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[Visiting a shrine is hardly an oddity these days, routine enough—if driven by curiosity and little else—that it’s not even a novelty. Strange, how even the company has been labeled as familiar, he thinks, with Wanda walking beside them as they reach a small clearing in which a tiny, winding dirt path has led them.

Henry carries a various cutting of flowers and herbs meant for a small offering, ushered this way by the family he’s still staying with. Ever pious, they are. It’s reason enough to pull himself away from the chores and rote routines, so he accepts the task easily enough.

What is strange about today is hard to put into words. A tug at his mental capabilities, an itch at the back of his neck. A ripple in the atmosphere that’s hard to parse for anyone who doesn’t possess psionic powers.

His brow crinkles. Nothing looks terribly out of the ordinary, and yet his step… actually hurries a beat or two. Curious, wondering.]

Do you feel that?

Edited 2023-07-25 13:26 (UTC)

[henry asking wanda to accompany him to shrines or to give him a hand with a chore or two is not unusual, so today isn’t a day that she considers anything different ought to happen. solvunn is full of strange goings-ons; ‘expect the unexpected’ in its emblem of circumstances, and yet—

it feels stranger than usual.

it makes her hesitant, turns her stomach upside down.]

Henry—

[she starts, but he’s already hurrying in his steps, moving forward without her and leaving wanda no choice but to follow after him in an attempt to remind him to draw caution.]

[If that was supposed to be an utterance of a warning, or caution, Henry doesn't register it. Or rather, his interest has been peaked past the point of caution, that niggling feeling at the back of his mind drawing him closer.]

You feel it, don't you?

[He echoes, seeking her confirmation. Surely she does; this is growing far too much in prevalence for anyone telepathically sensitive.]

The shrine's never done this before, has it?

[there really is something to be said about henry throwing caution to the wind. at this point, wanda's got no other choice but to follow him and make sure that whatever this is neither consumes him nor causes him injury.

she's been in the vicinity of oddly-behaving shrines before.]

It's because you can feel it that you should be more careful about it.

[but then there's that gnawing darkness in him, once again, surfacing to where wanda can see, too, that there is something not quite right with him. she puts a hand to his forearm, soon as she catches up with him.]

Henry.

[It's moments like these that this apparent darkness churns and twists in his head, clawing up and up. Wanda would be able to sense it, that offness, because he feels no need to hide it when his curiosity is pulled in a completely different direction.

He casts a look in her direction.]

It's precisely why we should ask what it is.

[His brow scrunches.]

Come on. You must be curious, too.

I am, but that doesn’t mean—

[henry hasn’t been here long enough, but he’s been here through a lot of the messed up stuff. he should know better than this, and yet he is driven by this churning anger and darkness within him that he hides so well.

it’s easy to tell she won’t be able to change his mind, though.

wanda picks up her pace, towards that feeling that lures them to continue forward.]

It’s not going to be anything good.

[she can just tell.]

[It's the ugly part beneath that draws him to what he should not be curious about, what he should be wary of. His fascination regarding all things that might be powerful, that might be strange, unusual and misunderstood-

But most of all, he feels a power.]

Maybe not.

[Wavering in the air, near the shrine, tugging and tugging and tugging at his consciousness.

Probably heralding nothing good, Henry extends a hand. Seeks a little piece of the veil in his mind's eye that might be weaker, where something is trying so hard to push through.]

Help me bring it in.

[HELP HIM WANDA EVEN THO YOU JUST SAID HE SHOULD BE CAREFUL,]

[bringing anything in is reason enough to not do anything towards it, and wanda can definitely hear stephen’s voice in her head asking her what were you thinking and telling that she knew better. but she doesn’t deny henry’s request, putting up her hand once she manages to stand beside henry—wanda reaches forward, too.

maybe, if she gets herself involved in this, she can control whatever henry is inevitable going to bring out.]

You remember the shrine we went to a few months ago, don’t you?

[wanda says this as a bit of a warning, but she also knows it’s not going to make her stop.

something starts pushing against their consciousness, and wanda frowns, wary.]

This doesn’t — seem right.

[Oh, yes, Stephen Strange would definitely not approve of this instance in particular, nor would he approve of the company she's keeping, i.e. Mr. Creel here, who seems more than adamant enough to pull things free of the veil that he should not.]

Wanda, we're never going to unearth the secrets of this world-

[He feels her effort to aid him in wrenching this thing free, and that immediately overrides any immediacy in her warning; if Henry would have cared in the first place, besides.]

-we're not going to do it by standing by and waiting for something to happen to us.

[Action versus reaction. He's tired of simply letting things happen to him.

And so, it's not unlike a rubberband snapping, and quickly: something in the veil tears, a hole yawns in the fabric of reality itself, and just above the shrine, a retinue of so many arms reaches through at all manner of awkward, twisted angles, as though it pull itself in. Wanda you wouldn't be able to relate to this at all, huh.

Eventually, it simply falls through and lands... in a heap at their feet. A strange monster is really all it can be described at, with grey flesh and too many limbs, like a human turned upside-down, ribcage jutting upwards, fleshy and blooming. It twitches wetly.

What the actual hell.]

[the idea of wanting something to happen by seeking it out themselves is a hard lesson wanda has already learned plenty of times before—the quintessential 'fuck around and find out'. it's far too late to reconsider what she's doing, though, for their psionic abilities combined pull something that tears through the fabric of reality.

arms, a creature with its torso open, its organs naked to the surface, falling quite suddenly at their feet.

wanda takes a step back, already taking in a pulse of this creature's inner workings. her hand surrounds itself with a circling of her scarlet magic.]

This creature cannot be, Henry.

[and, unless he or someone else stops her, wanda will disintegrate it from its existence in their world.]

Wait.

[No, how can she simply banish it away, try to destroy it? When something so fresh and impossibly curious is all twisted limbs and heaving "chest" at their feet, some creature unlike anything he's ever seen before. Something alien and terrible and fascinating.

He reaches out to grab her by her wrist, a sign to halt.]

What do you mean it cannot be? I can feel it, it's like... It's connected.

[To his mind. Somewhere deep, somewhere he cannot precisely access, but the feeling ist here, so faint -- as thin as fishing wire, but just as taut.]

No, wait. Let's see if it's even dangerous.

[A laughable notion, because just look at it.

...Look at it as it starts to rise onto its many legs, hissing out as it twists around to turn its "front" towards them both; hard to tell without a face, but it seems almost... disoriented?]

[wait, he says, and wanda feels altogether too baffled by his words and actions—grabbing at her wrist to stop her—to really try and formulate a logical reason for all this.

she pulls her wrist back onto herself, showing her disapproval.]

We both know it's dangerous.

[just by looking at it — but also based on what they're receiving as a mental connection, surface-level as it may be. as it starts moving, wanda takes a step back, but holds her ground once she sees that it seems to be gathering its bearings.]

[He releases her wrist, far too intrigued for his own good. It's unlike anything he's seen before in this world, certainly something pulled from- what? Another realm?

When the thing rises and twists itself to look at them, Henry barely takes a backstep. There's something there, that nigglings sense of connection that makes him believe he's not under threat — at least not immediately.

Which is a strange stance to take when it lunges forward just enough to close the space between both of them, raising its limbs in the air, hissing loudly—

(Henry’s eyes widen, but really, he just smiles a little.)

—before it pauses, as though frozen in place… and twists around to dart away through the trees.]

[Long story short: Henry sort-of-accidentally summoned a monster.

It isn't a particularly pleasant thing to look at, and despite its strange anatomy that looks like the wrong bits of people twisted upside-down, it moves on those many limbs quickly. It's fast, and strong, and it is, unfortunately, somehow connected very tenuously to Henry's own subconsciousness. As you do.

This also means it absolutely hates Solvunn's goats.

If you're in or around the Primary Settlement, it isn't unreasonable to think you might run into this disturbing, unworldly thing tearing across fields or even lurking behind homes and their penned-in fences, looking to cause havoc with the local animals... especially if said animals are goat-shaped. If approached, it lets out a terrible sound, rising up and making itself look bigger with outstretched "forelegs". It leaps and tries to pounce on anything that might present itself as a threat, and that does include fellow Summoned who might make an effort to save their precious settlement's goats.

It will attack those who draw too close without hesitation, but it won't go out of its way to inflict violence on either the Summoned or the natives. It really does just hate the goats.

Still, maybe you should help the little guys? Henry sure isn't making an effort.]

(( OOC: There will be a couple of goat casualties, so there is an inherent CW FOR ANIMAL HARM/DEATH in potential threads, but I won't be going into detail. That said, this monster can be injured and shooed away with the right tools and effort. Please refrain from killing it, as it will just run off at the end of this and become part of the Bestiary! c: ))

BAHAHAHAHA...

[ Nanaue sits on the grass watching the weird spider-man-thing tangling with the bad goats. Nanaue might also chase around the bad goats, except one of them is already deceased, and he is immediately attracted to the fresh nom nom... the forbidden goat meat...

He laughs loudly in between sucking on a leg bone. ]

[ Truthfully, Rocket's got no real feelings one way or another where the goats are concerned. There are a lot of 'em, and they're loud and kinda stupid, but they don't do anything to deliberately tick him off, and his roommates seem to be fond of them too.

As such, he goes by a 'live and let live' kind of policy.

But when he starts to pick up on the presence of a too-many-limbed creature terrorizing the goats and then killing them (the panicked bleats and the struggle of hoofs against the growling and patter of hands and feet against the ground is a dead giveaway), Rocket is suddenly instilled with the need to defend those that can't really defend themselves. This apparently applies to dumb goats.

And this is what being a Guardian of the Galaxy (and former part-time Avenger) does to you, apparently. Ugh. ]

Hey! Knock that off!

[ He's a 3'-1" creature without his trusty big ol' blaster guns, but yeah, sure, that's fine. He's wiley and agile, and at the very least he's got a couple of small blades he'd picked up at the Vermilion Court; he'll figure something out. ]

What the hell are you anyway?

[The creature itself has no distaste for raccoon-shaped Summoned. In fact, it seems to quite precisely direct its ire to the goats of Solvunn, for whatever reason — everyone else is left alone unless they approach, but then it’s all bets off.

Currently, the monster has found its way into one of many goat pens, a common sight in the settlement, causing the goats within to bleat and run off in the opposite direction in panic. While it would normally give chase, Rocket’s interruption has it turning its “head”—if you can call it that—towards him, hissing out a low noise that sounds almost questioning.

It hasn't been aggroed yet, at least, as though it's trying to assess where Rocket stands in the goat versus human cateogry.]

Eugh — you are disgusting.

[ Rocket makes a face that expresses said disgust with a frown.

He looks at the collection of limbs and hands and feet that suddenly seem to direct its attention back to him, and then realizing that it hasn't really got any ears, he wonders how the hell it sensed that he'd been speaking. ]

Listen, uh. [ He clears his throat. ] You're really gonna have to leave those dumb goats alone. I'm only gonna warn you once.

[How does the anatomy of this creature work at all? It's truly a mystery. But have no doubt that it can hear Rocket, made obvious by the way it hisses yet once more. Questioning, right on the verge of a warning. Its many limbs shift about, as though trying to judge whether or not it should rush forward and ignore this new creature.

Ultimately? It turns it attention back to the goats crowding near the corner of the pen, and simply decides that this is its priority, and starts rushing towards them -- with its awkward, slightly disturbing, many-legged gait.

Those goats might need a rescue!]

[ Ugh. He's really gonna have to do this, isn't he?

Goddamnit.

And his single (1) blaster is only partially constructed because he just ain't getting the materials fast enough.

So: daggers and claws it is. ]

Don't say I didn't warn you.

[ Fey dagger in one claw, he uses the strength in his back legs to lift himself up high enough to gain some edge on the creature. He shouts out with a particularly graceful, Aaaahhhh! and drives the sharp tip of his dagger into one of the creature's many limbs, enough to halt it from making further progress into its goat buffet. ]

[Well, it might be no blaster, but a Fey dagger is still very much effective against soft flesh. When the blade sinks into the skin of one of its many legs, the creature skids to a halt, twisting about in confusion at first -- the momentum is sudden, enough to fling Rocket about if he's still holding onto the dagger's hilt, and if he's not holding on tightly.

It gives an ear-splitting screech, two of its legs thrashing out to swipe at Rocket.

(The goats have been forgotten about, if only for a moment. But a moment is all they need to scramble along the fenceline once more, finding refuge in a different corner altogether.)]

[ For a creepy crawly limbed thing, Rocket doesn't expect it to be so freakin' nimble. It shakes him off pretty easily, flinging him into the dirt of the goat pen, his crystalline dagger flying off somewhere else too. Out of his immediate reach. ]

Well, shit.

[ He scrambles back to his own feet, looking from the terrified goats to the skittering limbed creature. ]

[Harboring a wound in a leg, the monster doesn't care to turn its attention back to the goats just yet. Rocket's presented himself as a threat, and an irritation, which is enough to realign its priorities for now.

Another screech, and it dashes straight for Rocket once more, using the same strategy as before -- lurching up and trying to slam its many arms back down. It has no interest in the dagger, which has flown out and away, landing somewhere nearby.]

[ Rocket's goal: get that goddamned knife back.

But until then, he's got four paws with sharp claws, and equally sharp teeth. He'll use 'em all if he has to, and the latter as a last resort because chomping into this thing seems real disgusting even as a concept.

He manages to climb onto the creature's 'back', scratching at any of the flailing limbs that come at him, his claws digging into pale flesh and holding on before the flurry of arms manages to catch at his side with a winded oof!. And then another one (and another one, DJ KHALED) dislodges him fully, sending him flying off again.

This is starting to become something of a habit, but the chromatic glint of his crystalline dagger catches his eye and he dives for it. ]

( open )

the shrine. (closed to wanda) IS THIS BETTER NOW KIRA

🤸‍♂️ 🏌️‍♂️

i see what you're doing

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oops, a monster. (ota)

drive-by, later on

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