Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

31th of October 2006 A.D.

While it's certainly not nice feeling this hollow, you are more curious than hungry. What is Mab going to do? Barely giving you the time to ask the question even to yourself the Queen of Air and Darkness bridges the space between the door and where you stand in the blink of an eye, in the flash of cold moonlight and then she simply reaches out, a pale expertly manicured hand slipping into the mass of inky darkness and twisting. Something's not right, you realize at once as the thing seems to slip between her fingers and forms a cylinder around her hand, then an oval, turning turning, the speed of it writ in texture that shadow should not have.

In the blink of an eye Usum is in your hands, thoughts of who gets to devour this thing or what it's shame might gone gone from your mind. It's turning into a spider, legs jetting out of the swollen mass of darkness. Hide in plain sight indeed... some part of you thinks almost admiring though the real concern is how to cut though that thing without slicing though the hand below. What's the consistency of Outsider Shadow Stuff?

"Can I...?" you start. You do not get to finish. Even as the thing forms a misshapen mouth to spew God knows what at you Mab's hand erupts with it wreathed in ice, half hailstone, half falling star

Lines of blue light race though the shadow thing, fractures that give true shape to shapelessness for just an instant..."Poor broken things, cutting with your bleeding edges," it spits its malice upon the air, though on the last word it is no more. It almost looks like she gave the thing reality poisoning.

It suddenly feels just a little silly to be holding a sword as Winter's power lashes around you in an unseen gale, rejoicing in the fall of its foe, carving lines beautiful and strange upon the rink.

"The sentiment is appreciated in the spirit that animates it Miss Carpenter. Some day, perhaps soon it might be the act that is likewise, but here and now things have been settled."

"Uhm..." You glance at the Winter Lady, still in her icy prison, only now with a hole where you had shoved the steel pole through. "She should be alright, but I'd like to see how she's doing just to be sure, The only other spirit I banished was far lesser than that." A moment, two she hesitates, though eyes less sharp than yours might have missed it before commanding the ice to recede with a wave.

Lost 1 Essence -> Now at 1/12

A heady mix of bruise purple and dirty yellow stains her aura, confusion and defensiveness as her eyes snap to you, perhaps all the more so as not to look at her liege lady. "What... what the fuck's going on?"

Maybe it's the fact that she sounds like she's your age as well as looking at it, maybe it's because not wanting to look people in the eye after doing something stupid is a feeling you can sympathize with, but in place of the polished response that sits on the tip of your tongue you answer with: "An Outsider the fuck happened, although the 'fuck' might be redundant when talking about them."

"And what in a Jotun's frozen balls are you?" she presses.

"Well from the parts you care the most about to least..." You count on your fingers. "Already paid, invested with fel powers that used to be a tree in the ice gardens of Arctis Tor, mortal enough be be getting on with, Molly Carpenter."

The Winter Lady laughs, with you not at you, confirming the impulse to curse more in two sentences that you have in the last two months no matter how uncomfortable it still makes you. "You're the one that... huh. Consider this payment for waking me up in a way that's not a whole damn chore. You were supposed to fall afoul of the Laws, get used in some plot against Dresden. I know it would have involved you seducing him at some point 'cause that bitch Sandra came to me to ask what he's into. I told him guilt. Seeing as you're Catholic so that fits perfectly."

"Sandra... Sandra Marling?" you ask horrified. "What does she have to do with any of this?"

"She's in deep with Him." The screech of nails involuntarily dragging along ice leaves no doubt as to who she means "Not sure if he's in her head or not, but she was supposed to push you to break a Law and make you think it was your idea. Who'd you kill?"

"No one," you answer automatically.

"What?" Maeve shakes her head as though in disbelief, though she is pretty clearly exaggerating as well. "Figures they would over-complicate it instead of pushing you to boil a thug's blood in an alley. You cry on him a little, one thing leads to another..."

"Circling back for a bit," you cut her off before she can do anymore speculating about you and Harry. "What exactly was Sandra's plan for me."

Alas the Winter Lady rolls her eyes in a way that makes Leech look mature by comparison. "We don't do circles here unless it's a circle of poison toadstools or a circle of dancers that keep going until they die."Beneath the brashness there is pain you see, writ clear upon her aura. All those missing pieces that she had been fine with at the time are signs of just how helpless she was until an hour ago.

Glancing back at Mab, one is reminded of two things, firstly she is a lot harder to read than her daughter and secondly that one should never underestimate a good listener.

What do you do?

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OOC: Probably the most friendly introduction anyone has had to Maeve in centuries, she is hardly insulted Molly at all.