[center][h3]Dead Zone Hinterlands - Martira, Old Castle Town[/h3]
Harry’s [@Eviledd1984][/center]

Rummaging through waste on the way to the Friendly Arm turned up little in terms of value for Harry. His search turned up what one might expect: food waste (whether spoiled or inedible like peels and stems), broken or used-up objects, bits of excess building materials, and so forth. A broken bottle could conceivably be used as a weapon, and certain discarded items might still have a few uses left in them, but he didn’t find any spare change or refuse worth selling. In a village used to hard times, it seemed that people lived sparingly, and got their money’s worth out of every last cent. Taking the disturbed expressions of nearby onlookers into account, Harry’s efforts probably came to a deficit in terms of social value. The red-haired noblewoman, in particular, did not seem impressed by his self-assuredness; the look she gave him was rather pitying, the sort one might give a lame horse as its owner came to put it out of its misery.

On the ground floor of the Friendly Arm, Harry found a bar just as expected. The [url=https://i.imgur.com/WkkxB2n.png]bartender[/url], whose name tag read ‘Gillian’ was a young-looking man with scruffy dark hair and a patchy goatee. Not seemingly very outgoing, he focused on his duties with a serious, taciturn expression until the newcomer spoke up first. When asked about Morris, he took a quick look around, then -with the second of the two questions being a little easier to answer’ decided to tackle Harry’s queries in reverse order. Notably, he did not give Harry’s somewhat desperate attempt to nurse his empty wine bottle a second glance; no doubt this place had seen its fair share of boozers.

“Oily Oaf, or Squeck Juice?” he replied succinctly, reciting the names of the inn’s cheapest ails but nothing else about them. Depending on which one he chose, Harry would be in for  a very different experience; Oily Oaf was light, but with a rich, buttery aftertaste, while Squeck Juice was inky, salty, and hoppy, liable to get him more inebriated but guaranteed to give him hiccups. Once Harry had officially patronized the establishment and received his beverage of choice, Gillian went ahead and addressed his other question. “You’ll find Morris at the card tables in the back,” he reported. 

When Harry followed the barman’s directions, he found not one but several tables where customers were playing cards. The most notable one sported a quartet of [url=https://i.imgur.com/erDEdHd.png]anthropomorphic animals[/url] stressing out and accusing one another over some sort of simple but high-stakes card game, while others harbored more customary sorts like the typical long-eared Roussaintes, doglike Paripus, and angel-winged Ishkia. After a minute or so Harry could identify one man in the trappings of a guard, though. He was a dour-looking [url=https://i.imgur.com/xl3QNcf.png]Clemar[/url] with violet eyes and brown hair tied back in a bun, and if the distribution of chips at his table was anything to go by, he seemed to be doing poorly. His opponents -a [url=https://i.imgur.com/7aehKby.png]bushy-tailed witch[/url], a big man with a [url=https://i.imgur.com/7KfpF5s.png]bird head[/url], an even [url=https://i.imgur.com/SrYj0kL.png]bigger man[/url] with long ears, grayish skin, and crystalline protrusions- all seemed to be doing much better. Just as Harry walked up, the bird man reached out and scooped a big pile of chips toward him with his arms, chirping uproariously–and in a thick Russian accent. “Hah! Another round like that, Mister Morris, and you’ll have to take out another loan! Hahahaha!”

The big conductor shrugged it off and the witch took a sip of her drink, but Morris put his head in his hands. “Damn it!” he growled, even more Scottish than Bardon had been. “Why me?”

[center][h3]The Qliphoth - the Final Hollow[/h3]
Lvl 14 Ms Fortune (187/140) Lvl 9 Goldlewis (122/90) Lvl 7 Sandalphon (84/70) Lvl 4 [color=ef6069]Grimm[/color] (37/40)
Midna, Junior, & Rika’s [@DracoLunaris] Blazermate & Roland’s [@Archmage MC] Geralt, Zenkichi & Edelgard’s [@MULTI_MEDIA_MAN] Ace Cadet, Pit, Primrose & Therion’s [@Yankee] Juri’s [@Zoey Boey] Roxas, Ganondorf, & Captain Falcon’s [@Double][/center]

Though she typically pre-furred to be optimistic, for the others’ sakes if not her own, Nadia got the sneaking suspicion that what appeared to be D’s defeat was a little too good to be true. Considering the fight he put up as a mere Consul, she would have expected D to get more mileage out of his fearsome Moebius form than this. Nevertheless, she tried to hope for the best as she gathered up alongside Roxas, Geralt, Falcon, and Therion, taking deep breaths in through her nose and out through her mouth. By now, fatigue and injury were taking a toll on all of them. She herself needed healing, or at least a while to regenerate while her Life Gem did its thing, and the others probably weren’t much better off. Maybe they were trying to look on the bright side too, but with O’s fate unknown, and the battles against the Gravemind and A raging on elsewhere, it was hard to feel like the fight was over. Still…the Seekers had to be getting close!

After another moment, D’s eyes flickered open. Instantly he burst into a swarm of bats that surged upward like water from a geyser, quickly distancing themselves from the melee-oriented team. “I’ve toyed with you miserable cretins enough,” his disembodied voice snarled. Only once about a hundred feet in the air did the bats coalesce into the Consul once more, and with the aid of his magic D hung in the air, scythe at the ready, glaring down at the Seekers imperiously. “I had thought to honor your reckless courage with a personal death at my own hand.” Sophisticated purple and red magic circles inscribed themselves in the air around him, layered and turning. “But now, you will suffer the dispassionate indignity of bombardment from afar, without the faintest hope of fighting back!”

So saying, the Consul began to cast. D conjured a roving deluge of boiling blood, a rain of meteors, spinning sickles, batstreams that spiraled down to crash against the floor with crushing force, and Destruction Rays one after another. From his lofty -and mobile- vantage point he could abuse his seemingly infinite reserves of mana while none of his challengers could even hope to reach him, let alone hurt him. Some of the five had appreciable aerial mobility, but all ultimately fell short, especially with D’s smorgasbord of sorcery coming the opposite way. True his word, this was no longer a real fight; it was a hellstorm in which it took everything the enervated Seekers had just to survive. “Yes! Run, run!” D taunted from above. “Draw your deaths out as long as you like! I am Moebius - I have all the time in the world!”

One side-effect of the havoc wreaked by Moebius D was its potential for interfering in other fights, at least one of which could really use the help. Though dauntingly hardy at first blush once it went mobile, the Gravemind quickly found staunch opposition in the form of Ganon. Mostly ignoring the other Seekers’ efforts, the two giants traded blows, Ganon faster than his foe but obliged to work harder to pierce the Gravemind’s tougher defenses. Thanks to Sandalphon’s Angel Wings and Blazermate’s continuous restoration, though, the Gravemind’s toxic biological countermeasures were not as great a concern for him, and with the bestial warlord taking point the heroes made good progress. After one head fell the spore grenades spouted from its severed stump complicated things, but the heroes did not relent. Edelgard strove to put Sandalphon’s advice into action by targeting one of the giant horror’s three mammoth legs, Once she softened it up with Flickering Flower, Zenkichi braved the Gravemind’s fumes and fury to shatter the wounded limb with a fully-charged Eruption, its raw force and explosive flame proving equal to the task. Once its leg was crippled, the ungainly amalgamate’s own weight did the rest, and as a thousand twisted voices wailed the Gravemind crashed to the floor.

That was just the opportunity that Blazermate had been waiting for. Sensing victory, the dutiful medabot gave Ganon the second wind he needed to push toward the battle’s finale. Strengthened by the Kritzkrieg, Zenkichi’s Heat Riser, and more, the behemoth went whole hog against the downed Gravemind in a terrific physical and magical onslaught. He chewed through his foe’s innate damage reduction and demolished it one big chunk at a time. Its agonized roar shook the Qliphoth, as if the demon tree itself were screaming. [color=olive][b]”I HAVE SPENT EONS WAITING, WATCHING, PLANNING! WILL NOT AGAIN BE TORN ASUNDER! NOT NOW THAT I'M FREE, NOT NOW THAT I’M WHOLE!”[/b][/color] Even if the Kritzkrieg’s ubercharge lasted only eight seconds, it was enough to turn the tide irreversibly in Ganon’s favor. Within fifteen seconds, a second head had been destroyed: the Ancient Infested head, responsible for the manipulation of the Gravemind’s colossal scythe. Immobilized and robbed of two heads, the Gravemind could do little but spew its infectious vapors if Ganon remained on the opposite side. Even the tentacles of the Brother Moon overhead, stretching ever closer to the Qliphoth, seemed to writhe in shared pain.

As its biomass was reduced, it was losing its intelligence–its very sense of self. The Gravemind had only one card left to play. As the Seekers’ assault continued, somewhat less than before, it began one final, large-scale transformation. Its body shifted and reshaped itself, splitting into five pieces. Two were formed from its other legs, and the other two had the bulk from its remaining head. Once separated they attacked, one each for Zenkichi and Edelgard with two to try and occupy Ganon. From the wreckage of the Gravemind’s body, however, rose its core in the form of a bloated mish-mash somewhere between a [url=https://i.imgur.com/1OyxWay.png]Bomber Form[/url] and a [url=https://i.imgur.com/gTDcFrl.png]Genetrix[/url]. Jettisoning non-essential tissue as spore grenades, the Gravecore floated upward, as if to reunite with the Brother Moon far above.

Following Midna’s death, A resumed the fight against Primrose and Roland with a cold nonchalance, as if nothing at all had happened. By its logic, perhaps, an eventuality had merely come to pass, and more were soon to come. For the Seekers, though, things [i]were[/i] different now. They had somebody to avenge, and something they could not allow to transpire again. Intensified and razor-sharp, the dancer and the fixer went to work, and a moment later they found their efforts joined by those of Goldlewis Dickinson. The veteran belted out his fury as he attacked, alternating between Behemoth Typhoons and shotgun fisticuffs.

Tactically speaking, A was a risk that could no longer be tolerated, but Goldlewis would be lying if he said there wasn’t a personal element to his wild assault, too. He kept up the pressure on A while Roland sealed him with Emerald and Primrose tempered herself with a well-timed dance. As soon as her performance concluded, a maelstrom of savage shadows and deadly flames befell the Consul, each smoldering burn converted into a single incinerating burst. After another few seconds, even more backup arrived in a form that none of the other Seekers recognized: a huge, arthropod juggernaut, whose startling screech had reverberated around the hollow moments before. The sight of it threw Goldlewis off, but since it didn’t fit the opposition’s aesthetic he held off making judgements, and the sight of the Monster bulling into A the next moment dispelled all doubt.

The combined koopa kids crashed into A like a landslide, the mighty impact actually doubling A over and leaving it vulnerable. They pressed their advantage without hesitation, and the rest of their team followed their example. Berzerk Blast paved the way for Rites of Termination, Furioso’s finale, and finally, a brutal Down With the System from Goldlewis. It was a staggering beatdown, leaving A unable to fight back for more reasons than one, and yet…

Moebius A still clung to life. [b]”Self-deceiving figments!”[/b] Its voice was frayed by its fury, rendered by ruptured organs that railed and refused to give in. [b]”I WILL HAVE MY DUE!”[/b] Before the Seekers could destroy it, the thing they all feared came to pass–a second, terrible invocation of its eldritch power, Undo. The hollow around them melted into a that loathsome chamber surrounded on all sides by nightmarish masses of meat. [b]”CHOOSE!”[/b]

“Damn it!” Goldlewis growled between haggard, panting breaths. Even after Sandalphon’s healing, he was on his last legs, his mind and body under a great deal of strain, and now he was going to lose another ally. He’d only spent a short time with Midna, but he could see her face in his mind’s eye, clear as day. Her voice and her visage haunted him, joined to the ethereal chorus that had hounded him all his years. How many more men and women were going to die under his command!?

Goldlewis clenched his jaw, steadying himself. It was wrong to give into hysteria; if all the blood on his hands hadn’t broken him before, one more corpse on the pile wouldn’t break him now. Nevertheless, the loss of her life weighed on him, and after a moment something dawned on him. It didn’t seem right that he, a tired and sad old man, a soldier of a dozen campaigns, ought to keep living while the young ones with bright futures ahead of them went away. For a long time, Goldlewis had considered the possibility of giving his life for his country -for its people- the highest honor. Freedom wasn’t free, after all; somebody always had to pay the price. The last time A used this dreadful dark art, the other Seekers had quailed from his proffered grasp. [i]He[/i] had quailed. He hadn’t said anything, but a dozen thoughts had rushed through his head, a dozen reasons why it should be somebody else, anybody but him. If nothing changed, though, these walls of flesh would come crashing in, and destroy the whole team where they stood.

[b]”What now, you who remain?”[/b] A crowed as the unfathomably maw closed in around the Seekers. [b]”Moebius fills you. Moebius IS you. Return, from whence you came!”[/b]

Goldlewis blinked. “Ohhh…” he murmured, scratching his beard with a wry smile. “So that’s it. I see. Well.” He took a deep breath. [i]They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.[/i] Then he opened his eyes. “Fine.”

Aboard the Avenger, Sandalphon widened her eyes, her pupils no more than empty rings. “Goldlewis!”

For a moment A gnashed its teeth, but it obliged him all the same. A tentacle shot forward, twisting toward Goldlewis. His face tightened as his breath billowed across his whiskers from his nose, and with nothing else to his name, he raised a fist in defiance. “I’m ready!” he barked, leaping up in order to airdash toward him. Time seemed to slow as the arrowhead tentacle veered toward him. With his left hand he extended two fingers toward the Consul, like a baseballer calling a home run. Veins bulged and glasses shattered as Goldlewis then threw his right punch. “How ‘bout you!?”

The next moment, it was done. Roland, Primrose, and the Monster stood alone in the Final Hollow before Moebius A, the monster slumped over and on its last legs. The heart in its back pounded, its terrible powers were mostly exhausted or sealed, and it had only a few eyes left with which to stare balefully at its lessers. Nevertheless, it lived. [b]”Even the aged oak will fall to the tempest's winds.”[/b] it remarked, lifting its arms for the final round. [b]”More dust. More ashes. More disappointment.”[/b]