From the Heart
14th of February 2007 A.D.
Setting foot on the shore reminded me of nothing so much as being carsick, the feeling of the gut rebelling against the fake evidence of my eyes, only instead of my gut it was my soul, the part of me that reached for the magic if I wanted to or not, the part most fundamentally Harry Dresden. Rotting posts rose out of the water to mark the area that had once been a dock, a little beyond that and you could just make out the outlines of long abandoned buildings, bunk houses around a factory maybe, though the path between them had long since been strangled by a gnarled and thorny undergrowth that even winter's chill couldn't beat back, the kind of strange old ruin of which local legends were made of, the local kids daring one another to spend the night and make up outlandish stories, only there were no children here, it wasn't even on a map. Circled by the waters of the lake it might as well be in another world to seaside Walmart of Burnham Harbor and it was
watching. Without meaning to my eyes were drawn up the the steep shore and up again, above the tops of the trees where a hill stood and on that hill a tower of stone, grey and weathered.
Power welled up from the earth there whipping by with the force of a jet-stream. Out came my staff and I leaned on it, and not, as the peanut gallery might think to look more like Gandalf. The trick of drawing power from ley lines was one I'd been practicing over the last month ever since Lash had told me that it was my best bet to match a Nicklehead blow for blow now that I wasn't throwing around hellfire. But I wasn't a fool, the opinion of some on the Council aside. I wasn't going to ring the doorbell by taking power from the island, even though there was more of it than a thousand of me could channel at once. Instead I took out the silver pentagram around my neck and channeled a thread of power into it until it glowed silver then I raised it up and flashed it at the tower like a reverse lighthouse.
In response there's a shift in the flow of power, barely a blip compared to the sheer scale of the thing, but it still sends my senses recoiling.
It's a good thing, this is good, I remind myself, simplest form of communication, call and response. At the very least whatever lives here had indeed seen us and it was willing to talk.
First rule of talking to the land Hoss, don't startle it, 'cause it's a lot bigger and a lot slower than you are and it'll swat you like a fly, the advice came back to me like it was yesterday I'd been wandering around the Ozarks getting to know the mountains that had been climbing to the sky since before trees were a thing.
I'm alive like you are alive, channeling power from my heart, though the staff and into the air I let the air vibrate with the frequency of my heart. It's the element of communication and much as Bob might make me doubt it sometimes, intellect.
The answering change in the atmosphere is like a hammer to the chest... it may or may not have technically counted as a heart attack.
"NO!"
The soul boils up five feet in front of me, roots growing twisting, groaning against each other, soil hardening over them into a cold clay like something out of an old bog, a humanoid shape pulling itself out of the earth and yet somehow also out of the water and the air, its eyes searching green flame.
"I am not as the others, of the land but apart, your sympathy echos hollow unless you are the one-to-be. I am for one to keep as they are kept. Are you the one? Are you the Warden? Do you seek to be?"
Each word, each syllable, not English, but something closer to what Lash calls Enochian resounds in my chest. The heart thing... probably wasn't my
best idea.
What do you do?
[] Harry answers yes, something tells you the spirit does not deal well with things going off script
[] Get Harry out of there (MHM to lift him back onto the boat)
[] Write in
OOC: Harry Dresden is gonna... Harry Dresden. He botched his Arette+Prime Roll to establish safe communication but he aced the soak roll not to take damage from a Genius Loci using his heart as a voice box. 
