Story: Chimera: Class of 666
Part: One "Waking Up"
Part: One "Waking Up"
Chapter: Three "The Iron Gauntlet"
Authored by:
Hannah Nyland (The Irreverent Revenant)
All Rights Reserved.
Chimera: Class of 666
By Hannah Nyland and Jerad Sayler
Chapter 3: The Iron Gauntlet
25 December 2013
Beulah, North Dakota
“You’ll like this story,” Jack waggles my
eyebrows with a playful smile. “It’s a Christmas story,” he adds in the voice
of a game show host. Then he dives in, the tone is calm, casual, but deadly
serious.
“I
know it’s only been three years but I feel like I’ve been on this secret road
for a long time. Three years Awakened really isn’t a huge accomplishment in the
grand scheme of things, but I can honestly say that I am roughly ranked in the
top third of Pentacle mages with regards to raw magical talent. I am the
LoreKeeper of the Five Horseman and Bridge of Souls Cabals and that means I
collect knowledge and stories, experiences, thought and memory. So now I share
with you my experience about that binds us in a brother and sisterhood of
Supernal congress with the Watchtowers. All awakened were all called across the
Abyss in different situations and different reasons.”
“What
was different and rare for me was that the first five of us, my best friends
all the way back to Beulah High School and before, awakened together in a
shared astral dream experience provoked by a dream attack caused by a nightmare
morphean. Our situation was bizarre; our interpretation of our visits to the
Watchtowers was similar to others and yet a little skewed. I have never heard
an awakening story that matched any other I have collected. Similarity I have
never heard of a ‘group awakening’ like this happening before but there is some
precedence for it. Some would imply a shared purpose of communion with each
other before we ever became a Cabal with symbolic team spell-work. The ritual
synergy we could all work when we were all together and alive was astounding.”
Jack
scratches the back of his head and takes a sip of coffee before
continuing.
“Where
to begin? It was the night we were all hanging out a few days before Christmas
2010. Partying it up in ‘La Roome,’ at the Mayor's house. That is the term of
endearment from my Grandpa, who consequently has been the Mayor of our Hometown
of Beulah for quite some time. La Roome or just ‘The Room’ is the newest
expansion to his ever growing property right off main street - a hangout room
as an extension to the garage. Now instead of going downstairs we congregate
there for holiday stuff like opening gifts on Christmas Day.”
“It
was dark outside and snow is starting to fall quiet and soft. The Christmas
tree with all its lights and tasteful trimmings and presents illuminate up one
corner of the room. I liked to commandeer the place when I went home. Ditch the half-constructed ranch with my mom
and crazy step-dad in Wilton and chill at my favorite place in town as an HQ
for all my Christmas logistics. Terry & Bab’s is about a ten minute walk up
the way. So we are close to all the action and it beats the heck out of driving
across the states and dodging blizzards to come home. It is actually where we are staying tonight
after this.”
“That
night I had the gang over for the start of our new tradition – After
Commissioning in the Air Force I would take a trip home every six months. So
far it had ran like clockwork since big going away party in May of 09. We would
nerd out and drink our faces off. The gang was over – Kairos, Prodigy, Loudon and
Nergal. We had been playing Rock Band. I
provided the vocals, while drinking heavily. I think we played some drinking
games that night so we were getting pretty hammered. It was getting late into
the night and the booze was starting to wear down into fatigue when someone, I
think it might have been Prodigy? Got a call.”
“On
the phone was an old High School friend - Jason Ballinger. We’d collectively
drifted apart as he picked up a stupider crowd... and drugs after I graduated.
He said some depressing things to Prodigy over the phone, I mean textbook
suicidal queues. It really sounded like he was gonna kill himself. It was
terrifying, saying things like ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t a better friend’ and what
not and then he hung up. We freaked out trying to figure out who knew someone
who would know where he was. The number was his cell phone so that wasn’t helpful.
Turned out he was at that hotel near Dairy Queen. As much as I am ashamed to
say, we drove drunk through the slippery snow and ice as carefully as we could
in the early hours of a bitterly cold morning, Christmas Eve.”
“We
got to the door of his hotel room and heard something like a scuffle going on.
We took turns kicking in the door for a few desperate moments. Let me tell you, kicking in a door is NOT like
it is in the movies. It hurt and the damn thing, even an interior door,
wouldn't budge until we finally cracked something in the wall and the door
swung lazily open. Jason was hanging himself with a bedsheet from the light
fixture. Apparently he didn't have much line cause he was choking and his neck hadn’t
broken. And like so many suicides in my high school years, he was purposefully
holding his legs off the ground to do it. We tried to lift him and cut the line
with a knife but he fought us, kicking and fighting us off. It's like, even
with his face turning purple, he wanted to die. And when we finally cut him
down he just lapsed into deep sleep or a coma and wouldn't wake up. We called
the cops and acted as sober as possible when they showed.”
“We
got back to The Room, too wired to sleep right away. At this point we had
already seen some weird shit the last couple years. We knew the world was dark
and there were creatures in it. We had already survived the ghost town of Krem.
We also already had a run in with some truly horrible ghosts at my Dad's new
place in South Dakota before he moved back to Minot. Alanna had her girls-only road
trip through New Mexico and had trouble with a human trafficking ring,
kidnapping girls. Then the last straw was when people we knew started getting
their organs snatched out of their bodies right here in town. We also managed
to kill the SpearFinger, one of the great United Tribes boogeymen, and the
wicked shaman who summoned her. So yeah, we were getting pretty good at spotting
weird shit. And it was all mundane skill, just some guys with random skills and
determination. No physic powers, no sights, nodda, all skill baby. Friendship, trust, teamwork. We had become
what we call in the magic business, Hunters… after a fashion. If you ever run into vanilla sleepers trying
to kill you, they probably are witch hunters.
One of those dangerous things.”
I
nod. He had listed a multitude of bad
things. Ghosts, kidnappers, bogeymen,
hunters…
“So
then we started talking about all the weird shit we had seen before. Then we
started talking about all the suicides that had occurred in the last 20 years.
People we grew up with, went to school with, killing themselves for no
reason... Statistically it was higher than major cities let alone a small town
area. And they all had killed themselves the same way. I couldn't shake the
feeling there had been a sinister force at work all our lives. Now that feeling
has grown into a paranoid level of certainly. I now have theories about why we
awakened… and it harkens back to a darkness deep under the ground centered on
the Bakken oil formations and the North Dakota frakking of the last decade.
More on that later…”
“So
after we discussed all the people who were gone and the strange ways they died
it, some of whom were very close friends we decided to crash. Kairos and Nergal
went to Kairos’s parent’s house (yeah at the time he was still living with his
parents) close by to sleep. Prodigy, Loudon, and I all crashed downstairs on
the couch in my grandparent’s basement. Then we had the weirdest dream of our
lives and we would never be the same afterwards.”
“I didn't mean to ramble about everything leading
up to my awakening. Just ask my wife, I
definitely talk too much.” I pause to take another sip while the coffee is
still hot. Jack glances up where Zoe is
entertaining the family and smiles. I
wondered if they were still connected telepathically had were sharing messages
that I couldn’t hear or see. Too bizarre
still.
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