heorte | when i go towards you it is with my whole life.

Another sort of person might, upon witnessing Ellis jam his entire arm and shoulder into the dark depths of a mysterious instrument in an allegedly haunted castle, hiss something about caution. Wysteria however merely steps a little closer and obediently holds the glowlight as directed. And she does, it must be noted, lean a little over the cracked edge of the pianofortes exterior as if she is considering following the reach of his arm with that of her own—

"Anything?"

"Something," he answers, abandoning efforts to squint down in the direction of his hand to shift position slightly in hopes of getting a better grasp on the edge of the item. "It'll come loose if I can—"

Was the answer: pull too hard and overbalance in the opposite direction when the item abruptly comes free of the strings with a discordant clang?

Because that's what happens almost immediately after the second, grasping yank on the edge of the leather pouch.

It's punctuated by Wysteria's automatic squawk of alarm and an ineffectual flap of elbow and glowlight in his general direction. It must be her discombobulated attempt to rescue him. Suffice to say, there has been more effectual attempts in human history.

The dual thump of Ellis on the mossy, flexing floorboards and the leather pouch alongside is somewhat definitive. After a moment, Wysteria—standing still alongside the cracked pianoforte case—helpfully declares,

"Would you like to place a wager over what is inside?"

It should be mortifying. Maybe it would be if Wysteria commented in any way to Ellis' undignified sprawl, but her attention is so reliably focused on what they've unearthed that he can sit up with a low grunt and brush some grit and leaves from his hair before considering the pouch.

Which had not felt like very much, but exposed fully to the glowlight has revealed itself to be lumpy. It made a louder thump than it had a right to. (Or was that just an echo of Ellis' landing?) Resting both forearms on his knees, Ellis directs a skeptical look over to the pouch.

"What are we wagering?" is clearly the most important question. Wysteria is far more ruthless than she appears, after all.

Surely they have all done more mortifying things in the field. Why, if asked she herself might mention that instance in which the three of them—Ellis, herself, and Tony—had incidentally backed themselves to the edge of a rather muddy ravine, and how when that edge had collapsed someone (she will not name names or point fingers; it would be undignified and besides, Wysteria suspects it may have been her) had dragged the other two down with them into the muck at the bottom of the gully.

Sitting very hard on the floor of some moldy old library floor is hardly so bad. Besides, cracking open the pianoforte's stuck case with sheer brute strength had been quite charming.

"Well money of course," she insists.

Obviously.

Money is easily parted with, as far as Ellis is concerned. He'd expected something more exacting, and momentary, faint relief passes across his face before his expression returns solely to solemn contemplation of terms.

"I'll wager the contents of my purse that it's rubbish," Ellis tells her, very gamely.

This might be more of a hopeful guess than an educated one. Maybe it's nothing but a bit of junk. But considering what's brought them here, it's more likely that whatever's in that pouch is an inconvenience waiting to happen.

"Nonsense," she scoffs, at last peeling herself from the edge of the broken instrument case. "What would rubbish be doing hidden inside a pianoforte?"

With the glowlight in one hand, Wysteria moves to retrieve the lumpy parcel from where it has fallen. She isn't strictly ginger amount how she fetches it up, but she is mindful not to spill its contents from out of the wrapping as she shifts it back to Ellis.

"I think it is will be something very dreadful. A cursed and calcified heart, perhaps."

(She has been reading a series of rather lavishly morbid mystery novels, having recently dashed through the last of her favorite cheap romances.)

"If it is, that would explain the haunting."

If an object were to be cursed and lodged within a pianoforte, it might as well be a calcified heart. Ellis takes the parcel from her, handling the leather wrappings carefully as he shifts position on the floor, one leg sent out in front of him, one boot slanting to wedge in against his knee as he lays the bag over his thigh.

"Step back, but hold the glowlight up, please."

Ellis' steadfast commitment to keeping Wysteria out of the blast zone is unwavering, even if it seems unlikely the parcel contains something explosive.

"Oh really, Mister Ellis," she tuts and tsks, taking all of a half step back. But up comes the glowlight despite her protest.

In that shadowed room, smelling densely of dust and molded things, with heavy ivy and lichen blotting out so much of the light from the waning day beyond the hollow window frames, that light casts him and the parcel and this corner in a wan, pale circle of illumination.

The protest is acknowledged with a brief lift of his eyebrows in return, but his attention returns to the parcel almost immediately when it's clear Wysteria is heeding the request.

If he could have told her to wait in the hallway, he might have. But she's edged back a few steps, enough so that Ellis can devote his time to picking the leather binding loose. The binds have gone brittle, enough to come apart with only a small bit of coaxing. The contents of the bag clink and rattle: not one item, but several. Not coin.

The impulse to simply turn the bag upside down is set aside in favor of very carefully, with one hand supporting the contents, ease them from the bag.

"Jewelry, of a sort," he says, tone still apprehensive. In his palm is something gleaming gold, the inset stone swirling dark, flecks of blood on the chain, accompanied by a clatter of rings. "I wouldn't put any of it on here."

The barely-there distance she has established obviously winnows shut again as the gold spills into his upturned hand. Which is only fair. It's not as if he'd been struck dead instantly upon touching the pieces, now had he? There can't be so much to fear, and if there is a murmuration of the arcane in the air it feels—withdrawn, distant. There is indeed something faintly off, but whether it has to do with the contents of the parcel down living in Ellis' hand or some other hidey hole in the sprawling castle, she cannot say.

What she can, when she bends close with the glowlight, is—

"Oh how fantastically dreadful. Do you think those spots are blood? Here. Allow me to take the rings. If there is some enchantment on them, I may be able to discern it."

She moves to trade them for the light.

Ellis' fingers twitch briefly closed over the cluster of jewelry in his palm. All these bits of metal are unsettlingly warm, just a shade or two off genuine discomfort where they touch the skin.

"Promise you won't put them on," is only good sense, even if Ellis is thinking less about any particular arcane item he's encountered and more about a particular passage in one of his mother's storybooks. "We don't know what they are."

Admittedly, he's more troubled by the amulet than the rings. But Ellis has learned through long experience at Tony and Wysteria's side that a word of caution is never wasted, even if it only culminates in Ellis reminding them of his initial apprehensions as they mopped up the results of a minor chemical fires.

"Of course I shall not put them on. What do you take me for, Mister Ellis? Honestly, this is hardly my very first haunted mansion, much less my first ruin or adventure into unknown mystery."

This mild scolding is doled out even as she trades the glowlight into his palm and takes up the rings, juggling them gently about her palm as she is initially surprised by the murmuring heat held in the metal. In honor of his caution, she is very mindful not to accidentally slip her finger through either ring as she prods them about.

Her focus narrows. Have you ever blurred your vision while looking at a portrait and seen it colors and shapes in slightly different dimensions? It is rather like that, and most easily done when she has a point (or two points, as is the case with the matching rings) upon which to concentrate.

Here is the thing: Ellis understands Wysteria has the capability to do magic, but he has very little idea of what it looks like when she resorts to any kind of magical ability.

And Ellis certainly can't see the way the rings light up under scrutiny. The rings are old, and the magic on them stems from something far older. It casts a bright, sickly glow under her examination, a green tinge to the brightness there.

In his palm, the pendant grows heavier. His fingers twitch closed and stay closed over it this time, as he looks up into Wysteria's face.

"What is it?" he questions, examining her furrowed brow.

With her hand very close to her face and her attention having gone slightly cross-eyed given the intent fixture of her study, Wysteria at first answers with only a faint noncommittal reply. After a little more poking and prodding, and the very careful turning over of the twin rings in her palm, she at last deigns to begin formulating a proper answer.

"I'm not certain. The enchantment is very old; I've never seen anything quite like it. You have a needle and thread, Mister Ellis. I have seen them in your satchel. You must picture magic a little like needlework, strung along lines as if stretched between points where the needle has passed. And it is rather like the pattern on these is unfamiliar to me. I can't say precisely what the purpose is, only that it exists. And I suppose that it would be strange to find very old magic in a place which is meant to be haunted and not have the two be in some way related."

She pauses. Which she is standing above him, her fingers part so that she can look at him through the gaps between them.

"I might be able to undo it. Cut the thread, as it were."

Low to the earth, Ellis is not positioned well enough to take her opposite hand.

What she proposes sounds innocuous enough. Impressive, but surely not taxing in any particular way. How much does it take to snip a bit of thread and allow the fabric it's holding together to fill into pieces?

But still—

"Is that wise?"

Though it occurs to him almost immediately after—

"Someone in Research might want to have a look at them."

Ellis says this very neutrally, as if his real opinion isn't that they should chuck all three pieces into the forge in the smithy to have done with them once they return to Kirkwall.

"Need I remind you that I am a member of Research?"

It is equally mild, hardly a point of contention at all. It's true that Isaac might prefer to see the pieces for himself.

Still.

"I don't know that I've ever seen pieces connected in this way. I've read about it certainly—sympathetic rings and our crystals and books are in fact fashioned with a similar principle—, but this is...different." What was that about wisdom? "What makes the enchantment on them functional is the whole. You cannot unmoor one of our crystals from its companions and have it still be functional. But I can see right here where these could be separated from one another."

It is part talking to herself, part thinking aloud, and part persuasive argument for his benefit.

"And besides, we don't know that taking they are the definitive source of the disturbance. So it seems prudent to do a little testing in the field, yes? I can disconnect one of the rings and then we will still have the other and the amulet to fetch back undisturbed."

Truthfully, it seems hard to believe that three pieces of tarnished jewelry could have caused such a commotion that it merited action. Even with the disquieting warmth of the metal and the smears of blood, they are old rings and a gaudy amulet. Where's the harm in trying something that sounds so easily done?

Still, Ellis gets to his feet before answering her, so he can follow through on the impulse to take her free hand in his own.

"Alright," is almost an afterthought. There's a pinch of worry at his brow, but is that not commonplace? "If you think you might find something of interest in doing it, I don't see a reason we shouldn't."

Well, he does. But some that he recognizes are overprotective in a detrimental way, and are thus set aside. Wysteria is capable, and knows better what she can accomplish. Ellis' perception of magic is fair enough when it comes to a battlefield. This kind of smaller, inquisitive type of magic is new to him, and likely very specific to Wysteria herself. He trusts her assessments of it.

There is in fact quite a long list of why shouldn'ts which Wysteria, in some more prudent hour in which she were not so very fascinated with the how coulds, might give serious consideration. There is a possibility for the release of some stored arcane energy. It is possible that the links between the enchantments are what is keeping the unknown effect of the spell in check. It is possible that by unwinding them, they will become all that more dangerous. That if there is some spirit tied to them, the weakened of the bonds will release it. That—

And so on and so forth.

Yet here they are in this hour and the temptation to be clever is very powerful. And yes, she does suspect they will find something of interest. She smiles at him, quite self-assured indeed as she lifts their linked hands so she can press a swift kiss to his knuckles.

"Very good. Now, take the spare and tell me if you begin to notice anything different about it. I will require my hand back, Mister Ellis," she explains, all sunshine as she breaks this very recently made point of connection and carefully passes the second ring over to replace her hand in his.

Centering the remaining ring in her palm, Wysteria creates a flat plane with her free hand and with it hovers directly above the ring. "I have been told that this is a very unnecessary step, you know. This use of the offhand. But I find it much easier to visualize how to accomplish the thing with both, and confidence is of course one of the foremost tools in any magician's repertoire."

What is perhaps significantly less clear is what else might be in that tool kit. There is no hum of light, no crackle of ozone-scented energy. There is pulsing shadow, no magic word, no indication whatsoever that anything at all is occurring in the space between her hands. And yet somewhere, somehow, to some other eye, something must become. Or rather, it must unbecome like a thread plucked free of a tapestry or how tugging the loose end of yarn unravels careful knitwork for all at once, there is some disorienting sway to the air as reality rushes to fill a space which once was occupied by something else.

And what follows is—

At first, nothing.

The pause stretches long enough for Ellis to tip his face to her, a question half-formed. (Spellwork that is an absence, an extinguishing, the aftereffects of which linger like smoke curling from a snuffed candle, how did such a thing—) Wysteria might explain the principal in such a way that Ellis could not, was not capable, of following, but he knows innately that it would please her to unravel even a part of her capabilities for him. (It would please him to hear it, incomprehensible or not.) The ring is still warm in his hand, and the fact that it has grown warmer escapes his notice as he considers Wysteria's face.

And then, a concussive thoom of pressure erupts from the paired ring. It explodes from Ellis' palm, shoves them both back from each other with a harsh slap of force. The ring is dropped. There is blood welling from a gouge in his palm, which nonsensically registers before Ellis fully makes sense of the grotesque thing unfolding disjointed, blackened limbs from a puddle of black on the floor of the room. Shadow and dark comes off it like smoke.

Ellis is scrambling to his feet, shouting, "Run for the door, run for the door!" as he moves immediately to reclaim his weapon, swing for the creature's blurred, monstrous face.

For a disorienting moment, she struggles to grasp why she is looking at the chipped plaster of the ceiling or how she has ended up on the floor. The facts catch up to her at the pace of a half step behind. She registers the surge of force only after the dark thing has begun to unfurl in the room's center; she is on her feet before she realizes it is because Ellis has shouted at her.

She is on the wrong side of the room, but is fleeing without a second thought with as wide a berth afforded the demon as it shrieks into being as is possible. And there is the cracked piano forte, and the rotted books which have come free of their shelves, and here is the shadow of the creature and the impact of Ellis' mace crashing against the crackling barrier which has sprung up in defense of it.

The wan daylight filtering from the overgrown window frames dims so instantly that its as if a curtain has been abruptly drawn, or as if they have somehow collapsed beyond the reach of the day, or, or, or.

A series of calculations that come together almost instantly:

He surely will not kill this monster on his own.

He cannot devote himself to the task too thoroughly with Wysteria in the room.

But he cannot turn and run, because Wysteria is on the wrong side of the room and she needs to make it through those doors.

So, in spite of the crackling barrier and rapidly coalescing form, Ellis weaves in closer. Ducking an unnaturally bent limb, Ellis heaves his mace up in a fluid arc to land a hit in the center of the rippling black mass. The barrier sparks and then gives under the force of the blow, and the impact of it shatters defensive magic and buries into the sucking morass of the creature's form.

There's a guttural screech in answer as the rippling mass quails and lashes out indiscriminately. It's flailing limbs whip blindly, no specific target beyond the impulse of pain animating joints that stretch, claws grasping for any purchase. One catches Ellis' across exposed cheek. Others shatter what's left of the piano forte, splinter a rotted chair, and some slice clumsily out towards Wysteria, even as it's attention stays narrowed on Ellis.

Edited (html no) 2021-08-02 03:46 (UTC)

The splintering of the room's contents about her prompts a flinch, a mindless throwing up of her arms to protect her head and maybe some sharp sound of distress as a thrashing limb crashes before her, bringing down shelves and dozens of books after it. To say that she ducks and weaves to avoid the assault would be to give Wysteria more credit than she is truly due—it implies some sense of strategy, where in reality she has none. Luck is not the same thing is good sense or practiced instinct as she stumbles half blind and fully desperate through the unlit library without any real sense of where the spirit is manifesting, and only the memory of where the door had lain, and hardly any grasp at all as to the state of—

"Ellis! You must come away from it!" A book is snatched blindly from the nearest shelf and chucked with force at the deepest miasmic point of shadow at the room's dreadful center. Arcane energy thrills over the receipt.

The inevitable outcome of this misadventure: a full suit of armor for Wysteria.

But while that consideration flashes across his mind, it takes an immediate backseat to the roiling mass in front of him. It's a toss up as to whether the impact of the book did any damage, but it was a reminder of a second person in the room. The swiveling, shadowed face shifts towards the secondary threat, and there's nothing for Ellis to do but shift with it, keeping himself centered in it's vision, even if he can't singularly counter the abundance of lashing tendrils. The sweep of his mace swings low, clanging against something substantial enough to provoke further pained writhing.

"I'll be right behind you!" is perhaps not the most reassuring thing, when Ellis has held his ground. A mace is not effective at a distance. "Get out into the hallway, and we'll go!"

Would this follow them? Is it bound here? Ellis doesn't recognize it, but he's hopeful that it's contained to the house. The disturbances had seemed centered here, and surely, surely just this once they could get lucky.

In the dark on dark, with the glowstones scattered and lost, there is nothing at all reassuring about his assertion. But what is there to be done?

Wysteria flings another book at the writhing mass of tendrils, and then— "I'm going then!"

And she does, ducking another lashing of dark tendrils and fumbling through the uneven terrain of scattered books and splintered shelving and the warped moss slick floor until she reaches the doorway.

And slams into the closed door, briefly baffled. She tries the latch and only once she discovers that it's stuck does Wysteria realize the wrongness of the door's alignment. Hadn't it been open? Why would they have closed the doors behind them?

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cant believe dw hid this from me

an OUTRAGE who do i call

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