9147/Time Stop

Time Stop
Date of Scene:	17 December 2021
Location:	Sanctum Santorum
Synopsis:	Majestic things.
Cast of Characters:	Stephen Strange, Illyana Rasputina

---

Stephen Strange has posed:
It's 9 o'clock on a Saturday....

The dulcet tones of Billy Joel drift languidly through the air. The source? A rather mundane bluetooth speaker. The reason for the music? Well, Stephen is reading. Honestly, more like studying...but he does study for fun, so it is entertainment just as much as educational. A book upon the lap, he sits in the library of the Sanctum, humming along softly to the music. Yes, no flashy night out quite tonight. Sometimes it is nice just to have a night with no major issues.

Sometimes.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
What, precisely, is a demon queen to do on a Saturday in the prime of life? Clubbing, maybe. Wrapping presents or poring over Amazon to find something who literally could have anything aren't her style entirely. Baking cookies? Why, when she has an entire dimension of monsters to do that?

Instead, she sits on the floor with a suspicious auroral necklace and a pair of books open, fine tweezers in one hand and another handful of fire swirling around her triple-barred warding circle. Preventing magical cross-contamination is utterly important, after all, particularly inside the Sanctum. Casting rooms are useful for this, not as if she'd be casting in the middle of the foyer for no purpose. Her eyes lack colour, her mouth black as sin, invoking some of the arcane principles that tilt heavily grey shaded.

Must be the season of the witch as she constructs their Amora-bait.

Tick. Tick...

Stephen Strange has posed:
A glance to the wall betrays the time as 9:21. With a slight smile, the bluetooth speaker is ported out and gone as Strange shifts to stand. It's time to check on Illy's bauble. With the book left on the end table next to the chair, Stephen takes a step...

...and walks into the same room as his paramour. He, of course, remains careful to not breach the warding circle, but he does seem rather content to just pull up a corner and look on with wry amusement. He, also, is sure to not necessarily *say* anything as he watches. If anyone knows what concentration is needed to work enchantments, it is Stephen.

That's not to say that he doesn't make his presence known. Just that he will wait until Illyana is at a cozy spot before attempting to speak.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
The gemstone is the piece of interesting work, though the lovely sunset gold of the necklace has its own pretty variations. Its intensity changes with the light, the hour of the day, and proximity to someone with blonde hair. Seriously, that's a condition being woven in by the admittedly blonde Russian sorceress. Her fingers spread out to net the spell over the gem, pulling down threads. The books beside her aren't for show, warning her exactly how she wants to shift the energy around and form a transparent half-sphere with room enough for the gem and an exacting shell of thin air that holds the residual 'fire' of the transformative, dancing aurora. After all, set it too low and there's no fire except in the facets, and how fun is that when the point is to make something that twinkles and glows like the night sky?

Fancy handiwork that even someone as skillful as the arcane surgeon turned sorcerer might want to pay attention to. The energies she's channelling into the spell originate not with the terrestrial dimension they occupy, but one far more exotic, filled by incandescent glows. "I should have asked a Faltine for their fire," she declares between arcane muttering and shifting her wrist back and forth. Belasco's processes have to be modified. It isn't theft. Hence having a book from his library, one from her own, one with teeth. Her eyelids lower, the resonance of that piece of his soul in her knowing where it belongs and stuck thanks to the mundane transactional nature of partners swearing and sealing things. He settles in under her frost-licked gaze, more a presence she knows is there than directly sees.

Not that it means any less when her aura trickles shades of purple and blue, the usual dark fire held in abeyance. Pushing it outwards through the circle is easy; the circle is there for the magic, containment of the spell, not the sorceress. Rather like being wound around by a cat.

Stephen Strange has posed:
"I may know a Faltine you can ask..."

A small comment. One that comes unbidden. But also one that could be considered in jest. Still, Stephen watches with interest. The skill is exceptional, of that there is no doubt. And really, would one expect less of a Sorceress Supreme? Certainly not Stephen. He knows what Illyana is capable of. After all, he has that spark of her within him as well. Unasked for, but given freely nonetheless.

"I do like the touch of increasing intensity in proportion to blondes, as well. Very clever." Not that Stephen was asked...but hey, he will offer complements when the occasion arises.

A minute ticks by. 9:22 PM.

"Would you like me to assist at all?" Of course Stephen would ask. The bait is being set because of his failure to keep a silly little sword safe. Illyana is essentially doing him a favor. Of course he is going to ask. "It won't take a mo..."

A pause, suddenly. The head tilts...as if something just seized Strange's attention. "Wait...what's that?" A flicker...

18 seconds after 9:22....

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
"Woman like her will not be bought with pretty baubles. We need something better to draw her in." Illyana's already got the components of a rare metal, a transcendent gem, a host of other sparkling objects put into a stunning design that would make Harry Winston blush and Cartier roll over in his grave for not thinking of it first. "She has all treasures of Asgard. How do you exceed this?" Her frailties cast in English, few as they are, sometimes arise when the conversation takes a far back seat on the stretched double-bus to concentrating on the magic. It leaps and thrums through her, quivering as she laces another tendril into place. That, like the spellwork before, has to be knotted off.

"Give it flair, da? I could be dripping with gems and they are like a parka. They are there." Nodding in acquiescence to Strange, her palms spread apart as he might be fit to approach. Her thumb spools a trailing gossamer line that flows into the circle, churning around to be picked up, so to speak, rather than having him reach for it. The ends singe purple, then gold, a colour it shouldn't be.

The upheaval of being dynamically connected to a different plane sends her plunging forward in a violent rocking motion, heaved on unstable territory as the spellwork surges around her and her fingers cast wide. In half a heartbeat, the black barbed crown manifests and silver armour explodes out of a nimbus of blue light, socketing together not in a pauldron but the smooth shell identical in some ways to her big brother's lamellared facade. The spontaneous eruption goes hurtling down her wrist and scoring across her chest, coating her as fast as thought can be. The stepping disk ought to be there seconds later. A flicker is too fast for it to more than wrench open--

--to nowhere. Because there is only nowhere, the nothing, the Null--

--and the shockwave begins.

Stephen Strange has posed:
The half a heartbeat of detection to oblivion might as well be an eternity. So long, yet so helpless. So very, very helpless.

Fingers outstretch, reaching for Illyana even as she rocks forward. Fingers, unconcerned with the threat of armor and crown, try to connect. Even so, the sorcerer's own protections snap into place, triggered by sheer instinct. The Cloak, faithful friend, envelopes...

Those fingers....disappear. As does everything else.

*Everything*

Then...reemergence. The fingertips fall upon smooth silver. Hands trembling with pain reborn fall upon armored shoulders as the Cloak shifts, including the Queen within its embrace as Strange finds the floor with his knees.

A half second. So short for normal perception. Almost imperceptible for most. But for those who know. Those who see.

They realize the implications.

Existence...ceased to be. For a split second.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
Half a second, all it takes for the universe from one end to the other to cease expansion. Unlike how the philosophers and scientific minds presume, it ends not in a massive crunch or cold, ominous darkness long after the Stelliferous and Degenerate Era vanished into ancient history.

A cosmic blip cuts into the bright lights and layered colours filling the casting room. Glimpses of black pants bleeding against tawny floors waxed and polished with care fade in an instant. Limbo's blood-streaked sunsets do not exist, the fading burn of the stepping disk outlined against an empty shell of nothingness full of the antithesis of everything.

Too short a time to cast. Too short a time to react as the Soulsword flashes to hand, burning as hot as a star in response to the unnatural weals bleeding outward from an impact point somewhere a couple of kilometers away in Manhattan. Or maybe it's only imagination that she calls the sword, holding out her hand to wrest him from danger.

Fingers never connect. Her shout never vibrates molecules in the atmosphere to convey his name, everything thrown into the invocation of his name, because that requires nitrogen and oxygen atoms to crash against one another. There are none.

Half a second, too late to recognize the death of her subjects. Not a planet of living beings, but a //plane//, all snuffed out an iota before she is.

Perfect silence greets as the world rips backwards into the base state of existence when there was nothing. Stillness and fomented chaos in the before.

                                     ----                                    
                                Fade to black.                                
                                     ----                                    

Ste --
    --iot--
        Who? Jean could stop this--
    --bastard, Mikhail? --
            --ph--
        you failed you failed you failed
    I don't want to die
        --why are you fighting Me?
            //e//
            no no no
        It's Our realm--
    --otr
--and they'll burn
                    --n!

                                     ----                                    

Time wheels back into place, rushing scarlet cloth of the Cloak and his scarred fingers skimming off mirror-bright surfaces shielding the Demon Queen head to toe. Magik: this isn't her mutation, but her living magic rushing to save her from oblivion too late. Their hands meet and she teeters forward on a crash through the stepping disk bloomed wide enough to swallow both of them and probably a bus. She probably has to push back against the wards of the Vishanti -- them, too, undone and remade when everything stitched back together again?

Stephen is in a better state to deal with such things than she is, poleaxed while her voice howls back in to finish his name when it was gone.

The necklace still glitters, and the destroyed spell without focus dissipates into how much damage?

Stephen Strange has posed:
Fingers meet. Scarred flesh to seamless armor. Those fingers lock down, entwining the digits about as the metal underneath warms to the touch. That hand holds fast, pulling. Pulling the Demon Queen back from the brink of the portal of her own creation, even as the other hand...the free hand...waves in a dismissing motion. Perhaps it will seal the portal, perhaps not...but the intention is still there.

Stephen intends on remaining where he is...and with Illyana.

The free arm shifts, wrapping over the armored shoulder as the sorcerer spins around, his knee finding the floor just before Illyana. The free hand splays the fingers wide, seeking purchase upon the smooth surface...someplace to cling to. And...all the while, that other hand remains steadfast, holding the other.

"I am here..." Three simple words. Just three. Spoken just for Illyana. The necklace remains at their feet, the broken spell an afterthought now.

For a moment....there was nothing.

Now? At least for Stephen, there is only one immediate concern in the universe renewed. And she is rocking in front of him.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
Through the breach in reality lies the summoned weight of Limbo, the fundamental realm winnowed through all places and times. Rough rock lies beneath her. Not the beautiful multihued stone near the dachas recreated in an effort to bring a touch of Russia to a place blighted by savage, preternatural corruption or the glittering spire she erected as a tower to mark authority. Simple dark rock, hard and coarse, an igneous plateau scraping her knees and almost warm. Illyana's armoured shape reflects Stephen's visage in whole, the absence of burnt black proof of the final form that protective wall takes.

Her sword rests to the side, the fingers clasping its silvered handle convulsing into a fist and loosening. The risk of being burnt by the flames is significant enough, though any spell in proximity runs the risk of unweaving permanently or temporarily, for all she hasn't focused on cutting or maiming.

Too much flits back and forth between polarities, incandescent motions riding over darkest passions broken open from their tenuous confinement. Fighting back one's nature is hardly easy. Stephen knows his own pride. She knows wrath.

Something to cling to in a storm of sheltering fury. He is there. Her lips part and the guttural breath ripping out from her is a slow building tempest, shredded against her clenched teeth, raising up in a spiralling gyre until the shriek in its soundless proportions shakes the very bedrock of Limbo itself.

"Who did this?" A question that will be asked by many in different places comes to her lips. Or a question it is not at all.

And how soon are they going to die?

For her eyes burn with balefire, turned on him even as her fingers clench around his, not letting go, not even knowing how. Silver armour flowing like metal, and the horns of Limbo aren't merely her headdress.

They're real.

Stephen Strange has posed:
The question is asked. And...the answer is given. It isn't necessarily an answer that bodes well, however.

"I don't know."

It is an honest answer. If Stephen is going to be honest to anyone, any being, there are only 4 that he would be unwavering honest towards. The Vishanti...and Illyana. The answer is followed with a promise.

"But...I intend to find out."

The shift is palpable. Strange does not need to see the balefire within those cerulean orbs to know. Nor does he need the evidence that the crown the Demon Queen wears is more than simply a crown. No. Stephen knew because of a simple thing.

He felt it.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
Who dares? Who would act?

Illyana is vanished beneath the nightmare within, the elder three-fifths subsuming the minority. The Soulsword that would most certainly turn back on her with catastrophic consequences burns hotter, virulent blue flames threatening to crackle through reality's walls.

His portion is in there, holding back the darkest tide, but nightfall bleeds across veins running with infuriated ichor, and the Hell Lord grits her pointed teeth against the incendiary truth laid there. "Who would take you from me..." A question it is not.

Rather a bloody declaration.

The other half takes a heave of breath to force out, the melting fragments of armour rearranged in their more traditional jagged pulse of metal cracked and brilliant around its edges, fragmented spikes at her shoulders and knees. Where she would have knees.

"They will suffer."

They're backbent.

Stephen Strange has posed:
He is there, certainly. Both within and outside of the Hell Lord Stephen is holding onto. He knows that his offering to the Queen, the part of his essence freely given, is fighting back the dark wrath. That was his intention, after all...to help Illyana hold on to her humanity. To remind her of who she is. But, the shock to the system is tremendous. The natural instinct of fight or flight is to be expected....and Illyana chose fight.

No.

The Darkchilde chose to fight.

Understandable, certainly...but dangerous? Most definitely.

"There is no need for anyone to suffer. I am still here. I will always be here." As Stephen speaks, he opens up his mind's eye...and proceeds to travel the roads he is familiar with. The Astral plane is familiar territory to him...and even as he slips free of his physical shackles, he walks with assured strides. Though...the mindscape that Strange finds himself in would cause anyone lesser to cower in fear.

Waves of anger, of malice roll over him, dark purple and menacing. Surely, this is the dark one's essence...the nearly overwhelming hatred that the Darkchilde must feel for whoever would dare to take away her possessions. It may not even be the fact that Stephen has given himself to Illyana....the fact that someone would take away anything would possibly be enough to draw the Demon Queen's ire.

But...it is not the wrath of the dark one that Stephen travels the Astral for. No. He is searching for another. For the woman within...the human essence that Stephen knows is there, somewhere. Illyana needs to know that she is protected....and Stephen intends to find her within and...in the process, quell the rage within.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
The Darkchilde knows nothing of surrender. What purpose has peace in a realm defined intrinsically by change? Struggle and hate didn't always poison Limbo, far from it, in the prehistory of Belasco's rulership. Smoldering wreckage darkens the land and removes all remnants of a different nature, burying them deep out of reach, and leaving only the disordered chaos arising from the universal reset.

To some degree, her cosmic awareness matches Strange's. Wrongness charges a horrific, rising revelation in the back of her mind. How close did they come to the end? What of everyone they know?

Countless voices crying out in the darkness no longer scream. The expected clamor does not exist. Instead, time and reality carry on as they have. She does not understand, not truly, not yet.

What is understood?

Flesh. Hers scalding warm, almost unbearable, pressed to relatively cooler skin.

Words, spoken reasonably. English. Masculine. Of course she knows Strange as he knows her. Hard with pieces of self lodged in her breast, literally. His words bring her lips curling in a snarl, contempt a savage, brimming point escalated from the possessive intent that will not permit this violation.

Rage tastes of black tea and iron. Her horror blended up in something close to loss and losing him feels hotter than a fever, the prickle at the back of the throat and burning up thoughts.

In the Astral, the Hell Lord looks the same as her mundane form, almost more tangible in a sense. The same battered black armour pierced by spikes, the skin riveted by slender opalescent scars -- ruby fractures bled over skin with a definite dusky tone. Who is the what, if they are knit and broken of the same wretched horror? Was always the demon, is ever the man?

"There is. What would do this will try it again."

Stephen Strange has posed:
"No. Not if I can help it."

It is a simple statement. One that Strange gives easily. Perhaps too easily. But the Darkchilde knows Strange. She knows that he does not say things lightly. Not without some measure of truth to them. And Stephen...he means what he says.

The digits entwined, ruined fingers against the furnace that is the Darkchilde, do not separate. Instead, the free hand reaches up, the fingertips dangerously close to cupping the cheek of the wrathful one. No, fire holds no fear for the sorcerer. Certainly not the flame that is before him, at the very least.

When Stephen speaks, the words resonate. Not just for the ears, but for the mind as well. Astral and human selves in sync as Stephen promises. "I will track down those responsible." Of course he will. It is his duty as the protector of the realm to do so. But, he speaks this out loud to attempt to calm the fiery vision before him. And...even as he speaks, he searches. If not for Illyana herself, for it is apparent that the two are one and the same...then for a way to quell the anger within.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
Balefire lurks in those empty eyes, none of their usual Arctic frost blue present. Tinged in the stormy presence of wrath, she snaps shut the portal to Limbo that bleeds fire around them and gives her hair and aura the same lambent glow, unnaturally rippling back and forth.

He who walks the Astral and simultaneously holds the hand of a monster who can fling several tons worth of material through a solid concrete wall is not to be treated lightly.

The Demon Queen flicks her tongue over her sharp fangs, an act of primal disdain, coiling deep while he reaches for her. Strange is the braver, in his way. He stands obdurate against stubborn threats and breaks in the world, stitching together the barriers, mending the holes left by her ilk and lesser ones.

Doubt and wrath chase one another, the twin demons circling an infernal wheel. Elder rulers of the Hells might approach this more brazenly, more subtly, practiced in the millennia-long games of maneuvering around one another. Dark mirror, bright shadow, both of them screaming different words, harbouring different fears from the same root source.

"And then what?"

Stephen Strange has posed:
Those grey eyes peer back into the balefire...and do not balk. And, even as the Demon Queen coils, tensing, the fingertips meet flesh, his palm doing little to cool the cheek...but his hand? Yes....the heat is rather intense...but nothing that he cannot handle. As the hand caresses flesh, he offers an answer to the question given.

"Then, we are going to have a rather involved talk about how it is impolite to almost destroy creation and impress upon whoever did this to never do it again." A pause. "And...if they refuse to listen, then I know just who I can call on to ensure that they do listen."

The implied reference is there. In short, Strange is asking to let him handle it first...and then, if that doesn't work, he will call upon the Queen within his grasp, should she wish. And...it is quite possible that she may wish.

Still, as Stephen speaks, he is still searching. Within the Astral, the Darkchilde is certainly present in all of her glory. But, it is the hint of Illyana that Strange is looking for. The slightest indication is enough. Enough for Strange to reach out, to support...to help bring to the forefront...

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
The failure to recoil irritates some part, the primal mind reeling back and prepared to strike like a venomous krait. He still touches, he still stares, refusing to back down. That corner loathes the defiance, willing to tear it down and subjugate the rest, while a spin of the wheel contemplates more substantive approaches to make the most of the situation to her advantage.

Trickier than simply overthrowing someone by a show of force or cowing them by a glare. The Soulsword isn't the tool for a different scalpel, even as she gets her digitigrade legs under her, poised on hardened hooves that very well could be normal feet under any other circumstance.

"Talk. Kill. Better to reverse the order, but your heart is too soft." That much she is willing to grant him, the sharp edges perfectly willing to sever wings or split demonic essence, to chain and subjugate back into nothingness anew. The concepts are always lightly at hand. Always present, the risk of how to put something down, because she expects it, and that makes her closer to Victor von Doom than any bright soul.

Her shoulders twinge, stillness off. Ruby lines shimmer. There, then, is the key, where the light of the broken self gleams through. It's dark in her bright aspect, bloody in this, a hint to the mortality where his soul rests.

Stephen Strange has posed:
"Oh, but to murder first is to not discover how reality was almost eliminated. Or, more precisely, *why*. And I am rather curious at the why, are you not?" Casual conservation. Well...at least casual for Stephen. But those eyes of his do not leave the Darkchilde. Yes, it might be foolish for Strange to treat the Darkchilde like he would Illyana proper, but...in his mind, this is still Illyana. It would be rude to change.

Besides, it isn't like he is any better. There has to have been some point in the past where Strange was a little less good and a bit more, shall we say...impulsive. So, really, out of most anyone, Strange understands. Which...could explain why the Demon Queen finds him so irritating.

Still....in the Astral, Strange does see it. The point in which to reach out and encourage the humane side of Illyana to come out...to establish itself anew. A beckoning, astral hand reaching out, towards that bloody crack. 'Come on out, dear one' it seems to say. Yet nothing is spoken. And...there is no urgency given. Strange knows that Illy has been able to repress the Darkchilde before. She can do it again.

This time....she will have help.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
The Darkchilde's care for how is secondary to punishing the perpetrator, and it shows in the cool, flexing snarl and the rigid arc of her back. Thrilling responses rake through her body, tense and fit for a fight, practically shoving away the threats that pile up in response.

Their seduction is too sweet.

Come out, come out, is like enticing a cat. A demonic cat. A demonic cat in possession of far too much power and the malice all felines possess. No eagle, no hawk, no snake even gets close to the calculated intent of someone to stomp or claw or play with its food.

Claws might be out as his finger beckons. He doesn't touch the broken skin, the vibrating seams of energy, but they run over her hand in his as much as any. Light bleeds to the moment, aura violently red and aflame to the point of orange, sundered for a brief second by the crackle of light.

If she had gloves... oh, she might smack him. Failing that, though, with teeth framed by overly full black lips, she snarls, "What next, here kitty, kitty, kitty? I am not a--"

Spitting tacks? Not exactly. "--- a cat, and you do not have a bell, da?"

Hell Queens don't speak Russian.

Stephen Strange has posed:
The hand withdraws from the cheek. The physical hand. The astral? Still held out patiently. That's the wonderful thing about Strange. He can actually be in two places at once. Though, now that the physical hand has pulled back, it is free to do whatever it wants.

And...seemingly on its own, the free hand flutters in the air, then reaches forward and pulls...something...from the emptiness between the two personages. A golden sphere, with grooves carved into it. Then, with a twist of the wrist, palm upward, the golden sphere is presented to the Darkchilde, as an offering.

It's...a bell. A spherical jingle bell, to be precise. Appropriately sized for a Illyana-scaled collar, should Strange wanted to make one. Which....he wisely didn't.

Though, wisdom is rather limited...for he did just offered a demon a bell.

"Will this one suffice?"

Oh, the cheekiness of that man...

"I mean, I was just going to ask nicely, but if you really wished for a bell..." The funny thing is that Strange doesn't crack a smile. At least, not physically. Astrally, his aura may be very well coloured with his amusement...but physically he at least remains serious looking.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
A bloody jingle bell.

In a one-horse open sleigh... over the fields we go...

How she dazzled at Christmas carols as a wee girl ignorant of anything else about American culture. The brief glimmer of the child's memory through the nightmarish outer casing cocooning whatever vestiges maintain a certain innocence burns redder, hot and rough, unbearably weighted against success.

He has made the damn bargain. Stephen may know the weight and texture of legalese with the infernal, they truck in it all the time. Fulfilled request, a slanted obligation... what, then?

"Bastard," she snarls, teeth blunter but still too sharp, her eyes narrowed and the pallor of her skin dubious yet. "Does it ring?" If it doesn't ring, then maybe the loophole can be exposed, the ball is a ball and the gift can be sliced through by--

Her shoulders twitch, back arching and stiffened again, her fingers curled around his cooling and heated all the same. No, a collar might not have been the best idea.

In the astral, her eyes narrow and she gestures with the same no you come here gesture. <<When has asking nicely ever got you anything, doctor?>>