"If that doesn't work, I have something even stupider to try." Gerhart responds back through the talking heads. That was still weird, but he can ask about these strange things later. Gotta pick what you want to be confused about, right now be confused about the Origin Matter.

Seeing the rocks start to target everyone, Halcyon will bank out of the way and try to swoop over to the side to pick out rocks to eventually drop on the monster.. Gerhart will do the exact opposite and charge in. He drew his other sword now, both of them gently glow with an effusive light, the Duelist's Longsword also hummed with wind magic.

The ranger keeps his swings shallow as he swipes at the origin matter, carefully not to extend to deep into it. He is more just pawing at the creature to see if magic weapons can do anything or if it is purely magical attacks that can work. It was a lesson he was not excited to learn, but they needed to if they were going to make any progress. Gerhart was also trying to keep enough distance so that he wouldn't be immediately overtaken.

Halcyon dives to grab some rocks in its talons and return fire to the Origin Matter. It might not work, but at least keep its attention split. The bird drops one rock before climbing to the sky again. Whether or not they were making progress was hard to tell, this monster didn't really bleed or say ouch so Gerhart was just praying.

Ah...shit.

The rock underneath Zarius starts to glow and shift under his feet, but he can't exactly move. The Origin Matter is too far from him too...but Gerhart had gotten the creature's attention and was flanking. Meaning this rock's most likely trajectory would be right towards the thing. 

This was a terrible idea, but Zarius braces and holds his ground as the rock breaks loose and jettisons towards Gerhart and the Origin Matter. 

His companions managed to do their part though and bought enough time for Zarius to finish his attempt at replicating the spell Scern used to bind the god of space and time. Buuuuuuuut magic really is not Zarius' strong suit and just as the angry red chains start to manifest, something goes wrong and the magic bursts into blue flames and burns into ash.^[1]

Zarius acts quickly and flips over the boulder just in time to dig his heels into the ground to deflect it from hitting Gerhart as it flies towards him.^[2] This unfortunately puts him right next to the angry Origin Matter which can now see him as his invisibility fails to cloak him. 

The Origin Matter grabs a hold of the dropped rock with its telekinesis and fires it back up at Halcyon. The fighter with the magic swords and the electric bird are the biggest threats, but it doesn't very much appreciate being outnumbered,  surrounded, and attacked from all sides. As Zarius recovers from deflecting the rock, a glowing aura surrounds him and he feels his body become weightless for a moment before he's flung effortlessly straight up into the sky at Wolfe.

---

[1] Scern's God Killer - failed
[2] Reversal of Momentum (1/topic)

SPOILER: Click to show

Blue Raspberry shook themself off, regaining their senses after the heavy impact of the boulder to their torso. It hurt, but the damage wasn't serious thanks to their armor. They took flight again, looking to continue the battle with the Origin Matter.

Only for a Zarius to be flung straight at them next. Luckily for both of them, this time Blue managed to dodge the IFBM, Incoming Fellblood Missile, with some help from the field of static around them. With a buzz and a tingle, Zarius's trajectory veered off course, flying around and past the giant bird instead of into it.

But now, there was a different problem. Zarius was high up in the air, and Blue didn't know whether he had any means of flight or not. They didn't want to risk it. Sure, Astrid and Cyran had both shown they could suddenly sprout wings, but if Zarius couldn't, they could have saved him.

Blue flew upward, approaching Zarius just as his upward momentum came to an end and he began to fall back down to the ground. Swooping by and dropping into a dive, Blue caught Zarius, letting him land on their back and grab hold of the slightly sticky feathers sticking out from between the metal plates. Hopefully he'd be able to hold on. They remembered he'd been able to walk on the ceiling when they'd been fighting Cave Fishers before, so he should be okay now, probably.

Meanwhile, the Origin Matter focused on the nearest threat, Gerhart. With the warrior swinging their magic sword, they were taking damage. The sword itself couldn't harm them, but the enchantment on it was slowly scratching away at them. The orb began to rise higher into the air, trying to get out of the sword's reach. As the Origin Matter rose, one after the other, rocks still floating in the air suddenly launched themself downward, straight at Gerhart.

---

Static Field

Halcyon takes a rock to the chest and cries out, pulling away from the fight. The bird was tough, but it wasn't as stupid as Gerhart. It wasn't about to take unnecessary damage.

Speaking of stupid people taking unnecessary damage, Gerhart grits his teeth once more having to use Step of the Wind to dodge around the rocks, though one does catch him in the chest denting the armor. Damnit, nothing they are doing is working.

"Hold on....I have an even dumber idea." Gerhart speaks into the talking heads before he holds out a hand.

From the ring Cirice gave him, a light flashes and chains bathed in a dull purple light spring forth. The ethereal chains seem to anchor into the center of the origin matter and make a straight line connected to Gerhart's chest.[1]

"I know you've wanted to do this since we met Zarius, knock me out. I'm connected to the thing, you can't hit it, but you can hit me. It'll take all the damage I do, so knock me out."

He hoped to whatever gods or deities were out there this would work. Gerhart wasn't fully sure how this ring worked or how Cirice's spells really worked. It was a long shot, but in a battle of attrition they likely weren't going to come out on top with how little damage they could do. Gerhart could fight it solo, but with no one else to heal or offer protection, that would just be a losing battle as well. Stupid has woorked before, let it work again.

---

1. Soul Shackle
Chest Hit Prevention Used

Zarius twists in the air, jostled by the abrupt change in trajectory by Wolfe's static field, but he does manage to right himself after slowing down his rotation.[1] He was up a decent ways in the air and landing in the craggy landscape would not be easy. His mind races with trying to judge distance, angle, speed, timing, everything to try and prevent himself from becoming a fellbloody smear on the scenery. 

He doesn't have to worry about it too much though as suddenly Wolfe swoops in under him and slows his fall. The fellblood holds onto the blue bird's...oddly sticky back. Ugh. Well, it was better than splatting on the rocks. Gerhart's voice comes over the magic sphere. 

"Wait, this is not a good time for dumb ideas."

Gerhart had great luck and he often claimed that he was too stupid to die, but this creature was incredibly powerful and dangerous. They need to come up with a plan that will not end in tragedy. Zarius didn't really want to have to tell Astrid or Cirice that their friends weren't going to be going on any future adventures. He also didn't want to burden either adventurer with having to deliver news of his own death back to the Rookery. 

He glances down over Wolf's wing at the fighter on the ground below them. He cast some sort of spell that summoned chains, but it didn't look like the one Zarius had attempted and failed to cast. And unlike Zarius' spell, this one seemed to work. Dammit. When did Gerhart get so good at magic?

"I have not actually ever wanted to do that. Are you sure this will work? Your attacks have been working and I do not think we can finish this fight with you unconscious."

There was no arguing with the young fighter though, especially when he gets stuck on a dumb idea. 

"Dammit, alright. This better work!"

He stands up on Wolfe's back as the armored bird swoops overhead. Jumping off, he hurtles towards Gerhart and brings down a solid strike on the young fighter's head in an attempt to knock him out while the spell still has a hold on the Origin Matter.^[2]

Landing heavily next to Gerhart, he grabs the fighter's body as he crumples and pulls him back away from the Origin Matter quickly in case it didn't end up being subdued. 

---

[1] Cats Grace
[2] Guillotine Drop

The big bird went wide-eyed in surprise. What the heck was Zarius doing!? Why did he knock out Gerhart!? Blue wasn't clued in on their plan. They hadn't been focused on listening to the only one side of the conversation they were able to hear, as they were busy trying not get hit by flying rocks. Was this some other power of the Origin Matter? Could it control minds or something?

As Gerhart went limp, the Origin Matter suddenly fell a few feet down as if it had also taken Zarius's heavy bonk on the top of its spherical body. That had hurt it quite a lot as the impact was magically transferred from Gerhart to the creature. It was normally completely immune to physical strikes which would pass right through its ethereal body, but this was different. The magical chain linking the two delivered a heavy hit to it that wasn't really physical anymore. It felt what it was like to be hit by something solid for the first time in its life, and it wasn't pleased.

Unfortunately, it seemed the Origin Matter was capable of taking a little more of a beating than the human warrior. It wobbled and lowered back to the ground, dazed, but wasn't knocked unconscious like Gerhart had been. The white pupil-like spot rotated around as if its eye couldn't focus on anything. The rocks floating in the sky from its telekinesis stopped glowing, and started falling back down to the ground.

Blue wasn't really sure just what happened, but the Origin Matter seemed a lot more hurt now that it did after any of their other attacks. Now they just needed to finish it off. But, Gerhart was down. They were a lot more worried about Cirice's very special person being injured! Blue landed and morphed back into their armored knight form.

"Is he alright? What happened!? Why'd you do that?" Blue asked Zarius, concerned and confused. They unfortunately didn't have any means of healing a hit that big, but maybe Zarius did. "Can you heal him?"

Gerhart bounces off the ground as he's knocked out. Thankfully the origin matter goes with him or at least mostly goes with him. The ranger stays motionless on the ground for a moment before bright star-like markings begin to cover his body. He stands and opens his eyes, his green eyes replaced with what seems like pure moonlight.

"We should hurry while we have the chance. It is hobbled, but it will arise soon." The voice is Gerhart's familiar boyish tone, but there's an unnatural resonance to it. 'Gerhart' leans down to pick up his swords, quickly cutting the binding chain to end the soul shackle.

The being approaches, blades cloaked in a brighter light than they had before. A sword is raised above their head before slicing hard across the Origin Matter's circumference^[1]. Due to its nature, there is no gaping wound left behind but Gerhart tried to leave as grievous a wound on the monster as he could before following up with another swipe to try and finish it off.

"If either of you know a way to contain it, that could help, I have never faced such a being, I am unsure of if it has acutally been killed or not."

'Gerhart' keeps an eye on the Origin Matter as Zarius and Blue do whatever it is they have planned. Their options are limited, but this is likely the best chance they are going to get. It is still off-balance from Zarius' strike on the ranger. This was their chance to either kill or capture it.

---

1. Gerhart's Final Strike

"He cast some sort of spell to connect himself to the Origin Matter," Zarius explains to the knight.

He couldn't blame Wolfe for their reaction, it wasn't a great plan and it looks like it didn't manage to knock the creature out either. Damn, this was a very bad position to be in. They wouldn't win a fight with this thing if they also had to protect Gerhart's unconscious body. 

"I only knocked him out, I think I can get him back up."

Before Zarius can reach for the healing necklace tucked into collar, Gerhart surprisingly gets up all on his own. Weird markings glow on his skin and the fellblood is utterly confused. He stands up quickly, offering to steady the young fighter and concerned for his wellbeing, though Gerhart just recovers his weapons and right on back to fighting. 

Shit. Something has come over him. It doesn't seem malicious but who can tell if it will stop and run if Gerhart's life is threatened.

Watching Gerhart carve into the creature just seems to cement how much of a disadvantage they are in facing this creature. Zarius grits his teeth, he had nothing. The spell he attempted had failed and he had no idea why, trying again seemed like a foolhardy waste of time which would only give the origin matter a chance to recover or severely injure the young fighter who already was not okay. 

The frustration burned in the back of his throat and his body temperature starts to climb as his blood boils. A stream of back smoke rises from the corner of his mouth and he starts to choke on the plumes. Not now. This wouldn't help the situation. NOT. NOW.

He tries to control it, push it down, but the chorus of whispers in his mind deafen him to 'Gerhart's voice. Stumbling back and away from Wolfe, he gasps and coughs as blue flames lick off of his skin. He had to think of some way to stop things from getting worse. 

Didn't the Origin Matter have a way to stop time?

The thought comes out of desperation. If he went down as well, he would be a liability to Wolfe and Gerhart. They had no more options and no more chances. Something had to be done. And that something may be just the dumbest thing possible. 

Zarius squeezes his eyes tight and gathers his nerve before dashing past Gerhart at the Origin Matter.^[1] He reaches towards the space sphere with the blue flames of dark magic starting to consume his form and take over his body. Embers leap from his fingertips to the Origin Matter and starts to swarm around it.

The Origin Matter shudders and its 'pupil' constricts to a pin point. There's a moment where it looks like it might engulf the fellblood and the young fighter as its form trembles and swells. Then the embers start to darken its surface and it begins to shrink as if being drained of its energy as the scorch marks start to consume its form.^[2]

Zarius then slams himself against it, knocking it down from the dark magic engulfing him but also falling through the center of its body and becoming suspended in time and interrupting whatever was trying to steal control from him.^[3]

---

[1] Dashing
[2] Consuming Darkness (1/topic)
[3] Evil Incarnate - halted

What the heck is going on???

First Zarius attacked Gerhart, his own ally, and knocked him out. The, Gerhart just got back up with weird glowing tattoos all over him like Cirice and went right back to fighting the Origin Matter which, for some reason, looked real loopy. That's good, Blue guessed, but now they were just baffled. Mister Zarius started to smoke and and catch on fire, which was pretty weird, yeah, but the much weirder thing is that he then threw himself right into the Origin Matter and got his whole body ate!

What was an ooze to do? The Origin Matter got smaller for some reason, but now Mister Zarius was inside it. They could only think of one thing to even try. Thinking was a bit of an overstatement. They barely thought about it as they transformed into the largest wolf they could manage. With one big bite, the giant blue wolf bit down on the sphere and swallowed. There was an odd resistance to it they weren't used to. Maybe something about it being a living demiplane of its own. But, it eventually slid into the pocket space within the ooze that everything went to when they ate it.

The Origin Matter was contained, but there was just one problem. Zarius was also contained. Inside the Origin Matter. Which was now inside Blue Raspberry. A veritable Turducken. A Blorigius. That was a problem that needed to be solved. But how? Maybe they could....

The wolf started to cough and hack. A few puffs of smoke and blue embers came out before suddenly-

Splat!

Mister Zarius was on the ground, coated in a thick layer of blue goop.

---

Shapeshifter Plate
Red Rogue's Coat
Space Pocket

'Gerhart' kept pace with Zarius, going blow for blow against this origin matter. There wasn't much else they could do as it swelled except try and put it down for good. Suddenly, the fellblood rushes past him and the next few seconds both take much longer than they should and also pass in a flurry.

The moment Zarius disappears seems to be the catalyst for Gerhart reawakening as the stars disappear in a flash as he throws out a hand to try and grab his friend. "ZARIUS!" Before he can foolhardly just dive in after the fellblood, the ooze suddenly consumes the monster...and Zarius.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Still coursing on adrenaline, once more Gerhart moves before he can think and is going to just plunge a hand into Blue to get Zarius, but then he starts coughing. Gerhart shifts to awkwardly pat his back firmly, "Come on, bud. Spit it out."

Gerhart lets out a breath of relief, putting a hand on his chest and laughing a bit as Zarius is spat out. A little pulse of energy leaves the ranger as Zarius and Blue feel a little healed, their resolve to fight even strengthened a bit.

"That....was a weird set of events. Everything was black for awhile then I saw Zarius get eaten twice.....wait, how did I get over here?" He points towards the spot where he could see a bit of his blood from where his head hit the rock. "I know the scent of my own blood, that's where Zarius knocked me out. Did that not work? Did that thing try to eat me?"

Zarius lies facedown on the ground covered in goo for a solid minute or two. Getting engulfed by the Origin Matter had been a surreal experience, if a brief one. It felt like no time and an eternity the same way that Ziev's time warping had felt when they fought the god in the strange demiplane he inhabited. 

It had done the trick though. The burning sensation in the back of his throat dies down and the whispers slowly quiet until Gerhart's muted words become more clear. Well, about as clear as they could be having to come through the thick layer of goop coating him. 

He takes a shaky breath which is instantly regretted as he sputters and coughs on the stuff. Rolling over, he starts to wipe the goop off enough that he can breath. 

"What is this stuff??" He finally asks while trying to scrape more off to no avail.

He looks up at Gerhart and Wolfe. Wait. Wolfe is now a wolf...okay, whatever. He was drained after...whatever all that was and he could ask questions later. Or not. He still wasn't sure he wanted to know more about this strange knight friend of Astrid's. 

At least Gerhart looks like he made a full recovery. But something was missing. 

"Where is the Origin Matter?"

Hm. There was a lot of explaining to do. Firstly, on how Gerhart had moved from one place to the other. That part, Blue Raspberry really didn't know how to explain. They had no idea either, really. Gerhart had just got up and walked around, seeming different. Maybe Zarius was better left to explain that.

Secondly, there was explaining to Zarius how he'd been coated in slime and where the Origin Matter was. Yup. Blue didn't know how they were supposed to explain that either, not without telling him they'd eat the thing while Zarius was inside it and then spat him out. They guessed they could say it, but they didn't want to reveal that they were an ooze and they didn't know how to skirt around that in their explanation.

The blue wolf shrank down and shifted back into the armored knight, who fidgeted with their hands for a moment as they tried to think of a reasonable, normal explanation of what just happened.

"Uh, I rescued you from inside the Origin Matter. That's definitely where all that goop came from. Must have been inside it, uh-huh. And the Origin Matter, uhhh..." Blue tried to think of what to say next, but was interrupted by a loud, oddly aggressive sounding gurgling from the knight's midsection.

"It... disappeared?" Blue finished with a shrug.

"Huh....that seems anti-climactic...Guess we scared it off....And you guys thought we couldn't do it." He grins about to play punch Zarius, but pulls back with how slimey he is.



Halcyon returns from his escape, slowly descending before meeting Gerhart with a little headbutt. The kestrel coos at the scritches he receives as Gerhart gives a small laugh.



"Well, all things considered that seemed to go pretty well. Should we call it? One of us needs a bath, I don't have any water magic to clean you off."

Luckily for Wolfe, Zarius was too distracted by the goop he was covered in to pay close attention to how unconvincing the lies about the goop's true origin. He does however, catch the answer that Wolfe provides in context to his earlier question.

"It disappeared??" Zarius parrots the knight's words. 

That was not good news at all. All that effort with nothing to show. It's frustrating and he feels that burning return to the back of his throat. Taking a long breath to calm himself down, he gets up off the ground. He nearly slips in the slime but manages to catch himself. Gods, how was this substance both sticky and slippery at the same time?

"Dammit," he hisses under his breath as he continues his futile effort to get the viscous blue goo off of him. 

Really, they got fairly lucky. Sure they didn't catch the thing but they did survive. Considering the annihilated pockets of rock dotting the landscape, things could have gone much worse. 

He frowns a bit at Gerhart's suggestion to call it quits. They hadn't succeeded, or at least couldn't verify that they had even driven the Origin Matter off for good. But what else could they do? If the Origin Matter could just disappear into thin air they couldn't track it even with Gerhart's skills. 

Considering how ineffective his own skills were against the creature, it was probably better to live to fight another day. Not that he would go out of his way to find another one of these things ever again. 

"Alright. I appreciate you both making the trip out here and I am sorry it was a waste." He looks at the pair. "Mister Wolfe, if it's all the same to you, I would appreciate some discretion about what happened here today. I would not want Miss Astrid trying to go after such a dangerous creature after hearing about everything we witnessed. Gerhart, make sure you get a lot of rest and perhaps see a healer, you do not want to make Miss Cirice worry."

Oh no. They hadn't considered at all that saying it disappeared would make Zarius upset. If it got away, that did mean they'd failed to stop it, didn't it? Well, it hadn't really gotten away, so that part was fine. But Zarius didn't know that. Darn, how could they backtrack and tell him mission accomplished without just admitting they'd straight up lied to him?

Also, what was discretion? How would they use it when they talked to Astrid? Maybe they had one in their stomach already and just didn't know it. Well, they'd worry about that later if they remembered.

"Uh, yeah, sure. Discretion. But, um, I don't think it's going to come back. I'd say it's taken care of, right Gerhart?" Blue stammered and then looked to the other man who knew exactly where the Origin Matter was now for some backup. "That big ball is nothing to worry about anymore. Why don't we just get out of here?"