3194/Ice Palace: A Swiftly Tilting Palace

Ice Palace: A Swiftly Tilting Palace
Date of Scene:	01 September 2020
Location:	Ice Palace
Synopsis:	In part 1 of the Ice Palace finale, Sera, Nessa and Agent May team up to stop the skeletons... and a Palace with legs!
Cast of Characters:	Loki, Melinda May, Nessa Donovan, Sera

---

Loki has posed:
The Ice Palace, built by magical forces back in early July, still stands... somehow. Yet the palace, which once was beautiful, with elegant walls of stained glass of various hues of blue, chandeliers of icy crystals - all of it has eroded into a shell of what it once was, as if sections of it had simply melted, like ice cubes in a glass. There are shells of wahat was left, as if the huge blocks had emptied from within. Strange, long jagged icicles on every surface and overhang, are still very present, but they are more slender, sharpened.

Yes, there are constantly skeletons and other monsters around, but late Sunday, as if just in time with the heat blossoming, the icy influence of the Ice Palace seems to rebel against it in an extreme way. Ice stretched out, reaching towards another warehouse several blocks away, a pattern deep under the ground but also on the surface, erupts in a jagged shape! A teeming mass of icy worms bubbles free out of this deep scar that runs through the streets, sidewalks, and buildings. The maggot-like monsters pulse up out of this wound in disarray, creating mass chaos all down through this deep ice vein.

At the far end of it stands a protected, warded warehouse; it is ice but has an arcane touch to it as well: and it must be that other element that is keeping it safe. For now. Hundreds of icy worms bubble out of the scarred earth, swarming onto the edge of the shielded warehouse, frothing in dark, corrupted squishiness!

Melinda May has posed:
Having mapped the underground vein as far as she could, May returned that information to her organization. Which means when those worms erupt all along that path, there are actually contingencies in place for... well... *something* to happen. Ice worms? That wasn't quite what the analysts envisioned. But they *did* consider snakes to be a good possibility. So... maybe it's not quite that far off?

At any rate, it means that there are teams on standby to move in to try to contain the damage and the threat to the civilian population. For her part, though, May isn't interested in pretending to be a containment specialist. That's not her strength. Oh, no. She's a fighter. She's the Cavalry, much as she hates the name. It means she likes to be in the thick of things.

So, as the worms converge on that warehouse, she's one of the first on the scene, in full fighting gear and with a few carefully chosen, highly portable weapons and tools to, hopefully, help contain and finish this threat once and for all.

There, at the edge of the event, she scans for the mages she hopes are either already there or arriving in tandem with her. Because if they're not here... she may have to resort to a WAND solution. (Which is kind of the mystic version of the nuclear option when placed in her arcanely inexperienced hands.)

Nessa Donovan has posed:
Nessa's been keeping a careful eye on the 'feel' of the magic near the ice palace. It's a check in from time to time to see that things haven't progressed too far. They were already working on borrowed time and it was only getting worse. So when she felt something a bit more /off/, it prompted her to head over. Tristan and Zelda got a warning text of 'be ready' in case whatever was happening was more than expected.

She arrives outside of the SHIELD perimeter, glancing at her phone for any messages from anyone else who might have been keeping a careful eye on the situation. Phone tucked away, she removes her gloves and shoves them into her pocket as she approaches a little more quickly, using her senses to follow the magic to the edge of where the gross maggoty creatures are coming out.

"Dammit, I thought there'd be more time..."

Sera has posed:
Sera sits upon the rooftop opposite this warehouse. Her feet dangling over the edge of the building as she watches it with concerned interest. Those ice maggots, like energy being squeezed out of a rotting wound, do look both interesting and disgusting. She has been watching it for a while now pondering the nature of the menace below but also where that final ice heart might be hiding.

Though, there are plenty of people around wearing the SHIELD badge on their arm, she does recognise May from the last time she was near the ice palace. She seemed to be in charge. With a heavy thunk she drops off the top of the building and to the pavement below. As she falls she sings and her clothing shimmers away revealing her beautiful Elysium armour.

She strides over to May and says, "Greetings SHIELD." She gives a wave to Nessa, "Greetings Nessa." Her eyes turn back to the gross maggoty ice scene and she says, "There's no time like the present."

Loki has posed:
The worm attack is chaotic. It's all over the place. Whatever is going on, the SHIELD agents are getting the brunt of it in the face: sometimes literally. "AGH IT'S ON ME," yells one poor agent, running towards another, to try to remove the ice worm that is slowly freezing him to death. It's not pleasant, and they're hard to remove once they're on! It's very.... busywork.

In fact, the AMOUNT of chaos is odd. The other attacks have been precise: yes, skeletons, but it wasn't a mass of confusing maggots everywhere out of the vein.

It's pretty distracting, and pulls a lot of attention, most certainly. Maybe tactics have been changed up, or resources are down to just bottom of the barrel ... and at that bottom are maggots?

Melinda May has posed:
Thermal weapons and insulated suits do help save the lives of some of her agents. But, unfortunately, casualties are inevitable. However, every single one of those agents, if they're worth the agency's time and effort, should be of one mind: They are all willing to give their lives to protect the people of New York.

"Sera. Ms Donovan," May says, tension on her face as she hears her people fighting as good a fight as they can... and struggling. "What's your plan?" Because her's is to try to figure out the real nature of the attack, in order to provide the right counterattack.

"My people can hold this line." She hopes. "I think we need to find the source and shut it down. I'm getting tired of the Frozen Hallowe'en theme."

Nessa Donovan has posed:
"Well, you look ready for battle!" Nessa directs the statement over towards Sera. It would be more of a greeting, but the chaos of the maggot attack is a little more distracting than anticipated. She holds her hands out, ice forming around whatever maggots get closer to the agents to simply trap them like mosquitos in amber. "That's good, because I'm pretty sure we're going to need to act, uh, like now."

Her attention, while on the maggots, is sort of surveying things as a whole... bigger picture is important. She looks over to Agent May. "If I were an asshole necromancer, this would be my play to distract as many resources blocking my escape as possible." She glances around, looking to see exactly what they had as backup. "Right, well, we may need to fly by the seat of our pants on this one... Agent May, based on where your agents are, what would you say is the most unprotected part of the perimeter? I think we should go in there, try to get closer to the source, and take a peek to see how bad this is."

Sera has posed:
Sera nods enthusiastically to Nessa. "Of course. What if not was all that practice for, than this battle? If we're lucky it'll be a climactic battle. Though, given those lil' wormies over there perhaps it'll be a grossmactic battle. I suggest we do more than merely peek this time. Let us haphazardly thrust ourselves in to the thick of it and deal with the consequences once we're there."

She holds out her arm up high and sings. Her eyes begin to glow white with magic and a glowing white magical sword erupts in to her hand. She gives it a few test swings and says. "Perhaps where the skeletons are most anxiously protecting we will find our choice entrance. Either way, this is most surely a trap. One we should spring and enjoy the exhilaration of battle."

"If we do happen to do die today, I will be most disappointed in myself - however, I feel the fates are on our side."

Loki has posed:
The worms are all over the place, but a large gob of them has started to really form around the end by the warehouse, mashing and trying to get through the shielding. Whether it can hold, or for how long, is unclear, though the maggots are starting to climb around on the warehouse to look for alternate ways in. (As much as things with no eyes can 'look' anyway.)

Melinda May has posed:
"What is it with you and the whole Klingon 'this is a good day to die' thing?" May demands briefly of Sera. It's really a rhetorical question. She can't help it. She's snarking. She does that.

It's not that she's adverse to fighting. She's got more blackbelts than just about any other SHIELD agent in the agency's history. It's just the whole 'glorious battle' rhetoric that grates on her.

Giving her opinion to Nessa, however, she says. "My gut says we need to cut this off at the source. That means the Ice Palace itself. However, those things are fighting damned hard to get into that warehouse, and something in that warehouse is resisting. That could mean there's something there we can use."

Her nostrils flare briefly as she inhales a swift breath, thinking as quickly as she can. "I can send a team in there to evaluate," she says. "But they'll have limited mystical defense."

She starts to pull a weapon, however, as those critters start getting way too close for comfort. "Whatever we do, though, we need to do it, *now*."

Nessa Donovan has posed:
"By peek I just mean see just how badly screwed we are before running in, Sera," Nessa replies, glancing back over at the angel. "Pretty sure the thrusting ourselves into the thick of it is a given now." She's not sure they have time to muster more resources at this point. "Every time Vega's tried to get out and sent skeletons he's been going for a lock. There's bound to be a reason they're going there in particular. I think you're right about cutting it off at the source, but I think we need that warehouse protected and I think we need someone to find out and report in as to /what/ is in there."

She glances towards the ice palace. "I think we've got to try and get to him before he gets out, we might have a better chance, but I think we need to go now." She's in agreement with May on that one. "I'm going to try for the palace, we need to know if he's out." She'll leave it up to the others as to where they're going to go.

Sera has posed:
Sera looks somewhat amused to May and says, "Grab life by the horns and all that. A life worth living, etc etc." She listens thoughtfully as they list out their options and she sighs, "We're going to have to split the party hm? Are you sure you're going to be okay at the melty palace if I go 'peek' in this warehouse?"

Though, as she looks at the attempts by the ice maggots to get inside she starts to wonder if going inside might give those things an opening to enter too, thus further helping the cause of the necromancer. "I am wary though, given how helpful we have been to the enemy of late, that someone will blame me when things go horribly wrong."

She takes out her phone and thumb flicks through her notes. The sun is making the screen hard to read so she turns to create shadow and then finds what she's looking for. She squints at the gibberish she wrote, "Ng fling the sowrd toof argent.. great, just great." At least the music portion is fine.

She begins to sing a new song and her sword shimmers and flickers like a flame in the wind before it suddenly bursts in to an intense blue flame. She gives it a few swings to make sure it won't go out and says, "If I run in to too much trouble I will summon the shield.. or, not you SHIELD person, but an actual shield. How do I call for backup?"

Loki has posed:
Agent May may not have mystic senses or a large magical sword. She does, in this case, have resources - and more importantly, resources with phones.

"Agent May," addresses one of May's agents -- "There's something going on at the Palace end here. We have to fall back away from it. It's pulsing with ice power, and a truck was flung out of the way," comes the report. That explains what a strange crashing noise was not too long ago, from the direction of the a palace!

On the end with the maggots, they seem to go berserk: less about attacking, perhaps, more about mobbing the warehouse and the shield. A few of them get deep enough to kill themselves on the shield, mushed between their allies and the goal, with a trust of their little wormy ice bodies turning into so much snowy mist.

Melinda May has posed:
Given her choice between the smooth-foreheaded, winged Klingon and... Donovan? "I'm with you," May tells Nessa. Then, she speaks into coms. "Takawa! Find Marks and Dieudonne. You're going in to the warehouse with the mage Sera." A beat. "Yes, the Angel. Go!"

Then, she's answering the call from the Ice Palace. "Fall back," she tells her agent. "I'm on my way." To Nessa, then, she says, "We need to move. The palace is getting feisty." She gestures to a skycycle she has nearby. "Let's go!"

Waiting just long enough for Nessa to mount up behind her, she guns the engine of the SHIELD personal flying machine she arrived on and zips over the worst of the fighting down towards the Ice Palace itself. When they are near enough to see what's happening there, she grimaces.

"I'm seriously starting to hate this guy."

And she manoeuvers them in for as secure and close a dismount into the fray as they can safely manage.

Nessa Donovan has posed:
Nessa seems more than happy to have the backup, especially backup that can get them there faster. She moves with Agent May to the skycyle, keeping her senses sharp as she tries to get a feel for what's happening in the ice palace itself as they approach. It's a lot of feeling for what she remembers Vega beneath the ice feeling like when she had visited the palace last. "Yeah, well, that's at least two of us," she notes as they make their way as close as possible.

She does take a quick moment to look over at May. "I'm going to preface this by saying it might try to eat me." There's a pause. "When I used magic before in it, it tried to take it in. I'm not sure it won't do the same thing now, but if that manages to serve as a distraction at some point, take advantage of it." If it was Vega or the ice palace itself doing it, she wasn't sure, but the warning at least needed to be given.

Sera has posed:
"Well Sera," she muses to herself as she takes in a deep breath, "This is what you wanted. To stand on your own two feet without Angela. I hope you're happy with yourself, you're probably going to regret this." Then she's all happy smiles as the three agents present themselves to her. "Hi I'm Sera, of Heven. It's a pleasure to meet you." She offers her forearm to each and with some prompting, gets an arm grab from each.

"We're going to foolishly enter this warehouse and see what's going on inside. Chances are, I may have to cut through that shield to get entry. If I do that, then we'll be helping those ice wormy maggoty things get in too. So, one of you will need to remain at the cut with a flame thrower to keep them at bay."

Marks hefts his flamethrower, "I volunteer ma'am."

Sera looks over the men and then shrugs her shoulders, "Right. Well, that's.. that then." She turns and starts marching toward the warehouse. They approach on the far side away from the gash so as to keep the distance between worm-reinforcements and the warehouse to a minimum. Her hand reaches out to touch the shield and she pulls it back at the last second, "Okay, cutty cutty it is." With a twirl, she thrusts her sword in to the shield and slices it down to cut open a slit for entry.

Loki has posed:
Sera and her team approach the side of the warehouse, where the sheen of arcane magic is less occupied by swarms of maggots. A few maggots seem to bumble around towards them, but can be caught by a quick flamethrower burst to keep them away.

The shield visably shudders and starts to warp as the sword impacts it; it seems it was set up against necrotic and the like, not this particular type of magic. Fortunately (or maybe not?) the rift Sera made starts to knit itself: so those that want to get inside will have to be quick about it!

The Shield is outside of the warehouse, which means it just mostly looks like a dingy building in there, with some big rolling doors that are shut. It doesn't look like an ice location: and maybe that's part of what has kept it isolated and safer.

--

The Ice Palace is ... erupting at the base. That's the best way to describe it! The whole area of the ground around the palace is rent, as the ground opens into large lesions similar to those that maggots came from. It is as if the tunnel system below were collapsing! The tendrils of ice that went out to each of the locations are now only about a hundred feet long, each, and have drawn back like strange enormous icy worms. One long one remains, in the direction of the warehouse: perhaps the palace is getting ready for whatever that attack will bring!

The palace is not unguarded; skeletons are standing within it, safely away from the torn ground, defensive of the palace itself.

Melinda May has posed:
May nods to Nessa. "I've got your back," she tells her. Eyeing the skeletons in the distance and the icy erruptions at the base of the palace, she adds, "And I've got a couple of tricks of my own, this time."

She's had time to think about everything she's seen here, after all. That means she's had time to plan.

"Re-establish the perimeter," she tells her people over coms. "I want this place completely cut off from the rest of the city. And get those heat registers in place."

Yep. She's got radiators incoming. Because, really? No one needs the A/C this place is providing.

She hefts her own heat gun and puts herself squarely beside Nessa, ready to take on all comers.

She hopes.

Nessa Donovan has posed:
Nessa's assessment of the situation has her frowning. "I think we need to get in fast, those skeletons are just gonna slow us down. I'm going to try and avoid them, a quick distraction and hopefully that'll keep them from spotting us." There's no real time to delay, so she's going to walk and talk. Or rather, talk while she's using the surrounding environment to dart between bits of cover to approach the palace itself. As a distraction, she finds a location farther away from them on the opposite side, and kicks up a blast of cold air and ice. It's nothing dramatic... it's just movement and a bit of a flurry to try and catch the attention of the skeletons and make them think someone's there.

"It's like a root system. All the roots but the warehouse seem to be gone. Like it's somehow going to uproot its--" She blinks. "Oh god, I hope it's not going to /uproot itself/." The incident at the school had been an awful indication what that sort of thing looked like. "I think we need to get right in to the core and see what we can do in there. I don't think we have any other choice at this point."

Sera has posed:
Sera says, "Quick! it's closing." She hops through and offers a hand to the first Agent, pulling him through. The other two jump through just in time before it's closed up. Sera takes a moment and says, "I felt my heart jump with that one. Good news though, no permanent hole we need to defend." She grins and looks to the three agents with optimism.

The warehouse gets a look over and they approach the roller door as it is the closest entry. "At least it's not another ice palace, but my guess is it contains another ice heart." The agents give her a confused look, "Oh, ah, three ice hearts, magical locks, two have been removed and one remains. This might be it. Instead of removing it this time, we should - you know - defend it."

She nods thusly and tries to open the roller doors. An agent on either side of her and one watching her back. She flings the roller door open and quickly lifts up her burning sword in case there's danger afoot. The agents quickly point their flame throwers in. Sera notes how unbelievable cool it is to be with a team of SHIELD agents. Mental note: get some flunkies.

Loki has posed:
"Don't you knock?" a creature nearby asks in thick amusement to Sera as she shows up. Inside the warehouse is... a very small ice structure. Barely an igloo, in the center of the floor. There is an icy fox seated near it: appropriate size to use said igloo, maybe. It is pure white with immaculate fur and bright amber eyes. It observes the SHIELD team and Sera quietly. "Oh, you're not a maggot." A pause. As if the fox weren't /sure/ they weren't maggots. All of the magic seems to be coming from the little igloo, to maintain the shield, in a beautiful aurora of glittering pastel rainbow color.

--

Indeed, another building gathered weird tendrils under it, and lurched out of the ground... and just as Nessa worries about it, it seems to start to happen. The palace leans to one side, as if pulling an anchoring free. It's held by that one long strand out towards the warehouse, but the other legs are free to... cause the whole palace to lurch ten feet off the ground, and start to pull away. It is as if it were a junkyard dog, trying to pull free of the last rope. It's not easy for it: pieces of the Palace tumble off in chunks. Under it is a big, empty cavern of a lot of nothing: the pool of slush has been pulled up into the palace. From the underside, it can be seen, swirling there.

Melinda May has posed:
"Oh," May says, a glint in her tilted eyes. "I can get us in. Just watch."

As the two women continue making their way toward the Ice Palace, she slides a small device from a pounch and reaches out to grab Nessa's shoulder to pull her back behind a small bit of cover. Then, she presses a button on the device.

A portion of the front doors to the Ice Palace disintegrate in a shower of ice and fire as the small charges she embedded in them days ago go off. "Okay," she tells Nessa, now. "Show time."

And she heads for the gap in the ice, weapon ready and firing at anything that gets in her way.

She just might need a magical lift to get up to that convenient entry, is all...

Nessa Donovan has posed:
They're on the move. Nessa seems more than happy to have May as backup--especially when she's making them a handy entrance. But the palace isn't staying put, it's doing exactly what she didn't hope it was going to do. "Oh no you don't," she says, glaring at the palace as if it could hear her. There's a gap, though, that needs to be crossed and stairs are certainly something in her wheelhouse. She's even practiced making them with just enough texture so as to make them even less of a slippery surface. Perfect for running up. They're in action mode, so she's not thinking too much about it.

She's forming stairs just as quickly as she's thought of it, practically racing up them as quickly as they're forming beneath her. She doesn't think too much of it as she's climbing up them, but when she looks back to make sure May's right behind her she groans. "I swear to god if the media catches wind of this..." Nope, she'll never hear the end of it. The Thing was right, she should have picked her own name while she had the chance.

Sera has posed:
Sera's sword lowers as her eyes lay upon the icy fox and the adorable igloo. "By the Goddess this day just keeps getter better and better." She smiles and approaches with her hand offered, "So sorry for the intrusion. I'm Sera and this is Takawa, Marks and Dieudonne. Who might you be?" She does not point to the agents as she's honestly not sure which one is which, though as the each lift a hand in greeting that small detail is filled in.

"As you're well aware this location is being attacked by ice maggots and probably much worse soon enough. You are likely protecting an ice heart used to keep an evil necromancer locked away. We are here to help." She utterly beams at this, though some of their intelligence is sketchy at best and some of it came from Loki which Nessa was extremely dubious about.

The agents begin to fan out in the warehouse to make sure they're alone for now. Sera finally puts the earpiece in her ear and says, "Hello hello," in to the comms, "there is a fox with an igloo in the warehouse. How are things on your end?"

Loki has posed:
The stairs are formed of ice, but that doesn't mean the destination is holding still in particular. It is lurching back and forth, big pieces of ice falling off of it: deadly to anything caught under one of them, and then some. Even an icicle falling on a head could immediately kill. Naturally, nobody is staying that close to the Palace as it churns and moves, going more towards twenty feet in the air now, as the magical icy legs draw up underneath. However, if those on the stairs are careful, and time it ... maybe they won't fall to their icy deaths, to be buried in clods of ice?

No pressure.

Also the skeletons arrange inside the ice palace. So they are also there. ...Except they aren't prepared for all of the lurching, and two of them fall off, to smash to bits below the palace. The did not wear their mobile home seatbelts.

--

"I'm only a friend," the fox says sweetly. "You would like the heart? Then it is yours. Going to carry it away like you did the others? You do understand that will unlock things, if it moves out of range of the prison?" The fox seems mostly indifferent about the situation, but willing to chat. It is probably bored.

Melinda May has posed:
"You're just lucky I don't do Disney," May says in response to Nessa. And yet... she got the reference?

(Think about how many commercials were aired for that movie, people. No one on Earth missed that moment! Whether they wanted to or not.)

She keeps her eyes on the stairs and how that palace is moving, however, slinging her rifle behind her so she'll have two hands free, and leaping for the entry when space and time allows. With catlike grace, she manages to land and then slide just inside the edge, reaching out to assist Nessa if necessary.

Nessa Donovan has posed:
"I knew I liked you for a reason," Nessa says, referring to the Disney, though it's equally as likely for the assistance. When May takes a leap and offers assistance, she moves, pushing off the top of the stairs with a blast of cold air to boost her the rest of the way. She makes it up, though her ungloved hands don't go for the help. That could potentially have been trouble if she wasn't paying attention. One hand goes up to serve as a shield, keeping the area around them clear of any falling ice chunks... or any skeletons that might already be close to them while carefully balanced.

As if she wasn't busy enough, she hears Sera's voice on the comms and she swears under her breath. "Sera, that's Loki. He might tell you some truthful things that are applicable but he's also got his hand in causing all of this, so don't trust him fully. Use your best judgement."

Sera has posed:
Sera shakes her head and waggles a free finger back and forth. "No. This time the lock stays where it is and we defend it. Well, we will, you can certainly help friend." She'd probably be more surprised by a talking fox if she weren't used to hoping from planet to planet and interacting with all kinds of weird aliens. Though, it does strike her as unique here on Earth. Recently she met a fairy, now a fox.

"Tell me friend, what is it you know about the prisoner?," she turns around slowly taking in the scene of where a battle may take place. "Because we know very little, only that somebody went to a great deal of trouble to lock them away..."

The agents take a corner each which gives some window access to peer out at the shield. "And tell me friend, how fairs your magical shield? I have not seen its like before, you clearly understand the threat faced: Necromancy." Though, the reply from Nessa over comms has Sera tilt her head with curiosity. She lets go of her sword and it disappears in a million little dots of light. The Angel paces slowly around the igloo. She knows next to nothing about this Loki fellow, except that people seem perterbed or angered by his name.

Loki has posed:
Sera may not know Loki, but those SHIELD agents will, and will become REALLY distracted by this information. /Tense/ and unhappy, and concerned for their lives.

The fox perks his ears a little, perhaps with those big animal ears he can hear things like communications pretty well. He doesn't indicate either way about it, though, he just stays where he is, tail slowly moving back and forth, just at the tip.

"A disembodied human soul, it is; locked away. I understand you were working to free it, opening the keys. This is the last one, the last tether. The lock is very weak now. I think it will be /boring/ to watch from here, I'm going to go see what happens," the fox shares, standing up, and then, with a little 'tuft!' of sparkle, he teleports away. Or perhaps he was never actually there? Was that illusion magic?

If Sera checks the Igloo, it does seem to be as reported: there is a slowly beating ice heart inside it, though hard to get at physically, within the structure.

--

The palace continues to strain, and the skeletons, while very motivated to try to get to the two women that leaped on, are struggling to keep their footing. All of the palace starts to TILT heavily, and the magical root starts to TEAR.

Inside the palace, there is a frosty mess of frozen black water, sloshing against the walls, at about a foot deep. Near the center, is a single pillar of the black ooze - human shaped, as if cocooned.

Melinda May has posed:
There is *no* way May will be able to effectively aim a firearm in a funhouse like this. Lurching floors and buckling walls are not good places to start firing indiscriminately. So, she leaves the rifle over her shoulder and draws a long baton from a sheath that hangs across her back instead.

It is hard enough and sharp enough at the end to allow her to stab it into the floor or walls to help her keep herself steady. (It's kinda shaped something like a somewhat thickened sword blade, with a switch on the cylindrical hilt that will, when its pressed, heat it up quickly. She just hasn't activated that part yet.)

"There!" she calls to Nessa, bracing her feet widely apart like a pirate on a sea-tossed galleon, pointing with her baton-sword. "Is that it?" She's pointing directly to the human shaped cocoon.

If that's what they need to kill, she'll do it. But if that's what will set Vega free... then Nessa needs to freeze it. Permanently.

Nessa Donovan has posed:
The first thing Nessa does is create a rougher texture in the ice around her and the SHIELD agent. Easier traction so there's reduced slipping on the ice as it tilts. There are even a few pegs that pop up to brace a foot against or grab with a hand if someone ends up on the floor. Safety precautions. Her attention turns to the human-shaped pillar, and her brow furrows in confusion. "... Agent May, I do not have a good feeling about this at all. Vega, to my knowledge, doesn't /have/ a body."

She keeps an eye on the skeletons, but her attention is mostly on whatever's cocooned. She feels out with her magic, trying to determine the contents. "I don't trust this. We need to open it up and make sure this isn't some trick. I've been lied to way too many times to just go with the obvious answer."

Sera has posed:
Sera glances over at the nervous fidgeting of her SHIELD entourage and looks back to that slow moving tip of the fox tail. Loki, she recalls, is meant to be the best ice mage on the planet.. according to him, but also a master of deception. So it is with great mental effort an anguish that she begins to list the pro's and con's of staying with the final heart to defend it from Vega.

Firstly, Loki is right, here is kind of boring though she has no idea if the ice palace is boring or not too. Second of all, Loki is right, it is kinda of boring here though defending the ice heart is an important job. Third of all, it's boring here.. but she made an oath to the Infinity Watch that she intends to keep.

"Argh," she says out loud making the agents turn and look at her. Over her comms she sings, "Looooki the friendly fox," then continues normally, "got bored and disappeared." She crouches down to look in the igloo, "The final ice heart is here and the magical shield is still holding - for now. Holding down the warehouse, yell if you need backup."

Loki has posed:
A lot of things happen all at once. The shield around the warehouse breaks, and the maggots swarm in greedily, rushing for the building: they burrow in around it, infesting the floor, and starting to pop up around the igloo, as they munch their way through the dirt with magical jaws. They still feel... disorganized. Like they were sent just to mill around and make a big mess. It isn't an effort like Sera has seen before - this is halfhearted, even if it did work....

The palace pulls hard against that leash, and it starts to tear. The palace has inched and lurched, and rocked against the anchor, and has enough momentum to move.

If the anchor can't be moved out of range... well, the palace is going to move out of range!

And with that final tug, magic floods outwards from the palace, as the lurch made it leeeean... and then start to topple, as all of the magic holding it together started to give way. The skeletons moved in, to guard the center spire of black ooze, trying to rush May and Nessa to shove them off. They are slow and skidding, though, and they are very large, unable to maintain footing in the horrible ice situation around them...

Melinda May has posed:
With Nessa supplying better traction, and the soles of her booted feet prepared for winter weather in any case (it's not like she didn't know what sort of environment she was preparing for, after all), May regains her footing far more quickly than the lurching skeletons. She ignites her baton with a flick of her thumb. It begins to glow with red, then yellow, and finally white heat -- which, yes, she handles exceptionally carefully.

Ducking under the guard of one skeleton, she slices out with the blade as if it were a katana (or maybe a lightsaber), relying heavily on decades of martial arts training. "You want it open?" she calls back to Nessa. "We'll get it open."

Pillar of black magic be damned, May is slicing and dancing her way over the ice -- relying as much on her childhood competitive ice skating lessons as her martial arts training -- towards that cocoon. Heat blade will slice it open, right?

She blocks another skeleton. "Just be ready to contain it, if it tries to kill me." Or, by all that's holy, she'll come back and haunt Nessa's ass for the rest of eternity.

Then it's slice, duck, and dice folowed by dance, slide, and slash a little more. Skeletons lose limbs. They lose heads. They lose axes.

And she finally closes within a sword's length of that cocoon and extends the heat blade in an elegant slice to rip whatever's surrounding that mummified thing wide open.

Loki has posed:
The cocoon contains ... what looks like a young person, of maybe a pre-teen age. Covered in the black sludge, they do not appear to be breathing, though a check for a pulse will return that there is, indeed, a very slight pulse. They are SLICK with the black icy stuff, extremely cold. And entirely, it seems, inconscious.

Nessa Donovan has posed:
Nessa is, once again, grateful for having backup. Who knew having a team could actually be good? "Right, got it, I'll contain whatever I need to," she says, ready for just that as she waits to see what the icy magic contains. In the meanwhile, though, she dodges a skeleton tumbling in her direction, ducking low as it falls over and slides past her. As soon as she sees what's inside, she blinks. "/Batteries/." She looks quickly to May.

"That's probably Kaylee, one of the students. Tristan was looking for her." She does, however, hear Sera on the comms. The mention of their friendly ice fox getting bored catches her attention. "Hey Sera, I'm sure it's /super/ exciting over there but I'm pretty sure I need that blade of yours right about now."

Sera has posed:
One of the SHIELD agents is the first to notice shouts out, "The shield is down!." Sera's eyes widen and she frowns, "Convenient timing. Protect the igloo!" The group gets to work. Sera begins to sing out, she climbs up on top of the well made igloo and has to pause to get out her phone. Thumb thumb scroll to the song in question. She resumes singing.

Magical wings burst from her back, which makes the SHIELD agents pause in wonder. Her sword and shield appear and she taps her burning sword to the shield and it too alights. As the rumbling of the ground makes it evident the ice maggots are coming the four of them take different quadrants. The three agents begin bursting their flame throwers at the maggots while sera begins to slash as she sings, sending out projected bursts of fire from her sword. She rests the burning shield against the door to the igloo.

"Ahh," she starts on comms, "The shield here is down and the ice maggots are coming for the heart. They're extremely.. lack luster about it and easy to burn up. But there's a lot of them. And they keep burrowing. How are things on your end? Oh okay, uh, let me try to.. I dunno.. finish things here and join you."

Though, now Sera thinks about it these ice maggoty things might just burrow up right underneath the ice heart. That'd be bad. That'd be very bad. She needs to destroy them in the ground as well! She hops off the igloo and says, "Here goes nothing...," and stabs her flaming sword in to the ground and begins to sing with what can best be termed 'gusto'. The heat from the blade builds up before suddenly spreading out through the ground in an intense, very audible, pulse.

Loki has posed:
The skeletons do /not/ appreciate the prize being cut down. They focus all of their energy on trying to destroy May, who currently is closest to the young human covered in black icy goop. Which means Nessa, for the most part, is getting ignored, while they attempt to cleave May into little pieces with their axes. They are clearly after her, though, not attacking the previously cocooned prize.

Necrotic, black energy continues to gather, but Nessa may be most aware that it starts to try to draw from her ice powers, trying to use /her/ as a battery. If she lingers without doing anything to stop it, she may soon be in the state the goopy youth is in: collapsed and maybe not breathing, as the palace tries to find something to maintain itself with.

--

The flash of heat through the ground causes all the burrowing maggots to immediately surface, hissing and twisting, and wiggling like loose, confusd worms all over the place. The igloo starts to suffer, melllllting like a poor snowman on a hot day. It IS Summer, right? But inside the warehouse, it never did see a day of summer. Until now. Becoming a puddle, which exposes the slightly singed heart prize.

Melinda May has posed:
May hears Nessa's words. She understands them. She does *not* have time to respond to them. She's too busy trying to keep sharp axes and graspy cold claws from tearing her to pieces. "Little help here!" she sings out, ducking and weaving, sword flashing expertly.

So many on one, however, is not good odds. There's no way she escapes this unscathed.

Her armor, a SHIELD cold-weather tac suit, is sturdy and holds up against grasping hands, but takes a beating whenever she fails to block or dodge an axe as well as she needs to.

She spins and kicks, sword thrusting and sweeping. But, while she may be one of the more impressive martial artists in the world -- and look like some sort of black-armoured jedi with her glowing baton sword, she's no Obi Wan Kenobi.

She lacks the really helpful force power to toss her opponents away like rag dolls. That would be a *really* helpful power to have about now. Especially since the skeletons aren't nearly as polite as ninjas in a Jackie Chan movie, who tend to attack only one at a time.

Thus, May grunts with real pain and bleeds real blood as her body takes a beating. Her lips press together as her focus increases and she moves as fast as she can humanly hope to do. She's good. Really good. And the skeltons... well, they're not, actually. But they have numbers on their side. Height. Reach. Strength. And numbers.

It's the numbers that are the deciding factor. May's skill will only be enough if her partner intervenes effectively in time.

Nessa Donovan has posed:
While the skeletons go after May, Nessa's hurrying to try and get over to what she only assumes is Kaylee to fish her out of the danger zone. There's certainly a sense of panic, especially as it seems they're outgunned, outmanned, outnumbered, and outplanned. She sends a blast of icy air to try and shove the skeletons out of the way and give May some room to breathe, but she's got to do something. "Okay, well, I'm going to try something that may not work but if it does you may want to /brace yourself/."

She can feel the magic's pull on her. It's a tug that happened before, but this time she's more aware of it. This time, though, she's not letting it happen. She sucks in a deep breath before she puts tremendous effort into changing the direction of the pull. She's trying to draw the magic from inside the ice palace to her, using /it/ as a battery for /her/ and not the other way around. She'd done something similar when she drew from the energy around her in Antartica, so why not try it on this convenient bastion of magical energy? The effort is to stop the palace itself from moving, to tear it down, and it's highly experimental.

Sera has posed:
Sera's sword and shield disappears in little sparkling dots of light as she stares in horror at the singed surface maggots squirming about, "SO gross." The Agents agree and begin to toast them with their flame throwers. Sera turns to inspect the heart and grimaces, "Sorry little lock, I didn't mean to singe you. We may have kept you safe for now, but more will come for you."

With the shield down and the sudden firey eruption beneath the surface, she hopes SHIELD will be able to stay on top of i for now. "Well I should go help Nessa. I hope she hasn't done anything too foolhardy, like offer the necromancer her soul or some such."

She smirks thinking it a funny joke, the three SHIELD agents look a little concerned though. With a big beat of her wings she takes off up in to the sky and turns around, flying back toward the ice castle, "Nessa the ice heart is a little singed but may be safe for the moment. I honestly can't tell. I'm on my way to you."

Loki has posed:
From the air, the Ice Palace is... not where Sera may have expected it. It has lurched and walked off into the middle of a street. SHIELD protection has blocked traffic and protected the people, but it certainly did take a bit of a walk. It has now 'squatted' down, in a mix of loss of energy and Nessa's pressures upon it, as her powers block it from using her as a source of magic. It's just about out of magic... and is falling apart entirely.

The skeletons continue to fight, drawing on the black tar-like slush around them, and shriek, wildly pushing their advantage. They do not seem sapped by Nessa, but Nessa, at least, has stopped the palace from going anywhere, it has become still, crumbling where it stands.

The black ooze has focused on the downed person, though: it has sneakily begun to wrap them again, enveloping, and necrotic magic surges in that spot, trying to do something to that captured person. A last gasp, perhaps.

Melinda May has posed:
"Sonuva..."

Whatever may happen to her, May cannot -- simply CANNOT -- allow anything to happen to the girl at her feet. Summoning all the strength and fury she has (and her fury is considerable), she starts knocking skeletons away with heavy kicks and wicked sweeps of her sword, until she's cleared enough space to allow her to slice that tar off the girl's body once more.

Then, as Nessa brings the palace to a halt and the thing starts disintegrating around her, she reaches down to grab hold of the girl's arm and bodily haul her away from the ooze. Her sword is still in one hand, making it a tough slog. But the ice helps, since the girl's dead weight slides more easily over it than it would just about any other surface.

May is occasionally obliged to pause to take care of another skeleton or two that gets too close, but she inevitably grabs that girl again and continues hauling her towards Nessa. Because, as far as May figures, Nessa's their best hope for getting out of this alive, now.

Nevertheless, she speaks into her com, calling her people -- and maybe letting Sera know in the process that things are still Not Good inside those icy walls.

"Evac! Converge on my signal! Get me an evac in the palace. Now!"

Nessa Donovan has posed:
While Nessa's never done anything like this before, she's certainly trying. She doesn't reply to Sera, only because she's too focused. This is /not/ what she was expecting to do here. It's working, though, so she continues her grasp on the palace, channeling the energy into forcing itself apart, melting, dissolving into snow flurries, whatever she can force it to do while she can. She lets her gaze drift to May to make sure she's alright and that she's got a grip on the downed youth, but mostly she focuses. With the sound of the voices still in her ear, she picks up that Sera's on her way.

She grits her teeth. "Sera, I'm taking the palace down, if you see something come out that looks like it could be Vega, please stab it. A lot. Please. Lots." It's a little hard to focus at the moment.

Sera has posed:
Sera starts to circle over the palace, which has somehow moved itself on to the street. Well, she didn't see that one coming. She touches the comms in her ear and replies, "I'm here, just above. I can help get you out. As for Vega, sure, I'll watch. Just remember - we never fully tested the soul burning song."

With that, she swoops down to the blown out entrance starts to sing as she enters, flaming sword reappearing she flies past May trying to barrel in to as many skeletons as she can to get them off of the brave SHIELD agent. Her burning sword cuts and slices as she disentangles herself to try and give May and the stranger the evac they requested. "Sorry it was further than I thought to get here," she comments and almost slips at the bonkers instability of the palace, mixed with an icy surface.

Loki has posed:
May has successfully drawn the girl - presumably Kaylee - out of the mess of black ooze. The magic, though, covers her, seeps into her clothing, seems to be covering all of her skin, though eyes open, eerie blue.

"She's mine," rasps Kaylee, disembodied and horrible. "Give up your fight, it is over. Let it go," growls the weak thing from Kaylee. She teems with the necromantic energy, a poor little possessed sponge.

The skeletons orient on the new foe, but they are slow, equally weakened, as all of the magic used to pull loose, to de-anchor from the palace: it was all quite a lot, without removing that last lock. It has left the magic in tatters, and Nessa in control of the ice palace, and Sera able to blaze through the skeletons with her magical weapon.

Melinda May has posed:
May is actually *glad* to see Sera. No longer a smooth-foreheaded Klingon. No, no. The Angel is genuinely what she claims to be in May's eyes -- an alien that closely resembles mythological angels and is currently in the process of saving her bacon.

Hallelujah!

Then, however, poor possessed little Kaylee starts to speak in that raspy voice with those erie blue eyes. May slips into Mandarin. (Because. Kaylee. Tell me you're not seeing Jewel Stait here. Seriously.) "Ching-wah tsao duh liou mahng." She snarls the curse. And then gives the girl a quick squeeze to the back of the neck, causing her slump forward. Not lifeless... just unconscious enough she can't be used as a meat puppet for the dispicable Vega.

When the girl is unconscious and May is certain she'll live, she crouches beside her protectively with that sword and glances to Nessa.

She doesn't say it, because it wouldn't help anyone to say it, but... really, Nessa's not the one that needs to 'let it go'.

"Kick his ass, Ice Queen," she says. One Ice Queen to another.

The Cavalry has done pretty much all she can, now.

Nessa Donovan has posed:
There's a lot going on. Nessa's doing her best to tear the palace apart in a safe manner, to bring it down fully to the street, to let it harmlessly start to crack and melt and destroy itself. With Sera taking out the skeletons that could have been a very serious threat to both her and May, it's easier for her to focus on what she's doing. Given that there's no sign of Vega, she's concerned until she notes May with Kaylee. There's a serious frown on her face, the remnants of the ice palace firmly meeting the ground. It seems, though, that Vega's already found a place to settle that's not the ice palace.

Her gaze goes to May, a wry smile on her face at the title. She'll take it. It's clear, though, that she's concerned. "Well, uh, that means Vega's contained in a safer way... if you consider him using a young girl as a host 'safe'." Better than an ice palace trying to destroy the city. "But we need to get him out of her. That's not exactly my expertise either. We should to bring her somewhere that we can keep her safe until we figure out how to boot him out." She looks to Sera. "Know anyone on the Infinity Watch that's good with souls?"

Sera has posed:
Sera's shield appears and she taps it with her sword, setting it align. Just in time too as an ice skeletons axe comes down at her. She blinks it with the shield and the icy axe begins to sizzle and melt. Sera smirks and cuts the skeletons arm off. She becomes a flurry of activity and lets out a cry of delight, "If Angela could see me now! I'm doing it! .. you know what would be really cool right now? fire wings. We should have figure out fire wings. Hey Nessa, next time let's figure out fire wings."

She ducks and weaves, her wings even acting like limbs to limit arm mobility of those axe swings. "So glad we figured out how to make the sword extra hot, cuts through like butter," she says as she slices a skeleton in half. They aren't acting as smart as the last time she fought them, probably because their leader is busy doing other things. "Was this castle floating or something, how'd it move!?" Sera is full of questions right now, "And what's the deal with that black goo? reminds me of the stuff Strange puked up in my basement."

She twirls a twirling cut and makes some room between her and the skeletons. She glances at May, noting all the red patches where the skeletons had cut her up. "Souls? Siobhan. Definitely Siobhan. If we can separate them I can test burning Vega up, but I dare not try it with him sharing that body with that young lady."

Loki has posed:
'Kaylee' - otherwise mostly known as Vega - started to rasp and struggle-- only to fall to the weakness of the current body he's occupying. Knocked out, Kaylee goes entirely limp. The skeletons are easy pickings, as their puppeteer stops influencing them. It makes it clearer which things are under Vega's control, and which aren't.

The skeletons, Vega seems to be their major link, by the way they behaved, and now, as they starts to sort of lurch into default patterns of patrolling. It makes them easier to engage and destroy.

The ice palace seems to have little to do with Vega; it was his prison. Nessa, Queen of the Ice Palace now, is able to dismantle it, brick by snowy brick, until it is even less than a husk of what it was. It now lays dormant, magic released.

Melinda May has posed:
As the Ice Palace fades with Nessa's magic, and Vega falls dormant with Kaylee's fading consciousness, May lets out a grunt of pain and satisfaction. "She needs medical care," she tells the others, referring to Kaylee. "I can get her a secure bed at the Triskellion," and probably get Palamas to sign-off on some arcane measures to keep her safe and Vega... at least impotent. "But what about Vega? How do we secure him?"

Once they've solved that and she's assured of the safety of all involved, she'll be off to help with the clean up.

And probably find a first aid kit.

Probably.

Nessa Donovan has posed:
The newly dubbed Ice Queen is slightly distracted by pulling the rest of the palace apart, but it's done enough that it shouldn't be any mess to the public. Nessa's gaze goes back to Sera and May. "We'll contact Siobhan, then. See if she can do something with this. I've got a friend I can ask for information as well." She looks back to Kaylee, frowning just slightly. Her attention settles on May again. "He had more power sources to draw from when he was in the ice palace. He also wasn't limited by a physical human form. If we can keep her sedated, I don't know if he'll manage to do something. You keep her out, maybe get some wards against magic in her room? I think that should last until we come up with a better option."

She lets out a slow breath. "I'll let Tristan know we found her."

Sera has posed:
Sera finishes off the last of the skeletons as they fall back in to a dumb routine. Soon with the ice palace gone they have no where else to go. She wipes her brow and steps away from the combat, wings and sword disappearing as so much magic from where they came. She smiles after May has departed for medical treatment,

"That SHIELD lady is really tough. I hope we can keep her asleep. If not, contained. Worse case scenario, both their souls will either end up in hell or be burned away in to oblivion. Here's hoping Siobhan knows more about this than we do - otherwise we'll have to hit the books or hope Strange, or Illy know what to do."

She takes a moment to shade her eyes and look around the street trying to see if she can spy that fox again, "I hope your friend Loki got a good seat for the show. Seems may be he was interested in the entertainment after all."