Dark Dimension: Searching
Oct. 7th, 2017 04:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsA search of the mansion reveals no sign of what might have attacked Clea.
It was a frustrated-looking witch who returned to the classroom she used for magic lessons. She'd been over her wards with the magical version of a fine tooth comb and had found nothing. Neither had there been any magical residue in the library where the attack had happened. Amanda sat on the desk, swinging her feet dejectedly. At the sound of the door opening, she looked up and asked, with a wry twist of the mouth: "I really hope someone had better luck than me."
Doug's mouth was twisting as well, as if he wanted to spit on the ground in disgust. "Don't look at me, then. Cameras, locators on phones...nothing. Just...blip...gone." He flashed his hands like a stage illusionist saying there was nothing up his sleeve.
Logan shook his head when Amanda's gaze went to him. "Nope, I got nothin' too. No scents that shouldn't be here. Not even traces of stray cats." He moved to one of the nearby desks where some of the scattered books had been dumped and shuffled through them.
Megan still unconsciously clutched her hand to her chest, expecting to feel the demon magic inside her respond to something of its kind. With mixed relief and disappointment she reported, "I don't sense anything demonic."
Billy’s eyes held a vacant stare, emitting a faint blue glow as his mind finished his search across the grounds. “Zippo,” he shrugged, the light fading as he brought his attention back to the room and the team. “If there’s magic involved, it’s nothing I’ve ever seen or would know how to look for.”
"Which puts us behind square one," Amanda said. "No magic, no critters, no demons... so what attacked Clea? Freddy Krueger?"
Doug shuddered. "Bad enough that Slender Men actually exist, the last thing we need is 80s slasher movie villains coming to life." His fingers flexed in frustration - he didn't like when the available data all seemed contradictory. "There has to be -something-."
"Something that we can't detect with any of our senses," Megan agreed. "But like dark matter, we have this massive problem. What attacked Clea? What are we missing?"
"When in doubt, go back to the start," Amanda replied. "I'm going to talk to Clea again, see if I can't get some more info on this whole thing. Hopefully it'll be the puzzle piece we need. In the meantime..." she looked around the motley group. "We stay on our toes, yeah? I've been bitten in the arse often enough to know there's no such thing as coincidence, and this isn't over yet."
Jean patches Clea up, and Amanda tries to get more answers.
Clea yawned as the last tape was placed on the bandage. The cut was deep and it needed stitches, Clea could only hope that they had found what had attacked her. It had to be an animal of some kind. She was a little groggy as she was given some medication for the pain but she was fighting to stay awake. "Thanks."
"You're welcome," Jean said with a warm smile. She had spent the last hour cleaning and disinfecting the wound, sewing up the gash, and bandaging it properly. It was hard for her not to notice the dark circles under the girl's eyes, and the way she struggled to keep her eyes open even before the cocktail of drugs had been given. With that amount of injury, she should've been more alert, yet her body was fighting against it. As if it'd been fighting for so long it could barely keep up. Her attention flickered toward Amanda, hovering in the doorway, then back over to Clea. "Is there a reason why you're trying to stay awake?"
Clea looked over at Topaz before looking back at Doctor Grey. Taking a deep breath as if she was defeated. "For the last couple of days I have been having nightmares." Looking up at the doctor, "There is something there, waiting for me. I know it is just a dream but it feels so real. And before you ask, I haven't seen a horror movie in weeks."
Jean's expression softened, and she shook her head. "I've learned that living here means giving someone the benefit of the doubt," she said. She studied her. "Why didn't you tell anyone? Were you afraid we wouldn't believe you?" She glanced back to Topaz, remembering the look Clea gave her, with a faint, gentle smile. "Or did you tell someone?"
If she did, it made sense.
Topaz had been sitting in the corner, staying out of the way, watching with her arms folded as Dr. Grey patched up Clea. She straightened up when the doctor turned to her. "She told me after this," she reported, gesturing at Clea's arm. "It happened in the library. For the record, I didn't feel anything before it happened." She might have put up extra wards around the library after the spider incident to try and protect it. Not that anything magical could have gotten by Amanda's wards anyways, but on the off chance it did, the library had another layer of protection.
Amanda raised an eyebrow. "Nothing magically or empathically?" she asked, leaving aside for the moment that Topaz hadn't mentioned it to her as well. Then again, it wasn't like Topaz wasn't capable. "And no sign of a critter. We covered the whole place."
"Nope, nope, and nope," Topaz said. "Anything big enough to leave that kind of injury wouldn't have been able to just disappear in the five seconds it took me to get to Clea."
"I AM AWAKE!" Clea yelled out suddenly. She was starting to drift in the middle of the conversation but woke up suddenly when she saw the city appear before her. Cata had made her way into the med lab and jumped onto the teen's lap. "It is these dreams. I am in a city, or at least I think it was a city with mirrors, endless mirrors. I am always alone but I can feel like I am being watched. I sometimes forget I am dreaming and it becomes so real. It always ends with something chasing me. I usually wake up but earlier...earlier was the first time it got me." She picked up Cata and hugged the feline closely. "I don't want to go back."
Once her heart had resumed beating normally after Clea's sudden yell, Amanda shot a look at Jean. "These don't sound like normal dreams," she said slowly. "More like projections. Either psychic or magical. Part of your sleeping mind going somewhere - like the astral plane."
Jean nodded in confirmation. "It could be a number of things, but that's a distinct possibility," she said. "We could do a few tests. But, I'm afraid most of them do require going there." She managed a soft smile. "We'd be with you every step of the way, though..." she added gently.
Lifting up her hands to rub her eyes trying to focus on the conversation. She heard of Astral plane, projections, and magical. "Wait, you want to see it?" She woke up enough to look around the room at the three woman in the room.
"Only if you want," Topaz said quickly. "Nothing gets done without your permission."
"The point of all this is to stop whatever it from happening, right?" She rubbed her eyes again. "I miss sleeping so much."
"And with Jean and Topaz doing their powers thing, we'll be able to make sure you're okay," Amanda reassured. "But yeah, we really do need to get to the bottom of this." Then she was struck by something. "Actually, I might be able to do some research, if I have an idea of what I'm looking for. Clea, do you mind if Jean goes into your head and shows me this city of yours? From your memories?"
Clea looked up at Amanda and nodded, "I trust you." Turning to the others, "And you ladies as well." She lifted Cata up to give another squeeze, whom seemed content of the attention she was receiving and was purring. "Doctor Grey, you can enter my mind."
Jean glanced at Clea, then the others, before nodding. "Alright. Perhaps we should go to my office. It's a little more homey in there," she said, motioning toward her medlab office door nearby. She knew the medlab atmosphere often made people nervous and it was hard for them to relax. The more relaxed Clea was, the better it was for all of them.
Clea got down and walked into Doctor Grey's office. Seeing the couch, she walked over and took a seat. It was so comfortable and inviting, she could totally fall asleep right then and there - again. Looking at the rest. "Let's do this."
Sitting down in a chair across from Clea, Jean stared a the girl for a moment or two before closing her eyes.
"Okay, Clea? I want you to let your mind go. We're just going in for a short look. In and out," she said quietly.
"I'll be taking in Amanda too. Once we get an idea of what we're dealing with, then we'll leave." A scouting mission, as it were.
"Alright." Clea answered. Two people going inside her mind. This was going to be interesting.
Jean could feel the girl's mind slowly open. It was like turning the knob on a door.
Every person's dreams were different. Some were logical, to the point: going back to high school, a walk in the park. Some were weird: going back to high school as a veloceraptor. Every dream unique, but uniquely theirs. But as Jean turned the knob, it didn't feel like Clea's dream. No, it was a place.
It was like something out of Lord of the Rings, except smashed all to pieces. It was a town, or it used to be, ruined, crumbled, and grown over. Everything was cloaked in shadow, making it hard to see what lay outside of the periphery.
Jean turned to Amanda. "What do you think?"
Amanda frowned. She was acquainted with mindscapes and dreams from her early years at the school, learning astral projection and being close to two psis with literally wandering minds. But this felt... wrong. "'S weird. On the one hand, yeah, it's the sort of thing you'd expect from too many fantasy books and movies, the whole dystopian thing. But on the other..." She scuffed at the 'ground', kicking up a small cloud of black dust. "'S too solid, for a dream. Let's let it play out, see what else there is?"
Not far, Clea appeared in the middle of the crumbling road and walked over to one of decaying mirrors. The mirrors started to shift in form as if someone was distorting it. She was clearly mumbling that it was just a dream to try and calm her nerves.
Clea took a step back as large form started to take shape behind her and hissed, "Of course it's a dream. But why should that matter?" As it reached out for Clea, as she took off running. A couple yards away, she tripped over a rock and turned to face the dark mass before disappearing - apparently she had woken up. The dark mass hissed as it turned to face the two others who were watching near by. "Just a dream, right?" Before it shot up into the air and disappeared.
Jean felt the blip as Clea disappeared, but the world around them remained. The dark shadow behind the mirror gave her a feeling of dread and anger, a reminder of not too long ago. She remained transfixed, clenching her fist. For a moment, the air felt hot. It shimmered. But then she remembered it was past tense, and this was something new.
The blonde witch shook her head. "When something tries to convince me it's not real, I tend to get suspicious," she said. "Let's head back to the real world and work out what happens next, yeah?"
Amanda's words made Jean turn. She nodded. "Yeah," she said. Taking a moment to commit the landscape to memory, Jean let it fade from around them as they made their way back to the (relative) safety of the medlab.
It was a frustrated-looking witch who returned to the classroom she used for magic lessons. She'd been over her wards with the magical version of a fine tooth comb and had found nothing. Neither had there been any magical residue in the library where the attack had happened. Amanda sat on the desk, swinging her feet dejectedly. At the sound of the door opening, she looked up and asked, with a wry twist of the mouth: "I really hope someone had better luck than me."
Doug's mouth was twisting as well, as if he wanted to spit on the ground in disgust. "Don't look at me, then. Cameras, locators on phones...nothing. Just...blip...gone." He flashed his hands like a stage illusionist saying there was nothing up his sleeve.
Logan shook his head when Amanda's gaze went to him. "Nope, I got nothin' too. No scents that shouldn't be here. Not even traces of stray cats." He moved to one of the nearby desks where some of the scattered books had been dumped and shuffled through them.
Megan still unconsciously clutched her hand to her chest, expecting to feel the demon magic inside her respond to something of its kind. With mixed relief and disappointment she reported, "I don't sense anything demonic."
Billy’s eyes held a vacant stare, emitting a faint blue glow as his mind finished his search across the grounds. “Zippo,” he shrugged, the light fading as he brought his attention back to the room and the team. “If there’s magic involved, it’s nothing I’ve ever seen or would know how to look for.”
"Which puts us behind square one," Amanda said. "No magic, no critters, no demons... so what attacked Clea? Freddy Krueger?"
Doug shuddered. "Bad enough that Slender Men actually exist, the last thing we need is 80s slasher movie villains coming to life." His fingers flexed in frustration - he didn't like when the available data all seemed contradictory. "There has to be -something-."
"Something that we can't detect with any of our senses," Megan agreed. "But like dark matter, we have this massive problem. What attacked Clea? What are we missing?"
"When in doubt, go back to the start," Amanda replied. "I'm going to talk to Clea again, see if I can't get some more info on this whole thing. Hopefully it'll be the puzzle piece we need. In the meantime..." she looked around the motley group. "We stay on our toes, yeah? I've been bitten in the arse often enough to know there's no such thing as coincidence, and this isn't over yet."
Jean patches Clea up, and Amanda tries to get more answers.
Clea yawned as the last tape was placed on the bandage. The cut was deep and it needed stitches, Clea could only hope that they had found what had attacked her. It had to be an animal of some kind. She was a little groggy as she was given some medication for the pain but she was fighting to stay awake. "Thanks."
"You're welcome," Jean said with a warm smile. She had spent the last hour cleaning and disinfecting the wound, sewing up the gash, and bandaging it properly. It was hard for her not to notice the dark circles under the girl's eyes, and the way she struggled to keep her eyes open even before the cocktail of drugs had been given. With that amount of injury, she should've been more alert, yet her body was fighting against it. As if it'd been fighting for so long it could barely keep up. Her attention flickered toward Amanda, hovering in the doorway, then back over to Clea. "Is there a reason why you're trying to stay awake?"
Clea looked over at Topaz before looking back at Doctor Grey. Taking a deep breath as if she was defeated. "For the last couple of days I have been having nightmares." Looking up at the doctor, "There is something there, waiting for me. I know it is just a dream but it feels so real. And before you ask, I haven't seen a horror movie in weeks."
Jean's expression softened, and she shook her head. "I've learned that living here means giving someone the benefit of the doubt," she said. She studied her. "Why didn't you tell anyone? Were you afraid we wouldn't believe you?" She glanced back to Topaz, remembering the look Clea gave her, with a faint, gentle smile. "Or did you tell someone?"
If she did, it made sense.
Topaz had been sitting in the corner, staying out of the way, watching with her arms folded as Dr. Grey patched up Clea. She straightened up when the doctor turned to her. "She told me after this," she reported, gesturing at Clea's arm. "It happened in the library. For the record, I didn't feel anything before it happened." She might have put up extra wards around the library after the spider incident to try and protect it. Not that anything magical could have gotten by Amanda's wards anyways, but on the off chance it did, the library had another layer of protection.
Amanda raised an eyebrow. "Nothing magically or empathically?" she asked, leaving aside for the moment that Topaz hadn't mentioned it to her as well. Then again, it wasn't like Topaz wasn't capable. "And no sign of a critter. We covered the whole place."
"Nope, nope, and nope," Topaz said. "Anything big enough to leave that kind of injury wouldn't have been able to just disappear in the five seconds it took me to get to Clea."
"I AM AWAKE!" Clea yelled out suddenly. She was starting to drift in the middle of the conversation but woke up suddenly when she saw the city appear before her. Cata had made her way into the med lab and jumped onto the teen's lap. "It is these dreams. I am in a city, or at least I think it was a city with mirrors, endless mirrors. I am always alone but I can feel like I am being watched. I sometimes forget I am dreaming and it becomes so real. It always ends with something chasing me. I usually wake up but earlier...earlier was the first time it got me." She picked up Cata and hugged the feline closely. "I don't want to go back."
Once her heart had resumed beating normally after Clea's sudden yell, Amanda shot a look at Jean. "These don't sound like normal dreams," she said slowly. "More like projections. Either psychic or magical. Part of your sleeping mind going somewhere - like the astral plane."
Jean nodded in confirmation. "It could be a number of things, but that's a distinct possibility," she said. "We could do a few tests. But, I'm afraid most of them do require going there." She managed a soft smile. "We'd be with you every step of the way, though..." she added gently.
Lifting up her hands to rub her eyes trying to focus on the conversation. She heard of Astral plane, projections, and magical. "Wait, you want to see it?" She woke up enough to look around the room at the three woman in the room.
"Only if you want," Topaz said quickly. "Nothing gets done without your permission."
"The point of all this is to stop whatever it from happening, right?" She rubbed her eyes again. "I miss sleeping so much."
"And with Jean and Topaz doing their powers thing, we'll be able to make sure you're okay," Amanda reassured. "But yeah, we really do need to get to the bottom of this." Then she was struck by something. "Actually, I might be able to do some research, if I have an idea of what I'm looking for. Clea, do you mind if Jean goes into your head and shows me this city of yours? From your memories?"
Clea looked up at Amanda and nodded, "I trust you." Turning to the others, "And you ladies as well." She lifted Cata up to give another squeeze, whom seemed content of the attention she was receiving and was purring. "Doctor Grey, you can enter my mind."
Jean glanced at Clea, then the others, before nodding. "Alright. Perhaps we should go to my office. It's a little more homey in there," she said, motioning toward her medlab office door nearby. She knew the medlab atmosphere often made people nervous and it was hard for them to relax. The more relaxed Clea was, the better it was for all of them.
Clea got down and walked into Doctor Grey's office. Seeing the couch, she walked over and took a seat. It was so comfortable and inviting, she could totally fall asleep right then and there - again. Looking at the rest. "Let's do this."
Sitting down in a chair across from Clea, Jean stared a the girl for a moment or two before closing her eyes.
"Okay, Clea? I want you to let your mind go. We're just going in for a short look. In and out," she said quietly.
"I'll be taking in Amanda too. Once we get an idea of what we're dealing with, then we'll leave." A scouting mission, as it were.
"Alright." Clea answered. Two people going inside her mind. This was going to be interesting.
Jean could feel the girl's mind slowly open. It was like turning the knob on a door.
Every person's dreams were different. Some were logical, to the point: going back to high school, a walk in the park. Some were weird: going back to high school as a veloceraptor. Every dream unique, but uniquely theirs. But as Jean turned the knob, it didn't feel like Clea's dream. No, it was a place.
It was like something out of Lord of the Rings, except smashed all to pieces. It was a town, or it used to be, ruined, crumbled, and grown over. Everything was cloaked in shadow, making it hard to see what lay outside of the periphery.
Jean turned to Amanda. "What do you think?"
Amanda frowned. She was acquainted with mindscapes and dreams from her early years at the school, learning astral projection and being close to two psis with literally wandering minds. But this felt... wrong. "'S weird. On the one hand, yeah, it's the sort of thing you'd expect from too many fantasy books and movies, the whole dystopian thing. But on the other..." She scuffed at the 'ground', kicking up a small cloud of black dust. "'S too solid, for a dream. Let's let it play out, see what else there is?"
Not far, Clea appeared in the middle of the crumbling road and walked over to one of decaying mirrors. The mirrors started to shift in form as if someone was distorting it. She was clearly mumbling that it was just a dream to try and calm her nerves.
Clea took a step back as large form started to take shape behind her and hissed, "Of course it's a dream. But why should that matter?" As it reached out for Clea, as she took off running. A couple yards away, she tripped over a rock and turned to face the dark mass before disappearing - apparently she had woken up. The dark mass hissed as it turned to face the two others who were watching near by. "Just a dream, right?" Before it shot up into the air and disappeared.
Jean felt the blip as Clea disappeared, but the world around them remained. The dark shadow behind the mirror gave her a feeling of dread and anger, a reminder of not too long ago. She remained transfixed, clenching her fist. For a moment, the air felt hot. It shimmered. But then she remembered it was past tense, and this was something new.
The blonde witch shook her head. "When something tries to convince me it's not real, I tend to get suspicious," she said. "Let's head back to the real world and work out what happens next, yeah?"
Amanda's words made Jean turn. She nodded. "Yeah," she said. Taking a moment to commit the landscape to memory, Jean let it fade from around them as they made their way back to the (relative) safety of the medlab.
