I Armed Myself Against Justice [Carina] [Memory] [Pt 1]

[Imogen]

Glade 55th, 121

The height of noon is a curious time for skullduggery, but a perfectly reasonable choice for an adventure in the woods. This endeavor felt a bit like both; so, the Sunsinger reasoned, it was at least halfway appropriate.

Every good adventure in the woods begins with a landmark, and this one had it- a hill set into the woodlands two and a half miles past the borders of the Wildking's Forge. The hill was (unofficially, but predominantly) called Kingsnob Hill, so named for the unfortunate outcropping of rock near the apex which cut a somewhat phallic shape against the sky. Imogen Ward and her charge waited patiently at the base of the hill, where some long-ago landslide had washed a great divot out of the side and exposed the rock within.

That divot, which the Kindred had relentlessly referred to as the "knob's hole," hid one of the easiest descents to the depths of the world, located (created?) by the Kindred just before Ailos fell and kept hidden from the city's official cartographers through coordinated sabotage and a simple illusion, maintained by some coven or other from time to time. The value of such a portal could hardly be mistaken; though the Railrunners could not create their transit portals into the Warrens, Kingsnob was well within the range of Zaichaer, and was far enough off the main road that one could expect enough privacy to work.

Speaking of the Railrunners...

"Your friend is late." The woman sitting nearby observed.

“I doubt it." Imogen replied, unperturbed. “Your watch is probably set wrong."

"Mmm." Responded the other witch, plainly unconvinced, "As you like. We should not wait long, Sunsinger. The safety promised by the spirits begins with the sun's zenith."

“Yeah? And when does it end?"

The Kindred woman did not respond, and the Sunsinger didn't need her to. The spirits which were sovereign in the fields and forests of Karnor had secret knowledge of the Warrens, but no dominion. They could make no certain promises about safety. That's what Imogen was for.

“Well, I'll get the door open."

The illusion covering the... knob's hole... was easy to bypass, if you knew what you were looking for. The rock seemed solid to a glancing touch, but by closing her eyes and feeling the surface, Imogen quickly caught the hidden seam. She followed it with the tips of her fingers, outlining the doorway, until she located the invisible depression and slid her hand in. With a quick twist, she disengaged the mechanism, and the door- well, more of a hatch, she was going to have to stoop a bit to fit- swung slowly open. It took a bit of pulling; evidently, hinges rust when left in a hillside for decades, exposed to the elements, even with irregular use.

Within a minute, the Sunsinger had the door open, a dark square in the hillside which opened up into a larger cavern, just within reach of the sun's rays.

[Carina]

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Carina hated being late, and she wasn't necessarily late late. But her muscles were more used to dance than a hike in the woods, and while she possessed necessary skill in the way of directions and following maps and instructions, she was used to doing that in the realm of a city and not a few miles out into the wilderness. She'd never been to the knob's hole, nor had she ever been to the hole cut in the Knob that of Zaichaer that also led into the Warrens. But a hike was a more apt place for her to be spotted, even if she traveled to the Knob and everywhere else in Zaichaer for her more unsavory proclivities.

More unsavory than magic, at least, which was her job. Though she would be hard pressed to find someone who thought drugs were were worse than magic.

In any case, Carina was drug-free this morning, though she did not skip her morning cigarette, she also ate a real breakfast. The stakes were higher in the Warrens than in rehearsal, she knew that much, and she didn't want to get injured because she skipped a serving of eggs and toast. Imogen had wanted to bring her with for some reason, though it was most likely because of her usefulness as a Traversion mage and Railrunner, even if she were not so advanced as to be able to teleport all of them at once. Truth be told, if she had ever been to this spot before she would have simply vaulted herself through slipspace to arrive much earlier than she had ended up arriving.

But she only ended up being 15 minutes late, anyway. Once she spotted Kingsnob Hill through the trees, it was not difficult to find the base of it. There was the issue of a flooded creek, bursting at the edges with run-off from a recent rain, but she was able to blink across without losing herself through space or time. She was lucky she was already physically fit; the hike did little to tire her out, even if it stretched her muscles in different ways than dancing. A bag was slung across her shoulders, not filled to the brim but helpfully containing trail mix and jerky and a couple waterskins, one of which she was drinking from when she had arrived, the water dripping from her chin.

Carina put the waterskin away. "Sorry I'm late. I brought snacks. In case we get peckish. I heard time feels different down there." She walked next to Imogen and peered into the dark, and then very carefully marked where she was standing on a sort of mental map she liked to form wherever she went. She'd do the same when they were inside, but she wanted to be able to come back here if she needed to, even if her preferred perches were high above the ground and not deep below it. She closed her eyes and inhaled the scent of trees and grass, largely saved from the smoke and grime of Zaichaer. She opened them with a bounce.

"Alright, I'm ready to go."

The Kindred woman — whom Carina had barely paid attention to by this point, despite her being the reason they were there — came to the front. "I'm Angela," She stated, "And you must be Carina." Without looking for a response, she started into the darkness.

Light filtered in, and glowing lichens and mosses provided enough light once the sun disappeared that lanterns seemed like they would get in the way. It was a long, windy sort of tunnel into the Warrens, with the occasional rat scurrying underfoot, but they came to a wider spot, and Carina once again started memorizing it and the way they had come. The more landmarks she could create in her mind, the easier it would be to leave again.

The Kindred woman had already started harvesting softly glowing mushrooms from the cavern walls, though judging by the size of backpack she wore filled with varying sizes of woven baskets, she had much more to gather this trip. Carina had no idea what the mushrooms did and she didn't ask; instead, she kept her attention on where they were going, what they were heading to. Shadows moved and churned even in the tunnel, and while she didn't jump at every shadow, they were all noted.

It was very suddenly that the tunnel opened into the cavern. Glowing moss and streams of light from the unknown lit a large cavern, and the wall they had walked near turned to smooth brick. Ruins of a lost time and place were scattered in the cavern, and plants jut through the cavern floors and walls in spots of light and dark alike. There was soft shuffling in the dark, the sounds of corrupted animals and other creatures echoing in the dark. But it felt still, too, and the dimly lit cavern could have almost been comfortable if it weren't so creepy.

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[Imogen]

The cool rock walls of the cave grew more verdant as the witches descended, sporting weird mosses, lichens and fungi. They weren't even in the Warrens proper yet, so there was no question that the growths Angela kept stopping to scrape off the walls were relatively mundane, but Imogen couldn't help but feel a bit jumpy about it. They'd all heard the tales of people who wandered down the wrong path, got separated from their friends by some monster and found themselves trapped in the Second Deep, the certainty of their deaths announced by rainbow flora and the calling of impossible birds.

That was one of the reasons she'd asked Carina along. Although she hadn't pried much in the way of knowledge from the Railrunners since her initiation, she did know that they never got lost. Some sort of map inside their heads. She didn't really understand how a Rune was supposed to do something like that, but she knew from experience that Carina was never lost. And if that magic worked in the fucked-up maze of disconnected, lightless corridors and storage rooms beneath the Pfenning, Imogen didn't see why it wouldn't work in the fucked-up maze further down.

Imogen Ward had never been afraid of monsters; the worst they could do was kill you. Probably.

"There it is." said Angela suddenly, as natural stone changed to ruined construction in the span of an instant, jolting Imogen to readiness. The natural caverns above were relatively safe, but one had to be on their guard around... whatever the buildings were. Sadly, it was only amidst the vast expanses of ruined architecture that the party's real goal was to be found.

"The First Deep." Imogen said, flatly, "Seen it before."

That wasn't wrong, but it glanced over the fact that Imogen's last trip down had been in the company of four veteran Sunsingers, a comforting nimbus of light and steel which had kept her effectively insulated from the monsters. This was absolutely the first time anyone was relying on her to kill the monsters before they were killed in turn, but she did her best to silence her apprehension and nerves. Worrying Carina and Angela was certainly not going to help anything.

"Mmm." Responded the Kindred, pensively. "We are going off the usual path, but only a little. It has been a li-hit!" The woman trilled, an involuntary noise which interrupted her speech, "-ttle longer since the last gathering than we would like, so new things will have moved in."

"Should I..."

"Not yet." Angela cut Imogen off, knowing what her instinct would be. "A light like that could draw them, here in the open caverns."

Imogen nodded, all cool-like, like that was her thinking too, and she begins down the rough path indicated by the Kindred witch. It wasn't too dark in the big cavern, at any rate. That was something.

[Carina]

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The unconventional safety of the Warrens was one place that Carina felt comfortable enough to use her magic, to stretch those runic muscles of hers, and it was not an opportunity she would waste. As Railrunner and as dancer mostly untrained in combat, it was not a safe place for her to be. But she was in the safe hands of Imogen, only shallowly travelling into the depths of the first deep, and she was only somewhat concerned with their safety.

They walked forward into the foreboding dark and crested upon a cliff that overlooked a great deal of dark expanse. The cavern that was opened before them was crowded with crumbled ruins and glowing lichens still. Few pale beams of light poured from somewhere, distant enough that they dissipated before hitting the ground. The ambient illumination from the lichens and the lights allowed little detail to be seen of the ruins themselves, only silhouettes.

Caverns echoed, and even at a usual volume, words seemed to careen around the edges. Carina followed close behind as the path they took from the smaller caverns wove down some mix of crumbling stairsteps and inclined dirt path. It seemed they were not avoiding the ruins at all; instead, what the Kindred was searching for was hidden in nooks and crannies of the walls and rooms who had long since stopped serving their purpose. If there was ever any clue to what this specific building had been used for, it had long since rotted away. Moist earth and hard stone were all that one could feel beneath their feet, and any detail besides the luminescent plants and fungi was impossible to see once the walls came up around them.

The more important sense than sight, here, was sound. If it was dark, and you did not want something to find you, you had to listen for it. The shuffling of some slow beast or creature could be heard on the opposite side of a far wall. Carina trailed around, mostly keeping near the Kindred and Imogen, but her hands trailed the stone and, if one looked close enough, they could see her left eye illuminated within itself, though emanating no light of its own. With the rune of Semblance, she watched the aura of the structure glow, and then, with some effort, sought out the auras of creatures hiding around the corners. She was not yet able to see through stone. Not without a great deal of aether and time spent, at least, but she could tell that for now, only mutated rats scurried underfoot.

Rats, and... something else licked at the edges, but when she tried to look, there was nothing to find. Her skin itched, and she wasn't sure if it was from the something else or her need for a cigarette. At least her Sunsinger friend could provide the fire. Carina rubbed her arms and looked up at Imogen— just for a second, before she decided that she didn't want to worry her for something that was based on paranoia alone. She stepped past Imogen and addressed the Kindred woman directly and quietly. "If you see what you need out of reach, let me know. I can try and grab it for you."

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[Imogen]

If it weren't for the nerve-wracking nature of the situation, Imogen might be inclined to explore the acoustics of the Warrens more completely. She wasn't a professional musician by any stretch of the imagination, but the Orkhan janitor was known to hum a few bars while polishing the bannisters or whiling away a night on guard duty. Alas, she wasn't quite ready to start whistling with the potential threat of eldritch monstrosity behind every corner.

(Also, on a practical level, whistling with tusks is not exactly an easy task.)

"Thank you, Carina." Angela replied, pursing her lips, "but I'm not seeing much of anything. If I h-AAA" the Kindred woman involuntarily chirped again, "A-d to guess, I would say that it's been too soon since the plants here were harvested. Strange. The Kindred haven't sent anyone down here for months. One of the smaller covens, maybe?"

"Without asking for a Sunsinger guard?" Imogen sounded skeptical. Most of the lesser covens or individual practitioners of Zaichaer focused on magic which sustained or created, not war magic; as such, few of them would be so bold as to delve into the Warrens by themselves. Still, it could have been the Myrshalai or Grimalkin, neither of whom were in the habit of sharing very freely with their sister witches.

"Well, no matter. It is fine." Angela sounded a little worried, but she put a brave face on it. "We'll find more growth a little deeper."

The Kindred glanced at the Railrunner and Sunsinger, then nodded firmly. "From here we need to find a particular corridor, which leads through a larger cavern. There will be flora and shards in abundance on the outskirts, and we'll still be well above the Second Deep. The spirits say that there should be fewer of the beasts and shamblers around right now, but stay on guard. Carina, the corridor should be easily spotted for the amethyst veins which run through it and the surrounding wall, but I'm not sure which direction it is. Perhaps you could spot it from the rooftops?'"

[Carina]

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Carina took a step forward past the other two witches, and stared straight up. Most of the ceilings of the ruins had collapsed, but they were in a room that stood mostly intact. She nodded at Angela. "I'll take a look." She focused on the pathway just above them. It was near-instant to find, for how short of a jump it was, and then with wink she was gone, replaced by a fragmented portal that closed up in the same second she had left.

Carina found herself in the second story of the ruins, somehow still intact, and the quiet dark encroached upon her. She crept through towards the only source of light through a dim, empty doorway. Two crumbling steps led to a strip of wall that once held a roof, now caved in, and Carina followed it, each step measured by the structure's aura. If it would turn to dust beneath her feet. She was not skilled in stealth, but she could step lightly, and quiet as a mouse she walked along that stone wall.

Out here there was more light, but she was facing away from the wall that would hold a cavern entrance. No amethysts gleamed in the dim. She hopped across a small gap and began to trail along the other side, and then crouched low when she heard the shifting again. Shamblers were just below, and she was just out of reach, but she kept along the wall. Part of a roof was here, at a low incline and damaged enough for hand and footholds. She was no climber, but she made it up with pure insistence, dexterity, and strength, one hand and one foot after the other. At the top she stretched out and surveyed the land before her.

The roof was barely holding her, however, and with that glimmering eye she could sense that it would not hold her long. But she had yet to find her quarry. A shifting noise came, and out of the corner of her eye, she spotted the hint of amethyst veins, and an abundance of glowing moss. The stone beneath her footing began to crumble, and Carina took one step off the edge.

The Slipspace inside the Warrens was not the same Slipspace that existed outside of it, and the instant flashes she was granted during her portaling were enough to tell that it was wrong. She arrived and fell foward into Imogen, but the Orkhan woman was far and away tall enough to take her small frame with hardly an inconvenience. She straightened herself up, and then started walking through the ruined building.

"It's just east. I'll show you."

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[Imogen]

The two witches trailed behind Carina, Imogen staying to the middle so that she could quickly intercept any sudden ambushes by shamblers or other such commonplace threats. This close to the surface, nothing ought to stand up to her flaming sword for long, but if they got backed into a corner, it wouldn't take more than a few of the ugly creatures to overwhelm them.

Thankfully, the Railrunner was quite good at this; it was, after all, her job to lead people through dangerous places. The trio of witches moved silently through the rooms of the ruined building, pausing before crossing out into a street to allow Carina to track the progress of a herd of shamblers. Did they come in herds? Imogen's instinct said 'no', but no better word presented itself. Frustrating.

A few more minutes of picking quietly across the streets led the witches to the amethyst wall, and they filed into the tunnel with all due haste. There were no shamblers inside, and the long, clear tunnel also meant that there wouldn't be any of the nasty ones, the ambush predators Gerhard had spoken of and which Imogen couldn't quite remember.

"Let's take a quick break here." Angela importuned, "I'm not used to all this fast movement. Ten minutes, that's it."

Imogen didn't really like the tunnel--sure, you could see anything coming at you, but it could also see you--but the Kindred was technically the client in this situation, and it wasn't so dangerous here that Imogen felt like she could overrule her.

As they waited, Imogen's eyes wandered over the walls. This tunnel was smooth, perfectly rectangular, as though it had been blasted cleanly away by a single beam of incredible force. The walls were ordinary stone, shot through with purple crystal. Imogen idly traced a finger along one of the veins, feeling the cold condensation and soot upon- soot?

The Orkhan Sunsinger blinked. Imogen walked slowly backwards, tracing her finger around and watching the accumulation of dust turn to thin ash. She licked the finger clean, then proceeded, suddenly moving to a section of stone wall with no dirt accumulation upon it at all. She pressed a finger against it and her finger stopped, but the sensation seemed subtly wrong.

"Hey, uh, Carina? Angela?" Imogen called to the other two witches, frowning.

Curious now, Imogen opened her right hand, allowing her aether to bubble up through her arm and coalesce into sword-shape in her palm. The heavy greatsword dropped into her hand and she brought the tip up to touch the wall as it burst into the signature silver-white fire of her order. As she pressed the blade against the wall, the licking flames seemed to send ripples through the stone- but to her disappointment, it did not cut through the enchantment. Evidentially this illusion was much stronger than the one guarding the entryway.

"There's some kind of... hidden passage here?"

[Carina]

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Carina was leaning against the stone cave wall, idly watching between Imogen and Angela. As Imogen called her name, she pushed herself up. With the familiar motion of a conjured sword, she reached behind herself and pulled out a case of cigarettes from a close pocket and sidled up to her friend. She held the cigarette to the signature Sunsinger flames and then put it to her mouth. It was certainly an illusion, and one made to be solid as real stone. She studied the aura as she smoked.

The structure of the illusion was not particularly thick, but if they intended to block off the passageway permanently, they would have to return with something far more solid, far more intentional. An illusion could only last so long. Carina knelt down and knocked against it, her ear pressed against the hidden illusory wall. It was not solid — really, it seemed to be only a matter of inches thick. Past it was more difficult to tell, but it was not real stone, and there seemed to be a room inside.

Carina sat back and sat in the dirt, propped against her hands. "I'm going to check what's inside." She did as any Railrunner would do to squeeze past a barrier into the unknown — she closed her eyes and aligned the portal within herself. It was a much different visual effect than when she had simply created a portal around herself. Now the glimpse of slipspace seemed to form upon her skin as she focused on the pathways between, and then she was gone.

The next thing anyone would hear was Carina as she knocked against the inside of the illusion. "Can you hear me Imogen?" came next, and muffled. "I can see there's a whole room in here. It's dark as fuck—" There was a slight muffled sound, a distant grunt of effort, as she picked up her cigarette off the ground. "Do you think you'll be able to get in? I'm gonna look around."

And then her steps grew far, far away as she began to explore. It really was pitch dark, but with her rune of semblance at least the auras were visible enough that she was not going to immediately run into anything. There was some sort of thing sitting in the very center of the floor, and Carina focused her attention on it. It had the taste of Grymalka, which meant necromancy. A little glowing ball of aura, shifting in grey and green, pulsed in the center of the Grymalka-made object. She tasted soot and ash in the air now, the same taste as when Imogen used her flame. But it was older, stale. Sunsingers had been here, too.

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[Imogen]

Imogen watched, fascinated, as the portal to slipspace seemed to spread through her Railrunner friend, momentarily revealing the... well, she'd been through Slipspace in the company of other witches often enough to be used to the strange vista beyond, but the flash of it here was unusually disturbing. For a moment, through Carina's skin, it seemed like she could see something indescribable looking back through the momentary gap betwixt. But before she could even blink, it was gone.

A moment later, there was a muffled knock on the other side of the not-wall. Distantly, it seemed like Imogen could hear someone shouting "Cag coo clear me, emotion!"

"She's in trouble!" Imogen assumed without evidence, "I'm breaking in."

"W-w-a-AAAAI-"

The Sunsinger ignored Angela's nervous lilting and turned her attention to the illusory wall. She wasn't nearly powerful enough, in magic or muscle, to cut through a solid stone wall; she could hardly fathom just how much aether such magic would require. But no matter how well-built this illusion was, it wasn't really solid, and the Nova fire combined with her will to reach her friend would surely prevail.

Imogen turned her blade, holding it to her side by hilt and crossguard for extra leverage, then drove it point-first into the illusory space. It stopped, as she expected, but she knew now that it was simply stopping her, not her sword. She focused her will, imagining the Nova gathering to a single point and burning through the web of aether in front of her. Slowly, the light dimmed across the blade, growing brighter and brighter at the very tip, as more ripples showed throughout the wall.

The Orkhan girl grunted, closing her eyes to try to help weaken the illusion's hold over her. She had practiced breaking through illusion before, but this one was clearly the work of an expert practitioner. It must have weakened with time, but it showed no signs of-

Without fanfare, the illusion gave way, blinking into nothingness like the surface of a bubble popped by a needle. With the repressive enchantment gone, Imogen's muscles suddenly sprang into action, as though she had been straining against a rope which was suddenly released, and she stumbled into the room, turning quickly to avoid accidentally bowling over Carina. She did not drop her sword (probably the most basic instinct of any student of Reaving) but could not stop her inertia from transforming into an impromptu thrust.

The greatsword, trailing argent Nova-fire from its tip, brushed past Carina and sailed majestically into the weird fetish of bones and feathers and silvered glass lying on the floor, breaking a hole straight through the calcified totem and lighting it straightaway on fire.

"Imogen!" Angel shouted, "Carina, are you-" Her question died in her throat as the Grymalkin totem caught fire, illuminating two other skeletons lying against the walls of the room, their arms broken off and scattered.

[Carina]

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Carina did not hear Imogen’s assertion, nor did she hear the woman’s efforts to break down the illusion. She did not see any ripples — it was too dark — and she was woefully unaware of Imogen’s attempt to “rescue” her until, all at once, the very thing she had been inspecting was alight.

”Imogen!” She yelled, ”Are you alright? What on Ransera happened?” Carina turned her Semblance — and her real vision — to the totem which now seemed brimming with more energy than just the fire that now engulfed it. Whatever it had been holding would not be held for long.

With the new lights in the room, she was able to get a better look. It was a bare hollow, with their footprints marked in dust, and the two skeletons missing arms. Carina looked out through the hall where Angela waited, clearly in distress, no Semblance necessary to discover that feeling.

Nothing seemed to be amiss outside of the room. ”Immy? I told you I was going to take a look around…” She looked down at the flaming totem of clearly Grymalkan make, and took another drag from her cigarette. ”I don’t think it’s supposed to do that.”

The aura of whatever was inside the totem expanded and grew, until Carina realized she was not only looking at the aura anymore, but of a phantasm in visual space. Carina was not well versed in Grymalka methods, or in ghosts in general, but it felt like a resoundingly bad thing to set one of their creations on fire, and whatever was trapped was now intent on escaping. It was also remarkably bad on their resume if Imogen intended to protect more people from Warrens beasties. Or remarkably good if she didn’t. Not that Carina had ever intentionally done something badly to avoid responsibility.

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