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One Big Happy Family Scene: Sun Hill Apartments The closet door creaked open, and the other Marcine emerged shaking her head, but not before they glimpsed her wiping her eyes. "Why are you provoking the Denarian?" Without waiting for a response, she folded her arms. “Now, again: What do you need me for?” “How do you feel about fighting a dragon?” Marcine asked. Her double snorted, looked doubtful, then determined she wasn’t joking. “Dragons. That thing in the fairgrounds. That dragon.” She nodded. “You want to kill that dragon.” “At least keep it busy while we do what we need to. That’s where all this started. We have to get to the source if we’re going to do anything about it.” “Or I could stay and not have to remake all the wards if I die again.” Seth, still standing in the doorway, grimaced. “How many times…?” She reached up to rub her left arm. “I stopped keeping track.” That motion clicked with the strange way she’d held her rifle--mostly in her right hand, the left braced against it, supporting her aim but not really holding it. “What happened to your arm?” Marcine asked. Her double looked down at her hand like she’d just noticed what she was doing. She shrugged to herself and slid up the flared sleeve. A smooth scar started at her shoulder, which bore the mark of a newly-healed puncture wound, and ended just past her elbow. She flexed her hand, but only her thumb and forefinger moved much; the rest barely straightened from their neutral relaxed curl. “Outsiders happened.” She dropped her sleeve. “At least I survived. Maks didn’t.” Marcine felt the weight of her violin. It would be impossible to play in that condition. That was the kind of injury she’d feared her entire life. “I’m sorry,” she said numbly. She folded her arms, with the left resting on top, her right supporting it. It didn’t look comfortable. Neither did she. “Yeah, well. If you think you sense Maks out there, don’t listen to it. It’s not him.” She seemed to stare through the wall rather than at it. “Even if it is, there’s nothing you can do about it.” Seth put an arm around her shoulder. “You wouldn’t be alone.” “So I get to see even more people die for no reason? Great. Wonderful.” She shrugged him off and glared at the intruders. “You still haven’t answered my drat question.” “What answer do you want?” Marcine asked. “We don’t know what’s in there. We just need to tip the odds as far in our favor as possible.” She gestured toward where the wall had been. “That would be useful! I don’t even know what kind of things you can do now, I just know it’s more than I can.” “You don’t get it. You know what death does to magic?” Her double raised her right hand and snapped her fingers. “Gone. The people here rely on me. They’re not talents. They can’t defend themselves against vampires or Outsiders or any loving thing out there. I can. Just me. Because that’s how I had to build all this poo poo. Because nobody loving else would. And you want me to go fight a drat dragon for some vague plan that might work.” “Has worked,” Elbridge spoke up. “At least up until this point. We’re in the city and we have a way inside. Cagey bastard really does have it all mapped out, doesn’t he?” “Oh. So this is you again. He wants us to get eaten by a dragon because the Outsiders didn’t do the job.” Her lip curled. “I am done with his loving ‘plans.’” “But he got us here,” Marcine insisted. “We can fix it. The barrier was already collapsing.” “Since when do you believe in acceptable losses?” she snapped. Marcine’s mouth twitched. “Maybe since a friend’s death curse gave us our way in yesterday. He won’t be coming back.” “Neither will Maks,” she said bitterly. “And would Maks want you to sit around here when you have the chance to fix it?” Her eyebrows arched. “But you’re the one fixing it.” Marcine now knew what it felt like to want to punch yourself. “I haven’t come all this way to fail.” “Neither have I.” Her double pointed at the doors. “Get out.” Marcine stood her ground. Her hands twitched, wanting to grab something; she settled on the pin and let the soft feel of Zophiel’s feathers calm her down. Getting mad wasn’t going to do anything. “Do you still have these?” “They’re a nice hat decoration with a handy plus-one versus vampires.” This might not be a good idea, with a fallen angel lurking in her double’s head, but Marcine didn’t see many alternatives. “His name’s Zophiel. I summoned ours to this timeline for help. He’s holding the way open for us, through the other side of the barrier, so we can get out if things go wrong. But we’d have to do it through a horde of Outsiders hanging around. He seems to believe in us.” “From your timeline.” Her double gritted her teeth audibly. “Then where’s ours after six drat years?” “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I only had a direct link to mine.” “Even the heavenly host cannot travel openly in the beyond,” Shamsiel said, stepping out from behind their partner. “I would have taken us home long ago, if it were possible. Not that it’s an excuse for six years of inaction on their part but what can you expect?” If looks could kill, Seth would have evaporated Shamsiel on the spot. Marcine tightened her hold on the brooch. “Then you can ask yours. Believe me, I was ready to throw these things out with everything we had to go through to get here, but breaking this stupid bubble is more important than worrying about that. Elbridge opened the door, Zophiel helped us get through it, and everything else is up to us. If we do nothing, you’re just going to keep fighting a slow decay. You know drat well you can’t win that.” Her double snorted. “Since when did that ever stop me from trying?” “From trying to prevent it? Sometime in the last six years, apparently.” “Don’t you loving imply I haven’t done anything--” “Then DO SOMETHING NOW!” Marcine shouted, which was enough to take her counterpart aback. “We have one shot at this. One. If we fail, we don’t have a chance to regroup and decide that maybe we could have done it if we had a couple more hands on deck. We don’t get to try again. You don’t get to try again, no one ever gets out of here, and the world tree dies.” She faced Shamsiel. “At least you should know what that means.” “Yes.” The Denarian tucked their hands inside their sleeves and gave her a slight bow. “I am, at heart, a performer, Miss Sterling. I demand an audience. I admit to a certain… enthusiasm… upon our first meeting, but I have no real need to hurt anyone, unlike some of my more bloodthirsty cousins. Something that you’ve come to appreciate over the years.” “Much like a staph infection,” she said tiredly, “Sham grows on you.” Shamsiel kept going. “In fact we have created a place of safety, of security, even in this, to pardon the term, private hell.” They smiled at their own joke, but the look they shot Elbridge after was pure poison. “If there is as you say, a way out, not just for us but for everyone that Hardley hasn’t yet condemned to oblivion... ” ”I see worse than you every time I close my eyes at night,” Elbridge muttered, though not so quietly that Shamsiel couldn’t hear it. “...then I believe we should take it. ‘Do not go gentle into the night’, as the poet said. ‘Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.’ I must agree. We should fight this beast and destroy it, or at least have tried. I have never been an advocate of doing nothing.” Despite their overly eloquent words, they looked to their Marcine with fondness, like a parent trying to coach a child to be brave enough to try something new. “You too?” she muttered. She looked upward, toward all the people in their apartments above. “I’ll regret this like I regret everything else I let Elbridge talk me into.” “Not this time,” Marcine said firmly. “Regrets are like wrinkles,” Elbridge mumbled, his eyes distant for a moment. “They come with age and some people claim they’ve found a way to avoid them, but it always involves taking something toxic.” “You’d know that best,” the other Marcine observed with a sigh. “Fine. I need to prep. I’ll meet you at the bar.” Seth gave her shoulder a light squeeze. “I’m staying with you.” “That little trust?” Despite the question, she smiled. “Sure.” Marcine couldn’t say she was disappointed to get away from the Denarian. “See you there, then.” She braced herself as they headed outside. Now she’d have to hear the goddamn buzzing again. --- After they left, Seth turned to Shamsiel and took a slow breath; what he was about to say already pained him. “I expect you already know my opinion of you. And I’m sure we’ll have a lot to discuss later. All the same… I appreciate that you’ve looked out for my daughter.” “I do like being appreciated,” Shamsiel said, smugly. “Don’t get used to it.”
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Feb 9, 2018 23:08
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The Clock Ticks Scene: All Around the City “I guess that went about as well as it could have,” Marcine said as they left the apartments. The buzzing was back in her head and her skin crawled with the awareness that there could be Outsiders lurking anywhere. She gritted her teeth and stayed alert. No point talking until they were safe(r) in the car. They were nearly there when a sound, like distant fracturing glass, made them look up. A crack shot upward through the sky, across the dome of the barrier. More cracks spread outward from it like a growing spiderweb, until with a terrible shatter they felt more than heard, it gave way and fell inward. For an awful moment, she thought she saw the horde of Outsiders lurking on the other side, waiting for this very opportunity. Then the sky collapsed, wavered, and returned to grey, like it had been before. Except a moment ago, she’d seen buildings in the distance. Now, there was only the same empty grey void as the rest of the sky. She knew that skyline. Those buildings were only a few miles away. Marcine sucked in a harsh breath and only then realized she’d stopped breathing. “Holy poo poo.” “...we need to hurry,” Elbridge said tensely. “Then I’ll pick you up at the curb.” She broke into a flat sprint for her car. --- Her counterpart stood at the window of her apartment. She’d seen this happen too many times before. Every time, they got closer. Eventually one would swallow up her and everything she’d worked so hard to protect. It had nearly been this one. She felt her father’s hand on her shoulder, trembling slightly. She was right, she thought. This really is our last shot. Are you afraid? Shamsiel asked. She looked for the high-rises that she’d seen every day from her window for all the years she’d lived here, but they were gone. Like everything else between there and the edge before this. Let’s say a dragon doesn’t sound so bad right now. Finally, a fitting audience for us. Not some low ranking vampire or idiot thug but a true opponent… I have longed to show you what you are truly capable of, Marcine. Not for the first time, they saw the destruction through her eyes and didn’t care. She tore her eyes away from the scene outside to finish getting what she needed. Finally, something she could punch in the face--figuratively and maybe literally--to solve her problems. All of them. Permanently. Good. I’m looking forward to it. --- Rupert turned at the sound of fracturing glass, the piercing tone interrupting the quiet stillness of the street they were walking down on the way back to the bar, his hand dropping briefly to the purloined handgun at his waist before he saw it. Frozen in place, he watched silently as more of the city fell to the Outsiders. “Well,” he grumbled, “That can't be good.” “We should go back to the bar,” Ed said. “But…” Lucy looked over her shoulder, as if she hoped that somehow, Turner would be there. But he wasn’t, and her brother was right. “Yeah. We’re out of time.” Rupert was silent for a moment, watching the now much closer grey sky. Turning to follow after the kids, he said to himself quietly, “Still got a chance. Just need to believe.”
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Feb 13, 2018 05:01
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We All Hang Together Scene: El Gato Negro The “airlock” to the Gato was crammed full between Elbridge, Marcine, Rupert, Hugues, Edward, and Lucy. It was like standing in the world’s most-uncomfortable elevator, with only some untimely flatulence needed to complete the experience. Elbridge took the time to refresh the fog-proofing spell on his glasses yet again - crossing all of these thresholds had done a number on the fragile enchantment. “So,” he said at last. “How did it go?” It was about as close to small talk as he felt he could manage at the moment. “Oh, you know, some little buggers tried to eat us, got a gun pointed at me by myself,” replied a Rupert slumped down on the floor, trying to manage something that vaguely resembled rest, “The usual for this place. No luck with Hugues’ counterpart, unfortunately. Apartment was empty and after, well…” He inclined his head towards the outer door, “We thought we better head back.” “Ah.” Elbridge nodded, his thoughts still not quite in the here-and-now. “We found Ms. Sterling’s double.” He did not sound particularly-happy about it. “I sense there’s a 'but’ coming,” replied Rupert, looking up at Elbridge and Marcine. She grimaced. “Might as well say it before she gets here… You know that Fallen I told you about? She took the coin to protect herself.” Rupert sucked in a breath and swore, “drat.” “The whole area around the apartment was a wreck, so I guess I can’t blame her. Shamsiel was the one that convinced her to help us in the end, so I’m not sure what to think.” “The outlook was a bit, er...disastrous,” Elbridge said. “Wholly-inauspicious, really, by the reading. But since I swore an oath on my power to Seth…” “At least he found his daughter. Small victories, I suppose,” said Rupert. Glancing up, he added, “And hey, she’s on our side for the moment. That’s something.” “You sure it wasn’t Tamiel?” Lucy asked nervously. “He seemed like the type to want everyone to know exactly who he was.” Marcine glanced from her to Edward. So these were the kids Rupert had told her about. “Definitely not Tamiel then,” Ed said, squeezing Lucy’s hand. “I don’t think she’s still here, Lu. Would’ve shown up by now.” Lucy looked away. “Yeah, well, apparently we missed another one so…” “From everything I could find out, the coins have a habit of doing stuff like that,” replied Rupert, grimly, “Wish I could have found out more.” With a sigh, he added, “And here was me thinking the whole golem limb thing my counterpart had going on was going to be the craziest thing our counterparts were up to.” Marcine raised an eyebrow. “Golem limb thing?” A sudden, jarring impact cracked the enchanted glass of the airlock’s interior door. The sound was deafening in the confined space. Chips and shards fell away on both sides, and the indentation in the window resembled most of a fist, topped with a smear of blood. “Ah.” Elbridge nodded to Marcine. “Golem limb thing.” “Damnit,” swore Rupert again, dragging himself up, “This brings a whole new meaning to the idea of lying to myself.” The door finally swung open at that moment to reveal quite a scene. The Black Cat’s barricaded interior looked as if it had been stormed by a mob of angry ogres. Tables were overturned and splintered, bottles and glasses shattered, and several other fist-shaped indentations were evident in the walls. An older, more-grizzled Rupert was doubled over from exertion, breathing haggardly, glaring daggers at the other Elbridge. For his part, El-2’s white Panama suit was streaked red with blood, and the flesh around one eye was livid and bruised. His face was as stony and impassive as ever; as they watched, the older Rupert threw another punch at him, gathering dirt and debris around the fist in a stony shell. Then, suddenly, El-2 was on the other side of the bar, and yet another bottle of bottom-shelf vodka exploded in the space behind where he’d been standing. “How much more of this bloody city has to fall thanks to your damned fool plan?” spat the older Rupert in halted growls as he leaned against the bar, chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath. “That depends.” El-2 waved his hand, and the trashed interior began to sort itself out. Tables uprighted, chairs and barstools slid back into place, and the glass...well, nothing doing there. The pieces simply moved to pile themselves in unobtrusive corners, awaiting a dustbin. “Are you quite finished yet?” “Depends,” grumbled old Rupert, snatching one of the remaining bottles from behind the bar. He lowered the scarf covering his face just long enough to take a long swig. A big chunk of his chin was missing. It wasn't pretty. “Are you still doing the whole not-giving-a-toss thing about the cost of your insane plan?” Taking another swig, he sunk down onto one of the bar stools, still glaring at El-2. “Singh, don’t presume to guess at my feelings,” El-2 said icily. “They’re rather beside the point.” “You promised!” Lucy said, striding into the room with her hands on her hips, and no heed for the damage, self-repairing or otherwise. “I said I wouldn't shoot him,” said old Rupert, leaning back against the bar and nodding towards the pile of firearms he’d dropped on it earlier, “Besides, he’s had worse than a punch or two. He’ll survive.” Marcine went to see if Elbridge needed medical attention, but pulled up short at the sound of her own dry laugh from behind her. Her double stood smirking beside the door. “Well, aren’t you a sight for black eyes.” Marcine shot her a glare and kept moving. “Ms. Sterling,” El-2 said. He didn’t push Marcine’s help away, but nor did he quite move to accommodate her. “Will you be joining us, then?” If he noticed anything, or guessed at anything, or had known anything all along, none of them could tell. He might as well have been greeting his bridge partner. “Might as well drag something worthwhile out of your mess.” She walked to a corner of the bar, hooked a chair upright with her foot and sat down as Seth joined her. He looked uncomfortable at the entire situation. Marcine noticed her double had changed into an open-backed tunic and leggings with sandals--a rather strange outfit to be fighting a dragon in. Maria walked out of the kitchen and threw a bag of frozen peas on the bar. It skidded to a stop in front of El-2. “Ah. Thank you,” he told her. “And you,” he added to Marcine, pressing the bag to his swollen orbit. “Are we all present, then?” “Tsk,” said Shamsiel, from behind Marcine. “Our supporting cast is a bit… lacking.” Edward faced them, one of his flammable talismans tucked between two fingers. “You want to go solo the dragon, green eyes? We’ll wait.” “Oh, we’re letting children fight now?” Shamsiel rolled their eyes. “My, my, how desperate we’ve become.” The older Marcine snorted. “Wasn’t that your entire sales pitch to get me over here?” Shamsiel sighed. “True. It would be pointless to cause discord now, when they are in such need of our help.” With that apparently settled, she waved Maria over and turned away from the rest of the room with a clear air of dismissal. “Well?” Talia said from the back booth, where she, Drouillard and Nicholas had been watching the fight. “If everyone is prepared-” El-2 began. “Where’s Angie?” Marcine cut in. “She went to retrieve Warden Cole,” El-2 said, slightly peevish at the interruption. “She did not return to the rendezvous point, nor to here, and she has not made contact since. I know that she is still alive, but I do not think she will be joining us at the moment.” He reached under the bar and retrieved Angie’s rifle from its place next to Maria’s bat and Drou’s shotgun, passing it to Marcine. “She requested that I give you this.” “Oh.” Because she was more comfortable with a rifle and didn’t have hers. Marcine sat down and tried not to think about what ‘still alive’ might imply. “With that in mind, here is the plan of action: Operation Blue Sky,” El-2 continued. “No evil books this time. No secrets or lies. Just us, our last hope for the city, and a bloody great dragon.” “Well, and a gazebo,” Nicky said. “The gazebo is more important than the dragon, really.” “The dragon is on top of the gazebo, Stripe,” Talia explained patiently. “One thing at a time.”
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Feb 13, 2018 05:02
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Minutes to MidnightElbridge Hardley posted:Attn: Senior Council --- Excerpt from pg. 246: posted:
--- “‘Operation Blue Sky is ready to commence,’” Elbridge said, quoting his double. “‘There will be no drills this time, and minimal preparation. In an hour, we will be staring down the maw of the dragon Factorax. If we fail, then our city is lost to the Outside. If they fail, then our entire world is lost with it.’” His lips drew thin. “He put a bit more inflection on ’our’, and looked right at me while he said it. I don’t think that he, er...trusted us all that much.” “They were not your priority.” Bellworth said. “We literally moved Heaven and Earth to find a solution that didn’t sacrifice an entire world to the Void, Laura,” Elbridge said. He didn’t sound boastful, or even peevish as he usually might. He was just...so very tired. “I would have hoped that counted for something.” “They say you are your own worst critic.” --- Excerpt, Cont’d: posted:
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Feb 13, 2018 05:10
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Distorted Mirror Scene: El Gato Negro The planning was over - all that remained before they strode out was to arm themselves for battle. And in the older Rupert’s case, this meant gathering the rather large pile of firearms - and what looked suspiciously like an old rocket launcher - he’d left on the bar before his brawl with El-2. He had, after all, promised Lucy he wouldn’t shoot the man. Despite everything that had happened, that still mattered to him. She still mattered to him. The younger Rupert leaned - almost slumped, even - against the bar further down, waiting for some painkillers taken from the Gato’s stash to kick in. Mental exercises to blunt and endure pain were all well and good, but pharmaceuticals were still a more than welcome blessing when you’d been hit that badly. He glanced over at his older counterpart, watching as the man stowed several snub nosed revolvers in various concealed pockets and holsters about his ragged attire. Clearing his throat, he caught the man’s attention and said quietly, “Bellworth’s waiting for you, back in the real world, you know. That kid you saved… he went warlock. It was Bad. She’s really, really pissed.” The older Rupert grunted in acknowledgement and glanced over, a larger revolver in hand - his old service weapon, “Figured the Council would find out eventually. Thought it’d be Elbridge that’d be the grass, honestly.” The younger Rupert glanced over at El-2 for a second before he replied, “How’d he find out about the kid?” “Didn’t,” came the growled reply of his counterpart, “But he was there when I offed Peter Evans. After everything Peter had done, he had to die.” “You think he deserved it?” asked Rupert, a faint frown on his tired face. “He was a monster,” replied the elder Rupert, nodding, as if that explained it. He stowed the service revolver in a holster on his hip. Glancing over, he noted the younger Rupert’s frown and added, “Didn't do it, did you? What’d it cost you?” “Couldn't bring myself to kill someone else, not after spending all that time with Ada and the others,” replied Rupert quietly, “He used his Death Curse on Lucy, doomed her to take up the coin. I’ve been searching as best I can to find a way to break either the curse or the coin, but… nothing so far.” “Doesn't seem worth it. Doomed a kid, for what? Fear?” “No, for hope,” replied Rupert, looking up, “Hope that I could move beyond the unfortunate events of that night and find redemption. That even someone like Peter could make the right choice.” The older Rupert grunted again, “Fair enough. Not much of that left in here,” he said, waving his hand toward the room, “Even less in here,” he added, tapping himself on the chest and head. “Bellworth’s in for a disappointment.” Rupert raised a questioning eyebrow. His counterpart drew a heavy leather bound notebook from inside a pocket and tossed it over, explaining, “All my notes since I came here. Read 'em if you survive. You’ll understand.” Rupert caught it one handed - barely - and glanced inside. It was heavy and each page was filled to the brim in his own neat hand. He smiled in understanding, “You don't want all that work to go to waste.” His counterpart nodded, “Someone should inherit it, and it’s much too grim for Ed or Lucy.” He slipped his last sawn-off into his worn coat, “If you ever want to realpolitik your way back into the Council, I worked on that one problem for a bit a while back when I was making the axe-blade. Might be something useful there to you. Needed to ask Hugues about it, really, but he'd already disappeared by then.” He slung the rocket launcher over his shoulder, lifted his axe-rifle and rose to his feet. Glancing back, he growled, “Survive. Keep hoping.” Rupert frowned as his counterpart walked away. It was as if the man already knew he wasn't walking away from this, before it even began. He’d clearly sacrificed much in fighting to keep what remained of the city safe, and in a way, it was admirable… but it seemed a waste, somehow.
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Apr 5, 2018 12:57
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Beauty and the Bat Scene: A Hole in the Wall A few broken cement stairs led down into a dimly lit barroom. Upended wooden wire spools took the place of tables, and no two chairs matched. The floor was hard packed earth, and the bar itself was a broken length of ship’s keel on sawhorses. There were no house lights, just a few smoked glass lanterns hanging from the ceiling to let the humans see by. Vampires slouched comfortably in the scavenged furniture, while their humans held them, or fed them, or otherwise pleasured them. Alcohol flowed freely here, and the thick cloud of smoke browning the ceiling wasn’t tobacco. At the far end of the room, an attractive young man plucked the strings of an old guitar and crooned a song to the red-head on his arm. An old couple sipped bright green liquor from mason jars. An incredibly thin woman nuzzled her partner’s neck, and when her fangs came out he leaned into them with a sigh of contentment. Elbridge was right to call this a den, Angie thought. It reminded her of the days when opium was in vogue, and it was always easy to find a little place with no name where you could drown yourself in oblivion for hours. Or forever, if that’s what you truly wanted. She glanced from face to face, never lingering long, not wanting to know the stories of desperation and loneliness that would invariably end in the canal that Enme had spoken of. She wanted to call his name, but it would only draw attention. So she kept quiet, and worked her way through the tables, one by one. It was never easy to find someone in a place where people went when they wanted to forget. --- Roger Cole was sitting alone in a corner, his broken office chair leaned comfortably against the wall. He wasn’t welcome at the tables, and he’d rather listen to Reese play his guitar than start a fight. He took a cigarette out of the silver case in his shirt pocket and called a small flame to his palm. Instantly, every vampire’s eye was on him. Even Reese paused his playing and looked down from the stage with an eyebrow raised. A smirk crossed Roger’s face. He’d started burning the place down right before the reset as retribution for the time they’d gotten up the nerve to throw him out, and reset was tomorrow. They were wondering if he was ahead of schedule. The sound of alcohol hissing and glass bottles exploding against his shield might be cathartic, but… no. He needed the place in one piece for now. He lit his cigarette and shook his hand to dispel the flame. A barely audible sigh went through the crowd as they went back to their business. Reese started playing again, Johnny Cash this time, Ring of Fire. There were a few groans but the bad joke let the tension out of the room and by the time he was through Roger was forgotten again. Just another wall decoration, exactly what he wanted to be. His skin felt too tight, and he scratched at his arms, leaving shallow red furrows. Rick’s body didn’t always change when his mind did, and the vampire felt vulnerable, even though he was far from helpless. He couldn’t even feed to take the edge off. He didn’t like alcohol, didn’t like anything that made him less sharp. So he smoked, and it helped, and Rick could join him or deal with the nicotine cravings. It was one of the few concessions he’d actually won in their little tug of war. Reese noticed him sulking and keeping in the Cash theme, started strumming Folsom Prison Blues. Roger rolled his eyes and glanced back at the bar, wondering if it might be worth the risk to get wasted just this once. But no, they’d kill him the second he bobbed his head, and he couldn’t afford to be dead now. Not when Operation Bellend had actually gone off without a hitch. He took a long drag and tapped his fingers in time with the music. “I’m stuck in Folsom Prison,” he muttered along with the tune. “And time keeps draggin’ on…” The letter in his pocket felt like it weighed half a ton. He knew what it meant, and what it meant for him particularly, and hiding in here was the only way he was going to make it out of all this alive. “Well I know I had it comin’, I know I can’t be free…” quote:We need your help. “Far from Folsom Prison, that’s where I want to be...” quote:This is our last chance. No matter who reads this... Lucy’s writing. Hardley wouldn’t ask, wouldn’t dare, not after everything they’d done to each other. Even Rick didn’t talk to El much anymore after… He counted his fingers again, making sure they were all there. El- He shook his head. That was Rick-talk. Hardley had done everything he could think of to push Roger under, but he hadn’t counted on Rick remembering every last detail of it. Rick hadn’t agreed to some of the final, desperate attempts. He hadn’t even complained when Roger caught up to the bastard and killed him outright the next cycle. “I didn’t torture him back,” Roger said to no one. Rick would remember it when he woke up… His hand shook slightly as he reached for another cigarette. Rick wasn’t going to wake up, was he? Not if things went to plan. If Rick and El- Hardley’s initial assessments were correct, if the city was restored then the cycle would lock. No more resets. No more Roger, unless he was in the driver’s seat when it happened. If he was, then no more Rick. If Hardley had just listened… You started that one. quote:No matter who reads this... He needed to forget, but Marcine wouldn’t even talk to him. And no matter how well he faked being Rick, she could tell it was him. Not that he was ever much good at faking. He’d inherited his brother’s lack of talent in that department. He’s not your brother. Close enough! He looked wistfully at the bar again, there had to be some way for him to get stone drunk and lock himself in the cellar, barricade the door, and wait for all this to stop mattering… And then he saw her. Angelique Montes. Impossible as it was undeniable. She moved through the oblivious vampires and their thralls like a shark through tuna, her sharp eyes flicking back and forth. She could only be looking for one person. “How?” he whispered. She froze, his voice reaching her through the music and the crowd’s murmur, then slowly turned to face him. “Rico?” she mouthed his name and it physically hurt. Rick’s emotions ran through him like water through a sieve. I love you, I miss you, I’m afraid for you, I want you, I love you… He couldn’t stop them, so he just let them run their course, letting himself feel and then letting those feelings go as best he could. It was never perfect, they always tainted him, as they’d done countless times, as they’d been doing ever since this bitch taught Rick how to suppress the fledgeling vampire inside him. Two years! No one had hurt him the way that Angelique had hurt him. She had done everything in her power to prevent him from even being born. He closed his eyes and let the initial flood of feelings pass, and when he opened them he looked at her calmly and said the most hurtful thing he could think of. The truth. “No.” --- For a long moment she stood there, taking him in. Not a shadow of him from another world, but her own friend and student, alive and well. He looked like he was seeing a ghost, and her expression mirrored his own. But she couldn’t run to him, because it wasn’t him. She’d been prepared for the vampire to lie, to try to lure her into thinking that he was Rico, but he hadn’t. He smiled thinly at her shock, then beckoned her to come closer with two fingers, a cigarette clutched between them. The cross necklace bit into her hand as she squeezed it tightly. She felt her skin flush as her tattoos started to color in. A hundred years of training screamed at her to shoot this inhuman thing that was defiling her friend’s corpse but she resisted. He was still in there. Elbridge had promised her it was so. She had to have faith. The vampire grabbed the back of a chair from one of the tables nearby and dumped the occupant- one of the half-drunk blood donors- on the floor. There was a noise of complaint that quickly went quiet when they saw who’d taken the seat, and they scurried off. He set the chair down against the wall next to the one he’d been sitting in and tilted his head the way Rico used to when asking a question without words. She nodded once and approached, waiting for him to sit down before pulling the offered chair slightly farther away and sitting herself. “Who are you then?” she asked. “Roger,” said the vampire. He gave her a smile that was half-grimace. “And you’re Angie.” “Not to you,” she snapped. “Angelique then? I’m not calling you Montes. We’ve known each other for too long.” “Fine.” Something wasn’t right about him, but it took a moment to place it. The wrinkles at his eyes, the scars on his hands when he took another cigarette out of his pocket... Red court vampires didn’t keep those on their flesh masks. They were always just a little too pretty to be real. It was something she’d had a lifetime of learning to spot. “You’re human,” she said. “For tonight,” Roger said, shrugging. He sat on the edge of his chair, half his weight still on his feet. It was unsettling. Rico never sat like he was ready to start a fight. “Guess that means you can’t kill me.” Her eyes widened in surprise. He was right. “I didn’t come here to kill you,” she said quickly. “You didn’t come here for me,” he corrected. “Don’t worry, I get that a lot. But you knew my brother. He’d have been there for Operation Bellend if he could have. So why are you here, since you knew it’d be me?” Brother? “I came a long way to find him,” Angie said, glancing down at her bag. “I wanted to at least know he was alive.” “Oh he’s alive alright,” Roger said bitterly. “But you didn’t come all the way from Brazil just to check on us. You thought you could coax him out, didn’t you? That maybe you were the special key to bringing him back all along. That Hardley just wasn’t trying hard enough with the pliers.” She shook her head. “I’m not that young and foolish anymore.” She pulled her satchel into her lap and opened it for him to see. The folded grey square of cloth on top made him flinch, visibly. “You went to our house,” he accused. “I did.” “That rag doesn’t mean anything to me.” Angie took a deep breath. There was always the risk that it would come to this, and even though it was a betrayal it was hopefully one that Rico could forgive. She took the cloak out and offered it to him. “I think it does. I think you imprinted for too long, Roger Cole.” “It’s your fault!” he shouted, standing up. The room quieted, until Angie felt exposed under the eyes of curious vampires. Roger turned on them with a glare that lowered the room temperature three degrees. That fast, everyone found something more interesting than the angry wizard to look at. Angie could hear the desperation under his rage. It meant she was right. She stood also, letting the cloak and the bag drop to the ground. “Roger,” she said. “Do you hate me?” “Yes!” No hesitation there, but it wasn’t that simple. She had to break him, and she was sorry that she knew how. “Do you love me?” “Why are you here?!” he asked, spreading his hands to his sides, shoulders back. She stepped into his arms and embraced him before he could react. He stood there for a full minute, shocked and confused. She held on tightly, pressing her forehead into his chest. He took a step back and bumped into the wall. Nowhere to run. He would either attack her now, or Rico’s feelings would win out. Have faith! Slowly, awkwardly, his arms went around her. “Angie…” She raised her head enough to look at his face. A tear fell on her cheek, and she blinked away tears of her own. He felt like Rico, he sounded like Rico, he even smelled like Rico. But he wasn’t, and so she did the cruelest thing she could think of. She kissed him. --- She’s using you! This is a trap! He knew, and he didn’t care. He could never have her for real, but if she wanted to fake it, even just this much, then he would take what was given and treasure it forever. He kissed her back, and pulled her against him, and pretended she meant it. “You’re the monster,” he said, when she finally broke away from the kiss. She stayed in his arms, running her hand over his chest. “I’ve had longer to practice,” she said, not even trying to deny it. “I love you,” he said. “Then tell me why you’re hiding here,” she said. “When all your friends are going out to fight.” “Why would they need me?” Angie took a deep breath and said a single name. “Factorax.” Roger’s eyes widened. “Oh.” He hadn’t thought they’d go after the wyrm directly. Was it even possible? Ideas started to float through his head but he knew he was being manipulated. “No, they can handle it just fine. Or they can’t. Either way, no skin off my back.” “Roger…” That was too much. He took a ragged breath and caught her hand. “Don’t.” She sensed she’d crossed a line and pulled back enough to let him breathe. “If you don’t come, and they lose, what then? Trapped in a shrinking bubble until it pops and the Outsiders eat all of us? Do you hate them that much?” “Maybe Elbridge…” he said bitterly. But even that was a lie. He shook his head. “That’s not what this is about.” She dipped, picking up the cloak. “Then why?” “I’m not him. If I put that on...” He sighed. It was a bullshit excuse, and he couldn’t make it convincing. She gripped his shirt and tugged, forcing him to look her in the eyes. “Do you want to be here, hiding in this shithole while the last battle rages on without you? While everyone you’ve ever cared about fights for their future? Are you happy riding their coattails, Roger Cole?” Shame colored his cheeks, his own feelings resurfacing. “No.” She tucked the cloak back into her bag without looking away. “Then come with me. As yourself.” He wanted to see betrayal in those eyes, lies, a reason to refuse her. But there was nothing but fire there. She wasn’t acting anymore. He wondered what her phage would be like, after hundreds of years of imprinting on such a bright soul. Would there be anything left of them? You’re going to get yourself killed, and Rick is going to win. He smirked. Maybe, maybe not. Besides, since when did he give a poo poo about dying? “Alright. But if we’re going after Factorax, there’s something we need to get first.”
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May 22, 2018 01:12
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Burninating The Countryside, Round 1 Scene: Race Track Scene Aspects: Drou’s Mobile Armory, Biker Edward The horse track was lit by the tall light poles that surrounded it for night racing, illuminating the sleeping Wyrm. He was so large that he looked more like a snake than a dragon. Only the curls of his body were visible from beyond the western fence, where the natives of the fallen city had gathered to do battle. “So, there he is,” Ed said, biting his lip. He was on Cole’s Suzuki again, which was now basically covered in inked paper talismans. The charms would lend the bike protection, stability, speed, and a few surprises besides. Operation Blue Sky had been a long time in the planning. “Base camp is here,” Talia said, dragging a card table out of the back of the van. Drou helped her set it up and she started unpacking her books. “We should be outside of the range of the anomaly itself, and with Lucy’s veils we won’t be visible to him.” “Shouldn’t be,” Lucy corrected. “I’ve never had to fool a dragon before. If you’re too obvious I don’t think anyone’s veils would be good enough.” Talia glared at the young woman over the top of her glasses at the interruption. “We’ll keep that in mind. Just remember to fall back to us if you feel the anomaly start to cause any problems. If you get crushed or eaten there’s not much we can do about it but we’ll have strong wards against time magic set up here.” She picked up a backpack full of salt and went about pouring said wards. “I’ll bring in what I got from the station,” Drou added. “If it looks like we can help, just holler.” “There will likely be a lot of screaming,” El-2 said. “I’ll use something else to mark priority targets.” He snapped his fingers, and a blood-red glyph that resembled crosshairs shimmered into being. “This should work.” “Of all the things I could have expected,” Seth muttered, “a dragon wasn’t one of them.” Kneeling, he laid his staff on the ground, lifted the violin from its case, and tuned it with old familiarity. It was like having an old friend back--but a friend he’d sent off to look after his daughter. Now it was useless to her. Yet another sacrifice in this hellhole. Old Rupert glanced from the dragon to his rocket launcher and then back again, before grumbling, “Starting to wish I’d made a bigger rocket.” Marcine slipped her feet out of her sandals. Her form shimmered like a heat mirage, then changed. Black-feathered wings appeared on her back, her legs developed the scale and talons of a bird of prey, and silvery feathers grew along her arms and mixed with her hair. The reason for her odd choice in clothing was now apparent, as the harpy stretched her arms and wings. Shamsiel gleefully demanded to see their reactions, so she satisfied his ego through eyes golden as a hawk’s. Seth stared back at her with his mouth open and no sound coming out, though it looked like he was trying. She (or Shamsiel - it was hard to tell, sometimes) smirked, and with a powerful downbeat, went streaking through the air toward the dragon. --- Factorax coiled in an uneven pile of scales, more like a resting python than the lizard he used to be. It was easy enough to find his head, resting on the green grass of the inner track. One great paw lay over his face, shielding his eyes from the stadium lights as he slept. His spine was hunched, and his other paw was too small and twisted against his side. There was something wrong with the way he’d grown. The horns on either side of his skull didn’t match, and the skin on his face was too tight, pulling his lips into a permanent snarl and revealing the dinosaur-like teeth of his lower jaw. Colors rippled over his razor sharp hide as he breathed, an uneven sound marred by occasional shudders and coughs. Though obscenely large and no doubt just as obscenely powerful, the shortcut the wyrm had taken to gain that strength had in many ways turned him into a cripple. “Shall we begin?” Shamsiel’s excitement was empowering in its own way, their support running through her altered body like an electric current. Marcine pitied the beast, but its condition was all the more reason to put it out of its misery. “I get the feeling a gun isn’t going to do much to its scales,” she observed dryly. Shamsiel only chuckled. “No, but neither would a tank. That is a Dragon.” The single most vulnerable point would be...the eyes. She flicked her hand to the side, sending a streak of light through the air that coalesced into a mirror of herself, glowing and distracting, as she swooped in the other direction and fired a shot at the dragon’s paw. It pinged off his scales, but it woke him up. (CA with Illusions to place the aspect “Decoy”: (///-)+5 = 4. One invoke.) His paw shifted and the great orb of his eye opened. Sea green, with a vertical pupil, like a snake. The eye focused on Marcine, then flicked to the copy she’d made and back. He pushed himself off the ground without any haste, giving her time to get a good look at the tough black rubber that made up his belly scales. They looked, if anything, even more impenetrable than the rest of him. A rolling cough went through him as he faced her, eye to eye even though she was flying twenty feet off the ground, and she realized he was trying to laugh. There was a low cunning in that eye, and malice, and rage. If there had ever been anything more, it was gone now. Lost to the horrors that this world had inflicted on him, and later, those he’d inflicted on himself. The dragon’s head tilted back, his jaws opening and his nostrils flaring as he inhaled a great breath. The light construct fired off some quick shots with the sharp crack of a handgun, leaving streaks of glittering smoke in the air as they passed just by the dragon’s face. Its wings flared, glowing brightly, and it zipped upward and away from Marcine. (Tor’s head prepares to use a breath weapon. Marcine invokes her decoy for effect to draw his aim. When charged, he will blast A1 and the attack roll will be made at that time. Puck to Rupert.) Taking advantage of the distraction provided by the fallen angel, Old Rupert rolled forwards across the muddy horse track, ax-rifle in hand, his cloak gathered around him as he eyed the distance between him and the dragon. Picking his spot, he dropped low, shrouding himself with the cloak, and with a brief incantation, seemed to blend into the mud, just another bump in the ruined track. (Old Rupert enters the fray at B2. CA with Stealth! //// +3 = +3. Creates aspect: “Just Another Bump in the Track” with one free invoke. Puck to El-2.) There he was. The great beast himself, warped and held hostage by his own enormity. There might have been a metaphor in there, if El-2 had been in a mood to consider it, but the time for such things was long-since passed. Instead, he contemplated Tor’s monstrous bulk, grossly-swollen musculature straining against skin and bone, the dragon’s one massive arm threatening to tear free of its own shoulder socket. It was a wretched fate, to be sure. “I should have killed you when I had the chance,” El-2 murmured, and he spoke with pity rather than hate. He watched Marcine-slash-Shamsiel circle in the air, baiting the enraged dragon. A single blow from its oversized arm might crush any of them in an instant, if it could hit. If. If Tor’s haphazard flailing at the Denarian was any indication, that arm had quite a limited range of motion. Nowhere in the park was safe to stand, per se, but some spots were notably safer than others. (El-2 follows Old Rupert to B2 and CAs with Notice: ++-/ +5 = 6. Tor defends with Athletics: ///+ +3 = 4. Advantage Created: El places the aspect “Limited Range of Motion” on Tor’s big arm. Puck to his little arm.) Though undersized, the dragon’s left arm had other uses. The fingers flashed in a complex motion as Factorax continued to inhale, and then the dragon shifted, coils revealing a magic circle that had been hidden underneath its bulk. The claws flashed red and stabbed down into the circle, and the area where Rupert and Elbridge were standing in erupted into crimson flames. The heat rolled over and off Rupert’s enchanted cloak like water off a duck. Elbridge wasn’t so lucky, and his white suit certainly wasn’t anymore, though it was resistant enough to help protect him from the worst of the fire. When it passed you might say he was still original flavor, not yet extra crispy. (Tor attacks with magic revealing his first stunt, the magic claw’s Dragonspell. Tor’s left arm hits a whole zone with magic! Aiming at B2: 4df+5 = (+-b-)+5 = 4) Rupert defends with Physique: (-+++)+6 = 8, gets a SwS and names it “Smoke on the Battlefield.” Elbridge defends, Athletics: (b-b-)+4 = 2. FP on “we are cancelling the apocalypse” to reroll: (b--b)+4 = 2. Welp. Tor uses a FP to get three, then downgrades one for a boost: “Energized.” El-2 marks 2nd box and gains a point of Preparation against the magic claw from Second Mover Principle; El-2 FP 5->4. While the left hand cast the spell the right wasn’t idle. The dragon leaned back and reached around the copy straight for the real Marcine. She dipped a wing and swooped beneath the paw, and winced as a few feathers tore out, caught on the edge of a scale. She evaded his second swipe, but the wind from his paw passing by sent her into a tumble--and this time two claws pinned her leg. She jabbed the gun into what looked like a gap between his scales and fired; he didn’t so much as twitch in response. But with direct contact, maybe she could-- “No,” Shamsiel warned her. “In a direct contest, we will lose. Bide your time.” (Might Claw creates an advantage: “Just like King Kong” using Physique: (+-bb)+7 = 7. Marcine defends with illusions: (++bb)+5 = 7. Tor uses his Energized boost to up to 9, Marcine invokes “Welcome to my Unreality” to 9 (FP: 5 -> 4). Tor invokes the Might Claw’s aspect, “Crushing Grip” to bring it to 11, and Marcine doesn’t contest. Advantage created, one free invoke.) Tor’s sea green eye flicked, as though a button had been pushed somewhere inside him, and glowed with red neon light. He opened his maw, and there was something shining and crystalline deep in the back of his throat. It glittered dangerously, then a brilliant white light from deep within him hit the prism and split into a violent rainbow of colors that beamed forth from his mouth in a huge, burning laser. An unearthly sound accompanied it, almost like a car alarm going off. It vaporized the bit of the track where Marcine’s clone floated, leaving nothing but slag and dust. (Tor ends the round by firing his breath weapon, which was distracted into A1 by Marcine. It does (++b-)+6 = 7, at w:6 to… well nothing THIS time. Puck to Elbridge.)
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May 22, 2018 01:16
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Burninating the Peasants, Round 2 Scene: Race Track Scene Aspects: Drou’s Mobile Armory, Biker Edward El-2 coughed and wiped the ashes that used to be his eyebrows from his face. So, Factorax wasn’t just gorging on the mystical energies leaking from the anomaly - the dragon had actually learned a thing or two about wielding them. No matter what he knew, however, Elbridge Hardley most-assuredly knew more. Taking in that much power, that rapidly, and expelling it so recklessly...dangerous business, that. Clearly, neither his mother nor his nanny had ever taught him not to play with fire. He’d learn that lesson soon enough. El-2 shouted a Sanskrit incantation, and a cloud of shimmering fractals - each about the size and shape of a playing card - erupted from his singed sleeves. They caught in the etheric winds, swirling and flying to mark the vulnerable stress points where the magics entered or exited the dragon’s body. (If Tor’s gonna act like a child’s toy, El-2’s gonna give him some GLOWY WEAK POINTS! Lore: Divinations /+-+ +5 = 6 to place the aspect “Arcane Stress Lines”. Tor defends: Will -+-+ +6 = 6, a tie! El-2 Invokes “The Forbidden Sage” for +2 to land it anyway, and gains a second point of Preparation against the mage claw. El-2 FP 4->3, puck to Rupert.) “Singh!” El-2 shouted. “Target!” Old Rupert didn’t bother to respond. Shaking the now dry mud from the edge of his cloak, he slid a bullet from a pocket, the tip painstakingly engraved with a tiny ring of runes. Tapping the ring, he whispered an incantation and slid it into the rifle’s chamber. Leaning forward, he moved his cloak to the side and took aim at a shimming joint just above the dragon’s claw. With a squeeze of the trigger, he fired, the bullet’s runic engravings glowing as it left the barrel. The bullet glowed as it flew through the air, slamming into Tor’s wrist. The Dragon roared as blood flew from the withered arm, and he curled it back against his side, adjusting himself so it wasn’t visible. (Old Rupert uses a magic bullet from his stash of Party Favours (OOO -> XOO) to bump this attack to W:3. Old Rupert, Combat: /+++ +5 = +8 vs Magic Claw’s Physique Defense: --+/ +4 = +3. Magic Claw is Taken Out! Puck to Might Claw.) The armored claw that currently held Marcine crushed her tightly in its grip. She pushed back, but not with physical force. She braced her hands against the scales and wove an illusion of vines sprouting along the dragon’s hand, growing spines that worked their way into the cracks in his hide. He’d feel it through the rest of his hand, too, any part that made contact with her. She sent the sense of pain through the illusion, then beat her wings hard. The force twisted his wrist at a sharp angle that its bulk wasn’t meant to turn at. That part of the pain wasn’t an illusion. (Tor rolls physique to stack another invoke onto “Just like King Kong: (-+-b)+7 = 6. Marcine defends with Illusions: (--b+)+5 = 4, and invokes “Welcome to My Unreality” (FP: 4 -> 3) and tags “Limited Range of Motion” for 8 to prevent the CA.) “Now!” Shamsiel said, bolstering her illusion as she fought to free herself. The impression of thorns stabbed deeper, but the dragon was unphased. Either it knew it was a trick, or it just plain wasn’t working to begin with. Struggling would only exhaust her. (Marcine tries to overcome with Illusions: (----)+5 = 1. Uh-huh. Tor defends: (b+++)+4 = 7. Invoke “Welcome to My Unreality” (FP: 3 -> 2) to reroll: (+-b+)+5 = 6. Pass to head.) Tor raised his head again, green eyes shifting in color to red once more. He gave that coughing laugh and broke into a reptilian grin. “Little fly,” he said, the sacs in his chest expanding once more. His voice sounded strange, modulated like a bad dubstep song. There were two layers to it, a higher child’s voice and a much deeper bass that rumbled through the ground. “Clip your wings.” This time when he opened his maw wide, the shining light was already there. Marcine clenched her teeth and desperately flung her own blinding stab of light at his eyes. ”Pull towards the flesh of his palm!” Shamsiel yelled in her mind, and she could feel them straining to conceal her, showing an image of her in the tips of the dragon’s claws. With the light in addition it might be enough to- Tor’s laser blinded her, and so did the pain. She screamed, then choked when the pain suddenly...didn’t exactly go away, but changed. She slumped against the dragon’s hand and stared blankly at the stump where her arm used to be. (Rules text. Marcine defends with Illusions: (-+-+)+5 = 5, taking 9 stress. She marks her 3rd stress box and the Severe consequence of “Lost Arm.”)
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May 22, 2018 01:26
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Burninating all the Peoples, Round 3 Scene: Race Track Scene Aspects: Drou’s Mobile Armory, Biker Edward Marcine swallowed back nausea and tried to focus through the shock. In a moment, it lessened, as Shamsiel blocked out the worst of it. The world seemed to swirl around her in a haze. Then she realized there was something swirling around her. She sang a piercing note as she reached out to the ambient magic that saturated the fairground and wrenched it into her control. Her song shifted it in her grasp, and she sent it on until the air near the others all but crackled with it. (Acoustics to CA: (+-b-)+5 = 4, placing the aspect “Channeled Magic” with one tag.) Tor peered at Marcine, tilting his head to catch the song. “Not fly, bird…” he said, opening his mouth again. The prism in his throat glittered ominously but was still charging… (Tor takes the puck and breaths in… Puck to Elbridge.) “Abel.” El-2 whispered, and his words carried despite the impossible distance between them. “Tear gas.” Drou didn’t flinch. He was used to the spooky poo poo by now, but he still had questions. “Where, man? I can’t see through this Bargain Basement Godzilla poo poo!” “Open mouth.” The eyepiece of Drou’s scope frosted over, but he could still see...not what was on the other end. The view was moving, following the arc of the ballistic trajectory, just like in The Matrix and every loving movie that had ripped off The Matrix, showing him a clear path from the end of his barrel to Tor’s cavernous maw. “Dead centre. Five second delay, starting now.” Five. Drou pulled back the handle and rested the stock against his shoulder. Four. He cycled the drum. Three. He primed the fuse. Two. He took aim. One. “Thank you, defense overspending.” Drou squeezed the trigger and fired. A hissing canister of olive-drab metal shot from the end of his grenade launcher and whizzed through the air. It flew true through the distortions of the anomaly, over the heads of the wizards on the ground, past the cloud of burnt feathers from the maimed Denarian… ...and snagged, short of its mark, on a cancerous mass of jagged dental tissue that had erupted from one side of Tor’s mouth like an elephant’s tusk. “Did I hit?” Drou shouted, still barely-audible over the din of battle. “Er…” El-2 mumbled, his vision returning to his own perspective. The canister was still caught on the side of Tor’s face. It was starting to fume, but it was precariously-lodged, and even a light scratch would knock it to the ground. He glanced to Marcine, wondered if this was really worth the effort, and sighed. A sharp, precise nudge of telekinetic force jostled the canister over into Tor’s mouth and down his gullet. “Yes,” El-2 answered. “Yes, you did.” (Battle of the Invokes! El-2 rolls Notice to direct Drou’s grenade fire: //-+ +5 = 5. Tor defends with Athletics: +--+ +6 = 6! Not good enough, so El-2 invokes on “We Are Cancelling The Apocalypse” to shut down that lazer-breath with a 7. Tor counter-invokes on “Unnaturally-Grown” to foul the shot with his face’s freakish, Escher-esque shape. El-2 escalates with “Remember What You’re Fighting For” to SAVE a life for once, and Tor has nothing left to raise on. The Aspect sticks: “WARNING: Choking Hazard”. El-2 FP 3->1, GM FP 6->5. Puck to Old Rupert.) Nestled beneath his mud-covered cloak, Old Rupert lowered his rifle, resting it on the ground beside him. Clenching his hands into fists, he punched one skywards, knocking his cloak to the side as he muttered the first part of his incantation, drawing the excessive ambient magic Shamsiel had so kindly provided. His eyes flashed with light as he channeled the magic through himself, down into his other fist - a fist he had plunged straight down into the ground. Almost hissing, he muttered the second half of the incantation as he released the energy into the ground below. The earth below Tor’s mighty claw began to crackle with energy, hardening into a rough circle of solid rock. With a rumble, a pillar shot straight upwards, topped with a vice-like claw. Unerringly, the stone claw speared towards the claw’s wrist, striking out like the limb of a massive earthen crab, grasping the dragon’s limb within its stone grasp. (Old Rupert, Earth Combat: +/++ +6 = +9 & W:2, invoking “Channeled Magic” to force Tor to defend at +0. Tor’s defense: //-+ = +0. Uses his free invoke on “Just like King Kong”, and invokes his “Capital D Dragon” and “Armored Arm” aspects to gain +6. (GM FP 5 > 3.) Rupert counter-invokes on “The Memory Of What Once Was” for another +2. (FP: 5->4). Rupert downgrades by 1 stress to take a boost for his SWS: “Crab Claw Action Feature!”. Tor is forced to take his mild, “RSI: Rupert-caused Strain Injury” and mark his 4th box. Phys: OOOXO) Tor struggled, his remaining arm caught in the grip of Rupert’s stone one. He coughed and choked on the gas canister, smoke running from between his teeth and tears streaming from his eyes. He clenched his fist around Marcine, trying to squeeze her like a grape. She pushed away Shamsiel’s block on her pain. She doubled over again as it rushed back, but forced the sensation straight into Tor’s nerves. His claw spasmed. It hurt, but she wasn’t crushed just yet. “I’ve had about enough of this,” Shamsiel grumbled. “You don’t loving say,” Marcine growled through clenched teeth. (Tor attacks: (-+b-)+7 = 6. Marcine defends with Mentalism: (+b+-)+5 = 6. She marks her second stress box. Pass to head.) The light in Tor’s throat flashed through the cloud of smoke, and the multicolored blast emerged, but refracted and dull compared to the focused laser it had previously been, and cut off short as the dragon had another coughing fit. The blast hit the image Marcine conjured of herself dead on, but slightly below that, it grazed her wing. She could still fly, but not for long if this kept up. (The laser fires! Well, it tries to. Elbridge invokes his Choking Hazard for effect, which removes the W:rating from the laser breath. (-+-b)+6 = 5. Marcine defends with another illusion: 4dF+5 = (bb-b)+5 = 4. Takes 1 stress, filling her first box.)
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May 22, 2018 01:28
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And Their Thatched Roof Cottages! Round 4 Scene: Race Track Scene Aspects: Drou’s Mobile Armory, Biker Edward Tor’s mouth snapped shut, and his head turned towards Elbridge and Rupert. The low, rumbling growl in his chest shook the ground as he focused. The anomaly behind him lit up, flashing as brightly as a nuclear bomb for an instant as he drew on its power. “I… am… invincible!” he roared, shifting his body to reveal his regenerated left arm. Bands of ultraviolet light glowed through his white skin as the magic settled in him. He looked even bigger than he had just a moment ago, and far more aware of his surroundings. “I have crushed you before,” he told Rupert, in that strange double-layered voice. “And you,” he said to Elbridge. “Thief. Fool. Murderer…” The smoke around his mangled face gave him the look of a skull with terrible green eyes. “The source is MINE!” He looked down at Marcine, still clutched, bleeding, in his claw. “You are too weak to take it from me. ALL OF YOU!” “Well, I’m glad he’s enjoying himself,” Shamsiel grunted. She sent him back a wordless demand to shut up. “Don’t be foolish, use it! This beast is remembering it has a mind, and a mind is vulnerable where a beast is not.” Old Rupert looked over at the newly regenerated arm and grumbled, “Bollocks.” “We really should never have let him leave with us,” El-2 said, with an unspoken but definite I-told-you-so. (Top of Round Four triggers a special stunt: Temporal Smearing! Every Four rounds choose one: Erase all stress track damage from one claw (reviving it if taken out) OR… a mystery. Magic Claw takes the puck.) As if to prove his point directly, Tor’s stunted arm slashed the air, making a complex hand gesture that one could only make if one had seven fingers and several of them were six-jointed. An icy mist poured forth, coating the ground where Rupert and Elbridge stood, dampening and freezing the air. The temperature dropped abruptly and their clothes went stiff as the water turned to solid ice. Elbridge flicked out his hand to conjure a barrier, but the biting wind blew snow everywhere, and he succeeded only in creating a small penumbra, sheltered from the worst of it. When the blizzard subsided, his suit was white again, as was the rest of him. He looked like the world’s grumpiest snowman. Rupert shivered (or, at least, the flesh parts of him did) beneath his cloak as the chill wind bit through the ragged material. With a grunt, he pulled the cloak closed again for warmth, the flickering remnants of his camouflage veil all but useless as the mud was covered by a layer of snow. (Magic Claw targets B2 with a magical attack: (-++-)+7 = 7. Rupert defends: (--+b)+6 = 5, and uses his free invoke on “Bump in the Track” to tie. Tor gains a Boost. Elbridge defends: (bb-+)+6 = 6. Pings armor, so Tor gains a second Boost. “Frost Fog” and “Elemental Resonance”) “Puny - *haaaaaack* - thing,” Tor growled around the canister stuck in his throat. “Can’t *urk* hurt me.” His jagged maw twisted into a ghoulish smile. “Can hurt you. Hurt. Hurt. Huuuuurk…” His last word trailed off into a liquid, retching noise, and his throat visibly heaved up and down, forcing the fuming grenade back up his gullet. He opened wide to spit it at Elbridge… ...and then Drou shot another one straight down his throat. He pumped and cycled the pneumatic drum with a smirk of satisfaction. “Mothafucka I got plenty more where that come from.” (Head takes the puck and spits out a gas can. Difficulty 5. Physique: (+--b)+6 = 5. CA fails after Rupert invokes the “Choking Hazard” to up the difficulty to 7. (Rupert FP: 4->3). Passes puck to Might claw.) As he choked, Tor’s grip on Marcine spasmed again, tighter. She fought back with the impression of stone in his hand, an immovable force that refused to be crushed, like the earthen claw that pinned his arm. He tugged against it, but it didn’t budge. Frustrated, he shook his hand. Marcine choked back a shriek of pain when the gaping wound that had been her arm banged against his scales. They scraped away part of the cauterized scar and it started bleeding. It wasn’t much of a comfort when the dragon stopped trying to shake her to death because of a twinge in his wrist. Her vision went dark around the edges for a moment. She was already exhausted and Tor’s grip wasn’t letting up. She couldn’t concentrate with the pain, despite Shamsiel trying to block it out. She’d known this would be dangerous, sure. But this was a loving stupid way to die, crushed by what amounted to an oversized parasite. ”I will find the cracks in his psyche, but you must hold on,” Shamsiel said. “Stay conscious - even if he breaks you in half. The mind controls the body, not the other way around.” The pain disappeared, and in its place came a sudden clarity of focus. The other constant presence in her mind went oddly silent. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to overcome fatigue, as she shoved the grasping claws back with her wings. (Might Claw attacks with Combat: (+b-b)+7 = 7 at w:2. Marcine defends, Illusions: (+++-)+5 = 7. Marcine raises on “Crab Claw Action” to avoid damage, since she’s out of stress boxes. Tor invokes on her “Lost Arm” severe consequence. Marcine invokes on Tor’s mild consequence, “RSI:Rupert-caused Strain Injury” to counter. Tor invokes his “Crushing Grip” aspect for 1FP (GFP: 3->2). Marcine counters with “Shamsiel’s Bearer.” (FP: 2 -> 1) And after all that, no damage is done! Puck to Elbridge.) Elbridge wiped the snow from his glasses and squinted up at the spectacle unfolding in the air. Factorax was trying to crush Ms. Sterling, Ms. Sterling was giving as good as she got, and the dragon’s gullet was too full of toxic fumes to spew technicolour agony at anyone. Nevertheless the strike team was losing. They were harming Factorax, yes, but he was regenerating almost as quickly. Their supplies were limited; his were not. They needed to press the advantage, and to do that… “Singh!” Elbridge called, taking off at a dead sprint to put some distance between himself and the withered claw. “Big arm! Bad shoulder! Take it out!” (Elbridge moves to A2 and uses Notice to CA against the Might Claw: /+-+ +6 = 7. Claw defends: +-+/ +6 = 7. How very symmetrical. Elbridge uses his one point of Preparation against the Might Claw to raise to an 8, landing the Aspect: “It Just Comes Right Off!” And since he landed a Notice-based CA, he gets that point of Preparation right back. Puck to Rupert.) Dragging himself upwards, Rupert stretched, growling as he pushed the cold away, frost cascading from his cloak as he threw it backwards. Kicking away the snow, he cleared a section of the ground and knelt back down, plunging his hand back into the earth as if it were a liquid to him, whispering an incantation. Without the added power, it wasn’t nearly as fancy as the stone crab claw - but even without that, a stone spire sprung forth from the ground beneath Tor’s shoulder, slamming into his scales with a cheap shot from the blind spot under his limb. Or… that was the plan. Tor’s withered claw clutched at the air, and the earthen spire hit a shimmering spot in the air and disintegrated into dust instead of doing any damage. (Old Rupert, Earth Combat: --++ +6 = +6 & W:2 Tor’s Magic Claw has the stunt Magicproof, and Defend Other’s the Might Claw. (++b-)+6 = 7, so a miss.) Marcine wasn’t going to get anywhere if she didn’t come up with a plan. Instead of fighting back blindly, she breathed deep and tried to think. Tor wasn’t going to let go of her until he felt her bones break in his hand, or...he had something better to do. She focused on the remnants of the first illusion she’d made, and a shining figure streaked toward Tor’s exposed shoulder, wings spread and a sword held ready to strike. (CA with Illusions: (+--+)+5 = 5, vs Tor’s Notice: (b++b)+4 = 6. Marcine tags “It Just Comes Right Off!” to place the Aspect “A Bigger Threat” with 1 free invoke, and keeps the puck for the next round.)
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May 22, 2018 01:29
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Thatched Roof Cottages!!!! Round 5 Scene: Race Track Scene Aspects: Drou’s Mobile Armory, Biker Edward The crushing force had eased up momentarily. Marcine let herself go limp, as if the fight had gone out of her. She wasn’t a threat; the figure aiming for his weak point was. Tor’s eyes shifted to the image. It was false, he knew that, but Shamsiel poked at the cracks in his mind, seeding doubt after doubt. Had it been a trick before when it was unaffected by his breath? Had he kept a close enough watch on it to be sure no one was wearing the image now? He couldn’t be sure, and the little bird was broken anyways. Surely, the Denarian suggested, he could afford to discard her... He let go. She spread her wings and slowed her fall just barely enough to prevent breaking something. She still hit the ground hard and just laid there for a moment, dazed. She had to get up before Tor realized he was swatting at air. Had to move out of his reach, not that it mattered if he decided to shoot the drat laser at her again… The motorcycle skidded to a stop next to her as she found her way up onto her knees. “Get on!” Ed yelled, his voice muffled by the helmet. Marcine shoved to her feet and all but fell onto the rear seat. She sensed he was scared--more of the entire situation or her, she wasn’t sure--and uncomfortable, even repulsed, which was definitely at her. Too bad. Her balance was off and there wasn’t time to find it again. So she leaned against his back and wrapped her arm around him, clenching her hand into a fist so her talons wouldn’t dig in. “Thanks,” she said hoarsely. There was a pulse of something else, something that might have translated to a blush if his face was visible, but he just leaned on the throttle and the bike jumped forwards. She almost laughed. It came out as a cough instead. (Marcine invokes “A Bigger Threat” for effect to make Tor let go, and takes a movement action with Athletics opposed by Tor’s Notice: (+-bb)+4 = 4 vs (b+-+)+4 = 5. She invokes again on Ed to move to B3 (FP: 1 -> 0). Pass to head.) Tor felt the pressure on his mind relax, and the shining creature that was flitting at his arm looked as false as it always had. “Liar!” He roared, hacking on the gas. But the little bird was gone, and he couldn’t quite see her through the rainbow colored smoke pouring from his own mouth. With his toy gone, he looked for another. And there was one, in a not-very-white suit, standing directly before him. “You…” His dual-toned voice growled, even the boyish half sounding low as he narrowed his tear-filled eyes. He horked once, like a lifelong tobacco-chewer, and spat the tear gas can directly at Elbridge’s head. Elbridge made a twirling gesture with his right hand and the can shot directly back down Tor’s throat. “Please,” he said, muffled by the snow. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been tear-gassed.” “The last!” Tor hissed in response. His eyes went red again, and his teeth closed over the offensive little can, crushing it until it burst. The rainbow light in the back of his throat stained it as the cloud of gas drifted downwards, directly on top of the offending wizard and painting him like a Holi participant. “Yours too,” Elbridge said, and doused his sleeve with the contents of his hip-flask before holding it to his face as a filter. (Tor attempts to CA some Tear Gas onto Elbridge, since he likes it so much. Physique: (----)+6 = 2. Well then! El defends with Combat to parry it back at him: (--++)+5 = 5! Would be a SWS so Tor invokes Unnaturally Grown (GM FP: 2>1) to hork up the second can: (+bb-)+6 = 6. Taps his Frost Fog boost to bring that to 8. Elbridge uses his point of preparation to bring his roll to 6 and deny the SWS, but is now “Rainbow Tear Gassed.” Puck to the Magic Claw.) The withered claw spasmed, all the scales standing up directly as a bolt of lightning shot from his palm directly at Rupert! -and when straight through him, down into the ground where his fist was still plunged from the negated spell. He was, quite literally, earthed. (Magic Claw uses LIT3 on Rupert: (-++-)+6 = 6! Rupert defends with Physique: (bb++)+6 = 8. Magic claw uses the Elemental Resonance boost from last turn to tie, and refreshes the boost. Puck to Rupert.) Shaking his head to clear the buzzing in his ears, Rupert pulled himself upwards, swinging the rifle to aim in retaliation. With measured practice, he calmly fired off a series of rounds from the rifle, his aim steady despite the static electricity in the air around him, the bullets hammering into the withered claw. The dragon shuddered and shrieked, tucking the claw back under his scales as the magic circle went dark. (Rupert, Combat: +/// +5 = +6 & W:2. Tor defends! -/+- +6 = +5 and uses the “Elemental Resonance” boost to try and not be dead. Rupert counters with an invoke on “Arabian Guerilla Nights” for +2 to finish it. (FP:3->2) Puck to Elbridge.) Elbridge tried to knock the grotesquely-swollen limb from its socket with a well-placed force-lance, but his blind shot went high, its impact absorbed by the dragon’s monstrous bulk. Cursing and coughing, Elbridge choked back the tears and steadied his aim for another shot. If at first you don’t succeed… (Elbridge rolls to attack Tor but -/-/ +5 = 3, terribad. Tor defends with Physique: -++/ +6 = 7, ick. El uses the free invoke on “It Just Comes Right Off!” to reroll: -/+/ +5 = 5. Still a failure, but at least Tor doesn’t get a SwS off of it. Puck to Might Claw.) The dragon reached with his giant claw but he couldn’t shift his massive bulk enough to catch anyone. Furious, he scored the ground with his claws, digging and gathering a great pile of sod and grass and broken picket fencing to shield himself with. (Everyone is out of range of the Might Claw so it uses Physique to CA “Homemade Dirtcastle” in A2 to protect himself: (--b-)+7 = 4, which is awful but enough to beat the static 3. One invoke available. Ends the Round, puck to Marcine.)
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May 22, 2018 01:30
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Well, Gee, That Was the End of the Song, Round 6 Scene: Race Track Scene Aspects: Drou’s Mobile Armory, Biker Edward The motorcycle came to a stop well out of the oversized claw’s reach. Marcine took in the battle from a new angle. If the dragon could just regenerate hands with the anomaly’s magic, destroying them wasn't going to get them very far. They needed to go for the head, stop the beast from thinking…if it didn't have a way to reverse that, too. Who even knew at this point. Her body was broken, but that didn't mean she was helpless just yet. The air was heavy with residue from Tor’s attacks. Once again, she sang. Her voice stirred the magic, swept it up, converted it to her own use. It carried across the battlefield to Elbridge and Rupert and saturated the air around them with a ready force bent to her will. And her will was to murder this loving dragon. (Will?: (bbb+)+5 = 6! SwS so two invokes on Channeled Magic at +3 each, puck to El) Elbridge felt Marcine’s rage. It was distant, muted, but there nonetheless. He was aware of the waves of raw emotion, but he wasn’t carried by them, swept away in their currents. Even if he’d wanted to let the Denarian into his mind, the spellwork he’d chiseled into his own skull left him numb to her fury...and to his own. The second Elbridge felt very little these days, and it was difficult to say if that was the warding or just the sheer weight of exhaustion taking its toll. But rage was power, and Elbridge knew how to turn that power toward a purpose, and so he did exactly that. “Here,” Elbridge shouted at Tor, muffled by his makeshift filter, “let me help you with that. Kardama!” Groundwater surged up from below, closer at hand than ever thanks to the rising water table that would likely soon drown all of Louisiana. For now, however, only a small portion of the fairgrounds was going under, and that portion was directly underneath Tor. The foundations went out from under his little sandcastle, and its defensive value plummeted accordingly, as did a largish chunk of Tor himself. (Elbridge uses Will to CA on the ground in A2, turning it into a swamp underneath Tor: -//+ +5 = 5. Aspect placed: “Going Under”, which also obliterates “Homemade Dirtcastle”. Tor raises with the free Invoke on “Homemade Dirtcastle” but El counters by tagging “Channeled Magic”. Two can play the game of loving with each others’ Aspects, Fat Dragon! Puck to the head.) Tor sank, more on his left side than his right, where his withered arm was too bullet-riddled to support his massive girth. “No!” he shouted, as the mud coated his white scales an ugly brown. “Nooooooo!” He opened his mouth in a roar, and El saw the prism flashing in his throat as the light swiftly built in intensity. (Tor aims at B1 for some sweet laser-revenge. Will fire at the end of the round. Puck to Rupert!) Rupert growled, dropping low again, his rifle’s barrel silent once more. Tor had started charging up his breath again, and that damned fool Elbridge was standing right in the open, right in his firing line. As obnoxious as the old wizard was… they weren’t going to win this scrap if people started going down. Reaching down into the ground, he started on a spell. The ground beneath Elbridge’s feet bubbled and shuddered, but the distance was too great, and there was too much groundwater to deal with, and so Rupert’s spell began to peter out, the task of forming a solid platform to move proving unmanageable. Shaking his head, he shouted out, “Ed! Need a hand!” The Suzuki barely had time to rev up before he was at Rupert’s side. He flipped his visor up. “I’m here, what’s up?” “Damned fool Elbridge made himself a bloody target and there’s too much groundwater to drag him away,” grumbled Rupert, “Remember that heat beam spell we worked on? I need you to dry out the ground under him, but be quick and then get yourself clear.” Edward glanced down at the bike. “Gonna hex the poo poo out of my ride, but okay! Counting on you to get us out of there!” He didn’t wait for Rupert to respond, just hit the throttle and took off. The mud was deep but Ed wasn’t about to let that stop him. He held a charm paper between two fingers and yelled “KATON!” Heat radiated in a circle around him, like a tiny meteor. The Suzuki choked and died almost immediately, but Ed held the paper behind him like a rocket flare, propelling himself forward (and popping a sick wheelie.) A white contrail of steam chased after him as the water evaporated in his wake. He jumped off the bike when he reached Elbridge. The Suzuki kept going for a while, fell to one side, and sank unceremoniously. Under the helmet, Ed winced. If they made it through this, Cole was not going to be happy. He tossed the burned stub of his charm aside and pulled a fresh one out of his belt pouch. “Hey old man, need a ride?” He was smirking, even under the glare of the horrible light in Tor’s maw, as he yanked the wizard out of the rapidly caking mud. “Much - *haaaaack* appreciated, yes,” El-2 told him, choking fumes still clinging to his no-longer-white-at-all suit. He fumbled with his free hand until he found solid purchase on Ed’s other arm. “Er…” he glanced up at the ominous glow from the dragon’s maw. “Sooner would be better than later.” “READY!” Ed yelled back to Rupert. Seconds after Ed’s feet hit the ground next to El’s, Rupert repeated his spell. The now-dry mud proved a much better medium and a disc of almost rock hard mud bobbed beneath their feet in the otherwise swampy track. With a flick of Rupert’s wrist, he motioned towards himself and the disc started to gather speed, skimming atop the loose mud like a strange misshapen surfboard. Not a moment too soon, the platform skidded to a stop near Rupert, safely away from the dragon’s dangerous breath. Dragging himself up, Rupert nodded at Ed, “Well done.” Ed took off his helmet, his short blonde hair was plastered to his head with sweat. “Thanks, you too.” He held up his charm. “Guess I’m grounded. Let’s get this bastard.” (Rupert, Magical Physique: ---+ +4 = +2. Fails to meet difficulty 4 so invoke on Ed to hit the difficulty and succeed at a minor cost (of Ed’s bike) (FP: 2->1). El moves to B2. Ed’s aspect changes from “Biker Ed” to “Fire Ninja Ed” Puck to Might Claw.) Tor’s mighty arm buried itself in the mud, coating it entirely as the steam from Ed’s spell washed over him, drying it into a cement-like armored shell. The rainbow light burst from his mouth with a thunderous PEW! PEW! WWWOOOOOP! And the area where Ed and El had just been was slagged completely. Including, Ed was horrified to see, Cole’s borrowed motorcycle. (Might Claw uses Physique to coat itself in quick-dry mud: (++bb)+7 = 9! Vs a flat three so SWS. “Indestructible Paper-Mache Armor” created on the Might Arm with 2 invokes. Rave breath fires, but no one is there to feel it. Alas. Puck to… Wait…Incoming Peanut Gallery!)
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May 22, 2018 01:36
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The Peanut Gallery Consisting mainly of: Rupert, Elbridge, and Marcine. Also present: Nicholas, Murrazanoth, Topaz, Hugues, and Jenny. “Bloody hell, they made it,” said Rupert, watching Ed and El-2 zoom out of the range of Tor’s breath just in the nick of time through a set of binoculars borrowed from the stash of equipment back at the Gato Negro, muttering under his breath, “Sitting back and watching this is nerve wracking.” “Yes.” Elbridge removed his spectacles and polished one of the lenses, moisture trickling from his eye on the same side. The glass was slick with a noxious, green-white residue. “Yes, it is.” He’d been observing the action from a slightly more-personal angle. The other Elbridge likewise had a view of his own position; they’d each swapped a single lens between frames before they’d left, so each could keep an eye on the other. “Cantor. How’s our window for entry?” The dragon’s coils were still looped around the gazebo, and hadn’t moved an inch since the fight began. There was still no way through. “Mostly good? There was a bit of a hangup when he burned a bunch of magic to regenerate that arm… if it gets too unstable we’re going to start feeling some effects even with the protection wards.” He twisted the tassel on the end of his scarf nervously. “Is there anything we can do to help?” “Without giving away our position...difficult,” Elbridge considered. Marcine scratched Topaz’s ear nervously. Watching herself get nearly murdered, even from a distance, did her nerves no favors. She had Angie’s rifle, but what good would it do? “Seems a Fallen’s not a match for a dragon,” she muttered. “Very few things are,” Elbridge said grimly. “To be honest, it’s remarkable that we - they - have survived for this long.” “Seems like they paid a price for it,” replied Rupert, lowering the binoculars so that he could wipe them clear of dust with his sleeve. “Then it’s a good thing the cavalry’s here,” said a voice that none of them were expecting to hear. “Sorry we’re late,” Angie added. “There was a detour.” Marcine jumped, but even if it was Rick and not the vampire, he’d be a stranger to her. She composed herself before she faced them and managed a smile for Angie. The rifle already felt lighter. “I’m glad you’re okay.” “Rick?” Elbridge asked, before he could catch himself. “Sometimes,” said the man with a smirk. His eyes played through the group as though he were sizing each of them up. “I’m Roger. Is that a problem?” “Only if we make it one,” Elbridge said, the renewed chill in his voice making it clear that by ’we’ he meant ’you’. “Right now my only problem is with the wyrm,” Roger said, his eyes flicking to Angie. “I was going to wait this one out until someone showed up with a dishrag full of shame and dragged me into it.” Angie just shook her head and crossed the space between them to Marcine. “There’s no time to go into details. We’re just here for my gun.” Marcine didn’t look at ‘Roger.’ Everything about him felt wrong. She didn’t like her last memory of Rick being him frozen in a block of ice, but this thing masquerading as him would be worse. And now Angie had to deal with him, a failure of everything she’d taught him… She passed Angie the rifle, then shifted Topaz to the side and hugged her with one arm. Not for long. She was right; there wasn’t time. So she didn’t say any of the things she wanted to say and just hoped that would be enough, because Angie was the one thing she’d miss from this miserable world. “Thank you,” Angie whispered, and it was about more than the rifle. She tucked a loose lock of hair behind Marcine’s ear. “It will be alright. Have faith.” Marcine laughed faintly. “Guess that’s easier than before.” She reluctantly turned back to the fight, wiping her eyes. “Even if I’m busy getting murdered over there.” “Not for much longer,” Roger said. He sounded extremely smug. “Anyone seen Lucy Evans? I have a present for her.” Rupert raised an eyebrow, “She’s with Talia and the others, but good luck finding her.” “She’ll find me,” Roger said. He glanced at Angie. “Ready to go?” Angie nodded. She gave the group a warm smile as she shouldered her rifle. “This is goodbye, my friends. I’m glad to have met all of you. Good luck.” “You too,” Marcine said, and her glance flicked to Roger before returning to Angie. “You know it’s possible now. You’ll find a better way.” “It’s been an honour and a privilege,” Elbridge told Angie. “Now let’s all go save the world twice over.”
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May 22, 2018 05:11
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Back to Some Sweet Guitar Riffs, Round 7 Scene: Race Track Scene Aspects: Drou’s Mobile Armory, Biker Edward Other Aspects: Tor: Rainbow Tear Gassed (on El) Indestructible Paper-Mache Armor (might claw) El: Going Under (mud scene aspect) 1 tag Marcine: Channeled Magic (rage) 1 tag On the battlefield, Marcine’s song changed, shifting tempo from pure aggression to add something steady, almost hypnotic. She bent the sound in the air until its source was unclear from Tor’s perspective. He’d want to find her, to finish what he’d started, and she invited him to look. But what he saw could be her...or was she back near his claw? Or was she in front of him? Or was that her to the side? No matter where he focused, the sound could be coming from there, or from somewhere nearby. Like trying to catch an annoying mosquito, it was enough to drive anyone to distraction. (CA with Acoustics: (++--)+5 = 5, opposed by Tor’s Notice: (--bb)+4 = 2 for a SWS. She places the aspect “That Infernal Noise” with two invokes, benefiting from her Resonance stunt. Puck to the head.) Tor looked furious, and he was! The anger came off him in waves Marcine couldn’t hope to ignore, but there was something else buried deep, deep beneath it. If she didn’t know better, she might have said that the Dragon was having fun. With a roar that might have been a laugh or a cry of pure frustration, he opened his mouth again, the prism in his throat flashing down at Rupert, Elbridge, and Edward. (Head takes aim at B2. Puck to El/Rupert) “Oh dear,” Elbridge said. He squinted against that terrible light, his senses assailed on two fronts as he struggled to clear the rest of the tear gas from his sinuses. “That’s not good.” They were all clumped together - never an advisable tactic, against a dragon. ”Ank- hrk! Hrkkk…*cough cough*” His incantation gave way to another coughing fit. The gas was in his clothes, his eyes, what was left of his hair. Speech was rapidly becoming difficult. A wizard who couldn’t speak was at a lethal disadvantage...but there was something else. A current of dark power, a surging tide of deadly purpose, coursing through the air, pulsing through the earth. The Denarian’s dirge. Elbridge closed his eyes and let his own magic align with that will, allowing the song to carry and amplify his spell. He couldn’t shout in this state...but with a little help, a whisper might suffice. [/i]”Ankita…”[/i] he rasped. More phantasmal cards erupted from his sleeves, swirling in the winds and circling the vulnerable chakra points within the blinding glare of the dragon’s maw. Read in the proper sequence, they pronounced a prophecy of the horrid doom awaiting Factorax. More to the point, they made really excellent targets for Singh’s arsenal. And at that, El limped away from the blast radius before it was too late. (Elbridge rolls Lore: Divinations again to Create Advantage against the head: ++/- +6 = 7. Tor defends with Will: -+-+ +6 = 6. Tor uses his free invoke on “Rainbow Tear-Gassed” to raise to +8; El counters with the free invoke on “Channeled Magic” to raise to +9. Aspect sticks: “Laser, Targetted”. Preparation vs. Head 1->2, and El shambles over to B3 before he gets pew-pew’d. Puck to Rupert.) Rupert dragged himself back to his feet, wiping his hand clean (adding yet more mud to his ragged cloak in the process). Eyeballing the distance between the dragon’s glaring maw - complete with helpful glowing weak spots on the roof of his mouth - he swung the modified bazooka from his back, checked his footing and took aim at the weak point. He’d never had chance to test the thing, and now everything hinged on it working. He really hoped it would, because the alternative didn’t bear thinking about. Sweeping his hand under the warhead, he triggered the layers of spells woven into the rocket. Intertwined rings of runes flared with light as he pulled the trigger. Glowing like a shining fiery comet, the rocket soared through the air and into the dragon’s gaping maw, exploding with a mighty boom and a cascading shower of flaming napalm. Tossing the spent bazooka tube to the ground, Rupert trudged forwards, out of the dragon’s breath’s line of fire. (Rupert fires his “Surprise” invention at Tor’s head. Combat: +-+- +5 = +5 & W:4 & Aspect Placed on Hit (“Burning Napalm”). Tor defends, Phys:(bb-+)+6 = 6! Rupert raises with “Laser Targeted” and “Infernal Noise” to add 5 to his result, so 10 w:4 vs 6. Tor takes a moderate consequence “Tongue Toaster” and his 4th box to soak. OOOX Rupert moves to A3.) The explosion seemed to break something inside the dragon. Tor flung his head backwards, and the laser-beam emitting from his ruined, smoking jaws drew a trail a mile long, out of the track and down the sidewalk, cracking the ground and leaving a trail in the cement like a finger through frosting. Seth had to grab Talia and pull her out of the way as the beam neatly bisected their base camp. “Holy CRAP!” Edward yelled, from Rupert’s side. “You have got to teach me how to make one of those!” “Ask again when something’s not trying to eat us, Ed,” the old man replied dryly. “Oh, I will,” Ed said, grinning through the ashes and mud on his cheeks. Tor clawed up a pawful of the muddy, electrocuted, frozen, melted ground and smeared it over his face, soothing as much of the burning as he could. It wasn’t enough so he kept going, shoveling it into his mouth like a baby eating birthday cake. The hole in front of him filled with water immediately, forming a small, muddy pond, and when he still couldn’t find any relief from the pain he plunged his head straight down into it, burying his misshapen face all the way to the ears. (Tor attempts to remove the Burning Napalm with a physique overcome, (---+)+6 = 4 vs a difficulty 5, so no go. He’s going to pass the puck but first, some plot.)
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Jun 15, 2018 23:49
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Pew Pew Pew, ROUND 8 ACTIVE ASPECTS Tor: Indestructible Paper-Mache Armor (might claw, 1 tag) El: Going Under (mud scene aspect) 1 tag Lazer-Targetted 1 tag Marcine: Infernal Noise 1 tag Rup: Burning Napalm (1 tag) Tongue Toaster (consq. on Tor, 1 tag) There was a sound underneath the ground like something collapsing as the mud sank a good foot or more around the group. The scales on Tor’s back began to glow again, and the anomaly shone with eerie power, visible between the beast’s shoulders now that his head was buried. “Is he going to regen his arm again?” Ed asked. But before anyone could answer, Tor stood up. His back legs shifted forwards, and his massive tail moved for the first time in years. Trees that had grown over him shuddered and snapped as the dragon righted himself. He pulled his head out of the mud, towering over the party now, his head at least forty feet in the air. Now that they could see him properly, the damage was tremendous. Tor’s ruined face still burned in places. His jaw drooped open, not to breathe but simply unable to close anymore because the bones were broken. The wreckage of his tongue hung like a cooked caterpillar from one side. Behind him, the original Nawlins crew saw their opening. The dragon’s tail was still curled around the gazebo but only barely. They had their chance. In front, the dragon looked up at the dark haze above. He inhaled a labored breath, and under the stadium lights he looked tragic and sad, the last of his kind come to a pitiful, and perhaps inevitable end. “Mine!” he called to the darkness. “MINE!” And then he crashed down onto his remaining front paw and his shattered teeth glittered like prisms, as the one in the back of his throat began to glow. The runes in his hide lit up like LEDs as he drew all the power he could from the anomaly. Looking directly at him became impossible. There was nowhere to hide this time: he would bathe the entire track in front of himself with pure, deadly power. Elbridge could see it, so could Rupert. Shamsiel let out a cry of shock as they realized even Marcine’s wings wouldn’t be fast enough to save them this time. CRACK! A rifle shot rang out like thunder, and a pinprick of darkness in that blinding light opened as one crystal tooth was knocked free. A pool of shadow on the ground promised safety. They had seconds to reach it if they wanted to survive. Round 8 opens with the final half-a-stunt that had yet to be revealed. Temporal Smearing: Every four rounds, choose one: erase all stress track damage from a claw (this revives it if taken out), OR breath attack hits all zones, except one. Your safe zone is A2, front and center. Good luck, ladies and gentlemen. In the breath between nonsense lyrics, Marcine streaked into the shadow with a beat of her wings, where she crouched and eyed Tor’s monstrous hand. Shamsiel let a part of her mind focus on continuing the song, while she refracted the light around them into something just as blinding for Tor. She monitored where the others were, and created vague images of them running in other directions. It didn’t have to be accurate; it was hard enough to see already. The one she put the most effort into was an image of Rupert, blurred by his cloak and glinting reflections off his metal limbs, circling around for a better, desperate shot to try to kill the dragon before it killed him. He’d probably be doing that anyway, but all that really mattered was Tor thinking he’d do it from over there. (Marcine free moves to the safe zone and CAs with Illusions: (-+b+)+5 = 6, vs Tor’s Notice: (+--+)+4 = 4. Creates the aspect “Refraction” with one invoke. Puck to Elbridge.) All manner of hell was breaking loose in the dragon’s death-throes, and despite the best efforts of Ms. Sterling and Ms. Montes, there remained a non-trivial chance that Factorax would take them all with him. No matter. His tail was unfurled. The others had a clear shot at the gazebo. If they made it, the sacrifice would not have been in vain. The Elbridge on the field intended to buy them every last second he could. Just a few could mean all the time in two worlds. Limping to the penumbra created by Ms. Montes’ timely shot, he sank his trembling fingers into the churning mud. “P-pida…” he coughed. The feeble ripple of magic shot up the hardened clay coating Tor’s arm, but Tor barely noticed. He was too preoccupied with the aftermath of Singh’s shot, and with trying to annihilate Singh altogether. Thanks to Ms. Sterling’s efforts, there were rather a lot of Singhs to annihilate, but Tor seemed determined nonetheless. Not as determined as Elbridge, though. “Pidayasah!” he shouted. The stony shell around Tor’s swollen arm quivered again, and then began to sprout long, sharp spikes. On the inside. Tor definitely noticed that. (El-2 moves to the safe zone and attacks the Might Arm, turning the armor shell against him! Combat /+-- +5 = 4, ew. Tor defends with Physique: +/+/ +6 = 8. El spends his last FP on “The Forbidden Sage” to reroll: +/// +5 = 6. He uses the free tags remaining on “Going Under” and “Infernal Noise” to boost that all the way to 11, and spends his Preparation to add W:1: 4 stress to the Might Arm, rolling up to the 5th box. Puck to Rupert.) Between the glaring light streaming from the dragon’s maw and the sudden army of… himself, it took Rupert a moment to regain his composure. Shaking his head, he motioned forward, leading Ed into the safe zone, checking his pockets as he trudged across the muddy racetrack. All of the illusions were sneaking about, aiming for the perfect shot - but this didn’t need the perfect shot, it just needed enough shots to punch through. Reaching the center, he dropped to one knee, drawing a pair of revolvers from beneath his ragged cloak, the handle of each wrapped in red tape - a simple reminder that these, unlike the others, were loaded with armour-piercing rounds, painstakingly collected over multiple resets. Steadying himself for but a moment, he took aim and squeezed at the triggers, unleashing a dull rhythm of cracks as a stream of bullets hammered into the dragon’s wrist. (Rupert moves to A2, uses a box of party favours (XXO) to boost his damage and makes a combat attack against the claw: +++- +5 = +7, W:3. Tor defends!: //+/ +6 = +7. In order to finish it, Rupert uses the tag from “Refraction” for a +2, but Tor counters with “Indestructible Paper-Mache Armor”, so Rupert invokes on “The Lone Partisan” with his last FP (1->0) to strike true!) The barrage of shots tore the muddy armor apart in seconds. Dragon blood leaked into the mud from the impaling spikes and bullet holes, and he sank to his elbow, barely able to stay upright now that his second arm was useless. But his arm wasn’t required for what came next. Light blasted the ground all around Rupert and the others, who had to duck and clump together to avoid the blast. It singed more than a few hairs even so. When it was over, Tor hung his head, exhausted. He looked with half-closed eyes at the cluster of humans between his mangled paws. They were decidedly not as roasted as he wanted them to be. He chuffed a breath, and the great eyes slid closed...
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Jun 15, 2018 23:54
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Power Surge Scene: Behind the Dragon Meanwhile, the original crew frantically ran for the revealed gazebo, crossing the muddy track as quickly as they were able. They could see the anomaly itself now, a sickly yellow-green crack in reality much like the one that they’d seen at JR’s grave hill, but ten times as large. Nicky’s time-wards grew red hot as they approached, but the pocket watch gears in each one withstood the test, and the wards held. Directly in the center of the gazebo itself was a completely out of place marble arch, inlaid with gold and decorated with greek letters. There was a hand-shaped indentation on one side. “There!” yelled Nicky. “That’s it!” “Wait!” Hugues grabbed his arm and pulled him down, out of the way as Tor’s tail whipped through the air over his head like a knife, decapitating several small trees. The dragon’s front end might be down but his back half was struggling into motion. The tail wasn’t just wantonly destroying shrubbery. It was looking for something, and in a quick moment it found the crack in time - and plunged directly into it. “NOW what?” Marcine yelled in equal parts frustration and panic. “Stay back!” Elbridge warned. “Try to prise it away and you’ll be dead in seconds.” He furrowed his brow, thinking on the problem. His double had said that Tor had to die. Elbridge would not have said this if he didn’t have a way to kill the dragon. Therefore, El-2 had some way to kill the dragon. Elbridge shuddered to think of what that might be, and hoped that they could find a way through before such drastic measures became necessary. “Cantor, can you sever the connection?” “If it was m-metaphorical or spiritual or anything except shoving his arse in the drat thing!” Cantor pulled himself and Hugues back to their feet. He made a repeated slicing motion with one hand. “You know how it is, Hardley! Physical problems, physical solutions!” “It’s a bloody great big dragon,” grumbled Rupert, “We can hardly just shift him out of the way!” The time scar flared with light and Tor’s tail started to glow. His scales shimmered and melted, changing from an opaque white to translucent as the light shone from inside of him. It raced up his body like food dye in water. Jenny stepped forwards and rolled up her sleeves. “Well, guess it’s time to give up then, we’ll just go home and… oh wait. Home’s that way.” She smirked at them over her shoulder and reached out with both hands. She hadn’t said much of anything since rejoining the group, even to Hugues. She hadn’t seen the point. Whatever they’d tried to do since the moment they came here had gone wrong, and some of the things she’s seen in the deep Nevernever would never leave her. On top of that, Cole… The power built in her as she squeezed invisible hands around the dragon’s tail. Fueled by her anger, she kept it inside like water behind a dam. This was how she’d lifted the antennae at the superdome. How she’d picked up cars, struck down trees, even thrown a bus once. She held onto the power until sweat poured off her, until her vision started to darken, until absolutely everything she had was pressing on the wall she’d built in her mind and then she led the dam burst with one herculean effort, dropping to her knee as she attempted to pull the tail from the crack in time. The dragon’s tail shifted a foot, then another. “Just… a little… farther…” Jenny said. And then she passed out. Tor’s tail slammed even further into the anomaly as Jenny hit the mud. Marcine handed her violin case to Hugues and dragged Jenny onto her back. Her bruised chest protested, but she gritted her teeth and ignored it as she steadied herself. Her hand went to the feathers, but it wasn’t time for that. Not yet. She focused on finding her double. At the moment of contact - feeling disorientingly like she’d somehow reached around a contacted herself from the outside, which she supposed she had - she sent the image in front of them. <We noticed,> her double responded, mental voice flat with exhaustion. Hugues rushed the arch, slapping Narcissus’ severed palm onto the hand-print, but the runes were flickering erratically and the gateway refused to open. “Well it was worth a shot,” he said, frowning. “He’s drawing too much power,” Nicky said. “We have to stop him somehow before he collapses the whole anomaly!” Hugues looked up at the dragon’s tail. “How?!” ----- Tor sat up again, both arms fully regenerated and his broken teeth falling out, replacing themselves like shark’s teeth even as the party watched. The terrible wound Rupert’s rocket launcher had inflicted didn’t heal properly, his whole jaw was crooked, but it scarred over and stopped bleeding. The now-translucent dragon glowed from within. His wings, all tattered and torn, burst from the earth where they’d been buried, slinging mud and fencing every which way. He towered over the party, roaring, and sounded absolutely thrilled. “Rupert!” Lucy’s voice was barely audible over the dragon’s roar. “Elbridge!” Tor inhaled. This time there was nowhere to hide, and no time to run. “SHIELDS UP!” yelled Cole, bursting into view just in front of the party. He raised both hands, and a dome of hex-shaped glass spread over them. Elbridge shouted an incantation, and a second shield, swirling and murky in contrast to the transparent crystal, sprang up to reinforce Cole’s. No hesitation, no doubts. Only decades of conditioned reflex, working in tandem with an old friend. As if they’d never parted, as if the last six years had never happened. Tossing the revolvers aside, Rupert dropped to his knees, plunging his hands deep into the ground, the mud parting as if it were water. The ground before the layered shield rumbled, a wall of mud rising upwards and hardening, blocking them from the dragon’s gaze, a barricade of stone against his breath. Marcine cut off her song and gave a short, tired laugh. Of course the vampire would be the one to show up. She added her own magic to the working anyway, her voice filling in the cracks between the three layers like mortar. Light exploded around them, blinding and hot, like a solar flare touching the earth itself. It hit the shield and bent, refracting into an infinite rainbow of colors. The wizards (and friends) underneath it held on for dear life, but this time… this time Tor didn’t stop. Power poured from his mouth like water from a fountain. He was no longer controlling it, just a conduit it was passing through. “El!” Roger yelled over the roar, certain death overriding any feelings he might have had one way or the other for the old wizard. “Operation Omelette!” ----- “Marcine!” Seth shielded his eyes helplessly. There was no getting closer without being vaporized. “What do we do now?” Minsk turned away, her shoulders sagging as she hugged herself. “Nothing, Sterling. Absolutely nothing.” Drou’s patrol car screeched to a stop next to them. “Look who I found,” he said out the driver’s window, thumbing towards the backseat. Angie leaned out and waved them over. “Get in, hurry!” “It’s over, Montes, or hadn’t you noticed!?” Minsk shouted. “Not yet,” Angie said, with the biggest smile on her face.
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Jun 16, 2018 00:00
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Operation Omelette Scene: Track ‘Operation Omelette’ took its name from the old adage that one cannot make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. In this case, the egg was already broken, and had been for some time. The fragment of shell that Cole tossed to Elbridge was thick and translucent, yellowed at the edges like an old, plastic carton. And indeed, it was plastic. It was a piece of the very egg from which Factorax had hatched, six years and uncountable summers ago. They’d kept it as an insurance policy, devising plans that went back to before Rick had become Roger. All of them had been fairly-drastic measures, none moreso than Operation Omelette. Privately, Elbridge had felt some degree of relief when it became seemingly-defunct. And yet, even though Tor’s nanny and her lair had fallen into the Void, here it was. The lynchpin. “How did you even get this?!” El shouted over the roar of eight-bit laser noises. “I went for a walk Outside!” Roger shouted back. “You didn’t think I’d keep you waiting for nothing did you?!” “Oh, since when have we ever been able to keep to a bloody timetable?” El said. It was a joke. Gallows humour. There was only one way left for this to end, and it was going to be ugly. Victorious, yes, but ugly. “Get them clear! As soon there’s an opening, get the others clear!” Roger looked back at him, and for a second his chest hurt, and not just from the strain of holding the shield. He forced a smile. “I will! Do it already!” Elbridge held it up for a second longer, contemplating the enormity of what he was about to do. Their shields cracked another fraction, and that second was all the time he had. ”Ia! Yn’helaeca!” There was another brittle, cracking sound, far louder than the shields had made. It came from higher above. Even overwhelmed by the flow of energy as he was, Factorax gazed dumbly up at the source of the noise. It was the dome. The barrier between the city and the Outside. It was breaking. ”Sna’atherlym tunigessr p’thalyi!” Elbridge’s eyes had turned solid, inky black. The words he spoke were never meant to come from a human throat; every syllable felt like choking through phlegm and tasted like blood and bile. ”Sna’atherloghr apsassar thubec! Ia, Yn’helaeca! Ia!” The crack grew wider. There was a vast, rushing noise, and then a bass tremor too low for human ears. That awful silence before an earthquake, or a hurricane. Every treetop whipped frantically as though caught in an updraft, but there was no wind. Pebbles and dewdrops levitated from the ground, hovering in midair against gravity’s pull. ”I’m sorry,” Elbridge whispered to no-one in particular. ”I’m so, so sorry, I should never have let it come to this…” He spat out a mouthful of slime and blinked back tears of blood, then stood up straight and looked up at the dragon who was about to die. He held the eggshell aloft, fracturing just as the sky above fractured, and Tor’s eyes gleamed in recognition. A single, acrid tear rolled down the side of his ruined face. ”Apaaya.” The sky split open, and beyond the dome was the endless void of outer space. Cyclone-force winds spiralled upward toward the breach, howling as if in mourning. Starlight shone through the aperture, bright enough to dim even Tor’s radiant breath by comparison, illuminating the battlefield in nebular reds and telluric blues. Rapidly, the light diminished, receding into a ragged, black shadow wreathed in white-hot fire. Something was coming through the opening. Something huge, and dark, and very, very fast. Something that began to splinter and burn away as it struck the atmosphere, each fragment pulled inexorably by the force of El’s magic. All converging on the single destination of Factorax’s head. A handful of fragments passed through the breach, and the sky turned a hellish red. The white of Tor’s scales vanished into black, burning silhouettes, his final roar - anguish or relief, none could tell - lost within the cosmic din as the asteroids fell to earth. The whole world went white. TN: El’s full incantation (loosely) translates to "Hear me, o Yn'helaeca! Thou who art above, part the veil and behold! Thou whose gaze burns, weep thine stone tears! Hear me, o Yn'helaeca, and WITNESS CALAMITY!"
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Jun 16, 2018 00:01
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Zophie’s Choice Scene: Behind the Dragon There was nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run. They wouldn't make it through the door, even as Tor’s tail jerked out of the anomaly in a death spasm. Marcine braced herself helplessly and clutched the brooch, all but crushing feathers in her grasp. “Zophiel!” The lake exploded as the impact shockwave emptied it. It should have blasted them all to kingdom come, along with the gazebo and the arch, and no amount of magic would have stopped it… but instead it split around the island, destroying the stands and everything to either side of them. When the light faded enough to see again, there stood an angel. His wings were spread wide and curled towards them, granting shelter. His sword was tip-down in the earth, and he leaned heavily on it. Everything went silent. The dragon did not stir again. Zophiel dropped to one knee, head down. Marcine thought she’d gone deaf until she heard Jenny’s breathing by her ear. She reached toward Zophiel, but her chest throbbed a warning that carrying an unconscious woman was already past her limit. “Are you okay?” “That… is my line,” Zophiel said, raising his eyes. He didn’t look okay. Hugues slapped Narcissus’ palm onto the panel one more time and this time the arch lit up, and the door swung inwards, into darkness. “It’s open!” “It’s...it’s open,” El echoed numbly. The right lens of his spectacles had cracked, turning a sooty black as if scorched by the terrible heat. He’d done that. He’d actually just done that. And more than just the way was open - that ragged hole in the sky was still there, a few more pieces of the dome splintering and flying off into space as he watched. Elbridge knew a thing or two about astronomy, and while this wasn’t the ideal vantage for stargazing, it was clear from a glance that the city was nowhere near Earth. Alien constellations glimmered in the broken sky, and the nearest star burned the bright, halogen blue of an A-type. Marcine tore her eyes from the hole and carried Jenny toward the door, but nearly dropped her when a horrendous buzzing grazed across her mind. “Did he just break the loving world?” she demanded. “Not...yet,” Elbridge said, still staggered by what he’d just witnessed. “That’s a shot below the waterline, yes...because the ship was already sinking, and it’s on us to bail it out. The seed. We need to get through and plant the seed, or everything is lost.” “Then get inside.” Marcine blocked out the buzzing with an effort of will that felt something like trying to block a running faucet with her hands and got Jenny through the door. “Move it,” grunted Rupert, shoving a transfixed Nicky forwards, towards the portal, “No time to stand around watching, there’s worlds to save.” “Quite…” Nicky stumbled at the push and then paused at the gate to stare for just another second. He looked at Elbridge, shaking his head as if he wasn’t sure who he was seeing. Then he ducked through. Rupert glanced skyward again as he trudged towards the gate, watching the display, and muttered under his breath as he stepped into the portal, “Bloody hell, El, hope you thought this through.” “Always,” El said. His tone wasn’t exactly reassuring. “...Zophiel,” he said once Rupert had gone. “How are you holding up?” He pushed himself to his feet and turned back to witness the destruction. His wings were shredded. “Not well. You?” “Dreadful.” Elbridge tried to wipe the soot from his right lens, only to find that the glass itself had been darkened and discoloured. It should have been hot to the touch, hot enough that it would have hurt...why didn’t it hurt? Why could he only feel numb at what he’d just witnessed? Was this truly what he’d done to himself? So hardened against horror as to become that horror? “...did they survive?” El asked. It was clear from his tone that he wasn’t talking about his own double. Zophiel smirked, perhaps for the first time in centuries. “I cheated,” he said. Elbridge blinked. It hurt, and his eyelids felt stiff, and it wasn’t until that exact moment that he realized he hadn’t blinked for the better part of the past hour. “How…?” “By making a choice.” His eyes turned upward. There were eyes out there in the black, more congregating by the second. A feather fell to the ground. “The scales must balance. By abusing my power, I allowed another to abuse their own. I pray they used it well.” “Yes, well, I...er…” Elbridge watched as the dark closed in and one by one, the stars began to vanish behind a curtain of writhing black. “I can relate.” Zophiel had scarcely moved since he’d appeared, and suddenly Elbridge found himself wondering if he could. After taking the full brunt of the blast for them. “Here.” Elbridge stooped down, draping one of the angel’s arms over his back like he would to help a drunken friend home, gingerly avoiding Zophiel’s maimed wings. “We’ve got a ways to go yet.” “I dare not be of more use,” Zophiel said, looking ashamed. “Lest Mel’karshok get her wish after all.” “It’s alright,” Elbridge said, sincere in his reassurance as he helped Zophiel toward the portal. “You don’t have to go home, but we can’t stay here.” They limped together for a few steps, and Zophiel leaned over to whisper something in Elbridge’s ear. “Yes,” Elbridge told him. “Yes, I do.”
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Jun 16, 2018 00:02
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Do Not Go Gentle Scene: Track As the world exploded around them, Shamsiel appeared in their midst. Their voice enfolded them in a clear note, a chord of harp music, the tone of a violin - then the world flashed silver, and they were standing in the forest. The explosion, not so distant, rattled the trees around them. Marcine had raised her hand to block out the glare. Now she realized that she’d raised both hands - and both of them were there. She gaped at her arm, back like it had never been blasted off with a laser. She looked to Shamsiel, mouth open to ask how, but the Denarian just gave her the smuggest smile she’d ever seen in her life and disappeared. Buzzing scratched inside her head, louder than she’d heard in years. She looked up at a sky that was now looking back at her. She slowly lowered her arms to her sides. “Your plan was to sacrifice the city,” she said tonelessly. “Not the city… The ground at the site of impact had vitrified, lining the basin of the crater with an unbroken crust of black glass. Elbridge slumped at the nadir, his suit scorched and ruddy from the heat and slowly staining a darker colour from the steady trickle of dragon’s blood pouring down one side. He looked like a slab of freezer-burned meat that had taken a beating and then been tossed unceremoniously over a grill. “...just us…” “What’s the difference?” Angel Tower was the last defense for people who couldn’t defend themselves, and she’d left it unprotected except for the wards. “Still...time…” Elbridge wheezed. “...they can...fix this…” His breathing was ragged, and his chest looked indented on one side. He had to have broken multiple ribs. “Plant the seed...mend the tear...you can - *nghhh!* - keep people safe...until then…” On some level, she understood. Sinking ship and so on. She’d heard that analogy often enough. But after all she’d accomplished despite the world fighting her every step, all she’d lost and sacrificed to do it, she was done with excuses. And this, of all things, had no loving excuse. If she really wanted to keep people safe, now and in the future (if they even had one), it started right here. “Not us,” she said. All she felt when she put a bullet through his head was a kind of dull relief. Like cutting off a limb to stop the spread of an infection: It wasn’t pleasant, it wasn’t something she wanted to do, but it felt necessary. Without a second glance at the others, she took to the air to go save what she could. ---- A shot rang out. Muffled and muted against the roaring updraft, it was almost inaudible, moreso than it should have been at point-blank distance. Pain. Elbridge could still feel pain. Had she missed? He opened his eyes. Marcine was gone. Shamsiel stood in her place, ankle deep in a pool of dragon’s blood. “Marvelous work, wizard. The stuff of tales and songs, if any survive to tell them.” “YOU?!” El exclaimed, then immediately regretted it. “How did you…my wards…?” “Oh, you seem to have bumped your head.” They tapped the side of their skull. Elbridge mimicked the gesture and felt agonising pain lance through his head, so ferocious that his vision went white again. Shamsiel gave him a patronizing smile. “My host is too soft-hearted to let the final act play out. She is safe, and the others. I will NOT be upstaged by a white-feathered fool.” “Hrngh.” Elbridge grunted, struggling to stand but managing only a slightly more-vertical slouch. ”...should never have...involved you...cards said...mistake…” “Ah… regret. Right on time.” Their eyes flicked past Elbridge, to another figure just beyond him. Elbridge couldn’t turn around, so he craned his neck as best he could to look behind him. The watery-blue eyes of the long-dead Adam Lawton looked back. This was the end. “By all my power,” Elbridge said, choking through the pain and the mouthful of fluid from his punctured lung, “I bani-” Taapya moved, snaking an arm around his throat from behind and putting him into a chokehold. El’s spell died in his throat as he was pulled off his feet. “No, I think not, Elbridge Hardley.” The pair of them floated slowly into the air, away from the empty crater, above the body of the dead dragon. “I want you to see this, gatekeeper, before I take you,” Taapya whispered, holding him close. There were other voices El could hear, other hands on his arms and back, pulling him tighter, binding him to the Outsider. Some he recognized. Some he didn’t. Below, Taapya’s army had just reached the ground, a horde of creatures without names or functional biology. They tried to scatter, but before they got more than a block a cry went up from the park, just across the street from the race track. Horns sounded, beasts howled, hooves thundered. The faeries were going to war. They burst from the treeline in an arrow formation and tore into the Outsiders’ unguarded flank, led by the River Man himself. Angie’s rifle cracked repeatedly, and fire, ice, and earth works sprang up from the other end, as Rupert and the others joined from where Shamsiel had taken them. A tornado from Seth ripped a line right through their center mass. “Even in death, you struggle,” Taapya whispered in his ear. “I understand. It is all you know. But stillness is patient. Stillness is irresistible.” There was no end to the legion of Outsiders waiting to flood inside, like ants descending on an untouched picnic. It was only a matter of time. “Goodbye, Elbridge Hardley. Welcome.” It was like being pulled into quicksand. The deeper he was drawn, the stronger the suction grew. There was no escaping this. There was no fighting against the tides, now that the levee had broken. The horrors poured through the breach in waves; the ones waiting beyond were without number. This wasn’t a mindless feast. The swarm moved with a purpose. As he was absorbed by Taapya, Elbridge caught one final glimpse through his right spectacle, of his double and Zophiel entering the portal, and those things in hot pursuit. They were after the tree itself. That had been their true objective all along. Not nips and bits of a dying city - those had just whetted their appetites for the real banquet. All they’d needed was for someone to let them in. The portal at the gazebo closed. The swarm wasted no time howling in frustration, but immediately began to charge at Summer’s vanguard. Only Narcissus could open the portal again, and they’d left plenty of him behind at Pontchartrain’s court. Once they had him, it was over. All possible worlds would lie within their grasp. Unless… ”Yn...he...lae...ca…” Elbridge choked. Most of his body had been assimilated by now. He protruded hideously from Taapya’s abdomen, held at an upright angle like a tree branch. Everything from his waist down was gone, and his left arm ended at the elbow. “We will meet her soon,” Taapya told him, whispering in his ear. The Outsider released its hold on Elbridge’s throat, grabbing his forehead to finish consuming him. ”sooner...than you think…” His airway clear, Elbridge took his final breath and spoke the same not-word of abjuration that his double had used to escape Taapya before. The effect was immediate: Elbridge and Taapya both rocketed upward, hurtling into the sky at breakneck speed. Mucilaginous, membrane-winged things parted before their ascent, shrieking in pain and confusion. K! they protested. Kkkkkkk-kkkkkkkkk…! Up they went, through the frozen reaches of the stratosphere, through the ragged rift in the shattered sky. Into the Void. “What do you think you’re doing?!” Taapya shrieked. “Being a sore loser.” El’s words misted into ice as they left his mouth, mingling with the crimson droplets from his open wounds. The pain was gone, replaced with a frigid numbness. He couldn’t feel his fractured skull throbbing, or the blood vessels bursting in his eyes. Out and away they spiralled, the dome shrinking into a tiny, azure jewel with a writhing darkness at its centre. The last thing that this Elbridge would ever see as his glasses slipped loose and floated into the infinite expanse of outer space. ”Mend,” he said, and nothing more. The hole in the sky rippled and shimmered. Like a break in the ice over a frozen pond, the breach began to close from the edges inward, frosting over with a layer of cloudy film. The cloudiness condensed to a liquid transparency, and then a solid, crystal shell. The Outsiders trying to cross at that instant were cut in half, raining amoebic gore over the battlefield. The rest were trapped outside the dome, wordlessly screaming at being denied their prize. The rift was sealed once more. Thin fingers plucked the floating glasses from their spin and set them on a face that had acquired a few new wrinkles. “Not bad, Elbridge Hardley,” Taapya said to himself, mopping the ichor from his brow and polishing the lenses with the corner of a shirt that was inexplicably covered in poker chips. “Not bad at all.”
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Jun 16, 2018 00:04
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The World Tree Scene: Grave Hill- June 20th, 2012 Ruby’s fingers tapped the steering wheel in anticipation as she turned off the highway onto the narrow gravel strip that led between the trees towards grave hill. The top of the cherry tree was just visible from this distance, silhouetted by moonlight. She’d had a long time to decide when to wake her family. The best time would be with the dawn, but it was just after midnight now and she found she couldn’t wait any longer. Seventy five years. It had been seventy five years since she stepped into her younger self’s shoes. Years she had already lived once, in horror and despair. But not this time. This time she was only an actress, drawing on the pain she’d felt in order to mask a secret hope that burned like a fire in her heart. Ada’s car was there already, where it had been left tonight, and many years ago. She pulled up beside it and cut the engine in her Volkswagen. With an effort of will she relaxed and let her glamor dissipate. She brushed a hand through her antennae, making sure every hair was in place, and then stepped out of the car. She flew up the path, literally, not stopping until her hands were on the trunk of the tree. It was warm to her touch, welcoming her back. She pressed her forehead against it. “Thank you old friend,” she whispered. “Your long vigil ends tonight.” For just a moment she glanced up at the fresh ugly scar that the time-spell had burned into the ground not far away, and the crack in the air leaking yellow-green light. Shame twisted her stomach. It would heal, but in her misery she had wounded the place she held dearest. Amends would have to be made. But first… She touched a knot on the trunk and a crack in the bark split apart to form an opening wide enough to permit her. With a quick look around to make sure she was alone she slipped inside. ---- The last thing Ada remembered before going to sleep was snow. Little particles of whiteness floating all around her like dancing fairies, enveloping her body and her vision in a protective cocoon of white amber. Then there was nothing but warm darkness. No thoughts, no pain, no fear...nothing, except dreams. Nothing but myself and I. They took a while to arrive, at first. Vaguely, she remembered snippets of serious conversations with Alisa about the future, discussing plans and preparations for what was to come. It was Christmas Eve, and their parents were away, and the little sisters earnestly discussed a future that was more than a decade of living and almost a hundred years of time beyond them. She wasn’t alone inside her tree. Her sister was there for her, as she always would be. As I will be for you too. The memories grew clearer gradually. Time had no meaning within her wakeless slumber, but clarity of memory was as good a way to count the passage of time as any other. She remembered looking into a mirror, staring at herself and frowning. The tank tops and hoodies had to go. They were nice to wear but they just weren’t her anymore. She grew her hair longer, clipped a pair of small diamond earrings and put on a dress with slits to the sides and long, vaporous sleeves that mixed sleek black with vibrant colours. Her reflection leaned forward in the mirror and smiled back at her, broadly. Gotta dress to kill from now on. Never know when you might need to actually do it. She was back in New Orleans now, walking through the streets, her shoes pressing down softly on the snow. The streets were still the same, but she had changed, and this time, she wasn’t walking alone. A mob was following after her, filled with familiar faces. There was Roy and Seline, Hugues and Rupert, Sula and Shirley, and many others besides them. Rick was watching her from the side, his face clouded with concern, but he didn’t try to stop her. No one could have, any more than they could’ve stopped a rising tide. Together, they walked to Jackson square, where the president’s statue was waiting for them. But it wasn’t him up on the plinth - it was a giant of a man wearing a fur-trimmed cloak and a muscle cuirass, stocky and muscular and with a sword on his side. His beard was impeccably trimmed, his Mediterranean features possessing of a natural-born arrogance and the quiet confidence that befit a true leader of men. Midas. The statue’s bronzed neck moved, and his eyes bored into Ada - and the tips of her hair tinkled with a soft, dangerous sound, as the mob behind her vanished, leaving her all alone beneath an overcast sky. He’s got us good, but not for long. A smaller, human-sized woman with red hair smiled smugly at her from the statue’s saddle, then leapt off it, landing in an animal crouch. She stood up, and Ada stood face to face with herself again - and this time, her reflection was free from the mirror. Her style was scandalous, and she moved with the elegant sway of a hunting cat. Her eyes, a darker, duller, rustier shade of red, glinted with amusement as she leaned forward to get a closer look at her, then slowly straightened back up. “You’ve been ignoring me for a very long time,” she said, lazily walking around Ada and wrapping her arms around her neck. It made all the hairs in the back of her head stand on end, but she couldn’t move, not with Midas’ gaze still fixed upon her. “But now...now you’re finally starting to listen,” she whispered, and her long, wicked nails dug into the flesh underneath Ada’s collarbone. There was no pain, only a sensation of lightness as blood carried a heavy weight out of her. “Good girl. It’s time we painted this town red.” Playfully, she flicked her nails, and drops of blood hit Midas’ eyes, blinding him. His grasp on Ada slipped, but the other woman’s hands kept her in place like a steel trap. The snow surrounded them, shutting out the outside world, leaving them standing in an infinite span of whiteness. “I’ll always be here. When you need me, look inside you. I’ll be waiting.” She leaned forward, and planted a strong, possessive kiss on Ada’s cheek, then embraced her, tightly. In spite of her wounds and of the memory of Midas’ eyes on her, Ada closed her eyes. So long as she had this side of herself with her, there was nothing else she needed to fear. --- Ada awoke slowly, with a long, satisfied sigh. Something fuzzy was brushing against her cheeks, and when she opened her eyes, she saw a pair of insectile arms holding her closely, and Ruby’s face above her. “Hey Ruby,” she murmured, stifling a yawn. “Been a while.” “Far too long,” Rubeansidhe said, grinning like a schoolgirl. She offered her hands to Ada to help her up. “Welcome back.” Ada rose, and pulled Ruby into a hug as she did so. “Missed you,” she said. “It’s official now, isn’t it? You’re free now. For real.” “It’s… frightening to think about not knowing what will happen tomorrow,” Ruby sank into that hug, happy tears on her cheeks. “But the act is done, the coup complete. All is as it was, or close enough. Free. Yes, I am free.” “The others, too. They don’t have to be afraid of what might happen anymore.” She looked around. “Speaking of which, where are they?” “Come out and see!” Ruby tugged on her hand, pulling her towards the exit. The bark closed up behind her as Ada stepped out onto the grass. It was just after midnight, and the hill was just far enough from the city that all the stars were clear. The only thing that marred the view was the sickly yellow-green light flickering from a spiral shaped scar a little further from the tree. “Good morning!” Ruby- the younger, human one- waved at her enthusiastically. Junior was crouched on the edge of the spiral with his back to them, muttering to himself. Isabel was beside him with one hand on his shoulder. “Morning,” Ada said, stretching out. “Looks like the gang’s all there. Got any plans for where you’re all rooming tonight or are you still working that out? The manor’s rooms are open if you need somewhere to crash at.” “I’ve never been inside the duSang’s place before,” Ruby said excitedly. “I keep thinking it must be filled with cobwebs after all this time, but it’s been no time at all for you.” “The strange part will be seeing it without all those duSangs in it,” Isabel said, smiling as she returned to where the girls were standing. “Junior would like a moment more to make sure the scar is stable and then we can be on our way.” “How’s that work?” Ada asked, as she sat down on the grass. “I thought the ritual was over. Doesn’t the magic just go away after?“ “If it’s done right,” Junior said. He stood up and dusted his hands. The glow cast heavy shadows on his face, exaggerating his concern. “Stolen magic and an extra passenger… You’re lucky all three of you didn’t come apart like paper dolls dropped in a washbarrel. There’s no guarantee your grandaddy didn’t do just that, Ruby.” “We’ll find him,” Rubeansidhe said, bowing her head. “I couldn’t look until tonight, but now that the scar is there to trace where he went-” “You will not do any such thing,” Junior cut her off. “That scar has enough power left in it for one good jump, if that. If you take it, you’re never coming back.” “So he’s gone?” Ada asked, seriousing up. She and JR weren’t on speaking terms, but that didn’t mean she wanted him dead or trapped in a time that wasn’t his own. “I reckon so, at least for a while. I’ll take a whack at it once we’ve settled, but...” He shook his head. “I guess it wouldn’t be the first time he’s crawled out of a grave.” “If anybody can do that, it’s him.” The cowboy was as resilient as a cockroach and three times as ornery. “But if there’s nothing you can do right now, there’s nothing you can do.” She stood up. “C’mon, let’s go home.” They all turned to leave, Rubeansidhe leading the way back to the cars. But something stopped Ada at the edge of the clearing. A feeling that someone, somewhere out there, was looking for her. She turned back towards the scar and in the light’s reflection she saw the outline of a man. His eyes were closed and he had that look of intense focus he only wore when casting a spell that took all his concentration. The light pulsed once, twice, and then he was gone, and it seemed a little dimmer than before. “Ada?” Ruby called back. “You coming?” “I...I can’t,” she said, rushing back to the scar. “I just saw Rick! He’s here!” “Where?” Rubeansidhe was beside her in a moment, looking this way and that. “His van isn’t here.” “He was here a second ago! Like he was behind a frosted glass!” She looked around too, but couldn’t find him. “Dammit! I think he’s gone.” “Gone where?” Junior asked, but when he looked at the scar his jaw dropped. “Son of a- someone’s tapped it already?!” “Wait - you think he used it?” Ada shook her head. “No way. He couldn’t have worked that fast. It looked like he was trying to hold a spell that was coming apart, not putting the finishing touches on it.” “He may well have been, but this is still here so he must not have made the jump.” The older man scratched at the stubble on his cheek and stared at the light. “You saw an afterimage. Someone using the power in the rift here, whenever they do. Might be next week, might be ten years from now. Did he look older?” “No,” Ada said, shaking her head once more. “He looked just as I remembered him. Does that mean he’s doing this right now?” “Relatively… to see an image like that it’d have to be a very similar circumstance. Maybe next year at this very moment, if we’re still trying to find Pa. He a wizard then, your beau?” “Yeah. The city’s warden. We were on a case before…” Suddenly she stopped. “Ruby, the Ripple’s already hit. What happened to New Orleans on the way here?” Rubeansidhe blushed. “I was already in the tree by then.” “Everything was going to hell in a handbasket by the time I left. It’s gotta be even worse now. We’ve got to get going, now.” Turning towards where she’d left the Rolls, she broke into a run. “Move!” She yelled over her shoulder. Rick wasn’t looking for JR. She knew it, knew it deep down in her bones. But she was here - it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes since she’d left. Why was he looking for her? And why a year from now? Something was squeezing inside her chest, yelling at her to get back to the city faster. Faster! Even in their hurry, the Lytles took a moment to marvel at the modern cars. “Where’s the crank?” Junior asked, leaning over in front of the Rolls, confused. “You don’t crank them, you use a pedal for the starter,” Ada explained, throwing the door open and throwing herself into the driver’s seat. “A lot’s changed in the century you missed. Ruby’ll catch you up on the way.” They split up. The younger Ruby came with her, while older one took her car with Junior and Isabelle. While she waited for the others to get into the cars, Ada reached for the Warden pin and tried to establish contact, but nothing happened. It was then that she remembered that she’d sealed off her magic. “Dammit! Ruby, I need you to activate this pin. Just put a bit of magic into it and it’ll open the channels,” she said, as she started the engine. “Maybe we can find my crew and tell them we’re coming.” “Oh, okay. Like a radio?” She held it cupped in her hands and focused on it. “Hello? Hello?” No response. “You sure it’s on? You should be able to tell, it warms up slightly when it’s active.” “Hello, hello, is anyone out there?” she said again, and when Ada reached over the metal was warm, so it was definitely on. Ruby didn’t know how to work it, so it should be broadcasting to everyone in the group. Still, no one answered. Ada’s brow furrowed, and the pressure in her chest grew even stronger. Something was definitely off, between the vision of Rick and now this. There was nothing in New Orleans that should’ve been able to block the pins, not with everyone spread out like they were supposed to be. The car eased onto the two lane highway, turning back towards the city. But the city wasn’t there. Where the lights of the city should be, the moon shone down on a great tree. It was enormous, with a trunk wider than the French Quarter itself, and it stretched so far up into the sky that the crown was too high to see the top of. The roots protruded from the earth like the bony knees of a palmetto, twisting and turning for miles in every direction. It was an impossibility. No tree had ever been, could ever be, as large as a city. But this one was. “Yggdrasil…” Ruby whispered beside her, with the reverence of someone who’d just seen God. Ada swore. “The world tree? From Norse Myth? What the hell is it doing in my city? Where the hell did New Orleans go?” Rubeansidhe flashed her lights behind them, asking her to pull over. Furrowing her brow, Ada did so. “Do you see it? Think this is Narcissus’ work?” she called out. “He’s gone mad if it is!” Junior yelled, hanging out the passenger window of Ruby’s Volkswagen. “Worse than mad,” Rubeansidhe said, completely stunned. “The tree of time can’t manifest like this, not in the real world!” “Only at the end of all things,” Isabel said solemnly. “We must find the Queen, and hurry.” “How are we gonna reach her though? She’s not just gonna take a random call, is she?” “No, someone will have to go to her,” Isabel said. “This is the equinox, yes? She should be at the stone table.” Rubeansidhe cursed. “Midnight is passed! The Way to the table will be closed until morning!” “Then that’s not an option. I’m not waiting until morning. If we can’t get Titania to fix it, we’ll fix this on our own.” She fixed her eyes on Rubeansidhe and Isabel. “Is there something I should know about that tree? Will we need to deal with a giant snake if we get too close to the roots?” “Wrong tree,” Rubeansidhe said, grimacing. “This one is… well, you’ll see, I suppose.” She looked at Junior. “Oh no you don’t,” he said, before she could even open her mouth. “We’re all going. Together. Ain’t nothing keeping this family apart. Not giant city-eating trees, not mad fae-lords, nothing.” “He’s right. If Narcissus did this, we’ll need a time mage anyway. The last thing we want is to break time after taking the slow way through it to fix what went wrong once upon a time.” Taking her sheathed knife out of her pocket, she turned to Ruby. “You’re gonna have to play it safe though. You never trained for something like this, right?” Ruby tugged the ritual blade free of the sheath to look at it and blanched. “No…” she said. “Ada, this knife feels wrong.” “Wrong how? It’s been with me for as long as I can remember.” “I… I’m not sure. It’s not meant for me though.” She shook her head and pressed it back into Ada’s hand. “I’ll stay close to daddy, we’ll be alright.” Ada nodded. “Isabel, Ruby, you know more about this tree than me. Is anybody inside besides Narcissus going to object if we come knocking?” “Maybe? If he had any guards with him after the coup…” Rubeansidhe looked lost. “There could be sentinels, guardians of the tree itself,” Isabel said. “But that’s only a guess, we have to get closer and find out what happened before I could say with any certainty.” Looking up towards the full moon, Ada sighed. “Let’s take the cars as close as we can get them to the tree and then cover the rest of the trail on foot. It’s gonna be a long night.”
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Jun 16, 2018 06:18
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The Entire History of You Scene: Yggdrasil The road ended at the outskirts of town and they had to proceed on foot. It became immediately apparent that the city hadn’t been destroyed by the great tree, it was simply gone, as if it had never existed at all. There were no buildings, no cars, no wreckage underneath the roots. The ground was spongy and soft, like the swamp after a light rain. Water pooled and ran past them in tiny streams, and the going was slow. There were no people, and very little wildlife. The plants were unfamiliar and small, and seemed to be growing around them, making backtracking impossible. Now that they were closer, the size of the tree wasn’t the only strangeness about it. Yggdrasil’s roots were of made of wood but it was pitted, dry, and cracked. The knots and the gaps leaked thin trails of smoke. There were embers beneath the bark, slowly and endlessly charring the dry leaves and twigs that seemed to be growing even as they burned. Smoke swirled up from the tree’s embers, surrounding her. The smell of firewood and ashes was strangely comforting, as if it was offering her protection against the eyes that lurked in the darkness beyond. The air around her sang with mystery, inviting her to take a step forward and explore, but she knew better than that. No one who went into the night ever came back. A bolt from the sky struck a smaller nearby tree, setting it ablaze. Suddenly everything was illuminated. Everyone else ran from the fire, but she found herself approaching it and grasping a burning branch. I can use this. She alone was not afraid. It was the beginning of everything. Ada gasped. “Did you see that?” she asked, glancing at young Ruby. Ruby nodded, eyes wide. “What was it?” “I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.” And she reached out to grasp the tree’s roots. Painful experimentation came first. Learning how to make more fire once the tree’s branches burnt out was the key. For days it seemed like every attempt was doomed to failure, until rubbing two sticks together ignited a spark. The prying eyes were soon nowhere to be found - though humanity attracted them, fire drove them away, and with them gone, the sun was no longer Ada’s master. When she needed to, she could work well into the night, knowing that the dark would respect her efforts and not interfere with them, and when she shared her secrets with the others, people finally stopped disappearing. Fire was wild and it was dangerous, but it was also a loyal friend. They learned ways to coax it out without first fighting a battle with it - first with sticks, then stones that would more easily release friendly sparks out. Fire kept them warm and provided light, and, as Ada quickly realized, it meant they could cook their food without waiting for brush fires. “Fire.” There was no doubt in Ada’s voice. “The time mankind learned to control fire. It was so long ago...hundreds of thousands of years.” Her eyes fixated on the tree once more. “I think it’s trying to tell us something. No, not tell us. Share.” “It’s a living history,” Isabel said quietly. “The Summer Fae have protected it since man first gave meaning to time, and brought us out of the long dreaming. Look-” She pointed ahead, where the dry roots joined a trunk that appeared to be petrified. Flame still danced in the bark, hotter than before, but more controlled. “The age of stone.” Fascinated, Ada approached the trunk, gesturing the others to come closer. For a moment, her mission was forgotten. Something so ancient and precious was a once in a lifetime experience. If she passed it over in her urgency to find the others, she’d be doing a disservice to the work of millennia, exactly the kind of history they were fighting to preserve. “It sure ain’t something you see everyday,” Junior said, with enough wonder in his gruff voice that it was clear he’d seen the visions too. “But… why’s it here, instead of the Nevernever?” Rubeansidhe flicked her wings. “I will go and see.” “Be careful,” Isabel took her hands and squeezed. “If all of Faerie is at the stone table...” “I will,” she squeezed back and let go, jumping into the air in the same motion. Up and up she flew, until the stone bark gave way to rough blackened metal, and then she was between the branches and lost to sight. Ada didn’t wait for her to come back. Her hand trailed the tree’s bark as she followed the roots back their origin. They twisted and turned, but their path was clear. Soon, she spied a large, circular opening, blocked by gates of sickly, pale white stone. They looked finely cut, in stark contrast with the roughly hewn stone of the branches, and covered in greek characters that shone with familiar yellow-green light. Anywhere else, they would’ve seemed awe-inspiring, but here they just looked out of place, a hasty, unwelcome addition to the natural beauty of the World Tree. “Narcissus...” she whispered. “He did this, didn’t he?” she asked. She wasn’t sure if the tree could hear her or not, but something told her it would listen. Isabel let out a furious hiss when she saw it, and Junior had to put his hand on her shoulder. “No one else would be so tacky,” she confirmed. “So he’s been inside it?” Ruby asked nervously. “But… why? It’s so big, even if he wanted to use time magic to undo the coup against him that Rubeansidhe told us about, he wouldn’t need all this to do it. The whole city’s gone, it’s like if you tried to warm your house with a forest fire and burned it all up.” Junior nodded. “This ain’t about some fae lords scrappin’ over territory. No way, no how.” “Yeah. There’s more to it than that.” Ada’s hand squeezed the bark. “This thing...it’s our shared history. If he wants to change something here, it means changing all of history’s course. I don’t think he came up with this plan on his own. Narcissus is too self-absorbed for something like this.” “But who else could’ve?” Isabel asked, her eyes raising to look for her daughter. “I don’t know,” Ada’s brow furrowed into a frown. “There’s no one that comes to mind. We’re missing pieces.” “Maybe we’ll find them inside,” Junior said, bending over to examine the door. Before anyone could move to help him, Isabel let out a gasp and cried out her husband’s name. He snapped upright, and everyone looked up. Rubeansidhe was falling. Her wings were limp, eyes closed. Junior raised both hands and yelled a command. Yellow light shone in a halo around the faerie as she slowed, but she was still coming down much too fast to land safely. Moving quickly, Isabel threw a silver thread each to Ada and Ruby, and another, and another, until a rough spider’s web was spun between them, then she dashed up the side of the tree, pulling it taut. “Hold on tight!” Rubeansidhe landed in the net, her weight bowing it towards the ground and nearly knocking the three women off their feet, but it held, and then she was down and safe. The moment she landed, Ada rushed to her side, while something hot and angry and violent surged upwards within her chest. If anybody hurt Ruby, I’m gonna make them pay for this. Slowly. It was a tempting fantasy, but she fought back against it. Thoughts of revenge later. Make sure Ruby wasn’t endangered by her injuries first. It didn’t look good - her right hand was badly burned, and most of her chest was horribly scalded as well. Now that she was kneeling down beside her, she could hear an awful sizzling sound, and the smell of cooked meat. The sound was coming from a spot almost right above her heart - there, Ada could barely see a metallic splinter. “This tree’s branches are made of cold iron,” she said, loud enough to startle the others. “It’ll burn a fairy the same way any other hunk of iron will, right?” “Yes,” Isabel said quietly, kneeling down and taking Rubeansidhe’s head into her lap. “Oh, my child… the pain must have knocked her out.” She looked up at Ada, unable to touch the bane herself. “Can you do anything for her?” “I...” she began, but stopped. “I don’t know. I don’t have magic.” For the first time, she felt a pang of loss. It would’ve been so easy to flush the splinter out of Ruby’s system and soothe her pain, but now, that wasn’t an option. Maybe it never would be again. “I think I can take out that splinter though. Hold her down for me.” Working with cooked human (or in this case, fairy) flesh was revolting. Ada was thankful she had firsthand personal experience with it to help her keep her hand steady. Last time she’d been involved in something like this, it had hurt like hell - but then, Ruby had helped take away her pain. Now, when her friend truly needed her, she couldn’t do the same. Even extracting the splinter didn’t wash away the guilt. She had to make it up to Ruby, somehow, but without magic, all she could do was what anyone else could’ve done. For the first time in a very long time, Ada felt powerless. The moment the iron sliver was out, Ruby took a long sobbing gasp and her eyes flew open. She didn’t know where she was at first and kicked out, but Isabel held her until she calmed down. “The tree!” she cried, and then words failed her as she tried to think how to describe what she’d seen. “Its rotting!” “And you’re halfway to extra crispy,“ Ada said, squeezing her arm tightly. She didn’t dare do more and risk touching the burns. “Take it easy for a second. Breathe deep. Anything hurt besides the burns?” Confusion flashed across Rubeansidhe’s face until she looked down at herself. “Oh. No… no I don’t think so. I must have brushed against a branch.” She sat up, wincing in pain. “I’ll be alright.” The moment she started to rise, Ada shoved her back down - gently, but firmly. “Not if you push yourself like that.” Somehow, she managed a strained smile. “Trust me, I know what walking around dragging a major injury does to you. What did you mean about the tree rotting?” Rubeansidhe frowned, unable to put such horror into words. “Let me show you,” she said instead. Her wings flicked once, shedding dust. But this time it didn’t make anyone sleepy, it just caused their thoughts to wander into a waking dream... The branches of the tree were a tangled maze, twisting around and within each other like a old, untended briar patch. Wood and stone continued to run through the bark in ever more refined and beautiful shapes. Power too. Great gouts of steam burst forth unexpectedly from steel maws in the bark, and further up, electricity leapt between great glass pylons, crackling blue and purple. Plastics began to show in the bark, cloudy or clear at first, then splitting into smooth blacks and whites. The central trunk of the tree was a singular stalk, and while there were myriad branches that curled around it, some closer and some jutting out into the darkness, they were all clearly offshoots. But here, near the crown, the trunk had split. It was obvious it hadn’t grown that way but been struck, as though by lightning, or a heavy axe. Circuit boards and vacuum tubes just underneath the bark were exposed and sparking. A hundred colors of LED flashed warning red as fans stuttered and wires hung loose. It was still attached, but barely, and the cords that held it together were stretched to the breaking point. Grafted into its true position was a new trunk. It had enough of the same materials and power sources that it didn’t look wholly out of place, but it didn’t fit, like a puzzle piece turned the wrong way in the right spot. It had been lashed to the wound by vine and leaf, a veritable jungle of foreign flora that called out with all the power of Summer. But it did not match what had come before, and the graft was failing. Not just the graft, but the false trunk itself was in danger of coming apart. Pieces of it floated in the air, only tethered by a vine or a wire. There were gaps in the bark that let you see through to the other side. It was coming apart at the seams. Rubeansidhe beat her wings and the dust blew away, ending the shared daydream. Her shoulders slumped. “The great tree has been sundered,” she said. “This is beyond us, Ada. Mother, Father… I don’t know what to do...” Ada looked up into the maze of branches above them. A place of beauty and memory, corrupted by an addition that made a mockery of mankind’s progress and its place in the world… “We’ve got to get in,” she said, shooting the others a look. “Find a way past those doors. Ruby, did you see any other entrances on the way up?” “Doors? No, nothing like that.” She struggled to stand. Ada frowned and sighed. “You’re so stubborn.” Giving up, she helped Ruby to get back on her feet. When she wobbled and threatened to fall down again, Ada was there for her to hold on to. “There’s gotta be something...are there any stories about people entering the World Tree?” she asked out loud, hoping there’d be an answer. “It might be simpler than that,” Junior said, returning to the marbled entrance once he was assured Rubeansidhe would recover. “These ain’t a part of it, after all. Whatever’s holding them here is Narcissus’ work, not the work of the aeons. A little easier to manage, I reckon.” “Yeah, but still out of our reach. Time magic doesn’t blow things up, does it? And I never heard about a banshee making things explode with her wails either.” “Time magic can’t affect it at all,” Junior said, pointing to the glowing glyphs. “I couldn’t make it go boom no, but I could have aged it to dust or something like it, but it’s been guarded against just that.” “We cannot break it by force,” Isabel confirmed, and Rubeansidhe nodded. “So there’s no other way in, but we can’t just force them open. There’s gotta be something, though...there’s no way Narcissus could make an impenetrable barrier. I don’t think he expected to need it when I talked to him.” The doors didn’t look totally immovable or indestructible, but it was a safe bet that the temporal energy wards would take care of that. The problem isn’t that there’s no way we can get around them. We just don’t have the resources or the time. Narcissus had enough stolen power to work with to make doors that would stand up against intrusion. If only they- Ada froze. There was no smoke here, but she still saw the tree’s vision once again through her mind’s eye. A lightning bolt, fire, then herself, grasping a burning branch. “The tree,” she whispered. “The tree’s going to help us out!” She couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice. Of course! It was so simple! “We need to find a way to talk to it and ask it for a bit of its power. If we can persuade it we’re here to kick Narcissus out, I bet it’ll help us get through!” “Is it something we can talk to?” Young Ruby piped up. “Even if we can, would it notice us any more than we’d notice an ant?” “It’s already noticed us crawling on it,” Junior said. “Unless it hands out visions like that to anyone that’s nearby.” Isabel and Rubeansidhe shared a look, and Isabel spoke. “We did not see the vision.” “Which means it only talks to humans. Which means it did try to reach out to us.” Ada looked around. “How can we reach it though? I don’t think it’s as simple as asking for an audience nicely.” “Wait,” young Ruby said. “If the vision was the tree trying to talk to us, can we use that to talk to it instead?” “No, I don’t think so. Seeing what the tree wants to show us means losing control. We can’t reach it that way.” She pursed her lips, thoughtfully. “There’s gotta be something...” Just then, the branches above them creaked ominously. The graft Ruby’d talked about wouldn’t hold on much longer. The tree needed their help just as much as they needed its. But what could they offer? The smell of flowers and greenery stirred up Ada’s memory. Suddenly, she heard her great grandmother’s voice once again. It’s the magic, not the blood itself that feeds the bush. All blood carries magic. “Thank you, grandmother,” Ada whispered, as she took the knife and case out of her pocket. They’d only spend a short while together, but she’d still managed to teach her well. She rested the obsidian edge against her wrist as she approached the root, and as soon as she was close enough, slashed it open. Blood bubbled up from the wound and trickled down the sides, forming a perfect circle, and then began to fall down onto the embers in a steady trickle. It hissed against the coals, filling her nose with a coppery scent, and for a moment, Ada saw an unbroken line of red connecting her to the roots. All she had to do was ask before letting go. “Help us,” she whispered. “Help us get inside so we can help you heal.” ...heal? The word was faint, like a whisper in her own voice. No vision accompanied it. “Yeah. We want to help, but we can’t get through Narcissus’ doors. We need you. Can you hear me?” ...can you hear me? “I hear you. How do we get inside?” “Who are you talking to?” Young Ruby asked, worried. “I think it’s the tree, but I don’t know. I’m getting really strange answers here.” “Strange how? More visions? I don’t see anything.” Ada shook her head. “No, it’s not like that. It’s bouncing my own words back at me, but it’s not exactly the same. And it’s quiet. Very quiet.” Very quiet. The emphasis was different than Ada had used, even if the words were the same. It spoke of exhaustion and loneliness. “It’s going to be OK. We’re here now,” Ada said, reassuringly. “We just need a way in. Can you open the doors?” ...the doors? Open… the doors. Open the doors. Openthedoors. OPENtheDOORS. OPENTHEDOORS. Every repetition was accompanied by a dull boom from behind the marble doors. “The heck’s goin’ on here?” Junior said, jumping back from the doors, shaking embers out of his hair. Ashes fell on all of them, dusting them in a coat of dull grey. “It’s trying to open the doors! See if there’s anything you can do to help out on this end, I can’t move without losing this connection!” she called out, frowning. The tree sounded desperate, but why? “What’s going on? Are you trapped?” But that didn’t make sense. There wasn’t a force on earth that could hold the tree down, it was just too big. Trapped! Trapped!!!!! Furious, desperate, the doors boomed again. Isabel threaded the handle with silk to make a rope and the whole Lytle family lined up and started pulling. “Pull with the sound!” Junior ordered. “One and two and PULL!” “Where are you? I know it’s inside, but do we need to go up, or down?” Ada spoke quickly. The wound was starting to close already, and the connection would soon be over unless the decided to slash her other wrist open. “One and two and PULL!” Junior cried again. The door burst off its hinges, and everyone fell over. ...down. the voice said, sounding suddenly distant and small again. Spent. ...down. ...down down down. “Woo!” Young Ruby yelled. “Ada, we did it!” “Stay alive,” Ada whispered. “I’m coming.” The wound finished closing, and the connection vanished into thin air. Turning around, Ada raised the knife up into the air. “That’s what I like to hear. Everyone ready? Last thing I heard from the tree is we got to go down. It’s waiting for us there.”
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Jun 16, 2018 06:24
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Down Scene: Yggdrasil Fire flickered in forked veins between the wood and stone, a bright orange glow that lit their way forward down the tunnel. The floor was rough and uneven, and sloped gently downwards. But what was really interesting were the cave paintings. A neverending mural of them, drawn in ash, or ochre, or other simple materials. Tiny figures of people and animals, of places. Young Ruby reached out to touch the wall at one point and stopped herself, shaking her head. “This is a holy place,” she whispered. It broke the silence that had fallen on all of them since they entered the cave. “A piece of the past, brought forward into the present,” Ada agreed, nodding. “Just imagine how long ago these murals were drawn.” “Even imagining it is hard,” Ruby said, eyes sparkling. “But… oh no! Not here too!” she pointed to a mark on the wall. A letter drawn in gold ink, where no letter should be. Omega. “He’s everywhere,” Ada muttered. “What the hell did he do to the tree? There’s no way he can be paranoid enough to leave trap after trap for people he didn’t know were coming.” “Is it a trap?” Rubeansidhe asked. “He is a vain creature first and always. He puts his mark on everything because he wants to be seen by everyone.” “I didn’t know there was an O in Narcissus,” Ada deadpanned. “The myths really weren’t kidding about the size of his ego.” She clenched her fists. “It doesn’t belong here. It’s a blight upon our history, just like that graft up above is. He’s gonna have a lot to answer for when I find him.” “Can’t we erase it?” Young Ruby asked. “It doesn’t belong here… and it’s only ink.” “Maybe. This thing’s an eyesore and it’s worth doing. Lemme give it a shot.” Approaching the wall, Ada pressed the knife against the ink and began scraping it, trying to get it off the wall. The ink didn’t stay still. It slipped away from the blade as she scraped the wall, running across the stone as though it were wet, losing shape. As she chased it, Ada felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle as though someone were staring at her from someplace unseen. She looked back, but there was no one there bar the Lytles. Drawing a deep breath, she tried to see things as they truly were, through her third eye, but nothing happened - it had been locked away, alongside her magic. “Dammit.” Gritting her teeth, she followed after the mark, wary and ready to call out to let the others know if something happened. It went deeper into the tree, faster and faster, and Ada noticed that there was a second line, almost like a shadow, following it along the wall. Where the Omega had been golden, this was silver. They came to a split in the tunnel and the golden stain ran to the left, on an upward angle. Silver. That wasn’t Narcissus’ mark if Ruby was to be believed. But who else could’ve engraved a magical mark into the walls? Ada didn’t give up the chase completely, but she slowed down, trying to get a better look at the silver sign. If Narcissus had an accomplice, she wanted to know who it might be before they sprang a nasty surprise on her. The silver slowed to match her pace even as the golden ink streamed off into the distance. It curled into the same letter, Omega, but it was somehow different from the other. Less obvious, for one. It didn’t belong among the painted beasts and stick people, but it wasn’t trying to stand out or overshadow them. Squinting, Ada leaned in closer to the mark to get a better look at it, and the mark stopped moving when she did. It wasn’t trying to escape her, it was...following her. Following a hunch, her hand reached out to brush against it. Instantly, that feeling of being watched returned, but by someone altogether different. The letter pulsed with frantic energy, the feet of the O shape linked around her fingertips and tugged her back, away from the upwards tunnel. Down... The voice from before, so faint, so distant she could barely hear it. “Ada?” Rubeansidhe asked. “Is everything alright?” “Yeah,” Ada said, breaking into a grin. “I found the way!” She retraced her steps back to the others, then waited for the mark to guide her steps. But it seemed more interested in following her instead. “Why’s it doing that?” Young Ruby asked, when she saw the letter trailing behind Ada. “That isn’t the same one as before, is it?” “No, it’s different. I think it’s the same voice from before, the one I heard at the root.” She glanced at the letter. “Told me to keep going down when Narcissus’ mark went up. It’s stopped now, though. I think we still need to keep going down.” Curious, she took a step back in the direction Narcissus’ symbol had taken. The silver Omega didn’t move until she took a few more steps, after which it followed, hesitantly. She tried a large step but it didn’t seem to be tethered to her in that way and came along at its own pace. When she headed back towards path it’d suggested, it moved much more swiftly, like a pet called to heel. “Heck of a guide, there,” Junior said, with a note of disapproval. “Can’t seem to make up its mind. What makes you think we can trust this character and not the other?” “It’s not guiding me by telling me where to go,” Ada said, her voice low and confident. “It’s telling me where not to. Glow a little if I’m on the money.” she asked the mark. Nothing happened, but it had only glowed briefly when she touched it, before. “Oh, come on.” Ada resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “I know you can shine! You did it earlier! Look,” she said, turning her eyes back to Junior. “This thing’s different, I can tell. It’s gonna take a while, but I’m sure it can take us where we need to be.” “If the problem’s up in the crown, why’re we going down?” Junior frowned. “That makes no sense, and if this is the thing that helped us get in here, then… well, look at it! It’s linked to Narcissus somehow.” “So was I,” Rubeansidhe said quietly. “Prisoners are linked to their jailers. If Ada trusts it, then I do too.” “A tree’s strength comes from its roots,” Ada added. “There’s no way Narcissus didn’t reach down to mess with them when he set up shop. We can’t fix whatever’s wrong up there until we fix what he did down here. If we don’t listen to a guide, we’ll just be fumbling around in the dark. I think it’s worth a shot.” “Down then,” said Isabel, “But be careful. Narcissus may have set traps of his own, even if this guide is not one of them. We don’t want to stumble into them blindly.” So down they went, with the symbol following Ada along the wall. It paused the next time they reached a fork in the tunnel, and followed again quickly when Ada led them all further down. Not long after, she spotted a second golden rune, Alpha this time. It fled, leaving behind a silver shadow of the same character, just like the Omega had. Curious, Ada brought the Omega closer to it, and brushed her other hand’s fingers against it. Sunlight warm on her skin, dappling the forest floor, a crystal clear pool just ahead, birdsong all around. Running, just for the joy of it, breathless, satisfied. A sound behind her that doesn’t belong here. Laughter? From a man she’s never seen before. Golden curls, deep blue eyes. So beautiful! Who is he? Hiding now, breathless for another reason... She blinked. Suddenly she was back inside the tree. Narcissus...what was that? It didn’t feel like a vision. More like a memory...but not his memory. That was someone else looking at him through innocent eyes. “You’re trying to show me something, aren’t you?” She whispered, careful to keep her words private so no one else would hear. “What happened when you first met him?” she asked, as she followed the trail further downward. The new rune linked up behind the first like an alphabetic train car and chased after her, but there were no more visions until she came upon a third golden rune. Gamma, this time. It fled, as before, leaving the silver shadow behind. “You think those are going straight to you-know-who?” Young Ruby asked, dismayed. “I wish we could stop them.” “Yeah, I think they are. But it doesn’t matter, does it? If he was gonna do something, he would’ve made a move a long while ago. It’s not exactly like we’re trying to hide ourselves.” This time, Ada didn’t hesitate. Her fingers pressed against the letter, and she braced for another vision. Frustration. Hot, wet tears streaming down her face. He sits on the edge of the pool, fawning over his own reflection. He speaks to himself like a lover, smiling, cajoling, intimate. The gods are truly cruel, to send such a man to her. A man who cannot see past his own beautiful smile. She wants to help him, but he does not feel her touch. He does not hear her words, pitiful repetitions of his own. Cursed. She is a cursed woman. Perhaps he too, is cursed. A fire burns bright in her chest. She will follow him, then, now and always, until the day he sees her too. “I know it,” Ada whispered, eyes wide, before racing her voice. “I know who’s been sending us these visions! Ruby,” she asked, glancing at the Rubeansidhe. “Did you ever see the nymph Echo hanging out with Narcissus?” “I haven’t,” Rubeansidhe said, shaking her head. “Narcissus came to these shores alone,” Isabel said. “Echo was left behind in the old world, or at least that was the tale the court was given. I cannot recall hearing of her in quite some time.” “That’s not what I saw,” Ada shook her head. “She promised to never stop chasing him until she’d won his love. I know it’s her, but there’s something missing here. Maybe this isn’t the last vision she’s got to show us. I bet there’s another waiting further down.” “Seems to me that you can’t leave an echo behind for long,” Junior said, eyeing the glyphs. “Maybe she followed him after all.” “Except, she’s following you now, Ada,” Young Ruby said. “Or at least some part of her is.” “Something must have changed between them. She said needed our help. Maybe she’s just as much a victim of Narcissus as everyone else.” Ruby. Her parents. The tree. And now, Echo. There was only one person here who hadn’t been hurt by that selfish prick - and if she had any say on the matter, it was going to stay that way. An Epsilon waited for them not far ahead. The golden letter skittered away once more, past them and back the way they’d come. The silver one drifted towards Ada. Ada’s fingers lingered just above the letter, but she didn’t make contact with it. Not yet. “Show me what happened to you,” she whispered as she touched it. “How did you end up here, Echo?” His touch on her face felt like fire. His eyes, meeting hers, were as bright as the sun. “My little Echo,” he said. “I see in you such possibility. I see myself. For so long, you have suffered, but no more. No more, Echo. I see you.” He kissed her and her body shook with longing. “I see you!” she shouted back to him. “I see you!” “Help me,” he said, pulling away. He led her to a place she had never seen. A great tree that burned and stank of cold iron. She was afraid, but she followed still. “Will you help me attain my desires, my darling?” “My darling,” she whispered, as the marble gate closed behind them. “Son of a bitch,” Ada spat out. “He used her. Took advantage of how much she loved him and led her here. He’s a special kind of rear end in a top hat, isn’t he?” Rubeansidhe’s antennae twitched. “Yes. The question is what he used her for.” “Echo repeats what she hears. Maybe it’s got something to do with that?” she suggested. It wasn’t a given, but Narcissus wouldn’t have chosen her for the job if anyone else could’ve done it just as well. There had to be something special about Echo that made her the right choice. “Something to do with time magic,” Young Ruby added. “Because why else kidnap time mages… or come here to the literal tree of time?” “We never did figure out where he hid them all,” Junior said. “Thought he must’ve been killing them off one at a time to hide his crimes but if he didn’t, if he kept them…” “Then they’d be here,” Ada finished. “Makes sense. You couldn’t graft a second trunk onto the tree of time without time magic, could you? You’d just make the whole thing unravel.” “Repetition strengthens time magics,” Junior said. “This is starting to make an ugly kind of sense.” “I think we’ve discovered the how of it all,” Isabel said, nodding. “But not the why. Narcissus had nothing to gain by trying to rewrite history in this manner. The coup against him was only a single event in a single night, even if he wished to overwrite it this response is far too extreme. It doesn’t add up.” Ada nodded back. “Echo might know something about it, though. We need to find her and ask her why he’s doing this. We’ve gone pretty far down already, she can’t be too far away now.”
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Jun 16, 2018 06:27
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Guided Scene: Root of the Tree Far was a relative concept when you were traveling through the heart of the tree of time itself. Junior called for rest pauses several times during their descent, but they had no food or water with them to ease the journey. “At least we’re not likely to get sleepy after a hundred year’s nap,” Young Ruby said with a smile, but as they continued with no end to the tunnel, and no knowledge of where an end might be, it was hard to stay positive. The only indication they were even getting anywhere at all was that cave paintings themselves seemed to become more crude as they went, the animals becoming less recognizable and the figures of people turning into mere sticks. There were no colors anymore, just black charcoal lines, and eventually even those stopped showing up and the walls were blank. The fires in the walls grew dimmer and the weight of all that history seemed to be pressing down on the travelers. But the silver runes glowed brighter the further they went, so there was no shortage of light. “Are we there yet?” Young Ruby asked, shoulders slumped. “Soon,” Rubeansidhe said. “I can feel it... someone is sleeping ahead of us. Dreaming, I think, and it’s very strong.” “Not the kind of place I’d pick for a nap,” Ada said, glancing at the forebodingly bare walls. “How long do you think she’s been here?” “No longer than Narcissus himself, I would think,” Isabel said. “Which is still over a century if we count from when he arrived in New Orleans.” “Guess you can get used to everything when you’ve got that much time to burn. But she can’t be guiding us while asleep, can she?” “Why not?” Rubeansidhe asked. “Dreams can’t reach out into the real world. Not easily, anyway.” Her mind went back to the closet portal she’d tried out with Rick once upon a time. It had led them through her memories...but only with effort, and special circumstances had been involved. “And I never heard a version of the myth of Narcissus where Echo was linked to dreaming. It doesn’t make any sense for her to reach out to us this way.” “Then perhaps it isn’t Echo who dreams,” Isabel said. Ada shot her a look. That could only mean one thing. She didn’t say a word, but her right hand’s grip on the knife tightened. They turned a corner, and suddenly, there was no more tunnel. A marble gate, very similar to the one at the entrance, blocked their path. Unlike that one though, the runes were dark. Ada walked toward it slowly, and rested a hand against it, testing its resistance. Maybe the runes had been knocked out already. It didn’t just swing open, but there was no trap that she could feel. Just inert stone, wedged into place like the door of a tomb. The silver letters followed her hand, more of them than she’d collected originally. They glowed faintly, and as Ada drew her hand over the marble, they followed it. One slipped into a groove that was shaped like it and remained there as the others kept moving. “Everyone get ready,” Ada called out, taking a step back. “I think we’re about to meet our guide.”
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Jun 16, 2018 06:30
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The Grove Scene: Yggdrasil The last rune slotted into place and the door ground open. Golden light poured through the crack, blinding after so long in the near dark. When their eyes adapted, they found the door had concealed not just a cavern, but a grove. Lush grass waved in a gentle breeze, and the air was cool and welcoming after so long in the burning tunnels. There were trees here, maybe a dozen or so, arranged in a circle. They were all different kinds, some native to Louisiana and some not. Oak, ash, sycamore, palmetto, beech, maple. They were all huge old things, and their branches reached into the darkness above. No ceiling was visible. The light itself came from an enormous cloudy crystal, as large as a small car, that sat in the very center of the circle. It was surrounded by the roots of an ancient olive tree, cupped as if by loving hands. This central tree was different from the others, not just in size but in feel. The ground it stood on was raised up, slightly, and though it bent over the crystal, the other trees all leaned towards it as if they were bowing. “This isn’t a natural tree,” Ada said, after studying it for a moment. “Look at it closely. The spot it’s on is too convenient, and there’s no way Narcissus just picked this spot to leave the crystal there. I bet he planted it.” “He must have planted all of them,” Rubeansidhe said, stepping inside. “This grove should not be here at all.” She knelt in the grass and touched it, touched the bare earth beneath it. “Death has never touched this place.” Isabel nodded, following her daughter. Ada nodded. “And time doesn’t fight death. It just takes you there.” She could see what Ruby meant. “I’m gonna get over there, have a closer look. Keep an eye out.” “Take care,” Rubeansidhe warned. “There is great power here. It is all around us, in the earth and the air. It moves, but I cannot tell to what purpose.” Ada nodded, and then walked over to the crystal and the olive tree. The grove thrummed with magic, just as Rubeansidhe had said, but it didn’t seem dangerous...yet, anyway. It was focused, contained, probably being used right now. And if she knew anything about magic, then the tree and the crystal were the focus of it all. They were beautiful, in a way, with little white flowers blooming upon the olive, and the crystal radiating a blinding yellow light...and yet, she could stare at it just fine, as though it were holding back its full force, and its hue was white. Shadows danced within it, inviting her to come closer. Slowly, warily, Ada leaned forward and pressed the palm of her hand against it. The shadows swirled, causing the light to flicker slightly. They joined together, split, and then merged again, until Ada thought she could see the vague outline of a woman. It was no solid shape, and seemed to be very small, or perhaps very deep within the crystal, but there it was nonetheless. “Ada!” Young Ruby called from behind her. “There are people here! Under the trees!” “What?” Ada said, taking her eyes off the crystal to look at her. “People? You mean bodies?” “No, people! They’re asleep!” “Like the way we traveled through time to the present?” Turning around, Ada went after the sound of Ruby’s voice. “Hold up a second, I’m coming!” Ruby was kneeling at the base of the oak tree, at the side of an old man. He had an impressive moustache, and an even more impressive beard that reached down almost to his waist. His nails were long and curved, extending a good dozen inches, and his veins were pierced by long, gnarly roots. Something was slowly oozing up within them, leading back to the tree. He was dressed in old-fashioned clothing that looked like what JR would have worn, if he had a choice. “He won’t wake up,” Ruby said, pinching his cheek. The sleeper didn’t stir. “I don’t know what to do about the rest of it, I didn’t want to mess anything up.” “We’ll have to talk to Ruby,” Ada said, after checking his pulse to make sure he was still alive. “Rubeansidhe, I mean. She did something like this for us. If anyone would know how to fix it, it’s her. HEY! RUBY! I NEED YOU OVER HERE!” She hollered, looking up from the sleeping man. Rubeansidhe was up in the air, hovering over the glade with her arms crossed as she looked at the circle from above. She darted down when Ada called, landing lightly on the grass. “Twelve,” she said. “There are twelve of them in total.” She held up a hand, waving her parents to come back from the trees they’d been looking at. “That many?” It couldn’t be just people Narcissus had been displeased with, then. And the roots seemed to be sucking something out of them, too. A thought crossed her mind. “Junior, can any of them do magic? Time magic, specifically?” she asked, raising her voice once again. “You’ve got the right of it,” Junior called back. “He’s using them to fuel that crystal!” Ada hollered as she got up. “I think he’s powering some kind of ritual through them. Maybe that’s how he grafted that second trunk onto the tree - time magic to keep it in place so it won’t go to pieces.” She turned back towards the crystal. “I saw a shape inside. I think I know who’s in there!” She covered the distance between them with a few strides and put her hand on it once again. “Hello, Echo.” The shadows danced again, and the figure reformed. Her words repeated, faintly. “Hello, Echo…” (echo, echo, echo) “Narcissus put you in here,” Ada said, keeping her eyes fixed on the shadow. “Do you want out?” It grew a little larger, a little more defined. “Want out…” (out, out, out) “How do we do that?” She stopped, but then quickly spoke up again. She’d almost forgotten Echo could only repeat the last few words she’d heard, that’s where the name had come from. She needed to be more specific. “Can we break this crystal or not? There was no answer, this time. The grove was silent save for the buzz of Rubeansidhe’s wings as she landed beside Ada. “There are more than just the twelve sleepers,” the banshee said. “Others are tangled in the roots, some even drawn into the trees themselves. We don’t know how many, it seems to vary from one tree to the next. Daddy says the entire grove is a magic circle, focusing all the power to the center, here. I’ve looked from above and I believe he is right.” “Break this crystal…” (or not, or not, or not) Echo offered. She sounded unsure. Above them, tiny white flowers began to bloom on the olive tree. “Echo’s here,” Ada explained. “She’s not sure if we can free her. We probably can’t wake the sleepers either if they’re hooked up to the circle like that. Right?” “Right.” (right, right, right) “So we’ve got to find out how it works to get them out. Echo, where’s Narcissus?” “Narcissus…” (issus, issus, issus) She was much closer now, and the name seemed to change something in her demeanor. The crystal’s light was harsher than before, harder to look at. Ada squinted and averted her eyes, but didn’t break contact. “Echo, the light’s too bright. Did you remember something? What’s wrong?” “Wrong… Wrong… Wrong!” (wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong!) Desperation, fear, panic, centuries worth of imprisonment and torment poured forth from the crystal in a wave of reverberation and sound. What was wrong? Everything. Everything was wrong, and had been for a long time. Rubeansidhe hissed and grabbed Ada’s shoulder. “Something is changed, Ada. We are not safe here any longer.” “Girls!” Isabel yelled, having sensed the danger as well. “Hold up. I think I can fix that. Echo!” she called out, her voice stern, but not harsh. “Calm down. I know it hurts, but we’re here to fix this. I promise we won’t leave the tree without you, but we need to find Narcissus to get you out of there. Where is he? Did he go up?” Distant and wretched weeping was her answer. “Echo…” With a sigh, Ada closed her eyes, and pressed her forehead against the crystal’s surface. “I’m sorry,” she said. “For everything he did to you. For all the years you lost. I know nothing can bring them back, but we’ll find a way to give you and the sleepers a second chance. You shouldn’t have to pay a price for his schemes.” One of the star-shaped flowers fell from the trees on her shoulder. “She pays a price for foolish love,” said a rich, familiar voice. “As do I. As do we all.” Ada’s eyes snapped open. “Narcissus,” she whispered, before raising her voice. “You’re not gonna make me search this whole tree to find you, are you?” she asked, keeping her hand on the crystal to reassure Echo as best as she could. The olive tree groaned as though there were a high wind. Rubeansidhe’s nails dug into her shoulder as the bark twisted into the shape of a face. The faerie lord’s eyes were covered in a wreath of white flowers, and his mouth did not open when he spoke. “No need for that. I am here, Ada duSang. I am all around you. In the boughs, in the air, in the grass...” It clutched at her feet. “In my hubris, I sought to become more than I was… but my collection failed me at the last, at the very last… And so I am caught, as she is caught, and my Queen has forsaken me.” He did not sound entirely displeased, and the sigh he gave manifested as a light breeze that kissed their cheeks. “Your queen? Don’t tell me you tried asking her for help after it all went wrong. You’d be lucky if she just killed you for trying to toy with time like this.” “Speak not her name, traitor!” Rubeansidhe shouted. “I am no traitor, jewel.” Narcissus said, bemused. “I merely followed orders.” She gasped. “You lie! You must!” He just laughed at her. Loud and long, until they could hear the madness in it. That didn’t make any sense. She didn’t get the feeling Narcissus was lying, and yet… “Why did Queen Titania order you to do this? What could be worth breaking time?” “Did you not hear me the first time? LOVE!” “Love!” (love love love) Echo responded, and the crystal rang out a sorrowful note. For a moment, Ada wasn’t sure what he meant. Love? What could love have to do with this? But then she remembered. Ruby had nearly killed herself out of despair borne from losing her loved ones and being left all alone in the world. And Titania had lost someone who meant the world to her not so long ago… “You did this for one single thing, didn’t you? Titania asked you to bring back the Summer Lady, her daughter.” “How could I refuse my love, my liege! She wept so sweetly, and only I could provide comfort! Ah but it would have worked, if I were not short just one, one little mage. I could have done it, and no one would have known save us, our secret bond, beautiful and perfect as I am.” Petals fell from the wreath on his eyes, as though they were tears. “Now my Titania is lost to the world I made for her, and she will not answer me. I must have succeeded enough for her. Of course I did, yes, and my suffering now is only the thorn on the beautiful rose that is a world without grief.” “You monster!” Rubeansidhe yelled. “You’ve sundered Yggdrasil! The great tree screams as it dies!” “It dies!” (it dies, it dies, it dies) Echo cried out. “No,” Narcissus said, low and angry now. “It will not die. Not now that you have brought the one thing I lacked to me.” Junior, halfway to the hill, yelled in alarm as something grabbed his leg. Narcissus laughed again, triumphantly this time. “I will finish what I began, a moment ago, a millenia ago.” The olive tree’s roots curled defensively around the crystal. “I will be free!” “FREE!” (free, free, free!) Echo’s power surged, and the crystal turned blazing hot. The trees shook, and the dreamers moaned. “Daddy!” Young Ruby screamed as something grabbed her as well. The now living roots of the trees dragged the pair of them in opposite directions. Junior to the oak, Ruby to the sycamore. Ada’s grip on the knife tightened and her knuckles went white. “No chance in hell.” Without thinking twice, she took off after Junior. “Rubeansidhe! Isabel! Get Ruby free, I’ve got him!” “GO!” Rubeansidhe yelled, her wings blurring as she zipped after her twin.
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Jun 16, 2018 06:34
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Buying Time Scene: The Grove ((This is a Challenge! To start off, Ada rolls Athletics and Physique to reach and free Junior. Difficulty is 5 for both. Athletics: 4df+5 = (+-b-)+5 = 4 Physique: 4df+5 = (+bb-)+5 = 5 Using Junior’s HC, ‘Head of Clan Lytle’, to boost that first one to a full success. Second is a tie, so Ada takes a minor cost of “To the Bone”)) Junior clutched at the grass but it slipped through his fingers, as much a part of Narcissus’ cavern as the root that was dragging him swiftly towards the oak tree. “I just got out of a tree, you ugly git, I ain’t goin’ back in one that quick!” Reaching for his power he yelled a word in Seminole and everything… slowed… down… It was enough for Ada to catch up with him. As she got closer, however, her movements grew more gradual, and stiffer. Slowly, she reached forward to grasp the root with one hand, and moved to saw the end off with the knife. It squirmed and twisted in her grasp, and while she managed to hack it off, she caught the flesh of her hand with her own knife. She inhaled sharply as it easily slid down to the bone, sending a jolt of pain through her body that seemed to extend for several minutes. Blood trickled out lazily from her fingers, coating the root stump. Pulling the knife back, she threw away the end and pulled Junior back, away from Narcissus’ grasp. Time returned to normal speed abruptly as he sat up and helped Ada to her feet. “We’ve got to break this circle,” he said, stomping the grass with one boot. “It’s feeding all the magic from the trees to him and-” he paused to pull her out of the way of another questing root. They were crawling all over the ground now, looking for ankles. He pointed at a few of the closer ones and barked a few more unfamiliar words. They shivered and slowed down enough to get away from. “Don’t stand still, lass, come on!” He didn’t have to tell her twice. After taking a moment to make sure Junior would be alright, Ada turned around and sprinted towards Ruby. I’m not losing anyone. Not here, not now! ((Now to free Ruby. Since Ada is banged up, this isn’t solved by Physique. Instead, this calls for a Notice roll! Notice: 4df+4 = (-b-+)+4 = 3 Dicebotttttttt  Ada invokes Soul Sisters, because this is for someone she’s very close to, and pushes it up to a tie and a success at a minor cost.)) Ruby didn’t have a trick up her sleeve the way her father did, but Rubeansidhe was much faster in flight than Ada was running and she caught up to herself in a few seconds. Isabel was there nearly as quickly, having been closer to where Ruby started than anyone else. She threw a net of webbing over her daughter and held it while Rubeansidhe grabbed the root and shrieked at it. It withered and died in an instant. But while they were dealing with that, Echo’s prison was glowing brighter and brighter, pulsing with light. Narcissus was whispering to her, holding her close. The trees bent farther, the grass rustled as the roots spread quickly. Ada saw it when the first dreamer stood up and walked forwards, jerking and stumbling like a zombie, no- a puppet. It was the man with the moustache she’d seen earlier, still asleep, but being manipulated by the roots that ran through his body. “Get them!” yelled Narcissus. “Get them!” (get them, get them, get them,) Echo repeated. Ada struck first. Lowering her head, she rammed into the man with the moustache, shoulder first, pushing him back. She could see the other dreamers starting to rise already. They needed an answer, fast. “Isabel!” She called out. “We need a big web to catch these flies with! Junior, can you break the circle and pull the plug?” “With my bare hands?” “No, with magic! It’s draining their power to fuel itself, isn’t it? Make it give it back!” He turned his head and scowled at the olive tree. “Alright, but you’d best put in a good word with your beau when I go breakin’ all the Laws to save the dang world.” “I’m sure they’ll make an exception, dear,” Isabel said, piling silk to one side. Young Ruby had a hand on her shoulder, speeding her mother’s work along, and Isabel’s fingers were a blur of motion. “Rubeansidhe,” Ada asked, glancing over her shoulder. They were almost out of time. “Those roots died earlier when you screamed at them. Can you make them freeze up instead?” “To what purpose?” Rubeansidhe asked. “There’s too many of them to fight off. But if we can split them up and stick them in Isabel’s webbing…” she said, grinning. Her hand ached, they were on a deadline and the numbers were stacked against them, but she wasn’t afraid. This kind of life and death struggle was what it meant to be alive. Rubeansidhe nodded. “I’ll protect us. Focus on helping Mother.” “Don’t worry. I’m not letting even one of them through.” They were almost upon them. Without another word, Ada turned towards the nearest sleeper and charged him. He tried to grab her, but she slipped past him and kicked him in the back - not to hurt him, but to make him fall down. She didn’t need to wound these people. All she had to do was buy time. ((Next roll’s gonna be a toughie, so Ada rolls to CA with Athletics first. 4dF+5 = (-b++)+5 = 6 That’s enough to create an Aspect successfully - Unbalanced.)) It was almost like a dance. Take a step forward, get the sleepers’ attention, move to the side, duck to avoid a gnarled hand, move forward, jump to get out of a root’s reach, turn around, move back...Ada’s blood pumped, the sound of her heartbeat filling her ears. She didn’t have to glance back to see the web was ready. She just knew that it was, maybe out of instinct or a glimpse of it out of the corner of her eye. The trap was ready. All it needed was for her to lead the dreamers to it. Reaching forward, she grasped the nearest one by the lapels and waited a moment. She responded in kind, throwing herself into an attack, but then Ada spun around, grabbed her wrist, and sent her tumbling, right into the web. She didn’t look to confirm she’d made it there - too many of Narcissus pawns still bearing down on her for that. ((Alright, let’s do this. Ada rolls Physique to Overcome this obstacle. Diff is still 5. 4dF+5 = (b+b-)+5 = 5 Tie, so invoking Unbalanced for a +2 makes it a clean win!)) The web worked perfectly. Isabel and her daughters were nimble with the webs and Narcissus was a blind puppetmaster, working mostly by feel. It only took a few moments for the banshees to collect the dreamers, as though they were goldfish in a pet store tank. “I will hold onto them so he can’t use them for more mischief. Go!” Isabel said. Keeping an eye out for any more surprises, Ada approached the crystal and the tree once again. “Junior!” she called out. “How’s that circle coming?” Wood snapped and popped and Narcissus screamed. “Got one! Keep her going!” he hollered back. “You’re all mad!” Narci yelled, as another wave of roots chased after them. “I can fix this! I can fix all of it! Yggdrasil will be healed if you just- stay- still!!!” “Fix this? Your stumbling around’s nearly torn history to pieces! It’s over, Narcissus! Time’s up!” A gust of wind answered her, and then another, stronger one. The trees groaned in the growing gale, as miniature whirlwinds began to tear through the glade one after another, coming from the center. Crack-pop-screech! “Two down!” yelled Junior. Almost there. All that was needed was a bit more time. Or maybe...all they needed was for the time Narcissus had wasted to finally catch up to him. Gripping the knife tightly, Ada picked up the pace until she was running as fast as she could manage. Then, she uttered words she knew Narcissus would be unable to ignore. “I promised the Old Man of the Lake a blood tithe to get here, Narcissus! All those things you stole and broke are about to come due!” ((Ada’s using every last trick she has to keep Narcissus’ attention on her. This is a Provoke attempt! Result is (--bb)+5, or 3, but that makes it anyway because boy is Narci scared of what’s coming to him. Adding +2 from Life is a Fairy Tale makes this a Success With Style! Ada’s In His Head now.)) She’d struck a nerve, it was obvious from how the tornadoes started to chase her directly, how every blade of grass, every tree root, and every Dreamer trapped in Isabel’s web reached for her. “You are his agent? YOU?!” he shrieked. In that moment, surrounded by death on all sides, trapped in the middle of a possessed grove, Ada couldn’t help but grin. This was the man that had sought to control time - a man she’d had wrapped around her little finger since the time they’d first met. “What?!” she called out, as she circled around the grove, coming closer and closer to the crystal, taking her time to enjoy the moment before the truth was revealed. “You haven’t got it yet? It’s so obvious!” Mockery was clear in her voice as she stared down the face in the tree and danced past his attempts to catch her, always out of reach. Pop-crack-screech! “That’s three! One more should do it!” There was no way to outrun the winds forever. It had been a long night, and she was slowing down. She started taking sharper, riskier turns, breaking past the winds, feeling the dirt slam into her like fists, the loose bits of rock and wood draw sharp cuts all over her body. But they were almost there...almost there… ((Final roll time. Out of tricks, Ada has nothing but Physique to withstand as much of the damage as she can. She gets (b++-)+5 = 6, against a difficult of 7. It’s not enough...)) “Ada!” Rubeansidhe shouted, up above. “Get down! NOW!” It was stupid to stop now, with a whirlwind hot on her heels, but Ada didn’t think twice. She threw herself into a side roll and let her momentum carry her forward a few steps more. Large, jagged roots burst out of the ground like spears, kissing her cheek and missing by an inch. Like so many times before, Ruby had come through for her when it counted. Where would I be without you, Ruby? Grabbing a pair of roots and pushing them aside, Ada dived through the gap and prepared to keep running. ((...Which is why Ada invokes Ruby’s “Youngest Jewel of Summer to turn that into an 8 and succeed. They’ve made it this far together. Together, they can make it further still.)) “THERE!” Junior called out, and the air in the grove turned hot. Golden light flared from four of the twelve trees, the tallest of them all, one at each compass point, and they started to shrink. Junior’s spell was reversing time. The magic that had been stolen to power the crystal was siphoned back, through the roots, through the tree, and returned to the sleepers caught in Isabel’s net. “NOOOOOO!” Narcissus howled. The olive tree’s branches whipped in the air. “Stop! You’re ruining everything!” “Everything!” (thing thing thing!) Echo sobbed. The shadow inside the crystal was much closer, much larger, and beating her fists on the wall - and Ada ran towards it, matching hands with her. “Work with me,” she said. “It’s time we broke through the looking glass.” Her other hand curled up into a fist and slammed against the crystal, testing its strength. A chip flaked free, but Ada’s hand stung with the impact. The trapped nymph, true to her name and nature, struck the same spot from the inside. It wasn’t unbreakable, but their bones would give long before the crystal did. But there was something stronger than bone she could use. Grabbing the knife on her belt, Ada raised it up to the level of her face so Echo could see. “Let’s cut our way through,” she said, and stabbed the crystal, as hard as she could. Echo raised a shadow knife in the same shape and nodded. The crystal dimmed further as the trees sapped it, and the girls chipped away at it. The face on the olive tree pleaded and cajoled, threatened and wept, but to no avail. Tink-Tink-Tink-CRACK! The crack spread like an egg, hit against a counter. Ruby was there, and Rubeansidhe, pulling from either side to separate it as a milky, sweet scented liquid poured out, along with the body of a woman. She was tall and willowy, with pale skin and deep black hair long enough to wrap around her entire body, shielding her nakedness. The olive tree split in two when the crystal egg did, revealing the still form of the faerie lord, roots embedded in his flesh as if he too were one of the dreamers. He did not stir.
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Jun 16, 2018 06:40
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Coming of (an) Age Scene: The Grove For a few moments, Ada was content to simply breathe. Her body ached and was covered by a sticky warmth from all the blood escaping from the wounds she’d taken when Narcissus had come for her. As soon as she found her strength, she helped the banshees pick Echo up - and once she was sure she was unharmed, went straight for Narcissus. He looked so feeble now...so ridiculous, like a puppet with pieces of string clinging to his body where they’d been cut. It wasn’t a good time for it, but she couldn’t keep herself from laughing. A deep, hearty laugh that made her whole body shake and protest. “You dumb son of a bitch...” she whispered, wiping away the tears on her eyes, as she leaned in closer to get a better look at him. “You never saw it coming, did you? There was never anyone behind this. It was just me. Just me, ahead of your arrogant rear end every step of the way.” Curious, she inspected the thorns, and checked his body for vital signs. “Just you…” he whispered. One eye opened a crack. “...the new world I made will fall. You cannot comprehend the magnitude of the ruin you have caused.” “You took mine away when you tried to make yours. That’s what you’ve always done, stomped on everyone else to reach your goals. But this time, you’ve got someone to answer to.” Standing up, Ada shot Rubeansidhe a look. “Ruby, he’s alive.” “Not for long,” the banshee said as she approached. “Narcissus, false lord of the Sidhe, you have trespassed on this holy place and made a mockery of the stewardship to which you were entrusted.” “Then so has our Queen,” Narcissus spat. “Will you condemn her as well?” “If I must, but first I will see to it that you can harm no one else.” She knelt beside him, and her wings shed pollen. Narci’s eyes drooped. Ruby shook her head. “He doesn’t deserve a peaceful death. Ada, give me your knife.” She offered Ruby the handle, but something in Narcissus’ words made her curious. “Ruby, what are we going to do with Titania? She’s your queen, but she would’ve destroyed everything. I can’t allow her to walk away with this.” “You can’t?” Ruby’s eyes glittered harshly. “My whole family was torn to pieces over this monster’s actions, and still I hesitate to charge the Queen of Summer for her part in it. Don’t be as arrogant as this fool. There will be no good end for whoever brings this injustice to light- no matter how necessary it may be.” “But it’ll be even worse if nobody knows to keep Titania in check,” Ada pointed out. “What happens if she tries again and gets a patsy who knows how to cover his tracks better? There won’t be a good end for anyone if Titania gets away with this - it’d just be picking between having everyone share your misery or suffering alone.” She stopped, pursed her lips, and took Ruby’s hand between her own. “We don’t have to put you and your family at risk if you’re scared,” she whispered. “I’ll say I stopped him myself. It was always just me, after all.” “And who will believe you?” Ruby sighed. “They already believe all humans are liars, and that would be a lie to prove them right. No Ada. Even if they did believe you, they would quietly have you killed, and forgotten. This is not your burden to bear.” She pulled her hands away from Ada’s. “I would rather skin him slowly, but he is the only one who knows what happened. He must be made a prisoner and brought before the court. That is the only way to fix this. If the Queen really is lost somewhere in the false world he made for her, she may never return. Which leaves Summer without a Queen, right as Winter comes into power… I don’t know what will happen. Nothing good.” “It’ll be a change. The end of an era,” Ada said, nodding her agreement. “But all things must pass, don’t they? That’s why you’re here. If the way things are has to end, you’re the one who can make sure it’s a gentle death.” She glanced down at the fallen Sidhe lord. “The only person who matters to Narcissus is himself. If we show how everyone how far gone he was, we’ll hurt him in the only way worse than death for him: his pride.” “You can’t shame the shameless,” Ruby said. “Come, he will sleep until I wake him again, and there are others more deserving of care and comfort.” “Yeah. Let’s get to it.” As they headed back to the dreamers and Echo to watch over them, Ada couldn’t help but look back. Narcissus had tried to change history, and he’d almost gotten away with it. Even in his failure, though, he’d kicked off a series of irreversible changes. No more secrets between her friend and her. A judgement for summer. The past, changed. He’d danced too close to the flame, and she’d had a front row seat to watch him burn. So much had happened tonight...and when she thought about what was still to come, it all took on an unreal quality, wavy and uncertain like the images from a dream. Through the exhaustion, the pain and the lingering taste of triumph, Ada felt an unmistakable nostalgia. She wouldn’t be doing this again very often. When I wake up tomorrow, it’s gonna be the start of a new dynasty. Learning from what happened to the old duSangs. Finding out the truth. Convincing Mom, and Rick, and everyone else that what I want to do is worth doing. Make my city into my city. It’s not just gonna be the fairies who’ll be changing. Everyone will, and I’ll be the one calling out for that change. Wait for me, New Orleans. We’re gonna get you back when you belong. And when that’s done, I’m coming home. It’s time to grow up and take my place.
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Jun 16, 2018 06:52
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Branching Paths Scene: The World Tree ON scene: Elbridge, Rupert, Jenny, Hugues, Marcine, Nicky, Murray, Topaz, Zophiel Nine went into the World Tree. They found themselves in an oval antechamber, dimly lit by a blue flicker coming in from a set of stairs that led up to a round doorway on the far side. “It’s metal,” Nicky said, touching the wall. “No, metal and plastic. And wood, and glass, and stone…” He held up his hand and called a gentle blue light to it. “Oh!” The floor was a mosaic of different materials, both glittering and dull, all linked together in a beautiful pattern that suggested tree bark. It sloped up into the wall and wrapped all the way around the ceiling, only a few feet over their heads. “Makes you wish you’d brought a camera along,” said Rupert, conjuring his own light as he looked down at the mosaic. Topaz jumped onto Marcine’s shoulder, curled around her neck, and shuddered. “There’s so much iron!” “You’ll be easier to carry, at least,” Marcine grunted as she settled Jenny onto the floor. The older girl stirred and opened her eyes slowly. “Did we make it?” she asked groggily. Marcine glanced from her to Zophiel. “More or less.” Elbridge took a listing step to one side, nearly dropping Zophiel; at the last second, he slouched against the wall to support them both. Cold. He felt cold all of a sudden, and curiously-faint of breath. Cold and numb...had the air grown that thin from the breach? It had been so hot when the asteroid fragments struck. How could he feel so cold already? Marcine slid Topaz onto Jenny’s lap and moved to El’s side, worriedly resting a hand each on his shoulder and Zophiel’s. “We should all sit down for a minute. Let me see if I can help.” “He’s gone cold,” Zophiel said, putting a hand to El’s forehead. “Is this shock?” “Maybe.” Or a heart attack. She caught his arm to support him. “What are you feeling?” Saying that reminded her of when she’d asked Rick something similar, and when she took El’s wrist to check his pulse, the last strains of The Black-Leg Miner floated into her head. She shook her head slightly to put all of it out of mind. Must be more tired than she thought. “I’m fine, fine, just...a bit winded.” Elbridge took a deep breath and looked at Marcine with his mismatched spectacles, stopping just short of direct eye contact. “It’s been a long week, hasn’t it?” He felt at his wounded leg. The slice from Rick’s sword had mostly closed, leaving only a crust of dried blood and a livid bruise under the bandages, but the leg felt a little weak nonetheless, as if the ground had gone out from under him. “Yeah…” His pulse was fast, but so was hers, and it didn’t feel abnormal. “You sure? You should still rest, both of you.” Thunder cracked, echoing through the tunnel. A moment later, the entire branch groaned ominously and the slope of the floor increased a few degrees. Marcine caught hold of them both so they wouldn’t lose their balance until the floor stopped moving. “What the gently caress now?” she groaned. Rupert slid forwards more than a few inches before he could plant himself steady again, narrowly avoiding a collision with Nicky. Looking up the stairway, he answered, “Something like that can't be heralding anything good. We need to keep moving, even if it’s at a limp.” “No rest for the wicked,” Jenny said, standing. Topaz perched on her shoulder. “Guess we’d better go take a look.” Murray had already slunk up the stairs and was sitting with his back to them, football shaped head tilted too far to one side as the light flickered over him. “Do you think there has ever been a demon here?” he asked, as Hugues joined him. “Or am I the very first?” “Just remember our deal,” Hugues said. “Oh, I do, little master. I do…” The door was a knot in the branch. Once beyond it, they stood on Yggdrasil herself, the World Tree, the great history-keeper. This particular branch was as wide as a 4-lane highway. Ahead of them, the trunk continued on for miles, for they were standing on the false branch and “straight” was the same as “down” would have been, from a normal perspective. But the tree had a gravity all its own, as Murray proved by running entirely around the branch, his orientation changing as he did so. “You can’t fall off!” he shouted at this new discovery. Thunder boomed again, and a wind picked up, rustling the leaves. Lightning leapt between poles that stuck out of the tree at irregular intervals. Fires burned here and there, plumes of smoke blown away by the wind. The great tree smelled more of gasoline and coal than anything natural. Marcine turned in a circle, taking in the sight. It was bizarre. Impossible, and disorienting. She closed her eyes to center herself from a moment of vertigo. When she opened them, the first thing she noticed was Rupert’s bandaged arm. She looked over the others: Hugues with his concussion. Jenny, recovering from straining her magic. Elbridge possibly just having suffered a heart attack. Zophiel barely standing upright. They had no idea what was ahead, and she was in the best shape of any of them. She rested her hands over her gun grips, shifted her hunting knife, and took a deep breath that nearly made her gag on a whiff of gas station stench. “Is it supposed to be like this?” “You get places with messed up gravity sometimes in the Nevernever, it’s usually harmless,” explained Rupert, peering downtrunk and sniffing the air, “I somewhat doubt it’s supposed to be on fire, though. That usually happens after we turn up.” She gave him a flat look. “Hrm.” Elbridge sat down on a patch of ‘bark’ that resembled corrugated metal. “I think we could use some perspective.” He retrieved the silver mirror he’d taken from Winter’s armoury. It was still intact, although it wouldn’t do to keep putting it at risk like this. Not once they were finished. He swabbed the glass clean and cleared his throat. ”Twinkle, twinkle, not-quite-stars, How we wonder what you are So I cast my gaze afar To view all time, from wheel to car.” “Help, o mirror, us to see A broader view of history Out of time and memory Miss not the forest for this tree” The mirror’s image came into focus. It had found a cluster of glass and silicate leaves far below them, on a branch that must have been another major split hundreds of years ago. Elbridge could see most of the tree from here. It extended up and up, showing the advance of technology in its very bark, until it reached an ugly scar. The false branch had split the true trunk like an axe, embedding itself as a wedge in between the two halves. Sickly yellow time-light leaked from the scar, and the graft itself seemed to be rotting instead of taking hold. Vines, branches, and leaves secured it in place, Summer’s power in full bloom. “I believe we’ve found our destination,” he told the others. “From the topography of the surface where we’re standing, we should be…” He pointed to a spot along the spliced branch, relatively-close to the wound. “Right here. We can make it if we… oh?” He looked more-closely at the damage to the tree. It wasn’t just the jagged, oozing split where the graft had been made. There was other damage - winding, half-pipe grooves that tangled and wound their way outward from the wound, scouring the bark and the tree underneath it. The tracks reminded him of the apple trees from his youth in Britain, when blight struck and the fruit was infested by - “...worms.” Elbridge cleared his throat to make sure the others were paying close attention. “The graft is partially worm-eaten.” “We need to pull the old trunk back together,” Nicky said, pointing at the split halves. “And get this timeline out of the way. The connection is weakened due to that… that worm, anyways but…” He gulped. “How do we do that without dropping this whole branch into the abyss?” “Given the unique gravity properties of the tree, I don’t think it would fall - I think it’d crash straight into the tree. So we need to slow that impact down and then move the branch,” replied Rupert, scratching his chin in thought, “If we reduce the branch to a more manageable weight, we can swing it around to the side and rely on the gravity to stop it from falling. As we walk, I can lay down a series of runic markers to work as a channel and with those, I ought to be able to extend my semi-weightlessness spell along the length of the branch, at least briefly.” “Give each branch its own, subjective ‘down’,” Elbridge said, nodding, “then plant the seed and induce it to germinate. Ms. Sterling, I do believe that we’ll need your help to make that happen - this is Summer magic, and our expertise falls decidedly on the colder side of things.” “Okay,” Marcine said, but her eyes were fixed on the worm trails.
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Jul 17, 2018 00:58
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Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board Scene: Yggdrasil While everyone caught their breaths and prepared for the looming encounter with the worm, Rupert knelt, drawing out a ziplock bag from his satchel - despite the last few days, its contents, a pair of charcoal sticks, were mercifully intact - and knelt down, sketching out a spiral of runes, investing each with the tiniest pulse of will. With each pulse, he could feel the tree itself thrum beneath his knees, a constant flow of energy, as if the branch held veins and arteries beneath its odd surface. But within the thrum was a discordant note - not wrongness, but sorrow, of a timeline suffering under the yoke of a bloody war, at least in recent years. Time and history flowed through this tree, and he got a sense that if he had a whim and time to spare, he might be able to use it and look back into the past. Shaking the sense away, he finished the last rune and stood. “There’s the first one done. I don’t think the tree’s magic will interfere with it, but we’ll have to see.” While Rupert worked on his gravity spell, the others advanced, cautiously, towards the graft. But there were no signs of tunnels on this side of it. Topaz fussed from Jenny’s shoulder. “If it has been eating the Nevernever in our world, then it’s probably there somewhere. Or could it have come here? Or could it be over there?” he raised a paw towards the split trunk halves, extending past them on either side. “That’s where we should be, so that’s where it was… Unless it moved.” “We’ve been through a couple places that were worm-eaten,” Marcine said. “It was most recently in the Winter swamp, as far as we know.” She frowned, thinking. “So if this tree is a literal representation of worlds...then a worm that ends up here, somehow, can go anywhere, and its tunnels have the potential to be where- or whenever in the world the branch represents?” The thought gave her chills. That swathe through the Nevernever could be in the middle of a city. “How the hell did it get here?” “Someone had to let it in,” Nicky said. “That’s why there’s a Law against doing any such thing.” “We don’t know how it got in,” Elbridge said, “but we can see where it’s going. Look at where the trails are clustered - right around the splice. New growth, no bark. It’s going to rot the branch clean off of the tree.” “No future for anyone,” Nicky said. “We can’t leave it in there or it’ll undo any fixing we manage.” “My word, this is a fair lot of killing we’ve had to do,” Elbridge sighed. “Vampires, Voidspawn, mercenaries, a dragon, and now this. Not even Breenfjell and his army could kill this one…” “No future for anyone… eventually,” Murray said. “The worm has been burrowing around for years. It will keep. Maybe that new Faerie lord can do his job, once things are set right, hmm?” “That seems infeasible,” Elbridge said acidly. “We only have one seed, and we can’t take the risk of planting it until that thing is out of the way.” “Suit yourself,” the demon responded. He didn’t sound overly worried. As they drew closer to the graft, the bark began showing signs of illness. The mosaic-pattern peeled back, exposing circuit boards and LED lights, clockwork and steam mechanisms. All the pieces of human technology, powered by the sparking pylons. In places, pieces of the tree were floating freely, and gravity felt looser than it had further up. It was all loosely held together by a tangle of green vines and dark roots. Topaz dropped off Jenny’s shoulder and sniffed at a yellow flower. “This is Summer’s power,” he confirmed. “It will grow back no matter how many times you cut it. If Narcissus is the source, he must be found before we can-” But before the Kitsune could finish his thought, the flower he’d smelled wilted. Then so did the vine that it grew from. And every stalk and root that had been holding the whole mess together. The time-light that had been emanating from the graft flickered and went out. “What… just happened?” Nicky asked in the sudden silence. The false branch shuddered and slipped several feet, knocking everyone over. “Something broke,” Elbridge said, picking himself up off of the floor yet again. “We’ve no way of knowing what, unless…” He raised the mirror again, pondering. It was a long shot, but so was everything else about this entire mission. ”Mirror, mirror, silver quiver, The floor we stand upon doth shiver, Darkened mirror, eye of the strange, Reveal what causeth Summer’s change” The image coalesced quickly, as if it were quite close by. It was fragmented terribly and the glass, (or perhaps crystal?) that it looked through was bleary and wet. But there was no mistaking Narcissus’ still form, bound in a sitting position, or the red-haired girl standing over him. “Ada!” Elbridge exclaimed, in an excited tone of voice that didn’t sound much like Elbridge at all. Marcine shook her head, looking over his shoulder. “And we all end up at the same place somehow. Sure, why not?” Flippancy aside, she felt a rush of relief followed by a pang of guilt. She was glad to see her. She didn’t want to have to tell her what happened. None of it mattered right now anyway. She’d promised Rick to look out for his friends… She looked away from the mirror. “Load-bearing boss. Guess that leaves the worm.” The branch slipped another few inches. Rupert soon caught up, leaving behind a trail of charcoal runic spirals along the length of the branch, each one accompanied by ever more uncomfortable flashes into the dark progression of the branch’s timeline. Staggering the last few steps as the branch grew increasingly unstable, he half-settled, half-slumped to his knees, quickly sketching out a circle with the charcoal stick. “Get ready to catch the thing, I don’t know how long I can hold the spell on something this large,” he said, slipping his injured arm out of its sling with a wince and moving his palm into contact with the branch. Willing the circle closed, he closed his eyes and started to chant. ”Arbre de la vie, attention…” He clutched the remaining hunk of charcoal in his good hand, his will flowing downwards, into the branch. The timeline’s thrum, distorted as it was in the damaged and grafted section, echoed in his mind, an erratic drumbeat of time flowing. ”Laisse la force de la terre…” The branch cracked and wavered beneath him as his will flowed outwards, seeking the rest of the stick of charcoal. Four spirals waited, four beacons sketched from the same piece of charcoal. Each glimmered with faint light as the central rune triggered upon his will’s touch. The branch creaked an almighty creak, the vines began to snap, the roots cracking under the tension. Time was up. ”N'as pas de prise sur toi! Not a moment too soon, he finished the spell. Each set of runes flared with light, spiraling outwards as a channel for the spell, mere seconds before the last roots snapped. Its weight reduced, the branch still shifted slowly, scraping along the remains of the graft with an ear piercing screech. (Translation: tree of life, heed... let the earth's strength... have no grasp upon thee!) (Rupert, Magic Physique: -/-+ +4 = +3. Creates the aspect “Almost Weightless, Hopefully”.) “Get to the gap and I’ll knock it into place,” Jenny told Elbridge and Marcine. “But you gotta be ready to catch it!” “An excellent exercise in control,” Elbridge told her, with an aside glance to Marcine. “Because if you push too hard, we’ll all die, so please don’t do that.” “You’re in luck, I’ve been playing a lot of Kerbal lately,” she said with a two fingered salute, and ran back up the branch to get into a good place to apply leverage. It went without saying that if she DID mess up, she wasn’t coming back. “What is a ‘Kerbal’?” Elbridge asked, nonplussed, as Hugues nearly fell over laughing. Marcine drew the gun on her left hip and felt the minute warmth that told her it had the blessed bullets. Zophiel had said they wouldn’t do much against Outsiders, but it was all she had. Her double had needed a Denarian to repel them. She had an angel, but in his condition… She turned to him. “Can you drive off the worm if it shows up?” “No. I am spent, and if I were to lose… I don’t want to know what kind of damage a worm with my Grace could cause.” A feather fell free from the mess of his wings, dull and lifeless. It barely resembled the ones in her hat. “I may have no choice but to try, if it comes to it.” She took a closer look at his wings. The feathers were torn and disheveled, but there was no blood, or signs of actual injury on the rest of him. Even angels had limits, it seemed. She tentatively smoothed a feather straight and felt guilty for even asking. “We’ll try to avoid crossing that bridge. We’re just not in great shape....” She laughed dryly. “Maybe I’ll set Rick’s sword on fire and look menacing.” Zophiel’s eyes went to Elbridge, and the sword on his hip. “Let him sleep,” he said, and pressed the hilt of his own blade into her hand. Marcine stared at the flaming sword that didn’t burn her. She almost asked if he was sure, but of course he was or he wouldn’t have given it to her. The reflection of flames glinted off her armor as she raised it in a fencer’s salute, finding it to be the same weight she was used to from practice sessions. Her smile was as edged as the blade. There was no clear target left to avenge Rick, but she could stop some damned monster from ruining everything. “Thanks.” He smiled. “Just don’t lose it. I’m already in enough trouble.” “I’ll try.” She lowered it to her side and joined Elbridge.
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Jul 17, 2018 00:59
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Give Me A Lever Long Enough... Scene: Yggdrasil It was all about leverage. Jenny applied her power to the far end of the false branch with more precision than she was generally known for. She jumped in place, bringing the force down with her. The bough bent, but not enough. She jumped again, a little more this time. Again, with a little more. It was exhausting, especially after overloading herself earlier, but she didn’t need to apply all that much. The branch was already slipping, she mostly just had to make sure it slipped in the right direction. “Timberrrrr!” she yelled as something popped in the trunk and the whole thing fell sideways at a 45 degree angle. “Get ready,” El said, carefully passing the seedpod to Marcine. “Once it stops, make it germinate in the gap.” He set his feet wide, as if braced to catch, one hand raised to work his magic and the other holding Laverne Bellafonte’s 1974 edition of Practical Horticulture open to page 577: Grafting Apple Trees and Other Fruit-Bearing Hardwoods. (Elbridge rolls Contacts to derive some value from Mrs. Bellafonte’s book on gardening: /-// +4 = 3, enough for a one-use Boost of “I Can’t Believe This Actually Works”.) Elbridge began a low, sonorous chant, pushing back against the falling branch with magical force, every vector exactly opposite one in Jenny’s spell. The first thing that he realised was that this was incredibly hard. Even if normal laws of weight and gravity didn’t apply, and even with assistance from Rupert to lower the tree’s ‘inertia’ (for want of a better word), it was still a tremendous exertion. The bough creaked and groaned thunderously with every motion, and Elbridge felt those same tremors reverberating through his bones. The branch was almost in position when the low rumble became a torturous squeal. Here and there, spars the length of boating staves splintered away, drifting around the axis of the trunk like space debris around a satellite. It was no good. The limb was over-extended, and some parts of it were moving faster than others, and that differential was beginning to shear it apart. If it should break altogether… Elbridge closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath, then applied more upward force to buttress the bough, cradling it against its own weight. He put the most support under its sturdiest portions, allowing the branch to bear the weight where it was least-likely to snap. Just how he so well-understood the limits of a tree’s comfortable range of motion, well...that was a secret that would stay between himself and Ash. Forever. (Will --+/ +7 (with the Boost) = 6. Taking the free Invoke on “Almost Weightless, Hopefully” to raise to 8 and spending a FP on “Neither Wealth Nor Taste” for El to have some rather-unorthodox expertise (El FP 6->5). Compel on Jenny’s “Excessive Force” aspect to unbalance things, GM FP: 7->6) Jenny felt him adjusting and tried to moderate her side of the spell, but that just made it tilt all the harder. She pulled back and it wobbled precariously from the overcompensation. Everything she tried seemed to just make it worse. “Miss Hirsch, stop *hngh* pushing!” Elbridge grunted, labouring under the strain of sustaining the magic. “Miss Hirsch! Miss Hirsch! JENNY!” It was no good. She couldn’t hear him, and she’d never listened. Not to Turner, not to him. Jenny did what she wanted, when she wanted, and to Hell with anyone else’s opinion. Rather than exhaust himself fighting her, Elbridge elected to try his usual approach to Jenny: step aside, watch carefully, then move in to clean up the mess. It took several long, agonising seconds after Elbridge let up on his end for Jenny to notice the resistance had stopped and relax her exertion. Only then did El resume guiding it into place, wincing at the sound of breaking wood and narrowly avoiding impalement as a javelin-like splinter fell and embedded itself mere inches away from him. (Invoking “I Know You Know I Know You Know” for El to have a general idea of how to manage Jenny and work around her proclivities by now. El FP 5->4) He put his free hand on the fallen splinter; it was long enough to lean upon as a walking stick, and thrummed with an energetic resonance quite separate from the quakes running through the tree. He focused on that resonance, and let his spell follow the rhythm, easing the severed branch into place by fractions. There was a liveliness to it now, swaying as if in a midsummer breeze, the rustling of oak leaves carrying the Oracle of Dodona’s whispers back to his ears. You did it Elbridge opened his eyes again. The ragged ends of the splice were perfectly-aligned, hovering in the void across from each other. The whole of time stretched from horizon to horizon, unbroken save for the split in the middle. The chasm was unfathomably-vast, but from a perspective that could see the entire tree, it must have looked the faintest crack. Like the Grand Canyon, as seen by an astronaut on the moon. “Marcine,” he said. His voice was hoarse - from exertion, or from awe, he couldn’t say. “It’s time.”
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Jul 17, 2018 01:24
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Song of the Seedling Scene: Yggdrasil “If the worm shows up, yell and get out of the way.” Marcine stepped into the gap and had to crouch for a moment while her equilibrium adjusted. Gravity was mostly down-ish with the bulk of the tree, but it also pulled at her from both sides, nauseatingly. She made her way to the bottom cautiously. The center was rotten. The whole thing might give way if she tried to plant the seed in it. She’d always heard that a fire cleared the way for new growth, she mused as she braced herself above the worst of it, and carved a chunk of rotten wood away with the sword. When nothing caught fire that she didn’t want to be on fire, she attacked it vigorously. Shouldn’t Summer’s power prevent this? Who even knew what the gently caress Narcissus thought he was doing. Dead wood burned and flaked away in chunks until, after what felt like an eternity to her already-sore chest, she had exposed healthy wood beneath the decay. She placed the seed in the new gap, slipped the sword (carefully) through her belt and took out her violin. Then she played in a major key, warm and encouraging as Summer at its best, urging the seed to grow. (Rapport vs diff 8: (+b+-)+5 = 6. Marcine invokes on Friend to All Seasons, GM counter-invokes to place the scene aspect Deep Spread Rot, and Marcine counter-counters on Nudged by an Angel to succeed at a minor cost with +10.) Something within the seed responded. The answer to a question without words, a note of limitless potential. It was very soft at first, humming along inside her head. Not human, not faerie, but something different. Wholesome in the way the distant buzzing of the Outsiders was toxic. It resonated in Marcine’s mind, a feeling of prosperity, innovation, progress… Look how far you’ve come! Imagine how far you’ll go! There was another voice too, much deeper, much slower, emitting a single steady tone. It wavered once, then began again. It was too big for Marcine to make out any individual thoughts or expressions, like trying to reach for the bottom of the ocean. The third was a discordant song, fearful and in pain. Trying to harmonize and failing, over and over again. It hurt to listen to, hurt to think about. It didn’t fit, but it longed to. This voice too was far larger than the seed’s, and Marcine herself couldn’t reach it. But the seed was growing, in size and in volume. They needed to connect. The tree and branch threatened to drag her in, but she cautiously listened anyway to incorporate them into her song. She slowed the tempo for the tree, played a dissonant minor key for the branch, and slowly--with some trial and error--improvised a melody that pulled the three together. She gave the branch its own motif and smoothed out the dissonance until something seemed to slip into place. The branch and tree harmonized, and in that moment the seed burst into bloom. New growth sloughed away the rot and Marcine found herself overwhelmed by the sudden union as all three disparate aspects found each other. She had to pull back, but everything begged her to keep playing. To keep guiding them until they were truly whole. To keep holding them together. To stay just a little longer... (Compel on Marcine’s “Singer to the Soul”, she can’t leave now! Marcine’s FP 4 -> 5.) From the outside, the seed’s growth was explosive. Green, fresh shoots poked through the cracks, twirling upwards around the broken halves of the split tree. They spread up and up, pushing the break back together in time with Marcine’s flourishes. At first, the false branch, still held in place by Elbridge, Rupert, and Jenny, seemed to be ignored, as the new roots avoided it completely. But something changed as Marcine’s song adjusted to incorporate it, and the seed abruptly embraced the branch. The wood shifted as it was supported from below, and for the first time since Narcissus created it, made a real part of the whole. The scene was so mesmerizing that for a few moments, no one moved. But as the trunk sealed back together, the sound of the violin tapered off… and there was no sign of Marcine. “Ms. Sterling?” Elbridge shouted as she disappeared from view. “MARCINE!” The instant he was able to move again, he took off at a mad dash toward the splice, scanning frantically for the spot where she’d vanished. “MARCINE, GET OUT OF THERE, THE BARK IS CLOSING OVER YOU!” There was no answer. Cursing, Elbridge grabbed a sprouting vine - already as thick as a hawser, and growing longer by the second - and started to feed it down the hole, hoping it would reach her before the gap closed. “SINGH, HELP ME! MARCINE’S IN TROUBLE!” Releasing what remained of his spell, Rupert dragged himself upwards and staggered over to Elbridge and the shrinking hole in the branch, his wounded arm hanging limply at his side. Glancing around, he spotted and quickly grabbed a broken piece of rebar, a shard of the broken branch. Hefting the length of metal, he hunched over the hole and with just a touch of magic to reshape the rebar, wedged it into the hole. “I can hold the drat thing open, but you might need to drop down and drag her out,” said Rupert through gritted teeth. With both of them no longer holding up the branch, it began to list. The seed hadn’t secured it fully quite yet. “It’ll have to be you, Rupert,” Elbridge said. The tree was creaking ominously; he held up his own staff and began to chant, and the noise abated somewhat. The splinter made a marvellous focus for working magic on the rest of the tree, but it was still all El could do to keep it from collapsing. “Keep the hole open then, can’t go fixing the drat thing only to have to break it again to get out,” grumbled Rupert. Lifting his limp arm up, he tapped an innocuous travel band tied around his wrist, releasing what remained of the spells he’d woven into it. A surge of earth magic flooded up his arm, a stone wall against the throbbing pain. Grabbing the vine with his good hand, he dropped down into the hole, past the straining length of rebar, attempting something that almost looked like rappelling downwards. It was close inside, and getting closer. The seed’s new growth was evolving, taking on the same mosaic-pattern as the parent tree as it knitted together. Rupert dropped a fair ways before the light of the flaming sword illuminated Marcine below him. She was caught in a trance, the violin still propped under her chin as she rocked slowly back and forth. The tree had left a hollow around her, but it was starting to collapse. Kicking aside a curtain of dangling vines, Rupert swung down next to Marcine, the growing branch beneath them almost springy underfoot. Shoving the vine under his damaged arm, he reached out with his good hand and shook her by the shoulder, shouting, “Wake up, we need to move!” (Rupert, Rapport: /+/- +3 = +3. Rupert invokes “Save Them” for a +2 (FP: 5->4)) Marcine felt like she’d fallen down a well, her own song echoing back to her from all directions with fragments of other songs, in styles throughout history, teasing at the edge of her awareness. It was peaceful, in a way, and the seed held her like it held the tree and the branch. It was all together now. Healing, like it should be. Everything was right and she should stay in it. But she couldn’t, she told it. She had to leave. Why? What was wrong with it here? She was the one that had brought them together. Because there was something dangerous out there that wanted to tear them apart again, and she was going to protect it. The seed clung to her. But then, reluctantly, it released its hold, and she felt herself floating up, back to the surface, as it accepted that it didn’t want to be apart... Marcine flinched when she became aware of someone shaking her, then blinked, looking around at the enclosing roots that were much closer than they had been a moment ago, and Rupert. “gently caress,” she observed. She felt sluggish as she shoved her violin into its case and grabbed the fine, though she was trying to move as fast as she could. “Before you ask, I don’t know.” “Wasn’t gonna ask, no time,” replied Rupert, swapping the vine back to his good arm again. When they were both secure (as they could manage, at least) to the vine, he gave it a few tugs and shouted, “Start hauling!” to whoever was listening at the top. With Marcine taking up the lead, they climbed upwards, through the branch, Rupert shifting what parts of the branch’s innards he could manage with quick spells and a flick of his injured arm to provide footholds. With some hauling from above, the footholds and sheer persistence, they were making progress. (Rupert, Physique: -/++ +4 = +5, invokes Tommy in the Desert and Allies On Scene for a +4 to succeed without cost. (FP:4->2).) Up at the top, Zophiel and Hugues were hauling the vine, even Topaz had grabbed an end and was tugging for all he was worth. Nicky stood in the gap, one hand on either side of it, his time magic slowing the hole’s closing. “You’ve almost got them!” he yelled encouragingly. “Just a little farther!”
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Jul 17, 2018 01:45
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Sixth Law, Six Degrees Scene: Yggdrasil It was a tight squeeze but in the end they managed it. Topaz crammed himself into Marcine’s arms as soon as she was out, licking her face. She ruffled his ears and looked at the others who’d hauled them out. “I’m fine. Thanks. The seed was uh...clingy.” She looked up at the fresh growth binding the tree back into one whole, and still heard her own song in the back of her mind. “We really just did that.” “Not many people can say they stitched Yggdrasil back together, that’s for sure,” said Rupert, slipping his arm back into its sling. “Not many at all!” Nicky said excitedly. “We really did it! There’s no sign of that worm, the new tree is stabilizing the branches perfectly, and I’ve figured out where we are!” “Where or when?” Marcine asked. “Both, probably.” He gestured to the night sky, where distant stars twinkled. “Those are OUR stars! Orion, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor- see?” “The Tree of Time is hidden away deep, deep in Summer,” Topaz said, shocked. “We shouldn’t be able to see Earth-stars from it.” Nicky nodded. “Exactly, we shouldn’t. Which means the tree isn’t where it should be. It’s rooted right to the very spot where all this started. Where it was summoned. When it was summoned. And, if my guess is correct, in the very world it was summoned from!” Marcine stared at him. “Are you saying Narcissus dumped the drat Tree of Time in New Orleans?” “Why not?” Elbridge sighed and wiped away the thick layer of sawdust clinging to his skin. “Seems as if everything old and magic washes up here eventually.” He blinked, looking through the one good lens remaining in his spectacles. “But...that would mean that…we’re home.” It seemed impossible to believe - ever since that ill-fated road trip that had led them to the anomaly, and to six years in a future that wasn’t their own. Elbridge looked down from their dizzying height near the tree’s crown, and saw that familiar, meandering coastline, just like it had been drawn on a map. The lights of the surrounding country glimmered below, mirroring the twinkling stars above, but the city itself was gone. “No,” he said. “We’re not home yet. Yggdrasill has displaced New Orleans to...well, wherever Yggdrasill would be, ordinarily.” Marcine sighed. Right, they still had to fix that part. “gently caress all this poo poo.” “The unwritten Zeroth Law of Magic,” Elbridge said. “There is always more and it is always worse.” “...And it’s almost always your job to fix it,” added Rupert. “Don’t despair,” Zophiel said, resting a hand on Marcine’s shoulder. “Time is a resilient thing. It will heal, now that you have cleansed the wound.” “But will it go back to where it belongs?” Murray asked. “The corrupted time magic holding it here is all but gone.” “All but…” Nicky repeated. “Bloody hell! We have to get off this tree!” “What a lovely idea,” Elbridge said. “Why don’t we just pluck some of those enormous leaves and parachute down?” Marcine looked up at the nearest one, which still seemed a long way away. “If it’s not going to pull off some part of a world, why not?” “Won’t it though?” Murray asked, grinning. The tree bark shimmered under their feet. It was starting to look translucent. And through that newly translucent bark, deep, deep within the core of the wood, curled up like a horrible sleeping snake, was a worm. Marcine hissed through her teeth. “Dammit… How do we kill it in there?” “Doubt we can,” replied Rupert, “Probably need to bait it out or piss it off.” “Where’s Kevin Bacon when you need him?” Elbridge sighed. “We need transportation, now. If we could just get that ghastly van back, then we could…” He paused, and reached for Rick’s sword. “You know, I think that we can get that ghastly van back.” With his other hand, he kept his grip on his makeshift staff, using the link to the tree to feel out the tangled maze of its branches. To find the alcove where they’d entered. There! It wasn’t far, but the Escher-esque contours of the gnarled branches made it difficult to find, if you didn’t already know where to look. Elbridge made his way back as quickly as he could (which wasn’t terribly-quickly as these things went, but it wasn’t such a bad pace for an old man). Arriving, he took the sword and swung it in a vertical, counter-clockwise motion, allowing the blade itself to guide him. Azure light traced the arc of the cut before the entire circle fell away, leaving a free-standing portal hanging in place. On the other side was a parking lot. The van and Marcine’s car were only a few yards away. She sighed in relief. “Won’t need to try to convince insurance of time travel after all.” She stopped beside her car before she got in, though, resting her hand on the sword hilt. “So what are we doing about the worm?” “A good question,” Elbridge said. “There must have been others, and yet the tree’s still standing. Even so…” He furrowed his brow and thought on it. A wave of eldritch energies rippled over the tree’s surface. The ethereal lights were gone again in an instant, but in that instant, he saw the towering arcade of the Outer Gates, and the distant gleam of Arctis Tor and its defenders, and the endless, thronging horde of nameless things in between the two, seeking to overrun the faeries and devour the world. Then, the clouds returned, and the starry night sky above, and the sleeping world below. “The tree’s returning to its proper place,” Elbridge said, alarmed. “Escape first, worry about the worm later.” “Unless you’ve got a portal to the world tree handy, we’re not going to have a later.” Marcine frowned. “Maybe I can deal with it…” “There is no ‘I’ in this,” Elbridge insisted. “You’re not killing that thing on your own, and unless you’ve a damned good plan, you’re not killing it at all.” “Knock it off the tree,” she said. “If I can get the seed to help entangle it, I can cut the vines.” She patted the sword. “But there...probably are some steps I’m missing.” That IS what Kevin Bacon would do, Elbridge thought. “We can try, but standing our ground is suicide. I want us ready to retreat the instant it turns on us, so let’s get the vehicles moving now. We’re not outmanoeuvering that thing on foot.” Marcine smirked as she opened the door. “Then who wants a ride in the danger car?” Rupert nodded, “I’ll come along. Might even be able to lend a hand somewhere in this mad plan.” Topaz leaned against her ankle. “We’ve come this far together.” She scooped him up and scratched his neck.
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Jul 17, 2018 01:59
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What Nicky Wants Scene: Yggdrasil “I suppose this is where we say goodbye then,” Nicky said, forlornly looking at the van as everyone else piled in. “If that’s what you want,” said Rupert, glancing around the parking lot, “Can't see any sign of vampires coming to eat us, so you might be safe here.” “Ah, well… I’m sure I can manage for a few minutes, until things go back to normal. But…” “But you’re wondering what it'd be like to explore a whole new timeline, right?” asked Rupert. Nicky shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Would that be alright? I’ve done what I needed to… Found Minsk, that is. Got her home. She won’t exactly… miss me.” He looked at Elbridge out of the corner of his eye. “Wizard Cantor,” Elbridge said levelly. “Although the White Council is a global institution, a key qualification for the title of ‘Wizard’ is that you must be able to make your own decisions. There are not enough Wardens to watch over the entire Council, and there are not enough Senior Councilors to offer guidance for every problem. We must use our own judgement, and stand by it.” Nicky nodded gravely. He looked over his shoulder, towards the park where the dead dragon’s corpse was visible, a horrendous lump reaching above the fence. The sounds of distant fighting were still audible, as the Outsiders made their last stand. He didn’t say a word as he walked to the van, opened the door, and climbed inside. “A word, wizard?” Murray asked Elbridge, once he was the only one left. “I suspect that I’m not going to like this,” Elbridge sighed. “Speak.” The little demon grinned at him. “I know how much you hate deals, but I have a gift. One you might find interesting...” He retched twice and spat out a short steel blade. There were brown stains on it. “How thoughtful,” Elbridge said. “Were dead mice and songbirds becoming passé?” “Do you really have time for jokes?” He raised one gooey eyebrow. “What is this?” Elbridge asked, point-blank. “The knife the Warden used in his duel with the vampire lord. Blood of both victor and victim… though who was who, I dare not judge.” Murray put a paw on it and pushed it forwards. “Now what could you do with that, I’m very curious.” “Very many things that ought never to be done,” Elbridge said. He took the blade by the hilt and inspected it. One of the kitchen knives from the Shreveport shelter, if he wasn’t mistaken. Then he slid it into the sword’s sheath before the others returned with the vehicles. The cushy fabric of Marcine’s handiwork had plenty of room for a second blade. “Your generosity is noted.” “I thought to trade it for passage, but now that things are fixed, I’d rather stay. If you’d like to repay me, see about breaking my other self free from that boring man. Oh, and do tell him what you do with your gift.” The engines roared to life on the other side of the portal. Elbridge looked the little demon in the eye. “Goodbye, Murrazonoth,” he said, and that was all the time they had. “Farewell, wizard!” Murray said cheerfully, and then he dissolved into a puddle of purple goop and was gone.
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Jul 17, 2018 02:00
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Tremors 2: Aftershocks Scene: Yggdrasil The tree was fading faster, the very top of the crown barely an outline against the starry night sky. It was at least going from the top down, which was far better than the alternative. The roots had formed a nearly solid connection between the branch and main trunk, some wide and some narrow, twisting and weaving around firmly enough to make a ramp they could drive down. Marcine parked her car by the roots while the van lumbered further away to get a head start if things went south. She laid a hand on a vine and focused, careful to only touch the plant and avoid the tree. She had a plan, but she needed its help. Would it be too much to ask for a few roots to entangle the danger so she could cut it away, like the rot she’d cleared to plant the seed? The childlike excitement she’d felt from it just minutes ago had tempered into something more mature, and much, much larger. It couldn’t talk to her anymore, not like it had. But she kept calling to it, and eventually it responded. The tendrils dug through the old tree, seeking out the source of corruption. (Rapport CA: (--bb)+5 = 3, to place the scene aspect “Summer’s Roots” with one tag.) She returned to where the worm waited. Her head buzzed, which for once, she didn’t mind: If she could hear it, it could hear her. In answer, she hummed. The sound built in her throat, in her teeth, drawing on her frustration at the entire situation until it was like a mental and audible knife that she flung down at the worm through layers of history. The roots followed her cue. (Provoke vs diff 7: (-+-+)+3 = 3. Marcine tags “Summer’s Roots” and invokes “Singer to the Soul” to tie at 7 to get the worm’s attention. FP: 5 -> 4) When the roots pushed into the hollow where the worm was curled up, it unspooled and thrashed. It severed some, devoured others, but the seed was not to be denied. With no way to win, the Outsider fled into the tunnels it had previously chewed. The roots followed slowly, and the worm left them behind. Marcine’s challenge caused it to whip around, facing her with its round rows of lamprey teeth. And then it started digging up, up, up, directly under her feet. It moved faster than a burrower had any right to, but Marcine’s reflexes were faster still. She flung herself aside in a controlled tumble and ended on her feet as it burst out of the tree. (Outsider’s Bane in effect. Invoking one’s own aspects costs 2 FP instead of 1 as long as the worm is on scene. Athletics vs diff 4: (-bb-)+5 = 3, invoking “No Time for Doubt” to dodge. 4->2 FP.) This worm wasn’t quite as large as the one that had pursued them in the Outside, but it was still big enough to swallow a sedan whole. As soon as it was out of the hole completely it turned to ‘face’ Marcine. Circular rows of teeth rotated inside its mouth like a drill. Hundreds of mismatched eyes lined its upper ‘lip’. The buzzing in Marcine’s head wasn’t just annoying anymore, it felt like it was draining away her will to act. Marcine raised the sword between herself and the worm and refracted the image of flames. An illusion of fire and heat swirled and spread, racing to form a ring around them. It obscured her even as she made an image of herself dash around the worm’s side, as if looking for an opening. (Deceive CA with stunt bonus from Stage Illusion: (--b-)+5+2 = 4. Places the aspect “Lost in Flames” with one tag.) It did not give chase, but instead, flattened itself against the bark, and a mass of tentacles shot up around it in all directions. Marcine had seen these before, back in the swamp one had even grabbed her leg. Now there were dozens, sprouting up all around her. They didn’t go after the illusion, or her, but if she moved… So she didn’t. (Worm Notice to grab onto Marcine with tentacles; +--- +4 = 2. GM FP 5->4 reroll on Destiny Leech to hunt down the prey. -/// +4 = 3. Marcine holds steady with Athletics: //+- +5 = 5.) Fire. If Summer was the custodian of the world-tree, then they likely used fire to protect it. Good thinking on Marcine’s part. She might yet make a good wizard, Elbridge thought, assuming that she survives for that long. While she distracted it, he searched for a good place to corner the worm for the kill. Much of the nearby stretch of tree was flat, smooth silicon, crisscrossed with metallic wires and studded with strobing lights. Elbridge wasn’t sure if the circuitboard-textured bark could be hexed the way an actual computer could, and he wasn’t keen to find out. But over there… ...right in the middle of the plain of blinking lights and beeping gadgets was a recession. It was huge, wide and shallow, and the greenish surface was thin and cracked in patches. Underneath were jagged concrete, sparking wires, and exposed spikes of rebar. Yes, this would do nicely. He tapped his Deputy Warden’s pin and whispered a message to Rupert and Marcine. (Notice CA to find a good killing ground: /-+/ + 5 = 5. Elbridge places the aspect “Sharp Recession”!) The buzzing in Marcine’s head increased until it was physically painful, and it was so strong that even Elbridge and Rupert could hear it from where they were. The worm screamed. The tentacles quivered around her, each on a hair trigger, a fish-hook that led straight to those gnashing teeth... Her teeth clenched, but she forced herself to stay still. It was just the same noise she’d been learning to block out for a while now. She put up a wall around her mind, willing the world to silence. The worm’s scream went quiet even as she began to feel faint from the effort. (Worm tries a psychic assault with Provoke: ---/ +5 = 2. Marcine resists with Will: +/+- +4 = 5. Reroll on Destiny Leech: -/-+ +5 = 4… And invoking on The Darkness Looks Back, its secondary aspect for 6 total. GM FP: 4->2 Marcine counter-invokes on Mind Games to pass with +7, leaving her with 0 FP.) Nodding in response to Elbridge’s message, Rupert darted forward while the worm was distracted, scooping a handful of chalk sticks from a jacket pocket as he reached the rebar-filled hole. Scattering them outward, he directed each one with a telekinetic spell, each one skittering across the ground to sketch spirals of runes. The designs completed, he willed the remains of the chalk back to his hand and, with the chalk dust as a connection, whispered all but the end of a hurried spell, the chalk runes glinting with power as he jogged back to the waiting vehicles and nodded at Elbridge to give the signal. Elbridge conjured a flare of emerald light and cast it high into the air. It hovered, unaffected by the pull of gravity in either direction, bright and clear for Marcine to see. Then another shuddering wave of raw magic washed over the tree, and when it passed, the light was gone. It had disappeared to a place beyond the veil, where the tree ought to be (and soon would). It was now or never. Marcine saw it before it vanished. Looked like they were set. She shifted her illusion to a point between the worm’s tendrils and where the signal had been. With some effort over the space between, she gave the image the sense of heat and the sound of tapping feet to tell the worm she was over there, just out of reach. The tentacles snapped at the false Marcine, but there was nothing there to catch. The worm reared up, flinging itself after the image. It chased right over the edge of the recession, falling like stock prices onto the broken rebar and spikes. But that alone wasn’t enough to pin it down. Tentacles gripped the metal and pulled it free, and in just moments the bulbous body was almost loose… ...but the worm’s efforts were not fast enough as Rupert finished his spell, releasing the built up magic downwards, into the crevice. The rebar shifted as the creature tried to break free, twisting and turning to hold the beast fast, the frayed wires coiling around its thrashing form. Tentacles fought with wires, teeth crunched rebar, and the creature’s back split open, releasing a flood of noxious acid that started to eat away at the retirement funds that held it. (Invoking Lost in Flames for effect to lead the worm back to 2008. Rupert, Physique: -/+/ +4 = +4 vs the Worm’s Physique: -+/+ +6 = +7. Using the tag from “Sharp Recession” and an invoke on “Forging a Better Future” (FP: 2->0) for a total of +4. The worm counter-invokes on “Destiny Leech”, so Rupert uses his experience “Anything’s A Weapon If You Try Hard Enough”, which is countered by an invoke on “Darkness Looks Back”.) “Hmph.” The goal had been to avoid damage to the tree, but then, if this was the period corresponding to the housing market collapse...mightn’t it be better to excise it? On the one hand, the Sixth Law of Magic said no; on the other, they were already well and truly past that by now. “...retirement’s been shite for me anyhow.” Elbridge gave the trunk another tap with his makeshift staff and the ground surged upward, spitting up ribbons of ticker-tape with enough force to buoy the worm aloft on a veritable sea of growth. (Spending El’s Experience “This Court Has Not Yet Determined That The World Should Be Saved” to clinch it because VERDICT’S IN MOTHERFUCKER) It was precisely at that moment that the seed’s tendrils caught up to the worm. They burst through the recession like a wave of Hope and Change, turning the ticker tape into a rain of confetti. They latched onto the Outsider and wrapped it around and around again, cocooning it in new growth. Tentacles wiggled, acid hissed, but the seedling was too powerful. The vines pushed it further and further away from the bark, until it hung above them like a misshapen hot air balloon, anchored by two main points. (Invoking Summer’s Roots for effect, the worm is now suspended.) Marcine ran to the nearer vines. The sword blazed in her grasp as she hacked it into the mass like a two-handed machete, cutting as much as she could with each swing. Elbridge strolled forward from the other side, calculating and deliberate as he took Rick’s sword in a firm grip and sliced at the vines where they were thinnest. The angel blade flared with each blow, flames licking at the vines. Even though it was as thick as an oak tree, it only took Marcine three swings to cut through. The vine snapped like a broken violin string, and the cocoon sagged further away. The worm roared, a muffled, awful sound. Now that half of the seed’s hold on it was cut, the toothy monstrosity was starting to gnaw its way out. Elbridge was having a harder time. The Warden sword was sharp, but it was never meant for something like this. Every swing fouled in the fibrous growth, and the deeper Elbridge cut, the more the thorns sliced at his own arms. He was sore, and drained, and just so incredibly-tired. His fingers held the hilt in a death-grip, too stiff and numb to let go, and every impact sent painful vibrations through his bones, but he cut, and cut, and cut until the last ragged tendril fell away. (Combat +-/= +5 = 4 to sever the worm’s lifeline, inadequate. El spends 2 FP to invoke “I Don’t Care…” for +2 and a second Experience, “Anger is an Acid…” for another +2. Cole donates “The World’s Kinda Heavy” for the home stretch, yielding a final roll result of 10) As soon as the second vine snapped, the cocoon fell. It plummeted towards the earth, shrinking in size as it grew farther away. It was too far away to hear the smash when it hit the ground, but the worm split open like a rotten fruit, and the distant puddle of gore did not move again. There was no time to celebrate. The tree groaned as if there was a heavy wind, and the strange Nevernever sky covered the stars, then it faded and the entire crown of the tree went with it. Elbridge looked up at the others, covered in blood, sap, and ichor, his eyes bloodshot and crazed. His chest heaved with the exertion of his every breath. Slowly, a broad grin of satisfaction split his face. “Guess this one couldn’t fly after all. Now let’s get the gently caress out of here.” Echo Cian fucked around with this message at 02:09 on Jul 17, 2018 |
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Jul 17, 2018 02:03
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Epilogue: Home Again What happened then was difficult to describe later even for those who directly witnessed it. Yggdrasil, the Tree of Time, vanished back into the NeverNever. The city of New Orleans reappeared in its place, as if it had never been gone. Outside the city, time hadn’t moved at all from the tree’s appearance to its disappearance. Inside the city, roughly three hours went by. This phenomenon was never adequately explained, no matter how many studies the government tried to do on it. Those that knew better, also knew better than to discuss it publicly. --- Jenny The car was packed, the furniture either sold off or on the truck, but she stood in the empty living room and looked out the back patio window at the sandbox where Hugues had first started her ‘training’ and sighed. New York was a long ways away. Closer to her family in Boston, sure, but it still meant leaving behind most of her friends, and the life she’d built here. Singh’s nephew had offered her a permanent job and a pathway to being a vet, even with her magic. Ever since the hexing started she’d been slowly giving up on that dream, and it was too good a deal to say no to. Plus, after everything that had happened, she felt like she owed herself a clean break. She locked the door behind her and dropped the keys in the mailbox at the real estate office. No more saving the world for her. No more losing friends. The sun was just coming up as she got on the highway. She put the city in her rearview mirror, turned on the radio, and started the long journey to the rest of her life. Hugues He didn’t tell anyone where he was going, but it was clear he wasn’t coming back. No reasons given, no note, no goodbye. Just an empty apartment and a flock of missing pixies. JR The sun was going down, moon and stars already showing in the evening sky. JR leaned back and gazed up at them, took a deep breath of air no man had ever breathed before, and smiled. Out here, he don’t have to think about nothing. The fire crackled at his feet, and the mammal-like-reptiles on a stick hanging over it were starting to smell almost done. For the first day or so he was furious, but for the next three weeks he was too busy to be anything but conscious or unconscious, and as he looked back at the cabin he’d built for himself he was more proud of it than anything else. There was a scar burned into the earth within earshot of him, circles and spirals and a bit of time magic, still crackling in the air. Ain’t no one come lookin for him yet though. Maybe they won’t. Maybe they can’t. Maybe he’ll do it himself, one of these days. In the meantime though… He reached up and patted his mount on the flank. “One more time around the cabin,” he said. “Then dinner.” The young Tyrannosaurus grumbled as he swung his leg over her back, but held still until he was up, and JR turned her head west to walk the perimeter. Just a man and his horse… riding into the sunset.
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Aug 15, 2018 01:26
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Marcine Her phone chimed five notifications in a row on the way home. She didn’t check it until she was back in her apartment, in the building that was as properly clean as she’d left it, and intact, and at least one television was on behind a neighbor’s door with its cheerful wreath and welcome mat. Something fell on the floor when she took off her coat: A piece of root and vine. She felt a faint awareness, just as dazed and tired as she was. A remnant of the seed. Had it attached itself to her on purpose or did it just get caught in her coat at some point? She stuck it in a flower pot beside her spider plant. It didn’t respond to her, but she felt relief when she watered it. She’d figure that out later. She collapsed on the couch and read her texts. Chelsea, 1:30 AM Enjoying your party? Chelsea, 2:00 AM If you can’t make it just say so Chelsea, 2:15 AM Ok seriously tho what’s going on Chelsea, 2:30 AM Are you alive? Chelsea, 2:45 AM If you forgot im going to punch u in the face tmrw Last week, according to her phone. Marcine sighed. She’d been heading to a friend’s place after the gala. That was the only reason she’d even wandered into that whole disaster instead of just driving home. The clock on her wall said it was around 3:30. She typed back, “Sorry, long story, can’t make it,” and dropped the phone onto the coffee table before sinking back in her couch. She’d killed people. That was only just sinking in, with everything over with. Even if she hadn’t shot the mercenaries at the cabin herself, they were dead instead of her and her friends because of her actions. She’d decapitated a vampire. There was a mental image she wasn’t getting rid of any time soon. It still felt weird, surreal. Back at home, where she belonged, in silence except for the humming of the fridge, she could almost tell herself it hadn’t even happened and she’d just woken up from a very strange dream. Except the armored coat was tossed over her armchair just inside the door, a root of the plant that had repaired Yggdrasil was in a flowerpot, and she was absolutely exhausted. Her phone dinged. Now all the messages said they were from ten minutes ago today, except for the new one. Chelsea, 3:34 AM Thought u were in an accident or smth Chelsea, 3:34 AM U owe me breakfast Relief in the form of shorthand. Marcine smiled faintly and closed her eyes. Sure. But it was going to have to wait. At a reasonable hour later that morning, she made another phone call. Tears sprang to her eyes when she heard the voice on the other end. “Hey, mom… Mind if I come up for a visit? I’ve...got some poo poo to talk about.” ---- She was packing her car when the angel that looked entirely too much like her EMT instructor showed up again, leaning against her car in a way that didn’t let her see him until she closed the trunk. She smiled weakly. “I don’t suppose you can fix the hood.” “Ah, the stain of evil,” he said, glancing over at the burn mark from when the book went up in flames. “Adds character.” “And insurance premiums.” “Be sure to mention it was angelic vandalism, there might be a discount.” Marcine laughed. “I’ll list it with time travel.” She walked around the edge and leaned on the car beside him. “What’s going to happen to her?” He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Your other self? She has a choice to make.” “Seemed like she’d already made it,” Marcine muttered. She didn’t recognize the version of herself that would ever accept the coin, but there she’d been, apparently fine with the situation. She hunched her shoulders. “Who wouldn’t want to be a kickass harpy thing?” ...Yeah, she had to admit it: That had looked awesome. “That ‘kickass harpy’ was designed to appeal perfectly to their host- to you. But the price for a Fallen’s power is servitude. Willing, in Shamsiel’s case. That one was always a puppet master.” “And proud of it,” she observed. “Must be nice to have no shame.” Zophiel shook his head. “Shame is the emotional equivalent to touching a hot stove. Without feeling pain, you can do terrible damage to yourself and others. It isn’t nice at all.” Angels didn’t do sarcasm, it seemed. “So were you keeping an eye on me, or on Shamsiel?” He frowned, frustrated. “Both, and many more besides. This vessel is much smaller than my true self. Like this, I can only do one thing, or perhaps two.” Marcine smiled wryly. “Sorry for stuffing you in a box.” He laughed. “I don’t regret it. It’s been aeons since I spent more than a few moments in a physical vessel. I think it’s done me good.” “Well, if you think so, that’s good to hear.” Nothing else about the circumstances had been. She was glad to have met him, but why did it have to be like this? She looked away, trying to remember what else she’d wanted to ask him. “When we talked before, you said something about atonement. What did you mean?” “Ah…” Zophiel’s eyes fell. “The boy, Joseph. I should have realized he was never Shamsiel’s true target. I pushed you into a trap.” Marcine sighed. She wanted to tell him it wasn’t his fault, but how would she know, really? “I probably would have noticed he was acting weird whether you were involved or not. I don’t know… Did you push me into it, or did you just save me from myself?” “A little of both,” he said. “‘Lead me not into temptation… But deliver me from evil.’ I got half of it right.” “More than half, if you ask me.” She tipped her head back and looked up at the sky, marked with feathery wisps of white clouds. “Why the feathers?” She was down to three, now--one still with Rick’s body, and the other had disappeared sometime after Tor. After Zophiel shielded them, she suspected. “An agent should be compensated fairly for her work,” he said cryptically. “They are favors. Mine to give, and to fulfill if I can, or should. I’m not a jinn who grants wishes.” If he were, Rick wouldn’t be dead. But that decision had been out of her hands. Too many things were...but not everything. She’d proven that repeatedly over the past week. “Is there anything I can do for Joey?” He looked at her seriously. “When’s the last time you tried?” She slumped down the side of the car. “I haven’t. I’m afraid I’d just make things worse.” “Something in him must hold on still, or he would have died all those years ago. You’ll have to keep trying until you find it.” “That would be because I managed not to kill his basic body functions.” Still, if it was possible… Possible, but difficult. That was the motto of her life, now. Zophiel sighed, worried. “If all that remains is a shell of flesh, you should be able to tell that, too. I don’t know the answer, Marcine. I’m sorry.” “No, you’re right. It’s worth trying. I’m just about to go up to Monroe, actually.” Maybe she’d find something that Elbridge could help her with, when she took up that apprenticeship. She looked up at Zophiel. “Will you be okay?” He was slow to answer. “I will face the consequences of my actions, with the conviction that I wouldn’t change them.” “Consequences,” she repeated. “For saving two worlds? We couldn’t have done that without you.” “That’s what I’m worried about,” he said. “Direct action is… frowned upon, for good reason. They will say I’m playing favorites again.” “Which set of billions of people was the favorite?” she asked dryly. “Blame my free choice, and if they have a problem with it, they can come down here and eat my entire hat collection.” “You don’t have enough hats to satisfy the Seraphim, I’m afraid.” He smiled at her, and his eyes went distant. “They’re right, though. I’ve been too fond of mankind. Ever since Adam… But the baby was cold, and the fire was a such a small thing… Just a going away present. I didn’t know what he’d do with it. That’s how I keep getting into trouble.” Marcine stared at him. “That was real, and that was you?” Zophiel cleared his throat. He was clearly blushing, even though it didn’t show on his dark cheeks. “We both have a long journey ahead… perhaps it’s time to say farewell.” She laughed, without feeling grim about it for the first time that day. “For whatever it’s worth, I don’t see how you can be expected to do your job if you don’t care for humanity. And fire is kind of massively important for all of civilization.” “That one only lasted for a single night, but once you knew it was possible… You figured out the rest on your own. Eventually.” “Then thanks for not leaving us freezing to death in caves.” She squeezed his hand and tried to ignore the twinge of pain at her own turn of phrase. “And thank you for everything else. Good luck… And I hope this won’t be the last time we can meet.” It was too much to beg for another one. That would have to do. He squeezed her hand back. “We’ll play it by ear.”
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Aug 15, 2018 01:38
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Rupert The street outside Skinner’s grandmother’s house was all but silent as the lights of Marcine's car turned off in the distance, leaving an all too battered, all too weary Rupert standing alone on the sidewalk, taking in the peace and quiet of a newly restored New Orleans. His wounded arm, bundled up in a sling, throbbed with a dull pain - a constant reminder of the harrowing week in the other timeline. A rollercoaster ride of brutal experiences, Rupert felt much older after the exhausting ordeal. And the cost had been too drat high. Marcine had glared at him after he’d insisted on coming here, rather than going straight to the hospital. But he needed to make sure they were still here first, make sure they were OK. The hospital could wait until after. He started walking down the pathway, the sound of his footsteps breaking the silence. Slumping against the porch rail, he rapped the door knocker against the wooden door. It took several minutes, and a few more knocks, before Danny answered. He was in his nightclothes, hair mussed up and bleary-eyed. He wasn’t blue, but his horns were showing. “Rupert? It’s three-thirty in the morning, man, what are you doing…” He saw the sling and his eyes snapped open. “Oh geez. Come in, already.” “Is everyone still here? Are they alright?” asked Rupert quietly, half-staggering through the doorway, “Elbridge and Nicky weren't certain what happened to everyone on this side.” “Yeah, we’re all fine here, the kids went to bed hours ago. What happened? You look like you got hit by a truck.” Rupert shook his head and lifted his injured arm as best he could, “It was a tank, actually. Managed to get shot by the thing. The Red Court doesn't do half measures.” “Since when do the Red Court have a tank? Since when are the Red Court around anymore? Ugh, nevermind, sit down and I’ll get you some tea...” Danny fussed over him until he sat on one of Grandma Skinner’s ancient sofas and disappeared into the kitchen for a minute. The microwave beeped and he came back with two mugs of hot water, cheap tea bags already steeping in them, and a tin of cookies. “I guess this has something to do with you calling my Name earlier.” Rupert slumped back into the couch’s padding, his eyelids already drooping in the minutes Danny spent in the kitchen. Shaking his head to keep awake, he clutched the mug. “Sorry about that, I’d almost forgotten. It’s been a long, long week. Narcissus messed with time magic and we ended up in a different, much worse, timeline. One where the old Summer Lady and the Red Court were both still around.” Danny listened while Rupert told the whole story. At the end of it, he shook his head and sighed. “That’s… wow. A whole different world, and different versions of us living in it, trapped in some infinitely looping version of the city? If it were someone else I might ask if you’d been out drinking. We knew the Ripple was going to be rough but… drat.” Rupert placed the now-empty mug on the coffee table and slumped backwards once more, “I wish it was something I'd just imagined while drunk, honestly. It’d mean we didn't suffer through all that.” He paused before adding in a quiet voice, “I… I can't do this anymore. I can't fight on the front lines and watch friends die anymore.” “So don’t.” The slightly-more-than-half demon stood up. “I’m done with it. Shirley’s done. Hell, if I had my way I’d take the kids up to see Bryan and never look back. This city… it can chew you up and spit you out again. Didn’t you come here to retire?” Rupert shook his head, “I came here to hide because I screwed up badly and let fear rule me. Some dark corner of my mind probably figured I'd end up dead here, one way or another. Probably would have if I hadn't met Ada or you or Ed and Lucy. Gave me a reason to keep going.” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s this whole ordeal - seeing what became of that other Rupert, how much he'd sacrificed… I don't want to fight on the frontline anymore, but I don't think running away is the answer, either. Even without fighting, I can still do some good here. Teach people how to put up wards and the like. Maybe even live a proper life while I'm at it.” Danny shrugged. “Maybe things will finally calm down without a Warden around to stir them up.” “Peace? That'd be nice for a change,” said Rupert, yawning, “Still need to get a proper doctor to look at this arm, right after I rest my eyes…” They let him sleep until the sun came up and then bundled him into the car. Shirley drove them to hospital. Ed and Lucy wouldn’t leave him until his arm was all plastered up. The next time Danny was alone with him was when Shirley went to get the lunch for them and the kids went with her. “Hey Rupert? I… Well, I was thinking about something you said, about the other versions of us.” “Oh?” inquired Rupert, propped up on the hospital bed by a mound of pillows. He flushed and scratched at a day’s stubble. “Were Bryan and me… really together? Like, together, together. Not just roommates.” “From what I saw, you both seemed happy, even in that hellhole, and the other Lucy mentioned something about being a flower girl...” Danny’s mouth dropped open. “She did?! Oh wow… That’s… Maybe I should call him up. It’s been a while.” “Probably. If there’s one thing I've learned over the years, Danny, it’s seize what happiness you can get,” said Rupert with a smile. “Thanks. I’m gonna go do that right now.” He almost skipped out of the door, phone in hand. --- Maybe a minute later, the door opened again, but it wasn’t Danny who came in this time. “Saw Shirley down below, she told me they checked you in.” There was a nasty bruise on Ada’s temple, and a couple bandages could be seen underneath her shirt, while more remained concealed. “Jeeze, you look like hell,” she whispered, and rushed to his bed. “Rupert, what happened to you while I was away? Are the others here too?” “We got stuck in a different timeline for a long week. Unpleasant place,” said Rupert, quietly. Nodding towards his plastered arm, he added, “One that still had the Red Court hanging around. They had a tank.” Ada gave him a once-over. “Did they run you over with it?” “Got shot knocking someone out of the line of fire. Didn’t drop fast enough,” replied Rupert with a wince as he remembered. “Ada… you might want to sit down for this… that wasn’t the… worst part of it.” Something in the way he said it made her muscles tense. “OK,” she said, dragging a chair next to him. “Hit me. What’s worse than having a tank shoot at you?”
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Aug 15, 2018 01:40
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Elbridge The first thing Elbridge did when he arrived at home was to check on the Blacklist. Despite the dire vision he’d seen in the grue’s cave, it was still there, ironbound cover rust-free and intact. The rest of the occult odds and ends he’d accrued over his long and storied career were still in place, safe and sinister as ever. They’d stay that way for a while longer, if he had his say- -no. That wouldn’t do. It would never have done. Back in the comfort of his own home (such as it was), Elbridge saw his collection with new eyes. How many horrors had been visited upon New Orleans because of Narcissus’ carelessness? How many more sat on Elbridge’s shelves, waiting for the right someone - or wrong someone - to come along? With gloved hands, he lifted the dagger that had slain nine kings from its stand, turning it over to inspect it. It would have killed a tenth, if not for Elbridge. It still might. How had this all started? He had, without ever meaning to, come into possession of the weapon after sealing its original owner within the Blacklist. Accursed artifacts were meant to go to Edinburgh for proper archival and disposal, but somehow he’d just never found the time. It was always something: one more demon that needed vanquishing; one more stack of paperwork that needed filing; one more week before the Council’s specialist would be in to take custody. The Vampire War certainly hadn’t helped, and neither had the revelation of what Wizard Peabody had really been doing with certain items from the vaults. Elbridge hadn’t been able to go to the Council for help. He hadn’t been able to let these evils run free on Earth. And so, he’d done with them what he did with his memories of that fateful night he met Taapya: locked them in a deep, dark vault and sat on them for ages. How foolish had he been, to ever think that this could last? He refreshed the wards on all the doors and windows, took stock to be certain that nothing was missing, and made a note to gather more fluxweed on the next new moon. Then he went upstairs to his bed and slept for three days straight. On the fourth day, he dusted off his old Selectric, typed up his report on the incident, and sent it directly to Captain Laura Ernestine Bellworth. He then went to an emporium and bought a single bottle of a Bordeaux claret vintage that he definitely couldn’t afford, returned to his home, and set out two glasses. There was a soft knock on the door not long after, but it wasn’t Laura. “Gatekeeper Rashid?!” Elbridge said. His eyes were bloodshot and his hands were shaking. He couldn’t tell if it was nerves or sobriety, but in either case he was in a bad way to entertain a Senior Councilor out of the blue. “Wizard Hardley,” he answered. “Your report caused quite a stir. I wanted to be the first to speak to you. A sensitive matter, I’m sure you’re aware.” He was very tall, with a dark cloak and hood that he pushed back to reveal a long face with sharp features, weathered like old leather, and a short silver beard. One of his eyes was false, and there were nasty scars on both sides of his face. “That’s...I…” Elbridge shook his head. As a proud Briton, he was used to being on the other end of cryptic understatements. “Well, that’s certainly...I’d say ‘come in’, but under the circumstances, I hope you’ll understand if first I insist on knowing that you’re you.” He nodded, and stepped over the threshold of his own accord. “I do so swear that I am the Gatekeeper of the White Council, on my power.” He smiled, though it must have been difficult to do so while on the wrong side of a hostile threshold. “Will that do?” “It will, thank you.” Elbridge offered his hand to shake. “Please, come inside, Senior Councilor.” Rashid shook his hand firmly and followed him further inside, noting the glasses on the table. “Expecting company?” “I had thought…” Elbridge coughed, choking through the lump in his throat. “...Captain Bellworth. She was, ah, responsible for...for Warden Cole.” He held up the sword that Breenfjell had given him, taken from the site of Rick’s battle with Roqueza. “I thought she’d want to be here in person, for…” “Oh, of course. I will try not to take up too much of your time then.” He bowed his head. “I’m sorry for your loss. There are too few good Wardens left.” “In this world, and in at least one more,” Elbridge sighed and pulled out a chair for the Gatekeeper before taking a seat himself. “So. You read my report.” “I did. You have been to the Outer Gates, and indeed, beyond them. As a precaution, I must insist on making sure that you are still you, as well. May I?” He tapped the side of his head next to his metallic eye. “It would be criminally-negligent not to,” Elbridge said, nodding for Rashid to go ahead. “Asking is a formality,” he admitted. The silver eye moved independently of his real one, scanning for any trace of Outsider taint. He was quiet for a time, then nodded. He didn’t look happy. “Marked, I see. You’ll feel the effects of your journey for some time. Weakness of the limbs, the heart… I expect your companions will have the same tremors. Cantor did. At least this version of the city was spared, I dread to think of the cleanup my counterpart must be leading at this moment.” “Cleanup at least means there’s a city to clean,” Elbridge sighed. “At least until the seas rise another few metres and the Fomor take over.” He paused and arched an eyebrow. “Wait…’marked’?” he asked. He already had a fairly-solid guess as to what that meant, but he needed to hear his suspicion confirmed. “Marked.” The Gatekeeper nodded. “You’re a catspaw, Wizard Hardley, in a very dangerous game. By writing your report you spread knowledge that should not be known. Gave names to things that should never be named.” He leaned forward, taking the measure of Elbridge. “What should be done with you?” “I ask myself that very question every time I climb out of bed,” Elbridge said sardonically. He was silent for a while, pondering that bottle of claret and the growing tremour in his hands, wishing Bellworth would get here already so that he could just have a drink already… “If ignorance alone could conquer the Void, Narcissus could never have done as much harm as he did. I cannot deny my role in allowing more of these horrors into our world, but nor can I pretend that this knowledge didn’t save us all from far worse. I’m a seer. It is my gift, and my curse, to see the truth; not to shut my eyes to it.” Rashid chuckled. “There is no right answer, I’m afraid. It’s all a balancing act. If you know enough you can prevent terrible harm. But if you know too much, you will do more harm than good. Welcome to the Oblivion War, soldier.” “Gatekeeper.” Elbridge stood and saluted. In one way, he felt the weight of the world falling on his shoulders. In another, an even-heavier weight had just been lifted. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but in that moment, he’d finally understood; finally let go of a habit he’d carried for over a century. A terrible vexation indeed, and not only for a seer. Let go of expectation. Embrace what is. Rashid stood up and saluted back, smiling again. “It’s a thankless job, but you’re no stranger to that.” “What about an operating budget?” Elbridge asked. “Do I finally get one of those?” “When it’s necessary, of course. Nothing regular though. These Outsiders are playing a very long game. This setback could mean they turn elsewhere and look for easier prey...” He frowned and gave Elbridge a very stern look. “...unless they have a reason to come back.” “I’ll see that they don’t have one,” Elbridge said coolly. There was another knock on the door. “Ah, if you will excuse me, I believe that’s everything we needed to discuss.” “Of course, Senior Councilor.” Elbridge reached to shake his hand again. “I’d offer you refreshment for the road, but I’m afraid that as halal options go, the best I can do is a glass of cold water.” He held up a hand. “Go, mourn your friend, and don’t trouble yourself over me.” --------- Laura was standing outside in a crisp, spotless black uniform coat. Her cloak was so starched it looked stiff. “Gatekeeper,” she said, blinking, as Rashid exited ahead of her. “Captain,” said Rashid. He didn’t explain anything, simply walked off the porch several steps, then cut himself into the Ways and vanished. Bellworth stared after him then turned that stare on Elbridge without a word. “Laura,” he said simply, his lip betraying an uncharacteristic quiver. “Hardley,” she said firmly, pausing to let the proper name sting. “What happened?” “...Rick’s dead,” he said, breathing out in a shuddering sigh. “The other timeline, the Red Court never lost, and…” he clenched his teeth. “Roqueza. Rick fought Roqueza, and they both died.” “By himself? Where were you!?” She snapped her mouth closed, cutting off any more accusations, then started again, cold as ice. “Enough. I’ve looked the other way, left you to yourself all these years, but this… I can’t.” She looked him right in the eyes. “Elbridge, will you be honest with me?” “If that’s what you want,” he said tonelessly. “I can’t promise that you’ll like my answers.” For the first time in over half a century, he looked up to meet her gaze.
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Aug 15, 2018 01:48
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Archives
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Aug 15, 2018 01:50
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Warfront
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Aug 15, 2018 01:55
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Pour One Out Scene: El’s House “You were right,” Bellworth said, holding Elbridge’s gaze, now that she could do so. “I need a drink.” “Come in, then,” he told her. There was no point in testing her as he had the Gatekeeper, not after that. The table was still set for two, just as he’d left it; without further ado, he pulled the cork on the Bordeaux and poured a glass of red wine for each of them. They stared at each other across the table, barely touching their glasses. Each of them was waiting for the other to talk first. Finally, Elbridge broke the silence. “Now you understand,” he said simply. “Yes. Many things are clearer now.” She swirled her wine glass, raising an eyebrow. “Except one. How did you make wizard with that in your closet?” “One can never forget what is seen in a soulgaze,” Elbridge said, “nor can a soulgaze show anything but the truth...but with enough liquor, one might not comprehend what one sees.” He took a drink. “Wizard Pembroke vetted me in a pub. He was seldom sober even on a good day. His recommendation didn’t do much for my prestige, but it got me onto the Council, and kept my head on my shoulders.” “Didn’t he die shortly after… under mysterious circumstances?” “Yes, although it wasn’t murder,” Elbridge said. There was no point in pretending. The only way he could have known for certain was if he’d been there at the time, and he knew that Laura knew that. “He was already dying. Syphilis. We wouldn’t have penicillin for another fifty years, so we used mercurochrome instead. It was...Laura, he’d be out of his mind for weeks at a time, ranting and raving and screaming at his family. They were terrified of him. He was terrified of himself, and each time he was lucid, he’d know what was coming, and never know how long it would be until he was himself again, or what he’d have done while he was out.” She shook her head. “More than a few of the ‘warlocks’ the Wardens have quietly taken care of were just very ill people with the power to cause an awful lot of damage while they weren’t lucid.” “We’ve come a ways since then,” Elbridge said sadly. “Modern medicine, I mean. Council sensibilities can still be rather, ah, medieval. For my part...I paid Pembroke a house call, as a courtesy from his old apprentice. He hadn’t told anyone about his condition - not officially. The scandal would have ruined his family - I don’t mean that people would have talked, I mean that they might have been thrown out onto the streets, forever tainted by association. And Pembroke...he didn’t want that. He didn’t want to keep losing his mind until there was nothing left. So, we sat, and we drank, and talked about old times. And...whenever his cup ran dry, I filled it again. With whatever he asked.” Elbridge looked distant for a moment. “Laudanum...not a bad way to go, I suppose.” “Better than Chevalier,” Laura said, speaking her own first master. It was a name that she hadn’t mentioned in his presence in more than thirty years, but past losses were all too relevant today. “The man raised me from a child to be his personal bodyguard. He tested every meal for poison and would put his own sons in the barn if they so much as sneezed. Then he got drunk one night, fell down the stairs on the way to the privy, and broke his neck. They tried to pin it on everyone in that house, the servants, the wife, the mistress… In the end it was just an accident.” “He died just as he lived,” Elbridge said wistfully. “Drunk and full of piss, leaving a dreadful mess for everyone else to clean.” She raised her glass and drank to the truth. After, she looked thoughtful. “I would have left him sooner for a real apprenticeship. For a while, I hoped you might be my way in, but you were just like all the others.” “Not by choice,” Elbridge sighed. “I always wished that I could have been your sponsor to full Wizard, but with what I’d done…” He shook his head. “Out of the question. I’d have been killed, and you’d have been under suspicion for the rest of your life.” “Only if I told on you.” She frowned. “Do you think I can’t keep a secret?” “Laura, you couldn’t keep it a secret when you broke that grandfather clock in the commons, and you weren’t even in the room when it happened.” He brooded over his glass. “If it helps any, you’re still leagues ahead of Ada in that regard - tell her anything, and the whole city will know within the hour.” “Ah, yes. Miss duSang. I meant to give this to her, but it might be better if you do it.” Laura pulled a wax-sealed envelope out of her jacket and set it on the table between them. “A commutation of her Doom of Damocles. With Richter gone…” Elbridge choked and gave a strangled sob. “Hadley?” “I couldn’t...couldn’t save him…” he heaved, struggling to contain himself. “I knew he mustn’t face Roqueza alone, and I still let him do it…!” Laura sighed and looked away from him. “Just tell me what happened. Not the damned report, but what really happened. I know Richter, he’s not… he wasn’t… drat you Hadley...” She refilled her glass and topped his off, though he’d barely touched it. “We were...we were death-cursed for him to find us, and we knew fighting him alone was sui-” Elbridge choked again over the word. “-suicide, so we tried to work around it...but Roqueza had an entire loving army! Hundreds of soldiers, all willing to fight for that abomination for money! So Rick, he knew...he knew that it was him Roqueza wanted. The one who got away. He posed as a prisoner to get close, buy the rest of us time while Roqueza gloated…” Tears flowed in a steady trickle down the front of Elbridge’s face. “...and it worked. God forgive us, but it worked. They both died, and we made it to the breach while the mercenaries watched them.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Of all the Wardens… Richter Cole. Even at the cost of his life, how? Roqueza was practically invincible. He survived six major death curses, over two centuries of assassination attempts... After Colorado, a few of the commanders wanted me to go after him directly. Chichen Itza happened before I could try, and I was in no hurry.” “He couldn’t be harmed by magic so long as he stood upon the earth,” Elbridge said. “We managed to discover that beforehand. So, Rick flooded the battlefield, and when it was clear that...that he wasn’t going to make it...he used his death curse to freeze them both. Roqueza suffocated.” “So that was the secret. He was always smart in a crisis.” She paused for a long moment, remembering. When she spoke again it was with barely concealed anger. “They’re not even going to acknowledge it. As far as the Council’s concerned none of this happened, and if the Summer Queen really is gone, they’ll go along with the faeries’ version of the truth.” “I don’t even know that we could acknowledge it,” Elbridge lamented. “The weight of the bloody world, balanced across that precarious axis of the Stone Table, and then Titania decides to jump off. On a lark. My God, what will even happen now?” “I don’t know, Hadley. This is beyond either of us.” She sighed and gave him a look. “I suppose no one else is going to do it, so thank you, for making sure everything’s still spinning today.” “You’re welcome,” he said. Automatic. Listless. He knew that she meant it, but the scope of the crises awaiting them all weighed on his mind. “Those mercenaries...Roqueza kept them on retainer. They’d worked for him before. I think...they must have worked for him in this timeline, as well. They’d still be around, working for God-know-whom now. Midas is buying politicians and police left and right, and the Fomor are abducting every mage they can find - remaking them in their own image, it seems. These awful things that keep happening to us...they aren’t accidents.” Laura sat back in her chair and watched him. “They never are. You sound like you want to do something about that.” “I met Rita Beaumont’s daughter the other week. She and her circle are holding community meetings. I said that I’d be at the next one, but…” he blinked. “...actually, I suppose that it’s still happening, a few days from now. We spent...rather longer than that, from our own perspective on the other side. In any event, it’s no good to keep putting out fires as they start up. I think that it’s time New Orleans had a proper fire brigade.” “I’ve been waiting for fifty years for you to say something like that,” Laura said. She stood up and unclasped her cloak. The silver shield pin she looked at fondly before tucking away into a pocket. The cloth she folded over her arm and offered to him. “...you’re serious?!” Elbridge asked. “After everything you’ve just seen, you’re offering me...this?” “I am.” He took the cloak and ran his fingers over the fabric, feeling out the warp and weft of the enchanted silver thread. A lifetime of duty and service, and a measure of protection from all of the blood. The obligation to protect, the power to pass judgement. If Rick had still been present, he might have refused. But Rick was gone, and New Orleans needed defenders. It had been left to the wolves for far too long. “I accept,” he said solemnly.
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Aug 15, 2018 01:56
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