aterat | He just wanted to buy supper and go home!

Entry tags:

He just wanted to buy supper and go home!

Who; Llewellyn (And his Hollow!Sister) & whoever is around!
What; Hollowmen/women plot thing!
Where; Around the city, probably near the markets
When; Late June when stuff started happening
Warnings; Probable violence, Hollow creature, also I got wordy? Oops? I will update if anything major happens!

Llewellyn was on his way home for the evening… A quick stop at the market for something to bring home for him and Rhy to share, and maybe something for dessert. And then he’d be set. It had been, all in all, a pretty decent day. The detective was starting to feel a little more settled into this new world. Work was going well, and it was starting to feel like they were really building a life in this place.

He was still a little worried about the whole ‘Oh the directory was destroyed and the entities inside it are now roaming free, but it’s fine!’ conversation he had with Athony the other day… But so far nothing strange had occurred, and certain parts of the city were a little more safe for the average person to wander than it had been.

What Llewellyn hadn’t expected was to be drawn to a stop by a familiar voice.

“Llewellyn?”

Not a voice he expected to hear again, nor was he entirely sure he wanted to hear. It left a cold, hurt pit in his stomach just thinking about their last encounter… But he turned, eyes dragging to the sight of a woman nearly as tall as him. Dark, curly hair pulled up and tied in place, her garb casual but of the style of their world and time, Clarissa Watts.

Of all the people Llewellyn would have liked to see here, of course the universe decided to pluck her out of whatever estate in Europe she’d moved to after their parting and drop her here.

“Llewellyn, are you even listening to me? Or is your head in the clouds as much as it ever was when you were a child.” Her irritated, impatient tone breaks through his thoughts, and he chose to ignore the fact that maybe she’d been right this time. He couldn’t be blamed for it, though, not that she would understand…

“No, I hear you… I’m just surprised…? You have rather sprung out of nowhere, and I admit… I’m not sure why you’re talking to me. You did say you didn’t intend to ever see me again, didn’t you?” He responded, tone equally irritated. The usual concern that he showed others was absent, even if he knew he should be… slightly concerned. “Or do you want my help now? Do you want to talk to me because you find yourself alone in the world, without anyone to explain what you should do? I suppose I do have some experience with that.”

Alright, maybe he needed to rein in some of that bitterness… He knew well enough that she didn’t ask to be here anymore than other arrivals did. An awkward expression crossed his face, clearing his throat a little. Llewellyn still refused to look the woman in the eyes, though he didn’t really feel like seeing whatever barely restrained contempt she might still harbor there.

An awkward pause followed before a huff escaped her. “I just want to know what this all is, Llewellyn. I saw you walking and I just… I don’t know, you were a familiar face and I didn’t think.” Folding her arms, adjusting the shawl wrapped around her, she continued. “I don’t expect you to forgive me or to pretend things are normal. I just want to know what’s going on here and then I intend to be on my way.” And by her tone, that suited her just fine. “… If you at least humour me, I can answer questions you might have too, you know?”

That gets a sidelong glance, complex emotions welling up at the offer. Of everything she could suggest… That was probably the one thing that would get him. She’d been old enough to know them, to remember their family before the incident. It was so clear in recent years that there was a lot she had neglected to tell him, to teach him in the couple of years that she’d stuck around before she’d abandoned him for the life she’d wanted instead. “Will you answer honestly?”

Because when had Clarissa ever uttered something that wasn’t a lie?

… other than when she’d intended to use the truth to hurt?

He could see a grimace marring her face out of the corner of his eye. “I don’t have anything to gain by lying about them, Llewellyn. If you answer my questions, I’ll answer yours.”

“Right.” He huffed, and that was as much of a confirmation as she’d get, a hand waving in a direction towards a side street he liked to cut through to get to the stand in the market he liked to eat at. It meant to follow, and so she did.

Of course, Llewellyn missed the satisfied smirk on her face as she trailed behind into the alleyway. Seemed he was making this easy.

Once they were a decent way into the alleyway, no sounds could be heard from the street, it suddenly wasn’t Clarissa Watts following behind him, as the glamour dropped there was nothing but a creature made of bones, rot and rubbish that street sweepers would have swept up and out of the main roads... A bone here, broken dishware there, twigs and rotting wood from crates just haphazardly gathered together to make something in the vague form of a body.

A piece of broken wood swung out to catch him in the side and slammed him into a wall. With a yelp, he stumbled to catch his balance against its surface. A sound both shocked and confused escaped him as his head snapped back to see what he certainly hadn’t expected.

No, Llewellyn had never seen the likes of this before… One hand going to his side, while the other raised to block his face as a branched hand reached for him. So he ran, darting down another side alley as he tried to process what was following him and what he should even do.

Stupid, stupid, stupid Llewellyn. Should have known better. She wouldn’t have ever wanted to talk to you, anyway. She would have avoided you and found anyone else to talk to here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The alleyway Watts happened down opened into a side street, where a thoroughly angry wizard was straightening his duster and shaking loose a bracelet with several shield-shaped charms dangling from it that had gotten caught in the sleeve during a tussel. The smoking refuse which used to be a creature quite like the one pursuing Watts lay several feet away, filling the street with the scent of ozone and burning plastic.

He turned at the sounds of shoes on paving stones, raising a rather impressive looking staff and leveling it perpendicular to the ground, the twisted end beginning to glow with a strange, pulsing light as he gathered his will and focused on the golem behind his friend.

"Hey, ugly! How about you pick on someone your own size?!" The energy gathered at the end of his staff thrummed as it came to a head, the energy around the wizard charging with static electricity, making the hairs on his head and arms stand on end. "Fulfure percuti!" White hot lightning erupted from his staff, arcing through the air with a sizzling crack, thundering rolling just after. The creature exploded, which had been his point, and he raised his hand immediately afterward, shouting again in quasi-latin, "Ventis fortio" sending a wave of strong wind just over Watts' head, redirecting the majority of the debris from the creature's demise.

Then he leaned on his staff, breathing heavily, before looking around for his victorian detective friend. "Watts?"

Llewellyn was exceptionally good at running. He wouldn’t say he prided himself on it or anything, but he had experience with situations in which you needed to run for most of his life. Well, situations like this if you were being chased by something that looked like it belonged in the pages of a horror novel, perhaps.

He was keeping to alleyways and sidestreets, if only because he didn’t want to lead it anywhere that it could hurt some unsuspecting stranger. They packed a rather nasty punch, or at least he was pretty sure they did once he had a chance to check on himself after the initial encounter. That said, keeping to unpopulated streets presented him with the problem of not being able to find any help… Not that he was entirely sure what would effectively help. He was out of his depth here.

Then there was someone yelling, and his eyes widened as he saw Harry ahead of him with his staff held up and… crackling with some kind of energy? Right, your friend is a Wizard, Llewellyn.

Having never seen the man at work before, Llewellyn jumped to the side and out of the way just to be on the safe side, pressing back against a building as the creature exploded with the force of the lightning his friend had blasted at it. Brows climbing high as it was then blown away by a good strong wind.

Llewellyn glanced in the direction of Harry once he heard his name, his eyes having been rather fixed on the point that the creature used to be. His face was still frozen in some kind of shock. “Uh- present, or um… I’m over here, Harry.” He raised his hand to wave and winced a little. Right. Bad idea. “Thank you…? For taking care of whatever that was?” Words, Llewellyn, words.

"Spirits, ghosts you could say." He smoothed out the sleeves of his duster as he closed the distance between himself and his friend. "They don't have corporeal forms of their own, so they're building bodies out of whatever they can get their grubby little ethereal mitts on."

And they could cast a mean glamour even a skilled wizard couldn't see through until it was nearly too late.

"You okay?"

“And they can apparently look like people we know, rather convincingly…” He muttered, finally pushing away from the wall with a last glance in the direction that the parts of the creature had been blown in.

The question gets a vague, one handed gesture. “I’m… Not sure okay is a word I can use at the moment, but I’m alive.” he responded with a grimace. Llewellyn knew he was going to be bruised as hell later on, and a few were already starting to colour on his face. Moving an arm, he let out a low hiss, sprained. Definitely sprained. “What about you, Harry?” He asked, glancing up a moment later. The detective, of course, would rather focus on anything other than how he was feeling.

He frowned at that response, jaw muscle tightening visibly. If there was one thing that really pissed off Harry Dresden it was having his emotions used against him. He shook his head, running a hand back through his hair which, by the look of it, he'd already done several times this evening.

"Oh, you know, I just killed a thing wearing my best friend's face, so I'm peachy."

Llewellyn made a face. Yeah, he should have seen that answer coming. “As if setting out with the intent to do physical harm wasn’t bad enough. Why not throw in emotional turmoil.” He responded with a widened frown as he walked over with a few glances behind him. The detective was the slightest bit anxious that the thing might just be there again without warning. How easily did they assemble themselves? How many more were there? He really hoped Rhy was at home now…

“Your best friend, my sister…” He made an uncomfortable sound, not wanting to continue the train of thought. “How would they even know to look like people we know? It’s not as though we have things in our heads here, Harry.” And it had been so damn convincing. Or maybe he’d just been too upset and annoyed to really pay attention.

"They shouldn't." He couldn't let his emotions run away with him, here. He had to keep a level head. If he didn't, they'd never piece anything together and they'd never be able to solve this thing. "Okay, they...weren't corporeal, right? They had to make vessels for themselves to have a physical form. That's got to mean something."

"No, they were made up of... Well, rubbish mostly?" Things that had been thrown out, "Maybe the odd bone or something..." He frowned, "And clearly once that's destroyed they can't do anything to us, otherwise uh- we'd still be in trouble." Llewellyn grimaced a bit, "And it must take time for them to put something together." Otherwise, again, he was sure they would already be seeing something back for another round.

"So... Spirits without corporeal form, capable of disguising themselves as people we know... Even if they shouldn't be able to." Llewellyn knew he should stop getting hung up on that part, but it was hard to not be sore about the whole thing. "I don't know if anything like this has been seen around this world before, but I certainly hadn't been warned about it like I was warned about those 'sha' things... So! It's quite possibly new."

And he's frowning more deeply, because if it was new then he would have a hard time wondering if this was related to the recent incident at the Historium.

"They could be some kind of entropy spirit." He breathed a sigh, missing Bob profoundly in that moment. Even if Bob hadn't enountered a spirit exactly like these, he'd have some idea of where to stop looking. "But they could also be powerful poltergeists." He shook his head. That didn't quite feel right, either. "They can get impressions from us, that's for sure."

Or they had some way to know things that they hadn't encountered yet. "Maybe we're looking at this from the wrong angle. Let's go over what we do know." He hooked the leather loop at the handle end of his blasting rod over the latch at his belt and started ticking things off on his fingers. "One, they aren't corporeal, but they can effect the physical world enough to collect a form around themselves. Two, they can read our memories at least enough to construct a believable glamour. Three, they really want to hurt us, and they do that by getting us alone. Am I missing anything?"

Even if Harry wasn't sure what they were dealing with, it was still something of a comfort to hear that he had ideas. The man was far more of an expert than he was on the subject. "So there are spirits that would be capable of getting that kind of information from us? I know I shouldn't be surprised, but it's unsettling..." He shook his head a little, "We definitely need to spread the word around... People should be warned that new arrivals might not necessarily be what they seem."

Because that seemed like a problem. Who knew if someone they knew had just arrived or if they were a disguised entity out for blood?

Harry was right though, and the detective tried to focus less on the residual panic from the encounter and more on the facts. Which... Was surprisingly difficult this time. "I don't believe so, other than perhaps it's hard to stop them without some considerable force? The one that hit me seemed fairly solid till you uh- exploded it with that lightning."

"There are all kinds of entities out there capable of reading our thoughts and emotions: phobophages, succubi, you name it. Vampires have teeth to get to your blood. Everything has teeth to get to what they eat." Which meant they might actually be dealing with a creature that wanted to feel on their emotions, which would actually make a good degree of sense considering the situation.

"Yeah, they don't have much in the way of preternatural defenses. It was pretty much exactly what it looked like: a walking pile of garbage."

That did make sense, of course. He didn’t like it though. It was almost funny to think the there was a time where people messing with him didn’t involve spirits or other entities that could quite literally get in his head. “So they may have had other goals in mind other than something as simple as murder... It might have been out of necessity as much as the initial angry and malicious intent it radiated in its attack.”

Llewellyn shook his head a little. Walking piles of garbage... What was next? “Hearing it out loud like that, sounds so absurd.” He let out a long breath. “So they aren’t prepared for people who have other means of defense, only the physical, that’s a weakness that could be useful for people to know until this is over. Another thing for the list of odd traits that might help identify them. If other people have encountered them too- “ Though he hoped not, “Perhaps they might have noticed other things we could add to that.”

"Maybe." He rolled a shoulder in a shrug. Unless they were able to capture one, the only thing they had was conjecture. "Or maybe they just really really hate us for some reason."

He nodded, agreeing with Watts' reasoning. "Right. Why don't you get on sharing information, and I'll see if I can't work out a way to catch one."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Closed to Rhy

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject