Germination 12

August 12th, 2032.

Ugh, I might wake with the sun but four in the morning is too much.

Eyes were open for any possible threat, Ultima stepping onto the deck of her kid— her apprentice’s home. The territory of her tiger of a mother, who scared the living daylights out of her. A glance, a breath and she drank in the whirling subtle web of chaos.

It was something she had only just started to pick up on, with how she weekly met up with Lucia. It was a barely notable thing, behaviors and patterns etched into the woman’s daily routine. There was a sense of otherness to her, one she felt only around the strongest of witches, among those who still dealt with spirits.

Salt tossing and offerings of tea and drink left by a small shrine, and subtle patterns worked into clothing and wood and stone. It explained some of her apprentice’s skills when it came to arts and crafts. It was nothing complicated, simple spirit mazes weaved into cloth and thread. A kitchen with granite tables etched with repelling patterns. Salt was sprinkled around the house in a great circle, held in place by four pillars of protective amethyst.

That she had managed to convince all her neighbors they were merely decorative glass… well Ultima was impressed with her hustle.

She had decided to leave it at that as did Lucia, a discreet agreement between the two. Celia was happy learning magic cough coding, and had some space from her mother. Time to keep their relationship from growing bitter and cold.

Mother made her bed, let it lie. Ultima shook her head and knocked on the door with a heavy burden on her shoulders. That it took only two seconds told her Lucia knew she was there, and had simply been lying in weight.

Lucia truly was a work of art, curves and softness in all the right places, a healthy layer of fat hiding dense, corded muscle. She wore a tight practical dress, yellows and greens and whites. She was a shade darker than her daughter, who leaned towards fair skin, more olive. But Celia did come close, on the weeks she spent hours in the sun. Lucia’s knuckles unfurled to reveal fingers dimpled by years of playing violin, and hardened by combat.

Lucia has the hands of someone who knife fights in dark alleys for money.

What I’d do to hold hands like that, Ultima mused as she was escorted to the living room. A quaint place, a standard sofa and chair and one of those fancy MicroLED displays.

She really needed to get on making use of human stuff more. Nanostructured steel and advanced polycrystalline diamond-boron plating was fancy. But not exactly the epitome of human-witch innovation. Even her human tools tended to involve merely reinforcing them with magic and will, or replacing motors with force engines.

I think I’m learning bad habits from Celia, Ultima thought with a chuckle as Lucia set down two cups of sweet tea. The Latina woman primly sat down, crossing one beautiful leg over the other. She pulled the cup to her chest, the ceramic clinking against claws hard as iron.

Ultima took a deep long sip of her sweet cool tea. “So when you are going to tell your daughter you know about magic?”

The half lidded gaze of Lucia sharpened, muscle tensing under supple skin. “If I had any choice? Never.”

Ultima quirked an eyebrow. “Is that so? Not even when it’s likely tied to her own past?”

Dimpled fingers tapped against ceramic, and a smile rose on the woman’s face. “And how many secrets do you keep from my daughter hmm?”

She snorted. “Oooh so that’s how you’re playing it? I’m guessing you haven’t met that many magical folk from my side? Locals don’t count, it’s been over a century and most of them were youngsters, kids. Of course I’m going to tell her my secrets, especially because she’s not stupid.”

The old man was definitely a clue. Celia knew more, but she was giving Ultima space to answer. Things have been moving fast, even by my standards.

The human’s eyes were narrowed into slits. “I don’t think she is stupid, but she doesn’t need to know.”

Ultima laughed bitterly, enjoying the outrage on the woman’s face. “I thought the same thing… and my sister is dead because of it. My family shattered, an entire clan disgraced. This isn’t a secret that can be kept in the dark, it’s one that’ll explode in her face and ruin her life.”

Ultima could feel it under her skin. Her very skin bubbling with her power, her Nature was chaos incarnate. The dynamic cycle of creation and destruction, supernova bursts in the limitless Dark. It was the very reason for her Earned name, she was the Wandering Abyss.

With a touch of true Black, she could drain spells of their power, removing energy until nothing remained but a fragile stasis. It touched upon aspects of the void that her student had discovered. The void was the word of the spirit world, the source of magic itself.

She had seen the unsettling applications when her student fought, warps and wefts of magic unraveled with her touch. Like she was unbinding the laws of space and time. And it wasn’t even conscious, simply a consequence of channeling that power through her body. But that wasn’t the point was it?

I am not going to drain this entire room of color to make a point, Ultima held back her own protective rage.

Lucia looked defiant. “That—”

“This isn’t healthy Lucia,” Ultima spoke quietly, sincerely. “Not when you have your own child learning magic, and not knowing her own legacy. Throwing salt behind your back, forming a circle of it around your home. Patterns of warding formed into clothing, stone and more. It explains why my apprentice is such a trouble magnet, fighting with those not born of flesh… or those of flesh who have become greater. That changes things, for them and their kith and kin.”

Lucia didn’t seem any less defiant, but Ultima could see the cracks in her shield. There was pain there in her eyes, one she understood but knew she couldn’t bargain with the woman on this.

“I…” Lucia placed her hand over her mouth, almost like she was trying to rip off her own jaw.

Ultima breathed with a shiver. “At least… talk about it with me? I’m teaching your daughter, the flesh and blood that you love.”

But she knew flesh and blood didn’t always matter even among those of the deep Blue.

Lucia stared at her, her fingers tensing around her cup. Is she going to throw that at me or—

“Fine.”

Ultima hid a smile. “Good we—”

“But I need to show you something first.”

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Ultima hesitantly watched Lucia pull down a ladder to the attic of the house, dust blowing down from the opening. The Latina woman sighed in resignation, climbing up the steps.

Ultima’s eyes briefly looked down before shooting back up at the knowing glance of Lucia. She whistled innocently as she followed after the woman, grinning stupidly at the reaction.

She didn’t say no, Ultima thought, pulling up into the dark and dusty attic. It was a room drowned in inky darkness, which writhed and curled in the naked shadow. Fleshless things of the Dark Below, stilled and quieted by the protections set within the home.

What. Why are so many of these things here? Ultima was almost frozen in quiet horror. She had explored the realm of humans for two decades, and had encountered many creatures native to the permeation between realities.

The In-Between was a place of horrors, monsters out of time and space, living in the countless slices of the Nothingness. Things that could shatter minds on the level of the conceptual, beasts hiding from their hunters and predators. A chaotic space created by the sloshing seas of every possible reality, of every possibility that exists. The Paths were simply the veins and arteries and capillaries of that permeating tissue, in diffuse barriers of the Infinite Realms.

One such shadowy low thing dared to approach… and Ultima hissed, a subsonic vibration in her throat.

She wrapped herself in the deep Black, and the other-creatures blanched and backed down. Ultrasonic shrieks and electromagnetic pops and apologetic bursts of cold.

“Sit down.” Lucia commanded, gesturing toward an old sofa, holding an odd wooden box carved with strange patterns.

Ultima did as she asked, knowing the signs of someone who wanted control before they broke like glass. “What is it?”

Lucia unlatched the box’s lock, revealing that it was filled with mementos and pictures. Loads of pictures and mementoes, the woman it belonged to sporting a conflicted pained expression.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

A photo was held in the careful grip of Lucia, a nostalgic look painted across her face. She gingerly handed it over, and Ultima kept her claws retracted. It looked like a picture out of a wedding album, a precious memory guarded and hidden in shadows.

She saw Lucia in a beautiful wedding dress, white stained with greens and grays. There was a bright smile on her face as she hugged the people in the old polaroid. Her left arm was around a rather short human, a fair skinned man with black hair and a handful of beauty marks. He wore a loud tux, pinks and reds and oranges like a neon peacock. His smile was crooked and shy.

He has Celia’s smile.

It had to be Celia’s father, the same hair color and fair skin, and the same dorky smile. His eyes were shut in laughter, but the man wasn’t the only one in the picture. There was a woman occupying her right arm, firm arms tightly wrapped around a thin waist.

She was a tall, thin woman with curls upon curls of hair, loose waves of brown cascading down her cheeks, upper back and shoulders. She wore a rich rich red suit-dress combination which complemented her swooping frame, wide hips and long legs. Her smile was more reserved, cheeks awkwardly pressed together to the far shorter and younger Lucia. Her eyes were dark, dark things, bordering on black, with a large wide nose pulled into a snort. Like Celia’s…

Lucia’s smile was a fragile thing, full of hurt and pain. “That would be Diego and Aaliyah, my partners.” Ultima saw the faint tremble in her eyes, she swallowed.

Oh. Oh no.

Ultima knew exactly where this was heading down, because she had seen that same pain in her apprentice’s eyes. She knew the kid’s father was dead, but didn’t know the exact cause. Though she had been told it was some kind of illness that had taken him, possibly from his work or an outside source.

“I’ve known both of them since I was a little girl, living in San Diego proper. Right around the corner from the Center Lane Institute.”

“That’s not a normal school,” Ultima pointed out, lips thinning in a faint grimace. “So… it goes back that far huh?”

Lucia shrugged. “I was thirteen when we started to notice the things that go bump in the night. Spirits and spooks and horrors wandering the places-that-aren’t. Waiting to feast on the easy prey known as humans.”

“Young, most witchlings tend to need to be fifteen or older to be allowed to work with spirits in greater depth. Most spirits aren’t malicious but…” Spirits in the end weren’t beings of flesh. They weren’t the same kind of Being as witches, much less humans.

“We didn’t get that choice.” Lucia’s voice spat bitterness and venom as she took another sip of her tea. “We battled such creatures for a year, not understanding what they were until Center Lane finally took notice. We were always friends, but we grew closer over the years, until… I fell in love. With both of them.” Her smile was a shadow of the one of her wedding day. “It took me some time to accept it, this was back in 2002 after all. We faced lots of dangers even within that school, and it wasn’t until graduation that I confessed.”

“Six years huh?” Ultima knew that was a long time for someone at that age. But she was just as much of a fool back then.

Lucia nodded. “We were at the top of the world, battling the supernatural. Helping people both human and not. My husband was the researcher, Applied Metaphysics is the public name. He studied the phenomenon of Paracausality, what your people call magic. The forces which do not obey cause and effect, which are unbound by space and time.”

“You humans have placed that under some form of quantum physics haven’t you?”

Her eyes twinkled in amusement. “Paracausality is more… a specific phenomenon which affects things on a quantum and classical scale. Like gravity, like the nuclear forces and electromagnetism. Perhaps even the most fundamental of all.”

“So humans have been studying magic in their own way.” She was impressed, as long as they were within the bounds of sanity and morality.

Lucia nodded. “He was the thinker, Aaliyah my wife… was the mediator. She loved to learn about new cultures and peoples, human or not. She saw the beauty in everything, and helped us see it too.”

Ultima’s instincts jumped at those words. “So what did you do?”

Her smirk revealed a predator, hazel eyes narrowed dangerously. Muscles coiled to pounce, one hand twitching towards a pocket. Knives.

“I was the warrior.” There was a stillness to her stance, confidence and violence radiating from her posture. The twisting darkness of the attic seemed to pulse and twist with excitement and joy. No arrogance, simply the solid will to fight, to live and conquer and kill if need be. Waiting.

That is a very dangerous woman.

“So you tested your own body and soul against those not of flesh,” she supposed even a spark was enough to battle against monsters. “Explains how Celia is so powerful.” She saw how the glyphs had nurtured that precious spark, even against the chill of death. Her very soul sang with power, superlative strength and durability now a part of her flesh.

Lucia snorted. “She got that from me. but she has Diego’s brains and Aaliyah’s heart. In the end though… it all went wrong.”

“How?”

“Diego… died, growing sick with a disease, an illness, a curse we couldn’t break. Our actions had finally caught up with us,” Lucia’s voice broke. “This was around the Christmas of 2024. It hurt our family so much, but we survived.”

Ultima nodded. “Okay.” She almost went to offer a hand… but didn’t. Time and place.

“Then the Day of Fire happened, and Aaliyah’s family was gone in less than a second. As was my brother in law.”

Celia Safar Esteban.

“Safar was his name then?”

“He was born during the second month,” Lucia shook her head. “That day… broke my wife, tore her heart out of her chest. So many people just gone, the screams, and the many, many deaths which came after. Even now the world hasn’t recovered.”

“And your wife?” She was afraid to know but she had to ask for her student’s sake. For her friend’s sake.

Her eyes slid up to the rafters with a dark look. “We were very lucky she loved us so much. And yet and yet… she left us anyway. Disappeared into the night, only leaving me a goddamn note!” The woman was breathing harshly, and Ultima could feel that rage taint the very air. Rage and betrayal and hatred, bound together by love turned sour. “I never told Celia what was in it. I just didn’t have the will anymore.”

Despite everything…

Ultima was still herself.

So she hopped over the couch, and gestured. The tired woman was pulled into a hug, Ultima driving herself forward with instinct and empathy.

“I’m… sorry. Not sure those are the right words, but that's all I can offer.” Ultima whispered in human ears, letting her own warmth soothe Alicia.

“Pathetic.” Lucia murmured.

“No. Not really. Pain is pain.” That was how she saw it anyway.

“I think… I’ll tell her soon, especially after what happened in town.”

Ultima hummed. “So you do know about that, a certain cloaked stranger saved lives that day.” Lucia grumbled in response so she laughed. “Yeah. I don’t think Celia will let me pull her away from this, and she’s got the means to step from here to there now.”

“Do you mean the werewolf dealing with prejudice and racial violence, the dragon-princess dealing with an evil murderous grandmother, or her mentor dealing with a genocidal god-king? Or do you mean the flood of man and witch-eating monsters possibly being mind-controlled?”

“Yes.”

Lucia laughed wetly. “At least Celia is making friends with people who’ll watch her back.”

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I hate Celia so much! Ajani screamed in his own head as he reached for his anchors and chains both physical and metaphysical.

He was a Warder, it was the craft he had been learning since he was a small child. Protective magics, complex spells anchored onto a place, a time, an object or even a person. Enchantment was so much more than just emplacing a complex spell within a runestone.

Anything could be an anchor for magic… which was the basis for curses, and why apotropaic magic was so vital. People like him stood between the evil and malice of those of flesh and spirit alike.

Which made Celia’s strange hungering magic a terrifying thing to experience, how reality seemed to burst at the seams. The strange energies seemed to unravel his protective spells.

“Sorry! I’m still working on keeping the void from touching your spells!” The human apologized with a pale expression as she dove into a slipstream she had created. She hurtled down the stream at thrice her typical speed, making up for her deficiencies as a human.

Not that I have a leg to stand on as a goblin, Ajani admitted with a pained shrug as he cast a shielding spell. The White radiated down his burning veins, forming a solid fractal barrier. He had placed a tiny shard of soul within the construct, a quiet whisper of instruction and purpose. A simple one.

Violence.

The fractal barrier was anchored to himself, broken shards stabbing into threaded ones with ease, or expanding outwards to grapple the little monsters.

Here you are, playing exterminator with rabble… when you’re so much more.

Ajani flinched at the mental voice, a memory cutting through his mind. His lips curled back into a snarl, and vicious knives of solid magic splattered three more barely sentient creatures.

I’m just a goblin.

Dinah covered his right, drawing on the essence of battle itself for power. She breathed fire, burning down threaded ones, until their flesh combusted. The warrior-princess of a taifa, a kingdom in its own right. With more responsibilities.

Liar.

He had run away, he had run away.

Althea took to his left with a howl, summoning Rage to her own fists to batter her prey. A shaman of all things, working the spirits to her will. Hearing the voice of the spirit world itself. Greater and grander than him.

Important and vital, but she wasn’t what I was.

The ghoul boy let out a subsonic shudder, skin shifting and limbs extending as he struck with a magical blade, pure heat scattering air.

A Smith in the making… and that’s all he is.

A warp in reality from above, tearing a threaded one aiming to strike him down. Celia floated down on air and gravity, colors bursting from her limbs.

A human is a big deal but not that much… but she could be.

Ajani growled, aiming not to think about his responsibilities, about what he had run away from.

Everything you are is because of me. Never forget that.

Celia glanced over in concern, thick eyebrows knitting together.

He breathed. In and out. Out and in.

He was just a goblin, today and tomorrow and hopefully months more.

Breathe.

Ajani reached for his anchors and chains and binds, and ignored everything else.