“Something Wicked This Way Comes”
Deep in the crimson pits of Hell, an eternity passes... and then so does another, and another, and another.
Existence down here isn't an infinite loop of suffering and damnation; that would miss the point entirely, you see. There's a definite beginning and end to each protracted period of misery, and worse still, as each epoch draws to a close so there comes a momentary respite, a hush to the screaming and the throttling and the lashing and the spurting. A pause. And, in that pause, every last soul is rewarded with a single, shuddering breath, and each is bidden to incline his or her head so that they might listen. Listen.
Up above, the world turns without them. They hear the whisper of wind in the leaves and the dance of blossom, and they hear the innocent laughter of children in the school playground, and they hear the low rise and fall of sleeping, contented hearts. They hear dogs and damselflies; they hear the rain, they hear the ocean. They hear life.
And then it's done, and when they reach desperately for another breath, for another precious glimmer, all they can taste is blood and blister spit and spiders and all they can swallow is needles. And then the whips begin to fall again, harsher and quicker than before, and eager fingers begin to thread more hooks into their eyes, and small, hungry rat-mouths return to gnaw them gently from the inside out, and the impressions of that other world, that lost world, slowly but surely fade away.
By the time the next pause arrives, an eternity from now, they'll all have forgotten it was coming.
All except one...
Unseen, a solitary creature stirs. It alone remembers the world above, and remembers that between every sliver of perpetuity that is that single, blessed moment, and in that moment there will be opportunity. The creature has been reduced quite literally to dust and ash, but it is resolute enough, and dedicated to its task; grain by splintered grain it re-gathers itself, silently and meticulously. It has purpose, and it has patience. Sometimes that's all one needs.
Another eternity passes.
And, just as this eternity reaches an end and in that priceless pause before the next one begins, the creature opens its newly formed eyes - its stark, hollow, bottomless eyes - and it flexes its brittle, burnt orange stoneflesh, and it breathes.
Isaac, it thinks. Because it remembers that too; memory, down here, is everything. But the old man named Isaac Christians is long, long gone, and his absence leaves behind a crater in the creature's stone heart, an aching emptiness that is the cruel essence of this netherworld given substance. The creature isn't whole any longer; all this time rebuilding, all this effort, and it still isn't enough. The creature starves. For a lesser being, this would simply be the threshold to a new plateau of suffering as one new eternity rises to replace the old - but this creature is different. This creature refuses to accept his fate.
And so, deep in the crimson pits of Hell, there is a pause. Silence falls, soon to be filled with the sounds of laughter and heartbeats and rain, if only for the briefest, most terrible moment.
But, in that moment, the creature gathers its strength and extends its new wings and gives flight...
...and, driven by the need to be complete, it ascends once more.
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It's raining in Paris.
In finer weather, the Notre-Dame Cathedral is a striking edifice, rising majestically from its location on a shallow island in the River Seine and preening like a grande madame against broad, blue skies; on a day like today, however, with oily black thunderclouds drifting in from the west, the gleaming stone turns dark and forbidding, and much of its magnificent lustre is spirited away. The majority of the tourists milling along the Rue du Cloitre-Notre-Dame boulevard are understandably disappointed, hunched beneath their colourful umbrellas and chattering in a multitude of tongues as the downpour lashes at them without mercy. However, for one woman - more petite mademoiselle than grande madame - the experience is delectably apposite.
Patricia Walker stares out into the rain, shivering in the seasonal chill, and allows herself an ironic smile.
Ah, April In Paris. 'I never knew the charm of spring, I never met it face to face...'
She's always loved that song, with its lyrics speaking of young love set to such a strangely sad melody. There are numerous well-known renditions, but Patsy prefers Sarah Vaughan to Ella Fitzgerald, or to Billie or Sinatra. Vaughan's version is undercut with just the right amount of heartbroken, not so full-blown as to be maudlin but not so hopeful as to suggest redemption. It says, here I am in the city that promised you everything you ever wanted, all hearts and secret glances and chestnuts in blossom... and yet still you're alone. So smile through the tears, honey, and drink your gin. Or words to that effect. A girl can't argue with a song like that.
Perhaps it's because Patsy has only visited Notre-Dame once before, in the days after she returned to this mortal coil following a rather uncomfortable period of time stuck in Hell. Yes, literal Hell. It didn't rain down there, and no one listened to jazz; consequently, she's learned to appreciate melancholia and April showers all the more, and not even darkening skies the hue of penitence can dampen her enthusiasm.
A shame, really, that the nightmares that have guided her here today have been so unpleasant...
Patsy pauses awhile to watch sightseers of varying ages and nationalities all scurrying and skittering like anxious rats, as the deluge intensifies and an accompaniment of thunder splinters high overhead. Then, finally, she tucks a delinquent lock of rusty auburn hair into the hood of her bright yellow cagoule and steps out into the monsoon, her high heels clipping demurely on river-dark flagstones. She stoops beneath her own umbrella, as yellow as her coat, as rain claws violently at the canvas. She crosses the street with a feline sashay, slinking towards the shadowed Notre-Dame that looms directly ahead.
Something bad lies in wait. Something wicked. She probably shouldn't have come here.
But, c'est la vie. Everyone knows what people say about cats and curiosity...
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Curiosity is something that the old man certainly doesn't want to attract; he's always careful to appear as inconspicuous as possible when stepping out incognito, and that means curbing his natural inclinations. This isn't to suggest that he's overly flamboyant or ostentatious in less public circumstances - he has, after all, suffered greatly for both arrogance and extravagance in his time, and humility was a lesson that was hard-learned - but his chosen vocation comes with particular trappings that some would deem... eccentric.
Today he has chosen to adopt a casual appearance without a hint of theatrical flourish: no silver walking stick, no beret, no gnarled white beard. To look at him in his colourless raincoat and galoshes is to be swiftly disinterested and thereafter immediately forgetful, and that suits him just fine. This anonymity will hopefully allow him to identify and target his adversary before that enemy is even remotely aware of his proximity.
Of course, the appearance of Patsy Walker throws the veritable cat among the pigeons, and when she smiles sweetly in the old man's direction as she crosses his path in the cathedral foyer, he is momentarily taken aback.
He sees smouldering red hair like a late August sunset when she pushes back her yellow hood, and he breathes in a delicate scent of Yves Saint Laurent as her perfume lingers in her wake. The old man pauses, watching her pass, and he can't help but recall so many things about her even as he wonders if she recognised him beneath the layers of his disguise; whether she remembers him as he does her. Memory is everything.
But Patsy walks on, her attention drawn to the grand architecture of the foyer, and she joins a group of tourists without glancing back. The old man looks on, eyes narrowing. There's no such thing as coincidence, only synchronicity; that was one of the first truths he was ever taught. Patsy comes to stand close to a young man - tall, lean, short-haired, olive-skinned - and a diminutive girl in a dark, lagoon-green raincoat, her features mostly hidden by a ruffled hood but her eyes sharp and darting beneath the cowl. The girl wears a well-worn satchel slung over her shoulder, brown leather that appears scorched to black in places. She clutches the bag with a visible intensity.
The tourist group is some two-dozen strong, with a striking, dark-haired female guide at their head, directing them from the foyer towards the similarly splendid nave and sacristy away to their right. There should be nothing dramatically distinct about the girl in the green raincoat or the lean, tanned lad alongside her, but the old man's gaze fixates upon them all the same, not least because Patsy is standing directly behind them at the exact moment that another rumbling peal of thunder breaks outside, echoing dully through the hall.
Synchronicity. He has found his adversary. From this point on it should be relatively straightforward to intercept and contain whatever threat his dreams have alerted him to. Should be.
The old man smiles wryly, then sighs.
"Ah, Patsy," he says, quietly. "Why do I get the feeling that you've brought bad luck in with the rain...?"
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"The Notre-Dame Cathedral was constructed over almost one hundred years between 1163 and 1250, and as well as being the most famous example of French Gothic Architecture it is also one of the most recognisable church buildings in the modern world today. Much of the building was damaged or destroyed completely during the Revolution in the 18th Century, but extensive renovations occurred in the following decades. Another period of delicate restoration and maintenance has been in place for the past twenty years. If you'd now like to follow me, I can show you the Cathedral's ten bells, on public display in the nave..."
The tour guide is highly professional, treating a group of a dozen soggy tourists to an informative discourse in first French, then in English and also Japanese. She is simultaneously slim and curvaceous, raven-haired, immaculately poised and exquisitely beautiful in that quintessentially French way, and she doesn't look a day over twenty-five. Patsy doesn't want to hate her; it's a cliché and it's unbecoming. It hasn't been that many years since she herself was a celebrity model, famous for bringing retro 60s chic back to the catwalk, and so she knows better than to judge women on their appearance and to dislike anyone for being pretty and perfect. Regrettably, she just can't help herself. It's an instinctive reaction, exacerbated by the fact that the guide is so coldly robotic. There's very little going on behind the girl's eyes, and her smile is all lipstick and practise and nothing else whatsoever.
You just go ahead and rationalize, darling, Patsy admonishes herself. Try not to admit that you feel like a frumpy old maid just because you turned thirty last week. Thirty! Goodness! Oh, all those clichés are just piling up now...
The tour guide walks on, straight-backed and swingy-hipped on great legs and polished heels. Patsy rolls her eyes and sticks out her tongue when she's sure no one's looking, but then glances to the side and realises that she's an idiot because there's a young man staring straight at her. Busted.
Patsy smiles sheepishly and desperately tries to think of an excuse, but she hasn't got one. Apparently she's just another bitter old harridan who can't help but be jealous of younger, French-er women. As Ani DiFranco once sang: Quick, someone call the girl police! Not that this man - more a boy, really - has any idea of the conversation going on in her head; he's just wondering why in the world this crazy, russet-haired lady is grinning at him. She decides that she needs to rescue the situation.
"Hello," she says, keenly. "Please ignore me. I'm... American."
The boy blushes furiously and bites his lower lip, then backs away so hurriedly that he rebounds off an ornately carved wall and almost falls over sideways, only managing to steady himself by grabbing out at a young girl in a dark green raincoat. The girl makes a sound of surprise, grabbing nervously at the satchel slung over her shoulder as if she thinks the boy was trying to steal it. It's such an extreme and comical sequence of events that Patsy's heart melts, and before she can stop herself she giggles - and then apologises for doing so, in English and in French, to both the young man and the girl.
The girl stares out coldly from beneath her hood, her eyes bright beneath a dark and unruly fringe. The boy pauses, apparently wrestling with an urge to run away as fast as he can. Instead he glances timidly in Patsy's direction, his cheeks still a fiery red.
"Sorry for stuh-stuh. Stuh. Staring," the lad says, eventually. "I thought you looked fuh-fuh. Fuh. Familiar."
He's obviously just as embarrassed by his stutter as the fact that he's been caught looking at Patsy. Patsy, in turn, is taken aback - not by the boy's speech, but by something else. He's the polar opposite of the tour guide's vision of perfection; he's tall, awkwardly so, like he's woken up that very morning and found to his horror that his feet were dangling over the edge of the bed for the first time, and he's rather scruffy and unfashionable in old jeans and a faded blue shirt. His tanned skin and short-cropped hair are pleasant enough but his features are altogether rather ordinary - all except his eyes. Oh, his eyes.
Now it's Patsy's turn to blush.
The boy's eyes are blue, royal blue, as blue as the lady's dress in Renoir's La Parisienne, and... well, they're beautiful. Patsy feels her heart contract. Blue, and beautiful, and something else; it takes her a second or two to understand what she's seeing, but eventually it comes to her. Innocence. Patricia Walker has spent far too long among sinners, far too long drowning in pure, visceral sin itself, not to recognise true innocence when she witnesses it - and, upon witnessing it, to not be utterly enraptured by it.
Now it's her who's staring. The young man seems terrified.
"Goodness, I'm sorry, forgive me," Patsy babbles. "You look like I'm about to eat you or something! Honestly, I already ate. Raspberry crepes. Lovely little crêperie just round the corner. Yum. Yum?"
The boy makes a frightened sound in the back of his throat and makes to run again. Patsy feels wretched. It's a ridiculous situation, made all the worse by the fact that the tour group they were with has judiciously moved on, leaving just her, the boy, and the girl in the green coat, who's now rummaging around in her satchel as if searching for a weapon to use in self-defense.
"Please! Listen... what's your name? I'm Patsy. And, really, I'm not trying to-"
"Arrête!" the girl in the dark green hood snarls, finally retrieving her reward from her bag. Patsy glances down and frowns. The girl is holding what looks to be a black card, about twice the size of a standard playing card. She flicks her wrist and the card turns and dances between her fingers, like a magician twirling a gold coin... only the card is giving off black smoke, as if permanently on the verge of catching fire.
"Fortitude," the girl murmurs, in English with a heavy French accent. "Strength in the face of danger. Resolution to follow one's heart."
She turns the card to show Patsy the illustration depicted. Patsy only catches a glimpse through the haze of black smoke, but it's enough to make her eyes flare wide and to bring a scream to her lips. She staggers backwards, glancing this was and that, assailed by visions - and then she's flying through the air as the girl in the green coat shoves out with her free hand, pushing the other woman in the chest with an incredible force that should truthfully be impossible for someone of her diminutive size. Patsy crashes onto her back and skids, her face full of red hair and yellow hood and her hands scrabbling at rain-damp flagstones. She twists, instinctively taking control of her weight and momentum and acrobatically propelling herself into an upright position even as she continues backwards; like a cat, landing - eventually - on its feet.
She breathes deeply, her green eyes wide.
Rain hammers down upon her, and thunder rumbles overhead. She's outside again.
The girl in the green coat - a slip of a thing, not much weight to her at all - has knocked her clean through the cathedral foyer, back out into the open air. That's a distance of some eighty feet. And that means that girl had some real power behind her. Unnatural power. Patsy remembers the card the girl was holding - an illustrated tarot card. The picture has somehow already faded from her memory, but she still shivers to think of it and has to fight back the fear that wells in her chest.
"Patricia..."
She turns at the sound of her name and finds herself in the presence of an old man. He's unremarkable, unfamiliar - at least at first. But when she narrows her eyes a little, lets herself see, she realises that he's actually the exact opposite. Highly remarkable, highly familiar. He's standing there in the driving rain, shrugging off the glamour he's been employing while attempting to remain anonymous, and now appears before her with his true face.
He is tall, slender, dark-haired, rather pale - the consequence of spending too much time inside, among dusty old books filled with magic and mystery. His silver-grey eyes speak of other worlds. His smile, though sad, speaks of friendship. They've known each other so long, these two, but the nature of their relationship is such that coming together in this way typically means imminent peril and disaster. Today is no exception.
"Stephen," Patsy breathes. "I... I dreamed of you, two nights ago."
"And I of you," Doctor Stephen Strange murmurs, his voice deep and soothing. "But, I'll be honest - I was paying more attention to the fact that my dream took place here, at this sacred place, and that a terrible danger was about to rear its head. You were rather more in the background, else seeing you here wouldn't have been such a surprise..."
"Oh. Charming. Still as blunt as ever, I see?"
"And you still have a tendency to wander face-first into trouble."
"Well, some of us don't have the luxury of casting magical spells to conceal our identity," Patsy says, tritely. "Was your dream less vague than mine? I just had an awful feeling that something was going to happen here, today. I didn't foresee anything about weird, hooded girls with magic tarot cards. I didn't recognise her whatsoever. But the danger in my dream..."
"Was more personal. Familiar."
Patsy nods. Strange glances back towards Notre-Dame, his expression thoughtful.
"My dream wasn't particularly lucid either," he admits. "I only know what impressions I can glean from the Eye of Agamotto... that the threat here heralds from a realm with which the two of us are lamentably all-too-well-acquainted. Hell."
Patsy sighs. Of course.
"Well," she murmurs, "I'm here now. With you. So, are you happy for us to take that little card-fiddling French strudel down together, for old times' sakes?"
Strange arches an eyebrow. "My friend, I can only hope that it's that straightforward..."
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There are scant few access points to the summit of the Notre-Dame tower, certainly none open to the general public, but somehow the boy with the royal blue eyes finds himself clinging on for dear life at the edge of a precipitous walkway, rendered lethally slick from driving rain and perilously exposed to the storm overhead in the event of a lightning strike. All around him, penning him in and making escape impossible, are those grotesques so peculiar to the medieval gothic architecture of France, but most famously belonging to this cathedral in particular: gargoyles. They are magnificent in one respect, these antique stone carvings of twisted ugliness, but also truly repugnant when viewed up close. The boy shivers, his eyes stinging with rain and his heart skittering.
"Adlene," a voice whispers at his ear. "That's your name, oui?"
Adlene Sahnoun turns to see the one who spirited him here, the girl in the green raincoat. Her eyes are sparkling in the shadows of her cowl as she crouches beneath one of the massive stone beasts that punctuate the tower's balustrade, a torrent of water gushing from its cruel, open mouth. That's what these gargoyles are: ostentatious gutters, cunningly designed to channel rainwater harmlessly down to the streets below, protecting the ancient masonry. For all the folklore, all the gothic romanticism, they're nothing more magical or sinister than ornamental features.
And yet, they terrify him beyond words.
"My name is Marie-Ange," the girl says. "The cards brought me here. They led me to you... and led me to him. He needs you. He needs what you can provide. And if I help him, then he helps me. It's the only way."
The boy, Adlene, stares at her through the rain. He doesn't understand. The girl seems sad, desperately so - but also determined.
She has something in her hands. Not just one card now, but three, each of them smoking black and dancing between her fingers like something alive. Seeing his interest, Marie-Ange smiles, almost shyly, and flips the first card.
"The Fool," she breathes, her eyes bright. "The lonely wanderer, the vagabond, the lost. This is the tale of his journey. For your journey, my love."
Adlene shivers, clinging more tightly to the walkway where he's trapped, no way forward and no way back. "I duh-duh. Duh. Don't, I don't-"
"The Tower," Marie-Ange continues, ignoring the boy as she turns the next card. "Sudden and destructive change, a breaking down on all things old into something new. But also literal in present circumstances, yes? For we find ourselves at the top of the world, looking down upon those who know no better as the storm rages about us..."
Adlene stifles a sob. He looks away, instinctively knowing that he doesn't want to see the illustrations depicted on the cards the girl is showing him. Something terrible happened down below, in the foyer. The beautiful woman with the red hair, the one who seemed familiar to him - because, he now remembers, he'd glimpsed her face in a dream - was harmed by those cards. He doesn't want the same to happen to him.
But looking away is worse, because that's when Adlene sees what's approaching behind him. That's when he screams.
One of the gargoyles is moving.
An enormous specimen, its body hewn not from weathered grey but from burnt orange stone, as if scorched by some terrible fire, is spreading its wings and coming for him. Reaching for him. Hungering for him.
"He needs what you have," Marie-Ange whispers. "He needs your innocence, Adlene. That's what he feeds on. That's the only thing that can sustain him, and prevent him returning to the forsaken pit he crawled from. And so, the final card. Judgement."
She turns the card, smiling softly. She's done this so many times these past few days, just to be sure, and the three cards are always the same. The Fool, The Tower, Judgement.
But now, today, something changes.
Her smile falls, replaced by uncertainty. She doesn't understand.
The Fool, The Tower, and now...
"The Magician," she says, in a faint voice. Staring at the new card in disbelief, she watches the image swirl and change behind the veil of black smoke.
Across from her, Adlene screams. The gargoyle has reached him. Marie-Ange looks up, her expression as dark as the thunderclouds which still roil and suffocate the Paris skies overhead - but perhaps even more dangerous.
"Be ready," she snarls. "Something wicked this way comes..."
To Be Continued!
Existence down here isn't an infinite loop of suffering and damnation; that would miss the point entirely, you see. There's a definite beginning and end to each protracted period of misery, and worse still, as each epoch draws to a close so there comes a momentary respite, a hush to the screaming and the throttling and the lashing and the spurting. A pause. And, in that pause, every last soul is rewarded with a single, shuddering breath, and each is bidden to incline his or her head so that they might listen. Listen.
Up above, the world turns without them. They hear the whisper of wind in the leaves and the dance of blossom, and they hear the innocent laughter of children in the school playground, and they hear the low rise and fall of sleeping, contented hearts. They hear dogs and damselflies; they hear the rain, they hear the ocean. They hear life.
And then it's done, and when they reach desperately for another breath, for another precious glimmer, all they can taste is blood and blister spit and spiders and all they can swallow is needles. And then the whips begin to fall again, harsher and quicker than before, and eager fingers begin to thread more hooks into their eyes, and small, hungry rat-mouths return to gnaw them gently from the inside out, and the impressions of that other world, that lost world, slowly but surely fade away.
By the time the next pause arrives, an eternity from now, they'll all have forgotten it was coming.
All except one...
Unseen, a solitary creature stirs. It alone remembers the world above, and remembers that between every sliver of perpetuity that is that single, blessed moment, and in that moment there will be opportunity. The creature has been reduced quite literally to dust and ash, but it is resolute enough, and dedicated to its task; grain by splintered grain it re-gathers itself, silently and meticulously. It has purpose, and it has patience. Sometimes that's all one needs.
Another eternity passes.
And, just as this eternity reaches an end and in that priceless pause before the next one begins, the creature opens its newly formed eyes - its stark, hollow, bottomless eyes - and it flexes its brittle, burnt orange stoneflesh, and it breathes.
Isaac, it thinks. Because it remembers that too; memory, down here, is everything. But the old man named Isaac Christians is long, long gone, and his absence leaves behind a crater in the creature's stone heart, an aching emptiness that is the cruel essence of this netherworld given substance. The creature isn't whole any longer; all this time rebuilding, all this effort, and it still isn't enough. The creature starves. For a lesser being, this would simply be the threshold to a new plateau of suffering as one new eternity rises to replace the old - but this creature is different. This creature refuses to accept his fate.
And so, deep in the crimson pits of Hell, there is a pause. Silence falls, soon to be filled with the sounds of laughter and heartbeats and rain, if only for the briefest, most terrible moment.
But, in that moment, the creature gathers its strength and extends its new wings and gives flight...
...and, driven by the need to be complete, it ascends once more.
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It's raining in Paris.
In finer weather, the Notre-Dame Cathedral is a striking edifice, rising majestically from its location on a shallow island in the River Seine and preening like a grande madame against broad, blue skies; on a day like today, however, with oily black thunderclouds drifting in from the west, the gleaming stone turns dark and forbidding, and much of its magnificent lustre is spirited away. The majority of the tourists milling along the Rue du Cloitre-Notre-Dame boulevard are understandably disappointed, hunched beneath their colourful umbrellas and chattering in a multitude of tongues as the downpour lashes at them without mercy. However, for one woman - more petite mademoiselle than grande madame - the experience is delectably apposite.
Patricia Walker stares out into the rain, shivering in the seasonal chill, and allows herself an ironic smile.
Ah, April In Paris. 'I never knew the charm of spring, I never met it face to face...'
She's always loved that song, with its lyrics speaking of young love set to such a strangely sad melody. There are numerous well-known renditions, but Patsy prefers Sarah Vaughan to Ella Fitzgerald, or to Billie or Sinatra. Vaughan's version is undercut with just the right amount of heartbroken, not so full-blown as to be maudlin but not so hopeful as to suggest redemption. It says, here I am in the city that promised you everything you ever wanted, all hearts and secret glances and chestnuts in blossom... and yet still you're alone. So smile through the tears, honey, and drink your gin. Or words to that effect. A girl can't argue with a song like that.
Perhaps it's because Patsy has only visited Notre-Dame once before, in the days after she returned to this mortal coil following a rather uncomfortable period of time stuck in Hell. Yes, literal Hell. It didn't rain down there, and no one listened to jazz; consequently, she's learned to appreciate melancholia and April showers all the more, and not even darkening skies the hue of penitence can dampen her enthusiasm.
A shame, really, that the nightmares that have guided her here today have been so unpleasant...
Patsy pauses awhile to watch sightseers of varying ages and nationalities all scurrying and skittering like anxious rats, as the deluge intensifies and an accompaniment of thunder splinters high overhead. Then, finally, she tucks a delinquent lock of rusty auburn hair into the hood of her bright yellow cagoule and steps out into the monsoon, her high heels clipping demurely on river-dark flagstones. She stoops beneath her own umbrella, as yellow as her coat, as rain claws violently at the canvas. She crosses the street with a feline sashay, slinking towards the shadowed Notre-Dame that looms directly ahead.
Something bad lies in wait. Something wicked. She probably shouldn't have come here.
But, c'est la vie. Everyone knows what people say about cats and curiosity...
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Curiosity is something that the old man certainly doesn't want to attract; he's always careful to appear as inconspicuous as possible when stepping out incognito, and that means curbing his natural inclinations. This isn't to suggest that he's overly flamboyant or ostentatious in less public circumstances - he has, after all, suffered greatly for both arrogance and extravagance in his time, and humility was a lesson that was hard-learned - but his chosen vocation comes with particular trappings that some would deem... eccentric.
Today he has chosen to adopt a casual appearance without a hint of theatrical flourish: no silver walking stick, no beret, no gnarled white beard. To look at him in his colourless raincoat and galoshes is to be swiftly disinterested and thereafter immediately forgetful, and that suits him just fine. This anonymity will hopefully allow him to identify and target his adversary before that enemy is even remotely aware of his proximity.
Of course, the appearance of Patsy Walker throws the veritable cat among the pigeons, and when she smiles sweetly in the old man's direction as she crosses his path in the cathedral foyer, he is momentarily taken aback.
He sees smouldering red hair like a late August sunset when she pushes back her yellow hood, and he breathes in a delicate scent of Yves Saint Laurent as her perfume lingers in her wake. The old man pauses, watching her pass, and he can't help but recall so many things about her even as he wonders if she recognised him beneath the layers of his disguise; whether she remembers him as he does her. Memory is everything.
But Patsy walks on, her attention drawn to the grand architecture of the foyer, and she joins a group of tourists without glancing back. The old man looks on, eyes narrowing. There's no such thing as coincidence, only synchronicity; that was one of the first truths he was ever taught. Patsy comes to stand close to a young man - tall, lean, short-haired, olive-skinned - and a diminutive girl in a dark, lagoon-green raincoat, her features mostly hidden by a ruffled hood but her eyes sharp and darting beneath the cowl. The girl wears a well-worn satchel slung over her shoulder, brown leather that appears scorched to black in places. She clutches the bag with a visible intensity.
The tourist group is some two-dozen strong, with a striking, dark-haired female guide at their head, directing them from the foyer towards the similarly splendid nave and sacristy away to their right. There should be nothing dramatically distinct about the girl in the green raincoat or the lean, tanned lad alongside her, but the old man's gaze fixates upon them all the same, not least because Patsy is standing directly behind them at the exact moment that another rumbling peal of thunder breaks outside, echoing dully through the hall.
Synchronicity. He has found his adversary. From this point on it should be relatively straightforward to intercept and contain whatever threat his dreams have alerted him to. Should be.
The old man smiles wryly, then sighs.
"Ah, Patsy," he says, quietly. "Why do I get the feeling that you've brought bad luck in with the rain...?"
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"The Notre-Dame Cathedral was constructed over almost one hundred years between 1163 and 1250, and as well as being the most famous example of French Gothic Architecture it is also one of the most recognisable church buildings in the modern world today. Much of the building was damaged or destroyed completely during the Revolution in the 18th Century, but extensive renovations occurred in the following decades. Another period of delicate restoration and maintenance has been in place for the past twenty years. If you'd now like to follow me, I can show you the Cathedral's ten bells, on public display in the nave..."
The tour guide is highly professional, treating a group of a dozen soggy tourists to an informative discourse in first French, then in English and also Japanese. She is simultaneously slim and curvaceous, raven-haired, immaculately poised and exquisitely beautiful in that quintessentially French way, and she doesn't look a day over twenty-five. Patsy doesn't want to hate her; it's a cliché and it's unbecoming. It hasn't been that many years since she herself was a celebrity model, famous for bringing retro 60s chic back to the catwalk, and so she knows better than to judge women on their appearance and to dislike anyone for being pretty and perfect. Regrettably, she just can't help herself. It's an instinctive reaction, exacerbated by the fact that the guide is so coldly robotic. There's very little going on behind the girl's eyes, and her smile is all lipstick and practise and nothing else whatsoever.
You just go ahead and rationalize, darling, Patsy admonishes herself. Try not to admit that you feel like a frumpy old maid just because you turned thirty last week. Thirty! Goodness! Oh, all those clichés are just piling up now...
The tour guide walks on, straight-backed and swingy-hipped on great legs and polished heels. Patsy rolls her eyes and sticks out her tongue when she's sure no one's looking, but then glances to the side and realises that she's an idiot because there's a young man staring straight at her. Busted.
Patsy smiles sheepishly and desperately tries to think of an excuse, but she hasn't got one. Apparently she's just another bitter old harridan who can't help but be jealous of younger, French-er women. As Ani DiFranco once sang: Quick, someone call the girl police! Not that this man - more a boy, really - has any idea of the conversation going on in her head; he's just wondering why in the world this crazy, russet-haired lady is grinning at him. She decides that she needs to rescue the situation.
"Hello," she says, keenly. "Please ignore me. I'm... American."
The boy blushes furiously and bites his lower lip, then backs away so hurriedly that he rebounds off an ornately carved wall and almost falls over sideways, only managing to steady himself by grabbing out at a young girl in a dark green raincoat. The girl makes a sound of surprise, grabbing nervously at the satchel slung over her shoulder as if she thinks the boy was trying to steal it. It's such an extreme and comical sequence of events that Patsy's heart melts, and before she can stop herself she giggles - and then apologises for doing so, in English and in French, to both the young man and the girl.
The girl stares out coldly from beneath her hood, her eyes bright beneath a dark and unruly fringe. The boy pauses, apparently wrestling with an urge to run away as fast as he can. Instead he glances timidly in Patsy's direction, his cheeks still a fiery red.
"Sorry for stuh-stuh. Stuh. Staring," the lad says, eventually. "I thought you looked fuh-fuh. Fuh. Familiar."
He's obviously just as embarrassed by his stutter as the fact that he's been caught looking at Patsy. Patsy, in turn, is taken aback - not by the boy's speech, but by something else. He's the polar opposite of the tour guide's vision of perfection; he's tall, awkwardly so, like he's woken up that very morning and found to his horror that his feet were dangling over the edge of the bed for the first time, and he's rather scruffy and unfashionable in old jeans and a faded blue shirt. His tanned skin and short-cropped hair are pleasant enough but his features are altogether rather ordinary - all except his eyes. Oh, his eyes.
Now it's Patsy's turn to blush.
The boy's eyes are blue, royal blue, as blue as the lady's dress in Renoir's La Parisienne, and... well, they're beautiful. Patsy feels her heart contract. Blue, and beautiful, and something else; it takes her a second or two to understand what she's seeing, but eventually it comes to her. Innocence. Patricia Walker has spent far too long among sinners, far too long drowning in pure, visceral sin itself, not to recognise true innocence when she witnesses it - and, upon witnessing it, to not be utterly enraptured by it.
Now it's her who's staring. The young man seems terrified.
"Goodness, I'm sorry, forgive me," Patsy babbles. "You look like I'm about to eat you or something! Honestly, I already ate. Raspberry crepes. Lovely little crêperie just round the corner. Yum. Yum?"
The boy makes a frightened sound in the back of his throat and makes to run again. Patsy feels wretched. It's a ridiculous situation, made all the worse by the fact that the tour group they were with has judiciously moved on, leaving just her, the boy, and the girl in the green coat, who's now rummaging around in her satchel as if searching for a weapon to use in self-defense.
"Please! Listen... what's your name? I'm Patsy. And, really, I'm not trying to-"
"Arrête!" the girl in the dark green hood snarls, finally retrieving her reward from her bag. Patsy glances down and frowns. The girl is holding what looks to be a black card, about twice the size of a standard playing card. She flicks her wrist and the card turns and dances between her fingers, like a magician twirling a gold coin... only the card is giving off black smoke, as if permanently on the verge of catching fire.
"Fortitude," the girl murmurs, in English with a heavy French accent. "Strength in the face of danger. Resolution to follow one's heart."
She turns the card to show Patsy the illustration depicted. Patsy only catches a glimpse through the haze of black smoke, but it's enough to make her eyes flare wide and to bring a scream to her lips. She staggers backwards, glancing this was and that, assailed by visions - and then she's flying through the air as the girl in the green coat shoves out with her free hand, pushing the other woman in the chest with an incredible force that should truthfully be impossible for someone of her diminutive size. Patsy crashes onto her back and skids, her face full of red hair and yellow hood and her hands scrabbling at rain-damp flagstones. She twists, instinctively taking control of her weight and momentum and acrobatically propelling herself into an upright position even as she continues backwards; like a cat, landing - eventually - on its feet.
She breathes deeply, her green eyes wide.
Rain hammers down upon her, and thunder rumbles overhead. She's outside again.
The girl in the green coat - a slip of a thing, not much weight to her at all - has knocked her clean through the cathedral foyer, back out into the open air. That's a distance of some eighty feet. And that means that girl had some real power behind her. Unnatural power. Patsy remembers the card the girl was holding - an illustrated tarot card. The picture has somehow already faded from her memory, but she still shivers to think of it and has to fight back the fear that wells in her chest.
"Patricia..."
She turns at the sound of her name and finds herself in the presence of an old man. He's unremarkable, unfamiliar - at least at first. But when she narrows her eyes a little, lets herself see, she realises that he's actually the exact opposite. Highly remarkable, highly familiar. He's standing there in the driving rain, shrugging off the glamour he's been employing while attempting to remain anonymous, and now appears before her with his true face.
He is tall, slender, dark-haired, rather pale - the consequence of spending too much time inside, among dusty old books filled with magic and mystery. His silver-grey eyes speak of other worlds. His smile, though sad, speaks of friendship. They've known each other so long, these two, but the nature of their relationship is such that coming together in this way typically means imminent peril and disaster. Today is no exception.
"Stephen," Patsy breathes. "I... I dreamed of you, two nights ago."
"And I of you," Doctor Stephen Strange murmurs, his voice deep and soothing. "But, I'll be honest - I was paying more attention to the fact that my dream took place here, at this sacred place, and that a terrible danger was about to rear its head. You were rather more in the background, else seeing you here wouldn't have been such a surprise..."
"Oh. Charming. Still as blunt as ever, I see?"
"And you still have a tendency to wander face-first into trouble."
"Well, some of us don't have the luxury of casting magical spells to conceal our identity," Patsy says, tritely. "Was your dream less vague than mine? I just had an awful feeling that something was going to happen here, today. I didn't foresee anything about weird, hooded girls with magic tarot cards. I didn't recognise her whatsoever. But the danger in my dream..."
"Was more personal. Familiar."
Patsy nods. Strange glances back towards Notre-Dame, his expression thoughtful.
"My dream wasn't particularly lucid either," he admits. "I only know what impressions I can glean from the Eye of Agamotto... that the threat here heralds from a realm with which the two of us are lamentably all-too-well-acquainted. Hell."
Patsy sighs. Of course.
"Well," she murmurs, "I'm here now. With you. So, are you happy for us to take that little card-fiddling French strudel down together, for old times' sakes?"
Strange arches an eyebrow. "My friend, I can only hope that it's that straightforward..."
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There are scant few access points to the summit of the Notre-Dame tower, certainly none open to the general public, but somehow the boy with the royal blue eyes finds himself clinging on for dear life at the edge of a precipitous walkway, rendered lethally slick from driving rain and perilously exposed to the storm overhead in the event of a lightning strike. All around him, penning him in and making escape impossible, are those grotesques so peculiar to the medieval gothic architecture of France, but most famously belonging to this cathedral in particular: gargoyles. They are magnificent in one respect, these antique stone carvings of twisted ugliness, but also truly repugnant when viewed up close. The boy shivers, his eyes stinging with rain and his heart skittering.
"Adlene," a voice whispers at his ear. "That's your name, oui?"
Adlene Sahnoun turns to see the one who spirited him here, the girl in the green raincoat. Her eyes are sparkling in the shadows of her cowl as she crouches beneath one of the massive stone beasts that punctuate the tower's balustrade, a torrent of water gushing from its cruel, open mouth. That's what these gargoyles are: ostentatious gutters, cunningly designed to channel rainwater harmlessly down to the streets below, protecting the ancient masonry. For all the folklore, all the gothic romanticism, they're nothing more magical or sinister than ornamental features.
And yet, they terrify him beyond words.
"My name is Marie-Ange," the girl says. "The cards brought me here. They led me to you... and led me to him. He needs you. He needs what you can provide. And if I help him, then he helps me. It's the only way."
The boy, Adlene, stares at her through the rain. He doesn't understand. The girl seems sad, desperately so - but also determined.
She has something in her hands. Not just one card now, but three, each of them smoking black and dancing between her fingers like something alive. Seeing his interest, Marie-Ange smiles, almost shyly, and flips the first card.
"The Fool," she breathes, her eyes bright. "The lonely wanderer, the vagabond, the lost. This is the tale of his journey. For your journey, my love."
Adlene shivers, clinging more tightly to the walkway where he's trapped, no way forward and no way back. "I duh-duh. Duh. Don't, I don't-"
"The Tower," Marie-Ange continues, ignoring the boy as she turns the next card. "Sudden and destructive change, a breaking down on all things old into something new. But also literal in present circumstances, yes? For we find ourselves at the top of the world, looking down upon those who know no better as the storm rages about us..."
Adlene stifles a sob. He looks away, instinctively knowing that he doesn't want to see the illustrations depicted on the cards the girl is showing him. Something terrible happened down below, in the foyer. The beautiful woman with the red hair, the one who seemed familiar to him - because, he now remembers, he'd glimpsed her face in a dream - was harmed by those cards. He doesn't want the same to happen to him.
But looking away is worse, because that's when Adlene sees what's approaching behind him. That's when he screams.
One of the gargoyles is moving.
An enormous specimen, its body hewn not from weathered grey but from burnt orange stone, as if scorched by some terrible fire, is spreading its wings and coming for him. Reaching for him. Hungering for him.
"He needs what you have," Marie-Ange whispers. "He needs your innocence, Adlene. That's what he feeds on. That's the only thing that can sustain him, and prevent him returning to the forsaken pit he crawled from. And so, the final card. Judgement."
She turns the card, smiling softly. She's done this so many times these past few days, just to be sure, and the three cards are always the same. The Fool, The Tower, Judgement.
But now, today, something changes.
Her smile falls, replaced by uncertainty. She doesn't understand.
The Fool, The Tower, and now...
"The Magician," she says, in a faint voice. Staring at the new card in disbelief, she watches the image swirl and change behind the veil of black smoke.
Across from her, Adlene screams. The gargoyle has reached him. Marie-Ange looks up, her expression as dark as the thunderclouds which still roil and suffocate the Paris skies overhead - but perhaps even more dangerous.
"Be ready," she snarls. "Something wicked this way comes..."
To Be Continued!