547/The Ghosts of U-853
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| The Ghosts of U-853 | |
|---|---|
| Date of Scene: | 21 May 2017 |
| Location: | Long Island, New York City |
| Synopsis: | Summary needed |
| Cast of Characters: | Loki, Athenaeum
|
- Loki has posed:
Montauk at the far northeastern tip of Long Island doesn't constitute a happening place in the middle of May. Even at the peak of summer, visitors tend to find a beach before that wild, windswept point with its dunes pointing out to Portugal. The spot offers privacy, at least, and a fancy lighthouse bagged by those strange bunch of people who really like lighthouses. Otherwise it has a small crab restaurant, desolation, and a small village of sleepy definition linked by a state route to the rest of the world. Essentially the perfect place for a problem.
Not far offshore in 1943, a sub flying the flag of Nazi Germany never quite made it to American shores. Lying in over a hundred feet of water, the rusting hull of U-853 is a twisted, grim effigy to the end of the Battle of the Atlantic. A little over seventy years ago -- not quite to the day -- she vanished under the sea. And her ghosts prowl the waves still, desperate men from the twilight of the Third Reich doomed to repeat their incomplete mission again and again.
Never successful. Never at rest. It may be for this reason that a few people sit on a boat offshore, and another few perform their dour magic to capture those haunting souls and direct them to a fell purpose, hissing in glottal German and Tibetan, their ritual well underway. That they do this in a cute resort room is even more ironic. Here is the American capitalism warned against. The day is grey and breezy, the weather warm, rather like that long ago day when the sub became a war grave. Traffic is next to null.
Loki Odinson sits upon the metal railing of the Montauk Lighthouse, watching. A sneer curls his lips as he tastes the magic in the air. Humans can be stupid, but this takes the cake.
- Athenaeum has posed:
Magic is indeed a many edged tool. Not just double, the eddies of power can cut in a hundred different ways for the unwary. Which is why the currents of power emanating from the cult's work had piqued an old magician's interest as well. Unsure as to what it might be from her current distance, a few words in a lanaguage no one has any right to speak any longer, followed by a soft sucking sound and a pop and...
A woman steps out onto the lighthouse barely six feet away from the mischeivous God. Wearing a long, deep burgandy dress of heavy velvet that covers from throat to ankle, there's no hiding the way she got here at this distance. A deep hood covers her features in shade, only her lips and chin easily visible unless she chooses to look up at the sky. Which presently, she isn't. "Oh my..." A paper white hand presses lightly to her chest, a sign of surprise. "I do appologise, I wasn't aware someone else might be int-" Which is when the bitter tang of dark magics reach her senses and her gaze turns that way. "What /are/ they up to..." Her voice is soft, cultured with an accent that can only be described as 'Western European'.
- Loki has posed:
For a man who speaks all languages, right down to the improbable accents that may contort his vocal chords into, the finer dimensions of medieval German or Merovingian French -- late reign, not early -- are unfairly impressed upon his speech without trying. It's not even a conscious effort on his part. What does strike a balance is that sudden spatial warp, an impression of atoms shunted aside that draws his arcane infused gaze over. Not an iota of motion otherwise implies he's about to abandon his post, but neither is he making way short of resisting someone stepping on him. Even if it happens to be with a perfectly nice slipper or the like.
Loki's dark hair barely moves in the persistent breeze, and he hardly looks out of place here. Dark pants and a zipped up coat afford the epitome of modern hipster about town. Nothing else to imply his arcane prowess, either, his aura practically scraped clean of any proofs of his nature. Such is how it goes. "Pardon me," he replies, a touch of a smirk impressed on thin lips. Or a smile. He has the kind of mouth that makes either possible, mischief and amusement at war with one another. "I hadn't realised the lighthouse hosted an exhibition of some kind. Tell me, is it another marriage and you've come to complain my feet are in the shot?"
Offshore, the fishing boat bobs on the steely waves. No one stands on the shore. It's a bit rough for that, though surfers might hope for even stronger winds. A few bubbles of air teem to the surface in piles, forming pockmarked circles on the waves that are natural, even if no giant clam or natural wave action has anything to do with them. The magic itself is purely terrestrial, seething, churning on the air in a complex pattern of ribbons and angles and circles, if one can even taste the sulfuric effervescence. Necromancy leaves a stain, among the etheric and entropy residues of the making.
"I do note, if you've come late, you'll be disappointed," he adds, off-handed, to the woman. "They started about an hour ago. Unless you're the witness or the sacrifice."
- Athenaeum has posed:
"I've not been to a wedding in quite some time." With his knowledge of ancient languages, he might notice the soft lilt of Ancient Grecian in there somewhere, but it's been buried and re-buried with accents over the years. Either way, the oddly dressed woman returns her gaze to the rather strangely clean aura of the man next to her. If his face means something, then the female magician doesn't show it, at least not with the parts of her face on display.
"I'm neither, but I felt it. And the fact you're watching them, and talking about sacrifice, suggests the same of you." Her smile slips just a little, and then fades completely as she turns back to the people on the boat, bobbing like so much flotsam on the waves.
Fingers the colour of new cream curl around the top rung of the ballustrade. "But then that beggers the question, if you've felt it, and been watching for an hour. Why haven't you attempted to stop them from such a blunder?"
- Loki has posed:
Shade and anonymity can be bewitching, and they certainly don't warrant harbouring a curious look now and then. Not that Loki makes a show of it, instead trained on the increasing foam defying the natural seafloor and the tangled strands of power in the air calling, snaring, and shaping the unshapeable. His tongue presses to the hard palate, teeth set together, and he steps into space with a careless eloquence. By all rights, he should drop the dozens of feet down the shaft of the lighthouse, and end up a splat on the great stones at its base. Rather that tall, lithe body of his hangs suspended on the unimpressive leap of faith.
So much for making Odin choke on his mead.
His hands pressed into his pockets distort the neat, crisp shape of his clothing, but otherwise hint to the physique beneath. And any weapon or object he might carry has to be thin; otherwise, unarmed. "What I am has yet to be seen. Quite the day for a joyride or a dive." No striped red and white flag indicates such is in process, though the scattered objects on the deck of the boat could be seen with a hawk's clear vision: a few rebreathers, bottles, and the odd beer can or three. Definitely not safe sailing or diving by anyone's standards, including the men who went to their grisly deaths in the muck one hundred feet below.
Thin and thick weavings populate the shoreline and span out, dragging up the first of the ghosts through the water. Nothing to see to mundane eyes, though the glamoured might catch the uniform, collar open, the long stride of a man. And another. Give them another quarter of an hour, it'll be close to ten of them ranging along the shore with a decidedly thin purpose.
"Indeed, what //have// I been doing. Question of the moment, isn't it? Though it might be more pertinent or important to inquire //why// they are, first."
- Athenaeum has posed:
"The why is only important if they succeed." Ysabelle's gaze is now only for those lines of power. The warp and the weave of the spell as it lays itself upon the shore, the water, the air. Each strand is carefully followed back, tracing the etchings of power back to their source. "It seems the gentleman with the swastika on his forehead is the one in charge... So all it's going to take is a little disruption in his rythmn and..." She follows the lines again, frowns, follows them again. "Does he even know what he's doing? Every lost soul in several leagues are going to know what he's up to... And those not caught... By Artemis, he's going to be ripped to shreds..." If she could pale, her voice states quite clearly that she would be.
It only takes a few moments for her to bring herself under control however, during which time the wind whips up, pulling her skirts out in swirling, flapping movement, a burgandy flag that now reveals the outlines of her legs.
"Are there more underneath?" Her eyes turn back again, flicking down to take note of the weightlessness of the God. She dismisses the move though, a slight downturn of the lips showing disaproval. "Still at the point of revelling in your powers I see..." It's a neutral comment, neither approving, or judgemental. For her, it is simply a statement of the observed fact.