multiversallogs | most consequential choices involve shades of gray

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most consequential choices involve shades of gray

Who: Erik Lehnsherr, Lucius Malfoy (Sr) and Tadhg MacEibhir
What: Discoveries are made where things are concealed, for fun and profit.
Where: South of the city.
When: Newdi morning (and slightly backdated).

It's difficult to explain to the uninitiated what one should expect from these adventures. Each time Lucius has gone, it's been a little different. A scavenger hunt of trinkets through to warfare with dinosaurs. Upon explanation, primarily to Mr. MacEibhir, he might not have properly accounted for this, and next time may just leave it at: if you have particular expectations, I suggest you leave them behind.

For one thing, Lucius expects danger, but the shape looming ahead of them, seen hazy through windshield and fog, is not the kind of threat that accounts for the defensive charms he has attempted to put on the now serviceable vehicle. It is passive, large, stagnant as a building.

They've been driving for a while. Erik behind the wheel and Lucius has taken his seat in the back, sitting stiffly in a way that is less about posture, more about lacking trust in the metal cage on wheels he tolerates for the sake of these trips. Taking the vehicle out from where it's shacked up in secondhand barn building, headed out further south and into what was almost a wall of dense fog, preternatural in its lingering. Visibility was lost by the time they'd passed their last pasture fence, rumbling over terrain that degenerates from road to trodden packed earth. Lucius is a quiet participant, and if he is leading this expedition beyond simply organising it, then he is doing so with.

Subtlety. Or apathy.

No robes, either. Trousers, a shirt, although his coat involves a lot of fabric, granted. His only weapon, which may seem queer to some in the car but expected for others, is the black and silver polished cane he currently has balanced across his knees, hands rested on it primly. If he usually wears rings, he doesn't today.

Ahead, the sprawling shape is a dark shadow in all the whiteness, laid across their path, man-made angles. Lucius won't see it first, preoccupied with his side of the scenery, where the sun burns from the east, struggling through the encompassing fog.

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By no means is this Erik's first stint behind the wheel of a vehicle, but it is the first time he could be classified as the driver, were one to apply fictional tropes to this situation.
Which he has. In his head.

He is prepared for more than only this role, however. The last run taught him a few things, perhaps the most important being to look forward to mental assault as well as physical—admittedly, the possibility had not even occurred to him before. It's not as though he has much in the way of psychic defense at his disposal, however (or so he thinks), and so the most he can do is be prepared. Magda, Anya, his family—he's been thinking about them since he woke up.

This is, perhaps, why he joined their small gathering in a serious mood, looking all business in his blue and yellow kevlar (and narrow as hell besides), and apparently with a lack of consideration for the preparation of his collaborators. He's brought a respirator for himself, you see, but none for either of them. They can breathe as much of the fog as they like. He doesn't care, and unless prompted to explain he will keep it ready around his neck without indicating why it's there at all.

There rests a large duffel bag in the truck bed, as well. It is far heavier than what any one man should be able to carry.

"There's something ahead," he says, just loud enough to be heard over the engine, and eases off the gas pedal cautiously. If the approaching structure contains any metallic elements, he will have announced it well before the appearance of its silhouette.

Tadhg has also done what he can to prepare, through gathering what stories he can of others who have fog-traveled (varied enough that he'd agree with Mr. Malfoy's short-form explanation), reinforcing his own protective wards and arming himself. He may be riding shotgun, but he carries no obvious firepower. Instead he holds a sheathed longsword braced between his knees and a sextet of throwing knives strapped to his sides.

His real firepower lies within himself and his torcs, of course, waiting to be channeled. Time to find out if survival skills honed in Faerie's most chaotic realms will also serve him here. Hopefully the message he left for Angela in case he doesn't return will never activate.

Though he doesn't seem overly concerned either way. Quite eerily serene, actually.

His companions have spoken little beyond necessities, and Tadhg has no problems with following their example. The lack of conversation allows him to extend his senses, searching for signs of movement or power in the fog. Signs of threat.

When Lehnsherr makes his announcement, he leans forward a little, animal-dark eyes probing for any hint of the energy patterns of a living thing. The angular darkness wouldn't seem to fall into that category, but he's making no assumptions. "A building?" he muses, not necessarily expecting an answer.

There's metal.

A whole bunch of it.

So Erik's announcement comes while the scenery is thick and white still with fog before its ramshackle shape appears visible before their eyes and the trucks momentum slows. Lucius has no outward senses to go by - no tasting the metal in the air, iron and steel both, nor knowing the absence of anything life-like within the structure - and whatever spells he can cast to compensate are somewhat swirly for the confines of the truck, but he is content to simply look.

"Not unfeasible," he comments, although he doesn't state that little is probably built, out here. More than likely grown up through the ground.

As they near, however, it is clear the shapes aren't buildings. Stretching across the road like something broken, the underside of one train carriage is a bizarre thing to witness, not generally seen by those who don't work railway maintenance and even those that do, ruined metal and exposed track wheels looking scorched and blackened. It rests on its side like a beached whale, and angling off and attached to it like a broken joint would be an identical carriage, sitting at an awkward angle like an immense discarded toy.

Its make is unusual, a certain foreign quality to its angled windows, faded colours of gold and green where it hasn't burned black. Broken glass glitters on the ground that it has laid tracks in from some violent path its coursed through the fog, sans rails.

Edited 2011-12-25 02:04 (UTC)

"It's a train."

Well. That's ironic, Erik thinks, and unusual—which in itself is not unusual for this awful place—and in a way beautiful.

He appears transfixed on the steel beast as the truck rolls to a stop a mindful distance away from its ruin, the engine still running. Looks left, and then right, leaning as though to see as much as he can of it. Gauging its length, the number of cars, and whatever contents he can detect, if any.

"Do we go around, or through?" First Tadhg gets a glance, and then Malfoy, by way of the rear view mirror. "Or do we stop here?"

Tadhg's eyes also fix on the arresting sight, tracking along the length of the ... crash? At first inspection it does look like a barreling train plunged through the walls between worlds, grinding to a fatal halt in this completely unexpected place. The rumination leads to such questions as what kind of people were riding in it and how many and what happened to them?

On the other hand, he can't yet rule out the possibility of the whole thing being some kind of fog-construction or hallucination, which would beg a whole other set of questions. The púca leans forward a shade further, lips slightly parted and fingers flexing on his sword.

"No sign of life or movement," he murmurs in response to Erik's question. "I've no objections to a closer look on foot, but you two are the ones with prior experience out here." He turns far enough sideways that he can look directly at either of his co-hunters. "What do you recommend?"

Despite being a man of words, more often than not, Lucius answers by way of action; he gets out of the car while it's still growling. He doesn't like the car anyway, for all that it is a necessity. The fog is cool and damp. The last they saw of the sky, it had threatened snow.

A slight flick of his cane has the longer wooden sheath disappearing as if it were made of smoke, revealing shorter wand. Silver shimmers through the air down its length at some charm that Lucius doesn't bother to explain to the other two as he pauses beside the car, hand resting on open door and studying the unusual sight before them.

"We shall look," he finally announces, voice prim and crisp in the damp air. "Goodness knows how much blank white fog I can stand at a time. Lehnsherr, would you care to..." Lucius doesn't actually have a name for Erik's magic, so he settles on; "...right it?" A nod to the carriage and its visible underside.

It's funny how easy it sounds as a request. Flip that massive vehicle onto its wheels, would you? All however-many tonnes of it. Just, you know, tip it over. There's a good chap. Erik gives Malfoy something of a sideways look as he too exits the cab, the engine now quiet (he can start it again from a distance, if need be). He takes a moment to adjust the fit of his respirator before shutting the door behind him. The sound of it is strangely weak, muted by the ever-present fog.

"Stand back," he advises, treading away from their vehicle and towards the other, tugging his gloves more firmly into place despite the current uselessness of the gesture. He's about to attempt to roll some train carriages in front of a rapt audience in the middle of nowhere. While wearing form-fitting kevlar. This will be either amazing or embarrassing.

One false start necessitates a slight repositioning of his feet, apparently, which he does without looking back to his companions at all. Taking two little steps that make his body sway easily, willowy. He sucks in a deep, filtered breath and pushes it out again. Resets his hands. Glowers at the train like he hates it. (And so he does, if only right now.)

Finally, a long, low sound reverberates through the twisted beast, this time developing past the preliminary old-bones resentment of being forced to move and into a proper moan of shifting bulk. Loose fixtures first rattle and then hold fast, and the train heaves, and while Erik strains against the air as though he were lifting the thing bodily, it rights itself. Wheels down, roof up. One open door bangs shut as the behemoth turns.
Finally, all its weight drops onto the wheels, and as it pushes great ruts into the ground it emits a clamour of metallic bangs and groans and squeals, the carriages rocking as their bulk settles.

Erik drops to his knees at once, palming the earth and breathing hard.

Tadhg gives the train only a cursory glance as it shifts, and instead stays focused on the man moving it. What happens to the huge metal construction is self-evident, but the way Lehnsherr's patterns twist and stretch to accommodate the forces he brings into play fascinates him. His hands continue working without much in the way of conscious direction from him, shutting the truck door behind him, arranging his sword at his right side, drawing one knife to hold poised in his fingers.

When the man in kevlar falls to all fours, he steps forward, starting to extend the hand not occupied with the knife to offer his healing powers, but he hesitates. Lehnsherr shows no signs of injury, and Tadhg is not at all sure how his fairy energies would interact with this whatever-the-man-does in any capacity other than healing. Instead he converts the gesture to an offered hand up, should it be needed, though he's not at all sure how Erik will react to that, either.

"Well done." He keeps ears, eyes, nose and more arcane senses spread wide, hunting for any potential threat within the cars that might have been wakened by the movement, or any without that may have heard the noise. The knife glints in the fog-diffused light as he steps between Erik and the train.

Tadhg deals out all the compliment necessary. Lucius is otherwise preoccupied.

He moves on by, a dark shape of cautious steps and dragging coat in Erik's periphery, the fog dancing and blurring up the edges of things, including the furthermost end of the second carriage, faded off into white ether. By the time he is placing a hand against the door that had snapped closed beneath the train's singular convulsion, there is a glow of light glimmering at the end of his wand. It does nothing against the thick white fog, but may help against gloomy interior of the train.

With a creak of steel, Lucius wrenches it back open.

Upon the side of the carriage are painted words in yellow, or perhaps gold in another life. The other side they do not face is scraped to silver and bronze from its own impact, the windows emptied of its glass as fog comes seeping into the dimness, but the side they do is more or less clean for all the good it does. Whatever the words are, they are in no recognisable language any three of them will know or have even glimpsed briefly.

Something tugs at Tadhg's senses, however, a sluggish, sleepy feeling presence that is no doubt alive. It can be felt towards the second twisted carriage, while the one that Lucius stands before remains unoccupied. At the mouth of the doorway, he speaks, his voice sounding hollow where it half-echoes through the empty carriage and bounces off thick fog and space;

"We shall leave it otherwise whole, so I can sell its location to those with bigger machines and ambition than we."

Erik grips the púca's hand without more than a moment's hesitation, and even that seems to be more for emphasis than anything else... although, to be honest, his sigh loses some of its effect behind that breathing mask. Compliments aside, that was sort of a shit performance, as far as he's concerned. One of the last things he did before being stolen away to Baedal was lifting a nuclear submarine, and here a couple of train cars nearly knock him on his ass. Bah.
This exasperation lasts only as long as it takes for him to get to his feet, though, which he does with a negligible grunt of breath and a nod of thanks to Tadhg.

Perhaps out of spite, or something like it, Erik lifts a hand as he too approaches the now upright train cars, forcing the coupling between them to separate. Although his expression appears neutral, there is no gentleness in the gesture; the noise issued by the twisting metal is distinctly unpleasant. As though steel is capable of feeling pain.

Otherwise whole, sure. Except for this one part right here.

Erik may have snapped the coupling out of a fit of pique with the train, but Tadhg is the one who grits his teeth at the noise, and not because of his sensitive hearing. Though really, the presence he senses no doubt had enough of a wake-up call from the righting of the train, so what difference could a little extra sound make? He reaches inward to draw power from his torcs, funneling it through his right fingers into the knife he holds, and through his left palm where it rests on the hilt of his sword, ready to draw.

"'Ware, gentlemen," he warns. "We are not alone." He jerks his chin in the direction of the second carriage. With smooth sideways steps, he angles himself so that he can see as much as can be seen past Malfoy and the now open door, while still keeping his main focus on the whatever-it-may-be.

Lucius braces a hand against the door as the carriage he is half inside of shudders at the detachment of its twin, shooting a look of mute complaint towards Erik but knowing better to put his voice to it. There are other things to fuss about. He looks towards Tadhg at that announcement, considering it, and deciding that he has, at least, chosen the correct carriage.

"Then be sure to kill it should it decide to make its acquaintance."

The instruction primly delivered, Lucius disappears inside shadowy carriage, the light from his wand throwing up illumination and shadows in kind over where intact windows are spider-cracked through or entirely empty, glass littered in pieces inside and out. From where the other two are standing, they can see it is mostly empty, but closer inspection shows blood stains and former carnage, and the smell of old death. These are things Lucius can ignore. What he can't ignore is the strange shape taken roost further along.

And because things just work like that, taking cues, there's a crack of window glass-- not from the carriage Malfoy is exploring, but from the second. The thing that comes out of it does not emerge all the way - it's a greyish-green appendage, almost finger-like in that it has knuckle-ish joints and a horned claw at the end, coming to bend over the edge of the window. A second identical appendage joins it.

Out into the swirling mist it heaves itself, revealing itself to be a collection of five of these over-sized digits in a kind of oversized, crab-walking starfish, bigger than a Doberman and judging by the window it just came out of, stronger than one too. No mouth in view, but two bulbous, unblinking black eyes rest in meaty centre of its five limbs.

Despite the likelihood that doing so may draw the attention of this...hideousness, Erik calls out to alert the man closest to it, his voice lent an artificial quality through the respirator. "Malfoy? It's coming out..." Whatever the hell it is. Dear god, how ugly is this thing.

At the same time, he begins the customary cautious backing-off, skimming the soles of his boots across the ground to avoid a misstep—the last thing he needs is to go ass over teakettle over here—and reaching back with one arm as though to feel for any objects that may come up behind him. The group's truck is not in collision range, however, and with nothing else but the train and the aberration nearby...

His fingers spread in their glove; the bag in the truck bed stirs discreetly.

Tadhg would like to eyeroll at Malfoy's talent for stating the obvious, but doing so would take his gaze off the second carriage and whatever is climbing out of it. He therefore limits his irritation to a stallion-snort, a low thrum of noise from deep in his chest. His hands move in a quick blur of motion that ends with his sword drawn and his right hand once again poised to throw before the creature finishes emerging from the carriage.

He circles in closer, trying to draw its attention while leaving an avenue of attack open to the other two. Hopefully Malfoy heard Lehnsherr's warning, and Lehnsherr himself won't need too much longer to recover his strength. His eyes search the thing's energy patterns for a spot where his knife might deliver a jolt of his own energy to best effect. The creature has made no aggressive moves yet, but Tadhg has never heard any fog-being described as harmless.

As Tadhg moves, he keeps pouring energy into his blades. He has no idea how many shots he'll get, but if it's only one, he wants to make it count.

Lucius reacts, and although he is loathe to use an excessive amount of magic in a realm where reality twists and splinters, he does it almost by instinct. Through the glass of the first carriage, there's a flooding darkness, and black smog billowing out through the broken windows in partial-Disapparition. It turns back into Malfoy by the time he has some distance between himself and the train, turning to see the monster with a look of annoyance that turns into steelier wariness. He knows weird creatures, and this one is particularly unattractive even by Wizarding Britain standards.

The black eyes that rest upon the thing's... head... are about as informative as fist-sized chunks of obsidian. That it's following Tadhg's movements is unclear until it moves in kind, shifting with a rather horrible arachnid quality, fast and jerky for its otherwise cumbersome size, the click and scrap of its oversized claws a louder sound than the weird crack of its joints moving beneath gristly muscle.

It turns, once, mirroring Tadhg's movements, before a claw raises as the only warning before it suddenly jumps in that way you don't expect spiders to -- for the carriage, at first, hooking one leg over the edge of its roof with a hideous scrape of sharp bone on steel, before its legs bunch again to launch itself off that vertical face and directly towards Tadhg. A flash of its underside reveals a sinewy, gnashing maw.

By the time it's moving in earnest, Lucius' wand is up - but he is otherwise allowing the hunter to act on the attack as he may, although if Erik interferes too, the wizard will be the last to complain.

Edited 2012-01-10 12:46 (UTC)

Erik will absolutely interfere, if only because the creature is attacking Tadhg rather than the reverse. None of them (presumably) have any idea what this thing is capable of doing, after all, apart from the usual things one may do with a mouth so hideous, with clawed limbs worthy of a Jabberwocky's envy.
(Is there a Jabberwocky in Baedal? There'd better not be.)

A guttural sound of effort announces his involvement, which comes in the form of eight or nine steel railroad spikes, airborne with the intent to intercept the beast's hideous body mid-leap. Each spike is about eight inches long, sharpened nearly to the point of unfairness, and notched once each to make removal more difficult—never mind what he may yet do to their shapes should they become lodged in the aberration's flesh.

There are more of these in the truck bed, too, awaiting their turn. He came well equipped this time.

Tadhg will admire the elegant simplicity of Erik's attack, just as soon as he can afford to shift his focus from the hellspawn currently intent on rending him to bits.

Even as the beast pushes off from the carriage, Tadhg shouts a single word in Fae and launches his knife on an intercept course. Fine lines of power course along the etching worked into the blade, primed to sear through whatever flesh it enters like a lightning strike. Unless the thing can change course in mid-air, the knife should strike one of its eyes, or just under them in the intersection of two of its legs.

He takes one step forward and braces his sword in both hands, angling it in an effort to impale the creature through that toothy aperture with the force of its own attack. Poised on his tongue is another word that will deliver an even more powerful bolt through his sword, just as soon as it penetrates.

A lot of sharp things are coming its way.

Metal screams through the air, but the pitching wail of pain that strikes it, clear as a bell, is not the same thing - it's a girl's scream, wrenching and ragged, and by the time the monster has been stopped, something else has happened. The multi-limbed creature of ugliness is gone, and in place is a smaller figure, dressed down to little more than a white frock that is quickly becoming red, with four naked limbs and a lolling head.

The girl bounces off the side of the carriage and crumples like a doll. Blood streaks her legs from thighs to ankles and spatters on her arms. A railroad spike is driven through her thigh, one into her ribcage, another in her gut, and the others have disappeared (although not from Erik's senses).

Her face, though, where Tadhg's knife struck strew, has been torn. An eye is a gory mess, a hole of red and black, and the searing edge of the magically charred knife ripples her skin down to her top lip, making her unrecognisable. Except that she isn't, not to Tadhg, because of course he can visualise what his little girl Caoimhe looks like. To Lucius and Erik, she is just a girl. One that can't be older than five.

"Specialis Revelio," is quietly and almost coldly uttered by Lucius, the sound of his wand cutting the air in a sharp and almost dismissive flick, as if one were pulling aside a curtain. The cloaking illusion lifts a moment, showing the twitching, mangled creature embedded with eight or nine steel spikes puncturing through its strange body, its black eye collapsed, and its mouth snapping soundlessly.

The girl's mournful cry catches on the wind, the illusion fighting back.

The beasts in this terrible vast place are not kind enough to make any one of their psychological attacks less than poignant, Erik believes, and so the idea that this is just a girl does not even enter his mind. It's not his Anya screaming this time—for which he is immensely grateful, however selfish that is—so she must belong to someone.

Now that the creature has been rendered immobile, Erik collects himself into a less aggressive stance and gives his hair a little flip back from his forehead, his respirator emitting tinny, panting breaths. He looks to Lucius first, sees no evidence of recognition at a glance, and so moves on to Tadhg...

For five of the most horrible seconds of his life, Tadhg believes, though the anguished huff of breath forced from his lungs is lost underneath the screaming of a too-familiar voice. His ability to see life energies allows him to see through most illusions, but this one duplicates Caoimhe exactly, patterns included. When Malfoy's spell disrupts the mirage, Tadhg's lips slowly curl in a snarl of cold fury.

The beast could have drawn such a detailed image from only one place in all of Baedal.

Growling his own spell in Fae, Tadhg uses his right hand to press the medallion under his shirt against his chest, hard enough to leave an imprint. Yes. Rather than disrupting the illusion, he can now see its connections to the creature wearing it, and can just make out the beast itself. Sufficient for his purposes.

What his intentions are becomes clear as he rises and strides toward the thing, face set and chill. His body flickers and flows, shimmering whitely into the shape of a muscular, dark grey stallion...a stallion holding a sword between his teeth. Tadhg rears and brings his fore-hooves down as hard as he can, one on either side of those gnashing teeth. A bellow of challenge tears from his throat.

[ OOC: HI SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG ]

Merlin--

The elm point of his wand goes skyward as Lucius flicks it away and takes quite a definite step back by the time Tadhg is making his transformation, pale eyes flaring wide. Though the fact that the man is magical registers as no surprise to a wizard (and one who was informed ahead of time), it's still something of a shock enough to make him hesitate and glance Erik's way.

Probably, it's time to leave.

The monster twists and writhes with disrupted shape flickering over its body; one blink, it's the same little girl, and the next, it's the tortured beast crippled by the metal spikes and the work done by the knife.

By the time Tadhg's hooves are finding flesh, it lets out one last whine as rubbery muscle twists and tears against breaking bones, arcs of black blood jetting and spattering on the floor, the train, the large grey stallion that stands over it. The fog is otherwise oppressively silent.

Erik shares Malfoy's surprise, it seems, as the pair's eyes meet almost in unison.

Well. That answers that, then.

A moment later, Erik's squinting against the fog—it occurs to him only now that he should have brought some sort of eyewear, god damn it, it's probably absorbing through his eyes—to give this spectacle the moment of attention it deserves. Only a moment, mind. Tadhg may not even have finished savaging the creature before Erik says, already turning away from the train and the gory business over yonder to head for the truck's cab, "What else are we taking?"

Besides whatever's left of this hideousness, he means. (He's going back for mason jars.)

The instant Tadhg sees the monster's life energies darkening, the savaging stops as if someone had flipped a switch. He steps back from the bloody form with a thrumming snort, rears, and allows his body to dissolve and contract back into his two-legged form. The corpse is still more or less in one piece, mangled at the center though that piece may be.

He looks over his shoulder at Erik's question. "Whatever's handy, I should presume." No human being should ever sound so contained after trampling anything that looked like his only child to death, but then as he's just amply demonstrated, Tadhg isn't human. The uncanny calm has returned, as if the rage belonged entirely to the stallion, and has now been released.

Something implacable and chill glints in his eyes, though, as he angles his head toward the carriage from which the beast emerged. "I can search this car, if you don't mind taking the other, Malfoy. Unless you gentlemen have another recommendation."

Sword at the ready in one hand, Tadhg kneels to reclaim his knife with the other. Glancing down at the state of his boots and jeans as he straightens, he shrugs and wipes the knife clean on one thigh before resheathing it. A little more gore can't make much difference at this point.

Lucius is the man left standing when it comes to eyeing off Tadhg and the situation in general, which is ludicrous considering he is the middle-aged long-haired Wizard, clutching a magic wand, with fog wisping around the hems of his cloak. But it doesn't last for long, anyway, turning his attention around at Erik to see how he is progressing, before glancing back to Tadhg, then down at the mess that was the attacking monster.

It oozes, but has otherwise nothing to say on the matter.

Let's all just crack on, then.

"Quite," he says, moving once more towards the train car he had been perusing before the structure had been compromised. "Whatever it suits you to take. The carriage boasts some partially eaten remains," and hasn't that mystery been solved, "but never mind them." A glance to the fairy and the gore that stains his clothing and weaponry follows a raise of an eyebrow. "Not that I think you will."

He levers himself back inside without another word. Through the fog, the sun moves on imperceptibly.

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most consequential choices involve shades of gray

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