2256/The All-Seeing Eye

The All-Seeing Eye
Date of Scene:	28 June 2020
Location:	Sanctum Santorum
Synopsis:	Magik and Doctor Strange devise a way by which the City can heal itself - genii locorum!
Cast of Characters:	Stephen Strange, Illyana Rasputina
Tinyplot:	Genosha Burns

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Stephen Strange has posed:
It's a moody Saturday evening in the Village. The weather is warm without being oppressively so, and it seems like just the kind of atmosphere for a night out on the town if a pall hadn't been cast over the entire city. Those people who are out are the kind of drunk that wallows in self-pity and searches out confrontation. There's no song and revelry pouring out into the streets, instead only the sullen silence and muted yammer of a baseball game recap somewhere out west. In times like this, the Sanctum Sanctorum seems to take on more shadowy and forbidding dimensions than normal.

The invitation had gone out through mystical means to the Queen of Limbo, inviting her to pay the Sanctum a visit. It had come via a spectral messenger who had sought her out in the astral, as it occurred to Strange he was not quite sure where the Sorceress Supreme resided and he did not want to invade her privacy.

He waits in the sitting room, though he cannot relax. Instead he stands by one of the bookcases, an ancient volume open in one hand and a long finger trailing the underside of words written in a language six thousand years dead.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
Being a young adult, even on a technicality, means knowing a thing or two about moodiness. They excel in it. Hormones and world-haking events make a volatile concoction for even the most sanguine soul, and Illyana Rasputina counts as sanguine only in the bloody count. Capping the Village with a pressure cooker atmosphere hasn't helped relax her any, though she walks those skinny Revolutionary-era streets largely inured to the awful weight of anticipation perched on their collective shoulders. Edison bulbs burning in overpriced bars struggle to keep the grey at bay, the weather a living embodiment of dysthymia leaking through psychic guards and invading moods all around. It's in the sullen turn of a fan and the glazed stares into smartphones, the restless spirits avoiding their books or parks or computers, seeking a substitute for a spiritual malaise.

Sometimes you just can't win, the hand dealt rotten to the core and the dealer cheating the stakes.

The Demon-Queen really has very little distance to walk to reach the Sanctum Sanctorum. For reasons all her own, her mortal demesne here is within a stone's throw of it. She might even see the great window from the roof with a little effort. He might be startled to know it. He may not. Still, it means that query going out and the ultimate tap on the door is unnaturally fast for someone on foot. Slow, of course, for teleportation writ in the scriptures of reality, but the Sanctum's wards shall not pick up any signs of arcane activity in the immediate vicinity.

Curiosities lined up, perhaps to tease out his interest. Perhaps not. Coincidence?

Stephen Strange has posed:
The Doctor's eyes lift from the parchment he reads when the knock sounds throughout the Sanctum. His grey eyes shift to the ornate door that leads into the residence's kitchen, where Wong busies himself with an evening meal. Earthly food long ago became something Strange could not properly stomach as his mastery of the mystic arts grew, but Wong still eats, and he presumed that Illyana would also.

Once more he finds himself answering the door in Wong's absence, clasping the handle and drawing it open curiously. His features are a polite mask he dons for uninitiated callers, but upon spotting Illyana they quickly fade in favor of his more serious mien.

"Hello again," he says pleasantly enough as he opens the door wide and steps to the side to allow her entry, "No trouble finding the place?"

Those last words prompt the slightest tick at the corner of his mouth.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
The doorway dwarfs the Russian who stands there in a sense, a bad fit where it comes to her standing at a ready position speaking far too much of someone used to looking over their shoulder. Never is she totally at ease, at least not in the present company, but the self-possessed awareness differs from a tone of edgy fear or endless paranoia. Finding the Doctor himself on the stoop might bring a look of surprise, tendered as the degree rise of a golden brow and the contracting weight of pitch-dark pupils rimmed in Baikal ice. Roots, far and distant as they may be, manifest somewhat among the practitioners of the Mystic Arts.

The polite mask he wears reflects the chilly alabastrine mien scoured of most emotion, and friendlier statues grace ancient Roman temples or modern museums. Then again, it takes talent to staredown a basilisk without turning to stone on account of just about being stone. Lest it be considered rude, her slow nod of acknowledgment comes without any grudging hostility; this, a measured grace, reckoning on him as her superior and not her peer.

"You rang?" And in that moment, deadpan humour might go totally unnoticed. Let it be said, she has a sense of humour, it may just be drier than the Skeleton Coast of Namibia. "Nyet, the road was clear." Stepping inside means bringing the greater and lesser weight of her broken soul through, and it's probably a given the wards register all sorts of oddities.

Not the least of which is a weapon beyond relic status literally woven into the skein of her psyche and soul, but Soulsword isn't an idle name.

Stephen Strange has posed:
"It's the tethers," Strange begins, plowing straight into the matter at hand as he lets go of the knob and the door shuts itself heavily behind them, "We know where they are in the astral, but the physical world is different. If we're going to bolster the connection, we need to secure them in both realms."

The high-collared cape he always seems to wear is with him as always, whipping about in an unfelt gale as he strides across the foyer of the handsome Victorian brownstone. He reaches the staircase, hand resting on the brass railing before he's struck by a thought and stops. He turns, glancing over his shoulder towards Illyana.

"There's food," he offers, "Are you hungry?"

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
"Thank you." For entry, the act of guest to host, or perhaps for getting straight to the purpose. Not the kind to mince words or stumble into unnecessary small talk, Illyana follows Strange's lead. Her cool gaze drinks in her surroundings with an odd concoction of greedy curiosity and stoic indifference, gauging angles and egresses with the same appreciation for an entirely different style of architecture or furnishings than she probably grew up with. The cape slithering about is another matter.

She waves at it. Modest crook of the fingers, but an animated sheet of scarlet wool counterpaned in a most intriguing patterned lining warrants a greeting. Perhaps deranged of her, but then no meter stick remotely comes close enough to measuring her upbringing as typical.

"The physical connection will matter when we rescue victims." Rescue, not recover. A distinct difference there, arranged deliberately. "I could link them, but dangerous to draw people physically into the Astral. No turning back then, is there?"

Philosophical questions those aren't, but a studied inquiry from one mage to another. The question of smaller comforts is met with a modest, "Tea, please." Maybe she subsists on other things.

Stephen Strange has posed:
The Cloak may indeed have a life of its own. In fact, when Illyana waves at it there is no doubt that one corner raises upwards to fold and unfold itself in a similar gesture. Still, when Strange turns about to mount the stairs again the Cloak once more becomes an obedient albeit restless article of clothing.

Strange leads the procession up the stairs. From the first floor, across the second-floor landing, and up another flight of stairs to the third. The Sanctum itself is a treasure trove - everywhere one looks there are artefacts of either mystical or mundane origin. Antiques from centuries past, first editions of books penned by authors long dead. All of it tended to, but not earning more than a casual glance from the Doctor himself.

As they arrive on the third floor, Strange opens an innocuous door. Inside is a chamber the walls of which cannot be seen, ensconced as they are in shadow. It stretches on much farther than the laws of physics would allow, suggesting the Sanctum has more space within than it appears to on the outside. The great window that is the Seal of the Vishanti - visible as it is from Illyana's own dwelling - casts the light of the half-moon down in that curved shape upon the wooden floorboards.

"Some of us will need to do the work from the astral while others protect the tethers in the physical. Travel between is, as you said, dangerous. Especially if they're unfamiliar with the landscape."

There's a pause.

"For now, we need to keep believing that Bushwick will be recovered. The alternative ... we discuss that when the time comes."

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
Life goals: acquire similar cloak. Possibly learn from Cloak how to make a Cloakette.

No, there's no reason for the girl in the Sex Pistols t-shirt and tight jeans to be making future plans with the possibility of no future beyond a few days out. Yet she does, slipping that bookmark away for future reference. The sonnet of her boots hitting the ground lends a melancholy soundtrack to the unsmiling softness of her lips, the contained efficiency of surmounting steps after Strange several at a time. She holds herself like a cross, upright and unbending, and aligned too easily. Past treasures, past grimoires and antiquities that would make so many collectors salivate. Surely they represent only a fraction of what's buried away. For that reason her Sight is narrowed down to the thinnest sliver, avoiding being completely blinded.

She lifts her palm to trace the seal of the Vishanti above her, suspended in nebulous gloaming, hard and clear when the sky beyond could be a smudge like the confines of the Sanctum elevated around her. "I ask your forbearance." Formal words as she turns her head to assess him, this man holding the terrors of outer dimensions in check. "How much do you know about what I am, Doctor?"

A beat. Several pass.

"It may answer the questions."

Stephen Strange has posed:
"I know what Limbo is," Strange answers, pausing in the center of the room in the oddly-shaped spotlight of the Vishanti Window, "And I know what dwelling there can do, just like I know the toll the other dimensions extract from their residents in time."

He moves towards the shadows, his hand disappearing like a magician performing a trick where the audience cannot see. A moment later they return with a silver tea tray, which he settles down on empty air as though there were a table. It is with a practiced hand that he pours the tea - a solitary cup just for Illyana.

"And it would be remiss of me to say I cannot see what's behind your particular curtain, so to speak. But I also see the force holding it in check. I see that, and I've invited you into my home. Maybe that will answer some questions of your own?"

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
Not one to put words in another's mouth for them, Illyana stays still and silent. Useful in the schoolroom a hundred years ago, less so perhaps here. The awful weight of her cool gaze leaves the window that she traced in the spread of her fingers, anchored instead on Strange himself. Seeing all, seeing nothing. Divesting the public facade to find the private face beneath, herpahs.

Shadows are no stranger to her, any more than standing illuminated in the ivory wash of a forgiving moon sweeping around the Earth who bore her, drawn out little by little every year until one day they will no longer revolve around one another. Just as the Saturnine rings will vanish, so too will things end. A reminder, really, even as the teacup appears and a mute dip of her head becomes a fuller blossoming of a tight bud for sake of right behaviour. Propriety happens, even among the blighted children of Limbo. "Thank you."

Taking it up, she reaches for the vessel and holds it on her palm, ignoring any heat. It probably cannot really injure her, all said and done. Heat and scent first appreciated through less used senses, then taste, all in good time.

"It changes," she murmurs. "Other dimensions possess a fixed quality. Once, it was practically paradisaical. It will be again, perhaps." A legion of demons might fly with pigskin wings, all said and done. Pale eyes flick back to the light-saturated window, limning the Seal in an almost surreal quality not fully shared by the demonic sorceress or sorcerer. How could they share in the transparent divinity?

Man's lot is far, far harder. "Rasputin. My great-grandfather practiced syncretic shamanism before everything else. His legacy," she taps her chest with a fingertip, "is here. For him, the astral landscape was native. I warped the tapestry but the threads still hold. I would be remiss to say it is home, but we keep believing the landscape is familiar." His own words twisted around the distaff come with a crooked smirk, fleeting as it is.

"The work of the tethers. It will need sympathetic connections, da?"

Stephen Strange has posed:
"It will."

Strange does not prepare himself a cup of tea, instead leaving the pot and the other accoutrement there for Illyana to make use of as she wishes. There's a motion of his hand within the voluminous folds of his cape, and when the shadows part there is now a carved, spherical container held aloft on three ornate legs.

The container opens, and within is an artifact unparalleled in the Sanctum save for perhaps the amulet Strange wears at his throat. The Orb of Agamotto - a crystalline depiction of the Earth as seen from space, with swirling clouds across its surface and shadows across one half as though orbiting an invisible sun. He makes an eldritch gesture, bringing middle and ring finger to his palm and passing it through the air.

The globe focuses, bringing up a detailed image of the Eastern Seaboard as seen from above, then closer and closer until it is depicting New York City. The City as it is this very moment, with the hole that was once Mutant Town glaringly obvious.

"Your innate connection to the astral is going to be vital. You'll have the strength to cling to those tethers where others would lose their grip. But we will need others to find their physical manifestations - the innocuous objects that are the lodestones of reality. This is a job for more than two."

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
"Da." Agreement there comes after setting aside some of the obvious avenues of discussion, like the audacious claim of relation to a turn-of-the-century trickster priest (or con man or devil worshipper, take your pick). No black ichor drips from Illyana's eyes or fingernails in the presence of the Orb, or any relic of Agamotto for that matter, though the Eye wouldn't be wholly kind in exposing the plight of her fall or possibility of redemption.

That's another matter for another hour.

She sips the tea in fleeting tastes, mostly when Strange's back is turned or attention devolved onto the image of Earth in all its sublime glory. Cobalt seas and splotches of terrain peppered in vibrant to dull shades. Ruin at this scale barely reveals itself, proof life will go on no matter humanity's invested efforts to stripmine and poison and reap unchecked. For all the slight sharpening to her calculated gaze acknowledges home; home in macrocosm and painted thin details peppered in lights.

"Someone will wonder why we do not open a hole and grab them back," she points out. This question is obviously not hers, despite having an innate predisposition to treat space like an optional concept instead of a skill mastered in arduous practice and bleeding pain on a mountainside. "One or two confined there are well-enough known it is not inconceivable. They might act as our anchors here, though. Tethered people, not just places. But for places...

"St. Barbara's at 138 Bleecker, or the Reformed Dutch Church with its white spire, da? It is old, seventeenth century. Both have strong meaning for those who shelter there. Another option might be a shelter. You go there to hide, regenerate, find your people. Who better to know?"

No need for showy elegance, but a wavering circle blossoms in front of them, foxfire radiant silver and etched in ghostly cyan at the outer edges. A nimbus peering into Limbo for a moment. Proof she's not merely a sorcerer. It winks away, and gone is the bleak gold he's seen in earlier occasions. That shift is something.

Stephen Strange has posed:
"The simple fact is we cannot bring back everyone," Strange answers, eyes still fixated upon the globe beneath his hand, "Discounting whatever defenses they have keeping them in place, the simple fact is that it's too big a job. And if we cannot save everyone, what good would bringing back a handful be for those who are left wanting? No, that's a worst-case scenario. For now, we strengthen the tethers. Let the Justice Leagues and Avengers of the world concern themselves with mending the body while we minister to the soul."

There is a flick of his wrist and the globe focuses on the Reformed Dutch Church, viewing it as though they were hovering right above it. An orange emblem not unlike the Seal of the Vishanti flickers against the crystal over it, before Strange moves the globe once more to focus on a seemingly innocuous patch of street as a taxi rattles past below.

"The 91st Street Subway. Abandoned, but home to the homeless - the people who fell through the cracks and live underground."

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
"The mutants themselves have their own wish to help. I am not their spokesperson, but they will not standby for everyone else to risk when they can bear the burden." So many words, precise as they are, might almost seem a drain. Ducking her golden head to sip the tea, the Rasputina scion's preoccupation with her drink is superficial at best. Drawing sustenance by wetting her palate is one thing, an act of communion serving as an ablution to darker thoughts swirling in the Hadean reaches of her mind.

Let them watch, then, as the world slithers past. Bushwick occupies a chunk of Brooklyn gone, carved out from the fabric of space and time. She too peers at the globe in detail, briefly studying the roadways and formations brought to life from the dead memory of a flat grid. Maps become tools of life only when lived in, when moved about. "Da. Hernandez Park? A place where mostly people congregate to play and enjoy themselves, forget about the world."

Drawing a circle against the teacup, she blows over the rim and feathers the sea of steeped, brewed amber. "What matters in life? Where you sleep, eat, work, think. Mm. Something else. The defiance. These are people neglected, rejected, forgotten. What is their /torch/?"

Stephen Strange has posed:
Strange seems to consider the question for a long moment. The bird's eye view of the city rotates across the surface of the globe serenely, the pale light of it reflecting up in their faces. The view starts to pan out across the water, and for a moment the Doctor's grey eyes narrow in thought.

"Torch ... "

There's another motion of his wrist and the rotation of the Orb picks up, heading out across water until it finds Liberty Island. The view pauses, hanging over it from above. Slowly, he turns his face to meet Illyana's gaze and quirks an eyebrow at her.

"I wouldn't have thought the metaphysical forces of the world would be quite so cliché."

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
Slip where it will, seeking a beacon. It could well be an artificial construct or a hidden emblem, City Hall, elsewhere. Illyana supplies the notions for the tethers rooting the residents of Mutant Town and spots she rarely visits, though whether they seed actual functional anchor points is another matter altogether.

Torch indeed.

Strange's response resonates enough amusement for her to nod grimly. "Da. They seem to. I have /questions/ for them." Questions that might invariably ring odd to an incarnated being of destiny or stars or hope, for that matter, especially if presented by an inherently young, incorrigible sorceress. Best no one dares that.

Too many responses call up a pause, and she shakes her head then, otherwise still. "Do we shape them or they shape us? Liberty in the harbour." Limpid light strobes over them both, and she leans in closer, invading the outermost reaches of Strange's orbit to stare down into the haloed imagery.

"Where is the most New York of places? Central Park. They want to be part of something more. Where would you go? I was not born here. Were you? What makes you join the city's identity?"

A pause lingers longer than she might like. "Is the city a genius loci? Embodied, like Columbia is America?"

Stephen Strange has posed:
"I feel like that's different for everyone," Strange answers, "I was born in Philadelphia and raised on a farm. I never really came here until I was in college. Rockefeller Center. Or the Empire State Building, maybe?"

At last, the Doctor leans up and away from the great globe. His hand rises to stroke his chin thoughtfully, his brow furrowing and his eyes staring off into the middle distance.

"If it is, I haven't met it," he continues, "Though all the hallmarks seem to be there. A strong sense of identity beyond that of the people who reside here. A confluence of energy from the dragon lines."

There's a pause, and slowly he turns his attention back to the Sorceress.

"Illyana, that's who we have to find. The presence growing in that void isn't just a garden variety monster. It's the antithesis of the City. The dark reflection. We need to find who casts that reflection."

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
"Outside Irkutsk," Illyana supplies in that dry tone borne of the Siberian plains, scoured by wind, baked beyond the great Gobi Desert and watered by frigid rivers. "But is it different? New York through a hundred facets is still a diamond."

Her mouth skims that ironic smirk again, eyes brimming with a fatal intensity that carries the same eldritch hue as her fire-limned portal. In relief, the change isn't much, but their watery intensity is more afflicted by a colour than none at all. "Manhattan is /not/ Brooklyn. Queens is no Bronx. Altogether, New York."

Hands held up sculpt the rough shape of the city, tapering off to a point for Manhattan. Her right hand flicks up the diagonal trend to her relative northeast. "Long Island, is it New York? Sympathy comes from a link, an identity or an image."

She chooses to pace then, circling Strange and the needle he threaded, rounding it back on her own beginnings. Sometimes there is value in retreading old ground, sometimes it offers nothing but distraction from a different tack. Silent, almost stalking, her hand lifts.

Fracture lines in the composure show briefly, her eyes thinning out as she returns his gaze. "This entity knew all our systems, he said. Attacked us for mutations to add to his drones, which he would use to neutralize us -- living beings on Earth. He forgets about magic if he even knows it. We have a weakness." Or Magik, for that matter. Ironies being what they are.

"Think, Doctor. When a virus attacks the patient, what do you expect to happen? The patient themselves fights back. Medicine, surgery, these are just things to help the patient. Maybe too hard to wake up the planet, but wake up New York. We are workers in the immune system, but not the whole piece. A piece of New York is up there. Can we use /that/ and /here/?"

Stephen Strange has posed:
"You strengthen the immune system. Without a cure, all you can do is help the body fight its own battle - just as you've said. Help the city produce its own antibodies ... "

It's as though he's struck by lightning. A sudden idea out of nowhere prompts him to stand bolt upright, eyebrows raising and mouth slightly agape. The greying hair at his temples is more noticeable now than ever, and he turns to stretch an arm into the shadows that surround them. A moment later it returns from elsewhere in the Sanctum, carrying with it a book which he releases into the air to float there under its own power.

The pages flick open under his withering stare, turning over and over as though caught in a violent wind. They finally stop as a specific page written in strange, cyclical writing from some unknown and forgotten civilization.

"Not genius loci," he tells her, moving so she can look at the pages of the book herself, "But genii locorum! More than one and making up a singular whole. It's old magic, but if they haven't already taken form they can be awakened. Manifested."

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
Trust the links to be made by the master smith. The apprentice can toss a few into the fire, as it were, but hammering out the finer points takes time, expertise, a deeper and profound knowledge.

Even if that apprentice happens to rule a dimension in her own right, and hold it against far worse monsters than prowl Earth's darkest corners. Illyana is many things, but prone to laughter or smiles is not among them. Her borrowed understanding of complicated fields, transcribed through an arcane lens, hopefully supplies the sufficient descriptions to nudge Strange to a moment of clarity. Shivering pages go without noted contents, recognition found in the urge to plunder a library for a recalled passage penned by his hand or another.

Strange isn't unfamiliar in this pursuit. Still, she knows better than to draw near, though her shadow crosses his at angles once he swivels. "Da. If they are not already present in potential. We need something that this Brainiac does not expect and cannot shift for. We have different tools to use. Is this one? Beyond the rest. Perhaps we can use that as a protective measure in time but now..."

A fatalism is in the Russian blood. It burns through their long, cold winters in those dark forests full of primeval memories and the Demon Queen, before all else, knows the numbing chill of her motherland. "We have hours. Build a tether, awaken the city, give them shells to fight. It will be enough. Or else I am not walking with you through realms but time, da?"

Stephen Strange has posed:
"We've had other crises," Strange recounts, closing the book and returning it to the darkness and the distant shelf upon which it sets, "Remind me to tell you about Shuma-Gorath sometime."

Another look is given to the Orb of Agamotto and the depiction of New York City. The five boroughs. The five separate points of light that combine to form a singular tether to the lost piece of the whole. He turns about then, lifting a hand and placing it on the Sorceress' shoulder gently.

"We can do this, Illyana. Gather whoever you can. Anyone you think can help. We'll meet here and branch outwards."

There's a pause as he realizes his hand rests upon her shoulder. His eyes flick towards it and then to hers before he retracts it, turning towards the chamber's doors which open of their own accord back onto the Sanctum's interior.

"You're good at this," he calls over his shoulder in a rare compliment, before departing down the stairs.