Jal'goroth's Prison
Log Info
- Title: Jal'goroth's Prison
- Emitter: Dolan
- Place: Andelena and Dolan's apartment
As it happens, the Donnelly residence turns out to be a door on the upper level of one of the side-street buildings in the Temple District. Small affairs one and all, and this one seems to be no different. The wooden staircase leading up to the door in question is worn and just a little creaky, but it's a door like any other.
The message was something of a formality, really. Magpie had set off shortly after sending it.
Apparently the visit is an urgent one indeed, because the little gnome looks quite... draggy, upon climbing down from the carriage. Scuffed, one might say. That she thought it important enough to visit without even taking a badly-needed nap is one thing... But she has no baked goods anywhere on her person.
Urgent, indeed.
Letting out a long, heavy sigh, she lifts a finger to knock on the Donnellys' door.
There's a noise from inside the apartment with Magpie's knock. Actually, to be more accurate, it's like a thundering of pitter-pattering feet. Then a thump. Followed by some louder steps...
And the door opens to reveal the newly-made Andelena Donnelly with a mess of red hair tied back into a barely-presentable ponytail and wearing what amounts to a bathrobe. "Listen, you got about fifty seconds before I go back to banging my HUSBAND'S brains ouuuu-ohhhh, hi Magpie."
Andelena's face is mildly bashful as she reaches up and scratches her head. "Well shit. Hey. I uh, I don't think we were expecting you. Kind of, uh. You know. Fucking busy. More literally than you'd--"
A calico cat slinks into view, following behind Andelena and staring with bright eyes at Magpie underneath the rim of Andelena's robe, right between her feet. Andelena takes the diversion the cat offers to call over her shoulder, "Hey Bry! Magpie's here!"
It takes Dolan a moment to emerge from the back room, similarly rumpled. He, however, had taken a bit more time than Andelena, and there's a call from inside the house, "Let her in, yeah? I'll be out in a trice." There is rustling from the background, a thump, and another kitten, similar to the first but with a different coat pattern, pads out towards the open door.
...And it's at that point that a sparrow with a scrap of paper tied to its foot, flutters down to land on Magpie's head, twittering proudly and sticking out is foot toward Andelena.
"...So I sent word ahead," Magpie finishes lamely, cheeks nigh aflame. She takes the message off the bird's foot herself, ending the spell, and shakes her head. "Anyway... Super sorry to interrupt but congratulations, and I guess you could call this a wedding present too?"
The gnome is about to go on, but then she registers the cats, and goes very, very silent, eyes wide. Oh no, little fluffy things.
"Yeah, sorry, Magpie," Andelena offers apologetically, "sending word ahead doesn't really mean much in the way of shit considering we haven't left the house since..."
She actually counts on her fingers. "Yeah. Eliday. Today's Tariday, right? Yeah, no, it's Tariday. Haven't fucked all of the werewithal out of my noggin yet."
Andelena turns around and waves Magpie in. "Don't worry about it. Life goes on even though Bry and I finally did the big damn thing, yeah? Come on in. I think I got some tea I can throw in a teapot."
Once Magpie's inside the house, she does just that, busying herself with throwing a teapot onto their hearth. "So, what's the word, Magpie?"
It takes Dolan a moment more to pad out into visibility, closing the door behind him. He spots the kittens at the door, staring up at Magpie, and makes a clicking noise with his tongue. "Tch tch tch tch tch! Get away from the door, you two." When he does emerge, he is at least a bit less rumpled, and has hastily thrown on a shirt and trousers, tucking the loose garments in and securing them with a belt. He is barefoot, and the golden gem is replaced with an eyepatch, but he is, at least, presentable.
The kittens turn around and head for the back room at a fast clip, streaking past him. "They're used to just us, I think," he explains, gesturing Magpie over to the sofa with a cheeky grin that is more relaxed than he's been in a while.
"...I want to pet them so much," Magpie whispers as the kittens scamper to the back, eyes following the little poofy tails and teeny little beans and fluffy faces and--
Her head gets a hard shake. Right. Purpose first, kittens later. "So I guess I have a wedding present?" she says, as she wobbles in through the door. "Wanted to give it over by hand, someplace people aren't allowed to just stroll through whenever. Completely forgot about the honeymoon. Sorry again."
"They might come back out in a second," Andelena offers as a consolation prize as she finishes fussing with the teapot on the hearth. "Patches and Spot act all nervous and scaredy-cat when people come around, but sometimes one of them will decide, 'Aww hey, the two-legged people aren't too bad,' and they'll come back out."
She raises a brow. "Well like I said, it's alright. Better you than some fuckstick who wants to sell us 'adventurer insurance'. I have half a godsdamned mind to tell off the next solicitor who comes here so bad their ears will still be fucking burning halfway across the city. Anyways--wedding present?"
Dolan gently reaches to close the door behind Magpie. This really two-room affair is cramped and cluttered and something of a mess, although by Magpie's standards, it's positively spacious. Papers and scrolls, trinkets, adventuring gear half-packed, dried fish flakes clearly meant for the cats, a feather on a string, and more all litter shelves and tables. Andelena's wedding dress is laid across one side of the sofa, semi-neatly although a crumpling suggests that it has had a napper upon it at one point. Their combined adventuring gear is stacked neatly in one corner, weapons on the wall, armor rack, packs, leather straps, cloaks, and more all arranged for convenience's sake.
The Corona gestures to the sofa, or what space is left on it, plenty for Magpie at least. "Have a seat. What wedding present?" The question echoes Andelena's, and he takes a seat in a chair across from her, perching on its edge.
"...So I have an answer to the Jal'goroth problem," Magpie says, clambering onto the open spot on the sofa, and unslinging her pack to set in her lap. "Speaking of, did you know if you have more knowledge than magic, and you have access to someone else's magic, you can kind of stitch together enough output necessary to make a super impressive enchantment... But oh boy does it sting, and it's not something I plan to repeat anytime soon. That was two days ago and I'm still wiped."
Digging into the pack, she emerges with a rune-etched silver sphere, about half the size of the gnome's head. An icy glow emanates from a band around the sphere's equator, with a ruby-colored button at the front of the sphere. "Many happy returns... Now let me tell you what Jal'goroth's jail can't do."
Andelena peers long and hard at the silver sphere that Magpie produces, her steel-gray eyes peering at it, and then back at Magpie. Both brows are raised now on the Sunguard's face. "Okay. Okay, wait a minute."
She lifts a hand into the air. "You mean to tell me--that's a thing designed to trap Jal'goroth? How'd you manage that? Do I wanna know? I mean, that's fucking impressive, Magpie, but I'm not exactly the smartest pupil in the classroom, so magic-babble stuff'll go over my head real fucking quick."
Dolan's eyes alight with interest and awe. "You and Albus worked out a way to make something to trap Jal'goroth? Sweet and holy gods, that's impressive. So how's it work, and will it work for any demon besides Jal'goroth?"
"No," Magpie says immediately to Dolan's question, then clears her throat. "No... Because we're hoping if it comes to trial, that'll be what keeps me from getting drummed out of polite society. See, the core spell's one that traps a soul, and we modified it just a bit, so that it is only effective on Jal'Goroth. All of his summoning names are written on the inside of the cover, see, and-- ehm. Anyway. Point is, if that touches him, it'll suck him in and hold him there as close to forever as we really care about."
Andelena stares down this carefully-devised trap some more, squinting at it like she's hoping doing so will tell her if Magpie's correct on that last bit. "I sure as shit hope that it's as long as we could hope for," she says, "because it'll be really fucking unpleasant if Jal'goroth manages to figure out how to destroy it from the inside."
As she comments this, the larger of the calico cats pads back out. She stops and stares at Magpie for a moment from a safe spot, bright eyes observing the foreign person in the cat's domain. (Because it's the cat's domain and not the Donnelly domain.)
All your base are belong to cat. It is known.
Dolan, too, stares at it with interest. "Yeah. I see that. Trapping souls is a damned nasty business, but if it denies V one of her servants - oh, they've got others. We've learned who some of them are. This one, though." His stare grows hard. "So all we've got to do is touch him with it?"
"Yeah, but you have to be able to touch him, first," Magpie says, keeping eye contact with Dolan as she leans down, stretching upturned palm and curled-in fingers toward the staring cat. Politeness demands, after all, one introduces oneself to the master of the house. "So you'll want to lock down his ability to teleport. Then maybe break his legs a little. Y'know, make really sure he can't run, the jerk."
The cat pulls her head back from having Magpie's fingers towards her snout. There's something apparently offensive or just unexpected about a stranger's hand. But... after a moment, she comes back in. Sniff sniff. Sniff sniff.
And then the calico rubs her cheeks against Magpie's fingers. Magpie has been accepted. Magpie has demonstrated proper deference protocols, after all.
"Lock down ability to teleport, ennnnh," Andelena says quietly. "I can't do that, but I think some of Bry's allies can. Maybe Starman. Break Jal'goroth's legs, though, Bry and I sure as fucking shit can do."
Dolan's gaze goes distant at the mention of legbreaking and similar activities, the grin fading from his lips. "Yeah," he says finally. "Tel probably can. I'll ask him. I didn't think teleportation worked inside the city, though." He sounds vaguely unhappy, but no worse than that, and he doesn't say why. "Cornering him we can surely do. Now it's just a matter of finding him." He reaches out towards Magpie, finally, holding out his hand for the ball. "That's damned clever, Magpie."
With the cat deigning to give her hand a sniff, Magpie plops the sphere into Dolan's hand, smiling through her exhaustion. "I get the feeling you're not gonna find him in the city, but... I know the wards are built on known planar-destabilization magics. It's the taste of them... Maybe Telamon or Cor'Lana can get access to them, all I know is they're way past my ability."
"Now then!" she chirps, settling back on the couch. "Now that business is out of the way, time for the pleasure; who is this sweet little king here, huh?"
"Doubt it too," Andelena remarks, noticing the distance of Dolan's gaze and the unhappiness of Dolan's tone. She goes to put her hand gently on Dolan's arm, supporting her recently-minted husband on a quiet and silent level.
She regards the calico cat that had been giving Magpie a sniff and a tentative rub for a moment. Like clockwork, however, the cat peers up at Dolan... and she rubs against the man's legs. Purring up a storm. "That's Patches," Andelena says, "and she and Spot are daddy's little girls." There's a wicked grin on her face.
Dolan looks up at the hand on his arm, and offers Andelena a half-cracked smile that holds gratitude. "Sorry, baby," he answers, letting out a breath and looking down as Patches rubs against his legs. "They're her cats, but they like me for some reason," he quickly explains with a more real smile. He loves them too, that much is obvious. He's just being stubborn about it. "Come here, Patches." He reaches down, offering a hand, still perched on the edge of the chair.
"Eh, cats know things," Magpie says with sage aplomb. "If a cat likes you, it's usually for a good reason. Even if that reason is 'He is the one who gives me the food,' that's still a good reason, right?" But at that, she hops off the couch, clearing her throat. "But uh... sorry for interrupting you, and uh... seriously congratulations. I'd've come to the wedding but..." Magpie gestures vaguely at the prison. "...Kinda wanted to finish giving you the gift of putting that bastard away for the rest of your life."
"It's appreciated, Magpie," Andelena says, smiling. "Just gotta figure out how the hell we're going to use it now."
She looks over at Dolan, grinning as Patches climbs into Dolan's hand, allowing the Corona to lift her up like he's the world's most fun airship ride. "I ain't complaining much," she says. "I think it's fucking adorable when I come in and see the two of them knocked out on top of him. It happens all the damn time."
Dolan shifts the Jal'go-ball to his other hand so that he can wrangle a cat, and ends up handing the creation to Andelena for safekeeping. "We'll find a way," he says, hefting the little creature and setting her feet down on his knees, then commencing to stroking her gently. "That is an amazing gift, Magpie. I -" He stops. "Thanks. I mean that. You're one hell of a friend."
"Hey," the sorceress says, grinning. "Y'all and Auranar were some of my first friends in, like, ever. Far's I'm concerned, if there's something I can do for you, it gets done."