The following story originated while roleplaying in the Champions Online universe. A much more capable spellcaster, who had been maintaining the supergroup's magical defenses, had just passed on and Tabby was determined to hold things together in her absence. It wasn't the direction I wanted to take Tabby, but one of the challenges with roleplaying circles is that the characters' stories sometimes take directions you don't intend and you have to adapt.
The whole story was hastily-written to fit into a rapidly-evolving storyline that never really fit my vision for Tabitha, but I always liked its portrayal and held onto it, hoping to find a place to repurpose core elements of it in something more Tabby-canon.
Tabby's footsteps echoed through the room that once housed Meri's artifacts and ritual circle. Her limp had grown more pronounced as she worked, and even with reverberation from the basement furnace resonating through the chamber, you could hear it... a pat of one footpad, the briefest scrape of a claw before the other footpad hit.
She took a sip from her energy drink and closed her eyes, trying not to think about the pain. In that brief blink, her mage-sight told her she was on the right path. She could see the traces of Meri's ritual circle- a faint cool glow, eminating from this spot... she could see the tethers to the building's wards that once drew energy from this spot... and with an intake of breath, she could almost taste Meri's dissipating presence here... that signature arcane "flavor" unique to each living being.
*If I opened my eyes right now... she'd be there... it'd all be like it was before... If I concentrate, I can feel the warmth of her candles playing along my cheeks.*
She wasn't there, though... and would never be there again.
Where the room once came to life with warm candlelight casting hundreds of dancing shadows on the wall, there was only cold concrete walls dimly lit by a poorly-functioning fluorescent light. Occasionally a few colors would reflect off her laptop's screensaver from its perch on an upturned crate near the entrance. The floor around the crate was littered with paper- mostly printouts... some scrawled with various colored pens, also scattered on the floor near the crate. A stack of post-it notes balanced precariously behind the laptop. A good two dozen of these scraps littered the crate's planks and the cold cement outer walls of the building.
The only other thing in the room visible in the dim light was what appeared to be a cheap oversized sewing basket- one of those covered in cheap padded fabric with vinyl hilights. This one had a black background virtually overwhelmed by brightly colored random swirls... kinda what you'd expect if someone slipped acid to granny's quilting circle.
*A far cry from Meri's treasure trove... * Her thoughts tinged with regret that she didn't take advantage of Meri's offer to explore her considerable library while she was still here to share it.
She paced the room again, studying each post-it note while muttering something indecipherable to herself. Satisfied, she walked over to the quilting bag and opened it, taking out a handful of candles and a large bag of salt.
Consulting the notes one last time, she knelt in front of one of the markers and began casting the circle. One candle placed... then another... a thin arc of salt connecting the two... then another... then the patterns started to emerge. The ritual became automatic, and it took Tabby a moment to realize that she'd been doing it all with her eyes closed.
*It won't exactly match, but it should do the trick.*
Magic circles weren't new to Tabby... her aunt had examined and documented their use in a half-dozen different cultures. It had been part of Aunt Tabby's passion to "transcend the tradition" and gain access to a more... "raw" magic... one that lacked the "refining" and "flavors" of energy that emerged from the rites. Schooled in western-arts magic early on, she investigated every tradition she could gain access to, taking what she liked from one and applying it to another... always hoping to set aside whatever trappings she could to grasp at that "core truth." Tabby had always seen her aunt as a kind of mystic-arts equivalent of Bruce Lee. He'd started by mastering one martial art discipline, then studied others, and eventually rejected well-defined styles for some raw... core... essence of the martial art.
Of course, with her aunt's notes as her only teacher, Tabby had ONLY learned magic through this haphazard mash of traditions and pared-down rituals. She'd never once doubted it... never once thought that maybe her aunt was wrong... but here she was writing her own ritual circle over the remnants of Meri's... with the wards that protected all the residents of the Haven at risk...
She compared her own almost-closed circle to the afterimage of Meri's she saw as her eyes closed. *Maybe I'm missing something... something the rituals would normally give... something so basic, she'd have taken it for granted and not written it down. Something that would give me a better handle on the magic... make the spells less erratic... more controlled.*
Tabby had once tried to explain her magical attunement to a technically-inclined friend as "high-voltage, low amps." She could unleash a massive blast of energy, but she couldn't sustain it for long. Once those energies were consumed, the spells drew directly from her own body... exhausting her until she collapsed... if she wasn't careful. * Maybe, In all that paring down, something's been lost. some necessary control...*
* You know that's a load of bull, Tabs. Your problem isn't too little control- it's too much. You're a friggin control freak. The energies are there- ready to course through you... over you... WITH with you but you're too focused on keeping them in check. It's no wonder that the only time you ever managed something REALLY remarkable was after you'd downed half a bottle of black label to loosen up.*
*Of course... look where that got ya.*
She held back the curse to her inner voice that came to mind and closed the circle, dropping the last grain of sand in place. Almost immediately, she could feel the energies start to build up. In her mind's eye, the crystalline salt had taken a luminescent form. Then she could feel it- the energies rising... like water pooling at her feet and rising fast. She stared at the wards' tethers, hoping to see them draw off the primal energies that continued to rise around her.
Nothing.
She waited.
The mystic forces no longer felt like water.... but like a million separate air currents whipping around her. Where they touched she felt... energized... alive... more alive than she'd felt... well... ever... she could feel her heart pounding... She started breathing faster.
The tethers grew warm as they drew ever so slightly from the new source.
Tabby didn't wait a moment longer. She cut a line in the ritual circle with her claw and lept outside, closing it again behind her.
*Coward*
She'd felt the power ebb the moment she stepped out of the ring. The circle wasn't going to just keep pumping juice into the tethers until the candles ran out. It needed a conduit... someone inside... direcing it. Without someone inside, she could only watch in defeat as the tethers grew cool again... as the ring became less and less luminescent...
In a few more seconds all her effort would be for nothing.
*Control Freak*
Her tail and ears sagged as the magnitude of her failure set in. Meri had charged the wards well before she left, but they needed maintenance, and if the Haven didn't find a mage able to re-energize them before they faded, then everyone here was in danger.
And here she was, standing there, watching one of their best chances fade away.
*Because you're a scaredy-cat*
Almost gone...
Gritting her teeth, she cut another line from the circle and stepped back inside. Almost immediately, the tide of energy reversed... flowing inward, again... first pooling at her feet... then, again, whipping around her as wind. Again, her breathing and heart rate raced. She just focused on the tethers... reaching out to them with her mind.... grasping them and willing the energies through them.
The tethers warmed, and she could sense Meri's wards ever-so-slowly growing in strength.
The energies changed again, from wind to... well, something etheral... something that ripped right through her, deep into her soul... and then even through that. Her skin felt on fire- its very surface electrifying- and yet, she didn't feel pain. She felt...
...incredible...
...unimaginable...
...terribleawesomehorribleindescribabledeadaliveeverythingnothing...
Keeping focused on the tethers, she willed these primal magic forces into them. For once, the current didn't drain her... if anything, she felt more energized than she'd felt in weeks... it seemed more like she couldn't expel the energies fast enough to make up for what was being forced through her.
She couldn't breathe... forgotten how to, it seemed.
Her heart raced, sounding line one continuous pound in her ears.
The tethers. The tethers. Focus on the Tethers.
And the energies changed again... now feeling... almost solid... floating in a vat of writhing snakes... no... maybe if the snakes were spasming from electric current. That's it... a vat of thousands of hyperactive overcaffeinated wet snakes being tasered... but it didn't matter... her senses were overwhelmed... or were they supplanted? She felt them and felt AS them as they moved over and through every inch of her being... over every stitch of every injury... over every blistered patch and every cut hair. They whipped around her... and down her arms and into the tethers and into the wards and through the building and she could see it all and understand it all. For one brief moment, she sensed everyone within the walls and saw what they were seeing, dreamed what they were dreaming, felt what they were feeling. She knew of the ones that dwelt in the sub-basement and why Meri's wards let them pass. She saw, felt, sensed... WAS...
... curled up, shivering and puking in the corner of the basement, heaving uncontrollably for a good minute. She couldn't register exactly how she got there, or what specifically had transpired moments before, but she was grateful to see that she'd had the mind to safely... correctly... break and reseal the circle when she left.
Stumbling to her feet... still woozy from the nausea... her mind was nevertheless racing. A quick inventory of the room verified that the circle was still "hot" enough to last several more minutes without her and that the candles could easily last several more hours. Using senses she was only now becoming aware of, she knew that the whole ordeal had bought the haven maybe eight hours' of additional charge. * If it hadn't been for that incident near the end...*
"Some kind of backflow of consciousness" she said, though there was nobody there to listen. Her stomach twisted as she struggled to remember the specifics. "The energies are less like the flow of a river and more like.... breathing... inhaling and exhaling."
Looking from the floor to the ceiling, she paced purposefully around the circle. "There... there.... there.... those six places... and there. Run some cured Essien cord between them, maybe with a few foci strategically placed... a prismatic orb at the center." She rushed back to the crate to jot all this down, her limp growing ever more apparent. First one one post-it, then another... and another... and a dozen more. "That might take the edge off it. Maybe. Look like a giant dreamcatcher hanging on the ceiling.... with a teeny disco ball in the middle.... but it might just do the trick..."
Finishing her notes, she took another swig from the energy drink... only to find it empty... and studied the circle... now just to glowing like embers to her enhanced senses.
"That might do the trick... but I want at least a full days' charge before I call it quits tonight."
And she stood there staring at the circle. Watching it fade.
*Even tougher to go back in now that you know what it's gonna do to ya, isn't it?*
She took a deep breath, cut the circle, and lept back inside, experiencing the whole ordeal all over again, for as long as she could bear... and then a third time before passing out, hunched over a pool of vomit in the corner.
... but with her mission complete. The wards gained another day-and-a half of strength.
(the following snippet was supposed to be used later on, when a new mage came on board. It never happened, but I always held onto it.)
*Sigh*
*So much for making a good first impression...*
Tabby's eyes did another critical review over the ritual chamber. Most of the cement basement walls remained covered in easel-sized post-it notes... many overlapping each other at random angles. The sheets contained sketches, diagrams, rubbings, smaller neon-colored post-its, mathematical calculations, and the occasional reminder of more mundane duties of the Haven. Rough forecasts of aural drift patterns partially overlapped a reminder to try to trade away seven pallets of canned peaches with some of the other kitchens in the city for maybe a bit more variety in the meat department.
Farther down, several paper strips covered in migraine-relief Kanji charms were tacked atop what appeared to be a preschooler art exhibit (Nathan was showing cubist leanings, but Cody appeared to be channeling Jackson Pollack in everything he did.) The only "clear" part of the wall was a spot illuminated by a screensaver slideshow of the kids' Christmas festivities, projected from a cardboard box that appeared to be a hodgepodge assembly of wires, fans and parts from an overhead projector... with a WiiMote, of all things, duct-taped to the top.
The rest of the room didn't fare much better. A half dozen "Tantrum" powerdrinks and snack wrappers still lay scattered about from the previous night's ceremonies. A 3-foot stack of binders and looseleaf papers had been the victim of one of her hasty breaks from the circle and now lay scattered across the door her guest would coming through. The overturned crate that had become her makeshift desk was barely recognizable, surrounded by stacks of tomes and computer printouts. Her computer itself was barely visible-- with the keyboard covered by Meri's small black spellbook and a few manila folders laying across the screen.
By far, the room's largest landmark was the ritual circle... a large salt ring in the center of the room, crossed in several places by precisely-drawn patterns, also in salt. The salts had started to take on a reddish hue, particularly near the mounds of wax that marked the placement of the last-night's candles, and would need re-drawn before tonight's ritual. Above, on the ceiling, a network of leather and string matched the circle's pattern. At various points along the line, small crystals, feathers, or palm-sized pouches were tied... some string fragments suggesting that they've been occasionally moved... orbiting the center... some strange hybrid of dreamcatcher and astrological chart.
The dim fluorescent lights only added to the room's disordered ambiance- flickering and varying in brightness in sync with the rumbling from the room's ancient dehumidifier.
*More of a sump pump, the way that thing has to work. This place never had water problems when Meri took care of it...*
She gave a few sniffs in the air, her whiskers instinctively curling forward as she did. One bright spot, at least. Candles and disinfectant.... well, at least it SMELLS clean...
Another glance around the room and another sigh of resignation escaped her.
No comments:
Post a Comment