Stephanie's Heart: The Archive

[reading_rainstorm]

In your dreams you are in a thick and foggy forest. It could be mistaken for the woods around Tributary if you don’t know your plants. You are on a trail leading into a clearing, in the center of which is a simple, concrete structure with a single door. A chaos star has been spray painted on it with a stencil.

You approach the structure. Looking over your shoulder you see a large shape lurking in the fog, obscured by the foliage. Two shining Feline eyes peer at you from the brush. You feel your heart rate spike as you turn the knob and find an old fashioned elevator tucked neatly inside with an accordion grate standing between you and the ornate, gilded interior. It creaks open as the presence behind you steps into the clearing. It is a sphinx, an eight foot tall lioness with the face of a woman and the large brown wings of an eagle on her back . The feminine face and olive skin tone of a Greek woman from antiquity smiles as she readies herself to to pounce, the wings on her back stretching and give a few readying flaps.You back into the elevator and close the gate with shaking hands as the sphinx leaps at the elevator. Her claws twisting and shearing the metal of the grate slowly, but she is too late. The elevator springs to life and you descend.

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A small light above flickers on as it illuminates your view outside the exposed elevator as you sink into the concrete structure. You descend for a few moments before an opening in the concrete gives you the view of an observation deck on a hill, looking down on the sprawling suburbs and campus of a college town. The elevator continues downward. The concrete gives way to old, dusty marble as you continue sinking. You see a vast maze stretch far and away that gets nearer and nearer. This has to be it, right? Your destination? No. You plunge further down, past the walls of the maze and the marble is replaced again by well polished wood. Beautiful stained mahogany rises past you as your descent finally starts to slow. You are greeted by another grate that creaks open for you. Entreating you to enter.

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[reading_rainstorm]

Going to check out that hospital room Marco?

[peccatore]

[IT SEEMS HE HAS NO CHOICE (he absolutely does, but. You know).]

[reading_rainstorm]

The door swings open and you are in a modern hospital room. Tile floor, the smell of antiseptic, eerily quiet. Someone moves behind the hospital curtain. You can see Ava's crutches leaning against the wall beside the bed. A knot forms in your stomach. This is wrong. You don't want to be here. You turn around and the door is gone.

[peccatore]

[He already had a bad enough feeling about this looking in from the outside. This only makes it worse. Where can he even go from here...? What's about to happen? What will he have to watch playing out?]

[reading_rainstorm]

Further in. The person behind the curtain shifts slightly...did they notice your presence?

[peccatore]

[They must have.]

I-I didn't mean to intrude.

[reading_rainstorm]

"Finally got the courage to face me Steph ?"


Suddenly Stephanie is there beside you, or...a ghost of her, she is younger, no sphinx eyes and for once she isn't dressed in her cloak. She wears a black blouse with an olive skirt. She passes you and pulls away the curtain to reveal a young woman with strawberry blonde hair, fuming.


"The courage!? I didn't even know you were here! I haven't heard from you in a week, I was worried Ava."

"You made your worries quite clear before I left, Grim." Stephanie cringes as Ava uses that name for her. Ava's frown burrows into Stephanie. "Your little superstition spooked you away from a trip we had planned for weeks!"

"Supperstition? You know- You've seen my magic! You know the things I can do."

"You let cards keep ruin a trip with my family."

"I told you I thought it would be dangerous, and-"

"AND YOU WERE RIGHT? Is that what you were about to say Stephanie? Oh great, your predictions came true and the doctors tell me I'm going to walk with a limp forever. So what, I should have listened to you and just stayed home with you? Holed up like a pair of hikikomori?"

"That's not what I-" The knot in your gut turns. You didn't deserve this. All this spite Ava was throwing at you, no. At Stephanie. That fear turns into anger. "You're going to call all this superstition after all you've seen. After all the luck charms that got you straight A's."

"Doubling down on the creepy girl act. Very nice Steph."

"You think I want people to call me creepy!? You think I want their attention? I sure know you do. That's why you started dating me, right? To look like the nice girl deigning to date the Freak" Tears prick at the corner of your eyes. You're crying. Ava points to the door and tosses a card at Stephanie. It slides to your feet.

"GET OUT. Take your stupid luck charm with you. We're done Steph."

[peccatore]

[Marco watches his play out with an increasingly grim look on his face - not to mention all the other feelings that are his-but-not-his, making something twist unpleasantly in his chest.

He picks up the card.]

[reading_rainstorm]

The card is Strength.

Is the woman on the card strawberry blonde, or is that a trick of the light?

Either way, you have three cards. Congrats.

[peccatore]

[He doesn't feel very good about this, but... he's come all this way.

Time to head back to that table, if the door is back.]

[reading_rainstorm]

It's there. You go back to the table and three of the six candles start smoking the smoke trails and swirls down to make outlines of three cards.

What order do you place them in?

[peccatore]

[It doesn't even occur to Marco that the order might matter, so he just ends up placing them in the order he found them - Tower first, Strength last.]

[reading_rainstorm]

The three smoking candles light as you place the cards, as do the sconces above the doors to the hall. The doors swing open allowing you to look inside.

The Hall of Fate looks to be be floored and papered entirely with pages upon pages upon pages of Stephanie's journals. Every inch of the place is covered with her hand writing. There are three stone doors along the walls of the corridor. Each bearing the image of the tarot cards Metis found. The Tower, Death and Strength. At the end of the hall is a final stone door. Emblazoned with the image of The High Priestess

[peccatore]

[He doesn't mean to sneak a peek at Stephanie's writing, exactly... but he can't quite keep his eyes from wandering while he makes his way to the final door. Does anything stand out?]

[reading_rainstorm]

You notice that there are a few passages about Marco. Some speculating about the weirdness around when he drank her blood. Some considering vampirism's relation to her own curse, some just an abridged rundown of their conversations.

The High Priestess door is locked.

[peccatore]

... The cards weren't enough? Do I have to...?

[His eyes fall on the other doors... and then wander back to the notes mentioning him.

This should absolutely not be his first priority, but he can't help himself. He reads them in a little more detail.]

[reading_rainstorm]

"Marco...is strange in how normal he seems. A centuries old vampire who's only real interest seems to be in technology. A millionare (at least) who seems to be at the very least philanthropic enough I can't jump down his throat for propping up capitalism. In any story I would have read with someone like him in it, he'd be the cold calculating villain.

Instead, he looks nervous and has a smile that doesn't make it to his eyes. He seems like a man who's conscience weighs heavy on him. I can tell he is holding a lot back. I hope in time I can learn something from him. At the very least, he is a useful primary source on the history of a world like mine. At the very best, I like talking to him, and is a good reminder on my worst days that my condition may not consume me. "

[peccatore]

[A small, incredulous smile.]

... I should focus. Should...

[He checks the Tower door. Touches it, first, then tries to open it.]

[reading_rainstorm]

It opens and you find yourself in a darkened tile hallway, at the far end of it you see a stairwell leading upward, the light above, the only seeming bit of warmth in the memory. A young child, about eight, with shaggy brown hair and bright green eyes sits in a chair outside a door labeled “Morgue”

[peccatore]

[Oh dear.]

Stephanie...?

[reading_rainstorm]

The child's head stays down and they speak in a quiet voice.

"Not yet..."

The door to the morgue opens and two men step out. One is the man you saw shelving books he looks distraught. The other a uniformed police officer.

"I'm sorry for your loss sir."

"How am I supposed to...to take care of- (He says something but its static to you. You get the sense it's the child's name as they look up) "

"Dad...what's wrong..."

The man is not able to look the child in his eye he just breaks down sobbing. The door remains open. The officer continues consoling the child's father and the child slips past them into the morgue. You recognize the woman on the viewing table beyond the window. It's Harmony.

You are back in the hall of fate.

[peccatore]

...

[He silently opens the Death door.]

[reading_rainstorm]

You are in a hallway, complete carved from pristine marble. Looking at the angles and corners this hallway has you can tell intuitively that this is a labyrinth. Stephanie is standing in front of a large fire, reading a book and frowning. She still has her bright green eyes. She sighs and closes the book, tossing it into the fire. She turns and looks surprised to see you. You hear the roar of a lion from deep within the labyrinth. A feminine voice with a thick Greek accent bounces down the halls.

"You will regret that, my little book of spells."

Stephanie locks eyes with you.

"Run."

She bolts ahead of you and you find your legs carrying you just behind. She follows a path marked by spray painted sigils on the walls she periodically hops over and ducks under trip wires that connect to little paper figures taped to the walls and covered with sigils. Eventually you start hearing those traps go off behind you along with pained shouts and roars, then the flapping of wings.

"Shit shit shit shit."

A sphinx, one without Stephanies face swoops toward Stephanie tearing a gash in her shoulder with a claw. It curves around again in the air for another strike but Steph throws a glass object from her pocket onto the ground and the Sphinx is stopped in mid air. The Sphinx struggles to get her claw free of the solidified air and Stephanie rounds the next corner. Following her you see her target at the end of the corridor. Three ritual circles. Stephanie rushes to stand in one and tosses a set of tablets bound with bronze rings into another.

"C'mon...C'mon..."

[peccatore]

[Everything is suddenly happening a lot faster than Marco anticipated.

He's along for the ride, but even knowing - or at least suspecting - that he's only witnessing something that already happened isn't enough to keep him cool and collected. The adrenaline coursing through him is his own, he's sure--

The solid hit that the sphinx gets on Stephanie makes him tense up, bracing himself for the need to put his own instincts into a chokehold - but the scent he's expecting never comes, nor does the hunger that comes with it. It would disorient him enough to stop him for a moment if his legs weren't doing their own thing right now.

... But does that mean there's nothing he can do to help Stephanie, either?]

[reading_rainstorm]

Stephanie takes deep gasping breaths and clutches her shoulder to staunch the bleeding a little...that's why right? There's a little trickling in the back of your skull. You know the power contained in blood. She gives you a tired, apologetic look. "We don't have a lot of time to brainstorm. She set the pace of all our encounters."

The sphinx lands and rounds the corner, when she sees Stephanie standing still in the circle, she stalks forward but stands outside the circle clearly drawn for her.

"Did you really think you were going to lure me into a ritual with you."

"I already have."

You notice that the magic circle Stephanie is is actually painted on top of an older, carved one, with the sphinx currently standing at the center of another ancient carved circle as well. Stephanie throws another glass item from her cloak, this one you can see is a knife. It shatters at the sphinxes feet but the shards fly outward cutting into the sphinx. A drop of blood lands on the circle lighting it up with sickly green.

Stephanie takes some of her own blood from her gash and spatters it across her own circle. Hers lights with a cool lavender.

"Pact circles. I name my demand first, since you were the 'Initiator' my demand is you return to the the slabs that bound you. I even set it up for you in the de summoning circle."

"Tch. And if I don't accept this pact or make no demands of you?"

"You'll be stuck to this spot, I'll die before you and then you won't have a way to complete the pact. You'll be stuck in that circle."

Steph looks to Marco. "It's what I could manage under the circumstances"