ic Azathoth Remix

[Raveled]

Freedom City, New Jersey

December 3rd, 2014

Afternoon

It always began with tentacles.

That was a lie. It usually began with a poor fool who stumbled on some book that no soul should ever read or even consider. Such books usually had ideas that were not simply intriguing, but were actually infectious. The ideas were impossible to get out of your head, to bury under the everyday and dull with mundanity. They strove to get out, to be expressed, to be birthed into the material world in all their hideous glory.

It was one of those hideous glories that burst out of a third-floor window, tearing a hole in the wall as it fell to the street below. It landed with a wet splat and shivered, curling back into itself as it gathered its glutinous mass together again. The creature seemed impossible, a squid-like mess of tentacles that lashed and pulled and moved without any apparent intelligence.

Asli Sadik found herself staring at the monster with the rest of the crowd. When the first stirrings of panic swept through everyone else, though, she merely stared up at the hole in the building for a moment, her stomach sinking as realizations piled up all of a sudden. Still, there was an eldritch beast to deal with, first; she put her bag down and stepped forward and shaking her arms free as she gathered her power to her. “Okay, big boy,†she called out, doing her best to get the creature’s attention. “It’s time to leash you back up and take you home.â€

[trollthumper]

Someone, somewhere, needed coffee. And it was Eric LaCroix's job to get it there.

Normally, they had a driver for this kind of thing, but said driver had come down with a case of the flu - it was the season for it, after all - so he needed to make sure several gallons of coffee, and mountains of pastry to match, got to a small film festival in the Theater District before the first reel played. It was fairly easy, though - there was little traffic, no snow on the streets, and some sunshine.

And then a pile of bricks fell onto the street corner, followed by tentacles. Sighing, Eric pulled over, found a meter with parking, and opened the door to the car - only to step out into a hidden corridor of Osiris' palace. One quick change and makeup job later, he was back out into the real world in no time as Nick Cimitiere.

"Tentacles. Always tentacles. Somehow, magical misfires rarely end in puppies..."

[Raveled]

The squamous beast turned its ineffable attention to Asli as she began tracing shapes into the air. She flicked her hood up around her head, and shadows deepened underneath it until the darkness was impenetrable. She had no problem seeing out herself, though, and as the tentacle monster -- Prophet’s Beard, if I have to deal with tentacle monsters can’t I at least be playing in Tokyo? -- lurched towards her, she put her power into the boards underneath her feet. Her magic traveled along the wood, lighting up the knots and whorls with multifarious color, and pooled beneath the creature, turning the wood to mud and causing it to sink in!

Asli didn’t have time to savor her victory, though, as the creature rolled unnaturally and suddenly it’s bulk was past the hole and it was detaching the tentacles still in the quagmire, leaving them behind in its rush to reach her! Tentacles swung at her and caught the big woman full in her mid-section, pitching her through the door of the building she had been about to enter.

Edited December 11, 2014 by Raveled

[trollthumper]

Well. That was never a good sign. Nick could sense the living pulse of magic as it worked its way through the building, both with the unnatural rhythm that denoted things from beyond the borders of reality, and the more natural beat of magic from this corner of the cosmos. And, of course, the gigantic bulk of appendages that surged from the building and held a captive in their grasp. There was a rather obvious response to such a thing, and Nick was always a sucker for obvious response.

"Hello there, ugly," he said. Ectoplasm suffused his hands, sweeping into the barbarous claws that had become his favorite response to spectral threats. "I don't know if you fell out of some back road of the universe, or if someone called you down here for craps and laughs." The claws came down, one by one, cutting away tentacles like topiary branches. "But, if you're going to make a mess out of things, then I've got to give you incentive to get out of here, and not to screw with the local populace. I really hope this is helping."

[Raveled]

As Nick cut the tentacles to ribbons, the chunks fell to the ground and evaporated into greasy black smoke, that crawled along the ground and vanished into shadows. Still, for every one he cut away two or three grew out of the shifting mass. Years of going hand to hand with gribbly horrors kept him out of reach, even if a few did impact on his Lethe-infused leathers. It was a stalemate, but Nick would run out of stamina before it did.

And then it all seemed to slow. Right. Down. The creature's strikes came slower and slower, its regeneration stalling in mid-air as the horror froze in place. A tall, robed figure stalked out of the same hole the hoodie-wearing woman had been thrown into. Both her hands were thrown out, her fingers splayed in specific, rigid patterns, silver gears shining in the air around her. The air between her and the creature was charged with the time between a tick and the tock, and she stalked slowly towards the beast. "Quickly," she shouted at Nick. "The thing has to have a heart, cut into it an find it!"

[trollthumper]

There's always some new trick in this business. That was the first thought to cross into Nick's mind, and it was swiftly followed by wondering whether he should be impressed or afraid. Time magic. It wasn't something he ran into often, the ability to slow seconds to minutes, minutes to hours, and so forth. Even with some very interesting interpretations of how death worked, it often fell out of the purview of the ghosts and gods he associated with, which meant he'd had little reason to dabble in its waters. It was the kind of thing that could be impressive if you wrapped your mind around it, or an utter disaster if you had a stray thought in the wrong place.

But right now, he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Diving between a gap in the regenerating tentacles, he cut a gash in the thing's central bulk, providing a glimpse at a multi-valved thing made of diseased flesh he guessed was a heart. He poked it with one wicked claw, then abandoned the gauntlets, turning the offensive towards a torrent of spectral fire aimed right at the thing's core, intending to burn out both the body and the mind.

[Raveled]

Nick's beam pumped into the eldritch organ, igniting it in a wave of spectral energy. It burned away with a psychic scream, and the tentacles meted into a puddle of viscous liquid all around the necromancer. It swiftly evaporated, and the hooded woman lowered her hands and nodded to Nick. "Call me Miras," she said. "We need to find the man behind this." She turned and disappeared into the building.

The lobby was austere and done in the sort of Ikea-chic style that gave the feeling it had all been bought out of the same catalog. Miras rushed up to the third floor, heading unerringly for a certain door. She didn't even pause before it, instead running right through the door, passing through the thin wood like smoke. Inside had been decorated in classic college student hand-me-down style, and looked like it had recently been redecorated with a sledgehammer.

Miras moved from room to room, and quickly found the place the creature had erupted from -- or more precisely, the body. There wasn't much left, just a torso with ragged, blackened strips below and a pale face on top contorted in pain. She fell to her knees next to it, brushing her hands over his eyes. "Brian. What did you get yourself into?" She closed the corpse's eyes gently and mouthed a prayer for his poor soul.

[trollthumper]

Composed, magically talented, and willing to charge right into the fray without pausing for breath - or, at least, a second to celebrate vanquishing a horror from beyond this realm. I wonder if she's single... Nick dismissed the thought and charged in after Miras, keeping his eyes open for any further beasts lurking in the shadows. The rather well-decorated shadows, it turned out.

He caught up with Miras, only to find her bowing over the body of someone who hadn't gone out peacefully - and given the care she was showing, it was clear she knew the deceased. "I'm sorry," he said. Sometimes it was all there was to say. But sympathies wouldn't be enough to figure out why he had died. Quickly, he began scanning the room, to see if the deceased had stuck around. It might be a bit easier - and comforting - than tapping into the Fates and busting out the creepy voice.

[Raveled]

Nick looked around the room with his unusual senses. He could see a misty form that matched the torso on the floor, simple snatches of movement as the man went about his day. Nick watched him work at a table where an oozing monitor and a malformed computer tower sat, or else sitting at a deck with a mess of papers pooled underneath it. As the form went through its pattern Nick noticed little details; a stubble of beard grew into a shaggy, unkempt beard, his movements grew frantic and tense, and Nick noticed that he was wearing the same clothes day in and day out.

The pattern continued, until suddenly the man was standing in the middle of the room, shouting soundlessly. Nick watched as he paced in an irregular, spiral pattern that itched at some detail in the back of his head. However, before the necromancer could put the facts together a great void opened in his vision. A tittering came through, a scratching at the edge of his hearing that quickly ramped into the supersonic. The noise cut like a scalpel through his brain, and the spot of void swiftly grew to encompass his whole range of vision.

Miras sighed and stood, unaware of the psychic assault Nick was dealing with, and moved into the room. She regarded the mutilated computer with ill will and instead knelt at the papers, shuffling them and trying to put them in some semblance of order. It looked like the beginning of a thesis; she knew Brian was a graduate student at FreeSA, but she didn't know exactly what he was studying.

[trollthumper]

Nick had a sinking feeling of what was happening as soon as he saw the ritual replaying in his head. The very fact that he was seeing them was a bit of an aberration. Usually, the Fates felt fit to grab his vocal cords and pull at them like marionette strings; while he got an idea of the sentiment behind the words, they usually came out broken and cracked. Getting a full recreation of what was happening in his minds' eye was not standard operating procedure. He tried to cut off the vision before it reached its conclusion --

-- and then there was noise. Endless, screeching, piping in and out of his head like a handsaw cutting through a log. By the time he managed to cut the connection, it still rang through his inner ear for seconds afterwards. When it finally faded, he breathed a sigh of relief.

"So, I don't think it needs to be said," he said, "but your thread was dabbling in things beyond the veil of sanity. And, while I've encountered a few entities in this field, this one's a bit different. You know of any abominations that tend to deal in the realm of sound?"

[Raveled]

Miras looked at Nick, unseen eyes blinking as she processed the question. “Slayer? Chris Brown?†She brought her hands up and rubbed at her eyes. “Sorry, bad joke. Uh, lots of monsters used songs to lure men to their death. Sirens, some version of ghuls. Pazuzu was rather chatty in the Exorcist but I don’t think he's traditionally was much of a talker. Really, there’s a lot of demons who will talk to a potential victim, to lure them into greater sin, but I can’t think of many who could use it in an attack like that.â€

She sat back on her heels and blinked, staring into the middle distance as her mind ground through possibilities. "Wasn't there some elder god that sits in the center of the universe and sings? Aza-something? Or he..." She trailed off and closed her eyes as she struggled to push aside the weight of Brian's death and remember something she read in a story a decade ago, while high. "Azathoth is an idiot creator-god that sits at the center of creation. He has to be kept asleep by his pipers, or he'll wake up and destroy everything that is to create it anew again." She opened her eyes and looked at Nick. "Does that... do you think Brian was involved with something like that?"

Edited January 10, 2015 by Raveled

[trollthumper]

"Well, I'd hate to say 'it sounds like it,' but... yeah. It sounds like it." Nick patted his ears, as if trying to exorcise the last of the wretched noise. "It didn't exactly sound like a lullaby to me. But then again, I'm not a wretched monstrosity from beyond the veil of time and space, so my tastes may be a bit different." He shook his head. He didn't know what drove people to dabble in the dark arts. Well, he did - pride, desperation, just plain fervor - but as far as he was concerned, the benefits were deeply outweighed by the costs. "You knew him better than I did. Why would he want to call on a blind idiot god with the backing band from Hell?"

[Raveled]

Miras flipped through a handful of the pages that she had picked up from the floor, scanning them quickly. From the different styles and topics, she considered that there must have been quite a few books on this table, before it was destroyed. They were all about music, but all different kinds of musicians: Jimi Hendrix and the later Beatles, the Monkees and the Beach Boys, and even books on organic cooking. There wasn’t any immediate connection she could determine. After all, if listening to Grateful Dead summoned ineffable horrors, every teenager in the 1970s would have been devoured!

“I wasn’t that close to Brian,†she said, sighing. “I was just coming over to work with him on a song.†Her gaze settled on Brian’s corpse, and her throat closed up. There was a dead man on the floor, someone she had eaten lunches with and discussed music with. He was dead, torn to pieces by some creature from beyond sanity, and all Miras could consider was how Brian had brought this doom on him! She felt like a ghoul, but at the same time she needed to figure out how this had happened and how she could stop it from happening to anyone else.

Her gaze wandered over the walls, and a thought suddenly occurred to her. “On the other hand, Brian was taking classes at FreeSA.†She stepped forward and straightened a framed picture on the wall. It showed a group of adults, some young and some old, all holding instruments and seated in particular positions, like an orchestra. At the front was a young Polynesian man holding a conductor’s baton; with some squinting and a mental addition of a torso, it wasn’t hard to recognize it as Brian. “If this started as a school project, his professor might know what he was working on.â€

[trollthumper]

Academia. That created all sorts of new and terrible paths. "Well," said Nick, "I can't tell you how many would-be students of the occult got their face bitten off because they just had to grab that one book in the back of the library for research purposes. Mind you, it's usually folklore, comparative religion, history, or linguistics that leads to people unleashing the horrible. Not music theory." Then again, there hadn't been many classes of that at SCAD. But it would make some sort of sense, wouldn't it? Digging into some sort of primal history of music might lead to exactly this kind of awful.

"All right. Let's go see the professor."

[Raveled]

Miras nodded, glancing at the hole in the wall. “We should probably leave before the cops show up, yes.†She moved to the door, then paused and stepped back into the room. She carefully removed the group picture from the wall and secrets it within her robes. “We might need to talk to these people, if Brian’s professor can’t give us a good idea of what happened.â€

She ran down the stairs faster than the eye could follow. She waited patiently for Nick to join her on the street and get into his car, and then the pair started racing across the city. Miras wrapped herself in time and turned to smoke, and the world became slow and lazy. She stepped out into traffic, easily dodging around the hypothetically speeding cars. On occasion she had to step onto the sidewalk to get around a traffic jam, which is when her body burst into a dense fog and she literally flowed around pedestrians and other obstructions. With abilities like that, she should have crossed the city in an eye-blink, but she conspicuously tarried around Nick’s car. Even when they reached the grounds of FreeSA, she waited at the edge of the campus for the necromancer to find a parking spot before heading onto the grounds.

Miras pulled her cowl more forward as uncomfortable memories surfaced. This was supposed to be her home on the East Coast, where she would blossom and have a great career. Instead she faltered and fell into drugs, and now her life was a decade behind where it should have been. As she considered how her life had gone wrong, her feet unconsciously carried her towards the music building.

[trollthumper]

Nick watched as Miras kept pace with the car. It wasn't the weirdest thing he'd seen - there had been ghosts, vampires, fairies, even one particularly strange zombie that had managed to keep pace with the Pale Horse at top speed. He kept one eye on the road and one eye on her, watching as she weaved gracefully around the people in the crowd - and, in a few cases, barged right through them. His eyebrows raised - he knew there was magic about Miras, but he still wasn't sure of the type. This, at least, narrowed it down to a select number of options. 

 

He pulled off to the college, making sure to find parking for his car - hopefully, somewhere that wouldn't draw much attention, but given midday parking in this city, there was only so much to ask. He got out and caught up with Miras, looking to the campus. "So, this professor of his," he said. "How much do you know about him?" 

[Raveled]

Miras snapped out of her funk and was startled to find that they were already standing in the lobby of FreeSA’s music building. She forced her dark thoughts deeper into her mind. She had to focus on the here-and-now, not get distracted by her past.

She stepped up a listing of the professors that was prominently displayed on the wall. “I don’t even know which professor was Brian’s,†she said, running a gloved finger down the wall. At Freedom City University this would be an easy decision, but FreeSA had several tenured teachers who could have been working with Brian. Miras tried to remember who liked what kind of music, but her memories of that period were infuriatingly hazy, and every time she tried to focus on the details she felt the old despair and humiliation creep over her.

She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to banish the negative emotions . She couldn’t let dark thoughts overwhelm her, couldn’t let the memories of bad decisions and failure paralyze her, or Brian’s death would be totally meaningless. An idea began to form in her head, and she half-turned to Nick as she began to verbalize it. “If there’s a teacher who’s interested in this stuff,†she said slowly, waving the papers from Brian’s desk in the air, “then they’d want to talk about it. If someone was maybe going to write a documentary or a book about it, they would want to be interviewed for it. Right?†She caught Nick’s eye, a tricky deal with the magical darkness under the hood of her cowl, and waited for his response.

[trollthumper]

"Well, I suppose that depends," said Nick. "There's the kind of folklore, mythology, and occultism you talk about on the History Channel... and the kind you don't. Some people think that letting people know about the horrors that lurk in the night is a good idea - forewarned is forearmed, and all that. Others think it's a lot like publishing excerpts from The Anarchist's Cookbook, only it means putting them in the hands of even more unhinged people. There's a chance that if we show up claiming to be with the Discovery Channel, he'll shut down."

 

The necromancer shrugged his shoulders. "It might be best if we're open about it. I'm a veteran presence in this town when it comes to the weird, and it looks like you've been making a name. When two occult heroes show up at your door, it's a sign something's gone wrong. Either he comes clean, or he runs. But it's better than having him shut down entirely." 

[Raveled]

Miras worked her mouth unhappily, not sure if she liked the idea of boldly going up to someone and demanding answers. After some thinking she had to admit that it might work, but she still felt apprehensive about making her presence known. Which was just silly; she didn’t look or sound anything like the meek California girl who had studied here for two brief semesters, but she still had the wild idea that some boogeyman would jump out from behind a tree and reduce her to a greasy smear for daring to return.

She took a deep breath and set off through the corridors, walking like she could leave those fears behind. She found the records office almost without thinking about it. The door was closed, but she didn’t knock. Instead she walked directly into it, bursting into a million tiny dots of color and coalescing into a solid shape on the other side. It probably wasn’t necessary, but somehow she felt better when she was staring at the shocked looks on the faces of a bunch of administrative workers.

Miras took a deep breath and tried to project an air of mystery and power. “Someone here was working with Brian Akanu,†she said. “I’m here to find them.â€

[trollthumper]

Nick followed Miras through the halls of the university, believing she knew where the professor's office was. It was when they came to rest outside of the records office that he paused. "I thought we were going to the --" But then she used her sorcery to dematerialize and - he greatly presumed - rematerialize in the middle of the office. If there was no one in there, then she found a great way around a locked door. But judging by the time of day, the lights on, and the slight din, he had a feeling that was not the case.

 

He smiled a little bit. This may not have been the most direct route, but it was a way of pursuing leads. If this professor had been the one to hook Brian up with the blasphemous texts, then it might not have been wise to engage directly. There might have been more subtle ways she could have gone in, but sometimes, a display of power worked best. He held back, though. The workers were probably on edge enough without a necromancer in skull makeup wandering in. 

[Raveled]

The office workers stared at the robed figure who appeared in their midst, but soon they rallied and a grey-haired woman stood up from her desk. “We can’t give our student information to just anyone. We have to protect their privacy!â€

Miras turned on her, wishing she could make her robes billow for dramatic effect at times like these. “Well you don’t have to worry about Brian Akanu then, because he’s not a student anymore.†She paused for effect. “He’s dead.†The office workers recoiled like she had thrown a live snake on a desk; even the matron looked taken aback. “He brought something into our world that killed him, and then I had to kill it to stop it from hurting anyone else.†Miras sighed, feeling any bravado she had been holding onto wash out of her. “I’m not trying to hurt Brian’s image, but someone pointed him in the wrong direction. I want to find them, and stop anyone else from turning up dead.â€

The words hung in the air, heavy and pink, while the mage waited for someone to react. Finally, the clerk who had spoken up for the rest went back to her computer and typed away for a moment. The office’s printer whirred into life and spat a few pages out, which Miras snatched up and scanned. She frowned at the name connected to Brian’s, and was still frowning when she reappeared in the hallway.

She started walking, slowly, engrossed in her own thoughts. “Brian’s professor was Eric Aquarius,†she said. “I never thought of him as a wizard. He’s the kind of guy who has a reggae hat signed by Jimi Hendrix, but mostly he just talks about psychedelic rock and Woodstock. I wouldn’t think he was into unspeakable horrors from the Dungeon Dimension.â€

[trollthumper]

There was something to be said for tact... and something for barging in, saying the victim was dead, and not giving a single goddamn. Nick wasn't entirely sure how he felt about the matter. He wasn't exactly one for subtlety at times - well, he was one to often strike from the shadows and take the guilty somewhere more isolated, but he favored showmanship over being quiet. The makeup spoke to that. Still, it got them the intelligence they needed. But it might have been better to try the soft touch. 

 

That debate would come later, though. Now, there were much more important matters to deal with. "I highly doubt he was born of Diane and Franklin Aquarius of Trenton," he said. "Unless somebody wanted it to be Woodstock every day." Or maybe Altamont. He looked to Miras. "So, you know the professor. How do you want to approach this?" 

[Raveled]

Miras shrugged with one shoulder. “He was an original hippie,†she said. “I don’t know if he ever had his name legally changed, but he was the kind of teacher who wore flip-flops in the summer and made us all call him Eric or Mister A. I can’t see him leading Brian into black magic,†she repeated, softly. “I could see him giving Brian a dime bag, but not tomes of eldritch lore.â€

 

It didn’t take long to locate Aquarius’s office. Both heroes could hear Jimi Hendrix playing from inside, telling whoever would listen about Seattle dance clubs. Miras opened the door and stepped inside, letting the music spill out into the hallway. “Professor Eric Aquarius. We have to talk to you.â€

The office wasn’t small, but the walls were covered in shelves containing vinyl records and CD cases. Anyone taller than six feet risked braining themselves on classic rock, and Miras had to almost stand in the doorway. Eric himself wasn’t a very impressive sort, a short, slim man wearing a tweed sportcoat over a tie-dye shirt and jeans. The hair on his head was thin, wispy, and white, and gave the impression that he had a cloud for a half-hearted toupee. He jumped at the intrusion, startled, looking between the large woman in robes and the man with the painted skull and leather jacket. “What… what is this? Who are you two? What’s going on?â€

 

[trollthumper]

Nick looked at the man in the tie-dye T-shirt. Man, even in the most staunch conservative's nightmare of Sixties radicals holding the reins of liberal academia, I don't think it'd be this bad. He looked to Miras, as if to seek advice on how to proceed - but soon, he found his words outpacing his etiquette. "Professor Aquarius?" he asked. "I know this isn't exactly a conventional visit, but nothing we've been dealing with is conventional. I'm Nick Cimitiere. You may have heard of me. One of your students called up that which couldn't be put down. And, well... it put him down. We were wondering if you might know anything about your students getting involved in more... arcane studies."

It felt somewhat hypocritical to go for the brusque route when he'd felt so unsure about Miras doing the same thing. But, past a certain point, one had to admit that they were wearing black leather and skull make-up on a college campus at mid-day. It was not exactly the type of outfit conducive to tea and sympathy. 

[Raveled]

“Arcane studies?” Aquarius pulled at his long chin, patting his pockets absently. “I’m not sure what you mean by… Are you talking untabulated recordings?”

 

“We’re talking magic,” Miras said. “On of your graduate students, Brian Akanu, opened a hole to some place that no one should look at it, and something from there killed him.” She looked around the office, at the frayed jacket covers and tapes carefully stacked according to some personal system. “We don’t think you gave him something dangerous,” she lied, “but we do think Brian was working on his graduate studies when it… happened. Do you know what he was working on?”

 

Aquarius blinked owishly, but talking about academic matters seemed to focus him. “Brian was working on an analysis of group-generate music,” he said. The professor rose to his feet and began shuffling the papers and folders on his desk. “Spontaneous songs. Things that were not created by a single craftsman laboring away, but were generated by a crowd, without any one member leading the action.” He seemed to find the manilla file folder he was looking for and began leafing through it, looking up every few seconds to eye the mages. “I don’t suppose you could tell me what killed Brian?”

 

Miras exchanged a look at Nick. “We think it was some manifestation of a being called Azathoth.”

The folder hit the ground, spraying papers everywhere. Aquarius’s lined faced went gray, and he sat in his chair heavily. “Azathoth. No, it can’t be that. I would never… I never.” He suddenly leapt to his feet and pulled a particular, dog-eared record cover off the shelf. “It never left my office, you’ll see, I’m not responsible for it.” He opened the cover and showed it to Miras and Nick, and all three looked at the empty sleeve. “Oh merciful God,” Aquarius breathed. “It got out.”