CLOSED; by the pricking of my thumbs

[rehandle]

Who: Ken Kaneki anthropophagite, Peter Parker tinglesense, Harleen Quinzel amenace, Kamala Khan bestversion, Alina Starkov sunmon, Kumoko survivalrate, Bart Allen kid_flash_found, Jinx whimsikills and Loki Laufeyson thecoolerloki.
What: Over the course of a few days, kids find an old spell book in the school library and come up with a plan to cast the spell inside at a spooky manor in Sunset Falls.
When: Monday 7th - Wednesday 9th March
Where: Meta school & Sunset Falls
Content Warnings: I'll keep you updated





It's just another day at the school in the sky. Classes run like clockwork, playground powergrabs are narrowly avoided, and somewhere in the school library a mysterious new addition sits on a shelf, waiting to be read.


DISCOVERING A BOOK;

It's especially quiet in this corner of the library - a perfect place to study. Browse the shelves and your eyes will be drawn to an old book: leatherbound, weathered, no trace of a title.

This book has a certain draw to it. Anyone who sees it may find themselves thinking about it all day, thoughts always looping back around.

Inside, the book is filled with scripts and symbols that don't make sense. Try to translate it and nothing solid comes up: it's a mish mash of different alphabets and languages and ancient runes.

It's also structured very oddly, hand written and chaotic. Script bunches together to form structures and patterns, curls in unsteady spirals, plays with empty space and covers other pages with dense layers of ink.

Only one page makes any sense, written in English. The page gives instructions about casting a spell, though all it really says about the spell itself is…

🔦 The spell creates a secret place that sits inside another.
🔦 The place hides those it houses, maps lose their meaning.
🔦 The more people lend the place their power, the better hidden they will be.

… does this sound like the perfect clubhouse to anyone else?




SPREADING THE WORD;

Maybe you found the book yourself, maybe you happened to be in the library at the same time somebody else found it.

If you've already seen it, you may feel compelled to share. Isn't this thing cool? Hey, check out this spell, do you think we can…?

Or maybe somebody smuggled the book out of the library and you're sitting in class and feel a sudden draw to peek inside their backpack…

However it happens, it's time to figure out who knows, loop in anybody else you want to know, and start coming up with a plan to test out that spell.




SCOPING OUT THE VENUE:

The house on Will-o'-the-Wisp Walk is well known in Sunset Falls as a trouble spot. An old and long-abandoned Victorian manor on a street where the houses are separated by vast property boundaries to ensure privacy, it's the perfect place to cast up a secret hideaway.

There's a gate at the bottom of the driveway but the lock is long gone, and a brief walk up the long sweeping drive reveals the house itself: four stories if you count the central tower, wood-paneled with arched windows and a stone staircase leading up to the porch. The implied grandeur doesn’t take away from how the whole place looks worse for wear, roof tiles slipping and window shutters hanging on by loose hinges, rotting wood on the porch railings.

The door opens as easily as the gate, and inside is looking just as rough… though not as disused. It's all old and dusty, sure, but some rooms show signs of the rumours you may have heard about this place: snack wrappers and leftover takeout, carpets scratched up and thrown back so some kid could scrawl chalk spell circles on original hardwood floors. Nobody's here right now, but they have been. Almost every room you walk through is laden with some kind of magic, hasty handwritten warnings stuck to walls and furniture to keep you away from half-finished spells.

As per the instructions in the spell book, the ideal room for the casting must be pitch dark, silent, and have at least two doors, one to be closed and the other left open a crack.

The only room in the house that fits this bill is the in the basement, a plain room with stone floors and walls and a single rusty lightbulb with a pull chain hanging from the ceiling. It's the middle room in a basement warren, one door for entry and another to pass through into the room beyond.

Once it's found and everyone's ready, it's time to gather round and prepare to cast the spell.




CASTING THE SPELL;


The book may not give an awful lot away, but it does provide instructions.

Spell casters must face the closed door with their backs to the open one, and any light in the room must be extinguished. Once these conditions are met, all you need to do is speak the magic words to cast the spell -

Now I'm here and then I'm gone.
A secret space will hide me.
In that other place I'll run
Where no one else can find me.

– and wait. The book says that soon enough you will feel the door at your back open wide to let you in, and when that happens all you need to do is turn around and walk inside.

As soon as you speak the spell, something shifts. It may take you a while to realise that the silence around you is now absolute. No murmurs of the spell words from your classmates, not the sound of their breathing or their footsteps moving toward the door.

Maybe you'll try to reach out for someone or attempt to turn on a light. Maybe you head to pass through the open door or try to leave through the closed one. Doesn't matter. As soon as you spoke the spell words, you were transported to another place. Maybe completely alone, or maybe with someone else from your group - your phone, if you try it, has no service. The old lightbulb with its pull switch is nowhere to be found, and if you do strike a light you'll find yourself in another room entirely, all peeling paint and bare wooden floorboards.

The only people who won't be immediately transported are those who chose not to perform the spell. They are left together in the casting room, with one simple choice to make. Pick a door or wait and hope.



( Here we go, time for some kids to do some magic!

This log is intended as the lead up to and casting of the spell - the place created by the spell will be described in detail in the event log going up on Wednesday, so please don’t run any further than the moment characters realize they’re not in Kansas anymore.

If you have any questions or need to figure anything out with me or anybody else, please refer back to the plotting post! I’m ready and waiting for you at the Questions comment. )

Comments

Kumoko / Miss Spider | So I'm a Spider, So What!? | ota

[survivalrate]

finding the book.

[ people... are not kumoko's strong suit. people scare her. she's a socially inept nightmare with a bad habit of spouting off somewhat mean telepathic thoughts. in school she needs to wear a bracelet to keep that thought projection at a minimum as it's "a distraction to the class".

so most of her time is spent in the library. reading as much as she can - largely light novels, because who gives a damn about magic when you have entertainment?????

but this... isn't a light novel she's picked up. the spiderling frowns and looks down at the page and blinks all ten eyes.

a secret hideout?

... that could be really useful. a nice place to run to when everything goes tits up for her.

she takes a moment or two to memorize the spell and then oh so carefully slides the book back onto the shelf. ]

spreading the word.

[ so...

soo...

in school she looks just like a normal girl. the thought suppression bracelet also hides her giant monstrous spider body... but she's still an anxious wreck. generally, kumoko keeps to herself and jumps anytime someone ties to talk to her.

so it might be a little weird that she's approaching you, looking as though the world is ending as she clears her throat. ]

H... hey. I've been... watching you a while... and....

[ wait that was totally creepy. crap, crap, crap! why can't she scroll up and pick a different opener? ]

kamala khan / ms marvel | marvel comics

[bestversion]

( i. research )

[ it was an unusual book. she pulled it out randomly while trying to grab a YA book and it fell out onto her pile. and it looked strange enough that she held onto it a little longer. it doesn't seem to be in any language she knows, so she's been flicking through the pages and doing copious internet searching in the library. ]

Hmm. That doesn't quite fit.

( ii. spreading the word — anon/network )

hey so I found something strange in the library. not sure what it is. maybe magic? I don't want to make a big fuss, but I was wondering if anyone wanted to check it out. just like a show of hands before we decide 🤔

( iii. scoping the venue )

[ once, her mother had talked to her about places in india and pakistan, places of bad blood and old history. places that were left abandoned and undisturbed. bhoot bungalows, they were called.

kamala didn't really believe in such things. those were her parent's superstitions, no hers. and the fact of the matter is, right now, they were all beholden to the guild's good graces. she didn't like that. she wanted to carve out her own space. or a space where any kid could belong, without adults deciding things for them.

she shoulders her bag, giving the house a long look. can't be worse than new attilan or the x-men house. they're all fancy, but also complete death traps. ]

Want to check it out?

( iv. wildcard )

[ got a prompt in mind? hit me up @ timmtams or this plotting comment ]

Loki Laufeyson (Kid Loki) | Marvel Comics

[thecoolerloki]

I. discovering the book

[Loki is seated criss-cross applesauce in some corner of the library, combing through the book with no apparent care to anything or anyone else around him. Occasionally he mutters to himself or pulls out a notepad, attempting to decode the runes in front of him. Rather than trying for an English translation, he's writing his (incorrect) guesses in more runes, Asgardian runes specifically.

Also worth noting that he probably looks like a sassy lost child, way too young to be in high school, maybe even too young for middle school.]

II. scoping out the venue

[Although he'd initially met up with everyone in modern clothes, now that they're doing the thing Loki looks properly Loki. Or maybe he looks like a baby LARPer. Someone suggests they split into pairs to investigate the rooms since they'll cover more ground while staying relatively safe.

Loki seems not at all concerned about safety, though, practically skipping through the rooms as they go. Looking all the part of the God of Mischief, he turns back to face his partner, tilting his head curiously.]

What do you hope to get out of all this? Something real? It's not a bad way to fill up an afternoon either.

Peter Parker | MCU | late but OTA

[tinglesense]

SPREADING THE WORD

Peter's not in the library to study so much as to get away from the regular mundanity of school. He's a nerd by nature, maybe, so he finds a bit of solace here. He likes books, okay, fine.

The spell book…okay, this is just weird. Maybe it makes some kind of sense that a school for metas might have it, since surely some people here can do magic other than adults? Right? That tracks, he can rationalise that, but this isn't Hogwarts and there aren't magic classes (haha, unless? Now he'll have to ask someone about that). This particular book is creepy as hell, though! Better to just leave it alone.

Well, okay, after one quick look.

No. No, Jesus, he knows better than to mess with magic. He learned that firsthand. Put that back on the shelf, walk away, goodbye creepy Hocus Pocus book!

But he can't stop thinking about it.

So he sends a message to one of the high school group chats. This way, even people he doesn't know, at least he can warn them? He rationalises it as a warning. He really doesn't mean to cause trouble, spread this book like a viral meme, but…

hey did any of you see this really weird book in the library? it looks like it has some kind of spell in it that makes a hidden house or something?

He means to say that they should stay away from it. He swears he even adds that. But you know how creepy magic books twist your thoughts around.

[ Feel free to text Peter or come talk to him out loud about this! ]

SCOPING OUT THE VENUE

Somehow, Peter gets it in his head that if he goes along and helps with the spell, he can make it safer. That's absolutely bonkers nonsense, of course. He doesn't know anything about magic other than that it's dangerous and people who don't know how to do it shouldn't do it, including him. But he's seen it and seen how it can go hideously wrong.

But this spell has been eating at him in a way he can't explain, so he's here with his anxiety ramped up to about a zillion. He's here completely as Peter Parker, though of course under his clothes he's got his Spider-Man suit in case he needs it for something. That's just how he rolls at all times.

He slides up to the nearest person.

"Okay, so let's go over this again to make really, really sure we have the specifics right. Because if we do even one thing wrong, we could seriously wreck something. Like…ourselves. Or the whole multiverse. I mean, just in theory."

Haha, great save, Peter. Well done.

CASTING THE SPELL

[CLOSED to STEPHEN STRANGE]

It's only just when they get to the basement, before the spell actually starts, that Peter's tingle thing (ughhhh that name for it? still? really?) kicks him out of whatever grip the book and its magic had on him and he realises that ACTUALLY this is a much worse idea than he had even acknowledged.

No. Nope, no, nuh-uh, back up, time out.

But he can't talk anyone out of it. He can't stop whatever is going on here, not alone. He can refuse to go into the basement himself, though, backtrack out and frantically call the only person he can think of who can do something about this before it's too late.

He does send a text first because he has no idea which of these two things is a better bet. And he can text faster than most people, but this is probably an out loud type of conversation, even if he wishes it weren't.

Maybe it's better that Dr. Strange doesn't actively remember what he does. How many times can he mess up magic and have to have Stephen look at him with that mad/disappointed combo? Yeah, no thanks. Deep breath, send a text, try not to panic into uselessness.

I need help right now at this address.

He sends a pin with his location.

Then he actually calls.

"Please let me have reception. Please pick up. Please pick up."