Scene #7232: Zora's Domain-4

Owner	Pose
Link	ZORA'S DOMAIN LATE AFTERNOON The group are heroes. They've captured Evan, the mastermind of the coup, and the knights have carted her off (after she reverted to normal form eventually, once she had awoken - it seemed to be will-based). But Lord Jabu-Jabu has fallen back into a coma, and they know the cause. A parasite, deep within the whale-hippo's massive stomach, a body large enough to swallow humans whole. The same general type of parasite that transformed Evan. At Jabu-Jabu's 'palace', which is up several flights of cliff-stairs and is a giant grotto, the whale-hippo sleeps with distress. General Mikau waits besides him for the group. When they arrive (Link is the last one there, and anyone hangering along can just...go with him, he'll vet), Mikau explains the situation. "No one has ever entered the interior of Lord Jabu-Jabu and returned. They've only entered his stomach at all twice, and while both problems were solved...we never heard back - they likely got trapped inside." "This is likely even more dangerous. With the parasite inside, you'll have to be careful not to badly damage his body, while removing it and any side-effects of it that you can. The alternative will be most dire - the transformation of our god into something else." "Are you all geared up? Ready to go?" Mikau asks, and waits. When people are finally ready... The wizened old general takes his guitar-spear, and uses incredible amounts of effort to crane Jabu-Jabu's mouth open with it. It's stressful on his body, but it should let the others in. "Knock on his teeth when you're ready to exit. I'll be waiting for you."
Revali	Revali's not moving quite as quickly as he was at the start of the trip to Zora's Domain. All of this has done a number on him, first on his spirit... ... The sudden annexation of the Zoras by Hyrule was not the solution he was expecting, and even if he would have expected it it would not have been the solution he would have hoped for. The dynamics of the Hyrulean Alliance feel... different, now. Revali feels like he needs to sit down and work it all out, and he just hasn't had the time to yet. And then the events took a toll on his body... ... The transformed Evan's rampage, brief as it was, put the citizens here in danger, and Revali strained himself terribly trying to get the streets cleared mid-rampage. Even with the best healing options the Paladins put forth, he still aches, and he's observed to wince occasionally as he moves about. "Always ready," says Revali, who did in fact make sure he's fully restocked with his usual loadout of magical arrows. At least that much is going well. "Remove the parasite, don't damage Lord Jabu-Jabu, get out alive. Simple." He leads the group on in...
Edward Blackwell	No hero. Dark hair in an unruly mop. Distant dirt-brown eyes, listless. Long fingers scratching stubble as smoke clouds drift from white teeth. No hero under the white mantle of a labcoat. No hero under the tee-shirt reading FRIEND with a faded silly pink heart on it. The cigarette comes out of his mouth. He waves, distantly, dismissively. But the twitch in his finger reveals a tiny bit of doubt. After all, he fucked up just last night. And he couldn't remove the other parasite. Couldn't drag Evan back to normal. Maybe if they'd killed 'em but that would've looked real bad. Dull eyes flick over at Revali. They go up. They go down. They go up. They go down. A piece of meat at the market. A butcher looking over a cow. An unnerving experience to be sure. Edward pokes him. And he keeps poking. Over and over and over. Seemingly completely random spots. Bird-forehead. Bird-beak. Bird stomach. Bird back. Bird knee. Edward just starts poking him curiously, prodding, like he's some kind of chakra healer or some shit, smoking the whole time as he crouches down to poke an ankle. Everywhere the finger pokes hurts like a bitch, as if Revali's been impaled with a needle, for about thirty seconds. And when it fades, the aches and pains are gone. Just. Gone. Edward straightens up. Cracks his own back. Hunches forward again. He waves the scalpel in front of him. "Armed and ready, Mickey." He's started calling the General 'Mickey.' No, he doesn't care.
Maksim Messerglas	Maksim has had kind of a week. He doesn't expect it will be an outlier, though, now that he's moving around in the Multiverse at large. After a close encounter with a wyvern on a mountain and a number of fire-spitting lizardmen, Maksim has learned the value of things like 'armor.' Rather than his usual fancy coat, he's wearing a gambeson in the same burgundy and brown, with a shirt of dull grey chainmail layered over the top. A slender sword and a dagger are on a belt, worn such that it seems like he has some idea of what to do with them, even if he doesn't have the casual confidence of the myriad swordmasters Hyrule seems to produce. Reynauld, the heavily-armored crusader in Maksim's employ, stands with him. He keeps glancing at his gear from under his helmet, as if uncertain that the nobleman should be here, in that. At least he doesn't verbally comment. "As prepared as can be, General." Maksim looks up at the fish-god. He silently wonders what became of the Princess's attempts at healing the great beast.
Rean Schwarzer	Rean arrives with the other Paladins, gently rolling his shoulder back a bit as he approaches the fish god. This is his first time actually seeing him. So it's uh...something. Rean peers into Jabu-Jabu's mouth. Yeah, this turning into a squid monster or something because of the parasite would really suck. Not to mention that the poor god was dying because of it. And all the consequences of it dying. When Mikau asks if they're ready, Rean nods, tilting his sheathed sword up at his waist. "Ready to go." Sure, the whole 'no one has come back from inside' thing was ominous, but they could totally handle this! They had to. Right? And so he walks in, following Revali inside. Into the belly of the whaleppo.
Lilian Rook	Lilian had really been hoping to leave this one to Edward, when she'd discovered it initially. That is, leaving it to him to crawl around in the divine beast's guts, cut out a parasite, and make it better somehow with a cotton swab and a toilet paper roll. If the beast died, that'd be unfortunate, but also fixable. It is no longer 'unfortunate, but fixable', knowing that these parasites don't just kill things now. Whether people want to believe in Jabu Jabu being any sort of divine messenger or not, something that huge and that old mutating, in the same way Evan had, would be a disaster. Which, of course, means she won't leave it to anyone else. She can't leave it to anyone else. She doesn't trust 'anyone else' to handle it competently --that is, improbably well. It's still crawling around in a giant whale's slimy guts though, so there's only one way to dress and prep, and that's in a full body abjuration suit, all armour save underweave inserts removed for possibility of getting stuck, along with anything firearm or explosive-shaped, and, begrudgingly, a helmet, because absolutely fuck the idea of letting anything inside of a giant fish creature touch her hair. It has a neck seal, a polarized red visor, integrated lights and sensors, and honestly looks uncomfortably 'despotic military police' along with the black and grey suit, only lacking a great big ominous gas mask with tubes. "What's the point in asking?" she replies to Mikau. There's an audible shift in attitude, several degrees along some lateral axis, now that there is an unspoken understanding that he is keeping his position because of her. "If they aren't ready, they either wouldn't show up, or the problem solves itself." Her voice is at least surprisingly clear. "Just so you're all aware, Jabu Jabu mutating and going on a rampage is the most unacceptable outcome, followed by Jabu Jabu being killed. If you get stuck, and there's nothing to be expedient to be done about it, you're on your own.
Link	As Lilian approaches, Mikau changes his stance slightly. It's 'begrudgingly respectful', since he can see the understanding, as are his words. "Dame Rook, it's my job to ask." And then, he pulls out a lighter, lights a cigarette, and does this all while holding the spear up for them. Once they're in... They step into the maw of the beast. It closes once everyone's inside, requiring lights to be lit up to see anything. Link helpfully lights a lantern, as the group can see and /feel/ their environment. It's soft and wet. They're on his massive tongue. As they venture deeper in, squishy pink walls of muscle and flesh surround them. They can't avoid touching them as they delve through the throat, as breathing causes loose constriction around them. This is where someone appears! She coughs, turning visible, next to Edward. It's Princess Mipha, who has joined Edward from Wherever She's Been, It's A Mystery to help heal Lord Jabu-Jabu. "Lord Messerglas, it's a pleasure to see you again." She gives a formal greeting, despite being inside a whale, and then speaks. "Please protect me. I do not have my spear, so I cannot fight." Deep inside the throat, the group first sees them. They're attached to the walls - blobs of scarlet malice with eyes and lashing tendrils, trying to jab at anyone who pushes past like a bug trying to grab their next meal. Since they're literally attached to the throat, and there's a lot of them, excision will have to be careful. And then there's two corridors to exit down. They probably lead the same place in the end, but they'll detour the group. What the hell? (Those who have been in a fantasy dungeon can basically understand what they're getting up to now, if they think about how this should not be the biology of a whale at all.) Pick your groups.
Revali	Revali smoothly draws his bow. A second later, three blunted arrows slam into three of the tendrils, then another three. They're shot with enough force that they should still damage, but missing and hitting Jabu-Jabu's throat with something sharp would be... bad. Not that Revali usually misses. "I have no idea what you did," says Revali to Edward as he draws back another volley. "But it seems to have worked?" "So thank you." And then Revali arbitrarily chooses the right hand path. R for Revali, Right, and Recovery.
Edward Blackwell	A handwave. Dissmisal. "Yeah, no shit." The lighter comes out as Edward looks at the Rito. "I don't know how you do shit with that thing and you don't know how I do shit with this one." He spins the scalpel between his fingers. A pistol. A weapon for killing disease. Mipha appears next to him as the mouth closes. Dark eyes flick over at Lilian. He brought her along, obviously. To take credit when the problem is solved. Because he doesn't want the credit. God no. God no, he doesn't want the credit. Credit leads to questions. The smoke rolls up to the top of the thing's mouth. Revali goes right. R for Revali. What a shock. Edward, meanwhile, just sort of sticks close to Mipha. No point if he and Mipha get separated, right? Wherever she's going, he's going, because they have the same job and the same goal, and it's better to have her on hand than not. Revali can handle himself. Maybe Rean'll go with him. Place is fucked-up, though. Fucked-up whale insides. God insides? Feeple God Insides. Tennis shoes slick with grotesqueries. Whale saliva. Whale saliva on the tennis shoes. Precious ambergris. Not that he knows that. "Yeah, protect us," he says. Just latching onto Mipha's statement. He doesn't want to have to fight. He's not good at fighting. Fighting gets him all fucked-up. He needs to be on point to solve this problem.
Rean Schwarzer	Ew. It's whale guts. Whale spit in the whale throat. What else was he expecting? What's also gross is the eyeball malice sticking to the walls. Rean slashes through the tendrils, hopefully stumpifying them so that someone with a more precise weapon (Read: Edward) can get the rest cut out of the throat walls without getting slapped. He COULD try to cut it out himself, but that would be tricky with a longsword, after all. And then Princess Mipha appears, asking to be protected. Rean nods. "Understood, Your Highness." Indeed, Rean follows after Revali. Right for Rean.
Maksim Messerglas	"I'm glad to see the spirit of camraderie lives on, even in distant worlds," Maksim says to Lilian with a thin smile, after her proclamation. He makes a mental note to keep an eye on her. He doesn't have any sort of experience to make her outfit seem especially ominous, but it does seem a little on the grim side, amplifying his reaction to her attitude. They go in. Maksim immediately pulls on a hooded cowl, drawing it up in a much more primitive reflection of Lilian's own thoughts: fish innards plus hair equals the absolute worst thing. Reynauld walks ahead of him, his two-handed sword drawn and at rest with a hand on the pommel and one on the grip, leaned lightly against his armored shoulder. "This is certainly a... fish," Maksim says with a sigh. "Reynauld, would you --" He gestures vaguely, falling a step further behind the uncomplaining crusader. Mipha appears! Maksim smiles, this time genuinely. "Princess Mipha! The pleasure is mine, I assure you. Would it be that we met again under more comfortable circumstances. Rest assured, we will do our utmost to keep you safe, no matter what we encounter." "Just stay behind me, Princess," Reynauld offers. Maksim gestures, and they start down the left fork.
Lilian Rook	The group is seemingly splitting up roughly fifty fifty, so Lilian could go either way. The bulk of individual bodies is going left, while the group on the right is smaller, but it comes down to three things: One: The princess is an extremely important VIP and needs to be secured. Only Edward is there as someone she can roughly trust, whom she would also not trust to be able to simultaneously defend her against the Malice and the two men should they turn coat. Two: Revali is, despite being in her eyes kind of a blowhard with a chip on his shoulder, genuinely extremely skilled, and having Rean in front solves most of the issues of having to use a bow in tight quarters. Two in front would begin to block shots. Three: Left is for Lilian. So she goes that way. At seeing the cancerous grotesqueries attached to Jabu Jabu's throat, her fingers briefly reach for the black cross secured at her neck, but then fall away, twitching as if having considered something truly revolting. Instead, she insistently holds the group up at the . . . throat, of the throat, so that she may use both hands and a degree of magical focus, to draw from the surrounding blood and dark and malicious air, writhing shadow and flowing iridescent light, mingled together into a surreal, dreamy haze of energy that she then begins liberally applying to attack-growths. She sits conveniently out of their range, using arcane gestures to conduct the flow of dreamstuff here and there, and scour the tumours from the walls with a hideously grotesque, cell-flaying effect. Then she lets people move. "So, would you happen to be a knight retainer to his . . . gentleman?" she bothers asking the stoic crusader.
Link	The party splits into two groups, as they excise the Malice Eyes actually relatively easy - the bows and slashes cut the tendrils, while the dreamstuff scours the tumors completely, gone from the throat after a quick lashing. They'll have the idea that these things are the 'minor' source of Malice - the greater sources are probably deeper, and more dangerous. LEFT (Lilian, Mipha, Edward, Maksim and Reynauld) The left path takes the party into a large open part of the lungs (Maybe? This is like no whale you've ever heard of, so...), with winding parts of flesh to walk on. The problem is twofold - on either side of the parts is acid that has been infected by Malice, making it caustic as long as the big ball of malice, some sort of Mega Malice Eye, exists on the roof of the flesh, using its tendrils to stir up the caustic malice acid into encased spheres and throw it at you. The second is that the path forward is blocked by the contracting of the flesh. To get past it, you'll have to temporarily put enough weight on the platform over there! Across the sea of stomach acid. You might want to throw something...or someone. And also, deal with the Malice! RIGHT (Revali and Rean) On the right, is another wide-open chamber. This makes no sense spatially, but we're going to deal with it. The problem with this one is two-fold: there is a passage directly in front of you, but is blocked by a pool of acid. This acid is /not/ caustic, and can be swam in...but it'd be disgusting and you probably wouldn't like it. The actual other REAL problem is the masses of Malice Eyes, with large tendrils. As you try to pass by the pool, they try and grab you and slam you down into it, and drown you with their tendrils so they can feed on you. There's just enough flying room over, too, though that'll get you closer to the tendrils. They try and grab fliers as well.
Edward Blackwell	Sea of acid. The smoke curls upwards towards the fleshy ceiling. Two options. One, somebody go over there. Two, somebody go over there. Not confident in his own weight. He's light. Skinny. A ghost. Withers away in the light. Wispy. Insubstantial. Also tremendously strong. Without a word Edward hoists Princess Mipha into his arms and just starts walking. Acid? Whatever. It's gonna melt through his legs. Might melt fast enough to knock him down. Certainly melts through his pants almost instantly. Lapping as his legs. Digging into flesh. Hurts. Hurts like a bitch. But closing the gap is good. Not confident in his arm. In his aim. In his accuracy. Feet slosh about in acid. Princess cary for the princess. If he starts tipping forward he can just huck her over. It'll be fine. He'll live. He'll live in extraordinary pain for the next few minutes as he experiences the agony of having his legs worn off, trusting in Lilian and Maksim to kill the Malice. If they don't kill it fast enough, well. He'll probably have part of his head blown open! But Mipha will get there. Or they'll both get there. Who knows! It's an adventure.
Revali	Aww, Revali thinks you're too self-important and full style without substance, too, Lillian. See? It's like we're already friends. The blue bird leads his group of two down the right hand path, reaching a wide-open chamber. With a pit full of stomach acid, and indeterminate amounts of tendrils guarding the passage forward. "Ah." The Rito Champion considers, rubbing the underside of his beak. "I could try to fly us straight into there - it'd save us a bit of time, not having to clear the whole room of those tendrils, but it's not a certain thing..." He glances over at Rean, and makes a decision. "Alright. Climb on my back." Revali crouches. "Cast whatever enhancement spells you have, and then you ward them off while I take us across." Once Rean gives him the ready signal, Revali takes off, focusing just on flying and evading while trusting Rean to take care of playing defense!
Maksim Messerglas	Maksim doesn't precisely stare at Lilian's scouring dreamstuff, but he does give it the Nerd Look for about two seconds. Subjectively, that's about five minutes of him gawking and trying to figure out what exactly she's doing, simultaneously revulsed and fascinated by the flaying she's giving the cancerous growths. "Astounding," he murmurs. In these close quarters, she can probably hear him, even if he's not directly talking to her. Reynauld doesn't have the mild bad impression issue that Maksim apparently does. "Indeed," he tells her, pushing on once the coast is clear. "Though I confess, I am not accustomed to directly serving a lord as such." He brushes dangling fleshy bits aside with his greatsword until Lilian and the Princess duck under it. "Count Messerglas' cause is a righteous one, as is this scouring we are undertaking. Even if the belly of a beast is not somewhere I expected to end up while I was still drawing breath," he adds, a little wryly. They come to the lungs(?). Maksim has a leatherbound book, and is sketching their route and the state of the thing as they go, apparently stopping to take notes on every little thing. He stops doing that once the eye comes into sight, and starts trying to kill them, instead ducking one of the malice-acid spheres and looking for... something solid. A bone, maybe? Rocks? Do giant fish-gods swallow stones, maybe? He's coming up kind of empty. "Reynauld!" The crusader steps forward. He shoulders his sword one-handed, drawing a yellowing scroll of some kind. He brandishes it, unrolling it with a flourish, and brilliant white light shines off the surface and surrounds him. The next time one of the acid-balls gets lobbed their way, he hits it with his sword like a one-handed batter, the force of his faith clashing with the Malice to either knock it back or deflect it away from the less durable members of their party.
Rean Schwarzer	They go down the right path, and there's a bunch of acid...and more tentacles. But Revali has a plan. Namely, flying the both of them across the pit while Rean fended off any grabby tentacles. Rean nods. "Sounds good." Rean turns on his ARCUS unit, and a ring of blue light surrounds him. Once it fades, A burst of heat surrounds Revali for a brief moment, boosting the Rito's strength. Rean then carefully gets on Revali's back. "Right, let's go!" The two take off and holds onto Revali's back with one hand, swinging his sword and throwing fireballs at any tentacles that try to grab them along the way across.
Lilian Rook	"Well, none of you have asphyxiated and died, so I give up on my fledgeling attempts at making sense of this." says Lilian, apparently having put significant odds on the realism of 'there's no air inside a whale's stomach, dummy' and people toppling over. That, and having delineated that part as the line at which there is no further use in trying to make sense of anything. There's absolutely no way of ascribing anything like 'perks up' or 'shows interest' while Lilian is wearing what roughly amounts to basic hazmat inclusive gear, but she does at least sound more enthused some time after Reynauld uses the word 'Count'. "Oh? I'll admit, I was perhaps expecting some different answer, about some sort of tragic backstory ending up with being a vagrant with a sword looking for coin and purpose. I'm pleasantly surprised." she says. "What cause would that be? Surely you mean aside from this one." When arriving at acid pool puzzle hell though, when Edward just grabs the princess and makes the critical error of ever wading into the poison swamp to the point of movement slowdown, Lilian yells "Why the hell did you do that?! Does this problem look like a nail to you?!" Now she has to keep track of him and catch the princess in a split second if she falls. The eyeball has got to go either way. Another uncanny shadow disperses from where Lilian's feet touch the ground; one that wasn't really there until it was gone, only noticeable by its absence. She then drifts away from the ground like a ghost, and then begins using the entire length, width, and height of the chamber to strafe the enemy rather than deal with floor hazards, weaving irregular, high speed circules around the cancer and its tendrils, gathering crackling energy about both arms and pumping searing bolts of magic into it over and over; like one of those awful minibosses that spins around the player fast enough that the lock-on keeps breaking while spawning duplicates and shooting them from offscreen.
Link	As the light of Reynauld plays baseball with the malice orbs, sending them back at the Mega Malice Eye, Edward suddenly picks up Mipha. "Uhhh?! What are you-" And then starts crossing the acid. She doesn't squirm in the princess carry, but... She absolutely despises this kind man. When she lands on the platform at the end, it begins to sink. If she touched the acid, that would be awful, but- The returned sphere stops the Malice Eye from firing again, and then Lilian's shadow tortures the thing into spinning, suffering, and then just scours it from existence. The second Mipha's feet touch the acid, it's turned into completely normal fluid. And Mipha can swim! She grabs the burned Edward to bring him towards the now opened passage, until his feet return, at which point she ditches him to not be near that jerk. ---- Rean and Revali have a plan. Rean leaps onto Revali's back, and as they fly, the tendrils lash out at them. But, sword and fireballs go flying, cutting off the tendrils and then burning the tumors to nothing. They manage to find out something interesting. Or, hear it, anyways - through the 'walls', they can hear Link muttering. He never left. He somehow got trapped in a third passage, like the dork he is. ---- The group's passages, inexplicably, regroup in an absolutely /massive/ chamber - the stomach. Inside, in the wet floor, there is the parasite. It's absolutely huge, wedged between the floor and the ceiling of the stomach like some sort of demon pillar. It is bright pinkish-red with dark purple tendrils, and is big enough to easily swallow one of the group whole casually. It also does nothing, immediately. Like it's asleep. The group has the chance to get in one strike, but then... MALUS SPAWN - BARINADE As soon as any one of them hits it, the pillar's transluscent center opens up, filled with fluid, and a massive red eye appears inside of it. The tendrils start wailing, but they're not the actual threat. That'd be the Malice Energy Bullet Bonanza that is coming at the group, flaming balls of malice blasting the /entire room/. They hit above you, below you, between you, with only a few ducking or dodging spaces that require actual care. They even scour the floors if you're not able to destroy those blasts, the parasite not afraid of damaging the host just a little. Link groups up with a sigh, and pulls out his bow. He's going to be ranged support - if you need him to defend A SPECIFIC PERSON, call out for him, and he'll start shooting attacks coming at them. This includes Mipha!
Revali	Of course Link gets stuck somewhere. That's just like Link. Revali narrows his eyes as they come into the room, setting Rean down. "That's... bigger than I would have thought. How quickly has it grown? How big was it to start with?" The blasts start coming in at the group from the parasite. The rito, in response, quickly slams a feathered hand down to the ground and channels his wind magic. "Revali's... GALE!" High winds pick up in the stomach chamber, swirling around it, causing incoming projectiles to go astray!
Maksim Messerglas	The deflection does not destroy Reynauld's sword, armor, or self, making it a win as far as Maksim is concerned. He thinks that the crusader's sheer grit will carry him through if nothing else does, but fortunately, they don't have to rely on it alone. Maksim stays largely out of the line of fire, squinting at the eye and gnawing on the inside of his cheek when Edward goes to carry the Princess through the acid like it wasn't even a big deal. When it turns out to work in their favor -- mostly because Lilian, as it turns out, is a magical killing machine -- he lets out a very genuine sigh of relief. "Reynauld, remind me to look into hiring on a second person with a, a firearm, or a crossbow, or something." "Of course, milord," the crusader replies mildly. He puts the scroll away and goes back to idly toting his sword, apparently not even winded. It isn't until they cross the moat of now not-acid that he actually gets a chance to respond to Lilian's query. "Coin and purpose are certainly not unwelcome, lady." His stoic demeanor is largely held up by the full armor, much like Lilian's lack of visual tells. Without it, he'd probably be at least somewhat animated. "My lord's ancestral seat has been tainted by sorcery most foul. We are to reclaim it, and, Light willing, purge it of its lingering corruption. I am to understand there is some manner of ancestral curse." "Some manner," Maksim mumbles. He's gone back to taking notes. It turns out the natural philosopher is, in the belly of a god-fish, pretty interested in making records of what they're seeing and what this Malice stuff does. They march on in. Reynauld takes the lead as soon as they reach the chamber and the pillar. He raises his sword, lining up a blow like a horizontally-aligned headsman. He winds up and swings, putting his weight and strength behind it, intending to simply cleave the parasite in twain and leave this place. It doesn't quite go that way. One of the projectiles clips him, leaving a black mark across a pauldron. Reynauld grunts, glancing at it with a short turn of his helmeted head, then turns back to the pillar and starts hacking at it like he was a lumberjack with a particularly stubborn tree. Maksim is nowhere to be found. (Unless you trip over him, anyway; he's hit the deck, rather sensibly, and rather invisibly.)
Edward Blackwell	Ah. Water. Cleansing. Refreshing. A wave. Feeple Princess grabs him, drags him. Drops him on the passage. Ditches him. That's fine. He expected that. He's not exactly a pleasant person to be around. Especially since he killed her once. You'd think she'd be over that. He brought her back. -1 + 1 = 0. Net neutral. Simple math. People can't do math anymore. Maybe Feeple don't know how to count. Maybe you can't do base-ten with fins. Base-fin. He stands. He dusts himself off. He mourns the loss of his shoes. They were nice shoes. They had served him well. His pants are burned up past the ankles. Nearly to the knee. To the knee. His coat's burned the same. He'll get a new one. He always does. Monster. Eyes widen at the god-slaying parasite. The god-eating parasite. The mutating parasite. The part of his brain that is still Edward Blackwell, that is still the man, stares. Fingers tremble. Legs tremble. This is not in his wheelhouse, as they say. Not in his circle cabana. Not in his spinny-spinny siesta space. The part of his brain that is Edward Blackwell is having some serious trouble holding it together. He is very, very afraid. And it shows. An immortal? Sure. An immortal against a thing that kills immortals? Less sure. Acid, acid's fine. Acid doesn't kill him unless it goes all the way. It wasn't gonna go all the way. This? This is...who knows what this is? This is something. Something other. Something alien. Malice. Malicious. Evil. Wicked. Nightmarish. Sickness that must be purged. Sickness must be purged. But it might kill him, too. Nothing for it, though. Parasite. Eyes flick back and forth as fingers tremble around silver blade. A mind crazed with fear is crazed with other things. Theories run through his head. Procedures dance behind those dull brown eyes. What to do? How to cut? Burn it out? Bleed it? Leeches? Does he have leeches? Did he pack leeches? He might've packed leeches. Did he, though? Fingers fumble about in his coat. No, Edward. You didn't pack leeches on your coat. Leeches in your coat could fall off. Right. You remembered how you packed your leeches. Edward pulls the cigarette box out of his coat. He lights one up. He takes a deep breath. In one motion, the burned coat and the pink tee-shirt are torn off. "Beginning the operation." His body is covered with leeches. Blood drips down their little mouths. Wriggling, wriggling. Gnawing, gnawing. Edward advances rapidly. He's fast. Faster than people should be. Faster than long legs, faster than the hunch. He's not hunched now. He's tall. He's quite tall. Fingers rip leeches out of skin. They tear. He doesn't care. Parasites to kill a parasite. Parasites to eat a parasite. Eat the malice. Leeches can't have malice. Leeches eat blood. Eat sanguinity. They're social. They need social to live. Active to live. They need other things to keep growing. Edward stuffs the leeches against the parasite and presses down on their awful little nerves. They're not eating blood anymore. They're eating malice. Drinking in malice. Destroying malice. Turning Yellow Bile into Blood. Turning Evil into Food. Purifying it. Activity. Socialization. He's fast about it. He's moving very fast. He's letting other people take the brunt of the attack, other people protect him. Here and there a bullet hits him, tearing off flesh, blowing a hole in a shoulder. His eyes are manic. Filled with light. Filled with madness. He's torn all the leeches off himself. His own blood drips. Activity. Socialization. Oh, he's going to be unhappy for the rest of this fight, that's for damn sure.
Rean Schwarzer	And they make it across. And then there's some muttering coming from one of the walls. "...Wait, is that Link?" Rean says, looking in the direction of the muttering (and maybe some HAAAAAAAAAAA-ing). "How'd he find a third passage?" Rean hopps off of Revali's back, and looks around. It's a big open room, with some weird looking pillar in the middle. Rean sighs, as this pattern is very familiar. Why is the inside of this whale designed like one of the rooms at the end of the Old Schoolhouse's floors? Right down to the thing in the middle attacking them after getting hit. Rean rushes forward, weaving and slashing between flaming balls.
Lilian Rook	Lilian's opinion of Reynauld probably ticks up a couple of notches after seeing him wield some form of magic or another. Whatever he'd like to call it, given its focus on scripture, it's enough to elevate him to at least the bare minimum of a class that sits above a purely traditional knight, going by the gradually lessening casual disinterest in her tone. "Ancestral curse, hm? Well, I couldn't say one way or the other if that sort of cause is righteous, given I know nothing of how and why it was brought about, but it certainly sounds interesting. At the very least, a meaningful quest, worth dedicating time to. I imagine this should be good practice. Or at least a way to keep your sword arm loosened up." She doesn't ever, at any point, speak to, or really look at Maksim. She seems to like his crusader, but as for the man himself; he is the baggage. The sack that Reynauld has to carry on his back. The noble to which the knight owes some sort of loyalty, fine and well enough, but certainly an irrelevant factor unless he's been wounded. When arriving at the stomach, then, wearing a helmet is probably in Lilian's favour here, in several respects. One is that she can't smell what the giant, ailing whale's stomach is like. Two is that she can't possibly make any kind of reactive face to the true form of the enormous parasite within, cannibalizing its innards. Her visor doesn't waver from its direction, as she responds almost automatically. "Weeks, I think. Blackwell set it back a few days ago, but it's already reestablished itself to this degree. Jabu Jabu's vitality must be unimaginably strong to have survived this long. That fist-sized one transformed Evan in seconds." She spots the tendrils. The links where the pillar is connected to Jabu Jabu's flesh. Its attacking appendages. Its huge gel sacs. A lot of connections, a lot of thin membranes, a lot of critical tubes and pumps. It's like whole sections of it have 'use sword here' painted on it. Her fingertips touch the cross again, and with a moment's barely audible sound, she still can't bear going through with it. Is that wise? Of course it's not. This is exactly the situation she should be bringing her main kit to bear and deal with this problem as swiftly and efficiently as possible-- doubly so with the princess in the line of fire. Drop the weights and hit this thing with her full force right from the starting line. That's what she'd been taught. That's what she knows. Yet it's still something she can't tolerate.
Lilian Rook	"Whatever you say." she then adds to Revali instead. It's not a very formal, nor even very tactical reply, sounding rather offput and inexplicably unhappy instead, but just as before, she's estimated already how effective she can expect the Rito champion to be in here, and judged it reasonable enough that he shouldn't need her babysitting-- which is apparently more than she can say for Edward and his awful decisionmaking at this point, which apparently continues when he runs right through the line of fire to plaster-- are those leeches? She moves to stand inside the wind-blocked area created by Revali, placing stock in his One Spell to hold out while he focuses on it. Streamers of black and gold 'light' trail from her fingers, sizzling and shimmering in the air. Spreading apart her arms, she smoothly brings both hands through dual half-orbits, rapid finger gestures used to trace complicated dark-and-bright figures, until they connect into a full circle. A tremendous amount of magical energy condenses into the pattern in an instant. Egregiously so. Unlike drawing upon mana reserves or shaping from the surroundings; like putting cathodes to a capacitor. A following series of conductor-like gestures continue to layer circles within circles, positioning and interlocking smaller sub-orbits into a greater mandala that, when finished several seconds later, rotates all its constituent parts together in an endless loop, full of mesmerizing intricacy. It's very pretty, very hard to look at, and dedicated solely to getting rid of this goddamn problem with a massive DPS spike while Revali volunteers to play team tank. She's afforded the opportunity to stand still in a safe space, so she's using it. She puts her hand through the mandala, shrinks it around her wrist in tight interlock, and it fires. Countless streaks of black and gold light carve intricately arcing trails through space, hurling a magical barrage directly upstream of the parasite's where Revali is clearing the room. Air physically boils where they pass, leaving trails of tiny incandescent flashes where little bits of plasma bubble and pop. Solid flesh is violently torn apart and flayed to itty bitty smoking pierces where the bolts and contrails pierce into it, instantly creating white hot disintegrated cavities. This is, ostensibly, Lilian taking the situation fairly seriously. It's not just a one-off attack; Lilian has set herself up as a stationary magic turret holding down the fire button to put hundreds of mystery-element blasts into the Barinade per minute, maxing out her DPS meter for as long as the area remains clear. In lieu of other efforts, an indiscriminate alpha strike against every part of the boss is her second course of action. She will, in fact, just keep shooting while Edward is running around. She is not being precise. If he runs through her field of fire and takes a hit, he will simply have to experience some exquisitely unique form of pain unlike any particular wound he's experienced before, and keep moving. She won't hold back for the super regenerator.
Link	As Revali starts using the wind to blast away the projectiles, which is super effective, Link begins shooting any he misses out of the air. It's because he wants to help Revali - though, Revali might take it another way. This quickly clears the air of bullets that the others don't deal with. Maksim turns invisible and ducks for cover, while Reynauld starts slashing at the pillar, assisted by Rean. It's effective at piercing the defenses, causing malicious fluid to pour out and splatter the armor and probably Rean's clothes, but it's definitely hurting the parasite. The leeches come out. These are exceptionally effective, because the parasite is, well, a parasite. As Edward begins the operation, tendrils begin to disintegrate around the battlefield, leaving holes in the flesh. It'd require another operation to heal those, so Mipha does the job for him. With a quick prayer and the casting of holy magic, her power is shown to be extremely effective in repairing the wounds! Lilian fires her super horrible magic turret stance behind the complete safety of Revali's Gale. The black and gold shots smash against the entire Barinade, causing it to writhe, but this means the tendrils are still a problem. You know what else is a problem: the Barinade, being a parasite that has grown over the course of weeks since the last medicinal treatment, has some control of the body's systems. That same 'non-caustic' stomach acid pours in through passages. It begins to flood the entire area, though there's still head room. While this is happening, tendrils lash out at /everyone/, trying to hold them down, flog them, drown them, whatever they can do. MIPHA is perfectly fine in this environment. She can help ONE person avoid the effects of the flooding by lifting them up to the 'air' part of the battle.
Edward Blackwell	Lilian is not being precise. It is something of a hindrance. Mostly because it hurts. It hurts in all kinds of ways Edward has not experienced before. Edward has been shot. Edward has been stabbed. Edward has been ripped in half. Edward has had his insides pulled outside by a giant octopus spawned out of a sewer. Edward has had yo-yos wrap around his neck and sever his head through a dimensional rift. It's better not to ask all the ways Edward has been killed. All of them are unpleasant. This is new unpleasant. This is fire up the blood. This is veins pounding against the surface. This is a fascinating new agony for a connoisseur to taste. Edward is not a connoisseur. Edward is the guy who eats everything at the buffet and goes home with food poisoning. It surges through him. The taste of it wells up in his mouth. Immediately he identifies the point of entry and forces it shut. He'll deal with the lingering pain. With the lingering taste of Lilian's hurt-magic. Boiling, flaying hurt-magic that flays solid flesh. Boiling, flaying, itty-bitty muder. He'll deal with it. Without a single complaint. All he says, his voice still manic, is "Try not to break my tools." And then the 'water' floods in, and a tendril wraps around his body, and all Edward can think is, oh, good, before he is smashed against the ground. Flogged. Beaten. Hammered. Smashed. Over and over and over. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Wounds carved into bone. Water flooding into lungs. Air. Air! No air. Water. Sloshing. Pressing down. No air. Water. Eyes sinking shut. Brain shutting off. Glub. No more struggle. The tendril probably releases him. His eyes shoot back open. He struggles for breath. No breath. Just drowning. Glub. Eyes. Glub. Eyes! He can't swim. Maybe he could once. Not anymore. Burned out of him. Burned, burned, burned. Fucking Icarus. Grabbed the sun and burned it out. He can drown in a positive direction though. The tentacle is slimy in his hand. He's still drowning. No breath to hold. Brain shutting off. Tentacle thrashes. Edward lets go. Flung at the boss. Glub. Eyes. Impact. Leeches all over. Leeches are aquatic. Leeches love water. Leeches don't drown. Can't be air for him. Does he need air? Not really. Scalpel comes out. Cut the nerves. Leech sucks the malice. Edward cuts the nerves. Snip, snip. Glub. Float upwards. Dead fish. Eyes open. Grab the parasite. Drag down. Slash slash. Glub. Dead fish. Float upwards. Eyes open.
Revali	"Hey - HEY!" calls Revali, looking over his shoulder at Link. "Stop trying to muscle in, Goat Herder!" The chamber starts flooding. Revali easily takes to the skies (or, well, the top of the chamber), though not everyone's so lucky. Edward in particular looks like he's having problems - ... wait, is he dead? No, he's still moving... ... Revali will worry about Edward later. For now, as he air-dodges between tendril attacks, the Rito Champion pulls out his bow and taking aim at the parasite, launching off trios of electrified arrows!
Lilian Rook	The likelihood of Lilian hitting an individual leech is fairly small, given their size and scattered spread all around the trunk of a giant cylindrical field. Edward insisting she avoid hitting them is a nuisance, but she barely obliges with incremental tightening of her grip and degrees of twist in the air, condensing her barrage into a focused column of machine gun fire that pours into a ragged, wounded area, hammering deeper and deeper through layers of supernaturally infused cancerous flesh. Ten thousand degree spike-studded drills coated in fluoroantimonic acid. Then the BOSS MECHANICS make her leave her LEY LINE and switch to off-DPS. Terrible. Lilian waves down Mipha and then points her at Reynauld, being the guy weighed down by fifty pounds of metal. The water is obnoxious in her case for other reasons, which she intends to play close to her chest. Though in her case, she can actually float above it, she stays rooted where she is, where the resistance against her body is actually higher, and her feet have purchase on solid, slimy ground. She takes in one deep breath before the water rises; not a lungful of everything-she-can-get, but the sort one does before walking on hot coals. The water around her vibrates more visibly than the air ever does as trickles of light briefly run through the conduits in her suit. She shifts her weight distribution to compensate for her natural buoyancy, and brings up her hands. The mandalas within mandalas disappear from her right wrist, and fracture into coruscating flickers of pitch black energy, like arcs of dead pixels shaped like lightning. When the tentacles come at her, she responds with something she prefers doing as little possible: utilizing matched physical force. The water drag and the soft organic material beneath her is just fine for absorbing all of the impact she catches and redirects, whether she physically smashes grasping tentacles aside with precision strikes, deflects flailing strikes with swiftly angled arm guards, or cold stops directed blows and has to channel all the force through her legs and into her root. It's a lot of work underwater. Physically exhausting. But she can keep it up for a time, drawing the parasite's attacks, and she can run right up to the limit before extracting from that position. Each time she counters a blow, she retaliates with graceful followup attack and a discharge of uncanny black lightning from her fingertips, riposting against touch AC over and over, and firing residual elements of her spell all the way up its fleshy waterlogged tentacles that strip away skin and boil blood in the water. When it reaches out to strangle her, she catches and squeezes with all of her strength, slowly crushing and rupturing the thinnest extension of the tentacle, and completing a circuit of magical electrocution with the main body, ideally pissing it off as much as possible.
Rean Schwarzer	The liquid malice getting on his clothes did not feel good at all. He tries to shake it off of him as much as he can, though he probably can't anyway. This leaves him open to get washed away when the room floods with more of that bile from earlier. Rean surfaces, letting out a few coughs. A tendril lashes out at him, and he charges a spell, creating arcs of darkness that swirl through the air and aim to cut into the tendrils and the main body of the boss.
Maksim Messerglas	"Sometimes, a blight simply needs to be cut out," Reynauld says, regarding this little side trip. Practice or not, he's someone who is dedicated to an ideal and a cause, and that ideal seems to intersect neatly with 'kill the monstrosity' popping up in his path. To his credit, the crusader does not wade in and get murdered by incoming magical firepower or the lashing tendrils of corruption that seem to be attached to this thing. His swordplay is solid, using the huge slab of worn steel as a defensive tool as much as a killing implement, warding off incoming strikes with sweeping swings that threaten to hack off the bits trying to kill him just as he's trying to kill it. Reynauld, however, cannot float, and as the watery juices pour into the insides of the thing, he starts to look for high ground -- and finds a total lack of it. Mipha has his back, though, thanks to Lilian's quick thinking. The Princess struggles to carry his plate armor-covered bulk, but he's strong and able to swim, judging by how he's moving in the water. It's mostly a token effort -- hauling around all that steel is a big problem, after all -- but he keeps his head above water, non-caustic acid dumping out a slit in his helm as the man inside sputters a little. "This thing must have a weak spot..." Maksim, clinging to a fleshy wall of the stomach (and having lost his sword at some point), isn't even visibly displacing the liquid. Nearby, though, he sees... something, a hazy, blue-limned figure swimming through the belly of the beast, unseen by the other combatants and apparently the monster to boot. He recognizes him as a Zora, though his armor looks archaic compared to the kind he's seen in the city. "You!" Maksim calls. The Zora turns. "You can see me? ...Finally. I came to this place for redemption. At least someone might hear my words before they speak their last." "That is --" Maksim exhales through his nose, digging his fingers into the fleshy wall. "-- exactly what I expected to hear." He narrows his eyes. "You are the spirit of one of the warriors who came before us, are you not? Tell me -- how do I kill it?" The spirit flinches at the odd intonation, like it possessed some kind of physical force and lightly boxed his ear-fins. He turns, pointing at the eye. "Those possessed by such strong Malice see through eyes of hatred. Pierce it, and it will fall." "Thank you. REYNAULD!" Maksim yells. He becomes a hazy grey outline across the room as he so obviously draws attention to himself. "Puncture the eye!" The crusader looks back to the Princess. "Please, Princess -- I must get closer. Give me but a chance!" He readies his sword, wrapping a gauntleted fist around the blade just above the crossguard, flipping his grip with his other hand. He intends to use the enormous blade like a lance, if he can only get close enough!
Link	Edward drowns. And comes back. And drowns again. Link is trying to swim towards him to help him, but he's propelling himself. As he scalpels, Link watches, spitting out acid that's very not good for him. It's causing the Barinade pain, and it's working. Electrified arrows assist, surging through the parasite, causing it to seize up while Lilian wrestles against the tendrils, as the black lightning surges through the main body, causing it to writhe again, in horrible pain. Tendrils are lopped off by magical darkness, as Rean fires off blasts. Mipha is tired, helping lift mail, but she'll do her best. These people are trying to save her god - she'll give them all the assistance she can. As Reynauld asks to get closer, she nods. "Hurry! I'm not sure how much longer I can hold on!" They charge forward. The blade punctures through the armor of the parasite, and pierces the eye. The Barinade's remaining tendrils thrash aimlessly, hitting nobody, and the water level starts to drain back, letting people on their feet. But it's nto quite dead - one tendril remains. It lunges. Not for Lilian, who surged lightning and turreted DPS. Not for Reynauld, who did the devastating strike to the eye. To Edward, who had the ability to cure it. Especially to Edward, who was the closest. Edward can feel the hate coming off of it. It is not hate towards them. Or him. Or to anyone in specific. It is hate towards everyone. The tendril's about to move to crush his head, when, it turns into red mist. The Barinade had taken too much damage from their combined effort. The Malice has been defeated. Within minutes returning, the body begins to purge. They'll have to battle upstream to get to the mouth, but they can do it - Jabu-Jabu has been healed, and is now awake.
Edward Blackwell	Edward is very busy drowning. The water is going to suck him out. His head comes above 'water' for a brief second. He waves at Revali. "Hey! Hey, birdle! Help me! I can't swim!" Yeah no shit you can't swim Edward.
Lilian Rook	Lilian shakes off her arms, as much as it'll matter when drenched in diluted parasite gore, extremely thankful for having suited up. Pleased to see that Mipha and Reynauld had buddied up as she ordered, she gives the latter a little Queen's Wave, then the former . . . Well, Edward is being a loser who can't swim, so she doesn't quite have the same luxury. She picks up Mipha and puts her on her shoulders, then just drags Edward by the hand, and says "Hold still" as if it makes any difference whatsoever. It doesn't, because they're just there at the teeth, which Lilian knocks on as requested. Why does this thing have giant teeth anyways? Creepy.