Patrollogs
Jodies Ghost Banishing 241102
In the eerie atmosphere of Arkwright Cemetery, amidst the unsettling coil of black mist and the pungent smell of brimstone, an unlikely trio faced a host of phantom adversaries. Jodie, with a disposition more prepared for a casual outing than battling otherworldly spirits, took the forefront as a defensive bulwark. Alongside her, Elora, with her expertise in the arcane, and her apprentice, Jiae, engaged in the intricate processes of a banishing ritual. As creatures formed from the smoke attempted to disrupt their work, the group found themselves entangled in a battle that tested both their physical defenses and their resolve. Jodie, undaunted by the spectral warriors and hellhounds, leaped into action, her efforts granting Elora and Jiae precious time to concentrate on their spellcasting.
The climax of their endeavor approached as Jiae, guided by Elora's seasoned hand, completed the ritual, her blood mingling with the earth as a powerful token of their intent. The air crackled with the potency of their spell, a dome of erasure expanding outward to cleanse the area of its spectral infestation. Despite the looming threats and under the veil of Elora's sharp retorts towards Jodie's desperate protests for a hastier resolution, the ritual concluded successfully. The spectral entities, bound by the constraints of the glyphs and the unique ingredients of the ritual, were dispelled, leaving behind a palpable sense of relief and triumph. Yet, even in the aftermath, tensions flared between Jodie and Elora, hinting at unresolved conflicts that transcended their spectral adversaries. Through courage, arcane knowledge, and a touch of desperation, the group reclaimed the cemetery from its otherworldly occupants, each member playing a pivotal role in the confrontation's resolution.
(Jodie's ghost banishing)
[Fri Nov 1 2024]
On the Sprawling Hillside of Arkwright Cemetery
It is afternoon, about 59F(15C) degrees,
There is the sudden smell of brimstone that fills the area, and along with a rising, black mist: smoke, coiling along the surface of the graveyard. It seems to form strange whorls and shapes, and as they draw close to %n they begin to look more and more like creatures -- horned creatures, with red eyes full of menace.
Jiae says "What start the ritual? Is it the time declared or the target- or just ever-ything..."
Jiae says "W-which are those? Still ghosts?"
Jiae smudges the dirt of her circle in its top right quandrant.
Elora brushes turquoise and neon locks from her face as she ambles through the graveyard, crossing over tombstones as she moves to where Jiae has begun drawing out a circle. She kneels at it, inspecting it with critical teal eyes. As the smell of brimstone fills the air, her nose twitches, once twice. "Ghosts, yes, but ghosts of something fleshcrafted or perhaps its descendant. " She looks over then, noticing that there are many. "A host of them it seems." She frowns at that. Then her choker begins to glow faintly with a wintery light.
Jodie smooths out her miniskirt after she smells the brimestone long before the smoke coaleses into anything that someone could sea. "I did not dress appropriately for chasing around smoke demons." she gravitates towards Elora and Jiae, not to join their ritual, but instead to stand in front of it to provide a first and last line of defense. "I'll do what I can to cover you both."
Out of the smoke charges an armed and armored warrior, spun out of black mist. He is dressed head to toe in archaic plate armor, wielding some huge, two-handed sword as black as his armor. With a roar, he rushes at Jodie, swinging the sword in some attempt to cut off their head.
Elora calls into begin multiple balls of blue and white light. One of them surges toward the armed warrior as if to blind or distract. And whatever it is that the figure sees... its definitely not a light.
Jiae redraws the Byzantine characters with her finger, then finishes the half side of the circle with an arc of her finger. It's not perfect, but its symmetry is functional. "You have knife? I need my hand, so stab me so I am not somewhere weird later."
"Of fuck-" Jodie swears narrowly ducking the blade as it passes through her head was a moment ago. In retaliation she sends her fist through where the smoke monsters head should be but it doesn't connect with anything solid. It does however dissipate the foe into a formless cloud of smoke
Jiae glances up to Jodie "You are.. Like shield, or something?"
Elora reaches out for the stick in Jiae's hand as the girl grows distracted, snagging it from her. She moves to add sigils to the top quadrant. Wavy lines, a curved, horned shape, and then she glances toward the foggy dark mist and draws a complicated arrangement of dots until there are as many dots as there are ghostly apparitions. Her teal eyes are cool through it all.
"That's me, Jodie. Shield, punching bag. Whatever." Jodie says to Jiae, glancing her way to introduce herself but quickly she's focused outward towards possible threats. "They usually don't care about me cause I dont do any magic."
"Keep them off of us while we work, I intend for this to be a lesson for my apprentice. She would not handle well being hit with a sword, shadow or no shadow," Elora instructs someone, even as her hand lazily re-offers the stick to Jiae.
"Keep them off of us while we work, I intend for this to be a lesson for my apprentice. She would not handle well being hit with a sword, shadow or no shadow," Elora instructs someone, even as her hand lazily re-offers the stick to Jiae.
"Keep them off of us while we work, I intend for this to be a lesson for my apprentice. She would not handle well being hit with a sword, shadow or no shadow," Elora orders Jodie, as she lazily re-offers her stick to Jiae.
Jiae holds an irritated silence as her writing utensil is taken from her, she writes in the bottom right, the 4th- generally the final quadrant of the circle a series of eastern characters. "I am writing my blood, teacher."
With a howl, some kind of winged monkey-demon swoops down near Jodie, its body made of living smoke. It's all grasping claws, striking hard to leave psychic scars that hurt like deep slashes. Other monkeys attack anyone nearby, with similar screeching, rending claws.
Elora in that moment moves, darting up, to dodge away from claws; strangely, as her choker flares with light, nothing moves to attack Jiae.
No hackles raise from Jiae as Elora speaks low of the small, physically sick and otherwise poorly frame student. As a monkey bounds towards her, she prepares to cross before it abruptly changes itds mind.
Jodie squeels when she's attacked by flying monkeys, she swats at them like they are oversized mosquitos but once she realizes that's fruitless she squats down and covers her head to try to protect herself.
Elora scrambles away from the flying monkeys a harried look on her teal eyes. She's not in clothes suited for such movement, her wrap of a blue dress, clinging to her, interfering with motion. So when the monkeys catch her and tear into her seconds later, her cry of pain is a terrible little wail, little, because she is little; almost child sized. Yet instead of falling, she glares, even as tears pool in her eyes from the pain. "Keep drawing," Elora hisses toward Jiae. her hand lashes out, slamming through the apparation that has talons embedded into her. The other is still there, upon her, slashing, and she cringed away more then dodged its sweeping blade like claws.
"Useless," Elora practically spit, continuing to back away from the monkey whose claws are tearing at her. She is looking toward the girl squatting. And then the monkeys are both turning, the one attacking Jodie turning toward Elora and the one attacking Elora turning toward Jodie. They continue to slash, but now at air, rather than at person. The wintery light of the choker continues to flare from the runes wrapped around Elora' neck.
Jiae, clearly not a perfectionist given the scrawl of her art, but conservative in her intent, traces a few ends of the circle then looks up to Elora with a tight expression. She turns down to fixate on what's below her- removing herself of the distraction- the howls, what she stands to lose. She starts adding a complex set of parallel filigry- small and seemingly innocent like the hidden symbols on a dollar bill, but vitally important to its value and identity.
A twisted figure forms out of infernal smoke, shaped like a terrible canine shape. It's a hellhound, leaping towards Jodie with an awful snarl. When its mouth closes on %n, it has some phantom force, sending a vision of suffering in hellfire.
Elora had moved away a bit from Jodie so the spirits are now crossing empty graveyard, giving the two of them room to breathe, to recover, to act; and apparently, Elora is rather insane, because instead of doing something sensible, she reaches for a knife, pulls it free, and cuts into her own palm. Clenching her fist, she lets blood drip down onto the the green grass of the graveyard.
"Come, Envy," Elora calls out.
Jodie growls back at the hellhound and when it tries to bite her she shoves her hand down it's throat and lets it bite her on the arm. She erred doing this however as the thing makes her suffer a painful vision which makes her scream
Jiae takes the plooms of smoke, cast strange through rays of the sunlit sky overhead, in a smoker's stride. Tears fall down from its sting, soaking twice this place of herself, but she doesn't blink. She finally crouches up, squatting, and looking about exasperated, proceeds to bash her compass into the ground. The dirt doesn't take easily to it, but a pebble does, and the quiet sound of glass is otherwise suffocated by the scene.
Jiae takes the glass in a fist, before she considers, and a whimper soon wishes she did. More blood joins the patch of land that swallows corpses- in droplets, not yet streams, that she uses to trace the core structure of the glyph now below her.
As the dark mists roil in the cemetery, Jodie and everyone with them are struck with a sudden fear. It's cold and awful, sinking into their heart to make the world seem impossible and alone.
in her Arcana summons a kitsune who arrives in loping strides. Two tails, swishing. Its an orange animal, with sleek fur. It pounces through the smoke creature harrying Elora. Then moves to support Jodie. No longer as harried by apparations Elora moves to Jiae rejoining her at the circle to check over her work.
"Did you do it wrong?" Elora asks, the fear striking her going into what she focuses on: her apprentice's sigil work. Yet as she looks it over, that fears begins to chill. "No. No, this is fine."
"Good. Good. Its better to use more life force than little when you're learning. As you get better, you can put less of yourself into it," Elora tells someone, voice lilting out in an English accent. She shows remarkably little concern for Jodie as she is harried, apparently content now to focus on her apprentice rather than the other woman now that the lithe orange furred fox is there to assist her.
"Good. Good. Its better to use more life force than little when you're learning. As you get better, you can put less of yourself into it," Elora tells Jiae, voice lilting out in an English accent. She shows remarkably little concern for Jodie as she is harried, apparently content now to focus on her apprentice rather than the other woman now that the lithe orange furred fox is there to assist her.
Jiae embellished. It is the mistake of the young to pay attention to the wrong things. She has remembered the shape romantically, the glpyh in the dirt a sketch that could lead to something one might hang on the wall. "I did it /right/" She insists, biting her lip as her hand tenses. Blood smudges and sticks to her hand as she dabs it with her free finger, instead of spilling out in the /ideal/ fashion. She shakes her hand frantically like a stiff rag, growling at it as if it hadn't been with her her entire life.
Jodie is still standing after she shakes off the hellhound, but now she's no longer confident. In fact fear makes up the majority of the emotions on her face. "This is ridiculous. Attack someone else!"
But Jiae 's drawing is, at least, correct.
Elora begins adding additional sigils, using her finger nails to draw in the patch of loamy soil the two women were working on. "I didn't teach you these, but different begins have weakneses. Fae, iron. God blooded have a weakness for that which is small and splits. For demons, it is quartz which is there weakness, so we add that to the spell."
"NO, no- Attack you! I am busy!" Jiae calls out to Jodie, not looking up. -
Jiae says "You have.. Have quarter- okay, just- I am drawing, add thing."
With a howl, some kind of winged monkey-demon swoops down near Jodie, its body made of living smoke. It's all grasping claws, striking hard to leave psychic scars that hurt like deep slashes. Other monkeys attack anyone nearby, with similar screeching, rending claws.
Elora points at the sigil she is drawing. "Different beings, different weaknesses."
has a kitsune that charges the howling monkeys, intercepting them as they move to attack Elora and Jiae, getting in the way. And Elora has a choker, glowing subtly with cyan light as it perhaps assists in leading the spirits away from the two kneeling women.
"QUARTS! I am /bleeding/ quarts! What are you talking about?" Jiae cries out, taking the casual abuse in the stride of her hands and knees, rounding the corners with red that disappears into the dirt in an easy fashion.
It's the monkeys again that get Jodie to freak out. She squeals out a noise then she drops to her knees and covers her head to try and protect herself again. It's useless, the monkeys are not physical and they have no problem plucking at her psyche even while she cowers.
Jiae stiffens from the squeal, but she doesn't look up. She averts her eyes from Jodie with the sting on her cheek, avoiding recognition like the casual tragedy of the homeless.
Elora and Jiae are subtly lit as the sigil beneath Jiae's falling blood begins to glow with a wintery light not at all unlike the light coming off Elora's choker. Its a cool light and it coats Elora's pale skin, casting it in a shade of blue. The woman's fist is still clenched, but the flow of blood from her cut is already stemming. Yet its a flickering light, for all that those flickers seem to make the shades in the graveyard ghosting over green and tombstones more insubstantial than they were before. "Focus not just on learning, but what you are doing, apprentice. We seek to banish them from this place, but not just that. They ought to suffer for making us suffer. Karma. And they are weak to quartz. So we want to infuse this with that subtle torture for them."
A twisted figure forms out of infernal smoke, shaped like a terrible canine shape. It's a hellhound, leaping towards Jodie with an awful snarl. When its mouth closes on %n, it has some phantom force, sending a vision of suffering in hellfire.
"At this stage, it could be hurried, were I to add in words of power. Inctantations. But this is your working, so I shall not do it," Elora explains to Jiae, speaking louder to be heard over the awful snarling of both the spirit and the two-tailed fox with golden eyes and orange fur that charges to meet it.
"I'm suffering over here while you are just tutoring!" Jodie snaps at Elora. She's ready for the hellhound this time and she stands just in time to meet it's attack, giving it a mighty kick to make it disappear as her foot passes harmlessly through. "Don't piss me off. Get this over with!"
"Well- ugh, make her stop screaming?" she suggests, then at last finishes. It's difficult to discern what exactly is different from the subject fifteen minutes ago. There is an exhaustion about, of having to dive and toil for half an hour in conflict. Someone has it harder, but, well, they're not Jiae. She finishes- and with a word that is swallowed by smoke and shadow, casts the ritual.
Jiae's design starts with a stutter in her space. A mirage against the smoke that rellocates the space, and then begins to erase it. It pulses from the center, stretching outward like an invisible dome- only shaped by what becomes missing.
Elora points to a sigil. "This one, you added embellishment. Its actually." Elora reaches out, smudging the dirt there, removing the extra pretty little detail. Her ritual-dirtied fingers shift things. And then she pauses as the cyan light beneath her blazes brigther to look at Jodie. "You come here... with no talent, nothing to offer us against spirits. And you dare to question our methods. Should I leave you here with these ghosts? Let them have you as you cower upon the ground?"
Elora tells the trash, "Some people actually bother to learn how to do a thing, rather than coming unprepared."
The smoke begins to wipe away from the dome eraser. "It- it is.. Not needed? Does not make stronger because it is closer?" Jiae pants out, hurried.
"Don't fuck with me witch or as soon as its over. I'll make you be a little more respectful." Jodie snaps back at Elora, her hands clench into fist and she stares daggers at Elora.
Jiae says "Look forward! Dog, okay!?"
Jiae's eyes raise to watch her work. She stares in awe, a small puddle taking a pocket of her pants in a faint dark red.
"Will you?" Elora asks. She rises. Maybe because the working is already starting to take hold. Maybe because Jodie not knowing ritualism can't tell they were already complete and so complains over nothing. "Is that how you repay my help?"
The climax of their endeavor approached as Jiae, guided by Elora's seasoned hand, completed the ritual, her blood mingling with the earth as a powerful token of their intent. The air crackled with the potency of their spell, a dome of erasure expanding outward to cleanse the area of its spectral infestation. Despite the looming threats and under the veil of Elora's sharp retorts towards Jodie's desperate protests for a hastier resolution, the ritual concluded successfully. The spectral entities, bound by the constraints of the glyphs and the unique ingredients of the ritual, were dispelled, leaving behind a palpable sense of relief and triumph. Yet, even in the aftermath, tensions flared between Jodie and Elora, hinting at unresolved conflicts that transcended their spectral adversaries. Through courage, arcane knowledge, and a touch of desperation, the group reclaimed the cemetery from its otherworldly occupants, each member playing a pivotal role in the confrontation's resolution.
(Jodie's ghost banishing)
[Fri Nov 1 2024]
On the Sprawling Hillside of Arkwright Cemetery
It is afternoon, about 59F(15C) degrees,
There is the sudden smell of brimstone that fills the area, and along with a rising, black mist: smoke, coiling along the surface of the graveyard. It seems to form strange whorls and shapes, and as they draw close to %n they begin to look more and more like creatures -- horned creatures, with red eyes full of menace.
Jiae says "What start the ritual? Is it the time declared or the target- or just ever-ything..."
Jiae says "W-which are those? Still ghosts?"
Jiae smudges the dirt of her circle in its top right quandrant.
Elora brushes turquoise and neon locks from her face as she ambles through the graveyard, crossing over tombstones as she moves to where Jiae has begun drawing out a circle. She kneels at it, inspecting it with critical teal eyes. As the smell of brimstone fills the air, her nose twitches, once twice. "Ghosts, yes, but ghosts of something fleshcrafted or perhaps its descendant. " She looks over then, noticing that there are many. "A host of them it seems." She frowns at that. Then her choker begins to glow faintly with a wintery light.
Jodie smooths out her miniskirt after she smells the brimestone long before the smoke coaleses into anything that someone could sea. "I did not dress appropriately for chasing around smoke demons." she gravitates towards Elora and Jiae, not to join their ritual, but instead to stand in front of it to provide a first and last line of defense. "I'll do what I can to cover you both."
Out of the smoke charges an armed and armored warrior, spun out of black mist. He is dressed head to toe in archaic plate armor, wielding some huge, two-handed sword as black as his armor. With a roar, he rushes at Jodie, swinging the sword in some attempt to cut off their head.
Elora calls into begin multiple balls of blue and white light. One of them surges toward the armed warrior as if to blind or distract. And whatever it is that the figure sees... its definitely not a light.
Jiae redraws the Byzantine characters with her finger, then finishes the half side of the circle with an arc of her finger. It's not perfect, but its symmetry is functional. "You have knife? I need my hand, so stab me so I am not somewhere weird later."
"Of fuck-" Jodie swears narrowly ducking the blade as it passes through her head was a moment ago. In retaliation she sends her fist through where the smoke monsters head should be but it doesn't connect with anything solid. It does however dissipate the foe into a formless cloud of smoke
Jiae glances up to Jodie "You are.. Like shield, or something?"
Elora reaches out for the stick in Jiae's hand as the girl grows distracted, snagging it from her. She moves to add sigils to the top quadrant. Wavy lines, a curved, horned shape, and then she glances toward the foggy dark mist and draws a complicated arrangement of dots until there are as many dots as there are ghostly apparitions. Her teal eyes are cool through it all.
"That's me, Jodie. Shield, punching bag. Whatever." Jodie says to Jiae, glancing her way to introduce herself but quickly she's focused outward towards possible threats. "They usually don't care about me cause I dont do any magic."
"Keep them off of us while we work, I intend for this to be a lesson for my apprentice. She would not handle well being hit with a sword, shadow or no shadow," Elora instructs someone, even as her hand lazily re-offers the stick to Jiae.
"Keep them off of us while we work, I intend for this to be a lesson for my apprentice. She would not handle well being hit with a sword, shadow or no shadow," Elora instructs someone, even as her hand lazily re-offers the stick to Jiae.
"Keep them off of us while we work, I intend for this to be a lesson for my apprentice. She would not handle well being hit with a sword, shadow or no shadow," Elora orders Jodie, as she lazily re-offers her stick to Jiae.
Jiae holds an irritated silence as her writing utensil is taken from her, she writes in the bottom right, the 4th- generally the final quadrant of the circle a series of eastern characters. "I am writing my blood, teacher."
With a howl, some kind of winged monkey-demon swoops down near Jodie, its body made of living smoke. It's all grasping claws, striking hard to leave psychic scars that hurt like deep slashes. Other monkeys attack anyone nearby, with similar screeching, rending claws.
Elora in that moment moves, darting up, to dodge away from claws; strangely, as her choker flares with light, nothing moves to attack Jiae.
No hackles raise from Jiae as Elora speaks low of the small, physically sick and otherwise poorly frame student. As a monkey bounds towards her, she prepares to cross before it abruptly changes itds mind.
Jodie squeels when she's attacked by flying monkeys, she swats at them like they are oversized mosquitos but once she realizes that's fruitless she squats down and covers her head to try to protect herself.
Elora scrambles away from the flying monkeys a harried look on her teal eyes. She's not in clothes suited for such movement, her wrap of a blue dress, clinging to her, interfering with motion. So when the monkeys catch her and tear into her seconds later, her cry of pain is a terrible little wail, little, because she is little; almost child sized. Yet instead of falling, she glares, even as tears pool in her eyes from the pain. "Keep drawing," Elora hisses toward Jiae. her hand lashes out, slamming through the apparation that has talons embedded into her. The other is still there, upon her, slashing, and she cringed away more then dodged its sweeping blade like claws.
"Useless," Elora practically spit, continuing to back away from the monkey whose claws are tearing at her. She is looking toward the girl squatting. And then the monkeys are both turning, the one attacking Jodie turning toward Elora and the one attacking Elora turning toward Jodie. They continue to slash, but now at air, rather than at person. The wintery light of the choker continues to flare from the runes wrapped around Elora' neck.
Jiae, clearly not a perfectionist given the scrawl of her art, but conservative in her intent, traces a few ends of the circle then looks up to Elora with a tight expression. She turns down to fixate on what's below her- removing herself of the distraction- the howls, what she stands to lose. She starts adding a complex set of parallel filigry- small and seemingly innocent like the hidden symbols on a dollar bill, but vitally important to its value and identity.
A twisted figure forms out of infernal smoke, shaped like a terrible canine shape. It's a hellhound, leaping towards Jodie with an awful snarl. When its mouth closes on %n, it has some phantom force, sending a vision of suffering in hellfire.
Elora had moved away a bit from Jodie so the spirits are now crossing empty graveyard, giving the two of them room to breathe, to recover, to act; and apparently, Elora is rather insane, because instead of doing something sensible, she reaches for a knife, pulls it free, and cuts into her own palm. Clenching her fist, she lets blood drip down onto the the green grass of the graveyard.
"Come, Envy," Elora calls out.
Jodie growls back at the hellhound and when it tries to bite her she shoves her hand down it's throat and lets it bite her on the arm. She erred doing this however as the thing makes her suffer a painful vision which makes her scream
Jiae takes the plooms of smoke, cast strange through rays of the sunlit sky overhead, in a smoker's stride. Tears fall down from its sting, soaking twice this place of herself, but she doesn't blink. She finally crouches up, squatting, and looking about exasperated, proceeds to bash her compass into the ground. The dirt doesn't take easily to it, but a pebble does, and the quiet sound of glass is otherwise suffocated by the scene.
Jiae takes the glass in a fist, before she considers, and a whimper soon wishes she did. More blood joins the patch of land that swallows corpses- in droplets, not yet streams, that she uses to trace the core structure of the glyph now below her.
As the dark mists roil in the cemetery, Jodie and everyone with them are struck with a sudden fear. It's cold and awful, sinking into their heart to make the world seem impossible and alone.
in her Arcana summons a kitsune who arrives in loping strides. Two tails, swishing. Its an orange animal, with sleek fur. It pounces through the smoke creature harrying Elora. Then moves to support Jodie. No longer as harried by apparations Elora moves to Jiae rejoining her at the circle to check over her work.
"Did you do it wrong?" Elora asks, the fear striking her going into what she focuses on: her apprentice's sigil work. Yet as she looks it over, that fears begins to chill. "No. No, this is fine."
"Good. Good. Its better to use more life force than little when you're learning. As you get better, you can put less of yourself into it," Elora tells someone, voice lilting out in an English accent. She shows remarkably little concern for Jodie as she is harried, apparently content now to focus on her apprentice rather than the other woman now that the lithe orange furred fox is there to assist her.
"Good. Good. Its better to use more life force than little when you're learning. As you get better, you can put less of yourself into it," Elora tells Jiae, voice lilting out in an English accent. She shows remarkably little concern for Jodie as she is harried, apparently content now to focus on her apprentice rather than the other woman now that the lithe orange furred fox is there to assist her.
Jiae embellished. It is the mistake of the young to pay attention to the wrong things. She has remembered the shape romantically, the glpyh in the dirt a sketch that could lead to something one might hang on the wall. "I did it /right/" She insists, biting her lip as her hand tenses. Blood smudges and sticks to her hand as she dabs it with her free finger, instead of spilling out in the /ideal/ fashion. She shakes her hand frantically like a stiff rag, growling at it as if it hadn't been with her her entire life.
Jodie is still standing after she shakes off the hellhound, but now she's no longer confident. In fact fear makes up the majority of the emotions on her face. "This is ridiculous. Attack someone else!"
But Jiae 's drawing is, at least, correct.
Elora begins adding additional sigils, using her finger nails to draw in the patch of loamy soil the two women were working on. "I didn't teach you these, but different begins have weakneses. Fae, iron. God blooded have a weakness for that which is small and splits. For demons, it is quartz which is there weakness, so we add that to the spell."
"NO, no- Attack you! I am busy!" Jiae calls out to Jodie, not looking up. -
Jiae says "You have.. Have quarter- okay, just- I am drawing, add thing."
With a howl, some kind of winged monkey-demon swoops down near Jodie, its body made of living smoke. It's all grasping claws, striking hard to leave psychic scars that hurt like deep slashes. Other monkeys attack anyone nearby, with similar screeching, rending claws.
Elora points at the sigil she is drawing. "Different beings, different weaknesses."
has a kitsune that charges the howling monkeys, intercepting them as they move to attack Elora and Jiae, getting in the way. And Elora has a choker, glowing subtly with cyan light as it perhaps assists in leading the spirits away from the two kneeling women.
"QUARTS! I am /bleeding/ quarts! What are you talking about?" Jiae cries out, taking the casual abuse in the stride of her hands and knees, rounding the corners with red that disappears into the dirt in an easy fashion.
It's the monkeys again that get Jodie to freak out. She squeals out a noise then she drops to her knees and covers her head to try and protect herself again. It's useless, the monkeys are not physical and they have no problem plucking at her psyche even while she cowers.
Jiae stiffens from the squeal, but she doesn't look up. She averts her eyes from Jodie with the sting on her cheek, avoiding recognition like the casual tragedy of the homeless.
Elora and Jiae are subtly lit as the sigil beneath Jiae's falling blood begins to glow with a wintery light not at all unlike the light coming off Elora's choker. Its a cool light and it coats Elora's pale skin, casting it in a shade of blue. The woman's fist is still clenched, but the flow of blood from her cut is already stemming. Yet its a flickering light, for all that those flickers seem to make the shades in the graveyard ghosting over green and tombstones more insubstantial than they were before. "Focus not just on learning, but what you are doing, apprentice. We seek to banish them from this place, but not just that. They ought to suffer for making us suffer. Karma. And they are weak to quartz. So we want to infuse this with that subtle torture for them."
A twisted figure forms out of infernal smoke, shaped like a terrible canine shape. It's a hellhound, leaping towards Jodie with an awful snarl. When its mouth closes on %n, it has some phantom force, sending a vision of suffering in hellfire.
"At this stage, it could be hurried, were I to add in words of power. Inctantations. But this is your working, so I shall not do it," Elora explains to Jiae, speaking louder to be heard over the awful snarling of both the spirit and the two-tailed fox with golden eyes and orange fur that charges to meet it.
"I'm suffering over here while you are just tutoring!" Jodie snaps at Elora. She's ready for the hellhound this time and she stands just in time to meet it's attack, giving it a mighty kick to make it disappear as her foot passes harmlessly through. "Don't piss me off. Get this over with!"
"Well- ugh, make her stop screaming?" she suggests, then at last finishes. It's difficult to discern what exactly is different from the subject fifteen minutes ago. There is an exhaustion about, of having to dive and toil for half an hour in conflict. Someone has it harder, but, well, they're not Jiae. She finishes- and with a word that is swallowed by smoke and shadow, casts the ritual.
Jiae's design starts with a stutter in her space. A mirage against the smoke that rellocates the space, and then begins to erase it. It pulses from the center, stretching outward like an invisible dome- only shaped by what becomes missing.
Elora points to a sigil. "This one, you added embellishment. Its actually." Elora reaches out, smudging the dirt there, removing the extra pretty little detail. Her ritual-dirtied fingers shift things. And then she pauses as the cyan light beneath her blazes brigther to look at Jodie. "You come here... with no talent, nothing to offer us against spirits. And you dare to question our methods. Should I leave you here with these ghosts? Let them have you as you cower upon the ground?"
Elora tells the trash, "Some people actually bother to learn how to do a thing, rather than coming unprepared."
The smoke begins to wipe away from the dome eraser. "It- it is.. Not needed? Does not make stronger because it is closer?" Jiae pants out, hurried.
"Don't fuck with me witch or as soon as its over. I'll make you be a little more respectful." Jodie snaps back at Elora, her hands clench into fist and she stares daggers at Elora.
Jiae says "Look forward! Dog, okay!?"
Jiae's eyes raise to watch her work. She stares in awe, a small puddle taking a pocket of her pants in a faint dark red.
"Will you?" Elora asks. She rises. Maybe because the working is already starting to take hold. Maybe because Jodie not knowing ritualism can't tell they were already complete and so complains over nothing. "Is that how you repay my help?"