Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

[DragonParadox]

Catching Breath ​

Elsewhere, Time Indeterminate

"Up!" the word bursts from your lips almost without meaning to, for once not the least curious to linger. What have I done? The question bounces around your brain like a stone bouncing down a spiral stair and nothing Usum says can take away the mounting dread. Deathknights, able to parry a Sword of the Cross with their bare hands, disarm a knight by sheer skill, master essence and bestride the elements. All in service to that thing...

So the world rushes past, at the speed of the wind, barely able to constrain yourself not to run faster than the others can keep up with, trying to escape not just the place but the deed.

Stop. I'm not a kid running out of the house so I don't have to show a bad report card. Breath ragged you focus on the rough texture of the stone under your hand, some kind of basalt maybe, if rock classifications mean anything down here. The path up to the angel's tomb is still long fathoms and hours away, if either could be said to be in this place, but the ocean below is just as distant, a stop upon the steps, a place liminal.

The sound of something small and light being set down draws your eye, Lydia putting down Aakebushu. You stare.

"What? He has small legs and you were going fast."

"I really should be keeping a scoreboard for times like this," Tiffany mutters.

"How can you... Why are you so calm about right now?" Some small part of you hopes the once-Fallen has some secret insight about what you just did, a way to return the shards of darkness to their secret tomb.

"Well... do you want me to sugarcoat this? Normally I wouldn't ask, just do it, but you're good enough to notice."

That is a weird compliment to be getting, admittedly, but it clearly is a compliment so you take it as such. "Give it to me straight."

"Hand a human a cosmic prybar and set them loose on the foundations of existence eventually something important is going to come loose, to my mind it was only a matter of what and when. I guessed that something might happen, though I could hardly speak up given what I am and how I came to be. All that said you must to blame someone feel free to make it the... messenger with whom you spoke." Even as she flips her hair with offhanded elegance as if she wasn't just running up steps for the last while, she avoids Uriel's name.

"No, I have free will and... so do will they, the black sun children." The realization is new but solid as the stone beneath your feet. Once are they Chosen that they may evermore Choose. Exaltations were made for men to use as they see fit.

"Well there you go, Heaven can't be that upset with you can they?"

"Should you be giving advice on this?" Lydia asks, almost in spite of herself. No sooner had she finished the question that she worried she had overstepped, but Tiffany waves her off.

"I have been giving advice for millennia, young one. True all the people bar one I gave it to came to bad ends, but it's not because I was ever bad at it, it's because I was malicious."

"Malicious... bad... aren't those the same thing?" Lamentations of the Void asks, looking between you with honest befuddlement.

"One is doing harm by accident, the other with intent," Tiffany says, frowns. "How much power do you have over the... what do you call them? Buds? Hyphae? Drones?"

If one had expected some kind deflection fit for a being of old secrets one would be thoroughly dissuaded of the notion. As far as you can tell Aakebushu sees little reason not to speak truth: "They are less than me and more than me, they wear the faces of the dead. Without me they are dust, without them I am blind. Can I see the sun now?"

There's a beat of silence as you internalize the question before asking. "If you step beyond the veil as you are what happens?" Rain of blood? Locust plague? Zombie horde? All of them seem disturbingly possible, though it might just be you feeling shaken from down below.

"I... don't know but if bad things happen I will step back and it will no longer be bad." The grey-skinned corpse-child then sketches an X in front of his chest with the tips of his fingers, funerary wrappings butn and flesh sizzles, but he doesn't seem bothered. "Cross my heart."

What do you reply?

[] Agree, you promised to help him make a change, this is a step on that path

[] Refuse, you need to get to someone with scrying capabilities, the Senior Council, maybe Mab, you have to find them, the four

[] Write in

OOC: Incidentally this is worth a lot of XP.

 

[DragonParadox]

Up Like Pyre Smoke ​

Elsewhere, Time Indeterminate

The way up seems longer than the descent, time indeterminate stretched like the innards of a dying beast, though you do not walk beneath the eyes of the angel, for which you are grateful to Aakebushu even if the path itself is not one you would have willingly walked.

No windows adorn the walls of the tower and no doors pierce its sides, but a tower it is without a doubt laying on its side against some far wall more guessed than known. It was built in three tapering tiers: a lower square section with a central core; a middle octagonal section; and, at the top, a circular section, all with a single narrow stair winding along the exterior barely wide enough to set one foot on front of the other. Where you stepped blood pooled black and sticky, as though the tower was sweating or bursting at the seams like a fresh corpse. No skeletal hands grabbed for ankles, no soul leaching cold seeped into flesh, but no matter how carefully you would step the ninth step always slipped, threatening to hurl you back into the depths. The fact that it was always the same, the pattern ironclad made it more frightening not less, giving the colossal structure the looming presence of a cat playing with its prey.

Finally Lydia asks: "Why nine, what's so special about the number?"

"That is how many steps she was forced to take before they killed her," Aakebushu answers distantly, he's the only one the tower doesn't seem to want to trip though to be fair he isn't walking on the narrow path. but crawling on the wall with his fingers and legs bent backwards like a spider.

"Her?" you prompt, a fascinated in spite of yourself. Even though it gives no power you still want to know things, to understand.

"From the street into the Caesareum there are nine steps, I think she pleaded with them nine times, not that they could hear her of course. Mobs are notoriously bad at hearing, especially what they don't want to hear."

"Hypatia of Alexandria," Tiffany says when it becomes clear the dark spirit has no interest in answering directly. "Though this isn't the temple of the Imperial Cult, this is the lighthouse. A strange place to memorialize her."

One small hand pulls free from the masonry and points up. "Pyre flame guides the way."

Before today you had known that Hypatia was killed by a mob of fanatics in what is often used as a sort of gruesome bookend to paganism in Rome, though history is rarely so neat. What you had not known was that after being killed and torn apart she had been burned and the ashes scattered, intentionally denying her any rest within the city's walls or beyond it. That one imagines is the reason this forms the one lit bridge between the depths and the the grey world of spirits wandering between one life and the next. Not that there are many spirits to greet you when you reach the apex of the tower set like a head on stony pillow against a great black gate, wide enough to pass an elephant or a giant through. The broken feet of nameless statues stand stand guard over it, just enough of them left to mark their failure.

"Nothing lasts forever," Lydia sighs with a strange ambivalence that brings to mind the darkness below, the 'nothing' that does last forever, or at least until the last grain of 'something' is finally gone.

As she touches the door you are standing again in the open passage of the forgotten temple, bright arcane lights casting into the void at your back. One mage starts flashing signals from his Sutra terminal that Clippy interprets as a password request fron IRIS... specifically for a key whose answering code is not stored on earth.

Clever... of course they would be given their job. You wonder what they would think of the thinks you roused down below. Generally speaking the troubles of the Labyrinth remained for the Labyrinth, but every now and again some new strain of virulent fungus or rare prion hitched a ride on a poorly decontaminated surface to cause trouble in the Five Cities. In a world where death was not final plagues didn't strike the same kind of terror as they did no Earth, but they could still disrupt the lives of millions, reaping a toll of lost years and memories.

"I'm going to need everyone to step back a, all the way out of the chamber, just to be safe..." you begin, though you never get all the way though the instructions

"Vat... vat did you do?" A familiar voice echoes down from the ceiling where the light doesn't reach, a formless presence filled with dread. Other Bob is nothing but two points of card red light seeping between unmortared stone of the ceiling.

For his part Lamentations of the Void isn't paying any attention to the conversation, he's looking at the revenants slowly raising a hand in front of him as though tracing a pane of glass. "Your doing?" he asks Lydia.

"VAT HAF YOU DONE!" the dark spirit you had chased all the way to Egypt screams in terror.

As bad as the day's events may yet turn out to be you can't help yourself from answering: "Made a friend."

What do you try to do?

[] Capture Other Bob, you're sure he can be of some use

[] Kill it, it's what Bob would want, that nothing of the part of himself he is so ashamed of could life on

[] Write in

OOC: From Evil Bob's persective he sent you to hell and you came back up with the Devil in tow.

 

[DragonParadox]

Ripples Across Eternity​

Egypt, Time Unknown

It's not without thought you draw your sword, not without worry for the being at your side, but you recall clear as day the revulsion burning behind the eyes of the skull in Harry's basement, the being which barely grasps the concepts of human morality moved to loathing and shame. Some things should not be known.

The soft hiss of air passing, flame crackling, parting stone in a single motion.

"DaMN YoU! DaM...!" the spirit's scream collapses into sounds the human throat could never made, but even as the burning edge of its essence trails green embers like a poison rain.

"Be at peace." Lydia raises a hand, more a parting wave than blow as a bolt of living silver strikes precisely at the core of strange geometries and stills them evermore.

"Why Kill?" Lamentations turns his face towards her, though his body does not shift an inch.

If your friend finds the manner of his adress strange she does not show it. "A spirit of knowledge and yet He was wrong and he could never be right, for the way he was wrong was all that defined him, pain was all he had ever given the world and all he could give. To be healed he would have to be made whole again, but that would only carve the wound of his essence upon a mind undeserving." Huh... that's right, Bob could have taken him back couldn't be? If he could be made to find peace with the horrors Kemmler had made him party to. "So," Lydia continues in calm and mesured tones, like a funerary march, "Rather than let the ache linger or worse escape and inflict yet more suffering upon the world trying to fill the void of its creator I made him Not."

"Why this and not more? Why stop?" Aakebushu asks, the death of mask of his face utterly still.

"Why do you want to see the sun?" Lydia shrugs.

"Curi-o-sity?" the word seems almost to fall apart on his lips and for a moment you feel your boon waver, almost rejected.

"There you go then, that is your answer, part of it at least, the one you hold for now." Your friend sighs. "If I gave you my answer for why things should be you'd doubtless find it unintuitive and strange and in that gap of understanding might sweet words of nothingness ring. I do not know and could not tell you why each and every one that is might think to deny Them that dwell below, but I can tell you with assurance of one who has entured temptation where Their power dwells."

"I know that, do you forget where you found me?" the not-child asks, annoyed.

"Oh no, that's just direction..." she turns her hand, the same one from which the deadly bolt had flown clockwise until her thumb is pointing down then flips it back. "The truth of Them each one carries with us always when we are lonely and lash out against the hand that's offered. The Void grows in wisdom as it grows in scale but it will only ever be a truth absolute if they win."

"When," the dark spirit frowns.

"How do you know?"

For a minute, maybe two, God it's good to be able to count time properly in your own head, Aakebushu is silent as he is still as he considers again the prospect of Oblivion, not as a fate to be held off, but as one which might or might not come to pass at all, as an article of faith. Something nudges at the back of your brain, but now's not the time to pursue it as the world seems to hold its breath.

"I don't." The revenants all twitch in eerie synchronicity and you realize Lydia had surrendered her power over them, a show of trust even if each one individually wouldn't be a threat to you. "Sun, now."

It's not so much a command to you but to the roof of stone and to the sand above it that parts as a tomb broken from within. Masonry freely into the sundered temple, but it falls not at the whim of gravity, but in perfect geometric arcs that do not strike Lydia, Tiffany or you, nor any of the delvers.

And that is when you realize it's not nearely as bright as as it should be, the sun disk is covered by a black shadow, a ring of fire etched around it.

Gained 2 Essence (Urge)

"Uhm... Tiff, was there a total solar eclipse schedualed for any time in march?" Please let us not have lost time.

"No..." a pause as she looks up. "I don't think that's the moon."

The shadow passes quickly, less than a minute after Aakebushu had risen from the earth, leaving him standing, still as stone on the sand, head tilted upwards, but as you have Clippy querry the satelites you find Egypt wasn't the only place visited by strange celestial phenomenon: auroras had swirled as far south as the tropics, unfamiliar constelations had shone over major cties, their stars so bright as to outshine the light glare, the moon had been seen waxing and waning in moments, phantoms of an age long dead or perhaps portents of one yet to come.

"The Date is still March 13th 2007," Clippy offers dutiffuly.

Part of you wonders why it didn't do that when you found your Crown or it found you, mostly you are just thinking how to explain all of this.

Lydia Essence 7/7 (0/3 Jade Talisman)
Molly Essence 9/18
Molly Willpower 8/9

Who, if anyone do you warm first?

[] The White Council

[] The Winter Court

[] The White Court

[] The Fellowship of Saint Giles

[] The Jade Court

[] Wrtie in

OOC: There are going to be a lot of talking heads on a lot of news shows talking about optical illusions and mirages over the next few weeks.

 

[DragonParadox]

At the Crack of Night ​

13th of March 2007 A.D.

Harry Dresden was having a nice normal day for once, he has just gotten the shopping done —trying to get more into fancy cookery ever since Lash had told him his usual fare counted as 'urban survival rations', not that he was about to admit it— planning to take his daughter to a skating ring next Sunday since that was apparently a thing Americans did so he had to figure out skates. Somewhere in the back of his mind was the thought of a cushioning spell maybe.

Then the sky went black at midday, the sun ringed bloody red and spewing the light of noxious red nebulae across the horizon. It was like a cold hand had reached out for his heart and squeezed, the essence of the world transposed.

Maggie! his instincts screamed at him, but no as traffic ground to a halt with swerving cars and blaring horns he knew this didn't have anything to do with the Red Court. The closest he had ever come to feeling power like this was in the tomb under Edinburgh, but where that had been close and spun like strings this was all encompassing, nightfall outpacing the sun.

"Fuck me!" he couldn't even hear himself curse so loud was the panic outside the Blue Beetle 's window. It was a miracle no one got run over, but plenty of people had been knocked around. Without thinking he rushed out to help.

Being big guy had its perks in a crises, especially when you looked like you had a clue and shouted like you had something important to say beyond 'let's not all run hog wild now' as Ebeneezer used to say. Lash's in Egypt hunting the Black Court. Harry's brain caught up with his speeding heartbeat just as the sky began to lighten as day resumed its march. One might if blessed with an active imagination, which wizards definitely were imagine the birds in the trees and the mice in the hollows breathing a sigh of relief, not that he could hear anything over the din of questioning and now cranky humanity.

Something bumped against his leg, a hunting dog long legged but hairy, like the kind you'd expect to hunt on lonely moors, Lydia's, he remembered. "What's wrong?" The word 'Lassie' did go though his mind, it was perhaps a mark of maturity that he didn't say it.

The answer he got in exchange wasn't what you'd call encouraging: "Extinction wakes, its black knives fly though the air!!"

"Woah there does Extinction have a last name, a middle name at least, something that's less of a mouthful to call it?"

The dog looked at him like he was being a little silly which wasn't as much of a novel experience to Harry Dresden as it was to others, though he seemed content that Harry was willing to follow.

A laugh rang out just off the side street to his left, a blond haired man with a long beard as carefully combed as the hair on his head. "Well wise friend rejoice for we are the first of mortal kind to encounter this thing for all the long ages of the world so we get to name it for the bards to sing, assuming we live. Lyr's the name and Half-Speech will have to do for now, haven't come up with something less conspicuous for this age yet. Not sure whose idea if was to make it so this talking-at-a-distance trick could be overwhelmed by too many people talking at the same time, but 't was a bad one for a time of trouble. The lady Lydia she cannot reach you, nor the Lady Margaret with her. She bids that you summon the council of the wise and pay heed the portents."

Harry thought about it for a bit, then he thought about Molly's tendency to just run at trouble full tilt and tried to imagine what it must have taken for her to be calling in backup like this.

"Is there any good news I can give 'em?"

"I gather that all the powers and primcipalities of the earth and planes sublime and planes infernal are as suprised as we."

Harry was not very comforted.

He was halfway to the Carpenters' House and most of the way caught up on the story of how Molly, Lydia and Lash who should have known better, tried to turn the Black Court and let something worse loose, when his phone started working again... but it wasn't Molly on the phone.

"What just fucking happened?" Harry had never heard Lara Raith curse before, and he had never heard that mix of anger and concern in her voice before. "I know you felt that. Did you have something to do with it?"

What does Harry do?

[] Explain what he knows, there's worse people to bring in than her

[] Stonwall her, he hadn't even gotten in touch with the Senior Council, the last thing anyone needed was the White Court jumping in on this

[] Write in

OOC: The universe once more decides that Harry Dresden doesn't have enough on his plate.

 

[DragonParadox]

When Wind Speaks ​

13th of March 2007 A.D.

Harry shows up at the Last Station about twenty minutes after the Anomaly, a word that had already started catching on by the sheer bewilderment of every expert news channels could get on air, accompanied by half a dozen of Lydia's Hounds, the knights of ancient power and as of yet little renown in this age of the world as well as the only Senior Council Member who could make it to Chicago. Joseph Listens to the Wind. The only one who seems relaxed is his masked furry companion Little Brother, Judging from the way he stares longingly at Tiffany's hair in passing one suspects he would rather be playing with that than paying attention to whatever had gotten his human up in arms. Literally up in arms as the case may be. Even without a wizard's Sight you can feel the power humming in the two pouches, one hung on his belt, another around his neck. He had come armed for...

"The dark one, where is it?" he asks without the preamble of old courtesies that is as much of a staple of old wizards as it is any other faction of the secret world.

...Something considerably worse than 'bear'.

Spoiler: Listens to the Wind and Little Brother

"Still staring up at the sun, I don't think he's going to stop at least until it goes down, probably longer to be honest. His sense likely skews long."

"Why did you bring it forth?" The question doesn't sound outright hostile, but it's certainly owes more to inquisition than inquisitiveness.

"Because it... he..." you frown. Lamentations of the Void is unlikely to care what word you use in place of his name, or even if you give him another name entirely, but English being what it is 'he' more personable and he is or at the very least could be a person. "Wanted to see the sun, it was a desire not rooted in unmaking, a wedge that could be driven between what he is and what he might yet be."

"And in pressing that wedge you opened a door," the elder wizard states, the words make no pretense of being a question. A part of you really wishes Dad had been home when they went looking for him. That he were here. No doubt where he was Called there is need of him too, but you're no saint, no matter what some of the people of Sanctuary might think.

"The world below has want of stronger hinges 'pon its doors," Lyr jokes, causing Mabon to growl under his breath... so he adds a smile to it, the kind that says 'you knew who I was when you took up with me'.

Listens to the Wind pays no mind to the byplay. "What was on the other side? Was it awake or was it sleeping, was it something or nothing?"

"Both, neither, it wants to be nothing but it is forced to be something, existence hurts. Not undead but..." The word in the vision comes back to you. "Neverborn."

A look of recognition passes over the older wizard's face, but when Harry opens his mouth to ask the obvious question he raises a hand. "Wait a moment. Margret Carpenter, why did you descend so deep, why disturb that which you found below?"

Lydia looks a little intimidated at the implication of wrongdoing, Tiffany vaguely amused, her bow-shaped lips threatening to form the genteel approximation of a sneer. And you...

Lydia Essence 7/7 (0/3 Jade Talisman)
Molly Essence 9/18
Molly Willpower 8/9

[] Don't have time for an interrogation, you called for help looking for the missing shards

[] Feel guilty, Aakebushu did warn you in his own way

[] Write in

OOC: The Molly lost 2 Essence opening a way though her soul and then got them back from time spent in her kingdom while waiting, hance why she it at the same Essence total

 

[DragonParadox]

To Discern Death ​

13th of March 2007 A.D.

With a grimace at once genuine and meant to hide the truth Harry cannot allow out you explain into the dead air of the meeting room: "We were following a spirit long in Kemmler's company. It is gone at least. Could we have done the same to the one we found there in the depths?" You give a shrug heavy with frustration. "I don't know, but it might by his own words have called worse things from the depths. Given a choice to react with violence on one hand and mercy on the other, both equally uncertain the latter seemed... best."

Two pairs of eyes scrutinize your reaction, wiser and more piercing than either alone could be, but not for nothing did the old wizard call you 'Carpenter', he knows whose daughter you are and surely he knows how a knight would have chosen at that crossroad. The only piece of the puzzle absent, the only lie of omission, is that you could have simply left Aakebushu there, by the lightless waters. It's not hard to imagine how he something so dreadful might have been as hostile as the mortwrights... and imagine it thus does Jospeh Listend to the Wind.

Molly and Lydia lose 1 Essence (Excelencies)

The only reason you do not breathe a sigh of relief is that it would have given the game away and you imagine the same is true of Tiffany to your left and Lydia to your right, Harry being lucky enough to be behind the pair and thus not under their scruteny for his own part in the secret.

"Kemmler... of course it would be the old bone gnawer. There's a part of me that still... ah, never you mind, won't help us now. More important things to talk about now." He turns to Harry. "Ever wonder why it's so easy to raise the dead? Relatively of course, but it's easier to get a skeleton to start moving around and mauling people than it is to do the same with a pile of rocks."

"Regrets, people clinging to life..."

"Dinosaurs too?" Listens to the Wind asks, the faintest shadow of a smile tilting at the corners of his mouth. "What would a beast know about regret after its laid down its head to die? That's a Christian thing, no offense meant Ms Carpenter, blaming the bad on the fallen nature of man, man has a lot to attone for, but it's not all us, its older than us, other worlds that came before this one and died, now lying unresting at the root of the world, wanting, needing to die, but not able to."

"What, like undead planets? Hells bells..." It is rare to see Harry in a crunch without a quip, but this manages to shake him.

Alas for him the older wizard just shakes his head. "No, no, nothing so small, older natures, older elements, things you and I will never see alive but which are still remembered, vast amalgamations out of time that pull on flesh and bone and spirit. They can't come back, but in their dreaming death, they can force other things to be, wrong, twisted that is the heart of what some call 'the black art of necromancy'. 'Art''s a foolish word for it, it implies something with purpose and meaning, but I couldn't tell you what wiser heads call it because the trully wise don't call it anything at all."

"Is there a point to this?" Tiffany asks, a little brosquely.

"Not everyone whose ever served on the White Council was wise. There's spellbooks locked away behind iron, silver and salt that do not perform raise any corpses no, but they still do necromancy in the older way."

"As divination," Lydia cuts in. "You can find the places were the darkness is stronger or... will be stronger?"

"Fates that are burning black," Listens to the Wind agrees with a sigh that seems to come from the very depths of his being. "They were meant to find necromancers before they could run rampant and for a long, long time they did their job well."

Regained 2 Essence (Urge of the Forbidden)

"Until Kemmler," you guess.

A nod grave as... you would say death, but perhaps more than that given the subject at hand. "They might be able to find these shards let loose." What's spoken is clear enough and so is what is not: This seeking, this 'older necromancy' is looking into the powers of death. One who learns that much could easily learn more.

"The Council discontinued the practice when it failed to track Kemmler or was it used against his heirs?" you guess, the old wizard confirms you guess aright. Given the risks of starting into the face of death-beyond-death and the fact that is had failed once before it was deemed too great a risk to use. Yet wizards will be wizards, the spells were not struck from record, final the spellbook was not burned, but kept back against some other more urgent need... which is what you are being offered now in recompense for all you had done for the White Council, not a decision lightly made.

Lydia Essence 7/7 (0/3 Jade Talisman)
Molly Essence 10/18
Molly Willpower 7/9

What do you say?

[] Use the spells of finding
-[] Listens to the Wind does it as the most senior wizard available in time
-[] Harry does it, maybe Awakened Essence will shield him
-[] In another life you might have been a wizard and you have been gaining more and more skill with magic of late, if only in the breaking. You will try

[] There is another way
-[] Write in

[] Write in

OOC: All that goodwill Molly and Co got with the Council isn't just for show. Wizards know things, it is their nature, wthether you would call that wise necesarily depends on who you ask.

 

[DragonParadox]

Broken Ever After ​

13th of March 2007 A.D.

San Fransisco

It wasn't meant to go this way.

They should have left that life behind. That's how it goes after all, the princess finds her prince charming, the monster is defeated and through it all if her love proves true they ride into the sunset happily ever after. So maybe her prince charming hadn't been the one to fight the monsters, the dead things, but Inari had been saved and she had gone away where her father couldn't find her. Lara had said so, she promised
The secrets of Inari's past could stay all zipped up in the corner of her wallet with all the pictures of a smiling family she was growing quietly convinced had never been quite real.

Life out here wasn't perfect, far from it, there was still rent to worry about and getting enough buzz going, earning enough clients. Maybe I shouldn't splurge on almond milk. A second later the cashier returned her nervous smile as she placed the carton down with a definitive thump. It's Jake's birthday, we should splurge a lit...

Sunlight glinted off steel beyond the shop window, too far, too faint for merely human eyes to see, she shot so soft that passersby mistook it for it for a backfiring car... until the glass shattered, until the hollow point strick flesh and send blood flying, bone shattering inward in a deadly arc. It wasn't just meant to kill but to make her last moments agony, placed precisely where the assassin meant it.

It wasn't meant to end this way.

Blood pooled under her, thick and fast in a carped of red among as the woman behind her in the line screamed. There was a sense of someone else, someone beside and above her, too tall he seemed and spun of neon lights, glass shards and screams, but the voice that reached her ears was almost apologetic and... familiar: "For your place in your sister's trial our thanks child. May your next life raise you up."

"Mr Lin w-why?" Inari thought she said the words but she couldn't force her lips to move. Mr. Lin wasn't, he couldn't... he had been so kind, so helpful. Why can I smell almond milk but not bl... blood. Maybe it's not real. Maybe it's all a dream?

"Bobby no..." He wouldn't know, he wouldn't know... Inari wanted to curse and kick and scream and fight, but she was just too weak... too human.

Then the Dark spoke, a presence vaster than galaxies and deeper than the void at their heart, cold and wordless, yet heavy with one final choice as the last spark of her life sputtered: embrace the awful power that rolls off of it like a dark fog, like a killing miasma, like a black fire; or reject it and pass into whatever awaits beyond death's veil.

Guess I'm a monster after all.

As her kin had done once long ago out of all knowing the youngest scion of House Raith— still the youngest daughter of House Raith— reached for the dark and of it she drank.

In a single hacking cough shards of bone and bullet flew out of her chest. and hear heart began to beat, alive yet of Death.

A debt was owed.

As she rose to her feet Inari wasn't sure why the dead man beside her was screaming, she hadn't done anything, yet.

***​

"Stars and Stones..."

One thousand eight hundred and fifty four miles away Harry Dresden looked down at the shards of a broken obsidian mirror, his left hand slashed on one edge. The face of the girl hadn't seen in the better part of two years vanished from sight . He knew, he still knew that vision too had been the past, less than an hour had passed from that moment to this, but how much could have that hour held. That was why Lara had called him.

Abyssal Found: Innari Raith
Harry used 4 Essence -> Now at 1/5

What do you do?

[] Contact Lara at once
-[] Write in

[] Try to look for the others

[] Write in

OOC: I hope presenting it like this works, trying to do it though Harry's PoV through the ritual didn't work since Harry himself just doesn't work as a passive observer.

 

[DragonParadox]

Family Call ​

13th of March 2007 A.D.

Harry had barely gotten the salient parts of what he had seen out by the time you call Thomas, silently cursing the lack of a personal satellite to make sure calls like this get through. He picks up on the third ring. "Something you did, Molly?" He sounds worried in spite of the glibness, alas not nearly worried enough.

There's a part of you that wants answer yes, to apologize for making his sister into... into... you are not even sure what to call those who bear the void shards, reapers and executioners. You shove that part into time out so hard it bruises. Now's the time to fix things not go looking for forgiveness. The image of your dad looking far larger though the eyes of child's memory, his face less lined and eyes not as worried offers a moment to breathe and center yourself before picking up the thread of conversation.: "We don't have a lot of time, but the short story is that something like a different flavor of what happened to me is happening to four others."

Silence rings in your ears like a bell.

"Inari is one of them."

"But she's... why?"

You meet the eyes of Listens to the Wind and his curious companion across the room. Truth be told you have theories, impressions born of dreams and glimpses of darkness, but that's not something to blurt out. As Uriel did for for me so do I hope to do for others. Does that make me conceited? You certainly don't feel conceited, frazzled, flummoxed and some other less polite words that start with F. Otherwise hardly more room for feelings.

"I need her number." To tell her to get off the street in the wake of what probably looks like a double homicide, you add, though only in the privacy of your own head. You still remember the Scarecrow, the hate and rage rushing though your veins with power. If all of that had happened on a crowded street you'd have killed it just as dead.

Thomas rattles it off from memory, voice half drowned by the sound of an already revving engine. Of course he's know it, she's his sister. You try to imagine how you would have reacted if it had been Daniel, Mathew or Leech, then flinch away from the thought.

One, ring two... and then a familiar voice.

"Ah, Miss Carpenter. I'm guessing you obtained the number from Thomas," Lara Raith says, trying and not at all succeeding to sound unphased. Taunt as a bow about to shoot. "Inari is safe, though unable to answer the phone at the moment."

"What happened?"

One can practically hear the gears turning in her head at the question. On the one hand you're a stranger without any particular right to know the state of a girl you'd never met. On the other hand you have been friendly to the White Court and her brother as well as Inari's works for you. Finally she answers, each word deliberate: "She is otherwise occupied paying back a betrayal, a family endeavor for an ill done the family." Nothing of that rings false, but then you don't think Lara normally bothers with anything as crude as a lie, but far from the whole truth.

"I might be able to help, I want to help," you blurt out, or seem to at least. Though the emotion is genuine the way you harness it is anything but. "What's happening with Inari?"

A strained sigh can be heard on the other side. "Owing to recent events my younger sister intended to destroy this phone rather than face calls from her beau or business partner. I pointed out that she will most likely want it in the morning no matter how she feels right now. Needing to replace one's phone never improves a situation. So she dropped it on me and said, verbatim, 'you answer then'."

For just a second or two there you feel simple sympathy for Lara Raith, one older sister to another. Her next question puts an end to it as quickly as it had come:

"Speaking of the situation, what do you know?"

It would be dramatic to say that the current White Queen by proxy is the last person you would rather be sharing the deeper mysteries of the world with, but of the people one could honestly imagine such a conversation with she's certainly down near the bottom. On the other hand she is the woman on the spot and seems to have things in hand, potential revenge fueled rampage asside.

What do you reply?

[] Offer to come to San Francisco to help

[] Share what insights you have
-[] Including the fact that you let the shards out
-[] Not including the fact that you let the shards out

[] Write in

OOC: A riddle for the ages, how do you stop a newly Exalted Abyssal from rampaging? The answer, if you are Lara Raith is 'you don't, you offer to help'. For anyone wondering how Lara got across the country so fast, Molly suspects she set up a Way connecting Chicago (or even just Castle Raith) and San Francisco because she knew Inari would be living there. I tried putting the speculation in the update proper but it wouldn't fit given Molly's present mindset.

 

[DragonParadox]

Trail of Death​

13th of March 2007 A.D.

"I'm on my way." you snap off, mind already whirling with what Lara might be after. How much sisterly care is true and how much is a mask? Does she even know herself? Not something you can ask over the phone, much less read in between the buzzing of the connection. "There are things Inari needs to know. I don't have all the answers, but I have more than anyone else."

"You hope," Lara interjects her voice neutral but for the straining of her breath.

"We all have hope, but I have knowledge still," you answer as you click off the phone.

"Well then we await your insight," Lara rattles off an address and room number for a Hotel, either the one she is staying at or more likely one that is permanently on hold for more discreet dealings of the White Court.

"333 Fulton St., Room 13. Got it."

The clang of breaking glass and desperate gunfire interjects the conversation and then distinctly the sound of bone shattering and cartilage torn free, you'd heard it often enough. Is she killing someone with her off hand? You're not sure if you should be impressed or horrified. What's the equivalent of 'Eyes on the road!' for fighting?

"Bring..." she has to stop and catch her breath. "Bring Thomas too, he'll want to see her."

You end the call without goodbe, unsure if any good could come of this before raising your eyes to sweep around the room. Tiffany looks unphased again, not a hair out of place, no hint of what she's thinking behind those green eyes. Lydia by contrast is sympathetic for Inari's fate, but unsure if she's still her own woman or a pawn of something darker. In that she agrees with the old wizard you think, though he keeps his own counsel for now, volunteering only the name of the new warden of San Francisco, named in the wake of recent reorganization.

As for Harry... yup, head down looking mulish enough to crew concrete and spit out gravel, up for rescuing a damsel in distress, at least it's not aimed at me, though you do have to wonder how Inari Raith is likely to take it after being swayed by the Neverborn.

***​

The six if you thus arrive in San Francisco by phone call and squeaky speakers playing a song too loud.

"I'm assuming this has something to do with that darn mess downtown?" An elderly woman, her hair drawn up in a messy bun, her cheeks rosy as a picture in a children's book and her eyes as grey as steel asks without preamble.

When the sky had gone strange there had been a few incidents like in other parts of the country, the world come to that, but whereas the worst that could be expected normally would be a few shots fired wildly or some fool drawing a knife the Dollar Tree Killings had been particularly gruesome, one man had been ripped almost in half like a wishbone, the two parts connected only by his entrails while another had been killed with a high powered sniper riffle.... by having the barrel shoved into their eye and clear through their skull.

As Leah, you finally get her name in the process, explains the bodies themselves had caused some consternation at the local morgue since both of them showed signs of having been dead for days before the killing.

"Days not weeks which means Thrashing Dragon or Thousand Whispers." She looks at you sharply to see if you catch her meaning.

"Yang inclined Wan Kuei?" half ask. Not the only ones who had been killed, judging by the fight you'd heard over the phone, though Lara would have been more careful to hide her tracks.

The warden nods sharply. "It looked more like they were mauled to death than killed with weapons and... this wasn't on the news either but one of the had their throat bitten out. Is there a scourge in town?"

"No," Listens to the Wind speaks before you can get a word in. "Might be something worse, might be better."

Leah laughs darkly, almost seeming to surprise herself. "Hope to God Almighty it's better than a scourge, what the hell could worse?"

We're about to find out aren't we? Some thoughts are better left unshared.

Thankfully she doesn't press either of the wizards for more information, content that the council is on this, whatever 'this' is to have filled her small ritual chamber with the touch of alien essence, though the same couldn't be said of Thomas.

"Was that something...?" he can't quite bring himself to finish even in a whisper.

You think about is the moment, recalling the grasping blackness of the still ocean that devoured all light upon its face and almost wish that you could lie. "Yes."

***​

On the way through windy streets filled with people either rushing and frazzled or still walking gingerly as if they are afraid the pavement under their feet might change to lava at any moment you wonder: 'Is tearing the throat out of an assassin any worse than any other way she could have killed him.' From Harry's vision it had clearly been self-defense and dead was dead, in this case twice over. The only conclusion you can reach without being the worse kind of hypocrite is no, but from the look on the wizards' faces, both of them, they aren't nearly so sanguine. Heh... It's far too late to wonder if you should be finding any part of this morbidly funny.

Its in such a mindset that you arive at the Inn at the Opera, built in the style popular at the turn of the last century and then modernized and sanitized within an inch of its architectural life its facade reminds you of nothing so much as a beautiful rose someone has shrink-wrapped, an impression not least improved by the innofensive blandness of its interior. At least they choose pastels rather than beige, Usum points out sardonically.

Thomas over takes you on the stairs and he's the first to the door.

"I don't recall inviting a wizard, much less two," Lara says archly while looking past him to Harry and Listens to the Wind.

Harry's already geering up to answer, probably something less than polite, though Tiffany looks like she might try to stop him if you don't.

What do you say?

[] If it weren't for the council we'd never have found out Inari needed help to begin with

[] This concerns everyone. Innary isn't the only one

[] Write in

OOC: No rolls for this one, at least no visibile ones.

 

[DragonParadox]

The Girl with No Name ​

13th of March 2007 A.D.

"I know showing up with the magical version of an aircraft carrier battle group isn't a great look, but you have my word that our intent is..." as you had done hundreds of times before you burn a mote of essence into the words to find the tone and timber that fits your purpose best, but another voice cuts in, a little higher, a little younger, but with a hard edge to it.

Lost 1 Essence (Empathy Excellency)
Lost 1 Willpower (ATB)

"She's doing something, I can see the power swirling like miasma."

Lara steps back with a sigh and a glance over her shoulder. "It's not polite to compare other people's abilities to poison gasses. As long as she's not doing things to us it's fair game."

And that is how you get your first look at what Inari Raith had become and what a look it is. The usual pallor of her family is taken to the extreme, but instead of words like 'waxy' or 'corpse-like' the word that first comes to mind is luminous even if one cannot help but wonder if it is a siren light shining though black of night. For indeed black as deepest midnight is the fantly curling hair that frames her face and blacker still the void where her eyes should have been. They aren't missing, there's nothing as mundane as empty space there, only a pitiless mirror that reveals the emptiness between all things.

"Oh..." It takes you a moment to register to recognize the emotion contorting the face of otherworldly dread before you, embarrassment at being caught out like that. "It's actually a beautiful glow, it doesn't change when I look deeper. Neither do you..." she points at Tiffany. "Or you."

If you had been a bit less careful or less focused it would have been easy to miss the comentary tenseness at the corners of her eyes when as she says the last.

"What, nothing to say your only brother?" Thomas asks, his languid tone doing little to hide very real worry.

Inari's voice falls into a dreamy whisper. "Oh you and Lara can still die, it will take a long time as men count years, not that long at all as the stars do."

Deathsight, of course They would give out the power to see mortality and souls at once.

While you are contemplating that particular implication Little Brother scurries off his friend's shoulder to examine an empty birdcage by the window as the wizard himself speaks with surprising gentleness. "You aren't the only one, there's three others and we need to find them before people with ill intent can."

With just those simple words he had absolved Lara of 'ill intent' and it can't have been an accident, watching Inari relax and the darkness recede from her eyes, though what it leaves in its place a mask almost as uncanny. Instead of shifting blue-greys of her siblings they glow like tarnished silver reflecting a flame that comes sometimes close sometimes further away, but always present.

"Hmm..." Tiffany hums. "Probably too bright for off the shelf contacts."

Inari laughs as much in surprise as relief. "You make it sound like a fashion statement."

You catch a glimpse of very sharp fangs as she does so, but don't comment. Thomas obviously had the same thought, trying to keep the tone light, a touch teasing. "It's never a bad time to think of fashion Inari."

She freezes and looks past him, the warmth draining from the air as Lara hastens to explain: "She is under a geas, she cannot answer to that name nor as I understand it any name..." A look to confirm then she continues. "She sacrificed her Name for the power she now holds. If nothing else it should make wizards less of a concern. Those of other inclinations of course."

Lara's idea of lightening the mood it a little different from her brother's.

At that Harry looks horrified and you suspect Listens to the Wind is too judging from the way Little Brother had stopped his exploring to look back with one year flat and the other raised in askance, though that is the only sign.

"Then what should we call you?" Lydia breaks the silence.

"I'm not sure," the... well you guess you can still think of her as Inari for now, says slowly. "Titles come from things you've done and I haven't done anything I'm proud of since... it happened."

"Exaltation, that's what the moment and the power is called, or at least the closest English can get. It's a concept given substance while the one who bears it, who directs it is an Exalt...." you launch into the comfortable realm of arcane classification, no matter how obscure it might be.

Alas before you can built up steam Inari asks. "Why... why does it happen?"

Lydia Essence 7/7 (0/3 Jade Talisman)
Molly Essence 9/18
Molly Willpower 6/9

[] Keep to generalities, use Lydia and the Dragonblooded as examples

[] Explain the Neverborn as best you are able

[] Explain the Neverborn and why these particular explanations are free

[] Write in

OOC: For anyone keeping track for build purposes those are the flaws Parmanet Fangs (3) and Glowing Eyes (3). They are not her shadow, those are extra.