Intro, overly long.
I'd not been to the Nightside before, but I thought it couldn't really be all that different from anywhere else I've been. After all, there's nowhere that can possibly be more of an assault to the senses than Nuovo Rio Grande, right? Wrong. I stepped through the door in the back of the upscale restaurant, the door with the notice saying 'staff only' that I was blithely ignoring, and had to clutch onto the wall for a moment. The Power of this place was like a swift sledgehammer to the sensitive tender parts of my brain. I swayed slightly, groping for a connection to the Power of the Nightside, trying to ground myself in the flow.
This was going to hurt like a bitch. I let my own Power dribble out along the strands of throbbing life nearest to me, spreading my senses out and trying to get a feel for the place. It was unlike anything I've ever encountered. As my own Power sank into the well of the Nightside I felt the familiar rush of heat over my skin, the sensation of freefall in the pit of my stomach that accompanied attunement to any new place. I took a few deep breaths and reminded myself to just relax into it. The backlash would be a bitch - but it always was.
After enough of my Power had been fed into the well, I relaxed and let it flood back in. It slammed into me, harder than I'd encountered before, attuned now to the Nightside. As the magic flowed back in, it forcefully re-wrote my own power-channels, tapping me into the Power of this place and handing me a lovely migraine to go along with it. I pressed my fingers to my temples and grimaced. I had the feeling that the Nightside would have been enough to give me a headache without me inviting one - but I also had the feeling that I would need the edge attunement would give me.
I shook my head slightly and looked around me. I had good intelligence that my quarry had passed into the Nightside through this door, but I couldn't catch even the faintest trace of his psychic footprints on the air. Damn. Still, at least there was that little aspect of the Nightside that I had been warned of - it was always three in the morning. And I am very definitely nocturnal, like many Necromances. Daylight makes me sluggish and grumpy. I pursed my lips, and wondered where to begin. What I neede, as usual when I had no leads, was a bar.
And conveniently, there was one nearby, I could feel the energies pulsing out of it. Bars are unmistakable, even ones with such peculiar clientele as this one had. I pushed open the door, and descended the clanging metal steps into the bar looking as if I had every right to be there (I hoped), ignored the stares of the occasional patron, and ordered a drink. Eventually. Once the black-clad, terminally angry barkeep deigned to notice me, at least. Still, if he was slow, at least he didn't stare at the tattoo with its winking emerald on my cheek with the sort of expression that usually meant that someone was only serving me because they were legally required to do so. I hauled myself onto a barstool in between a faintly smouldering humanoid with a clay mug of something that fumed and bubbled gently and a ghost drinking the memory of. . . whisky, I thought? I had a mexican beer with a label so water-damaged as to be illegible. I took a tentative sip, and was pleased and surprised at how good it tasted. Leaning back on the edge of the bar, I surveyed the room, getting a feel for the 'people' in it. Wow. Gabe had been right when she'd told me I wouldn't be prepared for the Nightside. Question was, was it prepared for me?
This was going to hurt like a bitch. I let my own Power dribble out along the strands of throbbing life nearest to me, spreading my senses out and trying to get a feel for the place. It was unlike anything I've ever encountered. As my own Power sank into the well of the Nightside I felt the familiar rush of heat over my skin, the sensation of freefall in the pit of my stomach that accompanied attunement to any new place. I took a few deep breaths and reminded myself to just relax into it. The backlash would be a bitch - but it always was.
After enough of my Power had been fed into the well, I relaxed and let it flood back in. It slammed into me, harder than I'd encountered before, attuned now to the Nightside. As the magic flowed back in, it forcefully re-wrote my own power-channels, tapping me into the Power of this place and handing me a lovely migraine to go along with it. I pressed my fingers to my temples and grimaced. I had the feeling that the Nightside would have been enough to give me a headache without me inviting one - but I also had the feeling that I would need the edge attunement would give me.
I shook my head slightly and looked around me. I had good intelligence that my quarry had passed into the Nightside through this door, but I couldn't catch even the faintest trace of his psychic footprints on the air. Damn. Still, at least there was that little aspect of the Nightside that I had been warned of - it was always three in the morning. And I am very definitely nocturnal, like many Necromances. Daylight makes me sluggish and grumpy. I pursed my lips, and wondered where to begin. What I neede, as usual when I had no leads, was a bar.
And conveniently, there was one nearby, I could feel the energies pulsing out of it. Bars are unmistakable, even ones with such peculiar clientele as this one had. I pushed open the door, and descended the clanging metal steps into the bar looking as if I had every right to be there (I hoped), ignored the stares of the occasional patron, and ordered a drink. Eventually. Once the black-clad, terminally angry barkeep deigned to notice me, at least. Still, if he was slow, at least he didn't stare at the tattoo with its winking emerald on my cheek with the sort of expression that usually meant that someone was only serving me because they were legally required to do so. I hauled myself onto a barstool in between a faintly smouldering humanoid with a clay mug of something that fumed and bubbled gently and a ghost drinking the memory of. . . whisky, I thought? I had a mexican beer with a label so water-damaged as to be illegible. I took a tentative sip, and was pleased and surprised at how good it tasted. Leaning back on the edge of the bar, I surveyed the room, getting a feel for the 'people' in it. Wow. Gabe had been right when she'd told me I wouldn't be prepared for the Nightside. Question was, was it prepared for me?