[Legends of the Modern Age (Scion)] Chapter 1.B: Enter the Labyrinth

Grisl moves next to Kendra and starts to put her arm around her. "Don't worry," her arm never actually touches Kendra having spent years of trying not to spread any disease that she might have picked up or generated, "it's much better to see what's around us than all that fog." Gently she rests two fingers very lightly on Kendra's collar bone while her arm hovers away from her.


She then moved forward to the statue. "The Egyptians put a lot of faith in their staves. Many of their myths involve some form of staff, even in biblical references. And they developed the rod as a unit of measurement. And they tried to eradicate the worship of Ra once his cult fell from power." She looks at the staff with intensity as she tries to discern any magical nature, but her knowledge of artifacts says that being held by a statue will not invoke any of its powers. That will have to fall to the living.


Grisl reaches forward and rests her hand firmly on the staff, then grasps it and tries to pull it from the grasp of the statue. Time to see what this thing was made for.
 
The Greek Scion was at first very confused at what Grisl was trying to do, but the light touch brought a smile to her face. "Could've just asked for a hug or somethin'."
 
The staff easily pulls free from the statue, though it moves as if it is underwater. As it pulls free the statue collapses into fog, leaving only the round pedestal with the alpha on the side and a larger one topped with a sun disc on top of the pedestal
 
"Could have. Didn't. And saved you from infection. My treat." She didn't want to be bitchy, but hugs had nearly 80% chance of passing something on. Leprosy, tuberculosis, staphylococcus. Those were the most common she carried. Being the daughter of the Mother of Disease had its issues, but she was slowly learning to counteract those.


Grisl remembered Aunt Jean. All she had done is give her a hug. She was 10 then, but she should have known better. Doctors had put her in quarantine as they tried to puzzle out what form of measles she had contracted. They never found out, and Aunt Jean was dead less than 5 days after meeting her niece.


"Typical," she muttered as the statue crumbled once the staff was firmly in her grasp. "Looks like I am going to be the future of the Celestial realms. I pity those realms." A flying ice castle seemed to be more future concept than just a brief flicker of imagination now.


"Any one else want to come along for the ride?" She looked at Kendra with an icy stare, but behind that stare was a desperate plea to not leave her alone to destroy the world of the gods in ice and disease. The Bifrost would rot to nothing under her footsteps.
 
It was not lost on Kendra that the icy stare and question were directed towards her. So she thinks about it before rubbing at the back of her neck bashfully. "Ah, hell. I put that mark on you and you expect me not to follow my charge? I got a little more class than that."
 
"So, are you planning to climb on to the pedestal or something like that?" Libby inquires. "Because it seems a test might be in order first. It might be a transport device, yes -- or it might be a magical hot plate."
 
"I'm all in favor of being prudent," Karima says, "but so far nothing here has been actually harmful to us, it would be incongruous to introduce a trap now. And I am all in favor of moving on, to Celestial Realms or wherever else this may lead, whatever else one might say about this place, it seems determined to push us forward."
 
"Not exactly like we can go backwards, anyway," Liam said, jerking his thumb backward at the way they'd come.
 
Grisl cleared her throat, not that it improved the quality of the voice. It still had the rough harmony of a cement mixer. "Choices have to be made. The gods no longer care. And we are scions, we should not be living our lives the way a common mortal lives theirs. We are better than that, we deserve better. The future hasn't been written, it's on the ceiling back there waiting for someone to write it."


Grisl stepped up to the platform, staff in hand. "I am pretty sure Alexander woke up one morning, realized the future was waiting for him to make a move, so he grabbed a sword and called his armies together and rewrote history. Fuck it! I say we put pen to paper, swords in hand, and write a future we will be proud of."


She held out one pox-riddled hand toward Kendra. "Anyone can stay and live out quiet lives, but I plan to rattle the pillars of Heaven."
 
Kendra cracks a smile at the impromptu speech. "Well, I always wanted to make a splash instead of a ripple."


She then moves to Grisl's side after accepting the out-stretched hand.
 
"I would not have pegged you as the dramatic type, Grisl," Karima says as she thinks on the other's words. "It appears to me that I have been procrastinating, building a mortal power base, staying out of conflicts more serious that the wars between nations, and only using my powers for an edge." She steps forward, looking at the assembled Scions, "I will write the future with you," she says directed at Grisl and Kendra, "and we'll make a splash to turn Alexander green with envy."
 
"When I was mortal, or thought I was, I took arms against a whole turbulent sea of troubles on behalf of America's children. I believed I need no other help or guidance...that all by myself I would save the World, or at least our part of it," says Libby thoughtfully.


"What I learned...is that one human being, alone, can do very little in the face of a World wracked with poverty, prejudice and war. Since I met my alma mater, I've made...a bit more progress. A few lives changed. A drop in the endless sea.


"One Scion alone can't save the World either. Without allies, no one can hope to make headway against the storm. So yes, I'll join you."
 
Everyone ready to move on to the next scene? You'll be able to spend xp before it. And there will be one more post here before we move on
 
"This is only Act I in my drama. I intend to make a scene. Care to come aboard?" Directed pointedly at Karima, she smiled as she stepped on to the pedestal, followed by Libby. This had the fine makings of a strong fellowship.


This was proving to be as much fun as she had ever had, since the days dancing in her room with half a dozen maladies while her mother tried to ignore the electronic beat that pulsed through the wooden floorboards. "All aboard, all aboard," she called to the others who hadn't joined them yet. "Last train to trancentral."

ready to go
 
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Karima looks mildly amused as she considers Grisl, "do you actually have any way of knowing that this is a means of transportation, or indeed where it leads?"
 
"I raised this question myself earlier," murmurs Libby, "and the general response was 'Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead'".
 
"I have a great deal of experience with artifacts," she tries with a haughty tone that fails as she is suddenly wracked with coughing. "Damn this lung cancer. I'll have to regenerate it all tomorrow."


"Seriously, I am just making an educated guess based on the practical applications available at the moment." She was really just trying to manipulate the creator of this trap in the hopes that he was both sentient and aware of the beings caught in his trap. "You don't give someone a gun unless you want them to shoot something. And you don't give someone a staff in a room with no doors unless you expect them to use it as a way out." She shrugs.
 
Kenji smiles at the absurdity of the situation "To change the world, hmm that is a cause I can get behind. Count me in for this adventure"
 
"I for one have no intentions of dying," Karima says dryly, "risks must be taken to achieve anything of worth, but failing to appreciate and managing those risks is foolish."
 
"We are not going to die. That is why Fate brought us together. Pull us out of our mortal lives and band us together. We won't die if we band together." I hope.


There was an absurdity here, but if she had read the signs properly, this test wasn't to see who they were, but to see what they would choose to become. And that the one to lead them from the labyrinth was the Scion of Death, Disease, and Magic; the one scion who was least content with her life was willing to risk everything to change it. Thea Heavens wouldn't have foreseen this coming.


"Time to go."
 
"For the Angel of Death spread her wings on the blast,


And breathed in the face of the foe as she passed;


And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,


And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still"


He smiles ready to take on what Fate has in store
 
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