NPF Avatars IV, Chapter VII: The Caryatid in the Cave

[Arhra]

The darkness slowly parted and Arhra found herself slung over Rei's shoulder. The others were arguing about where they were going. Remembering something important, Arhra neatly slid off Rei's shoulder and headed for them.

Syttulg was first in her path. Arhra jabbed a hand at his still musclebound chest, fingers splayed and digging in. A chaotic swirl of madness was in her eyes. Calling Chaos, a corona of flickering shapes of flame danced around her, crying out in ecstatic praise. Syttulg suddenly choked, weird long fingers of something moving beneath his skin. Blood burst on the plant-man's lips as branches erupted out of him, roots questing for soil and the sprouting vines tearing him apart.

Lips curled back into a madman's smile, Arhra drew forth a whip of icy blue flame, sending it curling around Flare, entangling the slime-girl. At its touch the bright, orange ooze of her body boiled off into a foul vapour. Flare, ensnared and trapped, thrashed as she evaporated away to nothing.

Hawk and Inbred charged the crazed being of Chaos as she dropped her whip. Arhra danced off to the side, one arm slicing through the blast of wind Hawk sent at her. the blow followed through and contacted Hawk at the moment he came into reach. The bird exploded, feathers raining down as if someone had turn a pillow open.

Momentum behind her blow, Arhra brought her leg around and slammed it into Inbred's waist. The half chocobo staggered back a few steps and Arhra dove at him. He felt pale, chill hands close around his throat, drinking his life, and then he felt no more.

"Admiral Arhra?" Rei shouted as Arhra casually tossed aside the withered husk, "what are you doing?!" Arhra turned, a fist punching through the android's chest and then, as unstable energy crackled over Rei, Arhra tossed her into the midst of the remaining NPFers. Laughing hysterically now, Arhra shielded her eyes as the resulting blast leveled trees, leaving nothing but charred dust at its centre.

Bursting with energy, Arhra declared herself king. She should have gone with 'queen' but felt king had more of a ring to to it. Then the world tottered, trees melting, shadows running like ink and holes in the world tearing open, showing the timeless madness beyond. There was a feeling of pressure and then rising darkness swallowed her.

* * *

"Guh?!" Arhra said blurrily as the darkness slowly parted. She found herself slung over Rei's shoulder the android having just given her a tight squeeze. The others were arguing about where they were going. Blinking confusedly, she realised what was going on. "Oh, I was having the most interesting dream. You all were in it." she said happily.

Slipping of Rei's shoulder, Arhra tried to regain her bearings. She started with an assessment of herself - it would be plain rude to seek bloody vengeance at this point in time. There was also the joy of delaying gratification. Besides, she felt generally happy right now. It was probably a side affect of that energy overload she'd just been involved in.

She started by checking for any effects of her recent travails. A quick inspection as she poked and prodded her fine physique showed all body parts were in the right place. She felt digustingly fit once more, the withering effect of those accursed fruits seeming to have been more than balanced out by the thrive spell. That brought something else to her attention - the spell did have a side effect. "Woo! I'm taller!" Arhra shouted with glee. She was still short.

Her clothes certainly weren't in good shape - being torn at by vines, partially revived into the plants they had been made from, subjected to the unfriendly environment of the innards of a giant, gelatinous fat guy and then in the middle of an explosion tended to do that. Still, thanks to narrative casuality, although ragged, there was enough to cover the essentials. "My clothes and the universe seem to be racing to see who dies first." Arhra muttered to herself. There was that other set of seemingly indestructable clothing secreted away in the pocket dimension she carried around wherever she went, but she wasn't nearly desperate enough to wear that costume yet.

Rummaging through her pockets, she found something in her pockets and and held it over her head excitedly. You could practically hear a simple fanfare. Arhra got the Title Deed! "Oooo." she said, "I've always wanted a mutant fruit orchard to call my own."

Rolling it up in one hand, she looked at the others, "So, is everyone together? Did I miss anything important while I was out?"

OOC: How better to start a chapter than violently killing everyone eh? Since there was a tiny bit to get wrapped up here, I thought it would be jarring to jump straight to the Caryatid. Still, there's walking and things to get straightened out for now!

[Bailey]

As Thog got hit by the fruit, bafflement spread across his face. Well, it was there already, but now moreso. Then, a grin broke his face as he tasted his much-beloved fruit. In his absolute joy, he ate twelve of them, and shoved a further six down the throat of the musclebound plantman. Or possibly he was trying to choke Syttulg and failing miserably. Either way, Syttulg's nannites used the energy obtained from the fruit to heal his massively damaged body from the abuse Thog had put it through.

Syttulg wandered over to Skyshot and stood dumbly beside him, vaguely understanding that he owed Skyshot something but not quite sure what it was.

[Flarecobra]

"Hey, ya'll go on ahead...I'll catch up." I said, gesturing to Mauve. After all, I had to rest a bit to recover my strength, and to regenerate myself after being exploded.

[Mauve Mage]

"You sure?" Mauve asked doubtfully. "Will you be able to find the others again once you're healed?"

Absently she tossed a healing spell Tarrin's way-- She wasn't sure what powers of recovery the guy had, but being squashed into the ground by a bazillion-point lardball couldn't be good for one's constitution.

"Well, I guess if you're sure about it..." Mauve continued with a shrug. "We'll save some caryatid for you. Or... y'know... whatever we happen to run into en route to said caryatid." She shoved her hands into her pockets and turned towards the whispering forest once more. At least Ahrha was awake now, meaning they might actually have an idea about where to go next. She still refused to put too much faith in Lumaes' sense of direction-- Never ask a hallucinating skeleton for directions, that's how the old saying goes.

[Steel Shadow]

"Do you ever get the feeling the world only exists to hurt you?" Steel called down to the NPFers. Or called up. He was upside down, his foot tangled in his cape, which had gotten caught in a tree branch. He wasn't to clear how he had gotten up there, but he did remember picking Arhra up, following after the very few people who seemed to know where they were going, then some powerful force grabbing Arhra and slinging him into the air in the process.
Grumbling about hating the world in general, Steel tried to reach up and untangle himself. Unfortunatly moving put to much pressure on his cape, which was pretty wornout as it was. With a loud ripping sound it tore away from the branch, sending Steel plumeting to the ground.

[Mauve Mage]

"Do you ever get the feeling the world only exists to hurt you?"

The ground shook as Steel impacted with the floor, face first. Mauve shrugged.

"Oh yeah," she said dismissively, waving a hand. "I've known that for ages. Long enough for Fate to make a running gag out of it. The trick is not to die."

[Hawk]

Having had his request ignored, Hawk was now in a slightly bitter mood and so was grumbling to himself about the unfortunate direction his life had taken when this damn curse had been put upon him.

"Sodding curses! Never-ending grief and misery...." *Incoherent mumbling* "...and damned immortality to-boot!" *Yet more mumbling* ".. I USED to command armies! I USED to command RESPECT!

And so Hawk thought back to better times as a strange inaudible "vvvvvvvvvmmmmmmmm", sound was heard coming from nowhere as...

Lost style flashback one begins...

It was a grim day. A light rain had begun falling a short while ago, an ominous sign. The then human form of he who would one day be known as The Hawk of Battle, sat upon a great black horse as he surveyed the opposing force accross the field. At his back, nothing less than an army was assembled. They weren't the best trained men, but they were battle hardened and eager for blood, and sometimes that in itself was better than simple training. Only war could prepare a man for war and these men had seen more war than most.

A man rode up to Hawk, and faced him;

"Commander Hawk, they will wish to Parlay before the battle. To deliver their ultimatum.."

"There will be no Parlay", Hawk said, not turning from the army in front of him, "it is not neccesary, and besides..." He turned towards the soldier, a grim smile crossing his face, "they may notice our surprise!"

"Then I guess we must begin the battle, Sir."

"Indeed we must." Hawk turned and surveyed his archers. "Archers... Ready!!!" A row of archers a hundred men strong prepared their weapons. FIRE!!!

A hundred arrows flew high into the air, arched high over the battlefield and pelted into the enemy, who had already raised their shields to protect themselves. Most were unharmed, but it didn't matter, they were not intended to kill, merely to get a message accross: The battle has begun, the next move is yours.
------------------------------
On the other side of the field, the enemy commander got the message. "Fine, if he will not Parley, then he will be killed", he said to his second-in-command. "They have no Cavalry, send in the horse!"

"Yes sir!", His second replied. A few shouted commands later and the enemy cavalry was bearing down on Hawk and his army...
------------------------------
Hawk saw the enemy cavalry and smiled. He turned back to his archers. "Light it!" A line of fire was struck across the front line of archers. "Light 'em up!" As one, the archers obeyed and lit the ends of their arrows. "Fire!" With a great many twangs, the archers let rip, a hundred flaming arrows aimed at the fast approaching cavalry. Unfortunately for the cavalry, the field had been specially prepared beforehand. Oil had been soaked into the ground and as the arrows struck it, it burst into flames, engulfing and surrounding the suddenly surprised horse.

Now for phase two, Hawk thought. He turned to the young soldier again. "Sound it" The soldier nodded, raised a horn to his lips, and blew.

The enemy general was wrong. Hawk DID indeed have cavalry, but not on the field. Instead, they had been waiting in ambush on either side of their foe. Hidden in the woods, they had moved silently till they were almost behind the enemy. At the sound of the horn the ambush was sprung! Fire to their front and charging cavalry to their rear, all their cavalry already dead and their general dead within minutes the battle did not last long.

Hawk watched silently till the fires died down before advancing the rest of the army.

The entire enemy force was soon dead. Dead to the last man...

Another vvvvvmmmmmmmmm and...

Lost style flashback one ends...

Back in the present, Hawk flew off ahead of the others, still grumbling.

[Steel Shadow]

"Oh yeah," she said dismissively, waving a hand. "I've known that for ages. Long enough for Fate to make a running gag out of it. The trick is not to die."

"I shall try to keep that in mind" Steel groaned, laying face down in the mud where he'd fallen, his voice muffled by the ground. He slowly rolled over, facing the sky. "I think I'll just stay here and catch my breath. You guys go save the world without me."
It was then he became aware of a familiar whispering.
Shred their skin... Roots drag them down... teeth rip flesh... crush their bones... snare them... strangling vines... blood seeps in loam... claw them open...
"On second thought" He said brightly, trying to drag himself to his feet "I'm sure you'd be completely helpless without me to help you, and it is saving the world after all, not to mention the poisonings, why don't we just get moving along and not stay here now?" He managed to haul himself to his feet and stood swaying slightly, as if he'd had just a liiitttle to much to drink. "Now where'd that healer guy get to? I do believe I have some sort of cild moncusion." He said, looking around for Skyshot.

[Tarrin]

Mauves healing energies rippled thru Tarrins body, the rhino form had stoped him from being crushed but he had taken damage and the offhand spell gave him back his vigor again.
"Thanks Mauve" he thanked the mage and started to feel himself to ensure eveything was where it should be, satisfied that it was he smiled and began to follow the majority of the Npfer's.

[Lumaes]

One eye twitched with irritation, skeletal mouth twisting into a frown.
Lumaes was not very happy... He pinched the slimey thing sharply between his fingers, then, before it could ooze away from his grip he tossed it roughly into a clean jar that, from the fading label, could be seen to have once held guava jam. He screwed the lid on tightly, not bothering to punch any air holes - if the slime couldn't survive being trapped in an airtight container than it shouldn't have allowed itself to be put in one.
He frowned again, sniffing huffily.
"The trick is not not to die, its to die with such style and panache that the Grim Reaper" his eyes blaze gleefully, "is enamoured to the death so allows you to have another... and another... and another as long as you keep doing it with style"
He decided to give up coercing them to follow him, he knew the way and he supposed he would have to set up for their eventual arrival - though from the look of them that could take years. The tile flickered underneath him as if from bad reception before dissapearing completely, sentencing him to a drop to the floor as more of the poisonous toxins dissapeared from his body. With a whistle he dusted himself off, it would be much less draining to walk now. Still keeping that joyous, yet somehow strangely melancholy, tune going he strode off into the forest.

[Arhra]

After what felt like a very long wait, the NPFers were finally before the place where the Caryatid waited. Great carven doors were in front of them, a massive intricate mechanism forming part of the pattern formed by the inlaid precious metals. Fortunately, they did not need some manner of large key to open it.

"Now remember," Arhra said, "I'll have to be ready to contain the explosive energy released when the seal is destroyed, so I won't be able to help much during the battle with the Caryatid. You'll have to take her on yourselves. Try not to die. Here we go."

Arhra opened the doors, gears spinning and counterweights moving as the double doors swung ponderously inward. The first thing they heard was the music, a sweet piping from within. The avatar of Chaos walked lightly through as the gap between them opened, the others close behind.

It was vast, you'd think such a huge chamber of rock couldn't exist. The ground was covered in soft sand, together with the piercing brightness - vents and crystalline formations on the vaulted expanse of the roof refracting light about the chamber - gave the air of a desert. Scattered around the place were rocky outcrops, covered with thick, lush greenry and creepers climbed all over the cave walls. The walls had statues of varied, odd looking warriors spaced evenly aorund the place, similiar statues also appearing on some of the larger outcrops of rock.

The placements of the crystals and rocky outcrops formed a pattern, the complex geometry capturing the eye and dragging it inwards. At the very centre, was a flat topped mass of rock, a vein of crystal running through it marking out a great runic symbol. A portion of the rock spiked up, like some great throne threaded again with crystal. Seated upon the throne was the Caryatid of Earth, playing a slender flute.

The music stopped.

"I'll try and reason with her." Arhra said.

Stepping forwards she spoke, "Your temple is failing before the approach of the Invisible Moon and the seal is not performing its intended purpose. I demand you release the seal so that my companions may face the Herald of the End Times."

The Caryatid stood, flute grasped in one hand. She stood strong and tall, skin of smooth, polished stone inlaid with metal in delicate patterns. Fitting with the earth's association with the verdancy of nature, her long tresses seemed mainly composed of leafy vines, the occaisional glint of a metallic thread showing through. Her lush figure was draped with a mixture of fabrics and lengths of finely woven metal filaments, adorned with amulets set with gems and precious stones as well as vines with coppery leaves, impossible to tell if they were alive or just cunning artifce. Eyes that glinted like diamonds fixed themselves on the small figure of Arhra.

"You are one who would bring Chaos." The Caryatid's voice was feminine and harmonious, though unusually deep, "The Concordant Sodality did not create me to fall to Chaos. I shall not allow you to break the Seal. Depart or be destroyed."

"The negotiations have failed!" Arhra cried, "Get her!"

But, even as Arhra spoke, a swirling cloud of sand rose up around the Caryatid, spreading outwards as the floor begain heaving in swells and waves like a sandy sea, whirlpools of sand forming and drifting about. View of the Caryatid hidden, the NPFers could hear the piping of her flute once more, the tune changed. With this new song, the mouths of the statues gaped open, large snakes slithering out. To everyone's surprise, several of these snakes immediately rose up, a great bulge moving up their throats, and coughed up wicker baskets. The tops of these slid off, a number of smaller snakes pouring out. As the sandstorm swept out to engulf the NPFers, the lenses on the roof that swung into position, focusing the refracted light into slender rays of burning intensity, just seemed like overkill.

OOC: To summarise, the Caryatid is in the middle of a confusing sandstorm - this sand storm will supernaturally get you turned around but varies in how severe it is over its area. Though still patchy in severity, it gets worse towards the centre. To even get near her, you'll also have to get past basket snakes, mobile sand vortexes seeking to drag you down, killer plants if you go near one of the rocky outcrops and sun rays racing around the room and seeking to fry you like an ant under a magnifying glass. As you can probably guess, this battle is Death By Chocolate. (http://forum.nuklearpower.com/showpost.php?p=421096&postcount=14) Monster profiles are here. (http://forum.nuklearpower.com/showpost.php?p=449801&postcount=14)

[Steel Shadow]

"Can anyone-!" Steel began, but was cut off as sand filled his lungs and sent him into a coughing fit. He pulled down his bandana, converting it into a sort of cowboy mask to protect his mouth. He sheilded his eyes with his hand. "Can anyone do anything about this sand?!" He repeated loudly.

It was insane. The storm was all around them, causing Steel's cape to spread out behind him. It would have looked impressive if not for all the holes. It was even less impressive when a laser ran across it seconds later, setting it alight.

"Oh come on!" he yelled as he looked back, untying the flaming cloth from around his neck. The wind tore it off and it disapeared from sight. Steel was left wearing his blue shirt and jeans. Combined with his blue bandanamask, he looked quite distinctly blue. And very distinctly pissed. "That was my favorite cape." He muttered. Freeing his sword, he decided to take out his frustration on the snakes blocking his way to the caryatid.

[Skyshot]

"Haven't I dealt with an indoor sandstorm before..." Skyshot wondered while shielding his eyes with his voluminous sleeve. "Wait, yeah, I have! Control Weather!"

He suddenly noticed a miniature green angel floating next to his elbow. Skyshot winced. Minor supernatural beings were never a good sign, especially if they were carrying books like this one was.

"You'd be advised to re-read the description of Control Weather," it said in an even voice, quite audible despite the raging sandstorm. "It can't actually DO that."

"Aw!" Skyshot yelled, lacking nifty angel powers to be heard despite pretty much anything. "Anything else in my arsenal?!"

The angel leafed through the book, somehow unaffected by the raging winds and blinding sand.

"Maybe Earthquake. Given what you're up against, I'd give it...maybe fifty-fifty. By the way, that Sanctuary spell has about ten minutes left on it, after which point this sandstorm's going to hurt."

"It already does!"

"No, it simply hurts now. In ten minutes -- nine, rather, now -- when the majority of the sand grains stop miraculously missing you and the wind stops being a little weak over on this side, it will hurt."

"Ooh! Boldface!"

"Bold what?"

"Uh, never mind! You got anything else for me?!"

"Just one." The angel made a beckoning motion, prompting Skyshot to lean in towards it. "Don't flirt with her," it whispered. "It won't work out in the long run."

"Okay, I -- wait a second! 'In the long run?!' What would happen now?!"

"Gotta go." A second later, Skyshot noticed he was no longer seeing the angel. He decided to wonder exactly how it left his vision later. Instead, he crouched down and put his palms on the ground.

"Earthquake!"

[Bailey]

Syttulg charged towards the Caryatid, directly into the sandstorm, and came charging back out the other side without ever having gone through the center. He careened into the wall and gave a grunt of dismay as he looked at the wall. obviously this wall had just been put here to block him from smashing the rock lady, so he slammed a fist into the wall, turning some of it into sand. He slammed another fist in a bit higher, and began to climb, creating handholds as he went.

[POS Industries]

Rei activated her shield bubble as the sandstorm engulfed her, electromagnetic energy crackling loudly as it was stuck by the raging sands. Her view of the Caryatid sufficiently obscured, the android decided to focus on more immediate concerns.

That being, why she suddenly felt heavier.

A simple solution for one with a built-in gravity field generator buried within the confines of her belly. The generator's dull hum completely drowned out by the roar of the storm and it's impact against her energy shield, Rei proceeded to negate the pull of gravity around her to zero and jumped up into the air with full intent to take flight!

One short hop ensued as she was quickly pulled back to earth.

"Hmm, that was odd," she stated curiously to herself as she channeled more power to the generator. As she stood unmoving, she pondered to herself how exactly this should be possible if her personal gravity field had been completely reveresed.

So she put even more power into it! She grunted, growled, groaned, grimaced, and did her best approximation of a Native American gravity dance, but to no avail. The Caryatid's own gravity control powers were completely negating hers.

"Awww, man," she sighed, "I really liked that power, too!"

[Hawk]

Laser, snakes, sandstorms, vortexs' and killer plants.

Hawk ignored them all and charged straight for the Caryatid, intending to test just how think her hide was and because he figured that, as there were so many things now trying to kill them, the quicker they killed the Caryatid the better.

Hawk rushed forward into the sandstorm... and promtly fell out of the sky. He hit the ground hard, and his own forward motion carried him onwards as he slid accross the sand.

"What the FUCK?!", he asked confusedly, after he picked himself up of the dirt. He attempted to flap his wings and get himself airborne again, but to no avail. "Damn it, I'm grounded. Need asistance over here!" Hawk called out to the others, hoping someone would save him VERY soonish.

He attempted to fly once more, but again he failed, just as he heard a strange "hissing" sound behind him. He turned as fast as he possibly could (which wasn't all that fast now he was stuck on his feet), just as a snake launched itself at him. Reacting without thinking, Hawk managed to fire of a blast off solid air at the creature, throwing it backwards as it's body exploded in a shower of blood due to the crushing force of the blast. But then he heard the horrifying cacophony of hissing around him as dozens more snakes surrounded him.

"REALY need assistance over here!" Hawk shouted to the others, as he began trying to blast open a path through the wall of snakes and get back to the relative "safety", of the NPFers.

[Arhra]

After having given the order to attack, Arhra was busy herself. Seeing the sandstorm swirling outwards, she'd chosen to keep in the shelter of the cavern's edges, where the sandstorm was at its weakest. Looking back she found that at some point the massive doors behind them had shut again, looking sturdily immovable. In hindsight, she really should have seen that coming.

But doors that mysteriously closed in preparation for large battles were not her concern at the moment. Muttering to herself, a snarl of magic knotted between her hands like a cat's cradle, Arhra was getting her little trick ready for when the Caryatid was defeated.

However, seeing a number of snakes coming at her, having slithered out of the mouths of the statues along the walls, Arhra felt suddenly concerned. Her hands were tied up at the moment. She took a step backwards, one foot stepping on her other heel to slide that foot free of its shoe. Eyeing the closest snake very carefully, she watched as raised its head and struck at her foot. Lightning quick, Arhra lifted her leg up and out of its reach. Fangs clacking shut on empty air, she stomped back down on its neck with her bare foot, trapping it. It thrashed for a few seconds and withered, Arhra siphoning off its life.

The other half dozen snakes paused, seeming to consider this development as Arhra kicked the wretched husk aside. As one they all turned and began slithering off with great haste to disappear behind a dune. "That's right!" Arhra shouted after them, "You'd better run!" Another glorious victory. She chuckled - one of the snakes had looked like it was about to throw up.

Turning her mind back to important matters, Arhra was distracted by Syttulg run back out of the battle and begin trying to attempt to climb the wall, Arhra decided to give her considered opinion on the matter, "The Caryatid's the other way you dolt! What are you going to do? Shout at her from there?" After all, it wasn't like there was anything to hold on to on the ceiling - while the walls were craggy and densely covered in creepers, the ceiling seemed generally devoid of any means to climb across it.

It was at this juncture that the creepers suddenly came alive. Slithering vines sought to strangle Syttulg and wrap him up, pulling on limbs to tear him apart. Seeing this, Arhra suddenly knew there was something she must do.

She hastened over, wrapping the half formed magic around one arm. Like a striking snake, one hand flashed out and tore a small vine off the creepers, Arhra dancing back out of reach as shoots grabbed at her. Arhra wrapped the vine, still twitching feebly from the Caryatid's power over it, up in her magic, dissolving it into the spell.

Then the earthquake hit. Arhra stumbled, just managing to stay on her feet. The cave was sturdily built, in no danger of collapse from the tremor. Near the edges, there was only the plinking of some loose rocks being dislodged from the walls. But, the shifting sands deeper in were suddenly plagued with long gashes opening, everything on the sand nearby getting dragged towards them as the flowing sand poured into the fissures. It threw the rippling undulations of the sea of sand into chaos. In the background the Caryatid's music momentarily faltered.

It was obvious to Arhra that the world was conspiring aginst her - trying to distract her from her important task. Even now another distraction was thrown at her. Through the thick haze of the sand storm, erratic bursts of wind giving brief glimpses, she saw it. Hawk was fluttering around, unable to get airborne and trying to fend off snakes with buffets of wind from his winds. Arhra mused to herself, "Hmmm, snakes eating birds. Not something you see everyday. Birds eating snakes, yes. Snakes eating eggs, yes. But snakes eating birds, no."

Shaking off her reverie, Arhra shouted out to him over the sandstorm, "Get over here you spoony bird!"

[Bailey]

As the earthquake hit, Syttulg heard a groaning sound from beneath him, and was surprised to find that the section of wall he was climbing was in fact a boulder which was popping out of the wall and rolling. As such, he hung on for dear life.

[Mauve Mage]

Mauve stood towards the edge of the room, clutching the brim of her hat in both hands to keep it from flying away.

"Stupid sandstorm..." she muttered through clenched teeth, getting a mouthful of sand as she did so. "P'tyuk!!! Stupid sand!"

A snake was for some reason buried in the sand next to her, and it chose this moment to unearth itself. It hissed menacingly, somehow audible over the screaming winds and Mauve's own whining. Instinctively, the mage thrust a hand towards it and barked out a word:

"Combust! Wha--!!" as the snake burst into flames, Mauve's hat escaped her single-handed grasp on it and became airborne. It fluttered around in the wind like a UFO driven by a drunk alien for a moment before being sucked towards the center of the room. It disappeared into the yellow cyclone, never to be seen again.

Her hat. First the sand in the face, and now her hat.

"THAT'S IT!!" She snarled. "SOMETHING MUST DIE!" Her clenched fists burst into blue-white flames as she pushed forwards into the maelstrom.

[Steel Shadow]

As it turned out, cold fury was no match for magical sandstorms. The ferocity of the sand stung and knocked Steel's sense of direction out of wack every time it hit. He found himself turned around and walking in the wrong direction, back to the main crowd of NPF'ers. Something would have to be done.

"REALY need assistance over here!"

Steel loooked over. Hawk was surrounded by snakes and aparently he was having some trouble flying out or he would have done so already. Luckily Steel wasn't far off and had some issues to vent. He ran over, beheading a snake that rose in his path, and jumped. He didn't jump as high as he expected. In fact it was closer to a hop. He breifly wondered if that was the reason Hawk was having trouble, then he pushed it from his mind.

He sliced two of the snakes in half with a single swing as he arived by Hawk. Sliding through the gap he'd made, he looked around. The snakes were advancing, but there weren't to many, and judging by previous experience it wouldn't be to hard to take them out.

"Hey, Bird boy" Steel wispered "You have wind powers, right? If I take care of the snakes, can you blow us a path through this sand to the caryatid?"

[Skyshot]

Skyshot rose up from the ground, far too accustomed to the shaking to fall with it. He heard the flute music falter for a second, and abruptly realized this would likely be his best chance in the entire fight.

He dove into the sandstorm.

The winds grew more intense towards the center, despite what he knew of physical law, and he could barely keep his eyes open amidst the flying sand and the blinding lights. Nonetheless, he pushed on, until he noticed the wind had suddenly abated slightly. He opened one eye a little further, and realized he was looking at the door he had come in through.

"Wha...oh, I see." He turned around. "Hah!" He dove in again, and again, the sandstorm intensified, then receded. He was looking at the door again. "Yeah, that's it." He turned towards the Caryatid, which he could barely make out through the sand. "Infravision." His vision changed slightly. Specifically, seeing almost anything became extremely difficult. Skyshot slapped his forehead. Of course heat vision wouldn't work; there was too much heat to distinguish anything. "Cancel Infravision. Let's see..." He wracked his brain for more spells he could use to augment his vision.

Epiphany struck.

"Detect Alignment." A bright white aura almost completely engulfed the Caryatid, standing out against the sand. But only for a moment. The notes on the flute changed subtly, and the Caryatid disappeared from view. "Well, it was worth a shot..." Skyshot dove into the sandstorm for the third time, straining his eyes to make out the white light. Suddenly, his vision went black. "Whoa! Cure Blind!" His vision remained black. It occurred to him his face felt much better now. He reached up to touch it and was interrupted by cloth. He removed the assailant. It was a very loud purplish hat.

He looked over in the direction it had come from and saw another, darker white aura mixed with more of the purplish color.

"Hey, Mauve Mage, I think this is yours!"

"What?"

"I said I think this is -- never mind." He threw on the hat, pulling down the brim to protect his eyes.

Epiphany struck again, possibly because of some unspecified stat modifier within the hat.

Skyshot turned to face the door and saw a few team members there, much more easily visible with their auras. Some were white, some blue, and some (which he wished he hadn't seen) were red.

He then began to walk backwards. Several times, the sand densified, blocking the auras from his view. Each time, he waited a moment and looked around until he saw them again, and continued to walk backwards. After the fourth time, the wind abruptly stopped.

"Oh no, not ag -- wait." He turned around. The Caryatid was standing there wide-eyed. Time for diplomacy. "Greetings, ma'am." He pulled off the hat and bowed in his most foppish impression of an utter fop. "I don't believe we've met before, and indeed we seem to have gotten off on bad terms. I'm Skyshot M'rnai, emissary from the Clerics' Guild of Caymus Harbor," (here he indicated the red markings on his outfit), "although it seems my outfit has taken a fair bit of damage on my way here," (here he indicated the gray base, the dirt, the blood, and the burns), "and I was hoping we could discuss this reasonably." He waited with bated breath for the reply. He hoped she'd be equally diplomatic; a very abrupt exposed sensation warned him he'd finally worn out his Sanctuary.

[Mauve Mage]

Skyshot was yelling something at her, but his voice was drowned out by the wind. Through the billowing clouds of yellow and white, Mauve thought she could see glimpses of the cleric waving something at her.

"What?" Mauve yelled at him. She ended up with another mouthful of sand for her troubles. Tch. Forget it. Whatever it was, it could wait until she had finished making people suffer for the loss of her hat.

She fought her way towards the dense center of the cyclone, blasting snakes and dodging various angry plants/sunbeams/snake baskets. Then, just when she thought things were going well, an earthquake hit her. The tremor, coupled with a blast of sandy wind, pushed the mage to the ground. Mauve let out a grunt as the breath was knocked out of her. Sand was flying everywhere. Mauve was probably cursing up a storm in several languages at that point, but luckily nobody could hear it over the wind.

When the wind shifted direction to a point where she could move without risking having her face sandblasted off, Mauve pushed herself up with her hands. Her left arm was buried in the sand up to her elbow, and it took her a moment to free herself. Her entire right leg, however, was buried pretty deeply and she struggled for quite a while to get it out. She wasn't making too much progress, and the wind wasn't helping.

"Dammit!!" she grunted. "Crap and hell and damn and... Buh?" A menacing hiss interrupted her stream of relatively tame curses. In a scene similar to "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Arc," Mauve looked up from her position on the ground to lock gazes with a large snake.

"Oh," Mauve said lamely. The snake opened its mouth and hissed, showing off its fangs.

The next thing the snake knew, there was a hand closing around it's throat and lifting it bodily off the ground. An angry Mauve filled its vision.

"I'm busy," the mage growled. "Don't even think about it. Don't make me get out a shovel." Mauve pulled back her arm and threw the poor thing as far as she could. The winds caught the snake and whipped it around. It'd probably land on somebody's head, but hey, at least it wasn't bothering HER anymore.

ZAAAP! A sun laser hit the ground a mere three feet away from Mauve, causing the sands to shift again. On the plus side, this helped her free herself. On the minus side, she got another faceful of sand.

But that was okay. Mauve found a scarf in her Pockets of Near Infinite Holding and tied it around her nose and mouth as a sort of mask, and then calmly took out her frustration on any snakes that happened to get too close to her. And there were plenty of snakes.

[Hawk]

"Get over here you spoony bird!"

Hawk looked up from his fight for survival at the sound of the voice, and instantly felt fearful. He hadn't exactly known Arhra long, but he had already managed to get on her bad side and seeing what happened to those who got on her bad side worried him greatly, not least the fact that she had the power to completely drain others of their very lifeforce by a mere touch. He had avoided her since she had exploded out of the Jolly Green Capatilists stomach (an event we he had helped cause). Needless to say, he wasn't too keen to get into close proximity to her right now. Fortunately he had a pre-made excuse for missing this possible Apointment of Doom!

"Ermmm... little busy right now!!

Two more snakes were sent hurtling through the air in an explosion of sand, as another air blast followed this sentence.

It was at this point that Steel finally came to Hawks aid.

"Hey, Bird boy" Steel wispered "You have wind powers, right? If I take care of the snakes, can you blow us a path through this sand to the caryatid?"

Hawk looked up and considered.

"Well, I can't use my hurricane, it requires flight, but I may be able to create a small pathway through. Only problem is I don't think I could hold it for long... anything's worth a shot though. COVER ME!" Hawk ordered, as if Steel was one of his old troops and this was just another battlefield.

He set his eyes upon the center of the storm and slowly flapped his wings backwards and forwards, generating the gale. For a moment the sandstorm around the two of them intensified as the winds increased and condensed with crushing force. A snake, thrown in their direction, was sucked into the vortex and landed on Steels head, as Hawk flapped faster, creating as much force as possible.

When he deemed it ready, the small storm he had generated burst forth along the ground, throwing up sand and blasting a pathway through the impenatrable storm. Whether or not it would reach the caryatid was another question, and even if it did, the passage wouldn't be open for long...

[Tarrin]

Hell had broken loose and for once the NPF wern't the cause, well not directly anyway.
Scanning the battle Tarrin could see snakes lazers and sand buffeting his allies, the lazers were too high for him to take out, the sand way beyond his powers to stop, the snakes however were rite up his ally.

The giant Mongoose that had taken the place of the indian started forward towards the closest group of snakes, three of the vile creatures turned as Tarrin approached them their quick strikes not quick enough for the lithe hunter that now stalked them.

Circling the triad of reptiles Tarrin darted in and out as quickly as him form would allow, two of the snakes struck missing him by a country mile, the third however dropped to the ground a larg piece of its head missing.

After another flurry of strikes the other two snakes joined their brother in the afterlife and Tarrin made to move to the next group when a beam of focused light clipped his shoulder, pain shot thru his body, this would surely slow down his movement which in his current form was not a good thing at all.

[Steel Shadow]

Steel cut another snake down as Hawk charged up. More and more were appearing as they coughed up baskets. Things were going to get rough if they didn't move soon. Then a snake landed on his head. Not letting it slow him down he grabbed it by the tail and swung it around, clubbing a few of it's unfortunate brethren before letting it sail off into the distance. It slowed down their advances momentarily, but there were far to many to hold off for long.

Finally Hawk attacked, opening a gap in the storm. There was no time to see if it lead to the caryatid or not. With a final swipe of his sword, Steel spun, grabbed Hawk and ran through the tunnel. The snakes perused. Lasers burst through the temporary calm. Vortexes swirled underfoot, threatening to swallow anyone who put a foot wrong.

Suffice it to say that Steel and Hawks dash through the tunnel was so extremely impressive that no film budget on earth could have afforded the special effects. There was much running and dodging, and a fair bit of swearing. Needless to say any spectators would have been overcome with awe. Unfortunately there weren't any, 'cause it's really hard to see through a sand storm, and no one cared anyway.

OOC: I'll leave it to you whether we get to the caryatid or not Arhra

[Flarecobra]

Meanwhile, back in the jungle...

I had FINALLY managed to pull myself togeather, with the help of Thod, who I got to help by the promice of all the baconfruit he can eat, Quickly shifting human, and getting my armor back on, I head down in the direction I saw everyone leaving. Entering the connecting hallway, I could hear blowing sand, causing me to slow. Just then, I heard a voice in my head. "She's Close...if you were wise, you would allow me to fight for you." Stopping, I said to myself "Well then, you're the phoenix, how should we go about handling this?" "First off, let my essance change you. Then let me handle this." With a sigh I said "Ok then, you're the Phoenix."

Then my body went limp, almost like a switch was thrown. Then a firey aura started to cover me, gathering on my back and transforming into wings made of fire. My hair started to whip around by some unseen force, and when my eyes opened again, they were a red-orange rather then the usual sapphire blue.

Now in my phoenix-hybrid form, I ran into the chamber, using a wing to block the sand and hopefully deflect the wind some. Looking up, I could barely make out the outline of crystal on the roof, in some areas focusing the sunlight into beams. "At least it's not my element." the Phoenix in me thought, as I saw a chance to hopefully nutralize three hazards in the room. Bracing myself, I started to charge up the most powerful directed attack in my arsonal: Terra-Flare. Sadly, it would take at least a minute for it to be ready to fire, and out of the corner of my eye I saw some snakes approching. Using my flaming wings, along with some quick kicks, they were held off, as the melted sand that was made from the heat of my wings stung several of them, causing some of them to be driven off.

Just then, I felt a bite on one of my legs, and saw one had managed to strike home. Taking a little bit of power away from charging for the blast, the snake lit on fire, letting go and then disappearing into the sandstorm. Then it was ready. Bracing myself I shot the Terra-flare at the junction where the crystal roof met the stone wall, striking it with a great explosion.

[Arhra]

"Greetings, ma'am." Skyshot swept off Mauve's hat and bowed foppishly. "I don't believe we've met before, and indeed we seem to have gotten off on bad terms. I'm Skyshot M'rnai, emissary from the Clerics' Guild of Caymus Harbor, although it seems my outfit has taken a fair bit of damage on my way here," he indicated his adventure-worn attire, "and I was hoping we could discuss this reasonably."

Still seated in her throne, the Caryatid paused in her playing, removing the flute from her lips. Her expression remained serene as she stood, slipping her flute into a sleeve on her waist sash evidentally designed for that exact purpose, "There is nothing to discuss. You have not departed when you were bid to, and so you will be destroyed. Such is the fate of all who would plot the downfall of Law."

The Caryatid swept both arms upwards, two lumps of rock the approximate size of a golf cart ripping out of the ground. Pulling her arms back, she struck them with open palms, sending one flying ponderously at Skyshot while the other flew neatly off to the side.

Hawk and Steel would be surprised to see the clear tunnel of wind openning before them, giving a brief glimpse of the eye of the storm, before seeing a large boulder flying down it at them.

The Caryatid kicked backwards, sending herself off the rocky platform and skidding back on the sand, pulling the flying sand to conceal her. Green energy flowed off the Caryatid as she did, leaving a trailing wake as she wrought some other sorcery. About the chamber, in places where the basket snakes had gathered, a number of them found themselves suddenly ringed about with green runes. The patterns circled as the creatures trapped inside glowed with the same light, indistinct sillhouettes flowing together. When it diminished, the snakes were replaced with with multiheaded serpents. The basket snakes nearby seemed rather confused by this, but many of them started slithering away, pausing only to cough up the occaisional basket, as the new creatures began lashing out, grabbing snakes and swallowing them whole.

Meanwhile, Flare was trying to break open the roof, with moderate success.

"Big roof!" Arhra shouted in alarm, trying to free her hands from her spell weaving to act as she saw the nearby Flare charging up the spell, "Holds big mountain up!"

Flare launched the spell at one of the larger crystal prisms on the roof. On impact it flared like a sun, random beams of searing heat emitted from it. Then with a mineral scream, it exploded, a fiery blast blossoming on that second of the ceiling. The lights dimmed, random patches of the chamer being thrown into darkness by the lighting array was damaged and the sun-rays careened wildly across the battlefield.

Rocks tumbled from the ceiling where the prism had been, piling up into a cone shapped head of rubble on the sandy floor. Thankfully the roof held, cratered where the prism had been.

Blistering rebuke on her lips, Arhra never got to deliver it, distracted as a writhing carpet of snakes approached, strange multi-headed ones bringing up the rear. "Hey! I beat you already!" she shouted, "Why are there more of you?" She got an answer as one coughed up a snake basket.

"Oh." Arhra said.

OOC: Oh, let's make that a dozen or so serpentine hydra (http://forum.nuklearpower.com/showpost.php?p=451626&postcount=36) of varying strength. The bafflement effect on the sandstorm is no longer present. I believe some people would probably have been near that.

[Bailey]

Syttulg's grasp weakened and he dropped off the boulder, landing just beside Skyshot as the giant stone struck the Caryatid. His nannites, sensing Skyshot, and not recieving any order from Syttulg, activated their earlier command ahead of schedule, and produced a scroll, dropping it in Skyshot's hand. It bore two simple words: "One Hen"

[Hawk]

Hawk had succeeded in opening up a path through the storm but before he could say or do anything, he was grabbed rougthly by Steel, who immediately set off down the tunnel.

Then followed the Ultra-Awsome, (sometimes slow motion), Ultra-Cool, Amazingly Intense and Action-Packed race towards the Caryatid, in which snakes heads were severed, vortexs avoided, and lasers dodged.

Hawk, having been grabbed up by Steel, wasn't in the most useful of positions in which to maintain the tunnel. His wings, which were designed to channel the wind, were clamped shut by Steels arm. At the moment, the only thing keeping the tunnel from collapsing was his pure will and command of the element. But it was then that the UA(ssm)UCAIAP race stopped suddenly, as both Hawk and Steel saw the approaching boulder. Taking this pause to his advantage, Hawk wriggled free of Steels grasp and quickly clawed his way up his arm and onto Steels left shoulder. He turned and fired a blast at the oncoming boulder, which dropped dead in the air about a foot away from them. The event could be summed up with the following equation: Earth + Wind = 0! Now free and standing on Steels shoulder, Hawk was able to quickly regain some more control over his wind tunnel with his now freed wings.

"Talk about elevating your tactical position on the battlefield", he said to Steel in-between these control maintaining blasts. It was something he had once heard a Paragon battle commander say long ago, during some Middle-Eastern conflict in which he had fought, but that was another story.

With a sudden, deafening explosion, the roof, errmm EXPLODED!!

This was where the aformentioned swearing came into the UA(ssm)UCAIAP race:

"Holy mother fucking shit on a pissing crap stick!!" Hawk yelled, as random lights fired everywhere near the Dynamic Duo of Hawk and Steel, as well as a fair amount of rock shaped rubble! What was worse was that Hawk lost his concentration on maintaining their tunnel and now a series of multi-headed hydras had also turned up. The tunnel behind them began collapsing, leaving only one way forward.

"Ruuunnn!!", Hawk yelled at Steel.
"Run like a goddamn bastard and don't look back!!"

[Steel Shadow]

"Ruuunnn!!", Hawk yelled at Steel.
"Run like a goddamn bastard and don't look back!!"



Steel didn't need to be told twice. He slid around the side of the boulder and dashed for the calm center. The sand was closing in quickly. Steel dodged left as a laser swept past. They were almost there...

Out of nowhere he felt something snag his ankle. He fell to the floor, slidding along the sand. Looking back he saw his foot wrapped in the tail of a rather nasty looking snake with to many heads. A little further back he could see the sandstorm rushing toward him.

"Not good!" The snakes middle head hissed viciously and struck forwards, fangs glinting. A time shield apeared between it and his vulerable leg, sending it away with a tooth ache. Steel's sword was already moving. He tried to wedge it between the snake and his leg, cutting it in half (the snake, not his leg).

Steel scrambled to his feet, grabbing hawk from where he'd fallen and ran for the finish line.

[Tarrin]

Arhra appeared to have one or twenty snakes, these were followed buy some new hybreed of muiltheaded snake.

"Not good" thought Tarrin, he was slightly slowed from the crystal and those new snakes looked nasty in every sence of the word.
Thinking of a way to combat this he went thru his options, Flying was out, swimming yeah rite, that left only two options digging or running, running and dodging was not the best idea thanks to his shoulder so that left digging???

or did it he'd see where scittering would get him...

As the first snake made it's way to Arhra and made to strike a large pincer clamped accross the skull of the serpent crushing the life from it, the large Scorpion put it's self in front of the only one with the knowledge to get rid of the blasted seal, "I'll try and buy you enough time to get rid of that thing" Tarrin shot at Arhra.
"Just don't take all day about it" If the scorpians features could allow a smile there would have been a big yet worried one on his face.

As the carpet of snakes got close enough both pincers and tail went to work killing left and rite, untill one of the new versions of serpent got close enough to Tarrin then the real work begain.

[Inbred Chocobo]

IC now stood by the entrance. Where ever he had been didn't matter now, and those that inquired about it would scream in terror of what IC would tell them.

But that is besides the point.

IC had a plan. He knew traversing this area was going to be difficult, even for him, but he knew where to get help. He reached into his pcket he conveniently had, and pulled out the greatest of all weapons. A toothpick that is. Oh but this was more than a toothpick, it happened to be a peice of the supposedly destroyed reverse wood, and IC was about to abuse the hell out of it.

IC stuck it in his mouth, and then suddenly he bursted with a huge amount of magical energy. Though, unlike DBZ, he wasn't screaming. Instead, the energy passed in just a few short seconds, and there IC stood, though no longer IC. The robes that draped over him and the staff on his back showed he had become a mage. But the frail frame he had also gave away that that form wouldn't last long in battle.

Instead, the mage-IC stuck his hands on his chest, and casted another spell. With this spell, IC was suddenly infused with wind. He seemed to always constantly give off a wind, and any element of the storm that came near him that existed was devestated into silence. Though IC was through yet.

IC then sput out the toothpick, which caught a breeze and flew away to some unknown direction to never be found again. Or more likely to prick someone's eye out. The unimaginable power that had flown through IC suddenly shot out, tearing up the ground around IC, and ingulfing him in a strange light.

In the remains of the burst, with the heat of the blast still lingering, stoof IC. Though IC had one new distinguishing thing about him. He was green, as he had used the reverse would to give himself the element of earth.

IC took off running, the sand holding solid for his movement. The terrain that would hold everyone back would now befriend IC, and let him cover all corners. And so IC charged his opponent, the Caryatid.

[Flarecobra]

Using an arm to cover my nose and face, I dove into the sandstorm, squinting and blinking to clear my eyes often. I know I stepped on a few snakes, but I just kept on going through, determined to get through, feeling thee attempted strikes bounce off my armor, though a few came close to the joints, where the armor was weakest.

[Lumaes]

Lumaes was unhappy, he had opened his mouth to unleash a scalding stream of verbal abuse disquised in a thin crispy shell of wit at the Caraytid and it had promptly been filled with disgusting gritty sand disguised in a shell of disgusting gritty sand.

Spluttering like a geriatric automotive, his eyes narrowed angrilly at the snakes, bastard adders, always getting bigger and bigger...
He paused... these couldn't be adders, they weren't just adding, they were multiplying! This was baaaaad, especially when the spectre spotted that they were conforming to an exponential equation - he hated expondential equations! Though, he did no one way to deal with them,

"DIFFERENTIATE!"

With a scream two boney fists hammered into one of the snake's jaws, shaking out a few teeth in the proccess, he punched another that was looming behind him in the manner of all kung-fu masters, the snake doing its best to imitate a woozy, muslcebound thug as it sank to the floor.
With a crazed gleam in his eye he wrapped his skeletal grasp around the head and tail of a third snake, he lifted the writhing thing and pulled in each direction - the undulating body straightening out with a vile sounding crack.
He risked a mouth full of sand to utter a nonchalant quip,
"Rate of change? Zero"

It wasn't enough, Lumaes realised as another wave of sand swept over him, pelting him with tiny painful grains, all this violence was doing was imposing a negative C value on the equation. Violence had failed him... in a world where violence can no longer be used as an easy extermination option is a world where the terrorists and Chaos have already won...
It was then he spotted the freakish creatures that were the serpentine hydra, resisting the urge to tumble over into the already leg-devouring sand with a high-pitched cackle at the sight of them, his brain quickly clicked into gear as he saw the hydra's head dip down into the squirming carpet of snakes and come up with a wriggling mouthful.

As each hydra consumed snakes, more heads budded of the reptillian trunk, thus enabling the hydra to consume more snakes at an increased rate!
Eventually, the number of hydra heads will grow to outstrip the basket-snakes rate of growth!

KYAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH

Somehow Lumaes managed to conjure up a flash of thunder and lightning to indulge his dramatic moment. His eyes blazed as his dark figure was outlined in the momentary, and completely unfeasable weather. He had found a way to use maths in combat, to defeat maths with maths! They had said he was mad, but he'd show them, he'd show them all!

The ghastly creature stumbled out further into the consuming sand and storm with vigor, snatching snakes where he could and hurling them towards the hydras. Occasionally he'd be a little slow and the teeth would sink into his shadowy composition, a thin trail of whiting fluid swirling up through the shadow, leeching slowly towards his acorn.

[Skyshot]

"Whoa! Whoa! Hey now, I'm not -- OY!" Skyshot dove off to the side to dodge the massive boulder the Caryatid launched at him. "Please, now, ma'am! That's not what I meant. What we're trying to do is --"

Another boulder hit the Caryatid, and Syttulg hit the ground next to Skyshot, sending up a large cloud of sand. He knelt down next to the plant man, and checked for any sort of vital signs from him -- pulse, breath, reactions, anything. He seemed to still be alive, but barely so.

Skyshot noticed a scroll forming in the air. When it finished, it dropped into his waiting hand. It read "One hen."

One hen. He knew about this spell. He'd dealt with a number of Mage Guild students back in Caymus Harbor, and they never shut up about their theoretical spells. This was one of the oddest ones he'd ever heard of. Along with one of the most potentially powerful.

"Hang on, Syttulg. Cure --"

The Caryatid burst the boulder into splinters, many of which struck Skyshot, cutting off his incantation. He dove away and turned to move in an arc. It worked -- she turned to watch him instead of forcusing on Syttulg. When he'd reached about 135 degrees, enough to keep Syttulg out of her line of sight but not out of his, he stopped.

Were this a movie (or an animated work), there'd be a double close-up on his eyes. Lacking a camera to enhance the drama, he instead gripped the brim of his hat and tugged it down as he bowed his head. It would have been a very cool effect had the hat not clashed with his outfit like two trains, one having left New York City at 12:15 PM heading for Chicago at 90 miles an hour, and the other having left Chicago at 10:45 heading for New York City at 70 miles an hour. After holding his stance a moment, he tucked the scroll into a pocket and took up his knives.

"Let's go," he whispered.

The Caryatid ran forward a second before he did, and took the offense by delivering an uncomplicated punch to his solar plexus. He grunted and bent over, but the loss of wind didn't stop him from reaching forwards and slashing the Caryatid's arm with both knives. She quickly withdrew the arm and swung the other. He deflected it with a knife edge and countered, slicing her across the abdomen. He started a backslash towards her face, but she forced him back with a sharp kick in his ribs. He tried to cut her again on the leg, but she withdrew too quickly and threw a second roundhouse.

"Hinder!" Rather than pausing to check the effects of the spell, he ducked under her roundhouse swing and stepped in place behind her. In a practiced motion, he grabbed her hair by the scalp with one hand and swung his knife towards where her right kidney could theoretically be with the other.

(OOC: One shot of Hinder, one shot of backstab.)

[Arhra]

Of course, any and all attempts to stab the Caryatid in the kidney would be severely hampered by her lack of kidneys. She was a composite construct of stone, metal and wood built around a magical seal of vast elemental power after all. But, stabbing is still stabbing.

Reflexes dulled by Skyshot's spell and hampered by his grip on her viny hair, the Caryatid wasn't able to totally avoid the blow that sought her nonexistent kidneys. Still, she twisted in his grasp, making the strike catch her side rather than full in the back. The blade skittered and scratched along her polished stone skin, sparks jumping off it. Her body was one of stone and hard to damage by such methods.

But the Caryatid was a perilous opponent to tangle with, designed by the ancient forces of Law to guard something imperative to the stability of the universe, and her power of her element was considerable. The vines of her hair were suddenly alive, a flurry of unnatural growth as they moved beneath his grip on the Caryatid's scalp and enwrapped his clutching hand.

They sought to crawl up Skyshot's arm while lengthening tresses with thorns pushing out along their span reached out to snare him. A vicious jab back with an elbow, reinforced by a projecting spur on the arm bracer she wore, forced Skyshot to move slightly backwards as the Caryatid moved to take action. She spun, bursting forwards as she did, tearing away with a loud rip. It sheared short her hair, leaving a mass of the tangling vegetation behind in SKyshot's grasp and grasping him back. Her hand brushed her side as she moved, plucking off one of the coppery leaves that ornamented her garments as they flurried out about her.

Roughly hacked off hair framing her serene face, the Caryatid's glittering eyes were fixed on Skyshot's face as he struggled with the thorny vines. An arm gracefully moved upwards, hand reaching eye level as it accented the gesture, a boulder lifted lazily out of the shifting sands in a neat arc that echoed the movement.

Time seemed to draw out as the rock reached the top of its trajectory, drifting forwards to come crushingly down on Skyshot, the Caryatid's crystalline gaze slowly turning to face her other foe. Inbred was charging towards her, feet propelling him steadily over the heaving, wavy movements of the sand. Her eyes momentarily looked into Inbred's expression, time slowing further, and then she flung the copper leaf at him. Tumbling end over end, an argent light, it sliced the air itself, streaking for his heart.

Even as the two attacks approached their targets, one attack seeming large and ponderous, the other insignificant yet perhaps infinitely more dangerous, the Caryatid was in motion once more. Pulling both hands back, drawing them to her chest as if to hug them to herself, the sands leapt up to hide her in their swirling embrace once more. Sun rays and the movements of the sand vortexes became slightly more purposeful, moving towards where the Caryatid fought.

Her shape became a dim shadow in the swirling brown clouds, wavering and threatening to vanish entirely. The flurries of the sand threw all into confusion in their shifting patches of darkness.

* * *

"I'll try and buy you enough time to get rid of that thing." Tarrin shot at Arhra. "Just don't take all day about it."

Did that telepathic scorpion just smile at me? Arhra thought to herself, Oh right, its that guy. She considered telling him that the spell itself wouldn't do anything to defeat the Caryatid, it was just to stop the nasty explosion that said defeat would cause, but dismissed the thought as being depressing.

Arhra believed the spell-net was about complete, but it would take constant attention to stop it unravelling. For now, she wrapped it around one arm again and considered the enemy. The snakes were numerous, but they didn't seem too dangerous compared to the hydra creatures at the back that were happily eating them. Even as she watched, one of them sprouted an extra head.

They'd only get stronger the more snakes they ate. And hiding at the back as they were, they'd be difficult to get to. Perhaps though, there was a way to weaken them. But, she'd have to get closer and there was a carpet of snakes in the way. Arhra knew what she had to do.

She doffed her other shoe.

Running into the fray, Arhra hopped, jumped and skipped like she was running over a bed of hot coals. And indeed she was, if you thought hot coals were snakes. She shied back and lunged forwards, treading on snakes as she made her way across. But angry snakes swarmed over the few that perished from being trodden and drained of life, snapping at her. Even jumping around like a madwoman wasn't enough to entirely protect her. Feeling woozy, Arhra managed to reach the other side, jumping back just in time as half a dozen heads bit at her. Eyes tracing the necks back to their common origin, Arhra knew she'd found herself a hydra.

She thrust the arm not wrapped with a spell of importance at it and shouted, "Regurgitate!" forcing her intent and chaotic power behind that word.

A tiny, sickly yellow sphere appeared at her fingertip and then suddenly expanded out to a dome shape a few meters across. The hydra's eyes bulged from surprise and internal forces, something obviously being forced up its several throats. It gagged, snakes slithering out of its jaws.

Normally Arhra would have taken the time to enjoy this and probably beat it up while it was having difficulty defending itself, but she was gagging too. She fell to her knees, eyes bulging as she tried to resist the magic, to no avail. With much coughing, Arhra hacked up the inverted fruits she had eaten. She didn't mind that too much - she didn't believe they had significantly increased her cognitive abilities. With them out of her system, she could feel muscle swelling imperceptibly as the weakening disappeared.

More insulting was The Capitalist's free buffet that she also coughed up. Now Arhra was hungry again and she couldn't even re-eat the food because it was poisoned. Thankfully, she was spared any further embarrassment by the spell shimmering and collapsing in on itself. She looked at the neat little pile of mysteriously intact food in front of her with disgust. This had not been one of her finest moments. She looked up at the hydra, looking similarly disorientated and reduced to just three heads. She could almost empathise with it.

Of course! That was it! She could make it non-hostile, thus all it would do is eat snakes instead of attack them. But what word to use for the magic to make a humane hydra? She smiled. As always, alliteration absolved all adversities.

Rising into more of a sitting position, Arhra called up power again, "Humanise!" she shouted. A blinding arc of light leapt from her to the hydra. As her vision cleared, Arhra looked at where it lay curled up on its side. Something seemed off as its three heads stirred and looked at her.

"Mama?"

Arhra was rendered temporarily speechless when she realised what she saw, cursing the English language for its ambiguity. Chaos magic would often take a form different how one might imagine in its fulfillment of the wielders intent, but it wasn't often you ended up resculpting a hydra into a humanoid shape. Well, if you called some sort of three headed snake girl humanoid.

OOC: As you may have guessed, innocous coppery leaves are appallingly dangerous when thrown. Astonishingly sharp doesn't even begin to cover it. The Caryatid is fighting in a hit and run style, what with the hiding in a sandstorm. She is outnumbered after all. Expect attacks coming out of nowhere.

I thought I might as well see about engineering one means of Syttulg getting some smarts back. I also was feeling very random and decided to indulge my madness.

[Inbred Chocobo]

IC shifted as one foot hit the ground, IC twisted. This shifted himself to where he was facing towards the right. He then kicking with the other foot, so that he would go off in a 45 degree angle, letting the leaf pass by harmlessly, though uncomfortably fast and close. As he was in mid-air from the kick dodge, he twisted again, so that when he landed he was facing the opposit direction. He kicked again, putting him back on his original trail, and went on running.

This didn't come without its drawback though. IC had to take his gaze of his opponent. And he was back on course, the sand had hid her from view. Since IC had no better idea what to do, he charged the last known position, gripping his weapon tight in preperation in blocking the next attack. Which he was sure it would be the one to launch.

[POS Industries]

Patience is a virtue.

Rei, deep down in the golden glowing power core that one could only call her heart, was a surprisingly virtuous individual.

Due to current weather conditions within the cave, the android's vision was completely obscured. The rest of her other optically-based scanning methods were rendered equally useless by the fact that she had to maintain her energy shield to keep the sandstorm and snakes from wearing her down or the simple fact that the Caryatid failed to produce any body heat or lifeform readings whatsoever.

And so, Rei was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the chamber as sand, snakes, and hydras pounded away perpetually upon the shield bubble surrounding her, while she amused herself with a game of Tetris played on a Game Boy that most likely came from wherever that popcorn she had earlier was from.

The God of Plotholes has been very busy lately.

She took this break whilst waiting, ever so patiently, for the nearest POS Industries Global Positioning satellites to move in geosynchronous orbit over the group's position and activate a high-level energy scanning beam straight down into the Caryatid's chamber, allowing the android girl full knowledge of the location and movements of all matter within.

It should be noted, of course, that the beam would disintigrate every bird, insect, squirell, tree, frog, bus driver, mushroom, Krylo, blade of grass, bacteria, and all other biological matter in its path due to the energy required to penetrate down into the planet's crust and fully scan the cave's interior. On the bright side, the earth should provide enough shieldingto ensure the scanning field only causes some minor discomfort to our intrepid group of NPFers.

Probably.

As the satellite took its position, Rei rose to her feet as the scan activated, giving her full knowledge of the positions of the Caryatid, the snakes, hydras, millions of grains of sand, and the other NPFers. While her jumping ability had been severely crippled by the Caryatid's gravity effect, her running speed was no less speedy, and so she took off in the most suitable direction, ariving at her first destination.

A very perturbed, hatless Mauve Mage.

"Okeedokee, Hiya!" the android greeted Mauve in a very bright-yet-anxious tone, "I have one of those mad plans that are so crazy they have to work! There's no time to explain everything, but the important part is that you cast Firaga at me while I go run headlong into that monster over there! Sound good? Okay! Ready.... set..... GO!!"

And then she was off to run headling into that monster over there.

[Flarecobra]

As I plowed though, I ran across a 5-headed Hydra-snake. Wasting little time, my hands were covered in fire, which formed into whips, and lashed out at it, stinging and cutting into the snakes scales, the fire searing the stumps and gashes. As soon as it was rendered incapable of attack, I moved on, pressing onwared, and soon reached the eye of the storm, where I saw Skyshot, but the Caryatid was not there.

[Mauve Mage]

"Okeedokee, Hiya!"

Mauve looked up from the snakes she happened to be torturing as Rei's voice broke her concentration.

"I have one of those mad plans that are so crazy they have to work! There's no time to explain everything, but the important part is that you cast Firaga at me while I go run headlong into that monster over there! Sound good? Okay! Ready.... set..... GO!!" And with that, the android was gone. Mauve looked back down at the snake.

"A crazy plan, huh?" she asked. "You think it'll work?" The snake looked up at her pleadingly, hoping she'd take her boot off its neck. Well, that's what Mauve guessed it was hoping, since she couldn't actually speak snake.

The mage sighed and shifted her weight, pushing the snake down into the sand. She looked back on the dissappearing figure of Rei as the android woman ran through the sandstorm. Mauve smiled brightly.

"Well," she said, "I'm never one to miss a chance to set something on fire. And an android covered in flames running headlong into a statue sounds like it'd be fun to watch. So..."

She extended a hand, and waited for the sand to allow her a glimpse of the android.

"Firaga!" Mauve yelled over the scream of the winds. Rei's bubble burst into flames.

[POS Industries]

After taking off from Point Mauve in a straight line toward the determined direction of Point Caryatid, Rei tore through the raging sandstorm and, upon spying the monster's silhouette though the morass, reeled back her fist as her energy shield bubble erupted in flame around her.

"Here I come..."

Using the energy field to manipulate the massive inferno within which she was engulfed, she channeled the Firaga spell into white hot concentrated fire around her extremeties and struck.

DOUBLE TECH. - BLAZE BEATDOWN!

Rei initiated a flying frenzy of furious fiery fists upon the Caryatid, the android's lightning fast movements intended to overwhelm the creature while the effect created from Mauve's fire spell enhanced the damage caused by her already powerful blows.

But would it be enough? Stay tuned!

[Skyshot]

Skyshot stared at the writhing lock of hair in his hand a moment, creeped out beyond words. After the thorns burst out, he took action.

"AAAAUGH! Demon hair! Killitkillitkillitkillitkillitkillitkillit!" Luckily, his frenzied slashes did no more than superficial damage to his arm while stripping off the vines. When he finished, he checked his knife blades. His efforts to damage stone skin had dulled them slightly. It was a shame; he was hoping his knife fighting would be quick enough to match the Caryatid's movements, but wedge-based assaults weren't going to get him anywhere. He'd have to keep doing what he'd been doing before.

The daggers went back into his belt and were replaced with Nightstorm.

"Skyshot! SKYSHOT!"

"Wha --" Skyshot looked upwards and saw yet another boulder high above, moving as if in slow motion. "Oh, cool." A split second, it occurred to him part of the reason it looked so cool was his angle. He dove to the side a split second before the boulder could flatten him. "Okay, so that's how you wanna play." He raised the staff, but it was too late. The Caryatid had already vanished into the sandstorm, and the bright white aura around her was obscured. He strained his eyes to make out the color, when a shining object shot towards Inbred and missed him by inches.

A second one shot towards Skyshot, but a well-timed duck let it land in the boulder instead. He looked at it. It was a coppery leaf, like the Caryatid had been wearing. Moreover, it was imbedded almost its entire length within the boulder. More came out from random places in the sandstorm, forcing Skyshot to dive and roll to avoid them.

Okay. Time to think. He reached into his pocket and withdrew an engraved bracelet.

* * *

"Feel honored, my apprentice," the Thief Guildmaster said. "This is a rare gift for successful students."

"I just joined."

"Silence!" Skyshot flinched at the voice coming from behind him. Was that -- when did he --? "Now, take this." One fairly aged hand took Skyshot's, and the other deposited an engraved bracelet in it. The new thief looked at it.

"W.W.N.D.?"

"Yes. These stand for words of great wisdom. I promise you, they will lead you to great fortune in every battle. That or utter crushing defeat. It's a toss-up, really."

* * *

What would Naruto do? Skyshot thought about it for a bit, before realizing that, while skilled with parrying, he could never deflect one of these leaves, so the whole "anything can be deflected with a kunai and your reflexes" thing was out. Analysis was the next option.

He slipped a long, hollowed dart out from underneath an epaulet and waited. More leaves came at him and his present teammates, though accuracy didn't seem to be a priority. He watched carefully to where they were coming from and tried to discern a pattern.

There.

He threw the dart at his predicted target location, causing an ear-splitting whistling noise. He'd know if he was right.

(OOC: Basically, if there's a pattern to her movement, I just exposed it; if not, it won't go anywhere.)

[Hawk]

Hawk and Steels Ultra-Awsome, (sometimes slow motion), Ultra-Cool, Amazingly Intense and Action-Packed race finally came to a stunning close as the pair entered the eye of the storm, a wall of sand hot on their heels (or Steels at least since he was the one doing all the leg work). The tunnel collapsed causing an explosion of sand as they dramatically dived into the clearing in a shower of sand and snakes which had been pulled along in the collapsing tunnels wake.

As the sand settled again, Steel got to his feet and once more Hawk struggled free of Steels arm and re-positioned himself on his shoulder. Looking around they saw that several NPFers had also found a way through to the Caryatid and had already engaged her in combat. Hawk was about to suggest to Steel what could have been a battle winning stategy when he heard a voice inside his head.

"Kill them!! Kill them all!!"

For a moment Hawk wasn't sure who or what the voice was, all he knew was that it powerful. He didn't know of any other NPFers who were psychic, apart from himself, but even as he thought about this he realised who the voice was. The Caryatid. She spoke again.

"KILL. KILL!!!"

Hawk tried to fight it with all of his will, but he knew it was a losing battle. The Caryatids will urged him on.

"KILLLL!!!!"

Hawk obeyed. He began firing off concussive blasts in rapid succession, at IC, REI and Skyshot, who were nearest and attempting to fight the Caryatid directly, while at the same time he dug down his razor sharp talons into Steels shoulder.

(ooc: About time she started to try and control me I think!)

[Steel Shadow]

Getting to his feet after surviving the tunnel of doom, Steel struck a victory pose. Then he remembered the caryatid.

"Right, I guess we'd better- Argh!" Steel was cut off as Hawk buried his talons in his shoulder. It was painful. Excruciating even.

"Bird boy" Steel growled between clenched teeth "Cut that out before I do something you'll regret." Hawk didn't let up. "Right then."
Steel punched him. It caused more damage to his shoulder as the talons tore free, but at least there wasn't more damage coming. He had no idea why Hawk had turned on him suddenly. "After I saved you from all those snakes and lasers and sand storms and stuff to!" Hawk, without any shoulders left to stand on, fell to the floor. Steel considered going after him, which would probably be hard work. If he was actually a creature of chaos in disguise... Nah, that didn't make sense. He would have turned on them sooner. That meant the caryatid was behind it.

Steel looked over at the cloud that covered the center of the room. She/it was in there somewhere, but impossible to detect. Rei, on the other hand, was incredibly easy to detect, what with being on fire and all. Before Hawk could recover and attack him again, Steel dived into the ministorm, trusting in his bandana mask to protect most of his head.

His left arm hung limply, the damage Hawk had done to it to painful to work through, but his sword arm was fine. The pain had a side effect though. As already mentioned waaaayy back in chapter 2, it made Steel angry. And when Steel was angry, his mind was focused, and that in turn focused his sword into an unstoppable blade. Kinda like a light saber, but without the lasers and cool zoomy noises.

He approached Rei and the caryatid silently. Well, no, he was quite noisy, but sandstorms make anything silent. Hoping the android could keep her/it distracted, Steel swung his sword in an arc, aiming to cut off her/it's head.

[Tarrin]

So much for watching the spell casters back not only had she stopped casting but she had run over the top of the massed serpants leaving Tarrin by himself surrounded by way too many.

"Oh boy my life must suck" was what went thru his mind as the mass of snakes plowed him under their mass, taking him out of sight of anyone wondering what was happening.

[Hawk]

Dazed and bruised after Steels punch, Hawk slipped into unconciousness yet again. It appeared to be something of a trend lately.

As his physical body lay still and peaceful in the cave, the battle for said body continued in his own mind, as Sub-Hawk and the Caryatid continued to duel.

The two were in a forest, for no other reason than the Narrative demanded it to be so! Scattered amongst the trees were the various statues of warriors from the Caryatids lair, which until now had been all but ignored and so deserved some special tribute, again because the Narrative demanded it!

Hawk was different in this place also. He was not a hawk by birth, but only because of that damned curse and so his mind was still very much human, which therefore meant that his subconcious self would remain human, regardless of how he may appear on the outside. And it was in his human hands that he held a rather impressive red sword, held in a two-handed grip before him as he and his foe circled each other warily.

The Caryatid struck first. Drawing up the earth around herself, she became surrounded by yet another dust storm as she charged toward Hawk. Unable to now see his enemy, Hawk swung blindly and his sword was caught in the stone hands of the Caryatid. He tried to wrench the weapon from her grip without success before a solid stone foot kicked out of the dust in front of him, catching him in the chest. Hawk was flung backwards into a tree, whose vines instantly coiled around him, pinning him down. The swirling dust around the Caryatid ceased slightly, granting him a view of the creature before him, who now examined his precious sword. Without warning she threw it high into the air where the branches of the neaby trees ensnared it.

"Why do you resist?" The Caryatid asked politely, as Hawk struggled in vain to free himself.

"You WILL become my servant, all creatures of the earth do eventually. It is inevitable"

Hawk gasped for "breath" as the vines holding him tightened further, weakening him until he could no longer resist. But Hawk was not some weak minded animal, he was a highly trained soldier, psychologicaly conditioned to endure pain, both physical and mental. And it was with that realisation that Hawk knew how he could turn this entire situation against the Caryatid. This was HIS head, HIS mind, HIS reality and if that was so then he could bend it to HIS will.

"Get out of my head!!" Hawk shouted as the vines binding him exploded outwards and the area was suddenly engulfed in fire. Hawk slowly got to his feet and stared down the enemy, and there was murder in his eye. Wasting no time, The Caryatid waved her hand and the forest came to life. Trees became Ent-like creatures fourteen feet high, warped and twisted animals appeared in various forms, and the stone warriors became animated. All of these new foes turned their attention to Hawk, who simply raised his hands before him, where two guns suddenly were held. Hawk opened fire on all before him, the guns morphing from one form to another to suit his needs. This was HIS mind, he could do whatever he wanted here. Machine gun fire tore through ravenous beasts, high velocity grenades pounded into walking trees and armour peircing Sabot shotgun rounds blasted through the stone army as they approached. None were spared. Soon the whole forest was ablaze and only he and the Caryatid were left. Looking up into the burning trees, Hawk saw his sword, still wrapped in branches. He raised both guns as they swiched to become twin MP5's which instantly began their assault upon the branches, quickly tearing through them like nothing. The sword fell as Hawk ran forward discarding the imaginary guns as he went. The weapon seemed to tumble slowly, turning over and over as the Caryatid watched. She knew what Hawks next move would be and so planned the only counter she could, the swirling dust storm now reforming upon her left forearm into a shield of solid earth. She raised her left arm to protect herself from the imminent attack, as Hawk caught the blade and swung downwards just as the shield reformed. It almost worked... for her! She was knocked off balance and stumbled backwards from the blow and Hawk pressed the advantage. Swinging from the right this time, once more striking the shield. The caryatid was thrown forward onto her knees from this second blow and was now side on to Hawk as he raised his weapon high above her exposed neck, aiming for the killing blow.

"And stay out!"

Hawk struck.

[Arhra]

OOC: Perhaps slightly cruel of me, but I'd decided it before that second post of Hawk's. Plus, I find the idea very funny.

Hawk's blade came down, square on its target.

The Caryatid exploded into muffins. This was an... unexpected turn of events. Shielding himself from the soft, delicious bombardment, Hawk couldn't help but stare in bewilderment at the pile of muffins heaped where the Caryatid had been.

"You're hallucinating again," a particularly large muffin said, perched jauntily atop the pile.

Before Hawk could launch into the kind of incoherent explanation about mind control, Caryatids, mental battles and being forced to attack the NPFers most people do in this situation, the muffin swivelled from side to side like a person shaking their head.

"No, no, no." it said sagely, "The Caryatid's control is pretty much limited to non-sentient creatures. She might be able to interfere with your tiny little bird brain a smidgeon, but she wasn't doing that. It was all you." The muffin trailed off, letting Hawk draw his own conclusions.

"I'm not crazy!"

"You're talking to a muffin." the delicious baked good pointed out. "Anyway, time for me to go." it said cheerily, "See you later!" Everything went black.

* * *

Back in the world that probably wasn't some sort of fruit induced hallucination, the Caryatid was beset by enemies. Skyshot heard the whistling of his thrown dart abruptly cut off by a dull clink. He'd been right.

As Flare neared Skyshot, unable to see the Caryatid, she heard a soft, evil hissing over the sussuraiton of the windborne sand, the only warning before she felt needles jabbing into her heel. Looking back, there was a hydra, a train of snakes following in its wake. One head had lunged at her heel, snagging her with its poisonous jaws. That head latching on, the others exhaled their poisonous miasma and struck too.

Rei charged the Caryatid, looking like a human shaped fireball as her energy field acted to refine the flaming shield bubble into intense flames about her extremities. But, as she launched her slavo of flaming fists of fury, the Caryatid swept one arm up to block, a wall of stone bursting from the ground just in front of the Caryatid.

The corporate android was not deterred. She pummeled the wall with a volley flaming fists and feet, breaking a hole that fell into a collapsing pile of red-hot rubble, thin rivulets of molten stone running across it. Nimbly charging through with little loss to her momentum, Rei went at the Caryatid.

Rei's breakthrough did not seem to surprise the Caryatid, taking a single, heavy step back. Behind her, a stalagmite burst out of the ground beneath Steel's feet in accordance with the motion, Steel sparing himself by throwing up a temporal field and kicking off it. She hadn't seen him and yet she knew he was there, as if just being in contact with the ground was enough.

With another stamp on the spot, sand exploded skywards about the Caryatid, a choking thickness of brown grit. The charging Rei and Steel were blinded, losing sight of the Caryatid.

But, Rei wasn't depending just on sight. The interference on the scanner death ray momentarily cleared, making proximity alarms scream out an alert. Warning not quite quick enough, Rei took a punishing blow to the abdomen from the Caryatid's stony fist as the seal's guardian struck from her left.

Though the Caryatid had gotten a hit in, Rei hadn't been caught entirely off guard. Rei deflected the second blow and then turned her flame wreathed hands on the Caryatid, unleashing a devastating series of searing strikes. With sounds like hammer on anvil, the Caryatid blocked each strike with her left arm, taking each impact on the ornate bracer she wore and an explosion of flame flaring out each time.

The Caryatid pulled back, the burning, mangled bracer falling off as she did. It fell to the sandy ground with a soft hiss, smouldering. The sand vortexes she called to her before were closing in, she flitted backwards through the sand laden winds, a deadly field of sucking whirlpools moving between her and her foes.

Jumping up onto a tiny outcrop of rock, mirrored by a similiar prism above, the Caryatid swung her arms outwards, describing an arc with them. The vortexes of sand began pulling back further to circle the rock, flowing together to make a great maelstrom of swirling sand. The sand pulled away, leaving the Caryatid standing on a pinnacle of rock that thrust out of the heart of a great whirlpool. Green light sparked off her as the sands whirled and the sun rays neared, spiralling towards the center.

* * *

Arhra studied the creature she'd accidentally created, fiddling with her spell net as she did to strengthen frayed weavings, not quite willing to make eye contact. Recast into humanoid form, Arhra thought the transformed-hydra-girl was cute in a monstrous way. Also, she proved hydra do have genders. Arhra had always thought they reproduced by budding or something. Fortunately, the spell seemed to have provided loose, sack-like clothing that fit the girl like a tent, removing the need for strategically placed shadows and camera angles.

She'd kept her serpentine qualties - torso and limbs were long and slender, her snake tail had been retained and her heads, at the end of coiling necks, were still mainly that of a snake's, though with some elusive human-like cast to them. It was especially evident as she looked at Arhra plaintively.

But, there was the question of what to do with her. On the plus side, she seemed to think of herself as Arhra's offspring, thus making her less likely to try and bite Arhra to death. Additionally, as the transformed hydra rose unsteadily to her feet, it became obvious she was shorter than Arhra, a trait which was to be encouraged wherever it was found. Except for the stuntie races - halflings, pixies, christmas elves and so on - of course; Arhra hated them irrationally. Most of them were fit only to be destroyed.

However, this could be taken as playing God and Arhra hated dealing with pitchfork and torch wielding mobs. Also - Agh! snakes!

Enwrapped in ponderings and revelations, she'd forgotten about the numerous snakes that were quite close at hand. Arhra scampered back as some lunged at her. To Arhra's surprise, the transformed hydra leapt into action, running in front of the Chaos being and snatching the snakes. Hands transfered said snatched snakes to her mouths, snacking on squirming snakes with every sign of relish. Arhra decided she could stay, for now.

[Tarrin]

The tide of serpents subsided, swarming off the pile that had engulfed Tarrin leaving nothing but sand, The spirit walker was nowhere in sight, not even his corpse was left behind.

The snakes and Hydra turned and started towards new targets, Deep below the sand a form stirred and started making its way forward.
The sand was like water to this form and Tarrin began his movement towards the Caryatid's position.

[Steel Shadow]

Steel gulped. “Overkill much?” He had to admit, the scene looked impressive. It wasn’t every day you got to see a sandstorm atop a pillar surrounded by a whirlpool and lasers. And she/it’d attacked him without seeing him. How’d she/it do that? “Probably something to do with her being one with the earth…” He muttered.

“How the hell are we going to get through that?!?” Steel muttered. “Come on, think, think!”

And so Steel thought. It didn’t take long for an idea to come to him. He winced. The plan was risky, suicidal, and above all, insane. But fortunately, for once none of these affected him. No, he would be perfectly safe, or at least as safe as you could be in a room that was actively trying to kill you. Instead he feared his team-mates reactions.

“Ok, I have an idea.” He told the NPF’ers gathered in the eye of the storm, “First, we need to take out those lasers. That shouldn’t be to hard, anyone who can reach those prisms attack ‘em, and try to avoid the debris. Once they’re down, anyone with any wind control abilities stand over there” He indicated the other side of the whirlpool, “And stop the tornado sandstorm thing. Anyone with ranged attacks go over with ‘em and distract the caryatid. Now I think that she can keep track off all of us as long as we’re in contact with earth, her being the earth caryatid and all. So to attack her successfully, we’d have to do it without touching the ground. So, does anyone have a feather fall spell?” He didn’t pause. It was a common spell, someone had to have it. “If we cast that on someone, then have a particularly strong person,” He looked at Rei, “throw them at her/it, it should be enough to counter the weird gravity around here, confuse the caryatid, and get past the whirlpool at the same time. With the others distracting her, we should be able to get an attack through. Which leads me to who we throw.” He looked at Skyshot, “Just out of curiosity, how often can you cast earthquake?” He asked, trying to look innocent.

[Hawk]

The Caryatid did one of those "mightily impressive, you can't stop me fore I can rip out the earth from under you", type things, looking very much like a stone Dark Pheonix at the end of the Alcatraz battle from X-3, only more impressive, as the view of the room shifted and flew about wildly, getting in all kinds of climatic shots of the scene for "cinematic" purposes, before pulling back round and wheeling downwards towards Hawk, who immediately did one of those dramatic "waking up gasping, I'm not quite dead yet" moments.

Climbing to his feet Hawk tried to get his bearings. He was confused. He was angry. He was slightly concerned for his mental well-being. "I'm soo going to need therapy after all this", he thought.

Looking around, he saw the cause of his recent agro and grew yet more angry. Pushing the recent events of his mind from errr, his mind, Hawk focused on the enemy in front. He was about to do something insanely brave like rushing forward and assaulting her with every bit of strength he had (the winds around him had already begun to swirl and gather about him, almost unconciously), when he heard Steel speak and so he listened attentively. He wasn't angry with Steel for the punch, he had probably deserved it after all and would most likely owe him an apology for the attack, but hopefully he hadn't done too much damage.

As Steel finished speaking, Hawk contemplated the plan;

"Meh, it'll do".

With that, Hawk turned and began firing blasts at the ceiling, shattering some of the sun beam crystals. He wasn't doing it to destroy them though, not entirely anyway, this was merely a means to an ends. He sighted a good target and fired a concussive ball with perfect accuracy. It struck against a crystal and jarred the object loose and with the velocity of the air blast carrying it onwards it struck another. The light that was suddenly refracted and condensed through the impacting crystals was suddenly amplified tenfold as a perfect superheated beam of light shot forth at just the angle Hawk had intended. The light was so hot it made a perfect line in the sand which lead directly to where Steel had indicated for the wind casters to gather. This line was now made of glass and it was this that Hawk had been trying to create all along.

You see, where Steel had indicated was a fair bit away from where Hawk now stood and for him to walk it would be slow and dangerous, thusly, glass had come to save the day. Stepping onto the glass trail, Hawk spread his toes wide so as to properly distribute his weight, re-directed the angle of his wings and summoned the wind to push him along the slippery glass as Hawk became a human/hawk lander surfer... on glass, using his wings to catch the gale which would push him along. The lower friction levels only added to his speed as he zipped across the huge cavern in seconds.

"WHHHEEEEEEEE!!!"

He was also suddenly giddy with happiness for no plausible reason what-so-ever.

Arriving on the far side of the swirling vortex Hawk turned his attention back to the matter at hand (hopefully for the last time). He charged up a gale and began feeding it toward the sandstorm, in an effort to counter out the vortex with an anti-cyclone.

He built it up slowly as it grew exponentially...

[Skyshot]

“Just out of curiosity, how often can you cast earthquake?”"Er, maybe two dozen or so times from full mana," said Skyshot. "Basically, it depends on how many times the gods are willing to accomodate my begging for favors. It gets old after a while, you know, having a subordinate ask you for favors without doing much for you in return.

"As for your plan, I think you forgot about the whole Imposition of Law thing."

"Wait, how would you know about that? She never said anything about it."

"Shut up. Anyways, I do have a Float spell, which might work like that Feather Fall you mentioned. Actually, you know what? Let's try this again. Hey, you up there!" The Caryatid turned her eyes on him. "I get the thing about being created by the 'forces of law,' as you call them, but I serve, answer to, and regularly commune with the creator gods themselves! And you know something, if they felt it would be a direct risk to Order and Law, I wouldn't have a chance at casting spells like Harm!"

[Steel Shadow]

"As for your plan, I think you forgot about the whole Imposition of Law thing."

"I didn't forget about the imporovising of law," Steel replied "That's why we're throwing someone buffed up with as many weight-lifting spells as we can think of instead of having them fly. Of course thay'd come down eventualy, but since I can still jump slightly, I'm figuring that enough force will lift someone up high enough for our purposes. And by someone, I do very specificaly mean you. When you get to her, cast earthquake directly ino her. She's made of rock, so it should technicaly work. I hope. K thanks."

He turned to Rei. "Ms. Rei, when the opertunity presents itself, would you kindly throw our friend here at the crayatid? From what I've seen your the strongest person here. Pretty please?"

"-casting spells like Harm!"

"Woah, lets not go getting her to pay you to much attention!" Steel said as he moved to block any counters the Caryatid might send at their living ammunition if the spell didn't work.

[Inbred Chocobo]

"Sorry if I mess up ya plans in advance Steel." IC said as he ran past Steel towards the whirlpool. IC could run across just about any surface thanks to his recent greenification, but traversing to whirlpool would require something just a bit more than that.

So IC tossed the Wind Edge in front of him, and without missing a step got on it and started riding it like a surfboard into the whirlpool. When IC hit, he bounced a bit with the waves, and then turned the direction the whirlpool turned, and surfed on.

The first little bit was mostly IC riding the outer edge, and those that watched could easily tell he was getting the hang of surfing sand. Strangely enough, IC's greenified walking abilities transferred quite easily into his sand surfing abilities as well, so it didn't take long at all for IC to get in the hang of it.

Then IC cut down, going towards the center in slow circles, using the motion of the whirlpool to his advantage. Things like snakes and hydras weren't around in these sands, so the only thing IC had to avoid was the death rays of the sun.

These too were easy enough to dodge, either by IC cutting up, letting some of the whirlpool push him up, or by IC cutting down, using the momentum he built up to shoot in close. The first few rays IC avoided in wide arches, but the next few ones started getting a lot closer to him than he liked.

As IC got close to the pillar, the speed had dramatically increased from when he started. It was all he could do to avoid the next ray that came in, just barely not having the tip of his tail burned. But IC was so close he could feel it, it was just the sands next to it where way to fast for him to surf and avoid the rays, but daring he went in anyway.

Then the next ray came, and this one IC couldn't avoid. He thought up an idea real quick, and then ducked down. Then, he jumped off hard, yanking the weapon with him. Just as the ray passed over him, IC was halfway through his jump, which ended up being a flip. IC was spinning as well, looking like he was doing a 720 flip, which was timed so that only the Wind Edge was hit as the ray passed over him.

IC came out of the flip, and landed with a thud as he struck the pillar. Instead of sliding off in a hilarious stunt equal to that of men on vines hitting trees, IC stuck a foot out under him and kicked up on the pillar. He followed with the other foot, and after the first few awkward steps, IC had managed to get himself running up the pillar.

[Flarecobra]

As Flare neared Skyshot, unable to see the Caryatid, she heard a soft, evil hissing over the sussuraiton of the windborne sand, the only warning before she felt needles jabbing into her heel. Looking back, there was a hydra, a train of snakes following in its wake. One head had lunged at her heel, snagging her with its poisonous jaws. That head latching on, the others exhaled their poisonous miasma and struck too.


As soon as the fangs punched through my armored heel, the flaming wings flared up, putting out a lot of blistering heat. However I quickly noticed my leg was moving a bit sluggishly, and inwardly cursed. I may be resistent to venom, but was was unsaid was the type of venom. This venom was nurotoxin, whereas I was resistant to hemotoxins. The Miasma that was being released was thankfully caught by the wind from the sandstorm, as I smacked away the striking ones, and using the flaming-hot wings to keep any that tried to strike my back at bay.

When I saw my chance, I stomped down on the snake head that was latched onto my heel, smashing it's neck before stiking at it's body with my hands.

[GARUD]

Garud, through some mysterious plot device, jumped through a protal which was conveninantly there for him to catch up with the others.

"I'm back. Did y'all miss me?"

Garud turned his attention to the Caryt... whatever it was called. He tried to recall how much shadow he had left from fighting the capitalist. Then he realised, he had heaps. The guy was large and the demon slayer had not used any of it. He was ready...

An arc of black lightning formed above Garud's head. Arms raised, he was forming something.

"All light feeds the earth with power. It provides head and nutrients. So lets see how well you fare when you have to rely on feeding off the cold, dead darkness. Garud the demon slayer will show you that he is no push-over."

The darkness wavered, and then grew into a large black dome. As the dome grew, it shut out light. More and more light was lost, as it only crept through at the sides. Finally, the dome was lowered and solidified. It was a very big dome, encapsulating all the NPFers and the Caryatid with it's minions, and allowing plenty of moving room. It was very spacious, but any bits of foliage was starting to retract due to the darkness. The entire area was far more dim than it had originally been. However, people could still see in front of them, just not far.

"Ok guys, hope you all brought flashlights."

[POS Industries]

After Rei's recent barrage of doom, the flames engulfing her hands and feet quickly dissipated and she joined most of the gang in the eye of the sandstorm to hear Steel's plan of action.

"Ms. Rei, when the opertunity presents itself, would you kindly throw our friend here are the crayatid? From what I've seen your the strongest person here. Pretty please?"

The android clasped her hands together and squealed excitedly at the request. "Ooh, Pe-chan's always said he'd love it if I threw all of you into some large rock! Wait'll he hears about this!"

Wasting no time, Rei reached down and grabbed Skyshot by the ankle, hoisting him into the air and twirling him over her head as she took aim in the Caryatid's general direction.

"Around and around and away we..."

*********************

Meanwhile, in low orbit above the precise location where our heroes stood, the POS Industries GPS tracking satellite was firing it's most highly powered scanning beam straight downward, obliterating all life in its path as it scanned the interior of the cave. Not at all unexpectedly, sparks began to fly around the satellite before it suddenly exploded in a completely silent ball of swirling fire. Simultaneously, a couple of the folks just returning to the company's R&D department after the Kickass Scientist Party fainted upon seeing its destruction, and Jenkins in accounting actually had a heart attack.

*********************

"...go?"

Rei stopped dead in her tracks, Skyshot hanging upside-down as she continued holding him over her head by his ankle. The little android girl was blind again in the surrounding madness and the encroaching darkness of Garud's spell, and hadn't the slightest idea where she should be aiming.

[Bailey]

Lying on the ground, on his back, Syttulg suddenly rocked and flipped over onto his stomach, then heaved himself to his feet by shifting his hands under himself and shoving. His head turned to face the Caryatid, he pulled back his hand to punch, and then froze as the Caryatid winked at him. He sat stunned for a couple seconds as his muscle and bone structures shifted, stretching him out from a normal sized extremely bulky and muscular type object into an elongated normal muscular build type object. Syttulg sat back down and looked at his hands.

[Tarrin]

Tarrin dug upwards and exited the sand just behind Arhra, Shifting from the mole form he had taken on to his normal human aspect he reached thru the veil and brought forth his spirit lance.

Backing up to watch Arhra's back he started to spin the lance reading his attacks for when the snakes started their attacks anew, Thistime a few of the Hydra had taken the initiave and were leading the torrent of serpents.

[Lumaes]

Lumaes stood very, very still. His pose was hunched and his skeleton claws where clenched very tightly at his sides, the air seemed to quiver around him tiny sparks and flashes surrounding him as sand combusted against the palpable aura of Unhappy that surrounded the blazing-eyed spectre which lit him up like a bonfire in the dark.
Very slowly the jaws began to separate, the mouth slowly opened and, for the briefest of moments, everything was still… everything was quiet….

“Mewling gutter-born brain-starved idiotic retard pack of fulminously inept thought-cripples!!!”

Sand and snakes were blown in all directions as a massive scar punched through the swirling winds as a solid wall of vehemence tore up the interior of the cavern. Sickening pops and snapping was heard from those unfortunate snakes that were broken against the cavern walls.
His voice was small and soft… like the whispering whistle that heralds the destructive payload of a five-nine.

“…I have one question… do you enjoy it?..”
When no answer is forthcoming he casts a scalding glance at a snake that was slowly creeping towards his heel, fangs bared to sink into the shadowy flesh. It promptly retreated.

“My genius plan – my mathematically sound, reasonable and scientifically assured recipe for success – being ruined by a bunch of slack jawed yokels. The hydras must survive – they must continue to thrive and multiply they must consume the snakes!”
A hydra, paralysed so far by the spectacle dipped a head worriedly into the massed snakes, swallowing one quickly with an ashamed look on its reptilian face.

“You are damaging my equations; you are reversing my good work. Not only that you are ruining each others plans!”
The searchlight gaze pierces the darkness to light up Garud,
“Darkness? Darkness?! Surely there plan lacked the sheer brilliance of my own but what simpleton would ever assume that blinding all their allies could possibly be a good thing?”

He sighed, a long weary sounding exaltation before he gasps as if in pain, a worm of poison burying in his heart. His body twitches slightly as the paralytic takes effect.

[Arhra]

"What?! Who turned out the lights?!" Arhra cried out in the sudden darkness.

"Ok guys, hope you all brought flashlights." came Garud's voice, just over the sounds of the swirling sand.

"Garud?!" Arhra said in shock. "I thought he was dead. This day just keeps getting worse and worse!"

A multi-headed shape stirred out of the murk and Arhra was relieved to find it was the only friendly hydra in the entire Temple. Happily Arhra started, "Oh, good to see you uh... actually, you don't have a name yet do you?" The hydra-girl shook her heads - its impolite to speak when one's mouths are full. "Well... you're a hydra... and you're a girl... so let's call you..." Arhra trailed off, muttering the word hydra to herself, "Hydra! That sounds like a girl's name." She was feeling lazy today. "Is that alright with you?"

Hydra nodded happily. Around them, it seemed everything had fallen momentarily silent. Arhra briefly wondered why - she wasn't about to do anything dramatic.

“Mewling gutter-born brain-starved idiotic retard pack of fulminously inept thought-cripples!!!”

Arhra reeled from the blistering tide of violent emotion, and would have fallen if Hydra hadn't caught her with a hand fortunately devoid of snakes. As the rest of Lumaes' rebuke continued with quiet vehemence, building up to another indignant crescendo, Arhra noticed Hydra was taller, standing ever so slightly higher than her. She knew she shouldn't hate someone for being able to shed the curse of short stature even though it had plagued her so much in this incarnation, but it still rankled. But, at least the pettiness helped her block out some of the pure fear the monologue instilled.

Hydra didn't seem as able to distract herself - Arhra could feel her quivering. Hearing the speech come to its end, with a gasp at its end that suggested something bad Arhra decided it was time to spring into action. She caught Hydra's worried gaze first, "Well, you heard the man-specter-ghost-person! Better get to that snake eating! I'll have to check on him." Hydra gulped, incidentally swallowing the last of the snakes she'd been eating and ran at the closest group of snakes she could see in the murky darkness, shovelling them into her mouths and swallowing them with a speed only the powerful combination of enjoyment and stark, raving terror could induce.

Arhra proceeded in the direction of the voice, fiddling with her containment spell as she went. It was dark here so she hoped she was headed the right way. She might get eaten by a grue otherwise. The pale white of Lumae's skull and hands stood out eerily in the darkness, Arhra finding him without too much trouble. "Are you alive?" she called out to him.

* * *

Inbred charged up the pillar in a feat of acrobatic ability, only to have Garud's darkness fall when he was halfway up. Forced to slow down to make certain of his footing, he was no doubt cursing the shadowy NPFer. Ahead, there was what sounded like laughter. Vines were crawling down the rock, long wicked thorns coating them, grasping at everything touching it. Where the others were bewildered in the darkness, they could feel the ground shifting beneath them, as if it might open to swallow them at any moment. Some new devilry was at work.

OOC: A little short on the Caryatid battle side, but everyone needs to adjust to the new situation anyway. Felt like a little fear of the unknown while I was at it.

[Inbred Chocobo]

"GARUD, YOU IDIOT STOP THIS THIS INSTANT!" IC shouted in fustration as the darkness forced him into a slow crawl up the pillar.

Don't have a flashlight, guess I'll have to make due. IC thought. He leaned back, and hurled the Wind Edge up the pillar. The Wind Edge started scrapping along the pillars, creating sparks as it went up so hopefully IC could get an idea of what was ahead of him. When he saw the vines, he knew was going to have to do something to get by them. While the Wind Edge cut some down, it grew back at a much faster rate.

Once the Wind Edge ran out of pillar, IC reached out, and in another second caught the Wind Edge again. IC was going to hate running blindly up the pillar, it was something that he wasn't sure he could do. But what he was sure of is that he could create a small gap by tearing the vines with the Wind Edge first. IC started running up the pillar again, a little slower at first, but picking up the pace really quick.

He stuck the Wind Edge in front of him, and scrapped it along the pillar, creating sparks so that he could see a little better, and so that he could start cutting through the vines.

[Hawk]

The darkness wasn't bothering Hawk all too much if truth be told. Sure it was darker, but he had the eyes of a hawk and therefore, very good eyesight, even in darkness. The only problem was he couldn't really do a whole lot more than what he was doing.

"There has to be some way to assist the others...", he thought.

"Around and around and away we..."

"That's it!"

"...go?"

Hawk sent a psychic message to REI.

"Keep spinning him, I can see so I'll tell you when to let go"

It was after he thought(said) this that he realised for the first time that he didn't know if the android could even pick up psychic thoughts. Surely whoever had built her would have thought of that...

Wouldn't they?

[POS Industries]

If Rei were able to receive psychic thoughts, which would require a brain made out of spongy, brainy material that generates and receives psychic waves rather than a series of microprocessors, the android would have answered Hawk's query about this exact matter with a very definite "No".

However, because that "No" was completely truthful, she couldn't answer it anyway, and continued to stand there blindly, unaware of the bird's attempts to communicate with her via silly means.

Rei lowered her right arm from its previous position of getting ready to chuck Skyshot, at which point her human projectile hit the ground beside her with a dull thud, ankle still held firmly in the android's clutches.

"Well, that's no good," Rei pondered aloud, "Looks like I'm blind again. Anyone wanna tell me where to throw this guy?"

[Hawk]

"Damnit, looks like I can't communicate with her after all. We really should have tested that out before running into battle!" But that would, of course, be far too easy!

"Can anyone relay a message to the android for me?", he asked the group at large. "As I seem to be the only one who can see the Caryatid I can direct her when to throw, but she can't hear me. Or, you know, we could just like, Get rid of the all encapsulating darkness!!"

[Steel Shadow]

"Who thought it'd be a good idea to turn the lights off in the middle of a boss battle?" Steel asked, looking around accusingly. The effect was lost in the darkness however.

"Can anyone relay a message to the android for me?"

"Rei, the psychotic bird," Steel, bitter? Nooo... "is trying to tell you that he can point you to the caryatid, but is apparently unable to communicate with you. I give him a 50/50 chance of telling the truth or being controlled by the enemy. Or just plain insane." He shrugged nonchalantly. Then winced in pain. "Oh yeah, that reminds me. Skyshot, could you heal my... You're busy. I'll ask later."

"Anyway, follow the bird, or you could try calculating it's position from all the sparks Inbred is making over there." He noted, watching IC's vertical dash. Then he looked down. The ground was shifting. That did not bode well. "Whatever you do, could you do it quickly?"

[Skyshot]

Rei may have been virtuous, but she was nothing compared to Skyshot.

Most people would have reacted vigorously and violently after being hoisted up by their ankle.

But not Skyshot.

Most people would have attempted to do actual physical harm to the person when realizing their intent was to throw them into an exceedingly dangerous and provoked superhuman.

But not Skyshot.

Most people would have begun plotting the destruction of the person, their family, their loved ones, and anything they held dear, in reverse order, when the person starting spinning them like a lariat over their head.

But not Skyshot.

Okay, a little Skyshot. Nobody's perfect.

Skyshot's brain began whirling what with the blood rush to his head, and received a boost from smacking the ground fairly hard. He recalled a few things. First, his last Float spell had worn off a while before. Second, if Rei failed, he'd most likely end up in the vortex. Third, he could clearly make out the Caryatid's glaring aura and thus her position. Fourth, it was very unsettling fighting someone more Good than he himself was, and wished it was practical to dispel the thing. Fifth, if someone could cool off the room real quick, his infravision would work. Sixth, Control Weather did work that way. Time for a mana-burner.

"Control Weather: Humid. Control Weather: Cold. Infravision."

The room gradually began to cool off at a barely noticeable rate, and he began to make out more shapes amongst the various auras. Now if only he could be convinced this was any kind of good idea, he might even cast his Infravision on Rei and go for it."Well, that's no good. Looks like I'm blind again. Anyone wanna tell me where to throw this guy?""Aren't you a machine or something? You have perfect memory recall, don't you?" He clapped his hands over his mouth. What...have...I...done...

[GARUD]

Garud paused. Everyone was complaining about his spell, even though he was only trying to help... himself. He sighed, so he knew just how to remedy the situation.

"Alright, let there be light!"

The demon slayer sucked in all the darkness, and it centralised in his hand. The ominous black cloud was unformed into any item so far, so it just stayed there. However, with the darkness gone, there was a strange unnatural light that filled the dome. Any sunlight was gone but this new light was there to replace the darkness.

"Y'know, my plan was to block off the sunlight, and then use that shadow that would result so I could use a strong spell. So don't hate me for turning out the lights for a moment. It is an Earth Caryatid, and Earth benefits from sunlight."

Garud smiled and scanned for the Caryatid and found that alot of snakes had surrounded him.

"Oh, it's whacking time!"

Garud drew his staff and started to belt them around. There was alot of them though.

[POS Industries]

"Aren't you a machine or something? You have perfect memory recall, don't you?"

"Well, yes," Rei shrugged half-heartedly in response to Skyshot's query as she scanned the area with her own infravision, attempting to get a lock on the target, "But the target is moving very fast and quite randomly. Remembering where it was a second earlier wouldn't do much good, I'm afraid. Thanks for settling things down enough for me to use some of my other ocular scanning systems, though. You're a sweetie!"

Even after Skyshot's series of weather control spells, there was still too much interference for the android to get a precise lock. The Caryatid was still moving, however, and the longer they waited, the slimmer their window of opportunity to attack became.

"Rei," Steel spoke up, "the psychotic bird is trying to tell you that he can point you to the caryatid, but is apparently unable to communicate with you. I give him a 50/50 chance of telling the truth or being controlled by the enemy. Or just plain insane."

The android girl blinked for a moment as she processed the statement for a few moments before finally turning her attention to her addresser. "So, wait..." she asked, "You mean to tell me that bird is part of the team?! I thought it was just somebody's pet!"

[Flarecobra]

I looked around some, lighting the area near me, though the heat was keeping some snakes away, thankfully. I moved to the group, though I kept the heat up, and stayed a little ways away.

[Bailey]

As Syttulg continued to stare at his hands, his nannites, still unsure of what to do and wanting to conserve energy, made the mistake of landing on his shoulders. A ripple of his flesh and they were gone.

Although they could no longer act outside his body, the inside was another matter. They made their way through his bloodstream and headed towards his brain. Ten seconds of work later, he had just enough intelligence to send them commands, although in the disoriented state that had been caused by a sudden brain increase, he wasn't quite sure what was going on.

All he knew for the moment was that the stone woman in front of him was incredibly beautiful, and that his nannites were for some reason inside him.


He extended his hand towards her, directing his nannites to turn his hand into a bouquet as he did so.

[Tarrin]

Tarrins body begain to glow, a soft green tinged glow that threw colour back into the cavern. Fireflys had the power to cause their abdomin to glow with such a light, Tarrin taking part of a transformation now gaive his skin the same power hopefully it would be enough to give the NPFer's the light they needed, Either that or he just made himself the best target around.

Later he would think about his actions a decide that the latter was more of a deffinate, for now however the Hydras were starting to move towards him again.
A few of them were taken up by some weird mix of hydra/girl that was eating them by the droves... the fact that it wasen't attacking him gave Tarrin pause to not bother it and turned his attention to the serpents that now had lunged at him.

[Arhra]

OOC: Well, this is what you get when I don't wish to delay things any more after my own busy-ness and I go with the first crazy idea I come up with. Blame Futurama. Windmills, hah! As you may have noticed, these things all have the fact in common they have nothing directly to do with a character's powers and everything to do with questionable logic. Er, the bad kind of questionable logic. Not the good kind. Most definately not.

In the wake of the various events after Garud inexplicably decided to do whatever you call the reverse of shedding light on a situation, the admixture of stern Law imbuing the chamber and the seething Chaos seeking to boil up from underneath had a very strange effect indeed. Or at least that's probably what caused it.

Inbred had found that slowing down while trying to get up a pillar by momentum alone was a very bad idea. Progress slowed to a crawl, he scrapped the Wind Edge along the pillar in front of him, trying to create sparks so that he could see a little better, and so that he could start cutting through the vines. But, some other nebulous presence was at work.

"SPARKS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!" it boomed. While they may look dramatic, they are not very good at lighting a place up. Inbred felt a massive impact, like some cosmic force smacking him on the back of the head. While not life threatening, its stunning effect meant the vines creeping up around him. They were hardly coming from just in front of him after all. Thorny creepers snagged at him, wrapping about limbs and trying to pull the man-chocobo more fully into their jagged embrace.

Hawk do not believe he was having much in the way of problems. He even suggested a suggestion. Sure it was darker, but he had the eyes of a hawk and hawks have very good eyesight. So he could see in darkness, right?

"HAWK EYES DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!" An invisible force flattened him into the soft sand, a reasonable sized concavity about him. Hawks are daylight hunters for a reason. The intangible presence seemed to hesitate, and then hit the bird again for something about prisms that may or may not have happened. The overall effect was much like a rather fat man sitting on a chicken. Thankfully the sand was fairly loose.

Garud had come to the realisation that his darkness was not welcome, and so he pulled it back into an orb of ominious darkness in his hand. The demon slayer believed that taking the darkness away would replace it with some strange, unnatural light that repelled the sunlight.

"LIGHT DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!" Some manner of invisible, cosmic sucker punch caught Garud, feeling much like getting hit in the gut with the universe.

Flare had lit the area around her with her fiery shield, believing the heat would stop mindless vines growing towards her.

"VINES DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!" the voice thundered. It was like a hammer hitting a nail. Flare was the nail. And the hammer was invisible. Possibly because of quantum. In other words, it was almost nothing like a hammer and a nail. Flare found herself somewhat concussed and buried up to her neck in the sand, having been driven into it like a tent-peg by a sharp blow to the noggin.

Seeing part of this spectacle despite the poor visibility and most definately hearing it, Arhra spoke to herself, "Crap. They've pissed off the universe." Considering what she was, she winced, then opened an eye, surprised to find it didn't come for her. "Must be afraid of me." she gleefully concluded. Just in case, she tried to bury her perpetual motion machine before remembering she didn't have one. Instead she was trying to kick sand over a snake, a bulge moving up its throat as it prepared to cough up a snake basket.

Hydra was off gulping down snakes some distance away, just a shadow in a dense path of the sand storm. Arhra would have to defend herself on her own. Face rather expressionless, she grabbed it by the throat. The snake made funny hissing noises as it was forced to swallow the expanding lump of a snake basket again.

Needing something to amuse her while she sat on the sidelines, Arhra carefully twisted the snake into a knot, still able to breath, but not able to bring up anything. She dropped it, seeing the basket had reached about its full size, making a rather large bulge in the snake's profile and then sat on it like a cushion, back into working on cat's cradle, important magical spell version.

Thankfully, there wasn't really any danger for her to worry about here. A shoot pushed out of the shifting sand a metre or so away. Arhra ignored it - she'd said there was no danger for her to worry about and there damn well was going to be no danger for her to worry about.

While Syttulg believed he was in front of the Caryatid, he was mistaken, as evidenced by the fact it wasn't killing him. 'Twas merely one of the inanimate statues scattered about the place. It showed no sign of becoming animate any time in the near future.

The Caryatid hadn't moved at all. The flurries of sand, all the other moving objects, the expectation that she would have moved and the fact she was the same temperature as her surroundings had definately complicated things. Seeing the Caryatid would have cleared up quite a few mysteries.

She crouched at the top of the stony pinnacle, drawing power into her out of the earth and recuperating from Skyshot's Harm spell. Her viny hair, formerly hacked off short facing Skyshot, now a luxurious mane. It carpeted the sheer sides of the pillar, had sought to entangle Inbred in its thorny grasp and its lengths vanished into the sands.

The Caryatid was an intelligent foe, and had developed two plans, one had been already in motion and a second had been developed to take advantage of the disarray that Garud's actions had caused. As the ground had shifted, she had been making things ready. Tentacular vines, barbed with wicked thorns, burst out of the sand and began lashing and grabbing at the NPFers.

OOC: As you can probably guess, the people closest to the pinnacle would be worst affected - less distance the vines had to grow. Given the number of pyromaniacs we seem to have, I should remind people that a mass of vines does not burst into flames like a mass of oil soaked rags gummed together with tar.

[Inbred Chocobo]

IC didn't need the sparks since Garud got rid of the darkness, but he now had another problem. The vines had managed to wrap him up, so he was stuck, and being poked by the thorns. So he pulled his Wind Edge free, grabbed a vine, and stripped it. Cutting at the vines would take forever, but if he was correct, she was the one growing them.

So he grabbed the thornless vine, and pulled down hard, using the pain of the other vines as motivation to get the Caryatid off her high place and down with him.

[Bailey]

As the vines came towards him, Syttulg tried to use his power to psychicly talk with plants before he remembered that he didn't have that power, and simply settled for shifting his arms into whirling blades of doom. Now, this may seem counter to his status as part-plant, but to be honest, these plants were competitors. The more other plants there were, the less sunlight there was for him, the less water there was for him, the less minerals there were for him, and most important, the less love from the Caryatid there was for him. He got to work on weedwacking, stopping from time to time to eat the hacked vines to get his energy back up.

[Mauve Mage]

In the utter chaos following the Caryatid's ascent to the pinnacle of stone, Mauve had been first overlooked and then completely forgotten by the hydras and whatnot. Probably because she hadn't DONE anything worth paying attention to. That didn't particularly bother Mauve; it meant she had less things to worry about. Now all she had to look out for was the wind and the sand and the lasers and the vines and the ever-present threat of being teamkilled.

The mage ran forward, slicing through one of the aforementioned vines with her knives. There had to be SOMETHING she could do; she had been sitting around doing practically nothing for most of the fight. And that just wasn't her style.

She supposed she should do something about the plants that were currently trying to impail her with thorns or trap her in vines. Slicing them in half worked well enough in the short term, but it was slow going and wasn't always easy to do. So, Mauve came up with an Idea.

If the Laws of the Universe were becoming involved, then it would stand to reason that these plants would follow some form of said laws, since no disembodied voices had yet shown up to say "PLANTS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!!" And if Mauve knew anything about plants-- not that she knew too much, mind you, as gardening wasn't her hobby of choice-- it was that plants and drastic temperature changes didn't mix.

While she had been pondering this, the vines had moved in closer, forming a lopsided circle around the mage. She sighed. Meh, it couldn't hurt to try it.

"Deep freeze," she said, and huge chunks of ice materialized in the air above the circle of vines. Mauve nodded, and the ice fell down onto the vines, crushing and freezing them.

The sand around the plants was hot, and so some of the ice had already begun to melt. That's when she realized that plants plus water equals happy plants.

"Crap," she sighed. "Oh well, forget that plan, then." She held up a hand. There was one good thing about getting the plants wet...

"Thundaga!!" It meant they would conduct electricity well. Mauve briefly wondered if the electicity would affect the roots of the plant, which might kill the whole thing. She readied another volley of lightning.

[Steel Shadow]

"Wait, so what just happened?" Steel asked, confused. Recent history had just been retconed several times in quick succession, and that's going to have an effect on someone who experiences time differently from your average human being.

"Ok, so, no encapsulating darkness or anti-light means..." He muttered, brain catching up, "Those lasers should be-" A sun beam zoomed past him, just missing setting him on fire again. "Damnit!"

Ok, there has to be something I can do, right? What do we need?
Defeat the cary... how do you pronounce that? I've heard it, I've even said it a few times, but I'm still not-
Focus! How do we defeat her/it?
Right now the best bet would be throwing Skyshot.
And that wont work because...?
Rei can't see the... you know... through the sand storm.
So I can...?
Get rid of the sandstorm.
And how do I do that?
Can't. Waaaay beyond my powers at the mo'.
Right. So what else?
Rei mentioned she could see in other ways. I'm assuming infrared’s in there somewhere.
Right. And?
Skyshot cooled down the area. Actually it is rather chilly...
Focus. The ca... her body wont produce heat will it?
Nope.
So to hit her...
We'd need to heat her up!
And how can we do that?
Fire?
I don't have any fire. Unless you count my cape.
Which was...
Set on fire by a sun laser!
One of which just passed me. Aha!

Steel burst into a run. Catching up with the beam didn't take long, it hadn't gone anywhere. Quickly he froze about a meter of pure, undiluted death beam and swiveled it around, aiming at the top of the pillar. It probably wouldn't hit. But when at first you don't succeed... He froze another section and aimed again, this time a little higher ant to the left. Repeating the process he moved after the sun beam, filling the sand cloud, and hopefully the caryatid, with laser.

[Tarrin]

"THAT'S IT" Tarrin had done his utmost to defend himself and to a lesser degree Arhra, but snakes, lazer beams, big rocks and now vines, he had had just about enough.

Tarrin wasn't the type to get mad infact it took quiet alot to make him so, but with everything happening and the fact his arm hurt from the laser that hit him earlier he was not a happy chappy.
Turning his back from the oncoming serpents he begain to charge at the Caryatid, as he closed the gap he changed and in his stead charging across the sand was a large and very pissed off Silverbacked gorrila.

[Hawk]

Once again, Hawk was in trouble (so what else is new?). Being temporarily dazed and then surrounded by killer plants while ones powers of flying away flight were non-existant tended to have that effect. Abandoning his attempt to disrupt the sand vortex surrounding the pillar upon which their foe stood, he attempted to make a swift retreat tactical withrawal and come up with a new plan of attack.

Unfortunately, the aformentioned killer plants were between him and freedom from this madhouse safety. A tentacle swung at him and the thorny monstrosity barely missed taking his head off as he ducked beneath its swing. A second vine followed the first, this one attempting to crush him under its bulbus, thorn covered end. Hawk threw himself forward as it smacked into the sand where he had been but a second earlier. Hawk wasn't agile enough on the ground for this kind of thing and as he tried to get back up onto his feet, the ominous shadow of the tentacle loomed over him once more. Hawk saw it and knew it was over. He was out of breath. His wings ached from the exertion of trying hopelesly to disrupt the vortex with his gales. He was battered and bruised from a variety of injuries (crashing headlong into a tree, falling out of the air at high speed, being dropped to the floor by Steel, being punched by Steel and then smacked around by the universe itself). Hawk often prided himself on being able to take this sort of thing, but it was all of a sudden beginning to take its toll.

He closed his eyes wearily as he heard, very faintly, the swoosh of his oncoming doom above him.

[Flarecobra]

As soon as I was recovered slightly, I shook my head, and tried my hardest to force my way out. "Damnit! I was NOT going to do anything to your precious vines you stupid construct!" I yelled at the voice, my eyes now a firey red. "Caryatid, listen to me. What these people are trying to do is save this world, and you are impeading in their progress. If you kill them here, then this world, along with you, will be destroyed. None shall be spared, regardless of them being on the side of Law or Chaos. The people arn't just doing it for themselves, or for the Forces of Chaos. They're doing for everyone."

[Hawk]

But the sound of approaching doom does NOT sound like that of a vine swooshing down to kill you. Instead, it sounds strangely familiar. It sounds a bit like this:

"Vvvvvvvvmmmmmmmm".

As Hawk closed his eyes and anticipated the end, he experianced,

LOST STYLE FLASHBACK TWO...

The two men stared each other down warily, each one daring the other to move. Each held a simple sword in his hand, ancient and deadly. It was the older who struck first. Hawk parried the attack and the second which immediately followed AND the third after that, before he was finally able to go on the offensive. An observer of this duel would easily tell you that the older warrior was clearly the superior swordsman. He moved and struck without thinking, his abilities pure reflex. Nether the less, the younger man was more than capable of holding his own.

The battle continued in this vein for some time, each combatant countering the other before they too, were countered. At one point the blades became locked together, as the two men fought with pure strength against the other. Hawk made the risky maneouver that broke the lock, twisting his blade away while exposing an opening for his enemy. But the move had also thrown his foe slightly off-balance, and without wasting time or giving his opponent the chance to strike, Hawk whipped the blade back around and caught the other mans arm, drawing blood. A cry of pain (or was it fury?) came from the wounded as he returned the assault upon Hawk with a swipe so forceful that the blade was flung from Hawks hand. Before he could react, Hawk was thrown to the ground, a blade pointed at his throat.

"You're getting better, but you still make stupid mistakes", Cort (the older) said, "but it has been a long time since someone drew MY blood first, in practice!"

He withdrew the blade from Hawks throat. "You may yet become a somewhat competant warrior!", Cort laughed cruelly.

Hawk stood and each of them bowed. "Thank you teacher", Hawk replied without emotion.

"Now get out of my sight before I draw YOUR blood!"

Hawk turned and obeyed without arguing and once outside of the Training Arena the young man who had been quietly watching this "lesson" joined him.

"That was brilliant Hawk!", his good friend Marcus said to him, "I've not seen Cort lose first blood to a student before! We need to go and celebrate!" Marcus was jumping for joy and laughing.

Hawk smiled at his friend. "Best idea I've heard all day".

Six weeks later, Marcus was dead and Hawks life changed forever...

LOST STYLE FLASHBACK TWO...

Vvvvvvvvmmmmmmmm!

As Hawk returned to the present, he realised something... he wasn't dead! Opening his eyes cautiously, he looked around to see that the vine that had been about to crush him was lying to the side, severed by a stray sun laser. It seemed the universe was letting him off the hook this time.

"Ah, how fortunate!"

Then he realised, Fate ITSELF had granted him this good fortune, so he must use it wisely. Pushing through the pain and exhaustion he continued on his way, striking at vines as they sprung up out of the sand around him. Air wasn't the most effective element against plants, but it knocked them back far enough to allow passage through the sandstorm.

And so it was that he came upon REI, who was standing around looking slightly lost.

"Let's end this already!"

With all his remaining strength, Hawk summoned up all the power he could and channeled it into another gale attack, directed it toward the Caryatid and unleashed the pure power of the wind. Another tunnel of air opened up in the storm, bringing the Caryatid into view.

"Attack now, before it's too late!" Hawk looked at REI, hopeing she would get the message."You know, we've REALLY got to work on our communication skills!"

[Arhra]

Out on the sidelines, Arhra was still busy maintaining her spell for when the Caryatid was defeated. She wriggled slightly on her cushion - the snake she'd forced to swallow its own snake basket. It was becoming a little awkward to sit on - the snakes from inside the basket seemed to be approaching full size, making Arhra's cushion-snake ridiculously bloated.

It was already fat enough that sitting on it was getting a little precarious. Arhra drummed the fingers of her free hand on its stretched skin, thinking she heard a snake cough inside - possibly making another basket. She wondered how long it would take for the wheezing snake to become spherical. Perhaps it would explode first. This was not cruelty, it was Science!

Of course, checking her spell and preoccupying herself with snake theories meant she wasn't very ready when the sprout from before erupted into a wickedly barbed length of angry plant life and lashed at her. Hydra suddenly appeared, blocking the whip-like strike with an arm, letting it wrap partially around her. She wrapped it about one arm and grabbed lower down with another then heaved, tearing it off near the base. Another arm - Oh, she has four arms now. I guess they're kind of like heads. Arhra noted - pulled the vines off where it clung to her limbs, leaving nasty looking long scratches in her scaly skin from the thorns.

Arhra was impressed. She hadn't even had to call out something like "Minion! Save me!" That metamorphosised to concern and Arhra rose up to look at Hydra more closely. Five serpentine heads looked back, from a much greater height than before Arhra noticed. The tent-like expanse of clothes that Hydra had been swathed in when she'd gained human shape was looking much less baggy now. She'd really been gorging herself on snakes. Aside from the thorn wounds, she looked as healthy as an ox, sleekly muscled and long limbs moving gracefully.

"You must take after me." Arhra said with something approximating maternal pride, "Although you seem to be much better than me at shedding shortness." She permitted herself a moment of internal rage, "Let's take a look at those wounds... Revivify!"

* * *

Meanwhile, the other NPFers were struggling with the vines. Inbred was caught on the pinnacle itself, trussed up and wicked, inches long thorns biting into him. He was trying to pull on a vine stripped of thorn, hoping to tug the Caryatid down to his level from her more elevated position. But the vines where well rooted down the rough sides of the rocky pillar and the Caryatid of Earth proved as immovable as stone. Funny that.

Mauve had called upon icy missiles that conducted supernatural cold to crush the vines beneath their frosty, crystalline edges. But, seeing the hot sands already beginning to melt them, she then invoked magics to call up the power of lightning instead. Electricity arced along the vines, driving up steam as the water saturating the plants flashed off, the vines themselves giving strange poping sounds as the moisture in them was also partially turned to vapour. Flaccid from their weakened structure, they thrashed slightly, new growth creeping along their lengths slowly renewing the parboiled sections.

In the shape of a mighty gorrila, Tarrin charged heedlessly towards the rock the Caryatid perched upon. His chagre was unhalted by the thrashing vines but there was still the dangers of the swirling sands about the pinnacle. He began to flounder as he reached the edge of the maelstrom of sand, footing treacherous and the currents in the sand seeking to suck him under. He could feel the sands shifting at the Caryatid's will as she enacted her own plan, the patterning pulling more inwards and down.

Eyes a fiery red, Flare cried out to the Caryatid, "Damnit! I was NOT going to do anything to your precious vines you stupid construct! Caryatid, listen to me. What these people are trying to do is save this world, and you are impeding their progress. If you kill them here, then this world, along with you, will be destroyed. None shall be spared, regardless of them being on the side of Law or Chaos. The people aren't just doing it for themselves, or for the Forces of Chaos. They're doing for everyone."

"You will bring Chaos." the Caryatid repeated with serenity, "The spawn of Chaos leads you and Chaos is all that will come of your actions." The Caryatid had risen to her feet, verdant mane of hair cascading down her back, turning into the vines that engulfed the pinnacle, and mana flaring off her as she held arms outstretched. The sun rays were spiralling inwards, their paths making up some complex pattern and above her, the light prism scraped and rotated in its mooring. "Thus you must be unmade."

Steel's captured beams made a grid of spearing lights, some solar spikes striking the Caryatid. Blossoms of sunny radiance shone out as they hit her cool stone flesh, and leaving the fabrics of her clothing charred and smouldering at the points of impact. But the Caryatid remained rooted, immobile - the light rays seemed to have little effect on her. Still, Steel's intent of heating her up was fulfilled.

A tunnel of wind opened, Hawk releasing a gale to clear the air. The path was open, Rei could clearly see even the glittering gaze of the Caryatid. The Caryatid's arms edged up fracitonally higher, as if ready for some swift gesture, sun rays entering a holding pattern revolving in a ring just in from the whirlpool's edges. The moment was now.

OOC: Dun dun dun! I wonder if anyone spots what's going to happen.

[Flarecobra]

I sighed. Nothing was going to get through to her, so I closed my eyes, and started to focus on using my most powerful spell: Firestorm. As I brought the spell into effect, overhead dark clouds started to form and started to cover the celing.

[Tarrin]

Tarrin felt the sand starting to grab at his feet, he judged himself close enough and jumped.
straining every muscle in his primate body he reached out for a bunch of the closest vines, he anticipated their movement and hoped he had allowed enough of a varience to get a grip on them. (upto you to resolve Arhra lol)

[Mauve Mage]

(OOC: Because I feel like doing something a little different...)

"D'oh," Mauve said forlornly, looking at the new life flowing into the previously electrocuted vines. "That's not cool."

Her magic having failed her, and the army of evil flora closing in, Mauve fell back on the age-old tradition of frantically searching through one's inventory for any special items they'd been saving. She delved into her Pockets of Near Infinite Holding (which can only hold 99 of each type of item) and began pulling things out, muttering to herself as she went...

"Lesee... KitKat bar. Mini Etch-A-Sketch. No. Tape measurer. Plastic Smurf. Green rubber band. Nenya. Sandwich bag full of Oreos. Broken wristwatch. Black Materia. Camcorder. Bottle of... Ah! Here we go." She held aloft a small black bottle victoriously. A Recall Potion.

"Recall," Mauve commanded as she threw the bottle to the ground. A spiral of white light swirled around her, and she was gone.

A moment later the mage appeared in front of a large white door. This was a place where few dared tread. Yes, this was THE GARAGE OF THE MAUVE MAGE. Mauve opened the garage door and stepped around her car to the item she desired. Yes, it was still there, half-buried beneath a tarpaulin and the box of halloween stuff that still needed to be put back up in the rafters. Meh, she'd get around to it eventually. Kicking the other stuff aside, she grabbed what she needed and ran back to the recall point.


Mauve re-appeared on the battlefield with a large object in her arms. She changed her grip on it and pulled a cord. A loud mechanical roar escaped the object as it jerked to life. Mauve raised it above her head, challenging the vines around her to do their worst.

BEHOLD THE CHAINSAW OF THE MAUVE MAGE!!

It was kinda heavy for her, and it probably wouldn't last long before the recall magic ran out and pulled it back to her garage, but damn, was it gonna be fun while it lasted.

She advanced on the ill-fated first group of vines, grinning maniacally.

[Bailey]

Syttulg looked around, a plant , in a room full of plants. In nature, plants fight constantly, day after day in a never-ending battle of survival, albiet a battle so slow that it is hard for human eyes to percieve. But now both sides were moving quickly. Syttulg glanced around. The enemy had numbers on their side. He heard the chainsaw rev and glanced at it, then grinned as he held out his arms, sprouting long curved bladelike thorns. But he could evolve much faster than they could.

He began slicing his way over to Mauve, devouring vines as he slashed them.

[POS Industries]

Rei, having assumed that Skyshot had already cast float on himself, hucked him full force at the Caryatid. It was awesome. Woo.

[Arhra]

OOC: In hindsight, that was not a very good spot to end a post. Oh well, hoping to wrap this battle up by chapter end.

Skyshot was hurled by Rei. The clerical thief was flung at Caryatid, straight through the vortex of clear air, passing unscathed through the circling, interlaced grid of the sun rays. It was all very dramatic.

But the Caryatid, arms still raised let them drop to her sides with an abrupt gesture. This was a moment she had been waiting for. The prism above her suddenly lurched, and then it fell, the sun rays now all tilting inwards and upwards from their holding position ringing the pillar. Before Skyshot's trajectory could bring him into contact with the construct, a maw of stone rose about the Caryatid, sealing her beneath a dome of rock. It sheared off where the Caryatid's leafy hair cascaded down into the vines that coated the pillar. The vines that attacked the NPFers suddenly grew sluggish in their motions as the direct link was severed. The sandstorm lost its energy, dying as the Caryatid directed her power elsewhere.

The bright beams of the solar rays passed harmlessly over the dome now capping the pinnacle, angling further up to form a blinding spot of light where all the beam converged in the empty space above the column. This focal point, a nexus of their energy rose into the air as the lens continued to tilt.

With a vast and terrible majesty that spoke of the premeditation behind it, halfway between the ceiling and the pinnacle, the falling prism fell directly into the rising converging point of the beams. The boulder-sized crystal flared into incandescent brillance, a rainbow of colours brighter than the sun...

About this time, the not so dramatic events of Arhra tending to Hydra's wounds were going on. Far, far away from any present battle - just a few meters away from the cavern walls - Arhra looked at the torn induced scratches worriedly. They'd resisted the healing magic somewhat and were looking puffy around the edges, "The vines are poisonous too?!" she said, "Its like they think too much overkill is never enough around here!" Seeing Hydra's worried look, she added, "Not too bad though. It's not like you've been doing something stupid like eating the vines."

About to go off in a rant about the excess amount of poison around here, Arhra found herself engulfed by a cloud of poisonous gas. Choking and eyes burning, she stumbled out of it, the blurry shape of an enemy to her left. Blinking furiously to clear her vision, Arhra saw the new foe better - a great serpentine trunk branching off into nine long necks, last wisps of the purplish - poison is purple - miasma trailing out of the hydra's jaws. It was massive.

"I thought they weren't supposed to go up to that number of heads." Arhra mumbled to herself. Checking her snare spell was still safely wrapped about one arm and in no immediate danger of unravelling, Arhra looked about, trying to see if Hydra was okay and trying to think of some way of fighting this beast that didn't involve giving it a chance to repeatedly bite her.

In the distance behind the monster, even through the concealing mists of the dying sandstorm, Arhra saw something dramatic. There was a flare of dazzling light, blinding as the sun and then that erupted into a bigger flash. Thin, almost invisible lances of killing energy glinted randomly out of it, striking nearby. Typical of such explosions, it made a sphere of solid light, bulging out slightly before that exploded.

Arhra raised one arm to shield her eyes, braced as the windborne sand blow out from that point with stinging speed, pelting like a rain of tiny needles. She heard the world shattering boom of the pre-explosion before the roaring white noise of the actual explosion drowned out all sound. The shockwave followed on the heels of the silent roar, lifting her up as if she weighed no more than a feather - only semi-true - and sending her flying. She had a blurred impression of the same happening to the hydra and what she thought was Hydra before hitting the cavern wall knocked all sense out of her.

Needless to say, actually being close to the explosion was far, far worse. But, even as crystalline dust wafted over over a bleached expanse, sand swept up into weird shapes and, in parts, half melted into weird formations, the blacked, brittle dome of the Caryatid's refuge cracked open. Long hair trailing behind her like a banner, she charged, skidding down the crumbling rock of the pillar and magic crackling about her as she launched her attack.

OOC: Well, I've been waiting to pull that out ever since the Caryatid hopped up on that pillar. To use my foresight, fire resistance won't let you shrug the blast off and you'll probably want to use your ingenuity to help reduce its effect on the NPFers. Particularly those unfortunates caught in the epicenter (This means you Inbred, Tarrin and Skyshot!).

Oh, and for the response to the charge, remember the Caryatid starts using earth manipulation before getting into melee. Kicking up rocks, veils of sand, making stalagmites burst up, rocks falling from the ceiling that kind of thing. Stylistically, its meant to echo her motions.

[Hawk]

As the blinding explosion consumed the room, Hawk did the only thing he could. He took cover behind the nearest available piece of cover... in this case, REI! However, having a robot stand between you and an oncoming blast is not as effective at saving ones arse as one might expect, although it seemed to serve his purposes... mostly.

He was still somewhat exhausted and the explosion still managed to both deafen, blind and throw him backwards somewhat, even with his human(oid) shield between him and it.

He took a moment to recover his sense of direction and get back on his feet, his eyesight recovering faster than his hearing, which was still pretty much non-existant. But hearing didn't matter, fore at that moment he saw, and sight was all he needed now. He saw his enemy charging at the NPFers and headed out to meet her in battle.

"It's ONN bitch!"

She saw him and turned. No doubt she thought herself, a stone earth wielding golem of Law, was far above a tiny, flightless, exhausted bird. As she charged, sand and dust whipped up around and in front of her. Her intent was obvious; she was going to smother and choke him to death with sand.

But there was something about this enemy she did NOT know. While at this moment in time he may be a tiny, flightless, exhausted bird, there was also a burning fire within him. THIS, was the thing that Hawk lived for! Charging into a one on one duel with a ferocious enemy, there was no other thrill like it! In a moment like this, there was no time for fear, there was no time for emotion of any kind, there was only the thrill of the battle. It gave Hawk strength.

The Caryatid finally came into attack range and unleashed her barrage of sand.

"You're not the only one who can control the sands around here BITCH!"

The sand surrounded Hawk, momentarily obscuring him from sight. But with a deft flap of his wings, the sand fell back. Another beat of his wings in the direction of the enemy and the sands around him were lifted upon the wind and blasted back towards the Caryatid. She re-doubled her efforts and so did he. A duel insued as the two foes struggled against each other, wind and sand versus the power of the earth itself. Hawks muscles in his wings strained harder as he attempted to create stronger, galeforce winds. The Caryatid began forming the sands into solid spikes of earth, but before they could obtain solidity they were blasted back to grains by the power of the winds. It couldn't last for long. The struggle continued, but it was clear there could only be one winner, and it wasn't going to be Hawk.

Hawk sent a telepathic message to every person in the room:

"Quickly!! While she's distracted, hit her with everything you have!!"

[Arhra]

Urgh, head hurting, was Arhra's first confused thought as she staggered to her feet. Being poisoned, knocked around and mildly concussed was not a good combination she decided. She cast her eyes around, trying to see where Hydra and that hydra had gotten to.

The ringing in her ears beginning to subside, she heard the sound of a struggle and staggered in that direction. Cresting the dune she saw a thrashing serpentine mass - Hydra and the nine headed hydra locked in combat, heads and limbs entangled and flailing at one another. Hydra didn't look like she was doing well.

Arhra raced forwards in a stumbling run and promptly tripped over the partially buried bulk of the snake she'd been using as a cushion earlier. A thoughtful expression crossed her face. The snake and the numerous (dead?) snakes inside it could be used to strengthen Hydra. The problem was how could one eat it? The creature was looking spherical! Then again, the other hydra had the same imperative to devour scalykind. Perhaps it could be a distraction instead. With a heave, Arhra tossed it into the fray.

Several of the hydra's heads turned to regard this delicious morsel, Hydra managing to partially squirm out of the creature's constricting embrace while it was distracted. Heads bit at the snake ineffectually but were unable to pick it up. Then one head dislocated its jaws, gathering the bloated snake up and slowly cramming it in.

"Oh, I forgot they could do that." Arhra said sheepishly as the massive bulge began to slowly make its way down the hydra's neck. "Well I have another trick up my sleeve. Let's change the odds a little. Grow!" Arhra called up a powerful surge of chaotic magic and a twisting bolt leapt from her hand. It coiled through the air towards Hydra, but then its erratic path and a sudden movement of the struggling pair made it hit the hydra instead.

Arhra swore violently, words blistering the air and curses flying out to buzz in angry clouds as the hydra suddenly glowed. Scaly skin split open like rotten fruit as its coiling length swelled to monstrous girth. The neck bulge of Arhra's cushion snake vanished as it made its way into the beast's stomach. Hydra went limp as spasming loops of the hydra's body squeezed her. A head came down, jaws distended, and it began swallowing her whole.

Arhra was furious at this development. She had been becoming fond of Hydra, in more a way than a vague sense of duty for being directly responsible for her creation - it helped that she liked things that reminded her of herself. This was obviously universal conspiracy. The forces of Chaos should know better than to backfire on her in such a way. Incandescent with rage, she approached, summoning magic again.

Unformed magic writhed in her vice grip, yearning to be free. Arhra fed power into it, spell-shape blooming into odd patterns that ran along its length. "Switch." she quietly, beginning to release the magic. It shifted, she could feel its subversion of her intent. "I'm in a bad mood." she told it in the same quiet tone. The spell quaked at the deadly undertone, terrified as only an inanimate wisp of energy can be.

It forked as Arhra released it, a crimson bolt striking the hydra square at the junction of its many necks and a sapphire bolt striking the bulge in its neck that had just passed below that. The glows moved outwards, bleeding together into an opaque purple haze. It began to recede, blue at the outside, red at the center, before it blinked out.

Hydra lay there, heads waving aimlessly. Her belly was ridiculously distended, seeing how her recent enemy was inside. She couldn't even get up. Arhra limped to her side. "Oh, uh, I guess you'd better take it easy while you digest that." Arhra said, patting the great mound of scaly flesh gingerly. She hoped she hadn't looked that obscenely inflated when they'd been fighting the Capitalist. Thankfully, she was fairly sure there had been no witnesses inside him.* "You sleep that off, I'd better get to the others - my important dramatic event sense is tingling!"

*The perceptive will remember Flare was there.

* * *

Hawk had been the first the first to respond to the Caryatid's charge in the wake of the devestating explosion the guardian of the seal had orchestrated. While blooded, dazed, weary and bruised, Hawk still showed excitement at the oncoming battle. People of his nature loved the giddy thrill that came from the activity generally involving wearing lots of metal and swinging lumps of sharpened metal at one another. A fire for battle burned within him.

The Caryatid's mind was the calm, patient strength of the earth. There was no hatred, no anger, merely the calm determination to destroy all threats to the seal that dwelt inside her. The slow, poisonous tendrils of the rising Chaos within her and her Temple that sought to corrupt and unmake the Seals she faced with the same steady will. Even now, concentration refined to a needle sharp focus, there was something that could be called joy as she felt power flow into her stony body out of the deep places of the earth, circulating through the branching conduits within. It was all around her in this cavern, each racing footstep that alighted on the ground, a pulse of that pure, elemental power. Her leafy hair was a trail of greenery behind her, vivid with life and verdancy.

A hypothetical observer, watching the battle might have found it amusing to see a bird and a stunningly beautiful stone woman charging towards each other. Anyone who doesn't think hawks and other such birds look funny when they're running around on the ground with their little bird legs is dead inside. They would probably also have popcorn. A well choreographed fight scene can be fun to watch. If you're here to observe, you might as well enjoy it.

The Caryatid gave a short leap and skidded, kicking up a mass of sand, arms suddenly in motion to swirl it around. She vanished into its murky brown depths, sand cloud moving to envelop Hawk too. Both defense and choking attack it was.

"You're not the only one who can control the sands around here BITCH!" Hawk cried in defiance. With a great sweep of his wings he blew the suffocating sands back at the Caryatid. She motioned, redoubling her own efforts and turning her full attention upon her tiny adversary.

Sand wasn't the only trick in her repetoire Hawk found. A spike of stone burst out of the ground beneath him, hopping to the side just enough to save him. Fist sized rocks came out of the swirling sands, Hawk forced to kncok them aside with blasts of wind. Still he strove against her for control of the sands, feeling her other attacks slack as she turned her efforts elsewhere.

Hawk charged forwards, keeping up blasts of wind, dodging one person sized boulder that tumbled slowly through the air at him out of the sands, passing through a rift of clear air where the turbulent currents of wind collided. He lunged sideways and with a mighty surge of his wings, unravelled the tangled knot of air.

Hawk had won, the sands blew away and left clear air, revealing the Caryatid. Her arms were raised up over her head, not really in a position to defend herself. If she was the type to make any real display of emotion, she would have had a broad and terrifying grin on her face. It is a matter of intense debate if the serene expression she did have on her face was actually scarier than the alternative or not.

As the billowing sand cleared a little more, the large shadow over Hawk would help explain why this debate is relevant. The parting sand clouds revealed the gigantic stone slab that hovered there, torn out of the earth by the Caryatid's power. She let several tonnes of solid rock drop.

OOC: Just in case it isn't clear enough, its 'Pile on the attacks for a dramatic finale' time. Most of the Caryatid's attention is taken up by Hawk. Though you lot really need to get the coordination together in the future. Oh, and someone may want to help Hawk - wind's not going to do much to that rock.

[Inbred Chocobo]

Something came flying out of the sand, end over end. The object in question landed with a thud, sticking out of the sand. The object was the Wind Edge, but a new feature was on it. From the middle and along the edge close to the top, there was a sizable crack. From this crack, a magical leak could be seen, releasing a lot of vile energy.

From the source of the Wind Edge, another buldge of sand was seen. Slowly the sand fell off, revealing IC, in a bit of a pissed off mood. His color was back to a normal orange, but it somehow seemed darker. The fact that around IC, everything seemed to shimmer, as if heat waves of some awesome heat was surrounding him. Whatever it was, it called the Caryatid's attention. And so the Caryatid turned to face this opponent.

Slowly, IC started walking towards this golem. The golem, in turn, took one step back, unsure of what to think of what was going on. To be sure, it shot forward, having a huge boulder come rolling out of the ground at IC. IC in turned ran at the boulder, jumping at it, then kicking off sending him in the air. He came down with a fist at the Caryatid.

The Caryatid jumped out of the way in turn, shooting a pillar of rock up at the strange warrior. IC connected his fist with this pillar, and destroyed the rising rock, sending smaller stones flying across the area. Though when he landed, he didn't stay still long, he jumped at the Caryatid.

She responded with smaller rocks being hurled at him. Who in turned knocked one that was about to hit him aside and landed on the Caryatid landing a solid blow into her face. Strangely, a small burst of fire, in a blackish-purple kind of fire, came out of the punch. The Caryatid took the burn in a very strange manner, falling backwards.

Whatever that attack was, it gave the Caryatid new initiative to kill the chocobo-man. She lifted both arms in one huge motion, sending IC upwards ontop of another pillar of rock. IC jumped off this column, and went to nail the golem again. The golem brought her arms up in a defensive position, creating a shield of rocks. IC's fist flared with that strange flame again, and then broke through the shield, grabbing the golem as the rest of him landed against the shield.

He hurled upwards, throwing the Caryatid into the air, leaving her very exposed to attack. Though this time IC paused, instead watching the golem fly through the air. Clearly he was waiting for someone else to attack.

[Flarecobra]

It felt like someone took a 10-lb sledgehammer and smashed me in the face with it. With that blow, I was knocked out, my phoenixform going away, leaving me in human form. After about 10 minutes, I started to come around, my face windburned some.

[Skyshot]

Skyshot unwisely looked up into the blinding lights and barely squeaked,

"Protection from --" It was too late.

Moments later, he found himself lying on the sand, feeling like he'd taken a direct hit with a concentrated solar laser and smashed into a rock face, like the one right in front of him.

"Aaagh...Heal." That was it, then. His mana was almost entirely spent, and so was he. Maybe one decent spell left; maybe a few more hits before he went down for good.

He rose to his feet, staggered a bit, and managed to pick up Nightstorm from where it had fallen. He looked around. His eyes still hurt and he had to squint a bit, but he didn't want to waste anything on fixing that. He managed to make out a fight going on between his teammates and the Caryatid. Two, maybe three birdies were fighting her. This wasn't for the birds, though; he had to do something. This was a time for action.

"Ow." He moved towards the Caryatid. "Ow, ow, ow." Closer. "Ow, ow, ouch! Ooh! Ouch!" Okay, perhaps this was a time for inaction.

Suddenly the Caryatid began to fly through the air. Skyshot realized separation from the earth from the earth could, plausibly, leave her vulnerable. It was worth checking out.

"Float!" She turned that creepy, uncanny-valley gaze on him as his spell began to work on her. Whether Imposition was stronger remained to be seen. It was time to make this count. He could cast at least two more medium-level spells. He took out his dirt jar. "Hey, look here! I've got a jar of dirt! I've got a jar of dirt! And guess what's inside it!" Her eyes narrowed a bit, though he couldn't see well enough to notice. "Earthquake." The dirt and sand in the jar began to shake violently, and he hurled it at her (the pain eliciting curses from the ever-so-saintly cleric). It struck her and shattered, extending the spell to her body. He then charged towards her likely landing position. If this worked...

[Steel Shadow]

The explosion had been dramatic. That was good. Dramatic explosions were flashy and slow. Plenty of time to shield. Steel took a deep breath as stopped time covered his body. He was exhausted. The coffee was beginning to wear off. The fight was going to end for him soon, one way or another.

Steel didn't know how long the explosion lasted. By the time he let his shield down it was over. He fell a few inches where the sand had been blown out from underneath him, but stayed on his feet, wobbling slightly.

"Huh... I didn't... fall over..." He gasped, his oxygen starved lungs gulping down air, "..my day... is finally... looking up!" He clutched his head. He was losing focus. His legs felt like they could barely hold him up. His sword was fading in and out of existence again.

"Oh no you don't" He muttered, staring at it intently. If it disappeared now, he doubted he would get it back for some time. He concentrated. Slowly it settled back into reality. And that was the last of it. He was out of power. No more shields, no more telekinesis, all he could do was hold his sword here. He felt weak.

"Guess this is it then." He panted, wearily scanning his surroundings. "Do and die." He hesitated. That hadn't sounded right. "Whatever. Stealth didn't work. Planning didn't work. I guess it's time for brute force!" He charged.

His brain kicked into gear. Trying to focus on something other than the pain in his shoulder every time he took a step and the unbidden thoughts like "Oh my god what am I doing I'mgunnadieI'mgunnadieI'mgunnadie!", he tried to remember everything he'd learned about the opponent. It wasn't much. Made of earth. Knew when you were attacking as long as you were in contact with the ground (Steel wasn't sure about that one, but this wasn't the time to get into a debate), could control the earth with just her will... He would have to avoid that one. Just watch how she moved and dodge accordingly. He'd seen how she moved every time she controlled the earth directly. It was the best defense he could think of. What did he have to lose?

He ran forward, the caryatids course through the air coming right at him. He watched as Skyshots jar smashed into her. When she came close enough to the ground, he was already there waiting. His sword swung around. It might not have been the sharp instrument of doom it had been a few seconds ago, but it was still made of the hardest substance in the universe. Like a very twisted game of baseball, it smashed into her with enough force to send her flying once again.

[Mauve Mage]

Mauve was depressed. The vines had dissapeared, rendering her beautiful, beautiful chainsaw useless.

"I used my recall potion for this thing," Mauve said sadly to a dead vine on the ground. "Now I can't use it. Do you know how sad that makes me?" The vine, of course, didn't answer, having been long since severed from its roots by aforementioned chainsaw.

She sighed and hung the chansaw from her shoulder, so it fell across her back. No-one asked how she managed to keep it there--Mauve figured that if Dante could hang a giant sword across his back without any type of sheath, then so could she. Nevermind the laws of reality or whatever. Minor technicalities.

But enough about the chainsaw. This looked like a good time for everybody to do what they did best... Namely, throw out random, uncontrolled violence until the offending object was no longer a problem. Mauve could do that.

She ran forward, towards the sun lasers. As she ran she moved her hands in front of her and started whispering something under her breath. This would either work, or be an incredibly stupid way to kill oneself. She was kind of hoping it would be the former. She promised herself a long time ago that she couldn't die until she found out how Jack Sparrow escaped from the Kraken.

A sun laser was racing towards her. Rather than swerve or dodge like some sort of sane person, Mauve grit her teeth and ran towards it. She crossed her arms like an X in front of her and braced herself with her feet.

BLAM!! The laser hit her dead-on. Rather than turn her into a sort of crispy mage flambe, however, the laser bounced off what looked like a glowing transluscent dome that formed above Mauve's crossed arms. The laser reflected off it as though it was a mirror and hit the ceiling.

"Hmm," Mauve said. "Well that's nice. Guess it works." She stared at the Caryatid and adjusted the position of her arms.

BLAM! Another laser hit the mage, and the beam shot off the glowing shell and arched towards the caryatid, impacting with her ribcage. Assuming she had ribs.

[Tarrin]

Tarrin's head hurt infact his whole body seamed to be burning with pain, the large primate lifted it's head to spy the large gaping hole in it's chest, the blast had missed any vital organs but frm te amount of blood that really wasn't a problem as soon he would be joining those he could commune with.

"see what happens, i leave you for one moment and you get into shit" the voice of Tarrins guardian rang in his ears. "If you had waited i could have told you that was going to happen and now your fubar'd"

Tarrin gathered what ever strength he had left and called out "LITTLE HLP" then his head droped and darkness overcame him.

[Bailey]

Syttulg, still attempting to charge towards Mauve, slowed and dropped as the poisons in his stomach rendered him paralysed.

[Mauve Mage]

Mauve reflected one more laser bolt at the Caryatid, crossing her arms like Ultraman and yelling "Shuwatch!!" for good measure, just because she was a nerd and found it funny to do that sort of thing.

Her bad superhero impression was abrubtly halted as she heard someone yelling for help. She lowered her arms and looked around, confused. There was a half-dead gorilla on the ground to one side of her, and a paralyzed plant dude on the other. Skyshot looked pre-occupied, as was Flare. That left her as the resident healer person. Oh well. She could go back to lasery fun later, she supposed.

She had to lower her reflective sheild, otherwise any healing spells would bounce off and hit her instead. It shattered and fizzled away into nothingness. Now the mage raised both hands towards Tarrin, who didn't look particularly healthy at the moment, and commanded "Cura! Regen!" That ought to hold him for a while. Don't ask why Mauve knows Regen but not Curaga. That's one of the great mysteries of the universe, which probably has something to do with the fact that Mauve was stupid and half asleep when she wrote her character sheet for these games. But I digress.

"Okay, now for the electric plant dude," Mauve said. She held out a hand. "Thunda--HOLYCRAPIFORGOTABOUTTHELASERSOWOWOWOW!!!!" That, of course, is the sound that mages make when they are interrupted mid- thunder spell by a sun laser impacting with the sand at their feet because they were stupid enough to stand in the middle of a field of lasers without a sheild. Everybody recognizes that sound, I'm sure.

"Fate dislikes me," Mauve said crossly, brushing sand and ashes off her skirt. "Let's try this again. Thundaga!" A bolt of lightning impacted with the Newb. Mauve quickly worked to rebuild her shield.

[Flarecobra]

"Ok...time to get out of this hole..." I said, then had an idea. Closing my eyes, I slowly changed over to lamia form, the increased size due to my tail helping me to push out. I was faly well spent, as I used a Fire-1 on myself, since I knew I was low on MP, not being a magic-using class could suck sometimes. I looked around, and saw Mauve nearby. Noticing the lasers around me, I bunched up my tail, and used it to shove myself into her, just as once crossed across my tail. "YEOW!!!" I said, looking at my tailtip, which was singed. "Damn light element....."