SILENT HORIZON - [Part 2: Facing the Faceless/Escape] [modplot]

[letsgolegion]

Who| Everyone in Silent Horizon plot
What| Fighting the Faceless, a perilous escape, and a chance to have a breather
Where| In the In-Between, the Silent Horizon, and then the Legion Cruiser
When| Chronologically, only hours have passed in the outside world from when the team disappeared, but it's up to players whether their characters perceived it as being hours or days
Warnings/Notes| Gore, blood, body horror, all the usual


They hear the voice again, calling out to them. Not the Faceless, not the dark whispers of this world. It's the same tinny voice that warned them, that told them not to give into the Faceless' offer. It's the voice that told them their Phalanxed teammates can still be saved if the Faceless is killed in time before they die.

It calls out again. Wherever they are, whatever the landscape is doing, they can hear it.

"I know you have no reason to trust me. I know you've been probably hearing lots of voices in this place, telling you all kinds of things. But I'm trying to help you. There's a way to end this, to stop the Faceless. Just follow my voice. My language synthesizer is broadcasting in the telepathic range like telepathic earplugs and I've managed to reconfigure it to broadcast through the entire In-Between. You should be hearing it wherever you are and you should be able to use its broadcast strength to navigate. I think I've managed to secure it from the Faceless and his Phalanx but there's no way to be sure."

How loud the voice is changes as they get closer or farther away. They can use it to navigate, albeit very crudely. And now that it's clearer, it's far more recognizable: it's the voice of the Robotican in the horrible footage that played before they were taken -- the one that had his head knocked off.

"My name is N-45LEN/Keth Series. My organic crewmates call --" He pauses, and sounds distraught. "--called me Lenny. I was a crew member of the Silent Horizon. This entire dimension is called the In-Between. It's made up of the body of the Faceless and I'm currently trapped at its core. I can see you Legionnaires from here through...what appears to be some kind structure for processing what equates to ocular stimuli for the Faceless. If any of you get lost, I can see enough to guide you here."

If they need it, they'll find that he can give them individualized directions, no matter what the landscape does, and he can give them to multiple people simultaneously. Having a complex processor for a brain has its perks.

"My organic teammate and I managed to discover the core of the Faceless and its nature, but I'm currently incapacitated and Bob...he just lost it. He nearly destroyed what was left of me and ran off before we could stop the Faceless. I saw him eventually accept the Faceless' offer and turn. If you make it here where I am, you may be able to destroy the Faceless' body enough to kill him, save your teammates, and destroy this dimension once and for all."

A pause.

"And if you could maybe take me with you when you leave, uh, I would appreciate that. Like, a lot."

[ooc post here]

Comments

FACING THE FACELESS

[letsgolegion]

Finding the core of the Faceless is a lot easier when they have guidance. Some way or another, they find a massive, twisted fortress at the center of it all, converging where many of the organ-like structures meet up. It's clear that dimensional space around the fortress is shifting and changing, as if this is the central engine of this strange, shifting, sprawling dimension.

Inside, there's a cavernous circular space with a bone throne in the center and oozing walls that undulate, covered in criss-crossed blood vessels. In some places, blood oozes out of the walls, leaving an ankle-deep pool over the entire floor of the cavern. In many places in the walls there are beating hearts, in half-open ribcages, all of them beating in unison, loudly. It's clear from the bloodflow in the walls that these hearts are attached to everything in this little world.

Over the bone throne is a strange shifting window attached to nerves that has some similar structures to the human eye and part of the brain. Its fragmented view shows locations all over the In-Between -- it's this structure that N-45LEN used to guide them here.

This is the center of the Faceless' entire being. The core of his body and the central point of this dimension are one and the same.

Thanks to their own efforts, or Len's guidance, or the strange shifting nature of this place, they all arrive at the same time, through the many entrances that lead in.

N-45LEN -- who is just a robot head -- lays on an outcropping of bone, where he was bashed and thrown by his insane teammate Bob. Despite being damaged, he is still intact enough that his processors are still firing.

"You made it! We can still save your teammates. The Faceless bragged about how Phalanxing works to Bob. If your teammates haven't bled to death from their transformations you can still save them if you kill the Faceless first."

Maybe he couldn't save most of his own crew but after everything he's been through, Lenny wants to save theirs, especially since he's watched them struggle.

"You have to act quickly, before he finds you here! Destroy his hearts! He can't be hurt physically -- he just regenerates his body out of the flesh and blood of the In-Between. But I can see on more spectrums than organics -- the hearts only look like hearts on the visual spectrum; my scans show they're attached to the quantum fabric of this dimension. If you destroy them you'll be destroying the equivalent of his brain. It should destroy the In-Between or at least weaken him enough for an exit to open up. And please, take me with you. I'm not alone in here -- some of my fellow Robotican crewmates managed an upload to my datacore before their physical forms were completely destroyed."

You heard it right, Legionnaires. The Roboticans are alive.

"There are 55 of us in all."

Even for those without functioning powers, there are plenty of sharp bones to destroy the hearts with. There sure are a lot of them, though. Enough that the entire team will have their hands full. And those hands are about to get even fuller.

"Too late," says a voice and the Faceless himself swoops out of the shadows. "Naughty, naughty little robot. I overlooked you. I always do have trouble with sensing and transforming inorganics. But I did sense the entire Legion showing up on my metaphorical doorstep. And I brought friends."

Their Phalanxed teammates heard their master's call and they're here now, along with many other nightmare creatures.

He holds a long-fingered hand to his chest.

"I offer you a gift, something that will spare you from It. Maybe if you see, you'll understand."

All of a sudden, they all see it, hear it, smell it, feel it, slamming into them like a wrecking ball. A memory. They see a vision of a world made of flesh, but it's not as ugly as this place. There are plants and trees and machines and homes that are all organic, that blend in and out of each other symbiotically, and maybe it's not beautiful by the standards of many species, but it's clearly considered beautiful to the people that live there -- the Faceless is only one of many. And those many can warp dimensional fabric -- a gift they use to shape their world and view other dimensions. And just like their flesh blends, so too do their minds, through a form of telepathy.

They lived and died, and loved and hated, and built and destroyed, like any other species. But mostly they loved, and mostly they built, and mostly they cared for each other. But then It came.

In the memory, strange crystalline eye-creatures float in the orbit of every inhabited world in their universe and all their powers and technology can do nothing to banish them. Its Heralds come and sow chaos. The Legionnaires can see two of them, their bodies glowing like living photo-negatives, destroying a city. One is dressed like a clown, cackling maniacally, the other is a long-haired woman armed with a sword, cutting down everyone she sees. The Faceless' fellow flesh-people scream and cry telepathically and try to destroy the Heralds with their reality-warping powers, but they come back again and again somehow.

In orbit around The Faceless' world is where Chronoblivion breaches like a whale, breaking through reality. The sky rips open and they see the Bleed, the nothing-space between dimensions, lacking in light or color -- not dark, not bright, not anything. They can't see Chronoblivion Itself because the Faceless' mind could not comprehend him, but light radiates out from the breech, and...

It deletes the world.

The rays are like the white-nothing blast of an atomic bomb, in colors that don't even exist outside of nuclear fire and the strange isotopes within it that only briefly flash in and out of existence. The rays cut through everything, but destroy it piecemeal instead of all at once. The Faceless' people scream their telepathic screams as they're made into nothing.

The nightmare-vision fades and while their heads are still ringing, Faceless speaks to them.

"Chronoblivion chose me to be one of Its Heralds but the reality-altering nature of my peoples' powers were...incompatible. It twisted me. This is what I am now, always hungry like It is. I managed to slip away, into the Bleed, the nothing-space between worlds, and whenever I can latch onto something drifting into a material universe, I add to my biomass. Whether it's by soul or flesh, you'll be mine. Trust me, it's much better than being destroyed by It -- at least you'll still be a part of something bigger than yourselves. Isn't that what you heroes are all about?"

And then the monsters attack. Time to get with the stabbin'.

Roland Deschain - phalanxed

[ka_sera_sera]

Been a long time since he worked with a team. In a team, he remembers, each member serves its own small purpose. His purpose is to protect the two hearts he feels beating behind him. One is about twelve feet up and a couple feet to his right, the other three feet off the ground, directly behind his legs. With every beat of them the vines curled around the remains of his face, the leaves sitting in the cavity of his chest, seem to beat, too, color shining a little more wetly on the petals of the rose growing there. The color overflows every now and then and splats down onto the toes of his boots.

Pale blue eyes peer around from about the vicinity of what was once his chin, picking out a target. The hand he raises to that target looks, from a distance, like it's wearing fingerless gloves - blood pumps sluggishly out from the place the flesh sits sagging around his knuckles. With that hand, he pulls. The ability the Legion gave to him seems the most appropriate way to save them, pull their power out from them and their energy out from them and from his other hand pour that stolen energy into the Faceless.

Perhaps Roland can steal a little, weaken whatever Legionnaire stands before him, before they find a way to break the concentration it takes for him to do this. Or perhaps he won't be quick enough. Or perhaps they'll want to talk, instead. If they seem distractable, hesitant in any way, the mouth set low in Roland's throat will open and he will speak to them, in whatever words come to him first.

"Stop this foolishness. You know as well as I do we both took an oath."

Re: Roland Deschain - phalanxed

[wherenoonegoes]

"To the Legion of Superheroes, I make this solemn pledge," Hiccup recites, partly to at least remind Roland of what that oath had actually been. Mostly to distract him as Toothless gets into position.

"To use my powers for good. To fight for justice and protect the innocent. To aid my fellow Legionnaires in times of peril and to keep their secrets safe. I don't know what you think, but I'm fairly certain I'm following it to the letter right...NOW!" The last word is a shouted command, and Roland suddenly has a fairly large dragon charging at him.

[ka_sera_sera]

He is not and never has been the type to talk and fight so what answer he has - and he does have one - will have to wait for the soonest calm moment. For now, he has no time for anything but the essentials and the split second he has in which to react to them. In that split second he decides his lefthand gun as the right choice here and stops trying to draw energy from the young man in front of him to draw it, shooting strong cord out toward Toothless's face in an attempt to keep the thing from being able to open its mouth. He won't dodge, won't abandon the heart behind him that way, but he will back along the wall a little ways, try to draw the dragon toward him. If he can make sure it's focused purely on him, rather than on the hearts, maybe he'll be able to lead it away long enough to get rid of it.

[wherenoonegoes]

The rope connects, and wraps around Toothless's mouth, but isn't much of a deterrent. The dragon hadn't planned on biting Roland or setting him aflame in the first place. Just ramming into him as fast as possible.

Meanwhile, Hiccup lights Inferno. Aiming upward, he throws the flaming sword into the air, his metallokinesis guiding it upward and onward with tremendous force, and stabs it right into the Faceless's beating heart.

Kubo and Sariatu - defending

[bachido]

"I'm sorry for you," Kubo said, when he'd understood the Faceless' story.

But he still strummed a powerful chord on his shamisen, his paper floating around him at the ready. He'd timidly journeyed through the Faceless' land of horror, seen what the Chronoblivion had made of it, and the story would never leave his mind. No matter how much he'd wish that it would.

"But you are doing to my friends what the Chronoblivion did to you, and I can't let them die like this."

And more than that - he'd fought and snuck and labored his way through the Faceless's mass, and somewhere in that horrible pit of suffering, he'd found his mother again.

Now she was ready, with the Sword Unbreakable to kill the creature that had separated them, and Kubo was ready with everything he had to protect her while she did.

"Stop this now, and let them go. They don't belong here any more than I do."

With his mother alive, nothing could convince him he belonged anywhere but at her side.

He didn't want to regret this story, and he would regret if it ended with the Faceless' death, instead of its healing. But if the choice was between it and his friends - and especially, between it and his mother - Kubo knew which ending he would rather live with.

Still - he held out a spark of hope that the Faceless could choose right.

He held his bachi, ready to defend his mother at her work, just as hard.

[meanmonkey]

Monkey growls softly, making sure Kubo is prepared before diving for the nearest heart, sword at the ready. He is too compassionate, too ready to allow mercy and redemption. It's a weakness that could so easily be exploited.

She wouldn't change him for the world.

"Shout if you're in trouble!" she calls as she takes off, finding a heart and driving the sword deep into it. She cuts down, ignoring the spray of blood across her face as the organ ruptures. The first one was easy.

As she sees the next closest, at least 25 feet off the ground, she also sees faceless monsters start to peel out of the shadows to come for her. The next one won't be so easy.

"Kubo!" she calls, her voice firm and steady. "Distraction!"

Locus (and zombie!Felix) - phalanxed

[agnominal]

Locus is there, but barely seems present at all. He's retreated and let something else take command, a ragged figure in broken scout armor perched atop his back, and using the chains winding about his limbs and throat to puppet him forward to attack.

Massive hands swipe to knock down anyone who stands in their way as he barrels forward, something dark oozing from the jagged, teeth-filled gash of his mouth. There's none of his usual fighter's grace, just brutal movement and the intent to tear apart anything he can lay hands on.

Just make it end. Bring it all to an end.

When these desperate tactics seem to fail him he retreats into shadow, vanishing. Waiting for one of the other monsters to lure the Legionnaire's in, to capture their attention, to allow him to bear in from behind. Best to keep an ear out during any of the fights for the tick-tick-tick of that gear embedded in his back, or the raking of chains as the corpse on his back reins him into action all over again.

[i_got_this]

South is stalking one of those monsters; resisting the call out of pure spite and taking it upon herself to shoot them in their fucking faces. When she can, that is; she's swearing under her breath as she loses sight of hte monster she was trailing, stun gun raised and ready.

"Come on, you filthy, dumb sonnovabitch. Give me something to shoot at."

[agnominal]

You heard the lady. Don't be rude.

The corpse on Locus's back snickers before yanking at the chains, and with a snarl Locus surges out of the shadows, suddenly visible and looming, one hand swinging for South's face.

She'd have a hard time hitting him in the face, however. Only his mouth remains exposed, hidden under large, plate-like growths over his face like secondary armor.

[i_got_this]

South swears as some thing comes lumbering out of nowhere, stumbling back and throwing an arm up to block his punch, and then instinctively following it up with a pistol-whip to his armored face.

"What the fuck --" Noticing now the additional thing on its back, the chains and reins and, why does that armor look familiar?

Sombra — not a spooky

[vata]

She isn't sorry.

This? This is what she saved her ammunition for. Her anger for. The last few depleted pools of energy left in burned-out circuitry and her muscles alike: no pretense, no innocuous habits played up to make her seem like less of a threat. Sombra hardly glows as she flits around the battlefield, translocator teleporting her to safety each time her digital camouflage fails. It works to her advantage, that lack of brightness— even the fluorescent streaks of white in her hair are so matted with blood and dull from lacking energy— that she can make for the shadows any time something (or someone) wanders too close.

Her primary target? The hearts. Only the hearts.

Her still-living teammates can fend for themselves, as far as she's concerned. A neglible loss, an appropriate distraction, she's already spent every bought resource in her arsenal except for one— Cortana— who's housed inside her own cybernetics. If someone else falls in the process of taking this thing down, it's not her problem anymore.

She came here to finish this.

And with a burst of fired rounds from her SMG, puncturing another heart with a wet, agonizing burst of blood, she likes to think she is. Even as the distressed shouting of her peers echoes not-so-distantly in the background.

hello i am here to ruin lives

[zippity]

Lena's lost count of how long she's been running. She wasn't superhuman -- she was just a girl with an unfortunate medical condition that lent itself very well to field work when that field work involved beating down aggressive robotics that had grown too smart for their chassis. But she has been flitting about for too long, long enough that she'd needed to take a breather in between cutting the Faceless apart, and dodging the various guardians it seemed to be letting loose.

She'd been through enough of this wheelhouse to know what was going on around her was the potential death of several of their crewmates, and she wasn't about to abide by it as long as they had a chance of recovering them. The faster the hearts got taken out, the sooner they would be free of this mess.

She spots Sombra again, and feels some sense of relief flood her -- finally, someone she recognized that wasn't a twisted amalgamation of their former selves. Her relief is short lived, and she doesn't have the recharge power to swoop in to rescue her from the sudden beast that seems to appear behind her without warning.

"Azúcar!" she cries (butchering her name in the process), pointing with her pistol -- there was no way she could take a shot without hitting her. "Behind you!"

not if i ruin them first

[mylawn]

In more lucid years, Jack Morrison liked to think he was acutely aware of what it truly meant to be an enhanced human. How he needed to conduct himself because of it, both in battle and out. How much damage he could cause if he didn't maintain full control of himself at all times. How truly lethal he could really be if he put his mind to it.

He'd stopped caring a little bit after becoming Soldier: 76, but part of him always knew how important it was to hold back. Right now, he doesn't care at all.

He's not exactly the stealthiest individual, but Tracer and Azúcar are currently occupied with another creature, giving him the opportunity to get the drop on them. From a distance, 76 might not look all that different—but closer inspection reveals the way his mask and visor has fused to his face, metal ribs that have torn through his jacket, dark blood staining the places where steel pushes out of him, a techno-organic amalgamation whose only current interest is to attack on sight. Having lost none of his speed, he's on Azúcar in an instant, foregoing any kind of actual weaponry in favor of his own brute strength to take her down.

you're both the worst

[vata]

This isn't how she wanted to meet him again.

Then again— breathless from impact, dazed to the point that her vision's flooded with flickering digital feeds and that harrowing, vivid red of his visor— this isn't exactly how she'd want to meet anyone. Much less a genetically enhanced super soldier, warped into a senseless version of himself.

But she didn't come this far to fail now.

Strong as he is, she's quick once her senses flood back in on instinct. Twists in his grip with a feral determination, clawing aimlessly at exposed skin, bone, sinew— anything that might buy her enough time or room to find her translocator and—

Lena. She can't. Shit.

Instead she digs in with enough force when she finds purchase in those vulnerable points to make him bleed. Though all things considered, that might not be a deterrent, mindless as he is.

Pidge - On Offense

[isthisapidge]

So the Chronoblivion is another Galra. Another Zarkon. Another megalomaniac trying to claim a universe that didn't belong to it just because it could, and because it could, who cared about how many lives it ruined in the process. Whatever sympathy she had for the unfortunate absorbed into the mass of flesh had to wait, not with her teammates lives on the line.

Pidge was already ignoring it before it finished it's thought, aiming her attention and bayard at the hearts. But a bayard is not an efficient weapon for destroying targets one at a time. It's slow firing. It sticks. It takes time to retract.

And that leaves her vulnerable.

[short_changed]

Connie's never been a heavy hitter for her team; she didn't have the physicality or the armour enhancements for it, but she could be a wonderful distraction. The bright green light of the weapon and the ensuing gout of blood from the heart it pierced catches Connie's attention- following the source back to the figure who had fired it...and to the fleshy-techno abomination that was closing in behind them.

Gritting her teeth Connie breaks into a run drawing her knife as she blinks through the air to reappear behind Pidge to block the monstrosity's path with two other armoured projections of herself at her side.

"I got your back, move!"

[isthisapidge]

Pidge knew things were advancing on her, she'd been keeping an eye over her shoulder since she realized that friends had a good chance of not really being friends down here.

But she didn't anticipate how vulnerable this would leave her. She can't even drag the bones back and whip them behind her to fight that way. But then Connie appears behind her like an avenging armored valkyrie and Pidge manages to scramble away and vanish.

Invisibility gives her a few precious moments to get around to the back of the monster. Turnabout is fair play, and she's going to make sure this thing is down. Whatever Connie does, she's going to drive the electric end of her bayard right into this thing's spine.

LENNY'S HEAD

[whyarewehere]

[OOC: Plum did get the RNG for this, but she suggested Grif starting with Lenny on plurk so that's what we're doing!]

Grif is on his last legs. He supposes that's lucky, because it looks like some of the people on this ship have come out of the experience with entirely too many of those. He's limping by the time he reaches the Faceless's apparent throne room. He's been running almost the entire time they've been aboard, he's exhausted and the only thing propelling him now is adrenaline.

He doesn't want to deal with seeing reality bent and broken by transdimensional horrors right now. He doesn't want to deal with anything at all. Fuck this.

Grif comes out of the Faceless's memory with ears ringing and head pounding, and his eyes settle on two points of light in the murky chamber.

To his right, lying suspended on a pair of bony prongs sticking out of the wall, is Lenny's head.

"...Please tell me you're going to pick me up?"

Shit, he has a job to do, doesn't he? Fuck jobs. But Grif still grabs Lenny with a sweaty, blood-grimed hand.

Oaths really are bullshit.

"C'mon dudes," he says. There are fifty-five of them in there and they are all "dude" to him. He tucks it under his arm like a football.

As soon as he does, something moves.

The prongs that were holding Lenny jut forward as a phalanx creature peels itself out of the wall, leaving what looks like a bloody internal mess in its wake as Grif staggers back. Its sightless head remains trained on Lenny, and it opens its maw to screech.

Fuck.

Grif takes off in a circuit around the room, nearly bouncing off Legionnaires phalanxed and non as the beaked creature tries to close with him. Grif's fast, but he's tired. His nerves are basically shot. And as a bonus, Lenny's apparent guardian is after him on seven legs because honestly, why wouldn't it be?

He wants to say something biting to Lenny, something like "your buddy needs to fuck off!" but he's already panting and can't afford to.

Then he trips.

Lenny sails through the air and the beaked creature comes to a hault over Grif, watching it with an almost curious tilt of its eyeless head.

Someone has to grab that. Someone. Anyone. Grif sees a figure in brown armor.

"MONTANA! CATCH!"

The creature's four front claws are on either side of Grif's head. If this gets its attention back and it kills him, they can say he died saving fifty-five people. At least there are worse eulogies.

[short_changed]

It's been hard to catch her breath in the middle of the fight. So many people could use decoys and while she could provide a fairly good one, constantly producing doubles and focusing enough to keep them active was tiring her out. Stepping back from the latest mess of a heart-hole in the wall her head snaps up at the name. It's not hers, really, and the Montana she's familiar with was no where in this world- but she can't imagine who else it might be aimed towards, especially when the voice sounds so familiar.

She spins to stare at the figure on the ground and the monster above- and following their line of sight her eyes widen at the arcing descent of Lenny's head through the air. Shoving her knife back into it's sheath Connie jumps, disappearing from view at the height of it- and reappearing in the air just under the falling head's path.

Opening her arms she clutches the head to her chest, "I GOT IT!"

With a glance back down to the floor she blinks through the air and reappears just above the ground in a solid landing. Looking up at the monster she grins under her helmet.

"Come and get me, bright eyes."

And suddenly a dozen sets of brown armour break away from where she stood, each holding an identical Lenny head.

[whyarewehere]

Grif squeezes his eyes shut in preparation to be gored, but it doesn't happen. The shambling monstrosity lunges after Connie instead. A tail woven from possibly-human spines whipsaws in the fetid air behind it, lashing Grif and knocking the breath out of him for a moment. He really didn't need the help there. Thanks for that, bullshit space monster.

The creature hesitates for a moment, apparently it does have some visual sense it's relying on, before it starts methodically chasing Connie's images one by one. It's relentless in its efficiency as it hunts out the real Connie and Lenny, stalking nearer and nearer with every slash of its beak.

It takes it way too little time for comfort.

Grif, in the meantime, cannot believe he's still in one piece. He's up again. Moving again. Trying to figure out what the monster already has: which one's real?

Victor & Miku - Screaming and Colliding With Monsters

[the_real_sir_prize]

After the day he's had, Victor would really have preferred not to have another vision that leave him trying to vomit up the contents of an empty stomach while kneeling in a puddle of blood. He's exhausted and terrified and covered in substances better not even thought about much less discussed.

But he doesn't want to die here and he's not alone anymore. Specifically, he's not alone with someone with whom he could do more than scream out warnings. He staggers to his feet and then kneels down so that a certain someone can climb onto his back.

"Let's keep the monsters off of everyone else!" he says, shooting a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure nothing's coming from behind.

[ghost_bait]

Miku, likewise, doesn't like, enjoy or want to think any further about what today has been (aside from a nightmare she would like to immediately wake up from). She's missing a boot, her uniform is filthy and she's glad that she's managed not to lose Victor this entire time.

She climbs up onto Victor's back, quietly thankful she doesn't weigh much. Luckily, her uniform is more or less still decent and the worst of the gore has been deflected by her shield. Her head aches like the worst thing, and it makes Victor's face weeble-wobble in her vision. She takes a deep breath of the foul, fetid air and the shield closes around them. "Ready... Ready when you are." She closes her eyes and prays she won't fly off his back somehow.

[strangebargains]

There's a skittering noise and an inhuman, bird-like screech as Stephen drops out of a teleportation circle right in front of them.

It was almost laughable to see how little humanity remained of this creature. Tattered rags, a ripped red cape, lain over a ragged cloak. His skull-like bird-head peered at the 'victims' in front of him, blood dripping off him in steady drips.

He was dizzy, the blood loss was immense and it was a miracle he hadn't passed out already. The spider-like body under the cloak and vaguely human torso skittered on many legs forward, as he tried to slash at them with his scythe-like bone-arms.

spooky ghost appearing as himself but spookier

[fantasmaniac]

Even when his mind is easily controlled, summoned, he knows that deep inside the sticky pit of miasma and smoke that he still resists being ordered around. Things are done his way, even if the outcome of it ultimately remains the same. Even as he oozes out from the pores of the closest wall, he's slow and seems to be purposely taking his time.

His favorite tactic is element of surprise. Flank the target, keep quiet as possible, then rush them when they least expect it. He stalks his prey, and tirelessly pursues them until their energy gives out and succumb to his attack. At least, that's the idea.