sand creek park. [nick, liz ST]

 twilight
Rules:

- I don't have much time tonight, but you are my priority!

- ask me for difficulties before you roll.  I may elide / narrate through some bits, I may ask for rolls for others.

- this scene is largely based on what your characters would do, so I'm going to ask you either for OOC direction or IC direction as to where they are starting and what their primary goals are (learn info? set up a distraction?  et cetera?)

- if you ever do not understand something I have written but think your character might, feel free to ask for clarification.  I may offer to let you roll to learn more.

- you can at any time ask to roll detection / knowledge rolls if you'd like based on the posts.  they won't always get tons of info!

twilightThe mercury still dips below freezing at night and each and every frame and edge of the day is ccool or chilly or cold or frigid depending on one's perspective and state of dress but 'round about three p.m. basking in the warm rays of the sun, surrounded by the golden waves of prairie grasses, the low scrub trees, that sense of: space, openness, the mad, endless dome-of-the-sky that inspired some pioneers and drove others mad mad mad.  Well, here is Sand Creek Park.  The odd sign about construction projects through summer 2016, but otherwise greenspace naturalized enough that the grass is left to go wild, naturalized.  Sand Creek proper is low and flat and undulent through the landscape, dark and cold where it runs through its rocky course, and hard to see in the flat sea of waving grasses except when one stumbles upon it, or where a pedestrian bridge arches high over.

Hard to believe a Technocratic lab is little more than a golf course away.

Kiara WoolfeThere's a fine tension here. An undercurrent of it, it rattles through them, rattles bone deep.

Being so close to them. The Verbena can almost taste it; their unyielding trudge toward so-called unification and strength. The idea that Alexander was with them, that they were working to bury their mechanics beneath his skin and twist and distort all that he was to suit their needs had, at first, nearly unwound Kiara Woolfe's carefully built armor.

It kept her safe, you see. That emotional buffer. Kept her from striding across that gently trickling creek into their turf. It was keeping a many great things at bay for the brunette right now - things she carried in those dark eyes of hers when they ticked over the parkland as they arrived; their movements seeming unnaturally loud and echoing.

There were insects singing in the wilder grasses growing by the creek. The Verbena paused only long enough to pass a flashlight to her companion and direct him a slight, brief check of her mouth upward at the corner. Still red, that mouth.

Tonight it feels brazen in a different way - a slash of bold declaration. The pendant around the female's neck glinted as she moved toward the water's edge; adjusting the strap of her backpack.

The insects quieted as they drew nearer, watching.

[Awareness!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 7, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )

Kiara Woolfe[And, activating Mind Shield! Base Diff 4, -1 Taking her time.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Nicholas HydeNicholas called in sick to work today.  It is not the first time he has done this in order to pursue some Awakened agenda, nor will it be the last; and yet it seems to him as though the space between these occurrences grows nearer and nearer.  Last year he went on administrative leave from his old job for nearly three months, and when he came back he was so changed and Quiet-riddled the Sleepers in his life all assumed he had cancer.  It was the only explanation they had for: holy shit, man.

He is not quite so phased by being this close to a Technocratic stronghold.  Nicholas works in a hospital; the risk of running into a Union operative, and the assumption that they perhaps even share some beliefs and aspects of paradigm in common, is a part of his day-to-day life.

Today when he arrives he is also carrying a backpack.  Some of his more cumbersome items (the yew staff, in particular) are resting at home in his study; it's fortunate the park is nearby since he will have nearly everything he needs to assist.

Maybe he's a little nervous, today, evidenced generally by fidgeting, by sometimes plucking absently at the curls at the back of his neck.  Can she see it?  Nick doesn't work around other mages familiar with his preferred Sphere very often.

They arrive at the creek together.  His movements are not loud and echoing; he might as well be floating over the landscape here, as though he already stands with one foot in this world and one in the next.  They come to the river, and Nick draws in a deep breath that inflates his lungs down to the very bottom and expands his shoulders and chest and lungs.

[Mind shield for Nick too.  Base diff 4, -1 taking time. Extending if necessary.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (1, 3) ( success x 1 )

Nicholas Hyde[Extending.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (3, 5) ( success x 2 )

Nicholas Hyde[Aaaaaand awareness.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

twilightIf there is some monstrous construct, some mad, consumptive, mechanistic, devouring amalgam lost somewhere in the orange glow of Aurora's ambient light pollution (on snow-bound nights, doesn't it all feel a bit nuclear?  some assault, some war at the edge of the horizon: Kiara feels not a lick of it.  She's open to the sky and oh there's Orion finding a way to shine through the haze and here is the murmur of the creek and the rush of the brace of interstates surrounding them quite as low and susserant as the coursing of any waterway and hum, hum, hum.  Come summer the noisy chorus will be loud and lewd, the rush and need, the drive to consummate, god, something, anything, before the sun falls away from the earth again.  To be remade, reborn: perpetuated.

Now though.

Now.

Not many in the park afterdark.

They cut through the popular jogging trails heading for something perhaps deeper.  Somewhere where the seams between the worlds are thinning, thinning, thinner.

Night all around.  Prairie grass rustling in the constant wind.

No evidence anyone knows they are here.

(Gauntlet is generally 7-8 in the park.  Kiara's awareness roll is enough that they can probably hike to an area where it is 6-7 at least at night.  it would be higher in daylight.)

Kiara WoolfeIn some ways the solitude feels worse. The normalcy to it; being in the open; surrounded by the soft grasses and beneath the sky. It feels like belonging and home to the pagan. She feels as much a part of the earth beneath their feed and the lush, verdant growth all around them as she does within her skin.

The essence of the brunette was twofold, here. A thrum; the pulse of nature; her perpetual, never-ending cycle. Nicholas takes the time to breathe when they reach the water's edge and the Verbena stands silently for a moment; staring out into the distance; her shoulders straight, a trace of that lingering agitation drawn into the curve of her spine.

Her fingers fall away from the quartz around her neck. "It feels wrong, doesn't it." She offers simply, quietly. Her eyes shifting to rove Nicholas's face. To search it, before she looks back over the water. "It feels like there should be something more. This close." She takes a few cautious steps off to the side and then gestures up a small crest.

There's a gentle gust of wind that sends the smell of summer-turned earth their way; traces over their skin as if to beckon them on. "I think we'll have a better chance up there, through those trees."

Kiara Woolfe(feed = feet, I can spell, honest.)

Nicholas HydeThey've reached the water's edge and as Kiara looks over at his face Nicholas seems to be scanning the water itself, for a moment.  There is something in the Chakravanti's demeanor that could lend the impression that he is not particularly paying attention as they walk through the park: there are points at which his eyes seemed to be focused on nothing, or when they are looking at something that neither of them are talking about.  They go unfocused, hazy.

Nick needs other people; they are a tether.

As Kiara speaks it draws his eyes over to her, and to her comment he only nods.  "They might even have some sort of operation here that's being concealed.  It's close enough, and there isn't a lot of other green space on their campus."  Perhaps he might not otherwise have been so suspicious but: construction projects.

Kiara leads them on, and Nick follows, shifting the shoulder strap of his bag.

twilightThey have to hike to find it.  In the dark, unfamiliar ground.  The sea of grass helps.  Easy to see where others have tramped then down, particularly when winter keeps them dry and dormant.  What trees are here are low and scrub; lonely, scrabbling outposts, strange little copses grown up where the water table is high, where an old half-forgotten oxbow of the stream has become a boggy wetland.

Thirty minutes, forty minutes, and: here.

Kiara WoolfeWhile they hike, Kiara's narrow beam of torchlight bounces across the grass. Casts a strange, feeble little yellow orb arcing out. She keeps it low, focusing on swinging it out before their feet so they can navigate around the wild grasses that have thrown themselves into re-growth everywhere their roots can reach. Straining even where they've become trodden and flattened by constant human traffic through the park.

She speaks, after a few minutes of silence. She has a melodic voice, the pagan. Somehow sweet for all the ways she clearly was anything but. There's a sense that perhaps she does it - talks, murmurs into the rustling trees and the gurgle of water - for the sake of distracting them from the task at hand as much as anything.

"There was another Node here, you know. Not here, but - out in the trees. In the wilderness. Annie - one of the Cabal at the Chantry - took me out there once. There's a clearing where the world just sort of - stops." Kiara's movements slow and she waits for Nicholas to catch up, glances at him.

The torchlight sliding along her arm, shoulder. Casting shadows into the lines of the Verbena's face. "On the other side, through time. It's just a void of nothing now. After they came and tried to take the Node. It was too wild for them, though. To powerful. It wouldn't yield." A flare of something like pride at that. A vicious sort of satisfaction that fades soon enough as she begins careful steps forward again.

"So they did what they're good at. They destroyed it. Killed more of us. Left the earth stained with blood." She stops after they've walked onwards a good way; dipping into a silence not fraught with but stained at the edges with a particular sort of grief. One not entirely hers but - felt. But understood.

"I think this is it." She turns a small circuit, the Verbena. Sets her pack down carefully. "I think we might be able to reach across here."

Nicholas HydeNicholas keeps pace with her easily enough, and even though he is in motion there is this stillness to him as the two of them follow the waterway.  When she glances at him he is watching her, has met her eyes because he senses that she is about to tell him more and there aren't any words needed to ask her to continue.

He is all smoke and cinder here, illuminated on one side as he is from the bright beam of the flashlight.  He belongs here, moreso than he did when he went with her out past the rocks, to the deep red landscape that could've belonged to another world.  There is a flicker of something on his face as he listens: some connecting of dots perhaps, some flash of insight or understanding.  Regardless, he is not surprised by what he is hearing.

"Andrés told me that happened."  Maybe she has to think to remember Andrés, the Etherite at the meeting: loud, effusive, arguing with Grace.  "What I don't understand is the why of it.  The Union disagrees with us but they...that kind of violation..."

And he is troubled here, and he stops because they have reached a place where they could reach across.  He, too, swings his pack off of his shoulder.  "You've more experience here than me.  I can follow your lead."

twilight(no reason for me to post again here.  i'm going to head to bed.  one of you email me please the transcript?)

Kiara Woolfe"Verbanae. They hate us with a particular kind of frenzy." There's a tick of dark humor to the way she offers that, lowering herself to her haunches and undoing the straps on her pack. She sets the torch between her teeth for a moment to extract a small number of items. Thick-set candles and a bundle of herbs rolled together, tethered with twine (sage, by the scent). A packet of incense, a purple pouch, cinched together with a black tie (dried leaves within this).

The tools of a healer; those of an earth witch.

She's surpassed the need for them for what they're here for tonight; can manifest her connection to the other side without her herbs and invocations but - habit keeps them on hand. "We were the guardians here and they knew better than to try and turn any of them."

Kiara's eyes gleam in the near-darkness. "We don't make good converts. And when they do manage -" A beat, a sharp breath out. "Well, better to violate the land than let it tended by us, apparently." She rises up and begins to etch out a circle of sorts; finding points around them. "I can erect a sort of - barrier, before we attempt to connect. To keep whatever we find a safe distance from us.

It won't keep everything out but no spirit will be able to cross it without considerable regret."

Nicholas HydeNick sets his bag on the ground and lowers himself to his haunches, whereupon he unzips the bag and begins to pull his own items from it.  These largely seem unrelated to his work, in all likelihood: a bottle of water, a first aid kit, the flashlight that he has set aside.  Good items to have on hand, at least.  There is also a string of bags that he draws from the pack, small pouches tied to one another.

And he listens.  There is another glance in Kiara's direction, attentive and sharp-eyed, as she offers her thoughts on why the Technocracy would have preferred to salt the earth rather than leave it in the hands of the Verbenae.  It is not beyond the pale, this thought that they would hate Kiara's Tradition to such an extent that they would destroy a node.  They are ancient enemies of one another, after all.  "I'm sorry about what happened," is what he offers, quietly.

"I can help you create the circle," he says, as he rises again to his feet.  The leather bags he has draped around his neck and shoulders now, mostly for ease of access.

Then, "I've mostly worked with animal spirits and ghosts, which I find easier to make offerings to and communicate with.  Less so with nature spirits, if those were what you thought to consult.  Do you have any specific requests of me?"

Kiara WoolfeHis acknowledgement of the loss receives the regard of her fine dark eyes on him for a beat.

There's a firming of her mouth as if the mention of it; the loss of life; women she'd never known but who she had shared a common belief with was a pain she did not quite know what to do with. And perhaps, given more recent events - she does not. She simply offers a tiny smile, a cant of her head and begins to sprinkle something around the same lines she'd just etched out into the earth.

"I thought perhaps we could summon a raven spirit. Or crow. They tend to know a lot about what goes on around them. This might be a good place to find them." Kiara's eyes tick around them. Her torch resting on the ground illuminates a beam of light across which tiny whirls of dust dance. "I could try and talk to Her, too. See if the wind will listen for us, what the water's seen." There's a beat as she fetches her bundle of sage. Begins to unwind it.

"If need be, I may be able to awaken something nearby. Something must have seen." Kiara's mouth constricts into a frown. "I just hate the idea of Alexander being - " She stops herself short, pushes herself to her feet with the sage and a pack of matches in hand. "I usually walk the boundaries of the circle to cast it." She offers.

Nicholas HydeNicholas is not looking at her when she looks at him.  His attention is roving over this little grove by the river, the beginnings of her circle and how very different places like this look in the black of night.  The thin dark hallow of him fades into the scenery here, as though he'd been painted in by some Victorian artist in a particularly somber mood.

"We are well acquainted," he says, when she mentions crow and raven spirits.  "I usually keep things on hand to trade with them."  What things those are is anyone's guess; who knows what he has in the little leather bags.  (Though he is quite well aware that spirit frequently favor things that have no material value or worth or even shape: and crows like secrets.)

He nods, accepting her method of drawing the circle and taking this in stride.  It is still something he is beginning to learn to use; he is, perhaps, in a period when he is at his most flexible with certain Arts.  So he moves to stand opposite her, so that they can each walk half the length and meet.  Duality in all things.

"Who is the Her you mentioned?"

Kiara WoolfeKiara seems surprised, for a moment, to be asked about Her. She pauses in walking the boundaries of the circle; spirals of smoke follow where she steps, the sage now burning and the packet of matches safely stowed in the pocket of her jeans. "I suppose the easiest way to describe Her is to say - nature. Everything around us is part of her. The Goddess. I believe that she speaks through the elements.

I hear her, sometimes. In the wind. Or see her, at bonfires during celebrations." There's a vague familiarity to it, the way the brunette speaks of this sentient presence. It was, one supposed, not unlike the way others spoke of their God. Their deities.

This then, was the pagan's own. The old Gods and Goddesses. The revered of the earth itself. Old magick, that of blood and drums and sacrifice. The traces of it are there even now - in the way the Verbena treks around the circle; cleanses the space within it with gentle, precise movements, draws blood where she bites down hard on her lower lip. There's a prickle of stirring energy; a shifting as Kiara's resonance begins to seep into their presence. A surge of rejuvenating energy; one shared with the only remaining Node in the area.

And beneath it, a steady pulsing.

[Magic Circle time! So I think this is Coincidental? Prime 2, Spirit 2. Base Diff 5. -1 Using Instruments when she doesn't need to (Spirit), taking her time -1 + WP. Basically raising a 'shield' around them that will keep any nasty influences at bay while they converse with the spirits.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (5, 6, 6) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Nicholas Hyde[I halp.  Base diff 5.  -1 for using an instrument, -1 for taking time.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (3, 9) ( success x 2 )

Nicholas HydeNicholas winds the other half of the circle, and he is also moving slowly; there is this occasional deep breath as he draws in the sweet scent of the smoke.  He keeps pace with her, maintaining the same distance so that they could look across the circle toward each other at any point.

Which is why she can see him glance at her as she speaks of the Goddess she follows.  There is some familiarity there, as he listens, no sense that any of what she is describing is new, at least in concept.  Nicholas has worked extensively with the Verbenae before; respects them even, on some deep level, even if it were not already apparent from the similarities in how they are Working together just now.

"I believe my Guide to also be a goddess," he says, "though I'd be less inclined to call Her nature."  Which is the way of things sometimes, when one is speaking of things that are ancient and harken back to the first memories: they are so distant that they become ineffable, even to those that they favor.  The quest for understanding, though, is always a worthwhile one.

He draws no blood.  He breathes in, breathes out, and shuts his eyes; a sort of walking meditation.  His resonance is this quiet bloom as his consciousness expands outward, this air of the sacred and the unknowable.

Kiara Woolfe[Whoo, so that's a total of 6 Suxx for the Magic Circle. Go, team!]


twilight
It is as dark a night as one will find in Sand Creek Park.  The moon is absent and the clouds have cleared away.  The ambient glow is ever-present on the horizon: impossible to forget the labs, the facilities, the hospital a holes of golf away: but beneath the loose sky and among the dark grasslands below: they work.  They have come deep enough that they have to push through the waving grasses like ships through the sea, but so they do.  The circle is drawn: physically.  The landscape means that it lingers physically even as they feel it taking shape, their resonance twined, the magicks woven together like reeds.

Kiara WoolfeIt feels like a key, turning in a lock, once the circle is cast. The faint hum of energy surrounding them; rising up around them in a small diameter on all sides. Kiara presses her fingertips to the bundle of sage and snuffs out the smoking tip; moves quietly over to her pack and carefully replaces it inside.

There's a sobriety, now, to the witch's movements. As if the casting of the circle had signaled some change in her demeanor. The dark eyes that find Nicholas, twin glimmers in the twilight, are full now of a steady sort of determination. "I think we're ready now," she offers and rises to her feet, gently brushing dirt from her knees.

"Crow won't be able to cross the circle but hopefully he'll be willing to bargain information. You've dealt with him before, you can speak for us, once he's here if you like." Her mouth curls a touch, she holds her hand out to the other Awakened.

"Ready?"

Nicholas HydeNicholas always has a sort of sobriety to his movements; there is no discernible difference in him once that quiet hum of energy seems to spring up around them.  If anything, perhaps there is some tension that has crept into him just now: he is unused to Working with an audience, or speaking to spirits with an audience, especially not when that happens to consist of someone who is more experienced than he is.

Still, he levels a look at the Verbena as she rises to her feet and he says, "I'm still learning to summon.  If you call him here, I can speak with him."

There is this glance to her hand when she offers it to him, this moment of quizzical hesitation: unsure of its purpose.  But he places his hand in hers, nods, and says, "Ready."

Kiara Woolfe[Right! Let's do this. I think ... we're gonna roll with Spirit 3 to Summon and add in Prime 2 to assist with drawing Crow over. So, we're starting at Base Diff 6, -1 for using Instruments, -1 for taking her sweet time and -1 for using a Quint. GO BIG OR GO HOME. May extend! I think they'll need a few suxx to get Crow's attention. ]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Kiara Woolfe[Extending! +1 Diff and adding a WP.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (1, 7, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Kiara Woolfe[Once more for flavor.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (4, 8, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

twilightNot silence here, but the distance of human-crafted sounds give their circle a strange sense of isolation that should feel rare in an urban setting: anywhere, except - god, it is night, and it is not quite as hard as one imagines to become lost in a cityscape, after full dark has fallen, particularly this close to one of the doorways of the year.

What is that near?  That noise that feels like woosh and lift, shadow-against-shadow with this fey hint of gleam, that shadow-without-shadow-without-shadow because tonight there is no moon.

Breathe in: and there.  Stippling the bare limbs of the nearest scrub oak, this impression of - oh, a half-dozen dark-winged birds, roosting in the trees.  Gleam-of-a-querying eye from the other side of their well-cast circle.  And:

?????????

This push of query/question that embodies so many all in one.  Who/when/how/why?

And, perhaps also: what do you have for me?

Kiara WoolfeIt takes time, to summon a spirit. Not - endless time, they don't quite have that to spare but - time. There is a drawing in of focus required, you understand. A need for this small, lean woman with her wild hair and eyes to pull at the very fabrics that knit their worlds together and unravel them. To part the seam between and draw out one that resided on the other side.

There was good reason why the Spirit touched Awakened often seemed so displaced - at any given moment prone to staring off into space; to gleaning things that were not quite there. For the Umbra, such as it was, was a profound spectacle to behold - hard to ignore that much wonderment, once your eyes had seen it once.

Kiara grips Nicholas' hand at one point; her eyes fixed ahead; at some point in the inky darkness. There's a thickening; a syrupy gathering of energy and then - the swoop of wings. They are, quite suddenly, not alone and being observed by a gathering of crows nesting in the tree branches.

The Verbena's fingers loosen and she turns dark eyes to her companion. Her expression seeming to read: you're up, batter.

Nicholas HydeNicholas, when he has spoken with spirits, has typically engaged them in this random way: whatever happened to be in the area he was.  It so happened that crow spirits and raven spirits and coyote spirits happened to find him, more often than not.  He does not know how long he walked in the dead lands when he was there, but he knows they became as friends, or as close to friends as something otherworldly can really ever get.

His gaze is intent as Kiara grips his hand and focuses her eyes (unfocuses them? who can really say) on the black that surrounds them.  The swoop of wings: his fingers loosen too at that moment and he looks around toward the winged birds that are roosting in that tree, from the other side of the circle.

"Hello," he says to them, and there's this way that he talks to them without pretense, as though they were people.  The two of them are battered by questions, which merit answers, in their turn.  And then, "Nicholas Hyde, and this is Kiara Woolfe.  I've met others like you before, and I know you're clever and quick, and I know how much you know.

"We called you hoping you'd be willing to trade.  Secret for secret?"

twilightSecret for a secret?

Secret for a secret.

There is something elegant and elegaic about the dark shapes shrouded amongst the bare tree limbs.  This sense of communal awareness, of communication, of chorus that ripples from one suggestion to another, dancing through murder, each to each.

At last the foremost among them rears back and opens its body up to the full width of its wingspan, and rears back and takes such soaring flight only to swoop back downward, hopping and backwinging like it intended to land just outside the circle.

And so it does.  Somehow the waving grasses sink all around the creature.

Gleam, that eye.  Finally:

Assent.  Secret for a secret.  and

Tell me what you know.

Greedy thing.

Kiara WoolfeKiara watches on as Nicholas speaks to the spirit(s). Her stillness could either signify tension or grave, total consideration and a look spared the Verbena's way speaks far more of the latter. The edge of her jaw in the moonlight a finecut thing; she's all hollows and dark, shining eyes.

When Crow assents, when he dives and settle-hops to the ground near the edge of the circle, then Kiara stirs and glances at her companion. Their secrets were a precious commodity and perhaps, given their nature, not to be shared without considerable caution. "We can each offer something," she says quietly, with a tinge of some unidentifiable strain in her voice.

"The more we do, the more he may be inclined to offer back." There's a beat, then Kiara walks to the edge of the circle proper and lowers herself to a crouch; observing the spirit's gleaming, bright eye. "Hello, Crow." The brunette murmurs and then leans in. Her body perched there at the edge of the circle.

She says something, the pagan and then after a beat, pulls back and rises again.

Nicholas HydeGreedy thing: he had expected no less.  Finding something equitable, that's always the trick; bargaining ethically, without giving away secrets that aren't his to give away - that's the other.

"I will.  Do you know anything about the tower back that way?"  And here, a significant look over his shoulder toward the Technocratic compound.  He can only imagine how it looks to them: he has never been to such a place, not in the Umbra.  An infinite network of steel and glass, perhaps.  "The web.  We want to know everything you know about it."

He watches them with steady eyes, hair dark as one of their wings.  Perhaps they, too, think he is a greedy thing.  He watches as Kiara moves forward, whispers to the murder.  "I'll offer more once we know what you have to tell in kind."

Kiara WoolfeThis is the secret Crow receives from the Verbena: Our friend was taken hostage and when I heard he was the first thing I felt wasn't pity or fear but envy. To be that close to them, to look them in the eye and have the chance to destroy them.

I want to watch them all burn. I want to exact revenge for my friends. And for myself.

twilightWe know it.

Ruffling, rustling, the murder responds.  The foremost of them bobs its head.  That whole and strange and oddly human movement, the too-intelligent gaze.

An echo: rising, whistling, whispering, brightening, query after query after answer after query:

Spiderhome.

Another frission, this dark, lyrical glance from Nicholas to Kiara, Kiara to Nicholas, back again.
--

Everything we know is much and little.  Ask what you will and we will answer.


Kiara WoolfeThe brunette's arms fold over her chest and for a beat she frowns into the distance, as the spirits mention the tower; call it the Spiderhome. The spirits of stagnation and the cities; spinning their webs across great divides of gleaming glass and steel.

She exchanges a look with Nicholas, then presses: "We seek someone inside the Spider's domain. He feels like Ice. Frozen things. We want to know what protections there are to reach him. Where are the dangers?"

Nicholas HydeSpiderhome, they say, and Nicholas, this is the first time he's heard it described as such: he had some sense of the way these places looked to spirits, from things he has heard others say.  He had perhaps been unaware until now of how apt his conceptualization of the place was.

The crows rustle on their branches, and Nicholas shifts his weight from one leg to the other, folding his arms as he thinks.  Perhaps he is still thinking of what to offer in return; it is not a decision made lightly.  "We also want to know the best way to reach him, the most direct and with the fewest dangers.  Are there any places near the web that they haven't touched - any safe places?"

twilightThere is a sense of cessation there.  Kiara says that they seek someone inside who feels like ice and there is another flutter from within the murder, ths humming, humming query that comes back to them, in a ricochet:

Many frozen in spiderhome.  Frozen-one-who-sought-and-changed is the friend-you-seek?

Another bristling from within the murder, which feels like a shivering sense of refusal or disagreement, some sense of disorder.   They do not know the best way to him; where he is being held, except in the heart and here there is something else: an impression from the murder that has flown-over spiderhome, that sees it from above the spinning web of the grid, that sensed this person and this change, some surging change like growth growth growth (flowing and boundless) from deep inside.  Later: Kiara and Nicholas will be able to transliterate this impression of space into at least a certain (still large) wing of a certain hospital south of where they stand.  Another sense of being: beneath, buried, perhaps - perhaps?  Belowground?

One of the murder tells them that noplace is safe but again: that bristling of disagreement, a rustling rising of a secret coming to the surface:  The Greenway.  Oak still lives.

Scoff.  Slumbers.

Lives.

The dangers?  Many: myriad.  Stasis, says one.  Death, says another.  Devouring.

Kiara WoolfeFrozen one who sought and changed is the friend you seek?

Kiara's mouth softens a touch, tilts up at the edge into a slip of a smile; she inclines her face. Nods, briefly. "Yes, that's our friend. He was taken and we want to bring him home." There's this tiny fleeting tremor in Kiara's voice that registers on home. As if she were uncertain of saying it aloud, as if, deep down, she knew there may well not be a home for Alexander to return to.

How did you simply pick up and resume a life after what he's been through, anyway?

Oak still lives. Slumbers. The Greenway.

The Verbena's smile fades a little. "Oak can help?" Aside, to Nicholas. "They might be referring to Greenway Park. It's not that far from here." Then, her dark eyes back on Crow. "I can awaken Oak from his slumber."

Nicholas HydeThe Greenway.

There is this sharp glance to Kiara then, something that Nicholas tries to shadow more or less as second nature but cannot quite.  It is a thing that sounds significant to him, even if he is fully unaware of the area.  Fortunately, Kiara expounds, lends color and form to the sketch he is beginning to lay out in his mind.

He heard Kiara's uncertainty too.  His jawline is firm: Nicholas had expected to find the man changed.  If you wish to be reborn, first you have to die.

"It sounds like we're headed to Greenway next, then."  And he takes a few steps closer to the edge of the circle, regards the murder in his somber way.  "Thank you, Crow.  You've been very helpful to us.  Is there something specific you would have of me?"

Kiara Woolfe[Enigmas + Intel]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Nicholas Hyde[Enigmas + Intelligence]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

twilightThere was dissension amongst the murder because they were debating whether or not a certain oak (somewhere: perhaps close) was even alive.  It sounds a bit like an old wives' tale, as much as a secret.  But: if that oak is in a nearby park and if that park is threatened by the technocrats, slumbering is the only way that spirit has of surviving.  Waking an oak spirit (which is tied essentially to its rooted-tree) would probably be the death of the tree and its spirit.



If anyone needed a distraction the murder might be the best way to go: they are mobile!  and can fly over/away, but I am not sure that they need that right now since they aren't attacking (yet).

twilightThe murder seems to confer amongst itself and they returns to Nicholas.  It wants: one shiny secret.   And two tears.

Nicholas HydeThe murder confers, and Nicholas steps closer to speak to them, and one bright eye regards another as he leans toward the edge of the circle, his hair preceding him and just brushing that invisible line.  He'll whisper a name: someone who will die perhaps tomorrow, perhaps three days from now, because this is the sort of thing he heralds, and this is the sort of thing he knows.

Whatever else he whispers Kiara cannot hear.

And when he straightens back up and steps back from the circle, he inclines his head to the flock, this easy however somber courtesy.  And as the flock leaves, one hand has found the bicep of the opposite arm, and he runs his fingers over the fabric of his sweater: this self-soothing gesture that perhaps betrays whatever nervousness he'd felt, either speaking with Crow or simply speaking with anything in front of Kiara.  We have mentioned that until now Nick frequently worked alone.

"Do you think there's anything we can do for the Oak?  I think if we Awaken it, they might kill it."

Kiara WoolfeWhen Crow takes his leave, his murder a flapping of wings that linger and then vanish into the night; their raised circle likewise diminishes, it's purpose served. There's a sense of crackling disruption and then - stillness. Kiara stands for a moment, her fingers playing over her lower lip. She seems lost to her own thoughts; the breeze rolling in and casting dark strands of hair into a wild display over her shoulders.

"I'm not sure. Right now, it may be wisest to let him sleep. We can always try and assist him after we have Alexander back, if we need to." A pause and the Verbena's fingers sweep back the fringe from her brow, she moves to begin collecting her belongings, the sense of urgency has passed but they both know better than to linger too long so close to the Union's stronghold.

"They said Alexander was felt in the heart. Deep down. Maybe he's being held underground somewhere in there." There's the sound of a zipper being drawn and the Verbena shrugs her bag over a thin shoulder, flashlight in hand. "I'm meeting with the Doc to discuss what Grace found out, maybe she knows something we can tie it together with. I got the impression it's in one of the wings.

Maybe there's a lab under the ground. We could find schematics. Grace might be able to help. Whatever we do, however we move on this - crow might be our best bet if we need a distraction."

Nicholas HydeNick, too, leans down to begin gathering up the things he brought with him and place them back in his pack.  It's fortunate enough that they weren't needed.  He still has his ear tilted toward Kiara, who is talking about the implications of what Crow told them.  There is this slow and slight nod of his head that accompanies his other movements as he places the kit and sundry back into his bag.

"Underground was my assumption too, from what we heard.  I think Grace could probably at the very least find a way to get a map of the compound, if not any specifics about where he's being held."  There is this soft exhale that accompanies the last word; perhaps Kiara can hear it from where she is. "There's no way to get around the danger for the team that goes in to get him."

His wife was to be among that team.  Perhaps the crease that has appeared on his brow has something to do with that.

"I agree that Crow might serve as a good distraction.  It won't come for free, but I think it would be able to cause enough chaos to draw personnel away from wherever the team needs to go."

Kiara WoolfeThere's no way to get around the danger for the team that goes in to get him.

She could say something about that. Offer some reassurance, some commentary on the talents of the combined effort. That if she's part of the extraction team she'll do her best to keep his wife safe. But she knows better than to offer promises. Kiara Woolfe knew, perhaps with an intimacy she wishes she didn't - how few you were ever likely to be able to keep in their lives.

Instead she's quiet for a moment, watching him. There's this faint glimmer to her eyes where they meet his. "No, there really isn't, is there." An edge of a smile and she gently brushes his shoulder with her own as she begins to pick a trail out of the park. "C'mon, let's get out of here before our friends over there start paying attention."

A beat, as they carefully navigate out, a gesture of sorts: "If it's any consolation, this isn't the worst situation we've faced. Remind me to tell you about the vampire war we nearly got dragged into." Their voices fade as they crest the hill and soon after - the insects begin to sing in the grass again.

what's your story. [nick, in progress]

Nick

After they had all convened at the chantry, Nicholas made arrangements with Kiara to meet her at a later date, and soon.  The Chakravanti has this air about him just then: distracted, preoccupied, his thoughts thousands of miles away and years ago.

But he will meet her later, and rather than meeting at her apartment he had instead asked whether she knew of anywhere outdoors to go around Denver.  He's new in town, he'd explained, and he's been meaning to get out and hike more now that the weather isn't bitterly cold; he often finds it necessary to go out to remote areas to do his Work.  So: he is willing to go wherever she suggests.

When he appears at whatever place she has suggested, Nick arrives early, and he waits.  He is lingering by a small dark gray compact car, and he is very monochrome today: a light ribbed black jacket, dark grey pants and a pair of boots, his hair a wild dark halo.

Here his resonance, the hallowed hush of him, is more evident than it had been amongst the pack of other magi at the chantry; it's something that is easy to lose in the background.  Nicholas is burnt circle mounds and highland barrows, and even the presence of the car doesn't quite detract from this fey look he has to him, this feeling of elsewhere-ness.  He is leaned against the hood of the car and staring off into space; waiting.

 

Kiara

 

She gives him directions that take him 10 miles west of Denver, out into Jefferson County and what signage as his car kicks up dust and turns into a visitor's parking area informs him is Red Rocks Park, an impressive range of sandstone rock formations that jut out into the skyline from a distance. It's the home of an amphitheater of the same name, too, rock concerts and other performances taking advantage of the superior acoustics to be had surrounded by the stars and stone; great levels of seating rising up and up and offering an irreplaceable view of the wilderness on every side.

At dusk when the horizon is painted into swirling reds and golds, there are precious few other places in Colorado that give over the impression of how magnificent the natural world could be (and how very tiny in comparison they really were.)

Out here too, one imagined, reaching across the divide between worlds would be a simpler feat than in the towering apartment complex the Verbena called home. Not impossible there, among the steel and glass, but a task burdened with a need for agility and perseverance - to push past the Gauntlet; to transpose oneself (and the senses) into the realm of the spiritual.

It's mid-afternoon by the time the pagan arrives in her tiny red hatchback; the sides of it coated in a fine layer of dust; old mud clinging to the lower half of the doors and wheel flaps (a sign perhaps of the female's inclinations toward frequent visits outside of the city limits).

-

Nicholas, lingering by his car is the picture of hushed, quiet tones. Not so the brunette that crosses toward him, her boots easily devouring the soft gravel underfoot. Kiara wears jeans and a bright, flowing shirt in forest greens and ocean blues, inter-cut with swirls of cream. Her ears gleam with silver hoops and around her neck a simple chain displays a quartz pendant. There's some combination, the thick, wild waves of dark hair that fall around her shoulders, the vibrant red mouth and dramatic eye make up perhaps, that casts her the vision of what she seems (what she conjures with that resonance of pulsing, rejuvenating energy) --

a witch by any other name

-- "Hey," she greets easily enough, her stride slowing a little as she passes by him and inclines her face, her mouth curving into a brief smile. "This way, there's a spot that I like to come to."

And off she goes, in a haze of earth and spice and some laced undertone of sweet perfume. Well, then. 

 

Nick

 

The vast expanse of chaparral and red stone is what makes Nicholas realize he has come back home.  The types of places we grow up remain inextricably tied to our youth: so too for him.  He didn't miss Arizona, necessarily, during his years in New England, but these are very different places, and here he might as well be a lone life form on another planet.  At least, until Kiara arrives.

It has occurred to him that there are no rivers here.

When she reaches him he is standing with his head slightly tilted back, the fingers of one hand lightly gripped in another.  When Kiara's hatchback pulls up nearby, he lets his hands fall to his sides.  "Hello," he says, and he starts after her without hesitation.  His footfalls are quiet, as though he were walking through a church: in those places even the softest footsteps ring and reverberate and disturb.

There is a brief time while he walks after her where he is silent, his wandering gaze lighting on whatever they happen across on the road to where they're going.  It's not uncomfortable to him.  They could easily spend this entire exchange not talking and Nick would be fine with that.  Still: he's aware that in fact this is not something other people usually like.

And in this situation, Nicholas Hyde will always default to asking questions.  "How long have you lived in Colorado?"

 

Kiara

 

The track she leads him on is scrubby at first, wild grasses erupting from the gravel track and skirting the edges; their footsteps leaving shallow imprints that the afternoon breeze would soon enough obliterate and conceal their ever having set foot in this wild land where they were sorely outnumbered by the cottontails and clever foxes; by the trees and low lying prairie fields. It widens out as they crest a hill and then narrows into a silver of etched out, worn down earth; eroded by the passage of many human feet over time.

Before them the sun winged across the tips of the rock formations and cast intricate triangles of shadow; the fields rolling back a ways before a smattering of tall pines bracketed any clearer vision beyond.

The air here smelled fresh; cleaner and lacking the congestion of city pollutants and the sky above them would be a sight when the tiny pricks of starlight began to reveal themselves after the sun's rays dimmed. The pagan too, felt (and appeared) more at home here, the further they moved into nature; stretching her fingertips out as they passed long, swaying wild grasses. The blades tickled Kiara's palms and for a moment she seems entirely possessed and elsewhere by the sensation, stirring only when Nicholas' voice penetrates the distant calls of a circling eagle; the rattling hiss of the leaves; shaken by the breeze.

"Hm? Oh, not long. A year, I think." There's a pause, Kiara's eyes narrow into the distance. "No - maybe two, now," she corrects with a neat little shrug; this curl of laughter in her voice as she glances over her shoulder at him. "Long enough that evidently I forget the date. I came here from New York, that's my home town." She starts down a gentler incline; her trajectory seemingly directing them toward a smaller protrusion of rock upon a nearby hill; tufts of grass dotting it, too. The Verbena's dark hair is shaken back by the breeze; it sails out over her shoulders.

"And what about you? What's your story? If we're going to be working together, I guess we should know some basics. We can skip trading starsigns though, if you want." A cut of her dark eyes, framed by long lashes and a crooked expression of mirth on those red lips. 

 

Nick

 

 

What's your story?

 

Kiara's eyes cut to him and Nick, too, smiles at her quip about starsigns.  There had been a short nonverbal sound of acknowledgement when she told him she was from New York; people around their age and slightly younger have been moving east to west in droves within the past few years.

"Pen and I just moved here back in December from the east coast, near Boston," he says.  "It was her idea, but I was ready for a change of scenery."  There is a way Nick hesitates when he speaks, not out of any particular sense of distrust but perhaps out of a selectiveness for his words and the information he does offer.  "I'm Chakravanti, which I think you caught."  This is not a story, precisely, and certainly not his, but it encompasses the things that are currently the main aspects of the life of Nicholas Hyde, at least as well as anything can.

In spite of not being too physically impressive, Nick keeps pace with her easily enough: more likely due to practice and comfort out in these wild areas than any sort of physical prowess.  The air here lacks the congestion of city pollutants and he has been breathing deep but quiet breaths, his gaze not on Kiara slightly ahead of him but reserved for the horizon line and the shadows cast across the plains.

"Grace had mentioned your name and that you Work within the spirit world.  I don't think I run into other magi with extensive experience in that very often."

 

Kiara

 

I'm Chakravanti.

Kiara's eyes do move over him at that as they walk, her expression not wholly closed off at the mention of his affiliation but perhaps - thoughtful, more so, than before. She might have caught that, what he was. "I did," she affirms softly, with this slight little smile before her attention re-directs back toward the rocky outcropping ahead.

Grace had mentioned her name and Kiara makes an affirmative noise at that, as if to acknowledge that what the Virtual Adept had mentioned was true (though it seems unlikely Nick would be out here were that the case). "I'm a healer by trade and by - calling, I suppose you could say. I consider myself a student of Life more than anything but my mentor believed in my learning the harmony in things. The balance. Once I began to understand more about everything out there," she gestures, Kiara, with a rattle of bracelets, toward the horizon, where the shadows were already beginning to lengthen.

Turns a bright eye back over a shoulder toward her companion. Her smile sudden and full and quite entirely captivating. "There was no going back."

-

The spot she guides him to sat on the lip of a cliff; cutting off abruptly at the edge and dropping in a sheer descent down into a small canyon. Everything here was coated in a fine layer of red dust; the granules of it clinging as they arrived at the Verbena's chosen destination. She set her bag down and perched herself tentatively on a small boulder; rubbing her palm along the side of it. "It's a lot easier to look across out here. Quieter, too. Don't get me wrong I love the city but - " she breathes out and tips her face back, eyes closing. "I can't go too long without coming out where it's wilder. Where the air isn't so artificial." One of the pagan's eyes opened, then both.

"Did Grace happen to tell you what I am," a curl of her mouth. "I'll give you two guesses."

 

Nick

 

There was no going back.  Nicholas meets her smile with one of his own, though there is something altogether more reserved about his, something thoughtful and slow.  "I suppose I'd also consider myself a healer, sort of," he says.  Perhaps a thing that one would find it unusual for someone of his Tradition to say, but then so few see them as anything other than passionless death dealers, bloodyfingered as they spin and sort the webs of Fate. And in fairness, this is the sort of Chakravanti many people come across.

They crest the top of the cliff, and the red dust has settled over their boots and their clothes and their skin, so that when they scour it away later it'll stain the water like rust.  Nick finds a nearby boulder and hops up onto it, where he sits back on his haunches and sets his bag next to him on the rock.

And he surveys the canyon, perhaps with a thought or two of how long it has been and will be.  Some canyons go deep enough to expose rock that saw the world's birth; likely not this one, but it doesn't hurt to show reverence.

As Kiara teases him about her own Tradition, he shakes his head, glancing at her across the small divide between the rocks they've chosen to perch on.  "I'm guessing you're either Verbena or Dreamspeaker," he says, "unless I'm way off the mark."  He says this with the certainty of someone who rarely is, where other people are concerned.

Kiara