Once she had her bearings, Rose looked around with a deep but unhurried curiosity. She was pretty sure this was a dream, which made it hard to feel like rushing when she had the background sense that she was asleep. "How fascinating," she said aloud, or at least attempted to. Her sense of vision was strong, but she hadn't picked up much sound yet to match.

The thought crossed her mind to explore, but almost as soon as it did, it occurred to her that she could still be in danger. Dreams were important realms in the world of the arcane, and if there were spirits here, that could mean that the siphon on the train was too - and that she could be in danger herself. Before she took the chance of stumbling into danger, she tried to focus her oddly telescopic vision to the baggage car where she knew that dangerous entity was. Better to retreat from this dream if it might suck her in or sever her from her body.

 Looking far below, realizing it's part of her connection to the train and its movements, she peers down towards the cargo car with the entity. Rose hears whispers as she focuses on the crate in question, a subtle push, her parent's voices, a beckoning call. She knows better but still, she can feel its allure.

 The sounds at this height are like hundreds of tiny voices speaking in whispers and subdued thoughts, perhaps dreaming themselves. As she begins to descend slowly, she sees something amiss to the East of the train's location. If she were seeing it from a zepplin, she might think it a storm, but here, in the Dream plane or Astral realm, wherever she was, it seemed odd and foreboding. It was very large and clouds seemed to swirl darkly, with crackling purple lightning sizzling across it's breadth. Then she sees the runes above the area, cracked and fragmented, still following it's prescribed orbit but dark and lifeless, perhaps broken in some way.

Rose shuddered a little as she found the lure for herself. It was good that her own training and prior knowledge protected her, but to imagine poor souls being drawn in by something like the voices of their own parents, how awful. She was glad she and Tiamat were going to do something about it.

Speaking of dangers, it seemed like there was another noticeable one on this plane. She wasn't keen to get close enough to be zapped by the apparent lightning, but she tried to draw closer, to examine both the cloud and the runes above. The broken-seeming nature of the latter seemed especially concerning.

 She begins to drift in that direction and with the thought of intent, she feels herself move quite pleasurably, gliding at incredible speeds to close the distance. The feeling is exhilarating as but quickly she begins to worry she might come in too fast, she suddenly slows to her previous drift, none of that feeling of inertia to make her stomach slosh around. It must've felt a bit like being shot from a gun without the explosive accompaniment, she reasoned.

 Up close, Rose finds the fragments to be each as large as a city block in New York City. The whole runes are like to be the size of whole cities. They sparkled and shimmered with energy from within them but it appeared they were broken. This one appeared to have a hole blasted through it. The large pieces were mingled with smaller boulder-sized masses. So she deigned to enter what was essentially a cloud of debris, the feeling that would be a mistake was an intuitive one, but she could always ignore that meat-based feeling if she chose.

 From here the gargantuan funnel cloud appeared to be almost directly beneath the rune debris. It looked as if whatever had blasted through this ward had also caused the stormcloud below, it was unmistakable. Almost the center of Russia, and it seemed to stretch further by the moment. Whatever had occurred was spreading.

"Wow," Rose said as she took in the magnitude of the destruction. Assuming she had the capacity to make sound, anyways. Much as she still disliked the earlier people on the train, seeing this gave her a better understanding of the urgency of their mission. Maybe she could try to assist as an outside consultant or something, because it seemed like something terrible had happened at their approaching destination.

 Rose feels a tingle wash over her, the way one might feel if they were on point and in the full throes of a complete state of meditation now. She feels powerful and flexible, adaptable. This tingle was strange though, the way you sometimes feel when something walks over your grave. A proper chill runs up her spine. Her tutor's words were stamped into her brain along with the memory of his cigar-breath, "a unique feeling is one to be questioned, for often it is a sign that someone has uttered your name."

 She sometimes wondered if her tutor had ever actually experienced a supernatural creature himself, she'd wager not. Still, it was difficult to discern where he might've gotten it wrong, or right.

 From her peripheral vision, which as an astral body, was directly behind Rose. She witnessed a speck moving with a gleam and an intent on coming towards her, she sensed it more than she could see it from such a distance, but it was moving with purpose and definitely en route.

Perhaps it was past time to go, but Rose was curious. She tried for a bit of astral acrobatics, turning in place to face the approaching mystery and then willing herself backwards to delay it reaching her. She had the feeling she might need to return to her body in a hurry - it might not be safe to just will herself awake when she was dreaming in Russia. "Yes?" she asked/projected into the ether toward the intent.

 The Other seemed to receive it and responded with intent to capture her. It was a lion telling a quarry it was about to be under its paw...

 At least that's the way it felt. She knew that the image of a person within a person's mind could be...manipulated, for lack of a better word. She wasn't sure that was the case here. The figure continued without slowing though, cruising at a very fast clip. The intent she felt, was that of a power whose goal was her specifically, she was the intent. She felt a coldness inside it, something she was normally immune to, but in its case, it startled her with its fury. Suddenly memories of her past seemed much less jovial than a moment before. Who or what was this?

 Her delaying tactic helping to slow it's approach, but it was still gaining.

 A moment later, she felt a familiar presence appear next to her. It was the fox-spirit, full bushy tail this time. It glanced up at Rose to meet her eyes before taking a few invisible steps forward to pose proudly before her in defense.

This was a worrisome thing, to put it mildly. Rose had no idea why something would seem to come after her in such a personal fashion. And as much as she appreciated the fox coming to her rescue - she hadn't even realized he could do that! - it also meant that she couldn't just flee and leave him to his fate.

Rose's eyes showed gratitude along with concern when the fox's gaze met them, and she considered for a moment before deciding on her course of action. She let the fox take point, but she didn't use its cover to escape. Instead she took the coldness she felt and turned it to her own ends, as though she was wrapping herself protectively in frost. She was a person touched by another, more terrible plane than this one, and surely if there was one place she could express that, it was here in the theater of the mind.

"Show yourself, then," she called out imperiously in a voice that crackled like ice.

 A sudden and startling woman appeared before Rose a moment later. Her challenge answered, the figure floated there only a moment before speaking, apprizing her and her authority here. She eyed the fox spirit with a quizzically raised eyebrow. "I am here for you Rose Blankenship. If you will not make yourself available to my brethren within the Heralds of Eternal Winter then I shall take this power from you, you don't deserve it!"

 The fox boy growls a low and rumbling snarl at the woman's threat but holds his little patch of ground defiantly, while his eyes began to glow with an iridescent reddish gleam.

(OOC: If you intend to meet her in battle, make an initiative roll with your next actions. 1d100 + Intuition rank number)
This message was last edited by the GM at 06:38, Fri 17 Sept 2021.

If the fox spirit was going to hold his ground, then Rose would too, that was just how it was. She was both loyal and stubborn where her friends and cute animals were concerned, and he was both, in a way.

She gave the woman a scrutinizing look before answering her words with a bitter laugh. "I don't deserve it? Then perhaps you shouldn't have given that power to an infant. Makes it a little hard to say how they'll grow up to use it, not that you intended to let me." She gathered her inner coldness in one hand as a manifested threat, or at least attempted to, not having much idea how things worked here. "Speaking of that, knowing the group you serve and that you do so willingly... here's my counteroffer. You can turn and go back to them now, or I can tear you apart and scatter your soul across this dream." She raised her (hopefully) ice-covered hand to point at the woman. "It'll be like you never were. Unless you think you can beat the person it took your whole cult to empower, and the bodyguard of a deity looking after her."

Init 57.

 The woman's face remains placid, "perhaps I can wield it better than you can welp," she says with a wisp of jealousy, "oh the Eternal Winter is coming for you, Blankenship. Yes, but let's not tarry on details like the gift they gave to me as well...consider this your warning. Return to the cult or face the consequences of your betrayal."

 She feins surprise when she swiftly grabs up the silver thread that trailed to Rose's foot, as the fox boy growls and looks ready to snap at her. The woman wagged a finger as she manifested a pair of comically large silver shears, ready to slice through the cord. "Hurry home now Rose."

"I'll grant that you use it differently," Rose said coldly. "I wouldn't try to sacrifice a child, for example. In fact I try to avoid hurting people at all. But knowing what your group is capable of, in your case I make an exception!"

Since she recognized that the woman would understand an attack was impending from her words, she didn't wait to finish her dramatic delivery before delivering it; instead she tried to blast the woman with ice in the middle of her own sentence.

(OOC: Not sure if dice rolling is normal here or what :))

(OOC: Ok, so just rolled an unlucky initiative for you. 108 after a +10 intuition. Feel free to revise your plan based on the initiative now. Truly sorry! Each turn you get a move action like running and a regular action like attack or pull a wagon or check your surroundings. I don't remember if I've ever gone over that part with you. Sorry if I'm repeating myself. Heh. But in this case, you'd want to roll your cold generation power or try to knock the scissors out of her hand.)
This message was last edited by the GM at 11:39, Sat 25 Sept 2021.

Once she realized that the woman definitely had the jump on her, Rose amended her plan - rather than waste any time talking, she just tried to immediately blast the scissors out of her hand with a surge of cold.

16:44, Today: Rose rolled 98 using 1d100.  Fn Cold Generation. Whoa, Red result! I should have just gone for a head shot XD

 Rose seizes upon the opportunity to fight back and takes her shot. She blasts at the woman's hand and it crystallized into a solid icicle. She screeches in anger and possibly pain but she looks at the hand after the shears fly from her frozen grasp. With an expression of interest, despite whatever pain she might feel, and she did look pained in the aftermath. Her eyes became more sunken and glassy appearing, some of her shine and glamour have gone now. She looks up at Rose viciously, "This is not over Blankenship."

 The terrible woman contained herself long enough to whip out a hand in a sudden jerking and tearing motion, and a rend in the fabric of Rose's dream realm appears in conjunction with her motions. She quickly steps through with a smoldering look.

 Afterward, the tear begins to seal itself off and the area is again still and quiet but for the murmuring of nascent minds...

(OOC: Hopefully I'm not misreading the tear "beginning" to seal itself off?)

Rose still had very little time to act, so rather than spend any on a retort, she simply hurled one more icicle, more or less blindly, after the woman before her escape route could close completely. Who knew, maybe she'd be able to catch her in the back before she fully made her escape. This wasn't a duel with Queensberry rules - Rose had said she intended to annihilate this woman, no quarter would be asked or given.

21:05, Today: Rose rolled 37 using 1d100.  Fn Cold Generation. Green result (I think, my screen is being wonky).

 The seething anger she felt for these people welled up in an instant icicle which she hurled after the woman. Rose hears a satisfying >splutch< sound, as her icicle found its mark, if not the place she wished it would've hit. A muffled cry of pain before the hole is sealed again.

 Rose looks around, sweeping with her senses across this dream plane, feeling victory for the first time in a while...Nothing else seemed to move in concert with the disappearance of the woman, she felt safe for now again. The fox boy circled Rose protectively, hunting for further causes of distress itself.

"Whew," Rose said aloud as she tried to regain her center and let the hatred she'd felt flow out of her. Eventually, she looked down at the fox spirit with a smile. "I wasn't expecting you, thank you for coming to help me!" Then she looked around again. "Though... I wonder if there's anything left to do in this terrain, now that we've defended our position in it. Is there anywhere you'd like to go, little fox?" Rose figured the least she could do was guard him if so, since he'd done the same for her.

 The little fox seemed to prance around for a few seconds at the question before setting down beside Rose once again. This time he looked up at her as if to say, "I go where you go."

 The tempest raged on below them for what seemed like an eternity.

≫ ──── ≪•◦ ❈ ◦•≫ ──── ≪

 From a faraway place, Rose hears a motherly reassuring voice, "Rose, it's time to awaken dear."

Rose smiled down at the fox, then eventually looked up when she heard what was presumably Tiamat's voice. "Let's be off then, shall we?" she asked the fox warmly. Barring objection from him, she tried to return to her body and wake herself up.

 Tiamat's words began to reach her more clearly and closely. "It's time to rise and shine dear. It's already seven in the morning and you had an early morning caller."

 While she'd slept Tiamat had somehow extended their room so that the bench/beds were twice as long and had much more foot room than earlier. She shrugged when Rose looked about and tried to change the subject with a slyly cocked eyebrow, "I got bored and cramped. Did you have a nice rest, oh I do hope it wasn't too fitful with the Lil-one running amok with you?"

 There were four more newspapers as well, each neatly folded and piled together on the extended table from the window. There was also a tray with fresh orange juice and a place setting for one with a steaming meal within presumably. Even the napkins were right.

Rose blinked and rubbed her eyes, then stretched a little in place and covered her mouth for a yawn before she sat up. "Good morning Tiamat, thank you for the wake-up call," she said drowsily as she looked around. She approved of what the goddess had done with the place, but since she didn't seem to want to discuss it she just smiled slightly. "It was an... eventful rest, if that's even the word for it. I was very grateful for the company."

"So, an early morning caller? Who was it?" She glanced over at the tray after that. Maybe Tiamat had ordered her breakfast? That would be nice, but she didn't want to be presumptuous, so she said instead "Is that your breakfast there?"

 "Yes," Tiamat replies lowering her bifocals to her chest, "it was that Davin fellow. I'm not sure I trust him if I'm being perfectly honest. No, I ate already feel free dear."

 The woman seemed to be interested in learning Rose's thoughts on the subject. Her manner this morning was part motherly and part aristocratic granny. It seemed strange that she could change so easily. In any event, she seemed concerned about Davin, but winked at Rose regardless and looked at some classified ads in one of the papers, "I suspect he'd be heading to get his own breakfast about now if you want to catch up to him."

(OOC: Feel free to hop into the 1.6b thread if you'd like to join the breakfast club.)

"No, I don't trust him either. He already revealed that he knew more about me than he was letting on," Rose said with a frown of her own. "Still, I believe he knows I know that now. Perhaps he wants to discuss our common... sort-of enemies. I think I'll at least see what he has to say." Her expression eased as she said "Thank you for passing that along Tiamat, barring disaster I'll see you soon." She did a little freshening up and grabbed her things, then headed out.

To the 1.6b dining car