2882/When the Demon Queens Come A-Knockin'

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When the Demon Queens Come A-Knockin'
Date of Scene: 12 August 2020
Location: Sanctum Santorum
Synopsis: Demon trouble in Little Sanctum.
Cast of Characters: Illyana Rasputina, Stephen Strange




Illyana Rasputina has posed:
It all begins with a crack.

A crack, a fissure, a break. One of those snapping threads of reality stretches and pulls too far, permitting a woman to fall through in a halo of fire. Silver tinged to ultramarine, that shade of indigo attained only when the last light dies from the sky. So often a glorious, gorgeous colour now personifies something else, perhaps worse, skimming in the brutality of midnight's revenge.

Bleecker Street buzzes around her, summer in the city in full swing, students aware their freedom ends and toil begins in mere handfuls of days. She ignores them. Those in their sunglasses and good humour, or buzzed enough not to worry, surely startle a little where it comes to the blonde Russian stalking for the tall house flanked by businesses and the sort. She doesn't even bang on the doors. Why?

They can sense her, surely, those wards filtering around the house, the principal sorceress and the Queen of a whole dimension standing on the threshold.

A worrying turn of events if they can parse emotion at all; the rage always there is practically bleeding.

Stephen Strange has posed:
There is no other presence quite like the Queen of Limbo, and the sensitive wards of the Sanctum Sanctorum sing of her as she makes her approach. The Doctor had been asleep, what little of that he actually did, when the clarion call had sounded and he sweeps down stairs as the nightclothes he wears reshape themselves into the vestments of the Sorcerer Supreme. An arm extends and the Cloak of Levitation joins him, binding about his shoulders as he reaches the door.

"Illyana," he is saying before the door is even open enough to see her, his brow furrowed with concern, "What's happened?"

He steps to one side, making space for her to pass him and enter. The wards know her already, and will not hold her at bay lest he ask them to.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
In her silence, in that ferociously poised wait, Illyana could be immobile. Sure, she might get a few passing looks hanging outside a mansion that people oddly seem to steer around, never giving too deep a look. Magic is madness. It fucks with your head. They might well know that, enshrined in the dulcet threnodies of their own self-importance stitched and whittled by mercurial causality down to moving the other way.

Darkness, then, the dripping ichor risen from fissures cracked and reopened in the aura, astral form seething in bloodied confession. Had she coins in hand, she might be positioned well to offer a token to the Underworld, escort to death or seeking the price. Let it be accepted as, perhaps, something worse coming.

When he opens the door, she is there: a bored late teen to early twenty-something. Young and old in the way that Russians always are. The Sanctum Sanctorum receives the slightest flick of glance, its master a steady, dark look through eyes almost white in their pallor. The grey mustered is a weak thing, blue leached fully. She stalks into the foyer with an aching elegance, purposeful in the way that drawing a blade makes a statement indeed.

Stephen Strange has posed:
The Doctor is not afraid, and his body language says as much. He long ago conquered the fear of death in his final trial as Sorcerer Supreme, and so even the most potentially deadly visages do not chill his blood as they may once have. But there is concern in his face, and he watches her with a thoughtful expression and prolonged silence.

"Illyana," he offers her name again - pointedly her name, not the alias she has given herself nor the titles thrust upon her by her demonic Other. No, this is the name of that little girl on the farming collective not so many years ago.

"Illyana, speak to me."

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
Fear is a long-ago trouble, but it still ought to run through the veins. For there are ends, ones even Death bows to, powers too great for her pale face and violet smile to ignore. Whatever faces they wear, they are all cataclysms in motion, scattered far and wide.

"I am going to cripple a power and force their subjugation," she replies without much of a preamble, purposeful admissions when deliberating on nothing more than where to scuff her boots. "It will be sweet and I will not for a moment hold the least sense of regret to see their throat beneath my sole."

Stephen Strange has posed:
The words may alarm him, the way they're spoken so pitilessly. The terrible coloration in the Russian woman's eyes. But he doesn't step back, doesn't move to give her space. He watches her carefully, foregoing any attempts to visit her troubled mind - he already knows that way lies static and screams.

"Which power?" he asks, his voice low and even, "And to whom am I speaking?"

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
"Are we on a first name basis, Doctor? After being steeped up to our elbows in the entrails of the city, bloody with the birthwaters of a threefold god, you may have to tell me." The curve of a smirk lifts lazily as the contrarian blonde shrugs her shoulder a little, turning to face him. As with everything, the movements articulate supreme awareness of herself, a braced control so the spaced out pauses become almost explosive, unexpectedly so. "Illyana. It's a brave thing to call me Yana, though if you allow that..." The thought is incomplete.

She tips her head a degree anyway, considering the questions. When her nature is so quintessentially riding on the edge, the laconic pauses and utter silences tell a good deal, as much as loquacity would. "A greater demon. It won't bleed over here, though he already tried to make it so."

Opinions on that aren't clear, but tell the dimension's guardian that a greater power is meddling, that's always smart.

Stephen Strange has posed:
"Yana," the Doctor offers, going straight for the diminutive and then further into the native Russian, "Yanushka. I would say we're on a first name basis, yes. You saved the City. You're a hero, even if the people out there don't know it. And someone I'm proud to call my friend. You can call me Stephen."

He dares to take a step closer to her, head tilted to one side. He cannot shake the medical practitioner's critical interest, observing her eyes and her stance. As though checking for anything out of order or sorts.

"I won't deign to tell you how to rule your own realm, Yanushka," he offers, voice quiet, "Instead I'll trust you to make the choice befitting your noble heart."

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
Yana, Yana, Yana. Snegurochka. To think four years ago, he would have been looking upon a delighted child with a cherub's smile, round-cheeked and a bit too gaunt, but still eager to scamper off to a playground or chatter shyly around her brother's side about this or that, as children's thoughts so often take.

To think, four years ago, she would not have the lexicon they share together, but Limbo reaped its span of years and she is no coltish girl starting to lengthen out into adolescence but formed by a harder, colder substance yet on the pressure cooker that formed her. She isn't injured to those knowing eyes, in no way damaged.

But then, it's the soul that holds its shadows closest and the darkest of hearts within, tinted out of the Vishanti's light into a deeper, harder eclipse. Doom rides in the vanguard, and not of the Doctor von sort, but the whispers uttered, the umbral visions in the corners of the room starting to writhe with her. "A brief hiatus, unlikely for long. The defiance went on long enough. Do keep me informed about any demons on the loose. Even if they aren't mine, they suffer."

Stephen Strange has posed:
"Should I go with you?" the Doctor asks suddenly, taking another step closer now and daring to lay a hand on her shoulder. He's always known of the darkness within Illyana and the toll that Limbo has taken on her. There is a foolishness in him that wants to believe those slivers of a good, noble soul that remain can somehow be fanned into a conflagration that will devour the darkness completely.

"My powers don't wain outside this dimension," he adds, the corner of his mouth twitching into a frown, "I know you can do this on your own, but still ... "

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
He's lucky not to get his fingers snapped right off, her shoulder rigid beneath Strange's hand. Too sharp, her eye-teeth, but it's a subtle thing to distinguish the risk her canines present to anyone, to anything. But the stretch of those full black lips suggests a very real consideration of fang and claw being applied without consideration, her weight resting too well balanced and distributed to suggest relaxation.

But almost. There are risks to attacking a man in his own house, with a cloak that can utterly defend its master from her.

Maybe.

"How would you punish someone who flouted your authority, Stephen? Would you make an object lesson of them, or just annihilate them on the spot? One day you will be asked, after all."

Stephen Strange has posed:
"What authority do I have that needs respecting?" Strange asks, lowering his hand back to his side slowly and purposefully, "My remit was bestowed upon me by the Ancient One, and blessed by the Vishanti. Ratified by the Octessence. Acknowledged by powers great and small. Whether they respect it or not matters little in the end, for there is only one Sorcerer Supreme of this world."

"I acknowledge demons are a rougher sort, Yana. That they must be brought to heel. My experience with them is not as all-encompassing as your own, but I would still call myself experienced. But at the end of the day, it is you who is the Queen of Limbo. Shirk and malign your authority they might do, but they can never subvert you."

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
His query hardly draws response other than the slight curl of her lip, acknowledging the absurdity of Strange's answer. Exiled from the warmth that might be found in a summer's day, those cold eyes barely besmirch the notion of a colour, pallid ice-blue and terribly icy. "Others would take it," she doesn't mince the words, though they have little chance of standing up to the chilled iwnter contours of her voice. Russian imposes itself how it will in breaking down the lyricism brought by Latin words borrowed into the Teutonic thread of English's older origins. "Divine mandates raise the stakes, but not impossibly."

No more than that will she permit to pass, for idle consideration hardly settles on that slim-shouldered nightmare dragging the cares of a dimension with her.

Stephen Strange has posed:
"Regardless," Stephen offers simply, folding his hands before him and letting his chin dip slightly, "I trust in your ability. I know how much of you has been ... stolen away. But not irrecoverably so. I hope you will believe me when I say I know a thing or two about the limitations of the soul."

"Come on," he calls, beckoning her towards the sitting room, "Let's at least feed you before you wade into an ocean of blood."

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
"Limitations?" A curious twist of the word there, winding it around a dagger-point of purpose and risking it splitting like the fraying cords of a rope. It might be weaponized under the right circumstances, though Illyana scours the sounds of much emotion, impressive only in the cold light of day. "I calculate the risk worth the cost of their submission. They flash and flicker, and will fade."

A slow circling of her fingertips suggests the ending of such things, waiting and patient, frost-cold and dangerous indeed. That subtle tip of a shrug is dangerous enough, even tempered and restricted, as she tiptoes through that wicked house of dreams and imagination. Following after Stephen is easily done, though with ruthless efficiency.

Stephen Strange has posed:
The food isn't something the Sorcerer Supreme can eat. The price of magic is a digestive system wholly unsuited for what this dimension has to offer. Nevertheless, food is kept for guests and for Wong, so there are still things around that settle well in the stomach of a human being - or a Limbo Queen. It's nothing more than a packet of potato chips and a bottle of water, set out for Illyana with a thin smile.

"Limitations, or lack thereof. You're not irredeemable, though sometimes I think you fear you are."

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
Food, an essential aspect of life for some, is still in the wheelhouse of fundamental needs for even a demonic queen. Never let it be aid she lacks a willingness there to take what others offer if it's not poisoned. Something to keep her going, to manage that awful uptake of energy required to sustain her. Either way, though,s he isn't arguing on that front; water will do, taken after a moment of watching him sharply.

"Redemption is a loaded word. It ends when the crime is balanced," she replies simply enough. Simple in unquestionably lethal terms, followed by opening the bottle, nodding shortly, and sipping it.

Stephen Strange has posed:
"Only when there's a crime to redeem yourself for," Strange says in reply, sitting down in a high-backed and ornate chair and crossing his legs at the knee, "The crimes you might think you're guilty of aren't really your crimes, are they? Not really."

He folds his hands, steeping his fingers before his face thoughtfully and peering at her over the top of them.

"I'm not a very good psychiatrist, Yanushka. I'm better at knowing when a battle is lost and when it isn't."

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
"Admitting to a limitation? Are you sure you are Doctor Strange?" Those words spiral around one another, a reply offered with the skillful directness of a fencer plowing home a point, unhesitating in marking that. She barely blinks at that, water leaving her cool lips gleaming. A mere trinket to be swallowed bit by bit, a far cry from the young woman devising strategies to detangle the question of the boroughs.

Not much different than the girl willing to midwife a god or slay it in the would-be cradle, if it came down to it. She won't do much with those potato chips. "No one will repeat my path. I cannot forbid the trade of souls, but I can end their buyers."

Stephen Strange has posed:
The Doctor cannot help but smile faintly at the words, waving a hand through the air in a blasé wave of dismissal. He lets the other rest on the arm of the chair he sits in, lifting it up on one fingertip and drumming against the strange claws carved into the woodwork there.

"I contain multitudes. You've got a lot to learn ... "

He looks up, grey eyes suddenly steely and serious.

"And I have much to teach."