I decided to make this one it's own story, sense I seem to actually be finishing it.
Enjoy.
In this fateful hour,
All heaven with it's power.
The sun with it's brightness,
The snow with it's whiteness,
The fire with all the strength it hath.
The lightning with it's rapid wrath,
The winds with their swiftness,
The sea with it's deepness,
The rocks with their steepness,
The earth with it's starkness,
All these I place between myself,
And the powers of darkness!
Snow Blackwood was a level five blackmaster, the leading researcher of major curses, a professional summoner of minor demons, and a man with a particular gift for the art of voodoo. He was currently teaching Magical Defense Tactics at the University of Sorcerers in Dublin, Ireland, with a side job as a consultant of the magical arts for the Irish Sanctuary's few detectives.
He was also a very bad man.
Valkyrie could see him from her vantage point atop the University's gymnasium, peering through the skylight. His long, brown hair was pulled back in a pony tail, and his sharp features and dark eyes looked drawn and haggard. The long, black cloak he wore trailed to the floor in a dramatic, sweeping wave that put an air of mystery about him that he wouldn't normally posses, and looked strange and out of place in the modern day gym.
"The blackmasters, you see, were the original practitioners of the dark arts," Whispered Skulduggery, crouched down besides her and peering at the odd seen below them. "They are the ones that gave magic a bad name, with all the demon summoning and curses. They rely mostly on objects and talismans to focus their magic, and a particular favorite of theirs over the last couple hundred years is using circles and pentagrams to halt magical energy, as is displayed by our good friend, Mr. Blackwood."
Blackwood did, indeed, have both a pentagram and a circle laid out on the floor, three of them, in fact, overlapping each other, with a lot more than that. There were candles of varying height, the only source of light in the shadowy room, shards of glass and seashells hanging suspended from the ceiling, strange objects that Valkyrie didn't even recognize, all arranged in complicated patterns barely detectable to the eye.
"This is a major summoning circle, probably used to call up demonic demigods and archangels, things like that." Skulduggery cocked his skull at an angle that Valkyrie took to be confused, and studied the complicated assortment of magic laid out on the gym floor. "All that other stuff could be used to adapt the circle to other things, fallen angles and Fea Queens, maybe the Leanansidhe, if you had enough energy to power it. I really don't know enough about summoning to be shore."
Valkyrie stared at him in astonishment. "Are you serious? Fallen angles? Demigods? Fairy Queens? Are those things even real?"
Skulduggery looked at her with an alarming amount of seriousness. "You'd be surprised. Summoning things like that from other worlds and pocket dimensions was outlawed long ago, and I'm not even shore if those things are still around, after the Faceless Ones started tearing through the walls of reality and killing off worlds, but apparently Blackwood managed to dig up the oh so famous 'How To' books from some long forgotten corner of the globe. "
Indeed, Blackwood carried an open, leather bound book in his hands, which he was consulting every couple of moments after looking at his twisted creation of dark magic and evil purposes.
"Could he actually summon a Faceless One with that?" Valkyrie asked nervously. She didn't fancy trying to fight one if Blackwood managed to summon it before they could stop him.
"I don't see why he would; he hasn't ever shown an interest in the Dark Gods, much less the level of fanaticism needed to actually WANT them here." Skulduggery replied quietly, thoughtfully.
"But could he, if he did want to?" Valkyrie asked.
"I don't think he'll try, but he certainly could."
Valkyrie stared at him. "I think we should go stop him now."
Skulduggery shook his head, his attention still on the room below. "No, we have to wait until he brings out Rave, or we may never find him."
"What makes you think he'll bring Rave here?" Valkyrie asked.
Skulduggery lowered his voice as some commotion at the doors to the gym took Blackwood's attention from his circle. "The Blackmasters were also famous for their practice of using human sacrifice to power their spells. They were unusually common in the ancient Aztec communities. They used to-"
He was abruptly cut off as Valkyrie slammed her hand over his mouth and hissed "Shhhhhh!" The commotion at the door resolved itself into six figures carrying something between them. A man. They were carrying a limp, bloody man between them, evening out the weigh, although he couldn't have weighed much with how terribly thin he was. Valkyrie had seen a picture of him when they first took on this case.
Shabble Rave. He was a third year student at the University, and most of his classes were in "Professor" Blackwood's class, as the Director of the school had told them. He was a bright boy, very promising talent, his other teachers informed them, when questioned. His picture showed a thin, awkward man of average height, all elbows and knees. Long, carrot red hair and wire frame glasses almost covered his bright, intelligent eyes, and his smile was shy, but nice. In the picture, he had been warring a plane T-shirt with a picture of a T-rex chasing a running figure with the words "Exercise; A little motivation required." on the front.
All in all, Valkyrie had thought at the time, he looked like a nerd.
The figures were all cloaked and hooded, their identities unknown. They carried Rave to the center of the gym, carefully avoiding the magical setup, and placed him on the ground. His hair was dirty and unwashed, his chest was bare, and his feet were shoeless, his only clothes were a dirty pair of jeans, ripped and tattered. He was unconscious.
An unexpected well of pity came from Valkyrie, for the poor sorcerer who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and didn't deserve any of this. She ignored it and focused on the problem at hand.
Blackwood had pulled a paint brush and a small carving knife out of the folds and pockets of his robe, and had opened a cut on his own wrist to dip the paint brush into and use to paint squiggly symbols on the chest of Shabble Rave, which began to writhe and worm around on the poor man's skin. His eyes trembled below his eyelids, and a small whimper escaped his lips, but he remained unconscious.
Blackwood stepped back and gestured to one of the cloaked figures, Valkyrie thought this one was a woman, and she stepped forward and raised her arms, and with barely a tremble in the air, Rave rose off the ground and began to float toward the elaborate setup of magical artifacts.
Skulduggery cursed and stood out of his crouch. "Those are not symbols of sacrifice." He said as he bent down and pulled Valkyrie to her feet. "Those are symbols of possession!"
He raised his hand and snapped his palm, and a blast of air took out the skylight in an explosion of glass and noise. He stepped up to the edge and dropped down, slowing his fall with air, and landed in the middle of the group of cloaked figures, all ready moving to take them out with a series of blinding jabs and his revolver aimed to disable with shots to the legs and arms.
Valkyrie was two seconds behind, landing next to Blackwood with shadows curling around her fist and a ball of fire in her other hand, ready for anything. Blackwood turned to face her, his features distorted with rage. He reached in his cloak's pocket and drew out. . . .
A Barbie doll. He reached into his coat and brought out a dark haired, dressed in pink, a lipstick smile painted on, honest to god, Barbie doll. Suddenly, Valkyrie felt like laughing at the absurdity of the situation.
"What do you plan on doing with that?" Valkyrie asked skeptically.
Blackwood smiled, and Valkyrie lost some of her confidence. He bent down and picked up a piece of fallen glass near his foot. A dark drop of blood stained it's clear surface. Valkyrie glanced down at her fist, for the first time noticing a small sliver of a cut, blood oozing out. He brought the glass shard to the face of the Barbie and carefully wiped the spot of blood onto the plastic cheek of the doll. He gripped the doll tightly in his fist, his fingers overlapping it's arms, and, with his eyes on Valkyrie, he whispered ancient words of magic. "Ubriacha, ubrius, ubrium,"
An aurora of magic suddenly sprang up around the doll, and Valkyrie felt the effects of the spell imidetly. Her arms snapped down to her sides, and the flame went out and the shadows thinned and disappeared. Too late, she remembered Blackwood's skill with voodoo. She could almost feel his thick fingers wrap around her, binding her arms to her sides. She struggled uselessly, tried to call out, saw Blackwood curl a finger around the dolls mouth as her lips sealed themselves shut, and she struggled all the harder.
Blackwood turned to Skulduggery, who was grappling with the last man standing, besides the woman holding Rave suspended in thin air above the circle, trying to concentrate so she wouldn't drop the man onto their project.
"Dead Man!" Blackwood called out. Skulduggery turned to him as soon as his opponent clasped into a heap on the floor, unconscious. "Lay down you weapon and surrender, or your partner won't live to see tomorrow."
To emphasize his point, Blackwood gave the doll a tight squeeze and raised his arm up. Valkyrie felt herself rise above the floor, and her struggles became frantic as pressure spread across her chest, painfully tight and restricting her breathing. A whimper of pain came from the back of her throat, and her back arched, trying to free herself from the invisible hand that held her tight. Blackness spread across her vision, and her eyes fluttered.
She was caught like a rat in a trap.
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