4897/It Came From the Deep

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It Came From the Deep
Date of Scene: 27 January 2021
Location: Sanctum Santorum
Synopsis: An ancient horror, a great old one you say? To the books, heroes!
Cast of Characters: Meggan Puceanu, Stephen Strange




Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Some time between the flurries lowering the shades over New York, a steady presence crosses Bleecker Street. Not bundled up in those puffy black coats that look like sleeping bags or a stylish parka with a haloed fur hood, that young woman extends her pace across snowy concrete. Where someone in a heeled shoe might slip on ice, she passes by without so much as a crack or turned ankle.

Ahead rears the Sanctum Sanctorum, detached from its fellow buildings in Greenwich Village. It carries the weight of time where the others don't. It's all she can do not to turn her face up to the stylish window and regard with great interest. Maybe just a few minutes.

By the time she gets to the door the snowflakes are caught in that wild silver and gold hair, the dusting accumulated on the oversized trenchcoat over her dress turned mostly to water. Coming around in her time, Meggan lifts her hand. A brief pause. Then she knocks.

Stephen Strange has posed:
    Meggan will find that she misses the wood of the door as they swing open, just as she's about to rasp against them. Inviting her in is the house itself, as no one stands near the door and they couldn't possibly be automated via technoligical means. But inside she'll find a split level foyer, and the tilled checkard floor that seems warn and heavily trafficed, before a few steps up to the massive landing of the main courseway of the house. The Hub of many magics and fortunes and stores of knowledge and power. Framed by twin stair cases to the sides, but at the top of the steps from the foyer, stands a man in a long dark cloak and darker clothes, Asian in apperance, but with wraps up and down his wrists and hands, as well as his feet though he wears thick soled boots.

    "Hello there." Stephen speaks softly, but powerfully, grey eyes lingering on Meggan.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
The door opening of its own accord really doesn't seem to bother Meggan. She instead broadcasts a smile and actually murmurs, "Thank you!" just as though everyone expresses gratitude to inanimate objects all the live-long day. Frankly they should. Maybe it would make the world quite a bit nicer! Snow melts away into so many drops as she steps into the warmth of the foyer, tilting her head up. Much to take in here would require longer than she can spend, and some bits are familiar enough to be pushed to the wayside. Casually she pulls her hands from her pockets and beams a smile to the gentleman in his fine cloak no doubt wishing to know who or what interrupts this space. She tilts her head, the tumbling weight of her hair fallen in a skein of pale sunlight along her shoulder and down.

"Hullo, Doctor." English, by accent, though the undertones pervading the usual British tones are anything but. Muddle in some proper Celtic influences, it's far more musical. "I came to call tonight with an unhappy warning, rather than good tidings." Her palms touch together, hands clasped in front of her, and there's a plain fact her soles are not touching the earth in any form.

Stephen Strange has posed:
    "Hello, ... ma'am." Stephen says in greeting as he squints his eyes and lifts his arms to cross before his chest as he looks Meggan over a bit more closely. "And you might be?" Stephen asks her name rather bluntly before he nods towards the door and they close, heavy behind the woman and yet he keeps his eyes upon her, curious and finally asks, "What tidings /do/ you bring to my doors?" The wizard asks lastly, but not dismissively.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
"Meggan Puceanu." Palms are briefly displayed to Stephen, utterly barren of jewelry. She wears no rings or anything distinguishable below her wrists, the coat too light for the winter cold barely belted around her waist. A man's tie serves as a necklace of sorts, or just the kind of accessory that amuses the environmental activist from many a social media post. The sharp uplift of those wide, green-grey eyes meet his. "Roma of the Starlight Citadel and Merlin of Avalon bid you greeting." The formality lands well enough, credentials presented for not the first time in a day.

She once more laces her hands together, her shoulders rolled in a bit. The lightest brush of her toe scathes the ground, not quite touching except in imagination. "Atlantean wards in the Challenger Deep failed. A horror from the outer reaches escaped into the Pacific. I managed to lure it off, for a time." The details are succinct, probably practiced somewhat. They have an air of rising tension, twisted like a spring almost to the height of its capacity by the time she trails off. "It broke through containment efforts and likely heads for land. It hungers to devour life and consume all."

Stephen Strange has posed:
    Stephen was about to respond to her name when she name drops so casually and so potently that his other eyebrow volunteers to join its mirror up on his forehead and he blinks sharply at Meggan. So he doesn't speak and instead allows Meggan to give her full report and his eyebrows lower as she speaks and he sets his face into something much less pleasant. "How long before it reaches the coast?" Stephen asks, frowning deeply as he lowers his arms and seems to regard Meggan with a much more respectful tone and a sharper presence.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Meggan may have shock factor on her side, but she would never deign to rub it in. Too much rides on the importance of the message. Keenly sensitive to passing emotions and responses, she watches Stephen through the tousled golden skein shot with moonlight and stray summer sunshine. Brushing her hair away from her face simply invites other pieces to fall in their place. "I baited it to follow me into the mid-Pacific from the Mariana Trench, where it remained imprisoned in a warded cavern. Collapsing the cavern failed to keep it from seeking the surface. Several Titans and an alien princess strategically withdrew with borrowed technology," she adds. A frown forms as the weight of memory bears down, something so fresh it nearly bleeds over her thoughts. "I hoped to pull it from heavily populated areas in Asia. It wanted to consume me whole. Other lesser examples of its species attacked shores and Atlantis a few months ago, but nothing this big or powerful. Nothing but hunger, hatred, and something that burns nature itself. It's unnatural in every respect." Tension burns in her eyes, her words lifted and pulled thin as cobwebs. Tingles dance down the scalp and up her neck.

"Pardon me." Her gaze drops away. Nose wrinkling, she tries to assert some sense of composure. "I feel nearly polluted from getting so close. But while it was free, I had to retreat to New York. A druid and a sorceress told me it hadn't pursued. So here I am, to tell you. Because this is not something minor, this is something Atlantis couldn't purge."

Stephen Strange has posed:
    Stephen looks lost deep in thought and then turns towards the young woman. "How much time do we have?" The wizard asks, as he looks back to Meggan's eyes as he turns around and with barely a thought, the two of them are in the library of the sanctum and it feels like the whole house just kind of JOLTED into that position, a sudden jerk through Meggan's core as reality moves around them unnaturally as Stephen pulls down a large thick tome from a shelf and begins to open it and hands the book over. Turned to the table of contents, there's many names, many languages through out and Stephen asks, "Can you point it out if you saw it again?"

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
"Days at most. Likely less. After so long buried, surely it will need to gather its strength?" Meggan isn't the fastest to make that calculation on the fly. A different kind of understanding needed to perform those measurements follows, her eyes closing for a moment to blot out the distractions found in the Sanctum. Found by the man who resonates with the same boundless potential, the same enormity. The house's spin is not lost, but she flinches all the same, Sight cracked and overrun by energies too difficult to separate from a tangle of others. If only a headache were even possible. Not likely any paracetamol can do a thing to alleviate stark, crushing pain from intense pressure.

"I can tell you what it looks like, yes," she confirms. "Really looks like. I had to... ah... Gandalf and the bridge, you know of it?" Giving Strange a rueful smile, she raises her hand. "When I pulled that move, I Saw it." Stress on the verb, a subtle change of tone, giving a different meaning. "Great, horrific. Made of a void between the stars. Antimatter, anti-creation, a poison that was thick with hunger. So many tentacles, a writhing, horrible mass of them. Like Lovecraft. Cthulhu, a great old one, but real. A large, eldritch abomination that could move almost fast as I do." She drifts towards him, taking the book, paging through it gingerly. Respectfully, anyway, trying to read the survey. "Which is fast."

Stephen Strange has posed:
    "Then we have less time than even you may guess." Stephen says with a frown as he turns and pulls out a scroll this time, turning to a table and unrolling it, looking for a spell that will aid in the relocating of such a great being. He assumes it's not truly an elder god, though they have been rising, and the dead bugs beneath their feet in the basement can prove that themselves. A look towards the woman and Stephen is quickly back to work. "Anything else you can tell me?"

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
The low, mirthless laugh carries the wounds of a hunter hunted, a glaring, heavy weight scored from precise, unwavering hunger in pursuit of her. "The magic faltered around it and fell. The glyphs were many. Neither Troia or I could read them. Not her failing. Mine," Meggan hesitates, but forces herself to speak, toying with the silk tie wrapped around her neck and arrowing down her midline. "A lack of education, Doctor, with my sincere regrets. I'd not thought to try a form that could read them. Not with how little time was left." More searching through the pages, gently flipped one by one for her to read and see if anything matches up with it. "It has intelligence. An alien, unfathomably odd one. It corrupted other Lurkers at the bottom to itself, and possibly more.

Stephen Strange has posed:
    "You're at no fault Meggan." Stephen responds as he continues research. "And you're free to stay here and help me prepare or you can go through that door there." Stephen motions to a doorway in the wall that makes no sense as to why it would be there, but it is. "Say where you want to go before opening it and it'll send you there without a problem." Stephen explains with a soft nod as he keeps his face down in the tome and scrolls, getting ready for another fight.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
"I might have stopped it. Now lives are at risk, even those not counted by many. Whales, sharks, fish, races hidden from us." Meggan rubs her shoulder with her slender fingers, tilting her head. Stephen may or may not see the pointed ears, the profile too fine to be purely human. Close but not quite. "I'm not sure what help I can offer you, but you have it. If anything in here looks promising," she gestures to the book, "I can note it for you. Surely something matches up with the memory. It's hard to forget. Sleep is impossible, anyway."