Back at Motel

I'm just going to move things (/force) back to the motel for the night after having laid the slab at Polk's.

The Queer will be there.
He will stumble over to your room, obviously a bit drunk, and carrying two bottles of brandy.
"Have a drink or two with me. I'll tell you about witches.... you know it's not easy, this, me, being me, I'm damned and I chose to be, I made that choice, for you, for all of you..." He waves a bottle around as if to signal he is referring to everything.

Pollard has seemed to be in a bad mood though if asked he waves it off and says, "just thinking." He doesn't seem too interested in entertaining the drunk cardinal and excuses himself out into the parking.

Percival watches as Pollard excuses himself, “okay… uhhhh.. do you have a name I can use other than calling you ‘the Queer?’ I’m interested in learning a bit more about the witches.”

The Queer will sit down and set the two bottles on the table. He produces a crumbled plastic cup from his pocket, of the type found near the sinks in motels, and pours another cup.
"prospiciendae erant, figura nigra contra tenebras, forma viduata. movit matres e sedibus suis, incipiens a septem. Evocare quidem aut nominare quidem non ausi sum, nam semel antea nominata erat. Mater Suspiriorum...
Seven mothers, seven witches...They say, they say she was always there, drove our great ancestors out of Africa, an animal instinct to flee, migrating across Europe, they carried her, she...it, it followed them...offspring dragging out of it as its shadow scraped across the ground and they ran in all directions some starving, others finding bodies to inhabit. We've tried, we've tried to root them out... if the mountain won't come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain... Voskresenska is the mountain."
He takes a swallow, "You cannot travel the path until you have become the path itself. Eve died of the Spanish flu, Voskresenska only daughter...and Alicia's daughters...like smoke they dematerialize. Where was I? The Spanish flu, 50 million dead, and she just floated through it..."

Pollard will rush back into the room with his cellphone cupped but to his ear.
He’ll cup a hand over the phone and start reciting back pieces.
"Pen and paper! I got Lark on..."
Pollard seems to summarize something from previously,
“…(I) stopped giving out blessings.”
“There was an increase in parents claiming their kids were…blessed…gifted.”
“Became suspect this wasn’t Ankroptic. Kids claimed to have messages from him but after investigating…blah blah blah…. Borderline psychotic but showed signs of being naturally gifted to summonings.“

Pollard, “Ok, hold on, slow down. Say that again…”

“Ok, so Ankroptic gifts were given out, you think these were hybrids? Parents had children, children were psychotic, yeah ok showed signs of, they were crazy, dark, demented, whatever, and heard “Ankroptic talking to them.”
“This other thing, demon, whatever, it planned an invasion… fuck lost him.”
Pollard checks the phone a couple of times, “he went into a building or underground or something lost the signal. But shut up, and I’ll try to remember what he was saying.”

Ok, you got the bit about Ankroptic gifts.

The water is infected with things from this other thing, that we know.

He was shown tests and offered a position but turned it down.

The tests he saw showed about a 30% infection rate, infection occurs through orifice or wound. In a small percentage of cases infected have a visceral reaction which passes after a few days, there was concern this would tip off the CDC early and there might be containment efforts if too many cases started showing up too early.

These things the infection creates turn feral if there are no “officers,” to control them. A sort of telepathy.
Lark was told these officers would be selected from those that were most loyal to this demon…He called it something similar to this Hasmital you’ve mentioned but had a different pronunciation. Lark suspected this wasn’t true though and they were all going to get screwed over.

Ok…six foot tongue mouth thing, like an Aswang. (Percival would likely know that is a Philippine vampire. Though in lore Aswangs don’t have lower torsos, this seems to reference to tongue mouth only.)

The infected will transform over the course of several months. Eventually they’ll lose their noses and ears, skin turns grey, oh yeah, bites from tongue mouth thing will infect you. Organs turn into these like milky puss sacks which attach to this tongue, which are full of whatever the infection is but also has healing properties. He said he thinks it is like a mix of the Ankroptic gifts…does that make sense? And whatever this Hasmitall thing has. The two fucked or something? I don’t know…he didn’t say that.

Regions, regions have like generals, who support some number of these things, and without them they turn wild.
…something…stoned…smoke a lot, uh, Highmore, Dr. Highmore, he supposedly has ties to the government, I don’t know him, he was working on extracting these healing properties from these puss sacks.
Ah…he named some other demon, Core something.

But, ok! Get this! Lark wants protection because he thinks these demons are going to hunt them all down.
He said they were allowed dominion over custodians or governors guarding…he used some weird word, but magic and he claims this means the Ankroptic priests. Does that sound fucking familiar or what?

So ok, these two demons do something, make gifted kids, kids convince parents, parents start rising up, we get this red night group forming in the Ankroptic followers.”

Pollard: "Ok, I'm behind the eight ball on this, but...."
He starts drawing on the wall, which the free motel ballpoint pen isn't very good at.
"We've got:
You two and this Harry Potter council thing that you are a part of but not a part of, and the witches are against because the nonalignment pact is done. Doesn't matter you aren't a part of it, they seem to think you are.
So:
You
Wizzy Council
Witches

We have this Ankroptic and Hasmital working together...
So:
You
Wizzy Council
Witches
Anne and Hasmat

And we have you," pointing at The Queer.
So:
You
Wizzy Council
Catholic Church
Witches
Anne and Hasmat
This soul grabber group
Witches --> You, and wizzys
Anne and Hasmat ---> Caller protectors = Chuch, or you, or wizzys, soul grabbys
Teacher made deal with witches....

He stops writing on the wall, "who made this protector caller deal?" Then he writes that on the wall.
Anne and Hasmat make dna creatures
Feral or Controlled? .....
"DNA....Well, here is a question I never thought I'd be asking, does DNA go with you when you die? i mean I don't know how this works, but wouldn't you need DNA to make something that effects DNA? Wouldn't you need....That priest was already turned into something and so was your father so....somewhere they have the ability to do this like, now. Would you want a feral army or would you, place your command in ahead of time....? Are demons chaotic?"

Pollard sits down on the corner of the bed, "There's a....story, urban legend. Fall of the Soviet Union, everyone is rushing around scooping up these cold war weapons and selling them off, making lots of money but it's risky right, everyone is corrupt double crossing each other. Except, except for this one general right. He's in charge of this arms depot, it's up in the Ural mountains or something. And he's looking at a future where he's going to lose his pension, and this warehouse is a goldmine. But he's got a little money saved up and thinks and figures he can get by for a little while.
He goes into the office like normal, and starts shredding everything, all the inventory reports, all the shipping manifests. ...and then he waits. And all these arms flood the market, and everyone is getting killed, and things finally start to dry up and then he opens up his warehouse. See...he didn't get into who to trust, who not to, he just hid the warehouse. Somewhere in this mess is our warehouse.

The seven mothers: “familiar with the term, from Isosperiti.” Then Percival lists out the seven mother cards and his little bit of knowledge about them.

The daughters turning in to smoke, “We encountered this. We eventually killed her but it took a while and some help. Then later her ‘mother’ set a trap for us but we killed her as well. and that was not easy.”

As Percival would be taking notes about the witches, he just switches to taking notes from pollard.

Percival would interject after Larkin is mentioned wanting protection. “If Larkin wants protection we can bring him right here. And like right now. But can we trust him?”

Ankroptic/ HazMitAl gifts: “yes it makes sense, the Ankroptic cultists are often given maggots to eat. When we interrupted one of their communes with Ankroptic, we found a box filled with large maggots, that had some form of psychic ability, you felt like you wanted to eat them, and it seemed like it was telling you to eat it. And I did. It made you feel healthier. But when I lost my toe, the ‘gift’ left my body.”

Some other demon, core: “Kor Ma Ka, he gave the Mourn, an extinct race that worshiped him, the Tril Quardaire, which was given to him my Darkonov.”

Percival shakes his head as if he’s taken in a lot and is trying to make some room for more, “are you saying we need to find a place to hole and wait things out then strike? Or to look for something where someone is already doing that? I mean I know a couple of places to hide that would be damn hard for anyone to ever find, and now thanks to getting what our teacher wanted us to have we…” he points to Lucien and himself “can makes those places and ourselves mostly forgotten to the world, and the demons and witches alike. However if you’re talking about a place where these invading demons are hiding, the mural from the clinic in Mexico shows them entering the Greylands, and from the Greylands they can get here. Unless we close all those portals. I only know of three direct links to it. I’m sure there are more and the guy who hanging out with cardinal
Dave might know many more.”

The Queer: "Not smoke...a swarm, a black swarm. All three of them, Cassandra, Bella, Daniela. Their "mother" Alicia, is...she can control you. Cassandra Beneviento, don't confuse her with Cassandra Dimitree, she's the weakest of the three, gives life to the lifeless."

Pollard, "I need to think, and this is not a conducive setting for thinking." He'll grab a bottle of brandy off the table and walk out.
15 minutes later he walks back in and throws his phone down on the table. Visible on the screen is a screen capture from CNN of the 85 border into South Carolina. Police can be seen on all sides of the interstate, cones are set up going into Georgia, and traffic looks abysmal. People appear to have given up on driving and are in long lines weaving back through the cars.
Pollard flips through several similar images before getting to one of emergency crews set up at the rest stop. Pollard pinches and zooms in. "There." Blue shirt, circle logo.
The image zoomed in this much is hard to distinguish much detail.
"Progeny. Outside of the Charleston area."
"Larkin is in Florida, wants protection, Florida hasn't activated any services on the border yet, he's staying far away. That guy, is wearing a Progeny shirt. It's a biochemistry research company."

Pollard looks like he's about to go into a long explanation but then stops.

North Georgia a couple is busted running an illegal cremation service. Turns out it was for some sort of black market diamond operation, but, the company confirming the DNA matches for the couple, Progeny. Where did the bodies go to be identified so family could be contacted? Progeny. Evidence testing? Progeny. John Doe case, Progeny.
It's a whole business industrial park area, specially zoned by the Goose Creek and Berkeley County Commission. Now Larkin said, "he was shown tests, and we suspected Larkin had traveled to South Carolina but all our intelligence kept pointing to him being in Florida so that is where we were concentrating our efforts. He "runs" the south east region so he bounces around.
But I'll bet you dollars to donuts, something is going on in that park. Progeny is testing people at the border, or at least has technicians there. What for?"

Pollard looks at The Queer, "...and your Strawberry Cemetery, in Berkeley County."
The Queer, "That doesn't sound like Voskresenska, and I've seen no evidence she started a company..."
Pollard, "Well, right now everything is pointing to Berkeley County."
Pollard, "Try this, This Hasmital and Ankroptic, turn some Ankroptic followers, they open Progeny, which I'll admit does not match our profile for Red Light Ankroptic followers, but maybe it wasn't opened under Red Light. They supply DNA, or do the experiments, create covid to keep everyone home, create this water infection to spread these things, meanwhile these witches get involved, they are getting to take over now or something so maybe they are commanding the whole operation or getting ready to have it handed off to them or think they are going to get it handed off to them. We've got some sort of double cross going on with the Red Light group where this Hasmital has wormed his way in, using this Ankroptic thing. So he's going to want them close either way. Or it's a coincidence...but regardless, it's all pointing there.
And your teacher guy, doesn't tell you about this council because he made this deal with the witches and knows they are all going to get killed so tries to shield you from it. It's the Anderssen and Kieseritzky Immortal 1851. Queen to bishop six, knight takes queen, bishop to king seven. Anderson loses his bishop, queen, both rooks, and wins on a failed King's Gambit start." He looks at Percival, "..but you know that."

Pericival looks at Pollard, “I’m not that familiar with chess theory.”

He sits down, checking his phone and is writing a message, “right so we’re woefully out numbered, and need help. Not just casters, but scouts, combatants, etc. what do you think we should actually do? Or do you think you can get an air strike on the area. But I can’t imagine it’s the only place they have where they are staging.”