The Barker Street Irregulars case 2 A vision in pink

[Stella Gaslight]

"I figured we were in for a reckoning sooner or later."  Celia said trying to wipe the paint from her face with a well worn handkerchief.  "Is that a summoning ring?' She said trying to follow a pattern spelled out in symbols as big as horses.

[walking stick]

"Here, dear" said Beety, handing Celia a telescope, "Hold it backwards to look through." 

Screaming defiance Verity threw quick impressionist effects, tears streaming down her face  "Vandals!", water lilies in a pond "Visigoths"!, a weeping willow, "Philistines" a flowered trellis that somehow held the attackers back a little longer.  Any attempt at stopping these madmen was worth the effort.  No sense of perspective, proportion or integrity and they wanted to rule art and life.

Using the backwards telescope Celia viewed the emerging pattern.  No wonder Verity was distraught.

[Stella Gaslight]

Celia shuddered as the pattern came in focus.  "They are summoning both courts to a crowning.  No one has stupid enough to try that for one hundred years.  They are making a frost king.  No wonder Morgan is a bit miffed. They are trying to go over her head.  They have to know that getting both courts to agree is nearly impossible."  She looked out at the rain that had slacked off but there were still clouds thick and ready.  "It is a trap the whole thing is a trap to get even more magic under their control."

[Ranger Reid]

Reid smiled a dark smile and laid his hand on his katana at his hip.   "What would happen if one of those circles collapsed?   Say, if something absorbed the power from one point in the circle?   I think I can do it if you guys can keep them from painting me in to a corner."

[Stella Gaslight]

"If we brake the circle then the fae can call on the castor.  And some of them are down right nasty when called."  Celia said with a wicked smile then turned and looked at Reid. "They are going to try their hardest to stop us but if we can all hold together we can win.  We need a shield line keeping the other side's magic away from Reid. If we can filter the power we drain back to Thomas then they will have trouble calling on it to give us trouble but I am not sure how to do that on the fly."

[CPT_J_Percell]

Tobias drew his revolver and checked that it was loaded before drawing his sword. "Don't know about a magic barrier, but I will stop any physical manifestation that tries to get close.

[Ranger Reid]

Reid drew his sword.   "I think I can drain the energy from one point in the circle, and that will collalse it. "
He also handed his tanto to Celia  "The energy will come shooting out the dagger.   Use it."

After months of inactivity the ranger should have been weak or unsteady.  Instead he felt strong and powerful.   "I owe something to the Morrigan too I think." he thought.

[Stella Gaslight]

"I have an idea.  Thomas stay by me, Luis leached a lot out of you I can give it back but it is going to be tricky.  Ladies will you help me build a sort of conservatory around all of us.  What I want is something that changes harmful magic in to warm wholesome light.  I can call on grandmother's iron roses to reinforce the glass."  Celia could see misty forms starting flow in to the circle.  They would have to hurry.

[walking stick]

"Beety, look in my bag for the chalks and the architectural studies in the blue sketchbook."  said Verity, adjusting her throws so the effect was that of hothouse glass blurring their attackers view. Beety gathered details from the sketchbook to create the shape of a handsome glass roofed sunroom. 

[Stella Gaslight]

The sun room looked like a chalk drawing come to life but inside it smelled of earth and the green beginnings of life.  "Come to the center Thomas and don't be afraid of the thorns."  Roses were starting to spread from her feet as Reid started draining the circle.  Celia let out a sigh of pleasure as the air warmed and started to dispel a chill in her bones so deep she was sure it had always been there

[MWBailey]

Marley and Bill had been led into a cul-de-sac away from teh others by the sightg and scent of cherries; the people who had taken ove rteh painting were certainly thinking on their feet. Marley finally twigged to what was going on, though, when Bill made an offhand remark to Beety that went unanswered; both of the ravens (for Marley was back in Raven form, the easier to keep up with Bill) looked arpund thenselves then,l anxd realized tehy had come a long way along toward a trap that was beginning to shut around them. Marley desperately racked his brain for siomething that would fend off and the trap and make escape possible, but was at a loss until Bill mentioned watching oil painters in Hyde Park and teh stink of their turpentine and turpentine. Turps! of course! Bill, you're a certifiable genius!

"Wozzat?" Bill queried, "Wha'd I do, ah?"

marley applied a large dollop of power and will, and suddenly turpentimne flowed dowmn teh wall s around them, revealing a hallway whose walls were rapidly dissolvig away; across teh new;ly- exposed expanse, they saw Celia and teh Ranger and best of all, Beety, fihghting teh cold and a celtic knotwork pattern-entwined magical grid.

"I do hope we're not too late," Marley said as he and Bill soared in, smelling rather strongly of tyrpentine. "have you tried paint thinner yet?"

[Stella Gaslight]

"Come enjoy the sun." Celia said building a bench from the rose vines.  "No friend to London has to worry about the thorns so lets rest for a moment. Because pretty soon they are going to figure out what we are doing and attack in earnest."  Thomas was glowing from within like stained glass as power flowed up from his feet.  It was like he had not been filling in his proper outlines before.

[MWBailey]

Marley morphed back to human form, and pulled a spanner from an inside pocket of his vest, rapped it on the ground thrice, and transmogrified it into yet another spanner sword.

"What stumps me is, where do ye keep pullin' them wrenches from?" Bill asked in a slightly miffed voice. "By roights, ye should be sinkin' inter th' mud o' London by now, if ye's got s' many of 'em..."

[Ranger Reid]

Reid leaned forward and drove the point of the katana towards the closest point of the circle of power.    At first there was no reaction.  Then there was an audible POP!  and the paints and lines of energy started streaming in to the tip of the blade.

"Uh oh....  this might be more dramatic than I thought.   Be careful where you point the dagger.   I am not sure what form the energy will be in when it comes out."  he said.       All around them the group could hear and feel a thundering vibration start to build.

[MWBailey]

"...That can't be right," Marley said, worry and a degree of suspicion in his voice. "That sundial in the courtyard en't that powerful. The Burgesses' clock should be regulating the gyres, anyway...

[Stella Gaslight]

Celia eld the blade like one would hold a fire hose.light burst from the tip.  It was blinding and hot as a summer day and she was only letting a trickle out.  "This is more than time magic.They must be putting everything in this spell."

[MWBailey]

Marley saw the danger; the power in the tanto might conceivably slowly erode the control of flow that Celia was exerting; the face-baking summer heat seemed to be about to ramp up. "Bill?"

"I sees it, she needs a shield or the heat'll burn her, could make 'er lose control, and tha'd be bad for everyone and everything," Bill answered. He flicked a wing, and suddenly the heat scorching Celia's face and hands lessened.

"Jus' a bit 'o air to buffer th' sunfire, milady. Shouldn't affect the flow, but it'll make it easier tae concentrate," Bill said. "Tall, pale an' turpy 'ere coulda done it, but 'e's busy lookin' masculine."

"Argh, sod off, Cheeky, You're better at that stuff than I, obviously," Markley retorted.

"Ye still stink loik ye fell in Rembrandt's paint pots, though."

"And you don't!?"

[Stella Gaslight]

There was so much power it made Celia nervous. This greenhouse wasn't enough to hold it and just letting it go could play merry hell with her careful balancing.  How could she make sure it all got to the proper places it had been stolen from?  "I need something to shepherd this magic back to where it belongs or it may just burn all of us.  Any ideas?"

[MWBailey]

"I could try the tracer spell I use for locating dabbler clocks, revamped for delivery and coupled with a conduit grid," Marley suggested, already working on the conduit construct. "I took the liberty of starting the grid, seeing how much power you were dealing with..."

[Stella Gaslight]

"That just may work if you are willing to help me build something."  Celia slowly and carefully rubbed a finder on her forehead when she removed her finger a black thread came with it.  She smiled with satisfaction before seeing the art magic she would have never tried this.  Celia was learning things she had never thought of.  This magic was playful a saying made real and it had power.  Celia felt like she was growing so much stronger and it was only partly because of the eminence power flowing through her. Shaking with effort of holding on one handed she quickly touched Marley's hand transferring the string then grabbed the  dagger and held on for dear life.  "Use this to build your grid and it will hold no matter what we send through it."

[Ranger Reid]

The sky began to look like a wall mural painting getting hosed off before it could dry.    Colors were streaming and running, all flowing towards the Ranger and his blade.    The rumbling in the distance seemed to grow stronger until the very ground shook.

Reid called out (shouting to be heard)  "I think we are approaching critical mass or something!   I don't know if this circle is going to explode or implode!  Either way I think the backlash will fix our friends!"      Windows in buildings nearby began to crack from the straining energies.

Reid backed up under the strain, and felt Celia's presence behind him.   He smiled a grim smile.  Whatever happened, it was worth it to be with her again.

A set of Celtic runes racing down his arm flashed red searing a brand into him.   Reid winced.  He didn't understand completely, but he felt like he had made the Morrigan angry again. 

[MWBailey]

Marley wove and built, with his will and with the thread given to him by Celia, as he had never done before, hurriedly yet deftly; it was like the constructiion grid of a sundial. Not just the mundane grid that showed the diallist where to place the gnomon and the hour lines, but also the grid of a Temporal mechanic, that captured the magic inherent in the site of the dial, and embodied the control, and containment, and strengthening of the bonds that held the will and rage of nature to the stricture of measured time's causality. Within the construct, both Reid's and Celia's flows were constrained and channelled; at the still-weaving and -knitting end of it, as if it were the end of a hose-pipe that was forming itself around a torrent, the flows raged forth, but become more and more controlled as the grid-construct took shape and gained the upper hand. The sweat of effort and concentration formed on Marley's brow and coursed down his limbs and body under his clothes, as the grid neared completion.

"Fear th' Morrigan, Lad," Bill said to Reid, his voice sounding as if it were spoken through clenched teeth instead of the beak of a young raven, one eye shut tight in... concentration, perhaps? "But accept 'er pow'r. Be glad offit, not every man serves 's 'er tool an' lives ter tell uvvit 's you 'ave. Be glad you're not a bird b'cause ovvit." The bird, or rather the being within the bird's body, gave energy to the Ranger and to Celia, to bolster their strength against the flow of power.

[Stella Gaslight]

Celia was sweating and breathing heavy almost back to back with Reid.  They reinforced each other as the sky fell down.  She could feel the spell give way with a crack that was louder than thunder.  Robed figures swarmed but it too late the spell fell apart  and the sun came out.  She sagged weary and worn as the robed figures tried to sling spells for revenge but the glass made them in to comfort the gunfire was still a problem however.

[CPT_J_Percell]

Crack, crack, crack, Tobias held his sword in one hand using is to support his revolver as he fired. He wasn't any good with magic attacks, but he could handle the physical and gun shots.

[Ranger Reid]

The flow of power seemed infinite, but it wasn't.   With a resounding crash the spell broke.    All around the group their opponents fell.   The backlash of losing control of such magic was too much.   It literally broke their minds.

As the paint and energy ended, Reid looked around at his friends.   They looked like they had been beaten with wet paint brushes.   In the strange silence, the ranger's voice seemed too loud as he asked  "Is it over?"