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

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 IV)

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.

"Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen." – Peter chapter 4, verses 10-11 

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

June 24th, 2014 

Chimera: About a week later, Casstiel hears of a death at the Grand Forks Air Force Base through his contacts in the military. Arriving at the base disguised as officers (except for Cass who actually is an Air Force Captain), the five mages are allowed to pass through security. Something is clearly wrong in the place, even setting aside the obvious Slenderman murder; the lights in a large section of the base are completely burnt out, and the creepy orange graffiti makes a return on portions of the walls and floor.

"He is coming."

"No eyes, still watching."

"He sees."

Two men stand outside the office of the victim, identifying themselves as special agents with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (or AFOSI). They’re not mages, but they’ve had magic used on them recently . . .

From them, the group learns a few details about the deceased. Master Sargent Karrin Booker had worked at the base for years, performing aircraft maintenance on KC-135 refuelers and then later middle management on the Global Hawk drones. Earlier that day, screams were heard coming from her office, but by the time help arrived (which couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds later) she was already dead. An investigation is ongoing; by now, the body will have been taken to base casualty collection point at the clinic.

With obvious reluctance, the two men allow them to enter Karrin’s office. Inside is none other than Black Moon, the Sentinel for the Red River Valley Concillium homed out of Fargo. Black Moon informs them that the local concilium has taken note of the recent string of unusual deaths and is in a heightened state of alert. Their own investigation in Cavalier turned up evidence of the Cabal’s presence, and they’re willing to give them a chance to resolve the issue. She then leaves to allow them to look around. 

The office was obviously fighting a losing battle with chaos even before the murder. Whatever else you can say about her, Karrin Booker was not a tidy person. The garbage bin is filled with crumpled up pieces of paper and tissues that overflow onto the floor. Several bookshelves are mounted to the wall; the organization of their contents could be charitably described as "creative". Her wooden desk, positioned facing the door, is engulfed by a tide of sticky notes and loose paperwork. A worn bible (dog-earred to Peter chapter 4, verses 10-11), a box of tissues, and bottles of assorted painkillers take up a small space in one corner. It is evident that Booker’s desk once housed a computer and telephone before they were reduced to husks of slagged plastic and silicon. Shards of broken glass litter the floor, and the spots of the desk not covered by debris are blackened and scorched. Similarly to other areas of the base, the light bulbs in the office are all blown out – though exploded might be a better word. After clearing off some of the mess, they find drawings of bony figures scrawled into the bare surface of the desk and a single world, repeated. The letters grow deeper and more frantic the closer to the present they were carved.

"No no no no no no no no. . ."

There’s also several patches of carpeting that are covered in blood, a stroke of luck (You really don’t get to say that sentence very often). With it, Nergal is able to analyze the circumstances of Karrin’s death without the body being physically present.

This time, the Slenderman took the heart, lungs and uterus. Booker was a tall woman with short brown hair, and she died in uniform, a cross necklace tucked underneath her shirt. She was ill before her death, but the nature of it is bizarrely difficult to determine, the physical effects not matching up perfectly with any documented diseases. Both of her arms are marred by electrical burns, and the left one has a deep, self-inflicted wound on the forearm. Cause of death is blood loss from the bigger cuts on her chest and abdomen, and the body is bleeding from the ears and nose; pretty much what they’ve come to expect by this point.

But the cuts themselves are different. Uglier. No tidy extraction this time, no surgical precision. A quick search by Eris turns up a bloodied utility knife nearby, and a d20 rolled under the desk. Death, Fate, and the Underworld – the die resonates all three. It reminds Casstiel a little of Persephone, but it’s also heavily stamped with Karrin’s identity and power. I suppose the closest mage equivalent would be a soul stone, but according to Cass, this was subtly but tangibly different. He called it a Keystone.

Immediately upon being handed the d20 for inspection, Nergal senses the presence of a being of twilight; the die appears to be its anchor. What resembles a plain teenage girl hovers just above his shoulder, wearing a blood soaked yellow sundress, her limbs broken at impossible angles and face perfectly emotionless. The presence is tied strongly to Fate, but not justice or karma. She’s bad things happening to people, deserving and undeserving both – freak, uncaring turns of chance. Events that can’t be made sense of, but simply are.

Azazel: In Colorado Springs, Persephone, Jack, Nergal, and Indra all had run-ins with an entity calling itself Mr. Monster. This spirit/ghost being was very similar to this being and was anchored to a Bulldog revolver used to commit the heinous serial murders of the Son of Sam killer.

In a measured, almost melodic voice, she identifies herself as The Girl in Red. She cared about Karrin only to the extent that one cares about a favorite toy, and now hers is broken. After Nergal presses her for what happened to her . . . host? plaything? . . . The Girl shunts a vision directly into his head. 

Eos: Yay more psychic trauma.

Azazel: With its face missing its debilitating effects were significantly reduced. Still, to date this is still the worst entity the Cabals have ever faced. I would hate to see it topped because topping it would mean an Abyssal Intruder of the caliber akin to an elder god or greater incarnea.

Chimera: It’s 4:30 pm and Karrin Booker sits at her desk, awaiting the end of the workday. Her eyes are dull, her complexion pallid, and her throat swollen. She shuffles idly through her paperwork, the girl in the yellow sundress hovering at her back. Save for the rustling of paper, the office is quiet.

The clock hits 5 pm, and silence is broken by the piercing, otherworldly scream of The Girl as Slenderman pops into existence directly in front of them, with only a flimsy wooden desk standing in his way. All that’s left of his face is a gaping, oozing hole from where Seraph tore it off. 

Karrin screams too. It’s a scream from the gut and from the soul; an animal sound of rage. The d20 appears in her right palm; she slams it down onto the desk as Slenderman drifts closer and all the technology in the room is annihilated in a burst of white-hot energy. Hundreds of broken shards of glass and silicon tear into her skin and fly at the anti-reality creature. The later doesn’t even slow down. 

She backs up, pulling out a knife in her free hand. Without hesitation, she makes a straight cut into her right arm. By now, she’s bleeding freely from most of her exposed skin and burned in places, but her face is a frozen mask of fury and concentration. Raw emotion courses through the room, rage being etched on bone and blood. The girl-ghost screamed the entire time, empowering what Karrin was attempting to do. No effect.

By now, there’s nowhere else for her to go. She’s backed into the corner of the office, Slenderman looming over her, impossibly slow of movement. Booker keeps fighting to the inevitable end, but it’s over in a matter of seconds. He’s hasty this time, his movements abrupt and almost . . . hungry. The remaining organs aren’t put neatly back into their places, but simply left piled on top of the body. Slenderman vanishes as quickly as he appeared, leaving the gruesome scene behind. A moment later, the door to the office flies open, and a man’s voice cries out in shock. 

I should mention that The Girl was screaming her lungs out during the recounting of this vision. As it ends, her face flickers and snaps back to perfect, unsettling calm. She eyes Nergal with detached interest and asks if he’s going to bring Karrin back to her, but he explains that it’s beyond his capabilities. The Girl considers that for a moment, then calmly requests that they take the keystone with them. She’s going to need a new toy.

Nergal informs the others of what he’s learned. Deciding that they’ve seen as much as they need to, they leave the office, taking the d20 with them. 

Tarot Draw: Page of Swords
Idealism, energy, a person with many plans for the future. (Karrin?)

Outside, someone is arguing with the two agents, insisting to be let into the office. He’s a short, dark haired man wearing a pair of sharp edged rectangular glasses. His voice is clipped and monotone. Most notably, his resonance has the same feel to it as Karrin’s did – but flavored with a gnawing, persistent apathy mixed with strong death resonance. Another twilight being hovers over his shoulder, best described as a gaping hole of emptiness. As the mages exit the room, his eyes snap to them and he takes a step back, sizing them up. 

The man’s name is Jacob Reighley, a friend of Karrin Booker, and he identifies himself as a member of "The Shepherds". Jacob has seen the strange symbols they’ve been encountering all over town, including around the house of another one of his friends – who has also noticed neighborhood children starring at her on several occasions. Upon being told that they intend to hunt down Karrin’s murderer, Jacob agrees to lend his assistance; he and his friends will map out the sites of the markings for the Cabal, and in return they will take vengeance. He seems distrustful and wary even then; he has the look of a man who wants very badly to believe what he’s being told, but is finding that his nature makes that impossible. As one last request for the dead, he asks that Karrin’s keystone be included as part of the deal, and they oblige. As security escorts him off the site, two twilight beings follow behind him. 

Before heading back to the Sanctum, the five mages decides to check out two strange markings they noticed. Combining their various mage sights, they determine that the first one (identified as the Observer Symbol) brings attention and death. It functions a bit like a sympathetic anchor, and is connected to the Dreaming. They recall it being present at the scene of Noah Maxwell’s murder – and Jacob will later inform them that it is the same symbol outside Erika’s house. 

Azazel: By our best estimates, the Observer Symbol acts as spot where the Slenderman can closely be draw or at least draw his attention. The esoteric meaning of the zero or eye with an ‘X’ through it can represent a null-space, the blinding of the all-seeing eye, the blind dead see or the blind faceless eyes of Slendy itself. The proxies were scouting viable organ donors and marking the nearby area with such symbols. As for the being mentioned by Noah Maxwell as The Observer, we do not yet know what part that being has.

Chimera: The second symbol (the Glyph of Severance) disrupts the sympathy of whatever is contained within. It’s effectively the opposite of the Observer Symbol, occluding its contents via fate and shifting attention away from the site.

Azazel: The Glyph of Severance appears as two eyes overlapping each other as opposite sides. While you might think that this would provide double clarity, somehow it actually cancels out the influences of the Slenderman. It is also the symbol that covered Eagle Butte and was solidified by whatever packs of the United Tribes that contained it there.

Chimera: By this point, it’s a safe bet that Slenderman is specifically targeting supernaturals, so their first step is to distribute the Glyph of Severance to as many of their supernatural contacts as they can, Jacob included – who in turn, upholds his end of the deal. To ensure the safety of Jacob and his friends, Seraph and Eris volunteer for body-guarding duty. 

There’s been enough death in the last few months. Now it’s time to plan, and act. They’re entering the endgame. 

June 25th, 2014  With little else I can do, I spend the day digging up information on Jacob Reighley. He’s an ER Physician who’s worked in the county for five years. Graduated from Mayo Medical School at the age of 28. Spotless reputation in his field, but regarded by co-workers as cold and aloof, even for someone in such a high-stress profession.

And he’s dead.

On June 4th, 1996 a teen suicide was reported in the small town of Dayton Tennessee. 17 year old Jacob Reighley was found dead in his parent’s bathroom, having slit both wrists and bled out. His parents refused to comment, but word around town was that Reighley suffered abuse from both his relatives and other kids at school. Shortly after being checked into the morgue, his body went missing. No explanation was put forth for this, nor were the remains ever recovered.

Nonetheless, there’s a Jacob Reighley of the same birth date and description practicing medicine in Grand Forks. Azazel has suggested the possibility that both Jacob and Karrin were Sin-Eaters, which is what you get when a ghost-spirit hybrid called a Geist forms a pact with a human straddling the line of life and death. The new symbiotic relationship gives the human influence over the dead and certain supernatural abilities, and the Geist gets to interact with the world of the living. Frankly, I’d never even heard of Sin-Eaters before, but it seems like a solid explanation for Karrin’s powers and her and Jacob’s twilight companions. 

Azazel: Very little concrete lore about Sin-Eaters exist that isn’t mixed in with spiritual mediums, ectoplasmic manifestations, and just people with a natural affinity for the dead. They are more commonly known to mages as Fog-men or Ghostwalkers.

Chimera: I also took the liberty of scrying and scrutinizing Jacob and his friends because frankly, Azazel made Sin-Eaters sound really freaking dangerous with fewer psychological hang-ups about killing than most. They are people sharing their heads with aspects of death, after all. I wanted numbers and general temperaments.

Jacob’s group, The Shepherds, appears to consist of three members after Karrin’s murder: Martin Wills, Erika Brandt, and Jacob Reighley.

Martin, whose surface is prickles and thorns. His resonance is worn, stretched thin between love, cynicism and compulsion. Above all, he seemed a tired old man. 

Erika is . . . volatile. Her aura is as varied as a kaleidoscope, flickering rapidly between colors and emotions. On the surface I saw a petite smiling blonde, and below that raw anger and hurt, her every action down to a dice roll.

But forget Erika - Jacob is the scary one. A man with an emptiness inside him, an apathy, a cold, uncaring practicality – a hollowed out soul. And buried somewhere within it? Grief an ocean deep.

They were painful people to study, honestly. As they gathered together in Jacob’s house to say their personal farewells to Karrin, I stopped looking. They deserved to grieve in peace.

Erika is . . . volatile. Her aura is as varied as a kaleidoscope, flickering rapidly between colors and emotions. On the surface I saw a petite smiling blonde, and below that raw anger and hurt, her every action down to a dice roll. 

But forget Erika - Jacob is the scary one. A man with an emptiness inside him, an apathy, a cold, uncaring practicality – a hollowed out soul. And buried somewhere within it? Grief an ocean deep.

They were painful people to study, honestly. As they gathered together in Jacob’s house to say their personal farewells to Karrin, I stopped looking. They deserved to grieve in peace. 

June 30th, 2014 
Eos, my newly christened Sleepwalker retainer, gets her first taste of the exciting mage lifestyle. That is to say, we both have a near-death experience. 

Eos: Go me. The retainer. Yay? Yeah, so through all this stuff going on Chimera took her field trip to go to German and managed to save my life by destroying a nightmare entity that was… feeding off of me.

Chimera: I’d intended it as a simple training session out in the country, an opportunity to gauge the limitations of her magical ability and give her a few pointers before introducing her to my master. If we had time, I’d planned to give her an overview of firearms and gun safety. 

Those plans come crashing to a halt when, at the wheel of my questionably-functional van and just out of Jamestown, I notice that we’re being followed. Four kids piled into a pickup truck, three in the cab and one riding in the back.

That’s how we made the acquaintance of the Jamestown Proxies. It might have been possible to write them off as simple thugs, even with the masks . . . if it weren’t for the delirious, almost hypnotic glow of their auras. Plus, when have things ever been that simple? 

I’ve brought my gun with, sure. But I really don’t want to use it on a couple of brainwashed kids; instead I put my foot to the accelerator. They return the favor by ramming us off the read.

I feel a sudden twist of magic in the air as they impact, a disruption of Fate. The strange thing is that it’s coming from Eos, who hasn’t learned a single thing about casting spells yet. 

The result is that they go careening off the road with us, leaving both of our vehicles trashed; the kid in the back of the pick-up goes flying on impact. Eos and I are fortunate to suffer only minor injuries, and beat a retreat on foot in the confusion. They pursue, but we’ve got enough of a head start to make it to town unscathed. My van isn’t so lucky; I find out afterwards that what’s left of it isn’t worth repairing. 

Eos: At one point the proxies show up again and we rabbit. They manage to start flanking us while I have Casstiel on speed dial and use Space magic to gain precious yards on our pursuers. Casstiel shows up and helps slow them down before portaling us out of harm’s away. Nicest thing the man has done for me so far, surprised he didn’t leave me behind to get stabbed.

Azazel: While mostly mundane, the proxies appear to increase the Quiescence, Disbelief and the ambient Paradox in the area. Further analysis suggests that the disruptive static produced by the Abyss’s hold on them may have allowed them to bypass shielding spells with mundane weapons.

Chimera: All in all, Eos took the whole thing surprisingly well, considering. I’m still struggling to find an explanation for the Fate magic she worked – it didn’t feel quite like conventional supernal magic, and when questioned about it she claimed she hadn’t done a thing.

Eos: We now know that what happened was the result of supernal energy infused into my family genetics. Most proximi families have some kind of magical curse, mine is bad luck, but to those around me instead of me specifically. It is like I am so lucky that I make everyone around me unlucky by contrast.

Chimera: We spend the next couple of days shut up in the Sanctum, lying low while the Cabals prepare to trap the monster that has been hunting us all for months. 

July 4th, 2014 
It’s the Fourth of July and instead of celebrating, the Cabal is finalizing their preparations to kill an Abyssal horror. The date was chosen deliberately; they’re making an effort to maintain the Veil with this plan. Over the last week, they’ve had time to refine it and do the setup necessary to spring their final trap.

It started with an idea put forth by Seraph. How do you fight a monster that walked straight out of a meme? You alter it at the source. You give it a weakness.

Part 1:

It’s decided that fire will be the Slenderman’s new vulnerability. And as mages at their level, they have the capacity to cast a spell that makes the entire world believe it. The details of the mythos change overnight. Eris’ husband Rusty provides suggestions on the supplies they’ll need to take advantage of this weakness.  

Azazel: This was a lot harder than it sounds. Not only did it take a long night of casting with multiple polymasters but a huge amount of discussion and effort was spent in making sure the spell could not be traced by other mages to them as the source. If it had backfired they may have come after the Horsemen, blaming them for the Slenderman’s existence rather than seeing it as an attempt to disrupt it.

Chimera: Guess the gambit payed off. Casstiel also asked through some of his contacts with other Awakened if anyone would object to them killing the creature. Predictably, no one cared.

Part 2:

Set the bait. Nergal purposely catches the attention of a few Proxies and sets up a routine of heading into the showroom of the old abandoned Chevy dealership just off of main street Beulah. The room has been prepped with fire Wards, and before long the Proxies have marked it up with Observer Symbols. 

Shortly afterwards, Slenderman makes his appearance. Nergal runs past him and into the showroom, where the others are waiting. Slenderman teleports into the room, poised to kill. Seraph and Nergal noted that he was bigger than before and physically stronger, as though consuming the organs had given him fresh power. 

Part 3:

This is elegant in its simplicity. They start the bastard on fire. 

Seraph intercepts as Slenderman strikes out at Nergal, taking the blow across the chest – it rips straight through his mage armor, but he’s still standing. Eris takes the chance to light the Glyph of Severance drawn in gasoline and Vaseline at his feet, burning the symbol into the ground. The rest of them are armed with a mixture of gasoline filled super soakers and flare-guns. He lights up like a torch.

Azazel: The real punch was in the home-made thermite mixed with the paint and coating every surface of the room. Once it got hot enough to ignite that the whole room because as hot as the sun, reducing anything to dust.

Chimera: Casstiel teleports them all back to the Crucible room as the room goes up in flames and they feel the warm, fuzzy satisfaction of a job well done and hope it is enough. 

There’s one last snag in the plan though. As Slenderman dies, a tremor runs through the nearby Proxies, and they sprint into the burning showroom before collapsing unconscious. Maybe it was his last command to them, or maybe it was just a reflection of the damage done to their minds – either way, they’re not going to make it out of there alive without interference. Thankfully, Casstiel quickly teleports them out of there – Seraph tosses a bag full of thermite on top of what little remains of Slenderman at this point and they retreat again as the plasma burns its way towards China.  
                  Tarot Draw: Two of Swords Reversed
An emotionally shattering experience, a loss of balance, release your fear of involvement

Eris heals the children of their injuries, and Seraph leaves them in a field surrounded by a Life Ban that will hold until they wake up. Their psyches have been damaged, but not beyond repair.

Overall, I’d call this plan a win. I’m sure there’s something to be said about the property damage to the dealership. 

Azazel: It’s okay, the owners have been trying to sell the place since 1985, no takers and the place has been abandoned that long.

Chimera: But hell, they got an awesome lightshow out of the deal. Happy Fourth of July indeed.

That night...

They sleep, and dream about the Slenderman one final time.

Kairos dreams of a pack of werewolves, feathers in their ears, laying down wards on a butte top. They are exhausted, but joyful – at long last, they’ve managed to imprison the Thin-Man, a task that cost them many of their people.

Nergal dreams of oil, and the heartbeat of a pulsing web of energy goes silent. It’s then that he realizes that this entire time, the Abyssal had been using the flow of American processed oil to spread his influence. Oil from the Bakken shale formation, now reachable through frakking and North Dakota’s new number 1 export. With the Acamoth gone and the Slenderman dead the growing influence of the spreading oil in North America finally withers and dies. 

Seraph dreams of a slagged hole where the Slenderman once stood, a Tarot card placed neatly among the ashes. XXIV "The Prisoner"; a dark skinned man draped in chains and metalwork. When Seraph re-examines the site the next day, the card is there, just as he saw it; he entrusts it to Kairos and Nergal for safe keeping. 

Eris dreams of a foreman working patience of a derrick on an oil pad after hours. Without warning, lightning strikes the site in a shower of white light, and every man present save the foreman collapses to the ground. He hears the groaning of metal, and the panel in front of him comes alive, wires wrapping around him like hands and pulling him in. The image of the man struggling, half-melded to the equipment panel is so vivid that at first, Eris isn’t completely sure she’s dreaming. 

I dream, blissfully, of nothing. This in itself is remarkable for me. But the next morning, Eos wakes up shaking and tells me of the things she saw. Children with the Observer Symbol branded onto their foreheads and dead eyes, and a young man watching over them. His features are obscured, but his mouth is set in a face-splitting grin. 

The weeks following...

It takes a while for it to truly be "over" of course, and even then there are a few loose ends left hanging. 

A few days after Slenderman’s death, police uncover twelve bodies out in the Black Hills, burned beyond all hope of identification. The Cabal is able to peg them as soulless Denarian squires. It’s Prodigy’s work, but the bodies are old; these murders had to have occurred before his death. 

One last ugly death emerges; Black Moon and Panoptes contact the Cabal, informing them that Vigil, the Guardian Emissary of Fargo, has been found murdered in his Sanctum. Vigil was by all accounts, a haunted and reclusive man, prone to sporadic human contact at best. As such, it took several weeks for anyone to investigate his disappearance and discover the body. His journals, erratic and rambling as they were, implies that he became aware of the presence of Slenderman long before anyone else, and that the Abyssal had been stalking him for nearly as long. There are signs that he’d taken the situation into his own hands, and had been looking for a means to summon and trap Slenderman as well as manipulate the Proxies. Evidentially, he didn’t succeed.

Then there’s the matter of Prodigy’s death curse, which has the potential to seriously screw things over. Was he too arrogant to realize his death was coming and too slow to react? Did he refrain as a rare act of mercy towards his former friends? Or has the Cabal yet to feel the effects? 

Gnomon is still missing, but quite possibly alive and looking for a new "master", especially when you consider the fact that no one in recorded history has been able to permanently kill it.

Kairos and Nergal use the Blood Fang, now in their keeping, to post-cog and track down Prodigy’s lair. They wouldn’t talk much about it, at least not to me, but they returned with another of the First Tarot, his blazing diamond, and a handful of photographs; they show Prodigy and the other Horsemen hanging out together, back before the world changed for them forever.  

The rest of July is, thankfully, uneventful. Everyone does pretty much as they please, relieved to be done with such morbid business. Persephone and Eris go backpacking. Seraph works on being human. Casstiel, Nergal and Kairos play board games. Everyone drinks – a lot. 

In short, they live.

Now let the dead have their due: Orion, Alex Kralie, Noah Maxwell, Karrin Booker, Vigil, and yes, Prodigy. 

May you be remembered.

About the Authors

Hannah Nyland is a full-time student majoring in News Media and Web Design in her last year at North Dakota State University. She graduated from High School in 2014 and placed second in the Ayn Rand essay contest for The Fountainhead in 2013. Her hobbies include reading, martial arts, writing fiction, gaming, playing Mage the Awakening and plotting to take over the world with an army of corgis.

Jerad Sayler is a Cyber Warfare Officer in the US Air Force of eight years. He graduated from the University of North Dakota with a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science in 2009 and received his MBA in 2014. He has been Storytelling new World of Darkness games since 2005 and has be running his current Chronicle of Mage: The Awakening since 2010. He enjoys creative writing involving role playing and game mechanics.

[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.