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I ended up going to my chair, and, wrapped in the blanket from the bed, did a lot of staring out my window onto the street below it and watched the sporadic traffic. The Darkness had let me see Megan's fear, and was probably tormenting her with the thought of continued servitude as a conduit, and that ate at my heart and my soul like acid poured on skin. There had to be a way to help her, but for the life of me I couldn't find a way. Plus in two days we would be going to the Northumberland strait to start re-opening the Anolyn Way.
One thing we could do was prepare, and I wanted an ace up my sleeve against that monster that had hunted me three times now. It was time to do a little hunting of my own. As a investigator, I have found location spells to be very useful, and I now wanted to find this creature and learn how to either banish or kill it. I didn't care which so long as it would be gone. To do that, if I could find it's lair, or find where it preferred to operate, that might give me a clue to use. That being said, I gathered up the one thing that I had that the creature had touched, Lary and Fawn's front door.
This was easier to set up than you might think. All I had to do was drag the door back to Larry's workshop from the trash heap, and use his circle to contain the spell. Ten minutes after dragging the door into place in the center of the circle I was ready to cast the spell. A magnifying glass on one point, compass on another, flashlight on a third, a fingerprint pad on the fourth. A DNA strip on the fifth, and a pencil on the sixth. I sat on the seventh point. I began the chant to focus myself and the magick I was calling to my aid.
The spell flowed easily and almost immediate was the sense of a direction and distance. I had tapped in very quickly. I decided on the fly to try and modify the spell from search to scry, and tilted the chant slightly to build the effect. Normally doing something like this takes a long time if you're able to do it at all, but I'd tried it and found that like anything, it got easier with practice. The big worry with a scrying is that if you see the person, if it has a sense of the spell he/she/it can look back at you and get a distance and direction as well. That's one of the reasons scrying wasn't done very often by me. It could blow up in my face and show the target who was looking for it, along with handy directions to my location.
The spell shifted with the chant and strengthened and began to clear after a few minutes of concentration. I couldn't quite make out the creature, and there were two things in the scrying rather than just the one creature. This gave me a bad case of butterflies, there was more than one? I dismissed that idea as the two were not identical in size, so since the creature had been identical in the attacks I experienced, that made sense then that it was one creature, or a pair of identical ones.
That the two did not match in height, and that made my 'twins' theory blow apart. I shifted the view line of the scry clockwise around the two, hoping to get a good angle on the faces. If I could see enough to identify this larger creature, I might have a clue on what I was dealing with. The larger of the two creatures straightened and I gasped. The face was Cobb's. He was talking to the creature. I saw the thing's face illuminated by light as Cobb stepped away from it. My mind reeled.
Why would Cobb want to send a creature at us when we were trying to open the Way again as he demanded in the details of the service? I just did not make sense. As I watched Cobb continued to speak at the creature, and it appeared to listen and understand. My best guess at the moment is that Cobb was either warning the creature off, or he was giving it instructions. Either way, I was going to find out the next time I saw him.
The two finished talking and with a short, ungainly hop, the creature unfurled its wings and rose off the ground and out of view. I tried to lock onto Cob, by shifting the intent of the spell, but I did it too fast and the spell collapsed, noisily. Fortunately, the collapse also kept Cobb from knowing who had cast the spell, and that would give me some advantage in our little dance.
I sat in the workshop, and contemplated re-casting the spell to follow Cobb, but dismissed the idea as a bad one. He'd heard the spell collapse and would be on his guard I was certain. I tried the creature again, and again it was easy to slip into the spell, and follow it into Underhill. I wasn't certain what exactly it was, but since it lived in Underhill, it had to be fae, and had to be vulnerable to cold iron. The trouble was, my car was loaded with iron and steel, and it still tore it apart with no apparent ill effects.
I remembered that there were a few creatures of Underhill that actually were not harmed by touching cold iron. The one that was the strongest and most dangerous were RedCaps. They were a race of fae that were able to stand the touch of cold iron, and actually preferred to make their weapons from it, when they could get their hands on cold iron. They were from the Unseelie court, and hated humanity. I canceled the spell and thought about the RedCap. It was vulnerable to anything like a human is, so if we could find a way to get around that horrible fear, we could take it out.
I went over to Fawn's and was greeted at the door by Larry as Fawn was pulling her turn in the kitchen. Fawn is a great cop and a great sister, but I was not going to plan on staying to get poisoned. She had a deservedly lousy reputation as a cook. Larry I guess, was a glutton for culinary torture. Either that or he knew when to compromise about cooking.
“So what's the house call for Fernie? Something new?” Larry said as he sat down at the circular table he and Fawn had in the kitchen. He reached out and idly slid the salt-shaker between his hands as he listened to me. I'd found that irritating before, but he always had his hands doing something when he talked or listened, so I'd gotten used to something going on besides talking. So as the salt-shaker slid back and forth on the table, I outlined what I'd discovered. Fawn came over as I talked, and when I got to the part about Cobb, and the RedCap being partners in some manner, she was ready to go call him in and have a little 'cop' chat with him.
Larry convinced both of us that putting Cobb on guard was the last thing we wanted to do if we wanted to find out what was really going on. “Cobb has gone through some pretty great lengths to set something up, and if either of you start getting smart and asking questions, he might pull something more dangerous than he already has. Lay back and watch his ass. I agree with Fawn, keep him close. That way you can see what he's doing” he finished up.
One thing we could do was prepare, and I wanted an ace up my sleeve against that monster that had hunted me three times now. It was time to do a little hunting of my own. As a investigator, I have found location spells to be very useful, and I now wanted to find this creature and learn how to either banish or kill it. I didn't care which so long as it would be gone. To do that, if I could find it's lair, or find where it preferred to operate, that might give me a clue to use. That being said, I gathered up the one thing that I had that the creature had touched, Lary and Fawn's front door.
This was easier to set up than you might think. All I had to do was drag the door back to Larry's workshop from the trash heap, and use his circle to contain the spell. Ten minutes after dragging the door into place in the center of the circle I was ready to cast the spell. A magnifying glass on one point, compass on another, flashlight on a third, a fingerprint pad on the fourth. A DNA strip on the fifth, and a pencil on the sixth. I sat on the seventh point. I began the chant to focus myself and the magick I was calling to my aid.
The spell flowed easily and almost immediate was the sense of a direction and distance. I had tapped in very quickly. I decided on the fly to try and modify the spell from search to scry, and tilted the chant slightly to build the effect. Normally doing something like this takes a long time if you're able to do it at all, but I'd tried it and found that like anything, it got easier with practice. The big worry with a scrying is that if you see the person, if it has a sense of the spell he/she/it can look back at you and get a distance and direction as well. That's one of the reasons scrying wasn't done very often by me. It could blow up in my face and show the target who was looking for it, along with handy directions to my location.
The spell shifted with the chant and strengthened and began to clear after a few minutes of concentration. I couldn't quite make out the creature, and there were two things in the scrying rather than just the one creature. This gave me a bad case of butterflies, there was more than one? I dismissed that idea as the two were not identical in size, so since the creature had been identical in the attacks I experienced, that made sense then that it was one creature, or a pair of identical ones.
That the two did not match in height, and that made my 'twins' theory blow apart. I shifted the view line of the scry clockwise around the two, hoping to get a good angle on the faces. If I could see enough to identify this larger creature, I might have a clue on what I was dealing with. The larger of the two creatures straightened and I gasped. The face was Cobb's. He was talking to the creature. I saw the thing's face illuminated by light as Cobb stepped away from it. My mind reeled.
Why would Cobb want to send a creature at us when we were trying to open the Way again as he demanded in the details of the service? I just did not make sense. As I watched Cobb continued to speak at the creature, and it appeared to listen and understand. My best guess at the moment is that Cobb was either warning the creature off, or he was giving it instructions. Either way, I was going to find out the next time I saw him.
The two finished talking and with a short, ungainly hop, the creature unfurled its wings and rose off the ground and out of view. I tried to lock onto Cob, by shifting the intent of the spell, but I did it too fast and the spell collapsed, noisily. Fortunately, the collapse also kept Cobb from knowing who had cast the spell, and that would give me some advantage in our little dance.
I sat in the workshop, and contemplated re-casting the spell to follow Cobb, but dismissed the idea as a bad one. He'd heard the spell collapse and would be on his guard I was certain. I tried the creature again, and again it was easy to slip into the spell, and follow it into Underhill. I wasn't certain what exactly it was, but since it lived in Underhill, it had to be fae, and had to be vulnerable to cold iron. The trouble was, my car was loaded with iron and steel, and it still tore it apart with no apparent ill effects.
I remembered that there were a few creatures of Underhill that actually were not harmed by touching cold iron. The one that was the strongest and most dangerous were RedCaps. They were a race of fae that were able to stand the touch of cold iron, and actually preferred to make their weapons from it, when they could get their hands on cold iron. They were from the Unseelie court, and hated humanity. I canceled the spell and thought about the RedCap. It was vulnerable to anything like a human is, so if we could find a way to get around that horrible fear, we could take it out.
I went over to Fawn's and was greeted at the door by Larry as Fawn was pulling her turn in the kitchen. Fawn is a great cop and a great sister, but I was not going to plan on staying to get poisoned. She had a deservedly lousy reputation as a cook. Larry I guess, was a glutton for culinary torture. Either that or he knew when to compromise about cooking.
“So what's the house call for Fernie? Something new?” Larry said as he sat down at the circular table he and Fawn had in the kitchen. He reached out and idly slid the salt-shaker between his hands as he listened to me. I'd found that irritating before, but he always had his hands doing something when he talked or listened, so I'd gotten used to something going on besides talking. So as the salt-shaker slid back and forth on the table, I outlined what I'd discovered. Fawn came over as I talked, and when I got to the part about Cobb, and the RedCap being partners in some manner, she was ready to go call him in and have a little 'cop' chat with him.
Larry convinced both of us that putting Cobb on guard was the last thing we wanted to do if we wanted to find out what was really going on. “Cobb has gone through some pretty great lengths to set something up, and if either of you start getting smart and asking questions, he might pull something more dangerous than he already has. Lay back and watch his ass. I agree with Fawn, keep him close. That way you can see what he's doing” he finished up.
posted by JD at
2:10:00 AM
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