Human Worlds are Strange [Active/Open]

[a_sinful_rose]

Characters: Rozalin and anyone else?
Time: Evening
Location: S. Wabash Ave. Not far from the Blackstone hotel.
Content: Rozalin wandering around.
Format: Prose
Warnings: Haughtiness? lol

Comments

Time: Before Adell and Rozy meet?

[theblackstaff]

The incident with his wards had annoyed (and worried) Ebenezar, and he'd spent a good chunk of his time afterward trying to figure out what was wrong and how to fix the wards. The trouble was that his magic still felt off here, power coming harder to hand and more troublesome to control. Which meant fine detection was out.

Ebenezar walked around the Blackstone Hotel with a stack of flyers in one hand and his staff in the other. It wasn't as tall as Hoss', but it worked as a fine enough walking stick. He turned a corner and raised an eyebrow at the young woman looking lost. She was dressed outlandishly by his measures, but then so were half the inhabitants of this Chicago. And she was staying at the Blackstone, which meant she was under his protection, nominally.

"Afternoon, miss," he said gruffly, giving her a courteous nod of the head as he slapped one of the flyers up on the wall, infusing the page with a tiny portion of his will.

Re: Time: Before Adell and Rozy meet?

[a_sinful_rose]

Having walked out of the hotel, Rozalin was uncertain of which way she should head. She probably did look quite lost, standing there looking around. The voice caught her slightly of guard. She hadn't noticed the man there.

"O-oh... Hello," she replied, pausing to give him a glance. Rozalin wasn't sure what to make of him, as she watched him place the paper on the wall. Why ever was he doing that? What possible purpose could papers on the wall like that serve?

This place really was very different from Veldime.

[theblackstaff]

Letting go of the thin trickle of magic he'd called up, Ebenezar looked at the girl again, taking in the confused look she was giving him and the flyer he'd slapped up. There had been a stack of them at the hotel, for some band or something called Soccer Octopus. Ebenezar had merely repurposed them, forging a connection between the oneness of the stack of papers, all from the same pulp, the same trees, and infused them with his will so that they could be linked, like a thin magic tripwire along the exterior of the hotel. Once he'd finished papering the sides of the hotel with them, they would alert him to any non-human entities that tried to cross.

Not that he would explain all that to the girl. "You look lost," he said instead. "Anything you need help with?"

[a_sinful_rose]

Whoops. She hadn't been particularly subtle at watching him, had she?

"O-oh, no. No, not really," she admitted, hastily, looking a bit embarrassed. "I was simply curious about what you are doing."

It did look rather strange, in her defense.

[theblackstaff]

The girl's embarrassment softened Ebenezar's grumbling, at least a little. "Just putting up some protection for the people staying in the hotel," he answered, despite his best efforts still more than a little gruff. Maybe it came of dealing with nothing but cattle and the Senior Council.

He rapped a knuckle against the wall of the Blackstone. "If we all have to be dragged into this fool place against our will, best to keep people safe from the vampires and faeries." Not that he resented it. Well, just a little.

Maybe a lot.

Ebenezar shook his head; no need to ramble on like an old man to the girl. "Name's McCoy. What should I call you, missie?"

[a_sinful_rose]

Rozalin eye'd the paper skeptically, not really taking much notice of his gruffness. She couldn't begin to figure out just how that flimsy piece of paper could protect anyone.

"Oh, I... I am Rozalin," she said, pausing a moment on the words. She'd always added how she was the daughter of Overlord Zenon, but, well, that was not the case, was it? Not that it likely would have meant much to this human, but she once would have stated the fact anyways. It was another change to get used to.

[theblackstaff]

"Nice to meet you." Finally realizing he should be giving more than a cursory glance at the girl he was having a conversation with, Ebenezar turned his attention fully to her. This place made him edgy and his instincts tried to keep his attention on the building and its perimeters, but he did have manners .

Ebenezar blinked a little at the girl's dress when he looked her over again. He'd attributed her appearance to the strangeness of the place, of Chicago, of the damn decade, but... Were her dress sleeves moving? He frowned again. "You ain't from around here, are you, gir-- Rozalin?"

[a_sinful_rose]

"I would have thought that was rather obvious," Rozalin replied, laying a hand on her hip as she noticed his expression change.

"No, I'm not. I'm from Veldime. I doubt you've heard of it," she explained, highly doubting anyone here would have heard of it. It was, after all, a rather backwater little planet, although she was starting to wonder if, somehow, this planet was more isolated than even Veldime. They didn't seem to even have a dimensional gate, after all.

[theblackstaff]

"Less obvious than you'd think, around here," Ebenezar muttered to himself. At the name, he ran through his knowledge of places both in the mortal world and in the Nevernever, which had grown substantially since the war. Veldime... No, nothing.

"Can't say I have," he answered. "Unless you can tell me if its here or in the Nevernever. Or what you are, less you're one of those fool children who dress up and wander around trying to scare old men." He peered closely at Rozalin. What he'd taken to just be an outlandish outfit while focused on his spellwork now looked... attached, for lack of a better word.

[a_sinful_rose]

"No, it's an entirely different planet. It was once a human world, but it was transformed into a netherworld by a curse," Rozalin replied, fully expecting him not to understand any of it, but since he seemed to want to know...

"As for myself, well, I'm a demon. Can't you tell?" she said, with a raised brow. She'd never met anyone who didn't know a demon when they saw one. Then again, Veldime didn't have any humans, save Adell, to not know what demons looked like, thanks to the curse. Or at least, it hadn't. Would the curse be reversing itself now? Was Adell's family all human again? She couldn't think of any reason why they wouldn't be now.

[theblackstaff]

Curses were things Ebenezar understood well. After all, he'd not too long ago just stared his own morality in the face (again) at the hand of a blood curse. And with the Senior Council's extensive knowledge as well as his own collection of journals, Ebenezar could guess at the scope of the power necessary to turn an entire world into a playground for demons, and a cold chill ran down his spine at the thought. "Must've been some curse," he said instead, frowning. He didn't try to think about reaching another planet through the Nevernever, even if it were (had been) a human one

[a_sinful_rose]

"Do I look like a summoner?" Rozalin replied, sounding exasperated he was even suggesting such a thing. Not that a summoner could be picked out by their appearance, but... well either way, she wasn't one. She wasn't even sure how he could even possibly think she had something to do with this.

"Although, I'm not sure even a summoner could do this," she added on as an after thought. It took lots of preparation and item gathering just to summon one demon. Rozalin couldn't begin to imagine how much power and things it would take to summon this many people. It had to be extraordinarily complicated. At least, she assumed so. Adell's mom was the only one Rozalin knew who could say for sure.

"Either way, I'm as trapped here as everyone else."