Feb 26 00:13:18 110 PA - Valeriya and Leonard's Epic Nexus Tapping
From Chronicles
Feb 26 00:13:18 110 PA.
WILDERNESS NEXUS
The amazing sight of the wilderness nexus northwest of Kingsdale remains just as awesome as any other day. A tall tear in the fabric of space-time pulsing with energies that common physics would be at a loss to define. For now, the area is otherwise quiet save for the natural sounds of animals in the nearby forest. The old derelict continues to sink without sinking, with water spilling from open portholes that seem to impossibly spew water that should long since have disappeared.
A second tear comes in the hour before dawn to the unusual destination, opening just wide enough for a person to step through. Valeriya does, stepping into the thigh high drifts of snow without any bother. Her armor sees to that. Her companions though seem at little less agreeable to the cold of the winter wilderness. Her long snakey lizard clinging to her back in aversion to the white below. Her flying lizard, flying above it to consider the shelters of foliage.
Leonard is the last of her companions to step through, accompanied by Edgar. As the tear snaps shut behind them, Edgar takes wing from Leonard's shoulder. He is not so thrilled at the cold and snow, but environmental armor negates the majority of his complaints. Now, if only it were not so stifling. "Would you and yours care to go first, my dear?" While it won't take them long to complete the initial absorption, there's no reason to have everyone occupied by it at once. Just in case.
For now, the magical energies and pulsing mysteries stay to themselves. The intruders are alone in a vast and frigid wilderness.
"First we should see to our accommodations, before we engage in activities that are likely to draw attention." Valeriya suggests with a shake of her head. "On my last visit I just had a simple burrow dug. But I imagine for the both of us we could use something more established."
"I can conjure a shelter easily enough," Leonard notes as he looks over the landscape, "Unless you prefer a hole in the ground?" The pack on his shoulders is adjusted before he moves through the snow in search of a suitable location for their accommodations."
"If something beyond us, or simply not worth our time comes along I'd like to be resting out of site." Valeriya adds before gesturing to the decomposing shipwreck. "Why not have our friend settle that wreck a hundred feet below the earth with a shaft to the surface. That will do nicely"
Leonard nods in agreement. "Better to ignore or be ignored, as required. Sinking the entire wreck may be a bit much, however. Perhaps a simple chamber or two will suffice?" He turns his concentration towards one of the ley lines and calls out to their mutual friend in the area. Manipulating earth is its specialty, after all.
The snowy area stays quiet, birds and animals chirping in the trees. Perhaps a vague feeling of the intended presence could be from the ley line, for those attuned to such things.
Valeriya nods her consent to that. "The galley will do nicely." She suggest when it comes to call which part of the wreck they wish to employ for their stay. "Maybe we can even get it working later."
"Wait..." Leonard returns his attention to Valeriya. "So, now we'll use just a portion of the wreck, not a chamber below ground?" He was about to request the latter, and is now confused.
Valeriya shakes her head. "No we should take a portion of the wreck and put it bellow ground. If the Coalition decides to carpet-bomb the area one day we don’t want it to be compromised." She offers in return. "You need me to cut it up? I have my can opener."
Leonard considers the sizable wreck a long moment. "Why bother with the wreck at all? Disturbing it will only show activity here, and a chunk of the hulk won't provide anything we can't create within or bring to an underground cavern. Also, we wouldn't need to create our demesne immediately below the wreck."
Valeriya shrugs lightly. "Just it probably has furniture." Is her only counter, and even she seems to think it weaks as she shrugs. "And I wasn’t entirely clear on our associates' capability to build longer lasting structures. If he can do it from rock alone by all means."
"It should be permanent enough for our needs," Leonard advises, "And reinforcements can be added as needed." With that seemingly decided, he returns his focus to their hidden accomplice. One excavated cavern, coming up. It just requires Leonard to ask politely and be specific in depth and dimension. A forty foot square cavern seventy feet below ground level should suffice.
Though the surface doesn't move and the snow doesn't quiver, a proper opening does find its way beneath Leonard's feet.
Valeriya nods as the hole opens to the underworld. "That will suffice." She concurs before lifting of into the air to do what they came for. Her and her familiar ascend up to the nexus, drawing on the available power therein.
Leonard watches as Valeriya takes to the sky, then scans the remainder of it. While she and her companions draw, he and Edgar will keep overwatch. "You'll remember not to handle any unknown power sources this time, yes?" he offers wryly over the radio.
Sometimes Nature is just against you. As soon as Valeriya and her familiar begin to draw energy from the pulsing nexus, a wide variety of other oddities take place. To the southwest a short distance, a humanoid clad in some type of native armor emerges from invisibility. That's only the beginning of the crescendo of power, however. A storm of energy, crackling with blue and pink tendrils of energy simply blazes into existence over an area of miles, thrashing the ground and everything near it with what would be painful but likely not lethal energies. Magic itself feels burnt, as if the psychic potential itself were on a roaring fire, smoking into a sky now obscured by clouds that simply don't confine themselves to the norm of what is to be expected when looking at a normal set of thunderheads. Even those who charter in the use of magic feel partially drained without any exertion. The quad group - both intruders and overseers - shoot apart as if a huge grenade had been set off between them, with Valeriya beamed more than the length of an ancient football field southwest, the others roughly the same but along a separate line. But the universe, or perhaps better stated, the Megaverse, has more in store for this little portion of Missouri. A spot poorly chosen for a camp-out, it would seem. Even louder that the charring of the ley line storm, a new rift appears, slashing through the open air in a way that many would simply find wrong and confusing. From blinding light and a backdrop of another world marches a fifty-foot tall beast. An elegant one, but a beast nevertheless. A long neck, horns on its head, giant wings and sharp talons that might weigh more than any of the Coalition's greatest constructs. Indeed, this is a moment of total chaos.
Okay, Valeriya has certainly had better starts to her days. She goes cartwheeling through the air from the nexus but does recover. Only to see what follows. Bad company. One signaling glance to her familiar and they both disappear, making haste for the prepared shelter.
"Well, shit." That is the first thought that comes to Leonard's mind, somewhere between the detonating pulse and the complete appearance of the massive creature. His thought is reflexively voiced aloud, though only Valeriya is likely to hear it, and over the com channel. The words that follow are a specific incantation to also make him less visible, though not as complete as Valeriya.
The chaos continues. The humanoid figure is relatively close to Valeriya, but a glance might show that it is suffering from its own issues, staggering and looking for a tree for shelter. On the other end of the spectrum, the beast fully emerges before the rift snaps shut with the sound of a million thunderclaps. Tendrils of energy from the storm strike at it, which doesn't seem to do much to help whatever mood it may have arrived with.
Valeriya doesn’t disappear actually, she doesn’t even realize it until she's half way to the hole in the ground. And at that point its hardly worth stopping. So she does not. Her and her familiar continue to make for the shelter.
Leonard doesn't, either, though he does secure his immediate surroundings with a ward to warn him if others come too close. This is, of course, markedly less than useful, given that he can see more than one potential threat that is far too close, already. "What in the hells happened?" She might have an idea.
For now, the magic of Valeriya's talisman holds, and her arc toward the cavern is straight enough. In a relative term of course, where time and space are being warped. Little fingers continue to bite at her armor, pulling at her core even though they may not make contact. Below, the other person has found some bare semblance of shelter against a large tree. Not much really, in fact probably more psychologically helpful than anything else. Leonard's alarm is... who knows. An alarm? The familiars are flopping about the skies, or the ground if they happen to have crashed. Chaos is an excellent term. The great lizard lets out a bellow that expresses an emotion possibly incomprehensible to Man, and begins a slow and deliberate march toward the very visible Leonard.
"Ley line storm, spells aren’t working right. HIDE!" Valeriya answers in reply to Leonard’s confusion. Though with the beast's roared intentions she can't exactly make good on her own advice just yet.. So she looks to the earth itself. "Subdue the intruding monster!" She orders.
Hide. That action is pretty high on Leonard's list. Simply not at the top just yet. He attempts to pierce the chaos of Edgar's thoughts long enough to direct his familiar to return to him or flee, whichever is easiest. The corvid can always meet with him later. Immediately after, he repeats Valeriya's directive to the entity affectionately dubbed 'George.' His third comment is directed to Valeriya over the radio, though it's similar to the one to Edgar. "Get here or get clear." Leonard nearly suggests that she flap faster, illogical or not.
Who would have thought that things could get worse? An unnatural storm blowing in from the ether. A tear in space exposing what most mages would recognize as a great horned dragon, and an adult at that. Sure, it bellowed and lumbered in the general direction of those from Kingsdale, but it hadn't shouted threats. In fact, many dragons are known for their great intelligence and occasionally even patience with mere mortals. Unfortunately, calling on the powerful intelligence of Nature itself has a way of turning one's view of things to the negative. Valeriya's shout comes first, and while it cannot know that she might not be the technical owner of something the ground, never be the first one or the last one to do anything. It advances on Valeriya at great speed, taking to the air to be upon her in moments even as it continues to be zapped by the sky.
The incoming dragon now becomes Leonard's top priority. With his personal magic not functioning as intended, he attempts to use one of his enchanted items. Namely a dagger, with the intent of getting the dragon's attention.
From the ground rises the summoned friend, a being of nature perhaps even more natural than the unnatural nature going on overhead. A fragment of life itself, one might say, but in the form of rock, dirt and tree. 'George,' Leonard's humble servant pulls himself - or perhaps better said, itself - to its full height, towering thirty feet above the ground in a vaguely humanoid shape. The command given, protect the mages. The command - ignored. This elemental has worn out its patience with Man, or whatever it is than an elemental might think. Unfortunately, it's worse than that. Sometimes such fickle beings can be vindictive, or vengeful. George is one such creature, and races to the nearby mage who deigned to call himself its master. Nothing fancy, just a ram with its own body.
The rise of 'George' is a welcome sight and has Leonard grinning behind his faceplate. Right until he realizes that something is wrong, which is just seconds before he's slammed and knocked free of gravity. Temporarily. His inertia was only outclassed by the elemental's momentum by a half-dozen orders of magnitude, after all.
"Play dead." Valeriya suggests to Leo over the radio as she takes in all that has happened in the literal blink of an eye. It's not like the suggestion can make things worse.. Valeriya can though, still affected by one spell and also holding a bag full of lamps in the pre-dawn twilight. She pulls out two before dropping the rest as she turns her thoughts to her familiar, dazed but not incapacitated. "Cast blinding flash at the elemental" She instructs the reptile mentally.
The flight of an adult dragon quickly overtakes Valeriya's faltering but flying form. Its massive arms that end in deadly fingers dart out, with fists of unimaginable fury pummeling at the mage. Twice in a row, one for each bludgeon. It calls in a growling roar, "I was not here to harm, I was not here to fight. You attack me without provocation!" No, it doesn't look pleased at all. It doesn't look pleased and blinks out of sight as it pursues.
Elementals, being things of nature are rarely subtle. The one conjured or at least preliminarily subdued by Leonard is not an exception. It only chases after Leonard's flying form with a dangerously impassive look on its expressionless face. It launches two wads of muddy fists at the prone mage.
"Again, and again until we get out of this." Valeriya orders her familiar as she nimbly avoids the giant clawed strikes from the dragon. "You know ignoring your assumptions about who we labeled an intruder and intended to attack, I really don’t care right now." She comments back to the dragon as she darts away. Moving past the feel of its magical energy towards the elemental and the fallen Leonard. She's there in four seconds, muttering and gesturing all along. Also those lamps must make a tempting target.
Magic continues to be just wrong in this area. One happily glowing bauble of daylight pops into existence.
Leonard is free of the claustrophobic armor, at least. Both sets, as he's barely beginning to find his feet when the swing he didn't avoid tears through the under layer. Now rather naked, nearly in a literal sense, he coughs while attempting to summon some new protection for himself. Twice the effort should double his chance of success.
Once more, the raging storm seems to twist Leonard's manipulation of energy into something other than what was intended. A blast fires off into the sky from his still-gesturing hand. The incantation becomes slightly longer, as some choice explicatives in Dragonese are added. "Get out of here, Valeriya" follows sharply over the radio.
The invisible lizard, terrible in all respects even more than the fabled dinosaurs, launches another attack on Valeriya as Charon flaps closer. Though perhaps only Valeriya can see them with her special eyes, three more punches are leveled at her. Despite their proximity to the other mage and the hulking elemental, the dragon seems single-minded in its path.
Who knows what an elemental may think. Does it care that Valeriya is nearby? Has it noticed the dragon? Impossible to say. Its humanoid form begins to coalesce into what can only be called a wave. Somehow though, it collapses into the ground near Leonard without touching him.
"Yeah, last I checked I can't outrun a dragon. So if bringing you along is the same as leaving you behind, you're coming." Valeriya replies over the radio just before she grabs Leonard to make her escape. A grab that probably cost her an evasion of a dragon punch but she doesn’t seem daunted. instead she casts again before suggesting Leo do the same. "Blinding flash, get your familiar on it too." She suggests as the lift off to flee for their lives.
Leonard helps the grab by reaching up an arm to grab the grabber. He also passes her suggestion on the Edgar, whom he's lost track of in the chaos. "At least," he pauses to cough again, "I feel needed."
Leonard also gets his partially-stolen breath back and promptly attempts to prove his usefulness. Namely, by getting them the hell out of this painful chaos. First, he tries to follow Valeriya's lead with a Blinding Flash at their very near but unseen pursuer. More importantly, he also focuses on a fresh tear in the Megaverse, this one intentional and meant to carry them elsewhere. Perhaps the chaotic energies will make such an act more easy, not more difficult.
Not only does a tear not open in space, but it might be downright painful to attempt. The chaos prevents even such a specialized use of power from functioning correctly, serving only to drain its attempter of energy.
"Well duh, what's it going to do to our group if I tell them a dragon ate you?" Valeriya points out to Leonard before putting out two more casts. Her familiar is following, but can't match her speed. It does its cast as well though. "I take it from us still being here that we need to get out of this storm... that may take a bit, so keep casting."
Where the old George had taken a nose-dive into the ground, only a hole in the snow remains. Nothing comes after the fleeing mages. The elemental is either quiet, or gone. There's no way to know for sure, but it seems to be posing no further threat.
It's a long, long way to get out of this storm. A long way to be dogged by little batteries of gnats helping out those who deigned to attack the dragon. As it flits through the sky on massive wings, the dragon glances at Charon but eventually bypasses it to simply easily keep pace with Valeriya like this were a boring stroll. An angry boring stroll. Two more invisible fists pound toward her armor.
"I'm working on it. I'm not going anywhere without you, obviously." Their mutual need is undeniable in its logic. Now that their deadly threats seem reduced to one, they only need to delay that one. Leonard attempts to weave a defensive barrier behind their travel to do precisely that.
"That’s great, but stop wasting your energy, you can't cast a spell predictably in this storm." Valeriya points out as she swings her free arm back to deflect one blow, but another nearly grabs her, literally pealing her out of her armor with a shriek. At which point she simply stops, turning to face their evident doom. "Alright! Yeah you win. Kinda obvious isn’t it? Look at yourself, practically a god and you are chasing after two humans who didn’t even get to lay a finger on you. Even if we could, could we really do anything lasting? Yet you pursue our lives single-mindedly. Are you really so easily enraged? Do you really have nothing better to do than spread our entrails across the lands? If not go ahead, I can see we won't be running from it. Satiate yourself." She retorts at the angered wyrm, good diplomacy skills.
The dragon pops back into the normal visible spectrum as Valeriya provides her little spat. One might read its expression as being amused as it does a fair impression of folding its arms along side the floating duo. Despite the storm continuing to rage overhead, its voice is quiet sufficiently loud to be heard. Maybe for miles. "Little things. Always ready to complain. Always ready to attack. Always scared of things they don't even stop to understand. I said that I didn't come to harm. You be on your way, now that you have learned a life lesson about jumping to conclusions and striking out with little fingers. Maybe I'll make a home here, little ones." That said, it rotates its body and begins to flap back toward the nexus beneath the tickling bolts - eyes kept on the strangers at all times.
Leonard curses under his breath, not at the dragon, per se, but rather the situation. Complaints on the dragon are voiced aloud, if only over the radio. "We were ready to attack?! We didn't so much as look at it cross-eyed until after it struck..." He then sighs loud enough for his mic to pick up. "Perhaps we need to reconsider our strategy."
"Our strategy? Don’t attack something during a ley line storm is a good strategy." Valeriya points out on the radio before resuming their flight to safety. Even if they are no longer being pursued, remaining out an about in their state is inadvisable. "Or were you referring to our power gathering plans? We'll have to do so the old fashioned way, will take longer but we can manage."
It will take miles and hours before the storm abates on its own. But it will, eventually and considering the trouble that the region has seen, any further threats have likely taken their own refuge at this point.
"It is. Next time I'll be sure to pass that along to any dragons that appear," Leonard snorts, "Or elementals that decide to rebel..." His sarcasm is kept to a minimum, however. There's no need to encourage her to loosen her grip on the way.
