(2018-03-10) Up
Log Title
Summary: A lighthouse full of cordyceps nearly makes Eddie a real fun guy.
Date: 2018-03-10
Related: None
Player Characters: Audgrim, Eddie, Tyla, Cobalt as ST

Out, out to the lighthouse! It's the furthest point up on the Strait of Juan de Fuca still within the influence of Port Angeles' Greater Metro Area. Out toward Sekiu. It's a long drive, an hour and change from downtown. Further if one is going from the east side of PA.

This lighthouse is an old one. Very, very old. It looks like it's half falling down, even. But there are definitely birds about it…

Though they start taking flight as wind comes off of the ocean (surprisingly), and causes them to all go fluttering about.

Audgrim spends most of the last hour to communicate with the air and the wind, so he's not very social; he's doing odd waves with his hands, patterns with his fingers, and is murmuring to himself with eyes closed as he tries to get a proper breeze come in. Sometimes this goes fast, sometimes the air need a bit of coaxing - and so it is that the Nightsinger spends most of the drive in the backseat, doing his thing. Once they do reach their destination though, the wind is picking up and he's looking faintly smug. "Lighthouse," he breathes. He remembers something, something from his past, as he watches the building.

Tyla drove, she's seen Eddie drive. But other than that her car probably has a GPS in it ans she's taking steps to remember things later when maybe she can't; but that might be an adventure for another day. She listened as Eddie told her and Audgrim about what happened to him the night before, surprisingly quiet. She's paying attention to the road - mostly, but she's listening, and trying to figure things out as well, but she seems a little worried once they pull to a stop. "Not breaking the mirror is pretty complicated when we keep finding mirrors." she mumbles. "Hopefully only Lucas shouldn't break it." she concludes and hands them both packs of those disposable, squishy ear plugs. She doesn't know if they will work, but it's worth a shot.

Eddie was in pretty rough shape when he dragged himself back from Forks this morning, but he still insisted on tagging along for this. No injuries, aside from a few bumps and scrapes, but it was a long night and he had kind of a scare, and he had to leave his coat back at the office. Probably he should have left it in an incinerator, but what are you going to do. He explained a little of what happened on the ride up— Ms. Everbright's apartment, an abbatoir of horrors, a journey through the looking glass. Probably there was more, but he fell asleep fifteen minutes into the car ride, drooling onto Tyla's passenger side window the whole way over. "Huh?" he says, "I'm listening! What. Oh. We're here." He takes the earplugs and climbs out and shambles around a little while like the walking dead, trying to get ready to deal with another mirror.

"But mirror in horror place under dead woman's apartment, it break?" Audgrim says quietly, not eager to make too much noise. Like usual, almost instinctually by now, he prepares himself to move quietly and to have better chance of discovering things, closing his eyes and flexing fingers in the telltale signs of preparations. "Let's go see if we find mirror here too. And not step into it… Don't think police will come to /this/ place." He starts to make his way towards the building, attentive and a bit nervous.

"I stepped in the one at home fine." Tyla says with a little shrug as she lets the two Lost take the lead. "I don't have a reflection now in it, but I think that was the deal I made, not going in itself. I have reflections everywhere else though." She explains, checking her car's sideview mirror, just in case. "But I also stepped in it in a dream, so I don't know if that counts or not." She admits.

It being the middle of the day the lighthouse is not on. Maybe it's never on… give how derelict it looks. It's quiet here. So very quiet. The ocean laps against the shore far below the cliff the light house rests on. Birds cry in the distance as they go play in the wind.
"I think it broke," Eddie says, voice still a little thick with sleep, "but I couldn't exactly go back to check. I came out in Forks. If there's one in there, whatever you do, don't touch it." He looks up at the lighthouse, then goes to tug at the lapels of his coat, scowling when he finds he's not wearing it. "Feel naked," he grumbles, following after Audgrim.

"Don't get close enough to touch it either." Tyla interjects. "The real one in the greenhouse tried to pull me in, that's why I have the complicated set up there I do." She adds, following.

The ocean is seductive to Audgrim and he gives it a longing look, before he veers towards the Lighthouse, taking point and walking with light steps. Even in daylight, he favors the few shadows there are and seem to blend into the background, due to some of the Fae powers. "If we find it, what we do with it? Move it?" He's not thought that far, yet.

"If it's as big as the one in the greenhouse anyway, I don't know how we would be able to move it, let alone move it without touching it." Tyla points out, as she unslings her backpack from her shoulder, so she can dig out a flashlight as they walk. "I'm just glad the birds are gone for now." She admits as she looks over the lighthouse. "I mean how would we even manage it? It probably poofed itself there too, and didn't use a door."

"I can widen up the doorway if we need to," Eddie says, not explaining how, exactly. "But I don't think it'll fit in your," he looks back at Tyla's car, furrowing his brow, "car." There's a lot of things he hasn't had time to catch up on yet, and electric cars are one of them, apparently. "We can come back later with a moving van, if we have to, let's just make sure it's in there first. And keep your eye out for a little one, I found a little hand mirror at Everbright's place, maybe they're a matched set." He looks at Audgrim, gestures toward the door. Tall guys first.

"Birds gone," Audgrim says, grinning widely, looking up at them there in the air. Reaching the building, he nods to Eddie and eyes the door. He starts putting his shoulders first and is going to ram it down, but then changes his mind and gives Tyla a sheepish look. "Tyla - you open. Just noisy if we kick it down."

Tyla nods and pulls out a set of lockpicks out of the bag instead of the flashlight and moves closer to have a better look. She hunches down a bit and gets to work, not taking too long to unlock it. She doesn't move to open the door though. She steps back and puts her picks away and goes back to looking at her flashlight, for now staying as quiet as she can.

The lock is old, frail, and breaks slightly underneath Tyla's picking it… The end result is the same: The door opens easily.

Fetid, stale air washes out over the three of them as the door creaks its way outward. Dust, mildew, and mold scent the air…
Eddie's already reaching into his pockets for his own kit, but then Audgrim's asking Tyla, so he steps aside and gestures have-at-it. He stands back and watches her work, always curious to see someone else's technique, and he seems a little disappointed when the lock comes apart. "Maybe next time," he murmurs, getting back in line behind the Faetouched. He'll be bringing up the rear, apparently.
Audgrim does lean over to look at what Tyla does, curious. "Nice," he says, impressed, no matter how easy the lock is; he sure couldn't do it. Now he does push the door open carefully and takes those first few steps inside, alert and excited, tail swishing behind him. Though his eyes can adjust better with the help of beastly abilities, he also takes out a small flashlight.

Tyla blushes a bit at the attention, going slightly purple as she's being watched. She clicks on her flashlight and points it at the ground, but slightly ahead of them a they enter. "You guys didn't shave this morning, did you?" She whispers, her hair flickering slightly. "I know when you open a tomb for the first time you aren't supposed to have any exposed cuts because of old germs. And we don't need you guys to come down with some sort of Aztec Apocalypse flu or anything." She tries to keep behind Audgrim, while aslo trying to peek around him and look at everything she can too.

Flashlight beams slide over the interior, bottom floor of the lighthouse. It's a circular room, with a set of stairs taking up a large chunk going up in a spiral toward the top. A couch is pushed against one wall, a cot next to it, a small folding table with chairs… Everything is covered in dust and…

Particulates dance about in the flashlight's beams. Little dust molecules and the like; motes floating about in the air.

"I spent last night doing the slip'n'slide in other people's guts," Eddie says, flashing Tyla a grin, "so I'm not too worried about sanitary conditions. But no, I didn't shave." He comes out with his own little flashlight, making a hat trick. "Let me look around a minute. Don't risk the stairs, yet." He goes to do that, starting with the couch. You never know what you'll find between the cushions, after all.

Audgrim sweeps the area with the light, looking around - but he waits patiently, not rushing into anything. "Did not shave," he echoes Eddie, rubbing his stubbled jaw. He does however walk over to the stairs and looks up, but doesn't climb it, just watching and listening while Eddie does his thing. "But I am not worried about flu. More worried about things in mirrors. Least, I hope, birds did not notice us."

As they step into the lighthouse to start investigating, the door creaks slowly, pushed by the wind and closed. It doesn't /slam/ but it does, indeed, close behind them. Leaving them in the mostly dark and dank lighthouse.

The smell of it is quite, quite awful now that the door is closed. Not like rotting food, but like mold that's been growing for hundreds of years.

Audgrim is busy investigating a little mini-fridge he found tucked underneath the stairs. Hey there's some real sugar Mexican coke in there!

Tyla happens to notice that there's a fine, fine layer of a fuzzy, gray mold upon the cot and the couch. And she thinks better of touching it.

…After she points this out to Eddie, he aims his flashlight around and notices that the walls are also all coated in this fine, fuzzy, gray substance and that…

There are no bugs… Not a single bug on the first floor.

There's a single moth on the first step of the light house, long dead… a shell with some mold like substance coating it…

Up and up his flashlight is beamed … to the underneath of the stairs where he finds… more and more moths and bugs … all died, shells of them covered in that fuzzy mold …

With stalks protruding from their bodies…

"Dust" falling down from them to dance in the flashlight beams.

Audgrim waves his hand around, and coughs a few times. He's happy, he found a can of some odd drink and shows it triumphantly to Eddie and Tyla, like he found a treasure. He doesn't notice dead bugs, but walks right over them - an old dried up beetle crunches under his boot.

Eddie stairs up, his face contorting in horror and disgust. This bothers him more than that pit of dead bodies, by a wide margin. "Out," he says, then louder, like a command: "Now." He doesn't wait to see who listens, he heads directly for the door, ready to make it go away if it doesn't feel like opening back up.

Tyla doesn't need to be told twice once she notices the mould. One hand reaches for Audgrim to pull him along if he doesn't come, (not that she's strong enough to really move him if he doesn't want to.) the other pulls up her shirt collar up over her nose as she tries to head for the door.

Audgrim stares at the can - he thinks it might be the thing that spooked Eddie and Tyla. He throws it behind him like it's a live grenade and lets Tyla drag him along, in fact he takes long strides and grabs her hand hard so he can pull her if needed. "What what," he asks, confused.

The door starts to wither, crack, and decay. Parts of the outside world beginning to be visible as it starts to break. Not quite broken enough to get through it … but close. So close.

Eddie glares at the door, pouring on the years, but his attention wavers. He keeps looking up. Up. Up… He's moving toward the stairs before he knows what he's doing, slowly, kind of sleepwalking. When he gets to the foot of them he forces his feet to a stop and grips his head and aims one last look back at the door, crumbling it to rotten splinters. That's all he's got, though. He can't go back through it. He starts to climb.

Tyla lets go of Audgrim's hand once he starts moving that way as well, content in knowing that he's going. She watches as Eddie is doing a thing with the door, only she's not really sure Eddie is even doing a thing with the door. The door could be breaking on it's own - the lock broke easily and stranger things have happened. Either way, as all eyes are n the door, Tyla turns and makes a break for the stairs, reaching out to grab on the railing so she can pull herself up the stairs faster.

Audgrim is s so far unaffected, but realising quickly enough that Eddie and Tyla are not when they don't do what he expects, but rather run back towards the stairs after just having tried to go out. He's not reacting fast enough however, the other two already at the stairs when he gets his wits about him; he stops breathing, literally, and muscles bulge somewhat as he rushes after Tyla who's closest, shooting a grim look up at Eddie. If reaching Tyla he'll simply try to wrap arms around her and drag her out. No words - he's holding his breath.

Up, up, Eddie goes. Somewhere in his mind he doesn't really want to be doing this, but his muscles are working of their own accord. Up, up… He needs to go /up/. The stairs are easily taken despite being coated in that fuzzy "mold". Up and up…

To the top… is there a body up there…?

Eddie manages to look down, hearing Audgrim struggle with Tyla, though he never halts his ascent. When the pair of them disappear back out the door, he smiles a distant smile, and nods. Good. That's good. He tries to focus on that as his feet keep carrying up the stairs. Is that a body? Of course. Of course, there'd be a body. Don't think about that, Brundle.

"Hey!" Tyla is not holding her breath as she gets grabbed and tries to fight Audgrim off. She's not kicking and biting and trying to fight him off, really so much as trying to wiggle out of the hug and head up the stairs. Maybe not so much of a rush to get up there, but definitely trying to get out of Audgrim's hold and trying to go upstairs. He hair reaching out in smoky tendrils towards and up the stairs. "Put me down!"

The window is cracked and broken.. as if the person up there had thrown themselves against it, over and over… It's almost shattered. So fragile now.

The body is missing a hand. It's stump dangles down to the side. Watery hair covered in fuzzy moss.

Here lies Nora Everbright.

There's something sitting her lap… a book? Looks to be a journal of shorts. Leatherbound. Covered in spores…

Audgrim doesn't listen, he lifts Tyla up and keeps his arms around her tightly and turns about, not even waiting to see what happens to Eddie. It's not a fun choice but he can't grab them both, not yet. He rushes towards the door, to get her out of there, muscles growing even bigger, straining the lose pants and shirt he's wearing. He literally leaps out of the lighthouse, making sure to not lose his grip on the Faetouched.

"Hi, Norah," Eddie says, giving the corpse a little wave as he reaches the top of the stairs. His voice is very quiet, and very far away. He looks up. Up… Is this really the top of this place? Isn't there anywhere higher than this? His eyes drift to the window, and his wings give a buzz. Up. He takes a step backward, because back isn't down and he can do that, and then takes off at a run for the window, head down, shoulders forward.

Once the fresh air hits Tyla she stops struggling briefly, and her hair goes back to the normal rolling and flickering. It takes her a second to realizes she's being carried by a much bigger and stronger Audgrim, and it's nice. But that doesn't last as she's trying to turn in his arms, reaching back for the door and the lighthouse. "Eddie! We can't just leave him in there!" It's mostly flailing though - she asks for help with pickcle jars from normal-strengthed Audgrim, no way she's fighting her way out of the beeffier one's grasp.
Just as Tyla and Audgrim come out of the Lighthouse … Glass rains down on them from above as Eddie shoots out the window at the top. Soaring upward on an updraft of wind caused by Audgrim's earlier wind-magic.

Audgrim inhales air sharply the moment they're a few yards away, needing that fresh air after having held his breath for a bit. "You alright? You don't want to go in ag-?" he starts, and then looks up in alarm as the glass breaks, watching Eddie jump out. "Helvete," he breathes, that well-known Norwegian curse, which Tyla's heard numerous times by now. He lets her go - he's moving to see if he can catch Eddie, knowing that the bug-man /can/ fly…. sort of.

Up! UP! Eddie's wings buzz furiously as he ascends higher and higher, looking up into the sky, buoyed by the wind. It carries him up in pretty little loop-di-loos, carrying him higher than he could go on his own. He does this more and more these days, it seems like. He's pretty small up there, by the time he looks down, but after a while he does look down. He stalls out briefly in mid-air, and yells something that can't be heard over the wind. Probably nothing polite. He starts to fall, and then his wings kick back in and he reorients himself, trying his best to glide back down to terra firma.

"Yeah, I'm okay." Tyla agrees, looking up and shielding her eyes with her arm at the crash, just in case. She's not wearing glasses right now. She does know Eddie can fly though! He saved her once jumping out a window, so she's not too worried about him. She does cast a worried glance at the window he came out of, mumbling to herself. "Of course the wind would have to come back now. That's not good." Then looks to wherever Eddie is, assuming he'll be better now that she is. "Okay, so we wait to see if anything is important in there." She calls out to Audgrim as she heads for her car. "Either someone is running to the store to get some breathing tanks. Either way we probably need to burn this place down, so no spores get out." She looks worriedly at the window Eddie came out of again, then glances down to see if there are any spores on her clothes. "And a naked car ride home for everyone. Fun!" She says, blushing.

"I made the wind, it's alright," Audgrim calls back to Tyla, trying to keep an eye on where Eddie is going in case he needs to help him get down. However he's going to do that. "And yes, we need to go back. "EDDIE! Are you alright?" he shouts. "Go out over ocean, I can jump in if you can't land on land."

Eddie seems to be doing okay, now. He might even be showing off a little, judging from the little loop he does around the lighthouse on his way down and the way he finally touches down, gracefully on one foot. Once he's on solid earth he doubles over and coughs and swears viciously for a while, waving everybody off. "I'm fine, I'm fine, I," he coughs again, and spits something up on the ground. "I think I found our missing lady. I'd feel bad for her, if I hadn't seen her basement. She's got some kind of book. We need, I don't know, some of those rubber underwear the crimescene cleaners wear."

Tyla gives Audgrim a little nod, still looking up worriedly at the window, squinting just to make sure she can't see spores swarming out of the window. "How long will it last? Much as we need it, we don't need it right now. Can you stop it, or will it just run it's course?" She asks Audgrim, digging for a water bottle for Eddie from her backpack as he coughs. "Masks and such shouldn't be hard to get. We could probably get them now even. Oh even portable air filters if we want to want. I'm sure we can even order hazmat suits online if we can wait. CAN we wait?" She asks Eddie since he was in it more. "Either way, we're all stripping and putting close in garbage bags before getting in my car. I don't need to go up while driving." She pauses and blushes, more so after getting a look at Audgrim than the naked comment. "I mean, if you don't want to walk home, anyway."

Audgrim's relief when Eddie lands safely, and is no longer compelled, is almost palpable. He puts a hand on the other Lost's shoulder and grins at him. The muscles have faded - they disappear almost as fast as they appear. Having no issues about being naked at any point, he just nods at Tyla and is rather oblivious to her shyness about it. "I think we should get it now," he ponders, looking up at the broken window. "Wind will be here for… a few hours," he says, not entirely sure. The powers are a bit fickle and he only knows from experience how long it would last, based on his earlier "talk" with the air. "Build something. We have plastic bags. I can run in, hold breath, covered in plastic - I grab book, run or jump out."

Eddie takes the offered water and guzzles it down, nodding his thanks at Tyla. He returns Audgrim's grin and slaps the bigger man on the back, then looks up at the lighthouse with its busted window, considering. "It took a while to hit us, and that place is clogged with the stuff. I don't think it'll be too much trouble, outside a confined space. Don't quote me. I'm not going anywhere 'til we've got that book, though. I'll stick around and stand guard if you want to get some masks and things. And some new clothes, I don't know you that well, yet."

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