Keeping tabs on the warlords shows they are ready to start their assault. Red did his recon in the shadow around the mansion, it was littered with war and strife spirits. We figure once the war starts they will be drawn to it and we can slip in. We enter into the shadow in Chicago and wait.
After the battle has begun we portal to the mansion in shadow and most of the spirits are gone. I extend my vision through the gauntlet and we start moving about the mansion looking for a good spot to cross over. We eventually find what appears to be the first floor of the basement and I rip a hole in the gauntlet and we cross back over. The corridors are very dark and we can feel the presence of the mote. I reach out to all the consciousness in the area and count several humans and several vampires. We form into a standard formation and begin sweeping the corridors. It's looking pretty empty until Danno opens the first door we come to, inside is a security guy trying to figure out why his radio won't work. He quickly realizes he is screwed so he blows himself up. Luckily Danno was in the door and we still in the corridor so the majority of the blast was contained. It's bad enough fighting ghouls and zombies but now we have to deal with suicide bombers. The bomb of course draws some attention and we hear some movement down the hallway and move to it. As we head around a corner Danno sees a bunch of guys moving toward us with ak-47s and he rushes into to catch them of guard. Danno starts killing guys and raising the dead to kill more guys. While that is going on we catch a glimpse of stone door being opened down the other hall and Hector goes to take a look while the remaining guards figure out what Danno is and one of them pushes past the others into the hall with a flame thrower and sets Danno on fire. Danno of course doesn't like this and has to get the hell out of the way. I growl at the flamethrower and set the spirit within into a fit and the flamethrower doesn't seem to want to cooperate with the owner and then he gets bit by one of Danno's zombies along the way. The zombie and the remaining guard fight over the malfunctioning flamethrower and Danno runs in the other direction to help Hector who is tangling with a heavily armed vampire. The vampire doesn't like being that close to Hector so he stabs him with a silver dagger. That was the wrong move as that pissed Hector off who retaliated by biting through the vampire's neck and taking his head along with it. The corridor the vampire came out of is quite cozy and Hector has to squeeze to get through but we decide to follow it. Eventually it opens into a guard room of sorts with some guards waiting for us. We duck around a corner and Danno uses his zombies to engage them. As much as I dislike the idea of zombies, they have been quite handy down here. We let the zombies do the work and head into the room. The only other exit is another door and it sounds like someone on the other side. We discuss our next move when we catch the sound of someone gurgling and then a thump. We open the door and the guard who was there is hunched over and bleeding to death. The others move down the corridor and I catch a glimpse of something sticking in the dead guy's neck. I pull it out and it a nicely crafted tanto. It seems our sniper friend is down here helping us. I still think this mystery person is Jericho's brother so I scry on him. He appears to be in Russia or something, so it's not him. Someone suggests it might be Malcothet so I analyze the connections between this knife and Malcothet, it is hers. Well thats interesting, she appears to be helping us but then again she helped us take out Samiel and we saw how that ended. We figure we will cross that bridge when we reach it, we need to keep moving so we find ourselves with a choice of left or right. We start out going right but then one of Danno's zombies indicates the armory is to the left and we were hoping to find some more grenades so we headed that way. Were sure the armory is being guarded so Ohm turns the door invisible so we can look through it, sure enough there is a guard on the other side who isn't exactly sure why he can now see us and starts firing at the door. Danno did something with his zombies and started killing the guy. I was watching behind us and caught a glimpse of someone duck around the corner down the other hall. I through up a scrying window to see what he was up to and barely had enough time to register him lifting an rpg to his shoulder and launching it down the hallway at us. Luckily by this time Danno had the armory door open and I willed myself to the other side of the room to escape the rocket. Ohm tried to turn it around but was caught off guard and was able to focus his will. Red took out his amulet that he had received from when we saved those mages in Detroit and did what Ohm couldn't. All though he wasn't able to turn it completely around he managed to deflect it enough to minimize the impact on the group. Hector didn't like this and took off running down the hall to take the guy out. This turned out to be a bad idea as he eventually ran into another vampire. This vampire was ready and took out a shotgun with silver buckshot and shot Hector in the face. Hector was probably going to try to rip this guy's head off too but was interrupted by a wooden stake erupting from the things chest from behind. He said all he saw was some red eyes and then nothing. Malcothet again. We tried to get her to show herself and talk, I even offered her the tanto back but she didn't. We all kept looking at Ohm to see his reaction to all of this but he was doing a damn good job of controlling his emotions.
We only got a glimpse of the next room as Danno sent a zombie in and we watched it's head being removed from it's shoulders but a silver blade of some kind. We got a closer look at the blade as it came flying through the crack in the door and past our heads. I conjured up a few of me in the room as bait so hopefully we could catch a glimpse of what was in there. I sat one down at a computer terminal and something came out of shadows with a broadsword and tried to take my duplicate's head off. Before I could get a good look it vanished into the shadows again. We've seen this before, it was most likely a vampire. We tried to come up with some plans but they all had to many points of failure so we said fuck it, charge. So everybody ran in at the same time while I waited outside to use my duplicates to teleport to when the time was right. Our friend the vampire went right into Hector's arms which was a mistake for him. But that vampire had a surprise for us, a twin. Danno jumped into the fray and I changed my plan up a bit and teleported in. I then looped the space around both vamps and they soon found they were stuck. Everybody just let lose on them at that point. I then decided that since the twins once shared a womb they would want to be that close one more time so I forced them to share the same space. One just turned to dust and the other didn't last much longer as Danno and Hector ripped him to shreds.
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While the others were catching their breaths I scanned through the computer system real quick. Looks like various plans Beshenipal was putting together for his bid for world domination. I quickly wrote a script to copy the contents of the hard drives up to our server and then shred the data locally. The others were ready to go and we had a double set of doors before us. Quick scan of consciousness in the area revealed four vampires left to go. Didn't take long to find those four vampires as they were waiting for us in the next room. The room was a replica of the throne room of the Palace of Ages and sitting on the throne was the creepy old vampire tapping his fingers. Beshenipal started going on about how he has been waiting for us and will enjoy taking our motes from us. We weren't really in the mood for talking and just launched into action. Hector went right for the old guys throat while Danno took on one of the other vampires who was leveling a shotgun at Hector. The old dude unleashed an aura similar to my own convincing everyone in the room that they were on his side. The three horsemen deflected it easily as did Hector. Ohm wasn't so lucky. I was expecting something of this nature to happen based on our previous old vampire fights, this was just one of those tricks they liked to use. I convinced Ohm he should leave and get us some beer and he complied leaving the room and hopefully the radius of the old dude's aura. Danno then proceeded to force the one vampire who was holding the shotgun to drop it by removing his arm. I collided the three vampires causing one to turn to dust and the other two wouldn't resist damage so well now. Red followed that up with his green spray of nastiness. The vampires didn't like this but one didn't have much of a chance to complain as Danno took it apart. The other decided to hide and everyone else focused on the old dude. By this time Ohm had reappeared and went all caveman to better avoid the old dude's aura. Ohm was just in time too as the hiding vampire appeared and ran me through with his sword. That took me out of the fight and put a hole in my suit which was just gonna piss me off even more later. Ohm healed me up and the last vampire went running as Red's poison was really starting to take a toll. The vampire didn't get that many steps out of the room before we heard his death cry. Now it was just us and the old dude. The fight raged on for what seemed like hours. Both sides inflicting grievous wounds but neither giving ground. It was getting obvious though that old dude had the advantage of well, being an old dude. We were running out of resources and he still had plenty to go. I was still bleeding heavily and just about drained of energy so I used what I had left to create a mobius strip of looped space at the exit to the room and opened a portal home. Without mana I was going to be useless in fighting old dude so I suggested a retreat may be in order and I stepped through the portal. Then the oddest thing happened. I heard a voice with a familiar Irish accent in my head, telling me to go back. I still wasn't ready to trust Malcothet so I ignored it. A few seconds later and the voice was back but this time it was more of a plea then a request. She was asking me to please get back in the fight as the others would need a portal from me. I'm not sure what she had planned but perhaps she really was trying to help us. This was a really bad time to head back into a losing battle and have her screw us over again. I was ready to just flat out ignore her but something told me not to. There was an urgency in her plea and the inflection was different, almost as though it was wholly the human half of her speaking. In those few seconds of indecision a conversation with the late Padre came to mind. It was a conversation about faith. My faith in our ability to stop the forces of darkness was lacking. Every time we turned around the bad guys seemed to know something we didn't, they always seemed to be several steps ahead of us. And then putting our trust in Malcothet only to see it betrayed when she took that spear from Samiel and left with Donovan's goons was the final straw. I felt the universe was just stringing us along for it's own amusement, that this endeavor of ours had already failed, evil would triumph no matter what we did. So now as I stared at that portal I knew I just had to have faith. Faith that Malcothet really was trying to help us and she had a plan. So I took a deep breath and stepped back into hell.
The battle was still raging when I returned and it still looked like it wasn't going to end well. Then a shadow dropped from the ceiling and landed in the middle of the room. Malcothet stood there with fire in her eyes. She muttered some phrase in what I could only guess was some infernal language and I felt all the magic in the room cease. All the spells I had one me were gone as was the portal. My first thought was were were betrayed again until I noticed there were four others in the room with us. Donovan's hunter goons. Apparently they had been hiding here, probably waiting for us to fail so they could take the motes. Malcothet started murmuring words of power and a ring of fire erupted around her and quickly began to increase in intensity. She looked at us with a face of sadness but also of peace. She told us to go. I drew some power from Red's reserve and opened another portal home. I didn't have any power left to keep the Abyss from influencing my spell but I was not going to add any more bad resonance to this area so I absorbed all of the Abyss's feedback and took a nap. I was dragged through by Danno and awoke to see everybody had come through and my portal was destroyed again. I scryed back upon the area and saw destruction. Apparently Malcothet has sacrificed herself and in the process destroyed everything in a several mile radius. She had gone thermonuclear. The remnants of the basement were all smoke and glass. The heat from the explosion had melted even rock. There was one thing still intact in the center of the room, the mote of war. I borrowed some more power and opened yet another portal back to ground zero. Ohm went through and claimed the mote. I watched as he looked around and found some human looking remains under a pile of rubble in a corner. He went over and started removing the rocks and some time later came back through the portal carrying the corpse of Malcothet. Our jubilation of retrieving the last mote was soured by the sadness of her death. In the end she had sacrificed her own life to help us.
We haven't been this drained and beat up in a while but I suggested we clean up a little and get to the palace. We should present the four to the Lady Abigail. As we got off the elevator from the basement we saw the palace was mostly empty. Apparently it had been closed. The Lady Abigail was in the throne room in full battle regalia and had been expecting us. She was pleased that the four were now together. Ohm asked if she would reside over the burial of Malcothet and she agreed. She knew that Malcothet was in a better place now, her soul finally free of the demon trapped within. We discussed what our next move should be. As we talked about the slow moving process of finding the bloodline of christ I had a thought that maybe we could use the Atlantean Nexus to do it. That idea was quickly shelved as we figured that if that was possible than Donovan would have done it already. Then the Lady Abigail mentioned that maybe he couldn't. She suggested that Donovan never had the nexus in the first place. Everything we found at the police academy was most likely a ruse meant to convince us that he did. She suggested that Donovan could easily cast the spell on the cops like he did without it. Red suggested that maybe because Donovan was of the sixth watchtower he couldn't actually enter the temples, since they were devoted to the pentacle. This actually made sense. That was why he used the Dante ruse to get us to go after it, because he couldn't. This actually was a spark of hope for once. With that we took our leave. We had a reason to retrieve the rest of the nexus now and we needed to rest up. I told Hector to meet us at the bar. We were going to have our victory drink an I told him this drink was mandatory.
Cygin