7671/1000 Faces: Seize the Day

1000 Faces: Seize the Day
Date of Scene:	03 September 2021
Location:	The Underworld
Synopsis:	Radha earns her place in the White Hall of Burned Words, after sacrificing a friend to an endless hunger.
Cast of Characters:	Jane Foster, Hela, Radha Tackeray
Tinyplot:	1000 Faces of Death

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Hela has posed:
In the Barbican, a girl hides back from danger that explodes from the downslope of the ramp. A sorcerer flings his fear and anger through elemental forces too strong for mere glass to withstand. Consequences pile up on a narrow shore. May, the SHIELD commander, goes sliding down the glass path threading around the outer walls of the pyramid. Footing already made treacherous by the smooth incline becomes outright perilous to navigate under a thick veneer of ice and shattered glass. Dark inkspots mark a possible trail of blood, but she slides to the far corner and round again, fighting up to her feet and picking a path lower.

A circle of golden light envelopes John Constantine and spirits him to safety beyond the Underworld. Phoebe, bleeding black around her kevlar vest from switchblades jammed up to her collarbone, hastens a retreat to a light-framed exit that shuts after her.

Destructive spells hurled liberally shattered statues and punched holes in the pyramid's walls in its upper reaches. Falling shards are largely contained to raining down on the streets below or through the open-air central shaft leading almost to ground level. Lower tiers of the sloping path aren't covered in ice nearly as much, the spells concentrated at the platform and the former labyrinth created by the pulverized statues. At the next level down, the ice fades to a thin frosty veneer, then the smooth, slippery glass.

The Hoodie Guy is blasted apart, and the black wraiths hiding among the crystalline facets hidden to the furthest corners.

Sara and Morrigan are partly shielded, the first by her Witchblade armour and the second by Rien's shield deflecting much damage away. Both the women look down to spy May and get a headstart, leaving the woman with her chest carved open to show a plasm heart beating alone with Radha on the platform.

Hela has posed:
That shield kept Radha from taking much damage, though the blasted statues and the loose metal about present hazards. Neither are the Underworld denizens prepared to stay for long.

Shades hurry to get to the lower levels, refusing to stop and speak. Below, the soft undulations where bronze pipes and black iron revolve and swivel relentlessly in a murmured melody that creaks under their feet.

Radha Tackeray has posed:
This was a very difficult afternoon for Radha Thackeray, who, let us remember, was not an hour ago expecting to pick up a Doordash order from a bakery and take it to someone. And yet, from there, drawn by some mixture of fascination, curiosity, and maybe just a wee smidgen of 'death is better than the gig economy,' she got herself entangled with all of this.

She has two weapons. One of them has not yet been revealed, though with the cut on her finger, it is on the shelf. The other is reading. The reading she did when she wasn't driving. The reading she did by listening to audiobooks on an increasingly rickety phone in the car she sort-of stole. Radha knows a lot of things. Will they help her? WHO KNOWS!

The shield around her, combined with a healthy chunk of idiot luck, means that Radha is able to begin moving. It is a blind sort of motion, more "away" than "towards." Others are there - moving, shouting, yelling, carrying on. She can taste magic in the air, along with that ashen feeling of this place...

Or is that because of her ectoplasmically-touched lips and tongue?

She looks at the toy robot she has been carrying around.

"Wave your hand at me."

The robot's right hand comes up and waves vigorously. So vigorously she almost drops it.

"Oh thank God," Radha says. ("Stop waving." (The robot toy does.))

Crouching, hugging the thing close, Radha tries to weave around the shades. She does not think she wants to touch them.

Hela has posed:
Bakeries may be few and far between. Nonetheless, an impressive cityscape laid out in colliding chunks below the inverted glass pyramid could well contain one. Whether they use bonemeal or bone meal to construct fluffy pastries or delicate cakes, only exploration will ever tell. From above, Radha commands a better view than some. She can look down through the open central shaft to see the lower floors, glass levels decorated by retreating figures in their generally dark, drab attire. Some stand out: a woman holding up her lightsaber, barely spotted. Morrigan's bright red hair, diminished to the dark wine of blood.

Both women pick their path down to the next level, moving around shades. They sport a little less caution, but being armed to the teeth in some mystic armament might preclude tripping on the ice and flying over the edge.

Radha's own path needs to be careful. No rail stops her from taking a certainly fatal plunge. Maybe fatal; the bodies knocked out the glass windows by John when the Hoodie Guy jabbed pen-knife fingers into Phoebe certainly look worse for wear at ground level. A small cart drawn by a slightly larger horse way, way down there approaches one of the howling, mumbling shades resting in a broken heap.

The shield peels away as she starts to move, eventually offering no protection from the falling snowflakes or the occasional bit of metal waving around. Shades pay her no mind as she slip-slides down the treacherous slope to the corner, passing bits of blackened blood and in a definite rush to be away.

Because they bleed. Because she breathes.

Radha Tackeray has posed:
The places below. Those who are ahead of her. They are the vanguard, or perhaps those who will die.

Maybe I died, Radha thinks as she picks her way forwards, careful but swift. She doesn't want to separate from them too far, but, she thinks, perhaps that's what happened when I went into that portal. I died. Maybe I got hit by a bus and all of this is an antechamber to Hell, Radha thinks further.

She lingers for a moment as she spots the drawn cart. Her eyes rest on it for a moment, even as the shield around her fades. She hugs herself closer, ending up in something closer to a slide as she descends, seeing the creatures move away.

"Oh, you don't like blood, do you" Radha grunts to herself, even as she looks desperately back to see if she can spot Rien-- but however far they truly are apart, Radha can't.

"I suppose it's just us," Radha remarks to the robot toy.

It doesn't reply.

Hela has posed:
The shades she passes bear something in common with humans. One or two wear suits, but their limbs are horribly bent in ways they should not. Another has a knot of tentacles rising from the nape, and most have misshapen faces somehow. Eyes out of place or too large fixate on the ground ahead or the things they carry: a briefcase, a carpet bag. Skin gone leathery or stitched too tight only approximate humanity's shapes and forms.

Maybe she has died.

It's not easy for her to move, the ground being slippery and the strangeness pulling at her. Frost still coats the way to the floor below the platform. Any traces of blood pull attention. Heads turn. Noses, if they have them, flare.

In the desperate corners where the wraiths still manage to previal, one flits nearer, despite witnessing spellfire and light. Sharp teeth inhabit a darker maw, a void in the blackened shape that would make Slenderman stories all too real.

Three floors below her is movement. That swirling apparatus in black and bronze swivels ever onward in its relentless rotations around the central shaft.

In a pyramid.

A few snowflakes keep tumbling lazily down, down, down.

Radha Tackeray has posed:
Radha looks at the shades.

They smell her. They're hideous. They're...

Will I be like that soon enough? she thinks. Like a doll myself? I wonder what -

DAMN IT WOMAN DO NOT IMAGINATION WHEN YOU ARE IN THE FUCKING UNDERWORLD, Radha thinks to herself. Willpower pushes past the temptation of dreams even as she slips, as she tries to stay clear.

She looks over the edge, towards that swirling. For a moment.

She looks towards the blackened and toothsome thing and tells the robot toy, "Follow the -- thing I'm looking at. Push it off the edge," in a low murmur and sets it down, at which point the blood-animated colorful piece of plastic begins to skid independently of her, its innocent and heroic faceplate turned up at the horror, without fear or doubt or hesitation.

At this point Radha glances up, perhaps because of the snow.

Hela has posed:
The Underworld is a place of brutality and creativity turned on its head. An eternity used to experiment might find her in excellent company. Radha might command an excellent price as long as she lives. And long after that.

Snowflakes fall from above, where the ice spells smashed their way through the glass. The remnants tumble through the open-air shaft dropping almost to the ground through concentrically smaller floors. Somewhere, down down below, must be a point that touches the ground. But still a far run, and the toothsome monster thinking her a toothsome morsel would likely catch up long before she reached it.

Mr. Robot might have a time making a stand against a billowing ghostly thing of ectoplasm and teeth, much taller than himself. It wants blood, and any stained on the robot will in turn attract it for a moment, two, three. Her own blood, if fresh and still spilled in that curious black shade -- red here barely exists -- will attract it yet after it lunges at the robot marching on.

Down below, two women halt near the strange spinning complex. They step closer and a weird light shoots up from it and possibly down, down where a grey set of hedges marks some kind of maze.

Radha Tackeray has posed:
Radha doesn't want to think about her price right now. Perhaps some other time she will explore the idea. For right now -

A broken roof, she thinks. Is that how they're getting in? And then she pushes herself upwards, because she is - oh, cruel fate! - abandoning her robot to the horrors of that creature!

ANd yet, what is Mr. Robot's purpose in life? Mr. Robot has neither purpose nor life; about six drops of blood have been oozed upon him, smeared by Radha into a blackish ink smear on a glossy piece of injected plastic over the left hand side. A warning of a wounded heart or a badge of courage. It is hard to say.

Mr. Robot is not cunning, exactly, but Mr. Robot's head turns up and when the toothsome THING comes towards him, he comes towards it. A small object, moving rather quickly at the creature's - leg? Lower half? It is hard to say?

Radha looks over her shoulder further, popping her bloody finger into her mouth. Radha has two other dolls in her bag. Both have soft bodies. She looks down towards those women -- sees the light --

"Oh fuck they're leaving!"

-- and she starts to run. Yes: This is a situation that has finally managed to make 'a mysteriously litten hedge maze in an inappropriate location' the more appealing option.

Hela has posed:
Mr. Robot at least serves his purpose and he can strike forth. The ectoplasmic nature of the wraith exists partly in the Underworld and partly phased out. Though where is that phasing? Nonetheless, a plastic arm or a firm push will meet with resistance and the smacks have to account for something. It will not entirely knock the long-limbed, gaunt wraith off its feet for that monstrosity is a sack of poisoned hate and teeth, throwing down its hands with chewing maws to inspect the world too. Eyesockets leech shadow, bending.

The mad run through the pyramid has its dangers. Even without frost, glass is smooth and Radha's rush sends her careening into a wall and spinning along the corner. Triangular panes ricochet with her reflection, and it takes some negotiation to get back up to her feet.

The women are closer at the rotating metal frame that sweeps above the central space. Both sides of brass and iron are anchored on the glass. Here might be the only light to speak of, the sparks of colour a pale gold, and the moment one of them steps within the periphery swept by the bars, a tree forms.

It's no ordinary tree. Wire-wrapped trunk and branches look to be made of silver, a spreading deciduous creation of some kind. It flashes out when one of them -- Sara, the Witchblade -- steps back. Then they both jump forth over the open space, and the whole space within the faster rotating orrery comes to life. Instead of white leaves, the tree has tickets: heaps of tickets, and little bone hooks on twigs for the places where none are.

It takes a good dash to get close, but not before they snare their papers and glyphs glow, and then they vanish.

Radha Tackeray has posed:
I should call out to them, thinks Radha as she slips and she falls and she skids and she, sort of, recovers, managing to avoid gashing herself again -- at least enough for her own eyes and body to notice. I should tell them to wait for me.

Would they care? Radha thinks, with some bitterness. They're on their way to find a savior. Her face refracts, sorrowful, perhaps over-pensive, in a dozen times a dozen triangles.

This is why Radha shouldn't be left along with herself.

MEANWHILE, Mr. Robot gazes upwards, and he begins to push, and he keeps pushing, and he keeps pushing, and he keeps pushing, and soon enough he is snatched up. The plastic provides perhaps a moment's curious resistance to fanged maws, seasoned as it is with blood. Rich and delectable blood.

When she sees the tree up close - or the mockery of a tree at any rate - Radha's eyes suddenly widen. Soon enough her hand is going into her dress pocket. Soon enough she's hesitating for a moment. She bought this, didn't she? It...

Was quite dear.

And yet, Radha thinks as she glances up and sees a brief flash of heartbreakingly bright plastic flying out into the open air between herself and that creature, what is dearer? My ass, Radha concludes, as she moves to put her ticket on the hook.

Hela has posed:
Would they hear? They are not so far in a house of glass, one where sound reflects off the many smooth surfaces polished to a shine. Her reflections run with her. They fall when Radha falls. They look back or stare down.

The price of admission, then, is named everywhere. TALAYA. IMALEE. BRUKE. TAMARIU. EGLUNAS. TXIV QUAV MIV. QUA ME. TAMDYR.

When she presents her little page, ATHEL written upon it along with THE HALL OF BURNED WORDS, a branch is practically there to meet her.

Hooking itself through it, the bark of the tree opens up in a collection of burning spirals that alight across its wire-wrapped silver measure. A short entrance, enough to require her to stoop, is well-lit by a sunlit sheen absent otherwise in this lonely, miserable realm.

The wraith shrieks with its new prize. Hungry and biting, plastic no flesh. The blood does not flow. It gnaws and laps, spitting out mangled bits of the toy. Turning, it hurls itself after the light.

A chalk path cuts ahead through the gap, emerging through a thick curve of smooth wood. Her choice is now or never.

Radha Tackeray has posed:
Radha does not hesitate.

Maybe never would be fun?

But in the end, she chooses now. She still has stuff to handle, back in the world of the living.

(Sorry, Optimus.)