2013.08.19 - Flaming Pharaoh

A pleasant day, by all accounts. Meals that undoubtedly have found their early recipes deep in antiquity; fig, dates and sweetbreads served with lamb and goat are served with flatbreads. Casual conversation within the walls of the home, though there are hints of the chaos that continues beyond their gates. Shots fired, news upon the television and radio regarding the dead and the injured.. and where each side stands in the conflict.

But that is something that Zelika's husband seeks to shield his guests from, and concentrates on the positive. And the mysterious.

Come nightfall, it is as was promised. The guns are silent (mostly), and with the calls to prayer ended for the night, it's time for the visit to the museum.

Within the museum, all is dark but for emergency lighting. Safer that way, they said. So it wouldn't call to anyone's attention, and for good cause. While the police stationed for the Minister of Antiquities are armed, they couldn't hold off an onslaught.

Mummies of all shapes, styles. Canopic jars. Collections of pharonic tools, art pieces... even canes for the disabled King Tuthankhamun are on display. Pictures of digs plaster the wall; ancient artifacts of all shapes and sizes are carefully placed in order to tell the long and varied history of such a now-troubled country.

And, as promised?

On the second floor, in an unlikely little display case which isn't very large to begin with, there are a couple small statuettes. Only one is 'different'.

Anubis is turned, facing left within his case.

Amanda was happy to spend the day in Zalika's company, answering questions about the wider world, recalling amusing incidents aboard planes, and generally being as congenial a house guest as she could be, given the circumstances. Cairo isn't a familiar city to her, however. It's energies aren't anything to which she's taken time to become attuned -- that takes a good three days. But, the Winding Way is at middling strength and unlikely to fail her in a pinch, nevermind her bag of tricks, so she's not without recourse should things turn ugly.

Walking through the darkened museum, however, somehow reminds her of walking through the darkened theatre. Well, perhaps not walking through the Majestic when it was infested, but still. There's a otherworldly energy that presses in on the place, a side-effect of so many antiquities, many of which had long years of focus applied to them, gathered in one place.

As they happen upon Anubis, the blonde sorceress pads quietly closer to the case, walking slowly around it and studying the statue within.

"Does the statue turn a full 360," she asks presently, "or does it always turn to face a specific direction?"

People always manage to find something to fight over, don't they... Humans, mutants, aliens, heck, even machines. Any form of sentience seems to carry with it the desire to attack other living things. Very few of the timelines TJ had witnessed had that problem hammered out, sometimes in ways that were plenty frightening in their own rights.

One can only do so much to block out the noise of yelling and gunfire. Somehow it seemed all the worse to her while they sat around surrounded by the finer things in life, sharing such a well prepared meal. What about everyone else?

One thing she had learned early on is that she has to pick her battles. This small group wouldn't be able to settle an entire country. By comparison investigating a statue might seem trivial, utterly pointless, but sometimes it's the smallest of details that can lead to the biggest of disasters. For all they know the peculiar behavior of that statue could be leading to something much worse than civil unrest.

With the pair inside and the museum closed off TJ crawls across the ceiling, glowing eyes effortlessly cutting through the darkness as she effectively shadows Amanda until she's staring straight down at the display case in question.

"Not sure, but I think they had said it always turns in the same direction. Following a flow of energy, maybe? Trying to keep time?"

The museum is indeed steeped with the feel of magic. It could be remnants of the ages past, back when pharoahs were gods among men, and that the words and inscriptions upon the various stellae and obelisks were truly a language of the gods. It doesn't feel dark and heavy, but it is all pervading; running all through the artefacts, joining everything together.

The closer to the upstairs case, however, the deeper it feels that the pair enter something of a magic 'stream'. While nothing 'looks' to swirl into a vortex, there is a decided wash of ancient, forgotten magics based upon a dusty, forgotten lore.

Now, according to the CCTV footage, the Anubis actually turns about 270' around, giving it a 3/4s spin before it ceases. There.. there it sits, staring at an empty spot on the display floor but for a hint of writing on a slip of papyrus. It's in hierotic- the writing of the pharoahs and scribs. Why, however, could be a mystery. The translation upon the slip describing it simply states that there was an order of pitch for mummification.

Amanda, thanks to her magical training, is quite fluent in the various dialects and writings of Ancient Egypt. Perhaps it's why Zalika thought to call her American friend. She closes her eyes for a moment and whispers a soft spell. When her eyes open once more, they are suffused with a pale purple glow, her magesight activated. She makes another slow circle of the statue, examining it closely, before she starts looking for the focus of its gaze -- that empty space with the old purchase order.

A brow arches lightly at that discovery. She glances to TJ. "I wonder what mummys they have in the building here." And not just those on display.

From above the statue TJ comes to 'stand' upside down, getting a real close look at it without quite touching the surface of the case with the ends of her braids. Eyes are the gateway to the soul, and all that. She follows where the figurine's now looking, after suppressing a shiver and muttering "Well that's creepy," over not just to the slip lying there but to the wall beyond. Maybe it's coincidence that the papyrus is there (and she can't read it to save herself, anyway.)

With a quick crouch, a silent hop forward and an equally soft leap she adheres herself to the wall that the stone sculpture is staring at. One elven ear presses to the surface as she lightly raps her knuckles against the surface. Maybe there's something hiding in there?

"Think one of them is having trouble napping lately? A mummy with insomnia would not be the weirdest thing I've heard this week," she offers back while crawling around to the nearest neighboring hallway. Is there anything else on the other side of that wall..?

With magesight, the Anubis flares to life, as it were. There's a glow about it, one born of the inscribed letters of the promise of an afterlife in the base of its stand. Though now, with magesight, all the inscriptions on the artefacts glow. Words of magic, words ARE magic in the belief of the ancients, and it is of these beliefs of people long past that reflect now.

With the addition of a second, separate type of magic, however, there's a decided cool 'feel' about the room, as if the temperature is dropping. The Anubis remains quiet, standing and staring at the script, but there's a decided.. unhappiness? Not malevolent, but displeased 'feeling' that emanates.

Of course the museum has archival rooms, as well as refrigerated rooms downstairs in the basement...

Amanda is careful as she reads the inscriptions both on the statue and the other artifacts, scrolls, and scraps that adorn the room. She does not read them aloud, not wishing to trigger unexpected spells. To TJ she notes, "Y'know, most people don't realize just how powerful museums are. They think they're just dusty collections of brick-a-brac from ages past. But, possessions have power. As do thoughts that have been written down. Even a nursery rhyme can be a spell..."

She glances at that purchase order and pauses. A brow arches. "Someone doesn't know his Deltan demotic from his Nubian hieratic," she says now. A grimace pulls at her lips, particularly as she senses the chill in the aether, and she mutters, "Where's Brendan Fraiser when you need him?"

She reaches into her pack, now, and pulls out a slender rod about the length of her forearm and as thick as one of TJ's blocky fingers. It's inscribed with runes and sigils, most of them a bastardized hieratic, in fact, rather than anything Norse-related. (It seemed appropriate to the locale.) The ends are capped in copper, the one forged into a sharp point, the other into a setting for a cluster of stones -- amber, amethyst, azurite, and staurolite, around a piece of clear quartz. As she hefts it in her hand and closes her fist around it, the gems and inscriptions begin to glow faintly.

"Brr... Did someone bump the thermostat? Kinda feel like someone just..walked..over my grave..." TJ quietly trails off while widened eyes stare out across the museum's interior. She can't see the magic or feel the energy, all she has to go by is the drop in temperature and what she can see and hear.

"You hear about stuff like this in those Ghost Tracker shows, about disturbed spirits making the air chilly. Either that or one of these exibits really likes having central air. Hey, if you want me to start yelling at mummies while waving a shotgun around I'm sure I could liberate one from the disgruntled folk outside. At this rate it just might be a more productive use of my time."

A leap here, a crawl to there... Not a lot to see, beyond a free self-guided tour without any other people to get in her way. Because, really! Just look at some of this stuff! "Nothing to report over here, Captain Magepants."

"Oh," Amanda says dryly to TJ, "I'm pretty sure we're going to be facing something supernatural and nasty before this night is out. Anubis over there is... not pleased about something. And given the chill, not to mention the hard stare at the millenias-old piece of litter, here, I think we'd better start checking sarcophogi."

She gives a brief sigh, adjusts the strap of her satchel, and sets her sights on the 'Employees Only' door a few feet along the wall from the spot that's captured the statue's attention. Absurdly, she hums a jaunty little tune: "Goin' on a mummy hunt... gonna catch a big one... I'm not scared..."

Yeah. Seriously.

Magic users are bizarre.

Maybe it's because she's so bizarre that she fits in so well with the Wagner Clan! A few more quick leaps across the floor brings TJ right back to Amanda's side. Well..close by Amanda, more at the wall's side. There's a sweep of her yellow eyes left then right before she reaches down and gives that Employees Only door a quick bump open. "Whoops." Yes, because she had to. Nothing to see here! Just a furry blue girl hanging onto the wall gesturing a mage into the back room! "Spell-slingers have the right of way."

Continuing along, she says "It probably goes without saying that setting a mummy on fire is not the ideal solution in this particular scenario. ..Come to think of it, possession's probably off the table as well."

Amanda pushes her way through the door, somewhat surprised to find it opened so easily when TJ bumped it. She holds it for TJ to crawl through, so she doesn't have to touch the floor. (Apparently, floors are generally lava to Wagners.) As they move along the hallway, far more austere in its appointment than the lavish display rooms, she reads the names and information pasted on the door. Most of what she finds are offices and research facilities. "I think we need to go deeper," she says, glowing eyes following the sense of the emanating magic. "The more comprehensive storage and climate-controlled storage facilities will be downstairs -- someplace less likely to get bombed out by extremists."

She hopes.

TJ passes Amanda a smart salute with the spade of her tail while crawling through the open doorway. Sure enough, she goes from wall back to ceiling. It's a tough job but someone's gotta be there to offer an inverse perspective.

"I can not fathom what it must be like to dust a place like this," she mutters while sweeping around an Exit sign. Then, "Oh sure, deeper! Because things weren't creepy enough on the upper levels."

She doesn't mind scouting around for another set of stairs. Stairs tend not to bite back when one has an almost perfect sense of balance.

"'The party ventures deeper into the dungeon, ever wary of kobolds and goblins...' Almost feel like I shoulda brought my lucky D20 today." She stops short and blinks once, staring at an ornate looking chest that's in the process of being restored. "Well I'll be. First dibs on any rings of protection we come across."

"Don't you still have that ring from the Maj?" Amanda replies, glancing back at TJ and grinning. She can't argue with her. This does have Dungeon Crawl written all over it. In more ways than one.

They move toward the stairwell at the end of the hall and Amanda tests the door. Since it also swings open she concludes that either the museum has really lax security protocols or someone/something else is looking out for them.

As she reaches the top of the stairs, she pauses to listen, and peers down the well between twisting levels. "Oh, yeah," she says dryly. "This is gonna be fun."

"Sure do," TJ confirms regarding that ring. "I'm looking to complete my set. Always good to have a hobby."

There's the stairs, and another unlocked door. Security did know that they would be here, after all. Did they score themselves all-access passes to the museum? Fingers and toes brush against the cold cement as she crawls along over the top of the stairs, silent other than her sarcasm. "We'll be alright, girl. You've got your magic, I've got bizarre genes. These guys are how many thousands of years old? Could probably sneeze on 'em and they'd fall apart. ..Right?"

"..Nevermind the D20, wish I woulda brought a sweater..."

It's obviously marked, and with Amanda's magesight, there is a glow to the entry into the basement. It -looks- clean and academic, with research tables dotting the large room, a 'card catalog' along the side, with small artefact containers along another. There are no windows.. which may or may not be a bad thing.

In the room, however, there's something of a flux. While not a total dimensional drift, there's a distinct difference in the vibrancy of the artefacts that lay upon the tables in the middle of study. They seem to be.. unaging.

And for the chest? It, too, glows in a soft blue light, and around it can almost be discerned voices from the aether.

Amanda moves slowly into that room, cautioned by the ethereal glow that escapes around the door. She slowly moves along the artifact tables, examining the objects and their qualities, before she is inevitably drawn to the glowing, mumuring chest.

"Someone's prepping a ritual here," she tells TJ with a measure of certainty. "Or unearthing one, anyway." Either's possible. Some clueless scientist could quite unwittingly assemble just the right combination of artifacts without understanding either their true import or the scope of their power -- and the danger they present when placed in proximity.

She regards the chest for a long moment, again listening carefully, trying to identify if the voices are coherent individuals or just a crowd of spiritual interlopers crowding around the latest 'show piece'.

"Then it's a good thing that we're here to interrupt it," TJ somewhat absently replies as she narrows her eyes. It's frustrating, knowing that there's something happening around here, something more than what most people can see. All she can see is that there's nothing obvious happening when the lights are turned off! No sounds, no scents, nothing glowing outside of the magic spectrum. Just dusty old remains.

"Hey, from what little I know of rituals isn't there usually some sort of blade involved, either for completing said ritual or for interrupting it? I might be able to track down something fitting that description. Or..y'know. Hang out. 'TJ, active sentry. Spotting harm before harm spots you.'"

Amanda regards TJ for a moment, breaking her concentration on the box. "Y'know, I sometimes forget you don't have Kurt's sensitivity toward magic." He'd at least have a general sense of what was happening, even if he couldn't see it. "C'mere a moment."

She moves toward the girl and raises a hand, murmuring a soft spell. Then, providing the girl stays still a moment, she lays three fingertips in the center of her forehead and releases her will, completing the spell.

That should allow the blue maiden the ability to see the magic in the room... at least for a little while. It's not quite the same as Amanda's sight -- TJ shouldn't have the 'true sight' experience, just the 'magical aura CG halo' effect.

Shades of history. That is what those voices are. Chanting. Incantations from the past that are attached to that chest. And the restoration work undoubtedly triggered it. Or, moreso, a confluence of actions.

It's one of those 'actions', however, that the intrepid duo aren't in any way in control of.

--Out in the Valley of the Kings--

Under the dark of the night's sky, in the silence of the guns in the city, an as of yet unlooted tomb of a lost pharoah, it is no longer.. unlooted. Armed, masked men break through the weakly constructed doors and begin to move through the artefacts. Statues.. and there.. there? Dark eyes glitter as the mummy of one of the pharonic line is seen...

In the blink of an eye, the moment the body is touched, defiled, the magic of the room blasts such that even the young Wagnerette can discern a little of the power.

All around now? Sand. Stone.. and no discernable door. Two stone, brightly coloured sarcophagi are set in the center of the large room. Pictographs, heiroglyphs line the walls in a story of the dead. Only.. there's a spot missing in the progress of the story.

Talia Wagner. She's the same, only different! When Amanda tells her to come over she gives up the hunt and crawls on back, crouched on all fours from above while sitting 'upright' as though pointing with the tip of her nose to the other woman.

Then getting ..magicized. "Whoooah, that is seriously trippy. Your sentry has been upgraded."

Now everything really is different. Things are glowing that formerly did not glow. There's quite a lot going on around the place! "Gees, glad I didn't sit over there before..." she mutters at one of the more illuminated areas. "Hey, could you use a version of this to detect wifi hotspots or would that be more of a technomancy thing?"

Then the room around them changes, like someone changing channels on a holodeck. "What th--?!" The flash of energy has her blinking in reflex. The obvious changes to their environment has her crouching lower overhead, twisting about in place in search of any threats. "Okay..mummies would have been a lot easier to handle without all of this going on... What just happened?"

As the world changes around them, Amanda raises both her hand and her rod. She moves, putting TJ at her back as she sweeps her gaze around their changed surroundings. "Not sure..." she says slowly in answer to the girl. "That didn't feel like a teleport, but..." Magical holodeck? Yeah, maybe.

(Oughta get one of those for the Maj.)

"I don't know if we've gone back in time or just ended up in a reality warp bubble or something." For lack of a better explanation.

Her right hand grips the rod, her left glows with the power of a prepped magic bolt. She turns her head toward the nearest of the sarcophogi as its stone lid scrapes open and slides heavily to the floor. The dessicated form within makes a crackling sound like dried leaves or broken branches as it shifts beneath its parched wrappings.

"Ah, bloody hell..." Yeah. She spent quite a bit of time in England.

A 'reality warp bubble.' "That anything like a pocket dimension? Maybe a really tiny pocket dimension. Like that little change pocket on a pair of jeans that everyone ignores and always gets in the way of a real pocket."

Stone lids, sliding open. Gosh, what could possibly be hiding on the other side? To try and settle her nerves TJ mock-gasps at Amanda's remark, "Language..! But look on the bright side, you already knew this was going to happen. I'd say that puts us one step ahead of the game." Glowy eyes dart over to one of the sarcophogi, narrowing. "Here, lemme help ya with that."

-Braack!-

One massive stone lid flips once then collapses onto the floor with a resounding thud, kicking up a cloud of dust. "Hey..it is okay that we attack these things, right?"

Amanda barks a brief laugh. "Unless we can figure out another way to placate them," she notes, "I don't see any alternative." Well, she could try shielding them to death or something, but that just doesn't have the same... punch. She'd really like to know what triggered their awakening, however.

"We didn't touch anything... they may not be specifically after us."

"Uh. Whoops."

TJ nonchalantly clears her throat. If these reanimated bodies in bad need of fresh dressings aren't after them then maaaybe she won't provoke them any further... "And here I thought we were gearing up for the final showdown. I'd be content with them acting more like corpsified bloodhounds. They can lead us right to the problem, sure! Wouldn't mind a bit."

And if not, well it's a real good thing that she's never once witnessed a mummy ever jumping.

Pitch.

Deep in a canopic jar back in the museum (that seems ages away), is a heart that is weighed down with pitch.

The rustling of dry twigs and the *poof* of dust (even if it wouldn't be quite so dusty!) sounds in the desert air. Slowly, inexorably, the creature rises. That which was once a human, pronounced god.

As the mummy rises and levers itself out of the sarcophagus, Amanda backs up and holds herself at ready. It opens its eyes and they glow with deep red power. The sort of power that says rather clearly... whether or not its consciously after the girls, they do happen to be in the way. And anything in the way is expendable.

"Oh. No." Amanda reverses her earlier speculation. "He's definitely not picky whom he attacks." And just to prove her point, the mummy opens its dessicated maw, showing a gaptoothed gullet, and screams its rage in undead harmonics. The sorceress doesn't delay further. She points her rod at it, speaks a spellword, and sends a souped up version of her shield slamming into it to try to push it back into its coffin.

Greeeeeat, and that mummy is now on the loose and raging all over the two because TJ had to go and pop the lid off of its stone bed. Good job! "Drat. My bad!"

Right after Amanda takes a magical swing at it Little Miss Wagner comes around with a physical swing, palms yet stuck overhead as she does an inverted flip then sweeps both of her feet right for the center of the upright mummy's chest. Just in case he (it?) is still standing after getting zapped.

"Where do you suppose these guys hide the snooze button?"

No rest, no life for this dead. Its soul was judged unworthy, thanks to those who removed the heart and added pitch. A ruse. A trick that fooled even the god of the Afterlife in order to be sure that foul deeds did not go unpunished.

The mummy is, indeed, pushed back, though it pauses a second, it begins its path back.

Two feet to the chest, however, is a force that can't be ignored either, and as it goes down, it's reaching up in order to try and grab at the offending feet, angry and irritated now.

Must have a new heart for weighing!

So, Amanda has no way of knowing just what triggered the mummy's awakening. Nor is she entirely clear on how to put it back in the box, so to speak. The fragment of parchment she read earlier spoke of pitch, and that triggers some sort of memory of something she read in the back of her mind, but she can't place the information. And, frankly, there's no time to do so, either. She's a little more concerned with the bony hands reaching for her best friend's 'daughter'. "Hey! Skinbones!" She steps forward, flipping over the sarcophagus and lining up a shot with her rod. "Don't you know it's rude to grab at a lady?" With that, she takes a batter's swing with the rod in her hand and sends a lob of fire at the creature, trying to put a wall between it and TJ. Mummys and fire don't really mix.

What was that TJ had said earlier about setting fire to these guys..? Well, that was back in the museum. New playing field, new rules! The only thing she really hadn't counted on was a very fast moving mummy grabbing her by the leg.

"Hey! Zombies, and especially mummies, are not supposed to move fast!" Though both should burn quite nicely. The blue girl's out of there with a timely -Foomp!- that puts several feet between herself and Mister Reanimation, right back to the ceiling. It's just safer up there.

"Think, here... These guys were real big on their 'do not disturb' signs. What could have disturbed this guy? Missing any pieces? Definitely his marbles." Blink. "Great, now I have the Wizard of Oz stuck in my head. Hard to do crossword puzzles without a brain, I suppose. Hey, it'd make me cranky."

Besides that, with having teleported to safety her hex bolts aren't going to work for a few moments. What else is there in this room? It'd be great to offer help without leaving herself open for getting entangled again!

Inhuman. What was once human shrieks with a scream that is almost deafening. Fire.. heavy, pitch-filled smoke begins to rise in the room, the black billows creating a stench of burnt flesh and bone, and textile. Odd hints of spice also rise, but it's definitely not a scent that Glade  would pick up for a seasonal scent.

The lid of the second sarcophagus begins a shift- but the stone is rather heavy. If only for the moment.

Amanda's left hand curls into a fist. She drops low toward the ground as the smoke billows upward. Speaking a word of power, she releases both a magic bolt and a shock wave from her rod, looking to blast a hole out of the tomb -- some place for the smoke to escape.

The movement from the 2nd sarcophagus isn't lost on her, but its attack will be a moot point if they choke to death on oily smoke.

Problems, problems, problems... Where's a solution when ya need one! At this moment all TJ can do is cover her ears at that horrific shrieking. Then she wishes that she had another hand to cover her nose with, because bleck!

Still not as bad as the Majestic used to be.

"Aaah no buddy, I'm done helping you guys get out of your boxes! Tried it once and look at what happened, you can just stay put thank y-Ikes!"

Now..how the heck is she going to make sure that lid stays put? They look heavy! Maybe she can just get Amanda to bring the ceiling down on top of it, because good lord!

-BLAM-

The wall explodes in a shower of stone, revealing another room beyond. Within, there are the libations and offerings of food to the pharoah to be used in the afterlife (even though the few knew darned well that wasn't going to happen!), household items, and all sorts of jewelry, weaponry.. and the random bit of pickled organs in canopic jars that may very well be necessary...

And beyond there? A corridor.

The black, acrid smoke still billows up, threatening to choke any who may be within.

"TJ! Move!" Amanda coughs as she crouch-runs toward the hole she's blown. "We need to get out of here!" God help them if they're actually still in the museum somewhere -- though Amanda's pretty sure they're not.

She dodges through the hole and to one side, skirting low around the edge of the room, before she casts a magelight down that corridor to see what's lurking there.

You don't have to tell her twice! TJ's a momentary blur of blue as she leaps across one room and comes flying into another, sticking herself to the wall and very nearly causing one of those jars to fall and hit the floor.

Instead it ends up snared in one hand and one foot. "I probably don't want to know what's inside of this..."

She should probably just..very gently..set it back right over there... Or not.

"Want your stuff back, Wrinkles? Have at!"

Gods know what's in that jar, but whatever it is has now become a missile. Along with a few more of its neighbors, grabbing one jar after another and flinging it at the burning creature with whatever limb happens to be free at the time.

"Have your coin collection! Have your jewelry! Have your--oh God what is that?"

The second sarcophagus only now begins to have its lid shift, but it may very well be too little, too late as it were. The burning pitch on the mummy is doing wonders for keeping its mobility at a minimum. And with TJ pummeling it with its own stuff? Combs. Brushes. Childhood toys. Kidneys. The family dog...

It's a little hard to move. And as that tar melts, it burns, but it also sticks the former world leader to the floor rather well. All while contributing to global warming- or what will be global warming in the future!

It's that toss of another canopic, and perhaps the fact that Amanda is also on the move that does something. That shift. There is something of a temporal shift, and slowly, the realities begin to converge.

As realities begin to converge, Amanda spins back toward the mummy. (Mummies?) She raises the rod in her hand, spreading her left hand out wide, and starts calling up mystical energies from out of the Winding Way, rather than the city itself. (Because the city is in flux, and it's not familiar enough to her, anyway.) Sending her power out in a great wind, she seeks to surround the monsters in a tight shield that will contain the fire (if not all the smoke) and the lurching body (bodies). If the real world reemerges while that thing's still flaming, Zalika won't thank her for pissing off the MoA with excessive damage to the museum. As it is, she has no idea how she's going to explain this.

The air's really getting thick in here... (Like it wasn't a second ago!) TJ's rapidly running out of things to throw. The last item she lays hands on is an old spear with an ornate gold spaded head on one end and an equally ornate endcap on the other, dropping to the floor in an almost impossibly low crouch as slit eyes cut through the oily smoke, staring back at the blazing inferno of a man..thing with the spear cocked back over and behind herself.

"You're about three steps away from getting a gold crown, buster..."

Realities are shifting. And Amanda's getting some serious wind up in the place, thank goodness for natural born adhesiveness. But..what's happening now?

Sticky pitch on the floor. Smouldering, stick, black tar with some pottery shards cracked in for good measure. At least, however, the black, noxious smoke no longer rises, and that the museum's sprinklers aren't engaging!

At least.

And still remaining, in the center of it all, is TJ with her golden-crowned spear. Amanda's shielding spell is a success.. and it's thanks to her that the second mummy didn't come across, and that the flames are out, keeping the worst of it from damaging Egyptian public property.

Within magesight, the room is still lit with the magic of inscriptions, the magic of being.. but there's a softer hue to it. A balance, as it were, seems to be in place, though it may be a fleeting one at that.

---In the Valley of the Kings---

Looters. Grave robbers. Those who would defile a king. A god.

Minutes pass since the tomb's reopened... and their partners in crime that keep watch just beyond the door can't hear their screams.

If anyone finds those poor sods in the Valley of Kings, they're still not likely to understand what happened to them. The only two that might know are miles away, and more focused on the challenges immediately before them.

Amanda looks at the pile of pitch on the floor, with the detritus of a tomb congealed within it. "Okay. That's gonna be a job to explain." She considers how best to deal with it and eventually decides a bit of eldritch fire within that shield to burn it away is the best bet. Lighting the fire is a matter of will and focus and a well-spoken word. She watches the green fire consume the last of the creature, snuffing it out only once she's sure it's all gone.

As the magical flame dies, she lowers her hands and looks at the focus rod. "I think I like this thing," she decides.

She turns now to TJ, noting that the girl's glowing yellow eyes are still miscoloured by her spell. "Oh! I should fade that for you, shouldn't I?"

Museum.

They're still in the museum.

TJ's eyes promptly go wide, posture starting to straighten as she stares at the room with both of her hands quickly covering her gaping open maw, absolutely horrified at the sight.

The first spoken "Oh God" comes out muffled and distant, the spear all but falling to the floor behind her if not for some tail intervention.

Look..at the MESS..they just caused..!

The only part of the girl to move is that tail once more, reaching over and ever so gently setting the spear upon the nearest available space as if it were made of nothing more than thin glass.

"We aren't telling Kurt about this."