Within Gynesis's crystalline prison, the banished ALU laid on his back looking like a beached starfish. He was knocked out cold thanks to the woman who'd sent him there, wearing what he had on before transforming. That being a red tracksuit with vertical white stripes and gray running shoes. As well as a new and unknown black and red accessory around his neck.
Around the male deity were trees, lots of trees. Massive, towering pillars of lumber with trunks thicker than sedans were long peppered themselves all around the still slumbering exorcist. The floor he was sleeping on was covered in a thick bed of brown and crunchy leaves. Above him hung the full moon, shining brilliantly, even if only a small fraction of that luminance made it to the wooded floor below. All while the winds howled endlessly, beating on the god's face with relentless fervor, a constant reminder of his current circumstances was this unnatural phenomenon.
It didn't take much time for Gynesis to reawaken, his eyes violently snapping open as he flung himself upright with a panicked frenzy after only being there for around 2 minutes. In one motion, the exorcist had repositioned himself to standing on his feet, looking around like a startled pigeon to take in where the hell he was. The details of his surroundings didn't give much to go off of. 'A forest? The fuck?' Was all the male deity could piece together at the moment.
Details like the trees being unnaturally and slender, as well as the impossibly strong winds blowing against his skin with a bitter bite to them. Obvious signs he wasn't on earth or in Gamindustri. Unless this was some kind of dungeon he never crawled before. After all, that kind of thing was more of Mugen's forte.
Not to mention the overbearing sense of dread filling the air. Hell, shit was so thick he felt like he could cut it with a butter knife thanks to how sketchy the place looked. To the new god, this place was looking shadier than a dark alleyway in Gotham's poorest sector. 'This whole place screams haunted... Best salt the area at least, making a quick circle around myself should keep the get rid of the weak ghosts if they're stupid enough to touch it and ward the mid ones.' As naturally as he breathed, the male searched for his exorcists' tools to deal with whatever undead threats he believed were nearby and could spring at him at any time. 'As for the strong ones... Let's hope and pray we don't meet one of those here.'
'Where the fuck am I?!' Gynesis thought to himself, patting himself down in his search. Coming up empty handed aside from the clothes on his back and his fists. Meaning he had zero talismans, no parchment papers, no salts, and none of his magatamas he wore on a necklace under his shirt. With little of his bag available, the man started calling out to his weapon mentally, hoping for an answer.
'Great! Fucking great! Lazarus?!' The man tried calling out to his spiritual sword, a weapon whom he had a connection with so deep they could speak to each other mentally across great distances, a boon he's abused many times during his adventures. Turns out being an exorcist in Metropolis and Gotham means getting spiritually punted across vast distances across many planes of existence.
Getting jack shit as his response, Gynesis deduced that either A: he was in a sperate dimension, or B: Lazarus was sealed in a separate dimension. There was also C: He was simply too far away for the mental link to work.
'What the fuck?!' The ALU growled internally, already getting pissed at his current circumstances. After all he's not only in some backwater dimension, but by himself, devoid of his tools, and he didn't even have his spiritual weapon on him. Hell, he even felt like his brand new power source he unlocked not even 30 minutes ago was gone too.
'That bitch showed up out of nowhere, waxed me and my twin, then sent me to some fucked up forest?! Aw HEELL naw!' Internally, the man was mad as shit, mentally flailing his arms in exasperation and annoyance at his situation. Externally, he was cool and collected, albeit staring daggers at some random tree as if it owed him money.
If you went by strictly external signs, it'd be safe to assume he was unfazed by his predicament at hand, if not a little annoyed. But that couldn't be farther from the truth as the hlaf redhead was absolutely pissed beyond belief. 'Okay, calm down. You're down your shit, down your friends, down familiar grounds, and down your main form of dealing damage... Don't worry, don't panic...' Gynesis spoke to himself, taking deep breaths to keep himself from doing something stupid out of panic or anger. 'Keep calm and everything will sort itself out... That's what mom says anyway. Let's try a bit of exploring, kay?' He told himself to keep his morale high despite being on his own at the moment, walking with a slow, meticulous, and measured stride as he treated every footstep taken like he was about to step on a landmine. As to where he was heading? He knew not, just that it was a straight line away from where he'd recently awakened.
The deity's tactics on maintaining order within his psyche worked well enough. He managed to keep himself from losing his cool as he began moving in some random direction. 'What's with these trees? It's like they're all the same distance apart from each other...' Gynesis mentally pointed out, feeling a bit weirded out by the fact that he wasn't too far off from the mark. The trees were all at the same distance from each other.
He trekked slowly and scrupulously, using what little distinctions in the wood he saw as landmarks for his surroundings as he marched through the wood he woke up in. As second naturedly as he reached for his salts earlier, the deity reached into his pocket to fish out his phone, catching a fistful of lint in the process. 'Right...' He grimaced at his inability to wield his handheld device. 'I can't even record this shit for Vali... She'd so fuck with a place like this, the draconic nut.'
Like an egotistical washed up influencer, the man found himself preoccupied with the thought of recording his situation instead of fixing it or panicking over it. That or he was simply occupied with the thought of whichever woman was on his mind, most likely a girlfriend or sister. Actually, the second one made way more sense.
'Girlfriend, she's a horror movie enthusiast when she isn't boxing mother fuckers.' Gynesis answered the unasked question, chuckling to himself as he remembered a fond memory for a second before his smile died just as quickly as it came. 'Above all else, I'm getting out of whatever hellhole this that lioness bitch put me in.' The deity swore to himself, arriving at a new area altogether.
It looked a lot like some kind of gate. A gateway to a massive courtyard if the exorcist's guess were to be correct. 'This could be a problem...' The man mused mentally, instinctively reaching for a sword that wasn't on his hip, causing him to stare forward similar to a certain gif of a soldier staring into the camera. 'Right...' He mentally reminded himself that Lazarus was currently unequipped. and there was nothing he could do about it. If anything, the poor sword was probably still in Pride's nasty mouth. A thought Gynesis was not happy to think about right now. Prompting him to mentally switch channels back to the gate, which was glowing a bright white, shining down on the deity with an imposing aura.
'Hold on, the fuck is this shit? Looks like some kind of-' The exorcist tried mentally noting that the whole thing looked like a trap of sort, only for a small group of entities to interrupt his train of thought.
He'd be cut off by around four feminine and humanoid visages landing before him. They'd jumped the gate, each striking a menacing pose brandishing a weapon towards the male threateningly. By their looks, they weren't human, nor alive.
Two of them seemed rather tall and top heavy, at least half a foot taller than Gynesis himself, and with Amazonian builds in what looked like brown leather upper armor and knife-plated blue skirts. The other two were closer to average height, at around the lower estimate of six feet tall and far more slender, donning A-line blue skirts and no upper armor to speak of. Instead their chests were covered with basic linen shirts.
'Four hostiles, possible magical zombies. Ghouls could fit bill as well.' The ALU deduced as he took a defensive stance, which the women retaliated in kind, raising their weapons and slowly encroaching on the man's personal space without word. 'Lighter skin, limited facial expressions, lack of verbal communication... I'm going with ghoul until I start to hear moaning, cuz those kinds of moves are not typical of zombies.'
The two more built entities each held a polearm, one being a naginata and the other being a poleaxe, each pointed directly at Gynesis. While the two more slender visages of the feminine form wielded what looked like sabers, the same sabers used by pirates in the 1500s.
With all of of these enemies wielding weapons, Gynesis found himself weighing his options. 'Maybe fighting isn't necessary at the moment? After all, running away could work... And seeing as I don't know how powerful these things are.
Slowly, the man began trying to back away, putting one foot behind the other to begin a tactical retreat, only for his foot to hit something. It was hard, and it hurt a little to touch whatever that was.
Instantly, the new god looked over his shoulder to check and see what it was that he just hit, his eyes falling on big black barrier with the phrase "FIGHT OR DIE!" written on it. Yeah, retreat was not an option anymore, it never was.
"I see..." The exorcist sighed, the entities no longer slowly encroaching, but quickly dashing over to the man's current location, silently rushing the man down with the two lighter women already within swinging range thanks to a speed advantage. Instead of panicking, Gynesis closed his eyes, as if accepting what was going down.
"There's nowhere to run, huh?" He chuckled to himself, a sharpened saber coming down from the heavens to bisect the male where he stood while another was getting ready to stab him right in the stomach.
"...Have it your way."