Margot
The week prior had brought rain in the form of thunderstorms that tested the window panes of the (not-a-)cabal's new home. They discovered several new leaks each time a new front rolled in and patched them during breaks between. Margot proved herself useful in scrambling deftly over loose shingles and capable enough with a hammer and nails.
By the time the weekend had come the rain had broken, and by afternoon Sunday the sky was bright blue and perfectly clear of clouds. The temperatures rose back to the mid-seventies and though the sun shone bright upon the grass it wasn't dry quite yet. It made for a lot of slipped sneakers and curses while the pair of recent Initiates struggled and practiced against each other in the backyard.
Or, more accurately, Ned tried to teach Margot why her way of holding a knife was going to break her wrist. She was dismal with the rubber knife and her eyes flashed reactive fear when first presented with it. She'd pushed soundly through the trigger but her hand shook the first few minutes that she held it. It took the back of her t-shirt and pants getting soaked wet on the grass from falling for her to get frustrated, but at least that helped push past the lingering ghost of terror-addled memory.
"So, like this?" She asked with a frown. Her hair was tied back and her face furrowed with a scowl of concentration. To her credit, she had finally corrected her grip.
Ned
The Orphan is dressed in simple black. A t and track pants. Bare foot and in slow circling patterns, he makes his way around Margot while speaking to her, eyes on her features with a calm that is at once serious as it is attempting to be relaxed. He's patient but not terribly sympathetic to her mood and bubbling panic. This was meant to challenge part of her as well as get them both used to it all.
"I just want to be clear about something here...Knife fights are ugly. There's no parrying or blocking or anything because the blade-" Ned hefts the rubber practice piece in his hand, effortlessly "-weighs nothing and gives you that extra half a foot of reach. Golden rule of a knife fight is you have to take hits to get hits. Normally, that's a death sentence regardless of the winner-" he taps his forearms, indicating where the knife point goes, demonstrating with a point first tap against the braided muscle of his own limb "-but with some Life, Matter or Forces, it is a lot easier to pull off I've found. You want to make sure though, if you get stuck, to get stuck in the forearm, above where the tendons are. Right here in the meat and muscle so when you flex your arm, excruciatingly that is, you jam their knife in place.for the split second it takes to put your own blade in their eye, neck stomach or groin."
The four 'Wounds of No return' Ned had called them. Places where death is assured immediately or eventually without severe and imminent healing/medical attention.
"Ultimately we want to be able to work you up to something longer so you can keep your distance and a finesse piece so you're not relying on strength to produce harm but knives get you used to the Death aspect of an up close and dirty scrap. Once you've gotten used to a blade near you and the awareness that comes with that, a fist to fist fight won't be nearly as terrifying."
"Solid grip. Make sure not to death grip it. A little loose and keep it moving. Don't pause long enough for someone to knock it out of your hand. If someone takes a swipe at you, don't try to go for a kill shot. If you can disable or strike at their fingers or knuckles-" Ned flicks his own rubber blade forward, raking 'lightly' along the knuckles and soft webbing between the index and the thumb, where Margot holds her own blade "-all the better. Disabling a hand is as functional and deadly in a fight, as the full limb or a gut shot. Just be mindful of your own hands and fingers as well."
Margot
It was serious business, learning to wield a knife. The two looked pretty serious about it, at least. Ned was offering great detail and suggestion and lessons about knife fights, how it was more than just hack and slash and pray for the best. Margot soaked all of it in with that concentrated and halfway incredulous flex to her brow. She looked to his arms and hands, the knives and grips, and nodded occasionally with understanding.
"With Matter you could just turn the other guy's knife to putty," she mused over how to wield magick in a handfight, a favored topic over the past week or so (when she wasn't spending her time studying up on ghosts and summoning).
She tested her grip against her other hand, and looked up to Ned's face after he'd flicked the rubber of his own blade against her fingers.
"What do you think I'll find that's longer than a knife? A sword's a little obvious." She grinned a bit, then sat down in the damp grass to start unlacing her shoes and tugging off socks. Ned was having better luck not slipping around in his bare feet than she was in her sneakers, may as well take that lesson out of his book too. "I think I'd like a bow and quiver, though."
Ned
Ned stepped back as Margot settled into the wet grass. He was continuously curling and uncurling his toes in the blades of green. The wet was easier to handle in bare feet, admittedly, but that didn't stop the occasional slip or pin wheeling of arms when the ball of the foot caught shifting grass and rain at the right angle. Ned kept his feet spread and weight evenly distributed as best he could without better training to make it comfortable. He had spent a good portion of the fight, silently reprimanding himself and readjusting his posture accordingly.
"You could, but a lot of my working, is touch based so Threat level makes it not worth it. You're actually better off applying any working benefits to yourself. I've figured out how to deflect and adjust kinetic and gravitational flows to skew people's strikes. So incoming harm is pushed away or aside. I'm sure Life has a bunch of applications as well and giving your clothes some semblance of hardness with Matter could easily produce some functional armour."
He plucks at his t-shirt, the concept of shifting it to leather patches around vital areas or even plastic for that teflon feel was something Ned had toyed with when he first learned more about the Sphere.
"Not sure. Anything longer would be too situational. Couldn't just carry it around all the time unless you stored it or made it collapsible and that'd be a needless waste of Work on your part. Better off just construction or building something on the spot, over carrying something around but...A staff, a spear, or even just a short truncheon for joint strikes-" he taps his elbows, knees, wrists, shoulders while he speaks "-would make for a very effective disabling device. Throw in some Prime or Spirit and you've got plenty of options for a variety of opponents, really." Ned's tapping his chin, a hand on his hip while he stares up at the sky for a second, squinting in the sunlight.
"Bow could work. Also problematic for situational benefit but long range is definitely something to keep in mind if we decide to go on anymore missions or pre-planned efforts."
Doc
From around the other side of the house comes the sound of a 200- Jeep Wrangler and its owner returning from wherever the hell they had both been that the kids thought they would have uninterrupted yard time.
For being an unpredictable and questionably sane individual, their mentor manages to follow a schedule based somewhat on what the rest of the world is going. He goes to work Monday through Friday, sometimes showing up on Saturdays if he needs to get caught up on paperwork, and on Sundays he devotes himself to whatever project happens to have snared his attention.
Fixing up the death trap underneath the house was his primary goal. It is no longer possible to pass into the catacombs where they encountered the warped avatar of a nascent god, where Doc discovered what lay down the corridor they hadn't explored themselves and decided without conferring with the others that it never needed to meet them.
In the weeks since then, presumably with Kiara's help, he has mowed the lawn and smoothed over the open graves and planted trees that will by this time next year be tall and lush. The porch is still a death trap and the roof needs help, but there is no longer a gaping hole where explosions failed to level the entire house and the dust and bones left over from the previous family have gone away.
The clap of the driver's side door and then enough of a span of silence that no one would blame the two if they thought their mentor had decided to retire to the basement, where he is working on transplanting his laboratory, or if he had gone back out again, taken the light rail into the city to do whatever it is he does when he's downtown. Disciple Shit.
They aren't so lucky.
<i>... but long range is definitely something to keep in mind if we decide...</i>
He's wearing a lab coat and scrubs and slip-resistant shoes, which means he probably intends to go back to his government job after this or else was up to his elbows in autopsies and didn't bother changing into street clothes before coming home. In his hand is a device neither of them have seen before. It looks like a walkie talkie, but if it had been microwaved with a graphing calculator rubber banded to it and the resultant mess is what came out.
Sepúlveda stands watching them for a few seconds then sighs and starts fiddling with the device.
"'Doc, help,'" he says in a high-pitched voice they can presume is an attempt to mimic Margot, his eyes on whatever it is he's doing and not on them. "'We were playing Cowboys and Indians and I shot Edward in the eye with an arrow.'"
---
Doc @ 8:10AM
[mind 2: mental impulse, "calm." base diff 5.]
Roll: 3 d10 TN5 (4, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )
Doc @ 8:11AM
[he'll need to extend this next round to hit both of them. no effect rn. carry on!]
Margot
In the time they'd all spent settling into the house Margot had grown accustomed to Doc's rhythms. The low rumble of a Jeep engine in the evenings was typically overheard through the living room wall, or sometimes through the window in the small bedroom she'd claimed for herself. By now she had a good idea of when to text versus when to go banging around downstairs on the hunt when she was seeking their mentor's counsel. This time when the now-familiar rumble of the Jeep announced his arrival home, Margot glanced back over her shoulder, blinked, and looked up to the sky to try and remember what time it was based on the sun's position. How long had she and Ned been outside practicing how to defend and kill?
She peeled her last sock off and jammed it inside of its partnered shoe, then rose to her feet once more. "Your work requires touch, but mine doesn't," she told Ned and looked at him thoughtfully. "I need some proximity now, yeah, but not for much longer. If I can find ways to disable a threat before they have a chance to attack then all the better. I can stitch my wounds back closed again, but I'd rather not need to in the first place." The engine died and she looked back toward the corner of the house around which the driveway could be found. "I can't stitch your wounds yet, y'know."
It wasn't much longer afterward that Sepúlveda rounded the corner of the house with a device in hand. Margot was in that moment brushing grass clippings from her damp jeans with the rubber blade of the practice knife, and glanced up quickly when the falsetto of mimicry caught her ear. What she heard had her rolling her eyes and putting a fist on one hip. "Yeah, playing. Because god knows how light-hearted and giddy I feel when my tri-county area is apparently full of people who want my ilk dead."
Ned
"We're using words like Ilk now? Is this who we've become and by the way-" He turns around on the Doc, relaxing out of his ready pose and posture with reflexive dismissal, to level a tsking finger at the Mexican Man, come calling "-Indians is an offensive term these days and given your minority status, you should be more careful about such things."
From the White Guy. Who is grinning.
"Proximity has it's benefits mind you. No one is going to be able to fireball or electrocute you without localizing it to ensure they don't hurt themselves. Kind of like a missile that won't arm within a certain distance of the vehicle that launched it. If someone's giving you ranged trouble, punch in close and go for the knife...sword....whatever." He pauses, one hand coiling in the air, eyes drifting to regard it as if he could see certain patterns forming within the movements. "I've been working on this...flashbang delivery. Forces affair that will effectively blind within a certain area. Good for causing general chaos, sneaking away or fouling anyone dependent on standard vision to find their targets. Still working on defending against it though. Closing your eyes doesn't really....work very well." Ned murmurs slightly, a bit dissuasive given he's probably blinded himself for several minutes in experimenting.
"Beyond that, a Kinetic Wedge-" he forms an arrow with his hands, fingertips touching and palms spaced away from one another "-directly infront and to either side, slightly sloped in the faces, can provide a neat little shield to help nudge projectiles out of the way. Only really works from the front but the effort to push things aside is a lot more minimal than just trying to stop something dead."
A pause, eyes roaming back to the Doc.
"Unless of course you've got a death ray or a freeze gun or a puppy launcher handy then I suppose it's just point and shoot."
Doc
... you should be more careful about such things.
"Mexican-Americans make up two-thirds of the North American Hispanic population, güero, show some..." What's the word. "... show some respect."
This without looking up from his device.
Then Ned returns to his lecture, and the Mad Scientist frowns down at the display somewhere on the front of his cobbled-together device. Or the top. It's hard to tell which end is up on this thing.
For a moment it appears as if even Sepúlveda can't figure out which end is up. He flinches, nearly drops it, then gives it a rattle and thumps it against the railing on the steps descending into the yard.
"Point and what?"
There it goes: whatever the two were feeling before, whatever was motivating them and whatever was lurking under the surface, is not just superimposed by whatever he just did. It completely disappears. They are both now calm, beyond calm. No anxiety, no anger, nothing but a sense of tranquility and peace.
It is nearly impossible to talk about violence, let alone self-defense, when one feels as if they just took the world's biggest bong rip.
Doc starts whistling like oh my what a lovely day i wonder what the kids are up to and tucks the device into the back pocket of his scrub pants. Here he comes, strolling along like they're in the park.
---
Sepúlveda @ 9:55AM
[extending the previous roll, +1 diff]
Roll: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6) ( success x 1 )
Sepúlveda @ 9:56AM
[and since ned is really on a roll over there...]
Roll: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Sepúlveda @ 9:56AM
^ THIS IS WHY WE SPEND WP, KIDS. THIS IS WHY.
Margot
Her choice of words put on the spot, Margot furrowed her brow a little bit at Ned, and blush tried to creep onto her cheeks. "What, 'like'? 'Kind'? 'People'? It's all the same."
The Doc was still fiddling with some device that didn't look incredibly familiar (but truthfully, she didn't have an easy time keeping them all separate), and Margot watched him suspiciously while he and Ned jibed about races in America at one another. Her attention was pulled back to Ned by talk of projectiles and the safety that proximity brought. "That makes sense," she agreed slowly, and her gaze switched just as slow from Doc to Ned once more. The shape his hands made while explaining his Kinetic Wedge was observed, then mirrored by her own hands while she glanced down at them to consider the potential. She didn't have the same grasp over Force that Ned did, having invested more of her time in the study of Life and Spirit and Prime and, as of late, Distance once more.
"Even if he did, Ned, we wouldn't be able to use it." Margot shook her head and looked away from her own hands, back up and over to the Scientist who probably <i>did</i> have a Freeze Ray stashed somewhere for all that she knew of him. Her brow flexed to find Doc still fiddling with his device, and around that time she lifted her voice to ask:
"Hey, what is that--"
"Point and what?"
He'd spoken over, and just as she felt the small clench of bother in her chest for being cut off she felt it unravel and fall away. There was a sense of her mind slipping loose from anchors and floating misty in the confines of her skull. There was almost always an underlying buzz of anxiety around her, and the silence that was left behind in its wake was nearly as loud. Yet, she truly didn't mind. Margot blinked a couple of times, then lifted a hand to glance at it-- fingernails first then fingerpads when it turned over. Next, she brushed her fingers back along her scalp to smooth stray hairs to their places.
"What happened?" She sounded curious without being worried. He could answer that they were neutralized and bombs would burn them down in the next two minutes, and she'd probably answer with cool.
Ned
Ned isn't vocal. The effect washes over them with surprising ease and it takes a moment for him to adjust to the sudden discharge of...emptiness that wakes in his guts and head. The slow tread of calm seems to re-orient thoughts and feelings with an abruptness that takes the strength out from under Ned's legs and he feels the need to climb down onto his ass, pants dampened by the grassy terrain, to regard himself and his surroundings with a brow that finally loses the tiny crease worry, concern and perpetual paranoia have reflexively instilled there.
He flicks his fingers. Let's them play and dance in the air. There's no smiling, just a placid face, filled with a low level of fascination. Fingers that fing. Finging with comfortable and easy-going measure. Watch them waft and sway and wiggle and writhe. Watch them dance.
Ok, maybe a little smile.
"Passive interaction. This is not normal for me. Am I the soul in this moment devoid of all the weight that existing has grown on me or am I merely a body divested of it's passions?"
Ned topples over into the grass, blinking owlishly at the approach of the Doc's shoes across the grassy turf.
Doc
What happened?
As Ned absorbs this newfound state of tranquility, their mentor rummages through the pockets of his lab coat until he finds a marker and swaps it out for the device. It's a dry erase marker, meant to be used on white boards and not his students' flesh, but --
"This is a practical demonstration on the necessity of Mind shields in field work," he says, making a red mark on the side of Margot's neck. "Stab."
He walks over to Ned and looks down on him, a frown knitting between his brows before he goes down onto one knee in the grass beside him.
"I figured this would be more useful than a lecture. Stab--" This as he leaves a red mark on Ned's midline, about where his aorta is. "--seeing as you two appear to think I talk just to hear myself talk."
When he leaves a few more red marks across Ned's chest for demonstrative purposes he does not verbalize what the action is supposed to symbolize. He does not tell them that he knows where to stab a person to make sure they bleed out quick and relatively silent, that scared young Nephandi and inexperienced Technocrats don't give two shits about suffering or doing so in silence. This isn't a lecture.
With a sigh he gives Ned one more 'stab' for good measure, then braces his weight on the younger man's sternum to give himself a boost standing again. One of his knees cracks as he stands. He caps the marker, pushes his glasses back up on his nose, and returns the marker to his pocket. They're both still calm to the point of not caring.
"'Joint strikes.'" One of his canned laughs, and he starts to walk back across the yard towards the house.
Margot
Incapable of being more or less bothered if Doc was approaching her with a marker or a knife, or even if he were Doc or a complete Stranger instead, Margot simply watched with mild, half-invested curiosity as he stepped up to her. Blinked when the lid popped off the marker and did nothing to stop the felt tip of the marker from staining her neck. Stab. She lifted a hand to hold it over the side of her neck and watched as he moved on to Ned next. Her ankles crossed and she sat down in the grass as well. That seemed the thing to do. Didn't you sit down if you were tagged out in childhood games?
"Mind shields," she repeated vaguely, and removed her hand from her neck to look down into her palm. Some of the still-damp ink had bled over and mottled her skin.
By this point Doc was already pushing himself up from a sprawled-out Ned and starting to walk away. A thought occurred somewhere in the back of her head, a vague dark shape behind the thick fog.
"So you could...?" She'd raised a hand up as though she were about to flag him down for a question, like a Professor as opposed to a Doctor. That hand made it up about halfway before the momentum slowed to a top; it bobbed lazy like it were afloat in the water and then lowered again with a small wave of dismissal. "Ah, nevermind."
It would occur to her to ask later.
Ned
The stabbing goes noticed. Some part of Ned's brain currently on lock down is trying to process the entire affair with blunt force reaction. It's mundane qualities come against the wall of resistance that has been forcibly constructed around those thoughts though and all he can do is blink owlishly and half-wince at the sudden pucker of coloured felt on the various parts of his framework. He glances down at each stab with a rudimentary sort of understanding of what is happening, tracing a line between what the Red means and the word 'Stab' signifies but unable to make the connection toward the utter violence it might portray had the market been a knife and the Doc been...well not the Doc.
"You do talk a lot." Admission of agreement. Said with matter-of-fact acceptance and certainty, before Ned is sucking in slow lungfuls of breath and blinking at the yard around them. No doubt there would be repercussions to this moment, most of which would fall under learning Mind as soon as absolutely fucking possible if it meant ensuring things like this couldn't, wouldn't or won't happen in the field.
"I have cake in the fridge." Ned brightens up, remembering the brief trip to the small bakery in town he'd luxuriated on earlier in the day. His smile is goofy, misplaced in the sea of red marks covering him there in the wet and cold grass.
Doc
Maybe if their fearless leader didn't have the intention to get back in the Jeep and return to work, he might have heeded the announcement of cake in the fridge and done something to further ruin the kids' day. As it stands, pretreating their laundry and vigorously scrubbing their skin with soap will wash away the evidence Dr. Sepúlveda left behind.
The calm clings to them as he mounts the steps. Once there, he starts to whistle a tune that might have stricken the both of them as obnoxious on an ordinary day. It doesn't strike them as anything today. They accept it and it continues as he removes the device from his bag and taps at the keys and unceremoniously drops whatever dampening effect he had just laid down on the backyard.
"Kay, bai!" he says, his voice pitched the way it tends to pitch when he is amusing himself at their expense, and then he disappears back inside the house.
October 11, 2016
October 4, 2016
September 15th, 2016 - Initiation - [Sadie] [NPC'd by jamie]
Margot
In the days following her meeting with Kiara, the email that she'd sent off to the address provided had been answered with a phone call. The first time she spoke with Sadie she did so for a solid twenty minutes before disconnecting the call. The woman on the other line wanted to be certain that Margot was confident in her choice of joining the Verbena, and was curious about whether she'd be joining a coven or not (the answer was a resounding 'no'). Based on these facts and other details from the conversation, the soul-sister of Kiara determined that she'd come to meet her and help with the Initiation.
The next day Margot received an email with flight details and the dates that this mysterious new Verbena woman would be in the city-- mid-September, it appeared. From there further plans were made. They needed to be free to speak and Wield if they so desired, and so Margot suggested her favorite fall back: hiking.
Mid-morning on a Thursday, Margot's car rolled into the parking lot at a trail head along the foothills of the stretch of mountains that boardered the Western frontier of the city. The day was overcast and promised for a thunderstorm later that night. The air was crisp and cool and the smell of rain was heavy on the earth and in the trees that framed the path that they would be walking. Margot had chosen a trail in particular that would bring them to a lake-- the significance of water for this meeting had not been missed.
She got out of her car dressed ready for the hike ahead of them-- jeans with frays at the cuffs and knees (function over fashion), dusty hiking boots, an olive-green hooded sweatshirt zipped up to the chest to show a triangle of black T-shirt underneath. She wore her hair down around her shoulders and had a red-and-blue patterned bandana tied around the top of her hair, which served the purposes of keeping her hair out of her eyes and forest debris off her scalp. A backpack, presumably packed with hiking supplies, was shouldered when retrieved from the back seat, and Margot glanced about for other cars, other faces, seeking Sadie out.
Sadie
Everyone says motherhood changes a person. No one believes it until they actually enter into this ancient and sacred bond. It does change a person, irreversibly. One cannot unbecome a mother.
Margot did not know Sadie before she became a mother. Kiara did. But then Kiara and Sadie knew each other before they had ever met, before they Awakened and clasped their bloodied hands in sisterhood. New York had changed them. Change is a necessary part of life. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it hurts so bad you don't think you can possibly survive.
Today's meeting isn't inherently about motherhood or sisterhood or any other sort of relationship that comes about as a result of being a woman. They are both women. That's about as much as they appear to have in common, at first.
Within a few moments of arriving, Margot gets the sense that she isn't alone. The sense of crystallization, both hardening and becoming clear, a strange euphoria underneath it.
The woman to whom the resonance belongs stands five-foot-nine even in bare feet, taller with the thickness of the soles of her boots. Her jeans look older than Margot, and she's wearing a halter top underneath a flannel shirt which she has tied rather than buttoning, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Her curly auburn hair is more or less controlled by a yellow bandanna tied into a headband, and where her aviator shades do not cover her face, freckles do.
"Margot?" Her speech gives away her hometown: London. When Margot confirms her identity, the older woman breaks out into a grin. "I thought that was you. You ready?"
Margot
The woman spotted in the parking lot as well was impressive in that she was tall, pretty, and out of the ordinary. The freckles and auburn hair matched with the dusky tone of her skin had Margot raising eyebrows curiously, had her suspicions arising-- she'd never seen a picture and didn't receive much of a description beyond 'you'll know her when you see her'.
Margot?
Certainly enough, the advice held true. Margot answered in turn with a small lift of her hand and polite smile in greeting, and her boots crunched on gravel to carry her toward the mouth of the trail to join the newly-met Verbena.
"Sadie, hi." Was she ready? Margot nodded her head a couple of times and adjusted the straps of her backpack across her shoulders. The faint mufffled sounds of water and glass came from within the canvas.
"Ready as I'm going to be." She nodded her head up the trail, as though to indicate that Sadie should begin leading the way. They were only several first steps into the trek before she launched her first question: "Has Kiara told you a lot about me and mine?" She means her Cabal, but doesn't call it that directly yet. There's more of a familial, a kinship implication with the use of the word 'mine' than anything else.
Sadie
That's a loaded question.
Though Sadie and her sister are two separate bodies, they share an Avatar. Folks like Margot's mentor would refer to the Avatar as fractured, but those who actually live in that state might argue to the contrary. They share Spheres, they share Quintessence, they even share sensation, if they open up their minds in order to do so. Not a lot of secrets exist between the two women, and when Margot asks what Kiara has told her, the taller woman's lip quirks upward in an expression she's doubtless familiar with by now. It's a mirror image of Kiara's.
"A bit, here and there," she says, and hooks her thumbs into the straps of her pack as the trail inclines. "I hear she wasn't wearing pants the night she met your friend Ned."
Margot
A faint blush-- no doubt the first of many blooms-- rose on Margot's cheeks at the last comment. 'A bit' was a vague answer, and the detail provided afterward suggested that a few stories had been told here and there. Anecdotes, from the sound of it, at least. It wasn't those she was worried about as much as the deeper details (like what she and Ned had done to Luke, for instance).
"Yeah, well, uh... I guess, if that's the life she wants to lead." Margot shrugged her shoulders and cast a glance ahead past Sadie. The trees were changing color in patches-- some still green, others gone golden and orange. A large one that they passed was caught between stages, with its leaves gone crimson around the edges with the chlorophyl still holding strong in the centers. The pattern on these leaves was appreciated enough that she paused to snap a picture from the case-covered phone she was keeping in the back pocket of her jeans. What? She was nineteen, after all.
As opposed to taking the time to 'share' the foliage right away, the phone was pocketed and the trek continued. Sadie wouldn't really even need to pause to wait for her; Margot's legs weren't the longest, but she was quick on them.
"She said you two were sisters? Doc explained that your Avatar's the same. That's neat." A pause. "Mine's a Goddess. Far as I can tell I'm the only initiate She has."
Sadie
"A goddess, huh?"
She doesn't sound as if she's placating the young Disparate, though her accent does give her an impression of detachment that the English upper crust have been instilling in their students for decades. Stiff upper lip and all that.
"If your Avatar had two bodies, you'd know. At least, unless the other hasn't Awakened yet, is my understanding. Do you see Her often, or just during Seekings?"
Margot
"I'm pretty sure that She's always there, in a part...."
The Witchling's brow furrowed while she thought about this. Ever since she Awoke something has always felt different and she hadn't been quite able to put her finger on it. Since she began to understand, learn, and expand in the Crafts and Spheres, though, it became more pronounced. Even now, as she stepped along the path up the side of a mountain, she could feel the extra something there in her very bones with each impact and motion.
"Started out as kind of a... superstition feeling, I guess. Like someone was looking at me or lurking in the shadows of my room at night. Since my Seeking, though, it's gotten more... solid, I guess. Maybe it's just because I understand it more, or maybe it's because I'm stronger and able to better recognize it." A finger lifted to itch at the inside of her ear, then that hand moved to adjust the bandana on her head just a little.
"I see Her in dreams sometimes. I didn't really see Her in my Seeking, but I felt her. I had to draw a bow, and I felt in that moment like from inside my arm someone was helping me draw the bow and steady my aim." Steady. She said the word and Sadie could put a finger on the sensation that paired up with the more obvious sticky-bloody-churning resonance. The combination of the two was more disconcerting than the bloodied imprint on the world was while standing alone. The controlled and measured carnage was more dangerous than a wild part of nature's cycle.
Sadie
Unsettling, sure. A Sleeper would be unsettled by Margot's resonance. As she grows more powerful, she will notice people reacting to her in ways that they now react to her mentor, who feels like waking up on a slab in his place of employment, or to Grace, who feels like a guillotine on her best days, or to Kiara, who feels like the rainforest.
Doc rarely talks about his Avatar because it is not as powerful as his intellect. He has had to find alternate ways of restoring his Quintessence, and the story he told of his Awakening was not as dramatic as Margot's or Ned's. He had walked through a wall following a shadow. Big deal.
"I've a friend, lives in Seattle," she says, "lovely fellow, Cultist, owns a vinyl store? I can't tell if he's having a go, but according to him, his Avatar looks like Kurt Cobain and is always hanging 'round the store, criticizing people's record choices and asking why they're so sober. No one else can see him. Mine's more like yours, I reckon. Feeling as if She's always around, becoming more familiar with Her the more I learn."
Margot
"Do you think She and Kiara and You are all the same thing? And maybe that's why you feel both of them all the time?"
Were Sadie to glance to the Initiate, she'd find Margot's wide eyes staring back at her, curious to know the answer and eager to hear of her theory was well-recieved.
Margot
"I mean, obviously you're connected, but like instead of being a Goddess the Avatar is both of you?"
Sadie
"It's funny..."
Said in a musing fashion that is antithetical to the notion of humor.
"You'd think our Avatars would feel the same, but Kiara's perception of our Avatar has always been that it's the wind, and I've always felt it was a river. I think it's something bigger than both of us."
Margot
"Maybe the earth...," Margot mused thoughtful and quiet. This idea that the same Avatar appeared differently to different people who were tied to it was a rather rich sort of food for thought.
A few minutes of quiet passed by, and the two women spent that time focused on a more steep section of trail. The scenery was pretty and worth the eye's attention during the time; a blanket of autumn colors stretching down the mountain side and out across the valley, the city's taller buildings stretching up over the treetops here and there and, further than that, the horizon and world East and beyond the city's limits.
When the trail leveled out a little more easily once more, Margot spoke up once more with the breath pulled back to her lungs.
"Her name is Andraste." Her Avatar, that is. The name may ring bells, given where the Verbena hailed from-- this was a Goddess of her own island's history and folklore, after all. "And I'm pretty sure that she's shaping me to be her vessel. Which means bringing War and seeing where the Victory will lie." She huffed the breath from her lungs for a better cleansing breath in, then unclipped the water thermos from the side of her backpack to seek out a drink. After wetting her throat and tongue she concluded the thought with something that might have been a concern were it not for the tone of grim duty that came with. "I'll need to fight. To burn and kill-- I've seen it in the dreams. Felt the flesh yielding under my fingertips and seen the battlefields."
Sadie
[LE PAUSE]
Margot
[TIME FOR AN HOUR BREAK]
Margot
.
Sadie
"Hmm."
There was a time not so long ago when the presence of a warrior in their midst would have meant security for the Circle. Man's capacity for violence has shaped the way modern society operates. Without war, borders would look much different, as would trade routes and highway systems. Plenty would be different if civilizations did not seek to obliterate each other.
Sadie does not believe in predestination. She is a Disciple of Entropy. Of course she doesn't.
"Are these dreams of what have happened, or what will happen?" The distinction is held in her inflection. "Your Avatar went through many previous lives before Awakening you. Don't forget that."
Margot
"What's supposed to happen." A hand swiped the water from her lower lip before returning to its default place at the strap of her backpack. The furrow to her brow was still there-- hadn't left the whole time that she'd been contemplating. She never fancied herself a philosophy major-- she'd worked out a path toward bio-ecology sciences for college. She'd aspired to do real work against global warming but would just be happy with some tenor one day. Yet here, even though she could create life (and not with her womb either), she found that Magick required so much more thought into the unknown and loosely structured.
"I don't feel like I'm looking into something in the future. Maybe it's a past life....? It feels linear." Note how frequent the use of the word 'feel' came up. She used magick with her bones and gut and intiution, even though she had grown up using her intellect for everything and letting intuition fall to the wayside.
"That would make sense, though... If She needs a horseman for Her Wars, then She'd just Awaken another when one dies." A pause, a scowl, and: "It feels like destiny, but that could just be Her finding ways to compel me. I've... not really ever considered myself violent before this."
Sadie
One of the unfortunate truths Margot will be able to one day say she took away from her apprenticeship with a Mad Scientist is that she had herself a well-rounded education. It may not seem like a benefit at this point, her brain wired for an education that would enable her to effect change and lift herself and possibly her family into a higher socioeconomic sphere, but science and philosophy have always been bedfellows.
Hell, on nights when the Doc is particularly snockered, he likes to talk, to himself if no one else is listening, about how art and science are really just man attempting to comprehend nature. The first time he sat the two of them down he had seemed disgruntled by having to tell her no shit they're talking philosophy at this stage in the game, the conversation concerned the very fabric of reality.
Kiara and Sadie are gentler teachers than Andrés is.
"If it's any consolation, I highly doubt She's chosen you to be the next Joan of Arc. Even if it feels as if She's compelling you to act or behave a certain way, you've still got a choice, you know? Seems to me these dreams you're having are more to prepare you."
Margot
"I'm not afraid."
Margot's tone had the defensiveness of her youth. The fact that Sadie was a gentler teacher than her full-time Mentor was not entirely missed by Margot, but it occurred to her more on a heart-and-soul level than a mind-and-brain one. She wouldn't be taking any knowing advantage of this insight just yet. That tone would have come out no matter who she was speaking to.
She wound up revoking it in the end anyways. A slight blush bloomed on her cheeks once again.
"Well, okay, I'm a little afraid. But it doesn't terrify me to go forward with Her. It's scarier to go back, anyways."
Sadie
"If you weren't afraid, I'd be afraid."
Humor lurks beneath the surface of near everything Sadie says. She has a sharper tongue than her sister, has always been quicker to say what was on her mind, but she's minding it around Margot. She remembers being new.
"Did Kiara tell you about the initiation ritual?"
Margot
The answer was a simple shake of the head. "No, not in any detail..."
Sadie
"Ours was intense."
Because of course she and Kiara went through theirs together. In addition to an Avatar and a mentor, they had shared a life once. Studying and testing and meditating. Literally braiding each others' hair. It's a wonder Sadie hasn't chosen to stay in Denver. She has a room in Kiara's apartment, but has left nothing in it.
"When you think you're ready, I'll have a chat with Kiara, put you through the ordeal proper. In the meantime..."
She trails off. Now is the time to ask questions, apparently.
Margot
In the meantime... Margot let that hang for a minute. The floor was clearly open for questions, even though the actual floor under their feet right now was no formal place. The dirt was packed from many feet for many years before, and their ceiling was treetops with branches and plentiful and colorful leaves.
Though, to think of it, this a formal setting for the Verbena, was it not?
The questions were thought over carefully, and the first one was preceded with another dolop of insight into her relationship with and the nature of her Magick.
"I dream about the oceans sometimes too. Always with rocks, always with steel clouds and storms in the sky too. The waters are always choppy and never shallow. That seems significant. That's a big part of why I reached out to you." To the Twisters of Fate, specifically.
Then: "What would my initiation look like? I mean... where will I go? How long will I be gone? ...I'd ask what's expected of me, but... well, it seems like it'd be inappropriate to study ahead for a test like this."
Sadie
"Of all the tests you've taken in your life, why would the one that could literally kill you be the one that's inappropriate to study ahead for?"
Margot
The question she received in return startled her a little-- her eyes widened and heavy brows flew up on her forehead. After blinking a few times, she replied:
"Well, because it's a test of this--" and she gestured to her heart first, but within the continued span of the motion dragged her hand down to her stomach. "And not a test of this--" and this time, she gestured to her mind.
"Either you're right for the Tradition or you're not... right?"
Sadie
"There's nine Traditions, and at least as many Crafts, if not more... how would you know if you're right for the Tradition, or vice versa, if you don't ask questions? Asking questions, being curious, that's how you know in your heart you're walking the right path, is how I see it."
Margot
"Ah."
She soaked that answer up for a dozen or so seconds, continued the hike on upward and upward. By this point they were cutting along a narrow cut deep through the dense trees along this mountainside, stretching all the way up toward the peaks where it was only interrupted by jagged faces of rock and cliff cutting through.
"I suppose... I mean, I've studied for Spheres, and I've learned about the Verbena against the other Traditions. I know that if I'm going to fit anywhere Verbena's the best bet, so I've already asked those questions. I figure at this point it's just a matter of whether the Verbena will have me or not."
Another pause, then. "It felt kind of like cheating to ask what to expect ahead of time. I thought maybe how you adapt and respond to the unknown might be part of the test, but..." Big hazel-colored eyes found Sadie's face (or the curly auburn back of her head, if that's what was presented instead by forward hiking). "Well, I mean, if it's okay to study...
"What happens in the initiation?"
Sadie
"It depends on the coven."
Sadie can imagine how old it must get, hearing the words 'it depends' so often in the first year of Awakened life. She was an apprentice once, knowing nothing but that her life as it was a few units of time ago.
"There are covens in some cities that have rigid initiation rites, or they won't even consider accepting you unless you can trace your lineage to other witches. In this case, once you're initiated into the tradition, you'll be on your own, yeah? You're probably going to want to make sure you're able to heal yourself, fortify your mind and spirit against corruption, things like that."
Margot
"I know Life and Spirit pretty well... they're what feel most natural to me, I think." She brushed a loose hair from her face, remembered the bandana on her head and did a better job of tucking it back the second time around instead. "Mind, though..." That trailed off, the faint flex of her brow explained enough right there.
"...if I'm not joining a coven, who do I go to to be Initiated?"
Sadie
Sadie holds out her arms and waggles her fingers, her nails painted black, smiling and flicking her eyebrows to create an unspoken tada! effect. Once the moment has passed, she returns her thumbs to the straps of her pack. The altitude has her breathing heavier, but she is still able to carry on a conversation.
"Or Kiara, since she lives here and I presume you're going to stay in the area if you succeed?"
Margot
The gesture that the woman made quirked a grin onto Margot's face. The good humor was infectious, and was a shift away from the more serious or irate nature of other discussions like this. Plus, wasn't it exciting to think of initiating?
More than that alone, though, was the relief. She had been envisioning some council of severe women and men who would argue quietly amongst themselves over her worthiness (apparently including over her lineage as well, and she had so little she wouldn't ever even apply that word to describe it). To know it would be Sadie or perhaps Kiara (or maybe both?) sounded way easier on her social anxiety.
"Uhh.... Yeah, I don't think we're going anywhere anytime soon. Just got into a house, you see." Another small grin punctuated the statement.
Sadie
"A house? Well, color me impressed."
Some light teasing as they approach the crest of the hill. The first of many, depending on how high up they decide to go today.
Margot
The serious mood felt lifted, or at least for the moments to come. They were atop the first crest, and before long they would be to the lake (the second crest was beyond that, the small lake cradled gentle between the two). Margot figured they could stop there, eat some hiking food, and continue or descend again from that point depending on how they were feeling (pretty much how a hike goes, right? see, some things could be very mundane for Mages too!).
It was around the time that they had been settled in on a sun-baked rockface that sat flat over a 10 square meter area. Margot was drinking water and munching on a banana at this point, and watching the way the wind rippled the water and searching for the subtle reflections of the cloudcover on the surface.
"Well," she said apropos of nothing, and looked to Sadie between banana bites. "What comes next? In initiation, I mean." Bite, munch. "I think... If I'm going to be with the Water and the West and Twisting Fate and all, it's probably more suiting if you were there for it?"
Sadie
Once at the lake, Sadie undoes her bandanna and, by extension, her curls. They spring up with the introduction of light breeze, and the Fate Witch kneels down by the water to soak the bandanna before tying it around her neck this time. She takes up two handfuls of clear water to splash her face clean, then runs her fingers through her hair and starts to braid it as she walks back to the rock face and sits cross-legged in front of Margot.
"Why?" she asks, because she wants to hear the answer.
Margot
"Because that's your faction."
Munch. She watched the braiding with mild interest, but mostly just watched Sadie overall as one does when in conversation with a person.
"It would make just as much sense if you and Kiara both worked to initiate someone together. It sounds like Initiation's going to be tied deep into Magick-- as well it should be, but if that were the case wouldn't it be... I don't know, stronger or more effective or something if both parts of the same Avatar were present?"
Sadie
"Sure."
Her braiding ends when the tail is lain over one shoulder, and she secures it with a band that has been around her wrist this entire time.
"What do you think would happen if Kiara oversaw the rite alone, just out of curiosity?"
Margot
Once more, cheeks went pink. She worried that Sadie would believe she was doubting Kiara's ability to oversee an initiation, and the Witchling would be loathe if that misconception made its way back to the Lifeweaving woman.
"Uhh..." She put the last bite of banana in her mouth to give herself time to recover. The peel was considered before returned to the bag that it was initially packed it. Biodegradable, sure but nobody wanted compost around their hiking trail.
"It would probably go about the same, I suppose."
Sadie
It's more likely that Sadie is just messing with the poor thing, or testing the edges of her decision to join the Verbenae. Looking for cracks. This may well be part of the initiation. Dynamic Essences have a way of figuring things out as they go along. It's the Primordials who like to have a mystery completely unveiled before they commit to anything.
"What made you decide you want to join a faction?"
Margot
The question was a good one to ask. Up until a month ago she didn't even know that Traditions even had factions. Her nose wrinkled a little with thought. The distraction allowed for a recovery from the flare of anxiousness over perception there.
"When I spoke with Kiara she explained the four factions to me. She didn't even finish the list of them, the Twisters of Fate were the second ones that she'd described, and what she said resounded with me more than the rest. The Water, the Entropy-focus-- Andraste's got domain over divination, too -- and she said that they're the most primal of the lot.
"It's not just that I think they sound the most badassed or whatever, either. She spoke of the Guardians, and they apparently have a thing with lineage and work with Matter and neither of those suit me. The Moon-Seekers, she said, work in cities and focus on Mind and that doesn't sound right. The Lifeweavers..."
She paused, frowning thoughtfully at this one.
"Kiara's a bloom of life. They weave Life. They're the healers, the makers, the flash of heat, the Big Bang of creation, yeah? Andraste knows heat, but it's just the fires that burn villages and cremate the fallen. In my magick I feel more like I'm unweaving and destroying. Rending the flesh instead of fixing it."
Sadie
"You have to be careful with that kind of magick, Margot. You don't want to end up accruing Jhor by destroying living Patterns, you know? You'll become a mindless killing machine instead of..."
Well, what are the Twisters of Fate, exactly?
"Well, instead of a solitary practitioner of an ancient Art. We live simply, and we try to make a difference in the world. I don't believe destruction is the answer to the earth's problems."
Margot
Jhor. She was aware of it, the word bolded on an ash-smudged page in her journal of notes from some of the first classes with Andrés. She'd never witnessed it or its effects directly, but any who spoke the word did so with the same warning that a devout Christian family may give about Satan. Beware it, for it will be your demise.
"I understand...," she said, low and simple.
"There is the molding after the breaking down..." That in a tone of trying to recover, to explain away the sense she'd tried to describe when she fiddled with Prime and the Gauntlet in her apartment and spent the better part of an hour in and out of pulling, fraying, destroying and burning threads between worlds. She'd also practiced building them back up again, but that truthfully did seem a lot like she was leaving bone shrapnel and charred iron where something different used to serve as brick-and-mortor instead.
Sadie
Sadie makes a clicking noise out of the corner of her mouth and shakes her head. Despite the solemnity of the conversation, she still seems buoyant.
"You can smash a plate and glue its pieces back together, but that don't mean you've got a plate, when you're done."
Margot
"Of course not." Again, that surprised blinking from across the still-warm surface of rock.
"I mean, if I wanted to have a plate I would just have the plate. I wouldn't be breaking the plate unless I wanted something else to be made from it."
Sadie
She gives a jerk of her chin towards Margot's backpack.
"Let's have that banana peel, yeah?"
Margot
The request had Margot believing a demonstration would be on the way. Even if she wasn't under that impression, though, she was willing to give up the banana peel as requested. It was fished out of the paper bag it had traveled up the mountain in, and Margot leaned forward with her free hand on the ground to pass the peel over.
Then she settled back with her legs crossed and back straight to watch attentively.
Sadie
By the time the two women came to a rest at the first crest in the foothills, the sun was beginning to warm the earth below and their pacing was an effort. The rest was welcome, and during the rest Sadie had taken from Margot a banana peel she had tucked into her bag to dispose of when they were back in civilization.
They had been speaking of breaking things down rather than fixing them. The visions Margot saw, uncertain of whether they were remembrances of lives pasts or portends of actions not yet come to pass. Her Avatar was a strong presence in her life, this all of the more experienced Mages she had met could concede on. Hers is a bloody Essence, tied into the earth and the stuff of the cosmos, darknesses the other Essences had no interest with.
Sadie can appreciate what it is to Work with destruction magick rather than healing. Her sister was a Lifeweaver, after all. Their Work was two halves of the same coin.
She held the banana peel in her hand as if it were a living being, drawing deep breaths as if she had to think of what she was to do next, and then she slung her pack off her back and removed from it a small bowl. A mortar. Now she places into it the peel, tamping it down with the pestle. To it she adds a bit of dirt. She hums as she does whatever it is she's doing.
"We're a difficult faction to stay in," Sadie says. "Most of our initiates have strong memories from past lives, or they're like you, with primordial Avatars. We don't have an official initiation, the way the Gardeners of the Tree do. If you want to be a Twister of Fate, that's all there is to it. Once you decide that's what you want, though, you'll be opening yourself up to visions. Quiet is a danger, as is becoming a Marauder." What she takes from the mortar is not a pulverized peel, but a small round black seed. "'Live simply, so others may live.' That's all there is to it. Do you think you can do that?"
Margot
To her credit, Margot played the part of a student well. While Sadie spoke and demonstrated, the younger Witch stayed quiet and attentive. Big eyes watched carefully when tools were revealed, and her big brain soaked up what was said.
Margot licked her lips. "Visions," she repeated thoughtfully. Her eyes focused toward the lake waters while she contemplated what that would be like. Visions of what? Would her Avatar make sure they were nothing but blood and iron? No doubt whatever she saw she would ultimately be compelled to pursue and understand.
When she looked back to Sadie she was wearing a small wry grin.
"After figuring out that I was a Witch, I started to see myself retiring as a hermit in the woods. Live and let live sounds doable." She paused, then added: "I expect it takes practice to learn what visions to explore and which ones not to give chase to."
Sadie
"There's a reason even the oldest Seer on Earth still refers to what we do as 'practice.'"
This is said with a touch of gentle teasing, like she's still not entirely accustomed to the idea of being a new witch's deciding factor as to whether she joins the tradition or not.
"In my experience, a little personal risk is to be expected when you're tugging on the strands of destiny. As long as you feel you're using your power and insight for good rather than gain, that makes it a bit easier to decide which visions to pursue."
Margot
Margot's head bobbed agreement to the advice given-- do good, and the rest of the path will become clear as you go. There then followed an awkward half-dozen seconds of quiet wherein the girl looked like she had something to say but wasn't entirely sure of how to frame it. Or she could just be feeling like it was her turn to contribute but she had nothing immediately and was floundering on the spot not to look like a fool.
"Umm."
Good start. "That's not a hard philosophy to subscribe to-- living and letting live, doing basically good but not inflicting yourself upon the world too much. Given what my Avatar does, what She wants me to be doing, I think tugging and reading destiny's a good skill to have."
Beat.
"What now?"
Sadie
"Pretty anticlimactic, isn't it?"
A lopsided grin cuts a bright swath in the freckled landscape of Sadie's face. It doesn't take much to pack up her mortar and pestle, return them to the backpack that doesn't have very much in it to begin with.
"That's pretty much all there is to it. You'll find your commitment to the tradition tested as you go through more Seekings, but for now, that's really all there is to it." A beat. "I've some mushrooms, if you'd care to drink tea to celebrate."
Margot
The surprise was apparent on the young witch's face when she was told the initiation was over. Pretty anti-climactic, wasn't it? Margot glanced to the left and the right, and she chuckled a little before nodding. "I figured there'd be a test of faith, or at least some kind of blood letting into a chalice given the way Kiara and Doc were setting up the Twisters of Fate."
Not to say that her committment to the Tradition would go untested. Sure, she would be without a coven, but from the sound of it Andraste would help to keep her in check throughout Seekings and Visions, and Margot had little doubt in her mind that Kiara would be watching her with a sharper eye from here on out.
Heavy dark eyebrows raised curiously when Sadie suggested a toast of tea with mushrooms.
"What kind of mushrooms...?," Margot asked suspiciously.
Sadie
It's a valid question. More than two hundred species of mushrooms contain the psychedelic substance psilocybin. But it's obvious from the way Margot asks the question that she isn't a regular user of anything more threatening than cannabis, and Sadie laughs without malice.
"I believe they're still referred to as shrooms," she says. "Entheogenic mushrooms, yeah? Or we can just keep going to the top of the next hill. S'up to you. It's your initiation."
She gets to her feet and waits for Margot to do the same. Tea or no tea, the older witch holds out the banana seed and deposits it in Margot's hand before they set off again.
In the days following her meeting with Kiara, the email that she'd sent off to the address provided had been answered with a phone call. The first time she spoke with Sadie she did so for a solid twenty minutes before disconnecting the call. The woman on the other line wanted to be certain that Margot was confident in her choice of joining the Verbena, and was curious about whether she'd be joining a coven or not (the answer was a resounding 'no'). Based on these facts and other details from the conversation, the soul-sister of Kiara determined that she'd come to meet her and help with the Initiation.
The next day Margot received an email with flight details and the dates that this mysterious new Verbena woman would be in the city-- mid-September, it appeared. From there further plans were made. They needed to be free to speak and Wield if they so desired, and so Margot suggested her favorite fall back: hiking.
Mid-morning on a Thursday, Margot's car rolled into the parking lot at a trail head along the foothills of the stretch of mountains that boardered the Western frontier of the city. The day was overcast and promised for a thunderstorm later that night. The air was crisp and cool and the smell of rain was heavy on the earth and in the trees that framed the path that they would be walking. Margot had chosen a trail in particular that would bring them to a lake-- the significance of water for this meeting had not been missed.
She got out of her car dressed ready for the hike ahead of them-- jeans with frays at the cuffs and knees (function over fashion), dusty hiking boots, an olive-green hooded sweatshirt zipped up to the chest to show a triangle of black T-shirt underneath. She wore her hair down around her shoulders and had a red-and-blue patterned bandana tied around the top of her hair, which served the purposes of keeping her hair out of her eyes and forest debris off her scalp. A backpack, presumably packed with hiking supplies, was shouldered when retrieved from the back seat, and Margot glanced about for other cars, other faces, seeking Sadie out.
Sadie
Everyone says motherhood changes a person. No one believes it until they actually enter into this ancient and sacred bond. It does change a person, irreversibly. One cannot unbecome a mother.
Margot did not know Sadie before she became a mother. Kiara did. But then Kiara and Sadie knew each other before they had ever met, before they Awakened and clasped their bloodied hands in sisterhood. New York had changed them. Change is a necessary part of life. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it hurts so bad you don't think you can possibly survive.
Today's meeting isn't inherently about motherhood or sisterhood or any other sort of relationship that comes about as a result of being a woman. They are both women. That's about as much as they appear to have in common, at first.
Within a few moments of arriving, Margot gets the sense that she isn't alone. The sense of crystallization, both hardening and becoming clear, a strange euphoria underneath it.
The woman to whom the resonance belongs stands five-foot-nine even in bare feet, taller with the thickness of the soles of her boots. Her jeans look older than Margot, and she's wearing a halter top underneath a flannel shirt which she has tied rather than buttoning, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Her curly auburn hair is more or less controlled by a yellow bandanna tied into a headband, and where her aviator shades do not cover her face, freckles do.
"Margot?" Her speech gives away her hometown: London. When Margot confirms her identity, the older woman breaks out into a grin. "I thought that was you. You ready?"
Margot
The woman spotted in the parking lot as well was impressive in that she was tall, pretty, and out of the ordinary. The freckles and auburn hair matched with the dusky tone of her skin had Margot raising eyebrows curiously, had her suspicions arising-- she'd never seen a picture and didn't receive much of a description beyond 'you'll know her when you see her'.
Margot?
Certainly enough, the advice held true. Margot answered in turn with a small lift of her hand and polite smile in greeting, and her boots crunched on gravel to carry her toward the mouth of the trail to join the newly-met Verbena.
"Sadie, hi." Was she ready? Margot nodded her head a couple of times and adjusted the straps of her backpack across her shoulders. The faint mufffled sounds of water and glass came from within the canvas.
"Ready as I'm going to be." She nodded her head up the trail, as though to indicate that Sadie should begin leading the way. They were only several first steps into the trek before she launched her first question: "Has Kiara told you a lot about me and mine?" She means her Cabal, but doesn't call it that directly yet. There's more of a familial, a kinship implication with the use of the word 'mine' than anything else.
Sadie
That's a loaded question.
Though Sadie and her sister are two separate bodies, they share an Avatar. Folks like Margot's mentor would refer to the Avatar as fractured, but those who actually live in that state might argue to the contrary. They share Spheres, they share Quintessence, they even share sensation, if they open up their minds in order to do so. Not a lot of secrets exist between the two women, and when Margot asks what Kiara has told her, the taller woman's lip quirks upward in an expression she's doubtless familiar with by now. It's a mirror image of Kiara's.
"A bit, here and there," she says, and hooks her thumbs into the straps of her pack as the trail inclines. "I hear she wasn't wearing pants the night she met your friend Ned."
Margot
A faint blush-- no doubt the first of many blooms-- rose on Margot's cheeks at the last comment. 'A bit' was a vague answer, and the detail provided afterward suggested that a few stories had been told here and there. Anecdotes, from the sound of it, at least. It wasn't those she was worried about as much as the deeper details (like what she and Ned had done to Luke, for instance).
"Yeah, well, uh... I guess, if that's the life she wants to lead." Margot shrugged her shoulders and cast a glance ahead past Sadie. The trees were changing color in patches-- some still green, others gone golden and orange. A large one that they passed was caught between stages, with its leaves gone crimson around the edges with the chlorophyl still holding strong in the centers. The pattern on these leaves was appreciated enough that she paused to snap a picture from the case-covered phone she was keeping in the back pocket of her jeans. What? She was nineteen, after all.
As opposed to taking the time to 'share' the foliage right away, the phone was pocketed and the trek continued. Sadie wouldn't really even need to pause to wait for her; Margot's legs weren't the longest, but she was quick on them.
"She said you two were sisters? Doc explained that your Avatar's the same. That's neat." A pause. "Mine's a Goddess. Far as I can tell I'm the only initiate She has."
Sadie
"A goddess, huh?"
She doesn't sound as if she's placating the young Disparate, though her accent does give her an impression of detachment that the English upper crust have been instilling in their students for decades. Stiff upper lip and all that.
"If your Avatar had two bodies, you'd know. At least, unless the other hasn't Awakened yet, is my understanding. Do you see Her often, or just during Seekings?"
Margot
"I'm pretty sure that She's always there, in a part...."
The Witchling's brow furrowed while she thought about this. Ever since she Awoke something has always felt different and she hadn't been quite able to put her finger on it. Since she began to understand, learn, and expand in the Crafts and Spheres, though, it became more pronounced. Even now, as she stepped along the path up the side of a mountain, she could feel the extra something there in her very bones with each impact and motion.
"Started out as kind of a... superstition feeling, I guess. Like someone was looking at me or lurking in the shadows of my room at night. Since my Seeking, though, it's gotten more... solid, I guess. Maybe it's just because I understand it more, or maybe it's because I'm stronger and able to better recognize it." A finger lifted to itch at the inside of her ear, then that hand moved to adjust the bandana on her head just a little.
"I see Her in dreams sometimes. I didn't really see Her in my Seeking, but I felt her. I had to draw a bow, and I felt in that moment like from inside my arm someone was helping me draw the bow and steady my aim." Steady. She said the word and Sadie could put a finger on the sensation that paired up with the more obvious sticky-bloody-churning resonance. The combination of the two was more disconcerting than the bloodied imprint on the world was while standing alone. The controlled and measured carnage was more dangerous than a wild part of nature's cycle.
Sadie
Unsettling, sure. A Sleeper would be unsettled by Margot's resonance. As she grows more powerful, she will notice people reacting to her in ways that they now react to her mentor, who feels like waking up on a slab in his place of employment, or to Grace, who feels like a guillotine on her best days, or to Kiara, who feels like the rainforest.
Doc rarely talks about his Avatar because it is not as powerful as his intellect. He has had to find alternate ways of restoring his Quintessence, and the story he told of his Awakening was not as dramatic as Margot's or Ned's. He had walked through a wall following a shadow. Big deal.
"I've a friend, lives in Seattle," she says, "lovely fellow, Cultist, owns a vinyl store? I can't tell if he's having a go, but according to him, his Avatar looks like Kurt Cobain and is always hanging 'round the store, criticizing people's record choices and asking why they're so sober. No one else can see him. Mine's more like yours, I reckon. Feeling as if She's always around, becoming more familiar with Her the more I learn."
Margot
"Do you think She and Kiara and You are all the same thing? And maybe that's why you feel both of them all the time?"
Were Sadie to glance to the Initiate, she'd find Margot's wide eyes staring back at her, curious to know the answer and eager to hear of her theory was well-recieved.
Margot
"I mean, obviously you're connected, but like instead of being a Goddess the Avatar is both of you?"
Sadie
"It's funny..."
Said in a musing fashion that is antithetical to the notion of humor.
"You'd think our Avatars would feel the same, but Kiara's perception of our Avatar has always been that it's the wind, and I've always felt it was a river. I think it's something bigger than both of us."
Margot
"Maybe the earth...," Margot mused thoughtful and quiet. This idea that the same Avatar appeared differently to different people who were tied to it was a rather rich sort of food for thought.
A few minutes of quiet passed by, and the two women spent that time focused on a more steep section of trail. The scenery was pretty and worth the eye's attention during the time; a blanket of autumn colors stretching down the mountain side and out across the valley, the city's taller buildings stretching up over the treetops here and there and, further than that, the horizon and world East and beyond the city's limits.
When the trail leveled out a little more easily once more, Margot spoke up once more with the breath pulled back to her lungs.
"Her name is Andraste." Her Avatar, that is. The name may ring bells, given where the Verbena hailed from-- this was a Goddess of her own island's history and folklore, after all. "And I'm pretty sure that she's shaping me to be her vessel. Which means bringing War and seeing where the Victory will lie." She huffed the breath from her lungs for a better cleansing breath in, then unclipped the water thermos from the side of her backpack to seek out a drink. After wetting her throat and tongue she concluded the thought with something that might have been a concern were it not for the tone of grim duty that came with. "I'll need to fight. To burn and kill-- I've seen it in the dreams. Felt the flesh yielding under my fingertips and seen the battlefields."
Sadie
[LE PAUSE]
Margot
[TIME FOR AN HOUR BREAK]
Margot
.
Sadie
"Hmm."
There was a time not so long ago when the presence of a warrior in their midst would have meant security for the Circle. Man's capacity for violence has shaped the way modern society operates. Without war, borders would look much different, as would trade routes and highway systems. Plenty would be different if civilizations did not seek to obliterate each other.
Sadie does not believe in predestination. She is a Disciple of Entropy. Of course she doesn't.
"Are these dreams of what have happened, or what will happen?" The distinction is held in her inflection. "Your Avatar went through many previous lives before Awakening you. Don't forget that."
Margot
"What's supposed to happen." A hand swiped the water from her lower lip before returning to its default place at the strap of her backpack. The furrow to her brow was still there-- hadn't left the whole time that she'd been contemplating. She never fancied herself a philosophy major-- she'd worked out a path toward bio-ecology sciences for college. She'd aspired to do real work against global warming but would just be happy with some tenor one day. Yet here, even though she could create life (and not with her womb either), she found that Magick required so much more thought into the unknown and loosely structured.
"I don't feel like I'm looking into something in the future. Maybe it's a past life....? It feels linear." Note how frequent the use of the word 'feel' came up. She used magick with her bones and gut and intiution, even though she had grown up using her intellect for everything and letting intuition fall to the wayside.
"That would make sense, though... If She needs a horseman for Her Wars, then She'd just Awaken another when one dies." A pause, a scowl, and: "It feels like destiny, but that could just be Her finding ways to compel me. I've... not really ever considered myself violent before this."
Sadie
One of the unfortunate truths Margot will be able to one day say she took away from her apprenticeship with a Mad Scientist is that she had herself a well-rounded education. It may not seem like a benefit at this point, her brain wired for an education that would enable her to effect change and lift herself and possibly her family into a higher socioeconomic sphere, but science and philosophy have always been bedfellows.
Hell, on nights when the Doc is particularly snockered, he likes to talk, to himself if no one else is listening, about how art and science are really just man attempting to comprehend nature. The first time he sat the two of them down he had seemed disgruntled by having to tell her no shit they're talking philosophy at this stage in the game, the conversation concerned the very fabric of reality.
Kiara and Sadie are gentler teachers than Andrés is.
"If it's any consolation, I highly doubt She's chosen you to be the next Joan of Arc. Even if it feels as if She's compelling you to act or behave a certain way, you've still got a choice, you know? Seems to me these dreams you're having are more to prepare you."
Margot
"I'm not afraid."
Margot's tone had the defensiveness of her youth. The fact that Sadie was a gentler teacher than her full-time Mentor was not entirely missed by Margot, but it occurred to her more on a heart-and-soul level than a mind-and-brain one. She wouldn't be taking any knowing advantage of this insight just yet. That tone would have come out no matter who she was speaking to.
She wound up revoking it in the end anyways. A slight blush bloomed on her cheeks once again.
"Well, okay, I'm a little afraid. But it doesn't terrify me to go forward with Her. It's scarier to go back, anyways."
Sadie
"If you weren't afraid, I'd be afraid."
Humor lurks beneath the surface of near everything Sadie says. She has a sharper tongue than her sister, has always been quicker to say what was on her mind, but she's minding it around Margot. She remembers being new.
"Did Kiara tell you about the initiation ritual?"
Margot
The answer was a simple shake of the head. "No, not in any detail..."
Sadie
"Ours was intense."
Because of course she and Kiara went through theirs together. In addition to an Avatar and a mentor, they had shared a life once. Studying and testing and meditating. Literally braiding each others' hair. It's a wonder Sadie hasn't chosen to stay in Denver. She has a room in Kiara's apartment, but has left nothing in it.
"When you think you're ready, I'll have a chat with Kiara, put you through the ordeal proper. In the meantime..."
She trails off. Now is the time to ask questions, apparently.
Margot
In the meantime... Margot let that hang for a minute. The floor was clearly open for questions, even though the actual floor under their feet right now was no formal place. The dirt was packed from many feet for many years before, and their ceiling was treetops with branches and plentiful and colorful leaves.
Though, to think of it, this a formal setting for the Verbena, was it not?
The questions were thought over carefully, and the first one was preceded with another dolop of insight into her relationship with and the nature of her Magick.
"I dream about the oceans sometimes too. Always with rocks, always with steel clouds and storms in the sky too. The waters are always choppy and never shallow. That seems significant. That's a big part of why I reached out to you." To the Twisters of Fate, specifically.
Then: "What would my initiation look like? I mean... where will I go? How long will I be gone? ...I'd ask what's expected of me, but... well, it seems like it'd be inappropriate to study ahead for a test like this."
Sadie
"Of all the tests you've taken in your life, why would the one that could literally kill you be the one that's inappropriate to study ahead for?"
Margot
The question she received in return startled her a little-- her eyes widened and heavy brows flew up on her forehead. After blinking a few times, she replied:
"Well, because it's a test of this--" and she gestured to her heart first, but within the continued span of the motion dragged her hand down to her stomach. "And not a test of this--" and this time, she gestured to her mind.
"Either you're right for the Tradition or you're not... right?"
Sadie
"There's nine Traditions, and at least as many Crafts, if not more... how would you know if you're right for the Tradition, or vice versa, if you don't ask questions? Asking questions, being curious, that's how you know in your heart you're walking the right path, is how I see it."
Margot
"Ah."
She soaked that answer up for a dozen or so seconds, continued the hike on upward and upward. By this point they were cutting along a narrow cut deep through the dense trees along this mountainside, stretching all the way up toward the peaks where it was only interrupted by jagged faces of rock and cliff cutting through.
"I suppose... I mean, I've studied for Spheres, and I've learned about the Verbena against the other Traditions. I know that if I'm going to fit anywhere Verbena's the best bet, so I've already asked those questions. I figure at this point it's just a matter of whether the Verbena will have me or not."
Another pause, then. "It felt kind of like cheating to ask what to expect ahead of time. I thought maybe how you adapt and respond to the unknown might be part of the test, but..." Big hazel-colored eyes found Sadie's face (or the curly auburn back of her head, if that's what was presented instead by forward hiking). "Well, I mean, if it's okay to study...
"What happens in the initiation?"
Sadie
"It depends on the coven."
Sadie can imagine how old it must get, hearing the words 'it depends' so often in the first year of Awakened life. She was an apprentice once, knowing nothing but that her life as it was a few units of time ago.
"There are covens in some cities that have rigid initiation rites, or they won't even consider accepting you unless you can trace your lineage to other witches. In this case, once you're initiated into the tradition, you'll be on your own, yeah? You're probably going to want to make sure you're able to heal yourself, fortify your mind and spirit against corruption, things like that."
Margot
"I know Life and Spirit pretty well... they're what feel most natural to me, I think." She brushed a loose hair from her face, remembered the bandana on her head and did a better job of tucking it back the second time around instead. "Mind, though..." That trailed off, the faint flex of her brow explained enough right there.
"...if I'm not joining a coven, who do I go to to be Initiated?"
Sadie
Sadie holds out her arms and waggles her fingers, her nails painted black, smiling and flicking her eyebrows to create an unspoken tada! effect. Once the moment has passed, she returns her thumbs to the straps of her pack. The altitude has her breathing heavier, but she is still able to carry on a conversation.
"Or Kiara, since she lives here and I presume you're going to stay in the area if you succeed?"
Margot
The gesture that the woman made quirked a grin onto Margot's face. The good humor was infectious, and was a shift away from the more serious or irate nature of other discussions like this. Plus, wasn't it exciting to think of initiating?
More than that alone, though, was the relief. She had been envisioning some council of severe women and men who would argue quietly amongst themselves over her worthiness (apparently including over her lineage as well, and she had so little she wouldn't ever even apply that word to describe it). To know it would be Sadie or perhaps Kiara (or maybe both?) sounded way easier on her social anxiety.
"Uhh.... Yeah, I don't think we're going anywhere anytime soon. Just got into a house, you see." Another small grin punctuated the statement.
Sadie
"A house? Well, color me impressed."
Some light teasing as they approach the crest of the hill. The first of many, depending on how high up they decide to go today.
Margot
The serious mood felt lifted, or at least for the moments to come. They were atop the first crest, and before long they would be to the lake (the second crest was beyond that, the small lake cradled gentle between the two). Margot figured they could stop there, eat some hiking food, and continue or descend again from that point depending on how they were feeling (pretty much how a hike goes, right? see, some things could be very mundane for Mages too!).
It was around the time that they had been settled in on a sun-baked rockface that sat flat over a 10 square meter area. Margot was drinking water and munching on a banana at this point, and watching the way the wind rippled the water and searching for the subtle reflections of the cloudcover on the surface.
"Well," she said apropos of nothing, and looked to Sadie between banana bites. "What comes next? In initiation, I mean." Bite, munch. "I think... If I'm going to be with the Water and the West and Twisting Fate and all, it's probably more suiting if you were there for it?"
Sadie
Once at the lake, Sadie undoes her bandanna and, by extension, her curls. They spring up with the introduction of light breeze, and the Fate Witch kneels down by the water to soak the bandanna before tying it around her neck this time. She takes up two handfuls of clear water to splash her face clean, then runs her fingers through her hair and starts to braid it as she walks back to the rock face and sits cross-legged in front of Margot.
"Why?" she asks, because she wants to hear the answer.
Margot
"Because that's your faction."
Munch. She watched the braiding with mild interest, but mostly just watched Sadie overall as one does when in conversation with a person.
"It would make just as much sense if you and Kiara both worked to initiate someone together. It sounds like Initiation's going to be tied deep into Magick-- as well it should be, but if that were the case wouldn't it be... I don't know, stronger or more effective or something if both parts of the same Avatar were present?"
Sadie
"Sure."
Her braiding ends when the tail is lain over one shoulder, and she secures it with a band that has been around her wrist this entire time.
"What do you think would happen if Kiara oversaw the rite alone, just out of curiosity?"
Margot
Once more, cheeks went pink. She worried that Sadie would believe she was doubting Kiara's ability to oversee an initiation, and the Witchling would be loathe if that misconception made its way back to the Lifeweaving woman.
"Uhh..." She put the last bite of banana in her mouth to give herself time to recover. The peel was considered before returned to the bag that it was initially packed it. Biodegradable, sure but nobody wanted compost around their hiking trail.
"It would probably go about the same, I suppose."
Sadie
It's more likely that Sadie is just messing with the poor thing, or testing the edges of her decision to join the Verbenae. Looking for cracks. This may well be part of the initiation. Dynamic Essences have a way of figuring things out as they go along. It's the Primordials who like to have a mystery completely unveiled before they commit to anything.
"What made you decide you want to join a faction?"
Margot
The question was a good one to ask. Up until a month ago she didn't even know that Traditions even had factions. Her nose wrinkled a little with thought. The distraction allowed for a recovery from the flare of anxiousness over perception there.
"When I spoke with Kiara she explained the four factions to me. She didn't even finish the list of them, the Twisters of Fate were the second ones that she'd described, and what she said resounded with me more than the rest. The Water, the Entropy-focus-- Andraste's got domain over divination, too -- and she said that they're the most primal of the lot.
"It's not just that I think they sound the most badassed or whatever, either. She spoke of the Guardians, and they apparently have a thing with lineage and work with Matter and neither of those suit me. The Moon-Seekers, she said, work in cities and focus on Mind and that doesn't sound right. The Lifeweavers..."
She paused, frowning thoughtfully at this one.
"Kiara's a bloom of life. They weave Life. They're the healers, the makers, the flash of heat, the Big Bang of creation, yeah? Andraste knows heat, but it's just the fires that burn villages and cremate the fallen. In my magick I feel more like I'm unweaving and destroying. Rending the flesh instead of fixing it."
Sadie
"You have to be careful with that kind of magick, Margot. You don't want to end up accruing Jhor by destroying living Patterns, you know? You'll become a mindless killing machine instead of..."
Well, what are the Twisters of Fate, exactly?
"Well, instead of a solitary practitioner of an ancient Art. We live simply, and we try to make a difference in the world. I don't believe destruction is the answer to the earth's problems."
Margot
Jhor. She was aware of it, the word bolded on an ash-smudged page in her journal of notes from some of the first classes with Andrés. She'd never witnessed it or its effects directly, but any who spoke the word did so with the same warning that a devout Christian family may give about Satan. Beware it, for it will be your demise.
"I understand...," she said, low and simple.
"There is the molding after the breaking down..." That in a tone of trying to recover, to explain away the sense she'd tried to describe when she fiddled with Prime and the Gauntlet in her apartment and spent the better part of an hour in and out of pulling, fraying, destroying and burning threads between worlds. She'd also practiced building them back up again, but that truthfully did seem a lot like she was leaving bone shrapnel and charred iron where something different used to serve as brick-and-mortor instead.
Sadie
Sadie makes a clicking noise out of the corner of her mouth and shakes her head. Despite the solemnity of the conversation, she still seems buoyant.
"You can smash a plate and glue its pieces back together, but that don't mean you've got a plate, when you're done."
Margot
"Of course not." Again, that surprised blinking from across the still-warm surface of rock.
"I mean, if I wanted to have a plate I would just have the plate. I wouldn't be breaking the plate unless I wanted something else to be made from it."
Sadie
She gives a jerk of her chin towards Margot's backpack.
"Let's have that banana peel, yeah?"
Margot
The request had Margot believing a demonstration would be on the way. Even if she wasn't under that impression, though, she was willing to give up the banana peel as requested. It was fished out of the paper bag it had traveled up the mountain in, and Margot leaned forward with her free hand on the ground to pass the peel over.
Then she settled back with her legs crossed and back straight to watch attentively.
Sadie
By the time the two women came to a rest at the first crest in the foothills, the sun was beginning to warm the earth below and their pacing was an effort. The rest was welcome, and during the rest Sadie had taken from Margot a banana peel she had tucked into her bag to dispose of when they were back in civilization.
They had been speaking of breaking things down rather than fixing them. The visions Margot saw, uncertain of whether they were remembrances of lives pasts or portends of actions not yet come to pass. Her Avatar was a strong presence in her life, this all of the more experienced Mages she had met could concede on. Hers is a bloody Essence, tied into the earth and the stuff of the cosmos, darknesses the other Essences had no interest with.
Sadie can appreciate what it is to Work with destruction magick rather than healing. Her sister was a Lifeweaver, after all. Their Work was two halves of the same coin.
She held the banana peel in her hand as if it were a living being, drawing deep breaths as if she had to think of what she was to do next, and then she slung her pack off her back and removed from it a small bowl. A mortar. Now she places into it the peel, tamping it down with the pestle. To it she adds a bit of dirt. She hums as she does whatever it is she's doing.
"We're a difficult faction to stay in," Sadie says. "Most of our initiates have strong memories from past lives, or they're like you, with primordial Avatars. We don't have an official initiation, the way the Gardeners of the Tree do. If you want to be a Twister of Fate, that's all there is to it. Once you decide that's what you want, though, you'll be opening yourself up to visions. Quiet is a danger, as is becoming a Marauder." What she takes from the mortar is not a pulverized peel, but a small round black seed. "'Live simply, so others may live.' That's all there is to it. Do you think you can do that?"
Margot
To her credit, Margot played the part of a student well. While Sadie spoke and demonstrated, the younger Witch stayed quiet and attentive. Big eyes watched carefully when tools were revealed, and her big brain soaked up what was said.
Margot licked her lips. "Visions," she repeated thoughtfully. Her eyes focused toward the lake waters while she contemplated what that would be like. Visions of what? Would her Avatar make sure they were nothing but blood and iron? No doubt whatever she saw she would ultimately be compelled to pursue and understand.
When she looked back to Sadie she was wearing a small wry grin.
"After figuring out that I was a Witch, I started to see myself retiring as a hermit in the woods. Live and let live sounds doable." She paused, then added: "I expect it takes practice to learn what visions to explore and which ones not to give chase to."
Sadie
"There's a reason even the oldest Seer on Earth still refers to what we do as 'practice.'"
This is said with a touch of gentle teasing, like she's still not entirely accustomed to the idea of being a new witch's deciding factor as to whether she joins the tradition or not.
"In my experience, a little personal risk is to be expected when you're tugging on the strands of destiny. As long as you feel you're using your power and insight for good rather than gain, that makes it a bit easier to decide which visions to pursue."
Margot
Margot's head bobbed agreement to the advice given-- do good, and the rest of the path will become clear as you go. There then followed an awkward half-dozen seconds of quiet wherein the girl looked like she had something to say but wasn't entirely sure of how to frame it. Or she could just be feeling like it was her turn to contribute but she had nothing immediately and was floundering on the spot not to look like a fool.
"Umm."
Good start. "That's not a hard philosophy to subscribe to-- living and letting live, doing basically good but not inflicting yourself upon the world too much. Given what my Avatar does, what She wants me to be doing, I think tugging and reading destiny's a good skill to have."
Beat.
"What now?"
Sadie
"Pretty anticlimactic, isn't it?"
A lopsided grin cuts a bright swath in the freckled landscape of Sadie's face. It doesn't take much to pack up her mortar and pestle, return them to the backpack that doesn't have very much in it to begin with.
"That's pretty much all there is to it. You'll find your commitment to the tradition tested as you go through more Seekings, but for now, that's really all there is to it." A beat. "I've some mushrooms, if you'd care to drink tea to celebrate."
Margot
The surprise was apparent on the young witch's face when she was told the initiation was over. Pretty anti-climactic, wasn't it? Margot glanced to the left and the right, and she chuckled a little before nodding. "I figured there'd be a test of faith, or at least some kind of blood letting into a chalice given the way Kiara and Doc were setting up the Twisters of Fate."
Not to say that her committment to the Tradition would go untested. Sure, she would be without a coven, but from the sound of it Andraste would help to keep her in check throughout Seekings and Visions, and Margot had little doubt in her mind that Kiara would be watching her with a sharper eye from here on out.
Heavy dark eyebrows raised curiously when Sadie suggested a toast of tea with mushrooms.
"What kind of mushrooms...?," Margot asked suspiciously.
Sadie
It's a valid question. More than two hundred species of mushrooms contain the psychedelic substance psilocybin. But it's obvious from the way Margot asks the question that she isn't a regular user of anything more threatening than cannabis, and Sadie laughs without malice.
"I believe they're still referred to as shrooms," she says. "Entheogenic mushrooms, yeah? Or we can just keep going to the top of the next hill. S'up to you. It's your initiation."
She gets to her feet and waits for Margot to do the same. Tea or no tea, the older witch holds out the banana seed and deposits it in Margot's hand before they set off again.
September 11th, 2016 - Pants! A Meeting [Ned, Doc, Kiara]
Ned
Things went about as expected on all ends:
The Kids came in, yelling after the Doc, saying things like
"it's important"
"Really important"
"Not 'The Kids are at it again' important but ACTUALLY important..."
And then they retired to the spooky library, crawling through the various tomes and trying their best to discover something in relation to a bunch of info. they have little idea what to do with just yet.
Fade IN: INT- Library
"-Part of me actually thinks this isn't all as bad as it sounds....though it's also the part that wants to drop all this and go get comfort ice cream so I'm going out on a limb to say that's my denial talking..."
Margot
Library: dusty. Margot: dressed in hiking clothes with a surprisingly minimal amount of blood and ash on her face after a summons. She was standing near a small display table that was empty save for a particularly heavy book with yellowed old pages that she'd pulled from the shelf. She was skimming pages and chapter headings for key words while they spoke.
"It's probably exactly as bad as it seems, but that doesn't mean we can't have ice cream."
Then, more to Doc, more in explanation:
"I think they're sacrificing to or making deals with some pretty powerful spirit."
Sepúlveda
Wardrobe note: Sepúlveda is wearing a pair of corduroys because the kids were protesting his first choice of clothing, which was nothing. Corduroys and his glasses. Nothing else. You're welcome.
"If one of you doesn't start from the beginning and tell me what happened in the next, oh--" He checks his imaginary watch. "--thirty seconds, I'm going to beat the shit out of both of you with the proverbial limb."
Ned
"We needed to get more information about the victims of this supposed serial killer running around killing Apprentices. We summoned Jacqueline Paix's spirit. Or Margot did. In the same area she died at. She was...remarkably calm out of the gate, but also displaying some really intense...side effects. Very cold. Ice forming where she was walking, cold."
"We questioned her about a few things and she told us a bunch of stuff to do with the Victims. Namely that there is apparently a Freemason type society called the Order of the Falcon. Secret society sort of stuff. One of the victims was a Member....Chet La Croix...and Jacqueline herself used to do work for them, training some of their members in an unknown occupation."
"She told us the woman who found her, Evelyn Murray, was someone she knew and that Jacqueline, was keeping a secret for Evelyn that she could not divulge to us. Outright refused to the point of being upset."
"That's...when...uhh....well Margot can probably explain this part better than me."
Margot
"The secret was more important than that."
This was how Margot explained-- by starting out with a correction. Thank goodness she didn't have big teeth or bushy hair or the comparisons would actually never end.
"She wanted to tell us but was being prevented by an... enchantment, I think. She came across this Evelyn woman and discovered something that she shouldn't have seen, and I think to keep her quiet she was given to this Keeper of Secrets spirit. I think the pact of the secret's, like.... binding on a spiritual level.
"When she tried to tell us what happened when she died she'd say she couldn't say. Or that 'it couldn't be said'. She wasn't able. And when she finally got close she mentioned the Evelyn woman, and she was just so hurt by the betrayal-- I think they were cabalmates. She challenged the secret in telling us that much and at that point this white-white hand came through the Gauntlet and grabbed her and... like... pulled her back into its being. And it said "Know that your word is your bond. Woe to those who would dare steal from the spirits that which is theirs. This is the wisdom of the Keeper of Secrets.""
She blinked owlishly up from the pages of her book before concluding. "I think this Order of the Falcon is trying to do something really stupid and harness this Keeper of Secrets for something, and I think apprentices keep getting in the way."
Sepúlveda
He's not amused. Not that he expected the kids to heed him when he said he didn't want them involved in this, but he's still not amused.
... and I think apprentices keep getting in the way.
This earns her a Look over the top of his glasses, which he pushes up higher on the bridge of his nose as he digests this.
"And, ah, how did you come to know Jacqueline Paix's name?"
Margot
A faint pink blush at the look she got from Doc over the rim of his glasses, and Margot tucked her gaze back down to the pages in front of her. Licked the pad of her thumb and flipped through a few more pages with the added traction provided.
"I... uh.... might have pulled an all nighter a little while ago reading into articles and stuff."
Ned
"I got it from Grace. Leveled the field for me in some detail a month or so back alongside the other victim names. Grace also gave me some info. regarding the Order of the Falcon but I don't think she knows about them. Just some of their details and the name of one of their more recent recruits."
Ned's thumbing through a few texts and volumes, frowning or making a face at the useless info. he finds.
"We might be new to this but we're not test tube kids. You're not going to be able to keep us out of affairs, especially if it concerns young workers Dying." Ned pauses in his reading to regard the Doc, a frank and opposing bit of honesty to Margot's shame-faced admittance.
"Right now we've got a few hypothesis' that differ but mostly just three directions we both think could be investigated further..."
Sepúlveda
Just some of their details and the name of one of their more recent recruits.
"Note to self: yell at Grace."
Something something test tube kids. That look Ned gives him is greeted with dubious raised eyebrows. An unspoken Yeah, right. If he really wanted to impede their free will, he would find a way. Trust.
Anyway:
"And which directions might those be."
Ned
"The cold that was coming off of Jacqueline. It was intense. Otherworldly intense but not resonance related. She's the only one of the victims that had it, despite the murders all having happened with similar MOs: gunshots. Jacqueline died though, of hypothermia, having been shot, after she died at that....While standing up, no less."
Cue baffled mask
"The Cold though, was something attached to this Keeper of Secrets. The same white arm that came out of the other side. Same....frequency? Feeling, really. Not just cold but....complete. Void. Space between the stars sort of nothingness if I could draw a little on Lovecraft and she was tangled up with this Order of the Falcon somehow...alongside at least one of the other Victims..."
"Secret Society plus weird, cold nothing spirit bargains plus young workers that might not know any better..."
Ned's uncomfortable. A little squirming
Ned
Squirming a little while leaving the sentence hanging in the air.^
Margot
"Jacqueline mentioned that the Order of the Falcon has special 'hunts' that are requred before you can ascend to the higher ranks. There's a chance those hunts might have something to do with the other dead apprentices. I just find it uncanny that there was a new body found month after month like that.... the timing doesn't seem coincidental with people just happening to uncover mysteries."
A pause, a glance at either of them, and then Margot cleared her throat.
"Well, you'd think people working with a Keeper of Secrets would be better about keeping secrets."
Sepúlveda
"You two are going to give me an ulcer."
No they're not. He's a Disciple of Life. Ulcers fear him.
"Sounds like Nephandi to me, but I don't know shit about spirits. What're you knuckleheads planning to do next?"
Ned
".....Tell you was step one. If you didn't have any bright ideas beyond 'Science!' I was going to drop Nick and Pen a line....and then Grace, to see what more can be fond out about Evelyn, This Order of the Falcon and this Keeper of Secrets..."
Pause.
"...Finding Evelyn and figuring out what the fuck seemed like a pretty solid bet...but if Nephandi is the word for all of this...Well...we figured it was time to toss this up to the higher Ranks..."
Kiara
Creak.
Movement in the dark. Isn't this how every low budget horror movie begins? Our heroes happened upon unawares? Not ... quite. The sound of shuffling is accompanied by the door to the library being nudged open and a figure filling it; her shadow filling the frame. Her partially naked figure, as a small aside. Kiara Woolfe was standing there with her dark hair tousled and wild around her shoulders; her body, at least until mid thigh, concealed by one of the good doctor's shirts.
She'd rolled the sleeves up, the Verbena and stood there with an apple in hand; a generous portion already sampled.
Dark eyes took in the scene. She settled a shoulder into the frame and let her mouth drift upward at one corner. "Sorry, am I interrupting?" She knew she was, the eyes said it well enough. Still, there was a touch of interest in the voice, the study she gave each figure. She felt like a surge of Spring had just set foot into their space. Earth and blood and the steady pulse of thriving, blooming things.
(a witch by any other name, then).
Sepúlveda
"Kiara! Get over here."
He's so charming, it's no wonder Kiara willingly gives up her free time to spend it with Andrés. He extends an arm and gestures with his free hand like he's going for optimum secondhand embarrassment.
To the kids: "Do not try to find Evelyn. If you two end up in my morgue, I'll reanimate you out of spite." To Kiara: "Does the name 'Keeper of Secrets' mean anything to you?"
Margot
The sudden creak and appearance of Kiara had startled the young witch-- shoulders and spine jerked and her face turned quick to the doorway. If her cheeks had been pink before they went all but magenta now. Good thing it was dimly lit in the library, and she was tucked near the shelves with her book and table.
"Not really....," to whether she was interrupting. The Good Doctor had gestured for Kiara to come join him where he was sitting in his chair.
To Doc:
"I had no plans to go knocking on her door." And then her attention shifted back down to the pages in front of her. Or, more, her eyes did. She was listening intently to hear what wisdom Kiara might have to share about the Keeper of Secrets.
Ned
"We need a dress code..."
Ned murmurs, keeping his eyes firmly in the book infront of him while Margot makes with the further explanation.
"I was going to leave Evelyn to Pen and Nick. She's important enough and good enough to have put Jacqueline in a bind and too much of an unknown for Margot and I to be that stupid about it. We give Grace the name of the Order and she can do her techno jam and maybe find out some more names and people or even a purpose."
Then Ned is listening intently, eyes in the book in front of him much as Margot, waiting for Kiara's response to the million dollar question.
Kiara
The pagan was barefoot (of course she was, somehow, that made sense). There was a thin chain around her neck that winked from beneath the folds of Andrés' shirt and while she bore the disarray of someone recently stirred from sleep, her eyes were still (upon closer inspection) wearing the remnants of black liner. Her mouth wore the faint traces of lipstick, a red stain dulled by the hour.
Get over here.
She pushes off the door with an idleness that can only be deliberate; picking a path over to the Doctor and perching herself on the arm of his chair. The shirt she's wearing is long enough to protect the idea of modesty (theirs, maybe, it's questionable if she had any care about it) as she directs a sudden, sharp little look her lover's way. "The Keeper of Secrets?" The Verbena's eyes shifted to Ned and Margot in turn; considering.
Back to Andrés: "Yes, it means something to me." There was a pause, the faint traces of acidic sweetness clung to her. "The Keeper of Secrets is a spirit. Very old. Very powerful. William and I met them once when we were out exploring the caves.
It survives on, unsurprisingly, secrets. Feeds on them." Her brow rose. "It exchanged knowledge with us, for a set price. You feed the Keeper of Secrets something that's worth a lot to you and it's no longer yours. It's not a pact you make lightly as far as such things go with Spirits."
Sepúlveda
Sitting still isn't one of his strong suits. He's managed to remain seated this entire time by joggling a foot or picking at the chair's arm. Now that Kiara's next to him he can play piano chords on her thigh or futz with loose strands of hair.
"Interesting."
If she gets the impression he's going to ask her more questions about this topic later, that's because Kiara knows him fairly well by now.
In the meantime, he adds, "Last I heard, which was, ah... three? Three. Three days ago, Gracia was looking into the Order of the Falcon. There's got to be some connection between dead apprentices showing up month after month and their choice of patron spirit. I doubt their victims are random. Let me see if I can find anything on this Evelyn myself. If it needs to go to the Chantry head, I'll take care of that." A beat. "Do I need to tie you two up to keep you from getting involved any more than you already are, or can you cool your jets for a minute?"
Kiara
She adds in, as a quiet afterthought: "What I can tell you is that any secret you gave to it became forfeit. If you spoke about it to anyone, gave to someone else what was an offering to this being? It would take from you payment owed." She turns the apple in her fingers.
"It doesn't like its gifts being stolen."
Ned
"...There's one other detail."
Ned offers, jaw pushed to one side as the Doc 'pulls rank' yet again. This was familiar territory across the board, but he didn't seem to want to press the topic any further than that.
"The way the bodies were shot and killed. It was an execution method. Standard military approach and...well...assassination tactics. Two to the chest, one to the head. I don't know much about the Techies but that seems like it might be up their alley..." A pause, one of Ned's hands slipping over his knuckles, gaze flicking toward Margot for a moment. If he looked uncomfortable over the talk of Nephandi before he looks downright displeased with the next sentence.
"...Or you know...the Euthanatos."
Sepúlveda
"It could also be other Nephandi, or hunters, or anti-terrorist law enforcement blah de blahs. We'll know more in the morning, yeah?"
He stands, then. Fingertips on the small of Kiara's back an unspoken invitation to retreat back upstairs.
"Or... soon, if not morning. Don't... Don't jump to conclusions, that's how you end up spraining your shitty ankles. Don't knock on the door again, I'm not putting my pants back on tonight."
Things went about as expected on all ends:
The Kids came in, yelling after the Doc, saying things like
"it's important"
"Really important"
"Not 'The Kids are at it again' important but ACTUALLY important..."
And then they retired to the spooky library, crawling through the various tomes and trying their best to discover something in relation to a bunch of info. they have little idea what to do with just yet.
Fade IN: INT- Library
"-Part of me actually thinks this isn't all as bad as it sounds....though it's also the part that wants to drop all this and go get comfort ice cream so I'm going out on a limb to say that's my denial talking..."
Margot
Library: dusty. Margot: dressed in hiking clothes with a surprisingly minimal amount of blood and ash on her face after a summons. She was standing near a small display table that was empty save for a particularly heavy book with yellowed old pages that she'd pulled from the shelf. She was skimming pages and chapter headings for key words while they spoke.
"It's probably exactly as bad as it seems, but that doesn't mean we can't have ice cream."
Then, more to Doc, more in explanation:
"I think they're sacrificing to or making deals with some pretty powerful spirit."
Sepúlveda
Wardrobe note: Sepúlveda is wearing a pair of corduroys because the kids were protesting his first choice of clothing, which was nothing. Corduroys and his glasses. Nothing else. You're welcome.
"If one of you doesn't start from the beginning and tell me what happened in the next, oh--" He checks his imaginary watch. "--thirty seconds, I'm going to beat the shit out of both of you with the proverbial limb."
Ned
"We needed to get more information about the victims of this supposed serial killer running around killing Apprentices. We summoned Jacqueline Paix's spirit. Or Margot did. In the same area she died at. She was...remarkably calm out of the gate, but also displaying some really intense...side effects. Very cold. Ice forming where she was walking, cold."
"We questioned her about a few things and she told us a bunch of stuff to do with the Victims. Namely that there is apparently a Freemason type society called the Order of the Falcon. Secret society sort of stuff. One of the victims was a Member....Chet La Croix...and Jacqueline herself used to do work for them, training some of their members in an unknown occupation."
"She told us the woman who found her, Evelyn Murray, was someone she knew and that Jacqueline, was keeping a secret for Evelyn that she could not divulge to us. Outright refused to the point of being upset."
"That's...when...uhh....well Margot can probably explain this part better than me."
Margot
"The secret was more important than that."
This was how Margot explained-- by starting out with a correction. Thank goodness she didn't have big teeth or bushy hair or the comparisons would actually never end.
"She wanted to tell us but was being prevented by an... enchantment, I think. She came across this Evelyn woman and discovered something that she shouldn't have seen, and I think to keep her quiet she was given to this Keeper of Secrets spirit. I think the pact of the secret's, like.... binding on a spiritual level.
"When she tried to tell us what happened when she died she'd say she couldn't say. Or that 'it couldn't be said'. She wasn't able. And when she finally got close she mentioned the Evelyn woman, and she was just so hurt by the betrayal-- I think they were cabalmates. She challenged the secret in telling us that much and at that point this white-white hand came through the Gauntlet and grabbed her and... like... pulled her back into its being. And it said "Know that your word is your bond. Woe to those who would dare steal from the spirits that which is theirs. This is the wisdom of the Keeper of Secrets.""
She blinked owlishly up from the pages of her book before concluding. "I think this Order of the Falcon is trying to do something really stupid and harness this Keeper of Secrets for something, and I think apprentices keep getting in the way."
Sepúlveda
He's not amused. Not that he expected the kids to heed him when he said he didn't want them involved in this, but he's still not amused.
... and I think apprentices keep getting in the way.
This earns her a Look over the top of his glasses, which he pushes up higher on the bridge of his nose as he digests this.
"And, ah, how did you come to know Jacqueline Paix's name?"
Margot
A faint pink blush at the look she got from Doc over the rim of his glasses, and Margot tucked her gaze back down to the pages in front of her. Licked the pad of her thumb and flipped through a few more pages with the added traction provided.
"I... uh.... might have pulled an all nighter a little while ago reading into articles and stuff."
Ned
"I got it from Grace. Leveled the field for me in some detail a month or so back alongside the other victim names. Grace also gave me some info. regarding the Order of the Falcon but I don't think she knows about them. Just some of their details and the name of one of their more recent recruits."
Ned's thumbing through a few texts and volumes, frowning or making a face at the useless info. he finds.
"We might be new to this but we're not test tube kids. You're not going to be able to keep us out of affairs, especially if it concerns young workers Dying." Ned pauses in his reading to regard the Doc, a frank and opposing bit of honesty to Margot's shame-faced admittance.
"Right now we've got a few hypothesis' that differ but mostly just three directions we both think could be investigated further..."
Sepúlveda
Just some of their details and the name of one of their more recent recruits.
"Note to self: yell at Grace."
Something something test tube kids. That look Ned gives him is greeted with dubious raised eyebrows. An unspoken Yeah, right. If he really wanted to impede their free will, he would find a way. Trust.
Anyway:
"And which directions might those be."
Ned
"The cold that was coming off of Jacqueline. It was intense. Otherworldly intense but not resonance related. She's the only one of the victims that had it, despite the murders all having happened with similar MOs: gunshots. Jacqueline died though, of hypothermia, having been shot, after she died at that....While standing up, no less."
Cue baffled mask
"The Cold though, was something attached to this Keeper of Secrets. The same white arm that came out of the other side. Same....frequency? Feeling, really. Not just cold but....complete. Void. Space between the stars sort of nothingness if I could draw a little on Lovecraft and she was tangled up with this Order of the Falcon somehow...alongside at least one of the other Victims..."
"Secret Society plus weird, cold nothing spirit bargains plus young workers that might not know any better..."
Ned's uncomfortable. A little squirming
Ned
Squirming a little while leaving the sentence hanging in the air.^
Margot
"Jacqueline mentioned that the Order of the Falcon has special 'hunts' that are requred before you can ascend to the higher ranks. There's a chance those hunts might have something to do with the other dead apprentices. I just find it uncanny that there was a new body found month after month like that.... the timing doesn't seem coincidental with people just happening to uncover mysteries."
A pause, a glance at either of them, and then Margot cleared her throat.
"Well, you'd think people working with a Keeper of Secrets would be better about keeping secrets."
Sepúlveda
"You two are going to give me an ulcer."
No they're not. He's a Disciple of Life. Ulcers fear him.
"Sounds like Nephandi to me, but I don't know shit about spirits. What're you knuckleheads planning to do next?"
Ned
".....Tell you was step one. If you didn't have any bright ideas beyond 'Science!' I was going to drop Nick and Pen a line....and then Grace, to see what more can be fond out about Evelyn, This Order of the Falcon and this Keeper of Secrets..."
Pause.
"...Finding Evelyn and figuring out what the fuck seemed like a pretty solid bet...but if Nephandi is the word for all of this...Well...we figured it was time to toss this up to the higher Ranks..."
Kiara
Creak.
Movement in the dark. Isn't this how every low budget horror movie begins? Our heroes happened upon unawares? Not ... quite. The sound of shuffling is accompanied by the door to the library being nudged open and a figure filling it; her shadow filling the frame. Her partially naked figure, as a small aside. Kiara Woolfe was standing there with her dark hair tousled and wild around her shoulders; her body, at least until mid thigh, concealed by one of the good doctor's shirts.
She'd rolled the sleeves up, the Verbena and stood there with an apple in hand; a generous portion already sampled.
Dark eyes took in the scene. She settled a shoulder into the frame and let her mouth drift upward at one corner. "Sorry, am I interrupting?" She knew she was, the eyes said it well enough. Still, there was a touch of interest in the voice, the study she gave each figure. She felt like a surge of Spring had just set foot into their space. Earth and blood and the steady pulse of thriving, blooming things.
(a witch by any other name, then).
Sepúlveda
"Kiara! Get over here."
He's so charming, it's no wonder Kiara willingly gives up her free time to spend it with Andrés. He extends an arm and gestures with his free hand like he's going for optimum secondhand embarrassment.
To the kids: "Do not try to find Evelyn. If you two end up in my morgue, I'll reanimate you out of spite." To Kiara: "Does the name 'Keeper of Secrets' mean anything to you?"
Margot
The sudden creak and appearance of Kiara had startled the young witch-- shoulders and spine jerked and her face turned quick to the doorway. If her cheeks had been pink before they went all but magenta now. Good thing it was dimly lit in the library, and she was tucked near the shelves with her book and table.
"Not really....," to whether she was interrupting. The Good Doctor had gestured for Kiara to come join him where he was sitting in his chair.
To Doc:
"I had no plans to go knocking on her door." And then her attention shifted back down to the pages in front of her. Or, more, her eyes did. She was listening intently to hear what wisdom Kiara might have to share about the Keeper of Secrets.
Ned
"We need a dress code..."
Ned murmurs, keeping his eyes firmly in the book infront of him while Margot makes with the further explanation.
"I was going to leave Evelyn to Pen and Nick. She's important enough and good enough to have put Jacqueline in a bind and too much of an unknown for Margot and I to be that stupid about it. We give Grace the name of the Order and she can do her techno jam and maybe find out some more names and people or even a purpose."
Then Ned is listening intently, eyes in the book in front of him much as Margot, waiting for Kiara's response to the million dollar question.
Kiara
The pagan was barefoot (of course she was, somehow, that made sense). There was a thin chain around her neck that winked from beneath the folds of Andrés' shirt and while she bore the disarray of someone recently stirred from sleep, her eyes were still (upon closer inspection) wearing the remnants of black liner. Her mouth wore the faint traces of lipstick, a red stain dulled by the hour.
Get over here.
She pushes off the door with an idleness that can only be deliberate; picking a path over to the Doctor and perching herself on the arm of his chair. The shirt she's wearing is long enough to protect the idea of modesty (theirs, maybe, it's questionable if she had any care about it) as she directs a sudden, sharp little look her lover's way. "The Keeper of Secrets?" The Verbena's eyes shifted to Ned and Margot in turn; considering.
Back to Andrés: "Yes, it means something to me." There was a pause, the faint traces of acidic sweetness clung to her. "The Keeper of Secrets is a spirit. Very old. Very powerful. William and I met them once when we were out exploring the caves.
It survives on, unsurprisingly, secrets. Feeds on them." Her brow rose. "It exchanged knowledge with us, for a set price. You feed the Keeper of Secrets something that's worth a lot to you and it's no longer yours. It's not a pact you make lightly as far as such things go with Spirits."
Sepúlveda
Sitting still isn't one of his strong suits. He's managed to remain seated this entire time by joggling a foot or picking at the chair's arm. Now that Kiara's next to him he can play piano chords on her thigh or futz with loose strands of hair.
"Interesting."
If she gets the impression he's going to ask her more questions about this topic later, that's because Kiara knows him fairly well by now.
In the meantime, he adds, "Last I heard, which was, ah... three? Three. Three days ago, Gracia was looking into the Order of the Falcon. There's got to be some connection between dead apprentices showing up month after month and their choice of patron spirit. I doubt their victims are random. Let me see if I can find anything on this Evelyn myself. If it needs to go to the Chantry head, I'll take care of that." A beat. "Do I need to tie you two up to keep you from getting involved any more than you already are, or can you cool your jets for a minute?"
Kiara
She adds in, as a quiet afterthought: "What I can tell you is that any secret you gave to it became forfeit. If you spoke about it to anyone, gave to someone else what was an offering to this being? It would take from you payment owed." She turns the apple in her fingers.
"It doesn't like its gifts being stolen."
Ned
"...There's one other detail."
Ned offers, jaw pushed to one side as the Doc 'pulls rank' yet again. This was familiar territory across the board, but he didn't seem to want to press the topic any further than that.
"The way the bodies were shot and killed. It was an execution method. Standard military approach and...well...assassination tactics. Two to the chest, one to the head. I don't know much about the Techies but that seems like it might be up their alley..." A pause, one of Ned's hands slipping over his knuckles, gaze flicking toward Margot for a moment. If he looked uncomfortable over the talk of Nephandi before he looks downright displeased with the next sentence.
"...Or you know...the Euthanatos."
Sepúlveda
"It could also be other Nephandi, or hunters, or anti-terrorist law enforcement blah de blahs. We'll know more in the morning, yeah?"
He stands, then. Fingertips on the small of Kiara's back an unspoken invitation to retreat back upstairs.
"Or... soon, if not morning. Don't... Don't jump to conclusions, that's how you end up spraining your shitty ankles. Don't knock on the door again, I'm not putting my pants back on tonight."
September 12, 2016
September 11th, 2016 - Wisdom of the Keeper of Secrets [Ned] [ST'd by Heather]
Echo
It's actually a peaceful place, were it not for the fact that Margot knew there had been a dead body here back in June. With a little digging and information she would remember that it was the body of one Jacqueline Paix- a ski instructor and Colorado Springs native. The two of them headed out tot eh edge of El Paso county, watching likely as the mountains became larger and tree cover became less sparse. The body had been found by an avid hiker who had decided to go a little off the rails, it would seem- Evelyn Murray. Forty-something, kids in college (out of state), finally really breaking down and enjoying her divorced years after a clean split.
It was just horrible, Murray reported, those blank eyes. I thought it had been drugs- it had to be. She was so young, nobody shoots a kid like that unless it was over drugs.
Like that. Like that meant the bullet holes in the woman- the one in the head, according to the report. But reports are incomplete, you know. Margot would have known it, Ned would have known it. There was a suspicious lack of evidence on this one, and a suspicious lack of digging that likely left a bad taste in their mouths. Whatever time of day they got to the area was inconsequential, because the quiet of the place was the same. The wind barely blew, and though fireflies drifted on and off just barely in the distance near some pond it appeared to be the only living movement in the area. The air was cold when it came into their lungs, no matter how warm it felt on their skin.
This was the right place.
Margot
The drive south was a pretty one. The mountains grew more ambitious in their reaching toward the sky, and trees crowded the peaks and summits closely enough to be deemed a 'forest' now. The road was two lanes only, one in either direction, and Margot minded the speed limit and tried not to spook Ned the Vehicular Passenger too much when she asked him to help her keep an eye on the sides of the roads for deer.
There were no encounters of the cervine kind, and Margot pulled her car off on the shoulder of the road closest to the murder site. She thought initially to park a good half a mile away for the sake of flying under the radar, but ultimately decided against it. They were remote enough that anybody who might connect her car with the murder would do so even if she were parked a full two miles away instead. Plus, when you dicked around with Magick and sent whispers through the Gauntlet to invite things through, it was good to have an escape route planned. She wanted to be as close within sprinting distance of the car as she could manage.
She locked up and pocketed her keys and rouned to the front of the car to look at the scene off the road's shoulder slope. She was dressed in a pair of dark jeans with the cuffs tucked into a pair of hiking boots, with a black tank top left on after she'd shed her red flannel and tied it around her waist instead. A faded black backpack that wasn't originally intended for hiking but did the trick fine was on her back, and her hands held the straps at chest level. Fieflies flitted on the horizon, testing their beacons in the dying afternoon light, readying them for the evening soon to fall.
"Night's the time for the dead," she'd explained to him if any question on the timing had come up. In this moment, though, with the mountains to the west casting early shadows on the land, she took a breath and glanced over to Ned.
"Ready to meet Jacqueline?"
Ned
"Says you and John Carpenter."
Ned would throw back. a distracted flutter of head turns sending his gaze around and about at the terrain and forestry, minimal though it might be. The mountains loomed over them with dreadful suggestion, sending his thoughts back to imagining what it must have been like for the poor woman who had been found out here. Part of Ned's curiosity suggested to him that there had been some game played. A chase or a hunt of some sort, with the young woman, Jacqueline as the target of someone's sense of the dramatic. He'd mentally gone over some of the work he'd put into memorizing various efforts to ensure a surprise if they ran into similar trouble.
"I'm ready to deal with this. Best I can say at this point, is there's no telling what condition she'll be in or even if stual he's going to be available. I imagine this sort of trauma leaves behind a pretty disturbed individual." Ned's memories coasted over their mutual ghostly history at the thought, a vague grimness catching his features. He was dressed in a simple black T=shirt and cargo pants, a knife sheath tucked into the waistband at the small of his back. He'd foregone any sort of carrying case or satchel, in favour of a water bottle tucked into his back pocket.
"Remember what I said. I get possessed you make sure to blind me and run. Count the spaces between the car and the crime scene so you know how far to go." They had not discussed what would happen if Margot was the one who got possessed. Ned didn't have Spirit, afterall.
Echo
It was smart to make allowances for potential spiritual possession, all things told. It was a real and dangerous possibility here, headed out into the wilderness- in a place where the barriers betweent he worlds may have been low enough that it made a real and true difference. Perhaps that had been the point- of course it had been the point. The reason behind coming out here (that and the fact that Margot had some spatial limitations when it came to her magickal practices).
The rocks are smooth and worn over the creek. The moon is three quarters of the way to full, lends itself more to illumination but there was no time to think of the moon and her symbols. That language was not spoken here; the air kept its secrets. No language would be spoken at all.
A perimeter is easily set, and sure as they can tell they are alone out here. Let it be said that this place is one of solitude.
Margot
Ned's penchant for pragmatism came in handy a lot of the time. Margot wouldn't have considered a back-up plan to possession. His concern-heavy voice on the subject of the deceased Jacqueline Paix's psychotrauma had the little blood witch settling a similarly concerned look onto the side of his face.
"You remember the girl-spirit from the frat house?" Of course he did. "She was tormented by her death. She tormented herself even worse afterwards. But she wasn't inherently bad. Maybe because she wasn't built to be, or maybe because she wasn't given enough time to get there, but we could communicate with her. She got what she wanted and left. This lady here and now? She's only been dead a few months. And I doubt she died a villian." Even as she tried reassuring him (herself as well) that this spirit was unlikely to want to attack or harm them, doubt sparked dull red and inconspicuous in the edges of her voice. There were too many variables that were different here, of course she couldn't guarantee the temperament of a summoned victim.
All the same, she took a breath and set off away from the gravel of the road's shoulder, the bottom of her boots slipping and pulling on the long grass that sloped down to a shallow ditch. From there she'd start forward, her path clearly set toward the small pond that was visible from the roadside. The lapping water and bright outline of the moon pushing through the dim periwinkles of dusk on its surface spoke to her, to Her, in a particular manner.
It was at the edge of the pond, several feet from the edge, that Margot settled. She sat down upon her knees with the heels of her boots tucked under her rump and opened the backpack that she'd shrugged off onto the ground beside her. From within she produced a couple of things: a white ceramic water bottle, a smooth bowl made from the wood of an ash tree, a stick lighter, and a good sized bundle of dried greens that were tucked away into a ziplock bag so that they wouldn't crumble all over the interior of her bag. Half the herbs were pulled from the bag and crumbled in her fist to fall into the bowl set central in front of her.
As she worked, the very air around her seemed to go still. Not just still, but taut, like the string of a bow being pulled and held with the potential to let loose at any time. Margot licked her lips and brought the stick lighter to life with flame, and spread the fire across the top of the loose dried bundle of green and yellow plant. Soon dense smoke twisted up from the bowl, and Margot leaned back. Her hands cupped loosely around the smoke like she was warming her hands on the embers within, or like she was trying to encourage them to grow...
[Summoning the ghost of a murder victim - Spirit 2] (WP!)]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (5, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Ned
Ned didn't offer anything to Margot's reassurance. Not one for optimism he seemed intent on their surroundings, allowing Margot the chance to do what she needed to do, to prepare for the moment ahead. His face continued to hold that vague grimness, though the knife had yet to make an appearance beyond the slight flash of a sheath at his back.
Instead, Ned's questing gaze continues it's scanning movements, head canting from one moment to the next even as he double checks their surroundings with a swift mental and physical departure from reality. The essence Doc explained as 'Quint' floods out of him and into his gaze, hands locking around some inner tension, fists formed at his sides while Margot works.
(Forces 1 / Life 1 / Matter 1: Reality X-ray (Searching for objects, heat blooms and pulses in the immediate vicinity. Diff 4 - 1 for Quint)
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (10, 10) ( success x 2 )
Echo
Ned is a sharp, astute sort of creature. Ned is also an observant sort- to the point that one could argue he was hyper vigilant- but that vigilance pays off and the world does as it will do. It is shoved aside and forced to render its secrets to Caesar. He reaches out and around, feels the heartbeat of a nearby deer. Some fish in the stream fleeing their presence. The only real heat coming to them is the heat held in the initiates' chests; he notices an odd lack of heat, really. A lack of others beyond themselves in this area because even now the doe is taking her leave of them.
All that is near them is the trees, the rocks, the natural. The only man made goods are those they brought with themselves. They are alone- save for this:
The dried greens in Margot's hands take the flame as a welcomed companion- they drink the warmth there and soon the when they are placed where they are intended there is a movement there. Dense smoke is plucked forth like the notes on a lyre as it twists and curls into the air. They say that there is something that needs to be cleansed when the smoke has something to grasp, and this smoke does grasp at the atmosphere around them.
She may look from her focus, from her ritual and see something move there- something in the smoke moves, like if Margot herself had pulled her hand through its coils. The movement is that of a magician's assistant, some kind of movement in the smoke to divert from what the other hand is doing but Margot Travers knows to look left when others point right. The smoke turns, braids, pulls to a thin line that reaches to hold-
Something.
It will take another pull to bring that something across.
Margot
Smoke twisted and curled in the air before her, thick and grabbing something in the air to show that it existed. Not wind, though-- the air was still, abnormally so with the lack of singing crickets and chirping birds overhead.
"You're there," she whispered quietly from the ground, speaking through the smoke to the Other Side to whatever was left of Jacqueline that she was trying to coax out-- hoping that it was Jacqueline at all. A hand dropped down and shook the bowl a little, tossing up the embers with the dried dandelion that it hadn't eaten yet and giving more oxygen to help fuel the burning as well. She licked her lips and focused on the smoke hard enough that she was looking into it, through it to the other side. The very image of the smoke reflected strong in her big eyes, taking mirroring lessons from the pond in front of them.
Fingers curled over the smoke again and moved in delicate motions, like she could tug the smoke to be more dense and strong, and then began to delicately pick it apart to help out whatever was Beyond.
[C'mon little spirit, I hear you in there. Extending.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Ned
Ned's attention returned to the Ritual, satisfied they were mundanely alone in this affair, his eyes seeming to blink particles of quint away to waft into the returning fold of reality. He is apart from where Margot kneels, regarding the feathering smoke and coiling 'presence' that seemed to be hovering on the outskirts of where and whenever the 'Other side' could be found.
In this moment, his hand was around the length of leather wrapped handle, attached to the honed and sharpened hunting knife. A glance at Margot given, both quizzical and patient, even if all nerves were firing, all muscles tensed for a potential bombardment of something otherworldly they might not be expecting.
Echo
And in that moment the air grew thicker and in a space smaller than one would expect, the air is rent, torn, and pushed through is a woman who stands nearly as tall as Ned is but with possibly half the bodyweight. She is some fae creature, or perhaps not. Perhaps this is their dead woman- what with her large eyes (seemingly sightless, milky save for the single pinpoint of what may have been pupils) and her narrow nose and delicately sculpted brows. Her proportions are distinctly human and her attire is non-existent.
She finds herself nearly standing on top of Margot. Her brows knit together and she cocks her head to the side- all that blonde hair toppling to one side. The smoke has long since grown cold, and where she stands there is the crunch of frozen earth.
"... where is this?"
The voice doesn't come from her, but rather it is ambient and half-muffled, as though parts of her never made it past the gauntlet.
Margot
All at once Margot felt the air expand and contract simultaneously. Stillness and cold flooded over her and by the time she'd focused her eyes back outside of the smoke Margot realized that she was seeing a manifestation of legs right in front of her knees, thin and maybe slightly discolored, maybe still colored the deep gray-blue of the smoke or maybe still fleshy. She looked up and blinked and realized that the woman was blond and present and speaking with a voice that didn't entirely come across with her, and that she was naked.
Margot made a small noise of discomfort (of course, squeamish over the proximity of the dead woman's nudity as opposed to with the concept of death or any visibility of a bullet hole in the head [she hadn't checked that far yet]), and pushed herself back away from the woman's feet and scrambled up onto her own soon after. She didn't retreat immediately to Ned's side but cleared her throat, brushed her hands on the thighs of her jeans, and tried to ignore the flush of embarassment burning on her cheeks and ears.
"The mountains in north El Paso county," she answered, testing her voice with the fact and finding that it would be fine after she cleared her throat. The clearing-throat sound came, a glance back to Ned followed, and then she looked back to the woman (eyes now checking for that bullet wound in the scalp, curious if it were to appear there still or not).
"...Are you Miss Jacqueline Paix?"
Echo
There were no bullet wounds at all in this body. Her fingertips are bluing and her lips have no color but she is intact. Clean. Like she'd just stepped out of a shower and everything was fine there. Like she had never even been dead at all save for the fact that she feels like the frozen cosmos; she looks around and her lips press into a fine line.
Is she Miss Jacqueline Paix?
"Why am I here?"
So incredulous, this one. She walks away from the little witch and takes a stance where she can observe her surroundings and those near her, "why did you bring me here?"
Margot
Ned was hanging back a few feet, and when Margot looked back to find him a brief glance and understanding was exchanged. This was her ritual, her show and pony. Both of her cabalmates were useless when it came to Spirits (though only for now, she was sure). He would watch carefully and she would continue to serve as liason to the dead. Her mouth set in a grim line, but Margot turned to address the dead woman once more.
"To help." This was her answer to both questions, and though her voice was still quiet and almost pleading it did not quake or quiver. Much like the air when she'd summoned the spirit forward, she was and would remain steady. Hazel eyes followed along after the woman's trailing steps, and her hands rested at her sides with a conscious effort not to fidget while she communed with the woman's spirit.
"We're trying to stop people from being killed, because the police don't seem interested in or able to do so themselves. We might, though." The 'we' clearly being her and Ned. She paused, frowning at how to pose this next question without running the risk of sending the spirit flying into a fit.
"...It's cold here, before and after you arrived, Miss. Was it so cold when you were here last?"
Echo
"I haven't been this far down the creek in months, not since May," she said, though the times may not quite correspond. Her body was found in June.
"Not since Beltane with Evan and Odessa and Evelyn and..." she looks concerned again, as though she was trying to remember something and the details were just escaping her. She seems keen on pacing. Her attention flickers from the little witch to the smoke "-but we all went home after that. I met with clients the next morning, it wasn't cold at all... It hadn't been cold in weeks."
Ned
"...Last names of your friends? We;d,,,"
Ned clears his throat gently, trying to decide whether to lean on the Orderly training he'd accmulated over the years or simply gut-punch things into the reality that was unfolding at the moment. He'd opted for more comfort than control.
"...like to check with them as well and hopefully be able to piece together some details about what's going on...Some confusion all around it would seem..."
Margot
[Intelligence + Enigmas: C'mon, Brainy Kid, don't those names sound familiar? The word Beltane should definitely tip you off.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5) ( botch x 1 )
Margot
Margot cast a polite glance back to Ned while he asked about the last names. Margot didn't need surnames herself, though. The ones given tied to the word Beltane had her gears turning. They sounded familiar, they were significant in a Magickal sense, not just in the way that she may have read about them in newspaper articles.
"Odessa," she repeated quietly, more for herself than anyone else. Her brow furrowed as memories bled together and refused to be separated. Vampiric flesh molding? Or a Swan-Spirit, perhaps?
"But that doesn't make sense...."
She was left to quietly mutter under her breath, near-silent for how soft it was, while trying to sort her threads out in her mind. This would give Jacqueline time to answer Ned or tell him to fuck off.
Echo
"Evelyn Murray," she says, carefully. She seems to be regarding them with a great deal of scrutiny, as though she isn't entirely certain what to make of this particular experience or the fact that she is in the middle of an area that she hadn't been to in months, "Evan's always just been Evan and Odessa doesn't have a last name."
But it doesn't make sense-
"What is confusing. You're talking about people being murdered- who-" her voice hits a pin point, not originating from her but, instead, from the place where the smoke smoldered quietly still "-which murders are you talking about?"
As though there were more.
Ned
Ned takes the name and sets it aside somewhere in the compartments of his mind. Something to investigate later or at least hand over to Grace so she could do her techno-thing. For now though, his brow knit together tempted to hand things back over to Margot before the young witch seemed to wander off into her memories and thoughts for a second, sourcing out details that...refused to untangle themselves. It left Ned with an eyeful of expectant ghost.
"Do the words Peregrine or Wiley mean anything to you?"
Echo
"Peregrine is a rank," she explained, "in the Fraternal Order of the Falcon. Like how the masons have their degrees and secrets, they have theirs. It's an honor to be part of that."
She seems to take her time to muse over the second part. Wiley-
"Like the Coyote?"
Ned
""That's wily, but yeah. This one's with an E. W.I.L.E.Y. The nickname of someone we found. Apparently, he got into this order." Ned offered with a vague smile that suggested 'Lucky fellow, right?'
"A brotherhood. Gentleman's club?" Ned draws closer to the ghost, his interest suddenly piqued at the mention of some order or other. That would no doubt gain some hits and attention from a few bodies and minds among them, though a small part of him was trying not to think about another 'Order' in the Mage community this could be attached to.
"So this order accepts people into it. Honourable types? Do they have a purpose? Protective of Falcons? Wilderness and Environmentalist group?" Ned's half-hearted joke was meant more toward alleviating the sudden dread creeping into his system. He did his best to remain relatively deadpan and settled.
Margot
"But wait..."
Margot cut in finally. She'd missed out on the majority of the conversation surrounding the Fraternal Order of Falcons and this Wiley person, still stuck with zero traction while gears in her mind whirled around the names Evan Evelyn and Odessa-- Odessa being the drain that her mind kept circling around in particular, unsure of whether it wanted to land on 'Vampire' or 'Swan'. She'd blinked and given her head a little shake when finally coming back to reality. She'd just have to give up on that particular train of thought for now.
"What's the last thing that you remember? As a whole, I mean, Miss Paix? If you weren't here since May, if you remember clients, then there's something missing between the last time you were here and when you... ended up here last."
Echo
"Somewhere between a hunting lodge and a gentlemen's club. Some of the men in the lower levels take lessons with me-" took lessons with her, but she doesn't dwell on it "-they donate to the NRA and anti-fracking groups, so there's that? One of my clients told me that the only way you get to the higher echelons of the organization is a successful and dangerous hunt."
But what did she remember. What could she say about all of this? Her head turned and... what did she remember. What were her last moments that she placed and-
The air grows terribly cold for a flash and she, dead thing, stops.
"I can't tell you that."
Ned
"...ok. That's ok."
Ned offers a moment of reassurance, regarding the ghost and moving into her peripheral when she turns on Margot with a cold front sweeping in. The orderly training pulls his hands up, showing them to her with a careful sort of 'calm down' ease, that has them fall away slowly while he speaks.
"How about you tell me what sort of lessons you taught these men? You must have been important if they allowed you access to their members. What did they have to hunt for anyway? Dangerous hunt sounds like a grizzly maybe? Or a wolf?"
Margot
An order of brothers, possibly tied in to Magick, but definitely shady. The best way to get to the higher levels was to perform a special hunt. At that reveal, Margot was furrowing her brow. She was already focused on that instead of waiting with baited breath for the answer to her question-- the what happened?. It was fine all the same, for the dead woman couldn't reveal any answers to her anyways. The sudden strengthening of cold's grip in the air was not missed, though. Margot's skin tightened and she shivered.
It was while she was untying her flannel that Ned caught her eye. The gesture had her scowling at him briefly, insult flashing across her face before immediatey conceding to agreement. She was picking up what he was putting down, and was quiet while she pulled her arms through the sleeves of her flannel.
While she was buttoning the buttons, though, after Ned mused about the hunt, Margot did pipe up with one add-in:
"Or people. Hence the murder victims."
Echo
"I still don't know which murders you are talking about," she snapped, "who else died? Who else do you know died- you can't push this and I can't help you if you can't tell me who died."
She straightened, tall and strong and defiant and alive in the way that the dead should never really be. She is aware of the cold, it makes her look around and-
"Yes, like wild boars with a pocket knife or something like that- I haven't heard of much else. Evan is the one who told me about the hunting, she would know more."
Ned
"La Croix." Ned butchers the french pronunciation. Doesn't even try. "Laura Fairbanks." He states the names with obviousness. No guile or misdirection this time. His gaze travels to Margot, brow perked as if in
Ned
^question.
Anyone else?
Margot
Eyes hopped to Margot to ask if there were other names that were missing. Margot listened to the names that Ned had provided and nodded, picking up where he'd left off and looking to the woman that she'd summoned. She was built slim, this Jacqueline, but there's a power that all spirits held within and perhaps that was what helped make her seem so impressive when she was drawn tall and taut like that. Or maybe that was just the way she was in life. She spoke of Beltane, of names that rang bells of magickal significance and familiarity, she taught classes to a Brotherhood of Birds. There was power in knowledge and Magick and that could manifest afterlife as well.
"There's been a body found each month so far. Fairbanks was in the Colorado Springs suburbs, found in April. Then in May they found Chet St. Croiz near Pike's Peak."
Margot paused and her mouth twisted uncomfortably. This was the part she was worried about. Certainly the woman knew, but... to say it... well...
"A woman found you here. In June." She gestured to the area around them vaguely with her hand, palm up and fingers relaxed out. To her credit, her tone was gentle and sympathetic, a Funeral Voice if there was one. "The circumstances surrounding each murder were suspicious, increasingly so, down to you."
"....they haven't reported any other similar findings since then, and it's September now."
Echo
"La Croix was a Falcon- new guy, new money- but... Who is Laura Fairbanks?"
She looked genuinely confused, pinpoint pupils blow out to something that makes her seem almost human, almost alive for a moment. She walks and the ground takes the barest bits of ice with it, the ground thaws when she leaves.
The ghost looks down, pauses-
"If you're finding bodies, it's not the murders you should be worried about-" she moves past the sentiment quickly "who found me?"
Ned
"Evelyn did." He offers it without much in the way of thought. Throwing the name out with the familiairity that suggests Jackie knows which Evelyn. If only to see what sort of reaction that might bring.
Once again, Ned's hand is behind his back, carefully fingering the knife handle.
"...So we know that each of them was gifted. We know at least one of them was part of the Order and you Ms. Paix...were at least connected to them, through teaching methods?" Another little aside left there for if the Ghost felt inclined to answer.
"Seems like an in house problem though. Especially given we're supposed to be worried about....not the murders...I find it hard to believe there's something of higher priority than the murders right now..."
Margot
The ghostly Ms. Paix's wandering drew notice to the fact that the cold seemed to be permeating from her directly-- it followed her through each step, the ground thawing after she moved on listlessly to another part of the bank, but never wandering far from the witch and crafter who summoned her. A trailing thought-- the cause of death was the cold, and it had followed her beyond the grave. That felt significant, but the warning that she gave (don't worry about the murders) distracted her from it (for now).
She'd glanced to Ned, then folded her arms uncomfortably across her chest. The dandelion smoldered down toward ash in the bowl crafted from the tree of the name, but smoke still drifted dutiful to keep the worlds drawn together for the exchange.
"They were all apprenticed in Magick....," Margot almost whispered this, it could almost have been missed if the place weren't so supernaturally quiet already. Her eyes had been unfocused with the thought, drifting near ground level as she'd listened and pondered, but now they lifted up to focus upon the tall and surprisingly calm spectre. They were wide.
"They're only targeting Magick. You... you died of hypothermia, Jacqueline. Was that your resonance? Cold?"
Echo
Was that your resonance? Margot asked,Cold?
"Placid." the ghost replies.
She died of hypothermia, she says-
"It's too warm for that-" she says swift and ready "-I-"
This was when there was a moment to perhaps test the placid nature that this creature had told them she possessed in life. And yes, how it would be tested because the dead were creatures of roaring passions, it was what fueled them. It was that which kept their forms together and she was no different and at that moment she was beginning to feel the effects of despair, and her fists clenched and she stepped away from the two young mages, Hands go up to hold the sides of her head.
"-I saw Evelyn before I was- I went to her, I'd found out that-" which was when her eyes went dark, black and bottomless. Fathomless and abyssal- "NO."
The leaves shake with this, the air stirs and her form flickers brighter than it would before fading back ethereal- barely here.
"I can't tell again, I will not- this is not my secret, I remember! I. Am. No. Thief."
Ned
"Send her back, Margot."
Ned's voice is low, as if he were attempting not to draw the ghost's attention, ire or regard suddenly. His gaze doesn't travel quickly at the younger mage, merely glances at her out of the corner of his eye.
Margot
Truth be told, Margot was surprised that this conversation had been going so well. Jacqueline explained that her resonance was not cold, but placid, and perhaps that contributed to the experience going so smooth as it had thus far. But again she brushed up against the memory of the moment of her death, and each time before she had shied away from it. This time, however, something snapped and a sudden rage arose.
Margot went stiff in spine and muscles, and her toes gripped at her boots. Her arms stayed folded across her chest (steady), but they tightened about her ribcage and her eyes had gone wide. The ghost was shouting about protecting a secret that wasn't hers because she wasn't going to steal anything and it was a secret that she had found out when Evelyn... this Evelyn...
Send her back, urged Ned.
Those big eyes hopped over to Ned when he whispered to her, but panic didn't cling to the edges of them. She didn't need to turn her head too severely to see him, there was no dramatic whipping of the head to be seen. She considered this suggestion, then looked back to the ghost who flickered near-etheral, near-gone, whose hands were up over her head. She spoke soft and steady as before.
"You're not. I won't ask you to be either. You've helped us a lot, Jacqueline, you have our thanks."
Echo
"She knew," the spirit said, with her voice so terribly heartbroken, the kind of heartbreak that can only fuel the purest of rage. The kind of betrayal that hurts to its core, Jacqueline closed her eyes tightly "I told Evelyn about them all and she knew- I didn't know I'd promised- I didn't remember-you have to believe me!" she wailed.
Margot could have sent her back, could have been ready to give the ghost back to her plane but the air was so cold, so frightfully cold. There is the feeling, perhaps for that moment, that maybe something was amiss. The cold that came with her, the dreadful, oppressive cold that had not lifted gave way and the shadows converged for a moment upon where the ghost had been standing.
The ghost shrieked again when some thin, alabaster hand seemed to come through the shroud, grasped her shoulder and then pulled. Limbs graceful and willowy, and the barest strands of gossamer thread hair seemed to come together, as if Jacqueline and some other, more ancient being were attempting to merge. Whern she speaks again it is the voice of a chorus-
"Know that your word is your bond, children, and woe to those who would dare steal from the spirits that which is theirs. This is the wisdom of the Keeper of Secrets."
And with that, she is gone. Both she and whatever had been with her this time are away, and the silence and the cold and the stillness of the area seems to begin to bleed away- the earth itself releasing its breath to relieve the tension.
Echo
"She knew," the spirit said, with her voice so terribly heartbroken, the kind of heartbreak that can only fuel the purest of rage. The kind of betrayal that hurts to its core, Jacqueline closed her eyes tightly "I told Evelyn about them all and she knew- I didn't know I'd promised- I didn't remember-you have to believe me!" she wailed.
Margot could have sent her back, could have been ready to give the ghost back to her plane but the air was so cold, so frightfully cold. There is the feeling, perhaps for that moment, that maybe something was amiss. The cold that came with her, the dreadful, oppressive cold that had not lifted gave way and the shadows converged for a moment upon where the ghost had been standing.
The ghost shrieked again when some thin, alabaster hand seemed to come through the shroud, grasped her shoulder and then pulled. Limbs graceful and willowy, and the barest strands of gossamer thread hair seemed to come together, as if Jacqueline and some other, more ancient being were attempting to merge. Whern she speaks again it is the voice of a chorus-
"Know that your word is your bond, children, and woe to those who would dare steal from the spirits that which is theirs. This is the wisdom of the Keeper of Secrets."
And with that, she is gone. Both she and whatever had been with her this time are away, and the silence and the cold and the stillness of the area seems to begin to bleed away- the earth itself releasing its breath to relieve the tension.
Ned
The knife is out.
Ned's attention is latching onto that alabaster limb punching through from the other side and the ghostly voices that suddenly rise to collect in the vicinity. His mind is pieecing things together into some format, even as he is witnessing events quick wits formulating thoughts and ideas even as they are happening.
Because really? It's all he can do. All he has access to at the moment.
There is a merging. The cold is batted aside like some errant child, crushed and delivered into a shadowy presence that sweeps up Jac
Ned
queline and Ned is watching. Sympathetic? Empathetic? Or merely a witness. One would be hard pressed to decipher which based solely on his protective stance and the deadpan on his face.
When it all goes still ad silent, he is the same for a few moments. Then: turning to Margot, slowly, carefully he sucks in a deep and slow breath and releases it with the same controlled ease.
"We've got a lot of information. I have some thoughts but nothing concrete and we need to know a lot more before any of it will shake out. For now though? We need to get the fuck out of here."
Ned
(Wits 4 + Awareness 2)
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 5 ) [WP]
Margot
[Wits 3 + Awareness 2]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 6) ( success x 1 )
Margot
"I do!" Margot was calling back to the ghost now, insisting belief. She felt for the woman, something about the righteousness of rage stoked by betrayal called to the Goddess that she could feel in her bones. There was more reassurance that she wanted to offer to the woman, she wanted her guided back to the other side peacably, but soon the area made thin by Margot's smoke summons and the lack of the city's choking nature was pushed through by something else. The hand seized Jacqueline by the shoulder and a small startled and fearful sound strangled its way out of Margot's throat. Her arms finally unfolded only to allow her hands to clasp over her mouth as she watched what transpired with wide eyes.
When the cold and the hand and the warning had faded away and quiet returned, Ned finally turned to face Margot and she turned her head slowly to look at him. Hands slowly lowered from her mouth but her eyes were still wide. He'd taken a breath to calm himself but she didn't do the same. Rather, she looked back to the spot on the pond shore where the ghost had been pulled back where she belongs.
"There's no danger here," she said, and though the tone wasn't reassuring the message was supposed to be. "What we saw... It's not..." She didn't finish, but shook her head and concluded differently instead. "Well, let's say I'm keeping that warning close."
She went back to the bowl of dandelion ash and knelt down to clean up. The ash was tipped into the pond itself, the bowl rinsed with the water from the bottle she'd brought and scrubbed carefully with bare fingertips then dried on the hem of her shirt. Supplies packed away she shouldered her backpack and rose, waited for Ned, and when he seemed ready she started a comfortably-paced walk back toward the car.
[[ End Scene: Not seen on camera, the car drive back hashing out theories on what's going on. Tune in next time for Getting Home and Filling Doc In! ]]
It's actually a peaceful place, were it not for the fact that Margot knew there had been a dead body here back in June. With a little digging and information she would remember that it was the body of one Jacqueline Paix- a ski instructor and Colorado Springs native. The two of them headed out tot eh edge of El Paso county, watching likely as the mountains became larger and tree cover became less sparse. The body had been found by an avid hiker who had decided to go a little off the rails, it would seem- Evelyn Murray. Forty-something, kids in college (out of state), finally really breaking down and enjoying her divorced years after a clean split.
It was just horrible, Murray reported, those blank eyes. I thought it had been drugs- it had to be. She was so young, nobody shoots a kid like that unless it was over drugs.
Like that. Like that meant the bullet holes in the woman- the one in the head, according to the report. But reports are incomplete, you know. Margot would have known it, Ned would have known it. There was a suspicious lack of evidence on this one, and a suspicious lack of digging that likely left a bad taste in their mouths. Whatever time of day they got to the area was inconsequential, because the quiet of the place was the same. The wind barely blew, and though fireflies drifted on and off just barely in the distance near some pond it appeared to be the only living movement in the area. The air was cold when it came into their lungs, no matter how warm it felt on their skin.
This was the right place.
Margot
The drive south was a pretty one. The mountains grew more ambitious in their reaching toward the sky, and trees crowded the peaks and summits closely enough to be deemed a 'forest' now. The road was two lanes only, one in either direction, and Margot minded the speed limit and tried not to spook Ned the Vehicular Passenger too much when she asked him to help her keep an eye on the sides of the roads for deer.
There were no encounters of the cervine kind, and Margot pulled her car off on the shoulder of the road closest to the murder site. She thought initially to park a good half a mile away for the sake of flying under the radar, but ultimately decided against it. They were remote enough that anybody who might connect her car with the murder would do so even if she were parked a full two miles away instead. Plus, when you dicked around with Magick and sent whispers through the Gauntlet to invite things through, it was good to have an escape route planned. She wanted to be as close within sprinting distance of the car as she could manage.
She locked up and pocketed her keys and rouned to the front of the car to look at the scene off the road's shoulder slope. She was dressed in a pair of dark jeans with the cuffs tucked into a pair of hiking boots, with a black tank top left on after she'd shed her red flannel and tied it around her waist instead. A faded black backpack that wasn't originally intended for hiking but did the trick fine was on her back, and her hands held the straps at chest level. Fieflies flitted on the horizon, testing their beacons in the dying afternoon light, readying them for the evening soon to fall.
"Night's the time for the dead," she'd explained to him if any question on the timing had come up. In this moment, though, with the mountains to the west casting early shadows on the land, she took a breath and glanced over to Ned.
"Ready to meet Jacqueline?"
Ned
"Says you and John Carpenter."
Ned would throw back. a distracted flutter of head turns sending his gaze around and about at the terrain and forestry, minimal though it might be. The mountains loomed over them with dreadful suggestion, sending his thoughts back to imagining what it must have been like for the poor woman who had been found out here. Part of Ned's curiosity suggested to him that there had been some game played. A chase or a hunt of some sort, with the young woman, Jacqueline as the target of someone's sense of the dramatic. He'd mentally gone over some of the work he'd put into memorizing various efforts to ensure a surprise if they ran into similar trouble.
"I'm ready to deal with this. Best I can say at this point, is there's no telling what condition she'll be in or even if stual he's going to be available. I imagine this sort of trauma leaves behind a pretty disturbed individual." Ned's memories coasted over their mutual ghostly history at the thought, a vague grimness catching his features. He was dressed in a simple black T=shirt and cargo pants, a knife sheath tucked into the waistband at the small of his back. He'd foregone any sort of carrying case or satchel, in favour of a water bottle tucked into his back pocket.
"Remember what I said. I get possessed you make sure to blind me and run. Count the spaces between the car and the crime scene so you know how far to go." They had not discussed what would happen if Margot was the one who got possessed. Ned didn't have Spirit, afterall.
Echo
It was smart to make allowances for potential spiritual possession, all things told. It was a real and dangerous possibility here, headed out into the wilderness- in a place where the barriers betweent he worlds may have been low enough that it made a real and true difference. Perhaps that had been the point- of course it had been the point. The reason behind coming out here (that and the fact that Margot had some spatial limitations when it came to her magickal practices).
The rocks are smooth and worn over the creek. The moon is three quarters of the way to full, lends itself more to illumination but there was no time to think of the moon and her symbols. That language was not spoken here; the air kept its secrets. No language would be spoken at all.
A perimeter is easily set, and sure as they can tell they are alone out here. Let it be said that this place is one of solitude.
Margot
Ned's penchant for pragmatism came in handy a lot of the time. Margot wouldn't have considered a back-up plan to possession. His concern-heavy voice on the subject of the deceased Jacqueline Paix's psychotrauma had the little blood witch settling a similarly concerned look onto the side of his face.
"You remember the girl-spirit from the frat house?" Of course he did. "She was tormented by her death. She tormented herself even worse afterwards. But she wasn't inherently bad. Maybe because she wasn't built to be, or maybe because she wasn't given enough time to get there, but we could communicate with her. She got what she wanted and left. This lady here and now? She's only been dead a few months. And I doubt she died a villian." Even as she tried reassuring him (herself as well) that this spirit was unlikely to want to attack or harm them, doubt sparked dull red and inconspicuous in the edges of her voice. There were too many variables that were different here, of course she couldn't guarantee the temperament of a summoned victim.
All the same, she took a breath and set off away from the gravel of the road's shoulder, the bottom of her boots slipping and pulling on the long grass that sloped down to a shallow ditch. From there she'd start forward, her path clearly set toward the small pond that was visible from the roadside. The lapping water and bright outline of the moon pushing through the dim periwinkles of dusk on its surface spoke to her, to Her, in a particular manner.
It was at the edge of the pond, several feet from the edge, that Margot settled. She sat down upon her knees with the heels of her boots tucked under her rump and opened the backpack that she'd shrugged off onto the ground beside her. From within she produced a couple of things: a white ceramic water bottle, a smooth bowl made from the wood of an ash tree, a stick lighter, and a good sized bundle of dried greens that were tucked away into a ziplock bag so that they wouldn't crumble all over the interior of her bag. Half the herbs were pulled from the bag and crumbled in her fist to fall into the bowl set central in front of her.
As she worked, the very air around her seemed to go still. Not just still, but taut, like the string of a bow being pulled and held with the potential to let loose at any time. Margot licked her lips and brought the stick lighter to life with flame, and spread the fire across the top of the loose dried bundle of green and yellow plant. Soon dense smoke twisted up from the bowl, and Margot leaned back. Her hands cupped loosely around the smoke like she was warming her hands on the embers within, or like she was trying to encourage them to grow...
[Summoning the ghost of a murder victim - Spirit 2] (WP!)]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (5, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Ned
Ned didn't offer anything to Margot's reassurance. Not one for optimism he seemed intent on their surroundings, allowing Margot the chance to do what she needed to do, to prepare for the moment ahead. His face continued to hold that vague grimness, though the knife had yet to make an appearance beyond the slight flash of a sheath at his back.
Instead, Ned's questing gaze continues it's scanning movements, head canting from one moment to the next even as he double checks their surroundings with a swift mental and physical departure from reality. The essence Doc explained as 'Quint' floods out of him and into his gaze, hands locking around some inner tension, fists formed at his sides while Margot works.
(Forces 1 / Life 1 / Matter 1: Reality X-ray (Searching for objects, heat blooms and pulses in the immediate vicinity. Diff 4 - 1 for Quint)
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (10, 10) ( success x 2 )
Echo
Ned is a sharp, astute sort of creature. Ned is also an observant sort- to the point that one could argue he was hyper vigilant- but that vigilance pays off and the world does as it will do. It is shoved aside and forced to render its secrets to Caesar. He reaches out and around, feels the heartbeat of a nearby deer. Some fish in the stream fleeing their presence. The only real heat coming to them is the heat held in the initiates' chests; he notices an odd lack of heat, really. A lack of others beyond themselves in this area because even now the doe is taking her leave of them.
All that is near them is the trees, the rocks, the natural. The only man made goods are those they brought with themselves. They are alone- save for this:
The dried greens in Margot's hands take the flame as a welcomed companion- they drink the warmth there and soon the when they are placed where they are intended there is a movement there. Dense smoke is plucked forth like the notes on a lyre as it twists and curls into the air. They say that there is something that needs to be cleansed when the smoke has something to grasp, and this smoke does grasp at the atmosphere around them.
She may look from her focus, from her ritual and see something move there- something in the smoke moves, like if Margot herself had pulled her hand through its coils. The movement is that of a magician's assistant, some kind of movement in the smoke to divert from what the other hand is doing but Margot Travers knows to look left when others point right. The smoke turns, braids, pulls to a thin line that reaches to hold-
Something.
It will take another pull to bring that something across.
Margot
Smoke twisted and curled in the air before her, thick and grabbing something in the air to show that it existed. Not wind, though-- the air was still, abnormally so with the lack of singing crickets and chirping birds overhead.
"You're there," she whispered quietly from the ground, speaking through the smoke to the Other Side to whatever was left of Jacqueline that she was trying to coax out-- hoping that it was Jacqueline at all. A hand dropped down and shook the bowl a little, tossing up the embers with the dried dandelion that it hadn't eaten yet and giving more oxygen to help fuel the burning as well. She licked her lips and focused on the smoke hard enough that she was looking into it, through it to the other side. The very image of the smoke reflected strong in her big eyes, taking mirroring lessons from the pond in front of them.
Fingers curled over the smoke again and moved in delicate motions, like she could tug the smoke to be more dense and strong, and then began to delicately pick it apart to help out whatever was Beyond.
[C'mon little spirit, I hear you in there. Extending.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Ned
Ned's attention returned to the Ritual, satisfied they were mundanely alone in this affair, his eyes seeming to blink particles of quint away to waft into the returning fold of reality. He is apart from where Margot kneels, regarding the feathering smoke and coiling 'presence' that seemed to be hovering on the outskirts of where and whenever the 'Other side' could be found.
In this moment, his hand was around the length of leather wrapped handle, attached to the honed and sharpened hunting knife. A glance at Margot given, both quizzical and patient, even if all nerves were firing, all muscles tensed for a potential bombardment of something otherworldly they might not be expecting.
Echo
And in that moment the air grew thicker and in a space smaller than one would expect, the air is rent, torn, and pushed through is a woman who stands nearly as tall as Ned is but with possibly half the bodyweight. She is some fae creature, or perhaps not. Perhaps this is their dead woman- what with her large eyes (seemingly sightless, milky save for the single pinpoint of what may have been pupils) and her narrow nose and delicately sculpted brows. Her proportions are distinctly human and her attire is non-existent.
She finds herself nearly standing on top of Margot. Her brows knit together and she cocks her head to the side- all that blonde hair toppling to one side. The smoke has long since grown cold, and where she stands there is the crunch of frozen earth.
"... where is this?"
The voice doesn't come from her, but rather it is ambient and half-muffled, as though parts of her never made it past the gauntlet.
Margot
All at once Margot felt the air expand and contract simultaneously. Stillness and cold flooded over her and by the time she'd focused her eyes back outside of the smoke Margot realized that she was seeing a manifestation of legs right in front of her knees, thin and maybe slightly discolored, maybe still colored the deep gray-blue of the smoke or maybe still fleshy. She looked up and blinked and realized that the woman was blond and present and speaking with a voice that didn't entirely come across with her, and that she was naked.
Margot made a small noise of discomfort (of course, squeamish over the proximity of the dead woman's nudity as opposed to with the concept of death or any visibility of a bullet hole in the head [she hadn't checked that far yet]), and pushed herself back away from the woman's feet and scrambled up onto her own soon after. She didn't retreat immediately to Ned's side but cleared her throat, brushed her hands on the thighs of her jeans, and tried to ignore the flush of embarassment burning on her cheeks and ears.
"The mountains in north El Paso county," she answered, testing her voice with the fact and finding that it would be fine after she cleared her throat. The clearing-throat sound came, a glance back to Ned followed, and then she looked back to the woman (eyes now checking for that bullet wound in the scalp, curious if it were to appear there still or not).
"...Are you Miss Jacqueline Paix?"
Echo
There were no bullet wounds at all in this body. Her fingertips are bluing and her lips have no color but she is intact. Clean. Like she'd just stepped out of a shower and everything was fine there. Like she had never even been dead at all save for the fact that she feels like the frozen cosmos; she looks around and her lips press into a fine line.
Is she Miss Jacqueline Paix?
"Why am I here?"
So incredulous, this one. She walks away from the little witch and takes a stance where she can observe her surroundings and those near her, "why did you bring me here?"
Margot
Ned was hanging back a few feet, and when Margot looked back to find him a brief glance and understanding was exchanged. This was her ritual, her show and pony. Both of her cabalmates were useless when it came to Spirits (though only for now, she was sure). He would watch carefully and she would continue to serve as liason to the dead. Her mouth set in a grim line, but Margot turned to address the dead woman once more.
"To help." This was her answer to both questions, and though her voice was still quiet and almost pleading it did not quake or quiver. Much like the air when she'd summoned the spirit forward, she was and would remain steady. Hazel eyes followed along after the woman's trailing steps, and her hands rested at her sides with a conscious effort not to fidget while she communed with the woman's spirit.
"We're trying to stop people from being killed, because the police don't seem interested in or able to do so themselves. We might, though." The 'we' clearly being her and Ned. She paused, frowning at how to pose this next question without running the risk of sending the spirit flying into a fit.
"...It's cold here, before and after you arrived, Miss. Was it so cold when you were here last?"
Echo
"I haven't been this far down the creek in months, not since May," she said, though the times may not quite correspond. Her body was found in June.
"Not since Beltane with Evan and Odessa and Evelyn and..." she looks concerned again, as though she was trying to remember something and the details were just escaping her. She seems keen on pacing. Her attention flickers from the little witch to the smoke "-but we all went home after that. I met with clients the next morning, it wasn't cold at all... It hadn't been cold in weeks."
Ned
"...Last names of your friends? We;d,,,"
Ned clears his throat gently, trying to decide whether to lean on the Orderly training he'd accmulated over the years or simply gut-punch things into the reality that was unfolding at the moment. He'd opted for more comfort than control.
"...like to check with them as well and hopefully be able to piece together some details about what's going on...Some confusion all around it would seem..."
Margot
[Intelligence + Enigmas: C'mon, Brainy Kid, don't those names sound familiar? The word Beltane should definitely tip you off.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5) ( botch x 1 )
Margot
Margot cast a polite glance back to Ned while he asked about the last names. Margot didn't need surnames herself, though. The ones given tied to the word Beltane had her gears turning. They sounded familiar, they were significant in a Magickal sense, not just in the way that she may have read about them in newspaper articles.
"Odessa," she repeated quietly, more for herself than anyone else. Her brow furrowed as memories bled together and refused to be separated. Vampiric flesh molding? Or a Swan-Spirit, perhaps?
"But that doesn't make sense...."
She was left to quietly mutter under her breath, near-silent for how soft it was, while trying to sort her threads out in her mind. This would give Jacqueline time to answer Ned or tell him to fuck off.
Echo
"Evelyn Murray," she says, carefully. She seems to be regarding them with a great deal of scrutiny, as though she isn't entirely certain what to make of this particular experience or the fact that she is in the middle of an area that she hadn't been to in months, "Evan's always just been Evan and Odessa doesn't have a last name."
But it doesn't make sense-
"What is confusing. You're talking about people being murdered- who-" her voice hits a pin point, not originating from her but, instead, from the place where the smoke smoldered quietly still "-which murders are you talking about?"
As though there were more.
Ned
Ned takes the name and sets it aside somewhere in the compartments of his mind. Something to investigate later or at least hand over to Grace so she could do her techno-thing. For now though, his brow knit together tempted to hand things back over to Margot before the young witch seemed to wander off into her memories and thoughts for a second, sourcing out details that...refused to untangle themselves. It left Ned with an eyeful of expectant ghost.
"Do the words Peregrine or Wiley mean anything to you?"
Echo
"Peregrine is a rank," she explained, "in the Fraternal Order of the Falcon. Like how the masons have their degrees and secrets, they have theirs. It's an honor to be part of that."
She seems to take her time to muse over the second part. Wiley-
"Like the Coyote?"
Ned
""That's wily, but yeah. This one's with an E. W.I.L.E.Y. The nickname of someone we found. Apparently, he got into this order." Ned offered with a vague smile that suggested 'Lucky fellow, right?'
"A brotherhood. Gentleman's club?" Ned draws closer to the ghost, his interest suddenly piqued at the mention of some order or other. That would no doubt gain some hits and attention from a few bodies and minds among them, though a small part of him was trying not to think about another 'Order' in the Mage community this could be attached to.
"So this order accepts people into it. Honourable types? Do they have a purpose? Protective of Falcons? Wilderness and Environmentalist group?" Ned's half-hearted joke was meant more toward alleviating the sudden dread creeping into his system. He did his best to remain relatively deadpan and settled.
Margot
"But wait..."
Margot cut in finally. She'd missed out on the majority of the conversation surrounding the Fraternal Order of Falcons and this Wiley person, still stuck with zero traction while gears in her mind whirled around the names Evan Evelyn and Odessa-- Odessa being the drain that her mind kept circling around in particular, unsure of whether it wanted to land on 'Vampire' or 'Swan'. She'd blinked and given her head a little shake when finally coming back to reality. She'd just have to give up on that particular train of thought for now.
"What's the last thing that you remember? As a whole, I mean, Miss Paix? If you weren't here since May, if you remember clients, then there's something missing between the last time you were here and when you... ended up here last."
Echo
"Somewhere between a hunting lodge and a gentlemen's club. Some of the men in the lower levels take lessons with me-" took lessons with her, but she doesn't dwell on it "-they donate to the NRA and anti-fracking groups, so there's that? One of my clients told me that the only way you get to the higher echelons of the organization is a successful and dangerous hunt."
But what did she remember. What could she say about all of this? Her head turned and... what did she remember. What were her last moments that she placed and-
The air grows terribly cold for a flash and she, dead thing, stops.
"I can't tell you that."
Ned
"...ok. That's ok."
Ned offers a moment of reassurance, regarding the ghost and moving into her peripheral when she turns on Margot with a cold front sweeping in. The orderly training pulls his hands up, showing them to her with a careful sort of 'calm down' ease, that has them fall away slowly while he speaks.
"How about you tell me what sort of lessons you taught these men? You must have been important if they allowed you access to their members. What did they have to hunt for anyway? Dangerous hunt sounds like a grizzly maybe? Or a wolf?"
Margot
An order of brothers, possibly tied in to Magick, but definitely shady. The best way to get to the higher levels was to perform a special hunt. At that reveal, Margot was furrowing her brow. She was already focused on that instead of waiting with baited breath for the answer to her question-- the what happened?. It was fine all the same, for the dead woman couldn't reveal any answers to her anyways. The sudden strengthening of cold's grip in the air was not missed, though. Margot's skin tightened and she shivered.
It was while she was untying her flannel that Ned caught her eye. The gesture had her scowling at him briefly, insult flashing across her face before immediatey conceding to agreement. She was picking up what he was putting down, and was quiet while she pulled her arms through the sleeves of her flannel.
While she was buttoning the buttons, though, after Ned mused about the hunt, Margot did pipe up with one add-in:
"Or people. Hence the murder victims."
Echo
"I still don't know which murders you are talking about," she snapped, "who else died? Who else do you know died- you can't push this and I can't help you if you can't tell me who died."
She straightened, tall and strong and defiant and alive in the way that the dead should never really be. She is aware of the cold, it makes her look around and-
"Yes, like wild boars with a pocket knife or something like that- I haven't heard of much else. Evan is the one who told me about the hunting, she would know more."
Ned
"La Croix." Ned butchers the french pronunciation. Doesn't even try. "Laura Fairbanks." He states the names with obviousness. No guile or misdirection this time. His gaze travels to Margot, brow perked as if in
Ned
^question.
Anyone else?
Margot
Eyes hopped to Margot to ask if there were other names that were missing. Margot listened to the names that Ned had provided and nodded, picking up where he'd left off and looking to the woman that she'd summoned. She was built slim, this Jacqueline, but there's a power that all spirits held within and perhaps that was what helped make her seem so impressive when she was drawn tall and taut like that. Or maybe that was just the way she was in life. She spoke of Beltane, of names that rang bells of magickal significance and familiarity, she taught classes to a Brotherhood of Birds. There was power in knowledge and Magick and that could manifest afterlife as well.
"There's been a body found each month so far. Fairbanks was in the Colorado Springs suburbs, found in April. Then in May they found Chet St. Croiz near Pike's Peak."
Margot paused and her mouth twisted uncomfortably. This was the part she was worried about. Certainly the woman knew, but... to say it... well...
"A woman found you here. In June." She gestured to the area around them vaguely with her hand, palm up and fingers relaxed out. To her credit, her tone was gentle and sympathetic, a Funeral Voice if there was one. "The circumstances surrounding each murder were suspicious, increasingly so, down to you."
"....they haven't reported any other similar findings since then, and it's September now."
Echo
"La Croix was a Falcon- new guy, new money- but... Who is Laura Fairbanks?"
She looked genuinely confused, pinpoint pupils blow out to something that makes her seem almost human, almost alive for a moment. She walks and the ground takes the barest bits of ice with it, the ground thaws when she leaves.
The ghost looks down, pauses-
"If you're finding bodies, it's not the murders you should be worried about-" she moves past the sentiment quickly "who found me?"
Ned
"Evelyn did." He offers it without much in the way of thought. Throwing the name out with the familiairity that suggests Jackie knows which Evelyn. If only to see what sort of reaction that might bring.
Once again, Ned's hand is behind his back, carefully fingering the knife handle.
"...So we know that each of them was gifted. We know at least one of them was part of the Order and you Ms. Paix...were at least connected to them, through teaching methods?" Another little aside left there for if the Ghost felt inclined to answer.
"Seems like an in house problem though. Especially given we're supposed to be worried about....not the murders...I find it hard to believe there's something of higher priority than the murders right now..."
Margot
The ghostly Ms. Paix's wandering drew notice to the fact that the cold seemed to be permeating from her directly-- it followed her through each step, the ground thawing after she moved on listlessly to another part of the bank, but never wandering far from the witch and crafter who summoned her. A trailing thought-- the cause of death was the cold, and it had followed her beyond the grave. That felt significant, but the warning that she gave (don't worry about the murders) distracted her from it (for now).
She'd glanced to Ned, then folded her arms uncomfortably across her chest. The dandelion smoldered down toward ash in the bowl crafted from the tree of the name, but smoke still drifted dutiful to keep the worlds drawn together for the exchange.
"They were all apprenticed in Magick....," Margot almost whispered this, it could almost have been missed if the place weren't so supernaturally quiet already. Her eyes had been unfocused with the thought, drifting near ground level as she'd listened and pondered, but now they lifted up to focus upon the tall and surprisingly calm spectre. They were wide.
"They're only targeting Magick. You... you died of hypothermia, Jacqueline. Was that your resonance? Cold?"
Echo
Was that your resonance? Margot asked,Cold?
"Placid." the ghost replies.
She died of hypothermia, she says-
"It's too warm for that-" she says swift and ready "-I-"
This was when there was a moment to perhaps test the placid nature that this creature had told them she possessed in life. And yes, how it would be tested because the dead were creatures of roaring passions, it was what fueled them. It was that which kept their forms together and she was no different and at that moment she was beginning to feel the effects of despair, and her fists clenched and she stepped away from the two young mages, Hands go up to hold the sides of her head.
"-I saw Evelyn before I was- I went to her, I'd found out that-" which was when her eyes went dark, black and bottomless. Fathomless and abyssal- "NO."
The leaves shake with this, the air stirs and her form flickers brighter than it would before fading back ethereal- barely here.
"I can't tell again, I will not- this is not my secret, I remember! I. Am. No. Thief."
Ned
"Send her back, Margot."
Ned's voice is low, as if he were attempting not to draw the ghost's attention, ire or regard suddenly. His gaze doesn't travel quickly at the younger mage, merely glances at her out of the corner of his eye.
Margot
Truth be told, Margot was surprised that this conversation had been going so well. Jacqueline explained that her resonance was not cold, but placid, and perhaps that contributed to the experience going so smooth as it had thus far. But again she brushed up against the memory of the moment of her death, and each time before she had shied away from it. This time, however, something snapped and a sudden rage arose.
Margot went stiff in spine and muscles, and her toes gripped at her boots. Her arms stayed folded across her chest (steady), but they tightened about her ribcage and her eyes had gone wide. The ghost was shouting about protecting a secret that wasn't hers because she wasn't going to steal anything and it was a secret that she had found out when Evelyn... this Evelyn...
Send her back, urged Ned.
Those big eyes hopped over to Ned when he whispered to her, but panic didn't cling to the edges of them. She didn't need to turn her head too severely to see him, there was no dramatic whipping of the head to be seen. She considered this suggestion, then looked back to the ghost who flickered near-etheral, near-gone, whose hands were up over her head. She spoke soft and steady as before.
"You're not. I won't ask you to be either. You've helped us a lot, Jacqueline, you have our thanks."
Echo
"She knew," the spirit said, with her voice so terribly heartbroken, the kind of heartbreak that can only fuel the purest of rage. The kind of betrayal that hurts to its core, Jacqueline closed her eyes tightly "I told Evelyn about them all and she knew- I didn't know I'd promised- I didn't remember-you have to believe me!" she wailed.
Margot could have sent her back, could have been ready to give the ghost back to her plane but the air was so cold, so frightfully cold. There is the feeling, perhaps for that moment, that maybe something was amiss. The cold that came with her, the dreadful, oppressive cold that had not lifted gave way and the shadows converged for a moment upon where the ghost had been standing.
The ghost shrieked again when some thin, alabaster hand seemed to come through the shroud, grasped her shoulder and then pulled. Limbs graceful and willowy, and the barest strands of gossamer thread hair seemed to come together, as if Jacqueline and some other, more ancient being were attempting to merge. Whern she speaks again it is the voice of a chorus-
"Know that your word is your bond, children, and woe to those who would dare steal from the spirits that which is theirs. This is the wisdom of the Keeper of Secrets."
And with that, she is gone. Both she and whatever had been with her this time are away, and the silence and the cold and the stillness of the area seems to begin to bleed away- the earth itself releasing its breath to relieve the tension.
Echo
"She knew," the spirit said, with her voice so terribly heartbroken, the kind of heartbreak that can only fuel the purest of rage. The kind of betrayal that hurts to its core, Jacqueline closed her eyes tightly "I told Evelyn about them all and she knew- I didn't know I'd promised- I didn't remember-you have to believe me!" she wailed.
Margot could have sent her back, could have been ready to give the ghost back to her plane but the air was so cold, so frightfully cold. There is the feeling, perhaps for that moment, that maybe something was amiss. The cold that came with her, the dreadful, oppressive cold that had not lifted gave way and the shadows converged for a moment upon where the ghost had been standing.
The ghost shrieked again when some thin, alabaster hand seemed to come through the shroud, grasped her shoulder and then pulled. Limbs graceful and willowy, and the barest strands of gossamer thread hair seemed to come together, as if Jacqueline and some other, more ancient being were attempting to merge. Whern she speaks again it is the voice of a chorus-
"Know that your word is your bond, children, and woe to those who would dare steal from the spirits that which is theirs. This is the wisdom of the Keeper of Secrets."
And with that, she is gone. Both she and whatever had been with her this time are away, and the silence and the cold and the stillness of the area seems to begin to bleed away- the earth itself releasing its breath to relieve the tension.
Ned
The knife is out.
Ned's attention is latching onto that alabaster limb punching through from the other side and the ghostly voices that suddenly rise to collect in the vicinity. His mind is pieecing things together into some format, even as he is witnessing events quick wits formulating thoughts and ideas even as they are happening.
Because really? It's all he can do. All he has access to at the moment.
There is a merging. The cold is batted aside like some errant child, crushed and delivered into a shadowy presence that sweeps up Jac
Ned
queline and Ned is watching. Sympathetic? Empathetic? Or merely a witness. One would be hard pressed to decipher which based solely on his protective stance and the deadpan on his face.
When it all goes still ad silent, he is the same for a few moments. Then: turning to Margot, slowly, carefully he sucks in a deep and slow breath and releases it with the same controlled ease.
"We've got a lot of information. I have some thoughts but nothing concrete and we need to know a lot more before any of it will shake out. For now though? We need to get the fuck out of here."
Ned
(Wits 4 + Awareness 2)
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 5 ) [WP]
Margot
[Wits 3 + Awareness 2]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 6) ( success x 1 )
Margot
"I do!" Margot was calling back to the ghost now, insisting belief. She felt for the woman, something about the righteousness of rage stoked by betrayal called to the Goddess that she could feel in her bones. There was more reassurance that she wanted to offer to the woman, she wanted her guided back to the other side peacably, but soon the area made thin by Margot's smoke summons and the lack of the city's choking nature was pushed through by something else. The hand seized Jacqueline by the shoulder and a small startled and fearful sound strangled its way out of Margot's throat. Her arms finally unfolded only to allow her hands to clasp over her mouth as she watched what transpired with wide eyes.
When the cold and the hand and the warning had faded away and quiet returned, Ned finally turned to face Margot and she turned her head slowly to look at him. Hands slowly lowered from her mouth but her eyes were still wide. He'd taken a breath to calm himself but she didn't do the same. Rather, she looked back to the spot on the pond shore where the ghost had been pulled back where she belongs.
"There's no danger here," she said, and though the tone wasn't reassuring the message was supposed to be. "What we saw... It's not..." She didn't finish, but shook her head and concluded differently instead. "Well, let's say I'm keeping that warning close."
She went back to the bowl of dandelion ash and knelt down to clean up. The ash was tipped into the pond itself, the bowl rinsed with the water from the bottle she'd brought and scrubbed carefully with bare fingertips then dried on the hem of her shirt. Supplies packed away she shouldered her backpack and rose, waited for Ned, and when he seemed ready she started a comfortably-paced walk back toward the car.
[[ End Scene: Not seen on camera, the car drive back hashing out theories on what's going on. Tune in next time for Getting Home and Filling Doc In! ]]
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