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Rustic A-frame Cabin(#3380RAJh)
Imagine what a well-constructed, rustic, open-design, lofted A-frame cabin with vaulted ceilings would look like. Now imagine it's furnished like a largely undecorated cheap dorm room that all but screams "bachelor pad!" The greatroom features a central, natural stone fireplace. Across from the fireplace, clashing with the theme, is a cheap metal futon and a metal and glass coffee table. An assortment of gaming consoles and a laptop roost beneath the coffee table's glass. There are two 32" HDTVs in the greatroom: unless used for entertainment, both cycle through live-stream feeds from hidden security cameras around the property. And then there's the mismatched bookcases, which hold a small library's worth of texts. The majority of the books are dedicated to mathematics, computer science, the occult, and Star Wars. A metal perch for a parrot is tucked into a corner near the dining area, though there's no parrot to be seen. Upstairs, the open loft serves as a not-entirely-private bedroom--assuming a second metal futon equipped with blankets and pillows counts as a bed and that a dozen stacked plastic drawers counts as a dresser.
The perceptive might eventually notice three not-so-obvious things. (1) A 12-gauge shotgun is concealed beneath the downstairs futon and a handgun is concealed near the upstairs bed. (2) Translucent silicon aquarium tubing, packed near-solidly with granular white material (salt?), rings the house's entire interior perimeter, like a baseboard, in one continuous, unbroken circuit. (3) A small tuxedo cat can occasionally be spotted lurking, watching, or hiding from any visitors.
Contents:
Flashlight
Obvious exits:
Front Door
Nick calls people when he's ready to perform the ritual he alerted them about. Once everyone has arrived (he left a voice mail for Emma and Mouse, who might have been otherwise preoccupied), he explains again how he's managed to narrow down the locations and times where the two texts he has were written, how he intends to drop some "mage-awakened" LSD, use the magickally created sensory deprivation space in his living room (a 7' diameter sphere of near-blackness residing in the middle of the cabin's front room, which seems to be sucking in sound and heat from the house), and attempt to look back in time and touch the mind of the texts' author in the hope of gaining some insight into The Nothing's origins. "Thanks for coming," he says once he's finished re-explaining what all is about to transpire--theoretically.
Salem listens to all of this with a grim expression (moreso than his default). "What happens if shit goes south?"
Nick spreads his hands. "I have no idea. Something seems to be clouding the future, and The Nothing seems to ignore spiritual and spatial boundaries, so it might also be able to ignore temporal ones. It might be able to detect me poking around. Worst case scenario?" He grimaces contemplatively. "I end up accidentally creating a second Nothing. But I don't think that's likely. I'm going to erect a couple mental barriers before I go in. And I plan to bail if they start coming down. In which case the worst case scenario becomes The Nothing sends agents after us. I've got some wards up in the realm and the spirit world, but they're more early warning systems and means to delay things with hostile intentions. If that happens and you all need to run, then run. The cabin and everything in it is... I'd miss it, but there's nothing irreplaceable. So don't die defending it."
Salem simply nods and takes up his station as sentinel, shifting to hispo -- lupine senses yet ready for battle, if it comes.
Nick examines the giant wolf in his front room. "I'd be scared of that if I were trespassing," he comments factually before ingesting a sugar cube, stepping into the dark sphere, and levitating towards its center--a mere shadow of himself visible within.
Scar briefly bares his fangs, crooked tail giving a single thump of amusement.
Aside from the Garou and the mage, it's comfortingly quiet. There's the patter of light rain against the windows, and little else. If it weren't for the dark sphere of magic, it would be downright cozy. But since there /is/ a dark sphere of magic that Nick just entered, cozy isn't quite in the cards.
Nick creates a barrier of mental shielding, infuses it with quintessence to reinforce it, and lets his body go limp--drifting in the warmth, nigh-silence, and nigh-blackness of the sphere he's crafted--as he waits for the first hint of the acid starting to work before reaching back in time with his mind's eye.
Time passes for Scar, as Nick feels the drug begin to take hold. Tensions and anxieties ease, and the present seems far less immediate, less absolute. What is time but perception? And in this sphere, what is perception but what he chooses to make of it? There are faint whispers that he can't quite understand that brush against his mental defenses, but none even seem to attempt to pierce it, let alone present a threat.
In the real world, things seem to get colder, not just in temperature, but in color and definition, though it's likely the effect of the black sphere. Probably.
Nick follows the thread of space and time, the link that connects the notebook he acquired from his mentor back towards its point of origin. His left arm reaches out, gasping the invisible thread, using it like a lifeline in an Antarctic whiteout, letting it guide him to where he needs to go, floating weightlessly all the way.
Nick feels, as clearly as if it were truly right in front of him, a cold cement wall. Grime comes away as his fingers brush against it, but beneath the gunk the cement feels clean and smooth, without the wear and tear of years. In the blackness, a painted capital 'B' can be made out like a ghostly after image. There's the sound of...machinery? A rumbling. No, it's a plane engine, but not a modern one. He can make out at least four propellers, and then briefly, ever so briefly, 'Enola'.
Outside the sphere, things grow colder still. The windows fog, color itself seems to leech away. Beyond the glass, the Philodox can still see falling rain, and trees so green against the colorlessness of inside that they almost hurt to look at.
Scar growls quietly to himself as he paces the area.
Nick closes his eyes shut, relaxes further, and--eyes still closed--takes a look around to get an idea of the lay of the land. Should he go around the cement wall, or just go straight through it? It's a dreamy, mental state: cement walls are not the obstacles they normally would be. He gets momentarily distracted by the vibrations emanating from the four engines working synchronously.
In this case, the wall itself is even less of an obstacle than it might be in a dream. It exists--that's the best way to describe the sensation--only a few inches to either side of where Nick touched it. Beyond is ethereal; less a place, more impressions of things...or perhaps, impressions of more than one place. He can taste the dry heat and dust of a desert, but the steady thrum of the plane engines cutting through damp air seems to be just as present. There's the dry scratching of a pen on paper, but he hears the words rather than reads them.
And, at just the same time, Scar, rather than hearing them, can see them write themselves slowly and neatly over the surface of the window glass, black ink that seems to flow entirely on its own free will:
You are mistaken
Scar cuts off his growl with a snap of massive jaws, then abruptly snaps back into homid form and gets out his cellphone. It's cheap as fuck, but it does have a halfway decent camera, and he uses it to take a picture.
Nick relishes the heat and dryness of the desert, which stands in stark contrast to the mountainous areas of Washington State. He intends to stay put, but the LSD prompts him to drift slowly sideways--while seemingly staying in one place. He focuses on listening to the scratches, unspoken words, and the thrumming engines for the time being.
Gradually, the other sounds and sensations drop away, leaving only the sound of pen on paper, the spoken words, and occasionally the odd whisper that can't be caught. "You are mistaken." Outside the sphere, the ink on the window runs wet as the words destroy themselves and reform. "It does not begin."
Salem dutifully snaps pictures. "How fucking helpful," he mutters, mostly for his own benefit.
Nick lets the other sensations erode away, not even attempting to cling onto them, as the focus of his mental probing resolves to the sounds of pen on paper, spoken words, and incomprehensible whispers.
As he hears "You are mistaken" being spoken, he listens more intently to the voice--pressing forward in that direction in the hope of learning more. Who is mistaken and why? Or had the author's mind already descended into madness prior to writing it?
"/You/ are mistaken." This time the voice can be heard, if faintly (wolf ears are good for something), outside of the sphere, despite the sphere's nature contradicting that this should be possible. "You are looking for an origin. A beginning. It does not begin. It never begins."
Salem puts his phone away and shifts back to hispo in time to hear those words. He paces the space around the sphere, hackles raised.
Nick listens to the words, remains silent for a moment, and then attempts something that he ought not be capable of doing--interacting with the past. He tries to speak to the past. "What is the significance of this place and this time?"
The voice is male, dry, older and hoarse, but still clear enough. "Hanford begins. It came from here, you know, all the misery to follow." The black ink words run down the window, over the sill, and drip slowly down the wall. "They came to that place by the river. Called? Coincidence? Only two tiny farming towns in the way, and only the Indians beyond that. Perfect, except for the people." The faintest whisper of a chuckle. "They created factories fit for the devil in secret. Oh, so many secrets. Shipped it far, far away to the desert, and then across the ocean. You know this story, if you think. It poisoned everything, but it poisoned here first."
Nick would probably have some serious heebie jeebies at this point had he not dropped LSD in advance of this trip. "I know this story. This may not be your beginning, but it is a beginning. A doorway. Which is in itself a beginning of sorts."
"You ask," the voice says after a few moments of pregnant silence, "The significance of this place and this time. Significance is a matter of perception. You exist in it, among it; it is significant to you. Home. To your pet, significance lies a little further, yes? Once, once, there was significance in the mountains near Hanford. No longer, except to me." Instead of pooling on the floor, the blank ink moves sideways, spreading over the walls, forming words seemingly at random from what the voice speaks. It's cold enough that Scar can see his breath fogging clearly in front of him, and the windows have started to ice over, forming fractal patterns that do not seem entirely natural. "They were going there, looking for allies. Spirits. Banes, as they are called. Possessed Sleepers. So ignorant, like repulsive clawed children. The Not took a few of them. They took a few back. Brought them to your city, your significance. Ignorant, as I said. Now it is eating, eating away." A beat. "But that is not the /significance/ for it."
Scar's hackles are all up, and his growl is steady, rising and falling with each fogging breath.
Nick finds himself slowly leaning more and more backwards, as if the voice's words had tactile force to them. Or perhaps his perception of the words signaled to his mind's crossed wiring that there was physical force involved. He pushes his brain to focus before asking his question now, some 70-ish years in the past and in a distant place. "Sleepers--even the possessed, clawed sleepers--are ignorant of the world," he concurs with the disembodied voice. "Is The Not another universe that is negating this one, The Is? Tell me what the significance is."
"Universe implies physicality. Being. Substance. Existence." The lights dim, and what shadows remain seem surreal and unpleasant. "I would not call it that. But how can I know?" Another dry chuckle. "Walk into the mouth, and tell me sometime. The significance. Sig-nif-icance. Mm. Can you feel the world's tilt and turn? The rotation of the galaxy? The slow march of the universe to inevitable solitude? You are aware of the Not because you have seen some of its effects, but there is something so...much...larger. Something significant to it, perhaps. Old and tired, but waking up. It woke us up. It...oh. But you /have/ felt it. The Not is always hungry; there lies a feast. Pulling. Pushing."
Nick is familiar with the documents in his possession to the point where he has them memorized, having dwelt on them considerably. "You speak of the void. Not the emptiness of space, for the emptiness of space comes with the knowledge of the absence of matter, spirit, time, life, and energy. Those things, moved into the emptiness, slowly begin to fill it. But the void is the absence of existence itself. That is what The Not is. I've felt it. I've even fed it, though feeding it is pointless--even if consumption is all it seems to desire. What is it that is waking up, and what are you?"
A dry breath. "I cannot see most of it. Far too large, far too old. I know that it is waking, stirring. Very slowly, to your perception. I know that the Not did not wake it; it woke us. More awake than when the dogs lost their Caern for good. I can only perceive a fragment. Power, yes. Chaos and life. It feeds the mountains, the forests, the rivers. It once fed even the dead Caern. Once. Once. As for me?" the voice trails off. "What.../am/...I? A good question. Your author. A seeker. But not a voice out of time, no. You touched my mind. I have felt others, distantly, in the past year. Others from your place, meddling where they should not, trying to steal what does not belong to them. All's well, yes? No more whispers in the dark. Not from me."
Nick wobbles momentarily in his mental acuity as the drugs in his system pull at his mind for a moment, an explosion of vibrantly colored sound bursts and then recedes into nothingness.After a few blinks--or the mental equivalence of such--he makes further inquiries. "You are not the Not, and you are not the thing the Nots seek to wake. You are the author and a seeker. A fellow seeker? A world warper? A will worker? A mage like myself? I and the local wolves received several whispers in the dark. I understand the value of whispering in the dark as it help to communicate information that is sensitive while hiding one's identity. But without clarity, whispers in the dark tend to be nothing more than what they are: whispers in the dark."
"It does not want to wake this thing," the voice responds. "This thing is already waking. Why? I do not know; the reason did not come from Hanford. Considering what has already happened; your...tremblings and rumblings, I do not think it would be beneficial to anyone for it to fully wake. That was a twitch. A snort, a blink. Metaphors can only go so far, I'm afraid. But yes, if you like. A fellow seeker. A mage. The name meant something to me at one point. Go with that." Silence follows, long enough that one might be forgiven for thinking that the communication was over, but the 'ink' is still flowing over the cabin walls, and it is still deathly cold inside, even if the outside appears untouched. "One little favor, fellow seeker. A direction, if you will, though I don't think you will enjoy following it. A word that you've missed. Would you like it, before I sleep?"
Nick blinks away at some sudden wooziness, likely a side-effect of the drugs he's taken prior to starting off on this particular journey. "I too speak in whispers. I would like to hear this word I've missed, especially if it's Ascension. In which congratulations are in order."
The response he gets is laughter, and then nothing. But outside the sphere, right below Scar's pacing paws, the wood floorboards suddenly grow orange and hot. It lasts only a moment, but when it's done, the cold is gone, the color returned, the ice on the window already breaking apart. No sign of any ink or mysterious words remains, apart from the one burned into the floorboard where the philodox was standing.
Hilliard, it reads, perfectly clear.
Scar curses in the basest dialect of Mother's Tongue.
Seconds later, the sphere of darkness that Nick had been floating within, a mere shadow within a pool of darkness, vanishes instantaneously. Nick’s still there, hovering a little over three feet off the ground--before gravity notices this minor incongruity. "Whu?" he gets out before he falls to the wooden floorboards, landing flat on his back and banging his head hard on the ground with a loud *thunk*. He moans quietly before he goes limp and his head rolls to one side.
Memory vacates her perch by the window and a moment later, she is at the front door in her homid form and letting herself inside.
Scar gives himself a rough shake and reverts to human form. "You see that?" He points to the word 'Hilliard' burned into the floor.
"Yea, I see it," Val says, as she heads straight for Nick, intent on making certain that the Mage is physically whole. "First thing that comes to mind is the old hospital. I'll have to look into it," she says, sounding rather distracted.
Salem gets out his cigarettes and lights up, his expression grim. "Whatever he was talking to was writing shit out as well, but not all of it. We'll have to wait until he wakes up to get the full story."
Val checks the Mage's pulse and fusses for a few minutes, before sighing and straightening up. "Well, he seem whole physically. Let’s hope that he hasn't gone and scrambled his brains by poking at that shit."
Salem nods and takes a lean against a wall to smoke his crappy cig. "Fucking Hilliard," he grumbles. "That fucking hospital. God fucking damn."
Val sighs and runs a hand through her brightly coloured hair. "It was Hilliard /Memorial/ Hospital. Gotta be some story behind it. The hospital is long gone and while the Umbra in that area is no joy, it isn't anything out of the ordinary."
Nick moves slightly, coughs a couple times, and moves to g... No, let's stay on the ground a little longer.
He puts a hand to the back of his head. "Anyone get the license plate off that truck?"
Salem glances down at Nick. "You get anything useful?"
"I didn't get to see much," Val says, as she crouches down next to Nick. "Want me to see what I can do about that headache?"
"Might just be the awakened LSD," Nick says to Val. "Ask again in 30 minutes?" To Salem he says, "Hilliard." He must not have been privy to the conversation over the past few minutes. "Wasn't clear to me if it meant the old Hilliard Memorial Hospital that burned down a while ago, the Hilliard Corporation in town, or maybe one or all of the Hilliard family."
Salem takes a drag, exhales smoke. "The Hilliards have, last I checked, fingers in a lot of local pies. Haven't heard shit from them in some time, though."
"Well, at least it's something to go on," Val says with a soft sigh. "I can do some digging. I still have my PI license, even if I've had to abandon many of my old contacts."
"Definitely a warper involved other than me. /Powerful/, too." Nick eases himself into a sitting position and stays there, not attempting to get off the floor yet. "He saw me looking back in time. Good and bad news. He's not exactly hostile. He's also not exactly a fan of garou, either. And he might have just checked out or done all he's willing to do."
"...Shit." Something's clicked in Salem's head. "They're rebuilding the hospital. There was a fucking article in the paper..." He grimaces, looking frustrated. "What, a couple of months ago? Christ on a crutch, someone even /talked/ to me about it, goddamn it."
"Crap," Val says, eyes briefly turning up towards the ceiling. "Can't give us anything more specific, eh?"
"Maybe," Nick says as he rubs at the back of his head. The metal ash bucket on the rocks in front of the stone fireplace begins to deform slightly, as if on the cusp of melting. "Once the LSD clears and this goose egg forming on the back of my noggin lays off for a little. It definitely tied in with Hanford, the Enola Gay, and nuclear weapons somehow."
Salem eyes Val sidelong. "They're rebuilding the hospital and the Hilliard family, the /same/ Hilliard family, is backing it." He shakes his head and pushes off from the wall. "I need some fresh air. Call me." This last mostly to Nick.
"I can take care of that goose egg for you," Val says, a touch of amusement entering her voice. "I'll poke at the Hilliard family some. See if I can come up with anything useful. As for nuke, all the black nothingness makes me think of the shadows left on walls when people were vaporized. See ya around, Salem."
Nick raises a hand in farewell to Salem. "Thanks for showing, Salem. Made me feel a lot safer trying this." To Val he finally consents, "Sure. Give it a shot if you can spare the juice."
Val smirks. "Can always mug a spirit, if need be," Val claims, as she gently places a hand on the Mage's head and calls on her healing Gift. "With all the things you can do for yourself, atleast I can still be a little bit useful."
Nick holds still while he's healed. It's ultimate just some bumps and bruises and a knock to the head. "You know, I thought about learning to heal myself, but it seems kind of like a waste of my time with so many shifters running around with a gift that they're willing to use. Maybe someday," he muses, though it doesn't seem like he's chomping at the bit to do so. "Thanks, Val. I appreciate it." The metal ash container folds in on itself as it does indeed begin to liquify.
Val eyes the container in the corner, then gives her head a bit of a shake. "If you're gonna have that affect on metal for the next little while," she says, pointing at the container. "You may wanna avoid your furniture for a bit. What with all the metal nails, staples, and your bed frame probably has metal in it. Glad that your gray matter appears to be intact."
Nick looks towards the indicated item. "Oh, it's actually melting? Seems like there's a lot of things melting right now," he points at about half a dozen objects, "and I figured it was the acid speaking. Guess not all of it is." He gets up, stabilizes himself, and makes for the door. "I might not be safe to be around right now, Val. I'm going to go grab my hiking pack from the car and set up camp elsewhere on my property so as to minimize any potential damage until the drugs wear off."
Val grunts softly, as she puts her hands on her hips and gives the Mage a bit of a look. "Like hell. You walk. I'll follow and bring your pack. Once you're set up I'll leave you alone. You're going to have a hell of a time setting up a tent, if you're tripping balls. I'll follow from the air. Little danger that way."
Nick meanders semi-uncertainly into the woods with the Corax following, and eventually they get him situated in a tent to sleep off the LSD.
By morning, the individual blades of scrub grass under and around the tent in a 7’ diameter have gone from the faded green of winter vegetation to a rainbow of vibrant, neon, psychedelic colors splaying out into a large fractal-based pattern.
