2745/Down in the Dark

Down in the Dark
Date of Scene:	07 October 2017
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Summary needed
Cast of Characters:	Terra, Vampirella

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Atlee (1034) has posed:
    There have been some rumors that the newest expansion to the Vernon Hills Shopping Center has been delayed due to mysterious events. Holes being found filled in the next day, odd collapses of concrete while it was curing...even a security guard who claimed he was attacked by a giant white rat. What might have caught Vampirella's attention is the dark energy around the location however. Or that the guard claimed it was actually a skeletal rat.

    Either way, work has stopped for the moment, but is due to continue at the beginnign of the week...and this time, the company doing the construction is going to pull 24 hour interlocking shifts to get it all done on time.

Vampirella has posed:
    Vampirella doesn't hunt by rumors. She prefers her sense of smell to find the heady, wrong scents of her prey. The bad thing is, scent can be a two-way street, and her own aroma is becoming known to some of her enemies, warning them off... so that leaves rumors overheard while out. She really does need to learn how to read, so she can at least look for these rumors herself on Sarah's beloved scrying window. The inner net. Fitting name to describe the tendrils woven below the surface, holding things together and serving as a highway for creatures that scuttle along them in the dark.
    Vampirella doesn't wait for night because it will hide her. She waits because the sun is damned annoying. She touches down almost silently on the mall's roof, her wings catching the air and billowing like two parachutes to slow her descent until her boots touch the roof. Always con your vantage before you enter the hunting grounds.

Atlee (1034) has posed:
    The construction site is eerily quiet. It's not just the soft wind blowing through the scaffolding and parked equipment and stacks of supplies, setting the plastic covering for those supplies to flapping. It's the lack of animal sounds. Crickets. Birds, There's no sound in this area. There's a feeling, a sort of dense, oilness to the air, that's purely a sensation rather than reality. Dark magic.

    As you watch, the ground rumbles slightly under you. A bit of shaking, then the ground opens up near the middle of the construction area, a petite figure lifting into view as she stumbles, then falls heavily against a cement mixer, panting. Unlike the rest of this place...she, at least, doesn't seem to have that sort of dark aura.

Vampirella has posed:
    Vampirella frowns down at the girl. Too far away to smell whether she's human or not, whether Vampirella even could smell it through all the dirt and minerals and sulphur, but in that outfit, she can assume the girl is likely one of this world's costumed warriors. She's definitely not the rat skeleton Vampirella heard of, at any rate. The girl is shaking and collapsed; if she's a warrior, then does that mean she did battle with the creature? Did she walk away victorious, or did she have to flee?
    A hero would go down and offer the girl help, but Vampirella isn't a hero. She's a hunter, and she wants her prey. If the monster lives, then the girl can be bait. If the girl stands up and walks away, then there's no hunt to be had here, and she can go help.

Atlee (1034) has posed:
    Atlee breathes out, then pushes herself up as the ground starts to shake again. She inhales, wincing, but squares herself, widening her stance as her gaze going to the ground about thirty feet from her, which is starting to bulge and crack. Then another. Then another. Little bulges popping up all around the construction yard, The girl holds out a hand, and the grown shakes again a long rippling wave running over the area, disrupting the bulges for a moment...but whatever it is only is slowling down whatever is trying to burrow up from the cold dark below.

Vampirella has posed:
    LITTLE bulges? The way the rumors were going, Vampirella imagined a single, large creature, not a swarm. That makes things different. There's no need to leave the girl out as bait any longer, so Vampirella doesn't. Her wings spread to catch the air and she leaps, body straight like a javelin, cutting through the air only to catch herself with a loud flap that makes her teeth grit with the pain of her wings rocking in their joints, and she lands with a heavy thud on top of the cement mixer. If it hadn't been there, if the girl had been out in the open, Vampirella could have snatched her up and flown away, but Vampirella rarely wastes time worrying about what might have been. Instead, she just hooks both arms down under the girl's armpits and hoists her up off the ground, onto the mixer with Vampirella. Whatever's coming are burrowers, which likely means they don't climb well. Likely.
    "Guard yourself, little sister," Vampirella warns the dirt-scented child softly, without looking at her. Her eyes are focused on the ground. "When they come, I will fight them, but I cannot swear for you."

Atlee (1034) has posed:
    Atlee lets out a startled sound as she's scooped up as she's picked up and set on top of the mixer, then gets a quick flicker of relief in her eyes. "That's fine, I don't swear much either?" she says, a bit confusedly. "But they're all going to come up here, I'm pretty sure. They really want this thing." She opens her left hand....and in it is what looks like a polished piece of amber. The dark miasma is positively rolling off it. "I can't keep collapsing their tunnels, they just keep burrowing up.

    And then the first start to burst from the ground. Not rats.

    Skeletal...gophers? But moving with an unnatural speed and smoothness for just bones. They do have a certain flavor of magic that is from the creatures you hunt...like a scent left on them.

Vampirella has posed:
    The "inner net" is gibberish to her, but Vampirella has lived comfortably with talismans all her life, and knows as soon as she sees the amber that she's found the key to the whole problem. Faster than the eye can see, she snatches the petrified ball of sap from Atlee's hand and, not wanting to waste the time to grow her claws, just pops it in her mouth, clutched between her pearly whites. Terra has a moment to protest (or even snatch the rock back with her powers) before Vampirella means to bite down hard, shearing it in two.

Atlee (1034) has posed:
    Terra's eyes widen. "Wait, is that a good -" And then you bite down, the amber giving with a crack around supernaturally sharp teeth. A cloud of purplish mist shoots out, gushing up, then spreading out over the ground in a thick mist...that starts being drunk down by the holes. The skelegophers are now surrounding the mixer, swaying back and forth, dark eye sockets tilted towards you as their sharp teeth click and slack as they snap soundless towards you.

    The other girl watches the mist get sucked back down. "...oh poop." she murmurs, before the ground starts to really shake, as cracks spread out across the ground, reddish energy glowing from underneath. "...well, I'm pretty sure you woke it up, but also that it's coming up here so that's convenient."

Vampirella has posed:
    Vampirella's eyes widen, then narrow in annoyance. She'd actually been betting the rock was a fetish animating the underground undead, but then, if it was a summoning tool, better it be destroyed so no one else can use it.
    In the meantime, there are tiny rodent skeletons that need stepping on. Vampirella leaps over the the horde to land at its outer edge, the farthest point away from Atlee, to make an experimental stomp down on one of the gophers with the flat toe of her boot, meaning to crush its bones.

Atlee (1034) has posed:
    That works quite well! They're old bones...quite brittle, though immediately attempt to swarm you when you drop down. Atlee quickly moves to help, a slab of concrete floating up, then smashing down on the mob of them around you, crushing them easily.

    Meanwhile, a much larger bulge in the ground starts to push up...along with a charnel house scent of old, rotting blood and flesh. The sense of your prey is very strong within it. Then a massive bony hand pushes up from the ground, gripping, as the creature hauls itself up. It's formed of bones, of all types, with flesh crudely running over it here and there to join them together, dripping with blood, with a ragged, moldy hide still cloaking its main body, with holes having rotted through it to expose bones and greasy grey organs underneath. Its head is that of a naked ram's head, with sigils carved into the skull like tattoos, with eyes that glow with a hellish orange light. The blood seems to run down from its skull in a constant, slow drip, as one of its cloven feet slams down on the ground, skeletal leg stabilizing it, then the other as it rips itself free from the ground. Its voice is grating, deep, and hollow, but with a gurgling component, as if the blood is slipping down its throat even as it talks. "YEsssssss....freee......Rawhead is free...

Vampirella has posed:
    Vampirella leaps backward to avoid shrapnel from the falling sheet of concrete (she privately still thinks of it as "glue-sand") and regards the creature before her, unimpressed. A mere zombie? Barely worth her time, except for the obvious question...
    "Why have you not shattered this beast as you have done others?" she calls across the construction site to the girl in black and white. "What more to it is there?"

Atlee (1034) has posed:
    "Because the bones just go back together!" Atlee calls back, then heaves the concrete at the creatures head....which smashes it out of the air in a shower of concrete dust and fragments. "And it's -very- strong!" This seems more powerful than a zombie...you do remember hearing of a creature, a boogeyman called the Bloody Bones....made of dark magic and the heart of an old one that still beats. Which would explain the constant magical blood dripping off the creature.
        And it seems to know you, as its glowing eyes fall on you. "Child of Lilith...is it you who had freed me? Free to hunt and devour the children of men once more?"

Vampirella has posed:
    Vampirella smiles and holds her hands up at about face level, fingers splayed toward the sky and growing grotesquely, each one now inches too long, and her red nails extending into vicious talons. "Freed you? Drew you into arm's reach, foul thing," she corrects it, and flashes in, wings tucked in tight to her back now and folded in, the finger-like bones making the best fists they back to keep the hollow, fragile bones out of easy reach. She doesn't need to fly when she can leap for the thing's back, the safest spot on it to start grabbing bones and tearing them off its chimeric skeleton.

Atlee (1034) has posed:
    The creature is suprisingly slippery to grab onto, the blood slimey rather than sticky as you grab for it. "Traitor!" it booms, letting out a howl as it reaches back for you, bony fingers shifting...then the arm join making a grating noise as the bones actually reverse the joint, its hand coming back for a tremendous slap aimed at catching you between the hand and the gory torso.

    Or at least, it tries, before a large rock smashes into it, shattering the hand for a moment as the creature lets out a roar! It lowers its wrists, the crushed bones of the skelegophers and shattered pieces of hand shuddering, then flowing back up as they start to reform those bony claws, as the other arm also reverses, that claw snatching at you. "I will feast on your heart, child of Lilith! And your little human too!"

    "I'm not her little human!" Atlee protests, has to abandon the mixer for a floating rock platorm as the swarm of skelegophers nearly overwhelms.

Vampirella has posed:
    The blood doesn't bother Vampirella. It sings to her, even this sluggish, putrid stuff the Rawhead calls blood. "You need a mouth to eat with," she purrs at the thing as her fingers splay out in a way that, from another person in another situation, might wish you live long and prosper, but in this sitation hook into the thing's empty eye sockets for a grip as Vampirella yanks savagely up and back, cracking its spine along the neck and severing the head amid a spray of bone splinters. She doesn't expect that to finish it, but she does have an idea. As she reverses her grip on the skull and brings it down repeatedly on the thing's spine, hammering its back, she yells, "Little sister! Can you make the cement dry?"

Atlee (1034) has posed:
    The skull howls as its yanked off...and doesn't stop as you hammer at its back, staggering as it stumbles forwards. On the third stroke...its ribs suddenly shoot back behind it towards you, grabbing hold of the skull as it shakes itself like a dog to try and throw you off. Atlee hurls another massive bolder at its knee, staggering it as it goes down to one knee as it's knocked off balance. "Cement? Yes....YES! If you can get him into it!" Atlee calls back.

Vampirella has posed:
    Vampirella is definitely strong enough to control the beast... but at a buck-fifteen, leverage is a real problem if it's still able to move. She hops off its back (almost literally) to land in front of the creature's newly reattached face, hunkered down, center of gravity low, claws held out at waist level like a Grecian wrestler. She's not worried the thing will try to flee; at this distance, such an attempt would be suicide, giving her all the time she needs to seize it and drag it.
    There's only the fight, then. With a shapeshifting skeleton. That's a big deal, and she can't let it control the tempo. Instead, she pounces, talons raking across its face and digging parallel furrows deep in the bone.

Atlee (1034) has posed:
    The creature has no interesting in fleeing; only in rending you into pieces to join the rest of its body. It snarls as you grab at it, its bones reshaping as you start to drag it, then reforms into a giant boar-like creature, with pointed ribs curling up like a quartet of tusks as it whips around to snap at you as you rake at its boney head, jerking as it tries to impale you its fingers curling into long, scything claws, trying to dig into the ground...even as it ripples and shifts, denying it the leverage it needs.

Vampirella has posed:
    Vampirella is fast, obscenely fast, but an enemy that can attack from all quarters is dangerous. She's pierced time and again, and she screeches her rage with each wound. No stoicism for her: she's all viciousness and battlecries. Each tusk is a handle for her to drag the thing with like it's a wheelbarrow, but she can only tug for a moment at a time before a murderclaw comes at her and she has to release her grip to slash back at its newest limb, severing bones and forcing it to waste precious seconds regenerating... but even so, this gruesome tug-of-war will be won an inch at a time.