Scion – Petro Campaign – Session 69
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 Jan 25th 2010
So, last entry I stopped right when we’d arrived at the Wailing Sea. Let me tell ya, things got a lot more intense after that. All of us were pushed to our limits fighting the minions of Aten and the chaos-spawn of Hundun. And we learned something about the angels of Aten that made me an ace-in-the-hole for our group. ^_^
Anyway, as we arrived at the Wailing Sea, we looked for a floating chunk of rock that was bisected by the wall of specters. Charles planned to create a barrier, much like Ray used to make, to keep the specters at bay while we made our way through the wall, as doing so in flight would have been tricky, given how little most of us knew about controlling our mounts. But as we flew in to land, a new surprise emerged from the wall to oppose us: Burnheart, the fire giant we’d killed only a few days earlier, stepped forward to meet us. He was now a towering undead manifestation of his former glory, glowing with pale blue flames and supported by a mass of zombies and several taotie masks.
We pulled up and remained airborne, all except Pierre, who leapt through the darkness to crash onto Burnheart’s rock, where he began destroying zombies with his chainsaw. I called to the others to take out the taotie masks first, and they did so, their precise shots making short work of the mind-warping titanspawn. Elisa wasted no time prepping a rocket launcher once the taotie masks were done, and she easily blew away the zombies even while T-Bone danced among them, taking out one after another alongside Pierre. Both of them were unscathed by Elisa’s rocket, T-Bone thanks to the cloak of chaos, Pierre thanks to his tremendous resilience. The zombies didn’t fare so well, and the rocket pretty much wiped them out.
As we turned our attention to Burnheart, several shitidama emerged from the Wailing Sea and flew screaming at us, but I sang out a brief exorcism curse. Yeah, you heard me, a curse. I hate shitidama, especially since they did a number on me during our climactic fight with Daitokuji. >_< The echoing ring of my exorcism bell drove them back into the Wailing Sea where they’d come from. About that time, Burnheart’s sword came crashing down on Pierre, and even though the big guy took the hit and remained standing, the blade cut deep. I don’t think I’ve seen Pierre take a hit that bad since he got smacked around by the titan in Glastonbury! >_< It’s okay, though. I forced him to sit tight and let me massage the pain away once the fight was over, and by the time I was done, I’d healed him almost as a good as new. ^_^
I also managed to sneak it a cinematic kiss with Yi during the battle. ^_^
Anyway, Elisa, Adam, and Charles finished Burnheart off. Again. First Daitokuji, then Burnheart…these titanspawn just don’t know when to stay dead, do they? >_< Then again, neither does Guan Yu apparently, so I guess I can’t complain too much. ^_^
Charles formed a barrier and with Elisa and Pierre’s help, we pushed through the wall of specters into the region beyond…which was pretty much like the area we’d left. Moving through the wall with the specters raging all around us was amazing! It was intimidating to be sure, but also horrifyingly beautiful in a macabre, creepy kind of way. I couldn’t help but pause and admire the sight for a few moments until Elisa prodded me to keep moving. I did get some marvelous photos, though! ^_^
Unfortunately, as soon as we emerged, servants of Aten descended upon us like they were waiting for our arrival. Several rasaps fired arrows of light at us, all of which impacted impotently on Charles’ barrier, but the rasaps were the least of our worries. They were led by four archangels, who were in turn backed up by a choir of 6 angels. The angels were singing in unison, and it didn’t take a genius to tell that their song, empty and mechanical though it was, was strengthening the already mighty power of the archangels. Unless they were stopped, there was no way we’d be able to handle the archangels’ fury. Hell, we’d had trouble with them before even without a choir to back them up. It sure didn’t take them long to smash through Charles’ barrier.
But that’s where I came in. ^_^ I realized that I could probably do at least a little to counteract the angels’ song with a bit of my own. So I cranked the volume on my iPod up and began to sing one of my songs. I really wish I’d had Echo there to sing with me. I’m always better with her. As it was, T-Bone backed me, and we must have been damn good because my music shut down the choir pretty quickly. ^_^
While I did that, Elisa fired another rocket at the rasaps, wiping them all out quickly. Meanwhile, Yi used her shadow calligraphy to create more shadow bullets for Adam, Natalia, and Charles, who fanned out, guns blazing, to kill off the choir of angels as quickly as possible.
The only problem with all of this was that the archangels all zeroed in on me since I was the one keeping their choir from being effective. >_< The first archangel’s sword plowed right through me, cutting me in two, so I shed my corpse, letting its two halves fall to the ground and decay into dust even as I caught my breath and continued singing. Then the other archangels swung their blazing swords and I just knew I was going to die.
But then T-Bone appeared in front of me, little more than a half-visible shadow, and fended off their blows with his cane, deflecting the blows enough for me to dodge out of the way. T-Bone saved my life! He’s definitely my hero, and Dahlia’s going to hear all about it!
As the fight continued, it became easier for me to disrupt the angels’ song as more of them were killed by my allies. The archangels didn’t let up, though, so as I continued to sing, I transformed into my half-skeletal undead person and warded them away with the horror of my deathly visage. It was enough to ward off a few of their blows, but one of them still managed to fight through the terror and land a blow. It hurt. A lot. I haven’t been hit that hard since…well, probably not since that oni hit me outside that tengu’s house in New York. And I was a lot less resilient then. Still, I managed to get back on my feet and keep singing.
By that point, the others had annihilated the rest of the choir, and the archangels turned their attention from me to our heavy-hitters. But by then it was too late, and we were able to finish off the rest of the archangels in short order. One of them managed to explode in a storm of light, but we were all able to withstand it. All except for T-Bone. I realized his danger too late to do anything about it, but fortunately Charles was quicker. He covered T-Bone at the last moment, absorbing most of the explosion.
Once the fight was done, I enthusiastically thanked T-Bone for saving my life. I even gave him and kiss…but I don’t think he appreciated it since I was still Undead Erika and he was basically kissing a skull. ^_^ I enjoyed it, though, even if he was a bit grossed out. ^____^
And speaking of grossed out, Pierre was kind enough to heal some of my damage: after a comment about me being a sweetheart or something ^_^, he leaned forward and kissed my heart through my exposed ribcage. The others were completely put off by it, but there was something so tender and intimate about it that I couldn’t help but shiver. I liked it. ^_^ I guess the others just don’t understand, but Yi didn’t really seem to mind. Neither did Elisa, for that matter. Yi also didn’t mind me being undead for awhile. She wouldn’t want to go to bed with me as Undead Erika, of course, but she didn’t mind when I held her hand. ^_^ I should get her to kiss my heart too. ^__^
Anyway, we still had some distance to go to reach the front lines and the 10th Court, and along the way, we had to fight our way through still more enemies. They were determined to keep us from the main battle, and I don’t blame them. We do tend to turn the tide when we show up. ^_^ Another group of archangels and angels, this time supported by more of Daitokuji’s robots, vectored in to stop us. As in the previous fight, I countered the angels’ song until the others had killed them all. Thanks to my undead visage, I managed to fend off the archangels until the choir was dead. Meanwhile, T-Bone and Natalia wiped out the robots.
After finishing them off, we continued soaring from one chunk of rock to the next until we could see the front lines…or at least those of us with super keen sight could. We’d finally arrived..but as we spurred our mounts onward to rendezvous with our allies who were defending the Courts, a horrifying beast of chaos, composed of gaping maws and lolling tongues, dragged itself around the ridge of a chunk of rock to intercept us (Charles called it the Beast of a Thousand Tongues, and it was apparently connected to Hundun somehow). Several black calamities, celestial hounds, and taotie masks slunk out of the shadows to harass us as well.
The beast’s very appearance was enough to drive mortals mad with terror (all I gotta say is that I’m sure Lovecraft knew at least a little about the titans), and even as it appeared, its chaos began seeping into our minds, encouraging us to do horrible things. Fortunately, we remained firm in the face of its madness. As usual, the others took out the dangerous but fragile taotie masks first while I kept the black calamities and celestial hounds at bay with my entrancing appearance (well, terrifying appearance in this case). Once the taotie masks were destroyed, we focused everything we had on the beast, which was tough as hell. Somewhere in there several more shitidama appeared to harass us with their filthy, spectral claws. But I’d had enough of them by that point. Seriously? I mean, seriously? Did they really think they were even close to being a threat to us by that point? I dispelled them with an off-handed shake of my exorcism bell.
Ultimately we were able to defeat the beast, which decayed into rotting flesh, leaving only one of its tongues as a relic of chaos. We told T-Bone it was all his, but he didn’t seem too interested in it. It was pretty disgusting. ^_^
With the beast dead, the way was clear, and we rode ahead to join Hou Yi, Nu Wa, and Fu Xi, who were standing firm at the forefront of the defending ranks of Celestial Bureacracy soldiers…