Operation: Clan Akkaba - Ascent - Log 1
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xp_logsMarie-Ange, Doug and Amanda try to make sense of the sigils found on the kidnapped teens.
"For once, I would like to provide snacks, and not knowledge of how to make ink from bones. This is twice? Thrice? How many times is it ink from bones." Marie-Ange set herself down at the table in the 'weird magic stuff' conference room, and unrolled a silk-wrapped parchment. "Incidentally, the ink on this is certainly made of human bones. I am sure neither of you could have guessed. What else do we know?"
Amanda closed the book she'd been reading with a slam and pinched the bridge of her nose. "I might have to actually go get my eyes checked for reading glasses?" she replied. "But as far as leads go, this book's a dead end." She reached for another on the pile, blowing dust from the leather cover before opening it.
Doug had his laptop in front of him, skimming the internet conspiracy sites for potential leads. "God, we're all thirty-five this year," he observed, his and Amanda's birthday having passed, and Marie-Ange's coming later in the summer. He was wearing a pair of blue light blockers to keep his own eye strain manageable. "Suddenly I have this mental image of the three of us all wearing bifocals around the table." He shuddered theatrically. "Sorting the possible leads from the batshit crazy on the internet is maddening."
"Strangely I think we can remove anything that comes from the human ink scrolls. All the dates are wrong, the parchment is the wrong age for the grammar, and the ink is too newly made." Despite the gruesome topic, she had been absently eating chips from the basket one-handed the entire time, and popped another into her mouth. "We know that the writing on that poor boy was not Norse Runes, or Celtic knots. Amanda eliminated most of the major demonic languages, yes? But if the sigils are not registering as anything familiar to either of you, then it has to be... what is the term for the, oh like the space people and Tolkien's elf language."
"Constructed language," Doug supplied absently, then the tap of his fingers on keys stopped. "Hold on, let me look at that again," he said, grabbing at the pictures of the sigils. He set them on the table, twisting and turning them to look at them from different angles. "This one here," he said, tapping at a piece that covered the base of the young man's spine. "It's stylized, but it's got a very Sanskrit look to it. And it's covering the root chakra, that seems like it's not a coincidence..."
"Huh, you're right." Amanda got up and leaned over Doug's shoulder to look at the photo herself. "This one, at the base of the neck? Doesn't it look like half of the Chinese character for that acupuncture point?"
"But only half." Marie-Ange stood and leaned over the table. "What would half a Chinese character even do?" She shuffled through the photos. "One on his head too, in the middle of the skull." She turned the photo around a few times. "It looks like they were setting him up for a trepanation, but never went through? Or that is another fake rune? It is not Norse, not Elder Futhark. I do not even know what this one is supposed to be. This is nonsense. No two of these is the same, none of this makes sense."
"Except it does, in a fucked up way." Amanda sounded excited. "Look, there's these big ones at all the main chakra points, the ones to do with energy flow through the body, top to toe. Mutant powers tend to involve some kind of energy, for the most part. So blocking those points with this bizarre mix of sigils, bastardised from all of the important magical cultures, that's what blocks the powers."
Doug looked at the writing Marie-Ange had indicated. "No, that's...Mayan? Maybe Olmec? Something Mesoamerican, which would track given that those cultures were known to practice trepanation for..." He waved a hand. "...reasons." He leaned closer to the picture and frowned. "Is that part of a cartouche on the upper lip?" he asked. "Like, where the Egyptians would..." He made a pair of hooks with his fingers and mimed pulling brains out through his nostrils. "I'll say this, whoever did this was definitely thorough. Like, there's redundancy, and then there's 'mark up the energy points on the body from every tradition known to man'."
"And that turned off this poor boy's powers?" Now Marie-Ange looked horrified, and pushed the basket of chips away. "Nothing recent though. Nothing near where someone would be lobotomized. Nothing Christian. Nothing..." She picked up her tablet, and tapped. "Nothing from the Mormons. Nothing from Baha'i. Nothing more recent than Judaism? Is there any Hebrew? Can we ... " She opened an app, and started taking notes. "What is the oldest belief system represented? We could build a timeline? Should we build a timeline?"
Amanda screwed up her nose as she looked at the photos. "A timeline would be fantastic - I'd be able to narrow down which books to check, for a start. Let's see. Hindu characters, but no Buddhism. There's something that looks Arabic, but it's not Muslim-related... Ancient Greek, Sumerian, Babylonian..." She glanced at Doug. "Is it me, or is it all the multiple-deism things?"
"All traditions where the gods walked among us mortals..." Doug observed. "Heroes with superhuman abilities..." He cocked his head. "I wonder if that's part of it. Look at the Avengers - hell, one of them IS an actual god." He knew Marie-Ange and Amanda had experience with Thor. The pieces were starting to form a rough outline, but the middle was still completely empty. "But if that's the case, what's the angle with the targeting of the energy centers?"
"And yet, no Asgardian. No Norse runes. Did they... disregard Thor and the other Norse pantheon because they know they are aliens and not gods?" Marie-Ange asked. "or... they know they are not mutants? What if..." She got up, pacing the room. "What if this is all religions where the gods could have been mutants. Old religions, nothing newer than Christianity, because whatever this is, it is older than that?" She pressed both hands into her face, rubbing at her nose and forehead and around her eyes. "Energy. Energy. Energy... gods. What if they are trying to bring this poor boy down to the rest of us lowly mortals?"
Doug's face went into the owlish sort of look that he got when he was trying to put together pieces of a puzzle that didn't quite fit. "But if that's the case, where does the energy -go-?" he asked. "I mean, conservation of energy, right? It at least kiiiiind of applies with magic, where you usually have to give something to get something..." Amanda's healing abilities requiring energy from other people to fuel, for example. "So if they've got this energy, life force, what have you, what are they doing with it?"
"That's the million pound question, isn't it?" Amanda replied. "I think we can safely say that it's probably for some kind of ritual, something big that needs a lot of energy." She groaned. "Please don't be trying to raise the dead. I'm done with zombies." But then she paused and reached for another book. "Wait. We're talking about pantheons, gods, powers... what if they're trying to bring one of their gods to this plane? Is that too much of a leap?"
"It has been tried before. That cult in Norway summoned Fenrisulfr. So..." Marie-Ange asked, uncertainty coloring her words. "So we need a ritual that spans multiple cultures that affects mutants? Or does it affect people who do magic who happen to be mutants? Either is horrible." She tapped at a notepad she'd been marking up with a pen. "The oldest culture I see on the timeline is Mesopotamian, but that overlaps with Egyptian and Chinese, all in the same large region." She drew a line down the page. "Or Indian and Vedic, but I cannot separate those as easily in a timeline. Everything outside that region is more recent, if we can call a thousand years ago or more recent."
"Then that gives us the double-or-nothing follow-up to the million-pound question," Doug said with a nod at Amanda. "Who or what are they trying to summon?" He stopped and then shrugged. "Okay, -two- follow-ups. Also who are the 'they' doing the summoning." He sighed. "To work, then."
"For once, I would like to provide snacks, and not knowledge of how to make ink from bones. This is twice? Thrice? How many times is it ink from bones." Marie-Ange set herself down at the table in the 'weird magic stuff' conference room, and unrolled a silk-wrapped parchment. "Incidentally, the ink on this is certainly made of human bones. I am sure neither of you could have guessed. What else do we know?"
Amanda closed the book she'd been reading with a slam and pinched the bridge of her nose. "I might have to actually go get my eyes checked for reading glasses?" she replied. "But as far as leads go, this book's a dead end." She reached for another on the pile, blowing dust from the leather cover before opening it.
Doug had his laptop in front of him, skimming the internet conspiracy sites for potential leads. "God, we're all thirty-five this year," he observed, his and Amanda's birthday having passed, and Marie-Ange's coming later in the summer. He was wearing a pair of blue light blockers to keep his own eye strain manageable. "Suddenly I have this mental image of the three of us all wearing bifocals around the table." He shuddered theatrically. "Sorting the possible leads from the batshit crazy on the internet is maddening."
"Strangely I think we can remove anything that comes from the human ink scrolls. All the dates are wrong, the parchment is the wrong age for the grammar, and the ink is too newly made." Despite the gruesome topic, she had been absently eating chips from the basket one-handed the entire time, and popped another into her mouth. "We know that the writing on that poor boy was not Norse Runes, or Celtic knots. Amanda eliminated most of the major demonic languages, yes? But if the sigils are not registering as anything familiar to either of you, then it has to be... what is the term for the, oh like the space people and Tolkien's elf language."
"Constructed language," Doug supplied absently, then the tap of his fingers on keys stopped. "Hold on, let me look at that again," he said, grabbing at the pictures of the sigils. He set them on the table, twisting and turning them to look at them from different angles. "This one here," he said, tapping at a piece that covered the base of the young man's spine. "It's stylized, but it's got a very Sanskrit look to it. And it's covering the root chakra, that seems like it's not a coincidence..."
"Huh, you're right." Amanda got up and leaned over Doug's shoulder to look at the photo herself. "This one, at the base of the neck? Doesn't it look like half of the Chinese character for that acupuncture point?"
"But only half." Marie-Ange stood and leaned over the table. "What would half a Chinese character even do?" She shuffled through the photos. "One on his head too, in the middle of the skull." She turned the photo around a few times. "It looks like they were setting him up for a trepanation, but never went through? Or that is another fake rune? It is not Norse, not Elder Futhark. I do not even know what this one is supposed to be. This is nonsense. No two of these is the same, none of this makes sense."
"Except it does, in a fucked up way." Amanda sounded excited. "Look, there's these big ones at all the main chakra points, the ones to do with energy flow through the body, top to toe. Mutant powers tend to involve some kind of energy, for the most part. So blocking those points with this bizarre mix of sigils, bastardised from all of the important magical cultures, that's what blocks the powers."
Doug looked at the writing Marie-Ange had indicated. "No, that's...Mayan? Maybe Olmec? Something Mesoamerican, which would track given that those cultures were known to practice trepanation for..." He waved a hand. "...reasons." He leaned closer to the picture and frowned. "Is that part of a cartouche on the upper lip?" he asked. "Like, where the Egyptians would..." He made a pair of hooks with his fingers and mimed pulling brains out through his nostrils. "I'll say this, whoever did this was definitely thorough. Like, there's redundancy, and then there's 'mark up the energy points on the body from every tradition known to man'."
"And that turned off this poor boy's powers?" Now Marie-Ange looked horrified, and pushed the basket of chips away. "Nothing recent though. Nothing near where someone would be lobotomized. Nothing Christian. Nothing..." She picked up her tablet, and tapped. "Nothing from the Mormons. Nothing from Baha'i. Nothing more recent than Judaism? Is there any Hebrew? Can we ... " She opened an app, and started taking notes. "What is the oldest belief system represented? We could build a timeline? Should we build a timeline?"
Amanda screwed up her nose as she looked at the photos. "A timeline would be fantastic - I'd be able to narrow down which books to check, for a start. Let's see. Hindu characters, but no Buddhism. There's something that looks Arabic, but it's not Muslim-related... Ancient Greek, Sumerian, Babylonian..." She glanced at Doug. "Is it me, or is it all the multiple-deism things?"
"All traditions where the gods walked among us mortals..." Doug observed. "Heroes with superhuman abilities..." He cocked his head. "I wonder if that's part of it. Look at the Avengers - hell, one of them IS an actual god." He knew Marie-Ange and Amanda had experience with Thor. The pieces were starting to form a rough outline, but the middle was still completely empty. "But if that's the case, what's the angle with the targeting of the energy centers?"
"And yet, no Asgardian. No Norse runes. Did they... disregard Thor and the other Norse pantheon because they know they are aliens and not gods?" Marie-Ange asked. "or... they know they are not mutants? What if..." She got up, pacing the room. "What if this is all religions where the gods could have been mutants. Old religions, nothing newer than Christianity, because whatever this is, it is older than that?" She pressed both hands into her face, rubbing at her nose and forehead and around her eyes. "Energy. Energy. Energy... gods. What if they are trying to bring this poor boy down to the rest of us lowly mortals?"
Doug's face went into the owlish sort of look that he got when he was trying to put together pieces of a puzzle that didn't quite fit. "But if that's the case, where does the energy -go-?" he asked. "I mean, conservation of energy, right? It at least kiiiiind of applies with magic, where you usually have to give something to get something..." Amanda's healing abilities requiring energy from other people to fuel, for example. "So if they've got this energy, life force, what have you, what are they doing with it?"
"That's the million pound question, isn't it?" Amanda replied. "I think we can safely say that it's probably for some kind of ritual, something big that needs a lot of energy." She groaned. "Please don't be trying to raise the dead. I'm done with zombies." But then she paused and reached for another book. "Wait. We're talking about pantheons, gods, powers... what if they're trying to bring one of their gods to this plane? Is that too much of a leap?"
"It has been tried before. That cult in Norway summoned Fenrisulfr. So..." Marie-Ange asked, uncertainty coloring her words. "So we need a ritual that spans multiple cultures that affects mutants? Or does it affect people who do magic who happen to be mutants? Either is horrible." She tapped at a notepad she'd been marking up with a pen. "The oldest culture I see on the timeline is Mesopotamian, but that overlaps with Egyptian and Chinese, all in the same large region." She drew a line down the page. "Or Indian and Vedic, but I cannot separate those as easily in a timeline. Everything outside that region is more recent, if we can call a thousand years ago or more recent."
"Then that gives us the double-or-nothing follow-up to the million-pound question," Doug said with a nod at Amanda. "Who or what are they trying to summon?" He stopped and then shrugged. "Okay, -two- follow-ups. Also who are the 'they' doing the summoning." He sighed. "To work, then."
