Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

13th of January 2007 A.D.

The girl in the cowboy hat was leafing through three books at once, looking at all three without turning her head as embers of green fire burned like stars in the sky all around her. The pencil in her hand races across the paper so fast Alexander had no notion of how it hadn't snapped or at least slipped from fingers drenched in water. He had not asked.

"The first thing you have to know is that there is no distinction between scientific understanding of the world and arcane insight. Sir Issac Newton was a magician and not from folly, the very name occult is at best misunderstanding, at worst a lie from those who cling to their magic like a miser to his coin, the world is one and we are of it. As above so below, as below so above. When we speak it is with an echo of the words of Creation and when we sing we ascent with our voices the scales of the divine. Et creavit Deus hominem ad imaginem suam. When man converses with powers beyond with rite and with offering in garb familiar it is not to disguise themselves that they do so nor to by veiling uplift themselves for how can one rise higher than the seat upon which they had been set. No, instead it falls to man to recognize the aspect of divinity in themselves which echoes whatever Eidolon of the Creation they seek."

"Humility is the virtue of the seeker without which they are as a fool unclothed wearing a crown of false gold," the words came easily —Too easily?— to his lips.

"Humble you must be, but before all of the revelation, that within and that without. Do not seek to lessen yourself as the star that seemed lowest in the pattern of the constellations does not does not willfully sink before her sisters, but indeed seems low only as a matter of perspective. Here, see the mark of the primordial ocean, Chthonic powers were those of the ocean before men sought to place them beneath their feet in caves of iron and gold. Wherefore is Poseidon the Earthshaker?"

"Because the passage to death is through deep water. And... and if it be an ocean then I must swim not sink," Alexander nodded along, recalling a riddle he had heard from 'Mr Lazarus' the same one he had struggles to forget after terrifying meeting with the Wardens that had followed. What creature does that beast which can devour all fear?/That which devoured can consume its hunter, a parasite. That didn't sound quite right but...

Lines then were drawn, and broken and refined, symbols made simple and the symbol revealed in dazzling complexity, to know.

"In the lines under the city, in the advertisements writ in light, in the cut across the vein, life's bleak end of its own choosing one thing binds us and its sight..." Thus spoke the green-eyed scholar, looking down almost idly at the mirror in her hand. Before he could call out a warning she cracked the mirror with her fingers, blood slipping among the cracks. "To the eye that is discerning imperfection amplifies the truth, just as a lens' curve carries light of distant start." So saying she threw a playful glare to Ms Carpenter, like a cat atop its perch. "Few are given perfect sight, even then just glimpses, better to mark where the creases are."

Mirrors broken, mirrors bloody, set in place of scryer's glass, sight truer than pride might tell.

"As long as you're moving as long as you're breathing there's magic in you and that magic wants you to succeed. Start from there and stay true to it and you'll go as far as you need to. Sparks start fires you know," said the wizard, the Warden, making the metaphor literal as he lit five black candles to set around the room. the fact that the fire did not stay true to its color, but took on a ghostly blue didn't seem to trouble him. "You do the best you can with what you've got for as long as you got. That's all that any of us can do."

There was a part of Alexander, the part that felt like blood rushing from his head and a knot of nausea in his stomach as the dingy walls of the fucking backroom examination room closed in, that wanted to throw that us in the Warden's smug face. Only this Warden didn't look smug, he looked like he hadn't slept well in days, hadn't shaved for longer. The lesson of fire is to burn, to do.

"Ah... I think he's catching on, which means I'm either finally losing my wits or a genius," the old priest cackled. "Now I know which one I'd prefer, but when you get to be my age lad you have to accept that it could be either and work that in."

"Be myself?" The words were half a question, it sounded sort of trite, like something you would find in the moral of a show for children or find wrapped up in a fortune cookie.

The old just shrugged, unsure perhaps how to explain it batter, setting down a bowl of pomegranate seeds.

"Trees and grass both grow from the soil," the previously blonde haired girl said wig in her lap to show the stark contrast of her hair. "When the hurricane comes in trees might break, but grass is fine. Don't be too impressed by towers that claim to pierce the heavens, that just means they are all the further from the foundation of all things. All things have to rest sometimes."

Lydia lost 1 Essence -> Now at 4/7

"Wait..." Know, lesson of the House of Air; See, lesson of the House of Water; Do, Lesson of the House of Fire; Be, Lesson of the House of Wood; Rest, lesson of the House of Earth. "The ritual's begun already hasn't it?"

The room was full of magic, not just their magic, but his if he dared to...

"You're the Fulcrum, you tell us," the girl-who is-green flame said.

Alexander Harrowmont, scholar, seeker, philosopher, fool and magician spoke now the words of the old mysteries with a calm certainty he had not known before in the tongue of lost Mycene: "Despoina, lady fair mistress of the golden grain more precious than a king's treasure, maker of the blood red poppy, sleep-flower, death-flower, hear now voice of mortal man..."

He looked own into the mirror bloodied and instead of cracks he saw ropes of power, thick and knoted, blackened like charred roots of earth and such fear did overcome him as a man who in the morning turned around to see his own face worm-eaten on the pillow beside him, but he knew in his heart, still beating, that he was alive, that the world was alive that he had skill enough, and in this place, power enough to fight it. He took from the bowl one seed and he crushed and threw it into the sest where the Great Sea was and he called to Kore the maiden that water might be drawn from he sea and given into the land, voices mortal and immortal rose with him, each cry upon the wings of five others carried.

High echoed the prayers to the glory of the Sun that warmed the land and and gave life to the people and lo the light grew warm and rich as beaten gold seeming to draw from each face what was good and great, but where it fell upon the girl Lydia did did not envelop her but from her feet cast a shadow black as midnight with an edge sharper than steel and it was the shadow of the Maiden, the Lady, the Watcher.

"I know what you did... and I'm gonna tell them.." The voice was not a thing heard on the wind, but felt through the fingers on the glass, through the vibrations of the ley-line. It sounded almost childish, if one could strip all but the meanness from the voice of a child, the desire to hurt just to see someone squirm. "They're gonna know and they're going to get rid of you. You eat them or they eat you. I'm gonna tell them."

Alexander didn't yell back, he did not curse the one clawing into his soul to pull out a handful of squirming fears and insecurities, with the skills born of five and a half years as a Chief Archivist he ignored it and finished the prayer.

All at once the energy seemed to go out of him and it was all he could do not to collapse over the desk.

The girl-who-is... Molly Carpenter damn it, he knew her name, spoke up: "The Chaos ritual has been dampened, until sunset at least. If it will last beyond that and for how long is anyone's guess."

It wasn't sunny in the room anymore, well except for around the old man who seemed to have caught a shard of it in a golden talisman. Was that the Eye of Ra? the part of him that was always wondering things thought

Oliver Adkin Gains Eye of Ascendant Ra (2/2 Uses; Otherwise equivalent to one of Harry's sunlight handkerchiefs)

Somewhere far above thunder peeled and the rain began to fall on a city aflame.

Chaos Ritual Dampened

Lost 2 Essence -> now at 8/15 ( Occult Excellency and TTC )

"Somehow I don't think Sandra's going to take this laying down," the Warden added grimly. "She'll know where we are, there's no way anyone with a lick of magic senses could miss the focus of a Working this strong and symbolically bright. We have to move, rally more support."

"I,"Alexander was proud of managing to keep his voice level. "Will not be leaving my library."

What do you do?

[] Try to convince him to see sense
-[] Write in

[] Fortify here if Sandra wants to come to to you all the better to use her resources

[] Write in

OOC: Whew, that was a hell of an interlude. Fun though, hope you guys enjoy.