Mazey Meditation

[Haley Crusek]

((Open))

Haley, after only cheating by floating above the walls of the maze a few (dozen) times, and only falling partially into the bushes twice, made it back to the center of the maze she'd found some time ago with Cal. Pulling a blanket out of her backpack, she spread it on the ground, pulled out a light jacket and zipped it up tightly, and sat cross-legged on the ground.

alright...meditating....I can do this...I guess?

Haley took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and closed her eyes.

Nothing.

shit, maybe this will help...

She pulled out her phone, and a pair of earbuds, put on some new agey sorta Internet radio station and placed the buds in her ears, then tried again.

Naturally five people texted her.

"SONOFABITCH," she grumbled, turning on a do not disturb setting.

And that seemed to do the trick. Haley sat there for over an hour, meditating.

[Victoria Valentine]

It was a gradual change. The first thing Haley might notice was the music gradually fading into more of a background noise, them become completely indistinguishable. The second thing she would notice was that there were very slow footsteps approaching. They weren't coming from the path she'd come from, or even from the rustling path ahead of her (wait, where had that come from? There weren't two paths!)... They were coming from behind her.

She also might notice that it was odd to hear like this when one had earbuds in... But then again, maybe she wouldn't.

[Haley Crusek]

Wait...what the hell...no. I'm just by myself out here. C'mon. Don't lose focus that fast, keep practicing...

[Victoria Valentine]

A chill would wash over Haley, and as the footsteps grew closer, ominously closer, she would hear quiet voices and whispering, a sort of background noise of quiet murmuring, just too quiet to understand, but Haley might get the feeling that it was a good thing she couldn't make out what they were saying.

[Haley Crusek]

Oh fuck this! I'm outta here!

Haley tried to focus on the music rather than the voices, and to just open her eyes and remind herself where she was: right in the middle of the maze on a crisp fall afternoon, safely on campus.

[Victoria Valentine]

The music remained gone. She could open her eyes, but the maze, however, was not as she recalled.

Everything seemed to have a grainy look to it, like she was looking at the world through an old film... Everything seemed to have jumpy and occasionally disconnected movements like an old film as well. Ahead of her, there was another path, which oddly seemed to extend straight ahead out of the maze, and which definitely hadn't been there before.

And as she saw this, Victoria walked past her, with that same imperfect type of movement, starting down the new path through the maze. If she even saw Haley, there was no indication.

[Haley Crusek]

Son of a bitch. This can't be good...wait. It's the creepy chick that went camping with us...I...that's good right?

Haley pushed herself to her feet a bit unsteadily since they were asleep.

"Hey...hey!" she called out after Victoria.

[Victoria Valentine]

As Victoria kept walking, Haley suddenly felt an icy cold hand reaching out from the bushes, grabbing onto her from behind. "Well well, what do we have here," a somewhat-distorted, voice said, disturbingly close to her ear.

[Haley Crusek]

Haley shrieked like a banshee and yanked her arm away form the icy hand, slamming telekinetic force wildly away from her.

[Victoria Valentine]

Her telekinesis, oddly, didn't have any affect at all on her surroundings. "Hee hee... look at her squirm, look at her thrash... oh, you're going to be a fun little toy, you are...."

[Haley Crusek]

Haley shrieked even louder, panic rising in her voice, "Let me go!!!!"

[Victoria Valentine]

"Hee hee, shriek and cry, little girl, you- uh oh." Ahead, Victoria... it was odd. On one hand, she never stopped moving forward or took her attention from the path. On the other hand, she seemed to have, in that slow, somewhat jumpy manner, turned her head to look back at Haley. And on one hand, while she didn't so much as move a muscle to stop her progress, on the other, her hand raised, turning to direct it at Haley. It wasn't like there was any sound, any rush of heat, but as the hands (and the rest of the creature, presumably) fell away from her, she got the sense that someone had just fired a sniper rifle right past her head into the creature. As Victoria turned back to the road/continued still without looking, a black bird seemed to fly back toward Haley- or was it just the shadow of a bird? Hard to tell with how weird this all was.

[The Book of Sins]

And where the creature fell away a shadow wriggles and seeps into the ground like a droplet of oil slipping into the cracks between reality.

[Haley Crusek]

Haley fell to her hands and knees, crying, and scrambled away from whatever had been holding her.

"Wh-what the fuck was that?! Where the hell am I!?" she screamed, tears running down her face.

[Victoria Valentine]

The voice sounded more like an echo... but it did get 'closer' when the bird landed on her shoulder. "You should be more careful when you let your mind wander. Some things you should never want to get there attention on you..."

"Don't lose sight of me... I can't help you if I can't keep track of you..."

[Haley Crusek]

Haley sniffled, tears still flowing. "I...how...how do we get the hell out of here?"

[Victoria Valentine]

"I'm really not sure how you got here to start with, darling, but if you just sit tight and stay close, you'll be safe enough. I'm sorry, I'm a bit busy here, I'm afraid."

[Haley Crusek]

"Busy? Wh-what do you mean? Where the hell are we?"

[Victoria Valentine]

"We're on the other side, darling. The part of the Astral Plane where all the creepy things and people lurk. Especially in this place."

As they progressed, she'd see that the maze wasn't around them anymore. Instead, Victoria was walking along a twisting path that only vaguely lay across the grounds- and that's what she'd finally recognize was around her, the grounds without any buildings or any people. In fact, the path seemed to be moving to wherever Victoria walked, while it steadfastly avoided Haley's feet. She could follow Victoria, but she couldn't seem to set one foot on the path she was 'following'.

[Haley Crusek]

Haley scrambled to keep up with the woman in this strange landscape.

"Shit. I didn't think I could get here by myself. This is nothing like the place Gideon took me. Guess he wasn't kidding about most of this astral place being terrifying."

[Victoria Valentine]

"Mmm... Well, it depends on where you come in, and what you intend to do. In this case..."

While the "bird" spoke, ahead Victoria was walking the path still, and Haley might notice that she wasn't exactly alone. Phantom images of creatures seemed to drift about, the most solid of them seeming to lie ahead of Victoria... And they didn't particularly look like the type to let someone pass.

[Haley Crusek]

"I intend to go the fuck home and never come back," she said angrily. "So what are you so busy doing that you can't get me home? Seemed pretty easy for Gideon to get me back."

[The Book of Sins]

At Haley's outburst a black, oily slick slowly seeps up from the ground where her shadow is falling.

[Haley Crusek]

"Oh what the fuck?!" She said, panic in her voice, trying to get closer to Victoria.

[Victoria Valentine]

"Mmm... and you always trust people who make things look easy? Psychics, I swear. You think this place is all telepathic communion and whatever other new-age nonsense is being passed around."

"You're giving it an opening, dear. Do try to defend yourself, yes?"

[Haley Crusek]

Haley shrieked as the slick spread from her shadow, and she tried for just a moment to flee from her own shadow before she realized how well that would work.

“What the fuck are you talking about?!”

In frustration, she let out a blast of telekinetic force at the ground where her shadow was spreading. Were this the real world, the force of the blast probably would have come close to leveling a small building. But Haley had no idea how strong the blast was, and really had no idea how well it would work given the ineffectiveness of her last tk attack here.

[The Book of Sins]

The blast leaves a ragged divot in the ground with the slick shadow sinking into it and disappearing into the ground again. Though Haley would have the impression that it was still there, hiding in the shadow somewhere.

[Haley Crusek]

"Y-yeah, fucker! Stay the fuck back," she said loudly but entirely unconvincingly, spinning on her heels to make sure she didn't lose sight of Victoria.

"So if you're not psychic how are you here?” she asked after a moment of reflection on her previous words.

[Victoria Valentine]

Victoria glanced back, smirking. "Magic," she answered.

"And as for what I'm doing... someone is being a very bad boy. I'm not quite sure where... just that it's close. And when people do these things... I'm the one that cleans the mess up around here."

[Haley Crusek]

"Magic...of course..." she muttered, "next you'll tell me the non mutant kinda vampires and werewolves are real too."

[Victoria Valentine]

"Ask around, we had a few silly girls catch lycanthropy last year. It was quite the wretched camping trip, from what I heard. This is very real, dear. Does the name Doctor Strange ring a bell?"

[Haley Crusek]

"The guy who flies through space in a phone booth that my dad watches on TV? You've gotta be shitting me, he's not real is he?"

[Victoria Valentine]

"...my faith in the coming generations sinks daily," Victoria sighed. "No, dear, I'm talking about someone else."

And it might be a little odd, but even as she talked with Haley through her little shadow-bird, she called out from the path ahead.

"Many names are given when you walk the Winding Way,
I call you to the side-path, ye who linger here today,
Name yourself and treat with me, and mercy might be felt,
But bring ye harm unto this place and vengeance shall be dealt!"

The voice carried with power, and various astral and mystic creatures, mostly little fairies and other normal denizens of the area, chimed out their names, identifying nicknames, or otherwise made some little means of acknowledgement. Even Haley would get the urge to introduce herself... But Victoria was waiting for the spell to touch something dark that wasn't supposed to be there.

[Haley Crusek]

this place gets weirder every. fucking. day..

Haley resisted the strange urge to introduce herself and watched uneasily as Victoria did her Dumbledore thing.

[The Book of Sins]

As the voices sounding out neared the object of Victoria's intentions, they became distorted, gargling syllables. Words that were scarcely words in any mortal sense, that frankly hurt to hear, but were names of a sort, nonetheless.

Then a wet, throaty chuckle sounded from the shadows up the path.

"I have no name to give for one such as you, but if it pleases you, call me... Nidhogg..."

[Victoria Valentine]

"My my, someone's feeling pretentious today," Victoria mused. "With a name like that, I hardly need ask your intentions here, do I."

[The Book of Sins]

"As if you're so pure," the man laughed, his voice carrying faint echoes of the pain caused by the other creatures uttering their names.

[Victoria Valentine]

"Purity can be measured in so many standards, darling. And I think that even the ones that consider me as pure as fresh-fallen snow would find you lacking." The path continued following her feet as she approached the voice,wary of the other voices as she went.

"If things go badly, run like mad back to the maze. This will cause quite enough of a scene for someone to come looking and to find you." the shadow-bird whispered to Haley.

[Haley Crusek]

"O-okay..." Haley whispered uneasily to the bird perched on her shoulder.

Shit. What the hell am I doing here. How the hell can I even get back without her.

Haley's eyes darted around, seeing if there was anyone .... or anything...that would stop her from bolting back into the maze.

[The Book of Sins]

There weren't any people per se, but the shadows moved oddly, rising and falling with her agitated mood in an almost liquid manner.

"We're all bastards, dearie. Some of us are just more honest about it..."