Hotel California: Convergence

[x-legion.livejournal.com]

The paths of Amanda, Haller and Wanda converge with unreassuring results.




The air felt heavier. Not stale, but thick like a humid day. The light cast by the gaslamps had dulled too, as if burning with an edge of something foul.

Jim proceeded with caution. He was beginning to adjust to the psychic atmosphere, but after what he'd already encountered that only raised his guard. Whatever was in this place had already found its way into his mind once. The X-Man kept his eyes open and initiated scans only in small bursts, like radar.

There was a turn in the corridor. Jim halted.

Precautions had to be taken.

The servants had been ordered away for the night and day of the event, even the old caretaker and his family that lived on the premises. She would chance no accidents. An odd look had come across her lawyer's face when instructed to arrange their temporary lodging. The meeting had been to finalize arrangements regarding the eventual dispensation of her estate; in hindsight, perhaps he'd feared this to be their final meeting.

Her executor seemed not to be alone in his fears. Several times she had turned a corner or entered a room and abruptly terminated whatever conversation she chanced upon. Men and women whom she had known for years, in some cases all her life, suddenly looked upon her with doubt in their eyes.

For the third time that morning she found herself outside the place she had prepared for the ritual. The magicks could be felt even from without. She ran her hand across the dark wood of the door and found neither weakness of construction nor degradation of power. Only a fool would contemplate such a course of action without misgivings, but their permanence was reassuring.

"Sir?"

"Amanda?"

The disconnect was momentarily bewildering, and for a moment she paused, wondering why the man addressing her was dressed so strangely. Then her mind cleared and she realised that Haller wasn't an illusion or one of those strange memory-visions of the original summoner. He was real. "You're a sight for sore eyes," she said with a grin, approaching him.

Jim's hesitation lasted only a moment. He'd been worried the distortion would prevent him from separating illusion from reality, but now that Amanda was in front of him he could sense the difference. The astral interference was more like dense fog: he had to be close, even for his meager range, but she stood out like a lighthouse in the mist. Real.

"You, too," Jim said, allowing himself a relieved smile. "Are you okay?"

She shrugged. "Pretty much. 'S a bit of a ride, this place. You see anyone else?"

"Not yet. My range is shot . . ."

Something odd registered. Jim was standing on carpet. Amanda was standing on asphalt.

The telepath dropped into a couch, frowning. "What is this?" he asked. Tentatively, he reached out to touch the point where the plush rug became black tar. It wasn't an abrupt transition; the fibers darkened and flattened until they became asphalt. Near the center of the hall he could even see a strip of yellow paint like the center line of a road.

"What's what..." Amanda looked down at her feet. "Huh." Like Haller, she crouched, resting her fingers lightly on the surface. Unlike him, she was able to push her fingertips into the surface, which gave way beneath her touch as if it was water. Around them, hints of a gutter appeared, and the wall nearest them took on the faintest shadow of a storefront window. "That's weird. 'S like this place is reacting to my powers."

The asphalt rippled under Jim's hand. Malleable to her, but not to him. He closed his eyes to take another, longer look at Amanda's astral form.

Nothing about her personal signature had changed, but it seemed to be interacting with the environment in a way he hadn't seen before. The energy he associated with her bled beyond the normal bounds of her astral body. The area around her feet, beneath her hand -- her psychic imprint spread from each point of contact, like a drop of water diluting fresh ink. A quick glance confirmed no such effect around him.

"I think it's more than just your powers," Jim said, pulling back his hand. "This place pulled things out of my head. I'm guessing yours, too?" Her expression gave him all the answer he needed. He rose. "Wherever we are seems to be psychoreactive, and something about you . . . your powers or your magic or both, I don't know, but it looks like there's some kind of interaction. Your astral presence is permeating the environment."

While they were speaking quietly the shadows behind them began to waver and flicker. They faded and fled before a soft pulsing red light; the remaining shadows hid the soft footsteps of the tall figure pushing her way towards them. Wanda slowly emerged and stopped a few feet from them. She held one hand up around her shoulders, using the red glow to chase the darkness back while her chaos powers held the madness at bay. Amanda and Haller were oblivious to her presence, masked by the same power she was using to make her way through the hotel. She hesitated and then her hand drop, letting go of the connection at the same time.

The telepath almost jumped out of his skin. A psi-print had literally appeared out of nowhere, and right behind him. He recognized it an instant before Jack could have his typical violent reaction to surprise.

"Jesus," Jim yelped as he spun around. "Wanda?"

She flinched and held her hands up. "In the flesh. I hope, anyway." Wanda looked pale and strained as she rubbed her wrist. Her shirt was stained with sweat and she was moving in a way that suggested she was favoring something - her leg or her back, perhaps. "Are you both unhurt?"

"Physically," Jim replied. He took in her wan face and frowned. "Are you? What happened?"

She broke eye contact for a second, eying the area around them for a moment before looking back. "I ... woke up. But I was not alone." Wanda smiled but it was more teeth than reassurance. "I was made to think that I had been taken over by Chthon again, forced to watch as -" She shook herself. "Half way through, I was shocked out of my own personal hell. A combination, I suppose, of pain and my powers."

Turning to Amanda, she gestured vaguely at her back. "I will need you to check on certain protections once we get out of here. I think it reacted to the mental stimulation of me believing the lie. But ..." Shrugging, she continued, "Amanda, and you? Are you unhurt?" Wanda continued to rub at the skin under the bracelet without seeming to realize that she'd been doing it.

"I'm fine," Amanda replied, looking relieved to see her mentor, although worried about the state of her. "I had an easier time of it than you two, it seems. And we just found out I seem to have some sort of connection to this place. See?" She reached out and touched the wall, the wood panelling turning to brick in a patch beneath her fingers.

Jim folded his arms in thought. He wasn't concerned that he'd been unable to sense Wanda until she'd been practically on top of him; her powers interfered with telepathy. The unusual thing was that he'd registered her sudden appearance at all. His telepathy was not known for its sensitivity.

On a hunch, Jim inspected Wanda in the same way he'd inspected Amanda. Her astral body had none of the diffusion Amanda's did, but there was something . . . odd, and it wasn't the expected red hue of chaos. There was an odd sheen around her, like a slick of light on her skin.

"I think I'm picking up more than just psychic phenomena," Jim said, rubbing his eyes. "Amanda, how far does your influence go? Does it only extend to changing things, or can you actually sense anything?"

The witch hesitated, her glance flicking past Haller to a mirror that had suddenly appeared on the wall. It misted over, and then...

Marco Polo at the court of Kublai Khan. John Lloyd Stephens at the ancient city of Copán. Lady Hester Stanhope excavating the ruins of Ashkelon. Blind James Holman, world-traveller and Fellow of the Royal Society. Explorers, discoverers. Seekers of knowledge.

Brass shook under her hand. It was difficult to breathe.

This could be done.

The moon was high enough to streak trees, fountain and cobbles with its gentle light. It was but a garden, a tiny patch of green safely enclosed within the walls of her own home. The gardener, the servants -- they passed freely through the open air every day and suffered no consequences. Emotion pulled the chariot, but reason held the reins. She steeled herself and prepared to turn the handle.

Panic struck. Heat flooded her face, arms, legs; her lungs could not seem to take in air. She backed away from the door, wrapping her arms round herself. She rocked back and forth to draw her mind from the lurch in her breast.

She had had to try just once more.

In her youth she had dreamed of travelling the world like her heroes, availing herself of the doors opened by wealth and intellect. Yet all these advantages could not compensate for the fundamental weakness in her character. No travels could be undertaken by one who had not left her own home in nearly twenty years. She could not even venture into her own garden.

It seemed there was only one path left to her after all.

With a deep, shuddering breath, Amanda returned to herself. She was clutching at her chest, which was heaving from the lack of air. "Well, there's that," she managed weakly.

Her words were met with a confused and concerned look from Wanda. "There's ... what?" she asked, looking back and forth between the two in front of her. "Did I miss something? Amanda kind of went away for a moment but I did not see anything else."

"The astral plane pulsed," Jim said tightly. He started to reach out to Amanda, then thought better of it.

"There was a ripple. Not the same as the hallucinations. It felt like -- a thought. A synapse firing." The telepath studied Amanda's pale face. "Did you see something?"

The witch grimaced. "I've been seeing things. Not the hallucinations - I got those too - but something else. They're like memories, I suppose? Really vivid, like I'm someone else." She gave them a helpless look. "Now's the time you tell me I'm off in la-la land again, like that time in London."

"Does it disturb anyone else that this seems rather normal for her?" Wanda asked, a hint of her normal sense of self finally surfacing. "But yes, it was much like a fugue state for a few minutes. David, does this place do anything to you?" She nodded at Amanda. "Like that, I mean."

"Like what just happened to Amanda? No. But my telepathy isn't normal here . . ." Jim rubbed his scarred hand, thinking rapidly. The atmosphere had warped around Amanda. A quick compression, as if something had been forced into her and then relaxed. As if it were alive . . .

. . . oh, shit.

"I think know why I'm having problems finding people," said the telepath. "This place -- it's a giant astral body. I can't find psi signatures because we're standing right in the middle of one." He looked at the witch. "I don't think it's human. But whatever it belongs to, it looks like you've got a direct channel."

"Direct channel?" Amanda frowned. That did not sound good. But then again, the visions hadn't been frightening or even very upsetting. More... sad. And desperate. She looked at Wanda. "The spell, the one Candra carved into my back. It's a channelling spell. Makes me a conduit, like in New Orleans with the hurricane. That could be it."

And suddenly Wanda cursed at the implications. "That probably is it," she agreed with a groan. "You've just become a walking, talking power source in this place. No wonder you've been so affected by it."

"Remy's not going to be happy with this," the witch replied, pulling a face. "But we pulled all the information we could on this place. There was no reason to think there'd been any kind of ritual history here." She sighed and brushed back her hair from her face. "So, we know I have a connection with the place. How do we use it to our advantage?"

"You're seeing things," Jim said thoughtfully. "Memories? Was there anything that might help us?"

"I--He's doing some mind of magical ritual," Amanda replied, sorting through the visions in her mind - it wasn't like they'd been sequential. "A summoning? For some kind of knowledge - something about protecting people. He put the wards up, good strong ones at the time. Like he didn't want whatever he was summoning to get out."

"Wards . . ." Jim knew enough to about magic to know wards meant safety -- Amanda performed regular upkeep on the ones around the school. If they'd been installed around a specific area maybe there would be something useful there.

There might be another reason to find them. He didn't know what Amanda was picking up, but he could sense the psychic atmosphere changing. Even in the brief time that they'd been speaking it had become more oppressive, curdling, as if something festered beneath the surface. Though the presence remained inhuman there was a growing sense of focus -- and anticipation.

Something was biding its time, and sooner or later its attention would turn back to them.

"Do you know where they are?" Jim asked.

"Not exactly. But maybe he'll show me where."

"He won't," said a voice from a shadowy corner, "but I will."