A Drow's Dilemma Ep. 66: Overkill

"Shall I set it on fire, Alchemist?" Selene asked in common, and loud enough for the guards to hear.

"Oh, no!" Carlotta said with mock horror. "That would cook them alive!" But then she turned a wide-eyed look towards the drow when she realized a moment later that Selene probably wasn't joking.

Ashyr let out a bark of laughter that was somewhat muffled by the solid clank she gave to one of the guy's head. The guy hit the ground with a slightly louder clank. "I suggest you stand down and let us tie you up, then."

Only two hired guards were left at that point, anyway. The especially burly one wasn't among them. And they seemed to enthusiastically agree with not being set on fire. They weren't paid enough for that bullshit. Their weapons clattered to the floor and they put their hands in the air.

"Hell, we'll tie ourselves up if it gets us away from those crazy bitches," one said with a nervous glance toward Althaia.

Althaia pouted. "Do not be like that!" She said in a sad tone. "I was enjoying this fight too. Normally, I prefer to take on only one man at a time, but you handsome chaps have showed me that it can be very pleasurable to take on several at a time. Why, when so many long, hard blades come at me, I can hardly help myself." Her tone was every bit as suggestive as her words implied. She smirked at the one looking nervously at her. Waving her hands, vines came up around the surrendering soldiers, pulling tightly around them and halting their movements.

"Oh, do not worry. I would never hurt a defeated enemy once they have surrendered. Now, as to not taking advantage of them, well, that I cannot promise." She licked her lips. "You boys all know how to show a girl a good time, so I forgive me if I cannot help but-"

"No raping the defeated guards." Caleldir said in an annoyed tone. He pulled the nymph away. "We do not have time for that right now."

"I was not going to-" Althaia said in an annoyed tone. Then, she took a deep breath. "Eh. I will just have to take out all this built-up lust later. Maybe on you, maybe on the Duskhavens. Maybe on Carlotta, if she is up for it. Not all of us were lucky enough to find ourselves in a Rusalka gangbang, after all."

With a deep sigh, Caleldir shook his head. "Whatever. Let us go restrain this mage."

The guards didn't know what the hell to think about the woman who, at one moment was fighting them, and in the next making extremely suggestive comments about them. And then she was restraining them with vines. Their eyes became wide and a little wild for the brief moment that they thought the woman was actually going to carry through with those plans. That was... not how it was supposed to be. Not at all. The worst part was, they didn't even know whether they wanted it that way or not. So it was with equal parts relief and disappointment that they slumped in their restraints when the horny girl was pulled away from them.

Ashyr's shoulders shook with silent laughter before she clapped Althaia on the back. "It is quite delightful to... er, have to deal with so many blades at once," she informed Althaia, continuing the innuendo the nymph had been using out of amusement more than actually being too dignified so speak more literally. Then the ranger sighed. "Unfortunately, I don't think our boys would appreciate it that much."

"We can talk about this later." Selene told them with a roll of her eyes. Sometimes she swore that sex was all they could think about.

Carlotta simply turned a brilliant shade of red and continued practically glowing that color as she followed the party out of the alley.

The shop itself was by far the tallest and most grand building in the entire place. It stood an impressive four stories high and was so aggressively magical that even those most mundane of people would likely be able to feel it. Just looking at the thing made Selene feel antsy and overstimulated. And excited. How many powerful artifacts resided within that building? The mage was eager to find out.

But first, they needed to focus on the guy who, according to the halfling, was likely about to blow up the castle. Weird flashes of light emanated from the uppermost floor of the magic shop. Ashyr began to lead the party around nearer the back of the store, where there wasn't a huge courtyard to sprint across. They made it around and to the shop without any further trouble. After a quick cancellation of a powerful magical trap at a window, all of them piled into the first floor of the shop.

That level looked pretty standard as shops went. It was dark, but not too dark for anyone with low-light vision. (Carlotta had a potion to help her see clearly, which she had consumed a little while ago as the streets grew uncomfortably dark.) There were no doors that led to the back, and no stairs within view. There were, however, two faintly glowing platforms - a red and a blue - and there were holes in the ceiling directly above those platforms.

The inside of the shop was about how Caleldir expected it to be, right up to the elevators rather than stairs. At least, Caleldir assumed that is what they were. He took a deep breath. "Well, let us try to get up this place and confront the mage before he blows anything up." The lightshow on the top floor was almost certainly not a good sign. The mage was probably about to do some rather catastrophic property damage. To say nothing of all the loss of life.

Althaia grinned. "We have no need to go up to him. He will have to come down to us."

Caleldir glanced over at the nymph. "Really? How are you going to do that?"

The nymph licked her lips. "Break things. My spells are not going to be useful for counterspelling. And, normally, I prefer not to use them, since it is more fun to hit things with a sword. But with them, I can make a real big mess of this place." She stretched, then began to very rapidly intone some spells. "Hold on to something!" She shouted as the ground around them began to shake violently.

"Earthquake!?" Caleldir gasped. "Are you insane?"

"Yes!" Althaia laughed as the tremors intensified. A massive earth elemental ripped its way out of the ground. Then a firestorm erupted from her, washing over the shop, and an equally huge fire elemental appeared. She clapped her hands together, issuing quick orders in Ignan and Terran. The elementals set to wantonly running around breaking things.

"This is a terrible plan," Caleldir muttered as a flaming rock flew past his head.

"Althaia! You are ruining everything! N-no, that item looks really powerful! WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?!" Selene began shout as everything around her began to devolve into chaos. She looked about to actually try to attack one of the summoned creatures who drew too close to a display case. The chaos had only just started, though.

Just a few seconds after things began to break, other, formerly invisible humanoid figures began to pour out from the walls. But even they didn't last very long, as one of Althaia's summoned creatures reached a part of the store that, until that moment, held magically explosive arrows and other similar ranged weapons. Now it mostly just had explosions. Colorful spurts of reds, blues, and purples filled the room with their searing bright heat; acid began to splatter everywhere; and, strangely, some nearby parts of the shop froze in a solid, jagged mass of ice. Which then exploded again to fling ice shards across the room.

Selene grabbed Ashyr, who in turn grabbed Carlotta. Caleldir quickly followed at their heels. Things bounced off of an invisible barrier around the drow and human as the four of them retreated out of the front door and into the courtyard. It was presumably safer than being inside the shop, which was well on its way to being just as blown up as the castle presumably would have been had the enemy mage got his way. Except, out there, they were in plain view of the shop's other inhabitant. They paid for it as well, but thankfully with less explosions. For now. Selene began to desperately make wide, complex motions with her hands and the circlet on her head shone like a beacon in the night as she negated the spells that were beginning to hail down from the top of the building.

And, of course, the cacophonous noise began to attract all manner of hired guards from all around the district. Not that the drow or human could see them begin to run out into the main street and towards them. Both Ashyr and Carlotta were temporarily blinded. The ranger looked barely able to remain upright under the weight of the pain and disorientation. It was a wonder that Selene could see enough to adequately protect them. It probably had something to do with her artifact.

Meanwhile, the shop continued to be its own localized apocalypse as various magical items set each other off.

It was then that Althaia began to swell and grow to an absolutely huge size. Too big for the floor, in fact. She decided to begin powering her way up the building to try to take on the mage head-on, simply ripping apart any walls or floors that got in her way. Also, every six to twelve seconds another elemental, animal, insect, plant, or faery creature appeared and began rioting around breaking stuff, burning stuff, and causing plants to grow everywhere. Althaia was taking absolutely punishing amounts of damage from all the exploding magic items, but she had apparently cast regeneration on herself about the same time as she had grown two sizes, and was just as busy throwing a truly divine cocktail of paladin and druid buffs on herself as she was in summoning her nature army.

"I do not think she was that powerful before." Caleldir said in panting breaths. "She certainly was not when we were fighting that dragon princess. Definitely a good thing she is with us." Another awful explosion rocked the building. "For a certain value of with us. I think she forgets that the rest of us are squishy when rocks fall on us." He quickly put magic shielding over the others, bolstering Selene's efforts on that front. When the explosion struck the four of them, Caleldir was briefly forced to the ground, and his form began to go translucent. A quick healing stabilized himself, and he set to increasing the buffs on Ashyr and Selene. Carlotta he merely healed.

"Now would probably be a good time to quaff some potions," he told her. "In case Althaia brings down the whole damn building."

Upon seeing the true destruction of the magic shop and the growing women within, the hired guards who had made their way into the courtyard quickly began to backpedal.

Caleldir glanced over at the guards. "I suppose that we are burning through all our spells now." he noted. Without any sort of incantation or arcane gestures of any kind, (unless pointing counted) he blasted forth a swarm of magic missiles. Being unerring, they each hit one of the guards. It was intentionally not enough to fell any of them, but definitely enough to give them brief pause. "I would stay out of it, fellows." He bellowed out over the sound of exploding everythings. "Whatever people are paying you, it is not worth getting involved with that." He gestured towards the army of nature being bursting out of the shop and swarming upwards towards wherever that mage was.

The pale man who was throwing magic missals a them was right; this was very much beyond their pay grade. Ashyr, who had been grinning madly in anticipation for a good, hard fight, huffed an explosive sigh of disappointment. "Cowards!" She yelled after them. But the only effect her insult had was a couple of dirty looks cast back at her as they began to run full-speed out of the area. Then, the courtyard was still - aside from the occasional bits of building that landed nearby.

"The mage stopped casting." Selene panted. "I don't- what are they-?"

Ashyr turned around to see a bright green flash from the top of the building. Althaia was only about half-way through the floors at this point - which was a sight to make Ashyr pause and blink for a moment in itself. After the bright light, the top of the building went completely silent and dark. That only lasted for a moment, however. The chain of destruction caused by the magic items Althaia and her summons set off had clearly damaged the integrity of the entire building. The paladin herself wasn't helping things, either. The structure shifted and began to list to the side with a deep, groaning protest. Then a massive detonation beginning at the top level annihilated the top half of the building.

"I think they teleported!" Selene yelled against the noise even as she threw out her arms to raise another barrier to combat the noise, magical backlash, and debris projected from the explosion. She managed to get it up just in time for the energy to wash over and around the four in the courtyard without injuring them. The cobblestone and structures around them didn't fare so well.

After the explosion, what was left of the building began to collapse around the Paladin. Lesser bursts flashed in the darkness, but seemed to be slowing down as there became fewer and fewer powerful magical items left to break. Selene scowled at the building as it went down, no doubt gearing up to give Althaia the most epic scolding of her comparatively short life.

Caleldir watched the explosion with a flat expression, shaking his head. "I still think that was a bad idea," he muttered. He did not care about the destroyed magical items - if they needed more they could always spend a week or so and try to raid the monastery again for much more powerful things - but of course the mage would up and run. And would be impossible to follow, because teleports. At least the guards were wise enough to call things quits and not try to attack them. He walked over to the wreckage of the building. "You still alive, Althaia, or was a building too much for your hard head to handle?"

"It was not!" Althaia said cheerfully, emerging from the ruins. Shuddering, she shrunk back down to her normal size.

"Please consult with the party before you try to destroy everything." Caleldir said in a tired tone. "We may have driven the fellow off, but where to we have no idea. And now he is mad at us, far more so than before. You let a dangerous man get away."

The nymph shrugged. "I stopped him from destroying the castle." She said. "That was the goal."

Caleldir glanced over at Selene, who was about to go into conniptions. "Argue that with the dark-elf mage, nymph. I am going to go see if I can find something in those ruins that I can use to scry that mage, see where he ported off to."

Selene wasn't the only one to look unhappy about how things went down. Even Ashyr had a somewhat sour look on her face - which was a pretty rare expression for the ranger. The mage was the one who had actually killed Celeste, after all. Ashyr was even more eager to see that person dead than she did Faust. But Ashyr didn't look like she wanted to talk about it. So much so that she tilted her head at Bard and then proceeded to sprint off back towards the castle with him trailing behind.

"Althaia!" Selene spat. "What in the abyss were you thinking? All those things in the shop are completely ruined now." The drow actually seemed morally offended by that. "And you're fucking lucky that this wasn't even more catastrophic. Do you know what happens when mages that powerful think they're going to die!? They get desperate! They blow up entire sections of cities! Just because you have the power to do something, it doesn't mean you should, Luidil!" Selene looked like she was about to say more, but then she realized her mistake. "Althaia." The mage corrected with a frown. With that, Selene completely lost her proverbial steam, and almost literally looked like she deflated. "I need to - I'm going to..." And then the drow wandered off.

Carlotta stood where she was with a bit of a baffled expression written across her freckled features. "Uh. For what it's worth, I thought that was pretty badass," she told Althaia sheepishly.

Carlotta's words brought a smile to Althaia's face. "Thank you my darling. But I think that I will probably not go all out like that again."

Caleldir glanced over at Althaia. "Selene does have a point, you could have gotten yourself killed. And everyone else," he sighed. "Although, you are right too, Carlotta. Althaia did save the castle from being blown up, and chased him off for now. If only we could scry him to keep an eye on what he is going to do next..."

There was nothing among the wreckage that looked like promising scrying material. Most of the contents of the shop turned into magical slag that glowed slightly purple and was still uncomfortably hot to the touch. The destruction of the top level had been quite intentional: the brief look the party had of it before told them it was probably the mage's living quarters. No self-respecting powerful mage would leave behind something to track them by if they wanted to disappear.

"So much for that idea," Caleldir concluded.

Althaia looked penitent. "Well, I can still Contact my divine patrons. I have a few more Contacts before I have run out of divine favors. So, They could find this mage."

Caleldir blinked. "Actually, that would probably be quite useful. I forgot how powerful that sort of Divination magic can be." He relaxed. "While I admit that your divine patrons strike me as a bit flighty and illogical at times, it is always nice to have some sort of divine assistance. But... I thought with a Contact spell the entities only give one-word answers?"

"That is only because most entities resent being Contacted. My patrons like me, so they would be quite willing to be helpful," the nymph said. "If this mage has gone anywhere where the goddesses of love, beauty, pleasure, and suchlike, or their allies, can see, then I can learn what he is up to. Failing that, they should at least point me towards some other method of learning the information.

"Now, excuse me while I go try to salvage the situation. If my superiors know anything, then the drow will likely feel a bit more charitably disposed towards me when I see them again." With that, Althaia stepped into a tree that had grown out of part of the ruins. The various summoned creatures began to fade away.

A short while later, Althaia walked back towards Carlotta and Caleldir. "It seems that the mage has fled this plane," she said. "Or at very least is cloistered in an area impervious to divine-level scrying. Also, he seems to be in the employ of some non-good deities. Whether actually evil or not I am not sure, but my patrons thought it might be so. At very least we will not need to worry about him in the very near future."

"Unless he plane-shifts back tomorrow morning." Caleldir observed. "So... we have that to worry about." He sighed. "Great, now we have to spend every day all paranoid that some powerful mage is going to show up and destroy all the work we accomplished here any day."

The nymph took a deep breath. She pursed her lips, but said nothing.

Carlotta looked toward the street Ashyr had disappeared down. "Do you think we should find her? Or should we just go back to the castle and wait? I'm sure she can handle herself but... I don't know, she looked upset. Both of them did."

Caleldir turned to Carlotta. "It is best to give the two of them there space. They will come back. They always do. Both are dealing with some pretty traumatic memories and old grudges, so it is best to let them sort things out."

He began trudging back towards the castle, followed by the two women with him. "If they do not return soon, though, I will go look for them. But, for now, I think we might be in control of the city," he said in disbelief. "I mean, with the mage gone, I do not think that anyone left can seriously threaten us."