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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"Good call!" shouts Kitty from up above and, "If I can disable the wings, that should help!"

The first bombardments are no surprise and Nazu dips and swerves to avoid some of it. Not all, because it is best to know what it's dealing with in a fight like this, where the field is crowded and any might join the attack on it.

The sticky ropes, however, those are a surprise. Imagine, something new, in all this time. It is almost enough to make the fight exciting. Almost. It dips its nose, and then pulls high and hard, snapping several (but not all) of the cables with the strength of its wings.

Its head darts forward to enable a bite against the small flying thing, feeling pleased at the elegance of that particular attack. Strong, and right on target. The claw strikes against the one on the ground are less pleasing. The color-shielded humanoid is small and moves quick.

The creature on its neck that continues to tear at its wings, it can presently do nothing about, but it lashes out with its tail to attempt a strike on the other blasting menace.

Rocket didn’t manage to avoid the bite, but he did manage to fly into the thing’s mouth so it’s teeth closed on his feet and tail instead of something more essential. (Not that it didn’t hurt! Is was fucking painful! AND HIS TAIL.)

But after, well.. it was a skull! Rocket buzzed around and shot up the place from the inside until it spit him out or whatever. “Hey ASSHOLE! Biting ain’t fair! I’ma blow off all your TEETH!”

"Oh you so did not just eat my friend," Quill said.

Instead of shooting the wings like was currently doing, he flew to the front of the dragon and starting shooting his guns in the face.

"Time to throw up, anorexic Smaug." He shouted.

Some of Peter's web-cables go flying as the creature pulls against them. In the creature's struggle to pull loose, Peter is thrown against his ribcage (once, twice) before crashing below with a tumble. "Ow!"

Peter's hands, by some miracle, are still latched around the last bit of web-cabling; untethered, the cable had shifted with the dragon's weight. Peter catches it to the round, then looks up at the others, still in the throes of combat.

Peter somehow resists the urge to ask Rocket if he's okay (he figures Rocket wouldn't like it and besides that, if he's swearing, he's probably okay) and goes in for yet another round of tether the bone dragon to the ground.

Peter sends another spray of webbing up towards the creature's webcage, and starts again -- this time, faster and with more urgency than before.

Time to throw up, anorexic Smaug???? Wow. And she thought she'd heard some gross banter in her days as an X-man. Still, Kitty's already grinning at Rocket zipping around inside the dragon's skull like a headache in progress, so it gets a laugh.

She sees Peter boomeranging and winces, but she knows what he's capable of and does him the courtesy of not asking if he's all right. She slides down the inside of the dragon's ribcage to find a place to brace her feet while she punches and tears and stabs through the shoulder joint. She plows a fist through the joint and it starts to splinter.

Nazu looses a primal scream, spitting out the flying creature and snapping after it. They snap again at the blasting man and swing their skull at it as they raise and lower their wings powerfully.

The female at their shoulder slips and loses her footing. Nazu shrieks with satisfaction when she begins to fall. They try to to circle to catch her with their claws, but she has disappeared, and the cables are beginning to hamper their movement.

Another shriek--perhaps they do not wish to die after all--and they launch themselves skyward, but the cables do not snap this time and they must begin to consider a new tactic. They do not pass up the old, however, and slash out with their claws for any they may reach.

The jaw snap on his way out missed only because Rocket made sure not to rely on spit-speed. He added a boost from his flying rig too. At most, the thing bit into some of the blood drips flying off Rocket’s feet. (Which hurt like anything but at least he was flying and didn’t have to try and walk on them.)

The claws were big, Rocket was small, he avoided them (just barely) by flying theough gaps between individual claws. But he was still in danger from teeth and breath, because he didn’t let up, firepower continued to rain on the flying bone lizard’s head. “Izzat what these things’re called? Anorexic Smaugs? Seems fuckin’ long.”

Quill felt the bone teeth sink into his thigh and he let out a painful shout.

"Son of a-" He said as he shot a few times to dislodge himself.

His leg hurt now, but Star-Lord wasn't about to let that stop him from beating this dead dragon to death.

"You think I know the actual name of Puff the Magic Zombie?" He replied to Rocket.

He flew to the other side of where Rocket was to blast the dragon at his head from both sides.

It's hard not to feel dizzy after awhile of swinging up and around. Peter has a better-than-most sense of equilibrium, but he only allows himself a moment on solid ground before he starts moving again.

"This is starting to drag on a little too long!" he says as he swings over Puff the Magic Zombie. "What's the plan once I get it locked down?"

If it doesn't thrash the same way he did before, it shouldn't be much longer. Peter wants to be ready for whatever comes next.

"Just keep hitting it," Kitty called out from inside the ribcage.

As far as she could tell, the only thing that wasn't bone was in its eye sockets and they didn't seem susceptible to blasters. It was obviously magically animated.

Where the hell was Illyana?

Between disrupting bones with her fists, she crawled toward the dragon's head which had been blown mostly to smithereens. "Aim for the chest," she called to Rocket and Quill. "Going to see if I can put out its lights!" Her affinity for magic had to be good for something, right?

"Our name is NAZU!"

With the scream, they loosed a noxious breath filled with bone shards. Windows and wood slats on the building in front of them shattered, adding to the treacherous mess littering the ground. Their tail slashed through the space around them, knocking the legs out from under combatants too close to avoid it--perhaps even their cohorts, the mummy twins, but Nazu could no longer turn to look.

The cables around them pulled them ground-ward and in desperation they dove, pulling in their wings to try to fly through the entanglement. Their breastbone hit the ground with a shrieking crash and they flew up again--still contained, and they began to thrash in anguish.

Their head had been all but obliterated. Only the magic that animated them kept it attached to their neck. Their jaw had shattered between the two blasters and their neck began to shorten as spinal bones dropped off and it knit back together.

With the thrashing, the female flew out from its empty mouth and collided with the building. They would have snatched for her, but they could not find her and there was too much fire around their head.

Rocket dodged most of the bone shard breath, but not all of it: bits stuck in his back and legs. He'd definitely feel it later, but for now he was on a combat high and also his feet still hurt enough to hide the rest. "Nah, you're gonna be Puff! Suck it, bone lizard!"

If he'd known there was a song, Rocket might even have begun singing it.

There wasn't a lot of head left, so when he let himself drop down to start unloading the cannon on Puff's chest, it wasn't because Kitty had told him to. It was because it was a good idea!

Quill barely managed to dodge the shards after one grazed his face.

"Oh, you did so not touch the face," He said.

He flew to the other side of the dragon and shot at the same area Rocket was concentrating on.

"Almost --" Peter huffs as he manages to swing over the creature. "Almost got it."

The second time Peter swings, though, the bone dragon (Nazu? did it say its name was Nazu? or was it their name?) thrashes, and Peter goes flying, landing neatly on his face, still gripping the long cable of web-slinger fluid.

It takes a second for Peter to peel himself off the ground; he might have stamina and endurance, but that didn't mean that it didn't take him time to recover from a blow.

"Owww..." Peter's pretty sure he's got a bloody nose. He sniffs from beneath the mask and feels something dripping from his nostril.

Definitely a bloody nose.

Between the damage done to their wings and face and the sticky cables that clung to their bones, Nazu could no longer force itself skyward. It crashed to the ground, bones gnashing and clashing and rattling.

Despite their broken jaw and nearly non-existent head, they let out a bugling battle cry and swung their tail in a massive, ground scraping arc. They used what little leverage they had to lift their foreparts and slash at the flying ones with their strange machines of fire.

And then they bugled again, swinging their head to seek the female and the smaller male. Not spotting either, they screamed, "Give us satisfaction or give us a worthy death!"

Puff was tied down enough, thanks to the kid, that the clumsy slashes were easy to avoid. Rocket didn’t stop firing; he’d never seen anything take this many cannon blasts and stay up and moving, but the bone lizard was breaking apart. It was working, even if it was slow. “How’s about just death? ‘Cause that I can promise ya!”

"What he said," Quill quipped as he, too, managed to avoid the tail.

His leg hurt like Hell, but Quill continued to shoot at whatever bones were most prevalent. This thing just needs to die already

Peter scrambles back to his feet and throws himself feet-first at the creature's head, backflipping and landing much more neatly on the ground than he had a few moments before.

"Why are you guys here?" he asks, not expecting an answer. "Why didn't you attack us before?"

Peter lands one punch on Nazu, and then another.

"Expansion," the dragon replied to the young one, their voice very nearly human in quality but for the hissing sibilants. "Restriction," they added, answers for the gift of an ending.

The female returned--Nazu saw now that she moved through the building, like a ghost, but she did not hit like one when she rejoined the others. Her fingers disrupted their bones and they crumbled.

Nazu tipped what remained of its head to the two that rained fire on them. They lashed out with their tail, slashed at the female and the young one with their claws...

But the end was coming, after so many centuries, it saw the true darkness closing in at last. "Thank you," they sighed in clear, if fatigued relief, and amidst the hail of blows, gave up their last noxious breath.

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Inn-world Combat: The Dread Reign

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