Rohan backed up from Annika when she got physical with him. "I said we had to go, there wasn't any time. We couldn't risk staying there when that house started to swallow us up. I didn't think you two were going to try linking up before you found the way out- Or that we could even do something like that." He rubbed at his arms and felt the heat start to return to them. "I'm no so heartless I'd abandon someone there."
He sighed and stood up straight, using his sword to brace himself. "We found a house in a forest, a journal, and the woods turned to a storm. I wrote things down before we had to pull out. I-" He reached into his jacket and withdrew the chunk of bark he retrieved. Rohan held it out and watched the damn thing begin to go up into smoke until it was gone. He frowned.
"...Well, that's useless." He grasped a hand around the smoke on the small chance it'd cling to his skin. "Everything jumped out and turned volatile all at once, so we had to leave before we found out the hard way what a rising pool of orange gunk would do to us. We can read the notes I took when I'm not freezing." With that, he walked over and swiped a mug of coffee, taking a long sip from it and appreciating the warmth. Root flew up and over to where Annika stood, perching on her shoulder and ruffling his feathers.
Chase turning the dome into a hut on legs certainly helped. She wished he'd have asked before doing it when she was actively trying to concentrate, but it took some of the strain off her. While she kept it up, he kept it going forward, kind of. It certainly didn't help, however, when Sabine stepped out with her wings and sparkly hair and started hitting on her. Leah could feel her face warming up as she stared forward at the roving mountain.
"Sabine. I'm trying to concentrate, here. You can worry about trying to pull my hair when-"
The sound of shouting and the bursting of fucking capybara steeds from the dunes below caught her attention. Bandits, if she wasn't mistaken. One immediately got to Luna and the rest started firing hooks at the dome. Three struck the underside, and she could see the bandits circling them to bind the shadowy legs in wire. That was a problem, and Leah figured she could turn back and shout for him to shut his power off so she could just bring them higher. But the moment was stolen away by the Everforge changing course. It was moving straight at them now. If they didn't veer off somehow, they'd be damn near flattened... Or would they? They were in the air, after all.
When the mountain started vomiting fucking detritus at them, it tore through the dome. Sandstone wasn't the strongest thing in the world, and Leah hadn't intended for it to suffer the abuse of a veritable meteor shower. The dumbbell to the side of her face hurt like a bitch, and shoved her off her feet into the floor as if America Chavez had just haymakered her again. Leah helped Sabine get behind the wall after she got clocked by a fucking bar stool.
She grabbed her sword and held it up.
"Tiwaz."
A rune flew out of her pouch and slammed itself into a slow along the blade. The rune was reflected up and down the kaleidoscope surface of the weapon, and the Thousand-Faced Rose morphed from a sword into a long spear. The blade thinned and stretched forward at one end, shortening as the hilt became a full haft. The tip of her spear was alight with golden energy, and it vaguely resembled the rune that was now embedded just above Leah's fist.
It'd be easier to fight in a confined space with than her sword, if the bandits somehow got up here.
Everyone inside was getting worked. Leah saw Gideon die, and a mix of her being Leah and Gideon being Gideon meant she wasn't that phased. She'd just come back, probably with that metal still stuck in her. Honestly, Leah didn't quite get how her resurrection thing worked. But she had more important things to worry about.
Using April's ice wall as cover, Leah picked herself up and slammed her palms into the floor of the flying structure. Two of her runestones flew out of their pouch and connected to the back of her hands. The Wyrd sprawled over the entire thing in lines of golden energy, holding the sandstone tighter together. Not by much, but it was enough that she could move and take her attention away from the outside for just a moment.
She dropped one of her bags on the ground by April. "Water in here, take what you need!" And then she stepped past them and Sabine, looking at the damage inside. There were holes in the dome, pieces of metal strewn about.
And Chase had a fucking sword in his stomach. She ran over to him and wrenched it free as if it were just a splinter. It was deep enough to puncture an organ, and she was already reading her spell.
"Sit still." Leah pointed a hand at him, causing more runes to orient themselves by her hand to form a stave. Magic rolled over Chase's body, sealing up most of the wound. That looked like agony to her trained eye, it was good thing she'd invested her time into this. It healed him up to a point he could move around.
"You still have internal bleeding, I can fix that. You're going to need more help, so move slow. Use your powers on the dome some more, the legs were a good idea, just let me focus on you."
She knelt down in front of him, spear held upright, and prepared to cast the spell again...
Location: Otherworld Magic Items:She’s no magician but you know she’s got that magic wand. Otherworldly Attire
Backpack
Spare clothes, 3x
Knives, 2x
Cruiser board
Snacks
Water
Skating tool kit
DIY Kit
Writing tools
Phone
Sunglasses
Deodorant
Toothbrush and toothpaste
Whoosh.
Fwip.
Boom.
Projectiles hurled off in her direction like she was trying to dodge a meteor shower, but almost miraculously, Marlena had managed to outright avoid damn near everything the dwarven bandits and the crawling mountain on legs could toss at her. It surprised her as she danced through the air on her skateboard-turned-hoverboard, a winged cannon firing a pounder that Marlena barrel-rolled away from, with her power keeping her feet and the board in contact with each other. Combat was a foreign thing to her, she had no formal training in the art of piecing a guy up, let alone dwarves riding capybaras in an alien desert. She had her knives, yes, but Marlena carried those because she was a transgender teenage girl who live in New York City, not because she was some kind of roguish dagger fighting savant. So the only thing really on her mind as she improved a master-class in evasive maneuvers was the dog that had fallen from the sky.
For a moment, the projectiles flying her way were a bit much to actually move towards him. One of those winged cannons made her have to jump and land as she flew in a straight direction, just to avoid getting blasted into the next chapter. Marlena dropped out of the air, arms behind her as she careened down toward Jean-Luc, swerving left around another cannon and getting a close call from a radiator that the Everforge spat out. She reached her arms out and caught the dog, holding him close and slingshotting herself back up into the air with centrifugal force that she hadn't imagined she could leverage.
"Got you!" God, he looked so damn soft- Was he going to shed fur on her nice new robes? Oh well, Marlena wasn't thinking about that. In fact, her pulse was hammering when her board went still. The scrabbling little creature was immediately supplied with headpats and reassurances to the best of her ability. Though, admittedly, she was more of a cat person, so she wasn't that sure how to console a dog.
"Take it easy, Frenchie, I'm not letting you fall. I've got an idea." Her Otherworld outfit was layers of robes over one another. Under her cowl was another layer, and over both of those was a sash that went around her full body, fastened into place by a belt. That was the perfect spot for someone his size.
Up there, above the dome and the chaos below, she womanhandled him and stuck the Golden Retriever in the loop around her back, then blindly wrapped one of her backpack's straps around his other half so he was nice and snug. No chance he'd go flying when she started doing flips and other maneuvers she didn't even know she could do with her powers. "Okay... What do you think, Jean-Luc? Should we try and help them?"
He was just a dog, so it wasn't like he could talk.
"Between you and me, I'm way out of my depth here. I don't know those dwarves enough to negotiate like Luna, I can't fight like Excelsior, and I definitely can't pull what Chase and his sister from another mister are pulling right now." It was exhilarating. And also terrifying, what if they got hurt down there? What if Marlena had to cause someone harm herself? Could she even do that?
She fumbled with Jean-Luc's leash, tucking it in with him as she thought. And then... It hit her.
A grin spread across her face. Who said she had to fight the bandits?
She reached behind her and ruffled the puppy's fur. "Jean-Luc, you and me are about to cause a ruckus."
Marlena tilted backwards, and the board went over her head in a backflip that sent her careening in a nosedive once again. She went wide, and embraced the cold desert wind that rushed past her. She had a plan, and if it worked, maybe it would buy the rest of them some time.
Tommy leaned forward to look at what Tuyen was pointing out. He couldn't see anything. So he quietly shook his head and sat up straight, grabbing his deck off the table just in case he had to fight something soon. He was glad nobody seemed willing to put up with Tyler's shit, and nobody seemed to be taking Lexi's either. Except for the damn cigarette... Fucking nasty.
He elected not to comment on the preacher boy being possessed. The irony of that wasn't lost on him, but he didn't imagine Daniel needed anyone's snide comments right now. And, admittedly, something told Tommy that the guy would probably respond poorly to anything coming from the guy who created monsters out of thin air. So instead, he grabbed his notebook and took to the floor for a moment. His monsters all reacted to him standing up, Raptor ruffled his feathers and the Watcher tilted its head.
Porter walked around and sat right in front of Tuyen, staring at Tommy. Raptor hopped onto a table and leered at Lexi.
"I'll go first," He decided, swiping a marker off the bottom of the whiteboard and pointing it in Ella's direction. "We just got started, you didn't miss anything important except some saber rattling from the peanut gallery. Okay, so everyone's seen enough strangeness by now we all know there's a lot to this... I've been digging, snooping around and trying to get a handle on things. Here's what I got."
He wrote several things down in the first three columns.
WHAT WE KNOW.
People can't see magic.
Magic has rules.
WHAT WE THINK WE KNOW.
People make Cornell less wrong.
Other Cornells.
WHAT WE DON'T KNOW.
What caused this?
How do we fix it?
"I drove over to the diner last week." Tommy thumped the back of the marker against the first line he wrote down. "Brought my mom lunch like I usually do. I ran into Tuyen, we talked, and I showed her the big fat monster that's sitting with her right now. Then she walked in, and she didn't even see him. She damn near walked right over him, like he was invisible to her. Gave us both one hell of a scare, and we just pretended everything was normal. Her and my dad both know nothing about magic. They weren't there, so they weren't exposed to it. Tuyen thinks some people can't see magic at all, and experience tells me she's right, and I think you've got to be... Brought in before you know it. That's good and bad. It means people might not see things, but that also means they can't run from something they don't know is after them."
Thump. Onto the second one. "I spent some time trying to teleport around or make things invisible, the way Tyler and Vicky can. Nothing happened. Whenever I tried to use magic without the cards I stick those monsters in? It's harder, it feels like there's something inside me tearing itself out. And everyone here who can throw spells around has said they've seen the dead come back to speak to them." He flipped through the pages of the notebook in his hands. "Kari called hers White Lux. There's a pattern to how magic works, we've all got something different, but it seems like there's a theme going through it. Kari can learn things and Vicky can hide things. I can make monsters out of thin air... I don't know how much that helps, but that means we can push the limits when we feel them out."
Then he moved over to the top of the second column. The theoretical ideas.
Thump. "This one, I've noticed that things get more stable the longer we look at them. Streets are stretching out longer than they ought to, but when I stare, they go back to normal. And since most people in Cornell are living in less than blissful ignorance, I think they expect things to be normal, which means they stay normal. Or they are normal around them. It's like they're not even pretending half the time, if I'm right. I wonder whether we can take advantage of that, but I wouldn't know how."
That one bothered Tommy the most. If most people had some kind of grounding effect on the town, where they weren't exposed and so normalcy stuck around them for longer, how did that work? How fragile was it? Was that something they wouldn't have forever as things got worse? Was it a skill that could be taught, enforcing normalcy over an area magically?
Thump. "Other Cornells. This one's more Kari than me, but she's onto something. We made a monster that's currently up in the air watching the whole block. Think of it like a crystal ball only Kari can see through.. The further out we go from downtown, it's like a giant came down with a machete and hacked away pieces of the town, and replaced them with something else. I've seen people wandering around at all hours, not knowing where they were, then they're gone with the wind by morning. Billboards on the highway look different, buildings made from bricks looks a few years younger. I think if we try to leave, we just walk into another place like this. And we might not come back, but that monster we made? I can bring him back to me anytime, so we send him instead of anyone who can bleed."
And finally, Tommy waved at the two questions on the third column. "Nothing I've seen or heard, from anyone or anything, answers this. I want to be optimistic and say there's an explanation, some kind of cause and effect, some invisible hand that did this one way or another. But..." He made a gesture with the book in his hand. "I've got nothing. I'd sure as hell like to cast some spell right now that puts things right, but I can't."
"Wait-" Leah put a hand out to stop Luna from running off. Looking back through the door, she saw things that stirred several feelings in her. Sabine's hair sparkled now, and she had fucking wings. If it weren't for the fact that it had hurt her so much, Leah might have been awestruck. Her girlfriend just became so much hotter and she couldn't believe what she was seeing. Or what she was feeling. Was Leah into monstrous women now? Probably. Fuck, it probably sucked from Sabine's perspective, though. But then, Leah knew how it felt to suddenly be in a completely different shape one day. They'd talk about it later, surely.
The vines appearing out of sand snapped her out of whatever thoughts she was having, thoughts left as an exercise to the reader. People got grabbed and Danni expertly incinerated the vines to set them free. She was up on her feet and moving now, the transformation was complete. She seemed to have new powers she couldn't control, but that meant they didn't have to be sitting ducks right now.
Good.
"She's stable now, it should be safe to move her. I didn't think that'd be so fast. Get back inside, this just go so much easier. I'm bringing everyone." Leah stomped her foot against she sand, and the dune rumbled. The ground around the dome became a solid floor of sandstone, spreading about ten feet further out then the base of the structure, so that the fliers among them could land before walking in. If they so chose. And then the structure began to rise.
"Everybody sit still!" She called inside. "I used to pull this sort of trick all the time!"
The dome and the platform it was fused to rose out of the sand and above the desert, like a spacecraft ready to take flight. It moved so smoothly that it was almost imperceptible to anyone on the inside who wasn't paying attention.
Leah exhaled slowly, and then knelt down to touch the floor with one hand. "Never was a fan of this, but now that those two can both move, it's safer." The structure moved through the air, slow at first, as Leah got a feel for the way this world's sand responded to her powers. It was earth, but it wasn't the Earth, and so she wanted to play it safe. No fancy palisades or crenelations beyond a solid dome. Still, this was functional, and she was almost surprised she got it to work.
They were all flying. Everyone taking shelter was now airborne, and covering ground from above. The dome picked up momentum, and they were on their way.
"If you can fly... Go ahead!" Not all of them could. Sabine surely couldn't with wings that new, she didn't trust Victoria to try, and maybe Luna couldn't either. She'd just let them approach as they wished. If they wanted to check on Sabine and Vicky inside, then great. If not, then that was fine too.
"Do what you've got to do," She told Luna. "I'm just going to focus on this."
Location: Otherworld Magic Items:She’s no magician but you know she’s got that magic wand. Otherworldly Attire
Backpack
Spare clothes, 3x
Knives, 2x
Cruiser board
Snacks
Water
Skating tool kit
DIY Kit
Writing tools
Phone
Sunglasses
Deodorant
Toothbrush and toothpaste
Marlena was very grateful that Danni had set her free. She didn't say it aloud though, as she was aghast at what had happened to Sabine. Her new body was Otherworldly. She wobbled in the air as her board caught her before she could hit the now solid sandstone floor. Sabine being able to move under her own power seemed to make things far more cohesive, which was great, but something strange stuck out to her.
"Hey, Sabine... I saw something like this in a book." A book written by someone who signed it as A. Pavon. A book on the autopsy of people with supernatural powers. "It had diagrams of people with wings, a woman like you who was from Avalon... Pretty nasty stuff, but I'll tell you the rest later. I think there's an explanation, for now..." What would she do now? Well, she figured she might as well try and fly off. This situation was making her antsy. The knowledge of that text was ghastly. Several prominent places of study around the world deemed it off-limits, having banned the damn thing.
She hovered around and out the entrance, to where Luna and and their pilot stood. There was a frown on her face. "Something about Sabine's situation's got me antsy- I think I know what just happened to her. I'll stay nearby, but I need to move. Got a bad feeling"
Marlena thumped her left foot against the hovering board and veered around the dome. It was exhilarating to be so high off the ground, and the cool dusk air send a delightful shiver down her back. She could see so much from up here... Even Percy falling through the air.
Wait a minute-
Percy!
Marlena swerved around in the air, nearly slipping off the board. She had to lean more to the sides to account for the board tilting so far left and right now, it was interesting but it'd definitely be a learning curve. She flew towards where she saw Percy falling and stuck a hand out to try and slow him down. Telekinetic energy roiled up inside of her, and... It felt like trying to grab wet soap. He was just falling to fast for her to catch.
Rohan had little time to react to Finley breaking something in hear and accidentally flood the place. When he saw the gunk rising up, he reached out with his staff and hauled his bow sling towards him, right as Dysphoria got everyone up onto the table. Thunder outside seems to be shaking the damn ground, and if that wasn't the worst part, the sky was shining down on them. The roof was peeling away, the table was buckling, foliage was coming down- Fuck, Finley had royally pissed the place off, hadn't they?
"Alright..." He slung his things over his back and drew his sword, trusting Dysphoria and Finley to pick themselves up off the floor. "It's not safe, we can't get out without risking ourselves. We aren't learning anything in here like this. Let's get out of here and try again later. And let's bring a few things back with us."
Internally, he told himself that this wasn't his Curse. It didn't behave like it, and there was no monster that they could easily point to. So there wasn't much to be afraid of. Those instruments offended him in a personal way. He damn sure wasn't bringing something like that back, where he'd have to study it for magic and be reminded of things he didn't like thinking about. Instead, Rohan raised his sword and took a mean swipe at one of those trees rapidly growing around them.
The metal bit into the wood, and a chunk of bark no larger than his palm was knocked loose. Good enough.
"Root."
The owl flew around and grabbed it in his beak, dropping it into his master's hand before landing on his shoulder. Rohan knelt on the table and held his sword close, pocketing the sample.
"Use the Heart, and get out."
He shut his eyes and listened for its beating rhythm. The gentle thunk, thunk, thunk of his curse flowing through it. The connection to the Earth... And when Rohan open his eyes, everything around him was going up in smoke. Everything turned to black, and the cold seeped in. Rohan, his things, and his familiar were all that remained.
For a moment, all was silent. This was the way the two of them had fallen in. His body felt numb, as if he were going to sleep for a long, long time. He knew Root felt it too.
Deep breath in, and then out.. Rohan willed his body to move.
"We need to keep moving."
It was sluggish at first, but sure enough, he got to moving. He turned, and in the black, there was a light far away. It looked to be the arch they had gone through, the First Gate. And luckily, Rohan saw his damn shoes floating about in that direction. Root got his body to function, and he flew out to grab them. His master kicked them back on- Last time he showed respect like that again- and started walking.
"Okay... Let's get out."
The walking turned to running. Root flew to keep pace with him, the light growing brighter and brighter as they neared. The light reflected off the steel of his blade, he refused to sheathe it until he knew for a fact they were safe. Up ahead, he felt the cold get stronger and seep further and further into his bones.
Root disappeared.
Rohan jumped.
He landed on a stone floor, on one knee, surrounded by tables and runes etched by their Coven's "leader." He was back on Earth, and his body was riddled with frost from the passage.
Root landed the floor, shaking flakes of ice off his body.
"Annika! Finley! Come on!" He called out into the swirling void under the archway. As if they could hear him.
Tommy did his best to not roll his eyes at Tyler when he came in dressed like a mascot for the Steelheads, whinging about leadership. Vicky and Tyler were practically made for each other, the way they both had so much obnoxious gravitas to them that sucked the air out of whatever room they were in. It was like they’d explode into a singularity if they got too close to one another, and then maybe the rest of them could finally, finally get something done.
“This does not inspire confidence in your leadership. We might need a proven leader to step in at some point,” Tyler paused as he spun the football in front
Tommy groaned. ”This fucking guy…”
It was nice to see that Tuyen was here. Tommy felt at ease knowing she hadn’t been killed, and that someone had managed to get her involved. Even if she couldn’t actually cast spells, that was just all the more reason for her to be here and get on the same page with everyone else. And he didn’t know her that well, but Tuyen was a hell of a lot more reasonable than some of the individuals among them.
”Hey. Not much happening yet.”
Tommy was hoping there’d be more people. Maybe not every teenager in Cornell, god forbid that many people got fucked up, but maybe a few more who might’ve seen something. There were around ten of them in here. Tommy, Vicky, Tyler, Tuyen, Daniel, Kari, Lupe, Zakira, and that new girl. Who… Could see the future?
That sounded ominous as fuck.
”I thought this was a meeting to figure out what’s going on. Did I miss something? Why is he talking about leadership?”
”No, you didn’t miss anything. Except half a day going by in seconds, apparently.”
Tommy stuck his hands behind his head and leaned back in his seat. ”And Tyler’s running his mouth because that’s one of the only two things he knows how to do; Throw a football, and pretend he’s the last damn tough guy on Planet Earth.” And then he turned his head and raised his voice so the Silver Star athlete could hear him. ”Nobody’s leading anybody into anything until we know which way is up. Sit down, Fox. We’ve got shit to talk about.”
He stuck a finger gun towards his deck on the table and dropped the hammer thar was his thumb. The deck flashed gold, and his two other summons appeared. Raptor, his jagged bird companion appeared on the back of an empty chair. And the woven coyote he called the Watcher appeared beside him, sitting and yawning.
Just in cast that punk felt like trying something funny.
Several things failed to add up in the next few moments. One of them being the way several people were acting like it was daytime out. And sure enough, when he looked out the windows, it appeared to be. And then Tommy was damn near aghast at the state of the phone Vicky had thrown at him. It looked like someone took it all the way to Normandy and back.
"Hey, car guy, you can fix that, right?"
He sighed. The Porter summon appeared. He reached into the bear-shaped, club-eared mustelid's body and withdrew a roll of transparent packing tape.
Tommy walked over to the tables and sat the battered phone in front of him and layered a long piece of the tape over the phone screen. Then, he used the edge of a table to smooth out air bubbles over it. Finally, he withdrew his switchblade and cut the edges off, tossing them into the golden creature's storage. Then he slid it back to her.
"There." It was basically new, now. Hard to even see the myriad cracks. Almost impatiently, he walked past Daniel Mars who had just walked in, a bit surprised he'd even be at a meeting about magic and whatever else was happening to the town. He stopped in front of one of the exists that led outside, and shoved the door open.
It was daytime outside.
He glanced out the window. Then the door.
Then Tommy shut the door, and reopened it again. Daytime still.
He turned around and stared at the others. "It was four in the morning when you told me we'd be meeting here, Kari. It was dark when I walked inside. What the fuck? Is anyone forgetting a whole day, or something? Is time getting fucked up now too?" He shook his head and shut the door, walking back over and plopping down on the opposite side of Vicky. Tommy took a contemplative sip from his canned caffeine while Porter trotted over and stared at Lupe. His ears wiggled, and his head tilted.
At least everyone was bantering instead of trying to kill each other. They could work with that. He could, anyway.
"That thing's got stuff to eat or drink in him, too." Tommy nodded at what Daniel had brought, and then pointed at the thing that suddenly took an interest in the second sassiest bitch in here. "Just ask him, he'll let you at it... Okay-"
Tommy tossed his notebook onto the table in front of him, along with his deck of cards that seemed to have a holographic sheen of gold to them, and kicked his feet up on the table like he owned the place.
The clock on the nightstand showed it was three in the morning. Almost four. Tommy was awake.
The last few nights had been rough, and “rough” was putting it charitably. He found sleep hard to come by, his mind restless in a way that made it easier to wear himself down mentally by staring possibilities in the face than to just shut his eyes and sit still. He sat on the edge of the bed, head bowed forward, fingers knitted together. The Watcher was curled up between his feet, not dissimilar to a dog that was napping by its master.
Balor floated above the desk where his notes lay. He didn’t move in the air, and his eyes were shut.
Raptor and Porter were stored away.
Next to him, a small notebook sat open. Tommy had taken to writing down what he could, he found that it helped make sense of things.
There are categories of magic.
Kari has one and I have another one. There’s a pattern to it that I don’t understand yet. Kari mentioned White Lux. Her information magic. Mine is different.
Tyler’s teleporting is a different one. So is Vicky’s bat.
How many kinds of magic are there?
Can we have more than one? Is itgeneticAncestors pass it down.
Why do I need my deck for it? Why does Vicky need her bat?
I can’t fucking sleep.
Everything was shifting in small ways. Yesterday, on his way home from town, Tommy had noticed a street sign that used to say King’s Street suddenly read nonsense. The letters weren’t letters, they were just writhing shapes that couldn’t sit still. He blinked and it went back to normal.
He wondered if people pretending that things hadn’t change made things change less. Or slower. If that was the case, then maybe it was a self-sustaining process where normal lead to more normal. But if that were true, why did things still go wrong? There had to be an explanation. The condition Cornell was suffering from originated in that warehouse, and was sprawling out everywhere. There were people walking around like no one’s son or daughter had died, and also acting like they weren’t from here.
Some people completely ignored the roads that weren’t present the day before.
Not even a real police report. Just a disturbance.
Tommy stood up and rolled his shoulders. He grabbed the book and sat down at his desk. He wanted to try his hand at more creatures. But he only had so many cards in the deck- Tommy wondered if he could connect his magic to another deck, maybe something like Tarot cards or blank ones that could behave differently if his summoner shit was channeled in. He started writing again, under a desk lamp.
I saw ancestors. Mine. I didn’t recognize any of them. Something tells me mom or dad wouldn’t either.
“Be proud.” What does that even mean??? They were being cryptic.
It’s like they wanted me to figure it out myself. Kari’s gave her way more. Tyler’s apparently did too. Did theirs just hand them spells? Could the old guy have given me a creature?
That fucking woman had a snake around her neck.
Why’d they expect me to do this the hard way?
Not that it wasn’t working.
His monsters weren’t the most impressive things in the world. Tommy didn’t have anything to compare them to, so he had no idea if he was doing anything right. What else could he make? If he were to chop up one of those things crawling out of the cracks in the world, what could he use those for? Kari’s magic gave her a way to see through Balor, and he wondered how much of that was the connection compared to the information magic.
He sighed.
”…I don’t suppose any of you dead people are listening now?”
Nothing.
”Figures.” He rubbed his eyes.
He had to do something. People were dying.
Tommy didn’t want people to die. Cornell sucked, but it wasn’t “Let everyone die” bad.
Beep. His phone went off. He checked it, and… Yeah. That sounded right. Tommy wasn't the only one trying to make sense of this. Kari was too, and the others were surely getting curious about what they were capable of. He quietly typed a response to her.
Tuyen says she didn't get magic but I know she knows. Showed off to her when we ran into each other one day. Turns out people who didn't get exposed can't even see the things that are happening.
Can't sleep either so I'm coming. Don't know if she's awake at this hour. Don't have her number anyway.
The radio was just quiet enough to be heard between the sound of the engine's rumblings. The headlights were off, because he didn't need them to see under the moonlight and the street lamps that were, strangely, still on at four in the morning. He didn't know if that was a good thing or not, or perhaps the universe was helping him out. The streets were empty, no one walking, no one driving. The town knew that nothing and no one good skulked about at this hour, even if they were pretending to keep up appearances.
Tommy's eyes peered left and right, watching for anything dangerous. A person's eyes had a way of seeing things that weren't really there when it was dark. The corners of vision were always swimming with shapes as the brain tried to parse the lack of sight into something with sense.
He was used to this quiet.
Eventually, the car rolled into the Cornell High parking lot. Above the building, Raptor circled around and landed on the chain link fence. He didn't see anything, and neither did Tommy. He could just barely make out the presence of light. Someone was in the cafeteria. Instinctually, Tommy’s hand found his switchblade.
Going out alone like he was doing felt dangerous. Bright lights in the middle of the 4AM darkness felt dangerous. Did she fucking walk here on foot? At least he was never technically isolated.
Tommy reached into the backseat where Porter was resting. The beast unfurled, and Tommy withdrew a can of cold brew. He made a point to stock up on a few things lately. Like things to drink and eat, tools like a pry bar and measuring square if he got into an emergency. The can wasn’t cold, but the chain store coffee was fresh enough.
Switchblade, check.
Notebook, check.
Phone. Deck of monsters… Check.
Tommy held up a hand, and Balor appeared, one eye open towards him in the dark.
”Fly over. Then stay. Go easy on her,” He instructed, opening the door and letting the orb soar up. Balor stopped a dozen feet above the school’s roof, and then floated in place. All of his eyes slid partially open, allowing Kari a sign that Tommy was both here, and giving her an unmoving picture of their surroundings.
Porter and Raptor disappeared as he stepped out.
He took one long look at the school and cracked his can open.
The caffeine hit his throat, and he knew it’d be a long night.
”Okay.”
He walked across the parking lot, one hand in his jacket’s pocket, and then through the building. With the hood draping over his head, it was difficult to see him in the gloom. Every shadow held his attention longer than it would have a month ago. Every single blade of grass warranted a once-over and Tommy hated that he needed to be so careful right now. Every tile on the floor, every painted brick in the walls.
There was something so fucked about being in a school at this hour. All the rooms pitch black, the way he stopped and listened for every single noise as if it’d be another werewolf thing.
Tommy didn’t dare shine a light down the hallways. Nothing that would give his attention away to something hungry or pissed off at the existence of a person. How long would he have to do this for? Traipsing through places like this at this hour, knowing damn well demons from hell or wherever the werewolf crawled from could be watching him, lurking in the shadows to avoid being spotted by things he barely had a name for?
He heard voices around the corner. Young voices, bantering voices. He recognized them, so he hurried along and entered the cafeteria. There, Tommy put aside any doubt he felt, and put on a confident face.
Kari Wilson, Lupe Sanchez, Zakira Watson. He wasn’t on particularly familiar terms with any of them.
”The hell are you three doing up so late?” He joked, deadpan, taking another drink from his can.
Sabine was a fae? Leah thought she was Inhuman. Was she fucking born here, on some far away piece of the world and only just now learning about it? Fuck, Leah knew how that felt. It hurt like hell when it happened to her, too. Luna's comments on the situation made her feel a bit less frantic. Ben was Inhuman, and he wasn't convulsing on the ground. So it wasn't a moon people thing, at least. They just had to let her go through the process... However long it took. While Vicky was slowly dying, and while nefarious people prowled the sands. Because of course.
Leah sat the kit Vicky offered up next to her. She ignored Jean-Luc barking up a storm, ignored the others getting their bearings, and focused on the immediate situation. Leah's two runes floated into her palm, and she whispered something into them. They stacked over each other and the glyph appeared again. The magic energy that coated Sabine was a little brighter, the awful pain she was an extra step diminished.
"That's about the best I can do right now," Leah told her, gently. She leaned back on one knee, rolling the two stones around in her hand. Would the Wreath help? Whatever was happening to her didn't quite seem like damage, just a change.
"If some of you are going, I'll stay here for defense." Leah laid Sjafnamarr on the ground beside Sabine, out of the way so she didn't roll over the massive blade and slice herself. With her free hand, Leah felt the sand underneath them. It was warm, and felt familiar enough to work with. She clamped a fist around the sand, it shifted under everyone's feet. Twenty feet away, in every direction, it climbed over itself and formed circular walls, until they were twenty feet high. Directly in front of them, a door opened wide enough for two people to walk through at once. It faced the crawling structure off in the distance.
The dome solidified into sandstone, the exterior dim on the inside.
"Now we have cover to hide in. We'll probably be hard to spot that far away. If Danni goes, he can make a fire to signal us after he gets their attention, and maybe Andy can shoot a bolt up so we don't lost anyone. Unless Sabine and Vicky can use their connection to find each other, but we don't want to push either of them right now. Chase, you can probably find us quicker than Percy if you can lock onto someone's shadow. I have no idea if Dorian can get in and out of the Astral from here... If we get swarmed, I can close the door." She looked at everyone gathered around. Splitting up was objectively a risky idea, but it wouldn't do to move Sabine or even abandon her.
"Stay together and be damn sure you don't lean too hard on any one person. Just like the Contest… Luna, here-" Leah reached into her bag and withdrew one of the pieces of her collection that she brought with her. A grey, hexagonal pyramid no larger than a baseball. There were geometric lines running across its surface, as if it had been used to practice manipulation of mineral structures.
She sat it down between her and the other girl.
”It’s Magnetite. If the dwarves need to be paid off to help us, give them that.” And with that, she grabbed her seven foot-sword again, pocketed her runes, and stood guard right outside the entrance.
Location: Otherworld Magic Items:She’s no magician but you know she’s got that magic wand. Otherworldly Attire
Backpack
Spare clothes, 3x
Knives, 2x
Cruiser board
Snacks
Water
Skating tool kit
DIY Kit
Writing tools
Phone
Sunglasses
Deodorant
Toothbrush and toothpaste
Bandits.
In Marlena's unprofessional opinion, she preferred Luna's idea of forming a circle over turtling up. It made sense to not be exposed, but she wasn't going to fight anybody. If Sandbenders from The Last Airbender showed up ready to rob them of their dragon companion, then Marlena was of a mind to just scatter the group to the four winds. The dome that Leah put over them was useful, though. Even as the sun was going down. Marlena couldn't bring herself to watch Sabine's body reshape itself. It'd be nice if she could do something, but she didn't have healing spells. The Story Magic that dictated how things went seemed capable of changing a person physically, considering the fact that Percy had cat ears. What purpose did it serve to subject somebody to this? Was she being retconned into being a fae? When they went home, would she be back to normal?
”I’ll go,” She decided. ”I can’t fight, but I can probably reason with the dwarves in that mountain. And, I think…”
She tossed her board out in front of her. It didn’t hit the sand, instead floating a few inches above it. Marlena’s telekinetic power kept it there, and it was difficult to see her grin in the dim light.
”Cool.” She stepped on it, and to her surprise, it didn’t knock her off. She floated towards one of the walls of the sandstone beachhead that Leah made, standing on the board. ”I’m mobile. I can get around okay like this, I think. If anyone’s stalking us, maybe I can fly higher and call it out. How long can we afford to stay here?”
The prospect of a fight with bandits while she was in another universe made her nervous. Were they magical bandits? Were they werewolves, vampires, some other fantastical creature? And how many of them were there? Marlena didn’t want to fight anyone.
Pictures still made Leah flinch. These days, it didn’t really matter since the whole galaxy knew her name as of a month ago. But for a brief moment, she wanted to lean away from the camera. Still, she let the picture be taken, even if she expected it to come out like most pictures of her did… Though, she did have other things on her mind at the moment. One of them being the information Luna was giving them. Leah had thought they wouldn’t be using human money there. Her collection would be useful, then. Good. No expression of gratitude, no getting wrapped up in social norms. Honestly, that wasn’t a problem for Leah Jordan.
She slowly nodded when Sabine spoke to her, putting away the her piece of the garlic handed everyone. Some things were on her mind. If they got separated, how quickly could they meet again before the center of the realm?
It seemed everyone was jumping in before asking questions. Leah wanted to ask Luna how vague or strict the rules around favors or names would be. But if some of them were just not going to listen… Oh well.
”Yeah, good idea, just go through before we can get straight answers…” She shook her head. Then she walked in anyway, and felt the world fall away beneath her.
Leah didn’t particularly like passing through warped spaces. They made her dizzy, and it didn’t particularly matter what method it was carrying her. Percy’s teleporting had the same effect on her as Heimdall shunting her across the galaxy. But this? It felt more like Stephen Strange opening up a hole underneath her feet. On the other side of the proverbial tunnel, there were colors of brown and yellow.
THUD.
Leah landed in the desert on one knee, one fist in the sand and her sword over her shoulder. Sand flew up and around her from the impact, and she took a moment to look around.
It was late evening by the standards of this world, if she understood it right. The sky was turning dark, but the heat was comforting. Familiar, in fact. She preferred this over Jotunheim.
Okay.
She didn’t get a chance to comment on the mountain that seemed to move, in account of the screams and Jean-Luc barking. Something was happening to Sabine that immediately put Leah in panic mode. The bones under her skin shifted and popped, writhed and twisted in ways that she was pretty fucking sure an Inhuman’s wasn’t supposed to.
”Sabine- Sabine!” She was knelt over her girlfriend in a heartbeat, sword rested on the sand beside her. She didn’t recognize this, she didn’t know what to do- Could they return to Earth from here?
”Fucking” Leah reached into her pocket to-
Her pockets. She wasn’t wearing pants. Her clothes had changed. She was wearing some kind of long skirt made from cloth and leather. And in place of her jacket was… What did anyone even call that? It was just a strap over her chest and a huge shoulder pad, leather lined with fur leaving little of her muscle much to the imagination.
She found her runes and withdrew Berkano and Algiz. They floated above a hand that she pointed at Sabine. The runes made a golden, glowing line between them that branched out and shaped a glyph, a combination of the two runes.
Warm energy rolled over Sabine’s body, and it eased her pain. It wasn’t much, but it had some effect.
”Fuck. Jean-Luc, sit!” She commanded. Having helped train him, she knew he’d understand that.
Location: Margaret Carter - Winter Carnival Magic Items:She’s no magician but you know she’s got that magic wand. Otherworldly Attire
Backpack
Spare clothes, 3x
Knives, 2x
Cruiser board
Snacks
Water
Skating tool kit
DIY Kit
Writing tools
Phone
Sunglasses
Deodorant
Toothbrush and toothpaste
Marlena made a note to be careful with the glyph. She wasn’t exactly a wizard anyway. She caught the garlic and stuffed it into her shirt pocket, and stood up. It seemed no one was looking to ask the expert any more questions. And so… She slid her board away where it was secure and jumped through the ring of mushrooms. It was fun, too, falling between worlds. One might have heard her scream of sheer adrenaline as her arms and legs went out wide…
Before she ate sand.
Marlena faceplanted in the desert, feeling her body ache with the fall. She rolled over halfway on her side, laughing like the world’s biggest jackass, when something flopped over her face. A hood. She hadn’t been wearing anything with a hood.
She stood up and dusted herself off. Otherworld had changed her cute outfit into an earthy brown robe reminiscent of a wizard. Or perhaps a monk? The hood was a dark brown, with a lighter brown over it pinned by a metal fastener. A belt at her waist kept it all tight. It was actually pretty damn nice, and Marlena wondered if she could keep it when she returned to Earth.
She spun around and saw the other fashion choices put on the group. April in a blue tabard, Percy in… cat ears? Real. But the moment passed when she heard Sabine screaming in pain as something warped her. Her girlfriend was trying something that didn’t seem to fully stop it.
Marlena froze and looked between the situation on the ground and the ominous mountain in the distance.
Was that thing moving? Ohhhhh shit.
”Well, we’re telling a story…” Marlena reached for her bag that seemed to not have been Otherised. She laid her board upside down in the sand and withdrew her tool pouch. A black nylon container, from which she retrieved a T-shaped thing. She used it to removed the wheels from their brackets, then the trucks from the board, and stored those with the tool.
Something told her they’d have to move pretty quickly. So Marlena quickly converted her skateboard to a sandboard.
”Guys, I don’t think that’s a mountain. Can anyone carry her?” She asked, picking up her de-wheeled board.
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