Because You've Missed The Plot [Anton, Vanessa]

[Anton]

Two things happened in very quick succession which served to steady Anton's nerves. First, and most familiar, was Vanessa calling out his name while taking flight, the very literal soaring strains having always been of particular interest to him. Second, and while he would never admit it far more impressive, was the sudden blossoming of yet another sun, the explosion of light purifying all about it with a heavenly refrain. The horrors that had once gripped his heart had not faded away or become inconsequential, but it was enough to have something else to anchor him as they went about their bloody business.

He did feel a spike of momentary frustration at being called Vanessa's boy, but he supposed that was his fault for not having introduced himself to her properly. It wasn't as if that hadn't been the interpretation that they had permitted others to believe before, but it nonetheless irritated him. Such minor concerns were eclipsed by the fact that they were all currently fighting for their lives, and were swiftly set aside as they moved to deal with the threat.

Imogen was right at least about how they ought to go about this - Vanessa's ability to fly gave her a massive advantage over the both of them in actually killing the thing. Anton may have a gun, but that somehow seemed of paltry utility when considering just how few rounds he had and how massive the abomination was. The Orkhan woman certainly had the advantage over him with her soul spun arms, but there were simply too many of the things. At leas their constant booing made it feel less like the once theater goers were still who they had been.

"Vanessa! Do as she says!" Anton cried out, reserving his shots. Keeping himself behind Imogen, he fired off a strategic shell at a grasping limb that was attempting to swat the former pirate out of the sky. The arm shattered and burst, broken elbow hanging uselessly.

[Vanessa Quill]

"The cloak can!" Vanessa yelled back to Imogen while pulling her blade out of the shoulder of one of the hecklers. Not so talkative now, was he? "Sometimes it just takes me along for the ride." She barked a single laugh, and swung again into another body. Her blade sung through the flesh, cutting neck from shoulders and sending a glurp of coagulating blood across her face.

"Fucking piss!" Vanessa shouted, the cold blood dripping off of her nearly in chunks. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve to clear her vision at least, and took stock of the situation. There were too many of the bloody pricks to deal with at their current pace. Both she and Imogen came to the same conclusion, and Vanessa reset her stance in the air. "Aye. Let's see what we can do."

Vanessa shot across the room like a bolt, sailing over the heads of the masses. It took the monstrosity time to realize what was happening, and it reacted ploddingly. One side of the crowd rose into the air, a side of formless flesh and bone. It swung towards Vanessa like a brutish club, too large to be avoided.

She turned into the strike, and rolled away from it, end over end in the air until she smashed into the far side of the auditorium. She came to rest in the mezzanine, body amidst a pile of broken seats. A lancing pain bloomed in her side, and she looked down to see a jagged splinter of wood two fingers thick jutting through her left side with its tip still embedded in her flesh. With an agonized grunt, Vanessa ripped the splinter out and tossed the bloodied object away. Hot blood sluiced from under her jacket, staining her shirt. She pushed through it, and rose to her feet. The mass that had struck her had returned to the floor, and the patrons jeered up at what they assumed was Vanessa's untimely demise.

Vanessa tossed herself over the side of what remained of the railing and dropped down onto the stage while using her cloak to slow her fall The conductor turned to face her, but had no eyes with which to see. That did not keep it from smiling though, the muscles pulling too tightly in places and far too much slack in others. It rose one of its gangly, misshapen arms towards her and turns its palm up as if to offer her a dance.

Vanessa lunged forward, but now the beast's true celerity came on display. It twisted unnaturally, dodging with grace and inducting Vanessa into the dance whether she accepted its hand or not. For every attack, an effortless dodge. This continued for some time, but as Vanessa tired she realized that conventional fighting wasn't going to fit the bill. When she looked up to avoid another strike, Vanessa spotted it.

The catwalks.

For the moment though she was stuck in melee, and any attempt to put distance between the two was a losing endeavor. "Distract this fuckin' thing a sec. I've got an idea!" she shouted.

[Imogen]

"Distract this thing?." Imogen muttered to herself. How was she meant to do that? The weird, conglomerate, ooze-monster hardly seemed pressed by attacking both of them at once, and she'd just pledged to defend the man taking potshots behind her. "Distract it with what? I don't have enough..."

The notion hit her all at once, and she realized that there was just such a way to occupy the monster's entire attention. If the problem was that she didn't have enough weapons, the solution was to produce... more.

In theory, the technique was a simple escalation from the magic of Duplication, a power she'd long ago mastered but seldom found much use for. The Pact Weapon, once bound, was a constant presence within her heart, an imprint on her soul. Even when it was materialized, that internal blueprint permitted her to arrange her aether into the physical manifestation, a perfect replica of the blade. The mortal mind, however, wasn't built to maintain duplicates. It felt like trying to split your right arm in twain, and then control both halves of the limb separately. One slip of concentration, one surge or drop in the flow of aether, and the entire fabrication broke apart.

No, Imogen had never found much value in phantom swords which persisted for the span of seconds. But if a mage could muster enough concentration, if they could build on the properties of a duplicate and send it forth quickly enough, then a few seconds was enough to do a lot of damage.

It was a spectacular technique if one had mastered it, but the young Sunsinger did not have the luxury of rehearsing it in training with the masters. Given the state of Zaichaer, she probably wasn't going to have that luxury for a long time. But if she could produce a convincing facsimile, she could certainly prevent the monster from swatting at Vanessa as she... did whatever it was she was trying to do up there.

Imogen dropped to one knee, pressing her hands against the Theater floor. It didn't help with the magic or anything- she just wanted to present as small a target as possible while she focused. She raised her right arm and recalled her sword to it, the heavy zweihander spinning back to her grasp. She focused on the flow of aether between herself and the weapon, casting her mind back to her first Initiation, when she'd been branded on the heart and the steel sword had threatened to drink her soul entirely. She could still remember the feeling of that draining compression, of warring between her body and the tiny metal prison she'd nearly (and willingly) consigned her mind to.

She could picture every detail of the sword in clear relief. She could feel the flows of aether between her own aura and the world beyond. With an act of supreme will, Imogen forced her own spirit to repeat the image of that day- again, and again, and again. To her side, a ghostly image of her sword flickered into being, gradually becoming opaque like a real object, gaining density as she converted aether to steel, however briefly.

Then she made another duplicate to the other side. And one above. And another. And another.

The air around the Orkhan woman grew thick with swords; first a handful, then a handful more, then a dozen. Then two dozen! As soon as it felt that she had pushed herself to the limit, Imogen slammed her fist into the floor, cracking the floorboards, and screamed fury at the room. Around her, each of the swords burst into a triumphal silver light, then scattered wildly in all directions as though fired from a cannon, slamming into Theatergoers throughout the room. Her swords scythed down the amorphous thing in the front row, and in the mezzanine, and broke against the bannisters of the Gods, filling the entire room with the argent Nova-light.

This the Theatergoers did not boo, as Imogen's attack tore the blobby thing apart in a hundred different places. A sufficient distraction!

[Anton]

Anton cursed under his breath as Vanessa was batted out of the sky, realizing that no single shot at the abomination would do enough damage to save her from the impact save for perhaps that from a cannon. He was not surprised in the least when she picked herself up from the ruined mezzanine - one unfortunate side effect of the near omniscience granted by a mastery of Semblance was a great decrease in dramatic moments - but even without it he would have assumed that his bodyguard would be able to walk off such a blow. She had to, after all. She was his knight, and would not die in so menial a fashion. This he believed with an unshakeable conviction, and so had already begun scanning the crowd for an impending threat when she suddenly shouted at Imogen to make a distraction.

If he had to be honest, he was not initially very impressed with Imogen's distraction. If anything, he was somewhat irate about it. There were two reasons for this. The first was that despite seeing a great swelling of aether inside of her body, nothing seemed to happen at first. The second, and truly far more important, was that she had opted to curl up into a protective posture while Vanessa had flown beyond the effective reach of the theater goers.

Combined, these circumstances meant that for a perilous period of time Anton was the most obvious target in the room. At the time, he had four shots still in his pistol, and a rapier held in his off hand that he had barely practiced with before descending from the Every Waking Moment in pursuit of the strange aura he had seen. This was not a winning combination.

Hoping that whatever Imogen was attempting it would happen soon, Anton made ready to do the best that he could. His shots were well aimed. They were undeniably lethal. Not a single one missed. They did absolutely nothing to thin the crowd of flesh that was beginning to swarm towards him. Switching to his rapier, it was all he could do to skewer those who get too close as he beat a constant fighting retreat, keeping tabs on both Imogen and Vanessa as he did.

To be entirely truthful, Anton was not in significant danger. The way out was still open, and between Vanessa and Imogen he assumed that any retreat would be safeguarded. Still, he was unwilling to run, and did his best to to hold the line inasmuch as was possible in circumstances such as these.

When he at last considered swallowing his pride, something very strange happened. Imogen's aura erupted, the Orkhan woman transforming into a veritable chorus as the redeeming light of her very soul illuminated the theater. Lost in the tumult was the clatter of steel against the floor as Anton dropped his rapier, eyes growing wide at the unspeakable vista that he had been exposed to.

A sufficient distraction indeed.

[Vanessa Quill]

"What the fuck is this!" Vanessa shouted in a frenzy, diving onto her stomach as the swords whipped through the room. She kept her eyes on the actor all the while though, and watched as it dodged many, but not all of the conjured blades. Hewn chunks of flesh dropped to the stage and one of the actor's arms hung on by a thread at one of its elbows.

Another sword had cut through the meat of its elongated torso, and the creature's entrails hung freely from the wound. Still it danced. Its loose organs squelched under its club-shaped feet as it trampled over them. It turned now to Imogen, finding her a far more engaging partner than Vanessa had been. It sashayed towards the edge of the stage, and gripped its loosely connected arm with unharmed one.

With a meaty, stomach turning tear, flesh split from bone and bone from socket. The actor held its severed arm in its hand, gesturing to Imogen with the bloody stump and still smiling that uneven, unnerving grin.

"May I have this dance?"

It spoke with ten voices, all of them death knells of theatergoers contorted into a mockery of language.

Vanessa made her move them, and shot up from the stage towards the catwalks above. She drew her blade back and swung hard for the rope system that kept it suspended out of sight of the average theatergoer. Her steel bit hard and cut through with ease. There was a low, labored groan as the other ropes tried to support the weight, but the pulleys screeched their exertion before they buckled under the strain.

The entire system of catwalks came crashing down at once, and Vanessa launched herself up to avoid the fallout. She kept her back pressed to the roof, and brought her hand down to put pressure on the wound she'd received. Blood still pumped from the wound with every furious beat of her heart, and it seeped messily through her fingers.

The catwalks smashed clear through the stage, sending wood spraying into the air in splinters with a cacophonous shriek. The abyssal actor was destroyed utterly, little left of it even to give one last twitch or gasp at life. This was partially thanks to the fact that the pit created by the catwalk was ponderously deep and the monstrosity had fallen some way before being crushed and impaled by wood and iron alike.

Vanessa floated to the ground, finally landing with a stumble at the edge of the cavern. She snorted, and hocked a wad of spit down towards the felled beast as one last insult. Only when she was done paying her disrespects, she gestured to the yawning opening before her.

"Hey, uh. Anyone ever mention any tunnels running under here? This doesn't look like the orchestra pit."

[Imogen]

Imogen panted as she slowly rose to her feet, leaning into her great sword as though it were an oversized cane. Beads of sweat stood out on her brow, and the opalescent armor of scales she had summoned earlier seemed unusually bristling, a clear sign that she had been Overstepping somewhat. She took a few deep breaths and heaved herself upright, regaining her feet while she stared at the ground, her vision swimming a bit.

Her stomach suggested vomiting, but for some reason Imogen felt a lingering touch of ego- having just unleashed such a potent and devastating technique, collapse right now would clearly communicate to her momentary companions that this wasn't something she did on the regular. She gasped a few times instead, swallowing lightly to push her gall back down, and straightened. She surveyed the room, still leaning on the blade.

The arsenal of swords she had summoned had already dissipated, of course; the duplicates began to fade the instant they were launched. But nothing moved in the wreckage of the Theater. None of the grimy piles of clothes so much as twitched as Imogen made her way slowly to the stage, gaining balance and renewed strength with each step.

"Whooo-eee." Imogen whistled as she got close enough to see the crater where the stage had been. "Now that's some quick thinking, Miss Vanessa. Looks like it got halfway to the Warrens before you sent it off to hell instead."

Imogen banished her spear and shield, seeing no evidence that an attack was immanent and wishing to disperse no more of her aether, but she kept her sword. Besides the fact that it was a steady source of light in the otherwise-dark and cavernous chamber, she wasn't entirely sure if the Railrunners had left any wards around the edges of their hidey-hole. With Carina, she'd never had to pay any attention to that sort of thing.

"Storage." Imogen explained to Vanessa, "This is the only opening; they had to have at least one, or the storehouse would run out of air. Used to keep smuggled goods, dragonshards and the like, before they were brought to market in the city. Hmm."

Imogen eyed the hole warily.

"You folks wouldn't happen to have a rope, would you?"

[Anton]

This was the first time Anton had ever really been exposed to true, unmitigated violence, at least of the kind that was of any threat to him personally. Any profound thoughts he may have developed upon the former humanity of those he had faced against, that they had been turned into something monstrous by no fault of their own, but instead solely by the will of a capricious and uncaring chaos, were unfortunately wiped out by three key realizations.

Most prosaically of these, he did not realize just how vast or massive catwalks actually were until Vanessa destroyed them, and was momentarily mortified by the prospect that every performance he had ever seen at the Pfenning was one such incident away from disaster. Of course, the analytical part of his brain attempted to reassure him of the sheer difficulty of causing the collapse as Vanessa did, but that did little to alleviate his concerns in the moment. Second, and probably most important of the three, was the swirling symphony of magic that was now singing clear to him from the Railrunner tunnel network now that the physical wards that had hidden their auras had been shattered. Imogen may have used the mundane word 'storage' for it, but it was clear that there was far more going on in the depths.

Finally, however, and by far the thing Anton himself focused on the most, was the lingering echo of the Sunsinger's onslaught. He willed himself to remember as much of that beauteous score as he could, and his heart ached for nothing but to see its like again, sated only by the constant reassuring song of the Orkhan's sword. It was her question that finally knocked him from this reverie, the nobleman glancing towards Vanessa.

"Plenty aboard the ship. Just... how deep does that go anyway?" he asked, before he remembered his lack of propriety. "I'm Anton, by the way. Things uh, got in the way before I thought to introduce myself."

[Vanessa Quill]

Treasure.

Vanessa's eyes lit up at the prospect, and her aura flared. Even so many years removed from her life of plunder, ill-gotten gains still called out to her in a voice too alluring to deny. She stared down into the pit for some time, looking for anything valuable sitting in amidst the rubble. Having spent the aftermath of many bloody battles picking through smoking ruins, Vanessa had gotten adept at picking out the slightest glint of something worth stealing. Avarice took hold when she spotted a dim arcane glow spilling out from beneath wood and stone.

She reached out and grabbed Anton immediately after his introduction to Imogen. In a moment, she was bringing him up against her side --the side that wasn't bleeding like a stuck pig, thankfully. "Trip there n' back'll take too long. C'mere." His bodyguard said, giving Anton a moment's warning before she simply scooped him up in princess carry. Vanessa's strong arms held Anton close to her chest, fresh blood on her hand staining the back of his shirt. With him secured, his bodyguard simply floated down into the pit.

Darkness crept in the deeper they sunk, but eventually Vanessa's feet found solid purchase on well packed earth. She set Anton down gently in the low light now identified as coming from dragonshards. A veritable hoard of them had been spared from the mists, and Vanessa stared at them with covetous hunger. If all of this had been sitting in the open, what more could the vault be hiding? Her fingers twitched in anticipation, and Vanessa unconsciously licked her lips.

Before she filled her pockets though, Vanessa slipped her jacket off of her shoulders. "Heads up, Imogen! I'm sending my jacket up. Grab it and come on down." Vanessa shouted, gruff voice bouncing off the walls on the way up. It wasn't the safest plan, but she was confident that either the ork could catch the jacket, or that there was a path out of here if Imogen somehow managed to miss. "Just imagine flying and it'll do the rest."

Vanessa left the shards for now, and ducked low into a side room filled with cases, lockboxes and chests. The materialist gnawing grew more intense here, surrounded by the unknown. Dust collected on the tops of each box, this room having either been lost to time or purposefully ignored. Vanessa swept across the chests one by one with her sleeve, sending great clouds of dust up her nose and into her mouth.

She stopped abruptly after the third box, an old, flat weapon's case about six feet long made of stained cherry wood. The bodyguard stared at it first with a confused expression that shifted to rare wide-eyed astonishment as she read over the name etched into the top of the locked box.

Orphea Quill.

She read the words over and over again, pausing on each letter to make sure she hadn't made a mistake. But there was no error on her end. A burbling tension welled up within her core, and Vanessa swallowed hard as if that might keep it down. What was something for her mother doing down here?

The case was locked, or she would have broken it open this very instant to find out what had been worth hiding all this time. Instead carried the case by the worn leather strap and returned to the open cavern she'd left Anton in. "Not sure it's just storage." Vanessa said, slower on the uptake than Anton.

"Grab anything you can carry what looks good." She said quickly, using their current situation to distract herself. "Don't wanna risk cleaning this whole place out. It'll attract too much attention if anyone sees us loadin' the ship full." It broke her heart to say as such, so used to picking hard-won prizes clean.

[Imogen]

"Probably wise," Imogen remarked, floating down on Vanessa's coat as though she had a natural grasp of it. That wasn't impossible, either- Rune-marked mages often had an instinctive sort of understanding of how to use such magical treasures. "I wouldn't think too much more about this, after you go. The Pfenning is empty, but the Railrunners aren't gone from Zaichaer, unless I miss the mark."

The Railrunners were, of course, one of the more famous Covens of Zaichaer. Imogen wasn't sure if every passerby would have heard of them, but Anton and Vanessa were plainly experienced; perhaps out of the Air Defense Corps, even? That would explain their claim of an airship and Vanessa's coat- which Imogen tossed cavalierly back to her as the thought struck- but neither seemed terribly concerned about her open display of a banned magic.

Well, then again, the end of the world would do that to people.

Imogen released her sword, then willed it to float up into the air, until it hung just where the ceiling of the storeroom should have been. She focused on the weapon, enhancing her flow of aether, and the Nova-fire billowed outward, doubling and re-doubling in intensity. Soon, the silver light lit the entire room, and Imogen began hunting through the boxes and shelves, intent on something. The radiance of inner flame was soft and comforting, slowly burning away the traces of filth the Theatergoers' collapse had left on her. Sadly, it wasn't ideal for reading, so she ended up squinting at the labels on each case.

After a few moments of searching Imogen pulled a slim box off one shelf, then set about looking for something else.

"If you're wondering, I work for a different coven, I just took contracts for the Railrunners. And cleaned the Theater, too. They brought me down a few times, but always by way of the slipspace. Easier to hide your storage if none of your couriers ever enter or leave the actual facility, you know."

[Anton]

It was either wisdom or foolishness on Anton's part that he refused to loot any of the Railrunners' supplies. Partly, he really didn't need anything from these vaults, but mostly he found it rude to rob those who might make better use of the contents. After all, Imogen had a point - the Railrunners weren't gone. Despite his upbringing, he had never really bought into the horror stories of the Covens that he had grown up. Being himself an illegal mage somewhat undercut his concern at the notion of their supposed evils.

That said, he certainly didn't begrudge Vanessa taking anything from the storehouse, especially not when the connection between her and it was as plain as day. "That... actually does make a lot of sense," Anton replied to Imogen, the simple idea going a far way to explain why the Defense Corps had never been able to truly crush the Covens despite centuries of effort. "But I guess everyone's been a bit tossed around by, well, you know."

As soon as the two women were done taking what they wanted from Pfenning, they and Anton beat a hasty retreat from the ruined theater. Luckily, exiting was far easier than entering, the last audience proving the only danger that they had to face. One by one, the trio ascended up to the waiting deck of the Every Waking Moment.

The airship hung languidly far above the city, beyond the last sputtering Mists which still plagued its streets. It was an incongruous sight, a fully rigged ship of the line, suspended in the air like a toy held in the hands of a child, unconcerned with all the troubles of the world. Safely aboard, the trio had had little time for a tête-à-tête before each had to carry on - Imogen to continue finding the other members of the Covens, Anton and Vanessa to secure the safety their holdings to the south of the city. At the least, it was an amicable parting, and one that saw Imogen have the opportunity to enjoy some fruits of civilization before venturing onward.

When the time finally did come for them to part, Anton could not help but record what contact information he could of the necessarily itinerant woman, while offering to her a bevy of addresses in Karnor and the Imperium where he could be reached. The fact that she had no real way to keep writing on her long term would have never occurred to him, but even if he had known, he would've tried regardless. He had been entranced by the sight of her soulflame, and clearly ached to know more, but time would not permit, and needs must they separate before he could indulge in his curiosities - or work up the courage and prove himself worthy of the Rune itself.

Imogen, exeunt stage left

Anton & Vanessa, exeunt stage right