WEEK 05

[modmachine]

Weather: The temperature has dropped another notch, enough to start being seriously uncomfortable for those who sleep outside with no cover. Tuesday and Wednesday will have freezing rain at night, though it’s not snowing as of yet. Some of the kids wish it would, though, the closer it gets to the Festival of Lights.

Moon Phase: Monday brings the new moon, not that most people will be able to see it through the gathering clouds. If you look, though, it's possible to see the waxing crescent in the early morning late in the week.

School's Out: This week is finals at the college, and as a result, Friday through Sunday see a large number of the students moving out for the winter holidays. Most of those who opt to remain are shuffled around in order to leave two buildings - the senior hall used by students in the sciences and one of the freshmen halls - completely empty. The official explanation is building maintenence. On Wednesday, Ryoji will get a text from Ci asking if he's staying over for the holiday.

Winter bluster, winter blow: Things are starting to get a little messy in the Winter Court as their season approaches. For most of the last year, the Court has been run by committee, after the last Winter King inexplicably vanished. No successor was named, and with the seasonal coronation less than a month away, the court's usual plots and intrigues are starting to spill into the open. As of now, things seem to be divided between three factions - a group of diehard supporters of the previous King, certain he'll return; a group supporting the former brother-at-arms of said King, who may have been involved in the disappearance; and a third group supporting the King's protege, clearly hoping that the youth's relative inexperience will make him an easy puppet. Business as usual in the Winter Court, but it has the potential to spill into the others and turn nasty.

Day Zero: Network Zero’s been alight with chatter for those who follow it. There’s been clear footage of something that appears to be a man with a knife on fire in one of the warehouses - and yet none of the fire seems to catch anything around him. There’s also a report that the person who took this footage is in the hospital for a broken bone, though there haven’t been any updates yet. The local Sin-Eaters aren’t thrilled about this either, and on Friday night two teenagers are spotted around the area, along with a trio of younger boys armed with a camera.

A Strange Guest: Casper's new... ahem, roommate, is causing a few side effects. Most prominent will be the small patches of black and dark blue scales - they start tiny, like freckles, but grow in over the course of a few days to something better called patches before they stop. And the entire time they're growing in, they itch like the bejeebus. On the bright side, after some adjustment, the new addition is alert and willing to communicate... as long as Casper doesn't mind that he's going to have a near-encyclopedic knowledge of astronomy before the week is out.

Words for the Wicked: In the park where the hunt took place last weekend, something is writing on the trees. It starts out with just scratch marks, but before long it's scraps of the sorts of conversation you might overhear in the park, people talking to their children or dogs, that sort of thing. On Friday night, however, the words start to take a darker turn - KILL IT is repeated in numerous places, sometimes accompanied by the words TROPHY and MONSTER. And on Sunday, all the words are gone, except for a single phrase written under the hole made by a stray bullet during the hunt - i'll hunt you back.

Frostgrowth: The entrance to the Hedge used by the recent Goblin Market is continually frosty this week, as is the Underworld entrance used by Ryoji and Casper. The changelings in particular are wary about the change, though none of them seem to have put it together with the other strange patch of frost. Lingering at either location too long will draw the attention of the Frostiron Guardian more quickly than usual.

Trains keep on rolling: Construction on the building in the Sixth has progressed far enough that watching the building is pointless even for the thickly built man, who has instead resumed his trainspotting ways.

Weekly service: The nighttime bell-ringing at St. Madeline's church occurs again on Sunday night, this time drawing a bit more of a crowd. In hushed voices, a few people approach the Acolyte responsible for the bells about organizing a regular service of the church of the dead. She seems uncertain, and no formal plans are made that night.

Put Yourself Back Where You Came From Or So Help Me: On Thursday night, Tobias will have a brief visit to his lair through the Primordial Dream - another, weaker Horror, still wary and apparently checking things out. It's hard to tell exactly what the creature is, but the impression is of something shadowed and low-to-the-ground that leaves behind a smell of soured wine.

Comments

OTA

[crazycatvampire]

I. Words

Corwin is oblivious to the hunt that happened here, but the scratches and words do catch his attention. After finding them two days in a row, he starts hunting through the park with a notebook in the afternoons, writing down everything he finds, in as much of an order as he can make out. He winds up spending most of his free time there when it's not raining to heavily, captivated and, slowly, concerned by the not-conversation.

He tries leaving a couple notes of his own, too: "Hello :) " on Thursday next to an innocuous snippet, "Don't kill anyone :( " on Saturday morning opposite the tree with the word "trophy", and "Can I help you?" on Sunday below the bullet hole message. Yes, the happy and frowny faces are included.

II. Frost

He spots the frost while working, and stops by again on his way home before his trips to the park and on his walks to the dump to pick up his truck pre-dawn on weekday mornings, pausing to examine it, to tap on it, and try to peer through it. It's like the frost he met Avere and Edda at, and that makes him curious. He attempts to sketch it, adding it to his notebook of park-conversation, but his artistic ability is not really very good, so he settles for a photograph or two on his phone, just to see if it changes between visits at all.

III. Etc

On the rainiest evenings, Corwin stays in, to visit with Malin before she goes out for the night, work on his experiments, peruse the internet, watch movies on the local equivalent of Netflix, and maybe exchange text messages with the few people who actually have his phone number. If Avere contacts him again, he'll share his photos of the frosted portals; otherwise, he searches Network Zero for what other people have to say about them, or the words in the park.

II

[runs]

She's noticed that he seemed to be looking at the frost.

Much more like the frost would deserve if it was just a bit of frozen ground in a random place. And that in turn makes her wonder if he knows anything more.

"What are you doing there?"

She looks much the same as at the market, with the one striking difference that her eyes look perfectly normal - there's white, brown irises and normally sized, round pupils.

[crazycatvampire]

"It looks a lot like the ice from a couple of weeks ago," Corwin explains, looking up and offering her a little smile. "That blocked some of the city gates. It's not as bad, but it's only right here, not everywhere else around it, so it's made me curious. I'm trying to track if it changes every day, or if it stays just like this." If it doesn't change, after all, that suggests it's unnatural.

[runs]

"...Some of the city gates?"

The only thing she knew was that it had blocked and entrance to the underworld, where the angel and Ryoji had met.

"How many? And what gates?"

[crazycatvampire]

"There were at least three places, things that look like doorways all over the city, that were iced over." Corwin doesn't know where those gates lead, he just knows they're portals of some sort, and he assumes they're that way in a mundane sense rather than a magical one-- though he's starting to revise that assumption, since he knows this was the way into the Goblin Market last week. "And now there's this one, and another one elsewhere in the city-- different than the ones from before."

[runs]

"...What's with that other one that's different?" She knows about the gates into the Underworld, and now the one into the Hedge, but Corwin makes it sound like there's a third type that is affected.

[crazycatvampire]

"Oh, just in different places," Corwin corrects. "The ice was thicker before, though, I think-- more of a deterrent perhaps?" It was definitely more obvious, last time, and it's only the similarity and the placement that caught his eye, this time.

[runs]

"...maybe."

Or something else.

Why would they put ice on every entrance back home? It makes no sense, unless it was somehow needed for a magical ritual... "Observation?" A little bit of ice isn't really a deterrent. "Or a sign to some people who know what it means."

[crazycatvampire]

"I must not be one of those people who knows, then," Corwin admits, shaking his head. "Maybe if I keep an eye on it I'll see someone else react to them, and that will help fill in the holes."

[runs]

"If you see something, tell me."

However he will do that. She distrusts him slightly less than before, now that she knows that he isn't possessed, but it's... still only slightly.

[crazycatvampire]

He blinks at her, having not expected that at all, and it makes him curious. In part because he's curious why she would offer, and in part because that implies that she knows more than he does, too. "I would love to, but I don't have any way of contacting you. Do you have a phone number? Or an email address?"

[runs]

...Well, there is one easy method that doesn't mean that she has to give him any information on herself, antiquated as it is.

"Put a red cloth on your door if you have something, and I will find you." She's starting to get good at finding people here.

[crazycatvampire]

Novel, he supposes, if somewhat unhelpful. But he isn't one to push, not when he knows what pushing can get him-- less than nothing; it can get people more afraid of him. "All right," he agrees, at last. "The front door, then. May I at least know your name?" They've spoken a few times, now, but she hasn't yet told him who she is.

[runs]

"..." Should she give him a name? Well, it's not like he'll be able to do much with it. "I'm Ebru."

[crazycatvampire]

"And I'm Corwin," he answers, just in case he never shared his. He may have, but at this point there's been a week or so between each of the three conversations he knows about. "Corwin Gardener. Kind of ironic, I guess, since I can't grow a garden, either."

[runs]

"But plants can't run away from you." ...well, unless they are awakened, in which case all bets are off.

Running away is the feeling that she gets when getting close to him, anyway.

[crazycatvampire]

"No," Corwin agrees sadly, "but they can die if they are too close to me for too long. My lawn is sort of all right, in the parts not too close to the house, but I can't have houseplants or spent much time out there."

Words

[modmachine]

The response, if Corwin checks throughout the day, doesn't come until after sundown, though not long after - are you one of them?

[crazycatvampire]

Corwin is delighted by the discovery, albeit still concerned for whoever this might be, and immediately scratches back, "No? Who is them?"

Then, assuming the answer won't come while he's waiting and staring at it, he intentionally takes a long, slow walk around the park before coming back to see if anything has been answered.

[modmachine]

By the time he gets back, there is indeed an answer, the scrawl looking more ragged than before - hunters. killers.

[crazycatvampire]

Corwin frowns at that. He'd guessed "they" were dangerous... he scratches back, a bit more hastily and making use of some chatspeak to speed things up: "Not me. Can I help u?"

Then he makes another trek around the park perimeter, though now he's even more tense, worried about someone hurting his new tree-texting partner in the half an hour it takes him to walk around.

[modmachine]

Don't know. I'm scared.

That's all the text there is, but if Corwin's keeping his wits close, he might notice that one of the lower branches in a nearby tree seems to have swung lower still over the path, as though there was a weight on it.

[crazycatvampire]

Corwin has spent his whole short life being intentionally observant. It's not too hard to notice the difference, especially since at this point he's actively looking. He touches the marks on the tree, then looks around-- and yep, there it is.

He only approaches slowly, however, not wanting to scare whoever (or whatever) is up there, peering up into the branches.

[modmachine]

There's the flash of a yellow eye peering back at him, but it doesn't make any move to get down.

[crazycatvampire]

Corwin stops out of reach, not quite out of his general aura of disquiet but as close to the edge of it as he's been able to measure, watching only out of the corner of his eye. "I don't want to frighten you," he says. "But if there's something I can do, just tell me."