[bestiary] [Jess Rules!
Prelude: A'ight, people. You're in a scene I'm running! For those of you who don't know: This means that, should dicing come up, we will be dicing my way, not necessarily the book's way. Also, there is a star. This scene is no-risk to your character's life. They'll survive! Hold onto that, k? If you've got questions, ask in alphabetdoom! If you've got Sensitive Information or Need Clarification, ask in IMs! Now for the REAL rules.
1. Trust me.
2. Try n' have fun.
3. Uh. Seriously, that's it.
Now I'll get y'all started.]
[Ashley] [Perception + Awareness, specialty mystic objects]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Ashley] [Willpower, +3 for Iron Will]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 3 at target 5)
[bestiary] The first one to arrive [chance (fortune)] is Israel Cohen, and she is the first one Ashley sees, when she 'rounds a corner, standing in front of an old run-down theatre that looks not only as if it's seen better days, but rather as if better days took the house and children when they packed up and left the theatre behind. The paint is peeling, the sidewalk is charred (ash [blackened]), and the entrance is less a door than a recess into some place that is dark. Even the sign is falling apart: Fables of the West - Last Day! There is a single sad tree which is still deep in wintering, no leaves. The bricks are (decay [entropy], slow dissolution), and there's no place to buy tickets outside.
That's all inside.
Ashley sees the theatre, and she weathers it: she knows whatever she's chasing is inside, and because this is Chicago, she likely guesses that Israel is standing in front of it because she, too, felt what the Hermetic felt. Neither the Orphan or the Hermetic get a sense of danger, just: be cautious (be awake). The wind is still circling, cold-snap, bones-and-marrow, shatter-wonder. Gregor's approach has him coming from the opposite direction Ashley is coming, and what he sees is quite different.
[Morgan Lake] [Per + Aware]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 4, 4, 4 (Failure at target 6)
to bestiary
[Ashley] Ashley has always had an odd sort of fondness for derelict buildings. There's something forbidding about them, something sad, ruined glory and wasted promise: like the shed skin of a snake lying broken about a rock. So when she approaches this old theater, it immediately strikes her as interesting. Not necessarily something she would want to crawl inside and have a look around in on a normal day, but today is not.
And of course she sees Israel, and waits for Israel to see her, and remembers half a beat later that the woman is blind. "Hey, Israel," she calls, and begins her approach toward the Orphan, wondering at her presence. Perhaps they have an acquaintance in common or perhaps Ashley was mistaken about what called her here in the first place.
"You didn't just happen to wander by, did you."
[Morgan Lake]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 6, 7, 8 (Failure at target 8)
to bestiary
[Israel Cohen] Jeffrey Blaine [this name, the long version of it, exists only in the wry, dry humour of her mind] is indeed, a pain. [Blaine is a pain; must certainly a pain - the rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain and Jeffrey Blaine is one horrendous pain] It's a sing song in her head because it soothes the nerves, rhythms do; they are hypnotic in their own right [it is no coincidence that tribal rituals so often incorporate percussive instruments of some sort]. She's standing there sniffing the air, her head slightly tilted like she's listening for something on a breeze, a sprite-of-a-woman, just barely reaching 5'1" and that only after the boost given by the two inch heels of her boots.
Footfall has her turning her head [not jumpy. not rigid. but keen and concentrated] in Ashley's direction before she hears her name spoken. Her brow furrows. A moment, a beat, then the sound of the voice [it's timbre and pitch, its relative height that is close to her own] is matched with information [the Hermetic, yes. Ashley. Fitting.] and her lips quirk, a pale shadow of a smile, not because she dislikes the company but because the Hermetic's words quite cement the general sensation of... wrongness? Weirdness? Out-of-place but not out-of-mind...
"Nope. Wish I could say I did. Convergence." It may or may not mean anything to Ashley, as it does the blind woman and her cabal-mate. Coincidences and Fate -- debatable. Convergence? Indisputable.
[bestiary] Enid is not near the Others. Enid does not even know that there are Others to be near right now. Enid doesn't know that something's just opened wide. Enid doesn't know that there's a convergence. What Enid knows is this: all the way over in Lake View, near Graceland cemetery, she was walking on her own, she was Feeling the lay of the land (not very well, although she doesn't know that), when she saw him coming out of a Starbucks. Her Dad.
to Morgan Lake
[Gregor] "Ashley."
The Dreamspeaker is sweating. Wide eyes have since shrunk to normalcy and his gaze finds the Hermetic with something steeled calm. The world of a half minute ago is briefly forgotten, quiet flashes of something drifting on the edge of his peripheral senses. His hands wrap themselves around one another, wringing and brushing the smooth surface of the glassy shards stitched into the tops of the gloves. Reflections of the world (Glance there, for a moment. See the twist and flail of movement, sharp and static and desperate, the window too small to see proper what is on the other surface) hidden under fingers and hands.
His shadow stretches, seems to fizz at the outer edges. His gaze finds the theatre, brow furrowed and nostrils flared. Cords of muscle run his neck and throat and he swallows. Repeatedly, against some constriction of the self.
"...Something's broken. Out..." a beat "...In, I'm not sure..." Strain in the voice, pushed down subtly by a firm (shaken) will. Israel is given a pass over with careful eyes, barely registered for the reactions of another world.
[Ashley] "Appears so," Ashley says. "I thought I was being called on to return a favor, but I suppose not." She turns her eyes back toward the theater, standing beside the Orphan: simultaneously an odd couple and something of a matched pair, between their height and dark hair and small frames and offset, of course, by everything that lies beneath.
Then there is Gregor's voice. Gregor has a habit of approaching her on her blind side, never letting her know that he's there until she hears her name. So she starts when she hears it, but when she pinwheels to face him she does not seem surprised to see him here.
Silently, she reaches up and puts a firm hand on the Dreamspeaker's elbow as though to remind him of where he is (solidarity). Then there's a glance toward the theater. "Broken out? I got the impression that there was something inside. Should we go in?"
[Israel Cohen]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 8)
[Morgan Lake] And cue: stalk still [Enid] Morgan, staring at her father as he exits Starbucks - she doesn't know what he's been told as to why she hasn't been in contact after being so careful about sending him an email at least to check in every third day while she really was gone. She stands, waits, counts, stares [I don't want you to go. I'll eat you up I love you so.] until if she doesn't make herself disappear, she's going to be caught. His body is already turning her way, though he's talking over his shoulder to someone else - one of the professors, or one of his students, Enid assumes.
She doesn't wait to find out.
Into a nearby alley it is, the better to avoid being seen, to hide, to wish that she didn't need to do so - it's never a good thing, hiding from one's parents. Enid's a good kid, and close with hers (especially her dad), and she misses him. Now, she misses him more.
to bestiary
[bestiary] He looks tired. Her Dad does, that is. If Enid took a moment to look at him -- to really look at the face she can't ever see again (shouldn't ever see again) -- she'll see that he looks tired. That there are dark circles around his eyes. That maybe he's lost some weight, just a little. What've they told him? He doesn't look like he's in mourning (but he must be [unless he thinks she's still in China, not coming home, doesn't want to talk to him]). Would he think that? Does he miss her?
Enid flits to an alley, and only moments after, her Dad is there again, walking outside, walking down the alley, his head down, his keys jingling in his palm, his fingers drumming against the side of his pants, his shoulders a slope that says down (down, down underground). There's a door, and she can open it, hide behind it: if she's fast.
to Morgan Lake
[Israel Cohen] A man's voice now; a man who radiates nerves and tension; frisson and friction that has a way of being contagious. For now, though, it only leaves her all the more on the alert; hyper-awareness a sheen over her flesh like other people perspire or pregnant women [the lucky ones] glow. She doesn't interject, she doesn't jump about her swing her head to and fro or.. well, any other such thing. She listens, sharply, one eyebrow arching when Gregor speaks of things breaking out, breaking in, a frown on the bow of her lips. [an immediate sense of her missing cabal mate - this is already sounding like something right up his alley
Then she reaches out a hand for where she'd last heard Ashley's voice, patting air for a moment before she finds the womans bicep or shoulder or... something. "Hold on. Two of my students are in their.. arguing. Music. Popcorn and apple blossoms and... just hold on."
She reaches into a pocket and draws out a gold coin, looking like gelt, like the kind of thing you might expect to be gold-foil wrapped and handed out during Chanukkah for the dreidle games; the pad one one slight thum smooths over its surface, while she murmurs under her breath; breathing outward slowly, cupping the coin in one loose fist as she raises it to her lips and breaths through the opening, open mouthed. Moist heat. [breath of life - hey - a sound, an invocation; the blessedness that gave animation to the Golem Adam and his Rib, for the first one, She was too Proud] Glottal words, then fluid, the old sound of Hebrew but older still, ah, yes, more ancient than all that. [god within you; god without. God left this Wonderwork long ago, don't you know?]
Breath without and breath within, it lingers and hangs in the air around her; though muted and hard to discern: Masked. Still that sense of Sorrow she carries [lamentations of the earth, it wails beneath you; it hurts just so] crests softly; slowly. Yearning.
She grimaces.
"I heard them.. but now I don't. Or I do.. but there's nothing to touch. There's a woman at least; she's cold and the job is strange. It's her last day. They are taking a long time downstairs. And then..." The weeping crest that is her magic shifts back again, down, away. Returned. "Something... old. Sleepy. Aware. Dreaming or awake; awake or wanting to Dream."
[Morgan Lake] DaddyDaddyDaddy, goes her mind, and, I miss you, I want to come home, do you miss me and want me back too? Again, it's a last minute decision; her dad may see or hear the door opening, may catch a glimpse of long red hair, but then she's gone, tucked away behind the door and leaned somewhere with her hands pressed against her face, fingers digging into her eyes until patterns form.
Deep breaths are taken in an attempt to force herself to calm, and it comes eventually . . . but she's listening for those footfalls, for the sound of her father walking away from her.
to bestiary
[bestiary] [Does He? NPC: What's Up? roll]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 6, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
to Morgan Lake
[Gregor] "...Feel it crack the world."
Something timorous. Quiet and not all together there. Ashley's touch elicits the same response, Ashley had gathered when Gregor had spoken her name. The elbow jerks sharply and the body follows, head snapping down to the little Hermetic a moment (Feral shrieks and bellows, leaving blinded, leaving go now wanting to not....not...now) arm held close to his chest, a deep breath settling through his nostrils. Taking the time, taking the energy and focus to breathe. Deeply. Over and over. Sustainable calm. Effort.
Should we go in?
Hesitation. Staring. Weighing something quiet (eyes) vs. something loud (separated mind) and possibilities-
"Yeah." Nodding. Reassuring. Himself or Ashley or both, they'd never know. His hand appears from within the shroud of rags that comprise the majority of his clothing, strips of a torn jacket, shredded almost to unrecognizable. In that hand, a gleaming something, edged and wrapped in the same duct tape. A moment's flash for the shiv in hand, then he's stepping forward, toward the theatre, a hand out for the door(s) with intent in movements and mannerisms.
Israel speaks. Rhythmic. Metaphor. Riddles and students. Arguments and slumber. Gregor pauses at the front of the door, free hand held out to the doorway, brushing old memories and archaic foundation.
"We have to get them out." Single minded. Direct. Without the forethought of 'What ifs' or 'buts'. Necessity makes a crusader, but then, as Ashley can attest, Gregor's necessity is born from something deeper. Spoken of in movements. In the stain of sweat tinging the air, frail and brittle under Israel's nose.
(See the Wretch. Drowning in his hole. His eyes are missing, held in the hands of a bored little boy at the top of the prison pit, pointing them downward, that He, the Wretch, might dig unblind, his way at the muck that avalanches around him. To the shins now. The cold sucks at his toes)
[Morgan Lake] [Dex + Stealth, +1 diff for unskilled]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 3, 9 (Success x 1 at target 7)
to bestiary
[Ashley] Ashley looks sidelong at Israel as the woman reaches out and grabs hold of her shoulder so that she has some guide in the way that leads thither (the half-blind leading the blind, not the ideal setup.) Then she looks sidelong to Gregor, who she had her hand on, offering support, until he moves away with the shiv in his hand. Both of them talking in half-theres and abstracts and tangled thoughts.
Briefly, the Hermetic's eyes roll skyward. "All we need is Kage," she says dryly as she steps ahead after Gregor, "and you guys could form some kind of horrible neverending riddle triad."
She makes sure Israel's hold on her shoulder is firm enough that she can follow along and then quickens her step toward the building. "I don't see anything in there yet," she tells the two of them, "or hear anything." Which means she's skeptical of whether there's actually a 'them' to get out; Ashley is Hermetic, her Will unshakable and her Mind difficult to alter, and these two are not.
It means she's far more inclined to trust her own stimuli (when is she not?)
Gregor pauses at the door and Ashley is right behind him, reaching out a hand to push the door open. It doesn't waver. When she'd asked whether they should go in it had been nearly rhetorical: of course they would go in, because Gregor and Israel can't keep themselves from helping and Ashley can't keep herself from looking.
So she steps inside.
[Ashley] [Countermagic, oh boy!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 1, 7 (Botch x 2 at target 8)
[bestiary] Ashley steps inside. And then, Ashley is gone.
[Gregor] (Keep it Together!)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[bestiary] Mysterious NPC Roll!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 3, 9 (Success x 1 at target 7)
[Israel Cohen] "Kage?" It isn't a question that comes from feeling completely lost: There is an air of surprised recognition to it. Or at lest the guess of surprised recognition. After all, how many people named Kage do you know? Even as she queries, she is shaking her head: Now is hardly the time after all.
There is much she misses: Looks and shivs being pulled and expressions of determination or fear or both. But enough is plain enough to go on: They are going in. One is frightened but pushes himself. One is like steele; like the people of the Show Me state; marching in because she'll make up her own mind on what's going on, you pansy-assed, frilly, undisciplined esoteric types! And then the blind woman, following with a hand on Ashley's shoulder and the tap-tap-tap of her guide cane until they stop at the door. The door the Hermetic moves to open...
Gone. She might have missed this, too, were it not for the sudden burst of magic; the disappearance of the shoulder just under her delicate hand.
This is what happens when you go charging in, Crusaders and Skeptics.
To Gregor: "You! Don't go barging in. Let me see if I can sense her."
Again fluid words slip from her lips; the coin palmed and caressed; organic and visceral.
[Gregor] "...What-...No, stop..."
Talking to invisible bodies. Gregor's eyes raze the air before him, the shiv gripped hard enough to bruise the flesh as Ashley's shape simply blinks out of existence. Sans noise. Sans visual. The threshold of the Theatre becomes empty the moment she slips through, Israel's hand dropping off into nowhere. Something boils, threads and sharks the waters of his mind for a moment.
...and it's every inch of anything the Dreamspeaker can be to not go charging through the Door-
-or back onto the Sidewalk and away from here.
He roots in place, beside the blind woman and the crackle of shadows, pushing, lengthening and reaching outward, like wicked come to collect, frays and scatters around him as if to hold up and support that weeping sorrow that suffuses the air. Resonance gathers and nearly chokes the throat as the two remaining Mages nearly stumble against one another.
"...They're pulling it wider." Desperation. Haunted rasp. "....Ashley?" Tentative. Tall (shoulder brushes arm, striking hard bone of the elbow). Strong earth smell (dusty). Sweating. Looming out front. Edge of the threshold, with the small blind woman behind. Trembling (vague cast of subtle threads, rags, dusting knuckles and fingers and brow)
"...They're tearing it wider!" Anger. Something deep rooted. That same desperate. An urgency. Terrible.
"Whatever you're doing, hurry." Seconds. Moments. Measure how you like. Crumbling in that tone. Crumbling resistance.
[bestiary] The door is open so Gregor can see inside, even if Israel gets no more than a sense of space (of stale [apple blossom] air). He can see the carpet, well-worn and old, threadbare, some remnant of a glory that's long ago fallen to dusk. There was a pattern of leaves, once. Now, there's a pattern of footprints. Burn-marks, maybe, scuffed-things, nibble-marks from rats around the corners (rat droppings, too: sh. There, behind the arcade). There's a woman with curving cheeks, plump, but lustrous-eyed, dark-haired, staring vacantly into nothing when Ashley walks through the door and smears away, wiped clean, out've sight, out've mind.
She blinks, slowly, Sleeper, nothing aware about her at all, when Ashley disappears right there in front of her, and Israel starts to mutter, chaunting in the doorway, and homeless-looking sweat-stale Gregor crowds in too, muttering crazily, and then she says,
"I fucking hate my job," and, showing a stoic aplomb, turns aside, picks up her broom, and then approaches the doorway determinedly. The broom is gripped the way some might grip a baseball bat they were threatening home invaders.
[bestiary] Maybe he didn't see her. Enid would like to believe that -- wouldn't she? Or maybe she'd much rather believe that her father, who loves her, would be able to sense her, would know that she was near, even if she wasn't allowed to show herself. Maybe she'd like him to catch her; some part of her would like that (what would the Uncles do to him [the ones that are left]). The door opens, and she doesn't so much as feel the warp-and-weft of the world change (door opens here [and a door opens elsewhere]). But she does hear, just as she shuts the door behind her, her father's voice. He says: "Enid? Enid? En--"
Then the door is closed. She's listening, and doesn't hear him finish her name. As if it were a bone, stuck in his throat, and now he was choking on it, dying. The room she's in is dark and dusty, little more than a closer, smells of sewage, smells of summer-heat-making-the-river-stink.
to Morgan Lake
[Gregor] "...They're Tearing it open!"
You be the Sleeper. Day to day job. 8.50 an hour if you're lucky. Clean up the mess. Wipe down the counter. Take the tickets and usher usher usher.
...And then one day you have a 6'2 silhouette in your theatre doorway, brandishing a curved piece of jagged mirror, stubble thick and ratchet tense, bellowing incoherencies at you with the same sort of urgency one might announce the impending explosion at a Diplomatic conference. Now hinge that tone with the sudden flare of surrounding...
...Shadows in an old world theatre. Looming dark that sheds chains to physical objects, inching out of every niche and giggling behind the hard and deep breaths of the (Meth Addict? Crack smoker? Speed freak?). Suggest plucks, like phantoms at the ankles and toes, breeding with fear to form sweat and worry. Anxiety and tender nerves...
...and all you've got between you is 8.50 an hour and a broom with too few bristles and a retirement package long overdue.
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3 (Botch x 1 at target 5)
[Gregor] (One more time. Cha 2 + Intim 2. Diff. 5 + 1)
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 6, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[bestiary] [I ain't scared of you, Big Bird!]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 5, 7, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Israel Cohen] Again, she grimaces, consternation now - ah the hubris of us all, we who think our own riddles and rhymes certainly make more sense than others do - but her concentration is unwavering. What she perceives though... were she a woman prone to growling she might do so now.
To the woman she says nothing - she cannot afford just now to flail around trying to speak to her; what is perceived as the most immediate threat is dealt with first.
A thumbed coin; all things gold; all glitter and shine to distract the mind [but not hers, not now, not yet]. Again a language most have not heard spoken since the days when it seemed acceptable for a tribal nation of freed slaves to manage to get lost in a Desert less than the size of Texas. Piercing anguish. Bittersweet clarity.
Then, "We're going in, down below. Keep yourself together, please." Command and plaintive all at once; the delicate, the steel inter-meshed. "Stay close to me if you want to keep within the warding I'm putting up." Or go run willy nilly: At the end of the day there is only so much one can do when up against anothers Will. "Got it?"
[Morgan Lake] Deep breaths. Deep breaths.
Don't open the door
(Just a crack [won't hurt])
to see him, don't make things [better?] worse than they already are.
Don't . . .
Just don't.
Deep ...
... breaths.
(He's there, Daddy's there, I could explain, I could talk to him, if they were still looking for me they'd have found me they'd have . . .)
It's distracting, all of that. It has fingers digging harder [until eyes hurt], has her gasping rather than the calming deep breaths she'd intended. This, of course, makes the smell register a bit sooner. It's not summer, far from it, and this place shouldn't smell like summer-heat-and-river-stink, not yet. There are still months to get to that point. Slowly, her hands pull down from her face and she allows her eyes to adjust to where she finds herself - she'll have to wait for a bit before slipping back out into the alley anyway. May as well take note of what she finds in as many ways she can. Perhaps there will be something to add to the Journal of Weird.
[Per + Alert!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 7, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
to bestiary
[bestiary] At first, there is something laughable about Gregor. He is a joke. His (lunatic [Mad Tom]) bellow. His mad prophecies. At first, a laugh catches in her throat, corn-in-the-husk, husk-in-the-corn, and she's smiling as she hefts the broom, says, "Look, people. This isn't the show, see? If you want the show," and then, then Gregor's visage takes on a distinctly (creepy [it's coming through the window, little girl; it's insidious, snaking up the sides of the bathtub, it's) more disturbing air, and she checks herself, eying him uneasily, taking a step back, choosing not to poke him and the delicate doll of a woman beside him with her broom, says, "Y'all don't have tickets, look, it's the last day, just ... Just stop being so weird, okay? You ... going below, what the hell... No, don't."
[Gregor] ...He breaks the threshold, hovering and at war. Sensations colliding as two parts that are the same, simply existing in separate moments, threaten to merge once more and bring with them...the cacophony of Necessity. He grips and re-grips the shiv, not bothering to answer or comment to Israel but instead, leaning back into her slightly and flicking a hand out to tap her arm, elbow, wrist in sporadic succession. An indication, if vague.
The Dreamspeaker takes one last (flagging) look at the threshold and whether Israel's gotten the message or not, pushes his way forward into the Theatre, his eyes holding the Sleeper before him.
"...We're going to find someone. Stop something. Deal with this problem and leave." A reassurance to the woman, the only thing Gregor is willing to offer. Capable of offering. Believes is necessary. Then...
...His gaze. Senses. Nose, eyes and ears lift to listen, see and smell for that inevitable shred. That familiar rip and tear sensation that would drag him bloodhound swift to the source.
[bestiary] This time, Enid gets a sense that something is going on. There are doors, and there are Doors, and she just walked through one: just walked through one and can feel, tangling nearby, the Hungry essence of her mentor, the Creeping, Crawling, Terrified [Terrifying] essence of the urban shaman who's part of the Society of the Nameless 'Crow, and then she can sense something else. Something more interesting, something reverenced [storm] and thoughtful: something that feels old, like locks-opening, locks-slamming into place, something that wants, that yearns, yearns, smells like apple blossoms.
to Morgan Lake
[Israel Cohen] She is folding up the guide cane now; holding the collapsed version with a tight fisted grip like one would a bludgeoning tool. Surprise! She's not really blind at all. And, at the moment, that is kinda-sort-[coincidental]-true.
Gregor speaks to the Sleeper and now the petite woman faces her as well, spot on though the gaze lacks precise focus. "What's down there--"
Ah, wasted words. The man [the glow, the figure, the sense of space and distance; sentient and ablaze] is moving and she follows, keeping close so that the Warding is snug around them. In the meantime she is murmuring once more, the language just as indescribable and hushed because creation happens with breath and sighs: The calamity comes after the fact.
[Morgan Lake] Something is going on. Something always is, isn't it? This doesn't make her forget having seen her father (gaunt, tired [worried?]) outside, but gives her something to focus on other than that, somewhere to put her energy, something to dive into head first. This is how survival works in Enid-land; one dives into work and doesn't look back if one can help it other than as is necessary to remember the lesson learned from any given happening.
She can feel her mentor nearby, knows she's there, knows the creepy . . . gargoyle guy (because she doesn't remember his name, if she ever had it) also close. ".....Ashley?"
There's no attempt to be any more quiet than she would be otherwise in this kind of place. Not, mind, that she's spent a lot of time here, or elsewhere like it.
to bestiary
[bestiary] Hubris. Hubris is the belief that a woman (just because she curves like a cello [just because she's a worker drone in a theater that's running itself down just because this is the final show]) would be paused just because of a little fear. Like she doesn't know her duty, like she doesn't have that broom, like she doesn't have questions of her own (like she hates her fucking job). Hubris is Gregor, finally walking over the threshold, going forward, trying to be reassuring but he's still going forward. The woman takes a deep breath and her broom
snicker snack
whaps out. Gregor tries to catch it (startled, perhaps?), but he fails, and instead, the broom's handle sweeps hard (crack) against his knees, knocking him down to the dirty (rat-eaten [moth-eaten]) carpeting, where the smell of popcorn is thick enough and old enough to induce a gag-reflex. He falls on his left hand. His mirror breaks, it cracks right through. "I'm sorry," she says, "I'm sorry, but you can't just float in like some sort've idiot. Oh god, I'm sorry, are you okay?"
[Gregor] (Mirrorbreak...? Gregor...?)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 8, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[bestiary] [NPC: NO!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 5, 5, 6, 6 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Gregor] "...You insignificant-" Something flashes. A snarl of anger-
[bestiary] [NPC: WHACK. WHACK. +1 extra-die! ]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 4, 4, 6, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6) [WP]
[Israel Cohen] [Mind 3, Prime 2 - Diff 6 - 1 (Focus) - 2 (Quint)] [WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 5, 5, 6 (Success x 4 at target 3) [WP]
[Gregor] (Stamina)
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 3, 6, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Morgan Lake] [Per + Alert for reals]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 6, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
to bestiary
[Gregor] (Gregor!)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[bestiary] Enid opens the door and she walks into darkness. The darkness is the kind've dark that is all encompassing. This isn't the alleyway where she left her father (pity) calling her name (plaintive [hopeful]) like it was the most painful thing he'd ever said. This is the underground. This is the sewersystem, underneath; this is somewhere away, somewhere far, far away from where she'd been wandering, and there are lumps, uncertain things, in the dark rush of water which gathers about her knees, reaches up, and up. And up ahead, as her eyes adjust, she can just dimly make out three tunnels which are even darker than the darkness she's in now, make the shadows she's walked into seem like they don't really know what black is, and down one, she can feel Ashley, as if Ashley were due north, as if she were holding a compass. And she can also feel something else, Enid.
She can feel something waking, something in the water, sinuous, that isn't a suspicious lump, a chunk of grit and dirt.
to Morgan Lake
[Israel Cohen] "God..."
For one split second she is stunned as the evocation of sight withing her minds eye [glowing lines; some pulsing stronger than others; a knowledge in the midst of the pitch dark of her life. [light it up] Rending, tearing, clawing pushing: In. In. In. In. Violation at it's more raw - sundering, tearing, the violent rip - In. In. In. [light. it. up]]. She doesn't gibber or ramble or quake. She sneers. She grits her teeth, a rictus of distaste, like a befouled taste on her tongue; like someone has smeared pork grease and bile over the Holy of Holies.
Gregor is attacked. And strikes back. Swinging out a hand she grunt out three words,, still in that most ancient tongue, her ethereal voice now guttural: Commandment. Somewhere in her mind - locked away for now - there is regret. To attack a sleeper like this is not something she normally ascribes to. [there are rules. there must be rules; clung to and honed for the spiral [the caul] ah, it can be sweet] But she is not sure what the unstable man is capable of: Stunning the womans mind to her core seems, at the moment, a blessing. [she regrets the lack of information, now. what the woman might have revealed. what is her role? what part. No time. Not time. [light it up].
Ashley is below her. And what Ashley is with is... [[i]she tastes bitterness in her mouth and spits off to the side, making the sign to ward off the evil eye, up close to her lips, unconscious [Solomon would sneer]]. Israel doesn't stop to ask anything of Gregor just now.. she scans around her and if there are no other [un-stunned] witnesses [besides the Spirits, the beasts, the savagery] she takes up the guide cane and begins to twirl it above her head, snarling out words that seem like quip, sharp barks now before at last she slams the point of the cane down before her as the last utterance of the Tetregrammaton leaves her lips.
[bestiary] Hubris, again.
Gregor tries to clock the woman across the head with his shiv. He fails. "I'm not insignificant," she says, firmly, two spots of red on her cheeks, burning like roses in winter. She is swift on her feet, ducks the homeless man's attempt to hurt her, and this time she means business when (a) SLAMS the broom handle into Gregor's stomach, then (b) SLAMS it across his knees, sending him back to the ground, hard. This time, something else breaks. She hollds the broom's hard-end at one of Gregor's eyes, like she's going to push in if he so much as moves one single muscle. And then, Israel. Then: Israel (lead us out of). The woman's eyes go startled, and she says, "NO, don't --"
And then she collapses, strings cut. Graceless, broom clattering. And Israel, o, Israel: Israel begins to Work, again.
[Morgan Lake] ".....eww." It's quite emphatic, that, for all that it's quiet, and it's still not enough to drive the sound of her dad's voice but this sewer place does provide quite the distraction, quite the something else to focus on. Something's waking, and Enid's pressing forward, and looking for a ledge to walk on rather than slogging through this water-and . . . and what, she certainly doesn't want to think about.
This is Chicago Below.
She can feel Ashley, there, ahead, in one of the three darker [what's darker than ...] tunnels, and of course that's the way she goes. There are few enough people she turns to (at all) for comfort now, and when things are strange, when she's knee deep in questionable sewer goop, of course she wants Ashley. Some would call it transference, and there's likely a laundry list that some psych*ist would have a heyday with, but that hardly matters to Enid, or right now. A hand finds its way briefly to that locket that means growth, that speaks it, sings it, and she's pressing onward even as it drops back to her skin, hidden under her shirt.
to Ashley, bestiary
[Gregor] Brief whuffs of pain. Flashes of sincerity. Snarls cut short and the ground rises to meet him again...
...And something cracks. An echo.
(See the Wretch. Screaming, watching his body flail as the muck slicks inward. Reaching for purchase that isn't there. The boy looks onward, frown turning to quiver, turning to pout, turned to tears. He grips the eyes in his hands and turns to run.
And from down the hole, there is howling. Howling and fury)
-The crack of shards brings him up as the young girl yells, his face a mask of hard lines and gaping maw, body climbing back to it's feet, gaze on the small glittering pieces scattered on the carpet. The means and path to the problem. The ability to seal. Close. Mend. Repair.
Broken in an instant of flashing brooms and desperation.
Pause. Head snap. Down to the floor, scanning, searching, mask to molded agony as eruptions turn random and sporadic. A sound in the chest, a burn in the throat and a strangled cry of anger lashes from lips and maw, barking out infront of him as fists clench, slivers of mirror digging into the back of hands and across knuckles.
"What Have you Done?!" Loud. Oblivious. Terrible quaking. The reflect of a weapon on dim light, eyes like coal, shadows like jaws. Snapping (Two, Three, Four different ways...). He looms over her, breath like a billows (Merging), fists clenched -
"Do You Know?! Do You[b]-" A hand reaches down to grasp the shirt, dragging the limp body up off the ground slightly, head bowing to scream in her face "-[b]Anything of this?! Anything at all?!"
[Ashley] There's a faint cough in the darkness, prompted purely by the smell of raw sewage beneath the water. She's hoping she doesn't fall in, that her fingertips will provide enough of a guide to keep her shoes and her jeans intact.
It's as if Fate, or whatever is lurking beneath, down here with her, hears that thought and laughs. Seconds later there's something sticky, scratching, strangling, constricting, and her clothes are melting away. Her shoes slide off of her feet, shapeless canvas without the form of her foot in them, shredded away.
There's a gutteral cry of horror as it wraps about her legs and clings to bare skin. One hand makes a fist around as much of it as she can get to, trying to rip it away, and the other finds its way to her necklace. She can't see what the seaweed is attached to, she just feels it moving on its own, and the only thing she can think of to do is shred space apart and Will herself to be somewhere else.
[Corr 3, Seven League Stride, -1 for focus. Spending WP.]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 4, 9 (Success x 2 at target 5) [WP]
to bestiary, Morgan Lake
[Gregor] Brief whuffs of pain. Flashes of sincerity. Snarls cut short and the ground rises to meet him again...
...And something cracks. An echo.
(See the Wretch. Screaming, watching his body flail as the muck slicks inward. Reaching for purchase that isn't there. The boy looks onward, frown turning to quiver, turning to pout, turned to tears. He grips the eyes in his hands and turns to run.
And from down the hole, there is howling. Howling and fury)
-The crack of shards brings him up as the young girl yells, his face a mask of hard lines and gaping maw, body climbing back to it's feet, gaze on the small glittering pieces scattered on the carpet. The means and path to the problem. The ability to seal. Close. Mend. Repair.
Broken in an instant of flashing brooms and desperation.
Pause. Head snap. Down to the floor, scanning, searching, mask to molded agony as eruptions turn random and sporadic. A sound in the chest, a burn in the throat and a strangled cry of anger lashes from lips and maw, barking out infront of him as fists clench, slivers of mirror digging into the back of hands and across knuckles.
"What Have you Done?!" Loud. Oblivious. Terrible quaking. The reflect of a weapon on dim light, eyes like coal, shadows like jaws. Snapping (Two, Three, Four different ways...). He looms over her, breath like a billows (Merging), fists clenched -
"Do You Know?! Do You-" A hand reaches down to grasp the shirt, dragging the limp body up off the ground slightly, head bowing to scream in her face "-Anything of this?! Anything at all?!"
[bestiary] The woman is insensible. Not only insensible: incapable of answering him. Her eyelids flicker when he screams in her face and she is heavy, heavy as only dead weight can really be. Her hair trails along the dirty floor, river of ink, of black, and it picks up shards of his broken (focus) mirrors.
There's noone else. He's alone in the lobby. The blind woman: she twirled her cain and there was a gust of wind (a cold damp breeze [sewage]), and then she was gone (and apple blossoms).
[Gregor] "No..."
Breath a gust, spittle flecking her cheeks and brow. His breathing continues to thrum in his chest, pushing at suffocating walls. Something draws at the mind and plucks at the shadow as the weakness of the Ward, diminishes and vanishes entirely after a moment, leaving his Shadow to clutch back that earlier Terror and hold it in place. Return some (small) measure of control.
He lifts himself back to his feet, letting the body slump back to the floor, gaze traveling the broad lobby of the theatre and then back to the doorway. A few steps forward and he flicks the door closed, executing the light from without. Then his senses leap out into the open air. Digging for that rupture. His fingers roll across the duct tape of his preferred weapon (reflections of horror, writhing back at him).
He cuts a hand through the air, as if it could dismiss the writhe of shadows that catch his peripheral. Then he begins the search. Down, down, down...must...go...down.
[Gregor] ("No, of course not...."^)
[bestiary] Enid walks down one tunnel and hears Ashley's hoarse cry, comes to a wall. Ashley is on top of that wall, and there are rungs, rusted, taste like blood to her hand if her hand could taste, and she can climb (athletic girl), climb up, and Ashley can hear, can hear Enid say ew, and that's where her step will take her. The purpose wasn't to get to Enid, though: the purpose was to shake off the -- weeds? Clinging? -- whatever it is that's wrapping around her throat (strangilng, sinuous, coils: imagine you're the world, Ashley, and your avatar's just trying to destroy you). And some of it falls away, but only some -- she can feel strands (hair [that's hair]) still clinging to her, sticking.
But then: she's beside Enid, who's just beginning to (perhaps) climb upward; she drops a few feet down into the water, and then there is Israel. Israel: who is now knee-deep in sewer-water, surrounded by the stench (overwhelming) of many-many summers, and it's suffocatingly hot down there in the sewers, furnace, wavering, wavering, but she can see [in her fashion] Enid and Ashley and the fine-winding tendrils (strangle the heart) which are working their way back around the diminutive Hermetic and are starting to coil around Enid's ankle and go through a Door that is, actually, a hole in this space, goes somewhere Else, is a connection that shouldn't be made.
When you've gone so down you've got to go up again.
That's now.
to Ashley, Israel Cohen, Morgan Lake
[Gregor] (Willpower!)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 7, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Morgan Lake] Now is not the time for 'I saw Daddy' and 'I want to go home'; now is the time for, ".....I went through a door that was supposed to go back to an alley in Lake View . . . where are we, please?"
She sounds (emphasis: sounds) so calm, so academic. She wants to know where they are, and how they got here, and . . .
"Also, we need a ledge. There's something in the water." Something wrapping itself around her ankle, something that wants to pull her, to drag her to someplace that shouldn't be here, someplace she shouldn't be anywhere near, someplace . . . Else, for lack of flowerier, more exotic description. "I mean, besides the obvious. Oh, god. I want a shower."
to Ashley, bestiary, Israel Cohen
[Ashley] "Israel!" Her voice is harsh, roughened by fear and the noise she'd emitted earlier, the one that had come from somewhere far back in her own mind. Somewhere primal, furious and desperate (I'm the one that does the constricting, I am Hunger). "Watch out, there's some kind of...seaweed monster..."
If she has some difficulty articulating just what is down here with them, it's probably excusable: her clothes are hanging in shreds off of her body, and there does indeed seem to be some sort of rough/slick/sticking plant finding its way back up around her legs.
There's a look toward Morgan (the reason she did not simply go Away), eyes wide, pupils so dialated there is hardly any blue left to see, as though she is uncomprehending of the girl's words. Then she reaches for her lighter once more, trying to get the plant to catch flame, Willing the flame to spread up its length.
[LIGHT IT ON FIRE. Forces 2, -1 for focus, spending WP.]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 4, 10 (Success x 3 at target 4) [WP]
to bestiary, Israel Cohen, Morgan Lake
[bestiary] [NPC: Ashley: Yea, Nay?]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9
[Israel Cohen] [Occ + Int] [WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 7, 7, 7, 7, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6) [WP]
to bestiary, Morgan Lake
[Morgan Lake]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 6, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
to Ashley, bestiary, Israel Cohen
[Gregor] (Stamina! I swear to whatever god you pray to Kahseeno...)
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 5, 7, 10
[Gregor] (Difficulty this time!)
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 10 (Failure at target 6)
[Israel Cohen] For Israel, striding through the bounds of space and distance is not... pleasant. It's a rush, yes. But it is also akin to being thrown into a blender along with the main ingredients: Anguish [bittersweet. heavy laden. how we weep. what you have done to us and Power [the Lord your God is mighty and his ways are not to be so easily trifled with. a price. a price. for everything a price.]
And then she lands in the shit. Literally. The. Shit.
If the situation wasn't so dire she might weep then and there. Instead she swallows back vile and reflexively concentrates, ignoring the stench and the thought of the utter uncleanliness; the plethora of kosher laws she is breaking then and there. Israel - calls Ashley with a warning and Israel shouts back... "It leads back -- to that door. There!" She is pointing, for all the world like she can see. [the beyond] "We should--"
And then...
Flames.
to Ashley, bestiary, Morgan Lake
[Israel Cohen] For Israel, striding through the bounds of space and distance is not... pleasant. It's a rush, yes. But it is also akin to being thrown into a blender along with the main ingredients: Anguish [bittersweet. heavy laden. how we weep. what you have done to us and Power [the Lord your God is mighty and his ways are not to be so easily trifled with. a price. a price. for everything a price.]
And then she lands in the shit. Literally. The. Shit.
If the situation wasn't so dire she might weep then and there. Instead she swallows back vile and reflexively concentrates, ignoring the stench and the thought of the utter uncleanliness; the plethora of kosher laws she is breaking then and there. Israel - calls Ashley with a warning and Israel shouts back... "It leads back -- to that door. There!" She is pointing, for all the world like she can see. [the beyond] "We should--"
And then...
Flames.
[bestiary] Earlier, Ashley hadn't been able to will light into being [no spark in the dark]. Now, though, that she has focus, has fear to sharpen it, she thinks she's tangled in a plant, she thinks it's some kindve seaweed monster ("Toxic sludge," Kage had said. "I ask you, what the hell next?"), so she scrapes her Mind across it, and causes it to burn. And it does burn. It burns with a vengeance, beginning near her, then flaming out.
There are little fires that dance atop the water, grease-soaked, rainbow-saturated: welcome to Hell. The -- it isn't a plant. It might not be immediately recognizable as hair, but it isn't a plant, ignites, singing Ashley, doing away with the rest of her pants, burning Israel's skirt or slacks but good, getting into her hair, around her wrist [because the hair'd begun to tendril that way, to wrap, as soon as she appeared], although she can pull away, just a little bit burned. Enid, though: Enid feels pain kiss up her ankles, streak up her thighs, echo at her hips, and the fire is burning all the way up, up the wall, illuminating a hundred crazy drawings outlines black thicker than darkness of a one-eyed [Cyclops] man. Up, up.
The fire races along the [snarled (tangled)] hair, causes it to disappear into brightness, up through the door-that-isn't-a-door.
Gregor is standing up near this door-that-isn't-a-door, and he can see the three female magi illuminated by the sewer, as it slowly blossoms into fire.
[bestiary]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Israel Cohen] "Enough with the Fire!" She forces her naturally breathy voice into a shout as she jerks away from burning tendrils, not turning her face Ashley's way -- because she can see her well enough without such physical needs and old habits die hard. "It's a Sleeping King, Ashley! That is not a plant, it is hair. If it comes at you, cut it. Cut it up good. The bastard must have been sleeping long for this to grow out so long, so far... God Almighty... " Like Samson and Delilah, or at least it is the imagery that immediately comes to mind [well I cut his hair myself one night; a pair of dull scissors in the yellow light]. "It is a Curse.. a Blessing.. can't you feel the Entropy? The Giant Slumbers; likely an Adept, a Master -- who knows. They numbered Six.. three certainly destroyed. This... well, he wants awake and I do not think him one of the Fallen. ...Who is with you, Ashley? If you need to get her out of here, do it now... You -- " Now she turns towards Gregor, "The Spirits clamoring. The woman I knocked out..." She is already moving for the door as she talks. "Do you know what who role was? Is there aught you can do there?"
[Israel Cohen] ooc: bah. "do you know what HER role was"
[Ashley] Naked in the dark. That's how nightmares begin, and end. Unbeknownst to Israel, up until those flames leaped into existence Ashley could not see a thing down here, was going purely by sound, by the pattern of breath, by what she could find with her fingertips. She cannot see Israel point to the door when she does so, has no idea where said door is. There's relief when the "plant" lights on fire...
And then dismay, because somehow the conflagration is spreading much, much more quickly than she would have thought possible in something soaked in water (and sewage, try not to think about that.) It burns, and there's a hiss through her teeth as she shakes herself free of the burning beard. Then she tries to hear what Israel is telling her over her heart beating in her ears, the talk of Sleeping Kings.
"My apprentice," she tells Israel, calming now that she can see, now that she's not swallowed by darkness. "Where is the door?"
[Morgan Lake] There's a shriek when Enid suddenly finds herself burning, and never mind that careful calm she'd adopted [getitoffmegetitoffmegetitoffmestopdropandrollewwwwww] and a sudden need for the fire to go out, and of course it's about Israel's words and not about shit and burning and too much and go out NOW, please and thank you.
[Can't do it, gonna try, self, remember to FPM Gaki about this when scene is done! +WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 4, 8 (Success x 2 at target 5) [WP]
[Morgan Lake] [Per + Aware!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 4, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
to bestiary
[bestiary] [Countermagick: Enid!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 2, 4 (Botch x 1 at target 8)
[bestiary] [Uh oh!]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 5, 5, 6, 9 (Failure at target 6)
[Gregor] Gregor's response is hard, hand and arm held up to shield against the flames corruscating through the tunnel. The shiv is gone, vanished amid the bundles of cloth and his teeth bared against the smell (Burning hair, sewage and flames make not for a pleasant mixture).
"...Nothing right now!" He moves aside for Israel to proceed back into the stairwell and cell beyond him, eyes catching Ashley. "Ashley!" He barks, an arm, hand and a scowl flashing down the tunnel.
"C'mon, Get out!"
[bestiary] [x2]
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[bestiary] [x3]
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[Morgan Lake] [WP, witnessed by CP!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 9 (Failure at target 5)
to Ashley
[bestiary] The flames that're trying to blossom immediately on Enid: wither. The water is still dancing with fire (elements opposed: married, for now). The shadows they throw across those [obsessive] drawings of a one-eyed man flicker uncertaintly (twist like they don't belong], like they want to gutter, want to go out. They don't. Did -- the direction all of the eyes are looking change? They're drawings. Of course not.
[Israel Cohen] Of course Israel did not think of Ashley's predicament. Of being lost in the dark, with some unseen horror. The dark is, after all, what is normal for Israel. But even here, even now the woman is not devoid of compassion [far different than pity, oh so much so], she climbs her own way out of the sewer and then stops when Ashley responds... she closes her eyes: Breathes out. Breathes in [ignore the stench; ignore it Yocheved!]... the minuscule woman seems to light up then, a Beacon now as they move away from burning sewage and into darkened paths, towards this door that-is-not-a-door. [light up the darkness]. "Can you see me now?"
To Gregor she nods, succinct. "Can you feel a rending in the curtain? Are we heading towards it?" She's moving ahead again...
[Ashley] Israel points out the door. Ashley grabs Morgan's arm and pulls the girl along with her, making for it immediately. She's eager to be away from this room, away from the stench, away from whatever sleeping god-kings there are in Chicago Below. The rest - the shreds of her clothing, whatever is all over her feet, the bits of weed still clinging - she is pointedly Not Thinking About right now.
Though now that she's managed to work magic, it's returned a sense of power, a sense of autonomy, to her that was not present when there was nothing but blackness and some greater Thing snuffing her Will out like a candle. Perhaps, were Enid not there, were Gregor and Israel not urging her to leave, she would have lingered. Would have tried to glean what details there were to be gleaned, studied it further. So there is one last, curious glance over her shoulder.
"Something called us here," she tells Israel as they move. "Maybe we should figure out why, before we leave."
[Gregor] "Yes."
Grunted, something of an apology and impatience balled into that sound. The regret over bulldozing past his others views to keep in place his own with the dismissal of those regrets a half instant later. He barks Ashley's name again, then turns part of his attention to Israel as the Hermetic grabs her Apprentice and slogs her way down the tunnel toward them.
"...Whatever came through, punched a tear and the Others are widening-..were widening it." Snorting to clear his nostrils of stench if only for a moment, free arm lifting to tuck his nose into the crook of his elbow.
"...The source is down here. In here." He waves a hand at the tunnel, arm falling from his hard lined face.
[Israel Cohen] "Leaving? I'm not leaving.. something is after the One Who Slumbers. Sampson, let's call him," An odd moment for wry whimsy, but there it is. "If I'm connecting the dots right, anyway," Dammit it all, she wishes the Priest was here. "Whatever it is, do we really want it either slaughtering - or worse - taking over the Sorcerer?" Like Solomon she uses the term in its archaic sense. Then, a beat, "Your Apprentice... is she alright? Are you alright?"
[Morgan Lake] "I'm okay," [Enid]Morgan says in a small voice, pulled up out of the water now. And her brow furrows at calling the . . . thing . . . Samson - she's heard the bible story, but in her world the gods and their prophets [with their words written on the subway walls] and disciples were just that, stories. She remembers Samson because, "The song? We're naming sleeping guy with the Rasputin attack beard after some piano rock-ish?"
It's a non-issue, but Enid's not having a good evening, sudden better-than-she-expected ability notwithstanding.
"Something's . . . what is that? It's acting like we're puzzles to take apart and scatter. It feels like . . . you know, the still, quiet before a storm."
[bestiary] The sewers smolder, and so does the rope -- the matted bramble [briar] -- of hair, picking up all manner've flotsam, jetsam, [look at that, there appears to be a dead rat, withering, decaying, flesh soughing from bones, caught up in the coils've hair, skull gleaming through dessicated fur]. Individual strands of hair, fine, fall away, ash into little embers that glimmer like stars and flake away. They can go that way, yes: they can go that way, if they'd like to go that way. Figure out why they came there. Figure out what's going on. They can also just as easily turn around -- go the way Gregor came; go up, toward stairs, a cinema that's showing Fables of the West. They could also take a nose-dive back into the water (the bog of eternal stench).
[Ashley] "Taking over the Sorcerer?" Ashley asks, turning a bemused look toward Israel. The Orphan asks if she's all right and Ashley moves as though to raise a hand to her temple, nearly gags when she notes her smeared palm and lets it fall back to her side. "I tried to Willwork when I was Below, before you guys showed up down there, and it sort of battered me down. I don't know anything about where we are or what you've found down here."
"I'm fine," she says. Except there's a slight, faltering glance up toward the Dreamspeaker. "Um, Gregor. Do you think I could borrow your coat?"
[Gregor] Ashley seeks some sort of cover and before she's finished the sentence, Gregor's doffed his jacket of red and black rags and handed it off to her. Beneath, he's dressed in a simple black zip up hoodie and pair of black slacks. The gloves, fingerless and normally obscured, are marred and pocked with tears and holes where the remnants of mirror shards stick to the stitched Gorilla duct tape.
"...Thought we lost you for a second." A reassurance to the little Hermetic, momentary and grim.
Then, Gregor stares at Israel, eyes flicking back and forth as she clues the rest of them into the possibility of what is occurring. The translation is not slow but far from instantaneous, as Gregor tries to alter the words to fit some definition of what he's come to know and recognize by his own designs.
"...What is a Sleeping on-"
And Gregor's head suddenly cracks backward, as if he were struck by a brick, eyes snapping shut and a hand rising to clap at his forehead, wincing sharply and dismissively (Not real. No pain. Nothing there. Just the sound that isn't.). Then he's turning to cast that line marred face down toward the sodden mess of hair-
"...What are you doing?!"
And Gregor's jaws clack, teeth flashing as he shoulders around the three small women and begins to walk the slender ledge lining the tunnel, feet scuffing the sodden and tangled mess of hair as he barrels forward, head ducked.
[bestiary] [Broom Badass Upstairs: Do I Wake Up?]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 6, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Ashley] [Perception + Awareness, specialty mystic objects]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[Gregor] (Perception 4 (Disturbances) + awareness 3. diff. 7)
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 7) Re-rolls: 2
[Morgan Lake] Enid's not that small, but she's not stopping Gregor either - at five foot eight (and a half) and athletic, she may well be the largest of the three women. And look at that . . .
"You're going through the door, right? I want to go through the door." There's a glance at Ashley, questioning (asking permission, maybe), and she's already taking a few small steps after the Dreamspeaker.
[Morgan Lake] [Per + Aware]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 4, 4, 4, 5 (Failure at target 6)
[Israel Cohen] Gregor barrels ahead [a vein throbs at her temple while her jaw tightens] and she lets his cabal-mate and her apprentice scurry after him. She is moving as well, bringing up the rear [not one of the best places to be, alas] while the coin is brought out once more and she clenches it tight, regulating her breathing as best she can while she moves. Under breath power names of power; acronyms and higher titles of the Kabbalic hierarchy, spoken almost without thought, for the rhythm, for the inherent power while she empties her mind but for shalom, stretching it outward... further.. further...
[Ashley] "Gregor," she says, sharp behind him as the Dreamspeaker starts across the ledge, "slow down. We don't know everything yet." She starts after him, unwilling to let him walk off by himself but knowing very little of what's going on here herself.
She's still shrugging into his coat, pulling it closed in front. "Israel, who do you mean by the Sorcerer?"
[bestiary] They follow (fallow, follow). Gregor, first. Unerring, driven: dutiful. Ashley, second. Inquisitive, relentless: can't stop her. Enid, afterward. Enid who isn't Enid any longer. (You've just heard your father say your name for the last time. He didn't sound happy. He sounded miserable.) And Israel, who's moving as if she doesn't need to see (warrior monk). First, they're walking through another tunnel: one that's large enough to encompass them all. They could even walk side-by-side if they wanted to. Then they're walking through what looks like a basement.
Then they're walking through what looks like a (catacomb [crypt]) church's old stone underneath. Then they're walking through a cave. Then they're walking through an old-fashioned stockroom with reels and reels and reels of film (boxes of apples [avalon]). Then another under-the-theater room: lots've cardboard cut outs for old films, toppled. Eerie, their faces: human but too flat, granulated, bent. Rat-chewed. And a costume room: through curtains, smell of popcorn, stale.
And then, almost last, they're in another room that their sense of space tells them should still be underneath. They went down, following. And it's exactly the kind've storeroom they'd expect to find (you're in and out of time: threading it like needles), except that there's light falling from above [filtering (grainy, like a black and white photograph)], and trees, sapplings, arcing through the cement, reaching upward. Upward, upward, there are wires (no wait. Those aren't wires. Those're tendrils of hair, rooting). There's brickwork, crumbling, and one more Cyclops drawn on crumbling drywall.
(And at last.)
The tear is here, and the hair leads right to an immense snarl of a tree: a dark gash inside.
[Gregor] "...They're opening it further!"
It was what the Marauder had done. Had been doing. Smaller scale that. By comparison. That few of them understood that (Or perhaps that he didn't understand the further intricacies of the moment) didn't seem to matter. The dedication was all there was. That and-
(See the Wretch. Waist deep. Clawing at mounds of nothing and muck. Sightless, empty sockets scrambling for landmarks of familiarity. A rock. A clump of dirt. The spoon with which he digs and the walls-
-Continue to drip and slough down around him.)
Vaguely, there are memories. Blank hollywood expressions...
Popcorn stench intermingled with excrement.
Glossy black film, rolled into forevers.
Purple drapes to obscure the path. Momentary. Momentary.
...And then the expanse of Indoor nature. Rooted lengths of stretching hair that bind and tangle from roof to ground, spearing upward amid forestry that clasps and claps at sky that should be ceiling and is instead, foliage and locks of overgrown tangle and briar thick. Gregor stares ahead, gaze seeming to bypass the oddity of the moment. The grand bizarre of the scene.
His eyes are for that Gash in the tree, legs rooted suddenly, fists clenched and a barking reaction less thoughtful and more-
"Stop it! Now!" The first thing out of his mouth.
[Israel Cohen] A surge of gratitude as Ashley tries to reign in her cabal-mate. Then, calling up to Ashley who is now ahead of her. "Many believe its just legends now. They are called the Slumbering Kings." There is a flatness to her tone, not common to how the woman usually speaks. It isn't that she is angry [not at Ashley at least or really any of the three other Awakened]; there is a sense of detachment to the words, as if some part of the tiny woman's mind is keeping up with the conversation but the bulk of it is divested and directed elsewhere. "Six of them, all known to be very powerful. A Curse - or a Blessing, it depends on how you look at it - was cast on them. For those who study it - and believe - it is generally agreed that Three of the Six were destroyed. This one... he wants out. Some part of him, at least, knows he is trapped. It could well be that the psycho-beard is a manifestation of some subconscious part of his Power, stretching outword, seeking aid, seeking escape... it could be he has grown... vengeful.. in his Slumber...."
A beat. A breath. "I'm in... Ashely..." More distant now, detachment becoming frost, becoming a wraith as she focuses with what is a considerable amount of might and will. "Help Gregor..." Whether she means back him up or hold him back... well...
[bestiary] [this one's for you, Gregor!]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2 (Failure at target 6)
[Ashley] There's something, something behind that drawing of the Cyclops, the Thing which pulled her down here in the first place. She looks at the gash and then between Gregor and Israel, suddenly wary. "There's something through the opening. We should probably look," she says, as Gregor is talking about opening things and Israel is talking about being 'in,' wherever that is.
She doesn't know what she could do to help Gregor. But she does have the Ars Mentis at her disposal, and right now that is the closest she will probably approach to being useful.
Ashley reaches beneath Gregor's coat to her necklace of links (still there, thankfully) and closes her hand around the iron one. "Hang back for a few minutes, Gregor, will you?" she asks, extending her Will outward to see what she can sense.
[Mind 2, getting a sense for other presences and thoughts, particularly if there is one for the Sleeping King! -1 for focus, spending WP.]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 2, 6 (Success x 2 at target 4) [WP]
[Ashley] [Intelligence + Occult]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 6, 7, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[bestiary] It's very still in this room. The trees don't move. Nothing moves: even the air doesn't want to move. Gregor halts beyond the tree [that dark Gash] and stays still. He yells: nothing moves. He yells: no birds fly.
Nothing stops.
[Ashley] Israel's thoughts reach her, and then she can get a sense of that mind that's there trapped: and that, there, is where the tempest came from. She'd been mistaken. And of course, the Something behind the drawing.
"I remember reading about the Kings now," she tells Israel, and she too sounds a bit distant. "They're supposed to awaken in times of need. Like Arthur. He's waking up but he's sort of...blocked in."
Then there's another push forward, into the path Israel has forged (weak, she should have forged her own, but there will be time enough to reflect on that) and an effort to connect as she has. Only with Ashley it is not so much connection as it is something rushing along at Israel's heels, swallowing as it goes until everything is her presence, everything is her Will.
[Mind 3, -1 for practiced rote, -1 for focus. Spending WP.]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 4, 7 (Success x 4 at target 4) [WP]
[Morgan Lake] Morgan-not-Enid (just heard her father call her name, maybe for the last time, is carefully not thinking about it) . . . follows Gregor - Ashley and Israel can, no doubt, handle a Sleeping King, whatever that is. Not, mind, that she knows what help she'll be through the rabbit hole.
"It's . . . what is this place?"
She wants to know, wants to understand.
[Morgan Lake] [Intel + Enigmas]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 5, 7 (Failure at target 6)
[Morgan Lake] [I defy you, Kahseeno! +1 diff.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 5, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 2 at target 7)
[Gregor] ...The Shiv makes an appearance suddenly, as Gregor is greeted by silence. He snorts sharply, teeth flashing at the air (Not again) and several steps clap the dirt as Ashley says something to the tune of possible necessity. Something of a Guardian. A protector. Or maybe a monster, waiting. Times of who's need? What need? Where-
"Enough of this."
Gregor's steps carry him past the cement parts, chewed and broken up into pieces. He pulls several aside, pushing one large piece forward until it lands with a heavy thrum, flat end up. He sets the shiv to the edge of that slab and then Gregor's hands reach down, digging mercilessly into the sodden and fresh turned earth, piling thick mounds of it atop that huge slab of concrete, a mole hill being constructed with dirtied hands.
It isn't until a sizable mountain has been constructed, Enid, Ashley and Israel standing around him in possible wonder, fascination or simple examination that Gregor turns to regard his cabal-mate, face a fractured mess of dirt smears, hard lines and eyes stoved in by something not seen since the early days of Dylan's loss and the Inferno.
"...What don't we want happening?"
[Ashley] "I think we want to keep it contained, Gregor," Ashley calls, and her voice doesn't waver through the trees. It's steady, in spite of the fact that she still is not fully certain of what is going on. "But hold on for a few more minutes, okay? Israel and I are speaking with it."
[Gregor] Gregor's smeared features, do not fracture or balk at Ashley's words. He simply nods, grimly (as if he could be anything else in this tired moment) and turns to pack the mound of dirt back down again. A withering glance is cast around at the chaotic abnormality of this scene. Nature in the form of direct vengeance. A cataclysmic sort of thing that bent the rules and propriety, necessity and design.
He plucks up the shiv, thumb back the tap from one side, with insistent pushes of moist dirt and fingernails, until the surface beneath is visible. Spit serves to wipe away the stubborn adhesive and a shirt sleeve wipes it all clean, until there is a mirrored surface available to see in. He stares at the eyes within that reflection, watching the Ghost writhe and claw at his surroundings. The illusion of what was real. He pushes the mound of dirt flat at the top and then jabs the shiv into it, giving him something stationary to stare into.
...Then Gregor settles into place before the concrete slab, eyes forward and gazing at that gash, his reflection a manic frenzy of abject terror that screams, weeps and darts in place, silently lost in it's own maddening fear.
He waits.
[Morgan Lake] Quietly [not a word], Enid makes her way towards the cyclops drawing on the wall, cants her head to look at it from another angle. The three older magi behind her are [not] forgotten as she does this, as a hand rises towards the wall, towards
fingerprints, finger marks, press in order [guess]
small depressions in the eroding concrete, worn by people before she got here, others with a similar puzzle to solve, perhaps. She presses one of the spots - not tentatively, no, [not]Enid is seldom tentative. But she is careful - it would hardly do to have bad things happen to the other people here.
[Ashley] [Willpower]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 7, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Morgan Lake]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2
[Israel Cohen] [WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[bestiary] There is a pattern there: she can see it. Unlace it: spy it out. Touch the eye -- the cheek -- the tooth: smell popcorn, again, taste it on your tongue. Touch the tooth -- the cheek -- the eye: watch it move (open). Touch the groove in the other cheek: touch the hair: make a compass.
to Morgan Lake
[bestiary] The wall that Morgan Lake stands in the shadow (caught in the honey-cloud, luminous-ether) of groans. The sound is like a ship, creaking on its moorings; the sound like like a bridge, wavering in a strong gust of wind. The temperature drops. The tear unshrivels, unwinds.
[Gregor] "Girl! Stop that!"
It's loud, nigh thunderous, Gregor's body twitching from the spastic reflection in the mirror (Who screams, clawing at his features, turning to Enid as well), jaws clamping hard as the Dreamspeaker rights himself with some effort. The anger is a byproduct, little more then the situational due but that doesn't stop his voice from sounding harsh.
"...Containment. You're playing with an unopened box."
[Morgan Lake] Yes, that! Eureka! It's not a smile, though it might be if not for earlier, if not for that dear face, that dear [forlorn] voice. Just as Gregor's speaking, she's doing the opposite of what he says.
eye
cheek
tooth
[the smell of popcorn wafts over her, strange]
tooth
cheek
eye
[it moves, opens, stranger still]
cheek
hair
[a compass, yes, to find her way back home (where's that?)]
[Gregor] "-Damn it, Girl!"
-Marching steps, as archaic 'buttons' are tabbed. Distant yet but closing-
[Ashley] Ashley's eyes are narrowed as she listens to this creature go on, talking about its half-ness, about its need to be whole. Perhaps she can sympathize: one consumes or one is consumed. She has no intention of being the latter, of turning her own Will into nothing more than fuel for some slumbering god-king.
No.
Then Gregor and not-Enid can hear her voice (though quiet) from where they are standing. "Israel, we should close it inside. It would be a mistake to let it out."
[bestiary] This whole time -
The blind woman (time's running out) has been standing still. Her thoughts have left the (delicate [bird]) shell she calls a body, tangle (like the matted beard [roots]) with whoever's in that tree. The forceful hungry Tytalan has been still, too, staring (one eyed [in the world of the blind the one-eyed woman is queen]) at the tree as well. Nobody's gone close enough to the gash to see him, but he's there: a human shape, seated in a chair, his hair slicked back, old-fashioned wings, and his beard flowing, long. He's mortal: his chest moves, rises-and-falls. He's there one moment: flickering, the next, like a bad movie picture [the smell of apples (of sap)]. Gregor might've discerned the slope of a nose or -- no. He turned away, just as, deep within, there was a flash of teeth (a smile). No movement. His eyes are open: they'd catch the light if the light made it in; if the light could fall through time and touch him. But it can't.
Morgan Lake walks across the room and starts to un-riddle a drawing (that isn't) on the wall. The wall groans: the trees shake (still [sundered]). The temperature drops. Their breath begins to sketch itself out across the sunlight -- plumes, steaming. Damn it, Girl, Gregor says: cranky as anything.
The two female Disciples are still (sacrifice [give me]) talking to one who can't wake up.
The eye in the wall sinks the next time Enid touches it. When the eye sinks, Gregor's awareness flares up, so does Ashley's. The Thing that wasn't the Old Thing (King) waking is open now: is in there (un-lock, re-clasp, re-knit, needle-pulling-thread).
Jolt. Sleep, now. You, Enid Geraint, Morgan Lake.
[Israel Cohen] She nods, slowly...
You have, I fear, gone Mad, Old One. Too long. Too long.
Her reasons are not the same as the Hermetic beside her, but in the end the answer is the same: No. Not when the duplicity is so strong.
The link from her mind to His [its. things] is severed. She sags slightly, then shudders. "The seal he mentioned.. is it actually there? Can you see it? Decipher it?"
[Ashley] There's damn it, girl which suddenly means something to her all of a sudden: she's been distracted all this time with speaking with the tree, turning all of her focus to making sense out of it. Gregor's voice snaps her back to the physical, back to the apprentice she has not been keeping an eye on, and...
"Shit. Enid," she says, and bare feet are rasping across the floor as the girl is instructed to sleep. Her connection with the Old One, too, is severed. She could be strangled with worry, but she manages to hold it back long enough to answer Israel. "There's a drawing of a Cyclops over there. That's probably the seal he's talking about," she says.
And of course it's what Enid[Morgan] was busying herself with. As she reaches the girl's side, the urge to lash out at Gregor is overwhelming, and she looks toward the Dreamspeaker with eyes flashing, jaw tight. But only once. Then she steps forward to have a look at the drawing for herself.
[Gregor] "What just...-Damn it!"
For the third or fourth time tonight (perhaps this counts as the first night in existence) Gregor's normal grim resolve is broken under a hail of friction, frisson and mental shrapnel as parts and pieces of the avenue of the moment shy away. Those that cling are carved as the 'Padlock' is undone.
Gregor watches Enid fall, already turning, feet clambering to make up the space between him and the dirt mounted Mirror he's left behind. He falls into place, not fifteen yards from the Tree with it's unblinking wound, gaze lifting briefly to spy and see if that dark opening is still present before-
-Brought back up sharply to stare into the face and eyes of the ancient creature within, seated upon archaic rings, centuries of life at the core and a flickering phantom existence steadily solidifying. Gregor's jaws flash outward, not snapping but yawning as he glares (unhelped) into that eldritch time and entity.
"...Ashley!" Not the first time tonight either.
[Morgan Lake] Yes, sleep. To sleep, to dream (of her fretting father calling her name), to rest. Enid falls.
Peace, child.
Sleep.
[bestiary] [Mysterious NPC Roll]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2
[Israel Cohen] The sustained rote that enables her a modicum of [warped. glowing. quantum] sight is only so helpful in some respects. She is weary now, having pushed herself far tonight, and finds herself at a loss at the moment for what is going on.
"What's happening? What just happened?"
Communication skills.. they should all probably touch up on those.
All That Glitters Is Not [paused]
14 years ago