Summary:Ambrose bites off more than he can chew with the Bane and Talbot steps in to eradicate the death magic's influence. Log Info:Storyteller: N/A |
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The mental slap upside the head was all that kept the Jackal from attempting to subsume the rest of the retrieval party in Chernobyl. With the second tablet retrieved and in the safe hands of the Dread Wolf and the Raven (for now), it falls upon the pair to deliver their teammates back to the relative safety of their homes.
That being said, it’s one hell of an arrival. Ambrose, nauseated off the glutting of giant radioactive spider life-force, stumbles out of the tear in reality — a topsy-turvy Way opened by Fenris — and falls to his knees on the sidewalk of the property he calls home with Kent Talbot. Immediately, the remainder of his last meal hours ago crawls up his throat and he hunches, the acidic mouthful leaving him to puddle in the grass. He spits and coughs, thankful for being on the interior side of the sturdy, wrought-iron fencing that keeps the world out and their privacy safe.
Still…a bubbling, woozy, and wicked laugh leaves him even as he wipes his mouth on his sleeve. Sif’s healing stone in his pants kept the radiation from silvering out more of his dark hair, but Ambrose is suddenly…very disinclined to show any sense of self-control whatsoever. God, the foreign oily darkness of death-magic that slithers through his blood blends near-perfectly with the liquid garnet-glitter of the Bane swirling around him in celestial circling, it feels….sooooooo good. Grass begins to wilt as he kneels there, lids heavy, indulging in letting the Bane run rampant.
Surely that’s enough to twit the Phurba’s nose?
*
More than enough. That presence comes awake with the supernatural equivalent of a startled snort, reorients on Ambrose…..but Kent’s at home, and awake (worrying, frankly), and he’s just as fast off the block. He has his hand on its leash within moments, bidding it be still and wait.
There’s the sound of the front door opening, and Kent appears on their stoop, dressed in dress shirt and pants. He can’t bring himself to wander around in a t-shirt on a regular basis - in his mind, that’s not more than underwear. That feeling of the Bane being unleashed checks him for a perturbed moment - what’s wrong with Ambrose?
But then he hurries forward, already reaching with his power to add his will to Ambrose’s and nudge him towards suppressing the Bane. I am here, my love. And clearly, you’ve suffered. Come with me, I’ll see you set to rights.
*
The impress of Kent’s gentle will meets resistance.
“Taaaallllbot…” Part singsong, part slurring greeting, Ambrose slowly looks up at his fiance. With his hands resting on his thighs in his kneel on the sidewalk, he’d look as if meditating but for the miasm around him of utter wrongness. To the Sight, a bitter-black misting clouds his aura and speckles through the usual lacing of the red-tinged Bane. A sickening facet of affection winks crimson in his eyes at the Hound and he smiles — nay, sneers. Lifting a curling finger at him, he laughs again, the tone loose and unsound. “Yes, my viperous bastard, attend on me. Come here.”
Apparently, Kent’s not moving fast enough in his caution. Like the flip of a page, frustration rears its head and turns the curl of lips ugly. “I said, come here…!” The Jackal lurches to his feet in one smooth motion as if to lunge and then trips over his own misplacement of feet. Down he goes again, this time to half-splay on grass that rapidly browns beneath him; he leaves his own human-shaped burn upon the lawn. The wooft of lost air turns into a grating inhale and then a hysterical laugh. “Oh, fuck me — Kent, where are they?”
He looks up at the man, wild, a thing of infernal Id and instinct. “The children.”
Oh god.
The kythe is full of painful static.
*
This is bad. This is very bad. But he has bedside manner enough to keep it from his face, and mostly from the kythe. Instead, he’s a soothing presence, but his will is starting to enclose Ambrose’s own. That has to be suppressed, that wild power uncontrolled, before it kills him….or the Phurba gets angry enough to take things into its own astral hands.
“You’ve made it home, my darling. Come, let me help you.” He kneels by Ambrose, gets one arm over his shoulder so he can lift the Jackal in an army carry. “You can rest inside.”
*
It’s like corralling a bucking bronco, but the intensity of madness can be seen to drop a number of degrees with the further enforcement of will. Like a banked fire, Ambrose still burns with the wrongness of the tainted life-force, but he’s malleable now. Does he have his feet? No — yes — no-yes-no, maybe — yes. Knees work to keep him moving alongside Kent towards and into the manor proper.
“It hurts,” he whines in a flickering of pure self, like a lighthouse through the shrouding of a coastline. Then the overlay of secondary voice slips in again, rasping like a cat’s tongue in the kythe simultaneously to his speech aloud. “I need more, Kent — more, don’t you understand? I have work to finish yet…!!!”
*
Here is an occasion to make use of the Phurba, and he draws upon its strength to bolster his own will. “No, my heart, not now,” he soothes. “Come, rest. You’ll be able to do what you need later.”
In and down they go, to the kitchenette and living room of the basement suite that he’s turned into his workshop. He was….apparently somewhat forewarned of this as a possible outcome, for he’s already rolled out one of the canvas cloths he’s used to draw permanent working circles on. And once he’s settled Ambrose in the center of it, he recites a few words, and the lines painted there begin to glow softly. The Phurba is perturbed enough to appear visually - that bizarre, colorful amalgam of dragon and Fu Lion and who knows what else. Its mane and whiskers flow in an unseen breeze, the enormous ball-like eyes fixed on Ambrose warily. But it only hovers in its splendor of red and gold and green, still obedient to Kent’s will.
*
A flicker of confusion goes through the pinpointed look given to Kent as the immediate and pressing need to feed the Bane is denied. The Hound will feel the flecking of dark magic squirm under the pressure of his willpower, but it isn’t about to breach the control. Between his fiance and the supernatural might of the ley line-empowered Phurba, the Jackal’s as malleable as freshly-mixed clay.
He kneels within the circle upon the canvas mat, his hands clutching up the sleeves of his outer coat as if he were cold. His teeth can be heard to finely chatter, but it’s not from chill; it’s from the horrifying tickling up his spine of fight-or-flight turned upon itself. The Phurba gone visible is enough to trigger the usual deep-seated concern from Ambrose himself. Within his aura, the tainting flecks begins to coalesce into inky blobs in equal perturbation at the creature, if only for the innate reasoning that it stands counter to the death magic’s own existence — as polarities might defy touch on magnets. He finally tears his attention from the Phurba and eyes the practitioner controlling it.
“Kent…Kent, let me go.” Ambrose speaks up softly, sternly, with the overlay of the rasping voice still present. “You don’t understand, I need — you need to let me go.” The Hound will feel the encouragement from the tainting power to test at the blanketing of his will. A hand reaches out towards the edge of the glimmering circles drawn — is there something to be touched or a reaction from the magic Kent’s summoned up?
*
The circles flare up into shimmering walls of green fire, like nothing so much a a tiny aurora seen from above. “Beloved, tell me what happened,” Kent says, kneeling on the floor, on the other side of the circle. The Phurba opens its mouth, makes some comment that only Kent can hear - his gaze flicks towards it, and he waves a hand in a manner meant to suppress it. No, you may not eat my fiancee, please. It tosses its head in annoyance, but goes back to keeping watch on Ambrose. …..did it just drool?
Even as he asks, he’s examining Ambrose’s aura, head cocked. Already reaching out with his various magical senses to diagnose.
*
Ambrose jerks back his hand at the response from the protective circling he’s now centered within. All of his body projects aversion to the situation at hand now and, in a ghostly reflection of canine habit, he drops his chin to curl in upon himself. Only the flash of ambient light in his pupils will be seen through his dark lashes and the short fall of dark hair grown longer in a callback to over a century ago. All that are missing are the tucked tail and flattened ears.
He watches the Phurba in particular with no love. A shiver seems to travel from scalp to toes and he grabs up the sleeves of his coat once more to hold himself in lieu of human contact.
“Chernobyl happened,” is the soft and hissing reply at first. “There were stairs and…down and down and down we went. The Russians must have tried to summon — ” His voice wends through the musical pitches until something hard and cold enters his gaze aimed at Kent. To the practitioner’s Sight, he’ll see the tide-like wash of the charcoal-speckled influence of the dark magic absorbed into Ambrose’s aura.
Quick — he’s frightfully quick, and thank the gods for the wards. Having shifted the pads of his feet beneath himself, Ambrose launches at the Hound. His shoulder slams into the warding spells and does not win. It’s a brutal, crunching sound of collision and he immediately falls to the tarp again, stunned and wheezing out a slow, teeth-clenched groan of agony. The Jackal curls on his good side, white-knuckled fingers clutching at his arm, and he begins laughing through his grimace. It’s a wrong sound.
“I took what was mine, Talbot — all mine — always mine — and I want more of it. You can’t hear them? Lisssten, you bastard cur. Listen…”
Oh, there are definitely voices in Ambrose’s head now, light whispers traveling with myriad legs and unblinking eyes and terrible, terrible ideas. A flickering of images runs through the kythe in lucidity within static: danger — Sif to his left — outstretching his hand — the gigantic spider with a dozen red eyes launching at him despite the drain of the Bane — his stomach roiling with radiation and death magic — the retort of the revolver ending the creature’s dash — wanting for the life of the others…
*
It’s a damned good thing he has the Phurba there to play magical energy generator. But both the wards and his psyche hold, even against that onslaught of voices.
The wards ripple and shimmer, the green now edged with red. Kent casts a grateful glance at the cloth, and then back at the Phurba, which opens its maw again and bellows - not that Ambrose can hear it.
“Dear God, the radiation alone….” His voice is shivery. But then he’s getting up, and turning to the cabinets of the kitchen. Upstairs is where real food and usable utensils are. Down here…it’s the wizard’s pantry. He gets out five brass censers, rummages out little glass jars of various resins. The censers are filled and lit, beginning to fill the room with sweet, sharply-scented smoke smoke. He sets them at the pentacle points around the cloth…..and even that smoke somehow strikes at the darkness in Ambrose. Incense of purification.
*
The squirming uprighting of his body takes on the notes of the mongoose; spine twists as he rolls and practically oozes to his feet. It’s graceful, beautiful, and deadly, especially with the look he levels on the first of the censers settled. The suspicion of the design to be enacted seems to set in around censer number three and the wards no doubt flare again when the Jackal slams against them.
Like a broken bird, Ambrose lies there and shudders. Another agonized groan leaves him followed by more laughter, thick and uncomfortable to hear. “Oh, my heart…just let me out,” he begs winsomely. Now the look given to Kent is undoubtedly lascivious. “I promise I’ll behave…” He’s broken his lip on the last impact and licks to smear red along his skin, bright against it. “Please…”
The broken whisper, beseeching from the bottom of his darkened soul, is accompanied by the reach towards Kent. His lashes flutter on the next inhale — censer number five gives the incense a metaphysical potency. The practitioner will see the dark globules of retained black magic in the Jackal’s aura begin to bubble and writhe as if increasingly uncomfortable.
*
But it’s alien to Ambrose’s own litheness. Not like him….and that’s enough to send chills up and down the Hound’s spine. His own expression is growing ever more dour and cool….all as part of his attempt to keep his reserve in place. Nevermind the fluttering mixture of panic and rage that some *thing* is daring to touch his Ambrose. His Jackal. The rage he’s frantically channeling into that icy coldness of temper.
All the better to bolster his will, as he reaches in to the kythe. Trying to test what’s truly Ambrose - is he being possessed in the classical sense? Or merely has some base, black magic corrupting his will? Careful as a surgeon trying to find the bounds of a tumor.
*
Within the kythe, the starlit reflecting pool is scummed over with the taint of base black magic. It seems to have been funneled in along with the life-force of the spider itself; the echoes around the vast celestially-pocked connection appear to be no more than poisonous residues of the original casters of the spells that left behind the dark stains absorbed. They will become more dangerous with time if left, given echoes build upon one another. Ambrose could be considered to have an infection raging through his body and his psyche.
The Jackal can feel the seeking tendrils of his lover’s attention and he lets out a wavering sigh, eyelashes fluttering again. “Please, don’t — yes, do — I…” A hand swats out at something only he can see within the bounds of the warding circle. The other fists up in his shirt above his sternum. A shiver wracks him and he stares now at Kent with wide eyes, both pleading and betrayed, the latter no doubt influenced by the residual dark magics.
*
There is the sense of a much more…vivid presence looming behind the Hound’s shadowy self. Scarlet and gold and green reflected in the murky waters, a sense of air so cold and keen and pure it cuts like a blade. Even here, in the all too human surrounds of New York, in the Hound’s sanctum, the Phurba’s spirit carries the tang of the high mountains, that aching purity. But it is the Hound holding it in check, as he makes shift to use its strength to try and clean up that internal mess. To drive it out, if he can - out of the Jackal’s body to where the Phurban can make prey of it. The guardian spirit is all but gnashing its teeth in eagerness.
“It’s me, my love. Reach out to me. I’ll get you out of this.” He’s back to kneeling on the other side of the wards, not yet reaching out on the physical level.
*
The crystalline translucency of the spirit behind Kent draws attention. The Jackal eyes the Phurba now with undiluted hatred. His lips peel back to reveal a ghastly number of human teeth and the growl to escape from him comes the very depths of him. No human sound should vibrate within his muscled chest like that; it’s as if the jackal aspect found a new home in his throat. “Bloody sham of a spell,” he hisses, another thread of presence making itself known in his words. “It would be worth the attempt to take it apart, limb from ruddy limb.”
Another shiver overtakes him. Agony is stoppered up in his throat; the incense is wending around in his brain and he’s beginning to appear to be confused. It comes in waves, with clenching of his hands at his clothing and gasps, as if his lungs were opening after an attack. Slumping to one hip, he has to plant a palm on the floor in order to keep from collapsing.
“«You think yourself so righteous, Acolyte of Fate.»” It’s no longer English, but old Russian, a dialect of it heard when Kent was newly introduced to the courts of Czarist Russia. Pupils flood in carmine out to the very edges of his irises as Ambrose looks up, his lips stained with his blood. Like harmony in a minor key, it wends through the Jackal’s tenor. “«Your struggles will fail. He is ours and will always be ours. He reached for us and we answered.»” It’s a twisted interpretation of Ambrose’s drawing of life-force and accompanied by the clawed reach of fingers towards the Hound. The wards flare again and he lets out a burbling hiss, displaying sharpened canines as he curls back into his slanted sit. Shadows gather about his eyes, contrasting the rabid red of his glare. “«Release us!»”
In the kythe, there’s the sense of straining fingers beneath the scummy starlit pond’s surface, as if a swimmer were trying desperately to reach the surface and is…nearly…there!!!
*
Physically, they are surrounded by drifting veils of incense, sweet and sharp and bright. Frankincense is the base, but it’s mingled with other things. It should be making Kent cough, but somehow…no.
Now that it’s in the kythe with them, Ambrose (and his rider) can hear the Phurba’s voice. It sounds like a weird mingling of a lion’s roar and the sounding of an enormous bronze temple bell, as it bellows defiance at that thing. And Kent, in turn, snarls back at it - purely canine, that sound, for all that he has flat ape’s teeth in this form..
«I do not delude myself that I am righteous in the least,» he replies, drily. «And no, we will not fail. You will be released only into nothingness. My friend here,» The sense of a glance cast at the Phurba, which paws eagerly at the air, «Is hungry, and you promise a rich feast.»
Even as he’s speaking, he reaches for Ambrose in the link, down into the water, the surface iridescent with filth and stagnation. Almost like someone trying to facilitate a birth, or a hatching - a transformation.
*
“«Then your lover will be equally as delicious,»” not-Ambrose sneers even as more of the dark magic’s hold on him is pried away. A cold sweat has broken out on his brow, visible now, and a sharp nose will know it as fear. The influence tries for a psychological two-pronged attack, a bluff at Kent and a goad to panic its bearer.
The opaque water swirls around Kent’s hand in proof of a displacement, of a reach so close, but missed in blindness — as the wild birds know north, the Jackal knows his heart.
Kent will see the incense on the metaphysical plane begin to slough off a layering of Ambrose’s aura in thicker, smokey tendrils. Like a sponge, it draws up the oily black magic and it’s impossible to resist. If anything, the tainted energy tries to cling simply because it has roots in the Bane’s blood magic. Letting out a whimpering wheeze, the brunet falls to his side, eyes gone abruptly vacant. He stares at nothing off to one side of the bedroom, twitching in base jolts of his nervous system.
Like a mass of weeds, the black magic will take one last final tug of willpower and influence, it appears — fingerpads brush at Kent’s hand in the frigid darkness of the starlit pool.
*
Gods, what hours it took him to prepare that stuff….and how worth it it’s proving. Even partially, it scourges away that dark taint. A multi-pronged attack on infection.
Oh, there’s fear in the Hound’s heart, never doubt. But he’s staunch, nearly submerging himself in his haste to get at that seeking hand, to wrap his own fingers around that wrist. I am here, my love. I am here. Come with me. Come.
If only he can pry this dark rider loose, fling it into the Phurba’s waiting jaws.
*
The wrist he grabs is cold as the surrounding water itself and there’s a horrible hanging heartbeat where there’s no reaction — and then the fingers close around his wrist in return, indenting into his pulse as if it check it for life of its own.
Ambrose flips onto his back and arches up at the sternum, inhaling slowly and fitfully. Rising up into the open space above him within the warding circle, a vaguely humanoid shape comprised of fine black grits — rancid coffee grounds, stinging volcanic ash, dried flecks of blood, the creep and crawl of minute biting insects, its composition all horrid — and it swirls and screels on the level of the metaphysical, a lowly snail shucked off its shell and all too easy to manipulate.
With a fitful cough, the Jackal rolls towards Kent and curls entirely upon himself.
In the kythe, he wavers in growing strength, like a fawn stumbling on new-found limbs: Save me…!
*
Ah ha, there. The Phurba pounces, quick as a cat despite its size, seizing that dark form and sinking bright fangs into it. It proceeds to worry the exorcised invader like a terrier with a rat, all exuberant, cheerful fury. Shaking off pieces and snapping them out of the air, emitting a belltone of utter contentment. It hasn’t dined this well in ages.
Kent’s locked his grip on Ambrose metaphysically….and now he dares reach in, past the wards, to take his lover’s hand in the physical world. I’m here. Hold on. My friend there is cleaning up after us. You did it.
*
As if recovering from the flu, Ambrose crawls towards the hand bypassing the wards and clings to it, resting his cheek upon the palm. Weak kisses are pressed to it repeatedly. It’s fairly simple in the kythe, wordless as it might be: he’s groveling in gratitude.
The Phurba gets every last little bit of the dark magic that arrived riding the Jackal. Kent will know the very second when the interior space of the warded circle becomes sterile of it save for the ever-present blood magic of the Bane itself.
“Thank you,” the master-thief whispers into the electric air of the space around him.
*
The Phurba pauses, plants all four paws neatly on the canvas circle, and emits a bizarre, seismic rumble. Nothing like its earlier brazen calls - it sounds like water bubbling up a ceramic drain. Then it….looks embarrassed, hanging its splendid head and sleeking its whiskers back.
Kent’s come right in to the canvas circle, too, gathering Ambrose up in his arms,cradling him close. But he peers at the guardian spirit, frowning. It scuffs a paw on the circle, shakes its mane, and disappears.
“…..I think it just belched,” Kent says, looking down into Ambrose’s face.
*
“…I hope it does not get…any indigestion,” the brunet slung in his arms murmurs raspily back to him, finally assaying a crooked smile. It works, sort of, and by the wince, stings where he broke his lip on the warding spell-wall. He’s dark beneath his eyes as if he’d lost sleep he hasn’t found in over a century and wetted through the roots of his hair, smelling metallic and warm both. “I am an idiot.” If able, he gathers up Kent’s hand again and holds it close to his chest, tucking the man’s knuckles up into the pulse of his own throat. “You have every right to tell me this.” His chuckle is rusty, self-effacing. “Go on then, get it out of your system.”
One leg splays out as he releases a tired sigh, looking up into Kent’s face with eyes clear as the ocean on a brisk and sunny winter day.
*