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[sophos]

[Annabeth's face pops up, curls a mess as usual, but considering the turtle developments, she doesn't look nearly as cross as usual?? There's the sounds of water splashing around somewhere in the suite, but she doesn't appear to care.]

It goes without saying that the turtle's health started improving at last. [Because powers! And it's swimming again!] I know various numbers of us were tasked by Evandau into investigations, and I don't know how all the other situations turned out, but Doctor Soranik Natu, Rogue, Percy Jackson, and myself found something probably worth sharing.

We were assigned with investigating a string of robberies initially, but really, the important part is we discovered a series of incomplete archways in several different homes and attempted to recreate one in its entirety.

The whole "world between Life, Death, and Dreaming" thing everyone gets on arrival? Start taking it literally, if you weren't before. Keeliai as we live in it here is the Life plane. The archway opened up a portal of a kind, and said portal took us to the Death plane.

[A blob of water floats across the screen, blurring Annabeth's face, but it's still possible to see her turn around in a huff, and from somewhere off screen there's an "Oops, sorry!" before the water flies off. She continues unperturbed.]

It was basically a version of Keeliai gone awry and ruined, everything rotting away, and we found markings in the form of some kind of blood magic, directly over where the Emperor's Palace is in this plane. Scans proved it to be kedan blood in origin, some of it fresh, and the pattern was being drawn by - you know, what we're here to fight, in a magical attempt to kill Tu Vishan. We were able to wipe the incomplete blood slate clean and stop this part of his illness before leaving the plane. [By 'we' she mostly means Ocean Jesus did A Water Thing.]

Unfortunately, or fortunately, the way in seems to be gone. The archways all disappeared once we got back, as did that particular methodology in creating them. [Melted pins ahh. A pause.] The Death plane is probably where our infamous threat is hiding. Its domain, so to speak.

Tu Vishan's health is picking up, but this - this situation here, with this thing we're up against? It's definitely not over.

Comments

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[eye_of_isis]

Let me know when there's a copy I can look at. Like I said, I don't know all the nerdy stuff like Carter does, but anything's better than nothing, yeah?

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[sophos]

It's not nerdy stuff. But yeah, I'll let you know. [A pause; she doesn't really want to broadcast this, if only because she doesn't want it falling into the wrong hands. But Sadie could be useful.] Would you want to take a look at the archway, too?

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[eye_of_isis]

I'll give it a once over, but I probably won't be able to tell you anything you don't already know. I can summon portals, but they never explained the finer details, just what we need to summon them.

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[sophos]

[Just going to casually slam that up.]

It was made of charcoal, with patterns and words, and the process included the insertions of five metal pins. Does that sound like anything you've used before? [She doesn't really think so, not really, but it never hurts to ask.]

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[eye_of_isis]

I've never even heard of something like that. Egyptians have to use things like obelisks and pyramids or anything else that comes from Egypt to open a portal. That sounds like something out of a bad horror film with morons messing with black magic.

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[sophos]

[She blows a puff of air out in an almost sigh.] Bad horror film sounds about right, only I think they knew exactly what they were doing in this case.

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[eye_of_isis]

Which, surprisingly, doesn't make it any better. As far as I know, no one uses blood in Egyptian magic regularly, but generally speaking anything that requires people to die or lose part of themselves for the magic to work is probably not something you want to see happen if you like staying alive and sane. [Unless you're using it against giant Chaos snakes.] Not even Walt uses blood.

[Or if he does, he didn't tell her]

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[sophos]

[Her face falls for a moment, then gets a little guarded.] You don't really want that happening for Greek or Roman rituals either.

[Sacrifices. Beautiful sacrifices for the goddess.]

Pretty sure it's definitely bad news anywhere. Hopefully we can stop it from happening again here, if kedan continue to be targeted and killed.

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[eye_of_isis]

Now that we know what's going on, it should be easier to at least notice it, even if we can't always stop it.

[And it very obviously bothers her to say that but...well, you learn quickly that you can't save everyone]

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[sophos]

I'm hoping for that. We can at least hinder it again, seeing as we've already accomplished that much.