The Witch And The Wardrobe (Moon)

[Imogen]

As she'd explained up front, the witch didn't know what the eye was. She'd had relatively few opportunities in her life to confront any kind of mental attack, really- the Order had not used it much, and the Sunsingers tried to avoid real confrontations with them anyway. Of the monsters she'd fought in Ecith, only the Liar-beast could be said to be a mental predator, and its assault was more in the vein of a morale-crushing one rather than a psionic assault.

But as a witch, she knew something of many runes, including Mesmer, and she didn't think this was how it worked. There was something about music, she was sure, or emotion. Or both. This felt more like someone had slammed a migraine through her eye sockets and filled her bones with lead. The great yellow eye in front of her seemed to consume more and more of her view, eating her awareness of the world, growing ever larger.

Thankfully, while she had little expertise in the field of such influence, she'd trained extensively to increase her own mastery over her body and soul, and was able to largely avoid spoiling her rite while she waited for Moon to engage the thing. She moved slowly, to be sure, with jerking motions and great difficulty, but move she did.

Still, she was glad when the icy contact lens formed over the eye and Moon struck, tearing out the organ and hurling it out of the rite entirely. The weight seemed to dissipate slowly from her limbs, as though someone were lifting individual burdens from each arm and leg, finally letting her unbow her back. She realized, at once, that she'd been breathing hard, and she took a moment to regain her composure as her staff tapped each glyph in sequence.

Given the increase in the eye's influence from a single circle's opening, she could only imagine how badly the sixth circle's opening would hit; but this was all well within her expectations. There were only two more gates to throw wide before she could fully sink the wardrobe into Slipspace, and once the rite was over it should be easy and quick to seal up the rift. As soon as Imogen felt calm and controlled once more, she tapped the last glyph of the sixth circle and spoke once more, chanting:

"The gates of time are sealed anew;
Our fates in stone are cast.
Vicis and Velar, turn away
From future and from past."

The radiance limning the sixth circle grew blinding as it sunk into the earth, now a fairly narrow disc centered around the great wardrobe. Each of the circular steps leading into the void seemed to elongate, spinning ever-faster as the magical cone of spatial disruption came close to a nadir. At this juncture, the witch was closer to slipspace than reality, which allowed some of the monsters circling the rite from without to finally reach in close enough to touch.

The gaps in reality were now large enough to admit the humanoid shambler, entirely comprised of flesh and bone, bereft of skin or blood. One-armed, it staggered towards the witch, rounding the wardrobe... and others of its kind followed suit, a seemingly endless tide of zombie-like apparitions. The dark cloud made of geometric shapes seeped in above, slowly spreading downward (though it seemed to leave the circles below it undisturbed; perhaps once they were activated, they were no longer so easy to dash or break?).

Worst of all, however, was what was visible from below. Somehow, the null-white void of Slipspace below the ritual had seemingly filled with a great ocean of blue ichor, swimming with thousands and thousands of unconnected mouths, all babbling incoherently. The liquid rose steadily upward, bubbling steadily through the paper-thin spatial disturbances separating the ritual from the vastness beyond.

The Sunsinger could have stopped and attempted to repel one or more of the beasts, but she chose instead to entrust the task to the Kalzasaern noble, and moved to the final circle, the one surrounding the wardrobe itself. If Moon had been keeping track of the incantation she'd spoken, he'd realize that she'd named every one of the great Dragon Gods who built the world... save for one, arguably mightiest and most hated of them all.

[Moon Jae-Seong]

TIMESTAMP: -
NOTES: -

- - -

- - -

It was impossible to tell by what method the shambling monstrosity had employed to hinder Imogen, and by extension, what method it was now using to perceive her given its eye had been ripped away and disposed of. The only form of mind magic Jae-Seong was aware of was the rune of Mesmer, and from the perspective of an observer, he didn’t think that’s what had been used. The witch looked like she was fighting an invisible almost force rather than some internal emotional battle, and to his understanding, Mesmer focused almost entirely on the manipulation of one’s Symphony– a concept he didn’t fully grasp, but he did know one’s Symphony encompassed emotions, mental state, motivation, mood, and this just…it couldn’t be that, could it?

Still, the interim between when he started along this train of thought and Imogen’s incipience of the sixth circle was not exceedingly long. With the incantation spoken and the sorcerer’s sand lit, the penultimate ring’s activation allowed the two mages to descend further into the space between worlds, further towards their goal, further into danger. As Imogen incanted, he had heard the name of each dragon god save one– Malgar. Jae-Seong was unsurprised by this; who would pray to Malgar unless they wanted to invite their own suffering?

The blinded shambler took this chance to cross the threshold more completely now, and along with it came an array of apparitions similarly anathemic in appearance to the living. Along with them came a darkened cloud above and below them did strange blue liquid begin to pool. Altogether an eldritch sort of arcane, this endeavor was.

With little time to think and this time an array of enemies, Jae-Seong had to act fast. Freezing things had proven effective thus far, but when it came to quickly dispatching groups of enemies, his mind jumped to the conclusion that ice would take too much time. He needed a combination of elements more immediately destructive.

For Jae-Seong, fire was the element that came to him with the least ease– the only caveat to that was that because he could, contrastingly, weave wind well, he could create a spark and then use air to both shape and fuel it rather than trying to rely on fire alone. And if the fire grew too large, air, too, could sap away the heat. Even so, he was often cagey to make use of it, but in a situation like this? Fire felt forced.

The swordsman still held his blades up in a defensive posture, but he held fast beside Imogen as they moved into the final circle. Instead, the rune of Elementalism that snaked up his right up set aglow and with a subtle flick of his wrist, one would be unsure at first what he was doing. Visually indistinct, his incipient action was to wick away the moisture in the meandering miscreations’ bones, intent on making them much more combustible.

His ensuing plot, however, held visual vibrancy; a flickering mote of fire made manifest in the most centralized location relative to all of the zombie-like creatures. The air around the mote stirred before it rapidly erupted outward to form an explosive, yet aetherically controlled inferno. In a matter of seconds, the blaze engulfed each of the skeletal monstrosities.

The taxing part of his spellcasting wasn’t actually the fire’s creation, rather, it was controlling it. He felt the pull of aetheric strain begin to burn through him as he continued to manipulate the air around preternatural paroxysm. Still, he grit his teeth and continued even as it bloomed into an almost radiant sort of anguish. The patrician, though he tried to hide it, was visibly suffering– despite this, his focus remained and he was deliberate in his ministrations. As if manicuring the flare, he was careful to direct the firestorm’s resultant flames and wind away from the remaining sorcerer’s sand– and the wardrobe, himself and Imogen– as much as possible. And where he could, he would redirect the wind to blow away the strange, dark clouds.

Despite his self-inflicted suffering, Jae-Seong stood stubborn and strong in the aftermath. But even with the skeletal beasties sufficiently incinerated and strange weather phenomena being blown away from them, the bizarre liquid below was still rising.

It was, decidedly, not water– at least not in the traditional sense. The Elementalist could not seem to grab ahold of it and it almost felt like the elemental spirits around him were nudging him away from that endeavor, as if to imply it was pointless. So Instead, he converted more water vapor from the air around them to create a platform of ice big enough to encompass both himself and Imogen and then willed it off of the ground. Deliberately, he'd crafted the surface of this platform to be textured enough to prevent the two of them from slipping. From where she now stood, Imogen would still be able to easily reach the sorcerer’s sand markings with her staff but was, ostensibly, held just high enough to keep out of the nebulous depths of the ‘waters’ which whispered and roiled below them.

This much magic was, without a doubt, a taxing endeavor for the relatively inexperienced mage, but one did not improve without pain– or at least, that’s what Jae-Seong believed. His breathing was labored and his body held tension enough to tremble while a thin patina of sweat layered what of his skin was exposed, but even so did his visage still bear an expression of steeled tenacity.

- - -

"Synskrit"

"Common"

"Inandoth"

[Imogen]

The witch maneuvered deftly as the ichor rose below- though it could not disturb the energized Sorcerer's Sand, she dared not expect her feet would enjoy similar impunity. She spun around, lunging for each symbol in turn to light them, muttering under her breath. Even though she'd admitted up front that she couldn't predict the form in which the attacks would take, she'd really not expected this. How could Jae...?

She nearly yelped as the elementalism began. She hadn't taken the nobleman for an elementalist, and by the look of things the effort was agonizing him. Still, the fire spun into smoke, which wove into steam, which coalesced into ice. Imogen needed no instruction; at once, she leapt up onto the platform, taking a moment to test the surface before racing for the innermost circuits of the ritual.

(It dawned on her, for the first time, how ridiculous it was to expend so much power and effort on what she was doing here. Nevertheless.)

The Sunsinger jammed the end of her staff through the icy plane and the ichor, touching it to the seventh circle. Light extended outward in both directions, as it had six times before. Thankfully, as the final circle, this one was smallest by far and it was a wait of mere moments before the entire design was lit. Imogen wrenched the pact weapon away from the grip of the ice and brought it down with surprising softness on the very top of the wardrobe.

The wardrobe, miraculously undisturbed in this battle, opened silently, revealing a complex glyph carved into the interior around a svelte aetheryte shard. She reached in deftly and tapped it with her sunstone-capped staff, lighting it in an instant, and she declared:

"The gates of every realm are shut;
The holy and depraved,
Lord Malgar, let this one know loss
To know one may be saved."

The final ritual circle began to sink- and it didn't stop. The dragonshard embedded within the antique furniture began to glow brighter and brighter, and then the closet doors slammed shut once more. The entire wardrobe turned, revolving, as the circle of rock it sat upon began to corkscrew down into the depths of Slipspace.

Almost at once, all manner of unsightly abominations surged forward, finding at last a true rift in the hole through which Imogen's Zaichaeri wardrobe had descended, pressing themselves, struggling against one another to try to slip upwards into the ritual site. Immediately, the witch turned and leapt from the ice platform, running for the ritual circles forming steep steps upward onto the rocky plateau in the Andalars where they were (nominally, at least) still located.

"Out and up!" she yelled at Moon, "Quick!"

A rope of flesh and bone tore out of the hole behind the ork, spearing towards her like a gunshot- but it had missed its chance. No longer distracted by the performance of the rite, the Sunsinger's arm snapped backwards, a pact sword manifesting therein, and she sliced the tendril in half without even looking at it. Silver fire erupted from her strike, engulfing the limb, and whatever had attacked fell back into the depths of Slipspace with a pained gargle.

She took the rest of the stair-circles one at a time, leaping the four-foot gaps with relative ease. More limbs extended from each gap, and she cut them down one by one, each time sending them howling into the abyss with a flash of argent light. Four stairs left... then three... two...

As the witch reached the precipice of the final step, however, the ichor-beast finally broke through Moon's impromptu ice seal, erupting into the air high above the ritual site like a geyser. She turned backwards in alarm, glancing up at the zenith of the monster's fountain.

The creatures sealed after the fall of the Boundless Empire obeyed neither laws nor reason, and while she didn't think her ritual was powerful enough to actually free one, she could only guess at the kind of havoc it could wreck if permitted to send even part of itself through. As a responsible Coven member, she was duty bound to clean up her own messes; and so, she resolved to destroy every single drop of the monster and finish her rite in a single stroke.

Imogen paused on the final precipice and lifted one hand into the air, closing her eyes. With an act of will, she summoned Metallabzieher.

At the apex of the geyser of ichor, there was a sudden flash of gold-and-silver light, twisting in on itself. To Moon's elemental senses, burgeoning Fire-aspected aether coalesced out of nothing, and a moment later a wave of intense heat rippled across the ritual site. The blue liquid was flash-vaporized by the superheated golden dagger, and its aether was consumed by the nova-flame, concluding with an enormous explosion overhead.

With another effort of will, the witch dragged the dagger downward through the geyser, the entire line of ichor exploding in the course of a second, causing an eruption of heat and light from the bottom of the ritual cone which tore the lesser manifestations apart, sterilizing the site in an instant. In the time it took to blink, the whole hole was suddenly emptied of all eldritch unlife.

The witch dematerialized the golden dagger, grunting as the superheated portion of her own spirit returned to her body, then snapped her fingers, cutting off the flow of aether between her Rune of Traversion and the ritual circles. They darkened rapidly, space collapsing back in on itself as the material world reestablished its dominion. Rock creaked as it found itself pressed against rock once more, and the spent sorcerer's sand, now blackened and burnt, sparked spitefully.

After a few moments, the plain had returned to normal, with the additions of various pocks and blasts from Moon and Imogen's spells. The only difference, in fact, was that the wardrobe was entirely vanished.

(In the distance, the horse snorted and lowered its head to eat an interesting-looking weed.)

[Moon Jae-Seong]

TIMESTAMP: -
NOTES: -

- - -

- - -

The semi-elaborate weaving of elements was, to Jae-Seong's great relief, enough to clear away what threats impeded Imogen's path forward through the sixth step and into the final phase, the final circle, of this rite. He was also glad to see that the meticulous manicuring of his spells kept all of his magical destruction away from the lovely antique that sat precariously in the center. It dawned upon him at this moment that he still did not know the precise purpose of what it was they were doing. Lowering an armoire effectively into an abyss, yes, but to what end? Now, at least, it was still not quite the right time to ask.

When the armoire opened, the dragonshard within the wardrobe was a strange yet beautiful sight. There was as much anticipation as there was tension when Imogen began to speak the words of the final incantation with Malgar finally getting His verse. It was hard to tell in the ensuing moments if the invocation of His name had any actual impact on what came next, but the cacophonous cavalcade of creatures come crawling in, trying to squeeze past and skitter over one another to get through was certainly evocative of the dreaded dragon god. With the armoire having sunk into the other realm fully now and what impending danger loomed, Jae-Seong was not one with a mind to linger long.

Along with Imogen, the noble turned to run (more like leap) up the rite's arcane staircase– and in so doing, he cut down anything that tried to do him harm with his blades. He'd infused the metal with a varnish of elemental ice, cold enough to extinguish almost all warmth on contact; the intent was to cause a creeping ingress of frostbite with only the briefest of contact with flesh. From what he could tell, it worked, though he had little desire to stare and make sure– for the moment, his focus was singularly intent on making it out of this pit of descending doom.

Alas, on the cusp of freedom, the icy stop-gap he'd made to block the ichorous monster failed. Luckily, however, Imogen herself was no longer occupied and thus fully capable of taking over the mantle of their defense- Jae-Seong very much doubted he would be of any use at this point.

As such, he leapt outside of the ritual's circular confines and then turned to watch whatever it was the witch had begun to cast. Sensorially, he detected the heat of fiery aether before his mind could process the visual that played out before him, but that still told him little about how whatever it was Imogen had made manifest worked. The heat of the fire rippled outwards in a rapidly forming, all consuming blaze, vaporizing all of the monsters that remained. Her final act, then, was to cut the power she was providing the portal she'd painstakingly opened– and in another instant, it was gone.

All that was left was the sorcerer's sand and scars from their spells burned into the earth– but aside from that, the field was, once more, composed of perfectly mundane dirt and stone.

Jae-Seong, slightly disheveled and trying to downplay his own aetheric strain, directed his gaze to his companion, then to check on the horse, then back.

“I never asked, ah…what was the purpose of all of that? How do you know if it worked?” His question sounded curious, but his voice could not hide his exhaustion. “And that dagger– what is that? Where…where'd you find it?”

After a moment, he thought of another, perhaps more pertinent, thing to add. “...and…do you think you could help me get back, at least, to somewhere I can rest?” He wasn't actually that picky about that but sleeping in this field would not be ideal.

- - -

"Synskrit"

"Common"

"Inandoth"

[Imogen]

The witch dropped to a seated position as the spell finished, exhaling deeply as she watched the plume of dust and smoke spiral out of the blackened sand. As Moon spoke, she waved at him, signaling that she would take a moment to respond. She breathed in and out, letting the the good air of the northlands flush the stench of burnt sulfur from her lungs and throat. She stretched, placing one arm in the other hand and rolling her joints until they cracked.

Then, and only then, did she turn back to her companion, letting her hands drop back into her lap.

"The purpose...? Oh! Oh, yes, of course. Give me a moment and I'll show you by, ah, checking to see if it worked at all."

Although the ork had been momentarily winded, in truth she was not deeply exhausted. She'd never dismissed her pact staff, so she raised her right hand and summoned it, catching it easily before driving into the fallow earth nearby and levering herself back up to her feet. The rite had taken a lot of concentration, of course, but less aether than it might have seemed; even a single use of the Arsenal technique involved a greater drain.

"The dagger... oh, yes, Metallabzieher. I made it maybe two months ago for a different spell."

The witch held out her other hand, and the golden dagger rematerialized above it. Now, in the calm after the chaos, it was clearly visible- a knife about a foot in length, with a hilt of unidentifiable obsidian material and a blade of golden metal which Moon could not hope to identify. In the pommel, however, and in veins running down the length of the weapon, glowed the largest and purest specimen of magmatyte the noble had ever seen.

"Pain in the ass making this thing and I can't touch it without burning my own hand, but it's handy for all that sort of hullabaloo." Imogen waved towards the smoking ritual site, unconcerned, and then dismissed the dagger once again.

To Moon's last question, the ork grinned, and gestured towards the cart- she would help walk him over herself, if need be. "I've got to take that back to town anyway, I've got some blankets you can nap on in the back."

~~~

When at last Moon was squared away, Imogen removed the blinders from the horse and unhooked the wagon from the stump she'd bound it to, saddling the beast back up. Before she started back to town, however, and true to her word, she positioned herself in front of Jae-Song and folded her hands together, closing her eyes.

"The purpose of the spell," she explained, eyes still closed, "Is... this."

The witch reached forward into the empty air and pulled it open. The transparent nothing faded into finely-painted maple as she pulled it open, revealing the empty expanse of wooden wardrobe beyond, hanging in the air.

Imogen opened her eyes and grinned, letting loose a little "whoop!"

[Moon Jae-Seong]

TIMESTAMP: -
NOTES: -

- - -

- - -

Jae-Seong himself was just barely standing, but he was somewhat of a stubborn man and did not want to sit down until he'd be able to do so for more than just a few moments.

He was interested in seeing what demonstration the witch had proposed of what exactly her newly completed rite had accomplished, but first thing Imogen went to do was bring out the dagger she'd utilized to cover their escape. From looking at it, he wasn't sure about any of the materials aside from the dragonshard which served as a pommel– magmatyte.

Immediately upon its manifestation, too, could one feel heat radiating off of it, so he was entirely unsurprised to hear that physically wielding the thing was a dangerous game in and of itself. At least, because Imogen was a Reaver, she had methods by which she could utilize it without necessarily subjecting her flesh to the superheated metal. Maybe there would be ways for Traversion to help in that endeavor as well? He couldn't say much on that end, though, what with not knowing the finer mechanics of the latter rune himself.

The notion that Imogen had crafted the dagger herself was an interesting one, as he imagined that it would take specialized tools and the like to have succeeded in that endeavor. And then there was the curiosity about exactly where it was she procured the dragonshard itself– but he'd wait to ask about that until they were no longer standing out in the middle of this field. Because, frankly, if the swordsman continued on insisting to stand for too much longer he may as well end up falling over.

So instead, he would nod to the last thing she said and when she herself appeared ready to leave, the two of them would make their way over to the horse-and-cart which had the fascinating experience of bearing witness to this. It crossed Jae-Seong's mind briefly if anything else had passed by to see what they were doing, too, and then he wondered what would've crossed their minds if that were the case.

- - -

With the patrician propped up well enough in the back of the cart, which without the wardrobe had a reasonable amount of space, Imogen chose now to show him the purpose of what they had just endeavored to accomplish.

At first, he was confused– she reached forward and opened a pocket of space to reveal the aforementioned armoire's interior, just as empty as before. He squinted, thinking for a second, before he fully realized that nothing else was going to happen.

“Is it…something of…extra storage? That, I assume from all of…that…you can access from anywhere?” He sounded a bit bewildered at the notion that all of their effort was to accomplish something that, when said aloud, sounded so perfectly mundane.

Bewildered, maybe, but not quite bothered.

And later on their journey, Jae-Seong would go from being asleep to asking questions about exactly how Imogen made her dagger, fascinating as that was.

- - -

"Synskrit"

"Common"

"Inandoth"

[Imogen]

Review

Jae

Points: 10xp, may be used for elementalism.

Injuries/Ailments: All pooped out

Loot: A good time which was had by all!

Notes: Good thinking with the ice platform. Very nice approach to a sudden problem.

~~~~~

Imogen

Points: 10xp, may be used for Traversion.

Injuries/Ailments: Meh, nothing worth talking about.

Loot: Lost... an antique wardrobe, I guess? Sort of?

Notes: I like to make lil rhymes, what can I say?