Shattered Pentacle

by Starscribe

Chapter 5

They didn’t go to Azucar³, but they did give her a drink. Just through the door was the basement retreat, with its size stretching far greater than the building overhead.

Despite having the same shape, the underground rooms were entirely transformed since the last time. Every broken glass container was back together, every piece of torn art hanging where it used to be. Even the walls weren’t burned anymore.

They didn’t go back to the dead-end where she had fired at a dangerous assailant with Bonnie’s gun—but through another door, to a tiny lounge with its own bar, and many glittering bottles.

“She saved your life, you get to tell her.” Reagan went straight over to the bar, where she immediately started pulling out glasses, bottles, and other supplies. Her friend might not always be the friendliest girl, but at least she knew how to mix a delicious drink.

Tabitha led her to a table, and soon Akiko joined her on the other side.

“Where is—” Akiko began.

“With the Hierarch now,” Tabitha interrupted. “Heaven knows what she will say about all this. Will it be open war, or pasting happy masks over our faces for a few more months of pretending. As though we can’t all tell precisely what’s happening here.”

Lyra settled into the corner chair with the weight of someone several times her size. She leaned back and closed her eyes, hoping that maybe she would sleep. The rest would not come—inexplicably, she wasn’t tired anymore.

“Everything you say is making it worse,” she muttered. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. What does it have to do with that vampire who attacked you?”

“Vampire?” Tabitha gasped. “Heavens, no. None of those awful beasts. Something so simplistic would never penetrate Akiko’s wards, let alone prove so dangerous to her. If they knew the truths she mastered, they would keep miles from her at all times.”

I want to learn those truths too, Lyra thought. But she didn’t ask them now. If she let them change the subject even for a moment, they might slip away to more irrelevant conversation about who knew what, and not explain what had just happened.

“Wait, those are real?” Reagan smacked a bottle with one hand, dislodging the cap with entirely non-supernatural dexterity.

“Yeah,” Lyra said, right along with Akiko and Tabitha. She quickly fell silent again, so her friends could continue with their explanation.

“Tempest isn’t a vampire—” Akiko finally said. “At least not in the way you’re thinking. A vicious predatory monster, yes. The ones she serves are even worse. I don’t know how, but she must’ve heard we had this.”

She settled something on the table between them—and instantly all attention turned towards her. There was the flat mechanical pocket watch that wasn’t a watch, resting gently on the polished wood. “That gun you used saved my life. Interrupted her spell somehow. That shot was perfect timing. Right when she was throwing vulgar magic around. Tossed it right into her own face.”

“Magic,” Lyra pressed. “That’s what you call it? What she was doing...”

“What we all do.” Tabitha set something down on the table between them, then pushed it over to Lyra. Her gun, undamaged from the last time she’d seen it. The frost had melted from its wires and tubes, and the connector on its side was still loose.

“Except for this. No magic here, Akiko. No enchantment, not even a pinch of luck. There’s nothing exotic in its construction, yet clearly it worked as intended. One evil sorceress inflicted enough harm to make her flee. If the rest of us had been there, perhaps we could have caught her, and brought her to justice. Assuming the Consilium was in the mood to administer it.”

Reagan set something down in front of her, a tiny glass, with several colors of liquid swirling around inside. “Here. Try this.”

Lyra wasn’t usually big on liquor. Tonight she took it without a second thought, then knocked it back in a single swig. It felt smooth going down, with a slight fizz. Nothing supernatural this time, no concentrated possibility flooded her chest. Unless a slight tingle on her lips counted as magic.

“Good.”

Reagan smiled back. “I’ll do another for you in half an hour, if you want one. But your weight... probably won’t.”

She shrugged. “Depends on whether everyone answers my questions. That was magic, right? What is magic? And why can I do it?”

“Magic is the result of imposing the true laws of the Supernal on the material world. Its true laws force the material to conform to your will, at least for a little while. That can mean throwing lightning around, or something as simple as seeing things other people don’t notice.”

“Or repairing a perfectly good Sanctum after it’s been trashed by a barbarian attack. Would that I could do anything for the tea. That’s the greatest tragedy of the evening.”

That was closer to what Lyra expected from Akiko—complex, methodical.

Akiko might not make complete sense, but what she said still felt true.

“Which you can do because of the whole—tower thing. Signing your name, all that.” Reagan passed around glasses to the other girls, then kept one in her own fingers. “Congrats, I guess. Not sure if this was what you wanted, but it’s where you are. Now that you know, you can’t leave.”

“I wouldn’t want to forget. Go back to the way it was before, thinking the world was out to get me and I couldn’t do anything to protect myself...” Lyra set down the glass, running her fingers over it. She traced symbols into the glass, symbols that meant nothing to her at first—but now she knew. She’d seen them written on the stones, grown into the leaves and bark of that great forest.

She didn’t yet understand precisely what those things meant. But she didn’t have to understand everything right away. She would learn. Eventually.

“Easy to say now, before you know what it means. Akiko. You like teaching.”

“Right.” Akiko sat up straighter, ignoring her glass “And you did save my life. Thank you for that, Lyra. You could not have chosen a better time to awaken.”

She nodded again. “I don’t think I really picked it, but you’re welcome. I’m glad you’re okay. I’ll be even happier when you explain.”

“We need to go back a ways,” Akiko said. “I should inform you, most of this is speculation, guesswork, or based on unreliable sources. But it’s all we have, so it’s the story we use. It all started with Atlantis...”

Her friend told her. Lyra would’ve dismissed such a story as superstition or myth out of hand the night before. To her ears, it wasn’t much more logical than Terri’s stories of crystal healing and earth spirits.

Akiko told of an ancient city in the days before civilization—a city of wonders and achievement beyond anything she could imagine. A city built on the bones of dragons, written in the words of the true tongue. Atlantis.

Then it fell, plunging all the world into darkness, and stealing the light of magic from every human soul. Until at last the Watchtowers rose, shining beacons across the newly-created absence called the Abyss.

“That’s what happened to you,” Akiko finally finished. “Your soul saw the Watchtowers, like ours did. You followed the call, you came, and you passed whatever trial waited for you. You signed the tower, binding yourself to the realm it was in forever. With that connection, your soul isn’t asleep anymore, it’s Awakened. You’re a mage.”

Not the first time she’d heard that particular word—but now it made a little more sense. It carried the weight of that miraculous healing, of the truth she saw in dream, and the ephemeral creatures she met there.

“Why me?” she asked. “My girlfriend—” She fell silent, turning over those words in her head before speaking again.

“If we knew the answer to that, we would all be happier,” Tabitha said. “Believe me, it’s about the most important question any mage has ever considered. How can we take the sleeping masses of Earth and wake them up? How do we return the birthright that was stolen from them?”

Reagan slid over a barstool, propping her legs up on the table, then leaning back. “Not a clue. If we thought we could, we’d be doing it all the time, every chance we got. But nobody knows why.”

“Exposure to magic usually helps,” Akiko said. “And you’ve spent much of your life around us. Magic was all around you, constant exposure. Maybe some of it sunk in eventually.”

Not them. Not her thoughts, exactly—that was the other voice again. The more it spoke, the more easily she could distinguish it from her own thoughts. Not just her mind or her imagination, this was something much deeper. You know.

Just because you say that doesn’t make it true.

The voice didn’t respond. Lyra hesitated, and nearly asked about it—but kept her mouth closed. If she told her friends she was hearing voices, they might just think she was insane, and not teach her anything else.

“It’s entirely unpredictable,” Akiko finished. “There are certain signs. Sleepwalkers often manifest powers of their own with enough time. Others serve the pentacle faithfully their entire lives without ever awakening. But from how you spoke this morning, I suspect your awakening may have been at the threshold for weeks.”

Now she regretted asking. Once Akiko got started with something mysterious and academic, she could probably go for hours. But Lyra wasn’t ready to ponder the mysteries of the universe. She had more pressing matters on her mind.

“What happens to me now?” she asked, a little louder. “Now that I’m... a mage, you called it? You’re all still... normal. You have jobs, families, and... other stuff.” She eyed Reagan and Akiko. But if the two knew she knew, they made no visible sign. “What changes?”

“Rather a lot.” Tabitha stood up, circling around the table. “You wield the fires of creation now, Lyra. By your will are fallen laws undone. By your voice, whispers of truth are kindled again, and dreams stir in sleeping souls.”

“She doesn’t need your Ladder poems,” Reagan said. She pushed Tabitha’s shoulder, making her stumble back. “We have a responsibility—that’s the three of us here—to report you to the Consilium. That’s all the other mages anywhere nearby. Once that happens, everyone is going to want to recruit you. All five orders. Probably not the sixth, after what you did to their local—whatever Tempest is. But the five. If you’re smart, you join us before that happens. The other girls and I, we’re a—Cabal. That’s the word. There’s only one you haven’t met, Starlight. She’s telling the locals about what happened. When she gets back, someone will be with her. You can tell them you’ve chosen the Free Council, and we’ll take care of the rest. You stay with friends, instead of strangers.”

Orders. Free Council. Cabal. None of that meant anything to Lyra. But she knew friendship. If she could trust anyone, it was people she already knew.

“They’ll train you,” Akiko continued. “There are rules you need to learn. Resources they’ll make available to you. The Mysterium’s hollow is leagues above the other orders. You can even dreamwalk there, if you want.”

“Which she doesn’t understand either,” Reagan said. “Look at her face. This girl is either going to melt into a puddle or turn you into a toad. She can probably do that, so don’t piss her off.”

Turn her into a toad? The statement was so obviously absurd she wanted to dismiss it out of hand. Something taken from every old story about evil witches could only be taking the piss. Right?

“I don’t know about changing anyone into a frog—but I have to talk to my girlfriend. She needs to know about this.”

She stood up, but someone caught her arm. Reagan, her grip as firm as before. “Wait. What we just said about rules? That’s... a big one. Thou shalt not speak of the Mysteries to a sleeping soul. They get real biblical about enforcing it too. If someone knows more than they should...”

She didn’t finish, leaving her words hanging over Lyra like a blade.

“Hello?” called a voice, echoing from down the hall. “What words do you sing, pentacle?”

Lyra’s companions each looked up, turning sharply for the doorway. It was Akiko who answered—not in English, but somehow Lyra understood anyway. “A new path to the same truth,” she yelled back. Then in English, she added “In the parlor!”

The door opened moments later, and several figures rushed inside.

All wore the same strange outfit—a dark cloak, covered in marks and shimmering symbols. They each wore masks, an ancient style with only narrow slits for eyes. Each carried little wooden objects in their hands, with the same delicacy they might wield automatic rifles. Wands?

“Hail, Libertines,” said one, sliding their wand away in a dramatic, ritual fashion. “We’re here to escort you. And to take any threatened thing into safekeeping.”

“Nothing is threatened,” Reagan lied. How she’d gotten in front of the table so fast, or emptied what was resting there moments before, Lyra couldn’t tell. But she spoke with such confidence, Lyra would never have known it was a lie—if she hadn’t seen the encounter herself. “Except us, obviously.”

The strangers shared a look, or at least Lyra assumed that was what they were doing through their masks. After a few moments of silence, one gestured to Lyra.

The same one spoke again—male, she thought, though she couldn’t be sure. There was something distorted about the voice emerging from behind a stone mask. “And this one. You have not defiled the Mysteries with a sleeping mind, have you? You’ve always been unspeakably liberal, but not so brazen.”

“Nothing of the kind,” Tabitha said, stepping protectively between the strangers and Lyra’s seat. “She’s newly awakened. We just completed her initiation in the Council—haven’t we girls?”

“Unfortunate timing, sister.” The speaker approached Lyra in a blink, clasping her hand and yanking her forcefully into a standing position. There was no skin contact, only a pair of black leather gloves. “But we must know before we open the way, or risk Paradox. What did you learn tonight?”

There was more of their double meanings—the endless maze of mysteries, questions, and lies. They obviously expected something specific, but what?

She tensed, trying and failing to pull away. But the stranger’s grip was too strong. So she reacted with something else—magic? “You’re blind,” she whispered, horrified. “Your eyes are...”

“That will do.” The stranger released her, a little too forcefully, turning their back on her. “If she enlists with your Council, you will have the duty of instructing her in proper behavior. Search not where not invited, sister.”

“Stand close,” said another of the masked figures, gesturing with their wand. “The Hierarch waits.”

Lyra obeyed, joining her friends in a tight circle around the masked strangers.

Akiko reached over, taking her hand and squeezing it with a gentle, reassuring pressure. “Close your eyes. It makes it easier.”

“Makes what—”

The strangers circled around her, whispering in that language that wasn’t anything she had ever learned, yet was somehow perfectly clear. “Holograph, distance, transit, converge, open... gate.” While she spoke, both hands traced through the air, leaving a faint trail in behind her. She was writing, though the words were not clear the same way as the words she spoke.

It’s so crude, isn’t it? Babbling in the true tongue. Spells are poetry. This—this is barbaric magic.

There was nothing crude about what happened next. Lyra’s eyes weren’t closed—she saw space fold, two locations lifted upward through a dimensionless infinity. Ripped, pulled, torn—and the basement was gone.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

Hearing voices is concerning, yes, but not for the reasons Lyra thinks. But now that she's a wizard, it's time to meet the local Ministry of Magic... who, unfortunately, seem to be about as effective as Rowling's when it comes to clear and present threats. Still, hopefully Lyra won't have to deal with crazed electromancers in the near future.

(Yes, of course she will, but I can hope. )