9759/Clipping Dread Wings

Clipping Dread Wings
Date of Scene:	22 January 2022
Location:	White's Mill, West Virginia
Synopsis:	Returning to White's Mill, an alliance of sorcerors clash with the wounded and still-weak monstrosity Husquollah-Baajzh before it can grow strong enough to wipe out the town and whatever else lies before it.
Cast of Characters:	Atrun Rai, Zatanna Zatara, Kaldur'ahm

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Atrun Rai has posed:
    A week later, and White's Mill again prepares for certain doom.

    Over the past days, the thing that had been thought perhaps destroyed upon the unsealing of the final mound had been...felt...though only a stirring of essence. Fallout, perhaps, from its destruction. But now the thing known as the Night That Flies has begun to stir once more, concentrating in the woods outside the little town. This cannot be good. This speaks of a return to power - and, most likely, bad, bad things in store for the people of that community that aren't in league with the thing (and still alive or not arrested.)

    So it is up to the mystics to destroy it.

    Atrun-Rai arrived some time ago. He sits at the foot of a hill, on the remnants of a fallen tree amid the skeletal trunks of winter. Out here, night is lit only by the moon, though it be only about half-visible now as it winds down the month. A silver spotlight, thrown across the landscape, making shadows stand out sharply against the frozen earth. Cold, yes, but the Atlantean does not seem to mind, whether by trick of magic or his own unnatural flesh. He simply waits or his fellow sorcerors to arrive, hands in his lap. Feeling the currents of darkness that slowly gather not too far away.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
It's a minimum expenditure of energy for the homo magi to port another person with her. Porting is like breathing. Opening spatial dimensions is akin to reading a book and finding the page you want to turn to. But, of course, the metaphor is clumsier than the process. Suffice it to say, Zatanna portals in with Kaldur'ahm close behind her.

They unfold into the wood silvered by moonlight. Even in the cold night, the ground exudes the smell of leaf mold and mushrooms.

It brings a faint smile to her face as she adjusts the cashmere scarf around the neck of her overcoat. Her feet make almost no sound as she crosses to Atrun-Rai. "Still waiting for the others?"

Kaldur'ahm has posed:
When Kal appears through the portal he has to steady himself with his arms held slightly outward like, say, someone trying to steady themselves on a skateboard. He's very new to teleporting, and hell he's even still pretty new to walking on dry land. So steadying himself after the port is non-trivial. But a slight smile on his lean, youthful face definitely shows he likes it.

"Thank you," he says to Zatanna. "Someday I wish to learn how to do that." Although his seeming inability to use contractions (in English, he can use them in Atlantean) adds a touch of stiffness to his speech patterns, he really is a relaxed, easy-going kid who smiles a lot and just generally is nice to people.

To Atrun-Rai he smiles and gives an enthusiastic wave that belies their grim circumstances and the dark environs. "Hello, Atrun-Rai!"

Atrun Rai has posed:
    It's with a grim chuckle that Atrun-Rai rises from his perch, making his usual gesture of greeting over his heart. "It would appear that the three of us are it tonight," he offers, nodding to each in turn. "Sister. Little brother."

    He turns to look up the direction of the hilltop, where the trees do not reach. There, the currents of darkness flow, a slowly building cyclone. "It is there," the Atlantean sorceror says, gesturing there. "I heard them chanting its name, earlier. Husquollah-Baajzh, it is called. A creature of darkness, one that once served the Old Ones before it tried to supercede them. It was cast here, thousands of years ago. The people who once lived here contained it somehow. We will have to slay it. Tonight. Else it will, without fail, consume the people in the town before roaming elsewhere. Depend upon it."

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
Zatanna's eyes follow the direction of his gaze. Her inner sight confirms the dark power building on the hilltop, magical currents fold in on themselves like a coming storm.

"You recognized the name? That lore is precious. Lost to most mages of my era since the Old Ones have receded from our world. If it served them and then turned on them, why have they not tried to contain it?"

She studies the hilltop limned in moonlight, musing aloud, "How did they do that I wonder? What do you propose to do, Atrun-Rai?"

Kaldur'ahm has posed:
With narrowed eyes, Kal looks up at the encroaching darkness. That wipes the playful smile from his face. Tonight the teen is barefoot, has no sleeves on his shirt, and wears no jacket. Yet despite the winter cold, he seems utterly unaffected and completely comfortable. He reaches to the bottom of the metal backpack he wear and slides out to handles that looks not unlike handle-less swords: his Water-Bearers. They are enchanted devices that enhance his ability to potently manipulate water -- like the pressurized water in that same backpack.

When Zatanna asks Atrun-rai about his plan, he too looks to the elder to find out what the group will be doing.

Atrun Rai has posed:
    "These names were known when Atlantis was young," explains Atrun-Rai, who frowns at the hilltop still. "The people up there worshipped it - I apologize, I meant the people who first lived here were the ones who contained it. The 'Native Americans', you would say. The Adena people."

    That said, he looks between the two. "We go up and kill it. A straightforward thing. Annihilate it, or dispel it back to the Void. I am immune to firearms, so please get behind me. Its supporters were armed before." And then up he goes, trudging up the hillside. Immune to firearms? Strange wizard, but he isn't wrong about the armed humans that were encountered before...

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
"I can paralyze his followers and transform their weapons." She frowns looking into the darkness, eyebrows knit, shadowing her eyes.

"I am blind to the forces he calls on. Knowing that, I can counter it, perhaps."

Kaldur'ahm has posed:
Fall in behind Atrun-Rai as instructed. Although no mere bullet could possibly penetrate his supernaturally tough body, when an Atlantean elder gives an order you follow it. And so he does.

He peers to Zatanna and gives her a reassuring nod, though the teenager almost seems to be attempting to reassuring himself in that gesture.

Atrun Rai has posed:
    Up the hill the three wizards climb, their footfalls light, but perhaps not as stealthy as one might have desired: leaves crunch and twigs snap, but there is no reaction from above. Finally, the top of the hill is in sight, and as the Atlantean crests the hill, he pauses, frowning as he ascends to the full.

    There had been a ritual here. Had. What exists now is a scene of horror. The bodies of half a dozen people are laid out in a circle in the bare earth of the hilltop, raw, red muscle bared to the moon as they are flayed of flesh as cleanly as the grass has been sheared away. There is no blood, just muscle, weapons discarded in a heap upon the bare, cold ground. They gave themselves up willingly - to the monstrosity that stands at the center of their slaughter-ring.

    It was a man. It was several men. Its body is made up of molded skins, stitched together not with thread but some abominable power; thick, misshapen legs, a great, bulbous trunk studded with two sets of arms that just out at angles never intended. Swollen with mass, some twelve feet tall. Shuddering, always moving. And then, its head: a mass of black feathers makes it up, and its 'face' is but a mass of dead birds arranged around a gaping pit, a hundred pairs of rheumy black eyes, a hundred pairs of dead and damaged beaks all opening in chorus as the aberration turns to let loose a nightmare chorus of hideous, grating caws.

    It sees them, and then the chorus screams again - this time for blood.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
The woman mage has descended into hell and walked through its nightmares, witnessing the abominations visited on those condemned to its torments. Still, she recoils in revulsion at what the moonlight shows them. The totem of lives stitched together is worse to her magical sight because pain emanates from the remnants of both the voluntary and unwilling lives sacrificed to construct it.

She wills her stomach to be quiet and her intellect to operate and not go gibbering into the night.

Opening both hands, the moon silvers her palms with its light, she poses a question, seeking t the power that holds it together. ?rehtegot ti sdloh ecrof tahW"

Kaldur'ahm has posed:
The Atlantean teen, though young, is no stranger to battle. Some might be amazed to learn that the most common age for Atlanteans to start their two-year compulsory military service is twelve. And being from beneath the sea, he is also no stranger to horrors. But this...this is on another level. Clenching his jaw, Kal holds out his Water-Bearers. A stream of water ejects from his pressurized backpack and forms two large, scintillating, enchanted water blades.

"Atrun-rai," he growls, "What manner of creature is this thing?" He's no coward. He'll fight. He'll fight to the death if need be. But it's not hard to see that this creature has him on edge.

Atrun Rai has posed:
    "A monster of the Void," says Atrun-Rai to Kaldur'ahm, frowning at the monstrosity as it turns toward them and looses its brain-shuddering scream. Though not nearly as affected as the others, the Atlantean is absolutely not giving the thing called Husquollah-Baajzh, the Night Which Flies, any ease. "We must destroy it, if we cannot send it on. Prepare yourselves!"

    And then it comes, thundering toward them; no claws, no teeth, just the sheer size of it, the screaming birds that form its head carrying on the nerve-tearing noise in an attempt to quail its imagined prey. And with every step, its body shudders - as if it were filled with something not bones or flesh. And in that moment, Zatanna knows: it is not the body that matters, the human flesh borrowed and stolen. Its body - and its essence is contained within the dead birds that fill its hollow figure even now.

    Atrun-Rai steps further between the creature and his comrades, and bellows something at the oncoming monstrosity: words that no human throat should make - a language all its own, alien and terrible to hear, but projected /toward/ the beast instead of toward his allies even this horror is enough to allay the nerves somewhat. But questions? Questions, yes. Questions for later...

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
Seeing void magic for Zatanna is asking the color blind to parse the flowers on display in a florist or for the average person to "see" infrared without special googles. The mage is effectively blind to it though she can feel it. Once the figure churns into movement the sensation engulfs her. Synthesia translates the power into smell. All the dead in the world, both recent and moldering, walks toward them.

She makes a series of decisions that she telegraphs in short phrases, "Contain it. Send it back to the Void. Ready?"

Kaldur'ahm has posed:
Aqualad churns more water out of his pressurized backpack with his Atlantean sorcery. It begins to swirl faster and faster until it becomes like a waterspout -- a literaly tornado made of water -- and lifts the teen up in the air. He's not a witty-banter-while-he-fights kind of young hero. Instead he is grimly determined and laser-focused. He starts to ride the waterspout in wide circles around the repugnant abomination in an attempt to either contain it so the other two, more-powerful magic-wielders can deal with it, or at the very least to slow it down.

Atrun Rai has posed:
    The thing intended to kill the first thing that got close, but whatever Atrun-Rai has 'said', if you can call it speech at all, has apparently enraged it. Like the grandfather of all subway trains it hurtles forward toward the Atlantean, and with two monstrous fists strikes him squarely in the torso. It might have killed the man outright with whatever benighted power it has in its limbs, but it must charge through Kaldur'ahm's torrential cordon, and this is enough to slow it to strike with a lesser, if still damaging, force. And yet, as it does, Atrun-Rai's body shifts; the long, whiplike tendrils he conjured before are now clearly not a work of sorcery, but something /extruded/ from his form; they lash about the creature's limbs, keeping it in place as best he can. And, given how he is able to keep it matched in the moment, the strength in those shuddering black tendrils, opaque like obsidian jelly in the moonlight, must be mighty indeed.

    "I have him," the wizard calls, black blood spattering from his mouth. "Attack it! Do your worst!"

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
Can it be as simple as containing him and then launching him through a portal? Atrun-Rai's words directed at the monster buffet Zatanna with shrapnels of magic, water vapor glistens on her skin from the young Atlantean's water spout.

Zatanna rises into the air as near to the thing as she dares and draws a portal to hang as a doorway into the Void. Double-handed she widens it, yelling, "Push it through!"

Kaldur'ahm has posed:
As Kal's waterspout begins to diminish, the water churns back into the pressurized backpack -- the toothpaste goes back in the tube! As his feet touch the ground softly, he holsters the Water-Bearers he holds out both hands. "I will drive it closer to the portal," he says to Zatanna. "Atrun-Rai, finish it!"

Gathering all of his magical energy, Kal siphons water from his pack. Planting his feet firmly on the ground he holds out his hands and murmurs some words in Atlantean. Suddenly water gushes at the creature like a magical fire hose. Aqualad grits his teeth and growls against the strain that this level of magical expenditure put on his body. He's first and foremost a warrior, and a spell-user second. "Can't...hold...must...longer!"

Atrun Rai has posed:
    Could it be? Nothing's quite /that/ easy. Its face of rotting beaks snaps viciously at Atrun-Rai's face as the combined forces of the other wizards push it slowly back toward the pit of blackness that Zatanna has conjured. There yawns screaming stars, empty, blasted plains of wastelands. The collective fury of the ancient, sleeping things that call themselves the Old Ones. His face pecked in multiple places, weeping black blood, Atrun-Rai pushes on as well as they - but when Kaldur'ahm calls for him to finish the thing, his eyes open wide and fill with a sudden, greasy gray flame, as does the hollow of his throat. Another bellow of horrible, alien words, and a gout of the the gray fire pours from his mouth, directly into those screeching faces; for a moment it seems as if it might resist the assault, but the column of monochrome fire erases the thing's head in an instant. It staggers, held still by Atrun-Rai as he draws breath to vomit that pallid fire once again, but from the opening left in the stump of its neck, a sudden torrent of black birds come pouring out of its borrowed body. For a moment they go up, up....and then, as one, hundreds of starlings are sucked as through a vaccuum gate into the portal to the Great Darkness, their angry chirping screams echoing as they vanish from sight.

    The body in Atrun-Rai's eldritch grip is now just a sack of empty flesh, and he drops it, bleeding freely. "Close it," he bellows. "Close the gate!"

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
Nothing is simple when manipulating eldritch forces opening into the Void. Inexorably, it pulls on the creator of the portal, wanting her to join the beast being pushed into its maw. The portal calls her while grey flames lick her with its cold heat, moaning of pain and lives spent vainly.

Pulling against the tides of screaming stars, the homo magi gestures, a downward slash of her outstretched hand, closing the eye of the portal, "!LAES"

Kaldur'ahm has posed:
As soon as the creature is disposed off, Aqualad immediately ceases his water blast. He stumbles slightly as many hundreds of pounds of force suddenly stop. What water he is able to reclaim flows back into his metallic pack by the power of his Atlantean sorcery, but much of it was lost. His reserve stands at under 50% now.

When the portal begins to pull at Zatanna, the athletic hero goes into a roll in her direction to interpose his body against. Hitting him is not unlike hitting a wall. He's not Superman-strong, but he's /ridiculously/ strong. He's whip-thin, slender, and barely looks older than a high-school student, but his physical power is extreme. Perhaps holding her back gave her extra time to close the portal.

When it's done, he stands straight. "Atrun-Rai, Zatanna, are either of you harmed?"

Atrun Rai has posed:
    Staggering horror blasts from the mouth of Zatanna's portal for a moment longer, and then...silence. They are alone on the hilltop, yawning darkness having left for the more traditional shadows of the night. The silver of the moon. He stands there, Atrun-Rai, his face pecked in many places, dark blood in his beard and at the corners of his mouth. "I will be fine," he says after a moment, the tendrils he exuded to hold the beast now drawing back into the substance of his body. "I will be."

    He looks between the two of them, expression grim as he does so. The fire is gone. "Thank you for that. That thing, were we not able to dispatch it, would have killed everyone in that town - at least - once it was up to strength. If you wish, the two of you can go. I will see that these bodies are dealt with. They're empty husks, now."

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
"Thank you, Kaldur'ahm. You could have followed it into the Void. That was much too close." She inclines her head to the young Atlantean.

A few tentative steps brings her to Atrun-Rai, the sudden silence is disorienting until she adjusts to the beneficent light of the moon tranquilly shining on them. She examines his face before asking.

"How will you dispose of them? Do you heal quickly or can I help?"

Kaldur'ahm has posed:
Starting to regain his calm, Kal holds up his Water-Bearers. A small, wry grin manages to find its way to his weary face. "Can you make a huge hole?" he asks Zatanna. "I can power wash the bodies in. It will be a clean-up and a burial at the same time. Not as dignified as these victims deserve but under the circumstances is may be all we can manage.

Atrun Rai has posed:
    "They deserve no such thing," Atrun-Rai replies. "They were willing servants. They should be dissolved - but, as you bring up the point..." The wizard closes his eyes, and heaves a sigh. "I will bury them here. But for now, leave me. My injuries will heal, but until they do I would not recommend you tarry. It will have an...effect on reality." He lifts a hand. "I will explain later, of course. For now, please. Leave me to this."

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
Zatanna takes a reluctant step back, acquiescing to the inscrutable mage with a frown.

"Come on Kaldur'ahn, when he gets like this, it's best to leave him alone. Where do you want to go?"

Kaldur'ahm has posed:
Kal gives a respectful nod to the Atlantean elder. Then he looks to Zatanna. "Somewhere that serves breakfast sausage? Have you tried breakfast sausage? I like it very much."

Atrun Rai has posed:
    And then..breakfast. Left alone, Atrun-Rai looks down at the skinned corpses, and gestures with a hand - bidding the earth to open up and swallow them, down into the bowels of the hill. Where they will moulder but slowly, he knows, tainted as they are by the touch of the void - poisoning the earth around them, as the nature of that dread dimension goes. Never again will anything grow atop that hill, he knows, but that is a mystery to solve in a different age. For now, the mission has been resolved, and reality is preserved.

    In their slumber, the dark ones are pleased.