lostcarnival | ⇨ FAERIE TALES

"Whatever state of mind he's in still one of ours," the witcher retorts hotly, fists balling by his side. This isn't getting them much of anywhere, and it doesn't seem to be getting them any closer to bringing them their magician.

Fine. If the plan they came up with isn't looking likely to work the way they wanted it to, then it's time to improvise -- the way they always do.

"If you won't bring him here, I'll do it myself!" Is this a bad idea? Possibly, but he's got nothing else, and maybe they'll be able to luck out and crack the magician over the head to save him from himself. He drops to a knee and thrusts out a hand holding a gem -- those familiar with it will recognize it as Strange's support gem -- and recites, rapid-fire:

"Jonathan Strange, by your bond of blood to me, I summon you with your memories!" It's really not much of a chant, but he's not an expert in this, okay? And he literally has a blood contract to Strange, that better be good for something. As he finishes, a hard twist of his wrist sets the gem spinning on the coliseum stones, and creepy music box music starts playing out of nowhere, filling the air. In the air above the gem starts playing out a scene from Strange's memory...

Edited 2018-06-04 01:32 (UTC)

The memory that plays is entirely devoid of context. Strange smiles at Arabella who runs up to him, entirely relieved, and gives him a hug. It's definitely something that probably should be private, based on how happy memory-Strange looks and how absolutely relieved memory-Arabella looks.

And then, in the dead center of the summoning circle, Strange appears. He's distracted by the memory for a second, eyes unsurprisingly drawn to Arabella before he puts two and two together and realizes he has no idea how the hell he got here in the first place.

It's like a switch flips in his brain from 'dopey husband' to 'battlefield ready.' Strange tenses up, not saying anything but obviously ready for a fight, as he summons a fireball to his hand and his eyes dart around the room as he tries to get his bearings and take in the situation.

Of all the things that Ignatius was expecting, that wasn't one of them. It shouldn't be possible - Strange was, by all rights, his. No one should be able to summon him without his consent.

Though maybe that's what he gets for consorting with the magical oath equivalent of an absolute whore.

Ignatius grits his teeth, falling back into a battle-ready pose. As casual and light-hearted as he's been, the change of circumstances is enough to get his attention - when he isn't sure of his victory, he isn't so foolish as to treat a conflict lightly.

"Strange, ready yourself, they are wielding some kind of magic I'm unfamiliar with," he says, and immediately attempts to teleport the two of them away and back to the gardens in a swirl of flame.

Well, it was a good plan. Was. But Ignatius isn’t as hot-headed as his appearance would imply. Time to think of something, quick.

Plan B? Plan B. This was their story. They were the protagonists. They WOULD be successful, one way or another.

Lambert summons Strange, and as soon as the brainwashed magician is on the scene, Zangetsu begins to narrate again.

“Ignatius was a bit more clever than the brave heroes gave him credit for, but the group didn’t charge in without several backup plans. The magic circle that Rita drew wasn’t just for summoning!”

Zangetsu stabs his sword into the ground, sending white-red energy along the ground and illuminating the circle, changing it from plain charcoal to brilliant light.

“The circle was also an incredibly powerful trap! Once activated, the coliseum became an inescapable prison for Ignatius and the kidnapped magician. The heroes came prepared, and the trap could not be disarmed until the group decided it should be so!”

His spell doesn't work.

If a fae made mostly of flame could sweat, he would be. It shows on his face - his absolute shock, and deep unease. He doesn't have the practice to contain it. Things like this happen so rarely, and every time it's been a nightmare.

That fear can't remain, however. It has to be something useful, and so soon after it's swelled into anger. So, it was a trap, after all!

"Strange, I need you to help me kill them," Ignatius says, his voice tense. "Go!"

Ignatius draws his sword.

So much is happening all at once. When Ignatius mentions he's unfamiliar with the magic, Strange decides that he can help with that. After all, he can see magic. He activates his third eye: the burns on his forehead, hand, and elbow outline themselves in an eye shape with magical fire as Strange quickly glances at his surroundings.

All he can see is the magic of the Athenaeum. Which, considering that they're in the damn library to begin with, is intensely unhelpful. This is stupid! Of course that's the only magic he could see!

He's scowling slightly as he looks over to Ignatius to tell him that, but the fae gets the word in first. Strange's expression shifts and he just looks downright pleased that Ignatius is trusting him to help and murder these troublemakers. "Of course, my lord," he simply responds. And then, barely even a second later, Strange lobs that fireball he's holding in Rita's direction.

Well, they're up one magician, one trapped fae, and a fight on their hands. It's not quite the scenario they wanted, but it's the one they had to work with, and Lambert has a fleeting moment to feel a vicious surge of satisfaction at Zangetsu's quick thinking before he's brought back to the fight by the sight of Strange casting a familiar spell.

For all that they'd built Rita up to hold all this power, it's still instinctive to move in and block the fireball, throwing up a shield to take the worst of the flames. The barrier flares under the impact, almost immediately dissipating, but it does the job of intercepting the flame before it can reach Rita. As it dissolves, Lambert lunges for Strange, shouting over his shoulder.

"Take Ignatius!"

Edited 2018-06-04 02:48 (UTC)

It... worked. Twice. Are either of those actually real spells? Doesn't matter, because it worked! In most circumstance, Syrlya never would have found this believable.

But you can't fight what you see with your own eyes, so okay! He drops the contract, nearly drops the quill before he remembers they probably want to keep that. So it's slipped back into his belt.

"We could have done this the easy way!" He glances sidelong at Ignatius as he reaches for his blade. He'll trust Lambert with Strange for now--between him and a High Fae, Syrlya knows which one is the greater target. With his free hand, he extends it toward where Ignatius and Rita stand,encompassing radial area in a warping purple field. It's a handful of seconds, but if it works then to both their perspectives, it's like Rita's moving in a timeline faster than Ignatius. He hopes it will be enough to give her the immediate advantage.

Rita glares at Lambert as he shields her. "I have a fireproof potion, you know!" she shouts at him, like he's an idiot. But even with Strange's attack blocked, she'll probably need that protection anyway, so she quickly rips off the stopper and downs the liquid in one gulp. Though it was really only made of water and food coloring, it's strangely thick and bitter-tasting, like a real potion. Maybe it'll even work.

Rita doesn't need to be told to go after Ignatius. She's already focused on the fae and preparing herself for the fight.

"Creation, give me strength!" she cries, feeling foolish as she reaches to her chest... but her Spark responds, or something that looks and feels vaguely like it, a sparkling orange light that brings with it a flurry of pages that whirl around her as her clothes seemingly change to that of her Guardian uniform. The pages then bind together and, with a flash of light, form a large, floating book with an orange-jeweled cover.

The transformation itself is virtually instantaneous, and with whatever Syrlya just did, it feels like her enemy's moving in slow motion... so she'd better make good use of this moment.

She waves a hand at the floating book, beckoning it to flip to a specific page. It then turns around, its open pages facing Ignatius and taking on a pale blue glow. "Come forth! Shimmering Frost!" From the pages' surface, a cold wind billows out, one that quickly turns to a mass of frost, racing toward Ignatius like a large icy hand, eager to grab him.

Fireproof or not fireproof, Ignatius doesn't really care at the moment. There's one thing he knows that isn't fireproof - that frost. Everything else better hope they are, because he isn't holding back.

All Court fae are created with a Domain - an aspect of reality that is uniquely theirs. He was given the Conflagration, the mass destruction of fire. It's never been a Domain he's had much joy in utilizing, but it is his never the less. Its fury is all-consuming, and it is indiscriminate.

Ignatius leaps into the air, just narrowly dodging the reaching frost that is moving so much faster than it should. In return, he unleashes the flame of pure destruction inside of him, like the core of an expanding sun.

The entire arena will be bathed in flames. Only Strange will be partially spared, thanks to his status as Ignatius's follower.

There's fire everywhere.

Rita has reason to believe she'll be fine, but the others? Not so likely. She springs at Syrlya, the most flammable-looking of the group, grabbing him by the arm and wrapping her wings around the two of them like a shield.

She holds up a hand, focusing on drawing the fire away from the two of them and into a single point, forming her own fireball above their heads. Trying to manipulate Ignatius' fire didn't work so well the last time she tried, but this time, she has a Bloodstone to amplify her magic. It has to work...

As soon as Lambert lunges at him, Strange turns to smoke. He floats towards Lambert, trying to close the distance between them...and just straight up stays in smoke form while the flames shower down on everyone. He's still a little charred because of the inherent magic in Ignatius's attack, but better 'a bit burned' than 'absolutely flashfried'.

Lambert gets a brief second or two to react before, still in smoke form, Strange tries to straight up gas him and send his smoke down Lambert's nose and throat.

Ah. So this is what the full force of a High Fae's attack feels like, head on. It feels like swimming in lava. It feels like falling into the sun. It feels like flesh melting off of bones. He sees the attack coming, feels it ramping up, and all he can do is try and protect himself with a fiery aura of his own. If he can cancel out just a fraction of it--!

He hisses into the conflagration, "We.... are... the.... heroes! Of this story!!"

Plot armor or no, even with Rita's intervention, Zangetsu is blown back by the force of the explosion, charring his white skin black and scorching much of his clothing. He slams into the stands and lies there for a moment, broken. Ichigo's powerful energy contributions kicks his regeneration into high gear, but the feeling of his burnt skin so tight against him is agony. It's hard to move. It's almost impossible to breathe. But he croaks out more words anyway. He doesn't want to do this, he doesn't want to call on this memory.

But they would not survive another attack like that.

"Ghh.... the... the Dragon knew despair... hhh... He knew suffering. He'd... he'd been through worse bullshit than this! And if he had to suffer, so did his enemies!" Zangetsu calls to mind the drowned city that Ichigo had trapped himself in, trapped them ALL in with his sorrow. How that sorrow had permeated every aspect of his soul. "The heroes... hnrrrgh. The heroes would be spared the sea, but the ocean crashed in around the coliseum!"

There's a loud rumble from nearby, and then several thousand tons of icy cold water come crashing into the coliseum, filling it like some sort of horrible swirling swimming pool. The heroes will find themselves chilled, but able to breathe and move as normal

Ignatius and Strange? Not quite so lucky.

Now, don't mind Zangetsu as he flops over in the stands and lets his healing take precedence over everything else.

Aw, hell. Syrlya ducks as the flames come forward, his grip on his sword tightening. He can phase through the initial burst, but he'll have to time it right. He's tense and watching the flames closely--and then Rita dives in, shielding his gaze as she tries to block the fire around them. It's more her element than his, but...

The pattern of a clock appears under their feet, the hands ticking down around a swirl of purple color. There's a sense of magic that pulses on their bodies, preventing some of the flame from hurting them. Not everything, not enough to stay here, but enough that they won't immediately die.

And then, then they're swamped in water and Syrlya's just throwing completely off balance for a moment. He absolutely makes the attempt to hold his breath as he tries to anchor himself in the water, before realizing he's still breathing.

It's still kind of hard to swing a sword like this, so he peers around to see how Ignatius is coping.

Strange's reaction times are better. Whatever Ignatius did to him, that training doesn't seem to have been just for show. However, Lambert rapidly has other problems, between Ignatius's sudden burst of flame rolling out, the magician in front of him turning into smoke and flowing towards him, and having only a split second to weave a narrative for himself without the aid of witcher magic.

He brings up the magical bracer Peridot wrought for him and it absorbs the flame ... for a time. It quickly superheats against his skin, making his teeth grit in pain, and unfortunately it's no shield for the rest of him -- it keeps it off enough to keep it from killing him outright, but he can feel his clothes essentially fusing to his skin as they're turned to ash.

Fuck it. He's bent reality before, just by willing it, he'll fucking bend reality again, trying to call on the Athenaeum's power. What is the Athenaeum's power? In the heat of the moment, Lambert can't think of a specific story -- only the memory of poring over books, books, and more books, endless lines of text that blur into each other.

"Shield!" Lambert shouts, visualizing a wall -- a dome of text around him -- to block the rest of the flames, and block the smoke seeking to choke him too. For a moment, it seems to work, as his form's briefly obscured by a uite literally formed of the word 'shield,' repeated over and over again -- but the narrative's too thin to hold it together and it shatters, making him yelp as he's drenched in flame again.

Luckily, he doesn't have to bear with it for long, as Zangetsu's wall of water floods the Coliseum, letting him be a little less on fire as he tries to catch his breath and figure out what the hell else is happening.

Edited (walls of text can't save you now) 2018-06-04 04:26 (UTC)

This has really never happened to him before.

Not quite like this, anyway. Dunked in water, sure. Everyone sees the guy that's on fire and thinks 'oh, what if we put water on that?' It usually amounts to a temporary inconvenience at worst, unless it's in the hands of another fae, and even so...

Not when he's already unleashing his Domain. Not when he's had the opportunity to let loose like this, no amount of water should be enough to get in his way. Yet, as the water pours in, the flames are smothered, and he is smothered as well.

It's not like it extinguishes him like a candle flame. He's made of sturdier stuff like that. What should be happening, however, is his flames turning all of that water to gas the instant it touches him. Instead, it's only the water closest to his body bubbling and steaming, slipping into the water above him as his flames flicker and struggle against the inhospitable climate.

He's dazed by it all, and even just existing here feels difficult. Rita, though... she's the one that trapped him here, she made that circle. So he has to take her down. That's the way it has to go, he doesn't have a choice.

Staggering under the weight of the water, he draws his other sword, taking the two blades and holding them out in front of him. The metal of the weapons breaks off, melting instantly into molten metal and breaking into parts, swelling in size and burning red against the water.

The blades of superheated metal zip through the water zip through the water to wards Rita. She may be fireproof, but she isn't metal-proof.

What the everloving fuck is going on. First Rita becomes a Guardian again then Lambert summons a dome of text then Zangetsu summons a literal tidal wave? Strange doesn't know what's going on but what he does know is that nobody's playing fair and this is all bullshit.

He remains in smoke form as the water pours into the arena and then almost instantly decides that feels weird and he doesn't want to experience that particular sensation ever again. He can't cast as smoke but he also can't really move through the water as smoke. So, against his better judgement, Strange turns back to his human form.

...and then instantly finds out he can't breathe. This is all so bullshit. Strange is straight up attempting to swim to the top of the wall of water so he can get some air and his mostly verbal spells can actually be of use.

Edited 2018-06-04 04:48 (UTC)

Syrlya narrows his eyes as Ignatius is pinned back, but it buys them time. It's not unlike fighting in Elder Dragon, that his raw strength will be enough alone--but Rita managed to pull some resemblance of Creation forward again, and Strange did once tell him he felt traces of the Blue Rose shortly after he wielded it. Rita has his bloodstone, so he needs a new catalyst.

"I don't have the Blue Rose, but I have enough of its power." He reaches back, gripping the but growing at his ponytail and snaps the stem. It immediately begins to grip his left arm again with vines, just as the real Rose had done for him. Its power could be stored in some sort of glowing orb, why not an imitation of it as well? He has to believe it'll be enough.

The water is actually beneficial in giving them a very obvious tell that the metal is coming forward. It takes less than a second when Syrlya registers them for a purple bubble to sound them, translucent like a faceted glass. It's feedback--if the metal hits the bubble, it almost seems to be absorbed before reversing its direction right back to Ignatius.

As the metal is caught and thrown back at him, Ignatius decides he's going to follow Strange's lead. He rockets away from the floor via a stream of superheated water, making for the surface as quickly as he can. If he can get out of the water, then he has a chance to turn the tides back in his direction.

Right. So the last time Lambert tried harnessing the Athenaeum's magic, it got slapped back in his face like a first draft full of editor's red marks, but it worked for him before, so it's clearly not like it's ineffective.

He just needs to rethink his approach. Against the wince of pain, he looks up sharply at Ignatius and Strange making a break for the surface, and snarls.

"The witcher called on the Earth Spirit to aid him once more! To bind the lord to the ground with chains of stone and mud and leave him to the others!" Maybe being literal will help. In any case, as he speaks, the dirt and stone of the Coliseum floor shifts and then bursts upwards, pillars aiming to wrap around and grasp Ignatius's limbs and pull him back down to the floor.

Whether it takes or not, he doesn't wait to see -- Lambert kicks upward to follow after Strange.

Apparently, the Earth Spirit comes through for him. The chains of stone wrap around Ignatius's legs, stopping him in his tracks. He's weak to gather flames in his hands, ready to tear them away, only for more chains to grab his arms as well.

He manages to struggle against them for several seconds, but he doesn't have enough left to escape. They tug him back to the ground, binding him in place. He doesn't have to breathe, so he isn't drowning - but there's some kind of oppressive heaviness in the water that makes it harder and harder to act. A despair that is hard to fight against, even for someone as determined as him.

He yells in frustration as he tries to get away, the fight becoming harder and harder as the searing water around him is gradually being reduced to a sizzle.

Edited 2018-06-04 05:35 (UTC)

He can hear Ignatius yell in frustration which only makes Strange swim faster. He hates this, but there's nothing he can do until he's on solid ground or at least out of the water. He manages to reach the surface and takes a few gasps of air before thrusting his hand down to point at the base of the coliseum and muttering a spell.

A different pillar of earth shoots through the water, directly under Strange. He's far enough away from Ignatius, Syrlya, and Rita that neither of them have to worry about it but surprise Lambert, now you get to deal with a whole bunch of earth. It pushes up through the water to give Strange a platform to stand on but big enough to hold one or two other people as well.

For a moment, Rita stares in fear as the sizzling metal shoots toward her... and is reflected away. She shoots Syrlya a quick, grateful look, then turns her attention back to Ignatius. With Lambert succeeding in binding him, she sees a clear opportunity.

Rita holds a hand out to her book, which turns its pages in response, seemingly unaffected by the water around them. "Come, sword of knowledge... Elucidator!" From the pages, she draws a long, thin sword with an orange-jeweled hilt. "Infuse element: ice!" Waving a hand over the blade, she charges it with cold magic.

Then, using her wings to propel herself forward, she charges.

Rita's not that skilled with a sword, as her grip and positioning might show. But there's more to this fight than skill. "Bound by the Earth Spirit's power, there was no escape for the fae. The magic blade would surely find its mark!" she cries as she closes the distance, then thrusts the sword at Ignatius' upper body.

He doesn't have any tricks up his sleeve. He's trapped here. So when Rita lunges forward with her icy sword, it goes straight through his chest.

The fire inside of him gnaws at the ice, fighting to melt it away, but sting of it is more than enough. He grunts in pain, with nowhere to go to escape it, the blades resting in his chest as he squirms. He looks up at her with half-lidded eyes, from his kneeling position on the ground. Even like this, he's almost as tall as her.

He exhales into the water a few times, before his grunting turns into a hoarse kind of laugh. He can't help it. He's really never imagined getting stabbed by one of his own changelings, but here they are.

"They grow up so fast," he says, compulsively chuckling.

Earth pillar shooting up to almost slam up under him? Not what Lambert was expecting, but he remembers: Strange is a damn powerful magician in his own right, and if they don't put a cork in him fast, he might just turn this story against them. He's got enough bullshit on his own, even without the Athenaeum's help. Lambert swears colorfully as he nearly breaks his ribs on earth rushing through the water, but he twists away in time, just getting a harsh scrape along one burned side for the trouble.

Where the fuck is Zangetsu and his pickles? He grabs at the earth pillar for a handhold to hitch a free ride up, coughing for breath as he tries to spin another narrative out.

"The earth ceased to obey the magician, because the Earth Spirit would not allow it!" Of course, Strange can do a hell of a lot more than move dirt around, but trying to deprive him of at least one element should help. Right?

Edited 2018-06-04 06:20 (UTC)

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