Encounterlogs
Leos Odd Encounter Sr Kylia
Leo was approached by an elderly woman named Margaret, anguished by paranormal activities in her house which she attributed to the trapped spirit of her late husband, Edgar. Despite his recent unsettling encounter with a vampire and his own skepticism, Leo agreed to help. In Margaret's Victorian home, they encountered manifestations like levitating objects and Edgar's favorite tune playing mysteriously. Though clueless and fumbling through an improvised exorcism, Leo's inexplicable success led to Edgar's peaceful departure, leaving both Margaret relieved and Leo in astonished disbelief that his seemingly arbitrary suggestion had resolved the haunting.
Meanwhile, the town of Haven was plagued with a vicious phenomenon where a possessed child was seen violently confronting hordes of ravens. Autumn, finding herself the closest to handle the bizarre event, strategically avoided the bird mayhem and pursued the child, who led her to a graveyard cult ritual aiming to summon another entity. Acting quickly, she disrupted the cult’s chant with precision-targeted spells, resulting in the retreat of the spirit from the child and the sealing of the portal. Despite the boy being returned home safely and a potential threat from one of the cultists, Autumn’s intervention thwarted further chaos, marking a short-lived but intense victory over otherworldly forces.
(Leo's odd encounter(SRKylia):SRKylia)
[Fri Jan 12 2024]
In The Hometown Diner's Dining Room
This room is both cozy and fairly modern in style, with oak panelling along the bottom half of the walls, while the top has been painted a rich, bright shade of white. Open windows on the eastern wall look out over the diner's pergola and firepit, offering a gorgeous view past that of the horizon to diners. The tables are spread out around the room so that the waitstaff can easily make their way to all diners, and the smell of home cooking fills the air at all hours of the day.
It is about 50F(10C) degrees.
(The characters are approached by an elderly resident of Haven. She believes her late husband's spirit is trapped in their house. She's been hearing strange noises, seeing objects move on their own and even caught glimpses of a figure resembling her husband. The task is to investigate these paranormal activities and help the spirit find peace, if it indeed exists. But beware, as not everything is as it seems in Haven and the spirit might not be the only supernatural entity haunting the old house.)
Watching the birds, Leo is enjoying his day when an elderly woman abruptly approaches him. Her eyes are filled with a mixture of desperation and hope as she regards him, "Young man, I've heard you're the best paranormal investigator in these parts." She tells him earnestly, "Please, you must help me. My late husband's spirit is trapped in our house."
Leo just got out of a battle with a hungry vampire. Barely escaped that alive. And now... now. Leo is being approached by some old lady. He opens his mouth- but. He doesn't seem to have the heart to say no. It's a very paused moment, before Leo supplies: "Fine. Let's see what I can do..." As he makes to follow the old lady, Leo sends a message off to one...
Harriet Fairfax. Leo sends the message: Old lady. Needs help with ghosts. I don't know what I'm doing. Send help.
Margaret leads Leo to her Victorian-era home, where the air felt heavy with the weight of time, "You won't believe the things that have taken place in these walls. Eerie footsteps echo through the hallways. Objects levitate on their own. Look here." The old woman unlocked the front door, aged wood creaking in protest as they entered the dimly lit foyer. She points toward a portait of a refined gentleman hanging from the wall, "This man is my dear Edgar. But he's been gone, you see, gone for years now. I've tried to make sense of it all. Called in priests- they just think me mad, and I'm at wit's end."
Suddenly, a soft melody, reminiscent of a long-lost love, emanates from the walls themselves, a haunting serenade that tugged at the heartstrings. Recognizing the tune, the old woman turns to Leo with a mixture of sorrow and awe. "That was Edgar's favorite song." she whispered, her eyes misty with memories.
Now. Leo has absolutely no clue what he's doing. And the occultists that might watch this later would absolutely groan as they watch him walk around the house. He sniffs at the air. Placing his head in against the wall. Knocking against the creaking wood. Making a few motions with his hands, nodding his head as if he has the slightest idea of what's going on. "Mhm. Mhm." Says the man. "I see what's going on." Leo has no, idea what's going on. That said... he knows a thing or two about general occult stuff. But probably nothing useful to the situation at hand.
The ghostly figure of Edgar manifests and rather than providing a clear response, drifted aimlessly about the room. It seems lost rather than malicious. Leo's occult knowledge would hint that perhaps there's something tethering him and keeping it from moving on.
The old woman,Margaret, tearfully nods to Leo, "He does this every so often." Her lips tug into a frown, "Nothing I say gets through to him. It's like he doesn't know I'm here."
"You have to let go of him." Says Leo after a moment's of thought. It worked in... uh... well. It probably worked in a movie that exists. Somewhere.
Margaret watches Leo with a mixture of hope and anticipation, which slowly melts away into skepticism as the seconds drag on. To everyone's surprise, the spectral figure of Edgar begins to dissipate slowly, like mist in the morning sun, before the otherworldly presence fades entirely.
It's really unclear weather it was anything Leo actually did or sheer just concidence, but Margaret seems to think the former and with tears in her her eyes, she enthusiastically thanks Leo, "Your sincerity and compassion have given me a closure I thought was lost forever. Edgar's spirit seems to have found solace, and I, in turn, can start to let go. Thank you." Once more the front door is opened for Leo in what is probably the most bizarre banishing to ever happen in this town.
"Holy shit. That worked." Says Leo. Clearly he didn't expect it to work at all. There's a beat. And he realizes he said that out loud. "Yes. It worked. Ahem." Leo claims as he strides through the door. "Happy to help, ma'am."
Leo, perhaps still unsure of what transpired, left the old house with perhaps a sense of bewilderment and relief. That's the last anyone would hear of hauntings, so whatever happened must have worked.
(A spirit has possessed a local child and is causing havoc in town. Your target must exorcise the spirit without harming the child and find a way to seal the portal through which it entered our world.)
Autumn is resting on the bed, covered with small cuts and peck marks that are healing from the constant assault of birds, along with black feathers on her. She lifts one hand to pluck a feather off her hair while she uses her other hand to browse her phone. "When will bird anarchy end?" she wonders to herself.
Outside, Corvid-19 continues to devastate most Havenites that travel outside the safety of buildings, so the question Autumn poses aloud to herself is perfectly reasonable. Even the light house is not immune to the pestering avian ambushers, and more than a few have thumped against the windows to try to shatter them and get into the structure. And yet, there is never enough weirdness in Haven, is there?
After a few minutes of checking her phone, Autumn receives a message about a child on Main Street causing some disturbances. A video is included, showing a male, blond child of no more than ten years old snatching ravens out of the air when they dive bomb him. And then he bites its head off and spits it to the side before slinging the decapitated bird's body back at the flock. Naturally, the body lands somewhere off screen, but this repeats a couple of times as the boy walks down main street. Then the video ends with a message suggesting Autumn is the closest person able to respond to the situation.
"Since when are Earth children so brutal?" Autumn mutters while she watches the video before she reads the message. She looks at the window, where a crow is staring at her menacingly, and then she gets up to her feet. Putting on her sweater and sneakers, she walks towards the entrance and carefully steps out, ready to brave the birdemic again. With a glance around she quickly runs to her bike, getting on it and rides down to the boy's location.
Main Street looks different in the midst of the birdemic. Hundreds, maybe even thousands, of ravens perch on every building, surface, vehicle, street light, and power line, watching anyone that dares step foot outside. Yet, despite the numbers, unless someone agitates them into action, they are nearly silent, adding a layer of eerie on top of the already freakish occurrence. And someone is most certainly motivating them to violence. Autumn arrives and parks her bike in an alley to peek out at what is going on. Angry caws ring out as the boy walks down the street, and any raven that ventures close enough to attack him gets snatched, decapitated, and spit aside in two pieces just like in the videos. The birds have not yet noticed Autumn, despite the bike, so focused are they on this unruly child that defies them so. The child is just outside of Narnia at the moment, and he stops to look around as if trying to find something besides the avian assassins.
Making sure the birds don't spot her, Autumn callously walks through the darkness to follow the boy. Her foot steps on a headless bird corpse, causing her to pause and move the feathered body aside before she moves on. Her eyes are on the child, with a glance here and there in case any corvid finds and marks her their new target.
Thankfully for Autumn, the boy in the middle of the street seems to have the birds' relentless attention for the moment. They do not like being thwarted so easily. A flock of the birds takes off from a nearby building to mount a more viable assault on the child instead of the one offs they have been doing. Thirty or so ravens descend on the child, but a chill forms in the air. Ice explodes from the boy's form, and skewers a dozen or more of then birds instantly. The others flee before befalling the same fate. The ice cracks, then shatters, falling to the street to melt out of the impaled bodies. The boy continues to look around, and while he looks toward Autumn, he does not notice her. She however would notice his white, faintly glowing eyes. He turns back toward the street and continues making his way south before turning to the east after passing the last shop on main street.
Autumn stops her movement upon seeing the icy counterattack on the ravens, grimacing as she watches the impaled birds drop dead on the concrete. She mouths something silently before she resumes following the boy with more caution. She sticks to the shadows and readies her left hand, waiting for the child to step out to the darkness.
Into the shadows the boy eventually does go, but it is a short distance from the street, on the lawn surrounding the town hall. The boy seems to be drawn to the graveyard of all places, as that is really the only major land mark in that direction. And the kid does not seem all that interested in shopping or eating. As Autumn follows the boy, a chorus of caws say she has been spotted by them, but perhaps because of the presence of the child, they seem reluctant to attack again so soon. How long her luck in that regard will last, who knows.
The graveyard is not a sanctuary from the avian menace either however. The fence, hundreds of grave markers and tomb stones, even the mausoleum have dozens more ravens perched upon them. But as she gets closer, Autumn can hear chanting from the far northeastern area of the grave yard. And she can sense more than see a black swirling vortex in that direction. The lack of lights make it difficult to see it, but there is certainly a gravity pulling from that corner of the grave yard.
A glance at her back has Autumn walk faster while she keeps her distance from the boy. Her hazel gaze turns towards the northeast, and her senses makes her guard herself from not just the birds. She tries to look closer with a squint of her eyes, before she speaks silently under her breath, raising her left hand.
Birds surround Autumn on every side as she follows the kid toward the grave yard. He stops when he gets to the fence however. Ravens scatter away from him, somehow aware of what he has already done to other members of the flock. Though the wrought iron fence might stop most people unwilling to climb it, the boy reaches out to grab to bars and just pulls them apart enough to be able to step through the fence and into the grave yard. He then turns toward the northeastern chanting and that swirling vortex that tugs at Autumn. The boy does not care about the graves or markers and proceeds forward, walking over who even knows how many people buried in the ground here.
As Autumn lingers near the boy, one bird makes it a point to dive toward her and test her defenses with a shrieking caw as it dives at her.
Autumn freezes and looks up to see the bird diving at her. She attempts to dodge, but she is too slow as the bird crashes right onto her. She staggers, almost falling before she regains her balance, seething quietly as she flails her hands angrily to shoo away her avian assailant.
Bruised of pride and bum from the fall, Autumn fends off the aggressive avian that rejoins its pals on a nearby building. But a few caws later, and it seems to be spreading word about her. As one, they turn their menacing attention toward her and begin to watch her intently.
Meanwhile, the boy is drifting closer and closer to the chanting people near the swirling vortex at the other end of the grave yard. There is a hole in the fence nearby she could scramble through if she does not feel like climbing. Or there is always the option to try to flee back to her bike and get the hell away from the Birds, a la Hitchcock.
Autumn might notice at this point that the birds are not attacking the people chanting either, but she may not realize why that might be just yet.
Rubbing where the bird struck her, Autumn turns to face the fence and with a glance up, she begins to wiggle her way through the hole towards the graveyard. Knowing her way around the cemetery, she follows the boy towards the chanting, trying to get a closer look while she attempts to listen.
Within the graveyard, Autumn is better able to keep pace with the boy, and the ravens, though still watching her, give her something of a break. Or maybe they just do not wish to tangle with whatever is happening inside the fence.
The boy steps up to the cultists chanting and linked to keep the vortex open. He ducks under their arms and into the circle. The chants are taking place in a language that is not English, and given the ancient dialect being used, Autumn may not understand it. The child addresses the apparent leader of the cult gathered here in the grave yard, speaking in an otherworldly voice from the small child's mouth. The cult leader nods in their hooded robe and begins a new chant that the others join in on.
It would not take a degree in rocket surgery to realize the change in chant means there is likely a different entity to call from the void-like vortex. They are about to summon a companion for the boy!
Getting closer, Autumn stops at a distance between herself and the circle of cultists. Raising her left hand, she chants in a low voice, making the runes on her panja bracelet glow red-orange. Peering around to make sure there's no birds, she looks back and focuses on the boy, preparing a spell in order to make him sweat.
Heating up the boy by a good deal certainly gets a reaction. He throws his head back and lets out an other worldly scream of pain. Whatever is inside of the boy immediately starts trying to tear itself loose, becoming an ethereal, frosty figure half inside of the boy, half outside of him, until it can wrench itself loose from the feverish child. When it does so, it stands fifteen feet tall, still howling in pain. The boy collapses on the ground, the fever and detachment immediately faints.
The cultists falter and start looking around, but the leader shouts at everyone to continue. As they return to their chants, a fiery hand emerges from the vortex, trying to pull another form through onto this plane. All that stands between them and success in this moment is Autumn
Seeing the tall frosty figure, Autumn directs her hand to target the leader's robe, her bracelet glowing again as she attempts to make it smoulder. She then moves slowly towards the child, ready to reach out and grab him while she keeps her eye out.
Lighting the cult leader on fire, or at least, appear to be on fire, earns a similar reaction. The leader breaks the link to stop drop and roll once he realizes he is smoking. As soon as his hands separate from the pair nearest him, the swirling vortex starts to spin the other way. The fiery hand is sucked back inside, and soon, that force is exerting itself on the icy figure as well. The cultists break apart and scatter away from the vortex, anticipating some sort of explosion once the icy figure is sucked back in and it closes. They want to be as far away from it as possible.
None of them at all tries to help the unconscious kid laying at the foot of the portal.
Using the chance, Autumn runs towards the boy, crouching down to pick him up to carry in her arms before she stands and flees from the vortex as well. She glances behind her shoulder once more as she runs across the cemetery towards the fence. She gently moves the kid through the hole first before she herself goes through after to carry him again.
Once the icy figure has been torn back through to where ever it came from, the vortex collapses. A brief limbo occurs for a second or two, and then a blast of energy surges out from that collapse, not unlike how a black hole might get formed with a star implodes. Luckily, this is just a dispersion of energy from the ritual and not an actual explosion. It is more like a massive gust of wind instead, but enough to knock Autumn to the ground and displace the entire graveyard's worth of ravens. The child flies with Autumn, but once they roll a couple of times and end up on the ground, the boy seems little worse for wear. Autumn is able to get him home and back to her bike to get out of the bird bombing areas of town before it is too late.
But one of those cultists sees her and follows her. Retribution may be down the road a ways... But not tonight. Tonight, she managed to save the kid and stop a second entity from crossing over into the world. A job well done.
Meanwhile, the town of Haven was plagued with a vicious phenomenon where a possessed child was seen violently confronting hordes of ravens. Autumn, finding herself the closest to handle the bizarre event, strategically avoided the bird mayhem and pursued the child, who led her to a graveyard cult ritual aiming to summon another entity. Acting quickly, she disrupted the cult’s chant with precision-targeted spells, resulting in the retreat of the spirit from the child and the sealing of the portal. Despite the boy being returned home safely and a potential threat from one of the cultists, Autumn’s intervention thwarted further chaos, marking a short-lived but intense victory over otherworldly forces.
(Leo's odd encounter(SRKylia):SRKylia)
[Fri Jan 12 2024]
In The Hometown Diner's Dining Room
This room is both cozy and fairly modern in style, with oak panelling along the bottom half of the walls, while the top has been painted a rich, bright shade of white. Open windows on the eastern wall look out over the diner's pergola and firepit, offering a gorgeous view past that of the horizon to diners. The tables are spread out around the room so that the waitstaff can easily make their way to all diners, and the smell of home cooking fills the air at all hours of the day.
It is about 50F(10C) degrees.
(The characters are approached by an elderly resident of Haven. She believes her late husband's spirit is trapped in their house. She's been hearing strange noises, seeing objects move on their own and even caught glimpses of a figure resembling her husband. The task is to investigate these paranormal activities and help the spirit find peace, if it indeed exists. But beware, as not everything is as it seems in Haven and the spirit might not be the only supernatural entity haunting the old house.)
Watching the birds, Leo is enjoying his day when an elderly woman abruptly approaches him. Her eyes are filled with a mixture of desperation and hope as she regards him, "Young man, I've heard you're the best paranormal investigator in these parts." She tells him earnestly, "Please, you must help me. My late husband's spirit is trapped in our house."
Leo just got out of a battle with a hungry vampire. Barely escaped that alive. And now... now. Leo is being approached by some old lady. He opens his mouth- but. He doesn't seem to have the heart to say no. It's a very paused moment, before Leo supplies: "Fine. Let's see what I can do..." As he makes to follow the old lady, Leo sends a message off to one...
Harriet Fairfax. Leo sends the message: Old lady. Needs help with ghosts. I don't know what I'm doing. Send help.
Margaret leads Leo to her Victorian-era home, where the air felt heavy with the weight of time, "You won't believe the things that have taken place in these walls. Eerie footsteps echo through the hallways. Objects levitate on their own. Look here." The old woman unlocked the front door, aged wood creaking in protest as they entered the dimly lit foyer. She points toward a portait of a refined gentleman hanging from the wall, "This man is my dear Edgar. But he's been gone, you see, gone for years now. I've tried to make sense of it all. Called in priests- they just think me mad, and I'm at wit's end."
Suddenly, a soft melody, reminiscent of a long-lost love, emanates from the walls themselves, a haunting serenade that tugged at the heartstrings. Recognizing the tune, the old woman turns to Leo with a mixture of sorrow and awe. "That was Edgar's favorite song." she whispered, her eyes misty with memories.
Now. Leo has absolutely no clue what he's doing. And the occultists that might watch this later would absolutely groan as they watch him walk around the house. He sniffs at the air. Placing his head in against the wall. Knocking against the creaking wood. Making a few motions with his hands, nodding his head as if he has the slightest idea of what's going on. "Mhm. Mhm." Says the man. "I see what's going on." Leo has no, idea what's going on. That said... he knows a thing or two about general occult stuff. But probably nothing useful to the situation at hand.
The ghostly figure of Edgar manifests and rather than providing a clear response, drifted aimlessly about the room. It seems lost rather than malicious. Leo's occult knowledge would hint that perhaps there's something tethering him and keeping it from moving on.
The old woman,Margaret, tearfully nods to Leo, "He does this every so often." Her lips tug into a frown, "Nothing I say gets through to him. It's like he doesn't know I'm here."
"You have to let go of him." Says Leo after a moment's of thought. It worked in... uh... well. It probably worked in a movie that exists. Somewhere.
Margaret watches Leo with a mixture of hope and anticipation, which slowly melts away into skepticism as the seconds drag on. To everyone's surprise, the spectral figure of Edgar begins to dissipate slowly, like mist in the morning sun, before the otherworldly presence fades entirely.
It's really unclear weather it was anything Leo actually did or sheer just concidence, but Margaret seems to think the former and with tears in her her eyes, she enthusiastically thanks Leo, "Your sincerity and compassion have given me a closure I thought was lost forever. Edgar's spirit seems to have found solace, and I, in turn, can start to let go. Thank you." Once more the front door is opened for Leo in what is probably the most bizarre banishing to ever happen in this town.
"Holy shit. That worked." Says Leo. Clearly he didn't expect it to work at all. There's a beat. And he realizes he said that out loud. "Yes. It worked. Ahem." Leo claims as he strides through the door. "Happy to help, ma'am."
Leo, perhaps still unsure of what transpired, left the old house with perhaps a sense of bewilderment and relief. That's the last anyone would hear of hauntings, so whatever happened must have worked.
(A spirit has possessed a local child and is causing havoc in town. Your target must exorcise the spirit without harming the child and find a way to seal the portal through which it entered our world.)
Autumn is resting on the bed, covered with small cuts and peck marks that are healing from the constant assault of birds, along with black feathers on her. She lifts one hand to pluck a feather off her hair while she uses her other hand to browse her phone. "When will bird anarchy end?" she wonders to herself.
Outside, Corvid-19 continues to devastate most Havenites that travel outside the safety of buildings, so the question Autumn poses aloud to herself is perfectly reasonable. Even the light house is not immune to the pestering avian ambushers, and more than a few have thumped against the windows to try to shatter them and get into the structure. And yet, there is never enough weirdness in Haven, is there?
After a few minutes of checking her phone, Autumn receives a message about a child on Main Street causing some disturbances. A video is included, showing a male, blond child of no more than ten years old snatching ravens out of the air when they dive bomb him. And then he bites its head off and spits it to the side before slinging the decapitated bird's body back at the flock. Naturally, the body lands somewhere off screen, but this repeats a couple of times as the boy walks down main street. Then the video ends with a message suggesting Autumn is the closest person able to respond to the situation.
"Since when are Earth children so brutal?" Autumn mutters while she watches the video before she reads the message. She looks at the window, where a crow is staring at her menacingly, and then she gets up to her feet. Putting on her sweater and sneakers, she walks towards the entrance and carefully steps out, ready to brave the birdemic again. With a glance around she quickly runs to her bike, getting on it and rides down to the boy's location.
Main Street looks different in the midst of the birdemic. Hundreds, maybe even thousands, of ravens perch on every building, surface, vehicle, street light, and power line, watching anyone that dares step foot outside. Yet, despite the numbers, unless someone agitates them into action, they are nearly silent, adding a layer of eerie on top of the already freakish occurrence. And someone is most certainly motivating them to violence. Autumn arrives and parks her bike in an alley to peek out at what is going on. Angry caws ring out as the boy walks down the street, and any raven that ventures close enough to attack him gets snatched, decapitated, and spit aside in two pieces just like in the videos. The birds have not yet noticed Autumn, despite the bike, so focused are they on this unruly child that defies them so. The child is just outside of Narnia at the moment, and he stops to look around as if trying to find something besides the avian assassins.
Making sure the birds don't spot her, Autumn callously walks through the darkness to follow the boy. Her foot steps on a headless bird corpse, causing her to pause and move the feathered body aside before she moves on. Her eyes are on the child, with a glance here and there in case any corvid finds and marks her their new target.
Thankfully for Autumn, the boy in the middle of the street seems to have the birds' relentless attention for the moment. They do not like being thwarted so easily. A flock of the birds takes off from a nearby building to mount a more viable assault on the child instead of the one offs they have been doing. Thirty or so ravens descend on the child, but a chill forms in the air. Ice explodes from the boy's form, and skewers a dozen or more of then birds instantly. The others flee before befalling the same fate. The ice cracks, then shatters, falling to the street to melt out of the impaled bodies. The boy continues to look around, and while he looks toward Autumn, he does not notice her. She however would notice his white, faintly glowing eyes. He turns back toward the street and continues making his way south before turning to the east after passing the last shop on main street.
Autumn stops her movement upon seeing the icy counterattack on the ravens, grimacing as she watches the impaled birds drop dead on the concrete. She mouths something silently before she resumes following the boy with more caution. She sticks to the shadows and readies her left hand, waiting for the child to step out to the darkness.
Into the shadows the boy eventually does go, but it is a short distance from the street, on the lawn surrounding the town hall. The boy seems to be drawn to the graveyard of all places, as that is really the only major land mark in that direction. And the kid does not seem all that interested in shopping or eating. As Autumn follows the boy, a chorus of caws say she has been spotted by them, but perhaps because of the presence of the child, they seem reluctant to attack again so soon. How long her luck in that regard will last, who knows.
The graveyard is not a sanctuary from the avian menace either however. The fence, hundreds of grave markers and tomb stones, even the mausoleum have dozens more ravens perched upon them. But as she gets closer, Autumn can hear chanting from the far northeastern area of the grave yard. And she can sense more than see a black swirling vortex in that direction. The lack of lights make it difficult to see it, but there is certainly a gravity pulling from that corner of the grave yard.
A glance at her back has Autumn walk faster while she keeps her distance from the boy. Her hazel gaze turns towards the northeast, and her senses makes her guard herself from not just the birds. She tries to look closer with a squint of her eyes, before she speaks silently under her breath, raising her left hand.
Birds surround Autumn on every side as she follows the kid toward the grave yard. He stops when he gets to the fence however. Ravens scatter away from him, somehow aware of what he has already done to other members of the flock. Though the wrought iron fence might stop most people unwilling to climb it, the boy reaches out to grab to bars and just pulls them apart enough to be able to step through the fence and into the grave yard. He then turns toward the northeastern chanting and that swirling vortex that tugs at Autumn. The boy does not care about the graves or markers and proceeds forward, walking over who even knows how many people buried in the ground here.
As Autumn lingers near the boy, one bird makes it a point to dive toward her and test her defenses with a shrieking caw as it dives at her.
Autumn freezes and looks up to see the bird diving at her. She attempts to dodge, but she is too slow as the bird crashes right onto her. She staggers, almost falling before she regains her balance, seething quietly as she flails her hands angrily to shoo away her avian assailant.
Bruised of pride and bum from the fall, Autumn fends off the aggressive avian that rejoins its pals on a nearby building. But a few caws later, and it seems to be spreading word about her. As one, they turn their menacing attention toward her and begin to watch her intently.
Meanwhile, the boy is drifting closer and closer to the chanting people near the swirling vortex at the other end of the grave yard. There is a hole in the fence nearby she could scramble through if she does not feel like climbing. Or there is always the option to try to flee back to her bike and get the hell away from the Birds, a la Hitchcock.
Autumn might notice at this point that the birds are not attacking the people chanting either, but she may not realize why that might be just yet.
Rubbing where the bird struck her, Autumn turns to face the fence and with a glance up, she begins to wiggle her way through the hole towards the graveyard. Knowing her way around the cemetery, she follows the boy towards the chanting, trying to get a closer look while she attempts to listen.
Within the graveyard, Autumn is better able to keep pace with the boy, and the ravens, though still watching her, give her something of a break. Or maybe they just do not wish to tangle with whatever is happening inside the fence.
The boy steps up to the cultists chanting and linked to keep the vortex open. He ducks under their arms and into the circle. The chants are taking place in a language that is not English, and given the ancient dialect being used, Autumn may not understand it. The child addresses the apparent leader of the cult gathered here in the grave yard, speaking in an otherworldly voice from the small child's mouth. The cult leader nods in their hooded robe and begins a new chant that the others join in on.
It would not take a degree in rocket surgery to realize the change in chant means there is likely a different entity to call from the void-like vortex. They are about to summon a companion for the boy!
Getting closer, Autumn stops at a distance between herself and the circle of cultists. Raising her left hand, she chants in a low voice, making the runes on her panja bracelet glow red-orange. Peering around to make sure there's no birds, she looks back and focuses on the boy, preparing a spell in order to make him sweat.
Heating up the boy by a good deal certainly gets a reaction. He throws his head back and lets out an other worldly scream of pain. Whatever is inside of the boy immediately starts trying to tear itself loose, becoming an ethereal, frosty figure half inside of the boy, half outside of him, until it can wrench itself loose from the feverish child. When it does so, it stands fifteen feet tall, still howling in pain. The boy collapses on the ground, the fever and detachment immediately faints.
The cultists falter and start looking around, but the leader shouts at everyone to continue. As they return to their chants, a fiery hand emerges from the vortex, trying to pull another form through onto this plane. All that stands between them and success in this moment is Autumn
Seeing the tall frosty figure, Autumn directs her hand to target the leader's robe, her bracelet glowing again as she attempts to make it smoulder. She then moves slowly towards the child, ready to reach out and grab him while she keeps her eye out.
Lighting the cult leader on fire, or at least, appear to be on fire, earns a similar reaction. The leader breaks the link to stop drop and roll once he realizes he is smoking. As soon as his hands separate from the pair nearest him, the swirling vortex starts to spin the other way. The fiery hand is sucked back inside, and soon, that force is exerting itself on the icy figure as well. The cultists break apart and scatter away from the vortex, anticipating some sort of explosion once the icy figure is sucked back in and it closes. They want to be as far away from it as possible.
None of them at all tries to help the unconscious kid laying at the foot of the portal.
Using the chance, Autumn runs towards the boy, crouching down to pick him up to carry in her arms before she stands and flees from the vortex as well. She glances behind her shoulder once more as she runs across the cemetery towards the fence. She gently moves the kid through the hole first before she herself goes through after to carry him again.
Once the icy figure has been torn back through to where ever it came from, the vortex collapses. A brief limbo occurs for a second or two, and then a blast of energy surges out from that collapse, not unlike how a black hole might get formed with a star implodes. Luckily, this is just a dispersion of energy from the ritual and not an actual explosion. It is more like a massive gust of wind instead, but enough to knock Autumn to the ground and displace the entire graveyard's worth of ravens. The child flies with Autumn, but once they roll a couple of times and end up on the ground, the boy seems little worse for wear. Autumn is able to get him home and back to her bike to get out of the bird bombing areas of town before it is too late.
But one of those cultists sees her and follows her. Retribution may be down the road a ways... But not tonight. Tonight, she managed to save the kid and stop a second entity from crossing over into the world. A job well done.