After the impromptu congregation in the kitchen the priest had stood from his place at the table and gone out into the backyard. From the looks of things the younger Awakened had been ministering to him. Someone had made tea and someone else had thrown a quilt over him.
He wears all black tonight. Kept his boots on even inside. Black is supposed to be slimming but on someone who is already withered down by illness and injury it does a job of concealment. Pan doesn't slink into the darkness but it is dark by the time he goes outside and chilled besides.
A few days ago he'd been out here praying for his Lord to safeguard the place against acts of aggression from the outside. He does not intend to harm those about whom he asks for insight. At least not tonight.
SidThe back door slides open and shut again behind the priest and a new collection of resonances charges the air behind him. It's curiosity that had Sid following in Pan's wake, and at least this time she wanders outside dressed like she meant to be out here. Her departure for home had been arrested by talk of school and futures and new paths, but it was something else that's stalled her still further.
Pan mentioned tether points.
"Do you have an plan to find them?" she asks by way of announcing her presence. "The tether points, that is."
PanFor someone who preaches about the necessity of trust and working together and asking for help when one needs it Mr. Echeverría is a poor practitioner of the art of relying on other people. They touched on this a few days ago. He is not invincible. Anyone who was there the night he went looking for John Brogan and came out to the cabin where Leah slept near-raving about how close the Nephandus was with his own blood staining his shirt could attest to that.
Turns out he was right and Brogan was mere miles away plotting his end game. But it might have been more productive if anyone other than Annie had known what he was doing.
The patio door opens and Pan turns towards that frantic yet liberated presence and gives her his attention.
"Yeah," he says. Glances up at the sky like he can visualize the protection he's asked for and then out towards the Node. "I gotta say, though, after what happened last time, I'm not so sure I wanna be here while I'm praying."
SidSid was there that night, though honestly she didn't know how bad things were. She was on the outskirts, outside of that triumverate that had the most contact with John Brogan and his company, but it was still an important night for Sid. Pan had been covered in his own blood, Sera had been distraught by it, and Sid and Jim lingered to have a conversation by a small fire. She's learning lately that the people she cares about and the people they care about, they're all the same. They work at things for the benefit of all and, for whatever reason, they try to do these things alone. Sid does reach out when she needs help, but she reaches out selectively.
Wrapping her arms around herself, she turns her head to follow his gaze before looking back to him. Her brows are tightened with a worried look. "There are wards here, though. Right?" she asks, because she doesn't know much about these things, when one gets right down to it. She's learning, but she still has a ways to go to full enlightenment.
PanWhen she looks back at him she finds the worried expression does not mirror itself on the priest's face. Given how bright he feels it's ironic that low light suits him better. It hides the years of hard living that let his skin betray his age. He doesn't look quite so haggard standing outside at night.
And since he doesn't look haggard he looks determined. Jim hasn't ever voiced the concern that the Chorister is delusional but Jim is the only one who's ever heard him say what it is he does when he decides to end a threat that will not go quietly.
"Yeah." He drags his hand down his jaws and clears his throat. "If the demon figures out what I'm doing I don't know how well they're gonna hold, is the problem."
SidHer upper lip disappears a moment between her teeth, those dark eyes of hers lowering away from him. "I don't...I don't know how to do any of that stuff yet. But, I'll stay with you. While you...pray. If you don't mind." Because did they not just have a conversation about her butting in when she could just ask first? And did she not say that she would try?
"Shoshannah scried away from here by herself, and that didn't..." she trails, and shakes her head. Sid does not exactly beat herself up over not being around when Shoshannah tried to look at that house on her own, there was nothing the Orphan could do. By the time she was aware of what the girl had done Sid was dealing with her own troubles. But Pan is not Shoshannah, and there are wards here placed by both the Dreamspeaker and the Chorister. That should make him harder to approach...maybe?
Pan"I heard. It didn't go too good."
This could be considered progress for both of them. He doesn't just ask the nearest person whose strength equals his and drag them off to keep an eye on him while he opens himself up to a mental assault. Sid will be able to do nothing if the wards don't hold but bear witness. Sometimes that's all one can ask of another. And she offered.
She offered and he considers it as they stand there in brief silence. At best they'll learn the Umbrood's anchors and how to get to it and this will go off without a hitch. At worst Thakinyan will break across and walk around in his skin and use him as a gateway into this world and permanent darkness will descent upon those who don't outright kill themselves in the madness that swallows up the world.
In either case:
"I'd appreciate the company. You warm enough?"
He's doing it right now, apparently.
SidHer mouth quirks, part of her weighed down by the seriousness of what happened, part of her amused by the vast understatement. Of the two Mages they know who have been attached by the umbrood, it has the strongest hold on Shoshannah. Sid shakes her head, no, no id did not go too good.
Sid knows full well there's nothing magical that she can do should the worst case scenario occur, but she doesn't rescind her offer. If nothing else, Pan won't be left sprawled unconscious in the lawn for who knows how many hours or days before he's found or wakes up.
He asks if she's warm enough and Sid's brows lift, and she nods. "Do you mind if I watch? Watch-watch, ah, Watch the Weaving." In the brief hesitation that follows Pan may begin to wonder if she means to watch so she can be prepared for some sort of countermeasure, but no, not exactly. In that hesitation, Sid grapples with herself, but eventually decides to share. "Before I moved here I...never had an opportunity to observe."
PanIn all likelihood unless another of his faith and tradition were to arrive at this moment and offer up assistance to him little exists that anyone here could do to help him in his divination. A man who asks for help only from a power higher than any on this earth is a difficult man to help at all and what he's about to do could kill him even if Sid is standing a few feet away.
She can learn from it though. Even if she can't help him she can learn. That is no small thing.
At the nod Pan turns to walk out into the gardens. She speaks again and stumbles her way through a question whose motive doesn't rely itself until after a hesitation. The priest pauses and turns back towards her when she does start to ask and she can read the curiosity on his face before the confession.
A tired smile takes its place.
"Nah," he says, "I don't mind." He indicates the Node with a tilt of his head. "Let's go."
---
Some time passes. It tends to do that. The Chantry and its grounds stand beneath the combined efforts of defensive and intense resonances. Anger and light knit between them. They will not be there in a few minutes.
Pan kneels in the grass and produces a rosary rubbed smoothed by years of prayer. It is slow going getting onto his knees. His faith descended from Catholicism. Accepting as they are there's an element of suffering inherent in a people whose salvation came about because villains crucified their jealous god's only son.
"Actiones nostras, quaesumus Domine, aspirando praeveni et adiuvando prosequere: ut cuncta nosta oratio et operatio a te semper incipiat et per ta coepta finiatur. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen."
Which is when Sid realizes they are not alone. It is not a holy eye that turns towards the priest.
SidSid breathes out a tension she did not know she was holding within her shoulders. Even she couldn't say why that simple request - that Pan let her watch the way he weaves even though they both know there is no way in this lifetime their weavings will ever intertwine - caused her that small measure of stress, but then it's gone. She follows in his wake again, though not so far as before. Pan makes his way toward the Node and Sid makes her way at his left side and only slightly behind. It's a conscious thing she does, letting him lead the way, because she is younger and healthier and in better shape than he. It's respectful.
Time passes. Pan gets himself down on his knees and Sid stands several paces back, hands kept in the pockets of her hooded sweatshirt, her weight evenly distributed between her feet. If Pan listens, if he has a bit of attention to spare, he might hear the way Sid hums, low and to herself. This low note is a small quiet thing, a faint thread that shifts subtly until some unknown harmony is reached.
Then, for Sid at least, the air around Pan begins to glow as he prays. Bright and brighter it gets, until it seems it might blind her.
There is something else, as well, a slinking dark insidious presence that brings that earlier tension back and then some. Sid does not see what Pan sees, and she doesn't hear what Pan hears, but she knows this feeling. She has felt this presence, not quite so impossibly vast, wrapped around the people she loves. Without a second thought Sid throws herself forward, a leap and a short sprint, to hurl herself bodily in front of the priest.
As if that might help. But so help her it's not getting its claws on this one, too.
PanAt the end of his prayer comes the knowledge that they are not alone and Pan does not immediately come back into himself but he is not ignorant to his surroundings either. He has a matter of seconds to recognize what is about to happen and one could argue that he does this without using a focus. Touch is one of his foci. He just rarely uses it because no one is ever around when he's praying.
Tonight is a night of rare things.
Sid walked out here on his left side. He reaches up with his right hand, grabs her wrist with his right hand, hauls her back to his right side as he says, "Domine, ad adiuvandum nos festina!"
It salvages his sanity but it doesn't do a goddamn thing about the fact that Thakinyan saw him. If she looks back at him the priest has the rosary in his left hand and it isn't shielding his eyes. He has the hand over his heart because it's pounding. Got a little distracted from his panic by the fact that Sid went walking right towards something that could shatter her mind.
Back in the yard as he is Pan blinks like he'd forgotten where he was. He's breathing hard and fast and his eyes are wide but he is not lost to an oncoming panic. The Chantry's spirit guardian has her hackles raised and her eyes turned fierce into the dark.
Pan lets go of Sid's arm and stares into the darkness after it.
"Santo Cristo... it's okay. It's okay, it's okay, no está aquí. He saw me. ...he saw me. Dios ya no está protegiendo este lugar..."
Shit, says his tone. He blows a breath out hard to calm himself down. Praying won't do any good if he's panicking.
SidIt is entirely possible that by trying to stand physically before the priest Sid would grant access to her mind and her body to the umbrood Thakinyan. It's possible that the warding put in place by Zoe Li at Sid's request - as a precaution though she hoped it would never be necessary - would protect her at least in part from possession. It's even possible that some element of these facts ran through Sid's brain, prompting her to action.
But the truth is, if there had been any thought to Sid's own protectiions it was subconscious. Pan grabbed her by the wrist and hauled her to his other side, the contact helping him to focus a desperate defense. Sid stood her ground, like she might be able to offer some kind of protection of her own. And there is a Bear as well, who probably is wondering what the actual fuck this tiny little human-thing is doing.
Pan isn't the only one whose heart is racing. She stands with him, staring upward into a sky that is dark and full of tiny bright pinpricks of starlight, a sky that a moment ago seemed cast in total darkness. Moments melt away into new ones, ones that are further and further from that moment when it felt like the goddamn Eye of Sauron was upon them. Sid is far, far from okay, but that doesn't keep her from looking to others first. Tentatively, she rests her hand on Pan's upper arm. He can feel the warmth of her palm bleed through the fabric of his shirt.
"It's gone," she says quietly. Breathing in deep to steady herself, she lets it out slowly before she says, "What happens now? Were you able to find the tethers?"
Pan"I found Montanari entonces I saw Keller. Tenemos a, a, how you call it, a home theater inside the house, they're both there now."
It would make their lives easier if those were the only two tethers for this creature but after that he does not and will not state with certainty that they are the only two. In that order, though. He saw the woman and he saw Keller. He saw no other tethers.
"She's feeding the sigils at the house with her blood, has to go outside to do it, and Keller, as long as the demon is latched onto him... it's stronger than him, yeah? no sobrevivirá para largo él, looks like it's sucking the life outta him..."
Nothing he can do about it right this second. Pan draws another deep breath to calm his ass down and works the rosary beads with his fingers as he finds his place kneeling on the grass again. He's not leaving this place defenseless.
SidSid's heart sinks a little when Pan says they're inside. Inside is the last place they need for them to be. Inside is their turf, though at this point Sid's beginning to wonder if they could handle this even if Montanari and Keller were somehow lured off that property. The creature's reach is vast and even from a distance able to wreak terrible havoc.
She shakes her head, though, to clear it of these useless thoughts. Immediately she begins to analyze this new data, turning it over in her mind and worrying at it as she tries to make her mind which has been trained to find solutions and answers to scientific theories turn toward the possibility for combat.
"What do you mean outs-" she cuts off abruptly, watching him curiously as he gets himself back down to his knees. She has so many questions, but the most important one at the moment is, "What're you doing?" She doesn't mean for it to be, but it's difficult to keep her voice, which wants to lift and fire off at the speed of her thoughts, curious rather than accusatory.
PanBefore he can clarify what he meant by 'outside' Sid shoots off a question. He sighs a deep sigh not of frustration but of refocused energy. He'd answered this question earlier but it was in his panicked native tongue.
Sid doesn't speak Spanglish. He takes another breath to slow himself down. Translate it out of his pious parlance and into the common tongue.
"It broke through everything. The wards Shoshannah cast and the ban against offensive acts I put up earlier. If we don't get 'em back up fast, only thing keeping anything out now is the guardian of the place."
SidThere was a time when Sid studied Spanish. In junior high. Which was quite a few years ago. She knows a handful of individual words but ask her to translate anything that isn't the location of the nearest bathroom or library and she's at a loss. At least she understood his prayers, if only academically.
Pan has to repeat himself, and Sid's eyes widen. She breathes in quickly and looks back at the house, half expecting to see a fireball descend from the sky or that terrible dark presence slowly wrap itself around the house. "Do you..." she looks at him and her mind immediately changes direction. "Should I look for Shoshannah? She set up some of those wards before."
PanShould she look for Shoshannah.
Nobody ever calls Shoshannah to come help when things go pear-shaped. They call the strongest person in their contact list and when that doesn't work then they try to fix the situation on their own and when that doesn't work everybody panics and runs towards the nearest person they trust until they can crowd-source an answer.
Shoshannah knows more about spirits than the priest does. Anglicans are not known for their reclusive knowledge of occult workings or their participation in exorcism rituals. That's a straight-up Vatican thing. The Chorister considers the request for a few seconds and then he nods quick and silent.
"Yes," he says. "Fuera. Go."
The rosary beads click between his fingers as he starts to pray to his god to forgive him his pride and protect this place.
SerafínePerception + Awareness
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 2, 3, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )
Sid[can my awareness be used to track a Dreamspeaker? Let's find out! Paranoia totally counts]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 4, 6) ( success x 1 )
Sid[FUCK. YOU. trying again.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1 [WP]
SidSid nods once, and then pauses. She tries to expand her senses, to reach out with her awareness to find that angry defensiveness that is a beacon of Shoshannah. She gets the vaguest sense of others. Pan right beside her is a pale light. From the house there is a storm far off, something shifting slightly, and something else that seems familiar but is too vague for Sid to pick out clearly.
Panic rising, Sid turns fully away from the priest at his prayers and she expands her consciousness, forcing her mind to see in a way that only those with minds cracked open can see and she...finally...finds her.
Without a word, Sid takes off...somewhere. In whatever direction will take her to the Dreamspeaker.
[sorry, but dinner and a movie is calling my name. thanks for the scene!]
SerafíneNeither of them were likely alert enough to hear the tires-on-gravel but perhaps the sweep-of-headlights in the drive was visible from the backyard. The coronal flare and then the sudden cessation of light, the lingering afterburn of a half-graven image on the back of one's eyelids.
Sera circles the house, approaching the back patio, the steaming heat of the springs, the resonance of the node from this circuitous, half-trod path instead of from inside the house. Comes scrabbling down a slope since the patio is on a lower level than the garage, with Dan trailing after her, his first question dissipated, his second lingering somewhere in the back of his throat. Sera's an athletic little thing and the scrabble down the slope is perfectly within her talents but he wants to hover.
Maybe there's a retaining wall and she jumps the last few feet onto the patio and he eases himself after her, the wallet chain with his keys attached jingling louder than the remnants of that whispered conversation.
Louder than the click of rosary beads but Sera hears those just the same.
A tight, luminous startlement chases across her sharp features. Sera stops short of Pan, her body language taut, her attention touching briefly on Sid disappearing into the house. She wants to throw herself at him or something but the air feels sharp and thick and he's praying like that, all intent.
So Sera, she doesn't say a word.
Pan[awareness?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )
PanThe priest is out there for a very long time.
First he prays in his Latin for the Lord to keep out the work of demons that would seek to harm the people in this place and he spends over half an hour doing that. And the light in the place comes up bright and powerful like to beat back anything dark that would come their way.
He isn't done though. His pride got them into this. He is stubborn and stronger than his body left him looking. He prays then for the Lord to keep out eyes that have no business seeing what they do in this place. To watch over and keep them. That ward is not so strong as the ban he placed but he is getting tired. Over an hour he was out praying. Longer.
His final prayer is for the Lord to shield the minds of His children and keep their dreams safe from the mind-eater loose in the world. And it holds. He is tired when it is over but he is not exhausted.
Behind him he can feel Sera's resonance. Weak but he knows her by now. They've survived enough else together that he knows her without having to turn around.
"Serafíne," he calls. Knelt in the grass and tired as he is he does not stand but he does not sound anything other than content now. "Mija, venga acá."
SerafíneHe prays for forever. She does not move. Or rather: she does move, but does not go far, and does not sit down and the cold does not seem to affect her anymore than it does him for the first few minutes, and then her teeth start chattering and Dan slides a hand onto her bicep to urge her to come back in and Sera, she shrugs him off with a look that lances, back and up at him and he swallows a half-curse but the resonance of Pan's Work is probably strong enough that even Dan can feel it now, bomb-blast-bright, so he disappears inside and returns with a fleece blanket and a bit later with a travel mug of Darjeeling fragrant in the sharp winter air.
Sera just does whatever it is she is doing. Standing guard or watching or waiting or something with a bright and present patience you'd never credit her with having. There is a stitch of fear between her shoulderblades and a thousand other half-acknowledged things in her gut and she knows the rhythm of Latin if not the meaning of the words themselves, the way it is intoned and droned and invoked and -
Mija, venga acá he tells her, so of course she comes to him. Brings the mug of cooling tea with her and she means to give it to him but her first instinct is to step in behind him and wrap her arms around him and bend her mouth to the crown of his head, because she does not quite believe that he is real. The tea in her hand is an afterthought of an offering, held against his shoulder as her arms come around him. She does not ask him what he was doing; just how:
"¿Estás bien?"
- murmured into the gray-shot black of his hair.
Pan"Estoy cansado."
Of course he's tired. He sought out the demon and its points of attachment to this plane of existence where it does not belong and he scared the daylights out of Sid and then he rebuilt the scant protection this place has after the demon busted through them as if they were made of sand.
Rare that he asks for help or admits to fatigue or accepts comfort offered. If she does not recognize that he leans back into her arms no one would blame her. His eyes are closed but Pan can feel the mug against his shoulder and smell the tea beneath his nose. With the hand that does not still hold his rosary he reaches up to hug the Cultist's arms where they lock across his chest and take the mug from her.
"¿Cómo has estado?"
Serafíne"Of course you are, praying like that." There is admonishment in her tone, though it is not the brutal, excoriating sort. Some spasm of emotion in the back of her throat that she gives herself over to without sinking. Her arms tighten around him and she surrenders the tea easily enough.
Feels him rock back into her skinny frame and it makes her close her eyes and go all breathing-still for a moment or two or three.
"I don't know why God needs you on your knees." Her lips compress and her mouth seals and she breaths him in one more time; remembers his solidity and finds it changed; remembers his strength and finds it winnowed.
"I'm fine," Sera says, "I'm brilliant." Both lies but what the fuck did you think she was going to say when she found her still-wounded priest praying like that in the back garden.
"It's fucking cold out here. Let's get you inside."
Sera kisses the crown of his head one last time, then reluctantly lets him go, circling him to slip her right arm through his left. She's put on some weight and looks 1000% better than she did the night she visited him at Kat's place way out in the country but how the hell does she think she's going to be able to support him? Hardly matters: he's tired.
PanShe doesn't know why God needs him on his knees and he laughs a low laugh at the easy blasphemy in her question. His god is a jealous god and men have long crafted signs of devotion that He might recognize their piousness but the angel who brought Pan back after he strung himself up by his neck in a prison bathroom - she's the one who taught him to pray on his knees when he'd fucked up once already.
That sharp smell that comes to a person when they're outside too long and their body starts to sweat from all the shivering trying to keep warm clings to his clothes. It was warm earlier. He's wearing all black and it is cold now. It snapped back at them despite the sun's blessing. As wrapped up in his prayer as he was he did not even notice.
This is why people worry about him.
She takes up a place on his left side and works her arm through his and he does not grunt or grimace as he gets to his feet but he is stiff from the cold and the time spent in that penitent stance. Once he's standing Pan does not lean on her. He doesn't let go of her arm though.
"I ain't heard from Jim since I been back," he says apropos of nothing. "Have you?"
Serafíne"Drink your tea," Sera instructs him as he gains his feet. Oh, she meant the question, the easy blasphemy and the querelous wtf of it right now. She has always been a little-bit-mad at his God, and the sight of him praying on his knees in the garden, well. The sharpest sort of twinge. Whom else could she blame?
Him. "And come inside. I'll have Dan make another pot."
Pan neither leans or her, nor lets go of her arm, and Sera settles in close to him, companionably and comfortably. Not that he has ever known her to be anything but invasive. Not that he can know how solid she has made herself, how closely she holds herself with most other people these days. How rarely she Works.
"I haven't seen him since - " A sharp breath; something contracted, closed off to the taut shape of her shoulders. She is not sure - briefly - whether or not she might be able to breathe in again. And then she does: it always happens so. One breath after the other. " - since I got sick. But I haven't seen many people. He threw away his phone for a while, when you were in the hospital. Then he came back, I don't know."
Sera's babbling; what information Pan manages to glean from a handful of half-strung thoughts is questionable but Sera's always bringing him inside, reaching for the door with her free hand, smelling the sharp scent of his sweat in the air.
"God you are freezing. Will it do me any good to tell you to pray inside on the carpet at fucking least? Or get Rosa on your case?"
Pan[WE'RE GOING TO EMAIL LIZ HAS SCHOOL IN THE MORNING <3]
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