7692/1000 Faces: Dirge

1000 Faces: Dirge
Date of Scene:	04 September 2021
Location:	Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Synopsis:	The Court of Death declares its sovereignty. Several death gods find the forces of Asgard and a rebel 'angel' have something to say about that.
Cast of Characters:	Jane Foster, Hela, Loki, Sif, Aldrif Odinsdottir, Balder
Tinyplot:	1000 Faces of Death

---

Hela has posed:
In Port-au-Prince, the poorest capital in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, a bad hand plays out like the worst nightmare. A place host to its unfair share of troubles draws a rotten succession.

Waves roar and rage across the coast just outside the city limits where a crowd of beautiful people consumed by their own importance and beauty gather, but the disturbed seas pummel shantytowns clinging to the beach. Water displaced on that scale tear little fishing boats from their moorings and sweep away fishermen, sailors, and drinkers come to forget their woes in company. Screaming men and women dragged out into the water may never see shore again, the once placid Caribbean thrashed to riptides, drowning currents, and whirlpools at a goddess' rage.

Earthquakes are commonplace throughout the Antilles and the larger islands, and the reasonably well-built villa dripping with tropical flowers takes the brunt. Whole garden terraces are shaken apart, cemented blocks hurled and the earth ripped open. When the spell that held them acquiescent falls, mortal servants and guests fall or end up careening into sinkholes torn into the wet soil. Others collapse beneath falling walls and wooden structures. The pier is flung up and low, testing the castle that impossibly rises between the land and the water.

Great stormclouds brew and churn in blackened abandon overhead with no sign of a thunderstorm. A summer tempest might not be unknown, but a deep barometric low accelerates winds wailing on high and dropping erratically down below. Whatever strange phenomena assail the people on the roads between the villa and Haiti, battered and pockmarked as they are before the quakes make them nearly impassable, raining insects and horrible shellfish might be among the worst. Centipedes break on contact. Spiders and beetles pelt the unsuspecting. Then there are the bones, chipped bits that explode like shrapnel in a mockery of the great plagues in another book.

Flowers wilt. Grass dies. Great swathes of the tropical gardens used to decorate the villa end up twisted, caught in suspended death in places. In others, the very vitality is ripped from the trees, the battered and bruised mortals, even the kelp heaped up on the high water line and deeper to fuel revenge.

The gods of death are not a nice lot.

Loki has posed:
With the enormous upheavals of land and sea, there is at least one that is straining to keep hold of what he has left; Loki, Sorceror Prince of Asgard is feeling the weight of his illusions, physically and mentally, the stress and strain evident upon his face, even there in the 'dark dungeon', the home-away-from-home with which he is so familiar. The need to slice his veins to bleed has passed, but not without added weight to his already almost impossible feat.

And there, beyond the 'walls' of his illusion, is the destruction of the rest of the island. Reality that has begun to seep into his illusion, merging it into something impossibly dangerous. Through it, however, Loki keeps a path for Sif until he can't see her progress any further.

Sif has posed:
There's only so much suspension a girl can take before it gets tedious. The magisters have been overwhelmed by the forces they unexpectedly faced and, while they made possible what was to come, it falls, as it always does, on the strong arm of the brave (some more unkind might call it 'foolhardy') to bring it all to a close.

Within her time bubble Sif exerts all her strength to move her arm as quickly as nature allows.

This is very quickly.

Even from without the confines of the time bubble her hand moves at a pace that seems leisurely ... until compared with the speed of her falling. Continuing from this outside perspective, the hand lazily crawls across her belly, toward her opposite hip where a sword forged by the greatest Dwarven craftsmen from the heart of a dead star, crafted with powerful magicks created by Odin Allfather Himself, rests.

The hand reaches the haft.

The thumb slides down and slowly launches the blade on its journey out of its sheathe.

The blade's edge becomes visible.

And then the acceleration begins. The sword, forged specifically to slice at the very barriers of reality itself, tastes of the mini-realm of slow time it finds itself in and cuts it. The cut leads to time speeding in the realm as it begins to pop. More blade shows, time speeds more, in a rapid feedback loop that has only the vestiges of the bubble realm she's in left. By the time the blade slashes at the fabric, it's only torn shards left.

Sif lands on her feet, crashes through the final door and, heedless of anything else that might be there, accepting blows in exchange for keeping initiative, grabs Hermod roughly, without much regard for the niceities of pain and injury, and, steeling herself, shatters through the opposite wall using her armour to take the brunt of the blow as masonry spalls out the opposite side.

From thence onward the rest is a simple matter of running.

Not fleeing. Emphatically not fleeing. A rapid advance away from the heart of the conflict.

Aldrif Odinsdottir has posed:
Angela has been having a rough time of it. Sera gone, she has been trapped for a year, and the only thing she's figured out is that she like the game of bowling. So, she had a bit of a moment but thanks to a talk with someone else, she's kind of gotten her head on straight. She was heading back dwon from up in the sky, taking a route around the world once before returning home just to cool off only to spot the craziness happening in Haiti.

She floats above the insanity, staring down at it for a long moment before crossing her arms over her chest. She has nothing to gain there. She is not on the job. Not hired. Nothing for nothing. Her showing up does not balance anything. A part of her causes her to shift slightly in her spot, ribbons moving slightly about her. Then a whipping wind causes a bird to go off course and it lands on Angela, seeming desperate for any sort of landing. She stares at it.

"Are you ok, small animal?" THe bird squawks at her and she shifts slightly before looking down and then at the bired. It squawks again and she nods, "I see." She states and then shrugs, "Good enough." She cups her hands around the bird and flies off higher and out of the way to release it before looking back at Port-Au-Prince and suddenly she is gone in a burst of speed powerful enough to break the sound barrier. When she lands, the Earth is once more disturbed by the impact. Her blades come out and she carefully cracks her neck.

"Alright. I'm not sure what this is about but a seagull is very upset about it. I am here to bring some balance..."

Hela has posed:
In Loki's illusory palace... Blood pays for blood. Black strands rise from the cellar floor where Sif lands with certain conviction. The two goddesses crouched at the gaping ceiling hurl magical bolts upon the two Asgardians, Sedna considerably more energetic about striking the Asgardian war goddess or messenger god dead than Marzanna.

She forms bone fletchettes saturated by necrotic poisons, releasing them in slashing waves. All it takes is a nick to do terrible things to the body as Sif and Hermod flee for their lives onto the grounds in disarray.

Hela has posed:
Outside the palace, the mayhem rolls outwards in uneven portions. Dark, ghastly creatures hunt the screaming and fleeing humans. Women strip their sandals and run in overpriced bikinis among the rubble. Young men find fists don't connect to frightening, jellied monsters crawling from the sea at Sedna's shrieks. Her servants are not alone in their vicious attacks.

Canids spun from darkness and weird birds herd victims into corners to be devoured. Sent by forces beyond salvation, they feast on blood and gorge on splitting flesh in frissons of pain, fear, and despair. A different kind of power spills across the killing fields at the party, one Loki's puissance as a mage cannot possibly overlook. Fuel. An excellent, abundant sort of fuel awaits, even if it's of a lower quality than the divine ichor spilled here. By Aesir or other, it matters not.

Hermod tries to speak but it's hopeless. His tongue and he are firmly parted. He tries to strike Sif's arm, to get her attention. Loki might detect one of the gods of death inside his illusion raising a gate. Whiro, the Maori death god, vanishes within it. Then another, following. Fleeing? Strategic retreat?

Thickened, dark clouds swirl. A blackened stormwind rises, swirling, tossing leaves and unattended abjects airborne. Angela's seagull is sure to screech in warning to the woman down far below. Is it even needed, when the pillar of energy rises to the sky?

Loki has posed:
Illusions in disarray. That is exactly what it is.

Loki can //feel// Sif's presence; she's found Hermod, and now all there is left is to escape. And for him, the sweat, the dirt, the bone crushing, soul crushing weariness that assails him. All this has to be timed just right, the destruction of the castle of his making. In a hoarse yell, whether or not he can be heard, he can but try,

"Get out! Get out now!"

Perhaps it may seem that the uneven, heaving ground is the reason for it, but Loki begins to tear down the illusion. Heavy stones begin to fall, ceilings begin to collapse in upon themselves, the floors 'pancaking'. For him? There is no way out, no way free from the literal and illusory dungeon.

The house of his making, of his creation, is now falling.

Sif has posed:
Bone flechettes meet the best Asgard's armoursmiths have to offer. The sweeping cloak trailing Sif captures one ... two waves of flechettes almost in their entirety, bone shards getting trapped within the flowing folds of the tough Asgardian Ramswool fibres further enchanted, then woven into a pattern perfected over thousands of years of non-stop conflict. The few flechettes that penetrate this cloak after entanglement have so little energy that they might not even penetrate Asgardian skin ... not that they'd have a chance to.

The waves take their toll, as does the shoulder impact to the wall to break the pair out, the grandiloquent red cloak being left behind, in tatters, on the masonry. (Not that there was much left of it.) Momentary respite from the attack, as Sedna is forced to reposition to keep the pair in the line of fire, gives Sif valuable time to open the range.

"What do you want!?" she snaps at Hermod. "I'm a bit busy rescuing your impetuous ass!"

She looks down at Hermod to see what he wants when the third wave of flechettes strike.

The increased range increases the spread of the flechettes. Shards of poisoned bone bounce off her helm without causing anything more than a bit of deafening din. They tear through sanguine shades of fabric to strike enchanted silver scale beneath, deflecting off in random directions when they don't simply get caught between scales. They strike red leather vembraces and stick within, some dangerously close to penetrating the skin beneath, but not quite. They strike silver scale on red leather boots to a mixture of almost-penetrations and deflections and entrapments.

And one. One very fortunately-aimed one, finds the narrow strip of flesh exposed at Sif's neck, between the helm and the scale tunic, as her head bends to look down at Hermod. It grazes by, cutting into the flesh enough to cause blood to appear before shooting past into the darkness.

Balder has posed:
Balder's light staves away and even banishes more than a few to keep them from devouring Loki! "A bit late for telling us that, brother!" Balder covers Balder's flank against shadow beasts.

Then the building is collapsing on them. "Swiftly!" He calls out to others, even if he's using his magic to push away falling debris, illusionary or no. Then he's moving, axe in hand. "Don't let the death gods even touch you!" Balder calls out, his voice loud as he ran.

Aldrif Odinsdottir has posed:
After having landed, the woman looks at this odd palace before she blinks at the various people being attacked. She isn't entirely sure what is happening. Only that the bird told her that death was happening here and he was in trouble. She has her blades out and seeing as the palace is seemingly collapsing, she instead races over to try to swipe at those shadow creatures to help some of the escaping people.

Hela has posed:
Hermod's efforts to spit out words are made clear when he opens his mouth and reveals the ghastly damage. Blood staining his tunic and his chin should be clear, but his tongue has been ripped out from the root, probably by some magical means. To get through an Asgardian's resistance, that is no small feat. "Uuu agh ughayy!" he tries to get his point across, but it's probably not helping. Scratching <Get us far away> in Aesir runes in the dirt as fast as he can, terror bleeding his eyes black. <Going to Mexico.> He spits out a gobbet of flesh and saliva, promptly looking ready to vomit at her feet.

Not from the pain. The death energies siphoned from the landscape leave the soil grey, plants dessicated, and anyone unfortunate enough to linger too long feeling sluggish.

Hermod hurriedly points up at the black streamers of energy rising up from the site where Loki's illusory palace collapses on itself. The former party boat sinks in the shallows of the foaming, wild sea. Hopefully more than the formerly ensorcelled mortal servants are crushed, but it's hard to know. Wild spirits flee from Angela's flashing blades and Balder's spell, summoned to dark corners.

Loki has posed:
Unless shored up by other means, Loki's letting things go. He looks pained, honestly and genuinely so, and only catches a little of what Balder is saying and doing. The sweat and dirt on his face isn't like the fastidious Prince, but never let it be said that he can't go 'all in' in a battle such as this.

And now, it's time to bring it all down.

"Get out! I have you covered. Don't wait for me!" Green eyes look up to meet his other brother's eyes before more building falls in, the dirt and rubble creating a dust cloud that makes it difficult to see through.

In a few more heartbeats, to look back, where Loki had been, the floor has opened up and the ground is revealed in its heaving and shaking, leaving no sign of the Prince.

Sif has posed:
Sif's blue eyes turn an obsidian as she stares down at Hermod's writing. Then, without a word, she grabs him and flees. Exit stage palace. In literal leaps and bounds, Sif is clear of the area crashing through anything that gets in her path that's dead, slashing through anything living. Or, rather, undead.

She has the package they'd gone in to recover. The rest are now her rear guard as she pulls the package out, and as she approaches the edge of the Death Gods zone, she gets ready.

~HEIMDALL! BROTHER! BIFROST NOW!~

She races to get clear, ready to flee up the rainbow bridge when (if) it arrives.

Balder has posed:
"I won't leave you, brother!" Balder called ask to Loki, only to turn around and find a complete lack of Loki behind him. "Loki no!" Then more debris comes down and lands right on Balder's back, breaking apart, and others block his path. "I will see you home Loki!" Balder calls to his brother as he gets moving...

He manages to escape the boat, but notices the soil and earth looking as if they have been drained of life.

"What in Odin's name...?" Balder mutters. "A dark ritual...this was a trap from the start to lure us here..." He stumbles when he moves next, but begins casting a spell in the Aesir tongue. <<Dark magic, death of stone...Rise from shadow and forced stone. Light shine anew, life reignited, dawn returning bright...>> He continues to chant as he gathers mystical energies around himself to combat the death gods' ritual.

Aldrif Odinsdottir has posed:
"I am unclear what any of this is about but, I know none of this is OK." She raises off the ground, not liking the way it makes her feel. She instead races off toward the water, looking around as she goes till she sees what she is looking for.

Moments later she is flying back with a yacht above her head and she lands it and pulls a board into place, "Get on board!" She calls to people nearby, eying Balder when he begins to chant. Could this all be an Asgardian dark ritual?

Hela has posed:
The Rainbow Bridge could not deliver them before, the cause for Hermod sneaking deep into the Caribbean to find out why.

Whatever blocked Heimdall before from bringing down the Bifrost, the searing light fights through the near impenetrable dark sky raging in a great churning tempest. Sif's call is answered slowly, as though the light itself is under siege from the poisonous night. When the first blue and green motes strike the ground, the gossamer flow contracts before it can steady.

<<Hurry!>> Heimdall's shout can be heard from terribly far away.

Stepping into that torrent could be more daunting than the flying woman bearing a yacht from the sea. A safe place to be ferried away from the corpses and the battered victims. A promise of escape, anyway.

Humans trying to scramble away shout, "They were trying to /kill/ us! They were making us kill one another."

Another woman cries as she leans over a body. "Oh God, oh God. I'm sorry. Ellie, I'm sorry." Ellie's ghost appears as the distraught cries continue, reaching out with visible translucent hands, until her soul is snagged with a scream.

And another. And another. All those perished on these grounds vanish in vicious green flame, of a hue known all too well.

Only found in Helheim.

Loki has posed:
In another area of the island now, Loki stands hidden from view and watches the portions of the island shudder and buckle. He's unkempt, disheveled, and honestly soul weary from the exertions, and he winces at the brightness of the bifrost as it appears from the sky. Green eyes turn upwards even as a heavy hand reaches up to brush dust off his lapels, his shoulders.

His attempt at the task of cleaning at least some of his outfit is paused, hand at his shoulder as he catches an all too familiar arcane color. It's not like the others' magicks, no. Nothing like them. This one he knows and knows quite well.

With an annoyed chuff of breath, Loki shakes his head and turns away to find his own way back. He's put off his trip to Helheim for far too long now.

Sif has posed:
Sif hesitates for a time approximating zero before leaping straight onto the bridge. Her now-obsidian eyes, black as her hair,turn down to Hermod. "Your rescue is almost complete, whelp." There's a certain cold anger in her voice. "But at what cost? That will be assessed. Against you if need be."

And onto the bridge her boots land, one after the other, as she runs full-tilt to where her brother stands, guarding Asgard from evils attempting to cross it.

And letting this one through, odds are.

Hela has posed:
Hermod's exhaustion is plain. The man has been nearly executed twice over, first by his own god-graced fall to a posse of death gods and next to his bleeding ego after Sif's tongue-lashing.

Must be nice to have one.

He stumbles when the Bifrost presents itself. Outrunning him, even battered and bruised, is very difficult indeed. But he holds back and painfully points at the sky and then down at the ground again. Another moment to carve out the words. <Went to Mexico.>

He slumps, clutching his side, still looking absolutely atrocious. After pointing, he runs with an ungainly gate to the war goddess' side. If the bridge is open, he'd rather face Odin's wrath than vanish in green fire.

Aldrif Odinsdottir has posed:
Squinting at those not getting on to the yacht she retrieved, Angela shakes her head. She is not a typical savior. She helps those who help themselves. Balance in all things even still and so she flies up and away with her yacht with people on it and aims for the nearby waters, away enough from all this insanity to place the ship so that they might have a fighting chance. She then floats back up and looks over the situation, considering how best to finish the situation.

She was under 'contract' after all.

"What is the source of all of this? Is that source even still here?" She considers the situation, sniffing at the air, listening and watching.

Hela has posed:
The source of the entropic field is fading, just as the rite is. But the darkened sky and the turbulence affecting Haiti is not alone; across the Caribbean, another blackening cloud blots out the sun and turns day into boundless night. Streaming shadows act as a false jetstream, pouring against the turn of the Earth westward, southward, along a deadly arc.

Those who cling to the boat huddle in fear. Some are so far gone they can't even moan in worry, holding to whatever handholds or ropes they can find. Angela means to get them out, she looks less frightening than the wild seas, the shaking earth.

Green flames spark and vanish, as the souls are reaped in horrifying quantities.

Loki has posed:
One step, two.. and he'll leave only after the bifrost has departed. The last thing Loki wants is something to announce his presence, as it were. He's accustomed to remaining in place for as long as is needed. To that end, he finds a tree to sit under, his back against the trunk, legs tucked up, his forearms resting upon his knees. As his head rolls backwards to rest upon the wood of the tree, green eyes look upwards again.

It's irrestable, however. The lure of magic, the promise of finding power at its source has always drawn Loki like a siren's song. His eyes close, the words come to his lips in a song; one as old as the gods. It's a spell, an incantation seeking a sight and sign of a vision for magics. It's a tune to those that draw the lines, calling to ask on the health of those magicks.

Balder has posed:
Balder can only fight the ritual so much before it claims it's prey.

It was something that Balder hated, feeling powerless to truly stop something terrible from happening. But with Hermod's evacuation confirmed, he nods ever so softly, but unlike others, he doesn't retreat from the damage done. "Begone, power of Helheim! Return to your sinister master!" Balder calls out.

Divine power can only counteract another so much.

He's able to affect some of it, maybe set some souls free to their respective afterlives or stop the stealing of them altogether for the Valkyrie to claim..but he can't stop the ritual itself.

A dark and terrible power. Yet during all of this, he frowns deeply as the green flames spark and vanish..the damage done, the souls reaped like wheat in a field. His eyes burn bright like the sun in his rage.

"Hela."

Hela has posed:
Chaos clings to the site of such utter depravity against human norms.

Those who can flee for Port-au-Prince, though the earthquakes decimated the roads and hinder their escape. Others run for the hills in a foreign country, assaulted by landslides and faced by frightened residents of another language, a different culture.

They know loss and they know fear. Ghosts vanishing in plain sight to green shocks of fire will carry as a tale far from the villa, deep into the lore and mythos of a proud people. So too the tale of a rainbow in the night.

But for now, there are the dead to mourn, the living to heal, and the need to carry on.

---

Angela conveys those in need away from danger. Sif and Hermod vanish into the Bifrost as its stability comes undone, already pushed too far. Heimdall is at his post in Asgard, guards already running from the Golden City at full charge as the god doubles over. The brothers Odinson have gone their separate ways, and their whereabouts remains somewhat a mystery.

Hela has posed:
End Act 2

A thousand miles away, a pyramid burns with an unholy light. Unnatural green-white light scrolls across the time-battered steps, the platform crawling with owls and sea-creatures, stalking jackals and coiled snakes. It would be beautiful were it not so wretched, in defiance of the natural order. Palms sway in wild winds. Vines tumble and twine across the stone in a facsimile of the bright paintings that used to decorate its facade, the god that once earned the benedictions there long since slain. A beacon burns from the top of Chichen Itza, so bright that the leylines knotted through the Yucatan Peninsula roll backwards, pulled to the great structure.

Dark energy cast down darkens the world and sends tourists fleeing, trying to find their busses. They crash into men, women, and children of every age and nationality. Not a one is alive.

With one voice, the dead draw breath to cry:

                           "The Great Hunger comes!"