The Road of Secrets
It was an afternoon's work to deliver the Solomon, Harrison, and Penelope over half a continent. Once the ritual of crimson-silver sigils splayed over the floor triggered with the final word of incantation, they went skipping across eddies of curved spatial resonance, a sensation not unlike a hook penetrating one's stomach, with a cord attached to a a rocket that carried you on to unseen horizons at blurring, furious speeds. They emerged upon a rocky, barren hill standing over vast dales and gorges full of umbra, a tide of darkness spilling forth like muddy rivers that sought to swallow the earth beneath. The sun over here was dimmer, as if the sky were covered by layers of clouds.
"Well, damn," said Harrison, breaths misting immediately with ambient cold. He focused momentarily and created a mote of heat, a small perilous flame hovering over an open palm, like a lone lantern in the dark. Its fire was on the precipice of guttering out, maintained only by his will. "It's so cold even my shadow is shivering."
Dramatically, Penelope stepped forward and spread out a radiant corona of seraphic wings, declaring, "Fiat lux."
She emanated a pure tone of radiance, a light as white as the heart of a star. Like a gas cloud driven back with a fiercely overclocked industrial fan, the darkness immediately around them dispelled: rays of wan sunshine punctured through the clouds, still a shade paler than sunlight should've been, like spears of cold, autumnal amber. It was cold and dark still, yet a beachhead for enterprise was established. Solomon absently started to cast identification spells, muttering away with incantations of learning.
He found that, aside from the supernatural murk, the valley had a certain weight of events impressed upon it; a shadow on the world cast as if a moonlight tower had encountered a wavering drape. Even the stones seemed weary with meaning, heavier as if carrying some gravid history with the sorrow of martyrs.
The darkness was even inside the matter, obscuring the chronicles with its own sort of determination to conceal the past. Solomon, not intent on simply letting it win, studied those ancestral indentations, each inkling of data pursued with tenacity, threads unraveled and networks snapped; deriving fragments of memories. Glorious sunlit castles with marmoreal walls, each one a bastion protecting its own peoples. A young smiling man, beard brown like a bear's fur, a crown of orichalcum adorning his head. A woman standing behind him, draped in a black mournful veil, smiling with violet lips. That same man, dead on his throne, with ten swords piercing through his heart.
Then darkness.
As Solomon came out of the visions, his senses flared with a danger fuzz, surrounding the edges of his consciousness. He sent out a mental ping of alert, snapping Penelope and Harrison to sudden, rapt attention.
It was still a heartbeat late, as the shadow woman came out of practically nowhere - feminine only in silhouette, and otherwise cloaked with a thick, cloying umbra that wafted off her in nightly streams - swifter than any shadow had a right to be; as fast as thought, barely granting a right to react. Even as magicka flowed to Solomon's brain, its presence transmuting base matter into an engine of higher cogitation, she moved like an inescapable maverick. From the depths of shadow, she was followed by dragging chains; she drifted around Penelope, metallic shackles as black as ink binding taut angelic wings, suppressing the inner light and rendering her uttermost efforts to break out into nothing. Before Solomon could so much as complete a single word of incantation, she'd finished almost three loops, Penelope now bound utterly in a cocoon of chains.
Angered, Harrison dashed and leaped, legs raised to deliver a kick - a vain effort, as with the woman's reflexes, she would've been able to avoid - only to encounter an obstruction as a transient pane of tenebrous force manifested, stopping him and cracking lightly at the impact of his foot.
A second woman made of shadow - a witch, Solomon amended mentally - stepped out, bearing a scepter with a core of faintly whirring violet clouds, producing the pane. Focusing, Solomon fired a salvo of magical darts, each one equivalent in power to fifteen gunshots, to distract her at the same time as the chain-wielder attacked. His symbiote manifested a leathery wing and interposed it against a burst of the shadowy chains, batting them away and dispelling them into a morass of shadows. As Solomon's passive senses attempted to penetrate the murk, he found two more hostiles fast approaching. If all parameters were identical, they'd swiftly be overwhelmed.
Think outside the box, then.
Instead of ineffectually repelling and scattering the native shadows of the valley, Solomon raised a white-gloved hand and called upon them, as a master called a servant, as a king called a crown or scepter, as Thor called down thunder or Zeus the lightning bolt; as a god called down the truth of the world on nonbelievers. He made an offering of blood to slake the enchaining rite's thirst, cuts opening vertically along each wrist, streams of scarlet liquid immediately flowing out to stoke the darkness; alongside alien tissue.
His symbiote emerged from the cuts like a monstrosity from some outer realm, and its tendrils raised their heads in eager anticipation and confusion - then, at a mental order, snapped out with lightning speed and threaded with the darkness, his power over the strains of hidden connectivity abstracting the tips of each strand into darkness itself; making it a part of him, an extension as controllable as any limb linked to one's central nervous system. He couldn't extend the control over the entire valley, not without risking a grave loss of control with potentially deadly consequences, but merely seizing the local environment was simplicity itself.
He found the darkness abrasive and sickening, like a syrup made of glue; attempting to stick to him and make him forget and sacrifice humanity as well. Refusing, Solomon tugged on the leash as an owner did with a hound, reminding it of its place. And like that, a metaphorical gun to its head, he stared down the four witches; now holding his own friends hostage, shackled and bound with chains. The other newly arrived witches seemed to wield a sword and a book as implements, respectively.
As a result, both sides stood at something of an uneasy impasse, staring each other down.
They could murder Harrison and Penelope, but it may provoke him to shatter the darkness and fundamentally impair their magic for a sufficient time to achieve retribution. However, if Solomon attempted to do that without reason, the chain wielder's lightning-fast speed might suffice nonetheless to execute Harrison or Penelope. Given the other three were much inferior, much slower than himself, the chain wielder was the one he needed to worry about. His eyes focused on her with calm attention.
He spoke, transmuting each word into a language they could understand, "Parley?
"Unchain the Abyss, interloper," ordered the chain witch, sneering. The absence of darkness revealed her true, natural features: a brunette about her mid-thirties, pretty although not to the disarmingly supernatural level he'd expected from the stories.
"If I choose to damage its fabric, something bad shall happen to you, I take it?" he asked, already supposing they reacted to Penelope's repulsion of the dark - as suggested by attacking and taking her down first, almost as if with priority. The witch's dark, vicious expression confirmed the suspicion. "Excellent. Let's discuss this."
"One more time, I'll tell you: release our Abyss."
"Release my friends," he countered, as calm as an ocean with a still surface, restful under a noonday sky.
"Elder sister, with your permission, perhaps I could negotiate on the conclave's behalf?" asked the scepter witch timidly, as she stepped forward, a girl not much older than Solomon, if at all.
"I don't think so," said the chain witch, eyes gleaming full of malice - answering both Solomon and her companion in one statement. "You dare intrude on our sacred grounds. You're reaping what you've sowed; submit yourselves to rightful authority and be judged."
"Whose authority, exactly, if I can ask? No one informed us we're entering sovereign territory. Furthermore, I sensed no warnings or signs this 'Abyss' of yours was sacred or important in any way," Solomon explicated.
"That you do not know the laws of the land does not mean you are free, or not subject, to them," answered the witch, malice now suppressed to a calm venom, almost as if parrying Solomon's equanimity with a mask of civil discourse. "Should've checked in, first. Now you'll be subject to the Eldest Sister's judgment, whether you like it or not."
"And what's the usual punishment for our crime, if I may ask?"
She allowed herself a cold titter. "I don't see why I should answer that, especially when asked by the likes of you."
"You're attempting to extract my cooperation," Solomon gently reminded. "Putting any of my potential worries or misgivings at ease can secure it much swifter than powerplays or posturing. That I am wary of recognizing your authority does not mean I must seek to escape judgement. Be warned that I can detect falsehood."
Her eyes narrowed and she contemplated the answer.
"The usual punishment for when an interloper such as you is disrespecting our Abyss is a life of imprisonment," she answered. "But given your ignorance and magical prowess, I suspect the Eldest may be convinced to leave you with a warning."
The words rang as technically true; something worrying, for there was no guarantee of spirit-deep sincerity.
Sighing, Solomon considered his answer.
---
Will: 65
Credit: 7.8
XP: 303
[ ] Road of Violence [-25 Will] - Produce a distraction and focus on freeing Penelope, so you can engage in a sudden bout of violence, now that you're advantaged by seizing the Abyss. If Harrison is executed, Penelope should be able to resurrect him as virtually unharmed from even a grievous spiritual injury, if she does so fast enough.
Predicted effectiveness, now that you've seized the Abyss:
*70% odds of winning without complication.
*25% odds of winning with significant complication (Harrison dies and is resurrected, but an Aspect is damaged, etc.)
*5% odds of winning with extreme complication.
You certainly won't be coming along with them after the ominous visions you dug out of the local soil.
[ ] Continue Negotiations - Aim for a compromise; you'll apologize for messing with their sacred Abyss, swear a binding compact to immediately leave and never return, and ask for your friends to be released back to you in return.
*Unknown odds.
[ ] Submit [+15 Will] - Eh, a technical truth's good enough on a statement such as that. It seems like the scepter wielder isn't some axiomatically evil creature and tried to offer negotiations in good faith, at least, so it's likely these aren't inherently evil people; it's only Chainy that's nasty as fuck.
Just come along quietly and hope their authority's lenient. She's got a point: you're an intruder here. If you cooperate and make a good case, it's likely you can even benefit from this approach: your sense of the local Architecture tells you as such.
[ ] Write-in - Tactics for any of the plans can potentially improve your odds, or you can craft your own approach.
