capeandcowllogs | DRAIN YOU OF YOUR SANITY

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DRAIN YOU OF YOUR SANITY

WHO: The Emissary and co. versus everybody
WHERE: Off the coast of Battery Park and throughout the City
WHEN: Just before midnight October 31st (technically November 1st)
WARNINGS: Violence and frightening imagery
SUMMARY: Drawn by Illidan’s magic, a demon from beyond reality has come forth to help the Betrayer doom the world. The battle that saves or destroys everything has begun. Happy Halloween, Cityverse!
FORMAT: Paragraph to start, whatever works after.

It came.

The Moon of midnight on All Hallow’s Eve shone wetly on the waters of the City’s Harbour. From beneath the surface a rumbling could be heard, as though emanating far, far below, within abyssal depths and ancient fathoms that could not possibly be there. First there was a ripple, then a wave, then the creature began to arise from the waters. It slid upwards and upwards, rising smoothly and continuously out of the ocean like a living edifice, a vast Thing ancient and immovable, a walking island sunken no longer. The head then the shoulders then the wings then the misshapen body came forth, yet still more of Its bulk remained beneath the waters, with slow thighs beginning to move It towards the City. All around it the sky and the ocean seemed to darken with an almost positive quality, as though jet-black ink was spilling into the universe itself. The Emissary had come.

Water flowed off Its body in torrents, mixing with drool and ichor. An unending series of sickly slopping and slobbering noises came from the twitching forest of tentacles around Its mouth, the product of a ravening hunger. The ocean heaved immensely around the Titan form, waves thrashing from the power of Its body. How to describe such a thing? How to even conceive of such horror, outside of madness or nightmare? That immense octopus head crowning the terrible body, those dragon-bat wings sprouting from Its back, those rubbery, sea-green scales, the mingled and loathsome aspects of the reptile, the mollusc- and the human! For it was on two feet that It moved, and with two arms did the Emissary reach out toward the morsels It slavered for.

An aura of panic and despair announced It, greater than any herald’s trumpet. Merely to look upon that incomprehensible shape and its alien geometry was to gamble with one’s sanity. Its very presence emanated a sense of immeasurable insignificance and absence of meaning, as though all the Earth was plankton in the presence of a whale. It moved with a shambling, unwholesome motion that had nothing to do with clumsiness, gathering speed. A mountain walked or stumbled! Toward the City, toward the Well. Toward the end of the world.

[ooc: goddamndoomchat is open on AIM if anyone's interested! There are some people fighting the Emissary who have not been slotted into threads yet; we will work those out as we go along! The raid against Illidan in Central Park will be posted by Jill later. Have fun everybody!]

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There was dark magic and then there was Dark Magic; Severus Snape knew well the difference, and this? This thing?

It was the walking embodiment of the latter. With several vials on his person of his most powerful works, he only took out the one he thought he'd really need. He'd been brewing it for weeks. He never, ever, went without having a tiny vial of it somewhere in his lab, for the moment he would need it. Slughorn had taught him the value of knowing when to rely on your skill, and knowing when sometimes, you need to nudge fate along.

Felix Felicis; liquified luck. If ever he needed to have One Good Day? Today was that day.

He popped the cork and drank the vial down; feeling the warmth spread through him. He fingered the vials in his pocket again, and pulled out another, and this time, left the roof top for the sky, abandoning all pretense of being 'the average wizard' of his world, and zipped in; spying Zatanna in the air, he zipped to the side, and again, popped a vial--

--this time, pointing it away from himself.

Out it flooded sickly green swaths of fluid, which he directed with flicks of his wand; another flick made them double, quadruple in size, till angry acidic serpents were lashing against the flesh of the great, terrible thing.

The pots spells were like pebbles in the path of a walker who wasn't looking down- too small to halt, but plenty enough to inconvenience, to slow. The Emissary's movements became jerky in the face of Zatanna's magic, stop-and-go, forcing Its way past the commands of her spells. In the grand scheme of things, this was barely an obstacle. Combined with giant rocks getting thrown in Its eyes and magical acid poured on it...

The Thing bellowed and halted, if only for a moment. Nictating membranes slid over Its eyes, thick and slimy and transclucent, shielding them from further attacks. Its hands swung against the acid serpents hissing and sizzling against Its body, trying to splash them out of existence. At the same time the tentacles around that horrid mouth stretched out and reached forth towards the two magicians between the Emissary and Its goal.

[ooc: No developments so far in filling the remaining spots in this thread, so we'll carry on with the three of us for now!]

She's moving downward, now, though perhaps being too close to the other fighting alongside her wasn't the wisest, it was the best way to not wear herself out. She could speak to him telepathically, but every little extra bit of magic would be needed to win this battle, if the fact that her abilities (and Snape's) were doing so little against it. One had to wonder what murky depths this thing really crawled out from.

"Look out!" Is all she's able to shout, whatever she'd meant to say slipping from her mind when the Emissary advances on them with its tentacles. She's a second or two to figure this out -- attempt to cut them or to dodge them. It's still too early in the game to know its weaknesses and strengths, so her first response is to extend a thin protective barrier (enough to help aid in movement, but not to completely save their skins) and to fire a wordless spell at it, lacking in any elemental alignment. It's one of her own, made of a bright, shining light and colors that aren't visible to the normal human eye. It's intention is to envelop it, burn it to cinders.

And if that fails, here's hoping she can grab her companion's arm and pull them to safety -- or that he has some more tricks up his sleeve.

[ooc: Sorry about the hold-up! I don't get off of work until like, six and I had ~parties~]

Snape sees Zatanna's volley, weaving with preternatural skill backwards as things lash and wave in the air. It's a strange and beautiful magic, less codified then his own -- he'll have to admire it later, however.

For now, he sees her zooming toward him, reaching out; he doesn't resist her sweet, instead, adds speed to them with his own magic, leaving the contrail behind that marks the sky with an ugly, black wake.

"I don't think we can kill or destroy it, even as harried as it is," he shouts over the din to be heard, "but I think we can,at the very least, slow it down significantly... Do you think we can tangle it from below?"

Thankfully, he lent her a hand and managed to pull her away. She lets a breath out that she didn't know she was holding. The inhale is deep and rushed, before it's out again. Then normal. Relief.

She has some thoughts about it being controlled, but going after whatever summoned it or shoving it back from where it came would have to wait until they at least were able to significantly slow it down. Even with a mandatory evacuation, it was getting deeper and deeper into the City and some seemed to be under the impression that they were safe, if they were to remain in their homes. The safety of the residents (natural and otherwise) came first.

"It's worth a shot," and it takes her a second for it to really wrap around her head what he means, but the damage to the street and the City isn't as important as human (and otherwise) life. "Still on shaky terms with what your magic can do. If you've a plan, let me know and I'll act as a conduit and make sure it goes through." And that he doesn't get smashed by the creature along the way, if possible.

"Unless you can summon a meteor--" Snape says, "--or make the earth swallow that up, I think we may be at a loss. Can we bind it? There are such spells to bend a creature to one's will, but Ic an think of none that would ensnare such a monstrosity!"

Or maybe the binding doesn't have to be a summoning...

"....but I suppose the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Can you create a barrier high enough, strong enough-- to trip the thing?"

The longer it takes to struggle oneward, the better off they'll be.

"I can do my best to try to. The former would do too much damage, if I were able to get that sort of magic into motion." Here, especially, the concentration required to summon that sort of thing and protect the area (and themselves) would be too great for her to deal with. Stupid Porter.

"I'll see what I can do, but we best be ready to move. If it'll fall, it's going to fall hard." Gracefully, she makes her way to the ground; her feet touch the concrete and she shuffles backward. Eyes fluttering closed, she starts to focus. It's all about keeping your mind on that one thing you're trying to do -- concentrate hard enough and reality will bend to your will. "Well, here it goes!" A deep breath as she stretches an arm forward and uses words to turn her thoughts into reality, weaving the barrier with the details of an expert (or, at least an expert in a rush). "Reirrab mrof dnuora eht erutearc! Ylno tel ti ssap fi ti sllaf!"

She cracks one eye open, then the other. Zatanna stares as the magic continues to extend and, perhaps, work the way it was intended to.

It was scorched and scarred by the magic attacks. One of Its tentacles had been blasted to a stump by Zatanna’s spell, and the others had withdrawn protectively around Its mouth while the injury regenerated. Despite the punishment, the Emissary kept moving. Shambling forward at top speed, the towering abomination encountered resistance at Its feet and paid no heed. Every other barrier or obstacle that had been met tonight had been no match for the Emissary’s titanic might, and It simply continued striding forward in the full expectation that this little bit of magic would shatter like glass before It.

This did not happen.

By the time the creature comprehended what was happening it was too late to pull back. Its momentum and massive weight were already working against It, pulling It further and further over the line of the barrier that Its feet still pressed uselessly against. Slowly, that great body began to tip forward, further and further past the point of no return. The Emissary might have been a walking defiance of all physical and scientific laws, but in this universe It was still bound by certain rules. Right now, the most important one of those was gravity. Remember the ‘a mountain walked or stumbled?’ The emphasis was now most definitely on the ‘stumbled.’

The Emissary let out a long, booming cry as it fell face first into the street, a writhing tower of odious flesh toppling in an earthquake. And the impact was like an earthquake, a sundering crash accompanied by crackings and groaning as the structure of Manhattan gave way beneath It. The street collapsed around It, and then the sewers and drains beneath the street, and then the subway beneath those. Glass shattered and structures wobbled for blocks around. One office building had a wall shaken loose by the cataclysm to tip into the yawning pit smashed by the creature’s fall, toppling on top of It.

Dust rose in great gritty clouds around the point of impact. For a moment, everything was silent.

[ooc: Sorry for the delay! I think we'll be ready to pack this guy back home soon.]

What... luck. Snape just smirks to himself, before he extends a hand to Zatanna. "Let us get further back, create a defensible position -- it may not stay buried for long!"

Really, it's immense. It could shake the debris off with no more effort then a wet dog does water.

They don't want to be close if that happens.

She doesn't hesitate in taking his hand, just barely allowing any sort of comprehensible thought to enter her mind, just barely nodding in response as she gets the move on and out of the area -- just far enough to witness the creature's fall.

Zatanna knows they can't just stay where they area, that they have to go after it. Considering what appeared to have been regenerative abilities (she hadn't gotten much of a look from down below; she was too busy focusing on simultaneously shielding as much of the area as possible and creating that barrier)... well, this was going to be a lengthy fight, unless they were able to return it from whence it came or figure out a weakness, both of which didn't seem too likely at the moment. But the magician has been through much, much worse than this. All it took was resilience and tenacity. So long as they didn't give up, they'd eventually succeed. They had to.

Feet planted firmly on the closest patch of solid ground, she glances up at Snape. "You're buying me a drink when all this is over, just so you know."

"If we live through this, I may well be forced to buy you a bar," Snape drawls, looking at the thing as it struggles.

He looks to the buildings to each side, and says, "I think at this point we shouldn't call meteors- but a few more buildings may not be out of the question."

The City may have to endure the damage. After all, that thing's sitting in the subway, so it's not like the repairs aren't going to be astronomical anyway. In Snape's mind, the expense is well worth keeping that thing out of Central Park, which seems to be it's goal.

"If you could, I will attempt to keep it busy, and keep us protected," he says, lifting his wand; he can't manage a grand barrier on the level she can -- his world's magic is usually much more personal -- but he can certainly manage something to keep them relatively safe...

And he can keep the crawling madness at bay, if he must. He is loathe to call forth that spell, and bring forth the Doe before a stranger -- but it may not be avoidable.

Sure enough, the beast rose once again from the pit, roaring Its wrath towards the darkened sky. More of the street crumbled around It as the Emissary climbed back up towards Its enemies. The good news was that for the moment, the overriding impulse to reach the Well and end the world was not driving the creature forward.

The bad news was that a new impulse had taken its place: the annihilation of the two insects that had dared to pull a child's trick on a being beyond their feeble comprehension. They would pay by being reduced to red smears in advance of this world being reduced to ash. The Emissary lunged forward once again, mouth open and claws out, Its terrible psychic and magical powers pulsing waves of insanity outwards, putting everything It had into eradicating these last pitiful obstacles.

"Appletini, actually." Something that costs twice as much but at least smells better. She means to tease more and she's usually pretty good with keeping up the banter alongside the fighting, but concentration is much harder in this world. She's not been in enough big fights to get a proper gauge of how far her magic can expand and what rules it bends to. There is still a price, but it's not the same as back home.

So she's cautious as she plants her feet on the ground -- no hovering, as helpful as it may be -- and all focus is put on reinforcing the buildings around her and the creation of new ones. Sturdy, old fortresses, made entirely of stone; no concrete or wood and drywall. These are meant to withstand an attack or at least make one more difficult. The sprout like trees from the ground, twisting higher and higher toward the sky and stop just short of the Emissary's height. Some are lower, but just as formidable.

This is bound to make a greater mess when it topples, but everything can always be rebuilt, removed, relocated...

She cracks her eyes open when she feels it stretching outward. It's a magical powerhouse, that's for sure, and though working on keeping it pushed back, she looks toward Snape, worriedly. Her hands fall to her side and she begins to halfheartedly work on protecting the City and barriers while the rest focuses on keeping them sane.

They can always pull out, but it might be hard if whatever magic was creeping toward them pushed through their defenses. It was like a low rumbling, like a small earthquake. It might have been playing with them before, but it meant business now.

Snape glances over, and finds himself smirking. "Well, if you'd rather have some ridiculous drink over an entire bar to yourself, by all means, Zatanna, it will make it easier for me!" But who can blame her for mishearing in the din.

While she fortifies the barrier, however, he takes some of the burden of their sanity off hre; feeling the creeping madness coming for them as surely as the trembling of the earth, he reaches for the only spell he knows that can fight back any darkness known to his world, and hopes that it applies here. He reaches for that one memory that he cannot lose; Lily's red hair, her smile, at eleven year old as she took his hand and dragged him forward to Hogwarts--

"Expecto patronum!"

The silver doe springs forth, delicate before such a foe, but forged from it's anathema; love and joy to ward away any encroaching darkness. It skips forward among the rubble, as it it were nothing, and stands, not far, a glimmering specter of hope before the maw of entropy's own emissary.

She opens her mouth, realizing she misheard him, though it's probably for the better. She was never known to be someone who didn't indulge in things she shouldn't when angry, depressed, or just stressed out in general. At least this way, she's not being reckless.

Though his magic is different from hers, it's still strong and easy to pinpoint. It's unique, despite its similarity to what she'd dealt with when Remus, Sirius, or Harry had used theirs; a different branch to the same tree. She makes a mental note to ask about the spell later, since she wasn't quite certain exactly what it was that he was doing, just that it was working. (And really, what was more important than that?)

Backing up, though the spell requires some maintenance, Snape stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the other woman, anything like creative banter lost in the silver light of the doe.

Lank hair whipping about his face with the force of that things breath-- if it can be called that -- he grimaces, but does not lose the doe, nor the memory.

At the very least, it breaks the tide of madness creeping forth... the rest is all on her barrier, and her strength. He can save their minds, but only she can really keep their flesh whole.

She doesn't get much of a look at whatever came with the light, assuming it to be formless. All she can do is feel the light beyond her eyelids, cutting through the darkness.

With obstacles now in the way, Zatanna shoots for a fail-safe, a wall that could perhaps rival a certain Great one. There are no doors or lookout posts or paths. It's meant solely to keep the creature on the other side or to bring it down as it attempts to cross. Her eyes snap open as the final brick is laid and she shuffles backward, her steps staggering as she grips an arm around her waist and breathes in heavily, like she knows it may be the last one she takes.

But then she smiles, smugly. There's more than enough left in her to teleport them to the other side of the City, if necessary. At least she doesn't seem to be ready to give up...

The Thing from Beyond reality, the Emissary of a world of madness, the towering demonic harbinger of the Apocalypse, charged the wall without hesitation and slammed into it with all Its enormous might, trying to break through and reach Its enemies.

It failed.

The wall was strong, the fortifications conjured into being around It were strong, the heroes It had fought and been wounded by were strong. More than this though, there was something weakening it. A small, pitiful something in the shape of a doe, based around a memory without meaning in a cold and uncaring universe, fueled by emotions without reality in a cosmos where sanity was a delusion. Yet the doe advanced, the wall held, and the darkness surrounding the Emissary began to fade.

Somewhere up ahead, the beacon that had called It into this world was also fading. Illidan Stormrage's deranged bid for power had been thwarted by the heroes of the City, and he had paid for his megalomania with his life. The ritual was interrupted, the power of the Well no longer tethered the Emissary and Its spawn to this universe. It found Itself cut off, cast away, adrift where It had no business being. It stumbled backwards, and fell. Even as It toppled for a second time, Its great body seemed to lose substance, become unreal like a half-remembered dream, almost transparent.

The pit It had just crawled out of yawned open to receive It. The Emissary slobbered one last time, flailed impotently at the air, and was then lost in the clouds of dust rising from the street's ruin. There was no sound of impact, for It never struck the bottom. It was simply gone. Like a nightmare at dawn, the Emissary and the horror It brought vanished like it never was.

It was-- over.

Snape exhaled a breath that he would not admit to holding in those last moments; he looks to the doe one last night, before she bounds off into the rubble-- a dim light bobbing away before she fades into nothingness, out of sight.

He drops his hand, wand gripped tight, and shakes his head.

"Such madness, and at what purpose?" he wonders aloud. "Are you alright?" He's cetainly taxed after that, but-- her power must come at a greater cost.

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DRAIN YOU OF YOUR SANITY

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i seriously read both tags like, four times. welp.

sometimes the best comedy is the accidental comedy, bb.

she could have had it all...

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