AEFAE Logs Three-Four || Fights
Aug. 31st, 2019 04:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xp_topaz posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
xp_logsThe rest of the group finishes off the cultists at the airport, and Wanda makes an interesting discovery.
It happened so fast. One moment Topaz was there beside her, flinging magic at the cultists, the next... gone. Not even a cloud of smoke or flash of magical energy in her wake. Amanda swore, but somehow, didn't seem terribly surprised.
"Tarot!" she called across the runway-turned-battle. "I've got to pop out for a bit. You lot have got this, yeah?" She had pulled her wych from inside her sleeve and was already drawing on its power for the teleport. She barely waited for Marie-Ange's response before disappearing.
"I have this." Marie-Ange had, in fact, a trio of skeletons with brass armor and gnarled clubs, and a miniature mastodon that was silently trumpeting around her ankles. "Cypher, I want you up high, watch our backs and I do not care about casualties. Pixie, keep anyone from getting to Cypher, stay out of his line of fire." She paused. "Strange and... ah.. " She paused for a moment.
"Parachute Woman." Doug didn't really expect anyone else to remember which codename-of-the-week was current in his little homage to teammates past.
"Yes, that, rather. You undo anything the cultists magic up. Scarlet Witch and I will take on cultists directly."
"You get all the fun stuff," Doug groused at his girlfriend. Off her sharp look that conveyed an awful lot of subtext, he relented. "Fine, fine, I'm on overwatch." And he didn't even make any jokes about high noon or the cavalry. See? He could be good. Gathering Pixie by eye, he made his way toward one of the jetways that they could get on top of. "A little help?" he asked, wishing he didn't know just how winded a simple climb up would leave him.
Pixie zipped after him, the flier lifting them both to the top of the segmented tube of glass and metal. Her pink hair floated slightly and she could feel her dust just below the surface of her skin. It gave off a scent like an underground river, dandelions, and something alien. "Even the air currents seem suspended. I should be able to get very precise with my dust attacks," she noted, brushing a streak of darker hair out of her face.
"Cypher, I hate you." Clea was already on one knee as she took out a piece of chalk and began to write symbols on the tarmac. "I need a piece of the Cultist. A piece of cloth would be fine." Clea called out to the others.
There was a part of Stephen that wanted to rush forward to get the robe that had been requested, but well...maybe the others might be better at that then he was. Stephen's skills ran in a different direction. Suning his foot the teenager drew a line across the ground, a crackle of energy dancing across the ground as he looked up at the cultists and smiled. "I'vee been working on this for a while." As he spoke Stephen's foot came slamming down on the line, a flurry of earthen fists rising up out of the ground, grasping and pummeling three of the cultists, battering them to the ground.
Somehow over the din of the fight, she'd heard the request. Grabbing a handful of the robe of the man she was fighting, Wanda turned and threw him up and over her shoulder so that he slammed down a few feet from where Clea knelt on the ground - whether the man was unconscious or dead, it was hard to tell. The older woman was barely breathing hard as she knelt next to the cultist, a hint of a knife in her hand as she sliced off a piece of fabric. "Never say I never get you anything nice," she said, handing it over to Clea.
"Thanks." Clea said as she looked at the cloth in her hand as she looked down at the finished spell. "Now for the final touch." Placing the cloth in the center and the white chalk began to glow and the air cracked with energy before it sent out towards the nearest cultist and hitting them.
Around that same time Doug had finally gotten set in his firing position on the jetway. The number of things one could do with an AR-15 to make it easily portable and even more highly lethal were many. As long as you didn't mind those modifications being highly illegal. A folding stock here, tripod and silencer there... One of the cultists was moving up in Clea's blind spot, and Doug put a trio of rounds into him, just below the sternum. "Thank god for cultists who don't wear body armor," he muttered.
Behind him, Pixie added, "Or gas masks." It was so annoying when enemies weren't affected by her dust. With careful wingbeats, she stirred up an air current and let loose a stream of dust into it. It drifted over another cluster of cultists, enveloping them in sparkles. They'd be taking a trip, but not by airplane, and too disoriented to pose much of a threat.
Behind the hood of her jacket, Marie-Ange was bearing her teeth, face grim as she drove the point of an imaged spear into whatever parts of the cultists that were foolish enough to step - or retreat from the others - into her range. She kept up a steady stream of instructions into her comm - cult members breaking into Doug's range, warnings to her teammates, and occasional profane curses, understandable only if you spoke badly remembered gutter Asgardian.
She turned to bark a warning to Wanda, and found herself thrown to the ground by a cultist who may very well have been recruited for muscle, or who had joined simply to get the chance to hit people. She had just enough instinct to turn as she fell, landing on her hip. The enormous man laughed darkly as she reached across her ribs, and his laugh turned to wet gurgles as Marie-Ange pulled a borrowed gun, utilitarian steel and black grip, from an equally borrowed shoulder holster and fired half-blindly until the pistol clicked on an empty chamber.
A woman smaller than Wanda lunged forward and slammed into her, curved knife held tightly in both hands. Staggering backward, Wanda managed to get her hands up in time to grab the wrists and stop the dagger from going any further. With their close proximity, she was able to slam her knee up into the woman's stomach, forcing the air out of her in a sharp gasp. Jerking her hands apart, the knife went flying and then the women went limp with a well-placed headbutt.
But as she dropped another, larger figure jumped on her back and Wanda dropped to one knee from the sudden weight, no knife in the hands of this one but she noted the glowing hands as they went for her throat. A shock ran through and her powers flared but a glimpse of the airplanes on the tarmac made her reel them in, despite the pain coursing through her body. Grunting with the effort, she reached up behind her and blasted the cultist point-blank in the face with a chaos bolt - there was no space to dodge and the man barely let out a gurgle as his face simply...melted.
The magical marks continued to glow and pulse as Clea continued to put magic into it. She was able to reach the cultist that were taking ranged shots. The ground beneath them began to shift and their cloaks were being tugged towards the ground before they themselves sunk into the ground, until they were gone. Opening her eyes as she saw from the distance those near their fellow buddies were now food for the Earth turn and began to run.
Stephen slumped, falling backwards onto the ground as he stared up at the sky above, the clouds drifting far ahead uncaring about the turmoil that had passed on the ground. Innocent, or perhaps just uncaring from their vantage so far above the distant crowds. He wanted to close his eyes, to relax but he could feel the energy of the earth that they'd so used and abused twisting and turning around them. There was a balance to magi, a give and take but now the balance had been broken, disrupted. The boy's fingers sank into the ground as he reached out to the energy, taking and manipulating...growth to counter death. Small buds appeared around them, pinks and yellows and whites as the buds bloomed, their growth sped by the vagrancies of magic. Balance.
Cultists lay dead, disabled and disintegrated on the tarmac below. Others were starting to retreat. But not this one, who came close to the area Pixie was keeping clear and launched a ball of magic energy arching up... "Incoming blast from behind!" she shouted. She sent Will o' Wisp blazing into the cultist's hooded face, the were light blinding him, following it up closely with a flying jump kick. Pixie launched herself off his unmoving body before he fully hit the ground, scanning for any more enemies desperate enough to make one final attack.
"So -that's- where my sidearm went," Doug said, sort of halfway accusing, but if Angie had needed it, well... One cultist made a half-step forward, but that was all as he then went pitching backward with a bullet between the eyes. "Clear," he reported.
Marie-Ange stayed down, using the body of the large cultist as a shield until she heard the "Clear" repeated more than twice. She poked her head up, a knife and armor growing and misting away in the same breath, and then carefully got to her feet. "Clear. Cypher, are you online already? Start getting our mess cleaned up, while we get our mess cleaned up." Her eyes tracked the retreating few cultists as they ran. "Let them run, we have... " She was cut off by the whoosh of the HVAC units returning to life, and the whirr of computers powering themselves back on. "We have almost no time to clean up and get out."
Rubbing at her aching throat, Wanda was turning around to survey the area as well, grimacing not only in pain but also at the scene in front of her. "Well, luckily, we're old enough hands at this that we should be okay," she responded, taking a step forward to start in on the mess when something caught her eye. With the spell broken, movement was back to normal and debris started to settle as gravity kicked back in. So she wasn't surprised to see paper scatting across the floor, that was normal.
What was less normal was the old paper that suddenly appeared only a few inches from her foot marked with a crawling scrawl. Frowning, she crouched in front of it, careful to not touch it just yet - it didn't seem dangerous but it was older than anything else in the room and she felt something like a shiver run up her back by looking at it.
"I might have found something," she announced, using a discarded piece of cloth to pick it up. It turned out to be a yellow-ish, cracked, single piece of paper. Nothing that should have been at an airport. "We'll take a look at it when we have time but there's a chance one of the cultists dropped it. And if Chthon's minions had it, then we certainly want it."
Topaz ends up back at the place where everything started.
Trigger Warning: Language, Violence, Blood - Minor Character Death.
Teleporting was different depending on the person. This teleportation trap Topaz had tripped into was what she imagined it felt like to be tossed around in a washing machine. Shapes and colors flew by in a blur, slipping through her fingers as she tried to anchor herself and stop, but nothing was working. She couldn't stop, she couldn't control it, she-
She stopped. Or, more accurately, she landed flat on her back, coughing as the wind was forced from her lungs. She pushed herself up shakily, ripping the hood off her head as she looked around. Grey skies. Tombstones. Wet grass under her hands. What in the... She looked around slowly, her eyes finding first the repaired tombstone with the familiar name - and then the man leaning against it.
It was hard to say when exactly the last time was that Topaz had seen Adam Destine. There had been a lot of hallucinating at the end of everything. But she knew he definitely he had two eyes the last time she clearly remembered seeing him.
A thousand quips ran through her head, but in that moment, facing what had been at the center of her nightmares for well over a year now, all she could do was say, "What do you want?" in a tone she hated to admit was desperate.
"A lot. A villa in Spain. You crucified on my front lawn. Maybe an X-Box. I hear those are really interesting." Adam said, his smile growing. "What I'm going to have is you, as a start."
Topaz pushed herself up, trying to look braver than she actually felt as her eyes traced the scars up and down his face. "That didn't work out too well for you last time," she observed, taking a step back, magic gathering in the air around her. "Why can't you let it go?"
"You child. You absolute fucking child. Don't you understand anything about magic?" He shook his head. "Magic is about blood. Bone. Sacrifice. Power demands something from you and you, you think you get it for free?"
Adam looked terrible, but once you scrutinized him, flickers of energy traced his outline. "It costs, and you haven't paid yet. Not at all. Not in the fucking slightest, you wog cunt."
Topaz’ gaze flicked up and down Adam for a moment. He looked... wrong. He felt wrong. It was the sensation of walking into a room where nothing had changed but it still felt different. That weird, uncertain feeling that nothing was okay.
Just stay alive. Stay alive long enough for Amanda-
She froze at the thought. Amanda had nearly died last time she had faced Adam. She’d been laid up for weeks. Never mind what the whole thing had done to everyone else. Marie-Ange’s eye, Doug’s blood curse...
They can’t fight your battles forever.
Topaz took a breath and straightened up, looking Adam in the eye. “And what is it that I owe? I don’t recall making any deals.”
"Magic makes its own deals. You think you get to just fall into it? It's years of pain. Of being told how little you know. Clawing out the lessons between the beatings and the pain." Adam's face twisted. "You got it all so easy, you think? You don't deserve any of it. And I won't let you have it."
"What Rack did to you isn't my problem." She knew the minute the words were out of her mouth that they were a mistake, and she already regretted it. But if she was going to die, then at least she'd do it on her feet and... somewhat fearless. "You think you're the only one with issues? You're not even the only person I know who's been tortured by him. Is that really what this is? You sacrificed two of your brothers and your sister just because you're mad someone else had it easier? Because someone else escaped?"
"You dumb cunt. You don't get to tell me anything." An angry red spike emerged, piercing her through the shoulder. "I decide this. I make this choice. And you are a dead woman."
No matter how prepared she had been for an attack, nothing could've prepared her for the pain. She screamed, her knees buckling for a moment before she caught herself, grimacing. It burned up and down her arm, and she had to resist the urge to grab it - point in doing any more damage to herself than what was necessary. Still, she leveled a glare with Adam, once again reaching out mentally. His emotions felt like sludge; she recoiled slightly, biting down another whimper.
"It is time for a new regime. A new cabal. That I have earned and you aren't part of." Adam's hand shifted, and tiny lancets of red-hot energy spiked through her. "I'm going to own you long enough to eliminate the opposition and do what no one else has done. I will be a magical King."
Topaz bit her tongue, but she couldn't keep down the pained groan as her knees buckled. She took a few deep breaths before trying to speak. "You've well and truly lost it, haven't you?" She was just speaking above above a whisper. "What did you make a deal with?"
"Why would I tell you that? It's time to bring in the new regime. A new world. Beg, and you can be part of it."
She glared, pushing herself up the best she could. "Hell no." The sound of blood was rushing through her ears, heart pounding in time with the pulses of pain. But adrenaline was a wonderful thing. She moved her free hand, aiming at the spike and slicing through it with a bolt of energy. Her arm was still useless, mostly hanging limply at her side, but she didn't exactly have any delusions about fighting her way through this. Magic sparked between her fingers, small flickers of black and white light. Maybe if she was lucky she could do enough damage for someone else to take him down.
"OH, very good." He gasped as the lancet pierced his shoulder. But with a wave, it disappeared. "Mandy would have taught you. I get that. But I'm not her. I'm the one who went through the real crucible."
Adam staggered a bit as he closed with her and grabbed her by the back of her head. "It's time. You're going to sacrifice yourself."
Topaz tried to pull away, but she was distracted by the stagger, checking him for a weakness - and then he had her, and she tried to jerk away, making a pained noise in the back of her throat. "To what?" She tried to keep the cold tone, but fear was creeping back in. He had messed with something. She'd already known that. But with the distance closed, she was nearly overwhelmed with the feeling of wrong.
"Power costs. And once your soul pays my debt, I'm going to take this body of yours right back into your little mansion. I'm going to tell all kinds of stories how I was able to defeat the big bad Destines. I might even celebrate by letting whatever boys and girls you have on the hook between your thighs. And when everyone is sated, and sleeping and just so happy about how things turned out, I'm going to get up for a glass of water. And slowly, methodically and entirely, I'm going to murder every fucking cunt in that place and bathe in their goddamn blood."
For a moment Topaz was too stunned to say anything. Plenty of thoughts ran through her head - No one would ever fall for that, Amanda's wards would catch you, like hell you're getting anywhere near them - but they were all useless words in the end. She looked up at the best she could, meeting his gaze. And all she saw was darkness. "They won't fall for it," she finally settled for informing him coldly. "They'd kill you before you stepped off the tarmac." She hoped. God she hoped. This would be a terrible time to get sentimental.
"Because Mandy's got the place so well protected? All the wards and magical protections and wotcha?" His smile turned cruel. "Who do you think was sitting right beside her when she learned how to do them in the first place?"
"They won't save you." Adam said and stepped back. "But I might. Give in, and it doesn't have to be agony."
"No." There was no hesitation in her answer. He wasn't getting that satisfaction.
"My old mentor used to beat the shit out of Mandy and I. We used to fuck because that was the only kindness that we never had to pay for. Magic is this kind of game. You are out of your depth and I'm the least predator you're going to face." Adam shrugged. "It's going to happen. Make it easy. I'll do it for her."
"How kind of you to do that right before you kill her." Bloody hell can you shut *up*? Nothing would be painless no matter what she did or said, but she didn't have to keep making it worse. "No."
"Righteous twat. Like you had an option." Adam gestured and Topaz' soul lurched like a harpoon had grounded itself in her spine. "I thought it might be easier for her to accept the inevitable. No chance of that now." He clenched his fist and a pain a thousand times worse than she'd ever encountered descended on her.
There was no pretense of strength or even a passing attempt - she went straight to her knees, screaming as the pain burned through her. Her mind went blank for a moment, and she fully expected consciousness to follow...
A sharp ping! seemed to echo through Topaz' body; she jerked back collapsing in a heap for a moment and gasping to catch her breath. Something in the air had changed; she could feel the familiar energy vibrating in the air even before she opened her eyes to see the golden shield between her and Adam. What... She dared to look around, but they were still alone.
"Fucking tra-la-la... figured you'd show up 'bout now, Mandy. You really are committed to this cunt. Makes you wonder, don't it? If you'd cared this much 'bout your mates, what could have happened differently." Adam said, his mouth twisting into a cruel smile as he swiped his arm and a million tiny red particles covered the shield and popped it like a balloon. "This only ends one way."
She wasn't there. Amanda could hide herself from empaths, but after six years and one unfortunate draining incident, Topaz could pick her out. She wasn't there. She's still trying to keep you alive, you idiot. You gave up, and she's still trying to keep you alive.
Topaz grimaced, pushing herself up and stumbling to regain her footing and gather herself. There would be time for questions later. Maybe. She fought her way passed the sludge of Adam's emotions, trying to find something to tap into and drain. "She grew up." Her voice shook despite her best efforts. "You didn't."
"Yeh, that's summat a little nog like you knows about." Adam pulled back, reaching to tap into the infernal conduit he'd arranged. "This is over. Over." A column of flame enveloped her, magic lines of fire racing up and down her to make her burn hard and fast.
The golden shield jumped to life again, this time with Topaz' own flare added in. She could already feel herself burning - this wasn't going to keep her for long. But hey, she didn't have to make things easy, right?
Then the earth between them cracked open, red light and flames erupting from it. Long, red-clawed hands appeared at the edge of the crevice, pulling up a red-scaled mass of muscle and butt-ugliness. Adam’s magical fire wavered and then died as the demon turned towards him.
“Witch,” it growled. “You said this one was for me. You dare renege on our deal?”
"You haven't lived up to your end of the bargain. I said I had her death! You get the rest." Adam said angrily.
"Once I had her soul. I gave you the power to achieve your ends only on that condition. I cannot take her soul if the body is dead, boy." Contempt - and some kind of ichor - dripped from the demon's jaws. "Without her soul, you have nothing to pay with - I take back my gifts." And with that, the demon made a beckoning motion with its long clawed hand, closing into a fist.
"No! No! I have her. She's ready to be harvested!" Adam cried, waving away at the motes that surrounded him. "I've won. I've won. You can't take it from me now!"
"Too late, witch. A deal is a deal." And with that, the demon made a yanking motion with its hand.
Unlike the more prosaic deals that witches and mages made between each other, a deal with a demon was a visceral thing. As the connection was severed, the magic was pulled back as if anchored on barbed stakes. Adam gasped as blood fountained from six different points of his body, which glowed momentarily as the connection was cut. He fell over, clutching his stomach and chest as he hit the ground, blood running freely down his chin.
There was something... surreal about watching the exchange.
Topaz had let her shields fall without thinking, but she had a feeling it didn't matter. Her eyes flicked back and forth between the demon and Adam, taking an unconscious step back when the demon raised its hand.
And then there was blood. A lot of blood. That blurred the line of events for a moment. She wasn't sure when the demon disappeared, or how long she stood there, frozen, before her feet moved her forward a few steps.
And, ridiculously, there was a small voice in the back of her head wondering if she should try to save him. The thought was laughable. At best she could put him out of his misery sooner.
There was a ripple in the air and then Amanda was there, panting a little at the efforts she’d put in to get from Denver to London. She took in the scene at a glance, and with a nod to Topaz, she went to Adam’s side, unsure of what it was she would do.
“Well… fuck.” Adam said, staring stupidly at the carnage he’d absorbed. “Fuck. I’m-“ He looked up and a weird small smile reached his face. “I fucked this one up fierce, right?”
“And then some.” Amanda’s tone was carefully neutral. “But it’s over now.” There was the barest hint of a question.
“Yeah… I-“ He stopped, contorting in pain from the damage. “I- I didn’t want to be him, Mandy. I didn’t. It was just- what I knew.” He caught her gaze, helpless and afraid, the end coming for him. “How did I become him?”
It was the helplessness that did it; Amanda reached for one bloody hand, holding it between her own. “You had to,” she replied, softly. “He’d have killed you otherwise. It could have just have easily been me.”
“But it wasn’t. I’m bad. I know I’m bad…” His hand convulsed around hers. “Was I so bad I wasn’t worth trying to save?” Blood burbled from his mouth, staining his throat and shirt with the rich red arterial flow.
“No. You weren’t.” As much as Amanda told herself it hadn’t been her who had left him to Rack’s mercies, in some weird multi-dimensional Frankenberry-fucking-cat way, she had. And she was the only one here now to reply to it. She freed one hand and wiped the blood from his lips. “But I wasn’t good enough to save you. Not then. And I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry. I really am. I-“ He coughed again, and the bubbles became a stream. He grasped her hand, hard, trying to find anything at the end. With a spasm, his hand gripped harder, and the last bit of magic he could summon was focused on Amanda.
“What--?” Amanda’s gaze unfocused, turned inward, as images flooded her vision. No, not just images, these were memories. Adam’s memories, of a girl called Amanda Sefton who had shared his magical bondage to a sadistic monster. A girl who’d escaped and left him to hell. A girl he’d loved, in his own terrible, broken way. The last that was left of him, given to her to hold.
His grip slacked. Adam looked at Amanda, his eyes pleading for something that didn’t exist. In a moment, they clouded over, and he ceased to exist as well.
She felt when he died.
She really, really didn't mean to. She'd looked away, eyes on the ground, looking at the grass and thinking, erratically, that the neighbors must have thought this cemetery was haunted. Adrenaline and empathy didn't care about privacy, though - she couldn't have shut anything down then even if she wanted to.
It was a long moment before Topaz looked up again, not quite looking at Amanda. She wasn't sure what to say. I'm sorry? She wasn't. She hadn't asked for any of this, she didn't-
Just be quiet.
Her gaze dropped back to the grass.
Amanda disengaged the dead hand in hers and placed it by his side before reaching over with a trembling hand and closing his eyes. Her mind was still awhirl with his memories and she closed her eyes against the intrusion, employing techniques taught to her by a teacher who had never existed in Adam`s world to package them away for processing later. When she opened them again, she looked over at Topaz. The mixture of relief and grief was unmistakable, even without empathy. 'You all right?"
Topaz nodded, hands in sweatshirt pocket. "Yeah. Are you?"
"That is a question that needs a gallon of tea and probably some major therapy with the Professor to answer," came Amanda's reply. She glanced down at the still body again. "There but for the grace of god," she murmured, before squaring her shoulders. "Let me drop an anonymous call to the cops to take care of hi-- this, and then let's get the fuck home."
It happened so fast. One moment Topaz was there beside her, flinging magic at the cultists, the next... gone. Not even a cloud of smoke or flash of magical energy in her wake. Amanda swore, but somehow, didn't seem terribly surprised.
"Tarot!" she called across the runway-turned-battle. "I've got to pop out for a bit. You lot have got this, yeah?" She had pulled her wych from inside her sleeve and was already drawing on its power for the teleport. She barely waited for Marie-Ange's response before disappearing.
"I have this." Marie-Ange had, in fact, a trio of skeletons with brass armor and gnarled clubs, and a miniature mastodon that was silently trumpeting around her ankles. "Cypher, I want you up high, watch our backs and I do not care about casualties. Pixie, keep anyone from getting to Cypher, stay out of his line of fire." She paused. "Strange and... ah.. " She paused for a moment.
"Parachute Woman." Doug didn't really expect anyone else to remember which codename-of-the-week was current in his little homage to teammates past.
"Yes, that, rather. You undo anything the cultists magic up. Scarlet Witch and I will take on cultists directly."
"You get all the fun stuff," Doug groused at his girlfriend. Off her sharp look that conveyed an awful lot of subtext, he relented. "Fine, fine, I'm on overwatch." And he didn't even make any jokes about high noon or the cavalry. See? He could be good. Gathering Pixie by eye, he made his way toward one of the jetways that they could get on top of. "A little help?" he asked, wishing he didn't know just how winded a simple climb up would leave him.
Pixie zipped after him, the flier lifting them both to the top of the segmented tube of glass and metal. Her pink hair floated slightly and she could feel her dust just below the surface of her skin. It gave off a scent like an underground river, dandelions, and something alien. "Even the air currents seem suspended. I should be able to get very precise with my dust attacks," she noted, brushing a streak of darker hair out of her face.
"Cypher, I hate you." Clea was already on one knee as she took out a piece of chalk and began to write symbols on the tarmac. "I need a piece of the Cultist. A piece of cloth would be fine." Clea called out to the others.
There was a part of Stephen that wanted to rush forward to get the robe that had been requested, but well...maybe the others might be better at that then he was. Stephen's skills ran in a different direction. Suning his foot the teenager drew a line across the ground, a crackle of energy dancing across the ground as he looked up at the cultists and smiled. "I'vee been working on this for a while." As he spoke Stephen's foot came slamming down on the line, a flurry of earthen fists rising up out of the ground, grasping and pummeling three of the cultists, battering them to the ground.
Somehow over the din of the fight, she'd heard the request. Grabbing a handful of the robe of the man she was fighting, Wanda turned and threw him up and over her shoulder so that he slammed down a few feet from where Clea knelt on the ground - whether the man was unconscious or dead, it was hard to tell. The older woman was barely breathing hard as she knelt next to the cultist, a hint of a knife in her hand as she sliced off a piece of fabric. "Never say I never get you anything nice," she said, handing it over to Clea.
"Thanks." Clea said as she looked at the cloth in her hand as she looked down at the finished spell. "Now for the final touch." Placing the cloth in the center and the white chalk began to glow and the air cracked with energy before it sent out towards the nearest cultist and hitting them.
Around that same time Doug had finally gotten set in his firing position on the jetway. The number of things one could do with an AR-15 to make it easily portable and even more highly lethal were many. As long as you didn't mind those modifications being highly illegal. A folding stock here, tripod and silencer there... One of the cultists was moving up in Clea's blind spot, and Doug put a trio of rounds into him, just below the sternum. "Thank god for cultists who don't wear body armor," he muttered.
Behind him, Pixie added, "Or gas masks." It was so annoying when enemies weren't affected by her dust. With careful wingbeats, she stirred up an air current and let loose a stream of dust into it. It drifted over another cluster of cultists, enveloping them in sparkles. They'd be taking a trip, but not by airplane, and too disoriented to pose much of a threat.
Behind the hood of her jacket, Marie-Ange was bearing her teeth, face grim as she drove the point of an imaged spear into whatever parts of the cultists that were foolish enough to step - or retreat from the others - into her range. She kept up a steady stream of instructions into her comm - cult members breaking into Doug's range, warnings to her teammates, and occasional profane curses, understandable only if you spoke badly remembered gutter Asgardian.
She turned to bark a warning to Wanda, and found herself thrown to the ground by a cultist who may very well have been recruited for muscle, or who had joined simply to get the chance to hit people. She had just enough instinct to turn as she fell, landing on her hip. The enormous man laughed darkly as she reached across her ribs, and his laugh turned to wet gurgles as Marie-Ange pulled a borrowed gun, utilitarian steel and black grip, from an equally borrowed shoulder holster and fired half-blindly until the pistol clicked on an empty chamber.
A woman smaller than Wanda lunged forward and slammed into her, curved knife held tightly in both hands. Staggering backward, Wanda managed to get her hands up in time to grab the wrists and stop the dagger from going any further. With their close proximity, she was able to slam her knee up into the woman's stomach, forcing the air out of her in a sharp gasp. Jerking her hands apart, the knife went flying and then the women went limp with a well-placed headbutt.
But as she dropped another, larger figure jumped on her back and Wanda dropped to one knee from the sudden weight, no knife in the hands of this one but she noted the glowing hands as they went for her throat. A shock ran through and her powers flared but a glimpse of the airplanes on the tarmac made her reel them in, despite the pain coursing through her body. Grunting with the effort, she reached up behind her and blasted the cultist point-blank in the face with a chaos bolt - there was no space to dodge and the man barely let out a gurgle as his face simply...melted.
The magical marks continued to glow and pulse as Clea continued to put magic into it. She was able to reach the cultist that were taking ranged shots. The ground beneath them began to shift and their cloaks were being tugged towards the ground before they themselves sunk into the ground, until they were gone. Opening her eyes as she saw from the distance those near their fellow buddies were now food for the Earth turn and began to run.
Stephen slumped, falling backwards onto the ground as he stared up at the sky above, the clouds drifting far ahead uncaring about the turmoil that had passed on the ground. Innocent, or perhaps just uncaring from their vantage so far above the distant crowds. He wanted to close his eyes, to relax but he could feel the energy of the earth that they'd so used and abused twisting and turning around them. There was a balance to magi, a give and take but now the balance had been broken, disrupted. The boy's fingers sank into the ground as he reached out to the energy, taking and manipulating...growth to counter death. Small buds appeared around them, pinks and yellows and whites as the buds bloomed, their growth sped by the vagrancies of magic. Balance.
Cultists lay dead, disabled and disintegrated on the tarmac below. Others were starting to retreat. But not this one, who came close to the area Pixie was keeping clear and launched a ball of magic energy arching up... "Incoming blast from behind!" she shouted. She sent Will o' Wisp blazing into the cultist's hooded face, the were light blinding him, following it up closely with a flying jump kick. Pixie launched herself off his unmoving body before he fully hit the ground, scanning for any more enemies desperate enough to make one final attack.
"So -that's- where my sidearm went," Doug said, sort of halfway accusing, but if Angie had needed it, well... One cultist made a half-step forward, but that was all as he then went pitching backward with a bullet between the eyes. "Clear," he reported.
Marie-Ange stayed down, using the body of the large cultist as a shield until she heard the "Clear" repeated more than twice. She poked her head up, a knife and armor growing and misting away in the same breath, and then carefully got to her feet. "Clear. Cypher, are you online already? Start getting our mess cleaned up, while we get our mess cleaned up." Her eyes tracked the retreating few cultists as they ran. "Let them run, we have... " She was cut off by the whoosh of the HVAC units returning to life, and the whirr of computers powering themselves back on. "We have almost no time to clean up and get out."
Rubbing at her aching throat, Wanda was turning around to survey the area as well, grimacing not only in pain but also at the scene in front of her. "Well, luckily, we're old enough hands at this that we should be okay," she responded, taking a step forward to start in on the mess when something caught her eye. With the spell broken, movement was back to normal and debris started to settle as gravity kicked back in. So she wasn't surprised to see paper scatting across the floor, that was normal.
What was less normal was the old paper that suddenly appeared only a few inches from her foot marked with a crawling scrawl. Frowning, she crouched in front of it, careful to not touch it just yet - it didn't seem dangerous but it was older than anything else in the room and she felt something like a shiver run up her back by looking at it.
"I might have found something," she announced, using a discarded piece of cloth to pick it up. It turned out to be a yellow-ish, cracked, single piece of paper. Nothing that should have been at an airport. "We'll take a look at it when we have time but there's a chance one of the cultists dropped it. And if Chthon's minions had it, then we certainly want it."
Topaz ends up back at the place where everything started.
Trigger Warning: Language, Violence, Blood - Minor Character Death.
Teleporting was different depending on the person. This teleportation trap Topaz had tripped into was what she imagined it felt like to be tossed around in a washing machine. Shapes and colors flew by in a blur, slipping through her fingers as she tried to anchor herself and stop, but nothing was working. She couldn't stop, she couldn't control it, she-
She stopped. Or, more accurately, she landed flat on her back, coughing as the wind was forced from her lungs. She pushed herself up shakily, ripping the hood off her head as she looked around. Grey skies. Tombstones. Wet grass under her hands. What in the... She looked around slowly, her eyes finding first the repaired tombstone with the familiar name - and then the man leaning against it.
It was hard to say when exactly the last time was that Topaz had seen Adam Destine. There had been a lot of hallucinating at the end of everything. But she knew he definitely he had two eyes the last time she clearly remembered seeing him.
A thousand quips ran through her head, but in that moment, facing what had been at the center of her nightmares for well over a year now, all she could do was say, "What do you want?" in a tone she hated to admit was desperate.
"A lot. A villa in Spain. You crucified on my front lawn. Maybe an X-Box. I hear those are really interesting." Adam said, his smile growing. "What I'm going to have is you, as a start."
Topaz pushed herself up, trying to look braver than she actually felt as her eyes traced the scars up and down his face. "That didn't work out too well for you last time," she observed, taking a step back, magic gathering in the air around her. "Why can't you let it go?"
"You child. You absolute fucking child. Don't you understand anything about magic?" He shook his head. "Magic is about blood. Bone. Sacrifice. Power demands something from you and you, you think you get it for free?"
Adam looked terrible, but once you scrutinized him, flickers of energy traced his outline. "It costs, and you haven't paid yet. Not at all. Not in the fucking slightest, you wog cunt."
Topaz’ gaze flicked up and down Adam for a moment. He looked... wrong. He felt wrong. It was the sensation of walking into a room where nothing had changed but it still felt different. That weird, uncertain feeling that nothing was okay.
Just stay alive. Stay alive long enough for Amanda-
She froze at the thought. Amanda had nearly died last time she had faced Adam. She’d been laid up for weeks. Never mind what the whole thing had done to everyone else. Marie-Ange’s eye, Doug’s blood curse...
They can’t fight your battles forever.
Topaz took a breath and straightened up, looking Adam in the eye. “And what is it that I owe? I don’t recall making any deals.”
"Magic makes its own deals. You think you get to just fall into it? It's years of pain. Of being told how little you know. Clawing out the lessons between the beatings and the pain." Adam's face twisted. "You got it all so easy, you think? You don't deserve any of it. And I won't let you have it."
"What Rack did to you isn't my problem." She knew the minute the words were out of her mouth that they were a mistake, and she already regretted it. But if she was going to die, then at least she'd do it on her feet and... somewhat fearless. "You think you're the only one with issues? You're not even the only person I know who's been tortured by him. Is that really what this is? You sacrificed two of your brothers and your sister just because you're mad someone else had it easier? Because someone else escaped?"
"You dumb cunt. You don't get to tell me anything." An angry red spike emerged, piercing her through the shoulder. "I decide this. I make this choice. And you are a dead woman."
No matter how prepared she had been for an attack, nothing could've prepared her for the pain. She screamed, her knees buckling for a moment before she caught herself, grimacing. It burned up and down her arm, and she had to resist the urge to grab it - point in doing any more damage to herself than what was necessary. Still, she leveled a glare with Adam, once again reaching out mentally. His emotions felt like sludge; she recoiled slightly, biting down another whimper.
"It is time for a new regime. A new cabal. That I have earned and you aren't part of." Adam's hand shifted, and tiny lancets of red-hot energy spiked through her. "I'm going to own you long enough to eliminate the opposition and do what no one else has done. I will be a magical King."
Topaz bit her tongue, but she couldn't keep down the pained groan as her knees buckled. She took a few deep breaths before trying to speak. "You've well and truly lost it, haven't you?" She was just speaking above above a whisper. "What did you make a deal with?"
"Why would I tell you that? It's time to bring in the new regime. A new world. Beg, and you can be part of it."
She glared, pushing herself up the best she could. "Hell no." The sound of blood was rushing through her ears, heart pounding in time with the pulses of pain. But adrenaline was a wonderful thing. She moved her free hand, aiming at the spike and slicing through it with a bolt of energy. Her arm was still useless, mostly hanging limply at her side, but she didn't exactly have any delusions about fighting her way through this. Magic sparked between her fingers, small flickers of black and white light. Maybe if she was lucky she could do enough damage for someone else to take him down.
"OH, very good." He gasped as the lancet pierced his shoulder. But with a wave, it disappeared. "Mandy would have taught you. I get that. But I'm not her. I'm the one who went through the real crucible."
Adam staggered a bit as he closed with her and grabbed her by the back of her head. "It's time. You're going to sacrifice yourself."
Topaz tried to pull away, but she was distracted by the stagger, checking him for a weakness - and then he had her, and she tried to jerk away, making a pained noise in the back of her throat. "To what?" She tried to keep the cold tone, but fear was creeping back in. He had messed with something. She'd already known that. But with the distance closed, she was nearly overwhelmed with the feeling of wrong.
"Power costs. And once your soul pays my debt, I'm going to take this body of yours right back into your little mansion. I'm going to tell all kinds of stories how I was able to defeat the big bad Destines. I might even celebrate by letting whatever boys and girls you have on the hook between your thighs. And when everyone is sated, and sleeping and just so happy about how things turned out, I'm going to get up for a glass of water. And slowly, methodically and entirely, I'm going to murder every fucking cunt in that place and bathe in their goddamn blood."
For a moment Topaz was too stunned to say anything. Plenty of thoughts ran through her head - No one would ever fall for that, Amanda's wards would catch you, like hell you're getting anywhere near them - but they were all useless words in the end. She looked up at the best she could, meeting his gaze. And all she saw was darkness. "They won't fall for it," she finally settled for informing him coldly. "They'd kill you before you stepped off the tarmac." She hoped. God she hoped. This would be a terrible time to get sentimental.
"Because Mandy's got the place so well protected? All the wards and magical protections and wotcha?" His smile turned cruel. "Who do you think was sitting right beside her when she learned how to do them in the first place?"
"They won't save you." Adam said and stepped back. "But I might. Give in, and it doesn't have to be agony."
"No." There was no hesitation in her answer. He wasn't getting that satisfaction.
"My old mentor used to beat the shit out of Mandy and I. We used to fuck because that was the only kindness that we never had to pay for. Magic is this kind of game. You are out of your depth and I'm the least predator you're going to face." Adam shrugged. "It's going to happen. Make it easy. I'll do it for her."
"How kind of you to do that right before you kill her." Bloody hell can you shut *up*? Nothing would be painless no matter what she did or said, but she didn't have to keep making it worse. "No."
"Righteous twat. Like you had an option." Adam gestured and Topaz' soul lurched like a harpoon had grounded itself in her spine. "I thought it might be easier for her to accept the inevitable. No chance of that now." He clenched his fist and a pain a thousand times worse than she'd ever encountered descended on her.
There was no pretense of strength or even a passing attempt - she went straight to her knees, screaming as the pain burned through her. Her mind went blank for a moment, and she fully expected consciousness to follow...
A sharp ping! seemed to echo through Topaz' body; she jerked back collapsing in a heap for a moment and gasping to catch her breath. Something in the air had changed; she could feel the familiar energy vibrating in the air even before she opened her eyes to see the golden shield between her and Adam. What... She dared to look around, but they were still alone.
"Fucking tra-la-la... figured you'd show up 'bout now, Mandy. You really are committed to this cunt. Makes you wonder, don't it? If you'd cared this much 'bout your mates, what could have happened differently." Adam said, his mouth twisting into a cruel smile as he swiped his arm and a million tiny red particles covered the shield and popped it like a balloon. "This only ends one way."
She wasn't there. Amanda could hide herself from empaths, but after six years and one unfortunate draining incident, Topaz could pick her out. She wasn't there. She's still trying to keep you alive, you idiot. You gave up, and she's still trying to keep you alive.
Topaz grimaced, pushing herself up and stumbling to regain her footing and gather herself. There would be time for questions later. Maybe. She fought her way passed the sludge of Adam's emotions, trying to find something to tap into and drain. "She grew up." Her voice shook despite her best efforts. "You didn't."
"Yeh, that's summat a little nog like you knows about." Adam pulled back, reaching to tap into the infernal conduit he'd arranged. "This is over. Over." A column of flame enveloped her, magic lines of fire racing up and down her to make her burn hard and fast.
The golden shield jumped to life again, this time with Topaz' own flare added in. She could already feel herself burning - this wasn't going to keep her for long. But hey, she didn't have to make things easy, right?
Then the earth between them cracked open, red light and flames erupting from it. Long, red-clawed hands appeared at the edge of the crevice, pulling up a red-scaled mass of muscle and butt-ugliness. Adam’s magical fire wavered and then died as the demon turned towards him.
“Witch,” it growled. “You said this one was for me. You dare renege on our deal?”
"You haven't lived up to your end of the bargain. I said I had her death! You get the rest." Adam said angrily.
"Once I had her soul. I gave you the power to achieve your ends only on that condition. I cannot take her soul if the body is dead, boy." Contempt - and some kind of ichor - dripped from the demon's jaws. "Without her soul, you have nothing to pay with - I take back my gifts." And with that, the demon made a beckoning motion with its long clawed hand, closing into a fist.
"No! No! I have her. She's ready to be harvested!" Adam cried, waving away at the motes that surrounded him. "I've won. I've won. You can't take it from me now!"
"Too late, witch. A deal is a deal." And with that, the demon made a yanking motion with its hand.
Unlike the more prosaic deals that witches and mages made between each other, a deal with a demon was a visceral thing. As the connection was severed, the magic was pulled back as if anchored on barbed stakes. Adam gasped as blood fountained from six different points of his body, which glowed momentarily as the connection was cut. He fell over, clutching his stomach and chest as he hit the ground, blood running freely down his chin.
There was something... surreal about watching the exchange.
Topaz had let her shields fall without thinking, but she had a feeling it didn't matter. Her eyes flicked back and forth between the demon and Adam, taking an unconscious step back when the demon raised its hand.
And then there was blood. A lot of blood. That blurred the line of events for a moment. She wasn't sure when the demon disappeared, or how long she stood there, frozen, before her feet moved her forward a few steps.
And, ridiculously, there was a small voice in the back of her head wondering if she should try to save him. The thought was laughable. At best she could put him out of his misery sooner.
There was a ripple in the air and then Amanda was there, panting a little at the efforts she’d put in to get from Denver to London. She took in the scene at a glance, and with a nod to Topaz, she went to Adam’s side, unsure of what it was she would do.
“Well… fuck.” Adam said, staring stupidly at the carnage he’d absorbed. “Fuck. I’m-“ He looked up and a weird small smile reached his face. “I fucked this one up fierce, right?”
“And then some.” Amanda’s tone was carefully neutral. “But it’s over now.” There was the barest hint of a question.
“Yeah… I-“ He stopped, contorting in pain from the damage. “I- I didn’t want to be him, Mandy. I didn’t. It was just- what I knew.” He caught her gaze, helpless and afraid, the end coming for him. “How did I become him?”
It was the helplessness that did it; Amanda reached for one bloody hand, holding it between her own. “You had to,” she replied, softly. “He’d have killed you otherwise. It could have just have easily been me.”
“But it wasn’t. I’m bad. I know I’m bad…” His hand convulsed around hers. “Was I so bad I wasn’t worth trying to save?” Blood burbled from his mouth, staining his throat and shirt with the rich red arterial flow.
“No. You weren’t.” As much as Amanda told herself it hadn’t been her who had left him to Rack’s mercies, in some weird multi-dimensional Frankenberry-fucking-cat way, she had. And she was the only one here now to reply to it. She freed one hand and wiped the blood from his lips. “But I wasn’t good enough to save you. Not then. And I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry. I really am. I-“ He coughed again, and the bubbles became a stream. He grasped her hand, hard, trying to find anything at the end. With a spasm, his hand gripped harder, and the last bit of magic he could summon was focused on Amanda.
“What--?” Amanda’s gaze unfocused, turned inward, as images flooded her vision. No, not just images, these were memories. Adam’s memories, of a girl called Amanda Sefton who had shared his magical bondage to a sadistic monster. A girl who’d escaped and left him to hell. A girl he’d loved, in his own terrible, broken way. The last that was left of him, given to her to hold.
His grip slacked. Adam looked at Amanda, his eyes pleading for something that didn’t exist. In a moment, they clouded over, and he ceased to exist as well.
She felt when he died.
She really, really didn't mean to. She'd looked away, eyes on the ground, looking at the grass and thinking, erratically, that the neighbors must have thought this cemetery was haunted. Adrenaline and empathy didn't care about privacy, though - she couldn't have shut anything down then even if she wanted to.
It was a long moment before Topaz looked up again, not quite looking at Amanda. She wasn't sure what to say. I'm sorry? She wasn't. She hadn't asked for any of this, she didn't-
Just be quiet.
Her gaze dropped back to the grass.
Amanda disengaged the dead hand in hers and placed it by his side before reaching over with a trembling hand and closing his eyes. Her mind was still awhirl with his memories and she closed her eyes against the intrusion, employing techniques taught to her by a teacher who had never existed in Adam`s world to package them away for processing later. When she opened them again, she looked over at Topaz. The mixture of relief and grief was unmistakable, even without empathy. 'You all right?"
Topaz nodded, hands in sweatshirt pocket. "Yeah. Are you?"
"That is a question that needs a gallon of tea and probably some major therapy with the Professor to answer," came Amanda's reply. She glanced down at the still body again. "There but for the grace of god," she murmured, before squaring her shoulders. "Let me drop an anonymous call to the cops to take care of hi-- this, and then let's get the fuck home."
