[Void] An End, To All Things

[Blade Kuroda]

Shun's eyes snapped open as he felt... something welling up below him. Turning to the side, he saw Renard there, adding his blood and power to the sigil. And for a moment, a sensation of dread hit him as he wondered if he had prioritized things incorrectly.

There was no way for Renard to know what their over all intentions were here. Whatever he was adding, it could ultimately corrupt or skew everything.

"What are you doing?" he hissed before he moved to attempt to shove the man away from the sigil. His blood had already been added. He might have been too late. Zac had also mentioned something about being unable to fight here, but he had to try.

He had said before he'd try to stop the Enemy from doing what he pleased with magic. And he did not go back on his word.

Shibrogane

 

[Daekie]

ashton carver -- not interested in principalness and would like some ibuprofen

Ashton would like some tea, but she can't -- she has more important things to think about, like the pounding in her skull and the blood matting her hair with no apparent source -- she needs to go to the hospital. She'll go to the hospital if she survives this, and she'll think about a valid excuse, because she is so god damn scared it feels like her skull is sharpening into shards and piercing through her flesh to impale her like some sort of crystalline puppet --

This is not the time. The blood is already in her hair -- she has no need to receive another cut -- Ashton rubs one hand through her hair again, to get it nice and wet, and traces a bloody line over one of the angles of the trinity knot. She doesn't want to be part of this, part of something so actively world-and-paradigm-changing, but...she really has little choice.

So she helps. What else can she do? If it fails, they're all dead anyways, aren't they? And if it fails - she can never get anything she wants ever again. The way her teeth sharpen, elongate, grow harsher -- the wind in her fur -- she thinks about all that, focuses on all that, as she layers the line. Her magic. Her magic.

They will live, and they will win.  

[Smerdle]

Rabbit Vaughn
a very brief pre-renardblood interlude

It did hurt, but not right away. And Rabbit was ready for it, watching as his skin went from mostly whole (the scratches from the explosions at Andromache notwithstanding) to ow, that's a lot of blood in a matter of moments. He pressed his fingers to the cut, squeezing his lips together at the sting, and looked Temp's way as she performed the same service for a number of others.

"Thanks," he murmured with a bit of a nod, leaving her side to crouch near the sigil. He had watched the girl with the glasses draw it there, had seen it morph into something more, and when he reached toward it now, he couldn't help the giddy tingle of pride that bloomed in his chest as he touched it, leaving a thick red smudge across one side of its trunk. When he closed his eyes, he could picture their symbol emblazoned on a thousand t-shirts. It was perfect.

He didn't linger long, somehow confident that the blood and the casting didn't have to happen simultaneously, and not wanting to clog up the space. Rabbit shuffled a few steps back, palm compressing his wound, and tried to clear his mind of the things he didn't need.

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Quote:

i'm scrapping the casting stuffs that came after this and will rewrite but i can't get rid of the beginning bit because it doesn't make sense for him to not have done it right after temp cut him
i was trying to get his whole thing in one post but i'm too slow
pls forgive
ilu

 

[lizbot]

America Jones

"...amazing." America breathed out, for a moment caught up once again in that feeling of being help up and up and up in the tide of magic and held against the rush that would otherwise be frightening, be too much for an existence far too small. Blinking rapidly, it takes a moment to notice her cheeks are wet with tears.

It takes a few moments more for her to find the rest of her voice and ask the strange man, "Are you pushing at our will?"

shibrogane

 

[cibarium]

Eve

"Why should you get to have any part of this?" hissed Eve, anxious and defiant against the swell of magic looming under them. It didn't feel like help to her. It felt like a carpet-yank. He was trying to steer the course of their sigil and redefine the meaning of their mission. "I don't care how powerful you are. You're not invited to this party as far as I'm concerned." Fingernails curling into the rim of her teacup, she venemously suggested to the group:

"We could pull his blood back out if enough of us envisioned and willed it, I bet. Like imagining his little display gone backwards. Anyone else game to try?"  

[endejester]

“Why?” Zac frowns “What are you up to? You didn’t want any of us associating with Sunny in the first place, not really. And you were the last one BOUND by this spell, who are -you- trying to bind sir. Or what?”

Zac frowned uncertain. He didn’t trust this, not at all. Was Renard trying to bind sunny as well, or….

It wasn’t as though he were going to bind himself.

he glanced at even and gave a small anxious shake of his head to indicate he didn't know.

"... We can, try?" He offered. "especially if he won't answer. It's not as though he's going to try and bind himself after all."

lizbot

cibarium

shiberogane

Just checking the book to see if there is anything in it that might answer Eve's question about pulling blood out again

((Because what time isn't a good time to try and search old books for information))  

[AMItotic]

Lily Babineaux

It felt like a vagueness, a fog made flesh, the subtle din of fluorescent lighting that buzzed in the back of Lily's mind. The roar of some kind of explosive, the hissing noise of a soda fountain, shaken repetitive words. And then Lily was elsewhere, clutching at her head in silence behind a throng of people, talking and shouting and bickering and just in general being loud, which was rather disagreeable to the space-time hangover she apparently had.

She opened her eyes slowly, staring hesitantly at the table, the bloody knife in Temperance's hand, the man who had come through the door. Shaking the debris from her hair, she blinked as she assessed what might have been happening, what the other groups might have surmised from their journeys through time. Lily herself had nothing to show for it, but she couldn't pass up the opportunity to be the peanut gallery, given the chance. After all, she'd now fallen through two voids to get here.

"Hey, it's that...person..." she chimed in weakly as she looked at Sibyl in muggle clothes, her voice a low creak under the other more important conversations. She glanced over at Eve and her tea-pot with eyes that were tired and yearning, but she was patient--it was easy enough to figure out that tea was for blood donors, and that she needed to wait her turn.

Quote:

hello everyone is it too late for me to join the party

 

[shibrogane]

He lifts his hand from the sigil: whatever he was trying to do, it seems the damage has been done. "It's my life's work," he says. Renard, born in a world overflowing with magic, seems to use it without thinking. He's solid against Shun's shove. The magic of the room revolts back at Shun for it, the force of his own shove rocketing back at him. This is a no-PVP zone.

"I'm... reinforcing it," says Renard. "I doubt it's a skill you've learned. Lending power takes a deeper understanding of magic."

"She's my daughter," says Renard. "I birthed her. Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh, I gave birth to that girl. I despise the construct that forced me to birth her. But I don't despise her. You think I want her twisted like that? You think I want her entrapped as I was?

"You could remove me, weaken the magical design," says Renard. "Or you could use the magic of this place to examine my intentions. You can make it to show you what it is I did. You could force me to tell you the truth." He sneers at that, as if he doubts they'll find anything different than what he's confessed. "What greater indignity can I bear than spending millennia separated from the very air I breathed?"

He says to Marcus, snidely, "This is hardly the place or time for memes. Have you considered that everything happening at this moment will affect your casting?"

saedusk

answer

Blade Kuroda

reaction

lizbot

answer

cibarium

reaction

iStoleYurVamps

reaction

There is nothing in the book about removing blood. Why would they have needed that? Their sigil was never meant to be undone.

endejester

 

[lizbot]

Nodding, America offered him a hopeful sort of smile before fully focusing on the sigil once again.

"It's not harmful even if it's startling. Just the opposite. Focus on what y'all want from this thing cause we can go further, safer like this."

That this was Sunny's father and the rest of it...

Later. There was definitely going to be a later.

shibrogane

 

[Smerdle]

Rabbit Vaughn

With family already on his mind, Rabbit might have more quickly assumed that this sudden sacrifice would be beneficial had he known the man's connection to this mess. As it was, he didn't recognize Renard, and he had no idea he was Sunny's father until he said as much. Hadn't someone been talking about body parts or links to casters or whatever?

"Maybe he's like Heliodora's foot," Rabbit said, his voice a whisper even though he'd meant for it to carry. One shoulder rose in a minute shrug, then he nodded vaguely at America's suggestion and got back to focusing.

Olivia. Sywyly. Neverain. Oroh. His mother. Jim. The people in this room. His magic. Ezra. Ashdown, both halves. He pushed his other thoughts away again until those were all that remained, then constructed a triangle in his mind that floated over the bloodstained tree and keys: three people standing at arm's length with one in the middle. Principals. He hoped he was doing this right.

The first was that kid, the one with the dark hair and the frantic, starry eyes. The one whose double had been up on stage back in 1989, elegant and troubled. The one who clutched that notebook and read from it like all of their lives depended on what was inside. And maybe they did. With all of his heart he needed to, he'd said, and Rabbit believed him.

The second was the cop, Shun. He was stable, knowledgeable, a protector. He got stuff done. Rabbit didn't know the half of it.

The last was Temperance, cutter and bandager of arms. She was a protector too, though after the fact. A healer. Someone who wanted to help all the time without realizing that sometimes that wasn't possible. He felt a little like he owed her. Not that envisioning her as one of his three was any sort of payment. It felt like a punishment, if anything. Maybe if they both made it out of here alive, he could work up the courage to give her what she wanted.

The being in the center was Sunny. He hardly knew her at all, but he was still under the impression that beneath it all, she was who they were here to fix. He stood stock still, vulnerable as he fed his magic to their symbol.

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Quote:

not a candidate

principals: zac, temp, shun
fourth: sunny
mission statement:

adaptation/the capacity for change - tree
equality - sirens/oroh vs mundane ashdown and rabbit's wish that no one thing overtakes any of the others
checks and balances - same
safety for all

this is the vaguest ever
what is coherency
sorry again <3

 

[endejester]

There were a lot of thoughts in his head. Previous conversations about Sunny, but he wasn’t sure that the implications that she wasn’t ‘right’, though that hadn’t been exactly how it had been phrased, ran in any way contrary to what he was seeing now. After all, people could want to protect you, could do a great many things towards that end, and still be harmful, so very harmful.

But. He hadn’t put Sunny herself in his thoughts when he did the ritual either.

He glanced away and worried at his lip.

“Thank you for bolstering the magic, I hope none of us will regret what we’re trying.”

Zac said cautiously. Though the idea of getting the magic of this place to show what Renard had done, it was as tempting as it was simultaneously appalling in that it was terribly invasive.

“Maybe rather than trying to pull the story out of you by force, one day you’ll share with us of your own accord sir, as you are sharing magic with us now.”

shibrogane

addressing

 

[cibarium]

Leila

Leila stiffened, turned pale -- that's what Friend meant -- "so Sunny's the Princess?" she blurted out, looking to Renard. "Princess was a pet name? The Multitude had me carry this baby through other Ashdown and bring it to an older woman, called her a Princess. And now they're telling me you, her, and that stone thing are all the same power." She hunkered down, squinted, and swallowed dryly. "Is Sunny even supposed to be alive? Is that why..."

Lady had spoken to Eve's pack about the Enemy's fear of death, and the inability of magic to restore the dead to life. She'd thought the Enemy had usurped the world only for itself, but maybe --


Eve

The werefox was still angry, but slightly cooled after the minute between Renard's words and others' replies. "Zac's right, but you're not wrong. Sunny has..." she squinted too, in thought, "She's hurt a lot of people. Acting on her behalf without her consent is going to lead to more harm." Just like with Michael. "If we can't change that now, we can acknowledge it in our final casting."

With a long sigh, she summoned up a stack of thin moleskine notebooks and offered them tersely over. "If you want to explain, give it freely, your own words and handwriting. I'd like to be able to take it home and think about what you have to say."

shibogane

 

[chiickadee]

Chel's hands reached to catch Shun as he was pushed back. Oy. Why did Shun have to shove that hard??

"Then teach us how to reinforce it, asswipe. Get off yer weird high horse an' take it seriously instead of actin' like yer special 'cause you know s**t we don't."

blade kuroda

shibrogane