[Fall] Chapter 1: Re-Placement

What the hells?
She ushers Wren inside, but if she is reluctant, then Myra will leave her outside. The door is closing now.

Wren is stepping inside.

Seeing what Myra was doing, and the result, Kyle called out to Glitch and glanced around somewhat nervously.

Joe is sufficiently engrossed in the Lockwood family library that although he notices Myra respond to the doorbell, he doesn’t really register the others leaving at first. By the time the unexpected quiet filters in through his focus, he finds himself alone in the library, and wandering off on his own through someone else’s home is not exactly polite. He’s just resigned himself to waiting in the library, and getting through this next interesting looking passage…
Then the lights flicker and dim.
Being stuck in someone else’s unfamiliar house in the dark is really not a good idea. Joe carefully puts down the book and goes to the door. Resolving not to compound the risk by actually getting lost, he concentrates on his memories of the walk in from the front door to this room; not just the passageway, but every nuance of the route; the turns, the doors unopened, every ornament and obstruction, every door frame and change of flooring… if the lights fail, he does not want to be stumbling into a wall, or something more breakable, let alone Myra’s grandmother if she should be abroad…

Lockwood Mansion Entrance - Kyle, Myra, Wren
The presence of the moths now took a more sinister implication than simply wild insects in the dark being pulled towards light. Were they trying to enter the house? And now that Myra had lured them back out, was the unseen perpetrator attempting something else, this time aimed at the inside of the mansion, by causing its front hallway lights to flicker?

The three of them still had no idea what or who was causing this, and why, apart from Wren's broader sense of magical energy somewhere in the proximity of the treeline where the driveway joins the main road.

Unsure what is going on Kyle suggests
Hey Myra, maybe you can get the house defenses to respond if you give it some guidance. It doesn't seem to like outside forces. At least it rejects me. If you can direct it then it may be able to be more effective in tracking and blocking outside forces?

In the meantime he decides to test his own abilities a bit and focusing on the moths he taps his phone and let's his intent interact with it's systems to scan through high frequency sounds in an attempt to drive off or disorient the bugs.

Houses defences? What are you talking about
Myra knows nothing about any defences on the house.

Somewhere inside Lockwood Manor - Joe
The dimming lights affected the main hallway the most, but parts of the house did also flicker in protest against some unknown perpetrator. Joe caught himself too absorbed in his research, and resolved to find his way to the others. The overall layout of the rooms wasn't too labyrinthine, he knew at least that he had to go down one floor, even if the irregular light threw him off a little. He used his inner sight to get his bearings, and found he saw more clearly and more sensibly as his proceed from the library towards what he thought was a famiilar direction. This led him to open a door to his right ...

... and as he entered, he felt a great sense of deja vu, as if he had been in this room before, even through he clearly hadn't. He paused, wondering whether to back out, but the sense grew stronger. He had been here before! No wait, someone he knew had been here before ... his ... mother?

Wren had quickly slipped into the Lockwood Manor - just in time for the door to be shut behind her by Myra.

She was still a bit rattled from the dispute with her dad, but now she was shrugging it off. She went to the next window that gave her view on the treeline and concentrated, fading out the nearby voices to make room to hear the more distant ones.

Lockwood Manor Entrance - Kyle, Myra, Wren
Kyle's efforts complemented Myra's. Whereas Myra's manipulation of light was directed at drawing the moths out, Kyle's was intended to drive them away. His phone's speaker wasn't built for this, but the slightly larger one installed in Glitch enabled his drone to fly in a sweeping manner at the level where the moths were in the hallway while emitting an ultrasonic frequency. This hastened their departure, so that Wren could quickly duck into the house such that Myra could close the door before more of them could enter. It wouldn't do to have any remaining insects trapped inside if the intention behind them was suspect.

The porch light flickered out, leaving the front door as equally dark as the rest of the driveway. The hallway light inside continued to dim, and while Myra pushed the door shut, she found she could not easily close it; something pushed back, like the wind, but very specifically focussed on the door. The bushes nearby weren't affected; their leaves barely rustled much. But Myra could feel the gust blowing into the gap as she pushed.

Wren quickly went to the nearest window to see if she could sense better who was out there; it was totally accurate by now to conclude that there was someone actively interfering with them. The person did not show their presence, and it could be inferred that their actions were not (or not yet) immediately applied to causing them direct physical harm. Nonetheless the attacks were significantly intrusive. Someone was 'invading' the house.

Myra hadn't had time to think about the strange observation that Kyle made, about the house's defences. As far as she thought, even though she had always felt this house was strange and special, that that was the way things were. But tonight she discovered a library of hidden ideas, and now she was about to further discover the house itself had ways of taking care of its occupants. It took Kyle to discover it first, and somewhere upstairs Joe was learning something else as well. It did cost Kyle something though, something to do with the after effects of magic. This was something he would learn more about soon enough.

Seeing as Myra seemed unfamiliar with the house, likely because she belonged to it so it never pushed back on her actions, Kyle decided to try and bolster it. Moving over to a wall socket he extended his senses into and along the wiring, spreading out to encompass the houses power system. Careful not to push against the houses magic he instead used the wires as conduits to guide and regulate power, as they are designed to do, while he directed his energies to isolating and reducing external influence, like a filter circuit blocking unwanted frequencies and preventing power spikes.

Somewhere inside Lockwood Manor - Joe
The house was too big; that was something Myra has always thought to herself. There were too many rooms for just her parents and grandparents when they were around, since there were no other occupants, and now it was just grandma Evelyn and herself. The maze-like effect that seemed to waylay Joe's direction-finding took him into -- a bedroom -- instead of the staircase landing he was looking for to get back downstairs where the others were, with the lights of the house flickering distractedly.

Joe adjusted his thought. The room looked like a former bedroom. A wardrobe stood against one wall, a chest of drawers that served as a dresser sat opposite, near the window. An old-fashioned rug covered the floor in front of him. In such a layout, where a bed would normally be, sat a circular table and two chairs. All the dark wood furniture were of the same traditional Queen Anne era matching the manor's architecture.

But Joe was using a different sight, an inner sight to see beyond the physical room. The presence he detected made little immediate sense, and he wanted to verify again that what he felt wasn't a figment of his current hyperaware imagination, given all that was happening recently. (For earlier he was very much able to sense Emily Walsh's trace even though the young girl was no longer present in the hall.) This time the feeling was different, more personal. This house was not a house of lingering spirits, Joe picked up the sense that there were no 'ghosts' present, at least not within the four walls. No, it was definitely lingering in a different way. His kata move drew him to take a position on one of the literal chairs in the room.

He sat.

A time mage might've sensed how long ago this remnant sensation was. A matter mage might be able to piece together the physical evidence of what the sensation might be. Joe's mental energies felt his mother, here, nearly the same spot, at rest, refreshed. That's how he concluded there used to be a bed there, because for some reason he knew Penny Leung had stayed here before. This must mean his parents, or at least his mother, was friends with the Lockwoods. But how were they acquainted? He knew nothing about their history.

The force pushing at the Lockwood front door, trying to force it open, pissed Myra off ot no end.

This. Is. My. HOME!

Nothing is held back in the attempt to protect her home. Pictures of wavebreakers that redirect the waves' energy up in the air and down in the ground fills her inner eye, as she is fighting with the door.

Someone was trying to invade her home! That singular thought was enough for Myra to push back with whatever she had at her disposal. She tapped on two different sources, that which controlled the forces around her, and the raw energy that had been growing within her. But she didn't have quite the right formula to make it work, not until she willed herself to shove the door against the power that was keeping it forcibly open.

Kyle used another approach. Initially burned by what he detected was the house attempting to curb his indiscriminate use of magic, this time he put his effort to align with what the house was already trying to do. In the laws of science, something was trying to disrupt the electric current to the lights. In opposition, he focussed on bolstering that current, hoping that that strengthened whatever else the house was attempting to resist.

Wren made herself useful by tapping into her greatest strength, her supernatural perception. She was beginning to understand that sometimes, something or someone could be shielded from her generalised hypersenses. This time, as she stood by the window partially hidden by the heavy curtain, she put her mind into reading the consciousness out there that was causing all this.

A big gust of wind through the open doorway scattered all the loose furniture within, knocking over side tables and chairs, and nearly knocking over the three teenagers themselves.

Then everything stopped. The insects, the lights, the violent pushing. The door slammed shut from the combined efforts of Myra and Kyle.

Wren could pin down a presence, a person, standing in the copse of trees that formed the hedge between the manor compound and the main road. The person was unreadable, their mental defense greater than what Wren could read into, and in the dark Wren wasn't using her visual sight to sense it. They seemed done with whatever objective they were trying to achieve because what Wren was reading was their resonant trace, ie the after effect of their magic.

They were leaving. Unless Kyle, Myra or Wren wanted to go after them. But that would mean opening the door and coming out from the safety of the house.

Myra is walking around all jittery, and filled to the brim with adrenaline and power that she still barely understands. One thing is for sure now - she is a mage and she has access to magic.
So did her parents and the house.

She is still parsing back and forth.

What was that?

But what about granny Lockwood? Kyle, Myra and Wren stood at the hallway, breathless from the exertion. It must have taken just seconds for everything to happen. Now the door was firmly shut. But Joe wasn't with them. And more importantly, was Evelyn okay?