Episode Seven: The Ivory-Winged Cherub

Session One (6.11.11)

• Serafina goes to the Adamantine Arrow caucus meeting. There, she meets an odd Moros named Danu who sniffs her and is of the opinion that Arrows shouldn't be blind followers who take orders and don't think for themselves.
• The Arrows who are up for the position of Adamant Sage are Crucible, Adder, and Nimue.
• Serafina mingles at the caucus, asking questions about the candidates and disseminating the information that Stoughton gave her about Adder.
• She also volunteers for a super-secret Arrow scouting mission.
• Issa puts Valentina on a bus so that Malachite can become Sophie's legal guardian.
• Malachite is awakened by Meredith, who tells him that someone is outside calling her name. Malachite thinks Meredith is just imagining it, but when he checks downstairs, he finds a zombified Siobhann scrabbling at the door, trying to get in and moaning Meredith's name.
• Zombie Siobhann has the words “You have something of ours” carved into her skin. Clearly, the Seers want Meredith back.
• Autumn and Rasayana read the zombie's resonance hoping to identify the mage responsible, but it's no one they recognize. Malachite kills the zombie with fire.
• Autumn casts several divination spells to see what he can learn about the situation.
• Divination on Meredith:
  • If the Seers get her, she ends up in a morgue as a Jane Doe.
  • If we turn her over to Stoughton, she ends up in a mental institution.
  • If Rasayana goes into her personal astral space, he learns that she's suffering from a dissociative disorder.
  • To make her whole, we need to keep her with us, get her on psychiatric medications, and give her some purpose by hiring her as our secretary.
• Divination on Malachite:
  • He will somehow become the shadow man that has been haunting him.
  • Preventing this would result in Mitchell's death.
  • He will find out why the Seers want Meredith.
  • His actions in LA will put his brother Danny in danger.
• Divination on Rasayana:
  • He will figure out what's wrong with Meredith and how to fix it.
  • His actions in LA result in meeting his mentor for his Legacy.
• Divination on Mitchell:
  • He might be killed by a blond woman who shoots him in the head.
  • To prevent Malachite from becoming the shadow man and Mitchell from dying, Meredith would have to die.
• Divination on Samantha:
  • Her effect on Malachite is simply that she makes him happy. If he told her about magic and being a mage, she wouldn't freak out, but she probably wouldn't really believe him.
  • Somehow, she will lead the cabal to an old stone chamber lined with Atlantean runes and weathered statues. Each statue wears a torc identical to the one Malachite is stuck with; all save one, that is.
• After Autumn tells us some of what he learned through these divinations, everything starts to happen at once:
  • Autumn asks Ophelia to talk Mitchell into wearing a bulletproof vest. Rasayana gives Ophelia a magical boost in that endeavor.
  • Malachite puts moving Danny into the works. Issa volunteers to guard Danny while he's en route.
  • Autumn gets called in to help the Mysterium move some magical texts to safety.
  • Rasayana gets a call from Aquinas, who wants to meet with him later that afternoon.
  • Serafina is summoned to her secret mission for the Arrows.

Session Two (6.25.11)

• The Mysterium's new temporary athanaeum is in an old bank vault somewhere in Salem. Autumn heads there to help with the move.
• Rasayana has a very laid-back lunch with Aquinas, then they go to Aquinas's new sanctum, where Aquinas shows Rasayana his alchemy lab. Aquinas asks Rasayana how he wants to change the world; Rasayana answers that he wants to help people find their potential. Aquinas explains some of the philosophy of his Legacy to Rasayana. He also asks Rasayana to deliver a message to the rest of us letting us know that some of his other students will be visiting him periodically via Space magic.
• Serafina goes to Vancouver to meet with Doyle and the rest of her team. Doyle explains that there may be Seers hiding out in Vancouver, according to intelligence from Agrippa. Doyle tells her that he recruited her because she is capable of both subterfuge and violence.
• Danny and Issa's flight goes smoothly. (Thank gods!) Malachite picks them up at the Warrenton airfield and drives them back to the Regina. There, Malachite gives Danny a tour, makes introductions, and spins Danny a line of bullshit about what they do there.
• Rasayana goes on his date with Ophelia later that evening. She talks, he listens. And after dinner . . . brown chicken, brown cow!
• Serafina and her group of Arrows find their way to an abandoned farm across from a construction site. Something about the place bothers Doyle, and he discovers that it is warded. They send Serafina in to spy on the place.
• Serafina sneaks around the farmhouse, but has trouble keeping her movements quiet due to the building's age. She ducks into a room to hide from some oncoming Seers and finds a body inside. She escapes out a window as the Seers kick the door in.
• Someone follows her out onto the porch roof, so Serafina climbs onto the roof of the house. She tries to get a glimpse of her pursuer without being seen, without luck. The woman chasing her is Enyo.
• Serafina attempts to chop off Enyo's arm with her hatchet, but "something" resists the attempt, and she only deals Enyo a glancing blow.
• A second Seer appears, casting a spell on Enyo that lets her leap onto the roof with Serafina. Enyo takes a piece of Serafina with her fuck-off sword of crazy. Wisely, Serafina runs.
• We have one day until the auction for the remaining journals of Gamayun. Before we can come up with a strategy, Tobias Helmes comes in to tell us about a disturbing case he's been working.
• Tobias was hired by Child Protective Services to investigate an older couple who are fostering a young girl named Tanya Clark. The kid seems troubled at school, and CPS is concerned that she's being abused. CPS originally sent one of their social workers to check in on the foster family, but she abruptly quit and moved out of town, without making any kind of report. That's when CPS turned to Tobias.
• Tobias says that he went to see the foster parents, but he can't remember what happened while he was there. All he does remember is that he spent the rest of the night drinking and having horrific dreams. He plans to take a few days off to recover. We promise to take over the case.
• In the file that Tobias gives us, we find a picture of Tanya when she first went into foster care around age nine. Before and after pictures show a significant decline in her health. The school nurse reported that when Tanya came into her office with a nosebleed, she noticed severe bruising on Tanya's side.
• Issa uses the pictures to scry on the girl. She is now about twelve years old. Issa shows the rest of us what he sees through a pool of water.
• Tanya is sitting on her bed in a cutesy room far too young for her and outdated at that, circa 1960 or so. An older woman, about fifty, walks into the room and brings the girl some soup. Tanya shies away from the woman, and the woman warns her to stay way from the school nurse from now on.
• Issa reads the resonance of the girl and her foster parents, but sees nothing supernatural.
• When Malachite does a computer search, he finds that there are no records of the foster parents at all. However, Tanya's records are available.
• Ophelia is in an extremely good mood that morning. On a completely unrelated note, Issa gives Rasayana extra waffles.

Session Three (7.30.11)

• We discuss strategies for acquiring the remaining journals of Gamayun and for dealing with the Tanya Clark situation.
• As to the journals, we consider stealing them, making forgeries to replace them, and outright buying them. Malachite tries to hunt up some information on who is auctioning the journals and where they might be located, with no luck. The auction is a private, invitation-only affair being held at a rented location; there's no brick-and-mortar auction house that we could burgle beforehand. Our only option is to attend the auction and buy the journals, or failing that, steal them from whoever outbids us.
• With that settled, we turn our attention to Tanya's plight. We decide to send Rasayana and Serafina to the girl's foster home posing as yet another set of CPS agents. Malachite supplies them with false ID and any paperwork they might need to get in the door.
• Autumn accompanies Rasayana and Serafina via Twilight. Malachite and Issa follow along behind them in Mal's SUV. Malachite makes the car invisible so he and Issa can stay close. Issa keeps a constant scrying eye on our cabalmates so we can move in as soon as they need help.
• Autumn looks at the Mavissons' house with Death sight. He can see that the place is steeped in Death. He uses post-cognition to see what happened to Tobias when he was there. He sees Tobias go inside and come stumbling out a mere twenty minutes later, clearly not in full control of his faculties.
• Martha Mavisson lets Rasayana and Serafina inside, albeit reluctantly. She is impatient and hostile, but also nervous, continually looking back over her shoulder.
• As Rasayana talks to her, an eerie scratching sound starts coming from the walls, as if something is scrabbling to get out. Serafina and Autumn are the only ones who can hear it. Serafina casts a spell that lets her see that the skeletons of hundreds of little girls are trapped inside the walls. Whatever is in the house is more than just a ghost or a spirit.
• Serafina also learns the entity's ban, which is a line of lily petals. Using Life, Serafina creates some extra long lily petals from the house plants.
• Issa and Malachite decide to join their cabalmates inside when they see Serafina's somewhat strange actions.
• Malachite casts an enchantment on his gun so he can shoot ephemeral creatures and tells Serafina to point him in the right direction.
• In Twilight, Autumn and Serafina see the walls of the house burst apart, and a creature steps out. She appears as a black-haired child with empty eyes and blood-stained clothes. Massive wings rise above her shoulders, made of the bones of children.
• As the creature's wings extend toward us, we begin experiencing a series of flashbacks, alternating between our own memories of abuse and the memories of dozens of young girls who were abused at the hands of the Mavissons. The visions stretch back to the late 1800s.
• When we wake up, the Mavissons are on the floor, literally weeping blood. The creature is standing over them, speaking to them in some Abyssal language. The Mavissons are begging the creature for forgiveness, begging it for another chance. The creature has now manifested physically.
• Rasayana goes after Tanya.
• Serafina uses the lily petals she made to form a circle on the floor around us.
• When Kesho attempts to attack the creature, it tears the spirit that is Kesho from the physical hyena he'd been possessing.
• Sutton, Serafina's familiar, uses a fear effect on the creature, making it momentarily unable to move or speak.
• Issa starts destroying the house itself.
• Malachite shoots the creature with his enchanted gun right in the center of its head. The skeletons making up its wings begin shrieking in agony and rage. In retaliation, the creature does something untoward to Malachite's brain. His fear of darkness is upgraded from a phobia to a hysteria, but he does not give in to it then and there. The effect, however, lasts for three months.
• Autumn uses Death magic on the creature and destroys the last of its corpus. It vanishes from sight.
• Rasayana finds Tanya and tells her he's there to take her away from this place. Her only response is to sob once and wrap her arms around his neck. He takes her out of the house.
• Autumn post-cogs the house. Back in 1886, Noel Mavisson came home one night in a drunken rage, raving about how his no-good son should be taking care of this brat. The "brat" is the same dark-haired girl who formed the body of the Abyssal creature. Martha tells her husband that they are doing the good Christian thing by taking in the girl. The girl, frightened by Noel's screaming, tries to hide in Martha's skirts. Noel smacks her away. She falls, hits her head on the door lintel, and dies. Something from the other world takes notice and bursts through to this world. It possesses the body of the little girl. It tells the Mavissons that in order to make things right, they must prove to it that they didn't love all the other little girls in the world more than it. Over and over, it forces them to bring little girls into their house and abuse them until they die, all the while keeping the couple at the same age they were when it first found them. Every time the Mavissons try to break away, the creature threatens to tell everyone what they've done.
• Issa drags the foster parents outside and tells Malachite to torch the house.
• Malachite burns the house to cinders. Yay, Fire Control!
• As the house burns, it releases a black, smoky pall. Autumn, Serafina, and Issa (by way of Kesho) hear a growing shriek and see a dark winged thing emerge from the ashes of the house. It tells them, "This accomplishes nothing, for she is coming."
• The Mavissons rapidly age, die, and turn to dust.
• We discuss whether or not we should bring someone in to alter Tanya's memory, in case the trauma is too much for her. Autumn tries to do a divination on her to see if that will be necessary. But as far as his spell is concerned, Tanya doesn't exist. In fact, as far as any spell is concerned, Tanya doesn't exist.
• Malachite looks at Tanya with Prime sight. He is nearly blinded by the dazzling power coming off her. She is in the middle of her Awakening, which is why she seems not to exist. By examining her resonance, Malachite is able to tell that she is Awakening as an Obrimos. That exposure to the Aether reverses whatever the Abyssal creature did to Malachite's phobia.