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[TheBiggerFish]

((Hoo boy.  Kinda worried, kinda expectant, kinda excited.  And kinda thankful that I have a cloning machine.))
((Plan: Like !!FUN!! only with plans.  plan: Well duh.))

[Amperzand]

I have a cloning machine.

{Not yet you don't.}

Just as Blaze and his goblin friend get back to our line, kicking the clawing undead away just in time, Net Patham raises his staff of necromantic energy, the object warping with the power it carries into unpleasant new shapes, clawing at his hands.

A whisper of intent, the beginnings of a spell. Nothing more. This sort of power has an eagerness all its own, and requires little more than that to leap from writhing dormancy into ruinous action.

The five-foot rod of something that was once wood flares into dark life, tendrils of shadowy material binding Patham's fingers as an unpleasantness forms around the artifact, leeching light.

Another whisper of will's strength, this time horrified, angry.

There is the sound of a great bell tolling in our bones, a rumbling crash of something that should be thunder, a terrible warping of our flares' crimson light.

A wave of absolute black washes outward from Net's hands, shivering over the creeping undead with a sibilant hiss of change and devastation.

Thud.

The staff in his hands shatters into a myriad tiny splinters of twisting shadow, a concussion of sucking dark, throwing his armored form against the Beast's serrated ferrous hide with an nasty grating noise, the last sound in his ears before the nightmares close in and his mind fades into shadow, leaving him insensate, his tiny crystalline pet fluttering in the air above.

The flares have gone out, but a new light shines.

Our great steel ally of circumstance raises its strange, partially triangular head above us, eyes glowing like molten searchlamps, revealing what horrors Patham wrought.

A field of writhing bones and calcified flesh, rotting stone and eternal meat, polluted lightnings and poison dark.

The undead are torn and wracked, gobbets of putrescence spattered among unnatural formations of broken stone.

A field of tiny fragments, each still animate, each striving to reach the others. Trying to make something new.

The Forgotten Beast, the Skalewyrm, inhales with a long scraping purr, head, neck and torso heating themselves into incandescent life, saw-edged feathers spreading from armored not-skin.

A long cone of searing tendrils whipping through one another. Vaporous steel carried on a projected magnetic field and propelled by gas heated to the life of a sun, a shrieking roar, like the furious death of a motorized lion. Consuming light and ruinous flame.

We barely escape incineration, diving to the ground as liquid heat scythes back and forth overhead, crisping our hair, browning our clothing.

The Ruinous Field is blasted into molten rock, everything that was softly torn into monatomic ash by the rage and terror of a horror more ancient still. Cleansed of the evil that might have since been born.

[TheBiggerFish]

I have a cloning machine.

{Not yet you don't.}

[IN PROGRESS]

[LIKE, SERIOUSLY, THIS WON'T BE A FAILDOP, I SWEAR]

((Yes I do.  I literally made a point of going and getting one.  It's not installed HERE though.))

[Amperzand]

{Given that deliberate inter-universal travel to and from here isn't currently possible, it doesn't matter. You aren't dead, though. Nah worries, mate.}

[TheBiggerFish]

{Given that deliberate inter-universal travel to and from here isn't currently possible, it doesn't matter. You aren't dead, though. Nah worries, mate.}

((Merh.  It's a backup plan.))

[Amperzand]

[EDITDOP FINISHED]

[TheBiggerFish]

The familiar uses precise manipulation of heat to emit one particular message, from me.
"What.  The.  Fuck."
My consciousness fades from direct control of the dragonhawk, leaving it free to act on its own, as per usual.
It then scorches the [EXPLETIVE DELETED] out of the blast area, because it can see what was threatening to be, affecting my feverish dreams.
((Yes, I am acting as my familiar for the duration of my unconsciousness.))
The ruby dragonhawk quickly swirls over towards its larger cousin, as if some kinship is inherent in its similitude.  It seems discomfited by the large diamond pinning the beast.
<<Crystal?  Bad?  Help?>>
((I am using this sort of language for FlareRetconbot 3000 successfulSpark (because flares) to communicate due to him currently not really knowing if the beast even understands what he's saying.  Should contact be successful, complexity will increase a bit.))

[Amperzand]

{Semantics, it's more like a set of slowly hardening waves of obsidian, rising away from us, not a crater. This was like a 100-square-meter area.}

The little construct writes its message in midair with flickering ghost-flame before spitting a last, petulant tongue of fire into the sterilized rock that once held an implacable foe.

Flitting from its half-dead master to the enormous monster overhead, Spark questioningly sends a simple impulse of almost-language.

The Skalewyrm meets this with a tiny spark of semi-comprehension and a half-hearted snap of teeth larger than Spark's entire head, seemingly exhausted by the obliteration it caused.

"Right, while this thing's heated up, everybody conscious get to the winches, I want that shard out of there."

[TheBiggerFish]

<<sharp pain heat / pain move / less pain / heal / how heal?>>
Spark moves to recover the Canteen Of Healing Majjyks, in any case.  Thankfully, I filled it before coming down.

[Amperzand]

{Thaat definitely won't do much for this thing. Don't worry though, it heals on its own. I believe somebody suggested we feed it some iron? A cookie for you.}

[TheBiggerFish]

{Thaat definitely won't do much for this thing. Don't worry though, it heals on its own. I believe somebody suggested we feed it some iron? A cookie for you.}

((That was me.  Mmm, cookie.))
Spark realizes that the spell structures in the Canteen will not do much for his distant relative and drops the idea before getting to the canteen, but does find the assortment of steel things I brought back down, and grabs a small enough piece to carry.  It then flies up to the FB, carefully staying out of bite range, and gives it the steel.

[Amperzand]

{So far 2/3rds of all combat encounters end in spectacular destruction and an unnecessarily pyrrhic victory.}

{I am entertained.}

[endlessblaze]

((So the necromantic energy went out of control, turned the area into something remicent of the Crimson, and then the fb incinerated the changes to keep it from going out of control more.))

[TheBiggerFish]

((Yeah.))
I bolt awake, sweating.
"You do not want to know what that could have been.  I do not want to know what that could have been.  And considering that the FB burned it to lava...I think it knows.  Now excuse me while I extricate myself from the caverns..."
I head up to my quarters and begin work on replacing my staff with one key improvement in a restabilization filter on the drain magic portions, which should prevent any sort of outright terrifying destruction like that from happening again.
I pour myself a small amount of whatever's being produced by our brewers from the Healing Canteen, and eat the cookie.  Mmm, cookie.
Spark, however, stays put.
((Also, I was thinking, manipulate temp. to create pressure.  Not fire.))
>>Hello, by the way.<<
This voice sounds different from mine.
((As I'm sure some people would be looking around right now))
>>Over here.<<
>>Yes, I'm the dragonhawk.<<
>>And no, I'm not Netpatham.<<
>>In other news, I can't seem to communicate with my distant relative here, so don't ask.  It will take a while for a middle ground to be reached.<<

[Amperzand]

{More like a miniature version of the Brother Moons from Dead Space 3, I think. Or possibly a Leviathan from Proximal Crescent's book All The Little Lost Boys And Girls.}

{The crimson is simply a very unpleasant ecosystem. This thing would have ended up being one fairly cohesive entity.}