Seraphina’s Friday afternoon odd encounter(Seraphina)
Date: 2025-06-27 15:56
(Seraphina’s Friday afternoon odd encounter(Seraphina):Seraphina)
[Fri Jun 27 2025]
In empty shop
It is about 60F(15C) degrees. The mist is heaviest At King and Lake/span>/span(Your target discovers a mundane-looking object that turns out to be a minor magical artifact. Unfortunately, it’s also a beacon that attracts lesser supernatural predators – things that feed on magical energy. They must decide whether to keep it, destroy it, or find someone who can properly contain it before they’re overwhelmed.)
Cadalie sifts through broken marionettes just below the precipice of the Refectory overhead- darkwood crumbled from a big’ol hole.
Cadalie lets a pulse of light run from shoulder to wrist and spread in a ring to the area around her, highlighting new blood and ancient dust in the crude basement.
As Cadalie sifts through the broken marionettes, there is one singular doll that appears to be mostly intact. It is a stunning piece, really, despite that its features are worn and dirty. The suit is faded, but is comprised of satin and lace, the lace browned by time, and the satin dulled, however the eyes are the striking part. They appear to glow once Cadalie touches the piece.
Cadalie draws her pistol, aiming from the waist like a carriage robbery upon the little thang. “Glow a little more honey. I dare ya. I see life in your eyes and I’m puttin’ it out.”
The marionette’s eyes merely glisten blue as Cadalie’s eyes, like they are a reflection of the womans own. The face looks sad. In fact, there is a teardrop, with a gemstone center that appears to twinkle, too, like water. If one looks even closer, there appears to be real tears at the corners of the crystalline eyes. There is nothing -too- ominous to speak of, if one does not count the tearful expression. It is possibly only condensation from a musty, dark basement, gathering upon an old doll. Until, perhaps, there comes a whisper on the otherwise still air: “Help me.” The mouth has not moved, however. And the eyes, they do not blink.
Like ichor, the darkness creeps deeper into the basement, despite the light that comes from within Cadalie, a light that struggles to not dim from within a woman scarred from life.
“Elaborate.”
It is a demand, make no mistake. The kindness, the quiet nursing pop of her vocal chords purely diplomatic as they’re arranged at the end of a revolver. Cadalie rises to straighten, back arched like a military officer as her eyes flit to shadows. “Be you psychic degree, poor thang? If so, make your words count for only with my eyes can I see you. If not, beg with enough voice to convince me to.”
Cadalie meant psychic debris*, aheha-ahem.
Don’t they? Magic, especially here, in New Haven, sometimes has no rhyme. Curses come in all shapes and sizes. This one may just be in the shape of a tiny marionette, a sad faced harlequin doll with tangled strings meant for puppeteering. Cadalie is able to see an aura about this special little doll, dimmed by time and misuse. “Help …” Cadalie may notice that shapes begin to form within the shadows that her light cannot touch, that sound, is the sound of something corporeal, shaped from shadow and slowly made to be physical.
Pausing, the ambiance of traffic outside diminishing to the rush of blood through Cadalie’s head, a pang of pain. Her heart might go out to the soul, perhaps it does. But deep within The Pontifex, at her very core is apathy. Therefore, she should act with apathetic means, right?
She holsters the gun into the leather and paces over to the doll, channeling antimagic with somatic shapes of her fingers into herself. With her other hand, she embraces the doll and holds it to her breast. “To give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
There is a lament in Cadalie’s voice as she quickly makes for the Home Depot ladder to bring the doll out to see the afternoon, eyes downcast from the shadows.
The scurry of creatures, cockroaches by first glance, both big and small, begin to coalesce themselves into a shape. Humanoid. It speaks to Cadalie, “I see you’ve found what is mine.” When it speaks, cockroaches slither from its dark maw, even as it continues to shift its form and become less bug and more human. This supernatural being stands there in the basement, its monologue cut short when Cadalie grabs for the doll, brings it to her breast, and makes a run for it. How rude! Not trapped to shadows, however, the beinb begins to follow, roach after roach falling from it as it steps.
Meanwhile… The strings of the marionette begin to tangle about Cadalie’s wrists, in an act to bind itself to her. They do not cut into her flesh. They creep along the wrist and up the arms as if they were her veins. “She likes you. Pity that. I was so hoping that it wouldn’t come to this.” The being continues to stalk, some roaches dispersing from its form as it slowly shifts once more into hundreds of quickly scurrying roaches. “You see, I should not care as I’ve had years of her servitude and she has grown stubborn. But I am not ready, yet, to let her go.”
Cadalie curls her finger and moves her wrist in an elliptical motion. An enchantment to something overhead connects and is called, she looks over her shoulder at the voice and promptly does a double takes.
Cadalie’s foot spins and her gauntlet begins to pulse bright blue with a flash that sustains- she levels it towards the creature, and promptly- a big ol’ burst of blue detonates in front of its face. Technically the detonation is entirely psychic, but oh well. With her feet stuck in by cords, she fights them demonically and well.. “SISTER ANNA!”
And then, to the upstairs aid above, she chucks the babydoll up through the hole.
The flash of blue light in the face of a creature not yet fully shapeshifted does bring it to a stop, and the cockroaches, as cockroaches cockroach scurry away from the light into shadows. But they are also not gone. Poor Cadalie, however, has forgotten that the strings of the marionette are wrapped around her and when she tosses the doll with her inhuman strength, she is also lurched toward the hole. There is distraction, at least from the supernatural entity now stalking her. Giving Cadalie enough time to try to summon up her minion. But will it be in enough time to stop whatever is happening? If there was to be any more monologuing from the beast about to strike, its stopped because the parts that make it whole are in hiding. However…
Do Cadalie’s wrists feel stiffer?
It’s hard to forget things rapping around your ankles, but of all the problems that face her a wrestle is the least of concern. They strain against the flash of blue as they contract about her defenses, the force-shield bulging around the tethers like an hour-glass. “I am the builder of bridges of New Haven, the authority and you are within my Church.” Cadalie hisses, glancing down to her wrists? Arthritis, perhaps? “You are within the premises of the Hollow Conclave. Flee, or I will feed you to my patrons.”
Cadalie meant ‘wrapping,’ but if they’re spitting some bars that’s cool too.
It could very well feel, with the strings of a marionette now wrapping about Cadalie, that with the toss, Cadalie is being dragged back into Hell. As Cadalie’s wrists feel stiffer, the doll starts feeling heavier. Lifelike, so. When her force shield strains one string, it breaks and cuts into her flesh, painfully so, deeply that her own crimson begins to well and drip to the floor. Then the being speaks again, the swarm creating the visage of person without quite being one yet, “Then you should not take what is mine. But, you make a fine consolation prize for me. She has listened far too long, and do you feel it? Do you hear it?” It is no longer ‘help me,’ whispered, but a chant. Fire. Yes. Fire may very well stave this curse.
The furry of footsteps overhead and the screech of a very pissed off Eagle cast new shadows down below as Cadalie is forced to a knee- her ankle showing a dark red line across the ankle as a tether catches and digs. As darkness begins to settle around the light pulsing from her gauntlet, it’s the perfect moment for the cockroaches to pounce.
But who cast those shadows?
It’s well into the afternoon for the Conclave, which means that the nuns and priests living in this Convent grin like skulls from a day of fun corruption and torture. With Devil May Care attitude, earned thusly from the agony of others, a few sprites of Hellish flame flow down. A Golden Eagle’s here too, though he’s really just quite angry and not entirely helpful to the cockroaches. Arms leaden and heavy, she shoves the doll into a minion of flame on whim.
It is not a good day for a being who swarm shifts into cockroaches, when there is a bird in the room. The bugs skitter toward one place, which, also doesn’t exactly bode well. When flesh begins to form, it is pecked from an Eagle beak. The open and bleeding sore at Cadalie’s ankle allows the string to start wending its way -inside-, becoming a vein. That is until the doll is thrown into the arms of a fiery minion. There is a sheer scream, as the wood ignites. There is a smell of burning blood and burning hair. Burning flesh. When the screaming ends, the strings fall aimless around Cadalie. There is no rhyme, nor reason, most often, when it comes to magic, and sometimes the most powerful curses can be dispelled with so little. Ashes fall from the minions grasp, and all that remains of the marionette now are its eyes, which, have now turned to real eyeballs, torn from sockets, their blues pointed up at Cadalie.
With the tremor in Cadalie’s/span>/spanThe being continues to try to turn back into its human counterpart, each cockroach killed is another part of him that is no longer. It is, on hope and a prayer, enough time for Cadalie to run, to hobble, perhaps, given the slice of her ankle pouring blood into the ash that was some poor lost, hollow, soul. But time does waste as the man’s form becomes more, if not bloodied, corporeal. “You will replace her, I will -find- you. Mark my words!” The being takes a step forward, now finding itself wrastling with a fiery minion, that has taken to give it a heated hug.
Cadalie claps her hands, and it might be just as bloody as it sounds. With a limp actively regenerating, becoming more healthy, she stumbles towards the ladder and doesn’t bother to return a one liner. She’s no Fae, and will let fate tempt itself well enough without her. She throws, or crawls depending on the strength remaining in her, back up to the ground level of Saint Bartholomew’s Convent.