... and as the fires die away, the three angels stand in what might be the turret of some tower, walls lined with heavy books, a small window unobtrusive in one corner, the door spattered by ink.
<
Maasiai pings her resonance to Find The Dai.
<
<
Maasiai looks around frantically to see where her attuned #1 might be hiding.
Outside the small window is darkness. A light moves in it, far off. There is no sign of Daimon in
the room.
Maasiai . o O (Trust the crazy Archangel to send us somewhere *useless*!)
Pat keeps his hands in his pockets, looking over the titles of the books.
Maasiai looks for a door and heads for it, her resonance currently not working right.
Eduardo looks around, slowly. "Are we where I think?" he asks, the light of his madness fading
from his eyes; replaced by a sober, considering expression.
Pat holds up a hand. "Possibly."
<
<
<
The room trembles very slightly, as though shaken by some great current of air. The door seems
to be stuck.
Pat says "I don't think we're in Hell."
Pat goes back to examining book titles.
Maasiai claws at the door with some amount of franticness and irritation for a few seconds.
The books have such titles as "How to Win Friends And Influence Demons".
Pat hms, and pulls that one from the shelf to look through it.
Maasiai gives the door a final claw, then turns for the window to see if she can squeeze out of
it.
The book appears to be a long-winded tome about treating demons with the edge of the
sword.
<
Outside the window, it is dark. A long, long darkness. The occasional speck of light glimmers far
below. Other meteors or comets burn in the darkness, falling far away.
<
<
Actually, the twinkling lights far below look perhaps a little closer than they did a few seconds
earlier.
Maasiai sticks her head as far out the window as possible to look down.
Pat says "Edward, see if you can make yourself less...conspicuous?"
A searing cold wind whips at Maasiai's fur. It is almost impossible to make out any details of
below, except that the flickering specks of light are getting closer.
The room shudders, again, as though from some pressure of wind or gravity.
Maasiai pulls her head in. "Excuse me," she says calmly, "but this building is doing a Lucifer."
Eduardo frowns. "I mislike it. "
Eduardo says "But it makes sense."
Eduardo attempts to adopt Eddie, battered Police Detective form.
Maasiai clears her throat. "We're going to impact soon. Unless we get out of this building, we
should probably find something soft to huddle in."
Maasiai eyes the window. Could she squeeze out of it?
Eduardo draws and ignites his sword, slashing at the rock wall about the window with it.
"Out."
Pat says "This may be bad."
<
The Malakite's form ripples, becoming that of the Police Detective.
<
The flaming sword begins to char and chop hunks out of the stone wall, though slowly. It'll take
a while to enlarge the window.
The room is vibrating more and more now, and the wind outside is a hiss, then a roar.
<
<
Maasiai spits something in kitty and starts clawing books off the shelves, trying to make them into
packing material for three angels about to be bounced.
Eduardo hisses softly, and eyes the door. He punches his blade through it, or tries to - close by
the upper hinge.
<
<
The fiery blade slams through the door. There is a hiss as the wind on the other side claws at the
flames.
<
Pages and paper scatter across the room.
Pat waits patiently for a plan to present itself.
Maasiai tells Pat, "Help me! This is softer than stone, at least!"
<
Eduardo slices the blade down, through the wood. "Hit it. And out."
Maasiai looks up at Eduardo, then lowers her shoulder and charges to slam into the door if that
seems appropriate.
The door stays sealed, and Maasiai bounces off it. The shaking of the room rises to a
crescendo.
Eduardo continues to try and carve the door away from it's hinges.
Maasiai curls up in approved paws over head position for Cherubim.
Pat ponders Maasiai, ponders the door, and moves to examine the window.
Maasiai is just bracing for impact.
Impact. A great thud shakes the entire room. And, for a while, there is nothing but
unconsciousness and darkness.
Maasiai . o O (*)
The Cherub is the first to wake. The flames of papers lit by Eduardo's sword illuminate the room,
and add a fetching scent of smoke. The door hangs loosely open. The room seems to be at a
45-degree angle. Pat and Eduardo are unconscious.
Maasiai shakes herself off. Bracing for impact was evidently good. She goes to drag the others
away from the flames.
Pat says "Ugh."
Maasiai hunts around to find Eduardo's sword, too.
Pat crawl/staggers to the door, looking out through it.
The sword hilt is - naturally - clutched tightly in Eduardo's hand.
Maasiai cat-pats Eduardo's face gently with her paws.
Outside the door lies a long waste of papers, filing cabinets, bookshelves, and staircases. Another
building seems to have impacted nearby, and to be drawing demonic attention.
Pat checks the sky to make sure there is no approaching masonry, before crawling out.
Nothing seems to be falling from Heaven at the moment, though the scaffolding of the floors
above - yes, you can see the hole that you came through - looks not entirely safe.
Maasiai takes Eduardo's collar in her teeth and tries dragging him along to the door.
Pat says "Quickly, please. We're not in the most stable of environments."
Maasiai mutters, through Eduardo's collar, "He's heavy."
<
<
Pat frowns, stepping back in to grab Eduardo by the shirt and help drag. "We're in Hell, by the
way."
Maasiai morps to her humaniform. "I noticed."
Pat says "Mm. Let's hope he doesn't wake up too soon."
Maasiai grimaces. "Let's." She eyes Pat. "Are you contagious or something?"
Pat says "Not that I know of."
Maasiai continues to drag Eduardo. "Then maybe it's the Lilim."
Eduardo grunts, softly; stirring only slightly. It's apparent the impact was hard on him, with his
blade braced into the door he was attempting to cut open.
Maasiai grumbles, "I'd tell you to go back, Mazpatiel, but you're the only one here who knows
Helltongue, am I right?"
A Balseraph in the distance yells at a group of damned souls and imps, in Helltongue, "You! Go
and take a look over there, see if anybody's trapped!"
Pat says "Unless there's something Edward hasn't told me."
<
Maasiai chuckles under her breath, dragging.
Eduardo stirs a little more, one eye peeling painfully open. In time-honoured fashion he asks
"Where am I?"
Pat says "You don't want to know. Keep your eyes closed and pretend you're not here."
Maasiai says "Do what Pat says, yes."
<
<
Maasiai looks around and pings resonance.
<
<
Eduardo rolls his head around to stare up at Pat, an edge coming to his voice, "Pardon?"
Eduardo's sword --unlit -- still trails from his hand.
Maasiai hisses, "*Trust* us."
Pat looks at Eduardo, perfectly calm. "You heard me. You don't want to know."
The group of damned souls approach, slowly, dragging their feet. The Balseraph with them seems
to be taking his time.
Nearby, a handy corridor twists off and into a set of forking passages.
Maasiai drags for the corridor.
Pat steps between the Balseraph and Eddie's line of sight. "We're alright. Just a little shaken
up."
<
Eduardo pauses, opening his other eye and staring at the ground, his expression very much as if
heshould be turning the air blue with curses, flaking the rocks apart and similar. All he says,
however, is "I should have realised."
Maasiai mutters, in English, "We all should have."
Maasiai keeps dragging.
Eduardo doesn't seem terribly confident in his legs yet, but does make the effort to get them
underneath him.
Maasiai . o O (Pat will deal with the Bal. He'd the one with brains. Allegedly.)
Maasiai helps Eduardo do this, hissing, "Pocket the sword before someone notices it."
Pat just poses in between the scrabbling angels and the approaching damned.
The approaching damned don't appear to have noticed the scrabbling angels yet.
Maasiai . o O (Our Father who art in Heaven...)
The approaching damned are more interested in the remains of the library tower which clearly
crashed through several layers of Archive.
Eduardo frowns at Maasiai, but tucks the blade -- and the hand holding it -- under the somewhat
charred remenants of his trenchcoat. He frowns, leaning on the Cherub as he levers himself
upright.
Pat waves quite cheerfully to the unattentive damned, and heads after the other two.
Maasiai helps Eduardo, murmuring, "The greater evil, the greater injustice, would be to leave
Daimonique here." She seems to be telling herself that as much as the Malakite.
The convenient nearby corridor leads between high-piled shelves of books, with only the
occasional flickering candle providing light. Small things creep in the darkness, skittering.
Eduardo growls. "Again," and pulls himself upright. "I will essay to be more restrained."
Pat plucks a candle from the nearest holder, snuffing it and tucking it into a pocket. "Thank you,
Edward. This is not the proper time to die."
Maasiai says, "After we get Daimonique back, though, then maybe..." She looks around. "I have
no idea which direction to go in."
Eduardo says "Nor the proper place. It would gain my Lady nothing."
Eduardo stiffens, his face a mask of disapproval.
Pat says "Exactly."
Maasiai sighs, muttering, "This is _not_ a proper triad." She looks to Pat. "Any ideas about which
way is Out?"
Pat says "Hm. No, not really. I've never been here."
Maasiai says "All this is jangling my resonance. Where would Daimonique try to get to, if not
captured first?"
Pat says "The Guildhall."
Eduardo looks around him. "Away from this."
Eduardo says "Too much attention."
Eduardo says "The what?"
Maasiai nods to both. "So which direction is this Guildhall? Or should we try going *up*?"
Pat says "Lilith's stronghold."
Maasiai tests gravity -- can she levitate without wings?
Pat says "In Shal-Mari."
<
<
<
Maasiai mutters. "We might want to go out and start climbing. I don't fancy wandering around
down here."
Pat says "That would be a good idea, yes."
Maasiai goes prowling to the edge of the corridor, trying to plot a course Up through the
devastation.
There is a low grunting and wheezing coming from ahead of you, as of some elderly and obese
demon making its way along the passage to your right.
Eduardo stares at Pat. "I agree." His lips peel back, into a snarl.
Eduardo says "Though I do wonder..."
Eduardo's eyes spark.
Pat looks at Eduardo. "Yes?"
Eduardo says "How many of them we can catch alone, in this. And dispose of."
Eduardo says "It is only proper. I will even stoop to challenging them quietly."
Maasiai . o O (Catch a guide. Intimidate it into silence. Hm.)
Pat says "Hm. Possibly quite a few."
Maasiai is trying to creep back to the edge of the wreckage and check to see if there's a way to
climb up -- or enough distraction out there for a quick shift to winged angelform.
Eduardo's mood picks up though the vessel seems little capable of showing emotion.
"Excellent."
There is no obvious way to climb up, short of ladders. There is, however, a staircase to the
right.
Eduardo heads that way. He's almost as unhappy to be still as Zebina usually is.
Maasiai follows Eduardo.
Pat moseys on afterwards.
---