Patrollogs
Fayads Ghost Banishing 241001
On a mystical night at the Arkwright Cemetery, a group gathered to confront a haunting unlike any they'd faced before. The air was filled with the eerie giggles of childlike spirits, casting an immediate pall of dread over the assembly. Among them, Ash, Fayad, Emmanuel, Novel, and Nikolai brought their unique mix of talents and temperaments to bear against the spectral menace. As Emmanuel scattered pocket sand and salt in a classic defensive gesture, only to have it blow back into his and Fayad's faces, the tension mounted. With every appearance of the sing-songy, dancing figure that twisted hearts with doubt, the group's resolve was tested. Ash's magical performance intertwined with Nikolai's ancestral invocations, while Novel's raw hostility and Fayad's stoic determination provided a striking contrast to the phantasmal chaos.
The turning point came with Novel's aggression, augmented by Nikolai's blessing, allowing him to finally strike at the elusive spirit. Meanwhile, Fayad focused intensely on his alchemical ingredients, channeling life force into the ritual as Ash commanded the powers of light and shadow to forge protective sigils. Emmanuel's humorous attempts to lighten the mood belied the deadly seriousness of their task, which crescendoed when the spirits shifted their guise to a swarm of butterflies, only to be scorched away by Nikolai's improvised flamethrower. The group's eclectic response to the haunting - from magical rites and aggressive defiance to heartfelt revelations - underscored the profound complexities of their individual struggles with loss, guilt, and rivalry. In a climactic fusion of their powers, the spectral tormentors were confronted, revealing the profound depths of their own haunted pasts as they sought resolution, not through violence, but through the cathartic release of their deepest confessions and confrontations with each other's shadowed souls.
(Fayad's ghost banishing)
[Mon Sep 30 2024]
On the Sprawling Hillside of Arkwright Cemetery
It is night, about 64F(17C) degrees, and the sky is covered by thin white clouds. There is a waning crescent moon.
Child-like giggling begins to fill the graveyard, it comes from everywhere, filling the minds of the small gathering here only to suddenly cut off, leaving everything dead silent, not even the wind makes a sound, the distant cars passing the graveyard have been muted. Only local voices can be heard by one another.
Ash hums. "It's not my destiny, it seems. I thought it was- what?"
Ash frowns, asking, "...children's ghosts? Really? And I don't use magic as a toy - it costs too much for that."
Fayad raises his arm, and lowers it slowly, like a lever, and then silence falls. He closes his eyes, becoming one with the complete silence. Honestly, it looks like Fayad may have fallen asleep, were it not for the gently pulsing materials laid across his lap - alchemical ingredients for psionic resonation pulsing with Fayad's heartbeat.
"..Oh, non." Emmanuel immediately loses a few shades of colour as the group is greeted by the giggling of children. He's seen enough horror films. He knows how this goes. "Oh, this is terrible. I did not know there were child ghosts." The man blurts out in clear alarm, and slinks a little closer toward Novel while starting to rummage about himself to produce handfuls of pocket salt, and pocket sand.
"Shiiit, really?" Novel cocks his head at Nikolai's description, expression looking interested. "I never fucking heard that. And I don't know fucking anything, that's why I keep asking questions. I thought the ghosts were literally ghosts. You know, beyond the veil, etcetra. If they're just PSYCHIC bullshit, I guess we still don't know if souls are real. That's a bit goddamn upsetting."
He talks loudly - filling the area, the space with his noise, his loudness, and in the silence there's the creak of leathers, the subtle shff of blue jeans, the way his boots thud heavily and the slight crunch of leaf and grass below his feet.
He glances over to Emmanuel. "Why is that bad? Children go further when you kick 'em, but they're little sociopaths."
A flash of light reveals a dancing figure, twirling gracefully through the air. Their voice is sing-songy as they tease, 'He loves me... he loves me not...' Each time they speak, doubt flickers in your heart about your closest relationships.
"You are feeling chipper, hm?" Emmanuel bleeps aside to Novel at the man's later words, and loudness, before shaking his head. "Nobody wants to fight children, hm?" He half-explains, though something in his tone suggests that there is more to this than he is saying.
Pulling a hammer - a small one, ball-peen - from an inner pocket of his jacket, Nikolai grips the tool in his hand and begins to rasp out something deep and throaty and difficult to understand - Russian, maybe, or something older. He's not a magician, but he does seem versed with spirits, and the scent of forge-smoke drips from his mouth as he beseeches his ancestral line for their assistance.
Novel gets a half-amused glance, but he doesn't interrupt his chanting for now.
Ash starts as they always do - with light. With the summoning of their will o' wisps, combining them into a larger will o' wisp, then breaks it in a burst of - this time - starlight. It falls like dust onto their skin, and then - like the spirit in the air, they start to twirl, spinning and leaping without their normal slow crescendo. They keep time with, and mirror the faelike spirit, except to dance in a circle, to create banishment circle of starlight.
Novel tenses, slightly, his lips thinning into a line, and then - he flips off the dancing figure. "Go fuck yourself. It's because everyone's powers were turned off. Made it all fucking weird." Like most things, he reacts with raw hostility and confidence. "Things will go back to normal now." Well. 'normal'.
And then, Emmanuel's question, a flashing grin. "Fuck yeah. I ALWAYS feel fantastic after a dip in Sludgefukk. And why the hell not? They're guilty as sin. Always breaking things. Hurting people for fun. You gotta teach them to not be little shitters, sometimes physically. Not really a fight, though. Mostly just teaching them." His hand snakes into his own coat and a knife flicks out. He has no power, except himself, and his mayhem. But he has something.
Fayad's face is set into a severe frown, but what else is new? His face couldn't even have smile lines if it was forced to, considering his usual status. The emotional agony being radiated from the sing-songy, childhood nursery rhyme doesn't seem to affect Fayad at all, for the moment. Perhaps these doubts were already present.
Ash explains in a sing-song voice, their drawl swinging back and forth in every word, "We don't have to fight them, Emmanuel. If they are children. If you know the words, then chant them. If you have the parts, then use them. If you can protect people, you can stop them from hurting others, without striking back. Though, I suspect... more fae than children. We shall see... this is new to me."
"Nyeh!" Emmanuel just straight up throws a fistful of pocket-sand toward the dancing figure, just as a seaside breeze picks up. It ends up scattering the salt and sand right back into his and Fayad's face, leaving the Frenchman spluttering for a few moments there, and then eventually lapsing into silence as he's left to consider the doubt afforded by the dancers enchantment.
Fayad thankfully has his eyes closed and thus has a resistance to pocket sand. Salt. ... Sant.
A soft giggle echoes in the air, followed by the scent of roses. For a brief moment, the face of a lover or crush you havent seen in years flashes before your eyeswas it real, or just a trick?
Ash disregards the sandy, salty mistake, dipping and turning their torso, swinging their seemingly wider hips and and holding their arms out as they form a path of light that forms sigil and symbol, draws lines, and makes connections... until they stumble, hands to their throat as they flinch back. "...Dorian?" They shiver, face taking on a variety of expressions - fear, shame, submission... and then, realization, anger, pride. "No, fuck off! Never again!" They kick at the vision, and leap back into dance - they dance with vigor and anger, with violence and vengeance. This drives passion into the dance, but not the kind the dance may have meant to evoke.
Novel recoils at the new trick, an opening, a closing of the mouth, a clacking of the teeth and slow exhale. A rolling of the shoulders. "I hate this bullshit," He says, eventually, his jaw flexing.
"Put these childs' minds back to bed," Nikolai beseeches, slowly and evenly lifting his hammer into the air with one hand while stretching out his open hand palm-up. His words grow firmer and more insistent as psychic doubts are cast into his mind. "Give me the flames that once lit your son, Dazhbog, and cast away the shadows of unrest." A deep, brilliant glow bursts from his skin, flooding his surroundings with a heat both intense and unburning - brief, admittedly, but outshining even Ash's conjured light in the few moments it lasts.
A flash of light reveals a dancing figure, twirling gracefully through the air. Their voice is sing-songy as they tease, 'He loves me... he loves me not...' Each time they speak, doubt flickers in your heart about your closest relationships.
Once Emmanuel is finished rubbing and brushing sant out of his eyes and mouth and face, he turns back toward the source of this haunting only to pause, and blinks several times, slowly. His lips twist into a thin, firm line, as he glances up and down at a figure that isn't really there, "A pretty lie," The man intones in quiet French, before clearing his throat, and dragging his attention away, in order to begin tracing a circle about their group in whole - making an unbroken line of salt against the grass of the cemetery.
Novel promptly walks up to the dancing figure and, taking his bowie knife, attempts to insert it directly into the spirit with clear anger in his expression. He has no magic like Nikolai and Ash and Fayad, nor the cleverness of Emmanuel, but he has a certain amount of raw, energetic viciousness, that he applies with grand exuberance.
Ash moves their hands in mystical patterns, fingers playing their role in mudras and tuts as their arms cross, twin, and bend. They sway and twist, they bend and kick, and the result is evident to the eye of all who watch. The circle pulses in rhythm, while lines are drawn into the air. This time, they ignore the doubts in their heart - they are adding nothing more to what has already been living in their heart.
Fayad's components are glowing umber, burnt umber, even. No one on this planet can cook umber properly, since it only is usually described in burned or raw flavors. He channels the life force around him into the ritual over time, concentrating intently on the ritual and nothing else.
A flash of light reveals a dancing figure, twirling gracefully through the air. Their voice is sing-songy as they tease, 'He loves me... he loves me not...' Each time they speak, doubt flickers in your heart about your closest relationships.
Stepping forward with a measured, ceremonial gait, Nikolai approaches Novel from behind and turns his open, outstretched palm downwards to rest on the mundane man's shoulder. His words slip smoothly from Russian to English, and he bestows Novel with a blessing: "May your weapons be sharp enough to pierce even the hide which is not there." There's a weight to those words - and even if the gangly man might prefer to shake off the Russian's clasp, the divine imbuement is sure to linger for some time. "Now deal with ghosts, da?"
Novel scowls as not just his hand but his whole body goes straight through the figure which continues to dance around the ghost-busting group as a whole, leading him to stumble. And then, a sagging to one side, finding himself forcefully righted upon the ground by Nikolai's clasping hand. "Huh?" He looks briefly confused. And then his hand tightens on the blade. And then, a grin, all white and pointed and sharp - the grind of a hunting dog. "FUCK yeah," He states, emboldened before turning it into a full on lunge.
And this time, the blade scores home, ripping into one of the flashes of light in terrible flashing, glinting.
Ash stamps a path along the ground with bare feet, sometimes on their toes, on the balls of their feet, sometimes taking a full step and leaving a whole footprint. But, for the most part, they draw trails into the soil, they stamp out runes, they draw them over and over again, sometimes in part, only to complete it when they come around the circle again. Rather than replace anything, they manage to only add to it, leaving behind an arcane trail.
"Nobody loves you," Emmanuel hisses over toward the spirit now, affording it a verbal lashing as Novel cuts through it's very form. He continues to make his way around the group, securing that binding circle of salt for the more arcanely gifted to use with their attempts. There is a growing tension in his jaw as this goes on.
Even if physical injury will never be a lasting concern of ghosts and the ethereal, Nikolai smiles with approval at Novel's renewed assault, then steps back to slip back into his aged, Russian droning. "Banish the dead to their resting place," he implores. "Drive their spears of doubt and worry away from us. Be our shield against grief and mourning. Do away with the unliving."
A swarm of beautiful blue winged butterflies sweep into the area and move as one to form the shape of a curvaceous female form, it moves as if to dance whimsically across the grave and as easily as it formed the butterflies scatter into thousands of directions.
"..Oh," Emmanuel blurts out quietly under his breath as the annoying figure instead turns into something curvaceous and female, and corrects himself, "Maybe someone could be loving you, eh, fellas?" He drawls out to the others with a dry laugh, making a joke of it all. Though he does flinch and pulls away from the sudden explosion of butterflies after. Clearly it reminds him of the attack of a particularly fiesty cat-girl.
Ashen gray dreadlocks fly out behind them, beads glowing and leaving a trail. Ash's brown skin glistens with sweat, and their white shirt clings to them, transparent. Their schoolgirl skirt flares and flips, and their chest heaves and bounces from within the shapewear that they still have on.
"OH THAT'S FUCKING BULLSHIT," Novel declares with savage annoyance on his voice, a sudden, sharp, discordant, mortal shouting in response as the entity dodges his next, violent stab. Absentmindedly a foot lift and slams down, crushing several butterfly below his feet and then twisting it with a crunching noise, in the common movement of someone who has learned to crush cockroaches twice because the little shits like to fake it the first time. "I wish I had a flamethrower." He complains to the air.
The sound of a harp echoes nearby, and the tune is hauntingly familiar. For just a moment, you feel an overwhelming urge to confess your deepest feelings to the nearest person.
Flamethrowers aren't a bad idea - Nikolai stops his chanting for a moment and lifts his hammer with purpose and ire - then glances aside at Emmanuel, cocking an amused eyebrow. He turns the hammer sideways - that's gangsta. That's a kill shot. Flame belches forth from the tip of his tool, scourging and excoriating the butterfly horde as best it can in an army of crimson tongues - and then they're gone, replaced by that melancholic harp.
Fayad doesn't particularly have any confessions to make - Fayad is renowned at this point for never lying about anything to anyone, to his grave, extreme, absolutely psyche and body shattering detriment, so anything he could think to come up with to say is sometihng he's already said to everyone present here, whether it was about his deep seated desire to murder Nikolai and Ash or his great admiration and gratitude for Emmanuel and Novel.
"I am going to break your fucking nose in the next couple of days," Nikolai scowls aside at Fayad. "Shithead. You are a stain on the ground you walk on. We will have to make example of you before you go on enormous rant on chatroom again about how you are so tortured and lonely and driven by hate. Cut yourself or jerk off. Don't do both at once. Don't do any of it where I am forced to read messages, mudak."
Novel immediately sprawls a grin over his features as he watches Nikolai set fire to everything, cheering, "FUCK yeah. I need to get me something like that. Or explosives. Need to get better at dealing with bombs and fucking fire one of these goddamn days. Maybe learn to BREATHE fire, that'd be fucking cool." He rambles to himself. But... honestly, he's like this all the time. Is this anything different than how he normally behaves? He doesn't listen to the rambling that isn't in a language he doesn't understand. Instead, he hunts.
Novel adds, as sort of an afterthought, "I feel like killing everything."
Ash pauses in their dance, ready to bring the ritual to completion... but their dance brings them near Fayad where they pause, staring at him. Their lips tremble as their mouth parts, and they fight... but they've *been* fighting for months now, and when they speak, they tell him... "All you had to do was care. You used me as a tool, and you hardly even valued me. I could have been anyone in the same role. All I needed was you to show me that you cared about *me*, Fayad... and I would have suffered the flames alongside of you. But you didn't value me. I was just... there. And useful."
Novel says "Pretty much all the time."
Nikolai did not mean to say all of that in Russian that time.
"I am going to break your fucking nose in the next couple of days," Nikolai scowls aside at Fayad. "Shithead. You are a stain on the ground you walk on. We will have to make example of you before you go on enormous rant on chatroom again about how you are so tortured and lonely and driven by hate. Cut yourself or jerk off. Don't do both at once. Don't do any of it where I am forced to read messages, mudak."
The turning point came with Novel's aggression, augmented by Nikolai's blessing, allowing him to finally strike at the elusive spirit. Meanwhile, Fayad focused intensely on his alchemical ingredients, channeling life force into the ritual as Ash commanded the powers of light and shadow to forge protective sigils. Emmanuel's humorous attempts to lighten the mood belied the deadly seriousness of their task, which crescendoed when the spirits shifted their guise to a swarm of butterflies, only to be scorched away by Nikolai's improvised flamethrower. The group's eclectic response to the haunting - from magical rites and aggressive defiance to heartfelt revelations - underscored the profound complexities of their individual struggles with loss, guilt, and rivalry. In a climactic fusion of their powers, the spectral tormentors were confronted, revealing the profound depths of their own haunted pasts as they sought resolution, not through violence, but through the cathartic release of their deepest confessions and confrontations with each other's shadowed souls.
(Fayad's ghost banishing)
[Mon Sep 30 2024]
On the Sprawling Hillside of Arkwright Cemetery
It is night, about 64F(17C) degrees, and the sky is covered by thin white clouds. There is a waning crescent moon.
Child-like giggling begins to fill the graveyard, it comes from everywhere, filling the minds of the small gathering here only to suddenly cut off, leaving everything dead silent, not even the wind makes a sound, the distant cars passing the graveyard have been muted. Only local voices can be heard by one another.
Ash hums. "It's not my destiny, it seems. I thought it was- what?"
Ash frowns, asking, "...children's ghosts? Really? And I don't use magic as a toy - it costs too much for that."
Fayad raises his arm, and lowers it slowly, like a lever, and then silence falls. He closes his eyes, becoming one with the complete silence. Honestly, it looks like Fayad may have fallen asleep, were it not for the gently pulsing materials laid across his lap - alchemical ingredients for psionic resonation pulsing with Fayad's heartbeat.
"..Oh, non." Emmanuel immediately loses a few shades of colour as the group is greeted by the giggling of children. He's seen enough horror films. He knows how this goes. "Oh, this is terrible. I did not know there were child ghosts." The man blurts out in clear alarm, and slinks a little closer toward Novel while starting to rummage about himself to produce handfuls of pocket salt, and pocket sand.
"Shiiit, really?" Novel cocks his head at Nikolai's description, expression looking interested. "I never fucking heard that. And I don't know fucking anything, that's why I keep asking questions. I thought the ghosts were literally ghosts. You know, beyond the veil, etcetra. If they're just PSYCHIC bullshit, I guess we still don't know if souls are real. That's a bit goddamn upsetting."
He talks loudly - filling the area, the space with his noise, his loudness, and in the silence there's the creak of leathers, the subtle shff of blue jeans, the way his boots thud heavily and the slight crunch of leaf and grass below his feet.
He glances over to Emmanuel. "Why is that bad? Children go further when you kick 'em, but they're little sociopaths."
A flash of light reveals a dancing figure, twirling gracefully through the air. Their voice is sing-songy as they tease, 'He loves me... he loves me not...' Each time they speak, doubt flickers in your heart about your closest relationships.
"You are feeling chipper, hm?" Emmanuel bleeps aside to Novel at the man's later words, and loudness, before shaking his head. "Nobody wants to fight children, hm?" He half-explains, though something in his tone suggests that there is more to this than he is saying.
Pulling a hammer - a small one, ball-peen - from an inner pocket of his jacket, Nikolai grips the tool in his hand and begins to rasp out something deep and throaty and difficult to understand - Russian, maybe, or something older. He's not a magician, but he does seem versed with spirits, and the scent of forge-smoke drips from his mouth as he beseeches his ancestral line for their assistance.
Novel gets a half-amused glance, but he doesn't interrupt his chanting for now.
Ash starts as they always do - with light. With the summoning of their will o' wisps, combining them into a larger will o' wisp, then breaks it in a burst of - this time - starlight. It falls like dust onto their skin, and then - like the spirit in the air, they start to twirl, spinning and leaping without their normal slow crescendo. They keep time with, and mirror the faelike spirit, except to dance in a circle, to create banishment circle of starlight.
Novel tenses, slightly, his lips thinning into a line, and then - he flips off the dancing figure. "Go fuck yourself. It's because everyone's powers were turned off. Made it all fucking weird." Like most things, he reacts with raw hostility and confidence. "Things will go back to normal now." Well. 'normal'.
And then, Emmanuel's question, a flashing grin. "Fuck yeah. I ALWAYS feel fantastic after a dip in Sludgefukk. And why the hell not? They're guilty as sin. Always breaking things. Hurting people for fun. You gotta teach them to not be little shitters, sometimes physically. Not really a fight, though. Mostly just teaching them." His hand snakes into his own coat and a knife flicks out. He has no power, except himself, and his mayhem. But he has something.
Fayad's face is set into a severe frown, but what else is new? His face couldn't even have smile lines if it was forced to, considering his usual status. The emotional agony being radiated from the sing-songy, childhood nursery rhyme doesn't seem to affect Fayad at all, for the moment. Perhaps these doubts were already present.
Ash explains in a sing-song voice, their drawl swinging back and forth in every word, "We don't have to fight them, Emmanuel. If they are children. If you know the words, then chant them. If you have the parts, then use them. If you can protect people, you can stop them from hurting others, without striking back. Though, I suspect... more fae than children. We shall see... this is new to me."
"Nyeh!" Emmanuel just straight up throws a fistful of pocket-sand toward the dancing figure, just as a seaside breeze picks up. It ends up scattering the salt and sand right back into his and Fayad's face, leaving the Frenchman spluttering for a few moments there, and then eventually lapsing into silence as he's left to consider the doubt afforded by the dancers enchantment.
Fayad thankfully has his eyes closed and thus has a resistance to pocket sand. Salt. ... Sant.
A soft giggle echoes in the air, followed by the scent of roses. For a brief moment, the face of a lover or crush you havent seen in years flashes before your eyeswas it real, or just a trick?
Ash disregards the sandy, salty mistake, dipping and turning their torso, swinging their seemingly wider hips and and holding their arms out as they form a path of light that forms sigil and symbol, draws lines, and makes connections... until they stumble, hands to their throat as they flinch back. "...Dorian?" They shiver, face taking on a variety of expressions - fear, shame, submission... and then, realization, anger, pride. "No, fuck off! Never again!" They kick at the vision, and leap back into dance - they dance with vigor and anger, with violence and vengeance. This drives passion into the dance, but not the kind the dance may have meant to evoke.
Novel recoils at the new trick, an opening, a closing of the mouth, a clacking of the teeth and slow exhale. A rolling of the shoulders. "I hate this bullshit," He says, eventually, his jaw flexing.
"Put these childs' minds back to bed," Nikolai beseeches, slowly and evenly lifting his hammer into the air with one hand while stretching out his open hand palm-up. His words grow firmer and more insistent as psychic doubts are cast into his mind. "Give me the flames that once lit your son, Dazhbog, and cast away the shadows of unrest." A deep, brilliant glow bursts from his skin, flooding his surroundings with a heat both intense and unburning - brief, admittedly, but outshining even Ash's conjured light in the few moments it lasts.
A flash of light reveals a dancing figure, twirling gracefully through the air. Their voice is sing-songy as they tease, 'He loves me... he loves me not...' Each time they speak, doubt flickers in your heart about your closest relationships.
Once Emmanuel is finished rubbing and brushing sant out of his eyes and mouth and face, he turns back toward the source of this haunting only to pause, and blinks several times, slowly. His lips twist into a thin, firm line, as he glances up and down at a figure that isn't really there, "A pretty lie," The man intones in quiet French, before clearing his throat, and dragging his attention away, in order to begin tracing a circle about their group in whole - making an unbroken line of salt against the grass of the cemetery.
Novel promptly walks up to the dancing figure and, taking his bowie knife, attempts to insert it directly into the spirit with clear anger in his expression. He has no magic like Nikolai and Ash and Fayad, nor the cleverness of Emmanuel, but he has a certain amount of raw, energetic viciousness, that he applies with grand exuberance.
Ash moves their hands in mystical patterns, fingers playing their role in mudras and tuts as their arms cross, twin, and bend. They sway and twist, they bend and kick, and the result is evident to the eye of all who watch. The circle pulses in rhythm, while lines are drawn into the air. This time, they ignore the doubts in their heart - they are adding nothing more to what has already been living in their heart.
Fayad's components are glowing umber, burnt umber, even. No one on this planet can cook umber properly, since it only is usually described in burned or raw flavors. He channels the life force around him into the ritual over time, concentrating intently on the ritual and nothing else.
A flash of light reveals a dancing figure, twirling gracefully through the air. Their voice is sing-songy as they tease, 'He loves me... he loves me not...' Each time they speak, doubt flickers in your heart about your closest relationships.
Stepping forward with a measured, ceremonial gait, Nikolai approaches Novel from behind and turns his open, outstretched palm downwards to rest on the mundane man's shoulder. His words slip smoothly from Russian to English, and he bestows Novel with a blessing: "May your weapons be sharp enough to pierce even the hide which is not there." There's a weight to those words - and even if the gangly man might prefer to shake off the Russian's clasp, the divine imbuement is sure to linger for some time. "Now deal with ghosts, da?"
Novel scowls as not just his hand but his whole body goes straight through the figure which continues to dance around the ghost-busting group as a whole, leading him to stumble. And then, a sagging to one side, finding himself forcefully righted upon the ground by Nikolai's clasping hand. "Huh?" He looks briefly confused. And then his hand tightens on the blade. And then, a grin, all white and pointed and sharp - the grind of a hunting dog. "FUCK yeah," He states, emboldened before turning it into a full on lunge.
And this time, the blade scores home, ripping into one of the flashes of light in terrible flashing, glinting.
Ash stamps a path along the ground with bare feet, sometimes on their toes, on the balls of their feet, sometimes taking a full step and leaving a whole footprint. But, for the most part, they draw trails into the soil, they stamp out runes, they draw them over and over again, sometimes in part, only to complete it when they come around the circle again. Rather than replace anything, they manage to only add to it, leaving behind an arcane trail.
"Nobody loves you," Emmanuel hisses over toward the spirit now, affording it a verbal lashing as Novel cuts through it's very form. He continues to make his way around the group, securing that binding circle of salt for the more arcanely gifted to use with their attempts. There is a growing tension in his jaw as this goes on.
Even if physical injury will never be a lasting concern of ghosts and the ethereal, Nikolai smiles with approval at Novel's renewed assault, then steps back to slip back into his aged, Russian droning. "Banish the dead to their resting place," he implores. "Drive their spears of doubt and worry away from us. Be our shield against grief and mourning. Do away with the unliving."
A swarm of beautiful blue winged butterflies sweep into the area and move as one to form the shape of a curvaceous female form, it moves as if to dance whimsically across the grave and as easily as it formed the butterflies scatter into thousands of directions.
"..Oh," Emmanuel blurts out quietly under his breath as the annoying figure instead turns into something curvaceous and female, and corrects himself, "Maybe someone could be loving you, eh, fellas?" He drawls out to the others with a dry laugh, making a joke of it all. Though he does flinch and pulls away from the sudden explosion of butterflies after. Clearly it reminds him of the attack of a particularly fiesty cat-girl.
Ashen gray dreadlocks fly out behind them, beads glowing and leaving a trail. Ash's brown skin glistens with sweat, and their white shirt clings to them, transparent. Their schoolgirl skirt flares and flips, and their chest heaves and bounces from within the shapewear that they still have on.
"OH THAT'S FUCKING BULLSHIT," Novel declares with savage annoyance on his voice, a sudden, sharp, discordant, mortal shouting in response as the entity dodges his next, violent stab. Absentmindedly a foot lift and slams down, crushing several butterfly below his feet and then twisting it with a crunching noise, in the common movement of someone who has learned to crush cockroaches twice because the little shits like to fake it the first time. "I wish I had a flamethrower." He complains to the air.
The sound of a harp echoes nearby, and the tune is hauntingly familiar. For just a moment, you feel an overwhelming urge to confess your deepest feelings to the nearest person.
Flamethrowers aren't a bad idea - Nikolai stops his chanting for a moment and lifts his hammer with purpose and ire - then glances aside at Emmanuel, cocking an amused eyebrow. He turns the hammer sideways - that's gangsta. That's a kill shot. Flame belches forth from the tip of his tool, scourging and excoriating the butterfly horde as best it can in an army of crimson tongues - and then they're gone, replaced by that melancholic harp.
Fayad doesn't particularly have any confessions to make - Fayad is renowned at this point for never lying about anything to anyone, to his grave, extreme, absolutely psyche and body shattering detriment, so anything he could think to come up with to say is sometihng he's already said to everyone present here, whether it was about his deep seated desire to murder Nikolai and Ash or his great admiration and gratitude for Emmanuel and Novel.
"I am going to break your fucking nose in the next couple of days," Nikolai scowls aside at Fayad. "Shithead. You are a stain on the ground you walk on. We will have to make example of you before you go on enormous rant on chatroom again about how you are so tortured and lonely and driven by hate. Cut yourself or jerk off. Don't do both at once. Don't do any of it where I am forced to read messages, mudak."
Novel immediately sprawls a grin over his features as he watches Nikolai set fire to everything, cheering, "FUCK yeah. I need to get me something like that. Or explosives. Need to get better at dealing with bombs and fucking fire one of these goddamn days. Maybe learn to BREATHE fire, that'd be fucking cool." He rambles to himself. But... honestly, he's like this all the time. Is this anything different than how he normally behaves? He doesn't listen to the rambling that isn't in a language he doesn't understand. Instead, he hunts.
Novel adds, as sort of an afterthought, "I feel like killing everything."
Ash pauses in their dance, ready to bring the ritual to completion... but their dance brings them near Fayad where they pause, staring at him. Their lips tremble as their mouth parts, and they fight... but they've *been* fighting for months now, and when they speak, they tell him... "All you had to do was care. You used me as a tool, and you hardly even valued me. I could have been anyone in the same role. All I needed was you to show me that you cared about *me*, Fayad... and I would have suffered the flames alongside of you. But you didn't value me. I was just... there. And useful."
Novel says "Pretty much all the time."
Nikolai did not mean to say all of that in Russian that time.
"I am going to break your fucking nose in the next couple of days," Nikolai scowls aside at Fayad. "Shithead. You are a stain on the ground you walk on. We will have to make example of you before you go on enormous rant on chatroom again about how you are so tortured and lonely and driven by hate. Cut yourself or jerk off. Don't do both at once. Don't do any of it where I am forced to read messages, mudak."