Patrollogs
Keiths Ghost Banishing 250222
In the eerie gloom of Arkwright Cemetery, amidst the raging storm and spectral warfare, Keith, Siofra, and William find themselves caught in a timeless battle between two ghostly armies. The unearthly combatants, ignoring the living, focus on their ancient feud, hurling magical assaults that threaten to envelop everything in their path. Siofra, opting for a pragmatic approach, contacts a ritualist for assistance, while Keith and William scramble for cover and strategize on how to quell the unrest. The cemetery becomes a chaotic warzone, with splintered gravestones and arcane energies flying, as our protagonists seek to find a solution amidst their own bumbling and unorthodox methods.
In a desperate bid to end the supernatural onslaught, William, with his knowledge of arcane rituals, begins to draw a complex sigil on the ground, using his own blood as a conduit for the magic required to banish the spirits. Meanwhile, Keith, armed with naught but a shard of rock and sheer determination, attempts to support the effort through improvised symbols and sheer willpower. Siofra, despite an initial injury, regains her senses and contributes to the ritual, invoking words of power. The culmination of their efforts, guided by William's chants, unleashes a spectacle of light that ensnares the ghostly warriors, drawing them back into the earth and restoring peace to the graveyard. Through a combination of arcane knowledge, improvisation, and a bit of luck, the trio manages to quell the spectral battle, illustrating that even in the face of otherworldly chaos, resilience and collaboration can prevail.
(Keith's ghost banishing)
[Fri Feb 21 2025]
On the Sprawling Hillside of Arkwright Cemetery
It is after dusk, about 16F(-8C) degrees, and the sky is covered by dark grey stormclouds. There is a waning crescent moon.
An eerie stillness settles over the graveyard, the fog thickening like an otherworldly veil. The ground trembles, and two ghostly armies surge forth, locked in a battle that defies time. One side, draped in ethereal armor, charges with spectral weapons, while the other hurls crackling bolts of elemental magic. The air is alight with haunting energy as the spirits, long dead, resume their eternal battle, heedless of the living who are caught in their spectral warpath.
"Well, I hope ya guys are better with these things than I am." Keith offers, looking over towards the growing fog.
"'Tis always this one." Siofra sighs, looking over her shoulder like she might just walk off the hill and let it be.
She does. Just to behind a tree where she sits down and begins to make a phone call.
"I'm just gonna call a ritualist. They need someone t'be on sight fer the target of their ritual, but other than that- feck chargin' in." Siofra explains, flipping off the ghosts from the safety of a splintered tree.
"Yeah, I can manage..." William comments maybe a tad distracted, before commenting "Well, with Sam gone, I think I can ritual it away... Be glad it is this one and not something that could kill you, like the heart attack mist mages..." He tells to Siofra before ducking behind a gravestone, looking for cover and pulling out a little knife "I can ritual it away, you know?"
A towering, spectral knight swings his sword at a ghostly conjurer, cutting the arcanist in half and continuing onwards to collide against a gravestone. The collision smashes the gravestone apart, sending shards flying all around dangerously.
"Sure, if you want to take the energy to." Siofra grumbles, volume likely caught under the ensuing chaos. "But why?" She whips her head back from a sound- collision caught by old wood.
Keith barely has time to curse before ducking like his life depended on it, which, frankly, it did. A chunk of gravestone whizzed over his head, another piece clipped his shoulder, and a third pinged off a nearby wrought-iron fence with a sharp clank! "Son of a...!" He stumbled back, arms thrown over his head, desperately dodging airborne cemetery debris. "Yea... Well someone needs to do something." He says, fumbling in his pocket for something.
And the cover William took is gone, probably with some minor stone shards flying his way "To see if this way they finally go away and leave the living for at least a week... Since the rest of rituals seem to bury them not too deep..." He groans out to Siofra, before putting the knife against his palm and cutting it open, letting some blood pool on it, sighing to Keith "I'm on it..."
"I've spent enough time-" Siofra attempts to call out beyond the explosion, "shooting into the crowd to understand that the little play of violence doesn't stop to anything! Like- I could rush in like I have, or shoot from the tree like I have, but they dinnae bother me none if I find a nice hole and lay in it!"
Siofra says "So- get in a hole, get a ritual, and WAATTCH THE FIREWORKS!"
"A'ight, fine, I ain't just gonna sit here and get turned into ghost dung," Keith mutters, shaking his hands out like that might make them stop trembling. He does not have fancy magic or any kind of spooky training. But Keith does have a brain (on the contrary of what some might thing), a half-decent set of lungs, and a reckless streak .He scrambles up from behind the tombstone and grabs a loose shard of rock, one big enough to get a decent grip on. "Okay, so yallre usin blood n ritual stuff, right? What if I make some kinda, uh, symbol? A ward? Aint that a thing?" He asks William.
Without waiting for permission, Keith drops to his knees and starts scratching the stone shard across the frozen earth, carving a rough, circular pattern into the dirt. He has no idea what he's doing, but he remembers seeing something like this on a documentary once. Or maybe a movie. Whatever. Its better than nothing.... right?
As a battalion of armored specters marches forth, a group of wraith-like sorcerers unleashes a storm of arcane missiles, shattering the ghostly shields; the resulting shockwave threatens to make ears bleed, if someone gets caught without cover.
"Yeah, well, they are busy fighting each other... That's why it's good that it's this one and not, the one that takes the air from you, or tries to stop your heart..." William says with a little shrug of his shoulders to Siofra, before dipping two of his fingers in his own blood and lifting his eyes to look at Keith for a moment or two and commenting "Well, you do that over there, but do not come close to anything I draw... I don't want anything misfiring..." And with that, he digs his fingers into the ground, starting with the simplest big circle, parting the soil and staining it with his blood in the process, not outright using it like paint more more leaving traces of it here and there
"Don't get me wrong-" Siofra calls, but the shockwave silences her voice- and her presence behind the tree goes quiet.
She's really just decided to keep texting, spamming a number for time to completion.
Flinching as the shockwave from the arcane missiles nearly knocks him flat, Keith's ears ring like a damn church bell, and for a second, all he can hear is a high-pitched whine. He throws himself down behind another gravestone, cursing under his breath. Doubling down after William's 'positive reinforcement', Keith keeps working on his own crude sigil, dragging his makeshift stone tool through the frozen ground. He's got no idea if this'l actually do anything, but he remembers hearing that intent matters with this kind of thing. So, Keith closes his eyes for a second, breathes deep. As he completes the circle, he glances at Siofra, "Ya know any magic words, or like maybe like a dance or something that helps with this?"
Siofra says, sing-songy, "Queer, queer, give me a beer. I were in love then my love was not here!"
William continues his circle by drawing another smaller one inside, concentric to the original, which is soon after followed by another six, places around the one in the center- But there's a bit of a pause to the drawing when the shockwave hits his ears, which promptly start leaking blood - Not even listening to the others and instead taking a deep breath, gritting his teeth and continuing with the work, trying to distract himself from the pain by keeping his eyes stuck to the cold earth he was staining with red
A ghostly battlemage hurls a ball of fire, deflected mid-air by a phantom knight's shield, causing an explosion that sends searing heat and blinding light across the battlefield.
Siofra peeks around the tree like the anti-christ terror child looking out from around the corner. A white iris looks at the dangerous little area of warzone, and then situates in her own spot. "Shite- well, feck, I suppose I might not be close enough for the ritual they target on me."
With that, keeping her head down, she rushes up to the nearest headstone- slapping her shoulder into it with her weight. She looks down at the ward, trying to make sense of what Keith has made.
Poor William, probably the only one here that knows what they are doing, but Keith tries anyway. He presses his palms down harder on the frozen ground, focusing as if sheer stubbornness will make the sigil work. Around him, the ghostly battle rages on. Another arcane blast explodes nearby, sending cracked tombstones flying. A shattered headstone slams into the dirt not two feet away from him, he tries to repeat what Siofra said, but it doesn't make it far "Wizzz wacky zipp zipp tacky!" The explosion from the ghostly fireball rocks the entire hillside. The heat blasts across his face, scorching the air around him, but it seems he doesnt dare look up. Whatever runes he is carving into the ground and working on, it doesn't seem to have much meaning overall, at least not in any arcane sense.
"Tearrmann-" Siofra chirps, pointing at a cornerstone of the sigil, "Tee- ee- aye- err- emm- aye- inin."
"Fath-" She points, explaining a letter to the bottom corner, and lastly points on the other side. "And aobhari."
Siofra says "That's like.. Sanctuary of fate within reason."
"Oh for fucks sake..." William complains at the heat wave, bracing himself for it. The light doesn't do all that much considering he's hiding behing the remains of a tomb, but the heat is what seems to disturb him. After the circles are done, comes a six pointed star, in the form of a triangle inverted overlaid on top of another triangle, the each of the edges ending up in the center of the outer circumferences. There is a look to the side as Siofra and Keith speak each their parts, deadpanning at them as if he was looking at two kids being stupid, but he refrains from saying anything and instead he continues drawing with his blood, every so often having to wet his fingers with some more of the red liquid
Siofra closes her left eye- the white iris going blind from the over-absorption of light into it. With a cry, she clutches it, tears immediately trying to facilitate the sting of pain that wilts her other eye to squint and scrunch.
A towering, spectral knight swings his sword at a ghostly conjurer, cutting the arcanist in half and continuing onwards to collide against a gravestone. The collision smashes the gravestone apart, sending shards flying all around dangerously.
In many ways, William isn't wrong about Keith being just a kid bumbling around with what he is doing. Nothing Keith attempts to do gains any real obvious traction. Ritualism 101 reflects that rituals are indeed fueled by blood, a component that Keith hasn't used at all, even if his runes were good. Frustrated and panicked, Keith scrambles to his feet and returns to the ward, focusing again. "I got this... I just gotta..." He presses his palms harder into the cold dirt, desperately trying to force whatever magic he's invoking to stabilize, despite how little he knows about this kind of thing. The spectral knight continues its path of destruction, but Keith cant afford to be distracted. A ghostly fireball explodes in the distance, sending a wave of heat over him, but Keith only flinches slightly before slamming his palms back down. "Daaanng it, work already!" he mutters.
William finishes witht he base drawing and starts adding small runes and glyphs all over the edges of it, specially around the lines that form the star, taking his time with simpler more straight shapes to cover some surface - The further breaking of his cover making him flinch for a moment, and have to retrieve some of the shards to get them out of the ritual circle. Giving the finishing touches with symbols and wards inside center circle, with a bigger more wiggly and curved figure in contrast to the rest of the shapes he's plastered here and there
Siofra is slapped in the back of the head by a child rock of the gravestone- the wayward stone playing hardball with her skull and sending her vision into a flash of black and white right onto the circle.
A little trickle of blood through white hair seeps into a crack made by stone as her hands fumble with getting her off the ground- a blood stain that seeps and begins to stretch into the crevices.
"Alright, let's see..." William says, taking a deep breath and letting his body go backwards a bit, resting on his knees on the dirt and straightening his back for a moment or two, eyes plastered over the circle he's worked on, double checking that everything is fine and correctly done. Then he takes a deep breath, trying to relax despite the circumstances. And after a couple seconds, he closes his eyes and begins muttering something to himself, his voice low even to be a whisper, making it hard to hear the guy even for those with more acute hearing, and even if they were to catch whatever he's saying, it would likely sound like some gibberish or made up language, it isn't the most common, specially not for non arcanists.
A towering, spectral knight swings his sword at a ghostly conjurer, cutting the arcanist in half and continuing onwards to collide against a gravestone. The collision smashes the gravestone apart, sending shards flying all around dangerously.
Keith jerks his head at the sudden thud of rock hitting Siofra, his eyes wide as her blood begins to spill into the cracks of the ritual circle. Without thinking, he scrambles to his feet, dodging more chunks of gravestone that are still flying around, but his gaze remains fixed on Siofra. He glances toward the man working on the arcane sigil, wondering how much longer they can keep this up. The ghosts and spirits are relentless, and the longer theyre in this warzone, the more they risk being swept up in the conflict. Keith's gaze darts to the spectral knight, now reeling back from the collision but still on the hunt for its next target. "Need to get this over with," he mutters to himself, his voice low, tight with tension. While adding the final component one would need to perform such a ritual, whether or not it meets any success, it seems unlikely unless Siofra does some added touches to the non-sense runes Keith has made.
At this point, the tombstone that was covering William is no longer in half, it'd be lucky if there were any bit of stone of it remaining in place after that many shockwaves. And even as some shards pierce the skin of his arms, the man tenses up but doesn't stop his muttering, allowing the barely audible tiny chants of made up language to slowly drift down towards the ritual circle stained with his blood, taking a couple minutes, but eventually, the blood starts to glow slightly. First in tones of blue and green it slowly grows to be a whiter tone, only keeping the original colors as traces, barely present as the light grows to be more noticeable, lighting up the surrounding area of the cemetery almost as if he really had some professional light on, pointing everywhere around him.
Siofra stirs to her elbows, rolling off to her side to look across a flat plane of small groove. "Euuwahddymnff." She says, trying to swallow her own tongue for a half second before consciousness takes the body's impetus to do so away. Her left leg- the one on the ground, slowly kicks at dirt- like it's trying to climb a staircase that isn't there, slowly progressing her to hit a rather large chunk of debris- pressing her neck up against it.
sucks in a breath, Siofra fumbles to take her phone out of her pocket, stroked out on a head wound, she makes the letters out "Enneeedonndnun.."
A towering, spectral knight swings his sword at a ghostly conjurer, cutting the arcanist in half and continuing onwards to collide against a gravestone. The collision smashes the gravestone apart, sending shards flying all around dangerously.
William continues his careful and deliberate speaking with himself, the ritual progressing in front of him, almost as if they were two separate entities, despite the connection between him and the magic being clear for anyone seeing it. Soon enough, there's a display of why those praising or connected to the natural world tend to hate the arcane. The magic twisting nature in one of its most fundamental ways, the beams of light that were previously only growing in intensity starting to bend and curve, unnaturally so, more akin to something alive that - Well, a beam - Contorting and twisting, circling around themselves and clumping up together into what would look like tendrils, or tentacles of some sort, thick and girthy, poking out from the circle on the ground
Watching in awe as the blood on the ground begins to glow, the eerie blue and green tones slowly giving way to a brighter, white light that pulses and spreads outward. Keith instinctively shields his eyes for a moment, squinting as the glow illuminates the battlefield. With his pulse quickens, his heart racing. The air feels charged with raw arcane energy, crackling like static, it causes Keith to involuntarily shiver as magic fills the air. Ducking down once more as once more, more debris is thrown into the air. It is very literally a warzone filled full of shrapnel at this point.
And without waiting much longer, the tentacles made out of light launch themselves towards the spectral armies. Wrapping around soldiers and mages alike, holding them in groups and keeping them hostage, seeming to neutralize their magic for the moment being, the whole lightshow that could very much be out of some sort of circus halting the war between both of the armies. And instants later, dragging them all forcefully towards the circle, directing them back towards the ground, trying to have the Earth swallow them whole once more, just like they emerged out of nowhere, returning them back to nowhere. Even as they struggle, dragging them closer and closer to drawing on the ground while William simply continues his odd chanting
Siofra wakes. Clear sight, clear mind, clear pain. A chuff, instinctive and somewhat territorial over her space, then a wheeze as more pangs of pain spread out from her forehead. The shrapnel, miraculously- flies past her and Keith within this circle they've made. Call it a matter of luck, call it fate- a coin toss sees both and by swallowing unluck, it takes.
Stuck between staying low and watching the obvious one with ritual knowledge actually make progress at pushing back the spirits, Keith looks between his work and William's. He seems to be soaking in the different details of his and the arcanist's. He has a thoughtful look which pulls him away from the danger of the moment, looking down at his crude pictographic runes and William's work of art. He reaches up, scratching his scruffy beard as he considerings the differences, "Don't get it.. They are like the same."
A sudden gust of wind sweeps through the graveyard, scattering the remnants of battle - ashes, shattered stones, and burned foliage - until all that's left is an unsettling calm. The ghostly combatants begin to falter, their spectral forms flickering like dying embers. One by one, they retreat into the earth, their energy spent, until the graveyard is once again quiet.
In a desperate bid to end the supernatural onslaught, William, with his knowledge of arcane rituals, begins to draw a complex sigil on the ground, using his own blood as a conduit for the magic required to banish the spirits. Meanwhile, Keith, armed with naught but a shard of rock and sheer determination, attempts to support the effort through improvised symbols and sheer willpower. Siofra, despite an initial injury, regains her senses and contributes to the ritual, invoking words of power. The culmination of their efforts, guided by William's chants, unleashes a spectacle of light that ensnares the ghostly warriors, drawing them back into the earth and restoring peace to the graveyard. Through a combination of arcane knowledge, improvisation, and a bit of luck, the trio manages to quell the spectral battle, illustrating that even in the face of otherworldly chaos, resilience and collaboration can prevail.
(Keith's ghost banishing)
[Fri Feb 21 2025]
On the Sprawling Hillside of Arkwright Cemetery
It is after dusk, about 16F(-8C) degrees, and the sky is covered by dark grey stormclouds. There is a waning crescent moon.
An eerie stillness settles over the graveyard, the fog thickening like an otherworldly veil. The ground trembles, and two ghostly armies surge forth, locked in a battle that defies time. One side, draped in ethereal armor, charges with spectral weapons, while the other hurls crackling bolts of elemental magic. The air is alight with haunting energy as the spirits, long dead, resume their eternal battle, heedless of the living who are caught in their spectral warpath.
"Well, I hope ya guys are better with these things than I am." Keith offers, looking over towards the growing fog.
"'Tis always this one." Siofra sighs, looking over her shoulder like she might just walk off the hill and let it be.
She does. Just to behind a tree where she sits down and begins to make a phone call.
"I'm just gonna call a ritualist. They need someone t'be on sight fer the target of their ritual, but other than that- feck chargin' in." Siofra explains, flipping off the ghosts from the safety of a splintered tree.
"Yeah, I can manage..." William comments maybe a tad distracted, before commenting "Well, with Sam gone, I think I can ritual it away... Be glad it is this one and not something that could kill you, like the heart attack mist mages..." He tells to Siofra before ducking behind a gravestone, looking for cover and pulling out a little knife "I can ritual it away, you know?"
A towering, spectral knight swings his sword at a ghostly conjurer, cutting the arcanist in half and continuing onwards to collide against a gravestone. The collision smashes the gravestone apart, sending shards flying all around dangerously.
"Sure, if you want to take the energy to." Siofra grumbles, volume likely caught under the ensuing chaos. "But why?" She whips her head back from a sound- collision caught by old wood.
Keith barely has time to curse before ducking like his life depended on it, which, frankly, it did. A chunk of gravestone whizzed over his head, another piece clipped his shoulder, and a third pinged off a nearby wrought-iron fence with a sharp clank! "Son of a...!" He stumbled back, arms thrown over his head, desperately dodging airborne cemetery debris. "Yea... Well someone needs to do something." He says, fumbling in his pocket for something.
And the cover William took is gone, probably with some minor stone shards flying his way "To see if this way they finally go away and leave the living for at least a week... Since the rest of rituals seem to bury them not too deep..." He groans out to Siofra, before putting the knife against his palm and cutting it open, letting some blood pool on it, sighing to Keith "I'm on it..."
"I've spent enough time-" Siofra attempts to call out beyond the explosion, "shooting into the crowd to understand that the little play of violence doesn't stop to anything! Like- I could rush in like I have, or shoot from the tree like I have, but they dinnae bother me none if I find a nice hole and lay in it!"
Siofra says "So- get in a hole, get a ritual, and WAATTCH THE FIREWORKS!"
"A'ight, fine, I ain't just gonna sit here and get turned into ghost dung," Keith mutters, shaking his hands out like that might make them stop trembling. He does not have fancy magic or any kind of spooky training. But Keith does have a brain (on the contrary of what some might thing), a half-decent set of lungs, and a reckless streak .He scrambles up from behind the tombstone and grabs a loose shard of rock, one big enough to get a decent grip on. "Okay, so yallre usin blood n ritual stuff, right? What if I make some kinda, uh, symbol? A ward? Aint that a thing?" He asks William.
Without waiting for permission, Keith drops to his knees and starts scratching the stone shard across the frozen earth, carving a rough, circular pattern into the dirt. He has no idea what he's doing, but he remembers seeing something like this on a documentary once. Or maybe a movie. Whatever. Its better than nothing.... right?
As a battalion of armored specters marches forth, a group of wraith-like sorcerers unleashes a storm of arcane missiles, shattering the ghostly shields; the resulting shockwave threatens to make ears bleed, if someone gets caught without cover.
"Yeah, well, they are busy fighting each other... That's why it's good that it's this one and not, the one that takes the air from you, or tries to stop your heart..." William says with a little shrug of his shoulders to Siofra, before dipping two of his fingers in his own blood and lifting his eyes to look at Keith for a moment or two and commenting "Well, you do that over there, but do not come close to anything I draw... I don't want anything misfiring..." And with that, he digs his fingers into the ground, starting with the simplest big circle, parting the soil and staining it with his blood in the process, not outright using it like paint more more leaving traces of it here and there
"Don't get me wrong-" Siofra calls, but the shockwave silences her voice- and her presence behind the tree goes quiet.
She's really just decided to keep texting, spamming a number for time to completion.
Flinching as the shockwave from the arcane missiles nearly knocks him flat, Keith's ears ring like a damn church bell, and for a second, all he can hear is a high-pitched whine. He throws himself down behind another gravestone, cursing under his breath. Doubling down after William's 'positive reinforcement', Keith keeps working on his own crude sigil, dragging his makeshift stone tool through the frozen ground. He's got no idea if this'l actually do anything, but he remembers hearing that intent matters with this kind of thing. So, Keith closes his eyes for a second, breathes deep. As he completes the circle, he glances at Siofra, "Ya know any magic words, or like maybe like a dance or something that helps with this?"
Siofra says, sing-songy, "Queer, queer, give me a beer. I were in love then my love was not here!"
William continues his circle by drawing another smaller one inside, concentric to the original, which is soon after followed by another six, places around the one in the center- But there's a bit of a pause to the drawing when the shockwave hits his ears, which promptly start leaking blood - Not even listening to the others and instead taking a deep breath, gritting his teeth and continuing with the work, trying to distract himself from the pain by keeping his eyes stuck to the cold earth he was staining with red
A ghostly battlemage hurls a ball of fire, deflected mid-air by a phantom knight's shield, causing an explosion that sends searing heat and blinding light across the battlefield.
Siofra peeks around the tree like the anti-christ terror child looking out from around the corner. A white iris looks at the dangerous little area of warzone, and then situates in her own spot. "Shite- well, feck, I suppose I might not be close enough for the ritual they target on me."
With that, keeping her head down, she rushes up to the nearest headstone- slapping her shoulder into it with her weight. She looks down at the ward, trying to make sense of what Keith has made.
Poor William, probably the only one here that knows what they are doing, but Keith tries anyway. He presses his palms down harder on the frozen ground, focusing as if sheer stubbornness will make the sigil work. Around him, the ghostly battle rages on. Another arcane blast explodes nearby, sending cracked tombstones flying. A shattered headstone slams into the dirt not two feet away from him, he tries to repeat what Siofra said, but it doesn't make it far "Wizzz wacky zipp zipp tacky!" The explosion from the ghostly fireball rocks the entire hillside. The heat blasts across his face, scorching the air around him, but it seems he doesnt dare look up. Whatever runes he is carving into the ground and working on, it doesn't seem to have much meaning overall, at least not in any arcane sense.
"Tearrmann-" Siofra chirps, pointing at a cornerstone of the sigil, "Tee- ee- aye- err- emm- aye- inin."
"Fath-" She points, explaining a letter to the bottom corner, and lastly points on the other side. "And aobhari."
Siofra says "That's like.. Sanctuary of fate within reason."
"Oh for fucks sake..." William complains at the heat wave, bracing himself for it. The light doesn't do all that much considering he's hiding behing the remains of a tomb, but the heat is what seems to disturb him. After the circles are done, comes a six pointed star, in the form of a triangle inverted overlaid on top of another triangle, the each of the edges ending up in the center of the outer circumferences. There is a look to the side as Siofra and Keith speak each their parts, deadpanning at them as if he was looking at two kids being stupid, but he refrains from saying anything and instead he continues drawing with his blood, every so often having to wet his fingers with some more of the red liquid
Siofra closes her left eye- the white iris going blind from the over-absorption of light into it. With a cry, she clutches it, tears immediately trying to facilitate the sting of pain that wilts her other eye to squint and scrunch.
A towering, spectral knight swings his sword at a ghostly conjurer, cutting the arcanist in half and continuing onwards to collide against a gravestone. The collision smashes the gravestone apart, sending shards flying all around dangerously.
In many ways, William isn't wrong about Keith being just a kid bumbling around with what he is doing. Nothing Keith attempts to do gains any real obvious traction. Ritualism 101 reflects that rituals are indeed fueled by blood, a component that Keith hasn't used at all, even if his runes were good. Frustrated and panicked, Keith scrambles to his feet and returns to the ward, focusing again. "I got this... I just gotta..." He presses his palms harder into the cold dirt, desperately trying to force whatever magic he's invoking to stabilize, despite how little he knows about this kind of thing. The spectral knight continues its path of destruction, but Keith cant afford to be distracted. A ghostly fireball explodes in the distance, sending a wave of heat over him, but Keith only flinches slightly before slamming his palms back down. "Daaanng it, work already!" he mutters.
William finishes witht he base drawing and starts adding small runes and glyphs all over the edges of it, specially around the lines that form the star, taking his time with simpler more straight shapes to cover some surface - The further breaking of his cover making him flinch for a moment, and have to retrieve some of the shards to get them out of the ritual circle. Giving the finishing touches with symbols and wards inside center circle, with a bigger more wiggly and curved figure in contrast to the rest of the shapes he's plastered here and there
Siofra is slapped in the back of the head by a child rock of the gravestone- the wayward stone playing hardball with her skull and sending her vision into a flash of black and white right onto the circle.
A little trickle of blood through white hair seeps into a crack made by stone as her hands fumble with getting her off the ground- a blood stain that seeps and begins to stretch into the crevices.
"Alright, let's see..." William says, taking a deep breath and letting his body go backwards a bit, resting on his knees on the dirt and straightening his back for a moment or two, eyes plastered over the circle he's worked on, double checking that everything is fine and correctly done. Then he takes a deep breath, trying to relax despite the circumstances. And after a couple seconds, he closes his eyes and begins muttering something to himself, his voice low even to be a whisper, making it hard to hear the guy even for those with more acute hearing, and even if they were to catch whatever he's saying, it would likely sound like some gibberish or made up language, it isn't the most common, specially not for non arcanists.
A towering, spectral knight swings his sword at a ghostly conjurer, cutting the arcanist in half and continuing onwards to collide against a gravestone. The collision smashes the gravestone apart, sending shards flying all around dangerously.
Keith jerks his head at the sudden thud of rock hitting Siofra, his eyes wide as her blood begins to spill into the cracks of the ritual circle. Without thinking, he scrambles to his feet, dodging more chunks of gravestone that are still flying around, but his gaze remains fixed on Siofra. He glances toward the man working on the arcane sigil, wondering how much longer they can keep this up. The ghosts and spirits are relentless, and the longer theyre in this warzone, the more they risk being swept up in the conflict. Keith's gaze darts to the spectral knight, now reeling back from the collision but still on the hunt for its next target. "Need to get this over with," he mutters to himself, his voice low, tight with tension. While adding the final component one would need to perform such a ritual, whether or not it meets any success, it seems unlikely unless Siofra does some added touches to the non-sense runes Keith has made.
At this point, the tombstone that was covering William is no longer in half, it'd be lucky if there were any bit of stone of it remaining in place after that many shockwaves. And even as some shards pierce the skin of his arms, the man tenses up but doesn't stop his muttering, allowing the barely audible tiny chants of made up language to slowly drift down towards the ritual circle stained with his blood, taking a couple minutes, but eventually, the blood starts to glow slightly. First in tones of blue and green it slowly grows to be a whiter tone, only keeping the original colors as traces, barely present as the light grows to be more noticeable, lighting up the surrounding area of the cemetery almost as if he really had some professional light on, pointing everywhere around him.
Siofra stirs to her elbows, rolling off to her side to look across a flat plane of small groove. "Euuwahddymnff." She says, trying to swallow her own tongue for a half second before consciousness takes the body's impetus to do so away. Her left leg- the one on the ground, slowly kicks at dirt- like it's trying to climb a staircase that isn't there, slowly progressing her to hit a rather large chunk of debris- pressing her neck up against it.
sucks in a breath, Siofra fumbles to take her phone out of her pocket, stroked out on a head wound, she makes the letters out "Enneeedonndnun.."
A towering, spectral knight swings his sword at a ghostly conjurer, cutting the arcanist in half and continuing onwards to collide against a gravestone. The collision smashes the gravestone apart, sending shards flying all around dangerously.
William continues his careful and deliberate speaking with himself, the ritual progressing in front of him, almost as if they were two separate entities, despite the connection between him and the magic being clear for anyone seeing it. Soon enough, there's a display of why those praising or connected to the natural world tend to hate the arcane. The magic twisting nature in one of its most fundamental ways, the beams of light that were previously only growing in intensity starting to bend and curve, unnaturally so, more akin to something alive that - Well, a beam - Contorting and twisting, circling around themselves and clumping up together into what would look like tendrils, or tentacles of some sort, thick and girthy, poking out from the circle on the ground
Watching in awe as the blood on the ground begins to glow, the eerie blue and green tones slowly giving way to a brighter, white light that pulses and spreads outward. Keith instinctively shields his eyes for a moment, squinting as the glow illuminates the battlefield. With his pulse quickens, his heart racing. The air feels charged with raw arcane energy, crackling like static, it causes Keith to involuntarily shiver as magic fills the air. Ducking down once more as once more, more debris is thrown into the air. It is very literally a warzone filled full of shrapnel at this point.
And without waiting much longer, the tentacles made out of light launch themselves towards the spectral armies. Wrapping around soldiers and mages alike, holding them in groups and keeping them hostage, seeming to neutralize their magic for the moment being, the whole lightshow that could very much be out of some sort of circus halting the war between both of the armies. And instants later, dragging them all forcefully towards the circle, directing them back towards the ground, trying to have the Earth swallow them whole once more, just like they emerged out of nowhere, returning them back to nowhere. Even as they struggle, dragging them closer and closer to drawing on the ground while William simply continues his odd chanting
Siofra wakes. Clear sight, clear mind, clear pain. A chuff, instinctive and somewhat territorial over her space, then a wheeze as more pangs of pain spread out from her forehead. The shrapnel, miraculously- flies past her and Keith within this circle they've made. Call it a matter of luck, call it fate- a coin toss sees both and by swallowing unluck, it takes.
Stuck between staying low and watching the obvious one with ritual knowledge actually make progress at pushing back the spirits, Keith looks between his work and William's. He seems to be soaking in the different details of his and the arcanist's. He has a thoughtful look which pulls him away from the danger of the moment, looking down at his crude pictographic runes and William's work of art. He reaches up, scratching his scruffy beard as he considerings the differences, "Don't get it.. They are like the same."
A sudden gust of wind sweeps through the graveyard, scattering the remnants of battle - ashes, shattered stones, and burned foliage - until all that's left is an unsettling calm. The ghostly combatants begin to falter, their spectral forms flickering like dying embers. One by one, they retreat into the earth, their energy spent, until the graveyard is once again quiet.