Grand Battle S3G1! (Round Four: City of the Dead)

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SpoilerWith apologies to everyone, you know who you are

The soldiers gave Ursus a full second's reprieve before opening fire, which would've been sensible against any other target standing in front of whatever was keeping you and your surrounds afloat. Ursus managed to shuffle between three sets of runes on his arms before the first artillecaster loosed a shot. The barrage struck the bear and suffused the air with the smell of burnt flesh, one string of tattooed text flaring up and splitting off down the claws which wrought reality's alphabet.

The bear wasn't grinning, but the glowing Glasgows adorning his cheeks could've fooled you. He swung a fist; three bloodied trails on the floor channelled the Flux Core and congregated on the doorway, manafrying those about the rigged floor.

The ash of incinerated magicians eventually cleared, and the bear still stood. His hairless frame stood gaunter than ever, backlit by the Core. Spin. Crouch. One claw in the well of blood he'd thought to prepare, one bullet to the shoulder, one Static Ink activating and replying to the bullet with its own in white noise. It burrowed into the mech's circuits, shutting it down from within.

Guardian. Reflexes. A barrage of darts and shells struck the Guardian rune, for the most part, but a few darts got through and hovered just out of claw's reach. Ursus stomped his foot with Negate tattooed upon it, knocking out another mech and drawing an angry wail from the Core. He caught a manabolt in a raised paw, unInked lines of skin charring. Punched it into his floor-scrawled calculations, bringing the Reciprocal online and triggering a thaumic backlash on the hands of every Caster still standing. Three more bullets in his flank, another grinding its way in under the radius. the wound trickled in that sluggish venous way down his arm, threatening to mix with the dactyl blood at his claw.

The darts overhead whined as their Farady Node payloads activated. Ursus bellowed as the air they encompassed became a mess of sparks, his Spire Inks around his left eye struggling to earth the unleashed storm.

The darts, spent, fell with a clatter. Ursus' eye wasn't healing, and there was definitely his blood mixed into the barely-bulletproof Guardian. The bear scarcely managed a couple of Vectors to fling the bullets toward the Flux Core instead before they were upon him again. He kicked a grenade back into the crowd, but there was no end to the soldiers, and no way the dracodactyl could've made it through alive.

Ursus' Inks scorched fresh scars where a score of mechs and mages failed, not even flinching as he raised his arms and took a fireball to the bad side of his face.

The slam of his fists on the stone floor rang abnormally loud, colour draining from the chamber like someone had pulled the plug.

Everyone's stomachs dropped, as did the rest of their bodies in no-less-unpleasant unison. Ursus swayed a bit from the magical feedback, and could no longer avoid the fact he'd failed. No matter how much urgency he'd drilled into his commands for Ruinam to reroute energy from the Sunstroke Device to the thrusters, you could only force a city-palace of rock so fast through the sky. If Ursus shut the Core down now and triggered the freefall, he'd be lucky if the shockwave dislodged roof tiles in the outer boroughs.

He'd have to settle for dropping the Flux Core.

This had the unfortunate downsides of: making very inelegant use of a power source design feature Ruinam's builders had definitely exploited, to discourage anyone from trying to shoot them down; almost certainly killing himself and the dracodactyl, were it still alive somehow; and potentially obliterating most of the Northern Continent.

On the other claw: Fuck Midday, and fuck every damned soul still alive on this rock. It'd be over in a matter of minutes.

The Core seemed to sigh, before taking the magical equivalent of a deep breath as it drew Ruinam's power back into itself. Mana surged down the spiderwebbing blood Ursus had laid across the Core chamber, scrambling up the unmarked walls with deep cracking sounds. Some of the vanguard pressed forward, others retreated up the corridor; a few indecisive mechs lost their footing or were crushed between collapsing walls as the Core room and the Sunstroke Device split away from the rest of Ruinam.

Ursus stood slowly, unsteadily; nearly collapsed again and caught his claws in a well of dactyl blood. Scrawled heal over the bullet wounds and roared defiance.

---

Ten minutes prior, perhaps, Tengeri hissed with frustration as her sensors did a 180 in several dimensions, Greenman no longer around to misdirect her. The Flux Core pinged unhelpfully on her map, several floors deep and most quickly reached by delving into unfamiliar, probably-monster-infested, territory. The overhead lights thrummed and wavered again, which didn't help her stress levels any. The Leviath's options were constricting painfully back to "kill someone (Scofflaw) before the impending apocalypse kills us all," which seemed just as unreasonable a task in the current time frame.

A dire something or another leapt from a convenient shadow. If anything, she felt worse after hosing it down and slashing at it and hear it flee screaming in pain down a corridor.

Tengeri tried another scan, then had to scan again, rationally discrediting the notion her sensors could hallucinate.

Soldiers. A dozen heading her way. What took her by surprise was the fact they weren't mech troops or mages or featuring some variant of a human among their number. Tengeri was dimly aware of an ATTEMPTED TRANSMISSION flicking on and off in the corner of her video feed; she pulled it into focus with a fin-flick and stared for a moment at the logo.

Transmission accepted. "Greetings, Dr. Nyoka, we trust you are confirmed safe-"

---

Tor came to a fair bit faster than the rest of the "hominids", not that he'd deigned to tell anyone. He'd had quite enough of being off his tree this round, but had enough of a grip to not piss off his latest captors enough that they'd make a real effort to knock him out. Combusting his way out of there was an option, though judging by the way the Coalition had placed most of the flammable stuff out of harm's reach, Tor suspected he wouldn't have the element of surprise. He settled for badly startling the technician who came to check up on him, assuming a non-threatening posture while simultaneously glaring daggers.

A ways around, Huebert punched out a xenosurgeon and took another tranq dart to the bicep. Tor took a deep breath, trickling smoke.

"I'm going to put aside the fact you just sentrali drugged me," Tor settled for, not quite not spitting the last bit, "and ask we fill each other in on ru dorshramentan filte."

The technician blinked within its suit, thin mechanical hands poring over Tor's readout (sporting updated information courtesy of Velobo's expositing). "Mr. Kajan, we'll not detain you as soon as we ourselves've got a measure of the situ-"

"sentral te doa," Tor snarled. "By the time you're done drugging us, this castle - there's a-" Tor swore again, wishing he'd retained salient memory beyond 'boy, I sure was drugged'. "There's someone taking this fortress somewhere."

The technician chittered uneasily as a couple of determined-loooking vac-suits hauled some sophisticated manacles Huebert-ward. "We're aware, Mr. Kajan. Nonetheless, we request you stay put."

Tor stood up, and was rather proud of himself that he kicked over the screen rather than the guy in the vac-suit. His rebellion went mostly-unnoticed, because Dorukomets chose this moment to strangle a biologist and chase after the Plazmuth. Tor's attendant vac-suit gave a trill of alarm, more at the general violence rather than Tor's attempt at escape. The look Tor gave it didn't allay its fears, either.

The Telpori-Hal was in fight or f[l]ight mode, and he was seriously considering ripping the suit open and threatening to set the damn thing on fire. You'd need a shitload of good intentions to make up for drugging and incarcerating a guy, and whatever goodwill the NSC's portal offered was soured by recalling a dozen earlier moments when it would've been really fucking great for them to stage a rescue. Were they even bothering to do that, or were they just here to get a front row seat?

No, thought Tor. Fuck these guys. Fuck these guys for being the first clumsy glimmer of hope in this fucking battle.

He growled at the metal-limbed technican to back off, and from said safe distance deprived himself of the immediate means to set everything on fire. He felt a lot better.

The last of his flames died out, and Tor savoured the lull, if not quite the stares. He pushed the hair out of his eyes, squared his shoulders, and marched none-the-genially toward Cendil. The insectoid flinched, and some armed guards started toward him, but Tor took the hint and stopped as soon as he had their attention.

"If you can afford to keep us sedated, you can afford to keep me-" Tor had to catch himself here, and took a step toward Huebert and jabbed a thumb "-keep us out of your way. Let us take down that domratal."

Cendil raised a hand or three, glancing across at the scattered aliens. "Sir Dorukomets must answer to us, also. We prefer the coalition send our own troops to intercept him. We need him alive."

"Considering you just drugged me without my consent-" Tor caught his breath, willed himself to calm down and quit counting the seconds as the toxins built back up. "He murdered an innocent woman. If you put his sentrali freedom over mine, then I've got no good reason to trust your group's intentions are good." That was a bit of a gamble, on the off-chance these guys didn't actually care, but he was running on limited information. He wasn't misinterpreting, wasn't just a bystander in some completely tangential multiversal fuckery, was he? "I don't know why you need Velobo so badly you tore your way into this universe. I don't know why you did it now, instead of half an hour ago when Alex was still alive. Damnit, why not however sentrali long ago it was that Murdoch DIED!?"

Tor felt the kind of dread-induced nausea you got from trying to repeatedly ignite without fuel. "We understand the stress of your current situation," someone said distantly. "We're doing what we can to-"

"Don't." Tor spat at a hovering vac-suit, who flinched and guiltily hid another vial of something, "touch me." He broke into a run, vaulted over a few scientists still trying to pick their clumsy suited selves off the floor, and took after Dorukomets.

---

Jetsam didn't have time to marvel at the cookie-cutter-neat hole punched in his sense of hopelessness, orders were orders. He tensed, lunged at a recoiling mech suit even as Velobo fired the atomiser into the crowd, gripped at its visor, sprang off and ruined a NSC troop's descent when his wings dug at the air and his claws dug at stone, dragged himself through the gap, bullets punching the spell-scorched air and clipping his back legs and marking his ascent with a few dusk-coloured feathers.

The NSC soldiers and Velobo told him to halt, told him wait, they wouldn't hurt him, so he did his best not to murder them all and sprinted off like hell itself had plucked feathers from his tail. He ran through lightless halls until the rattle and keen of fighting faded and something else laid a background track to his ragged breaths: splitting stone.

Jetsam spun about, hissing with pain. Velobo clung to his hindquarters like Jetsam had been one good lurch shy of throwing him off.

"Jetsam, come on," begged Velobo, hauling himself forward so he could grab Jetsam's neck. "You can rest before we go back, but not out here. Midday's soldiers are everywhere."

"I've... I have to escape." Jetsam muttered, not quite directed at Velobo enough to call it a protest. "Save myself." The little cube settling itself down between his shoulders should've been bugging him, but the Plazmuth's advice made sense. Driving him away would be ancillary, no, counterproductive, to his goals. The dracodactyl lurched off again, ever-alert to the sounds of gunfire.

They found an alcove, a sa[f]e point in the dungeon, strangely intact and with a pair of critters already trying to take shelter. The Heal rune on the back wall half-heartedly sputtered to life, bathing Jetsam and Velobo and the two Bone Spiders in a minty sort of gloom. The dracodactyl slumped to the floor, shaking off the Plazmuth like a big square tick and dismissing the monsters with a rattle of its beak.

Velobo didn't bother Jetsam; the latter seemed preoccupied with his forearms, watching the faded rune knit the skin back together. He instead examined his atomising gun, which beeped a warning at him. Overheated, but not broken. Jetsam was staring.

"You saved me." His tone was neutral with a hint of reproach, but something about his feathered face lent incredulity.

"The NSC helped. They're people from Tengeri's world! I think they were looking for Plazmuth artifacts like my wristband, but now they know we're in a battle and want to help! That's how I go to you so quickly, they sent me with their soldiers." The Plazmuth's face fell a bit, the thrill of riding a dragon and rescuing Jetsam fading as he remembered the ranks of Midday's troops. "We have to go back. The NSC guys will hopefully be fine, but we were supposed to rescue you, and that bear's still down there..."

Everything about this discussion was bothering Jetsam, but it wasn't giving him any obvious hints for how best to save himself. "How did they get here? How are they leaving?"

"Oh, well they came through on some kind of portal from their universe, so I guess that's how they'll-"

Jetsam was already moving, trying to grab a beakful of Plazmuth en route to the door. Velobo backed off, bounced off a few walls, and sat himself down on his usual perch. Jetsam made a noise straddling a laugh and a sob of relief, easing back into a gallop as he retraced his steps.

"No, this is perfect, even if it is that snake - Ursus can finish his spell, I can leave - shit, maybe you lot did change things for the better-"

but didn't get far before Ruinam lurched rather more violently around him, sustained and suffused with the barlely-comprehensible tones of the world itself cracking under its own weight. Ahead, the floor was collapsing, taking the ceiling with it. Jetsam envisioned for a moment being crushed in a corridor, and the dread of failing Ursus was more awful to contemplate than suffocating in rock with all his bones broken. That was ok. That was understandable. Part of him still couldn't understand why he wouldn't run, try dodge a dungeon collapsing upon him despite the impossible odds.

It stopped, and Velobo stopped trying to pull out fistfuls of feather. Jetsam ignored him and listened intently, crests pinned back, staring at the rubble like sheer force of will might part it. He must have cowered, or flinched, or done something else to betray his despair, because Velobo wasn't telling him that it'd be ok and they'd find another way round.

He was asking what was wrong.

"He ripped out the core," said Jetsam, voice as hollow as if it had been his torn out and not Ruinam's. He shrieked a wet, acidic shriek, shaking his head like the dread was buzzing and flailing about inside it.

Velobo slapped him with his tongue. The dracodactyl snarled, would've bitten off the Plazmuth's nose if it had one, one twitch of the throat short of spitting venom in the olive face, but the little cube brandished a gun for someone a little larger. A strip of lights down its side was the only illumination in the now-unpowered hall. Velobo glared levelly back with his four applicable eyes, spitting out a feather.

"Can you fly out if I use this to blast a hole?"

"Gwrugh-"

Jetsam arched his neck, spitting at his feet. "No. I mean, yes! But outside's no safer, the Core was still live when he dropped it-"

Velobo was already scanning the rockfall, leaping atop a few choice boulders and pushing at others. He shot the atomiser into a nook, bringing down a little more ceiling but also a sliver of daylight. "Can we shut it down, then?"

Jetsam was trying to flee, but the dracodactyl could smell fresh air - not quite whistling by, but Ruinam's groaning told him it wouldn't be far off. Felt a breeze, however faint, through its feathers. It smelt the smoke of smouldering foes and felt the ache in its arms of keeping a perfectly-attuned body airborne, in exquisite control. Jetsam wanted to say no, of course not, if Ursus were there then maybe, but there was no way he'd survived the hit squad but Jetsam was going to die in the blastwave of a Flux Core or he'd die in the rubble of a steadily-falling castle, and before he'd made a conscious decision he leapt to Velobo's side and scrabbled at the beams of daylight.

"In there," growled Jetsam, and the stone returned to dust and the rubble began to slide and the beams became a dizzying drop into which Jetsam slipped and scrambled and finally, thank the gods, fell. Something fell between his shoulders, too light and loud to be a rock, clutching at feathers and yelling about some gadget it had dropped and how that must be the Core Room and Jetsam, you're falling, are you sure you can fly-

Jetsam outstretched his arms, felt the snap in his neck and his shoulders and screeched because why fucking not. He carved a swarthe of air for himself with a sweep of his wings, finding a rhythm and hearing an "ok" from Velobo before diving.

The shadow of Ruinam, gutted underside and all, transcended looming and rather indubitably existed much like terra firma would soon, still trickling rubble from a dozen severed corridors. It didn't faze Jetsam.

This was the sky. Here, he could outrun anything.

"Jetsam, look-"

---

Tor caught his breath at the first crossroads where he felt confident the NSC weren't after him, hissing expletives on the exhale. He didn't need to tell himself that he shouldn't have done that, but faced with three corridors and zero clue as to which one Dorukomets or Velobo had taken, feeling good about recent decision-making was a tall order.

The running had cleared his head. A little. As best as it could when Tor expected a stun gun's darts in his back at any moment. The halls shook again, grumbling at the Telpori-Hal to make a move already. The path so far had been made clear enough, peppered with clumps of ash or other remnants of dungeon monsters. If this corridor looked untouched, he could just double back-

"Tor! Hey!"

"Huebert." Tor mostly sounded confused, so Huebert just tapped his shiny new comm and pointed down the leftmost corridor. The Telpori-Hal let the man pass, glancing up the other halls, then caught up at a clip. He had to skip and step every couple of paces to keep up with Huebert, who was much better built to cover ground quickly.

"Listen, I'm sorry I left you back there." Huebert dignified that with a grunt. Tor broke into an uncomfortably slow jog, trying to not be annoyed. "Did they let you just leave? Are there soldiers after us now?"

"Yeah and no. We can thank Tengeri for that."

"She's safe, then? Good, I hadn't heard from her all round-"

"Indeed I am. Huebert, my devices show I'm on speaker, would you confirm?"

"Uh-huh. Down here," Huebert motioned at a rather incongruous hole in the floor. Tor accepted his hand and was lowered down; Huebert just jumped, dislodging a fair bit of dust. "So we're all up to speed. The plan from here is we help secure Jetsam and we all head back to base. The real plan is we go teach that six-armed murdering piece of shit a lesson."

"We... the NSC need him alive," cautioned Tengeri.

"Subtle," snapped Tor.

"The Coalition is a decentralised operation, Tor. I'm NSC, yes, but a different branch to Cendil's unit. My loyalty remains with us, our battle. Overthrowing the Fool." She paused, unbeknownst to the two spacefarers she was considering the Deicide. Tengeri figured if Scofflaw knew, it was best they hear it from her. If the Fool were monitoring their conversations the secret was already out. "To that end, I found a weapon that might be able to kill him. It still needs testing, but with this we can plan an attack."

Huebert paused, and must've got some kind of update on the feed because he broke into a run. "You didn't strike me as the fighting type," he growled.

"Yeah. Can't you smuggle the weapon out when you go back home through the gate?" Tor did his best not to sound bitter.

"I've already discussed this with Cendil; either all six of us take the gate or none of us do. The technology's still experimental, the NSC needs Dorukomets and his gauntlet and then to get all their personnel out safely. If I go with them, I imagine the Fool will just kidnap me without warning again when somebody - Scofflaw, I'd hope, but the situation'd be beyond my control - dies. Any idea where TinTen is, Huebert?"

"Nope-" Huebert had to hold that thought, shoving Tor out of harm's way and uprooting an ambush with some well-aimed shots of his pistol- "but he can take care of himself. TinTen probably got some divine omen to hole himself up somewhere. Unless your hologrammarians or whatever can make a map and track him down, there's not much Tor and I can do to help with your godslaying business."

"Well, ideally, Scofflaw is... taken care of this round, and we regroup in the next. As long as we have Velobo's Plazmuth armband, the NSC can trace the signal and find us again."

"Can you tell us where Scofflaw is, then?"

"... I'm getting potential readings from the flight deck, up in the castle itself. I can't confirm it's him."

"So we can do shitall to deal with him. Great. If you don't mind, then, I'm going to unfuck at least one tiny piece of this world and avenge that Alex girl." He grinned mirthlessly at Tor, who was picking himself off the wall and doing his level best to feel appreciative instead of murderous. "I reckon Tor here needs to let off some steam as well, I wouldn't really trust him to rein Jetsam in or whatever like he is right now."

"Don't talk about him like he's some kind of animal," said Tor curtly, as he wondered whether he'd broken a rib. He kept stubborn pace with Huebert, the two barely paying a glance to Midday's felled troops. Once he'd set a pace with his breathing, he snapped at Tengeri, "I'm fine. Jetsam will be fine, and Huebert's right. We can do dortul-all else from our position."

The Leviath finally spoke; backtracking out of unwillingness to take sides in the latest line of discussion. "I still don't think revenge is a worthy cause."

Huebert snorted, picked up the pace a bit as the comm flashed a proximity warning to the target. "Ok, listen. Noble intentions would be great if we had an outlet for them. We can't. Save. This world. And, I don't know about you your NSC and all your grand plans for next round, but I'm pretty fucking sore over that."

Huebert skidded around a corner, loosing a few energy bolts from his carbine with practiced ease. Dorukomets' armor rang as they bounced off, giving the dazed knight pause, but he took one look at his aggressor before charging off.

"Get back here, you fucking coward!"

---

"You've got a problem," squelched TinTen's mouth, struggling to be heard over the roar of the motorcycle. Midday caught the bottom quarter of Ruinam's stone base cracking off in an exquisitely timed turn of the head.

"That fucking bear," she hissed, scanning the landscape below to gauge the damage. A Flux Core large enough to power Ruinam would take out Triple City even from this distance, not to mention carve magical scars across the continent. She admired Ursus' capacity to hate existence for all of two seconds, before turning her ride around and more-or-less diving for Ruinam's underside. TinTen's houseguest deigned to lend a hand, telekinetically slowing a high-speed collision into a less-lethal landing with a tentacle's flick. Midday wasted no time peeling off the tentacles wrapped around her and looking for an easy way in.

"You're not shutting down the Core," it burbled. "I can stop this rock from falling, but the castle up top's beyond even me."

"Of course not. I'm picking up that treasonous cur and then we're teleporting out of the blast zone. If he thinks he's going out in a blaze of glory, tough."

Her companion struggled off the back of the motorcycle. "If you think I'm opening up a portal for you and waiting, think again. Fly out on your contraption and hope you get out of range."

"Don't be dense, hurry up and open a way through," Midday snapped, motioning at the rock underfoot. "Once the Magistrate in Triple City are all ash, you've nobody left but me to bother consorting with you Infernals. You'll see another sorceress of my calibre in, what, a couple centuries? Double that if this bomb burns out the manasphere. You need me."

The Meipi deigned to lend a limb, effortlessly unscrewing a pillar of rock and carving Midday a spiral staircase into the chambers below. Behind the rebreather, it grinned. For clarity's sake it exuded a triumphant aura, insidious flickers sparking up and off its form in the rising wind. "I needed you, witch. I needed you right up until your bear dropped this thaumonuclear payload, and I certainly don't need you to gather an army's worth of fettered souls to feed the ensuing rift." Whatever was behind the goggles just smirked wider, crushing the hewn rock into gravel and barely bothering to sidestep a fireball. "I'm done here, Midday. Go fetch your Sigilist; I'll be back for you and this world once the Gate germinates."

The air itself cackled maniacally as Midday and TinTen were showered with dust, the latter collapsing to the ground and smelling faintly of burnt calamari. Midday screamed with frustration, stopping only when something in Ruinam's shadow responded in turn.

Just what she needed. The dactyl, with a distinct lack of collar and distinct green cube clinging on for dear life, came shrieking down and scorched in the rock a venomous welt where the sorcercess had stood not half a second ago. Midday retaliated with an expertly-flung knife of distortion hidden in a boot, which struck the dragon's wing and twisted it in multiple impractical directions at once. Jetsam howled, crashed, and rolled past TinTen and Midday to a crumpled halt. Things were getting a bit unstable on top, and a freshly-dislodged tower shaking itself loose of the upper castle was a good enough reminder that she was pressed for time. Velobo recovered, found his way out from underneath various feathered limbs, and stood between Midday and Jetsam as best as he could manage.

TinTen came to just in time to see Velobo absorb a fireball with his wrist, then said wrist exploding into light and the blast knocking him back into some kind of monstrous bird. It took a moment's mounting pain to realise one of his eyes wasn't quite working, during which time the lip of stone was giving way under the Plazmuth.

The dracodactyl fell. TinTen couldn't muster a reaction before Velobo found his footing, and leapt after it.

---

About five minutes earlier (but one clip's worth of carbine fire too late), Huebert was officially sick of this fucker.

Whatever was messing with Ruinam's power source was clearly working to some narratively premature end, and Dorukomets had clearly lost all interest in maintaining midboss etiquette and helping resolve this fight before shit went irrevocably south. Tor wasn't much help either, a little too incensed to be accurate to the point of useful with his borrowed laser pistol.

Not that it was doing much damage when it did hit. Seriously, fuck this guy. The only appreciable progress to date was chasing him into a caved-in dead end and vaporising the longest of his quarterstaffs, which had really worked out as a net negative after Tor scolded him for using any energy weapons near the sentrali Gauntlet. Dorukomets wasn't even trying to fight back was the most infuriating thing about the situation; he was still fixated on reaching Velobo and it was all the pair could do to keep him hemmed in. Huebert couldn't even get in and just try land a solid punch because of the damn auto-counter, what with the last such attempt just giving Dorukomets a chance to shove past, heedlessly drag Tor along the ground for about ten feet, and waste even more time pursuing him into the current corridor.

Huebert ducked another glaive and laid down some suppressive fire with his carbine. Tor was scrounging furiously through Alex's backpack, reading scrolls upside down and tossing vials of whatever-the-fuck.

"Do you have anything useful!?"

Tor had quite a few responses to that, none especially helpful or polite, but all he had in his hands was a stick of charcoal. The lights overhead guttered in a way something that wasn't a candle shouldnt've, which drew Tor's attention to the way the soot on his hands sparkled blue in the mana-induced power surge. Not keen to get back in stave-range while still short on fuel, the Telpori-Hal tried to look busy by sketching one of the symbols on a scroll.

The floor froze. Dorukomets stumbled, and Tor took the chance to skid past (to the graunching tune of chainmail on ice) and flank the bastard. Huebert caught the next stave with a bare hand and a grimace, shoving back and sending Dorukomets slipping. Tor leapt for the Gauntlet, a shard of whatever had messed up Tykidu's wing gripped in his teeth, but was sent flying again by Dorukomets' fist. Huebert lost his footing wrestling a downed Dorukomets for the stave, but managed to kick him in the knee without enough force to dislocate something.

"Enough! I, SIR DORUKOMETS, must find Velobo Calidad! I must-"

Tor punched him in the helmet, probably breaking a couple bones in the Telpori-Hal's fist but knocking it around and disrupting his sight. Dorukomets wrenched the stave from Huebert's hands and struggled to his feet, whipping a spear around for Huebert to stare down with one hand, and twisting his helmet back around with another.

"The - the gall of you fiends - to think, even with such cowardly tactics, that you could ever stand up to me, SIR-"

"Just, shut up," Tor groaned, shooting Dorukomets in the dislocated knee and snatching up the crystal. Huebert yanked the spear in his face, which was being held by one Gauntleted hand, which Tor more or less caromed into as he skidded across the frozen floor on his knees and jammed the crystal under a bronzed knuckle. He rammed it in deeper with the butt of the laser pistol, which discharged into the ceiling@and also backfired, burning Tor's hands but driving the Shard of Distortion into the Gauntlet. Dorukomets literally punched him out of the way and into the ceiling, and Tor figured that as good a time to regenerate as any. A couple of scrolls he'd pocketed ignited and spewed lightning everywhere, which was all very useful because Ursus had just ripped out the Core and the lights had finally died.

Dorukomets looked at Tor, looked at Huebert, then looked at the Gauntlet; it was making increasingly desperate ratchety noises that started small but were quickly audible over the sound of Ruinam's bottom dropping out. The knight turned to retreat, buckling a bit on his injured leg. Huebert snarled, shot him with the carbine in the back of said leg, and charged, finally unhooking the plasma thrower.

Tor rejoined proceedings with a rather wobbly splish, on account of the melted floor and Ruinam's slow adjustment to terminal velocity. "Huebert?"

"Sup," replied a familiar voice, further up the now pitch-black hallway. A flare shwwwwked into existence, tossing feeble light upon the smoke. "I got him. Can't say it feels worth it."

Tor didn't say anything.

---

Jetsam was falling, but vertigo persisted - that sense of unreality he got when things got bad enough for the worlds to start to turn. It was the anticipation he hated more than the dying, this time manacled to and outshouted by enchantment-induced panic. He couldn't fail Ursus. He had to save himself. He was going to die.

Velobo was falling, his yells snatched by the air whistling by and utterly failing to reach Jetsam. He hadn't thought as far ahead as Jetsam to matters of the ground; in his eternal optimism he knew something would work out. What TinTen had been doing with that evil witch Velobo had no clue, they'd have plenty of time to figure things out after more pressing issues were handled. The dracodactyl raised its head, heronlike neck struggling against the slipstream. He saw Velobo, struggling to make headway, and something clicked. He struggled his good wing open, slowing his descent enough for the Plazmuth to close the gap and dive into his arms.

Jetsam gurgled something, gently but firmly reorienting the cube so the two were face to face. "Jetsam," Velobo had to yell, "it's going to be ok. You'll be-"

The wind whipped the first mouthful of venom off-centre. It burned his claws and missed the left side of Velobo's front face, which just hurt Jetsam worse with its look of shock. He lunged, sunk his teeth in so Velobo's expression wasn't boring into his brain, tried not think about the screams and the pain and whatever was yielding slowly - too slowly - taking too far godawful long to crush and break and stop screaming - to his jaws.

It was going to be ok. Please, please, please, let everything be ok.