Everyone is arriving from the "On Dry Land" thread.

As the group of heroes ascended a nearly collapsed stone stairway, they would emerge onto an awesome and disturbing scene. Before them was an immense chamber held aloft above an open pit of lava far below. The architecture should have been impossible considering the materials it was made of, yet it stood strong despite its obviously ancient age. And on either wall were stone carvings of large and monstrous faces, pouring hot lava from their eye sockets.


Worst of all though, were the beings inhabiting this place. Hellhounds prowled the walkways, snipping at eachother whenever they passed. Probably two dozen of them. Every once and a while one would bark an unholy bark and spew liquid flame at an imp flitting by. The imps were numerous as well, perching on any ledge or railing available. There were at least fifty. They chattered rudely amongst themselves, bickering and fighting, and using words that sounded almost nauseating to hear. None of the heroes could understand what was being said, but Mirage felt like the words were teetering on the edge of her understanding. Like when a word is on the tip of one's tongue, but in reverse.


Across the impossible walkways where all the paths led to, is what could never be mistaken for anything else. The nexus. The portal connecting this world to the demon realm. It was a swirling circle of orange flame burning on the floor. Even as the heroes watched, the portal flared with a plume of black flame and a new imp emerged. The imp quickly found a perch and landed. That's when the heroes realized it was a bit odd that none of these creatures were attempting to disperse. It was almost as if they were waiting for something. Or maybe someone.

---

What do you do? So far the heroes have not been noticed and are behind some rubble from the collapsed stairwell they just climbed. It wouldn't take much to blow your cover though.

Mirage frowned as she heard the speech of the imps. It was frustrating. If she had more time, she might be able to learn from this, but... there was no time to be wasted.

She could feel her own power being enhanced by proximity to the Demon Dimension, but it meant precious little, if they did not have a way to apply it. She also looked... different. More different than usual. Her features were more angular, here teeth more pointed. Her fingers had sharp claws instead of nails. The energy coming from the rift was possibly mutating her form slightly, making her just a little more demonic as time passed.

Fortunately, she did not feel any more evil than usual. And she considered possible plans. "If we try to just take them on in a stand up fight, we might not have enough time to do what we need to do," she mused, very quietly. "If we can draw some of them away, clear a path to the rift, then we can try to sneak the rest of us in under an invisibility illusion. I am pretty sure that these imps, when they see me, will either try to kill me in a towering rage, kidnap me and take me off to the Demon Dimension, or maybe - just maybe - they might be curious enough to try to communicate. But I think the kill me option is probably the most likely. If we are going to try anything requiring bait, it makes sense that I should be the one dangled in front of them."

She did not much like the idea of being used as bait, but under the circumstances, she was probably the one most likely to provoke and distract the demons.

"I don't know how to seal a gate like that, but I can certainly protect you," said Doll.  "I might be able to help someone else get through somewhere faster, too... Um, but it might be a bit rough.  And hard on your inner ears.  And stomach.  And maybe not great for your mind if you have your eyes open when I do it."

She wasn't really sure what would happen if she pulled a threespace creature through fourspace to get around obstacles.  It shouldn't be fatal, but at the very least, extremely disorienting.  But they might have to push it to get people into the right spaces.

"Anyway, I can stick close to you... and everyone... and help protect you, and they probably won't see me coming.  Um, because if they could, they'd probably already be reacting to my presence," she added, a bit sheepishly.  If you knew where to look, she was as big across as a football field; she just hoped that the assorted imps and hellhounds only had sensory organs in threespace... although she was fairly sure that that was the case.

She was also fairly sure that she could clear a path for the others if she had to, or at least help, but the distraction would probably be a better plan.

From: Pahoehoe Island - On Dry Land

Fraejia looked about the inside of the volcano in concern as she listened to the others discuss their plans.  The fact that it seemed something was going to be coming through that portal, something that was powerful enough the other creatures were waiting for it to arrive, was very concerning.  Her people had been in conflict with the various "lower planes", and the higher ones for that matter, for almost their entire existence so she knew how to fight them.

In a voice as cold as Ice Fraejia said, "I can be the distraction, I haven't had a chance to really let loose since I was enslaved so it should be fun.  So stay out of my way and watch for ice everywhere."  Her lips curved in a slight smile as she added, "Oh, and stay here until my initial strike goes off, you'll see why."

By the time the hardlight platform Amelia had been hanging from touched down inside the ruined mouth of the volcano, the elation she had been feeling from their accomplishment had withered. Her mouth dried out as she crouched behind the sparse cover they had advanced to, its sudden aridness completely unrelated to the oppressive heat that was rippling the air inside the bowl. Once again she was having to fight against her bestial aspect, her calculating mind rushing to cut off any avenue through which his wild fear might escape, lest he set her to sprinting headlong from this place and abandoning her new comrades. The presence of other animalistic creatures only served to increase the intensity of his frenzy; there was no need to be able to understand the hellish language they occasionally barked when their behavior told the whole tale. Territories and pecking orders were being established, as if several packs of young wolves were coming together at the corners of their territories to feast upon a massive corpse, their slavering appetites constrained only by the lack of a leader's allowance.

Cutting through all that was the presence of the portal itself. Amelia could feel it in her bones, the churn and subharmonic thrum of its mere existence setting her teeth on edge and raising every hair on her body. Yet those sensations were merely the physical echo of its effect in her mind; in that place where her Will connected to the source of Power that enabled her to use her Runes, she felt it like a raw burn on her brain itself. Their entire universe teetered on a precipice in that place, both micro and macro scales twisted and bent to cut through entire dimensions and tie disparate realities together. How it was held in place was a mystery she felt she could spend epochs seeking to unravel, and even with the advantage of knowing where to start she might never know its exact mechanics. The only hint she had was that she could feel it drawing on the same sort of machine her own Runes tapped. If she had a stronger grasp of exactly how that machine operated such a revelation might have actually been useful.

"This isn't something I'm going to be able to just reverse engineer," she grunted quietly, a headache blossoming behind her eyes as she struggled to handle too many conflicting threads of thought at once. "There's no visible control matrix on this side, which means if one even exists it's on the other end. I can't tell if there's an anchor on this side defining a locus for targeting this particular place in spacetime either." Saying her thoughts aloud was slow, but the act let her hear what their shape sounded like, and sometimes that gave insight into the sort of box they might be trapped in. "I might be able to Inscribe the hypersurface, but that could have unintended consequences on the entire local region. If it's traversable both ways, maybe I could-" and at once she had the inspiration for a first attempt at a solution. Her muttering ceased as her mind rushed forward with the planning, and she immediately started looking about for a useable medium.

Fortunately, there was plenty of material around, and all she needed was a stone of sufficient size. Choosing a piece of debris broken from the staircase that was about the size of a cantaloupe, she plopped down cross-legged and pulled out her trusty hammer and pick. "Give me about sixty seconds to get the matrix I need Inscribed, then start your distraction," she said loudly enough for everyone to hear. As she traced in the first set of TEMPO and LOCUS Runes, she explained her idea. "I don't have the first clue how override this thing to close, so we're going to try and use the Venturi effect to see if we can't cause it to collapse in the middle. Assuming matter can transit both directions, there's a theoretical point somewhere in the de Sitter space where the brane switches between wrapping dimensions to unwrapping them. If we can cause the second half of that switch to accelerate, it would result in a larger mass exiting than entering, creating a cavitation effect that could fold the brane into a different shape and bring opposing polarities close enough together to annihilate. That happens, both ends snap into their proper shape, and the spacetime bridge collapses from an entangled quantum system back into two un-entangled singularities. Hopefully, the one on this end is small enough to avoid colliding with any matter, and simply falls through the planet and out the other side without accreting."
This message was last edited by the player at 19:25, Thu 08 June 2023.

"All right," said Doll.  "Say the word if you need to get closer, any of you.  Or further.  And really don't worry about me, no matter what you see happen.  I'm really tough."

...besides which, she'd died before.  Pain from burns?  Nasty, but she could take it.

Alpha landed near the others. He was smoldering lightly, but otherwise unharmed from his battle. He listened intently as Runesmith laid out a plan, but would have to admit that he didn't understand half of what she was saying. Venturi effect? De Sitter space? Was she making these things up?

He concentrated for a moment. Okay. They made sense now. Well, a little. The first one more than the second one. Runesmith was apparently a lot smarter than Alpha was, but Alpha wasn't created to be smart.

"Just point me at whatever needs to be hit," he said.

Mirage listened to Runesmith's plan with zero real comprehension. She did, however, trust her to know what she was doing. So she simply accepted the plan as their best option.

She looked between the others. "I think we've just about got it worked out. Ice Queen will do her thing, and the rest of you can respond in whatever manner seems appropriate." She looked down to where Runesmith was chiselling away. "I promised to keep Amelia safe, no matter what happened, so I'll be focussed on her invisibility shield, and booting anything that gets too close firmly in the nads. I just hope that these imps can't see through illusions, or it might get a bit exciting."

She stretched, and cracked her knuckles, then started weaving her hands, and muttering a spell very quietly.

Klythie did her best to follow what Runesmith was saying, but it was remarkably... technical. She wondered if even her grandmother would be able to follow along with an explanation like that. Maybe if it was in a more familiar language it would help, but they weren't exactly sitting in an arcane library to pore over these matters.

"Okay, then I'll follow along behind you Ice Queen," she said, keeping her voice down along with the others. "Since Runesmith and Mirage'll be busy, I'll be on dispelling duty if they try any magic. Otherwise I guess I'll be relying on water jets."

"Make your move," said Meg, the Doll's face smiling encouragingly.  "I'll back you up.  Go start it, and I'll keep you safe."

Meg's body shifted slightly in a way that probably wasn't physically possible for her to move. That was awkward, but she couldn't really help it-- moving the vast bulk of her body in Fourspace, as she was doing now, inevitably moved the Doll a bit, and there was no way around that, but she needed to be in the Fourspace that was adjacent to the Threespace the others (and the imps, hellhounds, cave, island, ocean and so on) were residents of.  But better to have that little bit of dysphoria and be ready to squash a few hellhounds and deflect a few firebolts.

With the plan in place Fraejia nodded and said, >"Alright then, stay down until I have finished my initial attack."  Fraejia stepped out of cover and as she did a humming sound seemed to come from her and a sense of immense power welling up, like the feeling just before a lightning strike.  As she went the sound became louder and the power welled up and a blue glow began to seap through the materials of her environment suit, and she seemed to float through the air as she rose up and up into a position above the gate.

By the time she was above the gate Fraejia was a bright glowing figure attracting the attention of every creature in the caldera.  The sound had grown and swelled to a crescendo as she began to "sing" in a voice that sounded like orchestrated music with a skirling sound akin toa fiddle threading through it.  At the same time, she began to manifest ice, lots of ice, in a ball around herself as the attacks started to arrive at her position.  the singing swelled as the ice thickened and began to form long, thin, points.  With an angry skirl of sound, something that resided in the nightmares of those she had faced in battle under the cults control the barrier of ice shattered and sprayed wickedly long needles in all directions that began to slam into everything around her.  She killed many of the fiery fiends in that strike but nowhere near all of them as she began to move through thru air and began to send blasts of raw cold at everything that got within her range.

Well, that was impressive. If there was anything that those imps hated, it was probably the cold. Whatever else she might be able to do, Ice Queen could put on one hell of a show, and when it came to grabbing attention, she had brought her A-game.

That was exactly what they needed. Mirage moved to be beside Runesmith. "All right, we'll try this the same way as before. I'll bubble you. If anything looks like even frowning at you, I'll let rip with the big guns. I'll smack the buggers so hard they won't know their arse from a Tuesday!" Her discordant voice sounded especially ludicrous with a Yorkshire accent, but her intent was still perfectly clear. "Anyone else want to go with her in the bubble? Might not be a bad idea for her to have someone with her. I can manage the bubble size easily enough. I'm going to have to do my best to keep her safe, so speak now. getting someone else up close to that rift in case of unforseen circumstances is a pretty good idea."

"It's not necessary for my sake," said Doll.  She wouldn't really fit, anyway, and she wasn't sure what her mass might do to the bubble.

As Ice Queen began floating through the air toward the nexus, her icy aura proved to be a potent protection. Most of the imps simply watched Ice Queen make her approach, surprised by her presence. A couple flew in to intercept, but retreated again when they felt the chill around her. The hellhounds ran and barked underneath her, but could not reach the height she was at. Every so often one would belch a fiery blast her way, but again, her coldness as well as her protective suit prevented any actual harm to her body.

When she let the ice spikes fly, a dozen imps and hellhounds were mortally wounded, and a couple others were knocked into the lava below. Whether or not the lava would harm them was unknown, but they were certainly going to have a hard time causing more trouble for the band of heroes.

With Mirage making Runesmith invisible, Runesmith would be able to approach the nexus unseen. Unfortunately the nexus was currently surrounded by a mob of hellhounds barking wildly at Ice Queen who hovered above it. They would need to be dealt with in some manner.

Likewise, the imps were not sitting idly by waiting to be picked off either. They were flying around in a frantic flurry of leathery wings. Their unsettling demonic speech rang through the air, unintelligible as ever. Well, except to Mirage. She still couldn't understand most of what was being said, but every so often she could swear she was hearing the word "rocks" being yelled out within the flock. Which seemed appropriate considering the imps were snatching up pieces of loose rubble and were now pelting their projectiles in Ice Queen's direction.

A set of unholy shrieks let the party know that the rest of them had been spotted now too. Even more rocks were being thrown their way, and a few imps dive-bombed the group with their sharp claws ready to rend flesh.

Alpha waded into the pack of hellhounds, his fists flying. With them being magical in nature, he wasn't sure how much he could damage them — or how much they could damage him, for that fact — but they needed to be taken care of, and it needed to be done fast.

The first one yelped in surprise and pain as he punched it in the side of its head. That was going to make things a little more difficult. It wasn't that it made the fight harder, per se, but it made it harder for Alpha to listen to. He liked dogs, and found it difficult to wantonly hurt them, even if they were of the hell variety.

Still, it needed to be done.

Holding the piece of rubble with its Inscribed matrix, Amelia frowned at the mass of unknown variables the team was faced with at this point in the venture. Even worse than the fact that she had so little to work with and no real foundation of information to base her attempt at collapsing the portal, was the knowledge that she would have no way quick way of knowing its results. Time was, in itself, a fluid membrane that flowed with variable viscosity depending on one's relation to the speed of light and position in space relative to mass; there was no guarantee that it ticked by with anything close to the same cadence on the other side of the gateway than it did here at their own location. Only the wormhole collapsing would prove that they had succeeded, and that was the best case scenario. As Ice Queen leapt into action and Mirage formulated their approach plan, Amelia was attempting to ignore the uncomfortable number of failure scenarios.

Still, it was the best she could offer at the moment, with limited resources and only the theoretical knowledge she had on the subject matter. If I survive this somehow, I'm going to do a lot more research on higher dimensions and many-worlds theory, she swore to herself. Taking one last moment to double-check the array, now comprised of several recursive, self-targeting LOCUS, MOVE, TEMPO, and LISTEN Runes across all the cardinal faces, was more an exercise in delaying so she could gather her courage than a final quality check. If all went well, the purposefully imbalanced and nested nature of the array would effectively steal energy from the wormhole itself to generate additional mass, creating a low-pressure field inside the the tube. Success would depend on the pressure differential between the inside and outside of the wormhole's tunnel being great enough to cross the transfer streams, initiating an annihilation effect and decoherence between the ends. If it went poorly... well, they wouldn't be alive for long enough to feel the pain of failure, and there likely wouldn't be a planet or people on it to lament her incompetence.

"I can't believe I'm hoping this thing does like a straw trying to suck up an ice cube," she grumbled as she nodded to Mirage, indicating that she was ready. "Einstein's ghost is gonna come outta this thing and slap me into the next century for trying this." Despite her misgivings, or perhaps because of them, she was assuming this first attempt was doomed to failure but not a catastrophic one, and was already thinking over other ways to go about unfolding this particular knot. Her next idea involved gathering all the matter that had been transferred over to this side together and sending it back in one go...

"Einstein was good for some things, but a lot of the world is more complicated than he thought..." Meg observed, but then the Doll was yanked along violently as the rest of her body surged into action.

In threespace, Meg's body lurched suddenly in midair, the concentration necessary for this kind of fighting meaning that Meg wasn't bothering to make the Doll move realistically.  But all around, as she moved, things were happening, and all at once.

Red-blue iridescent, irregular shapes were suddenly growing into being all over the place.  Some sprang into existence to block hails of thrown rocks, while others manifested somehow with enough force to batter an imp or hellhound into a wall, and still others were appearing as growing, squeezing collars or rings around hellhound legs or necks.  Meg had a lot of limbs, and she had no reason to hold back at all.  (She might get burned, of course, but she could just let go and pull that particular limb to the safety of a different threespace.  She was massive; she wasn't seriously hurt that easily.)

Throughout it all she kept moving as quickly as she could while staying in control, larger limbs manifesting to grab the rock of the cavern to adjust her position.  Some rocks might strike the Doll, of course, but even hard-flung rocks wouldn't hurt her seriously, and she could always pull the Doll briefly out of the possible paths of attack.

The cavern seemed to shudder as she moved.  There was a great deal of mass in motion...

"I'll stick to you Runesmith," Klythie said before doing just that and joining the girl in the invisibility bubble. She wasn't amazing on offense or defense, especially in a volcanic chamber up against fire-based monsters. What she could do was add to Mirage's effect, throwing up little magical distractions here and there to keep the nearer enemies from cottoning onto their presence or luring them out of the path. "Marveille," she added to herself in a murmur as she watched the more combative heroes go at it around them.

As Klythie joined her inside the invisibility dome, Amelia nodded appreciation in her direction; having someone there to literally watch her back was reassuring, even if they might not have the same level of awe-inspiring combat acumen as the others were tossing about. Oddly enough, it was almost more reassuring to have someone at her side who was closer to her own perceived level. At the same time, one end of Chain Guard snaked out from her waist and offered itself to the Sea Witch. "In case things get in the way, I'm planning on either Air Walking over them or swinging beneath the bridge to get past," the foxkin explained, gritting her teeth as instinct rose up in an attempt to override that statement. "I can carry you if you want to focus on doing your thing. At this point, all I'm doing is dropping this in and scooting out of the way of any feedback."

Once she confirmed Klythie's decision, Amelia made her move. On the verge of hyperventilation as her breaths began to come in panicked gulps, she sprinted toward the yawning transdimensional abyss; her focus laser-tight on the path to the goal with no concern spared for whatever might be coming from above, behind, or from the sides. Almost immediately she was forced to dodge a set of demon dogs tossed wildly about by a manifesting tentacle and an on-target haymaker; the pair of hellhounds nearly colliding with each other and the Runesmith. Out lashed Amelia's hands, and a pair of Chains erupted from within the sleeves of her jacket, their ends slamming upward and out, anchoring deep into opposite walls. Behind her shoulders, the other ends wound themselves rapidly around the cores of a pair of Hubs secured to her torso, waist, and legs via a third segment of her Guard. The living harness was one she had perfected after spending untold hours of practice swinging around large buildings and massive trees, and she used it now as a springboard to launch high into the air and over the hazard.

Upon reaching the apex of the leap, she quickly activated the MOVE and LOCUS Runes in her boots to let her slide down at an angle through the air, recalling the two ends of Guard that had provided anchoring in the wall. They immediately got put back to work though, as a dive-bombing imp suddenly juked midair, its new flight path intersecting with Amelia's position. The creature seemed confused for a moment as it penetrated the invisibility bubble and witnessed the peculiar sight within, a pause that Amelia ruthlessly took advantage of by mimicking Meg. As she threw both hands forward, the two worker ends of Guard lashed out and wrapped around the otherworldly creature's head and wings. A flex of her fingers initiated a crushing action, tightening the ends until the links squeezed against each other, rendering the foe incapable of giving away their position.

Upon releasing its head with her right hand, she cast her left off to the side and sent both the ruined imp and that end of Guard smashing into the wall. Whatever was left of the pitiful creature fell away as the chain dug into the wall again, Amelia using it to adjust the trajectory of her slide, then to control her fall as she released the activated boot Runes to dodge another strafing imp. Sheer terror welled in her chest as she fell toward the magma, but the direness of the situation finally aligned the interest of her beast side with her best side, and without thinking she sent her right hand chain looping around a spike of ice that had embedded itself above the pit to hell.

"Alley oop this heat right down your throat!" she yelled as she arched above the portal, kicking her feet around and over to build as much spin as possible before spiking the dimension bomb directly down into it. The moment she discerned the throw was good, her focus shifted to getting out of the way of possible cataclysmic regurgitation. There were a great many things that could happen at this point, the vast majority not good at all, and she wanted to do anything she could to increase her chance at survival.

Fraejia's first strike was true, the veritable blizzard of ice lances taking out large numbers of the demons, and she was quite please.  She knew that she couldn't do that again now that the team had risen from cover, a place where several large jags of ice had lodged into the rock and behind their position, so she continued to move through the hot air gracefully as she began to send barrages of icicles at groupings of demons and occasionally pulled together a large person sized chuck to lob into locations where demons tried to take cover.  Once or twice she even sent a plane of ice with a multitude of points on the bottom over the harder cover only to detonate them and send a hailstorm of ice down into the demons behind them.  All the while her harsh sounding singing continued, swelling any time she sent a blast of ice at a target.

Mirage did exactly as promised. She stayed well back, hidden behind a rock, and kept the invisibility sphere up around her friends as they went to work on the real core of the problem. It was not yet time for her to really dive in and unleash more doom on the imps and hounds, and her friends were at least holding their own. She sympathised a lot with Alpha. She could see from his expression that beating down dogs was not sitting well, and she would have felt the same.

Although feelings right now were definitely an issue for her. This close to an open portal into the Demon Dimension, and its influence was starting to make itself felt in ways beyond the physical. The urge to simply cut loose and blast everyone and everything around her with magical armageddon was gnawing at the back of her brain. She wanted to be angry. She wanted to just SMASH!!! and damn the consequences! She kept her focus very much on the task at hand, so that the demon side of her nature did not get hold of the steering wheel. She tried so hard in her life to be a good person, to deny the evil that lurked within her. This was not the sort of environment she should be in, and certainly not under these circumstances. Yes, the power she was given was definitely stronger this close to the Demon Dimension, but she had not banked on the place trying to assimilate her as the new Borg Queen, or whatever it was trying to do.

She tried to distract her brain and muttered softly to herself, a method to keep her mind away from the insistent call of the Damned. "Half a pound of tuppeny rice, half a pound of... bloody Nora, that was close... something else, weasels, eagles..."