I did the math for like money stuff, and... alright, well first, do you think I'd be able to write as a living? Graphic Design, the field I'd gone into college to study, my design work has always been dragged down by the fact that I love cramming as much copy in there as I can. That's low on the list of why come I'm so bad at designing, but it is on there. The point being, I'm more likely to make money off of writing than, the thing I'm declared in.
So let's take that as a yes and move on.
Writers of the Future is a competition I've always wanted to enter, but they only allow amateurs, meaning those who haven't gotten paid for writing yet. So that's the hurdle I want to overcome before going in on getting paid.
I do have a story idea for a WotF submission, so that's my next writing-type writing project. As for revisions of Anachronominion, well I've got the whole thing as a Google Doc, so I'll just, like, link to that, and anybody who's interested can follow along there?
Things That Don't Even Come Back Around (a writing blog.)
Saturday, December 2, 2017
Friday, December 1, 2017
what now: revision schedule
I always figured the book should be, decently thick, just thick enough to qualify as thick and no thicker. That thickness right there that you just pictured, that exact thickness.
50,000 words is significantly, not as thick as that.
So revision drafts I want to make, in no real order I guess:
Character- add character quirks more consistently, rewrite characters for voice consistency, and like stuff I discovered about characters as I wrote. Like Unwin's "No, but Yes" tendencies and, hold on, I think the Pontifex developed a personality in there somewhere... right, his tendency to ramble, and maybe somehow the idea that he wants to hurt Moone good but stops himself every time.
Plot- figure out plot points at the sections I handwaved; write those chunks; go back and foreshadow. This may involve copious research, and needing to go back and rewrite parts where I found out I got it wrong; I'm going to go back and foreshadow these twists as well, but that may be a different draft revision.
Other stuff: I can't think of it right now, but there were a couple of other things I wanted to revise for as well. If I manage to think of them I'll put them here.
NaNoWriMo was fun. I think I'll continue writing, not just on my main blog but on this writing blog, every day. It won't have to be 1667 words, but, 1000 will do???
50,000 words is significantly, not as thick as that.
So revision drafts I want to make, in no real order I guess:
Character- add character quirks more consistently, rewrite characters for voice consistency, and like stuff I discovered about characters as I wrote. Like Unwin's "No, but Yes" tendencies and, hold on, I think the Pontifex developed a personality in there somewhere... right, his tendency to ramble, and maybe somehow the idea that he wants to hurt Moone good but stops himself every time.
Plot- figure out plot points at the sections I handwaved; write those chunks; go back and foreshadow. This may involve copious research, and needing to go back and rewrite parts where I found out I got it wrong; I'm going to go back and foreshadow these twists as well, but that may be a different draft revision.
Other stuff: I can't think of it right now, but there were a couple of other things I wanted to revise for as well. If I manage to think of them I'll put them here.
NaNoWriMo was fun. I think I'll continue writing, not just on my main blog but on this writing blog, every day. It won't have to be 1667 words, but, 1000 will do???
Thursday, November 30, 2017
nanowrimo 30/30: parts 26, 27, 28 (epilogue)!
The Pontifex slipped in somewhere behind Moone, but Moone quickly lost where; he found himself completely disoriented after entering the portal. The Dreamtime wasn't very much like what Moone was expecting after having visited the lesser dreaming. The dreaming was a filtered product of creation, ritual and myth echoing off of each other. The Dreamtime itself was the voice that had shouted into that valley into the first place.
Moone was there, and Moone was there, and Moone was there, back back back back back. Every man was his father, creation was still going on, and had already been completed, and was yet to be. Moone tried to clear his head; this was so disorienting.
The aboriginals of Australia don't find it odd to have conflicting mythology about the way something particular happened, from one group telling the story to another. Truth of things reflected itself, and the way a tale was told was true, if the truth was true, variations were also true. How was that?
Geography. Mythology. That's why it needed to be here. The Dreamtime, in Babel, would have been different from how the dreaming was there, all tied to the land. Here in Athens, at the heart of the ancient Athenian city state, it was Greek mythology, all of it, not just ancient but modern; the truth here was whatever people had said, all throughout time, all throughout this land.
Going back yet staying in the mythological present was like sliding along a scale, or, how to explain it? Moone had a difficult time attempting to do so later. Staying in one time, moving through the present, but sliding his mind back and forth through history, what people believed. Mind in Ancient Greece, God was Zeus, mind in Modern Greece, God was God.
Moone was in the present, the true present, in his mind, but could see into the past, and the past, the mythology that formed in front of him, was his own. The events that had led up to Xemf coming out victorious and opening up the portal. But this was all mythology, that's what the dreamtime showed, stories that were told of the origins, stories that might as well have been true as long as the present wound up the same, so Moone wasn't sure if this was the true story of how Xemf opened the portal, but it was the story that Moone made up in his mind, the instant small assumptions, gaps in logic filled in like, like a dream.
Moone had seen the end, Xemf transforming MacBeth, on his knees, into a rainbow vortex (was this the Bifrost or was this the Rainbow Serpent or was it both, and if it was a rainbow was that because it came that way or was it because that's how it was believed it should look) and so played it back, like hitting rewind on a VCR, saw MacBeth standing there, saw Xemf arrive, Larry arrive too late, Xemf turn around and lash out--
and Moone stepped in between them and pushed Larry out of the way, and somehow he knew that Larry was still alive now, back in reality, because Moone had changed the past, not the real past but the myth of the past. The Xemf of the Dreamtime, not being the true Xemf but a mythological version thereof, did nothing further beyond how the time had gone, now that the myth had been changed. [or something- don't they interact with the gods and change the myth later on, the gods don't freeze.]
And that was Xemf's plan, wasn't it, to change the writing of the NOC, not the Non-Official Cover but the actual Necro-nom-icon, the image of the names of the dead overwritten.
Xemf was in the mythological past, the Classical mythological past, but Xemf was also here right now, murder of Larry thwarted; was that how Moone was also his father his father his father, back back back back, everyone in place, compounding, because mythologies change throughout time. But here they could navigate through the when of that belief, naivete becoming knowledge, what was being altered or capable of being altered changing along a timeline of belief. I am my own father, because if a billiard ball traveled back in time, hit itself, that would compound, and there would be an infinite number of billiard balls; if Moone went back in the Dreamtime, took his mental state back to when he was already inside the portal, that would compound, he'd be there with himself. What would happen if one were to step through the Portal's version of the Portal? Would that collapse on itself, like the Pontifex's idea of bringing down the Tower of Babel? Would it be more billiard balls, spawning into the universe?
Or would it just pop one into the Dreamtime that one was already in, nothing effectively happening?One can't change the past; Moone had saved Larry by saving the present, not altering what happened in the past but what had happened in the present. The difference was major: Larry really had died, Moone had just, popped him back to life; back in reality Larry revived at a point, not before the portal had opened like in the myth, but after it, all taking place relative to Moone's own time in the portal.
Could Moone save Unwin, Lovecraft, Gef, everyone, this way? But no, he could only change the mythology of what happened here, in Athens, in the Acropolis. Mythology tied to geography, worship maybe. And the geography was off, to save those who had died anywhere but here.
There was no way to change where they were at, was there? Where the Dreamtime had been accessed, change where Xemf had opened the portal, but, no, again that wouldn't work, Xemf had opened the portal here, and getting it to change its mind on that would require being not-here, being before being here. It would only work if it already had worked, and... not even the Dreamtime would be able to change that.
Moone had spent so much time thinking about this, and no time at all. If it had taken time, would he have been able to change the way the Dreamtime worked by reverting to his primitive understanding of it, the initial assumption and shock of first going through the portal? But it hadn't been his assumption anyway, he'd been proven wrong, and if that were possible the other thing wouldn't be.
Or had it taken time? There was no reference here. The Xemf that had been thwarted just stood there frozen, the past being changed, its following actions not occurring and no future going on from that point, at least here in the Dreamtime. That was just a shadow Xemf, the real Xemf somewhere in the Dreamtime, even now changing the past, not changing the past but how the past had gone. [or maybe not, there should be a bigger fight scene somehow.]
Moone had been able to defeat the shadow Xemf because the shadow Xemf took place in a section of Dreamtime outside of Dreamtime, a myth Moone had created of Xemf's existence in the real world. Powers amplified, able to change form, here in the source of those powers, there was no telling what Xemf would be able to accomplish. What force would be able to stand against Xemf, the real Xemf?
Moone considered turning back, but without even needing to mull it over, changed his mind as he realized the answer.
So Moone brought his mind back, slid his mind's scale of time back to the ancient days, which took him before then, to when that version of reality was being created.
...
Mythological Greece. The Court of the Gods. [or wherever- why are we in the Parthenon and not at like Mt Olympus?]
Xemf was there already, of course. But where was the Pontifex, shouldn't he have gotten here already as well? Moone glanced around furtively, but gave up, realizing that if the Pontifex wanted to reveal himself he'd reveal himself, and turned his attention back to Xemf.
Xemf stood conversing with the Pantheon in all their glory, in Ancient Greek which might as well have been modern English now that Moone was back in the Dreamtime, having once spoken the Primordial Language in the dreaming. Pleading with them, about a book that it had...
The Pantheon here was not as we think of them in the modern world, but as envisioned by the Ancient Greeks. Not known just through their myths, which this was. But as actual household gods, arbiters of fate, the generous ones who bestow rain during dry times as blessings for righteousness, the just ones who send plague and famine to warn their followers against hubris.
There was a gorgeous feast set out, not just of ambrosia and honey but of roasted meats and fine stewed figs, olives and dates.
[bring up Pontifex again.] He'd slipped away, gotten to the ancient myths before Moone... Moone suddenly realized what myth he was in.
In the Dreamtime, everyone is their own father. And the Pontifex was a descendent of Lycaon, King of Arcadia. In Greek myth, the first werewolf. [foreshadow more clearly: Pontifex is a werewolf.] Pontifex had been here, the whole time.
The myth went that Lycaon served the flesh of his own son Nyctimus to the gods to test their omniscience, and was punished for it. The Pontifex had taken the place of Nyctimus here. If he hadn't been able to sacrifice himself to get to Dreamtime, the Pontifex sure would be able to sacrifice himself inside of Dreamtime.
And when the gods found out...
What force would be able to stand against Xemf, if not for gods themselves.
[the gods find out.] And they looked very displeased. Their punishment would have been to turn Lycaon into a common beast, for attempting to cause the consumption of human flesh, but Moone had to make this more dangerous, at least for Xemf.
What had the myth been like before? Changing something this far back into mythology wouldn't, once again, change the past- but it would change the present as though the past had been changed; the difference between the two didn't seem much, but was profound.
The myth would be different, people's attitudes toward the myth would be different, but their actions surrounding the myth would be the same-- did that allow free will, because decisions were already made and to erase them would be to deny will, or did having the decisions remain the same itself erase the concept of free will?
[Moone sics the gods on Xemf, maybe it transforms into a wolf but would that make Xemf Lycaon?? I think Pontifex is also Lycaon. Lycaon is here, guess the myth wasn't that altered after all. There's a huge epic climax-worthy battle, Moone realizing that his own boon and bane are enhanced in the dreamtime as well far above what the Pontifex could grant, and twists his boon around his bane again, becoming basically invincible against gods. Xemf is defeated; Moone makes out with the NOC list.]
[Moone goes to exit the dreamtime, maybe there's a suspense-type time constraint?]
Moone brought himself back to the moment the portal was created, MacBeth's flesh exploding into unimaginably brilliant colors like a prism made of fire. Maybe to get out of the Dreamtime, one just had to... go through the portal the opposite way? That would make sense.
Moone did so, and nothing happened. Guess that answers the question of what would happen entering the portal inside of itself, Moone thought, and his thought came as a voice and as one thousand rushing waters. What else...
Moone brought himself back, not through the timeline in relationship to understanding the myth, but through the myth itself.
Moone breathed out. Here was Xemf with MacBeth in front of him, MacBeth on his knees, seconds before Xemf turned him into the portal. Moone replicated Xemf's stance, placing his hand on MacBeth's forehead. And ripped MacBeth out, the portal never being created and the Dreamtime collapsing.
MacBeth and Moone fell to the earth and rolled a short rocky distance down the steps and the hill. It was as long as it had been since the portal was created now for Moone, the same idea behind the passage of time in Moone's and Pontifex's return from Babel; in reality the portal had been open for a few moments, but now sometime after it had closed Moone had collapsed it, and both MacBeth and Moone popped out of nowhere.
Moone rolled over, sore, and looked at the groaning form of MacBeth. The Pontifex had gotten a chance to sacrifice himself, like he'd always wanted, but MacBeth was still alive from closing the portal, from having been the portal, but then closing, and living. Moone looked at MacBeth, breathing softly there, with sadness.
The Pontifex hadn't needed to die. The Pontifex shouldn't have died. The world lost something, Moone couldn't help but shake the feeling, lost something grand, some irretrievable part of itself that should never have been given up, when the Pontifex died.
But to sacrifice himself had been the Pontifex's choice. Even if he hadn't needed to die to create a portal, it did accomplish a purpose in changing the myth. Time would tell what that would mean, though.
Time would tell what that would mean.
...
A few hours later, Moone and the five members of Unwin's old team were on the Mothman's private jet and headed back for the States. Moone sat in the same seat he'd used coming up to Athens in the first place. It had only been that morning, it was hard to believe, and he'd been in Babel only a few hours before that. The seat was the same, same crisp polished leather; Moone himself was a lot more, wrinkled, now. Like a shirt that had been wadded up and pressed wrong.
Moone stared emptily at the glass that he'd been drinking from that morning, the ice cubes all melted now, a small pool of water staring blankly back at him. He considered his next move, the NOC list held in both hands.
Xemf was dead, but the rest of its conspiracy still out there somewhere; Moone needed some way to shine cleansing sunlight on the conspiracy, dissolve it. The last scattered remains of the Pontifex's old organization were presumably out there somewhere as well, but without such a key player, they were bound to dissolve like the Soviet Union before them.
Moone considered whom he was going up against, an ancient and [profound] organization, powerful enough to rip his boon apart from his bane, powerful enough to control the weather. There was a distinct possibility that if they'd had agents in the Tetragrammaton, they'd have agents in non-supernatural organizations too, probably at every level of government and not just in the United States'.
Moone shook his head, his hands in his hair, and puffed out a breath from between his cheeks. If they truly were that powerful, he couldn't afford not to blow the whistle on this. Come what may. Even if they did have the power to potentially tear people's auras apart gaess from gaess, well, Moone did have a couple of plans to work around that...
As far as the [method] of exposing the conspiracy, Moone did have a medium for [exposure.] A medium who happened to have been embedded in the conspiracy at a high level, and who also happened to be a literal medium.
Moone looked over at MacBeth, still alive but now asleep and handcuffed to his seat across the aisle from him. [Thing established earlier, some kind of key able to allow Moone to hijack MacBeth's psychic powers, to leak MacBeth's secrets.] The host to receive the secrets would be David Icke, an English football star who'd been arbitrarily chosen to be a Son of the Godhead, a recipient of arcane knowledge, a line set up just for such occasions. Such recipients were generally celebrities, as their built-in fanbase allowed the blown whistle to be heard loudest; the Son of the Godhead before Icke had been a fairly established pulp fiction author, and before that had been... Moone wasn't sure, but he'd always guessed Elvis; there always seemed to be a lot of conspiracies built around that man.
Moone readied the key and paused. As great as Moone's own sacrifice was in all of this, Icke's would be greater. Such a [data dump] would be bigger than anything he'd received before, and would go on to shape much of the rest of his life. Though most did consider being chosen to be Son of the Godhead a great honor, and it was true. The man did seem to be genuinely having a blast wearing turquoise everywhere, and living in a menage-a-trois.
Some guys have all the luck, thought Moone. And turned the key.
EPILOGUE
Following Moone's leak of MacBeth's secrets to the public, Moone was exonerated and back at the agency, and didn't have to work out his issues alone. He did have many of those, to work out.
Working out assembling a new team. Working out the loss of each member of his old one. Working out the idea of a public who would now know of the truth. Working out the fact that he was the one responsible for this increase in public knowledge, the dark corners he and his kind used to hiding in being lightened a bit, suddenly and irretrievably. The rise of technology was contributing to this already, and there was no way of telling how those would interact.
For now, Moone mulled the basics; the public would know the truth and could choose to either accept it or ignore it. The same of any truth; these were universals, though Moone firmly believed that no truth could ever be truly known. But that shouldn't stop people from hunting it down.
Moone still thought about the Pontifex every day. Thought about the myth of Nyctimus, the meaning of it, sacrificing a son and testing out whether the gods were truly omniscient. There was something vitally inexorably profound in that, and Moone knew it related to his current position-- but, as hard as he thought about it, he could only scratch the surface of its significance.
[he's talking to someone about the myth of Nyctimus, discussing the symbolism.]
"The cannibalism thing, specifically, is what gets me. [somethinsomethin] and killing his son off forever."
"Um. Nyctimus was brought back to life, dude."
"Nyctimus--"
"Was brought back to life. Yeah. Resurrected by the gods after his father was punished, and went on to become King of Arcadia himself. Everyone knows this. If you're going to discuss symbolism--"
"Revived, revived by the gods," Moone corrected, hurriedly interrupting and turning to put on his coat. "Thanks, mate. Gotta rush."
[person] was left at a loss what to say; they shrugged and returned to their work.
Everyone was supposed to know that part of the myth, except Moone hadn't. Sudden fluctuations in mythology, that was a sign of... well.
Moone drove home, cruising on the [illegal] side of the speed limit. The house was just as dark and quiet tonight as that night [number] years ago when Smith had recruited him for the first time; it sometimes felt like only a few weeks ago, but sometimes felt a lot longer than it really was. Tonight, it felt ancient; like mythology.
Moone busted out his brand-new laptop, an IBM ThinkPad 700, and logged into the internet. The ThinkPad 700 was an impressive machine, boasting 120 megabytes of hard drive, and a 50 megahertz CPU, which meant it ran at a blazing 50 million cycles per second, so logging onto the dial-up only took him [humorously long time.] Moone didn't know what he was going to do with all his free time, with speeds like this.
He logged into Usenet, and ran a search for any news about werewolves. There was a new newsgroup under the .alt hierarchy dedicated entirely to the topic, which hadn't been there a few days ago; another excellent sign. The Pontifex could have been still out there somewhere, and if he was, the date that that newsgroup appeared would have been the date that mythology had changed. Moone sucked in a breath. Clicked into it.
And got on the hunt.
Moone was there, and Moone was there, and Moone was there, back back back back back. Every man was his father, creation was still going on, and had already been completed, and was yet to be. Moone tried to clear his head; this was so disorienting.
The aboriginals of Australia don't find it odd to have conflicting mythology about the way something particular happened, from one group telling the story to another. Truth of things reflected itself, and the way a tale was told was true, if the truth was true, variations were also true. How was that?
Geography. Mythology. That's why it needed to be here. The Dreamtime, in Babel, would have been different from how the dreaming was there, all tied to the land. Here in Athens, at the heart of the ancient Athenian city state, it was Greek mythology, all of it, not just ancient but modern; the truth here was whatever people had said, all throughout time, all throughout this land.
Going back yet staying in the mythological present was like sliding along a scale, or, how to explain it? Moone had a difficult time attempting to do so later. Staying in one time, moving through the present, but sliding his mind back and forth through history, what people believed. Mind in Ancient Greece, God was Zeus, mind in Modern Greece, God was God.
Moone was in the present, the true present, in his mind, but could see into the past, and the past, the mythology that formed in front of him, was his own. The events that had led up to Xemf coming out victorious and opening up the portal. But this was all mythology, that's what the dreamtime showed, stories that were told of the origins, stories that might as well have been true as long as the present wound up the same, so Moone wasn't sure if this was the true story of how Xemf opened the portal, but it was the story that Moone made up in his mind, the instant small assumptions, gaps in logic filled in like, like a dream.
Moone had seen the end, Xemf transforming MacBeth, on his knees, into a rainbow vortex (was this the Bifrost or was this the Rainbow Serpent or was it both, and if it was a rainbow was that because it came that way or was it because that's how it was believed it should look) and so played it back, like hitting rewind on a VCR, saw MacBeth standing there, saw Xemf arrive, Larry arrive too late, Xemf turn around and lash out--
and Moone stepped in between them and pushed Larry out of the way, and somehow he knew that Larry was still alive now, back in reality, because Moone had changed the past, not the real past but the myth of the past. The Xemf of the Dreamtime, not being the true Xemf but a mythological version thereof, did nothing further beyond how the time had gone, now that the myth had been changed. [or something- don't they interact with the gods and change the myth later on, the gods don't freeze.]
And that was Xemf's plan, wasn't it, to change the writing of the NOC, not the Non-Official Cover but the actual Necro-nom-icon, the image of the names of the dead overwritten.
Xemf was in the mythological past, the Classical mythological past, but Xemf was also here right now, murder of Larry thwarted; was that how Moone was also his father his father his father, back back back back, everyone in place, compounding, because mythologies change throughout time. But here they could navigate through the when of that belief, naivete becoming knowledge, what was being altered or capable of being altered changing along a timeline of belief. I am my own father, because if a billiard ball traveled back in time, hit itself, that would compound, and there would be an infinite number of billiard balls; if Moone went back in the Dreamtime, took his mental state back to when he was already inside the portal, that would compound, he'd be there with himself. What would happen if one were to step through the Portal's version of the Portal? Would that collapse on itself, like the Pontifex's idea of bringing down the Tower of Babel? Would it be more billiard balls, spawning into the universe?
Or would it just pop one into the Dreamtime that one was already in, nothing effectively happening?One can't change the past; Moone had saved Larry by saving the present, not altering what happened in the past but what had happened in the present. The difference was major: Larry really had died, Moone had just, popped him back to life; back in reality Larry revived at a point, not before the portal had opened like in the myth, but after it, all taking place relative to Moone's own time in the portal.
Could Moone save Unwin, Lovecraft, Gef, everyone, this way? But no, he could only change the mythology of what happened here, in Athens, in the Acropolis. Mythology tied to geography, worship maybe. And the geography was off, to save those who had died anywhere but here.
There was no way to change where they were at, was there? Where the Dreamtime had been accessed, change where Xemf had opened the portal, but, no, again that wouldn't work, Xemf had opened the portal here, and getting it to change its mind on that would require being not-here, being before being here. It would only work if it already had worked, and... not even the Dreamtime would be able to change that.
Moone had spent so much time thinking about this, and no time at all. If it had taken time, would he have been able to change the way the Dreamtime worked by reverting to his primitive understanding of it, the initial assumption and shock of first going through the portal? But it hadn't been his assumption anyway, he'd been proven wrong, and if that were possible the other thing wouldn't be.
Or had it taken time? There was no reference here. The Xemf that had been thwarted just stood there frozen, the past being changed, its following actions not occurring and no future going on from that point, at least here in the Dreamtime. That was just a shadow Xemf, the real Xemf somewhere in the Dreamtime, even now changing the past, not changing the past but how the past had gone. [or maybe not, there should be a bigger fight scene somehow.]
Moone had been able to defeat the shadow Xemf because the shadow Xemf took place in a section of Dreamtime outside of Dreamtime, a myth Moone had created of Xemf's existence in the real world. Powers amplified, able to change form, here in the source of those powers, there was no telling what Xemf would be able to accomplish. What force would be able to stand against Xemf, the real Xemf?
Moone considered turning back, but without even needing to mull it over, changed his mind as he realized the answer.
So Moone brought his mind back, slid his mind's scale of time back to the ancient days, which took him before then, to when that version of reality was being created.
...
Mythological Greece. The Court of the Gods. [or wherever- why are we in the Parthenon and not at like Mt Olympus?]
Xemf was there already, of course. But where was the Pontifex, shouldn't he have gotten here already as well? Moone glanced around furtively, but gave up, realizing that if the Pontifex wanted to reveal himself he'd reveal himself, and turned his attention back to Xemf.
Xemf stood conversing with the Pantheon in all their glory, in Ancient Greek which might as well have been modern English now that Moone was back in the Dreamtime, having once spoken the Primordial Language in the dreaming. Pleading with them, about a book that it had...
The Pantheon here was not as we think of them in the modern world, but as envisioned by the Ancient Greeks. Not known just through their myths, which this was. But as actual household gods, arbiters of fate, the generous ones who bestow rain during dry times as blessings for righteousness, the just ones who send plague and famine to warn their followers against hubris.
There was a gorgeous feast set out, not just of ambrosia and honey but of roasted meats and fine stewed figs, olives and dates.
[bring up Pontifex again.] He'd slipped away, gotten to the ancient myths before Moone... Moone suddenly realized what myth he was in.
In the Dreamtime, everyone is their own father. And the Pontifex was a descendent of Lycaon, King of Arcadia. In Greek myth, the first werewolf. [foreshadow more clearly: Pontifex is a werewolf.] Pontifex had been here, the whole time.
The myth went that Lycaon served the flesh of his own son Nyctimus to the gods to test their omniscience, and was punished for it. The Pontifex had taken the place of Nyctimus here. If he hadn't been able to sacrifice himself to get to Dreamtime, the Pontifex sure would be able to sacrifice himself inside of Dreamtime.
And when the gods found out...
What force would be able to stand against Xemf, if not for gods themselves.
[the gods find out.] And they looked very displeased. Their punishment would have been to turn Lycaon into a common beast, for attempting to cause the consumption of human flesh, but Moone had to make this more dangerous, at least for Xemf.
What had the myth been like before? Changing something this far back into mythology wouldn't, once again, change the past- but it would change the present as though the past had been changed; the difference between the two didn't seem much, but was profound.
The myth would be different, people's attitudes toward the myth would be different, but their actions surrounding the myth would be the same-- did that allow free will, because decisions were already made and to erase them would be to deny will, or did having the decisions remain the same itself erase the concept of free will?
[Moone sics the gods on Xemf, maybe it transforms into a wolf but would that make Xemf Lycaon?? I think Pontifex is also Lycaon. Lycaon is here, guess the myth wasn't that altered after all. There's a huge epic climax-worthy battle, Moone realizing that his own boon and bane are enhanced in the dreamtime as well far above what the Pontifex could grant, and twists his boon around his bane again, becoming basically invincible against gods. Xemf is defeated; Moone makes out with the NOC list.]
[Moone goes to exit the dreamtime, maybe there's a suspense-type time constraint?]
Moone brought himself back to the moment the portal was created, MacBeth's flesh exploding into unimaginably brilliant colors like a prism made of fire. Maybe to get out of the Dreamtime, one just had to... go through the portal the opposite way? That would make sense.
Moone did so, and nothing happened. Guess that answers the question of what would happen entering the portal inside of itself, Moone thought, and his thought came as a voice and as one thousand rushing waters. What else...
Moone brought himself back, not through the timeline in relationship to understanding the myth, but through the myth itself.
Moone breathed out. Here was Xemf with MacBeth in front of him, MacBeth on his knees, seconds before Xemf turned him into the portal. Moone replicated Xemf's stance, placing his hand on MacBeth's forehead. And ripped MacBeth out, the portal never being created and the Dreamtime collapsing.
MacBeth and Moone fell to the earth and rolled a short rocky distance down the steps and the hill. It was as long as it had been since the portal was created now for Moone, the same idea behind the passage of time in Moone's and Pontifex's return from Babel; in reality the portal had been open for a few moments, but now sometime after it had closed Moone had collapsed it, and both MacBeth and Moone popped out of nowhere.
Moone rolled over, sore, and looked at the groaning form of MacBeth. The Pontifex had gotten a chance to sacrifice himself, like he'd always wanted, but MacBeth was still alive from closing the portal, from having been the portal, but then closing, and living. Moone looked at MacBeth, breathing softly there, with sadness.
The Pontifex hadn't needed to die. The Pontifex shouldn't have died. The world lost something, Moone couldn't help but shake the feeling, lost something grand, some irretrievable part of itself that should never have been given up, when the Pontifex died.
But to sacrifice himself had been the Pontifex's choice. Even if he hadn't needed to die to create a portal, it did accomplish a purpose in changing the myth. Time would tell what that would mean, though.
Time would tell what that would mean.
...
A few hours later, Moone and the five members of Unwin's old team were on the Mothman's private jet and headed back for the States. Moone sat in the same seat he'd used coming up to Athens in the first place. It had only been that morning, it was hard to believe, and he'd been in Babel only a few hours before that. The seat was the same, same crisp polished leather; Moone himself was a lot more, wrinkled, now. Like a shirt that had been wadded up and pressed wrong.
Moone stared emptily at the glass that he'd been drinking from that morning, the ice cubes all melted now, a small pool of water staring blankly back at him. He considered his next move, the NOC list held in both hands.
Xemf was dead, but the rest of its conspiracy still out there somewhere; Moone needed some way to shine cleansing sunlight on the conspiracy, dissolve it. The last scattered remains of the Pontifex's old organization were presumably out there somewhere as well, but without such a key player, they were bound to dissolve like the Soviet Union before them.
Moone considered whom he was going up against, an ancient and [profound] organization, powerful enough to rip his boon apart from his bane, powerful enough to control the weather. There was a distinct possibility that if they'd had agents in the Tetragrammaton, they'd have agents in non-supernatural organizations too, probably at every level of government and not just in the United States'.
Moone shook his head, his hands in his hair, and puffed out a breath from between his cheeks. If they truly were that powerful, he couldn't afford not to blow the whistle on this. Come what may. Even if they did have the power to potentially tear people's auras apart gaess from gaess, well, Moone did have a couple of plans to work around that...
As far as the [method] of exposing the conspiracy, Moone did have a medium for [exposure.] A medium who happened to have been embedded in the conspiracy at a high level, and who also happened to be a literal medium.
Moone looked over at MacBeth, still alive but now asleep and handcuffed to his seat across the aisle from him. [Thing established earlier, some kind of key able to allow Moone to hijack MacBeth's psychic powers, to leak MacBeth's secrets.] The host to receive the secrets would be David Icke, an English football star who'd been arbitrarily chosen to be a Son of the Godhead, a recipient of arcane knowledge, a line set up just for such occasions. Such recipients were generally celebrities, as their built-in fanbase allowed the blown whistle to be heard loudest; the Son of the Godhead before Icke had been a fairly established pulp fiction author, and before that had been... Moone wasn't sure, but he'd always guessed Elvis; there always seemed to be a lot of conspiracies built around that man.
Moone readied the key and paused. As great as Moone's own sacrifice was in all of this, Icke's would be greater. Such a [data dump] would be bigger than anything he'd received before, and would go on to shape much of the rest of his life. Though most did consider being chosen to be Son of the Godhead a great honor, and it was true. The man did seem to be genuinely having a blast wearing turquoise everywhere, and living in a menage-a-trois.
Some guys have all the luck, thought Moone. And turned the key.
EPILOGUE
Following Moone's leak of MacBeth's secrets to the public, Moone was exonerated and back at the agency, and didn't have to work out his issues alone. He did have many of those, to work out.
Working out assembling a new team. Working out the loss of each member of his old one. Working out the idea of a public who would now know of the truth. Working out the fact that he was the one responsible for this increase in public knowledge, the dark corners he and his kind used to hiding in being lightened a bit, suddenly and irretrievably. The rise of technology was contributing to this already, and there was no way of telling how those would interact.
For now, Moone mulled the basics; the public would know the truth and could choose to either accept it or ignore it. The same of any truth; these were universals, though Moone firmly believed that no truth could ever be truly known. But that shouldn't stop people from hunting it down.
Moone still thought about the Pontifex every day. Thought about the myth of Nyctimus, the meaning of it, sacrificing a son and testing out whether the gods were truly omniscient. There was something vitally inexorably profound in that, and Moone knew it related to his current position-- but, as hard as he thought about it, he could only scratch the surface of its significance.
[he's talking to someone about the myth of Nyctimus, discussing the symbolism.]
"The cannibalism thing, specifically, is what gets me. [somethinsomethin] and killing his son off forever."
"Um. Nyctimus was brought back to life, dude."
"Nyctimus--"
"Was brought back to life. Yeah. Resurrected by the gods after his father was punished, and went on to become King of Arcadia himself. Everyone knows this. If you're going to discuss symbolism--"
"Revived, revived by the gods," Moone corrected, hurriedly interrupting and turning to put on his coat. "Thanks, mate. Gotta rush."
[person] was left at a loss what to say; they shrugged and returned to their work.
Everyone was supposed to know that part of the myth, except Moone hadn't. Sudden fluctuations in mythology, that was a sign of... well.
Moone drove home, cruising on the [illegal] side of the speed limit. The house was just as dark and quiet tonight as that night [number] years ago when Smith had recruited him for the first time; it sometimes felt like only a few weeks ago, but sometimes felt a lot longer than it really was. Tonight, it felt ancient; like mythology.
Moone busted out his brand-new laptop, an IBM ThinkPad 700, and logged into the internet. The ThinkPad 700 was an impressive machine, boasting 120 megabytes of hard drive, and a 50 megahertz CPU, which meant it ran at a blazing 50 million cycles per second, so logging onto the dial-up only took him [humorously long time.] Moone didn't know what he was going to do with all his free time, with speeds like this.
He logged into Usenet, and ran a search for any news about werewolves. There was a new newsgroup under the .alt hierarchy dedicated entirely to the topic, which hadn't been there a few days ago; another excellent sign. The Pontifex could have been still out there somewhere, and if he was, the date that that newsgroup appeared would have been the date that mythology had changed. Moone sucked in a breath. Clicked into it.
And got on the hunt.
day 30/30: Parts 24 and 25
"Xemf is in Athens already. And it's headed for the Pantheon right now."
...
"We can't let Xemf get to the Acropolis," Moone reminded everyone needlessly; they'd all already been very well-briefed. The plane touched down on the tarmac and the team rushed out the jet's door almost as soon as it opened for them; if Moone hadn't been a known enemy of the state he would have already called in a motorcade of SUVs waiting for them at the airport, and Unwin's men still technically worked for Overneath and had no foreign jurisdiction. So they had to improvise.
They improvised.
Five minutes later four of the team were piled into a humvee and rushing down [road name,] speeding toward Xemf's location as Xemf made its way down the same highway to the Pantheon. Tor Orson was at the wheel, Moone in the passenger seat, with the Pontifex and Larry in the back.
"What are we looking for exactly?" Tor asked, eyes firmly on the road.
"Well, [explanation,]" Moone explained. There was a construction project [etc, explain Athenian infrastructure projects of late 80s and early 90s] which meant that traffic was [not as bad as it would have been etc, but rerouted etc do research on specific dates and projects.]
Larry, the sharpshooter, got on the humvee's roof through the [humvee sunroof] and set up a sniper's perch, them traveling down the [highway] at 55 miles per hour. He wielded a [gun] with silver bullets, which would certainly do the trick against Xemf if cold iron was effective against it.
Moone scooted into the backseat to see the sniper off. "Alright, Larry," he said up through the [sunroof.] "Take out Xemf. But MacBeth is mine. They're probably going to meet up at the Parthenon; I'll bet anything that MacBeth is there already."
"I thought you said he'd be out of the picture?"
"Not if you do your job."
Larry paused. "You think Xemf is going to kill MacBeth, don't you? Sort of punishment for failing the conspiracy, letting you onto them."
Moone nodded, squinting in the wind as they blew down the highway. "There's more to it than that, but yes."
"What?"
"Well, it's just a theory, but... Xemf needs to access the dreamtime, specifically at the Parthenon in order to [activate the Necronomicon.]" [or wherever; maybe somewhere else at the acropolis with more mythological significance, like seriously it's not the only temple to Athena, and what would Athena have to do with the NOC list? research! and then once we've figured it out foreshadow!]
"Yes..."
"And opening up the Dreamtime would kill Xemf."
"So... Xemf is going to kill MacBeth instead, so that it doesn't have to be the one to die? Somehow?"
"That's what I think, yes. Xemf is a shapeshifter, who has the ability to bestow its own aura on others now. I think it's possible that Xemf can shapeshift its aura off of itself, the two auras syncretizing, so that it doesn't need to be the host when the aura compounds in on itself to create the portal."
"And MacBeth would be the portal, very clever."
"But he doesn't need to be. It could be any of us, or even a random tourist. So your job right now is a lot more essential than mine."
"Got it," said Larry.
"Target spotted," said Tor. "[whatever] o'clock."
Moone shifted back into the passenger seat and looked in the direction Orson had indicated. There was a [vehicle.] Driving it was Xemf, in the form of Himsters Keepses. They were about [distance] away from the Acropolis, and beginning to make their way through more urbanized areas. Moone reached up a fist and bumped on the humvee's ceiling. "Take him out, Larry."
And something smashed through Moone's window, shattering safety glass all over the inside of the front [cabin.] What the...?
Moone turned.
And was face-to-face with the final assassin. Slice.
The most dangerous of the three.
...
"Take out this guy, take out this guy!" Moone shrieked up to Larry, as Slice slashed a sword through the air, plunging it into the car's interior and missing Moone by centimeters. It was a wakizashi, like a shorter, one-handed katana; the katana accompanying it was sheathed in a sling along Slice's back. Larry swung his rifle around to shoot at the assassin, but Slice sprung off of the side of the car, flipping spectacularly through the air and executing a perfect three-point landing on the roof of another car with a crunch.
Slice's cape, draped over his sheathed katana, fluttered in the breeze, his outstretched wakizashi glinting wickedly. He stood up in a crouching position on the vehicle, which was beginning to brake, and leaped off the roof of that car. Slice bounced like a pinball from vehicle to vehicle, zagging too fast for Larry to get a bead on him. He flipped acrobatically over the humvee, landing on the roof of a truck to their right, and launched himself straight at Moone, slashing his blade through the air and extending psychic tentacles outward again to rip Moone's boon off for good.
Moone opened the car door right as Slice got to him, knocking the man down and causing him to roll on the cobble-paved road. The assassin used the momentum of the roll to roll back onto his feet, and was springing after the humvee again within seconds.
"Right," said Moone, having closed the door and watching the assassin gain on them in the side view mirror. "Um. Larry, you take out Xemf, and I'll head this guy off."
Orson gave Moone a sidelong glance.
"He's after me. Xemf is the target. There are two objectives, remember. Two objectives." Moone reached for the door handle again, and held it firm, as if to steady himself. "And we achieve them whatever the necessary sacrifice." Moone threw the door open, and climbed onto the outside of the still-speeding humvee.
"Um," Moone said. His boon was still intact, but he wasn't sure how much it would help him if he launched himself off of a moving vehicle. The danger was coming from himself, so would that be enough to qualify as supernatural?
Moone jumped, flailed his legs through the air, and landed with a thump and a groan, in the oncoming path of a transportation truck for a major consumer brand. Moone realized his mistake as the truck barreled down on him. He was supernatural, and the supernatural danger was from himself, yes, but the way to have avoided that particular danger was not to have jumped in the first place. Right.
The clearing underneath the truck was enough such that Moone merely lay down flat to have it pass above him safely. He hitched a ride underneath the truck using supernatural means, and crawled up its [back.]
Slice was waiting for him on the [hood of the car behind for some reason., maybe he leaps onto it from a nearby building.] Moone launched himself off of the back of the truck, using the [supernatural means] as a bolo to thrust himself onto the car hood, grappling with Slice, who cut the bolo in two pieces effortlessly as he leapt, catching Moone in the arc and both of them landing on top of the truck in front again.
Slice reached out with his tentacles again, as he swept the blade through the air. Moone honestly still didn't know the source of the three assassins' power. Something gained from working with the conspiracy, with their ability to manipulate mind, body, and soul?
[Slice attacks Moone but Larry covers him, saving Moone's life with Moone's boon temporarily down from the attack, instead of trying to take out Xemf.] The humvee turned, following Xemf's vehicle to the Acropolis, and Moone was without backup again, his boon barely hanging on. But it did hang on; there was still a way out of this.
Slice jabbed his blade down through the roof of the truck, right next to Moone's head as he dodged. It cut through easily. Moone had to find a way to disarm Slice if he could. Wakizashi, one of the blades favored by the samurai of feudal Japan, were incredibly sharp and made out of incredibly hard steel.
And, as Unwin had reminded Moone back at the Tower of Babel, hard meant brittle.
Moone headbutted the blade before Slice had the chance to withdraw it; it shattered, cutting Moone all over his head and face, but eliminating one of Slice's weapons. Head wounds tend to bleed profusely, and Moone was nearly blinded by the blood streaming down into his eyes, but he steeled himself and focused on disarming Slice of his remaining daisho blade.
Slice whipped his sling around, attempting to draw his katana out of its koshirae fitting, but Moone sprung up and grabbed onto the sheath, pulling the sling around Slice's neck in an attempt to strangle the assassin. The assassin kicked Moone in the jaw with one foot, launching Moone back to the front of the truck with the powerful spring he had on the bottom of each heel; in the same motion, Slice spun on his other heel and pulled the katana out of its sheath. Katana are two-handed weapons, but Slice adopted a one-handed grip briefly to reach out with his hand and psychic tentacles, to finally jar the last of Moone's boon loose as Moone stood up and began to rush blindly toward Slice again.
Moone paused as he felt his boon seep out its last, and grinned, a little blood getting into his mouth. Plan C it was, then. Even with his boon gone, Moone still had his bane, which now shone out as a naked beacon beckoning to all who'd wish to do Moone harm. And it had been a great long while since Moone's bane had been properly triggered...
"YOU!" a voice boomed from above their heads. A great black oily shape with enormous wings swooped around their heads. Kissifer. Last seen abandoned in a Babelian death trap. "It's been thousands of years, but you've finally reared your head again, Finnegan Michael Moone!" Kissifer landed on top of the trailer with a boom, and the driver slowed down at the commotion.
Slice paled, the top of his bald head going almost bone-white. He'd been there back in Babel, had seen a little bit, hadn't he? He should know what's going on.
[Moone somehow manages to get Kissifer to take out Slice, somehow regains his boon (maybe somehow through the phylactery? waters of youth?) and dodges Kissifer himself. Final assassin taken out and demon dealt with (trapped back in phylactery?) Moone is victorious, and maybe uses Slice's spring-heels to travel back quickly to the Acropolis.]
Moone arrived just in time, to see Larry dead, and MacBeth imploding in a rash of rainbow light, Xemf's claw on his forehead. Xemf, necronomicon in the crook of its arm, stepped through the portal.
And Moone followed.
...
"We can't let Xemf get to the Acropolis," Moone reminded everyone needlessly; they'd all already been very well-briefed. The plane touched down on the tarmac and the team rushed out the jet's door almost as soon as it opened for them; if Moone hadn't been a known enemy of the state he would have already called in a motorcade of SUVs waiting for them at the airport, and Unwin's men still technically worked for Overneath and had no foreign jurisdiction. So they had to improvise.
They improvised.
Five minutes later four of the team were piled into a humvee and rushing down [road name,] speeding toward Xemf's location as Xemf made its way down the same highway to the Pantheon. Tor Orson was at the wheel, Moone in the passenger seat, with the Pontifex and Larry in the back.
"What are we looking for exactly?" Tor asked, eyes firmly on the road.
"Well, [explanation,]" Moone explained. There was a construction project [etc, explain Athenian infrastructure projects of late 80s and early 90s] which meant that traffic was [not as bad as it would have been etc, but rerouted etc do research on specific dates and projects.]
Larry, the sharpshooter, got on the humvee's roof through the [humvee sunroof] and set up a sniper's perch, them traveling down the [highway] at 55 miles per hour. He wielded a [gun] with silver bullets, which would certainly do the trick against Xemf if cold iron was effective against it.
Moone scooted into the backseat to see the sniper off. "Alright, Larry," he said up through the [sunroof.] "Take out Xemf. But MacBeth is mine. They're probably going to meet up at the Parthenon; I'll bet anything that MacBeth is there already."
"I thought you said he'd be out of the picture?"
"Not if you do your job."
Larry paused. "You think Xemf is going to kill MacBeth, don't you? Sort of punishment for failing the conspiracy, letting you onto them."
Moone nodded, squinting in the wind as they blew down the highway. "There's more to it than that, but yes."
"What?"
"Well, it's just a theory, but... Xemf needs to access the dreamtime, specifically at the Parthenon in order to [activate the Necronomicon.]" [or wherever; maybe somewhere else at the acropolis with more mythological significance, like seriously it's not the only temple to Athena, and what would Athena have to do with the NOC list? research! and then once we've figured it out foreshadow!]
"Yes..."
"And opening up the Dreamtime would kill Xemf."
"So... Xemf is going to kill MacBeth instead, so that it doesn't have to be the one to die? Somehow?"
"That's what I think, yes. Xemf is a shapeshifter, who has the ability to bestow its own aura on others now. I think it's possible that Xemf can shapeshift its aura off of itself, the two auras syncretizing, so that it doesn't need to be the host when the aura compounds in on itself to create the portal."
"And MacBeth would be the portal, very clever."
"But he doesn't need to be. It could be any of us, or even a random tourist. So your job right now is a lot more essential than mine."
"Got it," said Larry.
"Target spotted," said Tor. "[whatever] o'clock."
Moone shifted back into the passenger seat and looked in the direction Orson had indicated. There was a [vehicle.] Driving it was Xemf, in the form of Himsters Keepses. They were about [distance] away from the Acropolis, and beginning to make their way through more urbanized areas. Moone reached up a fist and bumped on the humvee's ceiling. "Take him out, Larry."
And something smashed through Moone's window, shattering safety glass all over the inside of the front [cabin.] What the...?
Moone turned.
And was face-to-face with the final assassin. Slice.
The most dangerous of the three.
...
"Take out this guy, take out this guy!" Moone shrieked up to Larry, as Slice slashed a sword through the air, plunging it into the car's interior and missing Moone by centimeters. It was a wakizashi, like a shorter, one-handed katana; the katana accompanying it was sheathed in a sling along Slice's back. Larry swung his rifle around to shoot at the assassin, but Slice sprung off of the side of the car, flipping spectacularly through the air and executing a perfect three-point landing on the roof of another car with a crunch.
Slice's cape, draped over his sheathed katana, fluttered in the breeze, his outstretched wakizashi glinting wickedly. He stood up in a crouching position on the vehicle, which was beginning to brake, and leaped off the roof of that car. Slice bounced like a pinball from vehicle to vehicle, zagging too fast for Larry to get a bead on him. He flipped acrobatically over the humvee, landing on the roof of a truck to their right, and launched himself straight at Moone, slashing his blade through the air and extending psychic tentacles outward again to rip Moone's boon off for good.
Moone opened the car door right as Slice got to him, knocking the man down and causing him to roll on the cobble-paved road. The assassin used the momentum of the roll to roll back onto his feet, and was springing after the humvee again within seconds.
"Right," said Moone, having closed the door and watching the assassin gain on them in the side view mirror. "Um. Larry, you take out Xemf, and I'll head this guy off."
Orson gave Moone a sidelong glance.
"He's after me. Xemf is the target. There are two objectives, remember. Two objectives." Moone reached for the door handle again, and held it firm, as if to steady himself. "And we achieve them whatever the necessary sacrifice." Moone threw the door open, and climbed onto the outside of the still-speeding humvee.
"Um," Moone said. His boon was still intact, but he wasn't sure how much it would help him if he launched himself off of a moving vehicle. The danger was coming from himself, so would that be enough to qualify as supernatural?
Moone jumped, flailed his legs through the air, and landed with a thump and a groan, in the oncoming path of a transportation truck for a major consumer brand. Moone realized his mistake as the truck barreled down on him. He was supernatural, and the supernatural danger was from himself, yes, but the way to have avoided that particular danger was not to have jumped in the first place. Right.
The clearing underneath the truck was enough such that Moone merely lay down flat to have it pass above him safely. He hitched a ride underneath the truck using supernatural means, and crawled up its [back.]
Slice was waiting for him on the [hood of the car behind for some reason., maybe he leaps onto it from a nearby building.] Moone launched himself off of the back of the truck, using the [supernatural means] as a bolo to thrust himself onto the car hood, grappling with Slice, who cut the bolo in two pieces effortlessly as he leapt, catching Moone in the arc and both of them landing on top of the truck in front again.
Slice reached out with his tentacles again, as he swept the blade through the air. Moone honestly still didn't know the source of the three assassins' power. Something gained from working with the conspiracy, with their ability to manipulate mind, body, and soul?
[Slice attacks Moone but Larry covers him, saving Moone's life with Moone's boon temporarily down from the attack, instead of trying to take out Xemf.] The humvee turned, following Xemf's vehicle to the Acropolis, and Moone was without backup again, his boon barely hanging on. But it did hang on; there was still a way out of this.
Slice jabbed his blade down through the roof of the truck, right next to Moone's head as he dodged. It cut through easily. Moone had to find a way to disarm Slice if he could. Wakizashi, one of the blades favored by the samurai of feudal Japan, were incredibly sharp and made out of incredibly hard steel.
And, as Unwin had reminded Moone back at the Tower of Babel, hard meant brittle.
Moone headbutted the blade before Slice had the chance to withdraw it; it shattered, cutting Moone all over his head and face, but eliminating one of Slice's weapons. Head wounds tend to bleed profusely, and Moone was nearly blinded by the blood streaming down into his eyes, but he steeled himself and focused on disarming Slice of his remaining daisho blade.
Slice whipped his sling around, attempting to draw his katana out of its koshirae fitting, but Moone sprung up and grabbed onto the sheath, pulling the sling around Slice's neck in an attempt to strangle the assassin. The assassin kicked Moone in the jaw with one foot, launching Moone back to the front of the truck with the powerful spring he had on the bottom of each heel; in the same motion, Slice spun on his other heel and pulled the katana out of its sheath. Katana are two-handed weapons, but Slice adopted a one-handed grip briefly to reach out with his hand and psychic tentacles, to finally jar the last of Moone's boon loose as Moone stood up and began to rush blindly toward Slice again.
Moone paused as he felt his boon seep out its last, and grinned, a little blood getting into his mouth. Plan C it was, then. Even with his boon gone, Moone still had his bane, which now shone out as a naked beacon beckoning to all who'd wish to do Moone harm. And it had been a great long while since Moone's bane had been properly triggered...
"YOU!" a voice boomed from above their heads. A great black oily shape with enormous wings swooped around their heads. Kissifer. Last seen abandoned in a Babelian death trap. "It's been thousands of years, but you've finally reared your head again, Finnegan Michael Moone!" Kissifer landed on top of the trailer with a boom, and the driver slowed down at the commotion.
Slice paled, the top of his bald head going almost bone-white. He'd been there back in Babel, had seen a little bit, hadn't he? He should know what's going on.
[Moone somehow manages to get Kissifer to take out Slice, somehow regains his boon (maybe somehow through the phylactery? waters of youth?) and dodges Kissifer himself. Final assassin taken out and demon dealt with (trapped back in phylactery?) Moone is victorious, and maybe uses Slice's spring-heels to travel back quickly to the Acropolis.]
Moone arrived just in time, to see Larry dead, and MacBeth imploding in a rash of rainbow light, Xemf's claw on his forehead. Xemf, necronomicon in the crook of its arm, stepped through the portal.
And Moone followed.
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
day 29: also part 23 (it's late and I'm tired and there's like a grajillion things to do tomorrow but here's 371 words at least; only 4,300 words to go)
"We've got two objectives," Moone said, clinking his glass down on the table in front of him and shifting in his seat to readjust his pants. "Hopefully we'll be able to take out two birds with one stone here, you know?" They were in the [passenger area] of a midsized private jet en route to Athens, Moone sitting across a table from one of Unwin's men. Moone's own men, now, he supposed.
The man, Magico, ticked them off on his fingers; he only had three on his left hand, his thumb and forefinger missing. "Recover the NOC list. Take out, Xemf? Or MacBeth. That's three objectives." His right forefinger pivoted on the tip of his left pinkie, as if to emphasize the errant extra item.
"Well, that's the thing," said Moone, examining his glass, which was almost empty save for the ice cubes. "I'm not sure if we'll need to take out MacBeth. Just Xemf. If that thing's endgame with the NOC list is what I think it is, by the time we come face-to-face with it MacBeth is going to be out. Of the picture."
"Out out," said Magico. "Got it. And so we're tracking Xemf down in... Greece?"
"Athens," Moone specified. It was a short flight over the Mediterranean sea, between the lands; Moone realized with a raise of the eyebrows that that was what the word Mediterranean literally meant, in the middle of the land, and that made it synonymous with Middle-earth or Midgard. The opposite of Mesopotamia, between the rivers, from whence they were flying. Strange how geography shaped myth. And Midgard. There were indeed higher planes than this one, but what of lower ones, as in Teutonic myth?
[how do they know Xemf is in Athens, or going there? it's got to have something to do with the NOC list's backstory, or what Xemf is planning on doing with the list. Moone explains the whole thing. Specifically they're going to like the Parthenon probably.]
[more stuff happens to justify this scene- characterization with Unwin's men? Vern Magico, Tor Orson, Michael J Miracle, Art Rose, and "just" Larry.]
[They land at, probably whatever airport existed in 1992; the one now in use there was built in 2000.]
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
nanowrimo 28th day (section 23)
"I'm alive," the Pontifex said, sitting up shakily.
"Yes, of course Xemf left you alive," said Moone sourly. "If it had killed you, it would have lost your aura enhancing its powers. You haven't figured that out yet? What else haven't you figured out? Let me lay out the situation for you. We're trapped down here. In a vault. Someone's coming for the list soon, and they will find us, and they'd just reactivate the security system, and we'd be dead, because my boon would be canceled out by the antimagic. Even if nobody comes down here, someone still will, because my bane will trigger, without your aura enhancing mine, I will get attacked again. We're dead men walking, except sitting here, being dead."
Moone panted, exhausted after the [rant,] and, sitting on the ground, slammed the rest of his body down, so that he lay prone. His bane would trigger...
His bane would trigger.
Moone sat back up, the gears turning in his head. His bane may have been [up and running now,] but so was his boon; the anti-magic defenses were still down, and though he was in real danger of attack for one of the first times in months, he did have the resources to get out of this. Even out of the vault, even out of Babel. Right? If anything was a situation both supernatural and dangerous, surely this was. Whether they'd be able to track down and stop MacBeth and Xemf was still up in the air, but some way, somehow, there was a solution to escaping even these [direst of straits,] in the bowels of ancient Babylon.
Moone looked over at Unwin's collapsed body, lying in a pool of something brackish in the bottleneck outside the vault, and sighed. Unwin... Unwin would have known what to do, but of course if Unwin were still alive, they wouldn't need his help. They'd just have him end the ritual, just have him... release.
"Is it a function of the aura, that anchors us here in, the past?" Moone asked the Pontifex, who was also sitting upright now, with legs folded. "How did Unwin hold us here when he brought us in, and how would he have brought us back to the present?"
"Yes, the aura. The plane one inhabits is a function of the aura," the Pontifex nodded. "We're not in the past, as much as, on a plane that exists in the past, and present, both acting as one."
"The dreaming, right. The halfway Dreamtime, a dreamtime minus the energy that leads to creation."
An echo of superstition back into religion. [maybe establish more of this earlier.]
"Your aura is a portal to the Dreamtime," Moone continued, now standing up and pacing a short circle around the lower half of the upper level of the vault. "In a sense, you still have your aura on you, the part that you hold onto to make yourself you. Something's stabilizing us in this plane. Put here by Unwin's ritual, but our auras are what [keep us on the plane.] Would there be a way to use your aura to destabilize us, still?"
"Bestowing my aura on myself here, the two dreamings would cancel each other out, as the deeper dream made a direct circuit to this lesser plane. I don't have my aura to bestow."
"And what if you were to do the opposite of bestow your aura on yourself, would the opposite happen? Not bestow your aura on yourself, but give up your aura entirely?"
"If I do this, the last remains will go to the creature Xemf. And my boon will be gone permanently."
"And we'd be out of here?"
The Pontifex knit his eyebrows, then closed his eyes. "And..." He paused, lips twitching as if trying to say something. "And we'd be out of here," he said softly.
"This is your decision, Pontifex. Our contract would be complete."
"Our contract is complete," said the Pontifex. "And this is... my decision." He stood up, eyes open, wide open. He steeled himself. Reached inward, somehow.
And breathed.
...
All was black, suddenly.
Or... not black, just, dark. It was dark; they were in a lightless, ancient room. [they illuminate it somehow.] Moone saw that he and the Pontifex both had collapsed to the floor, and were lying in a thick layer of dust. Not cold iron dust. Just, dust.
They were back in the present, but not in the same time and place that they'd initiated the ritual; rather in Babel, the modern-day city of Ancient Babylon, where the ritual had taken them geographically. Thousands of years later, and in the location that the vault eventually would become. Changed place, and changed time as well, from the initiation of the ritual; instead of being brought back the moment after they'd set out, time had passed here at the same rate as back in Babel. They'd spent [time length] in Babel, and so now it would have been [time length] after they'd completed the ritual to have brought them into Babel in the first place.
Moone looked over at the Pontifex, lying face-down, breathing heavily, and tried imagining the sacrifice that his action just now had represented. He had given up the last of his aura. All his life, as far as Moone knew, the Pontifex had gone thinking that he'd be able to sacrifice himself and access Dreamtime at some crucial moment-- but now he wouldn't be able to bestow his aura upon anyone else ever again, let alone himself.
Which left the man purposeless in life.
But who was Moone to pity? Not everyone knew their purpose so clearly as the Pontifex had thought that he had. Most people had to find purpose for themselves, somehow.
And the goal now was Xemf.
Moone thought about Xemf. Too little made sense. What was its plan with the NOC list, if it was part of the same organization MacBeth was working for, and MacBeth had tried to fence the list? It made no sense. Unless they were trying to accomplish something publicizing the knowledge that the list was in the open, though keeping it for themselves.
Their auctioning of the NOC list had brought Moone out of hiding. Moone and the Pontifex. Was that what it was all about, getting the Pontifex's aura for themselves? And now Xemf had the full thing, not just to enhance its own powers the ability to bestow and enhance others' powers as well. Apparently the conspiracy was only in place inside the Pentagram after Moone had gone off with the Pontifex, otherwise they would have taken him and his power sooner. They would have been able to have the NOC list any time they wanted, but it wouldn't have been complete without both the Pontifex and the list, for whatever reason.
But what of the heist? If the conspiracy really wanted to hold onto the NOC list, there was no guarantee that they'd be successful heisting. And the heist had only happened after the auction; couldn't they have won that in the first place?
Unless...
Keepses had died. Just as Cloud had died. And Keepses had won the auction.
The Pontifex only noticed Cloud in the room after Moone had seen Keepses slip off somewhere; Moone hadn't been able to track Cloud down during the auction until there was a break, and Keepses would have been able to slip away. [Keepses's gift from the Tooth Fairy had been the Gift of Night, just as Team Punch's had been.] Xemf had turned into Keepses, assumed his identity, just as it had assumed Cloud's. It was Xemf that had won the auction; the list would remain in their organization's claws even if there hadn't been an attempted heist.
And the heist itself, getting the Pontifex to bestow it aura like that... but heisting as part of a different team. That team, of course, showing up at the same time as Moone's... that had been no coincidence. Of course not. And then telling Gef that Moone was trustworthy, Moone willing to believe it was an altruistic gesture, but really just getting the Pontifex to trust Xemf after seeing that.
They had been playing into Xemf's hands, into the conspiracy's hands, this whole time.
Moone collapsed against a dusty wall, looking again to the Pontifex. Yes, people still made their own destinies, every day. In spite of the past. Now that Moone realized his [reactivity,] he could fight against being the puppet this time. Would they see that one coming?
So now what would Xemf do?
What purpose could be accomplished that required both the Pontifex's aura and the Necronomicon?
With the Pontifex's aura, now fully incorporated as part of its own, Xemf's own powers wouldn't just be amplified, but it would be have the power to amplify others' as well. Those alien beings that comprised the conspiracy, did they all have Xemf's power of shapeshifting, body, mind, and spirit? But Xemf already having its own power amplified, there wasn't much use for it to bestow the aura onto others...
But maybe Xemf would still be able to bestow the aura on itself.
Complete the ultimate purpose with its aura, open a portal to Dreamtime? That was possible. Maybe it wouldn't have been if the last, core part of the aura hadn't been given up to release Moone and the Pontifex from the vault.
Was even this release of the last drop of the Ponifex's power just playing into the conspiracy's hands as well? Moone shook his head. There was no time for that kind of thinking. He still had to do something. Something the conspiracy wouldn't see coming, this time, if it were possible.
There was a thumping noise from one corner of the room, and the wall bust in. Behind it stood... Unwin's men.
"See, told you he'd be here," said one of them to another.
"What? How? What?" Moone asked. He may not have known what the conspiracy would or would not have seen coming, but this was definitely something Moone hadn't seen coming, at least.
"Well, said the man called [name,] "you weren't in the vault when we came looking for you, after that thing came barreling down the labyrinth halls. Figured it was a friend of yours or something, right? We saw Unwin's body there, and that woman Lovecraft's, but you two were gone. So unless that lizard thing was you, which we figured unlikely, we knew that you two must have gone back to the present. We released the ritual, landed back where we started, only you weren't there either. So you must have gone back the other way, hopping straight out of the plane down to ours."
"That's common knowledge that that's possible?" sputtered Moone. Apparently it was also possible to release someone else's ritual somehow even if that person were dead.
The man shrugged. "Apparently. Anyway, we knew you must have been here, so we came all the way to Iraq to find you. With your bane naked again, Moone, it was pretty easy to find your precise location once you did manage to pop back into this plane."
Moone was slightly dizzy. Of course Unwin's men had left after Moone and the Pontifex had, but arrived before. That was how that worked. There was a level of time travel here, low-level but time travel nonetheless. "Well, uh, thank you," Moone managed.
"You're welcome. But it was actually kind of selfish on our part. See, we're better at taking orders than actually leading ourselves, so, Unwin down, we figured we need a leader again. Tracking you down is the most proactive thing we've done by ourselves, in years."
Moone nodded absently, eyes and mind elsewhere.
"So," said a different man, [name.] "Do you have a plan?"
Moone grinned. "Believe it or not, actually I do."
"Yes, of course Xemf left you alive," said Moone sourly. "If it had killed you, it would have lost your aura enhancing its powers. You haven't figured that out yet? What else haven't you figured out? Let me lay out the situation for you. We're trapped down here. In a vault. Someone's coming for the list soon, and they will find us, and they'd just reactivate the security system, and we'd be dead, because my boon would be canceled out by the antimagic. Even if nobody comes down here, someone still will, because my bane will trigger, without your aura enhancing mine, I will get attacked again. We're dead men walking, except sitting here, being dead."
Moone panted, exhausted after the [rant,] and, sitting on the ground, slammed the rest of his body down, so that he lay prone. His bane would trigger...
His bane would trigger.
Moone sat back up, the gears turning in his head. His bane may have been [up and running now,] but so was his boon; the anti-magic defenses were still down, and though he was in real danger of attack for one of the first times in months, he did have the resources to get out of this. Even out of the vault, even out of Babel. Right? If anything was a situation both supernatural and dangerous, surely this was. Whether they'd be able to track down and stop MacBeth and Xemf was still up in the air, but some way, somehow, there was a solution to escaping even these [direst of straits,] in the bowels of ancient Babylon.
Moone looked over at Unwin's collapsed body, lying in a pool of something brackish in the bottleneck outside the vault, and sighed. Unwin... Unwin would have known what to do, but of course if Unwin were still alive, they wouldn't need his help. They'd just have him end the ritual, just have him... release.
"Is it a function of the aura, that anchors us here in, the past?" Moone asked the Pontifex, who was also sitting upright now, with legs folded. "How did Unwin hold us here when he brought us in, and how would he have brought us back to the present?"
"Yes, the aura. The plane one inhabits is a function of the aura," the Pontifex nodded. "We're not in the past, as much as, on a plane that exists in the past, and present, both acting as one."
"The dreaming, right. The halfway Dreamtime, a dreamtime minus the energy that leads to creation."
An echo of superstition back into religion. [maybe establish more of this earlier.]
"Your aura is a portal to the Dreamtime," Moone continued, now standing up and pacing a short circle around the lower half of the upper level of the vault. "In a sense, you still have your aura on you, the part that you hold onto to make yourself you. Something's stabilizing us in this plane. Put here by Unwin's ritual, but our auras are what [keep us on the plane.] Would there be a way to use your aura to destabilize us, still?"
"Bestowing my aura on myself here, the two dreamings would cancel each other out, as the deeper dream made a direct circuit to this lesser plane. I don't have my aura to bestow."
"And what if you were to do the opposite of bestow your aura on yourself, would the opposite happen? Not bestow your aura on yourself, but give up your aura entirely?"
"If I do this, the last remains will go to the creature Xemf. And my boon will be gone permanently."
"And we'd be out of here?"
The Pontifex knit his eyebrows, then closed his eyes. "And..." He paused, lips twitching as if trying to say something. "And we'd be out of here," he said softly.
"This is your decision, Pontifex. Our contract would be complete."
"Our contract is complete," said the Pontifex. "And this is... my decision." He stood up, eyes open, wide open. He steeled himself. Reached inward, somehow.
And breathed.
...
All was black, suddenly.
Or... not black, just, dark. It was dark; they were in a lightless, ancient room. [they illuminate it somehow.] Moone saw that he and the Pontifex both had collapsed to the floor, and were lying in a thick layer of dust. Not cold iron dust. Just, dust.
They were back in the present, but not in the same time and place that they'd initiated the ritual; rather in Babel, the modern-day city of Ancient Babylon, where the ritual had taken them geographically. Thousands of years later, and in the location that the vault eventually would become. Changed place, and changed time as well, from the initiation of the ritual; instead of being brought back the moment after they'd set out, time had passed here at the same rate as back in Babel. They'd spent [time length] in Babel, and so now it would have been [time length] after they'd completed the ritual to have brought them into Babel in the first place.
Moone looked over at the Pontifex, lying face-down, breathing heavily, and tried imagining the sacrifice that his action just now had represented. He had given up the last of his aura. All his life, as far as Moone knew, the Pontifex had gone thinking that he'd be able to sacrifice himself and access Dreamtime at some crucial moment-- but now he wouldn't be able to bestow his aura upon anyone else ever again, let alone himself.
Which left the man purposeless in life.
But who was Moone to pity? Not everyone knew their purpose so clearly as the Pontifex had thought that he had. Most people had to find purpose for themselves, somehow.
And the goal now was Xemf.
Moone thought about Xemf. Too little made sense. What was its plan with the NOC list, if it was part of the same organization MacBeth was working for, and MacBeth had tried to fence the list? It made no sense. Unless they were trying to accomplish something publicizing the knowledge that the list was in the open, though keeping it for themselves.
Their auctioning of the NOC list had brought Moone out of hiding. Moone and the Pontifex. Was that what it was all about, getting the Pontifex's aura for themselves? And now Xemf had the full thing, not just to enhance its own powers the ability to bestow and enhance others' powers as well. Apparently the conspiracy was only in place inside the Pentagram after Moone had gone off with the Pontifex, otherwise they would have taken him and his power sooner. They would have been able to have the NOC list any time they wanted, but it wouldn't have been complete without both the Pontifex and the list, for whatever reason.
But what of the heist? If the conspiracy really wanted to hold onto the NOC list, there was no guarantee that they'd be successful heisting. And the heist had only happened after the auction; couldn't they have won that in the first place?
Unless...
Keepses had died. Just as Cloud had died. And Keepses had won the auction.
The Pontifex only noticed Cloud in the room after Moone had seen Keepses slip off somewhere; Moone hadn't been able to track Cloud down during the auction until there was a break, and Keepses would have been able to slip away. [Keepses's gift from the Tooth Fairy had been the Gift of Night, just as Team Punch's had been.] Xemf had turned into Keepses, assumed his identity, just as it had assumed Cloud's. It was Xemf that had won the auction; the list would remain in their organization's claws even if there hadn't been an attempted heist.
And the heist itself, getting the Pontifex to bestow it aura like that... but heisting as part of a different team. That team, of course, showing up at the same time as Moone's... that had been no coincidence. Of course not. And then telling Gef that Moone was trustworthy, Moone willing to believe it was an altruistic gesture, but really just getting the Pontifex to trust Xemf after seeing that.
They had been playing into Xemf's hands, into the conspiracy's hands, this whole time.
Moone collapsed against a dusty wall, looking again to the Pontifex. Yes, people still made their own destinies, every day. In spite of the past. Now that Moone realized his [reactivity,] he could fight against being the puppet this time. Would they see that one coming?
So now what would Xemf do?
What purpose could be accomplished that required both the Pontifex's aura and the Necronomicon?
With the Pontifex's aura, now fully incorporated as part of its own, Xemf's own powers wouldn't just be amplified, but it would be have the power to amplify others' as well. Those alien beings that comprised the conspiracy, did they all have Xemf's power of shapeshifting, body, mind, and spirit? But Xemf already having its own power amplified, there wasn't much use for it to bestow the aura onto others...
But maybe Xemf would still be able to bestow the aura on itself.
Complete the ultimate purpose with its aura, open a portal to Dreamtime? That was possible. Maybe it wouldn't have been if the last, core part of the aura hadn't been given up to release Moone and the Pontifex from the vault.
Was even this release of the last drop of the Ponifex's power just playing into the conspiracy's hands as well? Moone shook his head. There was no time for that kind of thinking. He still had to do something. Something the conspiracy wouldn't see coming, this time, if it were possible.
There was a thumping noise from one corner of the room, and the wall bust in. Behind it stood... Unwin's men.
"See, told you he'd be here," said one of them to another.
"What? How? What?" Moone asked. He may not have known what the conspiracy would or would not have seen coming, but this was definitely something Moone hadn't seen coming, at least.
"Well, said the man called [name,] "you weren't in the vault when we came looking for you, after that thing came barreling down the labyrinth halls. Figured it was a friend of yours or something, right? We saw Unwin's body there, and that woman Lovecraft's, but you two were gone. So unless that lizard thing was you, which we figured unlikely, we knew that you two must have gone back to the present. We released the ritual, landed back where we started, only you weren't there either. So you must have gone back the other way, hopping straight out of the plane down to ours."
"That's common knowledge that that's possible?" sputtered Moone. Apparently it was also possible to release someone else's ritual somehow even if that person were dead.
The man shrugged. "Apparently. Anyway, we knew you must have been here, so we came all the way to Iraq to find you. With your bane naked again, Moone, it was pretty easy to find your precise location once you did manage to pop back into this plane."
Moone was slightly dizzy. Of course Unwin's men had left after Moone and the Pontifex had, but arrived before. That was how that worked. There was a level of time travel here, low-level but time travel nonetheless. "Well, uh, thank you," Moone managed.
"You're welcome. But it was actually kind of selfish on our part. See, we're better at taking orders than actually leading ourselves, so, Unwin down, we figured we need a leader again. Tracking you down is the most proactive thing we've done by ourselves, in years."
Moone nodded absently, eyes and mind elsewhere.
"So," said a different man, [name.] "Do you have a plan?"
Moone grinned. "Believe it or not, actually I do."
Monday, November 27, 2017
section 22 (day 27)
Moone turned back to the front of the vault, and discovered one of the large reptile-like alien beings stooped there, where the shapeshifter had been, the NOC list clutched in its beefy green claws.
The shapeshifter hadn't been a shapeshifter at all, not the kind that Moone had thought. It could alter its own aura, its own body and soul- and so the soul that Moone had seen, ancient and noble and wise, was itself a fabrication. It wasn't a slip of its true form at all, but the sleight of another false form, to get Moone to trust it; [it hadn't been the same kind of shapeshifter that had revealed itself to Moone, but shapeshifted to appear that way.] It was a shapeshiftershifter, of some kind. Whatever the alien presence was that Moone had felt MacBeth connected to. Maybe the self-same one, even, though when he'd felt it through MacBeth's network the one he'd felt had been somewhere far outside the Pentagram, and he'd run into the impostor Cloud just a few [hours] later while still inside the Pentagram.
[the creature is somehow namedropped as being Xemf. it's a big twist for the audience but not so much for the characters so figure out a way to balance that. And also, have someone know Xemf's name for some reason. maybe something to do with tooth fairy magic, fortunes of money and everything. Xemf's fortune is to be Xemf- have that as a point in the unique way the shapeshifter seemed to interact with the money magic, astrological standard representing fortune, Xemf's fortune is to be Xemf, in a way you wouldn't realize until second readthrough.]
The shapeshifter, the creature Xemf, would have already been gone if not for the cold iron nanoparticles gradually settling through the air, which even now clung to its skin and reverted it to its true form. With the antimagic down, it would have slipped away without anyone noticing; the system was still technically down, but the components of the system were still spread all around, leaving it trapped. There was no magical escape. And so instead of conjuring up a portal for itself, it just took the exit. Of which there was only one, and [between which and the creature stood the entire team].
The creature lunged, overtaking the entire lower level floor in one swoop and landing on the far side, right in front of where Lovecraft, Unwin, and the Pontifex were standing. It had leaped right over Moone's head from where he'd been standing on the black-tiled pressure-sensitive floor, and Moone wasted no time darting up the slope to the creature, attempting to throw it off balance by going for a low center of mass. The creature whirled, and locked metaphorical horns with Moone instead.
Xemf may have had a size advantage, and the advantage of sheer brute strength, but it was left entirely without its magics, which included the fully enhanced aura bestowed by the Pontifex. Moone knew it, knew that trusting the shapeshifter with such power was unwise, or at least suspected, but hindsight had 20/20 vision-- and it didn't matter now, either, with the cold iron-caused dampening of its aura.
It was shut it down here, or have a much much more difficult time of shutting it down later.
Xemf struck back, Moone anticipating the blow and dodging with ease. His boon had been restored, then. He had all the tools he needed in order to come out the victor. And he knew the first order of business.
[he gets Gef to reinstate the security system, fighting above the pressure sensitive floor, but Kissifer comes back into play and Xemf levitates over the floor, fighting, the walls beginning to bleed, Kissifer's strength combining with that of Xemf's- use some exorcism plan B now, establish holy water earlier or something, maybe fountain of youth related somehow. There's that trap activated from the pressure sensitive floor, possibly trapping Kissifer instead for some reason. Xemf and Moone now fight on level, upper area of vault, in front of vault doors, perhaps teammates also trying to assist.]
Xemf realized that it was losing. And that its back wasn't quite up against the wall yet.
With savage ferocity, the creature Xemf kicked Unwin to the side, into the side wall of the bottleneck outside of the inner vault. Unwin's ribcage snapped, and he fell with the squishy burbling groan of a man whose lungs were crushed, his top half rotating a horrible 90 degrees as his body collapsed to the ground.
Lovecraft was there beyond Unwin, and she watched her compatriot fall, eyes wide. She guarded the exit with the last of her life, attempting a spell but failing in it. Xemf made one swipe with its claws, and tore her chest open in massive jagged gashes, Lovecraft falling with a surprised-sounding whine, wounded but alive.
The Pontifex struggled to his feet, and lunged at the creature, placing a shaking hand against the small of its dappled yellow back, and attempting to psychically pull. The same thing stunting its power and keeping it from using its magic, however, was the same thing that kept the Pontifex from withdrawing his aura back into himself.
Xemf swatted the man back to the floor, turned down on all fours, and sniffed at him. The creature may have been bestial, but there was cold frightening intelligence in its eyes as it examined the grounded and panting Pontifex. Xemf turned around, pivoting on all fours, and disappeared out through the vault doors.
It was over. At least one of their comrades was down, the second in poor shape. And they'd failed to shut down Xemf.
[they examine Lovecraft; she won't make it. Process this fact. Quiet, slow beat, after the intense action.]
Lovecraft's eyes clouded over, and a keening wail emanated from the walls, where Gef had been in wait. Something rustled like leaves, and Gef [appeared,] jerking around in agony of loss over Lovecraft. "Vanished!" Gef keened.
There was a clattering all around, Gef rattling through the room and walls, flying around in a mad frenzy. Vanished, vanished, vanished, vanished, Gef's voice hung in the air, as his physical form shuddered and clanged from one corner of the room to another with impossible speed. Vanished! Vanished! Vanished! getting softer and softer, subdued and distant somehow. Gef's voice faded, and his form faded, and the clangs too faded and grew still.
Thus passed Gef as well.
There was a haunting, booming silence.
"Do you know the difference between a ghost and a poltergeist?" the Pontifex's voice rang out softly, from where he stood behind Moone. "The true distinction between them. It's not that poltergeists are more mischievous or anything. The simple difference is that ghosts haunt places. And poltergeists, poltergeists haunt people."
Moone was confused, at first. But something deep and powerful about Gef's nature clicked in his mind.
Gef had, in his first incarnation, been [hauntingly attached] to Jim Irving... but thinking on it now, Moone realized that it had been Jim's daughter, Voirrey, whom Gef truly loved; most people associated the legend of the Dalby Spook more to Voirrey than they did Jim, but it was Jim's death that had released Gef the first time. Abandoned my love. Forsaken from my love. It must have been agony, to be so close and so far.
This time around, Gef had been haunting the right person. The one. The one Gef loved, and the one who loved Gef right on back, fiercely, intensely. Bliss.
But bliss that couldn't last. Vanished, vanished, vanished.
Moone collapsed to his knees, knelt over Lovecraft's body, cradling it close in his arms, and wept for the love that had been whole then broken apart, his entire body spasming as he gasped for shaky breath in between sobs.
And Moone couldn't help but blame himself, at least partially. This was his fault. Not deliberately, but without his stratagem of releasing the cold iron into the air, the creature Xemf, the false Mushroom Cloud, would just have ported away without doing harm to anyone or ever revealing its true identity.
Moone had used his boon to save his own neck, but it had led, whether directly or indirectly, to more deaths on the part of others. And not for the first time. Cloud, now Lovecraft and Gef. There was only one other member of his original team left.
And that member was a traitor.
Moone looked up with red eyes from the cradled form of Lovecraft's twisted body, and vowed revenge with all the power of the [fortunes] that flowed from this room. MacBeth would pay. Xemf would pay. Somehow.
But even as he made the oath, Moone knew that vengeance wasn't truly possible. MacBeth would have been back in the present by now. And...
And it was Unwin's magic that had put them here in Babel in the first place. Unwin's ritual. Without him here to end that ritual, with Unwin dead, they wouldn't be able to simply pop back into the present. Which meant that while the creature Xemf made off with the NOC list, possessing the ability to tear down every domestic agent and destabilize the entire domestic supernatural intelligence and military complexes... Moone and the Pontifex were stuck back here in Babel.
Permanently.
THE END
\
OF PART SIX
The shapeshifter hadn't been a shapeshifter at all, not the kind that Moone had thought. It could alter its own aura, its own body and soul- and so the soul that Moone had seen, ancient and noble and wise, was itself a fabrication. It wasn't a slip of its true form at all, but the sleight of another false form, to get Moone to trust it; [it hadn't been the same kind of shapeshifter that had revealed itself to Moone, but shapeshifted to appear that way.] It was a shapeshiftershifter, of some kind. Whatever the alien presence was that Moone had felt MacBeth connected to. Maybe the self-same one, even, though when he'd felt it through MacBeth's network the one he'd felt had been somewhere far outside the Pentagram, and he'd run into the impostor Cloud just a few [hours] later while still inside the Pentagram.
[the creature is somehow namedropped as being Xemf. it's a big twist for the audience but not so much for the characters so figure out a way to balance that. And also, have someone know Xemf's name for some reason. maybe something to do with tooth fairy magic, fortunes of money and everything. Xemf's fortune is to be Xemf- have that as a point in the unique way the shapeshifter seemed to interact with the money magic, astrological standard representing fortune, Xemf's fortune is to be Xemf, in a way you wouldn't realize until second readthrough.]
The shapeshifter, the creature Xemf, would have already been gone if not for the cold iron nanoparticles gradually settling through the air, which even now clung to its skin and reverted it to its true form. With the antimagic down, it would have slipped away without anyone noticing; the system was still technically down, but the components of the system were still spread all around, leaving it trapped. There was no magical escape. And so instead of conjuring up a portal for itself, it just took the exit. Of which there was only one, and [between which and the creature stood the entire team].
The creature lunged, overtaking the entire lower level floor in one swoop and landing on the far side, right in front of where Lovecraft, Unwin, and the Pontifex were standing. It had leaped right over Moone's head from where he'd been standing on the black-tiled pressure-sensitive floor, and Moone wasted no time darting up the slope to the creature, attempting to throw it off balance by going for a low center of mass. The creature whirled, and locked metaphorical horns with Moone instead.
Xemf may have had a size advantage, and the advantage of sheer brute strength, but it was left entirely without its magics, which included the fully enhanced aura bestowed by the Pontifex. Moone knew it, knew that trusting the shapeshifter with such power was unwise, or at least suspected, but hindsight had 20/20 vision-- and it didn't matter now, either, with the cold iron-caused dampening of its aura.
It was shut it down here, or have a much much more difficult time of shutting it down later.
Xemf struck back, Moone anticipating the blow and dodging with ease. His boon had been restored, then. He had all the tools he needed in order to come out the victor. And he knew the first order of business.
[he gets Gef to reinstate the security system, fighting above the pressure sensitive floor, but Kissifer comes back into play and Xemf levitates over the floor, fighting, the walls beginning to bleed, Kissifer's strength combining with that of Xemf's- use some exorcism plan B now, establish holy water earlier or something, maybe fountain of youth related somehow. There's that trap activated from the pressure sensitive floor, possibly trapping Kissifer instead for some reason. Xemf and Moone now fight on level, upper area of vault, in front of vault doors, perhaps teammates also trying to assist.]
Xemf realized that it was losing. And that its back wasn't quite up against the wall yet.
With savage ferocity, the creature Xemf kicked Unwin to the side, into the side wall of the bottleneck outside of the inner vault. Unwin's ribcage snapped, and he fell with the squishy burbling groan of a man whose lungs were crushed, his top half rotating a horrible 90 degrees as his body collapsed to the ground.
Lovecraft was there beyond Unwin, and she watched her compatriot fall, eyes wide. She guarded the exit with the last of her life, attempting a spell but failing in it. Xemf made one swipe with its claws, and tore her chest open in massive jagged gashes, Lovecraft falling with a surprised-sounding whine, wounded but alive.
The Pontifex struggled to his feet, and lunged at the creature, placing a shaking hand against the small of its dappled yellow back, and attempting to psychically pull. The same thing stunting its power and keeping it from using its magic, however, was the same thing that kept the Pontifex from withdrawing his aura back into himself.
Xemf swatted the man back to the floor, turned down on all fours, and sniffed at him. The creature may have been bestial, but there was cold frightening intelligence in its eyes as it examined the grounded and panting Pontifex. Xemf turned around, pivoting on all fours, and disappeared out through the vault doors.
It was over. At least one of their comrades was down, the second in poor shape. And they'd failed to shut down Xemf.
[they examine Lovecraft; she won't make it. Process this fact. Quiet, slow beat, after the intense action.]
Lovecraft's eyes clouded over, and a keening wail emanated from the walls, where Gef had been in wait. Something rustled like leaves, and Gef [appeared,] jerking around in agony of loss over Lovecraft. "Vanished!" Gef keened.
There was a clattering all around, Gef rattling through the room and walls, flying around in a mad frenzy. Vanished, vanished, vanished, vanished, Gef's voice hung in the air, as his physical form shuddered and clanged from one corner of the room to another with impossible speed. Vanished! Vanished! Vanished! getting softer and softer, subdued and distant somehow. Gef's voice faded, and his form faded, and the clangs too faded and grew still.
Thus passed Gef as well.
There was a haunting, booming silence.
"Do you know the difference between a ghost and a poltergeist?" the Pontifex's voice rang out softly, from where he stood behind Moone. "The true distinction between them. It's not that poltergeists are more mischievous or anything. The simple difference is that ghosts haunt places. And poltergeists, poltergeists haunt people."
Moone was confused, at first. But something deep and powerful about Gef's nature clicked in his mind.
Gef had, in his first incarnation, been [hauntingly attached] to Jim Irving... but thinking on it now, Moone realized that it had been Jim's daughter, Voirrey, whom Gef truly loved; most people associated the legend of the Dalby Spook more to Voirrey than they did Jim, but it was Jim's death that had released Gef the first time. Abandoned my love. Forsaken from my love. It must have been agony, to be so close and so far.
This time around, Gef had been haunting the right person. The one. The one Gef loved, and the one who loved Gef right on back, fiercely, intensely. Bliss.
But bliss that couldn't last. Vanished, vanished, vanished.
Moone collapsed to his knees, knelt over Lovecraft's body, cradling it close in his arms, and wept for the love that had been whole then broken apart, his entire body spasming as he gasped for shaky breath in between sobs.
And Moone couldn't help but blame himself, at least partially. This was his fault. Not deliberately, but without his stratagem of releasing the cold iron into the air, the creature Xemf, the false Mushroom Cloud, would just have ported away without doing harm to anyone or ever revealing its true identity.
Moone had used his boon to save his own neck, but it had led, whether directly or indirectly, to more deaths on the part of others. And not for the first time. Cloud, now Lovecraft and Gef. There was only one other member of his original team left.
And that member was a traitor.
Moone looked up with red eyes from the cradled form of Lovecraft's twisted body, and vowed revenge with all the power of the [fortunes] that flowed from this room. MacBeth would pay. Xemf would pay. Somehow.
But even as he made the oath, Moone knew that vengeance wasn't truly possible. MacBeth would have been back in the present by now. And...
And it was Unwin's magic that had put them here in Babel in the first place. Unwin's ritual. Without him here to end that ritual, with Unwin dead, they wouldn't be able to simply pop back into the present. Which meant that while the creature Xemf made off with the NOC list, possessing the ability to tear down every domestic agent and destabilize the entire domestic supernatural intelligence and military complexes... Moone and the Pontifex were stuck back here in Babel.
Permanently.
THE END
\
OF PART SIX
Sunday, November 26, 2017
21 (day 26 2/2)
The shapeshifter continued, opening the final inner door, and they pressed forward into the central vault itself. The holy of holies. This vault was the size of a large room, and split from the entrance here into two sloping layers, one taking up the center of the room and one running along the edges. The inward, pressure-sensitive floor was made of black tiles, and the whole floor sloped downward; the outer rim tilted upward toward the balcony-like lip on the far side of the room, four or five feet above the sloped tiled floor below. This far wall consisted not of the small silver lock boxes that lined the outer walls from ceiling to upper-level floor, but a great wooden bookshelf, with many ancient tomes lining it. In front of the bookshelf, opened up on a book pedestal as if it were a dictionary, was the Necronomicon.
The shapeshifter went first, walking along one of the gently sloping side [paths.]
[The assassins, two remaining, burst out of seemingly nowhere; one of them hangs back presumably and the team get attacked by Slit; the shapeshifter and everyone are pushed back, except for Moone, alone one-on-one on the black-tiled lower floor, and maybe the shapeshifter is stranded somehow up on the level with the NOC list.]
The remaining assassins. How did they find them here? How did they get to them here? The Ancient City of Babel, much less the most secure vault underneath its tower? The assassins were working for MacBeth after all then; MacBeth would know they were here.
Of course, the fact the assassins were working for MacBeth was further confirmed by the fact that this one was also attacking Gef's team. He probably would not have been doing that had he been working for the agency. Most likely.
Moone examined the assassin, and tried to recall facts about him. This gentleman went by the moniker of Slit. He was dressed a lot more low-class than the well-tailored couture of Gentleman Slash. Clothes torn and sand-stained, Slit resembled a filthy Victorian hooligan, right down to the face smudged with soot, though otherwise closer in physical description to Bill Sykes than Oliver Twist. If Dick Van Dyke's character in Mary Poppins were evil, and on steroids, and wielding what looked like a thin cleaver, instead of a brush or broom.
Moone recognized the long, flat-tipped blade as being a sakin, used in Kosher ritual slaughter. Such blades were razor-sharp, and nick-free; it was said that an animal slaughtered with such a knife didn't even feel the cut, if the slice was performed properly. As much as Moone doubted Mr Slit was a trained shochet, he doubted even further that human was an acceptable animal under rabbinical law.
Still, Moone felt it wisest to avoid the swinging blade, as Slit made wide unpausing swipes with the knife, toward the trachea and esophagus of whoever was nearest. Even if Slit weren't operating under Kosher law, his form was still impeccable, and there was little doubt Slit kept his knife as carefully sharp as a true shochet. If that blade went through Moone's neck, Slit's cut would be true, and Moone wouldn't feel it.
If he were to die here, would he even know it?
Moone's unenhanced aura was apparently a lot easier to manipulate than the enhanced counterpart Moone had sported back on the hovercraft; Slit didn't even need to be touching him the way Slash had in order to pry tiny psychic fingers into his soul and pulling apart his boon from his bane. What were they doing? How were they doing it? The world was so full of things that seemed impossible, but deep down they had perfectly sound, rational explanations. Or, irrational explanations, more often than not. But things still had explanations.
Moone attempted to fight it off somehow, using same mental and metaphysical muscles he'd exercised in twisting his boon and bane into pretzels. Would it be possible for him to fail this battle, still having his boon in place, having the necessary resources on him to fight off this supernatural attack?
There was a small pop somewhere in his soul, and Moone was left completely without his boon. Apparently, yes, it had been possible for him to fail.
It was as if his fingers had been broken, not just broken but some snapped clean off, and an attempt to steeple the hands would result in the fingers passing out the other side or bending backwards, so that left and right hands seemed switched. The bane was there, but the boon was simply, gone. Unnatural void. Something living and a part of him dead suddenly. A miscarriage. Moone didn't like the feeling at all, and all the shocks and twists and revelations of the past [three?] months [didn't compare] to this feeling he felt right now.
It was hopefully temporary.
Moone's boon may have been detached, but that didn't change the fact that he had already planned for contingencies back when he'd had it.
Moone made his way along the side of the sloping rim above the black-tiled pit, hugging the wall and managing to keep his footing on the foot-wide concrete lip. Slit, unsure of how to fight against such a narrow footing, followed, rushing Moone, the sakin extended in front of him tracing a perfect beeline toward Moone's neck.
Moone banged the wall hard. One of the lock boxes above him was not a lock box at all, but the duct to the ventilation system, still piled high with powdery cold iron nanoparticles. Silvery powdered cold iron billowed out in large clouds, puffing out in a great quantity due to the microscopic and light quality of the metal.
Slit jerked to the side, his blade inches away from Moone's throat, and fell to the black tiled level a few feet below, landing perfectly on his feet. He stumbled back, as if made of magnets and repulsed physically by the iron particles, into the hall-like antechamber to the inner vault. The particles didn't affect Moone at all; there really was something inherently magical about these assassins.
The dust swirled around quickly in the warm air, spreading out to cover the whole room.
Moone could only watch as Slit was pushed into the bottleneck leading into the room, avoiding the cold iron cloud. Slit may have been cornered, but now he was cornered with Moone's teammates, and without Moone there to help them.
[Moone watches, attempting to repair his boon. There's a weird interaction between the team members' boons and the antimagical properties of the cold iron still swirling in the air in the sanctum sanctorum. Perhaps bouncing off the cloud, hitting Slit full blast and defeating him. Maybe the shapeshifter's aura powers come into play, if the shapeshifter isn't already on the other side of the room from this. The aura powers should come into play somehow, we need more of those.
The boon pulls back together like the abdominal muscles after pregnancy, and begins reknitting with his aura. Maybe this is what the shapeshifter helps out with.]
The particles settled, covering the whole floor in another layer of metallic dust. The final assassin, Slice, turned tail and disappeared [from wherever he'd been holding back and not fighting for some reason.] To get backup? To call for help? Moone guessed to report to MacBeth. The last assassin, but Moone further guessed that they hadn't seen the last of him.
[somehow moone and team are on one end of room and shapeshifter is alone on the other, with the NOC list. maybe demonic possession was finally invoked as part of last action sequence. incorporate geography of location into action scene and heist scene more, somehow.]
The shapeshifter went first, walking along one of the gently sloping side [paths.]
[The assassins, two remaining, burst out of seemingly nowhere; one of them hangs back presumably and the team get attacked by Slit; the shapeshifter and everyone are pushed back, except for Moone, alone one-on-one on the black-tiled lower floor, and maybe the shapeshifter is stranded somehow up on the level with the NOC list.]
The remaining assassins. How did they find them here? How did they get to them here? The Ancient City of Babel, much less the most secure vault underneath its tower? The assassins were working for MacBeth after all then; MacBeth would know they were here.
Of course, the fact the assassins were working for MacBeth was further confirmed by the fact that this one was also attacking Gef's team. He probably would not have been doing that had he been working for the agency. Most likely.
Moone examined the assassin, and tried to recall facts about him. This gentleman went by the moniker of Slit. He was dressed a lot more low-class than the well-tailored couture of Gentleman Slash. Clothes torn and sand-stained, Slit resembled a filthy Victorian hooligan, right down to the face smudged with soot, though otherwise closer in physical description to Bill Sykes than Oliver Twist. If Dick Van Dyke's character in Mary Poppins were evil, and on steroids, and wielding what looked like a thin cleaver, instead of a brush or broom.
Moone recognized the long, flat-tipped blade as being a sakin, used in Kosher ritual slaughter. Such blades were razor-sharp, and nick-free; it was said that an animal slaughtered with such a knife didn't even feel the cut, if the slice was performed properly. As much as Moone doubted Mr Slit was a trained shochet, he doubted even further that human was an acceptable animal under rabbinical law.
Still, Moone felt it wisest to avoid the swinging blade, as Slit made wide unpausing swipes with the knife, toward the trachea and esophagus of whoever was nearest. Even if Slit weren't operating under Kosher law, his form was still impeccable, and there was little doubt Slit kept his knife as carefully sharp as a true shochet. If that blade went through Moone's neck, Slit's cut would be true, and Moone wouldn't feel it.
If he were to die here, would he even know it?
Moone's unenhanced aura was apparently a lot easier to manipulate than the enhanced counterpart Moone had sported back on the hovercraft; Slit didn't even need to be touching him the way Slash had in order to pry tiny psychic fingers into his soul and pulling apart his boon from his bane. What were they doing? How were they doing it? The world was so full of things that seemed impossible, but deep down they had perfectly sound, rational explanations. Or, irrational explanations, more often than not. But things still had explanations.
Moone attempted to fight it off somehow, using same mental and metaphysical muscles he'd exercised in twisting his boon and bane into pretzels. Would it be possible for him to fail this battle, still having his boon in place, having the necessary resources on him to fight off this supernatural attack?
There was a small pop somewhere in his soul, and Moone was left completely without his boon. Apparently, yes, it had been possible for him to fail.
It was as if his fingers had been broken, not just broken but some snapped clean off, and an attempt to steeple the hands would result in the fingers passing out the other side or bending backwards, so that left and right hands seemed switched. The bane was there, but the boon was simply, gone. Unnatural void. Something living and a part of him dead suddenly. A miscarriage. Moone didn't like the feeling at all, and all the shocks and twists and revelations of the past [three?] months [didn't compare] to this feeling he felt right now.
It was hopefully temporary.
Moone's boon may have been detached, but that didn't change the fact that he had already planned for contingencies back when he'd had it.
Moone made his way along the side of the sloping rim above the black-tiled pit, hugging the wall and managing to keep his footing on the foot-wide concrete lip. Slit, unsure of how to fight against such a narrow footing, followed, rushing Moone, the sakin extended in front of him tracing a perfect beeline toward Moone's neck.
Moone banged the wall hard. One of the lock boxes above him was not a lock box at all, but the duct to the ventilation system, still piled high with powdery cold iron nanoparticles. Silvery powdered cold iron billowed out in large clouds, puffing out in a great quantity due to the microscopic and light quality of the metal.
Slit jerked to the side, his blade inches away from Moone's throat, and fell to the black tiled level a few feet below, landing perfectly on his feet. He stumbled back, as if made of magnets and repulsed physically by the iron particles, into the hall-like antechamber to the inner vault. The particles didn't affect Moone at all; there really was something inherently magical about these assassins.
The dust swirled around quickly in the warm air, spreading out to cover the whole room.
Moone could only watch as Slit was pushed into the bottleneck leading into the room, avoiding the cold iron cloud. Slit may have been cornered, but now he was cornered with Moone's teammates, and without Moone there to help them.
[Moone watches, attempting to repair his boon. There's a weird interaction between the team members' boons and the antimagical properties of the cold iron still swirling in the air in the sanctum sanctorum. Perhaps bouncing off the cloud, hitting Slit full blast and defeating him. Maybe the shapeshifter's aura powers come into play, if the shapeshifter isn't already on the other side of the room from this. The aura powers should come into play somehow, we need more of those.
The boon pulls back together like the abdominal muscles after pregnancy, and begins reknitting with his aura. Maybe this is what the shapeshifter helps out with.]
The particles settled, covering the whole floor in another layer of metallic dust. The final assassin, Slice, turned tail and disappeared [from wherever he'd been holding back and not fighting for some reason.] To get backup? To call for help? Moone guessed to report to MacBeth. The last assassin, but Moone further guessed that they hadn't seen the last of him.
[somehow moone and team are on one end of room and shapeshifter is alone on the other, with the NOC list. maybe demonic possession was finally invoked as part of last action sequence. incorporate geography of location into action scene and heist scene more, somehow.]
20 (day 26 pt 1/2)
Gef's plan had been to use his small frame to crawl through the air ducts and shut down the cold iron particulate circulation system, allowing supernatural spirits to enter into the vault. Going via the ducts themselves would have required him as a poltergeist to go into the belly of the beast where all of the cold iron was pumping through. The ducts themselves were also made out of meteoric cold iron. but he would be safe as long as he avoided direct contact with the system. He would crawl through the walls and shut the system down externally, snipping through or else gnawing through the wires.
This part of Gef's plan was incorporated into Unwin's, and through it they could avoid the cold iron entirely, which Unwin's team hadn't had a plan to work around. Demons being immune to cold iron [for some reason involving exorcism rites.] With the particulate circulation down, however, the naturally supernatural of them could enter into the vault themselves. They wouldn't need the work-around of Kissifer to get over the floor, because the pressure-detection system necessitating the demon would already be shut down.
The shapeshifter shaped its own aura to match the Tooth Fairy's, bypassing that layer of security to allow entrance. Going to crack the passcode was harder, intrinsically, but as the Tooth Fairy, apparently being able to do that using a code the real Tooth Fairy knew was possible to guess at, even if the code were random. Normally that wouldn't have been possible, but the shapeshifter's aura was as enhanced as Moone's had been underneath the Pontifex's magic, and Moone had been powerful enough a shaper of tides to stump an ancient and masterful shapeshifter- that same shapeshifter with the same power now had godlike power.
Moone questioned to himself whether that was wise. His own use of the power was strictly defensive, and he barely trusted himself with it.
Gef snapped a miniature pair of goggles on over his forehead, tiny climbers' gloves strapped onto each of his four paws which would allow him grip and insulation against direct contact with the cold iron. "Crawling through some impossibly narrow [passage.] Just like the old days."
[Gef worms his way around, and shuts the system down.]
The system's power shut down, the cold iron began accumulating as dust, in a thick layer on the bottom of the vent, and a thin layer on the bottom of the vault. The room also began heating up noticeably, without the cold air rapidly circulating through the room [and the server room.] {they wave some iron particulate detection system and wait for the levels to drop, maybe having a conversation in the meantime.]
Moone still had his normal aura, he'd still be able to escape have the means to escape. Diminished, but still functional. Moone considered again the power that the shapeshifter now possessed- so easily cracking the passcode, just because it had on itself the aura and identity of the tooth fairy. Knowing things it had no right to know. All the world's secrets could be at least guessed very easily by the shapeshifter. The Pontifex's aura transformed a thing into closer to the ideal of that thing, its magics greatly enhanced as its access to the source opened up like a hole growing bigger, or the turn of a nozzle allowing greater flow of water from the pipes. There's so much they didn't know about magic. And the shapeshifter's power seemed growing.
The shapeshifter on its own remained itself, but the aura filtered in knowledge, experiences even, that had not happened personally to it but which came as corollaries to the identity. Moone had had a contract with Cloud, which had not carried over to the shapeshifter, but now would grow in it if the shapeshifter had its aura in the form of Cloud's. Its body was still in Cloud's shape, but it had its aura identical to the Tooth Fairy's. Moone could see the shapeshifter's aura grow to become more and more like the Tooth Fairy's; the corollaries to that identity grew like a crystal latticework the longer the shapeshifter concentrated. The boons were its, and the banes were now its as well. The gifts over the control over the boon of speed, over the gift of night, over every gift that the tooth fairy had bestowed upon the factions at the auction. And over the money.
As the Tooth Fairy, the shapeshifter now had a connection to the Tooth Fairy's money. The money to the shapeshifter was the idea of the money, the idea of the money being what was bestowed upon the children whose baby teeth the Tooth Fairy took, just as it was the essence of the teeth that was taken in return. No physical transaction was made, but the idea of one was, the contract itself being written and carried out, all within that idea. That was how Unwin had taken the funds without a physical transaction being made, how he could replace one boon for another.
Here in the vaults, they discovered a deeper more powerful magic than they could have imagined just from the study of the security system. It was the magic here that powered all of Babel, all these contracts flowing through, from the idea of the currency to the physical reality of the makeup of the structure of the tower. The idea of the currency here was the idea of these fortunes in their [luck] sense, fortune itself extracted from slices of time, time flowing around them, tied up with the money deep in these vaults. Each time period represented, each tooth extracted one by one throughout time for thousands of years.
[I don't know where I'm goijng with this actually. Alchemical something. ]
The shapeshifter had every gift that the tooth fairy did, and the connection to the money flowed through it- everything that held Babel up.
The tower itself being an axis mundi, a giant beacon rod, only the rod inviting displeasure instead of approval from heavenly forces. Did that make the children's wide-eye innocence and belief in the Tooth Fairy tied in? The pure faith of children was one of the most powerful driving forces in the supernatural world. But its shaping of things represented superstition rather than religion, and this place, not just Babel but the heart of its foundation, the vault within, this place was the focal point of the imbalance, the clashing point between two opposing stormfronts. They're actually two entirely different systems of magic at play, not the same thing at all, although they've grown so entangled around each other that neither can survive without the other. Like a plant and the ivy that wraps around it. We alter ritual to better fit our myth, but we invent myth in the first place in order to explain our ritual.
With this raw power around him, Moone doubted that the Pontifex really would have been able to make good on his plan to collapse Babel and make his sacrifice worth something. The only thing to tear down this structure was the end of the world- the destruction of Babel wasn't just a microcosm of the casting down of Man's power, it was the end of the world itself, only on the other side of the bubble frozen in time. In the end was also the beginning, new races and tongues spreading out, powered by the force that would wipe out all of that at the last day. Not like the ark of Noah represented the end of the world, at all. Babel was an ark itself, throughout time, carrying this [system, or whatever,] the magic was much more powerful than the simple access of dreaming inside it could tear down- this was the dreaming already. All times in the world, occurring in the present, but representing a creation myth, still ongoing.
And it sometimes felt like the world would never end.
[heist continues; I think the vault is chambered, like a temple with progressively holier rooms]
[Maybe something about the tooth fairy himself coming down into the vault now. Maybe just a guard. They must surely realize that the air circulation is down as well. Does Gef have to reinstate it briefly? That would start kicking up the cold iron again...]
With every gift of the tooth fairy's, the shapeshifter had the gift of night again, just like back on the auction floor when Moone had approached it thinking it to be Cloud. The shapeshifter now cast this gift like a cloak over the members of the team, hiding them from the sight of [whoever was there.] [They complete whatever task they'd come to do, if it's a guard just a routine thing but if it's the TF himself something involving the magic we'd just discussed, and pass on their way.]
This part of Gef's plan was incorporated into Unwin's, and through it they could avoid the cold iron entirely, which Unwin's team hadn't had a plan to work around. Demons being immune to cold iron [for some reason involving exorcism rites.] With the particulate circulation down, however, the naturally supernatural of them could enter into the vault themselves. They wouldn't need the work-around of Kissifer to get over the floor, because the pressure-detection system necessitating the demon would already be shut down.
The shapeshifter shaped its own aura to match the Tooth Fairy's, bypassing that layer of security to allow entrance. Going to crack the passcode was harder, intrinsically, but as the Tooth Fairy, apparently being able to do that using a code the real Tooth Fairy knew was possible to guess at, even if the code were random. Normally that wouldn't have been possible, but the shapeshifter's aura was as enhanced as Moone's had been underneath the Pontifex's magic, and Moone had been powerful enough a shaper of tides to stump an ancient and masterful shapeshifter- that same shapeshifter with the same power now had godlike power.
Moone questioned to himself whether that was wise. His own use of the power was strictly defensive, and he barely trusted himself with it.
Gef snapped a miniature pair of goggles on over his forehead, tiny climbers' gloves strapped onto each of his four paws which would allow him grip and insulation against direct contact with the cold iron. "Crawling through some impossibly narrow [passage.] Just like the old days."
[Gef worms his way around, and shuts the system down.]
The system's power shut down, the cold iron began accumulating as dust, in a thick layer on the bottom of the vent, and a thin layer on the bottom of the vault. The room also began heating up noticeably, without the cold air rapidly circulating through the room [and the server room.] {they wave some iron particulate detection system and wait for the levels to drop, maybe having a conversation in the meantime.]
Moone still had his normal aura, he'd still be able to escape have the means to escape. Diminished, but still functional. Moone considered again the power that the shapeshifter now possessed- so easily cracking the passcode, just because it had on itself the aura and identity of the tooth fairy. Knowing things it had no right to know. All the world's secrets could be at least guessed very easily by the shapeshifter. The Pontifex's aura transformed a thing into closer to the ideal of that thing, its magics greatly enhanced as its access to the source opened up like a hole growing bigger, or the turn of a nozzle allowing greater flow of water from the pipes. There's so much they didn't know about magic. And the shapeshifter's power seemed growing.
The shapeshifter on its own remained itself, but the aura filtered in knowledge, experiences even, that had not happened personally to it but which came as corollaries to the identity. Moone had had a contract with Cloud, which had not carried over to the shapeshifter, but now would grow in it if the shapeshifter had its aura in the form of Cloud's. Its body was still in Cloud's shape, but it had its aura identical to the Tooth Fairy's. Moone could see the shapeshifter's aura grow to become more and more like the Tooth Fairy's; the corollaries to that identity grew like a crystal latticework the longer the shapeshifter concentrated. The boons were its, and the banes were now its as well. The gifts over the control over the boon of speed, over the gift of night, over every gift that the tooth fairy had bestowed upon the factions at the auction. And over the money.
As the Tooth Fairy, the shapeshifter now had a connection to the Tooth Fairy's money. The money to the shapeshifter was the idea of the money, the idea of the money being what was bestowed upon the children whose baby teeth the Tooth Fairy took, just as it was the essence of the teeth that was taken in return. No physical transaction was made, but the idea of one was, the contract itself being written and carried out, all within that idea. That was how Unwin had taken the funds without a physical transaction being made, how he could replace one boon for another.
Here in the vaults, they discovered a deeper more powerful magic than they could have imagined just from the study of the security system. It was the magic here that powered all of Babel, all these contracts flowing through, from the idea of the currency to the physical reality of the makeup of the structure of the tower. The idea of the currency here was the idea of these fortunes in their [luck] sense, fortune itself extracted from slices of time, time flowing around them, tied up with the money deep in these vaults. Each time period represented, each tooth extracted one by one throughout time for thousands of years.
[I don't know where I'm goijng with this actually. Alchemical something. ]
The shapeshifter had every gift that the tooth fairy did, and the connection to the money flowed through it- everything that held Babel up.
The tower itself being an axis mundi, a giant beacon rod, only the rod inviting displeasure instead of approval from heavenly forces. Did that make the children's wide-eye innocence and belief in the Tooth Fairy tied in? The pure faith of children was one of the most powerful driving forces in the supernatural world. But its shaping of things represented superstition rather than religion, and this place, not just Babel but the heart of its foundation, the vault within, this place was the focal point of the imbalance, the clashing point between two opposing stormfronts. They're actually two entirely different systems of magic at play, not the same thing at all, although they've grown so entangled around each other that neither can survive without the other. Like a plant and the ivy that wraps around it. We alter ritual to better fit our myth, but we invent myth in the first place in order to explain our ritual.
With this raw power around him, Moone doubted that the Pontifex really would have been able to make good on his plan to collapse Babel and make his sacrifice worth something. The only thing to tear down this structure was the end of the world- the destruction of Babel wasn't just a microcosm of the casting down of Man's power, it was the end of the world itself, only on the other side of the bubble frozen in time. In the end was also the beginning, new races and tongues spreading out, powered by the force that would wipe out all of that at the last day. Not like the ark of Noah represented the end of the world, at all. Babel was an ark itself, throughout time, carrying this [system, or whatever,] the magic was much more powerful than the simple access of dreaming inside it could tear down- this was the dreaming already. All times in the world, occurring in the present, but representing a creation myth, still ongoing.
And it sometimes felt like the world would never end.
[heist continues; I think the vault is chambered, like a temple with progressively holier rooms]
[Maybe something about the tooth fairy himself coming down into the vault now. Maybe just a guard. They must surely realize that the air circulation is down as well. Does Gef have to reinstate it briefly? That would start kicking up the cold iron again...]
With every gift of the tooth fairy's, the shapeshifter had the gift of night again, just like back on the auction floor when Moone had approached it thinking it to be Cloud. The shapeshifter now cast this gift like a cloak over the members of the team, hiding them from the sight of [whoever was there.] [They complete whatever task they'd come to do, if it's a guard just a routine thing but if it's the TF himself something involving the magic we'd just discussed, and pass on their way.]
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