[A Time Apart] (Current IC) What once was

"Maybe I can cover up the windows..." Bria looks around evaluating what materials are available and the amount of window.
 
There are several windows, and they already have light curtains suitable for covering them. Going by what she recalls from the books on how bright the anima banners would if Dylan ended up totemic, the curtains aren't enough. There are a few blankets that might suffice though.

It's been two, two and a half hours. Dylan would have recovered most of his personal by now.
 
Dylan gives an uncertain look as he bounces on the balls of his toes a few times. Holy hell, that actually worked! Who needed a heads-up-display when he could feel exactly how much power was in him? "Yup, its all there."
 
"Rose, time to go to work!" Dylan shouted from across the building. He then grabbed the items he had gathered from earlier and went over to the bed that Barbara was on, with the two following close behind. Like last time, the difficult part was actually getting the poison to where they could treat it. Now that he knew what to expect, a bit more could be done. He had Bria and Rose lay their hands on the woman's stomach, and had them picture an inky blackness that they could force to rise up, but only if they concentrated. While that was happening, he administered an antidote of his own concoction; it would be next to useless on its own, but it provided a slight buffer against the venom so that there wouldn't be any lasting damage.


Once her veins had turned black once more, out came the bits of crystal and jade. It had taken longer then last time, though, and a strangely pleasant burning sensation on his forehead told him that his personal pool was gone.


"Rose, focus!" He said, seeing the young woman stop, eyes pointed at the half-filled circle on his forehead. "There is a woman with a now deadly dose of poison in her laying in your infirmary. If she's gonna live, then I need you to work with me. Take that crystal on her throat and turn it to the right on my mark. Two...one...mark."


The rest of the time played out much the same way, his gold aura appearing not helping.

Alright, my normal pool and having Bria and Rose help pushes me to 11 dice. 5 on every roll to power Body-Purifying Admonitions and get the Black Voyage Venom out.


Roll 1: 3 successes (20 mins, -5 motes)(Personal pool: 15 motes)


Roll 2: 1 success (20 mins, -5 motes)(Personal pool: 10 motes)


Roll 3: 1 success (20 mins, -5 motes)(Personal pool: 5 motes)


Roll 4: 2 successes (20 mins, +1 motes)(Personal pool: 6 motes)


Roll 5: 3 successes (20 mins, -5 motes)(Personal pool: 1 mote)


Roll 6: 0 successes (20 mins, -5 motes)(Personal pool: 0 motes, peripheral: 37)(anima banner: 4)


Roll 7: 3 successes (20 mins, +1 mote)(Personal pool: 0 motes, peripheral: 38)(anima banner: 9)
 
2 die stunt, 2 successes. Since you already applied your anima banner we'll go with it twinkling anyways, but you stopped at roll 5. Add 4 motes back from your rolls, plus your four motes from stunting. You'll need 'em.


With much force of will, essence, and panicking by Dylan at one point as he nearly loses the poison into his own essence, Barbara sits up with a wordless scream, her mouth gasping at air but something is wrong. Even as she breathes, something is still missing and it is killing her rapidly. Still mostly buried in Barbara's essence, Dylan feels what it is.


The core of her soul, her essence twisted in with her Exaltation. It is in tatters, burned, ripped, shredded. There are echoes of where it filled her body to overflowing at one point, but now is little more than dregs. And even these dregs are sealed off by another poison.


A moan comes from Rose as you suddenly feel the essence of life and wood flow from her into the woman. "You fucked her up, she's not respiring essence! Fix her! Fix her! I can't hold this for long, I don't have the essence myself for it!"






Out of her Coma, Barbara is now attempting to respire Essence. Somehow, to Dylan's senses, the tatters of her Essence would equate her to Essence 1. With the Essence -1 poison, Barbara is now Essence 0, awakened Essence. Her soul literally cannot respire Essence when the multiplier is 0 and is now dying.


Rose has what amounts to a last ditch effort to force her own motes over, but it's at a fast burn. It costs her 4 motes, and she's got a pool of 20 motes, and Rose's extra dice no longer help. So you've got 5 rolls to get this poison out of her.
 
"Watch your fucking language!" Dylan shouts back at Rose, trying to alleviate some of the general panic with humor. But she was right, he hadn't done this in the right order. Goddamn Fair Folk not letting us take a goddamned break. It hasn't even been a day yet! Cut us some slack! He would have to work fast, there simply wasn't any other option. But he had already done this twice now. Why did the third have to be different?


"Don't worry, I've got this." Dylan says to Bria, his eyes burning with determination hotter then the mark on his forehead; before both are eclipsed by his next move. Leaning over Barbara again Dylan's body seems to ignite, covering the entirety of the room with a golden light. To add to it, a pair of white wings seem to erupt out of his back, encircling not only him, but the three women as well. Dylan closes his eyes as they all put their hands on her stomach once again. Instead of seeing the simple darkness from earlier, instead was a giant spider, composed entirely of poison, evil, and all that was vile. But the spider had an opponent.


A golden being looking straight out of a legend steps into view, clad head-to-toe in shining armor and wielding a blade made of pure light. Heartened by this sight, the three work swiftly. They had done this already, so aside from the needed haste, nothing was different. Not even a word was exchanged; a simple gesture was all that was needed to inform the others of what was wrong, and what needed to be done. Each move they took against the poison, prompting a strike from their golden knight against the monster. Too much was riding on this. Failure was not an option.

Lochar, you bastard.


So, at this point, I've got 5 motes in my personal pool, peripheral is full up, and 20 minutes until the next hour mark. 5 motes on every roll to power Body-Purifying Admonitions, 5 more on Touch of Blissful Release to make things easier on Barbara's end, channeling conviction, and spending 4 motes on every roll to buy 2 successes.


Roll 1: 6 successes (20 minutes, -14 motes)(personal pool: 0 motes, peripheral: 32)


Roll 2: 4 successes (20 minutes, -3 motes)(personal pool: 0 motes, peripheral: 29)


Roll 3: 0 successes (20 minutes, -9 motes)(personal pool: 0 motes, peripheral: 20)


Roll 4: 5 successes (20 minutes, -9 motes)(personal pool: 0 motes, peripheral: 11)


*totals have the excellency successes already added in
 
You know, for some reason I expected someone other than Dylan to hit totemic first. *shrug*
Ilusia comes out from the back part of the home/infirmary and sees the softly glowing Dylan, and Rose who is already getting pale. She shrieks and runs over to her intended, one hand going to her forehead and another finding a rag to quickly start wiping her brow.


Even as Dylan begins to dip deep into his own reserves, the woman sustaining Barbara begins to wilt just as her namesake can. Rose pales and shudders, and the vibrant health of her skin seems to fade as she feeds her own energy and life into Barbara to keep her alive. Ilusia has a fearful look on her face as Dylan's anima suddenly takes form, Dylan feels almost a strange sense of discorporation from his body for a moment, seeing from the eyes of his totemic anima, before he and his soul snap back into place and attack the spider's poison.


Each strike of the healers sheers off ten thousand drops of poison, but as each falls they form into new tiny spiders. Some skitter back and rejoin the main poison, and others crawl over Barbara's body. An hour into the procedure, the main form of the Essence blocking poison has been reduced to nearly nothing. It jumps back into Barbara's body as Dylan loses his hold against it for a moment, and Barbara's body arches up.


The poison reaches her heart, and for one dire moment, Dylan feels her heart reverse beat, drawing blood into her lungs. His soothing magics scream at him and he can feel the pain she feels as he takes the edge off of it, and then Barbara begins to live once more.


A last desperate attack as Rose sags, her own face ashen and nearly lifeless herself, drives the last of the poison from Barbara. Rose drops to the ground, nearly spent as Ilusia drops with her, cradling her head.


Barbara falls back to the bed herself, breath coming in short gasps and her eyes staring blankly at the ceiling, but Dylan and Bria know essence flows through her burned core once more. Tiny twitches go through her frame though, and a tiny whisper makes it out of her. "Why?"
 
Bria takes Barbara's hand and tries to comfort her. "We need you, it'll be ok. Dylan can take away the rest of the pain eventually." Turning to Dylan, Bria asks, "Will Rose be ok?"
 
"Let..die...safer" Barbara's voice is nearly silent, nigh impossible to hear more than a foot away.
 
"Idi..otic." Barbara says, but does close her eyes at Bria's request, and her breathing, while shallow, evens out.
 
Jake winced as Barbara spoke. Letting her die would be safer? He could see the logic behind that, even if he didn't agree with it. She was an extremely high Essence Exalted who had just punched a hole through space, time, fate, and god knows what other kind of cosmic barrier to bring them here. Every Sidereal this side of Yu-Shan was going to be gunning for her, with the Wyld Hunt hot on their heals.


Still, it didn't sit right with him. He wanted to make sure everyone stayed safe. If they managed to avoid the Wyld Hunt, she would be an invaluable ally. If. Very big if.


"Come on, we've gotten out of tougher scrapes than this, remember?" He asked with a wan smile, referring to the days when they had all thought it was just a game. "We'll be fine. Things usually work out when we put our minds to it."
 
Ilusia grabs the nearest person and makes them help put Rose into a bed, before she turns on all of you, but especially Dylan. "Give me one good reason for why Rose nearly killed herself, and I won't go looking for guards or an Immaculate to come after the Anathema that are running lose in town."
 
"Because of you, I'm now better then House, Perry Cox, and Dr. Mario all rolled into one. Not to mention we're a group of Celestials." Dylan says, his tone relaying his exhaustion. "Sorry, Barb; you brought this on yourself."


Afterwards, he shambles over to Rose, checking to see if there's anything wrong other then exhaustion. As he goes, the bright wings fade away. "Rose did what she did to save save a life. A fact that none of us are going to forget anytime soon."

Perception+Occult: 4 successes


Perception+Medicine: 4 successes
 
Bria looks at Ilusia with sympathy, "Rose was dong more than just trying to save Barbara. She was trying to save you and the village too. We are here to help as you know. Rose was very brave more than once today on our account. I'm sure she will need your support now more than ever."

Cha + Presence (gasp!) to try to calm Ilusia and give her a path forward after the shock of seeing Rose nearly die.
 
Emily is awed at the display of power, not daring to think what it means for her own area of expertise.


"This woman... well, we're sorry for not being honest about things, but... I don't know that any single being in Creation is stronger than her, and if they are then it won't be by far." she says slowly. "She hurt herself so badly to bring us here, we can't leave her..."
 
Wary of how things were going to go down, Jake bent his knees to shift his center of gravity, getting ready to act should force be required.
 
Grant:


When you return, the captain looks at you, his scarred eye taking you in. "So, what is all this about?"


Everyone else:


Dylan's checking of Rose reveals she literally did put her life on the line, filtering her own health to delay Barbara from dying. It reminds Dylan of the effect some plants have, a symbiotic or parasitic relationship. But Rose forced Barbara into the position of drawing on her vitality to supplant her own.


Ilusia shakes her head. "We'd not even be in any trouble if it weren't for you all, would we? You all show up with her hurt, then you say that there's a fae ready to invade the town, and Rose nearly dies. You" she points to Dylan "are one of the Anathema, and I have a feeling at least most of you are."
 
As Grant walks through the door, she lets herself sink beneath the surface, allowing the personality of Liberty’s Sentinel to come forth.


The Sentinel looks rueful. “I wish I knew,” he says. “All I know is what the Chameleon and Walker have told me: that the fae are angry, that they claim someone broke treaty, than they are hunting for the perpetrator, and…” he hesitates, “…that things in Halta are not as I’ve always heard them described. Or at least in Black Branches. But mayhap I’ve been deceived by travelers’ tales about this country.” He pauses. “I wasn’t much of a traveler, before I left home. ‘Twas Barbara who guided our party -- she who now lies ill in the healer’s house. I would ask you to pardon anything I do or say that seems boorish or ignorant, for I’ve only begun to learn your ways.”
 
Grant:


The captain nods. "I don't care how you act, so long as you're not bringing trouble into town." He sighs. "As for the town itself, Branches was set up as a tradestop with those not of Halta. 'S why you don't see any ata and sans, or most of the others of mixed blood. I was born here myself, but I'm just as at home in the trees as any Haltan."


He moves over to one of the weapon racks, drawing a rather long sword. "Now, you mind if we go outside and test your skills? I don't want an untested man guarding the town."
 
"Anathema's a nastier word then I'd personally use." Dylan says, realizing that his glowing was going to take a little while to disappear. That wasn't annoying at all. "We're not demons. We're not here to cause chaos and death. We don't have some unholy agenda; and we sure as hell didn't mean to cause any trouble for you or Rose."


"Do we possess power? Yes, I'd be a fool to say otherwise. But we're here to help. If there's anything I can do to prove that, say the word. Please."
 
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