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xp_logsAmanda, Marie-Ange, Doug and Wanda make a most unsettling discovery.
As they stepped out of the elevator and into the viewing area, Amanda scowled. "Have I mentioned I don't like this?" she asked rhetorically, since she had been saying that pretty much from the time they'd gotten Drumm's letter. "'Cause this stinks. To high heaven."
"Bird droppings." Marie-Ange said, scowling. "I knew finding those feathers all over Kevin's pile of newspaper deliveries boded poorly." Her team did not see her as a Cassandra - when Marie-Ange said something was a bad omen, people paid attention, but "ravens and crows mean bad news" was rather a constant refrain for her. It got old. "Who wants to go find some ravens and kick them off the building for me?"
Wanda snorted softly. "I generally tread lightly where normal ravens are concerned. The types of ravens you talk about could very well likely send me to my doom, so if I'm kicking any ravens off the building, I will be doing so from a distance."
Doug shook his head. "Between ravens and the cryptic letter from Team Ancient One, I can't decide who I'm more side-eye at." His hand crept toward where he had a pistol holstered under his windbreaker. "I definitely do not have a good feeling about any of this."
While they'd been talking, Amanda had crossed over to the door that led to the non-public levels past the viewing platform. "Wanda, you good to crack this lock?" she asked. "I'd rather save the magic until it's needed and there's no telling what sort of clash there could be if someone's been messing with the Dweller's lock up. Too bad it's not likely to be one of the builders on the renovation team bumping into the wrong place."
Flexing her fingers, she joined Amanda at the door and pressed her hand against the lock. "Let us see if I can use my powers to do this or if I'll need to break out the actual lockpicks as I worry, too, about my powers interacting poorly." A quick peek at the strings showed her that her using her powers to pop the lock, at least, wouldn't be a disaster. As the door swung open, she sighed, "Bit of a shame, that, it's been so long since I've done a proper break in."
The quartet was met at the open door by a large black bird, cocking its head as though it were inspecting them. It bobbed its head once, and then took flight, only to land almost immediately on Marie-Ange's shoulder. "Oh do bugger off..." She grumbled, glaring at the raven. "This is no longer amusing, you are irritating and I dislike you."
The raven ignored her words in favor of settling down quite comfortably, sharp talons wrapped around the strap of her messenger bag.
Marie-Ange looked away from it, not daring to try to shove it off her shoulder. "Who would like to bet on interference from a certain group of Norse gods?"
"Angie, how many times do I have to tell you, if I wanted to give you five bucks, I'd just give you five bucks and not make sucker bets with you." Doug's easy tone belied the tension in his body, and his pistol was out and held low in both hands as they all crept forward.
"They're never gotten involved in Dweller stuff before. I don't like it." Amanda gave the raven a dark look. Although Tandy was all grown up and doing her own thing these days, Amanda still felt responsible for keeping her safe from demonic forces after the mess with the young woman's father. She led the way through a maze of scaffolding, building equipment and building materials, clearly from the recent renovations. "I dunno if it's one of those bloody coincidences, but it looks like the bulk of the work was being done right over the spot where the Dweller was bound. Is bound," she amended. No point borrowing trouble until they were sure.
Wanda had gone very quiet as they walked, eyes slightly unfocused on the actual world as she delved into the world that overlaid it all. Her breath sharpened at what she found, tangled messes and tattered lines right under her nose and yet everything was oddly okay - so far - around them. "Be careful," she said, trying to find the source of the hurt, "we're walking on top of a powder keg all set to blow. Something is very seriously wrong right now and it's only getting worse the further we go."
Marie-Ange spared a moment to give Doug a sidelong look - she could hear him muttering song lyrics under his breath - before pulling a dull grey knife from nowhere and giving a worse glare to the raven on her shoulder. "Fine, if you are staying, I expect you to work." She pointed with the knife at the path between scaffolding and pallets of stone. "Go on, fly around, be ominously helpful, you know you want to."
The bird stayed firmly in place, cawing in Marie-Ange's ear.
Doug snorted very quietly. "That bird follows direction about as well as Jubilee," he observed as they crept closer. There was absolutely nothing to be seen other than the pallets strewn about, so why was the finely honed sense of when things were very wrong sounding so loudly in his head? And for that matter, if there was nothing to be seen, what were the ravens doing there?
Amanda didn't respond, her attention focused on the spot where the Dweller had been bound. At the time, she'd placed wards and spells over the spot, invisible to non-magic users but to her eyes glowing lines of purple and green. The lines were still there, but they blurred when she tried to focus on them. "I think someone's been messing with the spell," she announced, stopping at the place. "I can't really see it properly, but something's wonky."
"Of course someone has." Marie-Ange grumbled. She dodged the raven pecking at her ear twice and then cursed as it caught the side of her head with its beak. "Stop, you stupid useless..." The raven ignored her, in favor of biting through the thin strap at Marie-Ange's eyepatch and pulling it away, along with several pieces of her hair. "Fine, yes, I will stop calling you useless, leave that alone, leave my hair along, thank you!" Her last came with the large bird flapping away, eyepatch dangling from its beak and landing atop Doug's shoulder, repeating the same pecking at his glasses.
Doug cast his eye sideways, meeting the raven's glance at a distance of only an inch or two as it tried to slide the glasses off his face. "~If you shit on my shoulder I make no apologies for what will happen to you,~" he informed the bird in flawless court Asgardian. He took his right hand off the grip of his pistol to brush his passenger away, fingers flexing as if they had started to cramp abruptly. "I kind of need those," he said a bit more gently. Vision issues were definitely a symptom of pernicious anemia, after all.
"Amanda, would you like an assist?" Wanda asked, eyes still slightly unfocused. "We can compare what I see to what you see magically - I believe the end result will essentially be "not good".
"Yeah, that'd be good. I have a feeling it's a cloaking spell, but the whole point of those is to draw her attention away from them, so it's kind of hard to nail them down," the witch replied. She was tilting her head this way and that, squinting at the patch of wall which held her spell.
Marie-Ange had moved towards Doug, to try to pry the bird off him - she disliked the thing, but it was her problem to deal with, not his, but before she could raise an arm to encourage it to fly back, it took to the air. The raven flew in a wide circle around the rooftop and then dropped the eyepatch into a plastic tub full of water and cigarette butts and few soggy bits of paper next to the wall. It cawed loudly, flew around the building again, and then landed on a ledge, cocking its head and staring with jet black beady eyes.
"Amanda? I think the bird is confirming your theory..." Marie-Ange pulled a long spear from nowhere and handed it to Amanda. "Too much coincidence, you think it is a cloaking spell, and he stole my eyepatch and tried to steal Doug's glasses. Would a cloaking spell need some kind of, ah, magical focusing... bucket of water?"
"Ugh, gross." Doug had a feeling that eyepatch was going to be a lost cause after its dunking. He definitely couldn't see Marie-Ange putting it back on her face. He cocked his head at the bucket, taking in the rather aggressive hint from the raven. "That bucket is completely out of place," he observed. "I mean, that is not where workers would take their smoke break at all." He crossed to it and looked at the others. "Shall we?" he asked, drawing back his foot to knock it over.
The water, and gunk, splashed out across the floor, away from their shoes, thankfully, but the water also spilled out in unnatural waves. They followed no natural rhythm or reason, listened not at all to gravity, and as Wanda's eyes followed the flow, she started to see the pattern. "Amanda, are you seeing this?"
"Yeah." Amanda sighed and stepped gingerly through the mess to the wall, touching the surface lightly. "There's definitely a cloaking spell over the top of mine. I have a bad feeling about why," she continued, taking a breath. "But there's only one way to be sure. If our demon friend grabs me, be ready to yank me back out." And with that, she pushed her hand and arm into the wall, feeling around. After a long moment, she sighed again and pulled herself out. "Fuck."
"I'm going to guess that something isn't there that should be." If something had been there that shouldn't have, it would have involved a more intense 'fuck' and moving away quickly. Doug pursed his lips. "Like, say, a seal or whatever was keeping the Big Nasty caged in." That was very not good. "That begs the question - where is it?"
Wanda was mid-frustrated shrug when her phone went off silently but with a subtle vibration that she recognized instantly. She fished it out of her pocket as the rest of the phones around her went off in various tones and vibrations, everyone sharing the same look as they went for their own phones.
"The mansion," she said, staring at the emergency signal on the screen of her phone. "It's at the mansion."
As they stepped out of the elevator and into the viewing area, Amanda scowled. "Have I mentioned I don't like this?" she asked rhetorically, since she had been saying that pretty much from the time they'd gotten Drumm's letter. "'Cause this stinks. To high heaven."
"Bird droppings." Marie-Ange said, scowling. "I knew finding those feathers all over Kevin's pile of newspaper deliveries boded poorly." Her team did not see her as a Cassandra - when Marie-Ange said something was a bad omen, people paid attention, but "ravens and crows mean bad news" was rather a constant refrain for her. It got old. "Who wants to go find some ravens and kick them off the building for me?"
Wanda snorted softly. "I generally tread lightly where normal ravens are concerned. The types of ravens you talk about could very well likely send me to my doom, so if I'm kicking any ravens off the building, I will be doing so from a distance."
Doug shook his head. "Between ravens and the cryptic letter from Team Ancient One, I can't decide who I'm more side-eye at." His hand crept toward where he had a pistol holstered under his windbreaker. "I definitely do not have a good feeling about any of this."
While they'd been talking, Amanda had crossed over to the door that led to the non-public levels past the viewing platform. "Wanda, you good to crack this lock?" she asked. "I'd rather save the magic until it's needed and there's no telling what sort of clash there could be if someone's been messing with the Dweller's lock up. Too bad it's not likely to be one of the builders on the renovation team bumping into the wrong place."
Flexing her fingers, she joined Amanda at the door and pressed her hand against the lock. "Let us see if I can use my powers to do this or if I'll need to break out the actual lockpicks as I worry, too, about my powers interacting poorly." A quick peek at the strings showed her that her using her powers to pop the lock, at least, wouldn't be a disaster. As the door swung open, she sighed, "Bit of a shame, that, it's been so long since I've done a proper break in."
The quartet was met at the open door by a large black bird, cocking its head as though it were inspecting them. It bobbed its head once, and then took flight, only to land almost immediately on Marie-Ange's shoulder. "Oh do bugger off..." She grumbled, glaring at the raven. "This is no longer amusing, you are irritating and I dislike you."
The raven ignored her words in favor of settling down quite comfortably, sharp talons wrapped around the strap of her messenger bag.
Marie-Ange looked away from it, not daring to try to shove it off her shoulder. "Who would like to bet on interference from a certain group of Norse gods?"
"Angie, how many times do I have to tell you, if I wanted to give you five bucks, I'd just give you five bucks and not make sucker bets with you." Doug's easy tone belied the tension in his body, and his pistol was out and held low in both hands as they all crept forward.
"They're never gotten involved in Dweller stuff before. I don't like it." Amanda gave the raven a dark look. Although Tandy was all grown up and doing her own thing these days, Amanda still felt responsible for keeping her safe from demonic forces after the mess with the young woman's father. She led the way through a maze of scaffolding, building equipment and building materials, clearly from the recent renovations. "I dunno if it's one of those bloody coincidences, but it looks like the bulk of the work was being done right over the spot where the Dweller was bound. Is bound," she amended. No point borrowing trouble until they were sure.
Wanda had gone very quiet as they walked, eyes slightly unfocused on the actual world as she delved into the world that overlaid it all. Her breath sharpened at what she found, tangled messes and tattered lines right under her nose and yet everything was oddly okay - so far - around them. "Be careful," she said, trying to find the source of the hurt, "we're walking on top of a powder keg all set to blow. Something is very seriously wrong right now and it's only getting worse the further we go."
Marie-Ange spared a moment to give Doug a sidelong look - she could hear him muttering song lyrics under his breath - before pulling a dull grey knife from nowhere and giving a worse glare to the raven on her shoulder. "Fine, if you are staying, I expect you to work." She pointed with the knife at the path between scaffolding and pallets of stone. "Go on, fly around, be ominously helpful, you know you want to."
The bird stayed firmly in place, cawing in Marie-Ange's ear.
Doug snorted very quietly. "That bird follows direction about as well as Jubilee," he observed as they crept closer. There was absolutely nothing to be seen other than the pallets strewn about, so why was the finely honed sense of when things were very wrong sounding so loudly in his head? And for that matter, if there was nothing to be seen, what were the ravens doing there?
Amanda didn't respond, her attention focused on the spot where the Dweller had been bound. At the time, she'd placed wards and spells over the spot, invisible to non-magic users but to her eyes glowing lines of purple and green. The lines were still there, but they blurred when she tried to focus on them. "I think someone's been messing with the spell," she announced, stopping at the place. "I can't really see it properly, but something's wonky."
"Of course someone has." Marie-Ange grumbled. She dodged the raven pecking at her ear twice and then cursed as it caught the side of her head with its beak. "Stop, you stupid useless..." The raven ignored her, in favor of biting through the thin strap at Marie-Ange's eyepatch and pulling it away, along with several pieces of her hair. "Fine, yes, I will stop calling you useless, leave that alone, leave my hair along, thank you!" Her last came with the large bird flapping away, eyepatch dangling from its beak and landing atop Doug's shoulder, repeating the same pecking at his glasses.
Doug cast his eye sideways, meeting the raven's glance at a distance of only an inch or two as it tried to slide the glasses off his face. "~If you shit on my shoulder I make no apologies for what will happen to you,~" he informed the bird in flawless court Asgardian. He took his right hand off the grip of his pistol to brush his passenger away, fingers flexing as if they had started to cramp abruptly. "I kind of need those," he said a bit more gently. Vision issues were definitely a symptom of pernicious anemia, after all.
"Amanda, would you like an assist?" Wanda asked, eyes still slightly unfocused. "We can compare what I see to what you see magically - I believe the end result will essentially be "not good".
"Yeah, that'd be good. I have a feeling it's a cloaking spell, but the whole point of those is to draw her attention away from them, so it's kind of hard to nail them down," the witch replied. She was tilting her head this way and that, squinting at the patch of wall which held her spell.
Marie-Ange had moved towards Doug, to try to pry the bird off him - she disliked the thing, but it was her problem to deal with, not his, but before she could raise an arm to encourage it to fly back, it took to the air. The raven flew in a wide circle around the rooftop and then dropped the eyepatch into a plastic tub full of water and cigarette butts and few soggy bits of paper next to the wall. It cawed loudly, flew around the building again, and then landed on a ledge, cocking its head and staring with jet black beady eyes.
"Amanda? I think the bird is confirming your theory..." Marie-Ange pulled a long spear from nowhere and handed it to Amanda. "Too much coincidence, you think it is a cloaking spell, and he stole my eyepatch and tried to steal Doug's glasses. Would a cloaking spell need some kind of, ah, magical focusing... bucket of water?"
"Ugh, gross." Doug had a feeling that eyepatch was going to be a lost cause after its dunking. He definitely couldn't see Marie-Ange putting it back on her face. He cocked his head at the bucket, taking in the rather aggressive hint from the raven. "That bucket is completely out of place," he observed. "I mean, that is not where workers would take their smoke break at all." He crossed to it and looked at the others. "Shall we?" he asked, drawing back his foot to knock it over.
The water, and gunk, splashed out across the floor, away from their shoes, thankfully, but the water also spilled out in unnatural waves. They followed no natural rhythm or reason, listened not at all to gravity, and as Wanda's eyes followed the flow, she started to see the pattern. "Amanda, are you seeing this?"
"Yeah." Amanda sighed and stepped gingerly through the mess to the wall, touching the surface lightly. "There's definitely a cloaking spell over the top of mine. I have a bad feeling about why," she continued, taking a breath. "But there's only one way to be sure. If our demon friend grabs me, be ready to yank me back out." And with that, she pushed her hand and arm into the wall, feeling around. After a long moment, she sighed again and pulled herself out. "Fuck."
"I'm going to guess that something isn't there that should be." If something had been there that shouldn't have, it would have involved a more intense 'fuck' and moving away quickly. Doug pursed his lips. "Like, say, a seal or whatever was keeping the Big Nasty caged in." That was very not good. "That begs the question - where is it?"
Wanda was mid-frustrated shrug when her phone went off silently but with a subtle vibration that she recognized instantly. She fished it out of her pocket as the rest of the phones around her went off in various tones and vibrations, everyone sharing the same look as they went for their own phones.
"The mansion," she said, staring at the emergency signal on the screen of her phone. "It's at the mansion."
