Diffused
18th of February 2007 A.D.
"Is he...?" You've almost been tricked too many times today to not ask, but Sophia sends back the all clear so you call out: "On the count of three?"
"You two pull apart the mechanisms I can ground the power, Ebeneezer watch for traps," Langtry commands, his voice holding in equal measure conviction and exhaustion. The word 'still' hangs unspoken in the air, he thinks he can still ground the power.
Thankfully you are not the only one who heard that. "I'll help ground it, we all have eyes in our heads," McCoy says, approaching the contraption of steel, magic and pain from the opposite direction.
"I can help," Harry speaks up, still moving gingerly into the room, like he'd suddenly gotten three inches of height and was afraid to knock his head on the ceiling. No danger of that here. It seems to have been some kind of chapel, though of what you could not say and you're not sure you want to know.
"Three, two, one..."
Sophia tries to stir the life in the fallen wizards, but none of them stir, a look of anger and of anguish on her face-that-is-yours.
"Now!" you call peeling the rotten skin of the enchantment like the nastiest most wormy potato, if a potato's eyes
could see and hate. McCoy just yanks out the anchors, sweeping them in Langtry's direction. It would, you think have been enough to kill the curse dead, maybe a bit of the bedroock would have gone on a trip to Faerie, but no one in the city above would have noticed. Then Harry plants his staff throws up his left hand and for the briefest instant becomes a pillar of molten essence, one with the warp and weft of the world folding the tainted power away into the very veil it had been meant to break.
Harry loses 4 Essence and 1 Willpower -> Now at 7/8 willpower and 0/5 Essence
"What did you...?" Shock is not an emotion to which the Merlin's aristocratic features are accustomed to both due the wisdom he has gathered in his centuries of life and the poker face he's cultivated for just as long.
"Just something I figured out recently." From someone else or spoken in another tone the words might have sounded prideful, here and now they sound worried.
"As in within the last five minutes," Lydia says, smiling at the understatement or maybe just at the fact this seems to finally be over.
Taking advantage of the distraction you look down at the broken swords and ask:
"Who of those who have walked this Labyrinth have been tainted by it?"
"Carmen Sanchez, Peter Volkov, Cornelius Greenwood"
Not Langtry, thank God! A less charitable part of you, one that happens to speak with a demon's voice notes that at least one senior wizard seems to have dealt with the crises reasonably on his own, even if he did have to fall into a trap first.
Alas you can still count, so as Sophia gathers herself to try to heal the fallen wardens again you ask again:
"Who are the missing wizards? Where are they?"
You get names alright:
"Bill Mayers, Chandler Abbot, Lisa Strong, Jay Sagar, Alice Royce, Joséphine Aubert."
Lost in the Labyrinth.
Lost 3 Essence -> Now at 4/18 (3x Crown question)
Regained 2 Essence -> Now at 6/18 (Urge of the Forbidden)
Fuck! It's only the sound of metal scraping stone that makes you realize you had kicked the wall so hard it left a dent. Of course they would have been tempted too, of course some of them would lose themselves. A consolation prize for the Hollow Man's losses.
"Lydia, the dead..."
"None of them have passed," she confirms. "Those who die by violence rarely do before their first sunset."
The silver of her anima starts to unfold into the air to reveal a quartet of very bewildered wizards looking down at their own corpses. and the slowly stirring forms of their still living companions.
What do you do?
[] Propose going back into the Labyrinth to save the six who are lost in it somehow
-[] Write in with whom
[] There is already too much that needs doing, help with the clean up here and in the city above
[] Write in
OOC: Harry was not the only one who stepped into the Labyrinth, because it's not like it was a trap only for him, but the others did not have his advantages. 
