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The solars took to the sky just outside the inner wall, with one of the sorcerers driving the flying chariot while they surveyed the deployment below them. After a pass around, Grant fired an arrow to the ground with a note stating that Moon's First Shadow was now the overall leader of the brute squad and that they were tasked with entering the inner walls, aggro-ing the troops there, and holding the forces for as long as they could while the solars went inside the pagoda and did their thing.
On their next pass around, the chariot dropped and entered and hit a dispell wall. It vaporized beneath them, and Isha grabbed Grant who'd been leaning down to fire another shot to stabilize him as they fell. The three sprinted to the pagoda and leapt the wall with ease. The first door was locked outside of it. They walked around and tried others, but they heard voices coming at them. So they snuck back around the way they'd come and entered the pagoda at the door where the troops had been dispatched to check for the solars.
They closed the door quietly behind them.
Into the pagoda they went, all the way up to the top, but nothing. Then Searing suggested the basement, so back down the stairs they charged.
Searing had been right. They were presented with a door depicting the Scarlet Empress and the Ebon Dragon in a yin-and-yang sort of shape. They stood outside the door and tried repeatedly to open it by yelling, flinging essence. And finally, Searing channeled a conviction point (yerp), spending a willpower to force it open.
They were greeted by 2 Infernals. Empress nowhere in sight. The realm defense controls disabled already on the back wall (parts of the machinery was missing).
Song chose that moment to appear and tell them something useless, that the Ebon Dragon was everywhere and nowhere at this instant. He was in none of heaven, hell, or creation, but at the same time in all of them. Well, they'd just have to work around it. But in the meantime… time to deal with what stood before them.
Isha immediately stepped forward to attack the brute guy directly ahead of her while indicating to the boys that they should take care of the chick sorceress standing next to the wall.
It became apparent almost instantly that there was a 3rd player in room. Some kinda sandstorm, whirlwind Infernal. The whirlwind and the brute laid waste to Isha but the boys were able to get the female Infernal down so quickly it was frightening. Isha made a brutal attack at the brute Infernal, forcing him backward toward the light. She was able to withstand a bit more damage from the brute and then made a second brutal attack sending him into oblivion before he ever hit the green light. Searing, meanwhile, was able to catch the whirlwind unawares and trapped/slowed him as he attempted to attack Grant, who had just wasted the female Infernal.
As Isha finished off the brute within an inch of her own life, the boys finished off the whirlwind Infernal.
That was when the Empress made her presence known.
She was attached to the machinery that was removed from the realm defenses. She sat in a meditative pose in the column of light and spoke.
It was too late for us, she said, the column of light formed an axis mundi that connected hell, creation, and heaven. They were all one, here. She waved her hand and showed the sky above them, the tower above them turning invisible. At that moment, the sun shattered in the sky. The solars' animas flickered and faded. The three solars glanced at each other, and while strength still remained, they reached forward and axed the Empress a question and just like that, she was no more.
A breath later, a bellow in the mind of all Solars throughout creation declared the Ebon Dragon their mortal enemy. The Unconquered Sun demanded vengeance. At the same moment, their animas flared so brightly as to blind everyone within miles. The Solars felt new life breathed into them (+1 essence) and as if the Unconquered Sun himself had blown all the doors open that had been hiding the abilities their previous incarnations' had wielded (+10 charms of our choosing).
And as the animas faded back down to normal, two eyes coalesced in the roiling darkness that began leaking from the corpse of the Scarlet Empress. The Ebon Dragon formed before them.