Use one enemy to stymie another, you can see Gard's point, you can really see Gard's point. If dad weren't here... well it's a good thing dad is here or this would be a lot tougher on your conscience to resist, especially with a literal demon weighing in on the other side with such reasonable arguments as "It's their avowed purpose it is not?" But your dad is here and even Usum does not think it would be possible to persuade him to use the FBI agents as canon fodder, so you might well end up between FBI bullets and ghoul claws which is not an enviable position to be in.
So you make the argument to Gard, well not the part where you could see yourself being persuaded to go for it, but judging by the knowing gleam in those ice blue eyes as they slip to your dad's face and then to yours you suspect she knows.
"Do you have a car we could use, just the car I mean?" you ask as much to distract her as anything. "I don't really want my car connected with... anything that might happen."
"Yes," she answers curtly before taking out her phone to to shoot off a bunch of texts.
What arrives to pick you up is not the big black sedan that had carried Gorfel off. The off-off- white pickup looks like it was new when Ronald Regan was president and the sound of its engine is somewhere between pitiable and alarming. The driver is the same though and this time he introduces himself as 'Handricks' with a slightly too tight handshake that you return with interest.
As you approach the Englewood around southside, the sound of the of the train an odd warning in the distance Hendricks surprrises you by asking Gard: "You sure you can handle this with just the three of you?"
"No, I am not sure, it's battle not a picnic." Her answering tone is too flat to even read annoyance into it and Hendricks does not say anything more about it. Is Marcone worried she'll get herself killed on his watch you wonder?
"Er..." you clear your throat a little self-consciously. "We are going to need to cut the landlines and preferably the power as well to the place before we attack. We don't want Katrina coming up behind us with reinforcements."
"No point, they'll have cell phones..." Gard starts, but you cut her off.
"I can make simple EMP devices, assuming there's a hardware store around here."
Dad is worried about that leaving evidence. He probably wasn't expecting you to rattle off a list of components to make an EMP and the way you would go about making one. It's not all making armor and forging shields. You flash him a confident grin. Time to get that little girl back and those Nazis' beaten up again.
"What else can you make?" Gard asks as she is checking her own weapon, a vicious looking double headed axe gleaming with the care that had been given it.
A new door, you think. While the vague notion of digging straight into the chamber Cindy is in had proven unworkable even inside your own head cutting up a wall should be a lot easier and while you would not call it quiet it would at least be over quickly. On the other hand you doubt that Gard had power tools fit to break though concrete on hand so if you are going to come at this from an unexpected angle you would have to reveal that you can conjure tools.
What preparations do you make for the entrance?
[] Just EMP emitters
[] Be ready to cut an unexpected entrance though the back wall of the tattoo parlor with Tool Transcending constructs
[] Write in
OOC: This is a lot shorter than I had meant this to be, I did a lot of hemming and hawing over if I should just roll though with the prep work that makes sense to me, but some of this stuff uses essence and reveals abilities that you did not talk about so I did not feel comfortable making the call.
It takes about half an hour to make all three of the EMP generators, not so much the making part as the 'find a place where you can play nuclear MacGyver'. Sure there is nothing alarming about you wanting to buy cheap cameras, copper wire, iron rods or simple switches. That is all innocuous enough for your dad to get from the first Radio Shack you find. The nice lady what works there even asks if there's anything she can help you with. She really can't. Gard has to phone Marcone who has to make his own calls to open up an old garage, the kind of place that may or may not be selling cars one piece at a time, though the owners apparently don't work weekends...
"Ware Bokkr on the war path," Gard murmurs under her breath as delicate many jointed contraptions of black iron unfold from the heart of your power and begin to solder the devices together hissing and clicking faster and faster as though growing excited at the purpose these are to be put. At your curious looks she explains: "One of the dwarf smiths of old, the one who sewed Loki's lips shut."
"Well then let's hope that's a good omen for how quiet we end up being," you say as you clip on the plastic mold to the last of the emitters. "What...?" you ask as you see your dad looking at your funny.
"I wasn't expecting...."
"Oh yeah, I remember gangsters in the old days would hide guns in the cases of guitars so I figured why not make them look like that? It won't stand up to close scrutiny, but it should keep people from noticing us in the streets." Not that a lot of the locals in a primarily black neighborhood would miss Karl's Tats' and Piercings. The place was apparently new and it already had a reputation according the the saleslady at Radio Shack, not for being Nazi necromancers or anything just bad enough that she had thought to warn you away when you showed an interest in it.
Lost 1 Essence
Gained 3 EMP Emitters (Disguised as guitars )
So you are not that worried about being seen when you go around the place looking for where the phone lines are. Gard makes quick work of them with a small hand axe before Hendricks does the last turn around the south side. If he thinks it's odd that you want him to park next to the side with no doors he doesn't show it.
That is when you take a diamond tipped saw to the brickwork, lasers being apparently beyond the scope of what you can make unfortunately beyond the scope of what you can conjure.
As you call for dad adn Gard to follow you can just hear curse under the sound of collapsing brickwork, but you have other stuff to worry about.
Looking at the bright side of things there are four people in the room so if you handle them that's most of the thralls dealt with, but on the other hand there are four people and they are heavily armed.
The guy closest to you wearing what you can only think of as a disinterested dad's idea of what dressing their kid as a Hell's Angel is toting a very serious looking double barrelled shotgun where as the fellow over by the couch who had just enough time to dive to cover had the barrel of an all too familiar semiautomatic pointed towards dad.
As for the other two, there's the guy next to the fire alarm, getting ready to break it with the but of his own riffle and the last one is shouting and cursing up a storm... while aiming what looks like a bloody AK 47 of all things at you. Also the only one in body armor, Usum notes though you don't think that will do him much good against your sword or Gard's axe.
Maybe you should try to capture them you think, though the memory of bouncing Gorfel around the inside of the van and getting shot again for your trouble is still all too vivid in your mind.
What do you prioritize?
[] Capture them, you don;t want to risk killing anyone
[] Put them down as fast as you can, there's a kid's life on the line
OOC: My internet has been terrible since midafternoon, but I managed to get this up eventually. Good night guys, comments and rolls in the morning.
Greetings Jim!
1) How's Life?
2) Is there anything you 'd be willing to tell us about your long-term plans for Cinder Spires (number of books, plot teases, etc)?
3) What is a Saint in the Dresden Files? You've mentioned them as a mortal champion distinct from the Knights of the Cross, so I was curious what they were like, and if they specific to the Heavenly crowd or a more common and/or non-denominational form of power?
4) Did Vadderung sacrifice anything to be able to spend so much time on Earth, or is he just at a higher risk than most prefer? Or something else entirely?
5) Is Ancient Mai so called because she is the eldest in the Council's gerontocracy? (Chronologically if not on the objective scale).
6) Can you clarify how many times Bob has been split? It seems like it happened both before Harry got him and also during/after Dead Beat from Harry's orders, does that mean there were three Bob's at one point?
7) Can the True Name be considered a full part of the Self equation in the way the Body, Spirit, and Soul are? Ive been nursing a theory about the Dresden File Self being a multipart and evolving thing based on (a westerners understanding of) the Egyptian myths.
Thanks Again!
Quantus, Special Collections
2) I've got an outline for three, six, or nine books depending on how folks are liking it.
3) Saints, for practical purposes in the Dresden Files, distinct from straightforward religious figures, were mainly people with a wizard's or sorcerer's talents who went into the Church and who blended faith magic with their natural abilities to accomplish some amazing things. Most of the Catholic saints were members of the White Council as well. As the power of the Church waned, the word Saint kind of gradually turned to saint, and in the current storyline saints are simply people who blend faith with their magic.
It is Frowned Upon to be a practicing saint in the White Council, in some senses. They much prefer minds uncluttered by what they see as unnecessary folderol, and think that the worst thing they could imagine is a blend of a wizard's power with a fanatic's zeal, so if you're a saint it's not hard to make other wizards uneasy. Most saints keep their practice under discrete wraps, though there is at least one practicing saint on the Senior Council.
4) Over several different points of the Dresden Files universe, the old gods' power was curtailed, limits set upon it, so that they wouldn't be able to do as much interfering with the development of humans. That was fine with most of them--they were kind of self absorbed jerks anyway, a lot of them. But a few wanted to keep walking beside and guiding humanity.
I don't want to ruin the story for you, and it will be out further down the line.
5) Ancient Mai carries the title for oldest wizard on the Council, but does not see herself as a leadership figure, and regarded Langtry's talents as more suitable than her own for the role of Merlin.
6) Bob was never meant to be a contiguous personality with his own self motivation. He was supposed to be a sidekick and servant, and then this stupid kid went and gave him a NAME. With the name came individuality, and it was all downhill from there.
It's less a question of how many splits Bob has in his personality, and more about how much of his memory/power his dominant personality can encompass at one time. Two truly powerful wizards have held Bob--Kemmler and Dresden. Both of them left the mark of their force of will upon the construct in a particularly powerful way and in fairly recent times. When Butters picked up Bob, he too left his mark on the skull, though as somebody who really isn't all that much different from Harry, the skull just sort of rolled into the most convenient shape to make a personality for Butters--the one he already had for Harry.
7) The True Name is kind of the portrait on the passport that has the rest of the information under mind, body and spirit. It's what lets your power "recognize" your target when you send it out. The name itself isn't a part of you: it's a description of you.
Hello thank you for your time, it is much appreciated and I hope you are doing well.
What is Mister's cat name for Harry in Cinders Spire style?
What was Archangel the location and its importance to the White Council, and what was the Brute Squad that Bob mentioned role compared to the wardens?
What kind of magic did Aleron LaFortier specialize in? In Dead Beat Harry said that Ebenezer was the least powerful of the Senior Council was this Harry being an unreliable narrator or was LaFortier stronger then he looked?
What did Harry mean in Dead Beat when he said Cowl's magic was different from what he worked with? They both used kinetic magic and had a lingering sense of black magic was it the way Cowl used his magic or something else?
What are the other three Vampire Courts who are like mosquitos in influence compared to the others major Courts called and will we see them in the series?
What would Harry's Denarian form look like if he took up Lasciel's coin? If he took up other coins like Ursiel and Magog would he become more bestial or would he adapt other characteristics?
2) That was where Petrovich the Earth Mage lived. He and his people were hell on wheels in a fight. Earth magic is slow and tricky to use, but if you get good at it, it's very difficult to counter.
3) Illusion. Ebenezar can pull a satellite down from orbit onto your head. Someone like LaFortier can bamboozle nations. The way that the old school wizards think, direct power is the least useful power. All you can do with it is break something or kill someone.
4) Black magic is different. It's kind of the ultimate perversion of magic's original intent--creation. It takes things away from you when you use it, increasingly so as you use it more. To be able to use black magic at all is to have a soul that truly believes it /belongs/ here and /should/ be used. It's super powerful and super destructive. Things go wrong just because there's black magic about, much less when it gets used to actually break something.
5) You won't see Courts because they don't have them. There are other vampires around, but they aren't as large and organized as the Courts have been, and can't operate with the same kind of coordination.
The exception to that is the Jade Court, who rarely act outside of the Yangtze river valley. Everyone knows that they exist. No one is quite sure where. They do not respond to invitations or offer any of their own. They never deal directly with outsiders, but move through allies and agents. They are not signatories of the Accords, but everyone speaks of and treats them as if they are, because some fairly horrible things have happened to people, over the centuries, who showed too much disrespect.
The mosquito type vamps though operate mainly in SE Asia, mostly in SK, Thailand, that region. They're thugs, a branch of the Tongs, running drugs and human slaves through the local seas and sometimes hiring out as assassins.
6) If he took up Lasciel's coin, he'd immediately have a style and fashion adviser who would make him look like Someone Important everywhere he went. He'd have better posture, would look neat and clean all the time, like he knew exactly what he was doing, and would have supernatural sex appeal he could summon up on demand. Lasciel would have turned him into Bond.
Hi Jim! Thanks for taking the time to do this AMA and for the AMAZING books you've written so far. The Dresden Files is easily my favourite book series. When I found out you do AMAs every now again I started compiling some questions as I was going through the books. Could you shed light on some of these things please?
Throughout your books you mention that the right side/hand releases energy and the left hand/side absorbs it. Does this have anything to do with your dominant hand/side? Is this the opposite for lefties?
Is the Nevernever mapped to Earth/Our solar system/the whole universe? Or the other way around? Is it possible to not open a Way from one dimension to the other? Or is there for every location one on the other side - always guaranteed? Is the mapping a function?
You mentioned that parts of the Nevernever connect to parts of the real world based on similar ambiances and energies. Is it possible to have an ambiance or energy that does not have an equivalent in the other dimension?
Is Harry named after the city of Dresden because he usually ends up setting things on fire?
Reading Cold Days, it seemed like you really changed the way you approach the audience. A lot more breaking the fourth wall and more swearing. Is this something new you were trying or any particular reason for this change?
Is Nicodemus the same guy as St. Nicodemus from the Bible who helped wrap Jesus in the shroud of Turin?
[–]jimbutcherauthorAMA Author[S] 294 points 4 years ago
1) It's less about dominant hand than which one is closer to your heart, so nah, it's the same for righties and lefties. Dominant hands for spells aren't usually an issue by the time you know what you're doing, but among the apprentices righties have an advantage at offense, lefties at defense.
2) The Nevernever is, like, noneuclidean space in a lot of ways. It morphs and changes, without a fixed amount of acreage. Based on how much power you apply to it, you can change the Nevernever, make a given area larger or smaller.
3) No. The Nevernever is made out of a substance that is basically like the goo from Ghostbusters 2: it reacts to human emotions. When a given vibe goes out, the goo responds.
4) No. He is named after the city of Dresden because the night I was thinking of character names, John Sheridan on B5 was giving this speech about military atrocities and their psychological impact. Dresden was one of the cities he mentions in the speech, and it went well with "Harry."
5) Heh. Cold Days was Dresden operating on a whole new engine, more or less. There were more changes than that.
6) Inappropriate for this venue.
What made you decide to read "Even Hand" for the Brief Cases audiobook?
Does reincarnation exist in the Dresden Files universe? And do we know any characters that have already had former lives?
Will we ever meet the other heavenly archangels: Michael, Gabriel, or Raphael?
Did Hendricks finish his thesis?
How old is Marcone?
How did Hendricks and Marcone meet? How long have they known each other before Storm Front?
Is Marcone genuinely fond of Helen Beckitt, or is their "romantic" relationship for him more about keeping a potential threat close or just a weird guilt trip?
Multiple times in Small Favor, characters are able to contact the otherwise unreachable Denarians through "Accords-approved methods." What do these methods entail?
[–]jimbutcherauthorAMA Author[S] 217 points 4 years ago
1) Someone had to do it. They saved money using me.
2) Sort of. And not really. For reincarnation to be viable, you can't rig the game by knowing who you were the last time around.
3) <spoiler>I'm not going to tell you</spoiler>
4) He keeps writing it and rewriting it. It's over 1200 pages now.
5) If I recall, he was 40 in Storm Front.
6) In the service. They were Marines together. Marcone was Hendrick's sergeant when Hendricks was a Louie.
7) Marcone... does not think like most human beings. For him, there's no reason all of those things can't be true at the same time. But he's not going to be giving anyone True Love shields from the Whites any time soon either.
8) Mostly established messaging and answering services, mostly through human attorneys. You are also allowed to use heralds (and send heralds back headless if you get annoyed, like Ancient Mai's herald was frozen half to death by Mab in Summer Knight, by way of telling the Council "no, you can't use my roads.") And there are some various supernaturals who specialize as go-betweens and intermediaries.
Processing...
OH THOSE GUYS.
Yeah, I know who they all are. I don't have a further story role set for them at the moment, they're just part of Mab's backstory. That's kind of her trophy case of personal victories.
If I remember right they're Vlad Tsepes and his lover (who wanted to be together forever), Richlieu (Mab always collects eventually, no matter how tricky you are), that's not Arachne it's friggin' Anansi (Mab, too, knows hubris), and the triumverate of women was actually two women with Mab pulling a Scooby Doo move and hiding among them. Trying to remember, they were a pair of historical French or German or British twin sisters who were burned as witches by a Saint. Mab saved them, sort of. Instead of being burned to cinders, they were transformed to living crystal and used to decorate her bower. Mostly, Mab defeated the Saint, sort of at the end of the middle ages/opening of the Renaissance, when there hadn't been all that many Old Word wins lately.
They aren't really a part of Harry's story, just background details for Mab. Anansi is too much a trickster to be caught forever. He'll get free at some point and have a merry vengeance on Mab's pride and ego. She's just so serious, all the time, a guy like Anansi couldn't do anything BUT give her the grumpy camp counselor treatment once he was free.
1: How fast could Lash teach magic? The bit about being able to teach Harry how to heal his hand in Dead Beat implied that it was several dozen times faster than normal (because there's no way he'd be able to pick up healing before his hand healed normally on his own).
2: How exactly would the version of Changes where Harry does the Darkhallow have gone afterwards? It seems like the kind of thing that would burn his bridges with absolutely everybody.
3: You've previously mentioned that Morgan might appear in book 17 (Mirror Mirror), is that still on track?
4: Can you tell us more about the details of how Ways work and how two people working in the same spot can end up in different places?
5: Will the Shapeshifting Guru from the Ukraine mentioned in the list of freeholding lords in White Night play a role in the series or will it be like the Jade Court and not appear in the series?
6: Why did the half-turned Red Court and Cassius experience sped-up aging the moment they lost the thing stopping their aging? Shouldn't they have just gone back to aging at normal rate if the Red Court half of them was just pressing the proverbial pause button?
7: Did He Who Walks Behind slow down time around the clerk who tried to run in Ghost Story? If no, how was he slowed down?
EDIT: Why could Harry understand Sharkface's name while He Who Walks Behind's name was just an impression that HWWB gave him?
1) Teach it? VERY quickly. She could alter your perception of time and give you months of pure mental lessons in an evening. If she just did it for you while you sit in the passenger seat? She can do that instantly.
2) Well, with the White Council for sure, and with a lot of human authorities. But if he'd become a friggin' necromancer, he would have found his allies among the dead and dead-adjacent, and things would have generally been a lot gothier.
3) Maybe.
4) I can.
5) Can't think of a reason to have him around for Harry's story. Might be a different case in a spinoff.
6) Because it wasn't pressing pause. It was just sustaining them for the duration of the transformation. Once the transformation dropped them back into their mortal form again, it was time to pay the piper. They paid for their life with life, the way all vampires do. They just chose not to take someone else's. But younger half-vamps, like Susan, would have been okay, just older and a lot more tired.
7) HHWB, being a Walker, is an outsider on a power level similar to Uriel. He can do all KINDS of stuff. But also has a lot of weird limits as to when and where he can use his power.
Hi Jim, I have a question about Mortimer Lindquist.
In Ghost Story we learn that Morty is a significantly more powerful ectomancer than Dresden thought. My question is this: Is Ectomancy just another field of magical study that a wizard could have a talent for like Harry with Thaumaturgy, Chandler with Time magic, and Molly with Illusion magic or is Ectomancy a separate field from normal magical study? Could Morty become a full Wizard or are his talents too different?
EDIT: Hey everyone I don't know if you already are subscribed to /r/DresdenFiles but if not it is a great place to discuss the books, short stories, graphic novels, and interviews with Jim.
Oh, any wizard could learn ectomancy, it's just a matter of spending the time and energy to do it.
Morty's issue isn't that his Ectomancy isn't strong: it's that he doesn't have that kind of strength elsewhere. You wanna be a Wizard of the White Council, you've kinda gotta be able to do it all. That's what separates a wizard like Harry from a sorcerer like Morty. Harry might NEVER be as strong an ectomancer as Morty is. But Harry can also do thaumaturgy and evocation and abjuration AND divination AND illusions AND etc etc. Morty only tunes in to the one channel. Wizards got the entire America's Favorite Package.
Hi Jim! My question is about the Dresden Files:
Can a wizard soulgaze a baby? A child? What would it do to that child?
Thanks for all of the books you've written. I've enjoyed them very much.
Kids have got a certain amount of magical protection. Think of them like a baby dear: a fawn gets born with a suite of counter-predator capabilities that help it survive. Same for kids. They tend to be really resilient to the effects of magic. A child could soulgaze a wizard and find it distressing and confusing, but wouldn't wind up with the inkstain on their memory like the wizard would.
Thanks for having this AmA!
Is Nicodemus the first host for Anduriel?
What is Nicodemus' occupation before he chose to change career to murdering murderer?
Shutting your eyes an moment before Gard's flash-bang flies over your shoulder you charge through the brilliant light, your shield snapping open in your left like a malignant flower "Ware shotgun" you bark over your shoulder, opening your eyes just in time to dodge the wanabe biker... The smell of cordite fills the air as he fires off a panicked shot literally from the hip, but one shot isn't near enough to get through your armor or through you.
Leaving him for dad to handle you jump and ride the couch's backrest onto the gunman taking cover behind it bringing the combined weight down with a satisfying thump and crunch. You are not sure what you broke, but you are pretty sure it must have been important. Another beat and you're in the AK gunner's face, his eyes widening with alarm as your arm delivers a full strength slash to the upper body with the flat of your blade Alas more from instinct than anything else he flails mostly out of the way catching the flat of your blade catching him in the shoulder and not the side of the head as you had meant to. No time to slow down now. The same motion carries you into a lunge past him into the fourth thrall's back, shield forward as you drive him into the wall and the alarm with the full weight of your body.
You can hear the plastic shattering under his weight with a hiss of torn circuitry and you can feel his shoulder-blade dislodging under the blow. Damn that's gonna put him in a hospital.
As you turn you hear your dad call out: "Lay down your arms! This isn't your fight!"
From the way the fellow with the shotgun raises his weapon in his left hand it's clear he is not about to take the offer. So your dad hits him with the flat of the Sword, though he seems hesitant to strike a man already wounded and down.
Gard has no such compunctions about those in the service of her traitor sister slicing clean through the AK then though the armor as though it wasn't there and into his chest onto bubbling red that stains the axe and the hand that bears it. Well he certainly isn't going to shoot your dad now.
The rattle of a semi-automatic rends the air again as the guy on the floor sends bullets flying everywhere though mostly at Gard, by luck as much as aiming the blast hits her full in the shoulder and neck... and the Chooser of the slain turns slowly on her heel, unblemished skin under the torn shirt almost seeming to glow in the light of your anima.
"I give up! Stop please!" the guy you had smashed into the wall throws his riffle like it was a live snake.
That makes things a lot easier when it comes to choosing who to deal with. The guy with the semiauto is scrambling make his way out from under the couch, placing his head just in the right place for a running kick that sends him rolling over onto his back groaning as you spin and step over him to slam the side of your blade into the right shoulder of the fellow with the shotgun before he can even think to shoot again. The gun drops to the floor as he cradles his arm, just barely managing to choke out a plea off surrender through the pain.
So one guy who probably needs the ER, one knocked out and two surrendered. What are you going to...?
The jangle of cuffs answers half your question as Gard cuffs the remaining prisoners with the speed of long practice.
"We need to call an ambulance," your dad says looking down at the wounded... maybe dying thrall.
"A call from there would give us away as surely as if he had hit the fire alarm," Gard points out as she wipes the blood off her axe on the back of the couch. "I assume the girl's life is worth more than his."
What do you argue?
[] Call an ambulance now, you don't think Katrina would be watching the emergency lines
[] Have Clipy send out a call when you are at the Undertown entrance, there are still at least two more thralls in the shop besides
[] Write in
OOC: Axes are not really that good for non-lethal take-downs, on the plus side no one on your side got hurt and you did not use any essence.
"One minute." you say. Catching your father's eyes, then Gard's, you point at your eyes, then motion your hand towards the bathroom door and backroom door. No names. Yyou kneel beside the handcuffed rifleman, the one who had surrendered, and begin to tear his shirt into makeshift bandages for his friend. Limned in the flickering green fire of your anima, you look into his wide eyes and talk in a low voice. "I want to know where the other two are. And if there is anything you think I should know about your boss or this situation, now is the time to tell me. Before I get mad"
Groans and gasps are your only answer, though they might have been of fear and not pain as their eyes open to the sight of whirling night-black blades that cut the man's jacket and shirt apart, of gleaming greenish needles as long as a human hand filled with unknown concoctions. It seems that for your power the human body is only so much meat, sinew and skin to mend and to patch.
Lost one Essence.
Flipping open your phone with one of the improbable appendages that seems to be oddly well suited to the task you ask: "Clippy Trauma response protocols, see if you can find videos."
Now if only I could see what you are supposed to do on a screen that small... Responding to your thoughts the power woven through your soul spins a quartz lense into being like a potter working clay. It slots neatly into a black iron support at just the right height so that the light of the screen onto the nearby wall in a way that retains a coherent image.
"Molly we cant' leave you here..." your dad starts, but Gard raises a doubtful eyebrow and motions at your armored tinkering self as though to ask 'You think a few stray bullets are going to stop her?'
On the one hand you are flattered, but on the other it would have been nice if she had not given you the work to begin with.
For his part Dad sighs: "Take the bathroom, be careful..." You stop paying attention as your world narrows to the task at hand, cleaning off the blood and feeling for the edges of the wound with the pads of your fingers then with the needle-like appendages and then so smoothly that you do not even realize it you start to stitch the man up with thread that is being automatically unwound from the material of his shirt, passed through the glare of sterilizing tightly focused radiation and then put to use.
I'm not irradiating him am I? probably not the moment to be asking that but Usum is here to calm your fears. You are not because while alpha radiation can be concentrated to kill bacteria it simply does not have the penetrating power to do much else, especially at the low volumes you are producing. It only has to sterilize a thread after all and that does not have much surface area.
Apparently it is simply the natural bias of tools spun from your power to go for that over rubbing alcohol.
A giggle slips past your lips, judging from the look in the prisoners' eyes it isn't very reassuring. Well too bad for them, when they have the means to stitch complex trauma then they can complain.
Thankfully none of the arteries had been hit, though one of the larger veins on the right side of the chest seems to have been touched, you are sure it has a name, but Clippy isn't feeding your the names of things just the positions.
There's a burst of gunfire from the backroom, but you pay it no mind, sure that your dad and Gard together can handle it. And done... that is some neat stitch work if your say so yourself...
"You stitched him up?" You don't think you have aver heard Gard sound amused before, though to be fair she sounds impressed too.
"Yeah, was I not supposed to?" you ask as your dad sets one more cuffed prisoner on the floor, this one bruised all about the neck and the right side of his face and neck but thankfully not bleeding.
"Generally tight bandaging should do for trauma situations," dad explains. He just looks relieved no matter how weird the results might be. You are past the first hurdle and no one is in danger of dying.
Oh... right, simple bandaging would not have been repairing the body in any meaningful sense so your tools would not be fit to purpose. It wasn't until Clippy changed to ER diagrams instead of on the spot trauma response that the proverbial spark had gone off. Something tells you that you can do a lot more with the repair and improvement of flesh. Visions of gleaming brass flowing from your hands to replace imperfect organic forms flash though your mind: Friction-less ball bearings with three sixty degrees of motions, twitch fiber muscles from carbon composite, nanotubes permeating everything in the place of vulnerable veins , all bound by spirits willing, eager to serve.
Shaking off the mental image of your own personal cyborg manufacture you get off the floor getting the crick out of your neck before the next part. On the plus side there isn't likely to be any need to save the lives of the local ghouls, on the minus side ghouls.
"Clippy send call to 911, leave your voice as is they are going to know you are trying to hide it...." Something occurs to you. "Use an encryption site, like the kind they use for swatting."
"Searching..."
Dad asks that swatting is and to your surprise Gard responds before you can. Had someone actually tried it on her? You have a brief fantasy of some internet troll swatting a literal psychopomp. You probably shouldn't find it as entertaining as you do.
***
Going down the creaky steps to the basement and then the ladder into Undertown itself is a lot more creepy when you are here in the flesh seeing only as far as Gad's heavy duty lantern can illuminate than as a bodyless spirit guided by prophetic purpose.
The air tastes strange down here and it is not just the filth and sewage, it's too still, too bitter under the crushing weight of the dark above that separates you from the sky, from the rising and setting of the sun that wears away at wards and enchantments. It is as if magic itself has grown stagnant in this noisome realm, the carrion of a thousand thousand failed spells slowly rotting under the feet of the unknowing people of Chicago. No wonder so many wicked things are drawn here, it is not just the literal protection from the sun, but a darkness of sorcery and spirit that most fits their wants.
Crumbling rooms close off into narrow tunnels scarce wide enough for one of you to pass without walking sideways and then they open up into caverns carved as much by the unstoppable touch of water as by the hand of man. You find the half collapsed remains of old subway stations, numbers askew creaking at your passage, you spot the garish marks of gangs though you do not see another living soul.
Then out of the dark something comes screeching and screaming in shrill voices. As you raise your sword all you see is... bats, a whole flock of them, black-winged shadows against the light that you had brought into their domain, but still just bats.
"Er... sorry," you can feel a blush rise to your cheeks. "I didn't mean to be jumpy"
You pass by the bat roost quickly, as much to guard your nose as anything. As bad as the smell is down here it does not compare to the floor fully covered in guamo.
"Wait!" Gard calls from your left. "Look there."
There are footprints in the sticky white mess, recent ones even though you cannot be more than another half mile from the place you had seen the ghouls feasting. Wait a second... those were not just footsteps, those are some real nice boots, kind of distinctive as well. The last time you had seen ones like that was...
"Lydia..." you breathe shocked. What would she be doing down here? The part of you that is still half convinced she has nothing to do with any of this mess asks. But then what would anyone else wearing three hundred dollar boots be doing down here.
Wildly you look around, but there is no other pair of tracks, just hers. Was she here alone...?
What do you do?
[] Explain what you saw, try to follow the tracks, may or may not lead towards the ghouls
[] Take the path you know, you cannot risk getting lost down here
[] Write in
OOC: You rolled really well for the medical without skill, though any doctor who looks at your handwork is going to have a lot of questions.
Frowning, you stare at the distinctive shoe patterns, then crouch to get a closer look. "I think I know those shoes. I think I know the owner of those shoes." Focusing, you open your eyes and look for a single, endless moment, then shake your head
"What had those shoes witnesses since they were bought?"
You lose 1 Essence
***
A boots' eye view you soon find is a strange thing filled mostly with the silence of being tucked away in a dark place waiting to be used and when not with the sound of clinking heels, like shivers going down your spine, but in the time between steps, the time that was not in the light you hear snippets of conversation, you see people going up and up and up, faces oddly distorted.
Lydia wasn't kidding about not having many friends in the city, some days she spoke more to the local librarian who was just happy to see 'some young people around' than she did to any of those young people. You briefly see/hear/sense a mall some place in the city, seeing to stretch on and on into infinity, like some strange temple to the gods of youth commerce and advertising. Lydia's the odd one out, shyness taken for snobbery, which lead to just the worst people trying to hang with her, or maybe just to bring out the worst in people...
The vision fractures into blackness like one of those old time movie reels breaking, you see her father, old and young he looks all at once, comfortable in a suit, but the suit isn't quite ordinary, quite modern, like someone had laid a new coat of paint over one of those old Tudor paintings with the ruffled shirts and the tight doublets.
"I'm sorry snowdrop I have to work late again, but I'll get this all done soon, I promise..."
"Always soon and never now, dad I want to know what's happening, don't touch don't tell doesn't work anymore. I'm sixteen not six! I can read and research on my own you know and two plus two is starting to look a lot more like seven than four. Why do I see the things I see, why do we set gorse, rosemary and dil at the windows? Don't say because it smells nice, I know that's not all the truth, unless you'd like to argue that the reaason why you never open the windows after sunset is also for the smell."
"And do you think you deserve the whole truth, to be told it and not find it?" The man's eyes gleam dark green behind the heavy lenses of his glasses. "That is how you miss out on the greater answers, the ones that can't be told."
Fury cold and yet brittle is his only answer. "Dad I know what you can do, I know what I can do, hounds and hawks and crows come when I call not just because they like me..." A hand reaches out, the concrete of the driveway heaves and cracks as the earth moves under it. "I don't think I just made friends with the earth there."
"Looks to me like it obeyed you snowdrop..." the man replies calmly.
"And that's normal?"
"Normal for me and not for thee." It sounds like an in-joke and you see Lydia smile a little, but she shakes it off
"Father I want to know what you are looking for. I am sick and tired of just following the thread through the maze. I've been stuck at home for four days. Safe it might keep me but safe from what? I have a boyfriend you know, we had plans."
"I'll tell you when this is all done I promise."
She stomps the ground and the ground cracks.
Again the scene shifts, this time to what looks like a library, warm summer sunlight flowing over the faded spines of books, red and green, brown and black and one or two gleaming silver and gold. There's a circle on the floor, one carefully stepped over and you hear is if from far away chanting in Latin, but you don't speak a word of it... and the only thing you see is a pale gleam that reflects in the buckles of the boots before Lyda abruptly turns on her heel and walks out.
You see the path from upscale gated suburb to rundown factory rush by. You have no idea what the rusted industrial machinery might have once been meant to do, but now they serve as sentinels to a anonymous door and a path down and down and down.
***
Had Lydia summoned something more power than she could bind, or had she simply learned something spoken without voice that sent her down here?
"Let's go. Cindy first I'll fill you in," you say as you wrench yourself out of the vision.
It's not long until you come to the narrow stairway that leads down to the ghoul's nest. Trouble is the tunnel narrows here, only enough for one person to go down at once. Dad starts to step up, but you know what armor or no you are a lot tougher than he is.
"Let me." Before he can do more than open his mouth to argue you add. "You can go last, if there is a danger down there it's more from enemies that might be behind us than from the ghouls we know are in front of us."
And so you are the first down into the nest of ghouls, running as swift and silent as you know how. As your lantern light creeps down the slick tunnel walls the smell hits heavy and foul, the smell of rot, filth and blood and beneath it all. The steps bottom out suddenly, the light spilling out onto a scene out of nightmares: eight ghouls standing in front of the back wall amid a pile of gnawed one and torn meat, but in a way that is not the worst of it. They seemed to have been... playing, setting up piles of small bones and rocks and then throwing pebbles at them to see who can name the most fly off. How young are they?
As they turn, elongated jaws slavering and jagged claws out to grasp and to tear you still can't get that image of almost innocent play out of your mind.
How do you fight?
[] To capture/incapacitate
-[] Write in stunt
[] To kill
-[] Write in stunt
[] Write in
OOC: You are a high Empathy Infernal, that leads to stuff like noticing the innocent side of ghouls playing with the remains of their meals and other horrific sights, not that you have to act on it of course. It just changes your perspective a bit.
As you take a step foward you look at the room. Dark, silent and with a heavy feel to the stagnant air. These creatures are not used to light and that might make enough of a difference. With a thought you let bright nuclear fire envelope your sword, uncounted burning eyes open above your head and your entire form is engulfed in a nimbus of green flames.
Lost 1 Essence
The next word out of your mouth does not sound like you, nor like any human voice, it is the dry, hot wind of deserts to be, the roar of infinite furnaces the sound that the world's end might make:
"Leave"
The shadows race the light outwards from you, revealing the sudden coiling of backs and hunching of shoulders, beneath the horrors of their feasting an all too human dread and in a moment scatter like yowling and hissing, calling out to each other.
"Bones come on!"
"Fuck you Lockjaw!"
As they struggle to pass through the only passage beside the one you had come from and the grate whence you were heading, a narrow tunnel still encrusted with filth and dripping a slow sluggish current, you see the smallest of the pack fall behind, no being pushed back, as if they were an offering to the wrathful power that had come to invade their domain only for another slightly larger ghoul to pull them forward and offer their own back to your sword.
"Let them go," you say to Gard, worried she might see this as a chance to clean house of the servants of her hated sister, but the warrior just looks on stone-faced as the ghouls finally manage to flee.
"We couldn't afford to fight them," you say, feeling a little defensive all of a sudden. It does not take Usum whispering in the back of your mind that they would not be the worst servants to realize that you might have spared the literal people eating monsters for their own sake. They were people too weren't they?
Thankfully dad doesn't look like he disproves, more like he's a little bemused himself. About what to say to you or just about the whole situation? The idea that dad is in as much of a quandary as you are is itself disquieting, though you don't have long to consider it.
Click... hiss, the sound draws your eye back to the valkyrie. You are not sure what you had expected 'ward breaking' to look like, but it hadn't been like a compact handheld blowtorch coming out of the same duffel bag the flashbangs had. Not to say you could mistake it for a normal sort of tool. Here bronze cast back the light of your anima, there black iron absorbed it all covered in runes and what looks like the stylized form of a bow repeated over and over amid the black leaves. The mark of Höðr, the blind archer and unwitting slayer of Baldr, you suddenly recall, the memory of leafing though a book of mythology for kids coming back in sudden painful focus. A perilous thing for a servant of Odin to forge into her tools but potent...
Gain 2 Essence
When she turns it on chanting slow and sonorous the flame is blue-green rippling to purple like the northern lights. With practiced grace the draws lines in the air directed at each of the four corners. The fire passes over the steel of the grate seemingly without even heating it, at least as far as the eye can discern though you hear a wailing and a beating of chains against stone as though from some deep place . Gard keeps chanting, her voice level and her hand steady as the flame passes over lines seen only by her.
"Come on, we have to pull this clear now!" she snaps as she draws the final mark. "Katrina would have felt that blind drunk at the bottom of Lake Michigan!"
Part of you wants to ask why she hadn't told you breaking the ward would be so loud, but mostly you are too busy rushing to do as she asked to waste breath.
There is a scream from the other side and in the light of your anima you see Cindy on the stone slab struggling against something without flesh, without form, a murk that poisons the air. The specter, it is trying to posses her... and then she screamed again. Anger, fear, pain all coiled together and hurled at the thing they flash like a magnesium flare and the darkness pulls back as if burns.
You and dad both charge it, the Sword of Love reflecting only cold silver radiance amid a thousand whirling eyes of flame.
Alas the specter seems to know to avoid the holy sword its cursed existence cannot turn aside, but it is less careful about yours, perhaps because it does not know to fear it, perhaps because it can only fly so quickly, weightless though it be. Once, twice you cleave as it flies from corner to corner always trying to slink closer to Cindy, then it seems to quiver and flies like a back arrow towards the floor, trying to flee... only to be struck by the arc of Gard's axe glowing with a rune like forgefire.
"That will only have banished it but it will have to do," the sighs. "It's not as though Katrina can be doubly alerted."
"Who are you? What was that thing? What did I do!" The young voice grows higher and higher with each until she sounds at the edge of panic.
Only then do you fully realize that fire at the beginning had been Cindy, had been Cindy's magic. Heck of a way to find out you are gifted.
What do you do?
[] Try to calm her
-[] Write in Stunt (Optional)
[] Leave that to dad, you probably do not look very reassuring right about now
OOC: Welp that was a thing, I was expecting the specter to possess her and put you guys in a hostage situation... Instead the rolls were all over the place, poor Michael could not hit the thing even though he threw more dice at it than you and Gard, but on the other hand the kid literally rolled more successes for willpower than she had dice at the start.
Dismissing your sword this time not by stabbing yourself in the heart, but just throwing it away beyond the edge of your anima. "Sorry Usum..." you go down on one knee as she shrinks back against the wall in the light of your anima, feeling unaccountably old. Darn, she's barely older than Leech. "Hi, Cindy. I'm Molly. I visited your granpa yesterday with er... Warden Dresden. A very bad lady had you kidnapped and hidden away to blackmail your grandfather, and he asked for help to find you and get you out of here. That..." The pause as you motion to your dad is all she needs to cut in.
"What?" she turns and starts to get off the stone slab pushing a lock of dark hair out of her eyes. It sounds like your words had leeched some of the growing terror out of her voice, but little of the confusion. "Are we in the sewers?" Her hands spring up so fast she looks like she's been bitten. "Ew.... no wait don't answer that, what's with the light and the eyes and the..." she waves vaguely at the place where your sword had vanished. "That light was me wasn't it? I'm not dreaming am I? I don't think I've eaten anything weird enough for this."
"'Fraid not," You shake your head sadly and you sigh. You had only been a little older than her when you had found your own magic and as terrifying and awful as some of that had been at the end, it had at least started like a wonderful adventure. She doesn't even have that. "That's my dad and that's..." you are not sure how you would describe Gard so you just go with. "A lady you agreed to help and as for the dark thing that was sort of like a dementor." Might as well go whole hog... "Yer a wizard Cindy."
"Nope, nope, nope, can't be real," she mutters to herself, closes her eyes.
Come on the joke wasn't that bad, you think. Usum assuring you that you are the very pinacle of whit does not help that much alas.
For her part Cindy just sits there, her lips moving in what you think might be a countdown. When she opens them again and finds the drab sub-sub-basement of some bygone era, not a sewer, though it certainly smells like one thanks to the path leading up to the ghoul room she smacks her hand into the stone hard enough to hurt. "Shit, it's real." After another moment contemplating her surroundings she adds in that too-serious manner that not-so-little kinds have when trying to prove they are not little. "You're about eight times too small by volume to be Hagrid."
"Yeah well you're not wearing glasses and it's not your birthday either so let's call it even," you quip back.
"How do you know when my birthday is?" she asks bemused as she hope onto the floor with the thump of powder blue sneakers.
"MySpace," you reply honestly, not seeing any reason to keep it from her.
"So you really are as young as you look, you are not some kind of thousand year old witch?"
Graciously ignoring your dad's muffled laugh you reply seriously. "Nope, I'm really just Molly, I'm gonna be eighteen this year."
"Well I just turned thirteen already so if you wouldn't mind telling me who the 'bad lady' was?" She makes air quotes around the words. "I mean you guys killed that thing, but how do I know I can trust you?"
"You do not," Gard cuts in before you can reply. "You only have our word that we are who we say we are or that we mean to help you, but the alternative is to try to make your way to the surface, with nothing but your wits, your wyrd and power you have no mastery of. You would be fortunate to merely face a mortal death. "
"OK... you are a bazilion years old though," the girl says, peering at her curiously.
"That is not a number and we should be off before more danger can find us," comes the stiff reply followed by: "Can you walk?"
Cindy as it turns out can walk, she is only a little stiff from lying on that slab all this time. Thankfully the sleep spell she had been under had been the real sleeping beauty deal, beyond the reach of hunger, thirst or even age according to Gard, though that begs the question of why use it on the girl at all? Katrian could have just tied her up and handed her to the thugs up above. Was she expecting a rescue?
Well she could not have been expecting you.
Just as the thought passes through your mind Clippy starts to vibrate, subtle of her since faking a call down here would be about as believable as a water park in the Sahara.
You flip it open, as though cheeking it for damage from the fight. On the screen is a simple message:
Black Rider is Moving, destination the tattoo parlor. Passenger on left side of car not exhibiting ordinary signs of life yet there is motion. Entrance potentially compromised.
What do you argue for?
[] We need to find another way out to the city, we can't get into a fight while Cindy is with us
[] One of us can hang back with Cindy once we are closer to the surface and we can deal with Katrina once and for all
[] Write in
OOC: Well that could certainly have turned out worse.
"Holt's car's coming this way. Forty five minutes out at current speeds. And she's bringing a friend." Abrupt silence meets your declaration, and you take a moment to dust off your knee. "Cant tell what it is, just that its human shaped and fits in a car seat, but has no life signs. Time we get Cindy..." you nod towards her... "out of here." Then you pause, mind racing, as you finally make a connection. "Wait....Holt's a seer isnt she?" you say slowly. "Could she predict the Ankou's daughter would...." The expression on Gard's face gives you your answer. "Fff...udge. Alright everyone, change of plans.
"Wait... wait... what... something human shaped, but with no life signs, like a zombie? Zombies are real?" Cindy's voice rises to a panic again as she scrambles towards dad, probably because sword aside he looks like the least alarming of the three of you. So much for not scaring her...
"How certain are you of the information?" Gard gives your phone a very pointed look.
"Very certain, listen you know how I said I would fill you in on who those shoes belonged to? I think that was Eldest Ankou's daughter, we need to find her and then we need to get to the surface by some other way than Katrina."
"How do you..." Dad cuts himself off as he realizes that you are planning to do. Instead he focuses on Cindy again and starts to exp-lain in the least alarming of terms what a zombie is and what they can and cannot do. 'Not slow, not stupid, but limited by the concentration of the necromancer that called them, though there are other things that can...'
Tuning out the words you scroll through your pictures until you find one with Lyria and ask of that inner knowing that both is and is not you: Plot path to the current location and destination of Daniel Carpenter's current girlfriend.
Lost 1 Essence -> Now at 8/12
Thus the last sliver of uncertainty that this could have been another really well dressed tourist into the sunless and stinky realms melts away at the sight of Lydia crouched behind a grate listening to you scare off the ghouls. Apparently she's too intent to care if her jeans are ruined. A moment later she almost speaks, almost calls out, then changes her mind, turns and raises a hand slowly in front her her as if pulling unseen threads and the concrete of the tunnel rises up like the wave of a frozen sea, just wide enough for her to step onto it and then fly off. Lydia flies past what looks to be an old subway station and then roughhewn tunnels carved for someone or something distinctly smaller than a full-grown human, though Lydia manages to get through by pushing the stone aside like a fish moving through the sea.
Strangely she seems a lot more certain of her powers that she had been in the other vision.
"I know because I know her dad, she is Daniel's girlfriend, her name's Lydia and she's nice, but she gave me 'spooky side of the street' vibes. I did not want to prod, but down here, well I put two and two together and it came out to 'we need to hurry'. Come on. she went this way..." You are already halfway out of the chamber as you speak.
Though dad looks a little bemused by this revelation it's not him you are worried about. You had just revealed a lot about your divining powers to Gard. Some people can douse for water, you have just proven that you can douse for specific girls in the maze of Undertown at the drop of a hat. Not something you are entirely fine with her or more specifically either of her bosses knowing, but this is more important.
As you make your way back to the ghoul room to trace Lydia's path you quickly explain the rest of what you you had seen and guessed... what little of it there is.
"The station you describe is called Last Station, no one is quite sure how it ended up like this, but I have heard tell that it always looks about twenty years out of date and out of repair, changing as the years pass. I think it might be more in the Nevernever than most places even down here. It's White Court Dregs territory... those of them who break somehow, go mad or just don't have the will to carry on, but he Hunger drives them to do the bare minimum to hunt. They shouldn't be much of a danger, but the tunnels you described, those sound like wyrm holes..."
"Wyrm like Dragon?" you ask, not even trying to keep the trepidation out of your voice.
"In the same way a spark of flint is like a lightning bolt," she snorts. "Still they are dangerous in their own dens and territorial. I doubt they would fail to notice either of you. If something tries to grab you out of the wall don't try to break the grip directly, lean into it and then jerk away. Stone moves most often slow and sometimes very swift, but never does it change it's course swiftly and so their minds are befuddled."
"Wait a second..." you can see the rusted steel service door ahead leading to the Last Station. "Doesn't that mean we could talk to them? Ask them to find Lydia...?" The question fades as you push open the heavy door with a creek and find for the first time since descending into Undertown, light
It does not improve the place.
The flickering orange-red emergency lights gleam dully off the surface of rusted rails and spill downwards like a toxic mold to reveal layers upon layers of gratify that lose all meaning save as a patina of neglect, like the fallen temple of some unnameable deity driven now to madness and disdain.
"I'd ask where the electricity comes from down here, but I'm not sure I want to know..." you joke, voice swallowed up by the quiet of the station a little too quickly.
It's immediately clear something had heard you though. A pile of what seems at first glance to be loose concrete and rebar on the other side of the tracks, next to a rather prodigious hole in the side of the tunnel moves, it twists and reforms. The rubble aligns into the rough configuration of scales, into an approximate serpentine shape, though each pieces remains distinct. The head of said beast is as much drawn on with faded red spray as it is suggested by the way the stones arranged themselves. In the uneven sockets of its eyes, burns the same dying florescence that spills out from the ceiling. Altogether head to tail it is about twelve feet long and about four feet tall as it sits there coiled.
Before you can decide if you should raise your hand or start talking the thing bows its head and in a heavy voice like the scrape of steel on stone it hisses: "You an old sssmell, a sstrange ssmell... power and purpossse. You ssssmell of divinity, but not like the lasssst one, older, ssstronger. What do you ssseek?"
"Hey I thought I was Harry Potter," Cindy gets out, only a little unsteadily. Say what you will about her common sense but the kid doesn't lack for courage.
"Which way did the other one go?" you ask quickly.
The... wyrm points towards the hole in the wall and without prompting describes how to cut her off at the pass as it were, which tunnels to pass through and which to avoid if you want to catch up.
"Why are you telling me all this?" you ask suspiciously.
"When the flood comes the ssstone that does not sssshift is worn away," the strange spirit replies. After a moment it adds. "I could carry you, make ssure you find her whom you sseek. "
"At what price?" OK, now you are really suspicious, but you're not about to refuse help out of hand.
"Aid to make my lair a more fit place to dwell, filled with light that does not fade, with beauty and purpossse," comes the forthright reply.
So he wants you do fix the place up... on the one hand you have the tools, literally and the skills, but it is going to take time, weeks and months of effort even if you cheat...
"If you could claim this place mistress it would be worth the effort a thousandfold," Usum speaks without words, the words manifest greed in your mind. "This place is not merely close to the spirit world, it is a crossing of the dragon-lines. Here greater works might be wrought than could be forged in the thin air and fading light that most of the mortal world holds."
Now you do not know a lot about dragons, even small ones, but you do know they don't like sharing... on the other hand this place is huge. You shake your head. Find Lydia first, deal with Katrina... Is it worth making the dead just for this, just for more speed down here.
[] Take the Earth Wyrm's offer, much faster transport around this area of Undertown (Cost 8 AP of work with the tools you have available; potential future access to Dragon's Nest)
[] Do not take the offer, refurbishing a haunted subway station down here is not something you have the time for (Continue after Lydia in foot)
[] Write in
OOC: If the rolls had gone bad instead of really good this could have been a combat encounter.
"Deal," you do not hesitate even for a moment, looking right into he strange custodian's eyes... and carefully not looking at your dad. Really it's not like I promised anything bad, you reassure yourself. It's just help in a search for manual labor, sort of like Tom Sawyer painting that fence without tricking anyone to help. Although assuming I could somehow get some construction equipment down here I could put spirits in it and get them to do some of the literal heavy lifting....
"So what are we gonna... yeep," Cindy yelps as the earth wyrm snakes across the tracks to stretch out before you. Four sets of handlebars grow out from between its concrete 'scales', rust red, the color of old blood.
"I sssshall take you to sshe whom you ssseek," the spirit hisses.
"Molly are you sure it's safe..." Dad is looking between the girl and the very much not OSHA approved means of transportation.
"I think it's safe, certainly more than splitting up." The old Scooby Doo 'let's split up gang' runs through your mind. This is the kind of place where they'd have a big set piece chase with the Ten Thousand Volt Ghost or something. "You'll be careful right?" you ask the spirit.
The emergency-light eyes turn to look at you flickering in time with the dying neon above. There is a rumble of grinding stone in its belly right below its head and to your surprise amid the broken concrete emerges a marble bust, sort of neoclassical goddess with a bird on her head. You can just make out the letters 'CHI...GO' below it and on the armor itself 'I Will'.
Gard does not need anymore convincing, she grabs on to one of the handles and after a moment your dad does likewise with the one behind her, though with Cindy hanging held in his arms. "That would make it hard for him to defend himself at need," Usum notes clinically.
"We came down here to rescue her," you remind him as you take your own place, the foremost handlebar right behind the 'dragon's' head.
The stone flows and coils under you then with a sound eerily like an old time train whistle he surges forth, the light of his eyes casting cones of luminescence along the rails, down and through the long darkness. Air whistles past, cold and brisk until even the smells of undertown begin to fade.
Behind you you can hear Cindy whooping... and to be honest if Gard weren't here you'd be joining her. This is just plain 'take the sled down the hill', 'ride the big roller coaster' fun.
After a few minutes you are out of the subway tunnel and into the rough hewn passages, needing to lay down flat to fit at all. Water drips onto your face, thankfully not the foul stuff you had been walking in all this time, but fresh like rain water or even snow-melt. It's getting really cold down here now, cold enough that you feel like you might almost be able to draw power from it when, suddenly the spirit veers hard left into what looks like an old wine cellar of all things with one of those fancy spiral stairs like a medieval castle leading upwards towards faint white light.
But that is not the only light in the chamber. In the middle of the spiral is Lydia, holding in her left hand a pale blue witch-light, looking a bit bedraggled from her walk about Undertown but otherwise fine. You can't really blame her for looking shock at the sight of a great big stone dragon roaring into the room with four people hanging out the back of of it.
"What... Molly what are you doing here!" she shouts down
What do you reply? (Include any Essence Usage)
[] Ask her what she is doing down here
[] Say you were worried about her
[] Write in
OOC: A bit short here, but this is the natural break point. No rolls this time around, you would have had one to see if you caught up in time if you had not taken the offer, but with it that was automatic.
