Mary Grace steps up to what she's gonna assume is the Wildgulch side. She was under the impression this was a suicide mission, and every person hesitating is going down in her esteem with every passing moment.
Mary Grace's opinion of her cowardice or valor means less than nothing to Viola. She is scared of a great many things—antibiotic resistance, lightning strikes, loveless marriage—but her overgrown sense of impending dread has never stopped her from acting before. Being scared and, subsequently cautious, is just part of her nature and she doesn't even consider the possibility of not being this way.
She does, however, consider Pouch's answer to Lionel's question. It's predictably unsatisfying but likely the most they will get from the magimagicicada. And there is really no stopping him from joining, considering he can disappear and appear at will, apparently.
"We love trouble, you'll find," she deadpans and takes her place across from Mary Grace, which by her estimation must be north.
Edited 2020-05-16 00:26 (UTC)
Re: ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
Unlike Mary Grace, Trudy isn't the only member of her house here, and she isn't about to miss the opportunity to be the one standing at the hatch. She rushes forward again like this is a game of red light, green light. "Where does this hatch go?" she asks Pouch. She doesn't care, she'll still go.
"Oh, y'know," Pouch replies with a one shoulder shrug. "A place like, ehhhhhh."
He gestures vaguely around the basement, as though that illustrates anything.
Meanwhile, with Wildgulch, Deeplurk, and now Mothgarden represented the glyphs on each side fill with colored light. Blue and green and pink meeting red at the very center, an outline like a cicada.
"Aw, cute," Pouch comments, admiring the design while, at each edge of the hatch, a ghostly form appears.
An old man with an extravagant beard on the bottom, a hawk-like woman with big shoulder pads on the left. Up top, a man that some of the kids will recognize as Mr. Woodrow, the old Transfiguration teacher, and on the right is one Mr. Caleb Qualls. Armani will recognize all four of these people additionally as the four Heads of House at Peckenpaugh in 1989.
"You ready, Caleb?" says the man with the mighty beard.
"As I'll ever be, Iggy," Mr. Qualls replies, looking like a man preparing to join a wake.
The four of them point their wands at the hatch and begin to chant. The light filling each glyph seems to dance in time with their words, growing brighter and brighter until...
Click.
The hatch is unlocked. The ghostly figures fade. Who will be the first to enter?
"So that's why..." Armani murmurs cryptically as the four Heads of Houses begin to fade. He releases Eddy's hand and steps closer to the hatch, lighting the tip of his wand to prepare to illuminate the entry.
"After you," he tells Trudy, making a sweeping gesture toward her. He'll follow along close behind her.
Lionel has seen the ghostly figure of Mr. Qualls every day since he arrived at Peckenpaugh, yet his appearance here -- now -- knocks Lionel back onto his heels. Looking at his teacher, he wonders when his expression is from. Is it the memory of a man setting this barrier or a spirit aware that he's now opening it?
Lionel, who had not taken his place at the Thorntrail side in order to help open the hatch, now nods at Trudy, then the others. He's in. He's coming.
The ghosts are just ghosts to Eddy, but his gut twists a little when Armani releases his hand. He's still concerned about him, after everything that's happened in such a short period of time, and without Chanel here, he's self-appointed himself to watch his back. Whether Armani needs it or not.
The thought does spark another question from Eddy as he awaits his turn down the hatch. Now that things had been decided, he'd prefer to take the rear. "Sister know you're here?" he asks Pouch, curious. Last he knew Pocket didn't want them messing with any of this.
Audrey had been standing by Trudy, when the doors opened. Unnecessary. Maybe. But she exhales once, when they do. In the worst part of her mind, there were going to be vines just twirling out, grabbing them, rendering this choice stupid. Instead, there are ghosts. She'll follow. Not first. Not last. But Eddy's question sparks a wry little smile, grabs her attention back. "She doesn't. I bet." She murmurs, to no one in particular, only looking at the cicada for confirmation. "Thinks she's handling it. Alone."
But that's impossible. No one could do everything alone forever.
Edited 2020-05-16 02:10 (UTC)
Re: ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
Pouch's reply, when it comes, is little more than a fond smile leveled at Audrey, then a lift of his brow in Eddy's direction. Apparently, she isn't wrong.
Whatever magic bound the hatch falls dark and silent as it's thrown open. The musty smell of a frequently flooded basement wafts up from the opening, filling the basement with the scent of cool damp earth and green growth.
The students are not greeted by dark, but a sickly gray lights, flickering faintly, weakly, as though their magic is almost spent. A set of old, crumbling stone stairs lead down into a long hall of poured cement. The walls, the floor, the ceiling are all cracked and broken. Moss covers almost every surface, even the heatless magic lights lining the walls.
Overhead, dead fluorescent lights hang at regular intervals, some of them broken and dangling by a single wire. Though the light of magic lamps does illuminate the hall, you cannot see its end.
This place is instantly recognizable to Audrey. She's been here before: that somewhere gray. Eddy may find he remembers this place to, as part of a memory that isn't his.
She gasps a little. Soft. So. This would be a reunion after all. "Nothing but weeds, down here." She repeats what Pocket said.
And then, because even she can understand that's too cryptic, explains aloud, "This is where I went. On Halloween. Where the boy was whispering."
The old fear pops up again. Maybe they are a key.
But there's no place to go but onward, now.
Standing close enough to hear the evidence of Audrey's revelation, Viola turns to observe her curiously. Perhaps she was simply too distracted by the frivolities of teenage life but she doesn't remember ever hearing Audrey tell this story, at least not in a way that had registered with her. Strange that the door in the library would bring a student here while others went to a 'hell.' But not the strangest thing they've encountered, tonight alone. It's all connected somehow.
"And this is your cement hall? Viola looks to Eddy and raises a gently arched brow.
"When we went to Paw Paw," Trudy says in answer to Audrey. "So is that boy here? Lionel Qualls?" Trudy asks, glancing around as if he might wave hello from the shadows. "Have you seen this place too, Eddy?" She's not confident his answer will be understandable, so she keeps pushing down the hall, not allowing the group to dawdle.
Re: ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
Pouch moves like a breeze from the back of the line to somewhere in the middle, effortless and somehow never seeming to take up all that much space in the cramped hall. "Ah, yeah. Zel's memory, right Eddy?"
Pouch had seen it, himself, after all. Given freely by Eddy and then returned to him. He offers the Thorntrail junior a reassuring grin. Whatever feeling he's had about it isn't betrayed in his expression, attention focused on the thick lichen coating the walls. He smiles at that, too. Always smiling. "They used to use this passage to get to the other—er, what's the word?—Settlement? Back then, it was a much quicker walk. Few seconds, maybe? Seems the spellwork's changed since then."
Ahead, the darkness seems to stretch endlessly. It looks like the group has a bit of walking ahead of them.
Edited (hey y'all Manx went to bed a bit ago but she told us to go ahead and keep moving before she nodded off) 2020-05-16 04:06 (UTC)
"Lionel is somewhere... between," he says, recalling the cryptic message on the planchette. 'Between' could be many things, he realized. Maybe 'between' Elflock falls and this settlement.
He reaches into the pockets of his coat. His fingers hover over his wand and settle instead on his flashlight. He clicks it on and shines it down onto the lichen-covered walls. "Okay, then. Let's uh-- let's go." He heads in.
"Well if we're walkin' all the damn way to that place, then we better get a move on," Mary Grace says with a huff, wrinkling her nose at the idea of making that twelve-hour hike in these boots. She wastes no time brushing her way in, holding her phone up both for light and for pictures. She'd rather keep her wand free for, like, defending her damn self. "That place was miles off."
Monkey see, monkey do. Sort of. Armani pulls out his phone as well, but sets it to record. He's still using his wand for light. If he puts it away, he's afraid he'll forget to use it when the time comes.
"It's good exercise," he says chipperly from the front of the group, continuing to lead on. And, just as chipperly, he adds, "Did Wizards ever use asbestos?"
Maisy has planted herself firmly in the middle of the group, where she's being uncharacteristically quiet. Maybe for the first time during this whole operation, she's feeling a little bit of whatever the opposite of FOMO is. Fear of Actively Participating? That's probably it.
"Asba's toes?" she wonders aloud, not able to make heads or tails of what Armani just said.
Eddy nods silent confirmation when Pouch intervenes. The smile and the nonchalance are starkly different from what Eddy had accidentally intruded on. That sudden intense feeling of everything going gray as Pouch had read Ms. Guzenhauser's memory isn't one he'll forget. Eddy doesn't match Pouch's smile, but then, Eddy tends to be low on mirth.
"Vines above before," he notes, as he observes the broken ceiling lights, hands shoved firmly in his hoodie pocket where his wand is stored. "Smoke." Whatever transpired, they're clearly gone now. A part of him had expected they'd find the same chaos still raging.
When he glances behind him, it's just more hallway. Had they really been traveling so long?
"Came down here to get someone back," he adds as he tries to recall a memory he shouldn't have. "Big fight."
"Ain't ever met a person named Asba," Pouch muses as the rest chat and theorize.
He reaches out and runs his fingers over the thick moss on the walls. It frosts over under his touch, then grows fuller. "Little Sister told me El's gone, like the rest of the brood. Never said anything about a 'between'." A pause. Pouch lifts his chin, looks a bit like a cat sniffing the air. "Weeds ain't gone, though. They're still down here."
From just below Pouch's shoulder, Viola chimes in. At first, she speaks softly, really just to the obsidian, star flecked boy. "I don't know how much you know about us but sometimes, after death, we come back as ghosts. Like Lionel's—El's—father, Mr. Qualls," she explains in the flat affect of an academic, "We've seen El on campus and he communicates with us through the computers, sometimes. And perhaps other ways..." she trails off, thinking of the mysterious bags of candy from the Valentine's Day dance.
Her voice grows louder alongside her confidence. She rarely trusts her own knowledge but she knows ghosts. "He's still here but he isn't behaving like a spirit. At least, not by our classifications."
Turning her shoulders, Viola squeezes past the magimagicicada though she gets the distinct impression that space operates a little differently around him. "The man who makes the weeds is still don't here, too," she reminds the group. That's what Lionel Qualls had told her. Well, technically, he told Aris but Viola considers them to be sort of one and the same. The light that casts her shadow.
"And we're here to face him." In case anyone had just thought this was a casual exploration.
Thank god this is still a suicide mission. Mary Grace was getting a little worried folks were about to get all self-preservation happy on her, and at four shots deep, Mary Grace O'Malley ain't here for her health.
"Anything to stop the Bob Dylan," she mutters, running her fingers along the lichen-covered walls as she walks. She takes a few pictures, but it all looks the same. Lichen and gray and flickering lights followed by lichen and gray and more flickering lights. Like a nightmare about working in an office. "Hope you ain't down here to sacrifice us to get the rest of the album." She raises an eyebrow at Pouch. She's razzing him, but she's also kind of serious. Don't sacrifice them for the rest of the album. You can just buy that on WizAmazon.
"Asbestos," Lionel quietly clarifies, seeing as nobody else seems like they're going to. "It's an insulator. And," he glances around, "this place could be old enough to still have it. If things are cold, they stay cold. If they're hot, they stay hot." Which, could be useful, given the weaknesses and preferences of the vines. "It's also toxic," he adds. "Though it's probably not our main concern."
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peckenpaugh2020-05-15 01:28 pm
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
For whatever that's worth.
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
She does, however, consider Pouch's answer to Lionel's question. It's predictably unsatisfying but likely the most they will get from the magimagicicada. And there is really no stopping him from joining, considering he can disappear and appear at will, apparently.
"We love trouble, you'll find," she deadpans and takes her place across from Mary Grace, which by her estimation must be north.
Re: ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
He gestures vaguely around the basement, as though that illustrates anything.
Meanwhile, with Wildgulch, Deeplurk, and now Mothgarden represented the glyphs on each side fill with colored light. Blue and green and pink meeting red at the very center, an outline like a cicada.
"Aw, cute," Pouch comments, admiring the design while, at each edge of the hatch, a ghostly form appears.
An old man with an extravagant beard on the bottom, a hawk-like woman with big shoulder pads on the left. Up top, a man that some of the kids will recognize as Mr. Woodrow, the old Transfiguration teacher, and on the right is one Mr. Caleb Qualls. Armani will recognize all four of these people additionally as the four Heads of House at Peckenpaugh in 1989.
"You ready, Caleb?" says the man with the mighty beard.
"As I'll ever be, Iggy," Mr. Qualls replies, looking like a man preparing to join a wake.
The four of them point their wands at the hatch and begin to chant. The light filling each glyph seems to dance in time with their words, growing brighter and brighter until...
Click.
The hatch is unlocked. The ghostly figures fade. Who will be the first to enter?
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
"After you," he tells Trudy, making a sweeping gesture toward her. He'll follow along close behind her.
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
Lionel, who had not taken his place at the Thorntrail side in order to help open the hatch, now nods at Trudy, then the others. He's in. He's coming.
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
The thought does spark another question from Eddy as he awaits his turn down the hatch. Now that things had been decided, he'd prefer to take the rear. "Sister know you're here?" he asks Pouch, curious. Last he knew Pocket didn't want them messing with any of this.
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
But that's impossible. No one could do everything alone forever.
Re: ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
Re: ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
The students are not greeted by dark, but a sickly gray lights, flickering faintly, weakly, as though their magic is almost spent. A set of old, crumbling stone stairs lead down into a long hall of poured cement. The walls, the floor, the ceiling are all cracked and broken. Moss covers almost every surface, even the heatless magic lights lining the walls.
Overhead, dead fluorescent lights hang at regular intervals, some of them broken and dangling by a single wire. Though the light of magic lamps does illuminate the hall, you cannot see its end.
This place is instantly recognizable to Audrey. She's been here before: that somewhere gray. Eddy may find he remembers this place to, as part of a memory that isn't his.
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
"And this is your cement hall? Viola looks to Eddy and raises a gently arched brow.
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
Re: ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
Pouch had seen it, himself, after all. Given freely by Eddy and then returned to him. He offers the Thorntrail junior a reassuring grin. Whatever feeling he's had about it isn't betrayed in his expression, attention focused on the thick lichen coating the walls. He smiles at that, too. Always smiling. "They used to use this passage to get to the other—er, what's the word?—Settlement? Back then, it was a much quicker walk. Few seconds, maybe? Seems the spellwork's changed since then."
Ahead, the darkness seems to stretch endlessly. It looks like the group has a bit of walking ahead of them.
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
He reaches into the pockets of his coat. His fingers hover over his wand and settle instead on his flashlight. He clicks it on and shines it down onto the lichen-covered walls. "Okay, then. Let's uh-- let's go." He heads in.
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
"It's good exercise," he says chipperly from the front of the group, continuing to lead on. And, just as chipperly, he adds, "Did Wizards ever use asbestos?"
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
"Asba's toes?" she wonders aloud, not able to make heads or tails of what Armani just said.
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
"Vines above before," he notes, as he observes the broken ceiling lights, hands shoved firmly in his hoodie pocket where his wand is stored. "Smoke." Whatever transpired, they're clearly gone now. A part of him had expected they'd find the same chaos still raging.
When he glances behind him, it's just more hallway. Had they really been traveling so long?
"Came down here to get someone back," he adds as he tries to recall a memory he shouldn't have. "Big fight."
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
He reaches out and runs his fingers over the thick moss on the walls. It frosts over under his touch, then grows fuller. "Little Sister told me El's gone, like the rest of the brood. Never said anything about a 'between'." A pause. Pouch lifts his chin, looks a bit like a cat sniffing the air. "Weeds ain't gone, though. They're still down here."
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
Her voice grows louder alongside her confidence. She rarely trusts her own knowledge but she knows ghosts. "He's still here but he isn't behaving like a spirit. At least, not by our classifications."
Turning her shoulders, Viola squeezes past the magimagicicada though she gets the distinct impression that space operates a little differently around him. "The man who makes the weeds is still don't here, too," she reminds the group. That's what Lionel Qualls had told her. Well, technically, he told Aris but Viola considers them to be sort of one and the same. The light that casts her shadow.
"And we're here to face him." In case anyone had just thought this was a casual exploration.
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
"Anything to stop the Bob Dylan," she mutters, running her fingers along the lichen-covered walls as she walks. She takes a few pictures, but it all looks the same. Lichen and gray and flickering lights followed by lichen and gray and more flickering lights. Like a nightmare about working in an office. "Hope you ain't down here to sacrifice us to get the rest of the album." She raises an eyebrow at Pouch. She's razzing him, but she's also kind of serious. Don't sacrifice them for the rest of the album. You can just buy that on WizAmazon.
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
Mary Grace just mentioned 'sacrifice' after all.
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
Re: ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
Re: ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
Re: ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch! (Open to all ⛓️)
ELFLOCK LANES: Down the hatch & back, again