Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

[DragonParadox]

Crown's Sight and Mirror Hollow ​

18th of February 2007 A.D.

The air grows cold with your contemplation, reaching into the watchful dark for answers: "What can I do to help?" Thus it burns along threads black as ash against the backdrop of a starless night, invisible even to the wise. in all moments but this.

One is will, imperishable and unchanging the spoke upon which the wheel turns
Four are Virtues that drive the heart on, on roads straight and crooked, the small sundered suns
Compassion frays before the tide of the world's careless cruelty, hear the children crying.
Temperance breaks to the tolling of false innocence, ware the familiar face
Conviction turns to heartless calculation of souls uncounted grinding
Valor's promise to take on any challenge a veil of ashes to embrace
The span over eternity is woven not of steel, but silk that bends and sways
Thus comes undone the cruel and empty maze ​

"Harry if you want to do this know it's going to show you things. Some will be truths that hurt to know, some will fears you keep deep inside and every last one will be meant to break you until. The Maze turns and twists and tries to make you lost, tries to find your guiding light and drag it down. It doesn't always go like it did for Shaw. If you brace your weakness it will go after your strength. It's..." you frown. "Evil really doesn't exist of itself, its a distortion, a lie or an absence, if it.. if he can cut you up and make you choose what parts to keep, then he will cut and cut until there's nothing left but the sound of the knife. You have to keep the balance, no matter what he'll show you, no matter if its true or not, you have to keep the faith in everything you are and all that makes you human."

As you speak Ebenezer McCoy at first looks weary, then angry, he almost starts to speak, though in that moment before he can find the words you finish and he is left in limbo. Pensive, sad, it's hard to guess what lurks behind those eyes, but one thing is for sure, he cares about Harry not just the way a teacher cares for their students, wanting the best for them once they have stepped away, but as a parent does, a piece of their heart set forever aside in worry and love.

"Everyone wants to be something they are not," Lydia says, her tone mussing, but not uncertain. "They live with it and die with it. Plenty of people, most people die content enough to move on, but I have never met a human soul passing who did not have regrets who didn't want for something. If I understand this aright this place, this conversation with Empty Night aims to convince all wizards who pass into is that what they want to is to no longer be human. One who knows themselves utterly and without self-deception could walk though the maze as the white hind through the sunlit woods, untroubled by peril..."

"But for those who don't know they have to accept that too," you finish softly. A hard thing for wizards to do, whose very name means 'wise', you think, though there's no sense in saying so aloud.

"Well..." Harry looka around at the black featurless walls of the Labyrinth, your Labyrinth. "That's more advice, more help than most of the poor suckers who got thrown in here got. No sense throwing it all away."

"Can't have been too good or else you'd have unstopped your ears and listened," the old wizard's voice is gruff, though more with worry than anger. "If you go into this thinking to sacrifice yourself, that's what you'll get! You aren't here to pay for your sins Harry, there's no cosmic scoreboard for you to right. Swear ta God, it's like I managed to raise you Catholic somehow."

You really shouldn't laugh but you do because it's so true. Harry does have the guilt down really well, though it gets a lot less funny when you realize he's never gone to confession once, he's just been bottling it up, trying to pay it back not knowing if he has or if he's deluding himself. You are reminded of a talk you had with dad when you were just getting into middle school and there were some things you really didn't want to talk to a priest about, silly schoolyard crushes looking back now.

Can't someone do right by God on their own, like what if they're alone on a desert island?

Sure they can, but it's harder, like wandering a road at night without company. And you had just looked at him funny so he'd said: Like getting ready to go out without someone to hold the mirror and confirm that you look right or give advice when something's off. Even if you do get it right you might not have the confidence and then you'll spend all night wondering.

Harry is quiet for a long time, or at least it seems like that as the moments drag themselves along before he settles on a look of resolve. It suits him well. "I get it now. I'm going in."

For all your sakes you hope he's right.

OOC: The next post will be an interlude from Harry's PoV. In the meantime you guys might want to consider how you are going to explain your... everything to the Merlin if you find him alive, he is the most likely to ask detailed questions because that is the kind of person he is and Molly has that sense of him.

 

[DragonParadox]

The Magician and the Wizard ​

18th of February 2007 A.D.

There was a line on the ground, sharp as the blade of a knife between the deep black of Molly's passage and the limestone of the catacombs. All I had to to was step over it and the world twisted and unfolded like origami paper, like light cut into pieces, colors without names. I landed elsewhere, not Chicago and not the Nevernever...

I remembered this place, oh not in detail, but the peeling wallpaper, the faint smell of mildew, the sound of the pipes clattering though too thin-walls, it was one of the dozens of bargain bin hostels and roadside motels I'd lived in with my father. And there he was, tall and lanky, I'd gotten that from him, though his heir was darker than mine and his eyes a lighter blue. They were red those eyes of his as he sat on the edge of the bed, the plastic covering creaking under him. Hard night, I wondered and then with crushing speed my mind went to the day I'd found him dead. Had it been this room or one like it?

It was hard to remember anything beside his face, the smile on his face unlike anything I'd ever seen.

"Harry, Harry, I'm going out," he called out and for a moment I thought he was talking to me, but then I heard the creak of small feet on the worn carpet. I turned around and saw myself smiling up at him with that confidence that only little kids have, when their parents are the biggest and strongest thing in the world.

"OK Dad, I'll sit quiet and not answer the door..." Huh, I sounded like I had a cold, nothing bad, just the sniffles, though I was absurdly glad not to have substance to be sneezed on.

My father walked out, grabbing his hat along the way, not the magician's hat of course, the plain grey hat with a narrow brim I remember clutching to my chest as they took me away. I'd managed to hang on to that hat through two foster homes. Was it real, or at least was it how I remembered it or some distortion that was going to twist around and attack attack me at any moment. Nothing happened, I was just left in the room in the company of my younger self and a pack of battered playing cards he was attempting to replicate some trick he'd seen on stage.

Of course, not much of a maze if you don't follow along, I realized and cautiously set off after my father.

It was dark out but the streets were well lit, we must have been in a small town from the shape of the neighborhood , but one pretty close to a city from the lights in the distance, spilling out to cover the stars in a haze of orange.

An old man sat on a bench, just as I remembered him, just as I had seen him moments ago, Ebeneezer McCoy sat stiff as a board on a park bench in a nameless city waiting for my father like he was waiting for the hangman. "Well?"

"Harry has a cold, I told you on the phone it was nothing serious."

"That you can tell," thick eyebrows meet in a worried frown. "If I told you all the things that can look like a cold it would turn your hair whiter than mine."

My father sighed like they had this conversation before, like they knew each other.

Ebeneezer had been my mother's. Margret LaFey's, teacher, that was part of the reason why he'd taken me on when he did, but I always thought my father didn't know anything about wizards and their magic, just stagecraft.

"You know he doesn't' have to be in danger to meet his grandfather."

What? My brain felt like someone had dipped it in a jar of molasses. This has to be the maze fucking with my head, twisting things around to twist me.

"No he doesn't have to be because meeting his grandfather will put him in danger," Ebeneezer just kept on talking. "I'm being watched, always."

In spite of myself I kept watching, kept listening, trying to make sense of what they were saying, it's what wizards and detectives have in common. I came to realize that I'd been right before, my dad never knew about magic, but he did think Mom was in some shady stuff, and he thought grandf... Ebenezer —no way to know if it's true or not— was being paranoid. Knowing what I knew now I wasn't sure he was. Sure he hadn't been on the Senior Council back then, but a few years later he'd been senior enough to save my neck with the Doom.

"It's best if Harry doesn't get involved with the family..."

"You say that and then you keep lurking!" I don't remember ever having heard Malcolm Dresden raise his voice before. "Don't think I didn't notice: the empty seats paid for in Seattle, in Renton... If I could go back I'd find a dozen more. Sometimes he'll say there are people following us. That's you isn't it?"

"I hope to God it's just me," the words were faint and snatched up by the wind-that flowed-with- nameless-colors. The Labyrianth was trying to pull me elsewhere, but the current wasn't so strong that I couldn't stay here. Should I stay? Would I see what happened? How he died... could I trust it?

What does Harry do?

[] Try to remain with Malcolm and his younger self (Willpower Roll 8 Dice DC 7)

[] Follow the flow of the Labyrinth where it leads him

[] Try to speak to the people outside (Arete+Mind Roll 5 Dice DC 6)

OOC: I thought about just continuing to write, but that would have lead to an enormous interlude that might not even have been done today.

 

[DragonParadox]

A Symmetry Sinister ​

18th of February 2007 A.D.

I'm not good at mind magic at the best of times, it gets you looked at funny, for much the same reason a a high school chemistry teacher who can make crack cocaine would get looked at funny. These were not the best of times, in fact they might be the worst of times in the worst of places. Questioning the nature of space time asides...

"Molly!" the shout had the subtlety of a bull horn, for all the good it seemed to do. The quiet of the night seemed bigger somehow, more lonely, like it was waiting for something that I wouldn't enjoy.

I remembered the heat of the desert, the shifting green fire reflecting in brass that filled the horizon impossibly tall, imperishable ruin of impossible things.

"Harry... wha's... ning? Do y... out?"

It was like trying to listen to one of those old radios with the dial that creeks almost more loudly than the sound coming through, except when I concentrated on the static I could hear voices in it, chanting, cavorting and pleading.... Nope, static it was, I decided then and there.

"Ask Ebenezer if he's my grandfather." It felt strange to pass that though Molly... no, looking the thing in the eyes it felt more than strange, awkward and embarrassing and I didn't want to talk about it with a pair of kids listening, no matter how many metaphysical screwdrivers they hand to pull apart the walls of reality.

"Yes... was... ngerous, then didn't know... how to..."

He could've just said it, that was my first thought, but the thing about spending so long around Lash outside my own head is that these days I didn't need her inside my head to imagine what she'd say.

Remind you of anyone?

Why make things more complicated, why change what 'works'? It wasn't the same kind of lie as being the Blackstaff, it didn't feel like a betrayal of everything he taught me... My fingers hurt as they dug into the wood of the park bench. The memory of my dad had long since moved on.

There was still a part of me that wasn't over the empty feeling of being passed from foster home to foster home, tolerated at best like an old piece of luggage, of knowing I didn't have any other family. Why had DuMorne been the one to find me? Another time and in another place I might not have asked, but this was the worst place and I needed all the help I could get..

The answers came slowly, haltingly as the colors of the night grew hazy in the tarnished yellow light of street lights, like they all wanted to run together, but come they did: "I didn't know if you'd be a wizard... I didn't have the heart to bury you."

At first I thought he meant that I'd have been eaten by a vampire, scared for me the way I had been for Murphy in the old days, the way I tried not to be, but then I realized it was something a lot more basic, time. Wizards lived a long time, Ebenezer had lived centuries already. Did he have other children, other grandchildren he he had seen grow old and die while he changed hardly at all? I couldn't ask that, it was too personal, too painful. I didn't need to ask it.

"I understand."

The moment I let go of the connection the sun was in my face. The sky was blue and the awnings colorful, traffic lights flashed cars wound down narrow roads already filled with an abundance of people, all of them blind to me. A woman talking animatedly with her friend pushed a baby stroller right through me. Didn't feel a thing.

Spoiler: A city in color drawn

Somewhere in Latin America, though I couldn't tell you where. I knew just enough Spanish to say I didn't speak Spanish, if they couldn't read it on my face. What do you want me to see here? I wondered at at the dark looming presence behind the sunlit facade. I didn't doubt that this was a living breathing city, but I couldn't forget whose canvas it was.

I wasn't expecting it to answer:

"Why the same thing I showed you before, a truth which had been hidden from you. Lies from 'love' spoken."

The way it said love sent a chill down my spine, it wasn't hateful, scornful or angry, it was said with barely restrained laughter, like the the biggest joke the speaker had ever heard.

"Ah... there she is." A cold wind tugged me until I turned around and saw Susan for the first time in four years now, sitting at a cafe, watching the people go by. Stars and stones had it really been four years? She looked like he was trying to blend in without being too obviously herself, large sunglasses changed the shape of her face, her hair was braided and I had never seen her in a sundress and sandals, though to be fair Chicago weather didn't give much of an opportunity for the latter.

"If you are about to show me Susan's seeing someone you can skip the tape and hand me the prize already, I figured out she isn't living in perpetual chastity."

Despite the bravado I knew it would hurt, but not as much as it would have last year. I had moved on too after all...

"No Mr Dresden, I would like to show you the consequences of the last time you saw Ms Rodriguez..."

That was when I saw a family of six getting out of a car. Two boys, two girls, the oldest about seven the youngest... dark hair and skin, but her face reminded me of the boy in the motel room, if I hadn't just been there I could have missed it, or dismissed it out of hand. I didn't have to look back up at Susan to know she'd be watching the girl, to know she was our daughter.

It all comes right together doesn't it?

It was too pat, too easy a connection. It had to be a lie... it had to be, because otherwise this warlock, this voice in the dark knew where my daughter was and she had no more protection than my father could provide me, nothing and I never knew.

Some detective you are Dresden, some wizard?

"What do you want?" I asked the monster.

"To devour God as the tapeworm devours a starving man, but I'll settle for a shucos for now..." This time the voice did not come out of the ether. A man of middling height and middling weight, his eyes a middling shade of brown tapped me on the shoulder.

"A what...?" Not my most intelligent answer to meeting an ancient evil, but to be fair they generally have me tied to a chair at this point, not offering lunch.

"Traditional Guatemalan hot dog, it translates to something like 'dirties' . Don't worry you don't have to eat if you don't want, just listen." When I didn't say anything he just motioned to table. "Come now Dresden have a heart, do you have any idea how uncommon it is for these vision quests to have decent food? Cannibal feats and fuckable chocolate, sure. Food that is not just the culinary equivalent strumming the A major chord on a guitar until it snaps not so much."

"Fuckable cho...?"

"Most people are simple, predictable and that includes most wizards, much as they hate to admit it, but not you Dresden."

"I'm special am I? Born under the right stars?" You could cut the sarcasm in my words with a knife. He didn't seem to care.

I watched wearily as a thin almost pained smile showed on that unremarkable face as if the one behind it did not quite recall how those muscles were meant to work. "Same as I yes, but that is not what I meant. Most people see their desires in the Labyrinth Dresden, not their fears."

"What's the difference?" despite myself I found myself following along as he tossed a coin to one of the waiters, gold and ancient looking and grabbed a sausage wrapped in a toasted bun and topped with guacamole, cabbage, chorizo and some other things I didn't know the names of.

"Of all our animal drives fear if the only useful one... only one that's worth a dog's ass. Still something to purge yourself of, but leave it for last, it can be useful. Tell me Dresden do you wish she she had the Gift?"

What does Harry do?

[] Try to piss him off, they always slip up when they are angry

[] Let him keep talking

[] Write in

OOC: This was a lot longer than I thought it would be. Sorry for being so late guys.

 

[DragonParadox]

Doors of the Broken Hall​

18th of February 2007 A.D.

"Is that what we're going...?" I did my best to sound confused, which I had plenty of practice over the last few months and insulting, not really a hard ask when the guy compared himself to a tapeworm. "Lamp all rubbed out."

Instead of getting angry or at least bewildered himself the horror standing across from be in a fancily of a Guatemalan eatery just leaned back in his chair with a creak and waved his left hand at me as he continued to devour the hot dog with his right. "Go on then, get it out of your system so we can talk."

"You make a real bad genie. I don't think I'll be using my third wish to let you free."

"What makes you think I'm making an offer?" The blandest face of evil I'd ever met looked up at me with mild interest, like I was a new species of bug he was eager to pin to a cork board.

"Experience. It's what all you wanna be Darth Vaders do." There was no way to be sure how up this guy was on modern culture, but if there is one thing I had learned over my rewarding career it's that the bad guys did not like being painted with the same brush.

"That is where you are wrong, I do not have to buy men's souls, they give themselves to me." The whole scene pulsed like a tumor seeping poisoned light. In a more normal tone he added: "Because they come to agree. As for my question I asked it for the same reason you didn't answer: because you don't know." he motioned to the street where the girl —what was her name?— was arguing with the woman next to her about ice cream before lunch...

"...but I've never ruined my appetite before and papa got me ice cream at least six... no seven times." She held out the appropriate number of fingers, much to the man's chagrin.

"Listen to that, does it sound of innocence to you? Or is it just that children are powerless. When I was young Dresden I had a cat, also several daughters and a son, but the cat was more memorable. I saw it scavenge the dead once after a riot and I knew than that if I died in such a manner that would not poison my meat." He took a large and greedy bite of of his food. I felt like puking. "The cat would eat me, first the tongue and the lips, then the eyes and the ears. A child would too, if it is hungry enough. We are all agents of sentience moving though a world of meat, like a haunted mincing machine. Who knows what she will be hungry for soon... They are coming for her, the Red Court, they know who she is and they have a use for her. In this the leeches have still the power to take and the wisdom to find."

"What did you tell them?" My hand closed around the familiar surface of my blasting rod, though what good it would do here I couldn't say.

"Now you flatter me Dresden. Vampires find a girl in the middle of vampire country? Truly a marvel and a horror. It must be a conspiracy."

Without meaning to my eyes jumped to Susan. Why did she think Maggie, it felt wrong to learn that name from the monster, would be safer here under watch of a few Fellowship agents than back in Chicago where all the big guns were. Did she really think I was that much of a problem, that I would put my daughter in more danger than bloody Red Court in their own back yard?

The Hollow Man reached out to a neighboring table and snatched their paper napkin causing the man to look down confused and Susan to look over at him suspiciously, scanning for threats. For all that good that does... wait?

"Oh yes, this is mere passing vision, the Labyrinth is real, I would hazard to say it is reality and all the rest built upon its foundations, but you are not the man for such airy musings. Reach out your hand and pull the girl though and she will be with you in time. Who knows, she might even learn a thing or two."

He could still be lying, of course he lies... That is when I noticed the man at the next table was wearing skin color gloves, the heavy jacket and pants were not just being a clueless tourist. That was a vampire, one old enough to be in the sun, if not quite as confident in his flesh mask as he might like.

What does Harry do?

[] Pulls someone in
-[] Maggie so she will be safe
-[] The Vampire for interogation

[] No, let it go, the vampire isn't just going to attack a family on a busy street in broad daylight (Willpower DC 7)

[] Open his sight to get a better look at all of this, all he has so far are gut feelings and the word of a monster.

[] Write in

OOC: Welcome to the Labyrinth where the worst things you can see are true ones.

 

[DragonParadox]

What Lies in Grave Unquiet ​

18th of February 2007 A.D.

It shouldn't be light out. That was my first thought. I'm not sure what time it should be exactly, jet lag's got nothing on running though the ways, but it definitely shouldn't be this sunny in any part of South America, then the rest of my brain helpfully caught up. Who says time has to work the same not-quite-Outside?

The vampire had gotten up to pay, a polite monster, or more likely one who doesn't want to draw attention to itself. If I was going to expose anyone to this madness it wouldn't be a little girl, my little girl, that still sounded crazy. What did I know about being a dad?

I at least knew not to take the bait. "No."

"No?" the empty faced man looked but down his food gingerly. "May you never claim after this day Dresden that the dark is not generous."

Arms set crossed on his chest like a corpse, body suddenly stiff as a board he falls backwards onto the pavement and where he falls a grave opens, a headstone rising from the pavement like a pale mushroom from the riven earth. Marble and on it a pentacle in gold. Too much to hope it would be his grave.

Here lies Harry Dresden ✬ He died doing the Right Thing

It was mine, the one Bianca had gotten for me. As the sky darkened and the streets around me emptied of life I realized the grave opened into steps that reminded me a little of the ones below Demonreach. It was clear enough where I was meant to be going but I couldn't help but look around for Maggie and Susan. They were both gone, even the trees were starting to rot in place and the buildings to melt like pieces of rancid tallow left too long in the sun.

No way forward but down, about as subtle as a sledge hammer to the knees, but I knew it wasn't true. How much of beating this place was just knowing it could be beaten.

I heard my daughter scream from below, a sound of pure animal terror and I knew it was Maggie.

I ran.

"So confident in your own cleverness." I could not tell if the voice was coming from the walls of moldering earth or from inside my own head. "The great Harry Dresden, investigator and wizard can't possibility be wrong. It's not as though you guess half the time... it's not as though you gamble."

There were alcoves in the walls, the kind that should be filled with bones, but instead held only pools of rotting blood, offal and excrement. But I couldn't look, I couldn't look too close or I'd see faces in the rot: Victor Sells with a worm growing out of the middle of his forhead, McFinn trapped forever between man and wolf cursing God and all his saints, Kim Delaney being ripped apart over and over again, Aurora weeping blood from a dozen suppurating wounds....

"You can still save her soul, hurry!" "Hurry! Hurry!" Fleshless hands grabed at my legs. "You have to kill! Kill them all again!"

The screams were fainter now but no less anguished, fire was in my hand and in front of me was a familiar face ruined by the grave: Tall and sporting a goatee now filled with maggots, flesh charred black and bones showing through it: Justin DuMorne was standing over Maggie her chest torn open withered fingers on her still beating heart squeezing.

I gathered my will and... stopped.

In that final moment between grasping magic and shaping it into a spell I realized just how little sense any of this made. Why would her soul be here just because a vampire went after her? Sells and Aurora had twisted by the same power that ruled this place, but McFinn and KimDelaney. it was just showing me my fears to make me snap.

The moment I thought that, the moment I doubted the scene froze like some horrifying polaroid, then like a negative hurned by the sun is vanished.

"How dissapointing." The voice was the same but the figure walking into the chamber from a door that hadn;t been there before barely looked human, it swayed from side to side as it walked, chunched over and yet still way too tall under sweeping black robes. "I was all but sure you'd let your fists do your thinking for you, metaphorically of course." he waved at the floor in front of him and a well opened up filled with brackinsh water... then the 'well blinked'. The titanic eye of some burried horror looked at me with disdain.

"Ask and Ye shall recieve, what secret, what power is your performance worth?"

[] Harry asks how to kill the Hollow Man

[] Harry asks one of the myriad of questions he has about Molly and her nature
-[] Write in

[] Harry is silent, asking nothing

[] Write in

OOC: Sometimes evil is subtle and coniving, sometimes it hits one over the head with a metaphorical baseball bat, especially when it suspects you might react how it wants to being hit.

 

[DragonParadox]

The Essence of Things ​

18th of February 2007 A.D.

I wanted to tell Peepers Creepers down there to shove his question where the sun doesn't shine, but something told me anything I might say in here would be taken for agreement. Sometimes, as a great director once put to film the winning move is not to play. As soon as the thought crossed my mind time the silence grew oppressive, the blood that had been beating in my ears slowed, time itself stretched taunt into eternity. Why isn't he saying anything? I was suddenly struck by the horrifying idea that in here time was at the warlock's whims, he could just leave me like this for months, years, decades of subjective time until I choose something or went mad. That's not making an unsolvable labyrinth is it, just a long one.

I stepped closer to the wall and tried to tap my foot against it, but there was no sound, no sense of hitting something even. I snapped my fingers, nothing again, clenched my fist until it should have hurt. No pain. Nothing at all. Soon I couldn't feel the floor under my feet or the air going through my lungs.

I had do...Fuck that, are you a wizard Dresden or some conjuror of cheap tricks?

Thinking about it there were two ways this could be happening, either thing was in my head, even deeper in my head than Lash used to be, able to edit out all my senses until I did what it wanted or... this was normal, this was the true shape of the realm Molly had called the Labyrinth, formless shapeless nothing with only the Eye from Outside looking in, lies and visions stretched taunt over top. Exclude option one for the moment what did that mean for me? If there was no floor for me to stand on how did I have feet?

I 'looked' down to find I did not in fact have feet. It is at this point that most people would panic, being a wizard I saved the panic for later and tried to figure out what it meant. If I wasn't my body that I was my soul and I do not recall giving Evil McBland or his bosses back there any rights to hold my soul in place. So I picked a direction and...

Wyldfire trapped in a prison of Jade... So tragic... So lonely... So afraid... Don't be afraid...

The words swirled around me, rising to sharp peaks of worry and then falling to long valleys of calm. They reminded me of nothing so much as someone trying to shush a cranky baby.

So I screamed, not with my voice, but with my will, not with my lungs but with my soul.

The emptiness shattered around me like glass into a billion pieces, every sense rushing back in a cacophony of chaos. "Harry, Harry are you alright?"

Molly wavered in my sight like a heat mirage and then there were two of her, and then there were more, an endless parade down mirrors of brass.

"You know how you can taste food better when there's salt?" I heard a distant voice, like something in a dream.

"Yes..." she sounded worried. She sang, but wasn't part of the chorus.

"I think you're salt and everything else is... is... tasty."

There between my hands was a piece of... a light of... Everything the dark place had not been, earth, air, fire, water and life. It was a part of me and a part of the world, magic in its purest form.

Then I blacked out.

Harry Dresden has Awakened Essence (Equivalent Essence ●● Max Mote Pool 5)​

He must weave his mote pool though extended Arete roll at Base DC 7, each roll requiring an hour; 1 Success = 1 Mote. A Botch renders him unable to acess Essence until the next Sunrise or Sunset

• Can Learn Supernatural Martial Arts up to Terrestrial
• Can Study (Terrestrial) Ancient Sorcery
• Can freely gift motes to Exalted, though not the reverse
• Can freely convert his motes back into successes to any spells he casts

Harry has demonstrated Essence manipulation then collapsed from the strain?

[] Sophia can heal him, you still need to find the Merlin

[] Harry has already pushed himself too much, get him to safety then continue without him

[] Write in

OOC: The trials were in order Compassion: forgiving Ebeneezer, Conviction, not falling the the cruelty of thinking he knows best or the cruelty of using the Labyrinth to drag the vampire in, Valor: resisting the terrors the Hollow Man unleashed and Temperance: knowing when not to speak. Saying anything even to be a wiseass there at the end would have been bad.

 

[DragonParadox]

End of the Road​

18th of February 2007 A.D.

"Tarnation! What's the boy gone and done now?" Maybe you are starting to get a little loopy after everything that happened today because the first thing that pops into your mind is that you never heard someone use that word genuinely. Fortunately the second thing is more useful: "He's become Enlightened, not morally, not necessarily morally Harry is a good person, but this is more like being an Olympian of the soul, embracing and reflecting the essence of all things that dwells in the human soul just as it does in all other times and places and in between times and places too. "

"Aren't you a little young for those riddles?" the old wizard asks, shaking his head in frustration. "Come on, we have to..."

Sophia's voice breaks the silence, a roar echoing forever in the depths of the Labyrinth sinking down into some secret well of healing and from there drawing the power to awaken Harry.

Awake he does and not gently, rolling onto his blasting rod. In an instant it's pointed at her and the runes along its length white-hot in the span of an instant before recognition shows on his face.

"This is real right...?"

Before you can consider how one even goes about proving he throws a mote of white hot Essence at you like he's pitching and its the ninth inning. You don't so much catch it as absorb it by proximity.

Gained 1 Essence -> Now at 7/18

"Good nough, don't want to risk opening my Sight. I saw enough in there to last me a lifetime even with it closed."

Alas the night is not quite done with revelations, down and in your go, past rows of bones fist laid down in the long years that history now best recalls for the ages before and after, the middle ages, victims of plague and war, want and the simple advance of time now holding each other fast by command of a king long past their time. They seem almost to whisper, conspiring behind you. Had it not been for Lydia you might have passed your presnce over them and stripped lingering wraiths from hollow bone, but according to her there is no malice to it, more in the manner of arena full of sports fans might place a bet on a match. Fair's fair, there probably isn't much to do in death especially around here. Only so many times you can read the plaques.

At last you come to signs of battle, not suntle ones either, a heavy iron door of the kind that shouldn't be down here blasted open and the smell of blood filling the air. A dozen bodies most of them young, all of them wizards lay screwn on the floor while an exhausted looking Arthur Langtry his robes stained with soot, blood and other less identifiable things stands in the middle of the room physically holding closed an iron maiden bearing the mocking likeness of an angel. Lines of blue while magic are really doing the sealing but physical exercion lends weight to the warding.

"Ebeneezer, Dresden," his tone, much to your surprise does not sour on the second word. "I'd ask you what you are doing here, but I imagine the same thing as I, stumbling though ambushes we should have seen coming."

"What is that?" Lydia is the first to ask.

"A rather nasty device that contrary to its appearance doesn't imprison people, it lets them loose, in fact given how its' been empowered it would let the whole city of Paris loose, right into the Nevernever. It drops the veil to nothing, no more. Not that it would have to do more, it would be utter pandemonium, that many ignorant sous throw into the out in one place. Everything with a taste for man would be out in force and every single citizen an exposure risk under the Accords. It would have been quite clever if it hadn't been so psychotic."

"What did you do?" Ebeneezer asks his eyes laser-focused on the other wizard.

"I did not kill any despite..." he waves at the air. "Everything. Some of them did kill each other trying to get through my wards. The enthralling force damaged their ability to asses risk even within the context of the scenario they had been implanted with. As outnumbered as I was I couldn't afford to hold back. Three Lawbreakers, four dead and five or six broken swords. A dark day indeed."

Now its Harry's turn to glare at him, probably for counting swords and deaths in the same breath, but the Merlin does not seem to notice.

How do you remove the veil-ripper artifact?

[] Let the Blackstaff handle it

[] Try to destroy it yourself (Risk of taking considerable damage from backlash)

[] Try to take it into Sanctuary for study (Risk of going off and serving as a beacon in the spirit world for predatory and malicious entities)

[] Write in

OOC: Enjoy.

 

[DragonParadox]

The Gate Within ​

18th of February 2007 A.D.

Rashid hated devils, of course the devils are meant to be hated, they would be insulted if you did not hate them, but he especially hated it when then devils did the work of things that were worse. His mind passed over the thought lightly, like a ripple in a deep pond not because he did not know Them, but because he knew too much, he had Seen things unspeakable and to dwell upon them was to give them a purchase on his mind even if only a fingernail's width.

So it was with some satisfaction that he dropped the still bear-like head of the host of Magog before the vaguely throne-like chair that presently contained what seemed to be a petite teenage girl. Appearances could be deceiving.

"You misplaced your dog." Wizards who knew the distant, but kindly Rashid would have been perturbed at the coldness of his tone, but it was the Gatekeeper who spoke and it was Polonius Lartessa host of Imariel who listened.

"Oh?" the Fallen tilted her head coquettishly. "Where's the rest of him then?"

"If you meant the body when I last saw it it had been 'recycled' by He Who Walks in Garment of Rot attempting to salvage the a rite of summoning that would have used Manzanares as a vector for a parasitic plague meant to usher in a cult of its masters. The 'cure' would have been delivered by one doctor de Salva. Yes that one, I am not entirely sure what you were planning to use his talents for but you were played up to and including the death of your... instrument, he was meant to be the sacrifice."

"Sacrifice an angel?" Lartessa laughed, a sound uncanny in its perfection. "You've spent too long staring into the void old man, that is beyond Walkers, even the mightiest of them."

"The vessel." Rashid closed his eyes against the rage bubbling inside him, such as he had not felt in more than a century. A part of him, and not a small part, wanted to take this chance to kill the monster in front of him, to spare the world her malice, to bind her master to silence and stillness until he should find a much lesser host, but he could not justify it, not while... "Check your people all of them for the mark of..." The word he spoke them befouled the air between them and even made the Denarian flinch. Good.

"It may have made contingencies if the plan here failed, you may still have sleepers."

"May, is that the best your wizard's wit can do?" She tried to regain the initiative.

"Tread carefully Lartessa or it will not be Knights of any description who make your end," the wizard threatened, the silver eye burning almost white upon his face, knowing with that damnable insight that that is only given to seers that it was already too late to act in Scotland or in Paris. He could only take comfort in that fact that his sight was fractured by a bolt of green flame.

OOC: The Outsiders did not just infiltrate the good guys, though that is very little comfort to people like Rashid who have to clean up after Tessa and her posse of monsters getting used in a shell game.

 

[DragonParadox]

Diffused ​

18th of February 2007 A.D.

"Is he...?" You've almost been tricked too many times today to not ask, but Sophia sends back the all clear so you call out: "On the count of three?"

"You two pull apart the mechanisms I can ground the power, Ebeneezer watch for traps," Langtry commands, his voice holding in equal measure conviction and exhaustion. The word 'still' hangs unspoken in the air, he thinks he can still ground the power.

Thankfully you are not the only one who heard that. "I'll help ground it, we all have eyes in our heads," McCoy says, approaching the contraption of steel, magic and pain from the opposite direction.

"I can help," Harry speaks up, still moving gingerly into the room, like he'd suddenly gotten three inches of height and was afraid to knock his head on the ceiling. No danger of that here. It seems to have been some kind of chapel, though of what you could not say and you're not sure you want to know.

"Three, two, one..."

Sophia tries to stir the life in the fallen wizards, but none of them stir, a look of anger and of anguish on her face-that-is-yours.

"Now!" you call peeling the rotten skin of the enchantment like the nastiest most wormy potato, if a potato's eyes could see and hate. McCoy just yanks out the anchors, sweeping them in Langtry's direction. It would, you think have been enough to kill the curse dead, maybe a bit of the bedroock would have gone on a trip to Faerie, but no one in the city above would have noticed. Then Harry plants his staff throws up his left hand and for the briefest instant becomes a pillar of molten essence, one with the warp and weft of the world folding the tainted power away into the very veil it had been meant to break.

Harry loses 4 Essence and 1 Willpower -> Now at 7/8 willpower and 0/5 Essence

"What did you...?" Shock is not an emotion to which the Merlin's aristocratic features are accustomed to both due the wisdom he has gathered in his centuries of life and the poker face he's cultivated for just as long.

"Just something I figured out recently." From someone else or spoken in another tone the words might have sounded prideful, here and now they sound worried.

"As in within the last five minutes," Lydia says, smiling at the understatement or maybe just at the fact this seems to finally be over.

Taking advantage of the distraction you look down at the broken swords and ask: "Who of those who have walked this Labyrinth have been tainted by it?"

"Carmen Sanchez, Peter Volkov, Cornelius Greenwood"

Not Langtry, thank God! A less charitable part of you, one that happens to speak with a demon's voice notes that at least one senior wizard seems to have dealt with the crises reasonably on his own, even if he did have to fall into a trap first.

Alas you can still count, so as Sophia gathers herself to try to heal the fallen wardens again you ask again: "Who are the missing wizards? Where are they?"

You get names alright: "Bill Mayers, Chandler Abbot, Lisa Strong, Jay Sagar, Alice Royce, Joséphine Aubert."

Lost in the Labyrinth.

Lost 3 Essence -> Now at 4/18 (3x Crown question)
Regained 2 Essence -> Now at 6/18 (Urge of the Forbidden)

Fuck! It's only the sound of metal scraping stone that makes you realize you had kicked the wall so hard it left a dent. Of course they would have been tempted too, of course some of them would lose themselves. A consolation prize for the Hollow Man's losses.

"Lydia, the dead..."

"None of them have passed," she confirms. "Those who die by violence rarely do before their first sunset."

The silver of her anima starts to unfold into the air to reveal a quartet of very bewildered wizards looking down at their own corpses. and the slowly stirring forms of their still living companions.

What do you do?

[] Propose going back into the Labyrinth to save the six who are lost in it somehow
-[] Write in with whom

[] There is already too much that needs doing, help with the clean up here and in the city above

[] Write in

OOC: Harry was not the only one who stepped into the Labyrinth, because it's not like it was a trap only for him, but the others did not have his advantages.

 

[DragonParadox]

Of Entrances Ethereal ​

18th of February 2007 A.D.

"We are going after them..." you say calmly, firmly. "The missing wardens."

"I do not believe they are fit to be found alas," though Langtry's diction could easily fool one into doubting his sincerity you catch sight of the shadow passing over his features, he means that last word as much as if had said a dozen.

A pity Harry doesn't catch it. "You're just going to leave them to rot? Wizards of the Council? Wardens?"

"They are lost in more than space and time Dresden."

"I know. I was there! I met the bad bland man and his friend Eye-Gor. If I could break out on my own they sure as heck can with help! Come on!" For someone who annoyed the Senior Council by getting involved in matters above his age time and again there's not a hit of pride in Harry's words. As far as he is concerned he's no batter than any six randomly selected Wardens.

"That thing's going to be out for your blood," you cut him off before either of the two senior wizards can answer. "So we need to go back in and get them." Lydia nods firmly, before turning to talk quietly to the shades as you focus your attention. "Mr Merlin." You consider him briefly, then continue 'Those three" you gesture briefly"need to be sedated and restrained for treatment. I'm leaving you four people" A pair of sorcerers step forward at Sophia's prompting, accompanied by two Weavers, "to help with site security." You turn to go back the way you came "We have to hurry, I think. See you in a bit."

"Treatment," he shakes his head sadly, but as though he doesn't want to ruin your hopes all at once so he agrees, or at the very least voices no objection as he turns to the pair of mages, measuring up the brass exoskeletons they are wearing.

"Wait, how topped up are you?" Lydia stops, hand outstretched to part the veil.

"Not very... a third... wait no, six of eighteen parts," you send though Sophia. This is the first time you tried to put the feeling of essence into words and much to your surprise, they came easily, a trivial translation "six motes."

"How much does it take you to make the gate that got us out of Yomi, the arch?"

"Four, I'd be almost out." You had fought with less, but nothing as dangerous as the hollow man and up to six turned Wardens would be. "Why?"

"If I or wizard McCoy open the way we'll be at the edge, where all the defenses are likely to be, all the traps and snares, but if that Gate, we will be in the center before the Eye. That is where the missing Wardens inevitably have to arrive so we can gather them all onto us at once instead of having to hunt them down the proverbial corridors, though lies and nightmares."

"The gate you used to get out of Hell?" Langtry sounds less like he does not believe her and more like he would prefer if he could. "I suppose that would be a comparable experience."

"I dealt with is once, I can..."

"Warden Dresden, I would very strongly advise that you do not leave this plane of reality," the head of the White Council continues. "I do not know quite how you did what I just saw a moment ago, but such power, such purity if magic is not a thing lightly cast away, still less so in a time of war. If you will not stay for your own sake do it for the lives you might save teaching that art?"

"How do you know I didn't just make a pact with something?" Harry asks, mulish more for the source of the words than the contents you suspect.

"Because Warden Dresden the power was undeniably, inimitably your own," the Merlin asnwers in the tone of one who is more of an expert on the make up of Harry Dresden than he would like.

What do you do?

[] Open Calibration's Gate to the Heart of the Labyrinth (-4 Essence)

[] Lydia opens the Way to the edge of the Labyrinth
-[] Go in after them, the Hollow Man is unlikely to make your intrusion easy
-[] Light a beacon with magic and hope the lost can backtrack their way though their personal pitfalls and nightmares. The Labyrinth's guardians will alas be able to see it much more clearly

[] Write in

OOC: Since I know it will be asked, yes you are still in Shintai