Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

22st of July 2006 A.D.

Quit while you are ahead, the saying goes. You do not exactly feel 'ahead' right now, just not entirely left in the dirt, but from what Usum has told you about Mab as well as the look on Gard and Harry's faces you have a feeling that is as close to putting one over on the queen of Air and Darkness as you are likely to get.

"Alright," you shrug with just enough nonchalance to make it clear her glamor isn't doing anything without, hopefully, making it into a challenge "Is that soon my the measure of men or of the deathless fey." Hopefully that is the kind of flattery the likes of Mab would appreciate, not of beauty or grace, not even of power or wits, but of perspective.

Though you still cannot read her expression beyond those flashes you had seen earlier you think it landed, or else she is fine with waiting because she answers: "Before the turning of the seasons on Samhain." Which... whatever she knows about my not-Mantle it isn't how fast it seems to grow. You can feel it now like a fire stoked higher and higher in the hearth ready to burst forth, a growing glacier about to spill forth an avalanche before settling back in.

Seeming content with how she had dealt with you and Harry Queen Mab turns her eyes first to Gard whom she offers an infinitesimal tilt of the head, which might be a nod for a job well done or something else you cannot even guess at between centuries old beings, then to Lydia.

"Know this child the debts of your sire shall have to be paid sooner or later and lighter will they be paid by you than him. I shall not speak of them here and now with you so new to your true self, but recall well that treason never prospers. Those who bear its mark are well advised to leave it behind and in honorable service find their place."

The girl, tired, bruised and still with blood on her clothes, though thankfully not her own looks her dead in the eyes, obviously struggling under the power of fey glamor. "Sir Jack Huntington lived around your time did he not? Midsummer Night's Dream was first portrayed while he lived. He too said treason doth never prosper. Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason."

Mab just stops, not like a flesh and blood woman would pause to take stock, more like water turning to ice with a sudden frost. "Child be thou a thousand times mightier and a thousand times again you shall not stop me from daring to call a true thing true. I have dared grater peril than you can in your darkest nightmares contemplate."

With that she is gone with the sound of a great stone door closing far away and a final blast of frozen wind.

Somehow Lydia is the first to find her voice. "Damn should have gone with 'you definitely look bigger than an agate-stone'. You know imply her new diet definitely isn't working."

This time you don't laugh, but there's no way you're keeping back a smile.

For his part poor Harry looks as harried as you have ever seen him. Something tells you that he is used to being the one to make quips to absurdly powerful beings not dealing with other people doing it. "Alright, let's just not call anymore attention to ourselves and clean up here before the FBI show us and try to arrest everyone."

Slowly, perhaps unwillingly his gaze falls back on the circle Arawn had passed through.

You anticipate the obvious question: "I have no idea what most of the writing is but my power told me it... fit with what we were doing. The only part of it I can still read is 'Perfected Principle of Consumption'. Don't worry it looses basically all of its meaning in English..."

"I would suggest," Gard says, speaking very deliberately. "Cleansing that with fire until the stone flows like water."

But... There are words in there you cannot read, words that might be important. You open your mouth to argue for snapping a picture of the whole circle first, but then you think of how that might look. You've been doing very spooky things all evening. Maybe you shouldn't push your luck by appearing too interested in the Ominous Writing of Ominousness. But it seems important though...

What do you do?

[] Snap a picture of the circle before Harry melts it

[] Leave be and continue with what clean up you can

[] Write in


There's sadly nothing you can do about the bodies without leaving too many signs for the Daedalus people, or anyone else investigating to trace back to you. At the very least you can make sure that the ritual tools inside and outside the submarine are rendered harmless as well as getting rid of obvious forensic traces for the mortal authorities to follow. Where Gard learned so much about cleaning up a crime scene you do not know and you are not sure you want to, but you are glad of the expertise.

By the time you are done there are only a few things of great note to deal with Katrina's body which Gard takes responsibility for disposing and her effects. The gun is nothing special, it's made out of fancy polymers and not steel so it can pass through a metal detector, but when it comes to its damage Katrina had obviously derided that being able to shoot people in the back of the head point blank was more than enough to be getting on with.

Now the runeblade... it certainly has power of its own, 'an ever-changing ever grasping aura' Harry calls it, explaining that it will seek the weakness of any foe it encounters and seek to mimic it once it has drawn blood. He reluctantly proclaims that it probably would not curse the user and Gard concurs: "Katrina would never lay an enchantment against a foe wielding her weapons because that would be planning for defeat."

The jacket, also cleared of being evil, though not of being gross, you had seen it in action trying to thicken in response to a blow, like the hide of some great beast that can turn sword, axe, arrow and now bullet in equal measure. It does look kind of cool too admittedly.

What do you do about Katrina's effects?

[] Try to claim one of them, they might be useful or at least interesting
-[] The runeblade
Each time the weapon wounds an oppoment roll a d10. On a toll of 7+ the runeblade seeks to mimic the weakens of the opponent. Given blood from a specific foe the sword can also be anointed to have that quality before battle, though the effect will last until the next sunrise or sunset and cannot be changed until then even if a foe with a different weakness is wounded. This applies to most supernatural banes like cold iron, silver, yew and similar but not to very specific weaknesses like a Loup Garou's to inherited silver
-[] The jacket
Allows one to re-roll soak 3/day no more than 1/encounter

[] Leave them for the others

[] Write in

OOC: After this it will be the end of arc XP spending vote so I wanted to handle the whole clean up. I hope the transition isn't too abrupt.