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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