Sunday, October 4, 2015

Chimera: Class of 666 | 1.4.0 | Part One "Waking Up" | Chapter Four "Truth or Lie?"

Story: Chimera: Class of 666
Part: One "Waking Up"
Chapter: Three "Truth of Lie?"
Authored by: 
Hannah Nyland (The Irreverent Revenant
All Rights Reserved.

Chimera: Class of 666
By Hannah Nyland and Jerad Sayler


Chapter 4: Truth or Lie?
25 December 2013
Beulah, North Dakota

“Let me know if I am saying too much at once,” Jack says. “Among my friends I tend to do knowledge dumps in casual conversation. I am the LoreKeeper of my cabal and that means I share a lot of information freely. As I said, my order believes you can share any advanced knowledge freely with your peers so long as they are wise enough (and important enough in the order) to be responsible with it. No one does it mind you, knowledge has value and must be bartered and traded for.  But also, a lot of this is part of the basic mage jargon.  Still, I talk too much.”
“No problem. I talk too little; it works out,” I reply.  I take a sip of my drink as well, then shake my head in frustration. “I can’t believe I’ve never noticed any of this stuff. People have disappeared from my class before too. Not that many, but a few. The weird thing is that no one ever made a big deal about it. But you guys have been dealing with that kind of thing for years. How can so many people be oblivious to it?”
“The average Joe doesn’t look for the supernatural. We have been indoctrinated, taught science as something clinical and secular, been told by our parents that the monsters don’t exist. So when we see something fishy, we rationalize. We want to believe we are safe, to think that there are things in the world that transcend explanation is too scary to deal with.  It is all part of the Lie.”
 “And…it seems that different supernatural entities actively try to hide from sleepers. Take vampires for example, they feed on people, but they are outnumbered an estimated 100,000 to one. With the globalization, digital information sharing, if word and hard evidence was distributed freely they could get completely wiped out.”
“In free mage society we have the Veil. It is the divide between the physical and metaphysical we try to keep intact.  There are forces in opposition against us and powers even higher than mages, godlike beings that use people as pawns. All these secret societies exist which cover up evidence of the supernatural, strengthening the Veil. They own high positions in government and corporations, they can hack computers, mess with memories, and generally explain away anything as mundane. And normal people want to believe the reality fits within their world view so they accept it.  The result is that the Veil almost protects itself, but most concilia have laws to protect the sanctity of the Veil.”
“The rationalization makes sense, I guess. It was my first reaction,” I reply. Still, so many people out there, unaware of the danger surrounding them – easy prey. Most of my family among them. And not too long ago, me. My skin crawls. “And the Lie, you touched on that before I . . . freaked out.” I look down at my feet, and trail off. I don’t even ask about vampires. One thing at a time.
He touches his chest, indicating his heart or perhaps his soul. “The big factor is that the Lie, that is what we call this shattered and fallen world. The Lie is an active force, suppressing evidence of the supernatural. There is a tiny bit of the Abyss in every sleeper’s soul (the Sleeping Curse I mentioned), part that disbelieves the Truth of the Supernal. You and I shook it off, everyone else can barely register the world as it is, we can see the truth of it now. I have cast blatant spellwork in front of sleepers before, out of necessity. I felt presence of Paradox amplified in their presence. It weakened my magic, their observation of the spell damaged its framework.  Started to unraveled it through assertive rejection. We call the phenomena Disbelief.”
“The Lie.  How best to explain it? It’s the Matrix and now you are Neo. Only we can’t unplug, we can only see hints of the ‘real’ world trying to leak in. Ever seen Dark City? Great movie, anyway, you are John Murdock. The Lie is quite literally the world around you. There is truth here but it is a fallen world and most of the truth you would hope to find is fabricated. I will explain why we call the world fallen later.  The Lie is this: There is no magic in the world, there are only the dim and dreary limitations of the human frailty, mortality, and soul sucking business, Bureaucratic, and social structures... structures that are employed in order to keep us occupied. This cage is meant to hold us here forever. The Lie is a system of constructs that replace our free will and what we desire. Money, love, drugs, war, all subtle tools to keep humanity spiritually starving and not looking for the True light of the Supernal.”
“Some of this sounds a little like Buddhist philosophy. Or what small amount I’ve read on it, anyway. A flawed world, enlightenment, the trap of desire. Interesting.” I tilt my head slightly. “But how fight a reality-wide conspiracy?”
He nods, tapping his right temple with his index finger. “From what I can tell, one way. Make your own world-wide conspiracy or support one. Certain orders are definitely trying to do just that, the others support that effort in their own ways. The one way to make a difference is to transcend this place, pulling down and solidifying elements of the Supernal into this Fallen World as much as possible. But it all must be done with care. With magic you can do anything, including crafting your own soul… but now I am talking Masteries to an Initiate. One thing at a time…”
“Ah. Is that all?” I smirk back, despite myself. “Easier said than done. But I can see what you mean. I think I’ll get there, eventually.” With that, my expression turns sober again.
“And speaking of the Lie and the Veil,” He segways, “I forgot to mention, we should talk about Shadow Names.  Shadow Names are what mages use instead of their real or True Names.  Have you ever heard of the occult concept of True Names?”
“True Names?”  I ask. “Shadow Names?” I make a face and he catches it.
“They actually work then?” Considering how today has been going, I should really stop being surprised by things like this.
He nods gravely. “Yes, True Names ‘work.’ They hold power of spiritual beings and allow you to create associations with people. To name a thing is to define it and parse it from the unknown.” He stops, assessing me, maybe to see if my head was ready to explode, or if I was going to have a full-on breakdown or run away screaming.  I wondered if he had been using magic to keep me calm but didn’t try to see for myself, where would I even begin?
“So,” he continues, “to avoid people using our identity or our True Names to find us or cast spells upon us we all use Shadow Names. Mine is Casstiel… and Keri is Persephone. Everyone picks there Shadow Name as something of an alias. You can have yours be whatever you want. I guess just make sure it means something to you.”
The notion of getting to pick out a name makes me perk up a little. “I’ll have to think on it. I don’t want to choose something impulsively and regret it later.”  I foresee hours of research and mulling this over in my future. Many, many hours. I am not unhappy at the thought. “Also, I’ll have to adjust to calling you Casstiel. What made you choose that name? If it isn’t rude of me to ask,” I add hastily. It occurs to me that I don’t exactly know the etiquette on these things.
“Ah,” he smiles gently, waiving my hand in a dismissive gesture. As he speaks I can’t help but turn my attention to him and notice that my mind is honing this attention down to a laser sharp focus while it dissects his speech patterns.  It feels good, the strength feels… right. What the bombardment of subtle information streams shows is his confidence.  “If I were a stranger it might be rude to ask. I do not doubt that some awakened out there have very personal shadow names. As I said before I have always been exceptionally good at the neuromancy and probability shifting. This is a bit different than your typical Warlock or Psychonaut who usually has the easiest time getting a hang of Mind and Space magic, which are the two types of ‘thread’ that are generated into the world from Pandemonium.”
“Anyway, yeah, definitely think on it, it took me a year to come to Casstiel. It was just Jack or “Chance” before, my first Cabal was a symbolic Cabal associated with the Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse and I was the Fifth Horsemen Chaos... but in a good way… it’s complicated. Casstiel is an obscure angelic name defined by Kabbalah as the ruler of the bridge between the Sephirah of Fate and Mind and there I go again….” He wrinkles his nose as if he smelled something bad. “Sorry, too much.  The reason is very esoteric.”
I shake my head in dismissal. “I don’t mind, actually. I think I’m missing half of what you’re talking about, but I don’t mind. I just have way too many questions right now.” I’m still feeling completely flooded with information, but overall I’m considerably calmer than I should be in this situation. The amulet probably, enhancing my emotional fortitude. It’s unnerving, having that kind of strength while knowing it’s not really mine. I frown, realizing that I’ve unconsciously started to reach for the band around my neck again. I look pensively out the sliding door, weighing something for a moment before finally reaching a conclusion. 

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