(Dry Hallow) End of Line

[Yumyumcrow]

Four mages prepare. Tingles and shivers all round.

Abacus deftly draws out the very stuff of shadow and pours it around himself. The light seems to fade out; indeed, the nearest street light flickers and dies silently as the darkness thickens. The Enchanter is barely visible in a pool of tarry darkness the slithers and drools from the shadows around him.

Anima cycles through spells, his breath catching audibly in his ears as the extra Supernal weight settles on his shoulders. His Sight grows - not in the sense that the night becomes less of an obstacle to clear vision - but in the breadth of what he See's. He can see the solid gauze of the Shadow Realm - at the edge of his vision - and now he can detect the little tingles and flashes of life in this deserted urban barren.

There is insect life. Not a lot. He hears the low buzzing whisper of the grubs in the walls and in the earth; and the flutter of the moths. Nothing conscious - nothing apart from his Awakened allies - and no projections or other higher forms of Mind. They are alone. If the woman they seek is close by, she must yet be beyond the range of his spells - which, if she was lurking inside the warehouse, would definitely be true.

Winter struggles briefly before achieving the Sight associated with Forces. And then struggles processing what he sees - for interplay of all the natural forces become visible to him. Thankfully, he witness a base-line area, with the natural forces balanced as they should be (but such sight, impossible to describe, wondrous to behold!)

Still - there are some benefits. He can tell that the dreaded camera is dead and blind, for there is not a pulse of electricity in it. It is for show.

The Guardian still clings tenaciously to his Supernal Vision. Overlaid now with aspects of his Read Matrices spell, Winter can make out the gentle flow of ambient mana. And how it is slowly, gently, being drawn to a point within the ugly warehouse.

Pixel simply vanishes. Not a physical disappearance. Rather, he becomes less and less noticeable as he slinks quietly away. The thickening shadows help him immeasurably and by the time he rounds the nearest corner, he is well and truly beneath notice: a baroque figure fading under a street light, featureless and indistinct.

The Warlock cases the block quickly: six lots back to back, with a tight alleyway running down the middle. The alleyway provides easy access to the rear of the industrial lot they are interested. Pixel notes that the fencing is not as nasty (less barbed wire) in that area. It is Abacus, who joins up with Pixel later (his pool of shadow almost completely filling the alleyway with inky impenetrable darkness) who notices that the back fence has been cut and can be eased open to allow access to the industrial lot beyond.

[Winter]

"Camera is offline, but something is boiling inside the warehouse", he says, then he springs into motion, carefully advancing from shadow to shadow toward the building.

  1 success

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2020-02-06 15:30:48		Winter rolls 5 to stealth (10 Again)		2, 3, 5, 2, 10, 1		1 success

[Pixel]

And they had their entry point. Pixel turned around to return to the group when he noticed the extent of the shadows and how they had consumed the alleyway. Given that Abacus had summoned them before leaving though, Pixel was content to just point back around the building from where they had come and start heading back.

"We found a possible...way...in?" His voice trailed off as he stared at Anima. "Where did Winter go?"

[Anima]

The Shaman points towards the building.

"He's begun his stealthy approach. Please go on ahead of me. I'm not suited for sneaking about, and I wouldn't want to muck up everyone's plan. Don't worry I'll follow along after you've gotten a good ways away."

After Pixel begins his approach Anima starts his own. The doctor isn't quite coordinated enough to make such an effort look graceful. So as he approaches he looks for alternative points of entry.

But NEVER underestimate the sheer will of the Ecstatic. So great is his effort to be unnoticed that it is hard to focus on other tasks.

  3 successes to Stealth, Dex+Stealth-1(untrained)+Will

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2020-02-09 11:28:50		Anima rolls 4 to Stealth untrained (10 Again, WillPower)		7, 10, 5, 8, 10, 7		3 successes

  0 success at investigation

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2020-02-09 11:30:49		Anima rolls 5 to Investigate (10 Again)		5, 7, 4, 5, 2		failure

[Abacus]

Abacus advances through the cut fencing, a shade amongst phantoms, into the industrial lot.

[Yumyumcrow]

Carefully Abacus peels back the damaged fence and slips inside the perimeter. The shadows thicken and stretch as he passes, making everything vanish into the delicate and deep darkness.

The shadows greatly assist Winter and Anima as they move through the night. The Shaman's face, in particular, is a rigid mask of concentration as he moves carefully behind - and sometimes lost in - the thick shadows encircling (and left behind by) the Enchanter.

Of course, the enhanced gloom... conceals its secrets very well....

The warehouse is pressed close to the back fence of the lot. There are even more industrial sized bins here, pressed up against the wall along with other materials. The upper storey of the building can be reached fairly easily by climbing over the bins - and curiously an open window is within reach of one such bin (and by open, one should say broken open). The window is in the rough centre of the building.
Pixel and Abacus still have their spells active - and they know now that their quarry is in the top corner of the building.

There is only the ambient light from the street, filtered weakly from the street. Otherwise it is quite dark - and incredibly dark where Abacus stands relative to everyone else.

@Vincent Winter - just checking: was Winter following Pixel and the others or taking a different path? I'm a little confused at this point. Thanks YYC

[Winter]

There are several things that make him wary of this situation, and he isn't talking about his natural distrust of... well, everything.
The place has been outfitted with a fake camera, so whoever owned the lot, was privacy conscious enough to want to project an impression of security. Yet, he fell flat with the whole broken windows and bins thing.
To be fair, nobody can foresee a of strangers at the door willing to play Wile E. Coyote in your parking lot. Then, of course, there's a whole lot of magical shenanigans going on in the middle of the warehouse.
Yep, they needed to split, or at least have a backup plan, should they fall right into a trap.
He follows Pixel, stopping right by the bins, to get a better look and check whether the place has been booby-trapped.

  4 successes

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2020-02-14 14:16:46		Winter rolls 6 to Perception (10 Again)		9, 4, 10, 4, 10, 5, 8, 3		4 successes

[Anima]

This is not the Onion King's specialty. He is a man of passion, expression, exuberance. He is a the gibbon shouting at the world that the sun is rising, not the tiger stalking in the dark. But like the gibbon, he is adaptable, he can use tools, and operate within a group dynamic. So he halts and crouches by Winter. ​What's the play?

[Yumyumcrow]

Abacus moves into the industrial lot, shadows deepening perceptibly around him.
Winter follows, taking advantage of the diminished light. Anima trails behind the Guardian and the Mystogogue. Pixel is last, hovering in the alleyway and keep the pesky fence in order while the others slide through.

All is silent.

Winter studies the bins - they are mostly empty and what is there isn't exactly industrial waste. He can surmise the warehouse is probably still in use, after a fashion, but is not in working order. The bins at the back look like they have been shunted there to be out of the way.

The warehouse is sealed. He spots a door at the opposite corner - build up of mould and grime suggests it doesn't see a lot of use; placement of one of the bins also implies the same thing.

Glass fragments - the spray of glass and debris comes from the broken window. Recent, too, the debris has not been scattered or ground down as yet.

Scratch marks on the concrete - someone shunted one of the larger bins into position. There is a recent looking dent on the lid as well. Someone moved the bin, climbed on it to get at the window...

[Winter]

It makes no sense. Somebody had climbed from the window using the bins as the steps of a ladder. But then, shouldn't the glass shards be on the inside rather than the outside?
It could be that the same person used the same window to exit afterwards. Why not use the door, then? Unless there were other exits.
He hates resorting to vulgar magic for something so mundane, but they need to know what's inside the warehouse before they enter it, and right now, they don't exactly have a lot of options. And he's running out of juice to boot.
Likely, the Mastigos or the doctor would have the right amount of magic in their arsenal.