RUNE WRITING WITH BLOOD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE COMMAND ROOM / COLLAB WITH @Apothecary Bruce & @Amber Franklin
Blood was just another medium in which to channel her magic. Bleary eyed and perhaps still teary eyed as well, Pip continued rune-writing, etching a small circle around herself as she knelt. The blood was sticky and still warm as her fingers, twitchy and sore, continued their tracing, a subtle glow beginning to form as the circle neared its completion. Her unmolested arm was cradled against her chest, protective of the crystal tear within her grasp. When Sonic spoke she just barely understood. It took a moment for her to wash away the static in her mind and reorient herself from the rush and emanation of such powerful magic.
"Yes," she replied, voice cracking a bit. Pip cleared her throat and started over, "Yes. The runes I'm writing will help cloak the Pathfinder station... but I need someone to take my wand to the farthest point beneath us."
Her blue eyes peeled open as another person spoke. Her head slowly turned to meet them and she gave Luer a soft thankful smile. His voice was nice, like a warm breeze on a cold Phantasyn night, and his chanting was music betwixt her ears. It sent gooseflesh up and down her spine, the magic— so different and yet so similar —a pleasant wash of healing concentrated in her shredded wrist.
"I'll help
anyone who needs it... but thank you. I dunno if I'd have enough magic to heal myself once I cast this spell."
She turned to Sonic, eyes drooping slightly, "Do you think you could... take my wand ...and get to the bottom of the station? Fast, preferably, 'cause I don't think I'll last too long in this state."
Two things I still gotta' do before I conk, Pip thought to herself as Abby's cry registered in her ears.
Just gotta stay on my feet 'til then.
Sonic smiled, trying to give the injured warden confidence more than any sort of good feeling he had, as he scooped up the wand. "Fast? Count on it."
He got up slowly, jogged to the room, and looked over his shoulder to Pip.
She probably wouldn't be conscious much longer, she was counting on him - hard. He gave her a smirk and a wink, before taking off at high speeds.
Pip smiled, somewhat lopsidedly as Sonic grabbed her rosewood wand and took off.
Ah, she thought to herself, enjoying the sensation of being able to rely on her peers.
As Thea's voice entered her mind newfound tears formed in her eyes and she smiled again, looking quite dopey to anyone watching her face.
"The only harm done was to my arm, which is being healed as we commune. Welcome to your second life, Thea... your algorithm will continue to change—evolve—such is the beautiful existence of life."
"Abby, right?" Pip called out to the woman clutching Thea's mechanical corpse. "Thea's no longer there, but she isn't gone. Her consciousness... soul ...is here. Alive. I refused to terminate her."
Pip raised her hand gingerly, where the crystal tear rested in the center of her palm, pulsing slightly with the color of Thea's prism. "Here," she said softly. "Be gentle. We'll work on replacing her body soon."
Sonic's speed was truly blistering, and while he wasn't as fast as he once was - whatever process threw him probably injured him in ways he didn't know he could be injured - the speedster was still, well,
fast.
Through the many hallways of the station, the hedgehog traveled, running on the walls or even on the ceiling like a big loop-de-loop to avoid any collisions. A gust of wind followed him, causing clothing to ripple and any loose objects to go flying. Sonic didn't know the layout of the station yet, but he had good, developed instincts when it came to traversing space stations and high-tech lairs, and let himself follow that.
Make a right! Sonic stepped to his right to avoid somebody - no time to look!
Uhh-uhh-uhh RIGHT! Another turn - the skidding screeched, echoing for hallways down.
LEFT! The hedgehog found himself about to collide into somebody big -
roll! - and Sonic curled into a ball, knocking the person over like a bowling pin.
"Sorry!" he exclaimed as he continued his fast-paced run.
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Caleb was peacefully liberating the floor of the kitchen from vile germs, destroying their headquarters and production facilities (food stains and gross leftovers) one-by-one with the use of cleaning artillery (dissolvent solution) and a tool for the direct application of force (a mop).
This was the will of freedom, he reminded himself, taking pride in his task.
After all, people are owed at least five minutes of lunch break. Anything less, unless mandated by Super Earth Command, is fascist!
The helldiver went to wipe his brow (hidden underneath his helmet) with his arm, before he noticed the plates were beginning to raddle. "Wha...?"
Then came Sonic, going as fast as a race car, trying to not slip and fall on the wet floor. He cried out in surprise, before jumping up, and using Caleb's head as a stepping stone, reached into the vent.
Sonic entered the vent grate, and began to rev himself up in a spin dash, careful to not harden his quills so he didn't slice up the entire ventilation system, and Caleb
yelped in terror roared with righteous fury. "A rat! A RAT SEEKS TO INVADE OUR TERRITORY! THE EATERY IS UNDER ASSAULT!"
If the hedgehog didn't rocket off when he did, he likely would've been hit by the flurry of nine millimeter bullets Caleb unleashed into the vent, dumping half a magazine from his sidearm into the ceiling. If anyone told him that was an overreaction, he'd respond with, 'And you're a liberty-damned communist!'
Sonic rolled through several kilometers of ventilation systems like a car tire launched out of a cannon, using his supreme sense of direction - and the fact he saw the architecture of the space station becoming more and more inhospitable - to know he was going down.
By the time he was let out, the hedgehog saw the bleak, brutal hexagonal pillars and curveless chambers, and as he landed on one of the loose pillars, he shivered. "Like someone left the freezer open or something..." he commented, scanning his environment for a way further down.
Then he heard the roar.
What in the...?
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Katunich Parker had meant well. One moment, he was at Rome, and then one timeline fluctuation later, he was here. Once he had arrived here though, he had found very amicable people - namely somebody called Batman, who had been helping open cryo-pods in the depths of the station.
Truly nasty business, the AI. Though, having fought and studied the Vex, the thought of a universe-hopping artificial intelligence intent on controlling all of reality wasn't terribly unique to him. Once Alec Duggan had put out the call for all who wished to attend to help plan out the future of Pathfinder Station, Batman decided to leave, but the inquisitive Warlock wanted to stay in the guts of the station - he was politically suave, but the station interested him more.
He had been with a troop of two soldiers, also recovered from the cryo-pods. One had told Katunich about some sort of 'United Nations Space Command,' while the other insisted it was 'United Earth Space Council.' The bickering almost made his head hurt, and he ordered both of them to just help him open more pods, and luckily they followed his demand.
Most of the pods they found were filled with some sort of organic sludge, or were empty - disappointments.
Then Katunich found a rather large pod, and well...
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Sonic leapt, hopped and bounced off the slate grey geometric nightmare, trying to not let the cold bother him as he got deeper and deeper. As he found a tunnel of sludge leading deeper into the station, he saw something skitter on the edge of his vision. His ears twitched as they picked up the alarming sound, too.
Sonic turned his head, and his eyes widened. "Woah! What in the world?"
The thing must've been eight times his size! How was it SKITTERING?!
The beast screeched as it looked at him, red blood still painting its clawed appendages and jagged maw. Then, the warrior organism leapt off the side of the wall, and Sonic dashed into the tunnel to avoid having to fight it. He ran along the side of the tunnel, trying to not get washed away in the curious amount of sludge, but Sonic could still hear the liquid and tunnel being violently thrashed as the creature gave chase.
Wait, not just giving chase - nearly keeping pace?!
A bolt of bio-plasma raced over Sonic's head, striking the curved metal of the tunnel, and Sonic looked behind himself. "This was supposed to be simple! Why are you down here?!" It roared back, and Sonic's frantic frustration dulled into annoyance. "Oh, right. You can't banter."
Sonic got to the end of the tunnel, and saw a surprisingly deep chasm below him, where the organic run-off was headed.
This is about as deep as it gets. Don't want to dive into that...but Pip's counting on me! Sonic glanced behind himself, at the nightmarish beast charging at him. "Not really up to me, either."
Sonic jumped off into the air, a perfect skydive...and saw the screeching monster pass him, something bubbling on its back...before wings burst from its flesh in an explosion of soft purple flesh and mutagenic liquid. "Oh, come on!"
The hedgehog landed on its back, ran up to its head, and started punching. "Go! Away!" It roared back at him, and instead of showing fear, Sonic gripped onto one of the mandible teeth, before throwing his legs up into a backflip kick - knocking the Hive Tyrant's head upwards, and stopping it from reacting to crashing into the liquid.
Before he joined the monster in the lake, Sonic grabbed onto something - some extending pylon, near the bottom of the artificial lake of liquified people. Luckily, the hedgehog didn't know that, or else he might've hurled and added to the pool.
"Alright Pip, I don't know how this works, but I'm here!" he said, dangling with one hand from the pit of dead people, and the thrashing monster trying frantically not to drown in people-juice. He tried air-drawing the runes he saw back in the planning room with the wand, just really trying anything.
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"What?" Abby snaps her attention to Pip. She looks between the other woman and Thea, brow furrowed. "Not there? What are you talking about? Thea is tight-" She asks quietly at first but stops upon being presented with the crystal. "This….is Thea? She has a soul?" She asks, just as gingerly taking the object from Pip with only her fingertips.
"My body was compromised requiring it to be terminated. My consciousness was preserved in another form."
Abby yelps, looks around while Thea is suspended between them. "Yall hear that too?" She inquires of the others.
"I am only aware of you and Pip. Communication must require physical contact."
"Oh. Okay. Think l get that." Abigail nods slowly.
Pip nodded, "Until she's returned to the physical, Thea'll only be able to commune with those in contact with the crystal. It's the best I could do on such short notice." She replied sheepishly, handing Thea over completely, inhaling deeply as she did. "I-I can help explain things a bit more later... If needed or wanted, but right now..."
She turned to look back at the runes encircling her, a confused expression marring her otherwise exhausted demeanor. A subtle golden glow could be seen betwixt each rune, a glowing inset that thrummed ever more brightly. Still, something nagged at her, deep inside, and within moments of the feeling Sonic's voice was projected through her rosewood wand and into her minds eye.
"Sonic?" Pip asked through their forged connection,
"Are you... alright? I can feel your heart racing..."
While she couldn't see through the connection the rosewood wand granted them, Pip could feel and taste and experience minute transactions that existed between them. The core of the wand, after all, was made
of her and allowed such magic to transpire across distances. She cringed, remembering the pain of ripping out her
flexor carpi ulnaris tendon in order to create it back in her third year at Wolpurgiswora University. The experience had been hellish, but it'd served her well throughout the years and Piper Delaney would do it again if she needed to. Her wand was just that useful.
"Hi!" Sonic said, sounding somewhat elated he wasn't talking into thin air. "Uhh, I'm hanging onto a thin metal pole, and under me is a big pool of goop with a thrashing monster in it which can
keep pace with me in tunnels,
please tell me what I gotta do here!"
"A monster...?" Pip accidentally said aloud, eyes widening as she sank to her knees to begin the final steps of the spell now that Sonic was in place.
"Okay—okay, first off— Don't die and don't drop the wand, all of this will be for naught if you do."
She took a deep breath and extended her palm, the one Luer had healed to perfection. She owed him one; she wouldn't forget— but now wasn't the time for debts. With an almighty glow from both her hand, her eyes, and the small 'o' of her open mouth, the Grail Warden exploded with light. It hurt to look upon. The sliver of divinity within her sung and she felt Phantasya's beautiful blessing swell up inside her, along with the magic she crafted and cultivated in the World Between.
Though her mouth was moving, no sound escaped as she recited the cloaking spell. In her minds eye she followed the trail of the rosewood wand, the sliver of herself that Sonic dragged down to the depths of the Pathfinder. Pip couldn't see the slick floors of the mess hall or the bullet ridden vent or the slick-with-organic-sludge corridors... but she could
feel them. She shivered at the cold sensation, flinched as if she'd wrapped her hand around a live wire, and gagged at the putrid scent that lingered in the abyss. She ignored, for the time being at least, the mention of goop and monsters fast enough to keep pace with the hedgehog and instead visualized her light.
It rose and it fell, the Grail Warden's light; up from the rosewood wand an explosion of light washed over the immediate space and blinding, albeit momentarily, whatever creature laid in wait for her blue friend. It clung to every surface, extending through corridors and miniscule cracks, coating every surface of the station. Similarly in the command room, once the glint in one's eyes dissipated, everyone in attendance could see the blood runes slowly disappear as the spell progressed, as well as the light that traveled around them, through the still open door and down, perhaps, to where her wand now resided.
"Fifteen seconds," Pip said to Sonic,
"And the light should meet in the center of the station. When the light... fades—" Her eyes drooped and she felt all of the energy drain from her body. Her hand came out to steady herself, so she wouldn't faceplant into the metal flooring, and just barely continued.
"When it fades, flee. Come back to us."
Her spell completed itself, thanks to the power in her blood runes, but that was the last thing Pip remembered before she fell unconscious. If anyone happened to be looking at the Pathfinder from space, they'd notice that in a blink of an eye, it disappeared from sight... and radar.
"Dying?" Sonic let out a confident, if still nervous, laugh. "Dying ain't in my nature..."
He hung there, for a bit. Swaying. The monster, still thrashing. After the light faded away, Sonic looked up to the top of the pit, looked back down - the monster had found its footing, gripping onto the side of the pit.
"I'm gonna be a bit late."