Yvette Larinyan

There is a room that's dark and cold. It's made of stone, with a doorway cut into each of the four walls. At the room's center is some type of circle, carved into a raised platform. The only light comes from a slightly sad looking light fixture set into the ceiling.

Then the circle glows, brightening until it could rival the sun, humming and shaking the room around it. There is a buildup of energy of some kind...

And then it stops, returning to as it was before.

Except, now it contains two women.

One of them has pointed ears and red hair. She looks around in quite a lot of alarm.

Inavet - does not actually recall the last time she's been this much of an emotional cocktail. She thinks this might be her new record for most emotions she's had at one single point in time. Anger, rage, despair, worry (so very much of that), guilt, self doubt, fear, fear, fear, fear. And rage. A lot of rage. She's surprised she hasn't broken anything.

She got an automated message, earlier. It was from Miles. It seems that he is missing. Or, to be more specific, kidnapped, by the mysterious and terrifying entity known as the SCP. And now, they possibly have access to his Many Worlds Forum account.

This means many things: one, they could know how to summon daeva. Two, they could have arcany. Three, they know about her, and know her abilities. Four, Andrew did not fucking tell her that first fucking thing in his darling little message. Doesn't help that she holds him personally responsible for this entire mess. He was the one who let the information about zorkmids out. He is the reason the SCP could even get to Miles.

It's a good thing she is drawing a circle that requires a lot of fiddly details and concentration, because otherwise she might use her hands for something else. For example: strangulation of a certain summoner. Who is maybe going to accidentally cause an apocalypse if he keeps things up the way he is.

Write, write. Write. Checking of notes. Write. And then: one completed summoning circle to summon the demon Cam.

Inavet hisses a creative curseword, and slams the door shut, and reaches for her magic. The door to the building she's hiding in becomes to all appearances an ordinary wall. It'll take her pursuers time to find it - none of their arcanists are any good at crystal craft, from what she can tell. It won't buy her enough time, but it'll buy her some, and every second counts.

She starts trying to patch herself up while she looks for an escape route they're not covering. Blood craft's not her best, but she's gotten a lot of practice at it, lately. Enough to stop herself from bleeding out from the wound in her side (because of course it's deep) and keep herself from collapsing from exhaustion. Too slow - one of these days it'll kill her.

But not yet, she thinks, as she spots a window to an alley. Out go her magic senses - no one's alive and breathing in that alley but a cat rummaging through the garbage.

She dumps an illusion over the alley, to appear exactly as it was before she entered it. She can't get the cat right in a rush, but she doesn't need this to hold out for very long. Just long enough to get away. Song disguises the sound of the window opening and her scrambling out of it. She's conscientious enough to close it behind her. Easier than another illusion. Maybe they won't notice the blood.

Which way? Mm. One that way, two to her left, three are - oh look they found the door, she needs to hurry. She takes a right, and runs.

And comes face to face with - a snake? With a mirror for a head? What, how in the -

It's very fast. She was not expecting it. She didn't even sense it, like it appeared from nowhere, she raises her knife but she's not fast enough -

And then there is darkness.

Darkness and pain.

She'd scream, but the air's sucked out of her lungs in a whoosh. She snaps her mouth shut and flails, lashing out with something, anything - but she feels nothing around her. Nothing at all. Not even air. It's like a pressure, on all of her, but instead of pressing in it's pulling out -

Is this how she's going to die? Some Ministry snake monster thing?

Not. Likely.

She isn't the best at blood craft, but she knows enough to keep herself alive. She knows enough to snap her eyes shut and cover her nose and mouth and push magic at herself so her body doesn't shut down. It's hard - there's so much to monitor, she has no air... But she can keep herself alive. If she doesn't move and she focuses near entirely on self preservation. For - for a little while, anyway. Not forever.

Time crunch, then. Well. She was always good at those.

Her lesser crafts won't do her any good here. No way to make sound with song, no air to ignite in fire with heat, no time for aura anything, nothing to move and change with breath. Forget stone and metal, even when she's not in a crisis she's awful with both, not to mention there's nothing around for either.

But she is good at crystal, and crystal deals in light.

If she's not the brightest fucking beacon the world has ever seen, it won't be for lack of trying.

Maybe someone will find her. Or maybe she'll blind the bastards who put her here. Either way, it won't hurt to try.