Foxside: The Temple of Inari 56 - Rice, Wine, and Spell Slots

[Recaiden]

"You cannot kill someone 'a little bit'!" He starts.

"I was just taking a look at you." Insists another face. "You should cover yourself if you're going to be pushing out ideas so strongly like that."
Well, if they can't pull Zee closer, they'll just have to pull him to Zee. The other monstrosity reels itself in along the chameleon tongues, zipping towards that immovable fungus-monster.

"If you really didn't mean to do all this, prove it. Let Kara go. We will care for her." Death is one of the things the temple is best equipped to cure, you know. Even if there's serious damage to one's soul or basic ontology, they can usually work something out. Meanwhile, he gets steadily less vulpine and more reptilian/arboreal. Fur becomes scales, ears fold away, flowers bud...

"Ignore her lies. This is just a distraction." You know, 4'th face, that actually seems like good advice. The weirdness is spreading. You should really do something about that.

The priest brings his hands together, and takes hold of his fox-head pendant. Oh. A third hand. Look at that.
"This place is Hallowed ground.
"You'll go no further. Around
"this dead garden I draw a ring.
"Between this and the temple's dream."
With these motions and questionable rhymes, he adds some rather substantial magic to that of the koi's, to keep the weirdness and the fungus contained.

[Rebonack]

[Horror Garden]

The sealing magic seems to be doing a good job of keeping the aberrant growth in check. Zee vaguely takes note of it. Normally she would be glad here, but her mind is on other things. Everything within the protective circle keeps warping, however. By now the air is so thick it's like trying to swim through molasses. Molasses that's actively crawling around on you. The otherworldly light is quickly growing brighter as coral-like growths of fungus spreads within the contained area. The garden is quickly beginning to look like a reef, assuming someone can squint through the increasingly blinding light that permeates it.

"You can totally kill someone just a little bit~! It's less than totally alive and more than mostly dead~," Zee shoots back defiantly. "I normally put up telepathy warnings but I got distracted by a gaggle of shrieking buzzers when I manifested back here in the Waking World~. It's been so long since I had to deal with flatlanders that I totally forgot~."

And then suddenly, what's this? Awful mouth thing sailing toward the hymn? Well that just won't do at all. Jezekiel lashes her tail to the earth, uproots one of her feet, and catches the rapidly approaching awful mutated thing with her hoofy toe claws! The fact that those claws just spontaneously grew about four sizes larger probably helps keep all those gnashing teeth contained. Now balanced on one foot, Zee is leaning away from the priest as far as she can manage, trying to put as much space between him and the cocoon as possible. It looks humorously similar to two children fighting over a ball.

Except the two 'children' are both awful blasphemies against creation.

"I'm not giving you Kara~!" Zee growls back, more than a little maternal rage slipping into her sonorous voice. "Your stupid soul nonsense would probably bring the daemon back, too~. I won't let that thing touch my daughter, do you hear me~? NEVER~! AGAIN~!"

Oh. Yeah. That makes sense, actually. Karaglen basically lived in the rafters of Trog's. And Zee spent years caring for and feeding and loving on that little dragon. And then everything fell apart when Zee did. Now she's trying to make it right. Watching from the heavens, she could only observe with pain and horror as Karaglen descended further into madness. All because no one was responsible enough to take an artifact of pure destructive evil away from a child. Away from her child. She had tried, all those years ago, only for the Stars themselves to conspire against her.

And now someone wants to use godling magic to try and fail to mend Karaglen. She won't have it. Not now, not ever.

One of the stripes alone the beast's abdomen suddenly manifests teeth and yawns open wide, a nest of white fungal tendrils flailing out and latching onto the surface of the mushroom egg. Once proper connections are made, the strands connecting to Zee's arms shrivel and the egg is pulled inside, the mouth sealing up behind it. The eldritch horror immediately begins reinforcing the womb around it with armor plating just in case this devolves into a fight. She can't let Kara get hurt.

"I'm giving you exactly one warning~," the beast snarls with all the fury of a mother grizzly bear protecting her cubs, teething poking out of her cheeks and creeping toward her neck. "Back off or I'm going to break you~."

[Recaiden]

"I'm not sure what it's like where you're from, but around here, people who kill their daughters are very bad parents and they have their children taken away."

The monstrosity changes shape rather dramatically Wouldn't it better than all this chameleon nonsense if he were instead a combination of many giant spiders, spinning webs around Jezekiel? Yes, I think that would be ideal. It happens.
Now, the priest isn't trying to hurt Zee. He would have gotten out his dagger if he wanted to do that. Just prevent her from escaping with an 'innocent' templegoer.

"Not that I believe she's your daughter. I'm afraid the fact that you're only mentioning this now, when earlier you called her a friend - it doesn't look good. It looks like you're caught in a lie and desperately making things up. Perhaps you can't even tell how thoroughly the Far Realm has corrupted you. How it will corrupt if you kept her."

One of the giant spider-faces kinda smiles with its awful fangs.
"You said you didn't want to destroy this garden. You said you want to help her, save her form the demon."
"Don't just try to threaten me."
"Prove it."
This is your last warning, Zee. If you keep adding new facts and raving about this demon which probably doesn't even exist and trying to keep away what's left of Kara, people will get hurt. Well, hopefully just Beasts. But still, it will be regrettable.

[Rebonack]

[Horror Garden]

Well, strictly speaking friend/adoptive daughter was accurate originally. But when considering what the beast is up to, having taken the vestige apart to rebuild someone new and very much alive? Biological daughter is quite a bit more true now than it was a few minutes ago. And that familial connection is rapidly strengthening. To create something like this, to change something like this, it changes her as well. Push upon the universe, and it pushes back. Protected, swaddled, warm and embraced, Karaglen continues to grow. A little bit flows both ways.

Interlocking, triangular scales ripple their way down Jezekiel's neck, chest, and the underside of her tail. Glossy, polished black with a metallic sheen. The earthstars simply drop away, thumping to the ground and taking root as they begin releasing a miasma of greasy black spores. Her neck grows longer, teeth running its entire length, as her face takes on a more draconic figure, eyes still blazing with protective, maternal rage. The rusty, cinnamon colored fur on her back and flanks grows longer, white mycelial growth still creeping across her form. She drops from a bipedal stance to a quadrupedal one, her mass instantly octupleing as she doubles in size and causes the ground to quake with the impact of her clawed hooves. Her wings grow larger, more draconic, as another two pairs erupt from the small of her back and her hips. Here and there white light, cold and clear as starlight, shines from between her scales.

Huh. Apparently she can push herself from a Hymn to a Glory if the need arises. Though getting a little more dragon from Karaglen probably helped.

"I really don't care what you believe~," she snarls back. "Kara and I are leaving~."

A ripple of power flows across her and she spreads her wings with a loud WHUMP!, the webbing getting blasted to stray amino acids. Where the spider legs touch her they may begin sizzling as if exposed to incredibly aggressive digestive enzymes. Then with a powerful beat she tries to launch herself into the air!

With Karaglen secured and safe, she really doesn't have any reason to stick around here and fight with awful giant spiders that might also be trees or lizards or foxes. And with that maternal rage boiling at the back of her mind she really wants to get out of here before she does something regretful. That protective instinct is telling her to lash out, but she knows that'll just cause more harm than good. At the moment rationality is winning out over RAWR, but probably not for long.

[Chaotic Bob]

[Somewhere]

Daughter. Daughter. Daughter.

I hear someone, far away. They sound nice. They also sound upset.
That's sad. Someone should make them feel better. No one should be upset.

What can I do to make them feel better? I don't...know where I am...

...

There's a loud room. People everywhere, talking, shouting, drinking, living. I like this place. I live here?
The nice voice is here too and food. She. She gives me food. I like her. A friend. Family? Important...
Something important. Her smile droops, her face droops, her body droops.

I'm not looking at her anymore. Looking at who? The room seems indistinct.
There's a man, too. I like him too. Too? There is a man. I know him, he...raised me. He...

There is a man, with three others. He looks very sad, they look very angry. I feel tall. Why am I tall? I am supposed to be little.
My hand itches. It holds something, large. A sword. A sword...the world seems red. That doesn't seem right.
The man looks so sad. He says something. It hurts. It hurts? It hurts.

I am not looking at him anymore. Him? There's so much mist...
This spot is warm and nice. I am high up, above a loud room of life and shouting and fun. A nice voice gave me food. I like her.
The warm is next to me. He sleeps funny. I feel happy with my friend.

Happy. Why am I happy?
The mist holds me close. I don't...where am I...

[Deathkeeper]

[Sanctuary]

Alex sniffs.
”Anchor, people love calling my naive. But even I know better than to go alone into the personal realm of a fey out for holdings. And-“ she turns, ears twitching.
”I’m afraid duty calls. We am resume this charade another time.” And with that, Alex simply melts into the shadows of the altar.

[Horror Garden]

Thump.
The crack of wood on a tough garden stone.
Shhhhh.
The hiss of the cold wind through the bushes.
Splsh.
A straw hat discarded into the stream, already melting into shadowstuff.

A dark figure melts out onto the trail, clad in loose robes that blend into the night, clutching a curved sword by a wooden scabbard. With a flick of his thumb, a centimeter of black blade glints under the moonlight, some beast growling from the immaterial.
Shadows spring to life. Writhing. Binding. More solid and strong than anything without true existence should be. They do not discriminate between beast and priest.

”You.” declares Acting Messenger of Tamamo no Mae, Steven Primerra to the far-creature, pointing.
”In ten seconds I’m going to release you, and you’re going to take your spawn and leave. If you ever wish to step foot here again you will cordially explain things at a later date in a way that does not involve destroying my grandmother’s garden.”

”You.” declares Acting Messenger of Tamamo no Mae, Steven Primerra to the priest of Inari mimicking a far-creature. He points to the night sky.
”Are out of your jurisdiction and out of control. In ten seconds I will release you, and you will act in such a way that befits your station, which involves not driving mad anyone in a fifty foot radius while assaulting visitors.”

Thump.
”Are we clear?”

[Recaiden]

Well, he was right. This fungus-dragon-thing isn't interested in talking or making things right because it's just a bundle of madness and lies.
"I'm sorry to hear that."

Oh. Tangled up in shadows. Really bad timing there, Steven.

Better clear things up right away.
That's not its spawn. That's a visitor to the gardens that the monster killed and started to transform. Her name is Karaglen; she's been coming here for years. I was trying to get her back before it's too late. The monster is making a lot of excuses, but it won't stop and explain anything. Be careful of trusting anything it says.

The spiders start collapsing back towards a vulpan shape. One still caught in the shadows, to show that we are clear. He is working with Steven here.
His fur looks a bit ragged, patchy. Like some horrible far monster had splashed him with acid. Which it did, as it happens.
"I don't look like that because I want to. It's what I need to do to handle the eldritch energy without further harm."
Even now small elements of his appearance are switching around. We don't all have your capacity to ignore empyreal warping shenanigans, Steven.

[Sanctuary]

Resume it later?
Probably not.
Alex is cute, but not so much that it's worth putting up with this rudeness.
Anchor frowns slightly and heads out towards the stairs.

[Rebonack]

[Horror Garden]

Right as Zee is about to take off she suddenly finds herself bound with darkness! She lets loose a sonorous roar of rage and despair, pearlescent fungal growths bursting out of the ground around her within the warded zone. Bulbous, rounded mushroom eggs, waving tendrils, and long, narrow crystalline spikes. She thrashes against her bonds for a moment, before realizing that Steven is talking to her. At his voice she begins to calm, her breath slowing. She regards the Messenger with a scrutinizing gaze.

"Pray to Inari for me~," she sings. "Tell her Zee is very, very sorry for making a mess in her garden~. I'll come back and help clean up when I'm more presentable~."

Or in other words, she's less of a reality warping eldritch abomination.

"Thank you for showing me mercy~. If there had been a cleaner way to do this, I would have taken it~."

But wait!

Steve was just warned don't listen to ondore's Zee's lies! Would he believe a seraph, who's tongue burns with Truth?

She scowls a bit at the accusations. "You should know better than to stick your mind inside things like me~," she retorts, her tone one of a mother scolding a child for touching the hot stove. Again. "Reading people's thoughts without consent is rude~." She puffs herself up a bit, sitting down like a HUGE cat and wrapping her tail around her feet. "But I'll work on figuring out how to shield my thoughts like K'rax used to. That was her craft, not mine."

[Deathkeeper]

[Horror Garden]

Steven (whose name has an N at the end, Steve is the name of a talking sword or a deadtimed paladin) is notably not immune to empryeal warping shenanigans, and that's why he's standing way over there and not trying to engage a far thing in melee combat. Though his tails are refusing to agree on their number. Ignore that.

"And so you decided that the best course of action would be to begin using force instead of the large wellspring of magic that overflows from our beings." states the Acting Messenger (only Acting; being a full Messenger requires being dead).
Thump.

A shimmering field surrounds them. Zee and Arlem will find it really needlessly difficult and annoying to lie without breaking through the divine energy Steven is weaving. Of course it's entirely possible that Zee can totally break a Zone of Truth, but is it really worth it?
"You. Name and explanation. Now." Steven demands simply of the singing one.

[Rebonack]

[Horror Garden]

That's fine.

Zee has trouble lying to begin with. That comes with the territory when your tongue blazes with the searing Light of Truth.

With the situation calming down and Kara (reasonably) safe, Zee is getting her instincts back under control. Which is good. Being in control is good. Zee doesn't want to be a puppet, if she can avoid it. Even if that's just a puppet to her own burning passions. She adjusts her position to get comfortable, fluffing her wings a bit and settling her tail. She smiles, realizes that's a terrible idea since her smile goes all the way down her long, draconic neck, then promptly stops smiling.

"I'm Jezekiel Xarcha~," comes her symphonic reply. "I used to be a puppet to the Great Old One K'rax Naggath~. I worked at Trog's Tavern as a barmaid~. When K'rax was slain on That Day my strings were cut as I was cast into the Empyreum~. I've been there since, looking down on the Nexus, watching the people I cared about impotently~. I'm still not sure how I returned here.~"

All true, thus far.

"Shortly before That Day began, Karaglen found a sword possessed of a bloodthirster, a fae of the most reprehensibly, violently evil type~. A daemon~. I tried to take it from her, but the Stars conspired against me and I was cast away~. And no one else was willing to do what was necessary and take the sword~. The daemon all but consumed Karaglen and left her broken~. The daemon has been building power, feeding on the souls of people here Inside each time it takes control~. I hoped to slay it at least, and at best to mend a poor little girl who I cared for deeply~. I'm putting her back together now~. She was a friend, an adopted child to me before~."

The seraph places a clawed hoof over her belly, looking down fondly.

"But she's my daughter by blood, this time~. She's mine, and I am hers~," the seraph sings.

[Recaiden]

"Perhaps you've forgotten what it's like to be a normal member of the temple, Mr. Primerra? Performing miracles takes effort for us, hardly an overflowing spring. More to the point, she had already demonstrated an ability to evade our magic."

Arlem inspects the zone of truth spell, trying to see if Zee could be finding a way around it.

That does make more sense than what the monster had been saying before. Although it still makes Zee's course of action extremely risky. If he hadn't been so patient and careful in dealing with her, anything could have happened.

But he has nothing else to say. This is Steven's show now, his problem, the replacement of a guest with a far realm monstrosity on his shoulders.

[Deathkeeper]

Horror Garden

"Oh, stow it with that, Arlem. You know I haven't had permission to tap into my Big reserves in over a year; you get more spells than I do. And I've been very acquainted with the trials of the lower priests."

Steven lets out a long exhale, not quite a sigh.
"Then you would be the famous Zee. We've never met, but I suppose your reputation precedes you." Mostly from old patrons of Trog's.
"Eclipse probably could have helped with a daemon, but I can't get any closer to you without sprouting some extra heads and/or limbs, so I'm just going to stay here.
I'm also going to suggest very much that you please leave soon as I will need to cover this entire eye-searing monstrosity of a garden before anyone wakes up and has to have their mind repaired. Or their coat removed of static." he says irritably at his own, which is currently fluffing from all the static in the air.

[Rebonack]

[Horror Garden]

"I really wish this could have happened differently, but catching Kara in the garden praying while the daemon was asleep was the only way to be sure," Zee apologizes. "I feel terrible about the garden and I'll be back to help clean up once I'm bound again. I don't think my presence should have been so intensely mutagenic, that might have been a side effect of eating the daemon."

Mutagenic, yes. But resolving the whole garden into a tiny shrine to Logos and Hyle in a matter of minutes? That took a big power boost. Bloodthirsters ARE pretty powerful, though.

Assuming she's not tied down by shadows anymore, the seraph will launch herself into the air, rising skyward until the temple grounds are well out of her aura of resolution. Even in the air, little points of light wrapped in crimson, coral like fungus are winking into existence and slowly reaching toward each other with white filaments. The effect has slowed down drastically, however. At this new rate it would take hours or days to create a landscape like the garden. When she speaks again her voice is still clear and strong as it was down in the ground.

"Thank you for being understanding. And sorry about the frizzing. The garden should be safe now so long as you ward against lightning and acid. Oh! And wear eye protection! Looking directly into the Light of Truth can cause eye damage and or insanity."

Was it mentioned that the garden is really bright? Because it's brighter than the noin day sun in there. The night priests probably find it really aggravating.

With a final parting shout of, "I'll bring snacks!" she's off, leaving a glittering trail of stars behind her. She needs to find somewhere safe and secluded to wait out the hours it will take for Karaglen to finish gestating.

Well! That was certainly a thing that just happened.

[Recaiden]

Arlem does not respond to the monster. Zee's apology means nothing. Sometimes events are set the way they are.

For the acting messenger, though... "I'm sorry. If the truth isn't to your liking, I can keep it to myself." He waves at the area of the zone, eyes twinkling.

Then he starts in on the prayers needed to purge the temple of every trace of the Empyrean.

[Deathkeeper]

[Horror Garden]

”You forget that I’m bound to my own spell as well.” So it seems that both of what they said was true, at least to the respective speakers.

Then Steven makes sure that the garden is properly blocked off to unsuspecting onlookers.
It will be a long night.

[Rebonack]

[Horror Garden]

Using straight divine magic to miracle away the growth could probably work, but it would be a giant pain in the tail. The empyrean growth is largely apathetic to the faith of mortals; it reacts better to the concrete rather than the abstract. While simply praying it away would eventually do the trick, it would be rather akin to removing weeds by smacking them relentlessly with a stick. Possible, but not the best choice.

Truth be told, the most effective method here would be good old fashioned weed pulling.

Or several castings of Disintegration and a broom.

That would work, too.

Buried somewhere in the garden is an icon, a symbol of the pure power of the Empyreum. A fragment of Logos, refined and resolved. So long as it remains, the aberrant garden will slowly grow back. It could be used to super charge a spell touching on the spheres of information or life, consuming it in the process. But meddling with such unnatural magics might not be wise. Or it could be destroyed. Exposing it to raw unreality would do the trick. Shadow magic comes pretty close, on that front, given that solid shadows are very much not a real thing.

And for the record, the garden isn't horrifically mutagenic. Or maddening, for that matter. Just really weird. Anyone inside will be very gradually eroded, but making sure to spend less than fifteen minutes at a time in the garden would nicely avoid that fate.

[Recaiden]

"I'm not that forgetful." Steven might think a lot of strange things - he evidently does since he's speaking them here.

Well, it's not straight magicking it away. Burning would be ideal, if they could trust the smoke.
So it's doing to be disintegrations.

Some time later...
"Well look at this."
Arlem holds up the icon he dug out of the dust, something that wasn't annihilated by their spells.
"A little seed of corrupting eldritch power, newly buried here, that Zee just failed to mention. I hate to think what this might have done if we'd actually waited for her to 'fix' the garden."

[Deathkeeper]

[Sanctuary]

Two teenagers enter the temple grounds! The first comes holding his companion’s hand, a Totally Normal teenage boy with white hair, a somewhat bedraggled outfit and jacket, and for those that can look past the glamour, the legs of a white stallion.
”You know, did we really need the glamour? It’s not like anyone outside the school cares what you look like.” he whispers.

[Rebonack]

[Sanctuary]

The second is a svelte red headed girl bundled up in winter wear. At Grant's question she gives a little huff as a fox' tail ending in a spiraling wisp of blue foxfire rather than a white spot suddenly begins existing behind her. "I was mostly worried about people like Oliver's parents shooting us on sight when we left the school grounds."

Oh.

Well.

That sort of makes sense, right?

"People there were on the lookout for, like, evil faeries, right? So we don't want to be mistaken for those."

But...

But Rey!

You're probably an evil faerie!

[Recaiden]

And there seems to be another one already here.

The very tall bird-girl at the altar welcomes them in the standard manner, looking curiously at the suddenly-appearing tail.
"Greetings, neighbors; the blessings of Inari be upon you. What can we do for you today?"
She has the sky-blue-and-blue robes of a junior priestess.

[Deathkeeper]

[Sanctuary]

Don’t be silly, narrator. Rey can’t be evil. She hasn’t eaten anyone.
Yet.
Grant doesn’t turn off his glamour since he doesn’t actually know how he turned it on in the first place.
”My friend got her name eaten by an evil faerie and now we need help before she hurts someone.
...
I guess I need help too. I don’t even know what I am at this point.” Grant admits.

[Rebonack]

[Sanctuary]

"It was a huldra," Rey adds. "Which is why I've got-"

She waves vaguely in the direction of her fox tail.

"And this, too," she adds, holding up her spirit ball.

That shiny, swirling spirit ball.

Drawing the eyes toward it.

Just drowning out everything else.

Rey quickly stuffs it back in her pocket before it has time to hypnotize anyone.

Because that would be terrible.

[Recaiden]

Here in the temple, the spirit ball probably kinda just seems like a ball. Shiny, but pretty easy to look away from.

"Okay. Well don't worry; the temple is very safe. No one will get hurt."
"Will you be able to tell me how this all happened?" the priestess asks.

[Deathkeeper]

[Sanctuary]

”Faeries ate our school. And maybe most of the people in it since we only got nine kids out. A huldra ate Rey’s name and I got forced into drinking some naiad’s water who might also have been Pegasus?” Grant explains. Badly.

[Rebonack]

[Sanctuary]

"That's about all of it," Rey confirms. "We, like, totally slew the huldra and I got my soul back. But I think that counted as eating a soul so... tail."

She gestures at the tail again.

That blasted tail!

Just sitting there.

Being floofy.

What's it good for, anyway?

[Recaiden]

The tail is cute, it helps you balance, and it can keep you warm, it can dust things, that one might start fires...very useful.
The priestess sometimes wishes she had a tail. But she does not; she isn't that bird-like.

"Have you gone to the police about the rest of your school, then? You did well to get nine peopple out but that sounds like quite the catastrophe!"
If not she can set some of the troops at the base here on it, perhaps. Or maybe the whole place has vanished into the faerie world now.

"-and now you're worried that you'll become as dangerous as that huldra was." Is that about how it's happening?

Grant's story still doesn't make much sense, but he definitely had some fae drink then, that's supposed to be a little serious. Probably changed him in some subtle way. Or some way that's hiding from her.

[Deathkeeper]

[Sanctuary]

"We had someone called Watchers who were handling the authorities I think.
But the spring was just from a naiad. They're...bad because they're faeries but not as dangerous as huldra. I'm not actually sure if that makes me one." Grant admits.

[Rebonack]

[Sanctuary]

"There were police or something there," Rey says, in corroboration with Grant's story. "And... yeah. There this 'oh boy I should eat people's livers!'"

As she says this she puts on her biggest, most cheerful smile, makes a fist, crooks her elbow, and gives it a great 'hot-diggity!' sort of swing.

"Impulse that keeps popping up. I don't want to hurt anyone... but I kind of want to eat people. If... if that makes any sense?"

It doesn't make much sense to her.

Really.

None at all.

She really, really doesn't want to do something.

And she also REALLY wants to do the same thing.

[Recaiden]

"Have you felt any particular way since then, Mr. Rey's friend?"
He should really tell them his own name. If he has one.

"Well, you might be driven to eat people because that's 'just what huldra do', but no matter what, you have a choice. You don't have to kill people."
"But also, you may just be hungry and need vitamins. When was the last time you ate normal food?"

[Deathkeeper]

[Sanctuary]

Grant thinks about it.
”Well I’ve felt more confident. Kinda achey, especially when I take off this necklace. And Like I might just burst or something.”
“Oh and call me Grant.”