with @blccmedrage;
Near the edge of the strange wood that's been made of the city's outer bounds...
It had been a silent ride as they visited the rest of the points on the map. Five points outside, five inside, each deathroot seedling torn from the ground and absorbed back into her skin returning the ounces of power to the scion inside of her.
After pulling out the anchor root at the center of it all, Briar feels a surge of energy flowing inside her, and, casting her eyes skyward, watches the sun begin its early descent as her wayward children whisper what they've learned into her mind.
"I' am sorry, Daniella, to break your heart. But rest easy knowing we will both have our revenge."
She directs their commandeered chauffer to the entrance of some woods, and dismisses him. Here, at the fringes, as the moon rises and the hidden sun sinks, they stand at a bow in the line of trees at the highways edge. Her deathroot guides her towards the source of the spell that seals the city.
"We must find the center, you can ask any questions you might like as we go."
—
She’s sullen, eyes focused on the partition refusing to look at the witch. Perhaps it is childish, Briar hadn’t been the one to put her under this spell. Briar hadn’t been the deceiver. She wonders how many of her choices had been her own in her days amongst Ironwood, and how many had simply been a means to being their tool? How many times had her undead heart been forced to squeeze with something unnatural?
No, it isn’t Briar who had laid it, but is Briar who is aware of it and makes use. She’ll sacrifice herself based off of someone else’s decision for her. She is trapped once again at the end of her long life, the way she’d been trapped at its start.
The drive takes what seems ages and then the witch is commanding the man up front once more. When they arrive at their final destination she leaves the journal she’s kept so close behind. If her heart didn’t ache, if she were more spiteful, she would spit on its cover.
Instead she follows after Briar, boots crunching in the snow as she comes to stand next to the shorter woman and follows her towards their goal. “How long have you known? Have I been a puppet for your amusement this entire time?”
—
"A hunch, really," she says as they go. "A hunch, and then trial and error - you can't stand me, and yet you give in on arguments quickly - or well, you couldn't stand me. But, well. Look at us now."
She sighs, tromping through the snow in suede boots that only look like they can withstand the cold. The temperature drops, deeper and deeper - she wonders if Daniella can feel it.
"I tested small demands first, then larger ones. Until I was sure something was afoot. Again. Ironwood is insidious - your Emily might have done it to protect you in some roundabout way, who knows? You ended up here, anyways - far away from any Ironwood power - may not be coincidence." She shrugs.
"We all do terrible things for stupid reasons sometimes - she is not here to ask, so it is left to you to imagine the why."
—
She listens, and it is true. She hadn’t been able to stand the strange little witch in the beginning. Her harsh words and accusations. It had been tiring and tedious to deal with her. But the grimoire, she remembers, Briar’s, the one she’d been sworn to protect. She had handed it to the owner with a mere few prodding’s. And she does like to think their companionship isn’t fully based on a lie. She wants to believe her ties to Emily hadn’t been either. That her friendship to young Chamomile held just as real despite what name is there.
“She wrote a lot in her journal about being fifth and the disappointment that came with it. She’d say things about it occasionally but never divulge why it mattered.” She sighs.
“I don’t want to think ill of you, of Cham. But I questioned how much of my love is truly my own.” She truly shivers the closer they get, joints feeling almost brittle with cold that seeps in, she knows what it is only because she’s heard it described before and her hands slip into her pockets uselessly.
“My task was to keep your grimoire from the rest. To run until it was not being threatened. That’s the last thing she told me.” She shakes her head. “You wish to sacrifice me, what does that entail? Because as of right now I think I’m freezing. It at least feels like what I’ve heard.”
—
Briar's breath curls off her tonuge, whisps of dragon-steam in the dark. Daniella's lament though, eventually pries a groan from her, and a sardonic eyeroll.
"I'm not sacrificing you, you pillock," she laughs. "I was being dramatic to show you you'll agree to anything, so long as I or Chamomile or any other Ironwood is the one to say it."
"- But you are going to make a sacrifice - I am, as well." She fishes her book out, no new magic has been scriven there since her imprisonment, only a record of her time locked away. "Endless cold, a world stuck in time, every way in but no way out? I've been here before. Not here, but this… strangeness. It's a buffer world, a pocket of space meant to contain something. In other words…"
They mount a hill and look down into a valley. "That."
A lake, pristine and still, sits amid a clearing, a lone cabin sitting ark on its other side. Despite the icy cold, its placid surface sits, unfrozen.
—
The groan is enough to still her and her tongue, the insult enough to cause a huff of annoyance. “Always so damn rude.” she grumbles, a sacrifice, not death. That was at least something.
“Does Cham know?” she asks curiously about this infliction upon her, she supposes if a coven dark enough to kill their own has her under their control she has lucked out quite well with only Briar and Chamomile having entered her life recently.
She looks out into the valley, at the lake. Putting together the pieces before she speaks. “You and I are going to trade ourselves for the city, aren’t we?” She finally asks, eyes still focused on the cabin and taking in a deep breath. “In this bubble of a world, do you feel hunger?” She glances to Briar knowing that she’ll understand the true question
—
"I've left my sister-in-time a letter, explaining all which needs explained." She says, coldly. Ironwood. The Deathroot. Daniella, her hex, and instructions to live well and carry on the work. "I don't think she did, for what it's worth. She's the one good sprog that coven's ever blessed the Earth with. Had she known, she'd have likely thrown herself stupid trying to undo it."
She turns back to Daniella. "Good for us she missed it. You're a useful tool here."
She starts down the hill. "I'll channel my being into this ward - change it's makeup. Somebody botched it - made it cast a wider net. i'll shrink it to a mote, and plant my seed in it - all inside will die, and you and I will be left to tend what's left. But yes," she says. "we will trade ourselves for the city."
She stops at the bottom.
"Yes, but it's a shallow hunger - it won't kill, just… wither. You have noticed it, haven't you? The city's descended into chaos, and everybody's simply… gone along with it, waiting for their turn to be picked off? These things breed complacency and the reap it like rows of maize. The lucky will die first, or be taken. The hardier ones next - the magically inclined, the wolves. The vampires, I suppose, will make it the longest - hardy as they are, but these things are not only immortal, but… unbeing. They are… light out of place. They'll win."
—
She knows it's true, Cham wouldn't have let her stay this way if she knew. Chamomile had never asked much of her aside from friendship. She gives a nod in acknowledgement even if she hates the way her ailment is being used for the other's benefit. She knows though, somewhere deep that Briar does not mean it in such a way. Or maybe she is misreading it and she does. She follows along, listening.
"If I had known what you'd be having me do I'd have at least said good-bye to a few. But I suppose it is too late for that now." She may not fully be doing this of her complete will, but she's already coming to accept it for what it was. Life was never predictable, and hardly ever had a fairness about it. One could only move forward. Embrace what came to them in stride.
Once she reaches the bottom of the hill and is standing back by the witch's side she works her jaw. She has noticed it. Things had stopped being predictable. People had stopped being predictable. A hand raises, fingers running through blonde locks.
"You know, if you had explained to me what everything meant before you asked, I might have agreed before you need command." She tells her honestly. "I've noticed it though, the way the world has become — othered. Not quite right. Nothing is quite right. I think a part of me began to change. Losing track of feeding. Losing track of time in a way I normally wouldn't. I don't even remember when the snow started. It doesn't matter, just, lead the way."
—
"Well, I know now." She says, flippant. It won't do to dwell on if what she is doing is good or evil - two immortals need be here for this. The magic inherent in them will act as renewable fuel, so that this might not happen again.
As they walk, she ponders on Daniella's words. She had not gotten to say goodbye either - not to anyone. Not to who was taken from her, not to who she was taken from. This is the way of the world, she has always reckoned. Justice is an unnatural artifact. The harsh lack of it is the world's natural state.
They walk the lake, and then, at a cabin, Briar touches her hands to the ground, black roots threading out of her skin and feathering along the snowy floor. She follows their movements until she finds it tracing a path, and standing uses it as a dowsing rod to guide their way.
The woods are deep, and grow dark enough that she needs to shiny a dull red glow from the vines pulling her hand like a lead, casting the woods in a strange coat of light. It goes like this until they hear footsteps, hurried and rumbling through the woods in their direction.
—
She lets the quiet settle round them, though it isn't tense like it had been in the limo. Just a companionable thing, two women doing something to save a mass of people. Unlucky saviors. Even if the choice wasn't completely her own, Daniella hadn't been lying, she would have given herself for this cause. What was the loss of a few for the safety of more? Selfless, she thinks.
She watches, admittedly enraptured, at the vines that spring from Briar as if her very veins are cultivating themself within the earth. She's seen magic for centuries and yet every gift, every spell still brings forth complete fascination. She wonders if she'll have the chance to ask for more explanations and demonstration in this pocket they plan to trap themselves away within.
The darkness that presses round them even makes her keen eyes squint to attempt to make sight come but Briar remedies that as well. The sound of coming foot fall hits her first, the singing of blood pumping from a beating heart, a second. Without question she moves closer to Briar, not knowing how far the witch can extend herself with the magic she is already using. Not knowing what danger may be approaching. Whatever it may be, it is definitely mortal, or inclined to pretend as such.
—
The footfalls seem to amplify, and then morph into something stretched and strange, echoing off the bare trees. Briar, nearly clung to by Daniella, traces the sound in reverse, until she sees a strange, dark void between a set of snow-rimed boulders that set sunken into the ground.
"There…" She says, tugging the vampire along with her for a few steps. Her stomach lurches, the first bit of fear she has felt in centuries, and, looking back to Daniella, she swallows thickly and turns to her fully.
"I intend to seal this place, to cut them off, first from the world, and then from existence entirely." Her speech is hurrried, and her hand snatches out to Daniella, thumbpint falling to the woman's forehead as she chants in some sort of language that makes little sense to the ear. It is a great expenditure of power - one she cannot afford, really, but if she is to die here, it will not be her last action to crawl into her grave perpetrating the same evil she's survived so long to destroy.
"Your hex is broken," she says, pulling her hand free, leaving an ashy mark in the middle of Daniella's brow. "You're free to go, but with me or without me, you need to make your choice soon"
She leaves no space for further discussion, turning to the rushing footsteps coming towards them from the depths of the cave.
—
She shifts more to shield her companion as Briar huddles close as the noise stretches and pulses as if in surround sound. The gaping blackness they come upon brings a chill even to her, but she lets the witch take her closer to their destination.
Suddenly they are even closer, she’s confused by the press of thumb, doesn’t know if this is a part of the sealing, doesn’t know if these are her last moments in this place of frost and ice. But suddenly a weight she never realized existed shifts. It’s like they say a gasp of air after being held under water for far too long feels. Like her lungs are expanding, her heart thump after being compressed by a fist squeezing, all those silly sounding things humans say. She blinks down at the witch. This Ironwood woman who has given her a gift and it solidifies her resolve.
Her hand shifts, fingers threading with Briar’s own. Thinking of the people back in town, thinking of the people she’s come to know and get close to. “Well this disaster of a city isn’t going to save itself, and I’m hardly letting you have all the fun. Let’s get this over with. Together.”
—
There's a tender moment there, and Briar feels the vampire's fingers curl between her own - it's felt, if briefly in the black-beating lump of flesh in her chest that is wire-wrapped with poisonous bramble. A strange sisterhood with this outsider.
Can't have that.
Briar coarsely rips her hands from Daniella. "Enough of that soft nonsense, look alive."
She nods to the mouth of the cave, where footfalls have become loud to the point of being un-ignorable. Briar's skin blossoms with black snaking vines, but they fall like pine-needles to the snowy mud when what stumbles out of the cavern is just a woman... a haggard one, but the Deathroot does not quiver at her presence the way it does the denizens of this world.
"Well, hello, little lost sheepie," she says, moving towards a woman of young age and flaxen color.
Mirror Lake
The Summer Solstice following An Encounter in the Woods
With the huntress, addled as she is, sent off with the single point of clarity that what has been given must be kept secret and kept safe, elsewise destroyed for the good of all, Briar turns from the edge of the wood to the gleaming, still edge of the lake.
She bids Daniella come with her, if this is her choice.
The space around them is clear of the impostor spirits, but as she steps out onto the gleaming surface of the water, Briar leaves a trail of dark brambles rooting from the ground in her wake, providing a path over the water for her fellow immortal.
She has never been one for chants, or for wriggling her fingers.
Briar has always been a witch who likes dirt beneath her nails, who cares a great deal for the sensation of tacky, greasy blood drying to her fingertips. This rite, it will be no different. She had planned to use it to rid the world of her coven, a group of evil souls who had walked the earth several centuries too long, angling the bodies of its women as anchors for power.
It will fall, Ironwood - this she knows - but she will not be here to see it, lamentable as that is.
No. There will be no rain of deathroot from the sky, plucking the health out of her enemies. The deathroot's font of magic is needed elsewhere. She weaves the missive in her thoughts as she kneels down, Daniella at her back. "I'll need you to put thy hands upon me, child."
She turns to Danilla. "It will not be painless, nor will it be over quickly."
But with the keystone on the outside, in the Halstead woman's care - it may not be their end.
Funny how a family of hunters have in the end become the thing that solidifies her willingness to put her self aside, she watches Annalise go, eyes trailing off even when she is out of sight. A deep unneeded breath taken to solidify her resolve. Her life hangs in the hands of this odd witch unmarred by the sands of time. This odd being who has entwined herself within her life.
When Briar beckons her to come she follows with no true hesitation. She is sure of this, of the impossible path that life has put in front of her. Steps are sure as she steps across this magic made bridge, eyes peering along the water on either side of them until they are in the middle of it all. She watches her kneel and at her words she braces herself.
She's endured pain, but has never been cocky enough to scoff at it. Her fingers flex at her sides before delicate fingers are wrapping around the witch's shoulders. "Much older than you." She tries to brush with a slight tease, before rolling her own shoulders.
"Whatever it takes. I'm ready."
Briar would never be so humble as to prostrate herself in a prayer to any God, let alone the God of her long-dead parents, but there is a mote of apprehension and wonderment in her thoughts at the notion of endlessness - if she would do better to simply break the barrier that locks these things off from the rest of the world so that she might make good her own escape; to scurry away from the tidal wave of their surge and find some isolated place in the world to live out rest of her days until death.
But that sounds dolorous and boring, and so the mote is crushed beneath the heel of hope that one day in the far flung future, Chamomile will find a way to pluck her out of nothing once more.
She places her hands against the pristine water, only to find them mirrored by hungry souls beneath, desperate to emerge and find those they are bound to. They realize, quickly, that she is not what they want, and the air fills with a shriek so baleful that she can feel her ears threaten to burst beneath it.
Outside this space, in the city, their brothers and sisters and minions here it like an alarum bell, and decide that the time for quiet endeavor is older.
The city descend into chaos, but here, te shriek ends, and it is replaced by the slamming sounds of a thousand thousand hands beneath the surface of the lake, hammering for escape.
Briar's eyes hollow, sinking into dark pits. Thorns burst from her skin, starting at the ends of her fingers, running up along her arms, and then her shoulders, where they pierce Daniella's hands, chaining the two of them together as the Deathroot begins to siphon its power from the both of them.
They won't die, Briar had assured her of that, it isn't something she is worried about. It's the unknown of it all, of where they end up, the prospect of being in timeless darkness much more brutal than the night in this waking world. The unknowing of things is something that has always plagued her. Unsure of her human life, torn from her. Her true age. What her family had looked like. Where she had truly come from. The magic that has so recently been lifted from her, and now the magic she will be so willingly be taking on.
Her hands tense against the shoulders they hold too as a piercing scream of so many things below the waters surface try to rally, try to break themselves free. Blood trickles from her ears, ringing, healing then bursting again with their sensitivity. And then altogether it ends and she knows not what that means.
She can't see Briar's face, but she does see the way thorns seem to break and wind their way up her hands, her arms, then belated stinging pain as they thrust themself through her own hands, she yelps at the pain, natural reaction telling her to pull away because it fucking hurts, easing in an anguished burning, she holds tight regardless of what her mind tells her. Of what her sense of survival screams for her to do.
She tightens her grip, driving the spines in deeper, gritting her teeth, she is sure the flesh beneath her grip is already giving, her hold near crushing and her eyes transfixed to where stolen blood oozes from the wounds. And then it feels as if something is feeding off of her, sucking from deep within.
The roots burst out of her skin, drinking the potency of a vampire into themselves. At the same time, they tear through the rest of her, snaking over the surface of the lake.. At the same time, it breaks through her back, growing in a twisting, gnarled stalk, up towards the sky.
The city bursts into conflict. Mankind rallies, ushering themselves into safe spaces. Not all will survive, but most will. Many will.
At the lake, the ice begins to crack and shatter under the strength of the vile Deathroot, and when it begins to crush its way through, the mercurial creatures begin to burst through, spidering around them on countless limbs - a thousand terrible reflections of a thousand nameless faces. They lurch and lunge, and the Deathroot, bolstered by its toxic magic, begins to weave a protective ring around the two of them, around it's black, skyward creeping stalk.
It seems like it takes ages. Hours, days, weeks, years. Time has become as murky and unknowable of the rest of the space within the ward.
Briar can feel her flesh withering under the influence of its magic - if not for the vampire at her back, feeding into her immortal undeath through the creeping vines, she would be little more now than dust and ash.
The roots fully burst through the ice, and the air around the lake fills with the warbling shrieks of monsters - high above, the Deathroot bursts into an enormous red bloom, channeling the magic of centuries of stolen life in a single ephemeral beam that seems to hone itself on an empty space of sky. Cracks form. Fissures run like red lightning from the sky.
Beyond the barrier, where the world has simply continued, it is as if nothing is happening, but inside, the sky cracks apart, revealing not night but the bright height of noon through the gaps in the darkness.
She begins to chant - the end of this rite nears. Two final pieces of a puzzle. The first is a whispering spell of transmuting magic - the illusory ward that has cut the world off from the city inverting, until its domereflects the world back, catching the glint of thousands of creatures in its reflection as that reflection begins to crack and shatter, forcing many of them into shrieking agony.
"Daniella!" She screams, the silvery creatures who've refused to look skyward seeping through their defense "I'm quite sorry, I think may've lied when I told you we'd live through this."
She can't even focus on what is happening around her so blinded by the pain coursing through her body, her knees weakening as more is pulled from her, life and energy feeding into the spell she can't even realize is growing, is pulsing.
Her eyes darken and flood red, fangs extending as she grits through the need to scream out in anguish. She knows her grip is crushing, that she can't be the only one in pain as she falls to her knees , pressing into the painful spikes burst from the witch and then the heat starts, everything brightening in a way she's never even fully remembered witnessing, her first time in the sun after centuries in darkness and it sets her skin in a fiery burn, she gasps out a cry and presses closer.
"At least I'll go out with a final glimpse of the sun. Can't say I thought it'd be the thing ending me." She yells out in pain as blisters start to form. "I don't think I'm going to last much longer."
The heat blossoms as Summer Sun punches through the dark, burning at the ward. It's light hits the ground and bounces back up, fills the dark with bright summerlight. In a though, Briar channels will into the stalk, and a wreath of twining brambles arch over the two of them, shielding them from the sun. Red leaves begin to bloom from it, expanding its shade. "Not yet, I fear. I need you for a bit more."
The roots hit the edge of the ward, and begins snaking over it, pushing against it and sucking the magic clean.
For an instant, all of Port Leiry and its surroundings are reflected in the sky, two worlds brought face to face.
The black vines of the Deathroot push and push and push, and then blossom with their blood-red leaves.
The ward itself, and its reflection of the city crack, swell, and then shatter.
It seems like snow at first, the glistening glimmer that falls from a no sunny sky. The creatures in the mirror lake scream and writhe as they begin to rot and burst and harden into shimmering dust.
All across the city, their unturned remnants do the same - only those already turned, or able to escape the sky are spared.
And then, blossomed, the Deathroot saps the final bit of energy from the witch bound to the vampire, wreathing them together into the trunk of a great dark tree in the center of the laker. The roots in the sky burst into flame, sizzling into nothing and dumping a snowfall of magical ash onto the city - ash that will soothe the memory of those who might rather go on believing in the mundane banality of the world.
The great vine dries too, crumbling and withering and disintegrating into the lake as The Deathroot too dies.
—
What is left is a sunny day in June, the longest day of the year. What is left is the rapidly melting snow, leaving a city perplexed in the aftermath of a riotous, collective hallucination. The conspiracists will rail against any attempted explanation. The powers that be, human and othrwise, will be dogged in the who and the how of their silencing measures.
In the center of the Mirror Lake, now placid save for the gentle summer breeze drifting across its surface, sits a gnarled black tree with strange red leaves - singular among its peers in this tiny hidden forest. It stands there regardless, effecting the image of two women in embrace, should one stare at it just a touch too long.
And a thousand stories of that night float around - mouth to ear, in strange forums buried on the internet, or in the files of ancient guilds and clans of immortal creatures or stories told by packs around a campfire under a new moon. Stories of how, for a time, Port Leiry simply stopped for a while, held in place by a common enemy until even its greatest enemies had no choice but to save eachother.
And Somewhere, in keeping of an addled woman in a fur coat, a gemstone glows, holding in it a world of eternal ice and snow with only two souls inside to weather it.
But they will weather it - and as within, so without - so too will all.
Lucas and Codie had chosen hard mode, stalking about enemy territory in corsets and long skirts, but Flick could kiss (would kiss, God Willing) Chamomile for their costume choice, because for all its form fitting tightness, she feels much better skulking about in this spider-girl getup or whatever it was.
She and the newbie swipe the key from César, who seems preoccupied, which, fair, and after exchanging little more than a few reassuring nods and a very hushed good luck, they all part ways.
The Shipping Yard is a maze, and they've only got a number to go off of; tracking it seems like it ought to be easy, like it all goes in order, but it seems to fall apart once they begin to search properly; each number isn't something that goes in order cleanly, it's shipping lots and manifest serials and she doesn't know which number is which because she's never set foot in a shipyard in her life. "Why can't she just hide it in safe like anyone else, Jesus Christ."
She holds a flashlight up to each code on each shipping container; none of them seem to match, and what's more, the locks on these things dont' steem to match the key itself either; they key's some new-fangled plasticene passkey card thing, and these all have hideous, ancient looking padlocks. She lets out a stage-whispered his for Codie. "I'm starting to think this isn't for one of these big metal things," she says. "Look for... weird stuff, I don't know. It has to be close." The letters in front of the number had been clearly plastered on the concrete underfoot - that had to mean something, right?
If Flick was out of her element, then Codie definitely was. Ask her to navigate heavy forests and hills, and she's your girl. Here it's an urban sprawl of towering containers that make her feel a little dizzy if she looks up too much -- the faded and rusty colors are really all she has for comfort as they move through. Numbers aren't easy for her. But she's trying.
They've found the right place but not the right lock, and when Flick points out the difference between the passcode key and the padlock locking the whole container, she frowns. They don't have a lot of time, so Codie whips her head around to try and find something for leverage, nearly yawping in glee when she finds a discarded, broken pipe. "If that card won't get us in, we gotta force it. Bet ya anythin' there's somethin' in there that that'll fit." She swings the pipe down hard, full force as best she can until the old, rusty thing finally breaks -- it's a lot of noise but it'll have to work.
She flings the pipe far away from them, hoping the clatter leads them away. "Help me pull it open." Codie gets a good grip, and when Flick gets situated, too, she heaves the door open just enough for them to slip into. It's a surprisingly small space, not nearly deep enough for the container to hold.
But there is a small, small place to scan a card on the inside corner of the false wall. "Bingo?"
She starts to protest, hushed but urgent; "Code… Codie no! Bad! Put tha-"
The clank and clamor of it as the piece of steal uncouples the lock's shackle from its block, chain rattling against the handle as Codie launches the pipe. It won't by them much time, if any, and she turns back to stare at her. "Fine, I guess!" She hisses out, face half-obscured in the spider-mask.
They pull it open together, and at the back there is a small LED shining through a set of netting. Flick peers around the outside edge of the container, and notices it budges up against another warehouse She looks over at Codie, and there's a quiet moment as she pulls it open. "Don't be smug."
Moving into the container, she takes the key and slides it through the reader, and a tone sounds as the back shifts, revealing a pack panel that swings inside of the adjacent building, revealing a cellar stairway that goes down to a single door. Flick heads in, and sees pipelines along the ceiling, tracing them back to the door, and she recognizes the scent of wolfsbane. "Good thing we didn't bust in, I guess…"
The door at the bottom is old, and looks like it should be stuck, but it gives easy between the two of them. Inside, they find the remnants of what looks like some sort of water ritual and at the center of it is a single square of what looks like ancient pelt. Flick throws a switch that illuminates the room from a single bulb, stares at it; the runes on it seem strange and faded, and besides it is a strange pool in which similar runes seem to float through some form of magic.
"Uh… You seeing all of this?" She asks, picking up a bloody-tipped needle that looks fashioned out of bone, her lips curling into a sickened look of ick.
"Grab anything that looks… grabbable. We've gotta meet up with Lazkano and get the hell out of here."
The smell of magic is strong here, and that concerns her - whatever ritual this is means bad news and the weight of it prickles at her skin. Already she's trying to commit things to memory but grabbing is of the essence - they gotta move and they gotta move fast. She starts shoving things into pockets, into a backpack, whatever she can find. The ancient pelt looks like they need to be more careful with it, and she takes that and rolls it up gingerly before shoving it into her bra. Close and safe.
Once she's got about all she carry, she nods over to Flick. "I hope Cesar's good at the pier. We've been lucky."
Flick swipes a bunch of photographs from where they're pinned brainstorm style to a sheet of plyboard on the side of the old prohibition vault, and when she turns, she watches Codie stuff a rolled up sheet of fur into the front of her dress, which somehow really completes the Mary Sanderson look. "Okay, let's go, something in here has to be worth hiding, or it wouldn't be down here."
They rush back up the stairs and out of the false container, taking off at a sprint as the sounds of Yuisa and her dogs come closer and closer through the canyons of shipping containers, hot on their heels.
