Anyways, if anyone actually drinks it, the potion is basically just made from opium, for the purposes of being a painkiller. Ciara herself got a stronger dose though, enough to basically turn her limbs into noodles.
So one could simply walk into a Leyline Overcharge without issue? Or was this a special quality of this particular transformation into Ascendia? It was worthwhile to consider as well, whether or not a Leyline was truly being drained here, considering how...lacking the capabilities of the Umbralist proved to be, if a handful of already-fatigued students could ward off their advances. They could claim mercy, a small compassion afforded to children who knew not what they were getting into, but only the results mattered. And in this case?
The results were that they all managed to buy enough time for the Undermage to arrive. Enough, perhaps, that they could escape entirely.
Otis stood up from his chair, shooting off one last message to Nicole: "I'll bring them to the clinic."
No need to get the guards involved, not when Ciara was still an active threat in their eyes. And Davil's situation was dangerous as well, not the sort of work that first aid would benefit too greatly. The Strigidae would have preferred if Iraleth had enough strength left to simply carry and fly his roommate over, but well, no one was perfect. He set his Adapa to record the battle raging within the cathedral, made sure his gun was loaded, and finally entered the scene.
...
The Door opened, and Otis stepped out to the stairwell, his nose wrinkling slightly at the stench of blood and sweat that had seemed to congeal here. Unlike the others, he had remained spotless throughout all this, his amber eyes showing no particular strain. It had been a beneficial venture for him, after all, getting access to so much information, from the structure of the Iris Record to the capacity of its guards to the curious spellwork utilized by the Undermage to how Umbralists seemed capable of Leyline Overcharge despite how advanced and novel the technique was to the simple limits in capacity that his classmates had.
And now, though his holstered firearm was loaded, the Strigidae offered a vial each to the bloodied students. It was a dark liquid, a crafted potion that smelled bitter.
"Drink. It'll help with the pain and the adrenal dump. I'll bring you four to the hospital proper."
A screen of light illuminated the dark stairwell; in the corner of his eye, Otis was still watching the frenzied battle between Umbralist and Undermage.
What do you imagine would be the situation behind them meeting? Amaya herself isn't likely to reach out, and if its work that a House wants done by a DSC squad, it probably wouldn't be work that an indie contractor would really get involved in. Kinda like how you'd hire a landscaping company to make a new garden and fence versus hiring a teenager to mow your lawn.
@Remram I mean, she'd just treat him as another independent mage encountered in the Dark City. So passively cautious but not immediately drawing steel n all.
@OwO A microwave is too heavy to carry around. Electric kettle and instant noodles/dehydrated meals though? God combo.
@Asuras With regards to Houses getting peeps to marry into them, is it usually a House-to-House kind of thing, or is it more common for them to snag significantly capable independents into their House?
@Estylwen That's fine with me. From Amaya's own side, she's mostly just ticking off boxes, going after each House that specialized in Obscurity and puzzling out if they have any actual involvement in her own stuff. If it came down to an actual all-out fight, she'd more or less just be running away and hiding every time, because the difference in resources between the head of a House and an independent mage is basically unbridgeable.
It is fun to have that whole Demon-Possessed vs Demonsbane thing though.
@Remram I'm not totally sure if they would end up crossing blades that often, because in most cases, Amaya does contract work for other Houses. So it's like...on her side, she doesn't really want any smoke with the DSC, because they have significant Realspace influence, and on the DSC's side, they probably wouldn't want to obstruct the work that a House (that they wouldn't know the identity of) had paid to get done. Things would be different if Mathias was out-of-uniform during an encounter though.
Small note too: she'd be absolutely flabberghasted that Mathias decided to teach the Craft to someone whose name was literally Maverick.
soothing the howling of the mind, pulling away the psychological afflictions
I saw the line and went for it.
Anyways, comfy cooking flashbacks sound good, but unironically, it's probably a situation where Amaya doesn't actually know all that much about adulting either. She can certainly boil a hot pot of water though. With an electric kettle.
@Kronshi It'd be interesting in general to consider how much impact one's personality has upon their Crest and vice versa. Amaya's own biases come strictly from understanding that its the Obscurity peeps who are able to do stuff like summoning shadow monsters and wiping/editing memories, so that's more of a personal bias than anything else.
I don't think any mediation would really be necessary or even justified, because Amaya was definitely the aggressor in this particular instance kekek. Probably one of the things that're immediately obvious would be that, for someone who spent their formative years purely in the Realspace, she adjusted relatively quickly to the amoral, lawless life of the Dark City real quick. So I guess somehow it's the demon-fused life-eating child-leader of a House that has more scruples than the small-time kiddo who just got in deep during her young adult years.
Also Asuras. There's a Dark City for every metropolitan area out there, yeah? Are there Houses that have like, national or global levels of influence? Or are all Houses, no matter how powerful, still mostly contained within their individual City?
If the former, may be useful to distinguish between levels of influence that player-made Houses have, and perhaps also have a list of, idk, the top 5 most infamous Houses nationally and internationally.
@Asuras First off, gonna put forward an idea for worldbuilding, where the independent mages of the City, once they become capable enough not to be a complete liability to those around them, are invited to join a loose collective or union. Basically, my thought is that it'd serve as a body for the Houses to request third-party fixers to handle problems or issues that'd require plausible deniability, and it also serves as a way for independent mages not to get completely bullied into bad deals by Houses, in a kinda 'if you fuck with one of us, the rest of us will maybe possibly take action'.
Also should confirm: is this in the US????
@OwO If you want, it could be the situation where Amaya looked out for Macaron during her early years, in more of a 'teach her to cook food and get odd jobs' kinda way. Probably saw something sympathetic in the literal teenager. If they were extra close, one of Amaya's particular crafts could have been formed/obtained initially to mentally soothe Macaron during particularly bad nights in the City.
@Estylwen Don't think that there's any actual reason for Amaya and Reina to have any significant relationship with one another, but Amaya herself probably has a negative bias towards Obscurity peeps, because it's pretty likely that her whole life/family/friends/town got fucked over by Obscurity peeps. Maybe it's a case where they encountered each other before during various hunts of Manifestations. Maybe it's a case where Reina, being the head of the family, has heard of lesser members of her House being killed within Labyrinths or secluded portions of the Dark City, and what information could be extracted from their desiccated souls point only towards a blinding shaft of light.
@Remram Amaya probably has no trust for the Dark Sphere Command because whatever the fuck did they do for her? Certainly, they didn't do jack shit about mass disappearances of people and the mind-wiping of the town. She'd have been more alright with it if the government was completely ignorant about the matter, but now that she knows their asses have an actual presence within the Dark City, it's like, bitch. Y'all fucking suck.
That being said, did you have clear ideas/plans for The Mist, or did you plan on Asuras handling most of it? Figured it'd be interesting if Amaya encountered/knew of The Mist herself, due to her particular line of work.
@Kronshi Don't got nothing, unless you think it'd be funny if House Falloch had an open contract on Oz, because the possibility of him exposing Family Secrets after leaving them was too high to simply let be. Then they could have met when Amaya considered jumping his ass early on, before reconsidering it since his scruffy, asocial ass reminded her of Macaron and she went to give him a heads up about it instead.
The Baskervilles, a great Family seeped in Obscurity, knew this. And their heir, Casimir Baskerville, was just arrogant enough, just callous enough, just Machiavellian enough, to abuse this. After all, all Houses end up having the problem of an incestuous relationship with their magecraft. Spread their ties too wide, and their Family Secrets became public knowledge. Confine themselves for too long, and they stagnate, becoming inbred buffoons with no practical capabilities. They needed fresh blood and fresh perspectives, strangers who were nevertheless willing to divulge their own understandings of the arcane craft properly.
Strangers, who knew not that such knowledge was meant to be safeguarded with their life.
So Casimir looked for those who wanted purpose, who wanted to be special. Those has-beens, those drifters, those deluded of their own capability, who just wanted an opportunity to become who they once were. He took his time, of course. Scattered a few spells as miracles, promised those mundanes that he would reveal the truth of the world. Built up House Baskerville as the only justice in a cruel world. Armed them with a faith born from deception, roused their spirits, offered them that singular chance to truly be a part of something special!
And then plunged them headlong into the Dungeon.
Those that survive were drowning still, and the only lifeline they could grasp upon was House Baskerville. They gained the Craft and the Crest, the qualifications to walk the reverse side of the world, but with neither knowledge nor the ability to learn, all they could do was become subservient to the Baskervilles, to Casimir. To continue to plunge into Dungeons, continue to face great terrors, continue to mine for magecraft, in exchange for the shelter of Obscurity, for they knew not how to survive alone in a realm that defied one’s understanding of reality.
It was a successful program! After some delegation, after some showing of favors, it became a self-propagating program!
…
People disappeared, never to be seen or heard of again, but society forgot them.
Amaya, however, couldn't.
Before 15, her life had been fairly normal. Her parents weren’t excessively loving, but they weren’t abusive either. She went through public school, excelling in some subjects but never to the point of becoming extraordinary. She had her friends, her extracurriculars, and she was her class’s student representative. Perhaps she had a dream job, but she was realistic enough not to toss away safe options. Perhaps she had a crush or two, but it was easy enough to make excuses to never ask them out. It was a small town, a small school. Peacefully in the middle of nowhere in particular.
She thought it was a bit weird when the school brought in a guest speaker who looked like a bit of a loony, but his magic tricks were cool. It was some Oriental traditional practice thing, and after the speech and demonstration, they handed out pamphlets to another meeting they were having later on that week. Her friend, Renee, wanted to go, but didn’t want to go alone, so Amaya tagged along as her plus one. Renee liked that kinda stuff, after all. Magic and superstitions and such. Apparently one of her ancestors was a witch.
The meeting wasn’t anything that really stuck out to Amaya either. The group’s members were all cheerful sorts, though it gave off the impression of a bunch introverts and nerds with bad hygiene. Renee called it ‘aura’ though. Amaya didn’t think she’d have a BO fetish like that, but her friend seemed to be getting along with the others, so she hung around for a while longer and then excused herself. It was a gradual thing.
If she didn’t know about the meeting, she’d have thought her friend had gotten a boyfriend.
Hard to imagine a boyfriend would be enough to get you to drop school altogether though.
Harder to imagine that a boyfriend would be enough to get you to disappear from your own house in the middle of the night, without even leaving behind a note, without even bringing her wallet.
The school worried about it for a bit, but ultimately, the administration were tight-lipped. The police worked on it for a bit, but they soon delegated the case to some other department, and no one seemed to know who really worked at that department. The parents grieved, worried, and yet there wasn’t any sense of urgency or desperation. People disappeared. It simply happened. What was there to worry about?
Amaya wondered if there was something in the water.
Then, with the arrogance of teenager who thought herself as a young adult, she decided to take matters to her own hands, because that cult had to be responsible.
…
It took two years of digging around the internet. It took a part-time job to buy a decent road bike and tickets for buses and trains. It took effort and relationships, and at times, Amaya herself wasn’t certain what she was doing, spending her high school life like this. Did she even care about Renee, about other students, that much? Or was it simply a curiosity, an obsession, triggered by the behavior of others, who thought that none of it really mattered?
Before she reached that point, she got her breakthrough. Left on a bike, with a flashlight, a camera, a stun gun, and a sandwich all stuffed in a fanny pack. Didn’t know what to expect, but she was used to groping in the dark. Whatever it was, she’d know by the end of the week.
Darkness was replaced by nightmares.
A shadow-beast great enough to swallow the moon, a horde of ghouls rising from the walls, an abyssal quagmire, swallowing whole bursts of light and flame, the feeble resistance of those same members of that cult she had been tracking. Cries of the betrayed sounded, but mercy wasn’t a possibility, and in three minutes, all that remained was a vacant lot.
A vacant lot, and a man dressed like he hadn’t left the 19th century.
He was young in an ageless way. His eyes were as black as the night sky. Purple veins wriggled beneath his translucent skin. His hands were gloved. His shadow stretched out in a way that defied the streetlamps around him.
He smiled at her, and in that moment, Amaya could not remember what had been in that vacant lot before.
“Best to forget this, young lady.”
He passed by her, and Amaya forgot whether she had even brought anything with her on that night.
The clouds obscured the moon. The forecast spoke of rain tomorrow.
…
But while she had forgotten what was there, she knew that something had been there. Something that she wanted to see, something that she wanted to know. Something had dug into her mind itself, snipping away the bits that seemed to matter so much for her.
And when she returned home, that something had erased all traces of those who had disappeared. There was no notice in the school. There was no case in the department. There was no son or daughter who had disappeared. She couldn’t recall any faces, couldn’t find any photos, couldn’t do anything but scratch at that itch in the back of her head!
As blood collected beneath her nails, she had to wonder.
If her memories were so suspect, how could she be so sure that Renee was just some friend? Just another face in the classroom? How could she be certain, when she was only on one side of the coin?
What was missing?
Three years passed. Six years passed. Ten years passed.
Amaya earned her Crest. She stepped deep into the Dark City. She delved into the Labyrinth. She formed connections as a courier. She learned of the Houses, of the Manifestations, of the innumerable ways with which the movements of the shadow could affect the status of the corporeal. She had become unrecognizable to her teenage self, stray beast with a gleaming fang, having so neatly cleaved herself from her realspace relationships.
But she held no regrets.
You can't know what you don't learn, and she was never smart enough to earn a scholarship.
The first thing mages note about Amaya is her sword, a spiritual construct imbued with a simple tenet: “What can be perceived is material.” With that understanding of the world, that blade of white light becomes capable of slicing through curses and maladies, of parting barriers and seals, of rendering the incomprehensible simple. It cleaves the unknown, parting darkness to reveal the true nature of the night: that there is nothing in darkness that isn’t there in day.
It has earned her the reputation of ‘Demonsbane’.
But that’s the thing about a sword. It draws attention away from the gleam in Amaya’s eyes. Eyes that see through deception, a sovereign capable of passing down divine judgment. Eyes that transfix her prey, a tyrant that allows for nothing less that absolute stillness. Eyes that, at times, offers solace amidst chaos as well, soothing the howling of the mind, pulling away the psychological afflictions that far too many spells and curses. One sees heaven in her gaze, and heaven can be blinding or beautiful, depending on the sins they bear.
A litany of other crafts assists Amaya in her work as a freelancer in the magical world, of course. Ways of folding and traversing space. Ways of finding a safehouse night. Ways of generating warmth without flame. Ways of cleaning clothing without needing to remove them.
Sir Lurksalot,
High Moon,
RisingRobin,
Affili,
mickilennial,
Feyblue,
Kronshi,
Sky Blue,
Majoraa,
Emberdawn2
