Into the belly

crow

evening-star
"Definitely."

What type of person isn't afraid of the dark? Being afraid of the dark is one of the oldest human fears; it is a sort of self-preservation instinct, a last-ditch safety net to keep the curious from wandering off of a cliff or into a den or away from their fellows in the deepest of nights. What sort of person isn't afraid of the things they cannot known, or see, or sense coming?

Arianna Giametti is not afraid of the dark. Not specifically of The Dark. She is not afraid of striding forward into the unknown; it is her profound belief that the unknown was always out there, it was always coming anyway, and meeting it headlong is better than cowering in the background. When the car stops and the lights are cut out and they are standing in the faint light of stars and whatever warm-light is cast by the rising moon, and the city is a constellation of bright points on the valley floor, nestled up against the immovable and absolute dark of the Rocky Mountains, she steps out onto the red dirt with her chin tipped upward and her expression watchful but untroubled.

She should be troubled. It would make an awful lot of sense to be troubled.

The path ahead of them is too steep to navigate the car down with any confidence that even this four-wheel drive hatchback would wind its way back up. It is not exactly narrow, but neither of them can see its width well enough to have confidence that they would be able to turn around if they traveled down it, and Ari's car does not have the sort of massive tire tread that gives them purchase in reverse to climb their way backwards up a mountain.

The road -- let's call it that for convenience -- has been worn unevenly and there are echoes of that sort of monstrous tread in the broad grooves that interlace and erode and turn this red dirt into a riverway more than a driveway. The air is thin and carries the dust aloft. Every footstep they make pulls it up into the air around their shins, and then their knees, and finally it is stirred up enough for them to taste. This dust-dirt is not worn down mountain; it is ash and dust and feathered bits of bone. It tastes of memory. The path downward is steep and requires steady footing. It descends in the half light, and follows the curve of the mountain. They must be cautious to keep their footing with the uneven ground and the pitch of the pathway.

Deeper into the night, the crumbled walls and half-roofed structures of the ruins await them. Ari's car had only one hand torch, and whoever is in front has the use of it. She has magics that can cast its beam wider or brighter if needed. Their progress is easily evidenced by the travel of this bright point in the darkness.

Were you there when the walls came down?

Nick can feel the ground shake and tremble beneath his feet, echoes of long-since exploded ordinance, but it does not cause him to stumble. The roar of it rings in his ears, but is not so loud as to stamp out the present.

crow

[Perception + Awareness]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 10, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

evening-star

[Per + Aware]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )

crow

Deeper into the night.

Nick can feel the echoes of the explosion, whatever it was: how long ago must it have been? He cannot tell precisely, not without further use of ritual here and now. Sometimes Time works that way, leaves echoes of the past or portents of the future without anything to reference a when.

Sirens. That's all he really has to go on, to mark it as present day. But present day can mean a lot. It can mean: world wars, or Ascension Wars, or last summer. All it really means is before their time.

"Do you hear the echo?"

Does Ari hear the walls?

It is lucky that they left the car behind and chose to go on afoot. At one point the trail pitches upward so steeply that they need to explore around to the sides of the trail, where they will find a few rocks that they can clamber up on. Nick offers Ari a hand up or two when and if she wants it (bouldering with Sera recently did come in handy), and from there they can find their way back to the road.

To their right is a collapsed chimney, made of red stone and the first indicator they have come across, other than the trail tracks, that sentient life comes up this way. And as they go farther up it becomes evident to Nick first, and then moments later Ari: the sun has not sunk any lower than it was when they started on their way up. It hangs low just at the horizon line like a disc of molten copper: is it moving at all?

evening-star

Ari is not as athletic as Nick is. This is a fair assumption, even without her knowing about his bouldering with Sera. Her days of adventuring at the drop of a hat have been fewer and farther between in the years after she left Academy. In Denver, already, she has seen more excitement than she had in all the time she was at conclave or symposium after they all left the East Coast and before she arrived on this Western Front. So she needs the hand up here or there, and she accepts it without bruised pride or ego. That the adventure continues and the riddle is solved is far more important than that she conquers every boulder or crag all on her own.

There are times when the descent is so steep that his hand alone is not enough and she must sit on the ground and scoot forward like a child to avoid stumbling. It leaves grave-and-mortar dust on her clothes, which are clearly to fine of fabrics for this sort of nonsense, but she will have them mended or replaced. This is the luxury of privilege: not having to choose between necessities and wants.

Does she hear the echoes?

Ari pauses, brow furrowed and head tipped slightly to one side. She cuts an odd silhouette in the setting sun -- and hadn't the city just been a constellation of pinprick lights on the valley floor? hadn't she just felt the relief of rising moonlight? surely she was mistaken in that memory, as the sun is molten and low and angry on the horizon and even Hesperus is not yet to be seen near Helios on the horizon -- stretching her senses to hear the rumble and echo of which he speaks.

"Not yet," she says. But if he does she surely believes that she will, too. "Is something coming?" she asks him, the line above her nose still creased with concern. The hand torch still burns, which is odd, because it is not yet even truly twilight.

crow

"No," he says. There is a point between his eyebrows, a divet that could have been stamped there or placed by awl, a place where his brows have drawn together and left a small furrow. It stops short of concern; there is no need for concern just yet.

Though maybe the both of them ought to have been more cautious. Maybe they should both be more afraid of the dark.

"It sounds like the echoes of the explosion." His eyes trek back up toward the horizon line, visible now past the mountain. He has checked the sun once and again, and he is sure now and so he says, "The sun should be lower now than it is, too. Have you noticed? It isn't getting any lower."

Nick does not know what would produce that, short of advanced Time magick. Short of some sort of lingering effect. "I wonder if something is still here."

evening-star

She is not the adventuring fellow one chooses when caution and carefully considered strategy is required. That sort of restraint and hesitation is left to other arenas of Ari's life and has no place where the wondrous is afoot. It will catch up with her one day, in ways far more grave than bruises from falling down mountains. There are sayings about bright-burning things, and the duration of their brilliance.

So she picks and chooses her footfalls and descends the rest of the way to where he is standing, and her torch is still burning -- though unnecessary -- and the evidence is adding up to support his theory that something is not quite as it seems.

"I thought I remembered moon-rise before we came down quite this far, but then again I thought I might be mistaken." She is insouciant, and offers a little shrug to pair with this easy admission. "I'd been more focused on the path than the sky..."

Ari reaches up to push her bangs out of her eyes, to shade her eyes from the setting sun. Nick wonders if something might still be here and Ari's eyebrows raise up. The next bit of pathway is not so steep and she, with this intrigued expression still focused on him, and with the sort of sway and easy saunter to her footsteps, starts to move further down it.

"I suppose we're in now, aren't we? Jacta alea est. We might as well go see what we can see, don't you think...?"

Later, when Nick tells Pen about this adventure, this may not prove to have been the wisest course of action. But it is action; Ari cannot much abide sitting still.

crow

Nicholas, too, has been more focused on the path ahead of them than the sky; at Ari's admission the little furrow between his brows only deepens. He is trying to concentrate to remember: where exactly the sun was when they left the gas station. He cannot.

"I have been too, but I think you might be right," he says. And Nick: he often knows things in his heart, but sometimes he lacks the confidence to say them. Particularly where such things are concerned, in matters where he might otherwise be more inclined to defer to his Hermetic friends.

"I agree that we might as well keep going." He stops short of saying that they have gone too far, because they haven't really: going ahead, and the risks that it entails, is a conscious choice that they are making now.

No excuses, when he tells Pen about this adventure.

And so they walk.

crow

[Let's pick a storyline!]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )

evening-star

One of the decided benefits of a Hermetic education is learning how to express your opinions, beliefs, or even your passing thoughts with a sort of nonchalance that borders on hubris. The expectation of a ready audience; the wherewithall to withstand a verbal duel. Sparring with quill or tongues or any other instrument of the mind is how they hone their paradigms and protocols and their very grasp of the language that gives form to Art and Ars. The hesitant and the uncertain and the first to fold all get left behind and the crucible formed by those who remain is merciless.

And magical. Transformative. They are forged in the fire. Meant to be the leading edge of the blade, the tip of the arrow, the point of the quill.

Ari is not too far from the point, being that she is part siren, or lorelei, or fae light on the moors, or even some ominous star to lead them who wander astray. It does not occur to her that Nick may feel some hesitance or have reservations or unspoken truth kept gated behind the cage of his teeth because he is unsure or unsteady.

Down they go, until the relentless slant of the path recants and begins to level out, and still they are winding around the circumference of the mountain but gone is the dreadful feeling of descent. They have come all this way down and not gone under; Hades is not waiting for them here. The air is less choked-full of dust and sediment here. The setting sun is merciless and clear. The buildings here have been spared the ravages of war; their roofs are not caving in, avalanches of red-tile and broken joists and beams; their walls stand upright, rough with stucco and sharp cornered and solid. It has been a slow progression, as they are moving away from the epicenter of some frightful thing, or perhaps back in time toward a moment before the sundering.

The streets are brick over gravel, set in a herringbone pattern, as if the wide parkways were more for pedestrian than vehicular travel. Just beyond the edge of their hearing, indistinct but somehow familiar, is the crackle of static interspersed with the brassy jazz of an old radio playing the old songs of a bygone generation. Down the alley to their left, they can see the swing of a metal garden gate and within its boundaries a low clothesline hung with forgotten and tattered items. The white have gone grey with the dust and time. The gate swings on its hinges, though neither of them feel a breeze, and it squeaks idly.

The path cut around the mountain is only wide enough for the street and a few homes on either side. To widen the town beyond these boundaries, alleys have been cut up and down, steep pedestrian stairs connect lower and upper terraces; it is a warren of tiny passages tucked into, around, and through. Broad windows decorate the storefronts along the empty street. The letters painted on to reveal their purposed are scuffed and faded. Yet, out of the corner of their eyes, it almost seems as if they might be legible -- then no again, they are indistinct when direct attention is applied.

"There's no town on the map here," Arianna tells him, frowning at the pitted and worn name of a street on a metal sign affixed to the edge of a building. "I'm almost certain of it, Nick...."

Dice: 1 d10 TN10 (9) ( fail )

crow

Ari is certain there is no town on the map; Nick is also certain of this, though his certainty comes from the pit of his stomach, a far more intuitive thing. He knows without looking, he knows because that is how these things go.

Sundown is a threshold, a period of the day when the space between this world and the next draws thinner. Nick wonders whether they have wandered into a shadow realm, someplace not quite past the Veil but perhaps in that in between place. There are such places in the world.

"Can you hear the radio?" He asks her this because he does not yet understand what is happening: he only knows that something is. "This might not even be...it might not even be in Colorado, depending on what's..."

He doesn't finish because, well, speculation.

Nick brings the spirit world with him; he looks into it as naturally now as breathing. He has to close his eyes a moment and open them again, has to draw in a breath and breathe out and remember how it feels to be back at the beginning: that's all. It has gotten much easier over the years. So: he looks. Perhaps it will give him a sense of just where they are.

[Spirit 1, Sight: base diff 4, -1 for practiced rote.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (2, 6) ( success x 1 )

evening-star

His cabal-mate belongs to the Autumn; she is sometimes rowan-haired and often mercurial, but her practices lean toward memory, and her heart rules her head more often than she will acknowledge and the season of cups, and of emotion, and of sundering and of going under; this twilight of the year, and as a time of life, of truths that transcend word and knowing; this knowing of things that are not the purview of Air and Intellect alone. She belongs to the Autumn, though she Winters over oh so well, and she can burn like a summer child. This Nick knows when he peers at her through his Spirit sight; he knows it in his bones as surely as if he had spoken one of her names.

Thresholds are places only truths can endure.

And then, beyond the immediacy of her presence, which is far more permanent and resolved than these others, comes the expanding awareness of the town itself. Held in this moment like a photograph, a breath that can never be drawn in to its fullest, stopped, as it were...

As they were...

The ghostly silhouettes, grey-shaped and translucent, shimmering in the heat of the setting sun, phantasmic, of a bustling small town. The figures are paused, mid-stride, mid-sentence, mid-something. All of them. A woman in an upper window airing out the laundry, arms aloft in the process of flinging the wrinkles out of some now-lost thing. A gentleman in a hat, whose style gives away the decade, bent forward to speak to a child who is only half his height; pipe held away from his face in one hand, the illusion of smoke curling up and out of it. There is movement in the sound alone, and this is the roll of hard wheels against cobbles, or perhaps the herringbone of the street, but not with the clarity and quickness of cars and neither with the accompanying foot stamps of carriage horses, so perhaps the push charts of market folks further around the bend; there are birds calling but out of sight; trees sigh and rustle in the intangible breeze, though there are no such tall-trees or rustlings in their presence, physical space.

The smell of sea air overwhelms him, the valley floor below having been overlaid with the rolling waters of an inlet. The newspaper headline in the shop window nearest him begins: WAR. It is followed by such punctuation as to be alarmist.

And then, on the exhale, when he thinks he might have a sense of time and space around him, comes the whistle of an incoming, ever nearing object; a holiday firecracker played in reverse; and the sun catches his eye which shifts his mind slightly toward the present, where the walls and boundaries of this space match up too precisely with the echoes of his Spirit Sight.

crow

Sea air: and know that the home of Nick's heart is not in Arizona where he grew up nor in Denver where the three of them live now, but in the hills and woods and salt marshes of the place they left not so long ago. He recognizes it as soon as he smells it, the brine. Which means: they are not in Denver, this is an Elsewhere as much as it is an Elsewhen.

There is a newspaper headline in the window.

The holiday was not so long ago and so that is indeed what springs to mind first: a firecracker, the long whistle just before colorful starbursts in the night sky. Sounds and scents are often visceral things, and they can be as effective as any Time magick in transporting a person to another time: to childhood watching fireworks on a blanket, to being at home and wondering when people will bloody stop launching the firecrackers down the street.

To being in another country a year or two ago and hearing that distant sound just before the conflagration, and knowing that charnelhouse will be his next destination. He was there to see those walls collapse, though they weren't his.

Ari sees only his eyes fixating on some point in the sky, and: she can see the white of them. It takes a moment for him to find his voice. "We're somewhere else," he says. "I think it's...there was some sort of - " And he says this and with a rough exhale he shuts his eyes to blink the magick away before the moment of impact,

because he cannot. Not again.

His breathing is unsteady.

evening-star

[Corr: Where am I? base diff 4, -1 practiced]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (7, 8) ( success x 2 )

evening-star

She is watching him, out of the corner of her eye, when he allows his second sight to overtake his absolute sense of here and now. She is watchful, ready, the fingers of one hand wrapped around the hilt of her wand wherever it is currently concealed and the fingers of her other wrapped around the heavy torch, which still burns needlessly, which is a light house, or a ladder or life boat or some other thing that might anchor him if he should so need it. There is no slick of mercury to her eyes, save the grey resolution of a friend who is only half a heartbeat away, and when he is not looking at her she is looking to him.

Ready.

When his voice breaks away from his thoughts, Ari steps in beside him. She moves her hand away from her wand to place the cup of her palm against the round of his shoulder. Her finger press into its blade, offering a grounding pressure that does not draw forward pain. It leaves no question of whether she is there, of whether he is alone. It anchors. He braces for impact; she is beside him.

"Nicholas."

"Just breathe."

It is the barest of reminders, sotto voce, on the edge of hearing. It is not a command. The strength of her grip on his shoulder relents. It becomes just a presence, then her hand moves in small, soothing circles, until it stills. Then taps once, as if testing his resolve. And finally withdraws.

When he is steady on his feet, or near enough, it is her turn to draw in a deep breath. She draws the shape of a circle on the back of her hand, near to the circle made by her thumb and forefinger. Round, and round again, and round again until her skin prickles with the shape of it, and then she pushes out her sense of place and direction, feeling for the truth of where they are in the vastness of the Tellurian. They are travelers without even the night sky to guide them; it is one thing to wander and wholly another to be lost.

crow

Just breathe.

Ari's hand on his shoulder is a comforting weight, a reminder of where and when he is and moreso: a line in the sand between the pain of others and his own. The ease with which Nick understands what's in another's heart is a sword which cuts two ways; he is deeply affected by what he reads from other expressions, from voice and body.

His breath does not take long to steady. He is practiced at this, too.

"It must have been a long time ago. The first world war, maybe. I couldn't see any cars or anything." Just the bright bloom of artillery fire.

To Ari, too, the place might seem all too familiar as she orients herself, and here is the strange thing: they are outside Denver. She knows this as surely as though she were reading a map, though there is no town here, there is no sea. They are also: in a coastal Italian town, somewhere north. Maybe she passed through that country long ago in her youth; maybe it is hardly known to her.

And they are also nowhere at all.

evening-star

There are towns like this, carved into the face of sea cliffs, colorful and dangerous and festooned with history, throughout coastal Italy. The immediacy with which she recognizes her home country is almost brutal, it causes her to pull a sharp breath in between her teeth and the dry, thin air of the mountains above Denver is incongruous with the crash-nearness of the sea. Through memory, she can smell citrus, sun warmed, from the trees that she knows are kept on the tiled balconies and terraces, even though it is not here.

"This is Italia," she tells him, pronunciation canted hard toward home when she speaks the country name, though there is a prick of concern and worry to her expression. She has not committed to it enough for it to be fear or panic.

"Nicholas," she says, though her placement of where to direct his name is a little off due to her split attention. "I know this place." It is like a name just at the tip of her tongue. She knows but does not recognize it. She knows with certainty that there will be a book shop a couple doors down, and she is compelled toward it, by some fondness or some need to know, some need of something definite.

It stands, as it did in her memory. On the corner of a narrow alley and the main street. And she smooths her thumb over the embellishments around the nameplate on the door, worn down with more lifetimes than the span of her own. They have both been Awake too long for her to waste time with incredulity or assertions that this might be impossible.

"I don't understand." This is as much as far as she is willing to stretch disbelief. "It was destroyed in the ..."

Oh. Some sort of realization crests and breaks in her and Arianna pushes the sense of the other town away from her mind. It is his turn to glimpse the whites of her eyes, widened as they are as she churns though some mental arithmetic. And then alarmed. Unlike Nicholas, she does not close them against the dawning thought. She is transfixed, staring at her fingers against the nameplate, remembering; she knows what is coming and yet she cannot bring herself to look away.

crow

He sees the dawning realization in Ari's eyes, and he would not have guessed where they are on his own; he would have needed the magick in truth that Ari only needed to trigger a memory. Other than to the middle east (Chakravanti business, he would have said) Nicholas has never left the country, save just past the Mexican border. He'd thought the place charming, like pictures he's seen of Europe: but how many pictures, over how many years? Things blur.

Nick has raised a hand to his chest and he is gently rubbing at the muscle over his heart, as though he could calm himself this way, could soothe the remembered heartache of someone else.

"I wonder how this place got here," he says. "It must be someone's memory. Some survivor who came here and did some other Work, maybe. I don't know how else this would have gotten here." It challenges his understanding of the Veil, though this is of course not complete.

The world is still full of mystery, isn't it.

"Do you want to leave?"

evening-star

It is possible that this place shows them echoes of their own echoes. That it is only in Italy because she is here; that it only causes him this particular heartache because of the lives that he has lived. It may be a labyrinth, a thing bordering on thresholds of its own. It may be drawing them down into its belly so that they may emerge, changed, reborn, renewed.

She had still be numb when she'd heard that the cliff-side town had been sundered by the War. Numb from the loss of so many friends, aching from her own wounds and the ruins of her sense of surety and place within the world. The Order was not unassailable after all. She'd been far from the sea, but beyond that, Arianna remembers little of place they'd sheltered. Instead she remembers her father's voice, counsel kept with others late at night, the ever-burning light in his study, the way his eyes sunk into his face and the terrible pressure of his resonance always and immediately around them.

When she finally pulls her hand back from the nameplate it is all at once, pulled back toward her center as if she has been burned or bitten; wounded. She does not have as firm a filter for these memories as he does; instead she religiously avoids their echoes.

"Yes." She is smoothing her hand against her pants when she looks over to him, using the feel of the fabric to erase the memories in her fingerprints. Her eyes are clear but not calm when she looks over to him. Conflicted. "I do not want to linger, but still -- if someone has survived and come here. I want to know. Someone should know."

Duty wars with self-preservation. There is no clear victor just yet.

crow

Echoes of their own echoes: or Mind, perhaps. It would not take significant skill to produce such an effect. Nick knows of magi who can do this; there is something unpleasant that triggers in his memory when he thinks about it. Not of the green door, not of the firm pressure of Lysander's hand on his shoulder, but something associated something -

He cannot quite place it.

But it is no matter. Whatever was on the tip of his tongue at the edge of his memory, he is sure it is not here. "There are still ghosts lingering. They might know, though if they died a long time ago what they can tell us is probably going to be limited and cryptic."

Nick says this with the confidence of someone who has done this, and often; he might not often speak of himself or his spirit work but there are often things to be read in the things he knows about and knows how to do. "If you want to stay, I'll stay with you. But we should be cautious." More cautious than they have been, at least.

evening-star

If you want to stay...

Pen is not here to defer to. She cannot pin this on Silas. There are no ready scapegoats and Nick is looking to her which means that she is -- Verdammt! -- responsible for this decision. The Giametti woman weighs this for a moment, with her lips pressed together and her gaze cast down toward the interleaving bricks. She breathes in once, and then out again, and that is all the time it takes to decide.

"No." Self-preservation has won out. "If I had known what was coming then, I would not have stayed. I do not want to stay now to see if it will come again."

There are still ghosts here. There are stories hidden in the twisting alleys and crammed in between the bricks. But whatever she remembers is more terrible than the pull of the unknown. It overtakes her curiosity and even her disdain for consequence. Ari's hand has move back to whatever pocket houses her wand. He cannot see her white-knuckled grasp on it, but he can see the bloodless hue of the hand that holds the torch -- still burning, still needlessly so. He can see the tension to the lines of her face and the pull of her shoulders.

There is something she is keeping from him, and not terribly well.

crow

Ari decides not to stay, and as Nick breathes out there is a slight but visible bow that appears across the line of his shoulders: they relax. He would have indeed stayed, and stayed from loyalty and no small measure of his own curiosity: but caution wins the day. This is fortunate, perhaps; the last time Nick was in a place like this, he left with his soul rotting from the inside out.

Each time he'll have to question whether or not the tether Pen (Ari, too, but especially Pen) provides would be enough to stay him: eventually one time will be the last.

Best to avoid it.

"We can go then. We can always come back, or try to get a better idea of what's happening from afar." He wonders: are there places where they have to be present? This is outside of his understanding of Correspondence.

"What is it, Ari?"

evening-star

She is afraid. Ari, who is not afraid of the dark. Ari, who is headfirst into most adventures. Is terrified of what comes next.

"Nothing," she lies, and offers him a smile. It would be convincing, were he not Nicholas and were they not family of the heart. And then, immediately upon its heels and in conflict with her assertion, she tells him: "I'll tell you when we're clear of this place."

Because it is not the time to tell him that it shatters, and blisters, and burns.

Climbing up a steep incline was somehow easier than carefully descending. Still, though, Nicholas is her better in the mechanics of this escape. All the while she is waiting for the scream of incoming magics or artillery rounds; for the inevitable crash, and boom, and breaking.

crow

[Dex + Athletics?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

evening-star

[Dex + Ath: Upward...?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )

crow

[Uh...doing that again. Diff 7.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (1, 6, 10) ( success x 1 )

evening-star

[Oh... it gets steeper...]

Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (1, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )

crow

[Stamina?]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (6, 7) ( success x 2 )

evening-star

[Stamina: I can totally keep going...]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (5, 8) ( success x 1 )

crow

[Okay. Home stretch?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (1, 2, 9) ( success x 1 )

evening-star

[All the way back to the top?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (6, 6, 7) ( fail )

evening-star

[No, seriously, I want out of this place. +1 for retrying]

Dice: 3 d10 TN9 (4, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )