What they found there Date: September 18, 2015 Time: 12:00pm Location: Shadow Realm Characters: Cole Gray, Felix Cain, Alicia Saunders, Kieran Lark, Desidero Vargas Description: If you go down to the Shadow Realm today... Status/Rating: Private, in progress, NC-17
OOC/MOD NOTE: I realise that this is long overdue, however we had to wait for the results of the Conclave to come out beforehand. They'll be posted in another thread.
However I'd like to get this going at a good clip, given the delay and the fact that October sign-ups are coming up. Thanks for your patience!
Conclave had ended with not a small amount of disunity and argument over who would lead this trip. Some said that Cole shouldn't do it, given his new position within Arcanist society. Others wanted to do it for their own reasons - the vast majority, in fact, who were tired of sitting on their hands and waiting for answers about what had happened to their parents.
Cole realised that they should have done this sooner, but in his view, there was nobody else who could lead the expedition but him. He was Magistratus, now, for better or worse,and he had to lead by example. Vargas had insisted on coming, of course, and his camp that had nearly clinched the seat for the man pushed it until he had no choice but to accept. Cole only insisted on Al, the Protector that he'd met on the first day, so as to block Carter or Alastair from coming. The others had all been volunteers - another Cain boy, and Kieran Lark, in place of Cassidy. Cole wanted to limit the amount of heads present if possible - after all, there was no guarantee that they would be coming back.
They'd said their good byes already, all that remained was for Cole to deliver, and actually get there. Travelling between the planes had long been a preserve of Conjuration's magic, but Cole had never attempted anything like this before.
He exhaled, and steadied, his mind already running over the words, his will having been poured through the intricate layers of glyphs and sigils that formed the casting circle on the floor. It glowed with a sullen, violet light, one that pulsated in the quiet tension of the room. He reached the end of his breath, and held it.
Time seemed to slow, before he thrust his hand forward, fingers outstretched, and allowed his body to become a conduit for the magic. It ripped through him like a wildfire through brush, concentrating on the single point in front of him. It filled his body, his blood, the world around him glowed and he wondered if his eyes were doing the same thing, as it began to reach a critical mass. He didn't think he could bear it any more, that it would burn him from the inside out, and a small part of him was exhilirated by that thought.
But then, just as he thought he might explode, an awful screeching noise, like metal on metal, filled the space around them as a hole was torn in the fabric of reality. Shadows curled from the opening, which looked like a torn banner in the air, as if smoke, reaching out toward them. Cole spared a look at his party, before he took a steadying breath, and stepped through...
...into Seattle. At night.
The others followed him through, and as the last of them made it, the tear sealed up behind them with that horrible noise again, as if it had known just how long to stay open for. Cole's head pounded with the withdrawal of the magic, and he felt a hot wetness on his lip. He touched his fingers to it, and they came away with blood on them. Wonderful.
The more he looked around, though, the less like Seattle it really was. Sure, at first glance, it looked like it, but scratch the surface and he could see the differences. It was like being in a model of the city that someone had constructed from memory rather than photographs - the key features were there, but they were... different. Some things were too large, others too small, others bent at impossible angles that hurt your eyes and your mind to look at if you tried to puzzle them out for too long. In the distance, a snarl rang out, followed by the abrupt scream of prey being pulled down by a predator. Overhead, the moon hung, too large to be real, giving off an eerie light that bathed their surroundings without ever actually banishing the shadows that saturated everything.
"All good?" Cole asked, keeping his voice low. "Kieran, you've gotta be our eyes and ears on this one, boy, you let us know if anythin's comin' that may need dissuasion. Al," he grinned at her, suddenly starting to feel energised now that they were actually doing something. "Lock and load."