~~Eric~~
He walked over to the wall of gold, and tore at it with his claws. His claws left a scratch, but nothing more. He tried again, snarling, growling, and eventually roaring with each swing of his claws against the wall. The gate Matthew destroyed to get them into the casino, was apparently nothing compared to the strength of the walls they'd need to break through to get out.
"Quite the m-metaphor," Natasha said. "You can get in, b-but you can't get out."
He snapped her a harsh glare and a quick growl, which earned a growl in return from Arturo. They squared off against each other, baring their teeth and leaning in close enough to pose a threat. One wrong move and they'd rip the other's throat out.
"Stop," Brianna said, and she snapped a bark at the both of them. "We--"
"You sent us in here," Matthew said, throwing his own snarl at Brianna.
"There is tunnel! Connects to other casino!"
"Below us!"
Eric stamped his foot hard, and his talons dug at the crimson carpet as he glared at the others.
"Now we're trapped! What can--"
A gunshot forced the four werewolves to spin and face the source of the noise. Little Natasha, gun pointed up and away, glaring at them.
"Enough! W-We don't have t-time for this! This casino connects to the neighbor casino, yes. But now Red T-Tide is guarding the exit, and the connecting path. We have to get back down there, and past Red Tide. How!?"
The four werewolves stared at her, each of them breathing heavy. They knew they were riding the coattails of Kuruth, and each moment they stayed in their war forms, the more likely they'd freak out, rage, and kill anything that was alive, including each other. Natasha knew it, too, from the look on her face, and she glared at each of them like a teacher royally pissed with her students.
Slowly, the four of them nodded, each of them taking deep breaths as they forced their hearts to calm. Breathe, Luna had told him. Breathe.
"Can we fight it?" she asked.
Arturo shook his head. "Maybe with whole pack. Maybe."
That was a big maybe. As strong as Uratha were, and built from the ground up to deal with threats like spirits, they couldn't fight spirits strong enough to control entire cities, not without exploiting its bans or using its banes. If they fought it without them, it'd take Avery's whole pack, Flowing Sanctuary, and Eric, and a lot of luck to bring down something that big. Which made their situation really fucking problematic.
Eric looked down over the railing, and rumbled in his throat. One of the huge spirit's red tentacles reached up, all the way up, and its tip brushed against the floor near Eric's talons. He suppressed the urge to slash it open. No point, yet.
Tash came up beside him, careful of the tendril, and peeked down over the railing. "Can we d-distract it?"
"Easily," Arturo said. "Red Tide is angry. Stupid. Always hungry for blood."
"Like a vampire?" the little vampire asked. "Oh. You m-mean, it always wants to fight."
"Yes."
"So we b-bait it with a promise of a fight?"
"Perhaps," Flow said. "Black Blood is forcing it to attack us, so there is uncertainty."
As if someone tied an anchor to Natasha's neck and threw it over the railing, her head slumped and her body tightened. Eric knew what she was going to say before she said it.
"We have to get out of here, and b-back to the physical world, to tell people what's happening. If we can't kill Red Tide, then someone will have to d-distract it." She pulled her head up against the weight, and looked to Arturo.
Arturo nodded, leaned in, gave Natasha a lick on her cheek, and before she could say anything more, he jumped over the railing.
Everyone stared down over the edge of the balcony as Arturo landed on the floor below them, the third floor, and sliced at the huge red tendril still reaching up for the rest of them. Red Tide let out a bellowing roar, as if a whale had decided to bring down the walls of Jerusalem with only its voice. Everyone covered their ears except Flow, as the vibration ripped through the whole building and churned the blood lake until it boiled.
Arturo leaned over the railing long enough for Red Tide to realize who'd hurt it, before ducking away as a dozen enormous tendrils lashed out for him. The railing of gold and glass shattered, and the entire floor bent under the weight of the spirit as it pulled some of its kraken mass up out of the blood lake. The squid, octopus, monstrous entity, was deeper than the depth of the lake itself. Only maybe eight feet of blood waited below, but something far, far bigger come up and out of it, showing its giant, circular mouth, hundreds of its teeth, and two of its dark, squid-like eyes.
"I know you, Uratha," it said. "How. Dare. You. Come out and die."
However strong Red Tide was, it couldn't lift its own mass, not completely. But it wouldn't need to. With some of its tendrils pulling on the second floor and already pulling the entire balcony down, cracking and breaking the gold until it slanted down toward the bottom, once it got a good grip on the third floor balcony, the same thing would happen.
But it was distracted.
Tash reached out, and tapped each of her friends on the arm. The wolf in Eric told him she'd just used a Discipline, something invisible, something that warped and twisted air and light and perception, and told everyone and everything watching that there was nothing there to see. It was like a smell, something his human nose would never find. And hopefully since it wrapped him, Brianna, Tash, and Matthew, it'd hide them from Red Tide well enough they could slip past it.
"Go," she said.
Eric and Flow went first. There was no time to climb down the individual floors, so they did the only reasonable thing: they jumped to the bottom floor. Some of the larger machines poked up from the red waves, and with everything made of solid gold, they were strong enough to withstand his weight. Flow had a harder time, but it managed to come down as a solid, thick stream of water, spinning like a compressed tornado. If Red Tide noticed, Arturo quickly rectified that. They didn't have a chance to look back and check, but the noises Red Tide made were deafening.
Brianna and Matthew came next, both landing on the fountain bowl held up by the now drowned gold men. Only the bowl remained visible.
Eric breathed deep the smell of blood. The Hisil realm was all ephemera, nothing was made of flesh or metal, but the spirits and the realm itself did their best to emulate reality. They failed in a lot of ways, but Red Tide captured the smell of blood almost perfectly, and Eric had to force down the rising urge in his guts that told him to rip and tear. It only grew worse as he watched the colossal monster smash tendrils against the floor Arturo jumped around on.
Arturo would be fine. He was fast, and all Irraka were sneaky. Once the coast was clear, he'd run, and live to hunt another day. The rest of them, on the other hand, were dead if Red Tide turned around.
Tash jumped down last, and Flow softened her impact with an arm of water. The little vampire landed, wetter now, but otherwise without a sound, and the five of them scanned the area for a path. The flood of blood wasn't uniform. Certain areas were higher, especially all the areas around Red Tide itself, like when Flow managed its body when moving over floors and ground. There were patches of floor visible with no blood, but too far to reach. And whatever tunnel door existed between the two casinos, it was probably nearby, and buried in red. The casino exit they'd come in from was their only option.
Eric pointed to another gambling machine, some exaggerated, ridiculous gold box. They all nodded, and everyone took turns jumping to the machine. Flow first, again turning into a spiraling tornado of water that bounced on the machine, and shot off into the distance closer to the exit, where no blood waited. They all looked Red Tide's way, but it didn't notice. Natasha next, following Flow's example. Then Brianna, and Eric. It was a hard jump, and Eric didn't like how the huge gold box teetered slightly when he jumped off it.
Finally came Matthew. When the huge werewolf landed on the gold machine, it teetered over, and crashed into the lake of blood. They'd managed to put a decent distance between themselves and the kraken, so the blood around the machine was only a foot deep. But it was more than enough to launch a huge wave of blood in all directions as the giant gold machine crashed into it.
Red Tide ceased its constant roaring, and spun around, sending glass shards everywhere as its dozen tendrils ripped the railings of the third floor aside before they slammed into the blood with the creature. It glared at them with one of its giant eyes, and again slammed its tendrils, causing waves of crimson to spike up around it.
"Uratha should die. Meddlers. Forsaken."
That word. Forsaken. It shot fire up Eric's veins, and he took a step toward the creature. But a small hand on his elbow stopped him.
"Let's go!" the little vampire said.
He growled as he turned, and the group ran for the exit, now a giant hole from when Red Tide had smashed through it to get in. But they already knew what would happen. A wave of red crashed against them, hard, and threw them all into the chaos of crimson rapids. Flow let out an inhuman shriek before Red Tide's body overtook it, and its blue waters disappeared beneath the waves.
"Flow!" Matthew said, and jumped back to his feet. Eric managed to stay on his feet long enough to look to the goliath werewolf, but the waves flipped Eric over a second later. Matthew, on the other hand, had enough weight that he rushed through the waves fast enough to reach them, and intercept a giant, red log.
