Welcome to Gaia! ::

Lyra finally made it to the bottom of the overly large staircase along with the rest of the crew. She found the need for such large items to be... interesting. Lyra's eyes drifted around the room. She looked around at the wide array of items, her eyes setting on the door to the outside the longest.

That was when she tried to move- but... of course as things go, it would not be that easy. It was as if her feet were glued to the floor, and her body was encased in ice. She couldn't move. She could look, breath and... hopefully talk. Green eyes looked now towards the center of the room, right at the winter witch. Why hadn't Lyra noticed her before now?

...Wait. Winter witch? THE winter witch? The pig spoke of said witch, even thought Lyra was a follower of the witch because she wore mostly white. She remembered him commenting on how the witch's followers were normally shackled- and how even the thought of her being a follower of hers made the poor pig shake in fear. That was not a good sign.

And oh look... they cant move anywhere. Ah crap and the witch was looking at them. Her eyes gazed towards the corner with the statue.. and the blood. She figured now that them being in this womans house was not a good sign. She started to wonder about the sauce stains now too. Nervously she looked up at the witch- not meeting her gaze directly in the eyes but looking more at her chin. "Greetings, Winter Witch. What a, uh... lovely house you have! Were you who brought us here?"

Light blue eyes flicked over the room's details, Over all, it reminded him of crazy cannibalistic hut. When you saw blood stains, dirty dishes, and medieval torture devices you tended to think along the lines of '******** my life this is the crazy woodland kill's hut and we're next on the menu.' That was his thought at least, until the sound of the woman's voice drew his attention.

The term ice in your veins could have never felt more real then it now did. Marlo was literally, frozen in place. How, he hadn't the foggiest, but the fact remained. He couldn't move. His gaze focused on the Winter Witch before diverting his eyes back to the west wall, lingering over on the locked box that seemed to have something living inside of it.

It was Lyra's voice that made him remember the simple fact that no matter what he saw or was curious about, this was lesser to the fact that the giant woman had stopped him in his tracks cold. (His brain scolded him for the accidental pun.) His gaze was on the Witch. Eye contact, as was only polite, even if he was slightly scared shitless at the whole blood stains, dirty dishes and red lips. "Indeed. Thank you for the warm beds and the water madam. Sorry about the door. We're in a bit of a hurry to get...home." He got the idea vague was good. Who knew the levels of batshit going on. It was a dreamland or something after all. Birds talked, s**t riddles and clues, and little girls got scalped in pinned to ******** batshit dream all in all.

Things were getting more and more peculiar by the moment. Looking around the room, Walküre suddenly regretted being at the head of the pack. This place was really morbid. Poorly decorated too.

She attempted to step forward, but found that she couldn't move.

This only enraged her further, and Walküre (yet again) spoke without thinking. She mumbled under her breath and with a look of disdain, "more like Winter b***h." Clearly, things would have been better for her if her mouth had been frozen in place too.

She regretted saying it as soon as it passed out of her lips, and she unconsciously tried to reach to cover her mouth, but couldn't.

Being at the back of the group had its advantages. When they emerged in the living room and encountered possibly the tallest, whitest, coldest woman Aquarius had ever seen, she didn't have to stand directly in front of her. She was frozen, yes, and just as unnerved as the others, but having half a dozen warm bodies in between her and the Winter Witch made her feel a little bit more secure.

Until she realized that Walküre was at the front. While she wasn't Aquarius' favorite senshi ever, they had gotten as far as they had together. She didn't really know where anyone else in the group stood, but Walküre was an ally, a friendly (if sometimes irritating) force, and Aquarius really didn't want to lose that if she didn't have to.

There were also disadvantages to being in the back of the group. It was hard to get a clear view of the room when it was obscured by half a dozen heads, especially when she couldn't even crane her head to get a better view. Aquarius had to settle for squinting as she looked around, first taking in the front door, which she eyed wistfully. She then spotted the iron maiden and what seemed to be a spinning wheel. As soon as she saw what the wheel was threaded with, she shifted her focus, eyes settling on the bookcases. That was more promising. Her gaze lingered there for several seconds, as she tried to make out the titles of the books on the shelves while the others spoke to the witch.

Walküre's mumbling jerked Aquarius of surveillance mode, and she bit her lip. If she wanted to keep her ally around, she had to do something. Clearing her throat- if only she could drink some more water from the pitcher!- she spoke to the Winter Witch. "We thank you for inviting us into your home, Winter Witch." When in doubt, flattery was Aquarius' method of choice, and she was definitely in doubt. "It is true that we are in something of a hurry, but if there is any way we can repay you for your hospitality..." Aquarius paused. Considering the carnage she had glimpsed, she didn't want to make promises willy-nilly. "We would be glad to hear out any requests you have, to see if there is anything we can do for you in return."

There. It didn't hurt to listen, did it? Aquarius only hoped that her words soothed their hostess enough to avoid a violent rebuttal.

The front door was carved of sturdy-looking oak, old and thick and warped; its single, smooth plank was gouged out here and there to form a rather ritualistic set of carvings. Even from where they stood, those of them that looked at the door could see that the door was emblazoned with a giant sun aflame, and within the sun was carved a knotted tree, and beneath the tree was the simple arc of a crescent. At each of the four corners of the door was a carved snowflake. Another, small sun ringed the doorknob.

The Winter Witch really did cut an imposing figure when you looked at her. As old as she looked, somehow this didn't give her even a wisp of a kindly air. Even her eyes seemed to be banked with freezing cold snow, the way her pupils hid dilated behind a fog -- she looked at them as though they in their brightly colored clothes were mere blurs to her, and she, in white, was the reality.

From here, the iron maiden looked much the same as on first glance: gruesome. The bloodstains on the floor, however, only managed to get more terrifying the longer one looked at them -- for it wasn't just one stain, but appeared to be the overlapped soaks of many, many stains.

The dirty dishes that Marlo noticed didn't appear particularly noticeable from here at all, actually. They were dirty, old, chipped, and all in all about par for the course as far as things in this house went.

The locked box continued to give little jumps every so often, as though showing off that, unlike the eight of them, it wasn't frozen in place. Not much else to see from here.

The spinning wheel looked a bit beaten up, even from here.

From this distance and angle, it was difficult for Aquarius to make out the titles of any of the books on the shelf -- but her squinting paid off in some measure. A few of the books were larger than the others, more the size of thick coffee-table books. One was either illegible or unmarked on its spine, a deep amber-yellow book. The other had a rust-red spine, and was stamped along the spine with shiny goldleaf that she could just barely read: The Glory of the Red God.

The Winter Witch listened to each of their questions with thoughtful solemnity, nodding her head throughout to indicate that she'd heard. When this was all done, she smiled, her lips thinning into a red streak.

She walked over to Walkure, put her hands on the girl's frozen shoulders, and pressed a kissed to her forehead. Her touch was light and papery. "Insolent girl," she chided, clearly amused. She ruffled Hector's hair on her way past, and stopped in front of Aquarius. She drew in a breath, sucked on her own lip for a bit, and continued to stare at the frozen senshi. After a few uncomfortable seconds passed, she said, "good child," which sounded less like a mark of approval and more like an objective assessment. She sighed, looking weirdly wistful, and moved on.

"As I'm not dead," she explained, "I'm not the woman in the paintings upstairs. I'm not her -- but we all remember the Moon." Her mouth quirked in a very wry smile. "How could we not?" She leaned in towards Lyra -- no. She sniffed Lyra. "My niece, you know. Self-important girl, terribly impressed with her own mysteriousness, so certain of being cleverer than everyone else. A typical child."

"There's nothing I want from you, my boy," the Winter Witch switched to addressing Hector. "I have it. I've taken it all. I need your gushing heart," she told him. "I need your plump flesh. I need your hopes and your despair."

She crossed away to the table in the center of the room, wiping off the table with an absent hand. She missed some spots.

"You make an excellent bread," she smiled. The Winter Witch had a lot of smiles, none of them warmer than glacial.

"I'm heading out for a few hours, little ones," she explained. "But I shall be hungry upon my return. Pick one of your companions and serve me up their dead body on this table when I get back."

[OOC: You're still frozen. Sorry. smile ]

Well so much for the notion he should be semi-polite. Still, he wasn't going to be overly mouthy. That could only cause trouble. "Not to be a bother but, we can't exactly kill anyone if we're stuck in place. Let alone prepare you a meal from their corpse. Would you allow us the freedom to move?" It was a simple request. One he hoped she planned on granting. A small morbid fascination ticked in with the situation. He had always wanted to cook exotic meals, but never so exotic as human flesh.
"And do you have a particular cut or preparation style? I know a rather nice dish of liver and heart. But, usually that's from venison and not...human." Bile almost came up. Almost. "I'm sure I could improvise." His eyes were not on the doors, but rather on those that stood behind him. They were rather judgmental.

Lt. Ametrine took in everything she could of what the woman said and did, and it became all the clearer why the pig had feared her so. It was not easy to do so around the realization that the woman wanted to eat them, but she had to try. They couldn't move... so they couldn't draw lots. She didn't want to burst out with a suggestion, because she also didn't know who they would need to survive. When it came down to it, they would at least need to plan on having someone... available... for that. She remained silent while she thought through what she could say, since she was still bound by the witch's spell.

Black Lady needed to be protected. The Negaverse had an alliance with her, and Wiseman. She could not afford to allow anything to happen to her. Also, Captain Serandite outranked her. Could she leave these things to chance? Could she really? The protective lioness in her was having trouble doing so. As boneheaded as the young captain was, she was likely to get herself killed.

As she stood there, she asked herself: What would Tony do? They needed a contingency plan. If they couldn't get free of the spell, they had some choices. They could draw lots in some manner-- whether by seeing who spoke last or something else-- or they could wait to see what the witch had in store for them. Either was left up to chance. Neither was acceptable, because they put Black Lady and Serandite at risk, and as attached to her own skin as Ametrine was, well... there came a point. A point where the Negaverse was more important than her own livelihood.

"Should all else fail, and we find no recourse here... I volunteer."

Black Lady was having an incredible mental crisis. It was probably a good thing she couldn't move, or else her agitation might have shown in her body language and movement. It wasn't entirely hard to keep her face still, however, and it was like a smooth stone mask as her mind raced. Putting someone up on the chopping block wasn't a moral problem for her, she'd killed quite a few people, and this would be the fast way to end suffering. The Witch didn't want to eat the person alive, so the princess didn't mind sacrificing one of them to help the group.

The problem was, she couldn't decide which one was the best! Anyone would immediately assume that Prince Hector would have her vote, but that was not at all true. He was involved, he knew about this place and what it was, or at least had an inkling. Also, she wanted to kill him herself - and very slowly when she did. It also occurred to her that eliminating the powerless one would also be a wise track, except for the fact that Hector had so disdainfully pointed out that was what she was going to do!

Ametrine's gallant offer didn't even hit her ears, but she was up for consideration. But what her mind really lingered on, was Sailor Aquarius. There couldn't be too many people with chips on their shoulders against her on this team if she was to succeed and find Wiseman in one piece. Eliminating the Zodiac would eliminate a trained fighter, but she was less likely to be overwhelmed later. Winning them over with charm didn't even occur to her for more than a second, it was too unreliable.

Resentment boiled in her. None of them would be in this place if Hector hadn't been...Hector! Finally opening her mouth to speak, her eyes were closed. "This will be interesting, once we can move again."