The Castle (IC) [M] {04}

[Angel]

When Bam didn't respond, Ketefe put the butterfly back in her hair and hoped for the best. She looked to Ian. "Well, as long as we avoid dying before we get there, I don't mind. But if you hear so much as an unfamiliar claw click on the ground, we take a different way as quickly as we can. If worse comes to worst, I can try and kill it, but don't count on it." She headed to the door alongside the rat.

[Stygian]

Risking detection before the greater danger of being stranded, Ketefe and Ian thus set out through the middle floors.
   Meanwhile down below the other part of the group were faced with a much more imminent threat. Though it stalled the final attack, the slow, creeping approach of the demonic things only heightened the sensation of tension and dread that befell the adventurers. They were swarming now, crawling over the walls and ceiling even as they approached the group down the narrow passageway to the hall.
   Though on edge, knowing full well what some of those things could do and how dangerous a pack of this size could be, Stygian was hardly numbed of thought. Why were they not attacking? High on the smell of blood and the flight of their prey the demons should have been blind with bloodlust, no matter how close to intelligent some of them came. It didn't make sense.
   Then he felt it, and instantly the bat spun around, moving past Rynkura and positioning himself toward the other end of the hall. He looked up, baring his teeth. 'They're coming straight out of the gate now!' he hissed. 'Behind us!'
   Something detached from the ceiling, seemingly turning into a humanoid only as it fell. And then Stygian's wing was there, swiping out into a massive black blade. The demon let out a cry as it was slashed in two and hit the bat before tumbling away in pieces. As if this had been the cue for the transition to the next act in some play, the other fiends let out their cries, myriad snarls and hisses from an unprecedented amount of inhuman throats. And then they attacked.

- -

For the longest time it seemed that the little ghastly shape had not noticed Bambi. Then, when the cat queried as to her name, the little girl's sobs slowly subsided. She grew deathly still. Then, just as the fae was about to ask again, the girl slowly turned to look at her. And Bam was lost for speech.
   The thing in front of her, all pale whites and misty blues, had a face like some Chinese doll or mask, perfect and porcelain-like, but infinitely frightening. A small, pinched mouth and button nose to a fawn face, but with black pits for eyes, empty and wide open and infinitely deep. The little abomination stared at Bam, unnaturally still. And then opened its mouth into a black chasm, tearing up the air with a horrid, deafening shriek. The moment it hit Bam she could not help but stumble backwards, her ears ringing and her body and mind oddly terrorized and tired all of a sudden.

[Boog]

Things were everywhere. Monstrous, twisted perversions of the natural order, shrieking and changing as they charged hoping to rend our heroes limb from still-sticky limb.
For Bal, it was a lot like home. Really, you don't want to meet anyone's subconscious in a dark alley. He swung at the first thing he saw, something best described as a cross between a cuddlefish, an imp, and a drake that tried to charge him head-on. The axe went straight down, slamming to the floor through the beast. As it began to dissolve he was already raising his weapon to block the talons of some other, somewhat taller demon with its handle. He stepped back, and attempted to jab at it with the spike at the top of the axe.
The good thing about these things is that the other guy is all the freaking way over there at the other end... Bal grinned. First time in a while I've had a good time...

[Prof B Hunnydew]

"Ketefe and Ian, Are you Okay?  Sorry I am not with the others, they are by the center stairs. and on the third floor.  I am still look for Gina here in the music hall." Bambi tells her antenna  as she nears the little Ferret girl.

Bam turn back to the little fawn after she had talk to Ketefe, as the little fawn starts to stare at the catgirl.  the china girl's shrieks knocks Bam down.  Bambi screams herself and her voice goes over the comlink. 

"Stop screaming little fawn, I have a Sunbeam Ice Cream for you.." yells Bambi  as she lays on the floor.  She pulls out a shining Star the size of the little girls head, but the fae finds herself alone in her sphere of light with a surrounding darkness.  The music hall and the demon girl are gone.  And so is the world. There is only her, her light sphere, and the dark beyond.   "Gina?"

"Hey, Little one, I got your ice cream"  says Bam as holds up the star of light magic.  Its light slowly light up the Music Hall.  As if the sun was suddenly rising into the room.

PBH

[Mel Dragonkitty]

Mel shivered a little as they prepared for the oncoming monsters. She buried the fear under the business of preparing a variety of light spells. Looking at her companions she felt a little more vulnerable as the only one without a physical weapons to fall back on. She made a mental note to learn some sort of weapon if she ever got out of this mess. Then with a cacophony of howls the attack began and she was too busy cutting attackers down with lashes of light to think of much of anything else.

[lucas marcone]

Ian opened the door and stepped into the hall. He started for the stairs. Ian was reciteing basic principals of bio chem. He forgot one as he got to the stairs. "Damn! what was it again?" He hissed under his breath.

[Aisha deCabre]

The air was intense.  Hell had surfaced around them, the heart of it lingering behind them.  She pitied anyone else who would try to enter the castle at this rate.  For it had become frighteningly worthy of its reputation in the span of an unending night.  The healer was not only worried for the health of the others...but also for the state of their minds.  Not everyone had been recovered from the pit that was made within the walls...

All that the adventurers could do now was make a stand and fight through this throng...that even now were crawling up walls and over the ceilings in an effort to move for them.  Rynkura's entire body was glowing through this time, the precipice of an attack, of light and holy-powered energy conjured from hiding.

And that was when Stygian leaped past her suddenly, and she tensed at what she heard.  "Behind us?" she growled, turning to see the evidence.  His wing having pierced and sliced through the body of a grotesque, humanoid demon that even scared her with its inhuman calls and that of its brethren.  And then came the rest of them.  They could not even be described as creatures or beasts, names reserved for the living, born, earthbound.  They were things, plain and simple.

They charged, and the group defended.  Lances of white electricity flew through her hands, incinerating and killing bodies on the inside out.  A dart spell was set against another one diving from the ceiling at her...though when the lacerated body sprayed blood, she stopped and let it drop...nobody needed to afford more caustic damage from whatever entrails were left, if it was still that way.

"Straight from the gate...!" Rynkura growled, her staff whirling and catching another one, breaking whatever passed for a spine.  "How are we supposed to go..." she grunted, tossing another one from her back while finishing the sentence.  "...through?"

Aisha, meanwhile, could hear and see the events now more clearly than ever.  But, unable to do anything, she held her ears back against her skull and shrunk into the chair, the demons fended off relatively easily by the light barrier surrounding her.  Please end...please end...

[Cogidubnus]

 Cog took a quick look over his shoulder, noting the demons now heading for the rear as well as the front, and without so much as a word simply charged forward, pressing the attack on the creatures ahead of them. His blade began to whistle through the air, cleaving the top half of one demon's skull clean off even as he brought the sword up and into the body of another, stabbing through and cutting his way out of the demon's belly, disemboweling the unfortunate monster as he moved to the side.

The wolf, moving fluidly and yet rigidly, cut down three demons in short order even as he moved deeper into the horde, trying to create some sort of pressure on the tide. He moved almost faster than sight, his sword merely a series of silver, arcing blurs set against against the carapaces of the blackened demons. His hands and feet moved quickly.

Cog took another step forward, twisting the sword out of the stomach of yet another creature as he brought it up to block the claws of another, taking the thing's hands as he brought the blade up and then into its skull.
Cog paused for half a moment to wipe a bit of blood of his face, sidestepping a lunging creature. He cursed and brought the blade back up, setting up a cut that would split the demon through the middle...

[Stygian]

The demons ran into the adventurers, and were split like tide against a rock, rushing in from all sides and around the trapped adventurers. Cog's strikes made gaps in the demon line, while the things had serious difficulty getting close to Aisha with the barrier and Gar for her guard. Keaton was swinging wildly and responsible for largely all of the flying bodies, Rynkura shredded creatures with darts of light and toward the back Stygian was pushing the line with a flurry of attacks from maws, claws and tentacles.
   'Back up! Follow me!' the bat shouted, barely audible over the horrid screeches and vile voices roaring for the adventurers' blood. Struggling forward, he snarled horridly and swept out his wings, throwing a pair of things away, before throwing out a mass of darkness that swirled and twisted, before congregating into humanoid shapes. The next moment the bat was fighting alongside two seething shadowy copies of himself, trying as well as he could to drive the beasts back, blurring and slashing. Ever so slowly, the group advanced back down the hall.

[Boog]

Bal normally would take a swipe at the bat for trying to tell him to stop hitting things for any reason. However, there was kind of a lot of demons. He yanked the end of the axe out of one creature and whirled around to bury it in another, some spindely thing with too many arms for comfort. Too many arms that still tried to grasp at and choke him as they fell from its shattered body.
THEY'RE TOUCHING ME!
Bal didn't like that. Anything that touched him when he controlled Jeremiah's body decayed, and he HATED it. He hated that slimey, musty sensation of something aging rapidly as it came in contact with any part of his (borrowed) bare skin. With a yelp, the flames that ignited along Jeremiah's spine leaped up, and soon there were dusty demonic particles drifting around him. He swung his axe into another demon with as much force as he could. "Don't @#$%in' touch me..." he muttered, glaring at the beast he'd already chosen as his next target.

[Sunblink]

Among the swarming mass of incoming demons and monstrosities, Keaton was, along with the others, fighting for her life.

Malodorous teeth and bloodthirsty claws nicked and grazed at Keaton's body as she flung, swung, and maneuvered Catastrophe this way and that, its great spiked head slamming and crashing into demon after demon. Limbs were snapped like twigs, bones were splintered into shards, ribcages collapsed, blood burst in ruptured veins--the carnage never ended, each corpse or mutilated cadaver or half-dead abomination that sailed through the air a testament to every sacrificed second.

Beneath the pounding and pulsing of Keaton's blood rushing in her own ears she barely--just barely--heard Stygian shout for them all to follow him. Her head snapped in his direction just as the two demons which had tried to latch onto him were sent flying by a sweep of his wings. Shortly after, with a seething and writhing of the darkness surrounding him, he had crafted himself a pair of duplicates to accompany him through the fighting, possibly confirming that it was relatively safe to use some degrees of Dark Magic. So she hoped. She wasn't willing to take that chance and end up being another useless waste again.

Right now Keaton, for once, wasn't getting any entertainment in this sort of fighting. Her life was actually on the line. Now wasn't the time to be overconfident. Growling slightly under her breath, she grit her teeth and pursued the three Stygians, keeping Catastrophe at the ready. One more demon--a vile, foaming monstrosity, a four-legged beast with leathery, taut skin and razor-sharp claws--launched itself at her, preparing to sink its teeth into her skull.

It never got the chance. The second it entered Keaton's range she had swung Catastrophe about, obliterating the upper half of the creature's body with a soundless swipe. And there was no time to enjoy that insignificant victory. All she could do was keep on going as she fought her way after Stygian.

~Keaton the Black Jackal

[Cogidubnus]

 As Stygian began to move forward, Cog caught the bat's voice floating over the sounds of battle - taking just a moment to push another Imp off his sword with his foot, the Wolf bounded backwards and began to run for it. The wolf trailed blood behind him, his sword fairly painted in the stuff, and the wolf stepped carefully to avoid slipping on the suddenly wet floor.

Jeremiah seemed to be making a time of it. One of Cog's eyes widened as he saw about three or four demonic arms simply disintegrate after touching him, and the wolf made a mental note to ask the art teacher about that later. Slightly distracted, he almost sidestepped a slashing pair a claws too late, the Iaidouka refocusing and bringing the blade up and sideways, leaving a deep gash in the thing's torso before cutting down through the thing diagonally.

Cog kept his eyes on the bat in front of him, moving forward as quickly as he could in hopes of outrunning the demons behind him, while keeping himself on his toes and preparing to fight the demons in front of him...

[Stygian]

The line wavered, but never faltered. The adventurers suffered gashes and rips in already bloodstained and shredding clothes and stinging burns, yet managed to somehow drive the demons before them. It went on for what seemed like an hour, yet could not have been more than a few minutes, before the things stopped coming right out of the walls and the torn and battered group looked down the hallway leading straight to the chapel. Yellow and red eyes backed away from them into the dark, keeping watch like wounded wolves eying equally wounded but still struggling prey.
   Finally stopping, Stygian leaned back into an alcove, shrugging the last remaining pieces of his shirt and tightening the wrappings around his feet. He was panting, something they had never seen him doing before. 'There's the chapel,' he said heavily, his face still locked in a snarl and one arm, gun in hand, resting against the statue standing in the alcove. 'This close. There's got to be something guarding him down there...' The idea of just what sort of sentinels the old man could have summoned were what had made Stygian stop in the first place. Darkness was his element entirely, but the rest of the group...
   'How... how are we?' the bat asked after a short pause, looking back at the others. Everyone else seemed at least as wearied as he. And everyone was wounded. Even Mel's draconian hide had not been able to completely stop the creatures' claws. Keaton had suffered a gash over her cheek and her swing arm dangled as she leaned on her mace, and with her being a brawler her top and the fur on her arms was shredded and stained red. Gareeku was looking even worse for wear than before, exhausted both from spells and sword-swinging. Aisha was just plain bad off, and Jeremiah, though tired, looked as if he was about to have a mental breakdown, a strange, sharp-toothed grin on the frog's bloodstained face. The only one who had escaped losing what looked like half their fur and clothing was Rynkura, and even she had not gone unscathed.

- -

With a panicky yelp and a crying, unintelligible plea, the little girl or whatever she was put her hands up over her eyes, stumbling back in the face of Bambi's light. Then, just when the solar flare seemed to reach its peak, another shriek split the air, a shriek easily audible to anyone nearby and which drifted down even to the ones fighting their way forth in the hallway down below. The air seemed to ripple away from the girl, and the shining light wavered and flickered as if it were a lit candle being robbed of oxygen.
   'YOU ARE A MEAN LADY!' the little thing called out, and the next second Bambi felt as if she were struck with an iron rod in the stomach.

[lucas marcone]

Ian wouldn't get a chance to remeber that rule, for the girl's scream made his ears ring. "GAAK!" He clutched his ears and fell to the ground. Unfortunately ground was a relative term, and proceeded to tumble down the stairs to the next floor.

[Prof B Hunnydew]

The strike to her stomach pushes the fae back.  Bambi stumbles back into a whirlwind fall to her butt .  Her ball of light falls from her hands and lands behind her.  The Fae's light magic sphere, now, fades from a Sunburst to a just bright torch of light which lights a circle just the 6 feet across.   Bambi scrambles to reach it as it lays just beyond her paw tips.

PBH

[Gareeku]

As soon as the fighting ceased, Gareeku looked at the darkness, panting heavily as the grip on his sword did not soften. Looking over his shoulder at Aisha, he could see that she was alright. With his main concern put to rest, the wolf wiped the worst of the blood from his face before looking around to check on everyone else. It seemed that they all were injured in some way or another. Even Rynkura had not escaped injury-free.

[Aisha deCabre]

To Rynkura, this was an epic massacre that would go down in the better annals of her long memory.  Her ears caught nothing but the sounds of pain and fighting.  It looked nearly impossible to drive the demons back...but, the adventurers must have been blessed with luck even here...for ever so slowly they were.  The tigress just kept her concentration on blasting the monsters out of her way, alternating between dart lacerations and bouts of lightning magic...if they were not inside, she would have evoked some of her earth spells as well.

An entire arsenal of spells that she wished to release against every single one of them...just...to...get...through!  The warriors pushed onward for what seemed like hour upon grueling hour, though sometimes Rynkura stopped to keep Aisha in sight.  Perhaps the sun would shine through the windows when they were done...

And then, just as the battered group seemed to be on the edge of their own limits, the throng stopped hounding them and just backed away...not entirely continuing, not entirely retreating...just hovering, like the predators they were.  The healer could finally catch her breath and look upon the others.  All were quite worse off, and though she was still standing, Rynkura stopped to gaze upon a few gashes that had been put in her arm and on her back.

"The chapel..." she echoed, noticing Stygian's hesitance.  They weren't going to confront this evil without having a portion of fight left in them.  It felt like torture...healing, fighting, and healing everyone again, just to fight again.  She shook her head, and with one wave of her hand, the barrier was replaced...this time to everyone who'd have need of it...just temporarily so that the light magic around it could replenish a tiny bit of strength.  And then, the tigress turned back for Aisha, who had stumbled out of her spot in a tired effort to keep up.

Her barrier had held well, but at this point, the panthress just looked profoundly tired once more.  Having to watch her comrades battle through a horde of demons, she was shaken, torn between hiding and aiding...her resolve not yet regained.  Rynkura turned and helped her up.  "Can you walk?"

At this, Aisha murmured something unintelligible and dropped to her knee, quivering.  Noting that Gareeku looked more than exhausted himself, Rynkura decided to take the burden for the time being, and took Aisha onto her back...though she could only hold on about the tiger's shoulder with one arm.

"You have my thanks for keeping her, sir Manoko," she nodded to the wolf, and then looked around.  "Well, we're alive," Rynkura sighed.  "Now what...I could probably go back and look for that enchanted blade if you think it might be needed.  It would be easy."  Her eyes narrowed.  "A respite would be wise, if the chapel can provide that.  Unless the urgency is too great..."

The Angel didn't know what to think at that point.  Demons from Hell having come from the direction of a chapel...it wasn't just an invasion, it was serious, if a place normally considered for sanctuary was lost.

[Cogidubnus]

 Leaning against the wall, Cogidubnus looked terrible, even by the standards of battle - moreso than he should have been, really. His coat and hat were entirely gone, and some of his hair had gone along with it, the silver locks looking as though a deranged barber had taken a pair of rusty shears to them. His fur was mostly intact, but his clothing, where it wasn't simply simply gone, was covered in holes and patches.
Strangely, though, much of the gore that had previously slicked the wolf seemed to be missing.

Cog's face was twisted in grim displeasure, wiping his sword clear of blood with a scrap of black cloth in one hand. He looked up at Sebastian's inquiry, raising an eyebrow.
"Doing -rather- well, thanks." he said dryly, throwing the now-smoking cloth to his feet.

[Sunblink]

Fucking God she hurt.

Strangled breath after strangled breath escaped Keaton's lungs as she slumped heavily against the handle of Catastrophe, using the elongated, sturdy pommel as leverage to support her haggard and hurt body. Shocking as it was, despite the weightlessness of Catastrophe and her experience in berserker methods of fighting, she did have limited stamina and she could grow unbearably exhausted, especially when there were so many foes that needed to be dispatched in such a relentless supply. Behind the numbness which had gripped Keaton's pendulously hanging arm she could feel the stinging and aching of her torn skin, lacerations scattered around her upper arms oozing blood. The arm with the unhealed and possibly infected gash was sticky with snaking trails of sanguine from her previous injury, the dark and brittle layers becoming viscous with secreting rivulets of moisture all over again. Opposite arm wasn't much better, and her clothes were a bloodstained mess at this point.

Keaton heard Stygian speak, inquiring on their general health, and was unable to respond in-between her heaving. Keaton looked around for a moment--everybody else seemed to be just as bad as she was. Fuck, even Stygian looked tired, as he was breathing heavily. Aisha, bereft of one arm, looked pallid and surprisingly vulnerable, especially when her mentor rested her against her back. Gareeku had done an excellent job of keeping Aisha safe, but he was exhausted as well. Cogidubnus was missing his coat and hat (Keaton liked that fucking hat) and his hair was disheveled and uneven. Keaton tasted blood and realized that she had endured a deep gash into the flesh of her cheek, one she didn't dare touch, but the red was dribbling down her face.

"M' fine," Keaton half-muttered, half-slurred unconvincingly. Her organic eye looked slightly mad even in her weariness, the eye-stone's once-fiery glow having died down to a sputtering spark. Dizzy, she stared at the entrance to the chapel. "We're here, ri" - gasp - "right? 'Bout fu..."

She lost her tangent and deteriorated into a few, unintelligible mumblings, eventually ending with, "'feel weird."

~Keaton the Black Jackal

[Stygian]

Stygian shook his head, and looked down, the gleaming points of his pupils entirely shadowed for a second. He steadied his breathing and took a deep lungfull of air, and then pushed himself to his feet. Walking slowly out of the alcove, he glared into the dark, as if challenging the things within it to come out and die some more. Then he took out his guns, and busied himself with reloading them.
   'If we can busy ourselves with healing, I'll take point. I'm not sure how much energy we have left though,' he said after a while, sliding the last magazine into its slot. He snapped the slide releases down, and the slides clacked back into place. 'This is why you usually have potions...' He had to remember making something like that for himself later. Though he felt the darkness all around feeding him, bringing him strength to drive away the tiredness and the wounds every second, going too long for a stretch wore him down as well.

[Boog]

Bal was in fine shape, but Jeremiah's body was showing some fairly obvious signs of fatigue. New holes and rips in the already worn tweed coat, one leg of his jeans torn off at the knee, his hair singed and his hat askew. Any demons claw that came in contact with him hadn't for long, but he had his fair share of gashes and damages; one leg wound, several scratches to the shoulders, and a nick along the bottom of his jaw. Jeremiah'd ache like hell later, but Bal felt great now.
"Eh? And let you have all the fun?" the personae smirked, only realizing a second later how out of character that was for Jeremiah. He quickly cobbled together something a bit less bloodthirsty and a bit more self interested. "You're our resident expert on this stuff, Styggy, if you go down we don't know how the hell to fix this."

[Mel Dragonkitty]

Mel didn't think she had ever used as much magic in a whole week as she had in this one battle. While she hadn't quite exhausted her reserves yet she was noticing a lag as she had to dig deeper for each spell. And slowing down meant the monsters got closer. She wasn't badly hurt but scratched up, blue blood staining the grey suede remnants of her favorite coat. She felt the tiniest little drops of condensation starting to bead on her skin and run off her nose as she began to divert power away from the spell to mimic the body temperature of a mammal.

When Stygian called for healing she looked around. Keaton was closest. Without time or finesse for a proper healing Mel just put one hand on her shoulder and a quick stream of healing energy ran through the jackal's body.

[Aisha deCabre]

Rynkura released a sigh as she observed the bat, busily taking the opportunity they had of peace to reload his guns while he recomposed himself.  With a hum, the tigress looked around.  Mel already had started tending to Keaton's wounds, and she was one of the more seriously injured...that just left the two wolves and frog.  Jeremiah (or whomever he was at the moment...the sudden change in personality had somewhat intrigued the tiger) wasn't much worse for wear than Gareeku was...the warrior was still standing, but marred.  That left Cogidubnus, who looked much like he had walked out of a whirlwind of teeth, claws and blood...virtually what had happened, really.

She then decided to start making herself useful...true, most of the energy that came out of fighting had left her a little depleted...but thankfully, if her body couldn't call up magic, then there was plenty in her staff.  As Rynkura gently set Aisha against a portion of the wall, the weary panther watched her mentor with half-lidded eyes as she spoke.  "I want you to try and see if you can stand.  If you cannot, then rest...do not waste your energy...not yet."

Aisha simply nodded her assent after a pause, and nearly fell over when she tried to put her weight on a nonexistent arm to stand up.  With a growl and some effort, the panthress tried to get up on a less-than sturdy left arm.

Meanwhile, Rynkura caused her relic to glow and the air right around it to fill with an aura of strengthening, and turned to inform the group.  "Those near the staff should recover their stamina somewhat quickly...Mel, Gareeku, and Aisha have all been within the effect, so they should vouch for it.  And as for potions," she answered in response to Sebastian's comment with a chuckle.  "I more often rely on magic.  There are many kinds of medicines for many kinds of Creatures and Beings, and you never know if an ingredient may prove deadly to one when it is lifesaving to another..."

The tigress then reached into a hidden satchel and pulled out a small, pyramidal glass vial with a substance that swirled in shades of red and glowing white-blue.  "This is a catch-all I have managed to make for only the most dire of emergencies...made with plants so rare that if you ask any alchemist in Furrae about them, they will say they have gone extinct.  It is exceptionally hard to remake.  So for now, magic should do."  With that, Rynkura slipped the vial back into its pocket and set about to healing as best she can herself, first with Cogidubnus, then Gareeku, and then a quick check with Keaton and Mel.

Aisha, meanwhile, had managed to just crouch on her feet with the hand to the floor...just balancing herself.  But her eyes were narrowed; not in concentration, but extreme thought.

[Sunblink]

Too delirious and concerned with her own unintelligible mumblings to notice Mel's approach, Keaton remained barely upright by bracing herself against Catastrophe, eventually closing her eyes slightly when her world unexpectedly somersaulted right before her eyes. Fortunately for Mel and Keaton, the spell worked as it was intended to, the cold sensation jolting Keaton out of her blood loss-induced delirium and restoring the lost portion of the mildly infected flesh of her long-neglected upper arm.

"Gah!" Keaton gasped, body instinctually scrambling to a more tidy posture, but considering her bloodstained and bedraggled condition achieving this was impossible. Eyes wild, she stared around, looking as though an electric shock had run through her body.

Keaton glanced over to Mel, still heaving, although with significantly more ease. Thankfully, Mel didn't seem to be as injured as the rest of them, albeit very tired-looking and with sweat budding on her forehead. Nevertheless, seeing the dragon bleeding again wasn't something Keaton was happy to witness. She, despite her exhaustion, tried to display some amount of gratitude in her smirk. "T-Thanks. I needed that."

~Keaton the Black Jackal

[Stygian]

Stygian turned around, and for a moment he simply stared confusedly at Jeremiah. There was no doubt. Something had happened to the frog. There was something seething right through him, like a rank stench or a creeping, boiling feeling to Stygian's senses. And considering the state of things...
   Almost as if he ignored Mel and Keaton's exchange, and Rynkura's most important words, the bat stepped slowly closer, before with a final stretch he grasped the frog around the neck and lifted him from the ground, both by neck and shirt. He gasped silently, and for a second his hand quivered as he felt the putrefying power seep through it. Then it steadied. Whatever corruption had affected the demons somehow didn't touch Stygian.
   'Right. But maybe some things have to be fixed before to minimize the danger,' the bat hissed, narrowing his eyes as he looked up at the amphibian. 'Like whatever the fuck is up with you.'

[Boog]

Things were good. Things were REAL good. They probably bought that bit about worries about conscequences. Now the big funny-looking one was coming over and WHAT THE HELL-!?
"S-Stygian!?" Bal wheezed, dropping the axe to scrabble at the hand as he flailed his legs about a foot off the floor. "Whaddya talking about! I-" He wheezed and chocked more.
Why isn't he dead yet? From what he could tell, the man was practically hemmoraging energy. Bal turned up the effects until the man before him should have been a smoking, sparking mound of slush, but nothing!
"Nothing's u-up..."

[Stygian]

The bat's eyes narrowed another step, and he bared his teeth, before he shook the frog back and forth violently. 'Stop that shit!' he growled, and then threw Jeremiah to the floor. He pulled his other gun out with his left hand, and then stepped over, putting his foot on the still shocked man's chest and lowering the barrel until it was aligned directly with Jeremiah's forehead.
   There was a long moment of silence. Then Stygian growled again. 'I don't know what the Hell is up, and that irritates me greatly. But I can tell that it ends right here,' he said down at the frog, his voice at its coarsest and cruelest pitch. 'We've already had one problem like this. We are not going to have another. So even if I can't do anything against you directly, you can be sure that if you so much as make a comment meant to go against us, I won't stop until you are a smear on a wall. Got it?!' He silenced and went completely still, the dark barrel almost pressed to Jeremiah's forehead and not so much as trembling.

[Prof B Hunnydew]

In the Music Hall.

The fae just reaches her light ball with her hands as the demon kid attacks with long claw hands....

PBH

[Boog]

"Get him away from me!" Bal shrieked, putting as much fear as he could into his voice. C'mon, let's see... Ventriloquism spell, ventriloquism spell, aha!
"And how will you explain to the rest of them..." Something said next to Stygian's ear, too quietly for anyone else to pick up on, "Why you killed me? Because you sensed some spell that nobody else picked up on?" The quiet little voice laughed softly, approaching something closer to Bal's real voice, "Who're they gonna believe? A killer, or their own eyes telling them you held a gun to my head while I begged you to stop?"
"Please, somebody!" The thing using Jeremiah's body wept openly, horrified, "Get him away!"

[Stygian]

The bat didn't flinch for a second. And his mouth didn't move. But somehow, Bal could almost feel something creeping up next to Jeremiah's ear. Or perhaps it was another trick of the darkness.
   'Who of them would stop me?' a double-edged, fiendish voice whispered to the frog, only vaguely recognizable as Stygian's darker one. 'Who could? They are dependent on me. I am their eyes through this darkness, their one guide. What I see is what matters, and if they haven't thought of it, they still realize it deep down.' The bat, the thing, took a pause. And Bal thought that he could see the slightest quirk to his lips. 'You on the other hand are naught but a burden.'
   The next moment seemed to creep by, achingly slow, before Stygian spoke again.
   'What's it going to be?'