Halloween, a cross section

Ned Plus
The weeks have been trundling on, with the house growing quieter and quieter.

Bodies have entered and made themselves at home. Bodies have left and the space they once occupied is an open wound, driving those that remain to cringe and maybe isolate to protect themselves. Perhaps that's why things haven't escalated to 'concerned' until now.

It is the eve of Halloween. Decorations were minimal from the house's resident Orphan, who has been studying Corr in the spare study in the west wing of the house for a couple of weeks now. Time had him doing the same, constantly lost in the manic disruption of when. Corr is proving to provide the same level of incomprehensible where. He emerges only occasionally for bathroom and eating breaks or to poke his head in on the other two to see that they aren't dead. Then it's back to studying.

Halloween, though is different:

The door to the second study is open. The hallways are quiet in a brittle sort of way, with each floorboard creak promised to a loudness that is more noticeable then forgettable. The air reeks with acrid static, as if fresh before or after a lightning strike. it permeates the hallways and gathers under the nostrils, clearing sinuses and dipping nervous energy out of limbs and veins.

One might easily attribute this to the House being the House or the resident Mad Scientist doing what he does but there has been an absence. Enough that the play of electric chemical is difficult to explain.

Until one visits the main study.

The Tower of Books has been growing steadily. At first not noticeable, lost in the plethora collection that has been pulled from the shelves and left on the table, it isn't difficult to miss a book stack that numbers five or six high. It's when that stack begins to reach nine or ten that perhaps one of the kids has noticed the oddity and details around it. Even then, this could be dismissed as some odd little game. Someone's been building the stack in their spare time and leaving it behind for others to watch grow.

But inside of a couple of weeks, that singular stack has become over a dozen tall. Haphazard, impossibly balanced, the more than a dozen cinder touched, titleless books have been flying off random shelves one by one to form the Tower it has become now.

And Tonight, on Hallow's Eve, they sit that many deep as they had the previous night. The study is a mess of random books cleared from the table and scattered to the various couches and furnishings. The table is clean of all other paraphenalia, chairs pushed to the outer walls, random wrappers, dishes and foodstuffs tucked into the kitchen and even larger sofas and nightstands dragged noisily toward the study's far eastern side.

Because tonight, the Tower of books has begun to smolder. Not impressively, but enough that wisps of smoke burp from between the occasional page, feathering in the air around the tower before vanishing into nothing. Small sparks of light accompany these exhales, azure blue and as momentary as a sweating campfire. The pungent stench of lightning is all too noticeable in here. The origin point that has seeded the entire house by now and is making it noticeably uncomfortable to breathe in.

Enough that the call goes out if no one has bothered yet to arrive from their isolation, or if one of them has come and the other(s) are yet to arrive.

"Meeting!"

Bellowed from the Study, where Ned is sitting on a chair far from the table and the Tower. His head is in one hand, that palm decorated with a bloody dish towel, the hair on one side spiky and mashed with blood from a gash riding one side of his hairline. He meets the eyes of anyone who enters, bags of tiredness under each, offset by the vibrant sort of worry that comes with 'Fucking Up and Paying for it'.

"...Something's happening."

Is all he says. Closing his eyes and wincing, while adjusting the makeshift bandage at his brow.

William
Halloween is loud. It's always been loud with the sounds of children shrieking with terror and then delight and the neverending parties that seem to come about regardless of whether or not the holiday was taking place on a weekdayor a weekend. Students were restless, and even if they were in high school they were very demanding of candy. William had imposed a "Can you keep your mouth shut" grade for the class at the beginning of the year. Every time anyone said something outside of class discussions the class lost a point. Generally, this was supposed to be an easy grade. Shut your mouthes and get an easy A for the day that would inevitably bolster test scores and what-have-you.

Today, the first period class got a 42. Second period wasn't much better.

He'd come to enjoy the relative quiet at home, though. Nothing incorporeal asking favors or whining or chattering heedless of the fact that others could hear their conversations. Will could come out to the house in the middle of nowhere and breathe. Be alone without having to be alone. For the most part, the usually talkative man kept his mouth shut. He spent a lot of time reading. Medical texts that went over his head and books on herbalism and antiquated anatomy books and even things on gardening for Chrissake. He'd been studying Life- Animae, Vitae- William was capable of repairing basic, simple things but had not succeeded yet on making the jump to more complex life forms like the ones he was currently living with.

The request had been simple: don't do anything stupid until at least Halloween, and Mister Holmes was accident free. That, of course, seemed content to end that night. Meeting! and it was off to the study. Floors creeked along the way and he showed up dressed in what he'd worn to work that day, which was basically the culmination of what hipsters wear when they get a real job. Once he got to the room his eyes went from the smoldering, precarious tower to the bloody towel to-

"Fuck, Ned, what happened? When did that-" a gesture to the book pile "-happen? Do you need another towel?"

Ned Plus
"It started about a week ago, I think. I thought one of you was just dicking around-"

Ned flips a hand out at the book tower that continues to burp blue sparks and smoke wisps from between random pages. There is a flush of the electric without the caustic burn of smoke to the air in the study and no one's sinuses have been any clearer then they probably are now.

"But if the Book's are measurable by one a day, then this has been going on for at least two weeks."

Ned sighs which turns into a wince, pulling the dish rag away from his face to reveal the jagged burst of a wound that looks as if something tore a thin out out from under his skin.

"I tried digging one of them out with a bit of kinetic Force and promptly got slapped something fierce by 'dox for it." Ned bounces his brows up as if to indicate the wound and immediately regrets the decision as a thin trickle of blood seeps down over his right eyebrow. He pushes the dish rag back into place, covering one eye in the process while still regarding William across the room.

"I cleared the table and the surrounding area just incase but everything I've tried from physical to working has failed so far." A pause. "...Also, it's Halloween and this House used to have Nephandi oriented owners so..." Another wince, though metaphorical this time because that was probably something they should have mentioned to their newest Cabal member prior to this moment.

Margot
As it just so happens, autumn is Margot's very favorite season of the year.  They all have their pros and cons, and given her honest effort to keep a 'Verbena perspective' on the world (an effort to prevent accidentally isolating from the Tradition, what with her lack of a coven), she was probably going to find far more to love through her Nature-Witch-tinted glasses about winter in the upcoming weeks that she hadn't before.  The timing of the seasons, the assignment to lay low, and Doc's depature all lined up nicely, because Margot's way of coping was to begin spending more time in the yard, or the mountains, than in the house itself.

She had laid claim to two specific spaces in the house, and not unlike how Doc had treated his lab she treated her spaces very similarly; though she didn't come out and forbid the boys from entering the large closet space under the stairs to the second floor, any glimpse within would tell that it's a private space, with the motors and pesels and candles and jars and bits of bone and feather and plant that were tacked up on walls and shelves and surfaces.  The walls didn't actually drip, but they were so thick with the Essence of her Work that to lay a hand on the wallpaper would send a creeping discomfort up the spine, and when that hand pulled away there'd be the sense of something awful, like old blood, left behind.  The second space was the back of the yard, a corner where she'd taken overgrown hedges and bushes and Shaped them into a shrine.  There were no 'Keep Out' signs posted anywhere, but the dense thorny branches that twined their way through the shrine were unwelcome and it felt like the kind of place where the Big Bad Wolf might be waiting to snatch you up when you're not watchful.

The garden was where she'd been working when the muffled bellow of meeting! pushed through an open window somewhere at the back of the house and reached her ears.  Margot arrived a little ways behind William, heavy brow flexed in curiosity and the inconvenience of being interrupted.  She was dressed in a pair of jeans and stocking feet (shoes kicked off at the door), and had a towel in her hands as well, though the dark streaks on the fabric and how she was rubbing her hands suggested she'd been working with dirt instead of blood today.  She'd managed to keep the dirt off her black sweatshirt, but there was a touch showing in the dark brown hair that hung around her face and to her shoulders.


The expression of inconvenience quickly wiped away, and was replaced by a conflicting expression of worry, concern, fascination, and 'oh fuck' as she processed the smoldering and sparking tower of books simultaneous with the blood on Ned's face and towel.

"I thought we were laying low until Halloween?  I mean, I know it is Halloween, but..."  She shook her head and finished wiping her hands off, tossed the towel on a nearby surface that wasn't someplace people sit, and entered the room more fully as opposed to hovering indefinitely in the doorway.  "What's going on?"


Assuming it was re-explained in brief, as she wasn't quite in the room for the first time things were relayed, she was soon scowling heavy once more and standing several feet from the stack of books, facing it directly with her arms crossed firmly across her chest.  Analyzing, processing, deciding.

"I doubt the backlash was a coincidence; I wouldn't be surprised if harder forces of Work would just backfire even bigger.  Maybe...."  She wrinkled her nose, deepening the expression of displeasure as she continued.  "Maybe we're just going to need to see what happens next?"



William
I tried digging one of them out with a bit of kinetic Force and promptly got slapped something fierce by 'dox for it.
"Like they're an immutable fact of reality," he said, "normal Work shouldn't yield that kind of result."

William frowned and crossed his arms. The young man peered cautiously at the pile of books again, all electric and sparked.

There was the suggestion, of course, when Margot came in that they wait it out to see what happens next. William went for a pocket and procured a pocket watch, which he started carefully winding. "I could always check and see what's likely to happen next," all the while tending to the watch with the slightly cracked face and the hints of blood in the inlays.

"At the very least we need to be sure the books don't burn the damn house down."


Ned Plus
"You want to wait and see?"

Ned's incredulous expression made the wound above his brow crinkle, like a second mouth of disapproval aimed squarely at the Verbena that's come to join them. Had had indeed reiterated for Margot on entry, though the Orphan had yet to pick himself out of the sofa chair he had plopped himself into.

Ned glanced at William as the Hermetic pulled a watch from his pocket and began to fiddle with it in that way and manner Mages have a tendency to do when working up to something. The concern on his face turned to worry and a wince, the dish rag left to hover between his knees while he regarded the happening.

"As far as I can tell, working at the damn books is going to cost us something fierce...Just...be careful about what you do."

* * * * *

The Tower itself seems to gather the electric sensation in the air around it. One can feel an almost enforced gravity being applied to limbs and stray parts left to dangle too far from the body. It tugs on errant fingers, flaps of clothing and shoe laces. It pulls at eye-lashes, protruding lips or the tongues when the mouth opens to speak. If one pays attention and close enough to the things Ned has moved away from the table, there is the occasional flutter of a book page or cover snapping open in the Tower's direction or a sofa cushion pulling slightly out of it's groove.

Still the books spit wisps of smoke. Sparks gather in the air around it, lingering a little longer now.

The air is fickle with static.

Margot
[Intelligence 4 + Occult 2: Brain Strain!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )

William
Perception 4 + Esoterica 2 + Library 3 = 9, diff 6

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )

Margot
[Plus library!]

Dice: 1 d10 TN7 (2) ( fail )

Ned Plus
William has seen practical designs around Rituals before. This matches a large amount of various teachings handed down from several past mentors, teachers, lovers and one time discussions.

A central spire or lode point, that acts as a Focus for the ritual's efforts; a Mystical Lightning rod for any energies to latch onto incase of stray or errant backlash. The spire acts as a concentrating force, meant to alleviate the pressures on the ritualist(s) involved, focusing the power of the ritual into the spire itself. This explains why the books remain as immobile as they do, even against working. It would more than likely take a significant level of power to disrupt the spire though what that would do to the Ritual being enacted here would probably be catastrophic at the very least.

Normally, Lode points like this, have neighbouring anchors within a certain proximity as well. Points through which the spire remains grounded, not unlike ropes attached to a ship mast. An umbrella under which the storm of power can remain contained and in check, even monitored. Similarly immobile as the Spire itself, though perhaps more susceptible to working or moving then the Spire.



Margot
The expression Ned offered her was returned back, but with a bit of snideness tossed in as well.  He didn't seem to think waiting and seeing was a good idea, and naturally a girl smart as Margot took a little offense at having her suggestion greeted in such a manner.  But this certainly wasn't anything new, it was an exchange the pair had no doubt duplicated in any number of conversations or situations before now.  Soon enough she was also paying mind to the watch that Will had produced from his pocket.

"I suppose you could try," she added, in reference to peeking forward to see what would come.  "I'm worried about the Work involving it, but if it's just a peek, I suppose we'll see...."

The tug of gravity was noted when Margot came a little nearer, and with how close she stood now it was enough that the ends of her hair were pulling ever-so-slightly forward in response, the static causing it to want to rise away from her head and giving her goosebumps for how it felt like a charged tickle across her skin.  She caught herself leaning backwards some and planting her feet squarely to compensate for the effect this smolder-sparking stack of books was causing.

This time around she didn't try to puzzle out what was going on aloud, but lapsed into quiet while waiting for William and his attempts at manipulating Time to see what was going to happen.  The longer she stared the further her gaze slipped into the middle-distance, but she seemed to have less anxiety about what might happen to the Hermetic when he tried working his Magick, at least.

William
William's gaze narrowed at the pile of books, hands stopped winding and his fingers rested on top of the watch. "This is acting as a central point- a lode point- for a ritual. This is the center of what's going on and there are connections that should build out from here outward.

"If this has been building for two weeks, we're looking at two weeks of concentrated ritual practice building to a point and this? Is more than likely going to be the point at which all of the efforts of said ritual is going to be released. It's effective ritualcraft- it's like this thing's a lightning rod and any of the crap going on out there, which would probably also explain the backlash issues. You'd have to either be really dedicated of really powerful to move this thing.

"Normally Lode points have anchors within a certain radius essentially holding it up. They're a little more maleable than this thing, but we could actually get a little headway on those versus what we have here."

He let out a long breath.

"God, I hope I'm explaining that right."

He looked down at his watch again, and got on to doing what he said he was going to do, stomach tense and ready to take a right and proper beating from reality.

William
Time 2 + Entropy 1: What's the most likely outcome of all of this?

Base 3 + 2 (sphere) + 1 (vulgar) = 6- 1 (taking time) -2 (Quintessence)= diff 3

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 4, 6) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Ned Plus
William's senses begin to unravel around the effect he works into existence, replacing them with strange sigils and numbers that peel away each sense of the now and pull into existence, each sense of the 'will be'

When everything settles and he glances into the future, it is into the face of a man standing on the table, wearing the rags of or shroud of something long dead. He stares at William with a thick tangled beard, his skin tone the grey of a crypt creature, his head bald and etched in the faded swirls and whorls of ink.

His eyes are the azure blue of the sparks and his hands, curled into reflexive fists at his sides.

The stench of lightning, cloudbank and storms is nearly overpowering.

The bloom of crackling lightning is visible on several bookshelves, emanating from singular tomes or volumes on different shelves from different cases.

"Hello, little one." The voice is deep, resonant and echoing. As if spoken from far away and yet audible for miles. The man, crystal blue eyes and lividly bright, is looking directly at the time displacing William, as if they were in this particular moment right now and not in the 'what will be'.

Then William is blinking, as if shunted forcefully from the moment, a thrumming headache drumming in his head at the effort. His skin prickles around his fingertips, which spasm around the pocket watch threatening to drop it with their involuntary twitches.

Ned Plus
There is usually a build up before a revelation. Something to let those involved know that what is supposed to happen, is happening.
This isn't the usual.
The three are approaching this issue with a varied sense of analytics when, quite suddenly and unapologetically, one of the books widens along it's seem, like a mouth being pried open from the inside and something comes scuttling out in a burst of liquid blue sparks that splatter, neon gleaming, onto the table.
The thin, birthed in sickly gelatinous lightning, climbs and clambers down the tower, shedding droplets as it goes, before finally climbing onto the table a small ways from the tower for the three to openly see:
It is a hand.
The wrist is severed, ragged and sawn, the skin a ripe crypt gray. Fingernails are split down to the cuticle with the flesh beneath an actinic white. It hovers on all five fingers, not unlike some necromantic familiar, wrist bone jagged and jutting from it's severed stump. It sits there poised as if in regard of the trio, slim veins of liquid neon blue dribbling through the cracks in the skin.


* * * * *


Ned watches this happen, his hand already reflexively reaching for the knife he didn't have on his person because he rarely ever carried it around inside the house. This was their safe space...right?
"Fuckin'..." It trails off, the Orphan's head shaking slowly while he stares unblinkingly at the severed hand on the table.


* * * * *
The Tower's various books have all begun to burp wider and with more frequency, movement visible in the dark gaps where the pages yawn like hungry maws.
On the table, the fingers of the severed hand have begun to tap out an oddly discordant rhythm.












Margot
The split in the seam caught Margot off-guard and caused her body to give a small jerk from the start it gave her.  When something sticky and gooey but still electric burst its way from the book and began to scuttle about, Margot gave a small shrill yelp, like a scream turned to a brief exclamation, and took a few quick steps back away from the table.  It was with sheer disbelief that she stared at what was revealed to be a dismembered hand, mouth slightly agape and naturally wide eyes set almost to the point of bulging.

Then it started to tap out a rhythm, and Margot found her voice and use of her body as well.

"Nope, fuck that."It was easy to forget that she was a quick thing-- well, perhaps not for Ned who had worked with her in teaching knife defense many times over-- but all at once she'd gone from standing and staring to lifting a particularly large and heavy looking book off a chair cushion where it'd been stashed after being moved away from the sparking Lode of a book-tower.  Just as promptly as she'd seized the book she was palming its back cover with one small hand and then sending it flying toward the corpsely hand as though she were tossing a shotput.

[This is probably not the best idea, but here we go.  Dex 4 + Athletics 2, diff 7]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 4, 4, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 1 )

Ned Plus
(Hand Acrobatics)

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

William
[Per4+ Esoterica 2+ Library 3= 9, diff 6. SERIOUSLY WTF)

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]

William
For someone tinged by hurricanes, for someone born of tumult and landfall and whose formative years were marked by the devastation of a vibrant city, the feeling of storms and clouds and ozone drenched lightning were the unpleasant bits of familiar that made him stand more still than he ususally would. William was, at best, a little chaotic; stillness didn't suit him and yet.

It is a moment, his fingertips twitch, then tremble, and what brings him back to reality (and not reeling in his own head) is the sound of a book flying and someone screeching. The watch drops from his hands, hitting the ground with a delicate bounce.

"..."

C'mon, Mister Adeptus-in-the-Order-no-longer-Initiate-Exemptus say something.

"... that's a hand."

Ned Plus
William's fascination with details lends itself more toward his penchant for distraction. Too busy taking in all the facts, to specify on any one topic at any one point. It is probably why he isn't as abruptly disturbed by the future speaking directly to him, or the tower of immense power standing in his immediate future.

It is definitely the reason he notices the location of three of those lightning activated books on three different shelves behind where the Tower and the Man were standing.

Books that had buzzed with lightning in the future.

Anchors to a Spire of Power.

Ned Plus
The book lands near the hand, which seems to scuttle into place as it threatens to slide across the table under the weight of the gravity of the Tower as well as the momentum Margot put into it. The hand's fingers latch onto the top of the book, riding it like a surf board for a couple of feet but the hand's added weight keeps it from going to far.

And there is sits on the book, poised and turning in place on five adroit fingers to return to "staring" at the trio of kids.

The tower, meanwhile, has begun to spawn another hand along one side, while vomiting other body parts with sickening squelch like sounds from other seams. An entire body is being disgorged out onto the table. A pair of feet and legs here. Two arms there. Several meat chunks that could be shoulders, falling and wriggling in place before the gravity of the spire seems to force them together.

Flesh knits, the tower disgorges some (thanfully) torn and shredded ribbons of cloth that ooze out onto the table as well, folding over the various body parts that are writhing together into some chaotic puzzle.

Cloth swirls. Body parts suction into the folds of the shroud and all at once, under the thrum of booming thunder, a man is crouched on the table top, covered in a tattered mess of a poncho. The skin is gray. His head is bald, save for the swirling ink patterns that stretch from his neck to his brow. His beard is powerfully thick, like steel wool and his hands, once more attached to wrists that vanish under the folds of the shroud, are planted fists on the table top.

There is an exhale and it brings tremor to the air, though no chill or gusting wind is felt. Still, the pages of the thrown book, resting several feet from this new stranger, ruffle and flap gently with his first breath.

His eyes pop open slowly. Crystal azure blue inside well weathered sockets.

"...Again..." There is a resonance to the word. A resignation and a question without the emphasis that needed an answer. The body unfolds, cracking and popping with vicious stiffness in the process. The head tilts to one side and vertebrae protest, while those eyes scan the surroundings. Narrowed. Focused.

"...Different though..."

He reaches out a hand into the air, ignorant almost of his audience, hesitant almost in touching something-

ZZZTT!

-the hand impacts some invisible barrier. He snatches it back sharply, teeth flashing into existence, sharp and shaved down to fine triangular points.

On the shelves behind him, a triplet of books suddenly blaze to life with crackling arcs of electricity. They vibrate and dance in their sockets, smoke roiling from where their neighbouring books are pressed too close to the sizzling.

Ned Plus
Ned WP

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 7, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

William
Will: ahjkfsajfah WP

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 6, 6, 10) ( success x 3 )

Margot
[Willpower]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Ned Plus
Each of the young mages has more experience with this life then most their age. Dealing with trauma and the threat of being wiped off the face of the planet more times then any of them could probably count.

This however, is a different sensation. It goes beyond the bones, weathering each in their place. it digs into that space, that alcove where their Avatar's live, rushing across that connection between them to elicit a response that they can feel more than know.

Each guide to these three, different in their reactions, seems to respond to the same stimuli:

Terror

Margot
A small and sharp curse flashes into the air when the book misses its target, but the fact that the hand stopped its tapping was at least good.  It had poised itself as though staring at them, but it only held Margot's attention for a few moments longer before other pieces of flesh and bone started to fall in electric slime from the books and onto the table.  The second hand was enough to cement her suspicion when the first body part had arrived.

She felt herself paralyzed and helpless, watching without any idea of what else she should or could do as a gray-skinned man who looked like what she imagined Rasputin would have manifested in one of the most disgusting ways possible upon her study's table.  Her throat flexed to swallow back the sensation of horror that was naturally budding in her chest and making her stomach twist, but soon after a wave of absolute terror crashed down upon her.  She felt it constrict her heart before making it slam double-time against her ribs, felt her stomach make an effort at joining her bowels by how drastically it seemed to drop all at once.  Sweat prickled her skin and adrenaline made her brain feel like it was buzzing, but that wasn't all.

Deeper within and further beyond, the goddess of blood and war and victory that had called upon Margot to house her magick was responding to the terror as well.  However, contrary to Margot's natural disposition, it responded with rage, pure and unadulterated.  How dare this gray man deign to make an attempt at frightening Her?  How dare he?

Margot made a quiet sound in her throat like she was going to be sick while her body begged to run and her Spirit and Being screamed into the back of her brain for her to not only attack, but to utterly demolish so there was no doubt in the Victory at hand.

Her voice shook, and though she was trying to speak to the manifested man upon their table, she really just wound up whispering with a tremble: "Please leave..."

Ned Plus
Wits + Investigation. Diff 7

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )

William
It's those things you notice thatare a little too late. The books on the shelf that sync up to (It's a mast, not a maypole- why did I think?) There were the things that he'd held onto- the details and the ability to piece through things in a way to keep you sane. The way he processes damages by naming the objects around him and asserting again and again what was real. Things that he'd held onto- the texture of his beard, the color of his eyes (the way that Will's own stomach curled and tried to crawl into his stomach, as though some part of him knew that this man existed outside of time, aware enough to know what would happen, aware enough to know where to look and called him Little One as centuries old creatures were want to do Oh god oh god oh god don't think-his eyes are blue his beard is thick his flesh is gray-)

"This is real."
What is, what was, what will be, all the same. He knew.

He went through his mantras and his thoughts. The same repetitive things over and over, but each detail wasn't helping and he could hold onto details. His eyes were blue (like mine, but more) his beard is thick (and grissled and sharp) His skin is gray (like death, like rot, this shouldn't be real, this shouldn't be real, this shouldn't be real.)

"His eyes were blue." (like mine, but more)
"His beard is thick." (and grissled and sharp)
"His skin is gray." (like death, like rot, this shouldn't be real, this shouldn't be real, this shouldn't be real.)
"I'm with people I know."
"We are not safe."

---
The very visceral and real part of him growled, something that had assumed a form only becaause it knew William, once Elijah, once so many others, was not ready to know the truth. The reality. The living shadow shifted, felt the dauntless creature it had tried so hard to cultivate into its potential shrink in terror.

(Felt the dauntless creature it pushed and pushed to the edges of boundaries and dared him to topple so he could be greater than he was)

I will not. it insisted, reverberated in William's ears and heart and chest.

I will not. It repeated, and the walls reverberated and the voice, all gravel and promises and threats and insistence, grizzled as a thing who has seen the world and has been wounded by it.

We will not.

It says something to William. It is for his ears alone.

--

"This is what happens when we falter, we are not safe."

And, with that, he started speaking, quiet and insistent and demanding that that the universe bring forth its rightful protections. He was insisatent, persistent in the language of creation that these people be betowed with protections, hard from blows, that Force would yield to them.

They were not safe, but they would be.







William
Int 3 + Engimas 3 = 6, diff 6, Prone to Quiet

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

Ned Plus
"He can't."

She had said it to the man, who was busy looking around himself, down at the table and then at the spire, gray hands flexing in and out of fists, but Margot gets her response from Ned who is by her side suddenly with a shoulder for her to lean against. He's close enough the sensation of power is muted slightly, as if the more space the trio filled, the less intense it all felt. Clustered together, the sensation of gravity ebbs slightly. Ned is staring though, whispering under his breath.

"Can you?"

The response is a careful grunt that whispers off the tongue and mostly vanishes in the beard. The crystaline eyes regard the three, as if noticing for the first time. Those eyes settle on William, as if the man's outburst were a beckoning, a dawning sensation. He watches with almost casual fascination, like inspecting a sudden lightning fork in an otherwise clear sky.

 It is momentary and then, a sharp tug of recognition arrives. His head snaps off to one side and he stares into the space just beyond the table.

"Hello little one" The voice is like thunder, muted and on the spot. It does not roll over the three, but seems contained around the man.

The books on their shelves vibrate a little harder. The shelves themselves begin to shake and rattle gently.

William
Forces 2: YOU CAIN'T HURT MAH FRAAAAANDS

Base 3+ sphere 2+ 1 (vulgar) = 6 - 1 (specialized focus [Thanks Enochian!])= diff 5

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (3, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

Margot
[Spirit 2, What the fuck are you talking to? -- Base 4 + 1 (highest level of effect), +1 (vulgar), -1 (focus: blood)]

Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (5, 6) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Margot
Displaying another strong piece to their dynamic, Ned appeared at Margot's shoulder as a presence of support.  She didn't physically lean on him, but her weight did shift so that she wasn't standing against the gray man anymore, but standing with her cabalmates, weight gravitating toward them instead of the Lode and the man that burst forth from it.

Ned didn't think that it could leave, and William was speaking to himself reminders of what is.  Then: we are not safe.  Margot blinked and turned her head to look at Will, to gauge his expression.  He repeated the statement, and then set to focusing and chanting, clearly setting to Work once more, given how the room had started to feel a little as though the floor was being tossed too and fro by great waves and tumult from someplace not quite physical but still distinctly there.  She took a breath and looked back to the man ,who had been watching them, but turned to address Something Else that she could not see.

She swallowed hard to see this and felt more dread stir in her chest; what was he talking to?  Why couldn't she see it?  Perhaps a Spirit of some sort, even if not something once-alive but aetherial none the less?  She looked around quickly, a girl attached to her tools, and then her eyes hopped up the half-foot between her and Ned's eyes to spy the flash of red still open above his brow.  She reached up and swiped her thumb across his eyebrow, where the moisture from the blood would most likely still be clinging to the hairs, and then swept the now-wet-now-red pad of her thumb across her own brow in an arc and shut her eyes.  When she re-opened them they were clouded over, as though mists had appeared within them to represent what she was looking through.

Brows furrowed over those clouded eyes, and her head turned as they darted about the room in search of something.  She squinted harder at the space surrounding the bearded man of terror, then made a sound of frustration before scrubbing the heels of her hands into her eyes to clear them once more.  As she did she grumbled: "Nothing.  What is he talking to?"

Margot
[Wits 3 + Investigation 2: C'mon Margot you're supposed to be the smart guy]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

William
It's all playing out the way he'd seen, the way that he hadn't been able to vocalize because it was just- [His eyes are blue (We will not) His beard is thick (Focus)] - It was what it was. His watch was on the floor and his Words were insistent. His Will would be law at that moment, and there would be no negotiation. His compatriots would stay safe-

Margot asked him a question, or just askexd a question of the air but he was still focused, still speaking, still giving the law of What Will Be. Speaking of truth and definitions, shaping a thought into substance and giving it a Name.

When he had said they were not safe, it had been tinged with that fear. Yes, that primal, gut-wrenching feeling that comes when you know you are small and human and mortal, but striving for something else. William was off in a world of details, and the statement that they were not safe was a resolution. An end to the thought and puncuating a new one.

The second had been different, insistent and as though he had seen a challenge and it was something to rise to. A problem to acknowledge, a deed to be done that he would not be torn from.

It was the first that was off-putting, because for someone who does as many dumb things as he is reported to do who would have thought William aware of safety? Or aware of the feeling that comes with legitimate terror.

[Keep going! Forces 2: Be saaafe

Base diff 3 + Sphere 2 + 1 (vulgar) +1 (extension) = diff 7, -1 (Specialty focus (Enochian) -1 (quint) = diff 5. ]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (4, 4, 6) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Ned Plus
"...This time has changed since the others. There were others....are....others...." Confusion leaped across the man's face. His beard bristled, arcs of lightning gathering around it's tines and tips and strands. "...Things are....smaller."

The crystal eyes narrow. William's efforts strain and push, something charging the air in response to the lightning static that had gathered in the house so invasive. A barricade or storm-dam to weather it all. It forms and bubbles up around the pair of Initiates, even as William pushes his own will to the effort. One might think the Disciple suicidal. One might also reason the effort is reactionary. An activator of stress.

"...Things are weaker."

The Man raises a hand again, pushing at the odd invisible barrier he had encountered before. Lightning spasms around his fingers, his grimace strained but controlled. The barrier bends, warps under the pressure but does not give. The hand is removed, forcefully, smoke curling off of his gray fingertips and those crystal blue eyes turn finally to regard the trio again.

"Where are the caretakers? Those who put me here? Their power has waned some since the last...as with their accusations..." The crystal eyes crackle. Fists form at his sides. "Are you their children? Or their replacements?"



* * * * *



"We live here." Ned offers though it sounds somewhat burdened with obviousness. He can feel the resonance William is putting off, collect and attempt to push back against the obvious acidic static this trapped creature has permeated their Study and home with. Ned doesn't move to stop William, but there is a concern hiding under his features and a growing suspicion alongside of it.

"Who are you?"

* * * *

"I am Ulric. Dreadbringer...Caller of Storms...He of the last light-...or he that was...is...." The eyes narrow. Become unfocused again, head swimming in circles as if to take in his surroundings once more. "...They put me here...called me names...turned those names into bindings...or...wrappings...or-" he looks down at his hands, fingers curling into fists and back out again "....Bars...Cages....something..."

A renewed fervor reaches through him and clarity returns with a glare down at the three.

"Where are they?"

Ned Plus
Perception 3 + Awareness 2.

Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 1 )

William
Perception 4 + awareness 3 =  7, diff 7

Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Margot
[Intelligence 4 + Enigmas 2: NO WHAMMIES]

Dice: 6 d10 TN9 (1, 1, 3, 4, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1 [WP]

Ned Plus
William knows what he is looking at. He understands that Rituals have purpose and presence. That they serve different measures for different things. He has studied these effects and efforts with some of the best minds and imaginations from all sorts of different perspectives.

Yet there is something far more personal here as well that William is infinitely familiar with. He experiences it on a regular basis and knows the ins and outs of it's effects and appearance. Ulric, whoever he is or may be, is knee deep in the distant, disconnected, almost unmistakable presence of Quiet.

Margot
The man was speaking with them now, searching for people who used to live here, complaining that the room, the house, the entire world seemed much smaller.  This gave Margot a moment of tangential, wandering thought.  He had a point, the world was a much smaller place; affordability of worldwide travel and the information superhighway ensured that.  She wondered how that much appear on different scopes of perspective, and found it interesting to think that somehow space could have physically flexed smaller on account of the changes in the past 75 years.

This wasn't an easy environment for contemplation, though, and soon Margot was back and present, returned by the sound of Ned's voice beside her responding to explain who they were.  Current residents, and that was all.  He asked who he was, and received a name and vague recollection in return.  What this gray man, now with the name 'Dreadbringer' to associate with his uncomfortably unsettling visage, had to say got Margot thinking again, this time much deeper, more focused, and faster.  It was a mental flipping through of many pages, searching for the chapter and depth in the story that felt familiar to the subject.  An answer was somewhere in that mental library of hers, and this time around she happened to open the correct book the first time.

Though it seemed it shouldn't be possible, especially tonight, Margot's eyes found a way to widen further and the color drained from her face.  She swallowed what felt a lot like bile in the back of her throat and wanted to slide back a few steps more, but was reluctant to part from the cabal and the defense that Will had brought up around them that sheltered them from the electric storm in the study.  That and a certain Goddess was still bristling and insulted and slashing intangible blades through the air and against each other in protest; she wouldn't let Margot back down just yet either.

"You guys," she said quietly to catch Ned and Will's ears in particular.  "We... we can't let him get out."  She looked around desparately, as though hoping that some sort of inspiration for how to fold closed the trap that had kept Ulric for goddess-knows-how-long.  She didn't come close to the capabilities she figured were required to accomplish this feat in the first place.

William
His mind insists you can't keep doing this. This isn't good, This shouldn't be like it is and he knows why, he's standing near a goddamned paradox lightning rod Working where he really has no business to push. So he didn't. He stopped the pushing, let the effect come to its fruition, regardless of how weak or strong it may be because some part of him still had the desire to walk away from this okay.

William understands ritual, and understands it from multiple perspectives. He had been here for so long, seen great minds filter in and out. Gotten high with some or waxed philosophical with others or gabbed about the ins and outs of metaphysics sweaty and spent after whatever carnal delights a relatively attractive young man in his twenties can experience.

But this wasn't something he talked to people about. Something he'd never even discussed with anyone around him, never given the indication that it was a problem because when he rode the edges of reality people stopped showing up. (I'm the one for a good time call-) There were moments that he realized much later how far gone from the consensus he'd actually been.

"He's in Quiet, what he's seeing is real enough to him that he'll react accordingly. We are out of sync," William announced. Margot said her piece of the puzzle, seemed insistent and hopeful that they would follow her along. There was a slight can't of his head in recognition. Subtle, but obvious enough. Agreement.

"What are you accused of?"

Ned Plus
"Out..." Like the word was attached to an idea. Ulric seized on it, eyes bristling with light. Fists rose to press against the 'prison walls', driving lightning impacts out from where they came to rest.

The books on their shelves upped their vibration tempos to 9. The bookcases themselves began to rattle.

"Out." Ulric punched a fist into the wall.

* * * * *

Ned was staring at Ulric, concern to worry to anxiety flooding his features. Up until now he had been remarkably withdrawn from it all. Margot makes her statement and Ned's own response is a snapping of his head toward her, followed quickly by another glance at William when he asks his question. Ned's lip thin, pressed together hard around some vocal component of his own. He might have kept it to himself except Ulric was hammering on the 'walls' again.

More lightning. More shaking books.

"...For fuck's sake..."

Ned's scanning the shelves, the area around the room and the various pieces of furniture, books and chunks of things he'd moved out of the 'blast zone'. He steps clear of the protective huddle of his cabalmates, wandering past them and toward some of the nearby books.

"...They put him here, right? That's what he said? So why now-"

* * * *

"Renewal."

Ulric interrupts Ned. His eyes track the young Orphan walking free of Margot and William.

Then:

"Despair. This world was mine. Mine! They did not like that. They were greedy. Are greedy. They are greedy! This is mine!" Thunder and storms, contained still. He answers William with force and terror. Another fist into the prison walls, which begin to shock azure cracks that fail to fade away. "Each time Renewed! Each time asleep! No more! Wake...I will wake-"

* * * * *

"...You said it was lodestone. Smaller pieces around it?! Lesser things to stabilize the center?" Ned bellows over his shoulder at William. Eyeballs the hermetic. The orphan is holding several other books. "But he said it's weaker! It's less now then the last time!" Ned is diving across the biggest of the couches, hands grabbing at books to scan titles and scour covers.

"How many, Will?!"

Because the three with gathered lightning buzzing on their shelves wasn't enough and they had been taking books off the shelves for months now.

"William! How many more?!"

* * * *

Another fist in the walls. More cracks.

"Out!"



Margot
The room felt like it was going to try and collapse, between the electricity kicking from the invisible barrier that kept the Dreadbringer contained and the buzzing vibrations of books ons helves surrounding them.  Margot made a stressed noise when he started pounding actively on the barrier and cringed back some, but didn't shuffle her feet away to start retreat toward the door.  Eyes followed after Ned when he started inspecting the shelves, then snapped back to the entrapped resurrected being who spoke of ownership and renewal and greed.

Another crack appeared and Margot's hands lept reflexively up to cup over her ears and hold the sides of her head.  Ned apparently had an idea, something about returning books to the lodstone from whence the Dreadbringer came, but Margot wasn't catching on to what he was hunting for on the covers, what he hoped to accomplish.  How was he going to identify the books that he wanted to return to the table, and how was he going to get them there with this resummoned prisoner and the straining barrier surrounding him both in the way?

Out! the man bellowed again, and Margot snapped and bellowed back.

"NO!"  She threw her hands away from her head to clench as fists at her sides, limbs trembling with the adrenaline and anxiety and stress of the conflict and situation as a whole while the rage of a Goddess of Many Things But Above All Victory and War found its valve and started to leak its release.

"You were kept and with good reason!  We're not the children of the beasts that bound you, but by fucking god we will bind you again!  You.  Will.  Stay!"

And then, to Ned, her tone snapping and hard with the carry-over from shouting down a being that would probably eat her soul the instant he was free.  "What are you looking for?  Tell me, let me help!"

William
"All I see are three," he tells Ned, with tension while he looked desperately for some kind of indication that there were more. He had only seen what he thought were three, but there-

"I can find more," he said, crouching to get his watch and try to center himself. Focus on the texture, the sensation of metal in his hand instead of the sound around him or the crackling on the walls and the waning of what was around them, "I'm going to find more."

Desperate tracing of the steps he had taken, trembling fingertips and the feeling of the world pressing in. Focus Be present. Be here.

So it was back to looking again, back to the past hopefully when the ritual was first cast, so he could see the pieces that held it first.

William
"They were books."

Ned Plus
Ned Forces 2: Shutting out all sound, stilling the air. Diff 6 - 1 for Focus (Blood) -1 for Quint. WP

Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (5, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Ned Plus
Ned reaches through the last pile of books he can find, a frustrated scream ripping free of his throat. Margot's yelling at the creature in the cage, who responds with a thunderous bellow of his own. The lightning has reached a crackling pitch inside the 'cage' and doesn't seem to be dissipating at all now.

Ned turns, a book still in hand, eyes regarding Margot with a helpless sort of flutter.

"We need more time...or a distraction...or something to keep him from-"

Boom!

The walls spread more cracks of blue light.

"-Keep from doing that! Tell me you've got some voodoo or Prime or spirit friends or something!"

It is the best Ned has. William's already reaching for his pocket watch and Ned can see the flash and flutter of distraction creeping over the Hermetic with each impact of those fists on those invisible walls. Ned reaches for his brow, mimicing Margot's own efforts from before. The work becomes a focus and his Will pushes outward, closing the gap on Will as the Hermetic tries to work.

The world goes silent, suddenly, assuredly for William. Ned's hands fold over the mans ears and there are no more impacts. No more words but the mumbled inner syllables under William's own breath.

William
[Time 2: Looking at the past

Base 3+ sphere 2 + 1 (vulgar) = 6 - 1 (He ACTUALLY practices looking at the past) - 2 quint = 3

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Ned Plus
William's head once more drifts free of the present. There is a warped sense of searching, scanning a pattern of the world and how it used to be, overlayed with how it is and could be. His fingers sift through symbols and phrases, capture the wheres of who he was and the whens of where he could have been.

In this moment, pictures flash:

Ned's hands throwing books across a study table. His hair is shorter, his brow clear of wounds.

Margot reading quietly in a sofa chair. The same one in the study, on the other side of the room.

The Three of them marching through a deeper, darker, uglier house. Before the renovations.

Something lurking in a dark corner. Slathering over some piece of bloody meat.

A yawning black hole at the centre of what could be crumbling linoleum.

The screech of a monstrous bat thing, in a roughly hewn tunnel, surrounded by the skittering of a rodent flood.

The charged lightning of a pair of eyes, surrounded on all sides by 4...5 books. One for the corners of a pentacle formation. Something infernal. A cage of binding.

Books with titles. Books with many pages.

Glimpses are caught in the time wake. Beneath a couch, thrown during an argument. Something about cake. Something about a Dreamspeaker and the melting of wrists.

Glimpses of a thick tome, used for a doorstop. Tucked on the upper floor, next to a crumbling bedroom. Which room in the house was that?

On Mr. Holliday

Will

It had been a couple of days. Because of the timing of everything William hadn't really had a chance to get anything settled at the intermediary residence. Not that it would have mattered, he didn't seem too keen on doing much in the way of anything beyond cooking. Not that he really ate much of it, but he made enough for an army for the purposes of grazing. He'd made pancakes because crepes were hard. Muffins, or really any kind of breakfast food that he could make with the things on hand or with minimal effort regarding summoning and transfiguration. It was hard to turn flour into bacon, but it did happen once. The bacon ended up chalky, but it was bacon and that was good enough. 

Beyond that he spent most of his time on the back porch. He'd once asked Doc to pop his wrist back into place and then seemed surprised that he'd done it without it actually hurting. Gratitude was given and then it was back to sitting outside and occasionally talking to himself. 

You're outside. It's daytime. Margot and Ned and Sepúlveda are in the house and they're fine. It's Tuesday (it's Wednesday, it's Thursday, it's Thursday? It's Friday.) There's grass in the yard and a hole at the back of the property; this is real.

Sometimes, he named different things that he saw. Grass, birds, squirrels. But always, always ended with this is real.. Somewhere between naming the things outside and making breakfast, he came back in to find Margot. He wasn't entirely clear on the day today, but it was easy when you lose track of time courtesy of reality shaking you like an angry babysitter.

"I need to change clothes," he told her, "can you take me home? I can buy Taco Bell after."

Margot

During the time he'd spent recovering at the house out in Boulder where this weird morbid little cabal lived, Will wouldn't find himself restricted.  It was common sense and courtesy not to go poking around in a Scientist's lab, but beyond that all he'd catch was the occasional hawkish watch of Ned Gaites and a single warning that Margot had offered while rinsing blood from towels in the kitchen sink: "Better to just stay out of the tunnels.  For now, anyway."

This time when Will came inside and found Margot in the kitchen she was sitting on the end of the bench of the breakfast nook.  She had her legs folded up into a pretzel shaped lap and was examining the top of one foot up close.  There was a small pile of abandoned bandages (lightly stained now, as opposed to just the other day when they were bleeding through every six hours), and Margot appeared quite pleased to find that, at long last, the weeping holes at the tops of her feet and palms of her hands (unwrapped as well) had gone away.

"Hm?"  Margot's attention popped up when Will spoke, and big eyes blinked a couple of times while she processed what he was saying about clothes.  Then:  "Oh!  Ah, sure.  Hey, look!"  And, with a grin, she held her hands out to show him the smooth backs.  There was a mug of coffee on the breakfast table with her, and she reached over to take a sip before leaning down to gather up the shed bandages in a wad.

"Are you grabbing up more than just a suitcase?"  She asked with her mind on the several storage tubs that she had stashed in the trunk of her car, figuring she would need to bring them inside before they left if so.  There was another question that was unknowingly laced in with an underlying assumption in what was said, though:  you are coming back to stay, right?

Will

She shows him the back of her hands and he visibly brightened, the first instance of actual delight on his features (or really any kind of emotional response) since he got back. William looks most like himself when he smiled. "Oh Hell yes," he said. "That is awesome. And less gross, but you could totally bottle that so you have ritual blood on hand. Stock up while it's free?"

William looks like someone tried to kill him. The bruising and the scrapes and whatnot wasn't much of a physical problem anymore but he still looked horrible. Blood vessels burst in one , likely a result from what looked like where someone choked him out. Scratches on the wrist that spontaneously dislocated, scraped knees, the telltale signs of what happens when you shoot up wrong littering the inside of one of his forearms, and (the most innocuous) a bruise on his shin that looks like he kicked a coffee table. It hadn't all happened at once, but the culmination of all those incidents remembered courtesy of paradox were awful. 

But! There was a question, he leans carefully against the kitchen counter- very, very careful- and he blinks. Slow, not measured but assuredly distant. He was thinking before he finally nodded and-

"Yeah, I plan on grabbing a couple of suitcases," he half laughed but his heart didn't seem in it, "your couch is way more comfortable than mine. A friend made mine for me and it is still kinda pointie feeling because he literally materialized the couch in my apartment."

Followed by a little 'heh' before something seemed to strike him as awkward (no, uncomfortable. He was uncomfortable) and he retreated to the fridge. 

Margot

During the several days that the pair were confined to the house, recovering from their individual wounds of Paradox, Margot was self-confined to the basement.  The bleeding just would not stop, and though she bandaged her hands for comfort she would still end up making a terrible mess of the living space upstairs.  She had been miserable, cried in frustration and worry at least once a day up until today when the effects had finally come to an end.  During that time they had seen little of each other, each miserable in their own ways, waiting for the storms to pass.

Today was better though; Margot's first genuine grin had provoked Will's, and for a time the clouds had cleared, both figuratively and literally.  Margot had pushed open curtains and opened the windows to let air and light both into the home, wanting as much of it as possible following her stint in the basement.

"No."  Margot shook her head to the notion of collecting the blood, and moved to wash her hands in the sink after tossing the bandages in the garbage.  "That blood was cursed," she said resolutely.  "I don't trust it to behave right for any Work."

Talk of couches and an air of discomfort joined them next, and Margot flexed her brow downward while drying her hands.  She padded across the kitchen tiles on bare feet that still needed the last of the blood washed from them (but it was dry and minimal now at least, largely soaked up by the bandages), scooped up her mug, and discarded it in the sink to fetch herself a to-go thermos instead.  Raised her eyebrows back at him to inquire if he wanted any as well, obliged accordingly.

"You know there's another bedroom upstairs.  It's the door right to the side of the stairs.  It's... I mean, it's small, but it's not the couch, at least."

Will

"Yeeaah, you have a point. You could be inadvertently starting some Steven King level stuff with that kind of blood," he agreed. Followed the point and continued along. There were thermoses to be given, and he did take her up on the offer for having a To-Go drink. He put his hands to his side, only to remember that these shorts don't have pockets and that his bag was still at the train station along with, presumably, his cell phone. Assuming, of course, that nobody stole his things. 

He was lucky in that regard. He wasn't going to have to replace too much, but that was neither here nor there. Pocket watch stayed at home that day. 

"You sure everyone is going to be okay with that?" William was cautious, "the only time Ned's talked to me was when he proceeded to call me a colossal fuckup and threatened to kill me if I didn't join the cabal and I'm pretty sure Sepúlveda can't remember my name without being prompted."

A beat. 

"Does the door lock?"

Margot

"Of course the door locks."  Margot didn't bother locking it when she walked away from the house, though.  While Doc had a day job to hold down and was typically absent during the daytime hours, Ned was in and out of the house as freely and frequently as she could be.  It wasn't long after this that Margot wiped her feet down with a bath rag, dressed them in sandals, and was headed out the house toward the driver's seat of her little easily-overlooked sedan.

"We're a cabal.  I mean, I suppose that doesn't mean cohabitation, but look at what just happened-- we took how long to know something was wrong and you needed help?"

A sip of coffee was pulled before she started the car, backed up down the lengthy driveway and out onto the narrow residential street, then shifted to drive and started back toward the city.

"If Ned didn't care to keep you around he would have seen you killed instead of inviting you into the cabal."  She paused for a beat, frowned softly, and took another drink before adding: "If I were him and wanted that I would've gone straight to Doc and not called the meeting; left me out of the whole affair.  Of course I wasn't going to let that meeting close with the alternative ending.  But he called the meeting instead, didn't he?"

Will

"Ned is very loyal and very committed to your-" he gestures, there is no English equivalent to the plural you, "-well being. I wouldn't blame him if that was what he wanted to do and it's good that he didn't. I don't-" 

There was a hitch there, something that stuck when he was getting into the car and buckling up. William looked at the window and tried to determine whether or not he needed to roll it down. It wasn't small in here, and it wasn't suffocating, and this was real and everything is okay. 

"I'm not mad that it took long. I... I didn't want anyone to get hurt. I didn't want this but-" he inhales slow and deep and it makes his lungs burn when he does if only because it feels bitter, "-but it doesn't matter what my intention is. Good intentions do not negate bad results, and continued things like this? It's... it's a sign of bad judgment."

This is my fault. 

Margot

"We all have bad judgment, Will."

Margot said this in a tone that was patient and old sounding for a voice as small and young and clear as hers.  She glanced to him from the road, momentarily, before looking back through the windshield and minding traffic safety once more.

"That was the point Ned was making when he brought us together.  If you want to look at it in terms of fault I guess you could, and you could say it was yours, but then any number of Bad Things have been the fault of any one of us.  Shoot, the time that Doc got his wrists fused...  Or hauling Ned to the E.R. in the middle of noplace Iowa because of my poor choices and Ned's encouragement of them...  I've.." She trailed off and swallowed, scowling at the hard memories.  They did not cause her paroxysms of terror or the sensation of bad history imminently repeating itself, not any longer, but some things were still very hard to talk about all the same.

She cleared her throat and took another sip from her thermos.

"The cabal's us trying to keep all of Us alive, because the paths we're all walking otherwise would get us killed if we were alone."

Will

I've-

He turned his head and looked at her, studied the side of her face as she cleared her throat and noticed things like how fast they were going and the road signs they were passing and all the things he didn't need to focus on. Tuning out the noise made looking at another person easier, though. Made it more meaningful because it meant you needed to be present. 

"I think... we're putting unrealistic expectations on ourselves. Everyone seems to have their shit together because they fake it better, or maybe because they have support or-" he waved it away, "I'd rather have someone around who is indifferent towards me at best than being alone anymore."

"Aren't you ever afraid people will get sick of you and leave?"

Margot

"You're probably right there," she agreed about the unrealistic expectations.  Put on her blinker, switched lanes to get around a slow SUV hauling a boat.  "But we're unrealistic people.  It makes sense that everything about us, including our expectations, would be that way too."

The question that followed earned him another glance past her right shoulder, this one a little lengthier, but prevented from going on too long by being behind the driver's wheel.  Her expression was a thoughtful one; introspective, as opposed to somewhat hurt/somewhat pitying as it has been in the past.  She reached for her thermos again but held it in the air, paused before drinking so she could answer.

"I was, once.  I never had many people... it was pretty much just my Mom and I for a lot of the time, and I never worried about her leaving.  I..."  A swallow.  A sip from her thermos, and then she continued in a hush of resigned confession.  "I was the one who wound up leaving her.  And when I got out here I suppose I worried people would leave me because of what I'd done, what I can do.  I met Ned and the Doc...."

Her eyes and expression went blank while she analyzed the memories, as opposed to searching them alone.

"....I worried Ned would leave when he found other Mages; we were the first that the other had discovered, y'know.  I worried Doc would leave us both once we were no longer Apprentices; once I became a Verbena.

"But neither of them did.  Ned's still here grinding through books with me and helping teach me to defend myself.  The Doc's still here, teaching us, keeping us safe, giving us a home.  We've given one another all plenty of times and reasons to leave, but no one has.  I don't worry about that anymore.  It takes time, but that worry does die."

Will

"You were afraid he'd leave... like he'd find someone better and leave you since you weren't the world anymore?" William stopped, "... I'm putting words in your mouth."

He had an opportunity, to either ruminate and give background and history. To prattle on about himself and there is that silence when he looks for something to say. There is more silence there than need be, all things considered. She talks about having a friend who stuck with her, having a mentor who decided to keep teaching them and didn't cut ties the minute that there was some sort of divergence. 

"Kalen wasn't like that," William confessed, "he was the first person I met after almost four years of being alone. I thought he was the sun, he gave me that pocket watch I use, and a lot of other things."

He inhaled, shook his head and realized that his gaze had gone distant and that he had lost touch with his reflection. That he had been staring at the faint showing in the side window and that he couldn't quite place the person there. Familiar but not. 

"Coming here sounds like it was really nice... what was it like studying with Doc?"

Margot
Big hazel eyes flitted toward William when he began what sounded like projecting abandonment fears, and the corner of her mouth that faced him turned downward in sympathy when he stopped himself and stated precisely what he was doing-- putting words in her mouth.  To answer that she just rolled a shoulder in a shrug-- maybe, the non-committal answer of the ages.

"Not even that I wasn't the world.  I didn't ever think that I was.  I just used to think he'd find a Tradition and run away to a new land with new people to learn how to be One of Them."  However, as Will had to be aware by now, Ned was traditionless; truly an Orphan, even if he did smack of those who fiddled much with Entropy and Death from time to time.

She grew quiet after that, and in that quiet William spoke up about Kalen, who gave him much but wasn't 'like that'  She kept her eyes forward this time, and kept her quiet as well, though she didn't seem uncomfortable in it.  Just thoughtful, then companionly.  She didn't want to press for details, as the subject seemed tender, and trusted he would offer more clarification if/when he wanted.  After a time, they would instead talk about studying under Doc.  It was around this time that Margot was getting off the freeway to enter Denver and get William back to his belongings.

"Harsh," she answered without hesitation.  "He more or less built out a roadmap and dictionary and then kept us mostly safe while we figured out hard lessons.  He'll bitch at you for asking stupid questions, or sometimes outright forbid them if he's lecturing.  He'll be mean and roll his eyes and groan, but he makes sure that we know what we need to know, and lets us use his books even if we disagree on the fundamentals of how Magick works."

Will

I just used to think he'd find a Tradition and run away to a new land with new people to learn how to be One of Them."

"That he'd join another tribe, so to speak?" like that made more sense to him. The idea of finding your people and learning their dances and becoming One Of Them, or discovering the part of yourself that was there all along. 

The apprenticeship she described was harsh, which made him seem to brighten at the mention. Of something that was informative and interesting and, at that moment, he could hold onto it and be engrossed in the process. "I think cantankerous is a good word for him. Like that old guy that wants you off his lawn, but is going to make sure you don't step in any holes and gives you practical presents because he won't come out and say he likes you."

"I think Sepúlveda likes you."

He continued on, "Kalen... was great for a good two months. He was attentive and interested in having someone there that he could teach but then it just... stopped. The contact, the connections- he was off infatuated by someone or something else. Collecting projects or buying things or some weekly fling. I learned the vast majority of things about the Order from a book instead of him; we're not even members of the same house. 

"I didn't get to ask questions- he wouldn't answer if I asked him and if I asked someone else he'd get mad and say that I wasn't trusting him and that I was shutting him out."

Margot

"Yeah..."  The first time she said this was in agreement about tribes and running off to find them.  She felt hesitation in joining her own Tradition because of that; she'd felt a witch from the very start, and she'd always felt a primal one connected to the earth and the oceans and the blood that would soak the both of them.  When she learned what the Verbena were she knew it was where she belonged, but loathed the thought of leaving her mismatched little cabal behind to learn from a coven someplace far away near the sea.

The second time, though, was after Will concluded his analysis about her mentor, how he must like her.  "Yeah."  A small smile touched her face at the corners of her mouth and eyes. "I know he does."

Following that she listened and learned about Kalen and the kind of mentor/apprentice(/something more?) relationship that existed there.  It had her scowling gently, a set of lines appearing between her eyebrows where they pinched together.  Again, it seemed she didn't quite know what to say, but it could be that she was focused on pulling them into a parking space before the building where Will lived.  She parked the car and hesitated before getting out.  Making up her mind, she reached across Will's legs to tap the latch to the glove box, which fell open to show a neat and typical stack of papers in clear plastic bags (registration, manual, insurance), a number of clean napkins and a to-go package of tissues, and a black zipper pouch; it was the lattermost thing that she snatched up and over into her own lap.

When the pouch was unzipped it wafted the smell of a number of herbs; pine and sage being the strongest smelling.  From the bag she pulled an oblong wooden cylinder about half the size of her small hand, and a miniature sky blue lighter.  The cylinder was revealed to hold a false ceramic cigarette-- a one-hitter for weed, which she packed into the device from where it was stashed within the cylinder's chamber before offering it over to Will along with the lighter.

While he got his hands and mouth situated around taking a hit that was offered apropos of nothing, she spoke at last.

"Obviously I'd never met this Kalen, but it sounds like he was something of a jealous and emotionally abusive shit.  And I'm sorry for that."  When it was her turn to take the hitter back she did, and re-packed it as she continued.

"We're all shits too; me and The Doc and Ned, all of us suck pretty hard in our own ways.  But we're here to learn and grow and survive, and I think we can help you do a better job of it than books and some guy who can't be assed to remember you unless he's feeling slighted."

Will

She retrieved the one hitter-

"Margot, you fucking saint," he laughs, again with something like sincere joy. He took the one hitter and inspected it quietly, rolled ceramic between his fingers for a second before poising the lighter where he needed it to be. He took his drag. 

They were parked in front of a place called Floral and Hardy- it was a florist shop that, once upon a time, people cared about. The neighborhood has since fallen into disrepair and the little door next to the shop that led to the apartment looked like it had been replaced several times. It was an older part of town that had yet to feel the effects of gentrification. The rent was still reasonable, and that was good enough for Will when he was paying for two people. 

He held his breath while listening to her. Nodded once and then twice before handing the one hitter off and exhaling slowly. He didn't hack his lungs out, clearly subscribing to the idea that if you cough you did it wrong, versus being of the camp that you have to cough to get off. Who knew where the truth in the debate actually went. 

"I'd tell people and they'd either deny that he'd act that way and shut it down or say that it was the way he was and I should get over it or that, y'know, I had to have done something to deserve it, right?" William laughed, shrugging his shoulders before unbuckling and getting ready to head up to the apartment, the sound wasn't so much laughter as a release of tension, "he didn't even tell the Order about me... after all that, he never brought me up apparently. I had to convince the representatives that I needed to join."

"I mean, I am a shit, though. And I'm glad to be in similar company. Besides, you're prettier than most books," Will grinned, "have you seen medieval manuscripts? The ones from 1200? Better than a centerfold."

Margot

Margot was of a similar camp as William, and held her smoke within her lungs for a good time before blowing smoothly over her shoulder and into the back seat of her car.  She did cough a little, though, and brought her hand to press a fist to her mouth to muffle the sound.  The coughing bled into a sentence.  "Wh-what--" koff! "What kind of gaslighting community used to live here?"

When the coughing subsided to let her face find its own expressions again, she appeared alarmed and angry both.  The hitter was re-stashed appropriately in the zipper pouch, from there in the glovebox, and the two were climbing out of the car and up onto the sidewalk in front of the floral shop.  Margot didn't carry a purse with her anyplace, just kept her important cards and cash in the wallet folds that were built into her phone case.  This meant she was without any sticks of gum, though she did pat her pockets just to confirm that none was there (it was not).

She stepped around the headlight of the car to join Will's side, and would fall into step with him to lead the way to the apartment he'd been residing within.  When he paid his compliment, proclaiming her prettier than any ancient centerfold, she appeared momentarily taken aback, as though having seen something as unusual as a deer go sprinting across a downtown avenue.  Then she blinked and put a smirk on her face that helped her pretend she didn't feel blush blooming tell-tale in her cheeks like it always did.  "Oh, stop.  It's not the centerfold's fault that it never knew about modern hygiene and fashion."  Said while wearing flip-flops, cut-off denim shorts and a gray v-neck tee that was a little too large and stretched from too many washes on top of that.  Clearly the height of fashion.

"Where did he go?"  This was asked after a few moment's lapse into quiet, clearly kicking the conversational can back to Kalen.  There was a particular note to the question, delving and hinting of threat, that sounded very much like something she'd picked up from either/both of her cablmates... or possibly the Goddess that rode in her bones.  It did seem like the macabre aura that stuck faded and sticky in the air about her rolled comfortable as a tide to shore while she waited for the answer, whatever that may be.

Will

It was a two way security system that, as it turned out, was a really ineffective system. There was supposed to be a passcode lock on the door, but Will shoved his shoulder into it while he opened which jarred it with enough force to actually open the damned thing. It was up the stairs then in a narrow hallway with aging floral carpet covering maple wood stairs. This place had potential- the architecture, the molding, the opportunities again and again to be something truly beautiful if someone had actually cared about it. 

Luckily that disrepair came in handy because in order to get the spare key to his apartment, William jostled a piece of molding that wasn't quite attached as well as it should have. It moved the key out just enough that he could reach the tip and pull it out. he numbers on his apartment door had long since come off. 

"It's true! I'd daresay you even hold a candle to the calligraphic prowess of twelve cloistered monks. You're Book of Kells caliber," he gave her a thumbs up and a playful grin. Seemed more himself when he was playful and poking fun. 

The lock, however, was well cared for. It turned without a sound beyond the resounding click that came when one felt the deadbolt fall into position. He pushed the door and it opened without any real effort. The apartment was beautiful, but one could tell that it hadn't always been that way. The tile in the kitchen still needed to be tended but the exposed brick walls were clean and the ceilings were high. The molding was restored, the plaster was redone in the places that needed it. Fresh paint- it had to have taken time to do, and given the condition of the rest of the building it was clear this unit did not start out in the condition it happened to be in now. 

Upon opening the door there were a set of stairs that led up to a loft with a wrought iron bed that probably cost a small fortune. There were places where there should have been pictures on the walls, but those paintings were taken down and facing the wall. The floors were sanded and pristine, save for the chalk outlines and circles and what-have-you written there. It very clearly used to be an apartment but now felt more like a Workspace with a bed. There was a bedroom off to one side, and a balcony that had a lovely view of a wall. His plants were dying from the lack of waterings they'd received. 

"I've got water and stuff in the fridge, you're welcome to anything that isn't spoiled," he told Margot. Avoided the gaslighting question in favor of being preoccupied with these sorts of things. Like looking around and figuring out where he put his suitcases. 

Where did he go?

William didn't answer that one, instead he went to the bedroom down the way and retrieved a piece of rolling luggage, "Kalen?" Nope, couldn't buy himself any more time there, "He just... left. Left Denver, left the Order of Hermes, packed up his things and flew to South America to live with some priest named Ramon from the Chorus."

"He was one of the big movers-and-shakers when things first seemed to be going down in Denver. He knew all the right people, was in the thick of everything. He was a hub for the city-" he tipped the suitcare over and started to unzip it. A smaller suitcase fell out, which made William look relieved. 

He stopped for a second, that weird moment of reflection, "-and... I was a fuck up who made stupid mistakes very publicly- who kept getting in trouble and meant well but it didn't matter. I made him look bad. I mean... so it made sense. It makes sense, if I was better things would have been different." It had been said in a convicted fashion, like a genuine core belief. Not self-pitying, but rather like he was delivering an undisputed fact to Ms. Travers, "I had it coming."

Margot

In a home not her own-- nay, clearly a Workspace not her own, given the chalk on the ground and the much-cleared space-- Margot did her best to explore with her eyes and not with her hands and feet.  William was pulling suitcases out like nesting dolls and busying himself with his packing, and seeing this as a one-man job that she'd slow more than speed by trying to get involved, she settled herself hovering on a chalk-free spot on the floor near the middle of whatever space Will was in at that time.

She looked down while he spoke, pulling at a stray thread in the hem of her left sleeve and watching it unravel.  Her nose wrinkled when she saw the thread wanted to continue pulling further than she anticipated, so around the time that Will was proclaiming himself a fuck-up the little witch bared her teeth and used them to sever the thread abruptly at its end.  She pulled fibers from the tip of her tongue with her index and thumb finger pads and, still scowling, brushed that on the stunted thigh of her shorts.

"You had something coming," she agreed, now fixing the scowl onto him.  Her arms folded over her narrow chest, uncomfortable but braced (body language betraying what she was convincing her face and voice to go in a different direction from).  "But it wasn't any of that."

Her arms squeezed a little tighter, and the subtle aura ever-present around her, as it was around any of them, seemed taut like a well-controlled pull of a bow string.  It was anger, roiling under the surface at these figures of the past, prickling and pleasing the touches of Andraste that were with her always.

"I mean, yeah, sure we're fuck-ups and we do stupid shit that makes it to a lot of ears, stirs up fires that other people have to come put out.  We're humans<-- fucking kids who are wielding tools to break and make Existence.  That's what happens.  Yes, we should be yelled at and scolded when shit goes awry like that, and we should have our faces turned in the direction of the lesson we need to take away lest the next time kill us.

"But fuck his ego, Will.  And fuck him for thinking that was what was at stake.  I'm glad that you weren't 'better', because it sounds like the way things did turn out is actually 'better' than the kind of 'different' you're probably meaning."

Will

"I wasn't kidding when I told you a few months back that the fastest way to get people to leave is to be human," he said to Margot. Will starts to drag the larger of the two suitcases up to the loft area with the bed and the chest of drawers and implements of living. Whatever he used the bedroom for was questionable at best, and not something he seemed too interested in explaining. 

He threw his shirt over the railing, which was followed by the shorts he had been wearing. There was the sound of wrestling to get clothes back on, "I guess that's what I'm worried about. I keep thinking that you guys are going to figure I'm not worth it or I'll piss you off and I won't be able to fix it."

A pause, then peeking over the railing. He didn't have a shirt on, and he still looked awful but it wasn't as bad as it could have been, "I am probably confusing different with better. You think you will get more enlightened and get over your shit but it just makes you more aware of where you need to get over yourself."

"I wish I hated him. It would be easier."

Margot

"Well....," Margot started and trailed off at first, the argument reeled back as soon as it began to tumble from her mouth.  She analyzed what she was about to say, a habit she's always carried with her that's often given her pause before speech, which was doubtless murder for an impatient soul trying to have a conversation with her.  As always, though, she did continue.

"Well," she began again, and this time continued on. "Who needs the kind of person that would abandon you for being you in the first place?"

She stopped glowering at an intersect of chalk lines on the floor and lifted her gaze to find it meeting Will's over the railing.  She probably would have blushed and flustered some time ago to find him without his shirt, but that was another time, and another Margot who was worried about far smaller things.

Her mouth pressed to a sympathetic line after he spoke next, and her voice was still bothered but trying to be gentler when she replied. "The important lessons are never the easy ones.  But they are good to know, none the less."

She cleared her throat before adding: "Remember, though, we are They Who Make Change: if you really wanna hate him, we could find a way to make that happen.  Hey, can I help gather anything up for you?"

Will

It was the sort of interaction that was born of mindless comforts. That it wasn't a flirtatious gesture to be half clothed and conversing. Anything that started with well was likely to be predicated with something thoughtful. Margot didn't talk like Will- who spoke frequently and thought outloud and looped around and eventually got to a point because he talks when he's nervous and excited and the only time he ever shuts up is when things Are Not Okay, which is really what made this situation stand out because he didn't say more than a hand full of words for the most part. 

"Truth," he replies, nods. And then after a second of thinking.

"Yeah, yeah you're really right. And.. uh.. I think hating him is going to come naturally later... aaaand, can you grab my notebooks? They're... uh... on the kitchen table? Take the notes that are with it."

A beat.

"Or you could help me pick out clothes. I'm totally like a fucked up Barbie right now."