An attempt to thwart Arachne’s Haunt(Thomas)

Date: 2025-09-07 15:24

(An attempt to thwart Arachne’s Haunt(Thomas):Thomas)

[Sun Sep 7 2025]

In the city sewers
The air inside this underground vault is cool and dry, with a stillness that feels deeper than silence. Stone walls are lined with narrow wooden shelves, each one crowded with skulls – human and otherwise – every cranium inscribed with curling runes or marked with brands that seem to darken rather than burn. Some are mounted on brass stands, others rest directly on velvet-lined niches, and a few are bound with iron bands as if to keep something in. A faint metallic scent lingers in the air, like blood and old coins, mingled with dust and candle wax. Hanging from the ceiling is a pair of iron manacles, dropped down in the center of a ritual circle etched into the floor.

In this underground space, poured concrete walls seem to loom, oppressive. The air is cool and dry, filtered through unseen vents, and the heavy door to the south is like a bank vault door, full of heavy gears to lock away the world.

It is about 65F(18C) degrees. The mist is heaviest At Mayflower and Sycamore/span>/spanExhaling, Thomas says — “Thank you, Matias. That is exactly what I needed.” He reaches out a hand to Seraphina. “Come here?” he asks, as swirling magical smoke surrounds the trio. “I need your help, Miss Hawke, to banish this magic.”

Matias is freed and almost immediately despite his blinded senses and pained state begins to generate his own smoke and suddenly the human professor is a feline and slipping away with its smokey fur attempting to hide in the room, waiting for the vault door to open… Tiny cat coughs coming as it is still expelling the violating spiced smokes.

“Can we at least go up to the kitchen so I don’t have to help you with your magic in my underwear?” Seraphina asks, voice raspy from the smoke that had been assualting Matias(feline catus) when they were not in the shape of a cat. She does not look to be happy at whatever this outcome is. She starts toward the door to the vault, seeking to open it, unless she is ultimately stopped at possibly letting Matias(feline catus) go. “Furthermore, how am I meant to help?”

Matias(feline catus) lurks in the shadows near the walls, the sightless, ever watching skulls might be able to track the feline but perhaps the humans are more occupied with the counter to the magic at work in the Ivory Quarter to care where the Professor went or try and pick the feline out from the shadows natural to the vault.

“You’re my assistant,” Thomas points out to Seraphina. “I need your help to assist. Can you pick Matias up and bring him over here?” he says, looking around and not seeing him. “It’s best you both stay inside the ritual circle,” he explains, stepping into the center. “Besides: I need you. I need your eyes, for a moment, all the better if you are holding the cat.” A pause. “Please, Miss Hawke: this will be soon over, I promise.”

Matias(feline catus) hackles raise defensively as Thomas mentions its presence and it darts to the far side of the room from both Seraphina and Thomas

Seraphina gives a little snort of discontent at Thomas, but then all that fades, and she -assists-, despite that her role as assistant likely does not include this. She begins to approach Matias(feline catus), “Its okay..” she tells it, telling it, “Staaaaaaaaay….” This is surely going to end with her having a few cat scratches along all the skin that is revealed.

Despite being a cat Matias(feline catus) is not a small cat, he is a big boi at nearly twenty-five pounds and large for a maine coon. Even with a felines reflexes and several minutes of darting this way and that Seraphina is able to apprehend the cat which ferally begins to thrash and claw, drawing blood almost immediately as it yowls angrily with little human regard for the situation and a clear need to flee!

The raven-haired woman atain requests that Matias(feline catus) stay yet once more, as Seraphina makes for her approach, first, slowly, but as it continues to dart, her speed picks up. She is light and quick on her feet in some strange chase in a basement full of eyeless skulls staring at the calamity.

Emerald eyes dart in the smokey room, seeing Seraphina’s blood run red as Matias(feline catus) scratches her. “Perhaps there’s a price you’ll pay for that,” he says, but swiftly he turns to focus on the magic, beginning to chant again: making sure, now, to keep the smoke under control. Perhaps his mastery of it requires some concentration. “Come here,” he says, a little urgency in his voice.

There are numerous hisses from Seraphina, even as Matias(feline catus) hisses at her, and digs its tiny, sharp claws into her skin. “Stop it!” She holds Matias(feline catus) just a little tighter, not looking much like she is enjoying getting torn up by such a pretty little kitty. She holds onto Matias(feline catus) just a little tighter to try to contain its fluffy wrath. And then tries to pet it, for Gods sake, as she sits down in the middle of the ritual circle. “You know, this was not in the job description,” she tells Thomas.

Matias(feline catus) is still held by Seraphina and with no way to escape as she is certainly stronger than it. Eventually after shedding like a whole small cat worth of fur and dander in the ritual chamber the huffy cat seethes with a low *gggrrrrrroooowl* as it curls in on itself and fucking bites Seraphina on the forearm sinking its tiny kitty fangs into her arm and then just holding it there in some kind of protest but at least it is no longer trying to flee.

One Seraphina and Matias(feline catus) are inside the circle, Thomas turns to them — reaching out. He puts one palm on Seraphina’s forehead and the other on the cat’s head. “This is for the Quarter,” he explains to Seraphina, but then there is a surge of power, as he channels the swirling smoke into a kind of funnel cloud around them. His emerald eyes close, and he reaches out through the physical link with woman and cat to try to touch their memories.

One pet from Seraphina becomes a little more like a bop on the top of its head when Matias(feline catus) bites her and sinks its teeth into her skin. Her skin is tougher than it likely expected, but it does give.

Immediately, both Seraphina and Matias(feline catus)’s minds rocket back to memories — the smells of the perfumery, the sights of it. The feeling of being there, of wearing its perfumes and its colognes. The memory of smell banishes the strange, spiced scent of the magical smoke.

It is either the bop, the soothing aura, or the use of Matias(feline catus)’s memories to focus the spell which eventually leads to the jaw releasing Seraphina’s forearm and the cat kind of trancing out with a gurgly purring sound.

The scent of censor smoke, is replaced by the spiciness of the perfume that was bought. It surrounds both Seraphina and Matias(feline catus), filling Thomas’s nostrils. It is of myrrh, and amber, with a floral note of violet leaf, heliotrope and plum in the background. There is a feeling along with it, potency and importance. Remembrance. As it clings and lingers.

Thomas slips back into chanting — drawing energy, now, from the memories in Seraphina and Matias(feline catus)’s mind. The smoke seems to curl, now, beginning to form strange patterns — like arcane sigils, the form of them glimpsed briefly before they form and reform into some other strange arc. The sorcerer’s magic is starting to reach a crescendo, as it seems as if all the skulls in the room are whispering now in unearthly chorus with his spell. Whatever is about to happen — is about to happen.

Matias(feline catus) exhausted, captured, and still seething grouchily just remains held by Seraphina, its big bushy tail flicking every so often in warning.

“What exactly are you trying to do?” Seraphina asks Thomas, as the heavy scent of the perfume that was bought for her by Matias(feline catus) when not a cat, mind, fills the small space cloyingly. In her, it seems to evoke who she is. The woman equally sweet with a hint of mystery and spice. And whom she wants to be. Remembered, a whisper on someone’s lips. Certainly not cloying, though the air is heavy and still, so that it lingers there and settles into the skin and mind.

And then — then Thomas’s chant, the skulls’ chant — ends. The smoke dissipates with a low boom, as if the scent of it flees the vault, blowing at candles and sending scraps of paper flying into the air. It ruffles Seraphina’s hair, Matias(feline catus)’s fur, and then it is arcing out from the vault beneath the brownstone, winding its way throughout the Ivory Quarter to banish every trace of the perfumery’s enchantment. As Thomas’s hands lower, breathing out, he turns to Seraphina. “I am — I was — sending the smell of this smoke to banish Arachne’s enchantment,” he says, tired. “It is done.” A long beat, as he looks first at Seraphina and then Matias(feline catus). “I couldn’t have done it without your minds and memories as guides.”