"Beware of what the Ravens speak. Heed their words"

The words were left. Omens on her tongue as she left the gunslinger that night. Traced a darker path. Well the witch had come to learn, to know of the Circus.

Standing at the gates, tilt of head. This was not direction that the lure was thrown. Tossed to reel in a fine fish of shimmering twilight scales. No. Deeper depths were meant to allure the witch.

Black diamonds squinted, became dark rivers saturated by the light of the moon. This... she had not remembered mention of.

The whisper. The beckon. The lure was a shiny beacon on ley lines. Coated in omens, bathed in warning. It needed a haunting melody those steps of the witch.

The entrance gates of the Circus ignored. She went towards that darker path. Shadows parting.

The long thread of moon brushed emerald where the grass grew thick, undisturbed by a curing hand ended at another tent. Offset from the rest.

She shuddered as the wind moved through the grass, made the blades of green feel like serpent's tongues upon her flesh.

No sign. No declaration of the tempation of a lonely tent.

The flap of entry brushed aside, dusk of fingers carried a sensation. Feeling of spiderwebs one could never remove from their touch.

The feeling disturbed her. Settled in a coil of claustrophobic despair in the pit of her soul.

"Ah. There you are child. I knew you would come. We have been waiting."

We? She saw but one. Even with the nature of a Valendria witch, the nature of Lani to see souls there were no others.

A bit of cloak and dagger the hour seemed. Time itself did not exist. How many hours had passed before she settled in that chair across from the old woman.

Harmless palm reader. Grasping for hands that the witch was unwilling to offer.

The palm reader smiled, bared her teeth. The witch blinked, shook her head. Disbelieving her eyes. The image of the woman distorted, tainted by death and decay with jagged mouth of sharp teeth, a tongue severed by glass. Eyes bleeding with the impaling of silver spikes.

Fight or flight. The nature was deep in the spirit but the witch held her place. Dusk marked fingers tempted to grasp at the seat of chair, the palm reader sneered.

"Foolish girl. Are you so frightened? Give them to me. Your hands."

A tug,a pulling gesture of wrists. The palm reader shoved the sleeves of the witch's dress past her wrists. Examined with a cruel cut of a smile.

"Just as I thought. You carry the Mark."

The witch said nothing. Black diamonds moved. Flicked aside. Discomfort flooded pupils. The grasp upon wrists seemed harsher, the palm reader's nails dug in deep.

A hiss of breath. She saw them then. The many chairs. They sat and wait.

"Near After Midnight child. Will you stay and wait with us?"
"Not tonight I'm afraid."

Her hands were released. The palm reader masked rage in an old woman's clucking disappointment. A burden of guilt complex.

Laniandra stood,suppressing a shudder as she was released. Moved slow to the flap of the tent as she yearned to run.

The old woman's voice was tainted with a curse.

"You will bleed again... child."

She walked swiftly that night. Holding to her waist in that solitaire embrace. The night never felt so cold.

Her dreams were tormented with bloody visions of a seance unlike any other. In her dream she sat with them. Bleeding across the table, spilling into chalices, tainting crimson the symbols and letters cut into the wood.

A vessel. A sacrifice. A channel. She would be the door.

A shattering of glass, a burst explosion that cut jagged edges of a mirror across her arms as she shielded her face from the impact.

Sweat drenched and trembling she stared at the broken mirror, the shattered window where a tortured raven had flown through.

Its blood was a black stain on the floor. Spilling like an ichor of omen warnings.

Shuddering she curled into herself. Nothing Sacred. Nothing Safe. Fingers curling unconsciously upon the summoning stone. Wished for Light within Darkness.

The maniacal laughter deafened her. Palm Reader voice a violent ribbon through.

"There is your invitation to the seance child. Become the vessel. Become the door."

(Some adult/mature content. Guard the wee ones eyes)

Your body is the door, if cut would it open for me? Spill your soul. Make your heart bleed. Let us see...

The rain had soaked her to the bone. Still she found the desolate road of Ghost Town to find the mark of her steps still she ended up at the grave yard.

An empty grave would wait. She stared down into the dark, wet mouth of it.

When she lifted her eyes from the unmarked spot the weight of the moon rested heavy in the night sky. It had changed its place.

Losing time.

Death had paid her a visit... and Chronos seemed to be eating at the edge of seconds, nipping at seconds, devouring minutes, sensually snagging hours away from her.

Some how to end with flowers in her hands. She laid them on the grave. A glance over shoulder as she left. No.

She would not look for the name on a tombstone that did not exist. Was not yet forged.

How long would that road lead her?

Back to the empty quarters called home. The irony of it left her smirking.

Soaked. Saturated to the core. Hair plastered to dusky features left wet tendrils of twilight and shadow. The braid with its beads of amethyst and hematite. The frayed ribbon of sapphire.

The fabric of dress was pulled, near peeled from slick skin. Dropped the soaking bit of material to the floor.

A puddle began. A dark thing it was. Thicker then rain to pool. The Witch was unaware.

The rain had been a torrent that she had near been elusive to. A courting dance.

A flicker of a memory. One to dance in the rain.

The vision left her shaking. Knowing in the Mist and the Fog the Straw Man and the Palm Reader watched the Witch.

Side by Side.

A whisper at her ear.

"We wait for you..."

Fingers with nails meant better for weapons, for blades brushed her belly,sank below navel.

The whispered words held a dark light, an intimate burn.

"Will you come play?"

They stood side by side. The Palm Reader and the Straw Man.

"No..."

Defiance was wicked torment. A numbing sensation as the blade cut deep across her shoulder, dragged a line to her hip.

In the darkness of the room crimson trailed ebony in hue. The witch bit down hard on her lip. The metallic taste of blood filled her mouth.

She would not scream.

Hoped it was another nightmare. A cruel vision. Like the palm reader's true horror of visage. Like the corpse in her bed.

The pain...

It burned her.

"Soon. Very Soon. You will play with us"

A memento.

The empty void in the room promised relief to lose the weight of bravado and strength.

A collapse to knees as blood played a melody of death inked notes upon her flesh. Her body... a canvas of promise.

Nothing... Sacred

Meanwhile, at Greyshott Applied Magicks & Engineering (henceforth G.A.M.E.)...

Only the back half of Silas was visible; the rest of him was buried in the Red Jack's massive engine, hauled out of the ship and over to his firm to turn it into a more powerful, levitation-capable Carolus engine. He juggled three blue carolmagnium slugs that glowed softly, little cylinders encased in a strange black rune-marked metal on either end, holding them in thick, enchanted leather gloves for his own protection. The tinted goggles he wore were a variation on S.P.I.'s 'surveillance specs,' and with them he had an X-ray view of the labyrinth of gears and parts before him.

Magnify plus two, he thought, and the magnification of his goggles increased from its present status by two powers. Okay... he had found the problem, a loose plug due to a faulty enchantment, still flickering sparks from the last time they had attempted to power up the engine half an hour ago.

Doing this upside down in the guts of an engine was no easy task, but Silas focused, not on what he saw, but what he Saw, and once he was focused on the fault in the enchantment, like a ripple on an otherwise smoothly made bed, he traced a rune in the air with a subtle motion of his fingers. It glowed briefly and faded, and within a few moments, as the electric threads re-wove, the sparks died.

"Ya got it, lad?" a gravelly voice called to him, and Silas replied,

"Yes! Finally," he added with a chuckle. "Here, ah, could you help haul me out...? I think my... arm's stuck..." He grunted as he struggled to get free, and the Xalder Coast dwarf scurried up the ladder and gave him a good tug.

Several things happened at once. The dwarf's grip slipped just as Silas came loose, and he clung to the ladder rungs to avoid a fall; Silas came out with more force than he anticipated, and was tumbling through the air towards the concrete floor; and the subtle bond between himself and the Nightwitch (his own term for her in his mind) received an extremely forceful tug. With his jumbled thoughts on that bond and the distress of it, and his own danger with an incoming floor and considering a quick teleport to get out of harm's way, he wound up latched onto a very tumultuous, frayed thread towards the 'dead zone' of the West End as he initiated a teleportation spell.

Warlocks from the North -- Norras -- Silas' homeland, were an interesting breed as far as mages went. They were the sort of mage that always had a staff as an anchor, for the dual purpose of channeling magick and also to ground them such that they would not become lost to it. Silas' staff came from the Igdras, an ancient forest that was once very fast and still mysterious and powerful, where the trees whispered if you listened very hard. Six centuries ago Silas' staff had been given to a Warlock from a mighty old tree, and now it belonged to him, and it was important that he always have it nearby.

As such, he had it tucked into an 'edge-pocket,' a pool or shallow near the banks of a river if one thought of every realm as a river; it was heavily warded and enchanted, a handy place for him to grab items at his leisure, including his satchel and some travel supplies. Whenever he teleported, his staff went with him... but the nature of the West End made this very complicated. The staff was headed, like him, for a location beyond numerous magick-nulls and ley-fluxes, and their nearest point of intersection before all these complex obstacles was a tiny old barn that occupied the first floor of an ancient, creaking medieval-style house just inside the district, very close to the RhyDin River (not to be confused with the realm/river metaphor).

Silas appeared hurtling through the small, enclosed space and smashed through a row of then-sleeping, now-agitated hens; his staff smacked him in the face and he grabbed it and slammed into a deep pile of hay before he flickered out again, back into the ley-stream. Next he appeared sliding across a kitchen table, to the astonishment of several white-bearded and wide-eyed gnomes, and finally he was transported to the tent he'd been summoned to in the first place.

He rolled in under one of the tent-flaps and skidded to a halt with the help of his staff. He was dizzy, with a dozen white feathers stuck to him and turkey gravy on his left elbow, but as soon as he could orient himself he was taking stock of the scenario. Electricity crackled angrily in the knob of his wooden staff, and he pushed backwards with it up to his feet.

"Laniandra... what's happening -- what is this?" His voice was quiet, but unafraid.