[Mage: The Slenderman Plot] Zero-X (Part III)

Out of Character (OOC):

Chronicle: Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen
Venue: Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition
Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler

Assistant Storytellers: Hannah Nyland & Alex Van Belkum

Zero-X: A Story About the Dead (Part III)

by Chimera (Hannah Nyland), Azazel & Eos (Jerad Sayler)

What follows is the next transcript of the debriefing led by neophyte Chimera, Sleepwalker Agent Eos, and Chimera’s fetch Azazel on the Slenderman incident in North Dakota in 2014.  Out of Character, the entire plot took place over the course of the entire week of Halloween in 2014 and over 60 hours of game play.

Story Parts:
1. Part I
2. Part II
3. Part III
4. Part IV
5. Part V: The Monster

May 23rd, 2014. 2:41 am

Chimera: Around this time, the news coverage of the murders began to really ramp up. Add in the bizarre graffiti messages that has started to appear all over the state (we’ll get to that later), and you’ve got a media sensation waiting to happen. People have their heads low and their ears pricked; in times like these, fear makes even the impossible seem possible to them. Trouble is, many of us impossible people don’t want to be found.  There’s one name that keeps popping up everywhere I look: Noah Maxwell, a film student in Mandan North Dakota who lives with his parents. At most times, the things he’s saying would have him dismissed as a lunatic, but this isn’t most times, and he’s making the most of the media’s attention on him. The supernatural is real, he says, and he has proof.

Proof comes in the form of film clips aired on several news outlets taken from his YouTube channel and website. They’re ambiguous enough to be questioned but not nearly ambiguous enough. And the guy just won’t shut up. He’s always proclaiming that he’s got more video tapes than what the media is willing to show, and if even those tapes aren’t enough for people, he’s going to find some footage that is. You can practically hear the fanaticism dripping from his voice in interview. He’s following a calling. It would almost be admirable, this Sleeper getting his 15 minutes of fame for his efforts, if it didn’t make him such a huge pain in the ass.

And that’s how I end up breaking into Noah Maxwell’s house in the middle of the night and confiscating his tapes. Of course, it still leaves the matter of Noah himself; a truth seeker in all the ways people like me don’t want him to be. He’s idealistic. Reckless. Determined to the point of obsession. Let’s just say that if someone doesn’t "persuade" him out of his little project, he’s going to end up dead, one way or another.

Azazel: He did provide some clues through his recordings of what was going on with the children and the entity’s influence over the Tenemos and through it the negative effects on their Onerious.

Chimera: When I arrive Noah isn’t in his bed. No shock; from what I gathered on him, he’ll be out with his camera looking for evidence at this hour. This is an easy enough job, and it went smoothly; pick the lock on the back door, sneak over to his room, locate the tapes and stuff them into my bag.

(Note to self: Some of Noah’s tapes mentioned someone called "The Observer". We never encountered anyone by that alias. What was his involvement in this?)

It’s there when I walked out the back door. A flicker, a blur. A man dressed in a plain black suit, limbs long, limp and gangly, like some sort of sick puppet.

Eos: A daddy long-legs… so creepy

Azazel: A swaying tree,

Chimera: It’s tall. Pale. I look at its face.

There’s no way to explain, no way to describe... that, not unless you’ve seen it yourself. Ice cold hands wraps itself around my heart, delivering the psychic force of the darkest part of the Abyss like a sledgehammer, and in that instant I want to be dead. If I was I wouldn’t have to see it any more. I will never forget it and yet cannot remember it clearly, the wound of it, not what caused it.

Azazel: A defense mechanism for the psyche, your mind rejected the image. Some aspect of its face, or non-face induces a psychotic break. If I were to witness this effect it would cause serious harm to my being. The psychic force of it would annihilate me.

Chimera: Yes. Something snaps in my mind, a cascade of bleeding red and roaring sound. When I come to six hours and twenty three minutes later, I’m curled up on a bench at a bus stop, every muscle screaming in agony. Sprained muscles. Twisted leg. Shivering uncontrollably, despite the warm spring morning. The bag of tapes is still clutched in my hand.

I can’t remember a single thing from the time I was out. I try to trace back the precise events that led to me getting here, but find that I can only trace around; it’s as though there’s a gaping black hole in my head, sucking in memories, and my consciousness is a satellite around it. No holes cut into my chest though, no organs removed. I can barely believe I’m alive.

A few hazy moments later, I know that I shouldn’t be. It had me, stunned and off-guard. Wheels turn. Whose house was it? It starts to come back. Noah Maxwell’s. A seeker of occult truths, hard evidence, the unknown, and out in search of all three.

I wasn’t the one he’d been after.

Azazel: And he wasn’t just some nosy sleeper either, that wouldn’t fit the M.O. in the end.

May 23rd, 2014. 9:00 pm Chimera: Nergal receives a call at work from an old ally, Father Forthill, currently comforting a bereaved family in Mandan after a sudden, grotesque murder. I think you can guess who the victim was.

Eos: He was cute too…cute Jewish guys.

Chimera: Kairos, Seraph, Nergal and Eris go to investigate. The body was first discovered by Noah’s little brother Milo, as he cut through the playground across the street on his way to school, probably shortly before I regained consciousness. I saw that playground from Noah’s bedroom window. Pretty little place. Quaint. When it comes to Milo, all I can say is . . . that poor kid. But by that point, sorrow for the dead was starting to feel like ticking off boxes on a list, however sincere the sentiment.

When the police found Noah, he was tied down to the merry-go-round of the local playground with several layers of rope and duct-tape; chipped paint below him and empty, blood encrusted eye sockets staring up at the sky. More duct tape across his mouth, blunt force trauma to his head, his camera lying smashed on the ground a few yards away, and some sort of unidentifiable plastic wrap in his insides, which were predictably missing a few pieces - namely the kidneys. There were also crumpled up pieces of paper in Noah’s coat pocket – incomplete sketches of a tall, thin man and the scrawled ramblings of a mind neck deep in madness. According to his family, the handwriting was not his own. He was conscious when he died - chafing on his wrists, a look of horror on his face.

Eos: Why did it take so long for your powerful friends to act?

Azazel: It’s not surprising really. Again, remember that the first victim was killed by Prodigy, the next by "Slendy" and the third by Slendy and its helpers. Each murder was different, each victim died of different circumstances. They were spread over 9 months and no murder occurred in the same city twin. The police never would have connected the dots. It takes three consistent murders all in the same state to declare a serial killer on the loose, and the lack of physical evidence would prevent anyone from being completely sure they were the same killer.

Eos: But they have magic, I mean this can’t be hard right? 

Azazel: Hindsight.

Chimera: Nergal puts the time of Noah’s death at 2:42 am. Cause: blood loss, sped along by head trauma inflicted with blunt instruments by a group of humans of below average strength. Children, like middle schoolers. Because of some extremely convincing police disguises (Imposter spells), the officers on the scene willingly provide what they know. A few speculate that the cause may have been anti-Semitism, due to the personal nature of the murder. Noah’s parents stand by in stunned silence, unwilling or unable to believe what’s happened to their son. 

Naturally, the body has been removed by the time the four mages (minus Casstiel) arrive on the scene at 10:00 pm, but Kairos is able to confirm police reports on the matter via post-cognition – though the post-cog itself took a healthy chunk out of his sanity meter. He saw a boy wake up screaming silently into duct tape, thrashing but unable to free himself. A young man who knew he was about to die. And then it was there, a form looming over him, and the images splintered like Kairos’ psyche. Later his Cabalmates ran some Mind interference, to exorcise the foreign influence and attempt to patch the trauma, Casstiel will be maintaining that mental-Band-Aid spell on Kairos for the next year. 

But at that moment, having seen what no one should ever see, he notices the words. Pale orange tangles of spray paint up the street, on the sidewalk, winding around the trees. Somehow, they have a way of dodging the eye, as though they belong there and always have. Always will.

"Don’t look or it takes you." 

"Can’t run." 

"Watching you." 

"He knows."

Eris takes a moment to call Casstiel and inform him of the recent developments.

Tarot Draw: Ace of Swords reversed
Confusion, a lack of clarity, an uncertain plan that has not yet been put into action

In the meantime, Nergal is waved over by Father Forthill, who is sitting on a bench side by side with Milo. The kid is not exactly in great shape for talking at the moment, but a few relevant facts emerge. First, Milo has several new friends his age that seemed to deeply dislike his brother, and recently his brother offhandedly made mention to being stalked by them on his late night searches for evidence. He hasn’t mentioned this to the police or his parents. Probably doesn’t want to think on those implications too hard. 

Bludgeoning wounds to the head caused by several people of subhuman strength. A couple of middle-schoolers trailing Noah Maxwell in the middle of the night, when he’s alone, distracted by his work - at his most vulnerable. His method of death points to Slenderman, and he was left nice and wrapped up for it like a Christmas present. Do the math. At this point we’ve got two murderers on the loose, one of whom apparently has the capacity to indoctrinate children. And children do feature prominently in the original Slenderman mythos. We end up calling them Proxies in accordance with the modern legends. 

Milo also mentions a dream he keeps having – a tall, thin man outside his window, looking at him. He becomes agitated when Nergal tells him not to look at it, believing that this means that the disturbing man is real – and that it killed his brother (though it’s not like he was wrong . . . ). As they leave, Seraph reaches into his mind and removes his memories of the conversation, and of Slenderman. 

Pleasant sleep for someone, at least. 

Eos: We hoped.

Azazel: He didn’t succumb like the other children did, perhaps that made the difference.

Eos: Nergal made the kid cry, it was kind of despicable. Guy nicknamed "Creepy" and they send him to talk to the kid?

Azazel: Oh, I should also note that they also checked Noah’s body at Med Center One to confirm the M.O. of the Slender-being and also to look for any additional trace evidence. While the body really didn’t reveal anything knew they also noticed another unusual body brought in the previous night. A dried out corpse, dated years into decay and found impaled by a tree in the riverside parks in Bismarck. The corpse was missing its heart which had been bisected by the impaling. We later realized that the reason for the advanced decay and staking was because this was most likely a vampire. It would seem that the Slenderman could pray on any number of supernatural beings and gain substance and augmented strength from their organs.

May 31st, 2014

Chimera: We dream, everyone who has gotten close to the Slenderman case so far.

Nergal states in the morning that he dreamt of a bridge out in the mine hills, fire glinting through the broken windows of the abandoned cars nearby. A flock of bleach-white ravens land at his feet, cawing out First Tongue in raspy voices, "The white king comes for thee." He turns, and jagged black nails on a spindly hand are an inch from gouging his eyes out.

Kairos dreamt of a walk in the countryside, where the silence is a knife at his back. Tension and dread build like the climax of a horror movie. There’s something there, something following close behind. But when he turns, he sees nothing. And ultimately, there is nothing. The stage was set for an actor who never arrived; slowly, the nightmare dissipates into pleasanter things.

Eris dreamt of a place deep in the forest, where the redwoods reach to heaven and the air is wet and drizzly. She comes to a clearing where eight naked, decapitated bodies lie in a circle, each impaled through the torso by a large tree branch. A sound echoes through the trees, like a child’s giggle but too low, and she feels pain shoot through her abdomen.

Seraph dreamt of past lives (he says that is normal enough). First a man living in a cottage out in the wilderness with his two sons, but tonight only one returns from the woods. The boy is frantic, pleading crying. The whole house shakes, and a skeleton with too many limbs comes bursting through the doorway. Then he’s a knight, fighting a bony, spindly legged dragon with feet like lances. It passes, and he’s out on the plains of North Dakota, seeing meteorites rain down from the sky to wreak havoc on the earth. The plain floods over, filling with lizard creatures, and he watches as the sea boils and churns. Somehow though, the water is cold; slimy like a tar pit.

Azazel: He watched the Acamoth, the Darkness that Thirsts, fall to Earth as the world was sundered and wait for the entire span of human history. The Slender’s future "step-father."

 Chimera: I also had a dream. I dreamt of a portrait, but the canvas is stained through with oil and sickness. On a plane over the Atlantic Ocean, the laughter of faceless men and death rattles resound in my sleep. Delirium. A fevered mind forces itself back into equilibrium, and the threads of thought return to an empty pew in a hellish church. I wait.

June 15th, 2014

Roughly a day before the trap is set to be sprung on Prodigy, he arrives at the Sanctum with a mind to kill.

I was fighting my own battle and far, far outside the country at the time – to my relief, for multiple reasons. From what I’ve heard and seen of the man, he was a killing machine. If I’d have been there, the most I could’ve done was end up as a hostage, or simply dead.

No one was keen on talking about the attack on the Sanctum. Kairos just shrugged. Seraph was Seraph. Casstiel looked pained, then cheerfully suggested I look into it myself, framing it as "a learning experience".

Eris, the only one I could wring any info from, explained that the reason the trap didn’t go as planned was because it actually worked perfectly. Basically, there’s an alternate timeline where they snared Prodigy in the maze, but he had a Save Point set up, jumped back 24 hours, and tried to use what he now knew to get out of it, but nothing worked. Killing his family members in order to prevent them from being used to pull him into the trap was evidentially not an option in his mind. Give him a cookie for being a decent human being in that regard.

At that point, he saw striking preemptively as his only choice. From post-cogs I figure that he popped up in the Sanctum at around 12:30 pm and went straight for the first person he could find in the backyard, which happened to be Seraph. Bad luck choosing a guy who could accurately be described as a walking tank. Prodigy was probably planning to pick them off one by one, but Seraph was still more than kicking by the time the other four (plus Persephone) came running.

It was a nasty little showdown, and I only grabbed bits and pieces. The time stream was flickering in and out every time I put too much of my attention on Prodigy. More than that, it shriveled up as though somehow in agonizing pain, and that same sensation of ice cold ran through my body again. It’s like the Abyss was protecting him even then. I’ve never heard of a post-cog being affected that way, even by Abyssal magic, but Prodigy was a unique case for a number of reasons. Even watching him makes my head start to swim.

Flashes of violence. A sword impales Nergal through the shoulder as his shadows writhe around him. Kairos nocks his bow and takes aim. Prodigy’s picks up Eris with magic and slams her into the ground, and her nimbus flares as she begins to cast. Persephone unleashes her dogs. Casstiel mutters under his breath and fingers a Tarot card while bleeding from the nose.

Tarot Draw: Ace of Wands
Power, passion, a time to make thoughts a reality

And it all ends with Seraph’s sword a hair’s breadth from Prodigy’s neck, and Casstiel yelling out a command for him to hold back as he finishes the spell that holds their attacker immobile. He’s battered and bloodied now, and now that he’s still they’ve got the time to notice something. There are dark blue stitches crisscrossing much of his skin, and he is older than he should be. Prodigy’s been gone two years but aged for ten. On that subject, he’s evasive.

There’s no guarantee of how long they can keep him restrained without their carefully constructed trap, but they have a nice little chat, working to shore up the magical restraints on him as they go and binding his hands with zip ties. Kairos notches an arrow and aims it at his heart. Despite his predicament, Prodigy seems almost bored with the whole thing. He’s had this talk before, in a sense.

He admits that torturing Orion, the Guardian sent to hunt him, was unnecessary, but enjoyable and that his kill count numbers into dozens, including Denarians, their squires, the soulless and other Scelesti. It is his belief that he’s never murdered an innocent; that every one of his victims were beyond redemption. He tried to guide Nergal onto the "right" path through his dreams, which the latter rejected. And all the death, the isolation, and the price he’s paid? All worth it. He’s not willing to admit that he needs treatment, much less accept it.

Azazel: For a little context. The events in which the Horsemen banish the Acamoth back into the Abyss, the event that released the Slenderman, Prodigy had started showing up in the dreams in which Nergal was being tempted by the Acamoth. Prodigy claimed that Nergal was an Abyssal god, that Arulle and the Watchtower of Tarnish and Rot was his and that he should accept it. Rejecting the false Watchtower and burning out the Abyssal corruption from his pattern hurt Nergal egregiously but he made that choice. Apparently it wasn’t the entity wearing Prodigy’s face but the actual mad-man trying to tempt Nergal with power, their souls aligned close enough with the Abyss that they could bridge their sleeping minds. Rejecting his offer and the horrible wounds his suffered as a result were ultimately the reason Nergal decided that they needed to get rid of the Acamoth immediately and finally spurred the Horsemen to action. In a way Prodigy actually helped Nergal get rid of his dark passenger before it further harmed his soul, the Tenemos, and all sleepers in close proximity to the Acamoth’s oil. 

Chimera: According to the lie-detecting spell placed on him, this is all true from Prodigy’s perspective. He believes every word; this is the "peak of his potential", after all. 

Then he starts monologuing like any good villain, and that’s when things get fucked up. Well, more so. I’m hearing the speech through the post-cog; there’s no magic, tainted or otherwise, but the Abyss is here like a presence, icy fingers digging underneath my skin. Flashes of words: "Before creation . . . great dreamers in the oceans of chaos . . . wanted to be gods . . . reality is trying to invade, not-" 

Later, I come to in the Sanctum backyard with a three hour long hole in my memory. I’m starting to suspect that my encounter with Slenderman has left a psychological mark on me regarding the abyss. Dazed, I rewind time again – just back to the point where Prodigy finishes his speech. 

Azazel: He spoke blasphemies against reality and the very nature of the Supernal.

Chimera: Casstiel proposes the idea of taking away his magic to save him, but the idea is immediately rejected. Casstiel looked simultaneously relieved and disappointed. Taking away Prodigy’s magic would have required the removal of his soul and the replacement with a sleeping soul. So not only would soul handling harm whoever had to do the touching but then you would have to damn someone’s eternal soul to belong to someone else and keep the rotten one in a jar or something. 

Kairos murmurs something, but all I can catch is the word "goodbye". He releases the arrow he’s kept notched and Prodigy is consumed by celestial fire. There is very little left of the body by the time it clears. 

Azazel: Famine’s Bow is one of the aforementioned WMDs. While it utilizes a large amount of mana it hyper accelerates the bolt to supersonic speed, has perfect aim and guidance, and when fully charged will detonate like a high-explosive rocket, creating craters in the ground and blasting targets to small burning bits. This was a slightly powered down version to prevent shrapnel. 

Eos: I’m actually a little surprised they actually went through with it.

Azazel: My former master was as well. To this day he still harbors doubts that there might have been another way. At the time though he knew he was emotionally compromised enough to know he couldn’t make the call on his former friend’s fate. In the end it was the most practical, and pragmatic choice. Most likely the Autark was stalling for time in order to fashion an escape, call upon Gnomon or summon void-beings to aid him.

Chimera: Autark?

Azazel: Lone-wolf Selestus boss, outside of a cult or left-handed legacy. 

Chimera: Afterwards, Seraph and Nergal returned to the unused trap. While in the heart of the spatial maze, they were ambushed yet again, this time by everyone’s favorite Abyssal horror, who walked straight through the wards and displayed the capability to nullify their supernal magic. However, Slenderman’s attempt to remove a few choice organs from Nergal was cut short by Seraph ripping his face off through good old-fashioned martial prowess. 

Azazel: Before Seraph could attempt to harm it further it simply disappeared. The ability we later dubbed "slender-walk" or "slenderstep" appears to be some new capability for the creature to step sideways directly into the Tenemos. Really quite remarkable. Dream of the Endless is the only other entity that has shown a similar capability, to jump straight across the chimerical threshold and straight from matter into the world of ideas. Or tt could have stepped into some other null-space that we simply do not understand yet.

Chimera: It’s a cliché, but I’m glad Seraph is on our side. Ultimately the two completed their mission, destroying the trap and disposing of Prodigy’s remains to prevent all chance of resurrection or time manipulation. It is fitting that he is buried under Beulah’s cemetery. 

Eos: Too bad the creepy baby-thing never showed.

Azazel: Indeed. It must have predicted the trap and ambandoned its new master like many masters before him. It’s probably found a new pawn by now. A blight that can unlock a mage’s horrible potential at the cost of their sanity. It is a shame the Pentacle have yet to destroy the thing.

Chimera: To Eris and Seraph, killing Prodigy was removing a threat. To the others, it was the loss of a friend for the second time. The wounds of losing Loudon are also re-opened. 

For my part, I was of mixed feelings. I never once met Prodigy, not even after he lost himself to the Abyss. I can’t say whether he really could’ve been saved, or if he should’ve. When I think about the state of Orion’s corpse and the enjoyment taken in torturing him, I wonder. But some time ago, I made a promise to a friend to help find Prodigy and bring him back, a promise I wasn’t able to fulfill.

Sorry Cass.

Chimera: Okay, gotcha.