Once Upon A Hellmouth

Logan solicited Illyana to find Jean. Chthon, one of Illyana’s demon contacts, agreed to show them the way to Jean for an unnamed future favour. Chthon cashes in that favour…

1963-10-30 - Wibbly Wobbly Demony Wemony

Summary:	Agent Cassidy receives a report from the good Doctor's companion.
Related:	Closing the Hellmouth
Theme Song:	Coda - Echos

1963-10-29 - Closing the Hellmouth

Summary:	Magic of great power comes to close the problem haunting us all
Related:	None
Theme Song:	None

1963-10-28 - Not All is as it Seems

Summary:	Some heroes handle a standoff at the entrance of central park.
Related:	Once Upon a Hellmouth Plot
Theme Song:	None

1963-10-28 - Discarded Donuts and Terse Tea-time

Summary:	Prince Loki takes some time, between a walk and tea, to ascertain whether or not Dr. Strange actually has a plan for closing the Hellmouth.
Related:	The Hellmouth arc
Theme Song:	None

1963-10-28 - 100 Words of Cadaccus

Summary:	Skali walks a dog in Central Park. Given the Hellmouth, this was a poor decision.
Related:	http://marvel1963mush.wikidot.com/log:1963-10-29-so-inconsequential
Theme Song:	None

Mr. Enpeecee had left strict instructions to be followed in his stead. The directives were difficult to receive in the stupor of post-euphoric high that her run across the star fields resulted in the following morning. Skali still endeavored to pay attention though, something about what locks needed to be unlocked, what passcodes to his apartment were necessary for entrance, how incompetent the doormen were so she would need to keep track of the key he gave her, how many pieces of meat Bragadin ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and how he preferred them cooked. The pen scrawling out instructions seemed to be working furiously enough, but occasionally it would hitch, a rune taking form instead of a letter. Thankfully, her boss was in too much of a hurry to pay any mind to the seeming lack of literacy on the part of his secretary. When he finally swept out of the office with a solid thunk of the door closing in his wake, Skali collapsed on the desk with a groan, like a puppet with strings cut.

Eventually she picked herself up off the paper strewn surface, returned the messages that had piled up, and dragged her sullen hide down several blocks to the doorstep of her bosses' domicile. Navigating through what minimal security there was with a flash of white teeth and a unbuttoning of her blouse a bit lower than normal, Bragadin was leashed and the two set out on their usual stroll through New York's infamous Central Park. The day bore a ruthless chill of oncoming winter, something that seemed to affect neither of the beasts as they strolled unmolested through the winding paths and towering trees bleeding to orange and red.

Their usual pathway had been absorbed by the darkness stretching out from Hellmouth void within the park's gates, an inconvenience that was balanced against the absence of literally any other pedestrians. Skali unclipped the leash and allowed the mastiff to lope off in a gracious arch around her wandering pathway, sniffing at the untamed grass due to maintenance abandoned in light of the sudden presence of demonic creatures. The dog and its handler were hell hounds of their own, and perhaps they welcomed the intrusion of something that fancied itself evil.

"I've already had my first taste." he said, emerging from shadow without his costume of wealth and taste. She'd have smelled him on his way toward her, and while he didn't smell like colonge and expensive cloth, his was certainly unique otherwise. "Didn't get a good look at it before Crystal blew it up. Lots of eyes and mouths, thousands of long thin tentacles like a ManoWar." She might detect the dull haze of his trident, Poseidon's Trident, shimmering in the nothing around him; where he seemed to be able to pull it from at will.

"Been waiting for you to leave the office, Skali." then he hissed his voice low, "Maybe I could understand your infatuation with his dog." venomously though, as if the rest of her lifestyle made no sense in the portrait of oncoming slaughter from the nearby hellmouth.

Skali and the hound turned as one, the soft brown of their eyes fixating upon this interloper from the sea with a mixture of interest and suspicion as the darkness fell from his shoulders like tentacles convalescing into cloak. The hackling brute trotted over to lean against his mistress' thigh, piloerection down the spine marking his discomfort with a stranger's presence even as a fingertip traced behind thick ear leather and a word of peace was uttered in comfort. The woman's lips twitched in a faint smile, focus shifting to the path he had walked to arrive here, through darkness and hell on earth itself.

"Waiting for me to tread dark pathways in ancient forests? Some would consider your timing unsettling."

Whatever effect she had on the hound was obvious, Bragadin's fur descending and his mouth relaxing from silent snarl to quiet pant as his attentions turned to other things. A watchful canine eye spared Skali's focus to round upon Namor in full, the intensity of which held remnant hunger from the night before. Though the heavens had fallen underneath her paws until the sun glowed orange with dawn, her teeth still itched and her gut churned. Never satisfied, like most women.

"The evil and grotesque have beauty of their own. I wish no quarrel with the many-mouthed hordes, only to go on our daily walk."

Namor says, "No horse in the game, eh Skali?" he said, tone chastising. "I figured as much when I noticed you weren't walking with one of thos bag-bracelets around your wrist." he shook his head, "Gangster." he said, sparing a glance to the large animal and then back. "What now then? Beer and a fuck? Or are you saving yourself for the many mouthed grotesques who's beauty so evidently captivates you?" The white flicked up across his eyes, annoyed by the time he'd not spent in salt water today. They would flick up and white out his eyes the longer he'd spent on dry land. He stepped free of the path as if he'd no intent on keeping her.

"Odd though." he mentioned as he walked by her in the opposite direction, "Figured since you chose this place for your exile you might be more of a fan of its occupants." he shook his head in dismay, "Might just be asking too much though, I mean, you've got a lot of work to do. Memo's ain't gonna type themselves."

"In the wide expanse of a thousand years, a fuck gets quite dull. I wouldn't expect you to understand or anticipate you could impress."

Insult or observation, it was difficult to tell. She delivered her consideration with the unaffected superiority of a being that failed to realize intimacy was always attached to sexuality for short-lived species. As his step closed the distance between them and brought him alongside her, a hand shot out to collect his own finned digits, pulling his weight forward and across a waiting ankle that she had extended simultaneously. The intent was to put him into the ground at her feet for purposes undetermined.

The smile she wore offered no clarification if pleasure or pain awaited him; the forecast was cloudy with a chance of violence, sexual overtone showers around noon.

"I wasn't serious Skali!" he hissed angrily, mostly at being tricked. "I've no desire to bed a ten million year old nihilistic wolf!" he pushed her back from him with the flat of his palm and spare the dog a warning look as he tried to take back his feet. "I just thought maybe you should give a fuck about these people if you're going to spend so much time pretending to be one." and yes, there was a little scorn there, but he'd been a willing playmate in the previous encounter. Something had changed, or maybe he was naturally capricious.

Skali feigned offense, or perhaps his words had actually hurt, rolling her eyes as she gasped out, "Ten million? Do I really look that old?"

Even as she spoke, she had danced back a pace, the hound having moved before she even attempted the motion as if anticipating it. Given that even now it flanked the merman on the side unoccupied by Skali and moved in fluid prediction of her own motions, it was likely Skali need not spare a word to communicate what she desired from the canid counterpart.

"You assume quite a bit, Prince. It was only one date. Let me presume in kind; you want something that I symbolize, that you thought I possessed, some fraternity in the moments you stole from my seemingly infinite lifespan. You needed it to matter"

She paused in her motions, for instinctually she had begun to circle him once more. Bragadin slowed to a stop as well, and both stood quietly watching the man between them while the wind played with her curls and somewhere in the distance, an agony-laden scream sounded.

"It does. Not in the way you want it to, though."

Namor didn't bother to mention that he did not make friends easily or often as such a thing was easy enough to guess from any number of media sightings or simple conversations. His eyes moved to track the sound, and he stood up. "Spare me your ennui of the ages, please?" he snapped back, ego wounded a little and not afraid to show it. He moved a few paces in the direction of the scream, then in altered his course. "Come on, I'm sure you bosses dog will shit along the way." and he lifted off the ground into flight and lead the way toward the distant sounds of pain.

The injury to his arrogance was measured by the spreading of the grin across her chops, sadistic glee gleaned from the slight no matter how small. Glancing to her compatriot, she seemed to communicate some directive he was capable of following, as he barked a confirmation and ambled into a pleasant trot underneath her shadow as she ascended in Namor's wake. With a nudge of her own weight, she claimed the space just underneath him, flying in a backstroke so as to continue peering up at him in the obnoxious fashion only a sibling of many has mastered.

"Are we going to be heroes now? Isn't that a little played out? Besides, we don't even have costumes."

"You have to do it first." he prodded back, scanning as he was for some sign in the darkness. He looked back to her with something approximating amusement, "Then it gets played out." but when they arrived it was entirely too late. Whomever it was had been properly split in half. The breastbone shattered, the ribs torn open, and the delicious treats inside gone. Breasts lolled to either side asymmetrically, mouth agape in silent scream with eyes wide and the skin painted with blood. He moved on quickly, dragging kid-sister Skali in tow. "Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. Not like I can count on you to come up with something more interesting." he said, "Whats on the menu anyway? Dog walking and sulking at the beach? Maybe you should go get laid, go crazy." then he leaned in for emphasis, "You know, fake a humble blush, every now and then; Goddess." and he was enunciating there for sure.

Skali drops in elevation to circle the scene, nose working over the scent molecules still hovering over the corpse. Of course, the scent of gore and blood was predominant but underneath the heady and terrible bouquet something else lingered. When she accelerated to reclaim her spot beside hunting companion for the evening, the pupils of her eyes had receded to pin pricks and her voice was lowly growl,

"The things you'd have to do to make me blush"

She didn't elaborate, putting on an extra burst of speed as she dropped to skim the ground, flying along the contrail of scent she had caught and hunting it now in earnest. The human skin seemed disjointed now, as if it did not properly fit prowling beast seeking a hell creature to devour.

The Hunt weaved in and out of the trees in the vast and densely wooded park. A line that would eventually lead to edge of the mouth itself. Whatever it was that slaughtered the human had eaten its fill and gone back from whence it came for now. Then Namor turned on her, "I will admit that this little flap of skin you wear from time to time had me going at first." he raised a finger, "But I see you for what you are now." he lectured.

From behind him, something faded slowly into view, a creature long and slender, reared up from the ground with half its length. It unfolded spines from its belly, in pairs of two as if upzipping itself and a slick dark opening within. It began to inflate itself in the approximation of when it though it would need to capture the pair of them in a wet sack for some kind of digestion.

By now the thing was a fair amount larger that it had been, a long body snaking out behind what now looked like a massive opened umbrella of a mouth, rimmed with spines all gopped with ichor. From a small mouth on its segmented belly, it issued a perfect facsimile of Skali's human voice and pieced together words, "Namor, just let me…let me be human with you…please." breathy and wanting, another mouth chimed in and this time it was Crystal, "Ummph. Uuumph. baBy, YeS. Ummmmmph. Ummmph. Ummmph." scouping raw fantasy out of Namor's unwilling skull as his eyes went wide, jaw locked open and body froze in place paralyzed. It was moving in to finish the job. "Namor…" it said in Skali's voice, "…don't be afraid, you can touch me."

The hound began to bark and whimper in turns, urgently, this was a horror it could not bare, too big, and too unfamiliar.

Skali landed on all fours, already hunched over the scent and drawing it down her nostrils in a desperate huffing that moved her whole chest. Her head raised, limbs impossibly torqued as her back arched and eyes narrowed. While Namor lectured, her musculature tensed, fingers already beginning to twitch in desperate precursors of alarm as her jaws contorted and she started to cry out his name.

Except the voice that wreathed them both in abysmal terror did not come from her throat. Her lips gaped once, as if swallowing words that she did not utter, the creature expanding and raising to its full height while they both stood stupidly and only the hound had enough sense to flee.

Skali hit the body of the beast in mid transformation. The long fingers exploded into talons that sank into the divisions of the creature's hide, the jaws locking down hard on the first hold she could get and beginning to consume the demon with unflinching ferocity. The black, ink-like innards splattered against her splitting flesh, the commingled patchwork falling like sludge as fur blossomed in its wake.

Only the pained snarl was evidence of the spiny leg that had slammed into her shoulder, the creature plucking off this god with an inconvenienced, burbling hiss that quickly twisted into masculine timbre,

"Kneel, wolf. Kneel or know an eternity of no consequence. Thou art beast pretending at presence deserving of respect. Know thy name is treachery and thy existence devoid of purpose. Run, Skali, run."

Namor was released at that, the slim sliverspike it had rammed nearly invisibly into the base of his neck, retracted in a sudden and audibly thhhhwip! Namor gawped and stumbled, the reeled about, trident shimmering into view and without hesitation he launched into the frey. He brought the points of his weapon into the beast, which roared and batted him away with a slap of its tail. "Know thy place, son of Fen." and it reared up and roared with its gaping body mouth; "I am the hundred words of Cadaccus, with ninety nine brothers and sisters will I lay waste to thine world!" it said, almost singing, taunting as blood ejaculated from small holes in its body. "Take thy whore Goddess and run, or I shalt ruin her myself, after I have had meal of you!"

Tossed from the leg that had slid cleanly between shoulder blade and the meat of her back, Skali landed unceremoniously beside Namor, an impressive curtain of dirt and dead leaves tossed up underneath the impact. Staggering to her feet as the hellbeast monologues, she stumfor a moment before the deep layers of tissue began to reconnect enough to stabilize her stance. The hackles were alight down her spine, the mane that encircled her chest doubling her size as she snarled defiance at the black creature, her jaws a mass of writhing flesh and dripping blackness pooling between her paws. From somewhere inside the horror show of teeth and tongue, words formed in a voice akin to the one her human counterpart spoke in, but soaked in an ancient and unhurried amusement.

"Thou forgets, O' Cursed One, I am only a Goddess by these mortal considerations. I am a mere pet for whom awaits if you tarry here. This world is protected and will gloat in tearing every last ninety ninth sibling asunder. Perhaps it is thee who should flee."

As she held the beasts attention with words, her massive body had prowled sidelong, drawing the focus of the creature away from Namor with each syllable. Eventually its head would crane, the long body rearing back as if to descend on her while hood flared to fully encompass the wily bitch. Yet Skali did not move. And across the battlefield, she met her companion's eyes and hoped he would not betray her confidence.

Namor leaped into the air, muscles bloating and then stretching long again with the effort. He brought the golden trident down upon the beast and split its back open, a ripping sound as the fissure yawned open and ran down its length. Stroke after stroke he tore into it, two fisted on the golden haft, breath sighing out in harried "HHAAAAaaaaaaa HAAAAAaaaaa HAAAaaaaaa", not laughter, but the force which emboldens the abdomen and lets fly the arms. Gore fountained in every direction, smearing across Namor and it suited him well. He looked twice the man covered in bloody muck, regal and pampered did not suit is bold features at all; but this did.

When the trident fell, Skali launched to the side just as the creature's appendages slammed into the place she had stood only moments prior. The legs followed her escape, spearing through the dirt and her paw prints even as she twisted on the next leap and launched. While the Prince splintered the spine of the fiend, her teeth tore into the bulbous sac, the foul stench of bile flooding her senses as the gut's contents spilled out and soaked her thick fur. And unyielding, she continued to tear out mouthfuls of black, undigested soul sick, consuming what parts this nemesis left unabsorbed.

Buried in the creature by the hole she had torn with her teeth, she flung herself free as a foreboding shudder warned her of either impending demise or some fresh horror. Landing on all fours, she shook herself off and looked to Namor's progress with panting jaws that split open in a smile. Then she laughed, and the sound was far more hideous than the keening squall of the pain every fresh thrust of the trident provoked.

Namor let himself simmer a moment, then dismounted the unmoving thing, and sank back to the earth. On his way free of it, he gave the creature a firm kick. "Whatchyou got say now?" stabbing his trident back into the ether where it could no longer be seen and feeling at the back of his neck sorely where it has stuck its wasp's probe and augured out his secrets. He seemed no less comfortable with the Wolf Goddess, in her lupine form, but he had to take a moment to admire the situation.

There was a series of cracks, like corn being separated from the stalk, the husk being removed. Then just as promised, ninety nine small thin worm like things erupted free of the downed demon and arced through the air in every direction. When they made landfall they slithered for cover; borrowing into the ground just as fast as wiggling their butts would allow them. The corpse weakly, "The ninety nine words of Caddacus!" it wretched on, slowly losing strength, "In thine tongue, all meanings the same. Death!" and its last words whined out, sounding far away. "Death….death to the whore and her infertile mule!"

"Skali, we got go." he said, seeming extremely worried.

Skali sneezed and nodded once, before the fur began to retract into every pore, the limbs refolding and shrinking as her jawline slid from massive wedge of teeth and musculature to faint smile once more. The flesh still covered in the filth of their kill, she watched as the worms buried in the ground between her bare toes and raised an eyebrow at the death throes of the hell creature.

"Yes, that would seem judicious given the circumstances."

Whistling low, the mastiff plodded out from the bushes it had hidden within to come to her naked form, quivering with a tail tucked so tightly against his middle it was unseen. She bent at the waist and collected the huge dog as if it weighed nothing, before stepping into the air with it cradled against her chest. If the lack of decency occurred to her, it did not show, though a blush would have been indiscernible underneath the carnage she was painted with.

As they lifted higher and higher until the unnatural darkness was left behind and only stars kept them company, she looked quietly to the man who had shared a hunt with her tonight and smiled. Her voice finally broke the silence of high altitude, its tone teasing but not all together amused. "You were saying, you see me for what I am now?"

Namor blinked a few times, if only to squeegee his eyes clean. "What?" he said, gobsmacked, he was still reeling from the ninety nine words, a lot of frightening promises, and all his secrets laid bare by a demon that had basically, if briefly, had sex with his brain stem. "Oh." he conceded, "Well. That was before, when we had, and I was…" he grimaced, "I was just talking trash, alright? You win again, happy now?" and he seemed mildly short on patience, but still, he looked at her a moment. "That poor dog." he said compassionately. "Lets get that boy home."

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