[center][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/019ef57c-0575-733e-bce1-ec62bebb22cb.webp[/img][/center][center][/center][hr] [hr][center][b][color=ffcb00]Location:[/color][/b] Margaret Carter - Winter Carnival 
[b][color=ffcb00]Magic Items:[/color][/b] Thousand-Faced Rose, Rune Stones
[b][url=https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/019f0bf0-82dc-7219-9e3a-4d85812f589d.webp]Today's Fit[/url][/b][/center]

Leah was usually up before most people. Old habits meant her metaphorical inner clock woke her up not with a beep but with a foghorn. Ever the morning person, things were already in motion by six in the morning as the sun rose over Los Angeles. Black coffee was in her hand and a bagel in her stomach, and Leah did her best not to wake Sabine as she knelt before her bad and withdrew a wide cardboard box. Contained within was a smattering of whatnots that Leah had always kept with her. Pictures she had taken with the others, a few mementos from Asgard, a laptop she hadn't used much lately... And a container full of rocks.

She collected them. Not only were they useful for her powers, but her powers also made her a bit of a nerd about geology. It was useful to know how different places in the world reacted when she shifted the ground, and that attention she paid often had the byproduct of Leah collecting stones, gems, and anything adjacent that she came across. A chunk of scoria from Mount Rainier, prasiolite from near the Pacific Ring of Fire, Sandstone from the Sonoran Desert... Basalt from the ocean floor, she used part of that to make a gift for April, once. Leah snatched up a variety from the container and sorted through them. It was unlikely that they'd be useful in an actual fight, but stones and precious minerals had other uses. And, every now and then, Leah used to spend time making them look nice. It was a good bit of practice with her powers, and part of how she got so good at fine little details.

There was a small chance her powers wouldn't even work in Otherworld. It wasn't Earth, it wasn't Jotunheim, and it damn sure wasn't just going to be all caves and deserts. Fae could surely use a chunk of kanoite for something.

When she got the ones she wanted, she slid the box back under and and then looked at the seven foot long sword she found a place for by the wall.

Did Leah [i]want[/i] to bring Sjafnamarr with her? It was practically weightless to her, and in a strange way, it was a puzzle piece in her being that she didn't know was missing one before they found that prophecy. It was a way to cast spells and wield magic that didn't require drawing or handling runes, there'd probably be dangerous situations where the group would need to fight. But Leah wasn't an expert in swordplay. And it wasn't like there was anyone who could teach her to wield that fucking thing. She wondered, for just a moment, if it'd be easier to just stick to her old MMA training if things went that far.

Well, they needed as many advantages as possible.

She threw her closet open and broke out some more things. Her "camping gear" wasn't exactly glamorous, but she was an outdoors-y kind of girl. A hefty duffel bag, a backpack and a hefty water bottle were retrieved, along with a book she hadn't gotten around to reading.

Then she left the dorm building and got the food she and April had prepared. She stored it in Home Ec room, and thankfully, no one had come in and imped the entire stash of rations she prepared. She had some time to kill, so Leah got in a few practice swings in the gym with her sword, just to get her mind ready for the journey. At 7:50AM, she left and walked across the Campus, wearing her Excelsior jacket and a [i]lot[/i] of other things. Being so physically strong, all the things Leah carried on her body didn't weigh her down much. She appeared before the mystical tree that no one dared go near lest they walk away without their soul or with ten years of bad luck. Leah noticed Percy had a sword. That was weird, weren't those heavy for normal people?

[color=ffcb00]"Starting to see a pattern, here,"[/color] Leah commented, standing next to Percy and April. She elected not to comment on how unprepared he was. That was why she [i]overprepared.[/i]

[color=ffcb00]"Anyone else coming?"[/color]


[hider=Leah's Inventory]
[list]
[*]The Thousand-Faced Rose
[*]Rune Stones
[*]First aid kid
[*]Toothbrush and toothpaste
[*]Preserved steak and salmon
[*]Large water bottle
[*]Writing implements (Pens, markers, and notebooks)
[*]Spare clothes, 3 sets
[*][i]A Rose in Midgard[/i]
[*]Phone
[*]Rock Collection
[indent]
Kanoite
Aegirine
Alexandrite
Meteorite
Magnetite
Fluorite
Malachite
Ocean Floor Basalt
Prasiolite
Scoria
[/indent]
[/list]
[/hider]


[center][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/019c4842-fdb0-726a-bb52-4bfd95680e14.webp[/img][/center][center][/center][hr] [center][b][color=b940da]Location:[/color][/b] Margaret Carter - Winter Carnival 
[b][color=b940da]Magic Items:[/color][/b] [sub]She’s no magician but you know she’s got that magic wand.[/sub]
[b][url=https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/019f0bf0-5144-7008-ac47-e6aa8a5356a5.webp]Today's Fit[/url][/b][/center][hr]

Everyone around Marlena was gold and pale white. 

Beneath her, there was nothing but champagne bubbles of every size. All stretching out in every direction, every horizon, until she couldn't see them anymore. She walked forward in the field, in a place so alone that she might've been the only living thing that ever walked the world. No flowers, no people, nothing but herself. Marlena walked and walked, and there was no difference between the hours and the seconds.

The champagne bubbles floated around her as she walked, drifting away and around her. It was almost beautiful in its own way. But the light that shone wasn't from the sun. There wasn't a sun to be seen, and there was scarcely any sky. Not a star to be seen, or a cloud to gaze upon. Rather, there were moons in the empty air. Three of them, so massive and bright as to be the horizon themselves, as though they were [i]falling.[/i]

They surrounded her. Far to the left, there was the waxing crescent, the waning to the right, and front and center was the full moon. They didn't move, or maybe it would have been more accurate to say [i]she[/i] didn't. She knew she walked along a fourth one. An empty moon, the new moon, but it couldn't be seen. It was too dark.

Marlena looked all around, until she saw something different.

Far ahead of her, a small speck of something she couldn't see clearly. She ran, faster than her feet were used to carrying her. The air burned her lungs with each breath, it felt like she ran for an eternity. The shape in the distance could've been moving either further or closer to her, and her eyes wouldn't have told one from the other. The bubbles floated away, up and around her until they obscured her vision. Marlena shoved them aside, but there were so many that it was almost impossible to see how far to go or how far she had gone. Her lungs began to ache, but her legs still carried her.

[color=b940da]"Where..."[/color]

There.

The bubbles of champagne thinned out. It became easier to push through the morass and the rest flew off away when her body went to all fours. Marlena caught her breath and hauled herself up, to see where she'd gone. Standing before her was a rectangular structure, ten feet tall. It looked almost like a mural, flowing lines of the palest silver she'd ever seen, wreaths of gorgeous flowers that she couldn't tell the names of. All tracing the edges and the center, a wonderful work of art that didn't feel as if it belonged here.

She rested a hand on it. There was no sensation of touch.

[color=b940da]"What are you?"[/color] Her voice didn't sound like hers.

Marlena walked around the edge of the structure, to look at the other side. She recognized what she saw. A depiction of a tree, and a body hanging upside down by a rope. A girl with curly, bouncy hair. She looked unhappy. The girl's name was Marlena Evans, depicted as the Hanged One.

For a moment, the real Marlena stared at the fake one, and the fake one stared at her.

On the face of the Hanged One, the eyes came ablaze.

Fire streaked across the card, down the middle and rising high. There wasn't enough time for Marlena to react, before a hand shot out of the blaze overtaking the card. The hand grabbed her throat, and she felt something in her chest give out. The hand was made of old, corroded metal, that reeked of aged coins. Marlena's hands flew to the wrist, but her breath was already gone and her throat stung. 

[color=b940da]"Sto-"[/color] She choked on her words. [color=b940da]"St-Stop-Stop-"[/color]

In the flames, she saw a shape forming. An upper arm, a head, hair... The smell got worse.

[i]Clink. Clink. Clink.[/i] The sound of gears.

[color=b940da]"No- No... Stop- No-"[/color]

[i]CLINK. CLINK. CLINK.[/i]

She felt her throat collapse.

Everything became black.

There was a crash, and then there was a scream.

Marlena was not in a strange land where the powers that be wanted her neck. She was not under the light of the moons. She on the floor, hands digging into the carpet of a dorm room, gasping for air. Pencils and bits of hand-made projects, a thermos and her phone hit the floor after her, flung about in her sleep by telekinetic force. A box she'd yet to open and unpack was flung across the room, its contents spilled everywhere against the door.

For long minutes, she choked on air that was trying to force its way in and out of her lungs. There was a throbbing pain in the back of her neck, and every breath was like brimstone in her mouth.

A bead of sweat landed on the floor.

Just a bad dream.

Marlena eventually calmed down enough to look up, and around. She was in her room, the one she shared with Vicky, who she didn't see crashing through a window ready to blast someone with an electromechanical Anihilationator 9000. She stood up and leaned against the wall. It was still dark, so she flipped on the lamp and saw the damage. The walls appeared fine, even if the room suddenly looked like someone had come in with a search warrant. She coughed and reached for water, feeling her throat start to relax.

Marlena rolled her shoulders and checked her phone. It was nearly six in the morning.

Well... No going back to sleep this early.

She spent half an hour re-organizing things and making sure her powers didn't accidentally destroy something. Then she sat down on her bed and thought about that dream she had. The Hanged One tried to kill her, and the card meant a change was coming. Marlena didn't put much stock in dreams and prophecies, but a lot of coincidences were lining up lately. Carlos saw her in that card, the Otherworld was somehow influencing everyone who wasn't in Excelsior's immediate company to ignore all mentions of the place. Oh, and now she was being attacked in nightmares.

She had spent plenty of time yesterday, before the party, reading up on Otherworld. It was a land of the medieval. Of swords, kingdoms and power of Story Magic. There was a narrative to be told, and that was how things carried out. Ominous prophecies weren't out of the question when a hero needed to go on a journey. Hollywood sure knew that much... But why [i]her?[/i] She wasn't a hero in any sense. What story was there to be told from haunting her with that? 

Clockwork didn't fit the aesthetics she saw in those books. Metal arms moldered and aged to the point of corrosion weren't what she thought of when she imagined the Fae.

The moons had so many meanings. Triple goddesses were a thing in many cultures, apparently. It wasn't even limited to gender, from her study. But she didn't know much about Fae religion. The arm didn't match the shadowy ones in the visions they were given, either.

What was going on?

She spent the time getting ready. Marlena grabbed a shower to wipe off the sweat she was caked in, then began packing her things. Food, knives in case things got heated, her cruiser. A backpack was good enough to pack everything she needed, since she wasn't much of a camper. Marlena was used to urban activities like spending whole days out in places where some people wouldn't go, but she didn't think that translated to wherever they were going. She got water and some things to write with. Then she gathered up her usual traveling gear, the sorts of things she'd always have on her back in Brooklyn.

The time between then and the meet-up was filled with pondering fashion, something that always put Marlena's mind to rest. She got her most outdoors-appropriate fit on and boarded around to pass the time. When she met the group, she looked plenty put-together. It seemed the group was just starting to link up, not many of them were here just yet.

[color=b940da]"Hello, hello, hello,"[/color] She withdrew a pocketbook from the underside of her button-up, layered over a sweater. Then she sat her cruiser down in the grass and sat on it, biding her time. [color=b940da]"I'm ready to jump over there when we're all here, but I did learn a few things yesterday. I think everyone's ignoring us because of Story Magic. Exactly what it sounds like, we're in some scheme and someone, somewhere, doesn't want it stopped."[/color]

She opened her pocketbook and flipped to an empty page. Then she drew it in pieces, separated vertically across the page's length. [color=b940da]"I saw this symbol in the Scarlet Witch's eyes, right as I tried asking her about Otherworld. Then I look into it, there's something [i]really[/i] close to this that blocks memories. If I write it down fully, not separated like this, I'd probably forget something- Think that happened to me last time."[/color]


[hider=My Hider]
[list]
[*]Backpack
[*]Spare clothes, 3x
[*]Knives, 2x
[*]Cruiser board
[*]Snacks
[*]Water
[*]Skating tool kit
[*]DIY Kit
[*]Writing tools
[*]Phone
[*]Sunglasses
[*]Deodorant
[*]Toothbrush and toothpaste

[/list]
[/hider]