Dark Dimension: Rescue

[xp_topaz]

One team sets out to rescue...



To say that Doug was angry would be understating. Losing several more of their number to ambush, including several of his teammates, did not sit well with him. He examined their surroundings, his emotions seething just underneath a cold, analytical surface. Mostly he really wanted to punch someone, preferably a cultist or whoever. Really, he'd prefer to do more than that, but he knew that several of his compatriots would probably take issue with that. "If I was a dungeon, where would I be," he asked semi-rhetorically, trying to find clues in the pattern of architecture around them.

"Probably somewhere, dark, dank, and out of the way, not like those fancy Scandinavian dungeons." Miles climbed onto a wall and then up to the ceiling, following the rest of the group from up there. Maybe another perspective would help. Or, given how convoluted and crazy this whole damn place was, maybe the dungeon was in the ceiling. Who even knew anymore.

"Every thing is weird here. We've got no idea if they're stuck in a basement, a tower room or dangling around in an iron cage somewhere. And no one who we can ask the way..." Sharon fell silent when her eye fell on Megan. "You are one of the magic kids right... can't you do some kind of spell to find them?"

The light from Megan's were-light spell reflected faintly in her dark black eyes as she shook her head. "I can cast a locator spell, but it only works with objects, and probably only in our real world." Will-o-Wisp continued to drift ahead of her, providing additional light but no sense of direction in the maze of castle corridors.

"I could try to scan for them telepathically," Jean said, attention flickering up for a moment toward where Miles was climbing curiously before she continued on.

"I can recognize most of the group's mental signatures. But only if there isn't any magical interference, and if they weren't teleported somewhere far out of my range."

"No magical interference? In this place?" Doug snorted. "Doc, this whole place oozes with magic." He might not have enough talent to light a candle, as he'd been told once, but years of exposure to magic-users had given him something that was not quite a sense of when there was magic in play. And between New Orleans bokor, the pocket dimension that housed the Slendermen...this place might just take the cake as the nastiest. He shook his head. No sense in being a downer, much as this place seemed to bring it out. "But it's worth a shot."

Jean laughed. "I meant interference directly towards me," she said. She glanced around with a tinge of unrest. It was definitely magic central here. And it went against everything she knew scientifically. But she had been going with it so far, like being on the astral plane...except for real.

"But my telepathy seems to be heightened here anyway." It was how she was able to find the others before. Well, more so than usual. She wound up putting up her mental walls to keep everything out a little more than usual as well, until now.

"So here goes," she said. Closing her eyes, she reached out her mind again, searching for the others. It was like listening for someone's voice, and being familiar enough with it to know it was them. After a few moments, she tilted her head, then smiled softly.

"They're here, but it's a bit of a walk. Shall we?" she said.

"Lead the way." Sharon gestured, taking a moment to shift the pack on her back, the stick she had used earlier still firmly in her other hand. "Can you feel if any of those guys are in our path?"

At Sharon's question, Jean closed her eyes, sending her mind ahead to search for anything out of the ordinary. After a few moments, she opened her eyes.

"No...I think they're all still outside," Jean said cautiously, then frowned.

"I can't decide if that's good or bad. Probably a little of both."

"Hey, that looks like the entrance to a dungeon." Miles pointed at a large wooden door at the end of the path before it split left and right. There was a small portal near the top, blocked with metal bars to prevent anything bigger than a mouse from crawling through. Miles dropped from the ceiling and landed on his feet. The massive metal ring pull suggested it would take a lot of muscle to open. Thankfully they had that, he thought, cracking his knuckles as he walked up to it.

"Need a hand?" Sharon put her staff to the side and joined Miles, wrapping two hands around the ring. "Ready. On three... one, two, three!" Sharon pulled with all her might, leaning backwards to add her weight as well.

It took the two of them, with plenty of grunting and muffled cursing (mostly from Miles), to open the door. They were immediately hit with a gust of stale, putrid air, as if the door had not been opened in centuries after something had been left to die down there. "Yeah, no, not it for first," Miles claimed, waving a hand in front of his face to waft away the odor.

Doug had smelled worse. Not that it conjured up the best of memories, but he could manage. "Wuss," he told Miles with a broad wink to take the edge off of the teasing. He entered through the doorway, a small knife at the ready in one hand and a penlight in the other. There was a small landing, from which a staircase curled down and disappeared as it curved around. "I swear, if there's creepy organ music and someone gets a glowy triangle on the back of their hand, I am just done."

"If we were gonna get sucked into a Nintendo game, why couldn't it have been Pokemon?" Miles lamented.

Megan crinkled her nose but said nothing, following closely while her were-light spell illuminated the way ahead of the group. She didn't know how far the staircase spiraled down before they were finally walking on flat ground again, but she was starting to feel dizzy. She clumsily brushed up against a wall stacked with pale sticks, with skulls on top... oh. "Human bones," she said, rather unnecessarily, brushing herself off and feeling ill.

Jean glanced up at the "decoration," then back to Megan. "Pretend it isn't there," she said gently, trailing behind her so she could bring up the rear. She kept an eye on the girl in case she fainted.

"We're all right here."

Sharon clicked on her own flashlight, taking in the macabre decor of the dungeon. "Quiet everyone... I think I might be hearing something." She commanded sharply. Her hearing always had been good... She turned her head back and forth to listen as carefully as possible. "It sounds like... metal jangling? And I think it's coming from there."

Miles instinctively went to camo mode, though in such darkness, he was effectively invisible. Putting aside his earlier apprehension, he slipped to the front of the group, ready for a sneak attack against whatever thought it could get a jump on them. But when he turned the corner, he shimmered back to visibility.

"Stephen!" He all but leaped towards the cell where his friend and the others were jailed. "Guys, I found them!" he shouted back at the rest of his group.

The sound of a voice, any voice would have been enough to grab the teen's attention but a friendly voice, that brought a relieved smile to his face. "Miles! Oh thank god, I didn't know how we were gonna get outta here."

Julian's boots scrapped against the bare stone as he leveraged himself up from the wall he'd been leaning against, "We don't use call-signs anymore?" he grumbled. A gloved hand, with fingers twisted into odd angles, wiped down his grit strewn face as he stepped forward to the cage. Wincing, he looked at their rescuers in the light of Pixie's spell; finally settling on Doug; "I don't suppose you have a way of getting us out of this cell."

Doug resisted the urge to harass Julian - this wasn't the time, even if he tended to bring out that urge in Doug for whatever reason. "Oh ye of little faith." Okay, maybe he'd tease just a little. Then he paused. Given the power level of the captives, there must be something else going on keeping them inside. He examined the room around them, looking for clues or traps. "Try not to touch anything," he told the group with him. He frowned. How would he hold a telekinetic, a guy who could cut through just about anything, a plasma cannon, and psionic images? Magic negation was probably a given, what with where they were.

After careful examination, one of the stones on the floor looked...different. Doug fished out a ball bearing and pitched it underhand at the stone, where it clinked harmlessly. Okay, not a trap. When he stepped forward, it came down flush with the floor, and a piece of the wall pivoted, revealing...what looked like the magical equivalent of a keypad, still not visible from the prisoner area. That explained most of it, at least. Even Marie-Ange could only really affect what she could see. "Okay, so what's the pattern," he muttered to himself. He was guessing he only had one chance to get this right. A flash of recognition lit his eyes. The book Jubilee had lifted from the Ancient One's sanctum. The runes looked the same, so... He pressed his fingers on five of the runes, rotating his hand counter-clockwise until he heard a loud THUNK of something disengaging. He nodded toward the heavy portcullis. "Doc, would you do the honors?"

Jean's eyebrows rose and she smiled. It wasn't that she doubted Doug's mutant ability, it was that it was continually fascinating.

"My pleasure," she said, raising her hand toward the portcullis. With a simple lift of her hand, the sound of metal groaning was heard, followed by the iron grating slowly lifting upward until it was high enough for someone to pass through.

"Wait," she said, telekinetically picking up a nearby skull outside the door. She tossed it at the opening, waiting for it to bounce back, but it slipped right through.

"Sorry, I would've rather picked something a little less gruesome but we're pressed for time. We should move."

Marie-Ange waved her manacled hands at Doug impatiently from her perch on a stone bench. "Lockpicks please and thank you. It seems this room has managed to evolve it's protections each time we try to escape. It vomited handcuffs when I started pulling out cards. I am not sure I could escape these without dislocating my wrists." She shook them to show the ugly red marks from her attempts. "One of you should stay outside the door in case it realizes you are not authorized to let us go."

Logan had watched all the antics from his position slouched against one of the walls of the cell with strained patience. His claw marks from their escape attempts had simply faded from the stones. He should've expected magic was the ruling force here. It'd governed every action from the moment they'd stepped foot into this dimension. He watched the skull skitter before he pushed off the wall and walked toward the opening. "What's the update with the goo monsters? They actually let you find us unmolested?"

Artie replied in scrolling text. "Could be bait. Get them in to rescue us, get the lot of us gift wrapped as a result." He finished opening his handcuffs and slipped them into a pocket, just in case. He gave Stephen a slightly mocking smile. "Ready to run for it?" If bait, they'd have to move fast. If they weren't bait, well, speed never hurt anything. He projected an image of the map he'd been building with Julian on the way in up on the wall. You are here flashed over their cell.

The teen couldn't help but return Artie's smirk with one of his own as he pushed himself up off the floor and held out his manacled hands. "It's almost alive, the way it keeps responding to us, you know, it'd be almost interesting how they managed that...you know if it wasn't keeping us prisoner in here that is." He shook his head and glanced back at the map. "I guess all we can do is leg it and see what happens"

With a sigh, Julian nodded in agreement. He was tired, and wanted to be done with this place- could that be a side effect of the magic that was holding them here? The question had been nagging at him for a while, but now that they were free it seemed unlikely, why would the place want to hold him here by making him want to leave. "No time like the present then," he unlocked his hands and let them float a few inches off his wrists as he took a moment to look over the map.

"Yes, let's get out of here," said Megan, her wings buzzing with anticipation. She took a calming breath, then immediately regretted it as her lungs were filled with the disgusting dungeon air. She shouldn't have been so rattled by the bones and skulls, but it was the first time in this journey that her confidence had slipped a bit. But they were are alive and resourceful as hell - they weren't going to rot in this Dark Dimension!

"Firstly. Dude, that hand floaty thing will never not be creepy. Secondly, tell me that someone brought food." Jubilee finally spoke after Doug was kind enough to remove the gag from her mouth. Funnily enough, the prison had considered 'mouthing off to any possible people listening in' was a form of attempted escape. It had gone downhill from there, frankly. "I'm like, absolutely starving."

After making sure all of their respective "ducks" were accounted for, Jean reached her mind out to the others waiting nearby.

~Found everyone who was taken. We're on our way back to meet up. See you then.~



While another team sets out to distract.



Summary of the Log: While the others go in search of their captured friends, this group goes to distract Dormammu. He will be waiting for them all in the throne room. It will just be Orini, the true face of Dormammu won't be seen until they make a hasty retreat. (for log sanity, maybe Amanda sees the others (the ones captured and those that went to find them) returning and tells them to leave while the others hold him back.)

Dormammu will barely take damage, this is where we can injure more of our PCs if we want. Clea will already be injured due to a pervious attack at the start of the log. Dormammu's primary target will be her.

===

The Throne Room was lit by floating spheres giving off the creepy otherworld blue color. Up a short staircase was a large throne. Two more larger spheres were at either side of it, giving more light to the otherwise dark room. Orini wasn't anywhere to be seen. Clea stood behind Amanda barely looking around her to see where they were going. She could feel his presence heavily throughout the room as they entered. The magic in the air was thick almost like she could physically touch it with her bare hands. This was one nightmare that wouldn't end.

"We should have brought Jubilee for this. Totally up her alley," muttered Amanda to herself. She could feel the magical energy as well, thick and somehow oily to her senses. Definitely not something she wanted to be around for long, but the longer they were able to distract Orini/Dormammu's attention, the more time the others would have to find the rest of the group.

"Oi, bozo!" she called out, walking toward the the dais where the throne sat. "You about? I thought you wanted a trade!" Her voice echoed oddly off the walls.

"Yeah, let's sass the... whatever the hell the bozo is," Topaz muttered, following behind Amanda and trying to hide Clea at the same time. Not that she would ever admit to any such thing.

"Sass is a tried and true method." Arthur, the light from his eye piercing through the otherworldly blue like a far away beacon, flanked Amanda, only to position himself counter to her -- setting up a triangle between the three of them (discounting Clea, of course: Clea who?). He smiled mischievously. "It would be a shame if anything bad happened to such a lovely castle."

As if on queue, the boiling chaos that had only been building with the flip of Arthur's luck powers turned, if such things could be said to turn, away from the other pits and falls it could inflict elsewhere and instead toward one blonde, beleaguered stuntman. It was going to be a hell of a show.

"Especially when you're the distraction," murmured Amanda. She noticed a thickening of the atmosphere, a gathering of power and took a breath. "Looks like it's showtime, boys and girls."

Smoke and blue light flowed and fused around the throne, coalescing into a large shape on the throne. The shape thickened, took on colour, form... and then there was a middle-aged man sitting on the throne, his features almost kindly except for the deadness of the eyes. "So you decided to see sense," he said, and his voice betrayed him. Flat, hollow, echoing with malice and hunger. "You have brought her to me."

And there he was. Clea started to cast her own spell and extended a barrier between them and him. It was sturdy but it wouldn't last long - at least it would give her friends a chance.

There was something... oily about the thing that had appeared before them. It grated against Topaz's mind, sticking and refusing to leave. She slammed her shields down, glaring and ready to fight. She didn't have much in the way of energy unless she wanted to pick off someone, but hell if she wasn't going to try. "Oi, you try to kill all your guests?" Amanda was a bad influence, clearly. "That was rude, you know."

"Only the ones it kidnaps first," Amanda chimed in, with rather more bravado than she felt. This thing was strong and she wasn't certain they'd be able to hold it back for long. Her own fists crackled with energy as she called up an offensive spell.

"Wait, he's just a friendly old man?" Arthur deadpanned, raising an eyebrow skeptically. "How cliche. This universe is far too b movie even for me, and I'm, well..."

There was an ominous creak as a couple of the support pillars for the throne room began to buckle under the building chaos energy. Either from improper care or mere age, the bad luck was starting to add up.

Clea looked over at the pillar, "That can't be good." The magical energy swirled around the room, for some reason Clea was drawn to it. It weaved around as if were alive and suddenly, crack. One of the pillars started to crumble.

Topaz took a step back, reaching automatically for Clea. She wasn't going to be much good for this fight if she used up what she had too quickly, and making sure Clea was safe a good secondary role. Her hand hit hair, however, and she jerked around, seeing Clea wandering toward a pillar that was about to collapse. "Clea!" She dove, grabbing her and hauling her away.

The swirling energy reached for Clea, then snapped back again as Topaz hauled the teen away. One the throne, Orini smiled thinly. "We have a bargain, do we not? This child for the release of your companions?"

Amanda stepped forward. "How do we know they're all right?" she asked with more bravado than she felt. The amount of power Orini was giving off was considerably more than the three magic users together could manage on a good day, fully charged.

Orini spread his hands in front of him. "I gave you my word, they would be unharmed if you brought Clea to me. Is that not enough?"

"See, Liam Neesnot, that's the thing. Clear is here, but you didn't say anything about handing her over. We've honored our part." Arthur crossed his arms. Unseen, the chaos energy was still building -- all violent tinges of red degradation and moments of ill luck held captive, vibrating. All they needed was a trigger. "That's how these things work in any good fantasy movie. You give us an ultimatum, we trick you, everyone laughs as the evil empire burns to the ground and we ride into the sunset. Those are the rules."

Orini paused, looking puzzled at Arthur's words. "These are the rules, are they?" he said, rising from the throne. "Then obviously I should just give up now, shouldn't I? Let you have your victory and ride off into this sunset you speak of?" The fatherly smile dropped from his face and he raised his arms, neon blue sparks erupting from his fingertips. "Or I could kill you now and take what I want." Lightning shot from his hands towards the group.

The energy skittered over the shielding spell Amanda cast, plunging into the floor. The older witch winced at the pressure on her barrier, but followed up with a blast of her own. She hit Orini directly, but he seemed to shrug it off without any sign of damage.

Topaz was surprised by her own reflexes. She shoved Clea behind a still-standing pillar and hid with her while casting a shield to protect Arthur. It wouldn't hold for long, but hopefully it would keep long enough for him to find his own cover. "This is going well," she muttered, reaching out and skimming a bit off the top of Arthur's and Amanda's emotions - not even close to enough to numb either of them. She'd apologize later - and aimed her hand at the ceiling above Orini's head. She fired off a blast of energy, and the ceiling crumbled, stones falling toward him.

Orini gestured and the stones tumbled either side of him. "Admirable effort, child," he replied, beginning to descend the dais steps. The energy swirling through the room gathered behind him. "But not enough." More energy bolts crackled from his hands, seeking out each of the mutants.

Clea watched Orini's gestures of how he casted his spells and then she copied the gestures. Her own energy bolts moved and collided them into the other bolts, causing a bright explosion and then fizzled out. "Bloody hell that worked." She was pretty shocked herself.

Being the only one without magic in said room, Arthur chose the ever dignified "jumping behind the architecture" block method. Orini's bolts coursed, following, and rammed through Topaz's shield at the exact angle needed to penetrate like a knife through butter. They continued to obliterate another support pillar.

That, added to chunk Topaz took from the ceiling, caused the entire throne room to groan, the very floor starting to buckle in several places as the ceiling, too, started to strain under the built up poor luck and damage already taken. The room began to fall apart.

Amanda cursed and directed her shield upwards over herself and those closest to her. "Hey Lucky, watch the collateral!" she yelled, before a brief telepathic ping told her their delay was no longer needed - the prisoners had been rescued. She couldn't see Orini amongst the falling debris and the clouds of dust, but she doubted he'd be paused for long. "Topaz, grab Clea! We're out of here! Lucky, with me to cover them!"

Topaz immediately grabbed Clea’s arm and threw up a shield over their heads to protect them from falling debris. “Time to go.”

The chaos through her in for a loop as Topaz grabbed her arm and lead her away. She didn't fight it but instead let her lead the way as they ran out of the throne room. She only looked behind her for a moment to see only dust and debris, "I don't see him." Right one cue the ground started to vibrate with a humming sound coming from where Orini was standing. Clea swore, she just jinxed them.

"It would be a crying shame if he, my personal good friend Liam Whatever, were able to get out of this easily!" Arthur was weaving gracefully through the wreckage, blocking what falling debris he could with a few good kicks and dash or body placement. By "good," though, it was really more as though the rubble was trying to flatten Arthur more like anyone else. Like it was a competition.

"This is the worst dimension. I have zero control over this all," and Arthur gestured broadly when joining Amanda, "But let's do as much damage as we can."

"I can get behind that." Amanda looked behind her to make sure Topaz and Clea were clear, then began backing up to the doorway. "On three - one, two, THREE!" And with that, Amanda blasted power at the cracked stone beam that was holding up the remnants of the roof. Combined with Arthur's particular run of bad luck, the beam shuddered, long cracks expanding along its length. There was a loud groaning of stressed stone, and then it collapsed, burying the throne room Orisini with it. Amanda and Arthur emerged from the dust cloud billowing into the hallway, coughing and white with stone dust.

"Well, that ought to make life difficult for him for a little while," Amanda said, coughing. "Let's get the fuck out of here."