●●05:37 A.M. - Burger Joint●●●
"While two teams handle the front and back of the building, we'll be arriving on the rooftop. From there, we'll be going down to divide–"
"How are you supposed to do that?"
"Please tell me we're going on a helicopter? I haven't ridden a helicopter yet."
"Oh, we're doing something far better than a helicopter."
●●08:00 A.M. - Irwin Bellios●●●
Freedom was subjective, varying from human to human and even animal to animal. Hundreds of theories had been put out by philosophers, old and new, with many more ideologies being created by the very day.
In fact, even the concept of religion–which was now biting them in the butt–had been built on the abstract concept of freedom. Freedom from ultimate responsibility and freedom from the consequence of one's fault.
What Irwin had learned these past few days was that freedom was a hard thing to define, but being a literal wind felt as close to true freedom as it gets.
Scattering Wind, the Celestial spell he had bought to escape Dagon's Island, had been a tremendous help in achieving the first step in his plan; the step being to transport the other people with him across the vast skies of Los Angeles and atop the roof of Congressman Brown's apartment building.
A gust of cold wind billowed around the roof, blowing away the dust and bits or rubble that had congealed on the concrete for years. As the smoke of dust cleared, there appeared Irwin, along with Ellen, Garth, and Scott, with frazzled appearances.
Garth knelt down with a pale face, mouth watering from the sheer terror of his body being transformed into the wind by Irwin's magik. It could not have gone worse for the former dentist, who was initially excited about flying and was now praying to the concrete below their feet.
"T-that was… something." Ellen's stomach churned audibly as her shaking legs brought her beside the large exhaust machine.
Scott, on the other hand, took the spell in stride and immediately went to work, checking the whole roof for any unusual obstacles or personnel. Irwin also went to work as he used his magical energy to pick a sense of any traps hidden within the roof.
"Whole roof's clear." Scott reported, having gone to the same conclusion as Irwin, as he took out a worn leather glove which he put in his dominant hand.
It was a mystical item to control, direct, and amplify his lightning ability, a shortcut to adequate control with an easily curable curse of receiving pain whenever he used said ability. Irwin had given almost everyone a different mystical item, almost all of which were useful in the niche scenarios of the mission he had given them.
"What's next?" Garth asked, having got over his distraught.
"Dude, I told you the plan four times." Irwin complained, but nevertheless used his strength to break open the handle of the roof door. "We go down the fourth to save Linda and Anthony; mostly Anthony. And to prevent the Great Matron from being reborn into the world and plunging the west coast into chaos."
"Sounds… easy." Garth remarked as he took out his pistol and Angel Blade, crossing each weapon over the other and aiming his hands forward. "You take lead?"
"I take lead." With an Angel Blade in one hand and the Indestructible Hex Bag in the other, Irwin took the lead as he stepped a foot inside of the stairwell that led downwards.
The moment he did so, a high-pitched buzz rang in his ears, which had caused him to stumble forward a step. His eyes rolled into the back of his head as he forced his body to turn around and kick Scott away from the door.
Scott nearly flew away from the force of the blow, but being second in place, his body had been unassumingly caught by Ellen's own body. Like pins in an alley, all three stumbled out of the way and onto the roof.
"What the hell, man?" Garth exclaimed with irritation, having placed his hand on a rain puddle.
Irwin had no time to answer, however, as the ringing in his ears increased in intensity, blood began to trail out of his eardrums. Just as he was about to pass out from the pain, he invigorated his magical energy and activated Spell Purge.
The sub-effect made quick work of the ringing, which, based on its effectiveness, had been a defensive spell trap. He grunted out his frustration, eyes lighting up with a purple glow.
"Enemy incoming. Defensive formations!" He informed them as he jumped over the rails of the stairwell and down the stairs, clinging onto the rail at the last second before landing on the fourth floor landing.
He had to work fast because the enemy had already been alerted of an intruder, even if he had to leave most of his allies behind. They could catch up if they did, but he doubted they would.
As soon as the soles of his sneakers touched the rug of the fourth floor hallway, the successive sounds of gunshots rang behind and above him. It had seemed that whomever was in charge of the rooftop security had arrived.
Still, his main priority was to find the master bedroom where Linda was being kept imprisoned, albeit without having the slightest idea that she was in one.
"Screwed up because of the strange, glowing, rattling boxes in the storage room. Realize that your purpose in life is to suffer the humiliation that you would never leave a mark on the world. People know we're in here and we're only halfway done. You will join your sister in eternal damnation, looking in on her cell as she curses your name for eternity."
'What the fuck?' The demonic whispering nearly broke his sprint as he lurched into a stop, eyes wide in alarm, before realizing that it was only the Provocation Talisman being sent by Gordon Walker.
The mystical item had an automatic–where four sentences would be whispered into an enemy's mind that targeted their deepest, darkest secrets–or a manual option where one could implant two sentences, with the item adding two more.
Gordon had manually transmitted two pieces of information to him. The most important of which was that there were strange boxes in the storage room.
His mind worked overtime, asking himself as to why the Sassuratu would store any magical items with such obvious signatures in plain sight. It was then that he remembered Suzianna's warnings and Huwawa's bragging, memories of the Pantheonic assembly causing dozens of Demihumans convene in a singular location; some of whom arrives early and other late and, if Irwin had to guess, those three boxes were items at all but early comers to the greatest party in the world.
He took out his own talisman and ripped it in half. 'Disregard the next sentence, but good job because we fucked up, too. Go to plan B and, with my guess, that isn't boxes, so fucking leave.'
Just as his thoughts were finished sending towards Gordon, the hair on the back of his head stood up in alarm. He rolled forward just in time for a strange, amorphous bladed skin to nick the tips of his head hair.
He gazed at his attacker and found a gray-skinned humanoid creature with a featureless, faceless head. The creature wore a rusty belly chain with an added chain connected to a collar loosely clung around its long, thin neck.
The end of its arms were but spikes with razor edge ran along the length of its forearm while its lower limb had hooves for feet that had a curved spike along the back of its shin.
It made a strange sound, like a mutated cat mewling with pain; soon the lower half of its featureless face contorted into a semblance of a mouth–a distorted and quickly dissolving mouth.
"Found… killer… mistress… die… hands… Gallu."
It shrieked with hostility before the eight-foot-tall figure barreled towards Irwin with reckless abandon. Irwin narrowed his eyes, hands tightening as he contemplated the creature's words.
"Flagello!"