The Color Of Horror || Home Again
Nov. 20th, 2021 08:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xp_topaz posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
xp_logsIn which Topaz finally finds her way back.
None of her readings had been exact. Time was a slippery thing, and Marie-Ange had taken one look at the nightmare of equations on Doug's engineering pad, another at the arcane diagram on Amanda's notebook and thrown up her hands and just started taking notes and passing them on.
Knowing that did not mean she was any less anxious. She paced, steps careful to avoid the elaborate design chalked onto the ground. In the last day, none of her readings had changed, all reinforcing the same information they had. Be here, at this time.
Marie-Ange sat on one of the folding chairs someone had brought out and followed the intricate lines on the ground with her good eye. Mica, in the most brilliant colors, crushed pastel rock, rough ground topaz. Tea leaves. Art chalk. Glass beads so tiny she could not distinguish where they ended and the mica began. A pinch of what had to be coffee grounds on the far edge, and a bit of broken glass from a tumblr left on one of the work tables.
She picked up her phone for the dozenth time, checking the notes she and the others had made, and frowned - and then stood up, cursing with an exasperated shrug.. "This stupid country. It is Daylight Savings. We are early."
Amanda snorted, shaking her head. "Of all the things..." she said, coming to stand behind Marie-Ange and rest her hands on her shoulders. Outwardly, she appeared calm, almost happy, but Marie-Ange could feel Amanda's hands trembling with a build-up of anxiety and magical energy - the witch had been in London all day, soaking up as much power as her connection would allow. "If I'd thought of it myself, I would have spent another hour chatting to the London Stone. And convinced everyone there I was completely balmy."
Meggan shook her head in genuine amazement from where she sat. She had been nervously hoping this would all work out. Now, though, her thoughts turned to what weirdness could happen from going back one hour. She would never have thought Daylight Saving Time would cause something like being too early for saving a person, but here they were. “That...really? I seriously think we’ve now got another reason, a very big reason, for why somebody needs to put a stop to all this gaining and losing of hours.”
"Maybe the timing is for a reason," Pixie suggested quietly. "Things have a way of working out. But speaking of gaining and losing... I hope this homing beacon spell does its work soon and we get Topaz back."
"If this is some lesson from the universe I am going to scream into a pillow." Marie-Ange said. She pulled cards from her pockets, shuffling a deck automatically and turning up a card. "Ace of Wands." She let out a little snort of a laugh. "Ace of Wanda, this is the joke deck I drew because I kept writing Wands Maximoff and Wanda complained about it. I have not gotten this one before for this." She looked over her shoulder, as a brief red glow came from the other side of the mansion. "Success backed by hard work, and a little luck. We certainly did a lot of hard work." She'd bandaged Amanda's blisters herself, driven Maya to a bead store despite her frustration with the younger woman, and had bustled around taking notes in a notebook the entire time everyone was drawing when she was not doing art herself.
And it would pay off.
Topaz had stopped, again. She was stopping more now, or at least she thought she was. She couldn't really track how long she had been walking before she stopped, but the time felt shorter.
She laid back, closing her eyes, and the area around her slipped away. She was used to that. Everything ceased to exist and erased itself when she was no longer looking at it. She'd tried to take pictures before her phone had died, but apparently the void wasn't photogenic. Not that it mattered, she and her dead phone were never getting out-
Nope. Not thinking about that.
She'd just rest for a little bit, and...
And the air moved.
She sat up immediately, wide-eyed, every single complaint forgotten. That was new. Nothing moved in the void except for shadows and weird moments of color that might have been a hallucination. Topaz raised a hand, grimacing as she tried to just summon a little ball of light. Magic had gotten harder the longer she'd been alone. She hadn't realized how much she depended on the ambient magic and emotions that were always around her.
The light shot out of her palm and was almost immediately swallowed by darkness. She held her breath, waiting and counting...
Twenty seconds later, something pinged back.
At the exact same moment, a million miles away just on the other side of the wall, Amanda's hands tightened suddenly on Marie-Ange's shoulders and her head jerked around to the doorknob Stephen had magicked up for the spell. It had been just a fleeting ping, easy to miss if she hadn't been so wired to feel it. "Pixie, did you feel that?" she asked, wanting to be sure it wasn't just her imagination and almost obsessive hope.
"It's her," Pixie whispered, her all-black eyes shining. Acting as a conduit for the spell, she felt every hair on the back of her neck stand up. "Topaz, yes love, heads towards the beacon. Come back to us."
Meggan’s hope only increased in volume a thousand fold at the news. She’d collected all this emotion for her; this beacon had to work. “Yes, please come back, Topaz!” She fervently hoped that the other girl could hear their voices across the great distance.
Leaving her place behind Marie-Ange, Amanda stepped forward and reached for the door handle, careful to avoid smudging the design on the wall and floor. It tingled slightly under her hand. "Meg, Pixie, come and grab my shoulders. I can amplify the spell, but I need both of you to chime in." She closed her eyes and focussed, feeling their hands on her shoulders and the power surging through her, down her arm and into the hand gripping the knob. The glass glowed brightly, pulsing rhythmically with her heartbeat.
Topaz remained frozen on her knees for another moment, wondering if this was a trick - another way for the void to mess with her, just like the voices and the colors. Her hand tightened around the strap of her bag as she slowly stood, forming another ball of light in her hands. She didn't immediately send this one off, however; instead she started forward very slowly, every single sense on alert. And it hit her - not just one feeling, one emotion, but so much, all concentrated on one thing. Some sadness, some fear, some worry, but the louder ones were caring and loving and familiar. If she focused hard enough, she could almost pick out each individual person - Maya's stubborn, angry determination, Doug's fierce resolve, Wanda's guilty pleas, America's misplaced anger channeled into need, Amanda... layers and layers and layers all gathered up and tied in a neat little bow by a person Topaz had been connected to once, briefly, and who she could still easily pick out of a crowd without trying, and powered by a person with the completely wrong kind of magic considering how sweet and gentle she was. Because really, who else but Megan could use love to power demonic magic?
It was all a bit much, and overwhelmed Topaz for a minute before she started to laugh. Completely and ridiculously and entirely over the top. And if she'd thought about it sooner, she wouldn't expect anything less. She skimmed a bit off the emotions - she had a feeling no one would mind - and used it to grow her little ball of light, sending it forward. This time it didn't just ping - it stuck on to a spot and glowed bright enough that Topaz had to cover her eyes for a minute.
"Right," she mumbled, hooking her bag over her shoulder. "Time to go home. Got it."
The light, it turned out, had connected to a door knob. That was also new. Topaz approached slowly, grabbing it, and immediately recognized the mischievous but warm intent of Stephen's magic. She turned the knob; it disappeared from her hand, flattening into the air and expanding into a flashing array of swirling colors. She automatically tried to take a step back, but was pushed forward. This portal wasn't trying to take anything in - it wanted to get something out.
And out Topaz went. Into too bright light and warmth and familiarity and-
And she tripped, crashing right into Amanda.
The impact sent them both crashing to the ground, but Amanda's arms never loosened the tight hug she'd wrapped Topaz in the instant they'd made contact and a delighted laugh erupted from her, even as she lay on the floor with Topaz on top of her. "It's you! Oh thank fuck, it's really you!"
Topaz clung back just as tight, trying her best to reorient herself after the abrupt transition. It was warm, and she was starting to shiver, which was probably an improvement from the biting cold and numbness. She pressed her face into Amanda's shoulder, not wanting to even consider dealing with the chapel lights, and cast out a careful net to find out who else was there. Marie-Ange, Meggan, Pixie. She smiled a bit despite herself; her voice was muffled and maybe a little clumsy when she spoke.
"Told you you're not going to get rid of me."
Meggan was absolutely overjoyed at the results. She found that she just couldn’t help her natural inclination. She instinctively dove forward to where they were on the floor, and, given her front was presently occupied by Amanda, hugged Topaz fiercely from behind. Voice muffled by her closeness, she called out, “Oh, we’d never ever want that to happen.”
Pixie squeezed Amanda's shoulder on her left and slipped her other arm around the person to her right - she couldn't see clearly through the tears and her legs were shaking slightly. "We did it!" she exclaimed, overwhelmed with joy. She felt warmth flowing through her chest still, from that place where a piece of her soul was replaced with demon magic. The magic was still there, but... it felt different, changed somehow.
Eventually there was going to have to be movement, probably straight to the med lab, and questions to answers, and other people to reassure. There was a cat who was probably mad at her for disappearing or sad that she was gone, and either way, that had to be fixed. Oh, and the wormhole still whirring quietly in the wall needed to be dealt with. By someone else, preferably.
But Topaz was absolutely content to just lie there, laughing a little, maybe crying a little, surrounded by people and relief and joy and warmth. She was home. She could finally take a break.
None of her readings had been exact. Time was a slippery thing, and Marie-Ange had taken one look at the nightmare of equations on Doug's engineering pad, another at the arcane diagram on Amanda's notebook and thrown up her hands and just started taking notes and passing them on.
Knowing that did not mean she was any less anxious. She paced, steps careful to avoid the elaborate design chalked onto the ground. In the last day, none of her readings had changed, all reinforcing the same information they had. Be here, at this time.
Marie-Ange sat on one of the folding chairs someone had brought out and followed the intricate lines on the ground with her good eye. Mica, in the most brilliant colors, crushed pastel rock, rough ground topaz. Tea leaves. Art chalk. Glass beads so tiny she could not distinguish where they ended and the mica began. A pinch of what had to be coffee grounds on the far edge, and a bit of broken glass from a tumblr left on one of the work tables.
She picked up her phone for the dozenth time, checking the notes she and the others had made, and frowned - and then stood up, cursing with an exasperated shrug.. "This stupid country. It is Daylight Savings. We are early."
Amanda snorted, shaking her head. "Of all the things..." she said, coming to stand behind Marie-Ange and rest her hands on her shoulders. Outwardly, she appeared calm, almost happy, but Marie-Ange could feel Amanda's hands trembling with a build-up of anxiety and magical energy - the witch had been in London all day, soaking up as much power as her connection would allow. "If I'd thought of it myself, I would have spent another hour chatting to the London Stone. And convinced everyone there I was completely balmy."
Meggan shook her head in genuine amazement from where she sat. She had been nervously hoping this would all work out. Now, though, her thoughts turned to what weirdness could happen from going back one hour. She would never have thought Daylight Saving Time would cause something like being too early for saving a person, but here they were. “That...really? I seriously think we’ve now got another reason, a very big reason, for why somebody needs to put a stop to all this gaining and losing of hours.”
"Maybe the timing is for a reason," Pixie suggested quietly. "Things have a way of working out. But speaking of gaining and losing... I hope this homing beacon spell does its work soon and we get Topaz back."
"If this is some lesson from the universe I am going to scream into a pillow." Marie-Ange said. She pulled cards from her pockets, shuffling a deck automatically and turning up a card. "Ace of Wands." She let out a little snort of a laugh. "Ace of Wanda, this is the joke deck I drew because I kept writing Wands Maximoff and Wanda complained about it. I have not gotten this one before for this." She looked over her shoulder, as a brief red glow came from the other side of the mansion. "Success backed by hard work, and a little luck. We certainly did a lot of hard work." She'd bandaged Amanda's blisters herself, driven Maya to a bead store despite her frustration with the younger woman, and had bustled around taking notes in a notebook the entire time everyone was drawing when she was not doing art herself.
And it would pay off.
Topaz had stopped, again. She was stopping more now, or at least she thought she was. She couldn't really track how long she had been walking before she stopped, but the time felt shorter.
She laid back, closing her eyes, and the area around her slipped away. She was used to that. Everything ceased to exist and erased itself when she was no longer looking at it. She'd tried to take pictures before her phone had died, but apparently the void wasn't photogenic. Not that it mattered, she and her dead phone were never getting out-
Nope. Not thinking about that.
She'd just rest for a little bit, and...
And the air moved.
She sat up immediately, wide-eyed, every single complaint forgotten. That was new. Nothing moved in the void except for shadows and weird moments of color that might have been a hallucination. Topaz raised a hand, grimacing as she tried to just summon a little ball of light. Magic had gotten harder the longer she'd been alone. She hadn't realized how much she depended on the ambient magic and emotions that were always around her.
The light shot out of her palm and was almost immediately swallowed by darkness. She held her breath, waiting and counting...
Twenty seconds later, something pinged back.
At the exact same moment, a million miles away just on the other side of the wall, Amanda's hands tightened suddenly on Marie-Ange's shoulders and her head jerked around to the doorknob Stephen had magicked up for the spell. It had been just a fleeting ping, easy to miss if she hadn't been so wired to feel it. "Pixie, did you feel that?" she asked, wanting to be sure it wasn't just her imagination and almost obsessive hope.
"It's her," Pixie whispered, her all-black eyes shining. Acting as a conduit for the spell, she felt every hair on the back of her neck stand up. "Topaz, yes love, heads towards the beacon. Come back to us."
Meggan’s hope only increased in volume a thousand fold at the news. She’d collected all this emotion for her; this beacon had to work. “Yes, please come back, Topaz!” She fervently hoped that the other girl could hear their voices across the great distance.
Leaving her place behind Marie-Ange, Amanda stepped forward and reached for the door handle, careful to avoid smudging the design on the wall and floor. It tingled slightly under her hand. "Meg, Pixie, come and grab my shoulders. I can amplify the spell, but I need both of you to chime in." She closed her eyes and focussed, feeling their hands on her shoulders and the power surging through her, down her arm and into the hand gripping the knob. The glass glowed brightly, pulsing rhythmically with her heartbeat.
Topaz remained frozen on her knees for another moment, wondering if this was a trick - another way for the void to mess with her, just like the voices and the colors. Her hand tightened around the strap of her bag as she slowly stood, forming another ball of light in her hands. She didn't immediately send this one off, however; instead she started forward very slowly, every single sense on alert. And it hit her - not just one feeling, one emotion, but so much, all concentrated on one thing. Some sadness, some fear, some worry, but the louder ones were caring and loving and familiar. If she focused hard enough, she could almost pick out each individual person - Maya's stubborn, angry determination, Doug's fierce resolve, Wanda's guilty pleas, America's misplaced anger channeled into need, Amanda... layers and layers and layers all gathered up and tied in a neat little bow by a person Topaz had been connected to once, briefly, and who she could still easily pick out of a crowd without trying, and powered by a person with the completely wrong kind of magic considering how sweet and gentle she was. Because really, who else but Megan could use love to power demonic magic?
It was all a bit much, and overwhelmed Topaz for a minute before she started to laugh. Completely and ridiculously and entirely over the top. And if she'd thought about it sooner, she wouldn't expect anything less. She skimmed a bit off the emotions - she had a feeling no one would mind - and used it to grow her little ball of light, sending it forward. This time it didn't just ping - it stuck on to a spot and glowed bright enough that Topaz had to cover her eyes for a minute.
"Right," she mumbled, hooking her bag over her shoulder. "Time to go home. Got it."
The light, it turned out, had connected to a door knob. That was also new. Topaz approached slowly, grabbing it, and immediately recognized the mischievous but warm intent of Stephen's magic. She turned the knob; it disappeared from her hand, flattening into the air and expanding into a flashing array of swirling colors. She automatically tried to take a step back, but was pushed forward. This portal wasn't trying to take anything in - it wanted to get something out.
And out Topaz went. Into too bright light and warmth and familiarity and-
And she tripped, crashing right into Amanda.
The impact sent them both crashing to the ground, but Amanda's arms never loosened the tight hug she'd wrapped Topaz in the instant they'd made contact and a delighted laugh erupted from her, even as she lay on the floor with Topaz on top of her. "It's you! Oh thank fuck, it's really you!"
Topaz clung back just as tight, trying her best to reorient herself after the abrupt transition. It was warm, and she was starting to shiver, which was probably an improvement from the biting cold and numbness. She pressed her face into Amanda's shoulder, not wanting to even consider dealing with the chapel lights, and cast out a careful net to find out who else was there. Marie-Ange, Meggan, Pixie. She smiled a bit despite herself; her voice was muffled and maybe a little clumsy when she spoke.
"Told you you're not going to get rid of me."
Meggan was absolutely overjoyed at the results. She found that she just couldn’t help her natural inclination. She instinctively dove forward to where they were on the floor, and, given her front was presently occupied by Amanda, hugged Topaz fiercely from behind. Voice muffled by her closeness, she called out, “Oh, we’d never ever want that to happen.”
Pixie squeezed Amanda's shoulder on her left and slipped her other arm around the person to her right - she couldn't see clearly through the tears and her legs were shaking slightly. "We did it!" she exclaimed, overwhelmed with joy. She felt warmth flowing through her chest still, from that place where a piece of her soul was replaced with demon magic. The magic was still there, but... it felt different, changed somehow.
Eventually there was going to have to be movement, probably straight to the med lab, and questions to answers, and other people to reassure. There was a cat who was probably mad at her for disappearing or sad that she was gone, and either way, that had to be fixed. Oh, and the wormhole still whirring quietly in the wall needed to be dealt with. By someone else, preferably.
But Topaz was absolutely content to just lie there, laughing a little, maybe crying a little, surrounded by people and relief and joy and warmth. She was home. She could finally take a break.
