The Last Oddetsey

[kodster]

Eudial looked over at the macaw, at the conch, then at the snipe perched on her shoulder, and finally at Marisa and the reporter. "Uh... what's happened to him?" she inquired, peering at her avian party member with some amount of concern.

[majinb]

"What? Yeah, I will get back to your case asap Meander, just waiting for my dagger to return, please enjoy some chants that me and my Spanish Revolution will sing for you in the meantime."

[alex_holt]

TWITCH

After a while, Twitch suddenly awakens and stands bolt upright as if he'd just been plunged into icy cold water. There is a slightly dazed look in his eyes for a moment before he regains his senses. Meanwhile, the conch shell has entirely vanished without trace...

[shadowflare]

Marisa gently prodded Twitch.

"You ok, ze? You really shouldn't put random things you find in your mouth. Did it even do anything besides make you spazz out?"

She looked around to see if the shell was still around, and upon realising it was gone, shrugged and turned to the other witch.
"We really ought to go back, like the bird said. He could probably use being poked at-- in a medical way of course. And maybe we'll find something to help out Sally here. Also, that weird tree, ze, you gotta look at it~"

[NFX]

Twitch barely reacted to the prod from Marisa, instead continuing to stare at a nondescript point in the distance. "...yeah..." he replied, clearly not quite all there yet, "...yeah, something else happened..."

He paced over towards the sofa, dragging his wings along the floor behind him, and sat himself down in front of it, still staring at the same point. Whatever had happened inside the parrot's brain during that convulsion had clearly affected him something nasty. If nothing else, he probably just needed some time to calm down, the macaw was still pretty shaky. "...I think we should go back to the castle..." he said, to nobody in particular.

[kodster]

There were a great deal of things about the situation that Eudial was still suspicious about, but it was no good questioning them now. "All right," she said to Marisa, sniffling. "But if it's anything like the Hell Tree that I've heard of before, I'm staying as far away from it as I can."

Eudial shivered. She had heard rumours of that parasitic tree through the galaxies, none of which were pleasant.

[alex_holt]

TWITCH, EUDIAL, MARISA and Sally are teleported back to the castle.

[alex_holt]

The CASTLE

As the group arrive at the castle, there is a brief flickering of power and suddenly various bizarre looking technological and arcane devices protrude from the wall as a siren goes off. Severel different scanners sweep across the group before all the implements retract into the wall again as if nothing had happened.

Looking justifiably concerned, Sally asks "What was that about? Now we are here, do you think you can remove the rift from me?"

[NFX]

Twitch remained as still as he could while the devices did their work, before they disappeared back from whence they came, and the parrot staggered forwards a little, still trying to get his bearings after his fit. He did manage to cobble together the faculties to reach into his bag of iteming, and retrieve the truth dagger, handing it back to Aurelia.

Suddenly, though, his eyes shot open, he looked back towards the back, and frantically began rummaging through it. "He said it'd be here...c'mon, where is it?" he mumbled to himself, before pulling out a small orb and instantly flying off through the castle with it, leaving his bag of items behind. Although he didn't seem to be flying straight for some reason, he must have still been quite shaken up by the seizure...

[playzooki]

"woah what was that i think i heard something"

[majinb]

"I got my dagger back! Now tell me everything I need to know about your theft and Vengance's role in it, water woman!"

[alex_holt]

AURELIA

The dagger doesn't detect any lies as the watery woman explains everything that happened:

- The Water womans name is Kelpsie, and she is a Water Nymph
- Her family is poor and she'd supplemented her income by doing the ocassasional bit of theft for hire.
- Recently she was approached by several PTT employees (a floating Goat Skull that called itself Hyborean and a speckled blue alien called Thriloth) who said they had a high paid job for her.
- They took her to PTT headquarters where she met a man who looked almost exactly like Vengeance (although she concedes that that one was possibly a bit older than the one you know). He had the ability to use some kind of black energy she didn't recognise.
- She was commissioned to steal the three books, and was paid enough to set her up for life, but was warned that if she spoke of it ever, she and her mother would be murdered.

[NFX]

After a few minutes, Twitch returned to the group, flying a little more level but still not entirely balanced, and without the crystal ball he had flown off with. The parrot had stowed it in another of the castle's myriad rooms, this one containing a dozen unpainted aluminium shelving units which held at least a thousand copies of the Oxford English Dictionary. Why anyone needed at least a thousand copies of the Oxford English Dictionary, Twitch had absolutely no idea.

Landing alongside his bag of holding, the macaw gave his wings a shake momentarily. "Right, getting rid of the rift..." he said, hovering opposite Sally and looking like he was trying to remember something. "Getting rid of the rift, they said we have tooooo..." the parrot mumbled to himself. "...we have to..." he began quite slowly, "...either use some sort of ritual to get rid of the rift, trap them outside the multiverse, or kill them......also, does anyone know where Melded is?"

Twitch glanced unsurely between the members of the group, before hovering down to the ground and making himself look small again.

[kodster]

Looking justifiably concerned, Sally asks "What was that about? Now we are here, do you think you can remove the rift from me?"

The Witch let out an audible sigh. Great... please don't tell me I have to do this right now... "Yeah alright, give me a second," muttered Eudial. She was sure at least one of the others had looked at her in some confusion. "You can stop giving me patronizing glances, you know," Eudial retorted blindly. "After that moonfox or whatever decided to not snack on me, I was thinking: Even if the rift wasn't coming from that Titanicman guy, how do we know it wasn't that Mecha clone of his, or something more sinister? We'd need some sort of weird-ass spell to conjure it from... like, whatever it was. Because it's not like anybody can just remove rift sources from people, especially considering people are too afraid to even get near them. Sooooo... I went back to town for a bit. Oh yeah, I spotted Khloe in the church again, but she didn't really say anything," Eudial added conversationally. "so, that weapon store... I found a bookstore a few blocks from that and picked up... this."

With that, Eudial hauled a somewhat large book out and flipped open a few pages. "This wasn't easy to find. But apparently there's some sort of charm in here that can draw out - ah!" Eudial spotted it. "Alright here it is. Hold on..."

She noted the reporter's further trepidation. Ungh... cowardice. I hate dealing with this. Viluy is better in these situations than I am... "Hold still, this'll only take a moment..." muttered Eudial. I hope.

She pressed her index finger to the reporter's forehead and muttered a few words. And...

All of a sudden, the book in her arm pretty much EXPLODED. Eudial shrieked as she went flying across the room and landed heavily on the floor. "Aaaaagh...!" What the hell was that?! She could feel her arm had nearly been blown off... the only assumption she was able to make was that her own powers had prevented further harm to her.

She managed to stagger up. "Wha... wh-what happened... why did that..." she stumbled over words wildly. Then she realized. "Hey, what happened to Sally?!"

[alex_holt]

OOC: Melded is the City everything has been going on in :P

EUDIAL

Thrown across the room by the blast, Sally gets up and looks around confusedly before focusing her attention on Eudial.

"You did it! I've no idea how you did it, but I'm free of it finally! Thankyou so much!"

Anjushree has wandered into the room just as this was happening and watched the proceedings coldly and intently before walking changing original direction and heading to the library.