“Wait, ‘sorceress’? Wasn’t the intel just for Akariel and Urumviel?”

“Never mind, go!”

“What the - she’s here! Meciel and her new host are inside the building!” The woman’s voice, and Rosanna appears at the top of the stairs, long brown hair flowing down her back and golden eyes flashing.

“Tricks! Betrayal!” The rasping voice cries out.

“You shall pay for this, woman!” He ears very heavy footsteps accelerating across the floor.

Crumpled in a heap of boxes, body thrumming bruisedly, muffled chaos unfurling above, Melkor eyes the top of the stairs.

:Is she an angel?: Melkor wonders about the gorgeous, golden specimen. :Cuz she looks like she fell from heaven and hit every branch of the pretty tree on the way down.:

:Technically, yes,: Meciel thinks at him. :In practice, you should watch your fucking back around her.:

“Hello, Meciel,” Rosanna calls down the stairs. “We were just discussing how to best hunt you, and here you are, like a bird fallen right out of the bush into my hand.”

:Don’t worry Meciel,: Melkor talkthinks to the magical illusion being that’s living, in some metaphysical sense, inside his own head. :Pretty sure Angel Sorceress is bluffing, it’s like, physically impossible for her to know that you’re here.:

:Unless she knows through some sort of… magic?!: 

:I’m pretty sure you have a foot sticking out, Melkor. I suspect you have about two seconds before she starts throwing Hellfire at you, unless you can distract her somehow!:

Melkor replies in a straining, effeminate tenor. “Spare me the ‘bitchy overconfident gloating’ act, Rosanna.” He gets up out of the pile of boxes, moving his limbs in as puppet-like a fashion as possible, and stands at full height, hands on hips, chest thrust out.

”We both know I’m your only hope of coming out on top of the Tessa-Nicodemus power struggle. Or of coming out alive.”

Rosanna stares. “I - what - is this the host speaking? God’s balls on a skewer, Meciel, you sure know how to pick ‘em. How the mighty fall!”

“Better to fall than to never have been mighty at all,” Melkor calls, stalling, while groping around next to him in the scuzzy basement for some kind of weapon.

His hand lands on a nice thick handle — probably a guisarme, or at least a sick iron mace — and he switches back to his easily-heard-at-a-distance ethereal falsetto: “Excellent sorceress! This ritual we’re conducting in the basement shall surely succeed in castrating your former allies!”

He brandishes what turns out to be a tennis racket, and positions it as a face shield.

Rosanna rolls her eyes but also looks somewhat nervously over her shoulder.

Just in time for two monsters to come crashing through the door behind her. “This betrayal will not stand!” shouts the growth voice, coming from an enormous ground sloth of the kind that is supposed to be a) extinct, and b) actually vegetarian. This guy does not look like he is either.

They barrel into Rosanna, who gets a shield up in time to deflect the claws, but doesn’t manage to deflect the kinetic energy and is knocked down the stairs.

“You absolute fucking fools,” Rosanna hisses from the bottom of the stairs. “I’ll-”

Melkor coldcocks her with his racquet rim.

“Congratulations milords! By defeating my mistress you’ve earned the granting of wishes three! For your sake let’s hope one of those wishes is better battlefield awareness.”

Harry Dresden knows an entrance line when he hears one. “Forzare!” he yells, aiming a strong gust of wind at the hulking Denarians. As they, too, tumble down the narrow basement staircase, under the control of Mr. Newton and unable to dodge, he unleashes his force rings on the big furry one.

Michael rushes in behind Harry, sword drawn. He leaps over the side of the staircase, lands with a roll, and rushes to engage with the other Denarian, who looks sort of like a human-mantis hybrid with wings and horns.

Melkor kneels down to the hot woman on the ground, whose face is that of the goddess who spurned his advances 10,000 years ago and also this chick he worked with who collected beetles.

”Dear Heaven,” he prays, hands held hovering over her, “please reveal to me where this flesh-woman has stowed her angel coin, preferably in the form of haptic vibrations.”

Rosanna bursts up from the ground, her skin going crimson. Wings, horns, and tail burst forth and a second set of eyes open above hers. She clenches her fists, and a sheath of fiery magical power encircles her. The air reeks of sulphur.

“Meciel,” she turns burning eyes at Melkor. “This is your fault.” And she throws a fireball at him.

:quickdoanillusionofmeburningtodeath: “AUUUGGGHHH!!!”

From one perspective, Melkor’s really riding the line on this one. Trying not to use any magic, and belly flopping this hellfire with the uncertain hope that this ol’ fleshbot will survive it and Meciel can work her magic fingers on him once the battle’s over.

From another perspective, a Melkor-shaped civilization of affective neurons screams white nuclear hot destruction as the air and the earth and the water and the ether all become / are consumed by FIRE! FIRE! FIRE STINKING OF DAMNATION! THE NANO-SCALE TEETH OF THE HUNGERING MAW OF EMPTY DEATH FRACTALLY INCINERATES THE HYDROGEN-BLIMP-FARCICAL CONCOCTION OF EGO THAT IS MELKOR!

(Years from now, Melkor will look back on this trip fondly :) )

:?👍:

On fire, Melkor crumples to the ground and beats the fan wings of his searing stinging hands at the oil slick lightning storm flames, auggggh, auuuggghhh, dear sweet Illuvatar what the fuck was I thinking, auggh