Germination 2

July 21st, 2032.

My leg bounced as I waited for my ‘date’ to show up, a certain oddity, maybe a witch living in the Human Realm instead of the realm of her ancestors.

I had gone for a less conspicuous outfit. A banana yellow shirt graduating to lavender. Blue chino pants and a dark purple pageboy hat. Personally I thought I looked quite dapper. Plus I had my bracers which had been modified to better complement my new spell focuses. Which fortunately didn’t glow in a notable way once they settled.

My spell focus array lets me alter the weave of magic. Either by forming a glyph pattern in the air like a pen, or by picturing the weave of a spell. So my gloves were a tad obsolete… without modifications.

I had instead turned them into power sources. A ten-glyph array with only light glyphs could infuse magic into an object, acting as a power source in low magic areas. So I had added a large round crystal orb to the back of my bracers. Then carved the array into it and now had a rich source of magic to use anywhere.

I probably could have worked some runes into them. But I was honestly still rather shit at the more mathematical aspects of runes.

Though runes primarily had numbers recorded inside of them to record the shapes and dimensions of a spell or enchanted object. It was basically just geometry equations, just done in binary. It reduces the strain of needing to think about the shape and weave of a spell.

Modern runes had just a single shape encasing an equation describing geometries. But Ancient runes had more… complex pictograms that could be used to shape a spell without needing to do equations. And I was still studying them… translation was slow.

Math just made it more efficient…

I turned around, and with a nasty smirk startled the shit out of Maddie who was masking herself under endless writhing Black.

“Holy—” She cut off her cursing with a strangled hiss, revealing her fangs as they flicked out.

They were definitely fangs, curved inward, like hypodermic broadheads, grooved finely. Which narrowed down what she was in a very convenient instant for my own curiosity.

“An upyri huh…?” I said with a bemused grin as I leaned against a pole.

Maddie flinched, the true Black dancing around her skin shuddering with aggression. “You shouldn't say such things aloud.”

I raised a brow as I pointedly looked around my hometown, people simply avoiding us like the plague.

“You don't know much about Puerta Springs, do you? Strange things are always afoot in this town. No one cares.” It made me wonder if my mama was truly oblivious or if she was pretending for my sake. And what did that say about me?

Maddie hissed again, her dark gray eyes flashing dangerously. “No.”

I stuck out my tongue. “Yes. You're on my turf. And I've never met… I'm guessing a dhampir before.”

I gestured to the property line of Ultima’s Earth home, sitting down on a bench right outside it. It was just a common house. Nothing special outside the barely visible layers of magic from sitting in a soft spot in reality.

Maddie hesitantly sat down. “And you're not scared of me?” She sounded disappointed about that.

“My closest friend is a werewolf, my tinkering buddy is a ghoul, and my… rival turned hesitant ally is a wapuk.”

Maddie leaned back in shock. “They still exist?”

“Not here, no.” Was all I clarified, enjoying throwing her off her game.

She pouted. “I honestly thought you were some kind of wallflower…”

“I'm autistic, burnt out, and exhausted. If I'm quiet it's not because I'm nice and dainty.” I rolled my wrists, my bracelets tightly bound to my skin, spreading energy across my body. “I've met far more terrifying things than someone able to digest and break down blood.”

Maddie just stared at me. “This isn’t going the way I planned.”

“What was your plan?” I asked skeptically.

“I was going to intimidate you with being a dhampir and get answers out of how a human can perform a Working.”

“Another term for magic I presume.” I carefully felt my way through the flowing dense layers of khi flowing throughout my body. An interesting ability of my spell focus was that it spread out its energy into the pathways inside my own body. “And yeah you could just ask like a normal person, I’m not exactly keeping it secret.”

Maddie pouted. “Fair. How do you have magic?”

“I figured out an ancient forgotten means of invoking ambient magic known as glyphs,” I didn’t gesture to my bracelets. “I can use glyphs to infuse intentions into magic to cast spells, weaving together the strands of magic into the right pattern.”

Maddie blinked. “I guess that’s not far from how the Making works for us… we just use our own energy directly.”

“Same as witches then… which reminds me. How many people like you are living on this side of the divide? In the realm of humans?”

Maddie smirked. “Not many obviously, there are maybe ten thousand of us magic folk in the US. Perhaps one hundred thousand globally… There were more of us before the Day of Fire. When that day happened… a lot of our sanctuaries started to die even faster.”

“Faster?” I asked in confusion.

“A lot of our sanctuaries rely on powerful nature spirits, so when nature is…”

“Dying. Like the Amazon rainforest.” It wasn’t gone, but it had become both a net producer of carbon dioxide and the eastern Amazon was turning into a dry lowly savanna. “That makes sense, my teacher has said as much.”

Maddie crossed her legs, gray eyes watching my face. “So you've got access to where my great-grandfather fled from? From Calafia?”

I nodded. “In a sense yes, I did have a feeling that's where you had kin from.”

“He told me stories about how his people were forced to flee from some religious extremists. And that he hopes their leader was killed for his crimes.”

“I'm sorry.” Maddie blinked, confused before realization filled her eyes. “But that didn't happen, if it's who I think it is. That monster is still kicking, and has only gotten stronger.” The Chantry had expanded gradually and slowly, initially subsuming the kingdoms of the Head in the first two centuries of the Pale King’s life.

The next fifty years after that involved a rapid acceleration of the Chantry’s influence. Spreading across the Isles and then overseas. His rule became solid in the last hundred years, while his followers grew their own empires on the mainland.

“He's not going to like that, he… hates that man with a burning passion.” Maddie sounded just a tad unnerved.

“Not much I can do about that, I'm not exactly able to do much against a four century old god-king.” I pointed out the obvious problems with it. “What I do know is that he's done his best to cull away and strip away the identity of various branches of magic. Down to every single adult witch having to join a mandated Circle to bind and suppress their magic unless they want to be branded a lawless or wild witch.”

There was horror in her eyes. “That… covens are meant to nurture and strengthen our magic, they… that's horrible.”

I nodded. “Your great-grandfather has a good reason to hate that man. Hell I hate him without even knowing him.” It was distant hate, but it was there in my mind.

Maddie’s expression shifted, as did her aura. “Have you ever thought of doing something about this guy?

“Once or twice? Why?”

The dhampir smirked. “I thought maybe you'd like to compare notes on magic. My family still holds some secrets he wanted to be destroyed.”

I smirked right back. “I might be amiable for some sharing then.”

----------------------------------------

“So what's this?” I asked Ultima as I noted the drawing board was utterly covered in strange abstract images and geometries.

“It's time to give you a more detailed breakdown of my most powerful, and useful Craft. How I traverse from one reality to another.” She gestured to a strange depiction, it looked like a dark stellar ocean, hues of blacks and blues and purples scattered with gold and white and silver. There were flat grid layers, shaped like leaves, forming something like a tree or a bush of… membranes, dimensions? Those layers themselves were connected with fractal tunnels, like fleshy veins and capillaries.

“Sensible? So why is Maddie allowed to be here and why are we doing this in my home reality?” The aforementioned girl waved lazily, large headphones firmly placed on her slightly pointed ears.

“Maddie is here because I know her family and how trustworthy they are,” I blinked at that. “For the second, I’ve found it's far easier and safer to learn how to jump realities in your home.” She shuddered and I wondered what kind of shit she had gotten into.

“So what am I looking at exactly?” I had to ask now that I knew what we were doing.

“The rough structure of the multiverse little raven,” Ultima’s voice became more serious, a booming certainty. “At least it's how I've managed to piece it together from my travels, old texts I've found, and using human theories.”

“You've already mentioned that the spirit world is like an infinite ocean with mortal worlds floating within them.” I pointed out, curious if there was more to it than that. “I imagine it's more complicated than that?”

“It is. We’re talking about some of the fundamental structures of reality here, even at my best I'm missing a fuck ton. But I can do the best I can with what I have.” she pointed to the sea and the webbing. “I'll start with the two fundamental aspects of existence, the Material and the Spiritual. The Material is of course the world of matter and mortals like us. The Spiritual is the roiling, boiling, layer of existence that lays over and under and around the material universe. Every mortal world has a spirit world counterpart, a tributary to the greater spiritual ocean.”

I hummed. “I imagine Althea is learning some of this as a shaman?”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Ultima grinned. “Yep. The spirit world can itself be divided into three metaphysically aligned planes, the Outer Sphere appears to be the physical world, only with visible spirits and dampened magic. The High Spirit is one step above that, the true home of the spirits, with somewhat consistent laws of physics that can be countermanded by spirits, witches and otherkind. This is where most different metaphysical areas exist, large realms do need their own place. Knots and islands with criss-crossing paths between. The Abstract Spirit is the highest accessible plane, with no consistent laws at all, and home to the genius loci of the greatest spirits.”

“Highest accessible hmm?” I questioned.

“Think of a world of Forms, a true platonic realm, the objective blueprint of reality. It's a mythical plane supposedly home to the Others when they were greater and grander. All stories and fables.” She waved away the topic with a grimace.

I glanced over to something else on the drawing board, to the strange fractal veins, holes and bridges and chasms spread throughout existence. “What are those?”

“That would be the abyssal layers of reality, a complex network of capillaries and arteries, hidden threads within the veil, the gauntlet between the material and ephemeral. Think of them as the bridges and chasms and connections that tie two very different worlds together.” She explained with a gesture, claws tapping the abyssal tunnels. “They’re the places that form the foundation for the paths between universes, as well as where worlds and objects who've lost all their connections fall into.”

“I'm guessing the multiverse is a pretty varied landscape, isn't it?”

“Yep.” She pointed to the bush. “This big bush here represents Yggdrasil, the part of the spiritual sea connected to stable mortal worlds. There are paths between universes at the top of the abyss, the multiversal nexus, the Paths, which are all on the same ‘level’ as the mortal and spirit worlds. Then there's the Depths, which are realms cut off from the branches, where Lost things and people roam. Under that is the Below, where things dissolve and break down. Big old pile of garbage, one for every mortal world in existence.”

“The Depths, aren't those the places navigated by the Mau?”

“The Mau are a clan of Pathfinders and Oracles, they deal with immaterial forces and the lore of them. But the focus is almost always on either sealing those paths or breaking them down for use by the Chantry.” There was something left unsaid and I didn't pry.

“So portals between material worlds go through the Paths, you find rifts that lead to them, feed them with power and then pass through them.”

Ultima looked proud again, and I hid my preening. “Correct. There are of course a number of different ways to enter realms, rituals, wielding or creating otherkind that can deal with realms, or simply finding places with naturally open doors.”

“Can I see if I can open the rift here?” I pleaded, bouncing on my toes at the idea.

Maddie perked up and I hid a smug grin at her sudden attention.

“You may, if you can find it.” Ultima allowed with a grave voice, and I took a deep breath.

In and out.

Her blazing aura almost blinded me, a twisting scarlet and pitch-black bonfire, with tips of dull silver. Maddie’s aura was more like an oil spill crossed with a shadow, slipping off of her in waves. Which swept back and forth like the shore of a black sea. Magic twisted and winded around the house. In a dozen shades and hues crossing one another in endless patterns.

I found the rift in reality with shocking ease. So with a breath I opened a hole to the void. Drawing from the deep, I wove tarnished silver and walked over to the rift. I rooted myself, and flowed my movement as I pushed my hands into the rift, feeding the energy into it.

In an instant, the portal unfolded itself into an ovoid hole in space and time, fractals upon fractals doubling over in complex helices. I then pulled the energy sustaining it out, and it collapsed back into a warp.

“Is it supposed to be that easy?”

“No.” There was an unsettled hitch in her voice, and I frowned.

“Guess I have a talent for opening portals then?”

Ultima brightened, lips pulled into a toothy smile.

----------------------------------------

“Sisilla, the glyph of the Chain.” I murmured to myself, as I read a text older than my country. “This glyph is said to represent prisons, binding and limitations. A powerful symbol, said to be the heart of binding magic. Of tying down and restricting more dangerous things.”

Maddie groaned. “Do you even have this glyph?”

“Nope,” I said cheerily. “But I have a good idea of what this glyph is likely derived from. It’s likely a mix of earth and void, of the Green and the Gray. The chains of solid earth infused with the might and authority of the cradling void.”

Maddie raised a brow. “Are you sure about that?”

“Pretty sure, Litabo Gluphos y Rouns was pretty certain about that.” I shrugged at her dry look. “Hey, glyphs are a dead language, having a source about it at all is a miracle.”

Maddie rolled her eyes. “You’re a bit of a nerd are you?”

“What gave it away? Was it my sterling good looks?” I replied with snark as I played with light energy. While wondering if making a laser was possible. “Which now brings me back to our little deal. You said you were going to teach me your brand of magic. A Costcraft of some sort?”

Maddie smirked, and I twitched for a moment… as the Black inside her spilled forth like a tide of blood. Her power writhed violently, like rotting fetid skin reaching and twisting like bubbling swarms of ants.

“Are you sure you want to learn this kind of magic?” She said smugly and it was my turn to roll my eyes.

I pushed my aura out, and reality… skipped a frame in horror. Maddie’s smug grin cracked to my delight. Her Shadow was the endless dark of the night, confronting the Light of the stars.

My aura… was the blazing impossible glory of the Void, the absence of light and darkness, and yet the wellspring from which they were born. It was a quiescent silence, the delicate skein of a naked singularity. An ergosphere dragging at all of existence, gently twisting even Maddie’s Shadow.

“…” Maddie coughed, and I giggled at her response. Turns out having a soul touched by the void was very unusual. So I better understood why I weirded Dinah out.

“You were saying?”

Maddie adapted quickly, wrapping her Shadow tight around her person. “Okay. Fine. So… what do you know about Blood Witches?”

“Less than I should,” I said honestly. “Ultima says it was a lost craft along with shamanism, either subsumed or eradicated by the Chantry. Even she barely knows anything about it aside from what she's picked up from this side of the veil.”

Maddie looked disappointed. “Oh. Well they're missing out then, blood magic is at the heart of what vampires are. We are among the most ancient of the undead races spawned from witchkind. Bloodcraft is the sacrifice and use of bodily matter to feed, fuel and shape our magic.” She exposed her fangs with a gleeful grin. Needled daggers glinting in the odd light of Ultima’s human house.

“Blood huh…” I murmured with a tilt of my head.

“Not just blood, as long as it's of the body it can be used as power. Blood, death, sex, lives, and even valuable material or coins earned by sacrifice. Sweat, tears, and blood you know?”

“Interesting. That does explain some things, imperialist powers often need scapegoats.”

Maddie sighed. “Most people have a poor understanding of what blood magic truly entails. Deaths are a potent source of power yes, but we’re more akin to necromancers. We both commune with the dead from opposite ends, they commune with the spirit and we commune with the body.”

“So using death I imagine is rather more complicated than going out and murdering people?”

Maddie nodded. “Blood magic is sacrifice, yeah. But there are consequences because again we are psychopomps. We pay a high price for breaking the rules we’re bound by. I can take power from the death of someone who tried to kill me. Getting power through murder is a lot more… dangerous, when that power has the intent of those you killed.”

Oh, getting haunted or cursed definitely sounded like an obvious drawback.

“So how does blood magic fit with being an upyri?”

“Vampire is fine too,” Maddie rolled her bare shoulders, pulling back her shiny dark bangs. “Vampires are witches who learned how to drain energy from their prey, usually animals. Our bodies adapted accordingly, and we became a kind of undead. Which basically just means we play host to life and death spirits in our biology.

Like how beastfolk have their own animal spirit.”

“And the difference between vampires and ghouls is that vampires are predators while ghouls are scavengers? With some simplification.”

“More like spotted hyenas and striped hyenas.” Maddie added and I understood. “We’re not anywhere as fussy as humans.”

“Oh, you know the evil lies of Disney about poor hyenas.” Maddie smiled and we shared a moment of kinship then and there.

Maddie to my surprise, huddled up against me with a smug grin. I flushed as her thigh brushed my leg, hidden only by a swaying purple-black skirt. Maddie was oddly colorful, with a swaddling sweater in blues, pinks, purples, and black.

“Blood magic is a powerful magic that can be used to strengthen other crafts,” she whispered along my ear and I leaned back with a blush. She giggled. “And like I said sex is an option, and we are alone ya know?”

I squeaked and practically teleported to the other side of the couch. “Maddie!”

She laughed. “Sorry, I had to do it to you. But yeah blood magic is powerful, I use it to feed my connection to the Black. I can manipulate darkness and shadow, every aspect of the Black through the Shadow I've fed with my own sacrifices and work. It's pretty badass.”

A thought came to me. “Could I do that? Feed my connection with the right working of blood magic?”

Maddie purred with a very uncomfortable-looking head tilt. “Well I'm not sure, to be honest, my mother has no inherent magic of her own. Though she's very good at being a Collector, using the magic artifacts gathered by my dad. But… it shouldn't be impossible.”

“Right, so what are the basic principles of blood magic?” I asked as I bounced back over to the vampire. Now that she wasn't flirting with me.

“Well…” She drawled with a toothy smirk. “Well there's the principle of blood, the use of visceral sacrifice to power our magic. The principle of determination is the strength of our soul to focus that power into spells. Those are the big ones, but one little one is the principle of contagion…”

I listened intently to Maddie’s words, feeling slightly dissociated even as my mind focused on her words.

When did I start having friends? When did my loneliness start to abate? When did people start talking to me like a human being?

A small, bitter part of me wondered if this was what I had missed out on as a kid. If this was I had sacrificed to have a childhood of being considered gifted, and yet still being a freak anyways.

And yet my brain didn't want to accept it. It dn't want to accept that this was real and not a painful joke. Maybe that was wrong of me in some way. But I didn't exactly have much of a family to fall back on. Either dead or estranged, just a handful of victims among the millions wiped away…

It didn't help that I had a bad feeling about this, whether out of paranoia or not. It was a gut sensation, a wrongness in the air.

Something was going to happen. But I didn't know what it was.

I just knew it was going to blow up in my face.

----------------------------------------

It was not a sound, but there was a tearing. Like shoving an arm through a hole the size of a dime in a bolt of fabric. A visceral bleeding of the dimensions, a crushing of boundaries. A shattering of the microscopic edges between realities. It had to brute force its way through, crippled as it was, soul and spirit tattered.

RAGE.

The Mother watched through bloody eyes, through the endless spiritual medium which was one step above the lower world. Through the Outer Sphere where the desperate dying spirits of the mortal world of humans fled in terror. Once she had the means to see through the spiritual gauze across every layer of existence.

Now she was crippled, her old children burning out in the war across the heavens. And now she was awake, in pain, in agony, her very soul torn into a broken bramble of energies and essence.

HATE.

But she refused to die, not while her husk of a vessel still held breath, while she still had the chance to make those below her suffer and scream and DIE—

Her manifested form was barely corporeal, twisting tendrils of starlight and whipping storms of dust and mangled clumps of dead flesh. But she was still a mother, and that was enough.

HUNGER.

The Mother searched and found an easy source of prey, tasting through the currents of the spiritual sea. A human, a miserable little pile of secrets, a mere sputtering spark, empty of purpose and power.

But it was more than enough for her needs.

CONSUME.

She opened the maw.

The human screamed, but nobody came.