Myles figures that a spell that ostensibly renders booze unspeakably nefarious couldn't make it all that bad to drink, right? He locks eyes with the bottle in the man's hand and concentrates, wishing to bring about magic!
However, nothing seems to happen for some reason. Myles wonders if magic's supposed to feel like that, or if something might have gone wrong. Fortunately, this puzzlement lasts only a moment, as the man is kind enough to immediately confirm that the latter scenario has definitely come to pass, examining his bottle for a moment before looking around, his dull, watery, pale red eyes settling on Myles.
"Trying to magic up my drink, aren't you?" he unexpectedly asks, and half-stands, half-floats to his feet, pointing the bottle at Myles.
"I was just looking for one of you types, actually! C'mere," he says, approaching Myles in a mildly ominous fashion.
"I want to tell you something."* * * * *
Outside the church,
Halesey and
Larry are having one of their regular afternoon conversations.
"Larry, we should get back to the church and vortex it to oblivion before any of her friends show up. They are going to be pissed if they find out what we did to her. But it was the right thing to do, right. She could have kneecapped us too, the little fecker. I think the last few people... things we've met have shown us the reality of this new world. It's brutal, like tigers and antelopes. We need to stick together, and when we do anything, we have to do it really fecking hard, no questions. Unless that question be, dude, should we vortex the shit out of this eejit, and the answer to yon question be, shit yes dude, let's vortex hard," Halesey posits.
"Damn skippy. Let's vortex this bitch," Larry agrees, and the two move on to the obligatory second stage of all their afternoon conversations.
[Halesey's affinity roll: 5]
[Larry's affinity roll: 6-->1+1]
Practically synchronously there appear two vortexes, one of unhallowed potato borne, the other of champignons most damp and foul! The latter grows more quickly than the other, and its pull proves a little difficult for the two summoners to resist!
[Larry's body roll: 5-1]
[Halesey's body roll: 4]
Fortunately, with their levels of vortex mastery, none of their creations pose any threat to the two dudes! So they continue their summoning unabated!
[Larry's affinity roll: 2+1]
[Halesey's affinity roll: 6-->1]
Larry begins summoning another champignon-filled wound in spacetime, but does not get very far before he notices the tubery fire in Halesey's eyes! The thought of stepping away a bit occurs to him, but it comes far too late and without the requisite rodent instinct to facilitate rapid relocation! And so he can only watch as another vortex appears inside the one already there, and for a moment, space goes incredibly wonky in the area, twisting this way and that, before the two vortexes fuse into a single, massive, sucking maw about the size of a house, covering the entirety of the front of the building!
[Larry's body roll: 1-->5-1]
[Halesey's body roll: 3]
Both the summoners instantly find themselves in what people better-versed in science fiction would term a 'gravity well', and within seconds Larry is practically within spitting distance of the thing, his legs far too weak from the hundred-meter jog of mi to save him from the treacherous vortexward acceleration! Halesey does a little better, though he is also dangerously close to losing his footing!
* * * * *
After looking at the hole in the upscale apartment building he just made and deeming it all right and proper,
Dave quickly puts on his new C-string, finding it oddly evocative of a single maple leaf in many ways, and finally decides to light another green light and look within.
[Dave's mind roll: 5+2]
This time, he winds up in the very same room, except there's no desk. Instead, he spies a banana hanging from the elevated ceiling on a piece of string, and also a single heavy crate in the corner. Looks like a puzzle, Dave thinks, and the solution is plainly obvious, so he ambles over to the crate and opens, finding to his satisfaction that there seems to be a lifetime supply of shurikens within. Grabbing a handful, he begins throwing them at the piece of string - fortunately, it does not require too much skill, as the string is fairly long and thin, and merely lobbing a shuriken at it seems to remove the banana from the ceiling's grasp, at which point it impacts the floor loudly, cracking the marble tiling a little. Seeing no other logical path of action, Dave walks over to the banana, picks it up and peels it, only to find that there is no sweet fulfillment within, only arcane secrets that waft into his brain, filling it with disturbing information!
1. Inspire Booze
2. Inconceivable Hogweed Bolt
3. Become Musical Cookies
4. Call Upon Prophetic Vinegar
Well done! In record time, no less! Who's a good boy? You are! You are! Now, as a reward, you can have any of these spells that you like!
* * * * *
John is displeased by the way the battle seems to be going.
"Shit, Luz! Trey, focus on gettin that thing off. I'll be there in a second!" John says before turning back to the watchman.
"Working on it!" Trey shouts back.
[John's affinity roll: 2]
John, however, can't seem to get the methheads around the watchman explode in all this excitement and anxiety, so he guesses he'll just go help Trey.
[Trey's body roll: 4-1]
[John's body roll: 6-->1]
Miscalculating the necessary distance, John straight-up rams into the washing machine as Trey feebly tries to push it off his girlfriend, upending it and successfully removing it from atop Luz, at which point the girl breathes in with blissful relief. John, meanwhile, gets the feeling that this maneuver he just did will hurt quite a bit more in the morning than it does now, and he can't say it feels awfully pleasant right now, either! If John had to venture a guess, he would say that he's probably fractured his arm in at least one place with the charge.
What's more, despite the washing machine having been taken off her, Luz still looks to be in a considerable amount of pain.
"Oh god, I think my ribs might be broken," she mutters to herself.
[Night Watchman's affinity roll: 3+1]
And things are then, in a shocking twist, made significantly worse when a vortex made of clacking, meaty-looking dentures suddenly appears right next to them, exerting more than a slightly uncomfortable pull on them all!
[John's body roll: 1-->3]
[Trey's body roll: 6-->4-1]
[Luz's body roll: 6-->4-
1+1]
John is rather blindsided by the sudden appearance of the vortex, and would have been sucked in within seconds were it not for his two teenaged friends, with Luz grabbing on to his leg while Trey pulls him away by the arm, dragging him to a safer distance. John is rather glad, because he did
not want to find out what unholy dimension of salty dentures that might have led to.
"How'd you like that, assholes? Want some more?" the night watchman sneers at them from his high perch.
* * * * *
After spending a moment cleverly rationalizing about why exactly she's going to go outside and have a looksie at what's going on,
Eta quickly gets her coat and sturdiest umbrella before descending down the steps of her building and getting out into the street - it takes her no more than a minute to rush over to the alley. Aside from the rather noticeable panic inside her building, the area seems perfectly calm and normal up until the point she rushes into the alley, where she does indeed confirm the presence of two men - one wearing a suit and looking quite smug, while the other seems to be wearing nothing but a very damaged shirt and some sort of strapless thong. The latter individual currently appears to be staring at a lit match with glassy eyes, no less.
One thing is clear - whatever happened a few moments ago, these people look weird enough to be complicit in it somehow. And as Eta considers what her game plan here might be, taking into account all the present information, the suited man turns to face her, his eyes gleaming with a mildly creepy sort of interest as they take in her arriving shape.
"Why, hello there!" he says in a subdued voice.
"Looking for something, miss?"
Author
Topic: The Forgotten Art: Approaching the Nexus (Read 272549 times)