Maelstrom of Darkness

(I'll continue and we shall see where this goes. ^^)

Mort grabbed onto his seat to prevent being sucked out of the ship. He saw the fairy fly out, begin to grow in size and then summon some firearms. He wished her the best of luck, but he doubted that conventional weapons would be effective against this foe. Honestly, they were in an awful position to be fighting an airborne enemy. Being confined to a ship meant that the majority of the group had no way to fight back, and had to simply hold on tight and hope their pilot evaded the enemy.

Minare closed her eyes and tries to meditate to get her mind off the encrouching doom of the massive bird creature. Once the doors opened and the fairy flew out however her eyes were forced open and she was made painfully aware of how much danger they were in. "I HATE FLYING!" she growled. "There must be a better way than this!"

The bullets from both the guns on the craft and the fairy's arms would seem to do quite a bit of damage to the creature, with various pieces of bone cracking and breaking off, but the damage didn't visually seem to affect it. The simple bullets weren't able to damage the dark forces keeping the creature of darkness together. The goop-like energy pouring from its empty eyeholes seemed only to produce more of itself as bullets blasted it away, sending huge droplets of it toward the ground below.

Demechrelle smirked in her sleep. It was amusing that the fairy was trying to distract her. Were she fighting some mindless beast, her ploy might work, but as it was, she wasn't the greatest threat to her power as of yet.

The bird targeted the vessel, looping around in the air for another pass as the bullets continued to shatter its bones.

Lydia pushed a button, closing the hangar doors and ending the terrible wind that had been lashing about the chamber.

"Damn that dark energy..." The pilot grumbled, cutting the throttle and banking hard to the right. She could see in a rear-facing camera that the monster wasn't letting up. "At least Harpies went down with a liberal application of H.E. ammunition!"

She could only hope to evade, it seemed. Thankfully, the upgrades to the ship made that an actually viable option, and the mapping software in the lower right-hand corner of her heads-up display estimated they were only 15 minutes from the drop, now. If things went south and she had to put the ship down, the group might be able to complete its' mission on-foot, though it might well be a one-way trip in that event.

Leila growled as her bullets did nothing. "Fine then, ignore this!" She made a quick hand gesture and fired a small, pea sized ball at the creature that exploded into a blue fireball in the thing's face. She doubted it would do much, but she hoped that the light from the flames would harm ir, or give her some clue as to how to harm it.

A bright blue flash woke Demechrelle from her slumber with a jolt. Quickly realizing what had happened, she gave a sigh of frustration. She really wished she could just get used to her new abilities already. As it was, deep in her chambers within the center of the Tenebra Maze, not much was a threat to her waking self at the moment. But she knew the freedom of the guardians could change that. "If only dream-controlling gave me a third-person view instead of a first-person one..."

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Upon taking the blast of blue fire to its face, the skeletal bird creature seemed to simply fall apart as the darkness flowing from its' eyeholes dissipated, causing what was left of the bony structure to simply fall to pieces, and drop back towards the ground, where various creatures of the dark seemed to scramble towards it, as though they perhaps they thought it would be edible, or wanted to use its remains for something.

"Oh hell yes." Lydia said with a smirk. "I should've let that Fairy be my wingman from the beginning."
She hoped that would be their only distraction for the rest of the short flight, and could let Leila back in, but the pilot wasn't a hopeless optimist.
"Alright, we're closing on the Fairy Kingdom well ahead of schedule..." Lydia trailed off, realizing she didn't have any way to contact Leila. "Ah, hold on a moment, folks." She finished, slowing the craft gradually to a hover, hoping the Fairy would catch on and either lead or shrink back down and re-enter. She opened the hatch to the cool night air as a hint.

Well, the fairy wasn't useless after all. The sooner they landed though, the better.

Leila watched it fall, expecting the thing to fly back up or be replaced with a new horror. When that didn't happen, the fairy turned back to the ship. It was hovering with the back door open. Taking the hint, Leila flew over to it and shrunk down, then re-entered the craft. "Very impressive flying Lydia. And um...I also wanted to apologize for giving you such a hard time earlier...I was kind of a bitch to you...Sorry about that, it won't happen again." She strapped herself in. "So, onto the Fairy Kingdom?"

"Yeah, onto the Fairy Kingdom, now." Lydia replied after closing the hatch. "And don't worry about anything you said: we're all tense." She added, calming down from the battle-high.
Five minutes left, at this clip. Then they could get down to business.
Rescuing a Guardian... were it under any other circumstances, the pilot would have laughed at the prospect, but there were no other options, at this point.

The group's time remaining in the air was much less eventful, luckily for them. About three or four minutes from the encounter with the demonic creature, the craft would pass over the chasm making up the border of the Fairy Kingdom. On the holographic monitor, the group would be able to see below them as wandering nightmares and other dark creatures seemed to fall into the gorge like a leaky faucet.

Minare sighed with relief that at least the battle was over but her hands were still clinched to the seat.

Leila chuckled to herself as she watched the creatures fall to their doom into the gorge. "Alright, so our goal is to reach the Fairy Queen. She should be-" She stopped talking when the craft fully entered the Fairy Kingdom, blinked a few times, and shook her head. "Um...uh..." She shook her head and leaned back in her seat, then looked oddly at everyone in the ship. "Er...why are we on a ship?" Her face fell. "I swear, if you guys drugged me or if this is some kind of prank, I am eating you." >.<

"What are you talking about?" Minare asked anything to distract herself.

"I can't wait to get off this thing..." Muttered Mort to himself.

Lydia turned back in her seat.
"What did you say? Now's not the time to be playing around, Fairy. This isn't a game." She warned, though the pilot was already worried: who would make a joke like that when the stakes were so high?
The ship had come to hover just over the first dropzone near a possible loacation for the Fairy Guardian's home, the powerful engines idling as close to quiet as was possible.

Down below, a pair of fairies who were in the area gazed up at the craft, clueless as to what it was. They weren't sure if they should run or stick around to see if it would tell them who they were. Deciding that would be kinda' weird, even during a time when nobody they met could seem to remember what their own name was, let alone anything else, they decided to bolt, running away as quickly as possible on foot.

"Is it time at last to leave this infernal contraption?" Minare Grumbled but was more of subtle begging to feel the ground beneath her feet.

"Its about time!" Cried Mort as they hovered over their destination. Too impatient for the aircraft to land, he pulled open the door and leapt out of the craft, making no attempt to be stealthy.

"Woo! Hell yeah!"

He landed with a heavy thud, bending his knees to soften the impact. He then drew his sword and scanned the area, only to see two fairies running away. Not quite the welcoming committee he had expected.

"HEY!" He yelled after them. "Where are you going!?"

The first non-corrupted lifeforms he sees outside of the city, and they run away. Typical really. They already had one fairy with them, and she would no doubt come in handy if anymore non-corrupted fairies show up. The last thing they need is a pointless fight. Not that he'd complain. After being cooped up for so long in that accursed metal box, he was spoiling for a fight. Corrupted, non-corrupted. It didn't matter. He just wanted to kill something to vent his frustrations. Mort shouted up to the others.

"What are you waiting for? Area is clear! Don't tell me you cowards have changed your minds?"

"Could've just waited a moment..." The tired pilot grumbled, vectoring the engines down and cutting the thrust.
Slowly, the transport descended down into the cover of the surrounding trees, landing in the clearing.
"Alright, troopers," She began unenthusiastically, "Seeing as Miss Fairy isn't going to be able to pinpoint anything, we're falling back on the old plan of searching the most likely spots for the Queen's palace. I'll try to provide some fire support from the air, but don't expect miracles."
The ship idled, crew bay open, ready for the mishmash of volunteers to hop out.

The Fairy Kingdom hadn't been hit quite as hard as other places, owing to the isolating geography surrounding it, but the touch of dark corruption was still visible here and there: a dark purplish mist clung to the ground, pushed aside by the engine wash of the ship in a manner disturbingly similar to a bacterial colony on the edge of agar gel brushed with antibiotics, just waiting to obscure the forest floor again. Plants were a paler-than-healthy green, choked from the sun for too long.
Perhaps the biggest consolation was that monsters weren't currently pressing in on all sides: that was nice.

Minare walked out of the ship at a hurried pace trying not to seem over eager.  When her feet felt the earth again she was happy but that joy was short lived.  Seeing how badly the plants were doing reminded her why she had to get stronger, why weakness could not be tolerated.  Why this all had to end soon.  Minare waited for the others to come out before making a move.

Leila slowly walked out of the craft, looking around. "Where the hell are we? Where did you people take me? I am being very serious here!" She would glare at everyone in the group. "Look, I don't know what you want but you won't get it from me, you hear!?! I refuse to work with possible agents of...um...someone?" The fairy stood there for a second, looking totally confused. "Ok...I know that there was someone bad causing a lot of bad stuff...I think...but why don't I remember? Why do I feel like I should know the name I am trying to think of?" Her tone would slowly rise with panic.

"Calm yourself Fairy, we are here to find your people to in order to battle the evil that has gripped our world."  Minare explained poorly.  "Why have you suddenly forgotten?  Also stay calm you are putting me on edge, Its bad enough you are a fairy I don't want an unstable fairy at that."

Lydia wasn't sure what was happening with the Fairy, but she rather hoped the two people with her would be able to set her straight. As it stood, the Felarya-born pilot knew she would be able to support the trio the best, if at all, from the air. The hatch closed once more, and with a rising whine, the transport lifted to the air again.

Something had been waiting for her.

The woman barely had time to jerk the controls left, narrowly dodging a clawed kick from a desiccated-looking Harpy.

Below, the volunteers would see the ship veering off evasively, leaving them bereft of friendly air-support or an immediate means of escape.
The purple mist rolled in over their feet, filling in the hole made from the ship's engine-wash like long fingers reaching out and interlocking.
The map had said the first and most likely location for the palace was 15 minutes north on foot, though it seemed naïve to think it would be an uneventful hike.

I'm inclined to say you all probably have maps of the area provided by the Fist.

"Good grief..." Muttered mort as the ship left. No back up it seems.

"Alright lets get going then shall we? Lead the way and what not."