Chapter 1: Awakening23:12 Jan 25 2010
Times Read: 577
I was dripping blood as I struggled to stand. As I got my feet under me I held my hands a little out from my sides to try and keep my balance. The vampire standing before me only laughed at my pathetic attempt to resist the inevitable. "Stupid human. Sticking your nose in where it doesn't belong and then unable to accept the reality of your uselessness."
"Leave her alone!" I managed to gasp those words out as I fell to my knees again. He only laughed at me before backhanding me down the alley. I landed face first and immediately tried getting up again as I saw him start walking back toward her. I got my hands beneath me but before I could do anything my strength left me and I collapsed back down to the pavement. I'd lost too much blood already and I was still bleeding.
So this is it, I thought to myself. This is my end... I did all that I could, I think I can accept this.
As my thoughts began stilling and I was sure I was done I heard a voice, it sounded like I was sitting in a room with vaulted ceilings with whoever it was. "Are you so sure about that?"
I opened my eyes annoyed, who were they to be questioning me on this? I had done my best, it wasn't right that I should have to shoulder the responsibility in the first place. I'd earned the right to rest, hadn't I? When I looked up I was a little shocked to see that I was in a room with vaulted ceilings and stained glass mosaic windows, the light coming in from them was faint and I thought it must be moonlight. Then it occurred to me that I had been lying on the ground in an alley dying a moment before, how in the world had I gotten here and how was I not dead? I looked toward the source of the voice and stared for a moment. It was me, but at the same time it wasn't. He hung there in the middle of the room, chains wrapped around his arms, legs, and torso, suspending him spread eagle. He looked back at me from behind wild, disheveled hair and his eyes were endless voids.
He grinned at me, "I asked you, are you sure about that? Are you really willing to accept this? I know you far better than to believe that."
I stared at him for a moment longer before replying, "You're right, I can't accept it. Not really. There's nothing I can do though, It's too late for me to come back from this. I'm dying and there's nothing I can do.:
His laughter rippled across my skin and made me shiver with a very primal fear. "Of course there's something you can do, idiot."
"What?"
He looked me in the eye again and bared his teeth in a carnivorous smile. "Get up."
This time I laughed. "Just how am I supposed to do that? I've lost so much blood that I've gone unconscious and am torturing myself with this hallucination as I die."
"Hallucination? Is that what you think we are? Fool. If you truly do not wish to end here, don't. You simply have to get up! NOW!" The last word came out as a snarling scream that seemed to shake my very consciousness.
As he sceamed that last word my eyes flashed open again. My veins burned as my heart began pumping faster again. There was power flowing through me as though my blood had been replaced by magic itself. I pushed myself up and got to my feet and stared in disbelief as my wounds began closing. The power, whatever it was, was still growing and pooling within me. As I stood I looked toward the vampire who I'd followed into the alley, the vampire that had crippled me before I even had a chance to realize my own stupidity, the vampire that was inches from biting the unknown woman I had been trying to save, and anger boiled the power that was in me. "I said," my voice reverberated as I spoke, "Leave her alone!" I snarled as I said the last words and the power, finding a way to relieve the pressure it was under, lanced out of me as I spoke. Here and there around me concrete cracked audibly under the force of the energy, the air around me sparked, and the vampire was flung violently away from the woman. As this happened I felt suddenly drained. My vision blurred momentarily and I wobbled but stayed upright.
It turned to look at me with a new interest. "Odd," He said. "A moment before you didn't smell of magic anymore than the average mortal psychic. Now you reek like a long time practiticing wizard. I think I need to taste you, maybe then I'll understand."
On the bright side, he was no longer interested in the woman he'd been trying to eat before. Mission accomplished. On the down side, I'm afraid I was now on the menu and I didn't even know what I'd really done or even how to do it again. I was as defensless as I'd been when I first walked in to the alley. Are you really? The voice of that other me echoed in my ear. Not really knowing what I was doing, I bit my wrist to force myself to bleed. I held my hand out and turned quickly, leaving a trail of blood around me in a circle. As I completed it I focused my will on it and spread my arms, palms facing out, and I felt myself push energy into the circle. A barely visible, translucent wall of energy sprung up around me. Still not really knowing what I was doing I reached into my pocket for a matchbook I had a habit of carrying with me. I lit a match and began focusing on it as I had on the circle, the flame began burning a pure blue and swirled around me in thin stream like a rope. As I reached forward with my foot I smudged the line of blood I'd made and the rope of blue flame whipped toward the vampire as he charged me. It was then that I realized I'd done all that in a matter of seconds, not the several minutes it had felt like to me. The burning rope began wrapping around his body and slammed him into a wall. It continued wrapping around him over and over, burning him to ashes. The flames didn't stop until the match had burned out. I stared in shock at what I'd just done before I collapsed to my knees with weekness. As the last of my strength left me I fell over and I started going unconscious again. I heard some voices around me as I passed out and one last thought passed through me. What am I?
I came to and looked groggily around. I was in a hospital, I was in a room by myself and the door was open a crack. I heard someone speaking just outside it. "It looks like he's coming around, you can go and talk to him now if you want."
"Good, he's got some questions to answer." The voice was gruff and unpleasant sounding, the man that walked through the door immediately following those words looked like the voice sounded. Ruff, grumpy, and no nonsense. He had a trimmed and full beard marred only by a scar on the right side of his face running from his temple to just past his jaw under his ear. His eyes were dark but sparkled with something I couldn't quite place, it was obvious they'd seen things he'd rather forget. He saw me looking at him and a courteous, if not heartfelt, smile touched his lips as he nodded at me. "I'm surprised that you've managed to wake up so quickly after such a draining and impressive display of magic." This time a real grin touched his lips, showing me that he was genuinely impressed. Then he frowned in interest. "High speed regeneration good enough to almost completely heal you when you were half a hair from death, something almost unheard of. That was followed by some major reality displacement and then as icing on the cake, you performed some very serious fire magic that advanced students would have trouble with. I don't suppose you can explain to me how in hell an average mortal human can suddenly transform into a near master practitioner in less than the blink of an eye?"
"Excuse me? I don't really even know what you mean, I wouldn't begin to know how to explain it. What are you talking about, a near master practitioner?"
It was only after I saw the look of acceptance on his face that I noticed the ring he'd been staring at when I spoke. It was a gold wring with a piece of crystal that was fading to grey after flaring white for a moment. The stone looked like a completely average piece of polished quartz after it finished fading back. He nodded his head and looked up at me with renewed curiosity. "That high speed regeneration you performed, it's a very rare ability for humans to use and for it to be so powerful is something typically only heard of in legends. You were dead, your heart had stopped and you were practically drained of blood. Then suddenly you weren't and you were almost completely fine. After performing such an unusual and power consuming bit of magic you then displaced reality, something that requires the channeling and sudden release of energy. At best you should have been able to make a little bit of wind after something like that regeneration, even that would be pushing it. Instead you ripped concrete apart, created enough static in the air to shut down the power for a whole block, and then focused the displacement to throw a person without touching anything next to them. Even if you hadn't done the regeneration that wouldn't have been too shabby. Then you performed advanced fire magic, without an incantation. That should have taken you at least five minutes to perform with the proper tools while reciting the spell for it but you did it in less than one second, no recitation, and with nothing but a match stick. Something only a master or perhaps a very skilled student should be able to do after practicing the spell repeatedly and condensing it."
I stared at him in shock for a little bit while he stared right back. "That vampire, it told me that I hadn't smelled like I was magical one moment but the next that I reeked of a long time practitioner. But, I don't understand. I know very little about magic but what I know says I shouldn't have been able to do what I did. How is this even possible?" I looked at him hoping he would give me a comforting answer, or that he would suddenly disappear as I woke up in bed and found this had all been a dream.
Instead he arched an eyebrow at me and huffed. "We really don't know. You are registered as a mortal with nothing more than a latent sixth sense. Though after I looked into your file a little deeper it seems that before about two years ago you weren't registered at all, you just showed up one day."
I got a little nervous as he spoke, "We?"
"Yes, we. I'm Mason Aldridge. I'm an investiagtor for the Inquistion. I'm here on behalf of the Council of Elders, the covens want to know what your story is and they're not the only ones. Tell me about what happened two years ago." He sat back as he said this and steepled his fingers in front of him while staring at me.
I shrunk a little inside. Everyone knew about the Council and the Inquisition, though most non-magical people never had any interaction with them. The Council of Elders was simply a council of the leaders of the various covens around the world. I don't mean Wiccan covens either, those are simply religious covens, these are groups of high level practitioners. All true practitioners are part of the coven that has control of whatever territory they're in and answer to their rules and regulations. These covens also police the other magical species to make sure they're behaving. The covens and the Council worked with the mortal governments to do this. The Inquisition answered directly to the Council, they took care of matters that were of interest to more than just an individual coven. For example, a case of an average mortal suddenly having the power of a well trained wizard.
I shook my head at him. "There's really not much to tell. I don't have any memory of anything before that except for a couple vague images that I don't know the meaning of. The doctors told me that they weren't sure if I'd ever recover more than that or not. I was found passed out in a park. A dryad saw me and had a couple of nearby wood nymphs go tell one of the caretakers who then notified the police. The cops came and took me to a hospital, when they tried to ID me they couldn't bring anything up. So when I woke up they started trying to ask me but I couldn't tell them anything. They tested me to see if I was mortal or not and I came up as a plain old human. Since they didn't seem to have anything on me and they didn't know what else to do with me, they had me choose a name and registered me. Since then I've been working as a sort of handy man doing odd jobs."
He looked up from his ring that was flared white and fading again and nodded. He leaned back forward and looked into my eyes, "From what I can tell based on what happened and what you've told me, I'm guessing that your lack of memory is magic related. Some sort of forget spell or maybe a potion. It seems obvious to me that you have been trained in magic and are a practitioner of some sort. What this doesn't explain is why you didn't show up in the registry, not to mention why and how your power was suppressed and so well. It doesn't make much sense." He sat back for a moment with a thoughtful look before he snapped his fingers and said, "That might be it." He looked at me squarely and with even more interest, he sat there staring at me for a little bit while tracing the line of the scar on the right side of his face. "What have you heard about the coven that was nearly wiped out about 3 years ago?"
I gave him a quizzical look and said, "Not much more than that it happened. I heard that one of the covens here in the U.S. was massacred and the clan that founded it was wiped out."
He nodded again. "That's the short of it. We don't know the full story ourselves. Three years ago a call for emergency aid was sent out by the Coven of Silent Shadows. By the time we got to their headquarters there wasn't much left. Even members that weren't at the headquarters were dead, not all of them but a lot of them. The survivors were mostly some students and a few members that were members in name only and only because they were required to be but didn't have any involvement in the coven's dealings. There were also a few of the clan left that founded it but only young ones, a few kids and teenagers. Nobody there left alive knows what happened or why it happened. The only information we've had on it is that the coven leaders were getting nervous about something and were trying to keep it quiet. I'm thinking it's quite possible that you might be another survivor of that day, it might have something to do with your amnesia." He nodded to himself once before standing up and walking toward the door. "I need to go report to the Council. I'm going to have a re-test ordered. I'll be in touch after the test and after the Council has had some time to work this out." With that, Mason Aldridge walked out and a nurse walked in. I was so exhausted that I didn't object when she pushed some pills on me and told me to sleep. I drifted into sweet oblivion while wondering just what was going on and what was going to happen in my near future.
COMMENTS
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Lolita
23:47 Jan 25 2010
Well written Placid.... I am a little disappointed because I thought that this was real for a second... and I had one of those FU** yeah someone had a night like mine moments... :D