William
[How we doing?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 3 )
William
As time went on, things seemed content to move more and more towards what one could consider normal. The sounds that seemed to skitter through the walls and the strange smells and what-have-you had all but disappeared, though the study was still a right and proper disaster. It likely wouldn't feel like anything resembling normal for the foreseeable future. Who knew and who could really tell about these sorts of things, but looking into the future only gave probabilities and possible futures, not guarantees. One of the first things you learn when you become decent with Time is that you shouldn't rely on it at all. That way lies disaster and self-fulfilling prophecies.
So, the people who lived at the old Boucher house went on with their lives, and the Hermetic in particular had since determined that he would go on with his as it had been before. You don't get much of a pass on traditional duties, Quiet or not and even if he wasn't exactly all at home William happened to be visiting a non-augmented reality enough that he didn't have any real excuse to not continue about traditional business. Which meant making phone calls, writing letters, and (at that juncture) taking up the entirety of the dining room table reassembling old manuscripts. First ripped pages, and then pages into various books.
William had a solid pile of the things with him; it was a long-term project. He'd pitched the offer of helping him as getting to work on a potentially more informative and forbidden jigsaw puzzle- he'd supply whatever illicit substances were required to make this task not seem boring. Barring that, well, who knew. He took a long pull out of a beer bottle and put it back down next to a brilliant azure cover.
"... I'm pretty sure this is a cookbook."
Margot
Margot was a great "volunteer" for helping sort books and papers and make sense and organization of them. She seemed just anal-retentive enough the sort, and the way that she was floating anxiously about the kitchen she probably needed the distraction. So that's how she found herself sitting cross-legged on the floor in her sweatpants and tank-top and unzipped hoodie, a bottle of beer in one hand and a dozen pages laid out before her, eyes skimming over them to set them in order, and her hand soon following to sort them into a pile as well.
"Cookbooks are a type of alchemy-- I wouldn't be surprised if someone once opened that thing with consideration of matter, or maybe even forces, or how they interact maybe."
She hadn't yet told him; he was polite enough to take plenty of time in bringing it up, and she'd been quiet or gone since she returned home the day she'd gone off into the city proper to meet with a man who called himself her father. In this moment of quiet, though, where he pulled from his beer bottle and she did her own and she glanced up at him and then back down tot he pages again, she felt pressed to bring it up. So she set her bottle aside and shifted how her legs were shifted so her feet wouldn't fall asleep and cleared her throat.
"...So, the other day some guy came into town to talk. He claims he's my dad." A glance up, to gauge the reaction. "The Doc and Ned already know, so I figure you ought to as well, y'know?" She looked back up at him after flipping the sixth page in the essay over into its pile, and her expression was relatively stern when she added. "I'm handling this myself, okay? If I need or want help I'll come asking or calling for it, rest assured, but don't assume that I need it. I don't... I don't think anyone flaring up a fight would be helpful to the situation at all."
Her eyes hopped back down to the pages, and she reached for her bottle again. "Though, honestly, that's probably more something I need to worry about Ned doing," she added in a lower tone before taking a drink.
William
When she'd come back before, he'd asked if hse was okay. Following that, he'd asked if she needed anything, and didn't press for information beyond that. Since her first meeting, however, William Holmes had made it abundantly clear that his presence was, in fact, available should she so request it. Dinner got done. Houses were cleaned. Worries and concerns that might be something he could alleviate were taken care of. (Except for laundry. He did not, nor does he ever, ask if someone needs laundry done unless there is something well and truly wrong and someone is well and truly dying.)
"I feel like I could turn Ned on to alchemy with that; the man fucking loves cake," he says in reply. And, with that, it was there to slip into comfortable silence again. Perhaps some things are exchanged, but in reality William was just waiting as all practitioners of Time are want to do- waiting for that moment they know is coming in three... two...
...So, the other day some guy came into town to talk. He claims he's my dad.
His brows rose up, mouth stayed closed and while Margot was gauging his reaction it was clear the action was, well, just surprised. Not terribly surprised, but-
"So... uh... is this a weird Dad doppelganger thing? Does he look like your actual dad?" Surprise gave way to confusion. William, for his part, has precisely zero context for Margot's family life.
Margot
"Well, he looks like my dad, at least. As far as anything else goes, I'm not sure. I don't remember how he behaved, really. But even so, it could be an illusion to get close and take advantage of something I've got, for whatever reason... Which would confirm some suspicions I've got about his popping up, because he says it's just because he's only now realized I've Awoken that he's come knocking on my door."
She took another quick sip of her beer before setting it down again and flipping another page (the one she's identified as number seven) into the pile. She was quick to add: "I made it pretty clear I don't want him actually knocking on our door, though. I don't know him or trust him enough in our home."
She paused again, then leaned back and sat with her hands on the floor on either side of her, heels of her hands helping support her leaning weight and fingers splayed across the carpet. "He said he's part of the Celestial Choir, and apparently he goes around tracking down and 'helping' astray Mages try and 'find the Light'-- I find that phrasing kind of worrisome. Do you know much about that Tradition? Do they have, like... assassins or something?"
William
[Esoterica2+wits3, diff 7)
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (3, 4, 4, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
William
"My... first thought is with the Knights Templar?" he quirked his mouth up to the side while he pieced through, "they are there to wage war against the enemies of the Chorus and the faith in general. Some are a little pissy about accepting those outside of Christianity, but that's just because of some of the historical ends to the public groups of the Knights Templar. The Celestial Chorus is one of the more organized traditions out there... I mean, not organized like the Order is organized, but who is? But still. Structure. Protocol."
he drew a nice little box in the air with his fingers and then shoved the little box out of the way when he was done using it to illustrate having things in a nice, neat presentation.
"Buuuuuuut, realistically it's probably tied between either the Brotherhood of Saint Christopher, who seem to be pretty legit from what I've heard, or the Knights of Saint George? Seems very dragon-slayer-ie," he shrugged. "But no, the Chorus doesn't really... uh... do assassination. Not that I know of."
"Everybody's got assassins, though. If he were some church-sanctioned assassin, though? He wouldn't have told you about it."
A beat passed.
"I could find out more, if you wanted. I actually have about forty-seven thousand legitimate excuses to talk to people who come come into town. I'm a diplomat. Meddling and talking to people and is House Jerbiton's thing."
Margot
As ever, Margot was raptly attentive when listening to the explanation she'd requested. William had a couple of ideas, and the words were flagged in her memory to be written down on a journal in her room and explored further later on. For now, though, she nodded here and there while soaking the ideas in, at least up until he said he was a diplomat and supposed to be meeting people, at which point the witch paled a little and she shook her head.
"No, I don't want you to go meet him! I'm still not sure if his motives are honest or not, or what he's really up to. At the most innocent he wants to continue the family Tradition in a more literal way than most people mean, which sure as hell isn't gonna work. But that's assuming the most innocent and least dangerous outcome-- I'm still not confident about what's going on.
"If you go asking other Choir members about him that word'll probably get back to him, too. I don't know how much I want him to know we're snooping..."
She glanced down. Turned two more pages into the pile. Sighed as though in defeat and conceded:
"Though that might honestly be our only and best lead...."
William
"I could see if I could talk to someone. The last Chorister I knew here who was really legit let me sleep on his couch and made me do manual labor and go to a twelve step, but he moved to Los Angeles last I heard. I knew another Chorister who let me feel her up in a hall closet and we made out, so seriously: there are a huge range of people who are attracted to the chorus."
He was carefully putting some of the middle sections of the book together, some little burned edges and torn pieces before he stopped and cocked his head to the side. There were a pile of things there, and focusing on what was real and present made things a lot easier. Let it be said that drowning out the dozen other non-real things and strange sensory experiences made him a very attentive piece of company at that moment instead of his usual distracted.
"It isn't snooping if it's something I would do anyway. You didn't say anything about me-" I'm assuming- "-and so why would me doing exactly what the Order expects of me arouse any sort of suspicion? Hell, it would be good to know where he's staying, how long he plans on being here, if he plans on moving here, it's more suspicious if nobody does anything at all. It sends the message that we are patently ignoring him and, if he is somebody in the Chorus or has the ear of somebody, that could be a really shitty political move that'll end us up in hot water.
Margot
"No...," she conceded once more. "I didn't mention you specifically...."
She tapped her fingers along the edge of a page that she was surveying for keywords and continued flows of sentence structure. Scowled lightly (as usual), and thought aloud as she had to reread sentences over and over to process them usefully at the same time.
"Granted, he probably already knows about you, since I wouldn't be surprsied if he's scanned or read or... prayed about, I don't know, however it works for them... a lot of what he was going to find when he came looking for me. At least, I would have if I were smart, and he is an older mage, so I imagine he must be at least a little to have made it this far. He probably knows about you. He'll probably find out if anyone in the city breathes his name, at that matter. But then maybe he won't do anything about it? I don't know, it's really goddamn hard to say..."
She sniffed some, flipped a page decisively into the pile, then glanced up at Will from under the furrowed brow. "I could ask the bones, but that's likilihood, and I'm afraid of spooking myself and somehow sealing Fate even worse if things don't look good."
William
"Okay, so: worst case scenario. What are you expecting he is here to do? What do you think is the absolute worst thing that could be going on here?"
He regards her directly, leaves what he is working on to the side for the time being and, instead, took the opportunity to take a drink and get back into the frame of mind that involves thinking and piecing through the figurative instead of the literal.
"Ask them- they will help you figure out what to plan for in the event that this is a big thing... You're scared."
"What is Fear trying to teach you right now?"
Margot
She frowned at him, almost like she didn't like being asked what the worst that could happen could be. The answer to that was nothing good and ended in death or something worse, and she was pretty sure they both knew that and it didn't need saying aloud, so she fixed him with a flat stare that held for a few moments before she simply said--
"Fine."
Her crossed legs pushed in unison to raise her off the floor, and bare feet (toenails painted a deep navy blue) carried her across the floor and out of the large living room they'd decided to consume all the floor space of for this project. It was a little over a minute later when the padding of her feet carrying her back down the stairs could be heard, and she re-emerged to sit once more, but this time with a little red velvet pouch that was still drawn closed and set to rest in her lap.
The remaining several pages of the essay she'd been working on were quickly sorted (as though she was very languidly taking her time before and could actually work at much faster speeds [hey, if that were the case, she could have all of this processed in no time at all!]), then the stack was cleared out of her way. As she cleared the stack she reached once more for her beer and finally answered a question she seemed to have considered while she was away.
"I think Fear is always trying to teach us to survive. It tells us to check the corners and listen careful for breathing in the basement when things don't feel right. I think it also prepares us for the worst outcomes, if we're smart enough to anticipate what they could be. ...But it also sends you to an early grave from the stress, and I suppose that there in and of itself is a good demonstration of Balance."
A few small gulps were pulled from the beer before it was set aside once more and she pulled the rune drawstrings to open the bag to the air.
William
Flat stare was met with the kind of expression that seemed almost expectant, almost challenging- they both knew what would come from that. What the worst that could happen would be but there he was, sitting and waiting painfully patiently as though he somehow expected that this be voiced out into the public consciousness. The look dared the reality to come out into the forefront and to fall out into the reality they lived in- daring the horrible reality to be spoken into form and given a shape.
Fine.
Shoulders raise and he looks away to take a drink of beer.
"Ecstatics believe that fear is as sacred as joy," he said, "fear can keep us alive because it tells us to be aware, but it also has the power to paralyze us and leave us stagnant. You don't move. You don't think. You don't act- when it is allowed to rule instead of simply being experienced, it will drive you into a corner and force your hand. It brings reactions and not responses."
He settled down to where he could sit across from Margot and inspect whatever it was that she was doing and take in the details of it all. Elbows on knees, pants adjusted and pushed into a position that wasn't getting all bunched up and uncomfy.
"Thus spake Madness-" hands out, gestured to shadows and the world around him.
"Specifically, just... think about what about all of this has you rattled. Is it the fact that something could be pulling at a sore spot? Is it the fact that he might be for real?.. are you afraid of letting your guard down?"
"You said you didn't remember much about him- I guess... he's been gone? Is he supposed to be dead? I don't have enough of the story here to help as much as I can."
Tuesday, December 12, 2017
Monday, December 4, 2017
Sacred spaces
Margot
The air was crisp and cool, the sky blue with the occasional sheet of clouds to pass over the sun and send the temperature plunging for about 15 to 20 minutes until the bright warming rays could break through once more. Margot decided that this, of all days, was the best day to go back out to that spot she had once-upon-a-time-ago chosen in the mountainside as her 'witches den away from home'.
William had recently come to, and Margot wanted to get him out and stretch his legs and pump fresh air into his lungs after the extended stint almost literally watching paint dry within the walls of his new home. So she'd pulled on a hat and mittens (both natural-colored wool) and a black winter coat and boots and driven him out into the mountains to come with her on this witchy errand.
"I'd burried them by the big rock I wanted to make a cauldron," she was explaining while her boots crunched on crumbing leaves, the last to fall recent from their branches and be anything besides spongy and decaying underfoot. "I thought about a year should do it, and wouldn't you know it we're about there already." She was talking about runes, she'd previously explained in the car. Or, more to the point, runestones that she had carved a year earlier and buried in the earth to help instill them with some connection to it, or some nonsense like that.
William
He likes being outside, and having the opportunity to be outside. He’s a little like a plant in that regard; if given the opportunity William will seek out the first opportunity to be in the sunlight and just enjoy what it is. He wasn’t this way before he moved here. Colorado does a strange thing to one’s desire to be out and about plus it didn’t help that Louisiana had far too much swamp land to be a particularly sane place to go traipsing through nature.
“A year and a day,” he tells her, “you’re probably pretty on with that.”
He left lights on in the house still. A nice, steady stream of lights where he came and went so he could see precisely what was in the room and where his exits were. Things had stopped scratching in the walls, thankfully. It didn’t stop him from listening sometimes and trying to track things down that weren’t there. It wouldn’t stop him from zoning out periodically, but it went from being almost ceaseless to an hour at the very worst. He’s a lot more present and, again: sunlight.
William’s been beaming the whole time they’ve been out here, looks up at the sky and the resting life and, yes, seems content with things being precisely how he thought they were supposed to be.
“Are you still gonna make the cauldron?”
Margot
"Yeah, but I'm still gonna need help with Shaping it and hollowing it out." She had parried his habit of leaving lights on where he went by turning them off as he abandoned them forgotten. She'd snapped at Ned once about it, who'd explained it wasn't him, and after that she seemed fine with just continuing the practice of quelling the light when she found it.
She glanced back over her shoulder at him and appeared content with what she found. Much like a golden retriever, taking him outside had of course promised good for him (so long as nothing unpleasant and unexpected descended upon them this afternoon). Her expression was relaxed and she grinned a little when they met eyes, then looked forward once more. A big heavy stick she'd found, sheared of its extra branches, and had adopted as a walking stick thunked into the ground to serve as leverage to help her and her backpack up the incline of the mountainside trail.
"It's not exactly a priority, though-- I'm not ready to, like, set up shop here yet. So no sense in leaving something as conspicuous as a cauldron about until I've got the place properly established and warded and organized and stuff."
William
(un)surprisingly, he actually had gear for hiking and being out in the wilderness. He had a coat that could stand it if it so decided to become unseasonably cold. Then again, any Hermetic worth their salt could deal with a shift in temperature and rarely if ever had to worry about the prospect of frostbite save for if one felt they might fall unconscious.
“When you’re ready to do it, let me know? If you’d want the help I’d love to give it,” said like he was actually able to make plans for the future. The when portion of him being back seemed more definite and less like a timeframe parents give children when they’re asking when they can go to the pool. Soon becomes later becomes not today becomes-
Anyway. They were going to go to the goddamned pool at some point.
“I’m pretty excited about your little witchy hole in the wall, not gonna lie. I mean, how awesome is that, you will have your own hobbit hole filled with don’t fuck with me.”
Margot
Margot chuckled at how William described her mountainside witch burrow-to-be. "I suppose that's the idea, yeah..." She'd envisioned it as a place to get away from distractions and get in touch with the energies that Andraste pulled her power from and in sync with the world around her. She imagined creating many shelves in the walls, a small circular window she could push open if she needed more airflow, a pit in which to burn that which needed burning, a cauldron she could pull over the flames and off it again as need be. A bunk to sleep and contemplate. A circle to sit and Work. She imagined spending a lot of time there, but not just yet.
"I figure by the time I work out how to Cast from a distance, then this place will get a lot of use. Until then, I won't be doing much out here besides meditating and decorating, and that only remains productive for so long."
William
”Work in it anyway even until then, so you get the place to feel like you. Build your own little bubble of reality and reinforce that this is your space. That way, when you Work, it’s easier on you and you don’t run the risk of turning yourself inside out or exploding or-“ he gestured to himself “-going into Quiet. Your reality. Your rules.”
The place should get a lot of use, and at that juncture he was thinking of things. William had an expression when his mind wandered that was assuredly different from the expression he adopted when it was getting pulled somewhere. He continues along, but stopped for a second to pick something up and pocket it.
“That is gonna be your lab.”
Margot
The advice that Will had to offer was fair, and it was clear it sank in because Margot listened attentively, and the one eye he could see from how she walked ahead of him with her head turned to the side was bright. The more her Resonance saturated the place, the more the area became familiar with her Work, the easier and more natural weaving reality from that space would become.
"Hmm...," she said, then nodded. "Good call." A small smile crawled on her face when he mentioned it being her lab, and she looked around before pausing and stepping off the trail, leading him from the path that the national forest rangers would prefer they stick to and out on one she was working on cutting into the earth with her own two feet.
"I suppose I should leave a little magick there before we leave." She thought for a second, then snapped the fingers of the hand not already wrapped around the walking stick. "I'll test the runes! And a little premonition with them..."
Her free hand tucked into the pocket of her jacket, though soon after that action she found herself rolling and hitching her shoulder to pull the backpack's strap back up into place. She called back over her shoulder: "What should I try to read, do you think?"
William
[Manip+Sub: this is a completely innocent question to divine, I swear]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
William
She smiled, which in turn made him smile and continue tromping along down the trail. It wasn’t delicate when he got off the path, mostly because he needed to make sure he didn’t fall over or trip on something that nobody else could see or something to that effect. What should she read.
“Something easy? If it’s really off you’ll know you messed up, so you can always try it again. Or, y’know, give the runes a few more baking days,” he couldn’t help but grin at the notion. Because, as we all know, magickal tools were like well-crafted foods. They need a little tweaking sometimes on the recipe and you can’t be afraid to pop them back in the oven if they aren’t quite done yet. Using something undercooked made for a terrible meal, and could ruin everything else and-
Okay, Holmes, enough with the food metaphors, did you eat today. (Oh crap, did I?) If you must ask-
“Do you have a protein bar or something?” But then it was back to the question at hand- butterfly that he was, “you could check and see what the sunrise is going to be like tomorrow.”
Margot
"Define 'like'," was the intellectual little lady's reply. She stopped her heavy-booted (yet nimble-footed) way along the path, stepping over roots cutting across the slope's edge that she was making her path into. The walking stick was propped up against a tree that grew horizontal from the ground, and the backpack was pulled from her back and set down on the ground for her to crouch before. A zipp! echoed in the mostly-bare branches above, and a pack of trail mix was pulled forth along with a bottle of water, and both were offered up to Will's hands one after the other.
"Do you mean what time it will rise? What the weather will be doing? What you will be doing?"
William
Trail mix was offered up which he accepted very, very readily. It was opened and food went straight into his mouth. He’s lost some weight since this whole expedition going off into his own little world, and frankly he probably couldn’t have spared much to begin with. Part of it came from a distrust of what he was eating (Which he had likely let Margot and/or Ned know on several occasions) or just because he forgot that he was supposed to be eating and had difficulties placing where he was in time and what he was supposed to be doing at the time. So, there was food, and it was delicious judging by the sound he made.
William is about as easy to please as a rescue golden retriever right now. There wasn’t much of a filter these days and thoughts, complex and magickal or mundane and otherwise. “I don’t know, pick one? Just… make sure the sun’s involved. Maybe as a point for orientation?”
“What time it’ll come up would be nice, and the weather. If you want to see what’s most likely to happen you could see what I’m doing and then we can compare it to tomorrow?”
Margot
Lips pursed together in contemplation, and Margot nodded and zipped the pack back up again before shouldering it and grabbing her walking stick up. This way Will could walk along with the bag of trail mix and the water in hand. She seemed eager to get to the place where she'd buried her runes to rest, given the slightly more hastened pace when she'd found her face once more.
When they arrived in the place where the ground plateaued into a nice flat space before the rock face of the mountain pushing its way higher up, where the trees grew tall and shady, Margot looked up and breathed in deep and let her backpack slide down off her shoulders. It clattered just a little when it hit the ground, but she paid it no worry. Instead, she turned to look out at the view over the valley, where the buildings and streets were nestled up against the wilderness that would always press them right back. Judging by the again content look on her face, it was clear she had reaffirmed her decision making in choosing this spot as her own.
"Hey, pass some of those?" She asked of Will and whatever remained of the trail mix before leaning down and digging a small garden spade (wrapped in a kitchen towel) out from one of the front pockets of her pack.
William
He was quiet the rest of the way, and generally seemed content to just follow along and enjoy the surroundings. He occasionally hopped over something that may or may not have been there. Occasionally stalled to look at things or seemed dubious of some incredibly innocuous thing like a rock or a tree or something to that effect. Overall, traveling was not an arduous task and nature- with all its sunshine and life instead of everything falling apart and burning out- was a worthwhile task in his mind.
There was a fair bit of trail mix left when they got there, and about half of the water. Once she took what she needed, the young man settled down into a space nearby by the gigantic would-be cauldron in question.
“You ever just know when something is right?” he starts, “because the look on your face says that you’re having one of those moments.”
Margot
Margot looked up to Will from where she crouched, then grinned and blushed just enough to color the apples of her cheeks and rims of her ears. "Yeah," she admitted, and glanced back out over the view once again before picking up the spade and walking over to a large hunk of rock, something easily as wide as Will and tall as Margot's shoulders, rough and rounded from the wind and elements. A solid piece of dark granite that's been there for a Very Long Time, with plenty of moss riding upon its shoulders and back.
"I always figured that I'd stay by the ocean. When I was growing up, that was the thing that resonated with me the most. It was eternal and unrelenting, depthless and full of so many mysteries that man can never hope to solve them all. Even after I Awoke, I thought it was inevitable that I would go back. It just seemed like it aligned with my essence, my magick and how it works. Like maybe my connection to Andraste and her lands was from the shared edges of that ocean, and I'd have to go back to settle sometime."
As she spoke, she crouched once more, but this time beside that massive rock that would one day be a similarly massive cauldron, and began to dig. The dirt turned dark and rich (encouraged by spells and tendings over the course of the past year or so), but still full of rocks that needed to be pruned out. Before long they turned up a small burlap sack tied shut with a strip of animal leather (something she purchased, of course-- she wasn't quite to the point of skinning her own animals for her materials just yet), and she pulled it free from the earth and slapped it gently so the dirt stuck to the fabric fell back to the ground.
"But this place feels right, too. The lakes are deep and secluded and have mysteries of their own just as well. It feels promising, that I can still be where I want to be. Not everything in my life has to be dictated by the Goddess."
William
He leaned against it, shoulder to the stone and then he rested his head on it while he watched her work. He wasn’t tired, not by a long shot, but the young man seemed content to half lounge for a moment and become familiarized on an energetic level to things that were most likely going to be an integral part of his cabalmate’s practice.
“You might have been attracted to staying by the ocean for different reasons. Something you’d come into later maybe? Or… I don’t know, the ocean is something that is majestic and terrifying to me; water carves valleys and weathers mountains into sand. It leveled pretty much all of New Orleans when I lived there. But… it’s something to be respected, you know?”
“I don’t know, maybe we’re just drawn to things that seem bottomless and unfathomable- lakes, oceans, caves, the outer reaches of the realms we can barely touch-“ William seems to realize he’s rambling, and that his thoughts are going off the rails and onto details and tangents and he isn’t staying present. Meditation had not been his strongest suit; Kalen had been less than pleased with his inability to stay on a tangent or sit still for long.
“You’re chosen because you are who you are; I think if everything about you were to be determined by your Goddess she wouldn’t stand by your side… water like blood.”
Water is blood. Blood is water. The two mingle.
Margot
"That makes some sense," Margot agreed, affirming that even if he had found himself rambling a little, something had been taken away from it. "The unfathomable elements are the bits that attract me. And the possibility for the unknown. But I suppose I'm learning that the unknown exists almost everywhere, even where you'd least expect to find it."
She opened the bag, finally content with the amount of dirt she'd shaken from it, and poured its contents onto the sparsely grassed ground next to the patch she'd dug up. Within there were a plethora of small round stone-shaped objects, though they were a smooth ivory that would make him suspicious that they were actually carved from bone. All had different runes in the style of simple lines (he would probably recognize them as Ogham, with how Hermetics loved their languages), and each meant their own thing.
She scooped the rocks up again and rubbed them over her palms, chill from the freezes the earth had suffered since she'd left them there, returning her warmth and familiarity to them, and perhaps also feeling them for what they had learned while she was away. Soon, once the warmth of her body was finally starting to linger in the stones themselves, she puffed her breath from her lungs and swallowed and then opened her hands to let them fall to the ground. A few moments passed for the energy in the air to settle once more before she looked down upon the runes as they'd fallen.
[What will tomorrow's sunrise be like? A Weather Forecast - Entropy 2 + Forces 2: Coincidental + Bone Runes (-1 diff focus)]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (6, 6) ( success x 2 )
William
Hermetic practice was often steeped in the importance of symbolism and ritual. When he looked at her runes, everything had a significance that he was looking for and would inevitably tell him more about Margot in the process. The runes were smooth and ivory-colored and perhaps not stone in the slighted. The language was Ogham, the lines were careful and precise. Each set of lines had its own distinct meaning, as they always did.
He wondered how they would fall, what made the difference, if there were inverse positions and if it were a mirror or simply relaying more of the same whole. Time had come naturally for him; he’d been too afraid to go back and explore Entropy further, finding that the basic lessons had proven to be too much for him to handle at his awakening and he suspects- well, who really knew what he suspected. Would it be some slope to fall? Some secret that would make the wall crack (don’t you want it to crack)
Will waited, all baited breath and wonder waiting to see if there would be some kind of confirmation, something that would set his mind at rest that there was one thing he didn’t have to worry about enforcing.
Margot
One day the air here would seem thick and cloying without an actual stench lingering in it, though it seemed like it ought to have one. It would seem meaty and dangerous like the kind of place that meat came to die and then rot if it couldn't be consumed fast enough. People would steer clear of the area presuming a mountain lion or small bear might have set up home there. Margot's bloodied aura didn't stick to the trees and earth just yet, though, but it did thrum an even tune into the air while the runes settled to show likeliness.
The witch's eyes fluttered open and then down upon the runes, and the space between her brows pinched while her face screwed up with concentration and tried to make out what she was reading. It had taken a few goes over with the flashcards and some dummy stones (painted instead of carved, rock instead of bone), but she'd memorized the foreign alphabet she'd used to call upon the old words and ways of her Goddess's art, and tried now to make sense of what it was telling her.
After some time she cleared her throat and stated. "It's gonna be cold and it's gonna be wet."
An anti-climactic reading, but then what did one expect from a weather report? It was tricky to vocalize, but Margot felt almost certain that she was picking up a touch of boredom and judgment in how the runestones had arranged themselves on the ground. With her left hand holding open the bag that smelled like the mountain dirt, she plucked the runes from the ground and dropped them back from whence they came. "I suppose we'll wait and see if that holds true."
William
"But it comes up, right?"
Oops.
Margot
The bone-stones stopped plunking into the sack for a few moments while Margot paused to stare at William with surprise. After those moments passed she binked a couple of times, then went back to the act of collecting.
"Uhhh.... Yeah, pretty sure of it, otherwise I think everything would end up being too shitty for it to be able to rain and snow."
William
He doesn’t even try to not look relieved when she says that. The young man looks back at the stones, tries to laugh it off like it was some kind of dummy question but it’s clear that it was anything but. William Holmes was legitimately concerned that the sun might not come up. Runes fall as they will, do their duty to tell the odds and what may come in their favor.
“It can snow for a little while after the sun goes out,” he says, conversational, “but yeah, you’re right, it would end up pretty shitty.” The Hermetic confirms this before using the soon-to-be-great cauldron to stand himself up.
Margot
"I suppose it would depend on what kind of snow was falling... Though the Runes did specifically say that it would be 'wet', and I don't think that a nuclear winter's snow would be water. And if it were snowing because Yellowstone finally exploded, that wouldn't be water-based either."
The stones tucked away into their bag, Margot rose to her feet once more as well and thumped the bag a few more times against the heel of her boot for good measure before she tossed it over beside her bag to be tucked away later, when they were ready to go, and carried home to join a plethora of other supplied dedicated to pulling the fibers of reality and manipulating/reading them to her benefit (or, often, distress).
The cauldron stone was looked upon next, and her bare palm lay against a spot where the sun had been cutting through to warm it. Felt the difference in temperature between where her palm lay and where a few fingers cross into a shadow, where the stone was far more cold to her skin. "This thing is gonna be a beauty, though... I'll need to build some kind of... I don't know, lift-and-pulley system to get it on and off the fire. I'll never be able to just up and drag it on my own."
William
“Have you felt it? Wait, duh, of course you have… this thing is fantastic. I kinda like stones. They have seen all sorts of things. But, yeah, you’re going to need something that will make it possible to actually move. Or, you know, build a pit underneath it and heat it from the bottom? I don’t know… the pulley system seems cool.”
“Kind of like the rigging they use to fly Peter Pan,” he pats the stone before tracing some mark on it that seemed particularly interesting. It wasn’t a crack, but rather some vein that caught the light just right and therefore caught the sunflower’s attention. “It’s one set of ropes for up and down and another set for sidewards motions… I think? I dunno, maybe we could fly Ned. Or you could learn to levitate things. That’s also a thing for the future.”
The air was crisp and cool, the sky blue with the occasional sheet of clouds to pass over the sun and send the temperature plunging for about 15 to 20 minutes until the bright warming rays could break through once more. Margot decided that this, of all days, was the best day to go back out to that spot she had once-upon-a-time-ago chosen in the mountainside as her 'witches den away from home'.
William had recently come to, and Margot wanted to get him out and stretch his legs and pump fresh air into his lungs after the extended stint almost literally watching paint dry within the walls of his new home. So she'd pulled on a hat and mittens (both natural-colored wool) and a black winter coat and boots and driven him out into the mountains to come with her on this witchy errand.
"I'd burried them by the big rock I wanted to make a cauldron," she was explaining while her boots crunched on crumbing leaves, the last to fall recent from their branches and be anything besides spongy and decaying underfoot. "I thought about a year should do it, and wouldn't you know it we're about there already." She was talking about runes, she'd previously explained in the car. Or, more to the point, runestones that she had carved a year earlier and buried in the earth to help instill them with some connection to it, or some nonsense like that.
William
He likes being outside, and having the opportunity to be outside. He’s a little like a plant in that regard; if given the opportunity William will seek out the first opportunity to be in the sunlight and just enjoy what it is. He wasn’t this way before he moved here. Colorado does a strange thing to one’s desire to be out and about plus it didn’t help that Louisiana had far too much swamp land to be a particularly sane place to go traipsing through nature.
“A year and a day,” he tells her, “you’re probably pretty on with that.”
He left lights on in the house still. A nice, steady stream of lights where he came and went so he could see precisely what was in the room and where his exits were. Things had stopped scratching in the walls, thankfully. It didn’t stop him from listening sometimes and trying to track things down that weren’t there. It wouldn’t stop him from zoning out periodically, but it went from being almost ceaseless to an hour at the very worst. He’s a lot more present and, again: sunlight.
William’s been beaming the whole time they’ve been out here, looks up at the sky and the resting life and, yes, seems content with things being precisely how he thought they were supposed to be.
“Are you still gonna make the cauldron?”
Margot
"Yeah, but I'm still gonna need help with Shaping it and hollowing it out." She had parried his habit of leaving lights on where he went by turning them off as he abandoned them forgotten. She'd snapped at Ned once about it, who'd explained it wasn't him, and after that she seemed fine with just continuing the practice of quelling the light when she found it.
She glanced back over her shoulder at him and appeared content with what she found. Much like a golden retriever, taking him outside had of course promised good for him (so long as nothing unpleasant and unexpected descended upon them this afternoon). Her expression was relaxed and she grinned a little when they met eyes, then looked forward once more. A big heavy stick she'd found, sheared of its extra branches, and had adopted as a walking stick thunked into the ground to serve as leverage to help her and her backpack up the incline of the mountainside trail.
"It's not exactly a priority, though-- I'm not ready to, like, set up shop here yet. So no sense in leaving something as conspicuous as a cauldron about until I've got the place properly established and warded and organized and stuff."
William
(un)surprisingly, he actually had gear for hiking and being out in the wilderness. He had a coat that could stand it if it so decided to become unseasonably cold. Then again, any Hermetic worth their salt could deal with a shift in temperature and rarely if ever had to worry about the prospect of frostbite save for if one felt they might fall unconscious.
“When you’re ready to do it, let me know? If you’d want the help I’d love to give it,” said like he was actually able to make plans for the future. The when portion of him being back seemed more definite and less like a timeframe parents give children when they’re asking when they can go to the pool. Soon becomes later becomes not today becomes-
Anyway. They were going to go to the goddamned pool at some point.
“I’m pretty excited about your little witchy hole in the wall, not gonna lie. I mean, how awesome is that, you will have your own hobbit hole filled with don’t fuck with me.”
Margot
Margot chuckled at how William described her mountainside witch burrow-to-be. "I suppose that's the idea, yeah..." She'd envisioned it as a place to get away from distractions and get in touch with the energies that Andraste pulled her power from and in sync with the world around her. She imagined creating many shelves in the walls, a small circular window she could push open if she needed more airflow, a pit in which to burn that which needed burning, a cauldron she could pull over the flames and off it again as need be. A bunk to sleep and contemplate. A circle to sit and Work. She imagined spending a lot of time there, but not just yet.
"I figure by the time I work out how to Cast from a distance, then this place will get a lot of use. Until then, I won't be doing much out here besides meditating and decorating, and that only remains productive for so long."
William
”Work in it anyway even until then, so you get the place to feel like you. Build your own little bubble of reality and reinforce that this is your space. That way, when you Work, it’s easier on you and you don’t run the risk of turning yourself inside out or exploding or-“ he gestured to himself “-going into Quiet. Your reality. Your rules.”
The place should get a lot of use, and at that juncture he was thinking of things. William had an expression when his mind wandered that was assuredly different from the expression he adopted when it was getting pulled somewhere. He continues along, but stopped for a second to pick something up and pocket it.
“That is gonna be your lab.”
Margot
The advice that Will had to offer was fair, and it was clear it sank in because Margot listened attentively, and the one eye he could see from how she walked ahead of him with her head turned to the side was bright. The more her Resonance saturated the place, the more the area became familiar with her Work, the easier and more natural weaving reality from that space would become.
"Hmm...," she said, then nodded. "Good call." A small smile crawled on her face when he mentioned it being her lab, and she looked around before pausing and stepping off the trail, leading him from the path that the national forest rangers would prefer they stick to and out on one she was working on cutting into the earth with her own two feet.
"I suppose I should leave a little magick there before we leave." She thought for a second, then snapped the fingers of the hand not already wrapped around the walking stick. "I'll test the runes! And a little premonition with them..."
Her free hand tucked into the pocket of her jacket, though soon after that action she found herself rolling and hitching her shoulder to pull the backpack's strap back up into place. She called back over her shoulder: "What should I try to read, do you think?"
William
[Manip+Sub: this is a completely innocent question to divine, I swear]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
William
She smiled, which in turn made him smile and continue tromping along down the trail. It wasn’t delicate when he got off the path, mostly because he needed to make sure he didn’t fall over or trip on something that nobody else could see or something to that effect. What should she read.
“Something easy? If it’s really off you’ll know you messed up, so you can always try it again. Or, y’know, give the runes a few more baking days,” he couldn’t help but grin at the notion. Because, as we all know, magickal tools were like well-crafted foods. They need a little tweaking sometimes on the recipe and you can’t be afraid to pop them back in the oven if they aren’t quite done yet. Using something undercooked made for a terrible meal, and could ruin everything else and-
Okay, Holmes, enough with the food metaphors, did you eat today. (Oh crap, did I?) If you must ask-
“Do you have a protein bar or something?” But then it was back to the question at hand- butterfly that he was, “you could check and see what the sunrise is going to be like tomorrow.”
Margot
"Define 'like'," was the intellectual little lady's reply. She stopped her heavy-booted (yet nimble-footed) way along the path, stepping over roots cutting across the slope's edge that she was making her path into. The walking stick was propped up against a tree that grew horizontal from the ground, and the backpack was pulled from her back and set down on the ground for her to crouch before. A zipp! echoed in the mostly-bare branches above, and a pack of trail mix was pulled forth along with a bottle of water, and both were offered up to Will's hands one after the other.
"Do you mean what time it will rise? What the weather will be doing? What you will be doing?"
William
Trail mix was offered up which he accepted very, very readily. It was opened and food went straight into his mouth. He’s lost some weight since this whole expedition going off into his own little world, and frankly he probably couldn’t have spared much to begin with. Part of it came from a distrust of what he was eating (Which he had likely let Margot and/or Ned know on several occasions) or just because he forgot that he was supposed to be eating and had difficulties placing where he was in time and what he was supposed to be doing at the time. So, there was food, and it was delicious judging by the sound he made.
William is about as easy to please as a rescue golden retriever right now. There wasn’t much of a filter these days and thoughts, complex and magickal or mundane and otherwise. “I don’t know, pick one? Just… make sure the sun’s involved. Maybe as a point for orientation?”
“What time it’ll come up would be nice, and the weather. If you want to see what’s most likely to happen you could see what I’m doing and then we can compare it to tomorrow?”
Margot
Lips pursed together in contemplation, and Margot nodded and zipped the pack back up again before shouldering it and grabbing her walking stick up. This way Will could walk along with the bag of trail mix and the water in hand. She seemed eager to get to the place where she'd buried her runes to rest, given the slightly more hastened pace when she'd found her face once more.
When they arrived in the place where the ground plateaued into a nice flat space before the rock face of the mountain pushing its way higher up, where the trees grew tall and shady, Margot looked up and breathed in deep and let her backpack slide down off her shoulders. It clattered just a little when it hit the ground, but she paid it no worry. Instead, she turned to look out at the view over the valley, where the buildings and streets were nestled up against the wilderness that would always press them right back. Judging by the again content look on her face, it was clear she had reaffirmed her decision making in choosing this spot as her own.
"Hey, pass some of those?" She asked of Will and whatever remained of the trail mix before leaning down and digging a small garden spade (wrapped in a kitchen towel) out from one of the front pockets of her pack.
William
He was quiet the rest of the way, and generally seemed content to just follow along and enjoy the surroundings. He occasionally hopped over something that may or may not have been there. Occasionally stalled to look at things or seemed dubious of some incredibly innocuous thing like a rock or a tree or something to that effect. Overall, traveling was not an arduous task and nature- with all its sunshine and life instead of everything falling apart and burning out- was a worthwhile task in his mind.
There was a fair bit of trail mix left when they got there, and about half of the water. Once she took what she needed, the young man settled down into a space nearby by the gigantic would-be cauldron in question.
“You ever just know when something is right?” he starts, “because the look on your face says that you’re having one of those moments.”
Margot
Margot looked up to Will from where she crouched, then grinned and blushed just enough to color the apples of her cheeks and rims of her ears. "Yeah," she admitted, and glanced back out over the view once again before picking up the spade and walking over to a large hunk of rock, something easily as wide as Will and tall as Margot's shoulders, rough and rounded from the wind and elements. A solid piece of dark granite that's been there for a Very Long Time, with plenty of moss riding upon its shoulders and back.
"I always figured that I'd stay by the ocean. When I was growing up, that was the thing that resonated with me the most. It was eternal and unrelenting, depthless and full of so many mysteries that man can never hope to solve them all. Even after I Awoke, I thought it was inevitable that I would go back. It just seemed like it aligned with my essence, my magick and how it works. Like maybe my connection to Andraste and her lands was from the shared edges of that ocean, and I'd have to go back to settle sometime."
As she spoke, she crouched once more, but this time beside that massive rock that would one day be a similarly massive cauldron, and began to dig. The dirt turned dark and rich (encouraged by spells and tendings over the course of the past year or so), but still full of rocks that needed to be pruned out. Before long they turned up a small burlap sack tied shut with a strip of animal leather (something she purchased, of course-- she wasn't quite to the point of skinning her own animals for her materials just yet), and she pulled it free from the earth and slapped it gently so the dirt stuck to the fabric fell back to the ground.
"But this place feels right, too. The lakes are deep and secluded and have mysteries of their own just as well. It feels promising, that I can still be where I want to be. Not everything in my life has to be dictated by the Goddess."
William
He leaned against it, shoulder to the stone and then he rested his head on it while he watched her work. He wasn’t tired, not by a long shot, but the young man seemed content to half lounge for a moment and become familiarized on an energetic level to things that were most likely going to be an integral part of his cabalmate’s practice.
“You might have been attracted to staying by the ocean for different reasons. Something you’d come into later maybe? Or… I don’t know, the ocean is something that is majestic and terrifying to me; water carves valleys and weathers mountains into sand. It leveled pretty much all of New Orleans when I lived there. But… it’s something to be respected, you know?”
“I don’t know, maybe we’re just drawn to things that seem bottomless and unfathomable- lakes, oceans, caves, the outer reaches of the realms we can barely touch-“ William seems to realize he’s rambling, and that his thoughts are going off the rails and onto details and tangents and he isn’t staying present. Meditation had not been his strongest suit; Kalen had been less than pleased with his inability to stay on a tangent or sit still for long.
“You’re chosen because you are who you are; I think if everything about you were to be determined by your Goddess she wouldn’t stand by your side… water like blood.”
Water is blood. Blood is water. The two mingle.
Margot
"That makes some sense," Margot agreed, affirming that even if he had found himself rambling a little, something had been taken away from it. "The unfathomable elements are the bits that attract me. And the possibility for the unknown. But I suppose I'm learning that the unknown exists almost everywhere, even where you'd least expect to find it."
She opened the bag, finally content with the amount of dirt she'd shaken from it, and poured its contents onto the sparsely grassed ground next to the patch she'd dug up. Within there were a plethora of small round stone-shaped objects, though they were a smooth ivory that would make him suspicious that they were actually carved from bone. All had different runes in the style of simple lines (he would probably recognize them as Ogham, with how Hermetics loved their languages), and each meant their own thing.
She scooped the rocks up again and rubbed them over her palms, chill from the freezes the earth had suffered since she'd left them there, returning her warmth and familiarity to them, and perhaps also feeling them for what they had learned while she was away. Soon, once the warmth of her body was finally starting to linger in the stones themselves, she puffed her breath from her lungs and swallowed and then opened her hands to let them fall to the ground. A few moments passed for the energy in the air to settle once more before she looked down upon the runes as they'd fallen.
[What will tomorrow's sunrise be like? A Weather Forecast - Entropy 2 + Forces 2: Coincidental + Bone Runes (-1 diff focus)]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (6, 6) ( success x 2 )
William
Hermetic practice was often steeped in the importance of symbolism and ritual. When he looked at her runes, everything had a significance that he was looking for and would inevitably tell him more about Margot in the process. The runes were smooth and ivory-colored and perhaps not stone in the slighted. The language was Ogham, the lines were careful and precise. Each set of lines had its own distinct meaning, as they always did.
He wondered how they would fall, what made the difference, if there were inverse positions and if it were a mirror or simply relaying more of the same whole. Time had come naturally for him; he’d been too afraid to go back and explore Entropy further, finding that the basic lessons had proven to be too much for him to handle at his awakening and he suspects- well, who really knew what he suspected. Would it be some slope to fall? Some secret that would make the wall crack (don’t you want it to crack)
Will waited, all baited breath and wonder waiting to see if there would be some kind of confirmation, something that would set his mind at rest that there was one thing he didn’t have to worry about enforcing.
Margot
One day the air here would seem thick and cloying without an actual stench lingering in it, though it seemed like it ought to have one. It would seem meaty and dangerous like the kind of place that meat came to die and then rot if it couldn't be consumed fast enough. People would steer clear of the area presuming a mountain lion or small bear might have set up home there. Margot's bloodied aura didn't stick to the trees and earth just yet, though, but it did thrum an even tune into the air while the runes settled to show likeliness.
The witch's eyes fluttered open and then down upon the runes, and the space between her brows pinched while her face screwed up with concentration and tried to make out what she was reading. It had taken a few goes over with the flashcards and some dummy stones (painted instead of carved, rock instead of bone), but she'd memorized the foreign alphabet she'd used to call upon the old words and ways of her Goddess's art, and tried now to make sense of what it was telling her.
After some time she cleared her throat and stated. "It's gonna be cold and it's gonna be wet."
An anti-climactic reading, but then what did one expect from a weather report? It was tricky to vocalize, but Margot felt almost certain that she was picking up a touch of boredom and judgment in how the runestones had arranged themselves on the ground. With her left hand holding open the bag that smelled like the mountain dirt, she plucked the runes from the ground and dropped them back from whence they came. "I suppose we'll wait and see if that holds true."
William
"But it comes up, right?"
Oops.
Margot
The bone-stones stopped plunking into the sack for a few moments while Margot paused to stare at William with surprise. After those moments passed she binked a couple of times, then went back to the act of collecting.
"Uhhh.... Yeah, pretty sure of it, otherwise I think everything would end up being too shitty for it to be able to rain and snow."
William
He doesn’t even try to not look relieved when she says that. The young man looks back at the stones, tries to laugh it off like it was some kind of dummy question but it’s clear that it was anything but. William Holmes was legitimately concerned that the sun might not come up. Runes fall as they will, do their duty to tell the odds and what may come in their favor.
“It can snow for a little while after the sun goes out,” he says, conversational, “but yeah, you’re right, it would end up pretty shitty.” The Hermetic confirms this before using the soon-to-be-great cauldron to stand himself up.
Margot
"I suppose it would depend on what kind of snow was falling... Though the Runes did specifically say that it would be 'wet', and I don't think that a nuclear winter's snow would be water. And if it were snowing because Yellowstone finally exploded, that wouldn't be water-based either."
The stones tucked away into their bag, Margot rose to her feet once more as well and thumped the bag a few more times against the heel of her boot for good measure before she tossed it over beside her bag to be tucked away later, when they were ready to go, and carried home to join a plethora of other supplied dedicated to pulling the fibers of reality and manipulating/reading them to her benefit (or, often, distress).
The cauldron stone was looked upon next, and her bare palm lay against a spot where the sun had been cutting through to warm it. Felt the difference in temperature between where her palm lay and where a few fingers cross into a shadow, where the stone was far more cold to her skin. "This thing is gonna be a beauty, though... I'll need to build some kind of... I don't know, lift-and-pulley system to get it on and off the fire. I'll never be able to just up and drag it on my own."
William
“Have you felt it? Wait, duh, of course you have… this thing is fantastic. I kinda like stones. They have seen all sorts of things. But, yeah, you’re going to need something that will make it possible to actually move. Or, you know, build a pit underneath it and heat it from the bottom? I don’t know… the pulley system seems cool.”
“Kind of like the rigging they use to fly Peter Pan,” he pats the stone before tracing some mark on it that seemed particularly interesting. It wasn’t a crack, but rather some vein that caught the light just right and therefore caught the sunflower’s attention. “It’s one set of ropes for up and down and another set for sidewards motions… I think? I dunno, maybe we could fly Ned. Or you could learn to levitate things. That’s also a thing for the future.”
MargotMargot chuckled twice-- first when he'd asked if she's felt the stone and immediately corrected himself to continue, and second when he'd proposed that she learn to levitate, or Ned learn to levitate, or that perhaps they learn to levitate Ned? She shook her head and adjusted the wool cap she was wearing to keep it warm.
"Even if I did learn to levitate things... which I think I could... it would be a hell of a feat to lift something this heavy over and over again-- not worth it if I could make something do it for me." That she is speaking of tools and pulleys and inanimate somethings is unspoken, but the fact that it's not specifically clarified had a small cast of something looming, like foreshadowing, on the horizon of ponderance. She took her hand from the stone and stuck it (along with its other) into her coat pocket before turning to regard the mountainside, and the small nook she planned to hollow out further and make her own.
"That's gonna be a pain in the ass... And will definitely need to wait until I can manipulate Matter. And until it's warm." She furrowed her brow, now doubt imagining her fingers plunged into unpleasantly frozen earth to try and Work the churning and bringing them out cold as hell and just as red from how frozen they would be too.
"It'll turn out nice, though," she said with a sense of semi-finality, no doubt to be found. A glance was cast back to Will, and she raised her eyebrows when she did. "Ah, you just let me know whenever you wanna get back. I've got what I came for, I think I'll see if they do well in their forecast when the morning comes and go from there."
William“I want to learn to fly,” he tells her, “but I’ll be honest it is pretty low on my list. I need to learn to keep you and Ned from dying horribly in the event something bad happens and time is a factor… I also need to return all of my voicemails because I finally figured out how my cell phone works again.”
Which was true, at some point during November he, in a less coherent moment, had likely shaken his cell phone at Margot and been wordlessly confused by the fact that he couldn’t figure out how to answer the damned thing despite the fact that he knew he very obviously knew how to use a cell phone- the obvious portions made sense but the parts that involved numbers and symbolic communication were right out. You don’t realize how much stuff you have to read and interpret (numbers, words, certain symbols in pictures) until literally none of them make sense. As of yesterday, William Holmes had seventy-six unheard voicemail messages and enough texts to compose a novella.
When did he want to get back? Let her know? “It’s actually really nice out here.,, let’s wander around. Are there any creeks?” a second, “did you stop being a terrifying doom beacon yet?”
Margot"It's good to see you've inherited the Doc's anxiety-addled belief that Ned and I are constantly on the verge of getting ourselves killed." Margot was smiling when she said it, but the expression was sidelong in the way that accompanies a half-hearted scolding. She kept her hands in her pockets as she turned to regard the landscape and hummed her agreement. "It is nice out here..."
Then, when asked about creeks, she shrugged.
"I dunno-- there's one that cuts along the main trail near its top, the one we came up to get here. There could be more; I haven't seen any but I also haven't really roamed too far from here just yet.
Her eyes hopped toward the side of the mountain as it continued along its side-- her little plateaued space tapered for a ways further but soon the mountain's slope overtook the landscape once more. Out further that way, where a shadow from a peak was persistently present, the snows were white and crusted with ice in their small clinging and rippling drifts on the ground. "It looks pretty slick out that way, though..."
William“You hang out with me; the entire reason I got invited here was my propensity for getting people in trouble- ergo,” he gestures outward, grinned and presented his logical conclusion, “all those trips to Taco Bell we’ve made? Ticking timebombs. I’m dangerous.”
He couldn’t keep a straight face saying that, and he had to laugh at the very prospect of him being some sort of literal threat to, well, anything. William Holmes is as dangerous as a Disney princess. His attention flickered down the way that she had pointed out, where her attention fell and, instead, he found himself wandering in that direction anyway because it seemed like just the natural thing to do. Impulse control wasn’t on his to-do list today.
“What are your favorite places out here? What drew you to the mountain-what made you say this is mine rather than any other place in the reserve?”
MargotHesitation was rife around the little witch when William first started roaming off toward the south, like she could already see him slipping and scramble-slide-falling his way a good twenty or thirty feet down the mountain before finally stopping on a tree. While she was sure they'd figure something out, it still wasn't the kind of afternoon she'd hoped to have.
Ultimately, though, she'd start creeping along after him, even though she was reluctant to step off the actual plateau itself. "The seclusion," she answered, and there was no hesitation to be found there. "A lot of other space is too open, but this is a mountain to my back with a mountainside to my front, and the cover of trees from above and afar to keep people from knowing I'm here and what I'm up to, too." If he glanced back, he'd find her smiling apologetically and shrugging. "Nothing too mystical, just practicality, I suppose. Though the mountains are old, and the view is nice."
She then rembered a question he'd asked earlier as well, and that she'd never answered it. "Oh!" Was the declaration of memory, and she continued speaking into the otherwise still daytime air toward Will's roaming back. "I don't think I'm throwing out the beacon any longer... I went to the grocery store the other day and the clerk actually made small talk with me."
William“Not everything has to have some great mystical significance. Sometimes, because I wanted it is good enough. Hell, it’s more than enough,” he replied. Was less ambling now and more actually walking towards the spot with the snow flecks and the ice with purpose. It was a conscious decision of precisely where he wanted to go, though the young man did do a quick look around to see if he could find some other location with the white stuff peppering the area. The more treacherous route, it would seem, might not be his only option.
The clerk made small talk, she blurter out that she didn’t think she was a death beacon anymore and he turned around to face her. Kept walking, though Mr. Holmes was content to walk backwards for a bit. “Fuck yeah small talk!”
“I haven’t been grocery shopping in awhile, but I found out that apparently my parents keep trying to send groceries to my house because Jenn told them that I was really sick so I couldn’t make the holidays.”
"Even if I did learn to levitate things... which I think I could... it would be a hell of a feat to lift something this heavy over and over again-- not worth it if I could make something do it for me." That she is speaking of tools and pulleys and inanimate somethings is unspoken, but the fact that it's not specifically clarified had a small cast of something looming, like foreshadowing, on the horizon of ponderance. She took her hand from the stone and stuck it (along with its other) into her coat pocket before turning to regard the mountainside, and the small nook she planned to hollow out further and make her own.
"That's gonna be a pain in the ass... And will definitely need to wait until I can manipulate Matter. And until it's warm." She furrowed her brow, now doubt imagining her fingers plunged into unpleasantly frozen earth to try and Work the churning and bringing them out cold as hell and just as red from how frozen they would be too.
"It'll turn out nice, though," she said with a sense of semi-finality, no doubt to be found. A glance was cast back to Will, and she raised her eyebrows when she did. "Ah, you just let me know whenever you wanna get back. I've got what I came for, I think I'll see if they do well in their forecast when the morning comes and go from there."
William“I want to learn to fly,” he tells her, “but I’ll be honest it is pretty low on my list. I need to learn to keep you and Ned from dying horribly in the event something bad happens and time is a factor… I also need to return all of my voicemails because I finally figured out how my cell phone works again.”
Which was true, at some point during November he, in a less coherent moment, had likely shaken his cell phone at Margot and been wordlessly confused by the fact that he couldn’t figure out how to answer the damned thing despite the fact that he knew he very obviously knew how to use a cell phone- the obvious portions made sense but the parts that involved numbers and symbolic communication were right out. You don’t realize how much stuff you have to read and interpret (numbers, words, certain symbols in pictures) until literally none of them make sense. As of yesterday, William Holmes had seventy-six unheard voicemail messages and enough texts to compose a novella.
When did he want to get back? Let her know? “It’s actually really nice out here.,, let’s wander around. Are there any creeks?” a second, “did you stop being a terrifying doom beacon yet?”
Margot"It's good to see you've inherited the Doc's anxiety-addled belief that Ned and I are constantly on the verge of getting ourselves killed." Margot was smiling when she said it, but the expression was sidelong in the way that accompanies a half-hearted scolding. She kept her hands in her pockets as she turned to regard the landscape and hummed her agreement. "It is nice out here..."
Then, when asked about creeks, she shrugged.
"I dunno-- there's one that cuts along the main trail near its top, the one we came up to get here. There could be more; I haven't seen any but I also haven't really roamed too far from here just yet.
Her eyes hopped toward the side of the mountain as it continued along its side-- her little plateaued space tapered for a ways further but soon the mountain's slope overtook the landscape once more. Out further that way, where a shadow from a peak was persistently present, the snows were white and crusted with ice in their small clinging and rippling drifts on the ground. "It looks pretty slick out that way, though..."
William“You hang out with me; the entire reason I got invited here was my propensity for getting people in trouble- ergo,” he gestures outward, grinned and presented his logical conclusion, “all those trips to Taco Bell we’ve made? Ticking timebombs. I’m dangerous.”
He couldn’t keep a straight face saying that, and he had to laugh at the very prospect of him being some sort of literal threat to, well, anything. William Holmes is as dangerous as a Disney princess. His attention flickered down the way that she had pointed out, where her attention fell and, instead, he found himself wandering in that direction anyway because it seemed like just the natural thing to do. Impulse control wasn’t on his to-do list today.
“What are your favorite places out here? What drew you to the mountain-what made you say this is mine rather than any other place in the reserve?”
MargotHesitation was rife around the little witch when William first started roaming off toward the south, like she could already see him slipping and scramble-slide-falling his way a good twenty or thirty feet down the mountain before finally stopping on a tree. While she was sure they'd figure something out, it still wasn't the kind of afternoon she'd hoped to have.
Ultimately, though, she'd start creeping along after him, even though she was reluctant to step off the actual plateau itself. "The seclusion," she answered, and there was no hesitation to be found there. "A lot of other space is too open, but this is a mountain to my back with a mountainside to my front, and the cover of trees from above and afar to keep people from knowing I'm here and what I'm up to, too." If he glanced back, he'd find her smiling apologetically and shrugging. "Nothing too mystical, just practicality, I suppose. Though the mountains are old, and the view is nice."
She then rembered a question he'd asked earlier as well, and that she'd never answered it. "Oh!" Was the declaration of memory, and she continued speaking into the otherwise still daytime air toward Will's roaming back. "I don't think I'm throwing out the beacon any longer... I went to the grocery store the other day and the clerk actually made small talk with me."
William“Not everything has to have some great mystical significance. Sometimes, because I wanted it is good enough. Hell, it’s more than enough,” he replied. Was less ambling now and more actually walking towards the spot with the snow flecks and the ice with purpose. It was a conscious decision of precisely where he wanted to go, though the young man did do a quick look around to see if he could find some other location with the white stuff peppering the area. The more treacherous route, it would seem, might not be his only option.
The clerk made small talk, she blurter out that she didn’t think she was a death beacon anymore and he turned around to face her. Kept walking, though Mr. Holmes was content to walk backwards for a bit. “Fuck yeah small talk!”
“I haven’t been grocery shopping in awhile, but I found out that apparently my parents keep trying to send groceries to my house because Jenn told them that I was really sick so I couldn’t make the holidays.”
Friday, December 1, 2017
Outings with Ned
William
[Quick check, how coherent are we? Willpower!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Ned
The Evening is approaching.
It might seem ominous in a lot of circumstances but for these two, there is a pleasant level of calm about it all. Wide open spaces were something that made the world less claustrophobic and despite how comforting the House could be, it was also home to no few potential threats and dangers. Ned had needed to get out and away from the books and the studying for a while. He had also needed to test the boundaries of Will's recent return to their landscape of reality. Or version of it, anyway.
So he had donned a long jacket, the sort you might find on a captain sailing out to sea in search of a Kraken to kill. Or at least, drunk in some tavern bragging about how he was going to do it. His pants are tight, khakis rolled to the mid-shin with tall argyle socks and a pair of new black converse. He sports a hoodie beneath it all. Simply black, nothing extravagant. The chill in the air has abated some, allowing for something more casual.
They had opted to make their way into town, a simple half hour drive by way of a county bus that took an hour or so getting to their stop, which was a solid 20 minutes out from the house itself by way of foot, making the total travel time somewhere in excess of an hour and a half. The whole way, Ned was pondering. A mouthful of words at best shared with the mostly Lucid Hermetic.
It's only as they step into the quaint, settling down dimensions of Aurora, blending in with the societal norms as best they can, that Ned seems to animate a bit. His eyes take in the sights and the sounds of civilization and he sucks in a deeper breath than his lungs would normally reach for. A faint smile touches his lips, hands tucked into his jacket pockets and he sweeps out onto a sidewalk lined with stores that are closed, closing or in their 'midnight' hours with the approach of prime time television viewing.
"So how was that?" Ned would turn to glance at his cabalmate, hands still in pockets. "The trip here, that is. Perceptions ok? Any detachment occur? Hallucinations?"
William
Everywhere that William went in the house, lucid or not, he kept the lights on right now. Kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, dining room- you could tell what his thought process was should someone follow behind and turn off the trail of wasted electricity in his wake. Sometimes, he’d share a few words here and there. They were usually in English, but one could easily get the impression that it was a bit of a task to parse through information and pull up the right words in the right language for the person (or not person) he was talking to.
William had wanted to go out. He’d asked for some kind of chaperone and needed no real explanation of being stir crazy and eager to get out of the house- though occasionally one could swear that he wasn’t the only one hearing something in the walls there.
Clothing was comfortable and presentable and geared towards weathering the cold. He dressed warmer than a native of the area. But, true to form, he dressed like a damned hipster complete with button up shirt and vest (because, seriously, you need a place to put a pocketwatch and he had just managed to clean most of the blood off the important parts.)
“Written things aren’t happening,” he told Ned, “but that… I don’t think that’s all Quiet. I can’t tell what sounds are normal and what sounds aren’t. The bus ride was loud- everyone was talking on top of each other, I don’t know what’s dead and what isn’t but that’s pretty normal, though.”
He shrugged his shoulders and kept his hands in his pockets as he strolled along, “the bus driver’s shadow moved… but it was still kind of light at that point so it makes sense that things wouldn’t be as bad. We’ll be able to tell more if the stars come out.”
If. Not when, like he wasn’t completely convinced they would come back at all. “I lost track of where we were after the sixth pickup. Overall, I’d say it wasn’t too bad though? Can you verify any of that stuff?”
Did that really happen?
Ned
Verification:
"Written things are still just that. Sounds are going to be a hard one without something visible to attribute it too so I'd not bother too much with that. Or get some headphones to block out everything so you can record what you are still hearing over the music to identify what isn't actually real. Buses are loud. People weren't talking, though. Except Mable and Marcy up front, gabbing about the winter fair coming up in a few weeks and their christmas decorations. And Janice. That bitch. Not sure why she was a bitch but they hate her guts."
Ned weaves around a mailbox. Not that it was in his way, but he seems to not want to travel a simple path. Or maybe give William' brain something to focus on that wasn't just a steady rhythm of his footsteps. Re-orienting through sudden movement, so that Ned remains a lodestone and not a background object.
"Wasn't long after sunset when we were coming in off the bus. Might be you caught a stray sunbeam fluttering over the driver's shadow. Or your senses aren't fully up to trustworthy yet. The fact you can identify shadows on objects and peoples is a good sign though. At least identifying markers between things you see and your brain's ability to identify them is solid."
Because looking at something and not being able to tell what it is, sounded absolutely terrifying.
"You hungry? Thirsty? Any pains or aches? Nausea? Pins and needles? Unknown pressures?"
William
And Janice. That bitch. Not sure why she was a bitch but they hate her guts.
“Janices are always a bitch, it’s the name. Names are a thing,” says the Hermetic.
He was on auto pilot, it would seem. Or at least he was at first. William booped along until he realized he was about to run into a mailbox and he stopped. Full stop, took a left, and went back to following where Ned was going. Weave through things, focus on what was there. It does take him a little bit, though. At one point William’s eyes narrowed and he took a slightly wider arc around an obstacle than Ned had.
William looked back at a place on the sidewalk, shook his head and moved on. A non issue for a different day.
“I could use some water, but I don’t need to puke or anything. I feel like something’s dragging on my coat and-“ he caught up to Ned and motioned for him to stop. If he did, he’d demonstrate placement on Ned. If not, he’d do so on himself. “Here?” he points to a space at the back of his skull, aimed upward “Hurts. I know I don’t have a hole in the back of my head, but it still feels like someone pulled a bullet out of my skull.”
A pause.
"Did I eat today?" No, Will, you did not eat today.
Ned
"No, Will, you didn't eat today." The echo of his own thoughts, reinforced by an external presence.
Ned stopped to regard Will's jacket, stopped to manage each little indicator that Will took in regard to whatever the Hermetic's perceptions were showing him. It wasn't good humoured, but calculated inspection. Ned was actively probing and sorting out the details of William's condition as much as he could from the outside. Analysis made for better understanding and understanding made for better recovery.
"Nothing there, mate. Could be a vertigo symptom kicking in. Equilibrium adjustment and weight distribution being off, making you put more head or shoulder weight further back then necessary. Body is compensating for what the senses are trying to actualize." Or something to that extent. Ned weaves back into the sidewalk after having danced around several other objects in their path; a young couple wandering home. A potter for a city tree, sparse and housing only a few leaves left, the broken down patio of a coffee house yet to put all of it's chairs and tables away.
"Here." Ned plucks a bottle from inside of his jacket. A nalgene effort with a litre's worth of space, it is half full, bright pink and clear through. Ned unscrews it, lifts it to his own lips and takes a sip before passing it to William. Affirmation that anything inside of the nalgene visible to the Hermetic is obviously not real.
"Brain's been through some trauma. Physical, that is. Hit your head pretty hard a few times during that tussle so it could just be residual...or you could be sporting an electromagnetic migraine. Or just a clapback from reality. Can get you some advil if we find an open store."
Ned is inspecting the distance, scanning for an open sign that might lead to a diner or some food of some sort.
"You tried doing any work since?
William
“That makes sense,” he says, “I haven’t been out in awhile. It’s not like I really move much.” Which was true. For the most part he didn’t flutter around or cause too many problems (though at one point he did follow a sound through the house, marked on the wall where it was and went to go retrieve something, only to either get distracted or dissociate and stop doing whatever it was that he was doing in the first place.
He takes the bottle and inspects it briefly before taking a pull. The taste is exactly what he was expecting, which seems to be something that wasn’t obviously vile or unpalatable, so he does take a few solid pulls before handing the bottle back.
“I have had a lot of concussions,” don’t sound like you’re bragging, dumbass, “so I must’ve really bounced around. At one point- anyway, it’s good to know that my brain tried to normalize what shit shape we must’ve been in.”
Has he done any work recently?
“Fuck no! My brain is a fucking Hellscape.”
William almost laughed, but the sound was less laughter and more a sudden knee jerk fear reaction that he’d tried to cover otherwise
Ned
"Huh. Suppose that makes sense." Ned sounded a little disappointed and didn't choose to cover that up with any attempted appeasement of morality. He simply put his hands deeper into his pockets and continued the pace down the street. He pauses once at a small coffee shop that had it's chairs up on table tops and a pretty young teenager for a waitress dusting down the counter top. She and Ned shared a pantomime conversation about whether they were already closed. Her response was a nervous smile and a head shake that he waved off with one hand and then motioned for Will to follow.
The Hermetic's behaviour might well have prompted a bit of an aura of avoidance. Either drug users on the lookout for a late night snack or potential troublemakers angling for a bit of fun at someone else's expense. Hipster gangsters or what?
"Well a lot of concussions does make for easier damage over time so we'll call that one part of the physical trauma for now. In the meantime, you should probably be practicing at least some sensory input if you're not gonna do any work. Resonance dives to pick up on the subtle and the nuance dividing the presence of something versus he actual object or person itself. It should help to re-orient your senses. Kind of like looking off an object that's unfocused for a second, to help your eyes adjust."
Ned had been careful not to work much since the incident. At least, not around his cabalmates. He didn't want to send either of them into flashback territory and had seemed a bit more protective than usual of their states of mind. Margot was an easy one to read but Will was new. Thus the walk tonight and analysis involved.
"We can do some exercises out in the fields beyond the house when we get back. That place still has a lot of conflicting presence to it that might be fucking with your senses and your ability to recover."
William
He’s had bad trips and been better behaved, if only because you know all the things you see in a trip will eventually go away. The assumption when you’re in William’s position is to not assume anything; don’t fall too far or else it will be registered as a solid shove in some direction or another. “Gah, I-“ he stops, starts, “I wish… there are ways that you can show people your memories, like actually show them, not just passing around surface thoughts. If I could do that and you were amenable, I would totally show you what happened.”
A quick stop because he seems to have realized what he was offering and how much of a Very Bad Idea it was.
“Actually, no. Nevermind. But! It is a thing that’s possible. Just FYI.”
It was off to the coffee shop area and he shot the waitress a grateful smile and a bit of a nod- friendly, yes, but he’s not quite all there. That much is obvious, and not in the sense that your drunk friend isn’t all there most of the time.
“It’s never been like this before. It’s- I’ve never just gone completely offline and had to be fished out of wherever I was. I figure though if we’re out in a field if shit hits the fan you can drag my ass back inside and throw me on the couch. It could be fun to try and perceive things when your perceptions already-“ he waves something off.
“Did you guys find anything else out since I’ve been gone?”
Ned
"Nope. I don't think anyone's done much trying of anything but isolation. Margot's got her own issues piling up and the Doc's still elsewhere. I'm not terribly well versed on the mysteries of the Universe and don't want to go poking about in the attic, figuratively speaking. Next thing you know-"
He explodes something in front of his chest, using his hands as a visual aid, crimping fingers and expanding them slowly outward in digit-inspired devastation.
"Right now the concept is to get back to normal so we can start working on being secure. I want to be secure and that means establishing some baseline for Wards and/or at least alarms against possible tampering with the house. We've had Spiritual Visitors, Marauder visitors and Nephandi fuck-with-us rituals hovering around and all our responses have been keyed to reaction. Prediction should be on the table-"
Ned pauses, eyes gliding to one side to take in William. He is just now remembering the state of the Hermetic and where his mind was. This particular road was probably not the most productive to be on.
"Have you experienced any improvements since you woke up? Beyond, you know, waking up to begin with."
William
There is a sound that one makes when they are trying to pick the right language. It is a mixture of vowels followed by frustration followed by something that only really can be described by people whose first language was not English- a category of people that William (surprisingly) fell into. After going through the catalogue of options, he settles with.
“Faaaaaaaaahk,” and a groan. They weren’t working on anything, hadn’t looked through anything, “we do not have the luxury of acting like things are, or will ever be, normal. We need to respond, not react. There is a difference.” Leave it to a Hermetic to do something that sounds like arguing semantics but, given the tone, seemed to mean any number of things. His attention fell outside at the window and attention looked to pin something out there.
“I talked to Margot about wards… I think. I don’t remember, I was out of it, but… I can show you how to do that if you don’t already know and we can find something we can all do that works.”
It would seem he tried to avoid the question of whether or not he was seeing any improvements beyond just waking up, or if there was any large difference in what was going on around him. William ran a hand through his hair before pushing it back into place. He’s lost some weight he probably couldn’t have afforded to lose; Mr. Holmes is more concerned with the fact that he needs a pony tail holder at the current juncture.
“Improvements?” You’re stalling (shut up, I know) “I know that this is real, and that some of the things I’m experiencing aren’t real. I know that the sun will come up, and despite the fact that I don’t see them, there are stars outside.”
“There’s something in the walls at home. I don’t know about that.”
Ned
"That might not be you."
Ned doesn't mince words. When he said he hadn't done anything to poke in the attic-
"I took some glances around the House, mostly around the Study itself. I don't have access to Spirit, which I think may have been the big one, but Mind and Forces both brought back something like ripples. Electromagnetic or Radio or something. The Thought-wave was alive with harmonies but nothing distinctively thought like. Kind of like echoes left behind. Might be an after-effect from the actual failure of the Ritual though. Would explain why I wasn't picking up anything prior to Halloween."
Ned doesn't seem phased or even worried that William is stalling, wandering on tangents or simply lost in thought. He seems focused on establishing something more concrete then just futzing around at home trying to learn better Work.
"We'll all need to sit down and discuss Wards. I'd like all the entry points on the House secured at least. If we can score some sort of renewable effort it'll get us all practice on a regular basis. It all also give us all a chance to actually start investigating how well we can work together." Because so far, the Cabal wan't very synchronized magically. Just traumatically.
William
[Manip+ sub: try not to sound like you're concerned as fuck]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
William
“Entry points are different on a spiritual level. Doors and windows, yeah, but you have to look at things as a whole. Someone does not need to come in the front door to make their presence known,” he tells Ned, “your first, and biggest concern is making sure that the house is warded against remote access and entry. I don’t know how to set up contingencies from a magickal standpoint; it would be the equivalent of adding an exception to the firewall.
“That’s your big entry/exit point. That’s just warding against meat coming in. Spirits are a different matter entirely, I talked to Margot about it- do you have any intention on learning anything about spirits? Ghosts? Extra planar beings?” sometimes he can seem very, very coherent. Sometimes it can be forgotten that William Holmes is actually fairly intelligent until moments like these pop up and he seems (is) thoroughly in an element in which he is comfortable.
“What I was trying to get at earlier is do it now and discuss permanent solutions to the ward problem later. Who was handling your security before?”
He paused.
“Did the ritual actually fail? Ulrich is back where he was supposed to be, right?” Conversational, cool, comfortable.
Ned
"Not much at the moment. There are other sections of the Puzzle that demand more attention right now." Ned's indicator of his Avatar is probably something he doesn't talk about often. He hasn't mentioned it much outside of the Cabal and anyone within the Cabal would probably only have heard about it through the secondary descriptions he often uses in jigsawing various Works together.
"We didn't have security before because we weren't doing much to warrant it." That sounded like a weak argument and Ned knew it. He pulled a face. "We weren't. Which explains a lot, really. I'm not as worried about Spiritual stuff as I am about the physical. If something gets through on a spiritual level that's a step above what half of us in this damn Cabal are capable of doing anything about. Shoring up our weak points, the ones we can allinteract with, minimizes the ingress' associated on our home. That gives us time and freedom to approach a more real solution to the Spiritual than just invisibility...which is likely our best response for the time being."
"Ulric...Dread-bringer...He's secure. The Ritual is..." Ned's trying to remember through a haze of bad memories. Like picking through a garden of thorns. "It's like a timer. The energies associated with it seemed to form not just a prison but a tampering effect. He pushes back and gets a dose of something distracting. Coupled with the actual prison restraints and it's going to take him a while to be cohesive enough to break it all down again. Margot suggested Halloween...and every one after that until we sort out what to do about him permanently."
Ned snaps his fingers gently. The sidewalk thumps under his heels. They'd passed mostly closed shops now and he seems to be angling them toward one of the main streets south, back the way they had first arrived.
"I've been digging around in the library's more mundane areas, trying to find some sources but nothing's really come up. I get the feeling that whatever they were doing, it couldn't have just been about getting rid of him or...they would have just gotten rid of him, yeah? Who the hell wants to trap and secure a Marauder? More importantly, why>?"
William
“Dealing with potentially very angry dead people has been a function of my life long enough that I kind of forget that it isn’t a part of everyone else’s,” he tells Ned, “so I will try not to give you too much shit about not understanding spirits and alternate planes and shit. Keep working on your corners and edges, it’ll all meet up in the end.”The indication that, yes, he could follow and understand and, yes, he was actually going to try and be good on his attempts to not give Ned shit about having other shit to do.
“I will totally talk to you about Manes et Spirituum if you’re ever interested, but I’ve got some very strong opinions and they will bog down conversation if we get into it. Your concern was wards, and doing something we can all do.” All the while William is counting footsteps. One, two, three, five, eight, thirteen and so on. “But yeah, I’m all about throwing something up briefly. Correspondence for teleportation. Matter for actual physical sturdiness so nothing breaks a window down, Ars Virium to make sure the house isn’t a goddamned inescapable tinderbox death trap. If we can’t nail down correspondence at least nail down Forces. That I know at least three of us can do, sure Sepúlveda can too… but I kind of wonder if the house is actually his problem anymore.”
The rest of the content had him thinking. It made the Hermetic fall quiet. Silent. It didn’t seem right and he didn’t seem interested in filling the silence with anything. For a moment William looked at something on the ground and attempted to grab Ned’s coat to steer him around it.
“We’ll understand the why better if we understand who he was and what made him into who he became. Infernalists love their rituals, and working in concert lets you take some of the load off and do something bigger than one or two people could dream. Halloween is a duh date for them… I tried to strip out whatever we could to not perpetuate some kind of ritual that is going to leave us scarred.
“What if we looked back across the timeline to see what was there?”
Ned
"Well let's put a stall on that until you're in a state of mind that's capable of...well surviving on your own outside of four very familiar walls."
Ned's attention drifts across the landscape of the small county. Aurora had it's charms but small town living was not something Ned was comfortable with. At least as far as Aurora could be identified as a small town. He strays to the curb side for the novelty of a lack of traffic and drifts under street lamps knowing there isn't a policeman waiting nearby to scope him out. At least not regularly.
"The Doc is on his own budget and time. He's around when we call but not necessarily all the time. People that old tend to want to avoid people our age. It makes them wish for the good ole days of nostalgia, 8 tracks and casual sex without the STIs."
Ned slows his walking a bit, consideration a heavy thing in his knit brow.
"Wards are a good first step. Figuring out how to defend ourselves should have been priority ages ago but...well so was keeping sane and put together and look how well that turned out. We're going to be a constant work in progress but that doesn't mean we can't accomplish some things. Forces and Matter should be easy. Mind is a different story. Spirit you two can handle but ultimately I'd like some level of 'off the radar' that I doubt we're going to get from anything but Prime. Not appearing as anything more than a run down home or house to the Aware, should be a first line of defense really."
William
"Do you guys call Sepúlveda for things that aren't I'm in horrific trouble? He's right there, and he actually shows up when you ask him to; you've got a sweet mentor gig."
He continued along his way, content to meander and kept his gait even. He was avoiding looking at the sky of the stars (or lack thereof, oh god they're supposed to be back now, right?) This left William with the option of either looking at the ground or looking at Ned- the latter being what he finally decided on instead of being concerned about what was in front of him.
"Self-defense isn't something you need to just think magick about. You've been doing that- you are constantly learning and trying to expand what you see in front of you and around you. You're chipping away at the whole unknown category. If you want, we can get up and you can give me supervised yard time," with a grin, "I need a running partner and you look like you don't tire out."
"Also? Eeryone and everything is a constant work in progress. Anyone who says otherwise is a fucking idiot... you can make the house literally invisible, or you can make it beneath someone's notice. One is done with Forces and the other can be done with Mind. Your best bet is to do both... and there is no way in Hell I am living in a place that is run down and abandoned-looking. No no no, I come from contractors, we don't do that."
Ned
"I've got the physical element down for the most part. At least as far as non-military discipline levels of physicality go anyway. But when you've got opponents who can warp reality, seal you in a carbonite chamber or petrify you with a glance there's on so far your physical self will go. Supplementing combative efforts with Work-" Because Ned was in a similar boat as Andres, when it comes to referring to anything they did as 'Magic(k)'. "-was the obvious next step. Beyond that though, we're into Wizarding 101 levels of stuff and that's about where I want off the ride. Mostly because I've seen what it's done to you lot and the the Doc on several occasions."
So far, Ned's been the only one in the Cabal to have avoided any heavy backlashes. He's stable and he's safe in a lot of his practices. Which of course, might be part of the issue but then Ned probably also knows that already.
"For the most part, securing ourselves is the best option. Until we're done with that, there's not really going to be any chance to gain ground elsewhere because we'll be constantly looking over our shoulders."
Ned snaps his fingers and adjusts his jacket right afterward.
"Veto on the contracting deal though. We're not altering or touching or changing anything in that damned house until we're sure it won't set off the Marauder hiding in the fucking walls. It's gotta stay as is for the moment. I really don't want to discover Baba Yaga in the water closet on the second floor or the pop hole in the basement is a growing vat for the Golgathan or something."
Ned shrugs and grins.
"But yeah. We can knock you into shape while you're recovering. That and planning out what to do seems like the best road right now."
William
"We all know the risks of Working, and we do it anyway because the potential for doing good outweighs the consequence. I will end up in Quiet again, hopefully not worse than this but I know it's going to happen. I'm going to keep doing this shit anyway."
But, he is content to bop along and listen to Ned, going through his spiels and his references and William, for his part, only offers this:
"Wuuuuuuuusssssss," with a grin, obviously playful, "c'mon, let's bail. I need to go home- your shadow is starting to kinda freak me out."
[Quick check, how coherent are we? Willpower!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Ned
The Evening is approaching.
It might seem ominous in a lot of circumstances but for these two, there is a pleasant level of calm about it all. Wide open spaces were something that made the world less claustrophobic and despite how comforting the House could be, it was also home to no few potential threats and dangers. Ned had needed to get out and away from the books and the studying for a while. He had also needed to test the boundaries of Will's recent return to their landscape of reality. Or version of it, anyway.
So he had donned a long jacket, the sort you might find on a captain sailing out to sea in search of a Kraken to kill. Or at least, drunk in some tavern bragging about how he was going to do it. His pants are tight, khakis rolled to the mid-shin with tall argyle socks and a pair of new black converse. He sports a hoodie beneath it all. Simply black, nothing extravagant. The chill in the air has abated some, allowing for something more casual.
They had opted to make their way into town, a simple half hour drive by way of a county bus that took an hour or so getting to their stop, which was a solid 20 minutes out from the house itself by way of foot, making the total travel time somewhere in excess of an hour and a half. The whole way, Ned was pondering. A mouthful of words at best shared with the mostly Lucid Hermetic.
It's only as they step into the quaint, settling down dimensions of Aurora, blending in with the societal norms as best they can, that Ned seems to animate a bit. His eyes take in the sights and the sounds of civilization and he sucks in a deeper breath than his lungs would normally reach for. A faint smile touches his lips, hands tucked into his jacket pockets and he sweeps out onto a sidewalk lined with stores that are closed, closing or in their 'midnight' hours with the approach of prime time television viewing.
"So how was that?" Ned would turn to glance at his cabalmate, hands still in pockets. "The trip here, that is. Perceptions ok? Any detachment occur? Hallucinations?"
William
Everywhere that William went in the house, lucid or not, he kept the lights on right now. Kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, dining room- you could tell what his thought process was should someone follow behind and turn off the trail of wasted electricity in his wake. Sometimes, he’d share a few words here and there. They were usually in English, but one could easily get the impression that it was a bit of a task to parse through information and pull up the right words in the right language for the person (or not person) he was talking to.
William had wanted to go out. He’d asked for some kind of chaperone and needed no real explanation of being stir crazy and eager to get out of the house- though occasionally one could swear that he wasn’t the only one hearing something in the walls there.
Clothing was comfortable and presentable and geared towards weathering the cold. He dressed warmer than a native of the area. But, true to form, he dressed like a damned hipster complete with button up shirt and vest (because, seriously, you need a place to put a pocketwatch and he had just managed to clean most of the blood off the important parts.)
“Written things aren’t happening,” he told Ned, “but that… I don’t think that’s all Quiet. I can’t tell what sounds are normal and what sounds aren’t. The bus ride was loud- everyone was talking on top of each other, I don’t know what’s dead and what isn’t but that’s pretty normal, though.”
He shrugged his shoulders and kept his hands in his pockets as he strolled along, “the bus driver’s shadow moved… but it was still kind of light at that point so it makes sense that things wouldn’t be as bad. We’ll be able to tell more if the stars come out.”
If. Not when, like he wasn’t completely convinced they would come back at all. “I lost track of where we were after the sixth pickup. Overall, I’d say it wasn’t too bad though? Can you verify any of that stuff?”
Did that really happen?
Ned
Verification:
"Written things are still just that. Sounds are going to be a hard one without something visible to attribute it too so I'd not bother too much with that. Or get some headphones to block out everything so you can record what you are still hearing over the music to identify what isn't actually real. Buses are loud. People weren't talking, though. Except Mable and Marcy up front, gabbing about the winter fair coming up in a few weeks and their christmas decorations. And Janice. That bitch. Not sure why she was a bitch but they hate her guts."
Ned weaves around a mailbox. Not that it was in his way, but he seems to not want to travel a simple path. Or maybe give William' brain something to focus on that wasn't just a steady rhythm of his footsteps. Re-orienting through sudden movement, so that Ned remains a lodestone and not a background object.
"Wasn't long after sunset when we were coming in off the bus. Might be you caught a stray sunbeam fluttering over the driver's shadow. Or your senses aren't fully up to trustworthy yet. The fact you can identify shadows on objects and peoples is a good sign though. At least identifying markers between things you see and your brain's ability to identify them is solid."
Because looking at something and not being able to tell what it is, sounded absolutely terrifying.
"You hungry? Thirsty? Any pains or aches? Nausea? Pins and needles? Unknown pressures?"
William
And Janice. That bitch. Not sure why she was a bitch but they hate her guts.
“Janices are always a bitch, it’s the name. Names are a thing,” says the Hermetic.
He was on auto pilot, it would seem. Or at least he was at first. William booped along until he realized he was about to run into a mailbox and he stopped. Full stop, took a left, and went back to following where Ned was going. Weave through things, focus on what was there. It does take him a little bit, though. At one point William’s eyes narrowed and he took a slightly wider arc around an obstacle than Ned had.
William looked back at a place on the sidewalk, shook his head and moved on. A non issue for a different day.
“I could use some water, but I don’t need to puke or anything. I feel like something’s dragging on my coat and-“ he caught up to Ned and motioned for him to stop. If he did, he’d demonstrate placement on Ned. If not, he’d do so on himself. “Here?” he points to a space at the back of his skull, aimed upward “Hurts. I know I don’t have a hole in the back of my head, but it still feels like someone pulled a bullet out of my skull.”
A pause.
"Did I eat today?" No, Will, you did not eat today.
Ned
"No, Will, you didn't eat today." The echo of his own thoughts, reinforced by an external presence.
Ned stopped to regard Will's jacket, stopped to manage each little indicator that Will took in regard to whatever the Hermetic's perceptions were showing him. It wasn't good humoured, but calculated inspection. Ned was actively probing and sorting out the details of William's condition as much as he could from the outside. Analysis made for better understanding and understanding made for better recovery.
"Nothing there, mate. Could be a vertigo symptom kicking in. Equilibrium adjustment and weight distribution being off, making you put more head or shoulder weight further back then necessary. Body is compensating for what the senses are trying to actualize." Or something to that extent. Ned weaves back into the sidewalk after having danced around several other objects in their path; a young couple wandering home. A potter for a city tree, sparse and housing only a few leaves left, the broken down patio of a coffee house yet to put all of it's chairs and tables away.
"Here." Ned plucks a bottle from inside of his jacket. A nalgene effort with a litre's worth of space, it is half full, bright pink and clear through. Ned unscrews it, lifts it to his own lips and takes a sip before passing it to William. Affirmation that anything inside of the nalgene visible to the Hermetic is obviously not real.
"Brain's been through some trauma. Physical, that is. Hit your head pretty hard a few times during that tussle so it could just be residual...or you could be sporting an electromagnetic migraine. Or just a clapback from reality. Can get you some advil if we find an open store."
Ned is inspecting the distance, scanning for an open sign that might lead to a diner or some food of some sort.
"You tried doing any work since?
William
“That makes sense,” he says, “I haven’t been out in awhile. It’s not like I really move much.” Which was true. For the most part he didn’t flutter around or cause too many problems (though at one point he did follow a sound through the house, marked on the wall where it was and went to go retrieve something, only to either get distracted or dissociate and stop doing whatever it was that he was doing in the first place.
He takes the bottle and inspects it briefly before taking a pull. The taste is exactly what he was expecting, which seems to be something that wasn’t obviously vile or unpalatable, so he does take a few solid pulls before handing the bottle back.
“I have had a lot of concussions,” don’t sound like you’re bragging, dumbass, “so I must’ve really bounced around. At one point- anyway, it’s good to know that my brain tried to normalize what shit shape we must’ve been in.”
Has he done any work recently?
“Fuck no! My brain is a fucking Hellscape.”
William almost laughed, but the sound was less laughter and more a sudden knee jerk fear reaction that he’d tried to cover otherwise
Ned
"Huh. Suppose that makes sense." Ned sounded a little disappointed and didn't choose to cover that up with any attempted appeasement of morality. He simply put his hands deeper into his pockets and continued the pace down the street. He pauses once at a small coffee shop that had it's chairs up on table tops and a pretty young teenager for a waitress dusting down the counter top. She and Ned shared a pantomime conversation about whether they were already closed. Her response was a nervous smile and a head shake that he waved off with one hand and then motioned for Will to follow.
The Hermetic's behaviour might well have prompted a bit of an aura of avoidance. Either drug users on the lookout for a late night snack or potential troublemakers angling for a bit of fun at someone else's expense. Hipster gangsters or what?
"Well a lot of concussions does make for easier damage over time so we'll call that one part of the physical trauma for now. In the meantime, you should probably be practicing at least some sensory input if you're not gonna do any work. Resonance dives to pick up on the subtle and the nuance dividing the presence of something versus he actual object or person itself. It should help to re-orient your senses. Kind of like looking off an object that's unfocused for a second, to help your eyes adjust."
Ned had been careful not to work much since the incident. At least, not around his cabalmates. He didn't want to send either of them into flashback territory and had seemed a bit more protective than usual of their states of mind. Margot was an easy one to read but Will was new. Thus the walk tonight and analysis involved.
"We can do some exercises out in the fields beyond the house when we get back. That place still has a lot of conflicting presence to it that might be fucking with your senses and your ability to recover."
William
He’s had bad trips and been better behaved, if only because you know all the things you see in a trip will eventually go away. The assumption when you’re in William’s position is to not assume anything; don’t fall too far or else it will be registered as a solid shove in some direction or another. “Gah, I-“ he stops, starts, “I wish… there are ways that you can show people your memories, like actually show them, not just passing around surface thoughts. If I could do that and you were amenable, I would totally show you what happened.”
A quick stop because he seems to have realized what he was offering and how much of a Very Bad Idea it was.
“Actually, no. Nevermind. But! It is a thing that’s possible. Just FYI.”
It was off to the coffee shop area and he shot the waitress a grateful smile and a bit of a nod- friendly, yes, but he’s not quite all there. That much is obvious, and not in the sense that your drunk friend isn’t all there most of the time.
“It’s never been like this before. It’s- I’ve never just gone completely offline and had to be fished out of wherever I was. I figure though if we’re out in a field if shit hits the fan you can drag my ass back inside and throw me on the couch. It could be fun to try and perceive things when your perceptions already-“ he waves something off.
“Did you guys find anything else out since I’ve been gone?”
Ned
"Nope. I don't think anyone's done much trying of anything but isolation. Margot's got her own issues piling up and the Doc's still elsewhere. I'm not terribly well versed on the mysteries of the Universe and don't want to go poking about in the attic, figuratively speaking. Next thing you know-"
He explodes something in front of his chest, using his hands as a visual aid, crimping fingers and expanding them slowly outward in digit-inspired devastation.
"Right now the concept is to get back to normal so we can start working on being secure. I want to be secure and that means establishing some baseline for Wards and/or at least alarms against possible tampering with the house. We've had Spiritual Visitors, Marauder visitors and Nephandi fuck-with-us rituals hovering around and all our responses have been keyed to reaction. Prediction should be on the table-"
Ned pauses, eyes gliding to one side to take in William. He is just now remembering the state of the Hermetic and where his mind was. This particular road was probably not the most productive to be on.
"Have you experienced any improvements since you woke up? Beyond, you know, waking up to begin with."
William
There is a sound that one makes when they are trying to pick the right language. It is a mixture of vowels followed by frustration followed by something that only really can be described by people whose first language was not English- a category of people that William (surprisingly) fell into. After going through the catalogue of options, he settles with.
“Faaaaaaaaahk,” and a groan. They weren’t working on anything, hadn’t looked through anything, “we do not have the luxury of acting like things are, or will ever be, normal. We need to respond, not react. There is a difference.” Leave it to a Hermetic to do something that sounds like arguing semantics but, given the tone, seemed to mean any number of things. His attention fell outside at the window and attention looked to pin something out there.
“I talked to Margot about wards… I think. I don’t remember, I was out of it, but… I can show you how to do that if you don’t already know and we can find something we can all do that works.”
It would seem he tried to avoid the question of whether or not he was seeing any improvements beyond just waking up, or if there was any large difference in what was going on around him. William ran a hand through his hair before pushing it back into place. He’s lost some weight he probably couldn’t have afforded to lose; Mr. Holmes is more concerned with the fact that he needs a pony tail holder at the current juncture.
“Improvements?” You’re stalling (shut up, I know) “I know that this is real, and that some of the things I’m experiencing aren’t real. I know that the sun will come up, and despite the fact that I don’t see them, there are stars outside.”
“There’s something in the walls at home. I don’t know about that.”
Ned
"That might not be you."
Ned doesn't mince words. When he said he hadn't done anything to poke in the attic-
"I took some glances around the House, mostly around the Study itself. I don't have access to Spirit, which I think may have been the big one, but Mind and Forces both brought back something like ripples. Electromagnetic or Radio or something. The Thought-wave was alive with harmonies but nothing distinctively thought like. Kind of like echoes left behind. Might be an after-effect from the actual failure of the Ritual though. Would explain why I wasn't picking up anything prior to Halloween."
Ned doesn't seem phased or even worried that William is stalling, wandering on tangents or simply lost in thought. He seems focused on establishing something more concrete then just futzing around at home trying to learn better Work.
"We'll all need to sit down and discuss Wards. I'd like all the entry points on the House secured at least. If we can score some sort of renewable effort it'll get us all practice on a regular basis. It all also give us all a chance to actually start investigating how well we can work together." Because so far, the Cabal wan't very synchronized magically. Just traumatically.
William
[Manip+ sub: try not to sound like you're concerned as fuck]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
William
“Entry points are different on a spiritual level. Doors and windows, yeah, but you have to look at things as a whole. Someone does not need to come in the front door to make their presence known,” he tells Ned, “your first, and biggest concern is making sure that the house is warded against remote access and entry. I don’t know how to set up contingencies from a magickal standpoint; it would be the equivalent of adding an exception to the firewall.
“That’s your big entry/exit point. That’s just warding against meat coming in. Spirits are a different matter entirely, I talked to Margot about it- do you have any intention on learning anything about spirits? Ghosts? Extra planar beings?” sometimes he can seem very, very coherent. Sometimes it can be forgotten that William Holmes is actually fairly intelligent until moments like these pop up and he seems (is) thoroughly in an element in which he is comfortable.
“What I was trying to get at earlier is do it now and discuss permanent solutions to the ward problem later. Who was handling your security before?”
He paused.
“Did the ritual actually fail? Ulrich is back where he was supposed to be, right?” Conversational, cool, comfortable.
Ned
"Not much at the moment. There are other sections of the Puzzle that demand more attention right now." Ned's indicator of his Avatar is probably something he doesn't talk about often. He hasn't mentioned it much outside of the Cabal and anyone within the Cabal would probably only have heard about it through the secondary descriptions he often uses in jigsawing various Works together.
"We didn't have security before because we weren't doing much to warrant it." That sounded like a weak argument and Ned knew it. He pulled a face. "We weren't. Which explains a lot, really. I'm not as worried about Spiritual stuff as I am about the physical. If something gets through on a spiritual level that's a step above what half of us in this damn Cabal are capable of doing anything about. Shoring up our weak points, the ones we can allinteract with, minimizes the ingress' associated on our home. That gives us time and freedom to approach a more real solution to the Spiritual than just invisibility...which is likely our best response for the time being."
"Ulric...Dread-bringer...He's secure. The Ritual is..." Ned's trying to remember through a haze of bad memories. Like picking through a garden of thorns. "It's like a timer. The energies associated with it seemed to form not just a prison but a tampering effect. He pushes back and gets a dose of something distracting. Coupled with the actual prison restraints and it's going to take him a while to be cohesive enough to break it all down again. Margot suggested Halloween...and every one after that until we sort out what to do about him permanently."
Ned snaps his fingers gently. The sidewalk thumps under his heels. They'd passed mostly closed shops now and he seems to be angling them toward one of the main streets south, back the way they had first arrived.
"I've been digging around in the library's more mundane areas, trying to find some sources but nothing's really come up. I get the feeling that whatever they were doing, it couldn't have just been about getting rid of him or...they would have just gotten rid of him, yeah? Who the hell wants to trap and secure a Marauder? More importantly, why>?"
William
“Dealing with potentially very angry dead people has been a function of my life long enough that I kind of forget that it isn’t a part of everyone else’s,” he tells Ned, “so I will try not to give you too much shit about not understanding spirits and alternate planes and shit. Keep working on your corners and edges, it’ll all meet up in the end.”The indication that, yes, he could follow and understand and, yes, he was actually going to try and be good on his attempts to not give Ned shit about having other shit to do.
“I will totally talk to you about Manes et Spirituum if you’re ever interested, but I’ve got some very strong opinions and they will bog down conversation if we get into it. Your concern was wards, and doing something we can all do.” All the while William is counting footsteps. One, two, three, five, eight, thirteen and so on. “But yeah, I’m all about throwing something up briefly. Correspondence for teleportation. Matter for actual physical sturdiness so nothing breaks a window down, Ars Virium to make sure the house isn’t a goddamned inescapable tinderbox death trap. If we can’t nail down correspondence at least nail down Forces. That I know at least three of us can do, sure Sepúlveda can too… but I kind of wonder if the house is actually his problem anymore.”
The rest of the content had him thinking. It made the Hermetic fall quiet. Silent. It didn’t seem right and he didn’t seem interested in filling the silence with anything. For a moment William looked at something on the ground and attempted to grab Ned’s coat to steer him around it.
“We’ll understand the why better if we understand who he was and what made him into who he became. Infernalists love their rituals, and working in concert lets you take some of the load off and do something bigger than one or two people could dream. Halloween is a duh date for them… I tried to strip out whatever we could to not perpetuate some kind of ritual that is going to leave us scarred.
“What if we looked back across the timeline to see what was there?”
Ned
"Well let's put a stall on that until you're in a state of mind that's capable of...well surviving on your own outside of four very familiar walls."
Ned's attention drifts across the landscape of the small county. Aurora had it's charms but small town living was not something Ned was comfortable with. At least as far as Aurora could be identified as a small town. He strays to the curb side for the novelty of a lack of traffic and drifts under street lamps knowing there isn't a policeman waiting nearby to scope him out. At least not regularly.
"The Doc is on his own budget and time. He's around when we call but not necessarily all the time. People that old tend to want to avoid people our age. It makes them wish for the good ole days of nostalgia, 8 tracks and casual sex without the STIs."
Ned slows his walking a bit, consideration a heavy thing in his knit brow.
"Wards are a good first step. Figuring out how to defend ourselves should have been priority ages ago but...well so was keeping sane and put together and look how well that turned out. We're going to be a constant work in progress but that doesn't mean we can't accomplish some things. Forces and Matter should be easy. Mind is a different story. Spirit you two can handle but ultimately I'd like some level of 'off the radar' that I doubt we're going to get from anything but Prime. Not appearing as anything more than a run down home or house to the Aware, should be a first line of defense really."
William
"Do you guys call Sepúlveda for things that aren't I'm in horrific trouble? He's right there, and he actually shows up when you ask him to; you've got a sweet mentor gig."
He continued along his way, content to meander and kept his gait even. He was avoiding looking at the sky of the stars (or lack thereof, oh god they're supposed to be back now, right?) This left William with the option of either looking at the ground or looking at Ned- the latter being what he finally decided on instead of being concerned about what was in front of him.
"Self-defense isn't something you need to just think magick about. You've been doing that- you are constantly learning and trying to expand what you see in front of you and around you. You're chipping away at the whole unknown category. If you want, we can get up and you can give me supervised yard time," with a grin, "I need a running partner and you look like you don't tire out."
"Also? Eeryone and everything is a constant work in progress. Anyone who says otherwise is a fucking idiot... you can make the house literally invisible, or you can make it beneath someone's notice. One is done with Forces and the other can be done with Mind. Your best bet is to do both... and there is no way in Hell I am living in a place that is run down and abandoned-looking. No no no, I come from contractors, we don't do that."
Ned
"I've got the physical element down for the most part. At least as far as non-military discipline levels of physicality go anyway. But when you've got opponents who can warp reality, seal you in a carbonite chamber or petrify you with a glance there's on so far your physical self will go. Supplementing combative efforts with Work-" Because Ned was in a similar boat as Andres, when it comes to referring to anything they did as 'Magic(k)'. "-was the obvious next step. Beyond that though, we're into Wizarding 101 levels of stuff and that's about where I want off the ride. Mostly because I've seen what it's done to you lot and the the Doc on several occasions."
So far, Ned's been the only one in the Cabal to have avoided any heavy backlashes. He's stable and he's safe in a lot of his practices. Which of course, might be part of the issue but then Ned probably also knows that already.
"For the most part, securing ourselves is the best option. Until we're done with that, there's not really going to be any chance to gain ground elsewhere because we'll be constantly looking over our shoulders."
Ned snaps his fingers and adjusts his jacket right afterward.
"Veto on the contracting deal though. We're not altering or touching or changing anything in that damned house until we're sure it won't set off the Marauder hiding in the fucking walls. It's gotta stay as is for the moment. I really don't want to discover Baba Yaga in the water closet on the second floor or the pop hole in the basement is a growing vat for the Golgathan or something."
Ned shrugs and grins.
"But yeah. We can knock you into shape while you're recovering. That and planning out what to do seems like the best road right now."
William
"We all know the risks of Working, and we do it anyway because the potential for doing good outweighs the consequence. I will end up in Quiet again, hopefully not worse than this but I know it's going to happen. I'm going to keep doing this shit anyway."
But, he is content to bop along and listen to Ned, going through his spiels and his references and William, for his part, only offers this:
"Wuuuuuuuusssssss," with a grin, obviously playful, "c'mon, let's bail. I need to go home- your shadow is starting to kinda freak me out."
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Exit, stage left (Mindscape)
Michael
When he wakes up, he cannot tell if it is the same cot. The mattress beneath him is dry, and also when he pulls away from it and sits up, his cheek and hair tack and crisp with the dried blood that must have blown out of his face earlier.
It isn't his blood. He knows that. Any Hermetic worth their salt, with apprentice knowledge of the Ars Vitae, would know that it is not their own blood. The mattress has a patina of rust on it. The floor beneath the cot, and his feet when they connect, is concrete. The air is dank and cold.
A basement?
Nothing of note in the room, aside from the rancid mattress and the rickety cot frame. A small set of steps, also concrete, lead up to the only door in the place. Bits of old garlic husks and dried onion skins litter the corners, along with mouse droppings and scuff marks. But nothing else to tell him where he is or what is going to happen next.
He is not alone. In the room, sure, he's alone in the room. But not in the house.
William
He sits up and his cheek and hair feel… off. William does a quick check to feel the back of his head, half expecting there to be a hole the size of a finger where he remembered metal being pressed to the back of his head. William remembered the feeling, but not the aftermath. He should be dead; he isn’t dead. He should have been dead five times over but, again, William Holmes is not dead.
He places his hand to the wall and does a quick walk of the perimeter- how many steps to each wall? Twenty two and a half inches per step. He is making a map (he is wasting time.) William isn’t alone here; it is an immutable fact. Were he to stay in this room, there would be no exit plausible. Many of his problems could have been solved by the mere ability to not be where he is- either by magick or otherwise. He’s not a mind reader, though- nor does he possess any kind of miraculous fortune telling ability beyond that of people who experience misfortune. Captain Hindsight, this one. It’s what trauma does- makes you scrutinize every detail and wail about how you didn’t see the signs regardless of what should have rationally been expected as an outcome.
All that was just background noise, and had seasoned what his next action would be. There were no exits save for the obvious one, so carefully, quietly, the young man made his way up the stairs to the door. He would exit if the door would give. If not? Well, now, won’t that be fun.
Michael
The door is not locked.
When Will opens it, the hinges whine just a little bit. No more than the hinges in a typical American home tend to whine. Basement usage varies from person to person, as does upkeep and maintenance. This house appears to fall in the category of Average. An Average American Home.
Will opens the door. He comes to stand in a mudroom. At least, it looks like a mudroom. On either side of him are four closets, two on each side. Ahead are two utility sinks, back-to-back, with storage to the left and what appears to be a water closet and another walk-in closet beside that. Two walk-in closets and a doorway on the far wall.
The house looks normal. Looks. Something is hanging in the air, an atmosphere he can almost reach out and touch but he maybe doesn't want to.
Someone is upstairs, or else the wind is blowing with a fury tonight.
William
He familiarized himself with the area quickly. Two closets. Two sinks, and a bathroom. He headed to the utility sinks first, reaching to turn on the water before thinking better of it. After taking a quick check of his hands and deciding they were clean enough (after wiping them off on his pants), he headed to the bathroom to get a look at himself and to, hopefully, get the blood out of his hair.
William acknowledged his own desire to leave, it was made present the minute he woke up in an unfamiliar basement- understandable. He did, however, have the presence of mind to realize that he can’t wander out of a house with blood on his face and without anything that would help him to get from point A to point B. Will didn’t have a point B because he didn’t know where the Hell point A even was.
If he could, he washed up as quickly as he could. No need to turn the water on longer than necessary- just long enough to get shit off his face and abandon ship. The contents of the closets were not ignored, and instead he went to look for something that might either protect him from what’s upstairs or help him when he goes outside.
And a flashlight. You can never go wrong with a flashlight- if it’s heavy enough it kills two birds with one stone. Or, you know, knocks said bird unconscious so you can run away screaming.
Michael
The closets are either just there for decoration, or some sinister force is preventing him from opening them.
Much like the empty room full of sunlight and windows he could not open earlier, nothing he does has any effect on the closet doors. He can rattle them until his arms begin to ache, he can kick them hard enough to shoot pain up into his knee and hip, he can scream obscenities at them. But nothing will open the things.
Which leaves the open doorway leading into the hallway, glowing with soft 60-watt light. Across from it is the darkened master bedroom.
As he turns to leave the room, the toilet in the unseen water closet gives a gurgle almost as a way-belated afterthought, churning down the last of something that ought to have been flushed away long before Will came upstairs.
William
Unlike the panic-inducing doors and windows from his last adventure, William seems content to leave these be. They won’t open, so they get to stay decorative. Something is in the house, and he can’t shake that feeling. He drew a long, slow breath before forcing it out again. There wasn’t enough evidence to indicate that there was danger there (though some parts of his brain want to scream that there is always danger so you need to be ready and prepared for it.)
He know that he had to stay quiet, and his intention was very much to be quiet when he steps into the gently lit hallway. Typical American household. He pays attention to whatever may be on the walls, looking for any indication that would give a hint as to his location, and he counts steps. One, two, three- trying to measure how long the hallway was. The sound of the water closet snapped his attention (and his body) back in that direction.
“…”
He hadn’t flushed the toilet, or done anything of the sort. The toilet gave no indication that anything had happened while he was in there. Will barely washed his hands while he was there. His back was to the master suite for a good ten seconds before he turned back around.
William pressed his back against the wall and crept towards the dark room. I should close that door.
William
But then he gets there and realizes that there was no door. "...shit."
and is now standing in front of a giant dark room.
Michael
Physical spaces do not engage in physiological responses. Hardwood and plaster and copper wiring have no need for the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. That is a human need.
Everyone in the audience will have to forgive Will if he gets the impression that the dark room, full of vague furniture shapes and light-consuming curtains and possibly a potted plant possibly a lurking emaciated humanoid creature, is drawing a deep breath.
And then letting it out as it waits to see what he is going to do.
William
William, still pressed to the wall, moved along the wall and patted around for some indication that there was a lightswitch nearby. He only moved away from the wall long enough to press himself to the next one. Something is here, he thinks, can’t pin the exact shape down but knows sure as the sun (the one that refuses to shine) that there is something in there with him.
His breathing stays shallow, slow, and he hopes that maybe whatever is in the room with him didn’t notice him cursing outside.
Michael
The wall is cold beneath his searching palm, cold from disuse and darkness rather than the cranking of air conditioning. In point of fact, no air moves through the place at all.
Other than the darkened room before him as it takes another deep, patient breath.
Something is just outside his periphery, taking advantage of the fact that he is pressed against the wall and seeking out a source of light. It nestles up nice and close so that when it speaks, deep and velvety and sharp, it is right in his ear:
"Don't go in there."
William
He doesn’t make a sound. Instead of gasping he just forgets to breathe entirely, body goes stiff and his hand still rests on the wall and that cold, cold room- unused and silent- breathes and waits for him as though it is expectant. Perhaps it is waiting for guests, wonders if it should put on tea or a record or light a fire. No, no fire- the room seems to like it cold.
“Where should I go instead?” he whispers, forces his voice to stay solid. His fear is real, but it isn’t crippling. Just… insistent.
William moves his arm in the direction of the sound, but doesn’t turn. Doesn’t give the room in front of him any indication that he is taking his eyes off of it (Don’t try anything funny.)
Michael
This place is not interested in either his well-being or his continued survival.
He's already survived something that would have killed him in any other instance. He can reason it away however he wants, but the fact remains that he's not in a place that has to follow any particular laws.
The room keeps breathing. He can almost hear the thing in his ear grinning.
Then a voice that ought to be familiar to him by now rings out in the corridor upstairs.
"Will?" A pause. "William, are you in here?"
William
There is a familiar voice upstairs in a corridor, and he doesn’t call back to that voice. Against his better judgment, the young man tries to make his way across the room along the wall in hopes of finding some other entrance that he could use- something that would lead him to some place that had a path to the front door or a window or-
He takes his eyes off what he thinks might be a human-ish figure in time to try and find an exit. The thing in his ear was grinning, and the desire to leave and not give away his trail was important. Run until despair creps in.
Run into you realize running killed you once. Might not come back a third time.
Michael
In moving down the hallway, he has to slide past another darkened entryway. That space must belong to the guest suite, or full bathrooms. Both, if he were to allow himself the time and the lost sanity to go into the darkness and investigate.
Michael, tenuously present due to the combined powers of Correspondence and Mind, steps out of the shadows and peers down over the balcony on one side, then the other, and then finally over the side where Will is creeping along.
"Will," he calls down. The Chakravat has no idea what transpired in the previous episode of the Hermetic's Mindscape. That's between Will and his Avatar. "Stay there, this place isn't--"
If Will lets him get that far, they're in good shape. This ST doesn't think he will.
William
The ST was, in fact, correct. William does not let Mike get that far and tempts the programming in this particular realm. He looks up towards the sound of the voice and concludes he maybe has a little while before he either gets shot or dragged down to the basement (Whose blood is this?)
He foregoes the comfort of being able to have one side of his body covered in favor of gaining speed when he made a break for the guest room. (Please let there be light, please let there be light-) He if makes it, he shuts the door behind him.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck why is he here?”
Michael
It isn't often that Michael raises his voice. According to apocrypha, the man never panics either. He doesn't experience emotion the way other Adepts do because he's a honed blade, a clean and oiled sniper rifle.
When Michael raises his voice this time, it's with the hope of catching Will before he runs off.
"Will, wait!"
Which, of course, he doesn't. Michael doesn't swear, but he does move quickly down the spiral staircase. The Hermetic can hear the man's rapid footsteps descending right before he slams the door.
He's in a pitch black, abattoir cool room. The predominant scent in the room is ozone. That unsettling sense of nothing.
Why is he here.
Something behind him slithers, then slides, then shivers with pleasure.
There is no light.
William
There issomenothing in here with him.
The man outside doesn’t panic and doesn’t experience emotions in the way others do. He is very good at what he does, and the information William has is what he had once observed and the stories he’d heard from Grace. Grace, who thinks the world of the man, but does not do much to portray her beloved as anything other than inhuman efficiency in a humane suit. William knows him to be devoted and likable; it’s a hard mixture and he can’t reconcile the two.
What he has in front of him is lifetimes of knowing. There is Nothing there, but there is something and it slithered behind him and even if it didn’t touch him William could feel it on his skin breathe the ozone into his lungs and ruminate in pitch black. What he says next is for the ears of the universe alone, insists and repeats some poem that only makes sense in Enochian-
Nothing.
William moves back to try and find the door again. He didn’t lock it, he should be able to walk out, right? He hasn’t encountered many doors that lock from the outside. (He’s encountered enough doors that lock from the outside that it isn’t outside the realm of possibility.)
Michael
Given that he did not travel far between slamming the door and huddling down into the darkness, Will should not, it stands to reason, have to travel far to return.
He does. With his hands wherever they are, he has to take twice as many steps back as he took in with that thing following him. Nipping at his heels. Sniffing and insinuating itself around his ankles. Trying to trip him up.
Somehow Will manages to make it back to the door. He does not find it obstructed. He is able to burst through the door--
And he finds himself back in the doorway where he started.
William
Once he is outside of the door he shuts it behind him, hard. Doesn’t bother to look back and see if whatever was in that room, whatever was there closeby, whatever was underfoot and intent and slithering had stayed behind him.
William pushed himself back against the door. Closed his eyes tight and took the opportunity to force his breathing into something of a more calm state. It was a good solid minute before he could look around again.
This time, he went to the water closet and flipped the toilet seat completely up, unsure of what to expect there but checking just in case.
Michael
The house is not content to give him an entire minute to stand in silence and contemplate his place in the universe. Or its halls. Or in his own head.
Five seconds go by before a rumble begins to issue from deep within the house's foundation. It is an unhappy rumble that grows in intensity with each passing second. Will is a smart young man, in spite of what others tell him and what he may well have internalized on his own. He knows that if this keeps up, he's going to have a quake on his hands.
It gets him moving again. Gets him to look around and open up a door. The toilet is still standing there, although it, like the sinks and the floor and the air, it seems, is dirtier than before. Covered in a fine layer of dust and skin flakes and small bits of hair that get everywhere when a room has been used and used and used and then abandoned.
Another gurgle, as if the toilet is trying to choke down an unpleasant meal. Then the lid flips open.
A red mass of tissue, like a heart or a liver, something smooth and full of blood, is jammed in the bottom of the bowl. It will not go down. As Will absorbs this, in the time between his observation and his reaction, the bowl seems to burp, and a ripple of air moves through the mass, threatening to dislodge it.
William
He was going to stand still, he was happy standing still until the house made it abundantly clear that he was not allowed to stand still and, instead, he launches himself back into the fray. So, there he is, standing in a dirty bathroom with skin flakes and dust, feeling just grimy for his own presence there.
“… the Hell?” he peered closer at the red, formerly living mass in the toilet before he seemed to realize what it was. Will has seen enough horror movies and documentaries to know what human organs look like and the gurgling toilet and the mass-
Slam!
Will was not going to wait for the little human parts to come out of the toilet and, instead made his way out into the hallway again, lingering in front of the master bedroom to give it a quick check.
Michael
That slithering hiss he heard just before he broke into a run and existed the guest room greets him when he peers into the darkness, but this time he has the dingy light from the overhead fixtures to help his eyes adjust to the lack therein.
Somewhat. The darkness of the master bedroom is so completely that it swallows the light beyond a certain point. But it persists for long and far enough.
The walls are moving. Like a nest of snakes, bits of wallpaper and baseboard and hung paintings writhe and slide and twine around and over each other.
In a matter of seconds, the entire tableau comes to a rattling halt. The room knows it's being watched.
William
He was looking for something, for that vaguely humanoid, emaciated form he had seen before. Amidst the things that might be plants or might be a bed. What he had heard in the guest room hissed and made its presence known, made it abundantly clear that the voice he had heard earlier was right: Don’t Go In There. He swallows, running his hands through his hair like he does when flustered or thinking or wound up- and he most assuredly was wound up. His heart was beating loud in his ears even though his breathing was forced and measured. One-two-three-four out-two-three-four-
Other grounding exercises weren’t going to work right now. Will didn’t want to hold onto the fact that the walls were moving and the dark was creeping in and there was Something in all of that nothing and-and-and-
William backed himself against the wall and continued along the hallway, not taking his eyes from the master bedroom. The walls were moving. Why are they moving? He turned his gaze briefly to the hallway for some kind of reprieve- only to snap his attention back to the master bedroom as he crept away from it.
Michael
And the attention of the master bedroom is straight on him as he leaves its orbit.
For all he knows, the skulking shadow creature he had seen before is still there in the no man's land that is far too dark. Waiting in the void for Will to turn his back so it can creep closer.
Down the hallway, the same scene as before: the space outside the guest room, with the second water closet and a second room for the shower. The door to the guest suite in the center of the corridor, closed unlike last time.
The spiral staircase, empty for now. Nothing and no one on the landing overhead, at least not that Will can see.
Somewhere deeper in the house, a doorknob is rattling.
William
As he backs out into the area by the staircase, he visibly relaxes noting that there was no Chakravat waiting for him, telling him to wait, here to beckon the sun to rise (there has to be another way) with the most readily understandable end there. That particular fate was avoided for now, and for that he could be grateful.
He does not open the door to the guest suite. He does not linger in the hall. He heads deeper in the house and tries his level best to ignore the rattling doorknob and knowledge that he is not alone in this place(Why isn’t Mike here? This… this shouldn’t be happening, should it?) William plays it off as the strange that comes with being awakened and continues off to find his quarry.
He was looking for a kitchen. Kitchens had things like knives and pantries and places you could hide if things got bad. Kitchens have things like refrigerators, possibly full of human parts because there was a heart or a liver or some goddamned thing in the toilet and it wouldn’t go down and whose blood is-
One. Two. Three. Four. Out. Two. Three. Four.
Michael
A shadow falls across the hallway.
Whatever the solid body impeding the light is, it's standing in the open door of the room off to the right, and its shadow is so long that it hits the baseboard of the opposite wall and cants upward. The shadow it cuts is darker than a shadow has any right to be.
There's that ozone smell again.
The shadow's head turns towards Will. Where it ought to have a nose, it has nothing. Where it ought to have a chin, it has nothing. Where it ought to have teeth, it has long shards.
Footsteps sound out on the opposite end of the house. Sensible shoes on kitchen tile. They move quickly, as if pursued moreso than in pursuit.
Then the shadow steps back, and the hall is clear again.
William
That is not his shadow.
William knows his shadow, knows the scents and sensations of his avatar, knows its voice and threats and pleas and the cracks in between where its former nature wants to shine through. This is not his shadow, not the shadow that stands stark and solid when the young man was in the umbra with Leah and Henry and Kiara when they all wore their natures openly and loudly.
“Putain de merde…” he hisses when he catches a look at the shadow’s would-be teeth. He wanted to take his eyes off the shadow, but didn’t trust it enough to stay where it was, to stay attached. William’s lungs burned.
Hearing his former path impeded, the Hermetic made a run for the stairs. Upstairs. Yes, upstairs was good. No shadow creature, no assassins. But… he couldn’t shake what he’d seen. What belonged to that shadow?
What does its voice sound like? Are you familiar to me?
Michael
Another shadow strikes the stairwell halfway up but this one is easier to identify.
A burlap sack containing an object around 60 inches long with a broad section about a foot from the top, a tapered section not far from that, another broad section, and then skinny stick-like shapes that continue until the sack ends. Ropes are cinched around the ankles, the knees, and the elbows. The rope hanging the entire thing in place runs from the landing rail to the shape's neck. Its head, such as it is, slumps forward at an unnatural angle.
He can see what look like human toes cinched just outside the sack. Their nails are painted sparkling black. One of the feet has a silver toering on its longest toe. The rope creaks as the body swings with a gentle slight rhythm back and forth.
A folded piece of paper is secured to the sack with a safety pin. He has to climb the stairwell halfway in order to reach it.
William
The body makes him stop dead (ha) in his tracks. William’s stomach hurts when he sees it, his chest hurts, and something in the back of his mind aches because it has suspicions. He goes through the list of things and people that might be in that burlap bag, hanging with its head at the unnatural angle heads do when the neck snaps under its own weight.
He moves up the stairs and reaches out for the safety pinned paper. The note is unpinned and unfolded. William waits by the body as he reads…
Michael
The paper smells like incense. Depraved incense, but incense nonetheless. That thick cloying sort of smoke that is meant to provoke an emotional response depending upon the plant and the oils.
This plant is tobacco. This oil is cedar. Old cedar, cedar that resisted its burning as much as it could. Oil has a high smoke point after all and wood is used for burning but if trees had any say in it that is not what their deaths would provide. They need light to live. They have no reason for providing light. It is not as if they have a say in it.
The note's contents have the shimmering halo of a black hole. The swirling mass of nothingness that aims to suck in anything that passes the event horizon. He can feel that nothingness pulling at him. Can hear a whispering at the edges of the paper. Cannot make out what exactly the voice(s?) means to convey but the tone, that he can feel.
Time is up. The Sun is dead. The Void has come to claim him.
Behind him, the hallway bulb explodes and in exploding consumes part of the illumination downstairs.
William
Together, they do provoke a response in him- together, they are the ending of both the self in a slow, intent way and the consumption of something tall and impressive. The consumption of things that live for lifetimes beyond what humans can fathom- things that lived longer than countries and yet burned and consumed all the same. (The Void consumes. It is its nature.) He looks at the paper and he can’t stop his hands from shaking.
It is coming. His borrowed time has been reclaimed. This is what you’ve been warning me about? All those dreams? You knew this would come (I’m so sorry) and we couldn’t stop it.
“Je suis tellement désolé-” as though his apologizing through ragged breath and pounding, breaking heart would make any difference.
(No, no you couldn’t stop it, could you? You couldn’t stop it because you caused this. You brought this about, you brought down the sun with careless act after careless act you liability, you embarrassment, you-)
The bulb in the hallway explodes, claiming more light and driving the young man deeper into the house, following whatever chain of lighted paths he had. Some part of his mind realizes he’s being herded somewhere. The Void has come to claim him.
He would not go quietly.
Michael
It is around this point that Michael, less concerned about accumulating Paradox and more concerned with Will having a seizure and becoming trapped in a hellish Quiet for however long it takes him to wander through it alone, decides the least of either of their worries is his casting in another Willworker's head.
Also, he has had about enough of Will running through the house and shadows either getting in his way or swallowing up the path he had already taken. They could do this all night, hypothetically, but he isn't exactly thrilled with the idea of seeing how far this nightmare scenario will go.
So: he teleports from wherever he previously was to the top of the spiral staircase. He looks beleaguered. Whatever is in this place is affecting him, too.
His only options are to hear what the Chakravat has to say, fight him, or turn around and run down into the darkness.
William
Mike McCarrick is standing in front of him, which makes William stop in his tracks. He looks back at the ever-encroaching darkness, to Mike, and then to the body. He looks at her details hidden away, at the way the body is hung inside of a sack, and he can imagine death throes and struggle. He can imagine how hard it must have been, how hard-
“Please don’t leave her.”
As though some part of him is dead, as though he is pleading because he was pleading. Is pleading; William knows who is in there but is too afraid to look. Too afraid to confirm. Too ashamed to look at her. This is my fault (it always is.)
Michael
Standing inside another person's head is a dangerous activity for anyone. It requires an ironclad will and near-complete mastery over one's own thoughts. Careless words or actions can have irreparable consequences, especially in a Mindscape. Mages are more vulnerable in these states. They cannot distinguish reality from their own dreams and nightmares, and many of them are not even aware that they are, in fact, dreaming.
It is like a Seeking in a way. Particularly difficult Seekings can leave the Mage scarred, too frightened to attempt further Enlightenment for a long time afterwards. If advancement is so difficult, then Ascension is an impossible task. That anyone ever becomes an Archmage is testament to the power of perseverance and belief.
This is neither here nor there. What is here is Michael's complete attention. His mutable eyes move to find the hung body in the shape of a child, or a small young woman. He does not have to ask what - or who - the body is to Will.
"Will," he says, gentle, crouching down so the two of them are more at eye level. He does not want to tower over him. Fear is threatening to consume the Hermetic and he does not want to further contribute to the darkness. "Kiara asked that I help you. You're in a Mindscape." A pause. "That's not her. She's back home, and she's okay."
You, on the other hand...
William
“Grace asked you to come,” he tells Mike, his own manufactured reality butting against Mike’s actual knowledge of what is there. William swallows, “you came, and- and I panicked- and I’m not fighting this time-”
It takes a second before it really settles in that Mike is saying something, and the man has no reason to lie to him (he has plenty of reason, you shouldn’t trust him, don’t you remember? Run-run-run you know the Void, stop fighting-) and that voice in his mind is not his own and not his avatar but he doesn’t exactly force it away. He hasn’t moved from his position, but he does hold on to the hand railing. William isn’t fleeing, but he is looking incredulously at the older man.
His attention goes back to the body, his breathing is shallow.
“I don’t want it to be her,” William says, “I don’t want any of this but I brought it anyway...”
Michael
Grace asked you to come...
Though a flicker of confusion touches on Michael's brow, he does not interrupt to ask what he's talking about. Will continues all on his own. He stays in his crouch, patient to an extent, wary of the fact that the house is beginning to breathe around them again.
He hears it, too.
"You," he says with a tense smile, "are the reason your friends Margot and Ned are still alive right now, if my understanding of the situation on the outside is correct."
A bulb behind Michael blows. That shadow Will had encountered downstairs in the library doorway begins to peek out from the darkness, defying physics to crawl along the floor towards Michael, its facial features obscured for now.
"I think I know a way out of here, but you have to trust me. I would like to avoid sticking around to see what happens when all the lights go out."
William
It’s breathing, and if they stay still for much longer the house was going to make it clear that they should not be doing so. They’re being herded somewhere and he knows that much. If this is what Mike says it is, there is a way out and the world around him very much hinges on the fact that William must stay.
And here was this interloper offering to show him a way out. William nods, eyes still distant while he parsed through the information- conflicting information but decidedly more pleasant stuff. The ritual worked. Nothing went wrong, he didn’t lead it incorrectly, he’d done what he’d sworn he done and they were alive and-
His attention turns to the shadow creeping out of the darkness, the one with its shards and its too-solid features headed towards the man who said he had a way out. If this was William’s mindscape, whatever lived here didn’t stand to gain much by killing him (though there are far, far worse things you can do to a person). Mr. McCarrick, on the other hand…
“Move!” He wasn’t as fast as Mike, or as strong, but he does move forward and tries his damnedest to pull the man out of the way, tries to do whatever he can to actually protect the person sent to help him. It isn’t that he thinks he can, or that it will do any good, but rather William thinks he must. And there is no room for error or hesitation or doubt or fear. Mike could protect his damned self, but William would try anyway.
So, there he was, attempting to move a Chakravat and put some kind of space (or if need be, barrier) between the shadow and his would-be guide.
Michael
Somehow Will's grab for Mike's arm doesn't send Mike toppling over and down the stairs. He is not the world's most graceful creature, but he is not a klutz by any stretch. He manages to compensate for the weight and the Hermetic's desire to get him out of the way of something.
Which Michael spares a quick glance over his shoulder for the purposes of orientating himself.
"Down," Michael says as he stands again, "down the stairs."
Will has to go first in order for this to work, but as soon as he's turned his back, a burst of ethereal light gives them a pale globe of protection against the darkness.
The Chakravat behind him has conjured a bulb of pure Prime and fastened it to the space over Will's head.
A delighted snarl leaves the darkness, and he can feel the shadow pursuing them at a monster's steady pace.
William
He. Hauls. Ass. He knows damned good and well that Mike can keep up with him, and he has had presumably more time to familiarize himself with the layout of the house, even if the house’s layout would change- he could only expect it to change, and his instruction was made simple enough. Down the stairs.
William is very good at moving, notes the pale glow and the fairest bit of protection for what seemed to be an all-encompassing darkness. Whatever was behind them is pleased, gets the opportunity to give chase. Again: William Holmes would not go quietly.
“Right or left?”
Michael
Two sets of footsteps thunder down the spiral staircase. Something collides with the body hanging in the center of the staircase, slides a distance, and connects with the tile floor a second after Michael's reached the ground floor.
Left or right?
"Straight. Go straight, you're almost--"
Thump!
William
Two sets of footsteps, and he can feel them in his chest when he’s running but all his brain is wanting to process is run. And it doesn’t matter what any other voice is telling him, if his Avatar is screaming for him to fight and stand and not be cowed by this or everything else is insisting that this is real, this is true, he knows it to be true, he knows this has been coming for him since when he awakened and he should just accept it-
Straight. Go straight, you’re almost-
And then nothing. A loud thump and the Hermetic skids to a stop- he could have continued forward but the voice following him wasn’t there. William spins around to see what may lie behind him or what may be impeding his companion- “Mike?!”
Michael
By the time Will stops and turns around, something has dragged something else a far enough distance that he cannot make out what is happening using the glow of the Prime flame alone.
But the flame does persist. That is a sign that Michael is, if in peril, at least still in control of his faculties.
He came here to get Will out. If that means he has to get eaten by a shadow monster so that Will will keep running, it's not the end of the world. Will escaping this Hell his mind has created for him will boot him back into his own body.
There is not enough time to convey that to Will. Michael is in Will's mind, not the other way around. And Michael is currently wrestling with a creature that doesn't have to obey the rules of man or nature.
"Go!" Mike says, bass in his tone and an edge to his voice. Like so help him God if he has to tell him twice.
William
You don’t argue with that voice. It was something he has only heard from either his father and (now) Michael McCarrick. It’s a tone his being associates with you might not like it but I’m doing this for your own good. It’s the voice that has talked numerous things out of his hands and insisted on finishing homework or not killing yourself in the bathroom floor because this was coming and it was too much. You don’t see the aftermath of that tone, and perhaps it’s for the best lest you see those indestructible figures as the humans they are.
He turns back and keeps running. Goes forward even though it rings out on his face and in his shoulders and in his labored, uneasy breathing that he doesn’t want to. It hurts in a different way; some part of him knows this isn’t right. It tries to argue that William is ignoring suffering, ignoring the plight of the world around him but…
This wasn’t real, was it? None of this was real, so could Mike really get hurt? (Of course he could, Will knew that. He was painfully aware of that) He ran anyway.
If I get out fast enough, he thinks, he’ll be okay. Keep running.
Michael
In spite of the wet crunching sound that indicates vicious teeth tearing a mammal's windpipe, Michael keeps silent. He can turn off his pain reception, but he already has so many rotes juggled and if he spares himself a gory, not-real death, it may plunge Will into darkness again.
At least this is distracting the thing that wants Will and his sanity.
Roughly thirteen feet separate Will from the front door. No light glows outside, not even from a fixture. He already knows the stars have all gone out. Neith confirmed as much for him. The spectre posing as Michael was prepared to kill him to bring back the Sun.
All Will has to do is decide he wants to defy the darkness. His Avatar is not with him in this place. Nothing will be, once that Prime flame dies out.
William
He was almost to the door but there was no light there. No light and no sun and no real path save for a continued one of running. His exit would not be out there, the road would only continue to fall apart should he continue to be pursued. There was the reminder that this was not real, but more importantly the addition of another reminded him of something vital: William Holmes had never truly been powerless here. Not unless he allowed himself to be.
The Hermetic turns, does not pursue his exit anymore because it isn’t a place.
“My name is William Charles Elijah Renee Poirot Faolán Holmes, bani Jerbiton. I am Lethe’s Emissary, and I have walked to the edges of your bank. I have taunted your gods and refused your offerings,” his words are in only the truest of languages- the language of creation. He speaks Enochian like he was born for this.
“I have driven your supplicants from their burrows, I have seen the things you mock. You are not Fear. Fear is a being of Respect and you-“ he all but spits, does not finish his thought there.
“I am Abditus Ashmi Tuvene Rheath Zhentka. You will return what you have taken. You will place the stars, you will light the Sun, and you will Wait Until Your Time.”
There is no room for negotiation in his voice. There is only insistence. There is only the impression and the reality that he is the one holding the cards here, he is the one whose Will is Law, because the universe does the Hermetic’s bidding for the sheer reason that William is who he is. And that name, that one true and solid and Real definition said it all: do not fuck with me.
Michael
One of two things was going to happen: either Will was going to keep running, burst through that door, and emerge in a shallower level of Quiet knowing that the darkness devoured Michael with no recourse, or Will was going to remember that he is the master of his own fate.
Or at least a disciple of his own fate. He is not powerless. Drained as he was, confused and afraid and bereft as he was, he was not powerless.
Yet he accepted the help another wiser Willworker offered him, in the end. That is the point of joining a cabal. Of having friends, and keeping them. Of admitting that the journey upwards is not one walked alone.
And he commanded the darkness in the only tongue to which it would respond.
It hisses. It recoils. It keeps drawing back, a curtain allowing in the daylight, and though the daylight reveals Mike's ravaged body on the tile floor, the Sun has returned.
The little Prime flame flickers, sputters, and then dies.
Sunlight streams in through the beveled glass windows flanking the front door. It floods the foyer and the corridor, streams in through the upstairs windows, reveals the body in a burlap sack still hanging from the rail.
Within seconds, the light begins to become unbearable. He has traveled so long in darkness that the light overpowers him. But it is not painful. It is warm, and it is strong, and as he reasserts himself in the face of defeat, it wraps itself around him like a blanket borne by a long lost friend.
Eventually, he has to blink. And when he opens his eyes again, he is back in the living room of the cabal. His head on Kiara's lap, his body lain out on the sofa, his cabalmates in front of him.
He's still in Quiet, but compared to the Mindscape he just left, this is an improvement. He survived the death of the Sun.
When he wakes up, he cannot tell if it is the same cot. The mattress beneath him is dry, and also when he pulls away from it and sits up, his cheek and hair tack and crisp with the dried blood that must have blown out of his face earlier.
It isn't his blood. He knows that. Any Hermetic worth their salt, with apprentice knowledge of the Ars Vitae, would know that it is not their own blood. The mattress has a patina of rust on it. The floor beneath the cot, and his feet when they connect, is concrete. The air is dank and cold.
A basement?
Nothing of note in the room, aside from the rancid mattress and the rickety cot frame. A small set of steps, also concrete, lead up to the only door in the place. Bits of old garlic husks and dried onion skins litter the corners, along with mouse droppings and scuff marks. But nothing else to tell him where he is or what is going to happen next.
He is not alone. In the room, sure, he's alone in the room. But not in the house.
William
He sits up and his cheek and hair feel… off. William does a quick check to feel the back of his head, half expecting there to be a hole the size of a finger where he remembered metal being pressed to the back of his head. William remembered the feeling, but not the aftermath. He should be dead; he isn’t dead. He should have been dead five times over but, again, William Holmes is not dead.
He places his hand to the wall and does a quick walk of the perimeter- how many steps to each wall? Twenty two and a half inches per step. He is making a map (he is wasting time.) William isn’t alone here; it is an immutable fact. Were he to stay in this room, there would be no exit plausible. Many of his problems could have been solved by the mere ability to not be where he is- either by magick or otherwise. He’s not a mind reader, though- nor does he possess any kind of miraculous fortune telling ability beyond that of people who experience misfortune. Captain Hindsight, this one. It’s what trauma does- makes you scrutinize every detail and wail about how you didn’t see the signs regardless of what should have rationally been expected as an outcome.
All that was just background noise, and had seasoned what his next action would be. There were no exits save for the obvious one, so carefully, quietly, the young man made his way up the stairs to the door. He would exit if the door would give. If not? Well, now, won’t that be fun.
Michael
The door is not locked.
When Will opens it, the hinges whine just a little bit. No more than the hinges in a typical American home tend to whine. Basement usage varies from person to person, as does upkeep and maintenance. This house appears to fall in the category of Average. An Average American Home.
Will opens the door. He comes to stand in a mudroom. At least, it looks like a mudroom. On either side of him are four closets, two on each side. Ahead are two utility sinks, back-to-back, with storage to the left and what appears to be a water closet and another walk-in closet beside that. Two walk-in closets and a doorway on the far wall.
The house looks normal. Looks. Something is hanging in the air, an atmosphere he can almost reach out and touch but he maybe doesn't want to.
Someone is upstairs, or else the wind is blowing with a fury tonight.
William
He familiarized himself with the area quickly. Two closets. Two sinks, and a bathroom. He headed to the utility sinks first, reaching to turn on the water before thinking better of it. After taking a quick check of his hands and deciding they were clean enough (after wiping them off on his pants), he headed to the bathroom to get a look at himself and to, hopefully, get the blood out of his hair.
William acknowledged his own desire to leave, it was made present the minute he woke up in an unfamiliar basement- understandable. He did, however, have the presence of mind to realize that he can’t wander out of a house with blood on his face and without anything that would help him to get from point A to point B. Will didn’t have a point B because he didn’t know where the Hell point A even was.
If he could, he washed up as quickly as he could. No need to turn the water on longer than necessary- just long enough to get shit off his face and abandon ship. The contents of the closets were not ignored, and instead he went to look for something that might either protect him from what’s upstairs or help him when he goes outside.
And a flashlight. You can never go wrong with a flashlight- if it’s heavy enough it kills two birds with one stone. Or, you know, knocks said bird unconscious so you can run away screaming.
Michael
The closets are either just there for decoration, or some sinister force is preventing him from opening them.
Much like the empty room full of sunlight and windows he could not open earlier, nothing he does has any effect on the closet doors. He can rattle them until his arms begin to ache, he can kick them hard enough to shoot pain up into his knee and hip, he can scream obscenities at them. But nothing will open the things.
Which leaves the open doorway leading into the hallway, glowing with soft 60-watt light. Across from it is the darkened master bedroom.
As he turns to leave the room, the toilet in the unseen water closet gives a gurgle almost as a way-belated afterthought, churning down the last of something that ought to have been flushed away long before Will came upstairs.
William
Unlike the panic-inducing doors and windows from his last adventure, William seems content to leave these be. They won’t open, so they get to stay decorative. Something is in the house, and he can’t shake that feeling. He drew a long, slow breath before forcing it out again. There wasn’t enough evidence to indicate that there was danger there (though some parts of his brain want to scream that there is always danger so you need to be ready and prepared for it.)
He know that he had to stay quiet, and his intention was very much to be quiet when he steps into the gently lit hallway. Typical American household. He pays attention to whatever may be on the walls, looking for any indication that would give a hint as to his location, and he counts steps. One, two, three- trying to measure how long the hallway was. The sound of the water closet snapped his attention (and his body) back in that direction.
“…”
He hadn’t flushed the toilet, or done anything of the sort. The toilet gave no indication that anything had happened while he was in there. Will barely washed his hands while he was there. His back was to the master suite for a good ten seconds before he turned back around.
William pressed his back against the wall and crept towards the dark room. I should close that door.
William
But then he gets there and realizes that there was no door. "...shit."
and is now standing in front of a giant dark room.
Michael
Physical spaces do not engage in physiological responses. Hardwood and plaster and copper wiring have no need for the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. That is a human need.
Everyone in the audience will have to forgive Will if he gets the impression that the dark room, full of vague furniture shapes and light-consuming curtains and possibly a potted plant possibly a lurking emaciated humanoid creature, is drawing a deep breath.
And then letting it out as it waits to see what he is going to do.
William
William, still pressed to the wall, moved along the wall and patted around for some indication that there was a lightswitch nearby. He only moved away from the wall long enough to press himself to the next one. Something is here, he thinks, can’t pin the exact shape down but knows sure as the sun (the one that refuses to shine) that there is something in there with him.
His breathing stays shallow, slow, and he hopes that maybe whatever is in the room with him didn’t notice him cursing outside.
Michael
The wall is cold beneath his searching palm, cold from disuse and darkness rather than the cranking of air conditioning. In point of fact, no air moves through the place at all.
Other than the darkened room before him as it takes another deep, patient breath.
Something is just outside his periphery, taking advantage of the fact that he is pressed against the wall and seeking out a source of light. It nestles up nice and close so that when it speaks, deep and velvety and sharp, it is right in his ear:
"Don't go in there."
William
He doesn’t make a sound. Instead of gasping he just forgets to breathe entirely, body goes stiff and his hand still rests on the wall and that cold, cold room- unused and silent- breathes and waits for him as though it is expectant. Perhaps it is waiting for guests, wonders if it should put on tea or a record or light a fire. No, no fire- the room seems to like it cold.
“Where should I go instead?” he whispers, forces his voice to stay solid. His fear is real, but it isn’t crippling. Just… insistent.
William moves his arm in the direction of the sound, but doesn’t turn. Doesn’t give the room in front of him any indication that he is taking his eyes off of it (Don’t try anything funny.)
Michael
This place is not interested in either his well-being or his continued survival.
He's already survived something that would have killed him in any other instance. He can reason it away however he wants, but the fact remains that he's not in a place that has to follow any particular laws.
The room keeps breathing. He can almost hear the thing in his ear grinning.
Then a voice that ought to be familiar to him by now rings out in the corridor upstairs.
"Will?" A pause. "William, are you in here?"
William
There is a familiar voice upstairs in a corridor, and he doesn’t call back to that voice. Against his better judgment, the young man tries to make his way across the room along the wall in hopes of finding some other entrance that he could use- something that would lead him to some place that had a path to the front door or a window or-
He takes his eyes off what he thinks might be a human-ish figure in time to try and find an exit. The thing in his ear was grinning, and the desire to leave and not give away his trail was important. Run until despair creps in.
Run into you realize running killed you once. Might not come back a third time.
Michael
In moving down the hallway, he has to slide past another darkened entryway. That space must belong to the guest suite, or full bathrooms. Both, if he were to allow himself the time and the lost sanity to go into the darkness and investigate.
Michael, tenuously present due to the combined powers of Correspondence and Mind, steps out of the shadows and peers down over the balcony on one side, then the other, and then finally over the side where Will is creeping along.
"Will," he calls down. The Chakravat has no idea what transpired in the previous episode of the Hermetic's Mindscape. That's between Will and his Avatar. "Stay there, this place isn't--"
If Will lets him get that far, they're in good shape. This ST doesn't think he will.
William
The ST was, in fact, correct. William does not let Mike get that far and tempts the programming in this particular realm. He looks up towards the sound of the voice and concludes he maybe has a little while before he either gets shot or dragged down to the basement (Whose blood is this?)
He foregoes the comfort of being able to have one side of his body covered in favor of gaining speed when he made a break for the guest room. (Please let there be light, please let there be light-) He if makes it, he shuts the door behind him.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck why is he here?”
Michael
It isn't often that Michael raises his voice. According to apocrypha, the man never panics either. He doesn't experience emotion the way other Adepts do because he's a honed blade, a clean and oiled sniper rifle.
When Michael raises his voice this time, it's with the hope of catching Will before he runs off.
"Will, wait!"
Which, of course, he doesn't. Michael doesn't swear, but he does move quickly down the spiral staircase. The Hermetic can hear the man's rapid footsteps descending right before he slams the door.
He's in a pitch black, abattoir cool room. The predominant scent in the room is ozone. That unsettling sense of nothing.
Why is he here.
Something behind him slithers, then slides, then shivers with pleasure.
There is no light.
William
There is
The man outside doesn’t panic and doesn’t experience emotions in the way others do. He is very good at what he does, and the information William has is what he had once observed and the stories he’d heard from Grace. Grace, who thinks the world of the man, but does not do much to portray her beloved as anything other than inhuman efficiency in a humane suit. William knows him to be devoted and likable; it’s a hard mixture and he can’t reconcile the two.
What he has in front of him is lifetimes of knowing. There is Nothing there, but there is something and it slithered behind him and even if it didn’t touch him William could feel it on his skin breathe the ozone into his lungs and ruminate in pitch black. What he says next is for the ears of the universe alone, insists and repeats some poem that only makes sense in Enochian-
Nothing.
William moves back to try and find the door again. He didn’t lock it, he should be able to walk out, right? He hasn’t encountered many doors that lock from the outside. (He’s encountered enough doors that lock from the outside that it isn’t outside the realm of possibility.)
Michael
Given that he did not travel far between slamming the door and huddling down into the darkness, Will should not, it stands to reason, have to travel far to return.
He does. With his hands wherever they are, he has to take twice as many steps back as he took in with that thing following him. Nipping at his heels. Sniffing and insinuating itself around his ankles. Trying to trip him up.
Somehow Will manages to make it back to the door. He does not find it obstructed. He is able to burst through the door--
And he finds himself back in the doorway where he started.
William
Once he is outside of the door he shuts it behind him, hard. Doesn’t bother to look back and see if whatever was in that room, whatever was there closeby, whatever was underfoot and intent and slithering had stayed behind him.
William pushed himself back against the door. Closed his eyes tight and took the opportunity to force his breathing into something of a more calm state. It was a good solid minute before he could look around again.
This time, he went to the water closet and flipped the toilet seat completely up, unsure of what to expect there but checking just in case.
Michael
The house is not content to give him an entire minute to stand in silence and contemplate his place in the universe. Or its halls. Or in his own head.
Five seconds go by before a rumble begins to issue from deep within the house's foundation. It is an unhappy rumble that grows in intensity with each passing second. Will is a smart young man, in spite of what others tell him and what he may well have internalized on his own. He knows that if this keeps up, he's going to have a quake on his hands.
It gets him moving again. Gets him to look around and open up a door. The toilet is still standing there, although it, like the sinks and the floor and the air, it seems, is dirtier than before. Covered in a fine layer of dust and skin flakes and small bits of hair that get everywhere when a room has been used and used and used and then abandoned.
Another gurgle, as if the toilet is trying to choke down an unpleasant meal. Then the lid flips open.
A red mass of tissue, like a heart or a liver, something smooth and full of blood, is jammed in the bottom of the bowl. It will not go down. As Will absorbs this, in the time between his observation and his reaction, the bowl seems to burp, and a ripple of air moves through the mass, threatening to dislodge it.
William
He was going to stand still, he was happy standing still until the house made it abundantly clear that he was not allowed to stand still and, instead, he launches himself back into the fray. So, there he is, standing in a dirty bathroom with skin flakes and dust, feeling just grimy for his own presence there.
“… the Hell?” he peered closer at the red, formerly living mass in the toilet before he seemed to realize what it was. Will has seen enough horror movies and documentaries to know what human organs look like and the gurgling toilet and the mass-
Slam!
Will was not going to wait for the little human parts to come out of the toilet and, instead made his way out into the hallway again, lingering in front of the master bedroom to give it a quick check.
Michael
That slithering hiss he heard just before he broke into a run and existed the guest room greets him when he peers into the darkness, but this time he has the dingy light from the overhead fixtures to help his eyes adjust to the lack therein.
Somewhat. The darkness of the master bedroom is so completely that it swallows the light beyond a certain point. But it persists for long and far enough.
The walls are moving. Like a nest of snakes, bits of wallpaper and baseboard and hung paintings writhe and slide and twine around and over each other.
In a matter of seconds, the entire tableau comes to a rattling halt. The room knows it's being watched.
William
He was looking for something, for that vaguely humanoid, emaciated form he had seen before. Amidst the things that might be plants or might be a bed. What he had heard in the guest room hissed and made its presence known, made it abundantly clear that the voice he had heard earlier was right: Don’t Go In There. He swallows, running his hands through his hair like he does when flustered or thinking or wound up- and he most assuredly was wound up. His heart was beating loud in his ears even though his breathing was forced and measured. One-two-three-four out-two-three-four-
Other grounding exercises weren’t going to work right now. Will didn’t want to hold onto the fact that the walls were moving and the dark was creeping in and there was Something in all of that nothing and-and-and-
William backed himself against the wall and continued along the hallway, not taking his eyes from the master bedroom. The walls were moving. Why are they moving? He turned his gaze briefly to the hallway for some kind of reprieve- only to snap his attention back to the master bedroom as he crept away from it.
Michael
And the attention of the master bedroom is straight on him as he leaves its orbit.
For all he knows, the skulking shadow creature he had seen before is still there in the no man's land that is far too dark. Waiting in the void for Will to turn his back so it can creep closer.
Down the hallway, the same scene as before: the space outside the guest room, with the second water closet and a second room for the shower. The door to the guest suite in the center of the corridor, closed unlike last time.
The spiral staircase, empty for now. Nothing and no one on the landing overhead, at least not that Will can see.
Somewhere deeper in the house, a doorknob is rattling.
William
As he backs out into the area by the staircase, he visibly relaxes noting that there was no Chakravat waiting for him, telling him to wait, here to beckon the sun to rise (there has to be another way) with the most readily understandable end there. That particular fate was avoided for now, and for that he could be grateful.
He does not open the door to the guest suite. He does not linger in the hall. He heads deeper in the house and tries his level best to ignore the rattling doorknob and knowledge that he is not alone in this place(Why isn’t Mike here? This… this shouldn’t be happening, should it?) William plays it off as the strange that comes with being awakened and continues off to find his quarry.
He was looking for a kitchen. Kitchens had things like knives and pantries and places you could hide if things got bad. Kitchens have things like refrigerators, possibly full of human parts because there was a heart or a liver or some goddamned thing in the toilet and it wouldn’t go down and whose blood is-
One. Two. Three. Four. Out. Two. Three. Four.
Michael
A shadow falls across the hallway.
Whatever the solid body impeding the light is, it's standing in the open door of the room off to the right, and its shadow is so long that it hits the baseboard of the opposite wall and cants upward. The shadow it cuts is darker than a shadow has any right to be.
There's that ozone smell again.
The shadow's head turns towards Will. Where it ought to have a nose, it has nothing. Where it ought to have a chin, it has nothing. Where it ought to have teeth, it has long shards.
Footsteps sound out on the opposite end of the house. Sensible shoes on kitchen tile. They move quickly, as if pursued moreso than in pursuit.
Then the shadow steps back, and the hall is clear again.
William
That is not his shadow.
William knows his shadow, knows the scents and sensations of his avatar, knows its voice and threats and pleas and the cracks in between where its former nature wants to shine through. This is not his shadow, not the shadow that stands stark and solid when the young man was in the umbra with Leah and Henry and Kiara when they all wore their natures openly and loudly.
“Putain de merde…” he hisses when he catches a look at the shadow’s would-be teeth. He wanted to take his eyes off the shadow, but didn’t trust it enough to stay where it was, to stay attached. William’s lungs burned.
Hearing his former path impeded, the Hermetic made a run for the stairs. Upstairs. Yes, upstairs was good. No shadow creature, no assassins. But… he couldn’t shake what he’d seen. What belonged to that shadow?
What does its voice sound like? Are you familiar to me?
Michael
Another shadow strikes the stairwell halfway up but this one is easier to identify.
A burlap sack containing an object around 60 inches long with a broad section about a foot from the top, a tapered section not far from that, another broad section, and then skinny stick-like shapes that continue until the sack ends. Ropes are cinched around the ankles, the knees, and the elbows. The rope hanging the entire thing in place runs from the landing rail to the shape's neck. Its head, such as it is, slumps forward at an unnatural angle.
He can see what look like human toes cinched just outside the sack. Their nails are painted sparkling black. One of the feet has a silver toering on its longest toe. The rope creaks as the body swings with a gentle slight rhythm back and forth.
A folded piece of paper is secured to the sack with a safety pin. He has to climb the stairwell halfway in order to reach it.
William
The body makes him stop dead (ha) in his tracks. William’s stomach hurts when he sees it, his chest hurts, and something in the back of his mind aches because it has suspicions. He goes through the list of things and people that might be in that burlap bag, hanging with its head at the unnatural angle heads do when the neck snaps under its own weight.
He moves up the stairs and reaches out for the safety pinned paper. The note is unpinned and unfolded. William waits by the body as he reads…
Michael
The paper smells like incense. Depraved incense, but incense nonetheless. That thick cloying sort of smoke that is meant to provoke an emotional response depending upon the plant and the oils.
This plant is tobacco. This oil is cedar. Old cedar, cedar that resisted its burning as much as it could. Oil has a high smoke point after all and wood is used for burning but if trees had any say in it that is not what their deaths would provide. They need light to live. They have no reason for providing light. It is not as if they have a say in it.
The note's contents have the shimmering halo of a black hole. The swirling mass of nothingness that aims to suck in anything that passes the event horizon. He can feel that nothingness pulling at him. Can hear a whispering at the edges of the paper. Cannot make out what exactly the voice(s?) means to convey but the tone, that he can feel.
Time is up. The Sun is dead. The Void has come to claim him.
Behind him, the hallway bulb explodes and in exploding consumes part of the illumination downstairs.
William
Together, they do provoke a response in him- together, they are the ending of both the self in a slow, intent way and the consumption of something tall and impressive. The consumption of things that live for lifetimes beyond what humans can fathom- things that lived longer than countries and yet burned and consumed all the same. (The Void consumes. It is its nature.) He looks at the paper and he can’t stop his hands from shaking.
It is coming. His borrowed time has been reclaimed. This is what you’ve been warning me about? All those dreams? You knew this would come (I’m so sorry) and we couldn’t stop it.
“Je suis tellement désolé-” as though his apologizing through ragged breath and pounding, breaking heart would make any difference.
(No, no you couldn’t stop it, could you? You couldn’t stop it because you caused this. You brought this about, you brought down the sun with careless act after careless act you liability, you embarrassment, you-)
The bulb in the hallway explodes, claiming more light and driving the young man deeper into the house, following whatever chain of lighted paths he had. Some part of his mind realizes he’s being herded somewhere. The Void has come to claim him.
He would not go quietly.
Michael
It is around this point that Michael, less concerned about accumulating Paradox and more concerned with Will having a seizure and becoming trapped in a hellish Quiet for however long it takes him to wander through it alone, decides the least of either of their worries is his casting in another Willworker's head.
Also, he has had about enough of Will running through the house and shadows either getting in his way or swallowing up the path he had already taken. They could do this all night, hypothetically, but he isn't exactly thrilled with the idea of seeing how far this nightmare scenario will go.
So: he teleports from wherever he previously was to the top of the spiral staircase. He looks beleaguered. Whatever is in this place is affecting him, too.
His only options are to hear what the Chakravat has to say, fight him, or turn around and run down into the darkness.
William
Mike McCarrick is standing in front of him, which makes William stop in his tracks. He looks back at the ever-encroaching darkness, to Mike, and then to the body. He looks at her details hidden away, at the way the body is hung inside of a sack, and he can imagine death throes and struggle. He can imagine how hard it must have been, how hard-
“Please don’t leave her.”
As though some part of him is dead, as though he is pleading because he was pleading. Is pleading; William knows who is in there but is too afraid to look. Too afraid to confirm. Too ashamed to look at her. This is my fault (it always is.)
Michael
Standing inside another person's head is a dangerous activity for anyone. It requires an ironclad will and near-complete mastery over one's own thoughts. Careless words or actions can have irreparable consequences, especially in a Mindscape. Mages are more vulnerable in these states. They cannot distinguish reality from their own dreams and nightmares, and many of them are not even aware that they are, in fact, dreaming.
It is like a Seeking in a way. Particularly difficult Seekings can leave the Mage scarred, too frightened to attempt further Enlightenment for a long time afterwards. If advancement is so difficult, then Ascension is an impossible task. That anyone ever becomes an Archmage is testament to the power of perseverance and belief.
This is neither here nor there. What is here is Michael's complete attention. His mutable eyes move to find the hung body in the shape of a child, or a small young woman. He does not have to ask what - or who - the body is to Will.
"Will," he says, gentle, crouching down so the two of them are more at eye level. He does not want to tower over him. Fear is threatening to consume the Hermetic and he does not want to further contribute to the darkness. "Kiara asked that I help you. You're in a Mindscape." A pause. "That's not her. She's back home, and she's okay."
You, on the other hand...
William
“Grace asked you to come,” he tells Mike, his own manufactured reality butting against Mike’s actual knowledge of what is there. William swallows, “you came, and- and I panicked- and I’m not fighting this time-”
It takes a second before it really settles in that Mike is saying something, and the man has no reason to lie to him (he has plenty of reason, you shouldn’t trust him, don’t you remember? Run-run-run you know the Void, stop fighting-) and that voice in his mind is not his own and not his avatar but he doesn’t exactly force it away. He hasn’t moved from his position, but he does hold on to the hand railing. William isn’t fleeing, but he is looking incredulously at the older man.
His attention goes back to the body, his breathing is shallow.
“I don’t want it to be her,” William says, “I don’t want any of this but I brought it anyway...”
Michael
Grace asked you to come...
Though a flicker of confusion touches on Michael's brow, he does not interrupt to ask what he's talking about. Will continues all on his own. He stays in his crouch, patient to an extent, wary of the fact that the house is beginning to breathe around them again.
He hears it, too.
"You," he says with a tense smile, "are the reason your friends Margot and Ned are still alive right now, if my understanding of the situation on the outside is correct."
A bulb behind Michael blows. That shadow Will had encountered downstairs in the library doorway begins to peek out from the darkness, defying physics to crawl along the floor towards Michael, its facial features obscured for now.
"I think I know a way out of here, but you have to trust me. I would like to avoid sticking around to see what happens when all the lights go out."
William
It’s breathing, and if they stay still for much longer the house was going to make it clear that they should not be doing so. They’re being herded somewhere and he knows that much. If this is what Mike says it is, there is a way out and the world around him very much hinges on the fact that William must stay.
And here was this interloper offering to show him a way out. William nods, eyes still distant while he parsed through the information- conflicting information but decidedly more pleasant stuff. The ritual worked. Nothing went wrong, he didn’t lead it incorrectly, he’d done what he’d sworn he done and they were alive and-
His attention turns to the shadow creeping out of the darkness, the one with its shards and its too-solid features headed towards the man who said he had a way out. If this was William’s mindscape, whatever lived here didn’t stand to gain much by killing him (though there are far, far worse things you can do to a person). Mr. McCarrick, on the other hand…
“Move!” He wasn’t as fast as Mike, or as strong, but he does move forward and tries his damnedest to pull the man out of the way, tries to do whatever he can to actually protect the person sent to help him. It isn’t that he thinks he can, or that it will do any good, but rather William thinks he must. And there is no room for error or hesitation or doubt or fear. Mike could protect his damned self, but William would try anyway.
So, there he was, attempting to move a Chakravat and put some kind of space (or if need be, barrier) between the shadow and his would-be guide.
Michael
Somehow Will's grab for Mike's arm doesn't send Mike toppling over and down the stairs. He is not the world's most graceful creature, but he is not a klutz by any stretch. He manages to compensate for the weight and the Hermetic's desire to get him out of the way of something.
Which Michael spares a quick glance over his shoulder for the purposes of orientating himself.
"Down," Michael says as he stands again, "down the stairs."
Will has to go first in order for this to work, but as soon as he's turned his back, a burst of ethereal light gives them a pale globe of protection against the darkness.
The Chakravat behind him has conjured a bulb of pure Prime and fastened it to the space over Will's head.
A delighted snarl leaves the darkness, and he can feel the shadow pursuing them at a monster's steady pace.
William
He. Hauls. Ass. He knows damned good and well that Mike can keep up with him, and he has had presumably more time to familiarize himself with the layout of the house, even if the house’s layout would change- he could only expect it to change, and his instruction was made simple enough. Down the stairs.
William is very good at moving, notes the pale glow and the fairest bit of protection for what seemed to be an all-encompassing darkness. Whatever was behind them is pleased, gets the opportunity to give chase. Again: William Holmes would not go quietly.
“Right or left?”
Michael
Two sets of footsteps thunder down the spiral staircase. Something collides with the body hanging in the center of the staircase, slides a distance, and connects with the tile floor a second after Michael's reached the ground floor.
Left or right?
"Straight. Go straight, you're almost--"
Thump!
William
Two sets of footsteps, and he can feel them in his chest when he’s running but all his brain is wanting to process is run. And it doesn’t matter what any other voice is telling him, if his Avatar is screaming for him to fight and stand and not be cowed by this or everything else is insisting that this is real, this is true, he knows it to be true, he knows this has been coming for him since when he awakened and he should just accept it-
Straight. Go straight, you’re almost-
And then nothing. A loud thump and the Hermetic skids to a stop- he could have continued forward but the voice following him wasn’t there. William spins around to see what may lie behind him or what may be impeding his companion- “Mike?!”
Michael
By the time Will stops and turns around, something has dragged something else a far enough distance that he cannot make out what is happening using the glow of the Prime flame alone.
But the flame does persist. That is a sign that Michael is, if in peril, at least still in control of his faculties.
He came here to get Will out. If that means he has to get eaten by a shadow monster so that Will will keep running, it's not the end of the world. Will escaping this Hell his mind has created for him will boot him back into his own body.
There is not enough time to convey that to Will. Michael is in Will's mind, not the other way around. And Michael is currently wrestling with a creature that doesn't have to obey the rules of man or nature.
"Go!" Mike says, bass in his tone and an edge to his voice. Like so help him God if he has to tell him twice.
William
You don’t argue with that voice. It was something he has only heard from either his father and (now) Michael McCarrick. It’s a tone his being associates with you might not like it but I’m doing this for your own good. It’s the voice that has talked numerous things out of his hands and insisted on finishing homework or not killing yourself in the bathroom floor because this was coming and it was too much. You don’t see the aftermath of that tone, and perhaps it’s for the best lest you see those indestructible figures as the humans they are.
He turns back and keeps running. Goes forward even though it rings out on his face and in his shoulders and in his labored, uneasy breathing that he doesn’t want to. It hurts in a different way; some part of him knows this isn’t right. It tries to argue that William is ignoring suffering, ignoring the plight of the world around him but…
This wasn’t real, was it? None of this was real, so could Mike really get hurt? (Of course he could, Will knew that. He was painfully aware of that) He ran anyway.
If I get out fast enough, he thinks, he’ll be okay. Keep running.
Michael
In spite of the wet crunching sound that indicates vicious teeth tearing a mammal's windpipe, Michael keeps silent. He can turn off his pain reception, but he already has so many rotes juggled and if he spares himself a gory, not-real death, it may plunge Will into darkness again.
At least this is distracting the thing that wants Will and his sanity.
Roughly thirteen feet separate Will from the front door. No light glows outside, not even from a fixture. He already knows the stars have all gone out. Neith confirmed as much for him. The spectre posing as Michael was prepared to kill him to bring back the Sun.
All Will has to do is decide he wants to defy the darkness. His Avatar is not with him in this place. Nothing will be, once that Prime flame dies out.
William
He was almost to the door but there was no light there. No light and no sun and no real path save for a continued one of running. His exit would not be out there, the road would only continue to fall apart should he continue to be pursued. There was the reminder that this was not real, but more importantly the addition of another reminded him of something vital: William Holmes had never truly been powerless here. Not unless he allowed himself to be.
The Hermetic turns, does not pursue his exit anymore because it isn’t a place.
“My name is William Charles Elijah Renee Poirot Faolán Holmes, bani Jerbiton. I am Lethe’s Emissary, and I have walked to the edges of your bank. I have taunted your gods and refused your offerings,” his words are in only the truest of languages- the language of creation. He speaks Enochian like he was born for this.
“I have driven your supplicants from their burrows, I have seen the things you mock. You are not Fear. Fear is a being of Respect and you-“ he all but spits, does not finish his thought there.
“I am Abditus Ashmi Tuvene Rheath Zhentka. You will return what you have taken. You will place the stars, you will light the Sun, and you will Wait Until Your Time.”
There is no room for negotiation in his voice. There is only insistence. There is only the impression and the reality that he is the one holding the cards here, he is the one whose Will is Law, because the universe does the Hermetic’s bidding for the sheer reason that William is who he is. And that name, that one true and solid and Real definition said it all: do not fuck with me.
Michael
One of two things was going to happen: either Will was going to keep running, burst through that door, and emerge in a shallower level of Quiet knowing that the darkness devoured Michael with no recourse, or Will was going to remember that he is the master of his own fate.
Or at least a disciple of his own fate. He is not powerless. Drained as he was, confused and afraid and bereft as he was, he was not powerless.
Yet he accepted the help another wiser Willworker offered him, in the end. That is the point of joining a cabal. Of having friends, and keeping them. Of admitting that the journey upwards is not one walked alone.
And he commanded the darkness in the only tongue to which it would respond.
It hisses. It recoils. It keeps drawing back, a curtain allowing in the daylight, and though the daylight reveals Mike's ravaged body on the tile floor, the Sun has returned.
The little Prime flame flickers, sputters, and then dies.
Sunlight streams in through the beveled glass windows flanking the front door. It floods the foyer and the corridor, streams in through the upstairs windows, reveals the body in a burlap sack still hanging from the rail.
Within seconds, the light begins to become unbearable. He has traveled so long in darkness that the light overpowers him. But it is not painful. It is warm, and it is strong, and as he reasserts himself in the face of defeat, it wraps itself around him like a blanket borne by a long lost friend.
Eventually, he has to blink. And when he opens his eyes again, he is back in the living room of the cabal. His head on Kiara's lap, his body lain out on the sofa, his cabalmates in front of him.
He's still in Quiet, but compared to the Mindscape he just left, this is an improvement. He survived the death of the Sun.
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