Gods (to borrow a Kol phrase), this is a big one!

Warning: Awesome co-write ahead!

 
Our heroes each had their own path to the transmorphed Farnsworthy tower. The Dark Ones had prepared their assault on our world well, and catastrophic events were starting to build on each other, weaving a tapestry of travesty and tragedy for our heroes to negotiate.

* * *

Kadlin pulled out the jar of souls she'd collected. Well over a thousand goblins had rebelled against her authority. They'd be fuelling her magical rituals. It was time to break the next seal on the sword.

She had fortified Fernswarthy's tower with the help of whatsername. The ignorant and jealous of her powers would want to stop her from advancing. But with the defenses in place, she would undoubtedly have enough time to finish what she needed before they could stop her.

Her life as a dark lord was just beginning.

* * *

Three figures stood on a mountain ridge, overlooking a seemingly endless wave of fights below. Even organized fights looked like chaos close up. This fight really was one and thus, looked like what one might imagine from Hey Daze, assuming one had never been there.

As at least two of the figures, indeed, had.

"It's going to be a mess getting in," said Konall. He looked at the seven individuals he had brought with him, the strangers he had trusted in a time of need, and who had proven themselves in countless small and several big ways in the recent struggle. Their leader, a Mr. Skye, surveyed the ground below. "It will be. I doubt all of us can make it through that alive."

Dash surveyed the fight. "I can already spot about a half dozen of the most dangerous groups in my former hometown of Honorburg from both sides of the law. Kadlin's forces should be badly outnumbered, but there's a lot of infighting. There's got to be a solution to this puzzle somewhere."

Vixen and Bandit walked up to where Dash was standing and both "hmmm'ed."

Konall sighed. He struck his sword on his shield three times, the warrior's invocation. "Gods. We need your help. You've abandoned me constantly while I've served you faithfully. I don't know why but maybe, just once, you'll actually help me save this world you claim to care so much about." He turned toward the sky. "WHERE ARE YOU. JUST HELP ME THIS ONCE!"

"Hey, they sent us didn't they?" Vixen teased.

"You're looking in the wrong direction," said a voice behind Konall. He turned around as Skye stood there, facing him. "There is so much more going on than you can comprehend. The gods are at work fighting ten thousand evils which are now conspiring against us. The sword Kadlin has is but one. We seven chose to aid you in your quest personally."

Skye shifted into his true form as Odin. "Hermes, you go in and eliminate the leadership." The olive-skinned toga-clad runner replied, drawing a dagger and moving at superhuman speed. Odin continued bellowing orders. "Kali, be yourself. Just don't kill our people." The blue-skinned woman frowned at the order, but accepted it and took on her true form, that with four arms and a scimitar in each.

The feather clad Macaw and the dark skinned Warlord turned into Quetzalcoatl and Ougun while Ryujin's dragon tattoo transformed into a true oriental dragon as his fake corporeal shell and katana fell away.

Odin turned to the mother Konall had met. "Isis, you stay here, and rain down destruction on the battlefield with your magics."

"Be careful," Dash warned. "There are those in Honorburg who've killed spirits and elementals. They might even be able to take down a god."

Odin nodded. "I know the dangers here."

Dash nodded. "I suppose you would."

Odin drew his longsword and charged into the fray. "Follow me," he shouted, leaping onto an eight-legged horse.

Konall ran behind as Odin charged into the fray, warriors drawn to the god as he began to clear a path to the tower. Sebastian Dash glanced at Vixen and Bandit, who both nodded. Dash rushed in with the two furries close behind. Dash rushed to keep near the front of the mob, hopeful any friendlies would recognize him as an ally. There were too many enemies in there Dash had dealt with and very few allies. A swarm of KOKOL soldiers and Seaside Town guards joined up with a hero group Dash recognized from his last trip.

Kali and the three warrior gods moved ahead of Odin, clearing a path while he struck down anyone who got past them. Konall and Dash were at his heels, leading the wave of warriors that followed in cutting through anyone who swooped in from behind. From atop the mountain, Isis watched the tidal wave of martial force sweep over the battlefield, brushing aside soldiers like sand on the seashore. She blessed them and sped them on their way with her magics.

The battlelines became a little clearer as Dash, Konall and the others waded into battle. Dash noted, "It looks like we're not the only ones trying to take Kadlin down."

* * *

Sylenia cursed. She hated to be late in her rendezvous with Dash and Konall and the others, but there was no other choice. The battle on the ground seemed oblivious to the dogfight in the sky as Sylir drones and fighters fought Kadlin's undead airpower. From ragged and skeletal dragons to what appeared to be acid-spitting blimps of undead flesh proved themselves strong enough to tear apart any Sylir craft they could catch and hardy enough to resist their energy weapons... but fortunately they were not immune. This undead airforce was probably meant to be immune to non-magical weapons wielded by the Kingdom of Loathing and would have been absolutely devastating combatants.

Her fighter suddenly banked left and rolled, dodging a three-tailed undead monstrosity that was zeroing in on her craft. Her craft was larger than the fighting drones, and that three-tailed dragon was the largest of its kind in the fight. Sylenia had brought the full force of Sylir power available to her, and she was just keeping pace. She brought the dragon into her sights and squeezed the trigger. Bolts of energy lanced forth and cleanly through the dragon. The new vents in the animated corpse did nothing to slow it down.

Sylenia's thoughts turned momentarily to her empire. Though they were still not taking Kadlin's threat against the greater galactic community seriously, they were at least forming a task force. It will take some time for them to arrive, but one way or the other, Kadlin will be defeated. She could see the fleet as though she were there. She knew the crew who would be attending and serving aboard the gleaming white starships of beauty and power.

Back on one small and strange world, the number of undead polluting the sky was thinning. However, the number of Sylir drones had waned also.

In a sudden bout of impossible agility, the three-tailed dragon caught Sylenia's ship. Claws tore into metal, shredding the wings and engines. But before the dragon could deal the finishing blow to her cockpit and to her personally, one of the drones found one of the many holes in the undead corpse, entered, and exploded. The resulting force tore the dragon's body apart and saved her, but the twisted wreckage of her ship could no longer fly forcing Sylenia to eject.

Meanwhile, Sebastian and Konall were continuing to push their way through the mobs, with Dash proactively pointing out the groups likely to be on their side, if only for this battle. Both swordsmen cut apart the enemies that stood in their path. Konall jabbed his sword into a soldier and got it bone stuck. He yanked and yanked but it would not come free. A spearman came toward him, and evil glint in his eye. And then an elf landed on him.

"Thanks for dropping in," said Konall, finally freeing his blade.

"Nice catch. I am here to join you." She glanced up, gazing at the unseen battle overhead. The frayed wings of her pink-and-black cysuit folded in and disappeared. "We must hurry."

Dash nodded. "Excellent news. I can't imagine what we'll have ahead of us.. or who else can make it through this hey daze of a mess."

"Let's go," said Konall. Impatient, he put his sword and shield away and brought out his haxxor. Terrible defense, but he'd be able to crush his way through enemies. He brought his rage to a boil, focusing on what his sister had become, how stupid it was that people were flocking to her aid and their own self-destruction, how many good things would be lost in this and all other worlds if the sword's seals were broken. Anger fueled his muscles, took away the pain of his injuries, and compelled him to smash anyone in his way. And he did.

Dash was able to keep his pace even as their allies fell back under the assault. He had no idea where Kadlin had summoned these monstrosities. That was only the beginning, too, as Dash found himself facing down old enemies from Honorburg and even Adrule. Didn't matter. Nothing was going to stop the buzzsaw Konall had turned into and the stakes were too high for Dash to hold back or fall back.

The heroes punched their way through their enemies, who were fleeing in terror from the onslaught of the gods. Suddenly, a bolt of pure dark energy struck Odin, and he fell over, dead. In an instant, the tide of battle changed. If Kadlin was greater than even the gods, how could anyone stand against her? All of Kadlin's forces turned as she imbued them with dark energy, their blades able to destroy body and soul, and even that which was previously immortal.

The heroes took a setback, and even Konall's berserker rage came to a halt, their advance turned into a halt, and then a fighting retreat. But even that wasn't enough, and soon Dash found himself in the grip of an Adrulian woodenknuckle, fighting to get himself free of the chokehold. Meanwhile, three oversized Knob Smashers had gotten Konall's arms, forcing him to drop his weapon and shield as a third pounded on him. For a few moments, the only thing to be heard over the battle were Konall struggling against the beating and Dash trying to ply the enemy's grip free. Even the space elf found herself in trouble - specifically in a magic bubble courtesy of a Triangle of Barbs mage.

Then.. a voice.

Blazing Inferno!

With it, flames burst out around the enemies surrounding Dash and Konall, forcing them to take a step back. Dash glanced over, seeing Prince Blahking standing there, arms raised for his magical attack, with Fluffy Hamster on his shoulder and Captain Morgan standing behind the two. Dash immediately retrieved his swords and quickly helped Konall take down the mage, setting Slyenia free.

"What're ya waitin for?!" the pirate captain called out to his backup. "Take the enemies, boys, cut us a path to the doors of hell!"

"Aye aye, captain!" a chorus of voices rang out from behind the Captain as wave after wave of pirates, both Captain Morgan's and more, poured from behind him, crashing into the enemies. Past them, Dash caught sight of his ex wife Katalana, engaging in battle alongside other heroes, some of which Dash also recognized. She was too busy to notice Dash, so Sebastian turned his attention back to the matter at hand, putting her out of mind for the moment.

Dash caught sight of Catrina further down. It took him a moment to realize it wasn't in fact, 'our' Catrina but the mirrorworld version of herself, fighting against the odds. Dash couldn't help but wonder how she'd gotten into this fight, but again, that was something to figure out another time.

If there would be another time. The nanites in Dash's blood were relaying information on the world around him, and something was clearly wrong. Something was starting to.. 'break.'

Dash turned to Captain Morgan and Blahking. "We need to get to the tower. Can you fight them off?"

"You got it!" Fluffy squeaked as Blahking simply nodded.

Continuing onward as the others kept reinforcements for the enemies in line, Konall, Dash, and Sylenia stumbled over the corpses of friend and foe as they reached the gates to the tower. "Hurry," said a beautiful, majestic woman dressed in white silks. It was the Nice Sorceress. "We need to stop Kadlin before it's too late!"

Ougun, the war god came up beside them. "You climb to the top. We'll hold the doors against anyone getting in to stop you."

"Perfect timing," the nice one said. "The Council sent me to help debilitate the traps set in the tower. I can only hope I'm up to the noble task."

The fighting raged on behind them. The enemies continued to pour at Dash and Konall. Fortunately, their backup provided a solid wall between them and their enemies. Having a pack of gods on your side didn't hurt, either.

Dash assured her, "I'm sure you're up to it."

It didn't take long to get close to the entrance of what had once been Farnsworthy Tower. "Is it me?" Dash asked, looking up at the monstrosity. "Or did your sister rearrange everything within half a mile of here? Including the tower itself?"

Konall had no answer to that. The tower looked bigger, more menacing. More tellingly, there were several new additions past the sheer increase in bulk. Dash could only wonder what was waiting inside for them.

Through the gates stood an indoor garden, the first level of the tower. Sunlight streamed in through the windows to shine on an indoor garden full of hedges, each part of a twisting maze.

"I wonder what mess Kadlin set up for us here," said Konall.

earlier

Kadlin prepared the first obstacle to keep her safe while she performed the ritual. She opened the soul jar and called forth three dozen souls. The hedges around the tower were bound with thorns. As a necromancer she had power over life and death, and she used both as she affixed soul to hedge under her control and then mutated the plant life to become a golem. She didn't have the time to spare to animate all the hedges, but these would do. All the hedges she commanded to uproot themselves and plant their hardened trunks and deep roots in a maze. The living golems would move throughout the maze, rearranging it so that the correct solution was always out of reach. And they would be indistinguishable from the normal hedges until they ambushed unwary intruders. Was it a permanent defense? Perhaps not. But it would slow and wear down intruders for the greater hazards beyond. ;

"The expedient solution seems to mean simply burning a hole through it," Sylenia said, firing up her wrist blaster and taking aim. "We're not used to dealing with magic. Do any of you have any thoughts?"

Konall butchered the nearest hedge with his haxxor. "I'm not much for thinking."

The elf shrugged and burned a Konall-sized hole clear to the other side of the room. Hedge golems, some flaming, some not, rushed toward them through the gap she created, thorns whipping out at the heroes.

Konall's arms were tied down, but he headbutted his opponent, which might have been more effective if his opponent had a head. Freeing himself from the vines with his berserker strength, he hacked at the golems like a crazed lumberjack with murder in his eyes.

The battle did not last long. With Dash's blade, Konall's haxxor and the burning inferno of Sylenia's blaster, the few golems that Kadlin had conjured lay in pieces while on fire.

Before them lay the stairs that led up to Kadlin's sanctum. As Dash ran up the stairs, a bolt of energy flew toward him. Reacting on instinct, he held up his mirrored sword and the bolt deflected off, hitting a nearby parakeet.

slightly less earlier
Kadlin finished the last of the halls. Each one had a different magical enchantment that threatened anyone who lacked her level of power. Fire, shadow, ice, and several other hazards would keep her safe as she worked on completing her ritual.

; 
Up ahead Dash saw a hallway covered in ice. The faint breeze that blew through it went right through his clothes, chilling him to the core. He stepped back.

"I'll handle this," said Konall.

As he pressed forward, the cold quickly worked through Konall's fur armor, passing through skin and muscle, and reaching bone. And there it stopped. Part of the cold was magical, but Konall was born in the cold, and had become hardened against it. He should have frozen in place, but his body was capable of handling that level. Part of that cold was magical, but Konall's spirit pushed through it. His spirit had endured ten-thousand hardships: horrendous battles, the loss of his sister, the loss of his people, and many uncounted more. This was nothing. As a berserker, his anger brought warmth that could overcome any cold. And he kept going.

At the end, there was an orb of ice. Konall guessed that if someone took the time to carefully remove the enchantments on it, the supernatural cold in this room would end. He smashed it with his haxxor. Sure enough, the room warmed up almost instantly. The Nice Sorceress took the lead.

The next room was shrouded in darkness. Black, poisonous fog wafted through it, concealing dark, jagged shards of pure malevolence. Shadows crept about as if to devour any life that entered, shadows that existed without any life source to support them. Behind those, nearly black beams of lights bounced back and forth. The nanites in Konall and Dash informed them they were 'lasers,' highly dangerous.

"Useful little things, aren't they Konall?" Dash asked, drawing a confused glance from the nice one.

"Creepy little things." He strode into the darkness and stumbled back out, covered in oozing sores. "Bad idea."

"What?" Dash looked up from what he was doing- examining his twin swords. "Oh, hey don't go in there, too dangerous."

"Thanks," said Konall, coughing the poisonous gas from his lungs.

"I got a lay of the room from the nanites' scan," Dash said, resting his grip on his mirrorsword. "Bad Beats is a Kitsune enhanced sword. Give me a second.. and.. there we go.."

As Dash held Bad Beats in front of him, the sword seemed to glow with holy power. Dash cautiously poked the darkness with it, driving it back. Dash started pushing his way into the room, with the darkness closing behind him. Without warning, a dark laser bounced off the wall, into Dash. Reacting with uncanny speed, he swung the sword to deflect it. Without hesitation. Without thought. Dash repeated the motion twice before he got to the room, dropped the mirrorsword, and threw Bad Beats at a seemingly pure black spot in the room. Dash ducked back through the door as an explosion rocked the room, panting and blistered from the flames.

"Should.." Dash huffed. "Should be okay now."

"What was that?" asked Konall.

"What was what?" Dash asked. "Oh.. that was what I trained for. Don't tell me you're impressed after staring down a blizzard singlehandedly?"

"No, I mean since when does your sword explode? I gotta get me one of those."

Dash shrugged. "Pretty sure it was the darkness.. whatever was behind the room of horrors. Not the sword. Let's go, I need to see how badly damaged it is."

Dash walked into the next room, the darkness slowly fading. The others followed.

"Cattaras didn't tell me he had a place here," Sebastian said as he looked at the next room, which dripped with ooze and innuendo. "You take this one Konall." Sebastian idly examined his sword, which seemed to have escaped the damage more or less intact.

"Nah," said Konall. "You're always chatting up babes. You're practically a sleaze elemental. You take it."

"I am not!" Dash argued, blushing slightly.

"I'll do it," said Sylenia.

She waded into the pit of slime and bodily fluids, her suit sealing out any foreign contaminants while cataloguing the various diseases that this cesspit held. But it couldn't filter out the psychic input of the constant barrage of nasty images that poured into her head.

But Sylenia was a scientist. She had no reason to show revulsion at normal, or highly abnormal bodily functions. She'd seen most of them before on the Sylir network. It was a part of life. She detached her emotions from what she was viewing and slogged through the psychic muck just as she did the physical muck, one step at a time. Finally, she found the submerged sleaze crystal, threw it into the air, and shattered it with a wrist blast. The gunk oozed back into the cracks or evaporated, and the path was cleared. More specifically, the path ahead of them was cleared. Dash looked back, seeing new threats already starting to form. If Kadlin's tower was generating new defenses, that would mean every group or individual to enter the castle would have to fight through their own puzzles.

Dash sighed, hoping they were up for it, and then turned to follow Slyvenia and Konall further into the dungeon.

* * *

The party reached the top of the tower, and found the glaive sitting embedded in the stone floor, surrounded by magical runes. The oppressive aura of the horrible magic involved was apparent to all, even Konall. You couldn't walk into that room without a profound sense of wrongness.

Kadlin was nowhere to be found. Dash looked out the windows which opened to the battlefield below, looked onto the roof and the sides of the building. They were clear. Konall smashed the crates and urns in the room. He found a few rupees, but no Kadlin. Sylenia used all the scanning equipment in her suit to find any traces of the sauceress. None.

The nice sorceress strode over to the glaive and began chanting. Konall drew his sword. "What are you doing."

The nice woman held her hand to her mouth in shock. "Why, I'm trying to use the power of the glaive to undo this ritual."

"No," said Konall. "Magic has made a mess of things. We're not using magic to solve it. Back away."

The Nice Sorceress shot Konall with a ball of energy, slamming him against the wall. She raised her arms over her head and took on her true form, black hair, black leather. "Finally, I'm going to take the power I foresaw myself taking," she monologued.

Dash and Sylenia rushed in to deal with her, but a wave of darkness slammed into the two, sending them flying into the far wall, which cracked slightly under the repeated impact.

Konall fought to stand up, his injuries adding up. This bitch had betrayed them all. That made him furious, and fury led to berserking. He gathered the last of his strength and charged the Nice Sorceress, or maybe he should call her the Naughty Sorceress. He charged her as she repelled him with a shield of energy. The traitorous Naughty Sorceress used the shield to trap Konall against the wall, looking to crush him.

She started to say something but got interrupted as a bolo slammed into her chest, forcing her to release the hold on Konall. Dash leapt at her, trying to drive his sword into her body but she nimbly dodged it and flicked her wrist, sending Dash tumbling to the ground.

"You thought Kadlin was the ultimate threat? You think she spent all her energy building this place? You wondering how I got here so easily? I've been biding my time, waiting to seize her power. And now I'm going to." She reached for the glaive, calling forth enough dark power to kill Dash, Sylenia, and Konall in one blast, and then obliterate their souls.