2020-09-13 - The Descent of Kukulcán

August is slow to realize this is a Dream; the happens, sometimes, if he's in the middle of work that's got him good calm and focused. In this case, he's been working in the cabin garden, beginning the prep for fall while the pigs romp about and Latte plays in her little enclosure. The geese and ducks eye her warily. She's the first 'predator' pet to take up residence at this cabin, and they're not sure what to make of her. (Mei Mei has refrained from hissing. For now.)

He slowly stands, staring into the fire. His trowel is gone, the garden is gone, Firefly Forest is gone. There's this burning blaze, waves rolling up on the beach, and that...thing, overhead. A dragon? A basilisk? He's not up on his mythical creatures. He flinches at the scream, half-ducking.

The oak is a welcome change. He sets a hand on its trunk to steady himself on the branch bearing him. "Hey, mama. How you doing," he murmurs, and slowly climbs to his feet. He looks around to see if he's alone, or not.

Dahlia had been snoozing at home, probably with her three unkittens trying to use her as a bed themselves. A scream starts her awake and, of course, she's not actually at home. She's in...a tree?! She yelps a bit, scrambling to orient herself. Trying to see if she's alone or what. Did the kittens also get pulled in? It doesn't seem like it right now. She's completely oblivious to the thing that caused the screaming. She's getting really tired of these Dreams.

Ravn Abildgaard's initial reaction is to check whether he has wings. Last time something like this occurred he turned out to be a tuna merman in a sea of kelp. Why not a baby bird in a tree?

I should take this more seriously, he tells himself, only he cannot; Gray Harbor's very special brand of story telling is too bizarre, too real to be real. Realer than real. Super-real. Really-real. Reeling real.

The Dane glances about; somebody mentioned that Dreams tend to be a social affair, and sure enough, he had company in both previous ones. And sure enough, there are movements and stirrings around him. He sits up and says softly, "I am not eating any worms."

There are few things that draw a panic out of the usually very chill Grant Baxter and the feeling of dying and having his spirit dissolved again is a flashback that one should not have and evokes a primordial panic like little else he could ever even think of describing.

When people land the skater is already winded, out of breath, and shaking like a fucking leaf. Where was he? camping on the beach in a pop up yurt kinda getting blazed. His face is wet and his eyes are wide open. There's a sniffle so he doesn't break down into a total panic attack and wind up a teary snotty mess. Right. Okay. tree... dragon... people he knows... sure fine. NOT. DEAD. and not a ghost. It's all he needs.

"Shit if it gets us out of this tree I'll do it." He looks and noticed most the people he knows and waves. "Wait were you all in my yurt?"

Itzhak just wants to play Minecraft, okay? He just wants to hide at home and wait for the healing Finch put in his arm to knit his bones back together and for the most part pretend none of this is happening. But he is one of the people it happens most to, the lighthouse beacon of his Song irresistible to the Other Side, and--his body sears painlessly away (which is nice, for a second, means his arm doesn't hurt). There's the magnificent serpent in the sky, screaming, ringing, and Itzhak's cranky heart lifts to see it, joy rather than fear. But when he remembers he has a fleshy form again (that hurts) he's sprawled over a big bough like a leopard, cheek mashed to the branch, arm and legs dangling. He looks up. Mutters something in Yiddish and conks his forehead against the bark. "Okay sound off, who's here?"

August winces at the reminder of Itzhak's busted arm, negotiates the broad bough to help him up. That yelp has him jerking in surprise, and he half-turns towards Dahlia, tense until he recognizes her.

He frowns at Grant. "Your yurt?" But rather than wait for an answer, he flicks Ravn a sympathetic look. "I hope it's something that easy..." His voice fades as he spots a figure in the branches, only just before they speak.

His mouth flattens. Wonderful--they've conscripted. He's not feeling very cordial, though, so he just eyes that figure in the mask, wary and unmoving.

"I am." Dahlia says to the people asking for a roll call. "Uh, Dahlia." She clarifies, not entirely sure she knows everyone who's here. She calms some though that there are a handful of familiar faces even if she isn't close to them. "See you're privy to this place's weird, huh?" She offers to Ravn with a wry smile. Though it fades as she takes stock of her surroundings again. In a giant tree. "Any idea what we're up against?" Still not having really noticed the giant creature. And of course she isn't dressed for the weather - as usual. In a pair of flannel pants and a tank top.

She shuts up and stills immediately when the voice comes out of nowhere. Oh great. Here we go. She grips at one of the branches a little tighter and draws in a shallow breath. Just stay calm...hopefully.

Familiar voices. And one not so familiar. Ravn fixes his steel grey stare on a fellow with skin the colour of obsidian and a beaked mask and murmurs, "I know most of you folks, I think, but that guy doesn't look like you'd see him walking down Main Street." Helpfully, he points. Does the voice belong to the man in the red bird mask? Probably. That's the thing about masks -- they make it a little hard to see what's going on with the blokes who's wearing them.

Something nags at his mind, like a persistent little cartoon squirrel thinking he's sitting on its one favourite acorn. The Dane tries to focus his thoughts. "Yeah, uh -- hi. You're the bartender, right? Look, I don't want to startle anyone but... I think we're a little screwed."

Grant answers, "Itzil, I'm here." Only one person here really calls him that. Looking back to Ravn he signs his concern which needs no fluency to know the guy is asking if he's alright. Deep breaths, Baxter. Looking up to Joey his concerned expression warms into a broad grin. "Yeaaaah Mr. Roen. My yurt, not 'i'm hurt' it's like a big tent kinda...Oh" Uhhh conscripted? Well, hey that happens. He offers to the creature in the mas, "You ordered a fist full of Maestros, hold the anchovies? We are here. Hi. Please, um, it'd be really cool if we weren't eaten or shoved out of a tree." His hand find the bits of branch under him and he moves closer to the group and less close to the edge. "What, um... what seems to be the trouble, man?" Looking to Dahlia there's a small smile and a wiggle of fingers hullo. Hey they're not dead already. The worst part is over. Maybe.

There wasn't a Joe, and now there is. He's perched in the tree, happily crouched on a bough like nothing so much as an aging Peter Pan (though isn't that an oxymoron), hand resting on a larger, upright branch. Glasses on, and an expression of intent interest on his long face. If he's frightened, it doesn't show. Not yet, anyhow.

Itzhak is startled, jerking in place, so naturally the thing he does is snap back to the voice, "Listen pal," and then comes up dry for what pal should listen to. That's enough, right? That's enough. He sits up, wriggling himself upright with the help of just one arm. The other's still in a vivid pink cast, the neat futuristic kind that's stiff plastic mesh. He checks for who's here--Roen, Bax, that hot girl whose name he can't quite remember, it's like, Daisy or something right?, Ravn. "Got ya, Crotchbiteleh," he calls back to Grant. Oh, and Joe, there's Joe. "Ugh fuck." Itzhak complains as he climbs to his feet, stands there neatly balanced hanging onto a branch.

August listens to the poem, head tilted. He's trying to place it, but can't. The mention of Babylonian gods has him on edge, especially sacrifices to them. It's on the tip of his tongue to say something not-very-useful, something which could land everyone in deep water.

One of his hands forms a fist, and he doesn't say whatever it was. Instead, he says, "Tlaltecuhtli," repeating the name carefully, munging it as little as he can manage. He spells it out for Grant (or at least spells how it sounds). Well, he doesn't want to kill anyone at the behest of...whomever this is, but they also probably have no choice. So. "Who is she," he asks.

"Pretty sure we were screwed the second we woke up in a fuckin' tree." Dahlia pointed out casually. "Yeah. I'm the bartender." She decides to just let the others handle this for now. Maybe they can just talk their way out of...whatever this is. She looks in the direction of the shadowy voice again as it/he starts to speak. She frowns lightly. Nope. Not even a little bit. She's content to try and shrink back a little further as if that might make her less noticable or something while the others get a talking to. She doesn't kill people. She doesn't even know how to kill someone. Let alone a...god?ess?

Why'd she always end up in the weird ones?

"As if one ancient mythology that is not my field wasn't enough," Ravn grouses under his breath while his brain scrambles for memories of lectures of ten years previous, dusty professors talking about feathered snakes and death cults and jungle pyramids that were not built by aliens -- no, Christine, that is a bloody hoax and if you keep bringing it up you can leave this classroom right now. Some men have mind palaces. Ravn Abildgaard has chaotic chains of random memories and associations that, when followed, somehow still very often end at the memory he needs.

This is not one of those times. He throws 'Tlaltecuhtli' into the echoing chasm of his mind. The darkness there returns 'bless you'. Not very helpful. Although it does tack on something that might potentially be. "Sacrifice. Sacrifice keeps the wheel of the year revolving," he murmurs very softly, to himself. Looking up at the figure again he echoes August's question: "Who is Tlaltecuhtli, and why does she need to die?"

Grant blinks and tilts his head answering, "He said nothing. The soldier was there to protect and do as they were asked?" His brown eyes squint curiously. When told their filthy little town did good he actually preens. Did he miss the point? No there was a whole compliment in there!! "Yoooou are welcome."

Grant's hearing sucks but at least he's got a valid reason for not hearing things too clearly. In earnest he asks, "Yeah, what'd this Patchouli lady do? And why we hating on hipsters? She like break up with you and take half your shit or something? I feel for ya. That's rough." It's in earnest, bless him. He's just trying to follow along here. The last thing he's intending to do is lie kill people because someone's got beef.

Itzhak makes his way over to August, carefully, one handed. "And who the fuck are you anyway?" He eyes the figure, up and down, narrow, aggressive.

Joe has decided to follow that same instinct. He heads for August and Itzhak - the strength of the wolf is the pack, after all. But his attention's all on that bird-like figure. "I have the same questions," he says, gravely. "Who is she? And why must she die?" The names.....they're redolent of Aztec myth, but that's not something he knows, other than a few half-recalled stories from Javier....and a playthrough of Grim Fandango in his misspent youth. The blue eyes don't waver from that masked face.

"Depends on the reward," August says under his breath. He narrows his eyes, following the man's gaze towards the sun. He considers the rope bridge. "Anything you can tell us to help us out? Warnings, advice, that kind of thing?" He almost smiles as he asks it, like he knows such answers will probably not be worth much, but figures it can't hurt to try.

When the bird thing looks at her, Dahlia just narrows her eyes. Slowly pushing herself up to her feet. She may or may not have mumbled the question mockingly under her breath. Like a petulant child. Though she straightens some and eyes the bird man again. "Only. ONLY. if the reward is worth it. I don't know what you could possibly give me. Give any of us. That stacks up equally to killing a goddess for you." Crossing her arms over her chest.

Yep. The blood of sacrifice keeps the wheel spinning. I remember that much. Ravn scrambles to his feet and tries to find his balance among the branches. Yes, let's just go kill somebody. Sure. No big deal. Do it all the time. Ravn the Strangler, they call me.

He fights off the urge to throw up. "I'm not a killer."

Itzhak follows the bird-dude's glance to Grant. His mouth quirks. Then the next glance, like August, to the sun hanging in the sky motionless. Ravn's distress draws his attention too. "Hey. Nobody says you have to kill anyone," he tells him, trying for calming. "We can get through this. Okay?"

Grant folds his arms across his chest tilting his head. "Look, guy, I dunno what you heard about Maestros but we're not pocket hitmen." He pauses and looks at Dahlia and back, "Hitpersons." There's a signed sorry to her. Folding his arms loosely he shoulder nudges Ravn and nods in a quiet support. Good.

Looking back at the bird creature he says with a focus that is in rare shortage, "Talk to us about this world problem standing still. That we can look into. We've saved two worlds, 9 species, and revived a dying star. Just because there's a problem doesn't mean we're on-call assassins or that someone has to die. And if someone has to die?... that's pretty fucked up man. What is getting saved if we're executing people to stay afloat. We would like some information please."

But someone else here is. Most of it remotely, via the joys of technology. But some of it more up close and personal. Oh, it may have been self-defense, but the men in question ended up just as dead, didn't they? Joe suspects the answer will be 'the reward is getting to keep your life'....but he doesn't volunteer it. There's that faint mournfulness on the long face. Maybe that's why he's in this dream. That figure sure doesn't look like it's going to need him to land a plane, and what else is he good at?

August really doeasn't want to take advice from this dude, but he's kind of what they've got. His lip curls just a fraction at the promise of 'anything you want'. No construct of Theirs can give him what he wants. Not by a goddamned long shot.

He spends a second being glad Itzhak has Ravn's reaction in hand, because August...isn't sure he can handle that conversation. Not right now. There are things running around in his heart he doesn't want to examine.

"Sneak up on her. Right." He looks askance at Itzhak, makes for the bridge. "Only way out's through," he says over his shoulder.

Dahlia just shrugs a bit at Grant's apologize with a fleeting smile. Doesn't seem like she cares too much. Hitman. Hitperson. Tomato. Tomato. There are more important things going on. Like a bird person promising you whatever you want if you kill for him. Too good to be true usually was too good to be true. "Honey, you don't have anything that I want." Dahlia countered before Kukulcan turned back to Grant and Co.

"Pretty sure that you still haven't introduced yourself." She pointed out.

She's definitely going to be bringing up the rear on this. She doesn't want to be left alone with this thing. So she'll inevitably follow if they all end up heading towards the bridge.

Ravn closes his eyes a moment and then nods. "It's how it works. Right. Got to play the story. Kill a goddess. As you do." He nods at Itzhak and Grant both. Not about to curl up in a ball of existential angst. Not right now, anyhow.

He wants to go to the rear, he really does; he's not a fighting man. But he's also one of the men present who is not in a cast. Maybe that's why he tries to step up to at least stand with the more proficient looking blokes. "I guess we have... to do this. If I remember correctly, and Lord knows it's been a decade, the idea is that the world ends if the wheel stops spinning. Like 2012. Where it didn't."

Itzhak gets kind of a funny look on his face when Grant declares they're not assassins. He clears his throat. "Roen's right, guys, we gotta play through." And he'll take point, despite the cast. Because that's how he do. The tank goes in first.

That wooden bridge gets the hairy eyeball, too. It's a long fucking way down. He makes his way to it nonetheless, head tilted, listening to Ravn, who seems rather more sensible than birdbrain over there.

Grant frowns. Outvoted. Still he can come out of this ahead. "Holding you to that payment, man." They can't think of something they want but Grant sure as shit can. While he's not thrilled about this he looks to Itzil and asks curious, and with some hesitation, "Can... can we do this?" it's a different sort of question here. "This really count as self-defense?" There's certain other unspoken rules and the skate punk plods on, though not far from Dahlia and Ravn. "Itzil, don't fall apart on the bridge. You're giving me tsuris watching you plod around like that, man." Looking to Joseph he asks, "Can you help us make sure he doesn't get himself dead?" Could he run ahead? eeh yeah, but there's two people less than enthused about killing anything that he doesn't blame and frankly it sounds pretty bogue. But he's crossing the bridge because they've literally come to it.

"If we have to, and it can be done by one man, I'll do it," Joe's voice is low, but there's something there in his tone, despite it. A glance back as he follows the taller man. "He did. He told us who he is, he just didn't use his name." To Ravn, he adds, "....I think that's Mayan, the idea that the world'd end in 2012. These fellas are Aztec, I'm pretty sure. I admit, I don't know how different the theology is." A beat, and he's unable to keep from adding, ".....but I do know blood sacrifice is a big damn deal here." Then he's following Itz across the bridge with something less than his usual grace. He slips, nearly falls, but manages to catch himself....and he's got no excuse. He's not drunk or in any particular pain, just a fit of clumsiness.

Dahlia lingers, watching all the men get on the bridge first. She does, in fact, turn to tell him to shut up but - unfortunately...he's left. Or. Fortunately. She scowled and finally, reluctantly starts to cross the bridge, not wanting to get too far behind.

Itzhak too is somewhat less than his usual grace, but is he letting that stop him? "Yes Ma," he crabs back at Bax, but--the question makes him think as he makes his way across. "I don't think we're talkin' about a literal person here," he says, carefully stepping from plank to plank. "We're talkin' more like the roasted bone on the seder plate, or the scapegoat. 'course, what we're doing is pretty bad, on account of doing it on behalf of another god which, let's be honest, more or less counts as worship...but that counts as pikuach nefesh, I mean, I'd think so. If our option is do this or never go home, then we're permitted to do what we have to, in order to preserve our lives."

The hair on the back of his neck rises as birdface chants the nonsense soldier poem, because he can't help it, he thinks of Ruiz. And he goosebumps all over as he hears the Song, far below, of something massive sleeping in the earth. No. The earth herself sleeps.

August shudders to hear the poem, proceeds to just about slip and fall off the bridge. He grabs for the handrope, cursing under his breath. "It's probably not a person," he says in agreement with Itzhak, in part to cover how nervous he's feeling. There's something welling up inside him he doesn't want to think about, doesn't want to face. So, he's not going to, like an adult.

But Itzhak also gets a glare for taking point with a busted damned arm. Someone is getting healed as soon as this is over.

Ravn glances at Joe and looks a little sheepish. "Mayan, Aztec, Olmec -- I mean, don't quote me on this to anyone from south of Tucson, but I honestly can't remember which is which. Mesoamerican mythology is not my field. If I had half an hour with a computer... But yeah. It's cyclical. Maize goddess reborn every year, killed every harvest, that kind of pattern. Aztecs used to act that out with virgin maidens dressed up as corn, I remember that much."

Then he crosses the bridge, stepping across it unfalteringly, even stepping around a few people because goddamnit, he's not letting the wounded man take lead -- and then he remembers, it's Itzhak Rosencrantz. He'll probably get punched just as hard as any earth goddess if he tries to tell the New Yorker he's in no condition for a fight.

Fine. I'll go second. Or something. Bleed on that goddess like she's never been bled on before. Stare her to death. Ruin her confidence with bad grades.

Grant is really choosing now to have a crisis of the soul. Look, Itzhak is weasily twice his age (Itzhak is not 44. To the 22 year old he's like ancient or some shit) and therefore he gets to sit Rabbi in these questions of life. At the very least if God has a problem he can point to Itzhak and say He said it was cool! God knows he forgot to put resistance to peer pressure in the guy's head. Can't yell at a guy for working without tools he was never given.

There's concern, but permission given his attitude shifts to one of curiosity and forward they go. He does anarchy, not combats. Riot in the public square? he'll take point on that. This? yeah he's letting the military guys tell them what's up.

Itz isn't the only one with that dark-eyed face in his mind, the ink he's run his hands over so many times... It makes Joe look that much grimmer, solemn as a hanging judge. "Not a person as we reckon it," he agrees, but even his voice is bland, the accent elided into something flatter, more academic. Engineer Brain is at least trying to grapple with the subject at hand, and pretty much failing utterly. Ravn gets a look to stay back in the middle of the pack - Joe's pretty insistent about sticking right behind Itz.

August walks along, mindful of his steps in between keeping an eye on everyone else. If this weren't a Dream it'd be a nice walk; he has fond memories of walking in misty solitude in Hoh Rain Forest, on rope bridges over small ravines. It helps calm him some.

Which is maybe why when the burned body comes flying at them his reaction is to empower Itzhak rather than freak out. The octopus headed guy, that makes him freeze, and it's a good thing Dahlia's on that because he stares. Hank. God, what'd they do to you.

Dahlia gingerly walked along the bridge with the others. She got a little tripped up but managed not to fall. They were making a little progress at least...but then she heard the sounds of running from behind her. Why'd she take the rear again? She whirled around and instinctively threw her hands up. A stream of fire shooting from her hands towards the Octopus Head Guy. That's what it got for trying to come at her with a baseball bat! "What the fuck is this?!"

She doesn't keep up with much of the local news apparently. She's had her own things to worry about.

Ravn decides to not argue about positions; Joe did mention a military background and more importantly, Joe isn't in a cast. Joe probably knows a hell of a lot more about how to keep the right people alive and the wrong -- things -- dead than some dr.phil from a remote country where feathered snakes are something that exists in a few obscure legends about vipers -- and he stops himself from letting his mind run off at a tangent again because focus, damnit.

Focus becomes a lot easier once he realises he's staring at Henry Fitzgerald. A man whose main feat, as far as Ravn is aware, is to be dead. Very dead. As in, the kind of dead where they still haven't found the man's missing head.

Of course, that's what the squid is for.

"I guess he did say the sacrifices worked, even if they were sent to the wrong address," the folklorist murmurs and mentally tries to distract himself from just turning around and throwing up by imagining just how pissed the Babylonian Annunaki must be, to have some Aztec trickster god hack their supply line. Drawn like South Park, for good measure. Not throwing up. Not. Throwing. Up. Fire. Fire is good. It's coming from the right direction at least. Bartender knows a few tricks beyond mixing a G&T, it seems.

Itzhak didn't see this body, this blackened thing racing at him wielding a chunky blade. Speaking of burnt offerings, fucking gross. "Glrugh!" He turns a little green, but--the cleaver-like weapon wriggles out of the corpse's hand and flings itself to Itzhak, who catches it neatly as if he catches flying cleavers every day of his life. "Mine now, fucker!" Then he's going after the dead dude like a kosher butcher with a chicken to behead. Well, it's already beheaded. You get the idea.

Grant has deleted their pose: Grant throws an arm in front of Ravn when the dead dudes show up like a ma in an SUV. At least the effort looks cool with hi hand coming up like he's suddenly Ben Kenobi using the force to push the guy flying back...

And if the headless dead dude moved at all it would mean something. He Looks down at his hand confused and gives it a paper rock scissors test to see if his hand is working right. yeah, all his fingers are operational. Where the hell did the oomph go? Huh. "This is like the trippiest fuckin haunted house ever. Hey good news, they are attacking us which means anything goes right? That's legit? Okay just don't hug that octopus thing and... walk in the park. we got this." And if you say it like that it becomes truth right? pleaseberight.

He doesn't know either of these dead guys. He thought he was at least somewhat prepared for some kind of insanity.

Turns out....no. Because Joe freezes like a rabbit pinned by a semi's headlights. No panic, no screaming....except that that is panic, for him. His brain just locking up and refusing to help in the least. He doesn't make a sound, doesn't do anything except clutch convulsively at the rope of the bridge.

August stares in shock as Hank gets a huge hole blown in him and apologizes anyways, then proceeds to advance on Dahlia with a bat. It's a bit much to take in. Fortunately this means he's not facing the right way to watch Itzhak almost lose his hand to a meat cleaver, and is able to react when goat-headed guy (what was his name? August can't remember...) comes at Joe with that wire. He's got no hope of physically intervening, seeks to break the wire instead, feeling along the bonds holding it together. He can't quite snap it.

Dahlia looks very disappointed when that Octo Head is still coming at her. So she does the next best thing! Try to not get clubbed with a baseball bat. And also maybe see if she can disarm him via levitation! Not that...she's really properly tried that before...But here's hoping! ...Unfortunately, it doesn't quite go her way this time.

Ravn does his very best to plant a booted foot right where any sensible goat head jerk might keep his family jewels.

There's a proverb for that. It goes, I'm a lover, not a fighter.

Going by that logic, Ravn Abildgaard is the smoothest lover on the North American continent because he very obviously couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a baseball bat if he was literally leaning against it. The barn, not the bat. So embarrassing.

It was close enough to inspire trickles of ice down Itzhak's back, but never let 'em see you sweat--he catches that fucking thing like a pro and like he did not at all risk several bowing fingers. In his off hand, no less. Yeah who's bad? He hisses Yiddish--may a thunderstorm be your golfing buddy--and there's an awful feeling of static tension rising swift and unbearable until POW lightning cracks into the corpse, searing fractal threads of plasma.

Grant doesn't often get angry. The truth is like he's said he has two heroes who are kinda sacrosanct to him. His father who is a legit badass, and the Professional Spaceman. Grant is, as he says, jut an amateur self-employed Spaceman which is not nearly so kick ass. once day though. Seeing the guy get beheaded like he once was? It's a different sort of Grant Baxter that turns and lunges to grab the rope trying to force it to unbind, His fingers a little raw trying to let Joe catch air there. "Let...go... a our...spaceman... assface!" It's not working. And suddenly in an instant the fear is real and being in a live action heavy metal music video is no longer 'fun'.

The feeling of that wire cutting into his throat, cutting off his air....that's enough to jar Joe right out of his panic. A frantic convulsion of Glimmer, even as he's reaching up, knowing he'll cut his fingers on it....and it breaks. All he can do is bow forward, whooping for air, that awful, suffused red in his face already starting to fade. God, what a death that'd've been.....and what bruises it's going to leave.

It takes a village, but Joe gets free of that stupid fucking wire. It's a person with a goat's head, except this is a Dream, and August isn't going to wake up to hear Joe was found dead, his throat cut. He's just not. He grits his teeth, read to tear this goat-headed bastard in half by sheer force of will alone--

...yet something does it for him. He shudders to hear that voice, see that shape rising before them. He stares, wondering, 'how the fuck do we kill this, exactly'.

"The sun needs to set. The seasons have to keep turning." He stops there. Maybe it doesn't have to die for that to happen? But maybe it also knows the score. He can hope, and let someone like Ravn do the talking there. Which is who he looks at, eyebrows up.

How many people have my freaking serial killer double actually killed? Ravn finds himself really, really hoping that these, all of these, were not the work of that one man, the one who apparently looks a lot like himself.

He glances to Joe -- the man is upright and breathing. Good.

Then he realises that August is looking at him. Whelp.

The Dane clears his throat. "So sorry about this. There's this... other bloke who says you have to die, to keep the year turning. It's -- really not personal? I'm pretty sure we're open for alternative suggestions, as long as the wheel doesn't grind to a halt and takes the world with it, something like that."

What the hell do you say to a goddess that you intend to kill?

Itzhak's blood and Song are up; he snarls wordlessly at all the beast-headed corpses clambering towards him. They don't like their afterlives? Come over here and he'll lay them to eternal rest just like bonfire guy, now ash on the wind. The cleaver is in his hand, ready to do work.

But they all dissolve into ash. And that face looms over him...and now it's Itzhak freezing in place. His eyes, gray-green as the misty trees, go wide. The cleaver drops from his hand and tumbles away, swallowed by the mist. Slowly he lifts his one working hand to clench in his hair, hard, knuckles whitening.

Grant has nothing to fight, he wants to but the rope his fingers are trying to grab dissolve with the goat and the dead dude and... wow. First things' first and he sizes Cavanaugh up with a look of concern, but pats him on both shoulders with a silent nod and signing 'Fine. You, fine. Good.' Phew. And then there's the HBIC right there. He watches her as Ravn tells her in few words: please die so we on't have to kill you, thanks. Seriously all the artist can do is blink at this signing, "And this is how it ends. Cool."

There's blood on Joe's throat. Oh, it's not the kind of volume that'll have him bleeding out and dead in moments. Mr. Billy Goat Gruff didn't make it through to the big veins. But it's there, seeping out from under the hand he has up on it. Still upright, though. "Quetzalcoatl sent us," His voice is a horrible, clotted thing. "But that's ridiculous. We're mortals, you're a goddess, we've got no means to kill you, even if we wanted to. We want to live to go home, though."

The smile doesn't fill August with hope, but the goddess' words do, especially her attempt to reassure Itzhak. He tenses a hair as she offers to...what, heal Joe? Fix him?

"Why were they trying to stop us?" he asks. He's relatively sure he knows how this is going to go, now, and wouldn't mind putting it off a little longer.

Cyclical. Nature religions are cyclical. Everything dies in winter and is revived in spring. The Aztecs -- Joe said Aztecs, right? -- they did this. Something. Corn maidens. Taught to dance. Cut down ritually. Volunteers. Ravn desperately tries to gather his thoughts because what his subconscious mind is really saying right now is something along the lines of Are you aware how small and squishy you are?

"I think... it's part of the ritual. It's really not my field but... the Aztecs at least were pretty big on conquest. The Mayans too. There might be some kind of warrior prove thyself thing going here." Ravn ventures a guess but from his expression it's very clear that he is just guessing.

Itzhak unfreezes, slowly. The goddess's smile, and her promise to him that even he will end...reassures him? Yeah, it seems it does. His fingers unwind from his hair, and he lifts his hand as if to caress her mighty face, like a lover. "Yeah," he whispers, voice a rasp, his expression growing enthralled. "Yeah. S'true, ain't it." He swallows. "We got to kill you, but--but we're sorry."

But how are they going to accomplish it? Itzhak looks around at everyone else, at a loss.

Grant doesn't take his eyes off the scary cool lady and says to August, "Beeeecause old people get bored" He is totally lost here but he was never a history guy in school. He was a draw things in the margins until something cool showed up sort. He reasons, "Oh, like Cabin in the Woods. yeah, alright." There is a slow nod as he's slowly comprehending the program and asks her, "You got a particular way you'd like to do this? I mean...it's really your big day not ours."

He thinks she means healing. But even if she doesn't....he can't stop her. The earlier panic has faded and now there's a kind of weary calm. "Please," he says, in that thick voice.

.....and if what she means is something else entirely, well, maybe that'll be enough for the rest of them to go free. Or for it to work. There's a novel he read as a young man - a war in Faerie needs mortal blood for the damage and the death to stick, for it to last, for it to count.

Joe holds out his hand to her, the one already dark with his own blood.

August tries to suppress a shudder. He doesn't want to be the kind of person who can think about the best way to kill someone, even a Dream being. Before he needs to, though, Grant just asks, which earns him August's undying gratitude. Yes, if she can just, tell them, that's fine. He doesn't want to come up with it in his own head. Doing it will be bad enough.

...so much for that. Well, he can think of ways to do this, as much as he doesn't want to. Staggering back, eyes wide (she might be a masked earth goddess in a Dream but she's still a goddess and Good Lord thank the Heavens he's a married man and not inclined to stupid ideas because himself of four years ago would be having several right now), he says, "If she were--a person, her neck's the safest bet. But, this is," he gropes for the right word, "a ritual. Mystical, I guess. It's about meaning, not efficiency." He shakes his head. "I figure it'd be more like, we need to," he looks over the figure, "destroy her heart, somehow. Break it. Or," he won't, can't say 'dismember', so, "break her, maybe, like we would a statue."

Ravn seems to have found a bit of his usual composure somewhere; possibly in having had time to yell into the pit in his mind into which he regularly dumps information -- long enough that the pit was able to offer something useful back. Something about frescoes depicting Eagle Warriors and colourful headdresses made from parrot feathers, warriors in elegant jaguar capes and exquisite golden jewellery -- and there it is. Red, blue, green, brown. Brown.

"All right -- I'm guessing here. Mesoamerica is not my field but there are constants in most nature based religions. Rules. She's an earth goddess -- masked fellow said as much. One who was killed canonically by a couple -- I don't remember, culture heroes or gods, either or the other. She's an elemental deity of a religion based on the cycle of death and rebirth. Her sacrifice has to be -- we can't just stab her with the nearest hand axe. She's earth -- what's the opposite of earth? That's what it has to be. Maybe." The folklorist hesitates, in the fashion of someone who is very keenly aware that they're addressing a culture they don't know nearly enough about. Oh, and that the goddess in question is right there. And, uh, very female.

"Grass? It works on Pokemon. We got plenty of trees here." Itzhak gets completely derailed by the goddess rising to her feet. He shuts up again, but this time it's in pure awe and let's be honest, not a little lust. All that adrenaline from fighting has got to go somewhere. "Oh you're beautiful," he breathes. What is the opposite of earth? Does he care?

Grant murmurs watching her. She is....tall. Also nude, but like IMPRESSIVELY tall holy crap! "Water. Sea and land are opposites if you live on the coast. Sky and earth if you lie in the mountains." To him this makes sense. He offers, "Rain?" It's sort of both? Water weathers rock though. I learned that when we studied Yellowstone soooo maybe?" He does, occasionally pay attention. He is also kinda stoned as balls right now so he might also tell you that a breakfast parfait is the opposite of a fig newton and also viable. "Water erodes stone and earth. Also a symbol of like renewal and stuff. My guess." And that said he goes to park his ass next to Dahlia while everyone gets kibbitzing over the answer.

Well, that's an awe-inspiring sight. Joe's eyes go wide.....and then he immediately has the look of a man trying to concentrate intently on something boring, like his tax returns. "Sky," he says, simply....and only barely manages to not have that monosyllable come out in an adolescent squeak. "I mean....earth and sky, right? Is there a sky god? Can we just, like, call for Tezcatlipoca or...." Trying not to stare at her, and failing.

"That's... who killed her... I think. Tezcatlipoca and... The other guy, Quetzalovercoatl." Ravn must be pretty distracted by the fertility goddess's ample assets; he's mixing up Aztec culture heroes with Terry Pratchett.

He looks away. Shakes his head. Thinks. "Mask Guy. He looked at three of us, remember? That's a constant anywhere on this bloody planet -- the rule of three. Three elements. Three of us." Steel grey eyes fix on August, the man everyone keeps saying knows everything anyone knows about this whole Art, shine, song affair. "Three -- abilities, I don't know? We don't have a mountain to drop on her but we bloody well do have the three people she looked at. What's your thing, Joe? Mine -- well, Rosencrantz's better than me, anyway."

August listens to the back and forth about elements. "Sky'd be lightning, I guess." And then Itzhak mentions a tree. "Right, a tree I could do, so..."

His voice dies when Ravn continues talking. After a second he blinks, winces. "Fuck! Right." He looks among those assembled, eyes unfocused. After a second, he winces. "We're...well, we don't have a very strong person with the mind Art. Which is maybe an issue. Though," he fixes on Joe, "I can boost you up a bit. Not gonna lie, it might be a little overload for you." He raises his eyebrows, to see how Joe feels about that.

She'd looked right at him, too. Itzhak shakes it off. "Cavanaugh oughta do the moving. I can do the," he wriggles his fingers as if to imply lightning. "That leaves the shaping for you, Roen." He looks at the other men. On one level he's glad that Joe's healed, but on most levels thinking about the problem they have to solve. The very large, very naked problem. Who he calls up to, "Wake up, mami, we're gonna take care a you real good."

Flirt.

Joe turns bright red at that. "Jesus, Rosencrantz, have some respect," he hisses, but refrains from elbowing the younger man. But then he's nodding. "A'right," he agrees, still trying to look somewhere that isn't her. Which mostly gives his gaze this frantically darting quality, at the moment.

Ravn finally has fallen silent. Mostly he's just staring. Maybe he could use a good elbowing too. Maybe he needs a reboot.

August nods at Itzhak and Joe, gives himself a few seconds to get centered. Granting power to two people, at this level, is going to be a bit much. And then, he still has to use one of the trees...well, he'll get to that.

For Joe and Itzhak, there's that spine-tingling sensation. the notion that August is doing something. It grows until they hear him say a single word, barely a whisper: "Grow."

It's a jolt, maybe a little uncomfortable though not painful. They're overloaded, their power stronger than it usually is, maybe more unwieldy as a result. That's their problem, though. August has something else to do.

He feels around among the trees, looking for one not connected to their bridge. Ah, yes--this will do. An oak, like the one that bore them when they woke up. He's asking a lot, to request she wrestle a goddess, but not (he thinks) too much of a grand tree like herself. Her crown of leaves shivers in response, and slowly, so slowly, as slow as poets and authors have assumed a tree might move under its own power, her limbs swing forward and her massive trunk leans towards the goddess. She's a tree, she knows that, in the end, even stone bows to the will of the root.

Focus, Itzil. He takes in a breath, tries to put acres of goddess-flesh out of his mind except the violence he's going to do to it. Which, actually, doesn't help him focus, like, at all. It's just made worse when August pushes strength into him. His mind keeps chasing down extremely inappropriate fantasies that are not going to do anybody any good. Lightning flickers through the mists, lighting it like stormclouds, but his hit doesn't land, just crackles around the great curvaceous stone figure.

Ah fuck it. Why not lean into this completely embarrassing moment in front of people whose opinion matters a lot to him? Itzhak lets his eyes close, lets himself think about the things he hadn't been allowing himself (cries of pain and pleasure and a richly curved body twisting under his hands) and then all kinds of things start happening. The Song opens in him and power pours through and lightning lances out of nowhere and CRACK hits his target. And it's incredibly good and he wishes it wasn't.

Unwieldy is precisely the word. It's more than he's used to - Joe's never any particularly great power when it comes to any of the flavors of Glimmer. The boost that August grants is a rush, one that has his head snapping up, like nothing so much as a junkie when the high first hits.

But then he's lashing out with that power, even if it's fine feathers temporarily granted. He's met a god before, or something on its way to godhead, in the Asylum. This is a good counter, hopefully. It's a wave of force, visible only in that it passes like a storm wind.

This is what true power looks and feels like.

Ravn did not share in the experience directly. He did not need to. His mouth tastes like ozone and he realizes that his fists are closed so hard that if not for the kidskin gloves that seem almost part of him, his fingernails would have cut his palms bloody.

He just... watches. Sometimes, words just aren't enough.

August watches the goddess shatter, comes within a hair's breadth of passing out. He's never had Them push him this much; normally They try to torment him into using power, and that he resists on instinct. This is different, he was happy to pour himself out, like the last drops of water in a canteen onto a thirsty desert bloom.

"Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon," he says, as the world of mist and trees and earth and sky unravels.

He sways and sinks to his knees in the beach sand. It's on the tip of his tongue to call for Eleanor, except he sees the masked man first. Holding...stones. Their reward, maybe.

...he's not sure they should touch them.

Itzhak makes a throttled sound in his throat and doubles over as he feels Tlaltecuhtli's shattering, her scream rippling through him like whalesong. He's beet red, panting, bent over with his one working arm wrapped around his belly.

"Fuck." His eyes are closed tight. Opening them is an unwelcome sight, the bird-masked man with their rewards. "I don't want your fershtunken rock," he rasps at him.

Joe, on the other hand.....doesn't demur. They may refuse theirs, but he'll take one, without hesitation.

Strike the bell and bide the danger.

Ravn just sits down in the sand and falls quiet. He seems to have stepped out, a little. Then again, it's not exactly every day in his life he's found himself face to face with Aztec fertility goddesses. Or watched them die and be reborn as the land, in a display worthy of about four years of academical studies into the cyclic nature of primitive beliefs. Maybe he needs a little time to process that.

August watches Itzhak flat out refuse, while Joe takes the rock. Well, now he's in a tight spot. He has a wife to think about. Which is more likely to get him fucked up?

Probably refusing the god. Dream-god? ...whatever. So he climbs to his feet, approaches Kukulcán slow and cautious. "Ellie'll have words with you if I come outta this fucked up, just keep that in mind." And with that, he takes the stone.

Itzhak doesn't seem in any hurry to straighten up. Ever again.

August takes a stone, Joe's taken one, Itzhak looks around to see what Ravn's doing. Oh, Ravn's having a little time out. He snorts a bitter laugh and looks at Kukulcán. "He accepts," he says, jerking his head towards Ravn. "I don't."