Into the Darkness

[Zephyr]

Ooh. The air fled from her lungs as she landed on the ground. The darkness soared into shouts and a man stepped out of the shadows. It could have been a moment of utter revenge on all those Atharim that had died at his hands, but Zef was too slow. Things happened quickly. He spat words at them then turned to the boy who she didn't hear.

Zef advanced drawing her gun but she slammed into an invisible wall. She pounded on it. "You bastard!" There wasn't much more to say. Zef paced back towards the way they came and back towards the invisible wall. "How well do you know this place?" she asked Grym. They might need to find another way around. "I don't like this. I really don't like this. Why are there so many fucking gods in one place."

[Allan]

The Ascendancy defused the situation by coming to the center of the cavern. Grudgingly Allan dropped the shield on Nox. Allan readied himself for an onslaught from the boy Atharim but instead of fighting or drawing an immense amount of power in a display he quickly wove a wall of thick air between the male Atharim and his counterparts.

Allan growled. "Why would you bring them along? Even him if he is here to learn he will die anyway. Why bother helping the enemy?"

Nox wasn't paying any attention to Allan's questions he was smiling at his wallet. Allan picked a rock with a weave of air and flung it at the incompetent boy. "I'm talking to you."

[Nox]

The hoard grew closer. The darkness threatened to overwhelm him. The hunger. The thirst to kill. The need to... Nox pushed the feelings down. He had to remember who he was. And they didn't respond. He felt them, but they didn't feel him. Maybe it was his own darkness, his own... No. Nox reminded himself he was human.

The Ascendancy made his presence known. The Atharim reacted in kind. Nox felt the power flood back into his mind and he felt the hoard grow still. But they still advanced -- faster. And more had joined them in his absense. Nox pulled at the power inside -- reaching through the sludge and grasped the dark light. It bent to his will and a wall of air three feet thick sprang into being between the Atharim and the other two. Nox tried not to snarl as he answered the Ascendancy in a hushed voice. Though Nox knew they wouldn't hear through the wall. It wasn't a ward -- he never perfected them, but sound was no stronger than a bullet when it came to three feet of solid air.

Allan started spewing his nonsense again when Nox's wallet jingled a happy little note. A slow smile spread across his lips. And Nox remembered who he was. He took a deep breath and focused on the incoming message. Raffe... That was his home. His happy place.

I know you'll do what needs to be done to keep everyone safe. Please be careful. My phone is with me, I'll be waiting for when you get back. I love you, Nox.

A rock struck his thigh and Nox looked up. Fury was in Allan's eyes.

Nox ignored him to tap out a quick message.

I love you too. See you soon."

Nox returned his attention to the drama unfolding. One of the intruding Atharim was pounding on the wall again. Nox rolled his eyes. "The more Atharim like us. The more chance we have of changing the fucking organization. I help him. Maybe he'll stop hunting me. No one here is outside their radar. No one. Help him. Maybe an inquisitor can help get the Atharim on our side instead of hunting us for sport." Nox looked at Jer and frowned. "Don't make me regret this more than I already do. Someone here should know how to get you to touch the power inside. Once you touch it. You won't die. But it has to be willingly and knowingly. None of that accidental shit. It causes a block you have to break through, so learn to do it. Don't flounder."

Nox looked at the Ascendancy. "The hoard is larger, and some of them aren't slowing at my command now that I have them again. Decide what you are going to do with them because we might need to run that way."

[Grym]

Grym knew the gods gathered like cockroaches. Where there was one, there were always more, but she’d never seen so many in one place like this. Except on tv. The CDC was proud of its channeler hording.

But before she could decide just how bad this was going to go, someone came into view that was not just any god. It was like coming face to face with the god. Nikolai Brandon was the reason they were here, yet he was like a figment of the imagination. The boogeyman. Something acknowledged but nobody really thought they’d encounter.

Just like the boogeyman, Brandon would kill them all as soon as look at them. Grym was no fool.

What happened next was unlike any channeling she’d ever encountered. Her hunt for gods was quite limited, and apparently contained to rather weak souls compared to this.

Something pushed her back. Zef scrambled to her feet. “Zef, I know the tunnels well enough to know we should run! We’re dead if we stay,” she tugged at her sister Atharim’s arm. “There’s too many of them and there’s him. Another time!”

She wasn’t going to abandon Zef, but the woman surely saw reason!

[Jay Carpenter]

Jay found a position leaning against the wall that seemed reasonably defensible yet involved enough to avoid missing the action. Allan’s question to Nox made him chuckle though.
“Because Nox has a soft spot for pathetic channelers who can’t get their own heads out of their ass,” a smirk twisted his lips that was assuredly cast at the aforementioned pathetic channeler on the other side of the wall.

But because the timing was right, Nox thought then to be the right moment to text. Because when is it ever not the right time? Jay chuckled again to himself, though the others were not privy to the humor of his inner monologue. Poor bastards missing out.

“Listen to Nox, brother. You will die and not in the nice, pretty way we all hope to end, if you don't get it under control” he told the stranger. If Nox vouched for him, snakes or otherwise, Jay would withhold judgement. He only let people try to kill him three or four times before he decided they were assholes. The two women though. They were the more dangerous ones. Jay watched them with the casualty of one predator acknowledging another.

Meanwhile, Nox’s anxiety was growing restless. He could practically feel darkness rising in his friend, and Jay had a feeling they were even shorter on time than before.

He kicked off from the wall and addressed Ascendancy with a plan, though it was to everyone interested in listening that he spoke. They needed to be ready to fight and having two Atharim trying to stab them in the backs while they did so was going to be quite distracting.

“I’ll take care of them. You have bigger problems,” he head-nodded toward the darkness.

“This will only take a minute,” he said with a bit of an uneasy sway to his step until he regained his bearing.

[Marcus DuBois]

The people who arrived were apparently acquaintances of Nox. The tension ratcheted up higher. He felt irritation skitter across his mind and shot him a glare that, after a moment, he decided to let remain. It was justified. The man had invited the Ascendancy, a Consul and two Rods of Dominion down into the tunnels and hadn't bothered to let any of them know that he had also asked members of the Atharim to join them? He flicked a look to Ascendancy before it returned to Nox. Was the man a moron? "Is there a reason you invited avowed enemies and didn't deign to let any of us know?"

He was about to say more when he felt vibration on one of the threads of spirit that extended down the tunnels. It was just a moment- and it stopped immediately. He raised his voice, threads of compressed air to conduct and fire as energy to amplify the vibration over the chatter as he spun and stepped toward in the direction of one of the tunnels. "They're coming." He listened over the spirit and with his ears, straining. Nothing. "Something is out there", he said, voice normal but no less tense.

[Ascendancy]

Theirs was the kind of tension before a battle that Nikolai loathed. Every ounce of his intuition demanded strategy and planning. He had contingency plans for everything, but he hadn’t considered Nox would invite Atharim into their midst. That one of them might channel bode the smallest sliver of understanding, though. Another former Atharim who could channel would aide the power to their side, but the women were expendable, and clearly hell-bent on extinguishing their mortal enemy.

Carpenter’s suggestion was approved. “Be quick about it,” was all the Ascendancy said before addressing Nox, Marcus and Allan once more.

"The horde has expanded. That’s not unexpected even if your timetable had accelerated. Are they advancing from the same direction at least?” he asked.

[Zephyr]

Zef didn't like this. She'd come for one god. Ended up with the Ascendancy himself and his employees. What the fuck. What had the Inquisitor gotten them into. She agreed with Grym. But she wanted that god. They were talking but she couldn't hear them. That wasn't good either. One guy came their way. The invisible wall fell and Zef stumbled forward.

The former Atherim godling she'd come for called after the man coming towards them. "I don't think you should go off alone."

A creature started barking and Zef looked past the gods. The darkness withered and shuttered with movement. It got closer. Zef had never seen anything like that. She stood shocked and still as one gnarled shaggy-skinned creature stepped into the light. "What the fuck is that?" Zef started walking backward.

[Jay Carpenter]

If anything, Jay’s kills were quick. A final mercy he liked to think. Though really the act was selfish. It helped him forget the blood spilled came from actual people. Blood was blood; enemies were enemies, but they were never people. Filling up his brain with the moaning sounds of the dying wasn’t the kind of thing he liked to keep on replay.

With a few choice exceptions.

Amengual and Placaso died too fast. Their mangled voices were the only anthems in Jay’s head at present. It was a grain of rice compared to the boulders of Everest in comparison, but the scale of horror tipped ever so slightly off the load of guilt dragging down his soul. They suffered, but they should have suffered longer.

“I’ll be quick,” he stated and filled himself with enough of the Power’s magic that cords snaked forth to wrap the two female Atharim’s bodies with inescapable bonds.
“Walk,” he ordered, ready to drag them just to expedite the process.

Once they were out of sight, which was exactly what Jay wanted despite Nox’s warning, he lowered his voice and leaned close. Though not too close. Didn’t want a head-slam to his face right then.
“When I say, you scream like you’re dying then run the shit away as fast as you can. I don’t understand all this snake cult business it is you’re in, but I promise I will defend myself and the rest of them from you both. I’d even protect you from the monsters that are on their way. Me killing you would be a mercy compared to what’s coming to rip your limbs from your body and eat the rest of you. But if you attack us, the best I can promise is your death will be quick.”

He stepped back to let them contemplate a few seconds, then gave a signal and the bonds wrapping them prisoner retracted into a whip that cracked sparks of lightining at their feet. “Go.” the snaps would sting with all the shock of a bolt from the sky if they struck true. He would chase them off if they didn’t run like hell, but not for too long. He had to get back.

[Grym]

This was bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. 

Grym found herself in tight situations before. She preferred to avoid these things before they got too hot, but even the best Atharim were cornered sometimes. Grym had her fair share of close-calls. While her luck held all these years, she didn't care to take chances when not absolutely necessary. There were five (six?) gods in their presence. Including the god of all gods. The creatures bearing down were likely to take them out and if they didn't, Grym and Z could wait for the stragglers. 

But none were so close as being dragged away by a god for execution. She struggled against the invisible bonds, panic starting to creep in with the impossibility of escape. She barely had time to process her own impending death when the god that deferred to Ascendancy told them to run. Grym was white as a sheet when she was dropped to her freedom. Was she to be hunted for sport? This one made a mistake, she thought and drew her battle axe for attack.

Then the shocks started. Every time she tried to surge forward, the shocks knocked her back. She growled at the god distributing the attention until she started to possibly consider he really did want them to run away.