isleofavalon | June catch-all

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June catch-all | OPEN

🧙 WHO: Emet-Selch and anyone
⚔️️ WHAT: It's time to go a-questing again, alchemist continues to hone his craft
🕒 WHEN: Throughout June
🗺️ WHERE: See individual prompts
⚠️ WARNINGS: None (will update as necessary)

1. Do it for the Vine 🗡️

I seek assistance in exterminating an overgrowth of seedkin. I will be departing three days hence.

Even if one doesn't see the message he puts out, one can find him at the scene: on the outskirts of Camelot, Emet-Selch surveys the damage with pursed lips. Fire would be a sure way to exterminate the vines yet it runs the risk of torching everything else as well. Especially magical fire. He has flammable concoctions made especially for this task, but he's hesitant to use them. Perhaps when they locate the parent...

If you happen to be crossing paths with him at the scene, he doesn't immediately take notice. He seems preoccupied with his own thoughts, though he will very quickly look over if someone decides to leap in and start attacking things.

2. Thunderbird 🗡️

The pursuit of unusual alchemy reagents takes one to odd places sometimes. Emet-Selch is not someone who would ordinarily volunteer to go rock-climbing, yet here he is doing just that. Unfortunately, he isn't the fittest of men. Scaling the rocks to reach one of the birds' elusive nests is trying his endurance - and patience.

About halfway up to one, he manages to clamber on to a small ledge and slumps there tiredly, breathing hard. "This had better be worth it," he growls under his breath as he takes a swig of water from his canteen.

--Or perhaps, instead, you meet him at the nest itself, tiredly setting up one of the observation cameras. Whilst technology isn't...unknown to him, he seems to be struggling with this modern brand of it. It's far more compact and advanced than that which he's accustomed to.

"Confound it," he mutters, staring at the pieces in frustration. "Why must they make it so damned small?"

3. Wildcard

Got another idea? Feel free to PM this account. He has a top-level on the TDM as well.

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"Saliva from the 'pelicans' here." The saliva had proven potent against the animated plant some moons back and Hades is pleased to see it's having an effect here too. He drizzles it over his own weapon before hurrying after Felih, attacking branches of vines in the general direction that Felih had indicated.

Come to think of it, they haven't fought together much, he thinks as he carves a way through the greenery. He hasn't really fought alongside a dancer either. Their coordination falters occasionally, but he does his best to correct himself. It's difficult trusting that those deadly chakrams won't cut him as they whirl around.

"Are we getting close?" he calls out.

They never did have much opportunity to do battle together until coming to this place, it's true- but Felih is very used to dancing and working around numerous players on a battlefield. If he notices Hades faltering, he doesn't show it, instead just focusing on cutting down the dangerously massive number of vines trying to bar their path.

"It's just through the wall, but- perhaps if we climb over?" he pants, glancing aside at some of the myriad trees in the forest surrounding them, plenty of them tall enough to use as leaping-off points. It might be faster than cutting through, but it is slightly more dangerous...

He's relieved to see the saliva working well, seeing and hearing the hiss and burn of the compound against the organic matter. It makes the vines recoil and falter as if poisoned and wounded, making it easier for them both to beat the creature back.

"I can bring the wall down if you distract it!"

Ever since he managed to master decomposition, it has made him far more useful on the field. He whistles and Nyx leaps into the air. Using her fiery breath, they can burn a circle into the earth for his alchemy.

"Can do!" Felih calls back, before launching his chakrams and slicing wide, broad swathes of the vines. They're not deep enough to truly injure or inhibit the vines, but it gets a lot of attention now focused right on him again. Not to mention the animosity the plant harbors for him thanks to his earlier stunt...

He darts around the vines as he battles to cut them down, testing out his new draining magic and alternating it with expelling the siphoned energy on more damaging or stunning blasts. With the amount of grief he's causing this creature, he's now commanding almost all its attention, the myriad vines all lashing and snaking out in their attempts to ensnare the Miqo'te. Felih has no intention of getting caught, however, and uses his dexterity and speed to his advantage, keeping the creature focused on the chase.

Mindful that Felih cannot run and dodge indefinitely, he raps out terse and exacting instructions to Nyx. Thankfully his familiar is a practical sort and does not object, scorching the wall with her violet fire until the circle is complete. Hades focuses. The circle flashes and suddenly the wall crumbles to dust.

"'Tis done!" he shouts. He hurries forward without waiting. Nyx flies back to help create an opening in the vines for Felih to join Hades.

Felih watches in wide-eyed awe as the wall of vines crumbles, and the moment he has an opening to do so, he darts towards his partner and tries to keep avoiding more and more of the remaining vines that reach up from the earth to lash at him. He has to leap and roll through the opening Nyx creates, and Felih ends up panting as he lands, exhausted from his constant movement.

He lifts his gaze in time to see the huge, twisted, gnarled mess of vines and plant matter that must be the mother plant. "Why is it always monstrous plants...?" he mumbles to himself, before yowling and leaping as a flytrap-shaped appendages lashes out and tries to snap him up.

"Should we aim for the core? Or is its 'heart' underground? Hells- I don't know where to focus!" he calls.

He's kept busy as well. There are too many vines and not enough eyes for him to keep track of everything and he's starting to regret plunging in without extra help. They'll have to finish this quickly before they both tire.

As he slashes off flytraps, relishing in the way the vines snatch their hissing, truncated ends back, he tries to assess their biggest impediment.

"Use your green magic to find it then!" he yells back. "Unless you want me to bring the entire building down on top of it. I only have so much of this concoction!"

"Then, keep them off of me!" Felih calls back, before falling to his hands and knees, hands glowing as green magic begins to spread and radiate from his hands and through the earth around him. The most he can do is use his healing magic to conjure shields around himself as he stops attacking, but trying to constantly renew the shields while also channeling his green magic to this extent is taxing him.

The magic begins to pulse through the branching rivulets Felih pushes through the earth, pulsing, pulsing- and then, a concentrated glow of green begins to peek through the monstrous mass of vines before them.

"There! At its base, dead center in the core of it- if we can cut through to it, then it's finished!" Felih calls after a gasp of breath, leaping to his feet and beginning to aim his chakrams at the same spot, over, over, over, throwing them viciously and trying to cut deeper and deeper.

He's beginning to tire. With only the strength of his arm to defend Felih from the onslaught, he is fast reaching the limits of this mortal body. So as soon as Felih calls out the location of the core, he immediately switches his attention to it.

Another application of the saliva along his weapon's blade as he runs towards the spot. He's barely thinking at this point, moving purely on instinct as he carves his way into the centre. One wrong step could mean death. Just like on the battlefield. Unlike then, he only protects one other this time.

He leaps over an attempt by a vine to snare him and drives his blade home into the core. And just like that...the fight is over.

When Hades is able to plunge his sword through the great mass of plant matter and finally strike at the creature's core, Felih witnesses the wild flailing and shuddering of myriad vines and tendrils, all of which try feebly to fight the man off. But with the pelican spit coating the blade, the burning poison spreads from the core outwards, rendering the entire plant weaker and weaker, thin purple-black veins spider-webbing over the leaves.

Soon, everything was still, and Felih was left panting and relieved that it was finally over. Hopefully this meant that the many other outcrops of the main body would soon wither away and die as well..

He pads slowly over to his mate, and then leans against his side, still trying to catch his breath.

"Are you alright?" he murmurs.

It takes visible effort for him to pull his blade out. He staggers back a little then puts an arm around Felih with a sigh. All around them, the black-veined vines form a thick, tangled mass that is difficult to navigate.

"I'm fine. Merely tired. I'm not used to this level of exertion. Are you hurt?"

"No, nothing major," Felih says with a shake of his head. Somehow, despite his reckless movements, he hadn't been truly injured, and now he's just trying to calm his body down from the adrenaline rush. He's comforted by the arm around him, a soft purr starting in his chest as he leans further into his beloved.

"We did it," he says next with a laugh, the unceremonious nature of the words just making him more amused. "Ah... at least we don't have to do the cleanup. A good bath sounds good right about now..."

"More like a good sleep," he mutters. Now that the danger is past, he finds himself incredibly weary. "Let's take whatever we need to prove the kill and return home."

He's too tired to even consider harvesting this plant.

"A chunk of its core ought to do. Maybe that odd blossom at its peak there. Or perhaps some of these flytrap appendages," Felih murmurs tiredly in response, before bunting affectionately at Hades' chest. "I do implore you to at least take a brief shower before sleeping, love. Sleeping in filth is never worth it." Such a fastidious and fussy thing the Miqo'te is, about cleanliness.

"Let's go home. Do we have to present this immediately...? I'd rather wait until after washing and resting..."

"I'm sure we have time for a bath." He is tired as well but he knows that reporting the kill too late leaves open the possibility that someone else may claim their reward.

"You can stay home whilst I hand in our trophy. I'll join you afterwards?" He kisses the top of Felih's head.

Felih is so very easy to please. The kiss to the top of his head has his tail fluffing up and quivering, his purr kicking up again.

"Yes, that sounds good," he chirps. "A bath, and then you can turn in our proof while I ready the bed for a cozy nap." His ears perk up, and he bunts affectionately at Hades' chest. "Let’s hurry along, then."

He smiles back faintly, gently rubbing Felih's ear before he steps away to climb the inert mass of vines to collect proof of their kill. For a little while, he can pretend that they're simply two adventurers at the end of their quest without centuries upon centuries of difference between them. This... This is what he would like to imagine his life could have been like if he hadn't escaped the Sundering.

He finds himself looking forward to returning home - a feeling growing more and more common of late.

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June catch-all | OPEN

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think we can probably wrap it up ;u;