Kochiya Sanae
Nieve — Red Light District
Filled with renewed confidence as Rayne remained evenly matched with the enemy in front of them as she was, Sanae felt no fear as she maintained the divine wind coursing through the battlefield from behind her. Given the apparent tricks she had seen from the oiran thus far, it made sense to focus on making sure that Rayne would be able to continue her barrage of attacks unimpeded.
If only things would remain that simple.
The sudden crippling wave of heat that bore down upon them quickly drowned out her own spell; though the illness that bore down upon them continued to be kept at bay, the heat was still sweltering enough to make the young woman sweat. Coupled with the disconcerting illusory noises echoing from around them (or, at least Sanae
hoped they were illusory), the green-haired girl was forced to reconsider if she needed to join the fray or not.
The answer to
that question quickly turned into a resounding "absolutely" as the inky-black pool of oil that spread out from underneath their enemy made contact with Qing'e and promptly revealed what sort of effects doing so would have. Coupled with a butterfly that promptly lit her aflame, though...
It wasn't surprising, really, that Sanae let out a shout mere moments before her body, now apparently consigned to the flames, disappeared outright. There was a brief moment of anger over how quickly and cruelly the other woman's life was apparently snuffed out, but that would mean nothing if they didn't finish what job they had already started.
Unfortunately, those few seconds worrying about the fate of their helped would come to collect from her, too.
Though Sanae had the sense to take flight after seeing what had happened to Qing'e, the scant seconds she had taken to mourn her meant that she, too, would end up a victim of the oncoming curse. As the oil-like substance pooled beneath her floating form, the young woman gritted her teeth and gripped onto her gohei as the very same substance began to bleed from her eyes, her sclera now stained black from it.
"This curse really is... Something else, huh?" Sanae choked out before taking as deep a breath as she could muster before calling out to Rayne. Despite her own currently-crippled form, the battle—as far as she could tell—was nowhere near over despite their sudden losses.
"Rayne! Don't even try to fly over this stuff!" she called out as she lobbed a few more bullets towards any butterflies that dared to even draw close to her. "Big hits from afar, if you can! We need to—"
Before she could finish her sentence, though, an even stronger wave of nausea—one that she
couldn't suppress out of sheer willpower—overcame her, and the shrine maiden promptly vomited the same substance that Qing'e had before her own disappearance.
"...Crap, I think I might need to call Kanako-sama in for this one..." Sanae cursed under her breath as she tried to steady herself. "Might not be calling home any time soon... But it's probably better than dying here."
@DracoLunaris@VitaVitaAR
With his attention thrown away in the heat of the moment—rare as such an incident was for him who had already seen so much absurdity in his lifetime—the monk could do little more than barely turn back in time to face the swordswoman who had all but sealed his fate. But instead of encountering that all-too-familiar feeling of cold steel carving through his torso, he found a rather targeted kick aimed directly at his solar plexus. With the wind thoroughly knocked out of him, the man fell to the ground, at which point his opponent promptly declared her victory—and, most surprising to him, a request for his surrender. The other woman chimed in soon thereafter in agreement, but by this point it was all but settled. The fact that she hadn't opted to kill him, though, seemed to give rise to more questions than answers.
"...Fine, fine. It's my loss," he responded as he released his weapon. "Man, sorcerers of this era really must be something else..."
Now that the fight was over, though, Carol—who had taken the prudent choice to
not get involved with more of the insanity that seemed to be breaking out no matter which direction she traveled in—walked over with a mildly annoyed looked on her face.
"I suppose that you're done handling whatever...
That was all about?" she asked as her gaze briefly flicked between the monk and the jiangshi (who seemed to be patting her stomach with a rather pleased expression on her face). "Now, with regards to your earlier question—no, this is most certainly
not Europe. I'm also fairly certain that throwing those morbidly deformed creatures at us for simply seeing them isn't any way to have a proper conversation in most worlds."
There was a brief pause as the monk took in Carol's worlds for a brief moment before a rather uncertain look finally crossed his face.
"Most... Worlds?" he parroted, taking a moment to stare at each of the three girls in turn as his uncertainty turned to discomfort. "...Wait. You three... Don't have any cursed energy coming from your bodies? But that one over there's just regenerating her hand as if..."
"Finally starting to piece it together?" Carol sighed as she shook her head. "Well, I'll let the two of you decide how to handle him. You've spared his life, but it's another question unto itself if it'd be safe letting him go... Not to mention the chaos of that fight sure to attract—"
It was at this point that the monk, after a brief expression of apparent enlightenment, began to laugh maniacally despite the current situation. Nothing more seemed to come of it, though—least of all when he began to speak again once his apparent fit of madness had subsided.
"Ah, sorry about interrupting you there," the monk replied as he slowly pushed himself to a seated position. "I just realized something about this whole situation, but it's not of any importance right now."
With a snap of his fingers, the darkness of night hanging over them soon washed away, only to be replaced with the bright blue midday sky.
"...Can we feed this guy to the jiangshi instead, actually?" the smaller girl asked in turn. "You said you knew the one who owned it, right? Surely they won't mind if we used her to help us a bit, right?"
@VitaVitaAR@Raineh Daze
The group of cautious travelers would find little of note past the debris and crushed goods—at least, at first. Further inspection of the wall that the destruction converged towards, however, would reveal that it was covered up by stone and dirt to mimic what
had been there before. A bit of force—be it thoroughly destructive or otherwise—would soon reveal a massive cavern that had been carved out and led into the room they were in now.
Bereft of light as it was, though, exploring such a structure might have been dangerous—and indeed, almost as if on cue a few moments after revealing the hidden passageway, the sound of metal crushing stone and metal scraping against stone could be heard echoing from further down into the darkness...
And, as Anne had suspected, from around them as well. From all sides, massive skeletons covered head-to-toe in metal armor began to bear down upon the group in what appeared to be an attempt to keep them from pushing towards wherever the passageway led.
@VitaVitaAR@Drifting Pollen@Rezod92@Lugubrious
