She has a bruise along the left side of her face, the inane thought ran though Donald Morgan's mind like water down a rain gutter. She didn't seem to notice. He'd already looked up, he always looked up. A piece of concrete that size would have brained the unlucky and made the lucky wish for the sweet release of unconsciousness, if one was talking humans at least, which Margaret Carpenter had long since stopped being. A vampire could've taken it, but not so lightly. Atrophied sense of pain? That wasn't as common as one might think, turns out pain was a useful warning sign for things that didn't just seem to heal right through it which the girl didn't seem to be doing.
The blonde... woman, Morgan guessed you could call her that accounting for the shape she'd chosen to wear, was already reaching out to help her friend. She didn't flinch away, barely seemed to notice, her attention on the prisoner.
Not for the first time the warden wished he could have gotten Dresden alone in a room to ask him what the Devil was going on beyond that report he sent last month. Among his many other faults Dresden was shit when it came to covering his trail in reports, a fact for which he should have been grateful if only the shape of what had been left unsaid wasn't liable to make a third of the council piss their pants which of course was why Dresden fucking a Nephilim wasn't public knowledge. If there was one thing Donald hated it was covering up for Harry Dresden and what he hated most of all is that it was most likely justified. Some combination of powers that should by rights and by nature have been left still and sleeping had sniffed out the rot that the council had failed to find for decades.
"Spread out, watch for entropy spells," he signed to the others.
Ramirez looked like he was thinking of arguing with his judgement. Good, they'd need leaders not just followers when this whole mess was over.
"We outnumber them locally most likely," he relented. Of course how long that would be true for God Almighty alone knew. Mass fucking enthrallment, Donald's stomach seemed to curl around his spine like an angry cat at the implications. They didn't have anyone good enough with mind magic to check without a risk of making things worse... which meant becoming more indebted to the girl. Girls maybe?
"Unlike the manipulation of forces or matter curses only need to overcome their selected target," Zadock explained adding for good measure. "As you were in their power at one point you are the most likely target, the one to which they probably still have some manner of fetish."
One of these days I'll explain the modern meaning of that word to him, another irrelevant thought, the price one paid, right up there with the sleepless nights, for being more used to this, to fighting to the death, than to peace.
Sometimes he wondered if there was such a thing as peace, or if that is what it looked like when the other side was content and winning. A somewhat younger Donald Morgan had seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers in cinemas and the images kept coming back to him.
Are you still yourself, he thought looking down at the young warden trapped in stone or is it already eating at your insides?
OOC: Good news you have something in common with Morgan, he too liked invasion of the Body Snatchers. Less good news, he's been having nightmares that feature it ever since it became clear how riddled the Council is with warlocks.
Silence suits the War Weavers well, the basic combat frame is old enough to be as recognizable in some parts of Sanctuary as a Colt Revolver would be in Texas, but tools, especially tools of war do not stay unchanged without reason. Durable, precise, and surprisingly perceptive, a war spinner is rarely without recourse regardless of the battlefield.
A sleek tocatiloid cast in bright brass and dull silvers sheathes the sword in their upper hands while keeping the electro-laser still on the warlock. They draw instead a set of electrified cuffs.
The sorcerer wearing the unvarnished red of a senior seeker priest nods approvingly. Arcane law-breakers are not unknown in Sanctuary, though the notion of final death without recourse is so far beyond the pale for the Five Cities that you only dared bring the most experienced of volunteers.
Lady Marguerite certainly seems to know where she's going, out through a side door, across the street, jaywalking not that there's any traffic. Are people just avoiding the silence? You hope so, the alternatives are all so much worse.
She motions to a cell tower, the grey metal marked rust red about a third of the way up. As she strides across yet another side street you hear... you hear:
"Such Arrogance" It's less the sound of a voice and more as if pieces of silence were splintering off to cut at your ears. "To violate the law."
The whole spell crumples inwards on her like a sheet of paper in the hand of a vicious child, still air suddenly turned to violence and pressed into her ears.
"Sophia!" you scream as the scene unfolds with agonizing slowness to your eyes.
But someone else is closer to hand. Tiffany grabs her head with both hands, fingers slick with gushing blood. She looks up at the figure now revealed on top of the tower, long black rain coat snapping in the night air. "Child in mud playing, that you make things willfully ugly draws no eyes and finds no love."
Her hands are still slick with blood, but when she pulls them away bleeding had stopped along with whatever deeper injury had been there.
The man, the warlock laughs, harsh and ragged. "Die-die-die-die!" The word tears itself out of him like a living thing as he points a copper tube at Tiffany and sets it to his lips.
"He's gonna blow!" Harry shouts.
"Death curse!" the glamor-smith calls out in the same instant as you feel half a dozen arcane protections bloom to life.
The warlock is, you realize, pulling power out of the tower itself, out of the city grid. Given that he's not planning to live through it a lot of power.
"It's just lightning, I can ground it!" The earth shakes and the air starts to grow heavy with summoned moisture as Carlos starts to work his will, but your eyes are on McCoy, he's reaching for something with his right hand that isn't there...isn't there yet.
What does the Circle do?
[] Olivia tries to send a sniper bullet through the warlock's brain stem, causing him to blank out without technically killing him. Tiffany can fix him for interrogation later
[] Molly flies up and tries to carve the tower out from under him, no place to draw power and the spell fizzles
[] Let the wizards handle is
[] Write in
OOC: You can't do both options one and two because bullet surgery to make someone blank out instantly is hard enough even with all of Olivia's advantages. Add Molly flying in front of her as a distraction and there is no way she can make the roll.
There's a shriek of expanding air like static amplified ten thousand times next to your ear and the smell of balefire as the warlock tips over from his perch eyes still open but unseeing, smoke wafting from the back of his skull.
Olivia lowers her weapon slowly, looking down at her hands, almost like she's surprised how easy that had been and to be fair the wizards definitely are too and their faces show not a little worry, other than McCoy who hadn't even needed to look back, he snaps his fingers at the air with a smidge of Latin and grabs the technically still alive warlock by the back of the neck and sets him gently down at Tiffany's feet.
Olivia loses 2 Mana -> Now at 3/5
"What the..." Carlos starts.
"Brain shot," the old man explains. "Can't curse for crap if you black out, 'course that usually just means 'died too fast', we're lucky enough to have the lady's help."
He gives a very polite half bow. You get the sense that if he had a hat, lucky or otherwise he'd be doffing it about now.
Tiffany herself, hands covered in fresh blood returns a faint but sincere smile. "It usually takes a lot longer to get a wizard to sell their lives so cheaply..."
"How do you know how long it's been since he turned?" Carlos asks intently.
"How human he sounded," she answers offhandedly. "Despairing at one's own doom is the privilege of those who still value their own lives once you scratch the surface."
"Antonio Verdi," Morgan mutters under his breath, sorting the man in some kind of mental file and putting a stop to the conversation before your friend can creep out Carlos anymore. "How the fuck did they get him, for that matter why? In and out of the Halls most weeks, but he didn't have clearance for anything major...." The next words, whatever they may have been, die on his lips. "A messenger, someone who was known to have good reason to cross the wards at odd hours coming or going. That means the source is high enough up that they can't absent themselves easily, important enough to hand off hot information not just once, but regularly."
McCoy looks grim and sounds worse. "They have someone on the Senior Council."
Morgan hauls up the newly healed warlock and slams him against a wall. "Who is it! Tell me!"
The shock of being shot off the tower, healed and now finding himself in the hands of a very angry enemy must have been too much for Antonio because he blurts out: "Peabody." The one name among all others you had been most eager to reveal yet which would have been hardest to explain.
He looks at you and for just a moment meeting that sharp gaze you wonder if he had somehow figured you out, but no. He just assumes, that you must have some way to tell truth from lies or at the very least make a good guess.
"He's not lying."
"It was the stenographer ?" Carlos is the only one to give voice to his surprise. Under other circumstances you suspect Harry might have cracked a joke about it always being the butler.
Donald Morgan draws his sword.
The reasoning is sound you have to admit, you can't keep shedding escort to guard warlocks, not ones willing to unleash their death curses so lightly, but there is something fatalistic about it, more than just the well-earned conviction that he can deal with the curse as he had with many others over his long career.
What do you do?
[] Offer to kill the warlock yourself
[] Try to keep him alive for more through interrogation once you deal with the traitor inside the Halls even if it does mean shedding another pair of War Weavers
[] Put him in a coma under a lighter guard, for most Talents that would be more than secure enough, but a wizard's mind can be quite slippery, all the more so when it started to come undone
[] Write in
OOC: Welp Olivia's build just scared every wizard not named 'McCoy' present, also you know the Fallen Angel iteration but the girl with the gun is the more viscerally obvious threat
"My people are already guarding one, a second one won't change much."
"Doubt it," Morgan says sharply, sword half drawn.
"We'll put him in a coma!"
Things are about to get more complicated, but Tiffany takes the moment of distraction to grab the warlock's wrist. She shivers head to toe, but doesn't fall. Instead his eyes go wild as he looks at McCoy. "Do you know what's going to happen now that you brought your freak show to town? They'll tear down the supports, open up the Hall, wizard war in the streets! But that's alright, you won't be killing any of them with your own hands right? That's the only law that matters, it's the only fucking thing that matters!"
"What...?" McCoy starts to ask, though he never gets an answer as Tiffany squeezes tighter around the warl... around Antonio's wrist. Now even I'm doing it, 'acceptable targets'.
He goes down like a sack of potatoes, leaving you with more questions than answers.
Before anyone can interrupt Sophia breathes out and out and out. Her breath becomes a thing unseen and manifest, a spirit of the winds to carry the prisoner back to the gym.
Maybe to offer another distraction Lydia clears her throat. "I don't think he was controlled but rather convinced. He thought, still thinks there's something worth dying for here."
"Those who deal with Outsiders soon find they have nothing worth living for," Zadock says with just a hint of condescension for the silver haired girl who doesn't seem to notice or maybe just doesn't care.
"He was irrational, on the verge of willfully crossing over in the hopes of compelling us to keep him company then he blurted out a name he shouldn't have and finally antagonistic but coherent. The reactions are too genuine for a thrall, too chaotic for a true believer but rather something in between. If we could pull out his soul to talk... "
"Later, come on!" you call, reflecting that at least Lydia had drawn the wizard's wary eyes to her.
For all your elan you do not know where the nearest entrance to the Halls even is, closer to the castle on its lonely perch so soon enough it's McCoy and Morgan in the lead again, though you stick close to them in case they trip another trap, but none is forthcoming. Electric lights cling to the edges of rough-hewn stone, the sound of voices and music both in the air far off. Somewhere to your left a car streaks by, speeding up.
"He'll just think it's cosplay," you say as much for your own sake as the others as Morgan turns an old rusted key that looks to be decorative, part of the wall or maybe having served its purpose in some bygone era. Instead of opening the wall though as you had half expected turning the key makes a large stone plaque to your right open in the ground on well oiled hinges.
You were in... now all you need to do is find the traitor. On the one hand using your Crown to navigate would give you a direct path to were he is right this moment, but on the other you cannot help but worry of all the times you demonstrated a 'skill for divination'. Most the terms of the equation are there if they care to look and you very much worry that your present company is good at this sort of math. The walls shake, once and then again twice in quick succession.
And on the third hand you might be running out of time. The words of your second prisoner come back all too sharply. 'Tear down the supports...'
What are the plans of the consipiracy? You look down at the copper tube in your hands.
Tear down the Hall. Kill the brave and drive out the craven. The answer is stark and terribile. If no one stops this the Hidden Halls will not stay hidden long.
Lost 1 Essence -> Now at 9/18
Regained 2 Essence -> Now at 11/18 (Urge)
What do you do?
[] Split up, you and the Circle look for the source of the tremors the wizards try to find more of the Senior Council
[] Head right for the Senion Council Chambers
[] Use your Crown again.
-[] Write in questions
[] Write in
OOC: For once you were lucky with the background dice and did not find anymore trouble in town.
Carlos didn't even like Old Town, too cold, too windy and too much like a postcard. LA was plastic too sure, but it was a more relaxed kind of faking, the Hollywood playbook where you were at least a little in on the joke even as it picked your pockets and sold you dreams as sweet as cherry liquor and just about as good for you. Edinburgh was a normal enough place, filled with normal enough folks, but all the knights and castles shit, it made him feel like he didn't really belong, it made him feel small looking back at a past that was just too big and filled with nooks and crannies like the passages below. I wonder how she does it? How they do it? His dad would laugh himself silly if he were still around. 'You're sweet on a girl, only it turns out she's several girls? Trying to make up for lost time Carlos?'
Course his dad would probably want to shout at him for avoiding the army, but still ending up carrying a weapon into the shit, even if it was a sword. Made him promise his father had that he wouldn't be following in the footsteps of generations of Ramirez men before him.
'Can I kill?' wasn't a question, hadn't been for a while. 'Who can I kill?' now that was the one that made him shake at the knees, because there were only two paths. Either he'd be able to ram edged steel into the guts of people he'd shared a drink and a laugh, people who'd saved his life and they his, or he wouldn't and some of the people right here, right now would have to pay the price. Not Molly, she'd headbut a fireball or something and not dragon Molly either, she was a dragon, probably not Dresden either, the man was famous for getting out of trouble alive as he was finding trouble to begin with, but what about the kid? She was some kind of super-ectomancer and the creepy healer lady, sure it was impressive that she could heal a bullet to the brain, but that seemed to be all she could do.
"Are you OK?" Molly asked. He could feel her power in that gaze. Buzzing against his skin, heavy and bright and flowing like water, or maybe more like molten lead.
You were supposed to nod at things like that, Carlos knew, like even though everyone knew you were lying, it kept up morale to at least show you had your head in the game, but hey, he'd already screwed up with her today, tonight... whatever it was. "Nope, feel like shit," he admitted.
"Wish I could say it's gonna be alright, but there's one thing I can say for sure, it's going to be over soon."
"We work fast, just ask Mikaboshi," ghost-girl agreed. The name was vaguely familiar, but he wasn't sure from where.
OOC: Hope you enjoyed the brief look at Carlos while I get back to making sheets for wizards of a rather darker bent.
Crystals shine with a cold light onto the faces of men and the shells of War Weavers, they glitter in the eyes of a Shadow-Made-Flesh, they shake with growing tremors like the footsteps of a giant approaching. "I know it's not good tactics to split up when there's a fight ahead of us all, but I fear that if we don't stop that the fight won't matter."
"The wards will hold, they're old and strong," Carlos insists and Harry nods, probably thinking of Demonreach, but Lady Marguerite and oddly enough Morgan look a lot more doubtful about the whole thing. You can hear his breath grow just a little faster among the dripping of the water.
"They'll hold unless the bastards found a way around them. They were made by great wizards, but even the first Merlin wasn't perfect and given what's on the other side what's Outside...." His shrug has more fatalism to it than you'd like, but now's not the time to worry about it.
"Soph, can you find the source of..."
"On it," she says before you can even finish. "Left and down, way down. Things are going to get hot and not the fun kind."
In spite of everything, the peril and the treason Harry blushes, it's almost comforting in a way.
"Good luck."
The greater portion of the company heads off then following Sophia's lead on the reasoning that the worst of the traitors will be there. Even if they had found some way to subvert or overcome the wards it can't have been easy and they must have prepared for a challenge from other wizards at least. This isn't subtle.
So why haven't the senior council reacted yet? you ask yourself, rushing down steps that had been built half a millennia and more ago, not wanting to think of the worst. The others' footsteps soon vanish down a side tunnel while you, Carlos and Tiffany escort McCoy with a single War Weaver bringing up the rear, both because the Sutra is second only to you in being able to take a hit and that it's most likely to worry any defenders who might be confused or mislead rather than subverted.
"We need to get to the Warden Barracks, we will either find one or more of the Senior Council there organizing a defense or we will find it occupied by traitors or under siege in which case we need to clear it up to get to the Residential Hall, they'll be holed up inside if they are in the Halls at all," McCoy explains speaking quickly.
For his part Carlos looks horrified at the idea that the Halls could have been breached to this extent, but... Tremors come again, echoes of nothing but your own steps and voices hurled forward into the crystal-lit air, only the sound of water dripping.
Something's not right...
You raise a hand to stop the others and focus on senses sharpened to where you can count the drops of water falling by sound alone around the corner. Too regular you realize, it repeats, like a disk on replay.
Thinking quickly you sign your hand in front of your face. Veil.
"Stay back," McCoy speaks and his voice echoes with calm certainty, not a bit of hurry. "Wizard McCoy I am, myself whole and hale leading these folk so vow I by my power. If you are friends show yourselves and know that these are friends of the Council. If you aren't say your prayers."
"Sir is that..." a young voice calls, cut off by a horrible gurgle then a scream.
As you run around the corner you are hit with the smell of fresh blood first then the sound of a scuffle a pair of young wizards about of an age with Carlos are struggling with creatures around their wrists that look like they had taken all the worst features of a leech, a snake and a moray eel. One of the things had gone for the throat and... managed it. Tiffany might be able to save the man, but not much else, the woman meanwhile was still trying to fight it, to keep it off her.
Before you can help, before you can take one more step towards them, there's a flash of light further on in the tunnels blinding-bright, illuminating five figures, one of which seems to be some sort of crude golem, though that's not the focus of your attention, given what the wizard in the back is shouting.
"They got Yuki and Phil, trap's a bust! Shoot!"
The golem you now realize contains a red-haired woman, the same principle as a Sanctuary exoskeleton only it compensates with superior magical might what it lacks in technological support.
What do you do?
[] Try to incapacitate as many as you can as quickly as you can, let McCoy and Carlos handle the counter-spelling
[] Help weather the barrage of spells
[] Kill the leech things so Tiffany can hopefully save both the wardens being attacked
[] Write in
OOC: And we are off to a pretty good start, you did not fall into the ambush thanks to supernatural perception and good rolls. Still there are two people dying on the floor at your feet and five wizards about to blast you in the confines of a narrow tunnel.
One step left, one to the right, cut and cut, both the leech things die with a feeble scream on your sword drowned out in an instant by keening that rises and falls, rises and falls like the beating of a heart, like the beating of your heart. For a moment it feels like something's trying to pull your blood out though your pores, a stone shard flies by Carlos' ear and the stone shifts underfoot out of tune with the tremors. Then as light flashes from Tiffany's eyes, adding the powers of Creation to the melange of mortal magic, for just a split second you see McCoy and McCoy... and McCoy, the old wizard split three ways and making three near-identical gestures. All three spells, of life, of matter and of energy break apart at his command, you realize and then there is just the one of the old wizard standing just where he had been a moment ago, breathing a little more shallowly, hand upraised facing four shocked wizards.
Regained 4 Essence -> Now at 12/18 (Murder is Meat x2)
Whether they are shocked at the show of prowess, at the fact that you had cut the leech things up or just at the all consuming flash you could not say... but the one who had called 'Shoot', must have had his eyes closed since he turns tail to run, practically shoving one of his companions, dupes more like, out of his way.
"You're not... you're not leeches," the one who's wearing a stone elemental says to which Carlos offers what you're pretty sure is a very bad word in Spanish as he rushes after the fleeing wizard, sword in hand, though from the way he's holding it it's clear he means to club them over the head with the pommel more than skewer them.
Reinvigorated you give him a helping hand by smashing his quarry on the vault of the tunnel, not hard enough to crack their head, but enough that they won't be getting up anytime soon.
"Leeches? What's going on?" McCoy orders with a force that wouldn't shame a drill sergeant, his moment of weakness noticed probably just by you.
"You're you..." the young woman who had tried to rip the blood out of your body starts. "Sorry sir, there are vampires in the hall and they have some kind of glamor on them, not just the usual, they can look like anyone. Can't tell until they're right next to you."
"Is Yuki OK?" Elemental boy interrupts as Tiffany leans in to inspect her.
"She will be," the once-Fallen says without looking up from her work. "Call me paranoid but I suspect whoever called these things up isn't on the Council's side."
"Called?" the third junior warden says.
"They're spirits from the Nevernever," you elaborate, though not going so far as to explain you 'ate' them. 'Metabolized their Essence,' Usum says.
It soon comes out why there are ambushes in the corridors. About an hour ago an attack on the Halls had started, though no one here knows anything as to how, just that they are vampires who can look like wizards and if you let them get close you're done for.
"Shit," you look over at McCoy, the same realization in his eyes that must be in yours. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"There aren't any vampires, just traitors presenting to be vampires, pretending to be wizards, sowing chaos and causing friendly fire."
"Add one more provocateur to be pile," you motion at the unconscious wizard.
"Traitors, what do you mean? Who?"
McCoy puts an end to the line of questioning, all lines really. Now more than ever you need to get to the rest of the council. Thankfully the Warden Barracks isn't taken over, though it is almost empty since Warden Captain Luccio had sent a good portion of those on duty into the city right before the attack.
"How good are you with sound, any of you?" Tiffany asks as she is patching up the least wounded of the duo, looking around the wizards. "These tunnels all connect right? You could send out a general message in the clear to draw back to the Warden Barracks and confirming there are traitors using glamours. It is not going to lower suspicions, but at least it will direct them and speaking of direction it will give the loyalists somewhere to go rather than bumping around in the dark."
"It would also confirm our location," you point out reasonably.
"Be a moving target then."
What do you do?
[] Send a shout through the tunnels as Tiffany suggests
[] Keep pushing through
[] Write in
OOC: Why would a wizard make a light trap? Because they think they are fighting vampires. On another note I was surre McCoy would have to pull out the Blackstaff to pull that trick with time, but no, he actually rolled the 6 successes he needed to give himself three actions to dispell with.
"I've got this." A smile pulls at the corners of your mouth. Is it a good sign that Tiffany looks approving, you wonder. "Somebody make me a megaphone..."
"But..." Carlos starts.
"The traitors are going to be too darn polite to hear what I have to say," you finish which earns you a very intense look from McCoy and an uncomfortably reverent one from Thunder's Silent Arrow, the sanctuary magi accompanying you.
It's a way of speaking, it's a way of standing, it's a way of being, an etiquette carved into the bones of the world that even the air and stone conspire to see it done. Even where there was other sound they seemed to carry their own hush about them like a cloak, something terrible and sublime seizing attention with all the remorseless strength of the gravity pinning them to Earth.
"Wizards of the White Council, you have been betrayed. Glamoured warlocks walk the Halls and kill by stealth in the name of distant masters. I have masked this message from them as best as I am able to give you an advantage. Here stand the names of the traitors known: Stenographer to the Senior Council Peabody, Wizard Honorius, Wizard DeValancia..." You run though the names on your list, there might be more of them now, but there is a limit on how many could have been pulled to the Halls in a few hours. "Others may have been enchanted to degrees subtle and overt. Teachers, shield your students' minds. Students, guard your teachers' lives. We rally at the Warden's Barracks."
Lost 2 Essence -> Now at 10/18
The moment you stop the old wizard gives you an even more serious look. "I'm not going to ask you how you know all those names missy because I trust you and because you've proven yourself trustworthy, but once the trash's taken out Arthur and the others are gonna be mighty curious."
"We got the names from a warlock in Sydney we captured," Carlos hurries to cover for you, until you give him a look to stop. I can handle this... I think.
Your company now grown by six, even if you also have one prisoner to handle no one bars your way until the high steel-bound doors that lead into a sort of domed antechamber like a cross between a classical temple and a really snazzy bank only instead of tellers the sides are manned by young wizards, too young, and the statues, wrought in the elegant shape of temple dogs built to titanic scale are alive and crawling at you. In the center of a group of three more experienced wizards is one far older. More than a head shorter than you and leaning on her staff for more than affection, dressed in beautifully styled silk robes Ancient Mai, for who else could it be, looks up at the arriving company through rheumy eyes.
They do not seem overly surprised to see you, those eyes, but she addresses her fellow Senior Council Member first. "You are late."
"I was delayed." There is a weight of history to those words to which you will never be party to, of triumphs and failures of confidence earned and lurking fears. "The others?"
"There was a disturbance as we met in council, a vampire attack on the city, or so it seemed at the time, given the news that precedes you that too might have been a ruse, if one that made use of Red Court vampires as its props and puppets. Luccio sent warden teams to deal with it, but they were pinned in place by the use of some new malfeasance of theirs, requesting aid..."
"It was," you interrupt, knowing the Warden Captain had been suborned.
She nods with a serenity that is somewhat undermined by the next tremor to hit, harder this time. "The enemy has slipped the wards, they are among us, they are us. Come," she motions for all of you to follow, though her gaze does linger for a moment on Thunder's Silent Arrow for a moment as she does so. "Arthur and Aleron went to seek the source of the disturbance while we remained here to protect the children."
At the word you can practically see the bale-fire armed guards' hackles rise, though not enough to challenge the elder wizard. She does not seem to notice. "Samuel was with them and Honorius. Ordinarily I would assume they would be more than a match for the pair should your words prove true, but there is something else in the air, foul as it is sly. It does not show itself openly, only to the Sight and it dreadful beyond what the eyes of the children can bear. I had thought to open myself to it if no other option presented itself."
Your eyes are drawn to the darkness at the edge of the crystal lights. It is all one thing isn't it, conceptually? One who had dwelt long in the dark could take advantage of that to stretch themselves across all of it in spirit. It would be difficult to gather enough of themselves in one place to weave magics, but if all they wanted to do was show the horror of their being to ones who could not endure it...
"What about the others?" McCoy asks as you enter what has to be some kind of information center, now eerily quiet, typing machines left abandoned mid-sentence, chalkboards with half filled out diagrams, bulletin boards with notes flying in the fitful breeze coming in from the tunnels. "Injun Joe, Martha?"
"Even more late than you are," she answers. One might perhaps read in the silence that follows a hope that they do not bring as interesting a company with them.
"The War Room," Carlos whispers from beside yo, not from any fear that you might be overheard by enemies, but because he does not want Mai to hear. A hopeless endeavor that.
And yet you'd have taken a thousand times more awkwardness over the shouts that echo from up ahead, followed by the sounds of tearing meta and the overpowering smell of sulfur.
Tiffany is cursing, you don't need to speak Sumerian to figure that out. Between them three words in English are clear: "Failed Summoning! Gate!" Ahead of you in the Warden Barracks had been a diabolist, a desperate one at that, past tense because they had tried to summon something powerful and in succeeding too well become the sacrifice to their own final spell.
It was vast, as though the space around it struggled to contain it, a thing of bone and horn and withered skin, only aping the form of humankind just enough to mock the form. Six horns had it and no face, only a great white eye that seemed to look into nothingness beyond all things. Upon seeing the host arrayed before it though the demon does something you had not expected, stops and speaks: "Lasciel's bastard and the heir of the Forgotten Tyrant. What strange happenstance this is whether chance or mischance I cannot say and I am not in the habit of gambling." It licks the blood from one clawed hand. "Give me the soul thrice-sold, the one who has so bedeviled you and I shall deliver onto you the names of all those who call themselves the True Magi."
It means the Hollow Man you know at once and you know you can trap him. This... this isn't answers, this is cover for your Crown. Does it know? Did it guess? Or is this just a particularly greedy demon, let loose from Hell's chains by a foolish summoner, trying to strike the best bargain it can?
What do you do?
[] Say you will take the bargain
[] Let the wizards speak... they look like they are about to 'speak' evocations
[] Write in
OOC: Was not expecting a double botch on the emergency summoning. There is one warlock char sheet I won't get to use *sigh*. Still now you get to talk to a big boss demon. To be clear this is not one of the Fallen, it's a demon like Chauncy, only more like his boss' boss.
The Warden's sword rings in Carlos' hands and his is not the only one among them, balefire weapons whir as they charge, but before the first shot can cut thorough the air in the wake of your silence the hounds fling themselves in the direction of the demon, not to harm him you realize but to distract, fangs of iron showing as Ebeneezer McCoy raises his staff... his Staff. Plain and black it is and of a size with a walking stick, plain and unmarked and yet the world it marks, spilling out color into the air tendrils snaking their way up the arms of the old wizard who you think at first does not notice it, but when you hear the thunder in his voice it's clear he does, it's clear he must: "Hic es non receperint."
You are not welcome here, in plain English.
At first it seems the demon is about to laugh, its skeletal chest expanding in mockery as much as pride, but something stops it. The face that is no face tips down quizzically.
Seeing its distraction Carlos and Thunder's Silent Arrow circle the demon using the hounds for cover. Getting behind to hit from all angles, you realize even as the words resound, the magic flies and twists:
You... you... It seems almost as if the echoes had picked up the words.
Are not... are not... Now you begin to see what the fiend must have felt from the start, a thin circle, the barest indentation in the tile underfoot.
Welcome... welcome... The crystal lights begin to flicker, but not as electric lights in the city above would when drowned in magic, growing only stronger each time they flick back on.
Here.. here... here....
With the final word the crystal explodes, showering everyone in shards as sharp as broken flint and twice as deadly. You are already flying sword first at it when you realize, not all the lights had burst. Five still burned, no more no less and all in the right place. Lines of light streaked between them as the wizard traced the sign with a staff unvarnished black, a pentagram.
"You dare!" it roars with all the affront of a lord, a would-be-master betrayed.
"Got that wrong way 'round. It's you that dared come on our ground and now..." he flings the staff upwards where with a crack it strikes the vault. A spiderweb of cracks crosses and reveals another pentagram, another circle. Two and two is four, you count. He needs another and the demon's claw is already descending to ruin the first circle.
It never gets there, instead it stops mid air as though the air had suddenly become a shackle and it's only then, finally taking your eyes off the thing that you realize what McCoy had done: Carlos and Thunder's Silent Arrow, Ancient Mai and Tiffany and him at the points make the third pentagram between them, the fifth binding.
Slowly with the menace born of cruel imagination the demon looks around and asks: "Do you truly think the boy can last long enough? Channel enough to hold me?"
"You're asking the wrong question," Carlos' voice is a little rough but it doesn't shake. "I might die, I might not, either way this is where I'm standing, but you... you're going to get worse than death back in hell without a body, without anything to show for it, but the death of some warlock who did it to himself. You've got nothing. Wanna try for less than nothing?"
He's bluffing, you realize, not about being willing to die in the line of duty, but about the notion that he can hold it if he dies. No wizard knows until the last how long their will might last in the face of death.
Even Tiffany looks on with as grim an expression as you have ever seen her wear and a small shake of the head.
Then and there, knowing you might not be fast enough to kill it before the backlash from the broken binding can kill, fear freezes to spite in the depths of your soul, a curse upon the demon's eyes, its will and its courage snuffed out in its own shadow.
Again it hesitates, it looks about itself and sees only foes, before it, behind it and to the side, all armed with mighty magic.
"See you all in Hell!" it howls painfully and is gone.
One of the younger warlocks drops his gun, collapses and starts to dry heave.
What do you do?
[] Yell at McCoy for using Carlos as one of the points of the pentagram
[] Try to observe the staff, there's something almost familiar about it
[] Write in
OOC: Welp, SSC sure came in handy, the Ebon Dragon would be proud as much as he was ever capable of positive emotion
No wood was ever cut to make that staff, nor carved into shape or polished with lacquer black, that's not a staff, just the shape of one, the story of one, a faerie's working carved from chaos or maybe it's a faerie itself, hard to say with something old and long grown into the fullness of its tale black. Huh... there's that word again. Black-story-staff... Blackstaff.
Most things though, even if they are made by the fey don't spin their names into the world by mere presence. It's the spinning that finally lodges the memory loose, the old woman with iron teeth who lives in a cottage in the woods just past Nowhere. How on Earth did the Council get Mother Winter's staff and what the heck did they pay her? Briefly, very briefly you consider the possibility that it might have been stolen, but then you recall Edinburgh isn't buried under an ice sheet. It's not beyond the bounds of imagination that some clever wizard might have stolen the staff in such a way as to ward off vengeance, men can be a bit mad at the best of times and mages more than most, but dangle such a stolen treasure in the halls of an institution and you open a thousand doors for Winter's hand to creep through. Does Meave know? You wonder. She'd probably tell you just to show off if you asked her the right way.
By the time you ask that last question the staff is gone and McCoy is holding his regular focus, carved with runes not unlike Harry's if with a finer hand for wood carving.
"We must find the source, end it before..." Ancient Mai says as another tremor hits, hard enough to unbalance a few of the younger wizards.
"Harry's on it and Donald the team we sent to Tres Fronteras. We should start scying for those that don't show up. Warlocks know the jig's up after today one way or the other and that's the worst kind of warlock to deal with."
The old woman gives him a long, meaningful look, the kind of meaning that's willfully not hidden from onlookers. 'You're suggesting the cautious approach?' it seems to say.
Tiffany clears her throat. "Given the introduction that misbegotten spawn of a goat and a mutt's bone pile gave me I might as well offer what counsel I can. This would be a very fruitful time to throw coins down gutters if one should find one's self inside the wards possessing one. How likely is that."
"Before today I would have said impossible," Ancient May says. "Alas there are other things I would have said impossible before this day."
More wizards were starting to trickle into the hall, some of them wounded, some of them carrying dead comrades, savaged, bloody. A poor approximation of a vampire attack, you think numbly, but then they wouldn't need perfect would they? Just good enough to kill.
The White Council is starting to rally around the two Senior Council Members present. What do you do?
[] Give an account of what you know of the traitors to help with the scrying
[] You are a lot faster than the wizards, maybe you can still catch up to Lydia and the others
[] Use your Crown to see if Tiffany's suspicion about the Denarians is right. True Chaos might serve them, but if you can find one of them alone it might also serve you
[] Write in
OOC: You now know what the Blackstaff is at a deep mystical level... and still do not know what the Blackstaff the posting is. High cosmic insight low politics, but then as soon as you mention the name to Carlos or Harry they will tell you, though the latter may have feelings on the matter.
