Laurel put her hands and forehead to the pane of glass in front of her and sighed heavily, leaning on it. Her shoulders were slumped in an attitude almost of defeat. She desperately wanted to cry.
Things had been going.. well, not so well, but better. She'd finally gotten away from Cyrus and met up with Merry, which had seemed like an enormous improvement. They'd had a bit of a discussion about the house, and about the psychic, Dennis. Merry had filled Laurel in on some things, and Laurel had filled Merry in on some other things. They'd had a chance to rest, catch their breath, make their plans. They'd had a chance to sit with each other, if only for a little while, which was invaluable to them, or at least to her. She'd rarely felt so alone as she had in the big machine-house with the megalomaniacal sorcerer after them, and the presence of even one of her coven-sisters was a comfort.
Now they were separated again. The final ghost had been released and the clock was ticking down to what would probably be doomsday. The only person she had for company was the nice but a little dull Arthur Kriticos, and she had had no idea where Amber had been all night. What if Amber had been captured again? She'd never been as adept as Merry at ferreting out people's thoughts, emotions, and finding them by those trails. Her specialty was in sight, second or third or whatever. And she didn't want to open any kind of third eye in this house. Not with all the ghosts.
And she couldn't get the images of Dennis out of her mind.
Arthur Kriticos looked around uncomfortably, then put a hand on her shoulder after a little while. She took a deep breath, forced the urge to cry away. He was comforting, even if he wasn't going to be much help tonight. Evil uncle or no evil uncle, she rather liked him.
"Er... Laurel?"
The witch took a deep breath and silently prayed for the strength of her Goddess to sustain her. The night was far from over, and she had many things to do. "I'm okay... just... needed a second to catch my breath." She straightened up. "Got any idea where we're supposed to go?"
"Not a clue..." he shrugged helplessly. "This is the first time I've been inside this house." He looked around. "I have to admit, if he had to squander the family fortune, at least he made a pretty-looking hell-machine."
Laurel giggled. "I guess. But there's an element to magic that's as much aesthetics as it is ... um... rituals, I guess. Merry could explain it better, she's good with all the really technical aspects of everything... better than I am."
They started down the hallway. "I never knew magic could be so... scientific," Arthur said, looking around at all the walls and some of the barely visible gears and cords."
"Of course..." Laurel said absently. "It's a lot like science. There's an element of belief to it, of course... if you don't believe in some things, a lot of times the spell won't work for you. But there are some things that believe in you whether you want them to or not..." she shuddered. "And those can affect you whether you want them to or not. It's kind of like the saying about God... you may not believe in God, but He believes in you."
"Or like ghosts..." Arthur commented, looking around warily.
"Yeah... like ghosts."
There was a long pause. Then Arthur made a sort of exaggerated coughing noise, trying to break the tension. "So what's magic like from a science point of view?"
"Well... Merry's been here long enough that I'm guessing she went off into a babblefest about correspondences and concatenations and alignments and things," Laurel smiled at Arthur's nod. "It's kind of like that. There's a lot of astronomy and astrology, some herbology... some of ... I don't know what you'd call it. Some numerology, a lot of looking at charts and colors and things. Really, though, a lot of it is common sense... like.. okay, here. Take the Laws, for instance."
"Laws?"
"Yeah. There are Laws of Physics, and there are Laws of Magic too. Like... oh, the Law of Contagion. If two things are in close proximity, or overlap enough, they are more likely to bleed into each other. It's like having red paint and blue paint next to each other, eventually you're going to have a thin line of purple. In practical terms... Hmm. Well, okay..." she held out her hands in front of her. "The easiest way to look at it is like this. If I was a medium, and spent a certain amount of time here, on the earth plane," she turned one of her hands palm down, "and a certain amount of time here on the spectral plane... the ghost plane..." she put her other hand above that one. "Then eventually, around me, they're going to start bleeding into each other... around me, ghosts will start to appear more often, things will move, etc."
Arthur blinked. "That... actually makes sense..." he said slowly, as though the thought that magic might actually make sense had never occurred to him. Laurel smiled to herself and continued.
"There's... say, the Law of Origin... anything that begins as part of a whole is always associated with that whole on some level. That's probably more familiar to you with voodoo, or voudoun, actually..." she repeated, pronouncing the word oddly. "If you have a piece of someone's hair or fingernail or something, it's still a part of them, even if it's not attatched to them anymore... and you can use it to affect them. There's the Law of Conservation of Mind... which basically means you can only concentrate on so many things at one time..." her expression turned serious.
"What does that mean?" Arthur asked guardedly.
"Um... it's one that a lot of witches and sorcerers and other practitioners forget. If you... oh, I don't know. If you go outside of your body too much... cast your mind in too many different places. You start to lose pieces of yourself... you forget things, you forget people you know. It's like Alzheimer's... only it can happen to anyone if they're not careful."
Arthur frowned. "I think I remember a story like that... some book Bobby was reading. About kids who could turn themselves into other animals... and there was one kid who got stuck in the form of a bird... I think it was a hawk, or an eagle. And after a while he almost stopped thinking like a kid... or at least, he sort of did... and the book implied that if he hadn't had his friends, he would have become a bird altogether."
Laurel nodded slowly. "I think I've heard of those books... and that's exactly it. Very few people can actually turn themselves into animals anymore... actually, I don't know if anyone can. But that's one of the biggest dangers of doing that." She smiled weakly, turning a corner and leading the way down a set of stairs. "So you see, powers and magic aren't all they're cracked up to be."
There was a little silence. They made their way through the glass hallways, all the while conscious that they were drawing closer and closer to the Ocularis. "What about people like Cyrus?" Arthur asked finally. "Why do they use all this power if there are so many drawbacks to it... most of them seem to mean going insane, anyway."
She didn't look at him as she responded. "I don't know, Arthur... I really don't."
Meredith took several deep breaths, running her fingers along the wall, trying to figure out the best way to get downstairs to the Ocularis. Everyone was tense, nervous... Maggie kept brushing against Dennis, who would try and stifle the screech that would invariably result, but after the first three times it was starting to get nervewracking. She made a mental note to get him some sort of mental protection when they got out of the house... if they all managed to get out of the house. First thing's first, she told herself. Rescue the children.
They found the stairs, finally, and started down. By this time Maggie was in the rear, and had managed to put some distance between her and Dennis. They were conversing in low tones, and sounded agitated, but Meredith had all she could handle with trying to keep a third eye on the children, looking for Amber, and making sure Laurel was all right. Between the overlapping mental and emotional sensations that were bombarding her, her energy was starting to wear down. It didn't help that Dennis was still as nervous as a long tailed kitten in a room full of rocking chairs, and just as weak.
Meredith paused at the bottom of the stairs, taking a look around and figuring it safe. "Hang on a second..." she said, rubbing her temples.
"What?" Maggie yelped, and Meredith winced. "What's going on? Is there a ghost?"
"No..." Meredith would have laughed if the situation hadn't robbed the question of all humor. "No, no ghost. I just... low blood sugar, I think... need something to eat." She started rummaging around in her duffel bag and pulled out a power bar.
"You actually eat those?" Maggie's tone caught Dennis's attention. He seemed astonished that Meredith had taken a time-out to do something as mundane as eat.
"They're energy efficient, and unfortunately I'm in a high-energy profession. It was either that or a Snickers bar," Merry smiled weakly, wolfing down the nutrient brick that only faintly tasted of chocolate.
"Well, I guess..." Maggie started to say, and then Dennis saw the ghost.
"Shit!!" he scurried up to press his back against the wall, eyes wide, chest heaving.
"WHAT?" Maggie yelled, even as Meredith looked up and over her shoulder.
"Shit!!" she echoed, slipping sideways into the spirit world and bringing her large knife up, ready to attack.
She never got the chance.
The Hammer swung, slamming his weapon into her side and knocking her into the wall. She had a couple of seconds to regret slipping into the ghost's world, and then her head hit the wall and lights started flashing in front of her eyes. For a moment it was hard to breathe. She took a deep (painful) breath, took a chance, and dove forward, stabbing down with her knife. The ghost screamed and raised his hammer again.
"Well," she choked out, "At least I got it..." Maggie was screaming. She couldn't hear Dennis, and guessed he was having breathless hysterics on the floor. Poor guys. The Hammer would be coming after them next.
Her vision blurred. The next thing she saw was a body, with a flash of the neon-and-magic glasses, flying over her legs and catching the Hammer in mid-swing.
Dennis?
"Hey!" he shouted. Oh no... Meredith thought, struggling to stand up against the wall. It felt like she'd broken a rib or ten. "Yeah, I'm talking to you..." Her vision was starting to clear... she could see Dennis going one-on-one with the Hammer, doing an admirable job of ducking. Unfortunately, she could also see that the Hammer was more confused than angry, and not on the attack yet. "...you little shit," Dennis finished, barely getting out of the way of the giant maul in time. "You don't scare me..." Duck, sidestep. "...you ectoplasmic weenie..." duck, skip backwards. Maggie was watching in confusion and horror, Meredith was watching in dread. Present and future images were starting to overlap, and suddenly she recalled an earlier conversation.
"Dennis..." she choked out, but he didn't hear her, and she couldn't get enough breath to speak any louder. "No..."
"You ain't nothing..." Duck. Dennis shifted the knife around in his hands. Meredith's heart sank.
"...but a..." Maggie got the idea too, started frantically searching around for a pair of glasses that wasn't there.
"BITCH!"
He lunged.
The Hammer swung.
The maul came down straight for the middle of Dennis's spine.
"NO!!!"
Things had been going.. well, not so well, but better. She'd finally gotten away from Cyrus and met up with Merry, which had seemed like an enormous improvement. They'd had a bit of a discussion about the house, and about the psychic, Dennis. Merry had filled Laurel in on some things, and Laurel had filled Merry in on some other things. They'd had a chance to rest, catch their breath, make their plans. They'd had a chance to sit with each other, if only for a little while, which was invaluable to them, or at least to her. She'd rarely felt so alone as she had in the big machine-house with the megalomaniacal sorcerer after them, and the presence of even one of her coven-sisters was a comfort.
Now they were separated again. The final ghost had been released and the clock was ticking down to what would probably be doomsday. The only person she had for company was the nice but a little dull Arthur Kriticos, and she had had no idea where Amber had been all night. What if Amber had been captured again? She'd never been as adept as Merry at ferreting out people's thoughts, emotions, and finding them by those trails. Her specialty was in sight, second or third or whatever. And she didn't want to open any kind of third eye in this house. Not with all the ghosts.
And she couldn't get the images of Dennis out of her mind.
Arthur Kriticos looked around uncomfortably, then put a hand on her shoulder after a little while. She took a deep breath, forced the urge to cry away. He was comforting, even if he wasn't going to be much help tonight. Evil uncle or no evil uncle, she rather liked him.
"Er... Laurel?"
The witch took a deep breath and silently prayed for the strength of her Goddess to sustain her. The night was far from over, and she had many things to do. "I'm okay... just... needed a second to catch my breath." She straightened up. "Got any idea where we're supposed to go?"
"Not a clue..." he shrugged helplessly. "This is the first time I've been inside this house." He looked around. "I have to admit, if he had to squander the family fortune, at least he made a pretty-looking hell-machine."
Laurel giggled. "I guess. But there's an element to magic that's as much aesthetics as it is ... um... rituals, I guess. Merry could explain it better, she's good with all the really technical aspects of everything... better than I am."
They started down the hallway. "I never knew magic could be so... scientific," Arthur said, looking around at all the walls and some of the barely visible gears and cords."
"Of course..." Laurel said absently. "It's a lot like science. There's an element of belief to it, of course... if you don't believe in some things, a lot of times the spell won't work for you. But there are some things that believe in you whether you want them to or not..." she shuddered. "And those can affect you whether you want them to or not. It's kind of like the saying about God... you may not believe in God, but He believes in you."
"Or like ghosts..." Arthur commented, looking around warily.
"Yeah... like ghosts."
There was a long pause. Then Arthur made a sort of exaggerated coughing noise, trying to break the tension. "So what's magic like from a science point of view?"
"Well... Merry's been here long enough that I'm guessing she went off into a babblefest about correspondences and concatenations and alignments and things," Laurel smiled at Arthur's nod. "It's kind of like that. There's a lot of astronomy and astrology, some herbology... some of ... I don't know what you'd call it. Some numerology, a lot of looking at charts and colors and things. Really, though, a lot of it is common sense... like.. okay, here. Take the Laws, for instance."
"Laws?"
"Yeah. There are Laws of Physics, and there are Laws of Magic too. Like... oh, the Law of Contagion. If two things are in close proximity, or overlap enough, they are more likely to bleed into each other. It's like having red paint and blue paint next to each other, eventually you're going to have a thin line of purple. In practical terms... Hmm. Well, okay..." she held out her hands in front of her. "The easiest way to look at it is like this. If I was a medium, and spent a certain amount of time here, on the earth plane," she turned one of her hands palm down, "and a certain amount of time here on the spectral plane... the ghost plane..." she put her other hand above that one. "Then eventually, around me, they're going to start bleeding into each other... around me, ghosts will start to appear more often, things will move, etc."
Arthur blinked. "That... actually makes sense..." he said slowly, as though the thought that magic might actually make sense had never occurred to him. Laurel smiled to herself and continued.
"There's... say, the Law of Origin... anything that begins as part of a whole is always associated with that whole on some level. That's probably more familiar to you with voodoo, or voudoun, actually..." she repeated, pronouncing the word oddly. "If you have a piece of someone's hair or fingernail or something, it's still a part of them, even if it's not attatched to them anymore... and you can use it to affect them. There's the Law of Conservation of Mind... which basically means you can only concentrate on so many things at one time..." her expression turned serious.
"What does that mean?" Arthur asked guardedly.
"Um... it's one that a lot of witches and sorcerers and other practitioners forget. If you... oh, I don't know. If you go outside of your body too much... cast your mind in too many different places. You start to lose pieces of yourself... you forget things, you forget people you know. It's like Alzheimer's... only it can happen to anyone if they're not careful."
Arthur frowned. "I think I remember a story like that... some book Bobby was reading. About kids who could turn themselves into other animals... and there was one kid who got stuck in the form of a bird... I think it was a hawk, or an eagle. And after a while he almost stopped thinking like a kid... or at least, he sort of did... and the book implied that if he hadn't had his friends, he would have become a bird altogether."
Laurel nodded slowly. "I think I've heard of those books... and that's exactly it. Very few people can actually turn themselves into animals anymore... actually, I don't know if anyone can. But that's one of the biggest dangers of doing that." She smiled weakly, turning a corner and leading the way down a set of stairs. "So you see, powers and magic aren't all they're cracked up to be."
There was a little silence. They made their way through the glass hallways, all the while conscious that they were drawing closer and closer to the Ocularis. "What about people like Cyrus?" Arthur asked finally. "Why do they use all this power if there are so many drawbacks to it... most of them seem to mean going insane, anyway."
She didn't look at him as she responded. "I don't know, Arthur... I really don't."
Meredith took several deep breaths, running her fingers along the wall, trying to figure out the best way to get downstairs to the Ocularis. Everyone was tense, nervous... Maggie kept brushing against Dennis, who would try and stifle the screech that would invariably result, but after the first three times it was starting to get nervewracking. She made a mental note to get him some sort of mental protection when they got out of the house... if they all managed to get out of the house. First thing's first, she told herself. Rescue the children.
They found the stairs, finally, and started down. By this time Maggie was in the rear, and had managed to put some distance between her and Dennis. They were conversing in low tones, and sounded agitated, but Meredith had all she could handle with trying to keep a third eye on the children, looking for Amber, and making sure Laurel was all right. Between the overlapping mental and emotional sensations that were bombarding her, her energy was starting to wear down. It didn't help that Dennis was still as nervous as a long tailed kitten in a room full of rocking chairs, and just as weak.
Meredith paused at the bottom of the stairs, taking a look around and figuring it safe. "Hang on a second..." she said, rubbing her temples.
"What?" Maggie yelped, and Meredith winced. "What's going on? Is there a ghost?"
"No..." Meredith would have laughed if the situation hadn't robbed the question of all humor. "No, no ghost. I just... low blood sugar, I think... need something to eat." She started rummaging around in her duffel bag and pulled out a power bar.
"You actually eat those?" Maggie's tone caught Dennis's attention. He seemed astonished that Meredith had taken a time-out to do something as mundane as eat.
"They're energy efficient, and unfortunately I'm in a high-energy profession. It was either that or a Snickers bar," Merry smiled weakly, wolfing down the nutrient brick that only faintly tasted of chocolate.
"Well, I guess..." Maggie started to say, and then Dennis saw the ghost.
"Shit!!" he scurried up to press his back against the wall, eyes wide, chest heaving.
"WHAT?" Maggie yelled, even as Meredith looked up and over her shoulder.
"Shit!!" she echoed, slipping sideways into the spirit world and bringing her large knife up, ready to attack.
She never got the chance.
The Hammer swung, slamming his weapon into her side and knocking her into the wall. She had a couple of seconds to regret slipping into the ghost's world, and then her head hit the wall and lights started flashing in front of her eyes. For a moment it was hard to breathe. She took a deep (painful) breath, took a chance, and dove forward, stabbing down with her knife. The ghost screamed and raised his hammer again.
"Well," she choked out, "At least I got it..." Maggie was screaming. She couldn't hear Dennis, and guessed he was having breathless hysterics on the floor. Poor guys. The Hammer would be coming after them next.
Her vision blurred. The next thing she saw was a body, with a flash of the neon-and-magic glasses, flying over her legs and catching the Hammer in mid-swing.
Dennis?
"Hey!" he shouted. Oh no... Meredith thought, struggling to stand up against the wall. It felt like she'd broken a rib or ten. "Yeah, I'm talking to you..." Her vision was starting to clear... she could see Dennis going one-on-one with the Hammer, doing an admirable job of ducking. Unfortunately, she could also see that the Hammer was more confused than angry, and not on the attack yet. "...you little shit," Dennis finished, barely getting out of the way of the giant maul in time. "You don't scare me..." Duck, sidestep. "...you ectoplasmic weenie..." duck, skip backwards. Maggie was watching in confusion and horror, Meredith was watching in dread. Present and future images were starting to overlap, and suddenly she recalled an earlier conversation.
"Dennis..." she choked out, but he didn't hear her, and she couldn't get enough breath to speak any louder. "No..."
"You ain't nothing..." Duck. Dennis shifted the knife around in his hands. Meredith's heart sank.
"...but a..." Maggie got the idea too, started frantically searching around for a pair of glasses that wasn't there.
"BITCH!"
He lunged.
The Hammer swung.
The maul came down straight for the middle of Dennis's spine.
"NO!!!"