The Witches' Road - The Ritual
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xp_logsNew York City, 7:30pm. It's another boring night on lockdown for Emily and Rictor, until very suddenly it isn't.
Emily had been looking forward to Halloween but with it being so close to the actual day there was no guarantee they’d actually be free by then. The thought of getting to hand out candy to random small humans, and possibly their cute chaperones seemed doomed to never happen. Instead she was stuck inside an office watching Hocus Pocus with only Rictor for company. Not that he was bad company, just that she was sad.
“This sucks.”
It was a hard agree from Rictor. No Shatterstar, no Ted the Man-Thing, and no Hordeculture for nearly a week now. But worst of all . . . "We should be helping them, we should not be locked up here. We're adults"—well, at least Rictor was—"we're mutants, we're magic. Everyone's time is being wasted without us."
Artie stuck his head through the door. Were some of the crew staying late just in case? Well, that was between them and Marie-Ange but there was no chance that the office was going to be left empty. He held out a handful of menus. Paper, not digital. It was easier to share them around in hard copy.
"I'm doing a dinner order. Do you want Vietnamese, Indian or burgers?" The text floated through the air and he set another projection behind himself toward the sound footsteps.
On the other side of the room from Artie, Wanda had a half-eaten and very stale donut she was holding onto in her mouth as she poured another cup of tea. Freeing one hand, she reached for her phone - she might as well get in on the food order or else she'd be starved by the time she left. vietnamese - beats leftovers.
"Vietnamese!" Emily piped up as she hit pause on the movie for the much more important topic of food, especially take away food. "Are there any good places around here?"
She wouldn't exactly call herself a gourmand given that she'd happily go with a meal of two minute noodles and vegemite toast in a pinch but burgers just weren't where it was at when things like Vietnamese were on offer.
It took her a few moments to notice the sparkles coming from the corner.
"Um, is that meant to be happening?"
"You need to call an electrician." Sparks when there were no exposed wires seemed like a potential hazard to Rictor, so of course his first instinct was to get a closer look and assess. The last thing he expected was for the sparks to grow bigger and start spinning in a circle.
"Incoming!" Pixie came tumbling out from the portal, pulling Amanda after her.
The older witch stumbled, nearly tripping over before catching herself against the boardroom table. Her expression was wild as she whipped back around to face the portal, hand raised and ready to blast anything untoward that might be following. "Topaz, Clea, get your arses out of there!" she yelled at the glowing circle.
"Well," Wanda said, spitting out the donut, "shit." Portals and a frazzled looking Amanda were never good signs. She stepped cautiously forward as red lines spilled across her vision. Oh, this was very not good.
"Present," Topaz said as she stumbled through the portal, still keeping a hand in it to maintain her shields. "God knows how much time we have with the way they've been able to track us, though. We need to get this Road thing going now."
The portal closed right after Clea had entered and she went straight to the conference table and pulled out the grimoire, which flickered purple as Clea used her magic to open it to the page. "They were waiting for us outside of the Library so they must have some kind of tracking spell on us." Looking at the people around the room but not taking in who was in the room, "We will need these ingredients, which I believe most of these are in our storage rooms and bowls and fire to burn the herbs. Looks like we will also need chalk and space." Clea looked around again. "This room should do it. We can move the conference table out of the way." Clea re-read the directions to make sure, already she was focused on getting this show on the road. Her adrenaline was pumping and her hands were shaking.
So many questions to ask, but from the women's appearances and tones of voice, Rictor knew better than to get into it. Instead, he waved over Artie to help him lift the conference table and move it to the corner to free the space Clea requested.
As the two men moved the table, Artie held up two questions, text floating in the eyelines of all the people in the room. "Are they teleporting in here or coming via the street? Are you taking the-" kids "-civilians, or are Wanda and I running evac?"
Table down, amid the flurry of moving chairs, he asked a third question, visible just to his teammates. "Confirming that we are shooting to kill on sight?"
Emily backed well away from all of them, keeping her hands visible as she watched them all jump into action.
She wasn’t not scared by talk of evac and random appearances of people through glowing portals but she managed to contain it to glimmers of fire at the ends of her hair and nails that were slightly more the colour of obsidian then you’d general expect from someone who adored pink and purple in the way they she did.
Apparently noticing the blood on her cheek for the first time, Amanda swiped it away with the back of her hand, leaving a long smear. "I don't know if they can make it in here with the wards we have on the place. It took them long enough to find us in Paris, so we've got a few hours at least. We'll need Rictor and Emily to set up the ritual, but once that's done, you and Wanda get them clear," she replied aloud to Artie. Then she added via sign language: ~If they show up here, it's no holds barred.~
New York City, 11:53pm. The best laid plans go very much awry when the Seven gatecrash the ritual.
It had taken some time - and some ransacking of various personal stashes and XF's magical storeroom - to get everything needed together for the ritual. With the alert sounded, Kevin and Marie-Ange had appeared, joining Artie and Wanda on watch while the magic users prepared, with Emily and Rictor acting as runners, fetching this and that. But at last, they were ready. The sigils were drawn on the uncarpeted floor of the conference room (uncarpeted for this very situation), the braziers were burning the required components, and the four witches - Amanda, Topaz, Clea and Megan - were ready to try the spell that promised to rid them of the Seven.
Wanda stood close to the door, sharp eyes on Emily and Rictor. "As we discussed, as soon as this ritual is complete, Artie and I will be escorting you both to safety. If things get confusing, Emily, try to stick close to Artie, Rictor, with me, but our aim is for the four of us to leave together."
Artie nodded. "That means you stick with us at all times. Don't try to play hero." The text vanished and he picked up a pair of small packs, holding them out to Emily and Rictor. "First aid, power banks, some emergency food and water and I'll have the Canadian passports back when we're done, please." He gave them a smile, picked up an identical pack for himself and one for Wanda. "Finally, this is a taser." The text became a diagram for use. "Keep it with you, please, Emily."
Emily accepted the taser and placed it down on the table, unwilling to hang onto it for any longer then was absolutely necessary. Sure, it wasn't lethal intentionally but weapons had a bad habit of becoming lethal when you least expected it.
Clea put the grimoire down after making sure everything was set. She had gone over the spell with everyone so they knew what to say. "Okay we all step up to the circle. And we will have to say an incantation." Clea paused, "Emily can you join us? I think we will need more power and I rather have too much power and not enough power." She was feeling slightly drained, especially after using the sling ring and teleporting three people and herself from France to here.
"Everyone ready? Okay let's begin. Darkest Hour, Wake thy power. Earthly and divine. Burn and brew with coven true. And glory shall be thine.
Her voice took on a sing-song cadence for the next part:
Down, down, down the road, down the witches' road Down, down, down the road, down the witches' road Down, down, down the road, down the witches' road
Purple started to swirl outwards from Clea and started to connect in a circle.
Pixie's voice joined the song, high and airy. The tips of her hair floated in the accumulating energy, her wings aglow with pink light.
Circle sewn with fate. Unlock thy hidden gate. March ever forward neath the wooden shine. I stray not from the path. Holding death’s hand in mine. Primal night giveth Sight.
Amanda grimaced before taking up the next part, her voice notably off-key: "Familiar by thy side. If sun be gone, we carry on, spirit as our guide." Neon blue energy began swirling around her, mixing with Clea's purple.
As the rest of the women took up the chorus, she rolled her eyes at those watching, apologising silently for her lack of tunefulness. Then she took up the next lines, still terribly flat:
"Blood and Tears and Bone. Maiden, Mother, Crone."
Topaz definitely shared in Amanda's displeasure as she took up the next part."The Road is Wild and Wicked, winding Through the Woods, where all that’s wrong is right, and All that’s bad is good. Through many miles of twisted Trails, we’ll wander high and Low..."
Emily pulled her posture upwards, trying to give herself the best possible stance to sing as her voice rose, a clear and sweet tone that almost echoed as she felt her body respond to her need.
"Tame your fears, a door appears. The time has come to go!"
The multi-coloured swirling energies combined and grew, before sinking into the lines drawn on the floor. The patterns burned brightly, making everyone shield their eyes, and then went out, leaving behind a circular trapdoor, divided into two halves with metal rings as handles.
"Well, bugger me, it worked." Amanda's tone was incredulous, and she moved forward to take hold of one of the rings. At the same moment, a deadly chill swept into the boardroom and all the magical wards went off at once, the security alerts suddenly deafening. From the various shadows, shapes were emerging.
The boardroom door swung open with a crash. Marie-Ange was framed by it briefly, red hair bright through the deep grey mist that had started spreading from the shadows. "None of this shadow creature -bullshit- today." She muttered, and tossed two handheld lights, one into the two far corners of the room and then flicked a card between her fingers. A skeletal hand the size of a large dog or a small wolf, with wrist bones wrapped in roses and thorns and finger bones more pointed than human swept out of the mist. It flipped onto thumb and three fingers, leaving the middle one to raise briefly in a profane and familiar gesture before launching itself at whatever was coming out of the third corner.
"Whelp, let's see how they handle the 21st century." Kevin said, sighting on the closest shape to him. The MP5 buzzed through the sound suppressor like a hive of angry bees. He'd loaded modified wadcutters, designed to expand greatly, knowing full well he was not going to be able to kill his target, but figured blowing off limbs might slow them down. He emptied the clip in seconds, swapping it out as he took two steps back and kept hammering away. "Colbert, next time, flamethrowers. Fuck our insurance."
If Marie-Ange had been feeling conversationally clever, she might've said "we have insurance?" or "I keep my flamethrower in my other jacket" but mostly she was feeling angry - that those magic-assassin-for-hire animal motif arseholes were in her office, hunting -her- people. The skeletal hand grappled one of the attackers, and Marie-Ange bore down on another with a long spear in her hand and teeth bared.
Keeping her eyes as much as she could on Rictor and Emily, Wanda thrust her hands forward, glowing balls of red shimmering brightly against the shadows as she threw them forward. The mass in front of her shuddered, lines the color of blood crackling fast and brutal through the darkness. She turned to the next threat as it shattered into motes of nothingness.
Where Kevin had gone for sheer destructive power, Artie had balanced what he was carrying between the probability of property damage and the need to fuck shit up, settling on a taser, with a backup pistol holstered at his hip.
He hit one with the taser, adding electricity to Kevin's destruction, scooped up Emily's discarded taser, shooting it, too.
Black smoke swirled out of reach of bullets and tasers, the chill increasing until they could see their breaths clouding. It was getting hard to breathe, too, the air heavy with darkness that seemed to creep into their lungs. Amanda looked from her teammates to the other magic users, Emily's face white and terrified, Rictor standing defensively in front of her, Megan... She, Clea and Topaz had made their choices when they joined X-Force, but although they'd fight bravely, the other three weren't prepared for this. They'd die, unless she did something now.
"Clea, lead the way to this Road of yours. Em, Ric, Pixie, follow her down. Topaz and I will cover your backs."
"And we have yours," Wanda said, nodding at Amanda and then at X-Force. "Go, anything else that pops up here will be dealt with."
Clea knelt down and opened up the door with a few steps, a landing, and a spiraling case that led downwards. "Alright let's go." She gave one last look at her teammates, grabbed the grimoire and went through the door down the first set of steps to the first landing and turned around to help the others in. "Inside, quickly."
Emily moved quickly, flares of flickering flame drifting after her as a physical manifestation of the sheer number of kittens she felt she was currently having as she grabbed Clea's hand and pulled herself through the opening and onto the landing beyond.
"Come on Rictor, we get to go on a magical adventure."
She was entirely lying her little head off but frankly, insane levels of optimism had seen her mostly sane and continuing to contain all limbs, and body parts in general so she wasn't about to stop being little Miss Sunshine until someone told her to cut it out.
Rictor had spent this whole time just observing, witnessing. Excluded from this ritual and nearly blocked from the ensuing mission, he was visibly unsettled when Amanda called on him. But after their X-Force guardians took up arms in their defense, his next step was clear, and he followed Emily into the Witches Road.
Megan followed with a flutter of wings and Amanda gestured at Topaz to join her. The eldest witch paused and met her girlfriend's eyes.
"Back before you know it," she said with her usual cocky grin. Then she plunged down into the doorway, pulling the doors shut behind her with a final, dreadful thud.
Emily had been looking forward to Halloween but with it being so close to the actual day there was no guarantee they’d actually be free by then. The thought of getting to hand out candy to random small humans, and possibly their cute chaperones seemed doomed to never happen. Instead she was stuck inside an office watching Hocus Pocus with only Rictor for company. Not that he was bad company, just that she was sad.
“This sucks.”
It was a hard agree from Rictor. No Shatterstar, no Ted the Man-Thing, and no Hordeculture for nearly a week now. But worst of all . . . "We should be helping them, we should not be locked up here. We're adults"—well, at least Rictor was—"we're mutants, we're magic. Everyone's time is being wasted without us."
Artie stuck his head through the door. Were some of the crew staying late just in case? Well, that was between them and Marie-Ange but there was no chance that the office was going to be left empty. He held out a handful of menus. Paper, not digital. It was easier to share them around in hard copy.
"I'm doing a dinner order. Do you want Vietnamese, Indian or burgers?" The text floated through the air and he set another projection behind himself toward the sound footsteps.
On the other side of the room from Artie, Wanda had a half-eaten and very stale donut she was holding onto in her mouth as she poured another cup of tea. Freeing one hand, she reached for her phone - she might as well get in on the food order or else she'd be starved by the time she left. vietnamese - beats leftovers.
"Vietnamese!" Emily piped up as she hit pause on the movie for the much more important topic of food, especially take away food. "Are there any good places around here?"
She wouldn't exactly call herself a gourmand given that she'd happily go with a meal of two minute noodles and vegemite toast in a pinch but burgers just weren't where it was at when things like Vietnamese were on offer.
It took her a few moments to notice the sparkles coming from the corner.
"Um, is that meant to be happening?"
"You need to call an electrician." Sparks when there were no exposed wires seemed like a potential hazard to Rictor, so of course his first instinct was to get a closer look and assess. The last thing he expected was for the sparks to grow bigger and start spinning in a circle.
"Incoming!" Pixie came tumbling out from the portal, pulling Amanda after her.
The older witch stumbled, nearly tripping over before catching herself against the boardroom table. Her expression was wild as she whipped back around to face the portal, hand raised and ready to blast anything untoward that might be following. "Topaz, Clea, get your arses out of there!" she yelled at the glowing circle.
"Well," Wanda said, spitting out the donut, "shit." Portals and a frazzled looking Amanda were never good signs. She stepped cautiously forward as red lines spilled across her vision. Oh, this was very not good.
"Present," Topaz said as she stumbled through the portal, still keeping a hand in it to maintain her shields. "God knows how much time we have with the way they've been able to track us, though. We need to get this Road thing going now."
The portal closed right after Clea had entered and she went straight to the conference table and pulled out the grimoire, which flickered purple as Clea used her magic to open it to the page. "They were waiting for us outside of the Library so they must have some kind of tracking spell on us." Looking at the people around the room but not taking in who was in the room, "We will need these ingredients, which I believe most of these are in our storage rooms and bowls and fire to burn the herbs. Looks like we will also need chalk and space." Clea looked around again. "This room should do it. We can move the conference table out of the way." Clea re-read the directions to make sure, already she was focused on getting this show on the road. Her adrenaline was pumping and her hands were shaking.
So many questions to ask, but from the women's appearances and tones of voice, Rictor knew better than to get into it. Instead, he waved over Artie to help him lift the conference table and move it to the corner to free the space Clea requested.
As the two men moved the table, Artie held up two questions, text floating in the eyelines of all the people in the room. "Are they teleporting in here or coming via the street? Are you taking the-" kids "-civilians, or are Wanda and I running evac?"
Table down, amid the flurry of moving chairs, he asked a third question, visible just to his teammates. "Confirming that we are shooting to kill on sight?"
Emily backed well away from all of them, keeping her hands visible as she watched them all jump into action.
She wasn’t not scared by talk of evac and random appearances of people through glowing portals but she managed to contain it to glimmers of fire at the ends of her hair and nails that were slightly more the colour of obsidian then you’d general expect from someone who adored pink and purple in the way they she did.
Apparently noticing the blood on her cheek for the first time, Amanda swiped it away with the back of her hand, leaving a long smear. "I don't know if they can make it in here with the wards we have on the place. It took them long enough to find us in Paris, so we've got a few hours at least. We'll need Rictor and Emily to set up the ritual, but once that's done, you and Wanda get them clear," she replied aloud to Artie. Then she added via sign language: ~If they show up here, it's no holds barred.~
New York City, 11:53pm. The best laid plans go very much awry when the Seven gatecrash the ritual.
It had taken some time - and some ransacking of various personal stashes and XF's magical storeroom - to get everything needed together for the ritual. With the alert sounded, Kevin and Marie-Ange had appeared, joining Artie and Wanda on watch while the magic users prepared, with Emily and Rictor acting as runners, fetching this and that. But at last, they were ready. The sigils were drawn on the uncarpeted floor of the conference room (uncarpeted for this very situation), the braziers were burning the required components, and the four witches - Amanda, Topaz, Clea and Megan - were ready to try the spell that promised to rid them of the Seven.
Wanda stood close to the door, sharp eyes on Emily and Rictor. "As we discussed, as soon as this ritual is complete, Artie and I will be escorting you both to safety. If things get confusing, Emily, try to stick close to Artie, Rictor, with me, but our aim is for the four of us to leave together."
Artie nodded. "That means you stick with us at all times. Don't try to play hero." The text vanished and he picked up a pair of small packs, holding them out to Emily and Rictor. "First aid, power banks, some emergency food and water and I'll have the Canadian passports back when we're done, please." He gave them a smile, picked up an identical pack for himself and one for Wanda. "Finally, this is a taser." The text became a diagram for use. "Keep it with you, please, Emily."
Emily accepted the taser and placed it down on the table, unwilling to hang onto it for any longer then was absolutely necessary. Sure, it wasn't lethal intentionally but weapons had a bad habit of becoming lethal when you least expected it.
Clea put the grimoire down after making sure everything was set. She had gone over the spell with everyone so they knew what to say. "Okay we all step up to the circle. And we will have to say an incantation." Clea paused, "Emily can you join us? I think we will need more power and I rather have too much power and not enough power." She was feeling slightly drained, especially after using the sling ring and teleporting three people and herself from France to here.
"Everyone ready? Okay let's begin. Darkest Hour, Wake thy power. Earthly and divine. Burn and brew with coven true. And glory shall be thine.
Her voice took on a sing-song cadence for the next part:
Down, down, down the road, down the witches' road Down, down, down the road, down the witches' road Down, down, down the road, down the witches' road
Purple started to swirl outwards from Clea and started to connect in a circle.
Pixie's voice joined the song, high and airy. The tips of her hair floated in the accumulating energy, her wings aglow with pink light.
Circle sewn with fate. Unlock thy hidden gate. March ever forward neath the wooden shine. I stray not from the path. Holding death’s hand in mine. Primal night giveth Sight.
Amanda grimaced before taking up the next part, her voice notably off-key: "Familiar by thy side. If sun be gone, we carry on, spirit as our guide." Neon blue energy began swirling around her, mixing with Clea's purple.
As the rest of the women took up the chorus, she rolled her eyes at those watching, apologising silently for her lack of tunefulness. Then she took up the next lines, still terribly flat:
"Blood and Tears and Bone. Maiden, Mother, Crone."
Topaz definitely shared in Amanda's displeasure as she took up the next part."The Road is Wild and Wicked, winding Through the Woods, where all that’s wrong is right, and All that’s bad is good. Through many miles of twisted Trails, we’ll wander high and Low..."
Emily pulled her posture upwards, trying to give herself the best possible stance to sing as her voice rose, a clear and sweet tone that almost echoed as she felt her body respond to her need.
"Tame your fears, a door appears. The time has come to go!"
The multi-coloured swirling energies combined and grew, before sinking into the lines drawn on the floor. The patterns burned brightly, making everyone shield their eyes, and then went out, leaving behind a circular trapdoor, divided into two halves with metal rings as handles.
"Well, bugger me, it worked." Amanda's tone was incredulous, and she moved forward to take hold of one of the rings. At the same moment, a deadly chill swept into the boardroom and all the magical wards went off at once, the security alerts suddenly deafening. From the various shadows, shapes were emerging.
The boardroom door swung open with a crash. Marie-Ange was framed by it briefly, red hair bright through the deep grey mist that had started spreading from the shadows. "None of this shadow creature -bullshit- today." She muttered, and tossed two handheld lights, one into the two far corners of the room and then flicked a card between her fingers. A skeletal hand the size of a large dog or a small wolf, with wrist bones wrapped in roses and thorns and finger bones more pointed than human swept out of the mist. It flipped onto thumb and three fingers, leaving the middle one to raise briefly in a profane and familiar gesture before launching itself at whatever was coming out of the third corner.
"Whelp, let's see how they handle the 21st century." Kevin said, sighting on the closest shape to him. The MP5 buzzed through the sound suppressor like a hive of angry bees. He'd loaded modified wadcutters, designed to expand greatly, knowing full well he was not going to be able to kill his target, but figured blowing off limbs might slow them down. He emptied the clip in seconds, swapping it out as he took two steps back and kept hammering away. "Colbert, next time, flamethrowers. Fuck our insurance."
If Marie-Ange had been feeling conversationally clever, she might've said "we have insurance?" or "I keep my flamethrower in my other jacket" but mostly she was feeling angry - that those magic-assassin-for-hire animal motif arseholes were in her office, hunting -her- people. The skeletal hand grappled one of the attackers, and Marie-Ange bore down on another with a long spear in her hand and teeth bared.
Keeping her eyes as much as she could on Rictor and Emily, Wanda thrust her hands forward, glowing balls of red shimmering brightly against the shadows as she threw them forward. The mass in front of her shuddered, lines the color of blood crackling fast and brutal through the darkness. She turned to the next threat as it shattered into motes of nothingness.
Where Kevin had gone for sheer destructive power, Artie had balanced what he was carrying between the probability of property damage and the need to fuck shit up, settling on a taser, with a backup pistol holstered at his hip.
He hit one with the taser, adding electricity to Kevin's destruction, scooped up Emily's discarded taser, shooting it, too.
Black smoke swirled out of reach of bullets and tasers, the chill increasing until they could see their breaths clouding. It was getting hard to breathe, too, the air heavy with darkness that seemed to creep into their lungs. Amanda looked from her teammates to the other magic users, Emily's face white and terrified, Rictor standing defensively in front of her, Megan... She, Clea and Topaz had made their choices when they joined X-Force, but although they'd fight bravely, the other three weren't prepared for this. They'd die, unless she did something now.
"Clea, lead the way to this Road of yours. Em, Ric, Pixie, follow her down. Topaz and I will cover your backs."
"And we have yours," Wanda said, nodding at Amanda and then at X-Force. "Go, anything else that pops up here will be dealt with."
Clea knelt down and opened up the door with a few steps, a landing, and a spiraling case that led downwards. "Alright let's go." She gave one last look at her teammates, grabbed the grimoire and went through the door down the first set of steps to the first landing and turned around to help the others in. "Inside, quickly."
Emily moved quickly, flares of flickering flame drifting after her as a physical manifestation of the sheer number of kittens she felt she was currently having as she grabbed Clea's hand and pulled herself through the opening and onto the landing beyond.
"Come on Rictor, we get to go on a magical adventure."
She was entirely lying her little head off but frankly, insane levels of optimism had seen her mostly sane and continuing to contain all limbs, and body parts in general so she wasn't about to stop being little Miss Sunshine until someone told her to cut it out.
Rictor had spent this whole time just observing, witnessing. Excluded from this ritual and nearly blocked from the ensuing mission, he was visibly unsettled when Amanda called on him. But after their X-Force guardians took up arms in their defense, his next step was clear, and he followed Emily into the Witches Road.
Megan followed with a flutter of wings and Amanda gestured at Topaz to join her. The eldest witch paused and met her girlfriend's eyes.
"Back before you know it," she said with her usual cocky grin. Then she plunged down into the doorway, pulling the doors shut behind her with a final, dreadful thud.
