Better Late Than Never

[morethanmyth]

The yetis and elves had been extremely welcoming when they arrived back at the Pole. As soon as they shook themselves out of their shock at how battered they'd looked, they'd immediately brought out the blankets, spare clothes, first aid kits, food and drinks. Cocoa was pressed into people's hands whether they wanted it or not.

"Blughbloghughblug?"

"Out of nowhere. In broad daylight, no less," Katherine said to one of the yetis, holding her half-finished cup of hot cocoa in her hands. "It goes without saying that this is very, very bad."

"Ooghughaugh. Blughooghablorgblurgh?"

"Oh, well, that may be because they're still tethered to their worlds to a degree." She looked to the others. "He said someone named Wonder Woman, a Mr. Stark, and some undead fellow that had stayed behind at the Pole disappeared while you were meeting with me. I suppose that supports my hypothesis about the trans-dimensional tethering."

It had been a little while now since they'd returned and there was still no sign of Jack and Bunny. It was obviously bothering Katherine. In between her idle chatter with the yetis, who seemed to regard with her great fondness, she was pacing back and forth through the area that had been made into a "common area" while they'd been away. It was comfortable, full of plush red couches and cushions and tables for them to sit at to eat. Board games in many varieties had been stacked around.

The yetis were on standby, ready to get anything they needed, or show those who hadn't seen the Pole yet around.

"They should be back by now. I don't know why they're not back by now. Maybe the lindworms gave them trouble. Perhaps they had to take shelter in the Warren."

She chugged down her cocoa like someone else might nervously down a shot of whisky and then went for a refill.

[ooc: This is just for a few minutes of post-fight mingling and then the return of Jack and Bunny, then it'll be free-threading after this.]

Comments

[morethanmyth]

"We wait, we hope, and we - we try desperately to not think about how badly we need them to come back. There's not much else we can do. If they're using Bunny's tunnels to return, we have no way of searching for them."

They hoped because if they didn't come back, who was left? Katherine dealt in information. She studied musty old books in dangerous places, like hidden cities, long abandoned, she gathered information from dangerous beings in dangerous places, she even spied on the enemy at times.

It was all dangerous, potentially deadly, and she was terrified every moment she did it. She'd learned a very long time ago, from very brave friend, that it was okay to be terrified while doing brave things - that was what made them brave.

But that friend was gone now, and bravery wasn't the only thing necessary to win a war. If it was down to them now, just one scholar and a group of people ripped unceremoniously from their worlds, new to their powers - with no Guardians to guide them - they didn't stand a chance.

"Do you play checkers?" Katherine said, sitting down across from Nico and looking at the board games stacked on the table next to her. The goose fluttered up next to Katherine and curled up under her one arm, more like a cat than a bird.

[spellitonce]

"Not well," Nico answered in response to the question about checkers. "But yeah, I play."

She devoured another cookie. "I could cast a spell," she said. Whatever spiritual mojo she had now was good with healing, but it wasn't like she couldn't break the skin again. "I could teleport them here, without grabbing anything else along with them either, so it wouldn't compromise this place as a base."

[morethanmyth]

Katherine shook her head as she got out the board and pieces and started setting up.

"Bunny's tunnels are magically...complex, is the word, I suppose. They exist only in potentiality when he's not using them - as something that isn't truly physical unless he wants it to be. They're more of an idea of tunnels, you see, imprinted into the earth, and his will is what opens them up, lets himself, anyone he might have with him - lets the outside world - access them. So, in a way, they're his idea. Right now, because the belief of the children is at an all-time high, he's vastly powerful by our world's metaphysical standards and that means his control over them is currently absolute. His idea of his tunnels is that they are impenetrable by anyone but him. Since they're not physical, that means they require magic to access them and open them up - and that makes them impenetrable by nearly all other magics but his own."

The board was set up. "White or black?"

[spellitonce]

"Ugh," Nico grunted in acknowledgement. "We're asking the Yeti for a radio for his hard-to-pin-down furry butt, right? I'll enchant that."

She picked black, naturally.

[morethanmyth]

"That's a possibility but we're not going to be able to do it until we talk to Bunny about it. He'd still have to adjust his concept of the tunnels."

She went on, "So much is tied to ideas and concepts and belief - there are rules to our world just like there are rules to checkers. One of which is that black goes first."

[spellitonce]

"I can be very persuasive," Nico said. Of course, most her experience in that involved screaming at other teenagers, not at centuries-old six-foot rabbits. "It's stupid not to have a way to contact each other. We didn't, but we didn't have a workshop full of toys either." And Karolina had sent them messages when she was in another freaking galaxy, so semi-imaginary tunnels in the Earth? They'd deal.

"There are always rules," she replied, moving her first piece. "But I'm a witch. Even if they can't be broken, they can be manipulated."

[morethanmyth]

"As soon as Bunny gets back, we can have the yetis provide something. He'd know what would work best at bypassing the magic of his tunnels. At the very least, it would be good for anyone here that wants to get out there to have a way of communicating with the others."

Katherine's eyes kept straying over to one of the many clocks, to see how much time had passed.

[spellitonce]

"Probably not as soon," Nico mused. "After we stuff him and Jack full of restorative cookies or whatever. But I'd bet that they wouldn't let any of us go out without an escort, and there's more of us than there are of them, so they might just have to suck it up and deal."

Nico wasn't watching the clock, for pretty much the same reason Katherine was. She didn't want to know how much time had passed.

"So. What are fearlings? And lindworms? Or, more specifically, what hurts them? Blunt-force trauma and light seem to do okay for the fearlings, is there anything else I should know about?"

[morethanmyth]

"Fearlings are... spirits, in a sense. Shadow-creatures. Weak against light, damaged by physical force. They have no other obvious weaknesses. They're mostly mindless, although some of them tend towards more intelligence, they're mindlessly obedient to Kuk, and while they'll kill adults, they mostly target children."

Moving a checker piece, she sucked in a deep breath. " - Which they don't kill. Instead, they try to make them become consumed by their fear so that they can convert them into more fearlings. There is no way to turn them back again after, and they don't even manage to...retain individual form. They become part of the collective shadow-mass, constantly ripped apart and shaped into many more fearlings. That's why they targeted the other younger members of the group so fiercely and why they were trying to scratch through the shell of ice Jack put over his skin to fight. They need physical contact and he's still got something of the spirit of a child."

[spellitonce]

"Do you know where they draw the line between child and adult?" Nico moved one of her pieces, lips pressed together in a thin line. "I mean, I'm going to light them on fire anyway, or teleport them into the center of the sun, or gather them up into a bag and make Kuk choke on them, but it'd be nice to know which side of the kill-or-corrupt line I'm on."

She pushed the image of Molly getting torn apart into little shadowy pieces to the deep dark hole in the back of her mind where she kept the thoughts she never wanted to think about.

[morethanmyth]

"It's less a clean break in age and more something spiritual, from what we've gathered. There have only been a few accounts that we heard of, and they've raged from age four to nineteen. In Jack's case, he's seventeen physically and over three hundred chronologically and they've still gone after him. I suppose it all comes down to a sense of innocence, of wonder."

[spellitonce]

Was there a difference between a sense of innocence and an innocent? A few weeks ago, the Gibborim had counted her as one of the latter (or so she'd gathered after she woke up), but that was before the Witchbreaker. Nico chewed her lip and tried not to wonder what could happen to a four year old for them to lose that status.

"Okay. Lindworms?"

[morethanmyth]

"Wingless dragons. Very serpentlike, with a poisonous bite. They're intelligent and quite malicious. There aren't many of them left but they're dangerous when they're willing to work together and right now they've allied themselves with Kuk, foolishly believing It will follow through on granting them the power Its offered them. They tunnel under the earth and while they can't breach Bunny's magical tunnels, they do make it so that their own magical tunnels can block the way. They've used that tactic more than once to force him to surface somewhere where they and the fearlings have set up a trap."

Katherine moved a checker piece, hopping over one of Nico's.

"Unfortunately, while there aren't many benevolent myths still free to help the Guardians, there are plenty of malicious ones free to ally themselves with Kuk or otherwise cause harm. It has been...discreet in Its true aims to many myths, and to the more malicious myths It's trying to ally Itself with, It has made it seem as if our warnings are just propaganda."

[spellitonce]

Of course there were mythical monster-things allying themselves with Kuk. Which brought to mind a very important question:

"Are there any myths in this world known as the Gibborim?"

If the Gibborim were here, Nico was seriously going to kill something.

"Giants; six fingers and toes; really hate humans for sullying the planet with our sex, drugs, and rock and roll?"

[morethanmyth]

"Ah, I believe that's Hebrew, correct? Any concept of them as being a class of beings was misinterpretation because it was applied to describe the nephilim in the Bible. It's mostly just a word to denote greatness. I'm not aware of any creatures with that name ever having existed here - if they ever did, they've most likely long since faded."

[spellitonce]

Nico's eyes flashed. "It may have been a misinterpretation in this reality, but they--" She bit her tongue and swallowed down everything she'd almost said about the girls the Pride had sacrificed, and her parents, and Alex. "Well, let's just say if the ones from my reality show up, they'd probably fall for Kuk's line and still think they could double-cross him and rebuild Eden." She drums her fingers on the edge of the board. "Last we saw them, they faded out of a sub-layer of our reality, so I've got no idea if they could crop up in Kuk's playspace."

[morethanmyth]

"...It is a possibility. But we know so little about Kuk's true nature that it's impossible to be sure. Given the thinning of dimensions, though, and the fact the children's belief is pulling you all through, it's entirely plausible that Kuk's influence could pull through allies for It, as well."

[spellitonce]

"They feed on the souls of innocents," Nico said, fidgeting with one of her pieces. "And apparently they don't mind the bodies either. But I think it takes a year for the three of them to digest one soul or something, so they might run a bit slow for Kuk's plans."