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sparkindarknessHMMM.... this looks like it may become rather epic. Or maybe not, I'm always a very bad judge of these things. Still, it is getting interesting. I'm fighting the urge to find some popcorn to sit down and look at what's happening in my head.
Edit for bad HTML. No cookies.
Edit again for bad names - thanks to Home_of_Usher for pointing it out. I blame the muses. They are also denied cookies.
I woke quickly. there was a hand on my mouth, a silhouetted figure stood over the bed. In an instant power rushed through me. the darkness eased back as my tattoos began to glow, the pain was lost in the rush of adrenaline. The hand froze then pulled back carefully. I turned and saw Liam standing over the bed, his hands held up placatingly.
I frowned up at him and whispered quietly so as not to disturb Rick (though the man could sleep through anything). “That’s a good way to get yourself messily killed, Liam.”
He nodded, swallowing. “I had a dream.”
I frowned at him. “What? Do you want me to check if there’s monsters under your bed and tuck you in?” It is perfectly possible to fill even whispered statements with lashings of sarcasm.
He glared at me in the half-light. “Don’t be a prat all your life, Darren, you know my talents as well as I do.”
I sat up in bed, pushing the last vestiges of sleep away. It had been a long day, the shop was nearly repaired but it had involved a truly epic struggle with both the insurance company and the contractors. I try very hard to be good and not to resort to dark powers to get my way, but the world seems almost to conspire to make me evil. Perhaps if it succeeds I might be able to get a job with the insurance company. Or maybe not. Even sorcerers have limits. I stifled a yawn. “Ok, you had a prophetic dream.”
“Yes, something bad is coming.” He nodded, shivering a little. New York in winter was an icy level of frozen hell, but the heating was on so I didn’t think it was cold that made him shiver. Being a Seer made for troubling dreams - but not particularly worse than an Infernalist or Necromancer got.
“Couldn’t this have waited?” I yawned again. “Until morning. Then you would have only have woken Rick up. Do you have any idea how little quality sleep an Infernalist gets?”
“No, it couldn’t wait. Because it’s coming here. Tonight.” He hissed back. Suddenly he stiffened and turned to look at something I couldn’t see. “Now.”
I was out of bed and standing between him and the doorway without a thought, my tattoos spread eerie light across the room, making the shadows flicker. Liam’s eyes flickered constantly to the shadows, trying to catch the almost-movement at the corners of his eyes. My own gaze remained fixed. I could see it, not with anything as basic as vision, but with my power as it eased into the flat. It was something dark and terrible and horribly familiar.
I willed the very power of destruction, the very essence of decay and ending into being in my hands before lashing it out at a half seen figure that suddenly loomed in the doorway.
I was briefly able to make out a vaguely humanoid figure. vaguely, but not quite, something vast swept up from its back and brushed the ceiling. it seemed to have extra limbs in the half light and the flickering glow of my tattoos. I only got a brief look as the creature dissolved into a faintly bubbling pool on the carpet. Shreds of body parts lay around the scorched mire or liquid flesh, some of them still twitching.
I staggered and gripped a wall, desperately trying not to collapse. My tattoos felt like someone was cutting into my flesh with red hot knives. I gasped, but couldn’t let the power go as I pulled myself past the mess on the carpet into the living room. I could sense them before I could see them. Undead and daemon both, mixed together into one terrible entity. I threw Necromancy into the room, a dire command with all my power of Undeath to cease, to stop, to become mere inert flesh. I felt both of them stagger drunkenly. They didn’t stop. Another will commanded them and the daemons empowered them.
I lashed out again, Necromancy and Sorcery, death and decay as one rotten arm reached for me. Flesh sloughed from its body and fell to the floor in ribbons,. In seconds my power had striped it down to a fragile skeleton, bones ancient and cracking. Yet still it didn’t stop.
In an impossibly blur of motion it had reached me. Bony fingers gripped my arms and forced me back heavily against the wall, knocking my breath out of me. My head flew backwards and hit hard. My vision swam in strange colours, my tattoos screamed in pain. My mind seemed to slow and draw back, become a mere spectator as the deformed skeletal face came towards me, mouth open to reveal fangs that had never graced a human corpse. I saw it come and I couldn’t move.
A hand gripped the back of the thing’s cranium and forced it down. Rather than going for my face the jaws descended to my neck. I felt the fangs pierce my skin, felt blood begin to flow, then there was a sudden, incredible jab of agony that burned away the fog in my mind. The creature reared back, fangs blackened and shattered from the touch of the tattoo ward at my neck. I saw Liam stood behind it, his skin nearly as pale as mine with the shock. He moved his hand from its skull and kicked it sharply in the back of the knee. The fragile bones shattered and it collapsed to the floor. Liam quickly began stamping on it, almost in a frenzy to crush any bones that still twitched.
I ignored it and turned to the other thing in the room. It loomed over Ahrimadan who was hissing angrily from it. I could feel the battle of wills between them as the creature desperately tried to inch closer to my familiar and he tried to force it away.
“Begone from this place!” Ahrimadan hissed, echoing rage clung painfully to every syllable. “BEGONE!” He roared, half feline and half creature I had no name for. The creature staggered, but the daemon remained, tied with a force that Ahrimadan could not gainsay.
I glared at it and pulled on the power of the Infernal realms. I let it fill me and confirm my mastery, my strength, my power without service. I let it roll over me without bowing or submitting, I took its power, took it with will and talent and strength. I through it at the daemon, exerting my mastery over it. “By my power and by my mastery and by my will I banish you from this place.”
It wasn’t the best banishment, not by any stretch, but it was the power that was important. Power and will and strength. It would still not have been enough, not alone I think. But at that moment Ahrimadan hissed another command that echoed inside my skull and thundered over my mind. I heard Liam groan behind me. The thing collapsed. The daemon within it banished it became mere inert flesh.
There was a sound like fingernails clawing down a blackboard to my right. I turned, wincing, to see yet another creature, long wings protruding from it rotten back, battering at the window. Or where the window had been - the glass had melted and run from the frame to lie in a puddle on the hardwood floor underneath. The creature battered at empty space, some invisible force holding it back. I felt the power of the wall, but it was nothing I could understand.
I took the seconds it gave me to study the thing. Undead, possessed by daemons., I could feel how it was put together, feel how different undead creatures had been grafted together then infused with infernal energy which in turn opened a gate for the daemon to take up residence. I could feel the spells that had been used on the Undead flesh to make it a perfect host for the daemonic driver. I could probably make one myself.
What you can make, you can also destroy.
I reached out to the creature with Necromancy, forging a connection between myself and the corpse, feeling the necrotic energy that gave it the ability to move, to hold together and to help the daemon take up residence. The daemon lashed out at me with its energy, trying to drive my magic away. I seized it with the power of the Infernal, took it by the scruff and forced it back. I then struck out with all my power, Necromancy to force the body to drive it out. Infernalism to banish the daemon and Sorcery to hit the whole thing - daemon and Undead vessel, with destruction.
The injured daemon was cast out. The shattered remains froze in mid air and plummeted downwards. I limped to the window and looked down. The remains had fallen through the soft top of a convertible car below. Safely out of sight for now.
I sighed with relief and leaned heavily on the window, rubbing my eyes. I felt like someone had someone had been beating me with a club for hours. My wards throbbed, each flare of burning pain seeming to take just a little more of my energy with it. I groaned and couldn’t stop myself. If I were going to fight Kyernath, I really would have to carry my knife around with me - I couldn’t fight with these damn wards crippling me all the time. I rubbed my neck around the tattoo. My skin was sore to the touch, like an extremely bad sunburn. I could feel it peeling and blisters beginning to form. I would have to have Rick look at it in the morning.
It was then that it hit me. I froze in shock as the power enveloped me. I do not know how far it was, I do not know where it came from, all I felt were the familiar flavours of my own powers. Necromancy, Infernalism and Sorcery closed in one me, all poised to destroy me by any means possible. For a second I felt sure I was dead, too shocked to act. My wards flared again, actinic light that illuminated the whole flat like brightly coloured halogen lamps. I covered my eyes and screamed, I didn’t know what hurt more, the burning of my wards - even directed outwards, the burning light or the power that closed in on me.
For the second time that night, pain snapped me into action. I snapped back fiercely with my own power. I had spent years forcing my magic through my wards, years of practice in fighting against their oppressive presence. I had hated every minute of it but it aided me now. I faced that overwhelming wave of power and flared back, through the wards, through his power to lash out at my attacker. Not a defence, a counter attack. Dimly I felt more power pouring into me, felt Ahrimadan’s furred side brushing against my legs. I felt the power hit and be knocked aside. The attack against me faltered, I felt him draw some of his power back into defence.
I drew back all of my power and took advantage of his hesitation to shatter any connection between us. I flared all three powers through the flat, through the entire city block, all seeking and annihilating any connections he may have built. Any suggestion of a magical link was shattered with overwhelming force. At last, I allowed myself to fall to my knees, panting as if I had run a mile. I let go of my power, wincing as sweat stung my burning skin.
I tried to think. I could have fought him. could have faced him then, mind to mind, but every instinct in my body screamed against it. I rolled the memory of his power in my mind, tried to analyse it. He was powerful, no question of that. I wondered if this was all his power or just a small sample? No way to know. No, it was not power that worried me, it was his skill and knowledge. I felt the rituals that had clung to his attack, felt the spells that had clung to his minions. It hit me then just how little I knew about ritual Necromancy, Infernalist and even Sorcery. There was a limit to what the Undead and Daemons could teach you and I had not exactly sought out that knowledge to the fullest extent.
I knew with a cold certainty that I could not defeat Kyernath in a battle of magic. Not yet.
I looked up at a scraping wooden noise and a strange, mechanical banging, trying to draw in enough energy to face a new threat. Trying to find the energy to care. Liam was by the window he had taken off the door to the walk in cupboard and was busily fixing it to the broken window with a nail gun. Lord and Lady knew why Rick had bought the bloody thing. At least it wouldn’t go to waste. Liam smiled at me, carefully. I managed a broken rictus in reply.
He gently helped me to my feet and back to the bedroom. Rick snored on, oblivious and Liam gently dislodged him from my side of the bed and helped me back between the sheets. I tried to thank him but already sleep had risen up to claim me.
My last thought before unconsciousness took me was that it was nice to have a Seer watching your back - and your future.
Edit for bad HTML. No cookies.
Edit again for bad names - thanks to Home_of_Usher for pointing it out. I blame the muses. They are also denied cookies.
I woke quickly. there was a hand on my mouth, a silhouetted figure stood over the bed. In an instant power rushed through me. the darkness eased back as my tattoos began to glow, the pain was lost in the rush of adrenaline. The hand froze then pulled back carefully. I turned and saw Liam standing over the bed, his hands held up placatingly.
I frowned up at him and whispered quietly so as not to disturb Rick (though the man could sleep through anything). “That’s a good way to get yourself messily killed, Liam.”
He nodded, swallowing. “I had a dream.”
I frowned at him. “What? Do you want me to check if there’s monsters under your bed and tuck you in?” It is perfectly possible to fill even whispered statements with lashings of sarcasm.
He glared at me in the half-light. “Don’t be a prat all your life, Darren, you know my talents as well as I do.”
I sat up in bed, pushing the last vestiges of sleep away. It had been a long day, the shop was nearly repaired but it had involved a truly epic struggle with both the insurance company and the contractors. I try very hard to be good and not to resort to dark powers to get my way, but the world seems almost to conspire to make me evil. Perhaps if it succeeds I might be able to get a job with the insurance company. Or maybe not. Even sorcerers have limits. I stifled a yawn. “Ok, you had a prophetic dream.”
“Yes, something bad is coming.” He nodded, shivering a little. New York in winter was an icy level of frozen hell, but the heating was on so I didn’t think it was cold that made him shiver. Being a Seer made for troubling dreams - but not particularly worse than an Infernalist or Necromancer got.
“Couldn’t this have waited?” I yawned again. “Until morning. Then you would have only have woken Rick up. Do you have any idea how little quality sleep an Infernalist gets?”
“No, it couldn’t wait. Because it’s coming here. Tonight.” He hissed back. Suddenly he stiffened and turned to look at something I couldn’t see. “Now.”
I was out of bed and standing between him and the doorway without a thought, my tattoos spread eerie light across the room, making the shadows flicker. Liam’s eyes flickered constantly to the shadows, trying to catch the almost-movement at the corners of his eyes. My own gaze remained fixed. I could see it, not with anything as basic as vision, but with my power as it eased into the flat. It was something dark and terrible and horribly familiar.
I willed the very power of destruction, the very essence of decay and ending into being in my hands before lashing it out at a half seen figure that suddenly loomed in the doorway.
I was briefly able to make out a vaguely humanoid figure. vaguely, but not quite, something vast swept up from its back and brushed the ceiling. it seemed to have extra limbs in the half light and the flickering glow of my tattoos. I only got a brief look as the creature dissolved into a faintly bubbling pool on the carpet. Shreds of body parts lay around the scorched mire or liquid flesh, some of them still twitching.
I staggered and gripped a wall, desperately trying not to collapse. My tattoos felt like someone was cutting into my flesh with red hot knives. I gasped, but couldn’t let the power go as I pulled myself past the mess on the carpet into the living room. I could sense them before I could see them. Undead and daemon both, mixed together into one terrible entity. I threw Necromancy into the room, a dire command with all my power of Undeath to cease, to stop, to become mere inert flesh. I felt both of them stagger drunkenly. They didn’t stop. Another will commanded them and the daemons empowered them.
I lashed out again, Necromancy and Sorcery, death and decay as one rotten arm reached for me. Flesh sloughed from its body and fell to the floor in ribbons,. In seconds my power had striped it down to a fragile skeleton, bones ancient and cracking. Yet still it didn’t stop.
In an impossibly blur of motion it had reached me. Bony fingers gripped my arms and forced me back heavily against the wall, knocking my breath out of me. My head flew backwards and hit hard. My vision swam in strange colours, my tattoos screamed in pain. My mind seemed to slow and draw back, become a mere spectator as the deformed skeletal face came towards me, mouth open to reveal fangs that had never graced a human corpse. I saw it come and I couldn’t move.
A hand gripped the back of the thing’s cranium and forced it down. Rather than going for my face the jaws descended to my neck. I felt the fangs pierce my skin, felt blood begin to flow, then there was a sudden, incredible jab of agony that burned away the fog in my mind. The creature reared back, fangs blackened and shattered from the touch of the tattoo ward at my neck. I saw Liam stood behind it, his skin nearly as pale as mine with the shock. He moved his hand from its skull and kicked it sharply in the back of the knee. The fragile bones shattered and it collapsed to the floor. Liam quickly began stamping on it, almost in a frenzy to crush any bones that still twitched.
I ignored it and turned to the other thing in the room. It loomed over Ahrimadan who was hissing angrily from it. I could feel the battle of wills between them as the creature desperately tried to inch closer to my familiar and he tried to force it away.
“Begone from this place!” Ahrimadan hissed, echoing rage clung painfully to every syllable. “BEGONE!” He roared, half feline and half creature I had no name for. The creature staggered, but the daemon remained, tied with a force that Ahrimadan could not gainsay.
I glared at it and pulled on the power of the Infernal realms. I let it fill me and confirm my mastery, my strength, my power without service. I let it roll over me without bowing or submitting, I took its power, took it with will and talent and strength. I through it at the daemon, exerting my mastery over it. “By my power and by my mastery and by my will I banish you from this place.”
It wasn’t the best banishment, not by any stretch, but it was the power that was important. Power and will and strength. It would still not have been enough, not alone I think. But at that moment Ahrimadan hissed another command that echoed inside my skull and thundered over my mind. I heard Liam groan behind me. The thing collapsed. The daemon within it banished it became mere inert flesh.
There was a sound like fingernails clawing down a blackboard to my right. I turned, wincing, to see yet another creature, long wings protruding from it rotten back, battering at the window. Or where the window had been - the glass had melted and run from the frame to lie in a puddle on the hardwood floor underneath. The creature battered at empty space, some invisible force holding it back. I felt the power of the wall, but it was nothing I could understand.
I took the seconds it gave me to study the thing. Undead, possessed by daemons., I could feel how it was put together, feel how different undead creatures had been grafted together then infused with infernal energy which in turn opened a gate for the daemon to take up residence. I could feel the spells that had been used on the Undead flesh to make it a perfect host for the daemonic driver. I could probably make one myself.
What you can make, you can also destroy.
I reached out to the creature with Necromancy, forging a connection between myself and the corpse, feeling the necrotic energy that gave it the ability to move, to hold together and to help the daemon take up residence. The daemon lashed out at me with its energy, trying to drive my magic away. I seized it with the power of the Infernal, took it by the scruff and forced it back. I then struck out with all my power, Necromancy to force the body to drive it out. Infernalism to banish the daemon and Sorcery to hit the whole thing - daemon and Undead vessel, with destruction.
The injured daemon was cast out. The shattered remains froze in mid air and plummeted downwards. I limped to the window and looked down. The remains had fallen through the soft top of a convertible car below. Safely out of sight for now.
I sighed with relief and leaned heavily on the window, rubbing my eyes. I felt like someone had someone had been beating me with a club for hours. My wards throbbed, each flare of burning pain seeming to take just a little more of my energy with it. I groaned and couldn’t stop myself. If I were going to fight Kyernath, I really would have to carry my knife around with me - I couldn’t fight with these damn wards crippling me all the time. I rubbed my neck around the tattoo. My skin was sore to the touch, like an extremely bad sunburn. I could feel it peeling and blisters beginning to form. I would have to have Rick look at it in the morning.
It was then that it hit me. I froze in shock as the power enveloped me. I do not know how far it was, I do not know where it came from, all I felt were the familiar flavours of my own powers. Necromancy, Infernalism and Sorcery closed in one me, all poised to destroy me by any means possible. For a second I felt sure I was dead, too shocked to act. My wards flared again, actinic light that illuminated the whole flat like brightly coloured halogen lamps. I covered my eyes and screamed, I didn’t know what hurt more, the burning of my wards - even directed outwards, the burning light or the power that closed in on me.
For the second time that night, pain snapped me into action. I snapped back fiercely with my own power. I had spent years forcing my magic through my wards, years of practice in fighting against their oppressive presence. I had hated every minute of it but it aided me now. I faced that overwhelming wave of power and flared back, through the wards, through his power to lash out at my attacker. Not a defence, a counter attack. Dimly I felt more power pouring into me, felt Ahrimadan’s furred side brushing against my legs. I felt the power hit and be knocked aside. The attack against me faltered, I felt him draw some of his power back into defence.
I drew back all of my power and took advantage of his hesitation to shatter any connection between us. I flared all three powers through the flat, through the entire city block, all seeking and annihilating any connections he may have built. Any suggestion of a magical link was shattered with overwhelming force. At last, I allowed myself to fall to my knees, panting as if I had run a mile. I let go of my power, wincing as sweat stung my burning skin.
I tried to think. I could have fought him. could have faced him then, mind to mind, but every instinct in my body screamed against it. I rolled the memory of his power in my mind, tried to analyse it. He was powerful, no question of that. I wondered if this was all his power or just a small sample? No way to know. No, it was not power that worried me, it was his skill and knowledge. I felt the rituals that had clung to his attack, felt the spells that had clung to his minions. It hit me then just how little I knew about ritual Necromancy, Infernalist and even Sorcery. There was a limit to what the Undead and Daemons could teach you and I had not exactly sought out that knowledge to the fullest extent.
I knew with a cold certainty that I could not defeat Kyernath in a battle of magic. Not yet.
I looked up at a scraping wooden noise and a strange, mechanical banging, trying to draw in enough energy to face a new threat. Trying to find the energy to care. Liam was by the window he had taken off the door to the walk in cupboard and was busily fixing it to the broken window with a nail gun. Lord and Lady knew why Rick had bought the bloody thing. At least it wouldn’t go to waste. Liam smiled at me, carefully. I managed a broken rictus in reply.
He gently helped me to my feet and back to the bedroom. Rick snored on, oblivious and Liam gently dislodged him from my side of the bed and helped me back between the sheets. I tried to thank him but already sleep had risen up to claim me.
My last thought before unconsciousness took me was that it was nice to have a Seer watching your back - and your future.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-05 04:36 am (UTC)Rick? Or do you mean Liam?
Jarrod: *is already munching popcorn* I'll probabaly have critique later on but for right now I enjoyed it.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-05 10:30 pm (UTC)I blame the muses. Cookies are being withheld.
Heh, at least he enjoyed it. Pass the pop corn, more images are moving through my head.