Vancouver - Various Locations - Sunday Morning through Afternoon
Following Leah's guidance, they found a shallow hole in an alley off Hastings Street between Gore and Main. The Chinese restaurant along one side was just opening, so they waited while a bored young man in kitchen whites tossed yellow plastic bags of garbage into the Dumpster.
“Why do these kinds of metaphysical things always happen in alleys,” Tony wondered as they walked past the Dumpster. “Why not in the middle of the TransCanada? Or a meter over the sock counter at Sears? Or in someone’s apartment?”
[Parts of this post and the comments are from chapter eight of Smoke and Ashes.]
Merlin
"They usually happen in the forest or somewhere hidden in the castle back home," Merlin informed him cheerfully.
Leah
"What makes you think they don't happen those places, though?" Leah pointed out. "All it needs is a place that something's missing."
She looked around, smiling softly when she spotted the weak spot. "Manhole, no cover," she said, pointing at it. "Can you see it?"
Tony
"I see the hole," Tony said, squinting at the spot where she'd pointed.
Merlin
"It's very... hole-y," Merlin confirmed slowly.
Leah
Leah gave Merlin a look, one that said, very clearly, "Not so much living up to the name, are you?" She did, thankfully, refrain from actually saying this aloud.
"Okay, so, the hole." She waved at it vaguely. "Those runes I showed you for getting rid of the demons? Push those through one at a time."
Tony
"The manhole?" Tony frowned.
Merlin
Merlin nodded in agreement with Tony on that one. "We're closing a small hole in the ground? That's it?"
Leah
"... Not the manhole," Leah said, barely resisting the urge to facepalm. "The hole. Where the manhole is. The -- look, it's like a heat-shimmer kind of thing?"
Tony
Tony looked again, and then tried looking just past the manhole and finally caught a glimpse of it from the corner of his eye. A heat shimmer that wasn't a heat shimmer. "Okay, I see it," he said. "Now what?"
Leah
"... Push the runes through," she repeated. Yeah, still barely resisting the facepalming.
Tony
“Through? Right. Why don’t I just burn close up or keep out?”
Leah
Leah leveled her stare at Tony. "Use the runes."
Tony
He shifted his foot a little farther away from a particularly nasty bit of melon. “Why? Go home worked fine on that charging demon.”
Leah
"Yeah, and it shouldn't have."
Tony
“But it did.” He was definitely taking his turn to be smug.
Leah
"Yes, it did. But it shouldn't have. And is this the time to be experimenting with new techniques that may or may not work? That may or may not make things worse? No. The fate of the world is at stake. You risk my life and everyone else’s on a whim!"
Leah? Not so much letting that go.
Merlin
"Perhaps we should get on with this?"
Tony
"All right. Sheesh," Tony said, more to Leah than to Merlin. He pulled out the notebook pages where he'd sketched the runes. He drew the runes in the air with lines of energy, then physically pushed them through the shimmer using the scar on his left hand.
Leah
Leah muttered under her breath about cheating.
Tony
As the last line of energy vanished, there was a soft, almost soggy pop that lifted all the hair on the back of his neck. The skin around his eyebrow ring suddenly began to burn. "I think it worked," Tony said. "Can we hit a drive-thru before the next place?"
* * *
Leah
"Up there," Leah said, as the walked up to the next weak spot. "Side of the building. Crack in the masonry."
Tony
Tony squinted a bit, walked around, and finally caught a glimpse of it. "Can you see it?" he asked Merlin.
Merlin
Merlin tilted his head, eye narrowed as he focused. "Yes, I think I can."
Leah
"Can I assume that you're capable enough to write runes in the air?" Leah asked, but without waiting for an answer, she continued. "You'll need to draw these ones." She lifted up the hem of her shirt to bare her stomach, indicating the four runes on the Demongate that were the spell.
Merlin
Write them in the air. Right. Tony's world was officially insane.
Merlin shot her a vaguely annoyed look before moving closer to the shimmer thing. Weak spot. Whatever it was.
He took a deep breath and concentrated as best he could on the runes before exhaling and opening now gold eyes. "Ic sagu forebéacen."
One rune down!
Leah
... Well that was different.
"What language is that?" Leah asked, staring. And what the fuck had happened to his eyes?
Merlin
"The old tongue," Merlin replied, blinking away the gold at the interruption. "I think Jack called it Old English?"
Leah
"Huh. I guess it's been longer than I thought, I should have recognised it." In fact, now that he mentioned it, it did sound familiar. "Carry on."
Merlin
That got one more look and then one aimed back at Arthur before he continued on with the runes. It was terribly odd to write things in the air like this, but a new spell was always a bit of a thrill.
Merlin finished the other three, hand up and fingers splayed out as if holding them all in place.
Leah
"Send them through," Leah explained. Again. "One at a time."
Merlin
"I know," Merlin said a bit breathlessly. "It's--" Something he really couldn't seem to find words for. There was a faint pause as the rune's went through, one after the other, and the gold faded from his eyes.
Tony
Tony had to squint and lean sideways a bit, but he was pretty sure the shimmer was gone. "I think it worked."
Leah
"It did," Leah agreed, and turned back towards the car. "Let's get moving, shall we?"
* * *
Leah
Leah stared at sign, rolling her eyes. "It's a high scool," she said, waving one hand in the general direction of the missing letter. "Who cares to do the honours?"
Tony
Demons and public high school?
Nah, too easy.
Tony stepped up to the sign, drew the first rune and pushed it through. Drew the second one and pushed it through. The third - dammit, he could never get this one right. He pulled out his cheat sheet to check it.
Arthur
You know, Arthur had never known magic was this bloody pedestrian. So far, there had been nothing to maim, nothing to stab, and certainly nothing to vivisect, which was good on the level that it had been peaceful and he'd yet to die at anything's hand, and less good on the level of his attention.
He crossed his arms, blew out a breath of bored air, and watched Tony. "Is he going to do that every time?"
Merlin
"Arthur." Just be glad Merlin wasn't aware of using a full name to voice exasperation.
Leah
Leah frowned. "Tony? Hurry up," she said. "This one's deep."
Tony
Tony drew half of the third rune, erased it, and looked down to check his cheat sheet again. Which was probably all that kept him from being blinded as light flared brilliantly purple and something burst out of the sign. Tony flew backwards and landed on Leah.
Arthur
Be careful what you wish for, apparently.
Arthur's reaction was immediate - he yanked his sword out of the scabbard and gave it a good twirl, settling into position in front of the three wizard... things... whatever to look at the other... whatever... that had just happened.
Merlin
As if he was going to do this without Merlin right next to him. "I thought this was supposed to keep them out."
Leah
"Get off!" Leah exclaimed, unceremoniously shoving Tony to the side.
"It is," she shot off in Merlin's general direction. "But obviously it failed."
Tony
Tony scrambled to his feet and scribbled a hasty go home in the air and flung it at the demon. Blue sparks flew on impact but the demon remained there and fully solid. "Shit."
Arthur
"So much for standing around watching wizards at work," Arthur gritted out, "You have any kind of spell for this kind of thing?"
Yes, that was aimed at Merlin. Arthur was... moving in closer, sword and all, utterly focused after that.
He went for an experimental slice at the thing.
Merlin
"I don't even know what they do!" Merlin snapped, ready to shove the damned thing back if it did anything to Arthur.
Demon
The demon towered well over their heads. Bone horns framed its face and bone spurs jutted from the back of its neck. It had a rune carved into its chest, but Tony's "go home" had burned along the edges of it, marring the sign. It met Arthur's slice with one huge claw and the sword chipped a bit of scale from the thing's hand. It snarled and swiped at Arthur with the other claw.
Arthur
Brilliant. Really. Sweet mercy.
Arthur ducked as fast as he possibly could - which at least put him face to face with the thing's hopefully vulnerable belly, but he couldn't manage more than a cursory stab at it.
Merlin
"Arthur, for--" Dear god, it was an exercise in futility to keep the man safe. Merlin shoved at the thing to force it away from Arthur, more fear than rational though fueling him.
Fear is the mindkiller, he repeated mentally, trying to hold onto that.
Demon
The belly was more vulnerable than the rest of the creature, in the same way that bricks were softer than diamonds. Arthur's sword left a scratch across the thing's midsection but it barely seemed to notice. Merlin's shove pushed it back several feet, though. It snarled again, then sniffed the air. Abruptly, it swept around, its tail swinging at them in a parting shot. The creature leapt across the road with way more grace than anything its size should have had. It landed on a blue Prius, setting off an alarm and crushing the hood, then took off running in the direction of the studio.
Arthur
"We need to stop it!"
... Thank you for that, Arthur, you testosterone-loaded idiot.
Merlin
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
...That at least got him to breathe instead of simply reacting. "You think?!"
Arthur
"I'm not the one who threw it away," Arthur shot back. Okay, yes, that was mostly adrenaline talking.
Merlin
Suuure it was. "It was going to decapitate you!"
Arthur
"Well, it didn't, did it?" Arthur retaliated, jamming his sword back into the scabbard as he peered over where the demon had gone. "My god."
That was aimed more at where the creature had gone than at Merlin.
Merlin
"Because I shoved it away!" Oh, Merlin wasn't letting this one drop because... Arthur wasn't allowed to nearly die on him again, alright? Not. Allowed.
Tony
"We're going after it!" Tony yelled, running for the car. Leah was two steps ahead of him car keys in her hand.
Arthur
Arthur shot Merlin a look.
It communicated 'let's leave this until when we don't have to kill the big snarly thing' or something in that vein.
Then he took off for the car, himself. "I could have taken it!"
Or maybe not.
Merlin
"Of course you could." Merlin could do bitchy too. Like a pro.
[Continued here.]
“Why do these kinds of metaphysical things always happen in alleys,” Tony wondered as they walked past the Dumpster. “Why not in the middle of the TransCanada? Or a meter over the sock counter at Sears? Or in someone’s apartment?”
[Parts of this post and the comments are from chapter eight of Smoke and Ashes.]
Merlin
"They usually happen in the forest or somewhere hidden in the castle back home," Merlin informed him cheerfully.
Leah
"What makes you think they don't happen those places, though?" Leah pointed out. "All it needs is a place that something's missing."
She looked around, smiling softly when she spotted the weak spot. "Manhole, no cover," she said, pointing at it. "Can you see it?"
Tony
"I see the hole," Tony said, squinting at the spot where she'd pointed.
Merlin
"It's very... hole-y," Merlin confirmed slowly.
Leah
Leah gave Merlin a look, one that said, very clearly, "Not so much living up to the name, are you?" She did, thankfully, refrain from actually saying this aloud.
"Okay, so, the hole." She waved at it vaguely. "Those runes I showed you for getting rid of the demons? Push those through one at a time."
Tony
"The manhole?" Tony frowned.
Merlin
Merlin nodded in agreement with Tony on that one. "We're closing a small hole in the ground? That's it?"
Leah
"... Not the manhole," Leah said, barely resisting the urge to facepalm. "The hole. Where the manhole is. The -- look, it's like a heat-shimmer kind of thing?"
Tony
Tony looked again, and then tried looking just past the manhole and finally caught a glimpse of it from the corner of his eye. A heat shimmer that wasn't a heat shimmer. "Okay, I see it," he said. "Now what?"
Leah
"... Push the runes through," she repeated. Yeah, still barely resisting the facepalming.
Tony
“Through? Right. Why don’t I just burn close up or keep out?”
Leah
Leah leveled her stare at Tony. "Use the runes."
Tony
He shifted his foot a little farther away from a particularly nasty bit of melon. “Why? Go home worked fine on that charging demon.”
Leah
"Yeah, and it shouldn't have."
Tony
“But it did.” He was definitely taking his turn to be smug.
Leah
"Yes, it did. But it shouldn't have. And is this the time to be experimenting with new techniques that may or may not work? That may or may not make things worse? No. The fate of the world is at stake. You risk my life and everyone else’s on a whim!"
Leah? Not so much letting that go.
Merlin
"Perhaps we should get on with this?"
Tony
"All right. Sheesh," Tony said, more to Leah than to Merlin. He pulled out the notebook pages where he'd sketched the runes. He drew the runes in the air with lines of energy, then physically pushed them through the shimmer using the scar on his left hand.
Leah
Leah muttered under her breath about cheating.
Tony
As the last line of energy vanished, there was a soft, almost soggy pop that lifted all the hair on the back of his neck. The skin around his eyebrow ring suddenly began to burn. "I think it worked," Tony said. "Can we hit a drive-thru before the next place?"
* * *
Leah
"Up there," Leah said, as the walked up to the next weak spot. "Side of the building. Crack in the masonry."
Tony
Tony squinted a bit, walked around, and finally caught a glimpse of it. "Can you see it?" he asked Merlin.
Merlin
Merlin tilted his head, eye narrowed as he focused. "Yes, I think I can."
Leah
"Can I assume that you're capable enough to write runes in the air?" Leah asked, but without waiting for an answer, she continued. "You'll need to draw these ones." She lifted up the hem of her shirt to bare her stomach, indicating the four runes on the Demongate that were the spell.
Merlin
Write them in the air. Right. Tony's world was officially insane.
Merlin shot her a vaguely annoyed look before moving closer to the shimmer thing. Weak spot. Whatever it was.
He took a deep breath and concentrated as best he could on the runes before exhaling and opening now gold eyes. "Ic sagu forebéacen."
One rune down!
Leah
... Well that was different.
"What language is that?" Leah asked, staring. And what the fuck had happened to his eyes?
Merlin
"The old tongue," Merlin replied, blinking away the gold at the interruption. "I think Jack called it Old English?"
Leah
"Huh. I guess it's been longer than I thought, I should have recognised it." In fact, now that he mentioned it, it did sound familiar. "Carry on."
Merlin
That got one more look and then one aimed back at Arthur before he continued on with the runes. It was terribly odd to write things in the air like this, but a new spell was always a bit of a thrill.
Merlin finished the other three, hand up and fingers splayed out as if holding them all in place.
Leah
"Send them through," Leah explained. Again. "One at a time."
Merlin
"I know," Merlin said a bit breathlessly. "It's--" Something he really couldn't seem to find words for. There was a faint pause as the rune's went through, one after the other, and the gold faded from his eyes.
Tony
Tony had to squint and lean sideways a bit, but he was pretty sure the shimmer was gone. "I think it worked."
Leah
"It did," Leah agreed, and turned back towards the car. "Let's get moving, shall we?"
* * *
Leah
Leah stared at sign, rolling her eyes. "It's a high scool," she said, waving one hand in the general direction of the missing letter. "Who cares to do the honours?"
Tony
Demons and public high school?
Nah, too easy.
Tony stepped up to the sign, drew the first rune and pushed it through. Drew the second one and pushed it through. The third - dammit, he could never get this one right. He pulled out his cheat sheet to check it.
Arthur
You know, Arthur had never known magic was this bloody pedestrian. So far, there had been nothing to maim, nothing to stab, and certainly nothing to vivisect, which was good on the level that it had been peaceful and he'd yet to die at anything's hand, and less good on the level of his attention.
He crossed his arms, blew out a breath of bored air, and watched Tony. "Is he going to do that every time?"
Merlin
"Arthur." Just be glad Merlin wasn't aware of using a full name to voice exasperation.
Leah
Leah frowned. "Tony? Hurry up," she said. "This one's deep."
Tony
Tony drew half of the third rune, erased it, and looked down to check his cheat sheet again. Which was probably all that kept him from being blinded as light flared brilliantly purple and something burst out of the sign. Tony flew backwards and landed on Leah.
Arthur
Be careful what you wish for, apparently.
Arthur's reaction was immediate - he yanked his sword out of the scabbard and gave it a good twirl, settling into position in front of the three wizard... things... whatever to look at the other... whatever... that had just happened.
Merlin
As if he was going to do this without Merlin right next to him. "I thought this was supposed to keep them out."
Leah
"Get off!" Leah exclaimed, unceremoniously shoving Tony to the side.
"It is," she shot off in Merlin's general direction. "But obviously it failed."
Tony
Tony scrambled to his feet and scribbled a hasty go home in the air and flung it at the demon. Blue sparks flew on impact but the demon remained there and fully solid. "Shit."
Arthur
"So much for standing around watching wizards at work," Arthur gritted out, "You have any kind of spell for this kind of thing?"
Yes, that was aimed at Merlin. Arthur was... moving in closer, sword and all, utterly focused after that.
He went for an experimental slice at the thing.
Merlin
"I don't even know what they do!" Merlin snapped, ready to shove the damned thing back if it did anything to Arthur.
Demon
The demon towered well over their heads. Bone horns framed its face and bone spurs jutted from the back of its neck. It had a rune carved into its chest, but Tony's "go home" had burned along the edges of it, marring the sign. It met Arthur's slice with one huge claw and the sword chipped a bit of scale from the thing's hand. It snarled and swiped at Arthur with the other claw.
Arthur
Brilliant. Really. Sweet mercy.
Arthur ducked as fast as he possibly could - which at least put him face to face with the thing's hopefully vulnerable belly, but he couldn't manage more than a cursory stab at it.
Merlin
"Arthur, for--" Dear god, it was an exercise in futility to keep the man safe. Merlin shoved at the thing to force it away from Arthur, more fear than rational though fueling him.
Fear is the mindkiller, he repeated mentally, trying to hold onto that.
Demon
The belly was more vulnerable than the rest of the creature, in the same way that bricks were softer than diamonds. Arthur's sword left a scratch across the thing's midsection but it barely seemed to notice. Merlin's shove pushed it back several feet, though. It snarled again, then sniffed the air. Abruptly, it swept around, its tail swinging at them in a parting shot. The creature leapt across the road with way more grace than anything its size should have had. It landed on a blue Prius, setting off an alarm and crushing the hood, then took off running in the direction of the studio.
Arthur
"We need to stop it!"
... Thank you for that, Arthur, you testosterone-loaded idiot.
Merlin
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
...That at least got him to breathe instead of simply reacting. "You think?!"
Arthur
"I'm not the one who threw it away," Arthur shot back. Okay, yes, that was mostly adrenaline talking.
Merlin
Suuure it was. "It was going to decapitate you!"
Arthur
"Well, it didn't, did it?" Arthur retaliated, jamming his sword back into the scabbard as he peered over where the demon had gone. "My god."
That was aimed more at where the creature had gone than at Merlin.
Merlin
"Because I shoved it away!" Oh, Merlin wasn't letting this one drop because... Arthur wasn't allowed to nearly die on him again, alright? Not. Allowed.
Tony
"We're going after it!" Tony yelled, running for the car. Leah was two steps ahead of him car keys in her hand.
Arthur
Arthur shot Merlin a look.
It communicated 'let's leave this until when we don't have to kill the big snarly thing' or something in that vein.
Then he took off for the car, himself. "I could have taken it!"
Or maybe not.
Merlin
"Of course you could." Merlin could do bitchy too. Like a pro.
[Continued here.]