floatingplot | Team Idiots / Part 2

...Oh! I get this!

The Ocean god made the world of water, then made a island. Then he made the original race--those zombie guards from before.

Then something bad came for the things on the island, and he split his power among four other gods too. So... then they held back the darkness... and the Ocean god watched over everything... and he made the islands, too.

This kinda. Is important. Really important. But why does everyone hate him? That's... actually things a good god would do.

[The priest is robed, not monstrous, untouched by the contamination of magic madness somehow. The scroll unrolls into a map of the ancient world.

It shows five cities.

East Blue, the city drenched in magic on the surface, attributed- To Isate, wait, what?
Atuin, the floating city of Cang Long.

These two, at least, aren’t changed:

Sakmet, the city of Metoth.
Saena, the city of Angha.

Those four each have a red cross somewhere on them, an X marks the spot in places you might know as untamed wilderness where nothing is. Totally. Of course the tourist and other modern maps of the cities are entirely accurate, trust your gods.

And the fifth, the capital in the center of all four:

Righad, the capital city.

There’s an extra new addition to the map, a messy scrawl of ‘Dome Righad’ on a piece of blank ocean.

But the map doesn’t end merely with the world. It shows a blank stretch of stars, and there’s an X up there, too...]

[...

Ed holds out a hand.

Now there are two maps, and he pockets the duplicate.]

...An X in the stars? [Even as dumb as he is, he knows he's missing something. But he carefully rolls the scroll back up, and tucks it back in the priest's arms.]

Let's try the staircase.

[Up the staircase is a room.

A gate is present in it, a mirror to the gate present in Atuin. But all of its exposed crystals are dark, and it does not do anything more than glow a little harder at their presence.

It's going to need power, a lot of power, and that is a problem because in the distance through the open windows you can see the tentacle mouthed monsters pouring out of the jail. Left to attack the guards, the guards left to mindlessly attack them, splitting, splitting...

An army of hungry scaled things is pouring out, and, well, a gigantic magic signal...]

...oh.

Whoopsie.

...[Battler frowns, and turns to Ed.] Buy me some time, keep them from getting here too soon. And please, look away.

[Not that it really matters, with this much magic here, but he has to try. He hums it more than he sings it...if it can repair broken things, maybe he can make the crystals remember having energy. It'd be the same as changing batteries, in a sense.

Besides, he's the Endless Sorcerer now. Of course he can 'revive' some crystals, dammit, or Beato won't let him hear the end of it.]

Come, remember what energy you had...Don't you remember?

[They are so old, Battler. These are tired crystals, rejected crystal. They can barely remember the feel of magic.

Oh and Ed, here they come. There's an army of them charging down the street, towards the temple, towards food.]

Okay. Gotta stop them. Can't use magic. Or...

[To buy Battler time, Ed flies a little out of the window, and focuses as much power as he can reasonably allow into a Sanctuary, covering the steet with it to bar the passage forward.]

STOP RIGHT THERE, TENTACLE DEMONS!

...[Battler takes a moment to appreciate that Ed is a special kind of stupid reserved for action movies, before continuing to work. He coaxes, soft and gentle, trying to get them to remember.

They were young once. Bright, full of energy, perfect. Come on, don't they remember? Surely they can still remember what form they had, what energy they had.]

[They are god-damned tentacle demons. All your shout does is encourage them to go faster.

They bash up against the sanctuary.

But you know what's great about really loud shouting? It attracts other things.

A massive bone golem snake punches through the ground underneath Ed, mouth open.]

Battler, hurry up..!!

[Unsure how long the sanctuary will end up holding at this point, he keeps it going as long as he can, a hand raised to it to channel power into it--the more seconds it stands for the more seconds Battler has to coax the crystals back into working order, after all.

His other hand levels at the Bone Golem, and an orange point of energy appears in it, quickly turning red and firing in a large Burst stream towards the snake. With any luck that'd be enough to get it to turn back--if not he was about to have to get out of there really fast, and that would really suck for many reasons.]

[Working as fast as he caaaaan.] Come on, come onnnn, don't you remember?

[WORK, DAMMIT.]

[Another crystal springs to life, of the ten. This gate once ran off the powers of the gods themselves, perhaps, because it requires so much energy. But they strain for Battler, trying to spring to life.

The tentacle-mouthed things attach themselves to the sanctuary and they-

They devour it. Whole.

And they keep coming.

The bone golem reels from the blast, shattering a rotten building as it falls.]

So they can just... eat it.

Greeeat.

Okay. It's fine. I've got this! Let's just...

[He holds his hands forward, landing a bit away from the demons.] Radiant frost of the betrayer's hell! Lay waste to my enemies! Cocytus flare!

[And he's firing a burst of power forward that will be freezing a good hundred feet or so's worth of air and ground and hopefully tentacle demons straight at the mass.]

[He can hear Beato mocking him for taking this long. The more he works, the more butterflies start to appear, circling around the crystals-

When something finally occurs to him.] ...Ed, can you charge other things with that power of yours?

[Back to the reviving until he gets an answer. Shine, be brilliant, Remember all that you were.]

[They freeze, all of them.

And then.

And then.

Slowly, steadily, they begin to absorb the power of the ice. You've bought time, but at a cost.]

[Ed flies back up and looks in the window.]

Huh? Oh, yeah, I recharge dead crystals all... the...

...time.

[His eyes widen as it hits him.]

God I'm dumb.

[He rolls up his left sleeve, as green runes spread over just that arm. Battler, if you can sense magic power, there is an INSANE amount running through his left arm, and only the left arm right now. He lands, and points it towards the crystals.]

Let's do this!

[The runes glow brightly, as he begins to charge the crystals all at once. Plus side? The crystals are getting supercharged by an entire world's source of raw undiluted magical power.

Minus side? There's a gargantuan beacon of raw undiluted magical power right in the temple, that'd be easily felt by anything that feels, eats, or wants to chew on magic within the entire shield.]

...[Battler stares for a moment. And then, without a single word, grabs Ed by the collar and YANKS HIM THROUGH THE PORTAL.]

I really hope they don't come through after uuuusss.

[AND YOU'RE THROUGH-]

Team Idiots / Part 2

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