A Mage’s Awakening: A Shadow Cities Story
02 Nov 2011 1 Comment
in belonging, Fan Fiction, madness, Shadow Cities
“Samkara? Sam?”
*Knock, Knock, Knock*
“Samantha, it’s Spiritbreaker…urgh…George. I was worried. I followed your beacon here. I had to knock on a few neighbours doors to find your house.”
*Knock, Knock, Knock*
“Sam?”
* * * * *
Sam had had a good day. Customers drove up for petrol, came in, exchanged pleasantries and money and left. Sam was in the centre of a web of activity. Releasing pumps, providing change, running the cash machine. It was comfortable and familiar. Her name tag may have read Samantha, but in her mind she was Samkara dispensing the justice and the grace of the mages to all in the Shadow Cities.
“Samantha, fill the impulse displays. They’re getting low.” Said the voice of the petrol station owner, but Sam did not respond. “Samantha?” A large heavy hand touched her arm. Shocked, Sam leaped off her stool.
“Oh, Mr Naidu! Did you want something?”
“Samantha, I called you. Are you feeling alright?”
”Just focused on the task at hand, Mr Naidu.” Sam tried to say as chipper as possible, but she knew she looked pale and tired. She hadn’t slept after the brush with the Architect mage. The altercation had left her uneasy.
”Good to hear.” Her boss replied in a tone that suggested the contrary. “All the same, maybe a change of task is warranted. Please fill the impulse displays.”
Sam did as she was told without complaint, all the time here mind was in the shadows. She didn’t notice the customer in the gloves and dark clothes enter and loiter at the back of the store. She didn’t see him act strangely as he wrapped a bandana around his face and didn’t see the knife until it was in front of her.
“Give me the money or I’ll cut her!” Said a harsh voice muffled by the bandana, the hunting knife resting against her skin.
“I’ve got your money you don’t need to hurt anyone.” Said Mr Naidu from behind the counter, the register door popped open and he started taking money out.
“Put it in a bag you moron or I’ll cut her I swear I will!” Sam stood still oblivious to all that was happening to her. She saw the knife, its serrated edge, the gleam of the metal, felt the cold razor-sharp point.
Slowly she looked into the face of the robber, stared into his bloodshot eyes. With her will focused on her target, her finger she traced the rune for the War Chant of Light.
Nothing happened.
The plastic bag handed over, the knife was withdrawn from sight.
Mr Naidu rang the police, dealt with the customers, ushered Sam into the staff area and talked to the constables when they arrived. Sam sat and held a cup of tea she’d been given and answered the questions of the police. A blanket was thrown over her and she took in the news that a taxi was waiting to take her home, no expense.
Once in the cool of her dark bedroom Sam’s mind was seeking the Shadow lands. Her body crashed into the rumpled bed covers as her conscious mind was looking out over the silhouetted maps of her neighbourhood. Out in the mundane Sam had felt numb. Above the Shadow Cities her aura seethed and crackled its core crystalline, faceted, cold and hard. The constant breeze of the Shadow lands sent the sparks flying into the ether illuminating her realm in a pale green glow.
Under this eyrie light, a small section not far from Sam’s dominators stayed stubbornly black. Sparking and hissing Sam’s conscious mind was drawn to it, hoping it was what she thought it was.
It looked like a small patch of blackness surrounded by eight faint blue lines all radiating out from the emptiness. But, below the blackness there was an intense feeling of energy, of power that only the most ancient spirits projected.
Sam’s voice rang out over the general ether to all who were up to hear. “Spider, Newlington beacon! Head south!”
Peas started dropping from everywhere and mustering around where the slumbering Arachne Weaver. One by one the gathered mages drew their runes and released them. Within the collective white glow of explosions the blue lines pumped energy into the black shape and it glowed a malevolent purple. The lines grew, propelling the head and torso of the spider way above the mages present. Spirits of all Houses and elements gathered at the feet of the monster camouflaging it and making it difficult for mages to target. Now roused, the beast drew on the personal energies of the mages to heal itself. Each mage closest to the beast felt weakened and quickly jumped back to a safe spot to heal while others took their place.
Sam did not leave the front lines. Downing pot after pot of mana and healing right on the front line she kept up the fight until the weaver was overwhelmed and finally destroyed. A peace spread out from the epicentre of the battle. Mages congratulated themselves at the destruction of the spider and started thinning.
”Good spider. Got a heap of energy from that monster.” Spiritbreaker to Sam who he found listless and still after most of the mages had left.
“Breaker. What’s your name?” Sam asked casually.
“Er…Spiritbreaker, you know we don’t give real name…”
“What’s your name?” She said more urgently this time just to him, mind to mind. It was a form of communication that was intimate and could not be ignored.
“George, I’m… my name is George.”
“Samantha,” Sam replied. “They call me Samantha.”
”Are you okay?”
“I was in a hold-up today. I tried to use the war rune.”
”In real life? Are you crazy?”
“But it didn’t work. Then there’s a spider and we fought and destroyed it. The war rune worked here.”
“Well yeah, Sam. Magic doesn’t work in the real world.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure that magic doesn’t work?”
“No. Sure that it’s real.”
Stormbreaker was silent for a moment. The two of them just floated in the dark over the Shadow Cities. A few stray spirits drawn to their aura light pulsed like ghostly jellyfish in the sea of the underworld. It was a lonely and barren place. Perfect for a broken soul.
“Look, Samantha. Sounds like you need to talk to someone…”
”I’m talking to you, talking in a way I can’t do in the other place…”
”Okay, I’ll come to you. I know generally where you live, but what house, what street?”
“You’re here with me Breaker; you don’t need to go anywhere, except…” There was a hint of a smile in the communication. It made Spiritbreaker shiver.
“Except?” He asked tentatively.
“Except to hunt spiders.”
They hunted through realms searching for the tell tale signs of Arachne Weavers all that afternoon and into the night. Every call for help they answered and though they didn’t destroy every spider, they helped everyone who asked for aid. They blazed across the world, hopping from friendly beacon to friendly beacon until they found themselves in Tampa, Florida in a realm so dense in gateways it was difficult to make out the spider web of roads beneath them.
Sites like these were rare and highly sought after as the many gateways attracted a range of spirits. As a result many of the gates glowed white and pure, neutral but not untouched. Sam noticed that a number of gates had the marks of mages who had claimed that area as their realm once a long time ago. Now, like ruins, they pointed to what had been, giving no sign as to what happened to the mages who had called this place home.
“Samkara, I’m done in. I’ve used up my last pots and need to get some sleep. I think you need some sleep too.” Spiritbreaker said unsure he would be heard. He’d been fearful to leave Sam alone but he just couldn’t keep up this constant fighting.
“There’s a spider here, can’t you feel it?” Sam replied, hopping from gateway to gateway.
“Put a call up, let someone else fight it. Don’t you feel tired?”
Sam stopped her hopping. “Yes, very tired. I feel…drawn thin. Stretched. I need…” Sam tried to form the words but they failed. Instead, images of being tied down; being pulled tight like the string on a bow flooded the intimate level of communication so that it hurt Spiritbreaker to see them.
“Sam that’s your body telling you need to rest. Back down, have a good nights rest and I’ll come find you tomorrow.”
”You’d come to me? In …”
”…real life, yes.”
“Promise?” The question was asked with such longing that tore at Spiritbreakers soul.
“Only if you back down now.”
“Spider, Palmetto Beach beacon!” Came a general call over the ether and Spiritbreaker groaned inwardly, wishing the call could have waited a moment longer.
“A spider! It’s so close.” Sam leaped back to the gateway where Spiritbreaker waited.
“You said you would back down.”
“A spider, Breaker. An enemy we can hurt and destroy, doesn’t that make you feel…”
“Powerful, strong?”
“Alive!” Sam finally supplied, “Being here is being alive, breaker.” With that she leapt for the beacon and the battle. Groaning with his entire being, Spiritbreaker followed.
When they arrive the battle was already in full swing. Hundred’s of mages in concert, battled the massive beast marching across the plains of shadow. Spiritbreaker had made a promise to himself he would just sit back in this one, keep the healing up to Sam and hope that with this concentration of mages that the battle would be over soon. But, as soon as they arrived, Sam disappeared into the throng and Spiritbreaker was left scrambling to find her.
“Sam, where are you?” He yelled into the general ether but was drowned out by the machine-gun explosions of mages spells igniting one after another. A wave of negative energy emitted by the spider rolled through the mages and Spiritbreaker found he had to move back or be banished from the shadow lands entirely. From a high point above a nearby dominator, Spiritbreaker looked out over the broiling sea of mages green and orange. Both groups focused on the common enemy, timing their attacks for best effect. It was from this advantage point that Spiritbreaker finally spotted Sam, a lone green aura among a mob of Architect orange.
Sam was in glorious oblivion. At that time it was immaterial who she stood with in the battle as long as they were all focused on the defeat of the spider. Her war runes weaved into those of the Architects beside her making a force greater than the sum of the individual runes. The great beast in front of them was teetering; one last push would see it go. With her last remaining energy and all her concentration, Sam pushed…
…and the Shadow Cities rang with a thundering crack, a snap that crossed the planes.
Sam’s aura suddenly took on a lightness, as if finally being released from a long held tension. In shock, she floated stunned in the sea of orange around her. Instead of the constant buzz of voices of so many mages in one place, the shadows were silent, warm and inviting. She moved without thought out of the crowd, her pure white light illuminating all the mages dull green and orange auras. She left the site of the battle, its dominators and beacons far behind and just drifted, drifting with the currents of the pulsing gateways safe in the shadows’ embraces.
* * * * *
The door opens and a middle aged man gray and drawn opens the door.
“Oh, sorry I must have the wrong house again.” George smiled sheepishly, “Could you please point out the Mage’s house? I’m a friend from the Faction.”
If it was possible the man’s face went grayer and his eyes filled with pain. “She’s not here.”
“Is she alright, she was upset and I got worried…”
“I said, she’s not here. Not anymore.” The man said in dull finality that ceased all argument and chilled George to the bone.
“What…?”
“She was my baby girl, and the spirits took her. I didn’t think it was dangerous, I didn’t think…”
Subconsciously George stepped away from the door. ”No, she was strong. She fought the spider, I saw her!” Shaking his head, George looked back to the old man willing him to say he had lied. Instead the old man took a step out to him and reached out his rough gardener’s hand.
”You saw her? In the Shadow lands? You saw her…go?”
“She was my friend…” Was all George could say as he let the strong hand take his and lead him inside.
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