01.05.2020

Take a peak at the rat creatures down in Mexico, seem to be thinning out nicely. We decide to head down and go into the shadow near the forest spirit and test the defenses. Crossing over with a strong gauntlet with multiple people is a lot harder than it looks. My first attempt fails. The second attempt I reach deep into the supernal and called down a more powerful version of the spirit road. This time it worked but it was quite expensive. It was strange trying to channel power you don't have a full understanding of. The imago feels brittle and requires a lot of focus to keep it from falling apart. The whole time I could feel the abyss trying to work it's way into the spell and make it slip out of my control. All though I did manage to keep it in check with a large expenditure of energy, it's not something I feel like trying again for awhile.

Once we are in the shadow we start circling about the forest getting a feel for what defenses might be in place and looking out for rat creatures. The shadow is still foreign to us and we were taken completely by surprise as a small swarm of the rat creatures ambushed us. It was a painful battle but they were a bit easier to take out then our last encounter as they weren't healing their wounds as before. My poisoned locus had starved them of the essence they needed. As we moved in a little closer towards the center we saw the remaining rat creatures darting behind the trees. Danno took a nice shot at one with his walter and blew it's head off. The rest of them decided to stay hidden and not engage. Soon we finally heard the voice of Enzukamada booming through the forest telling us to leave. We of course tell him to fuck off in the nicest way. Just because we are on a non violent kick doesn't mean we still can't be diplomatic. Ohm tries to reason with it but as I told him several times it won't listen. It is an ancient spirit that has only one purpose. Spirits don't have the faculties to reason beyond their very small and specific view of the world. We poke at it verbally a bit more and that pisses it off. There is some crashing of trees and branches snapping in front of us and this ent looking thing comes bounding at us. For a tree it sure is fast. It smacks Danno hard with a limb as the rest of the rat creatures start heading toward us. Danno swipes back but this tree thing is also extremely agile. I get the sense this isn't going to go well so I drop the shadow version of the emergency portal. Ohm jumps right through leaving Danno staring at a very large and wooden spike, vampires just love those. I know Danno won't leave unless he is the last one through so I give up on trying to test it's mental defense and hop through the portal with Danno close behind. I spend some time ripping a hole through the gauntlet, which is a whole lot easier to do at a locus, and we return to the material. Well our mission was to scout the place out and test the forest thing. So in that regards this was a success. While we didn't think an ancient aztecian forest spirit was going to be a pushover, I don't think any of us were quite ready for how bad ass it really was. We are going to have to put a hold on fighting this thing for now. We just don't have the firepower.

Cygin