Trog's Tavern CLIII

[Rebonack]

"I'm not very good at coming up with presents!" Navvy laments. "It was tough enough thinking of one for you, sis. How am I supposed to think of five more!"

Now, Navvy really likes giving out gifts. But most of the gifts he's given out thus far are things mom has made. Those little plates of Thanksmas goodies that he didn't eat any of because those were for other people and not him mom can always more at home that doesn't have fancy little bows tied on them.

He doesn't even know what all these half-brothers and sisters are like!

How is he supposed to figure out what sort of gift would bring them the most joy possible if he doesn't know what they enjoy!

Truly this is the worst thing possible.

Meanwhile!

Zee scrunches her lips off to the side a bit, peering at the collar.

Then?

She leans in close.

Veeeeeery close.

And licks it.

What kind of spellwork does this thing taste like?

[Chaotic Bob]

Aren't going anywhere near House Xar'cha, huh? They must be "bad people".
Karaglen isn't completely naive, living in this city. She knows the score with bad folks and bad families.
That being said, she's also a big supporter of redemption and generally being kind in the face of adversity.
Certain exceptions to be made. See: a certain recent fiend.

So while she'll be nodding her acceptance along with Raril's quick initial denial there, it isn't going to stop her from doing something for them. Maybe a big box of handmade spiders? The big drow families are usually still big on the spiders, she thinks? There's a few nice(ish) ones she's met who seemed to suggest as much.
That should be easy enough.

"It's okay Navvy, we can brainstorm together!"

That just leaves these step-siblings, uncle and...step-cousin?
Oh goodness, so many people to make things for and so very little time left to do it.
"Erelae, Sornnolu, Aly'ithra, Ilpholin, and Nadas. Five. Sszinyon and Landon. Two. Seven total. Okay! I can work with this! Um, I'm really super glad you came by and I wish we could talk more but I'mrunningoutofotimeI'mreallysorrybye!"
Her words quickly blur together at rushed speed, Raril will be afflicted with another hug, and then the girl is going to fly off towards the stares. Both metaphorically and literally, as a pair of silver dragon wings slip free from her dress.

"Navvycomehelpifyouwant!"

There are very few forces on this mortal plane that could stop her now, but everyone here can technically try.

[Artemis97]

Raril holds very still as Zee...licks? the collar.

"Uh, Zee... what are you...?" At this angle he can't actually see what she's doing to the metal thing around his neck.


It'll mostly taste like divination magic? There's no spell keeping it on, and surprisingly no curses.


Raril doesn't move while the collar is inspected, but he'll manage to wave at Kara. "Have fun, little one!"

[Earl of Purple]

The next person to pick up a drink may (if they desire) find a gold ring in the bottom of their glass/tankard/alcoholic beverage container. It's finely made, the golden band wrapped with silver leaves and flowers and it's set with a single large garnet. Despite the fact it may have been submerged in a drink that may have been chilled, or heated, it's room temperature, and it's also not sticky.

[Rebonack]

Navvy watches his sibling depart in haste.

Then he glances at his mom and dad doing weird grownup things.

"I'm going to go help sis and make sure she doesn't get carried away," he says as he hops off stool and begins bounding off toward the stairs. "Love you guys! Don't forget about the Thanksmas party dad!"

The pair of wyrmlings seem to make pretty good foils for each other. Kara is a thinker and Navvy a doer. Kara is intense and Navvy is grounded. It's probably a good thing that metallic dragon's natural inclination is toward niceness, otherwise two very different sibling personalities would probably clash more.

And Zee?

She leans back and just peers at the collar.

"I don't think it's trapped," she concludes. "Just for tracking, probably? Or possibly spying on you. Just in case of the last one-"

Zee peers rather intently at the collar. "Hey Danube, that new outfit of yours makes your butt look fat."

She's very diplomatic.

Then she smiles broadly as if nothing weird had just happened! "I'm glad to hear about your brother and his child. Or... her child? I haven't really checked in on that. Children really cause people to re-think their priorities."

It's a biological imperative!

[Artemis97]

"Zee...." Raril whines slightly, worried that she's offended his sister. Danube probably wasn't directly monitoring things right now, but word would get back to her, and even if it was obvious Zee shouldn't have a clue what Danube looks like in her latest ensemble she may still take offence, just on principle.

"Yeah, Sszinyon was a woman for a while? I think he got hit with the same curse that got me a few years back.Well he was a she and she was with Endrik, and I guess they got close, because she got pregnant, and now they've got a kid. Sszinyon's back to his usual self, now, but is mostly staying out of family politics, now. He's got a castle and village up the coast Outside. Lots of Lycanthropes and the like. He treats them fairly, so the place is pretty prosperous. Just maybe avoid it on a full moon?"

[Rebonack]

How do THEY know Zee isn't aware of what Danube looks like in her latest ensemble? They've been in the Nexus now for a while and they've probably heard the stories of what lives behind that unassuming human face. Maybe Zee isn't JUST being impetuous rude. Maybe she's making a subtle threat, too. I know exactly where to find you. I know when you're most vulnerable. Watch it how you treat my husband or we might get better acquainted.

Or maybe she IS just being silly and childish.

It's hard to tell sometimes.

Zee gives a 'eh?' sort of shrug.

"Sometimes you just have to yell that a drow matron's outfit accentuates her giant butt. She's a priestess, right? Loves spiders? Spiders have big butts. Keeps things thematic."

That probably isn't helping, Zee.

"A castle full of werewolves that might also be vampires sounds like something to avoid when it's that time of the month, yeah," Zee replies with a sagely nod. "I guess I should be glad that I'm not allergic to fur. Not that... that's any real problem. If it WAS I could fix that pretty easily since it's an auto-immune disorder. Would just have to tell my immune system to cool it because a bit of dog dander isn't the end of the world."

She hums to herself, considering all the odd things they've been through together. A smile. A laugh.

"You know, I was watching while I was gone. But that's not the same as hearing it from you. Tell me a story, Raril. Maybe with some music? Tell me what you've been through."

[Artemis97]

"I hope you're not allergic to fur!" Raril exclaims. "I'm a werewolf!" The drow chuckles.

"Ah..." He sighs, and summon a guitar into his hands with a gesture. "What have I been up to?" Raril wonders aloud, as he begins to play, a gentle sort of Spanish finger style. Nothing distracting, just pleasant to listen to.

He considers telling Zee that his brother had him assassinated, which was amusing as he ended up haunting the Den for a few days before being reunited with his body. But He considers his wife doesn't want to hear about him dying, again. Gods he did that a lot. There was also the plot that confronting his brother had led to, which he wouldn't speak of while wearing the collar. Though they hoped it would lead to Danube's downfall.

What was a safe topic?

"I've been doing little things, keeping the bar running, some light adventuring. Oh man, a few months back there was some sort of Blood moon. Made all the Lycanthropes go wild. I had been fairly safely barricaded in my office, until Nadas showed up. Poor boy got bit an instantly turned into a wolf. There were a few drow officers there that night too, probably spying on me to be honest. We got a few of them. I don't remember much of that, but I've been working with Nadas on how to control the turn. Same with the others. Got my own little pack. I tell you the females don't like listening to me, but every instinct tells them they should. I was able to convince Danube not to slay them outright, that the curse could be controlled, used. So she sees it as an interesting experiment. Damn her and her experiments. She's fascinated by breeding and bloodlines. She'll do anything to make our line stronger. Probably why she puts up with me still. For good or no, my blood is pure Xar'Cha and it runs strong. Erelae's resisted her machinations mostly, just by merit of being close to Danube, but she'll find some sort of mate for her. And for Aly'ithra. She tried giving her to some bat-demon. He was nice enough, but the deal fell apart.

"I've sort of retaken my position as spymaster for the house here in the Nexus. You wouldn't believe the extent of the network Sornnolu has set up already. I'm proud of him, but he won't hear it. I think he resents me for what happened to his mother. There wasn't much I could do for her. I ran." He strikes a discordant note. "I was a coward. But if I'd never ran I would have never ended up on the surface, seen how good it is."

[Rebonack]

"A bat?" Zee replies, wrinkling her nose a bit. "Like... one of the ugly insect eating bats or the nauseatingly cute fruit bats?"

Here's Zee.

Asking the real questions.

"I actually saw that whole blood moon thing. It was pretty hectic. There have been other lunar eclipses since then, but thankfully none of them had the same effect," Zee muses. "I'm kind of glad your brother chomping me didn't stick around permanently. I guess K'Rax wasn't going to be satisfied with just one form of weirdness. Had to try all those other things on me, too."

She had been a werewolf too, for a while. Thanks wholly to Ssizzy attacking her because...

Honestly she can't even recall the reason.

Probably just a werewolf doing werewolf things.

"I don't think I would be very hospitable to faewild spirits anymore, for that matter. Just a little too spicy now."

She is literally a star.

"Wouldn't have made it to the surface. Wouldn't have met me and everyone else. Wouldn't have helped kick Atropus to the curb. Wouldn't have stood up to Draken. Wouldn't have had a really nice fiend live in your head for a while..." Zee rattles off.

Other not so nice things wouldn't have happened, either. But there are going to be not so nice things no matter what route you take.

A few moments of silence follow.

"Raril? I told you about... how I kept coming back, right? What K'Rax was doing to bring me back over and over again?"

[Artemis97]

"Fruit bat, thankfully." Raril replies simply, striking a happier chord. He smiles as his wife lists off his achievements. Yeah, it was probably for the best.

But then, the question. Raril stops playing, resting his hand on the strings to still them. "Not exactly? Maybe you should go over it again?" He looks a little confused.

[Rebonack]

Zee takes a deep breath.

"Okay. So. I would get killed. It happened a whole lot since the Nexus used to be WAY more violent," she begins. "Or at least more deadly. Then, usually a day later or so, poof! I'm back. The exact way it happened wasn't always the same, either how I vanished or how I returned. And sometimes when I came back I was a little..."

Hydra Zee, for example?

"...different. I didn't really try to figure it out back then. I just rolled with it, you know? But my story wasn't always the same. Sometimes details were off. Things changed. Someone once joked that I was a comic-book character, always getting rewritten. We figured K'Rax was just putting me back together somehow and that was that, right?"

She drums her fingers along the counter.

"Not right. See, every single one of those mes that died? They got dumped into the Empyrean, or the Far Realm, or whatever you want to call it. And then K'Rax would grab someone, some innocent unassuming person, and twist them until they were a reasonable approximation of me. The new person would get dumped into the Nexus with all the relevant memories none the wiser. The first me that died? The original? I got gobbled up by some Far Realm thing after a few very disorienting minutes. That's what happened to nearly all of the mes that died. A few managed to hide and grow and survive. That's basically how things were going until K'Rax got blown up by Empire agents planting a nuclear bomb in her brain during That Day."

Oh.

Huh.

That's a revelation. Before just now no one actually knew what had killed K'Rax.

"When that happened ALL the other mes got dumped into the Far Realm at once. Thousands of mes that she had stocked up. That was when we figured out what she had been doing. And I spent the last seven years gathering myself together. Every single Zee that had died, hunting down the monsters that had gobbled them up and chowing down right back. We all had the same memories, basically. We all had common cause. We banded together and cooperated to grow our power and ascend the ladder of the Empyrean. And when we got as high as we could that way, we sort of... uhh..."

Zee looks a bit sheepish.

"Ate each other. It was a big Highlander-style tournament that we held among ourselves. There can only be one! End result, though, I hit Bronze Host in only seven years which is absolutely unheard of. I guess someone must have been impressed, because I got sponsored to re-enter the Eternal Game and woke up in the fox-hole Avatar had dug over at GLoG. I still have no idea who my benefactor is or why they wanted me here again, but I'm not complaining."

She reaches out to take Raril's hand.

"I really like the company in the Nexus."

[Artemis97]

"The Empire! I should have known..." Raril scowls, but it soon passes. The Empire was long gone from the Nexus.

The drow's eyes boggle when Zee describes what had happened to the thousands of her in the Empyrean, especially the eating each other part. "That's terrible! She was overwriting other people to make... you? Over and over again... every time you came back. Oh gods..."

Raril squeezes Zee's hand. She had survived all this time at the expense of others. He knew that would be something Zee would never want.

"And I considered bringing another aspect of K'Rax from outside the Nexus back here in a hope to just see you again, but...it would've been just another overwritten person? A copy?" The drow looks sad and confused.

"But now there's just one of you...one really powerful you."

[Rebonack]

Zee gives half a smile, recollecting that fateful day. "Honestly? If he was still around I would thank the self-styled emperor for calling that strike on K'Rax. If that hadn't happened she would probably still be doing the same thing and I wouldn't have ever learned the sort of atrocities she was committing just so she could have a friendly, quirky puppet for people to relate to. But she did get blown up. And now I'm a real girl, without any strings on me."

There's a flash of anger there. But... it doesn't last long.

"I can't hate her for it. We're both technically on the same side of the conflict here. We want to see the Game remain in a stalemate for as long as possible so That Day doesn't end in annihilation like it could have. I don't think she's evil. I just don't think... I don't think she really comprehends just how awful of a thing she was doing."

She nods at Raril's question.

"Yeah, it would have been another copy. They would have been me. Memories, personality, the whole package deal. But another person would have been erased for it. And if she ever manages to get back into the Game she might start doing it again. Or she might just make a totally new flavor of puppet since I'm here. Or maybe she's learned everything she wanted to know from that experiment. I just don't know. I was only her puppet, not privy to whatever thought process she had."

And finally a slow nod.

"Yeah... just one me. There were a few I couldn't rescue. Mes that got gobbled up by things WAY bigger than anything I should tangle with. There is one that I couldn't hope to beat before I came to the Nexus that I might be able to throw down with now. But that would be risky and... I'm kind of worried about what I might learn. See, one of the mes I'm missing is the first Avatar. The one that got dumped into the tavern along with the recliner over there."

She gestures at the comfy maroon E-Z Boy recliner still sitting in the tavern near a nice coffee table. It's battered and scuffed, but still going strong.

"I imagine what I would learn would be pretty similar to what I got from the second through sixth, but... I dunno. Was I ever a real person? The first me? Or was Avatar just another creation of K'Rax's? A personality she invented whole-cloth? How am I supposed to tell the difference between real memories and invented ones?" she asks with a frustrated sigh. "It doesn't help that apotheosis, transitioning from this physical reality to the Empyrean, isn't exactly a one-to-one change. The old flesh gets toasted and an empyrean gets born in your image. Memory is there. Will is there. But soul and terrestrial matter can't exist there. It isn't like the echo I pulled you through a few times in travel. This is the real deal."

Zee sits in silence for a few seconds, fiddling with a dish of peanuts in her free hand. She stares at the ale-soaked wood and reminds herself of all the tiny, clueless little creatures living between the grains.

"Apotheosis is like getting thrown into a smelter's fire, Raril. All impurities get burned away. Every single me that ended up in the heavenlys go their souls incinerated. I don't... know if that means I'm not the same person anymore. People anymore? Whatever. I don't know if that means I'm a copy of a copy. It never made any difference to me when I didn't know. But now I do, it's impossible to miss."

She gives the most hopeful smile to Raril that she can manage.

"I want to keep being Zee, though. I want to keep being your Zee, if you'll have me."

[Artemis97]

So it was true, her soul...souls? were gone. But what was a soul? Raril didn't have that answer. Zee, his wife, was standing here in front of him, real as anything. She knew what she was, what she was missing, but that didn't stop her from loving him. Isn't that the important part? Raril had once refused a marriage because his own soul was doomed to the Demonweb Pits. He believed a marriage was a joining of two souls in a way. Maybe... maybe there was enough of her bonded to him to make this marriage worth following. Despite the time she'd been gone, Raril had remained loyal to her memory, hopeful she would come back. And she had, in a new and glorious and slightly frightening way.

What was memory? What was a soul? What they had, it was real enough. It was all he could ask or hope for.

"Of course." Raril says, smiling up at her. "I love you, Zee. Always will."

[Rebonack]

Yes.

He said yes.

Raril will find himself pulled into a tight hug with Zee weeping tears of joy onto his shoulder.

Finally all those anxieties are unwinding for Zee.

And for Raril?

He gets to have a lady crying into his shirt for the second time today.

"I was so afraid you would say no," Zee whispers. "I love you Raril. Always. Always always."

She buries her face in the nape of his neck, holding on for dear life. His feel, his smell, his breath, his voice, his touch, all here. Too long.

Too long...

"It's been too long since I really touched you."

[Hattish Thing]

The doors into the tavern are suddenly blasted open via a colorful burst of magic as a severely drunk, seven-foot-tall, bow-legged individual lurches into the bar, a smoking wand in his left hand and a leaky bottle of yellow fluid in his right. The figure is dressed most unusually in garish shades of red and blue, with a patchy, torn overcoat covering much of his body, and an extraordinarily large multi-patched wizard's cap upon his head. A blue bandanna covers much of the man's face, save for his beady eyes, which glare forward in different directions from beneath the shade of the wizard's cap.

A horrifically stained white tunic covers the figure's chest, sloppily tucked into a pair of orange long underwear fitted with multicolored buttons and tassels. The man wears a large leather boot upon one of his feet, while the other is merely stuffed into a fuzzy slipper depicting what appears to be a yeti. It is far too small for him.

--

As the man lurches forward, he gestures towards Raril with his freakishly long left arm, noticing the guitar playing almost immediately. He waggles his long, spidery fingers within a pair of fingerless gloves as he does so before belching out towards the musical drow.



--

Spoiler: Basic Appearence

Show

[Artemis97]

Raril hugs his wife, for the first time in... months? Years? Gods it was too long, too much. A shuddering sigh escapes his chest as tears leak from his red eyes. He holds Zee tightly, searing this moment into his memory.

The guitar falls to the wayside, forgotten. It hits the floor with a discordant twang.

And then the door swings open.

"Why?" Raril wonders aloud. Reluctantly he lets go of his wife and turns to face the... very strange newcomer. "Uh, sorry? What? You want a song?"

[Rebonack]

Zee gives a snorting laugh to Raril's question, followed by a hiccuping giggle as she wipes tears and a bit of snot from her face. "Nexus serendipity," she whispers conspiratorially, as if that explained everything.

Then she...

Uh.

Turns her attention the new person and- ugh.

What even is that? Something discordant and wriggling. Like worms crawling up the man's worldline. The too-small nature of his yeti slipper is a piece of information she really didn't need. Though lacking in that detail, Zee can't help but imagine the newcomer is one of those people with disturbingly thick, yellowed nails. Especially on the be-slippered foot. Zee desperately hopes she's wrong.

"Well... uh... Howdy?" Zee begins cautiously. It'll take her to some time to build up to her default level of chipper.

Especially because something about this guy strikes her as deeply not okay.

"Welcome to Trog's Tavern. Can I get you anything today?"

[Hattish Thing]

The strangely dressed man scuttles closer, the exposed toes which have burst through his yeti slipper pat-pat-patting up against the wooden flooring of the pub. The very act of walking seems unusually difficult for the figure, almost painful, a suggestion which only grows more apparent as he grows closer, the sound of inner material grinding against its own self growing louder based on proximity. Something was very, very off with the shape of the man. As Raril responds, the masked man nods violently, that peculiar grinding sound once more growing louder before he waggles his fingers and stuffs his wand back in his belt.

Rather than immediately respond, however, the man-thing presses the bottle of yellow fluid to his lips once more (or at least, to the part of the mask which would, theoretically, cover where lips would be), and pours its contents all over himself. He twitches and groans afterwards, fingers and toes stretching backwards in a spasmodic fashion.

[Artemis97]

"Right....okay, a song it is." Raril leans over and picks up the guitar. He takes a few moments to tune the instrument, as it had probably been disturbed when it fell.

A spider song? Raril knew quite a few spider songs, most of them in drow. He starts playing and sings in his native tongue a rather bawdy tune about a male spider courting a female with a gift of a juicy fly, only to get eaten after they mate. But that's okay though, because now there will be lots of spider babies.

[Rebonack]

"He's talking WAY more yellow than he was before," Zee whispers to Raril.

She has... absolutely no idea what that means.

Well, no, that isn't accurate. It means exactly what it sounds like. Zee isn't sure what the significance is, though. But she DOES know that when the ideas expressed in a worldline suddenly change color it usually implies that something is going on. Maybe not something vital. Maybe not something immediate. But it IS worthy of paying attention to.

Zee glances rather pointedly over at Cosmo until she catches the gnome's attention, then shifts her gaze to the yellow puddle of fluid on the floor dripping from the strange figure.

Cosmo waves one hand dismissively in a pretty overt 'no way I get payed enough for that' sort of way and heads off to clean the bathrooms instead.

Great.

And then? Uh... spider songs? This is all really strange.

Zee doesn't really know the words to the song, so she just kind of hums along as best as she can.

[Hattish Thing]

The strange man chortles to himself. It is an eerie noise that echoes in ways it should not. As Raril performs, he takes this time to finish off his bottle by, quite literally, stuffing the entire bottle underneath his bandanna. The entire thing vanishes under there, accompanied by a chorus of crunches, glass falling like crumbs onto the figure's shirt. Now with hands freed, he claps them together, quite excited for Raril's performance. The man grows somewhat perturbed about halfway through, however, and elects to raise a single, long index finger up into the air. It is longer than before.

He sets a finger upon his other hand up against his nostril before pressing down and aiming his finger down at Raril's guitar. A beam of spiders shoots forth from the wizard-thing's yellowed fingernail, likely connecting with Raril's guitar. Should the spider-beam connect, Raril will find that his guitar is now, miraculously, made entirely of millions of concentrated (still-living) arachnids.

[Artemis97]

Raril just... screams. He drops the guitar and clambers over the bar top to get away from the instrument turned arachnids.

"Get em off! Get em off! Get em off! Oh gods help! Get em off!"

[Rebonack]

Sometimes Zee wonders if, given the propensity for Raril to get harassed by spiders at any given moment, Lolth takes personal enjoyment in tormenting him. He HAD been down in the demonweb pits for a while. Before her apotheosis going down there and slapping Lolth upside the face was an option. She isn't totally sure she can even exist down there anymore, though. Maybe she'll make a point of finding out some day?

There are more pressing concernes right now, though.

Namely the wizard? with weirdly shaped limbs who she's going to be referring to as Spidersman until she has a good reason not to. What does she know so far? He's gross. He has nauseating yellowed nails (ew ew ew she just knew he would). He's interacting with something pretty decidedly otherworldly, just his speech makes that pretty clear. He's got a penchant for Yellow. She's knows that Hastur had been briefly active when she first got back to the Nexus last year, but then all that gooey Yellow awfulness had lapsed into deadtime. Which she was pretty okay with. That was on less crises to worry about. Hopefully this is unrelated and just run of the mill awfulness but she kind of doubts it.

First order of business?

Spider-guitar.

Zee reaches out and grasps the wriggly instrument, focusing on the Matter that composes it and the Shape that it takes. Upon this she imposes her inviolate Will to force it back into conformity with the proper form of a guitar. Acoustic guitars aren't made of spiders. They're made of wood. An acoustic guitar made of spiders is not Correct and she aims to fix that problem.

Without any fanfare the guitar is a normal guitar again. Zee shakes a few stray spiders off it.

"Hey, that isn't okay," Zee informs Spidersman. "No one is going to be playing spiderham here. And no one is going to be eating bats OR getting sick. You can either order something like a normal person or you can take a hike. I'm not going to let you harass the patrons."

[Recaiden]

"Oh, hold on. I got it."

Tao suddenly says, stirring from his deadtime.
Huh, he really spaced out there, didn't he? Took one bite of those brownies and just drifted away. They really were delicious though, so that was time well spent.

In the meantime the gods showed up and started arguing, those bounty hunters left, and the barmaid's husband came in and they had a terrible revelation and a heart-warming reunion and oh wait oh mother oh what in all the frozen hells- Tao's internal monologue takes a brief detour into mute, uncomprehending horror as he considers Zee in a new light.
Not to even mention the spider guy.
Maybe he shouldn't start paying attention again.

[Hattish Thing]

As Raril shrieks and flees from the magical guitar so generously gifted to him, the masked wizard-thing grows visibly agitated, his beady black eyes furrowed beneath brows of orangeish hair. He crosses his uneven arms over the front of his stained shirt before stamping his booted foot upon the floor, the sound echoing strangely, bouncing up against angles that just aren't there. His lower body appears to shift strangely as the figure grows more compact, legs shortening before he's suddenly launched up into the air as if bounced atop a trampoline, his rubbery legs stretching out once more as he slams into the cieling, where he sticks.

With his back now glued to the cieling and his weird limbs hanging uselessly, the wizard-thing chortles madly at all the chaos, clapping his elongated hands together as Zee attempts to insert order into pure chaos. As her magic begins to wind its way through the spider-guitar, the very fabric of reality surrounding the thing snaps and shutters, matter phasing in and out of the material plane before exact duplicates of the objects found within five feet of the guitar pop into existence as if squeezed out of a tube of unreality.

As duplicate stools and chunks of wooden tavern-beams clatter against the ground, so too does a second spider-guitar split off from the now normal guitar. This spider-guitar appears thoroughly unstable, however, and vibrates violently for several seconds before bursting, creating a horrifying explosions of millions of tiny spiders which shower the tavern.

From atop the ceiling, the wizard-thing speaks again.

[Artemis97]

Oh now it's raining spiders. That's just... perfect.

There's a pitiful wail from the drow as he tries hiding under the counter behind the bar. He curls up in a ball and just begs for it all to stop.

[Rebonack]

Insert order? Hardly. The guitar was rearranged and Zee merely rearranged it back again.

And then other things begin happening. Unreality things. Gross fae magic things, from Zee's perspective at least. She hadn't been clear on exactly how Spidersman was causing his mischief, but now she certainly is. It probably isn't the fae she's used to dealing with. Probably wholly unrelated, given the Nexus' penchant for grabbing a huge range of nonsense. But it is, at its core, nonsense. Pure nonsense.

Pure chaos?

Hah!

Hardly. There's a big difference between actual chaos and intentional nonsense.

Sadly chaos isn't a sphere that Zee can really access. Otherwise she could show this hooligan what pure chaos really looks like. Instead, she makes a gesture toward the unreality vomiting furniture everywhere, causing a latticework of silvery metal and burning golden light to burst out of... well. Matter. Chunks of the gibbery reality popping out of nowhere just got mulched and made into something more real. In this particular case, the Searing Light of Truth. Unreality has a nasty habit of evaporating in its presence and manipulating unreality while the monolith is sitting there anchoring realness will probably prove to be a bit more difficult than it would be otherwise.

Then?

Zee, probably sporting more than a few spiders at this point, marches right up the monolith to the ceiling, guitar in hand, and swings the instrument to clobber the raggedy spell man right across his gross face.

"I've got your spider song right here you hooligan! Get out!"

[Hattish Thing]

The wizard-thing hisses most disconcertingly as Zee summons the very un-wizard-thing-ish monolith, cringing as it rises up and out of the very floor. His bandanna moves in a most unwholesome fashion as the man-creature cringes, as if strange mandible-like limbs of some sort were pulsing and writhing up against the fabric. The man-creature recoils by tapping the back of his feet, as well as the back of his hands against the ceiling, scuttling away like some sort of weird, uncoordinated insect, each limb pulling on and off the roof with a pucker-ish pop.

As Zee approaches, he pulls one hand off of the roof in order to tap at his forehead.

[Rebonack]

Drat.

Spidersman has scuttled out of guitar-swatting range.

There goes at least part of a reasonably sound plan.

She's quite sure that her guess on the creature's magic is correct. The Searing Light of Truth and unreality rarely get along. If that's enough to make the thing back up and produce unsettling hissing sounds then maybe she can drive it out of the tavern without breaking Raril's guitar across its face.

"Trog's Tavern isn't even unionized!" Zee yells back at the thing. "Why the heck would we strike? This place has six positions and half of them are filled by me. Now shoo! No goons allowed!"

She places her hand against the ceiling, causing another construct of latticed silvery metal and burning light to spring forth from the ceiling, chrome glossed strands interlacing as they form a sheet sticking down at a forty five degree angle. It would make a pretty great ramp if not for the facts that it doesn't reach anywhere near the floor and leads straight into the ceiling. It serves it's purpose, though, mainly in the form of growing aggressively toward Spidersman.

For good measure Zee menaces at the thing with Raril's guitar.

Despite it being well out of reach.