1523/It Approaches

It Approaches
Date of Scene:	17 July 2017
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Summary needed
Cast of Characters:	1198, Scarlet Witch

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Clea Lake (1198) has posed:
    Not every suicide is an act of dark magic. Sadly, not even many of them are: people get sick, and they die. But when six unconnected women in Manhattan committed suicide in one night, that would be suspicious, even if you weren't mystically aware enough to have a nightmare about a stormcloud made of teeth. Teeth that grin. Teeth that come to points. Teeth that hunger.
    That's not much for Clea to go off of, but she's a more than competent diviner, and she follows the omens to the obituaries that come two days later. Damn. Two days for this thing, whatever it is, to gather force. That's got to be horrible. Clea scans the names and finds a Regina Lake: no relation to Clea, but the last name is, if not a sign from the universe, then at least a link she can use to bluff her way into the front door.
    The Rule of Shade is in effect. The Images of Ikonn mask Clea in her Caucasian form (she can't quite bring herself to think of it as her hero persona) even before they shroud her in invisibility, and she flies through the night to the poor victim's home, a posh apartment in a rich high-rise in a good part of town. Good news is, it has a balcony to land on; bad news is, Clea doesn't know how to pick locks, and has to assume breaking the door would trigger an alarm in such a good part of town. Well, she could try teleporting through the sliding glass door; she's rubbish with teleporting on Earth, but it's only a distance of about eighteen inches...

Scarlet Witch has posed:
    At times the powers move a person, nudging them in the right direction along a series of unlikely coincidences. Tonight isn't one of them. Reading the news on a convenient screen attests a lurid pattern screaming 'suicide pact' and unnatural elements. Certain words stand out in their grim ferocity to her, blazing neon red in a dim flood of black digital ink. Wanda Maximoff is many things, but an expert in pattern recognition and probabilities is foremost among her lesser talents. It sends her forth, armed by the knowledge gleaned from sharpened visions and knowledge.
    A woman in a black dress isn't bound to attract much attention in the city. Someone in a superhero getup, yes, but someone wearing a red headband and carrying a bottle of water barely counts. Threads of possibility take her where she needs to go. A tweak here, one there, and it's like surfing on a wine-dark sea to the desired corner, one of those unfortunate souls who claimed her own life.
    The posh places frequently have doormen. Doormen frequently don't question someone who carries herself like an ancient queen, or happens to have a father who calls himself 'imperator.' It's not the latter Wanda waves in anyone's face so much as speaks softly about a visit made upstairs, her credentials established with the faintest of smiles universal to trouble.

Clea Lake (1198) has posed:
    There are gaps in reality. If the stars and planets form a web holding all things together, then this web, like any, has places where the strands part. Clea closes her eyes, summons the green energy of Jupiter, and does her best to slide down the edge of one of those titanic strands of reality on which she stands, building up speed by shedding her spell of invisibility to let its energy help her try to defy gravity and circle past the node where two lines of silk intersect, passing through the place that is no place where the unborn live, eyes shut; and then her ears are popping as she's restored to an atmosphere. Clea looks around cautiously. She's inside. Whew. If the door wasn't glass, who knows if that would have worked.
    She nearly murmurs the word "alright" aloud to herself before looking around, only barely thinking there might be auditory sensors in the apartment for all she knows. Best to be quiet, then. Slowly, Clea pads through the dark apartment lit only by the lights of the city's eternal, enormous electric grid, her ears cocked for the telltale sounds of magic. There's a ringing from ... sounds like the bedroom, something jangling and discordant.

Scarlet Witch has posed:
    The standard method for entry serves Wanda in good stead. No need to apply any higher arts to blind someone's mind so much as a little charm and a smile. She steps through the doorway after thanking the gentleman and proceeds straight to the elevator, following the pinched thread of probability in her delicate fingertips. The click of her heels is a steady rhythm, the metronome to which chaos falls and the Moirai spin their lengthy life-threads, though the one she wants is already clipped. Jewel strands spin up and down, but the right sense takes her into that coffin and pressing three buttons. Three for habit, threefold path. She can only hope they're right.
    Upon the first of the buttons pressed, she steps out onto the landing with a hand pressed to the doors to keep them from sliding shut again on her. Magic flickering over her faintly glowing vision affords insight into many things, some she might rather shut her thoughts out to: the psychometric imprints of old fights, deep sorrows, and lost joys all pepper the air as the oily stain of an overcooked curry. Once scented magically, there's no escape for her, though such is equally a blessing if a certain Ms. Lake left behind fear or despair in her wake. Magic takes many forms, auditory and olfactory and tactile, those feathery concoctions turning sharp and harsh as she ventures down the hallway. Door by door Wanda goes, doing legwork the old-fashioned way.

Clea Lake (1198) has posed:
    Oh, there was fear from the first Ms. Lake, and now there's a certain unmitigated but weirdly distant dread from the current Ms. Lake as she stares at the painting mounted on the bedroom wall, facing the foot of the bed. On a technical level, it's very good: stormclouds at night, billowing and thick, swollen purple and black like bruises on the sky itself. The curves of the cloud are lit by flashes of lightning so realistic you almost expect them to be able to light room, but when you look closer, you see that's not the curves of clouds, it's smiles. Dozens of them, lipless and gumless, made only of teeth. The storm is approaching a lone house on a hill, a single-story cottage whose one visible window is lit with yellow that looks like the light is reaching out into the darkness, but it's actually being beaten back by the dark.
    Beaten? Wrong word. Subtract the B. That's closer.
    What would drive a person to put this in the bedroom? What would drive them to make it the first thing you see in the morning, and the last at night?
    And why is Clea still staring at it? Is she being hypnotized? Nnnn ...

Scarlet Witch has posed:
    Sick fear has a taste of iron and faded copper on the tongue. It sinks down the back of the throat and sticks to every inhaled breath. Wanda finds herself bringing her sleeve to her nose as a matter of habit, and she might well sneeze. Or so it appears. The flavour pulls her to the door, a door that beckons in all the pervasive, miserable shadow it casts as a pall. Without much more she can do, the witch brushes her fingers over the surface without coming in contact. Somewhere it must open. Lock and key she doesn't have.
    Cheating time.
    The whisper on her lips is an old thing, a query to the spirit of the device to come alive and aid her. A deadbolt isn't particularly difficult compared to some kind of keypad. In the end the price is the same, an offering of her energy, a blessing of touch. Her powers in use are ephemeral things, light, rather than the harsh demands enforced by another kind of sorcery in its geometric control and command. She might speak powerful words; no need here. If the lock gives, she uses her sleeve to open the door and admit herself, tiptoeing lightly through a dead woman's violated privacy, her sanctuary no more.

Clea Lake (1198) has posed:
    Clea has feel her heartbeat settled somewhere in her throat, but from far away, disconnected. Like watching the news talk about a shooting in a coffee shop you sometimes go to. She can observe within her body signs of the fight or flight response, but from far away, disconnected. Her muscles don't move; she just looks at the painting and thinks about things. Is the painting cursed? Enchanted? Was it powerful enough to do this before its owner committed suicide? Does it affect women more powerfully than men? All the suicide victims were female; maybe the police officers who came to investigate the scene were all male and unaffected. Or maybe it's more powerful at night. Maybe both. Maybe there are female police officers and crime scene investigators having nightmares of the darkness closing in, a sharp darkness that takes delicate bites out of their living flesh, savoring the flavor.
    "Izzador?" comes a mushy, barely-there sound. Clea's surprised to notice it's her own voice, slurring so badly she can't even say four syllables: is that the door?

Scarlet Witch has posed:
    The witch walks lightly over the scattered shoes and the mail set aside, slid off a pile. The police probably went through and left the family to finish the disbursement of the estate. Wreckage of a lifetime, then, spread out in a neat and orderly fashion for the moment only. Wanda's eyes seek the outliers, those things which might speak to distress and a source for the ugly despair hanging over the air. Maybe it would be better to float, disturbing nothing but dust motes on the air stirred up by the air conditioning.
    Until someone speaks, a heady voice freezing her in her tracks. One foot barely comes down, the ball in a faintest kiss with the ground. She might have a chance to catch her breath, but the sound doesn't indicate immediate harm or a trap. Stalking to the dim corridor that connects bedroom to living area, she carefully raises her voice. "Hello?"

Clea Lake (1198) has posed:
    "Not all is silent in the halls of the dead," Clea says, clearly. Or something working Clea's voice. It doesn't feel like her own thought. Nor does, "Not all is still in the tombs of the memory. Sometimes the dust on the great catafalques stirs, sometimes the spiders cease their spinning and climb into the corners as their webs twitch at the groaning from inside the silent stone slabs where the flesh rots but never fades and the hunger does not cease."

Scarlet Witch has posed:
    A woman's voice, but atonal or bright? A sound that churns out draws out the response from the woman in black and crimson. She slowly draws her rings around to align them properly, twisting them at angles until their sharply defined gems align to a sacred pattern when her hands are splayed just so. A protective spell is easy enough to conjure out of near muscle memory. Not the splayed orange mandala wheel of anyone at Kamar-Taj, but this instead originates from the woman who bends to link earth to sky in a holy conduit sanctified by Gaea. It sweeps up around her in an incandescent wave. Trust is always short.
    Great. It's the incarnation of a poetic H.P. Lovecraft at the height of his craft, and the sonnets spun to mad things crawling in the deeping dark, where mournful effigies run waxlike into the crudely shaped abominations imagined by drowned horrors. Her shoulders twitch. The whispered thought to burn the place to the ground is shoved aside, and she edges to the bedroom.

Clea Lake (1198) has posed:
    Magic has never been as popular as science because it is not rational. It transcends the mind; it relies on the strength of the spirit, seperate from yet connected to the physical process of thought; the spirit, a guardian apart from and intextricable from the self it maintains. The painting has a hold of Clea's mind, but her spirit rises up, her spirit protects her, her spirit sets her to chanting: "Once, there was a maiden who learned that the faster she ran, the faster she could run." The words reach across the Astral Plane, connecting with what remains of her will, summoning the power of the Shield of the Seraphim who are masters of realms far beyond the corruption of the physical. Its yellow light spills out of the bedroom door, the spell taking the shape of an immense tablet of energy carved with Enochian language. The holy letters can shadows on the hardwood floor that dance on the ground.
    The painting's hold on Clea's mind is gone. She slumps but catches herself, probably sparing herself a nasty bump on the head against the footboard of the bed behind her. She presses trembling fingers to her temple and takes a deep breath. "Always gotta be your own hero," she mutters.
    Hero? Oh, right.
    "Who's there?" Clea calls sharply, crisply, out into the hallway as she emerges, still protected by seraphic energy. "Know that you come to a friend of the eternal Vishanti. Do we make peace or war?"

Scarlet Witch has posed:
    If the Scarlet Witch had expected a flood of warm, seraphic magic to come whooshing out of the bedroom, the one toward which she'd been cautiously floating whilst encased in her protective spell...the widening of her eyes and the intially startled intake of breath belie her surprise. Made of sterner stuff than most, she presses forward, with more determination than before. She centers herself in the doorway and, with a gesture, the door opens without her touch, revealing the tablet and its Enochian carvings.

    She's in time to see Clea slump to the floor, only managing to catch herself from a nastier spill. "I certainly hope we can make peace, friend of the eternal Vishanti. I am known as the Scarlet Witch," she says in a warm, feminine voice, her bearing regal even as she hovers just above the surface of the floor, in the doorway. "And, I followed the threads of fate to this place, touched by something fell. It is...," trainling off, she cants her head slightly as she takes in the sight of the painting -- which, to her eyes, glowers an angry, throbbing red, like a magical klaxon of warning. She only allows her eyes to register that much before they're back on Clea, and she blinks, resuming her sentence as though she momentarily forgot what she'd been saying, "It is my sacred duty to protect all from such evil. Which is why I hope we can make peace, instead of war. Are we friend or foe?" she smiles lightly, seeking the woman's eyes.

Clea Lake (1198) has posed:
    "Oh hell an actual Avenger," Clea ejaculates in surprise, her speech only barely slow enough from blurring the statement together into one quick word. She forces her eyes to stop widening and drops her spell of protection. "Um. Sorry about that, I know I sounded like a bad cosplayer. Gotta keep up the pageantry in case it's a demon, you know?"
    She's apologizing for doing her job. God. Clea forces herself to stop it. She's a professional, dammit! "I'm Clea. I was a student under the Ancient One before his passing." Is it okay to introduce herself? Yeah, in the middle of a suspicious nexus of dark magic, it's probably best to establish her cred here and now. "I'm an augur and I saw signs leading to this place, so I came to investigate, and I found--that." Her lips curl back in distaste. "It's an eye, I think. An eye full of teeth."
    Clea walks forward, toward the Scarlet Witch, hand extended to shake. It also puts her in range to counterspell any nasty effects that might try to grab a serious contender for Sorcerer Supreme.

Scarlet Witch has posed:
    The Scarlet Witch's smile grows as Clea exclaims her surprise, the protection spell of her own dissolving as Clea's does. She touches down on the floor with a feather-light landing. "No need for apologies, truly. This is something we all do, in our line of work. It's sort of like wearing a cape or wearing mystical artifacts; just business," she smiles kindly. Then, she nods her head companionably as she listens to the young woman introduces herself.

    "Well, Clea, I'm surprised it's taken this long for us to meet, but it is a pleasure, nonetheless," she smiles and accepts the handshake. Her grip is solid, and her hand is temperate, neither warm nor cool, and certainly not clammy. Then, she nods her head in the direction of the painting, "It's pulsing with negative energies, that much is certain. An eye full of teeth." She frowns, her brow creasing.

    Could it be related to that which plagues her on a daily basis? The influence of Chthon? It's chilling, and draws the eye. "What happened? It definitely wants to be looked at, which is why I won't. Did you? Is that why you were...?" she gestures toward the spot where Clea had sunk to the floor.

    

Clea Lake (1198) has posed:
    Clea's own handshake is strong, but more than that it's surprisingly, maybe even shockingly solid: it just weighs way more than it should. No doubt the Scarlet Witch can perceive the Images of Ikonn spell changing Clea's appearance. But either way, Clea is rolling on with the conversation. "I also try to have a life outside of magic," she explains wryly. "I don't know how long I'll be able to juggle that, but it doesn't leave me a lot of time for magical class reunions, you know?" With that barely-joke made, she nods briskly. "I wouldn't look at it if I were you. It's hypnotic. I was looking at it and I could see light coming off it; I could see the images moving even though they weren't. I could still think, but it was like my thoughts didn't matter, like..." She frowns and pauses, wanting to be as close to the truth of the issue as she possibly can. "Like my thoughts were a single voice in a great, pitch black void as big as the space between stars. They didn't go anywhere because the gulf was too great. They died before they got anywhere. I think it's a kind of necromancy."

Scarlet Witch has posed:
    The Scarlet Witch nods her head with a cordial, approachable smile on her face. "I can /completely/ relate to that. If we don't have a life outside of what we do, it can very easily overwhelm us," she says agreeably. "I, myself, try to partake in daily exercise and meditation. It might sound boring or tedious, but it works for me. Gets me out of my head," she smiles.

    "Thank you for warning me. I hadn't planned on it. It rather strongly demands to be looked at, and so I'm getting back at it by denying it my attention," she grins, rather impishly, it must be said. However, as Clea describes what it was like to be under the painting's thrall, her expression darkens, once more.

    "Not good, to say the least. What makes you think it's a kind of necromancy? Aside from the obvious death of its previous owner," she says, looking around the room. "I wonder how she came to own this painting and, if it affected you so strongly upon looking at it, how she survived having it for very long..." she muses. "And, if you'll forgive me for saying so, but... There was a time, there, where you weren't yourself," she says, lifting her brows and looking sideways. "You sounded sort of like the purple prose of H.P. Lovecraft. Do you recall that?" she asks, looking around the room for anything else that might stand out to her extrasensory sensibilities.

Clea Lake (1198) has posed:
    Clea just nods. "I heard what I was saying. It informs my theory. All this talk of the halls of the dead; the symbolism of the soundless, lightless void; the death of the previous owner that's being called a suicide. I would guess the painting probably wasn't this powerful before it took the life of its previous owner. Like a sacrifice. I think there have been twenty women who committed suicide in this town as part of the same design." She regards the painting somberly, grimly, daring it to try something. So far, nothing. "The power and themes of this work suggest some outer god, but that all the victims have been women suggests just a man with some serious problems to work out. Now that you're here, I think one of us should try to destroy the enchantment on this spell while the other keeps guard. Do you want the honors?"

Scarlet Witch has posed:
    Nothing else seeming to jump out at her as a clue of any kind, the witch nods and returns her attention to Clea. "Twenty women is a lot for an eyeball with teeth," she says grimly. "I wonder if the other victims have or had a similar painting or work of art which featured this enchantment," she murmurs in a thoughtful voice. "Have you had a chance to look into any of them, yet?" she presses on, walking up to the wall on which the painting hangs. She presses her cheek to the wall and, using her ability to See Beyond, she looks for a signature to the magical construct. Like a fingerprint.

    When Clea asks her if she'd like the honors, she brings her gaze around to the young woman in the masked form. "You know, I'd like you work, if you don't mind," she says with a smile, putting a hand on her hip, letting the sensation of the throbbing of the magical painting beside her buffet off of her mental wards.

Clea Lake (1198) has posed:
    "Not yet," Clea admits. "This was my first stop. I thought I had an in, and--well, it doesn't matter. Basically the first name I pulled off the list." Jeez, Clea, stop babbling your secrets to the Scarlet Witch!
    Clea takes a moment to center herself. Her hands lift into strange, familiar shapes: the Flames of the Faltine; the magical fire that transcends heat and burns away magic itself, twisting the etheric to ash. It's not a counterspell that messes around, and Clea isn't either, to judge by her firm, measured tone as she chants, "Once, there was a maiden made from iron, shaped by wind, sea, and fire. Fearing how wood might shape her, she ran, and did not look back. One day, she forgot what she ran from..."
    It's definitely a strange mantra, but it's working. The mandala she's building line by line does not crackle with power, it's too steady for that kind of coruscation. It hums instead, pulsing, a deep bass that... yes, it's shaking the windows now. You can tell by the way the city outside is bulging in and out from the distortions in the glass.
    "...So she pulled out her heart to ask it. 'Why don't you look back and see?' it said, so she sighed and threw it away."
    Flames erupt from Clea's eyes, twin pillars of prismatic fire shooting up to the ceiling without burning it, though the bass pounding is such you almost can't hear her finish the incantation: "'I have no use for beginnings,' said she."
    The Faltine are pleased by her petition. The waves of fire that course from her hands hit the painting with the force of a tsunami. Clea's revenge on the painting is absolute, and whatever is caught inside it twists and shrieks like a paper doll thrown into a campfire, burning away until nothing is left but a simple painting that has nothing interesting to say beyond a high schooler's glee at false nihilism. Clea blows on her right hand absently to extinguish the fire and turns back to the Scarlet Witch, not speaking, just looking her intently in the eye for any sign something from the painting found a home in her.

Scarlet Witch has posed:
    "No judgments, here," the Scarlet Witch says. "This happened to be the first thread that stood out to me, and vibrated with the most urgency. Perhaps so that we could meet," she smiles. And, she falls silent as Clea begins centering herself, preparing for what's to come. As the young sorceress begins the familiar hand-formations of the discipline favored by those of Kamar-Taj, the Scarlet Witch smiles and watches with interest. Of course, Clea is really focused and unable to really pay much attention to what, if anything, is playing over the witch's features.

    She opens herself up, out of habit, to be of assistance to Clea in her channeling. As this reality's nexus being, she can dramatically intensify spells by opening the spiritual channel of her being, and vice versa. In this case, though, she is there to assist if Clea wishes to make use of what she offers, or if anything starts to spin out of control, like an unexpected nasty whiplash effect.

    When all is said and done, she meets Clea's intense gaze with one that's much more at ease, though no less prepared for the unexpected. She smiles and nods her head, "Very nice work, Clea. Very nice. Your mantra is quite lovely, if I may say so."

Clea Lake (1198) has posed:
    Clea smiles a little and nods. "Thank you. I think I may have overdone it a little, but... I'm mad at that painting, so." She shrugs, as if to say, 'What else is there for it?' "So here's what I worry about: that there are more of these paintings at each apartment, and that they might have reached out for more victims from the roommates and police officers and people who've been on the scene. It's my hope it only targets lone women at night, just because that's how men with problems choose their victims, but who knows. This could get worse before it gets better." She meets the Scarlet Witch's eyes the entire time, offering no solution to the problem she outlined. She leaves it in the hands of the Avenger.

Scarlet Witch has posed:
    "It deserved no mercy, so considering you didn't harm anything else, you definitely didn't overdo it," the Scarlet Witch smiles, taking a more lingering look at the painting's subject matter, now that it's been rendered mundane. She listens quietly as Clea lays out her concerns regarding the entire situation. When the room falls silent, she lets it linger for a moment before speaking.

    "Don't worry, Clea. Each home will be investigated and each object -- for it may not have been a painting in every case -- will be cleansed. Now that I've gotten a solid lock on the magical signature, I can do more to quickly trace any others that might be floating around, and perhaps learn more about who or what put these nefarious enchanted items out into the world," she says with a calm, even voice. A good portion of her job as the Scarlet Witch is to very plainly not panic when the shit hits the fan, because cooler heads always prevail. "I believe that, if you're so inclined, you would be of great help in this matter. Though, of course, there's no pressure," she says with amusement in her green eyes.

Clea Lake (1198) has posed:
Clea Lake ponders whether she has a father. Given that he was an extradimensional being made of magical energy, it's entirely possible her conception was based on just tricking her mother into thinking the appropriate genetic material had been transmitted.