lostcarnival | ⇨ THE WINTER COURT

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⇨ THE WINTER COURT

Who: Everyone willing to come.
When: Day 142
Where: The Winter Palace
What: Whether you've ascended to godhood or been blessed with temporary protections, it's time to confront the Winter Queen.
Warnings: ???

THE BEGINNING AND THE END↴

Once everyone has made their decisions, the Ringmaster will take those that have chosen to ascend to an isolated place within her realm. As it turns out, that end up being the core of the two moons, combined into one impregnable space. This might be a bit explosive, she warns. Can't be too careful.

With everyone together, back in her partly humanoid form, she will bring out the Blue Rose and the Silver Mirror - both in their sword and shield forms respectively - and begin her work. Her wings, now feathery and glowing red with power, spread around the group, and they will feel a stirring in their body and soul.

The space becomes blinding, like overwhelming light and darkness all at once, burning and freezing all at once. Life and death, all at once. You bleed into the ether, become one with it, and then reform - only you've brought something back with you. The domain of one of the Miracles has bound itself to you, body and soul. Though it is the Miracle's legacy, the power is now yours, to do with what you will.

No other force will command you.

Once it is done, the moon has become an eclipse, it's corporeal form melting away. You will find yourself floating back down to the surface of the realm, changed but empowered. Your body may appear different than before, or it may be the same - regardless, you are something fully new. You have the same memories, the same desires, the same hopes, but they have come together to create something else.

You are born again.

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Syrlya twists, his form shattering as the ice hits a clone left in his place and he stands a couple feet to the side.

There are others focused on defense, so Syrlya makes a move to neutralize the threat. He drops to one knee, hand to the ground with focus.

Crystalline vines grow from the point, rolling along the ground before many of them shoot up quickly in an attempt to capture Frost and render him unable to attack or flee again.

There goes Rita's restraint. The sight of those black shards spurs her to action.

"Not again... You won't get away this time, you freak!"

Through the wall of blue flames conjured by Rin, an elemental made of white fire bursts forth and flies at Frost, fire whipping around her vaguely humanoid figure. In this form, Rita holds out a fist, charging it with more of that magical fire, and aims to slam it all into the pixie as she launches herself at him.

Despite her eagerness to put the hurt on Frost, Peridot sticks to the defensive this time, adding a crackling barrier of electricity to Rin and Carly's fire wall. Branches of lighting sheer off and target any wayward icicles that they can reach, hopefully destroying them before they do anyone any harm.

Alphys shrieks and covers her head as Frost attacks, but when she doesn't immediately die, she looks up to see everyone else throwing up shields.

"Ohhhhh my god-" She breathes a sigh of relief before realizing oh wait she can do this too. Holding up her staff, she summons up her new powers. "Mew Mew... MAGIC SHIELD!"

...Yes, she's going to give all of her new tricks anime attack names. Her contribution to the shield looks like floating bits of glitter dispersed in between the electricity and the flames.

Him again. Those again. Last time, the icicles tore through everyone's defenses, and proved really deadly - if it weren't for the Ringmaster's power restoring them. The change most of them have gone through just might make the difference, there...

But in this split second to decide, he isn't certain enough. The surest approach is to dodge the attacks, and keep Frost from making more.

So Papyrus shoots into the air, spreading crystal wings to hold him aloft above the icicles - freeing up his blue magic to grab for friends who haven't acted yet. The new dimension to his magic splits his focus, and for once he feels multiple souls at once. He reaches for people who haven't moved yet, ready to ping them blue and pull them out of harm's way.

Is Reira's shield going to do diddly? No, but it was better than sitting and gawking and in a weird way felt better than just standing about. When she feels herself ping blue however, she finds her current shield position a bit silly- what with now launching up to wherever Papyrus feels is Safest. "Oh-!"

.... "...ok..." Her shield is still up, mostly because she has quietly entered a strange foggy state of shock as she floats about.

While others put up shields and launch attacks of their own against the pixie, Lambert has ideas of his own, slower to react as he is. It's impulsiveness that drives it, really -- he steps forward and his form blurs to light, though instead of launching himself after Frost, he's going for popping up beside the Winter Queen's throne, tail glowing with light and waving agitatedly. It may put him out of the immediate defensive range of the Carnival, but he's confident, now, that things are different.

The Queen's evident surprise that things have taken this turn doesn't bode well. Provided he actually makes it there, he'll flank the Queen, though his eyes are fixed on Frost, watching the fae with bared teeth.

"Still sure he's on your side, your majesty?" he quips.

"Alright, that's enough of that fuckin' little bastard!"

Through the wall of flames and glitter and electricity, Zangetsu blasts toward the pixie. His hands are talons and wreathed in life-enhanced energy, and he swats the black ice intended for him out of the air.

He dashes to Frost's other side, across from Rita. Both his arms bubble and boil and shift into giant mouths with gnashing, shark-like, obsidian-black teeth.

This time is different.

It isn't some outside force coming at him - this is something he understands. It's Death, and that's one of his things now. Fortunately for him, Life is too.

Instead of even trying to stop the shards, he instead reaches out to the Death magic within them, and pulls. He'll take that for himself, please and thank you - and with any luck, that will make it easier for the others to destroy the weapons they were being transmitted in.

In the immediate moments after Frost attacks, it also seems like they are well protected. As horrifying as the last encounter with Frost was, this one is in an entirely different context for Steven. For once, he isn't afraid of not being strong enough. He projects the new kind of barrier he's been figuring out without really thinking of it - a wall of crystal that's facetted like jewels. Most people seem to be taking care of themselves.

But then he sees some of them lunging for Frost, and everything in his gut is screaming that they shouldn't. No matter how much he hates fae like him.

"Wait - don't!" he cries out, but it's too late to stop anything.

Chaos, threats, action--Tanyuu has enough time to bring up protective brambles and woody vines around those within the circle of flames, very alive and ready to snare any pieces of ice that get past--or any enemies that might slip inside as well.

But just like Steven, she's too late to stop the rush against Frost and can only shout in dismay.

All the while, Childermass just stands back and watches this giant, hideous disaster unfold with a slightly higher degree of judgment than usual.

The Winter Queen's attention goes to Lambert for a split few seconds, during which her expression turns absolutely furious. All of these people, trying to play with her mind! They've never take her.

And then her gaze goes to Frost. He doesn't even try to escape the grasp of Syrlya, or Rita and Zangetsu's strikes. Instead, they'll find their mark, fire and fangs marring him and all he does is laugh. At her. She knows it's at her.

"That's ENOUGH!" she screams, and a wind kicks up inside the closed room. All of Rin's fire extinguishes at once, somehow paradoxically freezing into fire-shaped ice, and light begins to vanish. Like the Queen's soul itself, her magic is a maelstrom of the Winter elements. Ice, Darkness, Death. It rises up like a storm, and the force of it is overwhelming.

Like a localized doomsday device, it puts even Ignatius's explosive might to shame. Raw magical power tears through the throne room, and it's enough that it could stand the chance to strike a fatal blow against even a fae - and that includes the carnival members themselves. That is, unless they stand together.

Otherwise, the power of the Queen shows no mercy.

Edited (need more bold) 2019-03-05 01:19 (UTC)

"FOCUS ON PROTECTION!" Carly screams, when the force comes to plow across the existing flames. Rin's is extinguished, but somehow she still has some left- and with wide eyes she looks to those nearest. "WE CAN'T BACK DOWN...AND WE WON'T!" she emphasizes, fueling everything she has into her wall. Already she has some of the others helping her after all- but if all of them can put some power into it..!

From on the ground, coiled in vines, Gongenzaka is already attempting to fuel the defenses himself- through mostly spirit, using the basis of what healing magic he had in order to bolster things. One hand parts through the vines to slam upon the ground as he reaches with his spirit, and Gongenzaka's jaw tightens as he focuses.

Yuya can hardly see what's happening from around Gongenzaka, but he hears the laughing, the crack of ice, the Queen's fury.

His fingers dig into Gongenzaka, and he closes his eyes and focuses on the glow of Creation flowing his energy to Gongenzaka, to bolster him--and his shield, because it won't do much but maybe it will ease the blow just enough for everyone else.

Syrlya leaves Frost trapped in those vines as he pulls back. Frost doesn't dodge, and Syrlya wonders if they aren't both inclined to die in their own disaster.

He centers himself to the group, and aims tontake advantage of his new raw power to cast a large area around the group, warped with purple'tinged magic that allows the carnival and everything they do to move faster, though they don't feel the burst of speed--instead, it's more like everything around them has slowed down.

"Shields up!" He calls out, echoing Carly as he waves his hand to create another area painted by a magic clock that settles a sort of magic barrier over the carnival members caught in it

The blast of pure Winter is enormous, and Tanyuu buckles beneath it for a moment before she slams back with power of her own--transformative, and in part led by the title of Balance she once wore. Seizing what pieces she can control of the Queen's fury, Tanyuu forcibly twists it's essence to opposition and hurls it back again to blunt the fury of the storm. Her control isn't nearly enough to push back completely, but if she can halt even a bit of the cold's advance...!

Ice and Darkness aren't strange fellows to Childermass. As soon as the cold picks up and the shadows begin to bend, he steps forward and throws out an arm, palm facing towards the Queen. That's the epicenter of the power, so that's where he's directing most of his own will.

Before when he absorbed energy, he was only tapping into the Void. With the Silver Mirror's power, he hopes he can do far more than before, extending his own field of death and destruction out in front of them. If he imagines it as a wall, perhaps he can stem the tide and help shield them, devour just enough of the magic the Winter Queen is throwing at them and lessen the chaos.

One pair of jaws snap closed on Frost, and Zangetsu is trying to figure out what he's going to do next when the Queen decides to... do her queenly thing. Even in his upgraded, newly forged state, it's incredibly overwhelming and powerful.

"Shit...! Rita, we gotta go!"

He breaks off the arm that has eaten Frost, leaving it behind. It quickly grows back into a new, normal arm from the shoulder as the other set of jaws also return to normal. A tactical retreat was necessary. Zangetsu focuses on the life in him, surrounding himself with a brilliant red aura, in an attempt to repel all the darkness and death. He flash-steps back to the protection of the more defense-minded Carnival members.

There's only a split second to react to the Queen's fury, and even with the ability to ride the light, Lambert's slow. He feels the bite of magic tearing at his skin before he wrenches himself back over to the Carnival, and the Ringmaster's side, manifesting a shield of light in front of him in his own effort to divert the onslaught from some of the less combat-ready Carnival members.

"I think she might be pissed," he calls, to be heard over the noise.

"You think?" Beau gets out, yelling from where she's sheltering behind Gongenzaka. No wonder most of the Winter Court didn't bother fighting, or lying in wait in the throne room. With a Queen with this kind of lethal power on hand, there was no need to.

It's a moment like this that really drives home just how outclassed the ordinary mortals are, even with the temporary boost. If the Winter Queen had gone out looking for the carnival directly, instead of staying home and letting lackeys handle it... They would have been dead meat, and she might never have escaped Eden.

They can't back down, or give up, or let each other give up. Carly and Syrlya have the right idea, and Papyrus drops down rather than keep trying to fly in this

Once in the group, surrounded by the others and the various shieldings people erected against Frost's icicles, he focuses on the powers surroundings them.

"Just hold on! I'm sure she'll change her mind... with enough time," Papyrus shouts, and does his best to push back at the darkness of the storm. He can feel that part, too, and maybe with a mix of light protecting the group and his own darkness in their shields, he can redirect the storm's darkness out and around them.

After all, if the Great Papyrus is a master of anything, it's deflection.

This creep, laughing at a time like this...! Rita's got a mind to give him another whack, but she doesn't get the chance. The icy wind pushes her away from Frost, and as raw power emanates from the Winter Queen, and the others' shouts reach her ears, she feels an impending sense of doom that makes her forget all about pummeling the pixie.

Her blazing form seems to weaken, the flames dying down as she soars back across the room, barreling towards her allies and their shields. The immense pressure forces her back into her human form just as she's nearly reached the relative safety of her friends' spells. She stumbles forward with an arm stretched out, hoping for someone to pull her in before the darkness can snuff out her life.

Rita had been right the first time. Rising to the bait was probably not the ideal decision, and his gut turns when he sees her leaping to attack Frost. His first concern is just her putting herself in too close of a proximity to the Queen, and then it only gets worse.

He'd never have dreamed of directly pushing back against the might of one of the Queens, but right now there isn't really a choice. He lunges past the defensive line and grabs her hand, standing against the ice but, much like Rita, having little defense against all the Darkness and Death.

But that's never been the sort of thing to stop him. Lighting up with as much power as he can manage, a defensive aura against the elements, he tugs her back into his arms and back behind the defenses of the others.

Sans was already trying to draw the Death out of the icicles, but blast of power from the Queen is enough to overwhelm his senses. Wings spread, he gets knocked back, but shortly after everyone is already summoning their defenses, and he spreads the light of Life across the group and blends his magic with theirs.

And then Papyrus suggests that they just wait her out and he can't help but let out a mildly hysterical laugh.

"Change her mind?" he asks. "Well I've got the change, and you've got the mind, so what else are we missing?"

The idea of trying to directly impact the Queen seemed ridiculous given all their experiences up to this point, but maybe that's just it. Growth and Decay was supposed to represent developing forces - who's to say they couldn't make these developments go faster?

And even more than them, they have the Miracle herself right here. He looks in the Ringmaster's direction.

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