Witch's Totems

Another day of scrap collecting for the retired reaver was underway. Molly was partly amazed at the sheer amount of amazing components people just tossed out on the streets. Magic components such as glass, human hair and certain kitchen scraps but also tin cans and iron bits here and there that smelted nicely. Oh and the wood! So much scrap wood! Pallets and ikea furniture left right and center kept Molly busy as he worked his way through retirement. This world, so much more peaceful than Dis, which was contant war and death. Here it seemed to only show up in fleeting minutes of panic followed by continued mulling about by the human population.

The stench he smelt was so familiar, the smell of hellfire and death.He turned over an abandoned bit of scrap metal only to find what looked to be a sack made of human skin, about the size of a golf ball and tied together with dark human hair. A totem that had him covering his nose in the smell. He knew damn well what was in that thing, some horrible amalgamation of human teeth, fingernails and possibly even eyeballs depending on what the witch in question was trying to summon. Drawing his knife he moves to kind of scoop the sack up and take a whiff. The smell of vinegar and perhaps urine stings his nose, signifying it’d been used up. The strong smell meant a summoning was recent and god knows what was currently running around New York doing whatever it pleased. By the weight of the contents of the totem, it wouldn’t be some runty imp.

Ugh time to go find this witch he supposed. Seemed he didn’t have to look far as the apartment building nearby was just too close for it not to have come from some resident. In a flash his bronze armor shimmers into place, however he remained without his helmet for the moment. His white cloak signifying age and experience tucked up under his left pauldron and his dirty blonde braids falling over the cuirass. Up the stairs he went, interrogating each resident about the disgusting little bag of horrors.Each one curled away in disgust, slamming their doors in the reavers face. One elderly woman even almost fainted at the sight of the revolting thing.

The last door.

A scrawny man with glasses and a bowl cut answers. He seemed more a mouse than a man, soul fluttering with fight and a never ending sense of self loathing. His eyes immediately lock on to the totem and shirking back as if he were to run back and slam the door in Molly’s face but the door slams into his waiting palm and refuses to budge.

“Got ya you little fucker.”

Xxxx

“Wait wait w-” The mousy man squeals as he is hauled out his 7th story window, death stopped only by Molly’s hands around his ankles. The reaver’s voice grows in volume and his accent thickens.

“What. Did. You. Summon.” Molly slows down, growing tired of the man’s evasion.
“I-I, I can’t tell you!” He squeals fighting back the best his could but freezing as Molly tauntingluy loosened his grip.

“Then it sounds like you have a date with the pavement, boy. What's your name anyway?” Molly switches to one hand around one angle instead of both, leading to another alarmed flailing, but Molly’s grip still does good to keep the man airborne as he leans into the window still.

“Uh- Charlie?”

“Right, right, Charlie. Look.” Molly retrieves the witch’s totem in his free hand, admiring the weight. “This totem is too well made and stuffed full of goodies for you to be as pathetic as you look.” Bright eyes flare the color of fire as rage overtakes the reaver. “Last chance. What did you do?”

“Uh I, Yes I made it, but it was supposed to summon an imp! I thought the more I put in it the better chances I had at summoning one!” Charlie screams. “Just put me down, Help!!!” Charlie suddenly screams, just desperate to get away.

The rage quells a bit at the realization he truly was an idiot rather than malicious. “Calm down. I’ll let you go when you answer my questions.” Theres a bit of a pause. “What did you fill it with?” Molly asks, palming the totem and feeling the vast amount of items clicking and moving around.

“Teeth. Five hundred of them! My dad’s a dentist so they’re free. I- Oh god, what did I do?” The young mage covers his eyes at the realization of what he’d done. Molly takes a deep breath before sitting him back to the safety of the window still.

“You summoned something you cannot control. You didn’t look up how to send it back so now it’s just free. Do you have any idea what it is?”


“No.” Charlie sniffles as Molly hands him the edge of his cloak to wipe the tears.

“Just.-” Molly sighs a heavy disappointed groan. “Don’t go making any more totems. I’ll clean up your mess, but you'll never do this again!” Molly notices the agressive nodding in agreeance.

“Never again! Nope! No more demon summoning. Throwing all the books away today.” Charlie stands to go to a bookshelf, hauling a massive dusty thing off the shelf. “If you can read this, maybe it’ll help you though.”

Molly blinks before realizing two things, the book was hand written meaning it was available to be read… and it was in latin meaning some words would actually make sense to him. “Actually. Yes. Thank you.” Molly takes the book and sits back on charlies couch to read for a moment. “Sorry about the window. Don’t know how to fix glass.” He adds as he glances to the shards scattered along the floor.

Thwip, catch, swing, release. There was something calming, even therapeudic about swinging through her city in the evening, when the rays of the sun turned grey concrete and reflective glass into molten gold. Every time she reached the apex of a swing and hung in the air for just a moment, she twisted into a new flip or position to line up the next shot of a webline, allowing her to transition into the next as she maneuvered through the city that she knew better than anyone. It had even been relatively quiet that day, only two muggings and an attempted carjacking had even crossed her path during her afternoon patrol. It allowed her time to swing and think--an activity that she had found increasingly necessary as the stresses of balancing a doctoral program and being a superhero began to weigh more heavily on her mind. For these moments, when it was nothing but her and the molten gold of the city, she was free.

"7-adam-19 we have reports of a strange man dressed in armor holding what appeared to be a bag of flesh at the apartment on the corner of 48th and 10th, be advised we are tasking you to this call."

Skye furrowed her brow as the message came over the police scanner app she had connected to her mask's audio system fed the information into her ear.

"Bag of flesh? Well, at least I haven't heard that before," she muttered as she shot a new webline and pulled, heading in the direction of Hell's Kitchen.

When she was cruising along, she could clear a city block in 1-2 swings--booking it. It only took her a minute and a half to clear half of manhattan to get to 48th and 10th. She frowned and made her lenses zoom in as she saw something hanging out of a window, only to realize that it was someone. Her eyes went wide behind her mask as she realized a small man was being dangled out of an apartment window by someone wearing a gauntlet. She pulled hard on her web to launch herself forward and flipped in the air to land on all fours about three floors above the man who's gaze was rather firmly fixed on what was surely a terrifying drop to someone without abilities, running a few calculations in her head about how to safely retrieve this guy. If she missed a grab, he could fall to his death. If she startled the guy holding him, same deal, and the person who was doing this act of intimidation could get away.

Even as she was planning out the rescue she paused upon hearing the conversation, her head tilting in visible confusion at the content.

“What. Did. You. Summon.”

Summon? Was this some kinda LARP thing? The conversation became progressively stranger from there, and Toxin found herself just listening as she stayed crouched on the vertical surface that the apartment provided about two floors up. Talk of totems and teeth, summoning imps, things that were patently ludicrous discussed with deadly seriousness. Now, she was a New Yorker, born and bred-- she knew about the albino crocodiles in the sewers, and had seen things in alleyways that she was almost certain constituted some new form of life, but these guys were talking as if they had summoned a mythical demon straight from hell.

Shit, was hell real? She'd grown up Catholic, but hadn't gone to mass in years. Did she have to go now? That was seriously gonna cut into hero time.

Toxin watched as the man was carefully brought back inside and looked up at the roof of the building, which created a small ledge that she was able to attach a bright green webline to. She lowered herself down while hanging upside down, slowly letting out a stream of webbing that let her glide down to the broken window and regard the mousy man and the huge horned dude in a set of bronze armor. One eyebrow raised as she regarded him, the lenses of her mask narrowing slightly.

"So, uh, you guys know that Halloween isn't for a few months, right? Ooh, is it a costume party? Can I get an invite?" she asked, her upside-down form perfectly framed by the broken window she hung in front of.

Molly leans back against the couch, seemingly getting comfortable as he thumbs through the leather bound book. The feel of it was reminiscent of human skin and each page barely hung into the old, dust filled spine. He squinted, decoding the the latin vernacular that wasn’t similar to reaver tongue and filling the gaps with context from the parts he did have the ability to read. The text was old and in a smudged charcoal and on occasion a dark muddy splash across the page. The kid managed to get ancient tombs, enough teeth to fill a totem up enough to summon whatever the hell he wanted and yet he lived in a cruddy apartment and didn’t know shit about fuck.

He didn’t even look up as one of this world’s red bloods made her way through the shattered window cracking jokes. Wasn’t the first time he’d caught the attention of a hero and definitely wouldn't be his last. “Costume?” His voice accented even heavier as his attention was split between toxin and the book at hand. The illustrations are horrible enough to be hell itself, all manner of horrors and creatures of the abyss. “If youre willing to help hunt down whatever the fresh fuck our friend Charlie here has pulled into this world, be my guest.I am Molly.”

Molly continues reading for a moment before letting yet another irritated sigh escape him, he pinches the bridge of his freckled nose before looking back to Charlie. “Where’s the box you meant to keep this thing in?”

“A box?”

There was a silence as another wave of fury passes over Molly, who stands and paces as to avoid strangling the want to be warlock. “This book is supposed to help you summon Dybbuks. Did you read it?”

Charlie freezes before putting his hands up in defense. “Read it?! I can’t read that! I just followed the pictures!”

Molly slams the book down on the coffee table, the depiction of a ghastly creature seemingly made of smoke and nightmares lay open where it lands. It’s sickly long fingers wrapped around the throat of some unsuspecting woman as her soul seems to leave it’s body into the shadowy maw of the Dybbuk. It was not alone as more Dybbuks ripped the woman limb from limb across the page. “God dammit. Of all the things you could have fished out of hell, and you snag one of the worst ones… and then you don’t have a box to bind it to.”

“Whoa, wait. What’s the box do?”

Molly’s eyebrow twitches as he just stares down the mage. “It makes sure it’s not free to do that, Charlie!” Molly points at the book for reference before crossing his arms across his armored chest. “You, red blood." He addresses Toxin with a sideways glance. "We need to get moving if you’re still onboard with your “invitation’.”

He supposed if it was a Dybbuk he’d need the offered help, he’d only ever had to deal with two in the past. One that was weakened and broke free of it’s seal, and another that’d escaped a previous hunt wounded. Both were worn down and both killed no less than three reavers in their weakened state. Something like this would typically have him calling in Rai, but after the situation in Dis she absolutely refused to enter any city so this new red blood would have to be a suitable stand in. Hopefully she’d be at least half as ferocious.

Once he did properly get a look at the red blood, her soul a bright and fluttering thing within her body. She was strong as far as he could tell, but then again humans weren’t really his forte. “I am assuming you are one of these ‘hero’ red bloods. If that is the case we have until sunrise to find this thing before it summons a few of its friends and really becomes a problem.” The reaver makes his way out the absolutely smashed front door and down the hallway assuming Toxin would accompany him.