Scion – Petro Campaign – Session 7
This account was originally found on Livejournal, I am not the original author—I am just a fan of the journal and have found reading it on livejournal clunky to navigate and rife with errors/instability (such as having to refresh multiple times due to the page in questions becoming unavailable often requiring multiple refreshes. The original post can be found here, published by DJ-Yomi, and was published on Sep 1st. 2007.
…CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS ENTRY
So, there we were, trapped in a cave thanks to the giants who had pulled a massive boulder down to seal the entrance. At first, I was worried that we wouldn’t be able to get out, but Ray and Pierre didn’t seem too upset. They assured the rest of us that it wouldn’t be difficult for them to pulverize the boulder. We decided to wait until morning to do so, though, since that would give the giants plenty of time to move on and would also let Elisa recover a bit from her remaining wounds.
Pierre called up a few of his ghosts and had them play some comforting background music, but that wasn’t really to my taste, so I settled down near Elisa and cranked up the volume on my iPod. The crawling feeling under my skin wouldn’t go away. I’ve never thought of myself as particularly claustrophobic, but then again, I’ve never actually been trapped underground before. I couldn’t get the thoughts of my mother’s maggot-ridden body languishing in the Underworld out of my mind. I kept getting more and more anxious until I couldn’t sit still anymore.
I guess I must have muttered something really discouraging, because the others quickly figured out that I was way too nervous. They did their best to put my mind at ease (well, all except for Ray, who, sensitive as ever, was more annoyed by my behavior than anything else), but it was Pierre who really comforted me. In calm, rational words, he reminded me that he and I were much alike, both being children of death gods. He reminded me that we had no need to fear, for like the dead, we are a part of the earth, and it is a part of us. I argued that I just don’t follow that side of my mother. I’m a daughter of her bright, creative side, the side of her that existed before she died and became the queen of Yomi. But Pierre encouraged me to embrace both sides of my mother. He said that she still has both a light and dark side, it’s just that the light side has atrophied since her death. He told me that if I can embrace both sides, it will be easier for me to reconnect with my mother and, just maybe, bring back a little of her brightness too.
Talking with Pierre really helped comfort me. I felt so much better afterward and was able to calm down a lot. I’ve always liked Pierre, but now I have a new level of respect for him. He showed a different side of himself in the cave; I never thought he could be such a wise man. And he gave me renewed confidence that I’d be able to reunite with my mother after all.
Around 6:00 a.m., we decided to get out of the cave. Pierre and Ray stood side by side in front of the boulder that blocked the exit and made short work of it. I’m used to seeing them cut down living foes, but let me tell, it’s a completely different thing to watch them turn such a huge boulder into rubble. The sound was incredible. I wish I’d been able to sample it. With a little modulation to take the edge off, it would make an awesome effect for one of my tracks.
It was good to breath fresh air again. I couldn’t help but wonder if what I felt was like what a corpse feels when it crawls its way from the ground.
Unfortunately, my joy at being out of the cave only lasted a few moments, because before we could get moving, we heard some very impressive howls from what had to be some very impressive wolves. I turned nervously to Adam and asked if they were fenrir, but he shook his head. They turned out to be wulfenjar, wolf-riding berserkers who serve Loki. We’d seen them before when we were dealing with Solomon Grundy. Hel sent a group of them to harass the big giant. They’d been pretty impressive then, and I think we were a bit nervous about this fight. Well, I was anyway. Ray wasn’t, of course.
The wulfenjar crested the hill and charged down on us. Adam must have understood the wolf-riders’ shouts, because he warned us that they would give no quarter. Like we needed it. I shouldn’t have been worried at all. Ray, Anna, Elisa, Adam, T-Bone and Pierre made short work of them. Keiko and Sera stuck close to me and helped shoot down one of the wulfenjar. I have to say, Keiko kicks ass for such a mild-mannered booking agent. She’s no whirlwind of blood-letting like Ray or Anna, but she handles herself really well!
After the fight, Elisa cut the heart from one of the surviving wulfenjar and fed it to her jaguar. I shuddered. As I’ve said before, I have a strong stomach for blood and gore, but seeing her reach in and pull out a guys heart while he’s still breathing…well, screaming, anyway…is a little unsettling. Still, that’s how her pantheon works, so I guess I can’t really complain. As I was watching Elisa work, though, a thought occurred to me. If Pierre were to raise the wulfenjar as a zombie, it would be heartless! I know zombies don’t really have feelings like the living do, be even so that struck me as incredibly sad. A heartless zombie! I commented on that to my comrades, but they just looked at me like I was crazy. Fortunately, Pierre didn’t raise the heartless corpse; that would have been just too depressing.
On the brighter side, I made friends with Elisa’s jaguar. The big cat had gotten hurt by one of the wulfenjar during the fight, and I couldn’t let it suffer from its wounds like that, poor thing. So I asked Elisa if I could heal it. She seemed grateful, and so I knelt and began petting the jaguar with Mara’s locket wrapped around my hand. Pretty soon, I’d healed it, at least enough so that it would recover from the rest of its wounds in a few days instead of a few weeks. The cat seemed grateful to. It likes me now. Jaguars have very rough tongues, by the way.
We briefly discussed what the appearance of the wulfenjar meant. Did it mean that Loki was trying to stop us? If so, surely he knew that the wulfenjar wouldn’t be able to handle the job. Maybe he was just trying to probe us for weaknesses or something. Anyway, we didn’t really have time to worry about it. We had to deal with the giants. *Sigh* I guess we couldn’t put it off any longer.
Anna tracked the giants back to the mill they were building. The others went up and scouted it out while Keiko, Sera, and I hung back (I’m better at being seen than at not being seen). There were seven giants and four huge wolves (but not fenrir; I checked with Adam) around the mill. Those didn’t look like good odds to any of us, so we retreated. We decided to wait until nightfall, when the giants would almost certainly split up into two or three groups to go about their business.
We were right. T-Bone scanned the moon to see the surrounding landscape and sure enough the giants had broken up into three groups – a group of three and a group of two, each with one wolf, were heading out to gather more trees or something, and a group of two giants and two wolves stayed behind to guard the mill. The harpies from the other mill had also gathered around the giants’ mill and looked like they were trying to gather the courage to attack the giants there. Great. Harpies. I can’t tell you how much I was looking forward to puking my guts up again when we went to deal with them.
Ray and I called in the rest of our followers, and we decided to ambush the biggest group of giants first since that group looked the most dangerous. We hid near one of the dried out channels that they use to move around and waited for them to show up. And show up they did.
I have to warn you, things got pretty bad for me about this point. I can honestly say it was one of the worst nights in my life. But, by some miracle, I got through it.
Sadly, we didn’t really ambush the giants because I’m a complete idiot when it comes to concealing myself. I guess the giants heard me moving around or something. I think I may have accidentally hit the click wheel on my iPod and made the display light up. They noticed us…or me, at least, instantly.
I decided to take advantage of their attention to stun them with Amaterasu’s brilliance as I’ve done so often before. I was a little out of sorts at having been discovered, so when I stood up to use the Heavenly Flare, I said something about how we didn’t agree with the giants’ plans and were going to attack them so that we could put an end to their work. Then I took a picture (not a good one) and used Heavenly Flare, expecting the giants to be dazed and stunned for a few seconds while my friends attacked them.
Ummm…giants are made of sterner stuff than most of what we’ve been fighting. They weren’t blinded or dazed or anything. They were really pissed off at me, though, and so one of them stepped forward and hit me with his axe. I went flying.
It hurt. A lot. I’ve never in my life felt so much pain. I thought I was going to die. Hell, I’ve had paramedic training, and I know a little about medicine – I almost did die. My entire midsection was a bloody, broken mess. I could barely move or breathe, much less stand up.
By the time I gathered my wits and regained my bearings, my friends were mixing it up with the giants pretty badly, and were doing a great job of it. They didn’t really need me to help, and I really should have stayed out the fight at that point. But something snapped inside me. Maybe it was Oiwa again, or some part of my mother’s blood that I’ve never felt before. Or maybe – probably – I was just so frightened at having been nearly killed that I couldn’t help but lash out in the only way I knew how. It was probably all of those things, but mainly just fear.
I staggered to my feet and stumbled toward where Ray was fighting one of the giants. By this time, they’d already finished off the one that hit me (damn, my friends are brutal), so I challenged the next one I could see. I shouted to him to get his attention and then…I don’t know exactly what I said, but I unleashed a stream of profanity that was scathing enough to make my friends pause and look at me with shock (I don’t really curse that much…at least not like I did at the giant). I think I punctuated it with something like, “How dare you strike a daughter of Izanami!” Yeah, it’s cheesy, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. I mean, gimme a break. Most of my ribs were broken and I’d lost a lot of blood. Besides, it was an off night for me even before I was nearly cut in half.
Anyway, I was able to lock eyes with the giant using the force of my personality. I made him forget everything else he was doing so that he just stood there staring at me. My girls knew what to do, and so did Ray. They waited for just the right moment, and then all attacked the defenseless giant at once. The bastard didn’t have a chance (serves him right). In fact, my girls finished him off with their pistols! Power to the youkai!
T-Bone dealt with the wolf with the help of Ray’s followers, and the others took down the other giant. Adam really rocked tonight, by the way. I’ve never seen him as ferocious in combat as he was tonight. It’s like he suddenly started throwing caution to the wind and unleashing the berserker fury that the Norse are known for.
With the giants dead, I collapsed against a tree. I was in so much pain I thought I might pass out. Everyone gathered around to make sure I was all right. Anna surprised me. She was really concerned about me. She’s always been kinda remote and cold, but she really seemed sincerely worried. I assured her that I’d be okay. Satsifed that I wasn’t going to die on the spot (I bet I’d make a hot zombie, by the way, and if I do ever die, Pierre had better raise me as one), the others went to inspect the giants. Quinn, Keiko, and the rest of my girls stayed nearby, and Elisa’s jaguar came over and nuzzled me comfortingly. She really does like me. ^_^
The others drained the giants’ blood – it’s a pretty potent elixir, after all. I wasn’t really interested, and neither was Ray. Blood and Shinto don’t really mix that well. I mean, I’m sort of inherently tainted by death anyway, so it’s not a big deal for me, but I still respect the principles Fukuda-san taught me. Ray stayed away from the corpses while the others worked.
We still had two other groups of giants to deal with. I knew I wouldn’t be any use to the others, so I thought about heading back to our campsite. But the pain had subsided a bit (the divine vigor I’ve gained recently must have something to do with that), and besides, if any trolls showed up (they didn’t), I could save my friends a lot of trouble by turning the trolls to stone with Amaterasu’s light. So I decided to soldier on.
Actually, I’m glad I did. Sure, it was hell making it through the rest of the night; hiking through the woods is incredibly painful when you’re on death’s door. But I got Adam to help me along. With one arm over his shoulders, I let him half carry me as we hiked along. Despite my pain, I couldn’t waste the opportunity to flirt with him, so I played up the poor, defenseless, damsel-in-distress angle. It worked like a charm. I could sense his clouded demeanor softening up as we walked. I think he warmed up to me in a way he never has before.
Unfortunately, things might not be as “over” between Adam and Anna as the two of them said they were. Anna caught on to what I was up to and shot me some very dirty looks. Getting along with her might be harder than I thought…
To be honest, I don’t remember much of the second fight against the giants. My friends took care of the lumbering brutes without too much trouble and harvested more blood. I’m not sure how much they have now, but it’s a lot. The stuff apparently makes a person stronger but dulls the wits. Not a good trade-off if you ask me, but then again, I’m not really a fighter. I do remember talking to Quinn, Kimiyo, and Dahlia during this fight. We discussed how we really needed to find a better way to resolve issues; the constant violence just doesn’t work for me.
Anyway, there was just one group left – the giants at the mill. The harpies were going to be a problem since they were as likely to attack us as they were the giants. But T-Bone took care of that the same way he took care of them before by playing his relic trumpet, which put the harpies in a trance and kept them out of the fight until we were ready for them.
The girls and I moved up to the edge of the clearing to keep an eye on the fight and to help with our guns. The others charged in to fight the giants face to face. Even Elisa ran in with her machete, which really surprised me since she’s usually content to snipe. I guess the bloodlust had gotten the best of her. A bunch of my friends also drank some of the giants’ blood, and I’m sure Elisa was one of them. She probably didn’t want its powers to go to waste.
I tried to fire a shot with the pistol Keiko got for me awhile back, but I didn’t come close to hitting and the recoil hurt so much that I dropped the pistol and abandoned trying to participate in the fight. The others didn’t need me anyway, of course. It didn’t take them long to finish off the last of the giants and their wolves. Then we attacked the harpies, which snapped them out of T-Bone’s song. We finished them in short order too.
So, in the end, we wiped out the giants and harpies. We now have the two pieces of the relic that Odin wanted Adam to find. Trust me, I was ready to say we’re done and head home. Among other things, I wanted to visit Mara. Her company would be welcome, and I know she could heal my wounds quickly. But then Anna reminded us that she still had to hunt the Nemean bear. So, it looks like we’ll be sticking around for another day or so after all. I just hope Loki doesn’t send in more reinforcements.
We returned to our campsite and settled down to rest. I wasn’t really all that tired, but I forced myself to sleep because I thought it would help me recover from my wounds more quickly.
And was I ever right! I just woke up about an hour or two ago, and I’m completely healed! I don’t even have a scar (thank the gods)! I feel pretty drained, but I’ll definitely take that over the pain of a crushed ribcage. I’m mystified, but I think I understand what’s happened. My divine blood has been responding to the stuff that’s been happening to me. Maybe…maybe I’m starting to accomplish what Pierre was encouraging me to do. Maybe I’m becoming more in tune with the part of my heritage that resides in the Underworld. Maybe that’s why, like one of the living dead, I need less rest and have what is starting to feel like boundless vigor – vigor from beyond the grave, I guess. Or maybe my miraculous healing comes from the live-giving power of my half-sister Amaterasu (that’s probably what Fukuda-san would say, anyway).
Whatever the reason, I gotta say I like it.