Story: Chimera: Class of 666
Part: One "Waking Up"
Chapter: Five "The Chimera"
Authored by:
Hannah Nyland (The Irreverent Revenant)
All Rights Reserved.
Chimera: Class of 666
By Hannah Nyland and Jerad Sayler
I
offer my parents a decent explanation about a D&D game with friends that
will eat up most of the day.
Surprisingly they don’t offer a fight or try to talk to me about my
crazy behavior the last month. I think
that maybe they are just secretly relieved I’m leaving the house and getting human
interaction than to question my motives.
I head out the door wearing the new coat and boots that are familiar but
not mine.
As
soon as I am outside I sense Casstiel thrumming the connection between himself and
I like the strings on a guitar. The
shimmer of magical attention washes over me.
《Are
you ready?》 Casstiel' s voice just sort of pops into my head. I
wonder if I can answer back just by thinking really loud. I move out of sight
of the house when I hear Cass’s voice and see the silver light. I’m too worn
out to be curious of the magic involved this time.
“Ready,”
I think, then mutter it out loud just to be sure, though it makes me feel a
little foolish.
I watch as the interconnections of sympathetic
ties grow large and feel the Supernal charge them, pushing two points in space
closer together. It is amazing to watch.
From Casstiel over a thousand miles away to this point space distorts, bubbling
and forming a point where two places meet.
The
air shimmers and ripples as if a sliced vertical plane suddenly became watery
and mirror-like. On the smoothing edges of this person-sized disk that same
silver light shimmers, the threads of sympathetic connection… but this time
they are visible to the naked eye and not just the Sights. Yes, mirror-like.
The pool of air shimmers to obscure what is framed behind it and then I can a
see a different place through the looking glass. The backyard of a gray two
story house. Despite the time of year in North Dakota the grass is still pretty
green and there is absolutely no sign of snow.
Standing
the center of the portal only an about 10 feet deep… or back… stands Casstiel
in a simple T-shirt and jeans. He holds a familiar card in one hand, the card I
don’t remember giving back to him and with his other he manipulates the invisible
platinum strands that seem to hold the distances together, sending power coursing
through them with delicate finger movements. His he is momentarily illuminated
by that blinding hell-light around his body before it fades. He smiles and motions me through with the
card in his other hand: The Two of Cups.
Walking
through that portal feels like… well it feels like walking. It’s just like
stepping through a doorway into a different environment. The only difference is
the rushing feeling of magic passing through me as I go (essentially) through a
wormhole. I had tensed up at the last second, embarrassed that I’d shut my eyes
before plunging my face through. I expected to feel butterflies or the bottom
drop out of my stomach… but nothing. Without seeing it, without being able to
feel the magic, it feels almost mundane. If you were just a normal person and
you backed into one of these you would have no idea you had transverse over a
thousand miles in a heartbeat.
When
you were half-way through did that mean you were temporarily split in half? And
what if the magic failed? I shove those thoughts out with a force of will and
follow through.
Warm
wind hits me, the sun is close and bright, and the air is thick with humidity.
It tosses my blond hair back as an effect of air pressure displacement (I
guess). I step out in to the center of a ring of concrete border stones in a
triangular-shaped back yard of green grass. The wooden fences at all borders
are eight to ten feet tall and offer good concealment from sleepers who could
see this happening.
The
portal hisses as it snaps shut. The air
ripples, and the space behind me is back to normal.
This
place is different. I can sense this pulse of energy filling the entire
property. The house looms behind Casstiel somehow seeming to tower like a
skyscraper and yet only be two stories. The
house feels like an entity unto itself, almost more like a living presence than
a building. It’s impressive, to say the least.
This is a place of magic, and it seems to have almost a life of its own.
“Welcome.”
Casstiel says, the dimples in his checks turn that knowing smirk into an
excited smile. This feels right.
The
anxious look on my face is slowly replaced by my own wide grin. “That was
cool.” And it was, after the initial strangeness. “I get to do that eventually,
right? I hope that I do.” For a few seconds, my reservations about magic are
happily absent.
“Yes,
you will be able to do that.” He nods, confirming for me that this rush I am
feeling actually holds promise. Magic is
awesome.
I
do a quick survey of the landscape, squinting from the sunlight. No snow, no
cold. It’s a nice change. Although in hindsight, a leather coat was perhaps not
the best idea for this climate. I take it off and sling it over my shoulder.
The
memory of the strange things I saw this week catch up with me again, and my
grin starts to fade. I rub my eyes, absently drawing attention to the dark
circles under them. Since I don’t know how to approach the subject, I settle on
jumping straight to the point. “I’m not sure if you saw this, but I checked out
around town during the last week. Some weird things were going on. . .”
He
watches me rub my eyes and speak, opens his mouth to say something but lets it
hang for a second, listening.
“Strange
things…?”
I
fill him in on what I saw, relaying all of the details that seem relevant. Afterwards Casstiel’s eyebrows are knotted
tightly.
“Okay,
yeah… I don’t like the sound of that slinker-thing at all. No.” He shakes my
head, racking his brain. “Not one bit. Okay the ephemeral beings are easy
enough to explain. Huh. I had forgotten that the Sight that lets you detect
thinking beings would allow you to see disembodied ones. I guess I’ve taken the
more direct sights for granted as of late.”
I
don’t follow but part of me is happy that he is human, prone to mistakes and
holes in memory. Like I was before the
amulet.
He
takes a breath and slows down, starting at the beginning. “Sky, you have
already shown prepotency to three of the ten known Supernal Arcana. Arcana are
“flavors” of magic a mage can learn, and they are not just magic materia, they
are the fundamental forces at work in the universe. All perceived energies and
substances of reality are made of these ten strands. Educated mages relate reality to a massive
tapestry, and we and our spells are nothing more than patterns within it. You have already shown that you can create
Sights that open your third eye to understanding Mind, Space and Fate
magic.”
He
takes another breath and says “Here is what their True Names are, in the tongue
of the ancients, the language of magic:”
That
last bit was spoken in words I had never heard, but I instantly felt their
meaning. I don’t know what characters or language but they were words of power.
They resonated as if the world stood still. These felt familiar, something that
I perceived at a fundamental level.
Unbidden the shapes of strange but powerful sigils rose in my mind’s
eye.
“It
is commonly referred to as the High Speech.”
He
nods, as if to promise he would come back to the High Speech later. “I know
many spells and how to dabble in nearly every Arcana. But the more I have learned about the Arcana
the more I have discovered that they really are the same. That is not a lesson
for you for a long long time. We must focus on their differences at first, and
celebrate their capabilities if utilized by a wise, intelligent, and witty
mind.”
I shift my weight from foot to foot, trying to
figure out where he is going with this.
He seems to catch this and continues. “For now just know that there are
Arcana which help understand incorporeal entities, ghosts, spirits, and other
formless beings. That is what you were seeing. You have honed your sights to
the point where if you look around at the world you can see layers and layers
of meaning there. You are sensing whatever motes of psychic energy pass for
their minds. Yes, ghosts are real, spirits are completely different than
ghosts, think more like Japanese or Hawaiian occult practices. Sentient
resonances. Spirits are ‘living’ creatures made of whatever energies they
exemplify. Fire spirit, tree spirit, hate spirit, death spirit, any person,
place, thing, abstract concept, can be a thing. They feed on emotions,
memories, and physical objects.”
“It’s
complex,” he adds, trying to be helpful.
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