It didn't take long for him to respond - although it was weaker than was strictly expected. He opened his mouth, and gasped in a half-liquid draw of air after about a minute of resuscitation efforts. His lungs realized that it was partially water and not oxygen he was taking in, and he rolled over onto one side to retch up what he'd swallowed. Not much came up, since he hadn't eaten in the last... well... In a while. It took about six or seven minutes for his stomach and lungs to be satisfied that no more scorching poison would be entering his system, but after that was taken care of, he simply had no strength left to do anything but rest his head on his arm, and wheeze harshly as his body got used to being technically alive again.

As well as nearly-drowning, he'd swallowed a great deal of the toxic water, and didn't look so good. Paler than he normally would have been, with a bit of a grayish tint to the skin, as well as flushed and shaking. His guts were not happy, but the more pressing issue was that his lungs were also unhappy. He continued to cough long after he'd finished heaving up what water he could get out of his stomach - deep, painful-sounding coughs that wracked his entire small frame. Blood dripped from his mouth after a few of these coughs, making it clear that whatever else had been done to him in that river had caused some internal damage.

When he had enough strength in him to lift his head again, he sought out his rescuer, making a concentrated attempt to locate just one of her among the myriad of swirling female images. That idea was quickly falling flat, however, since his vision was starting to cave in on itself. Blackness took the edges first, and quickly worked their way inward. Before he completely lost what he'd gained {albeit briefly}, he cracked a half-hearted attempt at a sheepish smile, and mouthed the words that it hurt his throat too much to say out loud just now: 'Thanks'.

After which, he slumped again, head on his arm, entire body relaxing into unconsciousness. Not surprising. But he was breathing, for whatever else might be wrong with him, so it was a start.

Dara looked down at the boy, unconcious again after his retched coughing fit. The poisons of the new ungodly world were different from what she was used to. She wondered briefly if the herbal concoction she fashioned to purify small amounts of water would work inside a human body. Stomache acid along would certainly breakdown the ingredients much faster then the tedious boiling process. She doubted that the boy would appreciate being used as a guinea pig though.

If he gets worse. I'll try it if he gets worse.

She was now faced with her other immediate problem: how to get the unconscious boy back to the others. He needed a little more help than what she could do with what was currently in her medical kit. Trying to work his dead weight onto her back was not a terribly attractive plan, and she briefly considered shouting, hoping her voice would carry enough along the river for someone friendly to hear. The sudden quake in the ground and crashing of tree trunks changed her mind on that option *very* fast.

What was that?

Michael covered his ears at the scream,lowering his gun. He was shocked out of his wits, and more or less fortunately out of his attention towards Mehetabel. "What the hell was that?" he barely gasped out when he recovered from the scream. Being very close to the source of the scream didn't exactly help him in coping with it. He had to sit down before saying anything else...
Which really helped when the large earthquake hit the island. Although he had to keep an eye out for anyone who might fall on him, Michael was more able to kept balance than he wold have while standing.
But by the end ofthe quake he really looked around. No longer did he look at Mehetabel, enchanted by her beauty, but at everyone else. Fear began to touch his heart becuase he knew the strength of the force that overtook Feenai, and it was much more powerful than he was, psychically. He grabbed the other gun from his coat pocket and readied it next to his laser, pointed in the air, to avoid hitting his (once again) neccesary allies. "Altiel..." he bean to ask, almost fearfully, "what is this place?"
They say "knowledge is power" and without knowing who the enemy was, nor how he or she or it was equipped, Michael could not fight...in his mind, he could only die where he was, without knowing. Even a room full of enemies was a lot better than a single enemy in a room full of friends, to him, becuase he now did not know the enemy.

Na'lsa looked less than pleased as events began to whirlwind in front of him. As the earthquake rocked the very earth he stood on, his composure finally broke.

"Is this your power? Is this the might of Metatron? A thousand pardons, but I am not impressed by smoke and mirrors. Show me this being! Show me the true form instead of the events being blamed blamed on it!"

Shealtiel casts a haggard glance back at Michael, unsure of what to tell the young man. "I... do not know. I have... theories, speculations, postulates... but, I could not tell you which is true."

He looks back over to their host, wondering if he does indeed detect a faint hint of concern across her placid features, or if it is merely his imagination supplying what is otherwise chillingly absent.

"Though," he adds, still speaking to Michael, "I do wonder where Kasdeja has gone."

Asasiah would be lying if she said she hadn't wanted to come to Mehetabel's call. Normally she was quite defiant, especially in the face of her 'fetchers'. But she could sense the presences on the island and to say the least she was quite curious. Unfortunately she was also rather hungry. She tilted her head much like a curious child at the man and smiled a little.

"She wants my presence you say..." her voice trailed off, she had a rather strong reputation for turning them into food and she could smell the fear on the man, it made him all the more appetizing. She stood and walked to him a soft giggle escaping her as she leaned onto the man, her hands gently sliding to his shoulders. She touched with a soft caress, perhaps even comforting but he could see the way she moved like a hunter, her heavy-lashed eyes narrowing as she looked at her prey.

"Mehetabel should know by now that I do what I please." She licked her lips a bit. His smell made her mouth water. "What's this, May...raw you say? Are you sure? I tend to like my meat a bit heated up... oh well, I guess you can have your way." The man whimpered in her soft touch as a line of blood traced down the center of his body before she suddenly ripped him in half as if he were paper.

"I will never understand this method, May... it's rather messy you know." She shrugged, proceeding to eat the man. Mehetabel could wait long enough for her to finish.

A little later, she walked down the street. "These pesky earthquakes are getting bothersome... May, we really should do something about this..." she sighed. Mehetabel was coming into her view. She was completely devoid of the bloody mess she had earlier created, except for the blood she gently licked off her fingers.

"What do you want, Mehetabel, I have better things to be doing..." She looked at them, her eyes traced the party Mehetabel was with, they seemed to be quite the bunch. She was sizing them up but her eyes stopped on the old man and she gave an odd face before her nose wrinkled. "You know it's bad enough that there is half dead demon stench on the shore, you bring me a shriveled old man, not even enough meat to be an appetizer." She sighed as she shook her head.

"Oh, May... I am sorry, I didn't mean to offend...but it really does stink..." she said, looking thoughtfully at nothing. She sucked the last bit of blood off her fingers before crossing her arms and looking at Mehetabel annoyed.

"So, why did you call me...I did enjoy the meal though, he was simply marinated with fear."

Shealtiel stares at the woman as she approaches, taken aback, no -- utterly stunned by the chaos unfolding around them. Was it this creature who shook the isle with such devastating force? Somehow, judging by Mehetabel's words earlier and her expression now, he does not believe so.

How many powers is this isle home to?

Perhaps it is prolonged exposure to Na'lsa, but the threat of being consumed by this newcomer does not even register to the old man. Reaching out with his spiritual senses, he immediately reels, stumbling backwards at the... madness that is her essence.

"What... what are you?" he breathes, not even realizing he voiced the words aloud.

* * *

"Did you not feel the tremors?" Mehetabel has apparently lost all interest in the intruders to her home. If she has any care for the servant Asasiah apparently devoured, she betrays no indication.

"I fear," she tells the creature. "I fear these travelers have brought a Power to our island. And not only that. I fear he has been awoken to anger." She softens momentarily, her eyes becoming almost pleading. "Asasiah, what are we to do?"

She completely ignored Mehetabel's question, looking at the old man and giggled. "How cute, he can feel my essence." She walked toward him, but stopped "No, May, we can't eat him," she said to herself before continuing her approach.

"Such a loaded question... mmm... how to answer. Uriel... Amaymon...but I prefer the name daddy gave me... can you believe he made me and then locked me away? How could he not love me... "She frowned a bit then realized she'd trailed off. "Call me Asasiah," she said before looking at Mehetabel. The woman was begging for her help, how adorable.

"I could take care of the problem quite quickly, I don't know though... pain and suffering is heavy in the air. I find it to be rather enjoyable, the fear you're people are drenched in... mmmm."

With no further tremors, Dara decides that staying and moving both amount to about the same thing at this time, that being nothing particularly significant either way. She lifted the boy over one shoulder. She was amazed at how light he was. She though that her med pack might be heavier when it was full. It was far from such now though, which made it easier to carry the two.

Keeping her profile as low as she could with a passenger, Dara started walking back towards the small settlement.

On the way she mused about her brief rural life with her family. They had a few sheep. She remembered her father hissing and swearing as he fought to get a bottle of charcoal down the throat of a sheep that had gotten into something it shouldn't have. Both were not happy with the effort, but netiher had died at the end of it.

She resolved to make a fire when she got back.

Swimming out of darkness, and back into the light wasn't as pleasant as it might have seemed. Deep in the confines of the darkness, he felt calm and at peace. Nothing ached, nothing felt too bad... but when there was something that reached down and tried to pluck him out - pain came flooding back. Pain all over. His chest was on fire, his stomach doubly-so, and his lungs felt as though they were filled with shards of glass.

Regardless, he did phase back into consciousness - mercifully as he was on the ground, and not slung over someone's shoulder like a sack of potatoes. He didn't know where he was, nor who his rescuer was... The last thing he remembered was his father calling for him to swim for his life - and he had. But he didn't think he'd made it very far before he was just too tired to continue.

There was a nagging in the back of his head. Something he should remember, but the world was a bit sideways at the moment, and his head was too full of cotton to think. Not to mention his entire body felt weighted down. When he did make a motion, it was with extreme effort, and just a couple of fingers. His eyelids were as-of-yet too heavy to open.

Conscious and awake, but unable to see for the time being, he used his ears to listen, trying to gather just where he was, where that woman had gone, and what was going on around him. Each passing moment brought more clarity which... he REALLY wished it hadn't. He wasn't a bad medic himself [abuse from Hell made that an easy thing to pick up] so he knew at least which areas he was injured in. There was something wrong in his chest - a cracked rib or two. Some bleeding deeper inside where it felt like a nightmare had kicked him. And he recognized enough of the symptoms to realize he was in shock already - the freezing cold - to - scorching hot, shivering and sweating in turns, the thirst, the rapid and hard heartbeat he could hear with his eyes closed... But was that his or his rescuer's? ... Yeah, and disjointed thoughts. He had to pull it together.

Opening his eyes took a lot more effort than he had thought it would take, and that was about all he could do for the moment. He was injured, in shock, possibly sick under all that from whatever was in his system, and... where was he? He wasn't in Hell, that was for sure. And from the sounds, he wasn't in the river, or even near it.

He tested his mouth a bit, opening and closing it a few times before he tried using it to actually form something coherent, like speech. And when he did, it sounded off - cracked and dry and rusty. Probably from the whole near-drowning thing, and the damage he could feel in his throat when he allowed sound to come out of it.

"... Wh...where.... am I?"

"Thasos."

She barely heard the question, and wasn't sure if the boy had heard her answer, but there was little else to do right now. She sat appart from where the others were. She wasn't sure they had even noticed she had returned, and with someone else in tow.

She didn't think much on where he might have come from. There were perfectly mundane ways to end up in a river. She didn't think much about his unusual appearance either. Hard to, given that she had her own quirks. She simply ignored the fact that his tail and hooves were a little more "distinctive" than some extra fingers and toes.

Not thinking much about either of them, she just sat, poking a tiny fire into life.

Na'lsa watched in what could only be called 'surprise' as the woman eviscerated the man before her, the display sickeningly beautiful to him. Deep inside him, his hunger continued to stir. He grew frustrated with the exchange before him, quickly adding to the conversation after the newcomer.

"I am the Power, Mehetabel. And this, this butcher that you have plucked from underneath a magician's hat and placed before me, is mere mockery of my methods."

He stepped closer, breathing deep the metallic smell of blood that wafted from her figure. Fingers ran gingerly down her arms, testing the muscle underneath. With a close lean, he whispered in to her ear.

"I admire you child. But you lack control. And that will be your downfall."

With that he pulled himself away, addressing those before him in his tone of conviction.

"The Nephilim is up to something. I say it's high time to consume him and finally put his flesh to good use."

She may have noticed the woman with the half-dead demon on her back, after all the stench really did bug her, but she didn't mention the matter. Instead, she listened to what the man called Na'lsa said to her. She couldn't help it after that, she just started laughing. It made her sound insane, but she stopped dead when he said the word Nephilim.

"A Nephilim is on this island..." The air around her changed, her hands fell to her sides, clenching, and blue light spread out from her back, spanning in the shape of wings. Her hair seemed to flow on a nonexistent wind, lifting into the air, dark smokey bands rising from the ground... and from her hand sliced out a long flaming sword. She was looking down at the time, but as her eyes lifted to the group both the red and the blue were glowing.

"Where is it..." she said in a blind anger. She couldn't control the hatred in her, it was a part of who she was. "No such being deserves to live." Her eyes turned toward Mehetabel. In a roundabout way, the woman was going to get exactly what she wanted. She had never seen Asasiah so angered.

With a decent amount of blinking and cussing, Dante drifted back into consciousness; the explosion of light had seared through his mind and knocked him out face-down on the cold ground.

How graceful.

He spat some sand, then wiped his mouth, trying to figure out the new aura...no, the two new auras, for Dara (he assumed the barely-visible whitish aura was hers) had someone next to her. Someone rather...blue. Or red. Or something like that. It didn't help that the already-faint aura was being completely overpowered by a new, blinding gold one.

He climbed slowly to his feet, and staggered towards Lev, the strangely-calm woman, and what seemed to be an extremely-powerful entity.

Shealtiel stares openly at the angelic creature, his weary mind struggling to recall decades-old angel lore from his Rabbinical studies before the apocalypse. Of course, back then, he hadn't really believed in such things, not like this. They had been metaphors, emanations, images... this thing, who called itself Asasiah, was not like that at all.

Angel... and human... and yet, unflawed. Not appalling. Not a sister of Kasdeja. And the vehement hatred that the mere word had awoken in her... no, not a Nephilim, this one. Something else entire.

There was no time to consider the other he had glimpsed from his once glance into her soul, that black blot staining the fiery perfection of her spirit. Whatever mystery lay twisted within her, it would need to wait. This situation was out of control. It reminded him of the early days of the Eschaton.

Turning to Mehetabel, trying to order his thoughts and focus on the matter at hand, Shealtiel asks her, "What is this Power you speak of? And where? If it is awoken, then so too is the Nephilim."

And we all saw what the Nephilim was capable of...

The aged woman regards him with a mix of pity and fear. "I do not know to tell you. None have entered the shrine and returned alive. Something dwells there, an ancient terror, unmatched in the psykosis."

Shealtiel considers her words for a long moment, beginning to get a troubling sense of what might lay ahead. He quests out with his senses, tentatively... and there it is. He can feel it even at this distance, and above all else, he can feel the weight of age upon its soul. An antediluvian malevolence.

After a moment, he speaks, a single word, a question, almost dreading the answer. "Where?"

Mehetabel meets his gaze, though whether she thinks him bold for the endeavor or utterly mad is impossible to discern. Her voice sounds disconsolate, lost. "A few miles down the coast... the ruins of the Basilica of Alyki..."

She takes a moment and turns her regard to Asasiah. "You're coming then?" she asks as though she fears the answer. "Do you... do you know what awaits? Are you strong enough to stop it?"