Asylum: unweaving and lacework

[Asylum] "...Double, double, toil and trouble..."
She couldn't resist really. Three female Magi endeavoring to Weave [to toil; to Will; to burn and bubble...] all in unison simply makes the reference momentarily irresistible. Irresistible on a Wednesday or a Thursday or a Friday night - depending on how soon they could all get together to get 'preliminary work' done - when she welcomes to their temporary workplace: A small, largely unfurnished studio flat over a small Moroccan bakery [with a mezuzah on the lentil and a small certified Kashrut advert on one of the bottom left of a hand painted display window. both things to suggest this is probably a spot quietly arranged by Israel or - even more likely - the Twins and their many and dizzying connections within the Conservative and Reform Jewish community]. The location is some several blocks to the east of the Asylum - to the South of Rogers park but still Northwest of the Chantry -

The preliminaries include making sure everyone understands the basics of what they are to do together and how.... and to set up their defenses. In the latter action Ashley and Israel are able to work each at their full strength. Emily is still able to help though, possessed of a basic understanding of Correspondence and what she sees at work here with the Sphere [that Israel called 'Yechidah' - the Oneness - and Ashley calls the 'Ars Conjunctus'] is truly a tantalizing display of what may very well be something the Chorister is able to work herself in due time. In the Traditions it is quite often called 'Chaining' -- what it amounts to here is layers upon layers of intricately shifted Spacial relations. Tweaked and nudged. Conjoined and separated. No one 'link' is too obvious, too overt. It takes time and effort but the pay off is usually well worth it: Anyone attempting to Scry a trail and follow back the lines of their Working to their persons and locations would encounter worse than a labyrinth: Something truer to an unraveling.
Trail?
What trail?
With the application of Mind they mask their Resonance in the magic and when all is said and done the night of the Cresecent moon - Saturday night - when they actually work together to drain the Asylum's Node, it will seem as if - so far as the metaphysics of distance and spatial relations are concerned - as if they were working from so many small points within the city that the traces unravel to nothingness.... Magic out of Thin Air.
[which is the real illusion: Magic is seldom that easy.]

Then they meet some hours before Solomon, Nathan, Atlas and Molly will be handling their respective objectives for this 'operation'. Some hours before and hopefully all well rested because the work ahead is no easy matter.
Doubtless none of them come here tonight looking pleased with what they are going to do: Going into this there seems little to ease the sting and ire of draining and, essentially, Unweaving a Node. Israel seems as she has for the last few days: Rested and in good health but a little withdrawn; a little detached. Focused on something not quite here; not quite there. More somber than the month of December in which she had many great reasons for Hope to rise to nearly trumping Lamentations.... January now and Sorrow is deeper again, settled back in her marrow though Hope still kindles the far reaches of blind eyes.

She attempts a smile as she sits tailor fashion on the floor, a shallow wooden box that holds many raw-spun silken pouches of various rock salts; shale dust and other things.
"Harpier cries:—'tis time! 'tis time!
Round about the caldron go...."
Her lips quirk slightly, lovely but without bright humour...
"We need to incorporate our Foci..."

When you speak of Magi working 'In Concert' it sounds as if it would make the whole of Willworking much easier. It does: If you can reach an accord. If you can meld and mesh and harmonize Paradigms, Foci, Will, Faith... attitudes, communication lines, roles....
...there is a reason working 'In Concert' is not done with far greater frequency.

[Ashley McGowen] Ashley is distinctly displeased with what they are here to do tonight. The Hermetic made her displeasure known both at the meeting and has several times since; she believes that there should have been another way. She believed this, too, when there was talk about how to deal with the Marauder at this time last year, when she and a certain Orphan began to devise a way to bring him back to reality. Perhaps it's the challenge of finding something better, because it's often easier to destroy.

That's not to say that she doesn't see the pragmatism in doing this. Ashley is pragmatic first and foremost, though some part of her has started to pull away from that. She doesn't know when or how it happened.

Grim hunger heralds her arrival at the place, and she does not join Israel in the playful rhyming and turns of phrase. It's in Ashley to take from the world, to draw everything in to sustain and attempt to satisfy herself somehow. Nowadays, this is not the kind of devouring she prefers, particularly since it seems as though it should smack of the destructive energy she fought so hard to overcome during the first half of last year. She's angry.

Still, it's not Emily or Israel she's angry at, and so the slightly smaller woman gets a half-smile, distracted and preoccupied, as she seats herself on the ground and begins to sort through her silken pouches. "I use Enochian and this," she says, reaching beneath the collar of her shirt to hook her thumb beneath her chain for a moment and pull it out to show it. "And runes and symbols and blood. So I don't have anything to put out in front of you, but I don't think I'll be hard to work around."

For all the individualism of the Order of Hermes, its magi are often taught a very structured form of magic. That often lends itself well to rituals such as this, even with her blending of Traditions.

[Emily Littleton] They three gather in the humble workshop above a place that smells of yeast and flours, of baking and hardwork. A bakery's work hours are shifted heavily toward the early morning, beginning often before daybreak with the ping and clang of ovens coming up to heat, tired and sleeping metal stretching and yawning, wide maws opening with heavy doors to accept the first offerings of the day. To be a baker is honest work, tiring and heavy on the hands. Like a potter with clay. There is artistry here, and also reverence.

And the stoic sort of mundanity about it, the lack of glamour or chicanery blends into the fibre and grain of a place. Flour grinds into wooden boards, things become smooth that were once rough-patterened before. Cloths lose their warp and weft. Everything in a bakery is bent toward its purpose, and that purpose is nothing more than building and baking nourishment.

They come together in a place above the kitchen were sustenance and good things are built up, fashioned, sold and bartered. They come together to tear one such wonder down. They put themselves above the yeast, and the flour, and the soft-grained wooden things. Above, but not beyond.

She is no longer an Apprentice, but rather a Journeyman in their craft. Her foci are simple, resonant but not tailored toward any particular pursuit. Aside from the rosary beads, they do not give much away about her Tradition, her Calling. The Singer is quieter than she'd been the year before, more deeply separated from the others, a solid thing striving towards becoming steadfast. Her dark hair is twisted to a bun at the crown of her head, secured tightly. Her jacket obscures the firearm they both know she cares in a holster at the small of her back whenever they come together.

Emily's mind is an agile thing, given to finding similarities and differences, categorizing, analyzing and repiecing puzzles quickly. She is likewise socially adept at resolving dissimilar things, making them seem or sound of a kind. These fluidities of thought and mind, speech and belief allow her to interface with people of different faiths, differing walks. There is room in her mind for more than one solution to a given problem, more than one correct answer, and more than one way of believing. That her initial studies fell under a Monist is no surprise, neither is it odd that she has learned from at least a pair of Traditions beyond her own in the past year.

Harmonizing, as Israel calls it, is not beyond her scope or her will. Blending faiths and strengths and magics comes from a place of respect for the integrity of another's will, their divinity, their sanctity. That respect allows her to hold reverence for whatever they value, and that is enough for Emily. Enough to begin...

They meet some hours before the others, again in this place that smells of home-making and warmth. Her bootheels click on the hard floors, make it easy for Israel to follow her presence by the sound, and the faint scent of vanilla and clove. She is watchful, if a little distant. Thoughtful if they catch her eyes. There is no warmth for what they must do tonight, but rather a grave and heavy silence. They three with unravel a Wonder, a welling up of His work. She's remorseful, resigned, and a little sad.

"I have personal talismans for Mind and Prime," she tells them, crossing the room and crouching to place the string of cool stone beads and the silver locket on the ground before Israel. Each has its own resonance (faintly steadfast, dying out over time [Home, belonging, calm]). "I like to use circles or grids for correspondence. But I'm comfortable with chanting, meditation, candles, and prayer."

[Asylum] One is Angry. Two are more... grimly [remorsefully; sorrowfully; sadly] resigned. Pragmatism is a pure metal cord to run through and around them: Gold. Sterling, though: Plated with different experiences and different drives. Platinum: A belief in what is sacred. Tarnish: Coming together to take what is Sacred and lay it to rest. One, at least, takes comfort that in doing so they can insure it is done with due solemnity and, more so, safeguard innocent lives [Human and Spiritus alike] in the process. But such things are small comforts at best. Human beings connect with what is immediate and personally relevant first and foremost. Whatever the reasons - whatever the pragmatism - the knowledge of the destruction of a Node introduces Dissonance that cannot be overlooked.

Ashley's use of Blood for Foci doesn't disquiet or displease the blind woman [who is dressed comfortably but well; who approaches ritual as others might approach Saturday service at Temple or Sunday morning Mass. who took a long time prior in her ablutions because much of her life - and Solomon's as well - is lived with a balancing of ascetics that ultimately represent fine threads that weave into greater ritual tapestries for times like this]. A Disciple of Life and a true believer in the initial sanctity of all of God's creation, she has no qualms or hang ups about blood. Indeed, she nods slightly with a scholastic appreciation for Enochian and Blood, both ripe with symbolic connections to Quintessence.

Emily - Journeyman and Promising given her prodigious advancement - has simpler things to offer, but no less meaningful or relevant. Israel is comfortable with High Ritual given her background before and after her own Awakening; but Kabbalah also stresses the treasure and significance of simplicity; the earnestness of soulful expression over mindless rote.

As she hoped for, working together should not prove difficult in the end: As she had the nights before when they Strove to set up the many intricate layers [a great lacework she would call it; though she could describe it in terms of circles and grids and sympathy as well] she goes about setting up the outer layer of the combined Foci: A great seal with interwoven, smaller seals that match the Cardinal directions. Emily is working with Solomon: There is no doubt that she's started to learn how to set up these basics with Dead Sea salt and shale and bone and olive branches [Solomon, though, would just stick to salt and shale and Discs]. The circle is what takes the longest: But once it is done and the other women have either aided or added their own elements [she welcomes - asks for - both as they feel comfortable] there is a space large enough to sit the three of them comfortably in its centre.

Before stepping into the Correspondence Circle, however, there is the process of removing their individual Resonances. Masking them, dimming them: Washing them away so that during the Working itself it will be as if one Source moved and Willed and Worked and Weaved. One Whole; not three parts.

As for Prime....
Prime is fundamental here, of course, but it is also what Israel leaves most to each woman's own interpretations. She would not ask Ashley, for example, to invoke the Names of God since doing so would clash Rote with Belief. So the aspect of Prime, she says, is instead symbolized by a bowl. Not some great, intricate, expensive bowl: A simple work of clay and subtle glaze into which she pours simple distilled water. Into which she sets a floating votive candle... and pricks her finger, letting a drop of blood fall within before staunching the small wound with the pressure of the tip of her tongue: Pragmatic and barely thought of. She asks the other two women to do the same.

"Quintessence is all and is in all Elements: Water. Earth. Fire. Air.
Water is the Wellspring.
Quintessence fuels All Flame.
Blood is our connection: Water. Earth. Fire. Air."

A beat... a pause: She has a telepathic connection with Solomon and Molly set up in advance so that all three groups are working in synch...
"... they'll be taking down the wall in a few minutes. Any last questions?"

[Ashley McGowen] Israel's circle is reinforced with Ashley's own, and there is nothing special that she uses to sketch out the circle about the boundaries and the runes that border it. Just a piece of chalk. Ordinarily she might use the lighter and direct the flame to burn a thin line into place for something more lasting, a more permanent press of her Will onto the environment surrounding. But this is Israel's space and she's here only temporarily, and there's recognition of that.

Ashley seats herself at Israel's right so that Emily may be at her own right side; it will be helpful for her to see the Singer, who is not by any means inexperienced but is the least experienced of them here. Ritual is a lengthy and precise process and it would be better to know if she needs assistance.

When she sits down, it is with ownership. She set a boundary there on the floor, and everything within it is hers, under the domain of her Will and under her protection (the two women within included.) It is difficult for her Working to be subtle, unfortunately; it's just in how she casts magic. She is a wall, she creates lines that by their very presence dare others to cross them. (Try it. See what I'll do.) It is, unfortunately, the thing that hampers her when the need arises for more subtle Workings - like now - but it's what she knows. It's what she is.

There is a bone-handled knife that she uses to prick her thumb, short and blunt and lethal, carved into the shape of some great reptile. She lets the blood roll into the water to join Israel's and then sheathes the blade and transfers the edge of her thumb to her mouth. The incision was fine, the blade being very sharp, but it still stings. That pain, too, is a thing that helps her focus, ties her body and her mind firmly together.

"None from me," she says, apparently in agreement for the way that Israel is binding together their magics.

[Emily Littleton] That Israel will come to call what they are working on a great lacework would not fret Emily. Layered such as their works are, piece upon piece, stitch upon stitch, it is not a difficult thing to extend the metaphor of weaving to tatting or lace-making. Emily does not see it as so different that building up a great work, or a modest house: there is a foundation, and upon that foundation more and more intricate overlays until the weight of a thing, the whole of it emerges as greater than the sum of its parts.

A great Synergy. Emergent.

From a long if somewhat distant association with Catholic liturgy and a shorter but far more intense exposure to Solomon's hide-bound and strictured rotes, Emily has developed an appreciation of ritual. That this ritual starts with shale and salt, builds to water and fire, does not seem odd to her. She understands why Israel has brought these things together; the Disciple states it plainly (Quintessence is all and is in all Elements: Water. Earth. Fire. Air.).

It is uncomfortable to feel her signature, her metaphysical heartbeat and scent sloughed from her, wiped clean like some sort of ablution. To stand before them without resonance, without gravity in the art they share. She remains a bright pillar, incadescent, a fount of Quintessence in and of herself. Emily has always been bright, held more than her share of star stuff in her lungs. She has always brought moonbright home in her bones, sloshing around in her marrow, heavy and luminous. It was one of the things that had drawn them to her, these Others-as-she-is, before she had taken on her flavor and tinge.

Within the circle, they each have their way of consecrating the vessel. Israel envokes the elements. Emily, for her part, kneels and places a hand to either side of the bowl, touching it lightly with the edge of her palm and her smallest fingers. She glances at the shimmy and shimmer of the water, the reflection of the candlelight. She bows her head for a moment, exhales without speaking, and lets her lashes kiss her cheekbones in prayer and repose.

No great thing happens in the hollow of the quiet she makes. No choirs sing, no breeze stirs. Masked as it is just now, her resonance does not flood them with reverence or grace. It is simply quiet, expectant, accepting.

After a moment, she blinks her eyes open again, and they are focused only on the candle. Her voice is soft, her words are not for either of the other women here. They are not even for her own sake.

So let the waters rise up, if You want them to.

She rocks back on heels, rises, and steps back from bowl. It is consecrated to their purpose; blessed to be a vessel of more than mundane things; filled with the waters and fire that are more than metaphor.

"I'm ready," she tells them. (I understand what we must do.)

[Hunter] [OOPS]

[Emily Littleton] [Alertness per Meesh]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 8, 8 (Success x 1 at target 7)

[Ashley McGowen] [Alertness!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 4, 10 (Failure at target 9)

[Ashley McGowen] [Maybe I'll notice this time...]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 5, 6, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 8)

[Emily Littleton] [Alertness, take two, per Meesh]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 7, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Asylum] Unlike Emily, Israel seems Dim tonight. She's transferred what personal Quintessence she didn't actively need to Solomon for his keeping - literally - so she can stand ready to hold as much of the Essence as her Pattern can possibly withstand if need be. Hopefully [and even in this: Even grim and set to task, she is Hopefilledful] that route won't be needed; but it's available just in case.

Her plan - as she's told them - is to bypass holding the Quintessence at all and instead Direct it. From Wellspring to multiple points throughout the city all at once. Given the Dynamic Resonance of the Node in question she's chosen Natural locations: Flora slumbering in the winter will be infused with traces of Twisting, Growing, Mutable, Thriving Resonance all around the City. And while she doesn't say it maybe this is - in her way - a bit of recompense for what they are doing. Infusing Life with the breath of Divine Essence; knowing full well it may eventually cause those trees to bloom in midwinter or Sing in Spring Showers or any number of things. Giving that Quintessence some place in which to thrive.
And giving the Technocrats something to narrow their eyes at.

Wonder. Magic. Faith. Quintessence.
It finds a way to carry on, despite it all.

They are ready: Her 'helpers' though she does not think of them as such. Each is a woman capable in her own way. They are less 'helpers' and more Champions: Present not only to make this 'easier' but to make this 'possible'. On her own Israel might manage this feat but would almost certainly kill herself - or worse [is tearing apart your own Avatar worse? She thinks so] - in the process.

Her eyes are closed now: Her lips framing susurrations of Aramaic and Hebrew. Not Liturgy but something far more heartfelt and profound.
Whether it asks for Strength or Forgiveness or Both is for her [and God; in whom she Truly believes] to know.

A beat,
"Molly's Ward has gone up," quietly, filling them in on what is being passed between the tri-linked telepathy with the Disciple Chorister and the Initiate Cultist,
"...five, four, three..." Solomon's voice in her head,
A moment.
A breath.
Hold it.

"Now."
The word isn't needed though. Ashley and Emily can sense it as well: In all their preparations they've all three laid down the ground work for the basis of this Rote. The cleansing of their Resonances from the Magic. The intricate connectivity of Correspondence filtered through that lacework - that fine Architecture of Gossamer and strongest, subtlest Silk they all put together - of interwoven spaces; now tapping through that to wait - ready - at the cusp of the Asylum's staunch, Static, highly Patterned Wards....
They all three feel it when the gaping hole - Rend - tears open in the midst of it and suddenly what is within is accessible. Holding onto the Resonance of the Node itself their perceptions shift: What is around them is a blur after that initial moment of sight of the immediate interior where that wall fell [it seems what they thought was an empty portion of the main building was currently being used: Atlas' explosion has taken out a few people. Three or four bodies strewn around what seem to be large wooden crates...]. Their collective Will makes a bee-line for the Node itself....

...there they see something that very nearly verges on chaos. In a large open room - scrubbed and renovated on the inside so that it does not at all resemble a broken down mental institution built more than a century ago but something far closer to a sterile laboratory environment. It would all be very structured and sorted: But madness has attacked the Hive and it is in Swarm.

Off to a corner are three individuals in lab coats hunched and standing around a intricate set up of monitors and controls, apparently trying to talk and type their way out of some kind of massive system failure. The fluorescent lights over head are flickering - pulsing.
Twisting.
Two men dressed in security guard type outfits are running as they leave the room. A woman in a dress suit and a man in street clothes laden down with a field medical kit are following three others who are armed to the teeth and scream paramilitary... making their way into what looks - for all the world - like a portal straight off the set of Star Gate. It is large. It is a marvel of technology and Enlightened Science. It transports these people - with a step - from one dimension to the next; the nearest in its fraction.

It doesn't matter what you think of the Technocracy, really: It is an awe-inspiring work, this testimony to the ingenuity of the human imagination, mind and all the technological advancement the Masses won't yet accept.

For a moment you might miss the Node, so eye-catching is the Union Portal. You might miss the screaming and inhuman sounds coming from the other side of that portal: Unmistakable sounds of battle. But the Node is there, visible to them with the Prime Sight cast earlier and it is thriving: In the Mystical view it seems as an Aura or Halo pulsing like veins around and over the shape of a Tree. Threads and chords of Quintessence intricately lattice in the center around a blank shape like a door: With Israel's Spirit Sense they can see that the doorway is a deep, rich crimson hue, thrown open inwardly with all manner of indiscernible spirit life - creatures, writhing vines and more things besides - reaching out within the Penumbra....

"Lord help them...." is Israel's response, somewhere between awe and horror. It is not clear whom she means for 'them' - perhaps technocrats and spirits alike.
A blink. A grimace.
She wastes no more time than that, "Quick.... we must be quick before either one of them does something horrendous...."

[Asylum] [[Prime 3, Corr 3, Mind 2. Diff: 6. -1 Foci, -1 Taking Time, -1 Near Node. Each suxx = 2 Quint drained.]] [WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 6, 6, 10 (Success x 4 at target 3) [WP]

[Asylum] In taking in everything at the Node site Emily also notices that near the main double doors are two of the same crates that were at the room that Atlas brought down the wall of. One of the crates is open: It was a wooden outer box filled with straw-looking material around a metal case on which she clearly sees a warning symbol for explosives. She also notices a warning symbol for Chemical Munitions - in her time as a Diplomats daughter it's possible she's seen something like it before or been warned of it. However the centre of the symbol is... different. Instead of a circle of green outlined in red as the Army usually uses it is a small symbol that looks like... an atom? No. No, more like a flat depiction of a celestial body and a smaller satellite with its drawn orbit ellipses. Chemical arms and planets? Even if it doesn't make complete sense to her the combination can't be good.
to Emily Littleton

[Emily Littleton] Had she peers with which to share stories of these adventures, of Fallings Into like the Apple Book, of Stepping Sideways to hold the line the night the Chalice was destroyed, of Surging Forward now intertwined with the wills of a Disciple and an Adept, had she someone to boast or braggart with, Emily might have earned a few points in that nonsensical keeping-up game tonight. Rather she is alone in her studies, does not measure herself by the yardstick of another once-Apprentice's accomplishments. She will play her part in this with the assumption that any other would do the same, had they the means and the opportunity.

They are Guardians as much as Sages, charged to safe-keep and enlighten. The images that flash across her consciousness depict an eerily comfortable alternative -- had her life gone different, fourteen months ago, she might have been in that lab or one like it just now, bending her measurable technological skill to the same devices as her Will, pushing the boundaries of what is possible and what is probable with every experiment.

And there is a sadness, a palpable and wrenching thing, to see how the Technocrats run form their decaying sanctum. A horror, suppressed, to rise up in nightmares later, at the markings on the boxes along the walls. It brings back things her father had told her growing up.

"No matter how much intelligence you have, Emily, no matter how much reconn, no matter how bright your analysts are, you will never know the full cost of an act of military aggression until its consequences are measured in the aftermath. Diplomacy is always the better answer, when it is a safe and viable alternative. You cannot foresee everything and that is the terrible price of war."

Her mother rebuilt communities, savaged by the wars people like her father strove to prevent. Their daughter, neither a diplomat nor a humanitarian, had tonight again become the sword, the last and terrible resort.

There is a terrible thing written on the boxes at the edge of Emily's awareness. She does not let it pull her away from her intended action. She refuses to give into the panic and curiosity, but it's there, in the way her frame tenses and her hands ball to fists. It's there in way her voice breaks the silence of her inward prayer to exclaim, softly and succinctly:

"Oh... shit."

[Emily Littleton] [Prime 2, Corr 1, Mind 1. Diff:5 . -1 Foci, -1 Taking Time, -1 Near Node. (WP)]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 3) [WP]

[Ashley McGowen] This is the first time Ashley has seen anything the Technocratic Union has created that wasn't cold and metal. It's infused with wonder, this, the same kind of thing that fuels the Workings of each of them. And for a moment the Hermetic stares at the gate with a kind of surprise and awe, her breath caught in her throat, Enochian syllables frozen on her lips.

And then there's the Tree, the raw power of the ideal, the Word, and all that it expresses, its strength and ability to persevere. The sight of it makes what they're about to do all the more bitter, makes her all the more aware that this is a sacred thing they're destroying.

If Ashley were possessed of a weaker Will, she might not be able to bring herself to do it.

Ashley, too, sees the explosives. She doesn't know what they were going to be used for. She has a few guesses, but the thought does not horrify her; Ashley is not upset by the thought of War. Her father is a Vajrapani and, much as she tries to avoid destruction, battle makes a person feel alive in a way that many other things do not. There's a primal part of her that takes joy in conflict, regardless of the form it takes. The fight, not the aftermath, but still.

"There are explosives," she warns Israel. "If I have to, I may have to divert my attention to try to contain them."

She hopes she won't have to.

They are breaking down the idea the node represents and everything it is, unweaving it, pulling that strength from it and dispersing it into other things. This is something Ashley can do; it is something she specializes in, knowing that she is stronger and that she can break it down.

[Ashley McGowen] [Prime 2, Corr 1, Mind 1. Diff:5 . -1 Focus, -1 Taking Time, -1 Near Node. Spending WP.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 4, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 3) [WP]

[Emily Littleton] "There's Chemical Weapons, too. Metal boxes, in crates, by the door," Emily says, with an odd certainty. How she would know that marking, or recognize it so quickly is anyone's guess. She doesn't muddle the message with her speculation about the other, odd sigil the boxes bear. Clarity is paramount.

[Asylum] To the womens words she grimaces tightly but nods, "If you get any sense of them being set off, do what you can to stop it. The ones by the door," she isn't sure if Ashley saw something different from Emily: She does not 'See' as they do, after all, "Are somehow tied to the Umbra." Grim. Slightly blanched: What the hell were these fools planning on doing?

For the first time since this started she truly begins to feel that niggling sense of fear that they may not have enough time to pull this off.
Like Ashley she doesn't let emotions pull her from her course; her Will [though for her it is Faith more than Will; for her they exist in symbiosis]. Like Emily she regrets this War, but does not see them as the Sword, but the Scythe: Here to reap away the Bright Fruit over which Spirits and Technocrats battle without care or ignorant of the threat posed to mortal lives...

The sense of the Nodes power is engulfing and mighty. Perhaps more so because they come not to meditate and draw power from it or safeguard it. There is an undeniable sense of unwitting self-defense. The same you might expect should you stare down into the maw of an active volcano and shout: I must put you to sleep for though you are awesome you are deadly here and now.
Only to have that Volcano laugh in your face.

And burn.

What they feel is simultaneous: One moment there is the sense of the Essence Israel is tapping into with their Will and Effort empowering her force. Sheer dynamism and potency.
Half-a-breath; barely-a-heart-beat later is the Backlash.
A pure Prime Attack surges through the three of them. Israel is the conduit but Ashley and Emily aren't sparred. And, yes, it hurts. It sears down to the core of their Patterns, not killing them, no, but were it one - or even two - doing this and not three then one - or two - of the cities Awakened would be dead.

[at that moment Solomon and Molly feel the telepathic connection falter; shudder; dim... Israel nearly loses consciousness from the brunt of the shock and pain alone.]

In a studio apartment that smells of yeast; kosher salt; almond pastes; dates; yogurt; olive oil and sesame seeds three women are brutally hit. Israel barely manages not to sprawl out of the Circles [within circles, surrounded by Runes] and half groans the words that follow, "Spiked. They Spiked it. The charms.... can't try again until we take the Charms..."
To try again before would be to risk death if the 'Spike' is recurrent.
But yes... she fully intends to try again.

...not for the first time she is thankful of Emily learning to make Healing Charms: She herself only had two here with her.

[Asylum] [[Damage: Israel 4A; Ashley and Emily 3A]]

[Emily Littleton] It is wonderous and terrible, looking into that churn and vibrancy of the Node, knowing that potential was only that, neither innately good or evil, neither elevating nor condemning. They're stealing a bright point of potential from the world, disseminating it in small pockets of brilliance, tossing out across the city like starbright.

It makes it better.

It burns.

Emily has felt a pain like this, and the Singer grits her teeth rather than crying out. Her vision goes white for a moment, then begins to darken at its margins. It seethes, the wounds she cannot yet see and know but only feel, feel with both her innate and preternatural senses. She hunches forward, rests her hands on her knees and coughs wetly. She isn't surprised to see blood on the back of her hand when she wipes the dampness from the back of her hand. Darkly, she thinks it somewhat apropos that she, too, will bleed for this rite.

There is a small red glass vial in her pocket. She reclaimed it from Ashley before they came here. It is stoppered with cork, smells violently of heavy spice. It is not gentle to drink down, but it coats her throat in a taste heavier that the cupperic tang of blood. It fills her senses with cinnamon, clove, anise -- things that warm from the inside out, restore. She breathes out a heat she didn't have before, and wills her body to mend, to use the very star stuff in her pattern to help stitch her back together.

She coughs again, but this time it is only to clear her throat of the thick syrup.

"Ungh," the Singer rolls the indelicate syllable across the back of her throat. "Next time..." her voice lurches and starts unevenly for a moment. "You all ... want to get together? Let's just... go to the spa or something."

It's wry and dark humor. It tells them she's fine; it gives her a way to judge their status by the laughter or glares she gets in return. Perhaps it pulls them back to thoughts of after and when, subtly hopeful things that will get them through the pain of here and now.

[Emily Littleton] [1wp/1quint to healing charm]

[Ashley McGowen] There's a sort of appeal for Ashley in staring down the node and commanding it to do her Will, even if she doesn't like the idea of snuffing it out of existence. She's trying to focus herself on that, right now, and not on the thought that here she is on a night in January, the dead of winter, destroying something beautiful.

She can't call it Faith, unlike the two here. She has no such thing. She has instinct and desire and stubborn resolve and these are the things she calls Will. She has a sense that it's aiding Israel anyway, that somehow in spite of their rather disparate beliefs the three of them are managing to work in concert after all.

Maybe later it will be cause for pride. It is not right now.

The backlash is unexpected when it comes. It surges into her, leaps through the circle toward her and makes the fiber of her being stretch out and waver and fray. Ashley is not too Willful to keep from screaming, a raw gutteral sound of pain and rage. Her throat feels shredded afterward and she can't tell whether it's from the noise or the backlash itself.

She's tense before she swallows down the contents of the vial, as though she would get up and fling herself toward the cause. Too angry, for a few seconds, to think of much else, but of course she has to.

Emily's wry comment provokes a low sound, something savage and suppressed, as Ashley downs the bit of liquid, focusing on releasing the Working that Emily wound into it.

[Asylum] If Israel screamed she had no recollection of it: Which made sense given how close she came to losing consciousness altogether. And outside of her immediate words to them [information. communication. these things are key when Working like this] there is the mustered Will to keep what happened from Solomon [there are few things that puts the Knight at risk of truly losing his head: She is one of them. it is not something of which she is proud. in truth it pains and frightens her] and to fumble for a stone vial of Jerusalem honey that is thick and cloying in her mouth. Too sweet - so sweet - against the acrid burn of bile and adrenaline....

...so her response to Emily's words may not make a lot of sense: "...I don't think they let lions and peregrines and rivers into Spa's..." A comment Kage might appreciate. A faint tweak of her lips; her blind eyes closed. "... but we c'n try..."

The set of her jaw tightens as she straights herself: Draws herself up. Up on her knees her hands raising. When she must summon her all and for Great Weaves her magic becomes far less subtle and far more a complete force of her Belief, her Heart, her Will and her Body. Like a conductor of an elemental, primal Orchestra she dives back into the Node [HaShem, be merciful... let it not be recurrent...]...

...no Backlash.
Only power.
The trio of Effort intertwines again. She leads but they do far, far more than just to follow. And though their Resonances are muted the three womens magic is now a Symphony of Force to match their objective: The Node is Pierced. With Hunger it is drawn up, taken up. And Unrelenting is the tide that bears that Essence away, drained not pointlessly but surging out into the the Cardinal directions to find the Trees and the Lawns and the Cypress knees in marshy fallows. [and that is Sorrow and Poignancy for what is torn asunder. and that is Hope and Reverence for what is Enriched and the Faith to know Divine Energy is never truly lost or destroyed
...it simply changes.]

But there is no doing this in one sweeping bout. They continue to work but time is slipping away and the window of oppourtunity before someone clues in to what they are doing is dwindling....
...they work and they Drain and Shift...

...at the array of monitors and keyboards and controls two men are sweating as they work, engrossed in some action. Then, suddenly, with a strangled scream the older of the two men starts to burn. Smolder. Not in flame but as if struck by invisible lightening where he sat: Smoke rising up from his flesh as he collapses. Dead. The woman standing behind him screams.

A man - one dressed as of some unknown military unit - is stepping out from the Umbral side of the Technocratic portal. He is carrying a body as he lips, blood spattered and more besides. The body is that of a woman in a suit and the limp heaviness of her form bespeaks of something far more permanent than a faint. His face is ashen; his chapped lips a rictus of anger and sneering hatred.

He stops.

He is facing the Node.
The Node he's never seen. Oh, they told him something of why he and his men and the others were here. Here in this FUBAR fucking building where nightmare things kept picking them off and them just waiting, waiting, waiting for reinforcements. For some beurocratic jackwagon to finally decide to send the proper Agents and Doctors and equipment here to set things right. To make things sane again.
But he's come out of that damned portal with a dead woman in his arms and there's no one coming out behind him.
He's come out with ever intention of dragging one of those crates of munitions in himself and doing what Needed Doing. Fuck the orders. Fuck the consequences. He was done with this place. This madness.
There had to be a way to make this all make sense.

And then he sees the man drop dead of lightening flung as if by Thor himself.
And then he Sees.
Sees the Tree. The Pulsing, Dynamic, Wonderous Tree.

The madness. The cancer.
The reason he's lost so many good and too-god damned-young 'Marines.
He Sees. For the First Time he Knows.
You've been asleep, Donnie...

"Not anymore."
He lays the woman down with a heartbreaking gentleness.....
...then marches forward.
And Lights Up. Power surges within him as he draws from the Node.
And draws.
And draws.
And draws....

[[Israel gasps.... "Who... wh-- he'll kill himself!"]]

The younger man at the control array is jerking to a stand. Drawing a weapon with a lack of skill and pointing it at this unknown militant who is doing the impossible [the deadly; the swan dive]. Screaming for him to drop it. Stop it.
The man behind the control array can see what is happening, too.
The woman in her lab coat is wide mouthed and heavy-breathing... she does not see. She does not know.

[Ashley McGowen] Israel's joke confuses Ashley a little. The Hermetic, lips bloodstained, flicks a glance toward her friend, but doesn't immediately try to deconstruct. It will probably make sense later, when her mind isn't buzzing with remembered agony.

There's only hunger, for a while after. Ashley dredges up the energies that swirl around the tree, draws them into all of them, pulls and unravels. This is what she was made to do; this is her Word and at the core of her very being, the pattern that was so stricken moments ago. It feels natural to her, even if some other part of herself cries out against the destruction.

Then there's a man. One they have a name for, one that she doesn't want to see ripped apart by what he's about to help them do.

Ashley searches for alternatives. Briefly, it occurs to the Hermetic to abandon the ritual and go after him, this newly Awakened man who is about to sacrifice everything he is. Everyone sacrifices when they Awaken - some are just more direct about it. And it's a sacred thing, and to go in to help him would mean her own death and no real help for him. It doesn't appeal to her sense of self-preservation.

So, reluctantly, she lets Donnie do what he's going to, and persists in the ritual, doing her best to focus on it alone.

[Emily Littleton] There are times when it is not enough to be Awake. There are times when it is not enough to be Willful, or Faithful, or Chosen. When the task at hand consumes everything, every last bit of attention that she has to give and Emily cannot find the grace, the strength, the inspiration to reach out and do more. She cannot break away from the ritual to pull away any of the energies that have begun to engulf the newly-Awakened man's form.

They are extremely trying times.

Knowing that she cannot help him does not keep Emily from wanting, from digging down as deep as she can into whatever seat of Will fuels her and Praying that there is a Fate for him that is not a brief, bright candle-flare. It is not dissimilar to the instinctive, pained, desperate way she prayed, surrounded by balefire and watching a small and frightened child struggle with his possessed and deranged mother.

It is no less feverent than when she stood in the labyrinth and called out for His protection against the twisted and wrong thing that sought to bring this same sort of backlash down onto her head, to split through her pattern, to unmake her.

Our Work, let it be Your work, and let it be done here, now.
Protect us and the innocent, the unknowing.
Let the water rise, if You want them to.
I will remain.

They're thoughts, not so much voiced in her mind as felt from her center. They're are a cry and a Call. A year ago, she wouldn't have reached for Him. A year ago, she wouldn't have known He would answer.

It's not Donnie, per se, that Emily wants to save. And it's not herself she sees in his abrupt and violent Awakening. Neither is she a martyr, to sacrifice her life for another. There is no Reverence in the destruction of a newly reborn soul, no Mercy to the sacrifice he's unwittingly giving.

She feels a visceral need to protect this fledgling fragile beginning, even as they work to unmake a wonder and a mystery. To retain some sort of balance to what is given up and what is reborn here. To appease the Raven but also the Dove that nestle deeply in her breast and it if were possible for Emily to grow, to bend, to become in this moment, to transcend she would.

But she is only mortal.
And she can only do so much with her hands, and her will.
It pours out of her into their shared working, this Unrelenting press, this driven need to be enough, to offer enough, to give not only the proper measure but the proper thing at the proper time.

There are people dying on the other side of this portal, these circles upon circles, wreathed in runes, bound by blood, illuminated by faith, honed by will. There are people broken and fearful and it doesn't matter, so much, to the Singer, now, whose side of the Great War they're on. It only matters that this ends, the suffering and the unweaving, that its purpose is fulfilled and the magics can drop away, thrum to nothing, fade.