trans_9 | Into the Vault

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Into the Vault

They hear the sounds of fighting behind them, the sounds of the fights that will determine if everyone on the ship lives or dies, stays sane or goes irrevocably mad. They are followed by things crawling in the dark, slinking--and sometimes bubbling along the walls.

This will be a fight. Some of them will have to hold off the hordes while others figure out how to free the Avatar from his prison. The problem at hand is that if they do it a moment too soon, the Nightmare King will be entirely freed, and if it's a moment too late, the last act of the Nightmare King will be to send along a pulse of energy through the glyphs that drives Aang insane, and then they'll have a mad demigod on their hands.

Those glyphs seem to be the key. They run from the room where the great stone is to the room where Aang is imprisoned in--

In a stone sarcophagus? That can't be where he's been all this time, can it? Locked away in a space no larger than a coffin?

Nearby are ugly contraptions with many tubes, stained with what looks like dried blood, and there is an experimental table set up nearby, with patterns and notes, glyphs and vials, and a computer console. The vials are stained brown with what looks like dried blood as well. The window to the room is broken, but the person who broke it--Jaime Reyes--doesn't remember it, as there had been two people he'd been with then that GLaDoS had stolen away. With his memory of them had gone the memory of this place, and that is the tragedy, that someone had known the sarcophagus was here--and then forgotten by the time this knowledge could have helped them find Aang sooner.

The tubes and things all hook up to the sarcophagus standing upright with its back set against the wall. It's a strange and horrible looking contraption, holes where the eyes should be, strange and ugly designs on the torso that were almost too horrible to be called writing--just like that around the black stone. On each arm, however, are scrawled very interesting designs that don't quite match the rest of the symbols--on an arm, swirling designs that look like air, on another, designs that look like water. On a leg, earth, on the other, fire.

If there are any doubts left at all, however, even after seeing those designs, eyes inside the sarcophagus suddenly open, glowing a bright blue that's likely familiar to a few in the room. They're very old, old, eyes.

All this time, he'd been kept alive in his prison, in a state of semi-suspended animation. Awake, aware, his body growing, his muscles kept from atrophying, his body kept fed and hydrated and clean. He'd been kept alive in a prison hardly larger than a coffin, and hardly able to move for well over a year. For some, this would have been enough to drive them insane. For Aang, it had just been all the more reasons to leave his body and use the powers granted to him by his prison to visit the dreams of the others and protect them.

If the other teams lose their fight, nothing this team does will matter. However, if the others win and defeat the Nightmare King...

They have about a minute or two to figure out how to free Aang, without accidentally freeing the Nightmare King first, before Aang's driven irrevocably insane. All while holding off hordes of horrible grotesques.

Good luck, guys!

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For a moment there was silence. Then Mai spoke up as she took it all in - the coffin, the Avatar, the runes. This was beyond her experience. It was all new, horrible. That anyone could do this (and do it willingly) was amazing. Then again, that's why this Aang was the Avatar, right?

"Alright. Now what?"

She raised a brow and looked at their illustrious leaders - Sokka and Zuko.

"I...We've got to disarm these glyphs." Isaac found this whole thing rather disturbing. It was an inhuman intellect that produced this mess, he was convinced. The Weaver might get a kick out of it, but he just felt vaguely sick. Still, he readied his paintbrush and tools...

"Whelp, this is where I stand back and let you guys tell me what to do," said Matt, unsheathing his sword. "I have zero experience with rituals."

“Me as well.”

Aeneas was lagging behind considerably. After draining his power to collapse the pillar (and the subsequent fall), the alien was exhausted and in an uncomfortable state. The splint on his back leg was helping now, at least, so he could still walk. Fighting was still going to be an issue.

Not that he was backing down of course. “I will do what I can.”

"Okay, okay. So. We need to disable the glyphs because they're what connect Aang to the Nightmare King, right? But we can't do it too soon or else the Nightmare King gets free. But we can't do it too late or else Aang goes crazy and dies. Oh man...." Sokka was speaking faster than normal, pacing back forth over the glyphs, chewing on one thumb. Think fast Sokka.

Think very, very fast.

"But how do we disable the glyphs? I'm no good at this, I've never even run into this kind of thing..."

"These glyphs..." The gears of Isaac's scientist brain were kicking into gear. His bald head was practically buzzing. "...They're a thaumaturgical circuit, leading back to the Enn Kay." He ran a finger along one. BZZAP, sickly green lightning arced to his hand. "Jabber and FUCK!!!" He shook it out, hissing in pain.

When he'd regained composure and dignity, he continued. "When we in'errupt the circuit, the remaining energy will continue to travel the loop, ending back 'ere in a few seconds. The glyphs will overload. We need a person to act as a sink for this energy, but absorbing that much might kill any one of us."

Static coughed.

"I can do it. Electricity is kinda, well, all I cando. It's the 'when' that's a real problem."

Sheeana was posted up against the doorway, hand on the butt of her crysknife. She heard but did not hear the conversation, more focused on making sure nothing strange came through that door. She wasn't going to sacrifice herself. She needed to be awake for what she might have to do next...

Isaac seems to have the best idea of what to do in this situation. At least SOMEONE does - all this is beyond Zuko.

"What else can we do?" he asks. "And WHEN do we do it?"

Mai hissed under her breath and skewered a monstrosity as it scurried out of the shadows. "Do it quick, whatever you're going to do."

Isaac shook his head. "It's not electricity. It's Torque...Raw potentiality. Whoever gets hooked up there could die. Or be hurt. Or grow an arm out of their chest or get turned into a mound of cockroaches. Or nothing at all could happen. I can channel most of it into..." He pulled his pack off, revealing a number of small jars, hexes on their stoppers, wire running through them on both ends. Inside was a green liquid. "...empty thaumaturgical batteries, but it's still a big risk. I should go..." He patted his belly, glancing back at the thing Mai had speared as it messily squeerarked and expired. "...I've got the most absorbance capacity."

"No." Sokka spoke up from his spot in the room, having just messily decapitated another creature. He flicked ichor and gore from his blade, then turned to look as Isaac.

"I'll do it. Aang is my friend. And I said I would do everything I could to help him out." Sokka's face is grim and set. And something in his voice suggests that arguing with him wouldn't be the best idea.

"How much time do you think we have?"

None.

Elsewhere, the fight is won. They hear the dying screams of this pocket universe as its creator is finally cut away from the reality of the ship.

There's no time for anything, no time to create any sort of bridge for one of them to absorb the energy, it comes blasting along the glyphs in a sickly red-black arc of energy, towards the sarcophagus, one last jab at his enemy, one last "gift" the Nightmare King intends to leave Aang.

Edited 2010-03-10 06:05 (UTC)

Sokka doesn't hesitate. He doesn't even pause to think. He doesn't have time to think. Not when his friend's life is on the line. He simply acts. The young warrior leaps forward, planting himself astride the line of glyphs. His sword swings upwards, then down in one smooth thrust. The star-metal blade pierces the stone, severs the glyph at its juncture with the rest of the line.

And Sokka has a bare moment to see the oncoming energy and braces himself for what he fears is coming. His last conscious thought before the blazing red-black arc hits the sword is that he regrets not seeing Suki again. And then his entire being is consumed by pain. A pain so intense and furious, it is like nothing he has ever felt. It is everything awful that has ever happened to Sokka and more wrapped into a single, mind-shattering burst of agony. His mind is bombarded for the barest second by images and concepts that men weren't meant to know, horrors beyond imagining. And then it passes, leaving only the blinding, crippling pain that pierces him deep into his bones. There is no room in his mind now for thought. Only the seemingly unending agony brought by this horrific and unknowable force.

To those around him, Sokka is engulfed in the red-black energy as it arcs up the sword and into his body, surrounding him and sending out a concussion that blasts everybody near to the young man backwards. His hair stands on end and his entire body is stiff, his mouth open in a silent scream of anguish and pain. And it's over. The dark energy, intended to take the Avatar with the defeated Nightmare King, fades.

And the valiant warrior of the Water Tribe collapses onto the stone floor of the cathedral.

Edited 2010-03-10 06:31 (UTC)

Something very much like concern flickered over Mai's face for a moment as she caught a glimpse of the strange energy leaping over Sokka's body. She turned, flicking another handful of knives into the shadow creatures, even as they start to fade into gibbering madness as their master is sealed away once more. "Sokka-!"

Though the connection was severed, unreleased energy from the sarcophagus's side arcs out like purple fire--as if the entire thing is burning. The outside is starting to glow a bright red.

There is a clack and then a cranking sound like gears moving, but suddenly a high-pitched whine and a sound like metal scraping against metal.

The door of the sarcophagus is stuck, and until it opens, the energy won't disperse and the Avatar won't be freed. It could roast him alive within minutes.

Something pounds on the door from the inside, once, with a clang.

Then twice.

Then it starts to come more and more methodically, but all the pounding in the world won't open it up.

Sokka's hurt. But there's nothing Zuko can do about that, and now the pounding from within the sarcophagus has all of his attention.

He rushes over. He can disperse the heat with his firebending. He can wrench the sarcophagus open and get the Avatar out.

Only, when he reaches the sarcophagus, the heat doesn't act like normal heat. This is an energy different from fire. This is an energy made into the idea of what fire is, and so yes, it disperses - but it hurts like hell, burning the palms of his hands, radiating up his arms.

Zuko yells, but wrenches at the cover of the sarcophagus. He did not come here to back down from the pain of being burned.

"Godshit!" Isaac exclaimed as he was knocked backwards into a bunch of stone skulls. He shook himself off and scrambled over to the fallen water tribe boy. Jabber, he's just a kid. He thought to himself. He had seen Dog Fenn boys cut down in running battles between gangs of orphans, children starved and teenage boys turned into monstrosities by Remaking. But not this close.

He checked Sokka's lifesigns. He wasn't a doctor, but there was enough overlap that he could at least stabilize the boy. Heartrate going wild, shock possible...Being near him sent little shocks travelling up his arms. He tied three empty thaumaturgical batteries to him, and they slowly began to fill with some of the excess energy Sokka had just been a victim of.

"'E could go into shock at any moment. We need to get him out of here."

The sarcophagus is thicker than it looks, and there is darkness inside, and a mist obscuring Aang from few, that starts to disperse.

There is darkness and silence.

Maybe he was too late?

That's . . . that's unthinkable. To have come this far, for Sokka to have done what he did, all of them, all of this fighting, for nothing -

No. Absolutely not.

Zuko reaches into the sarcophagus, feeling for a body to pull out.

"Zuko! Your hands!" Mai could tell, even from halfway across the room, that Zuko's hands were being burned, badly. She started towards him. "You're going to cripple yourself!"

The alien had his mandibles clamped around a particularly large shadow creature some distance away from the main event, but the vibrations from the “explosion” of sorts easily reached him. Aeneas wasted no time in retreating towards the group, standing protectively beside the downed Sokka and Isaac.

“I can get him out of here!” he trilled over the resounding clamor, his calm voice carrying surprisingly well for its relative tenor, “Put him on my back—and I’ll clear a path to the exit!”

Where was Katara when you needed her?...

Matt who had been silent up to now, was actually muttering a spell under his lips. He was tired but it would ease the pain of everyone in the room.

Clapping his hands, he threw them out towards the others. "This'll help! HEALING!"

Raw magic flared around Sokka and Zuko's hands. Even as he was casting one spell, another spell was flowing off his lips, yet another stronger healing spell.

Isaac, who was for the most part unharmed, felt suddenly light headed as the healing thaumaturgy washed over him. "Hoo...careful..." He said under his breath, before signaling the six limbed Xenian over.

"Aye, careful with him..." He said as he hoisted the unconscious Sokka onto the furry-feathery back.

Aeneas gave Isaac a quick nod, accepting Sokka’s limp form and shifting it onto the ventral side of his torso (in a position humans might call “piggy-back”). Actually placing anything on his weaker abdomen wouldn’t help either of them, for Aeneas wouldn’t be able to walk or have any way to protect him. This way the alien could not only run and climb, but he could also use all of his possible defense mechanisms without exposing Sokka to harm in the process. Sure it required giving up his arms, but the vestigial limbs could hardly do anything in the first place.

And he was off. Aeneas dove into the masses of creatures, swiping out the sides with his tail, running headlong into enemies that attempted to get in his way. The badly aggravated fracture in his back leg hardly seemed to bother him thanks to Matt’s recent healing spell, though that would wear off as soon as his adrenaline did.

He only hoped that the Nightmare King’s influence hadn’t affected the cathedral’s structure. Falling walls were not things that Aeneas could just plow through.

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