#cor.solstice

—

"A hunch, really," she says as they go. "A hunch, and then trial and error - you can't stand me, and yet you give in on arguments quickly - or well, you couldn't stand me. But, well. Look at us now."

She sighs, tromping through the snow in suede boots that only look like they can withstand the cold. The temperature drops, deeper and deeper - she wonders if Daniella can feel it.

"I tested small demands first, then larger ones. Until I was sure something was afoot. Again. Ironwood is insidious - your Emily might have done it to protect you in some roundabout way, who knows? You ended up here, anyways - far away from any Ironwood power - may not be coincidence." She shrugs.

"We all do terrible things for stupid reasons sometimes - she is not here to ask, so it is left to you to imagine the why."

—

She listens, and it is true. She hadn’t been able to stand the strange little witch in the beginning. Her harsh words and accusations. It had been tiring and tedious to deal with her. But the grimoire, she remembers, Briar’s, the one she’d been sworn to protect. She had handed it to the owner with a mere few prodding’s. And she does like to think their companionship isn’t fully based on a lie. She wants to believe her ties to Emily hadn’t been either. That her friendship to young Chamomile held just as real despite what name is there.

“She wrote a lot in her journal about being fifth and the disappointment that came with it. She’d say things about it occasionally but never divulge why it mattered.” She sighs.

“I don’t want to think ill of you, of Cham. But I questioned how much of my love is truly my own.” She truly shivers the closer they get, joints feeling almost brittle with cold that seeps in, she knows what it is only because she’s heard it described before and her hands slip into her pockets uselessly.

“My task was to keep your grimoire from the rest. To run until it was not being threatened. That’s the last thing she told me.” She shakes her head. “You wish to sacrifice me, what does that entail? Because as of right now I think I’m freezing. It at least feels like what I’ve heard.”

—

Briar's breath curls off her tonuge, whisps of dragon-steam in the dark. Daniella's lament though, eventually pries a groan from her, and a sardonic eyeroll.

"I'm not sacrificing you, you pillock," she laughs. "I was being dramatic to show you you'll agree to anything, so long as I or Chamomile or any other Ironwood is the one to say it."

"- But you are going to make a sacrifice - I am, as well." She fishes her book out, no new magic has been scriven there since her imprisonment, only a record of her time locked away. "Endless cold, a world stuck in time, every way in but no way out? I've been here before. Not here, but this… strangeness. It's a buffer world, a pocket of space meant to contain something. In other words…"

They mount a hill and look down into a valley. "That."

A lake, pristine and still, sits amid a clearing, a lone cabin sitting ark on its other side. Despite the icy cold, its placid surface sits, unfrozen.

—

The groan is enough to still her and her tongue, the insult enough to cause a huff of annoyance. “Always so damn rude.” she grumbles, a sacrifice, not death. That was at least something.

“Does Cham know?” she asks curiously about this infliction upon her, she supposes if a coven dark enough to kill their own has her under their control she has lucked out quite well with only Briar and Chamomile having entered her life recently.

She looks out into the valley, at the lake. Putting together the pieces before she speaks. “You and I are going to trade ourselves for the city, aren’t we?” She finally asks, eyes still focused on the cabin and taking in a deep breath. “In this bubble of a world, do you feel hunger?” She glances to Briar knowing that she’ll understand the true question

—

"I've left my sister-in-time a letter, explaining all which needs explained." She says, coldly. Ironwood. The Deathroot. Daniella, her hex, and instructions to live well and carry on the work. "I don't think she did, for what it's worth. She's the one good sprog that coven's ever blessed the Earth with. Had she known, she'd have likely thrown herself stupid trying to undo it."

She turns back to Daniella. "Good for us she missed it. You're a useful tool here."

She starts down the hill. "I'll channel my being into this ward - change it's makeup. Somebody botched it - made it cast a wider net. i'll shrink it to a mote, and plant my seed in it - all inside will die, and you and I will be left to tend what's left. But yes," she says. "we will trade ourselves for the city."

She stops at the bottom.

"Yes, but it's a shallow hunger - it won't kill, just… wither. You have noticed it, haven't you? The city's descended into chaos, and everybody's simply… gone along with it, waiting for their turn to be picked off? These things breed complacency and the reap it like rows of maize. The lucky will die first, or be taken. The hardier ones next - the magically inclined, the wolves. The vampires, I suppose, will make it the longest - hardy as they are, but these things are not only immortal, but… unbeing. They are… light out of place. They'll win."

—

She knows it's true, Cham wouldn't have let her stay this way if she knew. Chamomile had never asked much of her aside from friendship. She gives a nod in acknowledgement even if she hates the way her ailment is being used for the other's benefit. She knows though, somewhere deep that Briar does not mean it in such a way. Or maybe she is misreading it and she does. She follows along, listening.

"If I had known what you'd be having me do I'd have at least said good-bye to a few. But I suppose it is too late for that now." She may not fully be doing this of her complete will, but she's already coming to accept it for what it was. Life was never predictable, and hardly ever had a fairness about it. One could only move forward. Embrace what came to them in stride.

Once she reaches the bottom of the hill and is standing back by the witch's side she works her jaw. She has noticed it. Things had stopped being predictable. People had stopped being predictable. A hand raises, fingers running through blonde locks.

"You know, if you had explained to me what everything meant before you asked, I might have agreed before you need command." She tells her honestly. "I've noticed it though, the way the world has become — othered. Not quite right. Nothing is quite right. I think a part of me began to change. Losing track of feeding. Losing track of time in a way I normally wouldn't. I don't even remember when the snow started. It doesn't matter, just, lead the way."

—

"Well, I know now." She says, flippant. It won't do to dwell on if what she is doing is good or evil - two immortals need be here for this. The magic inherent in them will act as renewable fuel, so that this might not happen again.

As they walk, she ponders on Daniella's words. She had not gotten to say goodbye either - not to anyone. Not to who was taken from her, not to who she was taken from. This is the way of the world, she has always reckoned. Justice is an unnatural artifact. The harsh lack of it is the world's natural state.

They walk the lake, and then, at a cabin, Briar touches her hands to the ground, black roots threading out of her skin and feathering along the snowy floor. She follows their movements until she finds it tracing a path, and standing uses it as a dowsing rod to guide their way.

The woods are deep, and grow dark enough that she needs to shiny a dull red glow from the vines pulling her hand like a lead, casting the woods in a strange coat of light. It goes like this until they hear footsteps, hurried and rumbling through the woods in their direction.

—

She lets the quiet settle round them, though it isn't tense like it had been in the limo. Just a companionable thing, two women doing something to save a mass of people. Unlucky saviors. Even if the choice wasn't completely her own, Daniella hadn't been lying, she would have given herself for this cause. What was the loss of a few for the safety of more? Selfless, she thinks.

She watches, admittedly enraptured, at the vines that spring from Briar as if her very veins are cultivating themself within the earth. She's seen magic for centuries and yet every gift, every spell still brings forth complete fascination. She wonders if she'll have the chance to ask for more explanations and demonstration in this pocket they plan to trap themselves away within.

The darkness that presses round them even makes her keen eyes squint to attempt to make sight come but Briar remedies that as well. The sound of coming foot fall hits her first, the singing of blood pumping from a beating heart, a second. Without question she moves closer to Briar, not knowing how far the witch can extend herself with the magic she is already using. Not knowing what danger may be approaching. Whatever it may be, it is definitely mortal, or inclined to pretend as such.

—

The footfalls seem to amplify, and then morph into something stretched and strange, echoing off the bare trees. Briar, nearly clung to by Daniella, traces the sound in reverse, until she sees a strange, dark void between a set of snow-rimed boulders that set sunken into the ground.

"There…" She says, tugging the vampire along with her for a few steps. Her stomach lurches, the first bit of fear she has felt in centuries, and, looking back to Daniella, she swallows thickly and turns to her fully.

"I intend to seal this place, to cut them off, first from the world, and then from existence entirely." Her speech is hurrried, and her hand snatches out to Daniella, thumbpint falling to the woman's forehead as she chants in some sort of language that makes little sense to the ear. It is a great expenditure of power - one she cannot afford, really, but if she is to die here, it will not be her last action to crawl into her grave perpetrating the same evil she's survived so long to destroy.

"Your hex is broken," she says, pulling her hand free, leaving an ashy mark in the middle of Daniella's brow. "You're free to go, but with me or without me, you need to make your choice soon"

She leaves no space for further discussion, turning to the rushing footsteps coming towards them from the depths of the cave.

—

She shifts more to shield her companion as Briar huddles close as the noise stretches and pulses as if in surround sound. The gaping blackness they come upon brings a chill even to her, but she lets the witch take her closer to their destination.

Suddenly they are even closer, she’s confused by the press of thumb, doesn’t know if this is a part of the sealing, doesn’t know if these are her last moments in this place of frost and ice. But suddenly a weight she never realized existed shifts. It’s like they say a gasp of air after being held under water for far too long feels. Like her lungs are expanding, her heart thump after being compressed by a fist squeezing, all those silly sounding things humans say. She blinks down at the witch. This Ironwood woman who has given her a gift and it solidifies her resolve.

Her hand shifts, fingers threading with Briar’s own. Thinking of the people back in town, thinking of the people she’s come to know and get close to. “Well this disaster of a city isn’t going to save itself, and I’m hardly letting you have all the fun. Let’s get this over with. Together.”

—

There's a tender moment there, and Briar feels the vampire's fingers curl between her own - it's felt, if briefly in the black-beating lump of flesh in her chest that is wire-wrapped with poisonous bramble. A strange sisterhood with this outsider.

Can't have that.

Briar coarsely rips her hands from Daniella. "Enough of that soft nonsense, look alive."

She nods to the mouth of the cave, where footfalls have become loud to the point of being un-ignorable. Briar's skin blossoms with black snaking vines, but they fall like pine-needles to the snowy mud when what stumbles out of the cavern is just a woman... a haggard one, but the Deathroot does not quiver at her presence the way it does the denizens of this world.

Briar would never be so humble as to prostrate herself in a prayer to any God, let alone the God of her long-dead parents, but there is a mote of apprehension and wonderment in her thoughts at the notion of endlessness - if she would do better to simply break the barrier that locks these things off from the rest of the world so that she might make good her own escape; to scurry away from the tidal wave of their surge and find some isolated place in the world to live out rest of her days until death.

But that sounds dolorous and boring, and so the mote is crushed beneath the heel of hope that one day in the far flung future, Chamomile will find a way to pluck her out of nothing once more.

She places her hands against the pristine water, only to find them mirrored by hungry souls beneath, desperate to emerge and find those they are bound to. They realize, quickly, that she is not what they want, and the air fills with a shriek so baleful that she can feel her ears threaten to burst beneath it.

Outside this space, in the city, their brothers and sisters and minions here it like an alarum bell, and decide that the time for quiet endeavor is older.

The city descend into chaos, but here, te shriek ends, and it is replaced by the slamming sounds of a thousand thousand hands beneath the surface of the lake, hammering for escape.

Briar's eyes hollow, sinking into dark pits. Thorns burst from her skin, starting at the ends of her fingers, running up along her arms, and then her shoulders, where they pierce Daniella's hands, chaining the two of them together as the Deathroot begins to siphon its power from the both of them.

They won't die, Briar had assured her of that, it isn't something she is worried about. It's the unknown of it all, of where they end up, the prospect of being in timeless darkness much more brutal than the night in this waking world. The unknowing of things is something that has always plagued her. Unsure of her human life, torn from her. Her true age. What her family had looked like. Where she had truly come from. The magic that has so recently been lifted from her, and now the magic she will be so willingly be taking on. Her hands tense against the shoulders they hold too as a piercing scream of so many things below the waters surface try to rally, try to break themselves free. Blood trickles from her ears, ringing, healing then bursting again with their sensitivity. And then altogether it ends and she knows not what that means. She can't see Briar's face, but she does see the way thorns seem to break and wind their way up her hands, her arms, then belated stinging pain as they thrust themself through her own hands, she yelps at the pain, natural reaction telling her to pull away because it fucking hurts, easing in an anguished burning, she holds tight regardless of what her mind tells her. Of what her sense of survival screams for her to do. She tightens her grip, driving the spines in deeper, gritting her teeth, she is sure the flesh beneath her grip is already giving, her hold near crushing and her eyes transfixed to where stolen blood oozes from the wounds. And then it feels as if something is feeding off of her, sucking from deep within.

The roots burst out of her skin, drinking the potency of a vampire into themselves. At the same time, they tear through the rest of her, snaking over the surface of the lake.. At the same time, it breaks through her back, growing in a twisting, gnarled stalk, up towards the sky.

The city bursts into conflict. Mankind rallies, ushering themselves into safe spaces. Not all will survive, but most will. Many will.

At the lake, the ice begins to crack and shatter under the strength of the vile Deathroot, and when it begins to crush its way through, the mercurial creatures begin to burst through, spidering around them on countless limbs - a thousand terrible reflections of a thousand nameless faces. They lurch and lunge, and the Deathroot, bolstered by its toxic magic, begins to weave a protective ring around the two of them, around it's black, skyward creeping stalk.

It seems like it takes ages. Hours, days, weeks, years. Time has become as murky and unknowable of the rest of the space within the ward.

Briar can feel her flesh withering under the influence of its magic - if not for the vampire at her back, feeding into her immortal undeath through the creeping vines, she would be little more now than dust and ash.

The roots fully burst through the ice, and the air around the lake fills with the warbling shrieks of monsters - high above, the Deathroot bursts into an enormous red bloom, channeling the magic of centuries of stolen life in a single ephemeral beam that seems to hone itself on an empty space of sky. Cracks form. Fissures run like red lightning from the sky.

Beyond the barrier, where the world has simply continued, it is as if nothing is happening, but inside, the sky cracks apart, revealing not night but the bright height of noon through the gaps in the darkness.

She begins to chant - the end of this rite nears. Two final pieces of a puzzle. The first is a whispering spell of transmuting magic - the illusory ward that has cut the world off from the city inverting, until its domereflects the world back, catching the glint of thousands of creatures in its reflection as that reflection begins to crack and shatter, forcing many of them into shrieking agony.

"Daniella!" She screams, the silvery creatures who've refused to look skyward seeping through their defense "I'm quite sorry, I think may've lied when I told you we'd live through this."

She can't even focus on what is happening around her so blinded by the pain coursing through her body, her knees weakening as more is pulled from her, life and energy feeding into the spell she can't even realize is growing, is pulsing. Her eyes darken and flood red, fangs extending as she grits through the need to scream out in anguish. She knows her grip is crushing, that she can't be the only one in pain as she falls to her knees , pressing into the painful spikes burst from the witch and then the heat starts, everything brightening in a way she's never even fully remembered witnessing, her first time in the sun after centuries in darkness and it sets her skin in a fiery burn, she gasps out a cry and presses closer. "At least I'll go out with a final glimpse of the sun. Can't say I thought it'd be the thing ending me." She yells out in pain as blisters start to form. "I don't think I'm going to last much longer."

The heat blossoms as Summer Sun punches through the dark, burning at the ward. It's light hits the ground and bounces back up, fills the dark with bright summerlight. In a though, Briar channels will into the stalk, and a wreath of twining brambles arch over the two of them, shielding them from the sun. Red leaves begin to bloom from it, expanding its shade. "Not yet, I fear. I need you for a bit more."

The roots hit the edge of the ward, and begins snaking over it, pushing against it and sucking the magic clean.

For an instant, all of Port Leiry and its surroundings are reflected in the sky, two worlds brought face to face.

The black vines of the Deathroot push and push and push, and then blossom with their blood-red leaves.

The ward itself, and its reflection of the city crack, swell, and then shatter.

It seems like snow at first, the glistening glimmer that falls from a no sunny sky. The creatures in the mirror lake scream and writhe as they begin to rot and burst and harden into shimmering dust.

All across the city, their unturned remnants do the same - only those already turned, or able to escape the sky are spared.

And then, blossomed, the Deathroot saps the final bit of energy from the witch bound to the vampire, wreathing them together into the trunk of a great dark tree in the center of the laker. The roots in the sky burst into flame, sizzling into nothing and dumping a snowfall of magical ash onto the city - ash that will soothe the memory of those who might rather go on believing in the mundane banality of the world.

The great vine dries too, crumbling and withering and disintegrating into the lake as The Deathroot too dies.

—

What is left is a sunny day in June, the longest day of the year. What is left is the rapidly melting snow, leaving a city perplexed in the aftermath of a riotous, collective hallucination. The conspiracists will rail against any attempted explanation. The powers that be, human and othrwise, will be dogged in the who and the how of their silencing measures.

In the center of the Mirror Lake, now placid save for the gentle summer breeze drifting across its surface, sits a gnarled black tree with strange red leaves - singular among its peers in this tiny hidden forest. It stands there regardless, effecting the image of two women in embrace, should one stare at it just a touch too long.

And a thousand stories of that night float around - mouth to ear, in strange forums buried on the internet, or in the files of ancient guilds and clans of immortal creatures or stories told by packs around a campfire under a new moon. Stories of how, for a time, Port Leiry simply stopped for a while, held in place by a common enemy until even its greatest enemies had no choice but to save eachother.

And Somewhere, in keeping of an addled woman in a fur coat, a gemstone glows, holding in it a world of eternal ice and snow with only two souls inside to weather it.

Unable to to trust anybody, RIVEN VICTORS and AOIFE O'SULLIVAN find themselves broken off from evacuation routes and forced to cut through Hoyt Salvage, but it's not all rusted out car bodies and discarded TVs - Mimics lurk the piles in every shape an size.

With the Solstice putting the barrier in flux and meddling with the barrier sealing the city away, LARA RIVKIN finds themselves seperated from their group and stuck in the barren woods at the edge of the barrier. TOMÁS PRIESTLEY can hear them, but can't see them through the blustery snow. Little do they know that Doppelgangers stalk both of them, ready to strike.

CAITLIN SILTSHORE and VIKTORIA LOMIDZE are being shuttled to a safe zone when the vehicle sprouts legs. That's one big Mimic! Better get out before that plush leather interior starts drooling and chewing… oh wait.

REMI FELIX is nearly run over by WINTER YI while fleeing from a horde of mimics seeking to corral them into being easy targets. These Mimics have taken on the shapes of objects commonplace in both of their thoughts!

COLT MERCER, ROSE HALSTEAD, and GARRICK CALLAGHAN are trying to rescue civilians from a situation at Port Leiry Boat Rental as several pleasure craft seem to have grown mouths, eyes, and ... tentacles? Mimics... it's always mimics...

BIRDIE TEMPLETON and MADISON PAIGE are trying to get to safety, forced together after a pack of mimics turn on them in the streets. They're separated briefly, but after stumbling back into each other, can either of them spare any trust for the other?

As chaos spills out of the Mirror world and into the city, AURELIA KENNEDY and MAJA GRIMHJARTA take up refuge in Aftcastle Mall with some other citizens. Too bad the shelves are lined with mimics laying in wait amongst all of the other products!

Dopplegangers chase SADIE EASTON and ZOE VAN BRUNT into THE DEN but quickly give up once they barricade the door. Too bad the Pixies had the idea first. (Hold onto your teeth).

ANIKA BOOKER follows ANNALISE HALSTEAD inside a location designated as a shelter from the chaos. Once inside however, it becomes apparent that everyone inside has been replaced by Dopplegangers!

Spurred on by mistrust, a group of vampires shepherded by THAO NGUYEN clash with a pack of werewolves guided by MICHELLE BARRIOS in Olympic Metalworks while seeking shelter, trapping ETHAN PARKINSON and his crew in the middle of the violence!

Tideview Stadium is full of Port Leiry Citizens trying to hide from the increasingly apocalyptic snow and cold, little do they know, Althea's evasive FALSE VAMPIRE has taken up residence there since the city's wintry shut down. Upon finding the keys to escape, ATLAS JAY ASTOR is dragged off by it right in front of VANESSA KOBLIZKA!

A SLIME finds its way out of its sewer midden and into the pipes of the building. BLUE FELIX finds a nasty surprise when they try to run the water for TJ ASTOR'S drink.