nick_garou | So a mage walked into a caern to meet with one of its totems.... (Reply)

Right before I left to pay a visit to the caern, Kargamis, my chimera spirit, arrived with word from Silvertip. The Grey Sky hive in Seattle is nearly empty. Spirals are staging out of Hanford, possibly gathering banes. An attack here is imminent. Salt Lake City has a build-up of enemy with Denver being their likely next target. Silvertip is out of the area but will be back as soon as is possible.

Great. Just great.

I jumped in The Beast (lest I be late in meeting up with Jacinta, my escort for the evening), and went to dial Mouse. Dammit. Val, then. I relayed the news to her with a request that she spread the news to others--and not mention it came from me.*sigh* Dammit, Mouse.

With judicious use of the right pedal, I made it to Edgewood on time, meet up with Jacinta, abandoned all things techy in my car, and headed off with her to the caern. It was a long walk. At first I thought she was taking an intentionally roundabout way so as to get me turned around, but I later figured out she was taking an easier path. She was being considerate and making things easier for me. (Wow. I must have really impressed her.) Right before we entered the caern, she told me that one totem (The Orb Weaver, associated with the remains of the honeycombed giant wasp nest) had given me a thumbs up, another (The Forest Spirit associated with the giant tree in the caern) the thumbs down, and the remaining spirit (The Renascence Bird, Aahn, the spirit associated with the fire pit--Balance between Order and Chaos) would cast the deciding vote.

The meeting went well. Aahn had heard of me--apparently the good stuff. I got permission to examine the spirit with my sight so I could understand it better. It was like nothing I'd seen before. Entropy with change and death and life and fire and birth and cycles and renewal. It was fascinating looking at its feet. Where they touched the ground, the ground burned plants to ash and the ash then sprouted plants which burned again. And so on and so on and so on. It's definitely a powerful, unique, impressive spirit. Supposedly a pristine representation of the Wyrm, untainted by the Weaver's madness.

Aahn accepted my offer for aid and my presence within the caern. I asked if I might take some of the living fire from the fire pit, which burned constantly yet consumed nothing, so as to have a living connection to the caern. (I'd planned on a rock, but fire just felt soo much like a better choice.)

I settled in by the fire pit to meditate, Jacinta watching over me off and on as she went about doing caern-related business, By dawn, I felt that I knew the place well. I began a short ritual with Entropy, Spirit, and Time to get a feel for who, when, where, and how the caern would be attacked--by realm or by spirit world. The future was extremely clouded and muddy. I could not get a feel for anything. I settled in to do a much longer ritual, in case the earlier one had failed to work. Unfortunately, it hadn't. There are too many paths. Total chaos. And yet order. As if there is a coalition of evil things temporarily banded together under one leader. One cause.

And something dark is weaving magick from the other side. Dark magick. I've felt this before. I've had this wielded against me before. I've vomited black bile for a week after being lashed out at by dark Life magick.

There's at least one Nephandus in their midst. Maybe more.

Fuck.