Out of Character (OOC):
Chronicle: Mage: The Horseman
Venue: Mage: The Awakening 1st Edition
Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler
((Jack Text))
Things got dark on the river. Unnaturally dark, then a rushing of water and a roar of misty memories plummeting off a massive waterfall with a long drop. We approached the falls. The only light was the eerie glow of the memory waters around us. The Ferryman said we had arrived and vanished… ditching us and his boat. Man we are just really unlucky with these guys… remind me to lodge a complaint.
Then the waters churned offshore, a massive serpentine and tentacle thing moved beneath the black waters… it was massive but never broke the surface. The Leviathan, the Kerberoi of this realm…. Fuck this place.
Our plan really didn’t survive more than a few seconds, first contact with the enemy and all that. Whips of living tissue flowed out of Loudon’s sleeves, his parasite and personal WMD, and he charged Nicodemus. They had one hell of a good battle formation. Each Denarian had enough shielding, armor, and healing to take care of themselves for the most part. Nicodemus and Dierde stood their ground as three Denarian vanguards charged forward at us. The remaining six… I repeat SIX monstrous Scelesti stood back and supported. Three counterspelled all our good moves, the other three boosted the attacks of Nico, Demon-daughter, and the three brutish vanguards. It was very effective as mage battles went. AOE spells really weren’t concentrated enough to be effective against Masters of Arcana, and the boosting of various things using the whole spectrum of the Arcana made it so you never knew what was coming and how to counter it.
The ritual failed, the built up power backlashed and the floating ghostly platform shook and started to break apart under a titanic explosion. Shattered crystal fragments embedded in flesh as shrapnel. I feinted an attack and then dropped a targeted Fate teleportation spell, wincing at the powerful backlash. It gave me the beneficial mobility that I just had to exploit.
I was not at my best in this fight. When I get around a lot of abyssal shit or a lot of paradox I get migraines and nosebleeds. I hadn’t been hit in the face and my nose was gushing. Nevertheless I teleported everyone over to the far side of the platform and out of melee range as a massive crack split the platform in half. The later half started to list downwards.
“It’s over! We won! Let's book!” I cried. Now it was time to survive. I looked at the cavern above and below for a minute, filling with dread… we weren’t going to make it. There was nowhere to go. Maybe we could get back to the ocean with prep we didn't have.
I soon found out all the differences that really bothered me. In my reality… John, Prodigy was also possessed by a Denarian though he was more pious than Indra he took up Cassius’s coin when it was tossed at his sisters from a speeding van after we defeated Nico the first time. Ethen killed himself before the shit hit the fan. Andrew, Loudon, was the older brother and already a Doctor. Persephone and I had broken up, Nergal was an Engineer. My sister Tori had died of Long QT instead of Shannon and this was supposed to be Tori’s place.
CANTO V - The Sun, My Return
I was gone nearly a year. October 2013. Persephone moved to San Antonio and Seraph stayed with her at my behest as thanks for saving him from a fate worse than death.
We all drifted apart, coping, doing our own things. Saved the world and lost ourselves, one dead, one lost, at least three of us really fucked up.
I am back from beyond, and perhaps I should re-introduce myself. I am Casstiel, and I am an Archmage.
Many people have claimed such a title (many are charlatans); let me assure you that it is not all it’s cracked up to be. It’s not a bragging right; it’s a fricken heavy-ass cross that I am still coming to terms with carrying. I apologize if my thoughts seem random, despite my limiting efforts I spend time splitting my thoughts into parallel processes of six and more often. If has had its effect on me.
I used to be a man, I am not sure the term mortal applies now. Even being Magus I still felt all the human frailty despite all the spells and incantations. But now it’s something I choose to do. I choose to hang on to who and what I am, I hold onto myself lest I be subsumed into the Supernal Truth. I don’t augment my body and mind unless the need arises, I try not to play god. But I am still human… I think, and I do sin.
I was a Mastigos a path of our the Awakened kind, a path of scourging. We are called to the watchtower of Pandemonium and face our sins, fears, and pains. We reflect this in our lives; it is a sprinting marathon of pain, willful perseverance, and self-improvement through torture. I have my own watchtower there now, the edge of the Dark Matter blade is my Golden Road. I am getting ahead of myself again.
I used to be a man, I still am a man. When I was just a sleeper, if we are ever “just” what we are and not a compression of potentiality weaved in fate, I was ignorant to the occult or what we have been known to call the World of Darkness, the Secret World. But everything is true, yes? My closest friends and I began to notice things happening in our hometowns, the stench of predators and time and time again we stopped them.
These were the symptoms of our trouble, not the cause. We were hunters, but then one of the lesser slumbering Acamoth sent an emissary to us which forced a response. The Supernal saved us from the filth that nightmarish night. We found the dark paths to our watchtowers and were Awakened from that night on.
Time went on, the Horsemen Cabal made friends, enemies, and even frienemies. Our worst enemies were a cult of nilistic Scelesti trying to raise the Hellmenth from the bowels of the underworld. We cracked the codes, and went on a one way trip to stop them.
Chronicle: Mage: The Horseman
Venue: Mage: The Awakening 1st Edition
Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler
This is the final part of a retelling of the final plot of our LAST mage Chronicle, which concluded in December of 2012. End of the world and all that, obviously they succeeded. It is chock full of insanity... Also I lifted the Denarians from the Dresden Files to use as antagonists. It was so much fun.
Mage: The Horsemen
Death: Resumption after the events of our doom (Story: Dead Air)
By Casstiel, Lorekeeper of the Horsemen (Dec 2013)
Death: Resumption after the events of our doom (Story: Dead Air)
By Casstiel, Lorekeeper of the Horsemen (Dec 2013)
((Jack Text))
((IndraText))
((Kairos Text))
CHAPTER 4 – The Ends of the Earth
CANTO I – The Ocean of Lost Fragments
Things got dark on the river. Unnaturally dark, then a rushing of water and a roar of misty memories plummeting off a massive waterfall with a long drop. We approached the falls. The only light was the eerie glow of the memory waters around us. The Ferryman said we had arrived and vanished… ditching us and his boat. Man we are just really unlucky with these guys… remind me to lodge a complaint.
Featherfall, it’s a simple spell featured in the earliest versions of D&D. It’s totally a thing on a mad adventure such as this. A little bit of Forces and a little courage as we jumped over the falls and looked for a spot to land in the darkness below. I hate the endless falling forever bullshit as the mist of memories passed over us… filling our heads with so much babble and nonsense. Seraph and Indra coordinated a landing, man that guy always keeps his cool. I noticed the boat vanished when it hit the falls too, guess Moon Moon hit the end of his line.
I don’t know what made me think of it – maybe it was some random snatch of memory, filling my head with a similar scenario from a book I’d read with a crazy mage in a grey robe, but I shouted ‘Featherfall!’ to those of use with Forces, hoping they’d get the reference. I exerted a little will and altered the forces acting on us, allowing us to float down safely. This could have been a comical Alice in Wonderland parody, if it weren’t for the dire situation.
There's a version of solitaire called idiot's solitaire. It can't be won, at all, but it has the advantage of being playable in one hand with no table while falling. On the down side, my cards were ruined by that dip in the river, they were barely readable. Still, it passed the time for a while.
There were a few times on this endless night where we needed to create light. We landed on what felt like sand, but this place was dark beyond dark. Enhancing the light from flashlights had been the easiest way, here we had to get some Life/Forces darkvision going on.
Part of the blackness could be explained by our surroundings. The sand was black as obsidian, the towering walls of the cavern were also black as frozen ink. We were on the shore of a massive lake so large you couldn’t see the other side even with enhancements. Various Underworld rivers pouring their filth into it from all sides. A giant toilet, a basin of soul refuse. The noise was truly monstrous as it echoed off the walls and made a sort of powerful insane white noise. On one large obsidian stone down the beach the laws of this Death Dominion were posted. Once again, some of these were different in my “where” but fundamentally they were the same. There could only be one ship and one captain. You could not take the waters of the Ocean.
There was a tiny hovel along the shore and then this place stuck me as familiar. Loudon, Kairos,Indra, and Nergal saw it too. This was some sort of black copy of the shores of the Ocean Ouroboros in the highest part of the Astral Realms. Here was that scary hovel with the Gate hobo inside.. an emissary of the Abyss and maybe an Exarch who hadn’t made it. Lore is unclear. But who was the Gate down here in this reflection of that high place? The gatekeeper Deathlord? The hovel was abandoned, maybe Nico did something to him as he had planned. We didn’t approach it, it filled us with dread.
So this place was like a reflection, but this wasn’t going up to cross the Abyss, no broken Silver Ladder here. This was the way down, to Abbadon. I walked to the edge of the shore and inspected the waters. All the combined rivers of the Underworld must truly have supernatural substance, especially if you are forbidden to take from it. I couldn’t get a read on it so I Rook and Kairos to get ready to reverse time and dipped my pinky in. A bit of white foamy flotsam drifted off of my finger. Something bad had happened, my mind spell alarms went off. I scanned my memory frantically. Loudon informed me that I no longer had a blood type… the identifier had floated away and the reality of my body with it. Karios is very good at reversing time, bless him… I was alright. But it was terrifying. The Ocean took what you were… as if all people, souls, everything was just so much flotsam on the water, sinking down.
I was horrified. Just that brief exposure could start erasing who you were. How had the Denarians managed to cross it?
Then the waters churned offshore, a massive serpentine and tentacle thing moved beneath the black waters… it was massive but never broke the surface. The Leviathan, the Kerberoi of this realm…. Fuck this place.
That’s when Nergal spotted it, he sent out his spirits looking for Denarians. In the center of the lake was a sizeable maelstrom. A whirlpool disturbance in the water. It was created by powerful Supernal magic.. most likely how the Denarians got to where they were going. So it would seem that to get below the Underworld to Sheol you had to go through the bottom of the Ocean of Lost Fragments. We needed a submersible…
There was some debate among our number. Barter something expensive to the Captain of the white ghost ship drifting on the far side of vision, that’s the way the Underworld wants it after all… keep losing yourself and everything you care about, maybe ride the Leviathan down. In the end, and frankly I am not even sure how we came to this. Sometimes certain crazy personalities digress the discussion so hard and suddenly something utterly suicidal seems like a great fucking idea.
We built a little submarine… I shit you not. Everyone’s spellwork came into play. We used the sand and Matter to craft the sub, powered by mana, Forces and Prime. Most importantly was the Death and Life magic. Keep the good Life in, keep the bad Death out. Death and Fate spells combined to hide from the laws of the Kerberoi… to have another ship on the water and break an old law for a time. Space to make it bigger on the inside, it was only the size of an sedan by the way, and also to make it airtight.. preventing punctures.. There were countless other spells in the Fairy Glade Rook and Kairos threw down. It looked like a black obsidian junker, like the Millennium Falcon meets the Blue Beetle but it would serve. Kairos was insisting on weaponizing it but we were out of time. He used Matter to make the walls transparent from the inside so we had 360 degree vision... extremely unsettling. Lastly I did my best with Nergal to combine Death, Fate, Mind, and Space toward the little sub against the waters of the ocean itself. This was Horsemen ingenuity at its finest, brash and angry, mad determination to live and win at any cost. It was some of the finest spell casting I had ever seen…
We climbed in… crossed our hearts and hoped not to die. The sub propelled itself into the waters and Time, Matter, and Forces was used to accelerate the thing to an impressive speed. 100 Knots? There were no gauges… it was a tin can powered by will.
We were making good time… but it didn’t work out like we hoped. About halfway to the whirlpool the sub “forgot” that it had a spell against forgetting things. We all knew what was happening and tried to speed the thing up. Next our little submarine “forgot” that it was warded and allowed to break the Old Laws of this Dominion. It didn’t take more than a few seconds and a bubbling roar reverberated through the little obsidian capsule… the Leviathan was coming. We had not counted on our spells forgetting what they were.
I’m not sure if this thing was made of the black memory water but its tendrils were darker than the water around it but seemed to seep into and through the waters itself. It was naturally immune to the water’s ability to cause substance to lose its identifiers. How to describe what was chasing us, seen through the transparent hull at our stern? A massive jellyfish with an angry face and a million tendrils? But it was also kinda like a massive sea serpent… and also kinda like a Cthulhuian octopus. It seemed to alter its form and yet remain a sea-monster. It seemed to rise up from the depths below and chase behind, gaining ground. It filled up our vision… a couple of our more badass number threw some spells at it… they forgot what they were supposed to do once they left the hull. We were pretty fucked as we redoubled the speed of the sub. It seemed as if the monster were drawing energy and identity from us, accelerating the water's effects.
As the tight spiral of the maelstrom came into view the same time the boat “forgot” about its airtightness and we started to leak. Some of us got sprayed as we scrambled to patch the holes and used Prime to continually renew the spells purpose, instilling things with symbolic truth. I don’t know what they lost as a result but there was no time to address it. I threw a lot of mind effort into our tiny craft, trying to re-enforce what the submarine was mentally and what it was supposed to do with all my will as that identity trailed away.
We hit the whirlpool and were sucked down as one of the massive Leviathan’s tentacles with inky razorsharp suckers struck our tail. We started dropping and spinning, pulling serious Gs. As we sunk deeper into the Ocean, the stronger the effect of “forgetting” became. The submarine forgot it keep Life in and Death Out. It forgot it was a submarine…. It forgot it was transparent, it forgot it was obsidian… it forgot it was solid.
CANTO II – The Final Countdown (yes, just like the song)
The capsule rocked, half-real as it burst through rocks and crashed into solid ground. The submarine burst open and the space effect failed and we tumbled out onto a truly ghostly and ephemeral landscape. The water was gone, we had somehow left it above. We shook ourselves off, we seemed mostly alright. All 9 of us had made it to Sheol… The Lower Depths... to the bottom beneath the bottom in a place deeper... between the Underworld and Abbadon inside an enigma inside a taco. .
We were on some sort of massive floating rock platform made of a ghostly blasted landscape, completely ephemeral but as solid as the rest of the Underworld. Jack spent a lot of time grieving over the tortured dead we had encountered and making personal promises to come back and do some good in the land of the dead. Now he went to the edge of our platform and was taken aback. We looked and stumbled back ourselves.
Beneath this bit of floating earth was the nest of the Hellmenth. Massive crimson worms the size of mountains. They slithered among themselves, hundreds as far as the eye could see, a bottomless pit of Hellmenth bodies. I have never felt so helpless, so much like an ant. There maws were endless rings of teeth. Out from the mouths shot tendrils of oblivion that could consume a city block with one bite. And they were active, awake and squirming, shaking the air and our tiny platform with the slightest movements of their colossal bodies. The seals were broken and they were agitated, ready to rise. Infinitely high above us was a ceiling of jagged hellish rock. In the distance a few of these worms rose suddenly and stuck it with titanic force. The blows were an earthquake complete with a delayed over-pressure shockwave. But they weren't getting through... yet. The way was still closed. But it was brittle and ready to give.
Beneath this bit of floating earth was the nest of the Hellmenth. Massive crimson worms the size of mountains. They slithered among themselves, hundreds as far as the eye could see, a bottomless pit of Hellmenth bodies. I have never felt so helpless, so much like an ant. There maws were endless rings of teeth. Out from the mouths shot tendrils of oblivion that could consume a city block with one bite. And they were active, awake and squirming, shaking the air and our tiny platform with the slightest movements of their colossal bodies. The seals were broken and they were agitated, ready to rise. Infinitely high above us was a ceiling of jagged hellish rock. In the distance a few of these worms rose suddenly and stuck it with titanic force. The blows were an earthquake complete with a delayed over-pressure shockwave. But they weren't getting through... yet. The way was still closed. But it was brittle and ready to give.
There were other platforms of ghost-landscape. Fragments of Sheol that the Hellmenth ate thousands of years ago. Hellmenth poop I guess. On one nearby platform we could sense supernal magic… a ritual casting was taking place and mana was leaking out of it. That’s where they were. We needed a way to get over there and we needed a plan of attack. But our vision was blocked and they were veiling themselves against the hungry world-eaters below.
Indra and Azazel but their heads together and came up with something efficient and stylish. She summoned a large dragon construct made of Prime and Forces… a representation of the Dragon King Bahamut.
Having developed and performed this summon multiple times before, it had only become perfected with each use – the details, the entwined magics, nothing wasted. I placed my one-time-use-only red summoning crystal at the center of a blue magic circle and smashed the crystal with the bottom blade of Thrymja. “Rise, Bahamut! Dragon King!” I stabbed my staff upwards, the rush of released energy congealing into a massive form above our heads, wings nearly blotting out the cavern ceiling. Meter long claws crunched into the edge of our floating platform, and the beast’s head dipped down, broad horns wide enough to walk on grating against the rock’s surface as it waited for us to board. I pulled myself up and took a position right behind the Dragon King’s head.
We all broke into roles. Seraph, Kairos, and Nergal would tank, being the least squishy of us. Indra would be a step behind blasting and looking for openings with her staff. Loudon would heal constantly. I was once again on anti-curse and fate manipulation duty. I would look for any weaknesses and exploit them, I would prevent the worst spells from affecting us. When those chances came we would exploit them. Rook would also be in a supporting role, fucking shit up with Time and Fate, boosting here and cursing there. Jack would be on counter-spell duty, look for the most vicious attacks and weakening them. We would coordinate via telepathy using Stark and Azazel to help. I threw down some powerful fate magic here, I wasn’t going to hold back even with waning mana reserves all around. If this was the final showdown we needed to exploit our Destiny of being here. I Forged Doom on our Weapons of Mass Destruction, I Forged Destiny upon us… it was all directed at fighting and winning against Nickleheads and it left me drained. Godsends.
Having developed and performed this summon multiple times before, it had only become perfected with each use – the details, the entwined magics, nothing wasted. I placed my one-time-use-only red summoning crystal at the center of a blue magic circle and smashed the crystal with the bottom blade of Thrymja. “Rise, Bahamut! Dragon King!” I stabbed my staff upwards, the rush of released energy congealing into a massive form above our heads, wings nearly blotting out the cavern ceiling. Meter long claws crunched into the edge of our floating platform, and the beast’s head dipped down, broad horns wide enough to walk on grating against the rock’s surface as it waited for us to board. I pulled myself up and took a position right behind the Dragon King’s head.
We all broke into roles. Seraph, Kairos, and Nergal would tank, being the least squishy of us. Indra would be a step behind blasting and looking for openings with her staff. Loudon would heal constantly. I was once again on anti-curse and fate manipulation duty. I would look for any weaknesses and exploit them, I would prevent the worst spells from affecting us. When those chances came we would exploit them. Rook would also be in a supporting role, fucking shit up with Time and Fate, boosting here and cursing there. Jack would be on counter-spell duty, look for the most vicious attacks and weakening them. We would coordinate via telepathy using Stark and Azazel to help. I threw down some powerful fate magic here, I wasn’t going to hold back even with waning mana reserves all around. If this was the final showdown we needed to exploit our Destiny of being here. I Forged Doom on our Weapons of Mass Destruction, I Forged Destiny upon us… it was all directed at fighting and winning against Nickleheads and it left me drained. Godsends.
I also spent a good deal of time on lookout in this coming battle, since I'm really used to Omnivision, and with One Mind, Two Thoughts, I could have two roving centers of attention on field of view.
We prepared and climbed aboard our dragon, riding into battle. The Hellmenth have no eyes, they seem to look with their circular lamprey-like mouths. A few “looked” at our small morsel of energy and one took a lunge. Nothing like having a worm the size of a skyscraper flying up at you. Hell of a dodge. Nergal, who had carefully collected the coins of the Denarians we had dispatched (5 in total) decided this was a good time and dropped a small bag with the coins straight into the receding maw as it fell away. Wisps of darkness shot out as the indestructible Coins ceased to exist… better than the Cracks of Doom baby. A cheer went up among us, Loudon looked sick, but this was a big victory for us, no one had ever destroyed one of the blackened pieces of silver before. Nergal just reduced the number of Archdemons abroad by 5… and the Cabal of 30 Scelesti were down to 25... permanently.
We flew up over the ridge of the Denarian platform, and Bahamut roared. Below was another extremely elaborate ritual like the one we saw at the Hellmouth in Beulah. Multiple intersecting circles of candles and crystal chimes resonating with sounds, magic circles created with light and sound rather than chalk and paper. Something Lucifier created, big magic, Archmastery that Nicodemus would unleash and open the door. At the center was what might have been a Deathlord or some other sacrifice, 10 black swords pierced the limp form (The 10 of Swords here, finally in a literal sense). Nicodemus had already dispatched him and the end of the spell was near… the whole crystal configuration was powering up like the goddamn Deathstar to blast the roof open.
At Nicodemus’s side was his darling daughter Dierdre… daddies little Denarian. She was in demon form, with her hair a massive of long slithering blades. There were nine other Denarians around this sickly multi-circled Grace and they were all in demon battle form as well. 11, not 9… not liking the odds suddenly. As usual Nick was not demonic, just his old self with his tie Barabbas Noose that could death-curse like nobody's business. I told Jack if he could do one thing it would be to keep Nico from cursing anyone.
Indra didn’t give them time to unravel our mount and drop us into nothingness, she landed that sucker and he blasted the platform with Holy Fire. It was too spread out to be effective but they REALLY didn’t like that. Nicodemus destroyed Bahamut with a look, just like that he “killed” the spell with Death Mastery. We weren’t ready for that.
Nick wanted to trash talk, Loudon nearly collapsed as Lashiel fought against the Geases placed on him to keep her from another betrayal. Nicodemus, Judas, Aswadim, destroyer of worlds only got to say one thing before Kairos fired his bow at him. “Oh Loudon… having trouble? The first lie she ever told you was that she couldn’t lie…” Then Karios’s Famine Bow, Forged with Doom, stuck Nico. He tried to deflect the arrow, easy enough to set his will against it with Forces. But with the suddenness, the Forged Doom, and the spells guiding its path the arrow blew a hole through his left hand and went though. That bow's arrows hit like rockets from an Apache Attack Helicopter.
And like shot the final battle was on. If we had ONE advantage it was that the Denarians were over-confident, of course they had many reasons to be. They also had not expected us to ever get this far, even if we had even been able to follow the clues and enter the Underworld at all. Fate had brought us here, to our doom perhaps, but this was the function of the Five Horsemen. Fuck dying and losing, this was it, and we were going to stop them even if we blew up the whole cave and got eaten by the world eating worms.
Seraph, Kairos, and Nergal couldn’t take the three directly, not with Nicodemus and "whipping blades" firing away at them. With the two bad tanks and Seraph the one man army, getting boosted and our spells being countered and suppressed, we were not very effective. My fellow Horsemen took hideous injuries in the first few seconds. Loudon healed for a bit but then his internal struggle with Lashiel drove him to charge Nico again. Karios had to back off and heal.
I was forced to use a few spells that compromised my morals and Wisdom... spells I designed to fight these monsters would never wanted to use on anyone. One spell is based on the shackles they placed on Loudon when they captured him and force Lashiel's coin into his hand in exchange for his life. It’s a Mind and Fate spell that when cast on a mage disrupts concentration with pain so extreme that when they try to cast they instead scream and lose control over their casting. They can't hold an imago, attempting to form one results in agony. I started working on the ranks of the six, we needed to take down their buffs and debuffs.
Jack was dealing with Dierde, Indra was throwing Holy Fire at Nicodemus to keep him busy while Loudon attacked and dodged his rapier blows. And Rook wasn’t doing much good against his three so he backed me up now. He distracted with powerful Time spells similar to Chrono’s Curse and I would drop my Mind-Changer spell on one then another then another. I took the three debuffers down before they got wise and blasted the two of us with a combined World’s Collide which I had no time to counter. The three debuffers, unable to cast, there extra sets of eyes glowed and they charged into battle… now we had 5 in our faces, 2 leaders behind, and still three remaining.
I was forced to use a few spells that compromised my morals and Wisdom... spells I designed to fight these monsters would never wanted to use on anyone. One spell is based on the shackles they placed on Loudon when they captured him and force Lashiel's coin into his hand in exchange for his life. It’s a Mind and Fate spell that when cast on a mage disrupts concentration with pain so extreme that when they try to cast they instead scream and lose control over their casting. They can't hold an imago, attempting to form one results in agony. I started working on the ranks of the six, we needed to take down their buffs and debuffs.
Jack was dealing with Dierde, Indra was throwing Holy Fire at Nicodemus to keep him busy while Loudon attacked and dodged his rapier blows. And Rook wasn’t doing much good against his three so he backed me up now. He distracted with powerful Time spells similar to Chrono’s Curse and I would drop my Mind-Changer spell on one then another then another. I took the three debuffers down before they got wise and blasted the two of us with a combined World’s Collide which I had no time to counter. The three debuffers, unable to cast, there extra sets of eyes glowed and they charged into battle… now we had 5 in our faces, 2 leaders behind, and still three remaining.
Even with us at full strength without getting cursed constantly we were still not doing well. I was engaged at close range and had to summon my Chimerical Thrakath Soul from the Astral in order to fight close range. With some magic boosting my already modest skills I wasn’t doing to bad against this half-tree man with no face and an abyssal whip. “Remember we were hunters first! Tear them apart!” I roared. Indra fought close up with her staff, blasting away with electricity as Paradox in the area mounted up.
“We only need to disrupt the ritual, it doesn’t matter after that.” Seraph reminded us, his voice Shadows and Soul Reaver out, Nergal was doing the best out of all of us until he got ganged up on. Kairos fired powerful arrows and knocked the head off a wounded Denarian and healed healed always healed. Seraph had to break off to drop healing too, but on someone else... again, unharmed. The Paradox Backlash scoured me a few times, terrible muscle cramps, bruises and muscle tearing… shit. It burned cold.
deadpan as he disemboweled one of the monsters with his shapechanging weapon, now a hammer as he finished the swing.
 |
| Dierde in demon form |
deadpan as he disemboweled one of the monsters with his shapechanging weapon, now a hammer as he finished the swing.
We were losing. Jack got one in the eyes and threw one off the cliff but got stabbed in the back to the hilt before I could cry out a telepathic warning. Rook reversed time but it happened anyway, Jack not turning fast enough. Rook kicked one Denarian square in the groin then shot another, the bullets bouncing off the tough hide. I was also shooting my gun, warping the path of the bullets, looking for weak spots in this tree-beast's body. We couldn’t push forward to the ritual site and Nico was guarding it. He threw Loudon to the ground and he didn’t get up right away, Nico’s clothing was ripped but he looked pretty fresh still. The death curse of the noose lashed out and hit Loudon.
I saw the hit coming, but seeing it come doesn't necessarily help you avoid it. It's horribly frustrating but s'what it is.
Death curses ensure your death, they don’t kill you right away. When a mage dies he can throw a final curse, sworn on his soul and powered against the one who kills him. Nico’s tie is like a million bottled death-curses from dead mages all stored up and ready to fly.
Indra screamed and charged center-field, her staff making a forcefield which shot out chain lighting. She got slashed and stabbed as she staggered to Nico’s feet. He laughed the brought his rapier to her thigh. She sat up holding a small ancient Lyre of Ishtar in her hands. The Lyre we retrieved from the Temple of Sin, and it seemed to have the power to harm anything "evil" that hears its notes. The song rang out and the Dierde reverted to human form as fast as that, screaming. Black burns burst upon the Denarians that could hear it, Nicodemus roared with anger and the crystals of the ritual shattered. He swung his blade and smashed the Lyre in half, taking many of her fingers with it.
The ritual failed, the built up power backlashed and the floating ghostly platform shook and started to break apart under a titanic explosion. Shattered crystal fragments embedded in flesh as shrapnel. I feinted an attack and then dropped a targeted Fate teleportation spell, wincing at the powerful backlash. It gave me the beneficial mobility that I just had to exploit.I was not at my best in this fight. When I get around a lot of abyssal shit or a lot of paradox I get migraines and nosebleeds. I hadn’t been hit in the face and my nose was gushing. Nevertheless I teleported everyone over to the far side of the platform and out of melee range as a massive crack split the platform in half. The later half started to list downwards.
“It’s over! We won! Let's book!” I cried. Now it was time to survive. I looked at the cavern above and below for a minute, filling with dread… we weren’t going to make it. There was nowhere to go. Maybe we could get back to the ocean with prep we didn't have.
Spell accelerated machine gun bullets from an Uzi in Nico’s hand found me and blasted my chest open. Seraph and Kairos dropped some group heals. The Denarians charged after us. The battle was rejoined. No planning, no thinking, only the fight to the death. Down and dirty. They were down a few men, the remaining one I cursed had recovered, spell removed by another. No more organization on their part, they all charged in 8 vs 9…
We had only just re-engaged when the platform really started to fall apart. Nergal finally held one with his living shadows and hit it repeatedly with the Soul Reaver.. I don’t want to think about what happened to the Scelesti’s soul when the body split open like that.
Bullets, arrows, spells, blades, whips, demonic appendages… Loudon got back up and back in the fight, Nico stared at him. Again Lashiel tried to take over. He turned around to face Kairos then stabbed himself with his own living whips.
Losing ground, losing mana, losing blood, spells unraveling… the ground collapsed around us into smaller platforms which broke up the fight. I almost fell in to the worm put and Jack hauled me out. One of the larger brutish Denarians wasn’t so lucky. He fell into the pit of Worms and was no more.
Bullets, arrows, spells, blades, whips, demonic appendages… Loudon got back up and back in the fight, Nico stared at him. Again Lashiel tried to take over. He turned around to face Kairos then stabbed himself with his own living whips.
Indra and Seraph dropped some flight spells and we were forced to move from platform to platform as the whole thing drifted apart into dozens of pieces. Those pieces were also crumbling. This was it. In a few minutes we would all be worm food one way or another. You couldn't portal straight out of the Lower Depths, cross-dimensional stuff is very difficult. At least hopefully the Denarians would die too, or at least some of the. There has to be a way out somehow. I think some of us had giving up hope on surviving at this point. I think we were just fighting to fight, to finally settle business.
Some Denarians didn’t get the flying spells up quickly enough, with big group all spread out like that. Some were pretty athletic, managing to jump from tumbling rock to rock. We finally had a chance to win the fight… in time to what? World saved, now die? That’s the Doom after all. It became a game of king of the hill. Wound a Denarian, counter a movement spell, knock them down into the worms. I don’t know how we all made it. My space magic, Indra and Seraph helped keep anyone from falling even while they fought at close range.
Indra and I engaged Dierde and we took some severe wounds from her hair-blades. She knocked me off, I teleported back up. She knocked Indra off and she flew back up. Finally we knocked her off, I counterspelled her teleport… the same teleporting spell she used to capture Loudon, and Indra pushed with forces. She rocketed into the open mouth of one of the Hellmenth.
Where was Loudon?
Where was Loudon?
Seraph, Rook, and Jack were in a triangle formation fighting three Denarians and going toe to toe. Tons of blows and magic going off, Rook fired his gun, Jack slashed with his weapons, Seraph healed and took blows, knocking them off balance with massive hits, never getting hurt. His skin was like Admantine.
We were spread out on multiple platforms. One one Nergal and Kairos charged Nicodemus. He dropped his death curse on Indra and Seraph and I threw everything we had on knocking it down with counterspells as she also saw the attack coming and we managed to disperse it. She rested for a second and then two of Denarians descended on her. Nico parried the Soul Reaver with his rapier and engaged in a magical sword fight with Nergal, his black-wing shadows devastating Nergal’s shadows. Kairos was always darting in and attacking at any opens. It almost seemed to be working pretty well.
I use the weight of the Denarians on top of me as inspiration, and build up kinetic force as in a pressure cooker, reducing the pressure outside, and adding a little heat to the mix. A little twinge of Fate told me exactly when to let the spell loose.
Indra exploded out from under the two Denarians, destroying her platform and leaving them little room to reach floating ground. They flew after her but didn’t look down in time to see the lunging jaws of a mountain serpent overtake them both. Only 4 left.
Indra landed my platform and we rechecked our spells quickly, I had lost my flying spell in the mix. She picked me up and dropped me off on Nico’s platform. Seraph, Rook, and Jack’s platform was drifting ever further way, a Hellmenth began to rise after it. I telepathically warned them and as they began to fly off I dropped my own World’s Collide on the three baddies so they couldn’t escape in time as the worm ate the whole thing.
Only one big platform left… still no escape plan in sight. I reached out with my senses and tried to find some way to push the limits of my magic and portal us out of here. Even if I tried to cross planes of existence the paradox was so high it would certainly kill me... and I had already pushed myself as hard as I could by summoning my blade alone.
Only one big platform left… still no escape plan in sight. I reached out with my senses and tried to find some way to push the limits of my magic and portal us out of here. Even if I tried to cross planes of existence the paradox was so high it would certainly kill me... and I had already pushed myself as hard as I could by summoning my blade alone.
Nicodemus went to drop another death curse, this time on me since I was turned around and distracted. Kairos grabbed his fucking neck-tie noose before he could land the curse and cinched it down tight around his throat, choking the Aswadim.
“That’s enough of that.” Kairos roared angrily. Nico coughed but smiled as if to say “see ya losers” (I might have imagined that) and made with his own getaway. It was kinda hard to describe, a burst of mana and an afterimage… under the sights it looked like he literally vanished into his own soul… I didn’t understand it one bit but I knew it was our only way out. Seraph saw it too as Kairos’s grip on the hangman’s noose began to slip as it vanished. Seraph grunted and sent orders telepathically. Kairos used time to hang on and Rook expanded this moment so we could react. Seraph and Indra dumped Primal magic at this strange soul-vanishing and the opening into Nico’s soul widened. Kairos kept the grip on the tie and was pulled through, we wordlessly grasped each other as the platform collapsed beneath us.
“That’s enough of that.” Kairos roared angrily. Nico coughed but smiled as if to say “see ya losers” (I might have imagined that) and made with his own getaway. It was kinda hard to describe, a burst of mana and an afterimage… under the sights it looked like he literally vanished into his own soul… I didn’t understand it one bit but I knew it was our only way out. Seraph saw it too as Kairos’s grip on the hangman’s noose began to slip as it vanished. Seraph grunted and sent orders telepathically. Kairos used time to hang on and Rook expanded this moment so we could react. Seraph and Indra dumped Primal magic at this strange soul-vanishing and the opening into Nico’s soul widened. Kairos kept the grip on the tie and was pulled through, we wordlessly grasped each other as the platform collapsed beneath us.
When we were getting pulled in a comical life or death game of tug-of-war I spotted Loudon. He was on a tiny floating bit of rock the size of a man hole cover… clearly fighting his inner Archdemon and almost too far away to get to us. He had the coin in his hand, holding Lashiel’s coin over the titanic reality-gnawers… trying to will himself to drop it like Frodo and the Ring of Power. I cried out within my time distortion field, we all watched him. He saw us, shook his head, then jumped off. He had been fighting Lashiel this whole time, and she had been blocking him from our minds so we couldn’t help. In the heat of battle she had isolated him. But I guess he won. Never to be controlled again, fuck that bitch.
There was nothing we could do. Anyone who might have been able to reach out had blown their loads on whatever it was we were doing now… hanging in the air as many gigantic mouths turned and rose up at once. We were pulled through Nico’s reality-defying escape method.
CANTO III – The Wending
This felt like “flipping over” when you go to the Astral Realms. A reversal of orientation, and we landed on a granite pathway. It was utterly quiet, so different from the roars of battle and the Hellmenth's bodies rolling against each other like tectonic plates. We just watched Loudon die… I was about to start screaming in sorrow when I realized we were still in danger.
On this strange granite path surround by statues and simmering portals was our old pal Nick. Also, the whole path was crawling with Soulless. Forgot to mention that. Like I said… can’t catch a fucking break.
On this strange granite path surround by statues and simmering portals was our old pal Nick. Also, the whole path was crawling with Soulless. Forgot to mention that. Like I said… can’t catch a fucking break.
“KILL THEM!” Nico roared as he backed off, wounded, and the Soulless charged in to defend him. His wings of shadow split again and again into six oily appendages, almost like an insect and an extra set of glowing green eyes (the Eyes of the demon Andruiel) opened up on his forehead.
I am almost sad we didn’t get to have much conversation with the guy, he’s British, a good looking guy with 2,000 years of life experience. Too bad he’s such a fucking world-ending dick. Now soulless are a bit easier to deal with, despite the fact there were like 30…. I’m going to go with all of them. All the soulless they ever made were living in this guy’s astral path… crawling all over it like ants. What’s that tell you about him?
I am almost sad we didn’t get to have much conversation with the guy, he’s British, a good looking guy with 2,000 years of life experience. Too bad he’s such a fucking world-ending dick. Now soulless are a bit easier to deal with, despite the fact there were like 30…. I’m going to go with all of them. All the soulless they ever made were living in this guy’s astral path… crawling all over it like ants. What’s that tell you about him?
Rook dropped a time loop in a wall to slow some of the chattering soulless down. Indra sent bursts of lightning in arcing waves through the masses, paradox was not as bad here despite the amplifications of abyssal power in this place and from the soulless themselves. Seraph increased his mass and swung his hammer, knocking them off path and into other soul-spaces off the road. I lashed out with space and mind, frying their brains.
Nergal does what he usually does when he encounters an undead horde (which these apparently counted as such)… takes control of half of them if he can and makes them fight the other half. It didn’t work all that well but he sent half of them over the edge and into the darkness. Kairos was in a rage, he would not be shaken from Nicodemus's noose-tie and Jack charged in to help. We all soon followed suit and attacked Nico full on.
Nergal does what he usually does when he encounters an undead horde (which these apparently counted as such)… takes control of half of them if he can and makes them fight the other half. It didn’t work all that well but he sent half of them over the edge and into the darkness. Kairos was in a rage, he would not be shaken from Nicodemus's noose-tie and Jack charged in to help. We all soon followed suit and attacked Nico full on.
The Archmage is good at cheating death, I can attest to his little trick now. But here in his own soul he can die like a bitch just fine. Kairos shot him in the heart with his Famine Bow. I finally got my hits in on the sword fight and slashed frantically, keeping him off his balance. The whole place shook and glass pictures shattered, soulless howled. Nico’s black demon wings batted at us, almost knocking us all off the soul-bridge. Nergal took an arm off with the Soul Reaver. Nico and the sword seemed to react to each other. Seraph slashed open his neck and Indra planted her staff in his chest, blasting it with holy fire! Rook shot Nico between the eyes and Jack stabbed at his middle. The Aswadim staggered back and collapsed. His corpse bled out on the hard granite floor, eyes open. A bit anti-climactic for his death really.
Nergal recovered the Aswadim's coin using shadows to pull it out of the burned mess of his chest, he must have had it surgically implanted. How did Nergal know where to look? Karios checked the Barabas Noose but it was damaged beyond repair, just as well, nothing that awful should be allowed to exist.
We collapsed to the floor, all but Seraph, ever vigilant. Healing all around, but against resistant damage accelerated healing rates did little because of the pus from the river. Kairos grabbed me and we hugged, crying for our friend Loudon. Nergal bowed his head, tears crawled down Indra’s cheeks and I hugged her next. Jack regarded us solemnly and Rook was at my side for support as I staggered back, my blade dissolving from my mind and the air. This should have been a time of celebration, in the reptilian part of my brain a tiny voice from one of my minds reminded me that only losing one person was actually a fantastic outcome. We had gone from never defeating a Denarian in a fight to killing 16 in a single night. What is more, 15 of them are dead FOR GOOD. Oh, and the world is saved. I pushed that shit away, I needed to feel this. I could make the pain go away but that is not the way of scourging.
Then the inside of the dark dead soul world shook and the path discolored.
“Really!? This is getting old!” I yelled at the starry roof of this pathway. Survive impossible odds just to wind up in another strange and horrible place before it falls apart and we die again. Typical. We got up and I pulled a card to choose a direction. The path we took was The Chariot. Success and progression. The other way was The Tower… very bad. Sometimes those cards get me into trouble, I prayed this wasn't one of those times but I had a sinking feeling. We passed by doors we couldn’t open as the granite darkened and cracked. They must have been keyed to Nico somehow. We should have been awestruck by this place's evil and magnificence. But we had seen so much tonight I think we were getting a bit desensitized. The direction the card took us was to the edge of blackness that blocked the path ahead. An ocean of black water…. Orouboros. This was the Abyss, a black ocean of chaos and the place where Nico had tied his soul. The distant end of the path behind us gave way with a crunch and fell into the rising waters. Gods we were so fucked. So this was the doom… the fate worse than death. Abyssal waters filling up the path and no way home.
“Really!? This is getting old!” I yelled at the starry roof of this pathway. Survive impossible odds just to wind up in another strange and horrible place before it falls apart and we die again. Typical. We got up and I pulled a card to choose a direction. The path we took was The Chariot. Success and progression. The other way was The Tower… very bad. Sometimes those cards get me into trouble, I prayed this wasn't one of those times but I had a sinking feeling. We passed by doors we couldn’t open as the granite darkened and cracked. They must have been keyed to Nico somehow. We should have been awestruck by this place's evil and magnificence. But we had seen so much tonight I think we were getting a bit desensitized. The direction the card took us was to the edge of blackness that blocked the path ahead. An ocean of black water…. Orouboros. This was the Abyss, a black ocean of chaos and the place where Nico had tied his soul. The distant end of the path behind us gave way with a crunch and fell into the rising waters. Gods we were so fucked. So this was the doom… the fate worse than death. Abyssal waters filling up the path and no way home.
Then something caught my eye. A glimmer of light on the horizon in the distance. The tiny light of the Supernal Realms on the far side of the Abyssal gap. Maybe there was only one chance. Everyone else was in a panic and I turned back to them. “I need to try something, it’s the only thing I can think of. If you aren’t ready don’t try it yourself, but maybe there is a way to change the Doom without just overt magic. Maybe we need to change the world, change it so that the Doom is survivable. An Archmage’s curse, and then a death curse to destroy his own dead road. We need to change the nature of Fate itself. Just a little. So… I am going to try pass the Imperial Trials and cross the Abyss. Search your souls and if you think you could understand then try to cross. But if you stay here you have a little time left, time enough for me to try it. If I succeed maybe I can save everybody.”
Protests, but with the abyssal waters rising I starting walking. I drew upon everything I knew about these trials, all hypothetical, wrapped in mysteries, holes and symbolic metaphor. I walked into the empty, walked on the waters of the ocean of the dead dragon and the anti-reality tear from outside. Seraph followed me. My nose bled and my head pounded but I didn’t stop. This place was empty yes, but it didn’t mean there was nothing in it. The Abyss knew me, recognized my magic which had been pulled through it so many times.
I wasn’t sure what I was doing. I reached out for my magic and was scourged by the darkness but I felt it there in the glimmering distance. I reached out and felt the Watchtowers I could touch. The Watchtower of the Iron Gauntlet Pandemonium and Source of my Mind and Space, the root of my path, the Watchtower of the Lunargent Thorn Arcadia, source of Fate, the Watchtower of the Stone Book in the Primal Wilds and Source of my Spirit, the Watchtower of the Golden Key in the Aether and the source of my Prime, only the Lead Coin did I not touch. On the horizon the singular glimmer became four dim lights, the brightest red light that of Pandemonium. I pulled upon these strands of magic that I called down and tied to my soul, using them as a rope to guide me through the black waves.
Things rose up from the water, tentacles and spidery limbs, and they revisited upon me every paradox and every backlash I had ever caused. It took everything I learned about magic to steady the beams and pull through for an endless amount of time. There was no time for doubt or regret. It was either I try this, and maybe others try this, or we die. It was now or never. If I didn’t feel worthy I should just sink into the black waves and let the Abyss have my soul forever. I couldn’t glance back but I knew the waters were getting higher… and Seraph’s walk was not going well.
Just like that, I flipped again, stepped into… indescribable truth. The ecstatic winds were nothing compared to this. It felt good to be consumed by the Supernal Realms, to become part of the truth and the light forever. Just let go and stop this torture of living. It felt wonderful and horrible, I was losing who I was. I reached deep inside and knew my friends were dying, my fucking family. I threw up a wall of pure magic, not from the watchtowers but from within my soul. These concepts are going to be a bit hard to describe. But I used my entire existence to create an external barrier in which to filter the truth. I created my Amnion, the black armor and black bat demon winds wrapped around me again, creating a barrier against the burning light.
I found myself within this fragile bubble, standing upon brimstone at the heart of the Iron Labyrinth extending infinitely in every direction. In front of me my old teacher, the demon beast of latter days, face nothing but teeth and an angular light above his head. This was my trial, this was my guardian at last. No sign of the Iron Gauntlet Watchtower here. I summoned my blade effortlessly in this place of power and we prepared for combat. He asked me a question. For the sake of translation it comes down to “What makes you worthy to come to hell and liberate the damned and the sinners here?” Very Messianic if I do say so myself…
I cannot tell you what I replied in return, it is my truth to bare alone. It was a fundamental truth that I had learned through my sorrow, my loss, my scourging. He bowed and stepped aside. The battle of wills and wit was won.
The redish hell light from the Iron Gauntlet Watchtower dimmed and went out. I drew up my will, my life, my soul, my memories, and let my truth shine through in this barren and blasted place. The seven chakras lit up inside my starting at the very base of my spine and ascending, extending and I grew into the golden, serpentine, bat-winged dragon of old, akin to my familiar Azazel, named after the Demon Dragon. With my talons I held the Die of Kaos in one hand and my Thrakath Soul blade in the other, made both from the mind and the very substance of hell. I combined them and stabbed the blade into the ground at the center of this maze.
A new watchtower grows there now. It is my blade, the watchtower IS my sword and I hold onto its hilt and ride it into the burning heavens. The Tower of Thrakath. 17 Spokes which run up the double blade and the same spokes shoot out in demonic flame across the maze, knocking down the iron walls and connecting to parts of the maze, reforming the maze in a clockwise turning spiral formation. Seven rubies run up the massive tower’s “hilt” and glow brightly. I stand atop my tower and laugh.
My Cabal is downing, my friends are dying the eternal death in the Abyss. Suddenly beneath their feet slides a shimmering blade as wide as a bridge as it stabs all the way through the Astral Realms and back to Earth with a resounding boom! My soul encases them and protects them as they are pulled into my Golden Road, the path I walked in dreams now manifest physically here. My road shatters what is left of Judas’s Wending all the way down its length. His coin lands on the surface of my road and burns somewhere deep inside me.
I can see them from this high bastion as if I stand next to them. They look at this road. The center of this star metal blade is a core that looks something like an Iron Omphalos with the language of Atantis in all the permutations I know written upon it. It is the language of my sigils like Odins knowledge of the Runes. It is the word of how I work my magic. Two metals coil around this inner portion. They look like miniature versions of the Spire Perilous and the Swath in Obsidian and Marble. The ridges along the outer blade are wide and allow you to step off into any of the realms along the path if I choose it. They now stand in front of the gate which opens to the Supernal and along the edges are the Abyss. Here a blue glowing enormous marble cast of my head is the gateway and the blade travels out from the center of my forehead.
They stand at my third eye and look into Pandemonium unable to see it passed the red light which blinds them. If they see it they will be consumed. After a time they walk back the other way… I can’t leave yet.
CANTO IV – Merry Christmas
CANTO IV – Merry Christmas
My friends walk through the gates of my road, Anima Mundi, Tenemos, Onerious, and finally the Fallen World. The tip of the blade comes out at Shannon’s Place of course. A seed of the celestial palace and a Hallow close to my heart. They walk through the arch and appear on the shore of the Knife River.
I gather myself from magic and matter, from dust and energy and appear before them. “I’m okay.” I tell them to try to quell their concerns. But I am not. They aren’t the same. They aren’t how I remembered them. Where is Loudon? Where is Andrew? Where is John? Nothing is right.
I soon found out all the differences that really bothered me. In my reality… John, Prodigy was also possessed by a Denarian though he was more pious than Indra he took up Cassius’s coin when it was tossed at his sisters from a speeding van after we defeated Nico the first time. Ethen killed himself before the shit hit the fan. Andrew, Loudon, was the older brother and already a Doctor. Persephone and I had broken up, Nergal was an Engineer. My sister Tori had died of Long QT instead of Shannon and this was supposed to be Tori’s place.
“But I have to go for a bit.” They don’t want that of course. Only Seraph seems to regard me gracefully and allow it, of course we had only just met. I smile serenely, having a hard time feeling my body as real, trying to reassure them. I can feel another one of my new kind coming to entreat, to greet, to teach and I need to get away from my loved ones in order to protect them.
I discorporate back into My Golden Road, a burst of Mana and an afterimage and I am gone.
Later, the survivors found a crater 12 miles outside of Golden Valley. Almost looked like a tactical nuke went off. Bodies, lots of them. Some Soulless, some Denarians but no coins and even some humans. Prodigy taking care of things top-side and keeping Tessa off our back. She wasn’t there though.
When Kairos post-cogged the scene he say Prodigy blowing up the place and touching down. A whining baby-voice behind him but out of sight calling him “master.” Then he looked at Kairos. Looked him straight in the eye with his dark reddish eyes through the post-cog and with a whoosh was there in the present. Kairos was knocked over and then Prodigy blasted off into the sky and was gone. Paradox was everywhere.
Over the next few months we would see more of his handiwork but he never came home. He had finally gone darkside. And what was the thing that was with him now? That could shape time against the rules? Tessa is still out there too.
Merry Christmas 2012. The Mayans were wrong after all.
CANTO V - The Sun, My Return
“There are other Worlds than These.” -Stephen King
I was gone nearly a year. October 2013. Persephone moved to San Antonio and Seraph stayed with her at my behest as thanks for saving him from a fate worse than death.
We all drifted apart, coping, doing our own things. Saved the world and lost ourselves, one dead, one lost, at least three of us really fucked up.
I am back from beyond, and perhaps I should re-introduce myself. I am Casstiel, and I am an Archmage.
Many people have claimed such a title (many are charlatans); let me assure you that it is not all it’s cracked up to be. It’s not a bragging right; it’s a fricken heavy-ass cross that I am still coming to terms with carrying. I apologize if my thoughts seem random, despite my limiting efforts I spend time splitting my thoughts into parallel processes of six and more often. If has had its effect on me.
I used to be a man, I am not sure the term mortal applies now. Even being Magus I still felt all the human frailty despite all the spells and incantations. But now it’s something I choose to do. I choose to hang on to who and what I am, I hold onto myself lest I be subsumed into the Supernal Truth. I don’t augment my body and mind unless the need arises, I try not to play god. But I am still human… I think, and I do sin.
I was a Mastigos a path of our the Awakened kind, a path of scourging. We are called to the watchtower of Pandemonium and face our sins, fears, and pains. We reflect this in our lives; it is a sprinting marathon of pain, willful perseverance, and self-improvement through torture. I have my own watchtower there now, the edge of the Dark Matter blade is my Golden Road. I am getting ahead of myself again.
I used to be a man, I still am a man. When I was just a sleeper, if we are ever “just” what we are and not a compression of potentiality weaved in fate, I was ignorant to the occult or what we have been known to call the World of Darkness, the Secret World. But everything is true, yes? My closest friends and I began to notice things happening in our hometowns, the stench of predators and time and time again we stopped them.
These were the symptoms of our trouble, not the cause. We were hunters, but then one of the lesser slumbering Acamoth sent an emissary to us which forced a response. The Supernal saved us from the filth that nightmarish night. We found the dark paths to our watchtowers and were Awakened from that night on.
Time went on, the Horsemen Cabal made friends, enemies, and even frienemies. Our worst enemies were a cult of nilistic Scelesti trying to raise the Hellmenth from the bowels of the underworld. We cracked the codes, and went on a one way trip to stop them.
It would have been a one-way trip… the shadow world of the Hellmenth’s Sheol cave collapsing into 144 abyssal maws… the Scelesti falling like black angels. We chased Nicodemus the Aswadim Archmaster into his blackened road as he tried to flee the collapse of his plan and the death of his coinbearers and killed him inside his own soul. The Abyss began to consume the Wending. We were never meant to live, this was the doom of the Ten of Swords upon us. The only chance was to hope for a world in which fate had a different path. A fate in which we all lived. So I tried to change it. I tried to cross the Abyss, following the glimmering light reflected off of the waters of the great Ocean Ouroboros. I faced every Paradox, every sin against Wisdom, every compromise of my soul… a second scouring and then I was back in the heart of the Supernal… back in Pandemonium and facing my own gatekeeper. We battled with will and riddle and poetry of the heart as I held onto myself against the purest of the Ecstatic winds.
I won’t bore you with the details. There was no room for self-doubt. This wasn’t about me succeeding or not succeeding. This was about pushing to the place, the potentiality in which I HAD/WOULD/WILL succeed. Not CHANGING the world but MOVING to a world that already was the way we needed it to be. Remember this truth. I became the fulcrum of that movement and shifted it. I forged my own personal tower in the brimstone and iron dust soil, the sword of my mind and made astral star metal creating the focal point of my reality. I cemented a new star in the symbolic constellations of the Supernal.
My friends were drowning in the Abyss no longer, the road filled the space beneath them. I saw them, for me seconds later, for them a month after they saw me cross. But they were not the way I remembered them… and neither was the world. I had changed something in the Supernal by adding a focus of myself there, and by so doing I had changed the world…. but once again that is a misconception. I had moved to another world. I have grappled with these truths since that day in December, almost a year gone.
The world is changed. My friends are different. Some that had fallen in to shadow blaze with light, others are dead when they lived. I don’t recognize some brands of food. The changes are cascading… minor and maddening. I’ve had to adapt. Maybe I can get back? Would I be dead? Worlds split, run, intersect, and slough off into nothing all the time. I am beginning to think this makes Fate and Time subjective to a frame of reference. There is certainly evidence to support this.
Many of our original cabal was killed or driven mad. Prodigy, mantle of war has fallen into shadow. Loudon fell chasing his coin and putting an end to the Infernal inside him. Jack and Rook I haven’t seen in ages. Indra is off grappling with herself. Seraph and Persephone have perhaps formed something new and strong in Texas. Kairos and Nergal keep guardianship of our old stomping grounds and when they show up they are a force to be reckoned with, they also have demons of their own.
But I am my own demon, my Daemon – I name him Xelloss, the Daemon of an Archmaster of Mind is truly a dark god of something awful which I cannot overcome. A new scourging perhaps.
I am an Archmaster of Mind, were I to exercise this ability to create mind-based dynamically propagating spells I would violate a treaty among great powers which holds some of you chained in your ability to act. For the rest of you I will leave it at two words: Pax Arcana. Perhaps there will come a time when I need to do that. I am also a Master of Space, Fate, Prime, and have advanced understanding of Spirit.
When under true dire threat, I quite literally vanish inside my own soul. When I come back I am crafting a body, a residual self-image, out of supernal truth and collected matter. I can die… its just hard, like many of you. My body really isn’t me… I am my soul, I am my watchtower. You can see why I have a hard time feeling human. When you can proxy into at least six places at once and make yourself smarter than Einstein and have no real body except when you want to have one it sort of fucks with that human frame of reference thingy again.
Before I shifted dimensions by toying with the truth of reality (ugh, what an arrogant and horrible thing to say and a greater sin to do), Indra, Nergal, and I created a Virtual Intelligence called STARK. Many of you have decided to employ him on your mobile devices. He is a powerful investigative tool. He is what makes it so easy to coordinate.
I won’t bore you with the details. There was no room for self-doubt. This wasn’t about me succeeding or not succeeding. This was about pushing to the place, the potentiality in which I HAD/WOULD/WILL succeed. Not CHANGING the world but MOVING to a world that already was the way we needed it to be. Remember this truth. I became the fulcrum of that movement and shifted it. I forged my own personal tower in the brimstone and iron dust soil, the sword of my mind and made astral star metal creating the focal point of my reality. I cemented a new star in the symbolic constellations of the Supernal.
My friends were drowning in the Abyss no longer, the road filled the space beneath them. I saw them, for me seconds later, for them a month after they saw me cross. But they were not the way I remembered them… and neither was the world. I had changed something in the Supernal by adding a focus of myself there, and by so doing I had changed the world…. but once again that is a misconception. I had moved to another world. I have grappled with these truths since that day in December, almost a year gone.
The world is changed. My friends are different. Some that had fallen in to shadow blaze with light, others are dead when they lived. I don’t recognize some brands of food. The changes are cascading… minor and maddening. I’ve had to adapt. Maybe I can get back? Would I be dead? Worlds split, run, intersect, and slough off into nothing all the time. I am beginning to think this makes Fate and Time subjective to a frame of reference. There is certainly evidence to support this.
Many of our original cabal was killed or driven mad. Prodigy, mantle of war has fallen into shadow. Loudon fell chasing his coin and putting an end to the Infernal inside him. Jack and Rook I haven’t seen in ages. Indra is off grappling with herself. Seraph and Persephone have perhaps formed something new and strong in Texas. Kairos and Nergal keep guardianship of our old stomping grounds and when they show up they are a force to be reckoned with, they also have demons of their own.
But I am my own demon, my Daemon – I name him Xelloss, the Daemon of an Archmaster of Mind is truly a dark god of something awful which I cannot overcome. A new scourging perhaps.
I am an Archmaster of Mind, were I to exercise this ability to create mind-based dynamically propagating spells I would violate a treaty among great powers which holds some of you chained in your ability to act. For the rest of you I will leave it at two words: Pax Arcana. Perhaps there will come a time when I need to do that. I am also a Master of Space, Fate, Prime, and have advanced understanding of Spirit.
When under true dire threat, I quite literally vanish inside my own soul. When I come back I am crafting a body, a residual self-image, out of supernal truth and collected matter. I can die… its just hard, like many of you. My body really isn’t me… I am my soul, I am my watchtower. You can see why I have a hard time feeling human. When you can proxy into at least six places at once and make yourself smarter than Einstein and have no real body except when you want to have one it sort of fucks with that human frame of reference thingy again.
Before I shifted dimensions by toying with the truth of reality (ugh, what an arrogant and horrible thing to say and a greater sin to do), Indra, Nergal, and I created a Virtual Intelligence called STARK. Many of you have decided to employ him on your mobile devices. He is a powerful investigative tool. He is what makes it so easy to coordinate.
I was gone nearly a year learning the ropes from another Traveler. Now I have returned to you.
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