Out of Character (OOC):
Chronicle: Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen
Venue: Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition
Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler
Assistant Storytellers: Hannah Nyland & Alex Van Belkum
Light's Epitaph:
The Elementary School
The Elementary School
The following is a short journal entry from a Daimonoptikon recovered by the Sacred Realms cabal and found in a Scelesti lab located in a sub-basement of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science where Light was trapped in 2014. Written by David Ledbetter (Light) and edited by Jerad Sayler. This story really highlights Light's complete sociopathy and how he uses it to do the worst deeds for the Diamond.
::::SERAPH::::
It has been a bad day for Seraph. While coming home from work he had stopped to pick up supplies from the supermarket. His phone rings, it is his commander in the Arrow. The boss explains that there is a developing situation in a nearby town. His particular services are needed. A school is undergoing some kind of incursion by the abyss. Supposedly Guardians in the local caucus are dealing with a larger Seer plot in Austin and can’t respond, but that could be what they want us to think.. The one child who has made it out was tainted beyond repair, the best healers in the caucus could not heal him. His mandate is to go in and eliminate all tainted bodies. A containment crew is on site and holding at the borders of the school., they look grim As he is contemplating the image of Eris crosses his mind. He thinks of an alternative course of action. He dials a text to a colleague and an update to the local Adamant Sage.
::::LIGHT::::
Google earth is a valuable tool. I punch in the coordinates and get a small town called Temple. It is aboout a hour drive outside Killeen. The coordinates show a large brick building, apparently an elementary school. Why Seraph called me becomes clearer. Godric elementary is located right across from a park. There is plenty of time left in the school day. I place a Incognito presence and a seeming of Seraphs face on myself and use the street view to give me a place to teleport to. The park across the street is deserted right now. Around the block I can see the containment unit the Arrow has contracted to unobtrusively keep it all contained. I walk over to the school. The containment unit waits for the high sign and waves me through. I am hoping Seraph appreciates the trouble I am going through for him on this.
I have been in a lot of schools, this one is typical. The walls are brick on the outside, white painted cinderblock on the inside. I step into the office area of the school. There is no one here. I mentally check my internal chronometer, it is 10:27 AM. There should be someone here. I walk into the principal’s office. The walls of the room have her degrees and other awards hung proudly. There is a quark board with pictures of the principle mugging with her students, several letters from graduates. She seems popular. There are old school filing cabinets by the wall and her desk is clean but for a single piece of paper. I step closer and look down.
The paper is a picture of a mirror, gilt edged and black background. In the mirror a blond woman is pressed against the inside of the mirror, screaming. There is the Principle. I scrutinize the paper. It is tainted, the Abyss runs through it.
The whole page glows black to my sight. The woman in the mirror is a single point of light in the center of the page that as I watch disappears, eaten by darkness. I look at the mirror again and it is empty. Damn. Couldn't save her. I walk out of the office, armed now with my desert eagle in one hand and my khukuri in the other. I start to walk down the halls.
*****
The quiet echoes across the carpet as I walk down the empty hallways. I pass a class room and stop to peer through the window. Empty. I open the door. It looks like they all stood up at once to go to recess. I feel more than see the darkness in the room. I turn to look at the paper on the teacher’s desk. It is lighter than the one in the principal’s office. It shows the class walking to the center of the school, to the lunch room. Probably the biggest room in the building. The evil there in the picture feels spent, like it has done its job. The picture is dark and ominous, shadowing the outlines of teacher and students. I do a quick scrutiny of the room but nothing else sticks out. I move on, clearing the building should be interesting.
The next room has a body in it. The teacher has been hoisted onto a flagpole in the center of the room, her dress askew and blood pooling on the ground beneath her. I walk to the desk and glance down. The crayons have done the deed again. The scene shows the children hoisting her up and impaling her on the flagpole. The smiles on their faces are disturbing and two dimensional. I am starting to think the whole place will have to be burned. I move on.
The library is next. The room looks relatively untouched but for the librarians desk. An open copy of 120 days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade sits on the desk. There is a picture on the front page of a woman being put through each of the tortures listed in the book. I see no way of getting her out. I light a match and the book burns. A body thumps to the ground beside me. What is left of her looks up. I look her over, the taint has insinuated itself into every bit of her. She looks up at me slightly dazed. "I am out? Oh, thank you!" She looks surprised as the knife moves left to right across her throat, removing her head. I wait a moment to insure it will not grow legs and walk away then I move on.
It gets worse the deeper into the school I travel. Most if not all the teachers are dead, at least according to the pictures I am finding. I begin to burn each of them as I go, flooding them with celestial fire. A bruise starts at my knuckles as I soak the paradox and begins working its way up my arms. It hurts but I do my duty. This whole place is hellish and tainted, ambient paradox is through the roof. The walls are dripping with taint. To my sight it looks like a painting by a master, a Monet or a Rembrandt and splashed with black wax. I search inward for a moment then release the inner fire, the shadows on the walls flinch and I hear something in the distance scream in pain and rage. It knows I am here. The black on the walls seems to melt away as I go.
I pick up the pace toward the cafeteria. The floor buckles in front of me I see a tentacle speeds toward me. I have time to study it as it comes.
I have seen evil before, and I doubt not I shall see it again but this was wrong on a level I care to contemplate only in nightmares. Children of both sexes mashed together in a boneless, waxen way. Like a mad waxworks sculptor taking his completed pieces and meting them together like a mad orgy, backs to fronts, sides to sides, tops to feet. The faces of each child are in agony, their eyes open and mouths stitched shut. As it moves they somehow remain together but the individual parts shift into new configurations. Where a hand might have been forced through a chest of the next piece it could be wrenched into a groin or knee next. I look at it and restrain the urge to retch. The abyss is pure black in it. Whatever lights these children once had have been swallowed by what they have become. I return my knife and pistol to their other shapes and summon my pole arm.
The tentacle rushes hard and fast for me. I swing the end of the pole arm hard, the axe bighting through a torso. The tentacle splits then writhes. The dismembered portion rolls obscenely back towards the main mass, the children composing it push their hands, feet, and heads out to move back to the main mass of the tentacle. I watch as they are sucked back in. I see the legs of the boy I cut through and the torso in different parts of the beast. An interesting conundrum. I use the time it is giving me to put a edge of celestial fire on my pole arm. The bruise on my arms throbs and deepens. I step forward and slice through a child’s limbs, the arms and legs they are connecting to. I hear a scream from further up the hallway, it did not like that.
The part of the limb severed this time falls into pieces, the boys and girls falling to the floor in individual pieces. I do a quick check. The dark inside them is still there, the abys running through them. The shock of falling out of the beast has immobilized them. The larger part of the limb retreats back into the cafeteria. I look at the five little bodies surrounding me. They are lost. I know it and the Arrow knows it. You do not send people like Seraph, and Seraph certainly doesn't send me, when you think they can be saved. I take a minute to confirm the infection is soul terminal. It is. I sigh and shut the part of me that is sighing off. One of the little girls looks up at me shivering in shock. Her green eyes meet mine. She can't be more than six. Inside her the abyss is festering like maggots in a three week dead cows entrails. She would not want to be the monster she would become. I swing the pole arm hard and fast. It is the only mercy left to her. I roll through the others quickly and move on.
The central cafeteria is gone. In its place is room of meat and offal. The walls are covered in a layer of human. The children would no doubt be screaming if they could. The tentacles of the beast wind across the walls in layers, pulsating to the heartbeat of a never born evil. The floor is still paradoxically clean, what I can see of it. It is that same white-gray tile you see in every cafeteria I have ever been in. In the center of the room the tentacles converge into a central mass, the bodies are closer together, making it thicker.
Floating above the central mass about four feet from the ceiling is a naked little girl. The Beast sits with a tentacle wrapped around her, coming up between her legs from the front and wrapping around her torso once and terminating in a u shape around her head. Wrapped might be the wrong word. She is clearly floating, the tentacle is inches from her body. Occasionally a piece of one of the former students extrudes from the tentacle and lightly bushes her. As I watch an abnormally long tongue swells from the tip of the tentacle and spirals down the length of it, touching every bit of her as it goes. Her muscles shiver as it reaches sensitive skin but she remains focused. Around her float pages of a spiral notebook and crayons. Her brown hair floats around her. She is drawing on one of the pages. The u shape by her head has two mouths by her ears. I hear them whispering to her.
I Scrutinize the little girl carefully. She is not abyssaly tainted. She has not used abyssal magic. She is as pure as a summer’s day. I am a little shocked. The tentacles are avoiding me for now. I am sure that can't last. The girl finishes one of her pages and smiles a delighted smile. She crumples it up and feeds it to one of the mouths by her head. The beast shudders and then the world gets complicated.
Eight of the children tentacles detach from the wall and rush toward me. I swing the pole arm and start chanting. This is going to be interesting. The spell explodes from me and strikes the central mass. The pure fire that I sent blows a part of it away. The tentacles can't seem to find me, and when they get close I cut a part off. The little girl is oblivious. She is drawing another page. I send the next spell at the pages and torch them all. She blinks once confused then starts crying. The voices from the mouths scream. The beast falls apart, slowly at first then faster. The little bodies it was made of pattering to the floor like raindrops. The shock immobilizes them. The tentacles I have been dodging fall apart as well. The little girl is still floating and crying. I don't think she realizes I am here. I cast sleep on her and she plops to the ground, as insensible as the rest of them.
Cleanup is a bitch. I check each child very carefully before I administer mercy. I memorize each face and then move to the next. None are in a soul survivable condition. When I am about a third of the way through some of them wake up and hiss at me. Their bodies begin to swell with corruption. I end them quickly and return to my task. All told seventy seven bodies, none of them older than eleven. Some of them are still fused together, strange combinations that did not end when the monster fell apart. I end those abominations quickly.
I keep the little girl out. Where she fell the crayons remain. I look at them hard. They are full to the brim of abyssal taint and what feels like a twisted form of magic. I get a rolling chair and tie the girl to it and push the crayons into a box with a yardstick. I place the box on a different chair and move both of them back through the building. On my way out I stop by administration. The school is modern enough it keeps photos of all enrolled students on its database. I print the roll off and cross out each of the tainted. I find wonder girl in the roll. Emma Patrica Robb-Heller. I get her address and parents’ names from the database. I also find her homeroom class.
On the floor of her homeroom classroom is the box the crayons come in. It is an off brand I have not heard of before. I make note and put the box with the crayons.
Outside the containment team looks bored. I modify my vocal cords slightly and adjust my mannerisms. I motion one of them over, memorizing his face and use my best Seraph voice, "I need the boss." He quickly wanders off. I create a memory crystal starting from the moment I walk through the door to the building. Eyes only, no thoughts or anything to give away Seraph. While the boss knows I do the occasional job it is easier for the position not to officially recognize it. The boss wanders over. I pass the crystal up. The girls is taken away for questioning, processing, or reeducation. Hell, choose your doublespeak. The crayons are in a magical lead box somewhere. I am worn but not quite done.
I stay with the clean up crew as they go through the building. I keep my eyes distant and pretend not to notice the mingled looks of disgust and respect they are sending “Seraph”. I admire the courage of these men and women. They are confronting the Abyss for what may be the first time. I pray for their sake it is the last. One of them walks over to me.
“You monster. How could you do this? They are children!” His hands move to my collar to hold me in place . I allow it. I look into his eyes.
Pitching Seraphs voice to carry over the room I say, “No, they are what is left after the Abyss finds a way to hit us where we will hurt the most. These children died the moment the Abyss touched them. It warped them off of what they should have been.” He is listening, not yet driven to violence by wrath. I notice the boss walking toward us. “This is the nature of corruption. These were the hope of their parents and the joy of those who knew them. You are angry. You should be. You are saddened . You should be. Direct your wrath to the Abyss and do your duty to combat it.”
I shut up as he considers this. He is led away and the others look thoughtful. I am hoping that will be enough. I still have work to do. *****
The parents are clueless. The father drinks too much and the mother is sleeping with one of the other neighborhood wives. Neither is magical. I probe their thoughts and histories. Neither is magical or tainted, nor suspects their daughter might be. I am gone before the police and grief counselors arrive.
*****
There is no Pentex crayon factory. I run in to wall after wall. I pass the information to the Boss. Other, more specialized members begin looking.
*****
"This is CNN and we are coming to you live from Temple Texas where the nation is gathered in support of the mothers and fathers of the children caught in the terrible fire at Godric Elementary school. It looks like a gas main blew up and exploded during lunchtime, killing what is at this time counted to be about 83 people. The school principle and all the teachers were also caught in what is being called the worst tragedy the state has seen in decades. We will have more, after the break." *****
I Teleport back to the park by the elementary school about two blocks from my house. I look it over. It is no more or less tainted than any other building. I walk back to my house. My kids laugh when I walk through the door. I laugh and swing them around, one by one. Days like this are why we homeschool.
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