The Kingdom - Don't Get Lost In Heaven

[skullandscythe]

Red gets up off the floor where he had been resting when the fits of laughter hit the party. “It sounded like you guys had someone to play with as well. “ He looks at the new arrivals and squints at Ozzy. “Looks like it too. I don’t think “bloodbath” means what you think it means, Ozzy.”

Red starts going around, pulling his arrows out of the pile of animal corpses that used to be the giant horde that attacked them, and starts explaining how it got there.

“We were tracking the missing monks when we were attacked by this giant horde of mutant backyard critters. A lot of them ran off as we proved to be more than they could handle. It was odd-they were a hodge-podge of critters that don’t work well together being coordinated perfectly. They even had tactics, like climbing up onto the ceiling and dropping down on us-hitting our blind spots, as it were. If I had to guess, I think it was a summoning spell cast by some of the brothers upstairs.”

Red frowns as he examines the arrows he’s collected, sorting out the ones that can be reused from the ones that need repair. “As for the missing monks…it took me some time to find their tracks because they had been covered up by a large number of animal tracks. Like they were attacked by a giant horde of mutant backyard critters.” There’s a short pause. “I could continue to look for the bodies, but I think our time might be better spent finding the cisterns.”

Red, counting the arrows, realizes he’s missing a couple-the pair pinning the rodent to the ceiling. Proud but also frustrated that it’s still stuck to the ceiling, he calls out to Blair. “Hey, Blair! I need some help over here.”

Blair gives her sword one last good polish, so it's at a mirror shine under the torch light, then slides it back into its sheath across her back. "What'cha want, Red? Arrow stuck, is it?"

"Yeah. Figure I can reach it if you give me a boost."

Blair shrugs. "Sure, just don't go touchin' nothin' yer not supposed to be touchin'." She squats down and weaves her hands together. "Come on, we've got to get a move on."

Red looks mockingly offended. "Where ever did you get that idea, young lady? I am a paragon of virtue and chivalry! I wouldn't dream of such lechery," he replies with a puffed-out chest and blustery voice.
Red places his hand on Blair's shoulder and his foot in her hand. He won't touch any goods on purpose. Accidents, however, are fair game.

As Red prepares to vault up to grab his arrow from the ceiling, he feels his hand start to slip on some...goo on Blair's shoulder. He could have repositioned his hand, maybe he couldn't. What does happen for sure is that when Red puts pressure on that hand, it slips off and finds itself resting on Blair's ample and toned bust, and while he doesn't take advantage of the situation, he certainly doesn't do anything to remedy it, either.

Blair certainly does though, as after a moment of shock and surprise, Red feels her tense her muscles and toss him on the floor with a loud war shout. He hits the floor hard, and then Blair follows up Red's impromptu involuntary dismount with a kick to the ribs and another war shout. The blow feels like it not only knocks the wind out of Red's lungs, but all the rest of the air out of the room.

"You get your own damn arrows, and stick them up your arse!" she shouts, and stomps off over to Ozzy and the rest of the team.

Red lies there for a second, the familiar feeling of drowning coming over him until he takes a few quick breaths. Once the oxygen starts flowing to his brain, the first thought he has is Totally worth it.

Then, as if to add insult to injury, the king of all ugly rats that was pinned to the stalactite finally falls back down, breaking the arrowheads off at the shafts and, most importantly, landing on Red and knocking the wind out of him again. The smell of decaying rodent fills Red's nostrils and causes him to choke and cough violently on his first breath.

Yeah, still worth it. he thinks as he pushes the giant rat off of him and pulls the shafts out. He then joins the rest of the group looking pretty worse for wear, trying not to smile in case Blair is still feeling violent.
_________________
"There is nothing either good or bad,
but thinking makes it so."
-William Shakespeare

"A lesson without pain is meaningless, for you cannot gain something without sacrificing something in return."
-Fullmetal Alchemist, by Hiromu Arakawa

[admiralducksauce]

"That plan went tits up, didn't it?" Ozzy jibes at Red. Then he adds with a snort, "I don't think that was the breast thing to try on her. Heheheh... Seriously though, we look like a bunch of boobs just standin' around. Let's go kill us some priests."
_________________
"There's a LOT of cookie in a giant cookie."
- Ben

[skullandscythe]

Red shrugs sheepishly, like he just couldn't help himself, and shuffles off to find the path to the cisterns.
_________________
"There is nothing either good or bad,
but thinking makes it so."
-William Shakespeare

"A lesson without pain is meaningless, for you cannot gain something without sacrificing something in return."
-Fullmetal Alchemist, by Hiromu Arakawa

[fanchergw]

"Coming," Lucius calls back, justly loudly enough that Martin should be able to hear him. "Shush!"

Once he reaches the Novice, Lucius whispers, "We're not alone down here, so keep your damn voice down. Don't they teach you the concept of stealth here? They're already trying to get us by pumping some kind of poison into the air. Any luck with the books?"

[Gatac]

"You were gone," Martin says. "I wanted to make sure nothing had happened to you. My apologies if I compromised your silent approach."

The mention of poison takes him aback. Something is definitely wrong here; for the barest moment, he considers the possibility that Lucius is simply lying to exaggerate the danger, but the off-hand way in which the assassin mentioned it leads Martin to believe him. Poison. They're definitely on the track of something, but what could it be?

He looks back to the books. "Nothing more than what I have already told you, I'm afraid."
_________________
Gatac: Just making sure you are aware of life-saving buttsex.
Punkey: I've always been aware of life-saving buttsex. Best Red Cross training weekend ever.

[fanchergw]

"My hope was that we could get in and out of here without anyone ever being the wiser, but that ain't gonna happen."

Lucius pauses for a second to consider. "Okay, why don't you go alert the others to what we found here. I'll see if I can't track down where that guy I was following disappeared to."

[Gatac]

Martin nods. He's reluctant to leave, but Lucius is making sense - it doesn't matter if it's just Lucius or Lucius and Martin snooping around, they're not doing any good down here if their friends don't know what's going on.

"I'll alert the others," Martin says. "Please be careful, Lucius."

Martin slinks away, past the bookshelves and climbs the stairs back to the main library. As he takes the last few steps, he starts wondering about how exactly he's going to get back out into the courtyard without being seen.
_________________
Gatac: Just making sure you are aware of life-saving buttsex.
Punkey: I've always been aware of life-saving buttsex. Best Red Cross training weekend ever.

[fanchergw]

"Always. You too."

With Martin gone, now Lucius can begin working in earnest. Aware of the poison, or whatever it is being pumped into the room, Lucius tears a wide strip off his clothes and uses it to cover his mouth and nose. He begins silently making his way back toward where he lost the mysterious man, watching for and avoiding as best he can any grates where the gas is being pumped in.

Once he reaches the appropriate area, Lucius begins carefully scanning for any way the man might have disappeared: moving shelves, hidden switches, loose floor tiles, trap doors, etc.

[Punkey]

Blair glares furiously at Red. "Keep yer grabby arse in front, Red. Just because Rollins ordered me t'keep an eye out for you doesn't mean I can't beat you senseless, got it?"

Brandon shakes his head. "Enough distractions, children. Which way do the monk's steps lead, Red?"

"This way," Red says, and points deeper into the caves and rubs his bruised ribs.

"We could use Martin here," Ozzy ponders. "For the priest's leg." Brother Tatton and Benjamin walk up, each supporting Cardinal Raanan. The old man doesn't look good, his leg shows the tell-tale purple and swollen look of a badly broken bone, and he's in obvious pain. "You gonna make it?" Ozzy asks.

"I -" Raanan starts.

"Please, Cardinal, save your strength," Tatton says.

"Quiet, Brother Tatton," Raanan admonishes his aide. "I am injured, not dying. I shall be fine, as long as you do not ask me to run."

"Well, let me see what I can do," Eliott says. He kneels down and lays hands on Raanan's leg. The cardinal winces, but soon breathes a sigh of relief as the swelling shrinks down. "There," Eliott says. "It's not a permanent fix, I'd have to set it properly once we're topside, but you should be able to hobble along with it if you have to."

"Thank you," Raanan says.

"Alright, let's get out of this shithole," Brandon says.

----

Lucius, now having had his cover blown by Martin, has a few more options to use in his search for the mysterious figure. He retraces his steps, trying to find the spot where he lost his quarry. Once at the stacks where the man disappeared, he runs his hand along the underside of the shelves, looking for a hidden switch or trigger that opens the secret door he must have disappeared into.

Ow! He feels a sharp pain in his finger and yanks his hand out. A small dot of blood wells up on his index finger, and a peek under the shelf reveals a poorly-inserted nail poking through the woodwork. Damn poor craftsmanship. Disappointing. He looks at the blood on his finger, a glistening red dome, slowly growing as the puncture leaks more and more redness out. Lucius rubs it with his thumb, smearing the redness all over his fingers, then sticks his hand back under the shelf. There must be some kind of switch or lever here...

Lucius quickly runs out of shelf, though. Each shelf on both sides is empty. The idea that he somehow managed to simply evade Lucius enters his mind. Well, there can't be that many other ways out. Lucius looks down the column, and sees that there's maybe another 30 or 40 rows of shelves from where he's at, with the whole library basement no more than 50 feet wide. Fifteen-six. Got it.

He walks one row up, to Sixteen-six, and starts again. His right hand starts to feel numb as he runs it along the shelves, and his head is killing him. Must be the after-effects of the poison, he deduces. All the more reason to find this man quickly. At the end of the row, Lucius pulls his hand out from shelves. It feels tender and warm, almost swollen. He shakes it to get circulation back into his fingers.

When he stops, he almost shouts in surprise. His hand is huge! The fingers seem to have swollen up to nearly twice their normal size, and his entire hand is a soft, squishy red. The tiny puncture wound is constantly oozing redness and pus, and Lucius notices that there's some on the shelves, as well. Actually, he's left a trail of blood all the way down the row! His headache spikes, and the pain almost drops Lucius to the floor. When he can open his eyes again, he sees that now both hands are inflated, bloated flesh squishing out from under his bones as he braces himself on the floor. His hands are a mirror image of those poor bastards in the monastery courtyard, but much more disgusting. His head feels like it's going to explode, and the bookshelves are starting to spin around him.

This isn't real, Lucius tells himself as his forearm wrappings slowly tear and break away under the strain of his inflating body. No poison works this fast. This is the drugs, the gas they dosed me with, it must cause hallucinations. This isn't real.

Lucius hauls himself to his feet, and staggers into the aisle. He braces himself against the bookshelf, and looks at the plaque on the end. Eighteen-two. He looks across to the opposite bookshelf. Twenty-five-ten. He blinks a few times, then tries again. Two-thirty. Lucius can barely breathe as the swelling reaches his torso, and loosens his cloak before looking at the shelf above him again. Two-hundred-fifty-ninety. This is not good.

----

After ten minutes of stomping around in the caves, trying to distance themselves from the awful stench of mutated and decaying vermin (and failing) by the light of the one remaining torch and Ozzy, Brandon and Tobin's burning hand trick, Red glances up from the footsteps of the two missing monks and catches a glow of orange out of the corner of his eye. He motions for everyone else to follow him, and as he approaches the glow, he sees through his fading magic that they've finally found another guide arrow!

"Excellent," Tatton says. "They might have found their own way out through the cisterns!"

"Maybe," Tobins says. "I have a bad feeling about this."

"I do, as well," Brandon says. "Albert, stay with Red. Tobin, cover our rear. Those creatures must have come from somewhere, and the smell has only gotten worse as we've gotten closer to the monks."

Still, now that they're back on the right track, it's only a matter of minutes before they find themselves standing in front of the heavy wooden door that leads into the cisterns. Tatton was right, the monk's footsteps stop at the doorway and go inside. However, Brandon and Tobin were also right, as the stench of decaying flesh here is absolutely unbearable.

"So, I guess we have to go through the foul-smelling door of death, huh?" Albert says.

----

Martin makes his way back out of the basement and up to the library proper, still troubled by what he's seen and what has happened. What transpired in this place to turn it from a sanctuary of worship and peace into a trap of danger and lies?

Those thoughts are quickly displaced by the sound of Olli's shouts from outside. "Alright, stand back!" he shouts. "Get back! I don't want to have to hurt you, but I will if I have to!"

The front door stands open, and the guards are gone. Martin runs to the doorway, and sees Olli standing out in front of the library, backed into a corner by five or six of the sick villagers. They stagger towards him, hands on the heads and moaning in pain, but they are definitely not just asking for another drink of water.
_________________
Gatac: Disco Jesus is a dick.
Punkey: Yes.

[Gatac]

"What are you doing?" Martin shouts, hoping to catch the attention of the sick. He quickly closes the distance, but tries to appear nonthreatening. "We have cleared out the library for you to rest," he tells the sick. "It's nice and cool inside. If you would just follow me, we will get you fresh water and new dressings inside."
_________________
Gatac: Just making sure you are aware of life-saving buttsex.
Punkey: I've always been aware of life-saving buttsex. Best Red Cross training weekend ever.

[admiralducksauce]

"Where else are we gonna go?" Ozzy says, and kicks the door in.
_________________
"There's a LOT of cookie in a giant cookie."
- Ben

[fanchergw]

Lucius spends several minutes searching the shelves where the figure disappeared for some kind of hidden switch, but all he ends up with is a bloody finger. Time to widen the search.

Continuing stoicly with his search, Lucius starts feeling numbness and/or pain in various parts of his body. Gotta be the poison. Staggering on, it's not long before he starts seeing things that just cannot be: swollen hands, clothing tearing, even the numbers on the shelves seem to be changing. At one point, his knees buckle and he has to use the shelves to drag himself back up to his feet.

Clearly he cannot continue for the moment. Lucius focusses on trying to stagger back out of the area as best he can, trying to get himself as far as possible from where he believes the source of the poison is located. Perhaps that will give him time to recover...

[Punkey]

Lucius plods from shelf to shelf, each step accompanied by a wet slapping sound, his breathing becoming labored as he struggles to remain upright. The hallucinations of the damned poison continue to worsen, Lucius feels like he weighs at least 300 pounds, his cloak more of a cape on his massive bulk. Shadows flicker in and out at the edges of his vision, and Lucius feels the rush of adrenaline from being the hunted, not the hunter. They think I'm weakened. That I'm an easy target. Lucius' fingers manage to grab his knives. Let's see how wrong they are. Lucius twirls his knives, and looks down to see the illusory swelling has gone down considerably, and he feels significantly lighter. The assassin hauls himself to his feet, despite his pounding headache, and starts to move.

---

Two things say a big hello to Ozzy when he kicks the cistern door open: a rush of fetid water, black and yellow with...some kind of goo, and yet another wave of an all too familiar stench of sweetness and decay from the alleys of Ripperdan, like all the ghouls Ozzy's blown up are getting their revenge by belching in his face. There's been a cavalcade of foul smells so far in these fucking caves, but this is the first time he's recognized any of it, and these cisterns smell like ghoul.

Ozzy's got nothing left to vomit at this point; the Dire Mole's grotesqueries saw to that. He stumbles back, splashing in the filth, and just... slumps.

"Aqueducts," he mutters. "When we get out of this I am going to revitalize urban plumbing. Also, I can definitely smell the connection between the ghouls and the water."

Anton's reaction wouldn't be too different from Ozzy's, if it weren't for the fact that he merely puts it aside in his mind by concentrating on figuring out how much replacing this entire suit so he never has to wear it ever again will cost. However, the stench that was only all-pervasive a moment ago is now overpowering, and that pushes him over the edge. Once he's finished re-aqquainting himself with his last meal, Anton roughly wipes his mouth and what little clean areas are left on his sleeve. "Fuck yes. This whole place smells like it."

Once his eyes stop watering, Ozzy sees that what he's looking at is supposed to be some kind of dry antechamber, with shelves of tools and spare supplies and a workbench up against the walls. It's not dry anymore though, as the inch or so of water on the floor testifies to. A slick of goo floats atop the water, clinging to the walls and leading deeper into the cisterns. A tunnel, chiseled out of the stone of the cave, leads towards the cisterns.

"I think we can all smell...whatever that is," Brandon says. "What makes you think it's ghoul?"
"You weren't in Ripperdan," Ozzy says simply, and walks on.
"Right," Brandon says, and follows behind Ozzy.

As you all splash deeper into the cisterns, the mildew on the hand-cut stone walls starts to take on a decidedly different sheen. Thick layers of brown slime coat the walls, oozing black sludge into the water below. Dark red veins appear in the slime, and wind their way down the walls towards some deeper part of the cisterns. Anton is thoroughly creeped out by the fact that he's now knee-deep in whatever is causing the sickness in the village, and is trying to hold his breath as much as possible. Red just doesn't like that there is no good way to tell where they're going or what's in front of them.

"I'm pretty sure we've found the source of the plague," Eliott says, scraping some of the slime off the walls with a knife.
"If that is indeed what this is," Tobin says. "Who knows what kind of affliction we're dealing with."
"Well, as long as we resist the urge to drink the obviously contaminated water, we should be fine," Brandon says.
"What about our brothers?" Tatton says. "We saw their footprints go in here, but we have seen no sign of them."
"Hopefully, they found their own way out through here," Brandon says.
Ozzy shakes his head. "Sure, and this place would make a great vacation spot."
"Beats the alternative, that there's something really nasty waiting for us in the cisterns proper," Brandon says.
"Yeah, bad things won't happen if we just think they won't," Red mutters. "No offense, but in this situation, I'd rather plan for the worst and be pleasantly surprised when good things happen."
"That would be why I said 'hopefully'," Brandon says.
"And because you said it, now it's not going to turn out well. Like it could do anything else in a cavern that smells like that bitch's handiwork," Anton says.

---

The crowd around Olli turns towards Martin, and he sees just how far these poor souls have progressed. Their sores weep white fluid, and some of the worst of them seem to be suffering the same kind of bone softening he saw in the victims of Ripperdan. They stagger towards him, one of them managing to point an eye in Martin's direction.

"Is...th-there...inside?"
"You will be tended to inside," Martin repeats, stepping aside and motioning for the crowd to walk into the library.
"O...okay," he says, but continues to stand there. "He...says...he..."
"Your pain will be soothed inside," Martin says. He's fighting to keep it together, if only long enough to let Olli slip away.

Which Olli does, slowly creeping down away from the crowd. The sick villagers slowly file into the library, and Olli approaches Martin once the danger has gone.
"Thank the Gods you came when you did. They were muttering something about how 'he said you must be stopped'. I was afraid I'd have to fight my way out."
"The fighting I can deal with," Martin says and swallows heavily. "It's looking at them and knowing that...that they're all going to die, and that I'm standing here, and I'm lying to them...there's nothing I can do. Nothing." He looks at Olli. "That's hard."
Olli nods. "Yes." He sighs. "I've gone through all of my stock of ointments and blends, nothing's even slowing it down. Maybe that monk was right, this isn't natural." He looks around. "Where'd the other guy go, Lucius?"
"Lucius...we need to go back for him, he's still in the basement of the library," Martin says. "It's just our luck that I've just put a crowd of delirious plague victims between us and him."
"Wait, what is he doing down there?"
"That is an excellent question," Martin says. "He...we snuck in there on the suspicion that there was something afoot with the monastery, and while I've no hard proofs to offer there is altogether far too much cloak and...not exactly dagger, but I believe my point is clear. Something is not right in this place, and if we could just gather everyone we can trust, we would have the ability to investigate more thoroughly."
"With Brandon and the rest of my squad off in the cisterns with your friends, I think we're it, Martin," Olli says. He looks up at the abbot's office. "Do you think the monks have something to do with all this? Where'd they all go, anyway? I haven't seen most of them for a while now."
"They may be in the basement," Martin suggests. "But, ah, Lucius indicated that he did not welcome my attempts to assist him there. Maybe we should check the abbot's chambers first before we join him, so if we can divine the plot from there."
"Maybe, but when a member of my squad needs help, we don't screw around, we get them out. Is Lucius the kind of guy who would ask for help, even if he needed it?"
"Lucius would not utter so much as a moan were he torn in two pieces," Martin says. "Oh, to naught with the abbot's chambers. Lucius can complain when we're done helping him. Let us join him and see what he has discovered."
Olli smiles and claps Martin on the back. "Damn right. But how are we going to get past the sick?"
"It just so happens that we keep a store of the extremely potent ointments underneath the library main," Martin says with a wink. "I shall need your help to carry the chest that holds it up to the sick, Olli."
Olli nods. "Slay them with kindness. Very Open Hand."
Martin coughs. "I would rather that we make haste and speak not of slaying anyone. It is a bad habit to start and hard to quit."
"Right," Olli says, and claps his hands together. "Where to?"
"The basement," Martin says. "I do wonder where Lucius is now."

---

Lucius has managed to stagger his way behind one of the stone pillars, and waits for one of his assailants to get sloppy. His body feels like it's at its normal size again, and he's pleased to see that his clothes are still in one piece as well.

As he lies in wait, his headache spikes again, and he can literally feel his head pulse with the pressure. The shelves start to spin, and Lucius hits the floor again, this time, he can barely muster the strength to get up on his hands and knees. Lucius feels something...slither down his backside, and he quickly grabs at whatever it is that's attacking him, when it grabs back! The creature wraps around his hand, but when he tries to pull his hand free, he feels a sharp pain in his side.

More strange tentacles slide down his backside, and Lucius gets ahold of a second one, this time flipping over onto his back to get a look at the creature that's attacking him, but when he follows the pink, fleshy appendage back to its source, he feels it merge into his own back! Lucius groans with the realization that this must be another hallucination, but this time, it seems to be much more dangerous. The tentacles snake towards his neck, and it's all Lucius can do to keep them from strangling him. One of them makes it through his defenses, and quickly wraps tightly around his windpipe. Lucius' struggling becomes weaker as he feels himself being choked out by his own hallucinations, and then everything goes black.

---

"Does this place never end?" Albert says as they continue to slog through the cisterns.
"The ladder should be in the chamber coming up," Tatton says.
"Good," Blair says, "I'm about to get armor rot from being wet for this damn...long..."

Her voice trails off as she, and everyone else, is dumbfounded as they walk into the main chamber of the town cisterns. The black veiny slime coats all the walls, veins joining together and becoming bigger and bigger, until they join into the center of the room, and the cause of the astonishment.

A tower stretches from floor to ceiling, a pulsating column of black slime, leaking sludge into the water supply. Boils and pustules emerge from its surface and then burst, releasing white and green slime into the water. Human bones stick out of its surface, and the entire assembly is knotted with massive fibers of muscle tissue.

"Well, I think we've found the source of the infection..." Brandon says.
"Yeah, no shit," Ozzy replies. "How do we kill it?"
"I say we light it up," Tobin says, clenching his fist in anticipation of unleashing a blast of flame.

One of the dead bodies at the base of the tower rolls over, and Brother Tatton freezes. "Brother Stuart!" Tatton runs to the base of the tower as the Open Hand monk flops upright. "Brother, are you alright?"
"Tatton, get away from him!" Red shouts. "He might be a ghoul!" Red draws an arrow back to his cheek, aiming at Stuart in case he tries something.
"Brother Tatton," Stuart says, a rivulet of black bile running out of his mouth. The monk is pale, white as a sheet, and obviously very, very sick. "What are you doing here? You must go, now."
"I told you that we would be leaving here together, and I keep my promises. Where is Sister Tomasa?"
"She..." Stuart says, "we do not feel her, but that does not mean she is gone." A spasm wracks Brother Stuart's body, and a gurgling sound eminates from deep inside the pillar. "Brother Tatton, I am sorry. Please, forgive me," he says as the dribble of bile falling from his mouth begins to increase. "I have failed you."
"No, no, I will get you out of here," Tatton says, "We will leave no one behind."
"You must," Stuart says, and another spasm shakes his body. "You must." He bends over, and vomits out more black goo, like what the pillar's pustules are leaking. He looks back up at Tatton, terror in his eyes. "You must leave, now!"

Tatton wraps his arm around Brother Stuart's back and hauls him to his feet. "No, we're leaving together, Brother." He tries to pull Stuart away, but suddenly Stuart is yanked back, and Tatton falls into the water. He looks back, and you all suddenly see what caused the fall: a cord of flesh connecting Stuart to the pillar like an umbilical cord, blended right into his back. The pillar howls with pain, and from inside the tunnels, other howls and screeches answer back. Anton, Ozzy and Red's spines shiver with the sound, which they all recognize as the cries of more ghouls.

The pillar quivers again, and the cord turns black as it fills with fluid. "It's too late to save me, Brother," Stuart says. "Save yourselv-" He drops to his knees as the cord's contractions pump the vile fluid into the body of the poor monk, which starts to swell with the influx of liquid. Brother Stuart's gut starts to expand with the volume, and it pours out of his mouth like a fountain. He says nothing more, but his eyes beg for you all to leave before...well, none of you have any idea what's going to happen next, but you're all pretty sure it's not going to be good.
_________________
Gatac: Disco Jesus is a dick.
Punkey: Yes.

[skullandscythe]

Oh fuck, he's turning into a ghoul.

Red decides to put the monk out of his misery and lines his shot up with the poor bastard's head before firing.
_________________
"There is nothing either good or bad,
but thinking makes it so."
-William Shakespeare

"A lesson without pain is meaningless, for you cannot gain something without sacrificing something in return."
-Fullmetal Alchemist, by Hiromu Arakawa

[e of pi]

Anton's not exactly thrilled by this development, but hangs back and waits. This reeks of mojo, and the demon queen's at that. If there's one thing he knows about powerful mojo, it's that you leave dealing with it to those who know about it. Despite that, he stays ready, because if there's anything else about mojo, it's that it doesn't tend to effect those who can deal with it. Ripperdan would have taught him that if it hadn't already been in the Rules.
_________________
[12:34] e of pi: And I suppose you'd say the same about pedophilia robots?
[12:34] Punkey: They provide a valuable service.
[12:35] Punkey: Priests and ice cream truck drivers have never been more productive.

[fanchergw]

The hallucinations seem to be subsiding, which Lucius takes as a sign that his body is fighting off the poison. Unfortunately, he soon finds out just how wrong he is as the pain in his head swells like the roar of the sea. Struggle though he might, he soon passes out as his body succumbs to the poison...

[Punkey]

Red lets the arrow fly, and it blows straight through the monk's left eye, pinning the now grossly obese body to the tower of flesh and bone, like a grotesque fountain of black. The column quivers with the impact, but the wet pumping noises stop, and the monk's body voids itself of the black bile, deflating like a overstretched water skin.

---

After bribing the brainwashed sick with ointments and potions, Olli and Martin slowly make their way down the steps into the library basement. Nothing seems awry, but in the background, Martin hears the grinding of stone slabs and wood against each other.
_________________
Gatac: Disco Jesus is a dick.
Punkey: Yes.

[admiralducksauce]

"Nice shot," Ozzy says to Red. Then he turns to Tobin and flickers of fire dance across his fingertips. "You were saying let's light it up?"
_________________
"There's a LOT of cookie in a giant cookie."
- Ben

[skullandscythe]

There's a moment of silence following Stuart's death. That's all the time Red can spare.

"Sounds like we've got more ghouls coming soon. I'll check the rest of the room and make sure most if not all the entrances are sealed; I'd rather not fight a two front battle. I'll need someone to collapse the tunnels for me, though."
_________________
"There is nothing either good or bad,
but thinking makes it so."
-William Shakespeare

"A lesson without pain is meaningless, for you cannot gain something without sacrificing something in return."
-Fullmetal Alchemist, by Hiromu Arakawa

[admiralducksauce]

"I don't know if we wanna collapse stuff right now," Ozzy thinks. "I don't see an obvious way out, but that sister Tomasa must be somewhere. People, look around and find us a way out once we've burnt this fucker down."

Ozzy glances over the abomination, looking for a brain or heart or eyes or some sort of weak spot.
_________________
"There's a LOT of cookie in a giant cookie."
- Ben