>John: Don't fall for peer pressure! Consult a trusted adult before ingesting foreign substances. D.A.R.E. to resist drugs.
Sadly, John has already slipped into the fabled peacebirth trance of the jokebollocks, and quakes in the foodsandwich throes of the goofjester tongues. They are stubborn throes.
Although they're hardly as pleasant as I've made them out to be. John brings what he will into them. They go something like this.
>John: Dream/Wake
...he falls end over end through trackless nothing, and finds himself coming up for air, in a familiar sea. Something strange is going on. Overhead is a storm unlike any storm he has ever seen. It billows down from a central point, a black cloud spreading out to consume the sky unlike any cloud he has seen in his life. But there is something in the middle of the cloud. A leviathan shape, hanging on nothing - floating placidly far above in the morning sky. He wipes the water from his eyes, but the shape remains right where it was, impossibly. Long tendrils coil outward from a slender central body, like the many coils of some terrible serpent. A devilfish? He dives under the water, and swims forward, hoping to get a better look, but the current carries him down...
... and now he's talking to his father again. It feels like it's been so long. As they walk together, his father's pace seems to pick up, and he can't catch up to him. The length of the pathway seems to zoom out and down, down, down, in front of him, giving him nausea the way he gets when he stands on a very high cliff. Come back! He follows him down...
...and colors and mayhem blossom around him and as he runs down the path in hot pursuit, it coils and coils, becoming a spiral, and drawing him inward, and inward and inward. Another spiral joins the first, and they coil together, spiraling up around one another like a tall double helix, surrounding a tall central pole. The pole begins to quake and crumble as the serpent coils around it, crushing it, and the sky begins to fall down...
...he plummets deeper into the abyss, into a bottomless pit. Nothing can return from here. At the bottom is a tomb, and in the tomb, is a voice. The voice is familiar but he doesn't know why. And the voice says...
>John: Walk into the Tomb.
>John: Land already.
Sorry. I know I've been getting a lot of mileage out of that one.
John lands hard in the middle of what appears to be a ring of some kind. He's not sure why he knows it's a ring, but it is. Only after some quick observation, it doesn't appear to the be the circus ring. Or at least, not the kind of circus he was in a moment ago. Maybe another kind of circus.
There is a chain affixed to his leg, and he realizes he's not wearing his own clothes any more. He's wearing what seems like a suit of armor. It's tough, and smooth like a beetle's carapace. He's also armed, he realizes, with a sword and a shield.
The chain trails away into the darkness, toward the other edge of the ring. In the darkness surrounding the ring, an invisible, indistinct crowd roars.
Out of the darkness emerges another similarly clad figure. She looks smaller than John, slender, lithe. In some ways, she's almost childlike - but not quite. Her armor is decorated fancifully. She's monochrome, grey skin, black eyes, and entirely too much messy, pure white hair. A splash of cerulean makeup adds character to her otherwise grayscale appearance, however. Her stance is wide, and she holds a curving broadsword in both hands, with the posture of a warrior.
Looks like it's going to be a fight. Why don't we check back in on Dave and Roxy?
>Dave: Fall with Style
Dave falls, and catching his breath, orients himself, and lands on his feet, dropping to one knee, and catching himself with a spread hand. He has landed in the middle of a ring made of the same blue-purple flames as the one which blew his room to smithereens. He hurriedly gets his bearings. He is floating in the middle of the sky, gravity still drawing him sideways instead of downwards.
>Roxy: Fall without Style
Roxy's landing is considerably less graceful. He plummets like a flailing sack of potatoes down onto Dave, flattening him with an unpleasant smack.
Their assailant at last reveals himself. Plummeting down into the magical arena, a massive figure lands heavily enough that if they were not in the middle of the sky, he would kick up dust. The figure slowly rises to his full height, two heads taller than either of them, revealing himself to be clad in heavy armor that seems like it is probably made of stone or ceramic or something similar, colored an impure white, dirty from use and lack of polish. Over top of it, he wears an elegant egg-yoke-yellow cowl hemmed with tassels, and a pair of loose purple leggings with a rope like belt.
A glowing rune hangs in the middle of his armored forehead like the diadem in the fiery crown he wears. Actually, there's a lot of fire coming out of this guy, all the same color as his magic. The eyes of his armor glow with the stuff, and a smokeless flame sprouts from his head.
With a flick of his arm, he tosses away his cowl, revealing his ceramic armor to be sculpted into the shape of a stylized muscular human torso, with similarly ripped arms. and drops into an aggressive stance, placing his stone heel against the ground, and drawing it around him quickly in a circle. As he does, walls go up, and the arena becomes a cage of force, edged with runes of sealing. He bears no weapon, and instead, puts out a bare hand, beckoning.
Dave knows, and Roxy guesses - both correctly - that this man made of fire, wearing sculpted armor, is a Deva.
It looks like he wants to fight.
NACAHIEL
==Celestial God of Demonstration==
>Dave: Arm yourself with a shitty sword
>Roxy: Fail to arm yourself
Dave and Roxy circle the ring opposite the Deva, who maintains his distance, as the tension rises. Something imperceptible about the status quo changes, and then the Deva dashes, running forward across the ring.
Dave, and then a split instant behind him, Roxy, countercharges, and then upon reaching nearly the middle, jumps in the air, bringing his sword down in a horse-cleaving blow.
His sword snaps in half on impact.
The Deva grabs Dave, and flings him across the room, sending him speedily toward the wall, arms flailing helplessly. Roxy's mouth drops open, and he shouts in anger, throwing punches at the Deva's literally chiseled chest. No sell. He grabs him, twists his arm, and flips him over, sending him to the floor, groaning in pain.
He keeps fighting, only to discover that Dave has rebounded off the wall into the Deva's grasp, glasses smashed and astray, hair badly mussed. Holding Dave by the scruff of his shirt like a bad kitten, the Deva backs up slowly as Roxy flails his first few punches into him, moving Dave fluidly to absorb them as a human shield. Then, with a stunning blow to the chest, he knocks the wind out of Roxy, and flings him to the wall.
The Deva straightens up, and starts slowly walking over with heavy clunking footsteps.
> Roxy: Grab your bro, and fall down some stairs.
Roxy does exactly that. Grabbing Dave's hand, he rolls backward, down the Abyssal Stairs, and out of the Star God Hell In A Cell.
Something Something All These Stairs. Warned You About Something Something.
It keeps happening.