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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