Encounterlogs
Ashs Odd Encounter Sr Korina 241003
In a tale woven with the grim threads of danger and the intuitive prowess of a werewolf, Sienna emerges from a haze of lethargy to heed the call of a fellow sorority sister, Mary. Known for visions that straddle the edge of reality, Mary's troubled projection of Abby, another sorority sister, slumped and bloodied in the cloak of Warden's Wood, summons Sienna from her disarray. The distressing sight, painted in the vivid strokes of Mary's premonition, propels Sienna into action, her innate abilities as a werewolf beckoning her to unravel the mystery laid before her. Abby's plight, marked by an eerie trail of blood and the subtle scents of perfume mixed with impending doom, draws Sienna into the depths of the forest. Her keen senses, honed by her lycanthropic nature, guide her through the shadowed embrace of the woods, the promise of blood and violence echoing with every step.
As Sienna traces the vestiges of Abby's ordeal, the forest seems to breathe with a malevolent air, its branches snagging at her as though warning her of the grim tableau she is about to uncover. The sight that greets her—a ghostly figure of Abby, the pallor of her nightgown marred by the crimson of her lifeblood, bearing the unmistakable marks of a vampire's embrace—illustrates a cruel narrative of predation. Abby's feeble whisper, etched with the pain of her encounter, offers only a fragment of her tale, leaving the specter of her attacker lurking unseen. With Abby cradled carefully in her arms, Sienna becomes a beacon of both sanctuary and vengeance, her senses alert to the hidden dangers as she navigates the perilous return. The woods, a silent witness to the atrocities within its bounds, stand as a somber backdrop to Sienna's resolve, her steps a silent vow to unearth the darkness that festers beneath its serene veneer.
(Sienna's odd encounter(SRKorina):SRKorina)
[Wed Oct 2 2024]
On Suncrest Lane
Shrouded by boughs overhead and sticking out like civilization itself marked a patch of road in defiance of the forest itself, this route appears utterly mundane in its construction. Little effort seems to have gone in making this area little more than something functional for the occasional car or passerby on foot. At the very least, it is utilitarian in that it does seem to be keeping the encroaching woods at bay, at least for now.
It is morning, about 54F(12C) degrees, and the sky is covered by dark grey stormclouds.
Sienna slips off the hood of the BMW parked along side of the road, quickly unleashing a pair of small surveillance drones to the air as Ash and Isaiah finally come into her line of sight. "Alright, I've been doing my best to pull what I can off the triple-six," she launches straight into business. "We know that there's four points that are anchoring all the magic being channeled to disrupt the electronics and the communications networks, so we just need to find them and go. My first thought was the gate locations since, like, that's usually an easy catalyst for a lot of firepower to fuel these things."
Ash nods to Sienna, looking uncomfortable, but ready. They've come prepared with... food? Meat? For whatever reason, they've decided that these are the most necessary tools for this. A hand strokes their stallion as they nod, drawling, "Alright, then... which first? We just came from the Wild. Though... I feel like the Faegate - I mean, the Other... should be last."
Isaiah glances to Sienna and then Ash as the trio conjoin into one solid mass of Forged Fortune payroll, her eyes ticking northeast towards Camp White Oak before drawing slowly back to the pair she had merged with. "Four points just outside of town," she says, agreeing with Sienna and continuing with, "Four Gates... And shit like this is /always/ Gate magic. I'd say it's pretty on-brand," says the redhead, who shoves her eyes just down the way towards the closet Gate: the Other, here on Suncrest. "We may as well start here; let's investigate and see if this is a situation for brute force or delicacy." She pauses, then gives Ash a few elbow bumps, saying, "Fae Gate first- it's closest. Let's look around. Probably fucking Hell last- it's all the way on Black Ash Lane."
Ash shrugs, as Isaiah doesn't take their advice. "Alright. Let's go."
The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and the Hell gate is definitely not as inconvenient to reach as the Wilds gate is, all the way down south. Nothing jumps out of the trees to lunge at Ash's offering of meat... yet, and the group finds themselves near the cluster of gold-flecked trees near Suncrest Lane leading into the Other.
"I'm not sure that my drones will be safe for long, so I'm going to go ahead and send them to recon the Godrealm gates since I already have the coordinates still locked in from when I had to come out and stop the cleanse, and give us a bird's eye of what we're walking into," Sienna reaches down to grab her backpack off the dusty roadside, smacking it clean before feeding her arms through the straps. It settles heavily against her petite frame, booted feet delicately picking a way through the grass as she leads the way ahead of Isaiah and Ash, her head angled down to look at her screen as she looks at the coordinates.
Ash nods to Sienna, picking their way along with bare feet, breathing in deeply and looking invigorated as they approach the gate. They cast their eyes about, reluctant, but no less attentive to their surroundings... they don't have a habit of doing anything half-assed. When they spot the symbols, they step forward with narrowed greenish eyes.
"It's not far, a few paces," Isaiah assures Sienna, casting a wary gaze upon Ash afterwards, her tongue darting out to drag slowly over her lips, keeping them moist- and then deciding better of it. A bad habit, that. She instead pulls out a tube of Mango Carmex and gives it a faint squeeze, lightly applying the fruity grease to her puckered mouth and then smacking her lips together. "You can see it from here- there. See how they're all growing together like a Celtic knot or something?" she decribes, gesturing towards a grouping of trees that have grown together in some kind of archway.
Sienna tilts her head to the side, green eyes drifting over toward Ash and Isaiah briefly before she nods once. "Alright. Do you see anything, Ash? JR?"
Sienna's drones seem to be functioning, so far, perhaps thanks to them being far out in the forest, and the drones take off into the air. It'll be a bit until they reach the Godrealm gate from here, all the way to the northeast, but they've got plenty to occupy themselves with over here in the meantime, assuredly.
The trees /do/ form an archway, but whatever gate magic is taking place here, it's on this side of the gate instead of the other.
Ash blinks, looking up at them both before drawling, "Yes? These symbols here, on the trees, on the bark." They are studying them as they talk, trying to see what they can learn of their meaning and use with their knowledge.
Ash hums as they read them, drawling out loud, "Binding."
Sienna palms out her phone, quickly shifting until the symbols line up to take a picture of the intricate rune of binding, cataloging it with a snap of a photo. "Alright," she exhales, chewing lightly at the corner of her bottom lip. The device is dropped back into a pocket, green eyes skimming over the area at length as she circles around. Taking out a knife, she tosses it back and forth in her small hands, "We can just disturb the rune, right?"
"I don't see anything but the Gate," Isaiah tells Sienna as she takes it upon herself to head off the group, being the sturdiest of those gathered; if something lashes out, she's the least likely to die in just one strike. The young Wolf squats down there by that amalgamation os symbols then, assessing it, then pulling out a knife and glancing over her shoulder at Ash and Sienna. "I could shave it off, if nothing else," the overeager thing offers to her companions, then sucks on her teeth for a time before adding, "You think destroying one disables them all? Doubtful, but, if it does, that'd be rad. Easiest counterspell of my life," she decides. She doesn't take the knife to the run yet, however. This is a team effort, and she's waiting to hear what the others have to say.
Then Sienna confirms her suspicions, but she still waits for Ash's input.
Ash sighs, drawling, "We don't know what's being bound, or if it's just part of the puzzle of the other gates, but if I had to guess...." And they don't guess, checking their book of Occult Knowledge instead.
"That's why I'm sending drones to the other gates," Sienna reminds Ash quietly, reaching back to draw out her phone, thumbing past the lock screen to check the progress of her drones. The coordinates for the second one is updated, sending the second one, because they were pairs, toward the Hellgates. "Okay, they'll cover both the hell and Other. I'm watching the feeds."
Sienna says "Oh, sorry, I meant the Godrealm."
Ash nods to the other two, drawling, "I think we need to disrupt all four. There's more involved, most likely, but this should be an empowered binding - by breaking the chains of binding, what it contains shall be let loose."
"Then we fuck it up," Isaiah decides, rearing that knife back a bit and preparing to start whittling away at that runic mark on the tree unless Ash or Sienna stay her hand. Her intention is to peel the rune right off with a few scrapes of the blade, scouring the bark and the wood if necessary, in order to leave no trace behind. "God Realms next," she adds on as the point of their next location. "We'll send the drone that's observing that Gate down to the Wilds, and then move to Hell, before finally stopping on Forest Ridge Road for the last Gate."
"We're definitely going to have one hell of a day today," Sienna idly reports toward Ash and Isaiah, turning her phone around to showcase the drone cam's footage on its way to the Goldrealm gate, only halfway there, as the live feed begins to glitch. "It looks like there's different conditions for each of the runes, more likely, so we Ash's probably right about needing to disrupt all of them to completely restore everything to how it should be." She does nothing to stop Isaiah, but takes a cautionary several steps back while she screenshots everything on her phone.
Ash nods to Isaiah, before noting, "Mmm, and a monster, too. I wonder if I'll get to stretch my tentacles today...." They seem easily distracted at the moment, as if their mind is anywhere but here.
"... Ash, come look at this for me?" Isaiah asks of Ash, staying the swing of her knife as something unsettles her, causing her to swallow hard. "I think it's protected... Of course it is. It couldn't be this easy- I almost blew myself away..." she assumes, though her hesitance suggests she isn't sure what sort of warding glyph she's dealing with here- only that she nearly caused herself injury if she had followed through with that swing of a scrape. "... You're better at this than I am," she murmurs, her voice almost too low to hear.
Ash blinks up at Sienna, asking, "What? I'm wearing clothes!" Well, not shoes, but are they ever? Isaiah distracts them, however, and they move in close kneeling, sniffing at the runes as their eyes - now golden brights as they try to see what threw the werewolf off.
Sienna tongues quietly at the interior of her cheek, jade eyes trained on her phone while she troubleshoots the failing drones, quickly rerouting the coordinates of the one bound for the Godrealm to auto-pilot back to the safety of the White Oak Institute. "I've got two of the four runes, hoping the one on its' way to hell can hold through but it's not looking pretty. Godrealm has a power rune, same as this one here, but I'm pretty sure they're forming a circuit, each gate utilized for a specific purpose."
Ash chuckles, standing up. "This takes a lot of energy... I wonder if maybe the *others* should be done first? Maybe safe this one for last? Or, at least, with proper gear." They are not smug, not smug at all. Nope. Not this Ashen one. They hold their head back, pondering, trying to envision what 'proper gear' might entail.
"Of course the God Realms and the Fae Other are the source runes," Isaiah mutters under her breath, knowing what she's researched of the spell, it should have been obvious that those two would be the trickiest to handle. "Could we split up? One of us go to Hell, the other go to the Wilds. We'll peel off those runes and Sienna can be here to handle this one once it's been de-weaponized," the titchy thing offers, dropping down to her ass in the dirt with a heavy, frustrated sigh dripping from her lips. "We can all reconnaissance at the God Realms gate- unless since it's Korina's doing, you think the God Realms will be easier. Because if so, we could save this one for last," she wonders, pondering the possibilities of each rune's power level and protection, if any.
Good luck and godspeed, drone #1, may you not glitch out and land in a tree on the way back.
Splitting up would certainly make it faster, but considering they've no means of communication with phones being very dead, they'd have to rely on just their own judgment instead of putting their heads together.
For now, the rune seems to be doing its thing, humming merrily on with the occasional pulse of magic making everything upon Sienna's screen glitch out.
"I'm fine with splitting up and hitting each of the gates if we need to," Sienna supposes toward Ash and Isaiah while she continues to squint, readjust the zoom of the screenshots, and squint some more. "Alright, so I'm studying the site at the Godrealm gates again. Sorry. It's etched in the tree just like here, but that one is a configured for power," she reiterates, ensuring her words are properly understood by the pair with an apologetic twist of her mouth. "Back up?" she suggests to the redhead now, while she digs around through her bag, pulling out a small plastic bag of mixed home goods, complete with an empty plastic bottle. "You said that if you disturbed it, it was going to blow you back, right? Do you think if we trigger that intentionally with a detonation, even small, it'd be enough to disrupt this side?"
Ash looks to Sienna, then at Isaiah, before looking up at the sky, thinking. Finally, they reach out, pulling at something in the air, rearranging, then *yanking*.
Ash nods, drawling, "On a whim - no, call it a hunch... the God Realms may be where we should start. Then Hells or the Wilds... no, Hell second, then the Wild. That said... do-" They stop, tilting their head at Sienna. "The Godsrealm is a rune for power?" They hold up a hand to Sienna at the sight of her suspicious baggie and even more suspiciously innocent empty plastic bottle.
"So long as the boom isn't big enough to fuck up the Gate, there's no harm in trying," Isaiah tells Sienna with a shrug, already taking a few steps back away from the Faeling and her mixed bag of what will ultimately become war crimes and war chemicals. "Go for it."
Ash gave themself good luck.
Explosives /are/ a girl's best friend. It is known. Though maybe the group should consider finding some nice, good cover if they're planning on blowing up a component of a magical ritual. Watching up close might be fun too, for a certain definition of fun.
Sienna is nothing if not a meticulous planner, leaning down onto a knee and quickly mixing product together to create a volatile mixture. "Can you guys go ahead and start going back toward the road?" she requests of Isaiah and Ash, quickly twisting together twine to form a quick impromptu fuse before she takes her zippo lighter, used mainly for those yummy new bad weed habits she formed because of Isaiah, and sets it alight. The bottle is nestled by the base of the tree, and she's quickly running for the road back where they came from. "Go, go, go!"
"Whaaaa wait I wasn't readdy!!!!" Isaiah squeals as she beats feet, snatching up Sienna in passing with a loop around her waist and pounding... Well... Not pavement, because this is one of those newfangled dirt roads all the kids are raving about. She kicks fucking rocks. Yeah. "Ashes run, run, run," she calls over her shoulder at the stunned Ash who, really, has just been getting emotionally bullied by these two curly-headed cuties the entire time they've been here. Sorrows. Prayers.
Ash gasps, going, "Hands up means STOP!" But, they're running, they're running as they complain. "IT MEANS STOP, DO NOT GO, Hold your FUCKing drunken DONKY of a pair of googly-eyed HORSES, SIENNA!" They hope she can hear them over the sound of them using their ancient african ancestor's sacred power of NOPING the fUCK out of dodge. They are not *stunned*, they are the living in the capital of getting the FUCK out.
It had been a work of art, if you'd asked someone more adept at appreciating the beauty of magic and machinery intertwined. The carved runes forming pulses of magic woven through the very fabric of Haven, beautifully simplistic and efficient. Purposeful, intricate--
BOOM, it goes now, though the group's 'walking away coolly from an explosion' move could certainly use some work. There's no sunglasses involved, for one. There's also no cool involved, for two. There's a deafening noise from behind, much louder than the explosive mixture should have caused, and- well.
There's a tree on fire.
More importantly, there's a ripple through the magic that's surrounded them for the last day or so, felt throughout the town, and a horrible feeling in their pockets.
Their phones are on fire too.
Out there, somewhere, the drone that had been zooming back and forth on Black Ash Lane falls, right on top of the woman with the salt and pepper braid's head, the last thing shown from its camera before the feed cuts out. Sienna better hope she's not getting sued for that one.
There was one pair of sunglasses involved.
With the binding and stabilizing effect out of the way, well and truly blown up, the circuit /should/, hopefully, destabilize and the effect fade away. They're free to go blow up the other runes anyway, of course, but things should start returning to normal... soon.
Some time when you fuck around, you need to find out the important things in life. Sienna has been chosen to learn a very valuable and important lesson in life this day as they make it back out of harm's way. "You know, maybe I should've paid more attention when Avi was teaching all the fine points of ritual magic, and what not to do," she mumbles. Any legal consequences to come from this are more than likely to be covered by the fact that her cousin is part of the Wilson family, her mother is a minor celebrity on TV with great legal lawyers, and this Faeling knows how to GET SHIT DONE. "Do you think we should, uhm, just do our rounds anyway?"
Ash sighs, though, between all the gasping, before nodding to Sienna. "Fuck yeah, let's do that again." Once they're over the concern, Ash tends to be ready to go hard or go home.
Isaiah's squeals turn into screams as her phone turns red hot in her hand. It probably doesn't hurt as bad as she's making it out to be due to her fire affinity, but God dammit she's a dramatic girl, and she has to be in the spotlight. "Owowowowowieeeee!" she cries out, juggling her phone back in forth between her palms like a hot potato when Ash drops theirs, and tearfully she reassures herself mroe than the others: "D-Don't worry guys, if... If we put them in rice overnight, the Asians will come fix them.. Oh.. Oh gosh nooo I just got it replaced!!" Yeah. After she'd taken an axe to her last one.
"You can't say that. I'm a quarter asian," Sienna smacks Isaiah upside the back of her head with a light flick of her wrist, certainly nothing that can hurt. "Stop being racist, and no you can't say that ginger Irish are a minority and it's okay this time."
Isaiah says "I'll have you know that gingers are a minor- ERK!"
Ash smirks to Sienna, drawling, "Thank you - I'm not allowed to call her out on it anymore, ever since the 'Fam Incident'."
Isaiah's phone will definitely need replacing. Maybe Ash can salvage theirs after it was stopped, dropped, and rolled instead of hot potato'd.
The tree over there is still on fire.
OOC: I can fast-forward us through the other three gates, if you guys prefer, since it'll mostly be more blowing up! Let me know via tell or stalk.?
Ash will attempt to salvage their very special, very unique, ultra cool Hello Kitty phone, of course. The screen can be replaced. But the case and the number must remain.
"That was /you/ calling /me/ racist and I cried for like a whole day because I didn't even mean it that time!!" Isaiah whines in complaint, walking back towards her Harley Davidson, parked conveniently in front of Camp White Oak, because she surely wasn't walking all the way to the Fae Gate from Magnolia Row, that's for certain. Though, she does sniff herself, then later murmurs, "... Let's blow up the rest of these runes- you got enough for that, Sienna? I smell like... I don't want to talk about it," the redhead grumbles under her breath, feeling pretty sure of herself now that they had figured out the great mysteries of this Fae Puzzle. Sure, you can tap into the leylines and stack the pieces in order from largest to smallest, and dispell the warding glyphs, and hack the mainframe: or you can just use brute force and ignorance, and blow shit up. She'll stop and get her sunglasses, however, surely, before heading to the next three.
Sienna is content to take a more appropriate academic approach to the next three sites, disrupting everything in proper procedure now that she's understood the forces at work.
Once they've done their rounds across all four of the gates, the circuitry in play becomes more obvious: Power, Binding, Disrupt, and Flow.
The Power rune, just as its name implied, had been the one providing a constant stream of energy - likely the one that should have been disabled first if no trees were to be harmed. Alas, many trees have been harmed in the process of thwarting this scheme.
The Flow rune at the Wilds would have been regulating the magic, ensuring the energy would be distributed evenly throughout the web spread across Haven, a counterpart to the Binding rune at the Other gate keeping the whole circuit organized together and diverting the energy produced by the malfunctioning electronics to power... whatever had been powered through this ritual. 'Tis a mystery, assuredly.
The Disruption rune at the Hell gate would have been the one causing most of the electronic malfunctions, explaining why everything had been so much more fucked up more than simple magic would cause.
They all smell suspiciously like smoke by the time they're finished, probably, but it's worth it now that there's more than just one pair of sunglasses in play. They walk away from explosives like cool guys, having definitely saved the day.
OOC: Thanks for the fun! Let me know where you'd like to be dropped off to.?
(Your target's been contacted to help find a civilian who's become lost in the woods.
)
Jodie lazes about her dorm room which she has absolutely trashed. Everything from empty liquor bottles, a paper plate that has been left on the nightstand and used as ashtray. A vibrator. Hell it would be easier to describe what isn't dumped here. It's still in the middle of the new moon and so the young wolf is unlikely to summon the energy to clean.
There's a knock on the door. Knock, knock, knock. "Jodie?" comes the call, another sorority sister's voice from outside through the door.
"Fuck off..." Jodie complains in a petulant tone to herself. Not quite loud enough to be meant for the person at the door. She is slow to collect herself off the bed she's been lazing on and she trudges for the door nice and slow as if hoping that the person might give up and leave before she gets there.
"Jodie," the voice comes. It's more worried. "I know you're not feeling good, but Abby is missing." Abby is another Tri-Delt. "I'm. I'm just worried, okay?" she says. This is Mary -- and Mary, Jodie may know, gets visions. "I woke up from a nap and I -saw- something," she says with a concerned whisper through the door.
Jodie doesn't really know shit. She might know Sienna. And some of the girls, but even if she's met them she has mentally filed them away as nobody fellow sisters. Still, she's not able to just ignore a plea for help. Especially when asked for by name. She reaches for the door handle, turns it then pulls the door open, grunting in an un-lady-like way. "Abby? What are you talking about?"
Outside is Mary, looking more than a little concerned. "You know those visions," she says. "Like -- they just. This seemed real," she tells Jodie. "I saw Abby out in the Warden's Wood, just kind of slumped against a tree. She was in her nightgrown, but it was covered with blood," she says. "And I don't think she was breathing much."
"You saw this in a vision huh?" Jodie ask, she scowls faintly. Supposing she has to be the one to go looking. The school would take ages to send someone. "Got a better clue than a random tree in the entire warden wood?"
"Well." Mary pauses. "I was hoping you could -- you know," she says. "Jodie, we all know you can, you know. Smell things." She looks nervously from side to side. "It's not like you really keep it a secret, you know?" she says. "And blood?" she says. "I mean isn't that...?" Oh, it's because Jodie's a werewolf. That's why they are asking, why she is asking. It's just prejudice -- only one of the Tri-Delt girls is a literal animal.
That was plan B for Jodie. Using her nose. A soft sigh escapes the messy haired, downtrodden chick and she slips on her shoes at the door before pushing past Mary to head out, "Alright I'll find her..or whats left of her." she says, as if either possibility wouldn't make a difference to her. But internally, she hopes she finds a living person.
Jodie does in fact make her way out to warden's wood on foot, on her arrival if there is no thing of immediate interest. She begins to use her nose and other werewolf senses while still in human form. Trying to find clues, or just fine the missing girl. But its never quite that easy
Blood. The Warden's Wood is full of blood -- old blood, new blood, fresh blood... Fresh blood. It tickles at Jodie's nose, sparks at it, as if trying to pull the young werewolf deeper into the wood. Layered over it is perfume, familiar -- Jodie has smelled it before, in and out of the Tri-Delt bathroom, and the scent of laundry detergent, and... something else. Some low undertone of death, like the rustle of papers in the wind.
Jodie might not have a memory for faces, or names but she does have a memory for scents and upon catching a whiff of the laundry detergent she is quite easily capable of narrowing down a direction where the scene becomes stronger. She makes her way. She's notably not brought any weapon or gear with her, perhaps assuming she wont need it, or wouldn't rely on it anyways.
As Jodie gets further from the light of the dorms, the Warden's Wood grows dark around her. It's not such a tangled place as the real Forest, but there are hidden hollows in the wood surrounding the Institute all the same, places where past students have strayed too far or worked terrible things. White Oak, by its nature, tempts those within it, and scribed sometimes on the black oak trees is the measure of that temptation. A claw-like branch catches Jodie's clothing, pulling at her as she tracks the scent.
If her hoodie gets yet another small hole in it. She wouldn't even notice it. Jodie just moves deeper into the woods. She's been deep into the wilds and havens forest and so the warden wood does not terrify her. She does seem wary though, smelling blood does suggest a danger and so she keeps her senses open as she walks without any stealth
Now Jodie sees the blood trail: her nose pricks, and it's bloody footsteps in rich, autumn earth. They lead up and around a mossy, fallen log, towards a tree, and can Jodie see just a glimpse of white on the far side of that tree?
"Crissy? Cassie?" Jodie ask urgently, moving closer. Getting the name she was just told horrendously wrong. "Abby." she corrects herself just as she rounds the tree without taking her moves cautiously. If there was a trap. She wouldn't see it.
Abby. It's Abby. Maybe? If it is Abby, well: she's in rough shape. She's slumped against a tree, its trunk more green than brown with a carpet of moss, and she's wearing a white nightgown. Two prominent fang marks sit in her neck, and blood has soaked that white nightgown, matting it against her flesh. She is breathing -- Jodie's advanced ears can hear that -- but barely, as Sanctuary saves her, just a little, from the worst of fates. Is there a trap? It's hard to know.
Jodie isn't a doctor of any sort, but she can definitely try to haul Abby to safety. She reaches for her to try and princess carry her from the tree. But only if nothing interferes. She does notice the fang marks and briefly glances side to side to make sure nothing is immediately threatening. She may believe the fanger who did this, got their fill and pissed off.
The bloody girl isn't that hard to lift -- no, not at all for Jodie, and the amount of blood loss is consistent with someone who has drunk their fill and more. Still, she's barely breathing, and it's the kind of thing that -needs- a doctor. Jodie's relatively sure of that. As for who did this? Well. Vampires never smell, except for the faintest hint of something, but as Jodie picks up Abby she moans. "He..." That's all she gets out.
Jodie stands with a little bit of a backwards lean while she carries the girl. She begins to trudge one foot in front of the other. Her eyes, ears and nose keep tabs on the area around her to try and avoid any ambushes. But aside from her nose, and her night vision. She's not super perceptive
As Sienna traces the vestiges of Abby's ordeal, the forest seems to breathe with a malevolent air, its branches snagging at her as though warning her of the grim tableau she is about to uncover. The sight that greets her—a ghostly figure of Abby, the pallor of her nightgown marred by the crimson of her lifeblood, bearing the unmistakable marks of a vampire's embrace—illustrates a cruel narrative of predation. Abby's feeble whisper, etched with the pain of her encounter, offers only a fragment of her tale, leaving the specter of her attacker lurking unseen. With Abby cradled carefully in her arms, Sienna becomes a beacon of both sanctuary and vengeance, her senses alert to the hidden dangers as she navigates the perilous return. The woods, a silent witness to the atrocities within its bounds, stand as a somber backdrop to Sienna's resolve, her steps a silent vow to unearth the darkness that festers beneath its serene veneer.
(Sienna's odd encounter(SRKorina):SRKorina)
[Wed Oct 2 2024]
On Suncrest Lane
Shrouded by boughs overhead and sticking out like civilization itself marked a patch of road in defiance of the forest itself, this route appears utterly mundane in its construction. Little effort seems to have gone in making this area little more than something functional for the occasional car or passerby on foot. At the very least, it is utilitarian in that it does seem to be keeping the encroaching woods at bay, at least for now.
It is morning, about 54F(12C) degrees, and the sky is covered by dark grey stormclouds.
Sienna slips off the hood of the BMW parked along side of the road, quickly unleashing a pair of small surveillance drones to the air as Ash and Isaiah finally come into her line of sight. "Alright, I've been doing my best to pull what I can off the triple-six," she launches straight into business. "We know that there's four points that are anchoring all the magic being channeled to disrupt the electronics and the communications networks, so we just need to find them and go. My first thought was the gate locations since, like, that's usually an easy catalyst for a lot of firepower to fuel these things."
Ash nods to Sienna, looking uncomfortable, but ready. They've come prepared with... food? Meat? For whatever reason, they've decided that these are the most necessary tools for this. A hand strokes their stallion as they nod, drawling, "Alright, then... which first? We just came from the Wild. Though... I feel like the Faegate - I mean, the Other... should be last."
Isaiah glances to Sienna and then Ash as the trio conjoin into one solid mass of Forged Fortune payroll, her eyes ticking northeast towards Camp White Oak before drawing slowly back to the pair she had merged with. "Four points just outside of town," she says, agreeing with Sienna and continuing with, "Four Gates... And shit like this is /always/ Gate magic. I'd say it's pretty on-brand," says the redhead, who shoves her eyes just down the way towards the closet Gate: the Other, here on Suncrest. "We may as well start here; let's investigate and see if this is a situation for brute force or delicacy." She pauses, then gives Ash a few elbow bumps, saying, "Fae Gate first- it's closest. Let's look around. Probably fucking Hell last- it's all the way on Black Ash Lane."
Ash shrugs, as Isaiah doesn't take their advice. "Alright. Let's go."
The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and the Hell gate is definitely not as inconvenient to reach as the Wilds gate is, all the way down south. Nothing jumps out of the trees to lunge at Ash's offering of meat... yet, and the group finds themselves near the cluster of gold-flecked trees near Suncrest Lane leading into the Other.
"I'm not sure that my drones will be safe for long, so I'm going to go ahead and send them to recon the Godrealm gates since I already have the coordinates still locked in from when I had to come out and stop the cleanse, and give us a bird's eye of what we're walking into," Sienna reaches down to grab her backpack off the dusty roadside, smacking it clean before feeding her arms through the straps. It settles heavily against her petite frame, booted feet delicately picking a way through the grass as she leads the way ahead of Isaiah and Ash, her head angled down to look at her screen as she looks at the coordinates.
Ash nods to Sienna, picking their way along with bare feet, breathing in deeply and looking invigorated as they approach the gate. They cast their eyes about, reluctant, but no less attentive to their surroundings... they don't have a habit of doing anything half-assed. When they spot the symbols, they step forward with narrowed greenish eyes.
"It's not far, a few paces," Isaiah assures Sienna, casting a wary gaze upon Ash afterwards, her tongue darting out to drag slowly over her lips, keeping them moist- and then deciding better of it. A bad habit, that. She instead pulls out a tube of Mango Carmex and gives it a faint squeeze, lightly applying the fruity grease to her puckered mouth and then smacking her lips together. "You can see it from here- there. See how they're all growing together like a Celtic knot or something?" she decribes, gesturing towards a grouping of trees that have grown together in some kind of archway.
Sienna tilts her head to the side, green eyes drifting over toward Ash and Isaiah briefly before she nods once. "Alright. Do you see anything, Ash? JR?"
Sienna's drones seem to be functioning, so far, perhaps thanks to them being far out in the forest, and the drones take off into the air. It'll be a bit until they reach the Godrealm gate from here, all the way to the northeast, but they've got plenty to occupy themselves with over here in the meantime, assuredly.
The trees /do/ form an archway, but whatever gate magic is taking place here, it's on this side of the gate instead of the other.
Ash blinks, looking up at them both before drawling, "Yes? These symbols here, on the trees, on the bark." They are studying them as they talk, trying to see what they can learn of their meaning and use with their knowledge.
Ash hums as they read them, drawling out loud, "Binding."
Sienna palms out her phone, quickly shifting until the symbols line up to take a picture of the intricate rune of binding, cataloging it with a snap of a photo. "Alright," she exhales, chewing lightly at the corner of her bottom lip. The device is dropped back into a pocket, green eyes skimming over the area at length as she circles around. Taking out a knife, she tosses it back and forth in her small hands, "We can just disturb the rune, right?"
"I don't see anything but the Gate," Isaiah tells Sienna as she takes it upon herself to head off the group, being the sturdiest of those gathered; if something lashes out, she's the least likely to die in just one strike. The young Wolf squats down there by that amalgamation os symbols then, assessing it, then pulling out a knife and glancing over her shoulder at Ash and Sienna. "I could shave it off, if nothing else," the overeager thing offers to her companions, then sucks on her teeth for a time before adding, "You think destroying one disables them all? Doubtful, but, if it does, that'd be rad. Easiest counterspell of my life," she decides. She doesn't take the knife to the run yet, however. This is a team effort, and she's waiting to hear what the others have to say.
Then Sienna confirms her suspicions, but she still waits for Ash's input.
Ash sighs, drawling, "We don't know what's being bound, or if it's just part of the puzzle of the other gates, but if I had to guess...." And they don't guess, checking their book of Occult Knowledge instead.
"That's why I'm sending drones to the other gates," Sienna reminds Ash quietly, reaching back to draw out her phone, thumbing past the lock screen to check the progress of her drones. The coordinates for the second one is updated, sending the second one, because they were pairs, toward the Hellgates. "Okay, they'll cover both the hell and Other. I'm watching the feeds."
Sienna says "Oh, sorry, I meant the Godrealm."
Ash nods to the other two, drawling, "I think we need to disrupt all four. There's more involved, most likely, but this should be an empowered binding - by breaking the chains of binding, what it contains shall be let loose."
"Then we fuck it up," Isaiah decides, rearing that knife back a bit and preparing to start whittling away at that runic mark on the tree unless Ash or Sienna stay her hand. Her intention is to peel the rune right off with a few scrapes of the blade, scouring the bark and the wood if necessary, in order to leave no trace behind. "God Realms next," she adds on as the point of their next location. "We'll send the drone that's observing that Gate down to the Wilds, and then move to Hell, before finally stopping on Forest Ridge Road for the last Gate."
"We're definitely going to have one hell of a day today," Sienna idly reports toward Ash and Isaiah, turning her phone around to showcase the drone cam's footage on its way to the Goldrealm gate, only halfway there, as the live feed begins to glitch. "It looks like there's different conditions for each of the runes, more likely, so we Ash's probably right about needing to disrupt all of them to completely restore everything to how it should be." She does nothing to stop Isaiah, but takes a cautionary several steps back while she screenshots everything on her phone.
Ash nods to Isaiah, before noting, "Mmm, and a monster, too. I wonder if I'll get to stretch my tentacles today...." They seem easily distracted at the moment, as if their mind is anywhere but here.
"... Ash, come look at this for me?" Isaiah asks of Ash, staying the swing of her knife as something unsettles her, causing her to swallow hard. "I think it's protected... Of course it is. It couldn't be this easy- I almost blew myself away..." she assumes, though her hesitance suggests she isn't sure what sort of warding glyph she's dealing with here- only that she nearly caused herself injury if she had followed through with that swing of a scrape. "... You're better at this than I am," she murmurs, her voice almost too low to hear.
Ash blinks up at Sienna, asking, "What? I'm wearing clothes!" Well, not shoes, but are they ever? Isaiah distracts them, however, and they move in close kneeling, sniffing at the runes as their eyes - now golden brights as they try to see what threw the werewolf off.
Sienna tongues quietly at the interior of her cheek, jade eyes trained on her phone while she troubleshoots the failing drones, quickly rerouting the coordinates of the one bound for the Godrealm to auto-pilot back to the safety of the White Oak Institute. "I've got two of the four runes, hoping the one on its' way to hell can hold through but it's not looking pretty. Godrealm has a power rune, same as this one here, but I'm pretty sure they're forming a circuit, each gate utilized for a specific purpose."
Ash chuckles, standing up. "This takes a lot of energy... I wonder if maybe the *others* should be done first? Maybe safe this one for last? Or, at least, with proper gear." They are not smug, not smug at all. Nope. Not this Ashen one. They hold their head back, pondering, trying to envision what 'proper gear' might entail.
"Of course the God Realms and the Fae Other are the source runes," Isaiah mutters under her breath, knowing what she's researched of the spell, it should have been obvious that those two would be the trickiest to handle. "Could we split up? One of us go to Hell, the other go to the Wilds. We'll peel off those runes and Sienna can be here to handle this one once it's been de-weaponized," the titchy thing offers, dropping down to her ass in the dirt with a heavy, frustrated sigh dripping from her lips. "We can all reconnaissance at the God Realms gate- unless since it's Korina's doing, you think the God Realms will be easier. Because if so, we could save this one for last," she wonders, pondering the possibilities of each rune's power level and protection, if any.
Good luck and godspeed, drone #1, may you not glitch out and land in a tree on the way back.
Splitting up would certainly make it faster, but considering they've no means of communication with phones being very dead, they'd have to rely on just their own judgment instead of putting their heads together.
For now, the rune seems to be doing its thing, humming merrily on with the occasional pulse of magic making everything upon Sienna's screen glitch out.
"I'm fine with splitting up and hitting each of the gates if we need to," Sienna supposes toward Ash and Isaiah while she continues to squint, readjust the zoom of the screenshots, and squint some more. "Alright, so I'm studying the site at the Godrealm gates again. Sorry. It's etched in the tree just like here, but that one is a configured for power," she reiterates, ensuring her words are properly understood by the pair with an apologetic twist of her mouth. "Back up?" she suggests to the redhead now, while she digs around through her bag, pulling out a small plastic bag of mixed home goods, complete with an empty plastic bottle. "You said that if you disturbed it, it was going to blow you back, right? Do you think if we trigger that intentionally with a detonation, even small, it'd be enough to disrupt this side?"
Ash looks to Sienna, then at Isaiah, before looking up at the sky, thinking. Finally, they reach out, pulling at something in the air, rearranging, then *yanking*.
Ash nods, drawling, "On a whim - no, call it a hunch... the God Realms may be where we should start. Then Hells or the Wilds... no, Hell second, then the Wild. That said... do-" They stop, tilting their head at Sienna. "The Godsrealm is a rune for power?" They hold up a hand to Sienna at the sight of her suspicious baggie and even more suspiciously innocent empty plastic bottle.
"So long as the boom isn't big enough to fuck up the Gate, there's no harm in trying," Isaiah tells Sienna with a shrug, already taking a few steps back away from the Faeling and her mixed bag of what will ultimately become war crimes and war chemicals. "Go for it."
Ash gave themself good luck.
Explosives /are/ a girl's best friend. It is known. Though maybe the group should consider finding some nice, good cover if they're planning on blowing up a component of a magical ritual. Watching up close might be fun too, for a certain definition of fun.
Sienna is nothing if not a meticulous planner, leaning down onto a knee and quickly mixing product together to create a volatile mixture. "Can you guys go ahead and start going back toward the road?" she requests of Isaiah and Ash, quickly twisting together twine to form a quick impromptu fuse before she takes her zippo lighter, used mainly for those yummy new bad weed habits she formed because of Isaiah, and sets it alight. The bottle is nestled by the base of the tree, and she's quickly running for the road back where they came from. "Go, go, go!"
"Whaaaa wait I wasn't readdy!!!!" Isaiah squeals as she beats feet, snatching up Sienna in passing with a loop around her waist and pounding... Well... Not pavement, because this is one of those newfangled dirt roads all the kids are raving about. She kicks fucking rocks. Yeah. "Ashes run, run, run," she calls over her shoulder at the stunned Ash who, really, has just been getting emotionally bullied by these two curly-headed cuties the entire time they've been here. Sorrows. Prayers.
Ash gasps, going, "Hands up means STOP!" But, they're running, they're running as they complain. "IT MEANS STOP, DO NOT GO, Hold your FUCKing drunken DONKY of a pair of googly-eyed HORSES, SIENNA!" They hope she can hear them over the sound of them using their ancient african ancestor's sacred power of NOPING the fUCK out of dodge. They are not *stunned*, they are the living in the capital of getting the FUCK out.
It had been a work of art, if you'd asked someone more adept at appreciating the beauty of magic and machinery intertwined. The carved runes forming pulses of magic woven through the very fabric of Haven, beautifully simplistic and efficient. Purposeful, intricate--
BOOM, it goes now, though the group's 'walking away coolly from an explosion' move could certainly use some work. There's no sunglasses involved, for one. There's also no cool involved, for two. There's a deafening noise from behind, much louder than the explosive mixture should have caused, and- well.
There's a tree on fire.
More importantly, there's a ripple through the magic that's surrounded them for the last day or so, felt throughout the town, and a horrible feeling in their pockets.
Their phones are on fire too.
Out there, somewhere, the drone that had been zooming back and forth on Black Ash Lane falls, right on top of the woman with the salt and pepper braid's head, the last thing shown from its camera before the feed cuts out. Sienna better hope she's not getting sued for that one.
There was one pair of sunglasses involved.
With the binding and stabilizing effect out of the way, well and truly blown up, the circuit /should/, hopefully, destabilize and the effect fade away. They're free to go blow up the other runes anyway, of course, but things should start returning to normal... soon.
Some time when you fuck around, you need to find out the important things in life. Sienna has been chosen to learn a very valuable and important lesson in life this day as they make it back out of harm's way. "You know, maybe I should've paid more attention when Avi was teaching all the fine points of ritual magic, and what not to do," she mumbles. Any legal consequences to come from this are more than likely to be covered by the fact that her cousin is part of the Wilson family, her mother is a minor celebrity on TV with great legal lawyers, and this Faeling knows how to GET SHIT DONE. "Do you think we should, uhm, just do our rounds anyway?"
Ash sighs, though, between all the gasping, before nodding to Sienna. "Fuck yeah, let's do that again." Once they're over the concern, Ash tends to be ready to go hard or go home.
Isaiah's squeals turn into screams as her phone turns red hot in her hand. It probably doesn't hurt as bad as she's making it out to be due to her fire affinity, but God dammit she's a dramatic girl, and she has to be in the spotlight. "Owowowowowieeeee!" she cries out, juggling her phone back in forth between her palms like a hot potato when Ash drops theirs, and tearfully she reassures herself mroe than the others: "D-Don't worry guys, if... If we put them in rice overnight, the Asians will come fix them.. Oh.. Oh gosh nooo I just got it replaced!!" Yeah. After she'd taken an axe to her last one.
"You can't say that. I'm a quarter asian," Sienna smacks Isaiah upside the back of her head with a light flick of her wrist, certainly nothing that can hurt. "Stop being racist, and no you can't say that ginger Irish are a minority and it's okay this time."
Isaiah says "I'll have you know that gingers are a minor- ERK!"
Ash smirks to Sienna, drawling, "Thank you - I'm not allowed to call her out on it anymore, ever since the 'Fam Incident'."
Isaiah's phone will definitely need replacing. Maybe Ash can salvage theirs after it was stopped, dropped, and rolled instead of hot potato'd.
The tree over there is still on fire.
OOC: I can fast-forward us through the other three gates, if you guys prefer, since it'll mostly be more blowing up! Let me know via tell or stalk.?
Ash will attempt to salvage their very special, very unique, ultra cool Hello Kitty phone, of course. The screen can be replaced. But the case and the number must remain.
"That was /you/ calling /me/ racist and I cried for like a whole day because I didn't even mean it that time!!" Isaiah whines in complaint, walking back towards her Harley Davidson, parked conveniently in front of Camp White Oak, because she surely wasn't walking all the way to the Fae Gate from Magnolia Row, that's for certain. Though, she does sniff herself, then later murmurs, "... Let's blow up the rest of these runes- you got enough for that, Sienna? I smell like... I don't want to talk about it," the redhead grumbles under her breath, feeling pretty sure of herself now that they had figured out the great mysteries of this Fae Puzzle. Sure, you can tap into the leylines and stack the pieces in order from largest to smallest, and dispell the warding glyphs, and hack the mainframe: or you can just use brute force and ignorance, and blow shit up. She'll stop and get her sunglasses, however, surely, before heading to the next three.
Sienna is content to take a more appropriate academic approach to the next three sites, disrupting everything in proper procedure now that she's understood the forces at work.
Once they've done their rounds across all four of the gates, the circuitry in play becomes more obvious: Power, Binding, Disrupt, and Flow.
The Power rune, just as its name implied, had been the one providing a constant stream of energy - likely the one that should have been disabled first if no trees were to be harmed. Alas, many trees have been harmed in the process of thwarting this scheme.
The Flow rune at the Wilds would have been regulating the magic, ensuring the energy would be distributed evenly throughout the web spread across Haven, a counterpart to the Binding rune at the Other gate keeping the whole circuit organized together and diverting the energy produced by the malfunctioning electronics to power... whatever had been powered through this ritual. 'Tis a mystery, assuredly.
The Disruption rune at the Hell gate would have been the one causing most of the electronic malfunctions, explaining why everything had been so much more fucked up more than simple magic would cause.
They all smell suspiciously like smoke by the time they're finished, probably, but it's worth it now that there's more than just one pair of sunglasses in play. They walk away from explosives like cool guys, having definitely saved the day.
OOC: Thanks for the fun! Let me know where you'd like to be dropped off to.?
(Your target's been contacted to help find a civilian who's become lost in the woods.
)
Jodie lazes about her dorm room which she has absolutely trashed. Everything from empty liquor bottles, a paper plate that has been left on the nightstand and used as ashtray. A vibrator. Hell it would be easier to describe what isn't dumped here. It's still in the middle of the new moon and so the young wolf is unlikely to summon the energy to clean.
There's a knock on the door. Knock, knock, knock. "Jodie?" comes the call, another sorority sister's voice from outside through the door.
"Fuck off..." Jodie complains in a petulant tone to herself. Not quite loud enough to be meant for the person at the door. She is slow to collect herself off the bed she's been lazing on and she trudges for the door nice and slow as if hoping that the person might give up and leave before she gets there.
"Jodie," the voice comes. It's more worried. "I know you're not feeling good, but Abby is missing." Abby is another Tri-Delt. "I'm. I'm just worried, okay?" she says. This is Mary -- and Mary, Jodie may know, gets visions. "I woke up from a nap and I -saw- something," she says with a concerned whisper through the door.
Jodie doesn't really know shit. She might know Sienna. And some of the girls, but even if she's met them she has mentally filed them away as nobody fellow sisters. Still, she's not able to just ignore a plea for help. Especially when asked for by name. She reaches for the door handle, turns it then pulls the door open, grunting in an un-lady-like way. "Abby? What are you talking about?"
Outside is Mary, looking more than a little concerned. "You know those visions," she says. "Like -- they just. This seemed real," she tells Jodie. "I saw Abby out in the Warden's Wood, just kind of slumped against a tree. She was in her nightgrown, but it was covered with blood," she says. "And I don't think she was breathing much."
"You saw this in a vision huh?" Jodie ask, she scowls faintly. Supposing she has to be the one to go looking. The school would take ages to send someone. "Got a better clue than a random tree in the entire warden wood?"
"Well." Mary pauses. "I was hoping you could -- you know," she says. "Jodie, we all know you can, you know. Smell things." She looks nervously from side to side. "It's not like you really keep it a secret, you know?" she says. "And blood?" she says. "I mean isn't that...?" Oh, it's because Jodie's a werewolf. That's why they are asking, why she is asking. It's just prejudice -- only one of the Tri-Delt girls is a literal animal.
That was plan B for Jodie. Using her nose. A soft sigh escapes the messy haired, downtrodden chick and she slips on her shoes at the door before pushing past Mary to head out, "Alright I'll find her..or whats left of her." she says, as if either possibility wouldn't make a difference to her. But internally, she hopes she finds a living person.
Jodie does in fact make her way out to warden's wood on foot, on her arrival if there is no thing of immediate interest. She begins to use her nose and other werewolf senses while still in human form. Trying to find clues, or just fine the missing girl. But its never quite that easy
Blood. The Warden's Wood is full of blood -- old blood, new blood, fresh blood... Fresh blood. It tickles at Jodie's nose, sparks at it, as if trying to pull the young werewolf deeper into the wood. Layered over it is perfume, familiar -- Jodie has smelled it before, in and out of the Tri-Delt bathroom, and the scent of laundry detergent, and... something else. Some low undertone of death, like the rustle of papers in the wind.
Jodie might not have a memory for faces, or names but she does have a memory for scents and upon catching a whiff of the laundry detergent she is quite easily capable of narrowing down a direction where the scene becomes stronger. She makes her way. She's notably not brought any weapon or gear with her, perhaps assuming she wont need it, or wouldn't rely on it anyways.
As Jodie gets further from the light of the dorms, the Warden's Wood grows dark around her. It's not such a tangled place as the real Forest, but there are hidden hollows in the wood surrounding the Institute all the same, places where past students have strayed too far or worked terrible things. White Oak, by its nature, tempts those within it, and scribed sometimes on the black oak trees is the measure of that temptation. A claw-like branch catches Jodie's clothing, pulling at her as she tracks the scent.
If her hoodie gets yet another small hole in it. She wouldn't even notice it. Jodie just moves deeper into the woods. She's been deep into the wilds and havens forest and so the warden wood does not terrify her. She does seem wary though, smelling blood does suggest a danger and so she keeps her senses open as she walks without any stealth
Now Jodie sees the blood trail: her nose pricks, and it's bloody footsteps in rich, autumn earth. They lead up and around a mossy, fallen log, towards a tree, and can Jodie see just a glimpse of white on the far side of that tree?
"Crissy? Cassie?" Jodie ask urgently, moving closer. Getting the name she was just told horrendously wrong. "Abby." she corrects herself just as she rounds the tree without taking her moves cautiously. If there was a trap. She wouldn't see it.
Abby. It's Abby. Maybe? If it is Abby, well: she's in rough shape. She's slumped against a tree, its trunk more green than brown with a carpet of moss, and she's wearing a white nightgown. Two prominent fang marks sit in her neck, and blood has soaked that white nightgown, matting it against her flesh. She is breathing -- Jodie's advanced ears can hear that -- but barely, as Sanctuary saves her, just a little, from the worst of fates. Is there a trap? It's hard to know.
Jodie isn't a doctor of any sort, but she can definitely try to haul Abby to safety. She reaches for her to try and princess carry her from the tree. But only if nothing interferes. She does notice the fang marks and briefly glances side to side to make sure nothing is immediately threatening. She may believe the fanger who did this, got their fill and pissed off.
The bloody girl isn't that hard to lift -- no, not at all for Jodie, and the amount of blood loss is consistent with someone who has drunk their fill and more. Still, she's barely breathing, and it's the kind of thing that -needs- a doctor. Jodie's relatively sure of that. As for who did this? Well. Vampires never smell, except for the faintest hint of something, but as Jodie picks up Abby she moans. "He..." That's all she gets out.
Jodie stands with a little bit of a backwards lean while she carries the girl. She begins to trudge one foot in front of the other. Her eyes, ears and nose keep tabs on the area around her to try and avoid any ambushes. But aside from her nose, and her night vision. She's not super perceptive