multiversallogs | the little one stops to shut the gate

Entry tags:

the little one stops to shut the gate :: [OPEN]

Who: A whole lot of ants and YOU!
What: Exploring houses overrun by giant ants! Interacting with ants!
Where: Three specific ant hive houses have cropped up in Baedal.
When: The ants become visible late Sukkardi, so any time after Shundi will do.
Notes: To organize expeditions into the ant hives and to see what your characters will find there, please see the OOC post. NPCs, general GMing, and mod guidance are all available upon request.
Warnings: Bugs! Possible horror. Will update as needed.

When the ants come out of the ground it happens very quietly and it happens at night. Baedal wakes up to chitinous sound of insect labour. At first there is some panic - memories of strange creatures emerging from below to attack the city fresh in everyone's mind - but it is soon evident that the ants, while curious, pose no immediate threat to the City. They seem content to work and live inside the houses they have occupied; houses no one has noticed or cared about for years.

Soon, the ant-occupied houses begin to change. The ants are building something on the rooftops, something like towers, stretching towards the heavens. Birds that fly too close to the buildings quickly disappear.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Cassandra followed Jones' path, dodging from side to side to avoid the ants. They were really quite disgusting. They reminded Cassandra, strangely enough, of Achilles' army. The Myrmidons. Everyone believed that they were descended from ants, changed into men by the gods. And she could see plenty of similarities in the way that the creatures moved and organized themselves, so neatly, so distinctly.

"Death isn't what it used to be," she deadpanned. "I died once."

That statement gives Jones a moment of pause in the midst of inspecting the new decorating scheme. She doesn't turn around. "You died once," she says, levelly. "Is that a figure of speech, or..."

"Literal," Cassandra replied. "Stabbed to death. It was an unpleasant experience."

Secretly, Cassandra was beginning to enjoy saying things like that. As someone who so often observed people, she enjoyed watching their reactions. They ranged across a wide continuum from utter shock and disbelief to complete acceptance, like it was the most natural confession in the whole world. Based on what she had seen of Jones so far, she was guessing something in the middle, erring on the side of acceptance. There was something about this woman. She had seen...things.

"As you can see, my health has improved."

"Quite miraculous, really," says Jones, absently, not really sure what to think. She's never been particularly fond of necromancy, despite her aptitude for it—she's always thought it was a bit of a crime against nature, desecration of bodies aside. Although Cassandra certainly doesn't seem to mind. Nor does she seem to be a mindless, shambling meat puppet. "If I may ask—how did you come to be alive again?"

Cassandra leaned over, picking up a broken piece of wood. The ants didn't seem hostile yet, but there was no need to be underprepared. She rather wished she had brought her bow and quiver, though. But that just wasn't the sort of thing that a person brought to work in a tailor shop.

"I've been dragged through three separate worlds," she explained, stepping aside as an ant scurried past. "The first world that took me...the process of being taken somehow healed me. There were two other people who arrived directly from moment of death. We formed a club."

Well, that's a new one. Dear God, she didn't even want to think about the religious implications of this. Then again, she'd always thought the sort of angelic hierarchies and things about gates and whatnot were probably more human imagination than actual Truth. And what with everything here, she's not entirely disinclined to believe this woman. Although she'll put off deciding if she does really believe what she's saying later.

More things in heaven and on earth, as they say.

She's still thinking of what to say when something occurs to her, looking around the room. She takes a cursory glance around, frowns, and then moves toward Cassandra and the door, as if to go back outside.

"Hang on a second, there's something... strange here. I need to check something, to see if I might be right."

Something strange? "I think that goes without saying," Cassandra deadpanned. Nevertheless, she nodded to Jones, awaiting further instructions. It seemed they were backing out of the building. Cassandra was certainly curious to know why.

Damn that curiosity.

"What should I do?"

"Sit tight, mostly." Jones leans out the door, careful to avoid any of the ants, and walks backward slowly, away from the house. A measurement here, a measurement there... and if the inside is anything to go on...

She stretches out with her arcane senses, feeling for a deeper understanding of the gross matter around her. And... yes. She was right. There's more to the house than there appears, in a literal sense—there's not enough room inside to fill up the house. Something's hidden.

More confident of the ants' marching patterns now, she jogs up the walk to return to Cassandra.

Cassandra frowned, watching Jones with interest. As far as she could tell, the woman had done little more than walk away and stare at the building. But looks could be deceiving. She knew that well enough. And for once, she wished she still had access to the full range of her shamaness abilities. At least, then, she'd be able to read Jones' aura and figure out what kind of magic she had.

In the absence of such an ability, she would be forced to resort to another method of learning the truth.

"Were you using magic?" she asked.

God, is the cat out of the bag to everyone here? "What would make you think that?" Jones asks, giving her best taken-aback expression. She's not giving freebies here and she'd rather like to know why Cassandra would even come to that conclusion.

"Well," she said, "you just walked out of the building and looked at it and then you walked back. I can only assume that it was magic. Or else you're insane, I suppose. But I highly doubt that. I'm the only person here with a reputation for being a lunatic in this city."

When Cassandra was honest, she was brutally honest. And that generally cost her a lot of friendship and social collateral. But she liked to think that it allowed her to maintain some dignity.

"I used to be able to perceive auras on people. And all it took was looking at them." Cassandra shrugged. "Or maybe I'm round the bend. All things are possible."

Right, that's fair. Strictly speaking, it sounds like Cassandra here's a bit of a Sleepwalker, maybe, or was. Perhaps she came close to Awakening but failed—a sad fate, really. To so nearly touch the stars, only to have your wings torn from you...

"It was really more... taking measurements," Jones explains. "Although there was a little bit more to it, you're right. I have a bit of a sense for... well, I think there's something hidden in here. And I'm not sure what a sewing machine repair shop would need hidden rooms or storage space for."

"All right," Cassandra said. She had no problem accepting Jones, taking her at her word. She valued honesty. There was no way to know for sure that Jones was telling the truth, but Cassandra certainly had no evidence to the contrary right now. "Then if there's something hidden, do you think it's possible the ants were sent as an aggressive attack?" she asked.

"Haven't the slightest," Jones says, lightly. "Suppose we can put that on our list of things to find out." She moves slowly around the perimeter of the room now, taking great care with her steps. If they're going to investigate properly, they're going to have to go further than a few meters from the doorway.

The counter seems like the logical place to start. Thankfully, the ants haven't built on top of it yet (although it certainly seems like they're working on it, and they've gotten around the back), so Jones is able to hop up on top to get a better look at what's behind it. "Over here."

Cassandra followed. She knew better than to question someone with power.

But that didn't mean she didn't have questions.

"Is your Chicago a place where magic is common?" she asked. "Or uncommon? Where I grew up, it was rather natural. But you seemed quite surprised when I asked. As if you weren't accustomed to being asked something like that."

Oh yes, Cassandra was good at observing people.

"Ah, that's lucky," says Jones. She's shuffling through some papers on the counter at the same time; mostly invoices and such. Nothing interesting. Then again, she wouldn't really expect the interesting stuff to be here. "Where I live, magic's uncommon, and, worse—policed. Bunch of nutters who think they're serving men-turned-gods who think that no one else should have the Knowledge Supernal. So we don't usually talk about it to people who aren't already in on the secret, so to speak."

Nothing much else here except a bunch of bobbins and a few partially-burnt candles. Actually, thinking about it, she's used up her seance candles, hasn't she?Seems like a good enough opportunity to replace them. Jones picks one up and—

—startles almost enough to topple off the counter backwards, though manages to retain her balance.

Instinctively, Cassandra reached out, grabbing Jones' shoulders to make sure she was steady. It was actually a bit of an unusual gesture for Cassandra. She hated making physical contact, most of the time. But at least she had initiated this one.

"What is it?" she hissed, looking around and seeing, of course, nothing.

"Thanks," Jones murmurs. "I was just a little—the door, don't you see it? It just appeared."

Well, that sounded like a rather foolish question. If she could see the door, she probably wouldn't have asked what it was that had started Jones. But Cassandra really had to learn to hold her tongue, or at the very least, refrain from abusing sarcasm. "Show me," she said instead.

Vaguely, she was starting to wonder if she was entirely unnecessary in this particular endeavor.

"I mean, it's there..." She can't see it? Maybe it's only visible from a certain angle? Now that she can see it, she figures it was probably warded in some way, but what's the trigger—

Hm.

She puts the candle down. The door disappears from her sight. She picks it back up again; the door reappears.

There's a couple more candles around; why they'd be at the counter is anyone's guess, although it seems to suggest something a little more complicated going on here. She hands one to Cassandra. "Here."

Cassandra took the candle. Looking down, she was astonished to see a door appear out of nowhere. "Curious," she said quietly, turning her head this way and that to determine how she might have missed it before.

"It's certainly unusual. I'm not sure what a shop for sewing machines would need to hide under that kind of protection..."

She sweeps a glance across the counter for anything else of interest; she doesn't see much, other than invoices.

They say curiosity killed that cat. Hopefully, if death can be reversed in strange places such as these, then satisfaction will bring it back. She carefully dodges the ants' constructions (which are, really, not bad for not having opposable thumbs), and turns the handle on the door.

So they were venturing through, then? Well, all right. Cassandra propped the plank of wood on her shoulder and moved to stand behind Jones' shoulder. Perhaps, she mused, Jones would prefer to go it alone. Certainly, Cassandra had nothing useful to contribute to this little venture. But she wouldn't even entertain the notion of being left behind.

"I suppose the most obvious answer is that the shop was part of some act," she said. "One that wasn't important enough to keep up, perhaps."

She frowned. Oh, it was obvious, all right. But Cassandra didn't like obvious answers. They were too easy. The Pythia of Delphi never gave straightforward answers. She made pilgrims work for it. And Cassandra was working to find something now.

Something occurs to Jones: "Say, you'd been here before, hadn't you? Or maybe I'm just assuming so, but still—did you know the people who worked here? Did you notice anything suspicious?" She shrugs. "I mean, I know next to nothing about most of the city, so..."

She opens the door.

Cassandra shrugged slightly. "I've visited once or twice. I work for a tailor shop down the road. They've sent me here once or twice to repair the equipment, but I haven't had much interaction with these people beyond that." She paused. "Frankly, I never paid much attention to their work. I prefer sewing with my hands."

Spinning her own thread too, for that matter. Cassandra did not care for the pre-fabricated silks and threads that they used in the shop. Something about it was just too...uniform. It didn't look like the clothing was made by people at all.

"What do you see?" she asked.

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