Sutoratosu

"You should really be more careful, you know," Cadence chuckled as she took the swords from the spy, specifically keeping the enchanted blade out "A blade of air pressure will cut you far worse than any iron or steel yet wrought" "Like So..." Her sights were turned on the Mercenary nearby, as she brought it to a ready, tuned it with her own inherent power, and made a vicious, lightning fast cut. There was a flash and the howling of gale force winds, as an emerald green shockwave emerged from the blade, heading straight for the fool... D22, Attack Merc 6 with the Gale Sword

After she'd given Soma the Kit and let her work on it, Lucille had examined the resulting crystals after a heavy thud- sounding like something had hit flesh rather...painfully came from the other girl's direction. She was actually pretty surprised with the results, what with Soma managing to take the very small crystals she'd made and extropolating them until they were bigger than lucille's hands. She had wasted no time, going to work as she Shattered the Crystals down, just as she had with the junk spear, and once again sought to discard the property of "temporary" from their nature, and once she'd done so, she Manifested them back into physical form, though... well, it wasn't quite what she'd been hoping for: Still though, at least they were permanent now. And it wasn't like she lacked a means to manually separate. Chanting as a blade of sound formed in her hands, she set about trying to carve the crystals into more manageable chunks, making sure to carve one up particularly small for her purposes, and yet again, it went awry: But not enough to declare the situation FUBAR. She'd still gotten what she needed, even if there had been hiccups, and that was all that really mattered in the end. she turned to soma once the cutting was done, nodding "Thanks for your help. You can keep the growth kit and the refills if ya want by the way, I've gotten what I needed, plus there's plenty extra here," she gestured around at all the hewn spheres and the pile of shards, "Plus well.... you're probably better at growing them than I'd ever be, so it's for the best you hang onto it. Anyway, guess I'll take it from here, hopefully no one ends up dead" She laughed, nervously, at the jest, but it quickly petered out like a pair of sails on a windless day. "Um yeh, thanks again..." And with that, she had left Soma and wandered off to find somewhere quiet enough to focus, one of the seats towards the front of the bus. Sphere in one hand, conjured needle of sound in the other, her mind was practically ablaze as she spent who knows how long, sitting there, hands moving as if possessed, turning, rotating, adjusting the sphere as her fingers danced across its sleek surface, pure vibration etching countless lines and runic diagrams into it's face. Just as she had described to Soma, her purpose was simple, to figure out a way to store unneeded concepts for later, instead of discarding and thus destroying them: "It...worked?" She reviewed the work, passing her hands over the smooth ridges and grooves carved oh so painstakingly into it. It felt fine, felt perfectly fine, yet some part of her was screaming- positively, absolutely SCREAMING at her to look closer, to scry it immediately, some deep and primal part of her brain left over from the days before man was civilized, where instincts and reflex served to keep him alive rather than knowledge and reason, and though she thought it silly she should give in to such base inclinations... It wouldn't go away. No matter how much she tried to ignore it. If anything, it only got louder, and louder, and louder, until she was practically drowning in mental warning signs, sirens blaring left and right, every thread of her being rebelling against the very idea of simply calling this done, of taking it at face value... and it was nigh overwhelming to her. There was only thing she'd experienced before in her life that reminded of it, for the voices were quite similiar, but... but it was impossible. They were gone, they had left her on her own almost as soon as she'd fled home, left her with the database and a few basic laws to abide by and then upped and went, never to talk or teach her again. So how, and why, were they're voices back now, why were the whispers so strong in her skull, as if something, or someone, was directly crying out? Were they still here? Had they always been here, waiting, watching, pretending? but for what end, why? Why lie to her, saying they could no longer guide her and the the rest was her own responsibility? Why let her believe she was even more alone than any other time before? Was she just being paranoid? Were they really here, were they really trying to warn her, to save her? Was she in danger, was she about to die, were all of them about to die and leave nothing behind but charred, battered corpses or worse to float in the void? Would it be quick, or would their fates prove even worse than death? What had she done here, how could she have been so foolish as to try this completely from scratch, surely, there was something wrong, some fatal flaw that would- "SHUT UP, DAMN IT, I'LL DO IT!" She mentally shouted to herself, the rising tide of paranoia only grew bigger, but they easily drowned out her own voice in her head. Scrying was the only way to make it end, to shut up all the vocalizations screaming in warning, to shut up that stupid, animal part of her brain that valued survival and the worthless existence it brought above all else. And so reluctantly, she did... and lo and behold, it was then, and only then, that they began to quiet, giving her the focus she needed... to figure out fuck all. The voices- they're voices, the voices she could not possibly have mistaken for anything else -were gone. Not even a peep. All that surrounded Lucille was silence, eery silence, utter silence. Silence so deep and perverse, it filled her ears like wet sand and expanded until it filled every possible facet of her senses.... until the sounds of the real world began to fade back in. Her grip on the ethereal waned, until finally, it slipped altogether, and she let out a breath she did not even know she'd been holding, lungs burning, mind begging for air, a request she readily filled as she took a few panicked breaths. Everything leading up to this... those voices had not been in this realm. She'd been scrying, searching this whole time as she'd worked, hoping that by doing so she could catch mistakes and make sure things went smoothly... And of course, that had left her wide open for one of their signals. She didn't know why, or what they'd been warning her about, but that it was indeed a warning, that much she was certain of. There was no way the Mavens would've cut themselves off so abruptly if this truly had been a situation dire enough to make them all scream. And there was no way they could've hidden themselves inside her own head either, now that she had some rationality back- their presence was an unmistakable one, one unlike anything that had ever been, could ever be, or may one day be again.... And try as she might, she felt nothing of it. Even during the onslaught of noise, she'd felt nothing of it, the voices were theirs, but it had been hollow, empty. A vision of sorts, a premonition?... it had to be... either that, or she was going crazy. Maybe it had been indeed a caution about the object she'd just created, or perhaps the stupid, instinctual animal parts of her brain had merely twisted and misinterpreted it to fit the current situation. Either way she was absolutely certain- somehow, someway, wherever they had gone, her Mentors had tried to contact her, from somewhere, in some time. And something had made them utterly terrified. And that in and of itself served to cause Lucille herself to shake just thinking of the possibilities. But even as she did so, she could feel herself beginning to nod off. How long had she been up, how much had she done since she last slept, how much energy had she expended weaving thaumic works left and right, working miracles and defying despotic eldritch gods in one dimension and then shattering and piecing back together all manners of objects in the next? How long had she even spent carving the circuits into the orb? Minutes, hours? Something felt wrong. So very, very wrong... But the only thing both her body and mind cared for anymore was a break. With the orb in hand, her focus on the sounds and sensations all around her going fuzzy with fatigue, she curled up on the seat, closed her eyes shut, and tried to let the exhaustion of the feats before all of this overtake her, lull her away. But even as she did, some small part of her feared that sleeping would only open the door to much, much worse things than what she had just imagined. Crafting End Results

"Ya know what I did earlier when I messed with the things you altered and made them permanent?" Lucille began, pressing the kit into Soma's hands "basically, I've been thinking, how much more could I get done if I wasn't constantly tossing away old traits and concepts when I do that? What if I could store them for later? And well, that brings us to this- crystals are natural amplifiers for any thaumic spell, even when they're not attuned, so... If I made an orb or something out of one, did some work to get it ready, I could probably find a way to store loose traits inside of it, instead of throwing them away... like common trash. But, well... I can't read, for obvious reasons, and even though that's not much of an issue since I have other ways to figure it out, It would still take a while to grow what I need for this without any boost. A long while... but looks like my hunch about you being able to help was right~" Lucille gives Soma the Following:

Lucille sighed as she rose from her seat. Even after the blast from the kazoo, she could still feel a subtle throb behind the eyes; she hadn't been kidding about a break. Doing something, anything really, to get her mind off of the ordered insanity that was the glitched out lizard, would probably do her some good. Come to think of it, there was something she'd been meaning to do- something that could definitely help a lot of things in the long run... Crystals. Specifically, the strange chemistry kit she had picked up back in the PRTs world, from Hobby Lobby. She'd been too preoccupied to even use it, up till now, but well... this was as good a time as any. Speaking of which, she set her beasts about searching for Soma, and once she finally did, she sauntered on over to the other girl, holding up the chemistry kit for her to see; though lucille herself couldn't read it for obvious reasons (and had to rely on scrying just to even know what it was, when she'd bought it), the cape doubtlessly would be able to "Hey soma! You can make things more complex based on the underlying patterns, right? Well, what could you do with some that has nigh perfect repetition in it's structure, like say.... crystals? Would they just continue to grow as long as you exert your power on them?"

After the initial few seconds, confusion turned into cringe at the gods choice of a low level taunt, and just as quickly, cringe turned into annoyance, and annoyance turned into the seeds of cold fury.... "You first." It was the only thing the mechanic said, and the only warning Swag would've received, before Ragnarok came flying out across the field with a deafening, ear shattering boom behind it, it's oscillation frequency set high enough to make mince meat of heavy armor and carrying enough raw force behind it crush a lightly armored mech like it was absolutely nothing, all of it directed at the god of lust in a devastatingly fast streak of amber and crimson as the air itself ignited in it's wake, not unlike that of a meteorite. Of all the gods who could've chosen to face him, it had to be this douche, didn't it? Of fucking course it had. At this point though, Solomon really couldn't bring himself to care any less than he tried; he hadn't had any real purpose in participating in this whole thing besides shits and giggles, a laissez faire attitude with the pathetic sub motivator of defying the meta at just about the highest practical level possible, since he'd already done it at each and every last one of the lower ones. Or so he'd thought. Tesla was the reason he'd gotten this far, Tesla was the reason he'd pushed so hard all these years, almost everything he'd achieved, he'd done it off of either the back of her own work, or using what she had once taught him. He had suppressed his own power to the point of it might as well not existing, and relied completely on her memory to carry him. And that precise reason, that cowardice, that refusal to face his true self, was precisely the reason he had failed to stop her from leaving, the ultimate reason she vanished that day; had he not have held back, had he put it all on the line back then, perhaps things would be very different now. And yet, ironically, he had still ended up among the top, despite relying entirely on his sister's legacy. It was almost poetic really, the schematics she gave him after that defeat would serve as the very catalysts to giving him another chance to make it right, a chance to find her after he'd let her vanish to begin with. But over the course of this tourney, over the course of the failed fights and near victories, one thing had become steadily clearer and clearer to him... one thing tesla herself had already told him long ago, something that even now after so much time came bubbling back to the surface... along with many, many other things "If you want to change something, you have to rely on your own power. Don't just sit around expecting something or someone else to come in and save the day for you sully, the only heroes in this world are the ones who aren't afraid to be the change they want to see... that's something I had to learn the hard way" "Your mother? HAHAHA! You want to know 'bout your mother, boi? She was a selfish, irresponsible whore who walked out on us before you were even old enough to walk. Let me tell you somethin', Sully, don't you ever, and I mean EVER let yourself fall for a pretty face and a honeyed words. I might have been fooled, but I'll be damned if any son of mine falls for the same smiling faces..." But most of all... the message she had left him. The message she had left that finally gave him a reason, finally made him realize how fucking stupid he'd been all these years... Already, he could feel the adrenaline beginning to pump, his focus intensifying, all of it tinted a pretty shade of crimson with the subtle bloodlust just beneath the surface. It didn't matter if this was a god on the other end of the field, no more than the man's not-so-enticing offers mattered; he was done using Tesla as his crutch, just as much as he was done giving free reign to the demon lurking within, and there was no better time to unleash everything he'd been holding back, on his own terms... than right here... right now... against this very douche bag. And once this mess was over, he was going to use that same power to finally find Tesla...

"I presume those of you qualified to fix the pipe would be rather opposed to letting that desert rat blow your tools and materials to kingdom come, hence I will leave that to you..." almost as if on cue as he said that, another soldier popped up, this one armed with a rapidly firing fusil which he used to pepper the boy with the golem, the latter of whom now lay in a smoking pile on the ground thanks to the man who lay in pieces at stellio's feet. Already, Dark Mana gathered and focused itself into his blade, as he once more brought it to a ready "For, it seems yet another one has chosen to come out of hiding- TWAS A VERY DEAR MISTAKE, RAT!" moves: I. Stellio attacks the Talon Skirmisher with the Headsman! He spends 5 MP to convert his attack from melee to ranged! (IF the Talon Skirmisher is already dead, Stellio will use both his actions to push the Payload cart towards the pipe) (Attack converted from Melee to Ranged. Deals {2d6+Str[11]} ranged Dark/Slashing Damage, has 30% chance to inflict "Dark Adverse" Status for 3 turns {Sufferer takes 1.25x more damage from dark based sources}. Stellio will gain +1 Str/Ess from either dealing or receiving damage) II. Stellio attacks the Talon Skirmisher with the Headsman Again, again spending 5 MP to convert his attack from melee to ranged! (IF the talon Skirmisher dies due to Stellio's above attack, he will use this action to instead push the payload cart)

The sound of hurried footsteps can be heard as a certain red headed swordswoman charges into the room, staring quite intently at the gear Belros has received.... "Hey, you found them! Thank the goddess, I was afraid one of these wandroughts might've gotten the idea to use my stuff for himself....wasn't easy getting a sword like that ya know, had to almost kill a man, then find him again weeks later on some random island..." F24

"Alright, yeh, I.... I definitely need a break...." Lucille said, after.... well, in all honesty, she couldn't even fully process all the twists and turns that last statement had taken. Apparently it was insane, and yet somehow it was also coherent enough to sit here and discuss it's nature in a nuanced and rational manner... but it did emphasize it was indeed crazy- The headache was definitely getting worse. Lucille took out the kazoo and played a single note on it, before turning back to Nhevi. Already the throbbing pain was fading, but she wasn't eager to go immeidately inviting it back "Yeh, look, sorry, but, I think I'm at the end of my rope for now... you might wanna try talking to some of the...others though? I dunno, I just... need some time to process all of this, it's not everyday you meet a being who defies most of the things your people thought possible, even when they specialized in pushing and circumventing the boundaries of possible..."

"soooo... basically you're so broken that there's nothing separating your thoughts from direct outside influence," lucille muttered, trying to parse through the utter madness of this whole situation. Even by her own world's standards, this was beyond the pale, and that was certainly saying something, considering even Lucille herself would easily be considered beyond the pale and from what she could tell so far, out of the party she was the most qualified to decipher any of this... yet she was still barely able to even believe what was going on right in front of her "and because there's nothing separating your thoughts, random information flows in and out of your head like water flowing through a sieve... It sounds fairly similar to what my people developed, except we protect and focus our efforts with explicit mental filters. How haven't you gone insane, if its always on for you and you presumably have no control on what or how much information comes in? I... I had that type of information flowing through my head, once, and it was both the greatest and the most terrifying feeling at the same time; the only thing that kept me from completely giving in and getting lost in the tide was because I had an objective the focus on...but you, you casually just drop things into what you say like it's no big deal, like dealing with it is nothing... though, I guess if you apparently can't die either, and given everything else I found, your very nature somehow protects you from going insane...." She sighed, leaning back in her seat. By its very definition, none of this made any sense, and she felt the mystery irking her to no end. An entity like this who seemingly broke all laws, including those of rhyme or reason... in effect, it reminded her of thaumturgy, and what she had done to create the silverwood tree. Yet in causation, it was like night and day; Thaumturgy was highly focused and directed, always acting with a purpose, and it was not so much shattering the laws of reality outright, but instead merely using the primordial patterns of creation itself in order to temporarily alter, tweak, or circumvent the laws as one needed in order to create an effect... This though... was truly madness. Laws not just being tweaked, but outright snapped over one's knee, and with no discernible predictability or rationality, and unlike thaumaturgy, what was going on here was an apparently constant process beyond the conscious control of the one it centered around. It was, in truth, the very antithesis to everything her people had practiced and believed in since time immemorial. It was the chaos to their order, it was the reckless abandon to their caution, the dementia to their enlightenment... "I think I might go a bit crazy if I think about this anymore..." she finally said, shaking her head. Come to think of it, she did feel a minor ache beginning to sprout...nothing that would actively impede her, but it was a mild annoyance that was most definitely there.

"...." that description still sounded utterly horrible, in all honesty; especially for someone like Lucille. Being surrounded in deafening, unending noise, yes, that was quite the nice idea, why not go ahead and make it so she had literally no way to interpret the world at all? She'd already lacked sight, might as well go all the way with the cruelty of fate and render her deaf too- then she'd be truly helpless, and the Purists would be right in saying she was nothing but a drain on resources, a filthy, leeching Drek who needed to be killed for the good of all the actually able members of their society. Speaking of her blindness "Wait though, Where do you keep getting all this information about other people? I haven't argued with anyone about their ideas of "fixing" my eyes in at least years, and I definitely haven't brought that up to anyone here. Then there's also that thing you said to Calvera about her age or whatever. And after that you somehow knew that I can work with concepts and could figure this out... and you drop this information often enough and casually enough that there's no way you could be getting through a similar method I would. Is this related to how you're.... broken, somehow?"

"....I... how...what? Just WHAT!?" Lucille shook her head as some odd ruckus started and then the scent of raw meat filled her nostrils. All three of her pets looked at the pile of butchered cuts rather enticingly, but she kept all of them away from it- there was no telling what in the goddamn the meat this lizard had conjured was, where it had come from, nor if it was toxic like the Deathwyvern and the Serpent flesh had been... "Forget about the meat for a minute," The girl said as harry approached, standing up from her seat and opening up her senses like one might open a third eye, casting aside physical reality as she peered into the void between the material and ethereal, seeking to fish out any hint of whatever the lizard was from the infinite sea of knowledge of good and evil "what we should be getting to the bottom of is how the hell she can do this at all... without giving off any type of signature that suggests it's magic in nature." Lucille uses 1 charge to Scry Nhevi, intending to figure out what the hell is going on with her! "...." The girl was... silent, sitting back down as she processed the readout. Her animals begin to siddle closer to the mystery meat, but before they could take a bite some part of lucille pulled on the bonds connecting them and pulled them back once more- the last thing she needed was to be treating all of them for potential food poisoning. After about a half a minute or two, she finally seemed to find a way to articulate her findings "Shes... she breaks all the physical laws, just by her mere existence... but something about her still forces them act even in their broken states. It's like... some decimated machine, that keeps running even despite vital parts being damaged beyond repair, so it limps along, chugging miserably, pouring out smoke and making horribly noises, and even more parts of it breaking over time.... but it never ends, it never shuts down no matter how broken it becomes, it just keeps going, and going, in this... terrifying cycle... I don't even know how she can exist like this, but somehow she does. And I don't know if I, or anyone here can help her... the faults and cracks around her run so deep, I don't think anything even I have could do anything more than putting a bandage on a bullet wound..." a shake of her head, as if she were going to say more, before "Where... where did you come from?" she asked, turning to Nhevi "What is your world like, are there.... more like you? How did you end up this way and survive? Is it.... painful?" she visibly shivered, as she asked the questions. It wasn't quite the same as with avada, but it most definitely reminded her of the same basic principle, being made broken and subjected to an endless cycle of further breaking, one that would not ever end on its own...

The burst of sound directed at her- seemingly a bizarre mix of the crackle of electricity overtoned by the crashing of the coastal tide -only served to further perplex lucille. "Come again?" the girl asked, and not just as it realted to the static, but pretty much everything else the strange creature had just said "Um.... look whatever you are, are you sure you're okay? What's with all these weird pauses and stuttering and word fragments that keep popping in and out when you talk? And what was that weird noise you made just now? Did you... hit your head or something, before you got here?"

"Pathetic," the knight scowled as he took out the vial "I can't tell whether you were just practicing with a light breeze just now, or you truly did hope to avenge your comrades. Either way, it became quite obvious to me about half-way through the casting that you're nowhere near the hot shit you might've thought you were. Next time you sling a pissant spell like that my way, you'd better hope I die laughing at your ineffectualness." Use Vuln

F16, Impale Journeyman C

"Um.... hi?" Lucille muttered as something called out to her from...the ceiling of all places. The cat looked up at it on her command, and she saw through his eyes only served to confuse her. How long had this thing been there? What even was it? Had she been so absorbed in her work she hadn't even noticed? Likely... its not like she hadn't gotten so engrossed in a project as to practically ignore anything not related to it, before. Before she could ask any of those questions though, yet another voice came over, this one more familiar, and it seemed the two of them had practically forgotten she was there. "Just... how much of what I was doing did you see just now, out of curiosity?" she asked the lizard... purple, she didn't know what the hell it was.

The walk, if it could even be called that, towards the castle was a largely silent one. The world surged passed the warriors as they practically flew across the landscape, invisible and untouchable to all. The mists of this other realm parted and reformed behind them as they passed through it, and just as it did, so too did the obstacles of the physical world, entire facades vanishing and yielding before them, as if they did not exist to begin with... because in Ghost's domain, they truly did not exist. It had taken some getting used to still, for some, but by now all of them had gotten rather adept at projecting their focus in a direction, and willing the ethereal forms that served as their bodies to move in it. Like phantoms and wraiths they traveled, concealed and protected by Ghost's power, and it was by that very same power that within mere minutes of intense focus on their destination, the party had completed a journey that on foot would've easily taken several times as long. "That's far enough" Ghost ordered, her voice ringing out in the empty realm of her creation, yet completely inaudible to any on the physical plane. She turned and looked at each of those assembled on the team in turn, before glancing around at the cover provided by the hillside glade. The castle itself loomed in the distance, covered by some odd barrier still, just as the other team had mentioned "They've got sentries concealed in the brush, likely to intercept or keep tabs on anyone who attempts to approach." To illustrate the point, she snapped her fingers, and nigh instantly said brush became a hazy blur that soon faded altogether, revealing the indeed dozens of foes prepared for an ambush. The woman cracked her knuckles in anticipation, and some of them might've noticed a peculiar, metallic clang in her fingers as she did so "There's far too many of them to turn this little trap around I'm afraid- neither capturing nor launching our own ambush will go well, when we have so comparatively few numbers... that leaves immediately driving them out of cover as our best option. I'm going to drop us back into physical reality, and give them a reason to think twice about staying near so much... flammable material. Be prepared to meet them as they emerge." With that warning, she gave everyone approximately one minute to prepare, then finally announced that time was up. The hazy fog vanished, the ground once more felt solid under their feet, and all of them knew, the time was now. Ghost was taking in a breath the moment she released them, and in the next one she was issuing a mighty shout that sounded nigh like a dragon's keel. Flame erupted from her mouth as the resonance took hold, and the Mantra manifested, and she swept the stream of hellish heat over the brush immediately near them. And like bats out of hell, enemy soldiers, skeletons, and black, humanoid abominations with many limbs alike came scrambling out of the burning hiding places to avoid being incinerated, only to find the party waiting for them, weapons drawn, and Ghost's gaze peircing through all of them with a crimson radiance that could've rivaled a sun. The albino spoke yet another word, and the fires which she had started died just as instantly as they'd begun, leaving nothing but smoldering, burnt trees and scorched earth... "Our priority is clearing this area out, and seeing if anything has changed with the castle's situation." she ordered to the gang, glancing over her shoulder, "Stick together and watch each other's backs as we press forward. We should focus our offenses on the Officers and the Abominations they've brought first- if you cut off the heads, the rest of the serpent dies...and it's better to be safe than sorry, whatever in the gods names those things are. Once those targets are eliminated, we take advantage of the chaos and disarray the officers deaths will create among the ranks, and strike down the grunts and the skeletons while they struggle to adapt." BATTLE BEGIN! Theme Initiative Status Notes:

Lucille eventually returned to her previous spot, her beasts lazing about on the seat and the various materials used in her rituals scattered about. She sat there, muttering something to herself as she worked tirelessly; already, she had incscribed the Sigil of Alchemical Marriage and systematically taken it apart, peice by peice, almost like one would dismantle a gun or an engine of some sort, except it was all in writing, rather than in physical peices. The circles, lines, traingales and other assorted geeometry that made the circuitry which bound the Sigil's components together, the Runes which powered the circuits and caused the ritual to function in the first place, the basic equations which served to direct the effects of the runes, all of it was laid out haphazardly around her, like the scribblings of a mad, blind woman, hands tainted dark with charcoal. And even now, still she wrote yet more. Of the four runes responsible for the Alchemical Marriage, Shatter, Duplex, Mulligan and Manifest, she'd begun to mix and match them with other runes pulled her memory, comparing the Thaumic circuit designs she mapped out to the original and either scraping it for a new one when the simulations she ran did not pan out, or adding atop it and trying to refine them, when she found designs that didn't immediately fail the first test. If she could just find a structure the correct combination of both runes and their supporting circuitry, perhaps she could eventually find a way to fix it, for good and for all. Mavens knew that constantly relying on the Alchemical Marriage hadn't helped her in the least bit on that front, given well... how it had all ended up. Hence, it had been time to go back to the basics, to breakdown the sigil into its components, see just where and how things tended to wrong, test all their parts in their purest forms... if she knew precisely which component had been causing the random errors, and under what conditions it did so, perhaps she could refine the Sigil into something far greater than it had ever been before. What she occupied herself at the moment was simply a stepping down along that path, a project that was not directly related, but in it's pursuit she could still figure out quite a bit about the problem elements. And eventually, she found a draft that she felt fairly certain could work... "Come here, Do..." the cat obeyed, sauntering over and plopping down beside her. Lucille scribed the newly birthed Sigil on the floor, wrote the rune of Shatter beside it, and then pulled out the instrument. With a single utterance of the activation phrase, both spells flared to life, and she played a single note that nigh instantly fractured and split into its countless constituent traits, appearing like small, glittering shards that revolved in their own orbit like the rings of a planet... and then the sigil went to work, as she directed her focus on Do, preparing to work through the process of... "IT....stopped? What?" she sat there, trying to comprehend the sudden cessation of the thaumic resonance, and to figure out what the hell it was that had just landed in her lap- it felt like... "Is this...a potted plant? What in the goddamn...how even...?" She had Do look at it. It was indeed a potted plant she held now, instead of the loose concepts of the healing resonance she'd deconstructed. Somehow, someway, instead of discarding the concepts she didn't want or need, the spell had gone and... jumped the gun entirely and done... something. Something she most definitely had not been intending- the healing resonance was supposed to be encoded into the Cat...not turn into... a common medicinal plant. "oookay," she sighed, setting the pot to the side "Let's try this... again!" She scribed a few more runes this time, namely that of Duplex and Mulligan, and again, she spoke the activation rune, and the diagrams flared to life. She took out something from her pocket, a tooth, and tossed it into the range of the Shatter rune along with another resonance from the kazoo. This time, as she reached in to work with the concepts, the ritual kept going, and slowly but surely, she felt as though it was becoming clear where the exact problem lay. In due time, she'd taken everything she did not want, and discarded it, watching as it vanished into the ether. It was then she activated Mulligan, shifting and mixing the remainder together into coherrant order, before at long last, she turned to the sigil she'd created from scratch, again focused and prepared to work through the process of encoding, all the while taking notes in her mind of the signals her scry was picking up. .... .... .... There was nothing at first. But as she tried to delve into the cats code, she found the whole thing flipped on itself; rather than altering Do's genes, it opened up editing on a template that up until that point, had not existed, spawned entirely in that moment. Lucille was tempted to stop at that point, searching with her senses for any outside interference, anything that could be forcing it to behave like this, but upon finding nothing, it what she was witnessing was directly related to the central root of the problem. Stopping would do nothing but impede her progress towards fixing it. And so she simply shrugged and pressed on- if she could not edit Do's genes, for whatever reason, then perhaps she could use this blank slate to draft a genome wholesale... Which, after taking a few moments to call Astra over and Examine her, was precisely what she did. It was relatively easy to use her as a reference, simply tweaking certain parts here and there- namely Lucille took out the potential for Sapient thought, as well as condensed the projected lifespan down from the literal lifetimes upon lifetimes Astra herself would live... there was no telling what would come out of this, and she wanted neither something that could potentially challenge and work against her, nor something that would live longer than it had any right too, encase it proved to be a threat that could not immediately be bound or destroyed. Once it was done... she took a deep breath "Here goes something..." And pulled the metaphorical trigger. The world around her vanished in bright light, there was the screech of a young predator, the flapping of leathery wings, and finally, the glow died back down to tolerable levels. Not that it had down a damn thing to lucille- there was no light conceivably so magnificently bright and commanding in it's utter majesty as to successively beckon those eyes, that they may develop pupils and actually work for once in the girl's life. What sat in the sigil's place... was a young dragon. Emerlad, shimmering scales, bright red eyes that seemed to burn with vital essence, a red path shaped like a cross on it's back. It flitted out it's thin, forked tail as it tasted the air for the first time, and looked up at the girl who had just brought it into existence...edging closer. Astra was inbetween the younger Drake and her master in nigh an instant. Before lucille could even feel the impulsive reaction, the golden lizard was snarling at the new arrival, some amalgamation of black and vile temporal power welling up in her throat... the green drake backed up, caution in it's eyes as it examined the other creature. Then it took another stop towards Lucille, and Astra practically let her breath loose right then and there, before the girl established control over the situation "Oh, just stop it, would you? He's no more a threat to me than you or Do could be." The dragon ignored her, spewing twisted temporal winds upon the other drake... And much to her surprise, the other beast took it like a champ, practically unphased by the attack. But surprise soon gave way to a deep scowl which cut across her face, as she came down hard on the link between her and astra, cutting off the gold drake's attack before it could go on any longer. She didn't even know why she'd tried talking to her, instead of just using the bond in the first place... was she really so used to having no one that she would let emotion triumph over what she knew to by empirically correct, and begin to impose the desire for at least some non-hostile human contact onto these mere animals? "Who am I kidding, I already fucking do it all the time... pathetic. They're just beasts, pets at this point... they can't talk back to me, they never talked back, and they never will... I really need to stop trying to have conversations with something thats just a bundle of raw emotions and hard-coded, instinctual reactions with no ability to transcend their natural programming" Speaking of which, with a sigh, she reached out and probed the drakes mind, and upon finding that there was no potential for eventual sapient thought, just as she'd hoped, and that it had a mild enough disposition (unlike a certain... serpent she'd used earlier), she left a small peice of her own mind behind inside the creature, effectively binding it to her. Lucille Binds the newly Life Dragon! She expends 3 bonds! "Guess I'll call you Brachus..." and after a few more minutes, she'd corrected the issue that had led to the Dragon's birth in the first place... Well no. It was a lie to say she "fixed" it. Even if it hadn't been what she was anticipating, this was still quite the potnetially valuable discovery, and it would be a crime to simply erase it. No, instead, all Lucille did was scribe in a new function to the Sigil, while keeping it isolated from the wonderful error that led to this. She didn't even need to test it this time- the calculations all checked out. The sigil and all the runes she'd written over the past hour of working on it or so, disintegrated as she dropped out of her higher state of conscious and turned back to Brachus. "Welp, from what I can tell, you don't seem to be suffering the effects of failure, everything feels fine... and you took that attack like it was nothing. Let me see you- wait... Damn it, I'm doing it again... actually, just fucking forget it, not like it even matters -show me your breath" Brachus did just that, as she gave the order. A mint scented, vibrant plume of green energy bloomed forth from his mouth, spreading over her and making just about every bit of fatigue she'd begun to feel melt away. Just as she'd glimpsed during the final results of the ritual. She smirked, petting the little drake and scratching him under the chin, to which he cooed with content. Yes, this little one would be quite useful indeed. "Just as expected... you've honestly turned out a lot better than I was hoping, too. Hmph, who knows, maybe I should make even more like you two, I seem to have knack for making miniature replicas of ancient death organisms that killed for no reason other than they could, breathed pure suffering, and shat hot misery wherever they went. You lot should be alright though, I made sure to leave out those horrible qualities..."

"Hang on a minute, I'll be right back" Lucille said to Soma, before she walked back to the med bay. And when she got there, she didn't bother asking Harry what it was, but instead silently reached out with a few higher senses and collected the information directly... The look on her face was... difficult to ascertain, to say the least. She seemed neither impressed, nor excited, if anything, pensive perhaps the closest to describing her expression. As if she were thinking carefully about this situation...how to go about handling it. "Oh...thats... this is great, Harry," She said, trying to smile, though it failed to reach her eyes. From his breathing and the subtle tone of his voice when he'd called her over, she figured he had probably worked quite hard on getting... a mutagen of even this strength together, from what materials he had "I'm sure it'll help out a lot of people. Um..." Silence. That was all she could manage as she trailed off. So... this was what he'd meant earlier about his plan to try and... replicate the effects into some serum? She... couldn't help but have a great many mixed feelings about it, really. The "retrovirus" well.... the inbuilt spell of the Tree felt so utterly faint in it that Lucille could barely sense but a scant few traces now. As if only one very small part of all that made the species as significant as it was had been singled out for some reason, and made to try and replicate that significance on it's own, isolated from all the other parts, like a part of statement taken out of context. She did not know why she felt the twinge of upset, somewhere deep inside. What else should she have expected, from someone who was not of her world, and knew nothing of the workings of the Thaum? Why had she been so expecting of him to make something rivaling the stories and visions of the days of old back home, when he was not from her home and would know nothing of such wonders? Why was she even this upset? it was her who had handed him Materials that were the indirect products of centuries of research and scholarly endeavor within the system of correspondences and sympathetic resonances her people had come to so heavily depend on, that their entire culture had run off of it once, and even now, their culture revolved around trying to reclaim what was lost. And it was her who hadn't really bothered to explain it's true significance, neither culturally, nor in the sheer potential of the processes that Chimeric organisms like a Galdur Tree, and hell, even her own self, functioned off of... So why was she feeling herself getting into a twist, when he had simply taken things to their logical conclusion, based on what little she had explained to him? How could Harry have possibly known that replicating the effects of the Tree's inbuilt spell would not be as simple as just taking a small section of its DNA, and putting it into other organisms? How could she have expected him to have known that the spell was in fact subtly encoded across the entirety of the genome, not just isolated to one part, when even with as little as she'd explained, she'd not even bothered to mention that much to him? How was she to bring up the fact that he had infact shot the overall potential of his derived creation in the foot here, by mistakenly believing there was one specific gene which caused the regen effect? Should she even do it? He seemed at least marginally proud of it, and it certainly like he'd been laboring for a while... and it's not like it was even his own fault, if anything it was hers and hers alone. ... Her fault, and hers alone... Suddenly the reason behind these mixed feelings suddenly became all too clear. She didn't know whether it was more selfish, or just plain pathetic, once she did. Or maybe it was a bit of both. "Hmph... selfish and pathetic... yeah, that's probably pretty apt for me by now. Even when I tell you I'm sorry and promise I'll try and find another to accomplish what you wanted- I go and forget about it, then when I see someone else has gone and taken the things we tried to use and has applied his methods to help people, I go and get all upset just because it isn't perfect, or some stupid bullshit like that." The forced smile on her face finally faded, as the thoughts flooded in. Though she still said nothing to Harry, just kept up with the internal self-realization of how utterly, disgustingly petty her reason was "What right do I fucking have to stand here and look down on his work like this- harry's solution might be a far cry from the full potential the Galdur properties have, but at least his will actually work, and it won't fucking kill someone in the process... I couldn't even say that much back then, and I still can't say that much now. So I almost immediately get miffed because he's actually succeeded where I screwed up horribly, and instead of taking responsibility for what happened to you, I go and try to make my own damn self feel better, latch onto the one flaw I notice with what he's made, and try to go discrediting all the work he's put into it. Just like a petty, selfish bitch who can't swallow the pride she has no right to to begin with. Who knows, Avada? If I'm really this bad, Maybe it was better we were only together for a day... something even worse might've happened to you, if you stuck around someone like me..." "Well um..." she said, after a very long, and very awkard stretch of silence of her simply staring blankly in his general direction. "...just let me know if you need help with anything. I'm sure what you've made here will work just fine, if you find the tools to make more of it." With a short nod, she turned and started to walk back towards Soma. And the seething storm of repulsion for how she'd initially reacted here only grew with every step she took.

The... first results of their experiments were interesting, in a way. Namely in that soma' extrapolation made the kazoo... bigger and expanded the effective range of it's healing resonance, but well... from the information Lucille sensed flooding in, chances are anyone who got healed with it prooooooobably wouldn't enjoy what would happen to them afterwards. Just a hunch. Luckily, it was only temporary, so.... they just needed to wait. The next thing they tried was a bit different, Lucille had taken a sheet of scrap metal from the back and molded it into the rough shape of a spear, forming the following from the rather shabby, weathered metal: It wasn't pretty, nor was it impressive, but then again neither was the material she'd been working with... it was to be expected. Regardless, after getting it into shape, she had Soma use her powers again... this time the results were... well, they were interesting, and also a bit less hazardous to one's health compared to the heal kazoo's extrapolation: "Well, better than the first shot," Lucille had said "lets see how this goes...." And that was precisely what they'd done. Drawing a transfiguration rune, She dropped the spear in, moved a few concepts around until she found the traits provided by Soma's Extrapolation. Once she had, she went deeper, and found the underlying, fleeting nature of the added qualities, all hooked together by their inpermanency like a spider web. Snipping the trait away and tossing it was relatively easy, though.... there may have been a slight hiccup, as she was cleaning things up and putting it all back together in the right order. She frowned a little as the information from the ritual's results poured in. She didn't pick up the spear, or do anything else with it really, just glanced over at soma as she gently nudged it with her foot towards the girl. "So, good news and bad news," She began "Good news is, it worked. I managed to make your alterations on the spear permanent with the Transfiguration Circle... bad news though- it uh... kinda got a bit messed during the process... you can pick it up and use it just fine, but uh.... putting it away, like, taking it off your person entirely, weeeell... I seem to have accidentally added a trait of...compulsive throwing to it. You'll be able to leave it behind or put it away somewhere for storage, but... not without first chucking the thing as hard as you can. The impulse to do it can't really be controlled either, so.... at least the principle is sound? I guess? It's a better take away from all this than nothing..." Final Product added to the communal inventory:

"Ok then...uh, hang on" she checked around the pockets of her new vest, thinking of something she'd picked up recently that wouldn't become lethal but would still be useful and some would portable in a grown form. Before long she produced a kazoo... and for all the world, it looked like any other cheap kazoo one could find in a toy store. She handed to Soma "Might as well start small. See if you can expand that to about the complexity of say... a standard flute. Yeh, a flute would be good. Baby Steps and all. Plus I can just make another one, if things go horribly wrong... maybe." Lucille suggests Soma extrapolate the following gear to the complexity of a standard flute

Cheryn As Caliber made it closer to the doorway, Cheryn extended the barrier she already maintained there and merged it with the sphere protecting the girl, closing said sphere off and at the same time opening a small breach to let her into the pod room... much like an airlock. If anyone in tempest even knew what an airlock was, given well.... whatever, not important. With the rebel out of the flames, and Cheryn's own hunch telling her that Caliber was likely underestimating the strength of what she'd set into motion here, the shield meister once more condensed her focus to a razor fine point. The barrier she maintained burst outward with a flash of crimson, expanding further into the burning room like snaking tendrils of crimson, tendrils that sought out and took refuge in each and every last ventilation point present, and expanded to block them off, as she began uttering a modified version of her gas charm, tweaked ever so slightly to prevent even safe air from passing through the barriers, effectively creating what would eventually become a vacuum around the blaze.... Hopefully, nothing in the lab had served as too great an accelerant to the flames, while caliber had been going on her rampage. But then again, it shouldn't have mattered- this was mundane fire afterall, sustained not by favor, but by fuel, heat, and above all...oxygen. And with it's supply of oxygen now choked out at the sources... it was only a matter of time until it ran out of juice.

"I....could..." Lucille said "but it would take a different spell than what I just used. Unless... you want to try and directly change whatever inside you gives you that power- which I technically can do, but shouldn't do... won't do..." there was a visible shudder as she rubbed arm, looking at the floor, and seeing literally nothing... same as always "it... it doesn't end well. For anyone. Let's leave it at that. Anyway, do you... want me to try it, I guess? Things would probably go horribly wrong again if I used the fusion ritual on you to fix your problem directly, but I should be able to use the other spell to fix any objects you alter without any trouble." Come to think of it, actually.... now that she mentioned it, she could have probably Transfigured a person quite easily in order to fix chronic problems inside their bodies, and it would probably be far safer than trying to reach some macgyvered treatment by fusing them with something like the regenerative powers of the Galdur Tree. But just as quickly as the thought came, Avada's screams once more filled her mind, and she quite literally quaked in her boots as she quickly shook her head, banishing the hypothesis. Didn't matter how 'safe' it supposedly was, didn't matter how many lives it could improve or outright save, if it really worked... there was no way in any of the worlds out there that she was ever letting herself repeat something like what the two of them had attempted that horrible, wretched day.

"Basically, yes," Lucille responded. She didn't really seem that surprised about soma's voice or her presence, as she set to work cleaning up her supplies "What I do is something called 'Thaumaturgy' which uh... just think of it as me taking the rules of reality, and... tweaking them a bit- like with the fusion just now. Took a few things, mixed them with a monstrous amount of calculations, raw focus, and some knowledge about the underlying patterns that causes pretty much all of reality to tick, and then I tore the objects down into their base traits, concepts, stuff like that, picked the ones I liked best, and put them back together into something new. Its uh... what? Kinda like making a recipe, I guess... except I just write the recipes as they're needed, have a lot more control over the final outcome, and don't have to wait through all the boring and time consuming parts like having to prepare all the ingredients, mix them together, measure into portions, back them, or do any decoration work after." Which was, actually quite ironic, given the Mavens had forced her continue to practice the proper techniques of an Alchemist even after they'd taught her this sigil. While she had seen the principle behind it- it was better to know how to do both Conceptual and Physical Alchemy, she still felt the decision had been a bit backwards, the idea had been that even if for whatever reason she couldn't scribe the fusion sigil, she could still create something using proper tools and her own hands. But of course, given that sigils were piss easy to get access too, considering all one needed was something to write or carve with, or ones own verbal calculations, if one was skilled enough (which of course, Lucille herself had already done several times even before she got swept up into this mess of worlds being eaten). Actual tools, such as beakers, flasks, bottles, pedestals, etc, a fire to brew the solution over... they were not always so easy to come by. And though an Alchemist did indeed use runes and chants during the brewing process, the actual materials were still king on the physical side. A mixer who lacked his tools, and also lacked the knowledge and skill to perform Conceptual Alchemy... well, they were just shit out of luck really. "By the way," Lucille continued "I don't think I ever got your name. I know from the voice you're the one who amplified my staff though...and the one who took some of the energy from that stone I examined and was laughing on the floor in her own little world..." Now that she was probably as close to her as she'd ever been before, Soma probably would've noticed the very obvious issue in the other girl's eyes, if she hadn't all the times before; an issue so obvious that just about any high school dropout who'd paid decent attention during Anatomy class could've spotted it and understood why it was an issue...

After the ice box had been finished, lucille had gone back to examining the staff Parias and his allies had handed them, her mind reaching out and trying to glean any information she could off it. Namely though, what she was really looking for was a way to circumvent the "Mana Drain" the priest had mentioned... she rather liked her wits, and she'd prefer not to have them dampened, even temporarily and with the promise all would return to normal if she rested after each use. It didn't take long however, for her to find precisely what she was looking for- yes, that right there.... Parias had mentioned that mana functioned off of the traits of the user, the various aspects of their being. This staff functioned off blue- intelligence, wit, charisma; but... there was a way to give it the power it needed, in a far more efficient manner than letting it feed directly off her mind. She could let it consume idle and residual thoughts instead, especially if she went to the trouble of generating a lot of them whenever she used the staff... yes, yes, it was so simple. Why, she even went so far as to test it out, and the knowledge indeed held true, as a small bolt of green energy formed in her hand, and though Lucille did feel a slight pull as the staff drained away a few surface level thoughts, eating them up like a hungry...well, serpent, she didn't feel anything penetrate beyond just that... the surface level of her mind. She did it again, and once more, it simply skimmed whatever it found on the surface, creating yet more small bolts, which lucille found she could easily control, with a bit of focus. Lucille has spent 2 Merit upgrading the Serpent Staff to remove it's Int Drain effect! Soon enough, she was satisfied with the weapon, confident it would indeed be useful. Like her primary staff, she engraved a Miniaturization Sigil on it, entered a simple trigger word, and watched as the thing shrunk down to quite the portable size- about that of a wand -before she slipped it into her satchel. She was far from down however, for the next thing she did was examine the worn and acid burned bone armor she'd worn for.... she literally didn't even know how long it'd been since she made it. The thing, just like the Galdur trees, had saved her on more than one occasion, back home. Just as it had helped her come out of that last battle only half dead, instead of quite dead... but the damn thing was pitiful in it's current condition, after that barrage of acid she'd suffered. Mavens knew how long it would last until it finally did fail her when she needed it most- and that... well that was something lucille was not eager to find out. Not at all. She drew yet another fusion sigil, tossed in the worn cervidae armor, and the wyvern scale she'd picked up in the hell hole they'd just got back from. Still though, it felt like something was... missing? She couldn't put her finger on it...perhaps it was the weight? or how stiffing the armor had felt as she wore it, whilst exposed to the disgusting, hot winds of that hellish world. Yes actually... that was indeed it. by the time they got down and she'd removed it, she'd been sweating so much she was practically swimming- the thing could definitely do to be slimmed down, perhaps with a bit of fidgeting during the fusion....No. No... wait, yes, no, she had a better idea. She emptied the pockets of her vest, and then tossed the garment into the third and final circle, and with a snap of her fingers and an activation chant, the ritual was soon going in full force. By the time it's light faded, Lucille had managed to work up a design from it's three primary components that she felt would both offer better protection than the some of their parts, as well as not make her feel as though she were drowning from her own homeostasis during especially heated engagements. And what she pulled from the circle wasn't... that. But... it didn't really matter, it was still better defense wise than the old, worn armor, and it seemed to have fullfilled the second requirement decently enough. She put it back on, adjusting it here and there- twas vest like the one she had before, but now A black and red camo pattern, and to those who were sighted it would've looked like woven ordinary fabric at a glance. But to Lucille, as she brushed her hands across it's surface, it became quite clear what it was made from- Scales... countless tiny scales, all overlaid in thin layers. Lucille has crafted the following out of her old armor, her vest, and the Deathwyvern Scale! She pondered for a moment or two, before bringing out on the horns from her satchel, as well as the kazoo... just encase her analysis of it during the fusion's end had been wrong. And with a not-very-mighty, but quite quick and dextrous inward thrust, she attempted to stab herself with the nicked horn... She didn't even feel it. Not in the vein that she didn't feel the pain as it entered her flesh, no, no... she did not feel it, as in the thing never penetrated her flesh at all. She looked down at the horn, and saw the tip had actually broken off, a section of the scales shimmering in the light around the point of it's impact. Lucille reached down and felt them...and that patch was as hard, if not harder, than steel. There'd been no way in hell the tusk would've ever gone through. A smirk couldn't help but form itself, even if it wasn't precisely as good as she had hoped, this thing could still easily survive Armageddon... hell, who knows what type of things the pockets could... She did. She'd made and just tested the damn thing after all, and the answer to that question was already becoming quite clear. "Oh the things I could, and probably will, carry with you...." Lucille remarked, "And you even stopped me from getting stabbed, like good armor is wont to do. I think this has been an undeniable a success, one way or another...."

Arya "Yeah?" she asked, "What are they gonna do if we're a little late? Put us up in the delinquent cabin?" Arya smirked at the obviously rhetorical question, walking over to the front door. Rather than walking out though, she held it open, turning back to Natalie and gesturing for the other girl to go right on ahead "Anyway, after you~ time to see what we're gonna be stuck doing while we're here..."