Path's Price
24st of July 2006 A.D.
You look longingly at the door, but your better sense asserts itself. "I think we should probably stay in. Dinner and an early night." You admit grudgingly. "Especially with the Red admitting that they have our vehicle description and license plate on a police watchlist, Dad. "Accidents" " you make air quotes, "are likelier at night. Especially with the Reds having their hooks in the local PD. Gonna have to look into that." Pulling out your phone and checking for signal strength, you turn to Lydia "Bring a laptop? I have homework, and I could use the help."
Lydia just kind of looks at you funny. "
You have homework? Can't you just...?" she sort of wiggles her fingers in a vaguely magic-y way.
"No... wait you can do that? With
homework, like math and English and physics? Frictionless ball attached to an ideal spring and all that nonsense?" At her slightly sheepish nod you cannot help yourself. "That is so unfair. I mean I get a little help sometimes, but it is as likely to be mussing on how to weaponize magnets as it is to be actual help with how to solve the exercise."
"I feel like I should be objecting to something about now, but I am not sure what," dad says, not doing a very good job of hiding a smile.
"There is no rule that says you can't use magic to make yourself better at studying, especially if the magic is a part of you. Now if you asked some external being to help you out that could arguably be considered cheating," you point out.
"Not sure if anyone could enforce that one either," Lydia gets into the spirit of things. "You would have to ban prayer as cheating."
With that very weird, but not inaccurate thought you make your way to dinner. The Blue Lotus Hotel is in an upscale enough suburb that your tattoos and Lydia's fashion draw a trail of breathy whispers. For the most part you ignore it, you are used to it by now, though you catch one elderly lady say something about 'some people letting their children run wild' which just gets under your skin as an insult to dad. Fortunately for her dad knows you well enough to ask loudly when you would like to order, cutting off plans for making her eat her
words instead of the seafood platter she had ordered.
On the plus side the lasagna is good and the ice cream after it is great, chocolate as usual, unlike Lydia who... "What
is that?" you ask looking at the multicolored melange in her cup.
"Watermelon pistachio mint and lemon," she replies mixing a sliver of each of them in one spoonful "Best combo I found so far but I am still looking,"
You shake your head. "Hey if you want to perform self-experimentation can't stop you. I'll just stick to what works."
"It's ice cream not Kantian idealism," she counters and you pretend to know what that is.
As the two of you go up to your room it turns out that Lydia does have a laptop on her... though from the weight of it you would guess Arawn acquired it at some point in the mid nineties. Not that you end up needing the thing in the end. Vast swaths of data trawled from the depths of the internet are quickly sorted and sifted. You are not looking for a car, or an RPG zine, though admittedly that one looks kind of cool. Private chatrooms filled with people with a lot more interest in the occult than actual understanding of it are opened and closed over the span of a few hours. What cracks it in the end is looking into an old list of sites that may be associated with the Chicago area supernatural.
You are basically posing as...
you of two months ago, clueless and new come to magic talent, seeding your messages with a story about howa bunch of people called 'Pathfinders' had offered to mentor you, but they seemed kind of sketchy. That is when an account named Rose of Autumn sends you a private message
Rose of Autumn: /Listen to your gut, don't take anything they offer you and break contact right now. What they are selling you don't want. No one wants it, no one in their right mind at least./
Seeker of Secrets: /What do you mean?/
Rose of Autumn: /You wouldn't believe me if I told you kid./
Seeker of Secrets: /You would be surprised what I'd believe/
Rose of Autumn: /Then you would never sleep a full night in your life. Just listen to me, get away from them. Whatever they are promising, whatever they've shown you, it's all lies and their masters are not what you think they are./
There's a pause, but as you are about to type out your next response hers pops up. It is clear she is getting more nervous the more she writes.
Rose of Autumn: /I can tell you're young and you're looking for asnwers, but you are not going to find the ones you're looking for. The world isn't a friendly place. It's not Disney, it's the Brothers Grim. One man's dream can be another man's nightmare and the Pathfinders have been making these kinds of nightmares before either of us were born, if my teacher had the right of it before the US was a around, back in the Old Country./
You feel a little guilty for goading her, but it's for a good cause. From the corner of your eye you see slender shadows move across the wall, the motions of your fingers twisting until they look like spiders dancing on unseen threads. The words are yours and they are not, an insight whispered from afar.
Lost 1 Essence -> Now at 11/12
Seeker of Secrets: /The Old Country? What is this a musical with cartoon mice? I'll be sure to watch out for any creepy cats pretending to be my friends./
There's a long pause after that, so long in fact that you are starting to worry she had gotten tired of speaking to you, but what follows next is a wall of text.
Rose of Autumn: /You want answers? You want power? Well then you are in luck they have both, all it is going to cost you is the love of your family, your friends, everyone and everything you have ever cared about, cut right out of your soul. But don't worry, that is a bonus really, once you can't feel anything you won't be sorry when you cut them and bleed them and
torture them so that their agony can feed the things that lives behind the curtain, the things that have been here before our slope-forehead caveman ancestors tamed fire. GET OUT!/
Now you feel a lot guilty, you had freaked this lady right out, but if you don't press now it will have all been for nothing.
Seeker of Secrets: /OK, OK, I get it. Listen can you tell me how they hurt you? I have been feeling weird lately/
Rose of Autumn: /They do not take what you do not give, they are like evil genies or like the Devil the Christians would call it, I don't like to use that framework, but it is appropriate for this. It starts out like self help or at least it did the last time I heard about them, cut out your fear of spiders and gain an aptitude for music maybe, something useful, something small. Then they will ask for more and more of your dreams, good and bad and in exchange they can hand out all sorts of things, things you think you want: power, wealth, beauty, revenge, the one thing they never cut out is the desire for more. As you become less
you, less human they are going to start asking for proof of loyalty, to isolate you further. That is where hurting people, killing people comes in, the last tethers broken. And then you will be one of them, looking to feed the things that made them. I /
The message cuts off. Maybe she had hit send accidentally. Regardless you rush to apologize for upsetting her, but she is not done. She does not acknowledge the apology, maybe she does not even see it as she keeps typing faster and faster.
Rose of Autumn: /I've seen this happen to someone, I was a little girl back then, but I could see it I could see my uncle pulling away, he was always strange, but goofy, but then he got cold and scary. My mother later told me that the thing he was trying to sacrifice was my trust. I barely got away. I was lucky. You don't want to turn into those one of them. PLEASE./
Seeker of Secrets: /I'm not going to cut up my soul with magic, promise./ You pause a moment to let her take in the message then add. /But if they take me backing out badly what powers do they have? What should I look out for?/
Rose of Autumn: /They are stronger, faster, more perceptive, that sort of thing but as they become more like the things they serve they get marks, mutations, fingers that grow long and grasping but harder than iron, eyes in the middle of their forehead that can
see when you're lying, pheromones that can enslave animals to them, poison breath, poison touch, spring-knees that let them jump far after you./
Seeker of Secrets: /That sounds wild.I'm not saying you're lying, but I haven't seen any of this, maybe the... people I know aren't as far gone./
Rose of Autumn: /They can hide it under a glamor like the fey, maybe the things they serve are a kind of mad fey from a season no one knows../ She cuts off again then: /Look I can't explain all this, I don't know all of it myself. You are going to need sanctuary. I normally wouldn't be sending someone as young as you to them, but if you say you haven't done anything go to Harry Dresden. He's a Warden of the White Council, sort of like the wizard cops only they are even less accountable than the real ones. Still a corrupt cop is better than the soul-flaying serial killers./
She types out Harry's address much to your bemusement.
What do you do next?
[] Try to get more information out of your new contact
-[] Write in how
[] Close up for the night
-[] Write in suggestions for what to do tomorrow (Optional)
[] Write in
OOC: I hope the format for the online chatting works for this longer form. 
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