Round 200 Transcript

At dark corridor in New York high rise penthouse suite, the pressure shifts from waiting to immediate risk. The ward answers the party's presence with a fresh pulse through the stone and no one can mistake it for safety. The nearest sign of danger is now structural collapse imminent. Someone has to answer that change now.

Halie's hands press harder against the burning door frame, her burned palms searing with fresh pain but the wardstone energy making them feel like they're being turned inside out. "Silra!" she calls out over Hera's panicked breathing behind her and the wet squelch of the water mixing with spilled lubricant on the floor beneath her boots. "How many seconds until this gives way? My hands can't take much more!"

The mirror she'd propped to brace the door is already slipping, the glass slicked by whatever fluids are seeping through the cracks around it. She shifts her weight, trying to get a better grip with her feet on the treacherous surface while keeping Hera shielded behind her broad back. The wardstone pulses again, a slow, heavy beat that seems to press against her eardrums and her conscience simultaneously. "I'm not going to let that thing touch any of us," she mutters through gritted teeth, more prayer than promise. Her chastity oath burns hotter than her palms, a separate kind of fire that has nothing to do with the physical pain or the adrenaline flooding her system. The thought of what might be waiting in that dark corridor beyond makes her stomach churn with something other than fear—an old, familiar disgust she's learned to recognize as her own body's rejection of certain possibilities. Jeane is channeling something terrifying through that dildo pressed against the wall socket, her face contorted with effort. The sorcerer's arm trembles, and Halie knows they don't have much time before physical limits force a choice neither of them wants to make.