Arc 14 Interlude 14: What Lies in Grave Unquiet
What Lies in Grave Unquiet
18th of February 2007 A.D.
It shouldn't be light out. That was my first thought. I'm not sure what time it should be exactly, jet lag's got nothing on running though the ways, but it definitely shouldn't be this sunny in any part of South America, then the rest of my brain helpfully caught up. Who says time has to work the same not-quite-Outside?
The vampire had gotten up to pay, a polite monster, or more likely one who doesn't want to draw attention to itself. If I was going to expose anyone to this madness it wouldn't be a little girl, my little girl, that still sounded crazy. What did I know about being a dad?
I at least knew not to take the bait. "No."
"No?" the empty faced man looked but down his food gingerly. "May you never claim after this day Dresden that the dark is not generous."
Arms set crossed on his chest like a corpse, body suddenly stiff as a board he falls backwards onto the pavement and where he falls a grave opens, a headstone rising from the pavement like a pale mushroom from the riven earth. Marble and on it a pentacle in gold. Too much to hope it would be his grave.
Here lies Harry Dresden ✬ He died doing the Right Thing
It was mine, the one Bianca had gotten for me. As the sky darkened and the streets around me emptied of life I realized the grave opened into steps that reminded me a little of the ones below Demonreach. It was clear enough where I was meant to be going but I couldn't help but look around for Maggie and Susan. They were both gone, even the trees were starting to rot in place and the buildings to melt like pieces of rancid tallow left too long in the sun.
No way forward but down, about as subtle as a sledge hammer to the knees, but I knew it wasn't true. How much of beating this place was just knowing it could be beaten.
I heard my daughter scream from below, a sound of pure animal terror and I knew it was Maggie.
I ran.
"So confident in your own cleverness." I could not tell if the voice was coming from the walls of moldering earth or from inside my own head. "The great Harry Dresden, investigator and wizard can't possibility be wrong. It's not as though you guess half the time... it's not as though you gamble."
There were alcoves in the walls, the kind that should be filled with bones, but instead held only pools of rotting blood, offal and excrement. But I couldn't look, I couldn't look too close or I'd see faces in the rot: Victor Sells with a worm growing out of the middle of his forhead, McFinn trapped forever between man and wolf cursing God and all his saints, Kim Delaney being ripped apart over and over again, Aurora weeping blood from a dozen suppurating wounds....
"You can still save her soul, hurry!" "Hurry! Hurry!" Fleshless hands grabed at my legs. "You have to kill! Kill them all again!"
The screams were fainter now but no less anguished, fire was in my hand and in front of me was a familiar face ruined by the grave: Tall and sporting a goatee now filled with maggots, flesh charred black and bones showing through it: Justin DuMorne was standing over Maggie her chest torn open withered fingers on her still beating heart squeezing.
I gathered my will and... stopped.
In that final moment between grasping magic and shaping it into a spell I realized just how little sense any of this made. Why would her soul be here just because a vampire went after her? Sells and Aurora had twisted by the same power that ruled this place, but McFinn and KimDelaney. it was just showing me my fears to make me snap.
The moment I thought that, the moment I doubted the scene froze like some horrifying polaroid, then like a negative hurned by the sun is vanished.
"How dissapointing." The voice was the same but the figure walking into the chamber from a door that hadn;t been there before barely looked human, it swayed from side to side as it walked, chunched over and yet still way too tall under sweeping black robes. "I was all but sure you'd let your fists do your thinking for you, metaphorically of course." he waved at the floor in front of him and a well opened up filled with brackinsh water... then the 'well blinked'. The titanic eye of some burried horror looked at me with disdain.
"Ask and Ye shall recieve, what secret, what power is your performance worth?"
[] Harry asks how to kill the Hollow Man
[] Harry asks one of the myriad of questions he has about Molly and her nature
-[] Write in
[] Harry is silent, asking nothing
[] Write in
OOC: Sometimes evil is subtle and coniving, sometimes it hits one over the head with a metaphorical baseball bat, especially when it suspects you might react how it wants to being hit.
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