SJE/Session59

Session 59 - HEART OF DARKNESS REDUX

3 Resplendent Air

The Princess Magnificent - enraged by Orchid's refusal, unleashes the power of Oblivion. Standing in the centre of the courtyard, she unfurls her parasol and sweeps it around in a circle, the bells swinging and ringing. All around, Whiteshirts and Imperial legionaries fall, clutching at their bleeding ears, felled by the tale of the terror the bells’ turbulency tells. Even the Exalts are not immune. Brand claws at his ears as they erupt with blood. Orchid stuffs her fingers in her ears and, glowing golden-white with her Pearlescent Filigree Defence, scrambles away almost unharmed. Only the Captain, with his Durability of Oak, is immune.

Ravitsu, in full Deadly Beastman Transformations, swoops to the rescue. Half a dozen blinding-fast hacks with his direlance barely make an impression, though, as the princess blocks each with the shaft of her jangling parasol. Brand tries to hack it away. "Will you stop that infernal racket?" The Princess Magnificent merely ducks away from him.

Orchid turns her attention to the nearest of the zombies, folding her war fans and jamming them like spikes into either side of its neck. Injured, it is still able to strike back, but Orchid has already skipped away. Two more zombies shamble after Brand ("Braaaaains!") - he parries quite simply and flicks out his daiklave to cleanly sever their heads.

But this is just the start of the zombie menace - all over the battlefield, the Whiteshirts and Legionaries are dying in droves, thrashing as the Princess Magnificent's bells shriek, shriek out of tune and shatter their souls. Those who fall twitch and immediately rise again as a horde of "Braaaaains!"-hungry zombies.

Meanwhile, in the audience chamber, Shizu hurls bullet after bullet from her Sling Of Deadly Prowess at the Governor, who has taken up a position blocking the doorway to the infernal machine. They spatter off his stony skin. She punctuates the hail of bullets with exhortations to both the Governor - "Give this up! Whatever she promised you, it can't be worth turning this whole city into a shadowland!" - and Ledaals Takei and Hoshi - "In there! Destroy the infernal machine!"
Ledaal Takei objects: "But he's in the way!"
"Then go through him!"
"Leave this to the army!" The Governor gestures, drawing rock and stone up through the floor to form a wall, which blocks the doorway. The charging Ledaals hack at it with their jade daiklaves, but make little impression. "Damn him, there's no other way in!"

Outside, the Captain, his glowing aura projecting his gestures like shadow-puppets onto the wall behind the Princess Magnificent as he describes what he wants, organises another team attack on her. "See, when she raises her umbrella like that, hit her low where her defences are weakest!"

Brand Monkey Leaps high in the air above the Princess Magnificent, seeming to hang there for an eternity as she decides how to counter his attack. In the end, she raises her parasol high to sweep him aside. He Monkey Leaps away again. The Captain charges, powering himself up so enormously with his Essence and going so quickly that even his shadow is left behind for a moment or two. He kicks himself into the air off the legs of one zombie ("Braaaaains!") and the shoulders of another to flip himself over the Princess Magnificent’s head, striking a backhanded blow as he hurtles past. She ducks, leaving her parasol to deflect his blow aside almost with a will of its own.

Ravitsu stays toe-to-toe with her, swinging his direlance around twice in mighty circles, one low, one high. She leaps over the first and somersaults backward away from the second.

Orchid circles, moving away from the zombies and looking for an opening. "Ibrahim's plan be damned," she thinks. "I must do something about that awful hat..." She hurls her war fans at the somersaulting Princess's head and actually strikes home! One spinning fan gouges a chip of paint from the beak and slices away a handful of feathers on it's way to drawing a trickle of dark blood from the Princess's pallid cheek.
The Princess' eyes blaze with rage. "Nobody touches the hat!"
"It's for your own good!"
"All of Stygia trembles before this hat!"
"I'm not surprised... Do you even have a mirror?"
"I SHALL HURL YOU INTO A MONSTRANCE OF ETERNAL TORMENT!"

The Princess Magnificent's shrieking outburst transforms into a piercing wail. The thin light of the dawn is utterly snuffed out as darkness radiates out from her to cover the whole of Solaria Magna. Black lightning crackles around her as she draws upon her full power, the unholy cadences of the dirge she sings echoing throughout the city and sucking the life energy from everyone who hears it. All over the city, people die and begin to rise again as zombies ("Braaaaains!").

All the nearby Exalts are struck hard by this unholy paean, bleeding from the nose and ears. Only Brand is far enough away to withstand it unharmed. Brand, Captain Ibrahim, Orchid and Ravitsu glance at each other. They have no choice, they can’t repel sorcery of that magnitude...

In the audience chamber, where the Princess’s dirge is no more than a muffled hint of noise, Shizu and the Ledaals can hear the Governor screaming and flailing behind his stony barrier. Shizu yells at the Ledaals to stand aside and looks for a weak spot in the barrier. Seeing a small crack, she fires a single sling bullet into it as a marker, then hurls a full-on Cascade of Cutting Terror at it. As the dust and glowing essence fades, the wall is still standing, albeit marked with deep scores and gouges. Shizu gestures in frustration at the Ledaals: "Why are you just standing there?"
"You told us to!"
"I'm finished now, get on with hitting it!" They set to with a will, taking further chunks out of the Governor's barricade.

Brand leaps across the courtyard to snatch up Orchid and, with another mighty bound, carries her into the palace, ricocheting through the corridors in an effort to find Shizu and get away from the Princess Magnificent. Her deadly song has penetrated into the corridors of the palace, where dead servants litter the corridors, already rising as zombies ("Braaaaains!") to prey upon their surviving ex-colleagues. Moving without apparent hurry, yet no slower than they are for all that, the Princess Magnificent glides after Brand & Orchid, her bells tolling, tolling, tolling…

Ravitsu grabs the Captain and takes to the air, soaring high over the city. They behold a terrible apocalypse. There are zombies ("Braaaaains!") everywhere, chasing down terrified Solarians. Ravitsu uses his Lion Roar Method, his voice booming out to be heard all around Solaria Magna: "FLEE! FLEE FOR YOUR LIVES! GO TO SOLARIA MINOR!"

Shizu is fed up with the slow progress at getting through the wall. "Have you lot got any firedust, grenades… Things that go ‘boom!’?" The Ledaals are unable to help. "They're in there," Hoshi gestures at the barrier. "It used to be the armoury..." Shizu rolls her eyes and sighs, looking around the audience chamber for something hard enough to make an impression on that stone. Her eyes fall on the jewel-encrusted throne - well, they would, wouldn't they? - and she prises a diamond away from it to hurl it in another Cascade of Cutting Terror. This finally gouges a hole, though it's not quite big enough for even Shizu to wriggle through, yet.

Yelling "Shizu! Shizu!" Brand bounces into the audience chamber. "Here!" Shizu waves him over. "Have you got anything that can get through this?"
Brand puts Orchid down, eyes the stony barrier and hefts his grand daiklave, but can't help feeling that "This is no time to experiment with masonry, Shizu!"
Shizu rushes through a hurried explanation: "Machine... bodies... shadowland... Governor... locked in!"
Without a further word, Brand swings his daiklave around and smashes aside what is left of the barrier. Stepping through the doorway, the Solars & Team Ledaal gag at the charnel smell of the infernal machine. Beneath it, there is now a pit of howling darkness. The conveyor belts and terrible iron claws are working at a furious pace, hurling bodies - some of which, having arisen as zombies, are struggling feebly - into the furnace which is now ablaze with black and purple necromantic energy. The chill that is falling over Solaria Magna is at its most intense here.
Orchid looks to Brand for advice. "Tell us which part to break."
"I don't know!"
"Then look!" She snarls at him, then turns to Shizu and the Ledaals. "You! Cover our backs!"

Shizu instead leaps onto one of the conveyors, having spotted the Governor being dragged along into a mass of grinding, bladed machinery. She tries to drag him away, but is unable to stop him from being pulled further in, as the whirling machine snags his flailing foot and drags him screaming into its the belly.

The Ledaals, also ignoring Orchid, watch Brand as he studies the machine, stroking his chin. "There!! He points. "Hit that bit there!" Brand, Orchid and the Ledaals strike at the machinery as hard as they can. Behind the ringing chorus of their blows, the bells of the Princes Magnificent are a muffled monotone, growing louder by the moment.

Ravitsu and the Captain fly over the streets around the palace, swooping down time after time to chase zombies ("Braaaaains!") away from the few living souls they can find. Soon, they spot the last of the Whiteshirts, half a dozen survivors pursued by well over a hundred zombies. Ravitsu drops off the Captain so that he can take command, and covers their retreat with diving attacks upon the shambling undead horde, skewering zombies three at a time on his direlance, clawing off their heads, and crushing them into the blood-soaked sand.

Inside the palace, the combined attacks aren't making much impression on the enormous machine, so Brand taunts it. "Come on!" He roars. "Can't you taste my Essence? Don't you want my life? Don't you want me!" As he speaks, he clambers atop the main boiler. As the clawed arms strike out for him, he dodges aside, letting the clawed arm strike the machine itself, gouging a hole in the boiler that spurts out a stream of scalding-hot blood.

The Captain leads the Whiteshirts through the streets, gathering other refugees up with them as they go. On a rooftop, he spots a small band of civilians fighting desperately to repel the zombies ("Braaaaains!") that are clambering up the walls to get at them. The Captain leads his band onto a neighbouring rooftop, and throws a convenient ladder across the gap as a bridge. He stands astride the end of the ladder, battering zombies aside and hurling them down to cover the refugees' escape. Once they're all across, he picks up the ladder, shaking off a few dangling zombies, slides down it onto a merchant's wagon in the alley below. One mighty kick shoves the barrels from the ladder so that they roll among the zombies, knocking them down and forming a barrier behind which the Captain and the civilians can fall back.

Ravitsu, feeling that Brand, Orchid and Shizu have been in the palace for far too long, flies off to investigate what has happened to them.

Orchid, the Ledaals and Brand do their best to give the infernal machine a good spanking. One last effort from Brand, using the very last of his Essence and will to hack through support beams, pipes and control panels, is almost - but not quite - enough to shut it down. Gouts of bloody steam and dark necromantic Essence shoot out all over the chamber. Seeing that the infernal machine is almost destroyed, Orchid begins to summon a stormwind to carry herself and her comrades away, demanding: "Someone make me a hole in the wall!"

Shizu's Lock-Opening Touch frees the horribly-maimed Governor from the grip of the machine. Leaping back to safer ground with him, Shizu tries an appeal to his better nature, hoping to overturn the seductive wiles of the Princess Magnificent. "For the love of the Realm, you must seal the doorway against her!"
"No! I love her!"
"Don't you remember?" Shizu tries another angle. "You have to keep it safe, seal the door against intruders!"
"What invaders...?" The governor is befuddled, full of doubt. "The rebels...?"
"Yes! Yes, the rebels!"
The Governor glances around the room, but hardly seems to see what is there. "We must... protect the machine."
"No, seal the door first to keep the rebels out!"
The Governor gestures feebly, creating another barrier of stone across the doorway. Shizu quickly cold-cocks him, just in case he changes his mind.

Ravitsu flies through the corridors of the palace and, as he approaches the audience chamber, hears the moaning and groaning of the Princess's bells. Stepping out into the chamber, he takes on the form of the Maiden Of The Mirthless Smile. "So, Princess, we meet again. How lovely to see you..." He smiles coldly.
"Maiden? What are you doing here?"
"We have a score to settle."
"I shall kill your lover, and give you her corpse as a gift..."
Ravitsu merely smiles.
"Do not oppose me, Maiden, I do our master's work."
"You're doing a useless job... Oh, what happened to your hat?"
Fwoosh! The Princess levels her parasol at Ravitsu.
"Never mind,” Ravitsu smirks. “It didn't suit you anyway..."
As the Princess screams and hurls herself at him, Ravitsu turns and sprints through the corridors, calling upon Luna's favour to let him keep ahead of her unholy speed. He sidesteps into an opulent bedroom, shapeshifting into the form of the mouse that he copied in Solaria Minor, complete with a painted-on Solar symbol. But the Princess is already there - the dead travel fast, especially with Lunging Phantom Method. As Ravitsu turns the corner, the Princess Magnificent is already towering over him...

Brand and the Ledaals ponder what to do next. "We should sit tight," Takei ventures. "She will be behind that door, don't risk it!"
"We can't stay here, it's going to blow!"
"We should have left this alone, and waited for reinforcements."
"What, and let it make a shadowland over the whole country?"
Orchid, a whirlwind of Essence beginning to swirl about her, is losing her cool. "Stop talking, and do something, you idiots! Is nobody listening to me? I asked for a hole in the wall!"
Shizu kneels by the Governor. "What about him?"
"What about him?" Brand shrugs.
Orchid is even less sympathetic: "He's getting exactly what he deserves..."
Even the Ledaals are stony-faced. Seeing that she'll get no help in carrying the Governor away, Shizu draws her knife so at least she can give him a clean death.

Ravitsu, squeaking, sprints between the feet of the Princess and leaps to cling onto the skirts of her gown, hiding with his Stealthy Fox Method. She shrieks and turns on the spot, trying to catch a sight of him: "Come out, come out, wherever you are!" As her skirts swing around, Rav leaps for cover underneath the bed. He's just too late! A bolt of black lightning spears out of nowhere and shatters the bed into a cloud of feathers, splinters and scraps of charred cloth. Switching into his hawkman form, Ravitsu dives for the window, bursting through it in a shower of broken glass and making for open sky.

Brand, Shizu and the Ledaals discuss the best way to get through the wall. Perhaps they could go through the ceiling, instead.... Orchid, her stormwind now almost fully formed, shouts over the howling tornado. "Less talk! More hole in wall!" She finally gets the hole she wants as Brand, Shizu and the Ledaals smash through the back wall. Picking up Brand and Shizu, Orchid barely squeezes her stormwind through the hole. She reaches out a hand to Hoshi & Takei. "Come with me if you want to live." They glance at each other - this is an Anathema, after all! - but have little choice other than to acquiesce.

Brand chucks a firedust grenade back through the hole in the wall, as one last effort to break the terrible machine, then Orchid hurls her whirlwind through the corridors of the palace, hurling zombies ("Braaa- urk!"), corpses and sundry fixtures and fittings around. Stormwind Rider wasn't really intended for confined spaces, but Orchid couldn't care less...

The Captain, chivvying the last of his followers out through the city gates, hurls his next-to-last bottle of rotgut at the zombie ("Braaaaains!")... Orchid pushes her whirlwind as fast as it will go, back through the same city streets she took when she pursued the Princess Magnificent to the palace. Such a short time ago, but it seems an eternity... Ravitsu soars high above the palace...

With an earth-shaking crash, the centre of the palace explodes in a geyser of blood, steam, iron and coruscating necromantic energies. The Princess Magnificent's terrible shriek of anger and the tintinnabulation of her bells are audible above even this.

Ravitsu, buffeted by the shockwave, looks upon the ruined palace. "As I said," he speaks with the Maiden Of The Mirthless Smile's voice. "Lovely to see you..."

---

Return to SJE