[Lawtan]

Clanking metal sounded behind as a somewhat damaged cyberdog walked in. Whining, Rurik went over to Dante and put a cold, robotic, nose in his face...but where was Kadia?

-5 minutes ago-

"Forget about ideas!" Dante said and grabbed her. Sudden memories - images of a man with a raggled beard...and burning. Kadia started screaming. Dante let her go.

She came back in a few seconds...to everyone far away, and the bombs about to blow.

"Schießen! Those idiots!"

Crying, she went into overdrive, lifting the ground itself with her mind, creating a wall of earth between her and the explosion. Electricity crackled around her. Glad she carried little cyber-tech, she hid her face until the explosion passed.

Kadia couldn't sense Rurik - she couldn't tell if he was destroyed, or if the blast had disrupted the connection between the two. Tears fell from her eyes as she felt alone for the first time in a long while.

Dybuuk still remained. By the Balance, they did, but they were without a leader, a mind, or a will. She needed to carve her own way to the abyssal hole...fast! Lifting a large whip of earth, she started to plow through half-dazed corpses towards the portal...

-Back in the hole-

Rurik shivered, metal sounding, as he could no longer sense his master. 'if (target) == protect mistress, then target == *trust.' So, Rurik followed Dante...

-10 minutes later-

Kadia fell, exhausted. She spent most of her strength to get past the entryway. Horned snakes slithered around in her in the cavern...was this another portal? Scared and worn, Kadia felt a connection to Rurik reestablish, and she called him for help. Reassured that he heard her, she passed out.

[Espy]

Raising an eyebrow at...what was her name?...Dante sighed in exasperation, then grudgingly held onto a floating Thomas to steer him out of the way of whoever else might come toppling down the stairs.

"It feels like even if I had normal vision, it'd still be too dark to see jack shit down here."

Then...paws and a nose? But ice cold paws and a hard-as-steel nose. And then the thing whimpered. Or at least, Dante figured it was the creature's way of whimpering; to him, it sounded more akin to gears whirring away. And it smelled like lithium grease.

He didn't have a free hand to shove it off, but it jumped off him soon enough and...shook? Metal plates groaned and rattled. This was the girl's dog, wasn't it? Then...where was the girl? Suddenly, the dog's ears bumped into his leg as it turned abruptly, and Dante squinted.

Still nothing. Strange. But if she was still out there, she was either a corpse by now, or safe enough to not bother saving. Confused, Dante turned back to the task of pushing Thomas deeper into what he assumed was a cavern of some sorts.

[Quiet Man Cometh]

“It is dark enough.”

If she had been about to say anything else, it was cut off when she noticed the metal wolf that had come down the stairs. “Where did you get him?”

Tarja waved the sword, eerily still flaming, around to get a better look at the place. It was a building, the walls obviously made of modern stone; not at all the hole or dark cavern that its entrance would seem to imply. The light of the flames revealed little beyond that the stairs did have an end, and that said end led to a larger opening, presumably a room of some kind, and something was sitting at the light’s very edge.

Stopping before she had gone more than a couple of steps, Tarja looked about her. “We’re one short.”

After the chaos of the battle they left behind, the underground felt incredibly quiet, save for Rurik’s metallic clanking and the occasional, heavy gasp coming from the room beyond.

[Lawtan]

There was a sound in her darkness, a scraping of carapace on calcified marble. Kadia woke, startled to find herself laying askew – a marionette – on a tiled floor, a black moss growing over it. Kadia touched her back head, hair clotted and sticky. However, there was no bleeding. Cackling in her leather-metal Kadia worked into a sitting position, and from there a standing one. A sharp pain in her knee told her there was swelling. Hobbling, she lifted her leg and grabbed a bottle of anti-inflammatory (and other stuff) medicine, drank a bit, and waited for it to take hold...

“Rurik, I need you right now.” She muttered. Kadia went on to check her pink eye, and it “read” without issue.

Looking, before her was a hellish ruin. It was a pile of pillared marble, cracked and worn by water and…more black moss mixed fighting a glowing fungus… The structure mixed serpentine and red marbles, with the gritty ash on top of the orange wine-stain. The tile floor she stood on, in contrast, was a green shade. Kadia looked in amazement at the sculpted figures – like the griffin statues of Persia. Carvings of desolation lined the wall – here a tornado of flame, there an army of fleshless armor looking ready to charge. Most impressive, though also most difficult to observe, was a figure bearing a great crown…

Kadia now looked…unconcerned. Indeed, after the fight, the danger, and the momentary solitude…after the medicine started working on the exhaustion…she seemed different. A curious, feral grin split her face. She was a hurt cub, but she was a huntress. Sighting shining metal – her flame wheels – she lifted the debris over them, grabbed the two bent weapons, and reformed them as she had many times before.

Kadia wondered at her location. She felt the tug of Rurik, with a strange man…a blind fellow…scary savior…what was his name? She spotted an opening – a rock broken though the wall – and walked through.

---

Rurik insistently pawed his semi-loose leg at Dante, creating a clanking that simultaneously was endearing and annoying. ‘If Kadia in potential danger, then beg non-threats. Dante = non-threat.’

The wolf smelled like grease and oil, along with a tinge of rusting metal. Though furless, he looked…almost alive. It was a pity he had such a small aura…
Rurik, having Dante’s attention, tried to “flare up” and direct Dante towards a passageway he was digging…

---

Kadia found the passageway dim – there was no light within. However, in her focus, she feared little. Despite being in Hell, she felt…balanced. However, to see better she grabbed one of her hooked swords, and mentally fired it up. The glow of the metal - surprisingly not weakened at such temperature – lit the passageway.

She continued, past what looked like goblets in the alcoves, her leather-silk boots dampening her footsteps. Sometimes, an odd creature would slither by. Here, it was a small brown snake with a stag’s horns crowning its head. There, a large scorpion flying on batwings. All this was amazing to Kadia in her euphoria, and she felt she owned them all.

Suddenly, Kadia heard clanking, like a bounding of a knight in armor. Was it…

She checked her link…it was…

“Rurik!” she squealed with glee, and began to jog towards him. Down the hall, two bodies met. A metal nose shoved in Kadia’s face, the greasy thing like being licked by a puppy. Laughing Kadia hugged the metal fellow, her life companion…

[Espy]

"I didn't..get...him. And what is that sound?" Dante asked, referring to the strange gasps coming from deeper withing the cavern. A question, mostly to calm his nerves. Not that the dog's constant creaking was helping any.

Dante reached down -- was it digging something? -- and suddenly nearly had his hand torn off as it charged forwards down some sort of tunnel.

"...Erm." He motioned awkwardly to the girl, but then realized it was probably too dark for her to have seen. "...I'm going to go check on something."

Leaving Thomas to float next to her, he ducked into the cramped space and followed the clanking, and after a few moments, felt the tunnel widen. And there was someone ahead...the girl he had seen earlier. Not wanting to seem threatening, he stooped and leaned against a wall, gazing after "Rurik" as it ran almost headfirst into her. I suppose a creaky thing of metal and grease could make for a decent friend, huh.

"I take it he's yours?" Dante murmured quietly, thinking back several years ago.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

As they settle in the semi-darkness, safe for the moment, two of the Celestrine's soldiers shoulder their way back from the point to attend Thomas, taking his floating body from the blind man.

One of them pulls out some kinds of scanner and passes it over the priest's body. There is an erratic beeping, incessant but irregular, and he puts it away.

"His hearts have been desynchronized," the first one says, voice muffled through the respirator of his helmet. "They must be restarted." He nods to his companion, who opens a medical kit and produces a scalpel and a small diodic device.

Wasting no time, he disrobes the priest and makes three deep incisions, down the center of his chest and into each thigh. Priming the device, he peels back synthetic skin and nanitic muscular tissue to get at the electronic organs, attaching it to one after the other, first sending a negative charge to all three to stop them dead before calibrating the current and restarting them in proper synchronization.

Thomas' eyes flash open, not in pain, nor surprise -- placid and unbothered as the soldier seals the incisions with epoxy.

Saying nothing, he redresses and re-arms himself, nodding to dismiss his men before coming to kneel over Diogenes.

"Never did know your own limits," he mutters as he passes his hands over the assassin's body. There is no response, the man comatose and his organs failing.

"You earned this one way or another."

From the tip of each finger, a pin-prick of fire sparks into existence before Thomas, and with supernatural ease, he plunges them into Diogenes' flesh, burning away necrotic tissue and annealing the heart, lungs, kidneys, liver... thankfully the brain is yet undamaged -- neural surgery on psychics can be precarious.

Diogenes awakens with a roar, surging to his feet with explosive reflexive strength before staggering into the nearest wall. He is silent for a long moment.

"How... close?" he eventually gasps to the priest.

"Another moment and I would have had to resurrect you. And if you think my HEALING is uncomfortable..."

"...well enough."

Taking another moment to collect himself, testing his synapses and muscles, the assassin studies the broken blade of his khukri before throwing to the ground. He'll have a new one made when they return to Thyati'ra.

Striding out into the room beyond, he pauses to examine their surroundings.

The smell of sterilization battling, and losing, with rot. A keen chill in the air trailing down from above -- a gaping, man-shaped hole in the roof of the building... and no rubble below. Something ascended through the roof, and recently. Extending his sight through the hole, he sees nothing but yawning night above, and stars... stars too bright and looking to dance or whirl against each other in deadly contest, moving far too quickly.

Irrelevant.

The nature of the structure is immediately apparent, an asylum. All around, the walls are painted in waving script, smeared in blood and excrement, the same two words repeated endlessly, covering every spare space...

I AM. I AM. I AM. I AM. I AM. I AM.

Hell's ceaseless mockery.

Diogenes then turns his attention to the sole occupant of the lobby, bound with rusted iron chains to a decrepit wheelchair, wings plucked naked and quivering: an angel, it's gray, scar-mottled skin naked and bent emaciated over inhuman bones, joints where there should be none, and...

It's skull has been sawed open, and an emptiness leaks squalid fluid where its frontal cortex should have sat. The wound continues downward, the entire front of its skull removed leaving its eyes and optical nerves uncovered in staring anguish.

When the angel notices Diogenes, it gasps, the effort arching its back and straining its chains. Its feet flap uselessly just above the floor, its wings gyrate and snap open, yet it is helpless.

And it cannot look away.

[Quiet Man Cometh]

Tarja followed Diogenes into the room, mildly concerned that the assassin was unconscious mere moments ago, but waving it off as he appeared no more concerned with his sudden restoration than he had about anything else so far. Her attention is immediately drawn to the angel, chained, gasping, and…leaking… from its horrific wounds. She frowned. Why bother to leave it alive at all?

In the light of the flaming sword the angel looked little more than a miserable beast compared to whatever celestial being it once was, and she was never one to leave a beast to suffer…

Taking the sword in both hands, she leveled at the angel’s bloodied neck and swung.

[Gallagher]

There was much to be said for the spirit of these minnow-somethings. Fighting when there was no point in fighting. Sticking to one another even while standing on their own. He'd watched their battle, fully expecting to see meat go to waste in the bellies of those things. Yet none had fallen. He was prepared for them to give in to fear as any other beasts would in the face of the black. Yet they had fled for safety within it.

And, as the things had gathered themselves once more, he had followed them down.

Given all that he had seen from his minnows, he wasn't prepared for the way they floundered once they had set foot in the cavern. Some, though he hardly blamed them, couldn't be bothered to help their leaders. Still useless, even if not quite as predictable as he might have thought.

The strongest among them were the ones to watch, and watch he did. One that was no longer a being of flesh in the least, that would call for his death without knowing. A Mimic of those worth more than itself. And the other, fragile though it seemed, that would destroy with as much ease as the Mimic, yet did not. A Lion among its minnows.

It was the Lion's lead he followed, along with the somethings, into the den of filth. Among it all, one of the butchers, itself now carved as it would have carved others.

"And I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit."

Foolish, that a minnow would dare feel pity for a butcher such as this.

Death without knowing.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

As Tarja rears to behead the angel, its thrashings suddenly cease and it turns its agonized gaze to her, its eyes visibly swiveling. Its mouth struggles with the memory of articulation.

Looking up to her, mewling and pathetic, it tells her, "I love you." Trying to smile, it goes on, "I love you, as God loved me, so very much."

It manages the smile, but as soon as it does, it twists into a hideous snarl and the angel surges once more against its binding, snapping several of the chains. An unearthly presence alight int he depths of its mutilated gaze. "I WANT TO TEAR YOU OPEN AND RIP OUT YOUR LUNGS! I WANT TO GNAW UPON YOUR SPINE AND SIP YOUR MARROW UNTIL YOU DIE, AND DIE, AND DIE!!!!!"

Then, once more calm, helpless and pitiful, "They pr-promised I would be healed, they promised... AND THEY'RE LIARS! GOD-DAMNED LIARS AND I WANT TO BURN THEM ALIVE AND SWALLOW THEIR ASHES!"

Looking away, "I miss being someone's son..."

[Espy]

Dante turned and hurtled back through the tunnel towards the screams, skinning his arms as he ran and tripping his way into chamber. Regaining his composure as quickly as he could, he attempted to wrest the sword from Tarja's grasp, then let go when he realized she had stopped mid-swing. Gagging at the putrid odor of rot and waste, perhaps more so than any of the rest of the group, he cringed, and stare at the angel in front of him.

At least...I think it's an angel?

Holding his scarf over his nose, he reached down with a gloved hand and gently touched the tip of feather-less skeleton of what used to be wings, hoping that the creaking, rusted chains would hold.

I'd be in favor of helping it. He threw a pointed glance at Diogenes, then turned towards the angel. I suppose it can probably also hear me?

[Lawtan]

A cold, lime-grease nose rubbed against her face. Her arms were wrapped around the cold, but smooth, companion. The metal-chain tail wagged frantically, creating a cacophony of noise, but not enough. Kadia’s senses detected another figure, hidden in the shadow. Letting Rurik go, she stared, squinting, activating the software in her albino eye…focusing…a man.

Kadia mentally prepared to knock out the person, when a shattering scream split the air. A yell promising insanity and death…and it was gone. So was the man. Kadia got up, set her wrist-guns, and began bolting towards the sound. Rurik followed behind, leaving an echo of gear-on-gear…

Into a chamber they went. There was more light than just the infrared here…and it was coming from a chained…bird? Man? …Angel? Kadia gasped at the pitiful figure, and immediately activated a switch, opening a compartment in Rurik. She reached for medicines she carried.

The figure, emitting a dim light from – sockets? – began cackling again. Kadia stopped. She had read of some form of *punishment* similar to this before, and tried to recall it. Also, she couldn’t tell its aura…it was shapeless, or in disguise…

--------

[Object.Actions.Unidentifiable == 0
if Actions.Unidentifiable == 0
then Object == Potential_Threat]

Rurik growled at the thing. It wasn’t *right* - something was off about its aura, that much the mutt could tell from their mutual link…

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Not bothering to look at Dante, Diogenes conveys to him,

It hears no one. Its sensory association has been eradicated. The eyes see, the ears hear, but the mind remains deaf and blind. A solitary existence. It cannot even feel the pain of its isolation.

Growing disinterested with the angel -- it can tell them nothing, and is hardly any threat, he projects back to Thomas,

We waste time here. What is our next move?

I will determine that in a moment, comes the priest's response. There is a more pressing matter at hand.

Diogenes looks behind to see the priest approach the young woman and her pet, and without even trying can sense radiating hostility.

"What... is that?" he asks without inflection. "This beast of iron. It cleaves to you as a living hound. I can conceive of but two possibilities: a vital soul is bound to this... insulting frame, which though repellent, is neither crime nor sin. Or... it is possessed of a synthetic digital intelligence, the penalty for the creation, ownership, and tolerance of is summary execution, and immediate destruction of the abomination."

All at once, his rifle is in his hand, the tip of the barrel mere inches from Rurik's head.

"Do tell me."

Diogenes looks away from the spectacle and back to the protestations of the angel.

Is this truly the time, priest? You said it yourself, we are in Hell. What sway hold the laws of men, here?

I am an instrument of the Law. In my sight, it cannot but hold sway. Do not test me, I have not forgotten your insubordination earlier accepting the presence of that vagabond among us.

And what if I did test you, priest? There is a brain nestled somewhere in that titanium skull, a mind that can be crushed. Could you call forth your fires before I struck?

Has some infernal madness taken you? What is this talk? We are immersed in Hell and you speak sedition? I suggest you master yourself, and remember whom you serve.

Looking up to glare into Kadia's eyes, he slowly pivots the rifle until it is fixed on her head, her death mere microsecond away should she fail to answer to his satisfaction.

Judge not, that ye be not judged... Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you...

...thou hypocrite.

[Quiet Man Cometh]

Tarja barely felt the hands wrapped around her arm, though she resisted on instinct, and would have snapped at the blind man with no small amount of venom if her mind was turned in that direction. Instead, she just stared at the angel as though mesmerized by its lilting voice, before it breaks in erratic curses.

The sword held in her quivering grasp, Tarja gaped, stuttering with indecision. “I…It still speaks.”

Slowly, she lowered the sword, its tip pointing towards the ground, and she looked to Diogenes, though she spoke to no one in particular. “What do we do with it?”

She wrung her hands around the grip of the sword, having not quite abandoned her intentions, and completely unaware -for the time being- of the drama unfolding near a hole in the wall.

[Salone]

CONSUME

It was the only thought. The only thought there could be. Slay the flesh. Unhinge the flesh. Consume the flesh. Gorge on the rotted skin. Slay it. Skin it. Slough it. Peel it. Pick it. But above all, consume.

Until the grenades happened.

The force ripped through Lev, his body, through the...thing. Its claws were wrenched from his mind. It was not an easy withdrawal. Like a hook sunk deep in to the gill of a fish, it was a process that would normally take time and care to make the transition painless and smooth.

This was not painless, nor smooth.

Lev screamed, collapsing to the ground and raking his fingers across his head. His very mind was on fire. Hooked claws ripped at his very brain, his heart, what felt like his very soul were being split and ripped. Suddenly his body was the one that was ripped asunder as the hooks came unwillingly free. The pulses battered against him like a typhoon, harsh winds ripping out strand by strand of that which possessed him. He felt parts of his mind being ripped away, loosened by the tethered holds now forced from him There was no understanding. No reasoning. There was only pain.

He crumpled further, body going limp upon the fetid soil below him. His eyes rolled back in to his head, blood filling his eyes at the claw marks he has put across his head. Wind rushing, pulling even more from him bit by bit. The pain threatened to end him. And then...

Silence.

Dark. So very dark. So...cold? There was no light. Nothing to betray what the dark hid, but under his writhing form he could feel metal. A steel table below him, cracking leather straps above. And...cotton. A large swathe of cotton filled his mouth, robbing him of his ability to speak. All that escaped was muffled sounds which were quickly eaten up by the blackness.

Echoing footsteps. The closing of a metal door. Hard shoes against a concrete floor echoed closer. Still black. All black. Still the footsteps came closer. They stopped mere feet away, and were quickly followed by the clatter of small bits of metal upon metal. There was rustling. The flick of something. And then the loud whirring of a saw shattered the silence.

It deafened all. Obliterated all. The shock of noise jolted Lev, ripping the thread away from his eyelids. It wasn't dark. It had never been dark. His eyes had been shut for him. Someone had taken his sight away. But what?

Light blinded him, blood from the thread ripping through his soft tissue obscured his vision. And still the saw came. He could not wipe the blood away, could barely see what was above him. The only thing he could make out was the horrifically fast blade spinning away between both eyes, pausing for the moment before it came down.

Memories ripped themselves away. Everything he had ever known became slush, became gore and kibble as it mixed with fragmented bone matter. The hot nights on the African plains splattered across the lab coat of the saw's owner. Lev's burned body crawling through a mass of tangled limbs from a mass grave spun across linoleum floor before coming to a halt. His entire life flashed before his eyes, replacing the saw, and then found itself upon the wall. And then it went black.

NO. NO. PUT IT BACK TOGETHER.

Gargantuan skyscrapers of polished steel tickled the sky. Angry swirls of red and grey and yellow and brown swirled among the towers, whipping around one and then curling off to the next. The wind followed close on their heels, screaming hell and fire as it followed. This place was strange, foreign. At the base of each tower ran a pillar connecting them all to a central disc. The disc was everything. The disc was all. Everything rotated around the disc. The steel towers, in all their height and might, were forced to turn by these pillars between them. Structures incomprehensible in size bent as slaves to this center object, swirled among the colors, cut swathes in to them. The roiled, angrily separating then coming together again. First as strands, wisps, then cords and finally a large cloud before being churned again. The funnel whirled faster and faster, and everything became as one blur, one motion, one movement of speed and matter.

YOU ARE NOT DONE.

Darkness again. Pressure. Choking. Water, countless amounts of water pressing down on top of him. Eyes attempted to adjust to the burning saltiness invading them. Still, he could see. He could see them all. The darkness now was no barrier to his eyes. An eternal graveyard of battered ships, all broken upon the floor of this unknown ocean lay before him. Battleships, junks, skiffs, everything that had ever carried man across the unknowable depths that now housed them. There were too many to count. And though they numbered infinite, the corpses reaching upwards for salvation numbered more.

NOT THE RIGHT ONE.

Bones. Vast piles of bones. They stretched as far as the eye could see, and further still in to the yellow haze. A trio of suns beat down, baking and bleaching the remains. The air rippled and was disturbed further still by the sentinels that guarded this unholy place. They made long strides upon impossibly long skeletal legs, bones upon joints upon bones upon joints that disappeared somewhere to the unseen ground below. The legs then bunched and connected to small cages of ribs and clavicles that once again bent upon themselves and attached to larger portions still. As each cluster of legs finally connected to each other via a central grouping of bones, these further still connected to a spine that could only be described as colossal. The spine dominated the entire structure. Smaller ribs hung downward, not quite connecting, but the spines themselves dominated. As the spine grew larger to the front, it was ended by a large hand of bone. But the hands were wrong. Too many fingers dangled down at odd angles. They moved like pedipalps on a spider, making clicking sounds and odd scrapes as they rubbed together. The 'creatures' moved with a shambling grace, as the sheer scale of their movement made them seem both slow and swift at the same time.

NOT THIS PLANE.

Wet. Clammy. Blood. Lev removed his knife from the back of his head. His blood spouted freely from the wound. And then...it stopped. He eyed the knife as if it might come alive and bite him. Was this real? Was this like the others? Was...was this real?

His surroundings were barren. Concrete walls, battered with age and breaking from time. Spattered blood marred the floor. A large, olive green metal door hung from a single hinge in front of him. Beyond it was a dim hall in even worse shape than the room he occupied.

Shaking steps brought him forward. Whispers followed, licking at his heels and sniggering at his quickened footsteps. They became louder, catcalling and jeering as he pressed on. He finally gave in, fear overwhelming and consuming as he began to run. Blind panic set in as he became lost. Twists and turns, hallways doubling back in on each other. Whispers became open calls that became intelligible screams and calls for violence. The shouting grew louder, overtaking his mind as he stumbled forward, shoving a door open so hard it fell from the hinges.

THIS ONE.

And before him they all stood. Looking every bit the worse for wear. Dante. Thomas. Diogenes. Everyone else. And one more.

The angel.

[Lawtan]

Rurik gazed curiously at the gun – a curious device. He turned his head. He raised his head, and two eyes, flashing red and white with artificial light, glared at the gun pointed at Kadia. He lowers his rear legs, preparing to pounce…

[List(Hand.Item) == Gun
If Gun == 1, and Gun.target == Mistress,
then Hand == Enemy
…Gun == 1
…Gun.target == Mistress
Verifying Program Kill_Enemy…]

--------

Kadia freezes momentarily, uncertain what to do. She could try to run – her clothing was made to be night-camouflage – but she doubted it would work, and she could not let them destroy Rurik…

A noise in her head, deep and gutteral:
-Mistress, attack the enemy?-

Kadia sighs…protocol would dictate yes to the loyal ‘bot, but she knew it would not work.

Her mind adopting a commanding, yet feminine, tone responds
-Stand down…protocol 4222-9 Charlie Delta-

--------

Rurik, with a heave that sends an echoing metal clank, let his crouching legs collapse, The black boom-toy was still trained on him and Kadia. Rurik was less than worried - within the tail, an electric wiremesh/barbed net – a nasty tool – was primed to fire…

*Donk* The net hit a damaged portion of the tail, some dirt or perhaps a piece of metal jammed the otherwise silent device. Rurik tried to force the part to work…

----------

Kadia brought forth her carefully concealed paranoia and fear, She shivered and drooped slightly…

...a burly bearded man reeking of alcohol stood behind her…pain in her body…a fiery blast in the distance…charred bodies…shadows peeling flesh from bone…

Kadia raised her head, and the barrel looked more frightening – a snake ready to bite…the large dark fellow…no, he was the same as the man, as all men…but she can control him, and control this situation. She was Kadia the Huntress, and these, who would attack her, would feel the lioness’s wrath.

The group before her were strong – they had shields and arms…but they used most of the firearms in the battle. Meanwhile, she was mostly fresh in supplies. She was also clever. First, she had to get the gun out of her face.

Kadia pulled the metal/plaster from the foundation, pouring it around the gun and arm. Continuing, the floor itself seemed to pour around Thomas's legs.

"Why yes, Rurik is a part of my soul, priest." She spat in his face as she layered plaster and metal thickly around his limbs.
"Ironic I am a priestess, is it not?" She gave a haunting grin, "And it is so sad one such as you must consider my familiar as an abomination."
She cooled a little, partially due to Rurik's mental urging. "Now, I know you can break out of this. Even though I want to see your innards bleed for threatening my Rurik, I know better. Bye!"

Kadia kissed Thomas on the cheek. She and Rurik then began to run (Kadia having to withhold her rage and instinct to try to kill the superior foe for threatening her pup), knowing that would only hold the priest for a minute or two. However, she pulled from the area ahead of her, and weakened a support above the angel. With a creak and a crack, a series of tiles poured down the hole, bombarding the faceless light-being...

[Quiet Man Cometh]

Eventually, and perhaps thankfully, the commotion behind her grabbed Tarja’s attention. She hadn't seen the other psychic before, but she had sensed her presence. Even so, with the flare of Thomas’ power interfering and with innumerable foes previously occupying her attention, she had all but forgotten about the other girl.

Tarja came to a quick decision: Thomas was being stupid.

She turned abruptly, and held the sword out to the side. “Get over it, Priest! You think anyone cares about that right now? Confront her later, the machine is useful.”

Things changed rather abruptly when the floor started to cave upwards…

Tarja hissed and smacked the first tile to her in her direction out of the way with her sword, using it more like a club in her less than skilled hands. She was far more capable with her mind.

Tarja ceased the barrage of building materials that had headed for her, and consequently Dante as well, halting them midair and leaving them hovering as though at the edge of an unseen globe around her, before letting them fall uselessly to the ruined floor.

She snapped as she saw Kadia run by, “stupid girl! Do you want to cave the place in on us?!”