(2018-04-10) The 'Book'
The 'Book'
Summary: The students go after the ritual book.
Date: 2018-04-10
Related: Related Logs (Say None if there aren't any; don't leave blank. You have to use full URLs, like http://coralsprings.wikidot.com/logtitle)
NPCs: Players go below, other chars that deserve mention can be listed here
Scene Runner: Alignak
Players:
ashton..loukanos..grayson..

The volunteers gathered early in the morning before breakfast on the back patio as instructed. Already waiting was the Headmaster, wearing the staff mission uniform, only on his uniform were slotted glowing orbs - three on one arm, two on the other, and the tall White Witch, with sleepy eyed toddler in her arms. Most of Unit 23 has gathered, and one teen girl who does not attend the school. Unit 23 is in there Fatigue Uniforms, the girl is in what appears to be a body suit, but not that of the school uniforms. All students going are required to wear their team uniforms.

Once all the student volunteers were assembled the Headmaster gave a short speech about the goals of the mission. There would be three groups. One group would go after the piece of Besa's heart. The second group would find the resurrection ritual, Intel says it's books, but be aware it could also be scrolls. The third group, if it is necessary, would be crowd control, blocking off the stairs and elevators to the hotel floor to prevent staff and backup from sneaking up on the other two groups. He goes on to suggest that each group is a team and should act as such, watch each others backs and don't take any unnecessary risks.

As he is talking the White Witch set about to casting, some magical incantations and touching the door leading into the mansion, there is a surge of magic as the spell goes off. Where the door once was is now just the view of a well lit stair well. On the wall in large letters is painted '32nd Floor', stairs lead both up and down. The tall woman then begins guiding the volunteer students through, the toddler, now fully awake and watching the students pass with curiosity, until Besa, the last one to go through passes by. Seeing the nervous looking Besa, the young girl flails an arm out at him and shouts an adamant 'No go Bass-ah! Nappie time!' in her baby voice, those sensing magic would feel another powerful surge just as a surprised Besa's eyes roll back and he collapses to the ground at the school and the magical wormhole slams closed.

Grayson leaps through the portal. As he does, he looks behind him, "Besa, which—" And then he sees it close. He stands there a moment, and then just sighs. "Seriously?" With a huff, he then looks at the two boys with him. He's the oldest, so, "Well, I guess come on." Grayson yanks the door open. As the heart group heads down the hall one direction, he jogs down the other. "They said 3209…" he calls out, making sure the others are with him as he slows in front of the hotel room door. "We got a entry plan, fellas?"

Despite feeling silly in the Promethean uniform, Loukanos understands its importance and goes with it. Stepping through the portal, he watches the portal close and furrows his brows. "Our assignment is to locate the components for the ritual." He ponders briefly and starts off after Grayson. "I say we use a ruse to lure them out of the room."

As the "White Witch" starts her incantation, Ashton cannot help but to cock his head and watch for a second. As he passes the woman, he pointed does not look in the woman's direction, remembering Rain's opinion of how her mother might respond to him. Once through the portal he follows the group he was put into. The young sorcerer looks at the door lock, sliding his fingers over the edge of it. He cocks his head slightly as he does. "It's been magically sealed." There is an amused look in his eyes, "I'm pretty sure that I can… overpower it and just let us in."

Grayson furrows his brow, and he looks at Loukanos. "Do I listen to the God or the Demon?" He shakes his head, furrowing his brow a bit as his dumb jock brain processes things. He looks back at the door, and then nods. "It's a room. They're already basically trapped. I prefer a straight on fight to sneakin' around." He takes a step back and offers to Ashton, "Okay. Straight in, hard and fast. Let's use our surprise and how fuckin' awesome we are to kick their asses and get this stupid book and go home." He grins mischievously. "Do it."

"I suggest the God unless you're bound in some way to the Demon. Then Demon is usually a safer bet," Loukanos rattles off before stopping at the door. "Very well." He says, indulging the group's wishes to just barge in. "When the two of you are injured, I will be able to heal your wounds." Unless they're super serious. In that case, Besa can handle it. His body takes on a gentle golden glow as he prepares himself.

Luckily they went straight from meeting on the lawn to heading right into the thick of it, because the fresh glyph carved into Ashton's left wrist will still be fairly fresh and still bleeding, or easy enough to get it to be so again. "The Demon" pulls back the cuff of his sleeve, jabbing his thumb into the wound, which does start to quickly ooze blood. As Ashton begins speaking the dark tongue of his father, he starts drawing out a glyph on the door. He nods to the other two, as he steps back, gesturing with his right hand, suddenly spreading the fingers open. As he says the final words, the glyph glows bright green, then the door flies back into the room taking with it the protective spell.

The door bounces across the floor, the steel pieces breaking apart and settling in the middle of the room. At the same moment, the fire alarms begin to sound. Was it the door's fault? Are they demon alarms?

Inside the room is a rather posh suite. The living area is about fifteen feet wide and stretches back around thirty feet to the floor to ceiling windows that look out at the Vegas strip tonight. All of the furniture has been pushed and stacked against the walls, clearing the center of the room where a single wooden chair sits facing the giant flatscreen television on the wall. In the chair is a girl, about 16 years old. She's watching an episode of Austin and Alley on the Disney Channel. Even as the door breaks apart, she never looks away from the television. She's wearing a burlap robe, the hood of which drapes down her back, off her head.

There are two people standing on either side of her, both in the dark burlap robes, tied with rope as belts, and the hoods up, shrouding their faces in darkness. The slowly turn to look at the kids in the doorway.

Grayson tilts his head. "Why can't creepy cultists ever just look like monsters?" He steps into the room, and as he does so, the smell of freshly fallen rain suddenly fills the area. The air around his hands sort of warbles, and then there are balls of water around them. He takes an offensive stance and demands, "Give us the book, potato man!" Apparently potatoes come in burlap sacks and Grayson thinks he's funny. He's not. Don't encourage him. Then he tilts his head, "A girl…?"

"The building's on fir-" Loukanos just stops. The ruse is a poor one, considering their uniforms. Darn uniforms! Plus, Grayson has already revealed their true intentions. The girl gives the godling pause, but he's already entered the room and activates his divine sight that can sometimes supersede vision. Perhaps if the book is in the room. It can be found without their assistance.

Ashton starts pushing up his sleeves as he walks in. No, he's not trying to look intimidating, the uniform is just damned inconvenient if you have to cut on yourself. The devil's in the detail, as they say. "Because they are cultists, not the monster." He looks at Grayson for a second, mouthing 'potato man'? He looks at the tv then the girl, "Really? Super scary cult and you're watching Disney? On second thought that is kind of creepy.". The last into the room, has a small pocket knife in his hand.

The two cultists do not respond to Grayson, or the other two young men. Instead, they each begin to slowly move their hands with an eerie smoothness, making motions that are clearly going to end with some kind of nasty spell or power going off. The girl never looks away from the television, even as the two robed figures begin their movements. Their hand motions quickly come to a fruition as their arms and hands burst into flames, their eyes now suddenly glowing like fiery embers within the darkness of their hoods. Those fireballs in their hands get thrown. The fire darts across the room. One fireball is whooshing toward Ashton, the other at Grayson. And as if that weren't enough, right in the middle of the action, a third figure walks out of the bathroom, shouting, "Is that a fire alarm!?!"

Grayson scowls as those arms ignite, shouting, "Here we go!" He wheels back his arms, the water around his hands rushing into a larger sphere. He snarls, about to sling loose the torrent of high intensity water toward the nearest robed cultist, but then the other figure bursts into the room. In a reckless moment of surprise, he redirects, and fires the huge burst of liquid at the bathroom target, making sure they don't give the surprise new entry the chance to get the drop on he and his classmates. The water slams into the figure, breaking bones and crumpling the body as it shoots the figure across the room and toward the windows.

"What fresh hell…" Once sapphire eyes shine with brilliant golden light. Loukanos completely ignores the fireballs, not even checking to see if Ashton's okay. No, that's baby magic. What he feels is much more…intense. He sniffs and almost gags before his bright gaze lands on the girl in the chair. How do they obtain a child? More importantly, can that power be siphoned? An open hand lifts in the direction of the girl, and his booming and formidable psychic voice can be felt in her mind. "Sleep, child."

The fireball flies towards Ashton, which he catches it with no more concern for it as if it were a dodge ball. The flames lick across his skin, but does nothing more than that. The flames just die out in his hands, as his own eyes flicker with flame, except his are the yellow-green flames of hellfire. He just smiles as he continues walking into the room.

The water slams into the windows with a huge splash, the body embedding in the thick, shatterproof glass. As the water falls to the floor, it leaves behind watery blood and a woman in her late thirties wearing jeans and a Las Vegas Tshirt. Her body is broken like a ragdoll as it slides down the cracked glass, leaving a bloddy, body-shaped imprint of shatter in the center of the window. As the dead body hits the floor, the girl in the chair stands, looking to the window. "Mom?" she calls, a sudden sadness in her voice as her hand covers her mouth.

The first fireball dissipates around Ashton, but the second finds its mark, striking Grayson Squarely in the chest. He's tossed back into the hallway from the impact, tumbling across the floor into the door across the hall. His chest is seared and black, smoking, and the scent of burnt flesh and hair replaces that rain smell. He's hurt, but still conscious as the sprinklers in the hotel room begin to fire off water everywhere.

The two cultists begin to move their hands again. As they do, the fire flutters out from around their arms and is replaced by flickering, crackling blue flashes of electricity.

Grayson groans, slowly rolling onto his side. He touches his chest, wincing, and then scowls, looking back in the room. "Shit." He grunts, gritting his teeth as he pushes himself back to his feet, using the door and doorhandle on the room across the hall to lean on as he regains his composure. "The demon is fireproof. Fuck my life." And the smell of rain fills the air once more as his hands begin to recharge with water.

There is more there than Loukanos expected, but not one to back down from a challenge, the godling begins to break those walls, unlocking the wards, and enforcing his divine mandate upon the girl. His focus is nigh interruptible at this point. The switching from fire to lightning does not interrupt it nor does Grayson's flying body. Feeling the life flicker out of the woman…brows wrinkle over glowing eyes, but he maintains focus.

Of course the half-demon is fireproof. But then again, Ashton figured that the waterbender would have maybe extinguished the flame heading towards him with the water gathered around him. Fire is one thing, electricity is another, especially with water raining down. The dark-haired sorcerer cuts an about three inch long gash on his arm. He starts gesturing as he starts vocalizing the demonic words. As his hands start rotating around a phantom orb, several small fractals of light form, then launch towards one of the electricity wielding cultists.

The girl's eyes begin to tear up, "Mom!?!" she calls again, panicked. She stares at her mother's limp body and then slowly, gracefully, she lifts her arms, bending her elbows a bit so the burlap robe just falls off her to the floor. She's completely naked. The sprinkler water beads on her skin and runs down her young body, tracing over the thousands of burns, scars and tattoos that cover every inch of her below the neck. They aren't just torture marks, though. Rather, they are thousands of ritual diagrams, runes, incantations, sigils and spells. She slowly turns toward the boys in the doorway, and one of the ritual circles carved into her shoulder glows with a brilliant white light, shooting dazzling prismatic rainbows across the room as it blazes through the falling sprinkler water. Her eyes glow the same glow, and the power within her quickly rises.

The cultist on the right fires a blast of electricity across the room. It leaps and arcs across the thousands of drops of water in the air, spreading outward like fingery spider webs that snap and pop and sizzle as they stretch toward Loukanos. The water from the sprinklers bursts into steam as the obscene amount of electricity zig zags toward him.

The cultist on the left gets a small spark of electricity into the air that fizzles to nothiing as he's struck by Ashton's spell. The spell blast tosses the cultist backward, toppling him into a stack of chairs against the wall that tumble down onto him. He shrieks in pain as the heavy chairs land atop him. He's not unconcious, but he'll have to dig himself out to get up.

Just as the girl's eyes well up with power, they blink. They flutter. And then she crumples to the floor, sound asleep. The ritual mark on her shoulder stops glowing.

Grayson is in the hall. There's not a lot he can do quickly from here, but he sees the electricity shooting at Loukanos, who isn't getting out the way. "Lou!" he yells, and he reaches his arms forward. The water in his hands pushes across the hall and into the room. As it touches the first drops of water in the air from the sprinklers, all of the water in the room suddenly flattens into a single horizontal pane of water stretching across the entire room. It has pulled all of the water away from his teammates and the girl and even the clutist, clearing the air for an instant. There's a deafening 'whoompf' sound as he shoves his hands downward. All of the water is forced down to the floor in a fierce dump of liquid. The electricity that was crossing the water toward Loukanos redirects as well, most of it puttering out into the rubber of the carpet padding under their feet. The rest of the electricity snaps up the liquid's trail to Grayson's fingertips. There's a flash and a loud pop, and for the second time in as many seconds, he's tossed backward into the door across the hall.

There is no chance Loukanos is moving away from the bolt. He is just starting to find ground within the girl's head and is more than willing to take a burst of electricity if it means finishing his task. He faced Zeus and wavered. He cannot this time, too much is on the line. Lucky for him, he does not need to be tested as Grayson takes the brunt of the damage. But the golden light in his eyes flickers out, and for a moment, he forgets to breathe. A whimper escapes his mouth…but quickly turns into a primal growth. In a flash, Loukanos is by the sleeping girl's side with a knife held against her throat. "Enough. Stop this or I'll slit her throat and send her to Hades." His voice is deathly serious, and he seems ready to end this.

Ashton realizes that the girl is the book. He walks over to stand beside Loukanos. He places his hand on the girl's bare skin. As he does, pain courses through his hand. He says to Louk softly, "Whatever you do, don't move… until I'm done." He starts speaking in that ungodly language that sounds like a cross between Welsh and Klingon. As he does so, the skin on his hand starts sizzling and the smell of both brimstone and burning flesh can be smelled to any nearby. As he continues, the boy's color pales and he almost stumbles but maintains his footing.

The cultist under the chairs does freeze, holding his hands up slightly. The other cultist turns to face the boys and the girl. The cultist reaches up and slips the hood off, revealing a woman in her early twenties with a shaved head. Her face is thin and her looks are simple but pleasing, and her large brown eyes widen just slightly in concern. She lifts her hands up a bit as well. "Please… Don't hurt her."

"I-I can't. Grayson needs help. I need to heal him. He's-" But Loukanos chokes on the words. For the first time in years, his eyes swell with tears. What has he done? The woman's voice breaks his shock, and he snaps at her, pressing the dagger into the girl's throat, "Quiet! You'll die along with her if you do not cooperate." If not for Ashton's command, he might kill them both and be done with this.

Ashton continues chanting, occasionally his voice falters as the pain wracks his entire body. As he continues he slides to his knees, or rather falls to his knees, his hands never leaving the girls skin. Slowly though, the sigils, glyphs, ritual diagrams, and words start fading from her body. It seems with each one, the dark haired boy seems to take on more and more pain. Until the last disappears from her body, and Ashton slumps to the floor.

The female cultist's eyes widen as the marks fade from the sleeping teenage girl's body. "NO!" she shouts, and she quickly spins her hands around. Once again, there is a flurry of crackling electricity and she blasts a sphere of it toward Loukanos, the girl and Ashton.

Grayson still doesn't move.

All of his comrades have fallen and are left without a way to defend themselves. Instinctively, Loukanos stands and outstretches his hands as if to catch the sphere of lightning…and he does. Sorta. He channels a fraction of it, relying on his sturdy Olympian physiology to keep him breathing long enough to redirect a bolt of electricity back at the pissed cultist.

Ashton groans on the floor.

The lightning sphere swings back around, striking the cultist in the gut. She topples back, stumbling to the floor, where she jerks for a moment as the electricity sparks out, and then she's still. She appears to still be alive, just unconscious. The cultist under the chairs scrambles out, and just races for the door, running away, leaving the room. It suddenly seems very alone in here, and the din of the falling sprinkler water just adds to the meloncholy.

Good. Those aren't tears streaming down Loukanos's cheeks. It's just the sprinkler water. He lets the man go. They have 'completed' their objective though not without casualty. Speaking of, the godling moves to where Grayson is and kneels near the almost lifeless body. Suddenly, it's raining outside too. Placing a hand on the boy's burnt chest, he floods the dead teenager with divine energy. It appears he doubts himself as he's already muttering a prayer of safe passage to the Elysian Fields.

Ashton has started coming to, or rather, the pain that was overwhelming is suddenly not there. He manages to stand up. Both of his hands are blistered, and the cuts on his left arm are sealing themselves up like the normally do. He limps over to where his two team mates are.

As the energy washes over Grayson, Loukanos can sense the stirrings of life within him once more. It's weak, it's not of clear thought, but it's there. A moment later, a portal opens in the hallway. It seems that the White Witch was watching everyone and is ensuring they all return to the school. Several Unit 23 soldiers dart out of the portal. Two run over to Ashton and help him to his feet, propping him on their shoulders and helping him back through the portal. A flurry of medics push past Loukanos and crowd over Grayson. There's snippets of medical talk yelled about. "…vitals are weak but holding…" "…chest wound is mostly healed but…" "…heart was stopped for how long…" Then he's on a stretcher and being whisked through the portal as well. Another soldier is helping Loukanos up, "Come on, Louk, let's get you home." The sleeping naked girl is cuffed and thrown over the shoulder of another soldier, carried back through the portal as well.

When they all return to the school, Besa is still magically asleep on a couch with baby Circe on his chest. She smiles and waves to everyone as they pass. Besa looks unaware of anything wrong. Grayson and Ashton are rushed to the medical ward. The girl is placed in the brig. The night is over, and The White Witch tells everyone to go wash up before they have to debrief. This was an extra credit mission, reports will need to be written…

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