2013.07.14 - Shards of Betrayal - Baldur's Gate

Fandral had been sent to investigate the disturbance at the walls. WHen he arrived things were quiet. THe guards reported a few jotnar attacks. They reported the attacks in places no jotnar should be able to get to without first breeching the gate or employing high amounts of magic. Given that the jotnar soldiers don't have magic...

Jocelyn the Midgardian mutant, having stopped a svartalftar attack in Manhattan, found a shard of the bifrost and after the battle, took a moment to get away from the general population and then sought to press a bit of the bifrost energy she collected when the attack began in the hopes of healing the crack that had appeared. There was a swirl of bifrost magic about her...

THe sky over Fandral's spot on the wate near Baldur's Gate grows dark and forboding with twin bifrost swirls. One is directly over the gate, the other just inside.

Fandral's sword, for the time being, is sheathed. He's encamped now, and a little off to the side as he speaks to Baldur in hushed tones so as not to interfere with the rest of the defenses of the gate. That belongs to the other man.. and the Warrior is there to lend aid. Not take over command.

The sky's shifting, however, gains the Swordsman's attention, and he turns blue eyes up.. and narrows his eyes, reaching for the sword that lies upon his hip. He's discovered, then, the way those jotun are coming in but--

By the Allfather, alarm enters the Warrior's face as a SECOND opens. It's replaced, however, by determination. Magic.. magic is for the others. Fandral has a job, and he calls to Baldur, "Gain thine advantages with thine archers.. and give me who thou canst.."

Once more into the breach?

It had been a really difficult time. Jocelyn's first priority had been healing the injured, followed by sending a basic report to the X-Men. Just in case more things showed up. Once she'd done that, Jocelyn had grabbed her bag, stuck her mask in it, and then poured some of that energy into the shard to see if she could repair the tool in order to analyze it later. She didn't have time to take it to the manor and store it for detailed analysis. So, Jocelyn had decided to take the inititative and investigate this energy a little bit. What was the worst that could happen?

Apparently, that meant getting teleported into Asgard. Well, it could be worse.

Jocelyn appears out of the swirling vortex at the gate and falls, striking the gate on her way down before she falls off it in among some rocks with a graceless THUD. She looks like she'd just been at the front lines of battle. Her hair is dirty, and parts of her skin are burned. There are no open wounds, however, thanks to her healing. Some of the charred skin and cosmetic stuff hasn't been fixed yet, because Jocelyn didn't care about that. Her curved blade, forged by Brynn, is sheathed at her side. Most of her clothing is...what you could call 'tastefully shredded'. As in the important bits are covered, but when you were just inside an explosion and survived it, you're happy to have anything still intact. One of those laws of physics that only applies to heroes, it would seem.

Jocelyn lets out a few creative curse words as she pushes herself up to her hands and knees. She then tries to get a sense for where she is, the crystal getting shoved in her one intact pocket for safekeeping. She notices the second vortex and lets out another slight curse and looks around in an attempt to find cover behind some stones or something of that nature, even as she pulls in some kinetic energy to boost her physical abilities. She knew what that thing was, or at least she thought she did. And Jocelyn somehow suspected that if they were what she thought they were, they would shoot first, second, third, and so on.

What a way to start her new job.

Baldur gives the King's Swordsman a nod, eyes on the opening bifrost gates. That one is on the gate and one is inside the gate gives the guardian a moment's pause.

"Perhaps it is... reenforcements?" he asks, looking uncertain.

As Jocelyn appears, Baldur gives the orders: "Archers to thy posts! Infintry on myself and the Swordsman. FOR ASGARD!" Of course, this is said in the language of the aesir... because Baldur doesn't know English or speak the All Tongue.

The second swirl, appearing inside the gate on eh roof of the barracks that uses a section of the wall as one of its exteriors resovles into ...water? Gallons of water, gushing and spewing and pouring forth. And then... there was a tenticle.

Huge and serpentine, the tenticle with sucker pads larger than a man's face, lifts up out of the water over which the tiny bifrost portal still swirls. It slams down upon the wall, cracking the weaker stone of which this section of the wall is made. And the scream goes out:

"KRAKKEN!!!"

Fandral watches as there comes a figure out of the first bifrost gate, and he looks to the archers and raises his hand. Just as it begins to drop, ready to unleash a deadly hailstorm of Asgardian arrows, he pauses halfway as he catches something familiar about the form. It's in his home, Asgardian, tongue he speaks, the sound decidedly nordic as he calls, "Hold!"

It's that second bifrost gate, then, that when it belches water, Fandral is soaked.. as are the swordsmen now under his stead. "Target!" The command is given, before he finishes lowering his hand for that hail of arrows to hit that first, searching tentacle. "Swords back!"

Now, Fandral has the chance to look at the form that so gracelessly plopped at the wall. He calls first in his home tongue, "This way!" before he realizes that perhaps he may not be understood. There's a change then to the All Tongue, "This way, girl!"

Most of that, Jocelyn doesn't understand. When Fandral calls out to her, finally in a language she understands, Jocelyn stands and takes to the air, flying towards Fandral. It looked like her guess was right. "Good to see a familiar face". She then turns to look on the tentacle, and then at the portal it's peaking out of of. Well then. It sounded like it was time to drain the portal. She focuses her sight on the portal and attempts to start draining it, her intent on cutting the portal with the tentacle. And maybe cutting the tentacle with a severed portal! "You've got something big just about to follow that portal. I'll try to cut it off," the energy absorber says. "I'll offer an explanation to how I got here when we're finished here," she offers. Because now was not the time for long-winded explanations.

The first bifrost swirl closes as Jocelyn gets to her feet. The second remains open, pouring water everywhere. THe door to the barracks, which had opened, fills with shouts and closes again. Ground reinforcements are no long forth coming. It's plausible that the barracks is filling with sea water.

A fish flops from the barracks rooftop to the ground below.

The first tenticle grabs hold of hte wall and pulls. There's the terrible sound of crumbling stone as the wall shifts and begins to give way. Two more tenticles slither up from the water. One smashes down near the stables.

Firehooves whinies with indignation.

The portal, swirling above Jocelyn, remains active, swirling even as she drains from it. The energy feels... trapped... pained... impaled... angry.

Bright blue eyes look to Jocelyn, and Fandral studies her for a long moment. How is he supposed to know that she's not part of the problem again? He's kept the archers from shooting her down, but for the moment? She's safe. "No need, child. I would imagine this is just the beginning," comes with a quirked smile. This isn't his first trip around the block, after all. First, send the elephants to flatten everything. Makes it harder to defend.

Fandral has to take a step back at the water's rising, and he can hear Firehooves' whinny.. and he grins. Whistling for his horse, he reaches out for his mane and pulls himself onto the war horse's back. It gives him a little more height, and a little more speed with which to strike. Kicking forward in the rising water, he holds the sword aloft, ready to strike out at the tip of the tentacle. "If thou has a manner of doing so, holding back the water wouldst be just as good as closing the bifrost."

Well, the truth was there wasn't a way to know. But that could be sorted out later. Jocelyn simply nods to Fandral and looks at the water rushing forward. Where was Josie when Jocelyn needed her? Jocelyn reaches out to drain kinetic energy from the water to try and get it to slow down or stop moving. Meanwhile, with that absorbed kinetic energy, Jocelyn attempts to block the water from coming up through the portal with kinetic energy bursts in rapid succession, trying to create a makeshift shield to cap the water, so to speak. It was a makeshift plan, but it was the best she had so far.

More fish flop over the side of the rooftop, and slowly - an inch at a time - the water level begins to rise. More of the krakken tenticles lift out of the water and the very top of the krakken's body peeks up over the waterlevel. The archers loose at will, one out of every twenty or so arrows managing to penetrate the krakken's hide and sticking into it.

A shark swirls int he water, trapped by the portal's pull, and it tumbles against the side of Jocelyn's forcefield.

A tenticle curls up on the invisible barrier and presses down.

The first tenticle uncurls and reaches for another section of wall. Baldur's swordsmen back away as ordered. Two tenticles uncurl and grab at anything near by; wall, soldier, tree...

The tenicle that was struck by Fandral's sword, however, does not fair well, so the high quality of the Swordsman's blade slices cleanly through the monster's flesh and detaches a good three feet of octopod-ish thing from the creature's body. That tenticle, now shorter than the rest, flails in obivous pain. The rest of hte tenicles shudder.

Fandral has no clue what Jocelyn can do, truthfully.. but if it has anything to do with a bifrost gate, then, well..

She could have said she couldn't do it..

There's not a lot of difference there, as to the water's rise, and there's a sneaking suspicion that the other side of that gate is one of.. another world's oceans. Something rushing so heavily means that it's deep.. and he curses. If it continues, the area will fill up.

"Child! This is no sea of Asgard." Which means this is something that is completely beyond him in terms of 'fixing'. "If you can hold the water.."

And with the galloped swing of the sword, though the water makes it rather difficult to maneuver, Fandral calls out to Baldur. "Fine steel does damage.. For Asgard!"

Plans are forming, and once the krakken is dispatched, the Warrior may.. take a swim.

"I can at best slow the rate from the portal, but I don't know by how much. It must be opened into an ocean, and I cannot hold back that much force," Jocelyn conceeds. The woman can't tell what world the water is coming from. Just that it's an ocean. She takes to the air again and starts reaching out, trying to send her energy absorption powers through the portal and trying to track the 'source' of it. Probably one of those crystals. She had some idea what she was looking for in terms of energy. And if she can find it? She was gonna try and suck it dry and kill the portal that way. "I can absorb energy and hit things pretty hard," she states to Fandral.

As to the tentacle that's on her shield? She opens the shield briefly, hoping to let the tentacle drop through the shield partly before she snaps it shut again, intending to just cut it straight in half.

Baldur gives Fandral's words a nod and calls out to his archers, "Jotun tips!" The archers in the back ranks step forward to continue harrying the target while the front line steps back to reload... from the quivers hanging from the wall near them. The arrow heads are shiner and more delivate looking, and yet somehow seem far more up to the task of injuring a beast such as the Krakken than did the others. Baldur himself has taken up a bow and is loosing arrows right along with the others, though at a much slower rate of fire as he is taking moment to survey the wall, the gate, the damage.

"Dispatch the beast quickly! The gate is falling." calls out the Gatekeeper, his horn at his hip. If the gate falls....

As Jocelyn drops that section of her shield, the tenticle does indeed drop; as does several hundred gallons of water. A few of hte swordsman who were on ground level with Fandral, trying to get to their jotun-smashing swords, cry out as the force of the fresh salt water knocks them from their feet. The shark slips through and lands with a heavy plop on the muddy, churning ground. Fish flop about, the smaller ones - about the size of a man's arm - are starting to be able to swim about ineffectually.

A second tenticle grips onto wall and tugs.

Jocelyn senses into the portal and finds another shard, much stronger than the one she carries. It's in the center of the creature that is coming up, and it too is begining to emerge as the creature does. A fourth of the creature's body emerges now amid a writhing sea of tenticles. And stuck into the creature, just above an eye, is a glittering piece of the first Rainbow Bridge, about 3 inches long. It's like... the krakken has a glittering multi-colored splinter. And it's just as pissed off about it as anyone else would too.

Fandral rides hard, slicing into the meat of yet another tentacle, one that is pulling at the wall as the water slams into him. Horse and rider are hit with the wave, and are cast back, tumbling here and there. Slamming against a part of the barracks ceases the Warrior's progress.. and he has to find his breath as he stands once again.. and runs back into battle, knowing there's a volley of arrows following behind him.

There comes that glittering, however.. and that catches the Swordsman's attention. Blue eyes latch on to the shard, knowing that it's something that most certainly does not belong.. and his next target is aborted for that. To gain that bit that must be important!

Stupid things. She couldn't get the shield closed quickly enough. Sometimes simply being a multi-tool instead of a specialist had it's drawbacks. Jocelyn reaches out and simply tries to drain kinetic energy from the beast. Spotting that Fandral was going for it, she focuses her attention on slowing the beast down in the areas that Fandral is at. "Get the shard! That's the way the portal is being kept open!" Theories flood Jocelyn's mind, but she pushes them aside for now. There were other things to deal with.

Shiny things were important anyway, you know, so Jocelyn figured people would be going at it. In addition, Jocelyn flies forward now, attempting to distract the Kraken by blasting at it with energy blasts, weaving around and trying to keep it from attacking the others. She had good relexes and had flight, and frankly she'd rather it be attacking her in the air than the rest of the area. Like the gate. Hopefully it would make Fandral's life easier in obtaining the shard. Her blasts are also meant to try and drive the beast backwards if possible, or at least keep it from advancing.

Arrows indeed follow Fandral and with these new arrowheads, the arrows sink in to the tenticles deeply. Each time, the creature pulls the tenticle away so that the archers are now effectively keeping most of the tenticles from latching onto the walls.

The engery drain near Fandral slows a tenticle enough that the swordsman is able to quite easily slice through two tenticles in quick succession.

The water level is as deep as a manis tall. A crack appears in the wall of the barracks beneath where a tenticle has slammed down early in the fight.

Some of the tenticles do indeed lash out at Jocelyn with the intelligence of a flailing animal.

The rainbow vortex intensifies as the cretures hauls itself through the portal and onto the roof of the barracks.

"There are men trapped within the barracks!" Baldur calls out, trying to loose an arrow into the creature's eye, but missing. His missle skitters off the plate that is the creature's head.

"Our arrows are not strong enough to pierce the armor," he exclaims, then orders his men to continue keeping the tenticles from the wall and the gate.

Jocelyn's energy blasts are likewise keeping the beast from hitting her, latching onto the wall, and generally causing too much harm. She's too small, it seems, for the beast to land any solid hit. If it gets a lucky shot in, however...

There.. there's his chance, and Fandral goes to take it. The water is rising, and it's almost over his head as he moves, his sword cutting the water as well as cleaving those tentacles asunder. The Swordsman rises from the water, holding on to one of those flailing tentacles, stabbing into the limb before he moves away, making the creature worry about the pain rather than attacking him.

Not much of a plan, but..

"We'll all be dead if this isn't dispatched!" Though, the Swordsman glances back to Jocelyn, dropping into the All Tongue. "Men are trapped in the barracks!"

Now, his sword reaches for that splinter, ready to excise it. Now.. now he recognizes the piece, and he swears softly. "How did this get there.." And louder, "I know what it is!"

Right. The men. Jocelyn could track the lifeforms inside the barracks, and so Jocelyn flies towards the barracks, leaving the Kraken to the others. She didn't actually want to actually do structural damage here, and so she relies on her training from Carol with regards to high-speed flying and just goes through the first available door or window large enough to admit her. As there wasn't an emergency exit exactly, Jocelyn's focus is to get those inside to higher ground and also to get them all together near an upper exit to a balcony or upper landing or something where there was a way out, but above the fray.

Flailing tenticles, but with the grace of Joccelyn's drain, the keen aesir arrows, and Fandral's own fancy foot work, none of the tenticles are able to connect. Severl more tenticles are sliced by the swordsman's blade, krakken flesh falling here and there.

The water level continues to rise inside of Jocelyn's shields.

Fandral's swipe cuts deep, the blade sinking in a foot or more and then ccolliding with something hard and crystalline within. The beast roars in pain, body jerking. Fandral's blade slides up the length of hte shard, by now odviously NOT just a splitter, and a large chucnk of krakken head flies free.

Inside the barracks, Jocelyn will find hte men wall themselves close to the main wall, the gate wall. There was once a doorway there, leading up into the wall and to stairs that would have allowed the man to escape the barracks and give support to the ramparts up top. Only, with the tenticles pulling at the gate, the space inside the barracks collapsed. Some of the einhenjar are seeing about digging through, and the lare rocks they ar epulling free are being used to try to block the slowly rising water level. A sergent looksup at Jocelyn's appearance... and questions her in aesir.

The thrashing krakken is something that he expects. The sword is deep, and as he cuts, Fandral uses it as leverage and balance. It's hard, its deep.. and it's something that is so recognizable now, the Swordsman can swear that he can see his own footsteps upon the Rainbow shard even as he works to tear it from its place. "Almost!" Just to wrest it free.. and he digs his hand into the goo, the meat and matter of the stricken creature to pull it free.

Jocelyn points at her throat. "Midgardian. I don't speak your language". Jocelyn hoped he'd at least understand the world 'Midgardian'. She then gestures to them all to move back, waving her arms backwards. Then she uses a controlled series of small blasts to try and clear the doorway leading up to the wall to let the men get free, using her enhanced strength to clear away anything that her blasts can't safely remove. If she could manage that, then they could all get free without smashing the building open, which would be good.

THe creature flails more, howling in pain as Fandral works and then finally removes a three foot long javelin like shard of the rainbow bridge, the bridge Thor destroyed to prevent his brother from using the wormhole to rip apart Jotunheim. As the shard is pulled free, the swirling vortex of light above flickers, dims, and fades back into the bright blue Asgardian sky. When the portal closes, half of the beast is upon Asgard, the other half remains in the ocean of Vanaheim. Like a chicken with its head removed, the tenticles flail about mindlessly. The creature's body falls to one side. Its eyes grows lifeless and slack.

Inside the barracks, the guards understand the motions if nothing else, and step aside. As she starts blasting, however, they grow concerned, and try to make motions and words to stop her. One moves, ducking, back toward the portal. Another grabs him and pulls him back, shouting at him. They then stay clear, glancing at the rising waters behind them, and step forward to assist as Jocelyn's blasts cease. They are not quite as strong as Fandral is, but surely far stronger than the avergae human, and between the mutant and the aesir a path is cleared into the innerds of the wall.

Fandral perches on the creature as the shard is pulled, and there's a brief Midgardian thought that comes unbidden. 'Whosoever draws the sword from the stone'... and he chuckles.

In its death throes, however, the Warrior has to ride the creature down, and it's not an easy passage. From his vantage point he can see the damage done, and the losses incurred by the Aesir. No matter.

This held. Asgard held.

Finally leaping from his perch before they crash, the Warrior calls out in the tongue of his land, "Heimdall! I have this, thy shard of bridge given as proof against Loki! It shall be returned to thee, and thou shalt keep it safe!" After all, he watches the worlds, yes?

Looking out towards the barracks, Fandral searches for hint that all is well therein.

With the passage cleared, Jocelyn will make her way out with the men, and she will provide assistance and healing to those who require it. The girl was tired, as she'd already engaged in battle just a short time ago, but she doesn't let that show on her face as she works on making sure all is well.

Once that is taken care of, she will make her way over towards Fandral. "Those in the barracks are freed. Are there others I can assist with healing?" she questions. Because she knew there would be injured, though phrasing it as a question would be polite, Jocelyn knew.

There are five einhenjar whom are beyond help. They were crushed by the cave in. Several others are injured, but alive. Baldur looks over his men, assisting hte damage and the casualities. The gate held. That is all that matters.

OOC: Mav of the Day - You paged Vorpal with ‘Yes indeed. There's another tenticle and something BIG about to follow’ Vorpal pages: ..... I don't know how to take that o_O You paged Vorpal with ‘LOL I'm attacking Baldur's Gate with a .. yeah that's not any better.’ Vorpal pages: You're penetrating Baldur's gate with tentacles? You paged Vorpal with ‘yes. >.< LOL XD’