The Stars Are Right (OPEN)

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Characters Involved: OPEN
Location: The center of the American capital


It's often said that it's calmest just before the storm, and the sudden eerie lull of quiet that befell the city of Washington, DC was a testament to that statement, as if the sound of life in the capitol itself had been trapped under a glass and thoroughly snuffed out all at once. The fluttering of bird wings over the power lines silenced, the roar of traffic in the streets quieted, the murmur of busied people ceased, their attention suddenly pulled towards the sky, leaving only a vacuum of dread hanging in the air. The city itself seemed to hold its breath.

Something...something big, something...catastrophic...was just about to make landfall.

A sharp crackle of electricity suddenly tore through the deathly silence like sheet metal and concrete being torn handily in half, as if it were made of construction paper, an improbable jagged crack splitting into the sky itself, crumbling into a large vortex swirling into an ever growing mass of electric blues and neon yellows. Foreboding rumbles in the earth followed the stomach-churning snap of this split in the atmosphere, which lead to the inevitable first scream of panic, and another, and another, all echoing on top of one another until the entire capitol was shaken into a terrified frenzy. The whirling dead center of the vortex rolled in on itself, revealing a giant, blood-red eye twitching inside, looking about erratically before blinking once, eerily slow, and reopening at the same lackadaisical speed, splitting the dimensional crack ever further, the force of it shaking buildings at their foundations, debris crunching away from man-made structures, and perhaps even the sky itself, as a thick, yellow-green tendril slithered out against the oversized eyeball and reached out into the city. Two more serpentine appendages slipped out from the void to join their brother, pulling at the edges of the rift and forcing the...thing they were attached to further into this new earth.

Another horrible tearing of the cosmos rang through the bones of every living thing present for miles, and the body of the creature pushed forward, revealing a great amount of its cyclopian form, shaped like that of an Aztec sun calendar with one bulbous, piercing eye in the center, wreathed with a myriad of terrible tentacles coiling about it protectively. And from within the hearts and minds of all that looked upon its horror, a deep, slimy voice began to speak, the beast's giant eye pulsing with every word as eclipse-like darkness stretched over the city in a fog of shadow.


“MORTALS OF THIS UNTRODDEN REALM! THE TIME OF YOUR EXISTANCE MERELY DRIFTING THROUGH THE COSMOS UNDETECTED IS AT AN END. BEFORE YOU IS THAT WHICH CANNOT BE PERCIEVED. THAT WHICH SINGS WITH THE SCREAMS OF FALLING WORLDS. THAT WHICH DANCES IN THE DIAMOND DUST OF SHATTERED DIMENSIONS. I AM THE VOID WITHIN ABYSS. I AM THE VASTNESS OF ETERNAL NOTHINGNESS. I...AM...SHUMA-GORATH!”

A mighty tentacle raised up high and came back down with a explosive smash against a row of buildings, each crashing into one another like mere dominos in the creature's presence, the force of the strike splitting the pavement and cement foundations into long chasms. Several other wriggling tendrils stretched out as the horror further pulled from the vortex, much of its enormous body still on the other s side of it and steadily emerging. Shuma-Gorath's great eye widened and glowed an off-red color, light forming into a pinpoint, relative to its size, and shot forth in a long beam that flashed hot and fast across the cityscape, incinerating several blocks into ash in the wind with one glance.

Several more tendrils burst forth from the rip in the dimensions, one wrapped around what appeared to be a human-shaped figure with a shock of red hair, laden with guns and various weaponry, whipping it in and out of the vortex to shake it off. The figure, a woman it seemed, thrashed and fought viciously against the the godlike beast's hold, the familiar rat-a-tat-tat of a machine gun pinging against Shuma-Gorath's leathery hide as she cussed and swore, tossed about between this reality and the one she had been pulled from.


“You oversized, overbloated, overcompensating excuse for a cephalopod!” the woman screamed and spat angrily at the creature, oddly more annoyed with it than terrified. “Get your cock-swaddled appendages off me and climb back into your glory hole where you f**king slithered from! And I'll see to it personally that every sputtering little knob that graces the end of every bloody little entrail you call arms or legs or whatever the bloody hell you so choose to describe them as are ripped off one by one and battered and fried as eldritch calamari!” With a gnash of her teeth and a powerful warrior's cry, the redhead shoved herself upwards and out of the grip of the tendril that held upon her as it came crashing back into the city once more, leaping upwards onto another swooping tentacle. She dodged and leaped over the sea of wriggling squidlike vines looking to catch her, flipping about acrobatically and gaining higher ground upon Shuma-Gorath's form, blasting it with more gunfire in what was assumed to be its face.
The bold woman narrowed her eyes at the beast as she holstered her SMG onto her back, replacing it with a black bladed dagger that glittered like starlight from the scabbard at her hip, and made a running start up one of the long tendrils, her long coat flapping in the breeze of her dashing motion, and closed in on its gargantuan red eyeball. “Come now darling! You thought you could stand toe to tentacle with a Bloodstone?” As she elegantly ascended the undulating appendage with increasing speed and inhuman balance, a crimson glow began to emanate from the jeweled choker she wore around her neck, the light enveloping her entire body, from her high-heeled boots to the tip of her red ponytail. “Let's do this proper, then! Dance with me!”

The redhead leaped off the end of the tentacle, dagger raised, and plunged it deep into the watchful eye of the abominable creature, barely a pinprick compared to it's formidable size. Still, a blood curdling shriek could be felt exploding from the beast's telepathy, the dagger stuck fast into it. Bloodstone's assault was met with several swipes of Shuma-Gorath's tendrils, smacking her from his eye and into the air, only for her to be caught by another and sent hurtling towards the cracking pavement below.

“FOOLISH MITE! THE INSECTS OF YOUR REALM COULD NAUGHT BUT SEND ME OFF TO DEVOUR ANOTHER WORLD IN PLACE OF YOURS! AND YET YOU STILL DEEM TO LAY A FEEBLE STRIKE! FOR YOUR INSOLENCE, THIS WORLD AND YOURS SHALL KNOW NOT MERE ABYSS, BUT A PURGATORY OF NON-EXISTANCE!”

“Shite shite shite shite!!” Bloodstone spat several times as the burning and razing city came way too close, way too fast for her comfort. Another tentacle swooshed past her to end her more quickly, but she grappled onto it as soon as it was close enough, barely hanging on for dear life as it swooped back up into the air and back down again, looking to shake her off as a mere flea.