Axle’s Saturday afternoon odd encounter(Seraphina)
Date: 2026-05-02 12:25
(Axle’s Saturday afternoon odd encounter(Seraphina):Seraphina)
[Sat May 2 2026]
In Maritime Canvas Factory/span
It is about 55F(12C) degrees. The mist is heaviest At Thornberry and Franklin/span
(Your target discovers a mirror that shows glimpses of possible futures – but a desperate spirit trapped within the glass is manipulating the visions to trick someone into breaking the mirror and freeing it, regardless of the consequences.)
Axle is crouched over a pile of corpses, the factory enshrouded in the mist turned into a shelter and, apparently, a place for claiming the spoils of the mist’s denizens from the looks of the monster parts lying around.
Someone must have taken a wrong turn in Albuquerque while wholly engrossed with some new trinket in her hand. She ended up evidently wandering right into the mist because she’s so mesmerized by whatever it is she has in her hand. Though, that mesmerizification only lasts so long when the first of a few creatures catch her scent. Good thing she has her trainers on. She’s clearly ducked into the nearest building to escape, only to nearly trample right into Axle, and his pile of corpses. It is only by (possible) sheer luck that she has avoided landing face first into a mound of gore.
Looking up from the kobold he’d just reached into, Axle flashes Seraphina a grin, reaching up a free hand for support if needed. “Oh. Hey there Sera. Been a minute.” With a jerk, he removes an organ, tucking it away. “Mist strolling? Bit cold for my liking, but its still a good foggy day out there.” Standing, he surveys the group of corpses. Then, catching sight of Seraphina’s trinket, he leans forward. “Whats that? Looks pretty fancy.”
The trinket is perhaps a little like her ‘precious’ and Seraphina, like Gollum first tries to hoard the item and stowe it away from Axle’s curious gaze. But, being who she is, the curious gaze has her putting it more into the open. It was the curiousness, in fact, that drew her to it anyway. Moths and flames. “Ah… someone dropped their compact mirror.” It is a fanciful thing. Gold, gleaming, with an ornate Oroboros design on the top, with a little green gemstone for the single eye of the snake whose scales seem to shimmer and move. Enchanted, surely.
“As for being in the mist…” Seraphina says to Axle, snorting softly as she first tries to close the compact, but opens it up again to peer at the mirror. “I suppose I was just a little more than intrigued with this… As a Librarian at Endless, I run across a plethora of things that are magic, so I was trying to figure out what this did. Make me look prettier than I am? Surely something.” She isn’t saying immediately, but it is clear that the glass has fogged up much like the mist that rises outside.
“Any clue who it belonged to?” Axle asks, examining the ouroboros. “Looks like one of those old, magic things that some arcanist would carry around.” He puts his fingertips together, making a circle. “Snake eating its tail, demonic magic or some shit, right?” He looks to Seraphina, apparently deciding she’s the resident expert on the matter. “Does it at least work like a mirror? All those magic things work like something not themselves. Its weird. Never like them.” He rubs his arms, his jacket hiding anything he might be trying to dispel. “Gives me the shivers.” He leans in again, inspecting the mirror’s fogged glass alongside Seraphina. “Almost looks like the mist.” He observes, reaching forward at first, then snapping his hand back, as if remembering something. “Nope. I’m not touching that thing. That’s for you magic types. Anyhow, does it? Make you prettier or what have you?”
“I don’t know that I would call myself a ‘magic type’,” Seraphina says to Axle with some amusement trickling into her soft features. “I don’t use it myself, I just tend to find myself smack dab in the middle of it all due to Thomas. Well, and my line of work. The Endless Library is a leading place to host some of the oldest relics as well as the books that talk about them, afterall.” She says, sympathetically to Axle, “Though I do understand your hesitancy with these things. The last time I dealt with a mirror, it was enchanted by a Fae to capture the soul of a man who had agreed to let the Fae use his body in exchange for ….” She furrows her brow and snaps her fingers. “I’ve forgotten now, what. I think he was offered longevity and the power to become whomever he wanted.” She nods thoughtfully. “Anyway, turns out — he got these, sort of, because the Fae stole his body and trapped his soul in the mirror. Forever. He had no body to go back to, so he got to live like that for decades, watching others, sort of … in a way … becoming them, when they used it.” She stops rambling, looking into the misty glass, twisting her lips.
“It doesn’t make me look any prettier. Maybe in that respect it’s demonic. But the snake eating its tail is not really demonic, its more about life being cyclical and speaks of death and rebirth and renewal. It’s … good.” Seraphina suggests to Axle, even as something begins to form in the misty pane of a compact mirror.
Taking a long step back after that, Axle eyes the mirror a bit more suspiciously. “Think that’s what this one does?” He asks, shifting his weight. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not interested in giving away my body to some dumbass who got himself stuck in a mirror for a bad deal.” He rubs his beard. “Do mirrors usually have something, specific they’ll likely do? Like stealing your soul out of your body or something? Might help to know what it could do if it happens to be magical.” By the doubt evident in his expression, its fairly plain that the hope of the mirror not being magical is being actively crushed for Axle. And that is only confirmed when he catches the thing forming in the glass out of the corner of his eye. “Ah shit. So your saying this could be some rebirthing magic thing? Not sure if that’s any better than the soul snatching.”
“I let the man take over my body so that he could be free,” Seraphina tells Axle, of her own experience with the previous mirror. “He was just a sad soul looking to have a little human connection. It’d been something like fifty years…” There is a soft sigh. “Unfortunately for him, Buck decided to clock me one and tied me to the bed for the entire evening. He had no body to jump to, and no ritual to send him back to the mirror. He simply… Vanished.” She mention to Axle, “I think that is the biggest fear that spirits have. Those who have enough of their memories intact to be conscience. Vanishing. Being forgotten…” She nips on her bottom lip and peers back to the mirror. “Its possible that it is another instance of a trapped spirit. But unless they were a fortune teller in life, then its probably something different.” She displays the mirror image to the tall man. It is not reflecting his face. instead it is like a movie reel. Where the angel and the giant stand in the middle of the warehouse with a stack of slowly rotting corpses lie. The two appear to be in conversation before, somehow, one of the mist creatures make their way indoors. Did the sometimes ditzy, pretty thing forget to close a door?
“Well, that’s something…” Axle mutters, turning slowly to scan for the creature in the mirror. “Lets hope it really is something not so angry. I’d really not appreciate… well, seeing that.” He motions to the mirror. “Hope it doesn’t start…” He trails off, glancing between mirror and room, then to the door.
There’s nothing at the moment coming through the door, but the mirror is running a course of scenarios. The first has Seraphina and Axle conquering the grotesquerie that has infiltrated Axle’s hiding hole, the second has the two of them going down and later dragged by the creature. It even goes so far as to reveal what the mist creature does to them, Axle first. The rumors, it seems, are true, about creature impregnation. It is not a sexy scene. The thing has opened Axle’s mouth to implant him with a series of eggs that are expelled through a long vine-like tentacle that is shoved mercilessly down his throat. The eggs, if one looks close enough into the mirror, can be seen going down his gullet one by one by the extension of the muscles of his neck. This has the angelborn looking away now, peering where the man does. “Well…” she says, tugging a large sword out of the big duffel that she always carries. “Lets hope that it is not the latter, hm?”
“Yeah. Fuck I’d rather avoid that.” Axle mutters, shouldering his own weapon, the axe settling into place with his hand around the grip, whilst he lifts his shotgun with the other hand. “Do you think its… showing possible futures or something?” He asks, stepping to stand beside Seraphina in a semi-defensible position. “or, changing the future so something happens that wouldn’t?” He shrugs. “I’m not even sure if magic can do that, can it?”
“It probably the former, rather than the latter, but never think that magic -can’t- do something, Axle,” Seraphina warns. “Have you ever seen the movie Ocular? That’s more revealing a lot of what happened in the past through a different lens, but also the future. Is it showing or changing? Aren’t the two similar enough, because if you see it, you can change it!” And then, the creature is there, advancing, its tentacles waving menacingly as its plant-like body creeps along the misty floor, partially hidden. The angel isn’t going to wait for the thing to get close. The sword is slung, and her bow comes out, readying herself three arrows along the taut string. “I don’t know, some people would say that despite what it shows, the thing is evil and should be destroyed. It’s part of the Library’s duty to keep these things safe!” Speaking of safe, after waiting for almost a bit too long with her explanations to Axle, she finally releases the tension on her bow string.
“Ah hell.” Axle grumbles, leveling his shotgun and emptying a shell at the creature, racking the weapon and slotting in another in the same fluid motion. “I’d say it needs destroying, specially if it does ‘that’.” He gestures with the gun to the plant thing advancing on them. “Couldn’t it be some handy thing that doesn’t put you in a life threatening spot? How do you arcane people deal with this shit anyhow?” He starts to line up his second shot with the thing, settling himself to fire. “I always hated these things. Too damn unpredictable. Now I’m thinking it wasn’t wrong to.”