Set Them Free

“The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.”

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Hope
Expert Adventurer
Expert Adventurer
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Posts: 847
Joined: Wed Jul 10, 2013 2:13 am
Location: New Haven
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Set Them Free

Post by Hope »

Hope spotted the ghastly armory from aways and the roar of her V-Twin slowly churned down to a purr. Kicking out the stand she let her helmet dangle from the bar before stepping off and groaning as that fresh mud gave way to her boots. “These were new…” She remarked looking at the now plastered black with disgust. Making her way towards her now dated stomping grounds, she pulled out her phone and sent a text to the current warden. Out front, it read. Behind that black leather jacket was a red-hued cylinder that stretched well to her knees and past her head. It contained it. Hopefully she would be leaving without needing the cylinder. Plastered all along it were thin paper wards that she had taped. Janky, but effective.

Things had changed at the Battlefield Park manor, even in the short time since Hope had left with the same spear she now carried in a warded cylinder. The breaks in the low perimeter wall had been repaired with old stones and new mortar, and thick thorny brambles dotted with star-shaped purple flowers lined the top like razor wire. The trees themselves appeared to have moved — none remained close to the outside of the wall, but a number lined the inside, stretching their clawlike branches down as if daring trespassers to try leaping past them.

A young woman in a jumpsuit with her dark hair cut short and her face hidden behind a surgical mask stared at Hope from the roof of an outbuilding, and there were several others like her, wearing weapons on their hips and keeping an eye on the forest around them. She made a hand signal, and the old gates they had recently excavated and placed across the entryway were unchained and groaned open.

There was a whiff of ash and copper in the air as Hope passed through, and Mallory stood waiting for her by the front of the manor. Drachenbane was on her back, and its rubies gleamed with internal fire as the sword’s wielder cast a wary look out past the open gates. Only once they were shut again did she let herself look back at Hope, giving her a tight smile of greeting. A moment or two later, Bailey followed Mallory outside, lighting up a cigarette and fidgeting with the collar of his short-sleeved floral-printed shirt. He managed to let go of it long enough to wave at Hope, though the smoke between his lips kept him from smiling too broadly.

“Jesus…” Hope remarked as she was allowed inside this newly fortified fortress. “The hell happened here?” She eyed the wall and gave a few glances about, knowing that she’d seen someone, or something move atop those roofs. She tried not to let the odor get to her but as she drew in after the two she pulled the cylinder from her shoulder and coughed. “Some kinda truck run into that wall or what?” She really didn’t mean to poke fun, it was an earnest question by the size of the repairs.

“Marauders,” Mallory replied with a slow shrug and a glance aside at Bailey. “The walls were like this when I got the place,” though RhyDin could be strange about these things; “but dealing with my neighbor in New Haven inspired me to patch them up.”

She held out a hand for the cylinder. “I’m guessing this is it?”

“Hunh...” Hope had a few choice words for that, but it looked like those were best left in the past. Fresh wounds and all. She handed over the cylinder and let out a sigh of relief. “That’s it. Found in these walls, it seemed fitting at least I could bring it back. Maybe even dispose of it.” That was the end hope really. “Sometimes dead is better.”

“Mm...” Mallory examined the container closely, running her fingernail over the paper wards —then nodded to Bailey: “Can you draw the circle?” She tapped the toe of her boot to indicate a nearby patch of dirt and dust bereft of vegetation.

Bailey nodded back to Mallory, letting the cigarette fall to the ground before crushing it beneath a clean white sneaker. It wasn’t exactly necessary for the drawing, but he tugged at the necklace chain holding a key near his heart, pulling it free and visible from underneath the cloth of his shirt. The black star sapphire within it flickered briefly with white light, as Bailey fished around in the pockets of his jeans. Eventually, he retrieved something that looked like a pencil, only a little thicker and made of the same black gem held within his key. He started tapping on the earth, pounding out a rhythm that existed only in his head, and then walked a circle to that same beat. Only after completing that circuit did he drop into a crouch and carefully -- very carefully -- begin etching a pentagram into the dirt, with a series of Greek letters at each point.

While Bailey drew, Mallory unhooked Drachenbane and laid it on the ground, and once he was finished, Mallory handed him the sealed cylinder and held out her left hand over an alpha inscribed in the earth. Her ring fingernail grew longer and sharper, black and clawlike, until it pierced her palm. Then she dripped blood onto the symbol and began to pace between it and the other letters, reciting, “Abraxasaxabra, saxabrasabraxas, rasabraxasaxabrasar...”

A hot wind blew across the manor, and the naked branches overhead clacked together like bones.

There was a very real fear Hope harbored of the unknown that swelled within her now. The hot wind had a chill running down her spine as she instinctively almost took a step back. She swallowed and clenched her fists, her knuckles going white as she felt the leather jacket grow taut as she tensed. At least she knew she brought it to the right people.

Mallory gave Hope a slow nod, either reassurance or indication that she was about to begin; she blinked slowly as she turned away, and her eyes were solid red when she looked at Bailey and said, “The container.”

Her left hand was open, still dripping with blood. Bailey’s eyes drifted between Mallory’s bleeding hand and the makeshift paper wards. When he went to hand the spear off, he tried to place it in Mallory’s right hand, but she closed her left around it before it could touch the glove.

“Drachenbane is a jealous beast,” she told him with a smile, and resumed her chanting and pacing with the cylinder in her bloody grasp. Once the circuit was complete, she stopped in the center and told the two outside of it: “If I start sounding more fiendish than normal, whack me with something, okay?”

“A jab to the face will have to suffice,” Bailey replied mildly.

“Tch. Close enough,” she said to him, and broke the wards.

A wailing chorus erupted the moment Mallory closed her hand around the haft, the anguish of whatever resided in the spear drawn out by the thinness of the Veil within the circle. Ghastly green faces rushed out to the edge, highlighted by protective flames that sparked to life when they tried to breach the boundary. Some of the figures were humanoid, but others were decidedly less so; horned, many-eyed, many-fanged, some scaly or bony, others chitinous, but all of them in pain and desperate to break free.

The weapon itself was as alien as many of those held captive within its graphite-like metal, the haft scaly in places and smooth in others, consisting of several tendril-like shapes wound tightly together, clearly meant for hands not at all like Mallory’s. She angled the long, lopsided head over her bleeding palm and issued a command:

“Those who seek to escape, know that beyond the circle, you trespass upon my home; give your names, that I might show you hospitality!”

The air howled around them, thirteen names in thirteen tongues hissing in their ears, and the witch cried out and dropped to her knees. She braced her arm against her throbbing head and tried to force the spear from her grasp, but it would not unstick from her fingers.

“Fucking hell…” It was far worse than Hope could imagine, visualizing their forms, their faces at the very least. She felt echoes when wielding it, she could feel the pain as though through some insulation but nothing like this. “What happens if we just skip the niceties and just break the damn thing? They’re not in the bargaining mood.”

“I do not think that is a good idea.” Bailey watched the spirits pour out of the spear, with little expression on his face. He was either totally calm, or so terrified that he circled back around to stillness. “I suspect the weapon works as a focus, as a control on them. If we break the weapon, we likely remove any way of controlling them.”

“It’s more than a controller... it’s a fucking torture device!” Mallory spat, trying to get up from one knee until a howling mass beat her back down. “I say we scatter them — Bailey — can you blast the point from within the Hedge? As soon as I press it to the barrier?”

Hope rubbed her hands, what started as green sparks soon illuminated and manifested into fire. She had never experienced this nor truly knew the lengths of her own powers, but she punched into her palm, discharging green electricity. “I'll just follow your lead.”

Bailey shrugged as he walked right up to the edge of the ritual pentagram, flinching as a few of the horned creatures battered themselves against the energy field keeping them trapped. With a spin of his right hand, a circular purplish-black portal formed within reach of Mallory. He snapped a finger, and the gateway became translucent, revealing the murky shapes of a bog. Bailey hopped through the Hedge, his form warped by the barrier between worlds, as Mallory turned her fiery gaze to Hope and shouted to her, “Seven hundred nobles!”

“That's all?! You could have pressed me for much more!” She felt that green aura encompassing her entirely until it overtook her hair and eyes.

“Repeat customers are better!” Mallory countered, then staggered to her feet. “Both of you, strike the point on my mark. Ready... now!”

As the witch drove the tip of the strange spear into the fiery green barrier that surrounded the ring, Bailey tapped the key hanging from his neck. A focused white beam of pure starlit magic erupted from the black star sapphire.

At the same time, Hope dug her heels in and pivoted before swinging her fist striking the ground sending green arcing. It was raw and nearly uncontrolled, but roughly aimed at the spear. “Sorry!”

Hope’s apology could barely be heard over the horrible shearing noise as her bolt of green power and Bailey’s celestial beam struck the tip of the spear. Hope’s less controlled blast seemed to jolt Mallory, but her swearing too was lost with another noise: the rising cries of thirteen spirits, bursting out of the shattering weapon and disappearing in polychromatic flashes of light, scattered across the planes by the localized thinning of the Veil and Bailey’s opening to the Hedge. As they dispersed, the barrier blew out in a wave of green dust, flinging Mallory onto her back with the impact.

Several of the delinquents nearby had begun calling to each other, and two of them were fast approaching, though their steps slowed when it appeared that the witch was laughing where she laid on the ground. A little bit later, Bailey stepped back into RhyDin, smelling of sulphur and decay. One hand spun a counter-clockwise circle, shutting the portal behind him, while he flicked the fingers on his other hand, emitting bursts of cologne. Unfortunately, the mixture of swamp gas and musk just made him stink worse.

Hope coughed out as Bailey returned, the green dust was everywhere. “Hell…” She hacked and heaved almost coughing up a lung. “I think that went pretty well all things considered.” She’s trying to brush the dust off of her to no avail. It was like glitter but even worse. “Everyone alright?”

Bailey smelled terrible but looked fine, so Mallory didn’t ask. “I’m fine,” she said to Hope as she sat up, shaking out her arms where they still felt numb. She looked around at the scattered remains of the spear, little bits of it in the dirt, the grass, and embedded in the front door. “Should I go get a dustpan so we can start reforging...?”

“You know what? None of that felt right. From the moment I found it- or it found me until that very moment. So how about we just clean it up and uh try and forget we ever found it. Maybe there’s something better we can find from the armory?” She sure didn’t want to relive that. “But I mean I’ll totally pay you first. Bailey, you deserve a cut too.”

It sounded like Mallory was still catching her breath as she cast another slow look around. She glanced over at Hope and nodded: “Dustpan and a bin.”

((thank you very much to the players of Mallory and Bailey for writing this with me :like: ))
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