ic Welcome to Springsvale, AZ(IC)

[trollthumper]

Light exploded behind Nick's eyes, swiftly resolving into a tableau. He had a feeling that, if the feedback wasn't being filtered through the other mage's ritual, it might have burned something out. These weren't the eyes he usually saw with - they were plugged into an entirely different flow of life and death, one that ran like the Gulf Stream across the city. In time, the streams of power coalesced into solid images - buildings, streets, rivers, animals, and people. He felt that, if he peered deeper, he could see much more - the history of the town library, the relationships of the woman on the street corner. But he was borrowing a lot of juice, he didn't exactly have the reins on the power, and he didn't want to risk focusing all of it on one thing at once.

But he could glimpse out of the corner of his eye. And in one part of Springsvale, the lines of power were growing thicker, resolving into something like a beacon that punched through both the ground and the sky, shining an arcane light to realms beyond. [color=#000040}"There," he said. "I've got them. And... thanks."

[Ari]

GM

"I see them too, hold still..." like a whirlpool, mystic power surged up from the earth, enveloping the trio in a current of silver and crashing back into asphalt, leaving them on the driveway of a yellow suburban two-story house. No lights were on inside, but for those with eyes to see magic flared like a candle through black gauze, illuminating a confused mass of humanish shapes and something else. As soon as they had arrived, an invisible dome had begun arcing over and around the house, stretching far over their heads in a mass of writhing, commingling life energy that closed shut around them with less a sound and more a sensation of finality.

Then voices spoke up inside, muffled yet obviously angry and confused. They began to reach a crescendo as rattlinng metal, thumping feet and creaking furniture announced havoc behind the walls. Then a lone voice broke through the babbling, and silenced it. A few loud, even commands, and the door opened cautiously to show a stocky, well-dressed young man with dark skin, wearing a polite smile. Stepping outside and closing the door behind him, he approached the mages, stopping several yards from them on the broad driveway. "Hey there! Welcome to Nowheresville, Arizona." he said cheerfully, nodding to the odd trio "Shane's the name. Can I help you?"

As if on cue, the house behind him exploded, an eruption of darkness roaring and howling as it blasted apart the walls in chunks and sent the roof sailing into the sky...where it collided with the dome and stuck unceremoniously. One section of the upper floor hurtled towards the mages and their would-be delayer, only to crash into a shield of that leaped from his shadow to split the missile in two and send both halves rolling down the street. In the shattered wreckage that Shane turned his now furious eyes upon, a living room stood with its table, book shelves, chairs and sofas in incongruous wholeness, a circle of people in black robes standing around with blackly glowing hands stretched towards a neatly circular absence standing in the air a little higher than the mages would have been standing on each others' shoulders. Ranger Jane Aqui, leaning against one of the chairs, gave a shrug at their apparent leader's look.

Shane turned back to the trio. "Oh well, it was worth a shot." In a blur of movement he drew a formidable-looking pistol, barking "Now, Cabal!" and though none of the people in robes moved, they began concentrating on the absence hanging sickly over them, bolts of energy crackling around them as they began chanting in a language heavy on sibilants. At a whisper from its wielder, Shane's gun ignited with ethereal fire as he readied it, eyes darting between Pitch, Nick and Equinox as he tried to figure on the best target.

Edited January 19, 2015 by Arichamus

[Ecalsneerg]

Equinox brought up her left arm in a sweeping motion as Shane swept his gaze between the three magicians. A white-blue curtain of coalescing force came up before her, emanating a deep, slow energy like the depths of the Earth. She lifted her wand with the other hand, levelling it just as the dark magician was levelling his gun.

 

"I'll bet you mine is better," said the witch coolly. "Pyrkagius!" A white-hot stream of flame and force burst from the tip of her wand, firing through her shield and bursting forth unhampered to whip and spiral towards Shane.

[Ari]

GM

The fires lunged for the stumbling, discombobulated young man, reaching out with near-invisible hands only to smash and splash against some unseen barrier. Below them, Nick could see Shane's shadow jutting out like a bowsprit, blocking and dividing the elemental force until it was spent. Retreating as smoothly and silently as it had intervened, the patch of darkness under the gun-toting mage seemed to shift and eddy...

"It comes!" cried one of the Cabal, his face raised to the Moonlight and fixed with a ghostly smile as he looked at the shuddering absence above his head. Indeed, a thick arm, hairy as a spider's but built like an ape's, had emerged, and pawed searchingly at the empty air.

"It comes! It comes! The One From Beyond, it comes to us!" shouted the rest of th Cabal, their hands reaching for the absence and flaring with an eye-watering black light. The absence shook and twisted, growing rapidly until ten Hayleys could have lined up from head to tail and not crossed the gap. With one voice the Cabal shouted "Take form and be! Rise, O Un-Thing!"

With a moan that shook the ground dozens more limbs burst through the absence. Thick and thin, muscled and bony, slick and rough, the appendages of countless beings and animals from across the cosmos groped through the hole between Earth and somewhere horrible. The biggest limbs, wider across than an adult is tall and dozens of yards in length, anchored its unseen body and began dragging it through the gap, more and more hideousness spilling out until a forest of grasping, snaking limbs had dug into the ground, tensed, and pulled out a-

"This has gone too far! To Backstage!" Springsvale shouted, for the first time sounding really alarmed. With a wrenching feeling, the ground flipped under the mages, the house, the Cabal and the absence, and twisted into the shadow-world of the spirit realm. The night sky and the town were below them, areas not cast into shadow and bathed in Moonlight shifting and unreal. Almost at once, anyone not standing on shadows began to tumble head over heels towards the ink-black sky, the Cabal howling and screaming in mixed exhilaration and terror as they hurtled helplessly upwards. Shane's shadow jabbed into a sheltered patch of wall that blocked the light, and the Thing, its main body and head lost in the darkness far above the mages, simply wrapped a few limbs around handy Moonbeams.

Pitch gaped at the half-seen monster, "Damn me, that's not like anything I've ever seen, and I've walked through Hell!" Catching sight of the screaming, flailing people above she hurriedly reached out with her demonic gift to command metal, hellfire flicking from her mouth as metal studs, belt buckles, watches and rings began pulling their owners back to earth. Pulling her motorcycle up to her, she hastily used some of her Hellish power to enchant it, the thing's wheels quickly wreathing in dark flames that carried her easily thrrough the void. "I'll go get the people!" she hollered to Equinox and Nick over the roar of the imbued engine "You take care of that thing!" and with a rumble and a belch of hellfire she was off, riding to the rescue of the summoners.