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===== BEGIN LOG =====
It's not an entirely short trip to Hanford from St. Claire, but it's not nearly long enough to make anyone feel comfortable. The day is cold and drippy, and an overnight's sprinkling of snow is in the process of melting into a small slushy mess; no problem for vehicles, especially on I-90, but slippery and obnoxious when on foot. The Hanford site itself isn't open to the public except for scheduled tours, which means that soon enough they've run out of road that isn't closed off, although long before that there are signs, first directing them to the Hanford Site, then warning them that public access is not available. The surrounding territory is a seemingly endless field of brown grass and gently rolling hills, with the Columbia a constant nearby companion. In the distance are several very low mountains, and somewhere up there, they both know, used to be the Caern known as the Last Days.
Nicodemus pilots the Winnebago Brave with a touch that comes from familiarity and having spent time behind the wheel of a vehicle as part of a former job as a police officer. He fills Emma in on recent events as they're entoute, helping to catch her up. "And so I ended up introducing myself to the sept at this new moon information moot, except I did it as Brings-the-Pack, a cougar. No one seemed to object, even when I mentioned I was a mage and not a mountain lion. It was kind of a pleasant surprise, honestly." He surveys the landscape as he drives about the area, exploring what he'd reviewed earlier on Google Maps. "Is Zoe adapting to her new, temporary digs?"
Emma seems a bit uncomfortable during the car ride, though it is very easy to tell it's not the company causing it. She keeps up with the conversation at hand, nodding and at times grinning toward the man with that usual, fond smile she saves for him. "She is. I'm not. At least Signe is still down there, that helps. I guess I'm more of a control freak than I thought, I just worry about what kind of kid I'll get back once things are cleared up enough to do so. And don't even get me started on mu mom... Anyway. A mage-turned-cougar huh? So you're still not totally outed. That's good, right?"
The landscape is...brown. For the most part, the only staying snow is patches here and there, though this kind of grassy territory is usually not nearly as smooth and easy to trek across as it looks. Lots of hidden rocks and holes out there. There are plenty of spots to pull over, at least, despite the utter lack of civilization (or because of it), and the road they're on now seems to receive very little traffic.
Nicodemus keeps cruising about the area, perhaps sensing things with more than just his eyes and ears. "Nope. Not outted yet. But frankly? I don't think getting outted at this point would be a cause for concern insofar as life and death. It'd be more of an annoyance for me because I'd no longer be able to pretend I was a kin and bow out of unpleasant situations casually and without posturing. As a mage? There'd be a different set of expectations on all sides. And I imagine more people clamoring for assistance, and I've got other things to deal with beyond the local garou. And a private life? That'd be nice to have, too," he adds with a grin your way. "Zoe'll be fine. You already filled her head with that silly Thor nonsense anyway." He asks, "You know anything about this area? I'm just kind of eyeballing it in passing. I don't really know what I'm doing or where I'm going--beyond what's on the GPS and Google Maps."
Emma mmms and nods. "I recognize some of it from the maps I'd been putting together. I mean, not down to the detail, but little bits here and there seem familiar in my head. What exactly are we after?" At this point she sits a bit more upright, putting in some extra attention to her scanning of the horizon. "And I didn't put that Thor stuff in her head, she chose that all on her own."
The drive's peaceful, at least, even if there's that sense they've entered enemy territory. And then, as they talk, a phone rings. The ringtone is bog standard for cheap pay-as-you-go phones. Tee-da-dee-da-lee-dee.
Nicodemus looks over at the phone as he slows the RV and begins to turn off the road into an out-of-the-way spot. While he's looking to stop the vehicle, he says to Emma, "The Mystery Phone got tired of waiting for us, I think. You want to answer it? Put it on speaker, if you would, so we can both hear."
Emma glances down. "Oh. That's -the- phone. Got it." She reaches for the phone and presses the accept call button, offering in a very non-chalant tone, "Hello?"
The phone continues ringing merrily until Emma answers, the screen, where a phone number SHOULD show, merely reads <Error>. There's silence after she speaks, and then a rough, older male voice, almost hoarse, "Ahh. Hello again."
Nicodemus brings the ride to a complete, full stop; he puts the Winnebago into Park but leaves the engine running. "Oh, good. We were about to try and call you." He looks at Emma and shrugs quizzically, as if unsure of who is on the other end of this phone call.
Emma returns the look to Nicodemus and nods to him to continue. Talkers, Get are not. Typically.
"Yes," the voice says slowly. "I was hoping. I can feel you. So much closer, still so far away. When I last spoke with someone, it was to another dog and the little bird. That was some time ago now, I think."
Nicodemus looks as if he's about to say something, but then he stops and collects his thoughts. "We have a little bit more of an understanding as to what is going on, but not really enough. You say we're closer. Do you mean physically closer right now? To where the green-scarred man fled from?"
Emma looks across to her companion in the car and very, very quietly, whispers with exaggerated effort for lip reading, 'Do we know if this is friend or foe?'
Nicodemus shakes his head negatively, indicating he has no idea if it's friend or foe.
"Man," says the voice, and it sounds as though he's rolling the word carefully over his tongue. "Green-scarred? ...Ohhhh. Fascinating. I wonder where you found that. But not a man, no, no, no. A woman. And not a woman, not really. A scared little bitch, a mongrel, if you will. But...yes. Closer physically. Closer figuratively. Good. Very good."
Emma draws in a breath and shrugs up at Nicodemus, "You seem glad of our getting closer. Is there something we can help you with?"
Nicodemus stays silent, but pulls out his own smartphone, pulling up Google Maps, and touching it to the burner phone the mystery individual called on. He's clearly up to something, and likely something magical. Maybe he's trying to trace the call back with magic to determine where the call originated from?
"Yes," the voice answers. "I told the last two I spoke with that I would very much like for you to visit me. Visit me here. I think it would be very beneficial to us both, although, of course, yes. You will need to come prepared. Bring more. The Warder will try to stop you, and I can't dissuade her from that." On Nick's phone, Google maps quickly zooms in on an area north of Hanford site. In the mountains. Nick gets a marked location easily, though there's no close up view of the area. Not surprising. If the voice on the other end has noticed, he's apparently doing nothing to stop the effort.
Emma tries to keep talking while Nick manages his end- I mean, that's how it's done in Hollywood right? "The Warder- that's a term I've heard before. Is she a dog like the one that spoke to you with the bird? What relation are you to her?"
Nicodemus looks at his phone and where it pinpointed on the map, makes a "huh" noise, and shows it to Emma along with a shrug. "And what, precisely, is it that you think would be beneficial to both of us?" he adds on to Emma's questions.
The voice rasps, "Once. Years ago. She is a little less now. A little more. Very single minded. We have no relation beyond proximity and, shall we say, mutual difficulties, of a sort. She never knew me, never knew I existed until the day she decided to betray her purpose. Now, well. She is still the Warder. She guards the sacred place she chose to destroy. That is all that she does." A few moments of silence pass. "You want answers. If you are looking for the source, this is the source. I want something else, but I do not think it is something you will mind giving at all."
Emma looks over toward Nick again, mouthing the word, 'Dancer' with a lift of one shoulder. "She has others with her? Others that are like her?" She pauses then, "Can you tell us now what it is that you want?"
Nicodemus doesn't add a thing to Emma's questions, apparently that being largely what he was curious about as well.
"I prefer to keep that to myself for now," the voice says. "A very simple favor only. You will not likely object, and it will not endanger you or anything you care about." A rattling breath sounds through the speaker. "Every now and then, the Echoes bring someone they fail to kill. Sometimes they are too eaten up already. Sometimes I suspect they are simply too boring. In the case of the Warder, she fought them off just enough. It all ends the same way. They become what she has become. Vessels. Puppets. So, yes, there are others like her. Some of them were mongrels. Some of them were human. Some are even spirits."
"Are these vessels and puppets the things we saw in Olympia that materialized out of thin air? The things full of black blood? The thing with blades for hands and the thing covered in eyes save for where eyes should be?" Nick inquires curiously. "Is that what the Warder has become?"
"No," comes the answer. "Those are...ah. They have no names. I have dubbed them Echoes, for my own convenience. They are...ripples. Footprints on a beach. Shadows on a wall. The effect severed from cause, and distorted beyond full recognition. When something is brought here and fed to the Not, it ceases. Devoured. Unwritten. But the Not has a memory of sorts. Those things that you saw, those are what it remembers of its victims. They are. They aren't. Thus, reality has little hold on them."
"We know who awoke--well perhaps 'stirred' is a more appropriate term--the polar opposite of the Nothing. The Not," Nick says to the voice on the other end of the cellphone. "Are you aware of this? Does this alter your plans any? And are you the one who stirred the Not?"
"And the Warder is not an Echo?" adds Emma in as she grimaces over the words in play.
"It is more accurate to say that the Not stirred me," says the voice from the phone. "I am aware that it happened, though not how, or who. It changes nothing for me, although it's certainly a concern for you. As for the Warder...no. Not an Echo. She is still alive, after a fashion. The Echoes have never been alive. Never truly existed. They are fascinating beings, aren't they?"
"Fascinating insofar as they're unpleasant and unpredicatable surprises to deal with," Nick counters in regards to the Echoes. He then continues, making the assumption the speaker on the other end knows somethin of magic itself. "I've examined the Not, as have other world warpers I've shown it to. They've been unable to ascertain what it is, but maybe you might be able to provide some insight. I have two theories. The first is that some master of Prime--and likely other spheres--created it by detaching something from reality--perhaps erasing a thing too well from existence and creating the Not. The other theory is that the Not is an aspect of the tenth sphere which is rumored to exist but that none know of with any true certainty."
"Well, wait, before you get so far over my head I drown... the Warder is protecting the source of the Echoes even though she is not one? Are you saying that we can combat the /source/ there once the Warder is dealt with?" Emma, in true Get form, seems more interested in finding out if they've taken a step closer to having something to focus those energies on.
There's a long, dry chuckle. In response to Nick? To Emma? It's unclear. "You can reach the source. Getting there, getting /here/, is difficult. The Not has an aura, a presence. It maddens and unwrites simply by being close to it. You would become like the Warder, or simply devoured. She is not an Echo as I have described. She has been hollowed out, conquered, dangling on the strings, but still alive, still...existing. How much of her is left in that shell I could not say. But I believe I have provided you with a potential tool to reach me. Fighting it is another matter. As for the tenth sphere..." Another chuckle. "Ohh, I remember those days. There is no Tenth Sphere, boy. No easy answers. No salvation. In that regard, maybe the Not is the Tenth Sphere, because it /is/ Nothing. If you wish to put it in that context, however, I would call it the Zero Sphere. The lack of all other spheres and all they contain, forever."
"I've only seen one thing that seems to work against the Not, and /she/ is not a tool," Nick replies after a moment taken to dwell upon what was like magickal theory. "Or is there a different tool you've given to us that we're not aware of?"
Emma's eyebrows actually go up as some of the lingo is exchanged. If one were to urban dictionary the phrase, 'at a complete and utter loss' - well, Emma's current expression would be pictured there. "Is there anything that guards against that aura?"
"Is she not?" the voice counters. "You should be careful what you make your pets, boy. Mongrels will always disappoint you." A beat, and now he might be addressing Emma. "Oh yes. You haven't quite worked it out yet, that's understandable. Allow me to explain the value of what I have given you in a single, simple, if inaccurate word." Another pause. "/Vaccine/."
Nick twists his mouth slightly at 'boy', but he lets it slide. "So we're to vaccinate ourselved with her blood before going to where you're at? Or are we to vaccinate the Not to put it back to sleep or kill it--with the hope that the Anti-Not likewise returns to slumber? Or both? And will that kill her?"
<OOC> Emma thumbs up! Emma is not gonna talk no more, because she got called a mongrel, or a pet!
Emma hardens a glare at the phone at mention of pets and mongrels, but manages to zip her lips shut. She even manages to take in a deep, calming breath that isn't overly loud and noticable. Clearly, it's Nick's full tag-in from here on out.
"This is all very experimental," the voice says. "Risks will have to be taken, but I am confident it can be used to your benefit. Perhaps even to both of those ends, though I doubt it is as simple as injecting blood. Or, perhaps it is. My efforts to make this possible were considerable. And I have waited a very long time now. Find how to use what I've provided. How you do that is your decision."
<OOC> Emma says "Emma will wait until the call is ended, but she would tell Nick that if this is about Ghost, which she assumes it is, that one of the things in /her/ case when Ghost 'cured' her of the ill, was that it wasn't blood alone, but blood + a push of gnosis."
Nicodemus attempts to get in one more question. "How was it that you managed to alter her? Was she born that way? Or did you accomplish it later? And with what" Okay, series of related questions.
"The bitch was here, years ago," the voice says. "Not the pup, but the mother. The green-scarred bitch that ran far, far away, but never far enough. The details of the procedure are unimportant, and I suspect you would not enjoy hearing them. Know that it was a great deal of effort, of time, of trial and error. So many errors. You see, the Not knows its own, and it is also vulnerable to its own. Entropy feeding on entropy. The snake eating its own tail. Ouroboros. The vessels, the puppets, they're alive. They exist. They wouldn't do, couldn't do. But the Echoes? They exist, and they do not exist. Is, and is not. Just enough to bind into the essence of something that fully exists. Just enough to keep it alive, that was the tricky part. If you would, share this phone with your...friends. I would be happy to answer more questions. Talking with dogs is better than talking to no one."
Nicodemus replies, "I will do that. I might not be able to get the phone back to speak privately at that point, as most of them have no idea what I am." He then adds, "And if you aren't terribly offended by my own shortcomings and denseness, my personal number is... "And he shares that information. "It sounds as if you have something to tend to and we are keeping you from it. I am sure you'll hear from the others soon."
"I look forward to it, and to any future conversations of ours." The call disconnects.
===== END LOG =====
After the phone call, Emma and I drove around in mostly-silence. I don't think being referred to as a "mongrel" and a "pet" did much for her mood, and the moon was getting a bit uncomfortably on the full side. I stopped at a grocery store, claiming I needed to get something, and bought her a nice bouquet of flowers. I then drove out to a convenient, quiet spot, got out of the car and left Emma alone for a bit (in case something bad happened with the magick I was about to work), and did my two experiments: (1) shielding an area from radiation (check) and (2) de-irradiating a bit of nuclear waste (check). Two things that might come in handy in the future if the garou attempt a raid on Last Days, which I suspect may be coming up soon.
Nicodemus pilots the Winnebago Brave with a touch that comes from familiarity and having spent time behind the wheel of a vehicle as part of a former job as a police officer. He fills Emma in on recent events as they're entoute, helping to catch her up. "And so I ended up introducing myself to the sept at this new moon information moot, except I did it as Brings-the-Pack, a cougar. No one seemed to object, even when I mentioned I was a mage and not a mountain lion. It was kind of a pleasant surprise, honestly." He surveys the landscape as he drives about the area, exploring what he'd reviewed earlier on Google Maps. "Is Zoe adapting to her new, temporary digs?"
Emma seems a bit uncomfortable during the car ride, though it is very easy to tell it's not the company causing it. She keeps up with the conversation at hand, nodding and at times grinning toward the man with that usual, fond smile she saves for him. "She is. I'm not. At least Signe is still down there, that helps. I guess I'm more of a control freak than I thought, I just worry about what kind of kid I'll get back once things are cleared up enough to do so. And don't even get me started on mu mom... Anyway. A mage-turned-cougar huh? So you're still not totally outed. That's good, right?"
The landscape is...brown. For the most part, the only staying snow is patches here and there, though this kind of grassy territory is usually not nearly as smooth and easy to trek across as it looks. Lots of hidden rocks and holes out there. There are plenty of spots to pull over, at least, despite the utter lack of civilization (or because of it), and the road they're on now seems to receive very little traffic.
Nicodemus keeps cruising about the area, perhaps sensing things with more than just his eyes and ears. "Nope. Not outted yet. But frankly? I don't think getting outted at this point would be a cause for concern insofar as life and death. It'd be more of an annoyance for me because I'd no longer be able to pretend I was a kin and bow out of unpleasant situations casually and without posturing. As a mage? There'd be a different set of expectations on all sides. And I imagine more people clamoring for assistance, and I've got other things to deal with beyond the local garou. And a private life? That'd be nice to have, too," he adds with a grin your way. "Zoe'll be fine. You already filled her head with that silly Thor nonsense anyway." He asks, "You know anything about this area? I'm just kind of eyeballing it in passing. I don't really know what I'm doing or where I'm going--beyond what's on the GPS and Google Maps."
Emma mmms and nods. "I recognize some of it from the maps I'd been putting together. I mean, not down to the detail, but little bits here and there seem familiar in my head. What exactly are we after?" At this point she sits a bit more upright, putting in some extra attention to her scanning of the horizon. "And I didn't put that Thor stuff in her head, she chose that all on her own."
The drive's peaceful, at least, even if there's that sense they've entered enemy territory. And then, as they talk, a phone rings. The ringtone is bog standard for cheap pay-as-you-go phones. Tee-da-dee-da-lee-dee.
Nicodemus looks over at the phone as he slows the RV and begins to turn off the road into an out-of-the-way spot. While he's looking to stop the vehicle, he says to Emma, "The Mystery Phone got tired of waiting for us, I think. You want to answer it? Put it on speaker, if you would, so we can both hear."
Emma glances down. "Oh. That's -the- phone. Got it." She reaches for the phone and presses the accept call button, offering in a very non-chalant tone, "Hello?"
The phone continues ringing merrily until Emma answers, the screen, where a phone number SHOULD show, merely reads <Error>. There's silence after she speaks, and then a rough, older male voice, almost hoarse, "Ahh. Hello again."
Nicodemus brings the ride to a complete, full stop; he puts the Winnebago into Park but leaves the engine running. "Oh, good. We were about to try and call you." He looks at Emma and shrugs quizzically, as if unsure of who is on the other end of this phone call.
Emma returns the look to Nicodemus and nods to him to continue. Talkers, Get are not. Typically.
"Yes," the voice says slowly. "I was hoping. I can feel you. So much closer, still so far away. When I last spoke with someone, it was to another dog and the little bird. That was some time ago now, I think."
Nicodemus looks as if he's about to say something, but then he stops and collects his thoughts. "We have a little bit more of an understanding as to what is going on, but not really enough. You say we're closer. Do you mean physically closer right now? To where the green-scarred man fled from?"
Emma looks across to her companion in the car and very, very quietly, whispers with exaggerated effort for lip reading, 'Do we know if this is friend or foe?'
Nicodemus shakes his head negatively, indicating he has no idea if it's friend or foe.
"Man," says the voice, and it sounds as though he's rolling the word carefully over his tongue. "Green-scarred? ...Ohhhh. Fascinating. I wonder where you found that. But not a man, no, no, no. A woman. And not a woman, not really. A scared little bitch, a mongrel, if you will. But...yes. Closer physically. Closer figuratively. Good. Very good."
Emma draws in a breath and shrugs up at Nicodemus, "You seem glad of our getting closer. Is there something we can help you with?"
Nicodemus stays silent, but pulls out his own smartphone, pulling up Google Maps, and touching it to the burner phone the mystery individual called on. He's clearly up to something, and likely something magical. Maybe he's trying to trace the call back with magic to determine where the call originated from?
"Yes," the voice answers. "I told the last two I spoke with that I would very much like for you to visit me. Visit me here. I think it would be very beneficial to us both, although, of course, yes. You will need to come prepared. Bring more. The Warder will try to stop you, and I can't dissuade her from that." On Nick's phone, Google maps quickly zooms in on an area north of Hanford site. In the mountains. Nick gets a marked location easily, though there's no close up view of the area. Not surprising. If the voice on the other end has noticed, he's apparently doing nothing to stop the effort.
Emma tries to keep talking while Nick manages his end- I mean, that's how it's done in Hollywood right? "The Warder- that's a term I've heard before. Is she a dog like the one that spoke to you with the bird? What relation are you to her?"
Nicodemus looks at his phone and where it pinpointed on the map, makes a "huh" noise, and shows it to Emma along with a shrug. "And what, precisely, is it that you think would be beneficial to both of us?" he adds on to Emma's questions.
The voice rasps, "Once. Years ago. She is a little less now. A little more. Very single minded. We have no relation beyond proximity and, shall we say, mutual difficulties, of a sort. She never knew me, never knew I existed until the day she decided to betray her purpose. Now, well. She is still the Warder. She guards the sacred place she chose to destroy. That is all that she does." A few moments of silence pass. "You want answers. If you are looking for the source, this is the source. I want something else, but I do not think it is something you will mind giving at all."
Emma looks over toward Nick again, mouthing the word, 'Dancer' with a lift of one shoulder. "She has others with her? Others that are like her?" She pauses then, "Can you tell us now what it is that you want?"
Nicodemus doesn't add a thing to Emma's questions, apparently that being largely what he was curious about as well.
"I prefer to keep that to myself for now," the voice says. "A very simple favor only. You will not likely object, and it will not endanger you or anything you care about." A rattling breath sounds through the speaker. "Every now and then, the Echoes bring someone they fail to kill. Sometimes they are too eaten up already. Sometimes I suspect they are simply too boring. In the case of the Warder, she fought them off just enough. It all ends the same way. They become what she has become. Vessels. Puppets. So, yes, there are others like her. Some of them were mongrels. Some of them were human. Some are even spirits."
"Are these vessels and puppets the things we saw in Olympia that materialized out of thin air? The things full of black blood? The thing with blades for hands and the thing covered in eyes save for where eyes should be?" Nick inquires curiously. "Is that what the Warder has become?"
"No," comes the answer. "Those are...ah. They have no names. I have dubbed them Echoes, for my own convenience. They are...ripples. Footprints on a beach. Shadows on a wall. The effect severed from cause, and distorted beyond full recognition. When something is brought here and fed to the Not, it ceases. Devoured. Unwritten. But the Not has a memory of sorts. Those things that you saw, those are what it remembers of its victims. They are. They aren't. Thus, reality has little hold on them."
"We know who awoke--well perhaps 'stirred' is a more appropriate term--the polar opposite of the Nothing. The Not," Nick says to the voice on the other end of the cellphone. "Are you aware of this? Does this alter your plans any? And are you the one who stirred the Not?"
"And the Warder is not an Echo?" adds Emma in as she grimaces over the words in play.
"It is more accurate to say that the Not stirred me," says the voice from the phone. "I am aware that it happened, though not how, or who. It changes nothing for me, although it's certainly a concern for you. As for the Warder...no. Not an Echo. She is still alive, after a fashion. The Echoes have never been alive. Never truly existed. They are fascinating beings, aren't they?"
"Fascinating insofar as they're unpleasant and unpredicatable surprises to deal with," Nick counters in regards to the Echoes. He then continues, making the assumption the speaker on the other end knows somethin of magic itself. "I've examined the Not, as have other world warpers I've shown it to. They've been unable to ascertain what it is, but maybe you might be able to provide some insight. I have two theories. The first is that some master of Prime--and likely other spheres--created it by detaching something from reality--perhaps erasing a thing too well from existence and creating the Not. The other theory is that the Not is an aspect of the tenth sphere which is rumored to exist but that none know of with any true certainty."
"Well, wait, before you get so far over my head I drown... the Warder is protecting the source of the Echoes even though she is not one? Are you saying that we can combat the /source/ there once the Warder is dealt with?" Emma, in true Get form, seems more interested in finding out if they've taken a step closer to having something to focus those energies on.
There's a long, dry chuckle. In response to Nick? To Emma? It's unclear. "You can reach the source. Getting there, getting /here/, is difficult. The Not has an aura, a presence. It maddens and unwrites simply by being close to it. You would become like the Warder, or simply devoured. She is not an Echo as I have described. She has been hollowed out, conquered, dangling on the strings, but still alive, still...existing. How much of her is left in that shell I could not say. But I believe I have provided you with a potential tool to reach me. Fighting it is another matter. As for the tenth sphere..." Another chuckle. "Ohh, I remember those days. There is no Tenth Sphere, boy. No easy answers. No salvation. In that regard, maybe the Not is the Tenth Sphere, because it /is/ Nothing. If you wish to put it in that context, however, I would call it the Zero Sphere. The lack of all other spheres and all they contain, forever."
"I've only seen one thing that seems to work against the Not, and /she/ is not a tool," Nick replies after a moment taken to dwell upon what was like magickal theory. "Or is there a different tool you've given to us that we're not aware of?"
Emma's eyebrows actually go up as some of the lingo is exchanged. If one were to urban dictionary the phrase, 'at a complete and utter loss' - well, Emma's current expression would be pictured there. "Is there anything that guards against that aura?"
"Is she not?" the voice counters. "You should be careful what you make your pets, boy. Mongrels will always disappoint you." A beat, and now he might be addressing Emma. "Oh yes. You haven't quite worked it out yet, that's understandable. Allow me to explain the value of what I have given you in a single, simple, if inaccurate word." Another pause. "/Vaccine/."
Nick twists his mouth slightly at 'boy', but he lets it slide. "So we're to vaccinate ourselved with her blood before going to where you're at? Or are we to vaccinate the Not to put it back to sleep or kill it--with the hope that the Anti-Not likewise returns to slumber? Or both? And will that kill her?"
<OOC> Emma thumbs up! Emma is not gonna talk no more, because she got called a mongrel, or a pet!
Emma hardens a glare at the phone at mention of pets and mongrels, but manages to zip her lips shut. She even manages to take in a deep, calming breath that isn't overly loud and noticable. Clearly, it's Nick's full tag-in from here on out.
"This is all very experimental," the voice says. "Risks will have to be taken, but I am confident it can be used to your benefit. Perhaps even to both of those ends, though I doubt it is as simple as injecting blood. Or, perhaps it is. My efforts to make this possible were considerable. And I have waited a very long time now. Find how to use what I've provided. How you do that is your decision."
<OOC> Emma says "Emma will wait until the call is ended, but she would tell Nick that if this is about Ghost, which she assumes it is, that one of the things in /her/ case when Ghost 'cured' her of the ill, was that it wasn't blood alone, but blood + a push of gnosis."
Nicodemus attempts to get in one more question. "How was it that you managed to alter her? Was she born that way? Or did you accomplish it later? And with what" Okay, series of related questions.
"The bitch was here, years ago," the voice says. "Not the pup, but the mother. The green-scarred bitch that ran far, far away, but never far enough. The details of the procedure are unimportant, and I suspect you would not enjoy hearing them. Know that it was a great deal of effort, of time, of trial and error. So many errors. You see, the Not knows its own, and it is also vulnerable to its own. Entropy feeding on entropy. The snake eating its own tail. Ouroboros. The vessels, the puppets, they're alive. They exist. They wouldn't do, couldn't do. But the Echoes? They exist, and they do not exist. Is, and is not. Just enough to bind into the essence of something that fully exists. Just enough to keep it alive, that was the tricky part. If you would, share this phone with your...friends. I would be happy to answer more questions. Talking with dogs is better than talking to no one."
Nicodemus replies, "I will do that. I might not be able to get the phone back to speak privately at that point, as most of them have no idea what I am." He then adds, "And if you aren't terribly offended by my own shortcomings and denseness, my personal number is... "And he shares that information. "It sounds as if you have something to tend to and we are keeping you from it. I am sure you'll hear from the others soon."
"I look forward to it, and to any future conversations of ours." The call disconnects.
===== END LOG =====
After the phone call, Emma and I drove around in mostly-silence. I don't think being referred to as a "mongrel" and a "pet" did much for her mood, and the moon was getting a bit uncomfortably on the full side. I stopped at a grocery store, claiming I needed to get something, and bought her a nice bouquet of flowers. I then drove out to a convenient, quiet spot, got out of the car and left Emma alone for a bit (in case something bad happened with the magick I was about to work), and did my two experiments: (1) shielding an area from radiation (check) and (2) de-irradiating a bit of nuclear waste (check). Two things that might come in handy in the future if the garou attempt a raid on Last Days, which I suspect may be coming up soon.
Afterwards I checked myself to ensure I wasn't glowing or microwaving anything within 10' of myself, saw nothing significantly paradox-related (whew!) other than everything having a reddish tint to it, and returned to the Winnebago. We finished up by finding what was probably the nicest fine dining restaurant in the area and.... Well, the moon was too full to risk anything of a more carnal nature. Damn. And the sleepover and the drive back the next day was uneventful.
