Keble College

“It’s not safe for you to be out here. There are strix here at Oxford, they’ve been attracted by the bullshit the Mabinogi are trying to pull off.” Mehdi points his thumb behind him, gesturing to Liam jamming without any apparent concern for his safety. “That one has a deathwish, I’m just here to yank him back to the Hedge when shit goes bad. The two of you should…” it’s only now that Mehdi notices Rae’s missing finger and finds it in Aubrey’s clutch. “Wait a minute… you guys aren’t here just to watch the show and grab a bite to eat, are you?”

Before Aubrey or the others can say anything, Rae responds in a grave tone that resonates unnaturally outwards. As though the sound of her voice had been layered over itself a dozen times, then cast through a vast, cavernous space. “We’re here to kill a strix.” The shadows around her shudder, then crowd in closer to her.

Merric sees a new face approach, a bit reserved given the situation, but also excited to meet someone new. Rae introduces him, and he silently waves hi to the new face. Merric hears a term he hasn't heard outside of study that piques his curiosity. He pulled out his pocket notebook and pen and approached the new face. Ignoring social cues and breaking the tension, he asks, "You're name was Mehdi, right? You mentioned the Hedge just now, right? That has to do with the Fae. Are you related to the Fae somehow?" with excitement and pen in hand.

Mehdi blinks, wide eyed, at the strange yet blunt response from Rae. ”Right. Of course. Uhm,” he starts, turning to Merric. The stranger’s eager curiosity is offputting, especially with the notebook and pen readily in hand. Mehdi’s thoughts immediately return to Alice and her sketchbook skin. He shifts backwards, clearly uncomfortable. Of course, it would be hard for the privateer to hide her Mien from a fellow Changeling, but it certainly wouldn’t be impossible. “Uhm, yeah sure, I guess you could say that. And you’re a… mage?” he asks, making the easiest assumption given there is no pallor of undeath on the guy and there is another known mage present.  “So… two Mages, a bunch of Kindred, a bunch of cheshire cats, a Changeling and his Terror Toad against a Strix… or two or three. What exactly is our game plan?” The Strix feels far from the biggest threat to Liam, but it certainly isn’t a small one. As long as there is a team here looking to go up against the birds, he might as well throw in his lot and try to turn this sure to be trainwreck into a productive night.

Vesh said : "That makes two of us,” she muses to herself. “There is one more thing, however,” she turns to Khalid with a disarming smile. “The ritual requires bone ash specifically. You or your friend wouldn’t happen to know of a furnace or means to quickly burn this, would you?” Khalid gives Mehdi and Liam a nod, his eyes lingering on the changeling as he briefly recalls their last choice encounter. He turns back to Aubrey, matching her smile, "I could do it, but I'd need a crucible or something similar to contain the heat. I've got another idea but it's risky."  He briefly gestures over to his fellow mage, "If Merric has enough of a handle on Matter, he could just transmute it here and now."  He looks over the bloodied bone, "What's the ritual for anyway?"

Aubrey perks up as Khal speaks, and her eyes follow his words to Merric rather optimistically, before being drawn back by his question.  "Well as I said, it's a rite of fire, yeah? The same my professor used—"   seemingly ineffectively , she keeps to herself,  "—the other day to set Brasenose quad aflame. It's like, magic spectral fire, so our hooty shadow friend should have a hard time crossing it and be loathe to even try." How  exactly  she'd use such a flame — and how much she could feasibly control it — also failed to get mentioned.

Merric is interested in hearing more about this spectral fire, but his mind is preoccupied with the thought of transmuting the finger into bone ash. He turns to Khalid as he thinks out loud, "It's one thing to turn the bone into dust. That would be easy. The hard part is that turning to ash requires a stronger sense of matter transmutation than I currently have." He Looks to Khalid with an idea, "But, there is a way for us to combine our skills to make this work, Khalid. I can strip the flesh and weaken and shape the bone, while you can burn the bones into the ash. It's a bit complicated to combine multiple arcana into one, but it is doable if you want to try?"

Khalid looks at Aubrey with newfound interest, "Spectral fire? Well if it's fire I might be able to control it, could come in handy."   As Merric speaks with collaboration in mind Khalid nods, "I think it's possible, we'll have to work quick. Just focus on decaying the bone to dust and I'll attempt to turn it to ash." Khalid turns inwards preparing the imago of his spell. He conceptualized a self contained crucible to superheat the dust to ash, its heat localized within a pressure vacuum. Satisfied with his improvised spell he turned to see Merric's progress only to see the Moros finished. He raises his brows in surprise, "That is quick work Merric. Nicely done." He approaches Merric's finished work and casts his own spell, cupping the bone dust in his hands. The radiation of the heat warms him but not to the point of discomfort. Khalid opens his palms revealing the bone ash with cooling embers. He turns to Aubrey, offering the ash in his hands, "That's about the best we can do on short notice."

Aubrey marvels at the ash in the mage’s hands. It had hardly looked like anything had happened and yet, where once was a finger, only ash remained. Unfurling a small cloth handkerchief from her bag, she carefully wraps the ash securely within, securing it in the style of a small bag sealed with a hair tie. “That’s like, simultaneously incredible and disappointingly unremarkable,”  she laughs. “I thought there’d be more…”  her hands wave about, rising up and expanding out like the rising of a great inferno, “you know, FWOOSH  and all that, yeah?” “Anyway, cheers.”  Tucking the ash into her back pocket, she nods to Khalid. “That’d be splendid to see but I’m not so sure if it’d be possible. I don’t… totes understand it myself honestly but it’s not just spectral. It’s wild , living, in a way. Hungry . I’ve only tried it once and it took a lotta willpower to keep it in check. But I’d welcome your assistance and expertise, Gandalf.”

As he watches the crowd of students that has gathered, Mehdi feels the  world around him sharpen, part and rearrange itself into layers of meaning. The Mask, the Mien and the echoes of the Hedge itself, wherever reality grows thin. To anyone else, the Keble quad merely looks dim under the college's lamps. However, it becomes clear to Mehdi that the light is bending incorrectly.  Every lamp post casts two shadows.  A normal one, crisp under electric glow,  and second one beneath it that is  softer and slower-moving .  Shadow-within-shadow.  Furthermore, the air tastes like old smoke.  Like soot scraped from a chimney lined with bones.  It’s faint, but present everywhere. The taste is thickest around the entrances of certain buildings and strongest of all near Keble's library, where McDermott's office window glows faintly from within. Students are out tonight, drifting towards the quad where Liam's band is playing, drawn by free music and the thrill of a midweek party.  Among them is a girl that Mehdi does not like the feeling of.  At first glance she's just a fresher in a big coat, talking on her phone.  However, her footfalls don’t match her body . She's t oo quiet and  smooth, but she does  glance once towards Rae's group.

Mehdi becomes increasingly fidgety as the group continues to stand there. He glances as the mages do their work, and to his surprise the only thing remarkable about the magic is how banal it is. ‘Efficient’ or ‘pragmatic’ might also be used to describe it but still, Mehdi is used to the razzle and dazzle of wyrd magic rituals from the Hedge, and now the pomp and gravity of the Mabinogi. He quickly resumes scanning, continuing to keep an eye on McDermott’s window and the fresher in the big coat. ”You guys better hurry up with whatever this is. Something is off, feels like the shadows are closing in. And there’s that girl,” he says, nodding to the stranger, “She’s been giving us the eye, something’s definitely up with her.”

Rae looks on in shared astonishment with Mehdi and Aubrey as the mages transmute her severed finger into the needed material. She's about to comment when Mehdi brings their attention to a woman paying close attention to them while talking on a phone. She immediately notices the strangeness of the person, and allows the satin shadow of her soul to envelop the woman's mind.  Immediately, she is greeted by the icy malice that is the impression of the Strix upon the woman's body and mind. She is human, but the creature has overcome her and imposed its will and guiding her movements. This is the source of her unnatural movement, giving the impression of a Kindred poorly adhering to the masquerade.  Pressing in on the impression of the Bird of Dis, she finds that it regards them directly through the woman's eyes. It focuses particularly on Merric, Mehdi and herself. Yet behind her eyes sit black tendrils that lead up onto a rooftop above the quad where she sees the creature plainly, its head swiveling with eyes like molten tar.  Finally, she presses into the woman's mind to find the owner of the voice on the other end of her call. Her perception dives into the fresher's phone, which becomes a reflection of a face behind the girl. It's a man’s shape, inhumanly still with blank, yellow eyes like dying candle flames. The image shatters into shards of sound. Faint whispering like flapping wings, bone scraping stone and a voice layered over itself like a chorus of echoes. When she comes back to herself, she looks over to find that the girl is gone. "Shit. "  Shadows in her immediate area furl and flutter with agitation.  "That girl had been dominated by the Strix and was reporting our location. Perhaps our conversation. We need to move,  now. "  She turns on her heels and begins walking quickly across the quad towards Keble College.  "This creature dies  tonight."

Aubrey’s head spins, looking for the girl in question, only to get lost scanning the crowd for a shadows in a sea of moving lights and sounds. But Rae and Mehdi seemed sure, and the former was already taking off, and all at once a twinge of something white and hot was lit within her gut… a kernel of flame bouncing between the sum of all fear and the limitlessness of potential excitement.  Bounding after the kindred in turn, she strides up alongside Rae, keeping lock and step. “Okay so like, what’s the actual plan here?”  Eyes flit repeatedly to the edges of their peripheral vision, straining to see that which lay just beyond. She considers more than once to turn her head back around, but something within warned her not to. “We kick down this professor’s door and light him up or like… is Francis even here yet?”

“Wait, what? The professor? You mean McDermott?! Is he working with them?” Mehdi asks frantically as he rushes to follow. As they pass by the stage he glances at Liam, hoping to catch his eye while the musician plays. Part of him thinks to stay, to protect his charge, but in all actuality a stage in surrounded by a bunch of mortal students is probably the safest place the kindred professor could be. So Mehdi follows after the Strix-Hunters, dread building like a layer of late November frost across his nerves. Red violet leaves and soft pink petals drift from his Mien as he goes. The Changeling’s senses are on high alert, and he’s ready to shift into his familiar panther form the second that violence erupts.

Rae walks with haste, almost oblivious to the pace of the others. As Aubrey catches up, she answers the Daeva's questions as succinctly as she can.  "It will likely target me, since it has been hunting me. I will try to reach my brother and get him out, while you all fight and do your best to prioritize your safety. I notified Francis that we arrived when we first stepped onto the grounds, he should arrive at any moment. He largely travels by-"  Her mouth shapes the final word, but her voice is delayed by several seconds. When it finally does sound out, it echoes as though through a great cavern.  " shadow shadow   shadow shadow ... Shadow. The experience is jarring, and the darkness around her rises and falls subtly, as though with a breath. Refocusing, she continues.  "Francis will be here to fight with us. It will fear him." She turns to Mehdi.  "The Strix has possessed Professor McDermott. He is lost, I'm afraid. A Strix will only abandon a body once it has been destroyed. There is no other way to drive it out that is known to us."