Awaken
2011
Chronicle OneTraffic. Garnet hated it with a passion. Cars were in every direction, caging her in uncomfortably. The smell of a thousand different exhaust fumes made her nostrils flare in disgust as she impatiently tapped her fingers against the smooth metal of her motorcycle handlebars. Her dark hair had been tied back, away from her face. It was safer than letting it spill over her face when she was driving and she refused to so much as touch a motorcycle helmet.
The blood coloured light simply would not shift, though she could have sworn she had been sitting there for the best part of three minutes. It was the late evening, it was winter and she was cold. Three things that should never have been brought together.
I cannot afford to be late again, she considered as she continued to stare down the traffic lights. Somewhere close by, she heard some idiot driver strike their horn six or seven times in a row. She felt her fingers curl in disgust. Fucking sleepers. All they do is wander around in a stupor whilst the rest of us are left defending them left right and centre.
December had approached hard and fast, bringing with it the scent of festive joy and Christmas celebration. That and high consumerism, with every shop she had passed being decorated in green and red with reindeer and jolly fat men and snowmen beaming grotesquely from each any every window. The Sleepers loved this time of year, or at least most of them did. Before she had awakened, Garnet had too, but in the four years since she had been released from her slumber, she had lost touch with the happenings of the fallen world. Her new world kept her far busier; perhaps busier than she would have liked to have been.
Still, the light would not budge and by now Garnet had suffered overmuch. The temptation to use magic was growing on her, but even someone as ready to take a risk as she would not dare to call on the supernal powers in front of so many sleepers. If they saw her power, their curse could warp it, turn it against her, or worse conjure terrible beings from the dark abyss beyond the Fallen World. Neither was desirable.
She edged forwards and wove to the left of the car in front of her, pushing her way past it and narrowly avoiding the wing mirror. She continued to creep forwards, gradually slipping closer to the front of the queue when she heard the distinctly grating click of a car window being lowered.
'Hey, arsehole, get back in line!' came a common, nondescriptly middle-aged voice.
Garnet ignored him and continued forwards.
'I'm talking to you!' the voice nagged at her ear.
Knowing that he was about to call her again, Garnet invoked a well-practiced spell and twisted the sound of her voice so that she could not hear even the quietest whisper, all without moving a muscle. Such an act of magic was subtle, working with the physical laws that the sleepers seemed to know so well. Without cause to believe that there was magic, the sleepers could not threaten the safety and certainty that usually went hand in hand with her using her powers.
She continued forwards, slithering through the gaps in the traffic, of which there were few, until she had made her way to the front. The light remained its mocking stain of red as she edged up to the line. The road before her was completely clear, no reason why the light should have held up so many people. Cursing the sleepers yet again, she invoked more of her power. It was slightly more risky, doing such a thing in front of so many agitated sleepers, but the moment her will struck the traffic lights and tasted the electrical signals that buzzed within and altered them to her desires so that the red stain faded and was replaced with an emerald glow, she felt nothing but floods of relief from the drivers behind her.
Her motorcycle engine revved heavily as she sped forwards, her heart slightly up-tempo from the worry that a mortal might have suspected something of her. Once she was a few streets away, she had relaxed and was humming a tune under her breath as she darted across the tarmac of the busy city streets. Twice she almost rode down a careless pedestrian, but she was no stranger to driving and swerved aside at the last minute both times, unwilling to allow the fools to get away without a minor helping of stress.
She arrived at the foot of the church steps a few minutes later. It was an old building. Tall and looming, built from old grey stone, now a darker colour, and tinted with age. Ivy had been allowed to lazily droop over its walls and the wood of the front door looked to crumble to dust at the slightest touch. Naturally, this building had few visitors nowadays, considering the state it was in.
A woman stood by the doors, her eyes searching left and right in a restless fashion. Long dark hair spilling down her back and a warm, fur-lined coat wrapped tightly around her slender, reasonably average height, build. As soon as she saw the motorcycle, her posture stiffened and she gracefully descended the steps and approached the curb.
Garnet could scarcely discern the other's face in the dark, instead seeing little more than a black shape, unlike a face or a head considering the length of the woman's hair. She twisted the key of her ride and dismounted, drawing the other woman into an embrace which persisted for several seconds before releasing her.
'Amethyst,' she greeted her after a few long moments of irritating silence. 'I was expecting to meet you inside,' she gesticulated toward the doors, 'I thought that the streets made you nervous at night.'
'I can look after myself, Garnet,' Amethyst shook her head in a mock disdain. 'There are more important things to be worrying about, you know that. We have to move quickly if we are to be of any use to the cause both of us owe our Awakening to.'
'What does the uptight lord wish of us this time?' Garnet sighed, irked by the invasive manner of her duties. 'Is it really worth-while, or has he been spinning his infectious dramatization of our work once again?' She held up a hand when she saw the other was about to protest. 'Don't bother telling me he doesn't do it, we both know he does!'
'Don't speak of Larimar that way, especially not here! He probably heard every word you said and he won't be happy with either of us now!' she sighed and shook her head. Amethyst shrugged. 'It is more important than simply collecting another book! The Sapphire thinks that another is soon to awaken, that our family will have a new child to attend to!'
'I honestly don't know why you're so excited,' Garnet muttered whilst flexing her fingers. 'Our family is big enough already. We have enough to defend ourselves from outsiders. Lazuli and myself are the greatest of defenders, no matter what The Sapphire or Larimar may say!'
'From a renegade mage or a small group we might be able to defend ourselves. Even if a small coven of Vampires entered into our territory, we could probably beat them back. But even you have to admit that if one of the Orders came for us, we'd be screwed!'
Garnet shook her head. 'Let them come for us if they want to! Our Sanctum is well hidden!'
'Well, when the Mysterium come looking for us, I'm sure that their best spies could combine their might to overthrow even The Sapphire's protective magics! I'd also like to see you hold your own against a gang of Adamantine Arrow agents, see how long you last before their tactics reduce you to a puddle of ash.' Amethyst held Garnet's gaze and then offered her a wink.
'I'm sorry, I was under the impression that we were in a hurry, I had to use magic to get here so quickly and now we're just arguing?' Garnet understood her friend's point with crystalline clarity. If one of the Orders came for them, no reason that they should but if they did, then there would be little hope of their little Sanctum remaining undiscovered for very long. As soon as it was found, she was sure that the bigger organisations would be climbing over one another to recruit them.
'You're right!' Amethyst glanced at her watch and then her face morphed into a panicked state. 'Larimar is going to be in such a mood of we don't get a move on soon! Come on, we'd better be on our way if we're going to get there time!'
'Wait a second…'
'We don't have a second,' Amethyst snapped, though not vindictively.
'You've got to tell me where I am going first,' Garnet sighed.
'Oh! Right!' She reached forwards and pressed two of her fingers to Garnet's left temple, information and knowledge seeping between them and then settling in both minds.
She nodded, a mental map now clearly formulated in her mind. 'Are we both taking the bike?'
'Looks like it…' Amethyst shrugged.
Together they settled aboard the motorcycle and Garnet flipped the key and they were off, shooting across the city roads, snaking between cars and busses and another flock of wayward pedestrians. As she sped towards them, Garnet heard Amethyst gasp and then release her breath as soon as they had passed the common cattle without having harmed any of them.
As their journeyed continued, the city became more and more grim, eventually passing into what was unofficially known as the city slum. Even the streetlamps where shoddy, casting uneven streaks of light across the cracked pavements and uneven road. On the streets, suspicious characters walked past, their beady eyes scraping across the pair as they hurried along.
Then, they arrived. Garnet shifted towards the pavement and helped Amethyst dismount as she locked her vehicle. As she stood up, a man in a worn jacked shuffled past, meeting her eye as he did so. His mouth lopped open, revealing a maw of broken teeth, twisted into a menacing smile. Garnet's eyes hardened and her lip curled as he came closer. The man cowed, eyes sinking to the earth as he slunk away.
'I don't like this place,' Amethyst muttered, her voice only loud enough to be heard.
'It's a shit-hole, I'd worry if you liked it,' Garnet replied, far louder. A couple of the passers-by glanced up, but they quickly looked away again when she reached into her boot and pulled out a knife, its blade glinting in the lamp-light. 'So, where is out prey my fellow hunter?'
Amethyst, obviously more than a little intimidated, offered a nervous grin. 'It's this building, flat number seven, or that's what Larimar told me.'
'And he is obviously never wrong now is he?' Garnet walked up to the building and gave the door a slight push. It groaned slightly but then held fast, refusing to move any further. Bracing her shoulder, she rammed into it and drove a massive crack into the wood-work, though the door then opened without further complaint.
She was met with a gloomy hallway that stank of something she could only describe as social rot. That people actually lived in places like this (where the walls were as solid as paper and the air itself was rank with the scents of human waste and animal fur) was sickening. She edged her way into the hall, her blade held in front of her. Her four awakened years had taught her never to let her guard down outside of the Sanctum.
Garnet's knowledge of spirit magic was great and as an instinct she constantly probed the unseen world around her for any sign of spiritual movement. Some, including Amethyst and even Lazuli had called her paranoid. But at that moment, she was more than pleased that she had ignored them all.
The spirit slipped through the wall invisibly, or so it thought, before taking solid shape. It was an oddity to say the least, looking like a cloud of gaseous blood with eyes and teeth and odd, tentacle shapes writhing from its core. Spirits of murder always looked alien to a human eye, even to a Mage who had killed before.
It lunged for her. A tentacle snapped out, narrowly avoiding her head as she ducked out of the way and made a couple of quick slashes with her blade, to no avail. The shivering cloud twisted and lunged again, this time it was fast enough to throw her backwards, spiritual force shimmering throughout her entire body. Garnet felt the world revolve around her and then she was on the ground, pain ripping across her back.
She was up again and flailing the blade wildly, trying to block out the sound of a concerned Amethyst behind her. She nicked a tentacle and drew forth a howl from the aberrant monster, which then swarmed towards her, its many maws snapping hungrily.
Feeling one of its incisors make a shallow rip on her right bicep, Garnet leapt backwards and wove an imago in her mind. Power coursed from her soul as she threw her will against the spirit's own desires, commanding it to flee from her and never return. She felt the mist of her magic being to seep into the waters of the spirit's being and for a moment felt victory within her grasp. Then, she met an iron wall, another's will, a third party. This spirit had not simply drifted here from the shadow realm. It had been called and set against them deliberately.
Garnet was more than a little angry at the audacity of this enemy mage. With her family, she was known to be an Adept in the Arcanum of Spirit, an authority on such power. She formed another imago in her mind and flooded it with power. Instinct brought her hand up and from the centre of her palm spewed a terrible web of black and grey and navy blue which enveloped the bloody cloud and drew screams from its very essence as the fibre of its being was torn and rent asunder under her will.
As she felt the monster's essence fade across the gauntlet that separated the Fallen World from the Realm of Shadow, Garnet felt great relief wash over her, but only for a second. Whoever called that spirit here and bade it to attack me is almost certainly nearby. It would be a mighty feat to have set a spirit on her from afar and the caster would have undoubtedly had to have used sympathetic magic, using a link to her in order to channel the spell. Such a spell would be difficult without her name. That was the core reason why she and her fellows went around with such drammatic, and themed, names. Garnet shivered slightly.
Amethyst came up behind her and placed a hand on her shoulder, comforting her. 'What was that thing?' she asked, her voice dripping with concern. 'It wasn't of this world, was it?'
'Indeed not,' Garnet took a few deep breaths. 'Spirit of murder, summoned from across the Gauntlet and ordered to attack us or, more specifically, ordered to attack me.' Her fingers coiled tighter around her knife. 'They're likely still here, the caster I mean…the mage that summoned that aberration.'
'Then it seems our mission has been altered slightly,' Amethyst's face became one of fierce determination. 'We must find the one who stirs in their sleep and we must take the life of the one who summoned this monster!' She looked up into Garnet's impartial face. 'I know you feel the same way. You are of the Path of Ecstasy, a Shaman of Thyrsus! Your name is carved on the Watchtower of the Stone Book!'
'I know,' Garnet answered coolly. A Mage's path was their only root to power, their link to the supernal realms in which magic still existed. Each spell called down this world and superimposed it on the torn fabric of reality that earth had become since "the sundering", when Ancient Mages had literally broken the world in their wars. But five paths remained open, each path attuned to two of the ten ancient Arcanum, the schools of power as worked my the mages of the Fallen World. As every other mage, Garnet had been drawn to one of the supernal realms upon her moment of awakening. For her, it had been the Primal Wilds, the realm of beasts. There, she had written her name upon the walls of its ancient watchtower, thus forever binding her to the realms of magic and gaining particular insight into the arcana of life and of spirit.
Amethyst had done the same, though her soul had not visited the Primal Wilds, nor had it singed itself to the walls of the Watchtower of the Stone Book. No, she was not a Shaman but an Enchanter. She had instead walked the Path of the Thistle to the realm of Arcadia, home of the Fey. There she pledged herself to the watchtower of the Lunargent Thorn. Arcadia granted her the link to magic, and gave her greater insights into the Arcana of Time and Fate.
'Have you not always told me that those who walk the Path of Ecstasy have a sacred duty to ensure that life in the Fallen World is protected and that the spirits are honoured or bound beyond the Gauntlet? Do you not always stress the fundamental importance of staying true to the causes of our Paths? When Larimar told us that our path was fixed, what did you say?'
Garnet sighed. 'I told him that we had chosen it, a choice made deep in our souls. I told him that we therefore have a duty to uphold the tenants of our paths, not to shape our own futures by rejecting what we freely agreed to, whether we believe we freely agreed to it or not.'
'Then we must face this abhorrent creature!' Amethyst decided. And that was that.
Together, they probed through the apartments, utterly silent. The locks came undone easily enough; once Amethyst had worked some of her underhanded magic to jiffy them open. Though each apartment was furnished and obviously lived in, there were no sleepers in the house, nor were there any awakened souls.
Then Garnet came to the door to a room on the top floor, from the other side of which she could sense a pulsing rhythm, obviously spawned from magical intrusion. Then there was a sound, like a thud only louder and more…metallic? Garnet could hesitate no longer, her curiosity and desire for revenge were too powerful for her to resist.
One hand grasped the handle. The other, her knife. She twisted and pushed the door open, springing into the room with a ready blade. With rapid pulse and ready will, her eyes darted about, looking for her target, the mage she would be killing.
What she found on the other side of that door was not a sight for the faint of heart.
Corpses.
Four of them.
They were bruised and battered, laying across the floorboards in unnatural poses. There was blood too, covering all surfaces. Bile rose on Garnet's throat, though she pushed it back down and hardened her face as her eyes came to rest upon the two living people still in the room. The first was a girl, of similar age to Garnet herself, collapsed in a heap on the floor. However, it was the second person Garnet was more concerned about.
The man was of reasonable height with short, black hair and eyes so dark they unnerved her to even look upon. He was grinning, though it was no natural expression, but one filled with wrath and malice and cruelty, all wrapped up in that simple angle of his lips.
'A fellow traveller to the Primal Wild,' the man grinned. 'Do you know the fastest way to get there? Die, and hope your soul drifts there once your body is broken and empty!' His smile became a sneer, far more natural though still filled with most unnatural emotions than Garnet cared to consider.
She felt the spirit shift through the wall behind her. Yet, she did nothing. Her body would not move, pain rent her senses when she tried to call her will. No spell would wander the tense corridors of her mind as this spirit, a foe she could not see, for it was behind her, reached forwards and touched her skin, chilling her to the bone. Amethyst, her mind called out, though she knew her friend could not hear her.
Her vision began to spin, the spirit was feasting or draining her or something for her strength was seeping away towards the lethargic spectre. Curses flew through her mind, though she still found herself unable to call her will. Unable to think or feel. Numbness spread throughout her bones and her arms went limp, the blade crashing to the floor.
Then there was movement behind her and a bang ripped through the air. Then another, then another. She heard a yell and something that sounded like a deep exhalation. Feeling washed back over her, pain and weariness mostly. She looked up to see Amethyst crossing the room, a pistol in her hand. She went over to the collapsed girl and helped her to her feet.
Garnet smiled, then the weight of thinking and perceiving became too much and she fell into a deep abyss of darkness, glad for the comfort.