Awakening – Chapter Nine

For Disclaimer see Chapter One.


Storm Warning
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So hear the wail of the messenger

to avoid destruction,

for the storm is underway,

better listen carefully -

so ye be prepared!

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The Council Of Might had come together early this year.

In this council were members of almost every kind of witch represented. But this meeting had been called in much earlier than normal. It was kind of an emergency meeting and the atmosphere was heated. There were as always not only those with Council duty present, as this was an opportunity for exchanging news. But there were less than at the last meeting, since this meeting was out of the usual line.

Everyone was nervous since most witches didn't trust each other much; not many of them were normally mortal enemies but Council time was a time of truce. There were the Arun, Smoke, Vida, Shapeshifter of clan Silverfang and of course their host: the Triste. Well, Dominique wasn't nervous - it was not of the Vida way to be nervous. She had faced worse - this was uneasy but necessary for stability.

Then she spotted Mikhail Smoke and took in instinctual deep breath. "I knew it." She thought annoyed. No, Dominique was not particularly fond of Mikhail. She didn't made a hail of it.
It was useless on him anyway.

"Well well, there are you right Dominique." She heard suddenly in her head. "The nerve." She thought annoyed. "And he enjoys it, too."

His only reaction was a knowing smirk. Mikhail had changed into something more appropriate than what he usually wore, Dominique recognized. He wore a tunica made of blue velvet above leather trousers. He looked handsome as always, eerie, with his shining long blond hair, it was almost white, and pale blue eyes.

"Well, hello Dominique." He greeted her aloud, not bothering with offering her his hand to shake. He disliked touch since his early childhood.

"Mikhail Smoke." She acknowledged him, doing her best to stay calm. "I am Vida, so damn him." She told herself.

"Hasana didn't tell me she would get you to take her place." Dominique said.

"Sis didn't have to and you know that too." He explained. Yes, he was right Dominique should have known but she had been preoccupied.

"So, what do you think of the current situation?" Dominique asked, getting down to business.

"I don't know." Mikhail answered, thus surprising her.

"Really?" Dominique queried, exited that she found a weakness in him.

"Yes and no, it's not that easy. It certainly feels dark, but there are too many possibilities." He explained. True, his gift made it possible to see the future but what he saw were many different futures to be exact. And right now he couldn't sort them out either.

"I see." She replied. "You're not that all knowing most believe."

"Never said I was." He replied with one of his trademark smirks.

"Come it's time; we ought to go." He said and they went to the prepared Council Room.

Inside was a huge round marble table with a pentagram on its surface. There was one seat for each witch line, one for their hosts, the Triste, one for Arun, Smoke, Vida and Shapeshifter.
One seat was left empty; it was the one for Light. It had been left empty to honour their ceased sisters and brothers of the Light line. There was no one left to take their seat.

The room felt eerie because of the heavy shielding with curtains made of silk. It was too quiet.
Dominique knew little of what had really happened but that what she knew was bad enough.

Alone that the Triste had called in this meeting was proof enough that something major was wrong.

Strange things had happened in the last few weeks. First some of them had been discovered by normal humans. "Well, that had been annoying." She thought, remembering the headlines which stated that 'Witch War in New York'. Only they had gotten that completely wrong, it had not been a war among witches. It had been a rather unsuccessful attempt to calm a feud between two rival werewolf clans.

Further there had been witches of almost every kind killed. Someone had caught them and burnt them at the stake like in the middle ages.

When the chosen leader of Triste for this meeting appeared, she was met by silence, silence and astonishment. Of all Triste they had to send Nevà d'Arkienne their queen by right of birth.

She was one of the oldest of them, and the most beautiful. So old in fact, that nobody really knew if this was her born name. Nobody dared to ask anyway. Nevà was the one not to be asked about. She was beautiful enough to put any angel to shame, but a beautiful angel with a non-angelic temper.

But after astonishment there came fear, fear for the reason she was here. Normally one of the lesser Triste leaders would take her Council seat, even if it was an emergency meeting.

Dominique looked around and couldn't help but to realise that the people being here represented certain archetypes:

There was the Queen Nevà with her Knight Alexander at her side, then there was Mercenary Diana Arun, Bard Mikhail Smoke, Hunter Sharon and Damien Silverfang, and of course herself Warrior Dominique Vida.

"What are we? The Knight's of the Round Table?" She thought sarcastically.

Mikhail gave her a smirk on this.

"Out of my head." She thought back.

"I wasn't, believe me. " He sent back. "But your thoughts are rather loud."

He sent her another smirk.

"Nerve!" She thought, this time trying to keep her shields up.

Nevà waited for them to take their seats, then She opened the Council.

"This is a dark time we have come together." She began paused a moment for effect before continuing. "There have been fires." She said finely, shocking her audience.

"Fires, lady Nevà, truly fires, fires as in the middle ages?" Diana Arun questioned, trying not to show her fear – fear was weakness and she wasn't fond of weaknesses.

Nevà smiled sadly then turned around and nodded to Alexander, who stood just a step behind her.
On this he took a step forward looking questioningly at his queen.

"Please go ahead Alexander." She just replied.

"As you wish my Lady." He nodded in agreement. "As to answer your question." He paused to gather himself.

"Yes it is true, sadly." Alexander explained as was requested. "We have several reports of witches being burned. Chained and burned alive as centuries ago." He could remember his own fear back then, after he had found out about his powers.

"And before you asked they were verified to be truly witches. Witches of all kinds have been killed alike, even Triste." He added his eyes only slightly betraying the shock he saw in their eyes.

"Lady?" He turned to his leader, waiting for further instructions.

"Here, give them these." Nevà nodded sadly and gave him a scroll.

"Ah, yes as you wish." He agreed and gave the document to the other witches, so they could read on their own.

He was met by silence as they went through the lines of it. Silence caused by dread at these numbers written on paper.

"Alexander?" Dominique was the first to break the silence, putting herself together.

"Yes, Dominique?" He replied.

"That can't be true." She said; her voice was unusually trembling. "If this is true we lost more than a third of our people."

They had known that something bad had happened. They had even known that witches had been vanished – but they had not known the full extend. This was more than a shock.

But they struggled and finely managed to keep their calm, even an uneasy one.

Then the real debate started, as always.

Suddenly someone screamed. Everyone stood still.

Dominique looked startled who had screamed. It was Mikhail, "Mikhail Smoke, mind healer and shaman, annoying as hell." she thought and wondered "What made you crying out like this?"

She like many other witches felt uneasy around him because of what he was, of his psychic gifts. In short Mikhail was a telepath and clairvoyant, both things, which made Dominique, feel uneasy. She certainly didn't like people who could look into the inside of her, knowing her innermost thoughts.

True, she knew that he would never break anyone's trust like that. She remembered him saying once, that the human mind isn't that interesting.

That didn't change anything, that and the fact he liked to startle her, made her very uneasy around him. "I, Dominique Vida, don't get startled." She reassured herself. "So, why do I feel so uncertain, right now?"

Mikhail looked terrified. They had been in the midst of a heated discussion on how to deal with the killing of witches when he suddenly screamed.

"Mikhail?" She asked, approaching him carefully not daring to touch him, not knowing what happened. And most important: She did not know what would happen if someone would touch him.

Touch did support telepathy after all, highly.

"What have you seen?" What ever it had been, it had to be important to reach him through all those layers of protection wards the Triste had applied to this building. She shuddered. "No, nothing too good."

But he was gone, too far away to hear her voice. Captured by his vision. "Dark," he whimpered "So dark and blood, so much blood."

"What are you seeing?" Dominique inquired again hoping he heard her this time.

"Pain, so much pain." he whispered in horror. "Not, just burned, tortured. They are looking for something." He stopped then "No, not something someone."

"Noooo!" He screamed again.

Then in the blink of the eye the vision was gone. Mikhail looked up at Dominique tears running freely down his face.

Horror was shining in his bright blue eyes - horror and sadness. "Why? Why are they doing this?" He asked her looking her straight in the eyes.

She had suddenly the feeling they had to hurry, but didn't know why.

Then, Something whispered to him:

Close your eyes - leave everything behind and see what lurks in the shadow of tomorrow, Mikhail!

He heard a snigger – and suddenly he was completely normal again. Mikhail shook his head.

"Dominique Vida?" He asked. "What had happened?"

"What, what?" Dominique replied, her voice bordering to hysteric. "Do you remember anything?"

He looked just confused, as if waking from sleep under drug influence.
"A moment, Dominique Vida, please?" he send back, pleading, not bothering with speaking aloud.

"Al right" Dominique agreed eventually. "You get your moment. Just try not to do that again, would you?" Sarcasm was tripping from her voice.

"I'll try." He agreed, taking a deep breath. His mind was in tangles, tangles that needed untangling.

"Oh, that's really wonderful." Dominique thought not caring if he heard her or not. "First he had the nerve to give us an heart attack and now he doesn't remember anything."

"Ehem." Nevà began, trying to get everything ordered again.

"So what happened right now?" She inquired finely.

"He had a vision, Lady. That's what happened." Dominique answered instead of Mikhail, who was still confused about his vision.

"That's impossible." Nevà disagreed. "The shields make it impossible to reach the planes in between."

Everyone looked at Mikhail, again.

"You are right, it shouldn't have happened." He agreed.

"But I'm afraid, Lady Nevà, I had nevertheless a rather disturbing vision." Mikhail concluded knowing this was important. "Shields or not, they had to know." He thought determined.

"But…" Nevà was for once wordless. This had never happened before, to her knowledge.

Their shields should by all means have prevented this, and her people the Triste were the best at these things. They had centuries of knowledge about magic.

"The shields should have prevented this, shouldn't they?" Sharon asked.

"So, what do we know if they are still up and at full force?" Her brother Damien completed her thought.

"Yes, what do we know about those shields?" Added Diana Arun.

"There still there." Alexander suddenly said, with an absent expression on his face.

They heard Nevà releasing a deep breath.

And as suddenly the tension came it was gone.

"So, that's about the shields. I say we still have to take a closer look onto the vision." Dominique reminded, trying to pull them back to the really important things.

"Of course, you are right Dominique." Nevà agreed, and then turned her glance to Mikhail.

"So, Mikhail, please tell us what you remember."

"All right, Lady Nevà, Ladies, but please sit down." He took a deep breath. "Believe me you better sit down."

"It began with darkness, endless cold darkness." He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to get a better hold on his memories. "Then there was fire, every kind of fire. But at first the fires were just that, fires."

He opened his eyes, to look them into the eyes; it was an eerie glance.

"Then the fires were not empty anymore. I heard screams, many screams. Screams of pain and despair while burning alive." He remembered torture in more ways he never wanted to see again, but there was no need to burden them with the images in detail.

He paused for a moment to let it sink in.

"Those were the witches, we lost through the fires, weren't they?" Dominique asked to verify what she just heard.

"Yes, they were." He answered.

"But there is more Mikhail?" Nevà asked, feeling that there was more, something more sinister.

"Yes, the first fire I saw had pentagram form." His voice not much more than whisper, for he knew what that image meant. He wished he didn't.

"Are you sure?" They asked, alarmed.

"I'm afraid so. The pentagram was upside-down." He confirmed.

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