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xp_logsDeath is only temporary. Uuuuuuuuuuuh right?
There were some obstacles out there that you just couldn't get around, some that were so complex or so fiendish that you couldn't see a way around them. And then, there was the wall, solid, impenetrable and, Stephen noted rubbing his hand ruefully as he glared at the wall, "Ok, so...it's solid. I was kinda hoping that this was just some kinda illusion." If he was honest that was probably not the smartest idea he'd ever had but...totally part of the plan. "Anyone have any spells in their back pocket they think could blow a hole in this?"
"Blowing things up happens to be my specialty," Alex announced proudly, getting his wand out and twirling it between his fingers. He was getting better at this, he thought as he aimed, and the spell went off with a bang. It hit the wall, momentarily flashing light and blinding them... and when it faded away, there was still a wall, but now with a couple dots on it. ".......Well that wasn't supposed to happen."
Angelo was peering at the dots. “Those don’t look like damage, but they weren’t there before. Let me try something... Reducto!”
Jean-Phillipe attempted a "Lumos", but none of the spellwork seemed to accomplish anything except create tiny pinpricks of color on the wall. "Well, I am extremely confused now," he offered as they all stared at the obstacle.
"Did all of you get a Troll in Astronomy?" Marie-Ange said, with a sigh. "It is a star map, clearly we need to keep trying to set it on fire." She waved her potions knife at the wall, and raised an eyebrow, and then walked over and struck a match against the wall to no avail "I have no interest in any magic that does not involve me turning Dolores Umbridge into a cane toad and then squashing her under an Ugg boot, and it does not respond to actual fire, just magic it seems."
Hope moved closer the wall, knocking on it and tilting her head to listen. "There is a space behind it. So you would think it is not that difficult to blast through... but we already had physical challenges. So this would be one of strength of mind or heart." Hope stepped back and studied the wall. "I have the feeling that what we need lies behind it."
"Yeah, but what lies behind is.... behind it." Alex waved a hand, frowning. "Unless someone here is secretly a ghost."
"Or a virgin?" The cynical snort was entirely out of place coming from someone with braided pigtails who had found strawberry lipbalm in her robe pocket and used it. "I know better, five of us certainly are not and Stephen, I do not want to know if you are, I prefer to assume that our lovely front desk receptionist at Snow Valley is not, so I do not have to give her the safe sex talk." Marie-Ange tapped her fingers against the wall, and pressed her ear up, much like Hope had. "Do not give me that look, any of you. The constellation is Virgo, see, the brightest point is there, that is Spica, and the rest all have names similar to their constellation. Alpha Virginis, Chi Virginis, and the like. Who would like very much to volunteer to be dead?" She raised an eyebrow, looking over at Hope.
"Wait, you think because I am a ghost alive I would be a good ghost dead?" Hope's eyes widened at the sharp spike of fear that stabbed through her, but she suppressed it ruthlessly. "I cannot even begin to fathom how you can see this working successfully, so explain."
"I think you are the only one of us who could pass through a solid wall." Marie-Ange said calmly. "This has not been in the books, nor was Angelo's Tarzan exercise, or having to do dark unforgivable magic on a troll, so we are well past literature." She rummaged through her pockets until she found the uniform required Ravenclaw tie, and carefully knotted it up. "Someone has to die a little bit, or we all starve to death or get eaten by snakes, or whatever horrible thing Voldemort can do." She paused, undid the knots in the tie and began re-tying them. "I am almost certain we can bring you back. This constellation is Virgo, also sometimes Persephone, who visits Hades and then comes back, every spring. If this does not reference you, I will grade myself a Troll in Astronomy. A maiden with an over-protective mother, who goes to death and comes back, over and over?"
Jean-Phillipe snorted. "And there is no other woman here who 'goes to death' and has an overbearing mother." Considering she had been muttering almost the entire time about killing this or that character.
"If I could turn into a ghost we would already be done and I would be off doing murder to Dolores Umbridge." Marie-Ange said, pointing her finger at her cousin. "Goodness have none of you been forced to watch television. We stop Hope's heart, she is a ghost, and then we do CPR."
Alex gaped helplessly, looking at Hope. "Uh.... are you okay with this?"
She swallowed again. "It looks like we do not have much of a choice." Hope commented. Turning to Marie-Ange she added: "You want to use that thing or would an electric shock be better?"
"This is my backup plan." Marie-Ange said, twisting the tie in an expert way no eleven year old should have known. "Cousin, how precisely can you deliver an electrical shock?" She asked, more carefully than she'd been speaking to Hope even a moment ago. "I hate to ask you to do terrible things once more, but at least in this, I know it will not create a horcrux or rend your soul. I do get to cheat still, even here." Her robe pockets had been filled with odds and ends - a potions knife, spare hair ribbons, a deck of tarot cards, Norse rune stones, dice, and a crystal ball that was bigger than the pockets should have been able to hold.
Angelo moved silently to Jean-Phillipe's side, hand sliding into his once again in support of whatever he did - or couldn't do.
"I can do it." Pre-teen quavering of his voice aside, Jean-Phillipe's voice was confident. "Erik spent a lot of time working on fine-tuned control of my powers." He waved at Hope. "Let us do the death."
"Let's do this then." Hope quickly laid down on the floor, drawing in a deep breath as she prepared to shift into the mental state she usually used when ghosting. The flower came to life in her mind, waiting to be unfolded. As a sharp pain ran through her, she kept her focus on the flower, letting it unfold as she left her body.
"Voltage is not what injures and kills people from electric shock. The amount of current is - and paradoxically, a lower amperage is more lethal. Your typical 110 volt power supply creates ventricular fibrillation at as little as 30 milliamperes."
Jean-Phillipe reluctantly slid his hand out of Angelo's - no sense in electrocuting him at the same time, after all. He stretched his hand out just above Hope's heart, not quite touching her. The clothing would create some resistance, so he mentally adjusted his 'grip' on his power. He might not have an actual control dial for the electricity his body created, but he had spent enough time with the leads from a voltmeter in his hand while Erik looked on sternly to have a very good estimate of how much power was needed for any given situation.
A small spark emitted from each of his fingers, disappearing into Hope's body. He watched as her back involuntarily flexed and arched, and then her body slumped to the ground. He leaned down, verified that she was not breathing, then straightened up.
"Track the time, cousin," he said flatly.
Registering the time concern in the back of her mind, Hope was instead focused on getting what she needed as quickly as possible. Vaguely she registered that moving like a dead ghost was not so different from using her astral form. When she passed through the wall, she stopped abruptly though. 'Is this why they had to kill me?'
On the wall before her was just a fragment of text from myth of Persephone and Hades and she set about memorizing it as quickly as possibly, knowing she had a clock ticking away.
Marie-Ange's fingers were tapping out the seconds, five, ten, fifteen. At thirty, she bent to settle herself next to Hope, and at forty, she began chest compressions. "Five more seconds, and then someone please assist with breathing for her." Hopefully it would not be necessary - they had stopped Hope's heart, not her lungs, and ideally she would resume breathing as soon as she returned to her body.
Alex watched, head bobbing slightly as he counted in his head, and his fingers began tapping for the five seconds Marie-Ange had given. Then leaned in and started CPR.
A sharp pain rose once more in Hope's chest as she felt herself being drawn away from the words on the wall, through the barriers and back into her own body. After one last glance she was confident she'd be able to recite the words and turned around, heading back on her own.
Half a minute later she sputtered, trying to draw in a breath. The first one was really hard, the next one was a little easier and the third one one was doable. She felt someone sitting her up. "Need... the door..." She managed to get out. It was only a moment before she was lifted and carried towards the door. With a weak hand Hope reached out, touched and in a low whisper started to recite the text: "When the messenger came to me, the swift Argos-killer with the news from my father, the son of Kronos, and from the other dwellers in the sky. that I should come from Erebos, so that you may see me with your own eyes and let go of your wrath and terrible mênis against the immortals, then I sprang up for joy, but he, stealthily put into my hand the berry of the pomegranate, that honey-sweet food and he compelled me by biâ to eat of it. As for how it was that he [Hadês] snatched me away, through the mêtis of the son of Kronos, my father, and how he took me down beneath the depths of the earth."
When she stopped, the door rumbled open.
There were some obstacles out there that you just couldn't get around, some that were so complex or so fiendish that you couldn't see a way around them. And then, there was the wall, solid, impenetrable and, Stephen noted rubbing his hand ruefully as he glared at the wall, "Ok, so...it's solid. I was kinda hoping that this was just some kinda illusion." If he was honest that was probably not the smartest idea he'd ever had but...totally part of the plan. "Anyone have any spells in their back pocket they think could blow a hole in this?"
"Blowing things up happens to be my specialty," Alex announced proudly, getting his wand out and twirling it between his fingers. He was getting better at this, he thought as he aimed, and the spell went off with a bang. It hit the wall, momentarily flashing light and blinding them... and when it faded away, there was still a wall, but now with a couple dots on it. ".......Well that wasn't supposed to happen."
Angelo was peering at the dots. “Those don’t look like damage, but they weren’t there before. Let me try something... Reducto!”
Jean-Phillipe attempted a "Lumos", but none of the spellwork seemed to accomplish anything except create tiny pinpricks of color on the wall. "Well, I am extremely confused now," he offered as they all stared at the obstacle.
"Did all of you get a Troll in Astronomy?" Marie-Ange said, with a sigh. "It is a star map, clearly we need to keep trying to set it on fire." She waved her potions knife at the wall, and raised an eyebrow, and then walked over and struck a match against the wall to no avail "I have no interest in any magic that does not involve me turning Dolores Umbridge into a cane toad and then squashing her under an Ugg boot, and it does not respond to actual fire, just magic it seems."
Hope moved closer the wall, knocking on it and tilting her head to listen. "There is a space behind it. So you would think it is not that difficult to blast through... but we already had physical challenges. So this would be one of strength of mind or heart." Hope stepped back and studied the wall. "I have the feeling that what we need lies behind it."
"Yeah, but what lies behind is.... behind it." Alex waved a hand, frowning. "Unless someone here is secretly a ghost."
"Or a virgin?" The cynical snort was entirely out of place coming from someone with braided pigtails who had found strawberry lipbalm in her robe pocket and used it. "I know better, five of us certainly are not and Stephen, I do not want to know if you are, I prefer to assume that our lovely front desk receptionist at Snow Valley is not, so I do not have to give her the safe sex talk." Marie-Ange tapped her fingers against the wall, and pressed her ear up, much like Hope had. "Do not give me that look, any of you. The constellation is Virgo, see, the brightest point is there, that is Spica, and the rest all have names similar to their constellation. Alpha Virginis, Chi Virginis, and the like. Who would like very much to volunteer to be dead?" She raised an eyebrow, looking over at Hope.
"Wait, you think because I am a ghost alive I would be a good ghost dead?" Hope's eyes widened at the sharp spike of fear that stabbed through her, but she suppressed it ruthlessly. "I cannot even begin to fathom how you can see this working successfully, so explain."
"I think you are the only one of us who could pass through a solid wall." Marie-Ange said calmly. "This has not been in the books, nor was Angelo's Tarzan exercise, or having to do dark unforgivable magic on a troll, so we are well past literature." She rummaged through her pockets until she found the uniform required Ravenclaw tie, and carefully knotted it up. "Someone has to die a little bit, or we all starve to death or get eaten by snakes, or whatever horrible thing Voldemort can do." She paused, undid the knots in the tie and began re-tying them. "I am almost certain we can bring you back. This constellation is Virgo, also sometimes Persephone, who visits Hades and then comes back, every spring. If this does not reference you, I will grade myself a Troll in Astronomy. A maiden with an over-protective mother, who goes to death and comes back, over and over?"
Jean-Phillipe snorted. "And there is no other woman here who 'goes to death' and has an overbearing mother." Considering she had been muttering almost the entire time about killing this or that character.
"If I could turn into a ghost we would already be done and I would be off doing murder to Dolores Umbridge." Marie-Ange said, pointing her finger at her cousin. "Goodness have none of you been forced to watch television. We stop Hope's heart, she is a ghost, and then we do CPR."
Alex gaped helplessly, looking at Hope. "Uh.... are you okay with this?"
She swallowed again. "It looks like we do not have much of a choice." Hope commented. Turning to Marie-Ange she added: "You want to use that thing or would an electric shock be better?"
"This is my backup plan." Marie-Ange said, twisting the tie in an expert way no eleven year old should have known. "Cousin, how precisely can you deliver an electrical shock?" She asked, more carefully than she'd been speaking to Hope even a moment ago. "I hate to ask you to do terrible things once more, but at least in this, I know it will not create a horcrux or rend your soul. I do get to cheat still, even here." Her robe pockets had been filled with odds and ends - a potions knife, spare hair ribbons, a deck of tarot cards, Norse rune stones, dice, and a crystal ball that was bigger than the pockets should have been able to hold.
Angelo moved silently to Jean-Phillipe's side, hand sliding into his once again in support of whatever he did - or couldn't do.
"I can do it." Pre-teen quavering of his voice aside, Jean-Phillipe's voice was confident. "Erik spent a lot of time working on fine-tuned control of my powers." He waved at Hope. "Let us do the death."
"Let's do this then." Hope quickly laid down on the floor, drawing in a deep breath as she prepared to shift into the mental state she usually used when ghosting. The flower came to life in her mind, waiting to be unfolded. As a sharp pain ran through her, she kept her focus on the flower, letting it unfold as she left her body.
"Voltage is not what injures and kills people from electric shock. The amount of current is - and paradoxically, a lower amperage is more lethal. Your typical 110 volt power supply creates ventricular fibrillation at as little as 30 milliamperes."
Jean-Phillipe reluctantly slid his hand out of Angelo's - no sense in electrocuting him at the same time, after all. He stretched his hand out just above Hope's heart, not quite touching her. The clothing would create some resistance, so he mentally adjusted his 'grip' on his power. He might not have an actual control dial for the electricity his body created, but he had spent enough time with the leads from a voltmeter in his hand while Erik looked on sternly to have a very good estimate of how much power was needed for any given situation.
A small spark emitted from each of his fingers, disappearing into Hope's body. He watched as her back involuntarily flexed and arched, and then her body slumped to the ground. He leaned down, verified that she was not breathing, then straightened up.
"Track the time, cousin," he said flatly.
Registering the time concern in the back of her mind, Hope was instead focused on getting what she needed as quickly as possible. Vaguely she registered that moving like a dead ghost was not so different from using her astral form. When she passed through the wall, she stopped abruptly though. 'Is this why they had to kill me?'
On the wall before her was just a fragment of text from myth of Persephone and Hades and she set about memorizing it as quickly as possibly, knowing she had a clock ticking away.
Marie-Ange's fingers were tapping out the seconds, five, ten, fifteen. At thirty, she bent to settle herself next to Hope, and at forty, she began chest compressions. "Five more seconds, and then someone please assist with breathing for her." Hopefully it would not be necessary - they had stopped Hope's heart, not her lungs, and ideally she would resume breathing as soon as she returned to her body.
Alex watched, head bobbing slightly as he counted in his head, and his fingers began tapping for the five seconds Marie-Ange had given. Then leaned in and started CPR.
A sharp pain rose once more in Hope's chest as she felt herself being drawn away from the words on the wall, through the barriers and back into her own body. After one last glance she was confident she'd be able to recite the words and turned around, heading back on her own.
Half a minute later she sputtered, trying to draw in a breath. The first one was really hard, the next one was a little easier and the third one one was doable. She felt someone sitting her up. "Need... the door..." She managed to get out. It was only a moment before she was lifted and carried towards the door. With a weak hand Hope reached out, touched and in a low whisper started to recite the text: "When the messenger came to me, the swift Argos-killer with the news from my father, the son of Kronos, and from the other dwellers in the sky. that I should come from Erebos, so that you may see me with your own eyes and let go of your wrath and terrible mênis against the immortals, then I sprang up for joy, but he, stealthily put into my hand the berry of the pomegranate, that honey-sweet food and he compelled me by biâ to eat of it. As for how it was that he [Hadês] snatched me away, through the mêtis of the son of Kronos, my father, and how he took me down beneath the depths of the earth."
When she stopped, the door rumbled open.
