7690/1000 Faces: War and Peace

1000 Faces: War and Peace
Date of Scene:	04 September 2021
Location:	The Underworld
Synopsis:	Strange descends one last time.
Cast of Characters:	Jane Foster, Hela, Stephen Strange
Tinyplot:	1000 Faces of Death

---

Hela has posed:
On the Hill of Sovereignty, Macha watches the two young women depart from her care via the chalk path headed back to the surface. Even holding open that gate for them to ascend with their chosen gifts of mantle and jackdaw proves exhausting for the redheaded woman. Pride keeps her from going to her knees, but her body shakes with the wracked pangs that convulse her from the midsection. She bends, arm around her stomach, a brace against the discomfort carved in visceral terms.

White poplar leaves fall to the earth. The sound of the clash grows louder from the dusty clouds swept over the far ends of the plain, where the sky turns a darker grey and the murky sunlight withdraws somewhat. She wipes the black stains from her mouth with the back of her hand, the cloak overtaken by black feathers that stretch and grow down to the formerly embroidered hems. A stiffened cowl laced in the plumage hangs back from her hair, and her darkened skin settles into a comfortably tanned, nut-brown aspect.

Where Macha's voice is clear and commanding, hers is hoarse, and those black eyes stained by bruised shadows across broad cheekbones. If one is the classic model of Irish beauty influenced heavily by Norse strokes, hers is a stranger accumulation of features that mark her as a black Celt, Iberian memories of a long walk. Crowsfeet formed at the corners of her eyes lead to a pattern of tiny starlike freckles over her nose. "Always haughty and complicated, that one, isn't she? Maybe it would have gone better if she let her sister out. But no, no, 'Nemain took too much from Our sister. Nemain is lost in a fugue.'" Her mimicry of Macha's irritated, high-born tones are spot on, probably disturbingly so. "Nemain uses little words and /sees/, sorcerer."

Stephen Strange has posed:
The sorcerer does tarry behind, watching the two depart alongside the goddess. Yes, it might have taken some convincing to have them go on without him, but Strange was ever the resourceful one. Should he need to, he could focus on the mortal Morrigan's unique mystical signature. Now that he knows it, he could certainly follow it. Instead, he remains.

For questions still abound. And service to be rendered.

A step to the side and it is apparent to the sorcerer that the Three in One has changed aspect. Macha is no longer dominant. Instead, another...her sister. Nemain.

"What is it that you see, Nemain?" It is an expected question. One does not usually state that they see...without wanting to share what it is. Strange has already learned much from the conversation of namesake to mortal. Macha to Morrigan. Now, perhaps, Nemain will offer what Strange may not even know himself he needs.

Hela has posed:
The Sorcerer Supreme's presence still in the Underworld is less a living man haunted the abode of the dead than the Morrigan turning to him. Nemain clenches her fists at her sides, her nails black and shining-dark as corvid claws, breathing in through her nose. Breathing out, then.

The sapling that grew in the heart of the spiral fades away without Macha to sustain it, the second aspect providing none of the energy that the first did. Bone-white branches collapse to the chalk, broken and snapped, a pile of twigs or diviner's rods in a given pattern.

"Nemain sees the servant of an Elder Goddess. Sister spared her sister last time, did she not?" Nemain's clipped way of speaking is throaty and husky, not entirely unpleasant. "Her lover stayed good too. He was not chewed up and his divinity picked from his bones. Will her sister protect them this time? Ever ask, sorcerer?"

Stephen Strange has posed:
Not chewed up? That is a particular way to phrase something. "She protected you. You and your lover." Is she referring to Neit? It is certainly possible, though Strange does not ask about that. Instead, he takes a moment to consider his question. Divinities are a fickle lot...and proper reverence should be given. Considering Nemain's stilted speech, it would serve Strange well to not emulate, nor elaborate.

No. Here, at least, he feels he can speak freely. Plainly. So...the question that springs to mind isn't a 'will she?' question.

Instead...

"What did your sister protect you from before? What preys on the divine?"

For...that is the question, isn't it? What are the gods afraid of?

"As I was able to determine from your other sister, the one we speak of has grown mad with power and is willing to sacrifice souls to feed her craving. I have seen similar before, though it was a desperate gambit to defend the kingdom of Annwn. I sundered that, in exchange for assisting the King in defending his kingdom from those that would usurp it. But this...this is not out of desperation, but out of desire. I could assist, bring Her back to the fold."

Strange certainly could. But...first...

"There must be a reason She desires so much. What is She fearful of?"

Hela has posed:
Thinning black eyes glitter. Nemain shakes her head almost as soon as Strange begins speaking. She coughs out a denial, croaking, "No. Sorcerer does not know his history."

The hem of her feathery cloak trails through the chalk and the dust. One pointy-clawed finger jabs at the white path back near a break in the poplar screen, far from the spiral's centre. "Sorcerer, walk the path. Start by the branches."

She actually shoos him, both hands dashed to hasten him along. Nothing more is said until he actually leaves or starts trudging the dusty white route.

Stephen Strange has posed:
Perhaps the sorcerer does not know his history. Or, perhaps he was attempting to determine an answer that he was not properly prepared for, yet. Yes, so much for attempting to be clever.

Nemain will have her way and there is little that Stephen can do to dissuade that. The boots find the white path easily enough. He hesitates, not for fear, but for a moment to ask a question.

A question that never comes, as he is actually rushed along. Well, now that is a new experience. Just wait until he gets back and tell others. "As you wish..."

No, not an exclamation of love. Rather, acceptance of her terms. Stephen needs to walk the spiral? Then...Stephen shall walk the spiral.

Hela has posed:
He already walked a white path from the tree to the spiral where Macha stood. The walk here is quite a bit different. Even near the same beginning, the route veers away around the emerald-green turf, leaving the dappled shade from the trees lending some protective screen.

"Many cultures tell stories of the beginning. Some are true," Nemain begins in that age-old way of storytellers everywhere, leaving enough open as to suggest there could be authority in other talespinners and maybe not. "In the beginning were many powers. The First embodied the great laws. Each moved according to its wishes. Warring, swiving, creating, and destroying, they shaped the world. Hoggoth once stood in the First."

She points to the path, and traipses right along. "When all was young, a generation followed. They were as sand to the Moon beside the First. Some First were kind and many were not. War and loss chased the young out to find a new home. They roamed far and wide to find safety. Your elder goddess and her sister found welcome in a haven. Many followed them."

"When the world was young, this new place was empty. The seas waited. The sky was still of song. The Elder came to write their stories," she recounts in that slightly hoarse voice. "Some sought peace and growth. Most did not. Greed rent their hearts. They hungered for power like the First. They coveted wealth and strength they did not have. Their ambition led to war. Battles soaked the ground in ichor. Elder fought Elder and died. The land failed. The sky burned. The oceans churned. Such might shook even the firmament where the First noticed."

Stephen Strange has posed:
Some stories are true. Still, it is better to be told a story by one that knows it to be true. There isn't anything from Strange asking if his companion, his storyteller, happened to be there when creation was young.

No...that would be rude. And it would interrupt the story. Something that Strange believes would be a great affront to the goddess.

So he continues to walk the path, feet remaining steadfastly to the white way. It is not like he is in any great hurry. The servant of gods, of the Vishanti, could use a history lesson.

Hela has posed:
The white path stretches forth in fine detail, smooth and cleanly cut through the turf. Slowly it curves and beyond its edges, the green grass turns brown in the summer sun. Churned mud from many hoofprints might have something to do with the conflict in the edges of that space, where each of the leaves dance softly with their hidden murmurs.

Nemain shakes her head at herself, banishing a thought. "Greed begat corruption. Corruption twisted godhood. Darkness permeated immortal flesh. They yearned for more. They came for your lady's sister, the young Elder protecting life. She cried out for relief from the fallen Elders. The realm heard and succored her. For he, too, was sickened by the endless death and honourless waste. From them both came forth the Great Hunger. It would slake itself on corrupt godhood. It would consume darkened immortal flesh. It would drink their ichor," she says.

Long beats pass. "The Great Hunger did all these things. Few survived the hunt. The Elder Goddess called out to her son when he approached your lady. He spared her. He spared Hoggoth by her cry. From her generation lived only a handful. One by mercy. One by wisdom. One by malice. One by treachery." The woman blends into the corvid features, flying alongside the Sorcerer Supreme, wings beating at a desultory pace.

"The time of the Great Hunger passed when he was gorged. Gone was he. Then my mother bore us and the new generation. They grew strong and spread in the bountiful land. They populated the teeming seas. They claimed the loud skies. Some sought peace. Most did not. Warring, swiving, creating, and destroying. Greed pierced their hearts. Hunger filled their breasts. They coveted power and strength. Their ambition led them to take and take."

Stephen Strange has posed:
Footfalls continue to carry the emissary of Oshtur around the path set forth by Nemain. However, as Nemain speaks...the story of creation takes its grip upon Stephen's mind. She speaks of the Elders. She speaks of Oshtur. She speaks of Gaea.

And....she speaks of Gaea's son.

And now, the story falls into place. Blanks are filled with information from searches to slake the thirst of knowledge during many a night. Lessons from his mentor click. And...the name of he that spared his Mistress is spoken...a hushed tone that even Nemain herself may struggle to hear.

"Atum."

Corrupt godhood. It wasn't Nemain and her lover. It was Oshtur and her lover...Hoggoth. The flicker of comprehension fans into a bright flame. "Eater of Gods..." Yes, there was a lesson...perhaps...so long ago. The lesson was forgotten.

Forgotten no longer.

"I see! The darkness...the blind ambition. It is repeating the cycle once more. It...it will awaken the hunger anew."

Hela has posed:
"Nemain's sister saw. Little god fought little god. One fell and the other left fattened up. New lands and faithful now make them a bigger player in the game." The crow cackles, the chortling sounds rolling hard and harsh through the green swathe as she circles around Strange in the middle. He stands before the bone-white staves and rods from Macha's fallen tree.

"Nemain's sister acts, not thinks. She loses the fight with a fattened god. Again she fights and wins, and eats." It's a crow thing. Stripping the dead may be disasteful, but that's sometimes how it goes. "We feel her going to trick the Court of Death. Stupid girl," she says bitterly.

"Bad omens in the water." The bird clacks her black beak, the sound hollow and chiding at herself. "Nemain tries to stop us from going. No good there among mad, jealous powers. She is struck down. Macha forbade her, but she went into dark battle-frenzy. Knows no sister, no friend, but foe. How do you bring back a mind from madness?"

Her eyes glitter a hard, deadly black. "Why would Nemain /want/ her?"

Stephen Strange has posed:
Acknowledgement comes from the sorcerer as Nemain describes...no...not Nemain. As the Morrigan...aspects of all three...describes to Strange on what is happening. The crow...the Badb. Scavenger...but scavenger no longer. A fight, victory over a god still fat from the spoils of its own previous battle, and the taste for power gained. Power that was tried to be wrestled from the Court of Death, with the expected results.

Yes...things are clearer. "She hungers. As do they all. It is the same as when the Grey Goddess felt it prudent to hide...to cry out and find salvation with the beseeching of the Earth Goddess to her son. Balance must be found once more, for reality's sake as well as your own."

"It can be done. Should Nemain and Macha wish to reclaim their sister. Balance can be restored."

Hela has posed:
Nemain bitterly clacks her beak again and circles around him, winging in a spiral pattern. "Nemain thinks her sister best dead. Better two mourning than one poisoned. She is trapped with us. You can fix her to sane? Be the honoured guest. Otherwise she must die with the rest for there to be any hope of balance. Too late for all of them." The corvid mask falls and again she is the woman in the grey dress and the long feathered cloak, her hair tangled and dark, her copper features hardened.

"Nemain's sister gave gifts to them. She chooses champions. Sorcerer already serves others, so not for him that path." Her husky laugh rattles in her throat. "Not even going into the hall, so bad of us! We never even show them the lost words. Sorcerer cares more for this, aye? Nemain will open the door, but listen to her."

She leans forward, and the ground seems to sink. "No willworking. No fire. Leave your weapons at the door, sorcerer. She doesn't like them."

Stephen Strange has posed:
There is truth there. Nemain has been nothing but truthful to Stephen. She has no worry. What can Strange do, here? The offer was given...and the response logical. It is better for the two to live and mourn than the one poisoned. And, should Strange fail, then all is lost. It is apparent that Nemain, in her own direct way, is telling Strange that there are some battles that are better off not fought.

Appreciation must be given, to both sisters. Strange has learned much. And there is still more in store. "Many thanks to thee, Nemain. I appreciate the history lesson...and the passage further." The door to the hall? If Nemain feels it proper to go, then the Sorcerer shall continue to follow the path set before him.

The ground sinks...and Strange with it. No willworking. No fire.

So be it.

Hela has posed:
Or perhaps Nemain's a bitter sister angry for being struck down. Maybe there is hope; Macha spoke differently, didn't she? A mad cur may be a bit of damning praise.

The path swinging around through the chalk path spirals down in a tight corkscrew, emulating spiral staircases popular in lighthouses and commonplace to a given era. Not exactly favoured now, but thirty years ago was a different story. The door is open, then, and through the base of that winding walk, he might eventually find himself able to reach what looks like a subway tunnel.

The lighting is poor and variable, gaslit as it is, flames swaying to and fro. Shadows wing ahead, but the shades here are few, and those who hover among the long tunnel are entirely, utterly consumed by their own tasks. The man who shines shoes but none are there. The woman in a sari trying to post a letter, urgently pulling at the stones, getting nowhere with jamming the plasm into a stone wall. A boy plays with a stick and ball, which are a skull and femur, his face a grinning leer and his eyesockets caved in. They shrink back but barely speak.

So be it. The path takes a fair bit of time to walk, but it is straight, following pipes that were probably burrowed through bedrock and changing stone that moves from white to black, rough-hewn where it was once smooth. Eventually his footfalls reach the hollow arch, and through it, tiles that presumably lead to a station.

Stephen Strange has posed:
Flames here. This isn't his destination. Not yet.

For Nemain's words still echo in Strange's mind.

No willworking.

No fire.

Leave your weapons at the door

For Stephen, 'weapon' could take multiple meanings. Though, he himself takes nothing that is obviously a weapon. Words can be weapons. Intentions. Thoughts. All can cut as sharp as any knife, should the wielder be skilled enough.

A reminder to watch what he says and does, then. A warning not taken lightly.

The pathway continues, from staircase to subway tunnel to train platform. This platform is not familiar to Strange...but that does not matter. It is apparent that the path continues onward via rail.

Claiming the train will not be an issue. And, while Strange has never rode this particular rail, the destination seems familiar, at least by name

The Crystal Palace

Another moment of self-realization. The path leads back to the beginning. Were the sorcerer in any other place but the Underworld itself, he might have laughed.

Hela has posed:
Other rules, too, apply to the Crystal Palace. He has heard some of them before, seen them written in the broken glass he fell through. Others remained in the emporium, if he could call such a place by such a simple word.

The rail line that rattles through can be identified with relative ease. Only one side is reachable, the other track mirrored on the other side. Shades there embody the respectable sort with horribly gaunt faces, skin pulled tight. Some manner of humanity remains, but most of them have small mouths and leering eyes. The somewhat Egyptian appearance to them, at least as the dead go, is entirely due to the brown leathery flesh, the greyed features, the empty, glassy eyes.

The train that pulls out belongs to another time, naturally, a crashed together series of cars that could well be mistaken as archaic things rambling through the Balkans. A German engine, by the looks of it, would do well circa 1860, give or take eight years. The cars are small, quaint, wood-panalled, and singularly flimsy in their shadowy glass or fallen sashes that offer some kind of privacy. The boiler hisses, steam erupting from the chugging beast that nags and hisses as it waits.

His choices are entirely his own on how to achieve that train, especially with the conductors being jackal-headed.

Stephen Strange has posed:
Stephen's choices are indeed his own. However, when in Rome, or, in this case, when in a train station manned by possible devotees to Anubis, do what the locals do.

Which, in this case, is to procure a ticket.

For, Stephen does not need to be tossed from a train for jumping it. Somehow, he thinks his pending host at the end of this path set before him by two thirds of the Three-in-One would appreciate if he did not rock the boat at this point.

Or, the train.

The sorcerer takes his place in line. It shuffles along until it is his turn to board. Whatever payment that is necessary, Strange will pay. To which...if his ears do not deceive, is the cost of a memory with value. There are many that he values...but one springs to mind.

Age 11. On the farm. Helping his sister. The nudge that pushed him along his path towards medicine...and ultimately to who he is today.

Hela has posed:
The line takes a moment to move through. The shades presenting their credentials for a ticket turn thinner, reduced somewhat, to take this train through to The Crystal Palace. A handpainted sign in an old style hanging above the platform flickers between naming the location and stating "TICKETS ARE NECESSARY. NO FREELOADING."

The Anubid conductor in his curious long white kaftan coat and loose pants punches the tickets for those who come. His is a measure of doing it by literally biting their hand, leaving a string of bitemarks punched into the flesh. They barely bleed, welling up almost black in the light. How then the consequences of a dream yanked through Stephen's very skin? Whatever the case of it, he pays, and is waved on, sore or not.

The interior of the train is small and cramped. Seats in plush velvet stand out against the heavy, cloying sense of grief that lingers. Everywhere are floral motifs, so beloved of the Victorians. When another shade in widows' weeds -- ironic, given the build of the hulking figure could be a bear in the lace -- settles in, the car lurches unevenly. Then comes the next moment, the train pulling away with a sighing chug.

Travel goes fast, snaking through the serpentine darkness and plunging through a heavy, jilted path. Ahead come the bridges, twin spans back to back, ribcages wrapped around the bone-laid ttrack. The huge beasts that made them surely trawled the deeps of a primordial ocean, larger by half than anything the great collections of dinosaur bones or other contemporary monsters might ever have been. Yet, in rushing through them, the dark river clear as glass. Waters trail and swirl around the island station where the train approaches, leaving the safe chain of bone to that part buried deep, dangerous, in the spa town that resembles something like Brighton.

Stephen Strange has posed:
Now sporting a punctured hand and a slightly less cluttered mind, Stephen remains seated in his car, watching the scenery. This was a much more respectable method of travel in comparison to his original foray into the Underworld, flung from the upper reaches through time, space, and sheets of glass. The hand is inspected, of course, but not wrapped nor given too much mind. Unusual...but not exactly completely out of the norm.

As least a slightly mangled hand is easier to manage than a black-winged angel of death.

Still, the sorcerer keeps to himself. Too much attention is never a good thing. As such, keeping to oneself, remaining stalwart, vigilant. That is the matter at hand, even as the sorcerer continues to follow the path.

Though, there may be a nagging feeling that he has been to where he is before...

Hela has posed:
Milky-green holes fill in where the bite left its impression, goring Stephen's already injured hand. Not enough pain accompanies him to be wholly concerning, though the tapestry of scars boasts an addition of wounds he can see fully through as the ectoplasm fills in for tissue and muscle, bone glowing faintly incandescent. He might be quite lucky one of the conductors did not decide to remove it at the joint, really.

The rough travel rattles over the bones, sighing and groaning turning into the soft echoes of sobs. Not the loud, snot rolling down the face crying, but the kind when that rage has past, grief giving way to something greyer and heavier to bear through the years. Shades gather on the sides of the riverbank, staring down into water that might not even seem to be there at all. Where the platform presents itself, the isle links by low bridges to a different section of a city under vast, cavernous ceilings that recede beyond wherever the light would go. Here, too, the world is in disarray with buildings from Victorian England alongside those of handsome pillars and open-air spaces, roofs in terracotta, then more besides shunted in from some wood-daubed, crude domain by comparison. All pushed up against one another wouldn't be too offputting, if not for whole wings of a palais disappearing when touching a humble crofter's cottage, and leaping over a dirty, open yard to a pair of Romanesque vaulted buildings within the same stretch.

When the train squeals in, the order is clear. Doors open first in the higher class cards, while those confined to steerage class of a kind wait, pressed together, moaning, waiting for their chance to be free among the elegant betters instead of trapped with the dead hoi-polloi.

Strange is somewhere near the middle, and when the doors snap open, the floor tilts to get him and his companion out.

Stephen Strange has posed:
"Huh."

An utterance as the ecto-plasmic substance fills in the holes left by the rending and gnashing of teeth. That was unexpected, though certainly an interesting turn of events. Much too fascinating to be painful at all.

As the train passes the buildings, the hodge podge of architectural influences are readily noticeable. It is then that Strange is realizing that he is coming almost full circle, for the same decor was prevalent in the city he had found himself in, before he decided to join the mortal Morrigan and her companion. With the train stopping at the station...and the rather efficent means of clearing the cars, Strange finds himself stumbling out.

Oh well, no matter. The sorcerer is present...and the path leads onward.

Hela has posed:
Indeed, he is very much beyond and come full circle, though is the city anything less than a space within a realm, a realm build from many others? Perhaps there should be cities strung out in a line with darker spaces between them. Dominions descendever lower.

For the proof? In comparison to where the inverted pyramid was when he started, he certainly seems to be at a lower elevation. The neighbourhoods that spring up around the Crystal Palace look on the turbulent glass structure more like the Moon. It glows on high, far out of reach, a distant reminder of what seemed much closer than before. The broken skyline orbits around it so slowly, just as the Crystal Palace boasts its own archipelago.

The entry comes through the massive arched doors leading inside, though smaller entries lead inside. No repairs have touched the domed roof. One enters the building, or not at all.