Running Ink [IC]

[Fox]

Gaian Knight gave Custos a polite nod, but otherwise his attention was on the hallway to the east. "That certainly explains the smell," he noted, frowning and adjusting the cloth over his lower face. "At least, unless there's a new sulfur exhibit over in the children's section."

The earthmover's voice may have been calm but his own powers betrayed his mood somewhat: bits and shards of rock had collected themselves from around him as soon as Changeling and Equinox mentioned demons, arranging themselves in a small but bristling array above and behind his shoulders. Hands in his pockets and sword sheathed or not, he was clearly ready for a fight.

[trollthumper]

The gargoyle bowed before Melinda, who was slightly taken aback by the large stone creature. "Oh, my," she said. "Um, if you think this is necessary, I understand. Just.... don't try to do too much damage, all right?"

"We won't try to make a mess," Nick said. "Can't say the same for the demons, but we'll try to make sure they don't get too wild."

Melinda nodded and followed Custos out of the library. Nick, meanwhile, crept up the hall to the children's area. It was a sizable corner isolated from the rest of the library, with stacks that the children could easily reach. The walls were painted with murals of Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet, the Very Hungry Caterpillar, and the Pevensie children with Aslan. Candy-colored chairs sat at small tables, decorated with picture books and children's toys.

All of which made the six demons standing in the center of the room somewhat more conspicuous. Nick scanned their appearances; enthralling succubus stood by infernal insect stood by things that could hardly be called humanoid at all. They appeared to be clustered around one of the picture books, studying it. They spoke in the language of Hell, a mixture of broken Enochian and strangled screams, but one thing carried through - a strong sense of confusion.

One demon looked up from the book with a third eye - and spotted Nick. He shrieked, and the other demons turned towards the doorway.

"Think you're in the wrong section," Nick said as he gathered ectoplasm around him. "De Sade's upstairs. Unless The Very Hungry Caterpillar's big on Lucifer's Book Club this month."

[trollthumper]

The demons came rushing towards Nick instantly, spewing out words that needed no translation. One, the beautiful woman with a bird's eyes, grew horrible talons on her hands and came driving for his chest, but he managed to dodge out of the way. Another with a chitinous torso called up sickly green fire from the pit and threw it at Equinox, who shined like a beacon in the darkened library, but the flame was easily deflected by her magical protections.

Nick clenched his fist. "Ladies, gentleman, and... other things," he said. "I know you're not predisposed to following rules, but... this is a library." He drew the fist downwards, and half-formed hands erupted out of the floor, dragging the demons to the ground. "No roughhousing."

One of the demons, the one with three eyes, opened his mouth, letting out a dreadful torrent of screams and curses. Nick covered his ears before it could bite too deep; he knew this trick pretty well.

[Fox]

Not nearly fast enough to protect his senses, Gaian Knight still managed to keep his focus under the demonically-empowered verbal assault. Still, he winced, putting one hand to his ear as the other swept in an arc over his head. "It's a library," he said through gritted teeth. The bits and shards that were hanging out behind him followed his hand through the air, and blunt, bullet-like shards of rock rained down on the demon. "If you're not explaining why the hell you're here, be quiet!"

[Aoiroo]

Changeling didn't take the time for a witty comment, it wasn't necessary for really. In her hand appeared an axe headed polearm which she gave a quick spin before grabbing it and aiming to decapitate the demon nearest to her. The blade missed slightly and instead buried itself into his shoulder just under the neck. Pulling it back, she glanced at the rest of them and poised herself with the polearm at the ready.

[trollthumper]

The demon roared as the polearm bit into its shoulder. Its compatriots -- one made of solid smoke, the other a pile of burning, shifting sand -- locked eyes with Changeling and Gaian Knight and let loose invective from the deepest pits of the Malebolgia. More of the horrific green fire coalesced in mid-air before lashing out at the two heroes in the form of flaming whips. One lash struck Gaian Knight across the chest, but managed to bounce easily off of his magical protections. Changeling, meanwhile, dodged the whip easily, which struck a bookshelf and caused it to erupt into an eldritch blaze that reeked of brimstone.

"Y'know, I understand the need to lash out after being down in that infernal pit for so long," Nick said. "But taking it out on Winnie-the-Pooh? That's just low."

[Ecalsneerg]

Equinox winced, but carried on through the scream, raising her wand high. "You know, I've never thought it was possible to cause trouble in a library," she mused. "I've always been somewhat scared of librarians." She began weaving her wand in a complex gesture, cold blue light gathering at the tip even as she swung it down and pointed it at the floor.

Absent mindedly, as she tried to visualise, aim and project several attacks at once, she kept talking. "All those icy glares..." Several trails of frost erupted from her wand, slithering alone the floor crackling like a frozen pond being stepped on, and burst up from the ground in shards of jagged, hard edged ice at each demon's feet.

[trollthumper]

The sharp frost cut through the various demons, piercing the one that looked like a man made of obsidian right through the chest. It thrashed around on the floor before falling still, fading away into a black, greasy stain upon the ice. The succubus, watching as its colleague was dispatched back to Hell, struggled against her bonds... and broke free from the grasping hands. She shrieked triumphantly as balefire came to her hands, flying out to strike Equinox.

"You don't get out so easily," Nick said. "I'm not a huge fan of infernalism, but I know the basics. And you guys..."

The hands loosed briefly, and the demons took advantage of their release to scramble to their feet -- but not fast enough, as the hands clamped down again, dragging all, even the freed succubus, back to the ground.

"...aren't out of the circle yet. Which brings up a very good question -- who summoned you?"

"It does not matter, necromancer," said the succubus in a voice like chilled honey. "We are free. It does not matter if it was by word or will, flesh or pulp -- we are released."

[Fox]

"Well it matters to us," Gaian Knight pointed out, hands glowing as shards of earth arranged themselves throughout the room. "Demons don't typically pop up in libraries - well, not this part of the library, anyway. You guys know that Where the Wild Things Are isn't literal, right? It's not a suggestion. You don't actually have to hang out here."

He made a fist and the stone fragments (of which there seemed to be suspiciously more than he'd started with) dropped out of the sky like blunt-tipped lances, plunging into the demons' ranks with no inconsiderable force. "Why you're here is as important as that you're here. Maybe more important - I for one would rather not run into more of you hanging out in the self-help section or something. This library seems to have enough problems already."

[Aoiroo]

"I agree, you being here is very troublesome."

She shifted her stance as she held the polearm,

"So let us fix that problem."

Moving forward she swung the axe head in a wide arc would did well to slice through two demons without even slowing down. As they crumpled to the floor she gave it a wave before clinking the end of the handle down and looking at the last two demons,

"Now, would you kindly explain your purpose, or would you like to join your friends?"

[Ecalsneerg]

"How about a new tact," said Equinox suddenly, whipping her coat back to clear the remnants of fire and smoke from her force field, her fringe slightly singed and burnt.

"Demons, I have a problem. I am very, very against the harming of people by prying into their minds. It's not my place to know their secrets. It's not right. Doing it will utterly blow out every shred of magic I have, and it takes me over a day to recover from that. Usually a week before the headache fades." She smiled grimly. "That doesn't apply to you."

She raised a hand in front of her, and fixed her gaze on one of the demons. "Now... YOU'RE GOING TO TELL ME, WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT," she snarled, teeth curling over her lip as she thrust her mind into one of the hellspawn.

A few seconds later, she'd gone slightly pale, and lowered her hand slightly. "Right. Gazed into the mind of a demon, and they don't know who summoned them. Anyone got any more questions before we resume turning them into ash?"

[trollthumper]

Nick raised his eyebrows at that. "Okay, that's very much not normal," he said, as the spectral hands tightened their grip on their infernal prisoners. "You usually need the will to enact a demonic summoning. Invocation, sacrifice, something to bait the damn hook. There's a reason you don't have demons showing up around every print copy of The Lesser Key of Solomon."

He looked to the picture book on the table. Even at this distance, the words in the book didn't appear to be in English... and the illustrations therein definitely weren't safe for children. "...oh," he said. "I guess I should say 'unless the book is packed with enough infernal mojo that it does.'"

His grip faltered for a second, and as it did, one of the demons burst forth from the ground, stalking towards the heroes.

[Fox]

"Well, that just asks a whole other set of questions," Gaian Knight noted, raising a hand toward the demon who'd gotten free first. That demon's hard work and determination won him a world of pain as rock shards distributed throughout the room converged on him, pelting from all directions as if fired from so many invisible machine guns. "I dunno about you, but my first question is why in the world a library has tomes of bad mojo sitting around. My second question is probably why in the world it's sitting in the kid's section, unless there's someone hiding here with a really awful sense of humor."

[Aoiroo]

Changeling shrugged her shoulders,

"It is hard to say, it could be a book that was left as a way for an outrealm creature to try and move around the parameters of the Pact, it could be a book intended to be found by a child so as to influence them from a young age onto a path of darkness, it could be a mistake, a book that was formally dormant accidently being returned to a place where books usually find there place. I myself intend to take a closer look, but first,"

She didn't have glance at the demon as it froze in place, literately froze. Ice creeped up it's body completely blocking all movement leaving only the head free to struggle,

"We only need one, so you can have at him while I try and figure out what secrets this book holds."

[Ecalsneerg]

"Oh, good," said Equinox humorlessly. "We've got a malicious magic book, a group of demons who don't know enough to help us, and it's in the kid's section of a library."

The witch again pointed her wand, this time at the demon who was encased in ice. She thrust her will at the demon's mind again, teeth clenched as she spat out a few words. "Alright. Tell me. What were you planning to do in this realm? You must know something." Her voice reverberated around the room, at once sounding exactly like it normally did and coming out as a baritone boom.

[trollthumper]

Changeling's glimpse at the book revealed that it had, at one point, been The Very Hungry Caterpillar. The text inside the covers, however, told a different story. There were still traces of the caterpillar working its way through apples, vegetables, and pastries, but they were drowned out by illustrations of summoning circles, proper text in Latin, and notes in the margins in Italian. The Latin was clear, describing various methods of calling up the servants of Hell; the Italian was a bit more mangled, but she could parse bits and pieces based on the linguistic roots. Notes that said things like, "Exchanges favorable," "dismiss with iron" and "to gather word from Naples." As she lifted the book, she found another strand of stray magic, leading up from the basement.

Equinox, meanwhile, got a vision of a hard, sharp section of Hell, a place of starved underlings and meager servants, those who had lost at the treacherous games and barbed relations of the pit. Their only hope lay in the will of sorcerers who were desperate for infernal knowledge -- and when the beacon had gone up, with such light, they had answered. And now that this one was free of the pit, she sought to exercise herself in the fields of creation.

"So, how many damn magic books does this library have?" Nick said. "We going to find the Book of Dead Names next? Maybe in Periodicals?"

[Aoiroo]

Changeling held the book, reading and trying to connect what she saw,

"This book was not published like this, it was subverted to this form. Also, it mentions the words dismiss with iron, I do not know which form of iron it means, but cold iron usually works best on magical creatures."

Turning she looked towards Gaian Knight,

"You may want to draw your sword in case steel is an effective substitute, because the magic here is not limited to the demons, there is more behind there."

She reached her hand up and pointed at the doorway leading to the basement.

[Ecalsneerg]

Equinox shuddered as she saw what was in the demon's head. But she laughed nonetheless. "They're failures," she smirked. "The cast down and trodden on, the failures of the Pit. They're here because someone desperately summoned them, and they just came to wreak havoc because they didn't know if they'd get another chance to do anything."

She turned to look darkly at the group. "They're just dumb thugs. Lesser, lesser demons who are good for muscle against your average man on the street, but worthless trash for anything else. They didn't have anything to do with the books."

[Fox]

"You may want to draw your sword in case steel is an effective substitute, because the magic here is not limited to the demons, there is more behind there."

Gaian Knight shook his head, chuckling a little at his own expense. "I'll keep it in mind, but I'm honestly not that good with the thing. I'm not a hazard to the people around me, or anything, but I'm probably better off sticking with the rocks." Said rocks recollected themselves at a gesture, returning to their position above and behind his shoulders. "A surprising number of problems can be solved with rocks, y'know."

"They're just dumb thugs. Lesser, lesser demons who are good for muscle against your average man on the street, but worthless trash for anything else. They didn't have anything to do with the books."

"Hm. I guess that's good news and bad news. On the upside, they're not likely to be spread all over trying to summon up worse demons. On the other...if they didn't do anything with the book, someone or something else did, and he, she, or it is causing as much trouble as he, she, or it can."

[trollthumper]

"Or it might not have been a summoner," said Nick as he pocketed the infernal children's book. "I mean, we saw the first book. Everything it got near went shooting off like a rocket, and it was dancing all across the shelf. Could be we're dealing with wild magic." With his spare hand, he beckoned the ectoplasm up from the floor. The demon was loose, and ready to run -- at least, until he fashioned the ectoplasm into claws and drove them through the demon's back, sending it crumbling back towards the pit. "Which isn't good, because demon summonings usually have too much ritual and time bound up in them to just go wild. We're dealing with some potent mojo here."

Changeling led the other heroes down the stairwell to the basement. As she made her way down the stairs, however, she - and Hayley - could feel the air growing thicker with residual magic. It felt like a storm cloud, gathering with force and thunder. The basement revealed a display, possibly ready to be set up on one of the higher floors. Inside each case was a tome, old and aged - some folios from the Elizabethan era, others tomes on science from the times of the Renaissance. But one book, at the center of the hall, glowed like a bonfire before Changeling's sight.

[Aoiroo]

Changeling moved down and looked at the books wide eye, particularly the center one, she took head of the group sorting through the books with her eyes before rest at the center one again. She was mesmorized by the emmense amount of power pooring out, it somewhat like looking into the sun, and she was unable to look for very long before looking away,

"There,"

She pointed it out and approached slowly, cautiously. She looked around it not being able to look at it directly trying to pick

"That is the source of the corruption, but it may not be good to destroy it here, or at least destroy it without a proper sheild. Artifacts can have very violetile reactions when they are destroyed, especially one this powerful."

[Ecalsneerg]

"Sounds like a plan to me," said Equinox, twirling her wand in her hand. "We could contain it with a few defensive wards for now, remove it from the premises and I'll teleport us out to somewhere in the middle of the forest."

She narrowed her eyes and glared at the book. "That said, I'm not sure how easy it'd be to just destroy the book. I mean, if it's a powerful magical artifact, it's not like we can just burn it."

[Fox]

Gaian Knight frowned, hands in his pockets as he regarded the tome. "Well, one thing at a time, I guess. If we don't want to destroy it here, we've gotta get it out before we can burn it or blow it up...or just contain it. I'm assuming it wasn't always doing things like this, or somebody would've noticed before it got shipped off to a public library."

He paused for a moment, glancing between the others and the displays. "....I don't suppose anyone here can just lift it up with their mind? Something tells me we don't want to touch that thing bare-handed. S'pose I could just wrap it up in some rocks, and hope that holds it...."

[trollthumper]

"I could lift it out," Nick said. "We might want to kill the alarm, though. Last thing we want is the police streaming into the magical equivalent of a nuclear waste site because a light went on at 911."

In time, Nick managed to find the alarm console, tucked away behind one of the book cases. He pushed the case aside, and stood directly facing the console. He cleared his throat, and as he did, his voice took on the static shrieking of a dying fax signal. "You're relieved of duty in this room. The contents must be moved." In response, the alarm gave a quiet chirp and shut down. Nick turned to the others. "I'm probably going to want to make sure it stays sleeping. Mind making with the movement?"

[Ecalsneerg]

Equinox frowned. "Ah. Problem there..." She rubbed at her eyes with one hand. "My teleportation spell needs to have physical contact at least between all participants. So one of us needs to be at least holding the book, even if it's encased in... well, rocks might actually work."

An idea hit her. "We double secure it. I freeze it in ice, you encase it in rock, then I'll grab it and teleport it out of here. Since it's my plan, I'll take the hit if anything nasty's going to happen."