take me!"

This wasn't close quarters like the Statesman, but Thor wanted to be as far away from them as he possibly could be. When he fought Hela and her undead army, he had been a safe distance away from the Asgardians. He didn't want to risk hurting anyone that was already down.

Clarice gritted her teeth, you learned to put shit behind you and do the job. Unfortunately her portal making was tied to her strength and that was crap right now. That didn't stop her from trying though. "I got it!" She gritted out and pulled herself up by sheer determination. Her hands spread and the purplish lights began to flicker between her hands. It grew to make a portal but sadly, the portal was only as big as Thor's torso. He would either have to go through head first or just throw the hammer or lightening through and hope to hell it hit.

And he needed to do it pretty damn quick before she and the portal went to hell.

Thor couldn't risk smacking the skull through the portal and not getting a shot off on it. Thor has confidence plenty in his abilities, but he knows himself well enough to know he has limitations. He had screwed up when it mattered before, and he couldn't afford to again.

"Clarice, look after them!" He knows that there's not much that she's going to be able to do, so he needs to end this as quickly as he can manage.

Lightning crashes overhead as Thor barrels towards the demilich and smashes it skyward with a slam of his hammer; he raises Stormbreaker up and is carried up so quickly that he very nearly keeps pace with it.

One smash, two smash, a third -- and then the skull's teeth start chattering, and he can feel it try and pull something out of him.

And when it starts to, he smashes it again. This time, when Stormbreaker makes its mark, a net of lightning holds it in place. Thor keeps striking it -- over and over and over again, with a savageness that might have seemed inhumane if the creature weren't so obviously an abomination.

And with each strike, the eye sockets of the skull light up blue-white, mirroring Thor's eyes now. Even as he strikes the creature, he can feel it reaching out, trying to pull whatever life it can from inside of him. Fissures begin to form at the back of the skull, and the blue-white light seeps out of them with every strike until --

CRACK!

With one last thunderous smack, the skull breaks apart and falls to the Earth below.

Thor takes a breath.

And then another.

He watches as it hits the ground. He waits, but nothing moves.

It is dead.

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Inn-world Combat: The Dread Reign

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