Difference between revisions of "1-19-2015: Battle Scars"

She's sitting in a park in Hamtramck, somewhere relatively isolated, when she casts the circle and calls upon the spirits for Sight. "Hawk... will you come with me? I want to go look at the place where they had that fight, with this... Damien. Do you know of it?"

Red Feather projects his likeness into Maya's mind's eye, alighting nearby on the back of a bench. <<I do not, specifically. But Raven might, if there was a fight. He enjoys that sort of meal. I could seek him out, if you need?>>

A swift smile comes to Maya's face. "Of course. Raven. Associations with Wotan and the Morrigan, yeah? I hadn't thought of that. It's... I know where to go. I just want to look at it." She tips her head and thinks for a moment, expression darkening again. "Is the Enemy blending, somehow, with the weaver? I mean, where the river battles the... webs?"

If a bird could shrug... <<I do not know. I do not get close enough to learn. That lesson is likely... painful, and final.>> He tilts his head. <<If you know where to go, though, I will follow and lend you my eye.>>

Doubt comes to Maya's expression, and she chews on one side of her lower lip. "I'll follow your counsel, then, as far as... when it becomes truly unsafe. I think where we'll have to go-- I think it might be pretty close." She takes a deep breath, and gets out her supplies. Smudge, and a bit of sand. She traces her circle, and spreads out a smaller circle of sand; then she lights the smudge and begins to trace the mandala, the same one Victor gave her, glancing to the bracelet from time to time for reference. When it's finished, she traces the maze with her eyes, thrice over, and makes her whispered call to the spirits: Hawk, Eagle, Raven and Owl. There are mysteries to delve, here.

Red Feather watches, dispassionately. Her arts aren't actively boring to him, but they are not things that he needs to do more than be present for.

The cracked pavement of the western half of Jefferson Avenue is as hope-inspiring as the crumbling exteriors of abandoned, often tax-foreclosed industrial properties. A long line of For Sale signs that have seen plenty of weather and sunbleaching tell the tale of a neighborhood with no real impulse to improve.

The Warehouse's location, which is close enough to the river to make Red Feather nervous, but not enough for him to ask her to call the search off, is now the home of a large pit surrounded by a much newer-looking bit of tarmack, the striping is still on the outer edges of it, revealing that it was once a parking lot. Closer to the building, however, the striping has been burned away. Scorch marks speak of the three-alarm fire that went down here. Despite the obvious intensity of the heat, the fire didn't spread beyond the building, and since then demolition crews have cleaned away everything but the stubs of the plumbing that once ran in the basement. Everything else, down to the dirt, has been taken up and hauled away. Maya finds herself next to a fenced-in wound in the earth, one plastered with Biohazard signs with their sinister radial symmetry.

She doesn't go past those warning signs, at least not before a thorough study of what's visible from that boundary.

The Umbral memory of this place isn't as fully secure as that of the inner portions of the city. The building itself is actually outside the white-zone, in fact, though dense strands of the webbing dip down here to touch the river, fighting their constant war.

The automata do not come here, however, in fact the place seems to be largely devoid of any spiritual activity - not as a side effect, but almost as if someone has run them off deliberately. Red Feather sneers after a moment's additional observation. <<Rat has been here. Raven will not know anything.>>

"Why not?" Maya asks softly, frowning at the differences, pacing along the hazmat warning boundary.

<<Rat is greedy, She does not share. Her smell is everywhere here. Her children were here, and in force.>>

Brow furrowed, Maya steps past the markers, moving a little closer to the cave at a cautious pace--if she can. She switches to Salish, the language she often uses with him, the one she almost always spoke in during the long journey. "Rat's children... you mean spirits?"

<<In a manner of speaking. More like your wolf-girl friend.>> The cave, even after the cleansing, holds an ominous air. It's just as well, perhaps, that she is physically unable to walk into it, without crossing the gauntlet itself here, due to the material path not existing.

Still frowning in thought, Maya manages to get back to the street without tripping over anything. "Yeah, that's... pretty nasty," she says quietly. Head bowed, she heads back to the little Pinto.

Maya halts, halfway back to the car. She takes a second or two to look around, and then brings a hand up to her throat, to the crystal there. A quiet chant, a moment to center her mind and add yet another channel of concentration... "I want to get a better feel for things, here," she says quietly. "Bear with me a little longer? And-- do we need to stay away from the river?"

<<We mustn't touch the river's waters,>> Red Feather repeats, <<But so long as you do not slip in, the denizens here cannot grab you. I will have to be more cautious.>>

Maya nods, bowing her head for a moment, deepening her breathing despite the cold nip in the air.

Straightening deliberately, Maya starts to walk the perimeter again--focusing this time on the new input, the glimmer of magick-sense that colors her perceptions.

There are glimmers of a Static resonance, one that regulates and controls. It's very faint. Whomever cleansed this place was in particular working to scrub out the source of that resonance. The entropic resonance, in particular, a sickly thing that feels like parasites crawling beneath one's skin, is related to the static in a subservient fashion. That someone was up to something unpleasant here, should not be a a surprise, but the sophistication of the whole thing - coordinating two opposing forces only dozens of meters from where those same two forces are in violent conflict, speaks to the potency of the actor's arts.

Shuddering, Maya wraps both arms around herself. "Yeah," she whispers. "That's what I was afraid of." She looks up, then, to seek her totem-spirit. "C'mon. I'll show you the house. There's a good snag, on my side at least... maybe we can encourage it to get stronger, so you have a good nesting place."