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[shibrogane]

minor ritual mutilation

cibarium

Leila gazes into the mirror, and what she sees is Ezra Fitzpatrick, burned, unrolling something that looked like the Charter. He set small, melting globules of some silver metal at the corners, drew a line through them to connect them. A circle around the old design.

He cuts a vein in his wrist, holds it over a small bowl. Mixes it with more of the metal. It steams as blood and metal combine, but he doesn't notice as he dips his fingers into the coagulating goop.

The vision flickers out.

 

[shibrogane]

a-disgruntled-dragon

Erin looks in the mirror and what she sees is not edifying, particularly:

A rolled-up parchment in a black void. A rolled-up parchment in masculine, callused hands, one of them burned. A rolled-up parchment on a table between two figures, one brunette and small, the other dark-haired and tall.

 

[shibrogane]

cibarium

The spell seems confused by Eve's request. It flickers between Ezra and the fetches, Ezra in his apartment. A brief flash of Ezra in a hospital bed, arms in traction.

 

[shibrogane]

The Semblance of Unity

Horace doesn't just watch the vision. He's in it now, standing there behind Ezra as the young man plays... his guitar? There's a binder at hand, within reach of his left hand, and in the open pages Horace can see what looks like an incredibly complicated musical composition. There are sixteenth notes, slurs, rapid arpeggios. It rivals even the Devil's Trill--not that Horace necessarily knows that reference--in its density. In the center of the low table, there's a glimmering stone. It has an opalescent sheen, but looks to hold fire within it.

Ezra reaches out to turn the page, keeps playing. The fire inside the stone grows brighter. Ezra's burns don't seem to trouble him now as he reaches the crescendo of the song--

and then he stops, abruptly.

Get. Out, he says, and Horace is thrown out of the vision.

 

[shibrogane]

now u may resume ur hunt for the secrets  

[saedusk]

Scrying: 10 + 5 (bonus) = 15 + 20 from critical success?? = 35

With the paper he received from Leila, he wrote down what he'd seen in his vision. None of it meant much to him, not really, because he didn't know Minerva and so couldn't recognize her. Anyone who knew her, though, would likely understand by his description. He said it aloud, too, in case someone cared to hear. Who knew about the other triplets, but Minerva at least had already lost her thumbprint.

Though Elliot should've found something else for his scrying, he didn't much feel like moving from his comfortable position against Horace's back, and so relied on his small compact mirror once more.

"I want to see" he began, considering his words carefully, "if there was ever a time Ezra resisted whatever was driving him to collect everyone's fingerprints." If there was a crack in the control this Burning Man had, or the control everyone seemed to assume he had, Eli wanted to know what it was.


[Buffs]
Calm emotional state +1
Mirror scrying +2
Clear goal in mind +2

shibrogane

The Semblance of Unity

he try

 

[shibrogane]

major ritual gore sorry eli asked and then rolled a ******** 10

saedusk

A dark-haired young man stood in an unfamiliar bathroom. In his left hand was a chef's knife, the kind you would use to chop vegetables. Only he wasn't chopping vegetables; it was his arm he was sawing at, trying to carve free the burns.

"It won't work," he said. He squinched his eyes shut like it caused him pain to be there, to be thinking of any of this. "It won't work, little mouse, I'll take them all regardless."

Eli heard it like a psychic scream: NOT ******** OLIVER. DON'T

"I won't hurt him if he doesn't resist. Stop and put the knife down."

I WON'T ******** LET YOU

"I can start with your mother instead."

YOU DISGUST ME

"You're lucky I'm here to keep you intact. Look what you've done, peeled your hand like a grape. Your mother and Oliver aren't the ones you knew and loved, dear boy, and these histrionics benefit them not at all."

GETTING YOU TO WASTE YOUR POWER DOES

"Well, that I can't argue with."

 

[shibrogane]

round over
total score 35
hunting thread bonus 1.35
new round starts now  

[cibarium]

"Mercury? Why..."

The sight of blood didn't normally phase Leila, but the image before her here was still disturbing. The only thing she knew about mercury -- if that's what it was -- was that alchemists used to use it to try and become immortal or something, which didn't make a whole lot of sense to her. The steam suggested it was something else, with a higher melting point than room temperature.

She resumed her attention on the mirror. I need to see the outcome the Burning Man is working towards, she thought.

Ezra's Betrayal +4
Mirror scrying +2
Clear goal in mind +2
Quiet working space +2

Total: 12  

[The Semblance of Unity]

Horace immediately tried to jump back into that moment of time, focusing. He needed to see more, to... His mind jumped back to the music; Horace needed paper, needed to see.

s**t. He couldn't think. He set the silver dish away from himself.

Instead, he got up abruptly. Stuffing his hand into his pocket, he pulled out his notebook and flipped to a blank page. He brace it against the wall and began to write quickly. Five lines, dots connected, a time signature. It was horribly confusing and it reminded him of some of the fast bullshit sopranos in choir were expected to pull off, only worse. He hadn't gotten a look at all of it, sadly, but he wrote what he could, his fingers dutifully plunking the notes down for the first few lines. But the music was more than one page and he'd never seen it, hadn't had time to read all the first page.

"Eli - do you recognize this? It's... it's guitar music, though, and..." He reminded himself to breathe. "The music is the magic for him, his guitar, a stone with fire inside of it..." Horace deliberately slowed himself. "I asked to see his components, and it showed me this, he was playing it on a guitar, and there was some kind of opal colored stone - it held fire inside that twisted and grew with the music." Another pause and he scanned the music he'd jotted down. It was messily written, and incomplete, but.

"He saw me there, he told me to 'get out'."

Crit fail -10 from score
quiet space +2
half mirror +1
ezra boon +4

saedusk

 

[Melancholies]

Mila honestly had little to no idea on what she should be doing. She didn't even think she was magical for god's sake! But here she was, and she promised she was going to try, and the group had largely dispersed into different corners of the room for their spell casting. Leila decided to be a blessing in disguise though as she handed out the instruction lists.

"Thank you!" She was chipper enough about it as she read, her hand adjusting the glasses on her face. So magic was one half ingredients and set up and one half intent? Sounded a lot like baking! So she could do this, maybe...

"Reflective surface..." She retreated to a comfortable looking place by the wall before seating herself (she'd snagged a pastry too, yum), before digging out a compact mirror from her bag. It was small, but it was either that or her phone or my glasses, maybe, unless she got really creative with some of the other objects present. Unfortunately, she didn't know much about this Ezra person, and she knew less on what exactly she should trying asking.

"Alright..." She took a few bites of her pastry before setting it down again, the delicious sweetness delicate and tasty. Everyone else around her became a little bit of a blur as she settled in with herself. Just imagine you're trying to study in a busy library! It wasn't that hard. "I... want to see..." She took a deep even breath as she held the mirror to her face, "I want to check on the group who went to find Ezra, if they've found him yet..." That would be useful for the group to know, right? Right.

Calm emotional state +1
Clear goal in mind +2
Mirror scrying +2
Quiet working space +2

total = 7 + 9 = 16!

cibariummm

ty 4 sheet!

shibrogane

 

[saedusk]

small mentions of blood and gore

After that vision, all gore and horror and mentions of Oliver, Eli was definitely not in the best state of mind. The reason behind his inquiry, had been simple—check to see if there were any weaknesses the hunt team could exploit if they needed to. What he got was more than he expected and, truth be told, even bleeding out on a sigil hadn't prepared him for the shock of seeing someone's hand splayed open like a goddamn peeled fruit.

Maybe everyone else was used to that sort of thing with as long as they'd been in magic, but Eli wasn't.

"God, Horace-!" he gasped, drawn back into focus by what he was saying. "Wait, what now? Guitar music?" Trying to calm down (it was only kinda-sorta working), he skimmed what Horace had written and shook his head. "I don't recognize it. Looks complicated."

Eli breathed, swallowing against the lump in his throat. "Sorry, darling..."

The Semblance of Unityyyy

 

[The Semblance of Unity]

Horace stopped, really looked at Eli as he stared at the music. "Eli, what's wrong - are you okay?" He had to remind himself that he wasn't the only one anxious, panicking, and that his panic certainly wasn't the most important. He shoved it down fiercely, locking it into a box and throwing out the key. It would ooze out of the seams, but that was a problem for future Horace.

He reached out, skimmed his hand along Eli's shoulder to settle around his upper arm. "Did you see something?"

Saedusk

 

[saedusk]

If nothing else, Eli was certainly the type to respond well to physical comforts. That it was Horace, someone he'd grown to trust, only helped. What calm he'd managed to cobble together before was gone, but at least he had the wherewithal to speak on what he'd seen.

"I asked if Ezra had ever resisted the Burning Man," he said, then went into detail, telling Horace everything he'd seen.

"It was like... the idea of going after Oliver or his mother was... was too much for him." Eli shook his head. "That he'd do something like that to himself to try and stop it... I was only hoping to find a weakness we might be able to exploit. I wasn't expecting that."

The Semblance of Unity

 

[The Semblance of Unity]

"Instead of the burning man's weakness, you found Ezra's...." Horace sighed. "Do they know each other - Ollie and Ezra?" His thumb moved in circles against Eli's arm.

"And," he said. "Oliver is fine, it's okay. That was an older memory. We need to find out how to fix the things he's done and that was a good idea to try to find his weaknesses. When you're feeling steadier, let's try again." The music was crumpled in his fist. Put it out of your mind, sunshine, even though it's hard. We gotta keep on.

saedusk