Episode 4 “The Rats, The Rats!”
BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
- Location
- Lickwidget
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Episode 4
"The Rats, The Rats!"
"The Rats, The Rats!"
"My Lady?" You look at your minion as she addresses you. You gesture for her to continue.
"I examined the state of the Lair while you were gone. Strangely it still has running water and electricity, and is otherwise in good condition."
You tilt your head to the right, the scent of burning rat-flesh hanging in the air. After a moment you nod at her. A mostly pointless endeavour on her part, but some initiative is useful to you. Particularly when you teach her the half of the Revival that she will oversee.
After a moment, you speak. "When the sun rises we will go out." You look at her. She is drooping, though smiling. How unfortunate that she still requires sleep, you muse. Perhaps that will change in time. With your knowledge of the Soul Arts, many things are possible.
"For now, sleep." You say. She nods and heads upstairs. You return to considering how to ward the house. Repeating your sanctum wards will not be suitable. Those wards are meant to provide you with a safe hide, a literal sanctum, a retreat from overwhelming force. A large part of this is how you can lock the wards by pushing more power into them.
They also work better when applied to a space which can be easily defined as a sanctum. The entirety of your home and property do not easily fit such a definition. As you feel your minion fall asleep in one of the fourth floor rooms you start preparing your Paralysis Sigils. Special circular arrangements of Latrian runes, they call the power of lightning to rob intruders of motion.
Going around this main room you spread Fog around the interior, to act as an isolator from the Hellmouth. With that seeping into the stones you lay down Sigils near every door and at the foot of the steps, crafting them out of your power wholesale. You then sprinkle them at random through the entire first floor.
You cannot put them up around every single floor, you are not strong enough for that yet, so you go to the spiral stairs and put one at its base and at the landing with the sanctum. This way you can stop intruders on the first floor and then retreat to your sanctum. Climbing and windows might be a concern for the second floor, but the sanctum has no windows and its wards are vicious.
That done, you page through your spell book for pieces to use as an external ward for the building and property. After several minutes of reading you find a suitable choice. Mostly a construction of western Boletarian mages, the King's Gaze Turner is, as the name implies, a magic from the line of Boletarian kings. Though it is from before King Allant XII of the Second Scourge took the throne.
Walking out of your house you turn and face the front door. Raising your spell book, you begin to chant. To sing.
"Oculi mei inimicos.
Et declinaverunt ab honestam lapis.
Occultae veritatis occultatus anima.
Corvus repente ignotum."
Turning rightwards you begin to walk slowly, singing the next verses quietly under the light of the moon.
"Et lapis magnam peragret omne.
Celatur in potestate.
Omnes dormiemus tuebatur.
Corvus repente ignotum."
"Servi corvus repente caecus debitores.
Dico vobis ablata armis.
Sequor imperium hic signari.
Non visus, et quod ignotum est."
"Servire videbantur suorum ostende mihi.
Dico vobis ablata armis.
Praeceptis meis ambulaverit hic pace imperio.
Non visus, et quod ignotum est."
A line of Fog light and pure Soul lingers and twists behind you, like a train of celebrants beneath the stars in a saturnalia. Seventy times seventy times do you repeat this, walking widdershins around the building. You weave a growing net of lines into the ground and the walls, linking it to your presence here and with your power,
On the final circuit you return to the front door and feel a massive clang, as if from a gigantic bronze bell, ring out. With the ward's form set, you begin to chant and sing the final lock into place.
"Oculi mei inimicos.
Et declinaverunt ab invisibili.
Cognita praevaricatione caecus reddatur.
Videntur, quod ignotus erit, in saecula saeculorum."
Click.
The ward fades away into non-reality and the domain of the Soul as the lock slides into place. Looking on with mystically blessed eyes you see that it is resting, and every piece is in its proper place and every place is formed as they should be. You pull away.
With this ward any trespassers shall be struck blind by Fog and weakened, their true faces known to you. The boundary itself is powerful and should affect most creatures which you have sensed since coming to this town. The invader, the thing, will be stymied at the very least.
However, you do not intend to stop with this. Gathering your power around you again, like a silken cloak, you glide like an elegant statue of ivory to the gate. Here you will perform your final working and properly protect your entire property.
More of the Fog flows out from you, and you guide it to obscure and cover the gate. Its iron bars and dying vines of ivy are totally hidden from normal sight. But you can still see them magically. And the stones that arch above them.
Reaching out to those stones you begin to carve them. Pouring Soul magic down your arm and into the stone you write in runes like those on the Paralysis Sigil. Magic flows through the stones like water, touching every piece, every crack and crevice. You guide it as you write, extending it along the entirety of the walls.
The chain of the gate flies up and wraps tightly around the gate's bars, sealing tight. And the gate itself is given a mystic counterpart on the magical plane. A physical sealing measure for your property, acting as a literal wall. Reaching back with your senses you guide magic into the King's Gaze Turner.
As the caster of all three of these workings you use yourself as a sympathetic focus for a greater working. Flows of magic extend inward like the fingers of giants, first connecting the gate ward to the King's Gaze Turner and then through that to the sanctum wards.
With a push and a command of your inhuman will you fuse all three spells. The ward that comes out of them is incredibly vicious. First it will make trespasser's gaze slip from your home, then it will blind them and freeze them while giving you their faces, and if they persist it will weaken them and steal their life force from their still living bodies. This effect applies even if they suddenly appear inside your property, as in teleportation, which you are personally familiar with.
The sanctum wards are now even more potent, drawing on the others via a one way connection, and very difficult to penetrate. Gazing upon your work you are satisfied that it can slow down incredibly well the thing you sensed in the sewers, and potentially stop it. Most anything else will be stopped dead, before ending up with no life, caught in the web you have woven.
Relaxing from the effort of casting such a large working, at the very edge of your current abilities, you check your minion through the assortment of magical wards. A moment is all you need to verify that she is dreaming of the Tower again and nothing is amiss.
Now onto your next task, getting a message to Giles and Angel. Directly meeting either of them is not what you need to do and is something you'd rather avoid at the moment for that reason. Pulling on your seeming like old clothing, you leave through the gate and secure all of your wards behind you.
You do not go below into the under-roads this time. Instead you walk the surface and make your way towards the school. You do not know where the scholar lives, a lack you should probably rectify now that you have wandered over most of the town. Same with the Warrior as well. However, since you do not know where he lives you will use his place of work and leave a message for him there.
The town is quiet as you walk in your human guise… but there is an undercurrent of unconscious fear to the air. The Hellmouth is swirling, even though the dawn is only a handful of hours away. There is a stench like rotten things in the air and the mystic plane is humming with the thrumming sounds of gossamer wings.
The thing's doing. It will not do for you to leave it to its devices for long.
You also feel Darla's wake in the Hellmouth as you move, and scent vampires in the air. Everything seems quietly disturbed. You move cautiously through the alleys and back streets, shadows wrapped around you, and there is no one as you approach the school, all of the humans bundled up in their homes and the vampires distant. You think you briefly catch a faint hint of Angel as well, but you are not certain.
Then you reach the school and see that it is almost entirely empty. Just a single Soul, wandering through its halls. You move quickly to the wind which you got in through before and slip inside. Settling silently on the floor you move quickly through the classroom door and then the unlit halls.
The energy is intensely disturbed here and you catch a fading hint of familiar magic. Magic from the old witch in a young body, dispersing into nothingness. She must have cast a curse here at some point in the last day, you conclude after tasting it further. As a spell she cast it seems it was essentially dispelled after your attack on her.
You reach the library then and confirm it is deserted. Moving towards the office you push through the door, left slightly open, and start searching for paper or parchment and something to write with. It takes you only a moment to find a stack of loose blank paper precariously balanced on the corner of a wobbly tower of very very old books.
Taking out two sheets, you doubt the forgetful scholar will notice, you search for a quill or other writing tool. You are briefly stymied until you find an assortment of devices in a cup which smell of ink. A brief examination later has you writing with one of them on the pieces of paper.
Your first message, to the scholar, says this:
Dear Mr Giles, it has come to my attention that something horrid and rotten came to Sunnydale last night. It comes borne on portents of rats dead in mortal agony and the smell of rot. The Undead bloodsuckers I am hunting are disturbed in their hunts, seeming wary of it.
There is something deeply evil in the tunnels neath this town.
Perhaps we will meet again in the near future. Good hunting.
-Latria
There is something deeply evil in the tunnels neath this town.
Perhaps we will meet again in the near future. Good hunting.
-Latria
Blowing on the paper and ink you prop it up in the only clear spot on his desk, right in front of where he would sit. You then turn the lamp towards it and turn it on, illuminating the letter to hopefully catch his attention. Then you take the other piece of paper and write a message to Sir Angel.
Dear Sir Angel, we met three nights ago over the corpse of an unfortunate victim. You called me "Witchy Girl".
This is not a message of pure good news however. It has come to my attention that something horrid and rotten came to Sunnydale last night. It comes borne on portents of rats dead in mortal agony and the smell of rot. The Undead bloodsuckers I am hunting are disturbed in their hunts, seeming wary of it.
There is something deeply evil in the tunnels neath this town.
Perhaps we will meet again in the near future. Good hunting.
-Latria
This is not a message of pure good news however. It has come to my attention that something horrid and rotten came to Sunnydale last night. It comes borne on portents of rats dead in mortal agony and the smell of rot. The Undead bloodsuckers I am hunting are disturbed in their hunts, seeming wary of it.
There is something deeply evil in the tunnels neath this town.
Perhaps we will meet again in the near future. Good hunting.
-Latria
Clicking the pen shut you put it back amongst it's fellows and fold Angel's message, sticking it in your belt. You leave the school the same way you came in, with as much quiet haste as you can muster. Dress fluttering around your feet you run swiftly through the night.
Shortly after that you arrive in the vicinity of the Bronze. It is pumping out music without a care, and the people going in are happily oblivious from what you can hear. No one is near Angel's lair, that you can sense.
Slipping into a quiet, and seemingly mostly unused building, with the shadows wrapped tightly around you, you find a door. Through it is a stairway down, and a hall soaked with Angel's scent and filled with pipes. You slip along to the door and carefully slide the note into the gap between the door and the jamb, right near the latch. He will see it as he approaches the door.
Messages passed, you retreat from the area and return to the surface. You look out at the Hellmouth all around you and the weight sitting near the center of it. Nothing is overly changed as you examine it. Satisfied, for the moment, you make all haste back home. All told with the warding and the message passing dawn is less than an hour away now.
You are careful to avoid any masses of vampire scents on the surface as you move. The scent of rot is too evenly spread to properly avoid, so you simply move quickly.
The sun is rising as you arrive back at your home. When you approach you can feel your minion start to rise. Convenient. You and her will be going out today to gather supplies and information. Speeding up to your gate, the magic on it opens at your approach, and then seals it behind you. You enter the house as a dark blur.
Looking up you see your minion peeking down the stairs, a sleepy happy smile on her face. You gesture and speak. "Come." You are up the stairs and heading into your sanctum a moment later, with her right behind you.
Walking over to the money you gesture for her to take it and the bag you had discarded below the shelf, and begin to speak.
"We'll be going out to get you mortal supplies and information on the invader. You will explain whatever I ask. The deception we will wear is that we are friends. During this the name you will use for me is Latria."
She nods happily from where she is storing the money, "Yes, Latria!". You only have to wait a moment more before she is standing before you. She looks down at your feet for a moment, as if about to say something, but then she looks back up and doesn't mention anything.
"Shall I lead the way?" She instead asks attentively. You nod and gesture for her to lead on. You both leave the house then and start heading into town, though much more slowly than you normally would. Your seeming changes slightly as you leave the gate, your dress lengthening to mostly cover your feet and becoming a soft golden yellow, with matching elbow gloves.
She looks at you curiously for a moment but then ignores it to walk beside you. You walk in comfortable silence for several minutes. Your minion is looking around curiously as her be-sandaled feet eat up the ground. You are also looking around, watching the Hellmouth roil under the weight of whatever the thing brought to this plane.
Nothing accosts you as the woman leads you towards a market area you had sensed before and generally avoided. She stops on a corner, free of the crowds, and pauses to scan the various shops. She seems to pick one, a little clothing shop it would appear from the mannequins behind the front windows.
You tilt your head left, and ask a question. "Why here first?" She looks at you and nods, then responds.
"My clothes are a bit… grubby," She pulls at her clothing a bit here, "And it will be easier for me to get what I need if I look better and be of use to you for longer." You consider this for a moment, feeling out her Soul and scent. She doesn't seem to be lying to you. And humans do tend to look down on the poorly dressed.
You follow her in and see that the store is basically empty of other people. She immediately heads to the racks and racks of clothes carrying shirts, where she grabs two white-ish blouse like shirts. Then she moves on and the pattern repeats throughout the store. You don't seem to be garnering much attention from the proprietor.
The attention she gives to the lacy undergarments section is a bit befuddling however.
Shortly after that she moves to rooms in the back to try on her selections and gives you a quick, quiet, but effective rundown on how the denominations of currency are divided in this country when you ask. Apparently it's rather simple and you grasp it essentially instantly. When you go to pay for your purchases the man doesn't even really look up from his paper.
After that your minion slips most of the garments into bags pulled off from the arrangement near the counter and then heads back to the changing rooms. She emerges shortly there after wearing one of the blouses, and the "skinny jeans" she picked up. From what she explained about prices and showed you, everything she bought was actually extremely cheap due to a sale, which is fortuitous.
Then she leads you to the next stop. This one is a little grocer store from the smells. You both enter through the automatically opening doors into a slightly chilly room with many aisles and shelves of food stuffs. The tiles are comfortably cool on your bare feet. Your minion looks at you with an obviously questioning look on her face. You pause for a moment, and then nod permission.
"Do you need anything from here?" She whispers after leaning in.
"No. I eat Souls." You respond as quietly. There are some interesting scents in here however. You walk alongside her through the aisles as she loads things into a basket she picked up near the door. There are some more people in here but your minion avoids them. You pass through multiple aisles with your minion focusing on bread and a variety of canned items which you don't think will be perishable.
Its when you get to the fruit that you become slightly distracted from your vigil. The interesting scent is around here, but you can't quite figure out what is causing it amongst the cacophony of food items around you and the people in the store. Your "friend" picks up a few bananas and oranges, and you take a second to pause near her. Then she grabs a package of what are apparently blueberries from what she calls an "icebox" near the fruit section.
They are the source of the interesting smell. Intriguing, you muse to yourself. Setting that aside you return to listening to gossip from the other patrons. It's mortal inanities in all of it, no mention of anything related to the thing below. The rest of your trip through the grocer is a mix of scents as Annie adds a few more items and then lugs her bulging basket towards the front line.
What an odd world.
It is certainly easy to hide, however. You think to yourself. When you get to the front you see a small metal rack of those papers the clothing shop man was reading and the phrase "flood of rats" catches your eye. You reach out and grab it, saying, "This too Annie." As you put it on top of the supplies.
She looks over briefly while unloading the supplies and smiling at the man woman behind the counter, and nods. Away it goes. You then decamp the premises and pull her into an alley to go over the paper while she carries the items she has purchased. Looking over it you quickly absorb the information.
It is not much, but apparently there has been a flood of rats who then died spontaneously in the Sunnydale History Museum. From what the article says in between mortal babblings about "gas leaks" or "rat poison in the water" there are also several complaints from "concerned citizens" about similar incidents in their homes.
You look up at Annie and speak. "We need to purchase a map."
"Ah I can get one of those quickly, they're just inside the shop." She runs back into the store and comes back out a brief moment later. She looks curious as she sets your bags down on a nearby crate. You grab the map when she hands it to you and begin to cross reference the addresses stated in the paper with the street map she had and the magic you can sense.
While you cannot see actual houses, and don't have the full pattern you have enough. There is an expanding wave of rat deaths moving through the town. From what you can discern the wave is likely to be a circle expanding from a point of origin somewhere beneath the town, between the cemetery you arrived in and the school.
You look at your minion. "Are many people likely to know much about our rat problem?" You ask impassively. She leans back on the crate, hands balanced on it, thinking. After a moment she looks back at you and says, "No, not likely. I can ask though." You think about it for a moment.
"Do it, I'll wait here, take an hour and don't leave my sight." You have an excellent view of most of the street from this alley mouth. She nods and drifts off into the crowd while you just listen and watch her. The chatter while you two moved was dreadfully uninformative, but maybe stirring the pot with your minion will cause something to fall out.
For the first quarter hour or so as your minion mingles surprisingly well with a variety of street vendors, buying little and from what you can tell cheap things, while asking a variety of questions about the supposed rat problem. Not much comes of it however.
Eventually she manages to catch the attention of a bunch of women near a stand where she was talking with the owner and gets sucked into a gossip debate about a bunch of rat problems. Most of which are not relevant, but you do hear a few useful things along the lines of birds dying on front yards and how "pigeons are just rats with wings right?".
Extracting herself from them take about a half hour and she starts meandering back in your direction, talking to a few other shopkeepers and one woman who actually seems to know her from "way back". They reminisce for a moment and then discuss essentially small talk before your minion separates and comes back.
She looks at you with her curious look while picking up the supplies.
"I heard all of it. To be expected, they know very little." You turn and gesture for her to follow. You both head deeper into the alleys, with you leading the way back home. The sounds of rats in the alleys makes you tense very mildly for a moment before you sense nothing else amiss.
It is after you have left the market area far behind that you feel a wrench in the magic all around you. The quiet chittering and scuttles of vermin still and then they burst out of the trash all around you and rush for you in a maddened flurry of furred bodies. Hissing, you back up and shoot Soul Arrows into the mass, vaporizing dozens with every blast. Annie squeaks and starts kicking and stomping at the brown flood.
A moment later they flood past you and then convulse in one spasming lurch. Then they are dead, their essence stolen by whatever was riding them. You exchange a look with Annie. "Hmmm." You hum quietly as you verify through sight that you are both unharmed.
You rise from your tensed position and say, "Come, we need to go." Annie nods vigorously and scurries after you while you hurry away from the rat pile.
You are not accosted by anything on the rest of the trip back home. The sun is just passing its zenith when you get back to the house. Heading inside you seal the wards behind yourself and your minion as she unloads your stuff. You look at her and then say.
"I will be in my sanctum, care for yourself." She looks at you and nods, back to smiling like usual after that strange event.
Dropping your seeming you head upstairs and ponder the magic you have sensed so far from the thing. It would appear my adversary has a limit on how much they can affect the surface world, for the moment. You know that will change after it has sat in the aura of the Hellmouth for long enough.
This is unfortunate. However, you have some time before the sun sets today so you have some options before the vampires become especially active.
The most sensible options available to you are to either: go down into the tunnels and scout out what you can while staying at a fair distance from where you think the epicenter is. Or use magic to scout out what you can, based on the location information you got from the town and find what you can.
Your minion will be staying here for now, you don't want to leave your lair unattended.
What do you do with the last of the day?
[] Go down into the tunnels and scout out what you can whilst staying a fair distance away from the epicenter.
[] Stay home and use magic to attempt to gain more information about what you are facing.
Annie will be staying home today and tonight.
Extra long update today folks, you were doing a lot of stuff. And unfortunately I have to take a break tomorrow to deal with resume and similar stuff.
Vote lock will be at 6:00 pm UTC Wednesday June 6th.
"Eyes of my enemies.
Be turned away by honest stone.
Hidden truth, concealed by Soul.
Unseen, unknown."
"Stone and grand halls.
Be hidden by power.
All shall sleep safe within.
Unseen, unknown."
"Servants unseen, blind trespassers.
I call to you, rightful owner by conquest.
Follow my command and be sealed in this place.
Unseen, unknown shall this be."
"Servants unseen, give me knowledge of their trespass.
I call to you, rightful owner by conquest.
Follow my command and be at peace in this place.
Unseen, unknown shall this be."
"Eyes of my enemies.
Be turned away by the unseen
Be rendered blind and known on trespass.
Unseen, unknown this shall be, forevermore."
Be turned away by honest stone.
Hidden truth, concealed by Soul.
Unseen, unknown."
"Stone and grand halls.
Be hidden by power.
All shall sleep safe within.
Unseen, unknown."
"Servants unseen, blind trespassers.
I call to you, rightful owner by conquest.
Follow my command and be sealed in this place.
Unseen, unknown shall this be."
"Servants unseen, give me knowledge of their trespass.
I call to you, rightful owner by conquest.
Follow my command and be at peace in this place.
Unseen, unknown shall this be."
"Eyes of my enemies.
Be turned away by the unseen
Be rendered blind and known on trespass.
Unseen, unknown this shall be, forevermore."
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